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  <row Id="2" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27" CreationDate="2011-02-24T23:40:35.177" Score="65" ViewCount="8661" Body="&lt;p&gt;In homeopathic remedies the original substance is often diluted to a point where statistically there should be not a single molecule left of the original substance. The most common explanation by homeopaths, on how it still works although there is no substance left, is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory&quot;&gt;water has a memory&lt;/a&gt;. That the &quot;essence&quot; or &quot;imprint&quot; of a molecule can stay in water and continue to have some effect even after the molecule itself is removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this at all possible from a physical point of view? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can water molecules (in the liquid phase) form structures that are stable over long periods of time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-08-08T01:47:06.183" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T22:48:34.707" Title="Does water have a memory as claimed in homeopathy?" Tags="|homeopathy|physics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="54" CreationDate="2011-02-24T23:40:50.440" Score="29" ViewCount="1927" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is the best evidence available relative to chamomile having relaxing effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples claims include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20211018050717/https://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/8-health-benefits-of-chamomile-tea.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;It is known for its relaxing and soothing properties&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://health.learninginfo.org/benefits-of-chamomile.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;It is a mild relaxant and, as such, is often used as an herbal solution to help combat depression, stress and anxiety but is also used for the treatment of other diseases and illnesses.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.herbwisdom.com/herb-chamomile.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chamomile has been used for centuries in teas as a mild, relaxing sleep aid&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-10-13T19:54:30.997" LastActivityDate="2022-10-13T19:54:30.997" Title="Does chamomile help you to relax?" Tags="|nutrition|alternative-medicine|herbalism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19" CreationDate="2011-02-24T23:48:56.087" Score="33" ViewCount="2240" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people blame the preservative thiomersal in vaccines for all kinds of illnesses, but mainly for autism. As thiomersal is a mercury compound, there is some plausibility in suspecting it may cause some damage, but is there some hard data on how dangerous it really is? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How comparable are the effects of thiomersal to equal amounts of elementary mercury or methyl mercury? Is there evidence that the amount that was typically used in vaccines (it is seldom used now) is harmful? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T19:13:16.780" LastActivityDate="2018-10-14T15:32:17.517" Title="How dangerous is thiomersal (thimerosal)?" Tags="|united-states|vaccines|autism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12" CreationDate="2011-02-24T23:54:33.883" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thimersal does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; cause autism.  The only study indicating such was proven to be not just shoddy, but an actual fraud committed for the purpose of profiting on the legal fees from ensuing lawsuits.  There have been many studies across multiple countries using different vaccine preservatives which show that there's no link between autism and any vaccine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thimersal is the poster child for correlation != causation.  Just because kids happen to become symptomatic for autism at the same time they get vaccines, people swallowed the bait - hook, line, and sinker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/01/06/piltdown-medicine-andrew-wakefields-scie/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/01/06/piltdown-medicine-andrew-wakefields-scie/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5258.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5258.full&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7076-autism-rises-despite-mmr-ban-in-japan/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7076-autism-rises-despite-mmr-ban-in-japan/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/00_pdf/VSD_Chart_of_Autism_Studies-Updated_Sep_27_2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/00_pdf/VSD_Chart_of_Autism_Studies-Updated_Sep_27_2010.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-09-19T21:59:25.047" LastActivityDate="2018-09-19T21:59:25.047" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14371" CreationDate="2011-02-24T23:54:34.630" Score="67" ViewCount="5789" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo_effect&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;placebo effect&lt;/a&gt; plays a crucial role in clinical trials and in our understanding of medicine, but I have always had some difficulty in understanding how exactly it works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a purely psychological effect, that you feel better because of the attention the doctors gave you, or are there other aspects to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the placebo effect just change your perception of your condition, so you subjectively feel better although nothing changed about your condition, or does it have real, measurable physical effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="22266" LastEditDate="2018-10-27T15:48:34.037" LastActivityDate="2018-10-27T15:48:34.037" Title="Is the placebo effect a purely psychological effect?" Tags="|placebo|medical-science|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12" CreationDate="2011-02-24T23:56:55.443" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thiomersal itself is toxic in quantity, degrading to ethylmercury (C&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;H&lt;sub&gt;5&lt;/sub&gt;Hg&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a vaccine preservative, however, it is harmless. (Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (2006-07-14): &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/committee/topics/thiomersal/en/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Thiomersal and vaccines&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.) This hasn't stopped anti-vaccine activists claiming that the Hg&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt; atom has nigh-magical powers of autism-causing evil, however, despite no link whatsoever having been found with much research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-10-14T15:32:17.517" LastActivityDate="2018-10-14T15:32:17.517" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12" CreationDate="2011-02-25T00:01:10.110" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thiomersal is toxic, in much higher dosages than found in vaccines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some &lt;a href=&quot;http://msds.chem.ox.ac.uk/TH/thimerosal.html&quot;&gt;safety information about thiomersal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its OEL (occupational exposure limit) is 0.05 mg/m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;. (Ibid)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[And the autism link, is of course, fraudulent nonsense.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T03:45:31.527" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T03:45:31.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="22" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-25T00:07:59.183" Score="16" ViewCount="1497" Body="&lt;p&gt;The use of the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECA_stack&quot;&gt;ECA Stack&lt;/a&gt;&quot; - ephedrine, caffeine and aspirin - has been common-place in body-building and weight-loss circles. (e.g. in 1999, 2% of the Danish population and 12 million US inhabitants were using some variant. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/168/8/966.full&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is purported to hasten the reduction of body fat and increase athletic performance. After doing some research I can't even find a consistent claim for how this could work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see that ephedrine could could reduce body fat (because ephedrine behaves similarly to amphetamines in this regard), but I cannot see how it could increase athletic performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any science behind this claim? Are there any suggestions about the mechanism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-08T04:30:55.137" LastActivityDate="2018-11-26T20:17:03.690" Title="Are there benefits to the ECA stack for body-builders?" Tags="|nutritional-supplements|weight-loss|bodybuilding|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-25T00:13:48.383" Score="41" ViewCount="2314" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes you hear that a gravely ill patient &quot;just gave up&quot; and subsequently died. Many people put great value in the healing power of positive thinking, with the more cynical ones blaming a bad progression of disease onto a &quot;lack of will&quot;. Especially with cancer there are many people saying they survived it, because they fought the cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that the state of mind, the attitude of the patient has a real effect on the course of illnesses? I can imagine a positive attitude improving the quality of life, but I'm not so sure about having a real, physical effect on the illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-08-08T02:40:45.990" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T05:50:51.363" Title="Can positive thinking provide an improved outcome for an illness?" Tags="|positive-thinking|medical-science|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2" CreationDate="2011-02-25T00:14:15.233" Score="121" Body="&lt;h1&gt;No&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Water forms strong intermolecular forces between its molecules. This is called hydrogen bonding and is a form of permanent dipole/permanent dipole interaction. Oxygen is more electronegative (its nucleus attracts a bigger share of the electron cloud of the covalent bond) than hydrogen. This causes water to form a permanent dipole where the oxygen has a small negative charge and the hydrogens have small positive charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/76FEs.png&quot; alt=&quot;hydrogen bonding&quot; /&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hydrogen-bonding-in-water-2D.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;File:Hydrogen-bonding-in-water-2D.png&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This causes electrostatic attraction between water molecules and they can form structures for a small amount of time. Other molecules in the water can affect these short lived structures and water does retain some 'memory' of these molecules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is how some proponents of homeopathy claim it works. This memory somehow has an opposite effect to the toxin or other chemical that was diluted, although there has not been any mechanism proposed for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the duration of the water memory has been scientifically tested and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v434/n7030/full/nature03383.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;shown to be very short&lt;/a&gt; (less than one billionth of a second). This means that the memory has gone by the time the patient even takes the dose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if water did have a long term memory, it would not prove homeopathy. There would also need to be evidence that this water memory had the medical effects that have been claimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T15:50:42.223" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="32" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="62" CreationDate="2011-02-25T00:20:52.503" Score="48" ViewCount="3076" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a young age, most people are told that vegetables are really good for you and you must eat them...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But why? If I eat loads of vegetables for a week, and then the next week I eat nothing but burgers and fries I don't feel in the slightest bit different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different people have different tastes, but in my opinion, vegetables generally don't taste as good as a burger. Why have my taste buds evolved to like something that is bad for me and dislike something that's good for me. It doesn't make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="40" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-23T08:08:53.247" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T03:00:35.700" Title="Are vegetables good for me?" Tags="|nutrition|vegetables|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="37" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="71" CreationDate="2011-02-25T00:30:23.073" Score="25" ViewCount="1120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard a lot of people claiming they they have a disorder called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder&quot;&gt;Seasonal Affected Disorder&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research that indicates this is an actual mental disorder?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-08-08T02:43:52.100" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T02:43:52.100" Title="Is there any scientific basis for Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD)?" Tags="|psychiatry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="41" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="480" CreationDate="2011-02-25T00:34:17.597" Score="151" ViewCount="20142" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is lots of evidence that I have seen showing &lt;strong&gt;correlation&lt;/strong&gt; between human activities and climate change but what evidence is there to support &lt;strong&gt;causation&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-08T20:34:53.523" LastActivityDate="2019-06-05T08:08:21.873" Title="Do human activities contribute to climate change?" Tags="|climate-change|climatology|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="42" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-25T00:36:43.773" Score="41" ViewCount="4810" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often hear claims that some activities, nutrients, ... &lt;em&gt;&quot;boost&quot;&lt;/em&gt; your immune system. My understanding of the immune system is that it is a finely tuned machine with enormous destructive power. If unconditionally activated it is at least as dangerous, if not more, than the diseases it protects us from. The best evidence for that is the large variety of autoimmune diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm wondering if there is evidence that some activities, food or substances really &lt;em&gt;&quot;boost&quot;&lt;/em&gt; the immune system? And I'm also wondering whether boosting the immune system would be a good idea in the first place, considering the destructive potential of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-02-25T17:50:15.057" LastActivityDate="2018-10-17T00:25:41.007" Title="Is it possible to &quot;boost your immune system&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|immune-system|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="54" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3" CreationDate="2011-02-25T01:22:31.827" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/752.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;website by the NIH about Chamomile&lt;/a&gt; listing the evidence for effectiveness for medicinal purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short summary is, there is &lt;em&gt;insufficient evidence&lt;/em&gt; for effectiveness for any of the conditions it is used for. This does not mean that it absolutely does not work, but it means we don't know whether it does anything at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In absence of any evidence there are two major side effects listed, one is the possibility of miscarriage when taken during pregnancy, the second one are possible allergies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot recommend taking pharmacologically active substances with doubtful efficacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T01:22:31.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="55" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2011-02-25T02:44:26.953" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Skeptics - Stack Exchange&lt;/strong&gt; is for challenging &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/864/when-in-doubt-ask-for-a-citation&quot;&gt;unreferenced notable claims&lt;/a&gt;, pseudoscience and biased results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skeptics is about &lt;em&gt;applying&lt;/em&gt; skepticism &amp;mdash; it is for &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/5&quot;&gt;researching the evidence&lt;/a&gt; behind claims you encounter. It is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; for speculation, philosophical discussions or investigating original claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;New users&lt;/em&gt; (even users familiar with the Stack Exchange format) &lt;em&gt;should read our &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/welcome-to-new-users&quot;&gt;introduction to the site&lt;/a&gt; before posting.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a question about the accuracy of public claims made in the media or elsewhere, if you're interested in the evidence behind what you hear or read, then you are in the right place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your question is not about &lt;em&gt;a particular claim&lt;/em&gt;, or if it is about research-level science, the following sites may be better suited for your needs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://biology.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;Biology - Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Philosophy - Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fitness.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Physical Fitness - Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://physics.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Physics - Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;the full list of Stack Exchange sites&lt;/a&gt; for more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-16T00:38:29.980" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T00:38:29.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="57" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="84" CreationDate="2011-02-25T02:57:34.677" Score="49" ViewCount="13448" Body="&lt;p&gt;I listened to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thepsychfiles.com/2011/02/episode-140-psychoanalyzing-jack-lalanne/&quot;&gt;episode 140&lt;/a&gt; of the The Psych Files podcast where the host, Michael Britt, tried to psychoanalyze Jack Lalanne and was left wondering whether there's any validity to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am under the impression that psychoanalysis is a pseudoscience and is not used by psychologists anymore. Is there any scientific validity to psychoanalysis? Or was the podcast host just having fun with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="59" LastActivityDate="2024-01-08T18:18:59.593" Title="Is there any scientific support for psychoanalysis?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="58" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="81" CreationDate="2011-02-25T03:03:43.747" Score="53" ViewCount="4082" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that the left brain controls the logical aspects of the thought and right brain controls the creative. Is there any truth to such claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T00:08:21.887" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T00:08:21.887" Title="Do the Left Brain and Right Brain have different functions?" Tags="|neurology|logic|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="59" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="61" CreationDate="2011-02-25T03:21:46.707" Score="111" ViewCount="9313" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard claims that the average person uses only 10% of their &quot;brain power,&quot; whatever that means. The implication, though, is that there the majority of our brain's potential is untapped. However, I've often heard this refrain from people who are selling &quot;training&quot; or &quot;secrets&quot; to unlock the unused potential of our brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems unlikely that there would be evolutionary advantages to having a brain whose capabilities lie largely untapped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious - what percentage of our brain do we use, or can it even be quantified in such measures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2020-07-02T02:51:04.510" Title="Do we only use 10% of our brain?" Tags="|neurology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="61" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="59" CreationDate="2011-02-25T03:54:46.753" Score="111" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe snopes.com has some solid information on this topic: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percent.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Ten-Percent Myth&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10%25_of_brain_myth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;10% of brain myth&lt;/a&gt; article on Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neurologist Barry Gordon describes the myth as laughably false, adding, &amp;quot;we use virtually every part of the brain, and that [most of] the brain is active almost all the time&amp;quot;. Neuroscientist Barry Beyerstein sets out seven kinds of evidence refuting the ten percent myth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Studies of brain damage: If 90% of the brain is normally unused, then damage to these areas should not impair performance. Instead, there is almost no area of the brain that can be damaged without loss of abilities. Even slight damage to small areas of the brain can have profound effects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evolution: The brain is enormously costly to the rest of the body, in terms of oxygen and nutrient consumption. It can require up to twenty percent of the body's energy — more than any other organ — despite making up only 2% of the human body by weight.[6][7] If 90% of it were unnecessary, there would be a large survival advantage to humans with smaller, more efficient brains. If this were true, the process of natural selection would have eliminated the inefficient brains. By the same token, it is also highly unlikely that a brain with so much redundant matter would have evolved in the first place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brain imaging: Technologies such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allow the activity of the living brain to be monitored. They reveal that even during sleep, all parts of the brain show some level of &amp;quot;activity. Only in the case of serious damage does a brain have &amp;quot;silent&amp;quot; areas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Localization of function: Rather than acting as a single mass, the brain has distinct regions for different kinds of information processing. Decades of research has gone into mapping functions onto areas of the brain, and no function-less areas have been found.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microstructural analysis: In the single-unit recording technique, researchers insert a tiny electrode into the brain to monitor the activity of a single cell. If 90% of cells were unused, then this technique would have revealed that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Metabolic studies: Another scientific technique involves studying the take-up of radioactively labelled 2-deoxyglucose molecules by the brain. If 90 percent of the brain were inactive, then those inactive cells would show up as blank areas in a radiograph of the brain. Again, there is no such result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Neural disease: Brain cells that are not used have a tendency to degenerate. Hence if 90% of the brain were inactive, autopsy of adult brains would reveal large-scale degeneration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an article from Scientific American: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-we-really-use-only-10&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Do we really use only 10 percent of our brains?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and a Google search turns up many, many more article which all say the same thing. I couldn't find anything which argued otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="48" LastEditorUserId="36995" LastEditDate="2020-07-02T02:51:04.510" LastActivityDate="2020-07-02T02:51:04.510" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="62" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="32" CreationDate="2011-02-25T04:01:55.080" Score="50" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From a young age, most people are told that vegetables are really good for you and you must eat them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most vegetables are very good for your health - they are high in fiber an d contain essential vitamins and minerals. Also, most vegetables are low calorie and all are cholesterol-free. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/vegetables-and-fruits/index.html&quot;&gt;Harvard School of Public Heath&lt;/a&gt; notes that: &quot;Most people should aim for at least nine servings (at least 4½ cups) of vegetables and fruits a day,&quot; and that a diet rich in fruit and vegetables provides the following benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lower blood pressure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, and probably some cancers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lower risk of eye and digestive problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A mellowing effect on blood sugar that can help keep appetite in check&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mypyramid.gov/pyramid/vegetables_why.html&quot;&gt;United States Department of Agriculture&lt;/a&gt; lists the following benefits from a diet rich in fruits and vegetables:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dietary fiber helps reduce blood cholesterol levels and may lower risk of heart disease and is important for proper bowel function.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vegetables are important sources of many nutrients, including potassium, dietary fiber, folate (folic acid), vitamin A, vitamin E, and vitamin C. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eating vegetables rich in potassium may reduce the risk of developing kidney stones and may help to decrease bone loss.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my opinion, vegetables generally don't taste as good as a burger. Why so why have my taste buds evolved to like something that is bad for me and dislike something that's good for me. It doesn't make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our taste buds have evolved to identify high calorie items as tasty - sugar, fats, and protein. These types of food provide a much higher ratio of calories per gram. For much of our evolutionary history, given a choice between a fatty slab of meat and broccoli, those ancestors that chose the steak would have gained more calories and thereby increased their odds of not starving to death. Consequently, these genes got passed down the evolutionary tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eating unhealthily is not the only example of things that feel good, but are bad for you. Take exercise. In our prehistoric past, a human who exerted less energy would have a greater chance at survival as he'd require less calories per day. A caveman would not needlessly run a half marathon for exercise or sport; rather, he'd conserve his energy with a more lax task - tool making or story telling. As a result, it &quot;feels better&quot; to sit down in front of the computer or TV than it does to go to the gym, but we know that such a sedentary lifestyle is not healthy, especially given our high-calorie and unhealthy diets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="64" LastEditDate="2011-02-25T23:49:38.507" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T23:49:38.507" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="63" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="32" CreationDate="2011-02-25T04:37:06.857" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea that your likes and dislikes are purely a function of evolution is where the flaw in your logic lies.  A simple observation of the fact that you can take a child from a family and raise them in a drastically different culture where they will grow up loving food their parents hated should be enough to convince you that what you &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; is not purely hereditary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question directly, yes they are good for you in that they provide &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folic_acid#Sources&quot;&gt;essential&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_A#Sources&quot;&gt;vitamins&lt;/a&gt;.  Like everything else you consume, they are good in the proper quantities, though I am not certain that we know exactly what those quantities are.  If you doubt this, go on a strict meat and salt diet and let me know how the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy&quot;&gt;scurvy&lt;/a&gt; works out for you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copper is good for you... in the right quantity (reeeealllly tiny).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T22:25:19.957" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T22:25:19.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="65" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2011-02-25T04:48:59.300" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, humans cause climate change (each doubling of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; causes about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2012/02/09/understanding-the-global-warming-debate/2/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1C increase&lt;/a&gt;).  It's really a meaningless question.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory#Sensitivity_to_initial_conditions&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Any input to any chaos system will cause some effect on that system&lt;/a&gt;.  Do we know what effect we are having?  Can we measure/predict it?  Do we have any idea how to alter/change/control that change?  And really, what the hubbub is about is not &quot;will the climate change&quot;, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer/2012/02/09/understanding-the-global-warming-debate/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;will it change in a really bad way&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (ie, catastrophic global warming)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peter Stott&lt;/a&gt; models failed to predict current temperatures (though he echoes the recurring claim that they'll be correct in the future), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drroyspencer.com/2012/02/ten-years-after-the-warming/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;which means that no existing model has predicted, correctly, any significant amount of future climate change&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/06/25/antarctic_ice_not_melting/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;new research is steadily revealing flaws&lt;/a&gt; in existing catastrophic prediction models, so the answer to those questions should be no.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A model which has yet to make an accurate prediction cannot be said to be an accurate model.  Therefore, we don't know what effect we're having, we can't predict it, and as a result of those two, we do not know how to alter or control that affect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Causation on a chaos system is nigh impossible to prove with our current abilities, so we rely on modeling.  Unfortunately, instead of insisting that a model make a prediction and have it come true before accepting it, we accept models as true if they accurately predict past events (not kidding), which is trivially easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2016-07-02T14:18:33.400" LastActivityDate="2016-07-02T14:18:33.400" CommentCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="68" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="446" CreationDate="2011-02-25T06:02:08.690" Score="44" ViewCount="5619" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anytime you hear Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) come up, someone always pipes in that it's perfectly safe because we've been doing it for thousands of years through selective breeding.  Intuitively this sounds a lot like saying we've had solar power for thousands of years via chlorophyll (ie, true but not relevant to the real issue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So specifically what risks exist with GMOs that do not exist from selective breeding?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Updating just in case it's not absolutely clear what I'm asking.  There's almost a 0% chance that GMO is better in every single way than selective breeding without introducing any new risks at all, so what are the new risks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-31T05:15:11.243" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T04:25:13.353" Title="What risks exist with GMO, but not with selective breeding?" Tags="|gmo|genetics|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="71" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="37" CreationDate="2011-02-25T06:39:45.627" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes....Scientific research supports seasonal relationships with changes in mood....changes that can cause depressive episodes. As described by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/seasonal-affective-disorder/DS00195/DSECTION=symptoms&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic&lt;/a&gt; .....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Seasonal affective disorder is a&#xA;  cyclic, seasonal condition. This means&#xA;  that signs and symptoms come back and&#xA;  go away at the same time every year.&#xA;  Usually, seasonal affective disorder&#xA;  symptoms appear during late fall or&#xA;  early winter and go away during the&#xA;  sunnier days of spring and summer.&#xA;  Some people have the opposite pattern&#xA;  and become depressed with the onset of&#xA;  spring or summer. In either case,&#xA;  problems may start out mild and become&#xA;  more severe as the season progresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found the following bits on the research helpful for a start &lt;em&gt;(there is a lot of research...these are really small bits)&lt;/em&gt;..... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/48376?pageNumber=3&quot;&gt;Re-Examining Seasonal Affective Disorder. Psychiatric Times. Vol. 19 No. 10. 2002&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The initial focus of the&#xA;  pathophysiology of SAD was on&#xA;  circadian rhythm theories, but&#xA;  research interest has expanded to&#xA;  include hypotheses related to&#xA;  abnormalities in monoamine&#xA;  neurotransmitters, personality and&#xA;  genetics (Lam and Levitan, 2000;&#xA;  Partonen and Magnusson, 2001)....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;.....Neurotransmitters and genetics. A&#xA;  robust body of research also supports&#xA;  the role of neurotransmitters such as&#xA;  serotonin in the pathophysiology of&#xA;  SAD (Neumeister et al., 2001a). For&#xA;  example, neuroendocrine studies have&#xA;  shown evidence for serotonergic&#xA;  dysregulation in SAD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21048126?tool=MedlinePlus&quot;&gt;Seasonal effects on human striatal presynaptic dopamine synthesis. 2010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sorry this is a bit long. I tried cutting it down....and failed.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Past studies in rodents have&#xA;  demonstrated circannual variation in&#xA;  central dopaminergic activity as well&#xA;  as a host of compelling interactions&#xA;  between melatonin--a&#xA;  scotoperiod-responsive neurohormone&#xA;  closely tied to seasonal&#xA;  adaptation--and dopamine in the&#xA;  striatum and in midbrain neuronal&#xA;  populations with striatal projections.&#xA;  In humans, seasonal effects have been&#xA;  described for dopaminergic markers in&#xA;  CSF and postmortem brain, and &lt;strong&gt;there&#xA;  exists a range of affective,&#xA;  psychotic, and substance abuse&#xA;  disorders that have been associated&#xA;  with both seasonal symptomatic&#xA;  fluctuations and dopamine&#xA;  neurotransmission abnormalities&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  Together, these data indirectly&#xA;  suggest a potentially crucial link&#xA;  between circannual biorhythms and&#xA;  central dopamine systems. &lt;em&gt;However,&#xA;  seasonal effects on dopamine function&#xA;  in the living, healthy human brain&#xA;  have never been tested.&lt;/em&gt; For this&#xA;  study, 86 healthy adults underwent&#xA;  (18)F-DOPA positron emission&#xA;  tomography (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron_emission_tomography&quot;&gt;PET&lt;/a&gt;) scanning, each at a&#xA;  different time throughout the year.&#xA;  Striatal regions of interest (ROIs)&#xA;  were evaluated for differences in&#xA;  presynaptic dopamine synthesis,&#xA;  measured by the kinetic rate constant,&#xA;  K(i), between fall-winter and&#xA;  spring-summer scans. Analyses&#xA;  comparing ROI average K(i) values&#xA;  showed significantly greater putamen&#xA;  (18)F-DOPA K(i) in the fall-winter&#xA;  relative to the spring-summer group (p&#xA;  = 0.038). Analyses comparing voxelwise K(i) values confirmed this finding and&#xA;  evidenced intrastriatal localization&#xA;  of seasonal effects to the caudal&#xA;  putamen (p &amp;lt; 0.05, false-discovery&#xA;  rate corrected), a region that&#xA;  receives dopaminergic input&#xA;  predominantly from the substantia&#xA;  nigra. &lt;strong&gt;These data are the first to&#xA;  directly demonstrate a seasonal effect&#xA;  on striatal presynaptic dopamine&#xA;  synthesis and merit future research&#xA;  aimed at elucidating underlying&#xA;  mechanisms&lt;/strong&gt; and implications for&#xA;  neuropsychiatric disease and new&#xA;  treatment approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/107/45/19549.abstract&quot;&gt;Spectral quality of light modulates emotional brain responses in humans.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Light therapy can be an effective&#xA;  treatment for mood disorders,&#xA;  suggesting that light is able to&#xA;  affect mood state in the long term. As&#xA;  a first step to understand this&#xA;  effect, we hypothesized that light&#xA;  might also acutely influence emotion&#xA;  and tested whether short exposures to&#xA;  light modulate emotional brain&#xA;  responses. During functional magnetic&#xA;  resonance imaging, 17 healthy&#xA;  volunteers listened to emotional and&#xA;  neutral vocal stimuli while being&#xA;  exposed to alternating 40-s periods of&#xA;  blue or green ambient light. Blue&#xA;  (relative to green) light increased&#xA;  responses to emotional stimuli in the&#xA;  voice area of the temporal cortex and&#xA;  in the hippocampus. &lt;strong&gt;During emotional&#xA;  processing, the functional&#xA;  connectivity between the voice area,&#xA;  the amygdala, and the hypothalamus was&#xA;  selectively enhanced in the context of&#xA;  blue illumination&lt;/strong&gt;, which shows that&#xA;  responses to emotional stimulation in&#xA;  the hypothalamus and amygdala are&#xA;  influenced by both the decoding of&#xA;  vocal information in the voice area&#xA;  and the spectral quality of ambient&#xA;  light. These results demonstrate the&#xA;  acute influence of light and its&#xA;  spectral quality on emotional brain&#xA;  processing and identify a unique&#xA;  network merging affective and ambient&#xA;  light information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T06:39:45.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="74" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="76" CreationDate="2011-02-25T07:52:34.657" Score="58" ViewCount="7847" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the years, Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) has been creeping into popular culture. It is used by a lot of self-help gurus, and also in context of the right way to educate and learn (&lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt;, visual learner, auditory learner, etc.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At its core the NLP presuppositions seem vague. (&lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;Choice is better than no choice&quot;, &quot;People work perfectly&quot;, &quot;All actions have a purpose.&quot;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Is there any credible proof of NLP being anything more than just placebo?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In my mind I was comparing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kybalion&quot;&gt;The Seven Hermetic Principles&lt;/a&gt; [not that I subscribe to them] and NLP — trying to to figure out if NLP can score more points than the 7 principles in being scientific, verifiable and substantial.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="81" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2015-05-29T13:16:55.693" LastActivityDate="2023-08-24T12:33:27.753" Title="Any Scientific Basis for Neuro Linguistic Programming?" Tags="|psychology|marketing|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="75" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-25T07:53:04.487" Score="19" ViewCount="5052" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Sugar pill claims&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasoning behind dilution, 'potentiation' and the memory of water is known to me, and there are several good arguments to be made against those 'theories'. But I can't really use them if somebody comes up to me with a sugar pill supposed to contain a homeopathic remedy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; the homeopathic justification for those pills? The water, holding the cure in its supposed memory, is not there anymore, so what &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; the claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they claim that sugar has memory too? And if so, how do you get the water-memory into the sugar? Do you have to bang it against a book?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they claim something else? Is there some &lt;em&gt;residue&lt;/em&gt; (for lack of a better word) that stays between the various sugar molecules&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other strange arguments?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never seen anyone make these claims, they are just examples. There must be a - be it faulty - reasoning behind it, just as the memory explanation for water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How a sugar pill is made&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems the method is to just dip a pellet into the solution. From there you can just put other pellets/pills in the same jar as that one, and you have lots of pills.&#xA;The only claim there seems to be is that the remedy water may leave, but the remedy stays behind. I have not found any claim of how this supposed memory is transferred to the sugar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a pill, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20180629164546/http://www.critical-thinking.org.uk/health/alternative-medicine/homeopathy/homeopathy.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article on ukskeptics&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once the remedy has been obtained in the required potency, &#xA;  sugar pills are dipped in the remedy and allowed to dry. &#xA;  The essence of the original mother tincture is now believed to have &#xA;  been transferred to the pill. If a pill with the essence of the &#xA;  remedy is allowed to come into contact with other sugar pills &#xA;  (such as placing them all together in a jar), it is believed that&#xA;  the other pills will also acquire the essence of the mother tincture. &#xA;  This process is known as 'grafting'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of times it is necessary to explain to someone using a homeopathic dilution that there is a difference between (for instance) &quot;natural remedies&quot; they claim to use, and this bottle of water they're holding. After explaining &lt;strong&gt;what is claimed&lt;/strong&gt; by the homeopath you can then add your own response, and maybe come to the shared conclusion that it is not a real remedy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2019-05-02T17:21:47.807" LastActivityDate="2019-05-02T17:21:47.807" Title="How do sugar pills work according to homeopaths?" Tags="|homeopathy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2014-07-08T02:13:32.090" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="76" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="74" CreationDate="2011-02-25T07:58:56.853" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that there is no scientific basis for NLP. Reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/242770183_Neuro-linguistic_programming_cargo_cult_psychology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Neuro-linguistic programming: Cargo cult psychology? (2009)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It concludes that after three&#xA;decades, there is still no credible&#xA;theoretical basis for NLP, researchers&#xA;having failed to establish any&#xA;evidence for its efficacy that is not&#xA;anecdotal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from the conclusion: (link not in original quote)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To adapt this [Cargo Cult] term one more time, NLP&#xA;masquerades as a legitimate form of&#xA;psychotherapy, makes unsubstantiated&#xA;claims about how humans think and&#xA;behave, purports to encourage research&#xA;in a vain attempt to gain credibility,&#xA;yet fails to provide evidence that it&#xA;actually works. Neuro-linguistic&#xA;programming is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cargo cult&lt;/a&gt; psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-08-24T12:33:27.753" LastActivityDate="2023-08-24T12:33:27.753" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="79" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="68" CreationDate="2011-02-25T08:18:33.313" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the latest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive/podcastinfo.aspx?mid=1&amp;amp;pid=292&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Skeptics' Guide To The Universe&quot; episode&lt;/a&gt;, &#xA;Kevin Folta said that you have much more control over the outcome of the genetic material using GMO, as opposed to &quot;breeding by chance&quot; (classical) - which is acceptable by public but gives no controllable results.&#xA;I would say, GMO is more safe, and my source is intervew with Dr Folta :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="85" LastEditorUserId="83" LastEditDate="2011-02-25T21:55:56.297" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T21:55:56.297" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="81" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="58" CreationDate="2011-02-25T08:43:47.160" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of Left Brain/Right Brain &quot;function&quot; has been interpreted as &quot;thought.&quot; Thought and function are not the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each hemisphere of the brain has specializations or function sets. Generally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Right hemisphere: Processing of&#xA;visual and audiological stimuli,&#xA;spatial manipulation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Left hemisphere: Linear reasoning and&#xA;language functions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... definite evidence for language&#xA;  lateralisation arose from studies in&#xA;  split brain patients. In these&#xA;  patients, &lt;strong&gt;the nerve fibres that&#xA;  connect the two hemispheres were&#xA;  severed&lt;/strong&gt; in order to stop the spread of&#xA;  epileptic seizures from one hemisphere&#xA;  to the other ... studies of these split&#xA;  brain patients were carried out in the&#xA;  1960s and 1970s by the Nobel Prize&#xA;  laureate Roger Sperry and his&#xA;  colleagues at the Californian&#xA;  Institute of&#xA;  Technology ... Sperry’s&#xA;  experiments yielded an amazing result:&#xA;  when split brain patients processed an&#xA;  object with their right hand, i.e.&#xA;  with their left hemisphere, they could&#xA;  easily name the object. In contrast,&#xA;  when an object was touched with the&#xA;  left hand, i.e. processed by the right&#xA;  hemisphere, they could not name it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole &quot;philosophy&quot; of Left Brain/Right Brain was pulled from this information, not from further research. In other words, it's made up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The notion of different hemispheric&#xA;  thinking styles is based on an&#xA;  erroneous premise: each brain&#xA;  hemisphere is specialised and&#xA;  therefore each must function&#xA;  independently with a different&#xA;  thinking style. This connection is a&#xA;  bridge too far: it uses scientific&#xA;  findings regarding functional&#xA;  asymmetries for the processing of&#xA;  stimuli to create conceptions about&#xA;  hemispheric differences on a different&#xA;  level, such as a cognitive thinking&#xA;  style. Furthermore, there is no direct&#xA;  scientific evidence supporting the&#xA;  idea that different thinking styles&#xA;  lie within each hemisphere. Indeed,&#xA;  deriving different hemispheric&#xA;  thinking styles from functional&#xA;  asymmetries is quite a bold venture,&#xA;  which oversimplifies and misinterprets&#xA;  scientific findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above two quotes come from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oecd.org/document/63/0,3343,en_2649_35845581_34555007_1_1_1_1,00.html&quot;&gt;The left brain/ right brain myth&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Being a neurophysiologist, I suppose I&#xA;   ought to feel that progress has been&#xA;   made: in no other age could it have&#xA;   taken a mere twenty years to shift&#xA;   from a predominantly religious&#xA;   metaphor to a semi-scientific one.&#xA;   But the neurophysiologists and&#xA;   neuropsychologists who specialize in&#xA;   the human cerebral cortex are starting&#xA;   to view the left-righters with&#xA;   something of the wariness which the&#xA;   astronomers reserve for astrology.&quot; -William Calvin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-02-26T15:34:15.263" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T15:34:15.263" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="84" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="57" CreationDate="2011-02-25T09:51:15.027" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Psychoanalysis isn't used in the form that Sigmund Freud once designed by educated psychologists. Many present-day psychotherapists still use techniques that bear Freud's imprint, but they have modified the treatment in various ways. The intensity of Freud&#xA;'s design has been diminished, Freud insisted on at least three sessions of psychotherapy according to his own psychoanalysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the typical couch on which patients could relax while the psychologist sat outside of the patients' view is no longer used. Modern Neo-Freudian practitioners more commonly known as psychodynamic, ego-analytic and object-relations therapists, emphasize current interpersonal and cultural factors, where classical psychoanalysis emphasizes on past factors mainly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another change in modern psychoanalysis-based therapies is that patients are encouraged to apply what they have learned in their sessions with a therapist, whereas classical psychoanalysis therapy was thought to only be effective if no major life changes were made. (Like getting married, divorced, having children, etc.) So the patients life should be stable during the psychoanalysis therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although psychoanalysis has been the foundation of many therapies that have been scientifically proven to work, it's original form is no longer used in modern day psychological treatments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, concluding, as stated by Scott Mitchell's comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes, classical Freudian psychoanalysis is pseudoscience, but modern psychoanalytical techniques are evidence-based. Here's a paper published in American Psychologist that presents research that &quot;supports the efficacy and effectiveness of psychodynamic therapy&quot; &#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20110807160956/apsa.org/portals/1/docs/news/JonathanShedlerStudy20100202.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;apsa.org/portals/1/docs/news/JonathanShedlerStudy20100202.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="98" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-09-19T21:59:19.407" LastActivityDate="2018-09-19T21:59:19.407" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="88" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="180" CreationDate="2011-02-25T11:07:14.820" Score="165" ViewCount="25811" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Everyone knows&quot; - a scary statement - that you get &quot;a cold&quot; from being cold. Now it seems to be a fact that you don't, because you get a cold from a (rhino)virus, not from the temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But is there any correlation between temperature and disease&lt;/strong&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen claims that &quot;cold lowers your immune system&quot;, and stuff like that, but no real evidence. As soon as you look into scientific research about this, you get claims that the correlation is not causation, because in the winter people spend more time inside (close to one another) for instance. (See for instance &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20140622192142/https://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/commonCold/Pages/cause.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand - and I know this is a really bad form of reasoning -- I think if I'd go outside in the freezing cold wearing nothing but some summer pants, I'd not come out of that after a couple of hours like a happy camper. Is this non-sense, or is there some correlation between being cold (or even undercooled?) and disease? If so, how does this work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-10-14T18:22:35.357" LastActivityDate="2018-10-14T18:22:35.357" Title="Does being cold increase your chances of catching the common cold?" Tags="|medical-science|common-cold|immune-system|virus|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="90" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2011-02-25T12:27:45.950" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several aspects of this phenomenon, and I don't think it could be summed up easily even if it were better understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tellingly, placebo has most effect on non-specific symptoms. The easiest category is that which relates to perception, such as pain and nausea. These are entirely mental representations of sensorineural input; constructions that exist because we somehow benefit from the averse reaction to whatever we think might have caused it (i.e. we feel pain because it motivates us to run when animals are eating us, and we are nauseated so that we may refrain from eating the typically harmful stuff we associate with the onset of nausea). These are brain utilities and we shouldn't be surprised that we can ignore listening to them just as we can filter out things that happen right in front of our eyes when we're focusing on something else (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;*&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a bit trickier when it comes to things that can be measured objectively, but even in that group, there are symptoms that stand out as extra easy to explain away. Fever falls into this category, as well as, say, a swelling. When a placebo treatment brings your fever down measurably, we know that something more is going on than simply a selective perception. But it doesn't have to be &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; much more. Fevers and swellings are prompted by infectious disease, but the foreign antigen isn't the &lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt; cause of these symptoms, but rather, it is your body's way of dealing with the issue. You &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; that fever (well...), because that's your body adjusting itself to optimally cure you. So it's really not that big a deal that you can reduce a fever by means of placebo; sure, if you can trick yourself that you're not infected (or at least, that it's being taken care of), it makes sense that your body's response would be more relaxed, but you'd probably be worse off for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It must be acknowledged, however, that there are effects that seem to be purely driven by placebo, where it is not immediately obvious what the mechanisms behind it are. How do we explain entirely physical manifestations, such as how, say, &lt;a href=&quot;http://tinyurl.com/ymfgoz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;warts disappear apparently entirely due to placebo&lt;/a&gt;? Or have a look at this neat effect, where the nocebo effect (which surely must be but a different application of the same phenomenon) provokes a rash:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another interesting one that demonstrates both the placebo and nocebo effect in one study is a study done by Japanese researches on 57 high school aged boys.  They selected these boys based on the fact that when exposed to Lacquer trees, these boys would get a severe rash, much like is common with poison ivy.  They then blindfolded the boys and proceeded to brush one of their arms with the Lacquer tree leaves and the other with an innocuous leaf that would have no effect.  They told them however that the arm brushed with the laquer tree was brushed by the harmless leaf and the one brushed by the harmless leaf they were told was brushed by the Lacquer tree leaf.  What followed was a rash developed on most of the boys arms that were brushed by the harmless leaf and the other arm that was actually brushed by the Lacquer leaf that should have caused a rash was completely fine in nearly every case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/07/there-is-a-nocebo-effect-which-is-the-evil-twin-of-the-placebo-effect/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's going on here is probably that our bodies are being conditioned to release certain endorphins and chemical substances, leading up to this result. I don't think anybody can account for exactly what is going on in every single case of placebo effect, but I don't doubt these effects are all psychogenic, although their manifestations might be very indirect outcomes, far removed from their provoking agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-10-26T23:28:53.780" LastActivityDate="2018-10-26T23:28:53.780" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="95" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="107" CreationDate="2011-02-25T12:59:04.277" Score="28" ViewCount="6816" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was sent the following link by a friend and they were concerned that someone was passing it around on Twitter. What would be some good refutations for its content?&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180820015352/http://www.infowars.com/vaccine-deaths-and-injuries-skyrocket-as-cover-up-implodes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Infowars: Vaccine Deaths And Injuries Skyrocket As Cover-up Implodes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Cases of debilitating illnesses, soft-kill side-effects and even&#xA;instant deaths as a result of&#xA;vaccinations across the world are&#xA;skyrocketing as the cover-up of deadly&#xA;inoculations implodes and more people&#xA;than ever become suspicious about what&#xA;they are being injected with by health&#xA;authorities who have proven they&#xA;cannot be trusted. The implosion of&#xA;the vaccine cover-up is sure to&#xA;discourage more parents from&#xA;vaccinating their children in the&#xA;coming months, with the swine flu shot&#xA;now being combined with the regular&#xA;seasonal flu jab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent Rasmussen&#xA;poll found that 52 per cent of&#xA;Americans were concerned about the&#xA;safety of vaccines as we approach the&#xA;start of school and college terms,&#xA;where many children and teenagers will&#xA;be “required” to take shots before&#xA;they can attend...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-07-18T11:12:53.467" LastActivityDate="2021-07-18T11:12:53.467" Title="Are deaths &quot;skyrocketing&quot; due to vaccination?" Tags="|medical-science|vaccines|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="96" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="97" CreationDate="2011-02-25T13:00:06.037" Score="8" ViewCount="12315" Body="&lt;p&gt;Homeopathy literature likes to compare Nosode remedies with traditional vaccinations, does this have any validity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-24T06:31:42.343" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T17:53:45.190" Title="What is a Nosode?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|homeopathy|medications|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="97" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="96" CreationDate="2011-02-25T13:01:00.577" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thewholedog.org/id63.html&quot;&gt;the horse's (or dog's) mouth&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simply stated: a nosode is a homeopathic remedy prepared from a pathological specimen. The only difference between a nosode and any other remedy, is the starting material. It could be blood, pus, any other body secretion or excretion, or even a diseased fragment of tissue, such as a growth. Rabies nosode for example, starts with the saliva of a rabid dog and is then &quot;potentized&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flowersociety.org/Ask-FES/Ask-Potentizing.htm&quot;&gt;Potentization in homeopathy&lt;/a&gt; explained:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Homeopathic potentization is a very specific form of potentization which was developed by Samuel Hahnemann. It involves serial dilutions by factors of 10 or 100 with succession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a nosode is prepared by extreme dilution in the way that a homeopathic remedy is prepared, but instead of starting from a compound with mystical healing properties, they are starting from some manifestation of the target disease itself, or something with a claimed connection to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put aside the irony of &quot;potentizing&quot; meaning dilution to the point of non-existance of the original material for a moment, and wow, sounds a little bit like a killed or attenuated vaccine, so maybe there's something to this one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not so fast. A vaccine works by stimulating an immune response that the body remembers. This means that the vaccine needs to contain material that the body recognises in the same way that it recognises the disease organism (or its toxin in some cases). Such material might include the killed/inactivated organism itself, the live organism treated to be less virulent (attenuated), or parts of the organism that provoke a response in the immune system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Preparation of a vaccine thus requires a very specific and non-zero amount of material that elicits a response from the immune system that mirrors that of the actual infection, while avoiding over-stimulation and actual disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Homeopathic potentization is specifically designed not to contain this material. The process of dilution involved in homeopathic preparation is designed to ensure no significant amount of the original material remains in the preparation. From the same site I referenced for the explanation of nosodes earlier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The major difference between a nosode and an &quot;orthodox&quot; vaccine is of course the extremely small (if any) quantity of physical substance in a nosode. Remember, it is the &quot;energy&quot; pattern not the &quot;substance&quot; that does the job in a homeopathic remedy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So since there is no remaining material to induce an immune response, these preparations are no different than other standard homeopthatic remedies - they are nothing but water, a placebo. They rely on the same woo and mystical sleight-of-mind that standard homeopathy uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Posit for a moment that nosodes did contain sufficient material to elicit an immune response. Since they are prepared from the actual infection itself (those that aren't prepared from irrelevant excretions) then the only effective response-inducing material would be the original disease-causing organism. Even attenuated live vaccines carry the risk of reversion to virulence or causing disease in immunocompromised subjects. In other words, such a preparation would simply infect the new host.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T13:01:00.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="112" CreationDate="2011-02-25T13:05:30.553" Score="20" ViewCount="7810" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy&quot;&gt;Homeopathic&lt;/a&gt; medicines would be required (or considered) an overdose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every Homeopathic site claims the treatments are safe and have no side effects, it it even possible to overdose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T11:05:18.500" Title="Is it possible to overdose on Homeopathic medicines?" Tags="|homeopathy|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-05-01T11:05:26.663" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="101" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="115" CreationDate="2011-02-25T13:06:36.543" Score="59" ViewCount="9790" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Darwin, the absence of intermediate fossil forms “is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.” What new fossil finds, if any, have occurred since Darwin wrote these words nearly 150 years ago? Do they overturn Darwin’s bleak assessment of evolutionary theory? If the absence of intermediate fossil forms holds as much today as it did back then, why should anyone accept evolution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This question is taken from &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://billdembski.com/documents/2004.04.Five_Questions_Ev.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Five&#xA;  Questions Evolutionists Would Rather&#xA;  Dodge&lt;/a&gt; By William A. Dembski&lt;/em&gt;, I&#xA;  have asked it here so the rationalist,&#xA;  scientific and skeptical communities&#xA;  can collectively provide well&#xA;  researched and logically sound&#xA;  answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-11-10T17:58:50.753" LastActivityDate="2018-11-14T00:20:11.843" Title="Does &quot;The Fossil Record&quot; evidence sufficiently support evolution?" Tags="|fossil-record|charles-darwin|evolution|intelligent-design|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="102" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="125" CreationDate="2011-02-25T13:07:21.580" Score="11" ViewCount="849" Body="&lt;p&gt;The film &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.houseofnumbers.com/&quot;&gt;House of Numbers&lt;/a&gt; has had some quite mainstream backers including (for a brief time) an journalist at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2009/09/was-i-conned-by-aids-denialists.html&quot;&gt;New Humanist magazine&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In House of Numbers, an AIDS film like&#xA;  no other, the HIV/AIDS story is being&#xA;  rewritten. This is the first film to&#xA;  present the uncensored POVs of&#xA;  virtually all the major players[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the evidence agains House of Numbers, and AIDS denialists in general?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T21:48:11.083" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T23:18:33.323" Title="Is &quot;House of Numbers&quot; an AIDS denialist film?" Tags="|hiv-aids|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="95" CreationDate="2011-02-25T13:19:50.437" Score="61" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the facts are that the process of vaccination involves injecting you with an antigen very similar to the thing you are to gain immunization to, so that your immune system may familiarize with it in a controlled environment. Ideally, this similar antigen should be harmless, but so similar that your immunity towards the injected antigen will transfer to immunity to the actual disease. It is known that this is not entirely without side effects. It is indeed possible that you become ill from the very antigen you're injecting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not at all what the anti vax people are stressing up about, however. Probably because it's well documented that there's a &lt;em&gt;significantly greater&lt;/em&gt; risk in &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; getting vaccinated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the article you're referencing is problematic because it bundles together several completely different issues. For one part, it deals with the case of the H1N1 vaccine and the alleged links to narcolepsy which is an actual scientific debate regarding a brand new vaccine, and the claims are currently being investigated rigorously. There's one report going on in Finland from which we've only seen preliminary results (!) which seem to vindicate the connection, and there's another study in Sweden hopefully to be published within a few months. Until those studies are published, I wouldn't dare comment on the likelihood of a connection. If you're in the H1N1 high risk demography, at least Swedish government &lt;em&gt;still recommends&lt;/em&gt; the vaccine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For these guys, this just confirms their assumption that &lt;em&gt;all vaccines are dangerious and should be avoided&lt;/em&gt;. But the H1N1 story says &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; that will validate the links between the MMR vaccine and autism, for instance. This is an entirely different claim, it is about a vaccine that's been in long use, and &lt;em&gt;it's been refuted countless times&lt;/em&gt;. The alleged autism claim is based solely on an Andrew Wakefield study &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lifeofboys.com/family/vaccine-study-was-pure-bluff/&quot;&gt;that's been shown since long to be a complete scam&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's no simple answer to the vaccine story, because it's not one story. These guys are cross-pollinating the news in a manner that doesn't make sense, to try and validate a long debunked theory. What can be said is that all of this is very tragic. The vaccine scare has given us an increase in pertussis morbidity, which is &lt;em&gt;a disease we can avoid entirely&lt;/em&gt;. I know this'll come off as an argument from emotion here, but I really think it's a shame that people are still dying from pertussis, due to ignorance and fear mongering alone, when we have the very simple means to defeat it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T13:19:50.437" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="100" CreationDate="2011-02-25T13:33:31.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most homeopathic remedies are so far diluted that there just is not enough substance left to cause any kind of pharmacological effect. But there are some exceptions, the most well known was probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zicam&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zicam&lt;/a&gt;, which has been recalled by the FDA because is could destroy the sense of smell due to the contained zinc. One could argue that it is not a &lt;em&gt;&quot;real&quot;&lt;/em&gt; homeopathic remedy, but it was marketed as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-02T01:15:45.240" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T01:15:45.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="100" CreationDate="2011-02-25T13:35:31.580" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;That all depends on the homeopathic &quot;medicine.&quot; True homeopathic &quot;medicines&quot; are so &lt;a href=&quot;http://altmed.creighton.edu/Homeopathy/philosophy/dilution.htm&quot;&gt;diluted&lt;/a&gt; that they have no &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&amp;amp;artid=1874503&quot;&gt;active ingredients&lt;/a&gt;, and so this would be impossible, assuming that there are no harmful inactive ingredients, and not taken in quantities associated with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication&quot;&gt;hyperhydration&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there are some substances that are sold that are said to be homeopathic, and do contain active ingredients. Depending on the substance, it would be possible to over-dose on these. For instance, I know that there are some zinc lozenges that are marketed as homeopathic, and you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/Treatment/TreatmentsandSideEffects/ComplementaryandAlternativeMedicine/HerbsVitaminsandMinerals/zinc&quot;&gt;overdose on that&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="110" LastEditorUserId="110" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T20:57:09.727" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T20:57:09.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="100" CreationDate="2011-02-25T13:38:01.903" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is entirely possible to overdose on almost anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;liquid (water) homepathic medicine can of course cause &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication&quot;&gt;water intoxication&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sugar pills can cause problems with blood sugar I presume, although I do not know in what amounts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;liquid (alcohol) we all know this one :)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T21:54:42.923" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T21:54:42.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2011-02-25T13:49:42.587" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past 150 years, we have made &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/2401081&quot;&gt;heaps&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bio-nica.info/Biblioteca/Heads2005NodesMolecularPhylogenies.pdf&quot;&gt;heaps&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; of new fossil finds. If the fossil record of today had been available 150 years ago, I dare say there would not have been much for Chuck to figure out in the first place, because &lt;em&gt;everyone&lt;/em&gt; would immediately see what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is definitely not a question that evolutionists would rather dodge, but it is, perhaps, one that we've grown quite weary of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, however:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The fossil record is rich enough to be evidence of evolution even if we had &lt;em&gt;no other&lt;/em&gt; evidence for it at all&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We do, in fact, have other evidence and &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; would in turn be convincing enough even if there was no fossil record at all! Evidence is abundant.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While Darwin was indeed concerned about the, to his mind, poor fossil record of his time, he did spend &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species_%281859%29/Chapter_IX&quot;&gt;an entire chapter&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;em&gt;Origin&lt;/em&gt; on explaining the extremely rare circumstances under which fossilization occurs, giving an excellent account for why we aren't finding more of it. It is the most boring chapter of an otherwise excellent read, and it is also the chapter since rendered most redundant, as his concerns are no longer very valid.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Speciation occurs when members of the same species are suddenly isolated from one another for a substantial period of time. This is one of the driving mechanisms behind &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punctuated_equilibrium&quot;&gt;punctuated equilibrium&lt;/a&gt;. For this reason among several others (such as varying selection pressure), evolution is not constant linear momentum in one direction. A completely linear progression in the fossil records without &quot;gaps&quot; whatsoever would be difficult to explain. Even evolutionists expects some gap.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The fossil record would be one among several splendid places to easily falsify the theory of evolution. No single falsifying fossil has yet been found, though. I'd argue it's convincing evidence on its own, that the theory has effortlessly withstood 150 years of deliberate attempts to falsify it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="867" LastEditDate="2011-07-26T14:44:35.947" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T14:44:35.947" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2011-02-25T13:53:03.930" Score="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;The absence doesn't hold up. In fact there are tons of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils&quot;&gt;intermediate fossils&lt;/a&gt;. Good examples are the evolution of birds and humans. Early birds are more or less just &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_birds#References&quot;&gt;dinosaurs with wings&lt;/a&gt; (and we now know that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaur#References&quot;&gt;many dinosaurs had primitive feathers as well&lt;/a&gt;). And with this you can see a clear path from dinosaurs, to bird-like dinosaurs with feathers, to early dinosaur-like birds to birds, so therefore the bird-like dinosaurs and dinosaur-like birds are in fact intermediate fossil forms between dinosaurs and birds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In human evolution we can clearly see that australopithecines, being &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.proof-of-evolution.com/australopithecus.html&quot;&gt;upright-walking apes&lt;/a&gt;, are intermediate between apes and humans, and that early homo in turn is intermediate between australopithecines and homo sapiens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument is then sometimes said that they are not intermediate forms between &lt;em&gt;species&lt;/em&gt;. But that argument doesn't hold up because the line between species isn't necessarily sharp. It's an arbitrary grouping we humans do. You can't have an intermediate form between two species, because we will decide which species it belongs to. But nature makes no such distinctions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally the animals within one species can interbreed, but no interbreeding can be done between species. But there are species of birds where birds from the eastern part of the population will not mate with birds from the western part of the population. But yet there is never a clean break in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And everyone knows Coyotes and Gray Wolves are different species, right? But Gray Wolves can (and sometimes do) mate with red wolves, that can (and sometimes do) mate with Coyotes.&#xA;(In fact there is some speculation that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/books?id=JgAMbNSt8ikC&amp;amp;pg=PA532#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Red Wolf itself is a mix between Gray Wolf and Coyote&lt;/a&gt;. I don't know if any conclusion has been drawn on that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In evolution it is even more self-evident that there is no clean break between species, and one species slowly evolves from another. So if you find an intermediary form, i.e. something you can't clearly specify as species A or species B, you tend to give it a species of it's own (with a significant expansion of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo#Species&quot;&gt;species in Homo&lt;/a&gt; during the last decades as a result).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the grouping of individuals into species are often arbitrary, and as long as we always stick every individual into one species, we won't get intermediary forms between species. But it's clear that different species are intermediary forms of other species, so the evidence is there in the fossil record, with no doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="80" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T09:24:48.037" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T09:24:48.037" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="121" CreationDate="2011-02-25T14:11:51.863" Score="20" ViewCount="2153" Body="&lt;p&gt;Promoted by &lt;a href=&quot;http://jimhumble.biz/&quot;&gt;Jim Humble&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Miracle Mineral Solution&lt;/strong&gt; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/15/miracle-mineral-solutions-mms-bleach&quot;&gt;claimed to cure&lt;/a&gt; a wide range of ailments. But what exactly is it, chemically speaking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="4" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T11:22:17.777" LastActivityDate="2018-11-29T20:45:52.693" Title="What is Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS)?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="119" CreationDate="2011-02-25T14:23:23.580" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Miracle Mineral Solution is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?m=20100806&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;industrial strength bleach&lt;/a&gt;, it specifically contains &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_dioxide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chlorine dioxide&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20160303130147/http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm220747.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The FDA has issued a warning about consuming it&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers not to take&#xA;  Miracle Mineral Solution, an oral liquid also known as “Miracle&#xA;  Mineral Supplement” or “MMS.”  The product, when used as directed,&#xA;  produces an industrial bleach that can cause serious harm to health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The FDA has received several reports of health injuries from consumers&#xA;  using this product, including severe nausea, vomiting, and&#xA;  life-threatening low blood pressure from dehydration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consumers who have MMS should stop using it immediately and throw it&#xA;  away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-10-26T23:28:08.510" LastActivityDate="2018-10-26T23:28:08.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="119" CreationDate="2011-02-25T14:33:36.903" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110226091448/https://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch/SafetyInformation/SafetyAlertsforHumanMedicalProducts/ucm220756.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to the FDA&lt;/a&gt;, the Miracle Mineral Solution produces an industrial bleach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The product, when used as directed, produces an industrial bleach that can cause serious harm to health. The product instructs consumers to mix the 28 percent sodium chlorite solution with an acid such as citrus juice. This mixture produces &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_dioxide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;chlorine dioxide&lt;/a&gt;, a potent bleach used for stripping textiles and industrial water treatment. High oral doses of this bleach, such as those recommended in the labeling, can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and symptoms of severe dehydration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Health Canada issued &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.healthycanadians.gc.ca/recall-alert-rappel-avis/hc-sc/2010/13510a-eng.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a similar warning&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the information provided on the company's website, Miracle Mineral Solution is a 28% solution of sodium chlorite. Health Canada advises that sodium chlorite is a chemical used mainly as a textile bleaching agent and disinfectant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-11-02T23:20:06.790" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T23:20:06.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="102" CreationDate="2011-02-25T15:19:06.333" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The evidence against the belief that HIV doesn't cause AIDS (claimed by AIDS denialists and the film) is the evidence for HIV as a cause for AIDS. There is strong evidence for this, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In all parts of the world, people with AIDS also have HIV.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If people who have HIV (which can be determined as reliably as any viral infection) are not treated, they show signs of AIDS within 5-10 years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People who have HIV infected blood transfusions develop AIDS and people who have blood transfusions not infected by HIV don't.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most children who develop AIDS are born to HIV-infected mothers. The higher the viral load in the mother, the greater the risk of the child becoming infected&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the laboratory, HIV infects the exact type of white blood cell that becomes depleted in people with AIDS.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Drugs that block HIV replication in the test tube also reduce virus load in people and delay progression to AIDS. Where available, treatment has reduced AIDS mortality by more than 80%.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6791/full/406015a0.html&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="76" LastEditDate="2011-02-25T21:57:24.843" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T21:57:24.843" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="68" CreationDate="2011-02-25T15:26:22.830" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a specific risk of litigation with GMOs (particularly ones bred through pollination) that does not exist with classical eugenics, or selective breeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case in point would be the various lawsuits documented in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/pubs/CFSMOnsantovsFarmerReport1.13.05.pdf&quot;&gt;Monsanto vs. U.S. Farmers&lt;/a&gt;, wherein as of 2005 more than 15 million dollars had been awarded to Monsanto for infringements of their products (not counting the 525 settlements as of 1999). Obviously these numbers are dated, but I doubt the occurence of these lawsuits have declined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A frequent case for consideration is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percy_Schmeiser&quot;&gt;Percy Schmeiser&lt;/a&gt; whose case focused on Monsanto's claim of patent infringement and (the counter-claim) &quot;whether Monsanto would be held responsible for 'genetic engineering crop contamination'&quot;. Essentially, genetic dangers aside, there is a danger of growing a field of non-GMO corn next to a field of GMO corn insofar as, if the two cross-pollinate, and you replant the seeds, Monsanto may show up with a cease-and-desist letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T15:26:22.830" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="127" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27301" CreationDate="2011-02-25T15:29:54.243" Score="34" ViewCount="2687" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18/is-the-placebo-effect-a-purely-psychological-effect/90#90&quot;&gt;answer to another question&lt;/a&gt;, the following story was cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another interesting one that demonstrates both the placebo and nocebo effect in one study is a study done by Japanese researches on 57 high school aged boys.  They selected these boys based on the fact that when exposed to Lacquer trees, these boys would get a severe rash, much like is common with poison ivy.  They then blindfolded the boys and proceeded to brush one of their arms with the Lacquer tree leaves and the other with an innocuous leaf that would have no effect.  They told them however that the arm brushed with the laquer tree was brushed by the harmless leaf and the one brushed by the harmless leaf they were told was brushed by the Lacquer tree leaf.  What followed was a rash developed on most of the boys arms that were brushed by the harmless leaf and the other arm that was actually brushed by the Lacquer leaf that should have caused a rash was completely fine in nearly every case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this extraordinary, and decided to follow it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original answer cites &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/07/there-is-a-nocebo-effect-which-is-the-evil-twin-of-the-placebo-effect/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Today I Found Out&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That cites &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.skepdic.com/nocebo.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Skeptic's Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; for the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That cites a defunct journal article, called Hippocrates, which, using the WayBack machine, can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20020804133228/www.hippocrates.com/archive/November1999/11departments/11integrative.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It references... umm... &amp;quot;a review&amp;quot; of &amp;quot;scattered studies&amp;quot; in Medline by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thecommunityguide.org/about/community-guide-staff#rhahn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr Robert Hahn&lt;/a&gt; who is still at the CDC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick skim of the 134 articles about nocebo at Medline (via &lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt;) suggested nothing relevant prior to November 1999.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't contacted Dr Robert Hahn; I am not sure he would like his duties at the CDC interrupted with a question from a random about a quick literature survey he did two decades ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any idea where this study was originally from or if anything like it has been repeated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-10-17T23:16:21.733" LastActivityDate="2022-10-18T12:12:22.393" Title="Did a nocebo study find that rashes could swap hands?" Tags="|placebo|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="135" CreationDate="2011-02-25T15:54:12.233" Score="11" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frequently there is some banter about the risk associated with adjuvants by people who consider vaccines more dangerous than beneficial. If a given vaccine lists an adjuvant that is toxic in isolation, how can I find out if it is inert or otherwise harmless in the overall composition of the vaccine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastEditorUserId="111" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T05:26:18.273" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T05:26:18.273" Title="How can I tell if a listed adjuvant is no longer toxic due to a vaccine's composition?" Tags="|medical-science|vaccines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="131" CreationDate="2011-02-25T16:11:16.313" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The important principle of toxicology here is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The dose makes the poison&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus&quot;&gt;Paracelsus&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to find out the quantity of the adjuvant to compare it to known safety data. You can check Material safetey data sheets (MSDS) for those substances, or directly search for safety studies about those substances, e.g. on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/&quot;&gt;Pubmed&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quantity of most additives in vaccines is very small, far below dangerous amounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T16:11:16.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="136" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="146" CreationDate="2011-02-25T16:11:20.777" Score="30" ViewCount="2791" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do magnets have statistically significant effects on humans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some example claims are in the Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_therapy&quot;&gt;Magnet therapy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Practitioners claim that subjecting certain parts of the body to&#xA;  magnetostatic fields produced by permanent magnets has beneficial&#xA;  health effects. These claims are both physically and biologically&#xA;  implausible and no effects on health or healing have been established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="116" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T14:58:07.997" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T14:58:07.997" Title="Do magnets have verifiable effects on humans?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="138" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="140" CreationDate="2011-02-25T16:17:00.573" Score="40" ViewCount="6541" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bates_method&quot;&gt;Bates Method&lt;/a&gt; is often cited by people looking to avoid wearing glasses, or as an alternative to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LASIK&quot;&gt;LAZIK&lt;/a&gt; surgery for improving/correcting eyesight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the method at all effective? Can eyesight truly be improved/repaired through exercise and lifestyle changes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="116" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-06T15:10:57.433" LastActivityDate="2018-08-22T14:55:47.543" Title="Is the Bates Method for improving eyesight efficacious?" Tags="|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2011-02-25T16:31:29.110" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unsurprisingly, it does not work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As any other &quot;alternative&quot; medicine, it should be treated with the utmost caution, the general principle being &quot;alternative medicine that works is called medicine.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The findings of &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110823171316/http://one.aao.org/CE/PracticeGuidelines/Therapy_Content.aspx?cid=d7238b2b-a59f-49f6-9f30-64d1e84efc3b&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Visual Training for Refractive Errors CTA - October 2004&lt;/a&gt;, a meta-analysis from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://one.aao.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Academy of Ophthalmology&lt;/a&gt;, are summarised below by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bates_method&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No evidence was found that [visual training] techniques could objectively benefit eyesight&lt;/strong&gt;, though some studies noted changes, both positive and negative, in the visual acuity of nearsighted subjects as measured by a Snellen chart. In some cases noted improvements were maintained at subsequent follow-ups. However, these results were not seen as actual reversals of nearsightedness, and were attributed instead to factors such as &quot;improvements in interpreting blurred images, changes in mood or motivation, creation of an artificial contact lens by tear film changes, or a pinhole effect from miosis of the pupil.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia goes on to quote &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15825744&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a second report&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2005 the Ophthalmology Department&#xA;  of New Zealand's Christchurch Hospital&#xA;  published a review of forty-three&#xA;  studies regarding the use of eye&#xA;  exercises. They found that &quot;As yet&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;there is no clear scientific evidence&#xA;  published in the mainstream literature&#xA;  supporting the use of eye exercises&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&#xA;  to improve visual acuity, and&#xA;  concluded that &quot;their use therefore&#xA;  remains controversial.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-03-07T22:26:19.303" LastActivityDate="2018-03-07T22:26:19.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="141" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="216" CreationDate="2011-02-25T16:35:55.467" Score="11" ViewCount="854" Body="&lt;p&gt;When you watch most commercials for cholesterol drugs, they always have the disclaimer &quot;Not proven to reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the drugs which reduce cholesterol do not reduce the risk of heart attack, should we question more seriously the original premise that too much cholesterol leads to heart attack?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-02-25T17:42:17.563" LastActivityDate="2017-02-02T16:07:56.590" Title="Is cholesterol a significant factor in Heart Attacks?" Tags="|medical-science|cardiology|cholesterol|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="145" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-25T17:51:33.103" Score="15" ViewCount="3347" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think anyone who’s seen a magic show has witnessed conversations between the magician and a supposedly-randomly-chosen audience member that goes something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Magician: What’s your name?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Volunteer: John&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Magician: John, welcome. Have we ever met?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Volunteer: No&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Magician: Do you know how the following trick works?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Volunteer: No&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to believe that the audience member is an aide, I would have to believe that they are lying. However, they are not providing any evidence that they are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; lying, so is it reasonable to assume that they likely are?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently a show on British TV, &lt;em&gt;Enigma&lt;/em&gt;, showed &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Derren Brown&lt;/a&gt; performing a sequence of tricks, all of which can easily be explained simply by saying all the “volunteers” are aides, despite his insistence that they are not (they even displayed a message on-screen after every intermission to that effect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_I8aXrRAVA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this lecture by James Randi&lt;/a&gt; in which he performs a magic trick (fast forward to 1:01:00 to see it). Again, James Randi and the audience member (Lisa) both insist that she is genuine; in fact, Randi spends much of the talk saying how magicians are all “honest” because they don’t claim to have supernatural powers like the psychics and charlatans do... but there is no evidence to believe it. Is it reasonable to assume that she is most likely an aide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastEditorUserId="308" LastEditDate="2012-11-15T14:05:24.370" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T14:05:24.370" Title="Is it reasonable to assume that volunteers in stage-magic shows are aides?" Tags="|stage-magic|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="136" CreationDate="2011-02-25T18:26:46.323" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;While there are studies that have shown some relief of pain, &lt;a href=&quot;http://nccam.nih.gov/health/magnet/magnetsforpain.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;most do not show those results&lt;/a&gt;. Given the other factors that could cause false-positives, it seems unlikely that the magnets are the cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What the Science Says About Magnets for Pain&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific evidence does not support the use of magnets for pain relief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Preliminary studies looking at different types of pain—such as knee, hip, wrist, foot, back, and pelvic pain—have had mixed results. Some of these studies, including a 2007 clinical trial sponsored by the National Institutes of Health that looked at back pain in a small group of people, have suggested a benefit from using magnets. However, many studies have not been of high quality; they included a small number of participants, were too short, and/or were inadequately controlled. The majority of rigorous trials, however, have found no effect on pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="110" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T14:44:58.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="148" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="185" CreationDate="2011-02-25T18:36:20.740" Score="24" ViewCount="2364" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen these videos advertised online and on TV, and they make some pretty fantastic claims, showing kids as young as 2 reading complicated words. From what I can find online, it uses a memorization technique, which while possibly providing some real results, does not provide a significant advantage later in life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this teaching method effective, and do the the benefits last into school years? If not, are there down-sides to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="110" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:54:25.510" LastActivityDate="2021-06-12T23:47:00.850" Title="Is “Your Baby Can Read” effective and helpful?" Tags="|education|children|language|advertising|reading|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="151" CreationDate="2011-02-25T19:08:30.043" Score="30" ViewCount="5970" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The China Study&lt;/em&gt; authors state that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;osteoporosis is linked to the consumption of animal protein because animal protein, unlike plant protein, increases the acidity of blood and tissues. They add that to neutralize this acid, calcium (a very effective base) is pulled from the bones, which weakens them and puts them at greater risk for fracture.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_China_Study_%28book%29&quot;&gt;from Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As noted, they found &quot;in [their] rural China Study, where the animal to plant ratio [consumption of protein] was about 10 percent, the fracture rate is only one-fifth that of the U.S. (p. 205, 208)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that mean that drinking milk actually can lead to osteoporosis, rather than prevent it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastEditorUserId="7654" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T06:50:33.487" LastActivityDate="2019-11-11T17:35:39.773" Title="Does drinking milk lead to osteoporosis?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|milk|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="150" CreationDate="2011-02-25T19:19:27.427" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ics.2006.11.003&quot;&gt;Lanham-New et al.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt; compared the literature for bone health in ovo-lacto-vegetarians and vegan diets against omnivores with predominantly meat diets. They found no difference in bone-health indices between those two groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This review indicates that the source of the dietary protein does not make a significant difference for bone health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim that animal proteins increase the acidity of the blood is also not credible. The pH value of the blood and inside cells is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21503/#A323&quot;&gt;tightly regulated&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and not easily influenced by diet. The content of the stomach there is already a very acidic environment, which shows that the pH can be effectively regulated by the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also several studies indicating that milk consumption has a &lt;em&gt;positive&lt;/em&gt; effect on bone health and decreases the risk of osteoporosis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3796667/#B3&quot;&gt;Effects of calcium intake, milk and dairy product intake, and blood vitamin D level on osteoporosis risk in Korean adults: analysis of the 2008 and 2009 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results of this study showed that BMD increases as Ca intakes&#xA;  increases, and that the risk of osteoporosis incidence was reduced&#xA;  when more than 1 serving of milk or dairy products were consumed and&#xA;  serum 25(OH) vitamin D level was maintained in the normal range&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10759135&quot;&gt;Calcium, dairy products and osteoporosis&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of 52 investigator-controlled calcium intervention studies, all but&#xA;  two showed better bone balance at high intakes, or greater bone gain&#xA;  during growth, or reduced bone loss in the elderly, or reduced&#xA;  fracture risk. [...] While most of the investigator-controlled studies&#xA;  used calcium supplements, six used dairy sources of calcium; all were&#xA;  positive. Most of the observational studies were based on dairy&#xA;  calcium also, since at the time the studies were done, higher calcium&#xA;  intakes meant higher dairy intakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ics.2006.11.003&quot;&gt;[1] S.A. Lanham-Newa, W.T.K. Leea, D.J. Torgersonb and D.J. Millwarda, Is vegetable protein more beneficial to bone than animal protein?, &lt;em&gt;International Congress Series&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;1297&lt;/strong&gt;, Nutritional Aspects of Osteoporosis 2006. Proceedings of the 6th International Symposium on Nutritional Aspects of Osteoporosis (2006)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK21503/#A323&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;[2] Lodish et al., Molecular Cell Biology. 4th edition, New York: W. H. Freeman (2000).&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2014-01-22T13:15:41.750" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T13:15:41.750" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="154" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="169" CreationDate="2011-02-25T19:35:37.667" Score="20" ViewCount="13905" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen anti sea-sickness bracelets, but the mechanism of action is unclear to me, as well as the physiological reason behind them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T14:02:22.010" LastActivityDate="2018-09-25T20:28:13.993" Title="Do anti-sea-sickness bracelets work?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="155" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="158" CreationDate="2011-02-25T19:46:19.450" Score="25" ViewCount="7754" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many different sources claim to be able to produce &quot;unlimited free energy&quot;. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHAg25Ndk_k&quot;&gt;UNLIMITED FREE ENERGY IDENTIFIED&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gizmag.com/go/6031/&quot;&gt;Company claims to have developed new technology that provides unlimited free energy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to create energy out of nowhere? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-10-14T02:05:07.827" LastActivityDate="2018-11-24T22:34:34.797" Title="Are there technologies that provide unlimited free energy?" Tags="|physics|energy|perpetual-motion|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="186" CreationDate="2011-02-25T19:50:16.140" Score="15" ViewCount="4560" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Japan, blood group is believed to have ties with behavior. Is there scientific evidence for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2011-11-26T04:13:42.220" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T21:27:42.857" Title="Can blood group affect behavior?" Tags="|medical-science|behavior|blood|physiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="155" CreationDate="2011-02-25T19:54:45.980" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;Creating energy out of nowhere violates the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics&quot;&gt;first law of thermodynamics&lt;/a&gt;. Energy can only be changed from one form to another, e.g. from kinetic energy to heat, but it can neither be created nor destroyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an empirical law, but it has &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; of experimental evidence behind it. It would take some extremely convincing evidence to overthrow it, not to mention a whole lot of new physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-02-25T19:54:45.980" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="162" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="320" CreationDate="2011-02-25T20:20:50.610" Score="20" ViewCount="5113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently received an &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120317053635/http://www.scalewatcher.co.uk/pages/faq.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ad for a device&lt;/a&gt; attaching to my inlet water pipe and a power socket, and claiming to massively reduce the scale build-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This compact, computerised limescale remover uses a coil wrapped around the outside of your main intake pipe to create an electronic force, which changes the physical properties of the scale-forming calcium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those limescale beasties are literally shocked into shape. Scalewatcher electronically alters the shape of the limescale crystals so they can't stick onto your pipes any more. Instead they just wash straight through your system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your water doesn't just stop depositing limescale anymore — it actually absorbs and dissolves existing limescale, so, over time, Scalewatcher actually helps to clean up your plumbing!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't think of any mechanism through which it could possibly achieve that, although my knowledge of physics is amateur-level. Could it work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It does seem to trigger all the &amp;quot;scam&amp;quot; alarms in me, but now I have a good place where to seek a second opinion!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Curiously, it is claimed that the water remains chemically unchanged - which is weird because any device that actually succeeds at reducing the scale buildup will necessarily increase the amount of minerals in the tap water...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-10-25T14:29:10.977" LastActivityDate="2023-09-29T20:26:19.253" Title="Can an electronic device reduce scale buildup in waterworks?" Tags="|physics|water|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="162" CreationDate="2011-02-25T20:31:24.887" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's interesting. I know of electrical devices that do this with corrosive effects using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_corrosion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;galvanic reaction&lt;/a&gt;. I don't see what the mechanism would be for mineral accretion (which is what I'm assuming you're talking about).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My knowledge of the subject suggests to me that mineral deposits (like calcium) won't be bothered by any sort of electrical system (usually those are dealt with by installing a water conditioner to soften the water, or by putting mild acid (e.g. vinegar) into the pipes). I also know that, without a secondary reactive metal, the galvanic thing won't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yea, I looked at the link you provided, and I agree. The &quot;How it Works&quot; section is particularly hilarious. It claims that the device increases the solubility of water, which cannot be increased without increasing the temperature, pressure, or reducing the mineral load in the solution...All of which are pretty much impossible for this product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T11:34:44.637" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T11:34:44.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="154" CreationDate="2011-02-25T21:31:40.357" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2010/chapter-2/motion-sickness.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to the CDC&lt;/a&gt;, there's been no studies definitively proving they work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/asma/asem/2004/00000075/00000003/art00006&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a study&lt;/a&gt; that resulted in no definitive proof that they do work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A description of the supposed mechanism of relief:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;(From the above-linked study)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acupuncture is the practice of stimulating points on&#xA;  various meridians in the body with needles and is&#xA;  generally performed by a trained acupuncturist. The&#xA;  Neiguan/P6 point is the sixth point on the pericardial&#xA;  meridian and is believed to be the point where nausea&#xA;  and vomiting are controlled. The P6 point is&#xA;  located between the flexor carpi radialis and the palmaris&#xA;  longus tendons, one sixth of the distance between&#xA;  the distal transverse crease of the wrist (top crease,&#xA;  closest to the hand) and the cubital crease (elbow&#xA;  crease). According to the ancient Chinese meridian&#xA;  theory of acupuncture, life is balanced if the positive&#xA;  and negative energies are equal. These energies flow&#xA;  through invisible channels (meridians) in the body, connecting&#xA;  the points of the body and visceral organs. By&#xA;  stimulating these points with needles, the acupuncturist&#xA;  attempts to restore the balance of energy flow&#xA;  throughout the body. For nausea, negative energy in&#xA;  the body is first redirected away from the heart by&#xA;  stimulating the right P6 point and then more positive&#xA;  energy comes into the body through stimulating the left&#xA;  P6 point, the one closest to the heart. Purportedly, the&#xA;  balance of the life forces, yin and yang, are restored and&#xA;  nausea is controlled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-09-25T20:28:13.993" LastActivityDate="2018-09-25T20:28:13.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="88" CreationDate="2011-02-25T22:44:13.500" Score="106" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from the effect of cold temperatures on the human body, it's also important to consider the effect of cold temperatures on the &lt;em&gt;virus&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://aem.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/41/3/618&quot;&gt;One study&lt;/a&gt; found reduced virus infectivity at 37 degrees celcius while it was stable at 6 and 23 degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And while we're at it, there's even more data on the flu. Quite &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=7935254&quot;&gt;a few&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plospathogens.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.ppat.0030151&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/JVI.02186-10&quot;&gt;found&lt;/a&gt; that &quot;cold temperatures and low relative humidity are favorable to the spread of influenza virus.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So humidity is also important, as well as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/6/Suppl_6/S737.full&quot;&gt;interaction between humidity and temperature&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there seems to be some general indication that minimal survival for both lipid-enveloped [e.g. influenza] and non-lipid-enveloped viruses [e.g. rhinoviruses] occurs at an intermediate RH [relative humidity] of 40–70% (Arundel et al. 1986). Also, it is important to note that temperature and RH will always interact to affect the survival of airborne viruses in aerosols.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Edit: In my initial answer I suggested that being cold doesn't make a difference to you. That's not quite true. It does seem to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17705968&quot;&gt;increase susceptibility to infection&lt;/a&gt;, though of course the point is that you do need to be &lt;em&gt;exposed&lt;/em&gt; to a virus; you don't get a cold just from being cold.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While temperature may have an effect on your susceptibility to infection, it &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; has an effect on the survival of the virus outside your body. They prefer colder (less humid) environments. This &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; mean you're more likely to catch a cold when it's cold, because the virus is more likely to survive and be transmitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="20" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T22:28:12.430" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T22:28:12.430" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="181" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="201" CreationDate="2011-02-25T22:50:16.743" Score="13" ViewCount="1685" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stores more and more frequently offer better prices to customers who obtain one of their &quot;membership&quot; cards. Obviously such cards can be used to identify the shopper, collect data based on their purchase habits, and obviously be of great use to the company in determining prices, sales, and inventory. Even if you don't associate your real identity with the card, the company can still use the data to know what items are purchased together and with what frequency, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, do these stores purposely use such data to go beyond simple market research and instead use the information in ways that are detrimental to the customer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical of the need for these cards because most of the data they need can be simply obtained from their own cash register. The only information you gather with the card that you cannot without, is the association of separate purchasing events. In other words, if I pay cash for Armadillo Food in one shopping trip, and cash for canned tuna in another, the store has no real way to know that those two items were obtained by the same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why do more companies feel that such cards are needed? I don't believe that the discounts are real, but rather prices are inflated for customers without cards, thus making the card a benefit only in allowing the customer access to the normal price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-02-26T17:12:38.963" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T22:23:28.730" Title="Supermarket &quot;Membership&quot; Cards and Data Collection" Tags="|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="148" CreationDate="2011-02-26T00:17:34.223" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;While not a rigorous study, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.today.com/parents/your-baby-can-read-claims-overblown-experts-say-2d80555479&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Today Show investigated&lt;/a&gt; the claims made by &amp;quot;Your Baby Can Read,&amp;quot; asking 10 different child development experts to weigh in. All ten experts had the same opinion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Young children can be made to recognize or memorize words, but the brains of infants and toddlers are just not developed enough to actually learn to read at the level the way the enticing television ads claim they can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The teaching method leaves a bit to be desired, as it requires the child to sit in front of the TV for the lessons. The American Academy of Pediatrics &lt;a href=&quot;https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/104/2/341&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recommends against TV viewing for children under the age of 2&lt;/a&gt;, noting that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research on early brain development shows that babies and toddlers have a critical need for direct interactions with parents and other significant care givers (eg, child care providers) for healthy brain growth and the development of appropriate social, emotional, and cognitive skills. Therefore, exposing such young children to television programs should be discouraged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence that children who learn to read earlier do better in school, but one has to wonder if this is an example of mistaking correlation for causation. More intelligent kids would be apt to learn to read sooner than their counterparts; these same children would do better in school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, bear in mind that there are no rigorous studies or findings published in scholarly journals that show that the teaching methods employed by &amp;quot;Your Baby Can Read&amp;quot; are effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a personal note, I don't think using the &amp;quot;Your Baby Can Read&amp;quot; program will harm your child in anyway. Nor do I think it will have any long term impacts. However, I posit that you can get the same benefits — promoting early reading — by taking the time you would spend showing your child these videos and instead read to your child. You'd also save a chunk of change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-06-12T23:47:00.850" LastActivityDate="2021-06-12T23:47:00.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="156" CreationDate="2011-02-26T00:30:12.280" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no scientific evidence that blood group affects one's behavior or personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The history of this pseudoscience is interesting. Paraphrased from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_types_in_Japanese_culture&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blood types in Japanese culture&lt;/a&gt; Wikipedia entry:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different blood types were first identified by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Landsteiner&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Karl Landsteiner&lt;/a&gt; in 1900, and soon after it was noted that there were different blood group distributions around the world. Sadly, this information was used for racial prejudice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notion of blood group affecting behavior became popularized in Japan in 1927, when Takeji Furukawa, a professor at Tokyo Women's Teacher's School, published his paper &amp;quot;The Study of Temperament Through Blood Type&amp;quot; in the scholarly journal &lt;em&gt;Psychological Research&lt;/em&gt;. The idea quickly took off with the Japanese public despite Furukawa's lack of credentials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interest in this pseudoscience started to wane in the 1930s, but was revived in Japan in the 1970s with a book by Masahiko Nomi, a lawyer and broadcaster with no medical background. Nomi's work was largely uncontrolled and anecdotal, and the methodology of his conclusions was unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, one's blood group is about as telling of their temperament and personality as is their Zodiac sign. Which is to say, not at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T15:34:30.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="193" CreationDate="2011-02-26T01:38:15.550" Score="29" ViewCount="2444" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember that, a few years ago, my parents were told that different blood types need to eat differently. From a quick look online, it seems to be called &quot;Eat Right For Your Type.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It claimed that, depending on what your blood type is, some food groups should be preferred or avoided. For example, type O should prioritize meat and avoid wheat products; type A should prioritize vegetables and avoid meat. For a summary of the whole thing, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120627205651/http://www.runtheplanet.com/trainingracing/nutrition/bloodtype.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any validity to those claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-10-03T02:08:20.567" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T17:58:33.510" Title="Does blood type affect what type of food is best for you?" Tags="|nutrition|blood|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="191" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="194" CreationDate="2011-02-26T03:25:34.263" Score="22" ViewCount="2563" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often hear the claim that &quot;chemtrails&quot; have to exist, because &lt;em&gt;normal&lt;/em&gt; contrails don't linger very long.  Is there a definitive scientific explanation for why normal contrails sometimes do, in fact stick around and sometimes even seed very large clouds?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An ideal explanation would also clearly state why one wouldn't be able to identify the correct conditions from the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-28T04:15:10.203" LastActivityDate="2018-11-13T22:06:46.540" Title="Do contrails last long enough to explain chemtrails?" Tags="|weather|aviation|meteorology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="138" CreationDate="2011-02-26T04:10:20.283" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Bates Method relies on the idea that the eye focuses via accommodation using muscles which change the eye's shape.  The accepted idea that the lens is primarily responsible for focus, and that the shape of the eye doesn't change much, if at all, to focus wouldn't be difficult to verify objectively.  The idea that science might try to suppress the truth about this is merely a conspiracy theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr Phillip Pollack explains on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/bates.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;QuackWatch&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It would be theoretically impossible&#xA;  for the extrinsic muscles to alter the&#xA;  structure of the eyeball so as to meet&#xA;  the requirements of accommodation. The&#xA;  outside, white coat of the eyeball&#xA;  (the sclera) is not resilient and&#xA;  elastic, as shown by tests in the&#xA;  laboratory. Furthermore, when pressure&#xA;  inside an eye is increased by more&#xA;  than 500 per cent, the volume of the&#xA;  eyeball hardly changes, as shown by&#xA;  measurements (the increase is only&#xA;  0.007 per cent of the original volume). This proves that the sclera&#xA;  does not yield very easily to&#xA;  pressure. Finally, the sclera becomes&#xA;  even more rigid and less resilient&#xA;  with age, especially after the age of&#xA;  40.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-06T15:23:25.370" LastActivityDate="2012-02-06T15:23:25.370" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="189" CreationDate="2011-02-26T08:03:06.587" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your ABO blood type tells you which &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;antigens&lt;/a&gt; of the ABO blood group are present on your red blood cells. The function of the A and B antigens are not known, but they are not essential, individuals without those antigens are healthy&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ABO blood type has an effect on blood clotting&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, but there is no reliable evidence that it has an effect on metabolism. This does not mean that such a mechanism is impossible, but the burden of proof lies with Dr. Peter D'Adamo to provide evidence for his claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find any clinical trials that would support this claim on his website, there are some scientific papers listed there, but those are just reviews of the literature. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070506171542/http://www.mayoclinic.com:80/health/blood-type-diet/AN01415&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mayo clinic agrees&lt;/a&gt;, that there is no evidence for this claim,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0084749&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent study in PLOS One examining the blood type diet directly&lt;/a&gt;, and it found that there is no basis for it. The diets themselves provide some benefit, but that benefit is entirely independent from the blood type of the person:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adherence to certain ‘Blood-Type’ diets is associated with favorable&#xA;  effects on some cardiometabolic risk factors, but these associations&#xA;  were independent of an individual's ABO genotype, so the findings do&#xA;  not support the ‘Blood-Type’ diet hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2267/#ch05ABO.2.3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;[1] Dean L., Blood Groups and Red Cell Antigens [Internet]., Bethesda (MD): National Center for Biotechnology Information (US) (2005). &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-11-10T17:58:33.510" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T17:58:33.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="191" CreationDate="2011-02-26T08:14:46.353" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;The longevity of a contrail is dependent on the weather conditions which indeed might be difficult to spot from the ground. I don't know about &quot;unable&quot; though. As far as I know the 'controversy' about contrails has never had any substantial evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the time a contrail is visible, the most described factor is &lt;strong&gt;Humidity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the ambient relative humidity is high, the resulting ice-crystal plume may last for several hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20140801222923/http://journal.borderlands.com/1999/contrails-by-michael-theroux/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is an article&lt;/a&gt; explaining how the trails have been used by sailors for forecasting, and has a couple of links to other articles explaining the phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(1) &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.britannica.com/science/vapor-trail&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Encyclopedia Britannica&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-11-13T22:06:46.540" LastActivityDate="2018-11-13T22:06:46.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="195" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="197" CreationDate="2011-02-26T08:59:01.043" Score="29" ViewCount="2804" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number of diagnosed cases of autism has increased substantially in the last decades as seen in the following graph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dMJat.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Bar chart of the number (per 1,000 U.S. resident children aged 6–17) of children aged 6–17 who were served under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) with a diagnosis of autism, from 1996 through 2007. Image from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US-autism-6-17-1996-2007.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikimedia Commons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can this increase be explained. Are there environmental factors that contribute to a higher rate of autism today? Or did we just get better at diagnosing autism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2018-11-14T00:41:29.127" Title="Is there an autism epidemic?" Tags="|medical-science|autism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="195" CreationDate="2011-02-26T10:45:27.377" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all if you look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20130710002541/https://www.ideadata.org/TABLES31ST/AR_1-11.xls&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;original data&lt;/a&gt;, things are way more suspicious. Why are they suspicious? Because &lt;em&gt;most mental illnesses are actually also increasing dramatically during that period&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can speak about epidemiology of a single disease, but when there are many diseases with the same trend, producing that graph is clearly &lt;em&gt;cherry-picking&lt;/em&gt; the data to show that there must be something wrong with autism in particular!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this leads us clearly to systematic causes, like improved diagnostics, changed diagnostic criteria and age at which the diagnosis can be produced, etcetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this doesn't &lt;em&gt;disprove&lt;/em&gt; that autism has increased. It might have increased as well, but it's hard to say in a situation in which a proper study hasn't been conducted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me quote &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_autism#Changes_with_time&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;More children may have autism; that is, the true frequency of autism may&#xA;  have increased.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;There may be more complete pickup of autism (case finding), as a result&#xA;  of increased awareness and funding.&#xA;  For example, attempts to sue vaccine&#xA;  companies may have increased&#xA;  case-reporting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The diagnosis may be applied more broadly than before, as a result of&#xA;  the changing definition of the&#xA;  disorder, particularly changes in&#xA;  DSM-III-R and DSM-IV.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Successively earlier diagnosis in each succeeding cohort of children,&#xA;  including recognition in nursery&#xA;  (preschool), may have affected&#xA;  apparent prevalence but not incidence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A review of the &quot;rising autism&quot; figures compared to other disabilities&#xA;  in schools shows a corresponding drop&#xA;  in findings of mental retardation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also contains a pretty damning conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reported increase is largely attributable to changes in diagnostic practices, referral patterns, availability of services, age at diagnosis, and public awareness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following studies are referenced (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More children are being diagnosed with ASDs today than in the past. &lt;strong&gt;Some of the prevalence increase is undoubtedly attributable to changing diagnostic tendency;&lt;/strong&gt; however, there are insufficient data to determine whether this can explain the entire increasing trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20110802041620/https://idea.library.drexel.edu/bitstream/1860/2632/1/2006175339.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The prevalence of autism in metropolitan Atlanta in 1996 for children aged 3 to 10 was 3.4 per 1000. This overall rate is 10 times higher than rates from 3 other US studies that used DSM-III or ICD-9 criteria to identify children with autism and pervasive developmental disorders in the 1980s and early 1990s.&lt;/strong&gt; Our rate is closer to that found in a recent prevalence study in Brick Township, New Jersey, that used DSM-IV criteria (4.0 per 1000 for autistic disorder and 6.7 per 1000 for the entire autism spectrum). Our findings also are similar to rates from several recent European studies that used ICD-10 or DSM-IV criteria (2-6 per 1000 for autism).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/195703&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-11-14T00:41:29.127" LastActivityDate="2018-11-14T00:41:29.127" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="181" CreationDate="2011-02-26T11:00:52.517" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supermarkets get the following benefits from loyalty cards (that's the correct marketing name):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Obtain much more accurate information than they can gather from the cash register (these cards aggregate data when you pay without a credit card, or across family members). This information is used to measure ROI on marketing campaigns and therefore to tailor marketing to the real household demographic of a particular supermarket.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Obtain loyalty - they encourage the same household to always use the same supermarket chain. The biggest benefit of this is that supermarket chains feel the effects of competition much less and tend to be able to use monopolistic-like practices, like raising the price of a few items, knowing that people will still be loyal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Enable other in-store policies, like self-scanning trolleys.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Differentiate the offer: it's much easier to launch a DYI store when you own a supermarket if you have direct access to your customers and can offer them points on their supermarket loyalty card.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do they give in return?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Around 1% discount on average, which obviously is not real money - you need to buy even more stuff at the supermarket to get it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above statements can be easily verified on this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maximilesgroup.com/images/mxmpdf.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Maxmiles brochure&lt;/a&gt;. Maxmiles had 3.5M card owners in 2007:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maximiles Group is the European leader for online loyalty programs with over 3.5 million* members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T22:23:28.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T22:23:28.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="75" CreationDate="2011-02-26T11:10:41.417" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Homeopaths really have no consensus as to the mechanism. Any explanations given are usually extremely vague, riddled with psuedoscientific notions or just plain incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing they all seem to agree upon is the notion that &quot;like cures like&quot;. So for example, a homeopathic remedy creating from red onion would cure a runny nose and watering eyes, as these are the symptoms red onion causes on its own. This is called the &quot;Law of Similars&quot;. Samuel Hahnemann came up with this notion back when he was creating homeopathy. It has no evidence to support it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also claim that water has a &quot;memory&quot;. This is to get around the fact that there is no active ingredient left in the solution. Even though not a molecule is left, somehow the water remembers what was originally added to it. This again, has no scientific evidence to back it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another (infamous) explanation is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyhcEl0b-Kc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. This lady attempts to rationalise homeopathy from a physics point of view. It's wild conjecture based on a half-baked understanding of physics with a healthy sprinkle of factual inaccuracies. She basically asserts that mass is irrelevant in our universe, disease is caused by bad &quot;vibrations&quot; and homeopathy &quot;retransforms&quot; this energy back into a healthy state. Again, there is no evidence to back up these claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, a lot of homeopaths shrug their shoulders and say &quot;we don't really know how it works, it just works&quot;. There are things we use and yet we don't have a complete explanation of their mechanism (anesthetics), so that in itself doesn't debunk this claim. What debunks it is that any properly controlled, scientific experiment shows homeopathy has no effect any greater than placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="129" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T11:10:41.417" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="154" CreationDate="2011-02-26T11:14:06.423" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;They also have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/episode43&quot;&gt;tested by Mythbusters in 2005&lt;/a&gt; and found not to work (unsurprisingly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wrist straps: They wore little gray wristbands that are 'Barry Manilow's choice.' Adam was sick within 90 seconds. Grant got sick as well. They've gotten pretty quick with bringing a bucket to Grant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2005/11/episode_43_seasickness_cures_f.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T11:14:06.423" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="155" CreationDate="2011-02-26T11:58:38.803" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does &quot;nowhere&quot; mean? Does a &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/4313/are-we-living-in-a-false-vacuum-is-there-any-way-to-tell&quot;&gt;metastable vacuum&lt;/a&gt; count as nowhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could appeal to the laws of physics, or you could appeal to the maxim of &quot;If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; There's an episode of Mythbusters where they tried various approaches, including one which wasn't so much &quot;free energy&quot; as &quot;free to me energy&quot; (taking electricity from a power line using nearby chickenwire, IIRC).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:12.727" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T18:30:39.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="155" CreationDate="2011-02-26T12:41:02.633" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;An answer to your question can be found in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether&amp;#39;s_theorem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Noether's theorem&lt;/a&gt;, which is one of the most important mathematical physics theorems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Energy is a conserved quantity as long as physical laws are unchanging in time (as long as they display a time translation symmetry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An archetypal example of this is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_law_of_thermodynamics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;first law of thermodynamics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;quantum field theory&lt;/a&gt;, you can create energy out mass (E=mc&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;), so a different conservation law is found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The energy-momentum vector is conserved as long as physical laws are unchanging in space-time (as long as they display a space-time translation symmetry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, an electron and a positron can annihilate and generate photons with much more energy than they initially had, but their mass disappears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, in general relativity, the law still holds locally. In particular, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_field_equations#Conservation_of_energy_and_momentum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the following law still holds&lt;/a&gt; (and therefore there is no &quot;free lunch&quot; anyways, and the previous findings are still valid locally). To explain better: &quot;local&quot; in cosmology means &quot;in areas of the universe the size of a galaxy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The energy-stress-momentum tensor is locally conserved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For completeness, &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/2838/total-energy-of-the-universe&quot;&gt;there is some doubt about global (cosmological) conservation of energy&lt;/a&gt;. Noether's law still holds, but only locally, because the definition of energy and time is only valid locally. The consequence of this is that we don't have a general conservation theorem for energy in general relativity.&#xA;For example, a universe that is expanding, and whose expansion is accelerating does not conserve energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A layperson's dissertation can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy#Conservation_of_energy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:12.727" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T12:41:02.633" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="210" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-26T16:20:31.087" Score="12" ViewCount="1458" Body="&lt;p&gt;Especially in connection with claims that thiomersal in vaccines is responsible for cases of autism, I've read that removing mercury through chelation can help autistic children. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that mercury plays any role in causing autism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is chelation therapy (e.g. using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylenediaminetetraacetic_acid&quot;&gt;EDTA&lt;/a&gt;) effective in removing mercury from the body? And is it safe, or are there risks associated with it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2017-02-08T01:11:02.790" LastActivityDate="2018-12-09T21:46:14.327" Title="Is Chelation therapy effective for autism?" Tags="|autism|mercury|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="210" CreationDate="2011-02-26T17:57:17.523" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR: There is some limited evidence of efficacy - especially if the patient &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; suffers heavy-metal poisoning - but it is rather weak.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Note: This answer has had a substantial re-write, as I have now read the entire paper. Big props to Konrad Rudolph for finding me a copy.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following paper provides a systematic review for off-label and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) treatments for Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ann Clin Psychiatry. 2009 Oct-Dec;21(4):213-36.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19917212&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Novel and emerging treatments for autism spectrum disorders: a systematic review.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Rossignol DA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author, Dr Daniel Rossignol, notes that there is only one FDA-approved treatment for autism (a treatment to lower irritability) and that, perhaps as a consequence, there is a high level of unapproved treatments being given to ASD children (as high as 74%), often without the knowledge of the child's medical doctors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story with chelation as a treatment is complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By some measures it is very successful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Table 1, titled &amp;quot;The top 20 complementary and alternative medicine treatments for children with an ASD, excluding diets&amp;quot;, chelation ranks #1, with parents claiming an improvement in the child in 74% of 803 cases (based on tracking by the Autism&#xA;Research Institute).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But... there are some big caveats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I note that the ranking system - based on a survey of parental opinion - isn't very objective or reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author ranks the quality of the recommendation into grades, and gives the evidence for chelation a grade of C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is how he chose the ranking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grade of recommendation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt; At least one level 1a study or two level 1b studies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;B&lt;/strong&gt; At least one level 1b, 2a, or 3a study, or two level 2b or 3b studies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;C&lt;/strong&gt; At least one level 2b or 3b study, or two level 4&#xA;studies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;D&lt;/strong&gt; Level 5 evidence, or troublingly inconsistent or&#xA;inconclusive studies of any level, or studies reporting&#xA;no improvements&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;N&lt;/strong&gt; No studies identified&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To understand this, you need to understand the ranking of the underying studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Levels of Evidence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1a&lt;/strong&gt; Systematic Review (SR) or meta-analysis of RCTs with homogeneity or Cochrane review with favorable findings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1b&lt;/strong&gt; Prospective high-quality RCT&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2a&lt;/strong&gt; SR of cohort (prospective, nonrandomized) studies with&#xA;homogeneity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2b&lt;/strong&gt; Individual cohort (prospective, nonrandomized) study or low-quality RCT&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3a&lt;/strong&gt; SR of case-control (retrospective) studies with&#xA;homogeneity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3b&lt;/strong&gt; Individual case-control (retrospective) study&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4&lt;/strong&gt; Case series or reports&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5&lt;/strong&gt; Expert opinion without critical appraisal or based on physiology or bench research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I've changed the table formatting to fit the StackExchange mark-up.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we can see that while Level C is not to be simple dismissed, the best possible evidence it could include is an &amp;quot;Individual cohort (prospective, nonrandomized) study or low-quality RCT&amp;quot;, which would not normally be considered enough evidence to recommend treatment under an Evidence-Based Medicine approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Delving deeper, the paper reviews well over a dozen different papers on chelation and autism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Confusingly, several of them were on children who had &lt;strong&gt;both&lt;/strong&gt; autism and heavy metal poisoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies sometimes gave apparently contradictory results, but given the low evidentiary quality of the studies (e.g. no control, small sample), this is to be expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risks of chelation were briefly covered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reviewed studies of chelation in children&#xA;with an ASD suggest that when properly administered,&#xA;side effects of chelation are rare, idiosyncratic, and&#xA;reversible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the author noted two children in the USA (one with autism) have died from medication errors while receiving chelation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, the collective strength of these studies&#xA;investigating the use of chelation in individuals with&#xA;an ASD is limited, as some are case reports and none&#xA;included a control group. In some of these studies, it is&#xA;unclear if the children had elevated heavy metal levels&#xA;prior to initiating chelation or if this treatment directly&#xA;caused the clinical improvements described. It is also&#xA;possible that any improvements observed with chelation&#xA;in these children could have been due to some&#xA;chelator effect other than the removal of heavy metals&#xA;because some chelators also remove pesticides, raise&#xA;glutathione levels, and reduce oxidative stress.&#xA;It should be noted that placebo-controlled&#xA;studies of chelation in individuals with an ASD have not&#xA;been performed; a large planned placebo-controlled&#xA;study of chelation in children with autism was recently&#xA;cancelled by the National Institute of Mental Health.&#xA;However, despite the obvious limitations of the reviewed&#xA;studies, their cumulative findings suggest that chelation&#xA;might be a viable form of treatment in some individuals&#xA;with an ASD who have elevated heavy metal burden,&#xA;or as suggested by several studies, biochemical&#xA;changes suggestive of metal toxicity. Further research&#xA;investigating this possibility should thus be considered,&#xA;including carefully designed controlled studies of chelation&#xA;that include appropriate clinical monitoring as well&#xA;as objective prescreening to identify children with ASD&#xA;who have concomitant elevated heavy metal burden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-11-20T23:34:21.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="127" CreationDate="2011-02-26T18:35:09.733" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The review from Dr. Hahn you're looking for is most likely the following article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hahn RA. The nocebo phenomenon:&#xA;  concept, evidence, and implications&#xA;  for public health. Prev Med. 1997&#xA;  Sep-Oct;26(5 Pt 1):607-11.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=Hahn%20R%5bau%5d%20nocebo&quot;&gt;Link to Pubmed&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0091-7435%2896%2990124-3&quot;&gt;link to the article on ScienceDirect&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the study about the rash is not mentioned in that review. It only mentiones other studies, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199008163230701&quot;&gt;&quot;A double-blind study of symptom provocation to determine food sensitivity.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (free full text).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-02-27T16:51:06.493" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T16:51:06.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="141" CreationDate="2011-02-26T19:16:52.130" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The drugs that lower cholesterol you're asking about are called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statin&quot;&gt;Statins&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d480&quot;&gt;Cochrane Review&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (also discussed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=10170&quot;&gt;Steven Novella on Science Based Medicine&lt;/a&gt;) that discusses the use of statins for primary prevention. The conclusion of that review is that there is a small but significant reduction of cardiac events and deaths when treated preventively with statins. The effect in secondary prevention, preventing a second heart attack, is larger, as reviewed in another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/330/7495/821.abstract&quot;&gt;Cochrane Review&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is clear evidence that lowering cholesterol via statin-treatment can prevent heart attacks. It gets much more complicated if you ask how high exactly the cholesterol level should be before treatment is advisable. And there is some debate, also from the authors of the first review, whether the small effects in primary prevention are significant enough to warrant routine treatment with statins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d480&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;[1] Mayor, Susan, Cochrane review questions evidence for statins for primary prevention in low risk groups, &lt;em&gt;BMJ&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;2011&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/330/7495/821.abstract&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;[2] Wei et al., Statin use in the secondary prevention of coronary heart disease in primary care: cohort study and comparison of inclusion and outcome with patients in randomised trials, &lt;em&gt;BMJ&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;330&lt;/strong&gt;, 821 (2005)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-02-26T19:29:15.437" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T19:29:15.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="42" CreationDate="2011-02-26T19:57:07.767" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course it's possible through vaccination. That's exactly what vaccination is, giving you a fake or attenuated version of a disease to stimulate your immune system to produce antibodies and immunize you against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other &quot;immune system&quot; boosters are very very flaky, if not generally bogus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A lack of vitamins, is bad for your immune system, but does a large dose boost it? &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1452516/?page=4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apparently not&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A lack of sleep is bad for it, but over sleeping?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the immune system is not something you always want to &quot;boost&quot;. There are a lot of auto-immune diseases, which basically are due to the immune system being a bit too zealous. The most common are allergies. So people with allergies actually take immunosupressants to relieve the worst of their symptoms. The fact that basically any alt med completely &lt;em&gt;forgets to mention this&lt;/em&gt; (a real immune booster would be bad for people with allergies), makes me think really seriously that it's all quackery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="39663" LastEditDate="2018-10-15T21:32:29.663" LastActivityDate="2018-10-15T21:32:29.663" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="218" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="220" CreationDate="2011-02-26T21:58:27.167" Score="15" ViewCount="2694" Body="&lt;p&gt;Products like &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20211025071755/http://mederma.ca/en/products/gel/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mederma Scar Gel&lt;/a&gt; claim that they are &amp;quot;clinically proven to improve the softness, texture and overall appearance of scars.&amp;quot; Mederma in particular promises to improve both old and new scars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's entry on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;scars&lt;/a&gt; notes some treatment options:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ointments and semiocclusive dressings including mineral oil, lotions, and petrolatum-based ointments are recommended under guidelines as they promote moist healing. One 1996 trial found healing was improved but physical characteristics were unchanged, while a 2000 trial of a triple-antibiotic ointment found reduced scarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I cannot read the cited 2000 results without some sort of paid subscription. But the comments that these gels work by &amp;quot;promoting moist healing&amp;quot; implies that they are only effective when the scar is healing, and therefore wouldn't work on old scars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am doubtful that scar gels show appreciable improvement in the appearance of scars, especially old ones. Is there any conclusive evidence that would cause me to believe otherwise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2023-02-15T02:29:18.010" LastActivityDate="2023-02-15T02:29:18.010" Title="Do scar gel products work to reduce or soften the appearance of scars?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="218" CreationDate="2011-02-26T22:43:22.227" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;An important quote from the 2007 paper&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Controlled human studies of the above over-the-counter scar treatment products are limited and/or controversial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;specifically for Mederma, a topical onion extract they state&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The newest available over-the-counter&#xA;  scar treatment, topical onion extract&#xA;  (Mederma, Merz Pharmaceuticals,&#xA;  Greensboro, N.C.), has not been shown&#xA;  to improve scar symptoms in humans&#xA;  when compared with petrolatum&#xA;  emollient (Aquaphor, Beiersdorf,&#xA;  Norwalk, Conn.) in published studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hydration of scars seems to be established as a method as the authors state&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scar hydration strategies, on the&#xA;  other hand, are well supported by&#xA;  clinical trials as an effective and&#xA;  safe option to treat symptomatic&#xA;  scars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading this review it appears that petrolatum-based emollient is the standard treatment and that the alternatives have not been proven superior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17312518&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[1] Shih R, Waltzman J, Evans GR, Review of over-the-counter topical scar treatment products. Plast Reconstr Surg. &lt;strong&gt;119&lt;/strong&gt; (3), 1091-5 (2007)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-02-26T23:33:07.793" LastActivityDate="2011-02-26T23:33:07.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="225" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="226" CreationDate="2011-02-27T11:44:11.983" Score="47" ViewCount="2714" Body="&lt;p&gt;Polygraphs are often used in fiction, but also sometimes in court or by government agencies and corporations. Physiological reactions from the subject are recorded and an operator interprets them to decide whether the subject is telling the truth or is lying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic premise sounds plausible at first glance, but how reliable are polygraphs really? Are there scientific studies on the accuracy of lie detection using polygraphs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do they compare to experiences interrogators using just their observations, without recorded physiological data, to judge if the suspect is truthful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="110" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T08:22:27.107" LastActivityDate="2018-10-02T20:11:18.877" Title="Do polygraphs (lie-detectors) work?" Tags="|lie-detection|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="225" CreationDate="2011-02-27T12:19:35.930" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nope, polygraphs cannot tell whether you're lying. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/polygraph/ota/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/polygraph.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The polygraphs try to measure nervousness by registering sweating, breathing, blood pressure/pulse, and (I think) light trembling. They always calibrate the polygraph for each individual by asking questions the subject has no reason to lie about, to generate what is called a &lt;em&gt;honest baseline&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept has some damning flaws, as no such physiological traits have been shown to consistently correlate with lying. Not all people get nervous about lying! And quite a lot of people would be nervous in an interrogation even when they were telling the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are actually a few signs that have been seen to correlate with lying, such as going at great lengths to avoid self reference (&quot;then this happened&quot;, rather than &quot;then I did this&quot;), but nothing of the kind that could be picked up by a polygraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Richard Wiseman has this to say on lie detection through body language (from the book &lt;em&gt;59 Seconds&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For successful lie detection, jettison the behavioural myths surrounding the Anxiety Hypothesis, and look for signs more commonly associated with having to think hard. Forget the idea that liars have sweaty palms, fidget and avoid eye contact. Instead, look for a person suddenly becoming more static and cutting down on their gestures. Also, learn to listen. Be on guard for a sudden decrease in detail, an increase in pauses and hesitations and a sudden avoidance of the words 'me', 'mine' and 'I', but an increase in 'her' and 'him'. If someone suddenly becomes very evasive, press for a straight answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="46077" LastEditDate="2018-10-02T20:11:18.877" LastActivityDate="2018-10-02T20:11:18.877" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="229" CreationDate="2011-02-27T12:25:29.450" Score="52" ViewCount="3937" Body="&lt;p&gt;An unusual number of ships and planes are said to have disappeared without a trace in the area called the Bermuda Triangle. This has caused some people to claim supernatural causes for these mysterious disappearances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there more ships and planes disappearing in the Bermuda Triangle than in other regions, or is that just an inaccurate perception?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are more ships and planes lost there, are there natural explanations for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:16:24.643" LastActivityDate="2018-11-26T20:54:48.110" Title="Have there been unusual disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle?" Tags="|history|geography|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="227" CreationDate="2011-02-27T13:08:18.257" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is not an unusual amount of disappearances relative to the size of the area and the amount of traffic that passes through that region.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/bermuda.html&quot;&gt;Skepdic.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The number of wrecks in this area is not extraordinary, given its size, location and the amount of traffic it receives. Many of the ships and planes that have been identified as having disappeared mysteriously in the Bermuda Triangle were not in the Bermuda Triangle at all. Investigations to date have not produced scientific evidence of any unusual phenomena involved in the disappearances. Thus, any explanation, including so-called scientific ones in terms of methane gas being released from the ocean floor, magnetic disturbances, etc., are not needed. The real mystery is how the Bermuda Triangle became a mystery at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="3147" LastEditDate="2011-05-27T11:02:21.793" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T11:02:21.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="227" CreationDate="2011-02-27T13:10:32.970" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.history.uscg.mil/Frequently-Asked-Questions/#ICG_ETH_659&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Coast guard&lt;/a&gt;, the losses experienced in the triangle are no greater than in any other area of ocean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[the triangle] is noted for an apparent high incidence of unexplained losses of ship, small boats, and aircraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Coast Guard does not recognize the&#xA;existence of the so-called Bermuda&#xA;Triangle as a geographic area of&#xA;specific hazard to ships or planes. In&#xA;a review of many aircraft and vessel&#xA;losses in the area over the years,&#xA;there has been nothing discovered that&#xA;would indicate that casualties were&#xA;the result of anything other than&#xA;physical causes. No extraordinary&#xA;factors have ever been identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are unusual natural factors in the Bermuda Triangle, but they are known and exist similarly in various other locations worldwide (&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20120113023153/http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq8-1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A significant factor with regard to&#xA;missing vessels in the Bermuda&#xA;Triangle is a strong ocean current&#xA;called the Gulf Stream. It is&#xA;extremely swift and turbulent and can&#xA;quickly erase evidence of a disaster...the topography of the ocean floor&#xA;varies from extensive shoals around&#xA;the islands to some of the deepest&#xA;marine trenches in the world. With the&#xA;interaction of the strong currents&#xA;over the many reefs the topography of&#xA;the ocean bottom is in a state of flux&#xA;and the development of new&#xA;navigational hazards can sometimes be&#xA;swift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the perpetuation of the &amp;quot;mystery&amp;quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/bermuda.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skepdic&lt;/a&gt; concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the mystery of the Bermuda&#xA;Triangle became a mystery by a kind of&#xA;communal reinforcement among&#xA;uncritical authors and a willing mass&#xA;media to uncritically pass on the&#xA;speculation that something mysterious&#xA;is going on in the Atlantic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="125" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-11-26T20:54:48.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="233" CreationDate="2011-02-27T18:02:32.367" Score="16" ViewCount="3244" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_Freedom_Techniques&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;emotional freedom technique&lt;/a&gt;? How do you get qualified? Is it used in more traditional therapy?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T14:20:30.520" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T05:34:42.427" Title="What is EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and does it work?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="231" CreationDate="2011-02-27T21:04:57.870" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eftuniverse.com/images/pdf_files/eftquickstart.pdf&quot;&gt;this Quickstart Guide to EFT (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; as a basis to discuss the Emotional Freedom Technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EFT is based on the assumption that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It works by tapping on specific meridian points with your fingertips which &quot;balances energy meridians&quot;. It is claimed that this heals about any psychological problem you can think of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no scientific basis for the existence of meridians in our bodies. The basic principles of EFT are not based on science, but on a vague concept of energy, that has no relation to any established scientific principles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been a number of small studies on EFT. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.srmhp.org/0201/emotional-freedom-technique.html&quot;&gt;largest one of those&lt;/a&gt; with 119 participants divided into 4 groups did not find EFT significantly more effective than placebo. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B7MF9-4XP1RHH-9&amp;amp;_user=122861&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=&amp;amp;_orig=search&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_acct=C000010080&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=122861&amp;amp;md5=8c4595637598da2efce5e65c8aab7ba1&quot;&gt;One small study&lt;/a&gt; with 5 participants in each group, performed by the originator of the technique found a significant effect of EFT. Due to the small sample size and the fact that the journal it was published in is dedicated to alternative medicine, I would not consider these results as proof of effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not find any convincing studies that would show the effectiveness of this technique. Considering the implausible mechanism it is based on, I would safely argue that EFT is extremely unlikely to work better than placebo and should not be considered a credible treatment for psychological issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-02-27T21:04:57.870" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22" CreationDate="2011-02-28T01:07:15.850" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I first did a search for 'medical research search engine' and found several. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of those was &lt;a href=&quot;https://search.medscape.com/search/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MedScape&lt;/a&gt;, which came up with the result:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/533760&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Transient Blindness Due to Posterior&#xA;  Reversible Encephalopathy Syndrome&#xA;  Following Ephedra Overdose&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Extreme&#xA;  used in the presented patient.1 Both&#xA;  supplements are based on the ECA stack&#xA;  containing ephedrine, caffeine and&#xA;  aspirin which are used for their ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading the article, the reference to ECA stack states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both supplements are based on the ECA&#xA;  stack containing ephedrine, caffeine&#xA;  and aspirin which are used for their&#xA;  synergistic thermogenic properties.[4]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which references the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Daly PA, Krieger DR, Dulloo AG, et al.&#xA;  Ephedrine, caffeine and aspirin:&#xA;  safety and efficacy for treatment of&#xA;  human obesity. Int J Obes Relat Metab&#xA;  Disord 1993;17(suppl 1):S73-S78.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, perhaps this paper would contain what you are looking for or you could even try contacting Krieger or Dulloo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A search on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pogofrog.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pogofrog&lt;/a&gt; for 'ECA stack' turned at least one interesting result:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2129137/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ISSN Exercise &amp;amp; Sport Nutrition&#xA;  Review: Research &amp;amp; Recommendations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2004; 1(1):&#xA;  1–44.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Published online 2004 May 10. doi:&#xA;  10.1186/1550-2783-1-1-1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PMCID: PMC2129137&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Richard B Kreider,corresponding&#xA;  author1 Anthony L Almada,2 Jose&#xA;  Antonio,3 Craig Broeder,4 Conrad&#xA;  Earnest,5 Mike Greenwood,1 Thomas&#xA;  Incledon,6 Douglas S Kalman,7 Susan M&#xA;  Kleiner,8 Brian Leutholtz,1 Lonnie M&#xA;  Lowery,9 Ron Mendel,10 Jeffrey R&#xA;  Stout,11 Darryn S Willoughby,1 and Tim&#xA;  N Ziegenfuss10&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which referenced several research papers on the ECA Stack which may provide a lead to a scientist who can provide the answer you seek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, perhaps, isn't the answer you want, but it may lead to you the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="48" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-11-26T20:17:03.690" LastActivityDate="2018-11-26T20:17:03.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2011-02-28T01:38:10.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfRVCaA5o18&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;The Strange Powers of the Placebo Effect&quot;&gt;a short YouTube video&lt;/a&gt; (3 min). It only concentrates on some aspects of placebos, not so much on how they work, and whether the effect is just an illusion, which is the most interesting aspect of placebos, I guess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since some placebos had an effect on the volume of the lung, you can't say it's just an illusionary effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastEditorUserId="11122" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T12:44:39.583" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T12:44:39.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="240" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="246" CreationDate="2011-02-28T07:07:13.187" Score="5" ViewCount="1122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen advertisements for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yellowpages.ca/bus/Ontario/North-York/Lotus-Wellness-Naturopathic-Massage-Clinic/6111147.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;naturopathic massage&lt;/a&gt;, with claims of health benefits that apply to a wide range of conditions and diseases. Is a naturopathic massage significantly different from a regular one, and does the difference lead to significant benefits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="116" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:04:16.687" LastActivityDate="2012-01-14T15:04:16.687" Title="What makes a naturopathic massage naturopathic, and is there any significant benefit to it or is it a hoax?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|massage|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="242" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-02-28T07:10:32.543" Score="27" ViewCount="2351" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the pick-up artist community, there is much advertising and hype around &quot;game&quot; systems. These are systems which, as far as I understand, consist of sets of guidelines, advice, strategies, behaviours and exercises aimed at helping men become more successful in their attempts to seduce women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the advertisers for &quot;game&quot; systems claim that their system has been tested &quot;in the field&quot;, that they bring subjective benefits to the practitioners, and that it is scientific fact that the systems work - that the men who learn about them become more successful at seducing women. In this context, I'm wondering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that &quot;game&quot;&#xA;  systems advertised and promoted by&#xA;  pickup artists are at all effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm specifically looking for proof that any one single system (or, failing that, subset of a system) proves subjectively beneficial to its practitioners, or, alternatively, that, in general, such systems are not likely to provide any benefit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Game&quot; is a specific term, the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game%3a_Penetrating_the_Secret_Society_of_Pickup_Artists&quot;&gt;The Game&lt;/a&gt; seems to be the first public use it, though I assume it's been around for a while longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are thousands of online resources for pick-up artists, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pick-up-artist-forum.com/&quot;&gt;top google search&lt;/a&gt; result seems a good place to start to learn about the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="116" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:39:03.860" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T00:26:48.960" Title="Are the &quot;game&quot; systems advertised by pickup-artists effective?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="244" CreationDate="2011-02-28T07:14:08.487" Score="10" ViewCount="625" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of advertising for zinc supplements on the web, most of which seems indistinguishable from advertisements for ineffective alt-medicine cures. Are these ads a hoax, or is there any actual benefit to taking zinc supplements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="116" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T08:21:57.917" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T08:21:57.917" Title="Are zinc supplements beneficial?" Tags="|nutritional-supplements|zinc|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="243" CreationDate="2011-02-28T07:26:44.867" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Zinc, like iron, is an element that you need. If you are a 'healthy' person, eating 'normal' (these are kind-of subjective, that's why the marks) you will get enough of these in your daily food. See for advice for instance &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002416.htm&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;. You could argue that if you take some sort of special diet, like being a vegan, you might need to consider taking supplements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like iron, it is possible you have too little of it, but I would only start taking supplements anyway if advised by a doctor and as a response to some sort of problem: not as a general course of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know these ads, but I suspect they might even try to sell you them to avoid problems. If you have no problems because of too little zinc, more zinc will not help you. It does not 'stack', it will not better you in any way to take more then you need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @egle 's link points out, there might be some value to the thought that zinc acetate can be used to decrease the &lt;em&gt;duration and severity of cold symptoms, especially cough.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. This is not how &lt;strong&gt;supplements&lt;/strong&gt; are marketed as far as I know. This would be considered 'treatment' of a problem (cold).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annals.org/content/133/4/245.1&quot;&gt;Duration of Symptoms and Plasma Cytokine Levels in Patients with the Common Cold Treated with Zinc Acetate&#xA;A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastEditorUserId="83" LastEditDate="2011-02-28T13:20:57.140" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T13:20:57.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="240" CreationDate="2011-02-28T12:13:24.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Naturopathic philosophy favors a holistic approach, so naturopathic massage is kind of holistic massage. It's rather approach than method, so shouldn't be anything else than regular massage + scents, fancy oils and music. &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The body has this capacity to heal itself if given the right conditions and naturopathy, along with acupuncture, homoeopathy, herbal medicine, and most other holistic modalities subscribes to this basic understanding of the body’s own innate intelligence.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturopathy-uk.com/home/home-what-is-naturopathy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;*&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T12:13:24.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="243" CreationDate="2011-02-28T12:36:53.847" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/play/snake-oil-supplements/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This graph&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;shows there are conflicting evidence for benefits of zinc supplements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T12:36:53.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="240" CreationDate="2011-02-28T15:01:55.217" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most benefits are either from the massage itself, or the placebo effect. Same as with chiropracty: it tends to do &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; good (anyone who has ever had a good massage can attest), however some practitioners claim that it can cure everything from bad breath to cancer, and that is completely unsupported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T15:01:55.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="210" CreationDate="2011-02-28T15:25:09.690" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just looking at it logically, there are problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we assume that mercury causes autism, then it should be very easy to locate &quot;autism clusters&quot; in areas with a high incidence of environmental mercury. This is not the case. Some clustering has been observed, but it correlated very closely with the education level of the parents (better educated parents were more likely to have a child diagnosed with an ASD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The focus on mercury in thimerosal is completely disengenuous: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/Thimerosal/thimerosal_faqs.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;there is far more mercury to be found in a can of tuna fish than in a vaccine made with thimerosal...&lt;/a&gt;The DTaP vaccine contained about 3 micrograms of mercury, while a 6 oz of tuna contains a little more than 52 micrograms (which is more than twice as much as the vaccines with the highest historical amount of thimerosal (Fluzone, and Afluria, both flu vaccines, neither of which contains it any longer)). Nearly all vaccines are thimerosal free now, and no corresponding decrease in autism has been reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chelation therapy is commonly used for metal poisoning. There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelation_therapy#Side_effects_and_safety_concerns&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;known health effects and safety concerns&lt;/a&gt; which potentially include kidney failure and death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastEditorUserId="35250" LastEditDate="2017-02-10T19:43:06.380" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T19:43:06.380" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="291" CreationDate="2011-02-28T17:42:01.220" Score="12" ViewCount="3012" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while ago I read about a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10971&quot;&gt;cheap and safe drug that kills most cancers&lt;/a&gt;. It was the already known compound dichloroacetate (DCA) and the discovery was widely reported in the media. The results at that time were only preliminary, but people still used it &quot;off-label&quot; despite not being approved as a cancer drug. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The compound itself has been known for a while and is therefore not patentable itself. Some people then claimed that &quot;big pharma&quot; would have no interest in such a cure they could not earn a lot of money from and that such a drug would never be approved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the initial claims validated, does DCA show effectiveness against some cancers? Is it a viable drug or just the result of an overhyped early experiment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2019-05-01T04:10:27.640" Title="Dichloroacetate (DCA) as a cure for cancer" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="254" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="255" CreationDate="2011-02-28T19:17:46.363" Score="19" ViewCount="3040" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have Ouija boards been explained by science? And have they been shown to work under controlled conditions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:35:09.387" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T18:45:56.913" Title="How do Ouija boards work?" Tags="|ghosts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="254" CreationDate="2011-02-28T19:20:06.893" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideomotor_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ideomotor&lt;/a&gt; response is when we make a movement without being aware of doing so, it isn’t always apparent to the person making the movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spiritualists have used techniques such as table tipping, ouija boards, divination and automatic writing for a very long time, but these techniques came to ‘fame’ in the spiritualist movement of the early 1900’s and these techniques are still popular amongst not only spiritualists but also amongst amateur paranormal investigators who ignore the advances of modern science, and continue to believe that what they are witnessing through these methods is really a product from spirit communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“honest, intelligent people can unconsciously engage in muscular activity that is consistent with their expectations”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a quote from Ray Hyman who in the year 1999, alongside his fellow American Psychologist aswell as English scientist Michael Faraday, the French chemist Michel Chevreul actually conducted numerous tests that demonstrated that what some people believe the be spirits moving tables, glasses and planchettes IS down to the ideomotor effect. Earlier tests also showed that people can be subconsciously influenced when given subtle clues which can lead them to move the object in question (glass, pendulum etc.) without actually realising it, in response to the subtle clues given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The science of scams team did a very good explination of how Ouija boards work and I put in on my blog a while ago. The response I got from those who believe it works and those who understand the science wer quite interesting to read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find that post, and a video explaining things &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scienceofscams.com/factoids-ouija.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Science of Scams - Factoids - Ouija&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reproduced with permission from &lt;a href=&quot;http://ratherfriendlyskeptic.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hayley&#xA;  Stevens' blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="11122" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T18:45:56.913" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T18:45:56.913" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="259" CreationDate="2011-02-28T19:26:02.350" Score="28" ViewCount="4703" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Mayan calendar completes its 5,125 year cycle, on 21 December 2012. Is there any evidence they foresaw the end-of-the-world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T08:08:26.130" LastActivityDate="2020-05-23T14:48:18.743" Title="What is going to happen in 2012?" Tags="|history|extinction-event|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2020-03-18T14:08:18.400" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="256" CreationDate="2011-02-28T19:35:55.187" Score="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contrary to popular opinion, &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.tulane.edu/news/sky-not-falling&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the mayan calendar does not end in 2012, it merely begins a new cycle&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“There will be another cycle,” Andrews&#xA;  says. “We know the Maya thought there&#xA;  was one before this, and that implies&#xA;  they were comfortable with the idea of&#xA;  another one after this.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://news.tulane.edu/news/sky-not-falling&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt; E. Wyllys Andrews&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mayan calendar is based on cycles, that does not mean they thought the world ended at that specific point the cycle ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And regardless of what the Mayans thought, there is no evidence for any world-ending event happening in 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; The world didn't end on 21 December 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-11-26T20:54:54.597" LastActivityDate="2018-11-26T20:54:54.597" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="260" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="266" CreationDate="2011-02-28T19:42:18.083" Score="15" ViewCount="3321" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently become aware of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TENS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TENS&lt;/a&gt;, but have yet to find any definitive evidence it is either a &lt;strong&gt;legitimate&lt;/strong&gt; treatment or a full-blown &lt;strong&gt;pseudo-science&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest was this &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20121112235000/http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/physical_health/conditions/tens1.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some of the claims made for TENS could&#xA;  lead you to think it's the miracle&#xA;  cure for pain. Back pain, arthritis,&#xA;  migraine, sports injuries, period&#xA;  pains and even non-painful conditions&#xA;  such as sleeplessness and stress are&#xA;  said to improve with its use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But while TENS is widely recommended&#xA;  in the UK as a way of controlling&#xA;  labour pain, a review by the Pain&#xA;  Research Unit at Oxford University,&#xA;  published in 1997, found that evidence&#xA;  for it having an analgesic effect in&#xA;  such circumstances was weak. The unit&#xA;  could find no study of note showing&#xA;  any difference in pain intensity or&#xA;  pain relief scores between TENS and a&#xA;  placebo treatment during labour. There&#xA;  has not been any substantial study&#xA;  since, supporting its use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone link or summarise some decent papers investigating TENS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a niche treatment that salespeople are trying to push into the mainstream?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; With out any research my own rational explanation for pain relief in child birth is due to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/18/4&quot;&gt;placebo effect&lt;/a&gt; combined with allowing the mother to &quot;control&quot; the pain the same way hypnobirthing works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-11-26T20:54:58.070" LastActivityDate="2024-03-12T08:18:53.883" Title="Is &quot;Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation&quot; (TENS) effective?" Tags="|medical-science|pregnancy|pain|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="210" CreationDate="2011-02-28T19:43:58.940" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chelation has negative side effects, that can be fatal.  In 2005, &lt;a href=&quot;https://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/08/23/one-year-later-the-autopsy-results-on-ab-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tariq Nadama&lt;/a&gt; died from chelation treatment for autism, the third known death as a result of treatment by chelation to &quot;cure&quot; autism.  The chemicals used for chelation are not without their own risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, chelation as a treatment for mercury toxicity is only effective if applied very quickly and to stop the development of further symptoms.  It does not reverse the symptoms already in place from mercury toxicity, so would not cure someone who was already diagnosed as autistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-12-09T21:46:14.327" LastActivityDate="2018-12-09T21:46:14.327" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="262" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="270" CreationDate="2011-02-28T19:44:10.063" Score="12" ViewCount="2760" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine recently became pregnant.  One of the more woo things she has come out with is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.momswhothink.com/pregnancy/chinese-pregnancy-calendar.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chinese Birth Charts&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the admittedly tiny data set of 5 the chart was 100% accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bA3AG.png&quot; alt=&quot;Chinese Birth Charts&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Chinese Gender Table&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is said that sometime during the 13th century, a Chinese scientist developed a special&#xA;calendar to predict the gender of an unborn child based on the mother's age and month of&#xA;conception.&#xA;Chinese women have always respected and&#xA;valued this calendar, but now more recent&#xA;studies in the United States are showing a&#xA;success rate of over 90 percent. Enjoy the Chinese gender calendar, but keep in mind that&#xA;it is for entertainment purposes only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How to use this table&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing you have to do is look up your&#xA;month of conception and the age you were at&#xA;that moment. The intersection of the two lines&#xA;indicates a B for a boy or a G for a girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can not be held legally responsible for the accuracy&#xA;of this ancient calendar, but it's fun to try!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I in no way believe this can be 90% accurate as some claims make out, but I'd like to see some studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can any one please point me to studies/papers that prove one way or another?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="23506" LastEditDate="2022-09-07T21:47:21.793" LastActivityDate="2022-09-07T21:47:21.793" Title="Do Chinese birth charts accurately predict the sex of unborn children?" Tags="|gender|pregnancy|astrology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="256" CreationDate="2011-02-28T20:07:58.620" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The whole 2012 thing seems pretty arbitrary to me. Not only did the Maya &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.2012hoax.org/mayan-prediction&quot;&gt;make zero prophecies about the end of the world&lt;/a&gt;, their calendar wasn't even that good. 2012 proponents say that the Mayan calendar is so accurate, they didn't need an intercalary day (extra day on a leap year) to keep their calendar in sync with the year. Except intercalary days are necessary since there isn't an integer number of days in the year -- and the Maya did deal with this. Not with an intercalary day, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.2012hoax.org/mayan-calendar#Accuracy&quot;&gt;with an intercalary &lt;strong&gt;month&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mayan bunk notwithstanding, all of the proposed ways in which the world is going to end is also spectacularly arbitrary. Everyone has a different theory, most of them having exactly zero to do with the Mayan calendar. Apparently, all of these things are going to happen at the same time next year:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pole reversal&lt;/strong&gt;: the north/south magnetic poles are going to switch sides. This is going to happen because the earth is going to miraculously stop rotating, and begin spinning in the opposite direction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Planetary alignment&lt;/strong&gt;: the planets are going to roughly line up in one way or another and that's going to blow the sun up or something.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Galactic alignment&lt;/strong&gt;: the solar system is going to line up with the galactic plane. No word as to what effect this could have.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nibiru collision&lt;/strong&gt;: some yet-unobserved (except by the Maya) planet/asteroid called Nibiru is on a direct collision course with earth, and although it's close enough to hit us in one year, and big enough to annihilate us, it can't be seen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Planet X encounter&lt;/strong&gt;: the alien species that created us as dumbed-down versions of themselves for use as slaves is going to come back and visit/destroy us.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nemesis' return&lt;/strong&gt;: the sun's companion star that we've never been able to observe is going to disturb the oort cloud and cause a rain of comets on earth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Betelgeuse supernova&lt;/strong&gt;: Betelgeuse is going supernova and the resulting radiation is going to cook us&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solar flare&lt;/strong&gt;: a killer solar flare is going to destroy all of our technology and send us back into the dark ages.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many, many more. They are all either bunk from different sell-out pseudo-scientists, or they are heavily twisted astronomical events (such as the Betelgeuse supernova, which &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; happen at any time (probably not for millions of years, though), but is much too far away to harm us) which were conveniently re-scheduled for 2012. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you didn't click on either of the two links in the first paragraph, check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.2012hoax.org&quot;&gt;http://www.2012hoax.org&lt;/a&gt; for more information on all the doomsday theories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T20:07:58.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="260" CreationDate="2011-02-28T20:12:59.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There doesn't seem to be anything definitive anywhere. Some people claim it works, some people claim that it doesn't. Pain is subjective enough that you can get away with that sort of result. There is plenty of research dealing with people who have debilitating pain without any sort of obvious problem, so it stands to reason that there could be a device that could deal with pain without any obvious mechanism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Historically, electricity has been a very fruitful resource for quack medicine: Electropathy, electric hairbrushes to grow hair, belts to build muscles and fix (hem) &quot;male problems&quot;, toothbrushes to stop toothaches, etc, etc, etc. This is a very common trend within scientific advances: I saw &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20110316045947/http://www.healthmasterstore.com/lifecell/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;stem cell anti-aging cream&lt;/a&gt;&quot; on TV yesterday, and ordered enough to grow my own pizza parlor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll say this: any medical claim that claims to be applicable to that many different types of pain should be viewed with &lt;em&gt;extreme&lt;/em&gt; skepticism. I'm also very leery of anything medically electrical that can be bought without a prescription...That suggests to me that it's pretty much impossible to hurt yourself with it, which suggests that it can't be &lt;em&gt;doing&lt;/em&gt; very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-12-10T07:15:55.990" LastActivityDate="2018-12-10T07:15:55.990" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="260" CreationDate="2011-02-28T20:13:35.887" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can link you to an excellent article&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, but unfortunately it is in dutch. I shall try to translate parts, and provide the linked articles too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article starts with some history and explanation. It seems that the makers of the TENS apartus claim it has some evidence. In 1950 it was banned by the FDA (the provided link is in dutch also).&#xA;A new theory&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; about how pain works was introduced and claimed to be the working of TENS, but this was never proven at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of the proof, the point is made that it's not easily possible to perform a double blind test, as the electrical stimulation is felt. One can do meta-studies about the studies that are published (PubMed etc), and these are laid out in the artcicle (making it a meta-meta article). One of the good studies (score of '3', if that says anything to you) concludes that there is not much difference&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several other studies mentioned which are either concluding that there is no effect, or do find an effect, but have a low quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final thought, one of the referenced books' writer (who was first claimed to point to accupuncture as a valid scientific treatment) responded to the article. In this part he references some different studies. Using the words &amp;quot;TENS&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;clinical trial&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;human&amp;quot; he finds 210 'effectiveness studies'.  These studies are measured using &amp;quot;systematic reviews&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He references a study that concludes there is short term diminishing of pain&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;, some research that says more research is to be done&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;. He cites some other research, but this rings some warning bells in my head: (rough translation, sorry)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TENS can, when used informed and guided correctly, lead to an active role of the patient, lowering of cost and improvement of functioning&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More of the references linked to this part of the article are found under &amp;quot;more references&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article of the dutch skeptical society leads me to believe that although there is some research in favor of TENS, that just as with accupunture, the evidence leads one to think it is more of an alternative medicine, and not real Science Based Medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Labour pain&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;On this point I can link you to an article &lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; which does a systematic review of excisting research. The results are that the quality on a scale of 1 to 5, there was only 1 that got a good grade, with a typical 2.1 average. The conclusion is that there is no evidence of pain-relief with TENS in labour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepsis.nl/tens.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.skepsis.nl/tens.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;[2]: Melzack R, Wall PD, Pain mechanisms: a new theory. Science 150 (1965), p.971-&lt;/sup&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;[3]: Aker PD, Gross AR, Goldsmith CH, Peloso P, Conservative management of mechanical neck pain: systematic overview and meta-analysis. BMJ 313 (1996), p.1291-1296.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[4]: Osiri M, Welch V, Brosseau L et al. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation for knee osteoarthritis (Cochrane review). Cochrane Library, Issue 4, 2000.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[5]: Carroll D, Moore RA, McQuay HJ et al. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation for chronic pain (Cochrane review). Cochrane Library, Issue 4, 2001.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[6]: Caroll D et al, Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation in labour pain: a systematic review. Br J Obstet Gynaecol 104 (1997), p.169-175.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More references&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Scherder E. Peripheral nerve stimulation in Alzheimer's disease (thesis). Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, 1995.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Jongste MJL de. Neurostimulation as an adjunct therapy for patients with intractable angina pectoris (thesis). Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1994.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Fishbein DA, Chabal C, Abbott A et al. Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation: treatment outcome in long term users. Clin J Pain, 1996, 12: 201-14.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastEditorUserId="2828" LastEditDate="2024-03-12T08:18:53.883" LastActivityDate="2024-03-12T08:18:53.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="269" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="271" CreationDate="2011-02-28T20:40:18.203" Score="7" ViewCount="2393" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the most prominent proponents of the claim that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duesberg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Peter Duesberg&lt;/a&gt; claims in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC286556/?tool=pmcentrez&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PNAS article from 1989&lt;/a&gt; the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS is&#xA;  examined in terms of Koch's postulates&#xA;  and epidemiological, biochemical,&#xA;  genetic, and evolutionary conditions&#xA;  of viral pathology. HIV does not&#xA;  fulfill Koch's postulates&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Koch's postulates are the follwing according to Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease, but should not be found in healthy&#xA;  organisms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The microorganism must be reisolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified as being identical to the original&#xA;  specific causative agent. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are Koch's postulates, formulated in the late 19th century, a valid principle for evaluating if HIV causes AIDS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-09-12T06:35:08.263" LastActivityDate="2018-12-23T03:54:16.973" Title="Koch's postulates for judging if HIV causes AIDS" Tags="|medical-science|hiv-aids|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="262" CreationDate="2011-02-28T20:53:25.540" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chinesegendercalendar.info/theory.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;I found this website&lt;/a&gt; and several others with very similar text which describes the hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It talks about male and female sperm carrying opposite electrical charges, and the female ovum cycling between positive and negative charges thus determining which sperm can fertilize it. Apparently this cycle is synchronized for all women everywhere and thus can be conveniently charted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The page also talks about some research that confirmed this hypothesis, including one that said that sperm were either attracted to cathodes or anodes depending on whether they carried an X or Y chromosome. I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_selection#History_and_folk_beliefs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this bit on sperm sorting&lt;/a&gt; which describes labeling the sperm with a dye that attaches to DNA (and X chromosome has more DNA so will fluoresce more brightly), and then &lt;em&gt;attaching a charge to each one using a single droplet of charged fluid&lt;/em&gt;, before sorting them. I suspect this method was confused as the sperm already carrying a charge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing that differs between male and female sperm is the DNA they are carrying. They do not only carry an X or Y chromosome, they carry fully &lt;em&gt;half&lt;/em&gt; of the entire human genome, including one of the sex hormones. If the X and Y chromosomes have opposite charges, what charge do the rest of the chromosomes have? What happens when an X and Y chromosome are combined in a cell nucleus--do they tear through the rest of the genetic soup to snap together like fridge magnets? DNA is all made of the same stuff and the charge carried by each chromosome is the same (that is, none), so this theory can't possibly be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real odds of this chart are 50%, the same as all the other outside-the-genetic-laboratory sex selection techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastEditorDisplayName="user32299" LastEditDate="2018-12-29T11:41:22.793" LastActivityDate="2018-12-29T11:41:22.793" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="269" CreationDate="2011-02-28T21:15:53.407" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tellingly, Koch himself eventually abandoned the strict postulates!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, there are heaps of known virus infections that are exceptions to the postulates. I wouldn't pay that much regard, and it is my understanding that nobody does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I don't think failure to fulfil the postulates proves anything, it turns out there's actually &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0952791596800756&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;still some debate as to whether or not the HIV-&gt;AIDS causation does&lt;/a&gt;. I'm afraid I can't read the full article, but clue is in the title :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-12-23T03:54:16.973" LastActivityDate="2018-12-23T03:54:16.973" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="242" CreationDate="2011-02-28T21:44:45.910" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alright, as I referred to in comments earlier, Richard Wiseman has reviewed the scientific literature on attraction in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/59-Seconds-Think-little-change/dp/0330511602&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;59 Seconds&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the bigger things he mentions is a mechanism that seems to me quite like that of conditioning, or mirror neurons, or something weird merge between the two :) Namely this: we are exceptionally good at connecting things, and it turns out that once we've established a connection, it often goes both ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it has been shown, then, that your pulse races when you're with someone you're attracted to, some researches tested whether or not there's a mental (subconscious, perchance?) link between high pulse and attraction. So they set out to test whether or not &lt;em&gt;completely other&lt;/em&gt; things that caused high pulse, could still trigger that same conditioned connection, and it turned out there was some evidence for that: people who went for a horror film during a date, for instance, tended to rate their date as more attractive than those who had went to a romantic comedy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a similar note, it seems that if you can get people to tell you really personal things (here, experimenters set up &quot;sharing games&quot; for the test persons to play during their dates, in which they were encouraged to share increasingly personal information, of the kind you might not otherwise share with a somewhat stranger). Turns out that you're more likely to be attracted to people you've shared very personal information with, and the researchers interpret this as being because you &lt;em&gt;otherwise&lt;/em&gt; only share that kind of information with people you're very close to, so since you did, that means you must be close to this person, hey?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In speed dating (which would probably transfer to any dating circumstances where you have a limited time to make an impression, such as pub pickup or such), techniques that seemed particularly useful were to mimic (within reason) the other person's body language and expressions, and to get them to talk as much as possible about themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what have these got to do with The Game? Well, I don't know what the game asserts. If any of the above are mentioned in The Game, then yes, they seem to be vindicated: if not, well, Wiseman is on to some pretty peripheral effects here, and it seems unlikely that he'd miss out on these techniques if there was scientific support for them. For whatever that's worth :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-03-01T14:07:53.140" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T14:07:53.140" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="262" CreationDate="2011-02-28T21:47:56.023" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's easy to see that the predictions don't make any sense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The ratio of boys to girls born is well known: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;105 boys versus 100 girls&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words we should see 172 &quot;B&quot; and 164 &quot;G&quot;. Instead we see 162 &quot;G&quot; and 174 &quot;B&quot; and hence a ratio of 107 boys versus 100 girls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely, then this calendar can't account for the measured data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: this points assumes an overall uniform birth rate over the age of mothers and months of conception. As such it is as correct as this assumption.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The ratio of sexes at birth is almost independent of the age of the mother. The calendar predicts something like this graph:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wFclx.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see it is completely inconsistent...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there was any truth to the calendar, then why would a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chinesegenderchart.info/pregnancy-chart-gender-selection/gender-chart.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;different source&lt;/a&gt; show a completely different calendar?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a (amusing?) side note. If one was to always predict a boy, they would be right 51% of times! More than random chance :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-02-28T22:59:08.443" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T22:59:08.443" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="275" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="283" CreationDate="2011-02-28T22:50:37.123" Score="12" ViewCount="1984" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard from multiple sources -- a simple google search will confirm -- that significantly more babies are born during full moon periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies supporting or disputing the purported relationship between births and lunar cycles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T09:27:46.687" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T09:27:46.687" Title="Are more babies born during full moons?" Tags="|birth|moon|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="227" CreationDate="2011-02-28T23:32:05.633" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/10/22/1066631498889.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; a while ago about methane gas bubbles.  Of course this doesn't address the issue of how common these are outside the Bermuda Triangle, so it doesn't preclude the influence of confirmation bias on our perception of the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="141" LastActivityDate="2011-02-28T23:32:05.633" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="277" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="282" CreationDate="2011-03-01T01:31:17.867" Score="18" ViewCount="2344" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can a mother decide whether a baby will be born male or female through careful control of her diet? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="116" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:56:47.630" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T08:56:47.630" Title="Is it possible to influence the sex of a baby by controlling the mothers' diet?" Tags="|nutrition|children|gender|pregnancy|gender-selection|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="278" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="281" CreationDate="2011-03-01T02:10:55.447" Score="12" ViewCount="1724" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is significant noise claiming that flu shots are largely ineffective, especially against new strains of the flu (see, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flu-treatments.com/flu-shot-facts.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;). Both the arguments for, and against, flu shots, claim significant backing from existing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How reliable is the information? Are flu shots really effective enough to be worth the cost?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="116" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T07:18:57.660" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T13:22:11.050" Title="How reliable is the research behind the flu-vaccine?" Tags="|vaccines|flu|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="278" CreationDate="2011-03-01T07:17:42.870" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=2040&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mark Crislip from the Science Based Medicine Blog&lt;/a&gt; has written a very nice overview of various aspects of flu vaccine effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First, every year they have to make an&#xA;  educated guess which influenza strains&#xA;  will be circulating 9 months in the&#xA;  future.  The better the guess, the&#xA;  better the protection the vaccine&#xA;  should provide.  Some years they&#xA;  choose better than others. But often&#xA;  the match between the vaccine and the&#xA;  disease is not optimal, so vaccine&#xA;  efficacy can be decreased.  The&#xA;  vaccine works best when there is a&#xA;  good antigentic match between the&#xA;  vaccine and circulating strain of&#xA;  influenza.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flu vaccine is only effective for the specific strains of influenca it was targeted at. Those strains are adjusted every year, but creating the vaccines takes time, and sometimes an unexpected strain like the swine flu appears and the regular flu vaccines is not adapted to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Second, response to the vaccine is not&#xA;  100%.  The older and more&#xA;  immunoincompetent are the least likely&#xA;  to develop a good antibody response to&#xA;  the vaccine. In a bit of medical&#xA;  irony,  the more likely a patient is&#xA;  to need protection from the vaccine,&#xA;  the less likely they are to get a&#xA;  protective antibody response from the&#xA;  vaccine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No vaccine is perfect, but they don't have to work 100% of the time to save some lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the vaccine is worth it is a more difficult question. If you're not one of the risk groups the benefit for you might be relatively small. But as Mark Crislip notes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my mind that is the true benefit of&#xA;  the influenza vaccines: decreasing the&#xA;  morbidity and mortality of&#xA;  populations.  The benefit for&#xA;  populations is derived through&#xA;  vaccinating individuals. That requires&#xA;  a bit of altruism on the part of those&#xA;  receiving the vaccine, as they may be&#xA;  getting vaccinated more for the&#xA;  benefit of others than for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're young and healthy you might not benefit that much, but your grandmother or your child cousin and anyone from a risk group you get in contact with is probably grateful if you vaccinate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your point that both sides claim to be backed by scientific studies is also adressed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do flu vaccines work? It depends on&#xA;  what the meaning of is is. If you are&#xA;  simplistic and like binary answers,&#xA;  yes or no, then you can pick yes or&#xA;  pick no, and find studies to support&#xA;  your contention that the vaccine&#xA;  doesn’t work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mark Crislips conclusion is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or you can look at the preponderance&#xA;  of data, with all the flaws,  nuance,&#xA;  subtleties and qualifiers, and&#xA;  conclude the flu vaccine is of&#xA;  benefit.  The vaccine decreases the&#xA;  probability of morbidity and&#xA;  mortality.  It is a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which I can only fully agree with. It might not work 100% of the time and not in 100% of the people, but the flu vaccine saves lives and that is enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T07:17:42.870" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="277" CreationDate="2011-03-01T08:01:36.390" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short: &lt;strong&gt;no.&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/275/1643/1661.full.pdf+html?sid=0b315f70-cace-4670-9c3c-abff82e99ef2&quot;&gt;as you point out yourself&lt;/a&gt;, some research shows that (pre-conception) diet can be an influence, but nothing more than that. The mother definitely can not &lt;strong&gt;decide&lt;/strong&gt; the gender. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a hard time finding research that replicated this result, only links of more news-like sites that refer to the paper you already linked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7358384.stm&quot;&gt;BBC news article&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr Allan Pacey, an expert in fertility&#xA;  at the University of Sheffield, said&#xA;  there was good evidence that nature&#xA;  had subtle ways of changing the sex&#xA;  ratio of a population in response to a&#xA;  variety of circumstances. However, he&#xA;  said: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;I would urge women to not to&#xA;  start starving themselves in order to&#xA;  try influence the sex of their baby.&#xA;  &quot;It has been observed in some animal&#xA;  studies that even small changes in&#xA;  female diet can affect the life long&#xA;  health of the offspring, so it is&#xA;  important that the mother has&#xA;  appropriate nutrition at the time of&#xA;  conception and throughout her&#xA;  pregnancy.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from this single article alone I would conclude that although there is an influence of certain factors on the sex of the child (food being one of them), there is no way (and certainly no safe way) to decide the sex of your child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T07:48:32.273" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T07:48:32.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="275" CreationDate="2011-03-01T08:13:11.810" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/fullmoon.html&quot;&gt;skepdic article&lt;/a&gt; references meta-research after 100 studies, finding no evidence of any correlation between lunar-cycle and a lot of things, amongst them birth-rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It goes on to explain why the myth might be still around, if you are interested in that sort of thing ;) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is other research also:&#xA;for instance this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378%2805%2900282-6/abstract&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; that is quite clear in its results and conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The analyses revealed no&#xA;  significant correlates of birth rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusion&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Although there exists a&#xA;  popular belief that the phase of the lunar cycle and weather conditions affect birth rate, no such evidence was found in this study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe more studies can be found, but this is convincing enough for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378%2805%2900282-6/abstract&quot;&gt;Susan Morton-Pradhan, MD, R. Curtis Bay, PhD, Dean V. Coonrod, MD, MPH, American Journal of Obstetrics &amp;amp; Gynecology Volume 192, Issue 6 , Pages 1970-1973, June 2005&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T08:13:11.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="275" CreationDate="2011-03-01T08:43:33.733" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neil deGrasse Tyson &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVk-2XAd-kI&quot;&gt;talked about this&lt;/a&gt; at TAM6. Basically, in a few areas there is a &lt;em&gt;slight&lt;/em&gt; rise in birthrate during full moons, but, since the human gestation period is precisely 10 times the time between full Moons, that just means that conception happened on a full Moon, and there are certain, romantic, effects of a full Moon…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="88" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T08:43:33.733" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="288" CreationDate="2011-03-01T12:23:16.430" Score="38" ViewCount="2177" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the web site of the film &lt;a href=&quot;http://vanishingbees.co.uk/&quot;&gt;Vanishing of the Bees&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bees are dying in their billions. In the UK, around one fifth of honeybee hives were lost in the winter of 2008/2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence of bees disappearing and what are scientific theories on this subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-24T08:47:27.163" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T08:47:27.163" Title="Are bees disappearing and why?" Tags="|pesticides|bees|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="269" CreationDate="2011-03-01T13:16:41.883" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just from reading the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch%27s_postulates&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page of Koch's Postulates&lt;/a&gt;, several flaws in them are immediately identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first postulate ignores asymptomatic carriers, which Koch himself acknowledged. So an argument that some people have HIV but not AIDS shouldn't discount the HIV-&gt;AIDS causation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second postulate assumes that microorganisms can be grown in a culture. I'm no microbiologist, but I don't believe this is true of viruses - they need to be in living cells to reproduce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third and fourth postulates require infecting a healthy host, which is unethical in  terminal diseases that affect humans and not lab animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T13:16:41.883" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="286" CreationDate="2011-03-01T14:35:18.080" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would hesitate to say that &quot;bees are disappearing&quot;. But yes, there is a problem.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It's called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder&quot;&gt;Colony Collapse Disorder&lt;/a&gt; and there is nothing certain about why it happens. It's probably a combination of factors. The Wikipedia article is good. I've recently read some articles claiming that they have found a definitive link to some disease, but I can't find it right now, so I don't know if there is any good basis for the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/21543469&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; blaming the pesticide &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid&quot;&gt;Imidacloprid&lt;/a&gt; seems promising and seem to be the strongest claims of a cause at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="80" LastEditDate="2012-04-28T09:38:16.257" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T09:38:16.257" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="289" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="292" CreationDate="2011-03-01T15:09:13.243" Score="32" ViewCount="8034" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some urban legends and myths revolve around surgery occurring to a person who has had too much to drink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to, as a side effect of the patient drinking too much, reach a point where surgery can be performed without the patient regaining consciousness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="116" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2019-02-08T22:54:42.967" LastActivityDate="2019-02-17T00:49:07.037" Title="Is alcohol a good enough pain killer to allow for surgery without the patient noticing?" Tags="|alcohol|pain-control|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="250" CreationDate="2011-03-01T16:57:15.657" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.cancer.org/drlen/2010/05/14/more-on-dichloroacetate-dca-in-cancer-treatment/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article on cancer.org&lt;/a&gt; that sums up the current state of the DCA research pretty well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clinical trials take a &lt;em&gt;long&lt;/em&gt; time, and this is perhaps more true for medicine than it is for any other field. It is not surprising that preliminary indications reported in 2007, have not yet reached the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I've been able to gather, research on the topic progresses as you'd expect (it does not seem inhibited by a lack of interest from the medical establishment), and it even seems promising. The article linked to above references &lt;a href=&quot;https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/2/31/31ra34.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a 2010 study&lt;/a&gt;, which I do not have access to, but see the discussion in the cancer.org article for more on that study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-05-01T04:10:27.640" LastActivityDate="2019-05-01T04:10:27.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2011-03-01T17:10:30.967" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found a paper about &lt;a href=&quot;http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0014299997891741&quot;&gt;Ethanol as a general anesthetic&lt;/a&gt; and in their introduction they state&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[..] ethanol can produce a state of&#xA;  general anesthesia and historically&#xA;  has been used for this purpose (Dundee&#xA;  et al., 1969). Ethanol causes amnesia&#xA;  and loss of consiousness in man, and&#xA;  in experimental animals can cause&#xA;  immobility in response to a noxious&#xA;  stimulus. Immobility in response to a&#xA;  noxious stimulus is the endpoint of&#xA;  the most common operational definition&#xA;  of general anesthesia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article cited inside that quote is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anesthesia-analgesia.org/content/48/4/665.citation&quot;&gt;&quot;Use of alcohol in anesthesia&quot;&lt;/a&gt; which I can't access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems ethanol has been used as an anesthetic, although it is probably difficult to administer and most likely very dangerous. Most anesthetics have a very narrow &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutic_index&quot;&gt;therapeutic range&lt;/a&gt;, so the amount needed to kill someone is not that much higher than the amount needed for the drug effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With ethanol you will have the problem that many people will probably throw up before you can get enough alcohol into them to render them unconscious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-01T17:23:14.263" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T17:23:14.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="295" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="296" CreationDate="2011-03-01T18:49:44.703" Score="31" ViewCount="84289" Body="&lt;p&gt;My mother just forwarded an email to all her contacts (thanks, mom), warning us of the dangers of mixing Lysol and bleach together. Here's most the content, translated from French:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bleach and Lysol, a lethal mix&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the experience of my friend can be of any help... Read her email!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my latest bad experience that I want to share with you. It might be useful to you. On January 2nd 2011, I was finishing to wash the previous evening's dishes when I had family come over for dinner. As I was finishing, I thought of using a bit of bleach to disinfect the sink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I had very little bleach left, I went to fetch my Lysol and poured the bleach I had left with the Lysol. This was a terrible mix that you should never attempt to recreate. Two minutes later, I could barely breathe and thirty minutes later I was at the hospital where I received care from the ambulance and at the hospital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The doctor told me that it would have taken very little more for me pass away. An accident by lack of knowledge can happen quite fast and can sometimes be lethal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general rule, I'm skeptical of whatever I read in chain mails so I googled excerpts of the text. Unsurprisingly, I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://mytheourealite.com/eau-de-javel-et-lysol-melange-mortel/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an almost exact&lt;/a&gt; match as the first search result. The only difference is that the year changed, from 2011 in the email I received to 2009 on the blog page so it's undoubtedly a chain letter. By the way, that page is also the first result when you google &amp;quot;eau de javel lysol&amp;quot; (&amp;quot;bleach lysol&amp;quot;, in French).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A search on the web returns unhelpful results, with the average content farms contradicting each other and offering no trustworthy source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As any chemist would know, bleach is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaClO&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sodium hypochlorite&lt;/a&gt; and, from a quick search, it would seem the active agent in Lysol is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzalkonium_chloride&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;benzalkonium chloride&lt;/a&gt; but I can't find anything on the interaction of those two compounds either. From a quick look at the two compounds, I would be surprised to see any spectacular interaction between the two of them though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does anyone know what happens when you mix Lysol and bleach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-12-23T03:54:23.693" Title="What happens when you mix Lysol and bleach?" Tags="|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="295" CreationDate="2011-03-01T19:03:06.510" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this document from the Utah health department: &lt;a href=&quot;https://health.utah.gov/enviroepi/activities/NTSIP/Common%20Cleaning%20Products%20Can%20Be%20Dangerous%20When%20Mixed.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Common Cleaning Products May Be Dangerous When Mixed&lt;/a&gt;, dangerous gasses are produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chlorineinstitute.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Chlorine Institute, Inc.&lt;/a&gt; advises that one not &quot;mix Sodium Hypochlorite (bleach) with ANY other chemical unless adequate engineering controls and personal protective equipment (PPE) are in place&quot; in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chlorineinstitute.org/files/FileDownloads/Avoiding%20Accidental%20Mixing%20of%20Sodium%20Hypochlorite%20%2D%20Guidance%20Document%2020100323%201.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Avoiding Accidental Mixing of Sodium Hypochlorite&lt;/a&gt; document. They also have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chlorineinstitute.org/pub/2ca904fc-2354-d714-51a7-2cfd6c4de8e6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sodium Hypochlorite Incompatibility Chart (English Version)&lt;/a&gt; which lists the bad things which can happen when mixing bleach with other chemicals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to Fabian in the comments, he noted that benzalkonium chloride is a quarternary ammonium salt which, according to the incompatibility chart, will release chlorine or other noxious gases when mixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, according to the makers of Lysol ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reckittprofessional.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reckitt Benckiser Inc.&lt;/a&gt; ) in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rbnainfo.com/MSDS/US/LYSOL-Brand-Multi-Surface-Cleaner-Complete-Clean-Pourable-US-English.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Material Safety Data Sheet&lt;/a&gt;, they say under point 10: &quot;DO NOT MIX WITH BLEACH&quot; - note the nice big bold letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="48" LastEditorDisplayName="user32299" LastEditDate="2018-11-30T15:07:31.910" LastActivityDate="2018-11-30T15:07:31.910" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="313" CreationDate="2011-03-01T21:30:48.060" Score="39" ViewCount="40919" Body="&lt;p&gt;The energy-saving compact fluorecent lamps (CFLs) contain some amount of mercury. If they break, it might be released. I've heard claims that they are really dangerous, and claims that the amount of mercury is completely harmless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how dangerous are they, do I need to call a Hazmat team when I break one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T18:03:41.620" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T16:58:39.843" Title="How dangerous is a broken compact fluorescent lamp (CFL)?" Tags="|mercury|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="297" CreationDate="2011-03-01T21:43:52.533" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wasn't sure on this one myself, so I did some research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've come across this explanation, which sounds similar to what was my understanding before, so it's true by confirmation bias:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exposure to broken CFLs can pose a health risk, especially to a fetus or young child. But don't panic. Open a window, shut off central A/C or forced-air heating, and clear the room for at least 15 minutes as the Environmental Protection Agency recommends. Read &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/home-garden/home-improvement/hardware-building-supplies/lightbulbs/compact-fluorescent-lighting-10-07/safe-removal-of-broken-cfls/bulbs-safe.htm&quot;&gt;What to Do If a Compact Fluorescent Lightbulb Breaks&lt;/a&gt;&quot; for more details. And be sure to keep CFLs out of lamps that could easily tip, especially in rooms used often by children or pregnant women. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/home-garden/home-improvement/hardware-building-supplies/lightbulbs/cfls/overview/cfl-ov-.htm&quot;&gt;* consumerreports.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;don't panic, open a window&lt;/em&gt; part, especially, seems very plausible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastActivityDate="2011-03-01T21:43:52.533" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="299" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="304" CreationDate="2011-03-01T22:18:40.880" Score="46" ViewCount="4215" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any reason for a healthy adult to take a daily multi-vitamin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My intuition tells me that an adult eating a healthy and balanced diet will get all of the nutrients she needs and that taking a daily mulit-vitamin would be pointless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T07:50:51.580" Title="Should a healthy adult take a daily multi-vitamin?" Tags="|nutritional-supplements|vitamins|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1704" CreationDate="2011-03-02T04:41:02.530" Score="16" ViewCount="522" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a wide variety of food, health, and beauty products that boast containing Antioxidants in order to convince consumers to buy them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific data that backs-up the need for products to contain Antioxidants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible that humans do not benefit much from increased consumption of Antioxidants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or that people pursuing an average diet typically consume enough Antioxidants anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it that Antioxidants truly have value, and it is generally good to consume more Antioxidant products?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T04:58:41.943" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T19:33:48.013" Title="Do products that contain antioxidants have any value over products that do not?" Tags="|antioxidant|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="302" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-02T05:02:09.977" Score="13" ViewCount="628" Body="&lt;p&gt;Crystal healing techniques speak of blockages in the body's electromagnetic field.&#xA;Electromagnetic fields can usually be measured and observed. So, it seems to me, if a body's electromagnetic field experiences some sort of anomaly, it would be observable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this been researched? Have any of the blockages that crystal healing techniques speak of been observed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="116" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T20:39:48.070" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T12:39:42.250" Title="Have any &quot;blockages&quot; ever been observed in the body's EM field?" Tags="|medical-science|biophysics|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="303" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="306" CreationDate="2011-03-02T07:17:49.513" Score="44" ViewCount="3793" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time ago I read a warning that microwaved water can &quot;explode&quot; under certain circumstances. There was one case as an example where someone heated water in the microwave, took it out and then it &quot;exploded&quot; causing him to be burned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can something like this really happen, and if yes, under which exact circumstances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-04T11:47:11.040" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T22:36:28.363" Title="Can microwaved water explode?" Tags="|water|microwaves|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="299" CreationDate="2011-03-02T07:36:18.847" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;There answer is not necessarily a simple &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Way too little of a vitamin is a terrible thing, and way too much can be just as bad, although you must reach rather high levels to contract vitamin intoxication. A &quot;what's the harm&quot; attitude towards multivitamins is arguably defensible, as you're not running a risk of vitamin intoxication from following the recommended dosage. It rather boils down to whether or not you're willing to spend the money and go through the daily routine, when it's not at all obvious that you should need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vitamin supplements are all about avoiding a vitamin deficiency. There really is no added benefit to getting &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; vitamins once you're at sufficient levels. The trick is that it's not that easy to keep track of whether or not you are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rule cannot be generalized into saying &quot;Healthy adults don't need vitamin supplements, because in order to be healthy, you must not have a vitamin deficiency.&quot; You're not likely to catch scurvy unless you're doing something terribly wrong. That's not what this is all about. There can be more subtle effects of small vitamin deficiencies. Vitamins can help you fend off other diseases, for instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vitamin D from a multivitamin or single supplement can lower the risk of colon and possibly many other cancers. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/vitamins/&quot;&gt;* harvard.edu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process of self-diagnosis should not simply be &quot;Do I suffer from scurvy? No; ergo I'm getting all the vitamin C I need.&quot; Rather, you should be asking my self &quot;Am I avoiding colon cancer as best I can?&quot; That question is trickier to answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, you do not need vitamin supplements if you get sufficient levels of vitamins anyway. There is &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; added benefit to getting &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; than enough vitamins. But I can't generalize that into &quot;eating a healthy and balanced diet&quot;, as per your question. First of all, that phrase probably entails different specific details depending on the individual. But, more importantly, I'd like to stress that it's not all about your diet. The richest source of vitamin D, for instance, is exposure to the sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you live north of the line connecting San Francisco to Philadelphia and Athens to Beijing, odds are that you don't get enough vitamin D. The same holds true if you don't get outside for at least a 15-minute daily walk in the sun. African-Americans and others with dark skin, as well as older individuals, tend to have much lower levels of vitamin D, as do people who are overweight or obese. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/vitamin-d/index.html&quot;&gt;* harvard.edu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth looking into whether or not you belong to any of the risk groups, to assess whether or not you would be in need of supplements, or perhaps, and preferably, a change of habits. For a healthy adult to take &lt;em&gt;multi-vitamins&lt;/em&gt; sounds to me like hedging your bets, but a pill a day won't get you intoxicated either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-03-04T13:38:20.940" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T13:38:20.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="303" CreationDate="2011-03-02T07:57:35.683" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/science/microwave.asp&quot;&gt;There's a snopes.com article on the subject&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The page quotes &lt;em&gt;New Scientist&lt;/em&gt;, reproduced here for convenience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A portion of the water in the cup is becoming superheated — the liquid temperature is actually slightly above the boiling point, where it would normally form a gas. In this case, the boiling is hindered by a lack of nucleation sites needed to form the bubbles . . .  I imagine that by keeping the cup still and microwaving for a long time, one could blow the entire contents of the cup into the interior of the microwave as soon as you introduced any nucleation sites. It is this sometimes explosive rate of steam production that means you should take great care when using a microwave oven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T07:57:35.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="303" CreationDate="2011-03-02T07:59:28.773" Score="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, this &lt;strong&gt;can happen&lt;/strong&gt; with water, and in fact other liquids as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.animations.physics.unsw.edu.au/jw/superheating.htm&quot;&gt;UNSW School of Physics&lt;/a&gt;, this is called &lt;strong&gt;superheating&lt;/strong&gt;, and it occurs when a liquid is heated to a temperature slightly above its boiling point &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; the liquid starting to boil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result is an unstable liquid that can &lt;strong&gt;boil&lt;/strong&gt; (steam) &lt;strong&gt;violently&lt;/strong&gt; when a foreign object (i.e. instant coffee, tongue, spoon, etc.) contacts the liquid (I'll explain how/why later in this answer). This violent boiling is the &quot;&lt;strong&gt;explosion&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; referred to in your question, and it can be quite dangerous. &lt;em&gt;(Note that &lt;strong&gt;this is not, by definition, an actual explosion&lt;/strong&gt;, but colloquially, it may be referred to as such. See the comment by dm.skt below.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Superheating occurs when a liquid is heated in a smooth container*, such as a brand-new mug or bowl, for a long time in a microwave. The smooth container prevents &lt;strong&gt;steam bubbles&lt;/strong&gt; from forming on the surface of the container as the liquid is heated. The formation of steam bubbles is a crucial step of boiling; without steam bubbles, the liquid &lt;strong&gt;cannot boil&lt;/strong&gt;, and this is why superheating is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Introducing a non-smooth object into superheated water allows the water to &lt;strong&gt;form steam bubbles on the irregular surface&lt;/strong&gt; of the object, leading to a potentially rapid boil of the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;: As a container is used and/or washed, microscopic abrasions and scratches will accumulate on the interior surface of the container, whether from stirring with a spoon or scrubbing. Thus, the likelihood of superheating occurring with any given container decreases each time the container is used and superficially scratched, because steam bubbles will form more easily the more scratches are present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-03-12T21:42:17.070" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T21:42:17.070" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="301" CreationDate="2011-03-02T09:49:18.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Antioxidants are widely used as ingredients in dietary supplements and have been investigated for the prevention of diseases such as cancer, coronary heart disease and even altitude sickness. Although initial studies suggested that antioxidant supplements might promote health, later large clinical trials did not detect any benefit and suggested instead that excess supplementation may be harmful.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioxidant&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are antioxidants that are beneficial to our health, like Green tea or Vitamin C, but they are beneficial not because they are antioxidants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T09:49:18.443" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="302" CreationDate="2011-03-02T13:53:56.657" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of these claims don't describe EM energy, just some mysterious and non-measurable &quot;energy&quot; or chi. Supposedly, it can be felt by those that are sensitive to it, but no objective measurements can be taken of this so-called energy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you assume that such &quot;energy&quot; is hokum, then manipulation of it by any means is as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="110" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T13:53:56.657" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="297" CreationDate="2011-03-02T15:45:52.783" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reptox.csst.qc.ca/Produit.asp?no_produit=4309&amp;amp;nom=Mercure&quot;&gt;WHMIS documents (French only)&lt;/a&gt; provided by the Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CSST), you're under no immediate danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the relevant passage, translated from French:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exposure to vapors:&lt;/strong&gt;   Mercury has no scent. As such, we can only detect its presence with instruments. At ambient temperature (20°C), mercury possesses a saturation concentration of 1.6 ppm (13 mg/m³), which is 160 times the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_exposure_limit&quot;&gt;occupational exposure limit&lt;/a&gt; (0,003 ppm or 0,025 mg/m³). As a result, in the event of a leak or spill in a room, a significant quantity of mercury evaporates and the OEL is easily surpassed. However, in practice, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDLH&quot;&gt;IDLH&lt;/a&gt; (1,2 ppm or 10 mg/m³) is never surpassed, even if it is really near of the saturation concentration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put in simpler terms, at ambient temperature, a concentration which would be dangerous to be exposed to for a long period of time is easily reached. However, the concentration at which your health is immediately threatened is rarely reached. There's no reason to panic or to put on an Hazmat suit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you break a CFL, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/cfl/cflcleanup-detailed.html&quot;&gt;just follow the EPA's recommendations on how to clean up a broken CFL&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open the window.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carefully collect the debris.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid dermal contact with the broken bulb.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clean the surface thoroughly. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't keep the debris inside.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-03-13T06:12:29.663" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T06:12:29.663" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="303" CreationDate="2011-03-02T16:48:25.103" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_OXM4mr_i0&quot;&gt;Mythbusters&lt;/a&gt; showed that this is most easily achieved by using distilled water (with no impurities). Distilled water will fail to boil and therefore be more likely to cause an explosion. Tap water, on the other hand, will generally boil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T16:48:25.103" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="318" CreationDate="2011-03-02T17:01:48.713" Score="26" ViewCount="4870" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt that organisms have electromagnetic (EM) fields. If we did have such a field, then we would certainly be susceptible to having electric currents induced in us by stronger EM fields. Or worse, being affected by magnetic fields like a scrap of iron.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any organisms actually have such a field? Where does this claim come from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question arose because of &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/302/crystal-healing-techniques-speak-of-blockages-in-the-bodys-electromagnetic-field&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2021-02-28T10:05:51.640" Title="Do organisms have electromagnetic fields?" Tags="|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="315" CreationDate="2011-03-02T17:18:10.067" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Humans, animals and other &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamagnetism&quot;&gt;diamagnetic&lt;/a&gt; objects are affected by magnetic fields. The effect is just so weak that it is usually not noticable. But you can e.g. levitate a frog using an extremely strong magnet (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1vyB-O5i6E&quot;&gt;this video on YouTube&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EM fields also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/peh-emf/about/WhatisEMF/en/index1.html&quot;&gt;induce currents in humans&lt;/a&gt;, but they are usually so small as to be unnoticeable. But you don't want to stand directly in front of, e.g. a military radar or other sources with extremely high power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T17:18:10.067" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="315" CreationDate="2011-03-02T17:23:05.940" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wherever electric current exists, magnetic field is also induced. (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations&quot;&gt;Maxwell's equations&lt;/a&gt;) This means that all living organisms, which utilise electric current in their biology (like nerve impulses) emit weak electromagnetic fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some animals (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark#Electroreception&quot;&gt;sharks for example&lt;/a&gt;) are even capable of sensing these fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, being a source of such emission does NOT necessarily mean, we are also susceptible to interference by external sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2011-03-02T17:35:05.900" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T17:35:05.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="315" CreationDate="2011-03-02T21:10:16.727" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;They have plenty of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetism&quot;&gt;EM fields&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom&quot;&gt;Atoms&lt;/a&gt; are held together by the electromagnetic field&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_orbital&quot;&gt;Chemistry&lt;/a&gt; is based on electromagnetism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The body &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body&quot;&gt;emits heat&lt;/a&gt; through electromagnetic radiation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are currents which flow around &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocardiography&quot;&gt;muscles&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography&quot;&gt;nervous system&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are affected by the EM field:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Through &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light&quot;&gt;light&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Through &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_radiation&quot;&gt;radiative heat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Through &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation#X-ray&quot;&gt;radiation&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum&quot;&gt;in general&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-03-02T21:10:16.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="100" CreationDate="2011-03-02T22:12:11.277" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can certainly get poisoned by the solvant (water, alcohol, sugar, etc.), but for the rest... there is no rest!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Homeopathic medicines do not contain any active ingredient - this is universally accepted by both the science community and the homeopaths. Typical dilutions are 1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1 followed by 60 zeroes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Homeopathy is supposed to work through some never seen, semi-magical &quot;memory&quot; in the solvent, which somehow gets &quot;potentiated&quot; through extreme dilution and some &quot;succussion&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succussion#Preparation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;magical beating&lt;/a&gt;) on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hvmc.info/hvmc_homeopathy_long.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a bible&lt;/a&gt; (no, really).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, mmm, no. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find more about it here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_topics_characterized_as_pseudoscience&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;List of topics characterized as pseudoscience (Wikipedia)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="31604" LastEditDate="2017-05-01T07:35:41.807" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T07:35:41.807" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="162" CreationDate="2011-03-03T07:52:50.603" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have met with a similar device in a form of either &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_water_treatment&quot;&gt;permanent magnet or an electro-magnet&lt;/a&gt;. In both cases the devices failed when subject to an experiment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientific and engineering studies generally refute the effectiveness of the method, finding no differences not attributable to other causes between systems with and without a magnetic water treatment device, and no theoretical basis to expect that there might be. Vendors frequently use pictures and testimonials to support their claims, but omit quantitative detail and well-controlled studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case the description &quot;how it works&quot; is quite similar, using physical terms very vaguely, which gives impression of scientific approach to a buyer, but actually tells nothing at all. How it &quot;increases the solubility of water&quot;? As the operating principle is different, the magnetic treatment studies are not relevant here and to be absolutely sure it would be necessary to perform a controlled experiment, but from the external similarities I would most likely expect it to be the same, and having no effect at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scalewatcher.co.uk/pages/How_does_it_work.asp&quot;&gt;their how it works&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The electronic unit works by sending out a signal which changes the electrical and physical properties of scale forming calcium molecules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This action stops any further build-up of scale by preventing molecules from adhering to themselves or any other surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The solubility of the water is also increased, therefore existing scale is dissolved back into the water and gradually reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scalewatcher.co.uk/pages/scalewatcher-water-softeners.asp&quot;&gt;more &quot;scientific&quot; section&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The nuclei upon which the crystals start growing are minute in size and have charged surfaces in their natural condition within the water. When they pass through the field, these naturally charged &lt;strong&gt;nuclei encounter considerable forces as the field interacts with them. The field acts at the surfaces of the nuclei and modifies the nature of the electrical charges&lt;/strong&gt; and this ionisation effect thus alters the growth rate and pattern of the crystals in general and on specific planes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-03-03T08:06:49.887" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T08:06:49.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="321" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-03T12:16:51.947" Score="28" ViewCount="1520" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other day came across a commercial of a 'course for sign language' for infants and toddlers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was a bit sceptical from the start and my suspicions only rose, then I discovered that there is what &lt;strong&gt;seems&lt;/strong&gt; to me to be a multinational MLM scheme selling these courses and associated materials. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.babysigns.com/&quot;&gt;https://www.babysigns.com/&lt;/a&gt;. It just looks to me as exploitation of self-deception in parents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I reviewed a bit of research done in this area (starting with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_language_in_infants_and_toddlers&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;), and to me it seems that all answers to a question 'whether toddlers can learn sign language' so far are 'plausible, but not conclusive'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you know any other research in this subject that would be more conclusive, please let us all know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="78" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:57:37.463" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T08:57:37.463" Title="Can toddlers learn sign language?" Tags="|psychology|children|language|learning|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="162" CreationDate="2011-03-03T13:30:04.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Examining their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scalewatcher.co.uk/pages/faq.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt;, I see two claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That &quot;As the scale does not stick to pipework and appliances it all goes down the plug and leaves the house with the water.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That when it is working you should see a &quot;Reduction in use of soap, soap powder, shampoo, detergents and cleaners.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first claim would suggest that the calcium remains dissolved in the water as it leaves the tap - i.e. that there is (slightly) &lt;strong&gt;more&lt;/strong&gt; calcium in the water you wash with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second claim would suggest that the water is less &quot;hard&quot;, and the soaps don't need to overcome the calcium dissolved in the water - i.e. that there is significantly &lt;strong&gt;less&lt;/strong&gt; calcium in the  water you wash with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Independent of the mechanism the device uses, these claims are self-inconsistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T13:30:04.350" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="325" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="326" CreationDate="2011-03-03T14:40:05.243" Score="22" ViewCount="1696" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is commonly suggested, in the body building world, that the following eating strategy rises metabolism and inhibits the production of fat tissue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eat a substantial meal every 2 to 3 hours (six times a day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keep the overall caloric intake unchanged, or within norm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prefer protein over carbohydrates and fats&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that the body enters a &quot;starvation&quot; mode after that amount of time, leading to a slowing on metabolism to conserve energy and the activation of energy storing mechanisms. Also, not reducing caloric intake prevents &quot;starvation&quot; mode from kicking in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While clearly plausible, does this make any sense biologically? Have any studies proven its efficacy at all, or is it all a myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="19066" LastEditDate="2016-01-01T18:31:18.897" LastActivityDate="2016-01-01T18:31:18.897" Title="6-meals-a-day strategy" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="325" CreationDate="2011-03-03T15:28:56.013" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually find that the body building realm is full of weird nutritional myths, but after some poking around, it seems that a lot of articles writing about it actually did say they were citing a &quot;scientific study&quot;, without providing any links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At last I've found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/323/7324/1286.1.full&quot;&gt;this article from the British Medical Journal&lt;/a&gt; that seems to be what everybody's talking about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;increased daily frequency of eating was inversely and significantly associated with lower concentrations of total cholesterol and low density lipoprotein cholesterol. &lt;sup&gt;* BMJ&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is an observational study (actually, tapping into the data of a cohort study on a completely different topic), and not an experiment. This is of course often the case with social studies, but I don't think there would've been ethical implications with arranging an experiment of this one. That way we could've been more certain about the conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, all we know is that there's a correlation. It might very well be that frequent meals and the low cholestorol both are the effects of a common - unknown - cause, rather than the latter causing the former.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence that does suggest that the study published in BMJ is actually a causal relationship, is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/23/8/1059.full.pdf+html&quot;&gt;similar effects have been found in an experimental study on animals.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted, that although the cited literature seems to be in favor of the conclusion, there may well be other health concerns related to frequent meals; particularly with regards to dental health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="100" LastEditDate="2011-03-03T16:06:48.057" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T16:06:48.057" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="328" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="329" CreationDate="2011-03-03T18:03:38.477" Score="42" ViewCount="4669" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a parent, I often hear people say that they think it's bad for their children to have several vaccines in one go. Some parents pay for some vaccines to be given separately, and I wondered if there is any evidence that it makes a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T19:12:43.077" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T01:25:03.383" Title="Is it dangerous to have several vaccines at the same time?" Tags="|medical-science|vaccines|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="328" CreationDate="2011-03-03T18:34:53.117" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;This argument, &quot;Too many, too soon&quot;, is very common among groups opposing vaccines and promoting alternative cures. The basic argument is that the number of vaccines given to children increased substantially and that this &quot;overloads&quot; the immune system and causes illnesses, e.g. autism. I've heard this claim almost exclusively in connection with autism, so I'll focus on that in my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of vaccines you can find in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/recs/schedules/child-schedule.htm&quot;&gt;recommended vaccine schedule&lt;/a&gt; for the United States published by the CDC. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the end the number of vaccines is nothing compared to the number of antigens children will encounter naturally. Paul Offit said the following about that subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A baby’s body is bombarded with&#xA;  immunologic challenges—from bacteria&#xA;  in food to the dust they breathe.&#xA;  Compared to what they typically&#xA;  encounter and manage during the day,&#xA;  vaccines are literally a drop in the&#xA;  ocean”, and Dr. Offits studies&#xA;  theoretically show an infant could&#xA;  handle up to 100,000 vaccines at one&#xA;  time … safely &lt;sub&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=289&quot;&gt;quoted from SBM&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a study published in the Journal of Pediatrics titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/peds.2009-2489v1&quot;&gt;&quot;On-time Vaccine Receipt in the First Year Does Not Adversely Affect Neuropsychological Outcomes&quot;&lt;/a&gt; that directly refutes the claim that too many vaccines cause neurodevelopmental disorders in children. From that study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Timely vaccination during infancy has&#xA;  no adverse effect on&#xA;  neuropsychological outcomes 7 to 10&#xA;  years later. These data may reassure&#xA;  parents who are concerned that&#xA;  children receive too many vaccines too&#xA;  soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On rereading the question I see that I misread it somwhat, but I think the evidence also holds true for the case of simultaneous vaccinations, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Vaccines/multiplevaccines.html&quot;&gt;the CDC agrees with that&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2013-04-06T16:46:13.620" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T16:46:13.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="328" CreationDate="2011-03-03T18:42:46.327" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be plenty of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thinktwice.com/multiple.htm&quot;&gt;anecdotal evidence&lt;/a&gt; (currently the 4th google result for &quot;multiple vaccines&quot;) to confirm this, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Vaccines/multiplevaccines.html&quot;&gt;according to the CDC&lt;/a&gt;, there have been studies which have found no adverse health effects associated with multiple simultaneous vaccinations (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The available scientific data show that simultaneous vaccination with multiple vaccines &lt;strong&gt;has no adverse effect&lt;/strong&gt; on the normal childhood immune system. A number of studies have been conducted to examine the effects of giving various combinations of vaccines simultaneously. These studies have shown that the recommended vaccines are as effective in combination as they are individually, and that such combinations carry &lt;strong&gt;no greater risk for adverse side effects&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CDC also mentions that separating vaccinations is more likely to cause discomfort to the child, which makes sense-- less stress to get all of them done in one visit, I would think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CDC does not cite any of these studies on that page, but here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/109/1/124&quot;&gt;a study that I found&lt;/a&gt;. This is the summary (again, emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Current studies do not support the hypothesis that multiple vaccines overwhelm, weaken, or &quot;use up&quot; the immune system.&lt;/strong&gt; On the contrary, young infants have an enormous capacity to respond to multiple vaccines, as well as to the many other challenges present in the environment. By providing protection against a number of bacterial and viral pathogens, &lt;strong&gt;vaccines prevent the &quot;weakening&quot; of the immune system&lt;/strong&gt; and consequent secondary bacterial infections occasionally caused by natural infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenhf.com/article.php?id=1758&quot;&gt;criticism&lt;/a&gt; of such studies. This criticism in particular (not all criticism) comes from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Health_Federation&quot;&gt;National Health Federation&lt;/a&gt;, which has a history of promoting claims that vaccines are dangerous, so I'm inclined to disregard it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, studies have shown that it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; dangerous to have several vaccines at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2011-03-03T18:42:46.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="332" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="334" CreationDate="2011-03-04T02:08:17.887" Score="17" ViewCount="729" Body="&lt;p&gt;Echinacea bottles at my local food supplement store claim that taking the pills will reduce the length and severity of symptoms experienced when infected with the common cold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these claims have any basis? Is there any peer-reviewed research proving the benefits of echinacea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="116" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-04T05:21:07.597" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T13:41:55.913" Title="Does echinacea reduce the length and severity of symptoms for the common cold?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|common-cold|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="321" CreationDate="2011-03-04T03:46:36.383" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is called &quot;baby sign language&quot; is just a subset of American Sign Language (with a few simplifications).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the Baby Sign company sells you is educational books and videos (at very reasonable prices), but if you want to learn ASL, you can do it in many other venues (including online for free). I think your characterisation of them as MLM is inaccurate: their goal seems to be to sell you products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have met several toddlers who sign. What is inconclusive is whether it helps them over the longer term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T03:46:36.383" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="332" CreationDate="2011-03-04T07:25:26.767" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Echinacea may well be one of the next substances around the corner to be accepted as medicine proper. The evidence is not striking, but there are convincing indications. With further experimentation, we &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be able to single out the active agents so as to be able to devise a test that clearly differentiates it from placebo effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Cochrane Collaboration has done &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab000530.html&quot;&gt;a meta study of 16 of the most rigorous scientific trials of echinacea&lt;/a&gt; and the review shows that, for treatment &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a significant effect was reported in nine comparisons, a trend in one, and no difference in six.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No significant effect was shown for using Echinacea as prevention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reviewers conclude that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Echinacea preparations tested in clinical trials differ greatly. There is some evidence that preparations based on the aerial parts of E. purpurea might be effective for the early treatment of colds in adults but the results are not fully consistent. Beneficial effects of other Echinacea preparations, and Echinacea used for preventative purposes might exist but have not been shown in independently replicated, rigorous RCTs. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD000530/pdf_fs.html&quot;&gt;* Cochrane Collaboration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-03-04T13:41:55.913" LastActivityDate="2011-03-04T13:41:55.913" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="315" CreationDate="2011-03-04T18:53:46.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If we did have such a field, then we&#xA;  would certainly be susceptible to&#xA;  having electric currents induced in us&#xA;  by stronger EM fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you figure?  A lump of iron or pith doesn't have its own fields, but is still affected by external fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, humans generate small electric and magnetic fields, as well as emitting a few hundred watts of thermal electromagnetic radiation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are also affected by external fields, but we have evolved to not be affected by things like static magnetic fields or electrostatic shocks.  It generally takes a lot of energy/power to affect us.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_magnetic_stimulation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Transcranial magnetic stimulation&lt;/a&gt; for an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="155" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T19:01:04.937" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T19:01:04.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="297" CreationDate="2011-03-04T21:48:17.230" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;CFLs contain about 4mg of mercury -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OSHA OK level for mercury is 0.1mg/m3 -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osha.gov/dts/sltc/methods/inorganic/id145/id145.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.osha.gov/dts/sltc/methods/inorganic/id145/id145.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The California limit is 0.05mg/m3 -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/hesis/Documents/merc.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/hesis/Documents/merc.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously many questions can result from this.  Are the legal limits reasonable or too strict?  How much does it vary per bulb?  In a given space, when a bulb violently shatters, how much mercury of the 4mg particulates over what area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume a standard US 8x10x10 room in meters (roughly 2.5x3x3).  That's at most 27m3.  So 4/27m3 = 0.14mg/m3.  That's clearly in excess of the OSHA and CA limits.  However, the mercury would not instantly disperse uniformly throughout the room.  So while you'd get probably 0 exposure far from it, you'd get more at the distance you'd have to be to say... clean it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note this too from the EPA Clean up guide.  Have everyone leave the area, and turn off your AC/Heating.  &quot;Dangerous&quot; is a funny term, because it is subjectively defined.  &lt;strong&gt;We'd consider most chemicals that require those procedures dangerous.&lt;/strong&gt;  Indeed, those standards are typically ones you'd see for chemicals cleaners which require a licences to possess and use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition there is paper -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/environmental_risks/docs/scher_o_124.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/environmental_risks/docs/scher_o_124.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It basically says that most people will be okay, because the safety regulations are only meant to be used over a long time frame.  It doesn't seem to address the fact that one can presume that more than one bulb would break in your house in a lifetime, or the environmental buildup in a house after many years of CFLs with the occasional breakage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're also not going to get a perfect clean up every time.  Imagine being 30 years from now.  You have houses for sale that have had CFLs break periodically or 30 years.  Maybe the homeowners cleaned them, maybe they didn't.  We're now looking at having a mercury testing done as part of home inspections to buy houses (as seven or eight broken bulbs in the same area would certainly exceed &quot;safe&quot; levels if not cleaned properly).  As you can see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deq.state.or.us/lq/mercurydisposal.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, mercury that is not disposed of properly does build up over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also very pertinent is &quot;How dangerous are CFLs compared to other lighting sources?&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I had to rank them, safest to worst I'd go&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LEDs (hard plastic, won't shatter)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Incandescents (may cut, but won't&#xA;poison you)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CFLs (wont' kill you, but handle with&#xA;care)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Candles &amp;amp; Lamps (burning house down =&#xA;bad)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-28T15:12:25.443" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T15:12:25.443" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="351" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="468" CreationDate="2011-03-04T22:18:13.150" Score="90" ViewCount="9469" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caradvice.com.au/110838/electric-cars-pollute-more-than-petrol-cars-report/&quot;&gt;You hear a lot of claims that, once you include manufacturing and battery replacement, hybrids pollute more than an efficient, more conventional engine&lt;/a&gt;. Are there any end-to-end studies measuring &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; type of pollution for both types of vehicles, which demonstrate that one is superior, even when the manufacturing (and pollution to generate electricity) is included for consideration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, I'm not talking about comparisons to Hummers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pollution to include CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; and other emissions commonly attributed to and regulation in relation to the combustion of gasoline in motor vehicles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-10-07T16:52:08.240" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T02:09:01.677" Title="Does a car with a hybrid engine and Lithium batteries pollute more than a car with conventional technology?" Tags="|environment|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="356" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="365" CreationDate="2011-03-05T01:35:52.507" Score="19" ViewCount="495" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would regular travelers who fly more than five or so times a year be at higher risk for cancer, or other diseases as a result of going through the backscatter xray?  (assume every time for the purposes of discussion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-06T05:08:52.533" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T14:57:16.170" Title="Do airport backscatter machines increase the risk of diseases?" Tags="|medical-science|radiation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="357" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-05T01:39:54.500" Score="6" ViewCount="337" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://frogmatters.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/scientists-scramble-to-solve-amphibian-death-puzzle/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://frogmatters.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/scientists-scramble-to-solve-amphibian-death-puzzle/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there thousands of species dying off due to a chitrid fungus?  I tend to be very skeptical of this (for instance, how does one even track the number of frogs there are in something like a rain forest). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="183" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-27T11:11:54.837" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T13:28:19.940" Title="Is there an amphibian mass die off and if so, what is causing it?" Tags="|extinction-event|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="359" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-05T01:58:14.013" Score="48" ViewCount="5680" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a famous claim that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio&quot;&gt;golden ratio&lt;/a&gt; was both known to and deliberately used by artists and/or architects, for example in the Parthenon. I doubt this, and suspect that any observations about the golden ratio existing in art or architecture were retrofitted later. What &lt;strong&gt;contemporaneous&lt;/strong&gt;, direct evidence is there for the deliberate use of the golden ratio in art or architecture before the 19th century?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastEditorUserId="185" LastEditDate="2015-07-03T16:41:29.440" LastActivityDate="2023-05-18T14:54:05.037" Title="Was the golden ratio deliberately used for aesthetics in ancient or Renaissance times?" Tags="|history|art|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="361" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="368" CreationDate="2011-03-05T02:23:03.027" Score="24" ViewCount="4158" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember reading not too long ago about a study in which experimenters performed a number of standard psychological tests with a twist; it was something about they ran a number of tests from standard psychiatric batteries but they ran them backwards, and so were able to measure a small but positive 'esp' effect in which the participants were able to remember slightly better words from a larger group of words that they would be told only later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if the study was peer reviewed or published in a serious journal or what. My question is whether there is any serious scientific support at all for any kind of telepathy (or clairvoyance, cryptomnesia, etc)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="187" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-01T04:13:21.157" LastActivityDate="2022-04-14T22:27:29.877" Title="Does telepathy exist?" Tags="|psychology|esp|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="361" CreationDate="2011-03-05T04:08:24.540" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because it was making the rounds online shortly before this question was published, I'm confidant that the study you are thinking of was conducted by Cornell Professor Emeritus Daryl Bem, and concerns &amp;quot;erotic stimuli&amp;quot; and response. You can read his paper directly here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170323105013/http://dbem.ws/FeelingFuture.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect&lt;/a&gt;. It was published in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/psp/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Journal of Personality and Social Psychology&lt;/a&gt;, which is apparently a real peer-reviewed journal. In the study, over 100 sessions, students successfully identified that they would be shown a pornographic picture 53.1 percent of time, rather than the expected 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the journal, the study was well designed and the paper was well reviewed. But it hasn't been reproduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastEditorUserId="185" LastEditDate="2022-04-14T22:27:29.877" LastActivityDate="2022-04-14T22:27:29.877" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="356" CreationDate="2011-03-05T04:15:45.447" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frequent fliers will be at higher risk for cancer and some other diseases because they will receive above-average doses of ionizing radiation.  However, most of this would occur during flight, as the cosmic rays don't have to pass through as much air before they can damage your cells.  According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=5129082&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a 1989 paper&lt;/a&gt;, the typical dose received would be between 0.2 and 9.1 mSv, depending on duration, altitude, and latitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Radiation-EmittingProducts/RadiationEmittingProductsandProcedures/SecuritySystems/ucm231857.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;open FDA letter&lt;/a&gt; says that backscatter X-ray (BX) scanners deliver 0.25 µSv or less, so even if one distrusts the government and believes all the sensational articles about scanners doling out 10 or 100x the &quot;normal&quot; dose, you'd still end up receiving that on the flight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are those who claim that X-rays are being concentrated in the outer surface of your skin are on dubious ground, as the actual absorbed dose penetrates much further--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tek84.com/downloads/Holt-Letter2010-12-2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this letter from a BX manufacturer&lt;/a&gt; says it takes 2 inches of tissue analog (plastic; loaded with C-H bonds) to absorb half of the dose.  This makes some sense physically (been a while since my physics courses), though I cannot find a good paper about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T04:15:45.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="88" CreationDate="2011-03-05T05:05:39.963" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/997/why-is-winter-the-season-for-colds-flu-etc&quot;&gt;straight dope&lt;/a&gt; discussed this. It made the following points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The cold, wet feet, etc., don't make you more susceptible to the&#xA;  common cold.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If anything, long stretches of cold temps mean you'll catch fewer colds,&#xA;  presumably because the germs die off&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;We don't have indisputable evidence    that winter is &quot;cold season.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Winter is flu season, but not always.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Respiratory infections, setting aside    colds and flu, seem to be&#xA;  more common in winter--but some think&#xA;  that's because of misdiagnosis (the article suggests that cold stress may be misdiagnosed as a cold)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="188" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T09:34:03.897" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T09:34:03.897" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="361" CreationDate="2011-03-05T06:50:05.437" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there is no serious scientific support for any of these. Some studies, even well designed, do sometimes see some sort of statistically significant effect, but the majority of studies do not (ref meta &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/000712699161378/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt;). And if these phenomena were real, you would expect some people to be better at it than others, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;and no such people have been found&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all illustrates the scientific importance of results being reproducible and should teach journalists to stop basing scary claims about this and that on a single study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="80" LastEditDate="2013-06-09T15:29:26.827" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T15:29:26.827" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="369" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-05T08:14:51.033" Score="50" ViewCount="6025" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've often heard that the artificial sweetener &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/diet/healthy_eating/aspartame.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;aspartame&lt;/a&gt; causes cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-10-16T13:00:39.700" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T13:00:39.700" Title="Does the artificial sweetener aspartame cause cancer?" Tags="|nutrition|cancer|aspartame|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="370" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="375" CreationDate="2011-03-05T08:48:00.617" Score="54" ViewCount="12696" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of months ago I watched the talk &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM&quot;&gt;Sugar: The Bitter Truth&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by endocrinologist Dr. Robert Lustig on YouTube. The overall tone of the talk raised a couple of red flags; it sounded a little too much like conspiracy mongering for my taste, but the claim that Dr. Lustig makes is a pretty simple one: fructose doesn't only fatten us up; it's a toxin that gets metabolized very similar to ethyl alcohol. Conclusion: high fructose corn syrup and sugar should be avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have the claims of Dr. Lustig ever been independently verified or is this a one man crusade against the evil nutrition empire?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="192" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-04-10T12:18:20.733" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T08:12:24.277" Title="How bitter is Robert Lustig's &quot;Bitter Truth&quot; about sugar?" Tags="|nutrition|sugar|hfcs|robert-lustig|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="369" CreationDate="2011-03-05T09:37:02.150" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general with questions like this, you should try to look at all the&#xA;available evidence and see what conclusions can be drawn from that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often you'll be able to find some studies that support one side, and some&#xA;that support the other, but what does the overall body of research say? Of&#xA;course it's possible you'll find a similar amount of research supporting either&#xA;side, in which case the conclusion would be that we don't know yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, the work has sometimes already been done for you, which is the&#xA;case with aspartame. In 2007 a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&amp;amp;Cmd=ShowDetailView&amp;amp;TermToSearch=17828671&amp;amp;ordinalpos=1&amp;amp;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&quot;&gt;review&lt;/a&gt; of &quot;the scientific literature on the&#xA;absorption and metabolism, the current consumption levels worldwide, the&#xA;toxicology, and recent epidemiological studies on aspartame&quot; was done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically related to cancer the conclusion was: &quot;The studies provide no&#xA;evidence to support an association between aspartame and cancer in any&#xA;tissue.&quot; And more in general: &quot;The weight of existing evidence is that&#xA;aspartame is safe at current levels of consumption as a nonnutritive&#xA;sweetener.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T09:37:02.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="369" CreationDate="2011-03-05T10:24:30.387" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy#Safety_and_health_effects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia page about the &quot;aspartame controversy&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, especially the safete/health part, has more references than I can easily type here. Check over there for the links included, it seems like a solid piece of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A short summary (for references see the original obviously, emph. mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reviews have found no association&#xA;  between aspartame and cancer&lt;/strong&gt; These&#xA;  reviews have looked at numerous&#xA;  carcinogenicity studies in animals,&#xA;  epidemiologic studies in humans, as&#xA;  well as in vitro genotoxicity studies.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;These studies have found no&#xA;  significant evidence that aspartame&#xA;  causes cancer in animals, damages the&#xA;  genome, or causes cancer in humans at&#xA;  doses currently used.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Concern about possible carcinogenic properties of aspartame was originally raised and popularized in the mainstream media by John Olney in 1970s and again in 1996 by suggesting that aspartame may be related to brain tumors. &lt;strong&gt;Reviews have found that these concerns were flawed, due to reliance on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ecological fallacy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and the purported mechanism of causing tumors being unlikely to actually cause cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(link added)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastEditorUserId="2485" LastEditDate="2011-05-09T21:36:30.017" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T21:36:30.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="373" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-05T11:43:30.210" Score="11" ViewCount="2082" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_corliss_resolution.png&quot; alt=&quot;XKCD #962&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We should be able to estimate the number of detectable extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drake equation&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/E7TWZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;Drake equation&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By plugging in realistic values we obtain the result that there should be other civilizations in our galaxy, and this is what fundamentally motivates the search for extraterrestrial intelligence effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the fact is that we haven't detected any, leading to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fermi's paradox&lt;/a&gt;: where is everybody?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carl Sagan&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos:_A_Personal_Voyage#Episode_13:_.22Who_Speaks_for_Earth.3F.22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;proposed&lt;/a&gt;, in the 70's, that this could only explained by the fact that civilizations almost invariably self-destruct once they have thermonuclear arsenals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I am skeptical of the following claim&lt;/strong&gt;: That Fermi's paradox implies civilizations will self destruct inevitably in a short time. I would like to see scholarly articles supporting Sagan's claims or debunking it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Sagan's own words: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ztl8CG3Sys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ztl8CG3Sys&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same claim by &lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/other-shows/videos/stephen-hawkings-universe-human-self-destruction.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stephen Hawking&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:38.093" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T19:44:30.797" Title="Does Fermi's paradox imply that civilizations will self destruct inevitably in a short time?" Tags="|aliens|extinction-event|carl-sagan|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="370" CreationDate="2011-03-05T11:47:48.190" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not an expert in the field, and I couldn't quickly find sufficiently reliable sources to make any sort of claim about the specifics of this video, but here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-about-fructose-alarmism/&quot;&gt;one critical analysis&lt;/a&gt;. I would also like to point you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4157&quot;&gt;Brian Dunning's analysis&lt;/a&gt; of the dangers of high fructose corn syrup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also like to make a more general point on this type of video. If it is one expert defending a point, that should not be enough reason to accept the point. You simply don't know if he's cherry-picking the evidence, or even if the evidence actually supports his claims. If you're not an expert yourself, try to find reviews of all the evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T11:47:48.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="370" CreationDate="2011-03-05T11:56:56.550" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Especialy High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is a very &quot;out there&quot; worry for some people it seems. And also incorrectly. The key, as always, is moderation and looking at the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good read is this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=6501&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science-Based Medicine article&lt;/a&gt;. The best quote you can probably get out of it is the ending sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And stop worrying that HFCS is poisoning you and your children. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is made in the intro that we are not just looking at fructose/HFCS. It starts with this supporting claim (referenced)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite the fact that some of the underlying mechanisms are not clear, the evidence seems pretty solid that there are &lt;strong&gt;real risks to high fructose consumption&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But don't stop there, because here is the kicker:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, the question remains — is HFCS more of a health risk than other sweeteners?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of information in the article, and I suggest you read it to completely understand the sugar problem, instead of the &quot;quick-win&quot; frights that are raised on typical places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things mentioned is this (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HFCS allowed food manufacturers to &lt;strong&gt;use less sugar&lt;/strong&gt; — and thus fewer sugar calories — in their products without compromising sweetness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is probably not the healthiest - just like all sugar - in high concentration, but although there is truth in the problems with fructose, it is hardly a big problem compared to your intake. Worry about other things, like a balanced diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastEditorUserId="36560" LastEditDate="2017-04-03T08:12:24.277" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T08:12:24.277" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="377" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1460" CreationDate="2011-03-05T12:12:15.510" Score="86" ViewCount="17210" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is claimed in many different pseudoscience publications and sites that it was impossible for the ancient Egyptian civilization to build the pyramids, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;too much labour was needed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it was impossible to cut stone with such precision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they were built with particular geographical orientations that required knowledge they didn't possess&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably due to the fact that we don't exactly know how the pyramids were built in the first places. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramid_construction_techniques&quot;&gt;There are different conflicting theories&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Wikipedia misleading me here? Is there an accepted historical version of how the pyramids were built that can be used to effectively debunk the pseudoscience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2019-02-20T12:58:41.937" LastActivityDate="2019-02-20T12:58:41.937" Title="How were the pyramids built?" Tags="|history|egypt|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="373" CreationDate="2011-03-05T12:13:26.400" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Drake equation is controversial, as most of the elements are very hard to 'guess'. For instance, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://brneurosci.org/reviews/scienceofgod.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this quotation by  T.J. Nelson&lt;/a&gt; (via wikipedia)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Drake equation consists of a large number of probabilities multiplied together. Since each factor is guaranteed to be somewhere between 0 and 1, the result is also guaranteed to be a reasonable-looking number between 0 and 1. Unfortunately, all the probabilities are completely unknown, making the result worse than useless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You must also not forget that the equation has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/seti/seti_history_07.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a specific goal&lt;/a&gt;: a conversation piece, not a scientific equation at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with the paradox might be simply a matter of &quot;the number of civilizations is smaller then currently guessed&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no reason to start from the amount of expected civilisations to a conclusion about self-destruction, especially as specific as thermonuclear arsenals. Any global event, intentionally or not, caused by a civilization or not, could be the cause. Logic would say that though some civilizations would go down because of something, there is no reason to state that all would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T12:13:26.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="373" CreationDate="2011-03-05T12:44:47.153" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Drake equation isn't exact science and it was never intended to be. In fact, Drake himself didn't intend it be used as such. It was merely a tool &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/seti/seti_history_07.html&quot;&gt;to focus the discussion at the Green Bank conference&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When Drake came up with this formula, he had no notion that it would become a staple of SETI theorists for decades to come. In fact, he thought of it as an organizational tool - a way to order the different issues to be discussed at the Green Bank conference, and bring them to bear on the central question of intelligent life in the universe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All but one of the probabilities used in the equation are the result of wild speculation. As a general rule, when people go beyond the viability of their model, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Future-Babble-Predictions-Believe-ebook/dp/B00457X8JO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;m=AZC9TZ4UC9CFC&amp;amp;s=digital-text&amp;amp;qid=1299328161&amp;amp;sr=8-2&quot;&gt;the results ends being brutally wrong&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, just looking at the process used to determine each value is enough to make anyone skeptical:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Green Bank meeting weighed in on each of the elements in the equation, and came up with generally optimistic estimates. The rate of star formation (R*) was the only element in the equation about which some reliable information existed, and the conference settled on a conservative estimate of about one star per year. Otto Struve was the resident expert on extrasolar planets (fp), and he suggested that planets orbiting distant stars were, in fact, very common. Su-Shu Huang gave an optimistic assessment about the likelihood of planets having life supporting environments (ne), and Calvin and Sagan suggested that on suitable planets life would ultimately emerge (fl). Lilly gave an optimistic assessment on the likelihood of intelligence emerging on a life-bearing planet (fi), based on his work on dolphins. If at least two intelligent species emerged on Earth, doesn't that suggest that intelligence is common? Lilly's views, however, were highly controversial, and often dismissed by mainstream biologists. Even the sympathetic audience at Green Bank was quick to note that dolphins were not a technological species, and would be unlikely to send radio beams into space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The final two elements in the equation were in the field of social science: how likely are intelligent beings to communicate with other civilizations (fc), and how long do civilizations last (L)? Significantly, there were no social scientists at Green Bank. But while lamenting their absence, Morrison also pointed out that even specialists were unlikely to have the answers for such grand questions. In their absence, he suggested that based on Earthly experience civilizations were likely to develop advanced technology, and that curiosity and the urge to communicate appear to be universal. Furthermore, he suggested, if civilizations are able to overcome the dangers of nuclear self-destruction, they can probably sustain themselves for very long periods of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In summarizing their discussions, the conference members concluded that the number of communicating planets could range from fewer than 1000 to more than a billion. Most of them thought the higher number a more likely estimate. On this basis they called for a vigorous radio search for extraterrestrial intelligence, using a 300-foot dish, very large computers, and patience to search for at least 30 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll notice that, at best, scientists will refer to the equation as interesting. Take David Darling, an English astronomer, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/D/DrakeEq.html&quot;&gt;who says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite the enormous uncertainties involved in using the Drake Equation, which can result in a value of N from less than one to more than a billion, it is at least interesting and instructive to consider each of the factors involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for Sagan's assumption, it's just that: an assumption. It might be valid, or it might not be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can't derive the likelihood of a civilization to self-destruct from humanity's experience. We are only one data point. We will have to encounter many more habitable planets before pronouncing ourselves on that. As such, I would label Sagan's claim that civilizations almost invariably self-destruct once they have thermonuclear arsenal as nothing more than &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism&quot;&gt;galactic ethnocentrism&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We really have no way of knowing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-03-10T03:03:29.633" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T03:03:29.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="369" CreationDate="2011-03-05T14:25:54.073" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/aspartame&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to the National Health Institute&lt;/a&gt;, there is no evidence suggesting aspartame causes cancer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A study of about half a million people, published in 2006, compared people who drank aspartame-containing beverages with those who did not. Results of the study showed that increasing levels of consumption were not associated with any risk of lymphomas, leukemias, or brain cancers in men or women. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/aspartame#q2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Question 2&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Researchers examined the relationship between aspartame intake and 1,888 lymphomas or leukemias and 315 malignant brain cancers among the participants of the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study from 1995 until 2000. Development of these cancers was not associated with estimated aspartame consumption, refuting a recent animal study with positive findings for lymphomas and leukemias and also contradicting claims regarding brain cancer risk. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/aspartame#q3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Questions 3&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/aspartame#q8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study they refer to is Opinion of the Scientific Panel AFC related to a new long-term carcinogenicity study on aspartame by The European Food Safety Authority. It can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/afc_op_ej356_aspartame_en1,2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're curious about this subject, the whole page on the National Health Institute's site is worth reading. It offers a comprehensive explanation of the finding, avoiding technical terms or linking to their dictionary when the term simply cannot be avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T14:25:54.073" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="382" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="383" CreationDate="2011-03-05T14:30:06.903" Score="28" ViewCount="2392" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can an image flashed in the middle of a video for a single frame (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Vicary&quot;&gt;as in this hoax by Vicary&lt;/a&gt;), induce a specific behavior in people?  An example would be the supposed use of this to get people in theaters to buy snacks.  Is there any research demonstrating this to be effective or ineffective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-26T02:01:49.327" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T02:01:49.327" Title="Do short pictures as subliminal messages work?" Tags="|psychology|mind-control|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2011-03-05T15:58:52.570" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csicop.org/si/show/cargo-cult_science_of_subliminal_persuasion&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; might be a good one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it tells of the start of all this &quot;single frame&quot; theory, namely that research that made you drink cola / eat popcorn. This was &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; good research, if there was any research at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is however a lot of media coverage and 'urban myth' stuff going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That last part triggers me to check &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/business/hidden/popcorn.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes for the subliminals&lt;/a&gt; for the pocorn story :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To go beyond the popcorn-myth, still in the same &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csicop.org/si/show/cargo-cult_science_of_subliminal_persuasion&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine, do also check the background of the title, the 'cargo-cult' story is too great to miss):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the past few years, I have been&#xA;  collecting published articles on&#xA;  subliminal processes-research that&#xA;  goes back over a hundred years&#xA;  (Suslowa 1863) and includes more than&#xA;  a hundred articles from the mass media&#xA;  and more than two hundred academic&#xA;  papers on the topic (Pratkanis and&#xA;  Greenwald 1988). &lt;strong&gt;In none of these&#xA;  papers is there clear evidence in&#xA;  support of the proposition that&#xA;  subliminal messages influence&#xA;  behavior.&lt;/strong&gt; Many of the studies fail to&#xA;  find an effect, and those that do&#xA;  either cannot be reproduced or are&#xA;  fatally flawed on one or more&#xA;  methodological grounds, including: the&#xA;  failure to control for subject&#xA;  expectancy and experimenter bias&#xA;  effects, selective reporting of&#xA;  positive over negative findings, lack&#xA;  of appropriate control treatments,...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article states a lot of references in the bottom, and the conclusion is clearly that there have been attempts to proof, but no evidence found, that subliminal messaging works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastEditorUserId="164" LastEditDate="2011-03-06T07:15:50.273" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T07:15:50.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="377" CreationDate="2011-03-05T16:08:41.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seem to be several theories about how you can build a pyramid using then available systems and techniques. It is of course hard to find out how it was done, but there seem to be valid possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see no big problems raised in normal sources about the problems that you raise. Unless I read publications as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archaeology.org/0705/etc/pyramid.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; wrong, the discussion is about how it was done exactly, not about if it was possible at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T16:08:41.860" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="356" CreationDate="2011-03-05T16:45:17.797" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a nice article about &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/12/the-physics-and-biology-of-the-tsas-backscatter-security-scanners.ars&quot;&gt;X-ray backscatter scanners on Ars Technica&lt;/a&gt;. As Nick already wrote, the dose delivered by the scanner is smaller than what you receive from flying itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A group of professors from the UCSF &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/ucsf-jph-letter.pdf&quot;&gt;wrote an open letter about the risks of X-ray backscatter scanners&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Radiation-EmittingProducts/RadiationEmittingProductsandProcedures/SecuritySystems/ucm231857.htm&quot;&gt;FDA replied to it&lt;/a&gt;. The main argument is that the X-Rays are more concentrated in the skin as they don't penetrate as far as in conventional X-ray methods. The UCSF professors argue that due to that fact you can't just apply the usual safety limits as the radiation is concentrated differently. They ask for more detailed studies before the scanners are adopted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also raise a second point, that the scanners use a fast moving high intensity beam and &#xA;that an error that would stop the beam movement could lead to a high dose of radiation in a small area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T16:45:17.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2011-03-05T18:48:51.397" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short:&#xA;Sometimes they do something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Showing someone who has a strong phobia of spider for a split second can produce a rise in blood pressure without the person being consciously aware of having seen a spider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was even a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928005.000-subliminal-spiders-help-people-overcome-phobia.html&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; that used subliminal images of spiders to combat the phobia of spiders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to be consciously aware of a stimulus to be effected by the stimulus. In most cases a stimulus that raises conscious attention is however much stronger than a stimulus that doesn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2011-03-05T18:57:55.817" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T18:57:55.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="361" CreationDate="2011-03-05T19:21:29.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/115/1/4/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dozens of studies&lt;/a&gt; in which the Ganzfeld protocol produced statistically significant results.&#xA;The protocol got reproduced multiple times and the studies found that some groups like twins perform better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are however also studies that found no effects. That doesn't the protocol doesn't work. In university we collectively failed to replicate PCR without the postdoc who lead the process understanding the problem. PCR is a well understood process and it's still possible to mess it up. It's typical in science that people get protocols wrong.&#xA;As possible principles of telepathy are unknown it's not that surprising that half of the studies don't produce results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's however a meta study that concluded that the findings aren't enough to justify a belief in telepathy.&#xA;If you want to believe in telepathy than you can justify that belief with dozens of studies.&#xA;If you don't want to believe in telepathy than you can go to the meta study with finds that the evidence isn't conclusive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2012-12-03T16:42:26.373" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T16:42:26.373" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="299" CreationDate="2011-03-05T19:51:07.810" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only way to know whether you have enough vitamins through your diet is to get an detailed blood test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise there's Vitamin C and Vitamin D for which they are separate arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other mammals produce for themselves a lot of vitamin C. A few million years ago our gene for vitamin C production mutated and doesn't work anymore. &#xA;As a result people started to advocate that you should take supplements to get to a Vitamin C level of other mammals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as Vitamin D goes we get it from the sun. As we evolved outside of the office and now spends a lot of time inside the office there a argument that we probably don't produce enough Vitamin D on our own.&#xA;There was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/05/100501013417.htm&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; that showed that taking 4000 IU per day significantly reduced preterm pregnancies. Pregnant women who don't see that they get additional Vitamin D are acting irresponsible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T19:51:07.810" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="394" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-05T21:38:59.310" Score="11" ViewCount="434" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trying to answer another question about the link between the winter temperatures and catching the common cold, I remembered something one of my tutors said, namely that 'we catch more viruses when it is cold because our noses run and the exposed mucosa is a perfect virus catching ground' or something to that effect. So &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does a cold temperature make our nose run? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does it mean we 'catch' viruses more easily this way? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I can't find any evidence of my tutor's theory except for the runny nose being the symptom of an infection, not the cause...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="197" LastEditorUserId="83" LastEditDate="2011-03-06T04:17:55.823" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T19:44:10.970" Title="Link between runny noses and rhinoviral infections" Tags="|medical-science|virus|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="394" CreationDate="2011-03-05T22:02:58.120" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You catch viruses more easily with dry mucosa. A running nose not only wets your mucosa but it also helps you transporting all the bacteria out of your body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rhinoviral infections in the winter are more common because people are more crowded indoors. That makes it easier for viruses to spread. And yes, you can even get a cold in the summer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="153" LastActivityDate="2011-03-05T22:02:58.120" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="398" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="409" CreationDate="2011-03-06T00:38:54.777" Score="15" ViewCount="6555" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vitamin C megadoses were first championed by extraordinary chemist and physicist Linus Pauling, I believe, and as prescription for good health they gained by association with him.  I have read conflicting assessments of whether or not they work in different articles.   What's the latest scientific consensus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-06T04:17:29.083" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T06:45:53.347" Title="What is the latest scientific consensus on megadoses of Vitamin C?" Tags="|medical-science|vitamins|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="399" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-06T01:04:19.950" Score="49" ViewCount="9052" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard lots of people say things like &quot;race doesn't exist&quot; and &quot;race has no biological meaning.&quot; On the other hand, I've heard lots of disagreements too, from scientific popularizers like Steven Pinker &amp;amp; Razib Khan. The Wikipedia article on race is distinctly bloated and unhelpful.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the latest scientific consensus in regards to the biological meaning of human races?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-11T05:18:44.450" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T10:40:14.317" Title="Is race a discredited scientific concept in biology?" Tags="|biology|race|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2011-03-06T01:30:39.817" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/human_biology/v075/75.4long.pdf&quot;&gt;Long and Kittles&lt;/a&gt; provide the following breakdown of biological theories of race in the last century or so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Essentialist [Hooton (1926)]  &quot;A great&#xA;  division of mankind, characterized as&#xA;  a group by the sharing of a certain&#xA;  combination of features, which have&#xA;  been derived from their common&#xA;  descent, and constitute a vague&#xA;  physical background, usually more or&#xA;  less obscured by individual&#xA;  variations, and realized best in a&#xA;  composite picture.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taxonomic [Mayr (1969)]   &quot;A subspecies&#xA;  is an aggregate of phenotypically&#xA;  similar populations of a species,&#xA;  inhabiting a geographic subdivision of&#xA;  the range of a species, and differing&#xA;  taxonomically from other populations&#xA;  of the species.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Population    [Dobzhansky (1970)] &quot;Races&#xA;  are genetically distinct Mendelian&#xA;  populations. They are neither&#xA;  individuals nor particular genotypes,&#xA;  they consist of individuals who differ&#xA;  genetically among themselves.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lineage   [Templeton (1998)]  &quot;A&#xA;  subspecies (race) is a distinct&#xA;  evolutionary lineage within a species.&#xA;  This definition requires that a&#xA;  subspecies be genetically&#xA;  differentiated due to barriers to&#xA;  genetic exchange that have persisted&#xA;  for long periods of time; that is, the&#xA;  subspecies must have historical&#xA;  continuity in addition to current&#xA;  genetic differentiation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that they suggest that &quot;[s]urprisingly, a great deal of genetic variation within groups is consistent with each of these concepts. However, none of the race concepts is compatible with the patterns of variation revealed by our analyses.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="187" LastEditorUserId="187" LastEditDate="2011-03-20T15:06:29.527" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T15:06:29.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="382" CreationDate="2011-03-06T02:52:39.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the Straight Dope, subliminal advertising is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/177/does-subliminal-advertising-work&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;generally ineffective&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/544/do-subliminal-tapes-played-while-you-sleep-really-work&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Subliminal tapes&lt;/a&gt;, however, might be able to increase the effectiveness of training, especially when the message flashed is: &quot;Mommy and I are one&quot;. The effectiveness of this message, however, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.srmhp.org/archives/subliminal-influence.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;disputed&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T02:52:39.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="402" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="405" CreationDate="2011-03-06T02:58:00.573" Score="67" ViewCount="5362" Body="&lt;p&gt;What evidence is there for or against acupuncture being an effective treatment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T23:47:53.090" LastActivityDate="2024-01-03T23:40:59.020" Title="Is acupuncture an effective treatment?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|acupuncture|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="403" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="407" CreationDate="2011-03-06T03:42:24.837" Score="33" ViewCount="3217" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my friends has been particularly upset about this. I will try to track down a serious citation of someone making this claim but have been unable to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe there is a commission or something on cybersecurity that is looking into developing something related to securing and isolating telecommunication assets, but I thought it was more about scientific and technical research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any serious plans to grant the United States' government &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/01/kill-switch-legislation/&quot;&gt;executive power to shut down the internet&lt;/a&gt;, even in some attenuated form?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="187" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-02-26T03:40:32.340" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T03:40:32.340" Title="Is a kill switch being considered to shut down the internet?" Tags="|united-states|politics|internet|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="404" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-06T03:45:44.690" Score="59" ViewCount="10628" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that watching television for too long or while sitting too close weakens the eyes (leading to myopia, for example) ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="58" LastActivityDate="2018-11-26T18:28:00.890" Title="Does watching television damage the eyes?" Tags="|ophthalmology|television|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="402" CreationDate="2011-03-06T04:06:15.150" Score="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;Acupuncture is based on the belief that diseases are caused by blockages of your qi, which flows in so-called meridians in your body. By sticking needles into those meridians you can manipulate the flow of qi and eliminate the blockages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concepts of qi and meridians are unscientific, they date back to a time where there was no scientific method and knowledge of human anatomy was practically nonexistant. There is no evidence that qi and meridians exist at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sticking needles into your body still could have some effect, although it will have nothing to do with your qi. There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=acupuncture&quot;&gt;tons of clinical studies&lt;/a&gt; about acupuncture, but few conclusive results. A major problem is that controlling for the placebo effect is complicated, as people usually notice whether you stick needles into them or not. Some of the newer and better clinical trials used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9717924&quot;&gt;fake acupuncture needles&lt;/a&gt; that do not penetrate the skin. Another often used method is to stick the needles outside of the &quot;proper&quot; acupuncture points as a control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acupuncture is believed to be helpful in a large variety of conditions, I'll take pain relief as an example as it is somewhat plausible that sticking needles into your skin could have an effect on the perception of pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769056/?tool=pmcentrez&quot;&gt;review from 2009 in BJ&lt;/a&gt; concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A small analgesic effect of&#xA;  acupuncture was found, which seems to&#xA;  lack clinical relevance and cannot be&#xA;  clearly distinguished from bias.&#xA;  Whether needling at acupuncture&#xA;  points, or at any site, reduces pain&#xA;  independently of the psychological&#xA;  impact of the treatment ritual is&#xA;  unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion is that acupuncture is just a particularly effective placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T04:06:15.150" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="404" CreationDate="2011-03-06T04:53:08.280" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Focusing on &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; for an extended period of time can cause eye fatigue.  &lt;em&gt;Older&lt;/em&gt; eyes tend to recover from the fatigue more slowly, which may lead to some perceived vision loss during the recovery time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no real evidence to suggest focusing on a TV is any worse than anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kidshealth.org/parent/general/eyes/vision_facts_myths.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Link to more or less random page which agrees with me&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="67" LastEditDate="2011-05-25T18:23:39.200" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T18:23:39.200" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="403" CreationDate="2011-03-06T05:31:11.603" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;A congressional act granting an &lt;strong&gt;executive &amp;quot;kill switch&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt; for the internet was &lt;em&gt;proposed&lt;/em&gt; in June 2010. It was called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-3480&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act&lt;/a&gt;, and it never came up for vote in Congress (i.e. &lt;strong&gt;died&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a revised version of the bill in Congress now (introduced in February 2011) called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s112-413&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cybersecurity and Internet Freedom Act of 2011&lt;/a&gt;. According to the bill's sponsor, Joe Lieberman, the revised version contains &lt;em&gt;no kill switch&lt;/em&gt;. However, it seems that this may not be true, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20033717-281.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this CNET article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new version follows the same process as the old one: President Obama would be given the power to &amp;quot;issue a declaration of a national cyberemergency.&amp;quot; Once that happens, Homeland Security would receive sweeping new authorities, including the power to require that so-called critical companies &amp;quot;shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action&amp;quot; decreed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No &amp;quot;notice&amp;quot; needs to be given &amp;quot;before mandating any emergency measure or actions.&amp;quot; That means a company could be added to the &amp;quot;critical&amp;quot; infrastructure list one moment, and ordered by Homeland Security to &amp;quot;immediately comply&amp;quot; with its directives the next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;em&gt;seems&lt;/em&gt; that if this is so, they could label all ISPs &amp;quot;critical&amp;quot; and prevent anyone from accessing the internet. It would probably be a lot more paperwork, but I don't think that would discourage them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, this new bill (which is still in the early stages of legislature, as far as I can tell), seems to contain a weakened form of the &amp;quot;kill switch&amp;quot;, &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; not an executive one. It wouldn't be up to the President, or any other single person, but an entire governmental department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read the entire bill &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s112-413&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but unless you can speak &lt;em&gt;legalese&lt;/em&gt;, you might not be able to make sense of any of it, let alone know where to start. (It's unfortunate that I can't really answer your question directly from reading the bill, but such is American politics-- have to rely on sometimes-dubious third parties like news outlets to interpret legislature by proxy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T05:31:11.603" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="404" CreationDate="2011-03-06T06:14:46.687" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1107/will-sitting-too-close-to-the-tv-reading-with-bad-light-etc-ruin-your-eyes&quot;&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;, in ordinary circumstances watching too much TV or sitting too close will only lead to eye fatigue, not eye damage. Some studies claimed that &#xA;exposure at too young an age can cause myopia, but at the time of writing (1992), there was no definite proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="188" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T09:27:57.790" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T09:27:57.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="398" CreationDate="2011-03-06T06:19:09.573" Score="20" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Cancer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linus Pauling &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC431183/?tool=pmcentrez&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;published a study&lt;/a&gt; claiming that high doses of Vitamin C can extend survival times in terminal human cancer. A weakness of this study is the selection of the control group as described in the paper&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The control group was obtained by a&#xA;random search of the case record index&#xA;of similar patients treated by the&#xA;same clinicians in Vale of Leven&#xA;Hospital over the last 10 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method does not ensure that the treated and the control group are properly matched. Two later fully randomized clinical studies (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM197909273011303&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM198501173120301&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;) conclude that high doses of Vitamin C are not effective as a cancer therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Common Cold&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also claimed that high doses of Vitamin C can prevent the common cold or at least shorten its duration. There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/rel0001/CD000980/frame.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cochrane review&lt;/a&gt; stating&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long term daily supplementation with&#xA;vitamin C in large doses daily does&#xA;not appear to prevent colds. There&#xA;appears to be a modest benefit in&#xA;reducing duration of cold symptoms&#xA;from ingestion of relatively high&#xA;doses of vitamin C. The relation of&#xA;dose to therapeutic benefit needs&#xA;further exploration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T06:19:55.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="369" CreationDate="2011-03-06T06:33:02.850" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's still some open questions from a study newer than those cited in some other answers:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3adoi/10.1289/ehp.10271&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Life-Span Exposure to Low Doses of Aspartame Beginning during Prenatal Life Increases Cancer Effects in Rats&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study found statistically significant increases in lymphomas and leukemias in rats fed several times a normal human intake over the course of the rats' lifetimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study also raises concern with the methodology used in earlier studies. Specifically: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The two aforementioned epidemiologic&#xA;  studies (Gallus et al. 2006; Lim et&#xA;  al. 2006) published after our first&#xA;  mega-experiment (Belpoggi et al. 2006;&#xA;  Soffritti et al. 2005, 2006) merit&#xA;  general comment. Both studies consider&#xA;  the eating habits of a large&#xA;  population of males and females 50–70&#xA;  years of age in the 1990s. Given the&#xA;  time frame of these surveys and the&#xA;  commercialization of aspartame in the&#xA;  1980s, the subjects’ potential use of&#xA;  the sweetener could not have exceeded&#xA;  10–15 years. It is difficult to&#xA;  believe that this limited adult period&#xA;  of exposure to APM could confirm or&#xA;  exclude a potential carcinogenic risk.&#xA;  The design of these studies underlines&#xA;  the importance of conducting an&#xA;  epidemiologic study in which exposure&#xA;  to APM is monitored beginning in fetal&#xA;  life, particularly given the use of&#xA;  products containing APM by children&#xA;  and women of child-bearing age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a group which lobbies for truth in labeling, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm#aspartame&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;summarizes the issue here&lt;/a&gt;, mentioning industry reaction to this study. They note that &quot;It is likely that the new studies found problems that earlier company-sponsored studies did not because the Italian researchers monitored the rats for three years instead of two. The Italian tests remain controversial, with the industry contending that they were flawed in several ways and with the FDA stating its scientists couldn't evaluate the studies because the researchers refused to provide their original data.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, eh. I don't think there's cause for a panic, but the question doesn't seem completely resolved. It's worth nothing that CSPI doesn't seem to give a blanket &quot;fail&quot; to all artificial sweeteners, currently listing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm#sucralose&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sucralose (Splenda) as appearing to be safe&lt;/a&gt;. Oh, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm#neotame&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Neotame as well&lt;/a&gt;. In fact, since neotame is 40x sweeter than aspartame, requiring correspondingly lower dosage, that may be the safest bet so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and the idea that aspartame stays in your body forever is nonsense. It breaks down into aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastEditorUserId="2772" LastEditDate="2013-04-06T08:52:19.457" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T08:52:19.457" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="411" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-06T08:57:26.357" Score="13" ViewCount="666" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read on an Answers Website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;While tectonic plates are&#xA;  independent, some scientists believe&#xA;  that a seismic event thousands of&#xA;  miles away can trigger another seismic&#xA;  event. (So, some believe the Japan&#xA;  quake may have triggered the Chile&#xA;  quake.) &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answerer has provided this source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://justanothercoverup.com/?p=838&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://justanothercoverup.com/?p=838&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="206" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-06T08:59:39.377" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T16:06:22.067" Title="Can earthquakes be triggered thousands of miles away?" Tags="|geology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="411" CreationDate="2011-03-06T09:57:45.473" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have any absolute answers to this, I'll just gonna offer a skeptical view on the statements. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are in average about 2-3 earth quakes over a magnitude of 5 &lt;em&gt;per day&lt;/em&gt;. If earthquakes can cause another earth quake eleven thousand miles away (as in the case of Japan and Chile) that means that &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; quake can be &quot;caused&quot; by any other quake. In some sense this is quite possible, there is just one crust, and there is no doubt that one quake can cause other quakes along the same fault line, that is in fact what aftershocks are. After a big quake the tensions in the faultline has moved, and you may more earthquakes along that line for some time. This was the case when Turkey got two big quakes close after each other, and that certainly was the case after Chiles big quake last year, that was followed by many significant quakes/aftershocks in the months afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when extending the claim from &quot;along the same faultline&quot; to &quot;anywhere on earth&quot;, then the statements becomes impossible to prove or disprove. Any earthquake can now suddenly be caused by any other earthquake that happened anywhere on earth within the last month. OK, but which one? And how? The claim becomes meaningless, and you are in fact just saying that earthquakes creates more earthquakes, which is just another way of saying that earthquakes is caused by the movements in the earths crust, which in turn isn't much different from saying that &quot;because the crust moves, the crust moves&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So saying that the Chilean earthquake was caused by the Japanese earthquake is either nonsense or a tautology, depending on your point of view. :-)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(About the statement in the blog that earthquakes are increasing, UCSG has &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/faq/?categoryID=6&amp;amp;faqID=110&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some answers&lt;/a&gt;, and they also point out that earthquake clustering is normal in a random distribution and does not imply a causal relation between the earthquakes.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-11T16:06:22.067" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T16:06:22.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="404" CreationDate="2011-03-06T10:53:09.873" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two theories about this myth which I've heard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Watching TV causes eye strain, eye strain damages the eyes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The TV set emits &quot;cathode rays&quot; which damage the eye directly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's debunk them in order&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eye strain theory&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a well known fact that watching TV causes strain (tiredness) in the eyes. Any &lt;a href=&quot;http://ergonomics.about.com/od/eyestrain/a/eye_strain_caus.htm&quot;&gt;ergonomics source&lt;/a&gt; will tell you that. The problem here is that eye strain causes are many - TV, computer, books, driving, etc.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Another problem is that if you are short sighted and your sight is uncorrected (typical case would be a child with uncorrected eyesight), then the strain gets worse. This leads to confirmation bias (i.e. &quot;My son had eye strain and then was diagnosed with myopia, therefore eye strain causes myopia&quot; whereas the the causal relation is the opposite).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, TV can cause eye strain, as many different other things - this partially debunks the myth because TVs don't have any particular status here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does eye strain cause myopia? No. Eye strain might precipitate the onset in some cases, but there are no ways to prevent myopia. Furthermore, it's quite certain that myopia is of genetic origin. See the following references: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/tv-watching-may-cause-eye-strain-but-not-myopia/article1486660/&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://eyecaremanual.com/eye-diseases/what-causes-myopia.html&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001023.htm&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myopia#Genetic_Basis_for_Myopia&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we can see that the eye strain theory does not stand on its feet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cathode rays theory&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is easily debunked. Yes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crtsite.com/page3.html&quot;&gt;old school CR tubes&lt;/a&gt; did use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howstuffworks.com/question694.htm&quot;&gt;beams of electrons&lt;/a&gt; to generate images. The thing is, these beams are tightly focused on the screen in order to have a focused image. This is obtained through different means, but basically the electrons hit phosphors in the screen which is a wire mesh - conveniently it is also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage&quot;&gt;Faraday cage&lt;/a&gt; which prevents them from going anywhere.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual image is made of phosphor generated light. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q3750.html&quot;&gt;It's just light&lt;/a&gt; :-)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said - there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube#Health_concerns&quot;&gt;small amount of X-rays&lt;/a&gt; being emitted, but it's tightly regulated to super-low levels and it is widely considered innocuous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T10:53:09.873" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="361" CreationDate="2011-03-06T10:55:30.103" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The big problem with telepathy, and with parapsychology as a field in general, is that science is all of a piece. Thus, physics is consistent with chemistry, biology and so on. So the question is not &quot;what knowledge can we derive on the assumption that we know nothing?&quot; - but &quot;what knowledge can we derive given what we know already?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basic physics - extremely well-understood and well-tested physics - leaves it not looking good for parapsychology as a field in any way. Sean M. Carroll points out (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/02/18/telekinesis-and-quantum-field-theory/&quot;&gt;&quot;Telekinesis and Quantum Field Theory.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Discover Blogs: Cosmic Variance&lt;/em&gt; 2008-02-18.) that both human brains and the spoons they try to bend are made, like all matter, of quarks and leptons; everything else they do is emergent properties of the behaviour of quarks and leptons. And the quarks and leptons interact through the four forces: strong, weak, electromagnetic and gravitational. Thus either it's one of the four known forces or it's a new force, and any new force with range over 1 millimetre must be at most a billionth the strength of gravity, or it will have been captured in experiments &lt;em&gt;already done&lt;/em&gt;. (Sean M. Carroll. &lt;a href=&quot;http://preposterousuniverse.blogspot.com/2004/05/life-and-forces-of-nature.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Life and the forces of nature.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Preposterous Universe&lt;/em&gt;, 2004-05-03.) So either it's electromagnetism, gravity or something weaker than gravity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leaves no force that could possibly account for telekinesis, for example. Telepathy would require a new force much weaker than gravity and a detector in the brain evolved to use it for signaling. Precognition, the receipt of information transmitted back in time, would &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ParticleAndNuclear/tachyons.html&quot;&gt;violate quantum field theory&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this means is that the ideas parapsychology purports to investigate have pretty much no chance of being right even before we test them directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15" LastEditorUserId="15" LastEditDate="2011-03-06T20:31:06.553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T20:31:06.553" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="415" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="417" CreationDate="2011-03-06T11:40:30.743" Score="26" ViewCount="7335" Body="&lt;p&gt;Salt is &lt;a href=&quot;http://totalhealthforall.com/physical-health-fitness/salt-the-silent-killer-also-known-as-white-death/&quot;&gt;sometimes known as &quot;white death&quot;&lt;/a&gt; due to the belief that an excess intake of salt can cause substantial damage to health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What evidence exists to support or contradict the idea that excess salt intake can cause substantial health damage? Is it better to avoid salt altogether?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T00:19:25.697" LastActivityDate="2017-11-04T12:41:15.017" Title="Is salt &quot;white death&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="415" CreationDate="2011-03-06T11:51:09.883" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible to consume a lethal dose of salt, especially for small children. There has been at least one case where &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1237482/pdf/westjmed00270-0079.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an adult died of a salt overdose&lt;/a&gt;. In this case 45-60 grams were consumed, but the lethal dose is estimated to be lower. The lethal dose is also far smaller for children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T11:51:09.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="415" CreationDate="2011-03-06T12:25:41.337" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Toxicity of a substance must be investigated in different ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Acute toxicity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This corresponds to taking a &lt;a href=&quot;http://facta.junis.ni.ac.rs/mab/mab200503/mab200503-06.pdf&quot;&gt;large dose&lt;/a&gt; all at once. In the case of sodium chloride, toxic effects are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/evm_sodiumchloride.pdf&quot;&gt;encountered&lt;/a&gt; at 500-1000 mg/kg body weight. The effects include vomiting, ulceration of the gastrointestinal tract, muscle weakness and renal&#xA;damage, leading to dehydration, metabolic acidosis and severe peripheral and central neural effects.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The estimated fatal dose of sodium chloride is approximately 750 to 3000 mg/kg.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Also see (&lt;a href=&quot;http://toxseektoxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/f?./temp/~irGHhB:1%3aBASIC&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://msds.chem.ox.ac.uk/SO/sodium_chloride.html&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;) for many more sources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Chronic toxicity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This includes non-carcinogenic effects on health. There seems to be a link between salt intake and some hypertrophy of the heart - which is a risk factor for heart disease. The generally known medical advice to use less salt is actually due to a different factor: reducing salt reduces blood pressure in hypertonic subjects. In other words, if you have high pressure, then reducing salt is beneficial. The effect of reducing salt in individuals with normal pressure instead is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/evm_sodiumchloride.pdf&quot;&gt;disputed&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reduction of dietary sodium is generally recommended as a nonpharmacological treatment for patients with essential hypertension. In normotensive adults a significant&#xA;  reduction in sodium intake is needed to achieve a modest reduction in blood pressure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Carcinogenic effects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Salt has no known carcinogenic effects and no carcinogenic effects are expected to be found (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/s3338.htm&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://toxseektoxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/f?./temp/~bryPDA:1%3aBASIC&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T13:28:02.993" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T13:28:02.993" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2011-03-06T13:56:45.027" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Human races don't exist as clear distinguished groups, but as you can see there are at least &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; differences between races.&#xA;However, current research indicates that the traits that can be linked to specific races are more or less limited to what we see (skin color, hair,...). This maybe attributed to (relatively) recent adaptations to local wheather and living conditions at different places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for other traits, the variance inside each race is larger then the variance between races.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://references.260mb.com/Biometria/Relethford2002.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Apportionment of Global Human Genetic Diversity Based on Craniometrics and Skin Color&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1455.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Conceptualizing human variation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="212" LastEditorUserId="212" LastEditDate="2011-03-18T21:25:21.187" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T21:25:21.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2011-03-06T14:16:23.037" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you search in Sciencedirect in the category of Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology you get a variety of articles that speak about race such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Race/ethnic variation in serum levels of IGF-I and IGFBP-3 in US adults by David Berrigan et al&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept is still used in academia. Whether or not you learn a lot from using the concept is however another question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T14:16:23.037" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="421" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="426" CreationDate="2011-03-06T14:28:33.940" Score="34" ViewCount="5755" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any ghosts that are captured on photos?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, I'm referring to this famous ghost picture of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Lady_of_Raynham_Hall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brown Lady of Raynham Hall&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SDZus.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;A ghost&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never heard anyone debunking the myth of this photo, but I think this picture is so famous that someone must have dug it out and made it a shooting target, no?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="214" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2016-06-27T14:10:25.540" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T14:10:25.540" Title="Does this photo of the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall show a ghost?" Tags="|photography|ghosts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="421" CreationDate="2011-03-06T15:08:39.997" Score="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, it does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;ghost&quot; in question is known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Lady_of_Raynham_Hall&quot;&gt;Brown Lady of Raynham Hall&lt;/a&gt;. And, although often still presented as evidence of the supernatural, it's also pretty &lt;strong&gt;well debunked&lt;/strong&gt; — see &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20070616025207/http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/86/the_brown_lady_of_raynham_hall.html&quot;&gt;this detailed article&lt;/a&gt;. In short, a 1937 analysis notes that there are &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; visual artifacts in the picture indicating a double exposure, but these are normally cropped out. But, even when one looks at the version you've posted, it's clear that the banisters have become crooked — the two exposures don't line up perfectly. Also the picture is generally printed very darkly, disguising the fact that it was taken at 4PM (and hiding more visual anomalies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, the smeary blur in the photo does not match previous &quot;eye witness&quot; descriptions of the ghost, which described a detailed and real-seeming person. Given that, were the ghost &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; real, it would be awfully fortunate that she turned out to look just like a double exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastEditorUserId="185" LastEditDate="2015-07-02T13:04:19.940" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T13:04:19.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="74" CreationDate="2011-03-06T15:16:00.350" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gareth Roderique-Davies who wrote the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jarhe.research.glam.ac.uk/media/files/documents/2009-07-17/JARHE_V1.2_Jul09_Web_pp57-63.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;NEURO-LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING:&#xA;CARGO CULT PSYCHOLOGY?&quot;&lt;/a&gt; article fails to understand what Feynman meant with Cargo cults.&#xA;NLP doesn't engage in the kind of irrelevant research that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Feynman criticized&lt;/a&gt; when he criticized research of rat psychology as cargo cult research.&#xA;The charge about being a cargo cult is about incorperating some practices of productive scientists like doing experiments but getting no useful results.&#xA;Claiming that NLP integrates the research practices of academia is a failure to understand what NLP is about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A psychologists named Kevin Hogan who's no member of the NLP community did a study of his understanding of NLP Eye Accessing Cues &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kevinhogan.com/NLPeyeaccess.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NLP Eye Accessing Cues: Uncovering the Myth&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&#xA;The NLP community thinks that he misunderstood their ideas and therefore his experiment didn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evaluating NLP based on the soundness of it's presuppositions isn't what empiric research is about. Empiricism is about testing whether a technique works in the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You wouldn't test whether a technique of surgery works by letting a researcher read a text about surgery and then perform surgery based on his understanding of surgery.&#xA;Any serious study that wanted to establish whether NLP works would have to test interventions that are performed by skilled NLP practitioners instead of testing some part of NLP theory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no published studies that tested whether NLP based interventions such as the NLP phobia cure work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a similar token asking is NLP different from placebo misses the point. A placebo is a purely psychological intervention. Everyone agrees that NLP is about purely psychological evaluations. &#xA;If you want to evaluate the usefulness of a psychological evaluations than one should compare it to the conventional treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But are their cases where there's scientific evidence that NLP works? The Fast Phobia Cure is an example. &#xA;In his literature review paper &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20920803&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Neuro-linguistic programming and application in treatment of phobias&lt;/a&gt;&quot; Mahishika Karunaratne writes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper reviews evidence available in literature produced in the UK and US and reveals that NLP is a successful treatment for phobias as well as being particularly efficient due to the relatively brief time period it takes to effect an improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-12-03T20:42:42.633" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T20:42:42.633" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="359" CreationDate="2011-03-06T16:52:13.980" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that a lot of the claims are quite believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's start with this tidbit I found (source below)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the world of mathematics, the numeric value is called &amp;quot;phi&amp;quot;, named for the Greek sculptor Phidias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://emptyeasel.com/2009/01/20/a-guide-to-the-golden-ratio-aka-golden-section-or-golden-mean-for-artists/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;measurements of the Parthenon&lt;/a&gt; are quite objectively due to phi. As you can notice in the image below, all major measurements are strictly related to the golden ratio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/%7Edemo5337/s97b/art.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://community.middlebury.edu/%7Eharris/Humanities/TheGoldenMean.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;university&lt;/a&gt;, or otherwise &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathematicsmagazine.com/Articles/Mathematics_ofTheParthenon.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reputable sites&lt;/a&gt; corroborating this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has always been a problem to undertand how the Greek architect and his consruction workers managed to incorporate into the design of large-scale temples like the Parthenon the &amp;quot;irrational&amp;quot; measurements which the Golden Mean requires. The Greeks had no system for handling irrational numbers in a theoretical manner, let alone applying irrational measurements to an actual conctruction project. Extending the numbers of the GM proportion from one place to another on a building in the process of construction would seem to have been impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But the proportions are clearly there in fact.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throughout history, the ratio for length to width of rectangles of 1.61803 39887 49894 84820 has been considered the most pleasing to the eye. This ratio was named the golden ratio by the Greeks. In the world of mathematics, the numeric value is called &amp;quot;phi&amp;quot;, named for the Greek sculptor Phidias. The space between the collumns form golden rectangles. There are golden rectangles throughout this structure which is found in Athens, Greece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He sculpted many things including the bands of sculpture that run above the columns of the Parthenon. You can take a slide show visit to the Parthenon which is pictured above.&#xA;Phidias widely used the golden ratio in his works of sculpture. The exterior dimensions of the Parthenon in Athens, built in about 440BC, form a perfect golden rectangle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5b2HF.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Parthenon spiral&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mHkRs.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Phi temple&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find way more believable that the Greek would have used some symmetrically pleasing geometric construction, such as phi, to design the Parthenon, than assuming it's a mere coincidence. The figures match to within &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(101/59/(golden+ratio)-1)*100&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5%&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the Renaissance, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dsg.uniroma1.it/monti/gpm/Il_Corso/Testi/La%20sezione%20aurea.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;artists&lt;/a&gt; that extensively used the golden section during the Reinassance are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Battista_Alberti&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Leon Battista Alberti&lt;/a&gt; (1404-1472)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QpVKh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;L.B. Alberti&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this design and the following quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Di questi numeri si servono gli architetti non confusamente e alla mescolata, ma in modo che corrispondano e consentano da ogni banda all’armonia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(tr.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The architects use these numbers without confusion or messily, but so that they correspond, and allow from every band, to harmony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What he means is that architects should use integers to scale the various parts. To be honest he never explained how he chose the small integers used in his designs so that the composition was harmonious, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://digilander.libero.it/initlabor/musica-architettura-michelutti/musica-architettura-marta2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;subsequent studies&lt;/a&gt; have shown he must have used the golden ratio extensively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_della_Francesca&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Piero della Francesca&lt;/a&gt; (1416-1492)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very notable painter, he was also a famous geometer at the time and wrote a book on perspective and proportions which was heavily referenced by Pacioli in his magnum opus. I cannot find an online version but it's cited on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Prospectiva_Pingendi&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (FWIW).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luca_Pacioli&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Luca Pacioli&lt;/a&gt; (1445-1517)&#xA;He literally &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_divina_proportione&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wrote a book&lt;/a&gt; on the golden ratio in architecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;De divina proportione (On the Divine Proportion) is a book on mathematics written by Luca Pacioli and illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci, composed around 1498 in Milan and first printed in 1509. &lt;strong&gt;Its subject was mathematical proportions (the title refers to the golden ratio) and their applications to geometry, visual art and architecture&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/teaching/maa/markowsky.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;skeptics&lt;/a&gt; -- like George Markowski -- which seem to dismiss the claim based on believability. I personally don't find his argument compelling: it's based on the fact that &lt;em&gt;phi&lt;/em&gt; is close to 5/8&lt;sup&gt;ths&lt;/sup&gt;, and the measurements are not accurate enough. On the other hand, since &lt;em&gt;phi&lt;/em&gt; is irrational, one can &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; claim that any work is &lt;em&gt;not close enough&lt;/em&gt;, because the precision &amp;quot;required&amp;quot; to sustain or dismiss this claim seems to be set arbitrarily by the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I've only scratched the surface of examples: there's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_works_designed_with_the_golden_ratio&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; dedicated to listing all the works of art which use the Golden Ratio which gives around 12 examples, and many more can be found in art history books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T16:41:28.670" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="438" CreationDate="2011-03-06T17:16:20.747" Score="10" ViewCount="1083" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a day goes by without me hearing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.betaprostate.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;super mega beta prostate&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (or some other similar product) commercial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Super Beta Prostate is a natural prostate supplement made with beta-sitosterol designed to provide you with support for the following:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Healthy Urinary Flow&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Healthy Urinary Function&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Healthy Prostate Function&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the idea of taking 1000 times the dosage seems unlikely to be beneficial, is there any dosage for which &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytosterol&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;plant sterols&lt;/a&gt; have been shown to reduce prostate cancer risk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-02-07T23:35:08.900" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T23:35:08.900" Title="Do plant sterols prevent prostate cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="68" CreationDate="2011-03-06T18:54:59.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Genetic engineering is a bit like cars.&#xA;Humans always moved from place to place. Having cars allows us to go faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's both good and bad.&#xA;It allows us to save time but also increases the accident rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a longer analysis the Long Now foundation hosted a &lt;a href=&quot;http://longnow.org/seminars/02008/nov/17/synthetic-biology-debate/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;high level debate&lt;/a&gt; about GMO with synthetic biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T22:54:41.807" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T22:54:41.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="434" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="465" CreationDate="2011-03-06T19:14:28.477" Score="14" ViewCount="898" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while ago &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;there was a study&lt;/a&gt; that compared the amount of factual mistakes in Wikipedia to the amount of factual mistakes in Britannica. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there similar studies that count the average number of mistakes for mainstream news articles.&#xA;If a newspaper writes that within a big article that Joe Smith is 42 years old, what's on average the probability that Joe is really 42 years old?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:21:04.210" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:21:04.210" Title="How many of the facts in an average newspaper article are true?" Tags="|media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="394" CreationDate="2011-03-06T19:44:10.970" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucus&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on mucus&lt;/a&gt; states, &lt;strong&gt;cold weather does cause runny noses&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During cold weather, the cilia, which normally sweep mucus away from the nostrils and toward the back of the throat (see respiratory epithelium), become sluggish or completely cease functioning. This results in mucus &lt;strong&gt;running down the nose&lt;/strong&gt; and dripping (a &lt;strong&gt;runny nose&lt;/strong&gt;). Mucus also thickens in cold weather; when an individual comes in from the cold, the mucus thaws and begins to run before the cilia begin to work again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mucus also functions as a trap for bacteria and viruses (again, quoting Wikipedia):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A major function of (mucus) is to protect against infectious agents such as fungi, bacteria and viruses. ... In the respiratory system, mucus aids in the protection of the lungs by &lt;strong&gt;trapping foreign particles that enter it&lt;/strong&gt;, in particular, through the nose, during normal breathing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any source on this, but I should think that a runny nose would be no better or worse than a dry nose for protecting against viral infections. If anything, I think it would be &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; to have a runny nose, as bacteria and viruses would have to &quot;swim upstream&quot; to reach their target destination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T19:44:10.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="430" CreationDate="2011-03-06T20:29:02.537" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/phytochemicals/sterols/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Linus Pauli Institute&lt;/a&gt;:&#xA;&quot;The results of a few clinical trials suggest that phytosterol&#xA;supplementation at relatively low doses can improve urinary tract symptoms&#xA;related to benign prostatic hyperplasia, but further research is needed to&#xA;confirm these findings.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=phytosterols%20prostate%20cancer&amp;amp;itool=QuerySuggestion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;search on PubMed&lt;/a&gt; will give you 36 results, not all of which may be&#xA;relevant. It looks like the research is being done on cells in a dish, and&#xA;on animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this I'd say there may be something to this story, but we're not sure.&#xA;And I'm guessing it's too early to say what dosage you'd need to take. But&#xA;I'm not an MD, just a googler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T20:29:02.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="357" CreationDate="2011-03-06T21:36:03.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a good &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_amphibian_populations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; on this subject, which has a lot of&#xA;references that seem to be of high quality. You can also go to&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amphibiaweb.org/declines/declines.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;amphibiaweb.org&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbii.gov/portal/server.pt/community/amphibian_declines/387&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;national biological information&#xA;infrastructure&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;killer fungus&quot; is not the only cause these sources mention. Other causes&#xA;include habitat modification and fragmentation, pollution and climatic&#xA;change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's certainly possible to count numbers of amphibians and it is not&#xA;necessary to count them all to know that there is a dramatic decline in&#xA;their numbers. If a sufficiently large number of populations around the&#xA;world is counted accurately over a long enough period, and those&#xA;populations are seen to decrease in numbers all over the world, I would say&#xA;it is safe to speak of a global decline in amphibian populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning the causes and what we can know about them: we can study the&#xA;data, e.g. look at whether there are differences in decline rates between&#xA;different types of populations (cool or warm climate, human density, food&#xA;sources, amount of pollution), and we can study the effects something like&#xA;the fungus has on individual amphibians, or on populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's fairly easy to find a lot of information on this topic, from pretty&#xA;reliable sources. I don't think skepticism is warranted here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T21:36:03.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="356" CreationDate="2011-03-06T21:47:28.703" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no such thing as a safe dose of ionizing radiation.  Consequently, increasing the amount received will increase the danger level some amount.  The question is whether it will be worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One quick estimate on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/tsa_backscatter.html&quot;&gt;Bruce Schneier's security blog&lt;/a&gt; was that these scanners would probably kill 5 to 10 people per year (16 per billion scanned passengers).  This is extremely small compared to the number of people flying in the US, but it's still higher than the number killed by any attack these would have prevented recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastEditorUserId="39" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T14:57:16.170" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T14:57:16.170" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="68" CreationDate="2011-03-06T23:17:47.823" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The major risk associated with GMOs is due to the lack of &quot;familiarity&quot;. This term means that if natural breeding product are similar to each other (&quot;familiar&quot;), GMOs aren't - and this is especially true in the cases of crossing between plant and animal genes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a generic known principle which also applies to completely natural phenomena, like the introduction of the cold virus in central America in the XV century. So - lack of familiarity &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; introduce severe disruptions in the ecosystem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This said, we do not know if there are any real risks with GMOs. But entities like the European Union have decided to take a very careful approach due to the &lt;em&gt;possible consequences&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;where there is a threat of significant reduction or loss of biological diversity, lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason for postponing measures to avoid or minimise such a threat&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore some direct risks are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ecological probabilities of harm focus on weediness, spread of the transgene by either vertical or horizontal gene flow, and the potential for any unintended, or pleiotropic, effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To know more you can refer to the following (presumably peer-reviewed) very complete and referenced paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.0960-7412.2002.001607.x/full&quot;&gt;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.0960-7412.2002.001607.x/full&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-03-06T23:17:47.823" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="447" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-07T00:17:31.077" Score="9" ViewCount="582" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there scientific evidence that people who read a list of cognitive biases in a psychology book or in Wikipedia improve their reasoning abilities.&#xA;Is there evidence that they will less likely fall victim to the biases they read about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T21:33:29.300" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T21:33:29.300" Title="Does reading about cognitive biases improve reasoning?" Tags="|psychology|epistemology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="451" CreationDate="2011-03-07T03:33:24.000" Score="53" ViewCount="12266" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard this one several times but was never given a convincing explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a real phenomenon? (Bonus points for a good physical description of the behavior or reasons it couldn't occur.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="187" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T18:08:03.000" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T09:33:30.127" Title="Does water swirl the opposite way on the other hemisphere?" Tags="|physics|water|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="450" CreationDate="2011-03-07T06:07:03.650" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;This phenomenon has been widely attributed to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect&quot;&gt;Coriolis Effect&lt;/a&gt;. The Wikipedia article has a fairly wordy summary of the effect, so I will instead quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/coriolis.html&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Coriolis Effect&lt;/strong&gt; is the observed curved path of moving objects relative to the surface of the Earth. &lt;strong&gt;Hurricanes&lt;/strong&gt; are good visual examples. Hurricane air flow (winds) moves &lt;strong&gt;counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;clockwise in the southern hemisphere&lt;/strong&gt;. This is due to the rotation of the Earth. The Coriolis force assists in setting the circulation of a hurricane into motion by producing a rightward (clockwise) deflection that sets up a cyclonic (counterclockwise) circulation around the hurricane low pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you are interested in reading further about the details of the Coriolis Effect itself, I would encourage you to read some of the Wikipedia article, as it goes into great detail.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/science/coriolis.asp&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/149/do-bathtubs-drain-counterclockwise-in-the-northern-hemisphere&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt; indicate, the Coriolis Effect is not strong enough in bodies of water such as those in bathtubs, sinks, toilets, etc. to reliably influence their rotational direction as they drain. The rotational direction of water in such containers is much more likely to be affected by any combination of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pre-existing movement of the water. If the water was already rotating (if even very slowly) before being drained, this will almost certainly affect its rotational direction as it drains.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The geometrical shape of the container.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The smoothness of the container.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The location of the drain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article on the Coriolis Effect &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect#Draining_in_bathtubs_and_toilets&quot;&gt;mention&lt;/a&gt; a 1908 experiment in which a physicist successfully demonstrated the effect with a &lt;strong&gt;large&lt;/strong&gt; tub of water (more than 1000 liters). When the plug was pulled, the water eventually began to rotate in a &lt;strong&gt;counter-clockwise direction&lt;/strong&gt; (same as hurricanes in the northern hemisphere, where the experiment took place). &lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, the tub used was circular, with a tiny central drain, and the experimenter took &lt;strong&gt;great&lt;/strong&gt; care to eliminate as many disturbances as possible from the water before draining it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if your sink/toilet/bathtub is sufficiently large, circular, has a tiny central drain, and you let the water &lt;strong&gt;completely&lt;/strong&gt; stop moving before you drain it, you would observe that the rotational direction of the water as it drains is influenced by the Coriolis Effect (i.e. varies by hemisphere). But for the other 99.9999% of the sinks/toilets/bathtubs in the world, the direction in which the water rotates is determined by something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastEditorUserId="31" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T15:55:54.620" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T15:55:54.620" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="470" CreationDate="2011-03-07T06:24:52.507" Score="25" ViewCount="1368" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/hypnotherapy-000353.htm&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article found on the University of Maryland Medical Center website: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...problems or conditions that may&#xA;  respond to hypnotherapy include:&#xA;  Irritable bowel syndrome, Tension&#xA;  headaches, Alopecia areata, Asthma,&#xA;  Phobias, Insomnia, Addictions,&#xA;  Bedwetting, Fibromyalgia, Phobias,&#xA;  Labor and delivery, Skin disorders&#xA;  [such as acne, psoriasis, and eczema&#xA;  (atopic dermatitis)], Stress, Tinnitus&#xA;  (ringing in the ears), Cancer-related&#xA;  pain, Weight loss, Eating disorders,&#xA;  Warts, and Indigestion (dyspepsia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many hypnotherapists seem to advertise hypnotherapy as a panacea for a wide range of psychological disorders. Is there more to it than the placebo effect and short-term relaxation? Is hypnotherapy more effective for some disorders and less effective for others? Do the palliative effects last for months and years after the cessation of treatment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="204" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2011-03-27T16:23:36.370" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T16:23:36.370" Title="Is hypnotherapy an effective treatment for addiction, anxiety, phobias and other psychological disorders?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|hypnotism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="453" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="454" CreationDate="2011-03-07T07:31:54.170" Score="211" ViewCount="33183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it numerous times, that in the old days people thought that the world was flat. Most commonly I heard this in connection with the voyage of Columbus, that he believed the earth to be a sphere while most other people thought he must fail to reach India as the world is flat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any direct evidence, e.g. written documents, that shows when people first knew that the earth is a sphere? And since when was this common knowledge in the educated population?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="24708" LastEditDate="2021-10-21T14:01:11.133" LastActivityDate="2023-01-23T16:20:56.127" Title="When did people first know the Earth was a sphere?" Tags="|history|geography|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="453" CreationDate="2011-03-07T08:59:22.847" Score="212" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2009/07/22/2633359.htm&quot;&gt;Dr Karl&lt;/a&gt;, it was known that the earth was a sphere as far back as Aristotle. The three reasons were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The top of the mast being sighted before the rest of the ship&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lunar eclipses always throwing a circular shadow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The rising of the high point of certain constellations as one travels further south&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scientists thought Columbus's voyage would fail, not because they thought the earth was flat, but rather because he would have to travel 20000 nautical miles, rather than 5000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, for the last 2500 years, in Europe&#xA;  and in the Middle East, the&#xA;  flat-earthers were in a very small&#xA;  minority. At least, this is what the&#xA;  historian Jeffrey Burton Russell, of&#xA;  the University of California at Santa&#xA;  Barbara, reckons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His book, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/027595904X&quot;&gt;In Inventing the Flat Earth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;,&#xA;  claims that since the third century&#xA;  BC, practically all educated people in&#xA;  the western world believed in a&#xA;  spherical earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Looking as a historian into the&#xA;  historical record, he found tens of&#xA;  thousands of Christian theologians,&#xA;  poets, artists and scientists who&#xA;  believed that the earth was a sphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, he could find only&#xA;  five Christian authorities who&#xA;  believed in a flat earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/415/you-say-the-earth-is-round-prove-it&quot;&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; also discussed this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="637" LastEditDate="2011-03-28T13:24:53.767" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T13:24:53.767" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="256" CreationDate="2011-03-07T12:13:01.780" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a brilliant visualisation from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/2012-the-end-of-the-world/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Information is Beautiful&lt;/a&gt;. Basically, there was no Mayan prophecy concerning 2012, and most of theories of a catastrophe occurring were created by taking a date that is somewhere around 2012 and shifting it to 2012.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T12:13:01.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="453" CreationDate="2011-03-07T12:15:42.307" Score="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes&quot;&gt;Eratosthenes&lt;/a&gt; (276–195 BCE) is famous, among other things, for calculating the circumference of the Earth – which of course implies that the knowledge about Earth’s shape was available in his days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, his &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#Eratosthenes.27_measurement_of_the_earth.27s_circumference&quot;&gt;method of measuring Earth’s circumference&lt;/a&gt; is routinely taught in school today&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; so it’s a bit surprising how many people still think that people in the middle age believed Earth to be flat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; At least in France and Germany it’s part of the standard curriculum of physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T12:15:42.307" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="459" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="463" CreationDate="2011-03-07T12:29:17.233" Score="14" ViewCount="1010" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the chances that the magnetic poles of earth will switch during the next decade?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the event were to occur, what would be the effect to our civilization?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would computer hard drives get erased by the magnetic force?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would our navigation systems collapse because they can't handle a different pole configuration in a similar way as how the millennium bug might have caused problem if companies wouldn't have prepared for it? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T20:39:43.703" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T20:39:43.703" Title="What risk do pole reversals pose to human civilization?" Tags="|extinction-event|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="460" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-07T12:44:16.937" Score="58" ViewCount="9659" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard several claims that we have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all of humanity, but has anyone actually done an exact calculation of whether we do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All of the nuclear weapons which are currently built by the whole of humanity (according to available statistics).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All the direct deaths due to exploding them in the most damaging way (caused by the blast, fallout, radiation poisoning, nuclear winter and whatever other direct consequences that can be accurately predicted)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-28T12:38:30.407" LastActivityDate="2023-06-02T15:14:30.913" Title="Do we have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all of humanity?" Tags="|extinction-event|nuclear-weapons|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="459" CreationDate="2011-03-07T12:45:39.880" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pole reversals don't happen very often! They usually aggregate to a handful per million years. If we estimate the events to occur once every 200 000 years, say then the risk of that happening within the next decade is 0,005%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the last reversal was 780 000 years ago, so 200 000 years is an optimistic estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the &amp;quot;what would happen if...&amp;quot;-part of your question, I find it too hypothetical for this forum. From &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/faq&quot;&gt;the FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. … avoid asking subjective questions where …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we are being asked an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't find that part of the question appropriate for this site, and I think your comparison to the millenium bug is telling: it was more of a media craze than an actual concern; those of us who worked in IT at the time thought nothing of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T12:45:39.880" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="459" CreationDate="2011-03-07T14:13:20.677" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, nothing would get erased, the magnetic forces are very weak, and pole reversals are slow affairs. It won't just flip from one second to the other, instead there is a period where there are no poles or very weak poles (or possibly many poles), that lasts for &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/highlyallochthonous/2009/02/is_the_earths_magnetic_field_a.php&quot;&gt;thousands of years&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The things we &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; will happen is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compasses stops working. As the magnetic field weakens we and our electronic toys like GPS's etc need to stop relying on a compass to know the heading. This is not a big problem, most car GPS's already have no compass as the cars magnetism makes them useless anyway, as an example.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there are things that &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With a weak or no magnetic field we might get a lot more particles and radiation from the sun. Extinctions have not been correlated with reversals, so they don't seem to be dangerous for life, but this could prove problematic for electronics, meaning we need to shield them better.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Birds that navigate with the help of the magnetic field may become confused. But they navigate with the help of other things as well, so they'll probably just compensate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's pretty much it, really. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, it's  highly unlikely to happen within the nearest couple of thousand years, so not our problem, really. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T14:13:20.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="459" CreationDate="2011-03-07T14:14:01.660" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though magnetic reversal occurres fairly chaotically, chances are very, very slim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Besides, the effects of such a reversal have been totally over-hyped. Should we experience geomagnetic reversal in our lifetimes (which we probably won’t), it is unlikely that we’ll be cooked alive by the Solar Wind, or be wiped out by cosmic rays. It is unlikely that we’ll suffer any mass extinction event (after all, early man, homo erectus, lived through the last geomagnetic shift, apparently with ease). We’ll most likely experience aurorae at all latitudes whilst the dipolar magnetic field settles down to its new, reversed state, and there might be a small increase in energetic particles from space (remember, just because the magnetosphere is weakened, doesn’t mean we wont have magnetic protection), but we’ll still be (largely) protected by our thick atmosphere. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.universetoday.com/18977/2012-no-geomagnetic-reversal/&quot;&gt;Good article by Ian O'Neill&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T14:14:01.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="434" CreationDate="2011-03-07T14:23:52.707" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a published study called &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1990.tb02284.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;A Question of Accuracy: How Journalists and Scientists Report Research on Hazards&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. They state in their conclusion &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two-fifths of the news stories we&#xA;  coded had one or more statements that&#xA;  were  “substantially different” from&#xA;  statements in the original research&#xA;  report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aejmc.org/_scholarship/research_use/jmcq/05fall/maier.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;another study&lt;/a&gt; looking at 14 daily newspapers in the US titled which found the following result&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A survey of 4,800 news sources cited&#xA;  in fourteen newspapers provides a&#xA;  cross-market assessment of newspaper&#xA;  accuracy and the effect of errors on&#xA;  newspaper credibility. Sources found&#xA;  errors in 61% of local news and&#xA;  feature stories, an inaccuracy rate&#xA;  among the highest reported in nearly&#xA;  seventy years of accuracy research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T14:40:17.603" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T14:40:17.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="467" CreationDate="2011-03-07T14:26:39.643" Score="51" ViewCount="142361" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was cautioned by mom that I mustn't go swimming when there is lightning; the theory is that it is more likely for lightning to hit you when you are in the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this fear justified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="214" LastEditorUserId="1073" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T16:56:59.327" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T11:37:12.147" Title="Is it unsafe to swim during a lightning storm?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="466" CreationDate="2011-03-07T14:56:48.173" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The theory, the way I've understood it, is that you're more likely to be the highest elevated point, when you're in the water, since there are rarely any surrounding tall objects, such as trees. This is more likely to be true for a boat than for a person swimming, obviously. This is the same warning as that with regards to standing near a tree during lightning. The reasoning is that you should get away from tall objects, and certainly not comprise one yourself, during lightning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rationale for this is that an electrical discharge always seeks out the shortest path to ground. Shortest path, here, refers in part to the physical distance between the lightning source and the target, but also to resistance - if there's something more conductive in the vicinity of the highest point, this might be the lightning target instead. There is no reason to expect this shouldn't hold true for lightning - indeed, it is by this premise a lightning rod works - but to the extent that it does, it does so rather crudely. Not infrequently does lightning strike very close to a lightning rod, without hitting it, despite the rod being the highest elevated point. When swimming, attracting lightning strikes to your direct vicinity can be just as fatal as attracting a strike immediately to yourself, which is my next point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So much for the risk of being hit. Another concern with swimming during a lightning storm is the danger of &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; lightning strike, regardless of whether or not it hits you. On land, it's quite easy to see to it that you're relatively safe. Inside a car, for instance, you're protected since you're inside a conducting enclosure (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss_law&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gauss's Law&lt;/a&gt;). Non-distilled water is a good conductor, which means you could be in danger if lightning strikes in your vicinity, not only if it hits you. The best source I've found for that is &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20111022121410/http://newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/wea00/wea00025.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some dude who's apparently a lightning researcher in Argonne&lt;/a&gt;, who says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My guess is that the average lightning strike would electrify a few hundred feet worth of water from it's strike point sufficiently to electrocute someone.  &lt;em&gt;Note that the Straight Dope suggests a radius of twenty feet or so.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="30741" LastEditDate="2016-01-18T11:37:12.147" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T11:37:12.147" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2011-03-07T17:34:20.433" Score="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you asked about Nickel Metal Hybrid batteries, the answer would be extremely easy. A large amount of studies have been done with these, usually concluding that they have lifespan comparable to those internal combustion engine vehicles. To cite the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evchargernews.com/miscfiles/sce-rav4ev-100k.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;100,000-Mile Evaluation of the Toyota RAV4 EV study&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The five-vehicle test is demonstrating the long-term durability of Nickel Metal Hydride batteries and&#xA;of electric drive-trains. Only slight performance degradation has been observed to date with the&#xA;highest mileage vehicles. Test data provide strong evidence that all five vehicles will exceed the&#xA;100,000-mile mark and SCE’s positive experience points to the very strong likelihood of a 130,000 to&#xA;150,000-mile battery and drive-train operational life. This is achieved by full or mostly full range use&#xA;after every charge. EVs can therefore match or exceed the lifecycle miles of comparable internal&#xA;combustion engine vehicles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, the reduction of greenhouse gases is simply a net benefit for the environment. However, you asked for lithium-ion batteries. That makes the answer harder to answer. Lithium-ion batteries are used in hybrid cars since only very recently. Little information is available on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't take my word for it. It's the first thing said in &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es903729a&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the only peer-reviewed study I could find on the subject&lt;/a&gt;, published in August 2010:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Battery-powered electric cars (BEVs) play a key role in future mobility scenarios. However, little is known about the environmental impacts of the production, use and disposal of the lithium ion (Li-ion) battery. This makes it difficult to compare the environmental impacts of BEVs with those of internal combustion engine cars (ICEVs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study made several assumptions that were favorable to ICEVs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Used a car more energy efficient than the average car sold in Europe in 2009. They used 5.2 L of gasoline per 100 km, instead of 5.7 L of diesel /100 km 6.6 L of gasoline /100 km.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;All expenditures for the exploitation of the lithium salts were allocated to the lithium salts, even though the saline brine yields other byproduct as well.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All the burden from production are allocated to the first life of each product even though the product might be reused or recycled. As explained in the study, this assumption heavily penalizes BEVs since recycling of electric batteries is high and since recycling of lithium is more energy efficient than production of it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In spite of that, electric cars perform far better than conventional cars on all four indicators (abiotic depletion potential, global warming potential, cumulative energy demand, and eco-indicator 99):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cc2Rr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the research concludes that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the facts taken together, the results of the LCA, the various sensitivity analyses, the modeling applied for EOL, the assumption for the used electricity mix, etc., suggest that E-mobility is environmentally beneficial compared to conventional mobility. The Li-ion battery plays a minor role in the assessment of the environmental burden of E-Mobility. Thus, a Li-ion battery in an BEV does not lead to an overcompensation of the potential benefits of the higher efficiency of BEV compared to an ICEV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They note, however, that it's not always necessarily always the case. A few very small and efficient internal combustion engine vehicles can perform as well as electric cars:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A break even analysis shows that an ICEV would need to consume less than 3.9 L/100km to cause lower CED than a BEV or less than 2.6 L/100km to cause a lower EI99 H/A score. Consumptions in this range are achieved by some small and very efficient diesel ICEVs, for example, from Ford and Volkswagen (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.volkswagen.ch/ch/de/Volkswagen/Innovation/Bluemotion/bmt_modelle/golf.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;13&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ford.de/Pkw-Modelle/AlternativeAntriebe/FordECOnetic/tabid=tab1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;39&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also note that the means by which the energy is produced influences the how environmentally-friendly BEVs are. The study used the average electricity production mix in Europe to give a general idea. If electricity comes from &amp;quot;an average hard coal power plant&amp;quot;, the environmental burden is increased by 13.4%. On the other hand, if the electricity comes from hydropower plants, the environmental burden is decreased by 40.2%. As such, as countries move toward green energy, the environmental burden of electric cars will decrease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study does not address the cost of manufacturing the automobiles, but those costs are not significant. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/TA/378.PDF&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;As a recent Argonne National Lab study&lt;/a&gt; concluded that, while hybrid cars cost more to produce, hybrid cars make up for their greater manufacture energy costs by being more environmentally-friendly on the road - especially if recycled materials are used in the vehicle's fabrication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To cite the study's conclusion,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The energy use and GHG emissions that result from vehicle production and disposal of advanced-powertrain vehicles (HEV and FCV) may be greater than those for ICEVs because of (1) the use of energyi-ntensive materials in the fuel cell system of the FCV, and (2) the increased use of aluminum in both the HEV and FCV. However, the use of recycled materials can reduce these impacts. Conversely, the use of energy-intensive materials such as aluminum and carbon fiber composites does not necessarily increase the vehicle-cycle energy use and GHG emissions of lightweight vehicles; with a reduction in total weight, the results are about the same and could be improved with additional recycling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put vehicle-cycle results into a broad perspective, we conducted a total energy-cycle analysis that included the vehicle-cycle, fuel-cycle, and vehicle-operation stages. Our vehicle-cycle analysis revealed that lightweight materials can reduce the weight of a vehicle and improve its fuel economy, but that production of these materials can be energy intensive if recycled materials are not used. Our total energy-cycle analysis further shows that, when examining vehicle technologies and lightweight materials on a total energy-cycle basis, there can be a significant net benefit in terms of energy use and emissions reduction by substituting lightweight materials for conventional materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T07:00:56.343" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2011-03-07T18:31:28.497" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of your problems, for example addictions, depend on the will of the affected person to stop them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stopped smoking 2 years ago, and I was pretty convinced to do so - I only needed to start doing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you go and pay for hypnotherapy, you underline that you want to stop smoking, that you're going to take it seriously, so I would expect that to have a big influence on the outcome of the attempt to stop smoking (gambling, drinking, eating disorders). You already made a decision, but well - not always. Some people will either pretend to want to change their live, some might be unsure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For skin disorders such as acne and eczema, I don't know - they can be of psychosomatic cause? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T18:31:28.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="452" CreationDate="2011-03-07T18:35:50.283" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two Cochrane Reviews on hypnotherapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review about &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD005110/frame.html&quot;&gt;hypnotherapy for treatment of irritable bowel syndrome&lt;/a&gt; states &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The quality of the included trials was&#xA;  inadequate to allow any conclusion&#xA;  about the efficacy of hypnotherapy for&#xA;  irritable bowel syndrome. More&#xA;  research with high quality trials is&#xA;  needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/o/cochrane/clsysrev/articles/CD001008/frame.html&quot;&gt;review about hypnotherapy for smoking cessation&lt;/a&gt; states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have not shown that hypnotherapy&#xA;  has a greater effect on six-month quit&#xA;  rates than other interventions or no&#xA;  treatment. There is not enough&#xA;  evidence to show whether hypnotherapy&#xA;  could be as effective as counselling&#xA;  treatment. The effects of hypnotherapy&#xA;  on smoking cessation claimed by&#xA;  uncontrolled studies were not&#xA;  confirmed by analysis of randomized&#xA;  controlled trials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not really possible to use a placebo treatment for hypnotherapy, as it is pretty obvious whether you are being hypnotized or not. Most studies compare hypnotherapy to other methods used to treat the studied conditions, some compare to no intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies for smoking cessation were very heterogenuous which complicated the analysis. The most convincing of the studies selected for the review&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; consisted of 281 participants and found hypnotherapy comparable in effectiveness to behavioural counselling, which is a known effective treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the studies included in the review about treatment of irritable bowel syndrom the authors state&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results of the included studies&#xA;  need to be interpreted with caution&#xA;  due to the small size and&#xA;  methodological ﬂaws of the included&#xA;  studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would summarize those results as, &quot;At the moment, we don't know if hypnotherapy works.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Carmody TP, Duncan C, Simon JA, Solkowitz S, Huggins J, Lee&#xA;Set al. Hypnosis for smoking cessation: a randomized trial.&#xA;Nicotine &amp;amp; Tobacco Research 2008;10(5):811–8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T19:18:49.967" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T19:18:49.967" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="377" CreationDate="2011-03-07T19:25:10.393" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;To debunk parts of the third claim, you could use &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radosophie#Radosophie&quot;&gt;Radosophie&lt;/a&gt; , a fun-science just build for such debunctionarisms. Since there is no English translation, I will try a brief roundup: You take a typical bicycle from the Netherlands. There you take some measures, like pedal way, perimeter of a wheel, light and bell. Then you mix up all numbers with all mathematical operators you know, as well as some smaller numbers like 1, 2, 3. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can then generate every number you need within a few steps, the gravity constant, Eulers Number e, Pi and the fine-structure constant alpha and so on, to a surprising precision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same way you can do geometrical measurements at historical buildings, and conclude, that the Egypts knew the half-value period of plutonium. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T19:25:10.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="466" CreationDate="2011-03-07T20:19:40.980" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The lightning will conduct through the water.  Not for huge distances but farther than the ground.  The larger risk is to watercraft.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov&quot;&gt;NOAA Site&lt;/a&gt; for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="189" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-07T20:22:38.513" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T20:22:38.513" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="475" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="477" CreationDate="2011-03-07T20:22:35.643" Score="13" ViewCount="1271" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related to the question on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/136/magnets-are-being-marketed-as-medical-devices-do-magnets-have-any-noticeable-ef&quot;&gt;whether magnets work or not&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My brother-in-law purchased a magnetic bracelet and swears that it works in making him more 'balanced' and 'stronger'.  To prove it's effects he made me stand with my feet about a foot apart and pulled my right arm down and away from me.  This caused me to lean over and take a step.  Then he put the magnet on my wrist and repeated the experiment. Of course, this time it was much harder for him to pull me over (because I knew what was coming).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously I could have him repeat the experiment in the reverse order on a new person to prove that this 'test' is worthless, but I doubt he will be convinced.  Part of the problem is that he'll argue that it works 'for him' and may not work for other people.  He also may have a small aversion to me presenting the argument, since agreeing with me would then mean he'd have to admit he was duped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting aside the question of whether I really want to get into this argument with my brother-in-law, is there a simple way to prove to him that the magnet is not making him stronger?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="162" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T21:14:58.953" Title="What experiment can I use to show that magnets do not 'make you stronger'?" Tags="|magnets|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-07-01T21:23:57.050" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="475" CreationDate="2011-03-07T20:26:29.833" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's going to be very hard to prove to any single individual that something like that doesn't work -- due to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Placebo effect&lt;/a&gt;.  He may very well be experiencing a benefit from the magnets.  He'd also be quite right to say they work for him and not others, since the effect is entirely in his own psychology.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he won't respond to evidence (research studies, etc.) then there is little you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do to convince him, but I'll look for some papers on it for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T20:26:29.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="475" CreationDate="2011-03-07T20:28:02.540" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Buy him a &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepticbros.com/placebo-bands/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;placebo band&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and show him &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Piu75P8sxTo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the &lt;em&gt;How it’s done&lt;/em&gt; video&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T20:28:02.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2011-03-07T21:10:19.640" Score="163" Body="&lt;p&gt;Humans affect the weather in mainly the following ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Direct emissions of various gasses&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; is considered, but also other greenhouse gasses. The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide was first measured in 1859.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Pc5W.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Greenhouse effect&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:The_green_house_effect.svg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 19th century, scientists realized that gases in the atmosphere cause a &amp;quot;greenhouse effect&amp;quot; which affects the planet's temperature. These scientists were interested chiefly in the possibility that a lower level of carbon dioxide gas might explain the ice ages of the distant past. At the turn of the century, Svante Arrhenius calculated that emissions from human industry might someday bring a global warming. Other scientists dismissed his idea as faulty. In 1938, G.S. Callendar argued that the level of carbon dioxide was climbing and raising global temperature, but most scientists found his arguments implausible. It was almost by chance that a few researchers in the 1950s discovered that global warming truly was possible. In the early 1960s, C.D. Keeling measured the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: it was rising fast. Researchers began to take an interest, struggling to understand how the level of carbon dioxide had changed in the past, and how the level was influenced by chemical and biological forces. They found that the gas plays a crucial role in climate change, so that the rising level could gravely affect our future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Zhm68.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;List of greenhouse gases&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_list_of_greenhouse_gases&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Farming&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another man-made source is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20111130103419/http://jas.fass.org/content/77/6/1392.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;direct emission&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.practicalchemistry.org/experiments/the-greenhouse-effect,296,EX.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;greenhouse gasses&lt;/a&gt; through farming (funny, but true!): manure (and cows) produce methane which is a pretty effective greenhouse gas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aS0wq.gif&quot; alt=&quot;US cattle methane emissions&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/rlep/faq.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Increasing atmospheric concentrations of methane have led scientists to examine its sources of origin. Ruminant livestock can produce 250 to 500 L of methane per day. This level of production results in estimates of the contribution by cattle to global warming that may occur in the next 50 to 100 yr to be a little less than 2%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8567486&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Methane emissions from cattle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Deforestation&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plants &amp;quot;fix&amp;quot; carbon (a phenomena called &amp;quot;Carbon sequestration&amp;quot;), the less plants, the less fixing (and the more carbon released by fires).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5ap7d.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Forest carbon cycle&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://forestthreats.org/products/news-updates/volume-1-issue-2-winter-2008/what-happens-to-all-the-carbon&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/I1kss.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Carbon sequestration&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://unstats.un.org/unsd/envaccounting/londongroup/meeting14/LG14_12a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carbon sequestration: Forest and soil, by Jukka Muukkonen, Statistics Finland&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Oceans&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changes to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nature.com/articles/387272a0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;biological equilibrium&lt;/a&gt; of the oceans affect the climate because marine biology is known to have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/bibliography/related_files/jls9202.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;large carbon-fixating effect&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qTvNr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Carbon sequestration by the ocean&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170316060635/http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/ocean-co2-storage-revised&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most promising places to sequester carbon is in the oceans, which currently take up a third of the carbon emitted by human activity, roughly two billion metric tons each year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/sea-carb-bish.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carbon Sequestration in the Ocean&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All four of these effect can be shown in a laboratory and no model is required to do so, but we have very very good models to explain the lab experiments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Differently from the lab, the whole climate system is much less understood. And, yes, the model are not as reliable as we would like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However — due to our knowledge of chemistry — it is undeniable that we are affecting climate. Note that nobody has asserted that human intervention is the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; cause of climate change, but it can be said, with a straight face, that humans are changing climate.&#xA;A very simple example, the rise in temperature melts ice at the pole - which is not only responsible for reflecting some light out of the atmosphere, but also contains methane, which is then released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The debate can only be on &amp;quot;how much&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;how well can we reverse the trend (even beyond our contribution)&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T05:37:08.037" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="100" CreationDate="2011-03-07T21:15:50.157" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not every medicine marketed as homeopathy actually is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in Germany there’s an ointment on the basis of calendula, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dhu.com/products/calendumed.htm&quot;&gt;Calendumed&lt;/a&gt;. Despite the fact that it’s marketed as one, this is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a homeopathic treatment: it has an active ingredient in it and while its efficacy in healing wounds has not yet been proved&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; the active ingredient is there, and it’s measurable. So you could overdose on it (then again, it’s an &lt;em&gt;ointment&lt;/em&gt; so you shouldn’t eat it anyway). More specifically, the original tincture uses a potentiation of C1, which is a dilution of 1:100. Not much; enough to have an effect, certainly enough to overdose on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, if we accept that homeopathy exhibits a placebo effect then we must also accept that it exhibits a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;nocebo effect&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. If a person believing in its efficacy deliberately overdoses on homeopathic medicine it’s entirely possible that we could observe (severe) adverse effects. In fact, these adverse effects &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; been observed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=nocebo%5bTitle%5d&quot;&gt;in various studies&lt;/a&gt;, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20538704&quot;&gt;Weissenfeld &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp; al.&lt;/em&gt;, 2010&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; But there &lt;a href=&quot;http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/22/8/1447&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; evidence&lt;/a&gt; that it helps with radiation burns so it’s reasonable to suspect that it also works for the advertised indications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2011-03-29T18:07:02.760" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T18:07:02.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="136" CreationDate="2011-03-07T21:45:40.280" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation gets used in neuroscience to affect the brain.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/neuroreport/abstract/1995/10020/daily_repetitive_transcranial_magnetic_stimulation.8.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Klein et al&lt;/a&gt; showed in a placebo controlled double blind study that it can be used to treat recurrent major depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Converging evidence points to hypofunction of the left prefrontal cortex in depression. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) activates neurons near the surface of the brain. We questioned whether daily left prefrontal rTMS might improve mood in depressed subjects and report a pilot study of such treatment in six highly medication-resistant depressed inpatients. Depression scores significantly improved for the group as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/neuroreport/abstract/1995/10020/daily_repetitive_transcranial_magnetic_stimulation.8.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) improves mood in depression&lt;/a&gt; by George, Mark S.; Wassermann, Eric M.; Williams, Wendol A.; Callahan, Ann; Ketter, Terence A.; Basser, Peter; Hallett, Mark; Post, Robert M.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T14:48:03.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="485" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="500" CreationDate="2011-03-07T21:52:15.437" Score="21" ViewCount="1158" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies that demonstrate that talking on a cell phone is more dangerous than any other type of distraction?  Yes, it seems clear that talking on a cell phone is a distraction, but for the number of laws passed, I would expect that it be demonstrated that it is &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; of a distraction (to deserve being singled out legally).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other common distractions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Radio&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Talking to passengers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intoxication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fatigue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eating/Drinking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reading (no, I'm not kidding, people do it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Applying makeup (also common)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-05-25T17:46:07.263" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T05:05:09.337" Title="Is talking and driving more dangerous than any other type of distraction?" Tags="|mobile-phones|driving|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2011-03-07T21:54:03.323" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can’t answer the question directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full&quot;&gt;at least one large-scale review&lt;/a&gt; on the scientific consensus. And it can safely be said that the scientific consensus is &lt;strong&gt;overwhelmingly&lt;/strong&gt; that the current trend in global warming is caused by mankind. It would be weird if this consensus came to be without good evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review did a literature mining for peer-reviewed literature published between 1993 and 2003 with the words “global climate change” in their abstracts. They found 928 abstracts. Of those, 75% explicitly or implicitly &lt;em&gt;endorsed&lt;/em&gt; AGW. 0% rejected it. 25% did not take a position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Russell has noted in the comment, these also include mitigation proposals which shouldn’t be counted towards the consensus (since they merely refer to other papers) but were. Furthermore, the review only used one key phrase for their search, excluding parts of the available literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the review contains one systematic error (inclusion of mitigation proposals) and one unsystematic error. Nevertheless, because of the large number of papers it is still safe to assume that these will not change the reported consensus significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; mean that there are no dissenting opinions in the scientific community – &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54#p/c/A4F0994AFB057BB8/1/PoSVoxwYrKI&quot;&gt;there are&lt;/a&gt; – merely that the overwhelming majority of experts accepts AGW and that they probably have good reasons to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Still, this “answer’ is more of an FYI than an actual answer since, I want to stress again, it does not provide any of the &lt;em&gt;evidence&lt;/em&gt; asked for.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T07:54:22.257" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T07:54:22.257" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="487" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-07T21:56:36.697" Score="107" ViewCount="15611" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people believe that smoking marijuana (without any tobacco) is harmful to your health and may cause problems. Examples of things I've heard weed supposedly causes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All the health problems of tobacco (cancer, strokes, etc)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get addicted to it and can't stop&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It fries your brain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you smoke too much you can die&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know for a fact that the last one is false, as the scientific consensus is that an overdose of marijuana in a human being is for all intents and purposes impossible. I'm not sure what &quot;frying your brain&quot; even means, and I don't know about the first two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has it been scientifically proven that weed is, or isn't, harmful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="253" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:49:22.550" LastActivityDate="2018-10-02T16:20:46.503" Title="Is smoking weed bad for your health?" Tags="|medical-science|recreational-drugs|marijuana|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="487" CreationDate="2011-03-07T22:04:00.150" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is some evidence that consumption of cannabis can cause shizophrenia in some people (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d719.long&quot;&gt;see this BMJ editorial&lt;/a&gt;), the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d738&quot;&gt;newest study about this connection&lt;/a&gt; claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cannabis use is a risk factor for the&#xA;  development of incident psychotic&#xA;  symptoms. Continued cannabis use might&#xA;  increase the risk for psychotic&#xA;  disorder by impacting on the&#xA;  persistence of symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T22:04:00.150" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="491" CreationDate="2011-03-07T22:16:47.490" Score="135" ViewCount="17683" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people believe that if you shave or - especially - wax your legs, arms, chest, pubic hair or armpits then the hair will grow back stronger, or thicker, or more black, or more rapidly, or any combination of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it actually true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="253" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-08-16T20:35:44.370" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T00:06:47.447" Title="If you shave or wax, will the hair  grow back stronger or thicker?" Tags="|hair|anatomy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="490" CreationDate="2011-03-07T22:51:26.503" Score="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hair-removal/an00638&quot;&gt;According to a Mayo Clinic dermatologist&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, it is a myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both he and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/oldwives/hairgrow.asp&quot;&gt;snopes.com&lt;/a&gt; point to the fact that after cutting or otherwise removing hair, it grows back in &lt;em&gt;feeling&lt;/em&gt; coarse and stubby to the touch. This can lead to the &lt;strong&gt;perception&lt;/strong&gt; that the hair is stronger or thicker, when in reality, it's the same as it always was, just shorter and with rougher ends. After the hair grows out again naturally, the hair will likewise &lt;em&gt;seem&lt;/em&gt; smoother, because hair tapers when not cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13" LastActivityDate="2011-03-07T22:51:26.503" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="492" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="493" CreationDate="2011-03-08T00:37:50.567" Score="29" ViewCount="1418" Body="&lt;p&gt;Year after year parents are bombarded with all of the risks of trick or treating.  Razor blades in apples, poisoned candy, etc.  Even the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/family/halloween/&quot;&gt;CDC&lt;/a&gt; warns against eating anything homemade or before a parent has inspected it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all the hype of what &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt;  happen, have there been any confirmed cases of a child being harmed by tampered candy, poisoned food, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, I'm only referring to the candy/treat itself, not the risk of kidnapping, getting lost, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T01:03:34.197" Title="Has anyone died from tampered candy at Halloween?" Tags="|children|safety|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="492" CreationDate="2011-03-08T00:57:04.107" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefolklorist.com/pdf/Best_1985.pdf&quot;&gt;this research paper&lt;/a&gt;, only 76 incidents have been documented as 'Halloween sadism' at the time of its writing (1985).  Of those, two have resulted in death; however neither case turned out to be caused by candy received from trick-or-treating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1970, five-year-old&#xA;  Kevin Toston died after eating heroin supposedly hidden in his Halloween candy. While this story&#xA;  received considerable publicity, newspapers gave less coverage to the follow-up report that Kevin&#xA;  had found the heroin in his uncle’s home, not his treats &lt;em&gt;(San Francisco Chronicle, 1970).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1974, eight-year-old Timothy O’Bryan died after eating Halloween candy&#xA;  contaminated with cyanide. Investigators concluded that his father had contaminated the treat &lt;em&gt;(Grider. Sylvia, 1982 “The razor blades in the apple syndrome.”).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in both cases, the deaths resulted from family member negligence or harm, and not some mysterious stranger handing out halloween death.  I haven't found anything more recent yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the synopsis at the beginning of the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper examines the widespread belief that anonymous sadists give children&#xA;  dangerous treats on Halloween.  A review of news stories about Halloween sadism from&#xA;  1958 to 1983 suggests that the threat has been greatly exaggerated. Halloween sadism&#xA;  can be viewed as an urban legend, which emerged during the early 1970s to give&#xA;  expression to growing fears about the safety of children, the danger of crime, and other&#xA;  sources of social strain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T01:03:34.197" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T01:03:34.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="460" CreationDate="2011-03-08T02:39:48.437" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Russia has &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction&quot;&gt;about 12,000&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction&quot;&gt;USA about 9,600&lt;/a&gt; (both figures according to WP).  Assuming each warhead is on average the yield of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W76&quot;&gt;W76&lt;/a&gt;, 100 kt (a total guess), where ground zero (20 psi overpressure) is about 2 miles in diameter, this can only &quot;parking lot&quot; about 0.1% of the earth's land area.  Even if the bombs were all 20 Mt, it would only go up to about 4%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A problem with this figure, is that in order to kill people who are determined to stay alive in well stocked bomb shelters or the like, it is extremely difficult, so you would have to waste several weapons on those areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T02:39:48.437" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="485" CreationDate="2011-03-08T09:15:38.550" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Distraction of talking on a cell phone compared to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Talking to other passengers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt; &#xA;As for how talking on a cell phone relates to talking to other passengers, there's actually some research showing that the former is a greater distraction. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b6aa/1d61c67573540ff38df8403e9963b6f30866.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Passenger and cell-phone conversations in simulated driving (PDF!)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;drivers in the cell-phone condition were four times more likely to fail in finishing the task [successfully exiting at the correct highway exit] than drivers in the passenger condition&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Listening to radio&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;From a general study on how language tasks interferes with visual tasks, a comparison is made between listening and talking, which seems relevant, as cell phone use employs both, while listening to the radio only requires the former:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We measured their attention level and found that subjects were four times more distracted while preparing to speak or speaking than when they were listening,&quot; said Almor of the 47 people who participated in the experiment. &quot;People can tune in or out as needed when listening.&quot; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/541303/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;* Experimental Psychology via Newswise&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intoxication&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I haven't looked for any research in this area. I don't know of a country where driving intoxicated is legal. Comparing the exact blood concentration required to equate with the distraction of cell phone use would probably be a rather laborious endeavour.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eating/Drinking, Reading, Applying makeup&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;These are all already illegal under the broader headline of &lt;em&gt;reckless driving&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fatigue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This is a tricky one, as it's quite hard to quantify. There would be several practical problems with enforcing a law here. Partially because it is hard to objectively measure how tired someone is, but from another point of view, it is easy to relay the responsibility of not reading, talking on a cell phone, being intoxicated, etc, to the driver. These are all distractions that the driver can easily avoid. It would be problematic, in comparison, to demand that all drivers avoid becoming tired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, if that was the only problem with fatigue, we would probably have considered it a minor one, and worked around it. There is policy regarding this to some extent, already: there are laws controlling how long a professional driver (such as a truck or cab driver) is allowed to work without rest, and (at least in Sweden) if you do fall asleep while driving, it will be considered in court that you've been driving recklessly. I'm guessing the practical issues with implementation are what's differentiating this item from driving under the influence, which is prohibited regardless of whether or not you actually cause an accident.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T05:05:09.337" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T05:05:09.337" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="502" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="543" CreationDate="2011-03-08T11:18:02.707" Score="21" ViewCount="2061" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;E numbers&lt;/a&gt; are number codes for food additives that are used in the European Union. Some of the substances are banned in some countries while still allowed in others - see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;E110, E122, E129&lt;/a&gt;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some studies suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/new-link-between-enumbers-and-hyperactivity-401505.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;certain additives from the list&lt;/a&gt; can cause hyperactivity in children:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additives in sweets and soft drinks made by multinational companies have been found to cause hyperactivity in children, prompting renewed calls for a ban on E-numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Primary school children tested by Southampton University were more restless when they drank a mixture of six colourings and one preservative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How strong is the evidence cited here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T01:52:22.053" Title="Do food additives (&quot;E Number&quot;)  cause hyperactivity?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="487" CreationDate="2011-03-08T11:41:56.547" Score="36" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weed can cause some health problems, but not greater than tobacco or alcohol. It all depends on quantity/quality and personal health. So for perfectly healthy persons occasional use may have no effect, but for persons with heart problems it can do real damage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can result in dependence, but less than amphetamines, tobacco or alcohol.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are no deaths recorded caused only by using cannabis. But there are deaths associated with usage of weed (car accidents, choking on vomit, etc.)   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/drugs/acmd/&quot;&gt;Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs(UK)&lt;/a&gt; states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;High use of cannabis is not associated with &lt;b&gt;major&lt;/b&gt; health&#xA;  problems for individuals or society.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Smoking cannabis may be more dangerous than smoking cigarettes&#xA;  because it has a &lt;b&gt;higher&#xA;  concentration of carcinogens&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Occasional use of cannabis is only rarely associated with significant&#xA;  problems in otherwise healthy&#xA;  individuals, with the main worry being&#xA;  impaired control of your movements. It&#xA;  can also disrupt the control of blood&#xA;  pressure and increase the risk of&#xA;  fainting. However, occasional use can&#xA;  pose &lt;b&gt;significant dangers&lt;/b&gt; for&#xA;  those with &lt;b&gt;heart and circulation&#xA;  disorders&lt;/b&gt; and for those with&#xA;  &lt;b&gt;schizophrenia&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Regular &lt;b&gt;heavy use&lt;/b&gt; of cannabis &lt;b&gt;can result in dependence&lt;/b&gt; but&#xA;  its addictive potential is far &lt;b&gt;less&#xA;  than amphetamines, tobacco or&#xA;  alcohol&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cannabis impairs mental functions such as attention, memory and&#xA;  performance and so can be dangerous&#xA;  for drivers and those who operate&#xA;  heavy machinery but, unlike alcohol,&#xA;  it does not increase risk-taking&#xA;  behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The birth weight of children whose pregnant mothers smoked joints might&#xA;  be lower than expected due to carbon&#xA;  monoxide in the smoke. They also run a&#xA;  &lt;b&gt;small risk of minor birth&#xA;  defects&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cannabis is less harmful than other class B substances including&#xA;  amphetamines, barbiturates or&#xA;  codeine-like compounds.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T12:19:01.260" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T12:19:01.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="504" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-08T12:25:42.500" Score="34" ViewCount="4650" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often hypnotism is accomplished by convincing an audience member to play along, or by selecting out someone who is suggestible. Can an average person be involuntarily hypnotised?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: Let us assume that the situation is as follows. A man is willing to play along at the start by staring into a rotating wheel or by relaxing. However, when he is given a command like &quot;Cluck like a chicken&quot; he will choose not to do so if he is able. If he is in a state where he performs the action either under compulsion (so he tries to resist, but cannot) or where he performs the action automatically without considering it, then I consider the hypnotism successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, asking someone for the time and them replying automatically doesn't count - if you would already do something automatically before the hypnotism, then you haven't achieved anything!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="188" LastEditDate="2011-04-04T09:33:07.800" LastActivityDate="2021-09-13T02:46:59.227" Title="Can an average person be involuntarily hypnotised?" Tags="|hypnotism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2011-03-08T13:25:49.180" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_report_wg1_report_the_physical_science_basis.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IPCC report&lt;/a&gt; gives the following probabilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The total radiative forcing of the Earth’s climate &#xA;  due to increases in the concentrations of the LLGHGs &#xA;  CO2, CH4 and N2O, and very likely the rate of increase &#xA;  in the total forcing due to these gases over the &#xA;  period since 1750&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do they mean when they say &lt;em&gt;very likely&lt;/em&gt;? They mean 0.95 &amp;lt; p &amp;lt; 0.99.&#xA;When someone says that the evidence for climate change is comparable to the evidence for evolution they are either advocating that the IPCC is wrong by orders of magnitude or they are gravely insulting academic biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences including 11 Nobel Price winners issued &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/may/06/climate-science-open-letter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a letter&lt;/a&gt; that claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For instance, there is compelling scientific evidence that our planet is about 4.5bn years old (the theory of the origin of Earth), that our universe was born from a single event about 14bn years ago (the Big Bang theory), and that today's organisms evolved from ones living in the past (the theory of evolution). Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong. Climate change now falls into this category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an attempt to defend orthodox wisdom mainstream scientists seem to be willing to pretend that the evidence is for climate change is a lot better than it actually is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://andrewgelman.com/2009/12/15/say_a_little_pr/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Other people&lt;/a&gt; who see themselves in defense of climate change think that the IPCC is a bit overconfident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of reasons why that might be the case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Humans typically suffer from confirmation bias. Even a friendly reading of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Climatic_Research_Unit_emails,_data,_models,_1996-2009&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;climate gate emails&lt;/a&gt; that Wikileaks published suggest that they don't engage in mental strategies to reduce their vulnerability to confirmation bias. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The computer code that they use to generate the models has &lt;a href=&quot;https://pjmedia.com/blog/climategate-computer-codes-are-the-real-story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;low standards&lt;/a&gt;. It has probably a lot of bugs that throw extra inaccuracy into the models that aren't accounted for. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some data isn't openly available to allow for independent verification.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have seen in the financial crisis that complex computer models often include a lot of assumptions that make them overconfident. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Climate scientists test their models on past data and generally don't make predictions about the future to test their models. &lt;a href=&quot;http://archives.sethroberts.net/blog/2011/02/27/the-best-argument-against-man-made-global-warming/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;As the models have a lot of parameters that makes the models to appear better than they are.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean that we should assume p=0 but it might be reasonable to use a lower likelihood value than the IPCC value. If we go from 0.95 &amp;lt; p &amp;lt; 0.99 to 0.80 &amp;lt; p &amp;lt; 0.90 we have more than a 10% chance of being wrong. Even if we just go to 0.90 &amp;lt; p &amp;lt; 0.95 we have more than a 5% chance of being wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does that matter? Isn't p=0.80 enough for starting to reduce CO2 emissions? That might be true.&#xA;If we, however, start geoengineering, the confidence in our models matters a great deal. Starting geoengineering on the assumptions that our models are magnitudes better than they really are is dangerous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of being a good skeptic should be to avoid being more confident in your beliefs than the data warrants. We should move past binary classification.&#xA;Instead of showing tribal loyalty we should call out our friends when they overstate the evidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="50059" LastEditDate="2019-06-05T08:08:21.873" LastActivityDate="2019-06-05T08:08:21.873" CommentCount="46" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="504" CreationDate="2011-03-08T14:09:35.130" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you speak about involuntarily hypnosis you need to define in what sense you believe that humans process free will. Without a concept of free will the concept of something being involuntarily has little meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask a person on the street about the way to the next supermarket, does that person go voluntarily or involuntarily into a trance? The person doesn't consciously decide to go into a trance. He however usually goes into a trance because that's what the social contract demands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This puts the hypnotists into a position where give the subject a few suggestions. If he will give suggestions that the subjects understands to go against what situation is about the subject will snap out of the trance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hypnotist can, however, issue suggestions that change the person's perception of the situation without the person being aware that his perception gets changed. Computer hacking via privilege escalation is a good analogy. Whether a hacker can hack a computer depends on the specific software that the computer is running and the skills of the hacker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the hypnotist can achieve depends very much on the skill of the hypnotist, the suggestibility of the subject and the social contract of the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's move to the chicken example. The core question is: &amp;quot;Why don't people act like chicken in real life?&amp;quot; There are psychological reasons that explain the behavior. There is a strong social pressure that labels it unacceptable to act like a chicken. In stage hypnosis the hypnotist sets up a situation where that pressure doesn't exist. He convinces the subject that the subject has no choice over whether to act like a chicken. The subject is more susceptible to commands while it's in the trance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that the subject who wouldn't have thought before the performance that they would act like chicken actually acts like a chicken during the performance. If that's the standard for something being involuntary then it's possible to get people to act involuntarily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you use another concept of free will you might say that the stage hypnotist designs the experience in a way where the subject voluntary decides to follow the instructions.&#xA;Given the limited amount of time that a stage hypnotist has, the trance of the subjects usually isn't very deep and the stage hypnotist chooses a person who's more susceptible than average. A hypnotist who has a few hours with a subject can generally archive more than a stage hypnotist who has 5-10 minutes with a subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take an example that isn't about stage hypnosis from the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.deeptrancenow.com/exc2_forgetit.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Monsters and Magic Sticks: There's no such thing as hypnosis?&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; by Steven Heller Ph.D. and Terry Steele:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While in this somnambulistic state, the subject was told that when a clock chimed 10:00 P.M. at that evening's faculty party, she would remove one of her shoes; place it on the dining room table and put roses into the shoe. Further, it was suggested that she would have no memory of the suggestion; it would appear to be her own idea, and she would feel compelled to finish her task. &amp;quot;A very interesting thing happened on the way to the forum.&amp;quot; While she was carrying out the hypnotic suggestion, the professor asked her what she was doing. She replied that her husband had given her a beautiful crystal vase that looked just like her shoe and she had never known what to do with it. She went on to state that it had suddenly dawned on her how to arrange flowers in the vase and she had to try it in her shoe before she forgot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the subject in that example act involuntarily? She attended the hypnosis session on her own &amp;quot;free will&amp;quot;. She didn't act against her own intentions and was able to justify her actions afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hypnotist still determined her actions. The common sense notion of something being involuntary breaks down when you analyze the example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-09-12T16:18:44.643" LastActivityDate="2021-09-12T16:18:44.643" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="42" CreationDate="2011-03-08T18:03:21.080" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very important to refuse to get lost in semantics. The body is a complex system. Like zoo animals we don't live in a way that's comparable to the environment in which we evolved. Our genes for Vitamin C production might have been fall victim to gene drift. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like the perfectly rational participants don't exist in economics the human body isn't running perfect. Both are ideals that hide the inherent ambiguity of the real world. &#xA;It's not a good idea to pretend that things that one doesn't understand can't exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take Vitamin E in elderly subjects. &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/277/17/1380.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Meydani et al&lt;/a&gt; published a peer reviewed paper that showed a placebo controlled double blind study various boosts the immune system in various ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subjects consuming 200 mg/d of vitamin E had a &lt;strong&gt;65% increase in&lt;/strong&gt; [&lt;strong&gt;delayed-type hypersensitivity skin response&lt;/strong&gt;] and a &lt;strong&gt;6-fold increase&lt;/strong&gt; in antibody titer to hepatitis B compared with placebo (17% and 3-fold, respectively)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take Vitamin D. In a recent meta study &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2009.02.003&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Grant et al&lt;/a&gt; came to the conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One can estimate the effect of having all Europeans reach the 40-ng/mL 25(OH)D level as the product of the economic burden of each disease and the fraction of the burden that daily intake of 2000–3000 IU of vitamin D3 could reduce for some diseases, leading to reduced mortality rates and longer healthy life expectancy.&#xA;  [...]That would increase &lt;strong&gt;life expectancy&lt;/strong&gt; by about &lt;strong&gt;2–3 years&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There no scientific reason to demonise all Vitamin supplements as pseudoscience.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-10-17T00:25:41.007" LastActivityDate="2018-10-17T00:25:41.007" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="510" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6440" CreationDate="2011-03-08T19:20:05.830" Score="18" ViewCount="1451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read an article on Yahoo (but have seen them other places) that claim antioxidants are very important and have health benefits.  One article even talked about antioxidants ability to prevent strokes (which I find hard to believe).  I've even heard about the mixing of certain antioxidants providing greater benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any real scientific research that support these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="275" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-07T03:43:48.433" LastActivityDate="2019-12-19T17:24:29.293" Title="Do antioxidants have health benefits?" Tags="|nutrition|antioxidant|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="510" CreationDate="2011-03-08T19:40:29.270" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Antioxidants is a fairly broad class of substances. &#xA;Depending on what type of stroke and what type of Antioxidant you will get different &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c5702.full&quot;&gt;answers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In terms of absolute risk, this translates into one additional haemorrhagic stroke for every 1250 individuals taking vitamin E, in contrast to one ischaemic stroke prevented per 476 individuals taking vitamin E.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the matter of finding it hard to believe that a random substance has a physiological effect:&#xA;Adjust your priors. A lot of substances that physiological effects that change how the body reacts to various illnesses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T19:54:08.007" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T19:54:08.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="512" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="537" CreationDate="2011-03-08T20:38:49.447" Score="16" ViewCount="2256" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just saw this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nekqKEsbdU&quot;&gt;Youtube clip&lt;/a&gt; that claims it takes 200L of water to make a latte. Is that true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T14:00:37.273" LastActivityDate="2018-02-11T13:34:58.323" Title="Does it take 200L of water to make a latte?" Tags="|nutrition|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="514" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="515" CreationDate="2011-03-08T20:45:48.117" Score="5" ViewCount="626" Body="&lt;p&gt;A variety of treatments are purportedly available to aid in quitting smoking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are effective, scientifically proven ways to quit smoking?&#xA;  In particular, is any treatment significantly better than placebo?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of smoking cessation aids for context and convenience. You don't need to double check all of them if you don't want, feel free to indicate any other you like:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nicotine patches/gums/inhalers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Herbal cigarettes (not cannabis)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cannabis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hypnosis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Psychotherapy/Support groups&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Getting yourself sick by smoking too much all at once&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gradually decreased number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anti depressants&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the methods are documented on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoking_cessation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, some are claims I've heard from friends or from books and movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-08T21:19:06.153" LastActivityDate="2011-09-18T20:06:07.913" Title="Are there any viable shortcuts to stop smoking?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|addiction|nicotine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="514" CreationDate="2011-03-08T21:25:30.797" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The American Cancer Society makes the claim that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/Healthy/StayAwayfromTobacco/GuidetoQuittingSmoking/guide-to-quitting-smoking-success-rates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stopping with drugs is significantly more effective than without&lt;/a&gt;.  They also list several &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/Healthy/StayAwayfromTobacco/GuidetoQuittingSmoking/guide-to-quitting-smoking-help-phys-rx-drugs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;drugs&lt;/a&gt; which have been shown to help quitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They don't do a very good job of revealing where their data comes from, but I'll check more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-08T21:25:30.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="415" CreationDate="2011-03-09T01:04:29.920" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Signs don't look so good. See this article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cspinet.org/nah/articles/salt.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cspinet.org/nah/articles/salt.html&lt;/a&gt;, which refers to a number of recent (and not so recent) studies. (There are references to the actual studies in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/cover_-_salt.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF version&lt;/a&gt;; oddly in the html article the superscript numbers are there but the notes are missing.) Some highlights:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b4567.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2009 meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt; of 13 studies found that cutting salt reduces blood pressure and also lowers risk of heart attacks and strokes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;long-term exposure to excess sodium means eventual high blood pressure for 90% of Americans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;even moderately-elevated blood pressure is associated with increased risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there's some suggestion that elevated blood pressure may be associated with dementia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there's suggestion that salt is harmful to the cardiovascular system directly, regardless of pressure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that many of the studies are newer than the 2003 paper referenced in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/415/is-salt-really-white-death/417#417&quot;&gt;Sklivvz's answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastEditorUserId="185" LastEditDate="2017-11-04T12:41:15.017" LastActivityDate="2017-11-04T12:41:15.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="525" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="526" CreationDate="2011-03-09T07:45:25.890" Score="35" ViewCount="7545" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vegetarianism is heavily promoted. But let's say all people on Earth stop eating animal products. Can we grow enough crops so all people on the Earth are provided with enough healthy, nutritious food? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is of course very theoretical, but without discussing future possibilities to cultivate deserts and oceans, is there enough space to grow enough crops? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-03-09T23:00:29.387" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T17:31:03.613" Title="Can we grow enough crops to feed all people on Earth?" Tags="|environment|economics|vegetarianism|agriculture|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="525" CreationDate="2011-03-09T08:07:38.420" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;The production of meat is much less efficient than the production of the crops the animals eat. If you would use all the grain to feed people directly instead of producting meat, it has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Aug97/livestock.hrs.html&quot;&gt;estimated that the US could feed about 800 million people with that grain&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One paper about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/78/3/660S.full#T1&quot;&gt;&quot;Sustainability of meat-based and plant-based diets and the environment&quot;&lt;/a&gt; states that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For every 1 kg of high-quality animal&#xA;  protein produced, livestock are fed&#xA;  about 6 kg of plant protein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The production of meat is clearly less efficient than directly producing and eating plants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it would be much easier to feed the world population on a vegetarian diet than with a meat-rich diet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-09T17:12:56.937" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T17:12:56.937" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="88" CreationDate="2011-03-09T09:51:01.457" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a 2007 review (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17705968&quot;&gt;Exposure to cold and respiratory tract infections&lt;/a&gt; by Mourtzoukou &amp;amp; Falagas):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;… most of the available evidence from laboratory and clinical studies suggests that &lt;strong&gt;inhaled cold air, cooling of the body surface and cold stress induced by lowering the core body temperature cause pathophysiological responses&lt;/strong&gt; such as vasoconstriction in the respiratory tract mucosa and suppression of immune responses, which are responsible for increased susceptibility to infections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Emphasis mine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two things are worth noting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This review partly contradicts the conclusion in Solus’ answer, that “being cold doesn't seem to make a difference to you”. According to the review, it’s &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt;. However, Solus’ answer is mainly concerned with influenza which is &lt;em&gt;somewhat different&lt;/em&gt; from the rhinovirus so while his answer may actually be true, it almost certainly doesn’t apply to the common cold.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This isn’t undisputed – there is also some evidence to other causes (notably &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12357708&quot;&gt;Eccles (2002)&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10444630&quot;&gt;Brenner &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp; al.&lt;/em&gt; (1999)&lt;/a&gt;). But &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; of the evidence points this way. Furthermore, the study by Eccles actually proposes a mechanism which isn’t that much different from the one above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2011-03-09T11:30:49.303" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T11:30:49.303" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="528" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6484" CreationDate="2011-03-09T09:52:11.973" Score="69" ViewCount="19837" Body="&lt;p&gt;A colleague of mine just made a comment about cooking food in a microwave oven. According to him it is considered to be harmful to one's health. Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="293" LastEditorUserId="6185" LastEditDate="2012-02-18T08:13:32.503" LastActivityDate="2022-05-03T11:11:50.943" Title="Is food cooked in a microwave oven harmful for the health?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|microwaves|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="534" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="539" CreationDate="2011-03-09T12:00:21.030" Score="34" ViewCount="4316" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people, including my mom, believe that it's very dangerous to bathe after having eaten without waiting approximately 1 hour (the amount of time depends on what you have eaten).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this a real danger?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the chances of this happening worth giving up bathing? For example, the danger of someone dropping a vase on your head is real, but due to its unlikelihood we don't avoid walking under balconies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="253" LastEditorUserId="15667" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T21:13:55.970" LastActivityDate="2018-06-08T05:33:42.513" Title="Can swimming after having eaten make you drown?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="535" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="682" CreationDate="2011-03-09T12:11:49.067" Score="15" ViewCount="1376" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is usually phrased like a horror story: a patient feels like being trapped in a corpse, unable to move or scream and feeling intense pain, but surgeons continue to operate not noticing that patient is conscious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is reasonable to accept occasional failures of anaesthesia, but it is difficult to believe that there are no ways in modern medicine to monitor a patient’s consciousness during a surgery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How often does &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anesthesia_awareness&quot;&gt;anaesthesia awareness&lt;/a&gt; happen and are there means to avoid it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus points: are there studies concerning how many cases are actually &lt;em&gt;noticed&lt;/em&gt; in the OR versus the cases &lt;em&gt;reported afterward&lt;/em&gt; by the patient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-10T21:36:17.877" LastActivityDate="2018-12-02T17:01:38.020" Title="Anaesthesia awareness: fact or myth?" Tags="|medical-science|surgery|consciousness|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="136" CreationDate="2011-03-09T12:16:19.440" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Magnets can be used to unobtrusively remove small metal parts from human body remained after suffering an injury caused by a near bomb explosion. There's a so called 'magnet trap' developed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;layout=2&amp;amp;eotf=1&amp;amp;sl=sr&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http://www.madumagnet.com/patenti/klopka.htm&quot;&gt;Dr. Dusanka Mandic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="293" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T12:16:19.440" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="512" CreationDate="2011-03-09T12:31:19.760" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marcgunther.com/2009/02/25/the-anatomy-of-a-latte/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.marcgunther.com/2009/02/25/the-anatomy-of-a-latte/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Provides a writeup on the number. In this case of the water seems to come from tropical rainstorms that rain on coffee fields and the issue isn't that big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here’s the breakdown, by liters, of the water needed to make that latte:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;0.1 for the water itself&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;2.5 to make the plastic lid&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;5.5 to make the paper cup and sleeve&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;7.5 to grow the sugar&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;49.5 to feed the cows that make the milk&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;143 to grow the coffee&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That adds up to more than 200 liters of water to make a latte.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-02-11T13:34:58.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="535" CreationDate="2011-03-09T12:37:57.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a complex issue&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is now way to know if anesthesia is causing unconsciousness, or just paralysis, amnesia, and muscle relaxation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During operation, only paralysis, and muscle relaxation can be directly monitored&#xA;So in cases where a patient regains consciousness, but remains paralyzed there is no way to know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other methods to measure anesthetic depth, based mostly on analyzing EEG measurements, but as much as I know if they don't perform better in that respect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="212" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T12:37:57.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="534" CreationDate="2011-03-09T13:27:12.783" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you eat a lot, you'll feel rather uncomfortable doing any physical exercise immediately after. As for getting stomach cramps and dying, though, that has never happened. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/oldwives/hourwait.asp&quot;&gt;So says snopes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whether oxygen-deprivation stomach cramps are real or not is open to debate, as is whether they can be brought on by eating right before engaging in strenuous activity. &lt;strong&gt;What's not in doubt, however, are the lack of deaths associated with swimming right after eating — there hasn't been so much as one drowning attributed to this, not even a near drowning.&lt;/strong&gt; For something that was supposed to be fatal if you so much as dipped a toe, this particular old wives' tale proved to be a dud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My emphasis...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See snopes for deeper sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T13:27:12.783" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="502" CreationDate="2011-03-09T15:19:42.993" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article you cited, which links six coloring agents with hyperactivity, the study's result was apparently overstated by &lt;em&gt;The Lancet&lt;/em&gt;'s press release. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2007/sep/hyperactive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr Paul Illing&lt;/a&gt;, Registered Toxicologist and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Lancet&lt;/em&gt;'s press release is overstating the case presented in the paper. The paper is, in effect, four studies - two on three-year-olds and two on eight-year-olds, in each case using two non-identical mixtures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper shows some statistical associations, it is not a demonstration of cause and effect. Mixture A, but not mixture B gave a statistical association with hyperactivity, but the paper does not determine which component of the mixture is responsible or if it is an interactive effect. It supports a hypothesis that certain food additive mixtures may be associated with hyperactivity, without identifying which additives and certainly without identifying this as a feature of all food additives. The hypothesis should be further investigated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extrapolating from the small study population to the general public, let alone to individuals within the general public, is very difficult. The differences seen were probably very small when compared with the inter-individual variation seen within the appropriate general population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowhere does this study show the food sources of the food additives that children may be exposed to. Thus, the important question of whether the diets containing these quantities of food additives are typical of a well balanced diet or are skewed by the eating habits of these two age groups cannot be addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr Susan Jebb, Nutrition Scientist at the Medical Research Council, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.food.gov.uk/safereating/chemsafe/additivesbranch/colours/hyper/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;adds&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such additives are most likely to be found in foods that we would like to see children eating less of i.e. soft drinks, confectionery and so on, and so it reiterates the general healthy eating messages of encouraging healthier food choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the countries where they've been banned, it's usually in spite of the lack of evidence. For example, in 2008, when the Food Standard Agency is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/apr/10/foodanddrink&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;announced it was considering banning those six specific E-numbers&lt;/a&gt;, here's how The Guardian reported the news:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agency also paved the way for negotiations to get the colourants removed across the European Union after its board decided precautionary action was needed, despite the lack of evidence of a biological causal mechanism of hyperactivity through the additives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dame Deirdre Hutton, the FSA chair, said it was the agency's duty to put consumers first. The colours were not necessary and it was therefore &amp;quot;sensible&amp;quot; to remove them from food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, I wouldn't worry too much of the presence of E-numbers in the food you eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there were any solid evidence of risk, it wouldn't be allowed for consumption. When there is uncertainty, some countries will decide to ban the additive; others won't. That does not mean that the product is harmful; it only means that it's possibly harmful. Adjust your dietary habits in consequence of how you feel about products whose affects on health are possibly harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T01:46:38.580" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="545" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="562" CreationDate="2011-03-09T15:47:08.603" Score="10" ViewCount="755" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, someone mentioned he had started taking melatonin at night, and in the afternoon. At night is common as it helps some to sleep. He began taking it during the day to see if there would be an increase in production of human growth hormone. His basis for trying this was the correlation between melatonin production and uptake at night, with the production and uptake of human growth hormone at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this just a correlation? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there an actual connection between the two? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is a connection between the two, could additional supplementation of melatonin be  used to augment human growth hormone production? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any studies documenting the relationship between these two chemicals?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="111" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-01-20T03:26:30.413" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T03:26:30.413" Title="Can Melatonin lead to a result in weight loss?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="546" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="556" CreationDate="2011-03-09T18:23:24.907" Score="11" ViewCount="782" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there enough food produced annually to provide a subsistence diet for the entire population of Earth? (Bonus points for data involving shelter, clothing or education.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question was inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/525/can-we-grow-enough-crops-to-feed-all-people-on-earth&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="187" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T09:20:30.737" Title="Is global economic production sufficient to feed, clothe and educate everyone?" Tags="|nutrition|economics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="548" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-09T19:37:23.663" Score="31" ViewCount="7343" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a widely held belief in South Korea that you can suffocate if you leave a fan running in a closed room while you sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth or science behind this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(See Wikipedia on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death&quot;&gt;Fan Deaths&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="160" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2012-11-11T11:57:19.360" LastActivityDate="2016-09-30T03:25:38.887" Title="Can running a fan while sleeping in a closed room cause death?" Tags="|consumer-products|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="550" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="555" CreationDate="2011-03-09T20:42:40.020" Score="24" ViewCount="969" Body="&lt;p&gt;Criminal profiling is very popular in fictional crime shows, but also used in reality. A profiler uses the known data about the case to create a profile of the person that commited the crime. This profile is used to focus the investigations and track down the perpetrator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does criminal profiling work? Are there any studies that evaluate the success rates of profilers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-27T13:24:13.337" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T13:24:13.337" Title="Profiling in criminal cases" Tags="|psychology|criminology|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="447" CreationDate="2011-03-09T21:09:47.477" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a little bit of a catch 22. When we tend to feel strongly that we are right, we quieten down the part of our brains that signal we might be wrong: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it follows that if we are confident we know all the biases because we're well read on the topic, we could very well be leaving ourselves open to an as-yet unknown bias or some other weakness in our reasoning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a skeptic, by definition, I think it always helps to question, even the things we hold to be true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggested reading: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jonahlehrer.com/books&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.jonahlehrer.com/books&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: in response to Timwi - reference Fischhoff, B.  (1982).  Chapter 31 - Debiasing.  In D. Kahneman, P. Slovic, &amp;amp; A. Tversky (Eds.), Judgment Under Uncertainty:  Heuristics and Biases&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="319" LastEditDate="2011-03-10T17:16:30.410" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T17:16:30.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="552" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="553" CreationDate="2011-03-09T21:13:34.807" Score="53" ViewCount="21172" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was heating up some lunch in the microwave oven at work a few weeks ago, and peered into the window to see if my soup was bubbling yet.  At that point a coworker walked into the lunch room and exclaimed &quot;Get your head away from the microwave, it'll give you brain tumors!&quot; or something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research or evidence that close proximity to a microwave oven, frequently or infrequently, will give you tumors or other health issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="30" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T10:54:14.653" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T08:14:07.117" Title="Can standing in front of a microwave oven give you cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|microwaves|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="552" CreationDate="2011-03-09T21:51:50.730" Score="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microwave ovens allow a maximum leak amount of only 5mW, which is really small&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If more radiation were let out, you would experience microwave burns&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microwave radiation is non-ionizing. Differently from x-rays and gamma rays, the microwave photons simply do not have enough energy to cause cancer through ionization&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the previous well-known facts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you are not burned, you are not being affected by microwaves because they don't leak out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you were to get burned, you would still have no ionizing radiation impact.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, research shows that microwave-length radiation does not cause cancer, but the studies relate mostly to different kinds of microwaves (for example the waves emitted by a cell phone)&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xA;References:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven#Direct_microwave_exposure&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven#Direct_microwave_exposure&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_burn&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_burn&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;4: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21084892&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21084892&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="8651" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T08:14:07.117" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T08:14:07.117" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="550" CreationDate="2011-03-09T22:45:12.923" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very nice and complete paper on the subject was written by &#xA;Damon A Muller at the Australian National University&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] empirical evaluations of the effectiveness of profiling are equivocal at best. Where such analyses do exist, they tend to be limited, and feature flawed methodology and low numbers of experimental subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper goes in-depth in explaining what types of profiling exist, what challenges are there to actually measure the effectiveness and pretty much debunks profiling as a last-chance option not supported by hard scientific fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Reference&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ceps.anu.edu.au/events/criminal_investigations_workshop/papers/Damon%20Muller%20-%20Does%20Criminal%20Profiling%20Reduce%20or%20Increase%20Uncertainty.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ceps.anu.edu.au/events/criminal_investigations_workshop/papers/Damon%20Muller%20-%20Does%20Criminal%20Profiling%20Reduce%20or%20Increase%20Uncertainty.pdf&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T22:45:12.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="546" CreationDate="2011-03-09T23:06:45.267" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Food&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I would think so. According to the FAO, 152kg of food per capita were produced globally in 2007/2008&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, which equates to approximately 500gr of food per day - not a lot, but you could conceivably survive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clothing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I don't think there is any need for research here, certainly yes (although most people would have a minimum of 1 set of clothes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Education&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This year about 500 billion US$ will be spend on education worldwide&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; - whereas, if we used our military budget&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; for education we could add $1.61 trillion&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; per year. I think this should cover more than enough the 36 million children in Africa that may not have access to education&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;References:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fao.org/docrep/011/ai482e/ai482e01.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fao.org/docrep/011/ai482e/ai482e01.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldometers.info/education/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.worldometers.info/education/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&amp;amp;met=ms_mil_xpnd_gd_zs&amp;amp;tdim=true&amp;amp;dl=en&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;q=global+military+spending&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&amp;amp;met=ms_mil_xpnd_gd_zs&amp;amp;tdim=true&amp;amp;dl=en&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;q=global+military+spending&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;4: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2.7%25+of+global+gdp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2.7%25+of+global+gdp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;5: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Africa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Africa&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-03-09T23:06:45.267" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="550" CreationDate="2011-03-10T00:32:58.727" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not a scientific paper by any means, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/12/071112fa_fact_gladwell&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article about the pseudoscientific nature of profiling&lt;/a&gt; in the New Yorker in 2007.  He makes a pretty good case that much of it really boils down to same techniques as cold reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T00:32:58.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="558" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="561" CreationDate="2011-03-10T02:53:33.570" Score="13" ViewCount="528" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember reading about this geothermal &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/science/earth/12quake.html&quot;&gt;project&lt;/a&gt; being cancelled due to concerns over (relatively) small seismic events caused by the drilling.  Have there been any instances of, or reasonable scientific cause to believe a major seismic event might happen due to geothermal drilling?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T08:44:02.263" Title="Can drilling for geothermal energy trigger a major earthquake?" Tags="|energy|geology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="550" CreationDate="2011-03-10T04:49:51.103" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Tim. I did some of my own research into it back in 2009(?) trying to find &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; cases that were solved by profiling. I was only able to come up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newcriminologist.com/article.asp?nid=65&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;with one case (and it was supposedly the first) where profiling broke the case&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt;, as they say, the devil is in the details.  Was this case really, literally solved by profiling?  That was unclear to me in the reading and I haven't had time to research it further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems obvious that whatever the facts are behind profiling the process is not very effective at &lt;em&gt;solving&lt;/em&gt; crimes.  It may be better at helping police understand their quarry - but does it actually solve cases?  Not very often - if at all, as far as I've been able to tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user331" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-10T07:08:35.490" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T07:08:35.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="558" CreationDate="2011-03-10T05:38:15.637" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer answer: There's a statistically significant positive correlation between EGS and seismic activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer, peer-reviewed answer: &lt;a href=&quot;http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0t19709v&quot;&gt;http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0t19709v&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, the path I used to find that was&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your link&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google: &quot;Besel geothemal&quot; (mentioned in the article)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia &quot;Enhanced geothermal system&quot; (fourth from the top)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia &quot;Induced seismicity in Besel&quot; (linked by #3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia &quot;Induced seismicity&quot; (linked by #4)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Endnote 9 (citation on the sentence in #5 that says there's a link)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And no, I didn't read the paper, I'm (uncritically) assuming that Wikipedia wouldn't get the cite backwards on something that obscure. ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="221" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T05:38:15.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="545" CreationDate="2011-03-10T07:44:11.600" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a study done on rats which supports this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;T. Wolden-Hanson, D. R. Mitton, R. L. McCants, S. M. Yellon, C. W. Wilkinson, A. M. Matsumoto, and D. D Rasmussen&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://endo.endojournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/141/2/487&quot;&gt;Daily Melatonin Administration to Middle-Aged Male Rats Suppresses Body Weight, Intraabdominal Adiposity, and Plasma Leptin and Insulin Independent of Food Intake and Total Body Fat&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;Endocrinology 141: 487-497, doi:10.1210/en.141.2.487&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also known that good sleep improves weight loss, so melatonin may help us lose weight by improving the quality of our sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sanjay R. Patel, Atul Malhotra, David P. White, Daniel J. Gottlieb, and Frank B. Hu&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/164/10/947.short&quot;&gt;Association between Reduced Sleep and Weight Gain in Women&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Am. J. Epidemiol. (15 November 2006) 164(10): 947-954 &#xA;doi:10.1093/aje/kwj280&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="212" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T08:10:34.313" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T08:10:34.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="550" CreationDate="2011-03-10T08:14:55.003" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Profiling can help reduce the set of likely suspects, which might be enough to bring that number down to something that's small enough to be manageable by the available forces.&#xA;Of course when the profilers get it wrong (for whatever reasons, in practice often political correctness, being afraid to concluded that the most likely perp is a black female with an incomplete high school education for example) it can stall the case for a long time too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T08:14:55.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="564" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="573" CreationDate="2011-03-10T08:27:03.527" Score="89" ViewCount="12669" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/03/06/americans-are-still-divided-on-why-people-are-gay/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;widespread belief that one chooses to be a homosexual&lt;/a&gt;, and that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-gay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;people can successfully overcome such feelings&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, some scientific studies have shown that &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/ppoint/sexual-selection.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;finger length may be linked with sexuality&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has long been suspected that high levels of&#xA;androgenic steroids in the uterine environment have&#xA;a musculizing effect on the fetus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, several psychiatric organizations claim it is not a choice, but disagree on whether it is completely innate, affected by early childhood, or whether we really have any clue at all!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as far as we know now, is homosexuality a matter of choice, nature, or nuture?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-09-01T12:48:04.770" LastActivityDate="2023-01-13T19:32:09.250" Title="Is homosexuality innate?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="546" CreationDate="2011-03-10T09:20:30.737" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question pops up all the time, fueled by the ever repeating Malthusian fables about impending disaster due to mass starvation unless the population of the planet is brought down to a fraction of what it currently is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As is, there's no large scale lack of nutrition on the planet today (local catastrophes excluded, like people caught up temporarilly in natural disasters or wars).&#xA;Thus, the planet is more than capable of feeding its current population (those areas where there is lack of food experience that because the local population doesn't put in the effort needed to produce it, not because that effort would be futile but because they don't think it a priority in comparison with (usually) killing each other).&#xA;In fact, given the massive overproduction of foodstuff in parts of the world (especially the EU and US where agricultural policies cause farmers and processing industry to destroy produce rather than put it on the market so as not to cause food prices to collaps, and get paid for that by government subsidies) the world can feed a lot more people than exist on it today, even without resorting to more efficient ways of production (though those would certainly relieve a lot of people in especially Africa and Asia of backbreaking work as they're still tilling their fields in what are essentially medieval fashion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's for food.&#xA;Clothing, as I commented earlier, is a non-essential item for the majority of the world's population when it comes to physical survival and even physical comfort.&#xA;It can therefore essentially be excluded when calculating whether the earth is self supporting as obviously it is (I don't know of any large population group that involuntarilly goes without clothing when not forced to by other people rather than a real lack of it that they could be supplied with). Given that most people have access to far more clothing than they'll ever wear (especially in northern areas) only strengthens that conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shelter is a bit more tricky, but has more or less the same answer.&#xA;While there are people who are homeless, in some areas even large groups that are homeless, these people aren't homeless (permanently, sometimes temporarilly due to natural disasters) because of lack of resources but either because of economic reasons (they were evicted because they didn't pay rent or mortgage for example), out of choice (some people choose a life on the street), or because of being forced out of their homes by other humans for political or religious reasons (like the Cops in Egypt who're essentially being driven out of the country because of their religion right now).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Education is overrated. In large parts of the world education is learning to farm the land of your father, or to perform a trade or craft.&#xA;That's all that's needed to survive, and all people get it from their parents where no schools are available.&#xA;Thus education has been taken care of.&#xA;If you're talking about organised schooling, there's more than enough resources available for that as well. Where it's not offered (or of poor quality) despite this it's because those resources are either wasted (EU, US, etc. are prime examples of massive waste of educational resources) or diverted to other things (Africa, parts of Asia, where often funding and resources earmarked for education end up in some bureaucrat's or dictator's Swiss bank account).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T09:20:30.737" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="568" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10811" CreationDate="2011-03-10T09:47:30.220" Score="26" ViewCount="16478" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard theories that mermaid sightings were the result of sex-starved sailors mistaking manatees, dugongs or Steller's sea cows for beautiful women. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/columbus-mistakes-manatees-for-mermaids&quot;&gt;History.com&lt;/a&gt; claims Columbus did this, &quot;How I met your mother&quot; has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mermaid_Theory&quot;&gt;episode&lt;/a&gt; named after the theory, and the taxon &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirenia&quot;&gt;Sirenia&lt;/a&gt; got its name from the theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone tried to confirm or deny this theory, possibly by seeing if &quot;mermaid&quot; sightings were more common in locations and seasons associated with sea cows being present?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:39:28.537" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:39:28.537" Title="Did sailors mistake sea cows for mermaids?" Tags="|history|perception|hallucinations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="569" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="571" CreationDate="2011-03-10T10:04:27.203" Score="89" ViewCount="9775" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence for a correlation between the use of mobile phones and the occurence of brain cancer? If yes, is there also evidence for causality? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user288" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:12:46.940" LastActivityDate="2021-04-25T17:53:01.170" Title="Do mobile phones have anything to do with brain cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|mobile-phones|causality|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="570" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="590" CreationDate="2011-03-10T11:07:08.390" Score="46" ViewCount="24010" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, I think I can safely assume if an eye is left pointing directly towards sun for a long period of time it does get major damage. However, staring at the sun also hurts very quickly. That pain seems like a very natural&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; defense mechanism against eye damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I guess technically even a very quick glance at the sun does cause &lt;em&gt;temporary&lt;/em&gt; eye damage, as there is a visible distortion spot in sight for a short while afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is: &lt;strong&gt;Is possible for someone to naturally stare at the sun for an amount of time required for significant permanent eye damage, or whether the pain will become too much significantly sooner than any such damage would happen?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then: &lt;strong&gt;If not, is it possible with simple willpower, without special training or medication, to force oneself to ignore the pain for a long enough time to cause such damage?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: &lt;strong&gt;Is there a difference in this between adults, children and babies?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as a bonus, are there any special environmental situations where this does not apply? For example: sunset, sunrise, solar eclipse, major fog, underwater, or light filtered through something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;* - Natural is here not in the sense of &quot;everything natural is good&quot;, but in the sense of &quot;it is reasonable to assume there would be an evolutive advantage from it&quot;.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="154" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T03:25:38.360" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T11:53:41.917" Title="Does staring at the sun cause significant, permanent harm?" Tags="|environmental-health|ophthalmology|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="569" CreationDate="2011-03-10T11:10:36.550" Score="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17148772&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; of 420,000 danes found no correlation between mobile phone use and instances of cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We found no evidence for an association between tumor risk and cellular telephone use among either short-term or long-term users. Moreover, the narrow confidence intervals provide evidence that any large association of risk of cancer and cellular telephone use can be excluded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="294" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-09T16:12:05.903" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T16:12:05.903" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="564" CreationDate="2011-03-10T14:41:13.833" Score="-6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since homosexuality is seen in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many animals&lt;/a&gt;, not just humans I'd say it's innate, natural and doesn't factor in choice at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many ancient cultures (pre Judeo-Christian) homosexuality was reportedly very common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example in ancient &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Rome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rome&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_ancient_Greece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Greece&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="339" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-10T10:02:43.663" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T10:02:43.663" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="564" CreationDate="2011-03-10T15:44:06.580" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a good breakdown from a grad student on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tim-taylor.com/papers/twin_studies/index.html&quot;&gt;twin studies&lt;/a&gt;.  However, the key thing to note reading through it is the re-iterated theme that most research to date has not been of a sufficient sample sizes to be able to claim to represent homosexuality in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How we define &quot;homosexuality&quot; is also very much up in the air, particularly with prison populations.  When do two inmates having sex count as homosexual?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as we know, from a truly skeptic viewpoint, &lt;strong&gt;we just don't know yet what &quot;causes&quot; homosexuality&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will add, as an aside, that this is insanely hard to research.  95% of all pages I get are strongly activist for or against.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-06-15T15:16:27.387" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T15:16:27.387" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="569" CreationDate="2011-03-10T15:46:13.427" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most recent studies show not that there is &quot;no correlation&quot;, but rather that the studies are &quot;inconclusive.&quot; Here is an article about some recent research: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.suntimes.com/lifestyles/health/3897992-423/study-prolonged-cell-phone-use-increases-brain-activity.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brain activity during cellphone use&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote about the brain activity study:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;“What it does tell us that we need to look into this,” Volkow said. “If we had seen nothing, then I think it would have been much easier to say we don’t need to worry about it.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="340" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T15:46:13.427" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="575" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1177" CreationDate="2011-03-10T16:00:22.493" Score="37" ViewCount="3073" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator&quot;&gt;Myers-Briggs Type Indicator&lt;/a&gt; tell something objective and predictive about the persons decision making tendencies?  In other words, can a Myers-Briggs score give you useful information about what decisions a person is likely to make in future scenarios, or about his/her abilities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-03-10T16:56:23.343" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T11:10:10.697" Title="What does Myers-Briggs Type Indicator tell about a person?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="297" CreationDate="2011-03-10T16:21:53.643" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is important for consumers to realize that CFLs and fluorescent bulbs do contain mercury and require special handling. The mercury vapor can be detrimental to handlers' health—from those involved with handling new bulbs to people involved with storing, packaging and shipping used lamps. Mercury vapor, which can be absorbed through the skin or inhaled, can cause neurological damage, and when it gets into water, it can enter the food chain through fish. Read more about the dangers of mercury exposure here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://vaporlok.blogspot.ca/2010/05/preventing-health-and-safety-hazards.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Preventing health and safety hazards from fluorescent lamps.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a bulb is broken or burns out, it should be properly cleaned up and recycled—it should not be disposed of in landfills. To reduce the risk for mercury vapor exposure, CFLs and fluorescent lamps should be safely handled, stored and transported to recycling facilities in a package that is proven to effectively contain hazardous mercury vapor. Find out more about how to minimize environmental risks and safely package CFLs here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://vaporlok.blogspot.ca/2010/05/layers-of-protection-packaging-used.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Layers of protection: Packaging used fluorescent lamps.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user341" LastEditorUserId="31604" LastEditDate="2016-07-13T16:58:39.843" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T16:58:39.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3" CreationDate="2011-03-10T16:29:47.097" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The chamomille used as herb at least in Central Europe is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matricaria_chamomilla&quot;&gt;German chamomile&lt;/a&gt; (Matricaria recutita, also known as Matricaria chamomilla).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About its medicinal effects following is said on Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 2006 review of the medical literature reported a number of beneficial effects for chamomile in in vitro and animal tests, but added that more human clinical trials are needed before firm conclusions can be drawn. Research with animals suggests antispasmodic, anxiolytic, anti-inflammatory and some antimutagenic and cholesterol-lowering effects for chamomile.[9] Chamomile has sped healing time of wounds in animals.[10][11] It also showed some benefit in an animal model of diabetes.[12] In vitro chamomile has demonstrated moderate antimicrobial and antioxidant properties and significant antiplatelet activity, as well as preliminary results against cancer.[7][13]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study which might be relevant is &lt;a href=&quot;http://nccam.nih.gov/research/results/spotlight/040310.htm&quot;&gt;Chamomile Capsules Ease Anxiety Symptoms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-06-22T21:20:27.363" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T21:20:27.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="579" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-10T17:04:08.860" Score="25" ViewCount="1067" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had problems with back-pain in the past, and as a result, I reluctantly went to a chiropractor. It's hard to tell if going to the chiropractor helped my problem, or if they went away on their own. There is a lot of information there talking about the health benefits of chiropractic care, and most of them seem implausible, but there are others that don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what evidence is there that chiropractic medicine provides real health benefits? How much of their claims have some validity, and how much are just unsubstantiated claims? Are subluxations real? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="110" LastEditorUserId="110" LastEditDate="2011-03-10T18:47:11.767" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T20:39:55.077" Title="Are the claims of chiropractors independently verifiable?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="575" CreationDate="2011-03-10T17:28:08.603" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was able to find &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.learningace.com/doc/281660/f0aac9eabe12e7eedae29eee8e860e8e/brownharveysiop&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; which seems to indicate that the MBTI was predictive for the Extravert/Intravert and Sensing/Intuition dimensions. People who ranked high on these tended to be in jobs which aligned with their scores. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find any studies which focused on the abilities of the person versus the MBTI score, so I'm not sure a correlation would make sense as the test focuses on personality and not skill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2016-05-21T11:10:10.697" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T11:10:10.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="579" CreationDate="2011-03-10T17:33:27.337" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chiropractors are not medically trained doctors and the profession is essentially unregulated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://whatstheharm.net/chiropractic.html&quot;&gt;http://whatstheharm.net/chiropractic.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hard-core practitioners claim to be manipulating the body's energy field(s). Given there is no clinical evidence for such an energy field or that it can be manipulated I would say that puts them squarely in the woo category. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading: British Chiropractor's Association lost their lawsuit against Simon Singh (unable to present evidence of its effectiveness). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2011-03-10T17:33:27.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="535" CreationDate="2011-03-10T17:41:34.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;About how frequently Anesthesia awareness happens, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anesthesia_awareness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia tells us&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Awareness occurs in 20,000–40,000 patients out of the 20 million US surgeries performed each year (between 0.1% and 0.2%)&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; when patients have anesthesia that is inadequate to keep them unconscious during an operation. Large trials have demonstrated that around 1 to 2 per 1000 patients experience some form of awareness.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anesthesia awareness does occur, about 42% feel the pain of the operation, 94% experience panic/anxiety (sometimes because they cannot breathe), and 70% experience lasting psychological symptoms.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1: Sebel PS: The incidence of awareness during anesthesia: A multicenter United States study. Anesth Analg 2004; 99:833-9  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: Sandin RH, Enlund G, Samuelsson P. Awareness during anaesthesia: a prospective case study. Lancet 2000;355:707–711  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3: Sebels PS, Bowdie TA, Ghoneim MM. The incidence of awareness during anaesthesia: a multi- centre United States study. Anesthesia and Analgesia 2004;99:833–839  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4: N. Moerman et al.,Anesthesiology;79:454–464, 1993&lt;/sub&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T20:39:40.990" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T20:39:40.990" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="579" CreationDate="2011-03-10T18:14:04.697" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This summery is taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4042&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skeptoid.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like so many non-evidence based&#xA;  alternative medicine systems,&#xA;  chiropractic was established and&#xA;  defined by a non-scientist during a&#xA;  time when almost nothing useful or&#xA;  true was known about medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...invented by] Daniel D. Palmer, a&#xA;  practitioner of New Age healing with&#xA;  magnets, when medicine was in the Dark&#xA;  Ages of 1895.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Palmer was soon arrested and convicted&#xA;  of practicing medicine without a&#xA;  license. His son, BJ Palmer, formed&#xA;  the first professional chiropractic&#xA;  association to cover legal expenses of&#xA;  the students he and his father&#xA;  trained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[chiropractic] originally developed&#xA;  based on the purely mythical and&#xA;  supernatural conjecture of innate&#xA;  intelligence, the profession as a&#xA;  whole has evolved and generally&#xA;  accepted most anatomical discoveries&#xA;  of modern medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cornerstone of chiropractic is something they call a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subluxation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;subluxation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]chiropractic subluxation is a&#xA;  completely different phenomenon from&#xA;  an orthopedic subluxation, which is a&#xA;  real medical condition, and is&#xA;  unrelated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A chiropractic subluxation, on the&#xA;  other hand, is theoretic and is not&#xA;  visible on an imaging study or&#xA;  otherwise verifiable through&#xA;  conventional medicine. The&#xA;  chiropractic profession has repeatedly&#xA;  redefined a subluxation over the&#xA;  years, and the current definition is&#xA;  &quot;a complex of functional and/or&#xA;  structural and/or pathological&#xA;  articular changes that compromise&#xA;  neural integrity and may influence&#xA;  organ system function and general&#xA;  health.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=5339&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science-Based Medicine&lt;/a&gt; has this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The General Chiropractic Council, a&#xA;  UK-wide statutory body with regulatory&#xA;  powers, has just published a new&#xA;  position statement on the chiropractic&#xA;  subluxation complex:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;The chiropractic vertebral&#xA;  subluxation complex is an historical&#xA;  concept but it remains a theoretical&#xA;  model. It is not supported by any&#xA;  clinical research evidence that would&#xA;  allow claims to be made that it is the&#xA;  cause of disease or health concerns.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chiropractic-uk.co.uk/default.aspx?m=3&amp;amp;mi=3&amp;amp;title=About+Chiropractic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;British Chiropractic Association&lt;/a&gt; website states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All BCA chiropractors will have&#xA;  undergone a minimum four-year&#xA;  full-time internationally-accredited&#xA;  undergraduate course and are&#xA;  registered with the General&#xA;  Chiropractic Council, the UK's&#xA;  statutory regulator for the&#xA;  profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gcc-uk.org/page.cfm?page_id=21#3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;General Chiropractic Council&lt;/a&gt; charge a fee of £1,250 to register.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The GCC also say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is a criminal offence in the UK to&#xA;  call yourself (expressly or by&#xA;  implication) any kind of chiropractor&#xA;  if you are not registered with the&#xA;  GCC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/586/4&quot;&gt;Is Chiropractor a protected term, and if so where?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T20:39:55.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="570" CreationDate="2011-03-10T19:23:32.093" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;An ordinary person can easily stare at the sun or a solar eclipse long enough to cause significant, possibly permanent loss of vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Looking directly at the sun for even brief periods of time may cause&#xA;  blindness or severe damage to the&#xA;  eye.&lt;/strong&gt; Solar retinopathy, damage to&#xA;  the eye’s retina due to solar&#xA;  radiation, and blindness to varying&#xA;  degrees and persistence frequently&#xA;  result from sungazing during a solar&#xA;  eclipse. Although vision loss due to&#xA;  this damage is generally reversible,&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;permanent damage and loss of vision have been reported.&lt;/strong&gt; Most eye care&#xA;  professionals advise patients to avoid&#xA;  looking directly at the sun.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Exposure to ultraviolet radiation, produced by the sun, is associated&#xA;  with damage to the eye, including&#xA;  pterygium and cataracts.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sungazing&quot;&gt;Sungazing&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phil Plait recently cited an ‘‘unprecedented rise in the number of cases of solar retinopathy’’ directly linked to a popular Irish shrine where people stared at the sun in order to experience ‘‘visions of the Virgin Mary’’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/12/02/knock-visions-lead-to-eye-damage/&quot;&gt;Plait&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="349" LastEditorUserId="223" LastEditDate="2011-05-20T03:17:50.510" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T03:17:50.510" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="598" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="648" CreationDate="2011-03-10T21:53:55.567" Score="80" ViewCount="7259" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been following this question casually over the past couple of years, and it seemed to me that there was no strong consensus either way on the subject. However, I recently read an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/216849/editorial-pros-cons-schwarzenegger-v-ema/&quot;&gt;editorial&lt;/a&gt; from one of the scientists involved in the Supreme Court case, Schwarzenegger vs. EMA, arguing that the evidence for psychological and physical damage to children is strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a quick check of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_violence&quot;&gt;wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; on the subject seemed to confirm my original impression, that there was still significant controversy on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="369" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T16:38:02.723" LastActivityDate="2020-08-31T18:07:44.680" Title="Do violent video games cause violent behavior?" Tags="|psychology|videogames|violence|causality|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="600" CreationDate="2011-03-10T21:54:36.150" Score="19" ViewCount="2071" Body="&lt;p&gt;In economics, you commonly hear the clear that a minimum wage law will reduce employment. Is there empirical evidence that either supports or debunks that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T07:59:32.477" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T21:18:22.493" Title="Will introduction of a minimum wage increase unemployment?" Tags="|economics|unemployment|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="599" CreationDate="2011-03-10T22:28:33.687" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question is &quot;we're not sure yet.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-0515%28198206%2920:2%3C%3E1.0.CO;2-E&amp;amp;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;old minimum wage research&lt;/a&gt;&quot; shows that there is a negative impact, but more recent research - e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w4509&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Card and Kreuger (1993)&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/workingpapers/157-07.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dube, Lester, and Reich (2010)&lt;/a&gt; - show that there is no significant effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been attempts at reconciliation the literature on the subject, but, to the best of my knowledge, nothing resembling a consensus has been achieved amongst economists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When reviewing the possibility to raise the minimum wage again, Québec's Interdepartmental Committee for the Review of the Minimum Wage compiled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.travail.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/fichiers/Documents/normes_travail/salaire_minimum/summary2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a short review of the literature&lt;/a&gt;. It's written in language most people will understand, and only six pages long. It's definitively worth reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the event you don't feel like reading it, the most interesting passage is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Economic debate concerning the minimum wage has essentially been focussed around two&#xA;  subjects of discussion. These are the impacts that such a policy has on employment levels and its effects on the distribution of wealth. Economic theory generally approaches the impacts that the minimum wage may have on employment using mainly two models. These are a “pure and perfect” competition model (or neoclassical) and an imperfect model called “monopsony”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the last 40 years, economic studies based on the neoclassical model show that mainly young people less than 24 years old are generally the most affected by job reductions that are likely to take place when the minimum wage increases. Elasticity calculated by these models varies between –0.1 and –0.3, meaning that a 10% increase in the actual minimum wage will generate a reduction of employment for young people varying between 1% and 3%. An econometric made by the Department of Finance leads to a similar conclusion for young people aged between 15 and 19.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, numerous conditions must be met for this model to apply, and because of that, many economists have challenged its relevancy, especially since the nineties. These economists prefer the use of a monopsony model that includes market imperfections. Results obtained using this model are very different from those obtained with the neoclassical model. In fact, they lead to the conclusion that the increases in the minimum wage that occurred over the last 15 years in certain areas of North America and Europe did not hinder employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T14:42:06.657" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T14:42:06.657" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="606" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="608" CreationDate="2011-03-11T00:27:31.247" Score="17" ViewCount="4043" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question came up in a conversation where one associate indicated that they thought tattoos on women were &quot;slutty&quot; and others took offense.  The argument was that: when have you ever met a woman with a tattoo who was a virgin?  Brought up a host of questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any research on sexual activity and tattooing (ie. Is it true that a man/woman with a tattoo is more likely to be sexually active?). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any research on non-western norms for tattoos and other body modifications as related to sexual maturity?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any research on peoples' perceptions of others who have tattoos, as related to sexual activity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://independent.gmnews.com/news/2005-09-07/Front_page/003.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; that showed negative first opinions of women with tattoos, does this stereotype also apply to males?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T22:41:44.883" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T22:41:44.883" Title="Is there any research done on tattoos and their relationship to sexual activity?" Tags="|psychology|gender|body-modification|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="607" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-11T01:03:38.640" Score="23" ViewCount="4145" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wakefield's study from 1998 is now refuted as fraudulent, however there must have been subsequent research by others looking for a link between vaccines and autism.  Did any of this research find a positive correlation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user398" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-12T21:43:45.150" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T11:10:17.077" Title="Are there any other studies (besides the discredited Wakefield studies) that have found a link between vaccination and autism?" Tags="|vaccines|autism|andrew-wakefield|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="606" CreationDate="2011-03-11T01:20:58.380" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick google search turned up this 2005 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16512308&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PubMed abstract&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This research examined the association of having a tattoo and engaging in premarital sexual intercourse. Data gathered from a convenience sample of 450 college students indicated that tattooed respondents were substantively and significantly more likely to be sexually active than nontattooed college students. Tattooed men became sexually active at a significantly earlier age than nontattooed men but no such difference was found between tattooed and nontattooed college women&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is only a single study, but I found indications that other work corroborates the result. Here, for example, is another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20524547&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;abstract&lt;/a&gt; linking body modifications such as tattoos and piercings to premarital sexual activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, it seems that many researchers believe that tattoos and piercings are associated with risky behaviors, especially in &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/110/6/1058&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;adolescents&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="369" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-10T04:05:22.293" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T04:05:22.293" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="607" CreationDate="2011-03-11T01:30:56.677" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a single word:  No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anything, there is a greater correlation between autism and linoleum floors than there is to vaccines.  Or even vitamin D deficiencies:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-and-autism&amp;amp;sc=DD_20090424&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What If Vitamin D Deficiency Is a Cause of Autism?&lt;/a&gt; (Scientific American, 24 Apr 2009).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you wish, visit &lt;a href=&quot;http://factsnotfantasy.com/vaccines.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Truth About The &quot;Evils&quot; Of Vaccination&lt;/a&gt; at factsnotfantasy.com for a point by point debunking of Wakefield and the errors anti-vax proponents like to repeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2016-10-13T11:10:17.077" LastActivityDate="2016-10-13T11:10:17.077" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="610" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="638" CreationDate="2011-03-11T01:42:09.847" Score="98" ViewCount="37588" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately, I've been watching the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Libyan_uprising&quot;&gt;Libyan civil war&lt;/a&gt; in the media, and both sides in the conflict often &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire&quot;&gt;celebrate success by firing&lt;/a&gt; their &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47&quot;&gt;AK-47&lt;/a&gt;s into the air.  Not to say that firing guns into the air is restricted to any particular group, I'm just using this as an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will bullets fired into the air by small arms fire have the velocity to kill a person when they fall?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-05T19:40:10.180" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T06:39:55.607" Title="Can bullets fired into the air kill a person when they fall?" Tags="|physics|weapons|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="607" CreationDate="2011-03-11T01:44:08.667" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason that Wakefield's study was found to be fraudulent is a result of the plethora of studies that were done after his.  Not only could they not replicate the results of his study, but larger, better designed studies refuted the conclusion in his paper.  Very large studies such as this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa021134&quot;&gt;Danish study&lt;/a&gt; found no correlation between the MMR vaccine and autism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/Autism/Index.html&quot;&gt;the CDC's web site&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some people believe increased exposure to thimerosal (from the addition of important new vaccines recommended for children) explains the higher prevalence in recent years. However, evidence from several studies examining trends in vaccine use and changes in autism frequency does not support such an association. Furthermore, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iom.edu/CMS/3793/4705/20155.aspx&quot;&gt;scientific review&lt;/a&gt; by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) concluded that &quot;the evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines an autism.&quot; CDC supports the IOM conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="393" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T20:39:50.427" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T20:39:50.427" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="610" CreationDate="2011-03-11T01:50:45.367" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mythbusters did an episode on this and found that yes, a bullet fired into the air at a non-vertical angle (i.e. not equal to 90 degrees) can maintain its spin and high speed and can injure someone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Mythbusters results - &lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/episode50&quot;&gt;Episode 50: Bullets Fired Up&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="393" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-08-05T23:26:56.200" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T23:26:56.200" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="550" CreationDate="2011-03-11T01:59:02.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some years ago I was one of the Home Office (British government department responsible for the police) scientists working on offender profiling.  I was tasked with reviewing the state of the field as it then was and my conclusion then was that there were no scientifically validated techniques which had been shown to make a practical difference to the course of a real investigation.  The FBI unit had had some undoubted successes but these seemed to be based on the contributions of some very experienced detectives applying policing knowledge rather than any formal psychological technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After I left the Home Office work went in a different direction and the best-known application was to the Rachel Nickell murder investigation.  This led to the identification of a suspect, who was put on trial and acquitted.  in 2008 another man was convicted for the case on DNA evidence.  The original suspect received a formal apology and compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the UK there are now academic departments studying profiling at Liverpool and Starthclyde universities.  It seems that research is shifting to broader and more scientifically based questions such as the nature of the detection process and the reliability of witness statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user387" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T01:59:02.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="598" CreationDate="2011-03-11T02:02:36.637" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, getting over the irony of an ex-action-movie star trying to make an argument against violent video games...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gamer bias in me wants to say that's silly!  However the evidence is strongly in favor of violent video games predicting violent behavior in kids.  The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization I generally look to for advice on raising my kids, and they agree as shown in this study: &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/122/5/e1067&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/122/5/e1067&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I grew up in a time when everything was blamed for any perceptible increase in violence, from rock music to violence on TV.  When I see the studies on video games my initial response is to roll my eyes and start the next round of Call of Duty.  Most studies deal with kids who play hours of violent video games a day and don't deal with moderate gaming, or address it as in the study I linked to above: game in moderation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="393" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2018-02-23T19:57:12.797" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T19:57:12.797" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="665" CreationDate="2011-03-11T02:46:03.840" Score="18" ViewCount="2202" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike fortune-telling techniques, palmistry (or palm reading) has a potential connection with reality.  Are there any studies that relate any personality traits to shapes of the hand, or lines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:23:06.320" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T16:28:07.333" Title="Any validity to palmistry?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="617" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="622" CreationDate="2011-03-11T02:50:18.437" Score="26" ViewCount="36806" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I used to live in Japan, the summers were really too much for me, especially when going to bed. The strange thing is that all the (Japanese) people would strongly advise me against leaving the air conditioner running while I sleep because this is somehow very bad for people's health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I also used to live in Thailand for a while, and I never heard anybody say something of that nature-- and their weather is steaming hot. Similar with other countries I've lived in. I only heard this air conditioner thing while in Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: &lt;strong&gt;Is there really anything at all to be concerned about when running the air conditioner while sleeping?&lt;/strong&gt; Or is this more like a Japanese urban myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I always used to set the air conditioner in air drier mode, rather than air cooler mode. It felt as cool, except that it was dry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="403" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-03-13T22:25:20.750" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T10:19:26.463" Title="Can using an air conditioner while sleeping be harmful?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="615" CreationDate="2011-03-11T03:01:14.823" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://students.brown.edu/College_Hill_Independent/?p=2487&quot;&gt;There is no relation between palmistry and reality&lt;/a&gt;.  Palmistry is generally a form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000081.html&quot;&gt;cold reading&lt;/a&gt;.  Much like phrenology, palmistry is a discredited practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-15T18:00:59.387" LastActivityDate="2012-01-15T18:00:59.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="620" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="666" CreationDate="2011-03-11T03:04:03.123" Score="15" ViewCount="1226" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been seeing occasional studies go by about the use of anti-depressants in treating depression.  Some seem to imply that they are at least over-prescribed (which may in itself not be all that bad, if the side effects are negligible), and that the primarily work by the placebo effect.  Anybody know something definite on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-26T16:03:36.117" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T16:53:28.397" Title="Do antidepressants work?" Tags="|medical-science|depression|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="617" CreationDate="2011-03-11T03:21:48.003" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common urban legend in South Korea as well. It's called &amp;quot;Fan death&amp;quot; though, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's fan death article&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some quotes from that Wikipedia article outlines the otherwise outlandish claims that are associated with this phenomenon. Generally, many people die for various reasons, such as bad health, alcoholism, heart attack, etc. and it's easier to blame something external and unrelated.  This is the main source and reason the myth propagates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gord Giesbrecht, a professor of thermophysiology at the University of Manitoba in Canada,&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smartrisk.ca/ContentDirector.aspx?tp=2968&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;14&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; is a leading expert on hypothermia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to imagine death by fan, because to die of hypothermia, one's body temperature would have to get down to 28 [°C], drop by 10 degrees [Celsius] overnight. We've got people lying in snowbanks overnight here in Winnipeg and they survive. Maybe if someone was elderly and they were sitting there for three days in a sealed room with an electric fan turned on. Someone is not going to die from hypothermia because their body temperature drops two or three degrees overnight; it would have to drop eight to ten degrees.&amp;quot; In addition, &amp;quot;the only way to verify whether someone had really died of hypothermia during the night would be to take a core body temperature the following morning. Waiting three days while the body was in the morgue wouldn't work because the corpse's temperature can drop during that time.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070110052746/http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200409/22/200409222123324579900091009101.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. John Linton at Yonsei's Severance Hospital, who attended medical school at Yonsei University, is licensed to practice medicine in South Korea:&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070110052746/http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200409/22/200409222123324579900091009101.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several things that could be causing the fan deaths, things like pulmonary embolisms, cerebrovascular accidents or arrhythmia. There is little scientific evidence to support that a fan alone can kill you if you are using it in a sealed room. Although it is a common belief among Koreans, there are other explainable reasons for why these deaths are happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Lee Yoon-song is a professor at Seoul National University's medical school and works with the school's Institute of Scientific Investigation. He has conducted autopsies on some of the people who have been described in Korean media as having succumbed to fan death:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When someone's body temperature drops below 35 degrees, they do start to lose judgment ability. So if someone was hiking and later found dead, that could be part of the reason. But we can't really apply this to fan accidents. I found most of the victims already had some sort of disease like heart problems or serious alcoholism. So hypothermia is not the main reason for death, but it may contribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He blames the Korean media for the persistence of the urban legend:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Korean reporters are constantly writing inaccurate articles about death by fan, describing these deaths as being caused by the fan. That's why it seems that fan deaths only happen in Korea, when in reality these types of deaths are quite rare. They should have reported the victim's original defects such as heart or lung disease, which are the main cause of death in these cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T20:39:29.583" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="487" CreationDate="2011-03-11T05:06:04.937" Score="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be that smoking or ingesting marijuana has positive/neutral effects on certain health issues and neutral/negative effects on others. The consensus of studies are generally inconclusive in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, there are studies that say there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15517706?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;100% full increase in the odds of suffering from schizophrenia after trying cannabis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/ha/present/Staff_researchpapers/YAn_Cui_Articles/Marijuana_Lungca9.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Others&lt;/a&gt; that say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between&#xA;  marijuana use and lung cancer, and&#xA;  that the association would be more &#xA;  positive with heavier use,&quot; he said.&#xA;  &quot;What we found instead was no&#xA;  association at all, and even a&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;suggestion of some protective effect.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Earlier work established that marijuana does contain cancer-causing&#xA;  chemicals as  potentially harmful as&#xA;  those in tobacco, he said. However,&#xA;  marijuana also contains the  chemical&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;THC, which he said may kill aging cells and keep them from becoming&#xA;  cancerous&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;- Link to Washington&#xA;  Post Article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and more recently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/marijuana-smoking-does-not-harm-lungs-study-finds/?ref=health&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Moderate Marijuana Use Does Not Impair Lung Function, Study Finds&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other studies have been conducted on the specific interaction between THC and cancer cells.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://jci.org/articles/view/37948&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt;, conducted by the Journal of Clinical Investigation states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...THC can promote the autophagic&#xA;  death of human and mouse cancer cells&#xA;  and provides evidence that cannabinoid&#xA;  administration &lt;strong&gt;may be an effective&#xA;  therapeutic strategy for targeting&#xA;  human cancers.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I am not overlooking the potential health risks that have been proven to be associated with marijuana use, but I think it is a complex issue and media reports typically focus on potential negative health effects of marijuana use without mentioning potential positive health effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this graphic helps illustrates my point about the media reports:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mtpiM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Deadliest Drugs&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastEditorUserId="35711" LastEditDate="2016-11-12T14:35:23.400" LastActivityDate="2016-11-12T14:35:23.400" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="629" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="660" CreationDate="2011-03-11T07:31:49.560" Score="16" ViewCount="702" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different sites purporting to have exercises that reduce or eliminate the need to wear glasses.   Are there any such exercises that have been proven to work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="412" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T11:57:21.710" Title="Are there any &quot;exercises&quot; for your eyes that will help with near or far sightedness?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="617" CreationDate="2011-03-11T08:12:30.630" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many places, air conditioners are not cleaned or maintained regularly. Bacteria do build up easily within aircon units and filters need to be changed occasionally. Flu viruses spread better in dry and cold air (flu season normally has such weather conditions). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manufacturers are aware of this and do make improvements, so as long as you're using a relatively recent unit and changing the filter regularly, there should be no health hazard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mentioned Thailand -- I doubt most hotels there ever change the filters (even the top-notch places would probably just clean the outside). While traveling in SE Asia, I frequently experienced minor sore throat or nasal congestion that might have been due to aircon. This is anecdotal and it's difficult to determine the precise cause, but waking up slightly sick could be some indication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="329" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T08:12:30.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="610" CreationDate="2011-03-11T08:43:35.917" Score="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;As for physics, it is really very simple, the kinetic energy is converted to a potential energy while climbing and then to kinetic again when falling, with some of it converted to a heat due to friction. The air friction is quite substantial, the landing velocity, which is reported to be in range 50-200 m/s, is significantly lower than muzzle velocity, which is usually 300-1000 m/s, but the velocity is still high enough to kill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Celebratory gunfire&lt;/a&gt; - plenty of statistics and examples. My favourite: &amp;quot;every bullet that is fired up, must come down&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are injured, sometimes fatally, when bullets discharged into the air fall back down. The mortality rate among those struck by falling bullets is about 32%, compared with about 2% to 6% normally associated with gunshot wounds. The higher mortality is related to the higher incidence of head wounds from falling bullets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in one study led by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), they found that 80% of celebratory gunfire-related injuries are to the head, feet, and shoulders. In the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, about two people die and about 25 more are injured each year from celebratory gunfire on New Year's Eve, the CDC says. Between the years of 1985 and 1992, doctors at the King/Drew Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, treated some 118 people for random falling-bullet injuries. Thirty-eight Kuwaitis celebrating in 1991 at the end of the Gulf War by firing weapons into the air caused 20 deaths from falling bullets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firearms expert Julian Hatcher has studied falling bullets and found that on average .30 caliber rounds reach terminal velocities of 300 feet per second (90 m/s) and larger .50 caliber bullets have a terminal velocity of 500 feet per second (150 m/s). A bullet traveling at only 150 feet per second (46 m/s) to 170 feet per second (52 m/s) can easily penetrate human skin and at 200 feet per second (60 m/s), that same bullet can penetrate the skull.  Even a bullet that does not penetrate the skull may still result in an intracranial injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T05:39:24.457" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="641" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-11T09:06:42.503" Score="29" ViewCount="1052" Body="&lt;p&gt;In France &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphology&quot;&gt;Graphology&lt;/a&gt; is still actively used by some recruiters in order to attempt to evaluate applicants' personality from their handwriting (therefore covering letters in France are still handwritten in most cases as otherwise they could go to the trash).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there studies that can prove either that graphology is efficient or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example here are examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could you (even without being conscious of it) have a prejudice about a person that will draw a circle, not a dot, when drawing the letters ‘i’ and ‘j’?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could you think that a person of which the writing is not easily readable that this person will have difficulties re-reading what they themselves wrote on scratchpad?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could you think of a person with a very regular, scholar, cursive script that the person does what they are told to do?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some arguments that people in favour of graphology could have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastEditorUserId="4" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T18:58:53.583" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T14:44:59.333" Title="Is graphology grounded?" Tags="|psychology|graphology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="643" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="644" CreationDate="2011-03-11T09:25:01.217" Score="16" ViewCount="993" Body="&lt;p&gt;First it was New Zealand, now Japan -- two major earthquakes in a span of less than 2 months. Cults could use this opportunity to sell their end-day stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joking aside, is there any scientific evidence showing that seismic activity has become more and more frequent these days? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="214" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-04-22T08:45:58.787" LastActivityDate="2016-04-22T08:45:58.787" Title="Has there been an increase in the frequency of seismic activity?" Tags="|history|geology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2016-04-23T02:35:41.600" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="643" CreationDate="2011-03-11T09:36:17.080" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually not. It happened that those two earthquakes get media attention because they happen in developed countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually there are earthquakes &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php&quot;&gt;daily&lt;/a&gt; around the Earth. A vast majority of them is not harmful because the magnitude is low, or also because the epicentre lies from inhabited places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion&quot;&gt;Clustering illusion&lt;/a&gt; to know what can produce the feeling you describe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastEditorUserId="71" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T14:42:07.637" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T14:42:07.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="607" CreationDate="2011-03-11T10:31:27.227" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my work on Rett syndrome (a neurodevelopmental disorder), I once came across a paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12503649&quot;&gt;claiming&lt;/a&gt; that vaccination could be to blame for Rett syndrome. I'm rather ... skeptical about the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, scientists were &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2065973/&quot;&gt;able&lt;/a&gt; to put some parents' minds to rest about vaccination causing Rett syndrome. An Australian girl developed symptoms of Rett syndrome, and died of pneumonia at the age of 7 in 1991. In 2004, scientists analyzed DNA from a tooth they had kept, and confirmed she had had a mutation that causes Rett syndrome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was a relief to the parents, as she had been vaccinated a month before symptoms of Rett syndrome started, and she had a fall when she was 17 months - they were worried whether one of those things had caused their daughter's disorder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Declaration - I used to work with some of the people who retrospectively diagnosed the girl)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T10:31:27.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="598" CreationDate="2011-03-11T10:34:37.740" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We don’t know&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite many studies conducted, so far no consensus has emerged whether violent video games cause a long-term, sustained increase in violent behaviour. On the other hand, it seems increasingly likely that &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; such an effect exists, it is probably small: at most, video games have a minor overall influence on violent behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_video_games&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;break-down of the discussion&lt;/a&gt; with references to the relevant studies. Given the wide variability of individual studies’ results, the best available evidence is summarised in meta-analyses, of which there are also several.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even these meta-analyses reach different conclusions, partially because there’s disagreement even about the correct meta-analysis methodology. Some of the scientific publications in this area are unusually vitriolic, and personally attack other scientists (on both sides of the debate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here’s a representative (rather than exhaustive) overview of different conclusions, focussing on the more recent meta-analyses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0018251&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;DOI: 10.1037/a0018251&quot;&gt;2010 study by Craig A. Anderson &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp; al.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; concludes that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[t]he evidence strongly suggests that exposure to violent video&#xA;games is a causal risk factor for increased aggressive behavior,&#xA;aggressive cognition, and aggressive affect and&#xA;for decreased empathy and prosocial behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;playing violent video games is a significant risk factor for both short-term and long-term increases in physically aggressive behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study was variously criticised based on a number of methodological flaws. In particular, &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000074&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;DOI: 10.1037/bul0000074&quot;&gt;one reanalysis by Joseph Hilgard &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp; al.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; points out that unaccounted-for publication bias decreases the evidence, potentially rendering it non-significant. The original authors acknowledge some of these shortcomings but stand by their original conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615592234&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;DOI: 10.1177/1745691615592234&quot;&gt;2015 study by Christpher J. Ferguson&lt;/a&gt; reached pretty much the opposite conclusion: that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;video game influences on increased aggression […] are minimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The meta-analysis spends significant time identifying weaknesses in existing studies, and attempts to work around these, in particular publication bias. This study was published alongside multiple reviews which both support and criticise the study. One criticism in particular is the original study’s reliance on controlled effect sizes which, in a nutshell, attempt to account for independent factors that influence the effect size (= the magnitude of the measured effect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proponents of using controlled effect size point out that lack of controlling for these independent variables is known to over-inflate effect size (&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615592236&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;DOI: 10.1177/1745691615592236&quot;&gt;Patrick M. Markey, 2015&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615592234&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;DOI: 10.1177/1745691615592234&quot;&gt;Ferguson&lt;/a&gt; includes the following example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;boys play more violent video games […] and are also more aggressive than girls. Thus, one is likely to see bivariate correlations between video game violence use and aggression that are simple gender effects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Detractors such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615592239&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;DOI: 10.1177/1745691615592239&quot;&gt;Paul Boxer &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp; al.&lt;/em&gt; (2015)&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615592235&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;DOI: 10.1177/1745691615592235&quot;&gt;Hannah R. Rothstein &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp;&lt;/em&gt; Brad J. Bushman (2015)&lt;/a&gt; contend that this kind of adjustment is “unreliable and invalid” because it “overcorrects”, and “because the statistical theory underlying meta-analytic procedures assumes that one is working with raw (zero-order) correlations” (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0018251&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;DOI: 10.1037/a0018251&quot;&gt;Anderson &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp; al.&lt;/em&gt;, 2010&lt;/a&gt;) — in other words, use of controlled effect sizes violates the assumption that effects such as those in the above example do not exist.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691615593353&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;DOI: 10.1177/1745691615593353&quot;&gt;In a reply&lt;/a&gt;, Ferguson calls these claims “problematic both statistically and theoretically”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, Ferguson’s meta-analysis was subsequently defended on theoretical grounds (in particular regarding the use of controlled effect sizes) as well as reanalysed &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691616635599&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;DOI: 10.1177/1745691616635599&quot;&gt;in 2016 by Luis Furuya-Kanamori &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp;&lt;/em&gt; Suhail A. Doi&lt;/a&gt; using “improved meta-analytical model” (to invalidate the main criticism discussed above). This study&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;confirmed the main results of Ferguson’s meta-analysis. There was a significant yet very small effect on aggressive behavior of exposure to both general […] and violent […] video games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.200373&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;DOI: 10.1098/rsos.200373&quot;&gt;2020 study by Aaron Drummond &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp; al.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; focussing on long-term effects found that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[o]verall, longitudinal studies do not appear to support substantive long-term links between aggressive game content and youth aggression. Correlations between aggressive game content and youth aggression appear better explained by methodological weaknesses and researcher expectancy effects than true effects in the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;effect sizes were lower for better-designed studies and those with less evidence for researcher expectancy effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is: the higher quality the study, the less evidence for a causal effect of violent video games on violent behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the wide variety of conclusions from research studies, it’s instructive to survey the opinion of researchers in the field. This was done by &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000046&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;DOI: 10.1037/ppm0000046&quot;&gt;Brad J. Bushman &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp; al.&lt;/em&gt; in 2015&lt;/a&gt;. Their conclusion is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although a few vocal researchers claim there is a “debate” on this issue, the overwhelming majority of researchers believe that violent media increase aggression in children, and that the relationship is causal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notably, they surveyed not only the effect of video games but of other types of “violent media” as well, including “violent literature” and “violent music”, which the majority of researchers &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; believes can increase aggression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, there is no majority who believes that this causal effect is a “major factor in real-life violence”. In other words: even though most believe there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an effect, most either believe that this effect is ultimately not a major factor, or don’t know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9er4P.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9er4P.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Numbers from &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000046&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;DOI: 10.1037/ppm0000046&quot;&gt;Brad J. Bushman &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp; al.&lt;/em&gt; (2015)&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; This was written in 2011, and depressingly the answer hasn’t really changed, though the number of studies has. One thing that &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; changed is that studies have become less likely to argue for large, causal effects.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Stated like this, the claim seems obviously false, since it is clearly contradicted by the example. However, it’s not that simple: the &lt;em&gt;statistical model&lt;/em&gt; underlying meta-analyses uses a &lt;em&gt;simplifying assumption&lt;/em&gt;. The simplifying assumption may produce false results because it does not reflect reality, as argued e.g. by Ferguson. However, on the flip side, when using different assumptions one needs to adjust the statistical model. His critics claim Ferguson has not done this: he continues to use a statistical model that assumes different inputs from what he provides by controlling the effect size.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2020-08-31T18:07:44.680" LastActivityDate="2020-08-31T18:07:44.680" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="650" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-11T10:56:04.373" Score="24" ViewCount="2751" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every summer in England crop circles make the news for a few days. But journalists never really attempt to &quot;solve&quot; the question of who is responsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HGkJU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;crop circle&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130929191539/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crop_circles_Swirl.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are crop circles man-made? How?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-02-04T05:27:55.023" LastActivityDate="2019-02-04T05:33:28.690" Title="Are crop circles man-made?" Tags="|united-kingdom|agriculture|ufo|crop-circles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="651" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="663" CreationDate="2011-03-11T11:06:43.257" Score="38" ViewCount="10062" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the movies, fingerprints identification always works, with no mistakes. How close is this to reality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:41:03.910" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T23:37:03.570" Title="How accurate are fingerprints at identifying somebody?" Tags="|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="598" CreationDate="2011-03-11T11:11:40.643" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Video games have been shown to raise aggression when played and directly afterwards and much of the evidence I have seen points to the effect described above whereby violent people are attracted to violent video games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is little to link violence to explicit video games but some that suggests in some cases it may increase anti-social behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly a caveat - research on violence and video games is limited, from Adachi et al (2011) &quot;The effect of violent video games on aggression: Is it more than just the violence?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Experimental research has shown that playing violent video games&#xA;  produces higher levels of aggressive cognition, aggressive affect,&#xA;  physiological arousal, and aggressive behavior (in the short-term)&#xA;  than nonviolent video games. However, there are two major limitations&#xA;  with these investigations. First, the majority of experimental studies&#xA;  that have compared the effects of violent versus non-violent video&#xA;  games on aggression have failed to equate these games in terms of&#xA;  competitiveness, difficulty, and pace of action. Thus, although the&#xA;  common finding is that violent video games produce higher levels of&#xA;  aggression than non-violent video games, other unmatched factors&#xA;  beyond the actual violent content may be responsible for the elevated&#xA;  levels of aggression. Second, previous experimental studies have&#xA;  tended to use a measure of aggression that may also measure&#xA;  competitiveness, leading to questions about whether violent video&#xA;  games are related to aggression or competitiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the subject of violent video games having negative outcomes, Gentile and Anderson stated in in &quot;Taking Sides&quot; (p. 1098-5409):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gentile and Anderson believe the research has made it clear that&#xA;  playing violent videogames leads to violent behavior. These&#xA;  researchers claim that several things happen when a child is playing&#xA;  violent games: an increase in physiological arousal, aggressive&#xA;  cognitions and emotions, aggressive behaviors, and decreased&#xA;  pro-social behaviors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the co-author (the book is a debate type thing) states: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That there is not a causal connection between violent video games and&#xA;  violent behavior. In the second article, she summarizes several of her&#xA;  relevant research studies, including multiple qualitative and&#xA;  quantitative projects, a survey of over 1,000 middle school-aged&#xA;  children, and in-depth conversations with 42 youths in focus groups.&#xA;  While she allows that some individuals may have bad experiences with&#xA;  video games, she reports that playing such games, even violent ones,&#xA;  is a normal part of adolescent development. Indeed, they may even have&#xA;  pro-social and relationship-building consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Williams (2011) &quot;The effects of homophily, identification, and violent video games on players&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After an experiment with 148 male participants, results indicated that&#xA;  skinning a video game character to physically resemble the player led&#xA;  to greater identification and psychological involvement with the&#xA;  game's character but did little to impact the feeling of presence.&#xA;  Exposure to violent content also led to greater physical hostility&#xA;  than exposure to nonviolent content. An interaction effect revealed&#xA;  playing a violent game with a character physically resembling the&#xA;  player led to even greater hostility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sester and Bartholemew (2011) &quot;Violent and nonviolent video games produce opposing effects on aggressive and prosocial outcomes&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Experimental studies routinely show that participants who play a&#xA;  violent game are more aggressive immediately following game play than&#xA;  participants who play a nonviolent game. The underlying assumption is&#xA;  that nonviolent games have no effect on aggression, whereas violent&#xA;  games increase it. The current studies demonstrate that, although&#xA;  violent game exposure increases aggression, nonviolent video game&#xA;  exposure decreases aggressive thoughts and feelings (Exp 1) and&#xA;  aggressive behavior (Exp 2). When participants assessed after a delay&#xA;  were compared to those measured immediately following game play,&#xA;  violent game players showed decreased aggressive thoughts, feelings&#xA;  and behavior, whereas nonviolent game players showed increases in&#xA;  these outcomes. Experiment 3 extended these findings by showing that&#xA;  exposure to nonviolent puzzle-solving games with no expressly&#xA;  prosocial content increases prosocial thoughts, relative to both&#xA;  violent game exposure and, on some measures, a no-game control&#xA;  condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bosche (2010) &quot;Violent video games prime both aggressive and positive cognitions&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Previous studies have shown that violent video games prime aggressive&#xA;  thoughts and concepts. Interestingly, positively valenced test stimuli&#xA;  are rarely used in this field, though they might provide useful&#xA;  information on the nature of the emotional response to virtual&#xA;  violence and its associative structure. According to the General&#xA;  Aggression Model (GAM) and its extensions (Carnagey, Anderson, &amp;amp;&#xA;  Bushman, 2007), normal negative reactions to violence are expected.&#xA;  Alternatively, playing violent video games might be construed as&#xA;  engaging in positively valenced playful fighting behavior. To test the&#xA;  potential of violent video games to prime positive concepts, N = 29&#xA;  adult males played either a violent or a nonviolent video game for 20&#xA;  minutes and were subsequently tested in a standard lexical decision&#xA;  task consisting of positive, aggressive, nonaggressive negative, and&#xA;  neutral target words. The data show that the violent video game primed&#xA;  aggressive concepts as expected, but also raised positive concepts,&#xA;  and did so independently of the participants’ history of playing&#xA;  violent video games. Therefore, the results challenge the idea that&#xA;  violent video games inherently stimulate negative concepts only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="432" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T16:46:45.510" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T16:46:45.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="57" CreationDate="2011-03-11T11:18:56.533" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the theory it's based upon - very, very little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the act of &quot;talking therapy&quot; itself there is some evidence of benefit from studies and meta analysis to suggest it helps but this in itself does not indidcate that psychodynamic theory is valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short it's nonsense. But it is nonsense that in some cases can work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance see: The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy.&#xA;Shedler, Jonathan American Psychologist, Vol 65(2), Feb-Mar 2010, 98-109. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-65-2-shedler.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/amp-65-2-shedler.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abstract:&#xA;  Empirical evidence supports the efficacy of psychodynamic therapy. Effect sizes for &gt;psychodynamic therapy are as large as those reported for other therapies that have been &gt;actively promoted as “empirically supported” and “evidence based.” In addition, patients &gt;who receive psychodynamic therapy maintain therapeutic gains and appear to continue to &gt;improve after treatment ends. Finally, nonpsychodynamic therapies may be effective in part &gt;because the more skilled practitioners utilize techniques that have long been central to &gt;psychodynamic theory and practice. The perception that psychodynamic approaches lack &gt;empirical support does not accord with available scientific evidence and may reflect &gt;selective dissemination of research findings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all &gt;rights reserved)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and in comparison with pharmacological interventions: Relative efficacy of psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy in the treatment of depression: A meta-analysis&#xA;Psychotherapy Research&#xA;Volume 16, Issue 5, 2006, Pages 566 - 578&#xA;Authors: Saskia De Maata; Jack Dekkera; Robert Schoeversa; Frans De Jonghea&#xA;DOI: 10.1080/10503300600756402 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/10503300600756402&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/10503300600756402&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We investigated the efficacy of pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy for depression by &gt;searching for RCT's. Studies were classified according to chronicity and severity and a &gt;meta-analysis was applied. Ten studies were included. Remission did not differ between &gt;psychotherapy (38%) and pharmacotherapy (35%). No differences were found in chronic, or in &gt;non-chronic depression, and in mild or in moderate depression. Both treatments performed &gt;better in mild than in moderate depression. Dropout was larger in pharmacotherapy (28%) &gt;than in psychotherapy (24%). At follow-up relapse in pharmacotherapy (57%) was higher than &gt;in psychotherapy (27%). Psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy appear equally efficacious in &gt;depression. Both treatments have larger effects in mild than in moderate depression, but &gt;similar effects in chronic and non-chronic depression and at follow-up psychotherapy &gt;outperforms pharmacotherapy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the assertion that theoretically it's nonsense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Efficacy of treatment depends on therapist not school of psychoanalysis The alliance.&#xA;Horvath, Adam O. Current issue feed Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training, Vol 38(4), Win 2001, 365-372. &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/?&amp;amp;fa=main.doiLanding&amp;amp;doi=10.1037/0033-3204.38.4.365&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://psycnet.apa.org/?&amp;amp;fa=main.doiLanding&amp;amp;doi=10.1037/0033-3204.38.4.365&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also psychoanalytic therapies have, by and large - anorexia is a notable exception, been abandoned by psychologists in favour of CBT and mindfulness treatments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of Freud, and other early psychoanalysts, theories influenced the direction of psychology and you can see some vestiges of psychoanlytic ideas in some mainstream psychological theories. But I would say vestiges only and that psychology, for the main has abandoned psychodynamic theory as valid or having any explanatory power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That it was built on unfalsifiable case studies doesn't help it's cause either&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="432" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T16:31:05.843" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T16:31:05.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="610" CreationDate="2011-03-11T11:21:09.793" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/homework/s95523.htm&quot;&gt;Dr Karl&lt;/a&gt; performed a calculation of the terminal velocity of a bullet and determined that it should be able to kill someone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the bullet falls, it's subject to&#xA;  two forces - the suck of gravity&#xA;  trying to pull it faster, and the wind&#xA;  resistance slowing it down. The suck&#xA;  of gravity is not as powerful as the&#xA;  explosive gases that push it out of&#xA;  the barrel. So it will accelerate to a&#xA;  maximum speed of not 3,000 kilometres&#xA;  per hour, but somewhere between 330&#xA;  and 770 kilometres per hour -&#xA;  depending upon the weight and shape of&#xA;  the bullet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1199/can-a-bullet-fired-into-the-air-kill-someone-when-it-comes-down&quot;&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; also calculates the terminal velocity as sufficient to kill someone, but disputes the reliability of the King/Drew Medical Center figures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There is some skepticism about the&#xA;  numbers reported by the King/Drew&#xA;  team,&quot; the article continued. &quot;The Los&#xA;  Angeles County Sheriff's Department&#xA;  and the Los Angeles Police Department&#xA;  — which serve a vastly larger area —&#xA;  reported only about half a dozen&#xA;  deaths in the same period … Other&#xA;  hospitals contacted by The Times …&#xA;  reported few cases.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="188" LastEditDate="2011-03-12T00:04:29.687" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T00:04:29.687" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="669" CreationDate="2011-03-11T11:44:19.790" Score="16" ViewCount="1693" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is often claimed that lethal injections are a painless and humane method of applying the death penalty. Do lethal injections result in either no, or minimal, pain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2011-11-26T04:11:48.057" LastActivityDate="2011-11-26T04:11:48.057" Title="Are lethal injections painless?" Tags="|medical-science|mortality|pain|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="629" CreationDate="2011-03-11T11:57:21.710" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19154276&quot;&gt;abstract&lt;/a&gt; of Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics 2009&#xA;Jan;29(1):4-25.: &quot;Although there are areas where the available evidence is&#xA;consistent with claims made by behavioural optometrists (most notably in&#xA;relation to the treatment of convergence insufficiency, the use of yoked&#xA;prisms in neurological patients, and in vision rehabilitation after brain&#xA;disease/injury), a large majority of behavioural management approaches are&#xA;not evidence-based, and thus cannot be advocated.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even for disorders where exercise does work, doing them yourself at home&#xA;may be less efficient then office-based exercise, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://archopht.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/126/10/1336&quot;&gt;was shown&lt;/a&gt; for&#xA;treatment for sympotomatic convergence insufficiency in children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quackwatch has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/eyequack.html&quot;&gt;good article&lt;/a&gt; reviewing some eye-related claims. They&#xA;end with a warning: &quot;Remember: no type of eye exercise can improve a&#xA;refractive error or cure any ailment within the eyeball [...]&quot;. If you have&#xA;any problems with your eyes, it is best to go see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=43039&quot;&gt;an eye doctor&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="91" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T11:57:21.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="450" CreationDate="2011-03-11T12:32:24.083" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rasmussen.edu/student-life/online-community/learning-about-the-coriolis-force/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Coriolis Effect&lt;/a&gt; is dependent on velocity, mass and latitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Water in a sink is indeed subjected to the Coriolis Effect (just like every object moving along the surface of the earth) but the &quot;force&quot; is way too small to influence how it swirls down the drain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quickly demonstrate that you just have to throw a basket ball, walk in a straight line or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/supertanker/page.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;steer a super tanker&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;The ball, you and the giant ship all have a mass considerably larger than the water in the sink, yet there is no need to course correct for Coriolis. Other 'forces' (e.g. wind) are usually more of a nuisance than Coriolis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even though Coriolis does have an effect on the water in the sink, it can easily be demonstrated that it's just too small to be responsible for how it swirls. Otherwise we would all have a hard time not walking in circles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user440" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-04-21T11:42:51.417" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T11:42:51.417" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="651" CreationDate="2011-03-11T12:40:33.607" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Properly done, the false positive rate is negligible (estimated under 1:60 billion) assuming that the axiom &quot;fingerprints are individual&quot; is correct in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using automated matching, the error rates are MUCH higher, especially on partial prints, which the police uses too. Because the false positive rate on those are known to be horrendous, all automated matches are verified manually (though that does not really make it any better). All in all, false positive rates of between 1% and 4% are not uncommon, depending on the investigator's diligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should note that identifying a person without doubt is not the intent of matching a fingerprint in the first place, nor is ruling out a possible suspect.&lt;br&gt;A fingerprint match gives the police a &quot;leverage&quot; which may a) be used to justify breaking your civil rights (e.g. arrest, sequestration, body search) and b) gives their case a better &quot;weight&quot; when presented to the district attorney and later to an uncanny judge or jury, and c) press a culprit into confession as he realizes that there is doubtless evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like most forensic &quot;evidence&quot; (such as a DNA sample), fingerprints don't really mean an awful lot, though they are often seen as &quot;unquestionable&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, your fingerprint on the knife that sticks out of a dead body can equally well mean that you've killed that person or that you've had that knife in your hands in the shop two days ago (you thought about buying one). Your DNA on a cigarette that was found at a crime scene can equally well mean you're the culprit and stupid enough to smoke mid-crime, but it could equally well mean you threw the cigarette on the street the day before, or someone took it out of the ash-tray in your favourite cafe, just to lay a false track against a random person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is true that often things indeed are what they look like, they need not be, and sometimes they aren't. However, it is usually assumed that the &quot;evidence&quot; is infalliable, which is an increasing problem in a society where the classic presumption of innocence has turned into &quot;you must prove your innocence&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT (some sources were asked for): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One source which is freely available online is Galton's somewhat dated &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clpex.com/Information/Pioneers/galton-1892-fingerprints-lowres.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt;. Don't be put off by the fact that the book is 130 years old. Galton gives somewhat divergent numbers for different numbers of matches in particulars, they're somewhere in between 2^29 and 2^41, but all of them are in the same &quot;close to zero&quot; range. That's for a careful examination, assuming the examiner is not &quot;faulty&quot; in himself (which certainly does not apply to automated systems).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot find a reference for the 4% now... you'll have to take my word for that it was in some paper a couple of years ago... :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_McKie&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Marion Russ murder&lt;/a&gt; is a famous example of how wrong things can go with unfalliable evidence. The arrest of Brandon Mayfield in 2004 for the Madrid bombings is another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;False rejection and false acceptance rates on automatic matching can be somewhat estimated from data sheets available at biometric lock manufacturers' websites. It has to be said that a forensic computer is somewhat (2-3 orders of magnitude) more accurate &lt;em&gt;under optimal conditions&lt;/em&gt;, since it does not have the same time and computational power constraints, but the world is rarely ideal, either. If the input quality varies by 3-4 orders of magnitude, then the output quality obviously does, too. So... again, numbers must be taken with a grain of doubt. But anyway, rough figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As far as I'm concerned personally, I would multiply any claimed numbers by a factor of at least 100. Most manufacturers claim FRRs and FARs of &amp;lt;0.1% and &amp;lt;0.001%, respectively, some claim 1/10 of that. I'm seeing a false rejection about twice per day, at &amp;lt;0.1%, that would be 2000 attempts. Not only would that mean that I'd spend a full hour every day with it, but also my finger would be bleeding... this just isn't realistic.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="428" LastEditorUserId="19346" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T20:03:32.350" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T20:03:32.350" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="579" CreationDate="2011-03-11T12:45:59.423" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, chiropractics is theoretically unsound (the alleged mechanism contradicts conventional science) and many applications of chiropractic medicine could not be supported by studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;That said&lt;/em&gt;, one of the very few exceptions is the treatment of lower back pain where chiropractic treatment &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have a demonstrable effect, as supported by multiple studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, this effect is not greater than that of conventional treatment and there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic#Safety&quot;&gt;certain unique risks&lt;/a&gt; (see also the next section on that page, “Risk-benefit”) associated with chiropractic treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Sources of the above: &lt;em&gt;Trick or Treatment&lt;/em&gt; by Edzard Ernst and Simon Singh.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Singh and Ernst also warn that chiropractors come in very different flavours, from serious practitioners to downright quacks, and advise that one makes sure to have a competent practitioner who doesn’t reject the basic fundaments of medicine before proceeding with any form of therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T12:45:59.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="615" CreationDate="2011-03-11T13:05:44.427" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In men the ratio between the length of the second and forth finger &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.psych.ualberta.ca/~phurd/papers/Bailey_andH05.pdf&quot;&gt;are thought&lt;/a&gt; to be an indication for the amount of prenatal testosterone. It allows for some inferences on personality traits that are associated with masculinity such as aggression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330667,00.html&quot;&gt;few reports&lt;/a&gt; of doctors identifying some specific brain tumors via handshakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;White spots on fingernails can be a sign of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/228/2/157.1.short&quot;&gt;possible Zinc Deficiency&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hand grip strength &lt;a href=&quot;http://harvardpartnersinternational.staywellsolutionsonline.com/HealthNewsLetters/69,W1210c&quot;&gt;seems&lt;/a&gt; to be a predictor for lifespan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of what's commonly done under the label of palmistry however doesn't seem to be backed by research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T15:42:09.383" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T15:42:09.383" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="620" CreationDate="2011-03-11T13:15:48.927" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt; Antidepressants have been around for more than fifty years and are effective in treating depressive disorders. They do absolutely work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've been seeing occasional studies..&#xA;  ..that the[y] primarily work by the&#xA;  placebo effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I know where you might be getting this idea..... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some members of the press and general public are questioning&lt;/em&gt; the efficacy of &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; antidepressants based on the conclusions of a 2010 &lt;a href=&quot;https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/185157&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt;* in which &lt;strong&gt;two&lt;/strong&gt; antidepressants, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imipramine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Imipramine&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paroxetine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paroxetine&lt;/a&gt;, where used in the &lt;strong&gt;six&lt;/strong&gt; studies &lt;em&gt;analyzed&lt;/em&gt;. The analysis team concluded the following (emphasis mine): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“[E]fforts&#xA;  should be made to clarify to&#xA;  clinicians and prospective patients&#xA;  that whereas &lt;strong&gt;[antidepressant&#xA;  medication] can have a substantial&#xA;  effect with more severe depressions&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;  there is little evidence to suggest .&#xA;  . . specific pharmacological benefit&#xA;  for the majority of patients with less&#xA;  severe acute depressions.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of the confusion about the use of these drugs comes from using the term &quot;depression&quot; out of a medical context. There is a big difference between feeling &lt;em&gt;depressed&lt;/em&gt; for a few days and having a &lt;em&gt;depressive disorder&lt;/em&gt;. From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nimh.nih.gov/index.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NIMH&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a person has a depressive&#xA;  disorder, it interferes with daily&#xA;  life, normal functioning, and causes&#xA;  pain for both the person with the&#xA;  disorder and those who care about him&#xA;  or her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some general forms of depressive disorder (also from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/depression/index.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NIMH&lt;/a&gt;)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Major depressive disorder, also called major depression, is&#xA;  characterized by a combination of&#xA;  symptoms that interfere with a&#xA;  person's ability to work, sleep,&#xA;  study, eat, and enjoy once–pleasurable&#xA;  activities. Major depression is&#xA;  disabling and prevents a person from&#xA;  functioning normally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Dysthymic disorder, also called dysthymia, is characterized by&#xA;  long–term (two years or longer) but&#xA;  less severe symptoms that may not&#xA;  disable a person but can prevent one&#xA;  from functioning normally or feeling&#xA;  well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Psychotic depression, which occurs when a severe depressive illness is&#xA;  accompanied by some form of psychosis,&#xA;  such as a break with reality,&#xA;  hallucinations, and delusions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;**&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt; can never follow the rules of science, for example being double-blind, controlled, or proposing a way to falsify the theory in question. It is only a statistical examination of scientific studies, not an actual scientific study, itself.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anybody know something definite on&#xA;  this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;JAMA Psychiatry&lt;/a&gt; is a good starting point for researching the research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some random supporting research on antidepressants.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychiatrist.com/JCP/article/Pages/2003/v64n11/v64n1111.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Long-term antidepressant efficacy&#xA;and safety of olanzapine/fluoxetine&#xA;combination: A 76-week open-label&#xA;study&lt;/a&gt; Conclusions: The&#xA;olanzapine/fluoxetine combination&#xA;showed rapid, robust, and sustained&#xA;improvement in depressive symptoms in&#xA;patients with MDD, including patients&#xA;with TRD.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/497659&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Treating Major Depression in Primary&#xA;Care Practice&lt;/a&gt;   Results:&#xA;Severity of depressive symptoms was&#xA;reduced more rapidly and more&#xA;effectively among patients randomized&#xA;to pharmacotherapy or psychotherapy&#xA;than among patients assigned to a&#xA;physician's usual care.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/208460&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cognitive Therapy vs Medications in&#xA;the Treatment of Moderate to Severe&#xA;Depression&lt;/a&gt; Results: The&#xA;advantage was significant for&#xA;medication relative to placebo, and&#xA;at the level of a nonsignificant&#xA;trend for cognitive therapy relative&#xA;to placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/495012&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Serotonin Function and the Mechanism&#xA;of Antidepressant Action&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/481597&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evidence of the Dual Mechanisms of&#xA;Action of Venlafaxine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Antidepressant classifications:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin%E2%80%93norepinephrine_reuptake_inhibitor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Serotonin–norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_serotonin_reuptake_inhibitor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_inhibitor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricyclic_antidepressant&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T16:53:28.397" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T16:53:28.397" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="651" CreationDate="2011-03-11T13:17:40.657" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Germany the Chaos Computer Club &lt;a href=&quot;http://dasalte.ccc.de/biometrie/fingerabdruck_kopieren?language=en&quot;&gt;developed&lt;/a&gt; a cheap technique to copy fingerprint based on a photograph of the correct fingerprint from a glass bottle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theengineer.co.uk/news/doubts-cast-on-fingerprint-security-for-online-banking/1006622.article&quot;&gt;Some people&lt;/a&gt; also don't have clear fingerprints and the commenly used technqiues don't work with them with the same certainty that the work with people who have clear fingerprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T13:17:40.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="658" CreationDate="2011-03-11T13:26:42.320" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The killing is done in several steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the convicted are given a high dose of barbiturates (about 10-15 times the normal dose), which causes them to fall unconscious within a few seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then pancuronium, and finally a massive overdose of potassium chloride are injected. The former is similar to curare (indio arrow poison) in that it paralyzes muscles (thus causing apnea). If the person was not already unconscious at that time, this would be very inconvenient (not strictly painful, but nevertheless really really uncomfortable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter (potassium chloride) is actually harmless, but in this massive overdose causes a cardiac arrest and convulsions. Which, again, would be very painful, if the person was not already unconscious, and under pancuronium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short, yes. Painless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="428" LastEditorUserId="428" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T22:06:53.373" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T22:06:53.373" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="535" CreationDate="2011-03-11T16:31:31.940" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Various sources indicate the overall incidence of intraoperative awareness &lt;b&gt;with recall&lt;/b&gt; is about 0.2 – 3%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Modern anaesthesia consists of three agents - a light dose of painkiller, a paralyzing drug, and an amnesic agent that blocks memory of the experience - most patients do not remember awakening and so do not report it to their doctors. The paralyzing drug prevents any struggle or gesture as sign of distress so the surgeon, the anaesthesiologists, and nurse cannot see that the patient is awake. Some experimental studies estimate the rate of awareness may be as high as 44%.&lt;a href=&quot;http://ezinearticles.com/?Awake-And-Paralyzed-During-Surgery&amp;amp;id=182472&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;*&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means that overall rate would be higher if all cases are added, but it is impossible as patients with amnesia don’t report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to know what the rate of UNNOTICED cases is during operation but I failed to get answer. Now I see why – even recorded data is quite loose and doesn’t include all cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it simple – there is big grey area where data collection is impossible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Awareness with recall / noticed by clinical assessment (pulse, blood pressure, sweating, lacrimation, skin conductance, lower oesophageal contractility, isolated forearm technique, EGG, BIS&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frca.co.uk/article.aspx?articleid=100504&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;*&lt;/a&gt; ) – &lt;b&gt;possible to collect data&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Awareness with no recall / noticed by clinical assessment - &lt;b&gt;possible to collect data&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Awareness with recall / unnoticed by clinical assessment – &lt;b&gt;possible to collect data IF patient is willing to report.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Awareness with no recall / unnoticed by clinical assessment - &lt;b&gt;impossible  to collect data&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Is it possible to monitor depth of the anaesthesia, so awareness is always noticed? &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theiaforum.org/Article_Folder/measuring-depth-of-anaesthesia-available-monitoring-systems.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This overview on the currently (2008) available monitoring systems &#xA;&lt;/a&gt; gives the list of methods :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A. Subjective methods&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Autonomic response&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Patient Response to Surgical Stimulus (PSRT) scoring system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Isolated forearm technique&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;B. Objective methods&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spontaneous surface electromyogram (SEMG)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lower oesophageal contractility (LOC)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Heart rate variability (HRV)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Electroencephalogram and derived indices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evoked potentials&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reliability of all those methods depends on chosen anaesthetic agent, hypnotic drug, type of surgery. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bispectral_index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bispectral Index (BIS)&lt;/a&gt; seams to be the best method, but it also have some shortcomings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At present, no monitoring system has been found to measure the depth of anaesthesia reliably for all patients and all anaesthetic agents. All available monitors are no predictors, whether depth of anaesthesia is sufficient for the next painful surgical stimulus. They can only monitor the anaesthetic state at the time of measurement. There is no &quot;golden number&quot; predicting absolutely safely that the patient is in adequate anaesthesia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastEditorUserId="41888" LastEditDate="2018-12-02T17:01:38.020" LastActivityDate="2018-12-02T17:01:38.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="684" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="699" CreationDate="2011-03-11T16:48:23.517" Score="22" ViewCount="894" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge traditional lie detectors don't really detect lies but rather blood pressure, pulse, etc. and can be fooled with sufficient self control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about Functional MRI? Can FMRI be used to develop a definitive lie detector? Is there a part of the brain which is active when telling lies versus the truth? and does this work cross-culturally? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="319" LastActivityDate="2011-12-14T16:38:24.067" Title="Can Functional MRI be used to determine if someone is lying?" Tags="|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="136" CreationDate="2011-03-11T17:32:55.387" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;MIT neuroscientists published a &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/moral-control-0330.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; which provides evidence that a magnetic field applied to certain portions of the brain can impact morality judgements.  If true, that seems to be a clear example of a magnet's noticeable effect on humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When we judge an action as morally right or wrong, we rely on our&#xA;  capacity to infer the actor’s mental states (e.g., beliefs, intentions).&#xA;  Here, we test the hypothesis that the right temporoparietal junction&#xA;  (RTPJ), an area involved in mental state reasoning, is necessary for&#xA;  making moral judgments. In two experiments, we used transcranial&#xA;  magnetic stimulation (TMS) to disrupt neural activity in the RTPJ&#xA;  transiently before moral judgment (experiment 1, ofﬂine stimulation) and during moral judgment (experiment 2, online stimulation).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In both experiments, TMS to the RTPJ led participants to rely less on&#xA;  the actor’s mental states. A particularly striking effect occurred for&#xA;  attempted harms (e.g., actors who intended but failed to do harm):&#xA;  Relative to TMS to a control site, TMS to the RTPJ caused participants&#xA;  to judge attempted harms as less morally forbidden and more&#xA;  morally permissible. Thus, interfering with activity in the RTPJ disrupts the capacity to use mental states in moral judgment, especially&#xA;  in the case of attempted harms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/03/11/0914826107.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Disruption of the right temporoparietal junction with transcranial magnetic stimulation reduces the role of beliefs in moral judgments&lt;/a&gt; by Liane Young, Joan Albert Camprodon, Marc Hauser, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, and Rebecca Saxe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T14:54:31.170" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T14:54:31.170" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-05-06T14:54:31.170" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="695" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="697" CreationDate="2011-03-11T18:28:05.323" Score="10" ViewCount="914" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, with Japan in the news today, weird theories about earthquakes are at the forefront again.   The theory that solar flares are correlated with earthquakes came up, so of course I tried to find some information online.  To my surprise there seems to be quite a bit.  Does &lt;a href=&quot;http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AGUSMIN33A..03J&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; appear to be credible research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="67" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:11:49.280" LastActivityDate="2012-01-14T15:11:49.280" Title="Do solar flares increase the probability of an earthquake?" Tags="|geology|causality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="695" CreationDate="2011-03-11T18:39:23.153" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;NASA data would indicate that there is no &lt;em&gt;causal&lt;/em&gt; relationship.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;With the sheer number of earthquakes that are happening on the earth on a daily basis&lt;/a&gt;, there is absolutely a correlation in &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; between any solar flare and the earthquake itself (just like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;clustering illusion&lt;/a&gt;), thus people will tend to commit the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;post hoc ergo propter hoc&lt;/a&gt; fallacy.  However, the causal relation ship is not established, and would seem to be tenuous at best.  Considering the very disparate causes and mechanisms related to each phenomenon, the link is very unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some additional information:  Along with solar flares, there is speculation about the &quot;super moon&quot; causing the earthquake in Japan.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/11/no-the-supermoon-didnt-cause-the-japanese-earthquake/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This is also easily debunked&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  A geologist associate of mine also &lt;a href=&quot;http://georneys.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-are-there-earthquakes-and-volcanoes.html#more&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;has this to say about the earthquake in Japan&lt;/a&gt;.  Some good info in layman terms I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T20:12:24.167" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T20:12:24.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="684" CreationDate="2011-03-11T18:45:25.163" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently the jury is still out on this technique.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.stanford.edu/news/details/3086/The%20fMRI%20Brain%20Scan%3a%20A%20Better%20Lie%20Detector?/&quot;&gt;Getting an fMRI admitted in court has not met with great success&lt;/a&gt;, mostly due to the immaturity of the technology, as well as the cumbersome equipment needed to perform the scan.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1439171211&quot;&gt;Dr. Sam Harris thinks that this technology may become more reliable in the future&lt;/a&gt;.  However, many advances still need to be made in the technology, as well as understanding the human brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulekman.com/&quot;&gt;Dr. Paul Ekman&lt;/a&gt; is also doing a lot of work in this field.  I see we had a good chat session on this (thank you anthony137 for reminding me of this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-03-11T21:15:35.113" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T21:15:35.113" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="651" CreationDate="2011-03-11T20:02:50.250" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not very since on most crime scenes you will only find partial or bad prints. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/9341-real-crime-1-000-errors-fingerprint-matching-year.html&quot;&gt;The number of mistakes is pretty high&lt;/a&gt;. Especially when you are on the wrong side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with all things forensic it is the interpretation that is all important, these day more and more forensic experts use a Bayesian approach to interpreting the data. Meaning that they do a pre-evaluation before starting the analysis and then at the end seeing which one of the hypotheses corresponds with the pre-evaluation the most. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure that this is not done with fingerprints because of the common use of this techniques. This because it is cheap and can be automated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also a question of how strict they can be. For example a partial print will be put throught the computer and it might find another fingerprint in tha database that has 5 common points. This would be low for a complete print where they would speak of a match after 12 common points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the forensic world (I work in a forensic textile lab) everything should be about interpretation, interpretation, interpretation. The same results might lead to another conclusion based on the context and the context might change in the course of an investigation because of additional evidence, added witnesses or changing declarations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But never forget prisons are full of innocent people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="494" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T20:02:50.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="710" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="727" CreationDate="2011-03-11T20:45:20.100" Score="10" ViewCount="439" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allyngibson.net/?p=969&quot;&gt;a blog&lt;/a&gt; that stated:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ash Wednesday is a relatively late addition to the Christian liturgical calendar, first surfacing in the tenth century according to accounts written in the eleventh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the surface this seems a reasonable fact, and I initially accepted it.  However, upon further research and reflection, in the context of the blog, I am having doubts.  I am not much of a 10th Century history person, and I was wondering if anyone can verify or debunk this bit of info from that blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2011-07-14T18:57:58.283" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T18:57:58.283" Title="Ash Wednesday History" Tags="|history|religion|catholic-church|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="712" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="888" CreationDate="2011-03-11T21:05:29.553" Score="21" ViewCount="2750" Body="&lt;p&gt;The official (theirs) description is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atkins.com/Homepage.aspx&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_diet&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, does this diet lead to substantial weight loss, say a 25% reduction for an obese male, without any serious adverse side affects.  By serious, I mean things that would kill you.  For instance a statistically significant increased risk of heart attack or cancer is a serious side affect.  Also, for the purposes of this question, for a diet to &quot;work&quot; the weight has to stay down and not come back in 12-36 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T01:44:57.397" Title="Does the Atkins diet work?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="95" CreationDate="2011-03-11T21:16:31.670" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The vaccine that are commonly used do use adjuvants. Often that leads to adverse effects.&#xA;The study that approved the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pandemrix®&lt;/a&gt; vaccine noted that the vaccine gave  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wodarg.de/grippe/gesundheit/3676879.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;21.5% of children between 6 and 9 headaches&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the vaccine was used under live condition in Germany for swine flu the general monitoring system &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wodarg.de/grippe/gesundheit/3676879.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wasn't sensitive&lt;/a&gt; enough to pick up the adverse effects. Given the fact that the general monitoring system isn't working we don't know about the real extend of the damage that the vaccine has done under live conditions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2012-06-19T16:49:26.053" LastActivityDate="2012-06-19T16:49:26.053" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="716" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="720" CreationDate="2011-03-11T21:55:56.953" Score="24" ViewCount="3903" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bracelets such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://energyforceonline.com/&quot;&gt;Energy Force&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.powerbalance.com/&quot;&gt;Power Balance&lt;/a&gt; bracelets claim to improve balance, agility, strength, etc.  The demo at the health expo seemed pretty convincing but how can it possibly work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="502" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-06-19T14:30:45.973" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T11:23:06.033" Title="Do those hologram bracelets do anything at all?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="722" CreationDate="2011-03-11T21:58:44.910" Score="19" ViewCount="873" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every time there is a tsunami, we hear about animals fleeing to high ground and avoiding death.  I've read some articles that suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremely_low_frequency&quot;&gt;ELF&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_low_frequency&quot;&gt;VLF&lt;/a&gt; sensitivity warns the animals, as they can effectively &quot;hear&quot; the earthquake.  Any truth to that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-09-17T01:27:19.243" LastActivityDate="2011-09-17T01:27:19.243" Title="Can animals detect earthquakes through low radio-frequencies?" Tags="|geology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="716" CreationDate="2011-03-11T22:05:28.250" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an excellent opportunity to practice grass roots skepticism.  Ask yourself:  By what mechanism is this supposed to work?  How does the proposed mechanism align with what we know about science, biology, physics, etc.?  Also, you may be interested to know that in some countries, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.startribune.com/local/blogs/113017079.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUnciatkEP7DhUsl&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Power Balance must state that they have no actual scientific backing for their claims&lt;/a&gt;.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepticbros.com/placebo-bands/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Placebo band&lt;/a&gt; is just as effective, and much cheaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sort of demo was done at the expo?  Was it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Piu75P8sxTo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Applied Kinesiology&lt;/a&gt; by any chance?  That is a well known bit of deliberate deception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quote from the first link (EMPHASIS MINE):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Power Balance bracelets promise to improve balance, strength and flexibility and feature some lofty endorsers: Shaquille O’Neal, Drew Brees and Nicole Branagh, an Olympian from the University of Minnesota. Yet the maker of the $30 bracelets admitted this week that there’s no scientific evidence that the things actually work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The producers of Power Balance bracelets have sold them by the millions around the globe. They adorn the celebrity wrists of Robert de Niro and Kate Middleton, among others. The hologram-embedded rubbery bracelets “work with your body’s natural energy field” in ways similar to “concepts behind many Eastern philosophies,” the Power Balance website explains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These claims got the attention of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which compelled Power Balance to issue a letter that was published in various media outlets Down Under.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims,” the company wrote. “Therefore &lt;em&gt;we engaged in misleading conduct&lt;/em&gt;.”&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T22:05:02.647" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="717" CreationDate="2011-03-11T22:17:41.300" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gps.caltech.edu/%7Ejkirschvink/pdfs/earthquakeprediction.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In a study done in April 2000 by Joseph L. Kirschvink&lt;/a&gt; (PDF File), the final conclusion said that there may be some evolutionary selective pressures for some animals to develop such a trait, but the evidence is anecdotal at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wisegeek.com/can-animals-really-sense-earthquakes.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wisegeek&lt;/a&gt; would also seem to support that the issue isn't settled, but that the main impetus for this idea is anecdotal as opposed to truly evidence based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that animals can sense earthquakes is a popular one, and anecdotal stories about animals behaving strangely before major earthquakes have been told for centuries. However, debate over whether or not animals can truly sense earthquakes has not resolved the question, despite research in several earthquake-prone regions of the world. Some researchers believe that animals can, in fact, sense earthquakes, because they are more susceptible to subtle environmental changes than humans are. Others, however, argue that there are numerous causes for strange animal behavior, and that there many be a human psychological aspect involved in claims that animals can sense earthquakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Support for the idea that animals can sense earthquakes includes studies which suggest that animals may be able to sense vibrations before humans do. Animals have been proved to be more sensitive to ultrasonic waves such as the weaker p-waves which precede a major quake. It is possible that animals can sense an earthquake a few seconds before people do. In rare cases, an earthquake may be preceded by foreshocks, which may not be detectable by humans without specialized devices, but could be felt by animals. Other researchers have suggested that animals may sense chemical or electrical changes in the field of the Earth which could be indicators of an earthquake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T19:20:13.590" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="717" CreationDate="2011-03-11T22:22:50.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, the evidence available is sketchy at best. No controlled studies have been performed, which is unsurprising given the general difficulty in predicting earthquakes at all. One would think that if it were known that animals were able to predict earthquakes significantly in advance, that scientists would work to isolate what signals they are detecting in an effort to gain the same ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1549778&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE paper&lt;/a&gt; which purports to show that electromagnetic disturbances precede earthquakes, and could be used for prediction. I don't have access to anything but the abstract however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="369" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T22:22:50.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="725" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="742" CreationDate="2011-03-11T22:24:42.760" Score="12" ViewCount="1579" Body="&lt;p&gt;The alignment of ancient sites (1500+ years) in the landscape is said to be evidence of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_line&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ley lines&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the UK and elsewhere in Europe, it is said that many Saxon churches and pre-Christian monuments or earthworks can be shown to lie in straight lines. It is suggested that pre-Roman peoples used a system of markers on the landscape to find their way across great distances, and that these may have been the basis for some of the Roman roads.  Similar straight lines are said to exist in South America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the physical reality (or otherwise) of ley lines, there is the further idea that they carry some kind of &quot;earth energy&quot;, linking sacred sites such as stone circles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder whether anyone has done a scientific study of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Zzzzzzz123" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T10:09:04.673" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T21:46:23.713" Title="Do ley lines exist in the landscape?" Tags="|history|geography|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="710" CreationDate="2011-03-11T22:33:20.617" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Roman Catholic Church has the start date as 1091. Historical sources in English are a bit sketchy but this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01775b.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one seemed&lt;/a&gt; to agree with most..... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;....[T]he custom of distributing the&#xA;  ashes to all the faithful...is&#xA;  mentioned as of general observance for&#xA;  both clerics and faithful in the Synod&#xA;  of Beneventum, 1091 (Mansi, XX, 739),&#xA;  but nearly a hundred years earlier&#xA;  than this the Anglo-Saxon homilist&#xA;  Ælfric assumes that it applies to all&#xA;  classes of men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Makes the 10th century seem a good time frame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T22:33:20.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="730" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-11T23:05:50.790" Score="28" ViewCount="2250" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also known as &lt;em&gt;water divining&lt;/em&gt;, the more general term is &lt;em&gt;dowsing&lt;/em&gt;. Practitioners claim to be able to detect minerals and even specific objects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I first became interested in dowsing in my teens, when the BBC Television &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/tomorrowsworld/&quot;&gt;Tomorrow's World&lt;/a&gt;&quot; programme had a piece on the subject at Christmas 1977.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were reports of dowsing being used in mining and oil surveying, and I recall seeing (supposedly) old woodcut prints of miners using forked sticks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of scientific research into dowsing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Zzzzzzz123" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T02:19:14.143" LastActivityDate="2017-01-09T02:04:40.003" Title="Does dowsing (aka Water Divining) work?" Tags="|water|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="732" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="737" CreationDate="2011-03-11T23:16:17.883" Score="31" ViewCount="1736" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the chief arguments for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagonomics&quot;&gt;Reagan's fiscal policy&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics&quot;&gt;trickle-down economics&lt;/a&gt; was &quot;&lt;em&gt;money was all appropriated for the top in hopes that it would trickle down to the needy.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; Essentially that by providing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_cuts&quot;&gt;tax cuts&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Write-off&quot;&gt;write-offs&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_rich#The_Upper_Class&quot;&gt;wealthy individuals&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporations&quot;&gt;corporations&lt;/a&gt; the rest of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population&quot;&gt;the population&lt;/a&gt; will become more prosperous.  This policy comes from the belief that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government&quot;&gt;government&lt;/a&gt; is wasting &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset&quot;&gt;economic resources&lt;/a&gt; and by returning that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_revenue&quot;&gt;tax revenue&lt;/a&gt; to wealthy entities it could be put to better economic use. And thus the policy would create more jobs and raise the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living&quot;&gt;standard of living&lt;/a&gt; for all Americans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been decades since &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reagan_administration&quot;&gt;Reagan's administration&lt;/a&gt;, so it maybe possible for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economists&quot;&gt;economists&lt;/a&gt; to objectively answer whether or not the trickle-down policies have worked as described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So does economic data support or not support whether this theory was correct or incorrect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-04-04T17:19:40.657" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T17:19:40.657" Title="Is there economic data to suggest whether or not trickle-down economics provides a net increase in standards of living?" Tags="|economics|politics|taxes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="733" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="736" CreationDate="2011-03-11T23:23:55.890" Score="22" ViewCount="1646" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've investigated memory systems over the years and find them interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the common themes is that you should associate the thing being memorized with something that you already know. The act of recalling the familiar thing, should help you recall the one being memorized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, to remember a list of nonsense words, you'd take a walk through your house and imagine something related to the word in each room. When you wanted to remember the words you could walk the room in your mind and recall them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This approach does in fact work, for one list, but if I want to remember a new list, each room is now already associated and the act of recalling the room will now interfere with my attempt to remember the new list's items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do memory systems deal with this &quot;interference of associations&quot; or can they? Do people who claim that these systems help them remember vast amounts have an innate ability to partition their recall?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="505" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T19:13:59.480" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T19:13:59.480" Title="Can memory tricks work?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="734" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-11T23:45:44.640" Score="15" ViewCount="3977" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recall reading an article, many years ago, in the &lt;em&gt;New Scientist&lt;/em&gt; concerning a study into the effect of the lunar cycle on men. It was suggested that some men showed a physical response, such as a change in the rate of &lt;strong&gt;beard growth&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if it was part of the NS article, but this has obvious links with werewolf stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a kind of wish for this to be true. It seems feasible that some response to the moon should exist in men as well as women, given our evolution in the presence of that near neighbour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;, further information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=moon&quot;&gt;orbital period of the Moon&lt;/a&gt; is 27.322 days, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronomy/Lunation.html&quot;&gt;Wolfram Research&lt;/a&gt; state that the mean time for one lunar phase cycle (i.e., the synodic period of the Moon) is 29.530589 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biology-online.org/articles/lunar_cycle_effects_human/effects_lunar_cycle_humans.html&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; on the Biology Online website cites research into lunar influence on animals and plants. This does not specifically mention the influence on men but, more generally, animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Zzzzzzz123" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T10:07:01.243" LastActivityDate="2017-09-30T17:33:52.210" Title="Do men have a monthly cycle?" Tags="|moon|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="733" CreationDate="2011-03-11T23:47:25.903" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's easier than you might guess to clear the &quot;memory room&quot;.   I've been learning memory techniques for the past year (as I get older,  it seems like a smart thing to train).  Whenever I create a new list,  the items are usually of a particular sort,  which helps to distinguish from another list.  The only time it gets a bit confusing is when I have two very similar lists (grocery, to pick a recent example).  I &quot;highlight&quot;  the different associations in some way,  I might give them a distinctive tag based on the date,  for example.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also do walkthroughs of a clean, unassociated room from time to time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience,  the brain handles this kind of partitioning fairly easily.  I can't remember the problem being addressed in any memory book that I've read,  though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more powerful technique is based on numbers.  A particular word,  is associated with each number,  from one to up as high as you like.  Then for a list,  you associate the number word to the item,  then that item to the next number word.  The &quot;clearing&quot; problem doesn't come up,  as each chain is unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="412" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T23:47:25.903" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="733" CreationDate="2011-03-11T23:48:30.147" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This one's right in my wheelhouse.  Yes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interference_theory&quot;&gt;interference&lt;/a&gt; is a problem with using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic&quot;&gt;mnemonics&lt;/a&gt; like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci&quot;&gt;Method of Loci&lt;/a&gt; (which you described very well).  For this reason, a lot of competitive mnemonists, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Foer&quot;&gt;Joshua Foer&lt;/a&gt;, use a wide variety of different locations to take advantage of the method.  Foer claims not to be a savant, but just a well-practiced mnemonist.  He also talks about &quot;clearing&quot; his mental location out after using, although I'm dubious that it genuinely &quot;resets&quot; his memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this really doesn't seem to do much for the competitive mnemonists beyond memory tricks.  It seems like the crux of your question is whether or not mnemonics help for long term learning or not.  While there isn't a lot of evidence to support long-term effects one way or another (hmmm...I may have to look into that, though!) my own expectation would be that they can for some things.  Many know the mnemonic &quot;Every Good Boy Does Fine&quot; for the musical notes along the lines of staff paper (EGBDF) and similar ones (as with memorizing the order of planets).  These can be very long-lasting mnemonics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another question may be the amount of information remember, as some mnemonics seem to really limit the number of items you can remember.  The real issue may not be about how well the information is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encoding_%28memory%29&quot;&gt;encoded&lt;/a&gt;, although that may be part of it, but how well information can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_%28memory%29&quot;&gt;retrieved&lt;/a&gt;.  These tricks might help a little on encoding but their real power is in providing you with cues to the items you want to remember.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they work?  Yes, they really do.  You can't re-use the same tricks infinitely, but you can simultaneously use a wide variety of tricks.  These tricks will probably be the most useful for remembering lists of things too.  They don't promise a real &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levels-of-processing_effect&quot;&gt;depth of understanding&lt;/a&gt;, just an easy access to the information when you need it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="396" LastActivityDate="2011-03-11T23:48:30.147" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="732" CreationDate="2011-03-12T00:41:23.893" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, there is evidence that lowering corporate income tax (CIT) will lead to an increase average of salary. For example, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kansascityfed.org/Publicat/RegionalRWP/RRWP07-01.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Passing the burden: Corporate tax incidence in open economies&lt;/a&gt;, R. Alison Felix finds that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High rates of corporate taxation reduce corporate investment and thereby depress local wages. Using cross-country data I estimate that a ten percentage point increase in the corporate tax rate of high-income countries reduces mean annual gross wages by seven percent. The results do not support the common belief that the burden of corporate tax falls most heavily on skilled labor; corporate taxation appears to reduce the wages of low-skill and high-skill workers to the same degree. The incidence of the corporate tax in the form of reduced wages suggests that taxing labor instead of taxing corporations could be Pareto-improving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By Pareto-improving she means &quot;a change to a different allocation that makes at least one individual better off without making any other individual worse.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; In other words, she concludes that taxing labor instead of corporations might make some individuals better off and have no negative consequences for the rest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen Gordon, professor of economics at Université Laval, has a long reading list of studies on the subject available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecn.ulaval.ca/~sgor/cit/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; if you're interested in reading more on the subject. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, corporate income tax cuts more or less pay for themselves. CITs create so much &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distortions_%28economics%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;distortion&lt;/a&gt; that, even if in the short term it creates a loss in revenue, in the long run the costs are nearly recovered.  An example of this at work is &lt;a href=&quot;http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2010/10/corporate-tax-cuts-by-the-numbers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Canada over the last few decades&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/n8lS8.png&quot; alt=&quot;Canadian federal corporate tax rates and revenues&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though the corporate income tax rates have been reduced by half, the revenues (as percentage of GDP) have remained relatively steady, rising or falling with the economy. If CIT revenues were proportional to CIT rate, there would be a drastic fall in revenues over the decades. That didn't happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other taxes (consumption, property, and personal income) seem to much less disruptive. As such, cutting them won't result in voodoo economics the same way cutting corporate income taxes would. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, Xavier Sala-i-Martin concludes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.columbia.edu/cu/economics/discpapr/DP0102-47.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in this survey&lt;/a&gt; that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The size of the government does not appear to matter much. What is important is the&#xA;  “quality of government” (governments that produce hyperinflations, distortions in foreign&#xA;  exchange markets, extreme deficits, inefficient bureaucracies, etc., are governments that are detrimental to an economy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it's a bad idea to let politicians like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Robert Mugabe&lt;/a&gt; have control over a large part of your country's GDP, but many countries such as Sweden and Norway are wealthy countries, in spite of having a large public sector, because of competent economic policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a large body of literature on what consists the best &quot;tax mix.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data seems to point toward a high consumption taxes, low corporate income taxes, and moderate personal income taxes. For example, the OECD paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecn.ulaval.ca/~sgor/cit/arnold_oecd_2008/arnold_oecd_2008.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Do tax structures affect aggregate economic growth? Empirical evidence from a panel of OECD countries&lt;/a&gt; concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results of the analysis suggest that income taxes are generally associated with lower economic growth than taxes on consumption and property. ... Property taxes, and particularly recurrent taxes on immovable property, seem to be the most growth-friendly, followed by consumption taxes and then by personal income taxes. Corporate income taxes appear to have the most negative effect on GDP per capita. These findings suggest that a revenue-neutral growth-oriented tax reform would be to shift part of the revenue base towards recurrent property and consumption taxes and away from income taxes, especially corporate taxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can we conclude from this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The decision to lower personal income tax was economically sound. I will not weigh in  on whether 28% is unnecessarily low, but 70% was undeniably too high. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lowering taxes does not increase tax revenue but, if the tax causes enough distortion, lowering the tax can cause only a minor reduction in revenue. As such, the claims of supply-siders that lowering taxes was overblown, but they were not entirely wrong either. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A smaller government is better only if the politicians are untrustworthy. While some taxes are bad for the economy, that fact cannot be used to argue for a small government. Large government can be effective, as Nordic countries so well demonstrates. What matters is having the right tax mix to sustain your government. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-04-01T21:53:40.643" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T21:53:40.643" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="641" CreationDate="2011-03-12T00:50:33.843" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you were looking for someone who was organised, then it would seem that someone with neat handwriting would be more likely to be someone you'd want to hire. Of course, it is always possible that someone has muscle difficulties impeding handwriting, or learned handwriting from really strict teachers, or had their personality change from when they learned handwriting. I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6VDN-4XT2CMH-1&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=04/30/2010&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_searchStrId=1727808077&amp;amp;_rerunOrigin=google&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=0deeac62b02f50c637aad0b994e426e1&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Study results strongly recommend&#xA;  assessing organizational difficulties&#xA;  in children referred for therapy due&#xA;  to handwriting deficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be quite doubtful of any other claims without strong evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="188" LastEditDate="2011-04-22T22:14:37.307" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T22:14:37.307" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="734" CreationDate="2011-03-12T00:51:18.220" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The lunar cycle has no effect on human behavior in any way. No scientific study ever conducted has shown &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; correlation between the moon cycles and any human activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See Wikipedia's article on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lunar_effect&amp;amp;oldid=416417622#Scientific_research_on_theory&quot;&gt;Lunar Effect&lt;/a&gt; for a good summary of studies conducted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Psychologist Ivan Kelly of the University of Saskatchewan (with James Rotton and Roger Culver) did a meta-analysis of thirty-seven studies that examined relationships between the moon's four phases and human behavior in 1996. The meta-analysis revealed no significant correlation. They also checked twenty-three studies that had claimed to show correlation, and nearly half of these contained at least one statistical error. &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1: Kelly, Ivan; Rotton, James; Culver, Roger (1986), &quot;The Moon Was Full and Nothing Happened: A Review of Studies on the Moon and Human Behavior&quot;, Skeptical Inquirer 10 (2): 129–43. Reprinted in The Hundredth Monkey - and other paradigms of the paranormal, edited by Kendrick Frazier, Prometheus Books. Revised and updated in The Outer Edge: Classic Investigations of the Paranormal, edited by Joe Nickell, Barry Karr, and Tom Genoni, 1996, CSICOP.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="483" LastEditorUserId="483" LastEditDate="2011-03-12T17:15:28.137" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T17:15:28.137" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="725" CreationDate="2011-03-12T03:54:38.857" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/2981985&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Simulating the Ley Hunter, Simon Broadbent&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Megalithic sites, especially isolated&#xA;  standing stones, are believed by some&#xA;  to have been deliberately set out in&#xA;  straight lines known as leys. An&#xA;  alternative hypothesis is that these&#xA;  points are uniformly and independently&#xA;  distributed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of cool math. The bottom line: Ley lines are statistically random.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T03:54:38.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="743" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-12T04:28:03.277" Score="5" ViewCount="539" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/402/is-there-any-evidence-for-acupuncture-being-an-effective-treatment&quot;&gt;Is there any evidence for acupuncture being an effective treatment?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I sometimes have back pain and some numbness / pain in one leg.  They're nothing to worry about and I usually just ignore them.  However, a well-meaning friend offered to give me acupuncture for those conditions and I accepted not really expecting anything to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my surprise, a while after the session was over, the pain was gone for more than one day.  I'm curious to know what are the possible ways in which sticking needles into one's body could have such an effect.  Surely it doesn't have anything to do with &quot;stagnation of qi&quot;, but perhaps pinching yourself makes the body forget about other milder pains?  Or maybe it makes the body release some kind of painkiller?  Or am I just fooling myself into believing that that's got to work on me because so many other people claim that it really &quot;works&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="403" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T19:21:50.353" Title="What are the plausible ways in which acupuncture might work for minor pains?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|pain|acupuncture|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2011-03-13T07:45:39.477" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="610" CreationDate="2011-03-12T04:35:16.607" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the great scientific explanations given by others here, I'd like to share some empirical evidence.  This is taken verbatim from the Wikipedia entry on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celebratory_gunfire&quot;&gt;celebrator gunfire&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;December 1859: An autopsy showed that a native servant in India, who suddenly fell dead for no apparent reason, was mortally wounded from a bullet fired from a distance too far for the shot to be heard. The falling bullet had sufficient energy to pass through the victim's shoulder, a rib, a lung, his heart and his diaphragm.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;January 1, 1996: A grandmother in Detroit named Sandra Latham was killed on New Year's Day from bullet from celebratory firing as she sat in her living room.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;December 31, 1994: A tourist from Boston was killed by a falling bullet from celebratory firing while walking on the Moonwalk in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. The Police Department there has been striving to educate the public on the danger since then, frequently making arrests for firing into the air.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;July 22, 2003: More than 20 people were reported killed in Iraq from celebratory gunfire following the deaths of Saddam Hussein's sons Uday and Qusay in 2003.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;December 31, 2004: A 75-year-old man in Orlando, Florida, was mortally wounded in the heart from a falling bullet just before midnight. Police later traced the fatal bullet to a gun confiscated from a man firing into the air more than a mile away. The shooter was charged with manslaughter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;January 1, 2005: A stray bullet hit a young girl during New Year celebrations in the central square of downtown Skopje, Macedonia. She died two days later. This incident led to the 2006 IANSA awareness campaign in that country.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;December 28, 2005: A 23-year-old U.S. Army private on leave after basic training fired a 9 mm pistol into the air in celebration with friends, according to police, and one of the bullets came through a fifth-floor apartment window in the New York City borough of Queens, striking a 28-year-old mother of two in the eye. Her husband found her lifeless body moments later. The shooter had been drinking the night before and turned himself in to police the next morning when he heard the news. He was charged with second-degree manslaughter and weapons-related crimes, and was later found guilty and sentenced to four to 12 years in prison.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;February 25, 2007: Five people were killed by stray bullets fired at a kite festival in Lahore, Pakistan, including a 6-year-old schoolboy who was struck in the head near his home in the city's Mazang area.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;July 29, 2007: At least four people were reported killed and 17 others wounded by celebratory gunfire in the capital city of Baghdad, Iraq, following the victory of the national football team in the AFC Asian Cup, Celebratory gunfire occurred despite warnings issued by Iraqi security forces and the country's leading Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who forbade the gunfire with a religious fatwā.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;January 1, 2010: A 4-year-old boy was killed shortly after midnight while sitting in church during a midnight service in an Atlanta suburb. The cause of death was thought first to be due to falling ceiling debris until an autopsy confirmed an intracranial bullet injury to be the culprit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article includes citations to news stories and other evidence for many of the incidents listed above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T04:35:16.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="725" CreationDate="2011-03-12T04:41:57.443" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_lines&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ley_lines&lt;/a&gt; shows how to find ley lines in random points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can do some critical thinking on that yourself. Why should Saxon churches line up on lines? Why at all, and why in lines? Why not in circles or triangles, in elliptic curves, parables, sinus curves or Hebrew glyphs? Simple lines show not much fantasy or divine inspiration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without straight claims, which points exactly build a line, there isn't much to disprove. Which markers help to find a way over big distances? I would perhaps prefer to follow a river to a certain point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What shall &lt;em&gt;carry some kind of &quot;earth energy&quot;&lt;/em&gt; mean? Is that measurable or just imaginable, fantastic? You can carry a barrel or oil, a pound of coals or a kilo of plutonium. But how shall a line carry something? What does 'carry' mean in this context? Nothing? We thought so! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is nothing concrete enough to be proven or disproved - what might that indicate? In most cases it is just a vehicle to sell some books, or sell a seminar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T04:41:57.443" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="743" CreationDate="2011-03-12T04:47:24.747" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/402/is-there-any-evidence-for-acupuncture-being-an-effective-treatment&quot;&gt;This basic question was asked here before.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must express pleasure in the fact that you asked if you were fooling yourself (rather your body was doing the fooling of the mind, or as others would more kindly put it, experiencing the placebo effect).  That is a very healthy and skeptical attitude to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the previous answer reproduced for your convenience (as answered by &lt;strong&gt;Fabian&lt;/strong&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acupuncture is based on the belief that diseases are caused by blockages of your qi, which flows in so-called meridians in your body. By sticking needles into those meridians you can manipulate the flow of qi and eliminate the blockages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The concepts of qi and meridians are unscientific, they date back to a time where there was no scientific method and knowledge of human anatomy was practically nonexistent. There is no evidence that qi and meridians exist at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sticking needles into your body still could have some effect, although it will have nothing to do with your qi. There are &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/402/is-there-any-evidence-for-acupuncture-being-an-effective-treatment&quot;&gt;tons of clinical studies&lt;/a&gt; about acupuncture, but few conclusive results. A major problem is that controlling for the placebo effect is complicated, as people usually notice whether you stick needles into them or not. Some of the newer and better clinical trials used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9717924&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fake acupuncture needles&lt;/a&gt; that do not penetrate the skin. Another often used method is to stick the needles outside of the &quot;proper&quot; acupuncture points as a control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acupuncture is believed to be helpful in a large variety of conditions, I'll take pain relief as an example as it is somewhat plausible that sticking needles into your skin could have an effect on the perception of pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2769056/?tool=pmcentrez&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;review from 2009 in BJ&lt;/a&gt; concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;A small analgesic effect of&#xA;    acupuncture was found, which seems to&#xA;    lack clinical relevance and cannot be&#xA;    clearly distinguished from bias.&#xA;    Whether needling at acupuncture&#xA;    points, or at any site, reduces pain&#xA;    independently of the psychological&#xA;    impact of the treatment ritual is&#xA;    unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My conclusion is that acupuncture is just a particularly effective placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T16:11:52.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="730" CreationDate="2011-03-12T05:33:59.763" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some links in german language: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geophys.uni-stuttgart.de/erdstrahlen/erds2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.geophys.uni-stuttgart.de/erdstrahlen/erds2.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her is my summary for the text for each internal link: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gassmann: No earth radiation was measured scientifically, but radiations which were measured geophysical could not be found by the dowsers. If you put enough dowsers on a meadow, they find water or radiation everywhere, just everybody at a different location. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wagner: How dowsers failed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hartmann-Gitter: (Hartmann-Matrix?) Why did no dowser before 1951, where Hartmann reportet it, find it? Today, every dowser finds a crosspoint of Hartmann-Matrix, Curry-Matrix and underground watercourse under your bed, if you suffer from headaches. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A book on Radiesthesia and Drowsers &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prokop und Wimmer: Critique of 2 publications which look scientific in the first moment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wünschelruten-Report: Discussion of a study without clear outcome&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bericht von Dr. Hartmann: Citings of Dr. Hartmann (see so called Matrix) which speak for themselves&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wahnidee: (link is gone) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Freiherrn v. Pohl: Citings, The man who invented the term 'earth radiation' and patented an anti-radiation device, which was able to protect a whole city. No drowser today believes it's true, but all believe in his radiations. :) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a brief german discussion of a study which claimed to have proven some earth-radiation: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scienceblogs.de/kritisch-gedacht/2009/04/ezu-studie.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scienceblogs.de/kritisch-gedacht/2009/04/ezu-studie.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a english source, not why Dowsing doesn't work, but why dowsers believe it does: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sram.org/0302/ideomotor.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sram.org/0302/ideomotor.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2012-02-19T09:44:05.257" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T09:44:05.257" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="743" CreationDate="2011-03-12T10:33:02.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It probably works through the release of 'endogenous' (naturally occurring in the body) opiates.&#xA;Operations are conducted under acupuncture induced analgesia in China in particular, eg Thyroid surgery. It works. But the analgesia can be reversed by the opiate antagonist 'naloxone', strongly suggesting that the analgesia caused by acupuncture is activating naturally occurring opioid receptors in the brain. (if these &quot;opioid receptors in the brain&quot; didn't exist then presumably codeine, morphine or heroin would be inactive.) BTW naloxone also reverses the analgesia induced by hypnosis, which confirms that the 'placebo effect' is indeed more than &quot;just&quot; a psychological effect - it can reproduce just about anything that occurs physiologically! And yes it's doing it psychologically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user519" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T10:33:02.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="59" CreationDate="2011-03-12T11:01:30.190" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two more references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/04/22/1090374.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr Karl&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The myth that we use only 10% of our brain is finally being proved untrue, because over the last few decades, we have invented new technologies (such as Positron Emission Tomography and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) that can show the metabolism of the brain. In any one single activity (talking, reading, walking, laughing, eating, looking, hearing, etc) we use only a few per cent of our brain - but over a 24-hour day, all the brain will light up on the scan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/640/do-we-really-use-only-10-percent-of-our-brains&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Obviously not all the brain is in use at once. At any given time about 5 percent of the neurons are active, the only sense in which the old saw is even close to true. (Good thing, too, or you'd have the equivalent of a grand mal seizure, a mental electrical storm in which all the neurons fire continually.) The parts of the brain are highly specialized, and some areas are more active than others depending on the task at hand. But all the parts do something, and it seems safe to say that over time you use pretty much all your brain, just as most people use all their muscles to some degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is a definite no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T23:38:35.120" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T23:38:35.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="734" CreationDate="2011-03-12T12:51:15.753" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;While women do have something like a monthly cycle it's not linked to the moon. The mean cycle length is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menstrual_cycle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;29.1 days&lt;/a&gt; while the moon cycle is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_of_the_Moon&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;27.3 days&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if there would be a monthly cycle among men it's therefore unlikely that it would sync with the moon. It would make much more sense if a possible monthly cycle would sync with the cycle of a nearby female. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T12:51:15.753" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="755" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-12T16:53:40.567" Score="48" ViewCount="2930" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This question is not about nutrition.&lt;/strong&gt; I am &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; asking whether the kinds of foods that people typically have during breakfast (esp. cereals) are healthier than other foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is often made that the food is somehow digested “better” (more efficiently?) when consumed early in the day (shortly after waking up). It is claimed furthermore that extreme deviation from a traditional three-meal rhythm (esp. eating stuff in the middle of the night) is unhealthy. How much is there to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical about these claims because I have seen no reason to believe that the digestive system is any less capable of digesting food at any time during the day. Although it may well be &lt;em&gt;slower&lt;/em&gt; in digesting food at some times than others, I don’t see how that makes any difference to energy content and health consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T19:17:48.807" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T21:08:25.627" Title="Is breakfast the most important meal of the day?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="757" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="763" CreationDate="2011-03-12T17:23:21.940" Score="21" ViewCount="2892" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51&quot;&gt;Area 51&lt;/a&gt;-themed &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_Hunters_%28The_History_Channel%29&quot;&gt;TV specials&lt;/a&gt; appear on US cable TV from time to time, often times even appearing on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_channel&quot;&gt;educational TV networks&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These shows often feature interviews with people who claim to have seen strange lights or phenomenon around the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_military&quot;&gt;US&lt;/a&gt; Area 51 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_base&quot;&gt;military base&lt;/a&gt; in southern &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada&quot;&gt;Nevada&lt;/a&gt;.  Others have made claims that at one time there were whole &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extraterrestrial_life&quot;&gt;Alien&lt;/a&gt; bodies or even a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO&quot;&gt;UFO&lt;/a&gt; located in a hanger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T12:45:02.210" LastActivityDate="2020-12-10T14:23:23.430" Title="Are alien visitors in Area 51?" Tags="|aliens|ufo|area-51|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="260" CreationDate="2011-03-12T18:06:49.880" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what i've read about pain,  it's very susceptible to placebos and distraction therapy.  there's a good general pain article at   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myelitis.org/pain.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.myelitis.org/pain.htm&lt;/a&gt;   and to quote from another, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medindia.net/news/view_news_main.asp?x=210&quot;&gt;http://www.medindia.net/news/view_news_main.asp?x=210&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;at  Controlling pain in patients following surgeries has been effectively taken care of by a new therapy called distraction therapy. Doctors at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in the US have distracted patients with images and sounds from nature and have successfully controlled pain in patients following a painful procedure called bronchoscopy, which involves inserting the tube into the nose or the throat to see the lungs.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I  couldn't see any evidence that TENS is more than a distraction therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="412" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T18:06:49.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="710" CreationDate="2011-03-12T18:47:47.080" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best sources to go to for information on this kind of question is the Catholic Encyclopedia on the New Advent site.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01775b.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;entry for &quot;Ash Wednesday&quot; reads&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The name dies cinerum (day of ashes)&#xA;  which it bears in the Roman Missal is&#xA;  found in the earliest existing copies&#xA;  of the Gregorian Sacramentary and&#xA;  probably dates from at least the&#xA;  eighth century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The existence of a penitential ceremony at the beginning of Lent seems to have been in existence as a tradition prior to 1091:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There can be no doubt that the custom&#xA;  of distributing the ashes to all the&#xA;  faithful arose from a devotional&#xA;  imitation of the practice observed in&#xA;  the case of public penitents. But this&#xA;  devotional usage, the reception of a&#xA;  sacramental which is full of the&#xA;  symbolism of penance (cf. the cor&#xA;  contritum quasi cinis of the &quot;Dies&#xA;  Irae&quot;) is of earlier date than was&#xA;  formerly supposed. It is mentioned as&#xA;  of general observance for both clerics&#xA;  and faithful in the Synod of&#xA;  Beneventum, 1091 (Mansi, XX, 739), but&#xA;  nearly a hundred years earlier than&#xA;  this the Anglo-Saxon homilist Ælfric&#xA;  assumes that it applies to all classes&#xA;  of men. &quot;We read&quot;, he says, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;in the books both in the Old Law and&#xA;    in the New that the men who repented&#xA;    of their sins bestrewed themselves&#xA;    with ashes and clothed their bodies&#xA;    with sackcloth. Now let us do this&#xA;    little at the beginning of our Lent&#xA;    that we strew ashes upon our heads to&#xA;    signify that we ought to repent of our&#xA;    sins during the Lenten fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And then he enforces this&#xA;  recommendation by the terrible example&#xA;  of a man who refused to go to church&#xA;  for the ashes on Ash Wednesday and who&#xA;  a few days after was accidentally&#xA;  killed in a boar hunt (Ælfric, Lives&#xA;  of Saints, ed. Skeat, I, 262-266). It&#xA;  is possible that the notion of penance&#xA;  which was suggested by the rite of Ash&#xA;  Wednesday was was reinforced by the&#xA;  figurative exclusion from the sacred&#xA;  mysteries symbolized by the hanging of&#xA;  the Lenten veil before the sanctuary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tradition of &lt;a href=&quot;http://bible.cc/jeremiah/6-26.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;marking oneself with ashes as a sign of penitence&lt;/a&gt; is found throughout the Bible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="524" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-03-13T07:01:11.070" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T07:01:11.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="757" CreationDate="2011-03-12T19:27:33.430" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;There cannot be any credible evidence at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are literally &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrobiology&quot;&gt;hundreds of scientists&lt;/a&gt; who are convinced that extraterrestrial life must exist, and expensive missions have been performed and are planned to find proof that life exists outside of Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is to say that there is no preconceived hostility from the scientific community to accept evidence of extraterrestrial life - including extraterrestrial life hosted in Area 51.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; any evidence, it would arguably be one of the biggest scientific discoveries of all time - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.setileague.org/general/protocol.htm&quot;&gt;nobody would keep it secret&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should be remembered that extraterrestrial life is an extremely exceptional claim - as such people need to be extremely skeptical of any evidence presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give you a current example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/07/followup-thoughts-on-the-meteorite-fossils-claim/&quot;&gt;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/03/07/followup-thoughts-on-the-meteorite-fossils-claim/&lt;/a&gt; which is a very good example of how high the bar is set for this type of claims!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-03-12T19:27:33.430" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="772" CreationDate="2011-03-12T20:01:59.947" Score="23" ViewCount="3545" Body="&lt;p&gt;A unidentified flying object is just that&amp;mdash;a flying object that has not been identified.  There need not be evidence of alien hi-jinx.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My criteria for a credible UFO report would include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Verified by authentic photographic evidence or several eyewitness reports.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insufficiently explained by natural or human-caused phenomena.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Furthermore, such an explanation must not be scientifically suspect, and also must be substantiated.  There probably could be a reasonable explanation for all such events, but there must be some underlying evidence that the stated cause was, in fact, in effect at the time.  For instance, if it is explained by some human-made aircraft, there must be evidence that such aircraft was flying in the vicinity of the sighting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as reasoned skeptics, you are free to apply any criteria you deem relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastActivityDate="2020-05-18T04:15:17.930" Title="Have there been any credible reports of unidentified flying objects?" Tags="|astronomy|aviation|ufo|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="755" CreationDate="2011-03-12T21:02:04.703" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The three meal standard that people use is more a cultural than biological function.  If you look at how humans foraged and ate before we settled into cities and started agriculture, we were &quot;snackers&quot;.  We would eat numerous small portions throughout the day instead of a couple of large meals.  Our attempts to align our current societal habits with our evolutionary mechanisms don't always work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going longer periods without food is generally a precursor to attempting to gorge yourself since the survival centers of the brain may think that you are entering a food scarce time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=810636&quot;&gt;Proceedings of the Nutrition Society: Cambridge Journals.&lt;/a&gt;  This could probably be a good scientific paper that talks about how our eating habits are not quite in line with our evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Human eating behaviour in an evolutionary ecological context&#xA;  Stanley J. Ulijaszek&#xA;  Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, 51 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PE, UK&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Present-day human eating behaviour in industrialised society is characterised by the consumption of high-energy-density diets and often unstructured feeding patterns, largely uncoupled from seasonal cycles of food availability. Broadly similar patterns of feeding are found among advantaged groups in economically-emerging and developing nations. Such patterns of feeding are consistent with the evolutionary ecological understanding of feeding behaviour of hominids ancestral to humans, in that human feeding adaptations are likely to have arisen in the context of resource seasonality in which diet choice for energy-dense and palatable foods would have been selected by way of foraging strategies for the maximisation of energy intake. One hallmark trait of human feeding behaviour, complex control of food availability, emerged with Homo erectus (1·9 ´ 106-200 000 years ago), who carried out this process by either increased meat eating or by cooking, or both. Another key trait of human eating behaviour is the symbolic use of food, which emerged with modern Homo sapiens (100 000 years ago to the present) between 25 000 and 12 000 years ago. From this and subsequent social and economic transformations, including the origins of agriculture, humans have come to use food in increasingly elaborate symbolic ways, such that human eating has become increasingly structured socially and culturally in many different ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-03-13T00:14:24.833" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T00:14:24.833" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="475" CreationDate="2011-03-12T21:38:48.553" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, a mean way would be to demagnetize his bracelets without telling him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he still feels more &quot;balanced&quot; and &quot;stronger&quot; it would indicate that magnetism didn't have anything to do with it. (Of course he could argue that wearing the bracelets for so long has changed something in his body permanently by now, thus making a continuous stimulation through a magnetic field obsolete.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-03-13T07:53:55.517" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T07:53:55.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="765" CreationDate="2011-03-12T22:57:59.360" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;No UFO has ever been revealed to be an alien spacecraft. That said, we can't explain all UFOs through natural phenomena. In some cases the sightings remain mysterious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From 1947 to 1969 a project called &quot;Blue Book&quot; was run by the USAF to investigate UFO sightings. The results are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From 1947 to 1969, the Air Force investigated Unidentified Flying&#xA;  Objects under Project Blue Book. The project, headquartered at&#xA;  Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was terminated Dec. 17, 1969. &lt;strong&gt;Of&#xA;  a total of 12,618 sightings reported to Project Blue Book, 701 remained&#xA;  &quot;unidentified.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1541396&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, I would say that, yes, unidentified flying phenomena that cannot readily be explained away are quite common, 1 every 11 days on average (in the United States alone).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can now browse the &lt;a href=&quot;http://projectbluebook.theblackvault.com/&quot;&gt;Project Blue Book files&lt;/a&gt; online as they have been disclosed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-20T14:28:12.610" LastActivityDate="2015-01-20T14:28:12.610" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="773" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="774" CreationDate="2011-03-12T23:37:50.107" Score="17" ViewCount="2653" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2003/08/28/923750.htm?site=science/greatmomentsinscience&quot;&gt;Dr Karl&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And in 16th century Naples, in Italy,&#xA;  kissing was an offence that carried&#xA;  the death penalty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-07T17:07:03.517" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T00:20:53.687" Title="Was kissing punishable by death in 16th century Naples?" Tags="|history|law|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="773" CreationDate="2011-03-13T00:39:02.927" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;That exact phrase is repeated numerous times on what appears to be thousands of web sites.  However, in the 50 that I took a look at, none of them sourced it.  The best I have found is reference to a law passed on March 9th, 1562.  Apparently an anti-obscenity law.  As to how strictly it was enforced, I again am only getting references to the law itself (without any actual text of the law).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this pattern, I would suspect that perhaps an anti-obscenity law was passed on that date in Naples, but it was not strictly aimed at kissing, but other behaviour deemed immoral by the local magistrates/clergy/rulers.  Kissing was just one thing mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will continue to search for the original text of this law, but History is not my greatest subject, so I am leaving this as a wiki for the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="164" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T20:41:16.393" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T20:41:16.393" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-03-13T00:39:02.927" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="717" CreationDate="2011-03-13T00:54:52.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we determined that some animals are sensitive to impending earthquakes, we'd still have to establish why.  It's possible that some animals are sensitive to very low frequency radio waves, and we currently have ELF transmitters (there's one in central Wisconsin) that, if the Navy permitted, could be used for some research.  (In the 1990s, we drove into the ELF transmitter, and saw neither a keep-out sign except around some buildings, nor anybody warning us out.  I don't know what the post-9/11 security arrangement is.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also the possibility of trace amounts of released gases, or sounds or vibrations, since we know some animals have much more sensitive noses and ears than we do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would also help if we could determine if animals are sensitive to no, some, or all impending earthquakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T00:54:52.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="780" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="787" CreationDate="2011-03-13T04:12:49.327" Score="13" ViewCount="2128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading about the recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/nyregion/13crash.html?pagewanted=1&amp;amp;hp&quot;&gt;horrific I-95 bus crash&lt;/a&gt; when I came across a sentence that made me realize how much I dislike the way newspapers and TV journalists use the word &quot;shock&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should explain: This feeling comes from my remembrance of vaguely hearing or reading somewhere that &quot;going into shock&quot;  has a very precise use in medicine, to wit, that it is a term having to deal with the rapid loss of blood pressure, or an extreme infection, or something or the other that is at the very least scientifically quantifiable.  But often I find that journalists and reporters seem to conflate what I remember to be that precise medical term with the ordinary English sense of the word &quot;shock&quot;, as in stunned or left speechless.  In the above article, for example, a doctor describes the driver, who almost singularly amongst the survivors was not left dead or critically injured -- hence could not have suffered much blood loss? -- as being &quot;[put] into shock.&quot;  Even if that story isn't directly applicable here, I have seen plenty of stories describing unharmed witnesses of some huge tragedy as &quot;going into shock&quot;, as opposed to say, being described as &quot;shell-shocked&quot;, a word that I think is more apt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I remembering what I heard correctly? Is the article using the term &quot;shock&quot; in a medically kosher sense? Is it a precise term, or a &quot;catch-all&quot; that can be used by doctors and journalists alike?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastEditorUserId="200" LastEditDate="2011-03-13T07:22:27.853" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T21:55:54.117" Title="Is &quot;going into shock&quot; a real medical condition, or a journalistic flourish?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="784" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="791" CreationDate="2011-03-13T05:19:07.677" Score="18" ViewCount="4858" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other day I was browsing the TMZ website and they had a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toofab.com/2011/03/11/body-language-analysis-orlando-bloom-miranda-kerr-jessica-alba-photos/&quot;&gt;section&lt;/a&gt; that had pictures of celebrity couples being analyzed by a &quot;body language expert&quot;.  In essence, the guy was supposedly telling if these couples were really having a good time together or were just pretending for the cameras.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm wondering how much can you really tell from a still picture rather than a short move clip?  I feel highly suspicious on this one.  I think it's like having a picture taken of you precisely when you're blinking and appear in the picture with a sleepy / stupid face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can there possibly be any validity to those analysis?  Is there any branch of psychology that specializes in this sort of thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="403" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-05-05T11:52:29.207" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T22:48:11.720" Title="Interpreting body language from a photograph" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="786" CreationDate="2011-03-13T05:20:54.437" Score="18" ViewCount="30872" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a persistent myth, even among military members, that certain types of rounds can kill a human without actually impacting.  Myths like &quot;it can snap your neck as it passes by&quot; or &quot;it can tear your arm off if it passes near you&quot;.  Most examples I've heard deal with .50 caliber sniper rounds, although I've also heard the same about the A-10 Warthog's 30mm rounds.  Any validity at all?  What about artillery or other types of munitions killing by merely passing near a target on its flight path?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T23:47:39.933" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T20:06:50.840" Title=".50 cal bullets killing people without hitting them, via pressure wave or some other mechanism" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="785" CreationDate="2011-03-13T05:39:50.047" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there's an episode of Mythbusters that disproves the .50 BMG killing by pressure waves claim. They shot several times through a narrow corridor of glass cups and not even one broke because of the alleged pressure waves from the travelling bullet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Here's a link for a description of this specific episode &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2009_season)#Sonic_Boom_Sound-off&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2009_season)#Sonic_Boom_Sound-off&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="541" LastEditorUserId="541" LastEditDate="2011-03-13T05:44:53.087" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T05:44:53.087" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="780" CreationDate="2011-03-13T06:58:40.453" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two medical conditions referred to as &lt;em&gt;shock&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One, which might be the &quot;very precise use in medicine&quot; you are referring to, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000039.htm&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;circulatory shock&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, which is how the human body reacts to an extreme loss of blood flow.  It can be caused by heart problems, infections, allergic reactions, and several other conditions.  Symptoms include anxiety, chest pain, excessive sweating,  and unconsciousness.  It is a very serious condition which requires immediate medical attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other, emotional shock, is more accurately referred to as an &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.who.int/classifications/apps/icd/icd10online/?gf40.htm+f430&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;acute stress reaction&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  It happens soon after a traumatic event and presents symptoms of panic including excessive heart rates and sweating, a disassociation or &quot;stupor&quot;, and even amnesia.  It typically only lasts a few days at most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm sure even medical professionals just say &lt;em&gt;shock&lt;/em&gt; casually, they are usually specific: for instance using &lt;em&gt;anaphylactic shock&lt;/em&gt; for circulatory shock caused by an allergic reaction.  Nonetheless, the term &lt;em&gt;shock&lt;/em&gt; is correct in both the medical and English sense for both conditions.  But since it is so unspecific, one has to figure out from context which is being referred to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T06:58:40.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="789" CreationDate="2011-03-13T08:13:41.803" Score="28" ViewCount="6238" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.com/topics/historical-ghost-stories&quot;&gt;Ghost themed shows&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_hunting&quot;&gt;ghost tours&lt;/a&gt; in some cities probably make ghost-related entertainment products a multi-million dollar industry.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost&quot;&gt;ghost&lt;/a&gt; is supposedly the spirit of a deceased person who rises again as a translucent spirit that causes mischief or re-enacts some moment from its life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that I have never witnessed a ghost in my everyday life.  Therefore I wonder is there any scientific data at all that would support the existence of ghosts or similar spirits?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is the concept of ghosts merely exploiting the superstitions of the average human so that some people can make money and provide entertainment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-11T16:03:03.090" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T16:56:36.830" Title="Do ghosts exist?" Tags="|ghosts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="788" CreationDate="2011-03-13T09:32:22.950" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, and common understanding&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, the definition of a ghost is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In traditional belief, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a deceased person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, before we can scientifically investigate such a phenomenon, we need to understand what the soul is. Without a working definition of soul, it is not clear how we could discern natural manifestations from real ghosts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the soul is the transcendant part of a human being, in other words it can be described as what is left of a person if you take away the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Soul, in religion and philosophy, the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being, that which confers individuality and humanity, often considered to be synonymous with the mind or the self.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/555149/soul&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Practically speaking, there has to be a soul for ghosts to exist at all, and the soul must be separable from the body, through death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Belief in ghosts is based on the ancient notion that a human spirit is separable from the body and may maintain its existence after the body’s death.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/232779/ghost&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now - what problems do the previous definitions pose to scientific research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, any working definition of the soul is strictly unscientific: the soul is intended to be non-corporeal (or in other words, pretty much unmeasurable). So we are left with little or no means of substantiating a claim on ghosts - they can only be believed in, but not studied via physical detection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, as any soft, non-scientific concept, it is nearly impossible to define: on the wikipedia page there are no less than 22 different &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul#Religious_views&quot;&gt;religious definitions of the soul&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, all our scientific investigation on the workings of the mind through &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience#Major_branches&quot;&gt;neuroscience&lt;/a&gt; has been quite effective in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centromedian_nucleus&quot;&gt;discovering&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brodmann_area_17&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory#Physiology&quot;&gt;examples&lt;/a&gt; of parts of our consciousness which are physical in origin and not due a separate soul-like entity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, it is completely impossible to determine via experiment if ghosts exist. We don't know what they should be, how and if we should be able to measure them, and there are some strong indications that they would be very different from what common definitions would make them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a skeptic, this should make your alarm bells start ringing like crazy! We are clearly in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_teapot&quot;&gt;Russell's teapot&lt;/a&gt; situation where something is so vague that it is impossible to disprove, however it is clear that it is scientific nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best we can do is to debunk &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/encyclopedia/spirit%20photography.html&quot;&gt;specific&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/encyclopedia/spirit%20portraits.html&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; of ghost appearances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; See also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ghost&quot;&gt;Dictionary.com&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;1. the soul of a dead person&quot;; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ghost&quot;&gt;Merriam Webster&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;2: a disembodied soul; especially: the soul of a dead person&quot;; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ghost&quot;&gt;The Free Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;1. The spirit of a dead person&quot;; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://english.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ghost&quot;&gt;OED&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;Origin: Old English gāst (in the sense ‘spirit, soul’)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-08-14T16:56:36.830" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T16:56:36.830" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="784" CreationDate="2011-03-13T12:35:32.037" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There some research that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;suggests&lt;/a&gt; that we can tell the difference between real and fake smiles through pictures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone who pretends to feel an emotion usually isn't able to organize the dozens of muscles that are involved in the way the would be activated when he would feel the real emotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would however be very wary of an attempt to extrapolate whether a couple pretends to feel an emotion in the moment of a photo shot on the general health of their relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T12:35:32.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="792" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-13T13:12:49.353" Score="14" ViewCount="2139" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any proof that the amount of fluoride that commonly used in toothpaste is unhealthy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-26T09:38:26.857" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T21:46:39.800" Title="Is fluoride toothpaste dangerous?" Tags="|chemistry|safety|dentistry|fluoride|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-13T13:14:06.340" Score="32" ViewCount="3691" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that suggests that your teeth will be more healthy if you brush them multiple times per day than when you brush them once per day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T20:52:00.377" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T16:28:06.140" Title="Brushing your teeth multiple times per day" Tags="|medical-science|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="794" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="858" CreationDate="2011-03-13T13:29:52.143" Score="15" ViewCount="1729" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ballistic fingerprinting has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19876-2005Apr1.html&quot;&gt;used as evidence in US courts&lt;/a&gt; and elsewhere. In this method found bullets are compared based on markings the firing gun left on them. This should allow to prove which gun a certain bullet was fired from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard about several forensic techniques that were widely used but were not substantiated by evidence, e.g. a certain way of determining if a fire is arson. In the linked article it is also mentioned that some lawmakers want to abolish the database of ballistic fingerprints as it is claimed to be ineffective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How good is the evidence for ballistic fingerprinting? Specifically,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How often are the projectiles undamaged enough to allow ballistic fingerprinting?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How high is the false positive rate, projectiles identified as belonging to a certain gun that weren't fired from it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How high is the false negative rate, how often is no match found if the correct projectile and gun are compared?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T19:43:31.703" Title="Matching bullets to handguns (Ballistic fingerprinting)" Tags="|guns|forensics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="795" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-13T14:03:45.827" Score="23" ViewCount="2089" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm not asking about high energy RADAR and telecommunications installations or similar systems which can cook small animals alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard lots of stories about negative health effects of electromagnetic radiation generated by electrical generation, transmission and distribution systems, such as increased risk of cancer and leukemia for people living near electrical substations and power plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm personally not a fan of the theory, but I've seen some research results which could be interpreted both ways, so this looked like a nice question for this site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="549" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-31T01:53:35.223" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T17:41:11.633" Title="Does electromagnetic radiation from high energy power installations have negative effects on health?" Tags="|medical-science|electromagnetism|power-generation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="796" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-13T14:48:59.060" Score="8" ViewCount="1407" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has there been any legit studies that looked into it?  Anything that either confirms or debunks it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I might need the powers of science by my side when some family members come and try to convince me of its merits (and, eventually, to shell out some cash).  My initial impression was, well, skeptical. But if there is actually any evidence that it works, then I might give it a shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the product they're interested in getting:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://carmenbees.com.ph&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Body Energy Electromagnetic Synchronizer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="551" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T11:42:04.433" Title="Has electromagnetic therapy been proven effective?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="453" CreationDate="2011-03-13T14:59:55.840" Score="101" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jameshannam.com/flatearth.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to historian James Hannam&lt;/a&gt;, the trope that the people in the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat was created in the 19th Century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not difficult to see how the&#xA;story of Columbus was adapted so that&#xA;he became the figure of progress&#xA;rather than a lucky man who profited&#xA;from his error. According to Jeffrey Burton Russell here, the invention of&#xA;the flat Earth myth can be laid at the&#xA;feet of the nineteenth century writer&#xA;Washington Irving, who included it in&#xA;his historical novel on Columbus, and&#xA;the wider idea that the everyone in&#xA;the Middle Ages was deluded has been&#xA;widely accepted ever since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Real Flat Earthers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The myth that&#xA;Christians in the Middle Ages thought&#xA;the world was flat was given a massive&#xA;boost by Andrew Dickson White's&#xA;weighty tome &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0879758260&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Warfare of Science with Theology&lt;/a&gt; published in 1896. This&#xA;book has become something of a running&#xA;joke among historians of science and&#xA;it is dutifully mentioned as a prime&#xA;example of misinformation in the&#xA;preface of most modern works on&#xA;science and religion. The flat Earth&#xA;is discussed in chapter 2 and one can&#xA;almost sense White's confusion that&#xA;hardly any of the sources support his&#xA;hypothesis that Christians widely&#xA;believed in it. He finds himself&#xA;grudgingly admitting that St Clement,&#xA;Origen, St Ambrose, St Augustine, St&#xA;Isodore, St Albertus Magnus and St&#xA;Thomas Aquinas all accepted the Earth&#xA;was a globe - in other words none of&#xA;the great doctors of the church had&#xA;considered the matter in doubt.&#xA;Although an analysis of what White&#xA;actually says suggests he was aware&#xA;that the flat Earth was largely a&#xA;myth, he certainly gives an impression&#xA;of ignorant Christians suppressing&#xA;rational knowledge of its real shape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/library/russell/FlatEarth.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is the link that Hannam is referring to.&lt;/a&gt;  In it Jeffrey Burton Russell writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my research, I looked to see how&#xA;old the idea was that medieval&#xA;Christians believed the earth was&#xA;flat. I obviously did not find it&#xA;among medieval Christians. Nor among&#xA;anti-Catholic Protestant reformers.&#xA;Nor in Copernicus or Galileo or their&#xA;followers, who had to demonstrate the&#xA;superiority of a heliocentric system,&#xA;but not of a spherical earth. I was&#xA;sure I would find it among the&#xA;eighteenth-century philosophes, among&#xA;all their vitriolic sneers at&#xA;Christianity, but not a word. I am&#xA;still amazed at where it first&#xA;appears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one before the 1830s believed that&#xA;medieval people thought that the earth&#xA;was flat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea was established, almost&#xA;contemporaneously, by a Frenchman and&#xA;an American, between whom I have not&#xA;been able to establish a connection,&#xA;though they were both in Paris at the&#xA;same time. One was Antoine-Jean&#xA;Letronne (1787-1848), an academic of&#xA;strong antireligious prejudices who&#xA;had studied both geography and&#xA;patristics and who cleverly drew upon&#xA;both to misrepresent the church&#xA;fathers and their medieval successors&#xA;as believing in a flat earth, in his&#xA;On the Cosmographical Ideas of the&#xA;Church Fathers (1834). The American&#xA;was no other than our beloved&#xA;storyteller Washington Irving&#xA;(1783-1859), who loved to write&#xA;historical fiction under the guise of&#xA;history. His misrepresentations of the&#xA;history of early New York City and of&#xA;the life of Washington were topped by&#xA;his history of Christopher Columbus&#xA;(1828). It was he who invented the&#xA;indelible picture of the young&#xA;Columbus, a &amp;quot;simple mariner,&amp;quot;&#xA;appearing before a dark crowd of&#xA;benighted inquisitors and hooded&#xA;theologians at a council of Salamanca,&#xA;all of whom believed, according to&#xA;Irving, that the earth was flat like a&#xA;plate. Well, yes, there was a meeting&#xA;at Salamanca in 1491, but Irving's&#xA;version of it, to quote a&#xA;distinguished modern historian of&#xA;Columbus, was &amp;quot;pure moonshine.&#xA;Washington Irving, scenting his&#xA;opportunity for a picturesque and&#xA;moving scene,&amp;quot; created a fictitious&#xA;account of this &amp;quot;nonexistent&#xA;university council&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;let his&#xA;imagination go completely...the whole&#xA;story is misleading and mischievous&#xA;nonsense.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see Aquinas - who lived in the 13th Century - referring to the sun lighting up the &amp;quot;hemisphere&amp;quot; at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1067.htm#article2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Question 67 of the Summa Theologica&lt;/a&gt;, which is evidence that it was a commonplace understanding that the Earth was a sphere at that time. [Interestingly, Aquinas disputes that light is a body on the grounds that the movement of light cannot be discerned at large distances.  His reasoning is impeccable; his measuring instruments were insufficient; his conclusion was wrong.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case the quotes from Aquinas seem too indirect, here is a far less indirect quote from a respected authority, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bede&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bede the Venerable&lt;/a&gt;, from more than 500 years earlier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Earth is a sphere, set in the middle of the universe. It is not circular like a shield or spread out like a wheel, but looks round, like a ball.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This plaque with that quote has been on open display in the British Library: &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pawI7.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pawI7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;bede quote from British Library&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bede was a well known Benedictine Monk, teacher and scholar in 7th and 8th century Northumbria, known as &amp;quot;the father of English history&amp;quot;  for writing &lt;em&gt;Ecclesiastical History of the English People&lt;/em&gt;. He was very well known across Europe in his lifetime so it is unlikely that his view on the shape of the earth was unknown or aberrant for the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="524" LastEditorUserId="37682" LastEditDate="2023-01-23T16:20:56.127" LastActivityDate="2023-01-23T16:20:56.127" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="796" CreationDate="2011-03-13T15:00:14.900" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;While not a strict debunking of the &lt;em&gt;exact&lt;/em&gt; device you link to, I found this interesting write up at JREF.  I think the quackwatch link may provide you with additional information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/910-ow-to-debunk-biomagnet-therapy-in-less-than-a-minute.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Debunk Biomagnet Therapy in Less Than a Minute&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Written by Brandon Peterson&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Wednesday, 17 March 2010 10:32&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I recently had the opportunity to attend The Amaz!ng Adventure 5. While at Grand Turks, our final port, I was wandering through the duty-free shop looking for deals on liquor (Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel for $39!) when I happened upon a tableful of woo. Seeing as I was a medical student on a skeptical cruise, I had to stop and have my wife help make this video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my off-the-cuff video, I didn’t have the opportunity to mention the lack of scientific evidence for their claims. Even if the magnetic field did penetrate the skin, it still would not stimulate blood flow because the amount of iron in blood is far too small. If blood did have a strong magnetic attraction, your body would explode in an MRI (which would be cool, I admit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also didn’t have time to discuss the clinical trials that have been performed to evaluate efficacy. As usual with CAM research, earlier poor quality studies were weakly positive (1,2), while more recent high quality studies and meta-analyses are definitively negative (3,4,5).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also forgot to mention the numerous court rulings in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s against companies making false claims about these products. This issue is discussed extensively on Quackwatch for those interested (6). In a nutshell, companies that fraudulently claimed to treat specific illnesses (arthritis, diabetic neuropathy, migraines, etc.) were sued. Now, they use nebulous phrases such as “support the healing process” or “restore natural energy.” You know, phrases that have not been evaluated by the Federal Drug Administration and are not designed to diagnose, treat or blah blah blah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In short, magnet therapy is a great case study of CAM. The lack of scientific plausibility, the progression of the medical literature, and the FDA Miranda Rights statement are all characteristic of CAM. And if a lowly medical student can debunk it is less than a minute, how good can it really be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Harlow T, Greaves C, White A, et al. Randomised controlled trial of magnetic bracelets for relieving pain in osteoarthritis of the hip and knee.  BMJ 2004; 329:1450-1454&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vallbona C, Hazelwood CF, Jurida G. Response of pain to static magnetic fields in postpolio patients: A double-blind pilot study. Archives of Physical and Rehabilitative Medicine 1997; 78:1200-1203.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Winemiller MH and others. Effect of magnetic vs sham-magnetic insoles on plantar heel pain: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA2003; 290:1474-1478.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pittler MH. Static magnets for reducing pain: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials. CMAJ 2007; 177(7): 736-42.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cepeda MS, Carr DB, Sarquis T, et al.  Static magnetic therapy does not decrease pain or opioid requirements: a randomized double blind trial.   Anesth Analg 2007; 104. 290-294.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Barrett S.  Magnet therapy: a skeptical view.   Accessed March 15, 2010. Available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/QA/magnet.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/QA/magnet.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will note that there are things that electromagnetic fields &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do to the human body.  In particular the neural effects if placed about the head (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;God Helmet&lt;/a&gt;).  However, the main thing to do when dealing with claims like this is to ask yourself:  By what mechanism is this device claiming to work?  How does this align with what we know about biology, chemistry, physics, etc.?  Does the claimant use language that would be high on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;crankpot index&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T11:42:04.433" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T11:42:04.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="793" CreationDate="2011-03-13T15:15:19.177" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with just about any instance regarding human physiology/biology:  It depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brushing has been shown to remove food particles that will lead to decay.  However, brushing can also damage your teeth and gums if you use a brush that has stiff bristles, or brush too vigorously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20060703001633/http://www.dentalgentlecare.com/toothbrushing_flossing_fluroide.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The general consensus&lt;/a&gt; from dentists seems to indicate that you should gently brush after eating.  Although toothpaste is not required for all sessions.  And if you have eaten anything acidic, it is best to wait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140924031054/http://healthmad.com/home-health/should-you-really-brush-your-teeth-right-after-meals/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to Peter Heasman&lt;/a&gt;, a professor of periodontology at Newcastle University’s School of Dental Sciences, two minutes twice a day brushing with a pressure of 150 grams – equivalent to holding an orange – is correct practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, regular dental care (and the associated benefits that are well documented by the entire field of dentistry) &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/features/periodontal-disease-heart-health&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;can lead to better heart health&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T16:28:06.140" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T16:28:06.140" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="447" CreationDate="2011-03-13T15:34:47.757" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would surmise that it would only be effective if the person reading about this actually recognizes it in themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T15:34:47.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="803" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6991" CreationDate="2011-03-13T15:53:58.040" Score="17" ViewCount="3537" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often heard people say that celery will help weight loss because &lt;em&gt;digesting&lt;/em&gt; it consumes more calories than is contained in celery itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true and, if so, is the weight loss significant? E.g. if someone ate 1kg of celery, would it noticeably affect their weight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="235" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-03-13T22:24:55.057" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T09:55:31.983" Title="Does celery help you lose weight?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="805" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-13T16:25:28.243" Score="15" ViewCount="3573" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pretty popular in fiction is the sleeper agent who is &quot;activated&quot; by a particular phrase, picture, or sound, and who then carries out a pretty complex mission or terroristic act.  Are there any real world examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure the actually unaware, hypnotized type isn't possible (correct me if I'm wrong).  But is there a documented case of a deep cover, long term spy seeing an ad in a newspaper or receiving a phone call with only one innocuous phrase and then embarking on a complex mission without further interaction?  For example, hearing the phrase &quot;my dog is brown&quot;, and bang, carrying out the Madrid train bombing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message596172/pg1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here are some websites&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindcontrolwiki.com/develop-hypnotic-sleeper-agent/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;talk about this&lt;/a&gt;, as per request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-01T11:41:27.570" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T11:41:27.570" Title="Has there ever been a case of a Manchurian-Candidate-style sleeper agent?" Tags="|psychology|hypnotism|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="803" CreationDate="2011-03-13T16:55:11.637" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason for this claim is most likely the high content of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_fiber&quot;&gt;dietary fiber&lt;/a&gt; in celery. Dietary fiber cannot be used as energy by humans, but it still causes some feeling of satiety. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't get many calories from celery due to the high amount of fiber (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celery&quot;&gt;the energy content of celery is only 14 kcal/100g&lt;/a&gt;), but digestions itself takes some amount of energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T16:55:11.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="447" CreationDate="2011-03-13T17:59:45.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I teach reasoning in the classroom, I frequently demonstrate the confirmation bias to my students.  What I find is that they are able to overcome their bias on basic questions relatively quickly.  They don't do this simply because they are told about it, however.  It takes demonstrations and practice to start to get the hang of it.  When &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Cathcart_Wason&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wason&lt;/a&gt; examined reasoning and the confirmation bias in human subjects, he found that they would be quite slow to recognizing their reasoning error when given simple feedback about their choices.  Nevertheless, people do show improvement. In my own research lab we are anticipating examining how long it takes for people to figure out their own reasoning errors in order to explicitly examine how training can directly impact reasoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, there are instances when we appear to reason very naturally.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/people/faculty/cosmides/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lena Cosmides&lt;/a&gt; has evidence that we avoid the confirmation bias when reasoning about social contracts.  She attributes this ability to an evolved social reasoning process.  Some of my own research (still under way) shows similar effects for non-social, evolved processing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="396" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T17:59:45.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="810" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1013" CreationDate="2011-03-13T18:07:06.760" Score="15" ViewCount="6710" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the benefits of altitude training are well known, but a popular trend (especially in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA)) is simulating altitude training with a gas mask or other device to restrict oxygen.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always thought the altitude training was an immersion thing, not just during the actual training, but a cumulative effect of 24/7 decreased oxygen.  Any science to back up the gas mask training idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sherdog.net/forums/f13/gas-mask-training-1481911/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hh5UY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T19:23:09.180" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T13:38:07.010" Title="Does gas training simulate altitude training?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="814" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="817" CreationDate="2011-03-13T18:52:00.967" Score="20" ViewCount="2046" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the media, you hear predictions that the events in the damaged nuclear power plants could be &quot;the next Chernobyl&quot;, but this sounds like hyperbole to me. Are the events at those nuclear reactors comparable to Chernobyl? And what are the most likely outcomes of these events?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two of about a hundred articles mentioning or comparing the Japanese incident to Chernobyl (thanks to @Dogmafrog): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20042532-503543.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CBS&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-05-04T22:34:03.700" LastActivityDate="2019-05-04T22:34:03.700" Title="Can a &quot;second Chernobyl&quot; happen at the nuclear reactors damaged by the tsunami in Japan?" Tags="|physics|geology|fukushima-daiichi|nuclear-energy|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="815" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7546" CreationDate="2011-03-13T18:52:21.807" Score="15" ViewCount="1805" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are claims about the positive economic effects of offshore outsourcing for the poor and middle class of the outsourcing country verifiable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main argument for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore_outsourcing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Offshore Outsourcing&lt;/a&gt;, is the common economic justification that &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_rising_tide_lifts_all_boats&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a rising tide floats all boats&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  By outsourcing jobs to countries with cheaper labor markets (and/or cheaper currencies?) the outsourcing entity now has more money to spend on better jobs or on other economic activities like reducing prices.  Not to mention that it appears that this also improves the standards of living in the countries that receive the outsourced jobs (but that's not the focus of this particular question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One major criticism of this concept is that it does not appear that those whose jobs are displaced ever receive a net benefit from outsourcing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also some have suggested it is unclear whether or not &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lewrockwell.com/thornton/thornton20.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the poor and middle-class in the outsourcing country are ultimately economically affected positively&lt;/a&gt; or negatively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any economic data that directly supports whether Offshore Outsourcing ultimately improves the lives of the poor and middle-class in the outsourcing country, at least from a standard-of-living perspective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T08:50:01.187" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T17:55:04.310" Title="Does offshoring ultimately help the offshoring-country's poor and middle classes?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="814" CreationDate="2011-03-13T19:19:20.707" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The information in this answer is no longer accurate, events at Fukushima have progressed further after this answer was written.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nucleartourist.com/events/chernobl.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chernobyl&lt;/a&gt; incident was in a different kind of nuclear reactor, and involved a graphite fire and other problems which couldn't occur at this light water reactor in Japan.  Worst case scenario seems to be a catastrophic explosion in one of the reactors housing facilities, destroying the reactor casing and exposing the radioactive material to the atmosphere (I suppose the REAL &quot;worst case&quot; would be a very large explosion scatters portions of the core, but I doubt that's possible in this case).  That would increase atmospheric radiation in the local area, probably for a few kilometers.  Radiation outside of the immediate area would likely not be immediately fatal.  This would last until the reactor could be sealed. As evacuations have already begun it seems the personnel at the plant would be the most in danger.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realistically it seems there will be a detectable, potentially even dangerous release of radiation.  I'd guess people will be exposed to less than 100 milirems in a very bad case (3 mile island incident released about 80 mRem). So far I think they've measured about 10-20 mRems.  Leathal dose is about 500 mRems. The reactors are very probably damaged beyond repair.  I would guess that the surrounding areas will be off limits for months or even years, but that's speculation.  The specter of the disaster will probably cause that even if there are no real dangers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditorDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditDate="2011-04-15T06:41:04.080" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T06:41:04.080" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="814" CreationDate="2011-03-13T21:44:55.990" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think news reports take part in a natural selection process which massively favours sensationalist reports, so it's not surprising to hear a comparison to the Chernobyl power plant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chernobyl power plant had a positive &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Void_coefficient&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;void coefficient&lt;/a&gt; which is thought to have contributed to the problem. It had no containment building which the Fukushima reactor has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For these reasons I attribute the comparison to sensationalism rather than actual high likelihood of this occurring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastActivityDate="2011-03-13T21:44:55.990" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="805" CreationDate="2011-03-13T21:45:24.640" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.orwell-staat.de/cms/files/mindcontrol.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Unsichtbare Ketten by Hans Ulrich Gresch&lt;/a&gt; is a book that summarizes most of the publically known research into questionable use of post hypnotic suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Grensch there no documented case of such use of hypnosis. If someone would however do such a thing they would probably want to keep it secret. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-08T01:05:35.427" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T01:05:35.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="830" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-14T01:37:39.403" Score="44" ViewCount="1735" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the US recently went on to DST, I thought it'd be appropriate to ask this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard many claims made about DST, ranging from &quot;It saves electricity&quot; to &quot;It balances out daylight hours&quot; to &quot;It gives people more sunlit free time in the evenings.&quot; Which of these claims are true, and what evidence supports those claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I should probably consider both positive and negative effects, and not just benefits. Question title edited to reflect that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="369" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T15:46:16.953" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T05:59:49.103" Title="What are the scientifically established effects of Daylight Saving Time?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="831" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7848" CreationDate="2011-03-14T02:59:02.043" Score="24" ViewCount="53834" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sick, and my friend had me buy store brand Zicam to help with it.  Looking at the bottle after taking it, I thought the ingredients were written strangely.  &quot;Zincum Aceticum 2x&quot;, it says, when I would expect something more chemical sounding, like &quot;Zinc Acetate 2 mg&quot;.  Then I saw the &quot;homeopathic&quot; bullet point on the front.  &quot;Nooo, I've been suckered into homeopathic BS!&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I thought I'd heard that zinc actually &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; help with the cold.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab001364.html&quot;&gt;This 2011 meta-study&lt;/a&gt; seems to confirm that it does:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Zinc administered within 24 hours of onset of symptoms reduces the duration and severity of the common cold in healthy people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the particular type of zinc matter? (acetate vs gluconate, lozenge that dissolves in your mouth vs pill that you swallow)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dilutions of 1/10 (&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathic_dilutions&quot;&gt;1x&lt;/a&gt;&quot;) &quot;Zincum Gluconicum&quot; or 1/100 (&quot;2X&quot;) of &quot;Zincum Aceticum&quot; seems like there's still a lot of the active ingredients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a difference between this homeopathic zinc supplement and conventional zinc supplements?  If not, why might someone sell it as homeopathy instead of real medicine?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="155" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2011-07-14T20:46:24.023" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T16:10:13.833" Title="Does homeopathic zinc (Zicam) help with the common cold?" Tags="|medical-science|homeopathy|common-cold|zinc|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="835" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-14T05:42:56.853" Score="11" ViewCount="1659" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the first of the half of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932010&quot;&gt;current economic crisis&lt;/a&gt;, some companies began to collapse due to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis&quot;&gt;subprime mortgage crisis&lt;/a&gt; or from the cascading economic damage that it entailed.  A danger was seen in allowing some large important companies to fail.  Many within the US Federal Reserve, as well as, the Bush and Obama administrations believed that these large companies were so essential to the economy that if they were not saved from economic ruin the economic damage would be even more extensive and cascading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore these Administrations prevented the collapse of some large companies by providing capital in one form or another while they attempted to return to profitability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many have questioned the wisdom of whether or not these companies should have been allowed to fail instead.  These critics contend that it was the political clout of these companies, rather than their place in the economy, that caused politicians to save these companies.  While others contend there is a moral hazard in not allowing companies that do poorly to fail.  In their view, this would mean that in the future companies have less incentive to avoid risk, because they can depend on a government rescue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any economic data to support whether or not saving these large 'too big to fail' prevented far more extensive economic damage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or was the bail-out of these companies a waste of both money and effort?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does economic data support support either position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2011-03-19T15:28:17.570" LastActivityDate="2017-07-31T17:09:57.577" Title="In the economic crisis of 2008, were some companies truly &quot;too big to fail&quot;?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="831" CreationDate="2011-03-14T17:50:54.690" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathic_dilutions#Potency_scales&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;2X&quot; means that it's been diluted 1-part-in-10 twice&lt;/a&gt;, so it has 1 part in 100 zinc. For a 1g pill that would be 10mg[*], i.e. about the same as your daily RDA (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Zinc-HealthProfessional/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;adult male should have 11mg/day&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[*] roughly - not taking into account the difference between volume and weight, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user588" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T05:42:18.450" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T05:42:18.450" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="853" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="856" CreationDate="2011-03-14T18:01:22.077" Score="15" ViewCount="1396" Body="&lt;p&gt;The discovery of several new &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/animals/zombie-ants-fungus-amazon-110303.html&quot;&gt;ant zombie fungi&lt;/a&gt; got a lot of media attention over the last two weeks.  The fungi take hold over ants and cause them to carry out specific actions beneficial to the propagation of the individual fungus infection.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical that a &quot;higher order&quot; animal, meaning a fish or a bird or a mammal, could be &quot;zombified&quot; in such a way that they carry out what amounts to programed, predictable, and sophisticated commands.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there ever been a case where a substance was introduced into the biology of a higher order animal, causing them to carry out these kind of actions?  Doesn't have to be a fungus, even a manufactured and complex &quot;poison&quot; would count, but the outcome has to be a pretty complex action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: substances that increase suggestibility don't count.  After the substance is introduced, the subject needs to carry out the activity without any outside intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditorUserId="110" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T18:45:17.940" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T09:37:35.040" Title="Can a fungus or other parasites turn a high order animal into a zombie that carries out specific actions?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|ethology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="830" CreationDate="2011-03-14T18:23:45.747" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-daylight-saving-times-save-energy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I read a Scientific American article on this a while back&lt;/a&gt;.  It had this to say about Daylight Savings in the USA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People may think that with the time shift, they are conserving electricity otherwise spent on lighting. But recent studies have cast doubt on the energy argument—some research has even found that it ultimately leads to greater power use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The observed drop in energy use of 0.2 percent fell within the statistical margin of error of 1.5 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also addresses concerns about an increase in heart attacks, but also lowered traffic accidents.  In today's society, I think that the idea persists mostly out of momentum more than sound science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T05:59:49.103" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="853" CreationDate="2011-03-14T18:31:25.580" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Toxoplasma gondii&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1690701/pdf/11007336.pdf&quot;&gt;have been reported&lt;/a&gt; to make rats less fearful of cats, and may even cause the rats to seek out cat-scented areas. Usually rats would avoid cat-scented areas, but the infection by the parasite can subtly change this behaviour without impacting other behaviours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing this behaviour makes a lot of sense for the parasites as cats are its primary host and it can thereby increase its transmission rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T18:31:25.580" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="794" CreationDate="2011-03-14T19:43:31.703" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best information I've been able to find is a section from a National Academies report titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=12162&amp;amp;page=70&quot;&gt;Ballistic Imaging (pdf)&lt;/a&gt;. I was also able to find the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nraila.org/media/PDFs/CADOJ_report.pdf&quot;&gt;Technical Evaluation (pdf)&lt;/a&gt; for a report to the California Department of Justice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, they do not answer any of the specific questions you raised in your post, and the studies they reference do not all appear to be available online. However, I think a few things are made clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the specific type of bullet and gun is important to the results obtained. Soft lead bullets are much harder to recover intact and identify than copper-jacketed bullets. Caseless bullets or bullets where the case is not recovered are harder to identify, since the case is often more robustly identifiable. This is made clear in section 3 of the Technical Evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, section 3-E of the National Academies report explicitly found that &lt;strong&gt;&quot;The validity of the fundamental assumptions of uniqueness and reproducibility of firearms-related toolmarks has not yet been fully demonstrated.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; (bold theirs) and that &quot;Conclusions drawn in firearms identification should not be made to imply the presence of a firm statistical basis when none has been demonstrated.&quot; On the other hand, they also report that at a minimal level, &quot;there is at least some 'signal' that may be detected.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a personal note, I found the National Academies report to be quite convincing, and recommend those interested in more details to read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="369" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T19:43:31.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="853" CreationDate="2011-03-14T21:31:38.350" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this will meet your criteria for &quot;higher order&quot; animals, but there is parasite known as &lt;em&gt;Succulina&lt;/em&gt; which is known to invade certain species of crab, causing notable changes in the host's reproductive system and behavior.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The female &lt;em&gt;Succulina&lt;/em&gt; will find a weakness in the host crab's shell and will sort of inject itself into the host.  Once infested with this particular parasite, which happens to be a type of barnacle, the host is rendered infertile and its reproductive behavior is essentially hijacked so that the crab will abandon its own interest in reproduction in favor of nurturing the &lt;em&gt;Succulina.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also read that if a male crab has been infected with the parasite, its behavior will be changed to that of a female, causing it to be mainly interested in nurturing the parasite.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1651/S-2682.1?journalCode=crus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a link to an abstract describing the effect, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/rbz/biblio/52/52rbz449-453.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one more link&lt;/a&gt; for those curious about the biology of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They should be a good place to start.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="200" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T02:53:05.527" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T02:53:05.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="861" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="864" CreationDate="2011-03-14T21:47:58.473" Score="10" ViewCount="1324" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methadone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Methadone&lt;/a&gt; is a synthetic opioid. It is prescribed to dependent users of heroin and other opioids as a substitute for these drugs. Methadone is approved for different indications in different countries. Common is approval as an analgesic and approval for the treatment of opioid dependence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question was inspired by drug graphic posted &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/487/is-it-true-that-smoking-weed-is-bad-for-your-health/627#627&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt; The number of deaths is quite shocking and the number of reports is worrying. It's obvious that methadone programmes are favoured while risk of abuse is very high. Why? Is there really more benefit than damage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T23:38:59.080" Title="Methadone - remedy that cures or drug that kills?" Tags="|medical-science|medications|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="803" CreationDate="2011-03-14T22:28:47.083" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't mean to step on the obvious here, but if 1kg of celery per day was &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; you ate (meaning that you allow no other caloric intake) you would certainly lose weight and probably quite rapidly.  However, over an extended peiod of time, you would eventually become malnourished and probably die.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   Conversely, adding 1kg of celery to a diet (assuming a healthy diet at 1800-2000 kcal/day) certainly has some benefits, mostly due to its being high in fiber and water.   These same properties also may cause some loss of water weight through increased diuresis initially, however I think even this would be barely noticeable and replaced very quickly. It would probably be detectable only if you were to weigh yourself carefully before and after voiding.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   Even taking into consideration indiviual variations in metabolism and calories burned while chewing, the idea is that digesting food is only 5-15% of the average person's daily energy expenditure (according to some sources, alcohol and protein take the most energy to digest link found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/1/1/5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/1/1/5&lt;/a&gt;) it seems like any impact it would have on weight and body mass in general would be negligible, because the energy requirements to burn one pound of body fat is somewhere around 3500kcal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2011-03-14T22:28:47.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="861" CreationDate="2011-03-14T23:40:39.640" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0000591/&quot;&gt;Methadone&lt;/a&gt; is generally used for medical purposes because it lasts longer than traditional opiates such as morphine.  It is also used as a treatment for opiate addiction, for both those reasons and the fact that it does not result in a euphoric &quot;rush&quot; after administration like many traditional opiates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Previous opiate addiction treatments involved using decreasing treatments of opiates such as heroin or morphine.  Many people derided such programs; characterizing them as simply providing addicts with their fix.  Methadone treatment was introduced both for the aforementioned long-lasting and non-euphoric effects, and to combat this perception.  But, we're still treating addiction to a substance with the very type of substance the people are addicted to in the first place!  Why is that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you might be aware, the human body is full of various &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotransmitter&quot;&gt;neurotransmitters&lt;/a&gt;, which have corresponding &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Receptor_(biochemistry)&quot;&gt;receptors&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioids&quot;&gt;Opioids&lt;/a&gt;, such as methadone, are a form of neurotransmitter, therefore it follows that the body produces &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioids#Endogenous_opioids&quot;&gt;several varieties&lt;/a&gt; of them and has receptors to greet them as well. Another common source are derivatives of the poppy plant, properly called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opiates&quot;&gt;opiates&lt;/a&gt;, though many refer to all opioids as opiates, like morphine and heroin (the original brand name for diacetylmorphine, a medication sold by Bayer in the early 20th century).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opioids are also well known for their ability to induce euphoria.  Combined with the relative ease in which a tolerance to them is built, it is common for many to become addicted to them.  Continued use of externally-provided opioids in increasing doses causes the human body to reduce or stop production of its aforementioned endogenous opioids, further compounding the problem.  When an individual wishes to eliminate their dependency on opioids, or is compelled to by authorities, it is necessary to  slowly reduce dosage over time, to give the human body ample opportunity to adjust to the changes and resume or ramp up production of its own endogenous opioids.  Such treatment also reduces the pain and suffering associated with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001945/&quot;&gt;opiate withdrawal&lt;/a&gt;.  For these reasons, for many years now doctors have used several different kinds of opioids to treat opioid addiction, most recently methadone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as the use of methadone in treating pain and addiction rose, so did the number of deaths caused by it.  In 2002, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) of the United States Department of Health &amp;amp; Human Services &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samhsa.gov/news/newsreleases/040206nr_deaths.htm&quot;&gt;reported on the increasing number causes of methadone deaths&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hospital emergency department visits involving methadone rose 176 percent from 1995 to 2002.  The rise from 2000 to 2002 was 50 percent, according to SAMHSA’s Drug Abuse Warning Network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The experts surmise that current reports of methadone deaths involve one of three scenarios: illicitly obtained methadone used in excessive or repetitive doses in an attempt to achieve euphoric effects; methadone, either licitly or illicitly obtained, used in combination with other prescription medications, such as benzodiazepines (anti-anxiety medications), alcohol or other opioids; or an accumulation of methadone to harmful serum levels in the first few days of treatment for addiction or pain, before tolerance is developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2006, the Food &amp;amp; Drug Administration (FDA) issued &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch/SafetyInformation/SafetyAlertsforHumanMedicalProducts/ucm150642.htm&quot;&gt;an alert to medical professionals&lt;/a&gt; advising them of the increasing number of methadone related deaths and providing guidelines to reduce such deaths in the future.  Nonetheless, methadone use and death rates continued to rise. In 2009, SAMHSA released &lt;a href=&quot;http://kap.samhsa.gov/products/manuals/advisory/pdfs/Methadone-Advisory.pdf&quot;&gt;another report regarding methadone use and related deaths (PDF)&lt;/a&gt;.  The report indicates that deaths as a result from methadone rose from 786 in 1999 to 4,462 in 2005.  It also has this to say regarding the increased use of methadone which, as &lt;em&gt;jwenting&lt;/em&gt; points out in the comments, makes the increased number of deaths less significant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The amount of methadone distributed or delivered by the manufacturers rose dramatically from 2000 to early 2007, with increases ranging from 9 to 22 percent annually.  The distribution of all formulations of methadone (liquid, tablet, or dispersible tablet) increased. However, tablets distributed with a prescription through pharmacies had the largest increase. The number of methadone prescriptions dispensed increased by nearly 700 percent between 1998 and 2006. The strongest formulation, the 40 mg strength dispersible tablet, had the largest increase of all methadone formulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report continues to put the blame for most deaths on illicit use, commonly combined with other drugs, along with other factors previously mentioned such as inappropriate prescription by doctors.  Nevertheless, the report concludes that &quot;Methadone is &lt;em&gt;safe when used appropriately&lt;/em&gt;. It can be life saving for individuals dependent on opioids.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently, reports of increasing methadone deaths continue in several states, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://newsok.com/drug-deaths-spike-in-state/article/3544110&quot;&gt;Oklahoma&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/03/14/1915394/oxycontin-abuse-spreads-from-appalachia.html&quot;&gt;Kentucky&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajc.com/news/prescription-drug-deaths-soar-858612.html&quot;&gt;Georgia&lt;/a&gt;, with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gao.gov/htext/d09341.html&quot;&gt;government officials&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20087676&quot;&gt;scientists&lt;/a&gt; continuing on blame deaths to illicit use and improper prescribing practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, those reports also indicate that other opioids continue to be just as dangerous.  While the number of methadone-related deaths has surpassed heroin, it remains lower than other prescription opiates such as oxycodone.  Given the benefits of methadone treatment over other opiate treatments, I don't think we have enough information at this time to decide that it really helps more than it hurts.  We could stand to find something better, but that's true for just about every medication in use today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="334" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T03:57:59.390" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T03:57:59.390" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="831" CreationDate="2011-03-15T06:07:01.770" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember reading in the last few weeks that zinc can indeed help make your cold episodes shorter.  Here's one of those articles:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/02/15/133787643/zinc-may-help-fight-cold-symptoms-after-all?ps=sh_sthdl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zinc May Help Fight Cold Symptoms After All&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if it's a &quot;homeopathic&quot; version you would have to be fortunate to get any benefit other than placebo effect.  Homeopathic medicine contains active ingredients diluted in water to the point that in many cases you get only water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an analogy think of a barrel full of white marbles and one single black marble, where the black one is a molecule of the active ingredient and the white ones are molecules of water.  If you scoop one little bottle out of that barrel, what are the chances that you will get the black marble?  Oh, and by the way, homeopathy considers that the more diluted it is, the more potent the remedy.  Go figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may still get some benefit out of this potion if it happens to be &quot;enriched&quot; or &quot;fortified&quot; with vitamins or other things like that.  But these additives are not part of the central idea of homeopathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that if you need to take extra zinc, you should go with the non-homeopathic supplements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="403" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T06:07:01.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="795" CreationDate="2011-03-15T07:07:45.200" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/emf.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quackwatch has a great article on this subject&lt;/a&gt;, which gives reasons to not believe power lines are health hazards:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The fields produced by power lines are very small.&lt;/strong&gt; Power lines produce both electric and magnetic fields. The electric field is greatly reduced in magnitude within the human body, because the body is an electrical conductor. In fact, power lines produce electric fields inside the human body that are much smaller than the electric fields that normally exist in the body. The magnetic field is not significantly shielded inside the human body, so the only realistic possibility of health effects come from the magnetic field. The magnetic fields from power lines are rather small. Typically they are about 2 milliGauss. By comparison, the earth's field is typically 300-500 milliGauss, with the exact value depending on the location on the surface of the earth. Magnetic fields from power lines are therefore hundreds of times smaller than the magnetic field from the earth. If the relatively weak magnetic fields from power lines had significant adverse health effects, you would expect the much stronger magnetic field from earth to be devastating. Yet no such effect has ever been found. In experiments on animals, mice have lived for several generations in 60 Hz magnetic fields as high as 10,000 milliGauss, thousands of times higher typical power line fields, without any adverse effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is well known that fluctuating magnetic fields give rise to an electric field by the Faraday effect in physics. Yale physics professor Robert Adair demonstrated that these electric fields are very small in comparison with the naturally occurring electric fields arising from thermal fluctuations &lt;a href=&quot;http://pra.aps.org/abstract/PRA/v43/i2/p1039_1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[12]&lt;/a&gt;. This is a good benchmark to indicate that the powerline magnetic fields can't be important.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No plausible mechanism for adverse health effects has been postulated.&lt;/strong&gt; It is well known that electromagnetic fields at high frequencies (e.g., ultraviolet light) can have adverse biological effects. This is why sunlight is a good disinfectant: it kills bacteria. However, the frequency of power line fields (60 cycles per second, or 60 Hz) is too low to have this effect by many orders of magnitude.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The initial study was flawed.&lt;/strong&gt; Wertheimer and Leeper did not actually measure magnetic fields from power lines. Instead, they classified the homes according to their wiring code. The wiring code was then used as a surrogate for the powerline magnetic field, which was unmeasured and unknown. This is a flaw in the study. Later studies actually measured the magnetic fields from power lines and found no consistent relationship between measured magnetic field and incidence of cancer &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3164167?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[13]&lt;/a&gt;. It is important to realize that there are important possible confounding factors in such epidemiologic studies. For example, one possible confounding factor is an income effect. Living right under electric power lines is not a desired residence, and often is a low-income housing location. People living near power lines tend to be poorer than the control group, and there is a strong and well-known epidemiological relationship between poverty and cancer. Gurney and others showed that the homes with the presumably higher-current wiring code tended to be lower income &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7888441?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[14]&lt;/a&gt;. Thus the original Wertheimer-Leeper study was biased. In addition, it was based on relatively few cases, and the statistics were consequently rather poor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Later epidemiologic studies were properly designed, and some were much larger in scale. For example, the government of Finland performed a huge study of 134,800 children, with one million person-years of exposure. There were 140 cancers in the group, 5 fewer than would be expected by chance &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8241851?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[15]&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consequently, the epidemiologic studies, taken as a whole, consist of a few early low-quality studies, some of which yielded positive effects, and later, higher-quality studies, which yielded negative studies. If power lines really caused cancer, it is natural to expect the later studies to confirm the earlier studies. Instead, this has all the earmarks of a nonexistent effect.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The incidence of leukemia has been decreasing.&lt;/strong&gt; During the last few decades, the use of electric power and electric appliances has increased the 60 Hz powerline magnetic fields to which we Americans are exposed by roughly a factor of twenty. If power line fields were a significant cause of leukemia, there should have been a dramatic rise in leukemia. Leukemia rates, however, have slowly decreased. As noted by the physicist J.D. Jackson, this argues against any significant causal relationship &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1565645?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[16]&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="412" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2013-06-10T17:08:35.070" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T17:08:35.070" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="861" CreationDate="2011-03-15T07:21:03.457" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The benefits of methadone (and similar) being handed out to heroine addicts is that those addicts may now stop buying heroine, reducing both their own need to commit crimes to feed their addiction and the potential market for heroin dealers (thus possibly removing those from the streets as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even were it just as bad for the addict as is heroine medically, the public safety implications alone would be worth it, the financial benefits from reduced crime are a major bonus too (and the initial reason the methadone programs were started in Europe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being medically controlled however, methadone is also less likely to be taken in overdose or polluted form, thus reducing medical risk for the addict (of course some of them might still use heroine or other drugs on the side unless the methadone is given in a clinical setting with the addict as an in-patient with no possible access to other sources of drugs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T07:21:03.457" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="250" CreationDate="2011-03-15T07:54:49.293" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The single most important thing I need to stress is that &lt;em&gt;&quot;cancer&quot; is not one specific disease with one specific treatment&lt;/em&gt;.  and &lt;em&gt;there are no treatments without side effects&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what I can sum up for you about DCA.  I'm going to try to be as general as I can, but this is NOT a simple, cut and dry topic. However every link below should connect to an actual published, peer-reviewed study or at least an abstract (not some wikipedia link) to guide your own research.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DCA is a pyruvate mimetic compound that stimulates mitochondrial function by inhibiting &#xA;the family of regulatory pyruvate dehydrogenase kinases (PDK1-4). The stimulation of mitochondrial function, at the expense of glycolysis, reverses the Warburg effect and is thought to block the growth advantage of highly glycolytic tumors. (Basically, cancer cells eat more and grow more, DCA is thought to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21132264&quot;&gt;alter that tumor's metabolism&lt;/a&gt;). It has been used for about 30 years or so to treat mitochondrial disorders, and is currently under investigation as a possible cancer therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, research has run into a problem evaluating DCA for cancer. &#xA;The weird thing seems to be that there is a marked difference in the way DCA appears to act in a dish, the way it appears to act in animals, and the way it appears to act in humans.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This peculiarity alone may take years of research and tons of money to understand, mostly because in vitro (dish) analysis is usually the first step in evaluating potential new compounds, and it may suggest that there are things about tumor growth and metabolism which have yet to be understood properly enough to evaluate the effectiveness of DCA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I have read, DCA does have toxic effects, which seem to be mainly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16476929&quot;&gt;neuropathies&lt;/a&gt; and adverse effects on the liver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem is that DCA has a long history of being studied as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17101744&quot;&gt;pollutant&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8835661&quot;&gt;cause of tumors in mice&lt;/a&gt;,and possible disease in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1740539/&quot;&gt;humans&lt;/a&gt; particularly in association with other toxic hydrocarbons in superfund sites.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply take into consideration the idea of how carefully you would want to study something that was previously investigated as a toxin and pollutant, and you're not sure yet how it exactly works.  You'd probably want to be as thorough as possible before handing it out like candy in oncology wards across the world, regardless of how much money is involved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the whole, DCA seems to show promise in some forms of cancer, mainly by acting on the tumor's metabolic pathways in a manner not yet clearly understood.  A DCA treatment protocol will still take man hours, years, dollars, and whatever comes of it, beneficial or not, it will certainly not be a miracle cure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now comes the problem with dealing with profit for &quot;BIG PHARMA&quot;. A lot of this seems to stem from the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7296/full/465267b.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and is of course debatable and could easily devolve into heated, off-topic debates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people need to understand that what they think of as the &quot;BIG PHARMA&quot; is actually thousands of independent international interests including pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, clinics, regulatory agencies at local, state, federal levels, research firms, laboratories, universities, philanthropic organizations who provide grant funding, insurance providers, government and military agencies, oversight comittees, educational institutions, marketing firms, legal firms, advertising agencies, all the way down to individual medical personnel and the guy who empties the bedpans.  The interaction between the way these entities compete and cooperate with each other is complex, to say the least and there is indeed much room for critique of the system as it currently stands, but to lump the whole thing under some &quot;BIG PHARMA&quot; cabal run by Satan and Darth Vader from atop a gigantic pile of money is a bit naive.  If there is real promise in DCA, someone will find it, someone will fund it and despite any bureaucratic or economic hiccups, it will get to market, because there is no one out there profit-driven or not, who wouldn't want to sell their products with the label &quot;From The Company Who Cured Cancer&quot;.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few more studies done&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DCA in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20537792&quot;&gt;colorectal cancer&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;DCAin &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18423823&quot;&gt;endometrial cancer&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;DCA and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17222789&quot;&gt;tumor metabolism&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;DCA and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20463368&quot;&gt;glioblastoma&lt;/a&gt; (type of brain tumor)&#xA;DCA and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20886020&quot;&gt;Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;DCA and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21183852&quot;&gt;neurological side effects&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;DCA to that of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20502900&quot;&gt;standard chemotherapies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-03-15T08:00:47.947" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T08:00:47.947" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="877" CreationDate="2011-03-15T09:34:00.043" Score="32" ViewCount="20030" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dovesong.com/positive_music/plant_experiments.asp&quot;&gt;a very old study&lt;/a&gt; plants that “listen” to music have a better growth than other plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For her next experiment, Mrs. Retallack used two chambers (and fresh plants). She placed radios in each chamber. In one chamber, the radio was tuned to a local rock station, and in the other the radio played a station that featured soothing &quot;middle-of-the-road&quot; music. Only three hours of music was played in each chamber. On the fifth day, she began noticing drastic changes. In the chamber with the soothing music, the plants were growing healthily and their stems were starting to bend towards the radio! In the rock chamber, half the plants had small leaves and had grown gangly, while the others were stunted. After two weeks, the plants in the soothing-music chamber were uniform in size, lush and green, and were leaning between 15 and 20 degrees toward the radio. The plants in the rock chamber had grown extremely tall and were drooping, the blooms had faded and the stems were bending away from the radio. On the sixteenth day, all but a few plants in the rock chamber were in the last stages of dying. In the other chamber, the plants were alive, beautiful, and growing abundantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This drives my skepticism a lot. Are there more recent studies of this relationship? Can someone have a critical analysis of whether the samples used in the study are or not questionable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-12T00:46:42.990" LastActivityDate="2013-01-12T00:46:42.990" Title="Does music affect the growth of plants?" Tags="|plants|music|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="876" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="947" CreationDate="2011-03-15T09:43:24.103" Score="13" ViewCount="1570" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/the-weaponization-of-classical-music/article1491761/&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; explains some British experience on playing classical music in public places and the effect on behaviour of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that the feeling (was it measured?) was that it prevented youths from loitering in public places. But is there an effect on crime rate or violence measurements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastEditorDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditDate="2011-03-15T16:21:34.287" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T12:46:59.023" Title="Classical music in public places: does it affect violence?" Tags="|psychology|music|behavior|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="875" CreationDate="2011-03-15T12:26:50.660" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Mythbusters did an experiment on this a while back with results I found amusing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/episode23&quot;&gt;http://mythbustersresults.com/episode23&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Seven small greenhouses were set up on the M5 Industries roof. Four were set up with stereos playing endlessly looping recordings (as having the Mythbusters actually talk to the plants could contaminate the samples with their expelled carbon dioxide): Two of negative speech, two of positive speech (Kari and Scottie each made one positive and one negative soundtrack), a fifth with classical music and a sixth with intense death metal music. A seventh greenhouse, used as a control sample, had no stereo. The greenhouses with the recordings of speech grew better than the control, regardless of whether such talk was kind or angry. The plants in the greenhouse with the recording of classical music grew better, while the plants in the greenhouse with the recording of intense death metal grew best of all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, they found it to be plausable.  I'm personally unaware of any other studies or experiments done in this area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="579" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T12:26:50.660" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2011-03-15T13:18:42.480" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Dembski article is full of straw-man arguments, such as &quot;evolution has become an ideology&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since when?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a theory. It offers an explanation for things, that's all. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory&quot;&gt;It's testable.&lt;/a&gt; Evidence could contradict it, but hasn't (yet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at other theories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtonian_physics&quot;&gt;Newtonian physics&lt;/a&gt;. It explained things pretty well, but after a while some evidence comes along to contradict it. Did that make it flat-out wrong? Of course not. That only meant a more refined theory was needed. It has since been superceded by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_theory_of_relativity&quot;&gt;relativistic physics&lt;/a&gt;, and then by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_quantum_mechanics&quot;&gt;quantum physics&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Theories build on each other.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_heliocentrism&quot;&gt;Copernican theory&lt;/a&gt; that the earth revolves around the sun was controversial in it's day, because a class of people claimed it contradicted scripture. So was &lt;em&gt;it&lt;/em&gt; testable? At the time, not really. It just offered another, possibly simpler, explanation for things that could be seen. Later it, too, could be refined or replaced, which did not make it &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing about theories is, they are not a matter of &quot;belief&quot; or &quot;ideology&quot;. They are just mental frameworks for trying to understand things and fill in the gaps of what we see. Then if in our curiosity about the world around us, we see something that doesn't quite agree with the theory, it may be time to refine it or find something better, that's all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside: If this question is really about &quot;Intelligent Design&quot; (as I suspect it is), I would say &quot;Well, why not?&quot; There's nothing to prove there isn't an intelligent designer behind nature, or several of them, or a stupid one, or a childish one just having a little nasty fun before lunch. When there's evidence to support such a thing, great. Having open scientific questions is not evidence for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="342" LastEditorUserId="342" LastEditDate="2011-07-25T00:42:19.643" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T00:42:19.643" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="875" CreationDate="2011-03-15T13:56:07.697" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/about_6461438_music-make-plants-grow-taller_.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Why Does Music Make Plants Grow Taller?&quot;&lt;/a&gt; reviews some explanations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vibrations, such as sound and physical disturbances, affect plant growth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Studies done by the Smithsonian and NASA show that mild vibrations increase growth in plants, while harsher, stronger vibrations have a negative effect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;French physicist and musician Joel Sternheimer has found that certain types of music stimulate protein production in plants, therefore increasing plant growth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some scientists suggest that music improves gardeners' moods and therefore plants grow stronger and healthier in this environment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A study in Great Britain recently found that women's voices make plants grow faster than men's voices. It could be that they have a greater range of pitch and tone that affects the sound waves that hit the plant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T13:56:07.697" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="892" CreationDate="2011-03-15T15:43:32.913" Score="9" ViewCount="2255" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenibble.com/reviews/main/wine/lead-crystal.asp&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; describes why crystal glasses (made from lead crystal) contain lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the safety rules at the bottom of the article seem reasonable? Or is this excessive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If crystal glassware containers are dangerous, then why are they still on sale?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T08:30:53.613" Title="Crystal glassware contains lead. What health advice are reasonable?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="569" CreationDate="2011-03-15T20:15:04.937" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree that controlled studies may take many years to reach consensus, so instead I have to question the basic science behind the idea that it could even occur in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there were to be a causative link between cell phones and cancer rates, what is the proposed mechanism of this interaction? Cell phones only emit non-ionizing radiation. Agents of cancer causation (chemicals, energies, viruses) act by damaging DNA (by breaking the electron bonds) and producing mutations.  The energy emitted by a cell phone doesn't come close to this level, and it seems to take quite a different understanding of the interaction between photons and atoms than that provided by modern quantum mechanics for any causative link to be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, which types of cancer have been included in the studies?  I know the general public thinks of it only as an all-encompassing &quot;cancer&quot; but there are about 120 different types of brain cancers, all of which have distinct etiologies; glioblastoma, neuroma, meningioma, oligodenroglioma, astrocytoma, medullablastoma, chordoma, to name just a few.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a mention of cancers thought to be caused by cell phones in structures near the brain? Acoustic neuromas, optic neuromas, parotid cancers, oral cancers, melanomas, lymphomas, esophageal cancers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, wouldn't it seem reasonable to think that if cell phone radiation caused &quot;cancer&quot; it would cause cancer to the areas of the body which receive the most direct exposure?  Shouldn't we then be looking for melanomas of the ear and face or acoustic neuromas?  The ear and the skin are much closer to the phone than the brain after all.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course the final question, will it be easier for most people to seek the knowledge required to answer these and more relevant questions, or perpetuate the idea of some shadowy conspiracy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="200" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T03:10:19.520" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T03:10:19.520" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="712" CreationDate="2011-03-15T21:55:34.227" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is evidence that adherents to the Atkins Diet can reduce their weight and keep it off, provided they stick to the diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One widely cited &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022207&quot;&gt;New England Journal of Medicine&lt;/a&gt; study from 2003 looked at 63 participants over one year, and found that Atkins Dieters lost weight faster initially, but slower later on. At one year, there was no significant difference between the weight loss of Atkins Dieters and conventional dieters. The authors noted that &quot;adherence was poor and attrition was high in both groups&quot; and called for longer and larger studies. It is worth noting, as the authors do in their Results section, that the Atkins group saw increases in HDL cholesterol (the good kind) and decreases in triglycerides (low triglyceride count is good) over most of the study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study from 2003 in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&amp;amp;cpsidt=14806859&quot;&gt;Journal of Perception and Motor Skills&lt;/a&gt; showed that Atkins Dieters &quot;will experience more fatigue, more negative affect, and less positive affect in response to exercise than those individuals who are not restricting carbohydrates.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These studies and a small number of other studies are discussed in a 2009 overview of the Atkin's Diet from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aafp.org/online/en/home/clinical/publichealth/nutrition/atkinsdiet.html&quot;&gt;American Academy of Family Physicians&lt;/a&gt;. They conclude that the Atkins Diet can be effective, and while there are concerns about safety (most notably the risk of long-term heart disease), they assert that the evidence so far is inconclusive on that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence that the diet is effective should not be taken as evidence that the theories behind the Atkins diet are correct, however. One researcher opined, in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/diet/atkins-diet-what-it-is?page=3&quot;&gt;WebMD article&lt;/a&gt; that, &quot;No one has shown, in any studies, that anything magical is going on with Atkins other than calorie restriction. The diet is very prescriptive, very restrictive, and limits half of the foods we normally eat. ... In the end it's not fat, it's not protein, it's not carbs, it's calories. You can lose weight on anything that helps you to eat less, but that doesn't mean it's good for you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The high attrition and low adherence mentioned in the first study also tends to support the widely held view that highly restrictive diets, like Atkins and many other diets, are difficult to maintain over the long term. Thus, while they may be effective in the short term at reducing weight, standard lifestyle changes like eating a balanced diet and exercising are likely to be superior for life-long weight loss and health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="369" LastEditorUserId="369" LastEditDate="2011-03-15T22:08:46.070" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T22:08:46.070" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="889" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="895" CreationDate="2011-03-15T22:21:38.523" Score="32" ViewCount="2631" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suffer quite badly in the summer months with hayfever and I've been told by numerous people that eating a spoonful of locally produced honey a day in the months leading up to summer will help me become immune to the local pollen that causes my symptoms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth in this, or any studies to back it up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="599" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T11:33:36.670" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T21:06:46.983" Title="Can locally produced honey help to build an immunity to hayfever?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|allergies|honey|hay-fever|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="890" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="893" CreationDate="2011-03-15T23:11:49.920" Score="16" ViewCount="3452" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of pictures from Japan showing radiation testing with  patients wearing surgical masks. The impression one gets is that they must think it is protecting them, in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a legitimate use of the surgical mask? How about when one just wants to avoid contracting a viral infection from the people around a person? Is there any evidence that their use actually reduces risk to their wearers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that surgical mask should really only prevent the person wearing the surgical mask from spreading infection. To use it to protect against radiation just seems like a bunch of nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone please set me straight on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="600" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-01-28T06:46:18.717" LastActivityDate="2012-01-28T06:46:18.717" Title="Is there any real benefit in the everyday use of surgical masks to protect oneself from radiation?" Tags="|medical-science|radiation|fukushima-daiichi|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="881" CreationDate="2011-03-15T23:33:19.943" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't appear that a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of research has been done on this topic, but the research that has been conducted seems fairly clear. The Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_glass#Safety&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lead-glass safety&lt;/a&gt; contains a brief description of the safety aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going just a little deeper, I found two abstracts. One deals with short term use, the other with long term storage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the article you linked mentions, long term storage of acidic or alcoholic beverages is not recommended. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6T1B-49K0BF4-38R&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=01/19/1991&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=701ba10d8a9b9c3df1b41a1f4f4e0d44&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lancet abstract&lt;/a&gt; describes an experiment which found significant increases in lead concentration long term storage. Concentrations rose from 79 ug/L initially to 3817 ug/L after four months, and up to 21,530 ug/L after &quot;a long time.&quot; For comparison, a typical diet will contain around 70-80 ug of lead a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, short term use of lead-glass containers showed relatively small amounts of lead-leaching. According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10827902&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PubMed abstract&lt;/a&gt;, under &quot;conditions that are likely to occur to a consumer&quot; the worst case lead leaching amounted to only 14.5 ug in a 350 mL (12 fl. oz.) soda or about 41 ug/L. The researchers concluded that the lead increase would not significantly affect health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the US CDC &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/tips/water.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Action Level&quot; for lead in water&lt;/a&gt; is 15 parts per billion, or about 15 ug/L. While the soda case (worst case) from the PubMed study exceeds this level, one presumes that such consuption is not a regular occurrence. Regular use of a lead-glass beverage container would probably be contraindicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="369" LastActivityDate="2011-03-15T23:33:19.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="890" CreationDate="2011-03-16T00:04:20.747" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/H3ZZE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Asia Surgical Masks&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitericeculture.com/?p=1062&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Japanese (and other asians) wearing surgical masks is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://depletedcranium.com/the-japanese-and-their-surgical-masks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;common practise that predates the Fukushima accident&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/pathways.html#direct&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Regarding radioactive radiation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, a thin piece of paper will not protect you, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/alpha.html#protectmyself&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;except maybe Alpha radiation&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Protecting yourself from external exposure to alpha radiation is easy, since alpha particles are unable to penetrate the outer dead layers of skin or clothing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, tissue that is not protected by the outer layer of dead cells, such as eyes or open wounds, must be carefully protected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Greater concern about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/beta.html#protectmyself&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;beta particles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. They can burn the skin in some cases, or damage eyes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Greatest concern is about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/gamma.html#protectmyself&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gamma radiation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Different radionuclides emit gamma rays of different strength, but &lt;strong&gt;gamma rays can travel long&#xA;distances and penetrate entirely through the body&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gamma rays can be slowed by dense material (shielding), such as lead&lt;/strong&gt;, and can be stopped if the material is thick enough. Examples of shielding are containers; protective clothing, such as a lead apron; and soil covering buried radioactive materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Wearing a surgical mask may however &lt;a href=&quot;http://bepreparedcalifornia.ca.gov/EPO/Partners/HospitalsClinics/ForHospitalsClinics/PracticeGuidelines/Casualty+Management+after+a+Deliberate+Release+of+Radioactive+Material.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;help against inhaling &lt;strong&gt;radioactive dust&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. It depends on how fine the dust is. But some protection is still better than no protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regarding viral infection&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/Adviceusemaskscommunityrevised.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WHO - Advice on the use of masks in the community setting in&#xA;Influenza A (H1N1) outbreaks&lt;/a&gt; (2009)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In health-care settings&lt;/strong&gt;, studies evaluating measures to reduce the&#xA;spread of respiratory viruses suggest that &lt;strong&gt;the use of masks could&#xA;reduce the transmission of influenza&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In&#xA;the community, however, the benefits of wearing masks has not been&#xA;established&lt;/strong&gt;, especially in open areas, as opposed to enclosed spaces&#xA;while in close contact with a person with influenza-like symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Nonetheless ... using a mask can enable an individual&#xA;with influenza-like symptoms to cover their mouth and nose to help&#xA;contain respiratory droplets, a measure that is part of cough&#xA;etiquette.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a mask incorrectly however, may actually increase the&#xA;risk of transmission, rather than reduce it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T13:40:13.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="889" CreationDate="2011-03-16T02:03:01.203" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;While a popular cure in many areas of the US, there is little scientific evidence supporting this hypothesis.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annallergy.org/article/S1081-1206%2810%2961996-5/abstract&quot;&gt;This small study&lt;/a&gt; from the Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology found no improvement beyond a placebo&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Doi=319821&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; from the International Archive of Allergy and Immunology indicated some benefit to using honey linked to the allergic trigger (Birch pollen in this case) can provide benefit when used in conjunction with traditional medication&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is fair to say that these trials are limited in scope and contain small sample sizes that could result in non-applicable results for a larger population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the rationale for this myth may be the result of honey's efficacy in reducing coughs (a frequent symptom of seasonal allergic reactions) as shown in &lt;a href=&quot;http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/161/12/1140&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; from the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="52" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T02:03:01.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="898" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="902" CreationDate="2011-03-16T07:11:32.377" Score="34" ViewCount="1711" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Los Angeles Times reports &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latimes.com/health/ct-met-local-iodide-sales-20110315,0,624338.story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sales of Geiger counters and potassium iodide in the United States are skyrocketing&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sales of Geiger counters and potassium iodide supplements that can block some radiation have surged nationwide since Friday, fueled by concerns among some Americans that radiation released from Japanese nuclear plants could spread to the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, it seems potassium iodide doesn't really do much to help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite those statements, potassium iodide supplements — which can protect the thyroid gland if taken before or shortly after a person is exposed to radiation but do not protect other body parts or prevent damage from other radioactive substances — are either sold out or selling quickly at several Chicago-area stores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside the question as to whether any noticeable radiation will affect the United States (most experts say it won't), is the protection of the thyroid gland offered by potassium iodide really effective?  Is it useful in light of the fact that it doesn't seem to protect the remainder of the human body?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-01-28T07:11:41.090" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T11:01:17.800" Title="Is potassium iodide useful in preventing the harmful effects of radiation?" Tags="|medical-science|radiation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="853" CreationDate="2011-03-16T08:26:54.240" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Richard Dawkins dedicated his entire book &lt;em&gt;The Extended Phenotype&lt;/em&gt; (which is an excellent read if you get the chance) to elaborate on the idea that your genes may express themselves not only as adaptations in your organism (a certain gene for longer arms or whatever), but possibly as adaptations in &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt;, physically distinct organisms, via exactly the same mechanisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his book, Dawkins alludes to the concept of parasites' &lt;em&gt;intermediate&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;definite&lt;/em&gt; hosts, where a definite host is the host that eventually nourishes the parasite, and the intermediate host is only the means through which the parasite infects its definite host.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the book is riddled with examples, here's one that I think is especially instructive, as it deals with two parasites that exert &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; zombifying effects on the same host:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Bethel and Holmes] studied two species of acanthocephalan worms, &lt;em&gt;Polymorphus paradoxus&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;P. marilis&lt;/em&gt;. Both use a freshwater 'shrimp' (really an amphipod), &lt;em&gt;Gammarus lacustris&lt;/em&gt;, as an intermediate host, and both use ducks as the definitive host. &lt;em&gt;P. paradoxus&lt;/em&gt;, however, specializes in the mallard, which is a surface-dabbling duck, while &lt;em&gt;P. marilis&lt;/em&gt; specializes in diving ducks. Ideally then, &lt;em&gt;P. paradoxus&lt;/em&gt; might benefit by making its shrimps swim to the surface, where they are likely to be eaten by mallards, while &lt;em&gt;P. marilis&lt;/em&gt; might benefit by making its shrimps avoid the surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Uninfected &lt;em&gt;Gammarus lacustris&lt;/em&gt; tend to avoid ligth, and stay close to the lake bottom. Bethel and Holmes noticed striking differences in the behaviour of shrimps infected with cystacanths of &lt;em&gt;P. paradoxus&lt;/em&gt;. They stayed close to the surface, and clung tenaciously to surface plants . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shrimps infected by cystacanths of the other species, &lt;em&gt;P. marilis&lt;/em&gt;, however, do not hug the surface. In laboratory tests they admittedly sought the lighted half of an aquarium in preference to the dark half, but they did not orient positively towards the source of light: they distributed themselves randomly in the lighted half, rather than at the surface. &lt;sup&gt;* The Extended Phenotype, Dawkins, p. 216-217&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize you may not accept this 'shrimp' as a high order animal, but I think it is a useful example to sell in the idea of applying this zombiefying effect on one host, so as to be able to reach another. I wanted to sell in this idea, to see that this effect is not so uncommon, once you start to view the events in that light:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dogs, when affected with rabies, will be driven to bite other dogs (well, other animals, really). A bland interpretation would be that the virus irks the dogs, and they're getting really aggressive about that. But consider that this tendency to bite others is the &lt;em&gt;primary means&lt;/em&gt; through which the virus spreads. Could we not then agree that there is a direct appreciable selective pressure for this virus to exert this effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that this tendency is observed in rabies infected animals, and we can see that there is great evolutionary advantage to the rabies virus in it. I don't know what kind of scientific evidence you would need to be able to say that spreading the virus is the reason &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the animals behave in this way, but I would certainly argue that that's the most plausible explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving on along that line; we know that humans produce snot as an outlet for foreign bodies to leave our own body. But given that we have this mechanism up and running, wouldn't there be a huge selective advantage for the common cold virus to cause us to &lt;em&gt;sneeze&lt;/em&gt; while in this condition? At this end, it becomes a bit sketchy, but I'd say drawing the line is single-handedly a matter of interpretation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T08:26:54.240" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="881" CreationDate="2011-03-16T08:30:53.613" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lead crystal products have been used to hold liquids for thousands of years.&#xA;The &quot;safety&quot; rules listed at the bottom make some sense, as they would prevent the liquid from sitting inside the lead container for prolonged periods, thus minimising any lead leeching into the liquid from the crystal.&#xA;Whether they are necessary to prevent dangerous exposure is another question, but I doubt it (unless you're going to have that brandy sitting in that decanter for several years before serving it, maybe, in which case I'd indeed replace it with coloured water for show and only put in the actual brandy shortly before the guests arrive you're going to serve).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do keep in mind that the &quot;safe exposure levels&quot; published by agencies like the FDA are orders of magnitude lower (and deliberately so) than actual dangerous levels.&#xA;So even if they have a limit of 15 micrograms per liter, you would not see ill effects in all but the most vulnerable until you reach probably several milligrams per liter, a dose at which point the drink would have a distinct metalic taste and you'd throw it away because it tasted so bad after just a sip, a dose also that's extremely unlikely to ever be reached from a lead crystal container in normal use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T08:30:53.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="898" CreationDate="2011-03-16T08:48:55.757" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several aspects to this problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As you wrote, (potassium) iodide tablets only protect the thyroid gland. This works as follows: The thyroid gland uses iodide to synthesize its hormones. Iodide taken in with your normal diet will enrich in your thyroid gland where it is needed. Other tissues do not accumulate iodide in this way. This is the reason why one of the few &quot;magic bullets&quot; in medicine actually works: Using radioactive iodide to treat thyroid cancer. You inject a radioactive substance and it &quot;magically&quot; finds its way to the only place where it is needed, resulting in minimal side effects in other tissues.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now, since radioactive iodide isotopes are typically released in a nuclear accident, the chance of introducing radiation to your (healthy) thyroid gland can be a relevant problem if the dose is high enough. By giving iodide tablets, you effectively saturate your thyroid gland, blocking the uptake of any radioactive iodide which is then excreted (via urine, mostly).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a risk associated with this, though: If you have a condition called hyperthyroidism, i. e. if your thyroid gland tends to produce too much of its hormones, then administration of large doses of iodide may cause an exacerbation of your hyperthyroidism or even a potentially fatal thyrotoxic crisis. There are some other illnesses where iodide may not be given. (Also, there may be some other side effects of large doses of iodide). Since there is a significant number of people who have one of these conditions without knowing it or whose treatment is inadequate, the chance of causing side effects of this kind is rather high, probably a lot higher than the risk of not taking the iodide tablets (in regions where the expected amount of radioactivity is as low as in the U.S. - it's completely different in Japan at the moment, where I'm pretty sure that those people working in and around the reactors have been given iodide tablets).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there are other sources of radiation after a reactor meltdown (e. g. cesium) besides radioactive iodide that iodide tablets can't protect against. But for this specific threat, they are effective.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, all in all, don't panic and ask your doctor if you should be taking any medication where the chance of doing harm might outweigh the chance of doing good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: Any internal medicine or nuclear medicine textbook. A good overview from a credible source (the CDC) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bt.cdc.gov/radiation/ki.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;can be found here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastEditorUserId="604" LastEditDate="2012-02-29T11:01:17.800" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T11:01:17.800" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="803" CreationDate="2011-03-16T10:46:37.310" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2507/does-chewing-celery-consume-more-calories-than-it-provides&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;, celery helps you lose weight by having an extremely low amount of calories, it is not negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T10:46:37.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="286" CreationDate="2011-03-16T10:51:30.997" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The effect is called Colony Collapse Disorder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theres research that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fastcompany.com/1708896/wiki-bee-leaks-epa-document-reveals-agency-knowingly-allowed-use-of-bee-toxic-pesticide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;suggests&lt;/a&gt; that a pesticide named clothianidin is responsible for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:00:06.883" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T19:00:06.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="906" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="912" CreationDate="2011-03-16T11:25:48.833" Score="16" ViewCount="2140" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are various claims that &lt;strong&gt;L. Ron Hubbard&lt;/strong&gt; (the creator of Scientology) had degrees and doctorates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What formal education and qualifications did he have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:17:19.603" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T07:19:43.217" Title="What formal education did L Ron Hubbard have?" Tags="|history|education|celebrities|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-16T11:26:25.230" Score="62" ViewCount="9959" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of clutter from anti-death penalty sites, which makes it hard to find all the research.  They often cite statistics like those explained in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death-penalty-have-had-consistently-lower-murder-rates&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt;, including the chart below that shows that murder rates in states without the death penalty are lower than those in states with the death penalty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dt5r7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a straight comparison of murder rates a fair way to gauge the effectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent?  Might the murder rates be even higher in states that currently have the death penalty if they abandoned the practice?  Aren't there likely to be other factors that are contributing to higher murder rates (such as what each state considers to be &quot;murder&quot;, or poverty levels, especially in the typically poorer southern states that carry out the majority of executions in the US)?  Is there any evidence for death penalty effectiveness that attempts to control for these other variables?  What about as a deterrent for other crimes besides murder?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you're on here from China or Iran, I imagine this is a pretty uniquely US question. However, many European countries currently without the death penalty once had such laws, and perhaps the arguments used in those older debates would have merit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: I think ideally the answer to this question should involve some crime statistics from a place that had the death penalty, and then abolished it, or vice versa.  Ideally modeled in a way to try and control for other factors (as much as possible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditorDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditDate="2011-08-19T06:46:07.533" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T15:24:40.277" Title="Is the death penalty an effective deterrent?" Tags="|law|criminology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="920" CreationDate="2011-03-16T11:42:08.790" Score="95" ViewCount="10939" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many articles, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.actu.org.au/Media/Mediareleases/Australianwomenareunderemployedandunderpaidwarnsmajornewreport.aspx&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, report a significant wage gap between men and women of 15% or more as evidence of discrimination. On the other hand, some sources, &lt;a href=&quot;http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2009/10/26/female-%E2%80%9Cvictims%E2%80%9D/&quot;&gt;such as this one&lt;/a&gt;, claim that the gap can be explained by factors such as the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Men being more career obsessed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Men working more hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Differences in experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a significant difference in wages between men and women in first world countries that is not due to factors relevant to the job?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditorDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditDate="2018-02-05T17:20:38.860" LastActivityDate="2018-02-05T17:20:38.860" Title="Are women underpaid relative to men?" Tags="|gender|discrimination|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="906" CreationDate="2011-03-16T13:44:51.280" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The recent New Yorker article about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_wright?currentPage=all&quot;&gt;Paul Haggis and Scientology&lt;/a&gt; spends some time talking about how the Church has exaggerated Hubbard's achievements over the years. They made efforts to obtain original source documents that they found conflicted with what the Church has said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The church document indicates, falsely, that Hubbard completed four years of college, obtaining a degree in civil engineering. The official document correctly notes two years of college and no degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They even &lt;a href=&quot;http://documents.newyorker.com/2011/02/hubbard/&quot;&gt;posted all the documentation online&lt;/a&gt; so anyone can view them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related note, there's a very interesting piece on NPR's site about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2011/02/08/133561256/the-church-of-scientology-fact-checked&quot;&gt;fact checking that New Yorker did for that article&lt;/a&gt;. Because of the Church's well-known litigiousness, it was extensive.  The most interesting quote out of that article is about some discrepancies in Hubbard's war record, which also seems to have been embellished by the church.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In one very interesting moment, Davis said, 'Of course, if it's true that Mr. Hubbard was never injured during the war, then he never did heal himself using Dianetics principles, then Dianetics is based on a lie, and then Scientology is based on a lie. The truth is that Mr. Hubbard was a war hero.' And the way he phrased that, that everything depended on whether Hubbard had sustained these injuries and healed himself was like a wager on the table.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T13:44:51.280" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="913" PostTypeId="3" CreationDate="2011-03-16T14:30:06.060" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T14:30:06.060" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T14:30:06.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="914" PostTypeId="3" CreationDate="2011-03-16T14:30:06.060" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-03-16T14:30:06.060" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T14:30:06.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2011-03-16T15:42:16.710" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The statistics of the matter pretty much agree (at least here in the UK) that women are statistically paid less than men. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=167&quot;&gt;This December 2010 post&lt;/a&gt; from the ONS describes the relevant statistics of the matter here in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't speak much about the reasons behind the gender wage gap without being too speculative, but one interesting paragraph from the article leaps out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The scale and direction of the gender pay gap varies according to age. For instance in the 22–29 age group, full-time women earned 2.1 per cent more than full-time men and part-time women earned 1.7 per cent more than part-time men. The largest pay gaps in favour of men for full-time and part-time employees were in the 50–59 age group at 17.0 per cent and 17.4 per cent respectively. The largest pay gap for all employees, 27.4 per cent, was seen in both the 40–49 and 50–59 age groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggests that the pay gap is directly related to age, and among  younger people is largely disappearing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="294" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T15:42:16.710" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2011-03-16T15:55:38.837" Score="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only give an example for developed countries. In the Ny Times article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/business/global/29iht-riedgenper.html&quot;&gt;Why the Earnings Gender Gap in Business? Women Work Less&lt;/a&gt; from 2009 they cite research on MBA couples, and it's argued that wages remain largely the same among MBA holders up until the first child. After which most mothers (who continue their careers) are affected more than fathers when trying to balance motherhood and work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/15174489?story_id=15174489&quot;&gt;We did it! - The rich world’s quiet revolution: women are gradually taking over the workplace&lt;/a&gt; from the Economist also from 2009 argues that women who do well in their careers in their 20's, disappear in their 30's because they have to choose between motherhood and the career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same issue of the Economist they give the statistics in the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/15174489?story_id=15174489&quot;&gt;Female power - Across the rich world more women are working than ever before. Coping with this change will be one of the great challenges of the coming decades&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another American study, this time of&#xA;  women who left work to have children,&#xA;  found that all but 7% of them wanted&#xA;  to return to work. Only 74% managed to&#xA;  return, and just 40% returned to&#xA;  full-time jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other differences between men and women in modern times that should create a shift in wages. In Sweden (my home country) 60% of university students are women according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsv.se/download/18.8f0e4c9119e2b4a60c800023245/0819R.pdf&quot;&gt;national university review of 2008&lt;/a&gt; (in Swedish, sorry), and women typically do better than men in school {citation needed?}. I would argue that if university graduates earn more than non-graduates in the same job then womens wages will progress to the point where they overtake men if the above mentioned issue isn't a factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some support that things have changed for women since 1970 was recently shown in &lt;a href=&quot;http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/06/the-great-male-stagnation.html&quot;&gt;Marginal revolution&lt;/a&gt; (a blog by two well published economists) where they plotted GDP in America together with the median wage by gender. They showed that while womens wages closely follow GDP, males wages have stagnated. If true this would mean that women are closing the income gap on males at the rate that the GDP changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently in 2015 &lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;js=y&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fkarriere%2Fberufsleben%2Fgender-time-gap-frauen-arbeiten-k%C3%BCrzer-als-m%C3%A4nner-a-1026548.HTML&amp;amp;edit-text=&amp;amp;act=url&quot;&gt;a German newspaper reported&lt;/a&gt; on a German study that women work 23% fewer hours than men, with a wage gap of 22%. The work week difference of 7 hours doubles to a difference of 15 hours once there's children. It also says that of women with children 70% work part-time twice the amount of those without. Interestingly for men in Germany the change happens in the other direction where 6% of men with children work part-time, as opposed to 10% of those without. My German isn't good enough to read the original study for the researchers thoughts, but it seems to suggest that the wage gap in Germany is explained by the number of hours worked as opposed to wage discrimination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have a better answer than this, but I hope I've added a some food for others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Women start earning less when they&#xA;get children because they value&#xA;parenting more.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If we are merely concerned with women as a whole demographic being underpaid then I would expect that they are going to rise above men as a whole demographic as we are graduating women in larger numbers and with better grades, which is a fairly recent happening.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2015-04-05T02:06:05.550" LastActivityDate="2015-04-05T02:06:05.550" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="921" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="930" CreationDate="2011-03-16T15:56:33.577" Score="12" ViewCount="580" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can one earthquake trigger another? For instance, the quake in New Zealand, then the one in China and finally the big one in Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not count aftershocks, but separate earthquakes in reasonably disparate geographical regions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7490" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T06:03:44.463" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T06:03:44.463" Title="Can big earthquakes trigger a domino effect?" Tags="|physics|geology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="922" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="941" CreationDate="2011-03-16T16:01:41.343" Score="26" ViewCount="2620" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meditation&quot;&gt;Meditation&lt;/a&gt; is tightly associated with religious practices, but beside that it may be practiced for many other reasons, such as to increase calmness and physical relaxation, to improve psychological balance, to cope with illness, or to enhance overall health and well-being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are scientifically proven physiological and psychological effects of meditation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2018-01-23T19:38:23.880" LastActivityDate="2022-04-20T09:19:18.643" Title="Meditation - Is it just spiritual practice or something more?" Tags="|psychology|spirituality|meditation|positive-thinking|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="923" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-16T16:02:04.807" Score="19" ViewCount="2485" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard of some benefits of insects as food, but are there any drawbacks?  I've never heard of a human culture whose primary protein intake came exclusively from insects.  Would someone converting to an insect-only diet need to supplement their nutritional intake in any way?  Would such a conversion (removing traditional livestock and replacing them with breeding insects) cause any environmental problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is mainly aimed at western cultures similar to the US (Canada, UK, etc), where it is currently taboo to eat insects.  I have wondered about it for many years, and was reminded of it again while watching this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/marcel_dicke_why_not_eat_insects.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TED video&lt;/a&gt; and again while watching a rerun of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Idiot_Abroad#Episodes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the China episode from &lt;em&gt;An Idiot Abroad&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Personally, I consider ocean crustaceans like shrimp and lobster and crabs to just be sea insects, so I don't really have a hang-up.  But I know my wife would probably rather starve.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-10-22T15:27:42.413" Title="Insects as food: Is it feasible for humans to replace traditional &quot;livestock&quot; meat with insects?" Tags="|nutrition|environment|ethology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="925" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="927" CreationDate="2011-03-16T16:19:49.283" Score="25" ViewCount="11067" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was told many times when I was little that if you don't twist ticks counter-clockwise and instead just jerk them out, the head goes into your bloodstream and can be dangerous. It wasn't until recently I realized that I have no support for that belief, and it might just be an old wives' tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really bad to just pull a tick out? Will the head really go into the bloodstream if it stays? (This seems very unlikely considering how thick skin is.) Is there any proven danger to pulling a tick straight out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T19:14:11.840" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T10:17:32.240" Title="Do you need to twist a tick out counter-clockwise?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="925" CreationDate="2011-03-16T16:31:43.267" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't twist a tick at all.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/007211.htm&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt; sponsored by the National Institutes of Health for proper tick removal techniques:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a tick is attached to you, follow&#xA;  these steps to remove it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Grasp the tick close to its head or mouth with tweezers. Do not use your&#xA;  bare fingers. If needed, use a tissue&#xA;  or paper towel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pull it straight out with a slow and steady motion. Avoid squeezing or&#xA;  crushing the tick. Be careful not to&#xA;  leave the head embedded in the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Clean the area thoroughly with soap and water. Also wash your hands&#xA;  thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Save the tick in a jar and watch carefully for the next week or two for&#xA;  signs of Lyme disease.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If all parts of the tick cannot be removed, get medical help. Bring the&#xA;  tick in the jar to your doctor's&#xA;  appointment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• Do NOT try to burn the tick with a&#xA;  match or other hot object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• &lt;strong&gt;Do NOT&#xA;  twist the tick when pulling it out.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• Do NOT try to kill, smother, or&#xA;  lubricate the tick with oil, alcohol,&#xA;  vaseline, or similar material&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to remove a tick and accidentally leave the mouth parts in, but the mouth parts traveling to the bloodstream is not the concern.  The concern focuses around the increased chances of infection (both from the wound, and because the mouth parts may still secrete saliva, which might transmit disease).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-03-20T20:40:30.920" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T20:40:30.920" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2011-03-16T16:53:27.397" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;For &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;autogenic training&lt;/a&gt; (which is closely related to meditation but doesn’t have a spiritual component) there exist numerous studies. Citing from Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2002, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014576505223&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt; of 60 studies was published in Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, finding significant positive effects of treatment when compared to normals over a number of diagnoses; finding these effects to be similar to best recommended rival therapies; and finding positive additional effects by patients, such as their perceived quality of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, this sounds sufficiently unspecific. And, not having read the meta-analysis, I cannot comment on the quality of these studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-04-20T09:19:18.643" LastActivityDate="2022-04-20T09:19:18.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="923" CreationDate="2011-03-16T17:03:56.077" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Entomophagy&lt;/a&gt; is the consumption of insects as food. Over 1,000 insects are known to be eaten in 80% of the world's nations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hundreds of species have been used as human food. Some of the more important groups include grass- hoppers, caterpillars, beetle grubs and (sometimes) adults, winged termites (some of which are very large in the tropics), bee, wasp and ant brood (larvae and pupae) as well as winged ants, cicadas, and a variety of aquatic insects. Ordinarily, insects are not used as emergency food to ward off starvation, but are included as a planned part of the diet throughout the year or when seasonally available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.food-insects.com/Insects%20as%20Human%20Food.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;A Concise Summary of the General Nutritional Value of Insects&quot;&lt;/a&gt;; Reprinted from &lt;em&gt;Crop Protection&lt;/em&gt; Volume 11, Gene DeFoliart, &quot;Insects as human food........&quot;, pp. 395-399, 1992. Web archive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further quotes from this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Nutritional value of insects:&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Insects are very high in crude protein, many species ranging above 60%.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Insects vary widely in fat (and, thus, energy) content.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Recent analyses of 94 of the insect species consumed in Mexico [...] yielded high fat and caloric values (Ramos-Elorduy and Pino, 1990). [...] Of the insects analysed, 50% had a higher caloric value than soybeans; 87% were higher than corn; 63% were higher than beef; 70% were higher than fish, lentils and beans; and 95% were higher than wheat, rye or teosintle.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The caterpillar, &lt;em&gt;Usta terpsichore&lt;/em&gt; M. &amp;amp; W. (Satumiidae), was found to be a rich source of iron, copper, zinc, thiamin (vitamin BJ and riboflavin (B2); 100 9 of cooked insect provided &gt; 100% of the daily requirement of each of these minerals and vitamins (Oliveira et al., 1976).&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Chitin comprises ~ 10% of whole dried insects&quot; and is &quot;a source of fibre and calcium&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The long history of human use suggests, however, with little evidence to the contrary, that the insects intentionally harvested for human consumption do not pose any significant health problem.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Efficiency compared to live stock:&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The insects are many times higher in protein and fat than are the plants upon which they feed: for example, protein (on a dry weight basis) is 69.05% in the adult weevil, &lt;em&gt;Metamasius spinolae&lt;/em&gt; Vaurie, compared with 5.21% in nopal, the cactus upon which it feeds.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;When the cosmopolitan house cricket, &lt;em&gt;Acheta domesticus&lt;/em&gt;, was maintained at temperatures &gt; 30°C and fed a diet of similarly high quality to that used in bringing beef animals to market size and condition, the food conversion efficiency of the crickets was estimated to be more than five times that of beef animals (Nakagaki and DeFoliart, 1991). When the high fecundity of the cricket is considered (1500 offspring per female cricket compared with four standing animals in the beef herd for each animal marketed), the true food conversion efficiency is closer to 15-20 times greater for the cricket than for beef.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastEditorUserId="26675" LastEditDate="2018-10-22T15:27:42.413" LastActivityDate="2018-10-22T15:27:42.413" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="921" CreationDate="2011-03-16T17:15:52.603" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125991738&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article on NPR&lt;/a&gt; written in April 2010 discusses perceived clusters of earthquakes; specifically the high profile ones from early 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This section is particularly relevant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On average, there are 17 magnitude 7 quakes around the world each year, and an additional 130 in the magnitude 6 range. That would be one quake every 2 1/2 days if they fell evenly spread on the calendar. So while this year's spate of seismic activity actually isn't out of the ordinary, the USGS researcher in California analyzed the data, running various models comparing this year's high-magnitude quakes with the previous 100 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It's definitely more than most four-month periods, but things are not always exactly at the average,&amp;quot; Michael says. &amp;quot;This is within what we expect variations to be from random models of earthquake occurrence.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very easy to perceive patterns in things like this, when really there is none. Earthquakes happen very frequently, and when a few high profile ones happen within a short timeframe, people tend to see a pattern, when really it's just random chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/faq/?categoryID=6&amp;amp;faqID=110&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this FAQ&lt;/a&gt; from the USGS, which provides good information and several credible explanations about the phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="294" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T17:15:52.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="411" CreationDate="2011-03-16T18:17:11.577" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The substantiation for this article was contained within other articles that had been published by ThePoliticalBandit.com and are cited below. I find it extremely sad that people still deny the science that has substantiated this theory and is denied along with the fact that Climate Change is responsible for the increase in earthquake/volcanic activity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Big Earthquakes Spark Jolts Worldwide&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ScienceDaily (May 26, 2008) — Until 1992, when California’s magnitude-7.3 Landers earthquake set off small jolts as far away as Yellowstone National Park, scientists did not believe large earthquakes sparked maller tremors at distant locations. Now, a definitive study shows large earthquakes routinely trigger smaller jolts worldwide, including on the opposite side of the planet and in areas not prone to quakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Previously it was thought seismically active regions or geothermal areas were most vulnerable to large earthquake triggers,” says Kris Pankow, a seismologist at the University of Utah Seismograph Stations and a co-author of the new study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Pankow and colleagues analyzed 15 major earthquakes stronger than magnitude-7.0 since 1992, and found that at least 12 of them triggered small quakes hundreds and even thousands of miles away, according to the findings published online May 25, 2008 in the journal Nature Geoscience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“We conclude that dynamic triggering is a ubiquitous phenomenon,” they wrote.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists previously noted that those three major quakes triggered not only nearby aftershocks, but small quakes at great distances. The new study is the first to systematically analyze all the world’s big quakes during 1992-2006 and find that most of them triggered distant, smaller tremors. These are different than aftershocks, which occur fairly close to the main quake. After the devastating 2004 Sumatra earthquake, triggered quakes even occurred in Ecuador, on the opposite side of the Earth. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/re&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedaily.com/re&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Large Earthquakes Trigger A Surge In Volcanic Eruptions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ScienceDaily (Jan. 12, 2009) — New evidence showing that very large earthquakes can trigger an increase in activity at nearby volcanoes has been uncovered by Oxford University scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An analysis of records in southern Chile has shown that up to four times as many volcanic eruptions occur during the year following very large earthquakes than in other years. This ‘volcanic surge’ can affect volcanoes up to at least 500 km away from an earthquake’s epicentre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘The most unexpected part of this discovery was the considerable distance from the earthquake rupture where these eruptions took place, and the length of time for which we saw increased volcanic activity,’ said Sebastian Watt, a Dphil student in Oxford’s Department of Earth Sciences, who conducted the analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘This suggests that seismic waves, radiating from the earthquake rupture, may trigger an eruption by stirring or shaking the molten rock beneath volcanoes. The disturbances that result from this lead to eruption but, because of the time it takes for pressure to build up inside a volcano and for magma to move towards the surface, an eruption may not occur until some months after the earthquake,’ Sebastian added. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/re&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedaily.com/re&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="642" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T18:17:11.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="932" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-16T18:38:22.083" Score="10" ViewCount="2167" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently watched the film &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kingcorn.net/&quot;&gt;King Corn&lt;/a&gt;.  The filmmakers had their hair tested to determine how much of the carbon originated from corn.  They estimated that over 50% of the carbon in their hair was directly from corn.  Is their a specific isotope that can prove that corn was the source of the carbon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://uvamagazine.org/features/article/the_hair_detective/&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; that goes into more detail on the science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="643" LastEditorUserId="643" LastEditDate="2011-03-18T16:06:57.093" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T16:40:27.920" Title="Can carbon in hair be proven to originate from corn?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="932" CreationDate="2011-03-16T18:55:51.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about the study that King Corn used (if any), but the summary of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6V66-48C8P2J-24C&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=05/31/1978&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_searchStrId=1681498994&amp;amp;_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=39f335f0e3e2cd1baebbfdbc7f1d924c&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; indicated that different carbon isotopes can be used to track where the atoms are used in the body of the subject animals. Given that hair is constantly grown, and therefore needing sources of carbon, depending on the volume of corn or corn products consumed, it could be possible, though it would vary greatly by diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="110" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T18:55:51.940" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="936" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="937" CreationDate="2011-03-16T19:56:22.190" Score="36" ViewCount="2971" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of talk in magazines about a woman's G-Spot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But does it exist? Or is it a trick to keep men searching?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="649" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T18:03:26.393" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T22:57:08.470" Title="Does the G-Spot exist?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="936" CreationDate="2011-03-16T20:00:36.190" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;From personal experience, it does...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to be statistically more relevant, it appears that subjective body characteristics may define its sensitivity or not. Apparently, this is also the main reason why it is still an argument of research. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-Spot&quot;&gt;the Pedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers at the University of&#xA;  L'Aquila have found, using&#xA;  ultrasonography, that women who&#xA;  experience vaginal orgasm are&#xA;  statistically more likely to have&#xA;  thicker tissue in the anterior vaginal&#xA;  wall. The researchers believe&#xA;  these findings make it possible for&#xA;  women to have a rapid test to confirm&#xA;  whether or not they have a G-Spot.[28]&#xA;  A French study in late 2009 examined a&#xA;  small number of women with ultrasound&#xA;  as they had intercourse, by examining&#xA;  changes in the vagina they found&#xA;  physiological evidence of the G-Spot.&#xA;  The findings are under review by the&#xA;  Journal of Sexual Medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it's hard to obtain conclusive information from this, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01541824&quot;&gt;another study&lt;/a&gt; was statistically more relevant&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An anonymous questionnaire was&#xA;  distributed to 2350 professional women&#xA;  in the United States and Canada with a&#xA;  subsequent 55% return rate. Of these&#xA;  respondents, 40% reported having a&#xA;  fluid release (ejaculation) at the&#xA;  moment of orgasm. Further, 82% of the&#xA;  women who reported the sensitive area&#xA;  (Gräfenberg Spot) also reported&#xA;  ejaculation with their orgasms. A&#xA;  number of variables were associated&#xA;  with this perceived existence of&#xA;  female ejaculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the evidence points at a feature that is really person dependent, and it may certainly exists but not with the same level of sensitivity, making a clear identification difficult. In addition, being a sensitive area, and not a clearly visible feature, makes a clear identification even more complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31" LastEditorUserId="31" LastEditDate="2011-03-17T18:47:28.553" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T18:47:28.553" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2011-03-16T21:52:03.717" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Meditation is a catch all phrase that encompass a wide array of practices. Different meditation practices will have slightly different effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jpsychores.com/article/S0022-3999%2803%2900573-7/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mindfulness-based stress reduction and health benefits: A meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt; is a meta analyis on Mindfulness meditation with concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is a structured group program that employs mindfulness meditation to alleviate suffering associated with physical, psychosomatic and psychiatric disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although derived from a relatively small number of studies, these results suggest that MBSR may help a broad range of individuals to cope with their clinical and nonclinical problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-16T21:52:03.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="922" CreationDate="2011-03-17T05:53:05.897" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/938/6629&quot;&gt;Christian pointed out&lt;/a&gt;, meditation means a lot of different things. Even varieties of meditation differ within themselves; &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12671-010-0016-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;according to one account&lt;/a&gt;, mindfulness meditation practices differ along 5 dimensions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) intention and context of mindfulness practice, (2) bare attention, (3) attentional control, (4) wholesome emotions, and (5) ethical discernment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads to different effects depending on the style of meditation. Nonetheless, here are some of the findings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Psychological effects&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meditation has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00845519&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;shown to be effective in self-regulation of many psychology factors&lt;/a&gt; including&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;present-moment pain, negative body image, inhibition of activity by pain, symptoms, mood disturbance, and psychological symptomatology, including anxiety and depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transcendental Meditation has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://tinyurl.com/4ft5gy6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;shown to be particularly effective in improving anxiety&lt;/a&gt;, though other forms of meditation also helped, to a lesser degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1601-5215.2007.00175.x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another review&lt;/a&gt; concluded that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mindfulness-based therapeutic interventions appear to be effective in the treatment of depression, anxiety, psychosis, borderline personality disorder and suicidal/self-harm behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acceptance_and_commitment_therapy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ACT therapy&lt;/a&gt;, a relatively new form of cognitive-behavioural therapy based on mindfulness, has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000190790&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;shown to be effective&lt;/a&gt; in the treatment of a number of issues, including psychosis, anxiety, depression, pain management, quitting smoking, and substance abuse. A re-analysis showed that ACT was &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000235978&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;even more effective than some existing treatments&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17500308&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;another meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt; concluded that the effect of the mindfulness-based stress reduction program on depression and anxiety is not reliable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence for a beneficial effect of MBSR on depression and anxiety was equivocal. When active control groups were used, MBSR did not show an effect on depression and anxiety. Adherence to the MBSR program was infrequently assessed. Where it was assessed, the relation between practising mindfulness and changes in depression and anxiety was equivocal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Neurological effects&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.2.180&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This massive review&lt;/a&gt; summarises the research on neuroimaging studies of meditation and discusses the findings as they relate to psychological and clinical effects. The studies done to date show a number of changes to different areas of the brain, including frontal and prefrontal areas, which is linked with improvements to attention and information processing speed and efficiency. They conclude that effects on brain and nervous system function are undeniable, but due to differences in practice and research the exact nature of those effects requires more study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Physiological effects&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0149-7634(05)80210-6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This review&lt;/a&gt; summarises some of the physiological effects linked directly to meditation (as opposed to those caused by e.g., simply resting), including changes to heart rate, blood flow, and metabolic processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T17:10:18.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3285" CreationDate="2011-03-17T08:12:12.650" Score="4" ViewCount="1793" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of seemingly busy celebrities have rather well developed muscles, at least better than mine.  So my question is:  Is it possible to tell the difference simply by looking at pictures between people who eat healthy and exercise a lot vs people who take the shortcut of anabolic steroids?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="403" LastEditorUserId="403" LastEditDate="2011-03-17T08:27:36.907" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T09:21:12.707" Title="Telling the difference between anabolic steroid use vs dieting and exercise" Tags="|medical-science|lifestyle|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="945" CreationDate="2011-03-17T11:09:27.413" Score="34" ViewCount="27997" Body="&lt;p&gt;Was it common practice for pirates to replace a lost hand with a prosthetic hook? Or was this lore perpetrated by fiction and Hollywood?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does seem like a reasonable choice, since a hook is a rather cheap and simple to make prosthesis. But is there historical evidence that shows that a hook was the go-to prosthesis for pirates? Or did their job actually require a more sophisticated prosthesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="36598" LastEditDate="2021-08-04T14:33:45.477" LastActivityDate="2021-08-04T14:33:45.477" Title="Pirates with a prosthetic hook: Lore or Truth?" Tags="|medical-science|history|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="944" CreationDate="2011-03-17T11:33:16.863" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently it's true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/modern/prosthetic-limb1.htm&quot;&gt;&quot;How Stuff Works&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most famously attributed to seafaring pirates, peglegs with wooden cores and metal hands shaped into hooks have actually been the prosthetic standard throughout much of history. While Hollywood has exaggerated their use of hooks and peglegs, pirates did sometimes rely on these types of prostheses. The required materials for these devices could be scavenged from a common pirate ship; however, a trained doctor would have been rare. Instead, the ship's cook typically performed amputation surgeries, albeit with poor success rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="212" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-01-05T03:18:03.320" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T03:18:03.320" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="876" CreationDate="2011-03-17T12:30:34.787" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Playing any music could have an potential impact on a persons mood/behaviour. Although the effects I suspect would be quite subtle in many cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However simply playing &quot;classical&quot; or orchestral music wouldn't cut the mustard - you'd have to look at the features of the music itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An orchestral piece full of bombast or of a high tempo is likely to have the same effect as a drum heavy metal track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper: David L. Wiesenthal1,*, Dwight A. Hennessy, Brad Totten (2006)The Influence of Music on Driver Stress - found that driver stress could be reduced by allowing drivers to listen to some music of their own choosing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper: Warren Brodsky (2002) The effects of music tempo on simulated driving performance and vehicular control - found that the tempo of music can affect an individuals arousal with faster tempo music (regardless of genre) consistantly being linked with poor driving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="432" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T12:30:34.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="876" CreationDate="2011-03-17T12:46:59.023" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I understand this, the aim of playing classical music is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to affect the behaviour of people through subconscious tricks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s much more direct than that: young people in general dislike classical music and won’t be inclined to linger in public places that play classical music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether this works, my guess is as good as anyone’s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T12:46:59.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="949" CreationDate="2011-03-17T13:17:03.927" Score="31" ViewCount="5476" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a common belief that more crime is committed during a full moon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I rationalised this by assuming&#xA;criminals used the increased moon&#xA;light to aid them in their criminal&#xA;activities with out really thinking&#xA;about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies that show this link? Is there any link between phases of the moon and crime?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-02-01T06:18:07.587" LastActivityDate="2017-02-26T01:39:27.217" Title="Are more crimes committed during a full moon?" Tags="|criminology|moon|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="948" CreationDate="2011-03-17T13:35:30.923" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ivan Kelly, James Rotton and Roger Culver (1996) examined over 100 studies on lunar effects and concluded that the studies have failed to show a reliable and significant correlation (i.e., one not likely due to chance) between the full moon, or any other phase of the moon, and each of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the homicide rate &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;traffic accidents &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;crisis calls to police or fire stations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;domestic violence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assassinations &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;kidnappings &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;aggression by professional hockey players &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;violence in prisons&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assaults &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gunshot wounds &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stabbings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Huge list omitted)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/fullmoon.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.skepdic.com/fullmoon.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(At the bottom of that article you will find a lot more references)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This myth is a beautiful example of Confirmation Bias:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dSTe8.png&quot; alt=&quot;Confirmation Bias&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user288" LastEditorUserId="1183" LastEditDate="2011-05-19T04:09:46.693" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T04:09:46.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="950" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-17T13:36:59.350" Score="25" ViewCount="1389" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while ago &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/astrobiology_toxic_chemical.html&quot;&gt;a NASA funded study claimed&lt;/a&gt; that they could get bacteria to incorporate arsenic into their DNA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life forms based on different elements than life on earth have been speculated about in science fiction for a long time, the most prominent, hypothetical example is probably silicon-based instead of carbon-based life. Now, arsenic and phosphorus are in the same group in the periodic table like carbon and silicon are. This is the first study I know of that claims that life based on different elements is really possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did they conclusively show that life forms based on arsenic-containing DNA are possible, or is this an overhyped and exagerrated conclusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T11:53:47.043" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T08:09:19.707" Title="Did a NASA study show that arsenic-based bacteria are possible?" Tags="|biology|nasa|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="950" CreationDate="2011-03-17T14:23:17.623" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may enjoy the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2010/12/02/nasa-arsensic-based-file/&quot;&gt;NASA did not find arsenic-based life&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Those bacteria &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; use arsenic instead of phosphorus if forced to, but do not use it &lt;strong&gt;naturally&lt;/strong&gt;. Yet this achievement is still cool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="673" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T14:23:17.623" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="954" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-17T14:54:09.490" Score="6" ViewCount="351" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jim Berkland &lt;a href=&quot;http://mychurchofme.com/2011/03/former-usgs-geologist-jim-berkland-predicts-major-california-quake/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that he can predict earthquakes. Can he or other people predict earthquakes better than chance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-19T14:41:22.427" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T14:41:22.427" Title="Can Jim Berkland predict earthquakes?" Tags="|geology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="831" CreationDate="2011-03-17T15:03:23.147" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the question of zinc and the common cold: the evidence clearly says &quot;maybe.&quot; There are some studies which show effect and an approximately equal set showing none. (see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Zinc-HealthProfessional/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Zinc-HealthProfessional/&lt;/a&gt; especially &quot;The common cold&quot; section with cites).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One important point to note is that Zinc cold treatments are implicated in temporary to permanent loss of smell. I believe the intranasal (spray) ones are of concern. Zicam particularly was in court over this IIRC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="482" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T15:03:23.147" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="956" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="957" CreationDate="2011-03-17T15:46:33.983" Score="160" ViewCount="32137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this repeatedly over the years, that Einstein was bad at math, that he was bad at history, that he was dyslexic.  I also read somewhere in my youth that some of the &quot; bad at math&quot; stuff was based on a poor exam score he once received - but that the test had been in French, which Einstein couldn't read.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone cut through the junk and get to the heart of this.  Was one of history's greatest &quot;teachers&quot; a bad student, or have a learning disability?  I find it hard to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T18:13:51.320" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T21:26:13.183" Title="Was Einstein a poor student?" Tags="|education|albert-einstein|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="956" CreationDate="2011-03-17T16:06:03.933" Score="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, he wasn't: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scienceblogs.de/frischer-wind/2011/01/einsteins-4-in-mathe-ein-bildungsmythos.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;page with german article and image of school certificate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Swiss school system has a 6 as best grade, and 1 as poorest, while the german is the other way round. Perhaps the legend is founded there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EaON4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Einstein&amp;#39;s diploma&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bestand:Einstein-matura.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Translation of the subjects and grades in the image:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The education council of the Canton Aargau&#xA;certifies Albert Einstein, born Mar. 14 1879 &#xA;final secondary-school examinations from Sep 18, 19, 21 and 30&#xA;&#xA;German language and literature :    5&#xA;French    &quot;      &quot;      &quot;      :    3&#xA;English   &quot;      &quot;      &quot;      :    -&#xA;Italian   &quot;      &quot;      &quot;      :    5&#xA;History                        :    6&#xA;Geography                      :    4&#xA;Algebra                        :    6&#xA;Geometry                       :    6&#xA;Descriptive geometry           :    6&#xA;Physics                        :    6&#xA;Chemistry                      :    5&#xA;Natural history                :    5&#xA;Artistic drawing               :    4&#xA;Technical drawing              :    4&#xA;&#xA;documented at 3rd of Oct., 1896&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T23:59:27.643" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T23:59:27.643" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="956" CreationDate="2011-03-17T16:10:28.660" Score="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a myth that Einstein was bad at math. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1935, a rabbi in Princeton showed him [Einstein] a clipping of the Ripley’s [Believe it or Not] column with the headline “Greatest living mathematician failed in mathematics.” Einstein laughed. “I never failed in mathematics,” he replied, correctly. “Before I was fifteen I had mastered differential and integral calculus.” &#xA;  (Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1936731_1936743_1936758,00.html&quot;&gt;Time&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, as someone who studied physics himself I can tell you that physicists (including Einstein) sometimes do seek help from mathematicians. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T21:26:13.183" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T21:26:13.183" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="954" CreationDate="2011-03-17T17:19:52.157" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is certainly something that could be tested, but it would be hard.  You would have to define the conditions for it to be meaningful, including&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many predictions will he make?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How close does he have to be to the epicenter?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How close does he have to be in magnitude?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What time frame counts?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etcetera&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;the next big earthquake along the ring of fire could be as early as this weekend.&quot; is rather broad.  ANY earthquake of ANY magnitude ANYWHERE along the ENTIRE ring of fire counts?  And if one doesn't happen, well he did just say it COULD happen.  They only way he looses is if there is a big earthquake BEFORE this weekend - and even then he'd probably still claim he was correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-19T14:40:34.783" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T14:40:34.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="950" CreationDate="2011-03-17T19:47:39.443" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rrresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria-nasas.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; from a scientist pointing out the flaws in the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the measurements are questionable, due to sloppy controls.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a more general sense, in order to conclusively show something, someone not supporting NASA would have to replicate the experiment.  So far that has not happened, and most of the press is on how badly they screwed up protocols.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other articles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/dec/02/nasa-life-form-bacteria-arsenic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/dec/02/nasa-life-form-bacteria-arsenic&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-12/nasas-arsenic-loving-bacteria-doesnt-love-arsenic-after-all-critics-say&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-12/nasas-arsenic-loving-bacteria-doesnt-love-arsenic-after-all-critics-say&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, it appears to be in the one-experiment-and-a-lot-of-opinions stage, which is very far from conclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="30213" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T08:09:19.707" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T08:09:19.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="965" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-17T21:26:44.563" Score="34" ViewCount="5480" Body="&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accepted knowledge is that high carb low fat diet is good. Paleo diet says opposite, the claims seem solid for the Paleo diet but I am still skeptical as Science seems to think that conventional wisdom is correct but am looking to see if there are any problems with either side of the argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day I stumbled across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marksdailyapple.com/primal-blueprint-101/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic claim laid out there is this: We as humans only started eating large amounts of carbs when we got into agriculture. Even then, it's only in the last 100 years we started to put them (including sugar) into everything in large amounts. The human body was not made for this and quite a few modern diseases can be traced back to eating too many carbs (diabetes and obesity are easiest to connect to carb overconsumption).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process in your body can be summarized like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you eat carbs your body immediately converts them to glucose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because of the higher blood sugar levels (lots of glucose in your blood,) your body makes insulin.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The insulin puts your body in a state where it absorbs all glucose it can find into its cells and starts running on glucose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the same time, instead of using it, your body stores all fat that comes in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The result is that, when your done eating, it won't take that long to work through your glucose stores (usually one or two hours) after which you will be hungry again. So you'll start filling up on carbs again and in this way leave the fat stores constantly growing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The science behind this seems solid but the leading advice agencies still advise eating lots of carbs and staying low on fat and protein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It took me a few weeks of off and on reading of everything I could find on this subject before I started to believe in the science. I was really skeptical when I read the first page, but I had a real hard time finding holes in the theory so, in the end, I gave it a try. It's been around 5 weeks now and I've lost 6 kilos, the great thing is that I have been less hungry then normal (while eating a few hundred calories less a day).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find any serious problems with this diet (lifestyle). I'm hoping for some discussion on the health benefits or problems associated with this lifestyle. The most common comment is that eating more fat and protein will give you a elevated risk of heart disease. I believe its a lot more complicated then that. If you take in account the two different kinds of cholesterol (LDL and HDL?) and adjust your diet to optimize the balance between those two I think the risk of heart disease as a result of the higher fat and protein intake is negligible. The fact that you will almost definitely lose weight however will do wonders for your chances of (not) getting heart disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To further clarify my question: the accepted knowledge is that its healthier to live on a low fat, high carb diet. The Primal or Paleo diet says its the other way around, that low carb, high fat is healthier. Science seems to think conventional wisdom is correct and a high carb, low fat diet is best. I'm looking for a skeptical look at the facts. &lt;strong&gt;Am I goaded into believing a pseudo diet science? Or does the claim that a low carb, high fat diet is healthier seem scientifically plausible?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to end with saying this is my first contribution to this stack exchange community, so if this question has any major flaws, I would like to hear what I can do to fix them. I would also like to mention that English is not my first language so please excuse me for not being as clear and concise as I might have been otherwise, I found it hard to summarize this subject to a relatively small piece of text. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="683" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-01-03T21:09:24.287" Title="Are we eating too many carbs? And do we need to switch to the primal/paleo diet?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|lifestyle|cholesterol|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="966" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1030" CreationDate="2011-03-17T21:31:04.387" Score="8" ViewCount="1343" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hear students, parents, and -- some -- teachers pull this claim all the time: standardized tests causes a rise in ADHD in children. I know Sir Ken Robinson mentioned something like that in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&quot;&gt;one of his presentations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies to back this up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="686" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T12:57:14.307" Title="Does standardized testing cause ADHD?" Tags="|psychiatry|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="141" CreationDate="2011-03-17T22:47:16.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always found this obsession over cholesterol odd. It's like saying: more people die in cars when the speedometer is on a high number, lets see if we can get the speedometer to not go so high, while not changing anything about the actual speed of the car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I understand it there are many different types of cholesterol (or should i say many different elements that make up the group cholesterol?) some of them are really bad for you, others, not so much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most mentioned elements are HDL and LDL with the HDL being the good kind and the LDL the bad kind. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marksdailyapple.com/cholesterol/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Some&lt;/a&gt; sources say the proportion matters more than the total cholesterol level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/Cholesterol/AboutCholest...ol_UCM_305561_Article.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American heart association&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="683" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T22:47:16.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="970" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-17T23:10:57.187" Score="2" ViewCount="734" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people claim that reincarnation is &quot;scientific&quot;,  since there were &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation_research&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scientific studies of reincarnation&lt;/a&gt;. They refer especially to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Stevenson&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ian Stevenson's&lt;/a&gt; reseach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this still considered &quot;scientific&quot;? Can anyone give a brief review of works of this guy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="108" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-09-13T13:09:23.630" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T22:40:37.863" Title="Studies on reincarnation of Ian Stevenson" Tags="|reincarnation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="943" CreationDate="2011-03-17T23:17:54.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that is possible. What would you like to see? A specific artery pattern or something like that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the possible speculations come from people that are jealous and try to rationalize the difference in muscle growth between the celebrity and them self by claiming steroid use. What they fail to take in to account is that those busy celebrities can have months of free time in between movies so they could quite literally work-out full time and they get to fill that time with the best trainers and nutritionists money can buy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then, you don't even have to, this is how Hugh Jackman trained for the second Wolverine movie: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/celebrity-fitness-and-health-in-national/hugh-jackman-eats-6-000-caloriesa-day-to-gain-weight-for-wolverine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.examiner.com/celebrity-fitness-and-health-in-national/hugh-jackman-eats-6-000-caloriesa-day-to-gain-weight-for-wolverine&lt;/a&gt; 1,5 hours a day with a really high intensity specialized workout program combined with a 6000 calorie diet...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="683" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T23:17:54.797" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="966" CreationDate="2011-03-17T23:52:50.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think (not scientific) that the vast majority of children diagnosed with ADHD are just active children.  The expectation that every child is predisposed to sit in a chair and accomplish tasks is flawed at its basis.  Sure some actually have an imbalance, but not nearly as many we seem to think.  I am looking for data now from other places (Europe and Japan specifically) to see if their children seem to be afflicted as well.  Their not being would be a telling comment on our society's predisposition to medicate...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user705" LastActivityDate="2011-03-17T23:52:50.270" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="974" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1002" CreationDate="2011-03-18T01:12:23.977" Score="20" ViewCount="3659" Body="&lt;p&gt;An article from the Los Angeles Times &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2011/03/17/20110317japan-fukushima0317.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;regarding the concerns of individuals who live near the Fukushima I Nuclear Plant&lt;/a&gt; that appeared in my local newspaper this morning contained this interesting tidbit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Japanese, the desperation has an added dimension: Already the name &amp;quot;Fukushima&amp;quot; is laden with something beyond the fear of damaged health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Japanese survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki lived the rest of their lives with the stigma of having been exposed to radiation, a stain that the years never erased. Known as Hibakushas, they are formally recognized by the government if they lived within proximity of the blasts and receive a special medical allowance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the designation also led them to become ostracized by other Japanese, who feared wrongly that the contamination was contagious or could be hereditary. The result was that many survivors of the bombings, and even their children, lived ghettoized lives because of their exposure to radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any merit to their concerns?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-07-16T00:43:09.670" Title="Do people exposed to high levels of radiation pose any risk to their children or other individuals?" Tags="|medical-science|radiation|world-war-ii|hiroshima-nagasaki|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="155" CreationDate="2011-03-18T01:45:32.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am far from an expert in this field but this question reminded me of this post by Phil Plait:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/11/26/black-friday/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/11/26/black-friday/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;It actually starts with a definition of the color black but it ends with the conclusion that empty space (literally empty, a vacuum with 0 molecules and 0 photons in it) still holds some sort of energy. If we one day find out how to harvest this energy we would quite literally be creating energy out of (realllllllly) thin air! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="683" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T01:45:32.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="976" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-18T02:41:37.693" Score="68" ViewCount="7286" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen numerous arguments about gun control, in the sense of laws restricting gun ownership or possession, and whether widespread gun possession affects crime rates, and each side is happy to pull out studies that are favorable to their side.  I really haven't felt I could trust any of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this isn't too much of a hot potato, but are there any serious scientific studies available?  Or at least reasonably unbiased?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T11:45:55.413" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T15:22:52.230" Title="Is gun control effective?" Tags="|law|weapons|criminology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="965" CreationDate="2011-03-18T04:17:26.060" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Australian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csiro.au/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CSIRO&lt;/a&gt; has published a reasonably well-received book called &amp;quot;The Total Wellbeing Diet&amp;quot; that was based upon a number of clinical trials of overweight/obese Australian adults. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csiro.au/science/How-the-TWD-was-researched.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more traditional low fat high carbohydrate diets for weight loss had been challenged by alternative dietary approaches such as very low carbohydrate (Atkins), moderately high protein (ZONE) or low glycemic index diets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the emerging body of CSIRO and international research confirmed that varying the protein to carbohydrate ratio during weight loss appeared to have a number of subtle benefits which may result in greater fat loss and sparing of lean body mass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CSIRO has conducted several of the largest studies showing that higher protein dietary patterns for weight management have metabolic advantages over high carbohydrate patterns in overweight people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results clearly showed health benefits and significant weight loss from a diet higher in proteins and low in fats and the Total Wellbeing Diet was born.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a little more information on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csiro.au/csiro/channel/pchan.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; describing how one of the trials was conducted. I'm not sure this is precisely answers your question, however it does provide a volume of evidence regarding the effects on weight loss of different carb/protein/fat ratios in the diets of overweight adults. Diet is obviously only one factor in the maintenance of a given BMI, however (all other factors being controlled for) it seems that moderate-protein, low-carb diet will help a person shed excess body fat faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="710" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T04:17:26.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="979" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1014" CreationDate="2011-03-18T07:05:53.370" Score="32" ViewCount="9609" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program&quot;&gt;HAARP&lt;/a&gt; is a favorite target of conspiracy theorists. It has been blamed for causing the Haiti earthquake, the recent Japanese earthquake and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program#Conspiracy_theories&quot;&gt;many, many other events&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The High Frequency Active Auroral&#xA;  Research Program (HAARP) is an&#xA;  ionospheric research program jointly&#xA;  funded by the US Air Force, the US&#xA;  Navy, the University of Alaska and the&#xA;  Defense Advanced Research Projects&#xA;  Agency (DARPA). Its purpose is to&#xA;  analyze the ionosphere and investigate&#xA;  the potential for developing&#xA;  ionospheric enhancement technology for&#xA;  radio communications and surveillance&#xA;  purposes (such as missile detection).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even Jesse Ventura got onboard the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJbDUStIn2k&quot;&gt;HAARP conspiracy wagon&lt;/a&gt;. Is there ANY scientific basis for any of these theories? There are two theories specifically that seem to get traction in the fringes. The first even sounds feasible: Can HAARP affect the weather? The other, probably the most famous and also least feasible: Can HAARP cause earthquakes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="700" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-09T13:26:32.723" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T13:26:32.723" Title="Can HAARP affect weather or earthquakes?" Tags="|weather|geology|haarp|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="974" CreationDate="2011-03-18T09:22:14.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, don't forget that most radiation damage is got not by directly &quot;exposing to high dozes of radiation&quot; - like when you stand in front of a radiation source and get irradiated. Direct irradiation of course happens to people who were directly exposed, but that's relatively rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most typical way to get exposed to radiation is to inhale or otherwise consume radioactive materials and those materials stay in the body continuing to decay and irradiate not only the bearer but also everything around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So of course if you have a choice of whether to stay near a person who inhaled radioactive materials or not to stay your obvious choice is &lt;em&gt;not to stay&lt;/em&gt;. Yest the amount of materials typically inhaled/consumed is very low and so the amount of radiation produced by a bearer is also very low (since materials decay rather slowly) and also many types of radiation can't penetrate body tissues and &quot;get out&quot; to the outer world - they will mostly influence the bearer body. So risk of negative consequences of sitting next to a person who consumed radioactive materials is very low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="666" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T09:22:14.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="981" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="984" CreationDate="2011-03-18T10:02:43.947" Score="31" ViewCount="2645" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are widespread claims that you can get addicted to video games, shopping, internet, whatever, even sex. Not merely &quot;like it very much&quot;, but addicted, as in addicted to alcohol. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addictive_behavior&quot;&gt;According to Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is any activity, substance, object, or behavior that has become the major focus of a person's life to the exclusion of other activities, or that has begun to harm the individual or others physically, mentally, or socially&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whats the backing of this claim? How do you measure if one's really &quot;addicted&quot; and requires help or just likes the activity in question very much? If I'd like to measure i.e. whether Kobe Bryant is addicted to basketball or Stephen Hawking is to science, what methods I'm to use? Or is it all just subjective label without any scientific backing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user288" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-06-11T02:39:44.120" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T16:44:34.420" Title="Does addictive behavior exist?" Tags="|psychology|addiction|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="992" CreationDate="2011-03-18T10:12:58.207" Score="28" ViewCount="51995" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any documented events of people drowning in slippery baths after falling asleep? &#xA;I've tried to Google it but wasn't able to find anything. Probably just used wrong terms, or maybe there were no such accidents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking it because I used to hear &quot;how dangerous it is to fall asleep in a bath&quot; very often when I was a child. Is it just another fairy tale to scare children? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user288" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditorDisplayName="user288" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T02:27:58.510" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T23:48:51.517" Title="Is there a risk of drowning if you fall asleep in the bath?" Tags="|safety|sleep|mortality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="981" CreationDate="2011-03-18T10:47:57.097" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are soft sciences. You're not looking at a hard science; you can't do an fMRI and say &quot;look at how the addiction-response area lights up when this guy is playing MMORPGs.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia definition does a fine job of drawing the line, I'd like to point especially to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;. . . has begun to harm the individual or others physically, mentally or socially&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question doesn't spontaneously arise from the subset of alleged addictions that you point out. How do you know somebody doesn't just like cigarettes very much? You're always drawing a line based on some criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that a person may become addicted to video games (for instance) because there have been people who let their lives be dominated by playing video games to the extent of their family leaving them, and them losing their jobs due to high absence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The criteria for &quot;harming the individual&quot; is always sketchy. Certainly, it is conceivable that one could engage in a mild form of an activity that might be harmful. Drinking reasonable amounts of alcohol, or even a bit too much occasionally, might be &lt;em&gt;somewhat&lt;/em&gt; harmful, but we'd probably argue that it isn't an addiction if the person doesn't have a problem keeping away from it for a considerable amount of time. I'd rather place emphasis on the &quot;or others&quot; part of the definition. If your partner suffers because of your habit, we may be inclined to call those habits addictive. On that note, see the website &lt;a href=&quot;http://gamerwidow.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;GamerWidow&lt;/a&gt;. Of course, even this criteria has to be coupled with a lot of others. You can't jump immediately from &quot;someone was harmed&quot; to &quot;therefore, I'm addicted to this causal activity.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, soft science. I don't think anybody can ever point to a single defining factor, or any definite threshold of anything, that either prove or disprove addiction. Think of it, rather, as a set of weighted inclusion and exclusion criteria that adds up, and that you draw a subjective line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="26361" LastEditDate="2017-03-13T01:41:02.673" LastActivityDate="2017-03-13T01:41:02.673" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="990" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1006" CreationDate="2011-03-18T11:43:43.523" Score="15" ViewCount="975" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many years ago I saw an episode of ER where there was a person who suddenly experienced some heart rhythm problems in the hospital. There was a qualified doctor nearby and a defibrillator, but the latter was dysfunctional because of a drained battery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the doctor filled a small bath with water and then with assistance of his colleagues submerged that person's face into water. As they described it, water got into person's nose, irritated nerves located there, his body reflectively assumed it was drowning and that had such a powerful impact that the person's heart resumed normal functioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How realistic is that? Does such drowning imitation have enough effect to replace a defibrillator?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="666" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T03:35:57.600" Title="Can submerging into water be used to replace defibrillation?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="983" CreationDate="2011-03-18T11:50:40.123" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Drowning in bathtubs happens. In 2000 in the US there were &lt;b&gt;341&lt;/b&gt; deaths by drowning and submersion while in or falling into bathtubs. &lt;a href=&quot;http://danger.mongabay.com/injury_death.htm&quot;&gt;(Data)&lt;/a&gt; Though this data doesn't show the age factor.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most sources, &lt;a href=&quot;http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4100/is_200312/ai_n9332680/?tag=content;col1&quot;&gt;like this one&lt;/a&gt;, examine child drowning reasons. And it says that 75% of children who drowned were younger than 24 months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for adults, I didn't find any listed causes. But I would say they all happen when a person is unconscious, and there could be many reasons for that: fainting, heart attack, stroke, alcohol/drug poisoning, head injury, etc. Falling asleep is much less likely, as reflexes will kick in, but combined with the factors mentioned above - it's possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As personal example: once I fainted because the water in the tub was too hot. It took probably 10-20 seconds until I realized that I was under water and another 20-30 seconds to stand up, because it was slippery and I was drowsy. Of course it wasn't enough to drown, but I can see how it could happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-03-20T18:11:32.667" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T18:11:32.667" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="974" CreationDate="2011-03-18T11:54:14.183" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Radioactive radiation is a form of energy, if it hits your body it can damage it (depending on how high/low the energy is). But the &lt;strong&gt;radiation won't linger&lt;/strong&gt; in your body, it's not going to make you &quot;glow&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can become a danger for others is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/hac/crises/jpn/faqs/en/index2.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;radioactive dust&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;particles&lt;/strong&gt; that stick to your &lt;strong&gt;clothes and skin&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. By hugging or touching somebody you could transfer that radioactive material. But if you get rid of your clothes and take a thorough shower you won't be a danger anymore. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/pub_meet/polonium210/en/index.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Inhaling/swallowing radioactive material&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; can make you contagious more permantly. A thorough scrubbing won't help anymore, because now there is a radioactive source inside you. Your bodily fluids (blood, urine, sweat and even semen) could irradiate others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the radioactive radiation itself won't &quot;infect&quot; you and make you contagious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will only be contagious if you have something on or in you that is a continuous source of radioactivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: inserted Links&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-03-20T10:50:24.593" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T10:50:24.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="999" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1007" CreationDate="2011-03-18T13:58:07.113" Score="87" ViewCount="21441" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cutting sleep down to 6, or 4, or 2 hours per day sounds fantastic. It also sounds like something that should have evolved naturally if it were possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.polyphasicsociety.com/polyphasic-sleep/beginners/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Polyphasic Society&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Humans are naturally polyphasic sleepers. Depending on the culture, humans will either have segmented night sleep, or nap throughout the day.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  The reason humans sleep polyphasically is to improve sleep density, sleep stability, and for the warriors out there decrease overall time asleep. Humans need sleep, but only certain stages of sleep are important for us to recover each night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has any serious research been done into polyphasic sleep and its side effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biphasic_and_polyphasic_sleep&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Polyphasic sleep&lt;/a&gt; involves sleeping more than once per day at regular intervals and for regular amounts of time.  There are different specific regiments, but the overall goal is usually to reduce the total time spent sleeping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="753" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2018-08-29T07:30:20.303" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T07:30:20.303" Title="Does polyphasic sleep work? Does it have long-term or short-term side effects?" Tags="|sleep|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="974" CreationDate="2011-03-18T15:29:07.913" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have stated, the radiation itself doesn't &quot;stay&quot; with a person.  External exposure to radiation often takes the form of burns.  Just as you wouldn't be concerned with &quot;catching&quot; sunburn by being close to someone who lingered at the beach too long, you also don't need to worry about &quot;catching&quot; radiation burns.  Transference of radioactive particles, which can linger on skin, hair, and clothing, is the only transmission risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the one of the MAIN stigmas in Japanese culture after the atomic bombings stemmed from  the belief that the children of those exposed to radiation would be born disfigured by horrifying birth defects.  This is especially important in a society where &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1963.65.6.02a00070/pdf&quot;&gt;family honor and kinship&lt;/a&gt; are so important.  Many would argue that the &quot;Godzilla&quot; fear, of monsters born from radiation, is a manifestation of this concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately for the Japanese, their fears about the post-bombing effects of radiation being passed on to their kin went mainly unrealized.  As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rerf.or.jp/radefx/genetics_e/birthdef.html&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; shows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The incidence of major birth defects&#xA;  (594 cases or 0.91%) among the 65,431&#xA;  [births to parents exposed to&#xA;  radiation from the bombings]...accords&#xA;  well with a large series of&#xA;  contemporary Japanese births...where&#xA;  radiation exposure was not involved&#xA;  and overall malformation frequency was&#xA;  0.92%. No untoward outcome showed any relation to parental radiation dose or&#xA;  exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the swift moves by the Japanese government to evacuate the areas around the troubled nuclear facilities, will prevent further generations from suffering under the unnecessary stigmas associated with radiation exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T15:29:07.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="981" CreationDate="2011-03-18T16:47:54.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to David Hedlund's answer, which is excellent, I'd also like to point out that behavioral addiction is a continuum disorder, like many psychological problems such as ADHD, autism, and anxiety.  It isn't really valid to state that is a person &quot;is addicted&quot; or &quot;is not addicted&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncsacw.samhsa.gov/files/SAFERR_AppendixE.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;.  That's why the clause about being harmful is in there.  Until the point where an addiction becomes harmful, it wouldn't be worth while to treat.  It may even be unethical.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the degree of harm matters quite a bit.  If a person plays video games 8 hours a day, loses all social ties, but can keep a job and maintain other commitments: is that addiction?  Is that addiction combined with social anxiety disorders?  You can't know just from these hypotheticals.  The person's video game attachment could be (medically) treated as an addiction, but only would be if someone (or the person themselves) wanted it to be treated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="373" LastEditorUserId="373" LastEditDate="2017-03-15T16:44:34.420" LastActivityDate="2017-03-15T16:44:34.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="981" CreationDate="2011-03-18T16:59:58.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think we can make a case for several activities being addictive if we measure brain activity, in particular brain activity associated with dopamine and reward centers of the brain.  Setting drug addiction as the benchmark, many studies &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6T0C-4DBC9GS-5&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=12/31/2004&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_searchStrId=1684274418&amp;amp;_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=71524aa992dcacf4f39cf1b0eac97317&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;like this one&lt;/a&gt; establish dopamine reactions as key component:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brain imaging studies, while extending&#xA;  these finding to humans, have shown a&#xA;  correlation between&#xA;  psychostimulant-induced increase of&#xA;  extracellular DA [dopamine] in the&#xA;  striatum and self-reported measures of&#xA;  liking and ‘high’ (euphoria).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one can prove similar reactions in humans while they are engaging in other actions, and if one can couple these activities with negative social behaviors also associated with conventional (drug and alcohol) addictions, I think that's a strong case for the person being addicted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies are being conducted on several activities related to this phenomena.  For example, there is evidence for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrc-iol.org/cores/mialab/fijc/Files/2002/120402_Koepp_Nature_1998.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;striatal dopamine release&lt;/a&gt; during video game play, as measured by PET scan during video game play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, studies involving gambling also show similarities to drug addiction.  In the abstract &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrc-iol.org/cores/mialab/fijc/Files/2002/120402_Koepp_Nature_1998.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pathological gambling is linked to reduced activation of the mesolimbic reward system&lt;/a&gt;, (the mesolimbic reward system is involved with dopamine release) it states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By analogy to drug dependence, it has&#xA;  been speculated that the underlying&#xA;  pathology in pathological gambling is&#xA;  a reduction in the sensitivity of the&#xA;  reward system. Studying pathological&#xA;  gamblers and controls during a&#xA;  guessing game using functional&#xA;  magnetic resonance imaging, we&#xA;  observed a reduction of ventral&#xA;  striatal and ventromedial prefrontal&#xA;  activation in the pathological&#xA;  gamblers that was negatively&#xA;  correlated with gambling severity,&#xA;  linking hypoactivation of these areas&#xA;  to disease severity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that these active brain studies should be the scientific litmus test for &quot;addiction&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T16:59:58.617" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="990" CreationDate="2011-03-18T17:08:36.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to call it plausible but highly doubtful. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalian_diving_reflex&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mammalian diving reflex&lt;/a&gt;&amp;mdash;which is triggered when cold water hits the face&amp;mdash;causes a marked drop in heart rate, among other vascular effects. If the patient is experiencing tachycardia or irregular heart rhythm, the reflex &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; conceivably help restore normal rhythm, but this is most likely just typical medical drama fodder, which is notorious for its &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouFailYourMedicalBoardsForever&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;failings&lt;/a&gt; when it comes to &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DidNotDoTheResearch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt;. I am glad to hear they wanted to use the defibrillator in the &lt;em&gt;correct situation&lt;/em&gt; at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="657" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T17:08:36.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="990" CreationDate="2011-03-18T17:09:41.727" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect that what happened in that ER episode was a patient who had an attack of tachycardia -- where the heart is beating so fast that it no longer pumps blood efficiently. This particular rhythm can be treated by harnessing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammalian_diving_reflex&quot;&gt;diving reflex&lt;/a&gt;. When cold water (specifically below 21 C or 70 F) contacts the face, the heart immediately slows down by 10 to 25%. Thus if the heart rate is too high, this will immediately address the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Other effects take place afterwards, as described in the linked Wikipedia article, but the first effect is the relevant one.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is ONLY effective when the problem with the heart is that it is beating too fast. Other arrythmias, such as fibrillation, may not be affected. Thus the need for defibrillators. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrillation&quot;&gt;Fibrillation&lt;/a&gt; is irregular and unsynchronized quivering of the muscles. The problem there is not necessarily that the heart is beating too fast, but that it is not beating properly. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defibrillation&quot;&gt;Defibrillation&lt;/a&gt; attempts to reset the rhythm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, according to Wikipedia, defibrillation is only used in cases of tachycardia where there is no pulse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="677" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T17:09:41.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="999" CreationDate="2011-03-18T18:04:12.833" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is little research published in scientific journals about conscious adoption of extreme sleep patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2000 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.puredoxyk.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PureDoxyk&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://everything2.com/title/Uberman%2527s+Sleep+Schedule&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;proposed&lt;/a&gt; the Uberman schedule:&#xA;Every four hours you sleep 20 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It takes a lot of willpower to adopt a sleep pattern like Uberman that only allows 2 hours of sleep per day. People need a deep inner desire to adopt such a schedule or there will be no compliance with the experimental setup. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people who try to adopt the Uberman schedule fail very soon. There are some such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep-log-day-1/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Steve Pavlina&lt;/a&gt; or Tynan claim to have followed the schedule and produced a detailed account of the experience at their website.&#xA;Steve Pavlina &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/04/polyphasic-sleep-the-return-to-monophasic/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quit&lt;/a&gt; the schedule after 5 1/2 months. &#xA;Tynan &lt;a href=&quot;http://tynan.com/taking-a-break-from-polyphasic&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quit&lt;/a&gt; after 4 1/2 months.&#xA;PureDoxyk &lt;a href=&quot;http://everything2.com/title/Uberman%2527s+Sleep+Schedule&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quit&lt;/a&gt; after 6 months.&#xA;They all cite impracticality of having to sleep every 4 hours as reason for quiting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://pulsify.blogspot.de/2014/01/dymaxion-sleep-article.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Time article from 1943&lt;/a&gt; that reports Buckminster Fuller to have spent two years on a polyphasic sleep shedule with two hours per day he called dymaxion sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my awareness there's no contemporary person who upheld the schedule for multiple years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if it's possible to keep up with the Uberman schedule it doesn't seem to worthwhile or those people would probably have continued with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as short term side effects goes there seems to be mental effects. We unfortunately don't have much more than self reporting about most of the polyphasic sleepers. I will therefore write a bit which is my own understanding from reading about polyphasic sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of polyphasic sleepers report to be more productive during the time they are on the schedule. Polyphasic sleep forces you to do detailed time management or you screw up. The forced time management might account for the gain in productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's my understanding that the mental state is similar to the state of calmness, that's reached through doing a lot of meditation. The sleepers might therefore perform better on some tasks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand long deep problem solving such as making mathematical proofs might suffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a lot of the polyphasic sleep writing you find the claim that those who practice the Uberman schedule are in the REM state when they sleep. It's my understanding that Claudio Stampi showed in &lt;em&gt;Why We Nap: Evolution, Chronobiology, and Functions of Polyphasic and Ultrashort Sleep&lt;/em&gt; that this isn't what happens when people adapt to short nap based sleep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about sleeping 6 hours? There was a &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150221042754/http://www.byz.org/~david/neuro/kripke.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;huge study&lt;/a&gt; that concluded that people who sleep 6 hours have a longer life span than those that sleep 8 hours. &#xA;Correlation isn't causation and this doesn't mean that you will be healthier when you cut your sleep to 6 hours. It however makes it plausible that a 6 hour sleep schedule could be healthy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to understand more about polyphasic sleep cycles there's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://groups.google.com/group/Polyphasic&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mailing list&lt;/a&gt; and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.myzeo.com/forum/polyphasic-sleep-experiment-discussion/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;forum&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;The forum is run by the Zeo guys who produce equipment to measure sleep states. With a bit of luck they will be able to gather enough data in the coming years to publish a bit on polyphasic sleep schedules.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it also sounds like something that should have evolved naturally if it were possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ability to stay awake for 12 hours without pause is quite valuable. People who practice the Uberman schedule lose the ability.&#xA;If you are a hunter gatherer you don't profit very much from being awake at night. It's harder to protect yourself when you don't stay near the fire that your tribe lighted during the night.&#xA;I would note that the sleep practices of a person in the western world who sleep in a bed without a nearby fire are very different from the sleep practices according to which we developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2018-05-01T12:00:59.700" LastActivityDate="2018-05-01T12:00:59.700" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2011-03-18T22:04:14.453" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are quotes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html&quot;&gt;Lynn B Jorde's &amp;amp; Stephen P Wooding's&lt;/a&gt; paper &lt;strong&gt;Genetic variation, classification and 'race'&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Genetic variation is geographically&#xA;  structured&lt;/strong&gt;, as expected from the&#xA;  partial isolation of human populations&#xA;  during much of their history. &lt;strong&gt;Because&#xA;  traditional concepts of race are in&#xA;  turn correlated with geography, it is&#xA;  inaccurate to state that race is&#xA;  &quot;biologically meaningless&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, because they have&#xA;  been only partially isolated, &lt;strong&gt;human&#xA;  populations are seldom demarcated by&#xA;  precise genetic boundaries&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Substantial overlap can therefore&#xA;  occur between populations,&#xA;  invalidating the concept that&#xA;  populations (or races) are discrete&#xA;  types&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Modern human genetics can deliver the&#xA;  salutary message that human&#xA;  populations share most of their&#xA;  genetic variation and that &lt;strong&gt;there is no&#xA;  scientific support for the concept&#xA;  that human populations are discrete,&#xA;  nonoverlapping entities&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on how you define &quot;race&quot;: geographically, genetically, socially. But either way, you'll almost always find an &quot;overlap&quot; between populations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-03-18T22:04:14.453" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="990" CreationDate="2011-03-18T23:08:19.267" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me try to explain each of those ideas separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ice method is sometimes used as a form of VAGAL STIMULATION which can be done in a clinical setting to reduce heart rate.  It is done when patients are conscious and the electrical conduction of the heart is still able to pump blood to the body.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a general sense, it works by stimulating the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caam.rice.edu/~cox/wrap/vagusnerve.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;vagus nerve&lt;/a&gt; to slow down the impulse telling the heart to beat.  There are other ways of performing vagal stimulation to slow the heart, such as having the patient blow through a straw, &lt;a href=&quot;http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/carotid+sinus+massage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;carotid sinus massage&lt;/a&gt;, or having the patient attempt to &quot;bear down&quot; as if they were having a bowel movement.  Any of these things can be attempted in a clinical setting to slow heart rate before other, more invasive methods are tried (medications, cardioversion, defibrillation). While vagal stimulation may slow certain varieties of accelerated heart rates (&lt;a href=&quot;http://childrensmemorial.org/depts/heartcenter/supraventricular-tachycardia.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;supraventricular tachycardia&lt;/a&gt; for example) it is not a substitute for defibrillation.  This is because defibrillation works differently, and on different electrical disturbances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defibrillation is only used when the heart is beating in one of two specific rhythms; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001239/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ventricular Tachycardia&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0004467/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ventricular Fibrillation&lt;/a&gt;.  In both of these states, the electrical system of the heart is still sending signals which can be observed on an EKG, but they are not adequate to pump blood, so the patient has no pulse.  Basically, at this state the heart is just a quivering muscle which cannot really pump blood in that condition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the heart is in VT or VF, defibrillation is necessary.  Defibrillation works by conducting electricity through the heart in order to STOP it, not to START it.  It works on the principal that the heart is shocked out of the current non-perfusing rhythm with the hope that the body can start it back up again and when it does, it will be in a rhythm that is capable of pumping blood to the body.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If for some reason defibrillation is unavailable, there is also another method called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6476543&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PRECORDIAL THUMP&lt;/a&gt;.  It is an absolute last ditch move, done by pounding a fist down on the patient's chest, with the hope that the energy transferred from the hit will work the same way defibrillation does.  However, this rarely works.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TV medicine is usually horribly wrong, for instance: you do not shock a flat line, and there is really no reason to inject &quot;adrenalin&quot; or anything else directly into the heart, but on tv they do it all the time for the drama.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T03:35:57.600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T03:35:57.600" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="810" CreationDate="2011-03-19T00:05:32.437" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, looking at this site and reading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;helps condition the lungs by creating pulmonary resistance, your diaphragm is strengthened, surface area and elasticity in the alveoli is increased. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically all this does is make it harder for you to breathe.  Thereby making you train to a certain level of exertion under an already exerted condition (some credence to the endurance claim, but muscular endurance, not aerobic endurance).  This in no way simulates high altitude because of the pressure.  The lower air pressure is a result of there being less air all around you (not just in the lungs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect of this device would be to simulate asthma or some other bronchial restriction, NOT altitude.  You are correct, altitude training requires actually living at altitude and acclimating to it.  Although, &lt;em&gt;at altitude&lt;/em&gt;, a mask like this would possibly give the strengthening claim some additional benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A researcher at Columbia University says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because of the inconclusive nature of the studies done so far, the answer to that question is still up in the air.  What researchers do know is that constant exposure to low levels of oxygen can do more harm than good to the body. It can cause chronic stress, detraining, and edema (fluid buildup in the lungs and brain). In some cases, blood can thicken too much, raising the risk of death due to blood clotting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suspect that the lack of data is because the research itself may involve greater risks than most researchers would ethically want to take.  And those that have done &quot;studies&quot; are the same ones selling the masks, with an obvious conflict of interest as well as not performing actual research, but rather appealing to a &quot;this should make sense to a layperson&quot; strategy of marketing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T00:05:32.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="979" CreationDate="2011-03-19T00:28:10.233" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;beauty&quot; of a conspiracy theory is that no matter what evidence is presented, there is a &quot;talk around&quot; for the believer.  No matter what answer is given, they will have a more conspiratorial rebuttal for that.  To suggest that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/faq.html&quot;&gt;HAARP&lt;/a&gt; is anything beyond &quot;an ionospheric research program jointly funded by the US Air Force, the US Navy, the University of Alaska and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Its purpose is to analyze the ionosphere and investigate the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance purposes (such as missile detection).&quot; without anything to go on is a great hallmark of &quot;making stuff up.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;AS REQUESTED&lt;/strong&gt;:  Info about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/faq.html&quot;&gt;HAARP&lt;/a&gt; and what they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is HAARP?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HAARP stands for The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. The goal of this program is to further advance our knowledge of the physical and electrical properties of the Earth's ionosphere which can affect our military and civilian communication and navigation systems. The HAARP program operates a world-class ionospheric research facility located in Gakona, Alaska.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is HAARP a classified project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HAARP is not classified. There are no classified documents pertaining to HAARP. The Environmental Impact Process (EIP) documents have always been, are now, and will always be completely descriptive of the program in its entirety. The EIP documents are a matter of public record. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What kind of research will be conducted at the HAARP facility?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The research to be conducted at HAARP falls into two broad categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study of basic natural processes that occur in the ionosphere under the natural but much stronger influence of solar interaction. This includes studying how the natural ionosphere affects radio signals with the goal of developing techniques that may be available for mitigating these effects to improve the reliability and/or the performance of communication and navigation systems.&#xA;     Development of technology to use effects produced through ionospheric interactions. One example of this is learning how to generate new signals in the ELF range for the real application of subsurface communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BACK TO CONSPIRACY THEORIES&lt;/strong&gt;:  As we understand weather and earthquakes, there is no known mechanism by which HAARP can accomplish either conspiracy goal.  Since HAARP uses EM, it does not fall into any &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_control&quot;&gt;known application for having an actual effect on weather&lt;/a&gt; (Wiki).  As for using any sort of EM to control earthquakes, most of this stems from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_precursor#Natural_electric_field_of_the_Earth&quot;&gt;theoretical work that there may be some precursors to earthquakes&lt;/a&gt;. (Wiki)  Although, if this was reliable, I am quite certian Japan would also have this level of technology, and would have actually used it to warn their population prior to the 11 MAR 11 earthquake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that mean that the research these agencies do can't go beyond analyzing the ionosphere for those particular applications?  No.  They may indeed find some interesting applications that they weren't aware of before starting the study.  Is there anything nefarious going on?  Well, wanting to detect missiles, and perhaps enabling covert communications could be considered &quot;nefarious&quot; by some, but not beyond the scope of what agencies such as the USAF, USN, and DARPA do all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the government claims HAARP is ionospheric research, and a conspiracy theorists claims it's meant to control the Yellowstone Caldera, what answer should any reasonable person give?  A simple &quot;no&quot; will of course be met with &quot;the government is lying&quot; response, and no matter what is shown to the believer, they will claim that there is something hidden.  In these cases, it is standard policy to ignore these fringe elements because engaging them is ultimately more destructive than just ignoring them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T10:14:32.143" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T10:14:32.143" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="976" CreationDate="2011-03-19T00:59:53.567" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://gun.laws.com/gun-control/gun-control-effects-on-crime-and-murder&quot;&gt;Gun Control Effects on Crime and Murder&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Very much like the larger scope of the&#xA;  entire gun control debate, &lt;strong&gt;it is of no&#xA;  surprise that both opposing factions&#xA;  will reach a stalemate in regarding&#xA;  gun control and its actual effects on&#xA;  crime and murder&lt;/strong&gt;.  However, it is&#xA;  important to note that arguments and&#xA;  debate on the subject are not the main&#xA;  reason as to being able to&#xA;  determinately claim fact to one or the&#xA;  other, but it is the discrepancy in&#xA;  the statistics and facts themselves&#xA;  that lend to dispute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore the author goes on to state some statistics: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general, it has been reported that&#xA;  60% to 70% of all homicides involve&#xA;  firearms.  Out of this firearms, about&#xA;  80% involved handguns.  Since the&#xA;  implementations of more restrictions&#xA;  and regulations involving the&#xA;  purchases, possession, or carrying of&#xA;  handguns have been more explicitly&#xA;  stressed since the 1970s and 1980s,&#xA;  there has been a general decline of&#xA;  firearm related violent related&#xA;  crimes, particularly homicides.  &lt;strong&gt;From&#xA;  the early 1990s to turn of the&#xA;  century, this decline has been at a&#xA;  steady average at about 10% each year,&#xA;  with a total decline of about 50%. &#xA;  Such statistical reports will provide&#xA;  for factual evidence extensively&#xA;  showing how crime can be reduced with&#xA;  pro gun control implementations.  Not&#xA;  only do these numbers prove a positive&#xA;  effect about gun control, but it is a&#xA;  drastic and impressive one.&lt;/strong&gt;  Another&#xA;  report showed that there are about 6.3&#xA;  million violent crimes committed in&#xA;  1999.  Violent crimes including rape or sexual assault, robber, and assault&#xA;  were considered for this statistic. &#xA;  Out of those crimes, just over 500,000&#xA;  involved the use of firearms, which is&#xA;  about 8% of the total estimation of&#xA;  violent crimes.  This statistic&#xA;  essentially shows that firearms are&#xA;  not necessarily properly correlated&#xA;  with their use during violent crimes,&#xA;  and therefore, extensive gun control&#xA;  laws deem to be excessive and unfair&#xA;  to those citizens legally allowed to&#xA;  own and use them.  &lt;strong&gt;An example of how&#xA;  stricter gun control laws did not aid&#xA;  in lowering crime rates is Washington&#xA;  D.C.  In 1976, D.C. adopted what was&#xA;  to be considered one of the few&#xA;  extremely restrictive gun control&#xA;  policies in the country. The murder&#xA;  rate since the time of new gun control&#xA;  policy rose 134%.&lt;/strong&gt;  Yet another example&#xA;  is New York City, which also&#xA;  implemented similarly stringent gun&#xA;  laws as D.C. had similar results.  In&#xA;  the early 1970s, about 19 % of&#xA;  homicides involved pistols, and&#xA;  shortly after the new laws were in&#xA;  place, this number rose to about 50%. &#xA;  Furthermore, the restriction of&#xA;  firearms allowed for only 28,000&#xA;  lawfully possessed or acquired&#xA;  firearms, yet law enforcement&#xA;  estimations had the number at 1.3&#xA;  million illegal handguns in the city. &#xA;  Conversely, states with fewer&#xA;  restrictions such as New Hampshire and&#xA;  Vermont, have proven to the safest of&#xA;  all the states, with Vermont ranking&#xA;  in at 49th in crime and 47th in&#xA;  murders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I emphasized a few important points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion I draw is that there are situations where gun control appears to directly save lives, but in other situations gun control has almost no effect.  Though the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic&quot;&gt;crack epidemic&lt;/a&gt; may have simply outweighed the effects of gun control.  Another reason that these laws may have been ineffective is that guns can be purchased at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_shows_in_the_United_States&quot;&gt;gun shows in other states&lt;/a&gt;, which may render gun control laws in nearby areas mostly useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T00:17:10.173" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T00:17:10.173" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1016" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1023" CreationDate="2011-03-19T10:02:29.373" Score="7" ViewCount="1487" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIWeEFV59d4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt; that went viral about a sports star, Kobe Bryant, jumping over an Aston Martin. I'm really skeptical that his management would let him attempt that, but is there any evidence about whether the video is authentic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T18:08:44.043" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T18:08:44.043" Title="Did Kobe Bryant jump over a car?" Tags="|video|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1016" CreationDate="2011-03-19T10:54:55.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd be inclined to believe the shoe retailers are behind the video. A year ago, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe3St1GgoHQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this video of a new sport called Liquid Mountaineering&lt;/a&gt; went pretty viral as well. A key point in the video is that they found these shoes that are completely water repellant. Kobe seems to attribute quite a lot to the shoes as well. You don't see that with people who are winning the olympics :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I can't prove that the shoe retailers are behind it, but that doesn't really make a difference. The Liquid Mountaineering video, though well made, was obviously fake, as you simply can't do that. It's not as obvious that you &lt;em&gt;couldn't&lt;/em&gt; do what Kobe does in that video, but it would certainly be &lt;em&gt;easier&lt;/em&gt; to fake it. He's probably just standing closer to the camera than the car is, so he's jumping in front of the car (from our perspective). The jump still has to be just as impressive, but it would be completely safe to perform it, and he could try it a hundred times until he got it right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T10:54:55.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1018" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1022" CreationDate="2011-03-19T11:11:40.147" Score="107" ViewCount="46216" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a response to the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant I've heard the claim that fossil-fuel power plants using coal release more radiation than a nuclear power plant. I searched for some information and found an article supporting this statement in the Scientific American called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste&quot;&gt;Coal Ash Is More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a topic with huge political and economic interests which makes accurate and reliable information hard to find. I'm now wondering if that comparison of coal ash and nuclear waste is accurate, and also if it is misleading, how it compares to the real-world radiation release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much radiation is released by coal and nuclear power plants in regular operation? How do the numbers compare if you include different types of nuclear accidents?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2015-09-25T02:39:52.283" LastActivityDate="2017-07-10T07:57:28.037" Title="Do coal plants release more radiation than nuclear power plants?" Tags="|environment|radiation|nuclear-energy|fossil-fuel|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="956" CreationDate="2011-03-19T11:55:05.473" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Einstein clearly was a physical genius - the greatest physicist since Newton - and he is widely known for the following seminal contributions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using photons to explain the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoelectric_effect#20th_Century&quot;&gt;photoelectric effect&lt;/a&gt; (quantum theory was not mainstream)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explaining &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion&quot;&gt;Brownian motion&lt;/a&gt; through atoms (atomic theory was not mainstream)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extending dynamics to support EM theory (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity&quot;&gt;special relativity&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unifying special relativity and mechanics, while proposing a new theory of gravitation (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity&quot;&gt;general relativity&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being the first scientist to start the search for a theory of everything (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_field_theory&quot;&gt;TOE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Various contributions to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics&quot;&gt;quantum mechanics&lt;/a&gt;, especially in its &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohr%E2%80%93Einstein_debates&quot;&gt;epistemology&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox&quot;&gt;EPR&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%27s_box#Einstein.27s_second_criticism&quot;&gt;light box&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat#Origin_and_motivation&quot;&gt;Scrödinger's cat&lt;/a&gt; and other &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment&quot;&gt;gendankenexperiments&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of his contributions did not require an extensive mathematical knowledge. The average mathematical level of a physicist of his time was more than enough to understand most of his contribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, with the very notable exception of general relativity. GR is based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_geometry&quot;&gt;differential geometry&lt;/a&gt; which is way more sophisticated than mere calculus or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_transformation&quot;&gt;Lorentzian&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_geometry&quot;&gt;Euclidean&lt;/a&gt; geometry which is pretty much all that was needed for the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is why it took Einstein 10 years of hard work to extend special relativity to general relativity - he knew perfectly well where he was going, but he &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_general_relativity#Developing_general_relativity&quot;&gt;needed to study the maths&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that his &quot;struggling with the maths&quot; was a bit misinterpreted. He was far-exceeding his contemporaries on the subject and that is why he was struggling - not because he was not &quot;good at maths&quot;. GR is still considered graduate-level physics because of the complicated maths needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-28T15:44:35.607" LastActivityDate="2011-08-28T15:44:35.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1020" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1021" CreationDate="2011-03-19T12:12:30.297" Score="22" ViewCount="18617" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often hear people claim that it is a fact that humans lose seven pounds when they die. Some people believe that this is 'proof' of the existence of the 'soul'. Is there any truth to this claim? I could understand a weight change after death but not a consistent one between people of different sizes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N.B. I personally don't believe this to be true. Just thought it was a good question to ask on here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="723" LastActivityDate="2023-04-29T17:48:44.057" Title="Do we lose 7 pounds when we die?" Tags="|medical-science|physics|biology|religion|spirituality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1020" CreationDate="2011-03-19T12:22:23.550" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;No we don't. I don't know where you got that claim from because it's not linked in the question (do link it in the question, if you can).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a similar myth that upon dying a body weighs 21 grams less - this is due to a (flawed) experiment performed by a Dr Duncan MacDougal. His results were never replicated and are considered to have little if no scientific merit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More info here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul#Weight_of_the_soul&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul#Weight_of_the_soul&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T12:22:23.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1018" CreationDate="2011-03-19T13:01:18.543" Score="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your first question is already in the article you linked. It contains the following referenced quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper referenced in the article is here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/202/4372/1045.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/202/4372/1045.short&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Radiation doses from airborne effluents of model coal-fired and nuclear power plants (1000 megawatts electric) are compared. Assuming a 1 percent ash release to the atmosphere (Environmental Protection Agency regulation) and 1 part per million of uranium and 2 parts per million of thorium in the coal (approximately the U.S. average), population doses from the coal plant are typically higher than those from pressurized-water or boiling-water reactors that meet government regulations. Higher radionuclide contents and ash releases are common and would result in increased doses from the coal plant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper itself states that this result is only valid not considering nuclear accidents and nuclear waste, nor it considers non-radiological effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study does not assess the impact of non-radiological pollutants or the total radiological impacts of a coal versus a nuclear economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your second question, it can be answered easily:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The paper itself speaks about Uranium and Thorium being released by normal operation in less than 10 parts per million - very very low doses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A bad nuclear accident leaves kilograms or tons of radioactive elements exposed or emitted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Typically nuclear waste is composed of tons of material&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is clear that a single nuclear accident widely offsets any &quot;gains&quot; obtained by using a nuclear plant instead of a coal plant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the average radiation we all get by &quot;living&quot; makes the &lt;em&gt;normal&lt;/em&gt; power plant emissions irrelevant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Living within 50 miles (~80 km) of a nuclear reactor (1 year): 0.09 &amp;micro;S; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Living within 50 miles (~80 km) of a coal plant (1 year): 0.3 &amp;micro;S;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily average radiation: 10 &amp;micro;S;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Living in within 30 km of Chernobyl before evacuation (10 days): 3-150 mS &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first three are data from the image below, the third comes from from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11797891&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reconstruction of the inhalation dose in the 30-km zone after the Chernobyl accident&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to &lt;strong&gt;Borror0&lt;/strong&gt; for the great find. To put things in perspective see the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/radiation/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;infograph&lt;/a&gt;. At the top left, in blue, you can see the radiations absorbed by living next to a (nuclear|coal) plant. In yellow, the radiation doses of Chernobyl - many orders of magnitude higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/radiation/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cUEgj.png&quot; alt=&quot;Radiation&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-07-10T07:57:28.037" LastActivityDate="2017-07-10T07:57:28.037" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1016" CreationDate="2011-03-19T13:26:09.430" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kobe Bryant said in an interview that it's a fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sportsbybrooks.com/kobe-explains-car-jump-video-17131&quot;&gt;http://sportsbybrooks.com/kobe-explains-car-jump-video-17131&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an explanation on how to use after effects to do a similar video (it's quite easy!):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWi-rVy49JE&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWi-rVy49JE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T13:26:09.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1024" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="966" CreationDate="2011-03-19T14:34:18.677" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I watched the video you linked and it does not make that claim. What he claims is something completely different. He claims that, in education, we expect all students to conform to a certain standard (hard working, attentive and so on). The extreme example of this, he says, is that we have started to classify unconventional, different behaviours as new pathologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He furthermore argues that this is incorrect: pathologies like ADD should be considered simply differences in behaviour which are a positive thing. He argues that we should not medicate people into becoming something they are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, he doesn't make this claim at all - but he expresses a potentially valid subjective opinion that cannot offhandedly be verified or denied: it's mostly a matter of definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-19T17:02:11.283" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T17:02:11.283" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2011-03-19T16:11:00.100" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the risk of repeating Oliver_C's answer, I wanted to add in one more item and maybe pull out a few other quotes without totally re editing his answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bookrags.com/research/population-bottleneck-gen-03/&quot;&gt;human genome is surprisingly narrow when compared to other large mammalian species&lt;/a&gt;.  This would lend credence to the idea that any distinction of a &quot;race&quot; is meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;humans have remarkably little genetic diversity, especially in comparison to our closest living relative, the chimpanzee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we observe as a &quot;race&quot; is really just a population variance amongst a localized group adapted to the environment they live in.  Specific selection pressures would lead to fair skinned individuals surviving better in the north, and then later that becoming a consciously selected sexual preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/full/ng1435.html&quot;&gt;this article in Nature&lt;/a&gt; may have some more answers for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not surprisingly, biomedical scientists are divided in their opinions about race. Some characterize it as &quot;biologically meaningless&quot;4 or &quot;not based on scientific evidence&quot;5, whereas others advocate the use of race in making decisions about medical treatment or the design of research studies6, 7, 8. Amid this controversy, modern human genetics has generated a staggering array of new data. For the first time, it is possible to study human genetic variation using not just a few dozen polymorphisms, but hundreds or even thousands. In addition to neutral polymorphisms that inform us about population history, increasing numbers of variants that contribute to disease are being discovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article also backs up my earlier quote/claim about variation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The average proportion of nucleotide differences between a randomly chosen pair of humans (i.e., average nucleotide diversity, or pi) is consistently estimated to lie between 1 in 1,000 and 1 in 1,500 (refs. 9,10). This proportion is low compared with those of many other species, from fruit flies to chimpanzees11, 12, reflecting the recent origin of our species from a small founding population13.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from the conclusion of the article (my emphasis) is the answer to the question you asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Race remains an inflammatory issue, both socially and scientifically. Fortunately, &lt;strong&gt;modern human genetics can deliver the salutary message that human populations share most of their genetic variation and that &lt;em&gt;there is no scientific support for the concept that human populations are discrete, nonoverlapping entities&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Furthermore, by offering the means to assess disease-related variation at the individual level, new genetic technologies may eventually render race largely irrelevant in the clinical setting. Thus, genetics can and should be an important tool in helping to both illuminate and defuse the race issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T16:11:00.100" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="966" CreationDate="2011-03-19T16:33:58.863" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sklivvz is right in pointing out that Robinson does not claim that tests &lt;em&gt;cause&lt;/em&gt; ADHD. Robinson questions the diagnosis in the first place. Since Robinson is the only source you've cited for your claim, this is the view that my response is aimed at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robinson frequently claims that ADHD is invented (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in this TED talk, among other places&lt;/a&gt;). What we know for sure is that he doesn't know that for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robinson is making very bold claims outside of his own comfort zone (his PhD is in drama and education) and contradicts the consensus in medicine and psychology, where ADHD is treated as something very real. More than anything, his claims are emotional, anecdotal, and to me seem to reveal a gross missconception of what ADHD even is. Robinson will often say that children are different in several ways and that this should be encouraged. ADHD doesn't contradict that. ADHD is very specific. Although diagnosis is based on subjective judgement and there is no simple lithmus test to decide whether or not it is present in a given individual (&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/981/100&quot;&gt;much like most other psychogenic conditions, a line of argument I elaborated on in the question about addiction&lt;/a&gt;), it isn't enough to be fidgety and impatient, which are completely natural traits in children. In order to be diagnosed with ADHD, a child must meet several criteria on inattention and hyperactivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Robinsons argument to have any bearing on the validity of ADHD at all, given how specific the diagnosis is, the argument should not simply be that children are different, but he'd have to argue that a subset of children are for some reason different in a very specific and uniform way. It is easy to understand that conformity of behaviour if you consider a psychogenic disorder (the mechanics of which are not at this point entirely understood) to be the common cause in all these children. If Robinson is to dismiss that explanation, he would have to provide another one, or &lt;em&gt;at the very least&lt;/em&gt; a plausible reason for this dismissal. I have not seen Robinson put forth either, and as far as I can tell, his criticism is rooted in ignorance of the disorder at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that ADHD does exist, is medication the proper way to deal with it? I'm not qualified to say. Are we currently over-diagnosing the condition? Possibly. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19020513&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A study I don't have access to&lt;/a&gt; apparently claims (according to Wikipedia) that diagnosis based on the DSM-IV criteria, which are used in the USA, will be 3-4 times more likely to positively diagnose ADHD, compared to the DCI-10, used in Europe. From this, we must deduce that either over- or under-diagnosis must reasonably be going on. I wouldn't debate Robinson if those were his focal points, but his broader claims that ADHD is invented are very controversial, and in stark contrast with the current consensus among those who are actually educated in the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-03-19T16:33:58.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1018" CreationDate="2011-03-19T17:19:38.547" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although the concentration of uranium and thorium in coal is extremely low, a typical 1000 MW coal fired plant burns about 4 million tons of coal every year.  This results in an unregulated release to the environment of 5.2 tons of uranium along with 12.8 tons of thorium from a single coal plant each year. This does not include the large amounts of radium, radon, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium&quot;&gt;polonium&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium-40&quot;&gt;potassium-40&lt;/a&gt; that is also released from coal plants. Please refer to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory article &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html&quot;&gt;Coal Combustion: Nuclear Resource or Danger&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Alex Gabbard for more information on this subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nuclear power plants are owned by electric utilities which also run coal fired plants, and it is not in their best interest to point out the fact that radiological releases from coal plants exceed those from nuclear plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="783" LastEditorUserId="1760" LastEditDate="2015-07-18T15:31:29.293" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T15:31:29.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1032" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-19T18:59:58.843" Score="25" ViewCount="20670" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of people I know see solving Sudoku puzzles as a way to train their minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howtoincreasememorypower.com/a-sudoku-a-day-exercises-the-brain/&quot;&gt;howtoincreasememorypower.com&lt;/a&gt; recommends doing a Sudoku puzzle a day to increase brain power. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers rank solving sudoku puzzles daily among the top ten non-traditional and alternative ways to boosts brain power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They stress that just as physical exercise keeps muscle loss at bay, sudoku exercise keeps brain cells from dying and also encourages better brain function. Education is important, but studies actually show that students who do mental workouts like sudoku have higher IQs than students who do not. This only shows that doses of sudoku are more than just ways to pass time. They actually help in improving your ability to comprehend more complex ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other experts agree with these findings, saying that solving challenging mind games like sudoku puzzles inhibit or prevent the development of Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss. Health trends also show that adults with demanding, and intellectually challenging jobs benefit from better mental function when they age. Sudoku functions just like these jobs because it requires brain exertions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that solving puzzles like Sudoku provide good mental training?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2011-11-23T06:52:45.833" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T09:48:11.130" Title="Does solving Sudoku puzzles improve your mental abilities?" Tags="|intelligence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1036" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-19T22:41:14.770" Score="16" ViewCount="1159" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since 2008, whenever the possibly of an election is brought up, the Conservative Party of Canada repeats the same point: elections are bad for the economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here's an excerpt of &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/09/21/transcript-jim-flahertys-speech-to-the-canadian-club/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jim Flaherty's speech in 2010&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the risk of an unnecessary election, an election that would jeopardize our economic recovery, just as we enter the home stretch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, Prime Minister Harper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/harper-links-japanese-quake-opposition-threat-of-snap-election/article1943122/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;repeated that point&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“All of these things should remind everyone, should remind everybody in Canada, should remind all the parties in Parliament, that the global economy remains extremely fragile. It does not take very much to make us all, not just in Canada and the United States but all around the world, very worried,” he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The fact of the matter is this should be a wake-up call that we cannot afford to take our focus off the economy to get into a bunch of unnecessary political games or, as I said, an opportunistic or unnecessary election that nobody was asking for.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument - that elections harm the economic growth or recovery - seems a bit absurd. I'm not alone to think so; it's been mocked &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/#!/MikePMoffatt/status/47763272136531968&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;by economists&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/tabatha-southey/just-when-you-thought-it-was-safe-to-go-back-to-the-polls/article1948127/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;columnists alike&lt;/a&gt;. Unfortunately, I have not seen any evidence supporting either side's argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there any empirical data supporting the claim that elections are bad for the economy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-11-16T10:05:09.890" Title="Are elections bad for the economy?" Tags="|economics|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1038" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-20T00:28:23.810" Score="10" ViewCount="2352" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some sociologists have claimed that there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ejhs.org/Volume12/Feminism%20and%20Porn.htm&quot;&gt;significant disagreement among feminists regarding pornography&lt;/a&gt;. There are disagreements among academics working in Women's Studies and Sociology, but certainly the authors aren't the only feminists on earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any recent peer-reviewed literature, or proper surveys on how self-identified feminists regard pornography?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="794" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-20T20:19:59.993" LastActivityDate="2019-01-04T21:35:38.053" Title="Feminism and Attitude Towards Pornography" Tags="|pornography|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1039" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1046" CreationDate="2011-03-20T07:13:58.720" Score="29" ViewCount="4302" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen the stats on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf06.html&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt; saying that the number of death caused by nuclear accidents was way smaller then those caused by any other energy production factory. Do you have any information, studies that can confirm that? And numbers for accidents caused by windmills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="800" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-04-08T10:49:50.567" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T14:41:46.330" Title="Are there fewer accidental deaths at nuclear power plants than others?" Tags="|safety|energy|nuclear-energy|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1039" CreationDate="2011-03-20T09:45:01.217" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html&quot;&gt;WHO estimates&lt;/a&gt; up to 4000 victims of the catastrophe in Tchernobyl 1986. Indisputable are only 40 cases of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem is, that radioactivity increases the probability to suffer from cancer, but you cannot for sure identify a reason if somebody dies 2, 5, or 20 years after exposition. Due to the weather conditions, a cloud moved over parts of Europe, and depending on local conditions, much or less rain on certain days, the pollution differs much. In parts of Bavaria/Germany you can today, 25 years later, not eat mushrooms or wild pigs, which ate mushrooms, because they are radiating too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it will be hard to get numbers of people who worked in the mining of uran. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the problem of final storage isn't solved, we can't say much about the future, but from windmills there aren't long term dangers, as far as I know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastActivityDate="2011-03-20T09:45:01.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1039" CreationDate="2011-03-20T10:27:51.133" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is just a partial answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;As an example for a &lt;strong&gt;Hydroelectric&lt;/strong&gt; plant disaster:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Banqiao Dam&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; failure (China, 1975),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;approximately 26,000 people died from flooding and another 145,000 died during subsequent&#xA;  epidemics and famine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents#Nuclear_power_plant_accidents&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia has a list&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of &lt;strong&gt;Nuclear power plant accidents&lt;/strong&gt; (1952-2011). &#xA;&lt;br&gt;The figure given there for fatalities is &lt;strong&gt;4000+&lt;/strong&gt; (the majority of deaths coming from the Chernobyl accident)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.touchoilandgas.com/ebooks/A1ioj0/eandpvol7iss2/resources/134.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Accidental Century - Prominent Energy Accidents in the Last 100 Years&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;(by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vermontlaw.edu/our_faculty/faculty_directory/benjamin_k_sovacool.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Benjamin K. Sovacool&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421508000529&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A study&lt;/a&gt;, published in the May 2008 issue of &lt;em&gt;Energy Policy&lt;/em&gt; (written by the current author), assessed major energy accidents worldwide from 1907 to 2007. The study identified 279 incidents totaling US$41 billion in damages and 182,156 fatalities ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Energy accident fatalities by source (1907-2007):&lt;/strong&gt; (via &lt;a href=&quot;http://climatesight.org/2011/03/15/nuclear-power-in-context/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ClimateSight&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;  &lt;br&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RXIQb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Fatalities&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt; The study found that &lt;strong&gt;accidents at dams were the most dangerous, accidents at nuclear power plants the most expensive and accidents at oil and gas pipelines the most frequent&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/urE5u.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Table 1&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-04-10T11:20:02.807" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T11:20:02.807" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1039" CreationDate="2011-03-20T11:55:17.303" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;An update, as I found some interesting information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This post&lt;/a&gt; has deaths per Terawatt hour for various energy sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Energy Source              Death Rate (deaths per TWh) OLD&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coal – world average               161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coal – China                       278&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coal – USA                         15&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oil                                36  (36% of world energy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Natural Gas                         4  (21% of world energy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Biofuel/Biomass                    12&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peat                               12&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solar (rooftop)                     0.44 (less than 0.1% of world energy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wind                                0.15 (less than 1% of world energy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hydro                               0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hydro - world including Banqiao)    1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nuclear                             0.04 (5.9% of world energy)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even solar power is 0.44 deaths per TWh (I'm thinking installers falling off the roof:-)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="619" LastEditDate="2016-11-07T14:41:46.330" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T14:41:46.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1111" CreationDate="2011-03-20T14:44:21.333" Score="30" ViewCount="3039" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0387985468&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thomas Gold claims&lt;/a&gt; that oil is not aging vegetal or animal matter, but rather made continously from bacteria deep in the Earth's mantle (a '&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/89/13/6045.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;deep hot biosphere&lt;/a&gt;') so that we would effectively never have to worry about running out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gold's theory is that the methane is from the Earth's interior, and cooks into oil. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Gold&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;His Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; explains he drilled to find deep-Earth oil deposits at depths which are not supposed to contain hydocarbon deposits, and claimed to have found some but it seems that his methods have not been adopted by oil companies, because they weren't useful for finding new reserves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the scientific evidence available describe as to the disposition and origin of Earth's oil resources? If petroleum is renewable, should we even worry about transitioning to a post-petroleum economy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I suppose this is related to this question, which was closed: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/833/is-the-worlds-oil-supply-really-diminishing-closed&quot;&gt;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/833/is-the-worlds-oil-supply-really-diminishing-closed&lt;/a&gt;. I am looking for a good yardstick to evaluate the confusing variety of claims about the oil supply.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="187" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T19:18:28.290" Title="Is there a deep, hot biosphere?" Tags="|biology|oil|geology|fossil-fuel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1052" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1103" CreationDate="2011-03-20T18:48:30.497" Score="32" ViewCount="4357" Body="&lt;p&gt;A little &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shroud_of_Turin&quot;&gt;context&lt;/a&gt; on this famous myth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Shroud of Turin or Turin Shroud is a linen cloth bearing the image of a man who appears to have suffered physical trauma in a manner consistent with crucifixion.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Some contend that the shroud is the actual cloth placed on the body of Jesus Christ at the time of his burial, and that the face image is the Holy Face of Jesus, while others contend that the artefact was created in the Middle Ages, as indicated by carbon dating which placed the artifact between 1260 and 1390.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the JREF &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/encyclopedia/Shroud%20of%20Turin.html&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that this particular myth is absolutely debunked. I completely agree that the shroud has not, and will never, be proven to be a genuine holy item - how could one prove that it was used on Jesus of Nazareth at all? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the way the myth is debunked is, in my view, flaky, weak and unconvincing. Here in short are the claims, after each my doubts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The cloth itself could not date from the correct period or from that area of the world, simply because that particular weave of cloth was not made then or there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot find any good source to verify this. In any case I don't see how we can easily make such assertion (it could be an uncommon type with few examples left).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Wrapping of a body in that size and shape of cloth was not done in Palestine at that period. Such wrapping disagrees with the biblical description as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is completely irrelevant - either the cloth is from that place and time or it isn't. It could have been an unusual choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The representation of the face of Christ on this cloth and in all paintings and sculptures is and always has been a formalized guess. This version matches the “accepted” one. We know nothing about Christ's actual appearance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also totally irrelevant - the fact that Jesus has been depicted as a hippy guy with a beard does not rule out or confirm anything about his appearance (if he existed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Carbon dating of the fabric, done in three independent labs, showed that the linen fabric was woven about the year 1350.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True, but there are claims that the results might have been obtained by medieval repairs instead that from an original part of the cloth. The areas that have been cut off were the worst kept in order not to destroy important parts of the cloth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The “bloodstains” are not only red in color (they could not be, after that period of time), but they were shown by chemical analysis to be paint of the composition used in the fourteenth century.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot find any real affirmative confirmation of this claim - I can only find claims that someone made paint of the same color as the shroud, but no confirmation that &quot;chemical analysis&quot; has been performed on the shroud at all. Wikipedia, for what is worth, has a totally different story on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The bishop of Troyes (Lirey) knew who the artist was who painted the cloth and when and how he did it, and so reported to Pope Clement VII. The document still exists and has been shown to be unquestionably authentic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is shaky evidence - it's hearsay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is the JREF correct when they affirm that &lt;code&gt;Definitive tests prove absolutely that it is a forgery&lt;/code&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-06T17:12:27.497" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T17:12:27.497" Title="Shroud of Turin -- is it absolutely and definitively debunked?" Tags="|jref|catholic-church|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1038" CreationDate="2011-03-20T21:46:15.487" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Found a paper from 2009, peer reviewed, behind a paywall:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the 1970's the feminist movement has been bitterly divided over a number of issues related to women's sexuality. Some feminists which scholar Ann Ferguson (1984) terms &quot;radical feminists&quot; opposed a number of sexual relationships and activities including sadomasochism, prostitution, &quot;promiscuous sex with strangers&quot; and sexual role playing. &quot;Libertarian feminists&quot; on the other hand endorsed many forms of sexual expression granted that they are &quot;consensual&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/3/6/8/8/8/p368884_index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="814" LastEditorUserId="814" LastEditDate="2019-01-04T21:35:38.053" LastActivityDate="2019-01-04T21:35:38.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1056" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2496" CreationDate="2011-03-20T21:49:10.973" Score="10" ViewCount="3075" Body="&lt;p&gt;Iridology &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irisandyou.com/Iridiagnosis-And-Other-Diagnostic-Methods.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that it's practitioners can diagnose various illnesses via looking at the eyes of patients.&#xA;Is there evidence that supports or debunked their claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2012-08-15T04:23:04.447" Title="Does Iridology work?" Tags="|medical-science|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1059" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="42112" CreationDate="2011-03-21T01:03:54.827" Score="113" ViewCount="15655" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_18651_the-6-most-surprising-ways-alcohol-actually-good-you.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;widely believed&lt;/a&gt; that consuming small amounts of alcohol has many health benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a matter of fact, a lot of alcohol might be good for you, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/why-alcohol-is-good-for-you/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wired Magazine reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s one of those medical anomalies that nobody can really explain: Longitudinal studies have consistently shown that people who don’t consume any alcohol at all tend to die before people who do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, the anomaly has just gotten more anomalous: A new &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2010.01286.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt;, published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, followed 1,824 participants between the ages of 55 and 65. Once again, the researchers found that abstaining from alcohol increases the risk of dying, even when you exclude former alcoholics who have now quit. (The thinking is that ex-drinkers might distort the data, since they’ve already pickled their organs.) While 69 percent of the abstainers died during the 20-year time span of the study, only 41 percent of moderate drinkers passed away. (Moderate drinkers were also 23 percent less likely to die than light drinkers.) But here’s the really weird data point: Heavy drinkers also live longer than abstainers. (Only 61 percent of heavy drinkers died during the study.) In other words, consuming disturbingly large amounts of alcohol seems to be better than drinking none at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?  Is there any conflicting evidence?  If it is true, is there any indication as to what it does that might cause these beneficial effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-08-25T13:55:38.550" Title="Is alcohol beneficial in small amounts?" Tags="|medical-science|alcohol|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1060" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-21T01:58:26.200" Score="60" ViewCount="58006" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Westener, I've always been raised to believe that the best way to clean most objects is warm water and soap - self, dishes, clothes, pretty much everything. Except what is probably thought of as the &quot;dirtiest&quot; thing of all - our butts after we poop.  For that, we rub some paper on it and call it a day.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others have different methods of cleansing after a bowel movement including &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidet&quot;&gt;a bidet&lt;/a&gt;, sponges, towels, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilets_in_Japan&quot;&gt;the Japanese toilet&lt;/a&gt; (which is kind of a toilet with a hair dryer), things like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crfGXmxJ1vM&quot;&gt;the Comfort Wipe&lt;/a&gt;, and wet naps... or a combination thereof, as with dry paper and a wet naps chaser advocated on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howtowipeyourbutt.com/&quot;&gt;howtowipeyourbutt.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Logically, I can't see that toilet paper is the best option.  It doesn't seem like it cleans as thoroughly, and can even contribute to things like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/anal_fissure?open&quot;&gt;anal fissures, &lt;/a&gt;yet most of America and large portions of Europe use it and often scoff at other methods.  It's a weird kind of woo, and I'm wondering if there are any scholarly works indicating the best method, in terms of health and hygiene, for butt cleaning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-10-10T06:44:19.413" LastActivityDate="2011-12-15T07:25:59.530" Title="Is cleaning yourself with toilet paper cleaner than using water?" Tags="|hygiene|toilets|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1062" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-21T03:08:52.663" Score="14" ViewCount="1053" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim popped up in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2347885&quot;&gt;discussion on Hacker News&lt;/a&gt; where it was claimed that if a legal system has a jury it's more likely it will be just. As one commenter put it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[..] jury is not as easily bought, harder&#xA;  to threaten, and better at ironing out&#xA;  the moral ambiguities that can be the&#xA;  failings of a single person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there been any evaluations in different legal systems to support or refute that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-04-28T14:41:18.220" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T15:53:24.630" Title="Does having a jury increase the chance of justice being served?" Tags="|law|criminology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1064" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1066" CreationDate="2011-03-21T03:43:28.393" Score="31" ViewCount="3601" Body="&lt;p&gt;While googling about Ben Goldacre, I came across the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.badscience.net/2009/01/drink-coffee-see-dead-people/comment-page-1/#comment-23845&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;following&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;reductio ad absurdum&lt;/em&gt; argument:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nerd, can you point me to the data that shows that wearing a parachute increases your life expectancy when jumping out of a plane? You see, someone claimed that it is helpful, but there s nothing in the data to support this. I cannot find any reference to a double blind trial, I can’t find any peer-reviewed studies, and I cannot even find a pilot study comparing survivability with or without a ‘chute. Is it bad science to rely on anecdotal data here? If not, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess there's the hypothetical about &quot;What would you do if there weren't any peer-reviewed papers about parachutes?&quot;, but I'm interested in whether there's any scientific papers supporting the use of parachutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The papers don't necessarily have to involve double-blinded randomized experiments on humans. For example, the paper &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3692980&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;High-rise syndrome in cats&lt;/a&gt; concluded that the survival rate of cats &lt;em&gt;increased&lt;/em&gt; as the height increased, possibly because cats become more relaxed once they reach terminal velocity, and possibly because it has more time to prepare for the landing. Rather than a double-blinded study, they observed 132 cats who had been &quot;diagnosed&quot; with &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-rise_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;high-rise syndrome&lt;/a&gt; over a 5-month period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T15:51:29.920" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T15:51:29.920" Title="Is the use of parachutes supported by peer-reviewed papers?" Tags="|medical-science|philosophy-of-ebm|parachutes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1065" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1085" CreationDate="2011-03-21T04:17:48.990" Score="19" ViewCount="1860" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is generally accepted that the Earth's global mean (average) temperature has varied throughout history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the difficulties of accurately measuring and calculating temperatures across the entire planet: does scientific certainty exist that the global mean temperature at sea level has increased since the year 1900, and by what research has that certainty been derived?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="710" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T19:40:11.800" Title="Has global mean temperature at sea level increased since 1900?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1064" CreationDate="2011-03-21T04:18:01.110" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;The author of that comment is probably referencing &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;which is pointing out the absurdity of radical evidence based medicine. From the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions&lt;/strong&gt; As with many interventions intended to prevent ill health, the effectiveness of parachutes has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation by using randomised controlled trials. Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1459?tab=response-form#bmj_el_246540&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;discussion&lt;/a&gt; follows and I'm content with this comment that addresses the absurdity of demanding an explicit medical answer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not the common sense but simple laws of physics can prove the effectiveness of the parachute as a life saving intervention. When a person jumps from a height accelerates towards the earth and eventually reaches the “terminal velocity”. For an average person this terminal velocity is about 200km/hour and it takes only about 3 seconds to reach the terminal velocity. The damages caused to an individual hitting the ground at this speed is not just broken arms! Now, introducing a parachute reduces this terminal velocity to less than 10km/hour. This is comparable to crashing an old car without any airbags to a solid concrete wall at 200km/h and 10km/h.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia (and other sources) the Guiness world record for falling without a parachute belongs to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vesna Vulović&lt;/a&gt; who fell 10,000m, with several more people falling over 5,000m during WWII. The Wikipedia article also references a pub med article &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6620098&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ten years of experience with falls from a height in children.&lt;/a&gt; that states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Falls from a height are a major cause of accidental death in urban children. The medical and social data on 61 children admitted over the last decade for falls of one or more stories were reviewed. Seventy-seven percent of the children survived. Of the children who fell three stories or less, all survived (100%). Fifty percent mortality occurred between the fifth and sixth floors. Seventy-seven percent of the falls were accidental and 23% of the children jumped or were pushed. The 96% decrease in accidental falls from windows since 1979 demonstrates that the &quot;Children Can't Fly&quot; program in New York City has almost eliminated accidental falls from windows in our hospital population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are countless of articles about the injury rate of parachuting and base jumping that all give about the same numbers. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1478603/pdf/brjsmed00041-0015.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Parachuting injuries: a study of 110,000 sports jumps&lt;/a&gt; from 1987 states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A total of 110,000 parachute jumps resulted in six (0.005%) fatalities and 155 (0.14%)&#xA;  cases, requiring medical treatment. The latter group sustained 176 injuries of which 36.9% were significant soft tissue lesions and 63.1% fractures. Landing is the most dangerous part of the parachuting procedure, causing 83.8% of the accidents, while 9.3% were caused by faults during opening of the parachute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the age of those that participated it states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The mean age was 29.3 years, range 16-62 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working with the assumption that survivability doesn't increase with falling distance, and that age doesn't profoundly diminish the damage cause to humans by rapid deceleration, we must conclude that it's the parachutes responsible for the increase in survivability from 50% when falling from the fifth to sixth floor to 99.995% when jumping out of an airplane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is the use of parachutes supported by peer-reviewed papers?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are many papers that that show that parachutes are being used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Does the literature show that parachuting increases survivability over free-falling?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, indirectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T15:48:53.933" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T15:48:53.933" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1036" CreationDate="2011-03-21T05:09:28.440" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several papers that discuss trends, although proving causality in a system as complicated as the economy is probably impossible.  This &lt;a href=&quot;http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/2010/08/presidential-elections-and-stock-market-cycles/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;analysis&lt;/a&gt; shows trends surrounding U.S. elections, and even suggests some investment strategies &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on discussions above and the&#xA;  notion that the S&amp;amp;P 500 Index seems to&#xA;  bottom approximately two years into&#xA;  presidential terms, we can construct a&#xA;  hypothetical test for two investors&#xA;  that calculates the dollar return for&#xA;  two simple alternative investment&#xA;  strategies...Imagine that the first&#xA;  investor had consistently purchased&#xA;  the S&amp;amp;P 500 Index 27 months before&#xA;  presidential elections and had sold&#xA;  near election time on December 31 of&#xA;  the election year. Because a 27-month&#xA;  period seems to provide better returns&#xA;  than other studied periods before the&#xA;  election, a 27-month period was&#xA;  selected for this test. This strategy&#xA;  kept Investor 1 out of the market from&#xA;  January 1 of the inaugural year&#xA;  through September 30 of the second&#xA;  year during the test period. On the&#xA;  other hand, imagine further that&#xA;  Investor 2 bought the S&amp;amp;P 500 on the&#xA;  first trading day of the inaugural&#xA;  year of each presidential election&#xA;  during the test period and liquidated&#xA;  the portfolio on September 30 of the&#xA;  second year of the presidential term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the results, in chart form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wZ8ru.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kiplinger.com/columns/value/archive/how-elections-affect-the-stock-market.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article in Kiplinger&lt;/a&gt; talks about how growth slows approaching any midterm US election, but picks up just before the election.  The article speculates that uncertainty is the problem, and as polling clears up the likely election winners, the economy stabilizes. Of course, the recent economic movement following Mr Bush's and Mr Obama's elections have bucked the trend a bit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If uncertainty is truly the culprit, then it's not so much elections that are bad for the economy, but elections where a likely outcome is unclear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T05:09:28.440" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1062" CreationDate="2011-03-21T07:44:52.350" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Empirically, I wouldn't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But theoretically, the reasoning behind a jury system has been formalized mathematically. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does it mean for justice to be served?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a dilemma because of what statisticians call &quot;type 1&quot; and &quot;type 2&quot; error.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a justice system these types of error are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Letting the guilty go free&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convicting the innocent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_jury_theorem&quot;&gt;Condorcet's jury theorem&lt;/a&gt; [1785] argues that a traditional jury operating under unanimity for conviction is less likely to commit the second error than picking a single juror and making him the judge of the facts.  Suppose that the probability that juror i will wrongfully convict the innocent is p[i]. Then, if we assume independence of jurors (which can be problematic),  the probability that an innocent defendant is convicted by the jury under unanimity is product(p[i]; 1&amp;lt;=i&amp;lt;=N).  Since p[i]&amp;lt;=1.0 for all i, this product is necessarily smaller than any individual p[i].  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not answer whether letting a judge decide guilt might do better or worse either because of his training or potential for acquiescing to government demands  or falling into corruption. However, it does show that at least on avoiding the conviction of innocents, a larger jury should be fairer than a smaller one.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Type 1 error is increased. The proof, I suspect, is a bit more tedious but basically the same principal with &quot;and&quot; replaced by &quot;or&quot;.  Only one juror's false belief in innocence (or corruption) is required for type 1 error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are different injustices, and trying to mold the system to reduce one error often increases the frequency of the other error.  Designing for a balance between these errors involves some serious moral and ethical issues, among them the problem that citizens may have different preferences for them.  While Blackstone suggested &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation&quot;&gt;&quot;better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, any balancing invites both the questions &quot;how many innocents should suffer a false conviction?&quot; and &quot;What casualties do the freed guilty create among other innocents?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T04:34:23.247" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T04:34:23.247" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1074" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1109" CreationDate="2011-03-21T08:24:19.757" Score="9" ViewCount="1343" Body="&lt;p&gt;8 perfect Faro shuffles in a row will return a deck of cards to the original order. I am curious as to whether anyone has actually performed this feat. I found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lNk7bfkFq8&quot;&gt;Youtube&lt;/a&gt; video, but does anyone have any more definite proof of whether this feat has been accomplished?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2014-12-13T10:38:31.193" Title="Has anyone performed 8 perfect Faro shuffles in a row?" Tags="|tricks|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="712" CreationDate="2011-03-21T12:02:27.477" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Atkins diet consists of 4 distinct phases.&#xA;ALL (AFAIK) negative stories about it have to do with extremely prolonged adherence to the first of these, which is a diet almost completely free of carbohydrates.&#xA;If you read the Atkins diet plan a bit though (just reading the basics is enough) you'll notice that this stage is recommended to last no more than 2 weeks (I think it was, been a while) unless under medical supervision.&#xA;After this, carbohydrate intake is slowly increased in the followup stages, to a sustainable (but low in comparison to diets that aren't CH restricted) level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Atkins himself lived according to his own diet for decades until he died of non-related causes that could have killed anybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many advocates of other diet plans have trouble with the Atkins diet for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it works, longterm, if you stick to it (which can be hard, but the same is true for other diets that work longterm, they're all hard to stick to)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it requires no large sums of money to buy special diet products (in fact it states clearly that most &quot;diet&quot; products are to be avoided), thus there's no sustained source of income for dietitians, diet food manufacturers, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;because it works long term, you'll be less likely to be visiting that dietitian again for more diet tips. Again, they lose a steady source of reliable income.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as it is low in carbohydrates, a good portion of the rather powerful agricultural and processed foods lobby doesn't like it. You'll be buying fewer McDonald's hamburgers, Hershey chocolate, Coca Cola, Del Monte canned pineapples, etc. etc. Those (and many other) companies don't like to see their incomes reduced by people preferring to cook their own from raw ingredients.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall then, there's a lot of money being spent to blacken the reputation of the Atkins diet (and others that work, but this is the one being discussed here) because it threatens people, and it's not the people following the diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From personal experience I know it works, and I know it's very hard to keep up long term (I've got to get restarted, couldn't keep it up for more than about 2 years), and like all diets once you stop them you indeed gain the weight lost back relatively quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T08:14:25.963" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T08:14:25.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1032" CreationDate="2011-03-21T12:04:31.297" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7292/full/4641111a.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No Gain From Brain Training&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v465/n7299/abs/nature09042.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;largest trial&lt;/a&gt; to date of&#xA;'brain-training' computer games&#xA;suggests that people who use the&#xA;software to boost their mental skills&#xA;are likely to be disappointed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A total of 11,430 volunteers aged from&#xA;18 to 60 completed the study&lt;/strong&gt;, and&#xA;although they improved on the tasks,&#xA;the researchers believe that none of&#xA;the groups boosted their performance&#xA;on tests measuring general cognitive&#xA;abilities such as memory, reasoning&#xA;and learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dVcEY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Statistics&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although improvements were observed in every one of the cognitive tasks that were trained, &lt;strong&gt;no evidence was found for transfer effects to untrained tasks, even when those tasks were cognitively closely related&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;The study has been criticized, though: [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7292/full/4641111a.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;], [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1983306,00.html#ixzz0lh0ZMO77&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;], [&lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703763904575196400381395576.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=brain-trainings-unproven-hype&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scientific American - Do Brain Trainer Games and Software Work?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Neuroscientist &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.brown.edu/research/profile.php?id=1229013784&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peter Snyder&lt;/a&gt; of Brown University &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alzheimersanddementia.com/article/S1552-5260%2808%2902922-1/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reviewed nearly 20 software studies&lt;/a&gt; and concluded that, as a group, they were underwhelming&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are marred by flaws that induce confounding factors, such as a lack of control groups and follow-up, Snyder warns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than a third of those he reviewed were too shoddy even to include in the analysis he printed early this year in the journal &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alzheimersanddementia.com/home&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Alzheimer’s &amp;amp; Dementia&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One paper, however, exceeded expectations&lt;/strong&gt;: in a new study Snyder called the “most well-designed” of those he evaluated, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.org/news2009-rst/5179.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Mayo Clinic tested the Brain Fitness Program&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.positscience.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Posit Science&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Encour­agingly, &lt;strong&gt;the researchers found that the software boosted the brain in ways unrelated to the training&lt;/strong&gt;. Rather than simply learning to parrot back what they had practiced, participants improved their test scores across a range of brain functions, says clinical neuropsychologist &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/biography/SB00028&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Glenn Smith&lt;/a&gt;, who led the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, &lt;strong&gt;the boost was minimal&lt;/strong&gt;. Subjects who played improved their memory by twice as much as did those in the control group (who spent an equal amount of time watching educational documentaries). &lt;strong&gt;After eight weeks of training, that improvement was only about 4 percent&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;There have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alzheimersweekly.com/content/sharpening-your-wits-could-outwit-alzheimers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt; that suggest that mentally stimulating activities in old age helps reduce the risk of &lt;strong&gt;Alzheimer's disease/dementia&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The more you do mentally stimulating&#xA;activities -- such as crossword&#xA;puzzles or playing chess -- the better&#xA;it is,&amp;quot; said &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.einstein.yu.edu/faculty/profile.asp?id=5323&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Joe Verghese&lt;/a&gt;, an&#xA;assistant professor of neurology at&#xA;Albert Einstein College of Medicine in&#xA;New York City.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Verghese recently co-authored a &lt;strong&gt;study&#xA;that found that seniors who engage in&#xA;a wide variety of mental pursuits&#xA;while at leisure&lt;/strong&gt; -- such as playing a&#xA;musical instrument, reading and&#xA;playing cards or board-games -- &lt;strong&gt;seem&#xA;to dramatically lower their risk for&#xA;developing dementia&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But he stressed that it's never too&#xA;early to incorporate mental exercise&#xA;into the daily planner. In fact, it's&#xA;a habit that should be encouraged&#xA;starting in childhood, experts say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa022252&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Leisure Activities and the Risk of Dementia in the Elderly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1415273/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Leisure Activities And The Risk of Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment In The Elderly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;But Crossword puzzles and other mentally stimulating pursuits &lt;a href=&quot;http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/lifestyle/a/-/health/7869444/crossword-puzzles-may-hide-alzheimers/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;may just hide&lt;/a&gt;, rather than prevent, the progress of Alzheimer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers in the US said the reality&#xA;could be that, even without symptoms,&#xA;the brain was suffering progressive&#xA;damage behind the scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mentally stimulating activities might&#xA;help the brain &amp;quot;rewire&amp;quot; itself to&#xA;circumvent the effects of dementia.&#xA;However, once the disease was&#xA;diagnosed, damage to the brain was&#xA;likely to be greater than it would be&#xA;in someone who was not mentally&#xA;stimulated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rush.edu/rumc/page-1099611539759.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr Robert Wilson&lt;/a&gt;, from Rush University Medical Centre in Chicago, said &lt;strong&gt;the research team's results suggested that the benefit of delaying the initial signs of cognitive decline might come at the cost of more rapid dementia progression later&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 12-year-study involved evaluating the mental activity of 1157 people aged 65 and over - none of whom had dementia at the start of the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s3000571.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ABC - Brain training linked to faster dementia progress&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080428/full/news.2008.784.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nature - Do games improve mental performance?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/laura-donnelly/8771157/Research-suggests-brain-training-for-babies-works.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Telegraph - Research suggests brain training for babies works&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19140648&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Can training in a real-time strategy video game attenuate cognitive decline in older adults?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T09:48:11.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1064" CreationDate="2011-03-21T13:55:56.683" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question commits the logical fallacy &lt;a href=&quot;https://wrtg213x.community.uaf.edu/resources/recognizing-logical-fallacies/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Unstated Major Premise&lt;/a&gt;.  It presumes that because parachutes have to do with the safety of humans, that they must therefore be studied using a randomized controlled trial before we can ethically use them.  This is bogus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some interventions, even medical ones, which are have such a high prior plausibility that it is not necessary, advisable or even ethical to study them.  For example, if a person is on fire, logically one must extinguish the fire before tending to their burns.  One does not need to launch a randomized controlled trial on this first.  In fact, it would be unethical to do this study in the first place, because doing so would put the test subjects at high risk of harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so it is with parachutes.  Basic knowledge of human anatomy tells us that falling from a great height produces a very high likelihood of severe injury and death.  There are literally millions of empirical cases that back this up, more happen every day.  Therefore use of parachutes in situations where falls from great heights are necessary is logical and does not require an RCT first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that isn't to say you couldn't study &lt;em&gt;particular designs&lt;/em&gt; of parachutes to see which ones are more effective.  And these of course could be done without using human subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T15:44:12.190" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T15:44:12.190" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1060" CreationDate="2011-03-21T14:59:43.023" Score="24" Body="&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't done any studies on this, nor do I know any, but I don't think it makes such a difference in practice. For any infectious disease to propagate, it needs to move from one host to another. There needs to be a &quot;transit route&quot;. Now, usually diseases whose germs are excreted in the stool infect others orally (fecal-oral mode of transmission), so your germs somehow need to reach your own (auto-infection) or somebody else's mouth for a successful infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, aside from some (how to put this...) unsanitary sexual practices, it is not really the amount of germs left lying around your bottom after a &quot;half-assed&quot; cleaning session that's directly relevant for your infection risk. Rather, it's how much you get on your hands and fail to wash away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of Norovirus (one of the most infectious diarrhea agents), this is a real problem because the little buggers are very stable in the environment, and you need very few of them to get infected. A real risk here are instruments of normal social interaction -- handshakes, doorknobs etc. -- if you don't use very potent disinfectants for your hands after a bowel movement. Plus they spread via aerosols that permeate the air after a violent bowel movement or vomiting session. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, in the case of Cholera, it's a question of how many germs you get into your drinking water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that most civilized societies haven't died out from diarrhea appears to corroborate this - if anal hygiene was a relevant factor, we would have seen some differences here. In developing countries, people, especially children, die of diarrhea by the millions, not because they are not wiping their bottoms correctly, but because they have no access to clean water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just talked to the director of our university hospital's department of hygiene, and she was also unaware of any scientific studies about this question. She admitted that it would make for an interesting research project; writing the grant application alone sounds like fun. Might be a bit difficult to do a placebo-controlled, randomized, double-blind trial, though. In her opinion, wet naps (as long as they are made of a sturdy, poop-proof material) are probably your best bet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a topic of great interest to backpackers. On a long backpacking trip without resupply, it becomes problematic to carry enough TP. You also have to deal with the used TP either by packing it back out or by burning it (and it's very hard to get it to burn 100%). &quot;Backpacker's diarrhea&quot; is extremely common[Zell 1993,Mueser 1997]. People used to blame such diarrhea on bugs such as Giardia in contaminated drinking water. This tends to be a contentious topic; I've written a longish article on it here &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lightandmatter.com/article/hiking_water.html&quot;&gt;http://www.lightandmatter.com/article/hiking_water.html&lt;/a&gt; . The references given in the article show that this is basically wrong. Backpackers probably typically get diarrhea either from pre-trip exposure or from hand-to-mouth contamination. Most people who get a bad case of non-wilderness-related diarrhea get it in contexts like public swimming pools, daycare centers, and salad bars. Some of this transmission, e.g., at the salad bar, is presumably from hand-to-mouth contamination. But in other cases, such a public swimming pools, it isn't. So the issue isn't just whether you can get your hands clean; it also makes a difference whether your dirty butt is contaminating water in which you swim or bathe. Some backpackers use natural materials such as rocks, leaves, or snow for wiping. Others advocate washing with soap and water. I'm not aware of any scientific evidence on the advantages or disadvantages of one or the other. I believe that auto-infection by hand to mouth is not actually common, because people's immune systems resist their own gut flora.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Zell 1993] S.C. Zell and S.K. Sorenson, &quot;Cyst acquisition rate for Giardia lamblia in backcountry travelers to Desolation Wilderness, Lake Tahoe,&quot; Wilderness and Environmental Medicine 4 (1993) 147, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/jwm/article/S0953-9859%2893%2971172-9/abstract&quot;&gt;http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/jwm/article/S0953-9859%2893%2971172-9/abstract&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;[Mueser 1997] - Roland Mueser, Long-Distance Hiking: Lessons from the Appalachian Trail, International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press, 1st edition, 1997, p. 96 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastEditorDisplayName="user4216" LastEditDate="2011-08-07T18:31:57.637" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T18:31:57.637" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1065" CreationDate="2011-03-21T16:58:20.503" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following graph shows the global temperature development during the last 130 years (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2006/2006_Hansen_etal_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hansen et al., 2006&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/B0FXw.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This data is from resarchers of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)&lt;/a&gt;, but there are also groups from the University of East Anglia and the National Climatic Data Center working on similar data. They are based on the same observations in the end, but they use different methods for analysis and thereby provide some cross validation of the methods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data this graph is based on comes from meteorological stations on land (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1999/1999_Hansen_etal.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hansen et al., 2001&lt;/a&gt;), satellite data and ship-based data on the oceans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One difficulty in analysis the data from stations is the influence of urban development, cities produce heat which could bias the results. To correct for that, Hansen et al. used satellite light data to adjust stations affected by urban development (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2001/2001_Hansen_etal.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hansen et al., 2001&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are not many meteorological stations in the arctic, for that region the data is based primarily on satellite measurements (&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1256/wea.222.05/pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Comiso, 2006&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Independent from the temperature data there are also other indicators for a global warming trend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The conclusion that global warming is&#xA;  a real climate change, not an artifact&#xA;  due to measurements in urban areas, is&#xA;  confirmed by surface temperature&#xA;  change inferred from borehole&#xA;  temperature profiles at remote&#xA;  locations, the rate of retreat of&#xA;  alpine glaciers around the world, and&#xA;  progressively earlier breakup of ice&#xA;  on rivers and lakes&#xA;  -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2006/2006_Hansen_etal_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hansen et al., 2006&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the scientific articles I linked are freely available, if you want to dig deeper into the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T16:58:20.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1087" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-21T17:41:47.267" Score="10" ViewCount="765" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a consensus in the media the the events in Fukushima have significantly decreased the public's approval of nuclear energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See for example this article by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8393984/Safe-nuclear-does-exist-and-China-is-leading-the-way-with-thorium.html?sms_ss=facebook&amp;amp;at_xt=4d870a85e6241014,0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to back this up or is this just sulf-fulfilling fear mongering?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="367" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-04-10T14:42:10.360" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T14:42:10.360" Title="Has public faith in nuclear power decreased significantly after the Fukushima accident?" Tags="|fukushima-daiichi|nuclear-energy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1059" CreationDate="2011-03-21T18:20:00.917" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;The study is from a reputable scientific journal, and appears to apply good scientific methods and to exclude (as far as possible) a large number of alternative factors that might have caused the difference in mortality. Also this is far from the only study to have found that moderate alcohol consumption correlates with better health and longer life. Most studies report probable health benefits, but stop short of stating a provable connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.suite101.com/content/health-benefits-of-alcohol-a48358&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a report which lists five scholarly scientific studies showing the correlation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/alcohol/SC00024&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a Mayo Clinic study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moderate alcohol consumption may provide some health benefits. It may: Reduce your risk of developing heart disease; Reduce your risk of dying of a heart attack; Possibly reduce your risk of strokes, particularly ischemic strokes; Lower your risk of gallstones; Possibly reduce your risk of diabetes. Even so, the evidence about the possible health benefits of alcohol isn't certain, and alcohol may not benefit everyone who drinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh24-1/05-11.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is one from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (which also lists some of the downsides).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the past two decades, however, &#xA;  a growing number of epidemiologic&#xA;  studies have documented an association&#xA;  between alcohol consumption and&#xA;  lower risk for coronary heart disease&#xA;  (CHD), the leading cause of death in&#xA;  many developed countries (Chadwick&#xA;  and Goode 1998; Criqui 1996a,b;&#xA;  Zakhari 1997). Much remains to be&#xA;  learned about this association, the&#xA;  extent to which it is due specifically to&#xA;  alcohol and not to other associated&#xA;  lifestyle factors, and what the biological&#xA;  mechanisms of such an effect might be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://origin.www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/DietaryGuidelines/2010/DGAC/Report/D-7-Alcohol.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is the US dietary guidelines, alcohol section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Heavy drinking &#xA;  increases the risk of liver cirrhosis, hypertension, cancers of the upper gastrointestinal tract, injury, &#xA;  and violence (USDA, 2000). A recent analysis of the preventable causes of mortality in the United &#xA;  States (US) attributed 90,000 deaths a year to alcohol misuse (Danaei, 2009). However, the health &#xA;  consequences of consuming lesser amounts of alcohol are also important because of the large &#xA;  percent of the population that consumes alcohol at or below government recommendations on &#xA;  limits for intake. It is estimated that 26,000 fewer deaths were averted due to reductions in heart &#xA;  disease, stroke and diabetes from the benefits attributed to moderate alcohol consumption.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drinking moderate amounts of alcohol will impair your judgement, possibly causing you to drink more alcohol than you intended. The risks of alcoholism and vehicle accident are well known - I guess they could be considered counter-evidence. There are also studies that have shown increases in cancer related to alcohol consumption, as answered in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2735/does-alcohol-cause-cancer&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;. The more general studies would tend to indicate that the positive benefits outweigh the negative. This is not a clear-cut situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2017-06-01T19:05:32.760" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T19:05:32.760" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1091" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-21T19:37:15.967" Score="32" ViewCount="4239" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not too long ago a story about a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nrc/journal/v10/n10/full/nrc2914.html&quot;&gt;study examining mummies for the prevalence of cancer&lt;/a&gt; caused a flurry of articles in the media claiming that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39687039/ns/health-cancer/&quot;&gt;cancer is a man-made disease&lt;/a&gt;. The researchers claim that cancer was very rare in ancient egypt compared to modern times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=6243&quot;&gt;press release&lt;/a&gt; about the study the author states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“In industrialised societies, cancer&#xA;  is second only to cardiovascular&#xA;  disease as a cause of death. But in&#xA;  ancient times, it was extremely rare.&#xA;  There is nothing in the natural&#xA;  environment that can cause cancer. So&#xA;  it has to be a man-made disease, down&#xA;  to pollution and changes to our diet&#xA;  and lifestyle.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are those claims valid? What evidence is there about the environmental causes of cancer? I'm not just asking about this specific study, but also about other studies showing how important environmental factors are in the incidence of cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2022-04-23T09:10:20.170" Title="Is cancer a man-made disease?" Tags="|medical-science|environment|cancer|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1092" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1095" CreationDate="2011-03-21T19:39:12.690" Score="52" ViewCount="3370" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific backing to the claim that reading in dim light damages your eyes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/404/does-watching-television-damage-the-eyes&quot;&gt;Does watching television damage the eyes?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2017-12-02T03:32:56.943" Title="Is it harmful to your eyes to read in dim light?" Tags="|medical-science|ophthalmology|reading|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1091" CreationDate="2011-03-21T19:46:02.073" Score="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of no studies but it is well-known that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;life expectancy has increased &lt;em&gt;drastically&lt;/em&gt; since ancient Egypt and that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cancer prevalence increases with age.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the first point, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;life expectancy in ancient Egypt&lt;/a&gt; was around 25 years, and even in the middle ages no more than 30 years. Compare that to today’s 67 years. Granted, once you take infant mortality out of the equation life expectancy grows – but it still was much less than today, and more importantly, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120906012931/http://www.utexas.edu:80/depts/classics/documents/Life.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;it was often less than 50 years&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second point is due to a number of factors but it all boils down to cell aging and accumulating effects of detriment mutations. There &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; occurrences of cancer in young people and even in children, but mostly, it is “&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a disease found in people over the age of 50&lt;/a&gt;”: according to &lt;a href=&quot;https://seer.cancer.gov/data/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SEER data&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;just 95 people below 50 get cancer for 1449 incidences above 50&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combined, it isn’t surprising to see that cancer is much more common now than it was then. Superficially, no further reasons are needed to explain this phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, animals (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1382208/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;chimpanzees&lt;/a&gt;) and even plants can get cancer, too – so this isn’t a problem that is partial to humans (though that doesn’t preclude new environmental causes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from that, the quote is &lt;em&gt;complete nonsense&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well … &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;. There are a lot of things in the natural environment that can &lt;em&gt;and do&lt;/em&gt; cause cancers. The most glaring point is natural sources of high radiation, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation#Radon&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;uranium ore&lt;/a&gt; and of course &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120528131950/http://www.cancer.org.au/cancersmartlifestyle/SunSmart/Whatputsyouatrisk.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the sun&lt;/a&gt;. But more sources exist, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPV&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;viruses&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11095-008-9661-9&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;infectious diseases&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betel_nut&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;diet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-04-23T09:10:20.170" LastActivityDate="2022-04-23T09:10:20.170" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1091" CreationDate="2011-03-21T20:01:30.680" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/CancerBasics/TheHistoryofCancer/the-history-of-cancer-what-is-cancer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The History of Cancer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Oldest descriptions of cancer&lt;/strong&gt; Human beings have had cancer&#xA;  throughout recorded history. So it is&#xA;  no surprise that from the dawn of&#xA;  history people have written about&#xA;  cancer. Some of the earliest evidence&#xA;  of cancer is found among fossilized&#xA;  bone tumors, human mummies in ancient&#xA;  Egypt, and ancient manuscripts. Bone&#xA;  remains of mummies have revealed&#xA;  growths suggestive of the bone cancer,&#xA;  osteosarcoma. Bony skull destruction&#xA;  as seen in cancer of the head and neck&#xA;  has been found, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our oldest description of cancer&#xA;  (although the word cancer was not&#xA;  used) was discovered in Egypt and&#xA;  dates back to about 1600 B.C. It is&#xA;  called the Edwin Smith Papyrus, and is&#xA;  a copy of part of an ancient Egyptian&#xA;  textbook on trauma surgery. It&#xA;  describes 8 cases of tumors or ulcers&#xA;  of the breast that were treated by&#xA;  cauterization, with a tool called the&#xA;  fire drill. The writing says about the&#xA;  disease, &quot;There is no treatment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, cancer is not a modern disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="212" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-03-21T20:24:00.543" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T20:24:00.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1092" CreationDate="2011-03-21T20:13:06.640" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there isn’t. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/335/7633/1288.full&quot;&gt;This is a very old urban legend&lt;/a&gt; – nothing more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suboptimal lighting can create a sensation of having difficulty in focusing. It also decreases the rate of blinking and leads to discomfort from drying, particularly in conditions of voluntary squinting. &lt;strong&gt;The important counterpoint is that these effects do not persist.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T20:13:06.640" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1087" CreationDate="2011-03-21T20:55:55.050" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Gallup poll addressed this issue, found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gallup.com/poll/146660/Disaster-Japan-Raises-Nuclear-Concerns.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;.  Support for nuclear energy in America had been on the rise prior to the incidents.  Gallup concluded that near-term support has eroded but that whether the trend has long term implications is unknown:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The events in Japan may also be&#xA;  diminishing Americans' support for the&#xA;  use of nuclear power in the United&#xA;  States. The poll finds 44% in favor&#xA;  and 47% opposed to &quot;the construction&#xA;  of nuclear power plants in the United&#xA;  States.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In recent years, Gallup and other&#xA;  polling organizations have usually&#xA;  found more support than opposition for&#xA;  nuclear power. This includes Gallup's&#xA;  annual Environment survey -- conducted&#xA;  March 3-6, before the Japanese&#xA;  earthquake and tsunami -- which found&#xA;  57% of Americans saying they strongly&#xA;  or somewhat favor &quot;the use of nuclear&#xA;  energy as one of the ways to provide&#xA;  electricity for the U.S.,&quot; with 38%&#xA;  strongly or somewhat opposed. Support&#xA;  peaked at 62% last year on this&#xA;  question, which was first asked in&#xA;  1994. &lt;strong&gt;Whether the disaster in Japan will have a long-term impact on&#xA;  Americans' attitudes toward nuclear&#xA;  power as measured by this trend&#xA;  question remains to be seen&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see in the following chart from the same poll, other factors such as political affiliation and education also seem to play a role:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1xzAy.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Dogmafrog" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T20:55:55.050" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1091" CreationDate="2011-03-21T21:17:10.647" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before I start, I always remind people that &lt;em&gt;cancer is NOT one specific illness with one specific cause or treatment&lt;/em&gt;.  In fact, most people would be amazed at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/alphalist&quot;&gt;how many types of cancer there are&lt;/a&gt;.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the first depictions of cancer in historical medical literature dates back to about 1600 BC, from what's known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurosurgery.org/cybermuseum/pre20th/epapyrus.html&quot;&gt;Edwin Smith Papyrus&lt;/a&gt;.  For a historical overview, the Journal of Surgical Oncology has a paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2820670/pdf/10434_2009_Article_886.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The name &quot;cancer&quot; was attached to various malignancies by Hippocrates, from whom we have documented cases from ancient Greece.  So, the first answer is simple: No, cancer is not a modern, man-made disease.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the quote posted, I would like to point out a simple flaw in what seems to be the central statement of this argument: &quot;There is nothing in the natural environment that can cause cancer&quot;.  This is easily falsifiable.  I think most rational people would agree that there are few things more natural than SUNLIGHT.  Of course, there is a fairly well-documented association between sun exposure and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21357345&quot;&gt;melanoma&lt;/a&gt;.  There are also known viral causes of cancer, the most well known being &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21396686&quot;&gt;HPV&lt;/a&gt;.  While we may not like to think of a virus as a pleasant thing, it is in fact perfectly &lt;em&gt;all-natural&lt;/em&gt;.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any sufficient analysis of cancer rates is going to be much too complex for a simple post, but I can suggest some places to begin research, if one is so inclined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some data as to current trends; you can find a table of death rates for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@epidemiologysurveilance/documents/document/acspc-026208.pdf&quot;&gt;males&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@epidemiologysurveilance/documents/document/acspc-026209.pdf&quot;&gt;females&lt;/a&gt; between 1930-2006.  There is also a nicely put together table &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@epidemiologysurveilance/documents/document/acspc-026215.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for cancer probabilities for 2004-2006 broken down by age, sex, and organ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NCI offers a searchable database of available statistics from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://seer.cancer.gov/csr/1975_2007/browse_csr.php&quot;&gt;SEER&lt;/a&gt; which should also provide a good place to start looking if one is curious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that cancer is a hot-button issue in the media, and what is reported in the general press may not accurately reflect the current state of the peer-reviewed legitimate research.  Search out the citations if you can and see for yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also keep in mind that studying prevalence and incidence rates for cancer is very time-consuming and labor-intensive. One must take into consideration many factors in order to properly interpret the data. Some confounding factors are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Increased diagnostic capabilities which allow modern medicine to find and diagnose more cancers.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Increased lifespan which allows for more time to develop cancer&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Immunosuppressive conditions such as HIV which make patients more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18435450&quot;&gt;susceptible&lt;/a&gt; to cancers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/news/Cancer-Death-Rate-Steadily-Declining&quot;&gt;Better survival rates for cancers&lt;/a&gt; which increase the number of cases in the general population.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is obviously not a complete answer, but I hope it was helpful as a place to begin.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T19:40:48.300" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T19:40:48.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1091" CreationDate="2011-03-21T22:56:59.307" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are the conclusions from the paper (quoted in full):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is hoped that research in palaeopathology will contribute to the elucidation of the pathogenesis of cancer. The publication of the first histological diagnosis of cancer in an Egyptian mummy is one step along the way. Despite the fact that other explanations, such as inadequate techniques of disease diagnosis, cannot be ruled out, the rarity of malignancies in antiquity is strongly suggested by the available palaeopathological and literary evidence. This might be related to the prevalence of carcinogens in modern societies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the version that got past peer review is full of hedges (&quot;it might be related to&quot;, &quot;strongly suggested&quot;, &quot;one step along the way&quot;). The press release is just that, a press release, made to get into the news. The science is much murkier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastActivityDate="2011-03-21T22:56:59.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1101" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1107" CreationDate="2011-03-21T23:08:31.587" Score="37" ViewCount="4236" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(Quinn_novel)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ishmael&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Daniel Quinn, there's a passage that claims &amp;quot;Takers&amp;quot; (i.e. modern man) are the only thing in nature that hunt down competitors, destroy or otherwise deny someone else food. Are there strong arguments to be made that other animals exhibit the same behavior?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;you may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war.&amp;quot; All species inevitably follow this law, or as a consequence go extinct. The Takers believe themselves to be exempt from this Law and flout it at every point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm disqualifying &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptoparasitism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kleptoparasitism&lt;/a&gt; which directly benefits the thief as an answer. There's no need to make a case about animals that do all 3 of the above mentioned things, refuting one of them is enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2022-04-29T07:34:33.633" LastActivityDate="2022-04-29T10:23:49.227" Title="Are humans the only species that hunts down competitors, denies and destroys food for others?" Tags="|biology|ethology|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="32" CreationDate="2011-03-21T23:12:51.673" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Consuming vegetables has been associated with a decreased risk of some types of cancer, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-10-consuming-vegetables-linked-decreased-breast.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Consuming vegetables linked to decreased breast cancer risk in African-American women&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The incidence of ER-/PR- breast cancer was 43 percent lower among women consuming at least two vegetables per day compared with women who ate fewer than four vegetables per week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/19/9/2278.abstract?sid=c6f35519-359f-4443-afb5-b6c641202de8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Variety in Fruit and Vegetable Consumption and the Risk of Lung Cancer in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt; Variety in vegetable consumption was inversely associated with lung cancer risk among current smokers. Risk of squamous cell carcinomas was reduced with increasing variety in fruit and/or vegetable consumption, which was mainly driven by the effect in current smokers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="710" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T16:03:01.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1052" CreationDate="2011-03-21T23:25:01.587" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Remember the burden of proof in this case is on the believer to prove that the shroud is genuine, not for the skeptic to prove it a forgery.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definitive testing of the shroud was done in 1988 by 3 independent laboratories (and possibly verified by a fourth) in Zurich, Oxford and the University of Arizona.  You can find the results of the radiocarbon dating done by accelerated mass spectrometry  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shroud.com/nature.htm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  The methods for the taking of samples and the treating of results were agreed upon by the three labs, overseen by the British Museum, and approved by the Archbishop of Turin and the Holy See (owner of the shroud).  All showed cloth dating from the 1300's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The findings of these results confirm those done by McCrone, who examined the shroud using electron microscopy in the late 70's and identified the pigment of the shroud as red ochre.  His published results are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcri.org/CMSuploads/the_microscope_%20shroud.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been attempts to claim that biological or other contaminants caused a false reading.  Those claims are thoroughly refuted &lt;a href=&quot;http://mcri.org/home/section/63-64-293-351/amount-of-modern-biological-contaminant-required-to-raise-the-date-of-a-36-a.d.-shroud&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; by demonstrating that the 9kg shroud would have to be covered in 40kg of biological contaminants for the reading to be skewed enough for the shroud to be from around 36 C.E.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been some claims that the sample was contaminated by fire damage, or water damage (or both, depending on who you read), and there have also been claims that there are &quot;unauthorized, undocumented&quot; repairs through history which resulted in contamination.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/marben.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is one such claim, I find it to be particularly weak in light of the above evidence.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This information, should be considered with what is known historically about Geffroy de Charny (possible spelling error there, sorry!) who showed up sometime in the 1350's with the shroud and a desire to build a church (which in those days needed a really cool relic to be a really cool church).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there is no definitive historical proof of a named and documented individual who can be proven to have lived in the time period providing evidence showing that he, himself was the creator of the shroud.  However, the evidence that is available points to a quite rational, simple explanation.   The simple fact is that based on the demonstrable evidence at this time, the shroud does not meet the burden of proof to be considered legitimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested, you can find a list of theories, experiments, hypotheses and studies done over the years by various organizations with various agendas conducted with various degrees of scientific rigor &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shroud.com/library.htm#papers&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-10T03:55:40.520" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T03:55:40.520" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1074" CreationDate="2011-03-22T00:31:23.887" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short Yes!&#xA;I recommend the book &lt;em&gt;Magic Tricks, Card Shuffling, and Dynamic Computer Memories&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maa.org/mathland/mathtrek_8_3_98.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ivars Peterson&lt;/a&gt; where he explains how to do it, and the maths (if you are interested, as a skeptic ;) behind it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="800" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T00:31:23.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1101" CreationDate="2011-03-22T01:13:38.560" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ants are remarkable for &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180908210246/http://www.discoverwildlife.com:80/animals/ants-war&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;waging war&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/732g787472684404/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;enslaving and cultivating other species&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also be interested in a paper &lt;a href=&quot;https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article/14/5/713/187129?login=true&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;documenting ants being hostile&lt;/a&gt; to their neighbors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-04-29T03:15:04.637" LastActivityDate="2022-04-29T03:15:04.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1074" CreationDate="2011-03-22T01:58:05.227" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite a few more than eight actually:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;British magician David Willmott completed 2,784 ‘Faro’ shuffles at Illusions Magic Bar in Bristol - setting the new world record for the most complete perfect Faro shuffle cycles in 12 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldrecordsacademy.org/stunts/most_perfect_Faro_shuffle_cycles_world_record_set_by_David_Willmott_101636.htm&quot;&gt;World Records Academy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-09T12:06:16.463" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T12:06:16.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1056" CreationDate="2011-03-22T02:37:10.420" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As for iridology specifically...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many conditions which can be diagnosed by looking at the eye, and for the most part, they are only conditions which affect the eye.  Pupillary response can be measured to assess brain function and jaundice can be detected by looking into the eye.  However, that is not the claim here.  It is the sclera (white part) which becomes jaundiced, not the iris, and it is the pupil not the iris which becomes the indicator of brain function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also an argument which can be made, stating that since the PAX6 gene codes for the formation of the iris and also the frontal lobe, there could be a theoretical link between the iris and one's personality, but only very, very theoretically.  There is absolutely no proposed link between disease in one organ and an expression in the already genetically coded external appearance of the iris. Nor is there an idea of any way in which there could be such a link. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can check out a link &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20457720&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (it's only an abstract), regarding what is generally thought of having to study pseudoscientific claims. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10636425&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is one done stating iridology is ineffective.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another general abstract stating its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10213874&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ineffectiveness&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Here is one showing it is ineffective in looking for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3147081&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gall bladder disease.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from that, I don't believe that there are many more peer-reviewed, legitimate published studies on-topic.  I would suggest you look into genetics, anatomy and physiology for an understanding of why the claims of iridologists do not even begin to meet the burden of proof.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding pseudoscienctific claims in general....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such claims are the reason boards like this need to exist and the skeptical community needs to keep at it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In medical and pharmaceutical research time, talent, and funding are all very limited.  Simple ethics dictate that these limited resources are are allocated to the areas with the most potential for benefit. Put simply: designing, implementing and testing ideas with a valid base in science in order to do the most good.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most professionals realize that it is unethical to waste limited resources on claims &#xA;which don't even merit consideration because they are simply ludicrous and based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/513139&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;imaginary principles&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, if it can be disproven with only a basic knowledge of human anatomy and physiology, or doesn't have a reason to be taken seriously in the first place, it is usually (and rightly) dismissed out of hand and without comment by the professionals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, it can sometimes be hard for the public to find published studies which EXPLICITLY DISPROVE pseudoscientific ideas.  Sadly, people who sell these products and push these ideas exploit the knowledge and ethics of the scientific community, knowing that real scientists will not waste the time and resources to refute the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gni-international.org/about-iridology3.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claims they make&lt;/a&gt;. So, while it may sometimes be hard to find an accurate layman's debunking of a specific claim, this in NO WAY lgitimizes it, because the burden of proof lies on the one making the claim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T03:10:14.497" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T03:10:14.497" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1050" CreationDate="2011-03-22T02:49:04.063" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a deep hot biosphere, but the likelyhood of that being the primary source of fuel hydrocarbons is small.  There are several reasons for this.  Plankton fossils in oil, higher life fossils in coal, etc. indicate that those are in fact from higher life.  There are also small amounts of fuel hydrocarbons (primarily methane) that are produced deep within the earth from the chemical processes found there under pressure.   However, it is believed that the &quot;deep&quot; sources of fuel hydrocarbons are not commercially useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are very few papers on the production of fuel hydrocarbons in the way Gold hypothesizes.  His thoughts have not been verified through much independent research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is life deep within the earth as Gold posits.  However it has not been demonstrated that said life produces a significant quantity of fuel hydrocarbons.  I have not yet found a paper which demonstrates that they produce &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; fuel hydrocarbons.  Most of Gold's work seems to be concerned with showing that it's possible -- which is not the same as showing that it happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paper supporting the idea that oil is a product of tiny lifeforms (bacteria, plankton, etc.): &lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=6520705&quot;&gt;[Microbial Origin of Fossil Fuels — osti.gov]&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bacteria/life is there: &lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/314/5798/479.short&quot;&gt;[Long-Term Sustainability of a High-Energy, Low-Diversity Crustal Biome — sciencemag.com]&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, abiogenic is not exactly the question, but appears on topic, since we're discussing deep creation of hydrocarbons.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asserts that abiogenic gases (natural gas) exist but are not commercially available:&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=6779771&quot;&gt;[Energy Gases of Abiogenic Origin in the Earth's Crust — osti.gov]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second paper supporting abiogenic natural gas exists, but not useful:&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osti.gov/energycitations/product.biblio.jsp?osti_id=7052010&quot;&gt;[Abiogenic Hydrocarbons and Mantle Helium in Oil and Gas Fields — osti.gov]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, exists, but not in significant quantity:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v416/n6880/abs/416522a.html&quot;&gt;[Abiogenic Formation of Alkanes in the Earth's Crust as a Minor Source for Global Hydrocarbon Reservoirs — nature.com]&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would appear to assert that not only is (at least some) coal fossil based, but that it's been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6TG3-498VX3N-CG&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=07/31/1991&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=7ac1be91fe3ad4a9e097950dd15ceaf1&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot;&gt;traced to specific plants&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="110" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T15:24:46.997" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T15:24:46.997" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1112" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-22T02:57:25.100" Score="30" ViewCount="7482" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often heard that the most popular book is the Bible, but it seems to me that, for example, classical Indian books as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabarata&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mahabharata&lt;/a&gt; or the Chinese &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Books_and_Five_Classics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Four Books and Five Classics&lt;/a&gt; may be more popular. Does any one have any source related to that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.squidoo.com/mostreadbooks&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt; of the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Bible still remains at the top as the most read book in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I was maybe hopping for a better metric then the number of book sold (if it exists). As it is mentioned in the comments, many produced Bibles were probably never read. I have no idea what metric could be used.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="800" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:11:32.793" Title="Is the Bible the most read book?" Tags="|history|bible|books|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1118" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1127" CreationDate="2011-03-22T07:35:31.820" Score="106" ViewCount="7268" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are personal electronics (of present or recent past; e.g. cell phones, mp3 players, iPads) a risk to commercial air travel? Is the typical request to &quot;turn off all personal electronic devices&quot; based on any reasonable data?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="858" LastEditorUserId="59" LastEditDate="2011-10-04T02:22:05.937" LastActivityDate="2018-08-23T11:47:46.480" Title="Are personal electronics a risk to commercial aviation?" Tags="|physics|safety|radiation|aviation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1118" CreationDate="2011-03-22T08:05:41.933" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears it is based on reasonable data. I have no knowledge about any FAA research, but (not so recently) the Mythbusters tackled the myth that it &lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/episode49&quot;&gt;is forbidden to use cellphones to force you to use the on-board phones&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They had to &lt;a href=&quot;http://testequipmentnews.blogspot.com/2008/11/mythbusters-make-use-of-test-equipment.html&quot;&gt;build their own mock-up cockpit and throw a whole lot of interference-causing stuff&lt;/a&gt; at it, which sort of worked. &lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt; it supposedly only worked because the wires in their mock-up weren't &lt;em&gt;properly shielded&lt;/em&gt;. This would be supported by their failure to cause any sort of interference in a corporate jet (a Hawker 800XP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="860" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T08:05:41.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1121" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="44129" CreationDate="2011-03-22T09:21:24.657" Score="96" ViewCount="14735" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Pinsky&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Drew Pinsky&lt;/a&gt;, a medical doctor who hosts several television and radio programs, &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20111122085633/http://www.examiner.com/self-help-reality-tv-in-national/celebrity-rehab-4-dr-drew-and-frankie-lons-sexual-abuse-and-trauma&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims quite frequently that most people who engage in sex-related industries, such as prostitution or pornography, have experienced sexual abuse as a child&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="334" LastEditDate="2019-06-01T21:23:19.313" LastActivityDate="2020-01-06T17:34:56.917" Title="Did most sex workers experience abuse as a child?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|sexual-abuse|prostitution|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1118" CreationDate="2011-03-22T10:37:13.043" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cell phones present a separate category, as they actively and intentionally transmit (i.e. generate E-M field), while the other appliances produce only a E-M noise, which is a lot weaker, see&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20070031766_2007031907.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Small Aircraft RF Interference Path Loss&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For various reasons, many devices such as laptop computers are allowed&#xA;during flights, while intentional transmitters such as wireless&#xA;devices and phones are prohibited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One particular issue with cell phones is that when they get far from the ground station (or lose connection to the ground station), they transmit a lot stronger signal to maintain the connection or to discover a station (the transmitted signal power &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techmind.org/gsm/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;varies in range 20 mW - 3 W&lt;/a&gt;, see also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_health#Radiation_absorption&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mobile phone radiation&lt;/a&gt;). While one cell phone doing this would still most likely still be quite weak, having 400 cell phones transmitting at full intensity is something which could create an interference. This also explains why phones are not &amp;quot;confiscated&amp;quot; (like a knife would be) - a few of them left active does not matter, but having many of them could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides of aircraft safety there are other concerns: active cells phones in the plane are bad for the phone operators, as the ground infrastructure is not designed for a situation like this. While the phone is quite far, it has a direct visual connection to many ground stations. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A6821318&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mobile Phones and Aircraft&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the number of lines available in a particular cell is limited, the cells are sized according to the predicted number of simultaneous users. Inner-city cells are smaller than rural ones, based on the likelihood that there will be a greater demand for lines. Consequently, there are more cells per unit area in cities than elsewhere. It is also worth noting that the line-of-sight link from a mobile phone to a particular base station in a city is likely to be obstructed by buildings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An aircraft could be carrying 500 cellphones. While passing directly over a city and thus unhindered by buildings, these phones could be in the line-of-sight of hundreds of base stations and could try to register with all of them. This would impose a temporary but extreme load on the network. The speed of the plane passing over the small inner-city cells would also result in an unusually rapid handover from cell to cell, possibly far in excess of the network's design limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be possible to provide an infrastructure on the plane to avoid the issues above, by having a dedicated station on the plane, which phones on board would connect to (this can be done with a weak signal, and with no need of any handover during the flight), and this station would then connect by one link to the ground network by some special means, e.g. using a satellite link. One paper attempting to design a scheme like this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.etsi.org/WebSite/document/Technologies/ETSI-WP4_GSM_onboard.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ETSI White Paper No. 4, GSM operation onboard aircraft&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T07:23:14.980" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1124" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1139" CreationDate="2011-03-22T10:38:27.353" Score="21" ViewCount="4161" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is mentioned in nearly every fiction on Shaolin Temple, but did it really exist? Wikipedia didn't mention it at all the last time I read, so I assume it's all fiction. But I haven't had a chance to read any serious literature on the Shaolin yet. And if it's purely fiction or legend, maybe you know how the legend started?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bordeglobal.com/foruminv/index.php?showtopic=9850&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This post here&lt;/a&gt; pretty much sums up the widespread belief (or &quot;claim&quot;) about the Shaolin Wooden Men labyrinth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To be a Shaolin monk and &#xA;  learn the secrets of kung fu, you had&#xA;  to pass through a labyrinth filled&#xA;  with skilled warriors, creatures, and&#xA;  traps. At the end, they had to lift a&#xA;  500 or so pound urn out of the way of&#xA;  a door, and while lifting it, their&#xA;  arms were branded with the symbols of&#xA;  twin dragons to symbolize that they&#xA;  had gotten through &quot;initiation&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once in the labyrinth, there was no&#xA;  way out but to get past the urn. Many&#xA;  died to become bona fide Shaolin&#xA;  monks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did such a labyrinth ever exist or is it just fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user288" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2012-11-04T08:34:55.277" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T22:11:58.413" Title="Did (Does?) the Shaolin Wooden Men labyrinth exist?" Tags="|history|china|martial-arts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1101" CreationDate="2011-03-22T10:45:22.307" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide_%28zoology%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Infanticide&lt;/a&gt; is widely documented in animals, for instance in primates, birds and even insects. A common reason is a new male killing offspring sired by a displaced competitor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastEditorUserId="867" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T07:44:08.993" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T07:44:08.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1118" CreationDate="2011-03-22T11:06:48.707" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3964895&amp;amp;page=1&quot;&gt;ABC News&lt;/a&gt; (2007):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An aviation safety database maintained&#xA;  by NASA shows a handful of incidents&#xA;  each year reported by pilots who&#xA;  suspected cell phones and other&#xA;  electronic devices had caused a&#xA;  problem during flight. Despite these&#xA;  reports, &lt;strong&gt;not a single air crash has&#xA;  been proven to be caused by the use of&#xA;  a cell phone onboard a plane&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;John Nance, an ABC News consultant and&#xA;  veteran airline pilot, says there's&#xA;  little reason to worry about cell&#xA;  phones interfering with an airplane's&#xA;  navigational equipment. He says &lt;strong&gt;an&#xA;  airplane's electronic systems are &quot;all&#xA;  heavily shielded&lt;/strong&gt;. That means that&#xA;  stray signals cannot get into those&#xA;  systems.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The airlines can't allow cell phones&#xA;  to be used in flight until the&#xA;  technology has been proven safe.&#xA;  However, according to Nance, the&#xA;  Federal Communications Commission and&#xA;  the Federal Aviation Administration&#xA;  &quot;have not done their job over about a&#xA;  25-year period. And the airlines have&#xA;  quite properly said … if you're not&#xA;  going to tell us, then we're just&#xA;  going to &lt;strong&gt;default to the most&#xA;  conservative position and say we're&#xA;  not going to use them in the air&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/unsafe-at-any-airspeed/0&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a study done in 2003 that concludes &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Cellphones and other electronics are more of a risk than you think&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;regulations already permit a wide&#xA;  variety of other portable electronic&#xA;  devices--from game machines to laptops&#xA;  with Wi-Fi cards--to be used in the&#xA;  air today. Yet our research has found&#xA;  that these items &lt;strong&gt;can interrupt the&#xA;  normal operation of key cockpit&#xA;  instruments, especially Global&#xA;  Positioning System (GPS) receivers&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;  which are increasingly vital to safe&#xA;  landings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no smoking gun to this story:&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;there is no definitive instance of an&#xA;  air accident known to have been caused&#xA;  by a passenger's use of an electronic&#xA;  device&lt;/strong&gt;. Nonetheless, &lt;strong&gt;although it is&#xA;  impossible to say that such use has&#xA;  contributed to air accidents in the&#xA;  past, the data also make it impossible&#xA;  to rule it out completely&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consumer devices that meet FCC&#xA;  emission limits can exceed safe&#xA;  interference limits&lt;/strong&gt; set by the FAA for&#xA;  avionics, because the FCC and the FAA&#xA;  do not harmonize their regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At present, we believe that passenger&#xA;  use of electronics on board commercial&#xA;  aircraft should continue to be limited&#xA;  and that &lt;strong&gt;passengers should not be&#xA;  allowed to operate intentionally&#xA;  radiating devices such as cellphones&#xA;  and wireless computer equipment during&#xA;  critical stages of flight&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's presume there is a 0.01% chance that cell phones can cause a crash. Worldwide there will surely be more than 10.000 flights per day. So even with such a low percentage it would mean at least one crash per day. Looking at it this way I can understand the ban. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T13:24:01.400" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T13:24:01.400" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1128" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1130" CreationDate="2011-03-22T12:13:27.133" Score="229" ViewCount="38295" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any concrete, solid proof of this space odyssey?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way that I personally have a look a it? Let's say, with a nice telescope ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="873" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-12T22:01:20.383" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T22:46:00.673" Title="Has man walked on the Moon?" Tags="|physics|moon|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="30" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1091" CreationDate="2011-03-22T12:28:01.393" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The American Cancer Society has a long &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/CancerCauses/OtherCarcinogens/GeneralInformationaboutCarcinogens/known-and-probable-human-carcinogens&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of known and probable human carcinogens&lt;/a&gt;.  Among that long list are the following naturally occurring agents (exposure methods are also on the linked site):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beryllium&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cadmium&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chromium&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Epstein-Barr virus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ethanol in alcoholic beverages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helicobacter pylori (infection with)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hepatitis B virus (chronic infection with) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hepatitis C virus (chronic infection with) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Human papilloma virus (HPV) types 16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 39, 45, 51, 52, 56, 58, 59 and 66 (Note: The HPV types that have been classified as carcinogenic to humans can differ by an order of magnitude in risk for cervical cancer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Neutrons&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Radon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schistosoma haematobium (flatworm; infection with) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solar radiation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aflatoxins (naturally occurring mixtures of)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alcoholic beverages&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Areca nut, Betel nut&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coal-tar pitches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coal-tars &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mineral oils, untreated and mildly treated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plants containing aristolochic acid&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shale-oils&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Soots&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tobacco, smokeless&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wood dust&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is only a partial list of the naturally occurring agents and a smaller subset of &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; known carcinogens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be readily shown that cancers can be caused by natural processes.  @Konrad Rudolph has already described that &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1091/is-cancer-a-man-made-disease/1093#1093&quot;&gt;cancer is strongly associated with age&lt;/a&gt;--the longer you live, the more likely you are to be exposed to a carcinogen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now the caveat&lt;/strong&gt;: Although there are &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; naturally occurring carcinogens, there are many &lt;em&gt;&lt;s&gt;more&lt;/s&gt;&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;em&gt;additional&lt;/em&gt; carcinogens that exist in sufficient quantities to cause cancer only because of human industrial development.  While it is incorrect to say that cancer is a man-made disease, you &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; claim that human industry has increased the risk-of-exposure to carcinogens, thus advancing the spread, or prevalence, of cancer.  To be fair, such a claim should come with evidence showing that the particular carcinogen has caused cancer and that the carcinogen could not exist unless humans created or refined it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[The last paragraph was edited to &lt;em&gt;hopefully&lt;/em&gt; clear up misinterpretations of the more terse version that was originally submitted.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T14:49:10.827" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1128" CreationDate="2011-03-22T12:31:05.663" Score="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Command/Service_Module#Command_Module_.28CM.29&quot;&gt;command module&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9plMz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;lunar command module&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_sample&quot;&gt;rocks&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YzElu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;lunar rocks&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Apollo_astronauts&quot;&gt;dozen of people who went there&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/02/apollo-11-back-up-team&quot;&gt;400,000 scientists and engineers&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMINSD7MmT4&quot;&gt;TV footage&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.uk/images?q=apollo+moon+photo&amp;amp;um=1&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;source=univ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=T5aITfqxJ42XhQfhyIm6Dg&amp;amp;ved=0CCUQsAQ&amp;amp;biw=806&amp;amp;bih=912&quot;&gt;photo material&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an actual &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment&quot;&gt;mirror&lt;/a&gt; we left there that we can shine a laser on&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/z3EhV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;no we don't have any evidence ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The artifacts of the mission have been seen by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html&quot;&gt;Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter&lt;/a&gt; and probably other satellites. They can't be seen from Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/M9AZ1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Apollo 14 landing site&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-11-29T01:17:04.490" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T01:17:04.490" CommentCount="28" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1101" CreationDate="2011-03-22T13:03:32.363" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an example in higher primates, consider chimpanzees who are capable of premeditated murder for no apparent reason. There are even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPznMbNcfO8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;videos of this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They murder, they steal, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/21/us-chimps-war-idUSTRE65K48G20100621&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;they even wage war&lt;/a&gt; for territorial gains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these acts necessarily has any direct benefit. The benefits may either be long-term (territorial warfare) or not apparent at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="21437" LastEditDate="2016-05-31T08:58:00.277" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T08:58:00.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1132" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1173" CreationDate="2011-03-22T13:08:17.073" Score="6" ViewCount="2551" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard from word of mouth/gossip/etc. that many retired pornstars turn to religion after their careers are over. To what extent is this true? Is it uniform over sexes? Is it also the same for all religions? Does Buddhism maybe absorb more, or Christianity maybe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot find any statistics or studies on it, but there must be a lot of research on this. There has to be a percentage from countries, and an age graph and how this differs from a control group of random other groups of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user876" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T22:44:47.127" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T22:44:47.127" Title="Upon retirement, what percentage of pornstars turn to religion, and which ones?" Tags="|religion|sexuality|pornography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="890" CreationDate="2011-03-22T14:29:58.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A surgical mask is designed to protect the patient from the germs of the surgical staff.  They are actually rather ineffective as personal protection.  What they are good at is stopping germs from coughing and sneezing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better solution would be a paper construction filter.  It would at least filter out larger dust particles that have deposited radioactive particles on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="880" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T14:29:58.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1138" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1142" CreationDate="2011-03-22T17:19:14.903" Score="49" ViewCount="7890" Body="&lt;p&gt;All over the world there are signs similar to this, is there the slightest bit of support for the danger of using a cell phone at the gas station?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D9Hls.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Warning about using cell phones at the gas station&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1118/are-personal-electronics-really-a-risk-to-commercial-aviation&quot;&gt;Are personal electronics a risk to commercial aviation?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/cell-phone-gas-station-minimyth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mythbusters review&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkJdaU92Ln8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brainiac reviews if cellphones can set fire to a caravan filled with gas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T05:16:43.583" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T05:25:10.740" Title="Are cell phones dangerous to use at the gas station?" Tags="|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1124" CreationDate="2011-03-22T17:38:40.150" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plumpub.com/kaimen/2010/the-chinese-lohan-of-kung-fu/&quot;&gt;The Chinese LoHan of Kung Fu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As legend goes the Shaolin Temple has&#xA;  a hall known as the LoHan Palace where&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;36 wooden figures were set up&lt;/strong&gt; [...]&#xA;  These spring loaded dummies would then&#xA;  swing or slide down in the direction&#xA;  of the startled monk with wooden fists&#xA;  or weapons aimed to do damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should the kung fu man be lucky and&#xA;  skillful enough to reach it, &lt;strong&gt;the next&#xA;  phase of the test involved a sloped&#xA;  ramp bordered with twenty-four wooden&#xA;  horses&lt;/strong&gt;. The only thing to do was reach&#xA;  the bottom of the slope while dodging&#xA;  these two dozen run away steeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If not historically accurate at least these were the tests devised by&#xA;  novelists writing about the monastery&#xA;  in the Ming Dynasty&lt;/strong&gt;. A more&#xA;  reasonable possibility was that the&#xA;  disciple who wanted to return to the&#xA;  outside world and yet retain his&#xA;  connection with the Shaolin community&#xA;  was required to traverse a gauntlet of&#xA;  36 living monks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078243/&quot;&gt;The 36th Chamber of Shaolin&lt;/a&gt; and the TV-Series &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068093/&quot;&gt;Kung Fu&lt;/a&gt; might have helped in disseminating this &quot;legend&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T17:38:40.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1121" CreationDate="2011-03-22T17:48:36.937" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was able to find a reference for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies have indicated that childhood abuse characteristics are associated with different sexual behavior outcomes for men and women. For example, Senn et al. (2007) found that for men, sexual abuse with force and penetration was associated with greater frequency of sex trading than it was for those who reported abuse without force and penetration. The term sex trading has been defined as participating in sex in return for food, money, sex, or shelter (Newman, Rhodes, &amp;amp; Weiss, 2004). Senn et al. (2006) found that women were more likely than men were to report exchanging sex for money or drugs and a childhood sexual experience that involved force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The periodical quoted is: &lt;a href=&quot;https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.2161-0029.2010.tb00069.x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Developmental Impact of Child Abuse on Adulthood: Implications for Counselors&lt;/a&gt; (paywalled).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the article used by its reference (Senn et al., 2007) can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2042031/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NCBI&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senn, T. E., Carey, M. P., Vanable, P. A., Coury-Doniger, P., &amp;amp; Urban, M. (2007). Characteristics of sexual abuse in childhood and adolescence influence sexual risk behavior in adulthood. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 36, 637-645.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this links sex trade workers with sexual abuse victims. It does not suggest, as Dr. Pinsky stated, that &lt;strong&gt;most&lt;/strong&gt; people in sex-related industries experienced abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-06-02T01:00:16.827" LastActivityDate="2019-06-02T01:00:16.827" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1138" CreationDate="2011-03-22T17:57:34.340" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/autos/hazards/gasvapor.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; does a much better job of explaining this than I would.  Basic summary.  Not only has there not been a single confirmable incident reported worldwide that can be attributed to cell phones, no one has been able to reproduce it in a lab.  &lt;em&gt;If&lt;/em&gt; you take apart your phone and make an ignition switch out of it. and &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; the station you go to has poor vapor controls, you &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; succeed in igniting fumes from the pump.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise the only thing that's likely to even generate enough spark/heat to ignite fumes is if your phone's lithium battery ignites.  There are a couple of documented cases of that, so if you're &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/4452360/Exploding-mobile-phone-kills-man-in-China.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;buying cheap batteries in china&lt;/a&gt; then in an exact perfect scenario at the pump, it &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-05-07T05:25:10.740" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T05:25:10.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="956" CreationDate="2011-03-22T18:09:40.533" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;This myth might finally be dead (or at least bleeding out)....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1896 Einstein enrolled in a four year program at Zurich Polytechnic. In 1900 the Polytechnic awarded him a mathematics and physics teaching diploma. Here is his &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books/princeton?hl=en&amp;amp;q=Grades&amp;amp;vid=ISBN9780691084756&amp;amp;btnG.x=8&amp;amp;btnG.y=11&amp;amp;btnG=Search+This+Book#v=snippet&amp;amp;q=Grades&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Leaving Certificate&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;em&gt;Marks are from 1 (lowest) to 6 (highest)&lt;/em&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/z6ggD.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than &lt;em&gt;Physical experiments for beginners&lt;/em&gt; with a mark of 1 (maybe physical experiment wasn't his bag).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More myth debunking evidence can be found in this New York Times article from 1984:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/14/science/einstein-revealed-as-brilliant-in-youth.html?pagewanted=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EINSTEIN REVEALED AS BRILLIANT IN YOUTH&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some great stuff at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alberteinstein.info/about/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Einstein Archives Online&lt;/a&gt; and it looks like the full collection is &lt;a href=&quot;http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/for-einsteins-birthday-hebrew-u-unveils-online-archive-of-physicists-work/30467&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;moving online&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...his entire archive of 80,000&#xA;  documents held as a bequest by the&#xA;  university will be digitized and put&#xA;  online, thanks to a $500,000 grant...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't tell Newton F=ma is &lt;strong&gt;wrong&lt;/strong&gt; if you can't do the &lt;strong&gt;math&lt;/strong&gt;. Albert was one smart dude. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T18:09:40.533" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1118" CreationDate="2011-03-22T19:11:23.500" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsid=6275&amp;amp;print=go&quot;&gt;FAA&lt;/a&gt; regulation is based on a study from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://aero-defense.ihs.com/news/2006/rtca-portable-devices.htm&quot;&gt;RTCA&lt;/a&gt; which does indicate that cell phones can interfere with critical systems.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly they do not interfere every time, and not every interference would result in a crash, and proof after the fact would be difficult.  So the fact that no crashes have been blamed on this is not, by itself, proof that they pose no risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to why &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; devices might be banned, airlines tend to err on the side of less lawsuits and less violations.  The regulatory policy is clear that Airlines (in the US) are responsible for the effects of electronic devices operated on their planes, so they are going to be very hesitant to allow usage -- especially since research by the RTCA shows that some devices do interfere.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-22T20:36:53.583" LastActivityDate="2011-03-22T20:36:53.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1154" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-22T21:42:15.207" Score="14" ViewCount="54084" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always been told that eating oranges at night is bad for you.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In fact there is a saying that suggests that you might die if you eat them at night:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;Oranges in the morning are gold, afternoon silver and at night they kill!&quot; (Translated from Portuguese where it rhymes so it sounds good)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this saying and if not where could this myth come from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="928" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T22:56:30.837" Title="Is eating oranges at night bad for you?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1163" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-23T01:25:53.433" Score="15" ViewCount="3316" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are often claims that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_McCarthy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joe McCarthy&lt;/a&gt; started, led, or was responsible for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huac&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BBC reports &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1801948.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Many of those forced to appear before McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee...&lt;/a&gt;&quot;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.essortment.com/red-scare-mccarthyism-21546.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Claims that McCarthy was prosecuting TV people (again, an HUAC activity)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However McCarthy was a Senator, which presents certain issues with leading a House Committee.  Is there any documentation of McCarthy actually establishing, leading, mentoring, or participating in the creation of the HUAC or its hearings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T17:21:48.183" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T21:39:03.570" Title="Was McCarthy directly involved with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)?" Tags="|history|politics|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1164" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-23T02:39:44.497" Score="78" ViewCount="11113" Body="&lt;p&gt;Those arguing for more profiling quite frequently claim that while not all Muslims are terrorists, most terrorists are muslim.  Is there data to show that more than 50% of terrorists attacks can be attributed to any one religious or political affiliation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify some.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Terrorism :  The use of violence, outside of war, to manipulate or coerce a population.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Region :  US and Europe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="189" LastEditorUserId="189" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T03:33:00.703" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T14:10:21.413" Title="Are most terrorists Muslim?" Tags="|religion|politics|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1101" CreationDate="2011-03-23T03:26:04.637" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lion vs. Hyena&lt;/strong&gt; (Interspecific War)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lions and hyenas have been waging war against each other for as long as humans have observed the interaction between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the spring of 1999, a set of battles raged between a cackle of hyenas and a pride of lions in the Girawa woreda of Ethiopia.  A &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110928105949/http://www.ocha-eth.org/Archive/DownloadableReports/hoa0399.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report from the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs&lt;/a&gt; - Ethiopia (UN OCHA-Ethiopia) reported that when the described round of battles were finished 35 hyenas and 6 lions had been killed.  One local reported that the war between these two groups had started 45 year before &amp;quot;when a lion escaped from Emperor Haile Selassie's palace menagerie in Harar and wreaked havoc on a hyena family.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B000C28X0A&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hunting with the Moon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, author/explorer/filmmakers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalgeographic.com/field/explorers/jouberts/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dereck and Beverly Jouberts&lt;/a&gt; document ongoing battles between lions and hyenas in Botswana.  A quote from that book indicates that &amp;quot;anyone who watches a violent contact between lions and hyenas, one that is not related to food, can see plainly that there is a blood feud between them that is uncannily similar to those at which our own species is so adept.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wolf vs. Wolf&lt;/strong&gt; (Intraspecific War)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Yellowstone National Park (USA), there are several distinct packs of wolves that have known territories and sometimes wage war against each other.  They also participate in hunting parties that sometimes lead them to 'steal' a moose or bison from a competing pack's territory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PBS documentary series &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; followed the fate of one Yellowstone wolf pack in the episode &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/in-the-valley-of-the-wolves-introduction/212/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In the Valley of the Wolves&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/in-the-valley-of-the-wolves/the-druid-wolf-pack-story/209/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;episode transcript reports&lt;/a&gt; that &amp;quot;in 2004, the Druids [name of wolf pack] once again suffered terrible losses; longtime alpha female #42 was killed by members of a rival pack, and the aging patriarch was found dead in the summer. At the same time, however, the neighboring Slough Creek pack began to spend more time on the northwestern boundary of Druid territory. Their incursions into Druid turf culminated in a decisive battle in 2005 that ousted the formerly dominant Druid wolves from the Lamar Valley. Two adult female Druids died that year — one killed by the Sloughs — and no pups survived. The pack was reduced to just four members, and looked to be nearing its end.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf#Territorial_behaviours&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia entry for &lt;em&gt;wolves&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; indicates that 14 - 65% of wolf deaths can be attributed to predation by other wolves, and that up to 91% of wolf deaths occur within 3.5 km of the respective pack's territorial boundaries.  (Supporting references for cited figures are provided as reference numbers [90], [92], and [93] on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf#References&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the linked web page.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-04-29T10:23:49.227" LastActivityDate="2022-04-29T10:23:49.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1167" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-23T04:19:03.080" Score="23" ViewCount="2757" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is sometimes claimed that using a laptop on or in proximity of testicles can result in a lower sperm count. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20344474_5,00.html&quot;&gt;Health.com&lt;/a&gt; article claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can a laptop computer really affect a man’s ability to reproduce?&#xA;  According to researchers at the State University of New York at Stony&#xA;  Brook, there is a direct correlation between laptop use and increased&#xA;  scrotum temperature—up to 35˚ in certain positions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This increase has a well-documented harmful effect on spermatogenesis&#xA;  (the process of male gamete formation), so if you’re trying to&#xA;  conceive, leave the laptop on the desk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What evidence is there to support or contradict this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="854" LastEditorUserId="1134" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T07:24:28.300" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T11:44:38.117" Title="Does using a laptop on your lap lower your sperm count?" Tags="|medical-science|fertility|human-reproduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1169" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1171" CreationDate="2011-03-23T05:26:29.380" Score="11" ViewCount="660" Body="&lt;p&gt;House prices in China have been growing really fast due to the amazing GDP growth of the country. I've been reading though that whilst there are so many buildings being built, it's mainly due to the fact that people are wanting to buy them in order to sell them later and that in actual fact, none of these buildings are being rented out, because so few people can  afford to live in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this? Can anyone offer any evidence? The Chinese government I would assume would be keeping pretty tight lipped about any research suggesting that there is a property bubble, so is all the evidence purely anecdotal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T12:50:56.917" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T12:50:56.917" Title="Are most properties in China vacant, despite record property price growth?" Tags="|economics|china|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1167" CreationDate="2011-03-23T05:39:09.177" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This wonderful article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/20/2/452.short&quot;&gt;Increase in scrotal temperature in laptop computer users&lt;/a&gt; in the Oxford Journals of Human Reproduction explains it nicely. So the heat that the laptop generates does lower your sperm count. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;As pointed out by Solus, I didn't show that higher scrotal temperature decrease the sperm quality. So here is a study from 2002 that I found on NCBI called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12128094&quot;&gt;Impact of diurnal scrotal temperature on semen quality.&lt;/a&gt; that shows it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="800" LastEditorUserId="800" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T21:10:25.463" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T21:10:25.463" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1169" CreationDate="2011-03-23T05:40:24.197" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found one article suggesting that &lt;a href=&quot;http://shanghaiist.com/2010/08/17/chinese_netizens_report_5123_of_sol.php&quot;&gt;51% of sold housing in Shanghai is vacant&lt;/a&gt; (17-Aug-2010). The article also suggests that this is lower than in Beijing and Hainan, but offers no links. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/China-property-bubble-house-prices-Beijing-pd20100910-95T8Q?OpenDocument&quot;&gt;Another article&lt;/a&gt; (10-Sep-2010) quotes an analyst estimating the vacancy rate for commercial housing stock is between 25 to 30 per cent. And according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://cnbusinessnews.com/chinas-housing-vacancy-rate-likely-to-be-released-in-april-2011/&quot;&gt;this third article&lt;/a&gt; (12-Nov-2010), the issue of housing vacancies is being paid special attention in China's latest census.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the best answer to your question would seem to be a qualified no: while the vacancy rate appears to be quite high, &quot;most&quot; properties in China are not vacant (at the time of writing, and subject to a lack of reliable data).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="710" LastEditorUserId="710" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T23:24:50.130" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T23:24:50.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1132" CreationDate="2011-03-23T07:51:36.050" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt that is true. It is probably a claim that is being made because there's been a revival of &quot;saving&quot; hookers and other sex workers. One of the Poster children for it is Annie Lobert, who runs Hookers for Jesus. You can learn more about that &lt;a href=&quot;http://sexandscience.org/blog/?p=473&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, and I look for this kind of thing, there is no evidence to support the claim that people turn to religion at the end of their adult careers. In fact, while there is no evidence, I suspect the opposite is true. This could be because people are gradually disillusioned about things as their career progresses or, as often happens with most people, people become less religious with age. I can say that many people in the adult industry are already religious and justify their sex work for themselves when it conflicts with their religious ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the best you have on this kind of thing is anecdote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="530" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T07:51:36.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1038" CreationDate="2011-03-23T08:15:24.587" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a pretty significant range of opinions on pornography between feminists. Many feminists cite anecdotes about people who have worked in the industry to support a claim that pornography is damaging to women. Somehow, though, they rarely, if ever, do the same for men. Some feminists, though, feel that consent is the major issue and they are comfortable with pornography. In fact, as pornography use seems to increase for women, the more the distance between the two sides seems to increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The anti-porn arguments can be pretty diverse, but it generally includes things like examples from individual people who have been in the industry, claims about porn increasing violence, discussion of sex addiction, the objectification of women and various other things. You can find out more by going over to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oneangrygirl.net/&quot;&gt;One Angry Girl&lt;/a&gt; and seeing what she has to say. Be aware, though, the sources she cites are often quoted out of context or mis-quoted, so if you want real data, go straight to her sources and follow them through to the original paper. Also, she has some motive in keeping her cause going, as she makes money off of selling her feminist shirts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pro-porn side, which I have to admit to being biased for, has a lot more reliable data. Studies have actually shown that there's an inverse correlation between the availability of pornography and sexual violence (&lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=913013&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;). It is tough to really categorize feminists based on their opinions on porn, though, as most types of feminists might have a range of opinions and there are few subgroups of feminists that are completely pro-porn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've actually given presentations to groups who were more feminist-leaning and have found that I can never know what opinions I will hear from any single group of people. With porn being a current, heated, debate it is tough to say where the general opinion will land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have to mention that the disagreement is not amongst academia and women who produce pornography (as mentioned before). The disagreement is spread throughout society. Many academics are pro-porn and many producers of porn do believe that what they do is harmful. Society, in general, is extremely divided on the issue and this reinforces countless myths about the industry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="530" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T08:15:24.587" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="575" CreationDate="2011-03-23T08:38:51.977" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, there is little evidence to support that the Myers-Briggs gives us much useful information, at all. The M-B was based on Jungian ideas, but the people who developed it were not even psychologists. They based the questions on a variety of things, only some of which can be linked to Jungian ideas on psychology. Jungian ideas have not necessarily been supported, consistently, when tested. The test, itself, has shown to be problematic in determining behavior simply because people's results are often inconsistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the MB test is a very widely used measuring tool which hasn't been proven to be either consistent or even very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a decent breakdown of the history of the test and its flaws at skepdic, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/myersb.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="530" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T08:38:51.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1178" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-23T09:28:50.633" Score="119" ViewCount="24674" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has it been proven that being exposed to WiFi waves is harmful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="873" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T01:22:33.950" LastActivityDate="2018-11-10T23:05:58.757" Title="Are WiFi waves harmful?" Tags="|environmental-health|radiation|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1182" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-23T10:24:44.573" Score="26" ViewCount="1456" Body="&lt;p&gt;What are the benefits over just playing a normal game? Sites such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lumosity.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lumosity&lt;/a&gt; claim they are training your brain and making you smarter using &quot;what seems like games&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence from independent studies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2015-05-06T01:37:32.583" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T01:37:32.583" Title="Do any brain training games make you smarter?" Tags="|neurology|intelligence|videogames|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1183" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-23T10:46:52.473" Score="22" ViewCount="795" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7883/does-smoking-cigarettes-cause-lung-cancer&quot;&gt;Does smoking cigarettes cause lung cancer?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the data I've seen on smoking concentrates on the effects of smoking n cigarettes per day, or per week, over a long period of time. Is there any data on what damage is done to the body by smoking a single cigarette?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:49:12.043" Title="Does smoking a single cigarette measurably harm your body?" Tags="|cigarettes|nicotine|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-02-09T18:21:56.787" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1164" CreationDate="2011-03-23T10:54:45.743" Score="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question varies greatly, depending on country you are from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're from the Netherlands, Islamists represented 100% of the individuals suspected of terrorism each year from 2006 to 2009 (between 2 or 6 per year), except in  2007. On the other hand, if you are from France, then, while Islamists do represent a sizable number of the arrested suspects, the percentage is far lower (342 out of 1468, or 23.2%) in the same timespan.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United States, more than 80% (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.investigativeproject.org/2659/islamists-dominate-doj-list-of-terror-prosecutions&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;186 out of 228&lt;/a&gt;) of all convictions tied to international terrorist groups since 9/11 involve defendants driven by a radical Islamist agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The European Union has a graph of arrested terrorism suspects by Member State in its &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsUpload/TE-SAT%202010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2010&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Grm5W.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The number of arrests relating to Islamist terrorism (110) decreased by 41 % compared to 2008, which continues the trend of a steady decrease since 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since you're interested in those numbers to discuss &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; profiling, arrested suspects are not what is interesting to look at. Instead, that would be successful attempts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are few successful attempts, at least in Europe, over the last few years. For example, there was only one attempt in 2009:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/M5ozY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_253&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;..and it was foiled.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The preceding years are not very different. In the recent years, Islamist terrorism has not been very successful. For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/publications/tesat2008_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2008&lt;/a&gt;, which reports on terrorism in the European Union in 2007, states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With regard to Islamist terrorism, two failed and&#xA;  two attempted attacks were reported for 2007. As&#xA;  in 2006, failed or attempted Islamist terrorist&#xA;  attacks took place in the UK, Denmark and&#xA;  Germany. Police investigations into the attempted&#xA;  attacks in Denmark and Germany have shown&#xA;  that the intended targets were likely to be located&#xA;  on their national territory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as the report notes, &quot;The failed and attempted attacks mainly aimed at causing indiscriminate mass casualties.&quot; As such, even one successful attack can lead to a large amount of causalities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Resources used:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/publications/tesat2007_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2007&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/publications/tesat2008_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2008&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/publications/tesat2009_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2009&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.consilium.europa.eu/uedocs/cmsUpload/TE-SAT%202010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="11122" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T21:38:49.653" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T21:38:49.653" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1182" CreationDate="2011-03-23T10:57:57.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been some studies, and as one might expect, the results have been mixed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two BBC reports of two different studies pointing in different directions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7635404.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Computer game boosts maths scores&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7912379.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;'Brain training' claims dismissed&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T10:57:57.770" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1186" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1193" CreationDate="2011-03-23T11:22:51.913" Score="40" ViewCount="3088" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read yesterday that a single egg contains 70% of my daily cholesterol. I will frequently cook myself an omlette for lunch with 2-3 eggs. Is this unhealthy if I do it more than once a week?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastActivityDate="2012-08-07T16:38:33.720" Title="Is eating eggs bad for me?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1138" CreationDate="2011-03-23T11:24:59.173" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2006/11/30/1799366.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr Karl&lt;/a&gt; had some interesting points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is theoretically possible to set&#xA;  off a petrol fire with a phone. The&#xA;  amount of energy needed for a spark to&#xA;  ignite petrol vapour is 0.2 mJ, which&#xA;  is roughly one five-millionth of the&#xA;  energy stored in a fully-charged phone&#xA;  battery. The difficulty is that the&#xA;  phone is not designed to make sparks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it seems that the phone is not what we should worry about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And why worry about the phone battery&#xA;  when you have batteries in your iPod,&#xA;  CD player, mini-torch, and yes, don't&#xA;  forget the big 15 kg car battery that&#xA;  powers the electrics of your car? ... And consider that in the UK , some 200 Shell &#xA;  petrol stations have mobile phone&#xA;  towers in the tall petrol price&#xA;  indicators, which stand right there on&#xA;  the forecourt, a few metres from the&#xA;  petrol pumps... So what did set off&#xA;  those 243 petrol station fires? Most&#xA;  of the time, static electricity was&#xA;  the culprit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T11:24:59.173" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1186" CreationDate="2011-03-23T13:13:04.680" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7882850.stm&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt; quotes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.surrey.ac.uk/fhms/people/atoz/griffin_bruce/index.htm&quot;&gt;Professor Bruce Griffin&lt;/a&gt; as saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The ingrained misconception linking egg consumption to high blood cholesterol and heart disease must be corrected.&#xA;  The amount of saturated fat in our diet exerts an effect on blood cholesterol that is several times greater than the relatively small amounts of dietary cholesterol.&#xA;  The UK public do not need to be limiting the number of eggs they eat - indeed they can be encouraged to include them in a healthy diet as they are one of nature's most nutritionally dense foods.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bhf.org.uk/default.aspx?page=12920&quot;&gt;British Heart Foundation&lt;/a&gt; make the point that the eggs are fine, but the other things you add during cooking, such as butter fat etc are why eating a lot of eggs would be bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="973" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-06T01:48:40.837" LastActivityDate="2012-02-06T01:48:40.837" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1164" CreationDate="2011-03-23T14:19:59.953" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.loonwatch.com/2010/01/not-all-terrorists-are-muslims/&quot;&gt;FBI data&lt;/a&gt; only 6% of all terrorist in the US between 1980 and 2005 were Muslim. There were even more Jewish terrorists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the US the categorical claim &quot;more than 50% of terrorists attacks can be attributed to Muslims&quot; is therefore false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2011-08-04T21:45:21.920" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T21:45:21.920" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1164" CreationDate="2011-03-23T14:46:59.450" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to dictionary the definition of terrorism:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this definition for terrorism then no, most terrorists are not Muslim. The largest group of terrorists includes people from different religions and ethnic backgrounds who all wear government uniforms (some examples are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2011/02/26/libya-security-forces-fire-protesters-western-city&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Brendan Behan so astutely pointed out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The terrorist is the one with the small bomb.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2011-03-23T15:00:05.040" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T15:00:05.040" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1182" CreationDate="2011-03-23T14:52:52.327" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's probably a different answer for different games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2008 there was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/105/19/6829.short&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; that showed that a specific game called Dual-n-Back improves fluid intelligence. There are Android and iPhone versions of the game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as Brain Age for the Nintendo DS goes, Nintendo &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7912379.stm&quot;&gt;doesn't claim&lt;/a&gt; that it based on sound science. They see the game primarily as entertainment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T11:23:39.403" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T11:23:39.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1178" CreationDate="2011-03-23T15:16:19.783" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am unaware of any research done on this specific question. The closest I've come across was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wageningenuniversity.nl/NL/nieuwsagenda/nieuws/Bomen101120.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Dutch study&lt;/a&gt;, which states that there may be a connection between Wi-Fi transmissions and tree sickness. The research in itself was not sufficient to make that conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are people who report a negative feeling when exposed to Wi-Fi, but those claims don't seem to stand up to proper double-blind testing, see for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sep.org.uk/catalyst/articles/catalyst_18_3_344.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sep.org.uk/catalyst/articles/catalyst_18_3_344.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our study indicates that short-term exposure to mobile phone base station radiation does not affect the health and well-being of sensitive or control individuals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, based on my understanding of physics, I doubt that Wi-Fi radiation is harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The explanations that follow are not 100% accurate or bullet-proof, but they should give the general idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wi-Fi transmits at the 2.4 GHz frequency range; that's close to your microwave oven in the kitchen - and it has very much the same effect, that is it heats you up a little bit. Now, while that may be in theory a harmful effect, it should be noted that the change in temperature is much less than due to, say, having a little warmer weather (I'm cheating a little bit here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But maybe we should look at it in a different way. This is a nice table from xkcd:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/radiation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://xkcd.com/radiation/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While admittedly not the most solid source of information, I do believe it can give the general notion. Look at the lowest dose of radiation that any research ever found to be linked with cancer (100 mSv), and compare how much radiation you are exposed to on your daily life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/l8xUU.png&quot; alt=&quot;xckd radiation excerpt&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is quite large. So even with the (rather small) addition of radiation from Wi-Fi, you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="25693" LastEditDate="2017-08-17T17:10:48.650" LastActivityDate="2017-08-17T17:10:48.650" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1202" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1206" CreationDate="2011-03-23T15:24:11.320" Score="31" ViewCount="5218" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that there has been found evidence pointing to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_on_Mars&quot;&gt;simple life on Mars&lt;/a&gt;, but has any of the projects like &lt;a href=&quot;http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/&quot;&gt;SETI&lt;/a&gt; found anything that could point to intelligent alien life out there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By alien life, I mean from another planet than Earth.&#xA;By intelligent, I don't necessarily mean something we can communicate with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for is what evidence there is of life outside earth&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="971" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T13:41:34.837" LastActivityDate="2020-02-13T10:43:13.300" Title="Is there any strong evidence of alien life?" Tags="|aliens|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1203" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1215" CreationDate="2011-03-23T15:29:03.073" Score="16" ViewCount="8859" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw a few hours ago a friend posted on his Facebook wall a claim that some research from the University of Sussex has shown that daily consumption of ripe papaya works as a contraceptive, and to reverse the effects all you have to do is stop eating it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds very suspicious to me.  I searched in the University of Sussex website and couldn't find any reference to it.  The best reference I could find Googling it was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12288101&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt;, which belongs to the US National Library of Medicine.  But even in that link they present as their source a May 1994 Asiaweek article (a magazine closed about 10 years ago).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody have a more up-to-date source of evidence to the validity of this dubious claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="403" LastEditorUserId="4212" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T09:41:23.210" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T14:51:39.460" Title="Does eating papaya everyday work as a contraceptive?" Tags="|medical-science|pregnancy|contraception|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1178" CreationDate="2011-03-23T15:31:00.753" Score="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;WIFi is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ionizing_radiation&quot;&gt;non-ionising radiation&lt;/a&gt; and so has similar issues to other radiation using similar frequencies such as mobile telephones and microwave ovens.  These produce heating effects.  WiFi is not focused, so any impact should be very small and perhaps not measurable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any health studies specifically on WiFi.  There have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_health&quot;&gt;studies on mobile phones&lt;/a&gt; which has shown that while the phone is in use and held next to the head, there is small but measurable heating effect on human tissue. My guess is that it has less impact than standing at right angles to the Sun so one side of the head gets warmer faster than the other. Even then, these studies have produced no evidence that this has any health impact, positive or negative:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A large body of research exists, both epidemiological and experimental, in non-human animals and in humans, of which &lt;strong&gt;the majority shows no definite causative relationship between exposure to mobile phones and harmful biological effects in humans.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And per Dr. Michael Clark of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hpa.org.uk/&quot;&gt;HPA&lt;/a&gt;, WiFi is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/features/article665419.ece&quot;&gt;fraction of the energy of a cell phone&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“When we have conducted measurements in schools, typical exposures from wi-fi are around 20 millionths of the international guideline levels of exposure to radiation. As a comparison, a child on a mobile phone receives up to 50 per cent of guideline levels. &lt;strong&gt;So a year sitting in a classroom near a wireless network is roughly equivalent to 20 minutes on a mobile.&lt;/strong&gt; If wi-fi should be taken out of schools, then the mobile phone network should be shut down, too — and FM radio and TV, as the strength of their signals is similar to that from wi-fi in classrooms.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sun does emit ionising radiation (ultra violet) and that has significant health effects such as sunburn, pigmentation changes and Vitamin D production.  WiFi's impact, if anything, is nothing like this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="867" LastEditDate="2011-05-27T08:51:50.057" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T08:51:50.057" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1164" CreationDate="2011-03-23T15:33:26.430" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Robert Pape, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_to_Win%3a_The_Strategic_Logic_of_Suicide_Terrorism&quot;&gt;Dying To Win&lt;/a&gt;, provides evidence that most &lt;em&gt;suicide&lt;/em&gt; terrorists are not Muslim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No previous analysis of suicide&#xA;  terrorism has been able to draw on a&#xA;  complete survey of suicide terrorist&#xA;  attacks worldwide. This drawback,&#xA;  together with the fact that many such&#xA;  attacks, including all those against&#xA;  Americans, have been committed by&#xA;  Muslims have led many in the United&#xA;  States to assume that Islamic&#xA;  fundamentalism must be the main&#xA;  underlying cause. This, in turn, has&#xA;  fuelled a belief that anti-American&#xA;  terrorism can be stopped only by&#xA;  wholesale transformation of Muslim&#xA;  societies, a belief that helped create&#xA;  public support of the invasion of&#xA;  Iraq. Comprehensive study of the&#xA;  phenomenon of suicide terrorism,&#xA;  however, shows that the presumed&#xA;  connection to Islamic fundamentalism&#xA;  is misleading.&quot; (p38 of the 2006 paperback edition)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on to show that most suicide attacks are carried out by the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Again, this evidence is just for suicide terrorism, so much depends on how you define 'terrorism'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="611" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T15:33:26.430" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1202" CreationDate="2011-03-23T15:41:59.313" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there were and any proof of intelligent life from SETI, it would be right on their page, and all over world-news. It just hasn't happened yet. That may be due to the fact that we just haven't looked in the right place, or in the right ways yet, or because we lack the ability to detect them, or because they are not there. We just don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for microbial life on Mars, there isn't any conclusive evidence for that yet, though there are some interesting signs, including the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/04/12/new-evidence-of-transient-liquid-water-on-mars/&quot;&gt;possibility of liquid water&lt;/a&gt;. There are other interesting signs that are mentioned on the Wikipedia page that you linked to, and scientists around the world are looking to investigate them, though Mars is difficult to study. As of the time of this writing though, we can not conclusively say that there is any life on Mars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we like to say around here though, absence of evidence is no evidence of absence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="110" LastActivityDate="2011-03-23T15:41:59.313" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1163" CreationDate="2011-03-23T16:56:30.313" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The [HUAC] committee's anti-communist&#xA;  investigations are often confused with&#xA;  those of Senator Joseph McCarthy.&#xA;  McCarthy, as a U.S. Senator, had no&#xA;  direct involvement with this House&#xA;  committee. McCarthy was the Chairman&#xA;  of the Permanent Subcommittee on&#xA;  Investigations of the Government&#xA;  Operations Committee of the U.S.&#xA;  Senate, not the House.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;encyclopedia.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The work of HUAC in the 1940s, while&#xA;  not as wide-ranging as that under the&#xA;  Senate Permanent Investigations&#xA;  Committee under the chairmanship of&#xA;  Joseph McCarthy, was the beginning of&#xA;  the great search for Communists in&#xA;  American life that dominated the early&#xA;  part of the 1950s.&quot;      &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, the investigations by McCarthy were not part of the HUAC. He had his own organization, the &lt;strong&gt;Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Government Operations Committee of the U.S. Senate&lt;/strong&gt;, in which he did the same work. It's indeed a common mistake. However that mistake doesn't in any way reduce McCarthy's involvement in the &quot;Red Scare&quot;. The investigations he carried out in the Subcommittee on Investigations were very similar to the HUAC, were at least as aggressive and were later condemned in much the same way. Encyclopedia.com considers the Senate committee investigations to be &quot;more wide ranging&quot; than the HUAC. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T23:11:53.143" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T23:11:53.143" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1203" CreationDate="2011-03-23T18:42:25.200" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am unable to find a copy of the original study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unable to find a reference to Tharmalingam Senthilomohan, the researcher quoted in the linked article, aside from copies of the linked article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the absence of such basic corroborating evidence such as the existence of the researcher, verification of his cited credentials or any scholarly reference to the study, it is difficult to take this claim seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, further research has led to a handful of animal studies which tend to support the claim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12163882&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; examined the effects of an extract from papaya seeds on the fertility of female rats, and found that for very high concentrations of the extract, effects could be seen on the fetus, including lower birth weight and &quot;complete resorption of about 30% of the foetuses.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6TC0-4FPYWWW-1&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=06/30/2005&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_searchStrId=1690912822&amp;amp;_rerunOrigin=google&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=30b7567dbf0ac73855fc99e5a5b7d6ee&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; looked at the effect of two compounds from a purified extract on male rats. Both were equally effective in producing, &quot;a gradual and significant decline in cauda epididymal sperm density, percent viable spermatozoa and significant increase in sperm anomalies.&quot; The authors conclude that a &quot;Fertility test revealed 100% efficacy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems there may be something to this after all. I wouldn't say it's been conclusively proven, as no trial or study I have found has been conducted on humans, but there is some potential here. Using the Mythbusters rating, I'd call it plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more complete list of references can be found at the bottom of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.malecontraceptives.org/methods/others.php#refs&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="369" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-04-03T13:53:47.713" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T13:53:47.713" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1219" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1224" CreationDate="2011-03-23T19:51:05.680" Score="11" ViewCount="29419" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some claim that bacon can help to remove splinters.  Is there any good evidence that this makes sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, these splinter remedy lists both suggest that bandaging a piece of bacon (or bacon fat) over the splinter overnight will effectively remove the splinter (or facilitate its removal):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.susangaer.com/studentprojects/splinter.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;susangaer.com: Splinters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;COUNTRY_OF_REMEDY: USA&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  NAME_OF_REMEDY: Splinters, small shards of glass hard to remove, etc&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  INGREDIENTS: 1 small piece of raw fatty meat (bacon, salt pork, etc)&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Salt&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  white piece of cloth&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  INSTRUCTIONS: Take the piece of raw fatty meat, salt it REALLY well, place it directly on the place that needs the splinter, glass, etc drawn out. Cover with a WHITE cloth and leave overnight. If the splinter or glass has not been drawn to the surface, repeat the next night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myhomeremedies.com/topic.cgi?topicid=278&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;myhomeremedies.com: Home Remedies for Splinters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had a sliver of glass in my foot and couldn't get it out. I researched home remedies on line and only found remedies for wood splinters however I was desperate so I tried one which really sounds absurd but it worked! I put a piece of bacon fat on the spot,adhere it with a band aid and wrapped the area so it wouldn't slip out. I don't eat pork but it sounded crazy enough to work. The next day the glass was gone!! Sounds crazy but it works!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="998" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-01-19T10:03:26.670" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T12:35:42.997" Title="Can bacon help to remove splinters?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1219" CreationDate="2011-03-23T20:50:46.843" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether or not this works seems secondary to the fact that this is likely to complicate the problem. Having raw bacon on an open wound (granted, a small one) overnight, is a recipe for infection. While it doesn't seem that there is an additional risk of trichinosis by this (the worms need to be introduced through the digestive system), there is plenty of bacteria and viri that will thrive in that environment. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Remove-a-Splinter-with-Baking-Soda&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Baking soda&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_2205350_remove-wood-splinter-skin.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hydrogen-Peroxide&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.echochrist.net/graphics/1893262.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elmer's glue&lt;/a&gt; are better solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/249/blueraja-danny-pflughoeft&quot;&gt;BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft&lt;/a&gt;, for the Elmer's glue suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="110" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T12:37:19.143" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1059" CreationDate="2011-03-24T00:13:16.540" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/17/10/2692.full&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is study from 2008 that suggests &lt;strong&gt;drinking red wine can decrease the risk of lung cancer in men&lt;/strong&gt;. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in both men and women in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The California Men's Health Study is a&#xA;  multiethnic cohort of 84,170 men ages&#xA;  45 to 69 years [...] examine the&#xA;  effects of beer, red wine, white wine&#xA;  (including rosé), and liquor&#xA;  consumption on risk of lung cancer&#xA;  adjusting for age, race/ethnicity,&#xA;  education, income, body mass index,&#xA;  history of chronic obstructive&#xA;  pulmonary disease/emphysema, and&#xA;  smoking history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alcohol consumption has been shown to increase&#xA;  risk for several cancers, including&#xA;  cancers of the head and neck,&#xA;  esophagus, liver, colon, rectum, and&#xA;  female breast&lt;/strong&gt;. [...] The effect of&#xA;  alcohol use on lung cancer, however,&#xA;  has been controversial. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We did not&#xA;  find any clear association between&#xA;  lung cancer risk and consumption of&#xA;  beer, white wine, or liquor after&#xA;  adjusting for demographics and&#xA;  lifestyle factors including smoking&#xA;  history, socioeconomic status, BMI,&#xA;  and history of COPD/emphysema.&#xA;  However, &lt;strong&gt;an inverse association for&#xA;  red wine use was consistently&#xA;  observed, particularly among&#xA;  ever-smokers&lt;/strong&gt; (=&lt;em&gt;people who have smoked&#xA;  at least 100 cigarettes in their&#xA;  life&lt;/em&gt;). [...]&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Among ever-smokers,&#xA;  consumption of at least 1 drink of red&#xA;  wine per day was associated with an&#xA;  approximately 60% reduced risk of lung&#xA;  cancer&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although we cannot&#xA;  completely exclude the possibility of&#xA;  residual confounding, the lack of&#xA;  association for white wine lends&#xA;  support to a causal association for&#xA;  red wine and &lt;strong&gt;suggests that compounds&#xA;  that are present at high&#xA;  concentrations in red wine but not in&#xA;  white wine, beer, or liquors may be&#xA;  protective against lung&#xA;  carcinogenesis&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Chun Chao, lead author of the study, &lt;a href=&quot;http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2008/10/red-wine-slashe.html&quot;&gt;warns&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We need more studies on whether people&#xA;  should drink red wine to reduce lung&#xA;  cancer risk&lt;/strong&gt;. If people want to drink&#xA;  red wine for cardiovascular benefits,&#xA;  they should talk to their doctor about&#xA;  that. But they &lt;strong&gt;shouldn't drink for&#xA;  lung cancer prevention&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the &lt;a href=&quot;http://progressreport.cancer.gov/doc_detail.asp?pid=1&amp;amp;did=2007&amp;amp;chid=71&amp;amp;coid=706&quot;&gt;Nationale Cancer Institute's&lt;/a&gt; stance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some studies suggest that alcohol&#xA;  consumption is associated with a lower&#xA;  risk of some non-cancer health&#xA;  conditions. However, &lt;strong&gt;it is not&#xA;  recommended that anyone begin drinking&#xA;  or drink more frequently on the basis&#xA;  of health considerations&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T00:13:16.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1202" CreationDate="2011-03-24T00:23:17.420" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9943-top-10-controversial-pieces-of-evidence-for-extraterrestrial-life.html&quot;&gt;Top 10: Controversial pieces of evidence for extraterrestrial life&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;New Scientist&lt;/strong&gt;, 2006)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.&lt;/strong&gt; 1976, The Viking Mars landers detect chemical signatures indicative&#xA;  of life&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2.&lt;/strong&gt; 1977, The unexplained extraterrestrial &quot;Wow!&quot; signal is&#xA;  detected by an Ohio State University&#xA;  radio telescope&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3.&lt;/strong&gt; 1996, Martian &quot;fossils&quot; are discovered in meteorite ALH80041 from&#xA;  Antarctica&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4.&lt;/strong&gt; 2001, A more rigorous estimate of the &quot;Drake equation&quot; suggests that our&#xA;  galaxy may contain hundreds of&#xA;  thousands of life-bearing planets&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5.&lt;/strong&gt; 2001, The red tinge of Jupiter's moon Europa proposed to be due to&#xA;  frozen bits of bacteria, which also&#xA;  helps explain the mysterious infrared&#xA;  signal it gives off&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6.&lt;/strong&gt; 2002, Russian scientists argue that a mysterious radiation-proof microbe&#xA;  may have evolved on Mars&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;7.&lt;/strong&gt; 2002, Chemical hints of life are found in old data from Venus probes&#xA;  and landers. Could microbes exist in&#xA;  Venusian clouds?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;8.&lt;/strong&gt; 2003, Sulphur traces on Jupiter's moon Europa may be the waste products&#xA;  of underground bacterial colonies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;9.&lt;/strong&gt; 2004, Methane in the Martian atmosphere hints at microbial&#xA;  metabolism&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;10.&lt;/strong&gt; 2004, A mysterious radio signal is received by the SETI project on three&#xA;  occasions - from the same region of&#xA;  space&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;click on the Link for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T00:23:17.420" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1230" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2702" CreationDate="2011-03-24T00:30:09.147" Score="15" ViewCount="848" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/personal-science/201103/climate-change-confidential-what-doomsayers-dont-tell-you&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Seth Roberts&lt;/a&gt; claims that the field of climate modelling hasn't produced models that have effectively predicted future climate events. According to him the models are only validated on past data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this charge valid or did climate models make important predictions about the temperature on earth a decade ago that came true? If so, what were the greatest successes of the models?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-05-01T12:41:31.540" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T17:36:12.730" Title="What are the greatest successes of long term climate prediction?" Tags="|climate-change|climatology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1250" CreationDate="2011-03-24T00:43:18.680" Score="32" ViewCount="1838" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been taught since I was a kid that eating fat is bad for my health. Later on, I found out that unsaturated fats (especially ones containing Omega-3 and Omega-6) are actually good for your health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I've heard that there's dispute among professionals on whether saturated fats are unhealthy. What's the evidence for either side?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do realize that a balanced diet is probably good, and I assume that just about anything can be had in excess. If there's any information on what constitutes a moderate/safe amount, I'd be interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T01:46:59.150" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T21:26:55.130" Title="Are saturated fats unhealthy?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1230" CreationDate="2011-03-24T03:14:41.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to try to minimize block quotes in this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question is problematic for two reasons. First, I think this really depends on how you define &quot;long term.&quot; Also, no matter what anybody says there will always be somebody who predicts the opposite, and can claim to have been correct. I will try to address what was the consensus at the given time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we are talking about 40-50 years ago, there have been few real successes. In fact, in the 1970s people believed in &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;global cooling&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; that we would soon see massive glaciation across the entire world. This culminated with the plan to cover much of the world's deserts with oil, to soak up heat and prevent the global cooling. Fortunately, this plan was never enacted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#History_of_acid_rain_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;acid rain&lt;/a&gt; to be a climate issue, we have been remarkably successful in our predictions of this, although we did overestimate how bad the issue was. Acid rain never was as harmful as many &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/aqrs/reports/napapreport05.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;believed&lt;/a&gt;. I guess that our almost-elimination of acid rain could be considered a triumph of long term climate predicution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another long-term climate prediction was the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;depletion of the ozone layer&lt;/a&gt;. Our predictions on this front have been pretty bad. In the 1980s we predicted a decrease in ozone of 7% over a 60 year period. Today this has been decreased to 4%. We also missed dramatically in our belief that ozone holes would pop up all over the globe. To date there are only two such holes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't really think of anything else to investigate. But, there you go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user906" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T03:14:41.883" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1234" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1256" CreationDate="2011-03-24T03:35:02.577" Score="17" ViewCount="3672" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a question that is bound to be controversial but is not intended as such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do we really know anything at all&#xA;  about the brain? Is neurology really a&#xA;  science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm an epileptic patient and have had three brain surgeries. Fortunately, these were successful and I no longer have seizures. But throughout my tenure(s) in the hospital(s) and during all of my testing/etc, I heard the same story: We know little about the brain, neurology is an inexact science. In fact, this book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.katrinafirlik.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;by Katrina Firlik&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CotsR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;book cover&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;says that brain surgery is just a matter of &quot;open the head, stir it up, hope all goes well.&quot;&#xA;Not like the heart- you have a blocked artery? We'll do a bypass and as long as there are no complications, you'll be up and about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know about the tests that we have. I've had all of them performed on me many times. fMRI, MRI, CAT scans, PET scans, and, most importantly, EEGs. But, we see the electrical impulses and have no idea what they mean. For example, at one point I had three separate neurologists reading the same EEG, one telling me my seizures are in the frontal lobe, the second telling me they are in the left temporal lobe, and the third telling me they are in the right temporal lobe. MRI readings are better, but not really by much in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then there is the matter of the medicine that is prescribed. I &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; hear, when I am put on a new medicine, &quot;I hope this works, it might not.&quot; I have other medical problems in addition to my neurological problems and I don't hear this from any other doctor. And nobody agrees on the correct medicine or dosage. It's not like a dermatologist- this regimen for this type of acne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I guess that my experiences have convinced me that neurology is a matter of guess, check, and wishful thinking. I have been lucky that it has worked but I have met many other people who have not been so lucky. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is neurology a science? Do I have&#xA;  legitimate reason to doubt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user906" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T19:24:02.797" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T13:37:24.510" Title="How much do we know about the brain?" Tags="|medical-science|neurology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="466" CreationDate="2011-03-24T05:44:48.087" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you shouldn't swim in a lightning storm.  Electricity is more hazardous to a wet person because the body's electrical resistance (ohms) is lower when wet.  Also, the body of water can conduct the lightning's electricity from a strike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to US National Weather Service Science and Operations Officer Ted Funk, Lightning strikes can generate 300 million Volts and 10,000 - 200,000 Amps (see his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lmk/soo/presentations/Lightning_WFO_LMK.pdf%E2%80%8E&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF presentation &amp;quot;Lightning: Facts, Fiction, Safety Issues...&amp;quot; slide #15&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slide #20 of the same presentation provides that Water-related activities rank 3rd in danger among the studied categories, causing 13.6% of lightning fatality with a 35 year study period, behind being in an open-field (45%)  or under a tree (23%), and way ahead of most work-related categories (e.g. telephone workers 4%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think that being at a park with a pool or lake actually could raise all 3 of the top concerns, because there could be an open field or flat parking lot surrounding the pool or lake, and trees, but we also know that electricity has greater effect on a wet human body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of lightnings affect on the body I'm going to provide two references that both indicate that the human body's resistance to electricity is lower when wet, and provide a range of effects.  It is assumed that the reader is familiar with Ohm's law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We'll compare a notice from a OSHA, a workplace safety agency to an excerpt from a college textbook Forensic Pathology, 2nd ed. by DeMaio and DeMaio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://osha.gov&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;USA Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration&lt;/a&gt;, a national regulator of workplace safety, in &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/construction/electrical_incidents/eleccurrent.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Electrical Current Affects the Human Body&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wet conditions are common during low-voltage electrocutions. Under dry&#xA;conditions, human skin is very resistant. Wet skin dramatically drops&#xA;the body's resistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dry Conditions: Current = Volts/Ohms =&#xA;120/100,000 = 1mA a barely perceptible level of current&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wet conditions: Current = Volts/Ohms = 120/1,000 = 120mA sufficient&#xA;current to cause ventricular fibrillation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three primary factors affect the severity of the shock a person&#xA;receives when he or she is a part of an electrical circuit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Amount of current flowing through the body (measured in amperes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Path of the current through the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Length of time the body is in the circuit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[numbers added, text unchanged - Paul]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other factors that may affect the severity of the shock are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The voltage of the current. The presence of moisture in the&#xA;environment. The phase of the heart cycle when the shock occurs. The&#xA;general health of the person prior to the shock. Effects can range&#xA;from a barely perceptible tingle to severe burns and immediate cardiac&#xA;arrest. Although it is not known the exact injuries that result from&#xA;any given amperage, the following table demonstrates this general&#xA;relationship for a 60-cycle, hand-to-foot shock of one second's&#xA;duration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current level (Milliamperes)  Probable Effect on Human Body&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 mA  Perception level. Slight tingling sensation. Still dangerous under&#xA;certain conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5mA   Slight shock felt; not painful but disturbing.&#xA;Average individual can let go. However, strong involuntary reactions&#xA;to shocks in this range may lead to injuries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6mA - 16mA    Painful&#xA;shock, begin to lose muscular control. Commonly referred to as the&#xA;freezing current or &amp;quot;let-go&amp;quot; range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;17mA - 99mA   Extreme pain,&#xA;respiratory arrest, severe muscular contractions. Individual cannot&#xA;let go. Death is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100mA - 2000mA    Ventricular fibrillation&#xA;(uneven, uncoordinated pumping of the heart.) Muscular contraction and&#xA;nerve damage begins to occur. Death is likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2,000mA   Cardiac arrest, internal organ damage, and severe burns. Death is probable. References&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NIOSH [1998]. Worker Deaths by Electrocution; A Summary of NIOSH&#xA;Surveillance and Investigative Findings. Ohio: US Health and Human&#xA;Services. Greenwald EK [1991]. Electrical Hazards and Accidents -&#xA;Their Cause and Prevention. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=XyG3802xSdwC&amp;amp;pg=PA410&amp;amp;lpg=PA410&amp;amp;dq=current%20necessary%20to%20cause%20death&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=cVYIgumItg&amp;amp;sig=lVv80EeMKFosSY03waWyKohp0ng&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=d9mKTbmwJ8mx0QHNs9D-DQ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=6&amp;amp;ved=0CEUQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=current%20necessary%20to%20cause%20death&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DeMaio and Demail, Forensic Pathology&lt;/a&gt;, provide, near bottom of page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an example of household electrocution at 120V and 1000 ohms of skin resistance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;If the point of contact is thin moist skin, the resistance may be as low as 100 ohms.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional points to summarize the linked page of the Pathology text (which is difficult to cut/paste from Google Books and in any event is copyrighted material that I would rather summarize than copy directly) and compare to the OSHA article&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;more current kills faster, especially with respect to ventricular fibrillation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1 mA tingle; 5 mA muscle tremor; 15mA muscle contractions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;50 mA all muscles contract, leading to respiratory arrest and death if sustained&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;75-100 mA ventricular fibrillation, but recoverable if current stops&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;~1A or more ventricular arrest&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is fairly consistent with the OSHA article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, lightning produces incredible amounts of voltage and current when compared with household voltages and currents.  The currents needed to stop the heart, though miniscule when compared to lightning currents, are further reduced when the body is wet because resistance is lower, which increases the danger of being around any kind of electricity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Swimming during a thunderstorm is unsafe, both based on prior observation of lightning fatality and the known effects of greater exposure and greater susceptibility to electricity's effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T11:55:46.873" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1238" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1253" CreationDate="2011-03-24T06:19:49.370" Score="15" ViewCount="1313" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;record wind gust of 231 miles/hour&lt;/strong&gt; was recorded in 1934, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountwashington.org/about/visitor/recordwind.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.mountwashington.org/about/visitor/recordwind.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wind speeds of this magnitude are commonly known to damage or destroy structures as well as most mechanical instruments.  You would think instrument readings would be given error bars, and larger error bars if conditions are not ideal for the use of the instrument. Usually, instruments are calibrated under very controlled conditions, and one should be skeptical about the use of the instrument under conditions beyond the manufacturer's rated specifications.  With weather records, though, it seems to be common just to compare the numbers and see which is a new high or new low.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This snippet from the webpage above, explains events surrounding the storm in question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;April 12, 1934...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stephenson suited up, grabbed a wooden&#xA;  club and headed for the door. The&#xA;  intense wind created so much pressure&#xA;  that he was knocked to the floor as he&#xA;  opened the door. He struggled as he&#xA;  made his way to the ladder. The wind&#xA;  was at his back, and actually helped&#xA;  him maintain solid footing on the&#xA;  ladder. With dozens of blows, he&#xA;  cleared the accumulated ice from the&#xA;  anemometer. He dropped the club by&#xA;  accident, and it sailed off into the&#xA;  fog towards the Tip Top House.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Back inside, he flipped on the&#xA;  recorder and began timing the clicks&#xA;  from the telegraph sounder. After&#xA;  three tries, he verified that the wind&#xA;  now topped 150 mph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems most incredible.  Are we to really believe someone went up on a ladder, outside, in 100-150mph winds, in weather involving accumulating ice?  Is this from a time when Men were Men and Giants walked the Earth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_speed&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Wind Speed&quot;&lt;/a&gt; , this record still stands as the second highest wind speed ever recorded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should wind records like this stand as credible?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2012-03-11T10:45:36.077" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T12:57:57.400" Title="Does the Mount Washington wind speed record have scientific validity?" Tags="|physics|history|climatology|weather|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1234" CreationDate="2011-03-24T09:23:49.320" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's not like a dermatologist- this regimen for this type of acne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don’t ever make the mistake of over-estimating dermatologists. ;-) And in fact, acne is a very bad example because treating it is a bit like voodoo. The last resort cure for acne (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotretinoin&quot;&gt;isotretinoin&lt;/a&gt;) is an extremely potent toxin that kills cells left, right and center. And hopefully it eradicates acne in the process. It often has side-effects (some quite severe) and leads to a very high chance of birth defects when given to a pregnant woman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, it doesn’t always work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing sophisticated about that drug and it can only be taken because most its side-effects concern the skin, which regrowths rather easily. But it should be obvious why similar medication isn’t used on the brain. ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The brain as an organ is much more complex and requires much more sophisticated treatment, lest it be permanently damaged. That doesn’t mean that neurology isn’t a science – it just means that it needs to be much more sophisticated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T09:23:49.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1257" CreationDate="2011-03-24T10:44:51.190" Score="13" ViewCount="596" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim is frequently heard in news (and especially in TV and movies). Especially in connotation with big companies and rich individuals - &quot;They'll get the best lawyers money can buy, and they'll get by with anything&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My feeling is that this is not how a just system would be designed - isn't the law clear enough that assuming everybody is informed of all the laws, trials should have the same outcome no matter who is involved ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I've heard this mostly from popular media, based on the US justice system, let's limit the scope to that jurisdiction. Also, the jury system might be part of the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1024" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T19:20:53.797" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T19:20:53.797" Title="Can better lawyers achieve better judgements for their clients?" Tags="|law|criminology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1247" CreationDate="2011-03-24T10:45:17.193" Score="56" ViewCount="21998" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having read this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/mar/22/lsd-acid-trip-self-knowledge&quot;&gt;Guardian article&lt;/a&gt; it seems LSD is a much less harmful drug (both to the user and to others) than alcohol. I live in the UK, where alcohol is legal to buy from age 18 (and to drink from even younger), but LSD is a class A drug - the highest classification. What's the basis for this classification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Amusingly, it seems &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17297714&quot;&gt;LSD can actually help alcoholics kick the habit&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:48:52.677" LastActivityDate="2020-02-26T19:28:11.920" Title="Is LSD more harmful than alcohol?" Tags="|alcohol|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1246" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1251" CreationDate="2011-03-24T11:01:13.557" Score="19" ViewCount="33589" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a typical extract form a blog post about &lt;strong&gt;Orbs&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reading an article about orbs, the&#xA;  mysterious lights sometimes appearing&#xA;  in photographs, I was reminded of how&#xA;  little we know of the world&#xA;  surrounding us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is an example image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dVsA8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Orbs, ghosts or trick of the light?&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could they really they Ghosts, Spirits or Entities from another dimension?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T19:15:54.863" LastActivityDate="2020-11-14T07:29:07.893" Title="What is the scientific explanation of &quot;Orbs&quot; in photographs?" Tags="|photography|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1244" CreationDate="2011-03-24T11:09:41.683" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hate to answer with a direct quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSD#Possible_risks&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, but they do such a good job of summarising the health risks of LSD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whilst there have been no documented human deaths from an LSD overdose, LSD may temporarily impair the ability to make sensible judgments and understand common dangers, thus making the user more susceptible to accidents and personal injury and cause signs of organic brain damage-impaired memory and attention span, mental confusion or difficulty with abstract thinking. However LSD is physiologically well tolerated and there is no evidence for long-lasting effects on the brain or other parts of the human organism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's all that can really be said. There's an interesting graph right next to that paragraph on wikipedia, depicting the fact that LSD (as well as Marijuana and Psilocybin mushrooms) has a VERY low active dose to lethal dose ratio (meaning essentially no documented deaths from an overdose).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The danger of LSD, Marijuana and Psilocybin is NOT a toxic or physiologically harmful effect of the drug itself; it's the effect it has on the user's mind. In a perfectly controlled environment, LSD would not have any physiologically harmful effects &lt;em&gt;when taken in recreational doses&lt;/em&gt;. But in the real world, the effect can &lt;strong&gt;sometimes&lt;/strong&gt; be that the way the user perceives his surroundings changes drastically, while also impairing the user's ability to make reasoned decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're right in saying that alcohol does more physiological damage than LSD, and it also has a much higher addictive potential. However, those are not the properties that make LSD dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="294" LastEditorUserId="294" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T16:05:53.600" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T16:05:53.600" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1246" CreationDate="2011-03-24T11:19:59.937" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lenses can cause these kinds of artifacts when certain conditions are met. The reasons are somewhat like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokeh&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bokeh&lt;/a&gt; only the result is likely caused, in the above case, by a small drop of water or a speck of dust on or near the camera; or possibly a chip in the lens. When the light hits it just right, it produces a strange optical anomaly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bokeh&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/89/Bokeh_Example.jpg/220px-Bokeh_Example.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Bokeh&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dirty Lens&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZG9QO.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZG9QO.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Dirty Lens&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thephotoforum.com/photos/data/500/medium/IMG_6854_full.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;thephotoforum.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="985" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-02-17T16:22:26.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1231" CreationDate="2011-03-24T11:20:01.810" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Intake of saturated fat can raise one's blood cholesterol and increase the risk of developing coronary heart disease (the research is vast). There is no question that high blood cholesterol is a bad thing, but this does not mean eliminating or reducing saturated fat from you diet will necessarily lower or eliminate your risk of developing CHD or any other disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;Now I've heard that there's dispute among professionals on whether saturated fats are unhealthy.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1984: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6527990?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Meat consumption and fatal ischemic heart disease.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For 45- to 64-year-old men, there was&#xA;  approximately a threefold difference&#xA;  in risk between men who ate meat daily&#xA;  and those who did not eat meat. This&#xA;  is the first study to clearly show a&#xA;  dose-response relationship between&#xA;  meat consumption and ischemic heart&#xA;  disease risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible interpretation: &lt;strong&gt;Do not eat meat (or butter). Ever.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2010: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000252&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effects on Coronary Heart Disease of Increasing Polyunsaturated Fat in Place of Saturated Fat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Reduced saturated fat (SFA)&#xA;  consumption is recommended to reduce&#xA;  coronary heart disease (CHD), but&#xA;  there is an absence of strong&#xA;  supporting evidence from randomized&#xA;  controlled trials (RCTs) of clinical&#xA;  CHD events...(1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible interpretation: &lt;strong&gt;Eat as much meat as you want (with butter even).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The rub:&lt;/strong&gt; Politicizing either interpretation is child's play (and I'm not gonna touch it*).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good explanation and general summary of the state of fat.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jacn.org/cgi/content/full/20/1/5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Types of Dietary Fat and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease: A Critical Review&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key points from the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the past several decades,&#xA;reduction in fat intake has been the&#xA;main focus of national dietary&#xA;recommendations to lower risk of&#xA;coronary heart disease (CHD).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Metabolic studies have long&#xA;established that the type of fat, but&#xA;not total amount of fat, predicts&#xA;serum cholesterol levels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Results from epidemiologic studies&#xA;and controlled clinical trials have&#xA;indicated that replacing saturated&#xA;fat with unsaturated fat is more&#xA;effective in lowering risk of CHD&#xA;than simply reducing total fat&#xA;consumption.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prospective cohort studies and&#xA;secondary prevention trials have&#xA;provided strong evidence that a&#xA;higher intake of n-3 fatty acids from&#xA;fish or plant sources lowers risk of&#xA;CHD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recent national dietary guidelines&#xA;have shifted the emphasis from total&#xA;fat reduction to distinguishing&#xA;different types of fat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The bottom line:&lt;/strong&gt; Moderation in all things seems good advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;It is usually a good idea to check out the authors’ responsibilities and/or acknowledgments section of any research papers you might read.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T11:20:01.810" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1246" CreationDate="2011-03-24T11:33:34.573" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;Orbs are photographic artefacts – specifically bits of airborne dust, water droplets, insects etc. caught in the flash of a camera. They appear out of focus because they are so close to the lens of the camera in an area called ‘The orb zone’ which is between the camera lens and the ‘point of focus’ in a photograph (namely the object you are taking a photo of, such as a person.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the flash of a camera goes off it will reflect off of the airborne artefacts in ‘the orb zone’ and the position between the lens and the ‘point of focus’ will cause the light reflection to appear as a circle of confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An orb is what a professional photographer would call a circle of confusion, an out of focus highlight in the photo. When you take a photograph that has out of focus objects in it you will notice that the out of focus objects don’t just go fuzzy – they turn into small overlapping circles of light and the larger the circle, the fainter it is, because the light is more spread out until eventually the circles will become so large and faint that they disappear all together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could explain why some orbs appear larger and fainter than others rather than the idea that the spirit orb is further away from the camera. To confuse an artefact in front of a camera lens for a spirit manifestation is an easy mistake to make if you do not research into the subject and rely upon pseudo-scientific theories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study was done by ‘Paranormal Site Investigators’ who are based in Swindon into the orb phenomena that showed how it's unlikely that these balls of light are caused by ghosts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110717020812/http://www.theorbzone.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20110717020812/http://www.theorbzone.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="599" LastEditorUserId="25597" LastEditDate="2020-11-14T07:29:07.893" LastActivityDate="2020-11-14T07:29:07.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1238" CreationDate="2011-03-24T12:53:19.893" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems unlikely.  Let's compare this with tornado wind speeds.  According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TORRO_scale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the TORRO scale&lt;/a&gt;, 150mph would qualify as a T5 tornado, with results as following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Heavy motor vehicles levitated; more&#xA;  serious building damage than for T4,&#xA;  yet house walls usually remaining; the&#xA;  oldest, weakest buildings may collapse&#xA;  completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Fujita_Scale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Enhanced Fujita Scale&lt;/a&gt; gives similar results.  Note that the wind speeds listed are approximate, and are largely estimates (rather than trying to stick anemometers into tornadoes).  Also, some of the damage is from the internal vacuum rather than the winds, but not all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hurricane-force winds are 73mph or greater according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane#Classifications.2C_terminology.2C_and_naming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beaufort scale&lt;/a&gt;, and a hurricane with 150mph winds is the highest classification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think Stephenson would have been able to walk both directions.  The club could have been caught by a much lighter wind and sent sailing.  I think we have a major measurement error here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T12:53:19.893" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1255" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-24T13:33:55.787" Score="8" ViewCount="814" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does women working outside the home automatically drive &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-replacement_fertility&quot;&gt;below the replacement threshold&lt;/a&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a developed country, to ensure at least the replacement of its population, the fertility rate needs to be a little over 2 (2.3 I thought; 2.1 according to Borror0 in the comments), and in developing countries, this number goes significantly higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm not referring the the sustainability of an environment (or, more precisely, of a society coupled with its physical location), which is a very different thing. And please do not assume overpopulation, as this question is relevant to small and sparse ones, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1027" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T02:59:57.533" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T16:01:34.430" Title="Is the fertility rate of women who work over 2 children anywhere in the world?" Tags="|children|sustainability|fertility|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2017-08-14T08:06:26.553" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1234" CreationDate="2011-03-24T13:48:32.457" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2009/01/voodoo-correlations-in-social.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Voodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience&quot;-paper&lt;/a&gt; argues that a lot of the peer reviewed neuroscience research is build on flawed methodologies. They use statistical tools that are overconfident and don't test the theories on new data. They are guilty of what Feynman &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;sqi=2&amp;amp;ved=0CBYQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm&amp;amp;ei=jUuLTe-UBsaRswaI_9SHCg&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNEWUe8ZBsHIt_QG10yDmrBua3WjZg&amp;amp;sig2=f9FeOLbF8wsSj5LgQLpjuQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;identified&lt;/a&gt; in rat psychology research as cargo cult science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Top scientists like Marc Hauser have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/9/9/professor-faculty-misconduct-tenure/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;good chance to survive controversy&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/08/28/fabrication_plausible_journal_editor_believes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;having faked a lot of data&lt;/a&gt;. Accusing a colleague of faking data &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blog.sethroberts.net/2011/01/31/fear-of-retaliation-global-warming-and-nutrition/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;can damage your career&lt;/a&gt; and as a result some scientists don't speak out about it.  In that climate we don't know how many fraudsters simply don't get caught. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the scientific minded public thinks that the discovery of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mirror neurons&lt;/a&gt; was a big breakthrough of neuroscience. They are a potent meme because they provide people who want to argue a reductionist worldview with an argument. On the other hand those people who argue the other side usually don't know enough to challenge the argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of mirror neurons is poorly defined. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cognitionandculture.net/Olivier-s-blog/do-we-have-mirror-neurons-at-all.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;There are people&lt;/a&gt; who even argue that there is no real evidence for human mirror neurons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Lakhan who is the executive director of the Global Neuroscience Initiative Foundation published &lt;a href=&quot;http://brainblogger.com/2011/03/19/coverage-of-neuroscience-in-the-popular-media-the-new-psychobabble/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; about the mirror neuron question on his website that makes the call:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to avoid this “rather awkward position,” the scientific community must make concerted efforts to educate the public about neuroscience, and science journalists as well as the layperson would do well to approach coverage of studies in neuroscience with a healthy dose of skepticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately a lot of self professed skeptics don't really practice skepticism but would be better characterized as defenders of a reductionist world view. They need the mirror neuron argument to win debates. They have no interest into questioning modern &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cognitionandculture.net/Davie-Yoon-s-blog/qneurobabbleq-vs-real-science.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;neurobabble&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to completely invalidate the quest to understand the human brain. We have however still a long way to go. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-04-29T13:37:24.510" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T13:37:24.510" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1243" CreationDate="2011-03-24T14:25:42.383" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lawyers make a difference as the following data from a study on public safety worker disputes in New Jersey (source: Orley Ashenfelter and David Bloom &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w4447&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lawyers as Agents of the Devil in a Prisoner's Dilemma Game&lt;/a&gt;&quot; NBER Working Paper No. 447, September 1993)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Fractions of awards won by the employer&#xA;&#xA;                                  Union used:&#xA;                             No Lawyer    Lawyer&#xA;&#xA;                 No Lawyer       44%        23%&#xA;Employer used:&#xA;                 Lawyer          73%        46% &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point being made was that having a lawyer increased the chance of winning, but both sides using lawyers tended to cancel each other on average; both sides would therefore benefit in the long term if neither used lawyers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is highly plausible that the same issue arises with more successful lawyers, which is why they are paid more in the marketplace.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T14:25:42.383" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1243" CreationDate="2011-03-24T14:48:36.723" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key is in your question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My feeling is that this is not how a just system would be designed - isn't the law clear enough that assuming everybody is informed of all the laws, trials should have the same outcome no matter who is involved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The law system is very complex (and especially in the US, since US has a lot of very old laws, while many other countries just sit down and rewrite all laws after some major event like revolution). So knowing, understanding and being able to apply the laws requires a lot of knowledge, experience and discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The laws themselves (phrasing in acts and codes) are one thing, whether and how they are being applied is another thing. Actually knowing the laws and being able to make use of them is very important for fair (or beneficial) outcomes. That's what lawyers are for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, a bad lawyer can be even more incompetent and useless than a determined citizen - as with any other specialists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hypothetical example. You buy a computer and it's malfunctioning and you file a lawsuit against the retailer. You come to the court and the defendant just doesn't come - he knows that according to an applicable law he can do that and noone will do anything about that because there's no evidence the subpoena has been served to him. You start panicking and now it's easier for the other party to talk you into a settlement on worse (for you of course) conditions. The defendant's lawyer acts according to the law - he just knows the procedure better than you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So those media claims are especially right for large corporations. In many cases knowing the procedure and being able to apply the law is as important as the law itself. A qualified lawyer just knows the procedure better than average Joe does. A corporation will spend a huge sum an lawyers and they will use the procedure to literally exhaust the opponent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="666" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T14:48:36.723" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1263" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1290" CreationDate="2011-03-24T15:14:52.150" Score="29" ViewCount="2643" Body="&lt;p&gt;Refined sugar is regularly described as the root of all evil, while sugar in fruit juice slips under the net.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just noticed my 330ml juice has 33g of sugar in it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are currently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/10/07/health/main6935699.shtml&quot;&gt;initiatives across the US to ban sugary treats and sodas&lt;/a&gt;, which often have less sugar than fruit juice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ban would apply to any beverage that contains more than 10 calories per 8 ounces, except for milk products, milk substitutes like soy milk and rice milk, and fruit juices without added sugar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything special about fruit juice that makes it's sugar less likely to cause obesity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1038" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-04-10T12:17:46.843" LastActivityDate="2022-08-19T17:11:45.847" Title="Is sugar in fruit juice less likely to cause weight gain than refined sugar?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|sugar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1243" CreationDate="2011-03-24T15:21:09.863" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The U.S. system of law is based on precedents (previous cases that are similar to the current one). Much of the arguing in front of a judge is about what precedent should apply. A lawyer argues that the current case is much like a previous case, here's why they are the same, and here is why the judge should rule in a similar way.  I have even read cases where the two opposing lawyers both cited the same case as precedent - the prosecution said it shows the defendant should be found guilty, and the defense saying the EXACT SAME CASE shows the defendant should be found innocent. The better the lawyer, and the more convincing she is, the more likely the judge will rule in her favor. It is similar to debate - whoever comes up with a more convincing argument often wins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T15:21:09.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1266" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1273" CreationDate="2011-03-24T16:05:18.267" Score="22" ViewCount="2386" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah%27s_Ark#The_chronology_of_the_flood&quot;&gt;Noah's Ark myth&lt;/a&gt; God sent 40 days of rain to flood the Earth. &#xA;Are any such long periods of persistent rain recorded? What kind of disaster could happen to cover all continents with water?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2020-10-01T09:03:22.787" LastActivityDate="2020-10-01T12:16:43.263" Title="Could a Great Flood have happened?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2020-10-02T08:22:56.753" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1267" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1268" CreationDate="2011-03-24T16:07:09.703" Score="20" ViewCount="2383" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the famous image of a face on Mars a trick of the light or an artificial structure reprinting a face?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2WtRq.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Face on Mars&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:37:52.577" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:37:52.577" Title="Is the &quot;Face on Mars&quot; an artificial structure?" Tags="|aliens|mars|optical-illusions|archaeology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1267" CreationDate="2011-03-24T16:14:07.603" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's just a myth. That picture had a low resolution and a particular light angle made it look like a face, but see this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ugRZN.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what it looks like from the oblique:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oVd8Z.gif&quot; alt=&quot;&amp;#39;face&amp;#39; on mars&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's clearly not a face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What the picture actually shows is the Martian equivalent of a butte or mesa -- landforms common around the American West. &quot;It reminds me most of Middle Butte in the Snake River Plain of Idaho,&quot; says Garvin. &quot;That's a lava dome that takes the form of an isolated mesa about the same height as the Face on Mars.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast24may_1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="1045" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T19:11:37.947" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T19:11:37.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1244" CreationDate="2011-03-24T16:43:07.340" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, some data....&lt;em&gt;(Mostly US data so your mileage may vary, sorry)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alcohol&lt;/strong&gt; (ethyl alcohol)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US Drug Schedule: None&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://drugabuse.gov/DrugPages/DrugsofAbuse.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Acute Effects/Health Risks listed by the NIDA&lt;/a&gt;*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In low doses, euphoria, mild stimulation, relaxation, lowered inhibitions; in higher doses, drowsiness, slurred speech, nausea, emotional volatility, loss of coordination, visual distortions, impaired memory, sexual dysfunction, loss of consciousness/increased risk of injuries, violence, fetal damage (in pregnant women); depression; neurologic deficits; hypertension; liver and heart disease; addiction; fatal overdose.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/812411-overview&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Emergency department frequency&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Alcohol intoxication is&#xA;common in modern society, largely&#xA;because of its widespread&#xA;availability. More than 8 million&#xA;Americans are believed to be&#xA;dependent on alcohol, and up to 15%&#xA;of the population is considered at&#xA;risk. In some studies, more than half&#xA;of all trauma patients are&#xA;intoxicated with ethanol at the time&#xA;of arrival to the trauma center. In&#xA;addition, ethanol is a common&#xA;coingestant in suicide attempts. &lt;a href=&quot;https://dawninfo.samhsa.gov/default.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drug Abuse Warning Network*&lt;/a&gt;: Thirty-three percent&#xA;(approximately 577,521) of all drug&#xA;misuse/abuse ED visits in 2006&#xA;involved the use of alcohol, either&#xA;alone or in combination with another&#xA;drug. DAWN reports alcohol-related&#xA;data when it is used alone among&#xA;individuals under the age of 21 or in&#xA;combination with other drugs among&#xA;all groups, regardless of age. &lt;em&gt;(Because DAWN does not account for ED visits involving alcohol use alone in adults, the actual number of ED visits involving alcohol among the general population is thought to be significantly higher than what is reported in DAWN.(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nida.nih.gov/infofacts/hospitalvisits.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;))&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/812411-overview&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mortality/Morbidity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Acute&#xA;intoxication with any of the alcohols&#xA;can result in respiratory depression,&#xA;aspiration, hypotension, and&#xA;cardiovascular collapse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emedicinehealth.com/alcoholism/article_em.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Addiction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Alcohol problems vary in&#xA;severity from mild to life&#xA;threatening and affect the&#xA;individual, the person's family, and&#xA;society in numerous adverse ways.&#xA;Despite all of the focus on drugs&#xA;such as cocaine, alcohol remains the&#xA;number one drug problem in the United&#xA;States. According to community&#xA;surveys, over 13% of adults in the&#xA;United States will experience alcohol&#xA;abuse or dependence (also referred to&#xA;as alcoholism) at some point in their&#xA;lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/289848-overview&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Psychosis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Alcohol-related psychosis&#xA;is a secondary psychosis with&#xA;predominant hallucinations occurring&#xA;in many alcohol-related conditions,&#xA;including acute intoxication,&#xA;withdrawal, after a major decrease in&#xA;alcohol consumption, and alcohol&#xA;idiosyncratic intoxication. Alcohol&#xA;is a neurotoxin that affects the&#xA;brain in a complex manner through&#xA;prolonged exposure and repeated&#xA;withdrawal, resulting in significant&#xA;morbidity and mortality.&#xA;Alcohol-related psychosis is often an&#xA;indication of chronic alcoholism;&#xA;thus, it is associated with medical,&#xA;neurological, and psychosocial&#xA;complications. Roughly 3% of persons with alcoholism experience psychosis during acute intoxication or withdrawal. Approximately 10% of patients who are dependent on alcohol who are in withdrawal experience severe withdrawal symptomatology, including psychosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LSD&lt;/strong&gt; (Lysergic acid diethylamide)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US Drug Schedule: I&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://drugabuse.gov/DrugPages/DrugsofAbuse.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Acute Effects/Health Risks listed by the NIDA&lt;/a&gt;*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Altered states of perception and feeling; hallucinations; nausea; increased body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure; loss of appetite; sweating; sleeplessness; numbness, dizziness, weakness, tremors; impulsive behavior; rapid shifts in emotion; Flashbacks, Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1011615-overview&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Emergency department frequency&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Emergency department (ED)&#xA;visits from patients with adverse&#xA;reactions to hallucinogens are&#xA;relatively uncommon. In 2006, the&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://dawninfo.samhsa.gov/default.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drug Abuse Warning Network*&lt;/a&gt; (DAWN)&#xA;estimated 4,002 LSD related ED visits&#xA;out of a total of 958,164 ED visits&#xA;involving illicit drugs&#xA;(approximately 1.3 ED visits per&#xA;100,000 population). However, this&#xA;is a 2-fold increase in LSD-related&#xA;ED visits compared with 2005. Given&#xA;its popularity as a club drug,&#xA;LSD-related ED visits often involve&#xA;multidrug use, including MDMA and&#xA;others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1011615-overview&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mortality/Morbidity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Deaths caused by&#xA;primary LSD effects have not been&#xA;well documented. The lethal dose of&#xA;LSD has been estimated to be 14,000&#xA;mcg. Few cases of massive ingestions&#xA;have been reported; because of its&#xA;large index of toxicity, patients&#xA;must have access to unusually&#xA;concentrated forms of LSD if they are&#xA;to overdose. Massive overdoses can&#xA;lead to respiratory arrest, coma,&#xA;emesis, hyperthermia, autonomic&#xA;instability, and bleeding disorders.&#xA;No suicide attempts using LSD&#xA;intoxication have been reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1011615-overview&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Addiction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Although LSD does not cause&#xA;physical or psychological addiction,&#xA;users quickly develop a high degree&#xA;of short-lived tolerance&#xA;(tachyphylaxis), which is due to&#xA;down-regulation of 5-HT2A receptors.&#xA;Long-term effects of chronic use can&#xA;result in persistent psychosis and&#xA;hallucinogenic persisting perception&#xA;disorder (HPPD), so called&#xA;“flashbacks.&amp;quot; LSD remains one of the&#xA;most potent mood-altering and&#xA;perception-altering drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1011615-overview&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Psychosis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Long-term complications may include prolonged psychotic reactions, severe depression, or an exacerbation/unmasking of a preexisting psychiatric illness. Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD) is a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV (DSM-IV) diagnosis, in which patients who are not intoxicated experience symptoms (flashbacks) that occurred during the use of LSD. Patients can have both perceptual and visual disturbances during these brief episodes. HPPD may last several months; however, some patients report these experiences for as long as 5 years and often have an underlying psychiatric illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;What's the basis for this classification?&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per the Controlled Substances Act (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/21cfr/21usc/811.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;21.USC.811&lt;/a&gt;) :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[T]he Attorney General shall consider the following factors with respect to each drug or other substance proposed to be controlled or removed from the schedules:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Its actual or relative potential for&#xA;abuse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scientific evidence of its&#xA;pharmacological effect, if known.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The state of current scientific&#xA;knowledge regarding the drug or&#xA;other substance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Its history and current pattern of&#xA;abuse. The scope, duration, and&#xA;significance of abuse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What, if any, risk there is to the&#xA;public health.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Its psychic or physiological&#xA;dependence liability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether the substance is an&#xA;immediate precursor of a substance&#xA;already controlled under this&#xA;subchapter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The bottom line&lt;/strong&gt;: Taking drugs has risks (no comment on the classification thing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*The National Institute on Drug Abuse(NIDA) and the Drug Abuse Warning Network are part of the US Federal government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nida.nih.gov/infofacts/hospitalvisits.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NIDA InfoFacts: Drug-Related Hospital Emergency Room Visits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T16:43:07.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1255" CreationDate="2011-03-24T17:17:05.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Crossing two reference points, I can say the answer to this is almost certainly yes, in Madagascar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=wb-wdi&amp;amp;ctype=l&amp;amp;strail=false&amp;amp;bcs=d&amp;amp;nselm=h&amp;amp;met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&amp;amp;scale_y=lin&amp;amp;ind_y=false&amp;amp;rdim=country&amp;amp;idim=country%3aMDG&amp;amp;ifdim=country&amp;amp;tstart=-300139200000&amp;amp;tend=1277697600000&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;dl=en&amp;amp;ind=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Madagascar fertilty rate: 4.72&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wbl.worldbank.org/Data/ExploreEconomies/madagascar/2011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;% of Madagascar women in the workforce: 86%&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now while it's certainly possible that the remainig 14% have SO many kids that the 86% in the workforce do not exceed 2.3, it the more reasonable conclusion that Madagascar fits your case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-28T16:01:34.430" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T16:01:34.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1267" CreationDate="2011-03-24T17:34:27.850" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://therelativelyinterestingblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/face-on-mars-and-pareidolia.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Face on Mars and Pareidolia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a habit of finding patterns were there are none (&lt;strong&gt;Pareidolia&lt;/strong&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zNN1E.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... with our knowledge of pareidolia, and&#xA;  the high resolution images provided by&#xA;  NASA, do you think the Face is still a&#xA;  face, or an optical illusion enhanced&#xA;  by the fact that we were originally&#xA;  looking at very low resolution images?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://atlasobscura.com/place/the-badlands-guardian&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Badlands Guardian&lt;/a&gt; in Alberta, Canada, discovered through &quot;Google Earth&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dbAvM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T17:34:27.850" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1266" CreationDate="2011-03-24T17:39:23.367" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A point often missed about the Noah myth is that it doesn't claim the flooding was all due to rain. It says &quot;the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?passage=Genesis%207:11&quot;&gt;fountains of the deep&lt;/a&gt; were opened&quot;. Still, this CYA attempt fails, because there isn't enough water on the planet to cover all the land. Even if all the ice on the South Pole melted it would only &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question473.htm&quot;&gt;raise sea level about 60 meters&lt;/a&gt; (200 feet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="703" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T17:39:23.367" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1266" CreationDate="2011-03-24T17:57:44.333" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/&quot;&gt;talk.origins archive&lt;/a&gt; documents an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html#CH400-CH599&quot;&gt;extensive list of claims about the flood&lt;/a&gt;.  It also includes sections discussing the Ark and the various problems that aspect of story has.  There's also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html&quot;&gt;a separate article dedicated to the flood&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are any such long periods of persistent rain recorded? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know about &lt;em&gt;persistent&lt;/em&gt; rain, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002745278_webrainrecord17.html&quot;&gt;Seattle has had 30 days of measurable rainfall&lt;/a&gt; twice in the past 60 years.  It isn't unreasonable to believe that other locations could have had a longer, more aggressive chain of storms, and it's also not unreasonable to expect that there'd be problems with local waterways flooding as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What kind of disaster could happen to cover all continents with water?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH401.html&quot;&gt;few&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH410.html&quot;&gt;frequently&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH420.html&quot;&gt;suggested&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH430.html&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt; of the water.  They all fail simple tests.  If there was supernatural involvement, we'd also expect to see &lt;em&gt;global&lt;/em&gt; evidence of a great flood, but this is absent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most logical explanation given the lack of evidence is that the story is mythical.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Sklivvz posted in the comments &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/noah_com.htm&quot;&gt;the flood story probably originates from part of the Epic of Gilgamesh&lt;/a&gt; which follows the same general plot. The resident deity is upset with humanity and selects one righteous man to be saved.  Instructions are given to build a large boat to save all of the animals and the man's family.  It rained, though only for six days.  Birds are sent out, one doesn't come back, a mountain is found, a sacrifice is made, the resident deity is pleased / remorseful and promises not to do that again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The talk.origins site hasn't been updated in a while.  There was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_noah.htm&quot;&gt;some evidence&lt;/a&gt; uncovered somewhat recently that suggested that the myth may have originated when the Black Sea grew rapidly after an influx of water from the Mediterranean in ~5600 BCE.  In 2009, National Geographic &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/090206-smaller-noah-flood.html&quot;&gt;published a follow-up that suggested the growth in the Black Sea was not as catastrophic&lt;/a&gt; as first thought, and might not really be the origin of the myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1042" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T17:57:44.333" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1266" CreationDate="2011-03-24T17:58:34.997" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the time this was written, how would anyone know that all the continents were flooded? Let's just assume that the World was flooded, and that the World was considerably smaller. Horizon-to-horizon flooding &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1931_China_floods&quot;&gt;happens&lt;/a&gt;, and if that's all you can see, that means the whole World's flooded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although unrelated, the same applies to pairs of &quot;every single animal&quot;. This could well be just goats, sheep, chickens and dogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="922" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T10:28:09.577" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T10:28:09.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1276" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1279" CreationDate="2011-03-24T18:19:21.320" Score="-5" ViewCount="4696" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can not even find one Peer-Reviewed Double Blind Study of any vaccine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you point out some studies for me, if they are available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1043" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T19:10:51.320" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T20:45:10.820" Title="Has any Peer-Reviewed Double Blind Study been made on any vaccine regarding efficacy?" Tags="|medical-science|vaccines|safety|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1276" CreationDate="2011-03-24T18:24:39.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One study - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC/CC/polio.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.accessexcellence.org/AE/AEC/CC/polio.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T18:24:39.990" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1276" CreationDate="2011-03-24T19:02:46.807" Score="31" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21155091&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Immunogenicity and reactogenicity of a 13-valent-pneumococcal conjugate vaccine administered at 2, 4, and 12 months of age: a double-blind randomized active-controlled trial&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20980048&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Immunogenicity of bivalent types 1 and 3 oral poliovirus vaccine: a randomised, double-blind, controlled trial.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20692031&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Efficacy of pentavalent rotavirus vaccine against severe rotavirus gastroenteritis in infants in developing countries in Asia: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That are just a few results from a quick search, there are studies done for every approved vaccine. I'm using the US system as an example, but it will be similar in other countries. In the US &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/biologicsbloodvaccines/developmentapprovalprocess/biologicslicenseapplicationsblaprocess/ucm133096.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the FDA has to approve vaccines&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pre-marketing (pre-licensure) vaccine&#xA;  clinical trials are typically done in&#xA;  three phases, as is the case for any&#xA;  drug or biologic. Initial human&#xA;  studies, referred to as Phase 1, are&#xA;  safety and immunogenicity studies&#xA;  performed in a small number of closely&#xA;  monitored subjects. Phase 2 studies&#xA;  are dose-ranging studies and may&#xA;  enroll hundreds of subjects. Finally,&#xA;  Phase 3 trials typically enroll&#xA;  thousands of individuals and provide&#xA;  the critical documentation of&#xA;  effectiveness and important additional&#xA;  safety data required for licensing. At&#xA;  any stage of the clinical or animal&#xA;  studies, if data raise significant&#xA;  concerns about either safety or&#xA;  effectiveness, FDA may request&#xA;  additional information or studies, or&#xA;  may halt ongoing clinical studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; vaccine will have to be shown safe and effective in clinical trials to get approved. They also continue to investigate the safety of the vaccines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The FDA continues to oversee the&#xA;  production of vaccines after the&#xA;  vaccine and the manufacturing&#xA;  processes are approved, in order to&#xA;  ensure continuing safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-24T20:09:54.550" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T20:09:54.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1255" CreationDate="2011-03-24T22:38:53.303" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The online version of the CIA World Fact Book can &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2127rank.html?countryCode=xx&amp;amp;rankAnchorRow=#xx&quot;&gt;list all countries by fertility rate&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not completely clear what you're asking, but I believe you're looking for a 'developed' country with a fertility rate higher than ~2.1 - 2.3.  If that is your question, I offer the following countries from the World Fact Book list that are generally considered to be 'developed':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Argentina 2.31&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;United Arab Emirates 2.40&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;World (for reference) 2.46&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kuwait 2.64&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Israel 2.70&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The extreme low fertility rates of Hong Kong (1.07) and Singapore (1.11) do not prevent them from experiencing population growth, rather than steady-state or decline, because there is sufficient immigration.  Hong Kong has a population growth rate of 0.448%--not huge, but it is still positive.  Singapore's growth rate is 0.817%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, here are the growth rates for the counties listed earlier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Argentina 1.02%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;United Arab Emirates 3.28%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;World 1.09%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kuwait 1.99%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Israel 1.58%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most developed countries are at no risk for decline because there is enough immigration to offset their lower fertility rates.  Two notable exception are Germany, with a growth rate of -0.21%, and Japan, with a growth rate of -0.28%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt; (2011-03-25) In response to questions from the OP:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The grammar in the initial question,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does women working outside the home automatically drive below the replacement threshold?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;has a fair level of ambiguity.  Based on the paragraph that followed, I interpreted that question to be asking if there are any 'developed' countries where the fertility rate is higher than the assumed steady-state value of 2.1 for 'developed', 2.33 for world average, and higher for undeveloped, countries.  This is also what the ambiguously worded title question asks if you assume a direct correlation between 'developed' and 'women working':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the fertility rate of women who work over 2 children anywhere in the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my original answer (see response above the edit line), attempted to provide evidence that &lt;em&gt;there are some 'developed' countries where the fertility rate is higher than the assumed steady-state&lt;/em&gt; values that had been provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I reinterpret the question asked in the body of the question (see first quote) as &quot;Does having more women working outside of their own household &lt;strong&gt;cause&lt;/strong&gt; lower fertility rates?&quot; then I must answer:  &lt;em&gt;There is insufficient evidence to prove a cause/effect relationship between 'working women' and low fertility rates.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there is evidence to show a correlation between the two (higher 'development' and lower fertility rate), it does not show which, if any, causes the other.  You could just as easily claim that lower fertility rates cause a nation to become more developed and theorize various reasons for this phenomenon, such as: With lower fertility rates, there is less competition for food resources which allows more time to develop technology.  There is further 'proof' of this in nature, where animals with lower fertility rates, such as elephants (&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_babies_can_an_african_elephant_have&quot;&gt;5-10&lt;/a&gt; per lifetime) or dolphins (&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_babies_do_dolphins_have_in_their_life_time&quot;&gt;~16&lt;/a&gt; per lifetime), are much more highly developed than animals with high fertility rates, such as rabbits (10-30 per year) or fruit flies (up to 900 per lifetime).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproduction#Reproductive_strategies&quot;&gt;Reproductive strategies&lt;/a&gt; vary between different animals, and can vary within different populations of the same animal (as evidenced by the different fertility rates of humans in different countries.)  Animals with fewer offspring can afford to spend more time developing each one so that they have a higher chance of survival into their reproductive period, and &lt;strong&gt;that&lt;/strong&gt; (high survival rate) is the essence of what it means to be 'developed'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this additional response still doesn't answer your question, please consider revising your question using proper English grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="328" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T13:38:16.597" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T13:38:16.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1276" CreationDate="2011-03-24T23:36:57.443" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question is &quot;yes&quot;. Via PubMed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21329971&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Efficacy, safety, and immunogenicity of a Vero-cell-culture-derived trivalent influenza vaccine: a multicentre, double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21300092&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amplified antigen-specific immune responses in HIV-1 infected individuals in a double blind DNA immunization and therapy interruption trial.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21148531&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trivalent inactivated influenza vaccine in African adults infected with human immunodeficient virus: double blind, randomized clinical trial of efficacy, immunogenicity, and safety.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21079803&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Safety, immunogenicity and duration of protection of the RTS,S/AS02(D) malaria vaccine: one year follow-up of a randomized controlled phase I/IIb trial.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="710" LastActivityDate="2011-03-24T23:36:57.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1288" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1307" CreationDate="2011-03-25T01:27:54.600" Score="16" ViewCount="881" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it nearly impossible to keep a 24 hour day cycle and the developed world have been structured into the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;8 hour work day&lt;/a&gt; where you have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eight hours labour, Eight hours&#xA;  recreation, Eight hours rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there strong physical and psychological reasons for keeping a 24-hour cycle beyond the benefit of being on the same time as everyone else? Are there cycles of sleep that we know to be bad, and which are shown to be beneficial?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/999/does-polyphasic-sleep-work-does-it-have-long-term-or-short-term-side-effects&quot;&gt;Does polyphasic sleep work? Does it have long-term or short-term side effects?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T19:15:13.977" Title="Are we supposed to keep a 24 hour rest/wake cycle?" Tags="|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1263" CreationDate="2011-03-25T05:35:40.840" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The human body can make use of refined sugar more efficiently than fruit sugar, therefore it provides more energy per unit and is more likely to cause weight gain (in theory).&lt;/strong&gt; This answer is based on several assumptions, outlined below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many different types of sugar. There are single sugar molecules (monosaccharides), such as glucose, fructose (&amp;quot;fruit sugar&amp;quot;) and galactose. There are sugars composed of two or more single sugar molecules bonded together, such as sucrose (glucose+fructose), or lactose (glucose+galactose). Sucrose is basically table sugar, that you might put in your coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Refined sugar&amp;quot; normally refers to sucrose or to high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which is processed sugar composed of about half fructose, half glucose, plus some other stuff (the composition varies, depending on desired sweetness etc). The sugar found in most processed foods, soda and candy is mostly sucrose or HFCS (depending on what country you're in). &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100322121115.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some research has suggested&lt;/a&gt; that HFCS can prompt greater weight gain than a similar amount of sucrose, for reasons not really understood well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sugar found in fruit is sometimes (depending on the fruit) much higher in fructose than glucose; for example, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s00217-002-0505-2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sugar composition of apples juices in this study&lt;/a&gt; was 9.30-32.2 g/l glucose, 66.1-96.0 g/l fructose, 8.5-55.10 g/l sucrose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hugely simplified: the single sugar molecules are one of the main energy sources in our bodies (they gets oxidised into carbon dioxide and water, yielding energy). Pretty much all the other kinds of carbohydrates (such as more-complex sugars and starches) get broken down into simple sugars before being used in the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer stated above assumes that &amp;quot;sugar in fruit juice&amp;quot; is a greater percentage fructose than glucose, and that &amp;quot;refined sugar&amp;quot; is HFCS or sucrose. Glucose can be metabolized and used in any of the body's cells, whereas fructose has to undergo an intermediate metabolic pathway that only happens in the liver (where the enzymes required are produced). Thus, the metabolic pathway for the body to consume and use fructose is more complex and &amp;quot;expensive&amp;quot; than to use glucose. In effect, the body gets less bang for its buck from fructose than from a similar amount of glucose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, the body can make more efficient use of a given amount of glucose than fructose, therefore it is more likely to result in weight gain (in theory, and for sustained consumption over time). In practice, any difference in weight gain from fruit juice compared to (for example) soda is more likely due to differences in total sugar concentration for a given volume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that excess fructose consumption can also produce its own negative health impacts, such as diarrhea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="710" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2022-08-19T17:11:45.847" LastActivityDate="2022-08-19T17:11:45.847" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1293" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1299" CreationDate="2011-03-25T06:34:09.400" Score="2" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that the level of &quot;background radiation&quot; is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the primary concern in a radioactive accident; instead the radioactive particles emitting the radiation, and the absorption thereof, are the primary concern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've not heard &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; mainstream scientists mention this (the only vaguely related source I can find online is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/27/bananas-are-radioact.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), so I'm extremely hesitant to believe it. Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &quot;background radiation&quot;, I meant the level of radiation picked up by radiation detectors. It was a poor choice of words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1062" LastEditorUserId="1062" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T23:54:31.387" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T23:54:31.387" Title="Is background radiation a secondary concern over radioactive particles themselves?" Tags="|radiation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1244" CreationDate="2011-03-25T07:13:22.050" Score="-10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am posting a separate answer to address more specifically the toxicity issue and the issue of misrepresentation of research data which I think is very pertinent to this question and to Skeptics in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nellius brought my attention to the introduction of the Wikipedia LSD article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even reading the first paragraph of&#xA;  the wikipedia article on LSD (which&#xA;  has 112 references, most of which are&#xA;  academic and peer reviewed) will&#xA;  explain LSD to you in simple terms:&#xA;  &quot;LSD is non-addictive, is not known to&#xA;  cause brain damage, and has extremely&#xA;  low toxicity relative to dose,&#xA;  although adverse psychiatric reactions&#xA;  such as anxiety or delusions are&#xA;  possible even at low doses.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds pretty safe, doesn't it? Looks like the matter is closed and fully answered. After all, 112 academic &amp;amp; peer reviewed references couldn't be wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not quite. A closer look at the Wikipedia article shows that only &lt;strong&gt;1 out of 112 references&lt;/strong&gt; directly concerns LSD toxicity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maps.org/w3pb/new/2008/2008_Passie_23067_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.maps.org/w3pb/new/2008/2008_Passie_23067_1.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what does that reference say? (A paper very much in favor of LSD, BTW)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There have been no documented human&#xA;  deaths from an LSD overdose. Eight&#xA;  individuals who accidentally consumed&#xA;  a very high dose of LSD intranasally&#xA;  (mistaking it for cocaine) had plasma&#xA;  levels of 1000–7000 μg per 100 mL&#xA;  blood plasma and suffered from&#xA;  comatose states, hyperthermia,&#xA;  vomiting, light gastric bleeding, and&#xA;  respiratory problems. However, all&#xA;  survived with hospital treatment and&#xA;  without residual effects [56].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's read this again. Plasma levels of 1mg to 7mg per 100mL caused comatose states. An average human body contains 2.7l to 3 L of blood plasma. Assuming they were big guys with 3L of blood plasma each, we can deduce that the total quantity of LSD in the plasma was between 30mg and 210mg. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So less than a gram of LSD each was enough to put 8 men (or women, the reference does not specify) in a comatose state with serious respiratory problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They survived the hospital treatment. Would they have survived without hospital treatment? Would they have survived 2 grams of LSD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a matter of comparison, the lethal dose of arsenic is 0.6mg/kg/day. So for a 80kg adult, the lethal dose would be 48mg. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slice it or dice it anyway you like, LSD is a highly toxic substance. It is NOT a &quot;safe&quot; substance by any stretch of imagination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I very much agree that psychotropic effects of LSD are much more dangerous than the physiological effects. They can make a sane person clinically mad for a period of 12 hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But calling LSD &quot;safe and non-toxic&quot; is like calling arsenic &quot;safe and non toxic&quot;. It's a lie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to the comparison between LSD and alcohol, the comparison is not valid, on any level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alcohol and LSD are two chemical substances that can have mind altering effects. There ends the similarity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effects are different, the consequences are different, the dosages are different, the social context and the infrastructures are different,...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An artificial comparison is made with alcohol in an effort to make LSD appear safer and more acceptable. It's a marketing effort, but has no valid scientific grounds. You can only compare meaningfully things which are sufficiently related. Alcohol and LSD are to different for a side by side comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want a comparison between alcohol and LSD? Fine. Here you go:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 mg of LSD will put you in a comatose state and probably kill you without medical intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 mg of vodka intake barely has any noticeable effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 100µg p.o. dose of LSD will trigger a psychotic state complete with hallucinations that will last about 10 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 100µg dose of alcohol... you're kidding, right?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line is that the comparison between LSD and alcohol is not valid. It is just a marketing attempt for LSD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And since we are on Skeptics, remember that there is a point in figuring out where your data come from and whether or not these data sources had vested interests. That a substance with toxicity levels close to that of arsenic is listed as &quot;safe and non toxic&quot; in Wikipedia and on drug-friendly sites should be a major red flag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1025" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T07:13:22.050" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1266" CreationDate="2011-03-25T07:38:12.817" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I observe 4 questions here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could a Great Flood have happened?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are 40-day-periods of rain recorded?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What kind of disaster could happen to cover all continents with water?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can the Noah's Ark myth be correct? (implicit)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The smaller your universe is, the bigger a flood is. If you don't know that Africa, Europe, Asia, America and Antarctic exist, it's impossible to know &lt;strong&gt;that&lt;/strong&gt; the whole earth is covered. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm sure so; see Charles about Seattle. Investigate weather stations in regions of rain periods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To cover Himalaya, Alpen, Anden, Appalachen, Rocky Mountains and so on: Not enogh water. But from rain apart, tsunamis, smelting ice, river outbreaks (rain elsewhere) cause dramatique floods. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you know 500 species, most of them small, you can imagine them to fit into a big ship. Today, we know how many different animals there are, and that you need much bigger groups, to have enough genetic diversity to let one survive. But of cause predators need other animals as meal as well. To put all of them, and enough food on a ship, the ship would need to be multiple times the size of the Maracana stadium. So it's just a story. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T07:38:12.817" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1293" CreationDate="2011-03-25T08:04:14.467" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The US Environmental Protection Agency is clearly more concerned with ingestion than direct exposure:  see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/pathways.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/pathways.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skin will actually block most of the alphas and the neutrons.  X-ray and gamma rays of course would go through the skin.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, the radiation travels in straight lines from the source and is typically absorbed when it impacts a solid enough target.  It affects the area around the source.  Radioactive particles themselves create radiation.  So the propagation of radioactive particles by wind or other vectors is the primary method that the danger of radioactive exposure can spread from the immediate area around the source. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone ingests radioactive particles either through air, food, or water, it will continue to irradiate their body from the inside as the material decays. This is clearly worse than a temporary exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone is exposed to a source of rays but not radioactive particles, typically their skin and clothing will provide protection from some kinds of rays, but not all.  When they are removed from the source of the rays, there is typically no residual radiation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worthwhile to realize that there is a background radiation from outer space that is not absorbed by the atmosphere.  Therefore, unless you live in a lead lined bunker or under the ocean you can not completely eliminate exposure to radiation.  Levels of radiation comparable to this background level are considered acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T08:12:59.797" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T08:12:59.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="101" CreationDate="2011-03-25T08:37:57.707" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The theory of evolution offers the best explanation for how organisms have evolved over time.  It hasn't been disproven yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than trying to 'mix and match' fossil records, we can utilize DNA to track what species branched off of the family tree at what point in time by the mutations present in the DNA.  Certain DNA chains are known to mutate at a given rate - by following the number of mutations, you can see where they 'branched off' on their own, so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the DNA classification upholds the fossil record (such as the evolution of the horse), other times, it leads us to a new classification of an organism (as in, it's more closely related to the hippo than the elephant).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Campbell &amp;amp; Reece, 2005. Biology, 7th Edition. Pearson Education, Inc. San Francisco, CA. 1231 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science is fluid - it's ever learning and ever changing, based on the knowledge learned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastEditorUserId="1063" LastEditDate="2011-08-02T17:41:51.030" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T17:41:51.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1293" CreationDate="2011-03-25T09:04:56.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To supplement Paul's answer, direct radiation from your source would obey &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse-square_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Inverse-square law&lt;/a&gt;. Which means it's mainly a concern in the immediate vicinity of the source and greatly decreases with distance. Whereas radioactive particles can be distributed VERY widely with the wind (or water in water table or river).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a specific example, there are IIRC 57 confirmed deaths from effects of direct radiation from Chernobyl. Compare that to issues from particles that were blown all over Russia/Europe (which were less severe but more numerous) - I believe Chernobyl Wiki has enough relevant statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T09:04:56.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1304" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-25T09:11:12.807" Score="77" ViewCount="17406" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many castles or museums you'll find medieval armor, belonging to a knight. Those are often very small compared to the average human nowadays. I've heard this explained multiple times as being due to the general smaller size of people in the middle ages compared to the modern age. The reasoning was that the nutrition then was worse than today and that this affected the growth of the people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were people really so much shorter in the middle ages? If they were not shorter, why are the armors you see so small?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-02T21:31:40.913" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T14:09:30.350" Title="Were people shorter in the middle ages?" Tags="|history|biology|evolution|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1288" CreationDate="2011-03-25T12:44:59.323" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page for Circadian Rythm&lt;/a&gt; gives you a quick overview about this subject, with lots of links for further reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A circadian rhythm is an endogenously&#xA;  driven roughly 24-hour cycle&lt;/strong&gt; in&#xA;  biochemical, physiological, or&#xA;  behavioural processes. &lt;strong&gt;Circadian&#xA;  rhythms have been widely observed, in&#xA;  plants, animals, fungi and&#xA;  cyanobacteria&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A great deal of research on biological&#xA;  clocks was done in the latter half of&#xA;  the 20th century. &lt;strong&gt;It is now known that&#xA;  the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifc.unam.mx/pages/curso_ritmos/capitulo15/Cermakian.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;molecular circadian clock&lt;/a&gt; can&#xA;  function within a single cell&lt;/strong&gt;; i.e.,&#xA;  it is cell-autonomous. At the same&#xA;  time, different cells may communicate&#xA;  with each other resulting in a&#xA;  synchronised output of electrical&#xA;  signaling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nigms.nih.gov/Publications/Factsheet_CircadianRhythms.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Circadian rhythmicity&lt;/a&gt; is present in&#xA;  the sleeping and feeding patterns of&#xA;  animals, including human beings.&lt;/strong&gt; There&#xA;  are also clear patterns of core body&#xA;  temperature, brain wave activity,&#xA;  hormone production, cell regeneration&#xA;  and other biological activities.&#xA;  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WSM5Z.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The primary circadian &quot;clock&quot; in&#xA;  mammals is located in the&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/clocks/SCN.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;suprachiasmatic nucleus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (or nuclei)&#xA;  (SCN), a pair of distinct groups of&#xA;  cells located in the hypothalamus.&#xA;  Destruction of the SCN results in the&#xA;  complete absence of a regular&#xA;  sleep–wake rhythm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Timing of medical treatment in&#xA;  coordination with the body clock may&#xA;  significantly increase efficacy and&#xA;  reduce drug toxicity or adverse&#xA;  reactions&lt;/strong&gt; [...] There are many &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/circadian-rhythm-disorders-cause&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;health problems&lt;/a&gt; associated with disturbances of the human circadian rhythm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Although circadian rhythms are&#xA;  endogenous (&quot;built-in&quot;,&#xA;  self-sustained), they are adjusted&#xA;  (entrained) to the environment by&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.suite101.com/content/circadian-rhythms-and-zeitgebers-a212360&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;external cues&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; called zeitgebers, the&#xA;  primary one of which is daylight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-04-17T11:24:44.183" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T11:24:44.183" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1311" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1313" CreationDate="2011-03-25T13:52:20.940" Score="61" ViewCount="6301" Body="&lt;p&gt;One idea I used to hear a lot about was that when people are near-death and saved by medical science that they sometimes see &quot;a light at the end of a tunnel&quot; in a vision.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today I read about an article about a new best-seller from an ambitious 4-year-old in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebraska&quot;&gt;Nebraska&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1368467/I-met-granddad--wings-Colton-Burpo-went-heaven-speaks-relatives-book-Heaven-For-Real.html&quot;&gt;'I met great granddad...and he had wings': Boy who 'went to heaven' is now best selling author&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's his &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Bestseller&quot;&gt;#1 New York Times Bestselling&lt;/a&gt; book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0849946158&quot;&gt;&quot;Heaven is for Real&quot; on Amazon&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OjUuh.jpg&quot; width=&quot;100&quot; height=&quot;150&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only problem is that I remember &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.near-death.com/tv.html&quot;&gt;seeing shows on TV&lt;/a&gt; that suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_death&quot;&gt;near-death experiences&lt;/a&gt; can be repeated in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-G_training&quot;&gt;controlled environment&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest that near-death experiences and &quot;the light at the end of the tunnel&quot; have a scientific explanation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-29T03:48:32.577" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T00:11:06.837" Title="Is there any explanation for a near-death experience?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|physiology|religion|near-death-experience|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1311" CreationDate="2011-03-25T14:01:13.333" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a fairly comprehensive article on the topic at &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/nde.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Near-death experience (NDE) - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some details from one study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blackmore attributes the feelings of extreme peacefulness of the NDE to the release of endorphins in response to the extreme stress of the situation. The buzzing or ringing sound is attributed to cerebral anoxia and consequent effects upon the connections between brain cells (op. cit., 64). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2015-10-13T00:11:06.837" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T00:11:06.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1311" CreationDate="2011-03-25T14:04:43.907" Score="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is ample scientific explanations for the physiological reactions that people experience.  From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2156135&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt; (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Near-Death Experience (NDE) is a dissociative mental state with characteristic features. &lt;strong&gt;These can be reproduced&lt;/strong&gt; by ketamine which acts at sigma sites and blocks N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) linked phencyclidine (PCP) receptors to reduce ischaemic damage. Endogenous ligands, alpha and beta-endopsychosin, have been detected for these receptors which suggests an explanation for some NDE's: the endopsychosins may be released in abnormal quantity to protect neurons from ischaemic and other excitotoxic damage, and the NDE is a side effect on consciousness with important psychological functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The light in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnel_vision&quot;&gt;tunnel effect&lt;/a&gt; is an easy one, since I have personally experienced it numerous times in a high-G environment.  Your eyes naturally create a tunnel effect as they start to lose oxygen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for seeing loved ones, in the case of this particular book, that is more likely a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc&quot;&gt;post hoc&lt;/a&gt; occurrence for financial gain as well as societally influenced expectations.  The personal history and background of the boy Colton, and the author Todd Burpo, align exactly with what they wrote about (isn't it funny that no one ever experiences a &quot;vision&quot; that would be opposed to their expectations and personal history, like a christian seeing Vishnu for instance?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it is established that autobiographical &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nspb.net/index.php/nspb/article/view/59/54&quot;&gt;memories can be implanted in individuals&lt;/a&gt;, and that &lt;a href=&quot;http://users.owt.com/crook/memory/&quot;&gt;children are especially susceptible&lt;/a&gt; to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Loftus (1997) investigated memory distortion and the relation with the degree of confidence in the existence of a false memory. She calls this phenomenon the &quot;misinformation effect&quot;. She observed that if witnesses of an event are later exposed to new and misleading information about it, their recollections become distorted (Loftus, 1997). Loftus was able to empirically demonstrate this phenomenon with autobiographical memories. With corroboration from the participants' family members, Loftus was relatively successful at implanting false autobiographical memories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT TO ADD&lt;/strong&gt;:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/why-out-of-body-and-near-death-experiences-dont-prove-god/&quot;&gt;I just found this article today that is relevant to this answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This week, in “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.happinessinthisworld.com/2011/05/15/the-neurology-of-near-death-experiences/#more-7165&quot;&gt;The neurology of near-death experiences&lt;/a&gt;“, Alex debunks the religious trappings that attach to the “out-of-body” and similar experiences that occur in conjunction with operations and medical episodes.  In particular, he shows that experiences such as dreamlike states, tunnel vision, and leaving and returning to one’s body are all phenomena that have well-understood medical causes.  Some of them can even be reproduced by stimulating people’s brains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suggest anyone interested in the subject check out the links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-05-22T17:04:08.543" LastActivityDate="2011-05-22T17:04:08.543" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="765" CreationDate="2011-03-25T15:51:01.350" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;They&lt;/em&gt; are not flying and &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; are not objects.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But people saw them :)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(you can find a colection of reports of events in my site)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The events are more correctly called: &lt;strong&gt;UAP&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;strong&gt;Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because I've been always skeptic I studied this subject several years ago (during months),&lt;br&gt;&#xA;and I concluded that two classes of UFO events can be &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://heldervelez1.tiddlyspace.com/#%5B%5BUfos%20Physically%20Explained%5D%5D&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;physically explained&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  (edit add:  I decided to offline the content because no one care to know what I found)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;IMO they are just  &lt;strong&gt;Aerial Phenomenons&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;If you are so skeptic as I am you will have to study what I've explained there.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I'm expecting some comments if you deny my view point and downvote.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(the physical papers that I've consulted in relation to ice crystals and contrails... will be included in the site in the future)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;quote from &quot;Pilot Survey Results” at NARCAP.ORG (the site is offline in the moment of writing)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper presents the results of a confidential aircrew survey&#xA;  presented to 298 currently rated and flying commercial pilots employed&#xA;  by a U. S. airline.&#xA;  Table 5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results Related to Reporting One’s Sighting &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Total number of pilots having seen a UAP . .. . 16 (100%)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Number who did report the sighting . . . . .  . . . 4 (25 %)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Number who did not report the sighting . . . . . 12 (75 %)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If there are about 600,000 commercial pilots currently flying in the&#xA;  U.S.A. and 23  percent of them saw something they couldn’t identify&#xA;  this amounts to 138,000 witnesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;colections of reports on UFOs:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;COMETA report (French association) detail the results of a study by the Institute of Higher Studies for National Defense&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ufoevidence.org/newsite/files/COMETA_part1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;COMETA_part1.pdf&lt;/a&gt;  23 pages&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ufoevidence.org/newsite/files/COMETA_part2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;COMETA_part2.pdf&lt;/a&gt;  47 pages  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ufos.nationalarchives.gov.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UK gov. National Arquives&lt;/a&gt;, UFO files Files released in March 2011&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/search/database.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA ASRS Database&lt;/a&gt; world's largest repository of voluntary, confidential safety information provided by aviation's frontline personnel, including pilots.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.narcap.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena- NARCAP&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.narcap.org/documents/aircat_DWeinstein_300cases_9-09.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Narcap: 300 cases analysed&lt;/a&gt;    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a few selected cases:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.narcap.org/reports/010/TR10_Case_18a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chicago O'Hare airport: Narcap report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.narcap.org/aiaareport.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Astronautics &amp;amp; Aeronautics July 1971&lt;/a&gt; Unidentified Object in the ~South-Central U.S., July 17,1957&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rr0.org/science/crypto/ufo/enquete/dossier/Duboc/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;L'observation du vol AF 3532 1994&lt;/a&gt;, Coulommiers, France (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread634083/pg1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;more here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.narcap.org/reports/007/TR7.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Analysis of a Photograph of a High Speed Ball of Light&lt;/a&gt;  Jul 16, 1988 - I clearly see a contrail where sunlight is reflected.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;google search &quot;Police Chase UFO over St. Atham, Cardiff&quot;, in UK 2008 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scientists have been divorced of the UFO problem:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Society for Scientific Exploration: Report on a Survey of the Membership of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_08_1_sturrock.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Astronomical Society Concerning the UFO Problem: (1994) : Part 1&lt;/a&gt;  and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_08_2_sturrock.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Part 2&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My viewpoint of the case reported by a military pilot in the page 9 of Cometa report (pag 7 of pdf), Mirage IV - UFO encounter, March 7, 1977:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Chaumont    48° 6'40.76&quot;N , 5° 8'23.67&quot;E&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Luxeil Air Base    47°46'59.00&quot;N ;  6°21'1.29&quot;E   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not reported, but it is true:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;No one noticed that the path of flight was in the directon of the Full Moon, South India, and the contrail was above Switzerland (cold atmosphere, no wind for sure at the time of the event). The contrail stood straight for long enough time and transported the light of Full Moon, below the horizon, to the cockpit.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Just check the images bellow, obtained with help of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fourmilab.ch/homeplanet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HPlanet - Home Planet software&lt;/a&gt; and Google Maps)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Physical explanation:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;A contrail is made of ice crystals that in non turbulent atmosphere descend slowly exposing the bigger faces (frequently hexagonal) parallel to the ground (they go down like a large leave falling from a tree). The normal to that face oscilates around 8º max and they offer a continuous mirror for light that jump from crystal to crystal without leaving the contrail when light is injected along the longitudinal axis of the contrail. The total reflection in the faces are due to the low angle of incidence providing a 'natural low loss optical fiber'. And that was the case of this report. &#xA;The pilots usually can not see the contrails made by their own jets. This case is an exception. The contrail was there in the right direction and the moon light (full moon) made the impossible: for brief moments the pilots saw the moon. Most of the UFO lights seen by night are made by some invisible contrail in the right direction to sunlight or, the less frequent moonlight, when the sun or moon are already below the horizon.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Position of full moon over South India at the time of the event.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XQrPx.png&quot; alt=&quot;position of full moon over South India&quot;&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Local path of the flight over France and Switzerland &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q8uk3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;local path of the flight &quot;&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At left two red points (zoom it) is the path of the Mirage over France/Switzerland and a large white stripe to mark the path of the moon ligth.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yjR2x.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;at left (red points) the path of the Mirage over France/Switzerland and a large white stripe to mark the path of the moon ligth &quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check the report of the pilot:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They noticed a brilliant light coming towards their Mirage from their&#xA;  exact right and on a collision course with them, and first thought it&#xA;  may be a jet fighter, but when they radioed to the ground control at&#xA;  Contrex?ville for reporting it and getting it identified, they learned&#xA;  that the ground radar showed nothing and that no other aircraft was&#xA;  known to be in that area. The ground controller asked them to check&#xA;  their oxygen, which indicates that he thought the pilots may be&#xA;  hallucinating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The light appeared bigger and bigger as it approached their aircraft&#xA;  from their rear right. The pilot was flying at Mach 0.98 and made a&#xA;  turn to the right and then to the left to make sure the light was not&#xA;  a reflection of some sort on the cockpit. As he did these maneuvers,&#xA;  both of the crew could distinguish that the light was the front of a&#xA;  dark solid object. Despite the evasive maneuver, the unidentified&#xA;  object managed to stay exactly behind them for a few seconds, a very&#xA;  dangerous situation if the unknown object were to be hostile. The then&#xA;  object made a turn to the North-West at an estimated speed of Mach II,&#xA;  and went away to the left of the Mirage IV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and reappeared 45 secs later to tease again the pilots.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my oppinion this report of the pilots is credible. Also credible is the existence of the contrails, even if we can not see them by night time.&#xA;Incredible, IMO, is the lack of imagination of the scientific community and others, that in the absence of a theory try to  put down the testimonys, or waiting for help from some alien people.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By day time the testimonys are mostly correct but the physical explanation is based in the well known (in this moment I dont have the name in my head)... effect, and ....   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They report 'objects' but they saw 'light'.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Find a suitable source of Light and a path thru the medium (atmosphere).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1071" LastEditorUserId="1071" LastEditDate="2012-07-07T02:22:51.067" LastActivityDate="2012-07-07T02:22:51.067" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1311" CreationDate="2011-03-25T16:14:23.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bucket of random thoughts to this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two months ago, I saw two &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sendungen.sf.tv/sternstunden/Nachrichten/Archiv/2011/02/07/sternstundeneinzel/Sternstunde-Religion-vom-13.-Februar-20112&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;broadcasts in the Swiss TV, LANG=de_CH&lt;/a&gt; about near-death experiences, the first being a kind of report, and the second a talk. The first of the videos isn't available anymore (only to buy on DVD/VHS) and few wordings and a link to literature remains. I can try to give a brief conclusion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At most, the broadcasting station, which is a federal, not a private station, is serious, tends to higher culture and quality, but when it comes to religion - well... . Now the Swiss is, afaik, mostly protestantism, at least the German speaking part of it; two of the first popular heretics origins from the Swiss, Zwingli and Calvin. But not all of the religious people believe in near-death experiences. My impression was, that the report couldn't decide, whether to support the claims of NDE or not. They hadn't much material, some witnesses from hearsay, and hadn't much against, but mixed it - for my feelings just to keep the interest high. If you debunk such a claim in the first minutes you can stop the video after 5 Minutes. After the report, there was a talk which is today still available, but might vanish in near future: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.videoportal.sf.tv/video?id=eee95278-f812-4cfb-9bf5-d3f15507ab34&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Talk with Judith Hardegger and sociologist of religion, Hubert Knoblauch&lt;/a&gt;, again, language de_CH., duration about 30 min. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't remember much from the video. People, talking about a tunnel with light, of cause. And an experiment, but which was planned, at least not yet finished: Since people often experience such NDE when being in a surgery, and often claim, that they leave their body (out-of-body experience, OOBE) and floating at the top of the room, looking down towards their body, the experimenter placed some kind of beamer at the top, which displayed simple figures in a random way, so that they could only be seen from above, and that the doctor and other people wouldn't know what was displayed, but a floating ghost would be able to see them. Or not. Which would show, that they weren't really out of body, floating around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I try to summarize the talk. It is a different video, but the scientist had just seen the other video. &#xA;It's not my opinion, which I report, but the opinion of the sociologist, which I try to repeat in condensed form: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;His viewpoint is not natural sciences, but sociological, psychological. He is interested in what the people think it is, how they feel, and how deeply impressed they are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;since 60 years there are studies going on (in the Swiss, and nearby, in Freiburg/Germany), but without much[sic!] evidence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether the people are dead or not is normally not clear. Death by heart is the normal criteria, rarely: by brain. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The experience of time does not fit to the experience of time for people awake (Doctores), but is more like in a dream. A long journey in a dream may only last a few minutes in real sleep.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not everybody who was declared to be death, but 'came back' has NDE, and not everybody who has NDE was clinicly death. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nearly 1/3 of the experiences isn't about light and wonderful feelings (2/3), but about pain and horror. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People in the western world 'experience' to fly to heaven, while people in China tend to move into the earth, which is congruent to the culture, which surrounds the people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People today in the swiss 'meat' relatives during their NDE, like mother, grandmother and so on. A farmer in the 13th century meats his whole village and Karl der Große. Friar in the 8 Century meet their whole cloister. This reflects pretty much the trend to individualism during that time in our culture.&#xA;Former experiences talk about an old, wise man - today, people experience a white light. The stories are getting more abstract.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;he becomes a bit angry about the question, whether this isn't prove, that all this is hallucination. I couldn't follow  how he countered that. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He emphasized, that in contrast to religious believes, there is a continuation of identity and a continuation of feelings, of felt body awareness. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;most western people today don't connect their experience with religion, but mystic and transcendence. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are comparing studies of West- and East-Germany. More bad experiences in the former DDR (socialistic, atheistic staate), but not comparable to the pictures from hell, which where often found in the US.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He would like to do much more research, but would need money to do so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were more arguments made, so if you speak german, watch the video and correct or complete me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sum, it was a differentiated view on the facts, and afaik a honest presentation of the known facts, as far as he knows them. Weak, in the absence of natural science, but aware of this weakness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing bothered me often: The acceptance of the term NDE. The people did not die. They survived, and their living went on. So why name it 'near death'? He is on the one hand aware of this fact, and tells it that way himself, but few sentences later he says, that, while it isn't objectively near death, the people experience it as such. But since no living being had experienced the death nobody can, not even subjectively, claim to have knowledge, how close to a real death experience it is. It's just a projection, an illusion. But I guess that's the strength of the talk: While this person has a different opinion about the conclusions of the facts, he doesn't mud the water but is a reliable source of his observations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T21:44:57.617" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T21:44:57.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1319" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1363" CreationDate="2011-03-25T16:58:36.300" Score="31" ViewCount="2124" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often see cases of pareidolia reported in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1365434/Is-sign-Two-images-Jesus-tree-pizza-tray.html?ito=feeds-newsxml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;news&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/07/06/cectic-does-pareidolia/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;on blogs&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1267/is-the-face-on-mars-an-artificial-structure/1271#1271&quot;&gt;even here&lt;/a&gt;.  I think remember reading in &lt;em&gt;Demon Haunted World&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/pareidol.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carl Sagan&lt;/a&gt; that this had an evolutionary origin (i.e. if you see a familiar object and it isn't there, that doesn't cost anything in survival, as opposed to NOT seeing an object that really IS there, like a lion about to eat you).  However, when I do a google search, I don't find any actual evolutionary biologists talking about the origins of pareidolia, just people repeating this anecdote from Sagan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will admit, my google-fu is weak, but I would like to find out if there are actual papers and studies that can confirm or deny the origin of our species towards pareidolia.  A common definition of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pareidolia&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any scholarly documentation from an evolutionary biologist that speaks to the origin of pareidolia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:40:01.507" Title="What is the commonly accepted mechanism that causes people to experience pareidolia?" Tags="|psychology|evolution|perception|optical-illusions|carl-sagan|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1320" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1322" CreationDate="2011-03-25T17:03:39.930" Score="14" ViewCount="1720" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard on the radio advertisements for a product called the Platinum Fuel Saver, that they claim that if you use it, you will increase fuel efficiency by 25%. What kind of data is there to support this claim. Bonus points if you figure out the cost for the system, including installation, and figure the break even point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="987" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T17:41:12.647" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T17:52:54.410" Title="Platinum fuel saver" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1320" CreationDate="2011-03-25T17:08:44.317" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Devices of this kind are quite common, some have even been featured in episodes of Mythbusters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/tires-auto-parts/car-maintenance/gassaving-devices-904/overview/index.htm&quot;&gt;Consumer Reports article where they tested Platinum Gas Saver&lt;/a&gt; and two other similar products.  The result:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In more than 1,800 miles of driving, our tests showed no overall mileage improvements. In addition to the cost of the Platinum Gas Saver, consumers would have to pay for the oxygen sensors in each vehicle—about $140 for our vehicles—plus a labor charge for the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T17:08:44.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1320" CreationDate="2011-03-25T17:15:00.840" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did a quick look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0017UBUEW&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon&lt;/a&gt; and a few other places on this device.  Both the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/autos/aut10.shtm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EPA&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/tires-auto-parts/car-maintenance/gassaving-devices-904/overview/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Consumer Reports&lt;/a&gt; mark this as a scam device.  Many of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/otaq/consumer/reports.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EPA reports&lt;/a&gt; were &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/otaq/consumer/devices/pb92104413.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;commissioned by the FTC&lt;/a&gt;, and conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EPA judged that there was no technical basis or appropriate test data to support the claims for a fuel economy improvement or emission reduction due to the device. Therefore, EPA issued a report concluding that the device would not have an emission or fuel economy benefit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the claim that it somehow adjust the way your car burns gas is bunk because there is no mechanism to accomplish this.  Modern cars have a computer controlled electronic fuel injection system that will control the fuel to air ratio for optimum performance.  This device is preying on the increase in gas prices and people's natural gullibility.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_saving_devices#MythBusters&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mythbusters&lt;/a&gt; did an episode that showed that these things are scams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The bottom line: The best way to get the best mileage from a tank of gas is to follow the vehicle manufacturer's service schedule and fine-tune your driving habits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And since the device doesn't actually work, for your bonus question, the break even point is never.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T17:52:54.410" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T17:52:54.410" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1244" CreationDate="2011-03-25T17:17:48.807" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;In both physical and mental health terms consuming alcohol is more dangerous than LSD, but if a person is psychologically susceptible to mental illness like psychosis or schizophrenia; taking psychoactive drugs without professional assistance could be harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;«...alcohol was the most harmful drug&#xA;  (overall harm score 72), with heroin&#xA;  (55) and crack (54) in second and&#xA;  third places. Heroin, crack, and&#xA;  crystal meth were the most harmful&#xA;  drugs to the individual, whereas&#xA;  alcohol, heroin, and crack were the&#xA;  most harmful to others. The other&#xA;  drugs assessed followed in this order&#xA;  in terms of overall harm: Crystal meth&#xA;  (33), cocaine (27), tobacco (26),&#xA;  amphetamine/speed (23), cannabis (20),&#xA;  GHB (18), benzodiazepines (eg valium)&#xA;  (15), ketamine (also 15), methadone&#xA;  (14), mephedrone (13), butane (10),&#xA;  khat (9), ecstacy (9), anabolic&#xA;  steroids (9), LSD (7), buprenorphine&#xA;  (6), mushrooms (5).»&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jan van Amsterdam, Wim van den Brink. Ranking of drugs: a more balanced risk-assessment. The Lancet, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(10)62000-4&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imperial College London (2010, November 1). Alcohol 'most harmful drug', according to multicriteria analysis. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 25, 2011, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101101162138.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101101162138.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&amp;amp;q=cache:61IupQYNOvUJ:ww1.cpa-apc.org:8080/Publications/Archives/CJP/2005/june/cjp-june-05-dyck-IR.pdf%20Psychedelic%20psychiatry%20LSD%20and%20War%20II%20medical%20experimentation%20in%20Canada%20filetype:pdf&amp;amp;hl=es&amp;amp;pid=bl&amp;amp;srcid=ADGEESirpJsA0L0gS2dsv5y9SeFwryIn_i8G8St2FjNLUgRmnFxs_iZTENRhXd5Jzo-A24GvsnAKg204DMYu9bMjxyfQfPFop-Xrj-cthNWa0nLK6WeagDaMj3g8ufCjAfw5oTeZEvXd&amp;amp;sig=AHIEtbQfl3amGKszsoXP3q9EC73UPdVNcA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flashback: Psychiatric Experimentation With LSD in Historical Perspective&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited&lt;/strong&gt;: I added sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited&lt;/strong&gt;: Added an article link about LSD overdose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An article about LSD overdose: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pkeqd8/what-happens-lsd-overdose&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This Is What Happens When You Take 550 Doses of LSD At Once&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1075" LastEditorUserId="1075" LastEditDate="2020-02-26T19:28:11.920" LastActivityDate="2020-02-26T19:28:11.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1325" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1330" CreationDate="2011-03-25T17:31:45.353" Score="208" ViewCount="23862" Body="&lt;p&gt;I pop my knuckles fairly frequently, and I have been told on several occasions that doing so is bad for your joints. Is this true? Have there been any medical studies on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="849" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T22:10:28.720" Title="Is popping your knuckles bad for you?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1326" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-25T17:36:34.180" Score="25" ViewCount="4768" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/J7yZc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-is-yawning-contagious-minimyth.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mythbusters&lt;/a&gt; have &quot;&lt;strong&gt;confirmed&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; the contagiousness of yawning between humans and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15820652&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; concludes it may be part of a neural network involved in empathy.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This hypothesis is supported by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100915080427.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;another study&lt;/a&gt; that found that children under the age of 4, and children with autism, are less susceptible to contagious yawning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yawning also seems quite common in the animal kingdom&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/imDwX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and apparently humans can &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7541633.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;infect&quot; dogs&lt;/a&gt; with their yawning, which made me wonder:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is yawning contagious across species?&lt;/strong&gt; Are there studies researching this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T17:58:54.583" LastActivityDate="2016-05-14T19:52:29.653" Title="Is yawning contagious across species?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1327" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1415" CreationDate="2011-03-25T18:05:45.113" Score="22" ViewCount="1425" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a musician, I've had a fair amount of tuition on posture. One in particular, who was teaching &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_technique&quot;&gt;Alexander Technique&lt;/a&gt; said that bad posture could cause seemingly unrelated complaints, as slouching causes extra pressure on the internal organs, interferes with breathing etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can find evidence that good posture helps with back pain, but not for any other problems. Is there any evidence that bad posture can cause other problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T18:27:09.707" LastActivityDate="2022-09-20T20:27:13.810" Title="Is bad posture bad for anything other than your back?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1328" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1335" CreationDate="2011-03-25T18:09:45.277" Score="25" ViewCount="2140" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm seeing some conspiracy theories making the rounds which claim that car-manufacturers are intentionally making cars that aren't as fuel efficient as they used to be. They often point to the Geo Metro and claim it got 50 mpg, which is better than even the modern hybrids. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were cars like the Geo Metro really more fuel efficient than modern cars in the same class, and if so why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/11694.shtml&quot;&gt;1995 Geo Metro Fuel Economy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/29629.shtml&quot;&gt;2010 Toyota Yaris Fuel Economy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/noframes/29593.shtml&quot;&gt;2010 Nissan Sentra Fuel Economy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="770" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2013-12-12T16:56:59.183" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T16:56:59.183" Title="Why do we not have vehicles that meet or exceed the MPG ratings of vehicles that were available in the 1990s" Tags="|united-states|road-vehicles|environment|fossil-fuel|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1304" CreationDate="2011-03-25T18:18:06.407" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this response does not directly answer the question, it may offer some insight into the phenomenon of larger stature within a single group over a period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is well-known that the average height of Dutch people has shot up in the last 60 years, from 5'7&quot; to 6'1&quot; for males and similarly for females.  It is not fully understood why this is true, but there are several theories.  An &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2004-07-04/news/0407040331_1_dutch-american-south-john-komlos&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article in the Chicago Tribune&lt;/a&gt; offers some ideas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;More milk products, smaller families and better hygiene--those are the main reasons why the Dutch have increased in length&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I also think there must be something in our genetic makeup&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;People with better incomes and higher educations are taller. Everywhere and always&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Komlos and other experts believe the answer lies in the uneven distribution of wealth in America and better access to health care in Europe&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;the consensus among experts is that the country's excellent health-care system and a diet heavy on dairy products are the main factors responsible for the Dutch growth spurt&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.suite101.com/content/why-are-the-dutch-so-tall-a55753&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article on Suite 101&lt;/a&gt; offers some more interesting tidbits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a widely accepted evolutionary idea that each generation is fitter and taller than the last. This appears not to be the case at all. In Northern Europe, human height reached a high around 800 A.D., but then dropped to a low in the 17th century before climbing back up again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two main factors seem to have caused this dip. The first was the growth of cities: the more people were clustered together, the less food there was to go round and the faster diseases spread; the second was the drop in global temperatures, during what is known as the Little Ice Age. Findings such as these have made it clear that human height is not just linked to genetics or diet, but is much more sensitive to a range of influences than was previously thought.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;[S]tudies revealed that the Dutch growth spurt of the mid-19th century coincided with the establishment of the first liberal democracy&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/04/05/040405fa_fact?currentPage=all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article from the New Yorker&lt;/a&gt; is linked for your enjoyment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, the shorter stature of the middle ages seems to be caused by: Crowded cities, poor nutrition, colder climate, disparity of wealth between the richest and poorest, and lower education levels.  Hopefully this response is enough to show that &quot;Yes, people &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; were shorter in the middle ages,&quot; and offer plausible clues as to the reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="22367" LastEditDate="2016-01-20T01:43:50.847" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T01:43:50.847" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1325" CreationDate="2011-03-25T18:21:14.403" Score="161" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me like the concern about the negative impact of knuckle cracking brought up in the literature is if it leads to arthritis. Which of course isn't the only harmful thing it could cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://tech.mit.edu/V129/N41/ignobels.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ig Nobel in medicine was in 2009&lt;/a&gt; awarded to Donald L. Unger for research around this very thing. Unger cracked his left hand knuckle systematically for 60 years while leaving his right hand uncracked. Showing that in at least his case it didn't cause any harm. I believe he published his result &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1529-0131%28199805%2941:5%3C949::AID-ART36%3E3.0.CO;2-3/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that there seem to be two larger studies. The first one published in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://bmj.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;British Medical Journal&lt;/a&gt; titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://ard.bmj.com/content/49/5/308&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effect of habitual knuckle cracking on hand function&lt;/a&gt; shown that there are indeed some problems caused by cracking knuckles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To investigate the relation of&#xA;  habitual knuckle cracking to hand&#xA;  function 300 consecutive patients aged&#xA;  45 years or above and without evidence&#xA;  of neuromuscular, inflammatory, or&#xA;  malignant disease were evaluated for&#xA;  the presence of habitual knuckle&#xA;  cracking and hand&#xA;  arthritis/dysfunction. The age and sex&#xA;  distribution of the patients (74&#xA;  habitual knuckle crackers, 226&#xA;  non-knuckle crackers) was similar.&#xA;  There was no increased preponderance&#xA;  of arthritis of the hand in either&#xA;  group; however, &lt;strong&gt;habitual knuckle&#xA;  crackers were more likely to have hand&#xA;  swelling and lower grip strength.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Habitual knuckle cracking was&#xA;  associated with manual labour, biting&#xA;  of the nails, smoking, and drinking&#xA;  alcohol. &lt;strong&gt;It is concluded that habitual&#xA;  knuckle cracking results in functional&#xA;  hand impairment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one, published in The Western Journal of Medicine, titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1129752/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Consequences of Habitual Knuckle Cracking&lt;/a&gt; examined 28 people in a Jewish home for the aged, with an x-ray. It finds no harm:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The data fail to support evidence that&#xA;  knuckle cracking leads to degenerative&#xA;  changes in the metacarpal phalangeal&#xA;  joints in old age. The chief morbid&#xA;  consequence of knuckle cracking would&#xA;  appear to be its annoying effect on&#xA;  the observer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems like the the answer is that there's some harm, but it's probably so negligible it's not worth worrying about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="32124" LastEditDate="2016-12-06T22:10:28.720" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T22:10:28.720" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1128" CreationDate="2011-03-25T18:32:33.737" Score="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've spent a great deal of effort arguing about the moon landing, and done a great deal of research (the google kind, not the graduate kind) into the claims about the moon landing &quot;hoax.&quot; The biggest struggle I've had is that I (obviously) don't possess all the knowledge from every scientist who worked on Apollo, and the person I'm arguing with will normally ask more and more detailed questions until I can't answer them, and they say something like &quot;see? You find out it's a government cover-up if you dig deep enough.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the claims I hear are technical in nature, and are easy to debunk if you can go read about the subject and then follow up with the person (and the person is willing to appeal to fact, which in many cases, is doubtful). Some of the technical claims I hear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;We could never go to the moon, because it's impossible to send a man through the Van Allen belts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;We could never go to the moon because it would take an absurd amount of energy to keep the astronauts warm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;We could never go to the moon because they couldn't take enough oxygen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The president couldn't have made a phone call to Neil Armstrong on the moon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;We couldn't have broadcast footage live from the moon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The flag waved in the wind when they put it on the &quot;moon&quot; and there's no wind on the moon.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It would have been easier and less expensive to use a sound stage on earth, so that's what they did.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these are founded on a misunderstanding of some scientific discipline or the other. Most people don't know that the Van Allen belts aren't made of &quot;radiation,&quot; but high energy charged particles. Or that the astronauts were plenty warm from being in direct sunlight the entire time, and had to keep cool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are supplemented with claims that the US would do &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; to win the space race. Since the technical challenges are insurmountable, it follows that the landings were faked in order to win. Of course, the technical challenges aren't insurmountable -- and the evidence that the moon landings are real is overwhelming. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a few things that I think are very convincing evidence that the moon landings happened:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;independent astronomers the world over tracked the command module on its way to and from the moon (eg., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/space/apollo.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;all the Apollo missions brought back much more lunar material than has ever been found on earth (&lt;a href=&quot;http://planetaryprotection.nasa.gov/missions-past/apollo/&quot;&gt;382 kg&lt;/a&gt;, as opposed to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meteorites.wustl.edu/lunar/moon_meteorites_list_alumina.htm&quot;&gt;50-ish kg found as meteorites&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;the moon rocks were studied by top geologists from all over the world and there are no disputes that they are of lunar origin, and that they didn't fall through the earth's atmosphere unprotected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The oldest moon rocks are around 4.5 &lt;em&gt;billion&lt;/em&gt; years old, approximately the age of the earth itself. These couldn't be found on earth due to plate tectonics happening over the course of its lifetime.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Soviets' Luna 16, 20, and 24 probes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/lroc-20100316-luna.html&quot;&gt;brought back lunar material&lt;/a&gt; and matched the Apollo moon rocks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;the LRO photographed the landing sites, and SELENE mapped the geography of the landing sites and found that it matched the photos taken on the moon (which they could not if the photos were faked). (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_evidence_for_Apollo_Moon_landings#SELENE_photographs&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_evidence_for_Apollo_Moon_landings#New_lunar_missions&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;the video footage of the moon landings is consistent with a low gravity environment in a vacuum, and would have been impossible to film on earth in the 60's and 70's.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;there are mountains and mountains of evidence, and yet nobody of reputable scientific background has been able to disprove that we went to the moon. Indeed, not one shred of evidence has been disproved -- all claims that I have heard about the footage and pictures are easily explained and do not contradict the evidence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastEditorUserId="10" LastEditDate="2011-05-15T08:25:33.263" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T08:25:33.263" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1333" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1337" CreationDate="2011-03-25T18:48:47.453" Score="22" ViewCount="3477" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is sometimes heard that automobile manufacturers design low-quality parts that wear out or break easily, so that they can make money on the repair or replacement of these parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this to be true, and not just limited to automobile manufacturers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1080" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-26T22:18:00.517" LastActivityDate="2017-12-01T13:48:38.363" Title="Do automobile manufacturers make parts wear out and break easily, just so they can make more money?" Tags="|economics|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1328" CreationDate="2011-03-25T19:02:35.353" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are always outliers, but there is a standard in place for the US called CAFE (and a stricter standard in Europe) which requires the Corporate Average Fleet Economy to meet a minimum. Passenger cars are in a single category, and the standard for 2011 is 30mpg. 1995 was 27. There is a fine which manufacturers must pay if their fleet average falls below this requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/cafe/FuelEconUpdates/2003/index.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/cafe/FuelEconUpdates/2003/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="482" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T19:02:35.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1328" CreationDate="2011-03-25T19:15:57.990" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few things at work here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Safety requirements and standards are much more strict now than they were 10, 15, or 20 years ago.  These added components (such as ABS, etc) along with modern luxuries (such as power steering, etc) have added a lot of weight to modern cars.  The Geo Metro you reference had a curb weight of just &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.internetautoguide.com/13-12-1995-30-908/1995-geo-metro-specifications.html&quot;&gt;820kg&lt;/a&gt; (about 1800 lbs), while the Yaris has a curb weight of 2311 lbs.  That's a difference of 28.3%!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The EPA changed the standard way to estimate fuel economy in 2008.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/ratings2008.shtml&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a summary.  The standards are now more strict, so I believe every estimate dropped when these went into effect.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the fuel economy in general has gone down to make room for better performance as well, but I think that impact is minimal compared to the 2 items above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just for fun here is a link suggesting the opposite.  They managed to average 48.5 MPG with the 2011 V6 Ford Mustang (this was not an EPA rating, but a test track rating, of course).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/daily-news/100625-2011-Ford-Mustang-V6-Nets-48-5-MPG-in-Track-Test/&quot;&gt;http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/daily-news/100625-2011-Ford-Mustang-V6-Nets-48-5-MPG-in-Track-Test/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastEditorUserId="1081" LastEditDate="2011-03-25T19:22:55.427" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T19:22:55.427" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1333" CreationDate="2011-03-25T19:37:14.150" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this phenomenon is explained by a simple economic rationale:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manufacturers compete on price, but have to control quality to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.safermotoring.co.uk/CarSafetyFeaturesCategory.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;chosen&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_emissions_control&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fixed&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.euroncap.com/home.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;standard&lt;/a&gt;. For example, it's extremely rare to buy a new car that doesn't start. Cars are clearly quality checked for safety and their parts are made to last at least as long an the warranty. A company would lose money otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The final step is inspection of the completed cars. Each car undergoes strict inspections of 1,500 to 2,000 different things to make sure the brakes, windshield wipers, lights, and other parts work.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Only after the car passes all inspections is it shipped to the customer.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toyota.co.jp/en/kids/car/inspection.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, given a set quality, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/competition/sectors/motor_vehicles/prices/report.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the competition is on price&lt;/a&gt;. Manufacturers will tend to use pieces that are good enough to last, but mostly cheap - cheaper than the competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, in a way you are right, using cheap parts they compete better so they make more money than otherwise - however I would say they are pushed by economic forces and not mere greed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it just as clear that they use all available dirty tricks, like seriously overcharging for parts (one front lamp 400€?), in the &lt;em&gt;after market&lt;/em&gt;. This is where there is basically no competition pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The European Commission’s latest report on car prices shows that prices fell slightly, in real terms, in the European Union in 2009 and also converged within the EU's single market. At the same time &lt;strong&gt;prices for repair and maintenance services as well as spare parts continued to rise well above inflation confirming the need for the stricter competition&lt;/strong&gt; rules in place for the sector since the 1st of June.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/10/913&amp;amp;format=HTML&amp;amp;aged=0&amp;amp;language=EN&amp;amp;guiLanguage=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-10-12T15:31:04.510" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T15:31:04.510" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1338" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1452" CreationDate="2011-03-25T20:22:28.810" Score="12" ViewCount="19713" Body="&lt;p&gt;People wearing copper jewellery quite often have black/green/dark blue stains on wrists and fingers. Articles like &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150506072217/http://www.energyrings.com:80/green.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Copper Jewelry &amp;amp; Green Skin&lt;/a&gt; say that these stains are related to a person's metabolism, and appear because of stress, unhealthy diet, lack of minerals, etc. They also claim that copper bracelets are a remedy for arthritis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard that the colour and darkness of the stains accurately shows what kind of illness you have or what kind of nutrition your body lacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true? Can a perfectly healthy person have stains as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-05-04T13:23:03.973" LastActivityDate="2023-08-30T16:34:57.363" Title="Do copper jewellery stains indicate illness?" Tags="|medical-science|chemistry|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1311" CreationDate="2011-03-25T20:36:53.443" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One popular explanation is that near-death experiences are due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyltryptamine&quot;&gt;Dimethyltryptamine&lt;/a&gt; (DMT), a psychedelic drug produced natually, in small amounts, in the brain.  It is speculated that large amounts of DMT are released during near-death experiences, though I don't know of any studies that confirm this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. Rick Strassman, while conducting DMT research in the 1990s at the University of New Mexico, advanced the hypothesis that a massive release of DMT from the pineal gland prior to death or near death was the cause of the near death experience (NDE) phenomenon. Several of his test subjects reported NDE-like audio or visual hallucinations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, this brain-chemical is also hypothesized to be the cause of alien abductions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several subjects also reported contact with 'other beings', alien like, insectoid or reptilian in nature, in highly advanced technological environments where the subjects were 'carried', 'probed', 'tested', 'manipulated', 'dismembered', 'taught', 'loved' and even 'raped' by these beings&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastActivityDate="2011-03-25T20:36:53.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1342" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1343" CreationDate="2011-03-25T22:42:34.087" Score="15" ViewCount="1285" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm freezing my hands giving out fliers, I have to wonder: Am I actually making an impact? Are there specific forms of activism which are more effective than others? Does it just preach to the choir? We know that people almost never change their behavior, so my gut feeling is that activism is largely useless, but a google scholar search didn't turn up much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT&lt;/em&gt;: To make this more specific, I will rephrase: &quot;If I hand someone a flier, what is the likelihood they will change their behavior based on me having given them that flier?&quot; A hypothetical experiment: you're in a cafeteria and you give half the people a pamphlet saying that meat is bad. What fraction of each group (pamphlet and non-pamphlet) order veggie burgers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://philosophyforprogrammers.blogspot.com/2011/02/environmental-activism-is-broken.html&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt; which lands on the more skeptical side of things. Evidence like that contained in that post (e.g. &quot;environmental sentiment has no relationship with how frequently people recycle&quot;) is the kind of thing I'm looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-30T13:18:52.903" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T13:18:52.903" Title="Is Activism Effective?" Tags="|politics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1342" CreationDate="2011-03-25T23:02:35.627" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The precise effects of a campaign will undoubtedly depend upon the nature of the activist movement and the specific operations by which it challenges society to reform. But consider the recent popular uprisings across the world (notably in many cases organized in part via social networks.) A mass mobilization or revolution only seems impossible until it has arrived at your doorstep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite possibly many if not most people are going to drop your email or flier in the trash, perhaps after a brief glance. So it is important for activists not to be discouraged or personally wounded by the indifference of society at large or the man in the street. After all, it is not your fault, and is in a way why activists' movements exist in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we were not so indifferent to repression, violence, poverty, and so on, then &lt;em&gt;there would be no need for activism&lt;/em&gt;, or any work related to shattering indifference and &quot;selfism,&quot; whether that is in the form of sexism, racism, capitalism or 'wealthism', or anthropocentrism in the context of animal rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general I think throwing blood at people is probably not the best way to recruit compatriots to your cause. Even though the percentage of people drawn in by a flier or email may be low, spread around enough of them and suddenly a bunch of interested people will be joining in whatever you are planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gas.sagepub.com/content/13/1/56.short&quot;&gt;Here is a paper&lt;/a&gt; which appears to take up the question of social activism from the standpoint of outcomes. &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.80.6835&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot;&gt;This paper suggests&lt;/a&gt; that audience involvement is critical to responding positively to an advertising campaign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="187" LastEditorUserId="187" LastEditDate="2011-03-27T23:06:36.667" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T23:06:36.667" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1348" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1380" CreationDate="2011-03-26T01:31:09.683" Score="22" ViewCount="4372" Body="&lt;p&gt;UFO theorists claim that there are US laws preventing people from investigating or contacting aliens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &quot;Alien Contact Laws- $5,000 Fine And Imprisonment&quot; at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unexplainable.net/artman/publish/article_223.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.unexplainable.net/artman/publish/article_223.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Already Passed by Congress On October&#xA;  5, 1982, Dr. Brain T. Clifford of the&#xA;  Pentagon announced at a press&#xA;  conference (&quot;The Star&quot;, New York, Oct.&#xA;  5, 1982) that contact between U.S.&#xA;  citizens and extra-terrestrials or&#xA;  their vehicles is strictly illegal.&#xA;  According to a law already on the&#xA;  books  (Title 14, Section 1211 of the&#xA;  Code of Federal Regulations, adopted&#xA;  on July 16, 1969, before the Apollo&#xA;  moon shots), anyone guilty of such&#xA;  contact automatically becomes a wanted&#xA;  criminal to be jailed for one year and&#xA;  fined $5,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &#xA;&quot;UFO theorists gain support abroad, but repression at home&quot;&#xA;at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc598.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc598.htm&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;we have this claim of censorship regulations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the US military is concerned about&#xA;  UFOs, it is not saying so publicly.&#xA;  Indeed, the French report chastises&#xA;  the United States for what it calls an&#xA;  ''impressive repressive arsenal'' on&#xA;  the subject, including a policy of&#xA;  disinformation and military&#xA;  regulations prohibiting public&#xA;  disclosure of UFO sightings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Air Force Regulation 200-2,&#xA;  ''Unidentified Flying Objects&#xA;  Reporting,'' for example, prohibits&#xA;  the release to the public and the&#xA;  media of any data about ''those&#xA;  objects which are not explainable.''&#xA;  An even more restrictive procedure is&#xA;  outlined in the Joint Army Navy Air&#xA;  Force Publication 146, which threatens&#xA;  to prosecute anyone under its&#xA;  jurisdiction - including pilots,&#xA;  civilian agencies, merchant marine&#xA;  captains, and even some fishing&#xA;  vessels - for disclosing reports of&#xA;  sightings relevant to US security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/B2snT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image borrowed from area51.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Picture credit:  area51.stackexchange.com server error page&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there evidence that these, or similar laws or regulations exist?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Is it specifically illegal to investigate a crashed spaceship yourself, chat with the occupants, or discuss such a &quot;genuine&quot; event with others?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2011-04-04T09:28:23.813" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T01:57:14.140" Title="Are there public laws dealing with extraterrestrial contact?" Tags="|law|aliens|ufo|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1326" CreationDate="2011-03-26T02:07:03.900" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Three things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Current research shows that yawn contagiousness in humans is related to empathy (and is a partial explanation as to why young children are not affected, and why the yawner doesn't even need to be alive [cartoons yawning for example].&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&#xA;http://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/behavior/contagious-yawn.htm&#xA;http://news.discovery.com/human/yawning-social-behavior.html&#xA;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Corrolation != causation, nor does a tiny bit of empirical evidence prove anything (and does not count as an experiment)&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Please; never confuse mythbusters with having anything to do with the scientific method on a regular basis&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said. Humans tend to &quot;catch&quot; yawns from other species, and other higher level species seem to &quot;catch&quot; yawns from humans. This has not been shown to work on lower animal species such as cats/dogs/turtles/fish/whatever. Strangely, this behaviour doesn't stand out within a species (dogs yawn when other dogs yawn).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short...there is no evidence to support an answer one way or another. Even in humans only 40%-60% (at best) find a yawn to be contagious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1110" LastEditorUserId="1110" LastEditDate="2011-09-07T00:39:52.287" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T00:39:52.287" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1338" CreationDate="2011-03-26T02:13:13.743" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A perfectly healthy person can have stains since they sweat. Look up &amp;quot;oxidation&amp;quot;. (It isn't just copper, but also silver [non-sterling], or most plated jewelry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The oxidized metals will stain just about anyting they touch. Green is a typical color of copper oxidation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160309205355/http://www.corrosionist.com/why_does_copper_turn_green.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why Does Copper turn green?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copper turn green when exposed to the atmosphere due to the reaction with Oxygen. The reaction takes place when water, moisture condensation or rain, in which oxygen is dissolved is in contact with copper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1110" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-05-04T13:26:22.490" LastActivityDate="2022-05-04T13:26:22.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1328" CreationDate="2011-03-26T03:07:31.033" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another possibile explanation for the perception (not for any statistics on performance) is a general shift in the way people drive. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermiling&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hypermilers&lt;/a&gt;&quot; intentionally drive in ways that are proven to improve fuel efficiency. (Going slower, planning ahead to use the brakes less, etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any evidence to support this, but my own subjective observation is that in general there seem to be a higher percentage of aggressive drivers today than there were ten years ago. There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/pdfs/OwnerRelatedFuelEconomyImprovements.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a lot of evidence&lt;/a&gt;[PDF-FuelEconomy.gov] to support the idea that agressive driving has negative effects on fuel efficiency. &quot;Hypomilers&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At higher speeds, typical of urban expressway driving, however, the fuel economy penalty of aggressive driving is both significant in magnitude and more consistent across all cars. The average car is likely to experience a penalty of 33 percent, with more powerful cars experiencing a somewhat lower penalty of about 28 percent. Hence the impact of agressive driving seems to be especially large at high speeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1114" LastEditorUserId="1114" LastEditDate="2011-03-27T13:45:16.087" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T13:45:16.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1355" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1356" CreationDate="2011-03-26T05:59:49.703" Score="52" ViewCount="7258" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/40644.html&quot;&gt;Politico Article&lt;/a&gt; dated 8/5/10 the results of a poll taken on President Obama are discussed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The poll of 1,018 adults shows &lt;strong&gt;27&#xA;  percent of Americans believe the&#xA;  president was “probably” or&#xA;  “definitely” born in another country&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;  compared with 71 percent who think he&#xA;  was born in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So 1 in 4 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_of_the_United_States&quot;&gt;Americans&lt;/a&gt; do not believe that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama&quot;&gt;President Obama&lt;/a&gt; is really a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_born_citizen&quot;&gt;natural born citizen&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to back up the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birther&quot;&gt;Birther claims&lt;/a&gt; that Obama is not a natural born citizen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fZUD7.jpg&quot; width=&quot;300&quot; height=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-04-04T23:04:55.467" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T07:25:54.840" Title="Is Barack Obama a natural born US citizen?" Tags="|politics|united-states|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1355" CreationDate="2011-03-26T06:10:34.137" Score="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;One piece of evidence is the &lt;strong&gt;long-form&lt;/strong&gt; birth certificate showing that Barack Obama was born in Honolulu on Hawaii:   (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/27/president-obamas-long-form-birth-certificate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;long-form on whitehouse.gov in PDF format&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oR9sx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reissued &lt;strong&gt;short-form&lt;/strong&gt; birth certificate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cSerK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find a detailed examination of the birth certificate on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factcheck.org/2008/08/born-in-the-usa/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Factcheck.org&lt;/a&gt;. They conclude in their investigation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FactCheck.org staffers have now seen,&#xA;  touched, examined and photographed the&#xA;  original birth certificate. We&#xA;  conclude that it meets all of the&#xA;  requirements from the State Department&#xA;  for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims&#xA;  that the document lacks a raised seal&#xA;  or a signature are false. We have&#xA;  posted high-resolution photographs of&#xA;  the document as &quot;supporting documents&quot;&#xA;  to this article. Our conclusion: Obama&#xA;  was born in the U.S.A. just as he has&#xA;  always said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The director of Hawaii’s Department of Health, Chiyome Fukino, also confirmed that the certificate is genuine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of&#xA;  the Hawai'i State Department of&#xA;  Health, have seen the original vital&#xA;  records maintained on file by the&#xA;  Hawai'i State Department of Health&#xA;  verifying Barack Hussein Obama was&#xA;  born in Hawai'i and is a natural-born&#xA;  American citizen,&quot; Fukino said in a&#xA;  statement. &quot;I have nothing further to&#xA;  add to this statement or my original&#xA;  statement issued in October 2008, over&#xA;  eight months ago.&quot;&#xA;  -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2009/Jul/28/ln/hawaii907280345.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Barack Obama birth announcement, published in The Honolulu Advertiser on Aug. 13, 1961:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FsRe4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;newspaper clipping of Obama&amp;#39;s birth&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="21963" LastEditDate="2017-01-12T07:25:54.840" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T07:25:54.840" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1319" CreationDate="2011-03-26T09:31:22.650" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; know of evolutionary biologists who have repeated this claim, e.g. Dawkins (in &lt;em&gt;The God Delusion&lt;/em&gt;). But he could have repeated Sagan’s idea. The problem with these kinds of ideas is that they are very hard to test empirically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evolutionary stories like this go by the term of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;just-so story&lt;/a&gt;: they are very compelling, plausible, &lt;em&gt;probably even true&lt;/em&gt; but we have no good way of telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jerry Coyne occasionally talks about research suffering from this fallacy on his blog. For example, here’s his take on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/01/20/the-women-of-slate-take-on-evolutionary-psychology/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;genetic “rape kit” of ovulating women&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between these two examples is of course that the latter has demonstrable weaknesses while the former, as I’ve mentioned, &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; very compelling. In another example, he talks about &lt;a href=&quot;http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/evolutionary-psychology-the-adaptive-significance-of-semen-flavor/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;why sperm tastes bad&lt;/a&gt; – once again, the rationale is actually very compelling, makes sense from an evolutionary advantage point of view, and is probably even true. But there are no predictions that can be tested experimentally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, a lot of the evolutionary psychology field currently falls into this category which has led a lot of people to conclude that the whole field is bunkum. But that’s throwing the baby out with the bath water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T09:31:22.650" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1319" CreationDate="2011-03-26T12:18:56.560" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Type I errors&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (false positives), like pareidolia, can indeed be helpful to survival. Mistaking a stick for snake won't do you harm, but mistaking a snake for a stick could mean death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz-LsBpwVw8&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a talk &lt;strong&gt;Dylan Evans&lt;/strong&gt; gave, titled &quot;&lt;em&gt;Born to Believe&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. He hypothesizes apophenia (pareidolia) might underlie our tendency to be religious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xrWqsLHd2M&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is a short video where &lt;strong&gt;Richard Dawkins&lt;/strong&gt; talks about B.F. Skinner's &lt;strong&gt;superstitious pigeons&lt;/strong&gt; experiment: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All wild animals have to be kind of&#xA;  natural statisticians, looking for&#xA;  patterns in the apparent randomness of&#xA;  nature when they are looking for food&#xA;  or trying to avoid predators. There&#xA;  are two kinds of mistake they can&#xA;  make: they can either fail to detect&#xA;  pattern when there is some, or they&#xA;  can seem to detect pattern when there&#xA;  isn't any, and that's superstition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dylan Evans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Natural selection has favoured a brain&#xA;  that tends towards type I errors&#xA;  rather than type II errors. It may be&#xA;  better to be superstitious than to&#xA;  miss genuine causal patterns that are&#xA;  there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Also from Dylan Evans' talk (referencing one of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2589-paranormal-beliefs-linked-to-brain-chemistry.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Peter Brugger&lt;/strong&gt;'s studies&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Believers in the paranormal are more likely than skeptics to see faces that&#xA;  aren't there&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Skeptics are more likely to miss real faces (type II error, false&#xA;  negative)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-dopa&quot;&gt;L-dopa&lt;/a&gt; (dopamine) makes skeptics less skeptical&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;And sometimes, when a machine (e.g. computer, car, soda machine,...) doesn't work properly people talk to it, or curse/shout at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dylan Evans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On some level we all know that's&#xA;  silly. But that fact that we so&#xA;  readily do it suggests that even&#xA;  people who are clearly aware that&#xA;  these [machines] are not alive can't&#xA;  help but treat them as if they are,&#xA;  even if it's just as a joke. Which may&#xA;  be due to a more powerful force that&#xA;  underlies our original tendencies to&#xA;  attribute spirits to rivers, mountains&#xA;  and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while the origin of pareidolia/apophenia is not answered, this phemonenon might indeed be &quot;hardwired&quot; into our brain. I'm very interested in the answers of others on this subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;On a more humorous note, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8-8WJxA-cI&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is David Mitchell and Robert Webb's answer to &quot;religious pareidolia&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-12-05T12:43:50.297" LastActivityDate="2011-12-05T12:43:50.297" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1355" CreationDate="2011-03-26T12:43:49.193" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the constitution does state that to be president, one must be a &quot;natural born citizen&quot;, it in NO WAY defines what that term means.  So we are left with something of a legal void.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the Part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode08/usc_sec_08_00001401----000-.html&quot;&gt;U.S. Code&lt;/a&gt; that address this.  His mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, being born in Kansas, was a natural born citizen (I don't believe there is any question on that point). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section (e) of the code above stats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(e) a person born in an outlying possession of the United States of parents one of whom is a citizen of the United States who has been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for a continuous period of one year at any time prior to the birth of such person; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, regardless of where he was born (Hawaii or Kenya as some have claimed but provided little if any evidence), he is a citizen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the U.S. Title only states that &quot;The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth&quot;, and does not use the phrase &quot;natural born&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no final, legal definition even today on what &quot;Natural Born Citizen&quot; means, according to legal professor &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/04/20/chin.natural.born/index.html&quot;&gt;Gabriel &quot;Jack&quot; Chin&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the text of the&#xA;  Constitution does not define natural&#xA;  born citizenship, and neither the&#xA;  Supreme Court nor Congress has weighed&#xA;  in on the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastEditorUserId="681" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T15:42:57.187" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T15:42:57.187" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1366" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1370" CreationDate="2011-03-26T15:07:41.590" Score="21" ViewCount="1763" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common myth says that drug dealers make drug-laced candies or pills and give them off to children outside schools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Examples of the drug-mixing strategy also include candy laced with marijuana and, in several states, flavored methamphetamine. In Arkansas recently, a mix of meth and strawberry-flavored powder normally used to create a children's milk drink turned up under the name &quot;Strawberry Quick.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-08-drug-dealers-youth_N.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But many many other examples can be found in TV series' &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VerySpecialEpisode&quot;&gt;&quot;drug episodes&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, especially in the 70's and 80's TV family shows like &quot;Eight is enough&quot;, &quot;Family Ties&quot; or &quot;Different strokes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; recorded case of drug dealers pushing drugs outside schools and being successful on getting kids hooked? Is there any scientific basis at all?  Or is it just &quot;war on drugs&quot; propaganda preying on parents' fears?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:48:42.477" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:48:42.477" Title="Kindergarten drug dealers" Tags="|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1367" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1378" CreationDate="2011-03-26T15:33:18.533" Score="74" ViewCount="7418" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently surprised to learn that many Americans have been circumcised even though their parents had no religious motivation to go through with it. This in strong contrast with my home country where doctors are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelocal.se/26350/20100429/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;frequently&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelocal.se/20900/20090725/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;refuse to perform the procedure&lt;/a&gt; even for religious reasons. The number of circumcised men in America is over 50% according a page I found that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cirp.org/library/statistics/USA/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tracks circumcision rate in the US&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XGdaR.png&quot; alt=&quot;circumcision rate in America&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These seem to be primary motivators for circumcision for non-religious reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's cleaner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's healthier.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It leads for increased feeling and better sex for men.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fear of their child being alienated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much credibility do these have, are there other non-religious motivators and do the benefits really out weight the downsides and the risk of surgery?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-27T14:14:01.243" LastActivityDate="2021-08-28T23:46:53.443" Title="Does circumcision lead to a net increase in quality of life?" Tags="|medical-science|circumcision|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1368" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1376" CreationDate="2011-03-26T15:45:41.267" Score="147" ViewCount="24140" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been a lot of claims made about the circumstances surrounding the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks&quot;&gt;events of 9/11&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Trade_Center_controlled_demolition_conspiracy_theories#7_World_Trade_Center&quot;&gt;Building 7 in particular&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The central claim regarding &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_World_Trade_Center&quot;&gt;Building 7&lt;/a&gt;, that I have heard personally, is that Building 7 fell in such a perfect fluid motion that its collapse had to be due to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_demolition&quot;&gt;controlled demolition&lt;/a&gt;.  Furthermore since Building 7 wasn't hit by a plane directly, it is claimed that there can be no other explanation for how the building collapsed in such a seemingly controlled fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support the claims that Building 7 was destroyed in a directly controlled fashion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fR5NN.jpg&quot; width=&quot;210&quot; height=&quot;180&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TkfWP.jpg&quot; width=&quot;210&quot; height=&quot;180&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2015-05-24T13:23:27.180" LastActivityDate="2022-12-01T08:29:35.937" Title="On 9/11, was Building 7 destroyed in a controlled explosion?" Tags="|politics|9-11|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1366" CreationDate="2011-03-26T17:32:52.067" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did a quick Google search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/horrors/drugs/candymeth.asp&quot;&gt;2007 snopes.com&lt;/a&gt; article about it, claiming that while there definitely is brightly colored meth, nobody official verifies the flavor, and there is no evidence it's intended for young children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=2990334&amp;amp;page=1&quot;&gt;ABC News article from 2007&lt;/a&gt; provides testimony from a former meth user that meth can be flavored, but that drug rehabilitation centers in three states reported no reports of such meth.  The idea that it was intended for young children is attributed to a law enforcement official, but no actual evidence is provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at more articles, I find a complete lack of evidence, although a lot of suspicion, that the fancy drugs are marketed to young children.  I found one case of a teenager using something like strawberry meth, but it's unclear to me if the teenager started on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newspapers tend to present evidence if they have it, and I'm not finding it.  I think that, if any drug dealer had been caught trying to sell this stuff to a young child, there'd be a mention in one of the articles.  It's clear that colored and flavored meth exists, but the idea that it's targetted at young children seems speculative at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T17:32:52.067" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1367" CreationDate="2011-03-26T18:07:41.770" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is certainly &lt;strong&gt;not a clear advantage&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such widespread circumcision of babies &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;can only be found&lt;/a&gt; in the United States and Canada&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, out of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;G8 countries&lt;/a&gt;. All other G8 countries - which have good, equal or better, health care systems with respect to the United States and Canada, do not practice it as a norm, or actively discourage it. They do practice circumcision for more serious (real?) health concerns, obviously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Muslim Europe, Africa and Asia, there is a much higher prevalence, but this is due to religious practice and not medical concerns. India and China do not practice it.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tBQGd.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this data is &lt;a href=&quot;http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2007/9789241596169_eng.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;made available&lt;/a&gt; by the WHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that if the debate in the US has settled on &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision#United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;there are pros and cons&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, in Europe the debate goes from &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision#United_Kingdom&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;it is acceptable for 'ritual' reasons&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision#Netherlands&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;it should be banned as genital maiming&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;. It is unclear though whether there are any particular side-effects, besides the unavoidable risks of performing a surgical operation on a baby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question more directly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no clear-cut balance between circumcision being ultimately positive or negative. Different health organizations have very different opinions on this, even comparing only similar countries in terms of GDP and health standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As such, it &lt;strong&gt;cannot&lt;/strong&gt; be said with any confidence that there is a net increase in quality of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If there &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; such an obvious objective assessment (think for example of antibiotics), the use would be generally recommended by all health systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1: Only the English speaking provinces of Canada.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2021-08-28T23:46:53.443" LastActivityDate="2021-08-28T23:46:53.443" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1373" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-26T19:22:56.107" Score="17" ViewCount="934" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the Wikipedia article &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_illusion&quot;&gt;Moon illusion&lt;/a&gt;, it has apparently been &quot;proven&quot; that the moon's larger appearance at the horizon is, indeed, an illusion, and not a magnification of some kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think we can accept this proof, since (as pointed out by the comments and the Wikipedia article) there are several very straightforward ways to verify this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In spite of this, there is still disagreement about what causes this illusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the real reason?  A quick Google search pulls up a few articles &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/831/why-does-the-moon-appear-bigger-near-the-horizon&quot;&gt;like this one&lt;/a&gt; that tend to rely entirely on their own explanation on not on any studies or external evidence whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1073" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2011-06-25T01:34:34.320" LastActivityDate="2019-03-20T13:55:38.377" Title="What is the reason that the moon appears larger on the horizon?" Tags="|moon|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1374" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1398" CreationDate="2011-03-26T19:24:13.560" Score="17" ViewCount="6147" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read that eating more alkaline foods and changing your pH balance reduces stress and anxiety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stylelist.com/2010/01/22/eat-a-lemon-feel-less-stressed/&quot;&gt;Eat a Lemon, Feel Less Stressed&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stephanie McClellan, MD, and Beth Hamilton, MD, the authors of &lt;a href=&quot;http://sostressedonline.com/&quot;&gt;So Stressed&lt;/a&gt;, The Ultimate Stress-Relief Plan for Women, say that when the body is stressed on a cellular level it becomes acidic. So to counter that and even out your pH levels -- which makes your body better able to absorb nutrients and expel toxins -- you'll need to eat alkaline foods and avoid acidic ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research to support this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="854" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T07:57:45.940" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T07:57:45.940" Title="Does changing your pH balance change your mood?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|psychology|alkaline-diet|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1368" CreationDate="2011-03-26T20:32:56.177" Score="208" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fires ignited by falling debris (from WTC 1) are the sole cause of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_World_Trade_Center#The_original_7_World_Trade_Center_.281983.E2.80.932001.29&quot;&gt;WTC 7&lt;/a&gt; collapse.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Short answer:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Debris from the collapse of WTC 1, about 350 ft. to the south,&#xA;impacted WTC 7, igniting fires on at least 10 floors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other than starting the fires, the debris impacts were not a&#xA;contributing factor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fires on six of those floors grew from the time of the debris&#xA;impact (10:28:22 a.m.) and lasted until the building collapsed&#xA;(5:20:52 p.m.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After several hours, the heat absorption ability of the&#xA;fire-proofing began to fail. The building's structural steel began to&#xA;soak up heat from the fires.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A ''seated connection'' was used for some of the girders framed to&#xA;interior columns. The girder was held by four &quot;erection&#xA;bolts&quot; (''girders'' span between columns; ''beams'' span&#xA;between girders).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A 13.7 m (540 in.) long W33x130 beam heated uniformly to 600&amp;nbsp;°C will&#xA;expand along its length by 4.5 inches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In doing so it will produce a lateral force of 6.9 million pounds&#xA;(30.7 million newtons).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The four erection bolts resisting this force had a total shear&#xA;capacity of 0.180 million pounds (i.e., 2.6 percent of the possible&#xA;force).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By the time the girders reached 164&amp;nbsp;°C the four bolts had failed&#xA;(i.e., torn in two, ripped apart, cleaved in twain, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With the failure of the bolted connection, further thermal&#xA;expansion of the floor beams pushed a 13&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; floor girder,&#xA;between Columns 79 and 44, off its seat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The flooring system on Floor 13 subsequently failed, collapsing&#xA;onto the floors below, resulting in the collapse of floors 12 through 6.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The floor collapse left more than 150 ft. of Column 79 without&#xA;lateral support.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Without structure transferring load laterally, Column 79 buckled&#xA;and failed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The transfer of load, once supported by Column 79, overwhelmed the&#xA;structural capacity of the other columns. They too failed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After burning for 6 hours and 52 minutes, WTC 7 suffered a&#xA;fire-induced progressive collapse. The building was completely&#xA;destroyed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Long answer:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;1. Erection bolts are not structural connections&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a seated connection, the beam or girder was supported by the seat,&#xA;  which was welded to the column. Bolts were installed that fasten the&#xA;  beam or girder to the seat for erection purposes These erection bolts&#xA;  did not carry any gravity load; rather, they were installed to insure&#xA;  that the beam or girder was held in place during erection. NIST found&#xA;  no evidence that the girders or beams in WTC 7 were welded to the&#xA;  seats. In a similar way. an angle or plate was bolted to the top&#xA;  flange to prevent the beam or girder from twisting, but there was&#xA;  little restraint to bending in the plane of the beam.&#xA;  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2SY92.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;NCSTAR 1-9 Figure 8-21 Page 349&quot;&gt;&#xA;  Consider the girder that spanned between Column 79 on the interior of&#xA;  the building and Column 44 on the exterior. Thermal expansion of this&#xA;  girder would have loaded the erection bolts in shear, since (1) there&#xA;  were no shear studs anchoring the girder to the slab (and thereby&#xA;  restraining elongation), and (2) the columns were prevented from&#xA;  lateral movement because they were embedded in the floor slabs which&#xA;  had considerable in-plane stiffness. Additionally, the expansion of&#xA;  floor beams that framed into this girder, because the framing was&#xA;  asymmetrical, tended to add additional shear load to the erection&#xA;  bolts. The combination of these two shear loads could have failed the&#xA;  bolts in shear. If the erection bolts were to fail, then there would&#xA;  be no positive attachment preventing the girder from being pushed off&#xA;  the seat. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=861611&quot;&gt;(NCSTAR 1-9) VOLUMES 1 and 2&lt;/a&gt;, page 348.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2. Thermal expansion will break stuff&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first failures observed were of the shear studs, which were&#xA;  produced by axial expansion of the floor beams, and which began to&#xA;  occur at fairly low beam temperature of 103&amp;nbsp;°C. Axial expansion of the&#xA;  girder then led to shear failure of the bolts at the connection to&#xA;  Column 79; and, at a girder temperature of 164&amp;nbsp;°C, all four erection&#xA;  bolts had failed, leaving that end of the girder essentially&#xA;  unrestrained against rotation. Continued axial expansion of the floor&#xA;  beams pushed the girder laterally at Column 79, as shown in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NIST_NCSTAR_1-9_Figure_8-26_Page_354.png&quot;&gt;Figure&#xA;  8-26&lt;/a&gt;, in which failed shear studs and bolts were evident. When the&#xA;  beam temperatures had reached 300&amp;nbsp;°C, all but three shear studs in the&#xA;  model had failed due to axial expansion of the beams, leaving the top&#xA;  flanges of the beams essentially unrestrained laterally. Continued&#xA;  axial expansion of the girder caused it to bear against the face of&#xA;  Column 79, generating large axial forces that led to failure of the&#xA;  bolts connecting the girder to Column 44. When the girder temperature&#xA;  had reached 398&amp;nbsp;°C, all four erection bolts at Column 44 had failed,&#xA;  leaving the girder essentially unrestrained against rotation at both&#xA;  ends. After failure of the erection bolts in the seat at Column 44,&#xA;  continued axial expansion of the floor beams pushed the girder&#xA;  laterally, where it came to bear against the inside of the column&#xA;  flange. Axial compression then increased in the floor beams, and at a&#xA;  beam temperature of 436&amp;nbsp;°C, the northmost beam began to buckle&#xA;  laterally. Buckling of other floor beams followed as shown in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NIST_NCSTAR_1-9_Figure_8-27a_Page_354.png&quot;&gt;Figure&#xA;  8-27(a)&lt;/a&gt;, leading to collapse of the floor system, and rocking of the&#xA;  girder off its seat at Column 79 as shown in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NIST_NCSTAR_1-9_Figure_8-27b_Page_354.png&quot;&gt;Figure 8-27(b)&lt;/a&gt;. The&#xA;  collapse process took time to occur in the LS-DYNA analysis, during&#xA;  which the temperatures had ramped up to their maximum values in the&#xA;  simulation. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=861611&quot;&gt;(NCSTAR 1-9) VOLUMES 1 and 2&lt;/a&gt;, page 352.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;3. Collapse Initiation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The simple shear connection between Column 79 and the girder that&#xA;  spanned the distance to the north face (to Column 44) failed on Floor&#xA;  13. The connection failed due to shearing of erection bolts, caused by lateral thermal expansion of floor beams supporting the northeast&#xA;  floor system and, to a lesser extent, by the thermal expansion of the&#xA;  girder connecting Columns 79 and 44. Further thermal expansion of the&#xA;  floor beams pushed the girder off its seat, which led to the failure&#xA;  of the floor system surrounding Column 79 on Floor 13. The collapse of&#xA;  Floor 13 onto the floors below-some of which were already weakened by&#xA;  fires-triggered a cascade of floor failures in the northeast region.&#xA;  This, in turn, led to loss of lateral support to Column 79 in the&#xA;  east-west direction over nine stories (between Floors 5 and 14). The&#xA;  increase in unsupported length led to the buckling failure of Column&#xA;  79, which was the collapse initiation event. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=861611&quot;&gt;(NCSTAR 1-9)&#xA;  VOLUMES 1 and 2&lt;/a&gt;, page 611.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;4. &quot;Free fall&quot; is a myth&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To further clarify the descent of the north face, NIST recorded the&#xA;  downward displacement of a point near the center of the roofline from&#xA;  first movement until the north face was no longer visible in the&#xA;  video. Numerical analyses were conducted to calculate the velocity and&#xA;  acceleration of the roofline point from the time-dependent&#xA;  displacement data. The instant at which vertical motion of the&#xA;  roofline first occurred was determined by tracking the numerical value&#xA;  of the brightness of a pixel (a single element in the video image) at&#xA;  the roofline. This pixel became brighter as the roofline began to&#xA;  descend because the color of the pixel started to change from that of&#xA;  the building façade to the lighter color of the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The approach taken by NIST is summarized in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nist.gov/manuscript-publication-search.cfm?pub_id=861610&quot;&gt;NIST NCSTAR Report&#xA;  1A&lt;/a&gt;, Section 3.6, and detailed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nist.gov/manuscript-publication-search.cfm?pub_id=861611&quot;&gt;NIST NCSTAR Report 1-9&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;  Section 12.5.3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The analyses of the video (both the estimation of the instant the&#xA;  roofline began to descend and the calculated velocity and acceleration&#xA;  of a point on the roofline) revealed three distinct stages&#xA;  characterizing the 5.4 seconds of collapse:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stage 1 (0 to 1.75 seconds): acceleration less than that of gravity    (i.e., slower than free fall).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stage 2 (1.75 to 4.0 seconds): gravitational acceleration (free fall).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stage 3 (4.0 to 5.4 seconds): decreased acceleration, again less than    that of gravity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;:This analysis showed that the 40 percent longer descent time—compared&#xA;  to the 3.9 second free fall time—was due primarily to Stage 1, which&#xA;  corresponded to the buckling of the exterior columns in the lower&#xA;  stories of the north face. During Stage 2, the north face descended&#xA;  essentially in free fall, indicating negligible support from the&#xA;  structure below. This is consistent with the structural analysis&#xA;  model, which showed the exterior columns buckling and losing their&#xA;  capacity to support the loads from the structure above. In Stage 3,&#xA;  the acceleration decreased as the upper portion of the north face&#xA;  encountered increased resistance from the collapsed structure and the&#xA;  debris pile below. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/faqs_wtc7.cfm&quot;&gt;Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7&#xA;  Investigation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JXmYF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;NCSTAR 1-9 Figure 12-77 Page 603&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claims, assertions and questions :&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the claims and assertions by WTC 7 conspiracy theorists can be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://wtc.nist.gov/comments08/&quot;&gt;WTC 7 Draft Reports for public comment&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wtc.nist.gov/comments08/richardGageAE911Truthwtc7comments.pdf&quot;&gt;submission by Richard Gage&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ae911truth.org/&quot;&gt;Architects &amp;amp; Engineers for 9/11 Truth&lt;/a&gt; is a good representation of how 911 conspiracy theorists rely on a &lt;em&gt;lack&lt;/em&gt; of evidence to somehow draw conclusions (see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance&quot;&gt;argument from ignorance&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Investigation by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nist.gov/index.html&quot;&gt;National Institute of Standards and Technology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is responsible for conducting fact-finding investigations of building failures that resulted in substantial loss of life or that posed significant potential of substantial loss of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201A.pdf&quot;&gt;Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;(The results of all NIST WTC investigations can be found at : &lt;a href=&quot;http://wtc.nist.gov/&quot;&gt;NIST and the World Trade Center&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NIST: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.cfm&quot;&gt;Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did the fires cause WTC 7 to&#xA;  collapse?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The heat from the uncontrolled fires&#xA;  caused steel floor beams and girders&#xA;  to thermally expand, leading to a&#xA;  chain of events that caused a key&#xA;  structural column to fail. The failure&#xA;  of this structural column then&#xA;  initiated a fire-induced progressive&#xA;  collapse of the entire building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the report's probable&#xA;  collapse sequence, heat from the&#xA;  uncontrolled fires caused thermal&#xA;  expansion of the steel beams on the&#xA;  lower floors of the east side of WTC&#xA;  7, damaging the floor framing on&#xA;  multiple floors...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How hot did WTC 7's steel columns and floor beams get?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to the effectiveness of the&#xA;  spray-applied fire-resistive material&#xA;  (SFRM) or fireproofing, the highest&#xA;  steel column temperatures in WTC 7&#xA;  only reached an estimated 300 degrees&#xA;  C (570 degrees F), and only on the&#xA;  east side of the building did the&#xA;  steel floor beams exceed 600 degrees C&#xA;  (1,100 degrees F). However,&#xA;  fire-induced buckling of floor beams&#xA;  and damage to connections-that caused&#xA;  buckling of a critical column&#xA;  initiating collapse-occurred at&#xA;  temperatures below approximately 400&#xA;  degrees C where thermal expansion&#xA;  dominates. Above 600 degrees C (1,100&#xA;  degrees F), there is significant loss&#xA;  of steel strength and stiffness. In&#xA;  the WTC 7 collapse, the loss of steel&#xA;  strength or stiffness was not as&#xA;  important as the thermal expansion of&#xA;  steel structures caused by heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some people have said that a failure at one column should not have produced&#xA;  a symmetrical fall like this one.&#xA;  What's your answer to those&#xA;  assertions?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;WTC 7's collapse, viewed from the&#xA;  exterior (most videos were taken from&#xA;  the north), did appear to fall almost&#xA;  uniformly as a single unit. This&#xA;  occurred because the interior failures&#xA;  that took place did not cause the&#xA;  exterior framing to fail until the&#xA;  final stages of the building collapse.&#xA;  The interior floor framing and columns&#xA;  collapsed downward and pulled away&#xA;  from the exterior frame. There were&#xA;  clues that internal damage was taking&#xA;  place, prior to the downward movement&#xA;  of the exterior frame, such as when&#xA;  the east penthouse fell downward into&#xA;  the building and windows broke out on&#xA;  the north face at the ends of the&#xA;  building core. The symmetric&#xA;  appearance of the downward fall of the&#xA;  WTC 7 was primarily due to the greater&#xA;  stiffness and strength of its exterior&#xA;  frame relative to the interior&#xA;  framing...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AhPs3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Graphic showing the buckling of WTC 7 Column 79 (circled area), the local failure identified as the initiating event in the building&amp;#39;s progressive collapse&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Did investigators consider the possibility that an explosion caused&#xA;  or contributed to the collapse of WTC&#xA;  7?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes, this possibility was investigated&#xA;  carefully. NIST concluded that blast&#xA;  events inside the building did not&#xA;  occur and found no evidence supporting&#xA;  the existence of a blast event...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it possible that thermite or thermate contributed to the collapse&#xA;  of WTC 7?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NIST has looked at the application and&#xA;  use of thermite and has determined&#xA;  that its use to sever columns in WTC 7&#xA;  on 9/11/01 was unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thermite is a combination of aluminum&#xA;  powder and a metal oxide that releases&#xA;  a tremendous amount of heat when&#xA;  ignited. It is typically used to weld&#xA;  railroad rails together by melting a&#xA;  small quantity of steel and pouring&#xA;  the melted steel into a form between&#xA;  the two rails...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Analysis of the WTC steel for the&#xA;  elements in thermite/thermate would&#xA;  not necessarily have been conclusive.&#xA;  The metal compounds also would have&#xA;  been present in the construction&#xA;  materials making up the WTC buildings,&#xA;  and sulfur is present in the gypsum&#xA;  wallboard used for interior&#xA;  partitions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An emergency responder caught in the building between the 6th and 8th&#xA;  floors says he heard two loud booms.&#xA;  Isn't that evidence that there was an&#xA;  explosion?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sound levels reported by all&#xA;  witnesses do not match the sound level&#xA;  of an explosion that would have been&#xA;  required to cause the collapse of the&#xA;  building. If the two loud booms were&#xA;  due to explosions that were&#xA;  responsible for the collapse of WTC 7,&#xA;  the emergency responder-located&#xA;  somewhere between the 6th and 8th&#xA;  floors in WTC 7-would not have been&#xA;  able to survive the near immediate&#xA;  collapse and provide this witness&#xA;  account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;NIST is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="1760" LastEditDate="2013-07-09T09:03:09.573" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T09:03:09.573" CommentCount="32" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1373" CreationDate="2011-03-26T22:02:44.923" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QbbML.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Image comes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moillusions.com/2008/12/moon-optical-illusion.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.moillusions.com/2008/12/moon-optical-illusion.html&lt;/a&gt; and may have nothing to do with the 'real' moon illusion.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Donald E. Simanek has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/3d/moonillu.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a very good article about the phenomenon&lt;/a&gt; on his website. The opinion presented in his article is that the true nature of the illusion is not completely understood. He presents a number of theories, debunking those that are wrong, and offering suggestions about the more plausible ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the time being, the &lt;em&gt;whole&lt;/em&gt; true reason behind the phenomenon remains unresolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:  One of the links was reported to be broken.  The original link is left unchanged, in case the broken link becomes repaired, and a new link to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/3d/moonillu.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Donald E. Simanek moon illusion article&lt;/a&gt; has been added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="328" LastEditDate="2019-03-20T13:55:38.377" LastActivityDate="2019-03-20T13:55:38.377" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1367" CreationDate="2011-03-26T22:29:50.057" Score="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is basically &lt;strong&gt;no scientific consensus&lt;/strong&gt; to support &quot;&lt;em&gt;circumcision would lead to a better life quality&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.skeptic.org.uk/magazine/onlinearticles/infant-circumcision/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;'s a much bigger article with a slightly different approach and whole lot of different sources while independently coming basically to the same conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A circumcised penis is not necessarily &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cirp.org/pages/parents/FAQ/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cleaner&lt;/a&gt; nor &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.circumcision.org/benefits.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;healthier&lt;/a&gt;. That depends mostly on personal hygiene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Circumcision is a minor surgical procedure and, like all procedures, has potential to cause &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision#Effects&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;complications&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an ongoing debate about whether circumcision increases or decreases overall likelihood of transmitting disease. For instance, the CDC &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20140710025327/http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/prevention/research/malecircumcision/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;used&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20140710014334/http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/prevention/research/malecircumcision/recommendations.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;only&lt;/a&gt; claim that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/prevention/research/malecircumcision/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;circumcision reduces the risk that a man will receive HIV from a female partner&lt;/a&gt; but perhaps after this claim being &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20161109232441/http://www.doctorsopposingcircumcision.org/for-professionals/alleged-medical-benefits/hivaids/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;disputed&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cirp.org/library/disease/HIV/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;different&lt;/a&gt; organizations they now added &quot;&lt;em&gt;However, male circumcision confers only partial protection and should be considered as only one of several other prevention measures&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are legitimate concerns that circumcision might reduce sexual enjoyment. The corona below the foreskin is more sensitive than the penile sheath (or foreskin) which is removed during circumcision. Supposedly the corona gradually loses sensitivity due to constant contact with other surfaces. After &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sexual_effects_of_circumcision&amp;amp;direction=prev&amp;amp;oldid=577792790&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;much debate (keeping old link)&lt;/a&gt; there still is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision#Sexual_effects&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;no consensus on this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a social perspective, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.womenshealthmag.com/sex-and-relationships/do-women-prefer-circumcised-men&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;many US women prefer circumcised men&lt;/a&gt; and even demonstrate discomfort around uncircumcised ones. One reason might be the &lt;a href=&quot;http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2007/9789241596169_eng.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;high rate&lt;/a&gt; of circumcision. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_circumcision&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apparently&lt;/a&gt; the US is one of the very few developed countries doing the procedure so prominently, and maybe the biggest in population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an ethical perspective, some say it's a human rights issue. Grown men can and should decide for themselves if they'd like to undergo the procedure. &lt;strong&gt;Infants have no choice&lt;/strong&gt; but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15711354&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;they are still a big target audience in the US&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, for the TL;DR; folks, there are at least two celebrity skeptics who spoke out against circumcision: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sgutranscripts.org/wiki/SGU_Episode_412#Interview_with_Joshie_Berger_.2851:17.29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joshie Berger, in an interview&lt;/a&gt; for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theskepticsguide.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SGU&lt;/a&gt;; and Penn Jillette on his show &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0672524/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bullshit!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Here's a quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;... Suddenly circumcision prevented diseases. Now we find that's bullshit too so the only excuse we have now is conformity.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="1125" LastEditDate="2017-05-21T12:56:47.193" LastActivityDate="2017-05-21T12:56:47.193" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1348" CreationDate="2011-03-26T22:46:26.370" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to these references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Snopes research&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/legal/et.asp&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/legal/et.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CFR Title 14, Section 1211&lt;/strong&gt; text and removal: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.textfiles.com/ufo/etxpos.txt&quot;&gt;http://www.textfiles.com/ufo/etxpos.txt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Alternate at &lt;a href=&quot;http://paul.rutgers.edu/~mcgrew/ufo/cfr.1211&quot;&gt;http://paul.rutgers.edu/~mcgrew/ufo/cfr.1211&lt;/a&gt; and others, could not be found on any .gov sites)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Current Code of Federal Regulations Title 14&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_01/14cfrv5_01.html&quot;&gt;http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_01/14cfrv5_01.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The law &lt;strong&gt;did exist&lt;/strong&gt;, but &lt;strong&gt;did not make contact illegal&lt;/strong&gt;.  Specifically, it made &lt;strong&gt;quarantine&lt;/strong&gt; by the US government of an exposed person (exposed to any celestial body, such as the moon by the Apollo 11 crew) legal, in the event that any danger (think Andromeda Strain) was present (1211.104.a.3):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Determine that a&#xA;  particular person, property, animal, or other form of life or matter&#xA;  whatever is extraterrestrially exposed and quarantine such person,&#xA;  property, animal, or other form of life or matter whatever.  The quarantine&#xA;  may be based only on a determination, with or without the benefit of a&#xA;  hearing, that there is probable cause to believe that such person, property,&#xA;  animal or other form of life or matter whatever is extraterrestrially&#xA;  exposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has, apparently, been removed from the the books.  The official &lt;strong&gt;.gov&lt;/strong&gt; site for Title 14 simply says &quot;Reserved&quot; (3rd link), but the second link above contains supposed text of a 1991 removal of the quarantine section of the code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; NASA is removing 14 CFR part 1211 since it has served its &#xA;  purpose and is no longer in keeping with current policy.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Effective Date:&lt;/strong&gt; April 26, 1991.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1073" LastEditorUserId="1073" LastEditDate="2011-03-26T22:59:05.140" LastActivityDate="2011-03-26T22:59:05.140" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1382" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-26T23:38:05.840" Score="26" ViewCount="5368" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://geography.about.com/od/populationgeography/a/lifeexpectancy.htm&quot;&gt;About.com article on Life Expectancy&lt;/a&gt; they claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1900, the world life expectancy was approximately 30 years&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also the same claim elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this doesn't jibe with informal data-gathering I have done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An arbitary search of Wikipedia of random people that I know lived and died (of natural causes) before the 20th century shows that almost all of them died over 30.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I was in an old cemetery the other day, and saw that very few of the people buried there pre-1900 was under 30 years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I understand my &quot;research&quot; is purely unscientific - e.g. to be on Wikipedia you have to be famous, which means you probably were wealthy, which means you probably increased your chances of living longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, I find it hard to imagine a world where 30 is the life expectancy - i.e. that roughly around half the people would die younger than 30.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to hear further evidence supporting this fact or explanation for the fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-07T12:06:18.957" LastActivityDate="2022-05-19T08:34:44.170" Title="Was the world life expectancy only 30 years at 1900?" Tags="|history|life-expectancy|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1384" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1389" CreationDate="2011-03-27T00:50:21.893" Score="10" ViewCount="2855" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever someone is ill with a cold or flu, the 'fact' always seems to be brought up that you're contagious before you start exhibiting symptoms - coughing, sneezing etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many people with flu are somewhat contagious before they begin to show symptoms. Adults with flu can be contagious as soon as 1 day before flu symptoms appear.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/about_5082052_flu-contagious-before-symptoms-appear.html#ixzz1Hn595y45&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-27T09:30:35.813" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T12:45:36.893" Title="Am I contagious before I'm symptomatic?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1384" CreationDate="2011-03-27T02:15:39.517" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the particular illness.  With some diseases you can spread (be contagious) before symptoms appear, others you don't become contagious until after the symptoms appear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Viruses and bacteria have evolved to reproduce and migrate in different ways.  Some spread by contact and can survive in open air for a long time--these could possibly live on external skin or be on kitchen counters, desks, pens, pencils, etc. and be transported to a new host when the new host comes in contact with the infected area.  These are probably also most likely to spread before a host shows symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other types require a moist environment to survive and cannot exist in dry, open air.  These would need to be spread via bodily fluids (saliva, sperm, blood, etc.) and are often spread through coughing or sneezing--hence the symptoms are there in order allow the organism to spread to a new host.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit (per Matthew Read's comment, here are some links):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia entry for Influenza describes the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza#Transmission&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;method of transmission&lt;/a&gt; for that disease.  It confirms that a person with influenza is contagious &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; they are symptomatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia entry for Transmission (medicine) lists &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_%28medicine%29#Routes_of_Transmission&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;multiple routes of transmission&lt;/a&gt; for a variety of maladies, from HIV to athlete's foot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit II (per Borror0's comment):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) offers a number of notices and other articles aimed at the general public and health care professionals.  In an article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/flu/professionals/infectioncontrol/childcaresettings.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;preventing the spread of the flu virus in child care settings&lt;/a&gt;, a brief explanation is given as to when an infected person can be considered contagious:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People with influenza can potentially infect others beginning 1 day before symptoms develop and up to 5 days after becoming sick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other articles provide information on the transmission route for a variety of viruses.  For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/revb/gastro/norovirus-factsheet.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an article about the Norovirus&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Noroviruses are transmitted primarily through the fecal-oral route, either by consumption of fecally contaminated food or water or by direct person-to-person spread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/transmission/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article explains the transmission of the rabies virus&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most common mode of rabies virus transmission is through the bite and virus-containing saliva of an infected host. Though transmission has been rarely documented via other routes such as contamination of mucous membranes (i.e., eyes, nose, mouth), aerosol transmission, and corneal and organ transplantations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/meningitis/about/faq.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Meningitis&lt;/a&gt; can be caused by a bacterial infection or a viral infection.  According to the CDC, viral meningitis is contagious only after symptoms appear and most stop being contagious when the symptoms go away.  The same article also offers the following information about bacterial meningitis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[S]ome forms of bacterial meningitis are contagious. The bacteria can mainly be spread from person to person through the exchange of respiratory and throat secretions. This can occur through coughing, kissing, and sneezing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="328" LastEditDate="2011-03-29T12:45:36.893" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T12:45:36.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1382" CreationDate="2011-03-27T02:49:32.210" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to look on Wikipedia, here's a good place to start:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time&quot;&gt;Table of Life Expectancy Variation Over Time&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The table clearly shows that pretty much till mid-20th century, life expectancy was &amp;lt;30 years (aside from aristocracy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to why such a change in the last 100+ years, there are 3 main factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Child/infant mortality. From the same Wikipedia article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The percentage of children born in London who died before the age of five decreased from 74.5% in 1730-1749 to 31.8% in 1810-1829. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special%3aBookSources/0415382181&quot;&gt;Ref 1&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/foundling_01.shtml&quot;&gt;Ref 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even 30% infant mortality means that the &quot;actual&quot; life expectancy of, say, 50 years would turn into average TOTAL life expectancy of 30+ years. (Basic math - for population of 10 people, average life expectancy would be roughly &lt;code&gt;(3*0.5+7*50)/100=351.5/10=35.15&lt;/code&gt;. This is VERY rough and not an actual statistical calculation accounting for distributions, but enough of an approximation to show the great effect on the #s)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Medicine. Most life-extending medical advances we take for granted are, at most, 120-150 years old (including antibiotics or, heck, sterilization). See this &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_medicine_and_medical_technology&quot;&gt;Timeline of Medicine and Medical Technology&lt;/a&gt;. A few among the late-19th/early 20th century are 1870-80s (Antiseptic practices, germ theory of disease, first vaccines by Pasteur); 1906 (Vitamins), 1928 (Penicillin). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Widespread growth of the average wealth of society (e.g. economic surplus) allowed people who wouldn't have survived before 20th century (e.g. die of hunger/malnutrition/lack of vitamins/etc...) to survive. Before 19th century, a VERY large proportion of population live basically on the edge of subsistence.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-07T12:08:44.117" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T12:08:44.117" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1392" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1393" CreationDate="2011-03-27T02:49:34.177" Score="42" ViewCount="7444" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jamie Oliver always talks about how processed food is awful, and we should stop eating it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &lt;em&gt;processed food&lt;/em&gt; he means food which is pre-prepared and contains additives. He instead insists that food cooked from fresh local ingredients is much healthier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By reading the ingredients lists on the foods you buy, understanding what you are eating and cooking more fresh food for yourself and your family you can become empowered to make the right food choices. Ingredients lists shouldn't be a long list of unpronounceable things you've never heard of. Avoid processed foods and you will see and feel the benefits.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamieoliver.com/news/top-10-worst-processed-foods&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-576/Gwyneth-Paltrows-GOOP-Interview-with-Jamie-Oliver.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;example of his claims&lt;/a&gt; is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well, I think it’s pretty simple really: forty years ago we ate mostly fresh, local food, and we knew where that food was coming from. But then fast and heavily processed foods crept in and totally changed our palettes and food businesses. And ultimately, this food is killing us. Obesity and weight gain are the most obvious symptoms, but the problem I have in telling this story is that there are also loads of skinny people suffering because the garbage they are eating is affecting them in a different, but equally dramatic way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DV5OF.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that food containing preservatives is worse for our health than freshly cooked food?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if I were to cook chicken nuggets from fresh ingredients would it be healthier than using pre-made ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="686" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-27T09:21:54.147" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T11:53:50.290" Title="What's wrong with processed food?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1392" CreationDate="2011-03-27T03:05:13.593" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that the food is merely &quot;processed&quot; doesn't make it bad (the classic example is pasteurized milk - it is also a &quot;processed&quot; food; another is properly frozen vegetables).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What CAN make processed food worse than non-processed food is four factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Addition of certain ingredients that aren't good for you either by their nature (trans-fats) or by the unnatural amount (sodium). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The additives can be for preservation (e.g. sugar/sodium), or as replacement for easily perishable ingredients (e.g. trans-fats - see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat#Health_risks&quot;&gt;Wiki transfats article&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309085373&amp;amp;page=423&quot;&gt;http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309085373&amp;amp;page=423&lt;/a&gt;), or to give taste/color (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate#Health_concerns&quot;&gt;MSG&lt;/a&gt; - which doesn't seem to have a firm scientific consensus on long term effects but a proven potential for short term ill effects in some people).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A combination of different ingredients may lead to unexpected chemical reactions producing resulting chemicals that may be harmful. A well known example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_benzoate#Safety_and_health&quot;&gt;Sodium Benzoate turning into carcinogenic Benzene&lt;/a&gt; in certain conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The quality of ingredients in processed food may not be as high. When you get a hot dog, there's no way for you to examine the meat which went into it for quality as you would the meat you buy from the store. This is because the processing pretty much destroys most indicators of food quality by changing ingredients' texture, mixing them with other ingredients etc... This allows the manufacturer to use lesser-quality ingredient to contain costs (not necessarily pig snouts of urban legend, but just lesser quality cuts etc...). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The processing destroys good/useful/healthy properties of food. E.g. heating destroys vitamins.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-03-27T17:11:10.973" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T17:11:10.973" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1396" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1409" CreationDate="2011-03-27T04:52:51.907" Score="15" ViewCount="1205" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the things claimed by several adults when I was little is that coffee would stop me from growing so I wasn't allowed to drink it, is there any truth to that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't seem completely out of order that it could have some negative effects on us considering that it's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/226/4671/184&quot;&gt;natural pesticide&lt;/a&gt;, and that it &lt;a href=&quot;http://biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/63/2/149.extract&quot;&gt;reduces the life expectancy of fruit flies&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:48:29.713" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:48:29.713" Title="Does coffee cause children to grow slower?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|coffee|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1374" CreationDate="2011-03-27T05:36:31.450" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just took a quick look at the link you provided, and it is one of those &quot;half-smart&quot; claims that begins with misinterpretation of known phenomena and a few correct facts but quickly diverges into pseudoscience and bizzarre inaccuracies by taking unfounded leaps of faulty logic which may still sound correct to an average reader without an in-depth knowledge of acid-base regulation in the human body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing I noticed was that this claim is a watered-down version of the same woo that hawked &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4139&quot;&gt;ionized water&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phmiracleliving.com/default.aspx&quot;&gt;pH Miracle Living&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://articlesofhealth.blogspot.com/2006/11/acidalkaline-theory-of-disease.html&quot;&gt;acid/alkaline theory&lt;/a&gt; of disease, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diet.com/g/hay-diet&quot;&gt;Hay diet&lt;/a&gt;, and a host of other already debunked alkaline diets, including a similar one that was touted by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/cayce.html&quot;&gt;Edgar Cayce&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I began chewing a lemon (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.miamisci.org/ph/phlemon.html&quot;&gt;which has an acidic pH of about 3&lt;/a&gt;) as I read the article and researched the book a little, however I find myself no less annoyed by the same old woo under a new name. Again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here goes...     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first major way to shoot down this claim down is that &quot;body pH&quot; is not a term.  Different systems in the body have different pH ranges which are considered normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cerebrospinal fluid as a range of 7-7.2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bile has a range of 7-7.7&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Urine has a range of 4.5-8&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The eye has a range of 7-7.3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stomach acid has a range of 1-3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blood has a range of 7.35-7.45&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These values are not set in stone, the pH of body systems are always fluctuating in relationship to one another to keep the balance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is the bizzarre statement they make that the lemon is alkaline.  They seem to justify this assertion by claiming that when eaten, the body will make it alkaline through digestion.  This is true.  However, this is a normal part of the digestive process for anything, whether it be lemon or beer-battered unicorn.  Once in the instestines, a lemon will not be more or less alkaline than anything else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone's still interested...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acid-base.com/&quot;&gt;Acid-base balance in the human body&lt;/a&gt; is an extremely complex system.  This is mainly because it is affected by just about everything you do.  However it is well-studied and well-understood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/184ph.html&quot;&gt;The pH scale&lt;/a&gt; is a measure of hydrogen(H&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt;) and hydroxide ions(OH&lt;sup&gt;-&lt;/sup&gt;).  It is a logarithmic scale ranging from about 0 to 14. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pH of human blood generally ranges from 7.35-7.45 and deviation from this range will result in either &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001376/&quot;&gt;acidosis&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/243160-overview&quot;&gt;alkalosis&lt;/a&gt;, depending on which way you go (it's a complex topic, don't split hairs with my generalizing please). These are serious medical conditions which can result in death if uncorrected. Because of that fact, the body's balance is maintained by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemistry.wustl.edu/~edudev/LabTutorials/Buffer/Buffer.html&quot;&gt;a complex and extremely effective system&lt;/a&gt; of chemical and physiological mediators which protect from any rapid change in pH. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The greatest way to change the pH of the blood in a healthy person for a short time is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/sciences/zoology/animalphysiology/respiration/respiration.htm&quot;&gt;via the respiratory system&lt;/a&gt;.  This is because in the venous blood CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; comes into contact with &lt;a href=&quot;http://physrev.physiology.org/content/80/2/681.full&quot;&gt;carbonic anhydrase&lt;/a&gt; which converts it to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chem.usu.edu/~sbialkow/Classes/3600/Overheads/Carbonate/CO2.html&quot;&gt;carbonic acid&lt;/a&gt; for the lungs to exhale.  In fact the lungs expell about 30L a day. This is why hyperventilation can make one feel giddy and dizzy, and deep breathing can have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.studentdoctor.net/archive/index.php/t-674664.html&quot;&gt;variety of effects&lt;/a&gt;.  However these changes are limited, short-lived and cannot be linked to what this article is claiming.  Eating a lemon, or even a truck full of them won't even come close to matching this simple, well-understood physiological respone.  This is because of the way the digestive system works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;IF YOU WANT TO EXPERIENCE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU CHANGE YOUR BLOOD PH, HOLD YOUR BREATH.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stomach of a healthy person contains mucous, &lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/digestive/question464.htm&quot;&gt;hydrochloric acid&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/pepsinogen&quot;&gt;pepsinogen&lt;/a&gt;.  It has a pH of about 1-3.  Gastric acid is secreted for digestion and its pH drops as a result of this.  After a heavy meal, the blood pH will increase proportionally to this, particularly in parts of the circulatory system supplying the digestive system, this is sometimes called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/alkaline+tide&quot;&gt;alkaline tide&lt;/a&gt;. The change is determined by the amout of food eaten and amount of acid produced, not the acidity of the food eaten. But again, this is well known and understood physiological response and is not the claim made by the article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is not the end.  The food is acidified in the stomach, and it becomes a material called &lt;a href=&quot;http://mw2.m-w.com/medical/chyme&quot;&gt;chyme&lt;/a&gt; with a pH of about 2.0 regardless of what was in it.This chyme is then alkalinized when the duodenum secretes hormones which cause the gall baldder to release bile. It also stimulates release of enzymes from the pancreas which raise the pH of the chyme to about 7 so it can be absorbed by the intestines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been other claims that when the body takes in to much protein in a meal, the amino acids become organic acids and acidify the blood.  Calcium released from the bones neutralizes this process, which has been theorized to lead to osteoporosis. But again, the body steals calcium from the bones all the time for a variety of reasons, and this is not the claim made.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of where your lunch lies on the pH scale, it is rendered meaningless by these processes, and the only thing it may change the pH of is your urine. This is completely irrelevant, because if your urine is coming into contact with your bloodstream you have serious problems unrelated to your diet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote Homer Simpson &quot;Blue M&amp;amp;M, red M&amp;amp;M, they all wind up the same color in the end&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-03-27T08:59:24.877" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T08:59:24.877" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1392" CreationDate="2011-03-27T09:02:24.593" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many flavors of problems associated with processed food. Some stem from the ingredients which more often have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High-fructose corn syrup (ridiculous how many things have this..)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hydrogenated ????? oil (vegetable, soybean, peanut,..)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High sodium&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above are related to preservation mainly. Some companies will use lesser-known alternatives which essentially do the same things. The first two hurt by generally making bodies fatter when the same meal could usually be made without them. Peanut butter is a good example - natural varieties don't use hydrogenated oil whereas other use hydrogen to make the peanut butter and oil bond more permanently so  you don't have to stir it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The molecular effect of hydrogenated oil is to make peanut butter more like plastic than protein mixed with fatty acids in the oil. Your body stores this plastic-like substance in your cells and can give them trouble. High fructose syrups simply have gobs and gobs of sugar with a long shelf life. These syrups signal your body to store fat as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to these there are a few other things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Processed foods have severely &quot;injured&quot; molecule chains giving lower quality and amount of nutrients than whole foods or freshly cooked foods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vegetables and meat in processed food is often of low nutritional quality due to factory-like mentality vs. farms and ranches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MSG is more common&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usually no enzymes survive processing (The US's general populace for example has a rather large enzyme deficiency)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fresh tasting food is really good :P&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;References update&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raysahelian.com/fructose.html&quot;&gt;High fructose corn syrup&lt;/a&gt; (and high levels of fructose in general) lead to obesity and other health issues by stimulating cellular mechanism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.natural-health-information-centre.com/hydrogenated-fats.html&quot;&gt;Hydrogenation's affect on nutrients&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/healthy-eating/why-processed-foods-contain-so-much-sodium.html&quot;&gt;High sodium&lt;/a&gt; in processed foods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/280831-nutrition-in-processed-foods/&quot;&gt;Break of complex&lt;/a&gt; carbs in processed foods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Processed foods &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nutrition&amp;amp;oldid=420893005#Processed_foods&quot;&gt;destroy nutrients&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid&quot;&gt;Amino acids are body cannot produce are called &quot;essential amino acids.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthknot.com/essential_amino_acids.html&quot;&gt;In other words, if your diet is predominantly based on cooked and processed foods&lt;/a&gt;, what seems to be relatively large protein consumption may be effectively considerably smaller.&quot; and other information.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This talks briefly of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthychild.com/child-nutrition/fake-foods/&quot;&gt;high-fructose corn syrup and MSG&lt;/a&gt; in processed foods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allergyescape.com/digestive-enzymes.html&quot;&gt;Enzyme deficiency&lt;/a&gt; and poor digestion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hellolife.net/explore/digestive-enzymes/why-are-enzymes-so-important-for-digestion/&quot;&gt;&quot;Simply cooking or processing food can destroy many of the natural enzymes&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=5qolypPbzyoC&amp;amp;pg=PA18&amp;amp;lpg=PA18&amp;amp;dq=%22processed%20food%22%20complex%20nutrients&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=JvRe7Ram9j&amp;amp;sig=UQNbD_yUvuWmxvwWmgpln2yGfd4&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=8hiQTevjLMnFgAf295GtDQ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=3&amp;amp;ved=0CCIQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22processed%20food%22%20complex%20nutrients&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Extra reference with various related points.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1150" LastEditorUserId="1150" LastEditDate="2011-03-28T06:30:55.750" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T06:30:55.750" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1405" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1422" CreationDate="2011-03-27T09:41:26.387" Score="20" ViewCount="9252" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.life123.com/question/Why-Does-It-Get-Colder-When-the-Sun-Comes-up&quot;&gt;Popular&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/askjack/faq-temperature.htm&quot;&gt;lore&lt;/a&gt; states that generally the lowest temperature of any given day occurs an hour after sunrise, because it takes some time for the heat from the Sun to reach Earth.  But, it only takes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&amp;amp;q=1+AU%2Fc%3D&amp;amp;btnG=Search&amp;amp;aq=f&amp;amp;aqi=&amp;amp;aql=&amp;amp;oq=&quot;&gt;about 8 minutes&lt;/a&gt; for the energy from the Sun to reach Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there something more complex going on that causes the Earth to take longer to heat up, or is this claim false?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="334" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T10:38:37.627" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T17:27:25.360" Title="Is the coldest part of the day an hour after the sun comes up?" Tags="|weather|meteorology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1396" CreationDate="2011-03-27T12:25:32.853" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be more about &lt;strong&gt;caffeine&lt;/strong&gt; than coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2008, due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a2332&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; that suggested that &lt;strong&gt;caffeine intake during pregnancy could increase the risk of fetal growth restriction&lt;/strong&gt;, the &lt;strong&gt;&quot;UK Government's Food Standards Agency&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; issued &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.food.gov.uk/news/pressreleases/2008/nov/caffeineadvice&quot;&gt;new advice to pregnant women on daily caffeine consumption&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pregnant women are being advised to&#xA;  limit their daily caffeine intake,&#xA;  ideally keeping this below 200mg a day&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  (previously it was 300mg). This is&#xA;  roughly two mugs of coffee a day,&#xA;  although caffeine is also present in&#xA;  tea, chocolate, some soft drinks, and&#xA;  certain medicines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Too much caffeine might result in a&#xA;  baby having a lower birth weight than&#xA;  it should&lt;/strong&gt;, which can increase the risk&#xA;  of some health conditions for the baby&#xA;  in later life, or could possibly&#xA;  result in spontaneous miscarriage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We would emphasise that the risks are&#xA;  likely to be very small&lt;/strong&gt; and believe&#xA;  our new advice, which is based on new&#xA;  research and has been considered by&#xA;  leading independent scientists, is&#xA;  sensible and proportionate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated above, caffeine isn't just in coffee, it can also be found in (ice-)tea, soft and energy drinks, cocoa and chocolate. I'd guess these sources for caffeine are more common for children than coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.energyfiend.com/the-caffeine-database&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a list of caffeinated beverages (including the amount of caffeine in it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babycenter.com/404_is-it-true-that-caffeine-can-stunt-a-childs-growth_10310763.bc&quot;&gt;BabyCenter&lt;/a&gt; has this to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No. Caffeine has plenty of undesirable&#xA;  effects, but interfering with a&#xA;  child's growth isn't one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The United States hasn't established&#xA;  recommended limits for kids' caffeine&#xA;  consumption. In Canada, it's&#xA;  recommended that kids ages 4 to 6 get&#xA;  no more than 45 mg a day, kids ages 7&#xA;  to 9 get no more than 62.5 mg, and&#xA;  kids ages 10 to 12 get no more than 85&#xA;  mg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-03-27T12:32:24.207" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T12:32:24.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1405" CreationDate="2011-03-27T14:34:12.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-Does-Cold-Air-Fall-and-Warm-Air-Rise?&amp;amp;id=302338&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why Does Cold Air Fall and Warm Air Rise?&lt;/a&gt;  My weather station says yes, remember cold air falls and without the ground being warmed there is nothing to push the cold air away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1156" LastEditorUserId="1156" LastEditDate="2011-03-27T14:49:08.863" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T14:49:08.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1414" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1416" CreationDate="2011-03-27T14:38:19.737" Score="22" ViewCount="3856" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from the issue of pesticides there's the claim that organic food has more nutrients, vitamins and minerals than nonorganic food:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Organic food is known to contain 50%&#xA;  more nutrients, minerals and vitamins&#xA;  than produce that has been intensively&#xA;  farmed.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CBcQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.organicfoodinfo.net/&amp;amp;ei=KFqPTbvhOI-GhQfy5uS7Dg&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGax0Bh5DPGGhvNnK8ydKAyWHGFLQ&amp;amp;sig2=7A_FmV8sRZYy8SrPuBMEDQ&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given either the US certification or the EU certification for organic food is there evidence that an average organic apple has more nutrients, minerals and vitamins than a nonorganic one?&#xA;Does it differ between different vegetables and fruits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-03-09T09:16:12.403" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T09:16:12.403" Title="Does organic food have more vitamins than nonorganic food?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|environmental-health|vitamins|organic-food|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1327" CreationDate="2011-03-27T15:04:15.557" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Posture seems to be connected to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8832472/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;likelihood of injury in sports&lt;/a&gt;. (&lt;strong&gt;Journal of Orthopedic Sports Physical Therapy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Posture can also affect whether food/drink is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/c03km3bkthlctf6p/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;swallowed or aspirated&lt;/a&gt;. (&lt;strong&gt;American Journal of Roentgenology&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Posture is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/c03km3bkthlctf6p/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;related to fatigue&lt;/a&gt; for a person who is standing for a long period of time. (&lt;strong&gt;Surgical Endoscopy&lt;/strong&gt;) (Incidentally, I can back this up with personal experience -- I teach, and the better my posture, the less tired and achy I am after a day of teaching. However, I figured I'd give the research first, since one person's experience isn't enough data for scientific evaluation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Posture can tell you a lot about the &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1037/h0027349&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;attitude, status, and interest&lt;/a&gt; of the person you're talking with. (&lt;strong&gt;Psychological Bulletin&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good posture can also affect &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992249&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;motivation, stress, and mood&lt;/a&gt;. (&lt;strong&gt;Motivation and Emotion&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="677" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-20T20:27:13.810" LastActivityDate="2022-09-20T20:27:13.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1414" CreationDate="2011-03-27T15:25:11.617" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a word, no. There have been no studies to show significant differences in vitamin levels between organinc and conventionally grown foods. The largest discrepency for vitamin levels (not mineral) is due to preparation, processing and shipment methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caseperformance.com/19/nutrient-content-of-organic-vs-conventionally-grown-foods&quot;&gt;http://www.caseperformance.com/19/nutrient-content-of-organic-vs-conventionally-grown-foods&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I could dig out the specific studies if necessary, though they are well cited in the above article)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an addition, since there have been additional studies in the meantime the biggest difference appears to be on the specific crop, and the specific field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After 10 years, the researchers found that tomatoes raised in the organic plots contained significantly higher levels of certain antioxidant compounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But this is one study of one vegetable in one field. And when the&#xA;  Stanford researchers looked at their broad array of studies, which&#xA;  included lots of different crops in different situations, they found&#xA;  no such broad pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/09/04/160395259/why-organic-food-may-not-be-healthier-for-you&quot;&gt;http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/09/04/160395259/why-organic-food-may-not-be-healthier-for-you&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1110" LastEditorUserId="1110" LastEditDate="2012-09-10T17:37:33.073" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T17:37:33.073" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1423" CreationDate="2011-03-27T15:46:35.427" Score="46" ViewCount="5243" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are the volunteers actually part of the performance (i.e. paid or in other ways compensated) to perform like chickens etc., or is it actually possible to hypnotize people in the short space of time that is given?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-05-20T12:12:14.020" LastActivityDate="2021-09-12T16:26:34.470" Title="Are participants in stage hypnosis part of the show?" Tags="|hypnotism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2021-09-17T23:52:44.887" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1420" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-27T16:41:51.400" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-03-27T16:41:51.400" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T16:41:51.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1421" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-27T16:41:51.400" Score="0" Body="Use this for medical science, not for prescription medicines. Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness." OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-10-03T09:01:32.060" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T09:01:32.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1405" CreationDate="2011-03-27T16:49:34.697" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The theory is surprisingly simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The air and the ground get colder when no sun shines on them and hotter when the sun does. What we measure when we say it's colder is actually the air temperature. The sun's radiation has no effect on thermometers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see in the graph, minimum temperature occurs about 30 minutes to 1 hour after sunrise (hard to be exact with the ticks used).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For all dates, minimum temperature occurs at sunrise. Temperature drops throughout the night because of two processes. First, the Earth's radiation balance at the surface becomes negative after sunset. Thus, the surface of the Earth stops heating up as solar radiation is not being absorbed. Secondly, conduction and convection transport heat energy up into the atmosphere and the warm air that was at the surface is replaced by cooler air from above because of atmospheric mixing. Temperature begins rising as soon as the net radiation budget of the surface becomes positive. Temperature continues to rise from sunrise until sometime after solar noon. After this time, mixing of the Earth's surface by convection causes the surface to cool despite the positive addition of radiation and heat energy.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  --&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eoearth.org/article/Daily_and_annual_cycles_of_temperature&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tOv1X.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is a schematic of the typical diurnal cycle of surface temperature (red) and the net energy rate due to incoming solar (black) and outgoing longwave radiation (blue).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1: The source of this material is the COMET® Website at &lt;a href=&quot;http://meted.ucar.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://meted.ucar.edu/&lt;/a&gt; of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), sponsored in part through cooperative agreement(s) with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC). ©1997-2010 University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. All Rights Reserved.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-29T19:28:09.950" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T19:28:09.950" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1417" CreationDate="2011-03-27T17:20:04.790" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;All hypnosis is a form of self hypnosis, and it is fairly well understood that you cannot hypnotize either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;someone unwilling to be hypnotized&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;someone to do something that they are utterly unwilling to do&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of studies cited, plus an interesting read nonetheless: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20190404095213/https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol4no1/html/v04i1a05p_0001.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CIA: Hypnosis in Interrogation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my own experience being one of those fools willing to get on stage, the hypnotic suggestion just seems to be an &amp;quot;okay that sounds fun&amp;quot; as you're extremely relaxed and aware of the situation while not feeling so self-conscious. When the hypnotist suggested that we take our shirts off and turn them inside out (I being male) ... I snapped out as I'm very self-conscious of my body image and was excused from the stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the &lt;a href=&quot;https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/extrasensory-perceptions/hypnosis.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;howstuffworks&lt;/a&gt; article on the subject and from my experiences it seems pretty spot on. You aren't so much asleep as you are hyper-aware of the suggestions of the hypnotist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1110" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2021-09-12T16:26:34.470" LastActivityDate="2021-09-12T16:26:34.470" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1425" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-27T18:16:58.027" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nutrition is the provision, to cells and organisms, of the materials necessary (in the form of food) to support life. Many common health problems can be prevented or alleviated with a healthful diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T14:51:03.567" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:51:03.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1426" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-27T18:16:58.027" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for claims regarding the way we eat, and the effects eating has on our bodies." OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T14:51:03.567" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:51:03.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1427" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-27T18:18:55.623" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Psychology is the sociocultural and biochemical science of cognition, motivation, emotion, and behavior. Its goals include interpreting, explaining, predicting, or modifying these phenomena in abnormal individuals, groups of all sizes, and people in general (and in animals, primarily as analogues). Its methods include experimentation, observational research, case study, and to some extent, introspection. From Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Psychologists of diverse orientations also consider the unconscious mind. Psychologists employ empirical methods to infer causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial variables. In addition, or in opposition, to employing empirical and deductive methods, some—especially clinical and counseling psychologists—at times rely upon symbolic interpretation and other inductive techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#Criticism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's criticism sections on psychology&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xA;- Kalat, J. (2013). &lt;em&gt;Introduction to psychology&lt;/em&gt;. Cengage Learning.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Lilienfeld, S. O. (2012). Public skepticism of psychology: why many people perceive the study of human behavior as unscientific. &lt;em&gt;American Psychologist, 67&lt;/em&gt;(2), 111–129. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.missouri.edu/~segerti/capstone/LilienfieldPublicSckepticism.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://web.missouri.edu/~segerti/capstone/LilienfieldPublicSckepticism.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Von Eckardt, B. (1984). Cognitive psychology and principled skepticism. &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Philosophy, 81&lt;/em&gt;(2), 67–88.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16995" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:04:17.607" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:04:17.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1428" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-27T18:18:55.623" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about understanding, predicting, and changing the thoughts, emotions, and specifically psychological theories of behavior should use this tag. However, this excludes questions about specific claims, beliefs, or superstitions that would be better categorized under other, more specific tags, including behavior, brain, consciousness, superstition, esp, ghosts, religion, spirituality, energy, and meditation." OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:04:17.607" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:04:17.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1429" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-27T18:20:03.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Physics&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Physics is the science of matter and how matter interacts. Matter is any physical material in the universe. Everything is made of matter. Physics is used to describe the physical universe around us, and to predict how it will behave. Physics is the science concerned with the discovery and characterization of the universal laws which govern matter, movement and forces, and space and time, and other features of the natural world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Breadth and goals of physics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sweep of physics is broad, from the smallest components of matter and the forces that hold it together, to galaxies and even larger things. There are only four forces that appear to operate over this whole range. However, even these four forces (gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force associated with radioactivity, and the strong force which holds atoms together) are believed to be different parts of a single force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Physics is mainly focused on the goal of making ever simpler, more general, and more accurate rules that define the character and behavior of matter and space itself. One of the major goals of physics is making theories that apply to everything in the universe. In other words, physics can be viewed as the study of those universal laws which define, at the most basic level possible, the behavior of the physical universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Physics uses the scientific method&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Physics uses the scientific method. That is, data from experiments and observations are collected. Theories which attempt to explain these data are produced. Physics uses these theories to not only describe physical phenomena, but to model physical systems and predict how these physical systems will behave. Physicists then compare these predictions to observations or experimental evidence to show whether the theory is right or wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theories that are well supported by data and are especially simple and general are sometimes called scientific laws. Of course, all theories, including those known as laws, can be replaced by more accurate and more general laws, when a disagreement with data is found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Physics is Quantitative&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Physics is more quantitative than most other sciences. That is, many of the observations in physics may be represented in the form of numerical measurements. Most of the theories in physics use mathematics to express their principles. Most of the predictions from these theories are numerical. This is because of the areas which physics has addressed are more amenable to quantitative approaches than other areas. Sciences also tend to become more quantitative with time as they become more highly developed, and physics is one of the oldest sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fields of physics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Classical physics normally includes the fields of mechanics, optics, electricity, magnetism, acoustics and thermodynamics. Modern physics is a term normally used to cover fields which rely on quantum theory, including quantum mechanics, atomic physics, nuclear physics, particle physics and condensed matter physics, as well as the more modern fields of general and special relativity. Although this distinction can be found in older writings, it is of little recent interest as quantum effects are now understood to be of importance even in fields previously considered classical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Approaches in physics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many approaches to studying physics, and many different kinds of actitivies in physics. There are two main types of activities in physics; the collection of data and the development of theories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data in some subfields of physics is amenable to experiment. For example, condensed matter physics and nuclear physics benefit from the ability to perform experiments. &#xA;Experimental physics focuses mainly on an empirical approach. Sometimes experiments are done to explore nature, and in other cases experiments are performed to produce data to compare with the predictions of theories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other fields in physics like astrophysics and geophysics are primarily observational sciences because most their data has to be collected passively instead of through experimentation. Nevertheless, observational programs in these fields uses many of the same tools and technology that are used in the experimental subfields of physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theoretical physics often uses quantitative approaches to develop the theories that attempt to explain the data. In this way, theoretical physics often relies heavily on tools from mathematics. Theoretical physics often can involve creating quantitative predictions of physical theories, and comparing these predictions quantitatively with data. Theoretical physics sometimes creates models of physical systems before data is available to test and validate these models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two main activities in physics, data collection and theory production and testing, draw on many different skills. This has led to a lot of specialization in physics, and the introduction, development and use of tools from other fields. For example, theoretical physicists apply mathematics and numerical analysis and statistics and probability and computers and computer software in their work. Experimental physicists develop instruments and techniques for collecting data, drawing on engineering and computer technology and many other fields of technology. Often the tools from these other areas are not quite appropriate for the needs of physics, and need to be adapted or more advanced versions have to be produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-24T21:58:25.470" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T21:58:25.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1430" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-27T18:20:03.313" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about the physical nature of reality and in particular claims that are strictly about the field of physics. Please use specific tags if the question is about other sciences such as chemistry. Also consider to add [electromagnetism] and [radiation] if appropriate." OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:08:48.397" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:08:48.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1431" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-03-27T18:21:39.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;History is the study of the human past. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-17T01:18:22.060" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T01:18:22.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1432" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-03-27T18:21:39.723" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions that pertain to historical events, or claim whose evidence is historical in nature." OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-17T01:18:22.060" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T01:18:22.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1433" PostTypeId="3" CreationDate="2011-03-27T18:41:13.520" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-27T18:41:13.520" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T18:41:13.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1434" PostTypeId="3" CreationDate="2011-03-27T18:41:13.520" Score="0" Body="Health is the general condition of a person in all aspects. It is also a level of functional and/or metabolic efficiency of an organism, often implicitly human." OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-27T18:41:13.520" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T18:41:13.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1440" CreationDate="2011-03-27T18:57:47.037" Score="50" ViewCount="15412" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard numerous times that eating&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; a high quantity of sugar will give you a &quot;sugar high&quot; or &quot;sugar buzz&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The high one gets after consuming large amounts of sugar. Also called a &quot;sugar rush.&quot; Sugar highs cause twitchiness, spasms, and hyper excitability. Sugar highs do not last very long, and leave a person feeling drained afterwards.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  --&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sugar%20high&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I've heard, that for the same reason, giving too much sugar to kids will make them hyperactive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hyperactivity may be caused by learning disability, an unstable home life, food allergy, food additives, excessive sugar ingestion, heavy metal toxicity, or even the need for glasses.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  --&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liferesearchuniversal.com/hyperactivity.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like bogus to me. Is there any evidence on this claim, or is it just a urban myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1: Please assume non-diabetics&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T16:07:13.627" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T05:03:29.980" Title="Does the &quot;sugar high&quot; exist at all?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|children|sugar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1437" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1575" CreationDate="2011-03-27T19:35:03.663" Score="23" ViewCount="14677" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was under the impression that drinking water upside-down worked for curing hiccups (when they worked) merely due to a placebo effect, or at the very least didn't work any better than just drinking water normally. In spite of this, many of my friends swear by it, saying it's the only 'cure' that works for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any validity to this method of 'curing' the hiccups? I am most curious about minor spells which affect most people, not intractable hiccups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some background resources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hiccups are intermittent, abrupt, involuntary contractions of the diaphragm resulting in sudden inspiration abruptly opposed by closure of the glottis. The diaphragmatic contraction is often unilateral, occurring more often on the left side. Most hiccups occur as brief, self-limited episodes lasting only for a few seconds or minutes but sometimes may last for prolonged periods (&amp;gt; 48 hours), interfering with rest, sleep, and eating and causing fatigue, exhaustion, depression, and on occasion, death. In addition to treating underlying disorders, there are numerous methods to quell hiccups. Nevertheless, hiccups may be persistent despite a variety of therapeutic modalities.[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15813167&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hiccups are an involuntarily powerful spasm of the diaphragm, followed by a sudden inspiration with a closure of the glottis. Hiccups that are caused by gastric distention, spicy foods and neural dysfunction can resolve themselves without any treatment. Some hiccups are associated with certain diseases or they occur postsurgically, and life-restricting intractable hiccups should be treated. The cause of hiccups should be quickly determined so as to administer the proper treatment.[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20552072&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some anecdotal evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I cure my hiccups by filling a glass of water, bending over forward, and drinking the water upside down,&amp;quot; says Richard McCallum, M.D., professor of medicine and chief of the Gastroenterology Division at the University of Virginia Health Sciences Center. &amp;quot;That always works and I firmly recommend it for my normally healthy patients.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That cure came through for musician Mark Golin, who found himself beset with hiccups after a late-night gig in New York City. &amp;quot;A woman told me to bend over and drink the water from the opposite side of the glass,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;It worked then and has worked dozens of times since then.&amp;quot; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mothernature.com/Library/Bookshelf/Books/47/76.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15813167&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;] Feng-Cheng Liu, &lt;strong&gt;Acupuncture Therapy Rapidly Terminates Intractable Hiccups&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;South Med J&lt;/em&gt;. 2005;98(3):385-387.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20552072&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;] Ju Hwan Lee, &lt;strong&gt;Treatment of Intractable Hiccups&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Korean J Pain&lt;/em&gt;. 2010 March; 23(1): 42–45&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-09-15T19:29:42.850" LastActivityDate="2023-09-23T03:28:55.013" Title="Does drinking water upside-down help cure hiccups?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|hiccups|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1438" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1441" CreationDate="2011-03-27T20:01:26.237" Score="107" ViewCount="17527" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Hovind&quot;&gt;Dr Kent Hovind&lt;/a&gt;, a noted American &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism&quot;&gt;Young Earth creationist&lt;/a&gt;, claims that the Earth is only &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Hovind#Hovind.27s_.24250.2C000_offer&quot;&gt;6000 years old&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was growing up, I was taught in school that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur&quot;&gt;dinosaurs&lt;/a&gt; come from at least millions of years ago in Earth's far distant past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how can the claim about the Earth being 6000 years old be true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that supports the claim that the Earth is only 6000 years old?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2011-04-01T08:15:02.310" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T12:11:26.807" Title="Is the Earth 6000 years old?" Tags="|intelligent-design|young-earth-creationism|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1435" CreationDate="2011-03-27T20:25:50.607" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/HEALTH/children/9911/22/diet.sugar.myth.kids.wmd/&quot;&gt;No says CNN&lt;/a&gt;. The amount of sugar that you &lt;em&gt;tell&lt;/em&gt; the parent their child took &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7963081&quot;&gt;does affect their perception&lt;/a&gt; of the child's activity level though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T20:25:50.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1435" CreationDate="2011-03-27T20:30:58.293" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/guest-bloggers/willingham-how-sugar-really-af.html&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a Washington Post article that also says &quot;NO&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A stronger type of study is one in&#xA;  which no one--the kids, the parents,&#xA;  or the experimenter--knows whether the&#xA;  snack the child ate was sweetened with&#xA;  sugar or with aspartame. More than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8747098?dopt=Abstract&quot;&gt;a&#xA;  dozen such studies&lt;/a&gt; have been&#xA;  conducted, and they show that &lt;strong&gt;sugar&#xA;  does not cause hyperactive behavior or&#xA;  behavior problems&lt;/strong&gt;, even when the&#xA;  researchers make a point of testing&#xA;  kids whose parents say they are&#xA;  sensitive to sugar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sugar has also been tested for its&#xA;  impact on kids diagnosed with ADHD.&#xA;  Again, there seems to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199402033300511&quot;&gt;no effect&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7963081?dopt=Abstract&quot;&gt;One interesting study&lt;/a&gt; examined&#xA;  the effect of parental expectation&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  Thirty-five boys (aged 5 to 7) who&#xA;  were reported by their mothers to be&#xA;  sugar sensitive were given a drink&#xA;  sweetened with aspartame. &lt;strong&gt;Half of the&#xA;  moms were told that the drink had a&#xA;  lot of sugar in it, and half were told&#xA;  it had none&lt;/strong&gt;. Mothers and sons then&#xA;  interacted on several tasks (e.g.,&#xA;  building a Lego house together). &lt;strong&gt;Moms&#xA;  who were told their children had had&#xA;  sugar later rated their sons’ behavior&#xA;  during this interaction as more&#xA;  hyperactive&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There’s pretty good evidence that&#xA;  there is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a physiological effect of&#xA;  sugary snacks on kids’ behavior&lt;/strong&gt;, and&#xA;  some of parent’s perception of an&#xA;  effect is probably just&#xA;  that--perception. But there could also&#xA;  be a psychological effect whereby&#xA;  sugary snacks are associated with&#xA;  other factors such as a less regulated&#xA;  atmosphere or kids’ perception of a&#xA;  less well regulated atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T20:30:58.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1438" CreationDate="2011-03-27T20:36:25.867" Score="186" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, there is absolutely no sustainable claim at all that the Earth is young.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was proven through multiple experiments (see bottom of the answer), and whole sciences have been built on the premise of an old Earth. Admitting a 6,000 years old Earth hypothesis equates to denying the validity of the work of all of those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's clearly a false theory espoused by a fringe of extremists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Most of XX century science is direct evidence against Y. E. C.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Entire books have been devoted to explain how the universe formed and what we currently, rationally and reasonably think might have happened and why. Any pop-sci book on cosmology, physics, evolution would be an interesting read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a diagram illustrating the consequences (and therefore, the amount of dependent evidence that needs to be disproofed as part of accepting a young Earth).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YduxK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;YEC flowchart&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Entire physical sciences need to be proven totally wrong before Y. E. C. is acceptable&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Earth were young, it would imply that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_decay&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;XX&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;century&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_physics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;physics&lt;/a&gt; is very wrong&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SqFkc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;cloud chamber&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have no clue about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/113/2926/92.extract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;why chemistry works&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yf9y3.png&quot; alt=&quot;orbitals&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;modern biology&lt;/a&gt; is wrong&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2O5WF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;DNA&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We don't really understand &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20100505060729/http://www.college.ucla.edu/webproject/micro12/m12webnotes/viralevolution.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;modern medicine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z5Q6S.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;bacterial evolution&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paleoportal.org/index.php?globalnav=time_space&amp;amp;sectionnav=period&amp;amp;period_id=17&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paleontology&lt;/a&gt;? Nope, all wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mmG8w.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Dinosaur&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://library.thinkquest.org/17457/platetectonics/2.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Geology&lt;/a&gt;? Back to the XIX century as well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qNqNA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Geological layers&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Direct proof&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these sciences are based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paterson_isochron_animation.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hard&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002A&amp;amp;A...390.1115B&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;indisputable&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historyoftheuniverse.com/cdevidence.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;verifiable&lt;/a&gt; facts and they either depend on Earth being billions of years old, or they predict that it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a graph of the results of lead dating Earth through radioactive dating experiments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZgnL1.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other dating results are summarized on wikipedia (relevant citation is in a book):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistics for several meteorites that have undergone isochron dating are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;St. Severin (ordinary chondrite)&#xA;Pb-Pb isochron - 4.543 +/- 0.019 GY&#xA;Sm-Nd isochron - 4.55 +/- 0.33 GY&#xA;Rb-Sr isochron - 4.51 +/- 0.15 GY&#xA;Re-Os isochron - 4.68 +/- 0.15 GY&#xA;Juvinas (basaltic achondrite)&#xA;Pb-Pb isochron ..... 4.556 +/- 0.012 GY&#xA;Pb-Pb isochron ..... 4.540 +/- 0.001 GY&#xA;Sm-Nd isochron ..... 4.56 +/- 0.08 GY&#xA;Rb-Sr isochron ..... 4.50 +/- 0.07 GY&#xA;Allende (carbonaceous chondrite)&#xA;Pb-Pb isochron ..... 4.553 +/- 0.004 GY&#xA;Ar-Ar age spectrum ..... 4.52 +/- 0.02 GY&#xA;Ar-Ar age spectrum ..... 4.55 +/- 0.03 GY&#xA;Ar-Ar age spectrum ..... 4.56 +/- 0.05 GY&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Dalrymple, Brent G. (2004). Ancient Earth, Ancient Skies: The Age of the Earth and Its Cosmic Surroundings. Stanford University Press. pp. 147, 169. ISBN 978-0804749336.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T23:44:35.330" CommentCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1438" CreationDate="2011-03-27T21:09:09.210" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wow.  Talk about a previously solved problem. However the &quot;controversy&quot; seems to rage on.&#xA;The debate over this is multifaceted and often crosses scientific disciplines, which can make refutation tricky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I doubt I can add anything to the debate, other than yes, the earth is about 4.5 billion years old, I can provide links to the sites where good, kind, intelligent people have already done the heavy lifting to prove this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I don't mean to poison the well, but here is a nice article regarding Kent Hovind's i&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/03/kent_hovind_is_still_in_jail_a.php&quot;&gt;mprisonment&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can start &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for a good overview of just about every young earth creationist argument and its proper refutation.  It also gives a very good presentation of the fossil record, including the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html&quot;&gt;transitional fossils&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good place to start if you would like to learn about the Earth and the science behind how we know what we know is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stephenjaygould.org/&quot;&gt;Unofficial Stephen Jay Gould Archive.&lt;/a&gt; it is an excellent place to get an idea of the science of paleontology, particularly the &lt;a href=&quot;http://brembs.net/gould.html&quot;&gt;cambrian explosion&lt;/a&gt;, and theory of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_structure.html&quot;&gt;punctuated equilibrium&lt;/a&gt;.  An understanding of how &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geology/carbon-14.htm&quot;&gt;radiocarbon dating works&lt;/a&gt; is also helpful.  Some independent study in &lt;a href=&quot;http://geology.com/&quot;&gt;geology&lt;/a&gt; is always helpful as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Main_Page&quot;&gt;The iron chariots wiki&lt;/a&gt; exists solely for the purpose of countering the glut of poor arguments touted as evidence for religious claims such as this check it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/&quot;&gt;PZ Myers&lt;/a&gt; routinely takes on these claims from the perspective of evolutionary biology.  His site is brilliant, well written, and humorous.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not cited any specific studies done, simply because if you follow through on the links above you will find them, regarding just about any aspect of the question.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, not everything has to be a link or a site. If you want to understand the planet you live on, the universe it's in, and the beings you share it with, then go on, read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hawking.org.uk/&quot;&gt;Hawking&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://richarddawkins.net/&quot;&gt;Dawkins&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://librivox.org/the-origin-of-species-by-charles-darwin/&quot;&gt;Darwin&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stephenjaygould.org/&quot;&gt;Gould,&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/index.html&quot;&gt;Feynman&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1921/einstein-bio.html&quot;&gt;Einstein&lt;/a&gt;,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/do53dn.html&quot;&gt;Watson &amp;amp; Crick&lt;/a&gt;, and definitely read Sagan, read the Bible, read the Koran, read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://harekrishna.com/col/books/BG/gita/&quot;&gt;Bhagavad-gita&lt;/a&gt;, or any of the other holy books.  Put in the time, do the research, ask the questions, you will probably find that if you do, you will only increase your understanding of the issue.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-03-27T21:18:59.203" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T21:18:59.203" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1444" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-27T21:30:05.420" Score="36" ViewCount="2089" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard an interesting conspiracy theory recently with the basic idea that there isn't a gold stockpile at &quot;Fort Knox&quot; (anymore or ever). With the level of security so great there and reportedly few people having seen the gold, it's an interesting idea and raises the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a substantial stockpile of gold at &quot;Fort Knox&quot; (or the Bullion Depository) at present day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit for relevant claim - &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.com/shows/brad-meltzers-decoded&quot;&gt;Brad Metzler's Decoded on History Channel&lt;/a&gt; did a show on this.  They were unable to find any evidence that the gold was actually there but had several anecdotes from people who knew people who said there was no actual gold in the vault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="858" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2011-10-17T17:59:18.883" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T04:30:37.563" Title="Is there a gold stockpile at &quot;Fort Knox&quot;?" Tags="|united-states|economics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1444" CreationDate="2011-03-27T21:41:53.260" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, there is quite a stockpile at Fort Knox, Alaska (where hundreds of thousands of ounces come out of the ground annually)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kinross.com/operations/operation-fort-knox-alaska-usa.aspx&quot;&gt;http://www.kinross.com/operations/operation-fort-knox-alaska-usa.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the depository is concerned, you'd have to believe the Mint's publications or ask someone to provide classified information to answer your question (not a great idea).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/fun_facts/index.cfm?action=fun_facts13&quot;&gt;http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/fun_facts/index.cfm?action=fun_facts13&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1110" LastActivityDate="2011-03-27T21:41:53.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1438" CreationDate="2011-03-27T21:43:00.547" Score="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: this answer lives on the edge between science and philosophy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The earth could very well be only 6,000 years old, but all observed data and deduced models point to an earth billions of years old. This means that if the earth (and the universe) were indeed only 6,000 years old that it would have to have been created in a way such that it were pre-aged -- which is entirely possible, just not verifiable (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis&quot;&gt;Omphalos Hypothesis&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis#Other_formulations&quot;&gt;Last Thursdayism&lt;/a&gt;). At this stage, the distinction becomes/remains important in the realm of religion, but not in the realm of science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can look at it another way -- can we actually go back in time to see with our own eyes? No. We measure current data and deduce. In the realm of science the actual age of the earth doesn't really matter; what matters is figuring which &quot;facts&quot; and models to assume true in order to make useful predictions about the &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt; (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumentalism&quot;&gt;Instrumentalism&lt;/a&gt;). Knowing the past if solely for peace of mind is more a religious matter than a scientific one; and it's likely we'll never know what &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; happened 6 thousand or 5 billion years ago anyways. Science is about observations, models, and the future!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(edit: Added some links for further reading / support. Thank you to those who shared links and criticisms of my original answer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="858" LastEditorUserId="858" LastEditDate="2011-03-31T08:01:38.043" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T08:01:38.043" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1449" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2281" CreationDate="2011-03-27T23:48:03.247" Score="14" ViewCount="7067" Body="&lt;p&gt;ALH84001 is a famous meteorite found in Antarctica.  Scientists have since claimed that (1) this meteorite came from Mars (along with several other meteorites), and (2) that it contained evidence of life.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The focus here is on the first claim, that the rock comes from Mars.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A game of cosmic pinball is involved.  The rocks have to escape Mars gravity by some event, orbit around in space, and hit Earth before hitting something else.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://ssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/marslife.html&quot;&gt;NASA website explanation&lt;/a&gt; seems to be, more or less, &quot;gas bubbles&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do we know the meteorite came from&#xA;  Mars?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Meteorite ALH84001 is a softball-sized&#xA;  igneous rock weighing 1.9 kilograms&#xA;  (4.2 pounds). It is one of twelve&#xA;  meteorites discovered on Earth which&#xA;  are thought to be from Mars. Most&#xA;  meteorites formed early in the history&#xA;  of the solar system, some 4.6 billion&#xA;  years ago. Eleven of the twelve&#xA;  martian meteorites have ages less than&#xA;  1.3 billion years, ALH84001 at 4.5 billion years old being the only&#xA;  exception. All twelve are igneous&#xA;  rocks crystallized from molten magma&#xA;  in a way which suggests they formed in&#xA;  a planetary-sized body, not an&#xA;  asteroid. They have similar oxygen&#xA;  isotope characteristics to each other&#xA;  and higher concentrations of ferric&#xA;  iron, water, and other volatiles than&#xA;  other meteorites. All twelve also show&#xA;  evidence of shock heating, presumably&#xA;  as a result of the impact which&#xA;  ejected them into space. Gas bubbles&#xA;  trapped in one meteorite, EETA79001,&#xA;  have a composition which matches the&#xA;  current martian atmosphere as measured&#xA;  by the Viking Landers, compelling&#xA;  evidence that this meteorite and by&#xA;  association the others, including&#xA;  ALH84001, came from Mars&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An article in Wired &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/allan-hills-meteorite-age/&quot;&gt;http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/04/allan-hills-meteorite-age/&lt;/a&gt; notes that the estimated age of the rock had to be adjusted in light of new evidence.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does it matter that the gas in the meteorite matches a modern Martian atmosphere if the rock was ejected from Mars in a cataclysm over a billion years ago? Would the atmosphere still be the same? Aren't there other solar system objects, such as comets, that contain gas whose composition we either haven't yet observed, or whose gas might otherwise mimic what scientists saw in the Mars probe observations? As a meteorite enters Earth's atmosphere, isn't it subject to thermal stresses that could produce or change gas bubbles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we now have rovers on Mars whose primary job is to examine rocks, shouldn't there be more evidence when comparing the meteorites than &quot;gas bubbles&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a number of meteorites are now classified as being from Mars, how does this number compare to what might have possibly landed on Earth? Has anyone estimated the probability that ejecta from Mars will occur, and eventually land on the Earth (as opposed to orbiting the sun, or again landing on Mars, exiting the solar system, or impacting another larger body such as Jupiter).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The doubt for me would be that there are few ejecta events that produce material that exits Martian orbit, whose trajectory subsequently crosses Earth's atmosphere before impacting some other body, whose material also is large enough to survive atmospheric entry, to finally rest on land and (probability 1/3 with 2/3 ocean), specifically land untouched in a desolate area like antarctica. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems doubtful because we keep having to multiply what would seem like small probabilities.  Taking just the first item, how often do events on the Earth occur that launches rocks at escape velocity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we believe the claims that these rocks can be traced to Mars?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T00:00:33.143" Title="How can we know meteorites found on Earth came from Mars?" Tags="|physics|mars|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1501" CreationDate="2011-03-28T00:01:23.867" Score="22" ViewCount="8602" Body="&lt;p&gt;With my limited knowledge of the process of nuclear fusion energy, this seems like one of the most promising methods for producing huge amounts of energy, with relatively very low risk, once researchers manage to control the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim goes that the nuclear waste of nuclear fusion is negligible and that the process of generating nuclear fusion energy is easily containable, contrary to nuclear fission energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, are there any significant risks involved I may not be aware of yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1170" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-01-28T07:09:18.863" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T21:55:04.297" Title="Is nuclear fusion energy as safe as its proponents claim?" Tags="|safety|energy|nuclear-energy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1338" CreationDate="2011-03-28T01:06:45.853" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Basically what this claim does is take a known phenomenon and assign it a significance it does not deserve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copper staining occurs as a result of oxidation of the bracelet in response to exposure to many factors, not just the body. To understand this all it takes is to look at the basic &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180715031417/http://www.chemistry.co.nz:80/redox_new.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reaction which is occurring&lt;/a&gt;, and the factors which affect it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no basis for assigning any particular significance to this staining process.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if we were to ignore the fact that copper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shodor.org/unchem/advanced/redox/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;interacts with environmental oxygen&lt;/a&gt; and assume that the major reactant in staining is sweat or other metabolic waste products excreted through the skin or sebum, sweat is generally not a reliable indicator of any specific disease state or metabolic process (though exceptions can be made for cystic &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cystic_fibrosis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fibrosis&lt;/a&gt;, certain &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20131021023120/http://www.iusd.org/uhs/apbiology/Unit%20Resources/Unit%205/Human%20Genetic%20Disorders.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;genetic disorders&lt;/a&gt;, and some cases of poisoning). It is difficult to discern medically relevant data from sweat even when subjected to chemical analysis, and what can be gained is generally limited to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1616790/pdf/annsurg01396-0058.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;specific&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jpeds.com/article/S0022-3476(63)80099-2/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;conditions&lt;/a&gt;.  Even then, samples cannot be considered accurate unless they have an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/9685697_Composition_of_palmar_and_forearm_sweat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;adequate volume&lt;/a&gt;.  To assert that any valid assessment of anything can be done by randomly determining the color of a stain caused by a very tiny amount of sweat and limited skin contact in an uncontrolled environment is ridiculous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sweat is actually quite a complex thing (for this discussion I am lumping anything you can excrete through the skin as sweat). It is composed of sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, fatty acids, &lt;a href=&quot;https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article-abstract/18/5/373/4787525&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;amino acids&lt;/a&gt;, chloride ions, and many other things which can all react to solubilize copper and cause a stain.  However, there is no credible evidence that any of these levels are significantly altered in any particular condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also normal for the chemical composition and pH of sweat to vary within a certain dynamic range, as well as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smartskincare.com/skinbiology/sebum.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;that of the skin, sebum and acid mantle&lt;/a&gt;.  Even fluctuation within this range can change the outcome of the staining without indicating any &amp;quot;illness&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, basic chemistry tells us that there are other variables in this reaction, most of which have nothing to do with metabolism or illness, and therefore would confound any attempt to derive accurate health information from interpreting the stain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Soaps used&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lotions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Length of reaction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Temperature at which reaction occurs. Obviously, heat will speed up this reaction, changing the properties of the stain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frequency of bathing/showering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specific chemical properties of water which the skin or the bracelet may be exposed to. Which includes regional variations in water quality, use of well water, acidity of local rainfall.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chemical composition of the bracelet itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Environmental oxygen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arthritis...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that solutions containing copper can be absorbed transdermally and may have anti-inflammatory properties is &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180605072120/https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02024177&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;based on actual science&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the chemical formulations are very &lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8896117/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;particular&lt;/a&gt; and not without &lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15543084/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;side effects&lt;/a&gt; of their own and similar effects cannot be achieved by simply wearing copper jewelry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="29457" LastEditDate="2023-08-30T16:34:57.363" LastActivityDate="2023-08-30T16:34:57.363" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1367" CreationDate="2011-03-28T02:38:13.867" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/circumcision.htm&quot;&gt;CDC concludes that circumcision does reduce risk of disease&lt;/a&gt; based on multiple lab studies and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00124878?term=circumcision%20AND%20uganda&amp;amp;ran%20k=2&quot;&gt;controlled intervention trials&lt;/a&gt;, in addition to the statistical research that opponents focus on for &quot;refuting&quot; the evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without addressing any spurious claims about countries' &quot;superior&quot; health care systems, and avoiding the broadband use of wikipedia and pictures to draw emotic correlative arguments on a topic where &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fic.nih.gov/news/publications/global_health_matters/2010/0210_circumcision.htm&quot;&gt;real research&lt;/a&gt; has been done, it boils down to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research indicates reduced disease risk for circumcised men.  The question to be answered then is, do you feel that less risk of disease is synonymous with higher quality of life?  Assuming that the &quot;better sex&quot; one can experience with a foreskin is true, then it becomes an individual question of -- Does better sexual enjoyment provide enough quality of life to counter balance the increased risk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some myths about the difficulty or need cleaning, which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001917.htm&quot;&gt;Medline seems to clear up by saying to wash it like you do everything else&lt;/a&gt;.  Personally I do not see the difference of three minutes of cleaning either way to be a quality of life concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-31T06:56:28.620" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T06:56:28.620" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1450" CreationDate="2011-03-28T02:40:25.223" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually the first &quot;real&quot; Nuclear Fusion reactor is being constructed as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iter.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ITER&lt;/a&gt; project. &#xA;Although they started digging in France, they are many problems yet to overcome. I put real into quotes because the goal of a reactor is to produce more energy then what is used to start the reaction, and this is one of the things that nobody has been able to achieve yet with fusion, as mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iter.org/sci/beyonditer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for this introduction but it felt necessary. Now, for the dangers, a list is compiled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iter.org/safety&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and the process seems really safe since in case of a problem, everything stop in a few seconds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, they are, as mentioned, many obstacles yet to overcome, and if the theory makes it safe, the implementation will create other variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, since we don't have a working prototype yet, we don't really know. Maybe on &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;physics stackexchange&lt;/a&gt; you could have a more thorough answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was to lazy to check, but @dmckee posted in the comments &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/7539/is-there-any-inherent-danger-in-operating-a-thermonuclear-reactor&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; link to physics.SE where they have this discussion! They say basically the same thing ;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="800" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:12.727" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T14:12:58.700" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1456" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-28T02:51:37.357" Score="61" ViewCount="55914" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most people hear this in one form or another at some point in their life, especially those kids who play basketball.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even videos of white guys who have excellent jumping ability stress the fact that they are white &amp;mdash; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goXIlP854bs&quot;&gt;&quot;A true white kid that can jump&quot; (YouTube).&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it really true? Scientifically speaking, on a bell curve of the vertical of all black people and all white people, would the peak of the curve be higher for black people than for white people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1073" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2011-11-20T17:42:02.433" LastActivityDate="2016-12-19T13:18:12.633" Title="Can black people, on average, jump higher than white people?" Tags="|physiology|race|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1456" CreationDate="2011-03-28T07:28:01.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a great article that goes through the truths &amp;amp; myths regarding African American athletes and their domination of many sports including football, basketball and more. It can be found on page 183 of the book &quot;African Americans in sport: contemporary themes&quot;&#xA; By Gary Alan Sailes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The African-American Athlete: Social Myths and Stereotypes &#xA;  by Gary A. Sailes, Indiana University &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This essay notes the domination of African American athletes and discusses the &#xA;  attempts to explain the successes that have resulted in racial myths and stereotypes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Again, the author reviews the history of African American participation in sport, this time adding the history of the “dumb jock” stereotype. The author also reviews two distinct stereotypes that have emerged regarding African American males—the “brute” and the “sambo.”  The brute depicts the African American male as primitive, temperamental, &#xA;  overreactive, uncontrollable, violent and sexually powerful, intentionally separating the &#xA;  African American from intellectualism and mental abilities. The sambo depicts the &#xA;  African American male as benign, childish, immature, lazy, comical, fun-loving, &#xA;  impulsive, good-humored, inferior and loveable, a stereotype that the author says has its &#xA;  roots in American slavery. The author notes that the Harlem Globetrotters were criticized &#xA;  in the late 1970s for perpetuating the sambo stereotype. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The author discusses the belief, which was quite popular in mainstream media in the &#xA;  late 1980s, that African American athletes are physically superior to white athletes. The &#xA;  theory says that this superiority is genetic, giving Blacks an advantage over their white &#xA;  counterparts. &lt;strong&gt;The author then reviewed the common theories, dispelling each one as &#xA;  myth.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;(emphasis added, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncaa.org/wps/wcm/connect/c368c2004e0d628fbd98fd1ad6fc8b25/readers_guide.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&amp;amp;CACHEID=c368c2004e0d628fbd98fd1ad6fc8b25&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=SAa_GairhY8C&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA183&amp;amp;dq=african+americans+foot+muscle+jump&amp;amp;ots=tc34wBQ5Xe&amp;amp;sig=vlJFNCHnp9qZqlwqe1MSFrWh_Go#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=SAa_GairhY8C&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA183&amp;amp;dq=african+americans+foot+muscle+jump&amp;amp;ots=tc34wBQ5Xe&amp;amp;sig=vlJFNCHnp9qZqlwqe1MSFrWh_Go#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Google Book result in above link may or may not be available&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1199" LastEditorUserId="919" LastEditDate="2011-03-29T23:06:36.580" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T23:06:36.580" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="377" CreationDate="2011-03-28T07:38:14.393" Score="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080328104302.htm&quot;&gt;ScienceDaily&lt;/a&gt; has a nice article on this, as well as many related articles.  In the cited article, they state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the process of building pyramids, while complicated, was not as colossal an undertaking as many of us believe, Redford says. Estimates suggest that between 20,000 and 30,000 laborers were needed to build the Great Pyramid at Giza in less than 23 years. By comparison, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris took almost 200 years to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what gets people so confused is they mistake old cultures for being unintelligent.  Humans have had the same level of intelligence for nearly 200,000 years, just not the full benefit of technology.  (Citation:  Hominid Brain Evolution Testing Climatic, Ecological, and Social Competition Models, Drew H. Bailey &amp;amp; David C. Geary, Hum Nat (2009) 20:67-79, DOI 10.1007/s12110-008-9054-0)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, in the article, it states &quot;laborers&quot;.  A common misconception is that slaves built the pyramids, which is not the case.  Archaeological evidence shows the builders were skilled and paid for their efforts.  From the same article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the image most people have of slaves being forced to build the pyramids against their will is incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional collection of articles can be found at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/01/11/egypt-finds-tombs-of-pyramid-builders-and-more-evidence-they-were-free-men/&quot;&gt;Discover Magazine Blog&lt;/a&gt; post by Andrew Moseman.  It starts out saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Forget the myths about massive numbers of slaves or Jews building the great pyramids, Egypt‘s chief archaeologist argues this week. He says Egyptian researchers have found the tombs of more pyramid builders, and in those tombs more evidence that free men erected these monumental tributes to the ancient pharaohs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And continues with numerous links to even more articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the assertion that it was impossible to do many of the things that the builders of the pyramids did, that is a common misconception people seem to have.  Most people don't consider ancient humans to have been as intelligent as we are, when in fact they possessed the exact same intellect as we do today, just not the technology.  And since we rely so much on advanced technology, many people make an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity&quot;&gt;argument of incredulity&lt;/a&gt; because we just don't do things the old fashioned way.   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/constructiontechniques.htm&quot;&gt;Some people have started to collect reconstructions of those methods on the web&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same argument regarding the mathematical precision could be made.  Also, in ancient times, without our calendars and clocks, astronomical observations played a much more important role than today (i.e. when to plant, when to expect rains, etc.).  Again, ancient humans were not stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-07-31T01:32:30.720" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T01:32:30.720" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1384" CreationDate="2011-03-28T11:31:53.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do a little thought experiment. Imagine you're a virus wanting to infect as many people as possible. Your victims will also become horribly disfigured, ill, and probably die as a result of being infected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would you want your victims to become contagious before or after they become symptomatic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's how evolution works :) &#xA;It's also why e.g. Ebola doesn't spread very far geographically. Victims tend to get so seriously ill so rapidly after infection they have little time to infect enough others and to travel widely.&#xA;Most infections therefore will be in the immediate vicinity of the initial victim, often his or her caregivers who may get infected by accidents or carelessness while handling the victim or his remains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HIV otoh has a very long period during which the carrier is contagious but not symptomatic, which has allowed it to spread worldwide over a relatively short period of time despite having an infection vector which makes it harder for it to actually infect another victim (direct blood contact is required, rather than merely being for example coughed on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T11:31:53.990" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1438" CreationDate="2011-03-28T12:11:25.790" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 6000 year old figure comes from the Genealogies in the bible -&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology&quot;&gt;Ussher &lt;/a&gt;- He added up the lifetimes from Jesus (1 AD) back to Adam.  The Genealogies are surprisingly complete.  If you believe in the non-miraculous parts of the bible, it's actually a decent way of figuring out the date of &quot;The Fall of Man.&quot;  Let us assume, that there was a man called Adam, who was the first follower of Jehovah, and that he lived some time on the order of 6000 years ago.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we accept that, there is still no evidence that the &quot;Adam&quot; who was kicked out of Eden is the same Adam who was &quot;created&quot; on the sixth day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we cannot assume, unless we are biblical literalists, is that the garden of Eden and creation stories are anything but metaphor.  The &quot;days&quot; in creation could very well be arbitrary periods of time on the order of millions or billions of years.  Peter alluded to this possibility when he said &quot;... With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. [NIV]&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bible.cc/2_peter/3-8.htm&quot;&gt;2 Peter 3:8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, even taking the Judeo-Christian genealogies, we still have very weak evidence of a young earth.  The only people who believe this are the aforementioned literalists, who believe in the young earth because they are literalists.  (That is, they are not literalists because they believe in a young earth.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TLDR: The only evidence for a young earth is biblical.  Take it as you will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="880" LastEditorUserId="880" LastEditDate="2011-03-29T12:45:56.313" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T12:45:56.313" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="966" CreationDate="2011-03-28T12:57:14.307" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Observationally, ADHD is generally  diagnosed prior to any standardized tests being issued (at least in the educational world (again, from personal observation, those diagnoses are frequently made between 4 and 7 years old)). In most locales, standardized tests are not issued until grade 4, or approximately age 10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="637" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T12:57:14.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1477" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-28T14:50:38.047" Score="43" ViewCount="37885" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Ng9Q.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;The Great Sphinx of Giza&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Robert Temple's book &lt;em&gt;The Sphinx Mystery: The Forgotten Origins of the Sanctuary of Anubis&lt;/em&gt; have any support in the academic community? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those of you unfamiliar with his theory, here's a quote from his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sphinxmystery.info/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sphinx Mystery website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Robert Temple reveals that the Sphinx&#xA;  was originally a monumental Anubis,&#xA;  the Egyptian jackal god, and that its&#xA;  face is that of a Middle Kingdom&#xA;  Pharaoh, Amenemhet II, which was a&#xA;  later re-carving. In addition, he&#xA;  provides photographic evidence of&#xA;  ancient sluice gate traces to&#xA;  demonstrate that, during the Old&#xA;  Kingdom, the Sphinx as Anubis sat&#xA;  surrounded by a moat filled with&#xA;  water-called Jackal Lake in the&#xA;  ancient Pyramid Texts-where religious&#xA;  ceremonies were held. He also provides&#xA;  evidence that the exact size and&#xA;  position of the Sphinx were&#xA;  geometrically determined in relation&#xA;  to the pyramids of Cheops and Chephren&#xA;  and that it was part of a pharaonic&#xA;  resurrection cult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, was the Sphinx originally an Anubis re-carved into Amenemhet II?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cdUo2.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="994" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-05T01:07:23.080" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T21:04:02.057" Title="Was the Great Sphinx of Giza originally an Anubis?" Tags="|history|egypt|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="453" CreationDate="2011-03-28T20:55:03.063" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;About the fact the (educated) Middle Age people knew well that the Earth is spherical, let me add that the Earth Dante had in mind was indeed spherical, and in his &lt;em&gt;Divine Comedy&lt;/em&gt; he describes precisely the moment in which, when he reaches the bottom of the Inferno, which is an enormous conical empty space having its vertex in the centre of the Earth, Dante goes through the centre of gravity of the planet and his &quot;up&quot; become his &quot;down&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Guide [Virgil] with labour and with hard-drawn breath&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Turned round his head where he had had his legs,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And grappled to the hair [of Satan, who stands at the centre of the Earth], as one who mounts,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  So that to Hell I thought we were returning.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Inferno, XXXIV, 78--81, translation by Longfellow; see also the following lines).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1246" LastActivityDate="2011-03-28T20:55:03.063" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1493" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1694" CreationDate="2011-03-28T21:21:41.547" Score="29" ViewCount="2467" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spirasolaris.ca/1aintro.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one proposal that Vikings sailed around the northern coast of Canada&lt;/a&gt; and made it as far south along the west to reach Vancouver Island.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JCkCK.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Image taken from the link in the previous paragraph.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also considerably more proposals that Vikings made is as far south along the eastern coast of the Americas to interact with the Mayan civilization: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110802045225/http://www.suite101.com/content/the-vikingmaya-connection-a18989&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Viking-Maya Connection&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://forums.skadi.net/archive/index.php/t-62948.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Was Quetzalcoatl a Viking&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150105230643/http://merritt.150m.com/tw_017.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Thulerian Way&lt;/a&gt;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Records indicate that temperatures were considerably warmer during the first 100-200 years after 1000 AD than now; realistically, to what extent &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; the Vikings have sailed through the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Northwest Passage&lt;/a&gt; and down the western coast of Canada, or south from Newfoundland along the eastern coast of America?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T16:04:05.430" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T16:04:05.430" Title="What is the most realistic estimate for how far the Vikings could have explored the western hemisphere?" Tags="|history|vikings|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="453" CreationDate="2011-03-28T21:24:24.103" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bede.org.uk/flatearth.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Myth of the Flat Earth&lt;/a&gt; I found this to be a very good source&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We all know that Christopher Columbus encountered stiff resistance about his idea of sailing off West to try and reach the East Indies. Many of us have laboured under the impression that people were concerned that he would sail off the edge of the Earth which was widely believed to be flat. History is thought to have vindicated Columbus against those filled with the Christian superstition of a flat Earth who held on to old fashioned beliefs. A minority of people are even under the impression that Galileo's trial centred on the subject rather than whether the Earth orbited the sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It comes as some surprise, therefore, to find that Columbus was wrong and his critics were right - not because the world is actually flat after all, but because at the time everyone knew it was a globe and were arguing about how big it was. The idea that the uncouth people of the Middle Ages thought the Earth was flat is an example of the myth that has been propagated since the nineteenth century to give us a quite unfair view of this vibrant and exciting period.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular a committee set up in Salamanca examined the plans and rejected them on the grounds that Columbus had underestimated the distance he would have to travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1156" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T09:43:19.910" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1342" CreationDate="2011-03-29T01:37:05.570" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/2778889?seq=2&quot;&gt;this overview&lt;/a&gt; of a work by Gamson, in which he found that 49% of a random sample of organizations largely achieved their goals, 13% partially achieved them, and 38% didn't achieve any. He found that the major factor was whether the organization wanted to &quot;displace&quot; people they agreed with or just get them to change their minds. (Displacement ones did much worse.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So ironically enough, I wasn't able to find answers to my specific question about pamphleteering, but the broad question of &quot;does activism work?&quot; appears to be answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T01:37:05.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1499" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1519" CreationDate="2011-03-29T02:19:21.730" Score="21" ViewCount="2293" Body="&lt;p&gt;People like to claim that less developed countries are happier, because they live the simple life and stronger family ties. We've all heard the saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Money can't buy you happiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is easy to dismiss by showing that rich nations do better on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_with_Life_Index&quot;&gt;satisfaction of life index&lt;/a&gt; than poor ones (yes, correlation does not &lt;em&gt;imply&lt;/em&gt; causation, but I'm fairly sure there's a causal link in this case). I'm curious though if it's always the case that increased wealth leads to a negative impact on happiness, even after an adjustment period. Can a case be made that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Money can't buy (society) happiness (sometimes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where increase in money is the primary cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T10:18:15.177" LastActivityDate="2018-03-04T19:01:33.553" Title="Can a society become unhappier with an increase in wealth?" Tags="|economics|wealth|happiness|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1450" CreationDate="2011-03-29T04:02:30.387" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;All proposed methods of power generation using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;nuclear fusion&lt;/a&gt; will be &lt;strong&gt;safer&lt;/strong&gt; than current methods using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission_power&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;nuclear fission&lt;/a&gt; (assuming any of the proposed methods actually work).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Fusion reactors will not use the H1 + H1 reaction that powers the Sun (see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton-proton_chain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;proton–proton chain reaction&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;. The current designs combine (fuse) some combination of isotopes of hydrogen: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deuterium&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;deuterium&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tritium&lt;/a&gt;. Safety issues are largely dependent how those elements are combined (see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#Fuel_cycle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fusion fuel cycle&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the basic safety issues...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possibily of &quot;meltdown&quot;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Continuous operation of the plant is&#xA;  maintained by continual refuelling&#xA;  with the fuel mixture (deuterium and&#xA;  tritium), so the fuel inventory in the&#xA;  plasma chamber at any time is&#xA;  sufficient only for about one minute&#xA;  of operation.   --&lt;a href=&quot;http://iter.rma.ac.be/Stufftodownload/Texts/Safety_and_Environmental_Impact_Fusion.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Production of radioactive waste:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nearly all materials become activated&#xA;  to some degree by energetic neutron&#xA;  bombardment. Neutron reactions in DT&#xA;  fusion reactors will inevitably create&#xA;  radioisotopes. The principal&#xA;  radioactive materials present in a DT&#xA;  fusion reactor will therefore be&#xA;  tritium and neutron activated&#xA;  structural materials surrounding the&#xA;  reaction volume. --&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/.../37402042225.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Release of tritium:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(as noted this would not be a concern in a deuterium-deuterium process)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are also other concerns,&#xA;  principally regarding the possible&#xA;  release of tritium into the&#xA;  environment. It is radioactive and&#xA;  very difficult to contain since it can&#xA;  penetrate concrete, rubber and some&#xA;  grades of steel...snip...Each fusion&#xA;  reactor could release significant&#xA;  quantities of tritium during operation&#xA;  through routine leaks, assuming the&#xA;  best containment systems. An accident&#xA;  could release even more. This is one&#xA;  reason why long-term hopes are for the&#xA;  deuterium-deuterium fusion process,&#xA;  dispensing with tritium. --&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf66.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More sources of information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.efda.org/eu_fusion_programme/downloads/scientific_and_technical_publications/SEIF_report_25Apr01.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Safety and Environmental Impact of Fusion&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/canada/en/documents-and-links/publications/tritium-hazard-report-pollu.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tritium Hazard Report: Pollution and Radiation Risk from Canadian Nuclear Facilities&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/ReviewofGreenpeacereport_Final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Review of the Greenpeace report: &quot;Tritium Hazard Report: Pollution and Radiation Risk from Canadian Nuclear Facilities&quot;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia entry &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fusion Power&lt;/a&gt; also is a reasonable source for the basics and further research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;At the temperatures and densities in stellar cores the rates of fusion reactions are notoriously slow. For example, at solar core temperature (T ≈ 15 MK) and density (160 g/cm³), the energy release rate is only 276 μW/cm³—about a quarter of the volumetric rate at which a resting human body generates heat. (see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion#Astrophysical_reaction_chains&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Astrophysical reaction chains&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-15T21:58:50.267" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T21:58:50.267" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1499" CreationDate="2011-03-29T04:28:28.470" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Arguably, one of the best research on this subject was done by Princeton University, which showed that up to about $75000, money did have a measurable impact on the &quot;happiness&quot; of the owner.  Here is a link to that study: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2016291,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2016291,00.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It specifically found that beyond $75K, it did not have a significant impact.  &lt;strong&gt;However, it also did not find a negative correlation for higher values of money.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another relevant link may be here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/8580-money-buys-happiness-point.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.livescience.com/8580-money-buys-happiness-point.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, Bhutan's efforts at measuring &quot;Gross National Happiness&quot; are also interesting, but I have not seen the results of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the short answer to your question seems like a &quot;No&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1251" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T04:28:28.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1499" CreationDate="2011-03-29T09:03:43.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cepr.org/meets/wkcn/3/3503/Papers/kahneman.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Daniel Kahneman &quot;Experienced Utility and Objective Happiness:&#xA;A Moment-Based Approach&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the major issues in this research is the &quot;Treadmill&quot; effect, which causes out happiness to be related to the &lt;em&gt;change&lt;/em&gt; in out conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, having a large amount of money (or other thing that makes us happy) will make you happier in the short run, but you happiness level will return to normal very quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding you specific question, a society that increases it's wealth, but the loses some of it (but still having more then it started with), may be unhappier then the original society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="212" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T09:03:43.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1507" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2577" CreationDate="2011-03-29T09:28:33.660" Score="15" ViewCount="1043" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1370616/Fire-fighting-water-hoses-replaced-electric-wands.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Fighting fire with volts: How water hoses could be replaced with electric wands&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; gives exciting news about possible new way of extinguishing fire, researched by &lt;a href=&quot;http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&amp;amp;_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&amp;amp;node_id=222&amp;amp;content_id=CNBP_026931&amp;amp;use_sec=true&amp;amp;sec_url_var=region1&amp;amp;__uuid=cd081c4c-070d-4082-8632-77176da17080&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ludovico Cademartiri, Ph.D.&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cA3s8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists connected a 600-watt amplifier to a wizard-style wand and used it to shoot beams of  electricity at a flame more than a foot high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fire was snuffed out almost instantly, an American Chemical Society conference heard on Sunday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is it really plausible? How it could affect people and electric installation in a burning building?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="123" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T09:22:31.307" Title="Fighting fire with electricity. Plausible?" Tags="|safety|fire|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1508" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7124" CreationDate="2011-03-29T09:29:36.610" Score="46" ViewCount="9241" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sure most of us have heard at least a variation of this myth. Unfortunately I failed to find the original source. Was there actually a study that claimed this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the sites debunking this myth point to the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo3626005.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States&quot;&lt;/a&gt; citing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;54% of men think about sex everyday,    or several times a day,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;43% think about sex a few times per    month, or a few times per week &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;4% think about sex less than once a    month.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These numbers show that &lt;strong&gt;almost half the men don't even think about sex once a day&lt;/strong&gt;. But that book is &lt;strong&gt;from 1994&lt;/strong&gt; and from what I understand it was just a survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;2006&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://drlouann.ning.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Louann Brizendine&lt;/a&gt; published her book &lt;a href=&quot;http://drlouann.ning.com/page/the-female-brain&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Female Brain&lt;/a&gt;, in which see apparently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/taboo-tolerance/the-gspot-and-other-myths-about-sex-1857635.html?action=Gallery&amp;amp;ino=4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Studies have shown&lt;/strong&gt; that while &lt;strong&gt;a man&#xA;  will think about sex every 52 seconds&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;  the subject tends to cross women's&#xA;  minds just once a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have the book, so I don't know which studies she is referencing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there actually studies (not just &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/01/09/men-think-about-sex-13-times-a-day-115875-21953369/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;polls&lt;/a&gt;) that show men think about sex fairly often?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="25375" LastEditDate="2017-06-08T13:02:50.813" LastActivityDate="2023-04-07T19:18:12.830" Title="Do men think about sex every 7 seconds?" Tags="|biology|psychology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1509" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1512" CreationDate="2011-03-29T09:57:50.013" Score="17" ViewCount="1582" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6838/is-being-a-vegan-more-environmentally-friendly-than-otherwise&quot;&gt;Is being a vegan more environmentally friendly than otherwise?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be sufficient for people to stop eating meat to stop global warming? I've heard that the process to bring meat to everyone's plate is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This include the feeding of the animals, the cooling of the meat, transport, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="873" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T12:24:48.527" Title="Would avoiding the eating of meat stop global warming?" Tags="|climate-change|meat|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2012-10-23T05:11:24.750" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1508" CreationDate="2011-03-29T10:18:33.153" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honestly, you should think about this claim in the other direction. The claim is made, but lacks support, that men think about sex every 7 seconds. So, if you're taking a scientific approach, you'd ask a question, look for supporting research and, were we to follow the scientific process, we'd stop when we learned that there was no such thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, there are few studies that actually test this because it is the case that you can't &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; know what any individual person is thinking at any given time. However, there are things that we can know about thinking that are likely to make it unlikely that such a claim is true. A very basic concentration test, for example, which can take an hour or more obviously has a time frame that overlaps the time that a man would be thinking about sex if this were true. Thus, if you can keep someone concentrating on a task for an extended length of time, they're clearly not thinking about sex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some studies that are evidence regarding the efficiency (or lack of efficiency) with which we can think about multiple things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can be awesome at one thing, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/08/25/multitaskers-are-bad-at-multitasking-study-shows/&quot;&gt;most people suck when they try to be awesome at two&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.distraction.gov/research/PDF-Files/Passenger-Cellphone-Conversations.pdf&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; study shows that dividing one's attention between driving and talking on a cell phone can cause more accidents because the attention of individuals is not actually working on each task simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Psychologists blame what is known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icn.ucl.ac.uk/lavielab/reprints/Lavie-etal-04.pdf&quot;&gt;Load Theory&lt;/a&gt; for our inability to process much stimuli at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, based on the inability of our brains to actually process very many stimuli at once, while some men &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; think about sex more frequently than others, it is very unlikely that they are even capable of thinking about sex as frequently as is commonly claimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="530" LastEditorUserId="530" LastEditDate="2011-03-29T22:23:24.737" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T22:23:24.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1509" CreationDate="2011-03-29T11:18:58.607" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The meat industry is indeed a major contributor to global warming, and other environmental effects such as deforestation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it does not seem that stopping eating meat by itself is enough to stop global warming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/EI167.1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diet, Energy, and Global Warming&lt;/a&gt; by Gidon Eshel and Pamela A. Martin, the authors claim that moving from meat-based diet to a vegetarian diet saves about 6% of the greenhouse gas emissions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We examine the greenhouse gas emissions associated with plant- and animal-based diets, considering both direct and indirect emissions (i.e., CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emissions due to fossil fuel combustion, and methane and nitrous oxide CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;-equivalent emissions due to animal-based food production). We conclude that a person consuming a mixed diet with the mean American caloric content and composition causes the emissions of 1485 kg CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;-equivalent above the emissions associated with consuming the same number of calories, but from plant sources. Far from trivial, nationally this difference amounts to over 6% of the total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. We conclude by briefly addressing the public health safety of plant-based diets, and find no evidence for adverse effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this study is based on US data - the effect would be smaller in places where current diet already includes less meat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what level of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emission reduction is needed to stop global warming. but the change of green house gas concentration between the beginning of the industrial revolution and today is about 40% (&lt;a href=&quot;http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/pns/current_ghg.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;data from US Department of Energy&lt;/a&gt;) - much more than what will be saved from stopping the meat industry. This is a lot, but it doesn't appear enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/0804.1126v3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;A level of 350 PPM of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; is desired to stop global warming, while the current level is 385 PPM - a difference of about 8%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is much closer to the amount reached by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/EI167.1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diet, Energy, and Global Warming&lt;/a&gt; paper, but a similar study that takes into account global (and not just US) data is needed to get a real conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="212" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T12:24:48.527" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1384" CreationDate="2011-03-29T11:43:54.853" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you are infectious before you're symptomatic with the flu. This is one reason why the flu spreads so efficiently - sick people tend to stay at home, reducing the risk of infecting others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why the SARS epidemic was containable was that isolation measures could be applied to stop the spread of the disease - only symptomatic persons were infectious. If SARS had been like the flu, the world would have had a much more serious problem (anyone remember SARS at all, today)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a study about how infectiousness before symptom onset (among other things) determines whether containment strategies can work: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/101/16/6146.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.pnas.org/content/101/16/6146.full.pdf+html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken from this study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qJcGL.png&quot; alt=&quot;Infections before symptom onset&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you can contain SARS or smallpox, but no chance with flu or HIV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T11:43:54.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1518" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-29T12:57:40.723" Score="1" ViewCount="687" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/830/what-are-the-scientifically-established-effects-of-daylight-saving-time&quot;&gt;What are the scientifically established effects of Daylight Saving Time?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we did not have daylight-saving, then would the days still be longer in the summer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not, then what is it for?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it have any advantages? For Who?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can anyone cite any research, that shows its effects?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see disadvantages to changing the clocks. But I see no advantages, not even small advantages that are outweighed by the disadvantages. Unless you include job creation and distraction from real issues as advantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1260" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2016-12-24T09:34:34.280" Title="How much daylight does daylight-saving save?" Tags="|environment|economics|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2011-03-29T17:33:18.103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1499" CreationDate="2011-03-29T13:08:52.800" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being&lt;/a&gt;, the authors make the distinction between two factors aspects to happiness and then evaluate each aspect's relation with income.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is &lt;strong&gt;emotional well-being&lt;/strong&gt;, which they define as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emotional well-being (sometimes called hedonic well-being or experienced happiness) refers to the emotional quality of an individual’s everyday experience—the frequency and intensity of experiences of joy, fascination, anxiety, sadness, anger, and affection&#xA;that make one’s life pleasant or unpleasant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is &lt;strong&gt;life evaluation&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life evaluation refers to a person’s thoughts about his or her life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, they also measured what they called &amp;quot;blue effect,&amp;quot; which the &amp;quot;average of worry and sadness,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;positive effect,&amp;quot; which is defined &amp;quot;by the average of three dichotomous items (reports of happiness, enjoyment, and frequent smiling and laughter).&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After evaluating the results of the 2008 and 2009 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, the authors found that emotional well-being correlates with income, up to an an annual income of $75,000, after which point it has. They also found that both positive effect and blue effect correlates with income (positive effect positively and blue effects negatively), also only up to a certain point. On the other hand,m life evaluation correlated strongly with education and income.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In light of those results, they conclude that (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data for positive and blue affect provide an unexpectedly sharp answer to our original question. &lt;strong&gt;More money does not necessarily buy more happiness, but less money is associated with emotional pain.&lt;/strong&gt; Perhaps $75,000 is a threshold beyond which further increases in income no longer improve individuals’ ability to do what matters most to their emotional well-being, such as spending time with people they like, avoiding pain and disease, and enjoying leisure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering that wealth reduces sadness and worry, it's unlikely that an increase in wealth would result is a loss of happiness, unless wealth comes with an associated cost (sickness, for example). Wealth alone, however, does not seem to cause unhappiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you require a more global look at the problem, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20565185&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wealth and happiness across the world: material prosperity predicts life evaluation, whereas psychosocial prosperity predicts positive feeling.&lt;/a&gt;, a review of the Gallup World Poll, which &amp;quot;was used to explore the reasons why happiness is associated with higher income.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It finds that income only has a minor impact on emotional well-being, and that it is psychological needs that affects one's emotional well-being (emphasis mine, again):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Income was a moderately strong predictor of life evaluation but a much weaker predictor of positive and negative feelings. Possessing luxury conveniences and satisfaction with standard of living were also strong predictors of life evaluation. Although the meeting of basic and psychological needs mediated the effects of income on life evaluation to some degree, the strongest mediation was provided by standard of living and ownership of conveniences. &lt;strong&gt;In contrast, feelings were most associated with the fulfillment of psychological needs: learning, autonomy, using one's skills, respect, and the ability to count on others in an emergency.&lt;/strong&gt; Thus, two separate types of prosperity - economic and social psychological - best predict different types of well-being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, neither studies found a negative correlation between wealth and happiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T13:39:53.860" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1518" CreationDate="2011-03-29T13:25:49.340" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The length of a day, or to be more precise the number of hours in a 24-hour period in which there is sun-light is a result of a relation between the earth and the sun. Daylight saving time, which is changing the official hour of the day, doesn't change the positions of the earth and the sun and therefore does not effect number of hours in which there is sun-light and doesn't, in fact, &quot;saves&quot; any day-light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That, however, is not the whole story. Usually, we define the &quot;day&quot; as the time period in which we are awake and night as the period in which we are asleep. Note that these definitions differ from the previous ones since we (in our modern life) don't usually get up with the crack of dawn and go to sleep when the sun sets. Now, if we were to most of our activities during day-light - than we could save quite a lot of money on, for example, lighting the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that is what people mean when they talk about saving day-light. There is exactly the same amount of day-light hours, but we are awake during more of them and thus saving money. Now we could do that simply by deciding to get up earlier and do all of our activities earlier. However, since that seems to confuse people (for example, we are used to have our TV programs, bank opening time and so on at a given hour), we simply move the watch instead and get the exact same effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to how many day-light hour are actually &quot;saved&quot; (are actually been put into use by us), that depends on by how much we have moved the watch - typically, an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T13:25:49.340" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1499" CreationDate="2011-03-29T13:33:16.870" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, an increase in wealth can cause unhappiness when there is greater disparity between the rich and the poor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/031674_inequality_health.html&quot;&gt;Natural News&lt;/a&gt; offers this quote in an article about inequality and health:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research has shown us something rather remarkable: the stress that comes from inequality in our society, in particular from economic inequality, may have more of an effect on our overall health than any other single factor. And conversely, in those societies in which economic equality is greater, in effect a larger middle class, they experience far greater health, happiness, longevity and well-being. Where there is less disparity between rich and poor, there is also a proportionate reduction in violence, teenage pregnancy, depression, anxiety, suicide and homicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What that article boils down to is this:  You can be perfectly happy when you're poor as long as you aren't bombarded by expectations to have more material wealth.  In a richer society, especially where material wealth is fluid, there is a greater risk of polarization between the rich and poor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jean-Benoit G. Rouseau has written an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jbgrou/jobmarket/Happiness%20and%20Income%20Inequality.pdf&quot;&gt;excellent dissertation comparing income and well-being&lt;/a&gt; (pdf).  That paper points out that it is possible to experience a net gain in income that results in a net loss of well-being.  The following is an excerpt from the paper's conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lack of growth in aggregate happiness despite massive economic growth re&#xA;  ects the fact that, over the last few decades, income gains have accrued to the top income earners to such a disproportionate extent that income has fallen for the poor. Over the last thirty-ve years the happiness gap between the rich and the poor has widened in pair with income inequality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regardless of the reason given, happiness is nowadays more a commodity of rich people than it was thirty-five years ago. Analysis of patterns in European countries conrm the crucial role of income inequality in the conversion of economic growth into aggregate well-being.&#xA;  The increased well-being gap between the rich and poor has widened in other developed&#xA;  countries. It appears that this fact should receive additional attention and be consider as&#xA;  a stylized fact of the relationship between income and happiness. Correcting for taxes has&#xA;  little eect on the estimated slope of the happiness function and using permanent rather&#xA;  than transitory income surprisingly lowers the gradient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There you have it, increasing wealth &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; cause unhappiness when the distribution of that wealth is highly polarized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T13:33:16.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1499" CreationDate="2011-03-29T14:00:02.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from all the answers above, your questions can VERY easily be answered by observing immigration patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a MAJOR immigration from &amp;quot;less developed&amp;quot;, as you put  it, countries, to &amp;quot;more developed&amp;quot;. &lt;strong&gt;There is pretty much no immigration to speak of in the other direction (yes, there are some expats, but the numbers are negligible by comparison).&lt;/strong&gt; While that's pretty obvious, let's look at hard #s (Source: &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/2006_MigrationRep/exec_sum.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Migration Report 2006:&#xA;A Global Assessment&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; from UN):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2005, 75% of international migrants are concentrated in just 28 countries, with the US as the number one destination followed by Russia, Germany, Ukraine and France. 20 top countries were USA, Russia (immigration from Central Asia - again towards &amp;quot;more developed&amp;quot;), Germany, Ukraine (same as Russia), France, Saudi Arabia, Canada, India, United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total percentages by development:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More  developed   regions                 60.5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Less  developed   regions                 39.5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Least developed   countries                   5.5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that most of the &amp;quot;less developed&amp;quot; percentage is from moving WITHIN less developed world - e.g. India/Bangladesh, Philippines to all over the place etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to be clear, I'm not asserting that all migrants from less developed to more developed world do so due to &amp;quot;more/less happiness&amp;quot; factors. &lt;strong&gt;What I am asserting is that if there was a significant increase in happiness in less developed countries, the number of immigrants from more developed countries to less developed ones would be significantly higher.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;strong&gt;despite&lt;/strong&gt; the fact that this immigration from a less developed country is, for lack of a better term, difficult - from the cost of migrating (relative to source country's income level) to difficulties in legal immigration; to completely different difficulties in illegal immigration, to the fact that in pretty much any country an immigrant is sure to encounter at least some level of unhappiness with his existence due to &amp;quot;taking the job&amp;quot; from native population (this is a universal phenomenon - immigrants from Eastern Europe see it in Western Europe, while the same exact Easter European population in their countries frowns on immigrants from Central Asia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, immigrating from more developed country is IMMEASURABLY easier - from the fact that you're likely to have a lot more financial resources to travel, to having even a small sums of money be worth a lot more in destination country cost of living, to the fact that (due to low #s) there is less likely to be a major resentment of the immigrant on the &amp;quot;stealing jobs&amp;quot; level. And generally the legal/political difficulties from the less developed country are less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add a somewhat crude summary, &lt;strong&gt;anyone from developed country who asserts that life is better in a &amp;quot;less developed&amp;quot; country without putting their money where their mouth is (that is, improving their own happiness by moving there) is at best self-deluded and at worst a lying hypocrite.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T14:19:15.653" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1499" CreationDate="2011-03-29T16:40:34.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A large part of the problem is that while income is unbounded, happiness is normally inferred on a limited scale (0-10 or 1-5 or similar). Therefore, it is a mathematical fact that there must be diminishing returns. There is often a misinterpretation in the press whereby a study that shows diminishing returns (i.e., a small increase in reported happiness needing a very large increase in income after a certain threshold) being reported as &quot;after a threshold it makes no difference.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look for example at the Deacon and Kahneman  study's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/107/38/16489/F1.expansion.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Figure 1&lt;/a&gt;: the solid line is reported ladder (from 0 to 10, do you feel your life is the worst or the best possible ). There is a bend at ~80K, but the self-reported overall value keeps increasing beyond it. The other lines do flatten. They measure whether people reported feeling positive feelings over the previous day (although I do question whether feeling stress-free is always good). The headlines read &quot;The Price Of Happiness: $75000&quot; (e.g., at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/07/the-price-of-happiness-75_n_707721.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HuffPost&lt;/a&gt;, but there are more if you google it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="113" LastEditorUserId="113" LastEditDate="2011-03-29T19:40:24.453" LastActivityDate="2011-03-29T19:40:24.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1531" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1579" CreationDate="2011-03-29T18:10:52.350" Score="16" ViewCount="3904" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently, the English monarchy had the motive and the opportunity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1997, Princess Diana (Princess of Wales) and Dodi Fayed (son of Mohamed Fayed, owner of the Ritz Hotel and Harrods) were killed in a car accident while trying to get away from press photographers in Paris. The scandal surrounding their relationship (Dodi was Muslim whilst Diana was the mother of the future head of the Church of England) has led many people to speculate that they were actually killed in order to prevent further scandal to the throne of England.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  --&lt;a href=&quot;http://listverse.com/2007/08/21/top-10-conspiracy-theories/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, this theory was publicly supported by Dodi's father:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mohamed Al Fayed, father of Dodi, repeated his allegations of a massive cover-up involving the Royal family, paparazzi and for the first time Diana's sister. He has previously included British intelligence services in the alleged plot.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  --&lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/02/18/diana.inquest/index.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible that he was right? Is there any strong evidence that not all has been said of this tragic death in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090607230718/http://www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk/hearing_transcripts/verdict.htm&quot;&gt;jury verdict&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are the official conclusions supported by enough evidence, or are they mere speculation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T20:06:47.153" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T10:05:04.307" Title="Did Charles have Lady Diana murdered?" Tags="|history|mortality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1533" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1537" CreationDate="2011-03-29T23:23:38.083" Score="19" ViewCount="9039" Body="&lt;p&gt;I commonly hear that muscle cramps are caused by lactic acid.  For instance, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.24hrfitness.co.uk/fitness%20tips/muscle-cramps.html&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; indicates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another cause of muscle cramps can be the build up of lactic acid in the muscles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/16/health/nutrition/16run.html?_r=1&quot;&gt;NYT report&lt;/a&gt; claims otherwise&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The understanding now is that muscle cells convert glucose or glycogen to lactic acid. The lactic acid is taken up and used as a fuel by mitochondria, the energy factories in muscle cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-03-29T23:59:48.660" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T02:50:32.137" Title="Are cramps and muscle soreness caused by Lactic Acid?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1533" CreationDate="2011-03-30T01:04:25.757" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Addressing the muscle soreness point, no, lactic acid does not cause delayed soreness.  Wikipedia has &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactic_acid#Exercise_and_lactate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a nice terse summary of why&lt;/a&gt;, backed up by this review (of multiple related studies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lactic acidosis of exercise has been a classic explanation of the biochemistry of acidosis for more than 80 years. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This review presents clear evidence that &lt;strong&gt;there is no biochemical support for lactate production causing acidosis.  Lactate production retards, not causes, acidosis.&lt;/strong&gt; Similarly, there is a wealth of research evidence to show that acidosis is caused by reactions other than lactate production. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is only when the exercise intensity increases beyond steady state that there is a need for greater reliance on &lt;strong&gt;ATP regeneration from glycolysis and the phosphagen system. The ATP that is supplied from these non-mitochondrial sources and is eventually used to fuel muscle contraction increases proton release and causes the acidosis of intense exercise&lt;/strong&gt;. [...] If muscle did not produce lactate, acidosis and muscle fatigue would occur more quickly and exercise performance would be severely impaired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— Abstract from Robergs, R A, F Ghiasvand, and D Parker, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/287/3/R502.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Biochemistry of exercise-induced metabolic acidosis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The muscle soreness later, post-exercise, often felt the following day, cannot be caused by lactic acid as it is &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=y7RhhbUN3x4C&amp;amp;pg=PA111#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;flushed from the muscle cells within 40-60 minutes&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, though it is unclear if the blood stream carries it away or it is simply metabolized within the cell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cramping seems to be a more neurological symptom, when the peripheral nerves, rather than the CNS, generate a signal directing skeletal muscles to contract.  I can't find any papers that discuss lactic acid (which should be at a higher concentration with the muscle cells rather than extracellular) interfering with neurons or their receptors, so I don't know on that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T02:50:32.137" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1538" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1542" CreationDate="2011-03-30T01:18:03.167" Score="30" ViewCount="3273" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Dr. Thomas G. Barnes the Moon is much younger than claimed by the mainstream scientific community, by many orders of magnitude.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis&quot;&gt;Giant impact hypothesis&lt;/a&gt;, one of the primary mainstream scientific theories on the creation of the moon, says that the Moon is billions of years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Barnes claims that the Moon is far younger than this.  While he does not explicitly claim exactly how old the Moon is, I believe that he is implying that the Moon is at most a few thousand years old so that it's age is inline with some creationist beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icr.org/article/young-age-for-moon-earth/&quot;&gt;Barnes gives 5 reasons why his theory of a Young Moon is correct&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The age of the earth and moon can not&#xA;  be as old as required in the doctrine&#xA;  of evolution, as has been shown when&#xA;  the great laws of physics are applied&#xA;  to observed large scale phenomena such&#xA;  as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The recession rate of the moon and the Roche limit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The faster earth spin rate in the past.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The rate of lunar dust build-up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The decay of the earth's magnetic field.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The pleochroic halos in the earth's basement rock.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first point &quot;The recession rate of the moon and the Roche limit.&quot; is sited by others who also claim that the Moon is young.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conservapedia.com/Moon&quot;&gt;Conservapedia's article on the Moon&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rate of recession&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Moon currently recedes from the&#xA;  Earth at a rate of 1.5 inches (3.8 cm)&#xA;  per year, and is believed by&#xA;  atheistic scientists to be 4.6 billion&#xA;  years old, The Moon could never&#xA;  have been closer than about 11,000&#xA;  miles or it would have been broken up&#xA;  by tidal forces. If the rate of&#xA;  recession stayed constant at 3.8 cm&#xA;  per year, it would take 9.6 billion&#xA;  years for the lunar distance to&#xA;  migrate from 11,000 miles to the&#xA;  present distance of about 240,000&#xA;  miles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that Barnes believes that if the Moon was not young it would be much further away, while Conservapedia is claiming that it would take much longer for the Moon to reach the same position.  But both say the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roche_limit&quot;&gt;Roche Limit&lt;/a&gt; and the Rate of recession prove that the Moon cannot be as old as mainstream science claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is this theory of a Young Moon correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does evidence backup their claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Must the Moon be much further away if it is billions of years old?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="8081" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T20:42:23.240" LastActivityDate="2016-01-11T10:34:11.210" Title="Is the Moon young?" Tags="|moon|young-earth-creationism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1541" CreationDate="2011-03-30T04:13:57.560" Score="57" ViewCount="40885" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1faLx.png&quot; alt=&quot;Better safe than sorry&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/#!/BearGrylls/status/70639784963477505&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_vs._Wild&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Man vs. Wild&lt;/a&gt; the host &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Grylls&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bear Grylls&lt;/a&gt; claims you should drink your own urine to avoid dehydration. Among the many other interesting feats he has done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The show has featured stunts including Grylls climbing cliffs, parachuting from helicopters, balloons, and planes, paragliding, ice climbing, running through a forest fire, wading rapids, eating snakes, wrapping his urine-soaked t-shirt around his head to help stave off the desert heat, drinking urine saved in a rattlesnake skin, drinking fecal liquid from elephant dung, eating deer droppings, wrestling alligators, field dressing a camel carcass and drinking water from it, eating various &quot;creepy crawlies&quot; [insects], utilizing the corpse of a sheep as a sleeping bag and flotation device, free climbing waterfalls and using a bird guano/water enema for hydration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really a good idea to drink your own urine in a survival situation? Wouldn't it cause other health problems and reduce your chance of survival?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-05-19T00:09:09.750" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T03:58:58.273" Title="Is it a good idea to drink your own urine in a survival situation?" Tags="|urine|survival|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1540" CreationDate="2011-03-30T04:18:42.170" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; You can do it, as a last resort, but it's dicey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US Army doesn't think it's a good idea and lists it on its &amp;quot;Do NOT drink&amp;quot; list, stating in its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.equipped.com/21-76/ch6.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Field Manual&lt;/a&gt; that it &amp;quot;contains harmful body wastes&amp;quot; and that it is &amp;quot;about 2 percent salt.&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://trackertrail.com/publications/motherearthnews/72/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.equipped.com/primer.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;other&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-03/fyi-it-ever-ok-drink-your-own-urine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;resources&lt;/a&gt; seem to agree, all indicating that it will increase your rate of dehydration. (&lt;strong&gt;Warning:&lt;/strong&gt; the popular science link is not fun to open.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's your only source of water, it's likely that the US Army's recommendations of how to purify polluted water for consumption also applies to urine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If polluted water is your only moisture source, dig a small trough outside&#xA;the hole about 25 centimeters from the still’s lip (Figure 6-8). Dig the&#xA;trough about 25 centimeters deep and 8 centimeters wide. Pour the polluted&#xA;water in the trough. Be sure you do not spill any polluted water&#xA;around the rim of the hole where the plastic sheet touches the soil. The&#xA;trough holds the polluted water and the soil filters it as the still draws it.&#xA;The water then condenses on the plastic and drains into the container.&#xA;This process works extremely well when your only water source is salt&#xA;water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/awVeq.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sources, which support my memory on the matter, indicate that it is at best a short term solution. For example, in a Slate article named &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/id/2191909/?GT1=38001&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Yellow Liquid Diet&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, the author says that the waste might eventually &amp;quot;cause symptoms similar to those brought on by total kidney failure&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long can you survive by drinking pee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An extra day or two, at best. A healthy person's urine is about 95 percent water and sterile, so in the short term it's safe to drink and does replenish lost water. But the other 5 percent of urine comprises a diverse collection of waste products, including nitrogen, potassium, and calcium—and too much of these can cause problems. When you drink your own pee, all the stuff that your kidneys had attempted to excrete comes right back into your stomach, and much of it ends up back in your kidneys. After several days of this, your urine will become highly concentrated with dangerous waste products, and drinking it can cause symptoms similar to those brought on by total kidney failure. At that point, you're doomed either way—from dehydration on the one hand or renal meltdown on the other. (Even if one could filter out most of the unwanted products in urine, the cycle would not be sustainable for long. In addition to what he or she pees out, the average human excretes about half a quart of water a day through sweating and exhaling.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, drinking urine for survival has been attempted successfully before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in 2008, a Chinese man by the name of Shen Peiyun &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121130604542007575&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;survived six days&lt;/a&gt; by laying still and drinking his own urine, which is solid evidence that it won't kill you at least some of the time.  While it is not necessarily fatal, it doesn't mean it isn't harmful.  For instance, in the case above, no expert has asserted that he would have died without drinking his own urine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-30T20:02:47.343" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1538" CreationDate="2011-03-30T07:10:33.500" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;A great source for answers to myths like this that keep circulating around is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/&quot;&gt;Talkorigins.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some quotes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html#CE100&quot;&gt;the moon section&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The moon is receding at about 3.8 cm per year. Since the moon is 3.85 ×&#xA;  10&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; cm from the earth, this is&#xA;  already consistent, within an order of&#xA;  magnitude, with an earth-moon system&#xA;  billions of years old. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The magnitude of tidal friction&#xA;  depends on the arrangement of the&#xA;  continents. In the past, the&#xA;  continents were arranged such that&#xA;  tidal friction, and thus the rates of&#xA;  earth's slowing and the moon's&#xA;  recession, would have been less. The&#xA;  earth's rotation has slowed at a rate&#xA;  of two seconds every 100,000 years&#xA;  (Eicher 1976). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The rate of earth's rotation in the&#xA;  distant past can be measured. Corals&#xA;  produce skeletons with both daily&#xA;  layers and yearly patterns, so we can&#xA;  count the number of days per year when&#xA;  the coral grew. Measurements of fossil&#xA;  corals from 180 to 400 million years&#xA;  ago show year lengths from 381 to 410&#xA;  days, with older corals showing more&#xA;  days per year (Eicher 1976; Scrutton&#xA;  1970; Wells 1963; 1970). Similarly,&#xA;  days per year can also be computed&#xA;  from growth patterns in mollusks&#xA;  (Pannella 1976; Scrutton 1978) and&#xA;  stromatolites (Mohr 1975; Pannella et&#xA;  al. 1968) and from sediment deposition&#xA;  patterns (Williams 1997). All such&#xA;  measurements are consistent with a&#xA;  gradual rate of earth's slowing for&#xA;  the last 650 million years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The high number for dust accumulation (14 million tons per year&#xA;  on earth) comes from the high end of a&#xA;  single preliminary measurement that&#xA;  has long been obsolete. Other higher&#xA;  estimates come from even more obsolete&#xA;  sources, although they are sometimes&#xA;  incorrectly cited as being more&#xA;  recent. The actual influx is about&#xA;  22,000 to 44,000 tons per year on&#xA;  earth and around 840 tons per year on&#xA;  the moon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The story that scientists worried&#xA;  about astronauts sinking in moon dust&#xA;  is a total fabrication. As early as&#xA;  1965, scientists were confident, based&#xA;  on optical properties of the moon's&#xA;  surface, that dust was not extensive.&#xA;  Surveyor I, in May 1966, confirmed&#xA;  this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="412" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2016-01-09T19:23:23.313" LastActivityDate="2016-01-09T19:23:23.313" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1550" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1820" CreationDate="2011-03-30T13:16:18.243" Score="155" ViewCount="26511" Body="&lt;p&gt;In movies and television shows, you often see law enforcement (or hacker types) attempting to trace a phone call that they have received.  The typical scene plays out with one party trying to keep the other party on the phone long enough for them to get a trace on the location.  Veteran bad guys know this and usually hang up &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PhoneTraceRace&quot;&gt;just before the other side get a lock on the location&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that some of this may have changed over time, as phone systems have evolved.  It may also be different with landlines and cell phones.  I'm curious if this is accurate now and if it was ever accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you trace a phone call like this at all?  Is there a specific time that the call has to last?  If so, why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:40:56.417" LastActivityDate="2021-12-15T09:27:12.940" Title="Can you only trace a phone call if they don't hang up?" Tags="|television|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1550" CreationDate="2011-03-30T14:33:37.473" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an interesting Slate article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2002/10/how_hard_would_it_be_to_trace_the_snipers_phone_calls.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Hard Would It Be To Trace the Sniper's Phone Calls?&lt;/a&gt;, that discusses the advances from old switching technology to digital switches and it somewhat implies that the cinematic drama may have been based partially on fact at one point. It goes on to say that modern digital switches can trace a call's number instantly and then correlate that with location information to find the address.  It also says that dialing *67 only blocks caller ID data from civilians and doesn't keep you from being traced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Digital switches have sped up the&#xA;  process. Beginning in the mid-1980s,&#xA;  phone companies began using electronic&#xA;  switching systems, which can&#xA;  automatically identify any caller's&#xA;  number within a fraction of a second.&#xA;  Those numbers can then be correlated&#xA;  with information from an automatic&#xA;  location indicator to find the phone's&#xA;  address. There is no foolproof way to&#xA;  avoid tracing on an ESS network when&#xA;  making a direct-dial call. (And don't&#xA;  think for a second that hitting *67,&#xA;  which masks your number to Caller ID&#xA;  boxes, can foil a police trace; it&#xA;  only works against civilians.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes further to talk about cell phones too, indicating that by 2006, cell providers were required to triangulate the location of the phones on its network.  The most obvious usage of this is for 911 (U.S. Emergency calls).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mobile phones have proven harder to&#xA;  trace over recent years, but that is&#xA;  changing, too. The Federal&#xA;  Communications Commission has ordered&#xA;  that, by 2006, all cell-phone networks&#xA;  must feature location-tracking&#xA;  technology, ostensibly to assist 911&#xA;  operators. As a result, many new&#xA;  mobiles now come equipped with chips&#xA;  that link them into the Global&#xA;  Positioning Satellite system.&#xA;  Triangulation using coordinates from&#xA;  adjacent cell-phone towers is another&#xA;  effective tracing technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.privacyrights.org/fs/fs19-cid.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; talks a bit more about the *57 option to trace calls.  It appears that by using *57 immediately after a call, you can tell the phone company to trace the call and they will hand the information over to law enforcement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Call Trace.  The phone company's Call&#xA;  Trace service allows you to identify&#xA;  the phone number of the harassing&#xA;  caller, regardless of whether the&#xA;  caller blocks the number. When you&#xA;  activate the Call Trace code (*57)&#xA;  immediately following the harassing&#xA;  call, the caller's phone number is&#xA;  recorded by the phone company. The&#xA;  phone number is not given to you,&#xA;  however. You will be asked by the&#xA;  phone company to sign an authorization&#xA;  form before the harasser's phone&#xA;  number is turned over to law&#xA;  enforcement for further investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To order the Call Trace service, you&#xA;  must pay a start-up fee. Some phone&#xA;  companies then charge you each time&#xA;  you use Call Trace; others require a&#xA;  monthly charge for an unlimited number&#xA;  of traces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastEditorUserId="31782" LastEditDate="2016-03-15T20:12:10.043" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T20:12:10.043" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1555" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9745" CreationDate="2011-03-30T14:50:04.263" Score="41" ViewCount="5324" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a common myth that, if you're stung by a jellyfish, then pouring urine on the wound is an effective way to treat the injury or ease the pain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That belief is deeply entrenched in the American popular culture. So deeply, in fact, that in Survivor: Marquesas, one of the contestants &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xxY7QO9Ass&quot;&gt;asked one of his teammates to pee on his wound&lt;/a&gt; to relieve the pain after being stung (though, this time, it was sea urchin rather than a jellyfish).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to that belief?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T10:46:54.167" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T12:09:54.373" Title="Does urine heal jellyfishes' sting?" Tags="|medical-science|urine|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1555" CreationDate="2011-03-30T15:04:40.490" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to a pretty thorough about.com article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://firstaid.about.com/od/bitesstings/f/07_JellyfishPee.htm&quot;&gt;Will urine relieve the pain of a jellyfish sting?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article suggests that while urine may work in some circumstances, it can also cause the nematocysts in the wound to inject venom, which will actually make the pain worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which brings us to urine. Urine&#xA;  consists of water and waste products&#xA;  of the body's blood stream, which&#xA;  includes ammonia -- the reason for its&#xA;  legendary use. Depending on the person&#xA;  -- and whether he or she is dehydrated, diabetic, on a protein&#xA;  diet, or dealing with myriad other&#xA;  conditions -- urine may or may not be&#xA;  about as good as fresh water. In fact,&#xA;  urine contains so much fresh water&#xA;  that stranded folks can drink their&#xA;  own urine to survive (don't worry, I'm&#xA;  cringing at the idea, too). Since we&#xA;  know fresh water will often make&#xA;  nematocysts fire, the logical&#xA;  conclusion is that urine will do the&#xA;  same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Urine has about a 50/50 track record&#xA;  on the Internet. Many anonymous&#xA;  bloggers sing the praises of this&#xA;  readily available wonder tonic, but&#xA;  research just hasn't supported the&#xA;  claims. Others tell stories of urine&#xA;  not working at all. I've yet to read&#xA;  any supposed first-hand claims that&#xA;  urine made the pain of a jellyfish&#xA;  sting worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that acid can neutralize the venom that is released by the nematocysts, but urine does not always have the required acidity to get the job done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional References (from the linked article):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beadnell, C.E., et al.&quot;Management of a major box jellyfish (Chironex fleckeri) sting. Lessons from the first minutes and hours.&quot; Medical Journal of Australia. 4 May 1992 PMID: 1352619&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buddin, Elizabeth. &quot;Jellyfish.&quot; Unk publish date. Sea Science. South Carolina Department of Natural Resources. Retrieved 23 Oct 2007&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fenner, P.J., et al.&quot;First aid treatment of jellyfish stings in Australia. Response to a newly differentiated species.&quot; Medical Journal of Australia. 5 Apr 1995 PMID: 8469205&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;O'Reilly, G.M., et al.&quot;Prospective study of jellyfish stings from tropical Australia, including the major box jellyfish Chironex fleckeri.&quot; Medical Journal of Australia. 3 Dec 2001 PMID: 11837877 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastEditorUserId="1081" LastEditDate="2012-06-12T00:59:02.190" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T00:59:02.190" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1555" CreationDate="2011-03-30T15:05:18.740" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;No there is no truth to this myth. In fact, urine can actually cause the nematocysts embedded in the skin to release &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; venom, as discussed in this paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6102347&quot;&gt;Disarming the box-jellyfish: nematocyst inhibition in Chironex fleckeri.&lt;/a&gt; by Hartwick R, Callanan V, Williamson J., Med J Aust. 1980 Jan 12;1(1):15-20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best treatment for jellyfish stings is in fact ordinary vinegar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1205" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-08T18:56:30.770" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T18:56:30.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1558" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-30T15:44:29.753" Score="20" ViewCount="3972" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of the more dubious health sites promote gargling salt water (or peroxide) and swabbing the nasal cavity as a 'natural' prevention for catching the 'flu. Is there any science behind this? I understand how it alleviates symptoms through reducing swelling due to water being drawn out through the semi-permiable throat lining, but prevention?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="654" LastActivityDate="2017-12-21T20:39:46.830" Title="Does gargling salt water reduce incidence of flu?" Tags="|medical-science|flu|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1560" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1562" CreationDate="2011-03-30T16:42:48.977" Score="16" ViewCount="462" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been hearing a lot lately about how Japan's massive earthquake moved the Earth or changed its axis by 1°-4°.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally feel that this is not possible, but I don't have nearly enough knowledge to refute it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible? &#xA;Why or why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1292" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T17:46:33.797" Title="Japan's earthquake and the Earth's axis" Tags="|physics|astronomy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1558" CreationDate="2011-03-30T16:52:31.703" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Influenza viruses bind through&#xA;  hemagglutinin onto sialic acid sugars&#xA;  on the surfaces of epithelial cells,&#xA;  typically in the nose, throat, and&#xA;  lungs of mammals, and intestines of&#xA;  birds (Stage 1 in infection&#xA;  figure).[44] After the hemagglutinin&#xA;  is cleaved by a protease, the cell&#xA;  imports the virus by endocytosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My doctor explained that if you do this &lt;em&gt;regularly&lt;/em&gt;, you're washing the virus out before it can really grab hold in &quot;Stage 1&quot; of the infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1292" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T16:52:31.703" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1560" CreationDate="2011-03-30T17:00:11.840" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is actually pretty interesting. If you consider that figure skaters can change their rotation by adjusting the placement of their body mass (e.g. their arms), it is apparent that a simple geometry change can affect rotation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the Feb 2010 earthquake in Chile, Nasa released this press release:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-071&quot;&gt;http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-071&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[the Chile] quake should have shortened the length of an Earth day by about 1.26 microseconds...the quake should have moved Earth's figure axis by 2.7 milliarcseconds&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems it is possible, but perhaps not in the magnitude that you quote in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="482" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T17:00:11.840" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1560" CreationDate="2011-03-30T17:46:33.797" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2011/03/18/134658880/Japan-Earthquake-May-Have-Changed-Earths-Axis&quot;&gt;Richard Gross, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;strong&gt;Japanese Earthquake&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to a calculation I did [...]&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;the days should have gotten shorter&#xA;  by about 1.8 microseconds&lt;/strong&gt;. That's&#xA;  1.8 millionths of a second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the mass of the Earth is not balance&#xA;  about its rotation axis, and so it&#xA;  wobbles as it rotates, just like an&#xA;  out-of-balance tire on your car&#xA;  vibrates as it rotates. And it's that&#xA;  axis about which the mass is balanced&#xA;  is what shifted during this&#xA;  earthquake. The earthquake rearranges&#xA;  the mass of the Earth, and therefore&#xA;  the &lt;strong&gt;figure axis moved by about&#xA;  six-and-a-half inches&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T17:46:33.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1564" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1565" CreationDate="2011-03-30T17:53:24.400" Score="16" ViewCount="917" Body="&lt;p&gt;An article in Business Week Magazine (June 10, 1991, but can't yet find a link) kicked off a debate that raged throughout the 90's.  It stated that silicone breast implants manufactured by two Big Pharma companies could rupture and cause damage to a woman's immune system, which would result in all manner of health problems.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim supported by evidence?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T02:19:58.380" LastActivityDate="2015-11-29T12:33:37.553" Title="Do silicone breast implants cause health problems?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1564" CreationDate="2011-03-30T18:58:54.607" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first foray into silicone toxicity brings me to this report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fjc.gov/BREIMLIT/SCIENCE/chap1.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.fjc.gov/BREIMLIT/SCIENCE/chap1.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which, while old, determined no conclusive link between autoimmune problems and the implants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study, from 2009 which also showed no apparent link between them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1275451-overview&quot;&gt;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1275451-overview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Silicone is toxic if inhaled, but there's no hard data on its toxicity via leakage of implants.  Silicone is soluble in organic solvents, but not water. Therefore I'm more apt to suspect that any leaked silicone would remain in the fatty breast tissue. The question would be whether or not that silicone will react with the breast tissue, and I haven't seen any studies regarding that  yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T18:58:54.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1566" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-30T19:24:33.620" Score="22" ViewCount="1225" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is often said that the genius of Carl Friedrich Gauss was first discovered when his teacher told the students to calculate the sum of all integers from 1 to 100 to keep them occupied and young Gauss did that in seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much truth is in that story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="503" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-02-23T16:42:42.440" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T16:42:42.440" Title="Was the mathematical genius of Gauss discovered at school?" Tags="|history|mathematics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1566" CreationDate="2011-03-30T19:48:37.607" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2006/3/gausss-day-of-reckoning&quot;&gt;Brian Hayes&lt;/a&gt; (writer for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanscientist.org/&quot;&gt;American Scientist&lt;/a&gt;) has done some research into this and collected &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigmaxi.org/amscionline/gauss-snippets.html&quot;&gt;109 versions&lt;/a&gt;, in eight languages, of this story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After reading all those variations on&#xA;  the story, I still can't answer the&#xA;  fundamental factual question, &quot;Did it&#xA;  really happen that way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The story of Gauss and his conquest of&#xA;  the arithmetic series has a natural&#xA;  appeal to young people. After all, the&#xA;  hero is a child—a child who outwits a&#xA;  &quot;virile brute.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T19:48:37.607" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1569" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1592" CreationDate="2011-03-30T19:49:45.517" Score="78" ViewCount="55426" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of times, when some great tragedy occurs, one often hears journalists and bystanders alike softening the blow of having some person die by saying something like &quot;at least they died instantly&quot; or &quot;they died instantly, so they didn't suffer.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've always wondered whether there was in fact a scientific way to determine whether or not a certain method of death is instant or not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would dashing one's head having fallen from a high distance lead to &quot;instant death&quot;?  What about a high velocity hollow-point bullet?  Complete decapitation, such as found in the guillotine?  Is there a technical definition for the requirements of &quot;instant death&quot; available somewhere? I'd appreciate anyone making the science more clear for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-07-10T20:09:12.970" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T07:45:48.623" Title="Is it possible to &quot;die instantly&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|mortality|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1570" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1580" CreationDate="2011-03-30T19:59:57.447" Score="24" ViewCount="4554" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common belief in the coder world: many programmers are also (talented) musicians. It was certainly true in the places I've worked as a programmer, and I have been a professional musician and a professional coder for many years. I've met coders with albums in the top 40, musicians that want to start coding (and have talent for it), and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - is it true that there is a correlation between ability to code and musicianship? Have these two human endeavours been shown to be correlated by a scientific study? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus points: If there is a proven correlation (and &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; in this case) what was the given explanation? Should I advise my fellow coders to pick up a guitar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-30T20:06:11.377" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T17:31:28.597" Title="Are programmers likely to be musicians?" Tags="|psychology|music|cognitive-fitness|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1569" CreationDate="2011-03-30T20:01:57.550" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Typically when this term is used, it is describing a manner of death in which the deceased felt little or no pain during the process of death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1691/what-does-instant-death-really-mean&quot;&gt;What does &quot;instant death&quot; really mean?&lt;/a&gt; does a pretty good job of answering the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is difficult to determine exactly when &lt;code&gt;death&lt;/code&gt; occured&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This usually refers to a rapid loss of consciousness with actual arrest occurring later&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When reported by news and media, they aren't always scientifically accurate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also like the quip, noting that you always die instantly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, I should probably note that by a&#xA;  somewhat more snide definition, all&#xA;  death is instantaneous. One second&#xA;  you're alive, the next you're dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastEditorUserId="1081" LastEditDate="2011-03-30T20:07:01.943" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T20:07:01.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1437" CreationDate="2011-03-30T21:02:14.283" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen countless claims about hiccup cures online, but they do seem to be largely due to the placebo effect, as none of them seem to work effectively for everyone. Very little scientific research has been done on cures for mild hiccups, but the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160714020033/http://healthlibrary.wkhs.com/Article.aspx?chunkiid=156989&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;best explanation&lt;/a&gt; seems to be that home remedies seem to distract one so the hiccups can stop on their own. The suggestions from places like the previous link, WebMD, etc., that acupuncture may be effective lends further credence to the placebo/distraction explanation.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003068.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NIH says&lt;/a&gt; &amp;quot;There is no sure way to stop hiccups, but there are a number of common suggestions that may be effective...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdote: A method that has always worked for me that I have not seen mentioned or properly tested is to forcefully swallow air (just enough to push past the comfort zone). It's uncomfortable to do, but when done right it works immediately and every time, so I thought I'd mention it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1299" LastEditorUserId="1299" LastEditDate="2023-09-23T03:28:55.013" LastActivityDate="2023-09-23T03:28:55.013" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1576" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1588" CreationDate="2011-03-30T21:21:17.347" Score="29" ViewCount="9651" Body="&lt;p&gt;The airwaves and Internet are full of advertisements for &quot;male enhancement&quot; products:  magic pills &quot;guaranteed&quot; to enlarge your penis and increase your sex drive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extenzeenhancement.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ExtenZe&lt;/a&gt;, perhaps the most commonly advertised product of this nature, purports to do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Generates Rock Hard Erections&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stop Premature Ejaculation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Increase Stamina and Endurance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Treats Erectile Dysfunction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Increase Size And Girth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Generate Mind Blowing Orgasms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Increase Your Libido&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of these claims are testable.  Obviously you can measure size differences, but things like premature ejaculation, stamina, and endurance can be tested by measuring the amount of time it takes to ejaculate before and after using the product, with normalization of the related external factors.  Of course, others aren't.  I know what a &quot;mind blowing orgasm&quot; is, but I certainly couldn't explain it scientifically.  (Nor have I ever needed to take anything to experience one!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, none of these products are FDA approved, and there doesn't seem to be much research proving or refuting their claims.  Some even say many of these products are dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, many such sites appear to be veiled advertisements for a different product or technique that they purport to not be dangerous.  For instance, an organization called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enhancementresearch.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Male Enhancement Research&lt;/a&gt;, which is one of the top Google hits for &lt;code&gt;male enhancement&lt;/code&gt;, states the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Do male enhancement products really work? The fact is that many male enhancement companies are trying to sell products that do not work, and these so called natural male enhancement products have actually been known to cause harmful side effects such as high blood pressure, or worse!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, the very next page shows this table that lists one product as 98% successful with results &quot;up to 48%&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FJJ7t.png&quot; alt=&quot;Male Enhancement success rate table&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between websites offering these products and websites of dubious objectivity, like the aforementioned, it is incredibly hard to find independent research on products like these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that these products work?  On the other hand, is there any research that indicates that these products might be harmful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt;  This doesn't refer to FDA-approved erectile dysfunction medications such as Viagra or &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1613/do-mechanical-techniques-for-penis-enlargement-work&quot;&gt;other techniques like penis pumps or surgery, which are the subject of another question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2022-05-06T13:19:46.087" Title="Do non-FDA approved &quot;male enhancement&quot; pills work?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|sexuality|erectile-dysfunction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1550" CreationDate="2011-03-30T21:57:46.220" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a description of the state of telephone tracing in the mid 1980's, in Clifford Stoll's &quot;The Cuckoo's Egg&quot; [1]. At that time a trace could generally be completed in a few seconds (with some coordination between technicians at the different exchanges), unless the call got routed through one of the few remaining 1950's era electromechanical exchanges, in which case a technician would have to run from rack to rack within the exchange, which would obviously take a lot longer. He does state that if the call ends then the trace cannot be completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Clifford Stoll. Doubleday (1989) ISBN: 0-385-24946-2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1305" LastEditorUserId="1305" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T13:50:30.133" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T13:50:30.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1531" CreationDate="2011-03-30T23:03:45.393" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090607230718/http://www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk/hearing_transcripts/verdict.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;verdict of the jury&lt;/a&gt; (official conclusions) are supported by enough evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Mohamed Al Fayed says different...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Al Fayed's spokesman Michael Cole told&#xA;  GMTV today: &quot;When he made that&#xA;  declaration, it was on the assumption&#xA;  that the jury would be allowed to hear&#xA;  everything. They weren't.&quot; --&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1009802/Fayed-set-appeal-Diana-verdict-jury-did-hear-evidence.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the jury didn't hear was Al Fayed's last minute attempt to &lt;a href=&quot;http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090607230718/http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/docs/judgments_guidance/al_fayed_jud_review.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;change his story&lt;/a&gt;... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Al Fayed's allegations at the start of the inquest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Mr Al Fayed’s core belief, and his&#xA;  express evidence at the inquest that&#xA;  the Duke of Edinburgh was a “murderer”&#xA;  who organised the assassination by the&#xA;  SIS of both Diana, Princess of Wales&#xA;  and his son.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the last month of the inquest Al Fayed's legal advisers submitted an application for permission to apply for judicial review of...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...a decision of the Assistant Deputy&#xA;  Coroner of Inner West London (Lord&#xA;  Justice Scott Baker) who refused an&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090607230718/http://www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk/docs/reasons_not_calling_120308.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;application&lt;/a&gt; to call His Royal Highness&#xA;  The Duke of Edinburgh to give evidence&#xA;  and to request Her Majesty The Queen&#xA;  to answer a number of specified&#xA;  questions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the application they proposed a new theory....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...suggested, was that the jury should&#xA;  determine “whether the Royal Family&#xA;  and HRH The Duke of Edinburgh&#xA;  particularly (in respect of whom&#xA;  Diana, Princess of Wales expressed&#xA;  fears) contributed to a climate in&#xA;  which rogue elements in the SIS “took&#xA;  matters into their own hands” to&#xA;  ensure that Diana, Princess of Wales&#xA;  was killed, injured or frightened in a&#xA;  staged accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This suggestion, advanced for the&#xA;  first time by Mr Mansfield*, was based on what was&#xA;  described as a “troublesome” or&#xA;  “turbulent” priest thesis, a reference&#xA;  to the consequences of King Henry II’s&#xA;  denigration of Thomas Becket, and the&#xA;  hasty rush in 1170 by four knights to&#xA;  murder him in Canterbury Cathedral.&#xA;  The argument is summarised in the&#xA;  letter before claim from Mr Al Fayed’s&#xA;  solicitors dated 14 March 2008:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“This thesis is based on the&#xA;    proposition that those who are&#xA;    committed to the interests of the&#xA;    Monarchy may form their own view as to&#xA;    what would be best in the Monarch’s&#xA;    best interests, and how best to&#xA;    protect it from perceived threats.&#xA;    Action may be taken to that end&#xA;    without orders to that effect from any&#xA;    member of the Royal Family; those&#xA;    actions may include acts which would&#xA;    never be countenanced by the Royal&#xA;    Family if they were ever consulted.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The application was dismissed 18 March 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summation:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For some years, Mr Al Fayed has&#xA;  expressed the firm belief that his son&#xA;  and the Princess of Wales were&#xA;  murdered in furtherance of a&#xA;  conspiracy to kill them or do them&#xA;  serious harm...&#xA;  In the &lt;strong&gt;light of the&#xA;  evidence, Mr Mansfield QC&lt;/strong&gt; has, quite properly,&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;accepted&lt;/strong&gt; that there is &lt;strong&gt;no direct evidence&lt;/strong&gt; that the Duke played any&#xA;  part in the deaths and has accepted&#xA;  that there is &lt;strong&gt;no direct evidence&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  of any involvement of the SIS...&#xA;  --&lt;a href=&quot;http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090607230718/http://www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk/docs/ruling_on_verdicts_270308.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ruling on Verdicts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;**Mansfield QC: Al Fayed's attorney*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Links of interest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090607230718/http://www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk/docs/ruling_on_verdicts_270308.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Coroner's ruling on the verdicts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090607230718/http://www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk/hearing_transcripts/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hearing transcripts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090607230718/http://www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk/directions_decs/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Directions and decisions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090607230718/http://www.scottbaker-inquests.gov.uk/evidence/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evidence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T10:05:04.307" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T10:05:04.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1570" CreationDate="2011-03-30T23:14:49.413" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently there is such a relationship:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The neural correlates of the previously hypothesized link between formal musical training and mathematics performance are investigated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). FMRI was performed on fifteen normal adults, seven with musical training since early childhood, and eight without, while they mentally added and subtracted fractions. &lt;strong&gt;Musical training was associated with increased activation in the left fusiform gyrus and prefrontal cortex, and decreased activation in visual association areas and the left inferior parietal lobule during the mathematical task.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  --&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14700729&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the same paper comes the explanation of why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We hypothesize that the correlation between musical training and math proficiency may be associated with &lt;strong&gt;improved working memory performance and an increased abstract representation of numerical quantities&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, even if the original research was with mathematics, increased working memory and increased abstract representation of numerical quantities are big trump cards for programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a humourous side note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jeff Atwood on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/01/the-one-thing-programmers-and-musicians-have-in-common.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;subject&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/q/353104/7028&quot;&gt;What is the relationship between programming and music?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/q/1170894/7028&quot;&gt;How closely related is music composition to coding?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:24.653" LastActivityDate="2011-03-30T23:14:49.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1583" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-30T23:59:32.700" Score="9" ViewCount="439" Body="&lt;p&gt;For instance, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HOPE_Scholarship#Criticism&quot;&gt;this wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; there is the (un-cited) criticism that a specific scholarship has led to grade inflation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HOPE has been blamed for increased levels of grade inflation in Georgia schools, with teachers feeling pressured to give their students higher grades to maintain the necessary GPA for the scholarship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard this repeated more than once, but have also seen this paper indicating that this effect &lt;a href=&quot;http://aysps.gsu.edu/publications/arc/csp/DownLoad/HOPE991.pdf&quot;&gt;does not exist&lt;/a&gt;, which has a few sampling flaws. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research definitively showing that the affect of academic scholarships on grade inflation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-31T20:02:59.780" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T20:02:59.780" Title="Do performance based scholarships increase grade inflation?" Tags="|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1586" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1589" CreationDate="2011-03-31T03:17:20.127" Score="14" ViewCount="2112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen blue light therapy systems which just look like a bunch of LED blue lights being sold online and in stores. They claim to help with sleeping disorders and jet lag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How are they supposed to work and are they effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1102" LastEditorUserId="1102" LastEditDate="2011-03-31T03:38:03.697" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T21:32:09.473" Title="Do &quot;blue light therapy&quot; systems help with sleeping disorders?" Tags="|sleep|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1587" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1597" CreationDate="2011-03-31T03:34:14.257" Score="14" ViewCount="596" Body="&lt;p&gt;On Sunday, a lady from church saw me limping, and said that she had something to show me that might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tonight, she showed me magnetic shoe inserts.  I'm listening politely, and thinking &quot;BS!,&quot; but then the demonstrations came.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She had me hold my arms out in front of me, hands clasped together, and she proceeded to push me back by pushing up on my arms (mechanical advantage).  Then I stood on the inserts, did (what I thought) was the same thing, and I didn't get pushed back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm very concerned that I was taken for a fool, but I can't figure out how.  All I could find on the web was that it might have been the &quot;power of suggestion&quot; but is there some other common trick that's employed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, if they help that much, why not, but if it's magnetic snake oil it's of course not worth the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1315" LastEditorUserId="38113" LastEditDate="2017-03-06T00:17:56.910" LastActivityDate="2017-03-06T00:17:56.910" Title="Was there a trick behind this magnetic therapy demonstration?" Tags="|medical-science|magnets|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1576" CreationDate="2011-03-31T03:41:54.427" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to look at this question with a good, critical eye, let's first talk about what these claims &lt;em&gt;actually mean&lt;/em&gt;. One of the big problems with products that claim to help male performance is that they claim to be able to deal with things related with multiple biological systems. For example, blood flow to the penis requires other parts of your body to perform well that are unrelated to the aspect of your sexual functioning that helps you last longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When male enhancement products make the claims you're talking about, they are actually claiming that they can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase the size of tissue&#xA;structures in the penis, which has&#xA;several parts: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.webmd.com/men/picture-of-the-penis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The corpus&#xA;cavernosum, corpus spongiosum,&#xA;glans, and the foreskin, outer skin,&#xA;etc&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase time that an erection can&#xA;last by altering the variables that&#xA;affect the erection and prolonging&#xA;the amount of time between initial&#xA;stimulation and ejaculation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Change the person's physiology so&#xA;that they can perform better in the&#xA;act of copulating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Address issues that could cause&#xA;erectile dysfunction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alter the individual's physiology so&#xA;that their orgasmic experience is&#xA;different.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increase an individual's sex drive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The first item, alone, is a pretty significant medical task&lt;/strong&gt;. The penis may seem like a pretty basic structure on a creature, but there are multiple types of tissues in there. Medical science struggles with diseases that can be treated by altering tissue on very basic levels. Infants who are born with weak hearts or lungs would benefit tremendously if we could simply give them a medication and make them all better by strengthening just their heart or just their lungs. Instead, though, because we can't target the heart, specifically, we give them a general medication that alters their entire body, usually, steroids. So, the very first claim that male enhancement products make is that they've accomplished something that doctors have needed for years: growing only a specific region of the body without altering the rest. Not only does the claim that these products make target a specific part, they claim they've managed to find a single medication that targets only a specific group of organs on only &lt;em&gt;one region&lt;/em&gt; of the body. That's kind of like saying they could give you a pill and make &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; your left hand grow and nothing else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second claim is even more complicated than the first. The length of time that a man can hold an erection relies heavily on multiple factors from what he's thinking about, at the time, to if he's being stimulated and how sensitive his penis is in the moment. Genital sensitivity, itself, is inconsistent. This is why extended stimulation of the same pattern does not produce consistent biological responses. In other words, if an individual touches their penis in the same exact way for several minutes, the penis will become desensitized and the erection won't stay unless something changes. The effects of sensitization and desensitization can be seen in &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=cknrYDqAClkC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA1&amp;amp;dq=pavlov&amp;amp;ots=Kznkn3_aFe&amp;amp;sig=fsUmTWYy6GUhmdiPvT_7qERc6UY#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pavlov's work with dogs&lt;/a&gt;, but the same mechanisms exist in humans and can happen, similarly, to any stimuli, from tactile senses to smell. Beyond that, most men experience variation in their erection &lt;em&gt;just based on what they're thinking&lt;/em&gt;. While erections can be unpredictable, so can moments when an erection fails. Furthermore, during pauses in a sexual experience, the stimulation of the man's genitals is likely to vary as well, so that it is common for a man to lose and regain his erection while he's having sex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main problem with the third claim is that it is making a claim about something that is barely related to the act of having sex. A person's stamina and endurance, even during sex, has to do with their overall health. A person in poor health is less likely to have very good stamina or endurance during sex, whereas a person in excellent health is more likely to last longer. By claiming that they can improve something like this, the claim that is really being made is essentially that this is an overall miracle drug, capable of, at least for the short-term, curing what ails ya.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Erectile dysfunction is typically a side-effect of various types of medical conditions from diabetes to prostate cancer. Typically, treatment for erectile dysfunction is treatment for the possible causes plus a treatment of the symptom. In order to treat erectile dysfunction, the main approved treatments are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.viagra.com/taking-viagra/viagra-erectile-dysfunction/how-viagra-works.aspx?source=google&amp;amp;HBX_PK=s_how%20does%20viagra%20work&amp;amp;HBX_OU=50&amp;amp;o=23121503%7C166374793%7C0&amp;amp;skwid=43000000376593164&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Viagra&lt;/a&gt; and Cialis. These two medications are not automatic cures for the problem, though. They only make the process of getting an erection easier. Other factors, such as stimulation, as mentioned above, still apply to the variations in the kinds of erections one might get when using a drug that treats erectile dysfunction. &lt;strong&gt;Even drugs designed and approved by the FDA to treat problems with penile function don't make claims as extreme as penis enhancement drugs.&lt;/strong&gt; Viagra blocks a chemical that is responsible for reversing an erection. In order for someone to obtain an erection, stimulation is still necessary and blood still has to enter the penis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is more difficult to think critically about the sensation one feels during orgasm from one sexual experience to the next (requiring most studies on male orgasm to involve internal devices, like &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01542155&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;anal probes&lt;/a&gt;). Little variations from what is said to how it is said to what position a couple is using can change the sensations one feels during sex and even affect orgasm. This isn't surprising, since vocalizations have shown to be factors that can change if a mate ejaculates or not in a range of species from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6T0P-3S7XM82-1&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=02/15/1998&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_searchStrId=1700178937&amp;amp;_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=8aa61b7f9cc83ab06fc80bbab76c5d4c&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mice&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1023/B:IJOP.0000023579.30595.ae&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;macaques&lt;/a&gt;. Furthermore, the claims made regarding orgasm sensations ignore the fact that males have different phases of orgasm which, if interrupted, can also change the sensation of their orgasm. Men are capable of blocking the second phase of orgasm, which is suspected (but still needs tested) to result in additional pressure below the bladder, due to the pooling of liquid, to increase the sensation of another orgasm if it is attempted very soon after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last claim, that sex drive will increase with use of a penis enhancer is also difficult to test. There is no evidence that a penis enhancer can do this. Again, multiple factors can affect sex drive, including one's mental and physical health. Anything from &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130520222033/http://diabetessymptomsinmen.com/diabetes-symptoms-in-men/diabetes-and-libido-can-diabetes-affect-sex-drive/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blood sugar levels&lt;/a&gt;(1) to &lt;a href=&quot;https://irondisorders.org/chelation-therapy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;iron levels&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01541593&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;depression&lt;/a&gt; can affect an individual's sex drive. A doctor trying to address the issue of someone's sex drive is more likely to look into those factors before ever suggesting a treatment of just the symptom of a decreased sex drive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all that said, you're correct that there haven't been many studies on the effectiveness for these treatments. The reason, though, is because of what I've stated above. The claims made by those producing these pills are pretty unreasonable. That's why Steve Warshack and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.upi.com/Business_News/2009/07/22/Smilin-Bob-grandmother-avoids-jail/82631248302461/?u3L=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some of his family&lt;/a&gt; were found guilty of crimes related to the production and distribution of Enzyte, an herbal pill which claimed to be capable of penis enhancement and famous for the Smilin' Bob commercials. To complicate matters, &lt;a href=&quot;https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/dietarysupplements-Consumer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the FDA has more relaxed rules&lt;/a&gt; when it comes to &amp;quot;natural remedies&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;herbal&amp;quot; supplements, which makes it easier for a company to make claims about a product and face fewer penalties, even when their claims are found to be wrong (which is why the Enzyte case was &lt;a href=&quot;https://quackwatch.org/ads/bbb/enzyte/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;triggered by the Better Business Bureau&lt;/a&gt; and not the FDA).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because most of the products claiming to be male enhancement products are unregulated, they fall into the same categories as other types of herbal treatments and should be approached with caution &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM199809173391210&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;because of lack of testing&lt;/a&gt; and the consequences of introducing things into your body that could be potentially dangerous or that your doctor may not have enough information about. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6T8D-42RDSX6-9&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=05/31/2001&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_searchStrId=1700216343&amp;amp;_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=246523fc26e6ec6779ab584f2e721794&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; addresses some of that problem well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately there is no universal regulatory system in place that insures that any of these plant remedies are what they say they are, do what is claimed, or most importantly are safe. Data will be presented in this context, outlining how adulteration, inappropriate formulation, or lack of understanding of plant and drug interactions have led to adverse reactions that are sometimes life-threatening or lethal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as potential harm that these products may cause, we don't yet know. These products do prey on individual insecurities, but if we use that as a measure of harm, we'd have to also consider many cosmetics to be harmful as well (though, many cosmetics do exactly what they claim, so there is at least &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; difference in favor of them over male enhancement products). Most male enhancement products are very expensive and a person particularly concerned with their sexual performance is vulnerable to companies which may sell him ineffective products as he ignores the possibility that his sexual concern may be an indication of a medical problem. So far, this type of harm is not easily measured and we're not likely to ever find the kind of data we would need to confirm or deny it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, basically, the answer is that we can't really know if male enhancement products work, but it is very unlikely when we consider the claims that are made. Also, with lack of proper studies on the products, we can't really know what kind of harm they may cause to individuals, physically, and other possible harmful elements are, thus far, not even measurable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.auajournals.org/article/S0022-5347(06)03120-X/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A recent study&lt;/a&gt; has found that the decrease in sex drive in diabetics is possibly related to the decrease in sexual function and may not be a symptom, itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="530" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-05-06T13:19:46.087" LastActivityDate="2022-05-06T13:19:46.087" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1586" CreationDate="2011-03-31T03:52:24.200" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know the efficacy (and even safety) is as-yet unproven. However, there is a logic to why they might work: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It has relatively recently (1990's) been shown that in addition to the well-known rods and cones in the mammalian retina, there is a third class of light-sensitive cells, known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosensitive_ganglion_cell&quot;&gt;photosensitive ganglion cells&lt;/a&gt;. (This was a big deal, because the accepted wisdom was that rods and cones were the only ones, and it took a while for this idea to be accepted);&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;These pRGC are non-image-forming cells, and amongst other things, they are believed to be very important in synchronizing the circadian rhythm and regulating melatonin secretion from the pineal gland; and &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;These pRGC cells have been shown to have peak sensitivity to blue/violet light, somewhere around 480nm.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting these facts together, you can see why people have concluded that the most efficient way to influence the circadian clock is using blue LEDs. But, as I said earlier, as far as I know this has not been proven either effective or safe.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1305" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T03:52:24.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1595" CreationDate="2011-03-31T04:54:42.157" Score="30" ViewCount="4114" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any differences in either sex which are provably beneficial and/or detrimental to their driving abilities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, is it possible that stereotypical gender roles make any difference in driving ability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: Men stereotypically tend to take women on dates where the man drives the car and pays for the meal. A greater number of dates could make them accustomed to driving while distracted (if they're interested in the girl, they're probably distracted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For balance: Women have less testosterone and are stereotypically less aggressive than men, which may prevent them from succumbing to &quot;road rage&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies showing that either gender is more prone to accidents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="252" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-04-20T17:01:04.147" LastActivityDate="2022-04-20T17:01:04.147" Title="Does gender affect driving skill?" Tags="|road-vehicles|gender|vehicle|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1569" CreationDate="2011-03-31T06:21:21.177" Score="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, part of the problem is that when we talk about death, there are multiple definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Medically, you have &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Clinical+death&quot;&gt;clinical death&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM200104193441606&quot;&gt;brain&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/brain+death&quot;&gt;death&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; There is also the definition of death which means &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/death&quot;&gt;the end of life&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; The latter is even more of a problem because where most people consider &quot;life&quot; to mean a certain level of functioning, science defines life based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biologyreference.com/La-Ma/Life-What-Is.html&quot;&gt;more than organ functions&lt;/a&gt;. Starting at a very young age, in schools, we are often taught that the basic way that science defines life is that life is something that can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reproduce&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Move&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a metabolism (obtain and use&#xA;energy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, starting with brain death, yes, it is possible for the brain to cease functioning almost instantly. While we don't have many details on what the experience is like when the brain is shutting down, we do have studies on the activity in the brain &lt;a href=&quot;http://archneur.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/44/9/948&quot;&gt;afterward&lt;/a&gt;. It is most likely the case that during death, the brain will send signals based on external stimuli, as that is its main function, and because those stimuli are extreme, the brain's activity will probably also be pretty high. Because instant injuries, such as the one mentioned, create irreversible damage to parts of the brain that send and receive signals, instant brain death is possible because it would be much like ripping conductive wires apart that support a larger, electrically-driven apparatus, the parts of the brain affected by the injury would instantly turn off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clinical death is a little bit different and is vaguely defined. Generally, clinical death involves stopped breathing, but it can also involve cardiac arrest and the failure of various organs and biological systems. Clinical death is often not considered actual death because someone who is clinically dead can sometimes be revived. So, while someone may suffer injuries that causes clinical death to be sudden, because the brain hasn't necessarily shut down in the event of clinical death, they may actually experience &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; while they're unconscious and dying. This is what scientists think is responsible for near death experiences which many claim are related to the afterlife. Instead, though, these reports of near death experiences are likely similar to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/7565-death-experiences.html&quot;&gt;lucid dreams&lt;/a&gt;, in which it is difficult to differentiate between what is happening in one's head while sleeping and what is actually happening while awake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approaching the question of death as the end of life, as defined by science, is a whole different realm than defining brain death and clinical death. For at least a short time after we die, cellular processes can sometimes continue, even when the heart has stopped, breathing has stopped and the brain no longer is functioning. The cells function as long as their basic structures are in tact and the nutrients &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; are surviving on are still available. Thus, some of an individual's metabolic processes, like storing fat, will continue to happen for over an hour (probably more) after the brain, lungs and heart have completely shut down. Reproductive cells will function for a while after death and the process of death, itself, will cause an individual to move, sometimes. Because of this, a corpse still satisfies the definition for life that we're often given in grade school science classes. If consider death at this level, the only way instant death could occur is if the cellular structures of the body, including our symbiotic microbes, were instantly destroyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When people refer to &quot;instant death,&quot; though, in the sense that you describe, they're usually talking about what level of awareness someone has as they're dying. Did they feel pain for some time or did they experience some emotional state as they passed away? In that sense, instant death is not uncommon. Certain types of brain injuries do damage the brain to the point that it can no longer send signals related to processing stimuli. Decapitation may be another matter, though, because the brain may be severed from the body, but it can still send signals for a very short time. There are, in fact, anecdotes about decapitated heads &lt;a href=&quot;http://tafkac.org/medical/decapitated_head_blinking_more.html&quot;&gt;responding to stimuli&lt;/a&gt; after being separated from their body (not that anecdotes are great evidence, but that's what we have. I know of no brain scan done on a decapitated head right after it was severed from the body).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no technical definition for &quot;instant death.&quot; Instead, that is a term used in everyday jargon and not in the medico-science community as some official term. Death is too complex for that, as you can see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="530" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T06:21:21.177" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1590" CreationDate="2011-03-31T09:27:11.580" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sirc.org/publik/driving_risk.shtml&quot;&gt;Sex differences in driving and insurance risk&lt;/a&gt; (by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sirc.org/index.html&quot;&gt;The Social Issues Research Centre&lt;/a&gt;, 2004)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Men and women exhibit different&#xA;  driving behaviours that affect their&#xA;  attitudes, safety and insurance risk.&#xA;  Many factors underpin these&#xA;  differences, including neurochemical&#xA;  structures and hormonal processes&#xA;  shaped by evolution, and global&#xA;  socialisation practices. Each plays a&#xA;  part in explaining why &lt;strong&gt;men and women&#xA;  drivers have very different records in&#xA;  relation to accidents and insurance&#xA;  claims&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Differences between male and female drivers in terms of crash rates are &#xA;  evident in a wide range of countries, including the United States, Europe, &#xA;  Asia and Africa, with &lt;strong&gt;males being significantly more at risk than females&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is extensive evidence to show that men&lt;/strong&gt;, and young men in &#xA;  particular, &lt;strong&gt;tend to be more &#xA;  aggressive than women&lt;/strong&gt; (in all known &#xA;  cultures) and they express aggression &#xA;  in a direct, rather than indirect,  manner.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Levels of deviant (rule-breaking)    behaviour are significantly higher in &#xA;  men than in women&lt;/strong&gt;. This manifests &#xA;  itself in a greater frequency of &#xA;  violation of traffic regulations, &#xA;  including speed limits, traffic controls, drink-driving, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Men also exhibit, on average, higher    levels of sensation-seeking&#xA;  and    risk-taking&lt;/strong&gt; in a wide variety&#xA;  of settings. &lt;strong&gt;The basis for this &#xA;  well-established sex difference has a &#xA;  hormonal and neurochemical basis&lt;/strong&gt; – it &#xA;  is not simply a product of &#xA;  socialisation or experience.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A report published by the Department of Gender and Women’s Health at the    World Health&#xA;  Organisation has called    for recognition of these fundamental &#xA;  differences between men and women &#xA;  drivers and the development of   gender-differentiated policies in &#xA;  relevant areas.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Men and women are different&lt;/strong&gt;. In terms&#xA;  of driving behaviour, the differences&#xA;  can be seen clearly in the greater&#xA;  propensity of males to take risks,&#xA;  exhibit aggression and seek thrilling&#xA;  sensations. &lt;strong&gt;The results of these&#xA;  differences are highlighted very&#xA;  clearly across the globe in higher&#xA;  accident statistics, more expensive&#xA;  and frequent insurance claims and&#xA;  higher rates of convictions for&#xA;  offences such as dangerous and&#xA;  drink-driving&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;These differences may be shaped by&#xA;  socialisation, but they are rooted in&#xA;  more fundamental factors&lt;/strong&gt;. Evolutionary&#xA;  psychology provides a strong basis for&#xA;  sourcing many of these back to the&#xA;  little-changed cognitive structures&#xA;  required by our hunter-gather&#xA;  ancestors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the authors believe there is&#xA;  overwhelming evidence that&#xA;  propensities towards certain types of&#xA;  behaviour, including less-safe&#xA;  driving, are ‘hard wired’ in men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper cites a lot of studies. They are referenced on the last six pages. Way too many to include them here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T09:27:11.580" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1587" CreationDate="2011-03-31T11:32:55.543" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is a trick. There’s a video on YouTube from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Piu75P8sxTo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skeptic Zone Podcast&lt;/a&gt; demonstrating how it’s done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, the lady tricked you – she didn’t always apply the same kind of pressure, she changed the vector of the applied force slightly. This allows her to apply an equal &lt;em&gt;amount&lt;/em&gt; of pressure but without the same effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T11:32:55.543" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1583" CreationDate="2011-03-31T14:55:36.227" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A competitive scholarship (with a fixed number of awards) would normally lead to students at the margin (with the assistance of their teachers who want them to do well) to work harder and to give greater focus to the test which determines who gets the scholarship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A performance scholarlship (with a fixed standard for an award) would do the same, but if the standard is based on GPA then it also gives an incentive to helpful teachers to provide some grade inflation.  The difficult part is quantifying how much of an impact the different incentives have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://aysps.gsu.edu/publications/arc/csp/csp_hope98.htm&quot;&gt;Georgia HOPE Scholarship&lt;/a&gt; after it had been running a few years looked at this.  It showed an increasing proportion of Georgia students taking SAT has a B or better, both before and after the introduction of HOPE.  This may or may not be grade inflation, but it is difficult to say the scholarships caused it.  Meanwhile the average SAT scores of students reporting B or better rose very slightly after the introduction of HOPE; this may be a result of parallel GPA and SAT grade inflation, but again it provides no evidence of grade inflation caused by HOPE scholarships.  The report says &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At Georgia’s public colleges, this&#xA;  analysis suggests that at minimum HOPE&#xA;  has not increased grade inflation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which I think is a fair comment: whether or not there has been continual grade inflation, it has not obviously been accelerated by the scholarships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T14:55:36.227" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1604" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-03-31T15:55:34.997" Score="17" ViewCount="965" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard from animal rights activists that experiments on animals are not necessary because we can get the same or better results from cell culture experiments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of that claim is this excerpt from a comment on a blog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) According to the former scientific&#xA;  executive of Huntingdon Life Sciences,&#xA;  animal tests and human results agree&#xA;  “5%-25% of the time.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) Among the hundreds of techniques&#xA;  available instead of animal&#xA;  experiments, cell culture toxicology&#xA;  methods give accuracy rates of 80-85%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/03/the_animal_rights_movement_may_have_over.php#comment-3548258&quot;&gt;Posted in the comments section on Respectful Insolence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to focus on the exact numbers given here, but on the general issue of toxicology testing using animals and cell cultures. Determining the safety of new chemical compounds, drugs etc. is a major use of animal experiments, I'll focus my question on these toxicological studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can cell culture methods effectively replace animal experiments for toxicological studies?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-03-31T19:59:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T23:26:03.557" Title="Are animal experiments unnecessary for toxicological studies?" Tags="|biology|toxicology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1605" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1619" CreationDate="2011-03-31T16:22:27.170" Score="8" ViewCount="614" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/993.html#References&quot;&gt;possible health benefits&lt;/a&gt; of fish oil (primarily from its omega-3 content) have made it a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumerlab.com/news/Supplement_Survey_Report/1_31_2010/&quot;&gt;popular supplement&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of over-the-counter fish oil supplements (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=fish%20oil&quot;&gt;google fish oil&lt;/a&gt;) on the market and one (that I know of) that is only available by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omacor&quot;&gt;prescription&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence that prescription fish oil is better (more effective, safer, other) than over-the-counter fish oil ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="858" LastEditDate="2011-04-01T07:33:29.023" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T07:33:29.023" Title="Is prescription fish oil better than over-the-counter fish oil?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1606" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1611" CreationDate="2011-03-31T17:07:09.343" Score="16" ViewCount="1855" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a skeptic, I was present at a meeting during which the presenter stated his belief in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_UFOs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nazi UFOs&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Many websites claim that the Nazis had developed flying saucer technology during WWII:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In science fiction, conspiracy theory, and underground comic books, stories or claims circulate linking UFOs to Nazi Germany. These Nazi UFO theories describe supposedly successful attempts to develop advanced aircraft or spacecraft prior to and during World War II, and further claim the post-war survival of these craft in secret underground bases in Antarctica, South America or the United States, along with their creators.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_UFOs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Naziufo.png&quot; alt=&quot;Nazi UFO&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that can be described as remotely credible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1051" LastEditorUserId="44762" LastEditDate="2022-08-06T22:19:36.067" LastActivityDate="2022-08-06T22:19:36.067" Title="What is the current state of the evidence of the existence of the so-called Nazi UFO's?" Tags="|history|ufo|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1604" CreationDate="2011-03-31T19:04:07.493" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your citation only apply to toxicology but your &lt;del&gt;general question doesn’t&lt;/del&gt; original question wasn’t. So I’ll pick the remaining part. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Animal experiments are unfortunately&lt;/strong&gt; (still) &lt;strong&gt;necessary.&lt;/strong&gt; Most of the fundamental research today is conducted on animals and for the foreseeable time this will remain so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cell cultures and mathematical models are entirely inadequate in most fundamental research since we &lt;em&gt;don’t know&lt;/em&gt; what to model. Just consider embryology which studies the developmental processes that lead to an adult animal. Understanding these processes is fundamental for our general understanding of biology and consequently future medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, a big part of this research consists of mapping the embryology by cutting apart mouse embryos to take tissue samples (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://mouseatlas.caltech.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mouse atlas&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is true of basically every biological and clinical research. I’ll give two examples to illustrate this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Diabetes mellitus&lt;/em&gt; is today one of the most prevalent diseases, an epidemic, and one of the major causes of death in the developed world (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/Diabetes/news/docs/010126.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source: CDC&lt;/a&gt;). A lot of research goes into understanding it – and most of this research uses animal models – more precisely, mouse models (examples: &lt;a href=&quot;http://diabetes.diabetesjournals.org/content/29/10/835.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://jaxmice.jax.org/jaxnotes/archive/487n.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3891173&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, …).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Muscle development&lt;/em&gt; is regulated by a host of proteins. One of them is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myostatin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;myostatin&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Research into this protein could lead to cures for &lt;a href=&quot;http://jap.physiology.org/content/early/2011/01/20/japplphysiol.01183.2010.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;muscular atrophy&lt;/a&gt; which is ultimately the cause of death for several diseases such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001724/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DMD – Duchenne muscular dystrophy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The information gained through these experiments cannot be replicated otherwise&lt;/em&gt;.&#xA;In fact, there’s a big incentive for the industry and governments to use cell cultures or models instead – because they are &lt;em&gt;vastly cheaper&lt;/em&gt; than experimenting on live animals. Industry interests and animal rights interests perfectly align in this regard so we can be fairly confident that the industry and public research &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; indeed doing their best to replace animal experiments by other methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T23:26:03.557" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T23:26:03.557" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="795" CreationDate="2011-03-31T19:59:56.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_risk/committees/04_scenihr/docs/scenihr_o_022.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This recent EU-sponsored study on the epidemiological effects of exposure to&#xA;electromagnetic fields&lt;/a&gt; suggests that there is a causal link between exposure to&#xA;electromagnetic radiation from power lines and childhood leukemia (and&#xA;possibly also Alzheimer's disease) for electromagnetic flux density&#xA;exceeding 100 micro teslas.  Taking that average high tension power distribution lines are running around 400kV, the flux density can easily exceed that threshold within a few hundred meters radius.  The study found no association with other types of cancer or cardiovascular disease.  There are also well known links between EMF exposure and migraines/headaches, dizziness, and depression (also cited within the EU study on page 27).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2013-05-23T14:39:29.043" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T14:39:29.043" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1606" CreationDate="2011-03-31T20:51:29.803" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with any claim like this you have to look at the primary sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to the more recent versions of the Nazi saucer claims (ie. leaving the mystical Vril stuff out and concentrating on Die Glocke), &lt;a href=&quot;http://dir.salon.com/story/books/review/2002/08/05/zero_gravity/index1.html&quot;&gt;the only source is the Polish author Igor Witkowski&lt;/a&gt;, who claims to have been shown by someone (he won't say who) a transcript of the interrogation of an SS officer who was protecting flying saucer research. Of course no one else has seen the alleged transcript, so it's hard to call that evidence for anything. UFO researchers eventually went to the site Witkowski gave for where the research was supposed to have been conducted, but the &quot;mysterious structures&quot; they found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8cXr3CchZU&quot;&gt;were easily shown to be mundane building remains, even by other UFO researchers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that the Nazi have UFO bases inside the hollow earth also comes from a single source -- the alleged &quot;Secret Diary&quot; of Admiral Byrd. The diary, which showed up as a mail order item available from &quot;The Society for a Complete Earth&quot; sometime in the 1970s, claimed that Admiral Byrd had flown to the interior of the earth via the North Pole and encountered crystal cities full of UFOs and Aryans. Again, this single source is hardly credible and is contradicted by pretty much the entire historical record, but some UFO and hollow earth researchers like to claim that the diary is genuine, and Byrd, despite keeping it totally secret until after his death, changed the dates, maybe the places, and really meant Nazis when he said Aryans. In other words if you change every single thing the diary says, it's completely true. These kinds of researchers always wonder why they aren't taken seriously. You can read the whole saga of the diary from the believers perspective &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thehollowearthinsider.com/news/wmview.php?ArtID=6&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, or in the book Admiral Byrd's Secret Journey Beyond the Poles by Tim Swartz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The strain of Nazi UFO-ism that talks about Vril and Haunebu saucers, I'm not really sure where it comes from, but I didn't really hear about it until the internet. I suspect the website &lt;a href=&quot;http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/&quot;&gt;http://discaircraft.greyfalcon.us/&lt;/a&gt; is the source, but I can't prove that. The author of that site (he calls it a book) doesn't really explain where any of his information comes from, and his odd tendency to sprinkle pictures of naked women into discussions of aircraft engineering has always made me wonder if the site is entirely serious. Still, I've never found any detailed information on the alleged Haunebu or Vril saucers that predates it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="1343" LastEditDate="2011-04-01T02:19:10.520" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T02:19:10.520" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1604" CreationDate="2011-03-31T21:32:49.097" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, now with the edited question I'm going to weigh in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Cell culture methods cannot effectively replace animal experiments for Toxicological studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it will make some advances in toxicology, notably helping ensure products are safer when they come to market, it still doesn't give the 'full picture' of the life of a compound. They do wonders for xenbiotic compounds at the cellular and genetic level, but they cannot encompass all aspects of the toxicological picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's consider the in vitro tox screening for Ibuprofen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In vitro studies have been done re: Bilirubin toxicity. &#xA;(http://journals.lww.com/pedresearch/Fulltext/2009/04000/Ibuprofen_Augments_Bilirubin_Toxicity_in_Rat.6.aspx)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other cytotoxic studies have been performed with rainbow trout and cellular cultures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tox.20410/abstract&quot;&gt;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tox.20410/abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this compound bioaccumulate? Is it Biomagnified? These questions can't be answered via a cellular study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this compound produce metabolites?? (yes!) - what is the process of degradation by the organism? How are the compounds excreted from the organism?  Is this compound stored in fat? Are the metabolites stored in fat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're curious about the metabolites of Ibuprofen in water, here's an example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15212901&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15212901&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single cellular culture array cannot answer all the pertinent questions. It gives us an excellent picture of cellular disruptions, genetic impacts and such, but cannot compensate for the entire physiology of a test subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T21:32:49.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1621" CreationDate="2011-03-31T22:09:46.007" Score="25" ViewCount="11362" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to several different penis enlargement companies, and an unsourced claim on Wikipedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extenzetruth.com/maleenhancement/pills/history-of-penis-enlargement.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;men have been trying to enlarge their penis for over 2,000 years&lt;/a&gt;.  Over the years, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penis_enlargement&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;many different techniques&lt;/a&gt; have been tried.  For the purposes of this question, lets only consider &lt;em&gt;mechanical&lt;/em&gt; techniques.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1576/do-non-fda-approved-male-enhancement-pills-actually-work&quot;&gt;There are also several non-FDA approved supplements for penis enlargement that are the subject of another question.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The earliest method used seems to be hanging:  where a rope is tied around the &lt;em&gt;glans penis&lt;/em&gt; (commonly referred to as the &quot;head&quot; of the penis) and attached to a weight.  The weight is then raised for several seconds in the same manner a Kegel exercise is performed.  Clamping is where a string or cock ring is used to constrict the base of the penis and then the individual masturbates for a period of time.  Jelquing involves wrapping fingers around the penis while somewhat erect, and pulling it away to force blood into it.  Many tools are sold to assist with this method.  Stretching utilizes some sort of device to forcibly extend the penis, with the hope that it will stay at that length or girth or somewhere in between that and the original size.  Finally, penis pumps are devices that that create suction around the penis, drawing blood into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhat related are surgical techniques.  To grow the penis in girth, material is injected to it.  Artificial materials like silicone can be used, or biologic materials like fat or treated cadaver flesh.  To grow it in length, ligaments at the base of the penis are released, allowing the portion of the penis that is generally within the body to extend further outward.  Sometimes, inflatable implants are also used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are any of these methods effective?  Furthermore, is there any significant risk that should be taken into account?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2022-05-09T12:37:07.367" Title="Do mechanical techniques for penis enlargement work?" Tags="|physiology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1642" CreationDate="2011-03-31T22:20:16.170" Score="24" ViewCount="3340" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Absinthe&lt;/a&gt; is a distilled, alcoholic beverage,  sometimes referred to as &quot;la fée verte&quot; (the green fairy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absinthe#Bans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Absinthe was banned&lt;/a&gt; in many countries during the early 20th century: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1906 - Brazil and Belgium, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1909 - Netherlands, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1910 - Switzerland, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1912 - United States,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1914 - France.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wild claims about absinthe, that it 'caused epilepsy and tuberculosis and killed thousands of French people', as well as its reputation for being a psychoactive drug, kept it illegal for close to 100 years, even after countries repealed their prohibitions of other alcoholic drinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than the claims made by the pro-temperance movement and producers of competing alcoholic drinks (such as wine), what evidence is there that absinthe is sufficiently different from, or more dangerous than other liquors that it is still banned in some areas and tends to be more highly regulated than other liquors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any merit to the claims that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thujone#Thujone_in_absinthe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;thujone&lt;/a&gt; acts as a hallucinogen and can cause death when ingested by drinking absinthe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:48:01.993" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:48:01.993" Title="&quot;La fée verte&quot;: Is Absinthe hallucinogenic?" Tags="|alcohol|recreational-drugs|hallucinations|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1615" CreationDate="2011-03-31T22:33:43.413" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer, regarding hallucinations is no.  Here is a study done regarding the chemical composition of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18419128&quot;&gt;absinthe&lt;/a&gt;. And here's one on  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17912872&quot;&gt;thujone&lt;/a&gt; specifically, indicating that &lt;em&gt;its convulsive properties are dose-dependent&lt;/em&gt;, and showing that in Absinthe, sufficient quantities of thujone are not present to demonstrate either hallucinogenic or convulsive properties.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absinthe was determined not be associated with a significant risk of thujone-related seizure activity because &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20727933&quot;&gt;analysis shows the lower limit for a benchmark response of 10% was found to be 0.11mg/kg&lt;/a&gt; of body weight which is not reachable by consumption of thujone containing foods and beverages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A questioning of Magnan's findings (which started all the controversy) regarding convulsant properties is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19831287&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another study, specifically relating to the relationship between VanGogh and Absinthe is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15907745&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it appears that all of the effects of Absinthe can be attributed to its alcohol content.  Check &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18429531&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for a 2008 study done on both pre-and post ban Absinthe.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If needed, I can provide more links to other studies which confirm this finding, to oppose the anecdotal claims and various apocryphal stories of people claiming to have hallucinated while consuming it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the question of death, it would depend on the amount ingested.  This would of course be no different from any other beverage with comparable alcohol content.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-11-20T20:54:32.273" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T20:54:32.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1615" CreationDate="2011-03-31T22:48:37.017" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thujone is known to be a convulsant &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf001445%2B&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf001445%2B&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/tx000242c&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/tx000242c&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/97/9/4417.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pnas.org/content/97/9/4417.full.pdf+html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pertinent portion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thujone, like picrotoxin, is excitatory on the brain(analeptic). Such an agent may produce&#xA;  mood elevation and antidepressant effects. One may note the anxiogenic and possibly alerting effect of GABA antagonists, as opposed to the anxiolytic, sedative, but also amnestic effects of GABAenhancing drugs like benzodiazepines and ethanol (9, 10, 23). Do not forget, however, that in absinthe one is balancing the effect of thujone with the intoxicating, disinhibitory, and depressant effects of ethanol, not to mention those of the other herbal ingredients of oil of wormwood and others added to the myriad recipes for absinthe now in existence.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The EU did made a report in '02 regarding the presence of Thujone in foods in the EU, which can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/food/fs/sc/scf/out162_en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ec.europa.eu/food/fs/sc/scf/out162_en.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They make a note of anecdotal studies regarding thujone related deaths, but I haven't delved much deeper at the present.  It's nearly 1am and I'm turning into a pumpkin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I think it could happen; one person drunk on absinthe + a thujone induced seizure....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-03-31T23:07:28.787" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T23:07:28.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1605" CreationDate="2011-03-31T23:52:43.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Better in what way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better because it's cheaper?  Better because it works faster?  Better because it kills less puppies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/facts_5941552_fish-oil-vs_-omega-3_6_9.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Some&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mind1st.co.uk/omega-3-6-9.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;argue&lt;/a&gt; that you should take omega 3, 6 &amp;amp; 9 instead of Fish oil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that a product is (or isn't) on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescription_drug&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;prescription&lt;/a&gt; (in the US) only means that it has gone through &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Food,_Drug,_and_Cosmetic_Act&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FDA&lt;/a&gt; approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for which is better, I'd try both for a few weeks.  Ask you better half if they notice an improvement!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1373" LastActivityDate="2011-03-31T23:52:43.583" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1613" CreationDate="2011-04-01T00:46:28.537" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can enlarge your penis through surgical means where by the transplant skin or fat onto your penis, so not only is it possible to enhance your penis size but it's actually happening all the time. In &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s00266-004-0153-y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Augmentative Phalloplasty&lt;/a&gt; (if you don't like to look at penises, don't click the link) published in Aesthetic Plastic Surgery the procedure is outlined:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors have performed augentative phalloplasty on 88 patients since 1996. They have transplanted 40 to 68 ml of pure fat. Of the 88 patients, 57 underwent autologous fat transfer only, and 31 received additional ligament release. Penis length increased 1.5 to 4.8 cm (average, 2.42 cm), and circumference increased 1.4 to 4.0 cm (average, 2.65 cm). The initial penis lengths were 6.5 to 10.0 cm (average, 8.72 cm), and the circumference were 8.0 to 10.1 cm (average, 9.18 cm) not erected. This article details a simple operative procedure to enlarge the penis and simple postoperative bandages. Patients are advised to obstain from sexual activity for 5 weeks after the surgery. Two patients who disregarded this advice had an unsatisfactory result. In one patient too, much of the grafted fat had to be removed from the preputium. No other serious complications were observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1464-410X.2010.09647.x/abstract?systemMessage=Wiley%20Online%20Library%20will%20be%20disrupted%202nd%20Apr%20from%2010-12%20BST%20for%20monthly%20maintenance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Non-invasive methods of penile lengthening: fact or fiction?&lt;/a&gt; which references the previous mentioned paper it notes that the effectiveness of non-surgical methods while often being a pile of hogwash can (given the right device) be just as effective as surgery:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Penile size is a matter of great interest among men who are affected by ‘short penis syndrome’ or just believe themselves to have a small penis, even though the dimensions of the organ fall within the normal range. Surgical procedures of ‘lengthening phalloplasty’ lack standardized indications and carry a high risk of complications. Several non-invasive methods of penile lengthening have been described, such as vacuum devices, penile traction devices and penoscrotal rings; even ‘physical exercises’ have been popularized through the media. Most of these techniques, however, are not supported by any scientific evidence. We briefly analyse the efficacy and scientific background of such non-surgical methods of penile lengthening. It seems that penile extenders represent the only evidence-based technique of penile elongation. Results achieved do not seem to be inferior to surgery, making these traction devices an ideal first-line treatment option for patients seeking a penile lengthening procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've actually researched this issue 2 years ago and back then I found  one study that was evaluating a penile extender in a paper titled &lt;a href=&quot;https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1464-410X.2008.08083.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A pilot phase-II prospective study to test the ‘efficacy’ and tolerability of a penile-extender device in the treatment of ‘short penis&lt;/a&gt; outlines the procedure as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Patients were instructed in the use of the penile extender, the Andro-Penis® (Andromedical, Madrid, Spain), a device designed to exert a continuous and gradually increasing traction force on the penis. The device consists of a plastic ring, where the penis is introduced, with two dynamic metallic rods which produce the traction. In the superior part there is a plastic support where a silicone band holds the glans in place. Detailed instructions on how to increase the traction force from 600 g during the first month, 900 g during the second, up to 1200 g during the fifth and sixth months, were provided, following the manufacturer’s instructions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The patients were instructed to use the device for 4-6 hours a day:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Patients were requested to wear the device preferably for 6 h (and at least 4 h) daily, and for an optimum duration of 6 months, according to the manufacturer’s suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the results are were positive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After 6 months the mean gain in length was significant, meeting the goals of the effect size, at 2.3 and 1.7 cm for the flaccid and stretched penis, respectively. No significant changes in penile girth were detected. The EF domain scores improved significantly at the end of study. Treatment satisfaction scores were consistent with acceptable to good improvement in all items, except for penile girth, where the score was either ‘no change’ or ‘mild improvement’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that one patient quit because of pain issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Four patients discontinued treatment, three at 3 months (one for achieving satisfactory results, one for lack of efficacy and one for inability to comply with the protocol), and one at 1 month for side-effects (pain and penile bruising). One patient did not attend the visit after 6 months and was lost to follow up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now since I'm looking at this issue again I decided to have a look at the papers citing the above mentioned paper (since it was from 2009). In one paper published in The Journal of Sexual medicine titled &lt;a href=&quot;https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2010.02121.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Revision of Penile Prosthesis Surgery after Use of Penile Traction Therapy to Increase Erect Penile Length: Case Report and Review of the Literature&lt;/a&gt; they had a case where the patient had previous work done on his penis but wasn't able to maintain an erection while inside of his partner. The study concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This case suggests that the use of a penile traction device increases penile corporal length, and thus the length of a penile prosthesis that can be implanted in a patient with an unsatisfactory prosthesis already in place. Importantly, this patient experienced a substantial improvement in erect penile length after surgery. It is unknown whether these results are generalizable, either to all patients with a previously placed prosthesis or pre-prosthesis patients, representing an opportunity for further investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study similar to the first one used a different product much more aggressively:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After measuring the penile length in flaccid and stretched forms and penile circumference, patients were instructed to wear Golden Erect®, 4–6 hours per day during the first 2 weeks and then 9 hours per day until the end of the third month. The subjects were also trained how to increase the force of the device during determined intervals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their results are substantially different from the first one, and I'm a bit weary of accepting them but I'm not a doctor so it's difficult for me to point out any flaws:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twenty-three cases with a mean age of 26.5 ± 8.1 years entered the study. The mean flaccid penile length increased from 8.8 ± 1.2 cm to 10.1 ± 1.2 cm and 10.5 ± 1.2 cm, respectively, in the first and third months of follow-up, which was statistically significant (P &amp;lt; 0.05). Mean stretched penile length also significantly increased from 11.5 ± 1.0 cm to, respectively, 12.4 ± 1.3 cm and 13.2 ± 1.4 cm during the first and second follow-up (P &amp;lt; 0.05). No significant difference was found regarding proximal penile girth. However, it was not the same regarding the circumference of the glans penis (9.3 ± 0.86 cm vs. 8.8 ± 0.66 cm, P &amp;lt; 0.05).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seem to be clear indications that both surgery and other devices work, but you need to pick the right one. So the answer is yes. Where work means that the product can make your penis longer and thicker, depending on which route your go down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-05-09T12:37:07.367" LastActivityDate="2022-05-09T12:37:07.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1624" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1629" CreationDate="2011-04-01T04:05:09.447" Score="330" ViewCount="43201" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of whether you believe or not...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the non-Biblical evidence regarding his existence around the time he is commonly thought to have lived?  That is, are there other historically accurate documents from the time period which corroborate the biblical story or falsify it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this question does not have anything to do with anyone's personal belief or disbelief, and certainly has nothing to do with divinity.  It simply asks for a consideration of available evidence regarding the historical existence of a particular person by a particular name at  particular place in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-15T11:24:44.130" LastActivityDate="2022-10-19T16:28:57.973" Title="Did Jesus live?" Tags="|history|jesus-christ|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1624" CreationDate="2011-04-01T06:55:15.030" Score="160" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With respect to written historical references to Christ, here are some examples:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus wrote in his &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiquities_of_the_Jews&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Antiquities of the Jews&lt;/a&gt;, written around 93–94 AD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works - a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure.  He drew over to him both many of the Jews and Many of the Gentiles.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was (the) Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those who loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to themn alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning hiim; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day&amp;quot; (Antiquities, XVIII, III)*  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=wQ1MAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;dq=%22Now%20there%20was%20about%20this%20time,%20Jesus,%20a%20wise%20man%22&amp;amp;pg=PA831#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22Now%20there%20was%20about%20this%20time,%20Jesus,%20a%20wise%20man%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tacitus, a Roman historian mentions Jesus in a passage about Nero in his final work &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_(Tacitus)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Annals&lt;/a&gt; written in 116 AD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus [Christ], from whom the name had its origin,  suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition [Christ's resurrection] thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular (&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=AkEOAAAAIAAJ&amp;amp;dq=%22suffered%20the%20extreme%20penalty%20during%20the%20reign%20of%20Tiberius%22&amp;amp;pg=PA4388#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22suffered%20the%20extreme%20penalty%20during%20the%20reign%20of%20Tiberius%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will Durant, a agnostic historian (from what I can find), wrote on historical content:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...the argument took the existence of Christ for granted.  The denial of that existence seems never to have occurred even to the bitterest gentile or Jewish opponents of nascent Christianity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A couple of examples of indirect evidence from historical writing:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;comments in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Younger_on_Christians&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;letter by Roman Pliny the Younger&lt;/a&gt; written around 112 AD about the willingness of many Christians to be killed rather than change their beliefs;  this would probably be difficult to produce on any scale for a fictional figure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;various quotations of eyewitness accounts of Jesus in Bible sections writings; the tone, context and use of the quotations presume that Jesus existed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scientific evidences would be a little more difficult for any historical figure.  For example using DNA or fingerprints to prove that someone existed in history is heading toward logically impossible.  It seems you would need sample of biometric information from a person for comparison;  but then you would, by definition, already know they existed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.garyhabermas.com/books/historicaljesus/historicaljesus.htm#ch9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chapter 9 of Gary Habermas' book &amp;quot;The Historical Jesus&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; addresses this question extensively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1384" LastEditorUserId="62907" LastEditDate="2022-05-21T22:01:09.127" LastActivityDate="2022-05-21T22:01:09.127" CommentCount="34" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1640" CreationDate="2011-04-01T09:29:03.247" Score="11" ViewCount="1247" Body="&lt;p&gt;On October 20, 1967, Roger Patterson made a video which seared an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWGYTHK3E30&quot;&gt;image of Bigfoot&lt;/a&gt; into the popular consciousness.....  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that video real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-04-01T09:58:16.410" LastActivityDate="2016-06-11T13:36:47.430" Title="Was the Patterson Bigfoot Film Faked?" Tags="|history|cryptozoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1039" CreationDate="2011-04-01T10:20:48.730" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Straight Dope wrote an article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2988/is-nuclear-power-safe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;covering this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re Chernobyl:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An astute nuke spokesperson might have&#xA;  said: &quot;Look, here was a five-star&#xA;  fiasco and the confirmed death toll is&#xA;  about the same as from 12 hours of&#xA;  U.S. traffic accidents. Is that an&#xA;  outstanding safety record or what?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, mining kills many more people than you'd expect&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each year. on average, 35 U.S. coal&#xA;  miners are killed and 4,000 are&#xA;  injured. In China, 2,600 coal miners&#xA;  were killed in 2009, following 3,200&#xA;  dead in 2008. (Recent U.S. uranium&#xA;  mining deaths: zero.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While past performance isn't a perfect indicator of future performance, so far nuclear seems to be winning in safety. There is also the issue of safely storing all the waste we produce for thousands of years. Whether this will become a huge problem or we will invent a solution, remains to be seen. We also have to worry about the effect nuclear power has on the proliferation of nuclear weapons, but that is, of course, another question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T10:20:48.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1633" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1638" CreationDate="2011-04-01T10:21:56.840" Score="8" ViewCount="889" Body="&lt;p&gt;No one disputes the atrocity of the 1974 murders committed by Ronald DeFeo Jr which occurred at the house.  However, was there any truth to the 1977 book by Jay Anson which chronicled various claims by George and Kathy Lutz that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Slime oozed from the walls?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Locks and windows were broken by an unseen force?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cloven hoofprints unexplainedly appeared outside in the snow on January 1, 1976?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or that the &quot;most famous haunted house in America&quot; was actually haunted?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7S4bd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:35:44.500" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:35:44.500" Title="Is the Amityville Horror real?" Tags="|history|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1590" CreationDate="2011-04-01T11:55:51.847" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A key effect is vision. Women have better night vision (more rods) but males have better depth perception (more cones). Both are relevant to driving, but in different circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16127342&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;older females are more likely to recognize the limits of their vision.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T11:55:51.847" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1550" CreationDate="2011-04-01T12:23:48.530" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Surprisingly enough, this field isn't as secret as you'd perhaps think. For instance, the GSM standard includes a part documenting standard interfaces for this (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/html-info/33-series.htm&quot;&gt;GSM 03.33&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've implemented this for a major phone switch manufacturer that sold to ~90 countries. There's no restriction whatsoever. In fact, there's no trace at all. Once a phone number is selected for monitoring, any incoming or outgoing call is automatically picked up. There's no need for manual action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, when a call to a monitored phone number is made, the entire Call Detail Record is available. Nowadays, that includes all &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signaling_System_7&quot;&gt;SS7&lt;/a&gt; data. SS7 uses &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISDN_User_Part&quot;&gt;ISUP&lt;/a&gt; messages, including the Initial Address Message (IAM). Without that, there's no call, and afterwards the caller is known (to the phone switch receiving the call).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Features like &quot;Caller ID&quot; work by including the data from the ISUP IAM to the subscriber line, whereas &quot;Caller ID Block&quot; works by &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; copying the data from the IAM. This also explains why the police isn't affected by Called ID Block: their subscriber lines have another feature, &quot;Caller ID Override&quot; which copies the caller's phone number regardsless of his &quot;Caller ID Block&quot; flag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the further nails in this myth's coffin is the fact that for low-priority cases, the phone switch will only put a marker in the Call Detail Record (CDR), and sent the final CDR to the police. In that case, the call is effectively traced only &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; it's hung up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastEditorUserId="867" LastEditDate="2011-08-01T07:59:06.680" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T07:59:06.680" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1633" CreationDate="2011-04-01T13:17:12.167" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say that it has been pretty well proven that &lt;a href=&quot;http://chatanuga.org/Amityville.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jay Anson's book was a hoax&lt;/a&gt;. The motive, at least for the Lutzs, seems to have been to get out of the purchase of the house, which was financially ruinous for them. I've always found it odd that those money problems are so prominent in the book, and even in the famous movie based on the book. You'd think you'd want to downplay that angle in your ghost story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T13:17:12.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1631" CreationDate="2011-04-01T13:51:41.367" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess the question is really if the film (not video, it was shot on 16MM) shows an actual unknown primate. Probably not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a credibility standpoint the film has always been difficult, if only because the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.themunnsreport.com/tmr%20beginner%20guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;original film has apparently been lost&lt;/a&gt;. Therefore, we only know what's in those few seconds of footage. I'd love to know what's on the reel before the famous sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the internal evidence you can garner from the film, I'd point to this frame from a later portion of the footage than you usually see. I'm not sure what's up with the sole of the Bigfoot's foot, but it doesn't look organic to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nfPWF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;bigfootfoot&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="1343" LastEditDate="2011-04-01T14:40:16.570" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T14:40:16.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1624" CreationDate="2011-04-01T14:57:47.430" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;The infidels.org website has an article titled, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/scott_oser/hojfaq.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Historicity Of Jesus FAQ&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, which I believe is an even-handed treatment of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/scott_oser/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scott Oser&lt;/a&gt; uses some of the same sources that BCooksey used in an &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/is-there-any-verifiable-historical-and-or-scientific-evidence-that-jesus-really-l/1629#1629&quot;&gt;excellent response on this page&lt;/a&gt;.  Oser provides some additional information regarding the authenticity of those sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Flavius Josephus&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The early Christian writer Origen claims that Josephus did NOT recognize Jesus as the Messiah, in direct contradiction to the above passage, where Josephus says, &quot;He was the Messiah.&quot; Thus, we may conclude that this particular phrase at least was a later insertion. (The version given above was, however, known to Jerome and in the time of Eusebius. Jerome's Latin version, however, renders &quot;He was the Messiah&quot; by &quot;He was believed to be the Christ.&quot;) Furthermore, other early Christian writers fail to cite this passage, even though it would have suited their purposes to do so. There is thus firm evidence that this passage was tampered with at some point, even if parts of it do date back to Josephus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The passage is highly pro-Christian. It is hard to imagine that Josephus, a Pharisaic Jew, would write such a laudatory passage about a man supposedly killed for blasphemy. Indeed, the passage seems to make Josephus himself out to be a Christian, which was certainly not the case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In objection #2, Oser claims that Josephus was a Pharisaic Jew; at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one other source&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Whiston&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;William Whiston&lt;/a&gt;, proposes that Josephus may have been an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebionites&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ebionite Christian&lt;/a&gt;.  Oser provides additional evidence for the theory that the references to 'Jesus' and 'The Christ' were later reconstructionist alterations by pro-Christian copyists. (Follow previous link to infidels.org to see those arguments.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cornelius Tacitus&lt;/strong&gt; (55-120 CE):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two questions arise concerning this passage [Annals 15.44 (see answer by BCooksey)]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Did Tacitus really write this, or is this a later Christian interpolation?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Is this really an independent confirmation of Jesus's story, or is Tacitus just repeating what some Christians told him?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some scholars believe the passage may be a Christian interpolation into the text. However, this is not at all certain, and unlike Josephus's Testimonium Flavianum, no clear evidence of textual tampering exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second objection is much more serious. Conceivably, Tacitus may just be repeating what he was told by Christians about Jesus. If so, then this passage merely confirms that there were Christians in Tacitus' time, and that they believed that Pilate killed Jesus during the reign of Tiberius. This would not be independent confirmation of Jesus's existence. If, on the other hand, Tacitus found this information in Roman imperial records (to which he had access) then that could constitute independent confirmation. There are good reasons to doubt that Tacitus is working from Roman records here, however. For one, he refers to Pilate by the wrong title (Pilate was a prefect, not a procurator). Secondly, he refers to Jesus by the religious title &quot;Christos&quot;. Roman records would not have referred to Jesus by a Christian title, but presumably by his given name. Thus, there is excellent reason to suppose that Tacitus is merely repeating what Christians said about Jesus, and so can tell us nothing new about Jesus's historicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be little or no argument that Tacitus was the original author of the passage and that it survives with no evidence of tampering.  As Oser point out in his rebuttal to the second argument, we have no way of knowing how Tacitus got the information he wrote.  It was obviously not first hand; Tacitus was born in 55 CE, and Jesus is believed to have left this earth around 27 CE, almost 30 years before Tacitus was born.  It is believed that The Annals were written about year 117 CE, roughly 90 year after the death of Jesus, so it is highly doubtful that Tacitus would even have had access to anyone with first-hand knowledge of Jesus. For the sake of this argument, it is important to note that Tacitus does not name 'Jesus' as 'The Christ', and almost equally important, Tacitus does not mention Paul, Peter, or any other Christian leaders who would have been influential figures to Christians in Rome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Suetonius, Thallus, and Pliny the Younger&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oser also provides arguments against the references to 'Jesus' or 'Christians' in the writings of Suetonius, Thallus, and Pliny the Younger.  For sake of brevity they are not included here; you can follow the link to the infidels.org page to see those arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to add additional muck to this already muddy problem...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In personal discussions about the historicity of Jesus with other amateur scholars the theory has been posited that, like so many other hero myths, the figure we know as Jesus is based on deeds of more than one person and embellished to add greater credence to the claims made by proponents.  This bit of trivia adds nothing to support or oppose the historicity of Jesus, it is, as I mentioned, only provided to obfuscate an already highly-debated subject.  You can read part of a conversation between a believer and a skeptic, at www.christiananswers.net in an articled titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aiia/jesuslegend.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Was Jesus Christ only a legend?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, that implies that some skeptics subscribe to the hero-myth theory about the historicity of Jesus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T11:20:17.383" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1615" CreationDate="2011-04-01T15:10:32.037" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A world expert on the chemistry of Absinthe is Chemist Ted Breaux and there is no shortage of interviews with him going back a decade or more. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/absinthe.html&quot;&gt;Wired&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.absinthebuyersguide.com/Articles/TedBreaux/tedbreaux.html&quot;&gt;Absinthe Buyers Guide&lt;/a&gt; have a pair of good ones. He has published peer-reviewed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thujone.info/thujone-absinthe-39&quot;&gt;papers&lt;/a&gt; on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thirteen samples of authentic absinthe&#xA;  dating from the preban era (i.e.,&#xA;  prior to 1915) were analyzed for&#xA;  parameters that were  hypothesized as&#xA;  contributing to the toxicity of the&#xA;  spirit, including naturally occurring&#xA;  herbal essences (thujone,&#xA;  pinocamphone,  fenchone), methanol,&#xA;  higher alcohols, copper, and antimony.&#xA;  The total thujone content of preban&#xA;  absinthe was found to range between &#xA;  0.5 and 48.3 mg/L, with an average concentration of 25.4  20.3 mg/L and a&#xA;  median concentration of 33.3 mg/L. &lt;strong&gt;The&#xA;  authors conclude  that the thujone&#xA;  concentration of preban absinthe was&#xA;  generally overestimated in the past.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  The analysis of postban (1915–1988)&#xA;  and  modern commercial absinthes&#xA;  (2003–2006) showed that the&#xA;  encompassed thujone ranges of all&#xA;  absinthes are quite similar, &#xA;  disproving the supposition that a&#xA;  fundamental difference exists between&#xA;  preban and modern absinthes&#xA;  manufactured according to  historical&#xA;  recipes. Analyses of pinocamphone,&#xA;  fenchone, base spirits, copper, and&#xA;  antimony were inconspicuous. &lt;strong&gt;All&#xA;  things  considered, nothing besides&#xA;  ethanol was found in the absinthes&#xA;  that was able to explain the syndrome&#xA;  “absinthism”.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an interview:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Breaux discounts the popular notion&#xA;  that thujone is absinthe's only -- or&#xA;  even primary -- active ingredient.&#xA;  (See sidebar: &quot;The Thujone&#xA;  Connection&quot;). &quot;There's a lot more to&#xA;  absinthium, the herb, than thujone,&quot;&#xA;  he says. &quot;There are a lot of things in&#xA;  it that hardly anyone had studied.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I find that a quality absinthe prepared correctly with ice-cold water and raw sugar is an amazing drink. As refreshing as a mint julep but with a bit more kick. But I've never experienced any hallucinogenic effects from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="982" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T15:10:32.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="301" CreationDate="2011-04-01T16:22:53.767" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The theory about Oxidative stress s controversial. What it is about you can read here:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-radical_theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-radical_theory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And be sure you check the References, they are always full of links.&#xA;The theory says that the animal with most heart beats consumes the most oxigen and dies first. They say it has never been proved..... Byproduct of breathing and burning oxigen so that we can live are free radicals which cause cell damage and that is supposed to be the reason cells age. Scientist still search for an answer how oxidative stress is linked to life span, but from what I can read there is no solid answer yet. I am looking for an answer about antioxidants and whether it is all a scam myself as well. All I can give you is some links and you can explore and learn....&#xA;Very interesting is a BBC documantary, which actually triggered my curiosity:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVjVdpnGagI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVjVdpnGagI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;They start to talk about this theory at the end of part 1/4 and they continue to do so. Very interesting is also 2/4 part at 3:30!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself am very interested in any links and sources on this matter.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Greetings from Bazzer! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1409" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T16:22:53.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1508" CreationDate="2011-04-01T16:49:11.763" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt; says a survey by &lt;em&gt;Head and Shoulders&lt;/em&gt; as reported in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2011/04/01/research-shatters-myth-of-sex-on-the-brain-men-115875-23029287/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article by &lt;em&gt;The Mirror&lt;/em&gt;.It says the following of the average man:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He will use up 126.6 minutes a day dreaming about a new partner and married men think about their wives for 118 minutes. The survey of 5,000 men found Mr Average spends 177 minutes a day worrying about his job, 101 minutes on money trouble – and almost 33 minutes on how good he looks, whether he’s getting moobs, a bald patch or is piling on the pounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was reported by BBC on its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12932108&quot;&gt;10 stories that could be April Fools pranks but aren't&lt;/a&gt;, so even if I was not able to find the original research, I suppose that is possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="800" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T16:49:11.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1508" CreationDate="2011-04-01T17:21:03.320" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions#Human_sexuality&quot;&gt;List of Popular Misconceptions&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A popular myth regarding human sexuality is that men think about sex every seven seconds. In reality, &lt;strong&gt;this has not been measured&lt;/strong&gt;, and as far as researchers can tell, this statistic greatly exaggerates the frequency of sexual thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastActivityDate="2011-04-01T17:21:03.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1624" CreationDate="2011-04-01T17:45:29.633" Score="347" Body="&lt;p&gt;The non-Christian historical references mentioned above are all significant. What we need to understand first, though, is that there is no contemporaneous or documentary evidence for the existence of most ancient figures. That's the nature of our historical sources for the ancient world. So if the question is &quot;Do we have good historical evidence that Jesus existed, the kind of evidence that historians take as conclusive when they're doing ancient history&quot; then the answer is a clear &quot;yes.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One difficulty with the way the question is posed here is that it rules out any evidence coming from Jesus' followers. But that's not good historical method. For a relatively obscure figure from a backwater Roman province, the only sources you will find for the first several decades will come from the figure's own circle of followers. What we find is that within two decades of his death we have first- and second-hand accounts of Jesus' life and references to Jesus as a real person. (Paul writes in the late 40s and through the 50s AD.)[1] It is important here that Paul and the other early Christians writing within living memory of Jesus don't treat his existence as a focus of argument or as something to prove. They display no defensiveness about it. Instead, it is just taken for granted both by Jesus' followers and by his detractors.[2] This early evidence, then, seems widespread geographically (Paul in the Eastern Mediterranean, Peter and James the Just in and around Jerusalem, John perhaps in the Ephesus area of Asia Minor)[3] and is uncontested by contemporaries. I find it particularly telling that Paul doesn't need to argue for Jesus' existence when he writes to the new Christian communities in Rome around AD 58. Paul clearly didn't found the community, has never been to Rome, and (based on how much of his teaching he has to defend in the letter) is regarded with some suspicion by Roman Christ-followers. Most scholars think that teaching about Jesus was brought independently to Rome by Jews returning from pilgrimages to Jerusalem or some similar informal route.[4] Even so, Paul can take for granted their agreement that Jesus existed and was crucified [5].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we also need to look carefully at Tacitus and Josephus. Tacitus is writing in the second-century, true, but he is a meticulously careful historian. When he encounters dubious or unsubstantiated rumors, Tacitus is very clear with his readers that the evidence before him is suspect. So it is significant that Tacitus (less than a century after the events) does not signal any doubt. As for this passage being a Christian interpolation, there is no reason to say that &lt;em&gt;except for prior doubts about Jesus&lt;/em&gt;. There is a danger here of &quot;rigging the deck&quot;. If we dismiss evidence (without internal grounds) as fabricated, then what evidence could possibly be accepted? No, Tacitus is a very strong witness, even if he was writing two generations later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The so-called &quot;Testimonium Flavium&quot; by Josephus, on the other hand, is certainly the victim of Christian editing (for the reasons discussed here in other answers). But the general consensus among historians is that there was an original, neutral reference to Jesus here in Josephus that has been expanded and made more pious by later Christian scribes. I'll leave aside the detailed arguments here about the &quot;seams&quot; in the passage itself.[6] More convincing to me is the fact that there are so few references to Jesus in early historians. If Christian scribes (who preserved all of these classical sources for us through late Antiquity and the early middle ages until they were &quot;discovered&quot; in Constantinople by Arab Muslims) did not make a habit of injecting references to Jesus everywhere, then we should be careful about assuming that this reference in Josephus is pure fabrication. What Christian scribes &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; do, though, is add to and elaborate on references to Jesus in &quot;secular&quot; sources to make them more pious. If that is what happened with Josephus, then we do have a non-Christian historian writing within living memory of the events about Jesus as a real figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Despite the suggestion in one answer above, there is no evidence whatsoever that Josephus was an &quot;Ebionite&quot; Christian. The authority mentioned for this idea (Whiston) is a 19th century translator of Josephus who was making the assertion &lt;em&gt;on the basis of the Testimonium Flavium&lt;/em&gt;, which he assumed was genuine in its present form.[9])&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a biblical scholar and historian (PhD in Religious Studies from a secular public University in Canada, now tenured faculty at a Canadian Seminary). Every year I go to secular academic conferences to present and hear research papers from around the world. Arguments from consensus are dangerous, since the majority can easily be wrong. Still, it is significant that I have never met a colleague holding a faculty position in ancient history at a University who doubts Jesus' existence. This is certainly not because of public pressure (some of the same people are deeply iconoclastic) but because the evidence satisfies all the reasonable standards that we can expect for 90% of the ancient world. Anyone who spends her/his time working with ancient history comes to recognize quickly that the evidence for Jesus' existence is very good. Those who continue to question Jesus' existence are consistently people without academic training, whose work hasn't passed the peer review process that helps to maintain rigour. It tends to be journalists, documentary makers, amateurs writing a blog, or (at most) academics whose training is in an entirely different field (not in ancient history). My point is not that the historical academics couldn't (in theory) be wrong. It's that historians (even those much more skeptical than I) recognize that the existence of Jesus is as well attested as we can usually hope for in the ancient world. If we doubt Jesus' existence then certainly we must doubt, say, Pythagoras who left no writings and is only described by much later writers.[7] There is also much better historical evidence for Jesus than for Gautama the Buddha, who was not treated in &quot;outsider&quot; accounts for much longer than Jesus.[8]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick, of course, is the term &quot;verifiable&quot; in the question. If one is looking for the kind of evidence that gives us measurable experimental data in the physical sciences, then no we won't be satisfied with the evidence. But if that is our standard we lose most of the past. The first Skeptics (of the post-Plato Academy) understood that we live in a world where the best we can usually do is probability, but that this doesn't make evidence or the degree of probability insignificant. So maybe what we can say is that the probability of Jesus' existence is much, much higher than the probability that he did not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[1] This dating for Paul's writings is universally accepted among historians of the period and biblical scholars. See, e.g., Brown, Raymond E. An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), pp. 428-430.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[2] Of course, a neat reference is difficult when you're saying that something does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; appear in a document. But take Paul's letter to the Corinthians as an example. He talks throughout about Jesus, and in 1 Corinthians 15:1ff. he offers argumentative evidence for his claim that Jesus was raised from the dead. But nowhere in the letter does he feel the need to argue in a similar way for Jesus' mere existence. His argumentative structure presumes that everyone in the audience takes it for granted. Similarly, in Matthew's Gospel we find that his resurrection narrative is geared to counter the claim that Jesus' disciples stole his body after the crucifixion (Matthew 28:11-15). The existence of Jesus, and his crucifixion by the Romans, is taken for granted. The same thing is evident in all of the NT books and the non-canonical Christian writings from the first to early-second centuries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[3] Paul's geographic locations are evident from his authentic letters to churches that he founded: Galatians to various centres in Galatia (north-central Turkey), Philippians to Philippi (Macedonia), 1 Thessalonians to Thessalonica (Macedonia), Colossians to Colossae (Ionia in south-eastern Turkey--though some contest Pauline authorship of Colossians), 1 and 2 Corinthians to Corinth (at the top of the Peloponnesus of southern Greece). James is located in Jerusalem by first-hand accounts in Paul (Galatians 1) and possibly first-hand accounts in Acts (Acts 15 etc.). The Ephesian location for the disciple John is trickier and depends on second-century tradition. See the sections on each of these letters in Raymond Brown's introduction referenced above (Galatians, pp. 474-477; Philippians, pp. 483-485; 1 Thess, pp. 456-459;  Colossians, pp. 599-601; Corinthian letters, pp. 511-515, 541-544; James, pp. 741-743; John in Ephesus, pp. 368-369). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[4] See Dunn, James D. G. &lt;em&gt;Romans 1-8&lt;/em&gt;. Word Biblical Commentary 38A (Dallas: Word, 1988), pp. xlvi-xlvii. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[5] See, e.g., Romans 1:1-5; 3:25; and the allusions to crucifixion as the mode of Jesus' death in Romans 6.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[6] See the good treatment in volume 1 of Meier, John P. &lt;em&gt;A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus&lt;/em&gt; (New York: Doubleday, 1991), pp. 56-69. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[7] See Riedweg, Christoph. &quot;Pythagoras.&quot; Pages 276-281 in &lt;em&gt;Brill's New Pauly: Encyclopedia of the Ancient World&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Antiquity&lt;/em&gt; v. 12; Leiden: Brill, 2008).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[8] See the section on 'The Historical Buddha' in Reynolds, Frank E. and Charles Hallisey. &quot;Buddha&quot; in &lt;em&gt;Encyclopedia of Religion&lt;/em&gt;, 2nd ed. (v. 2; Detroit: Thomson Gale), pp.1061-1062.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[9] On Josephus' clear and obvious Jewishness, with no Christian inclinations, see e.g. Altshuler, David. &quot;Josephus Flavius&quot; in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed. (v. 7; Detroit: Thomson Gale), pp. 4957-4958. Tessa Rajak, a major authority on Josephus, says that &quot;Josephus was always a Jew, and, throughout his writing life, was preoccupied with Judaism...&quot; and by &quot;Judaism&quot; here she does not mean Jewish Christ-believers (Rajak, Tessa. &lt;em&gt;Josephus: The Historian and His Society&lt;/em&gt;, 2nd ed. [London: Duckworth, 2002], p. 11).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1416" LastEditorUserId="1416" LastEditDate="2012-03-28T14:45:08.883" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T14:45:08.883" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1652" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-01T18:35:00.820" Score="16" ViewCount="6503" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other day my friend asked what I think about &quot;earthing&quot; claiming that their products provide electrons we used to get from walking barefoot on the earth surface and that they have positive (healing) health effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you haven't heard of earthing yet, &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/01/15/james-oschman-on-earthing.aspx&quot;&gt;this article describes what it is about&lt;/a&gt;. In short, they claim that the &quot;lack of grounding&quot; due to not walking barefoot is partly responsible for the rise in modern diseases. In the &quot;What Happens to You When You Walk Barefoot?&quot; section of the linked article the whole procedure is described. See also their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earthinginstitute.net/index.php&quot;&gt;homepage&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since Earthing greatly reduces&#xA;  oxidative stress and inflammation it&#xA;  is expected to increase life&#xA;  expectancy and improve health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any basis to that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1409" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-12-14T00:37:09.117" LastActivityDate="2018-12-14T00:37:09.117" Title="Does earthing reduce oxidative stress and inflammation?" Tags="|medical-science|physics|alternative-medicine|earthing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1653" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1657" CreationDate="2011-04-01T19:42:44.413" Score="25" ViewCount="8134" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is perceived wisdom that vertical stripes on clothing make a person look thinner and horizontal stripes make them look fatter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has any research been done into these optical illusions that support either of the claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-04-29T02:35:29.073" LastActivityDate="2018-04-29T02:35:29.073" Title="Do vertical stripes make you look thinner?" Tags="|clothing|optical-illusions|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1653" CreationDate="2011-04-01T20:18:18.420" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalofvision.org/content/8/6/822&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Psychologist Peter Thompson&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1054674/Vertical-stripes-dont-help-look-slimmer--make-appear-fatter-scientists-told.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;horizontal stripes make you look thinner&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basis for this is the &lt;strong&gt;Helmholtz-Square Illusion&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CZbMi.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The horizontal stripes make an object look &quot;&lt;em&gt;taller&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His experiment revealed that when &#xA;  two women were the same size, the one&#xA;  wearing the horizontal-striped dress&#xA;  appeared to be the thinner of the two.&#xA;  And to make the women appear to be the&#xA;  same size, the one wearing the&#xA;  horizontal stripes had to be 6% wider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vOshd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While it is uncertain when the idea&#xA;  that horizontal stripes are fattening&#xA;  took hold, the opposite - and now&#xA;  apparently correct - view was&#xA;  documented 150 years ago.  German&#xA;  physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz&#xA;  noted in his 1867 Handbook of&#xA;  Physiological Optics that 'ladies'&#xA;  frocks with cross stripes on them make&#xA;  the figure look taller'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-08-16T16:56:13.530" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T16:56:13.530" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1652" CreationDate="2011-04-01T22:43:53.307" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim in the article that &quot;Your skin in general is a very good conductor.&quot; is simply untrue. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_shock#Body_resistance&quot;&gt;Body resistance &lt;/a&gt; is on the order of thousands to hundreds of thousands of ohms; and a good thing too, or we'd be electrocuting ourselves whenever we touch the terminals of a battery. Human skin is more an insulator or semiconductor than it is a conductor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding a build up of negative charge being good for what ails you: When you pet a cat, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rwc.uc.edu/koehler/biophys.2ed/electric.html&quot;&gt;a transfer of electric charge from the cat's fur to your hand: negative charge has been rubbed off on to your hand, leaving the cat positively charged&lt;/a&gt; (poor kitty!). A similar thing happens when you walk across a carpeted floor in your socks in the winter, yet neither cats, nor wintery weather are noticeably associated with our being especially healthful. Of course, if we were better conductors, neither of these things would happen. But we aren't good conductors, so the article's thesis falls apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author appears to be rehashing Wilhelm Reich's old &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgone&quot;&gt;Orgone theory&lt;/a&gt; for the new millennium. That's likely a profitable pursuit for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-04-02T19:41:32.830" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T19:41:32.830" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1660" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1662" CreationDate="2011-04-01T23:23:17.797" Score="8" ViewCount="1156" Body="&lt;p&gt;He offers both public and private readings and has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.johnedward.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;been featured on many television shows&lt;/a&gt;, but is there any evidence that he can contact the dead as he says?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:37:20.520" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:37:20.520" Title="Can psychics like John Edward contact the dead?" Tags="|mortality|ghosts|psychics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1660" CreationDate="2011-04-02T00:27:54.323" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a word:  No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His methods are the hallmark of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading&quot;&gt;Cold Reading&lt;/a&gt;.  As listed at the end of that Wikipedia article on cold reading, he does also use all the other techniques to &quot;validate&quot; his performance, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Confidence trick,&#xA;  Confirmation bias,&#xA;      Forer effect,&#xA;      Hot reading,&#xA;      Shut eye,&#xA;      Subjective validation, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, this isn't &lt;em&gt;definitive&lt;/em&gt; &quot;proof&quot; of what he is doing, but the fact that anyone who is skilled at such techniques can achieve the same results without claiming to talk to the dead would be a strong indicator.  Also, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2007/11/john-edward-jam.html&quot;&gt;predictability (Cold reading bingo)&lt;/a&gt; of the words John Edwards uses is another give away (as I once read, if he's talking to the dead, why does it sound like he's attempting to interpret a charade?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This website &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.re-quest.net/entertainment/movies-and-tv/tv/john-edward/&quot;&gt;Demystifying John Edwards&lt;/a&gt;&quot; also addresses his techniques, as well as alleges that he used outright fraud in the editing process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it was edited so that my answer to another question was edited in after one of his questions. In other words, his question and my answer were deliberately mismatched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This link is from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csicop.org/si/show/john_edward_hustling_the_bereaved/&quot;&gt;Committee of Skeptical Inquiry&lt;/a&gt; that did a relatively in-depth investigation of John Edward's claims.  &lt;em&gt;AGAIN&lt;/em&gt; you see that he is using well known techniques...  And this references a well known expose done on Dateline that showed how pathetic John Edwards's attempts really are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-04-02T14:54:00.650" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T14:54:00.650" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1663" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1673" CreationDate="2011-04-02T00:38:28.147" Score="15" ViewCount="3175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I frequently hear that left-handed people tend to be smarter or more creative. For example, a disproportionate number of musicians, presidents, and doctors are left-handed. Does being left-handed give you these traits or is it a correlation due to another factor?  If true, why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user906" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditorDisplayName="user906" LastEditDate="2012-05-14T22:59:09.683" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T22:59:09.683" Title="Are left-handed people smarter or more creative? " Tags="|medical-science|neurology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-02T00:39:04.217" Score="32" ViewCount="39800" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;It is not the voltage that kills you, it is the current&quot; is an electricity safety tip I've heard many times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://electrical.about.com/od/electricalsafety/a/amperagekills.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an experienced electrician making the claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The real danger with electrical shock is amperage, not voltage. Although people have been killed by as little as 120-volt AC and low voltage DC, the silent killer is the amount of amperage in milliampers that flow through a person's body. Any electrical device is capable of dealing a deadly blow, depending on the amount of current flowing through it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and a claim by &lt;a href=&quot;http://engineering.dartmouth.edu/safety/electrical/TheFatalCurrent.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New Jersey State Council of Electrical Contractors Associations&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's The Current That Kills&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Offhand it would seem that a shock of 10,000 volts would be more deadly than 100 volts. But this is not so! Individuals have been electrocuted by appliances using ordinary house currents of 110 volts and by electrical apparatus in industry using as little as 42 volts direct current. The real measure of shock's intensity lies in the amount of current (amperes) forced though the body, and not the voltage. Any electrical device used on a house wiring circuit can, under certain conditions, transmit a fatal current. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harmonycentral.com/t5/DIY-Do-It-Yourself/If-amps-kill-then-why-are-there-quot-high-voltage-quot-signs/m-p/14749542#M22261&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;typical forum post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No its current thats dangerous. You can generate 20,000 volts of static electricity walking across a carpet and get zapped a littel but its not going to hurt you. Take a low voltage, High current, and good conductor path and you're dead meat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, which is it? Is it the current that kills you or the voltage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1430" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2015-06-25T08:01:25.050" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T14:31:40.467" Title="Is it the current that kills you, not the voltage?" Tags="|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1664" CreationDate="2011-04-02T01:21:05.430" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll attempt to illustrate here with an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take one of the little 12V &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00004YK10&quot;&gt;garage door opener batteries&lt;/a&gt; and short out (directly connect) the two terminals with a piece of wire or something else.  You'll get a light current flow through the wire or metal.  It may get a little warm.  This battery is only capable of supplying a small amount of current.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take a 12V car battery and short out the two terminals (don't do it, it's not fun), you will be met with a huge current arc that will likely leave a burn mark on whatever was used to short it.  This is because the car battery is capable of discharging a large amount of current in a very short period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One time when working under the hood of a car I shorted out a wrench from the positive terminal of the battery to my watch, and my watch was touching the frame.  In the brief instant the current was flowing through my watch it became glowing red hot and the watch left a burn mark (still scarred to this day) on my wrist.  A 12V garage door opener battery would not have done this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is not the entire story.  As suggested already by others, Ohm's Law describes the relationship between Voltage(V) and Current (I) with &lt;code&gt;V=IR&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a great &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_1/chpt_3/4.html&quot;&gt;All About Circuits article&lt;/a&gt; that actually addresses your question here.  They make a good point that if Voltage wasn't dangerous, nobody would ever make signs that said &lt;strong&gt;DANGER -- HIGH VOLTAGE!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They provide a great summary themselves at the end, which I'll provide here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Harm to the body is a function of the amount of shock current. Higher&#xA;  voltage allows for the production of&#xA;  higher, more dangerous currents.&#xA;  Resistance opposes current, making&#xA;  high resistance a good protective&#xA;  measure against shock.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any voltage above 30 is generally considered to be capable of delivering&#xA;  dangerous shock currents.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Metal jewelry is definitely bad to wear when working around electric&#xA;  circuits. Rings, watchbands,&#xA;  necklaces, bracelets, and other such&#xA;  adornments provide excellent&#xA;  electrical contact with your body, and&#xA;  can conduct current themselves enough&#xA;  to produce skin burns, even with low&#xA;  voltages.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Low voltages can still be dangerous even if they're too low to&#xA;  directly cause shock injury. They may&#xA;  be enough to startle the victim,&#xA;  causing them to jerk back and contact&#xA;  something more dangerous in the near&#xA;  vicinity.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When necessary to work on a &quot;live&quot; circuit, it is best to perform&#xA;  the work with one hand so as to&#xA;  prevent a deadly hand-to-hand (through&#xA;  the chest) shock current path.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1081" LastEditorUserId="1081" LastEditDate="2011-04-02T01:32:29.530" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T01:32:29.530" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1669" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1671" CreationDate="2011-04-02T02:33:10.783" Score="34" ViewCount="4435" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have yet to make up my mind regarding the theory of evolution. Whilst doing some reading on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dnafish.com/why-dna/&quot;&gt;dnafish&lt;/a&gt; I read that DNA itself provides evidence for the theory of evolution: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yeast, trees, flowers, corn, mice, frogs and humans share the same DNA. We know this is true the DNA code has been decoded and the closer evolutionary relative, the more the DNA matches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But does the theory of evolution say that trees evolved from the same organisms as mammals, reptiles, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="711" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-04-02T02:54:33.500" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T21:13:48.220" Title="Does DNA add credibility to the theory of evolution?" Tags="|biology|evolution|dna|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1670" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1685" CreationDate="2011-04-02T03:06:31.887" Score="20" ViewCount="918" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess that this might be a little bit of an extension of the question &quot;Is yawning contagious across species&quot; that was earlier asked. But my question is, is yawning contagious at all? Is there any evidence that supports the idea that a person is statistically significantly more likely to yawn if in the vicinity of another person that is yawning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user906" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T12:25:47.127" Title="Are yawns contagious?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|biology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1669" CreationDate="2011-04-02T03:09:28.110" Score="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;When Darwin developed the theory of evolution by natural selection, he was at that time not able to identify the underlying mechanism responsible for the hereditary of traits. Of course, the hereditary of traits is something we can directly observe, and exploiting such a mechanism is exactly what a person breeding dogs, horses or roses does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The discovery of genes and DNA revealed the underlying mechanism. This is an important point, because for scientists to be really satisfied you need both a verified observation and a plausible mechanism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since evolution occurs through the gradual change of traits, which is reflected by gradual changes in the genes, the theory of evolution makes a prediction: The closer two species are related in their evolutionary history, the more similarities in the genetic code we should expect. Molecular phylogenetics (i.e. inferring relatedness from DNA sequences) produces results that are consistent with other methods of inferring relatedness among species: morphology, geography, and the fossil record. Therefore, it adds credibility to the only theory that predicts these patterns, evolution from a common ancestor. It extends the theory of evolution by allowing inferences to be drawn even in the absence of geographic and fossil-based evidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While in science, one does not deal in absolute truths and proofs, but merely with hypotheses and validations or falsifications thereof, this discovery lends credibility to the theory of evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life only had to happen once, and from that single point of origin, all else diversified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, plants and animals indeed are hypothesized to share a common ancestor and DNA sequencing is continuing to generate more and more proof:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/e95BY.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Phyolgenetic Tree&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/phylo.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;'29+ Evidences for Macroevolution'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="16282" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T21:13:48.220" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T21:13:48.220" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1669" CreationDate="2011-04-02T03:26:23.327" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely!  ALL organisms are evolved from the same original organism (that is what common descent means).  I just finished reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1416594787&quot;&gt;Greatest Show on Earth&lt;/a&gt;, which addresses most points one by one.  Remember, in a field as complex as biology, there will &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; be a singular item one can point to and say, &quot;See, because of X, it's all true.&quot;  I also recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0143116649&quot;&gt;Why Evolution is True&lt;/a&gt; as reading material.  Talk Origins also has an extensive discussion on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html&quot;&gt;The Molecular Sequence Evidence&lt;/a&gt; (i.e. genes, RNA, etc.).  It even speaks of falsifiability in the article (a hallmark of real science).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further points to consider regarding evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It would have been impossible for a Victorian Era scientist to know about DNA.  Although he could see the way evolution worked, Darwin had no idea exactly how or why it happened.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/phylo.html&quot;&gt;And yet every discovery in the field of genetics supports exactly what Darwin said!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The way our DNA is put together compared to every living thing on the planet would be unnecessarily burdensome if you wanted to only code for the specific being you want instead of letting evolutionary fingerprints remain.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#atavisms_ex1&quot;&gt;Why encode for back legs if something didn't evolve from a land mammal?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.notjustatheory.com/&quot;&gt;You may need to read up on what a scientific theory is and means&lt;/a&gt;.  Evolution is the best explanation we have for everything we see in biology.  Pretty much any biologist in the world would love to replace the theory of evolution with a theory of his own design, but no credible alternative exists. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The field of medicine uses the fact that DNA is common across species for a great deal of medical testing.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mmg.msu.edu/fyfe.html&quot;&gt;Thank evolution for safe medicines&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many reasons why one should accept evolution.  The idea of reserving judgment on it seems rather foolish &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/04/manufactroversy/&quot;&gt;considering the non-scientific origin of the debate&lt;/a&gt;.  I suggest a reading of this &lt;a href=&quot;http://factsnotfantasy.com/evolution.php&quot;&gt;simple list&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://factsnotfantasy.com/creationists.php&quot;&gt;this more expanded list&lt;/a&gt; of the logical mistakes made when attempting to refute evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to keep this answer of reasonable length, I am not going to blockquote or put pictures in.  It would just get too long and unmanageable.  I feel that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/&quot;&gt;Talk Origins essay is the best available on online for free&lt;/a&gt;.  Otherwise, read the books recommended earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-04-02T03:43:18.720" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T03:43:18.720" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1663" CreationDate="2011-04-02T03:28:08.630" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a study from the 1975:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03014467500000811&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03014467500000811&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Verbal and performance scores in a standard intelligence test (WAIS) were considered in relation to patterns of hand preference (measured by questionnaire) in a large sample of the general population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Left-handers and mixed-handers did not obtain lower scores than right-handers. Indeed, there was a tendency for subjects who reported that they could use either hand for at least one of the questionnaire tasks to obtain higher I.Q.s. Otherwise, there were no significant differences in I.Q. with the exception of a consistent sex difference, in that men achieved higher scores on both verbal and performance scales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most other studies have the same inconclusive results. What I suspect as the origin of this apparent myth is confirmation bias: Whenever a smart or otherwise famous person is left handed, this will get noticed, whereas the right handedness of famous people does not surprise anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T03:28:08.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1674" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-02T03:40:36.287" Score="12" ViewCount="2937" Body="&lt;p&gt;It was alleged by opponents to rock and heavy metal that the artists would include hidden satanic messages in their songs that would become audible when playing the song backwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was further claimed that the brain would still be able to subconsciously decode the message and thus manipulate the person in a subliminal way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the pattern-seeking behavior of our brain will make us hear things that are not there, such as whispering voices in the wind, or voices in white noise. Thus, a plausible explanation of the backwards messages is that the brain makes these things up when listening to something that sounds like spoken words, as spoken words backwards clearly are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, however, still not prove that nobody deliberately put backwards messages into music. Thus my question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there conclusive evidence that subliminal messages (i.e. reversing audio) has&#xA;been attempted in rock or heavy metal&#xA;music?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T13:23:14.187" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T13:23:14.187" Title="Backwards masking in music" Tags="|psychology|music|backmasking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1691" CreationDate="2011-04-02T03:53:40.080" Score="11" ViewCount="3389" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other day, I found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helium.com/items/2122034-scientists-research-warns-humanity-may-be-facing-vortex-of-death&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;following claim&lt;/a&gt; that solar flares cause a great increase in human agressiveness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chizhevsky found after intense&#xA;  research that the rise and fall of&#xA;  solar activity—interacting with the&#xA;  earth's magnetic field—causes mass&#xA;  changes in human's perspective's,&#xA;  moods, emotions and behavioral&#xA;  patterns. All are affected by sunspots&#xA;  and solar flares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-01T08:58:09.910" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T01:31:03.940" Title="Do solar storms affect human behaviour?" Tags="|psychology|astronomy|sun|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1615" CreationDate="2011-04-02T05:56:06.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anyone who has sampled the liquor Pernod has a good idea that absinthe got its reputation from its remarkably high alcohol content rather than any psychedelic in the oil of wormwood extract that distinguishes Pernod from absinthe.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080429120905.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article from Science Daily&lt;/a&gt; explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A high alcohol content, rather than&#xA;  thujone, the compound widely believed&#xA;  responsible for absinthe's effects.&#xA;  Although consumed diluted with water,&#xA;  absinthe contained about 70 percent&#xA;  alcohol, giving it a 140-proof wallop.&#xA;  Most gin, vodka, and whiskey are 80 --&#xA;  100-proof and contain 40-50 percent&#xA;  alcohol or ethanol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pernod - which is perfectly legal is, in fact, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ochef.com/322.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;simply absinthe without the wormwood&lt;/a&gt; and, apparently, a lower alcohol content:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pernod is actually a successor of&#xA;  absinthe, the potent liquor that&#xA;  contained a toxic oil from wormwood in&#xA;  quantities that were thought to cause&#xA;  brain damage — and which was outlawed&#xA;  in 1915 in France. One of absinthe's&#xA;  leading manufacturers, Henri Pernod,&#xA;  then focused its efforts on the&#xA;  lower-alcohol, wormwoodless,&#xA;  anise-flavored Pernod.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodreference.com/html/a-pernod.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This site offers this information on the Pernod - absinthe connection&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• The original Pernod consisted of&#xA;  65-75% alcohol and the notorious&#xA;  hallucinogen, absinthe “Arthemisia&#xA;  Absinthium,” which gave Pernod a&#xA;  distinct reputation around the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• After the imposition of a French ban&#xA;  on wormwood due to its hallucinogenic&#xA;  effects in 1915, the absinthe formula&#xA;  was modified, resulting in Pernod as&#xA;  we know it today – a 40% alcohol (80&#xA;  proof) anise-flavored spirit. Its&#xA;  distinctive flavor is created through&#xA;  a combination of star anise and&#xA;  several aromatic herbs and plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://alcoholcontents.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This site allows a comparison with conventional liquors&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Liqueur 15–55%  Light Liquors 20% &#xA;  Liquor/Spirits (general) 40%  Cask&#xA;  Strength Whisky/Rum 60%  Absinthe&#xA;  55–89.5%  Neutral Grain Spirit 95% &#xA;  Rectified Spirit 96%  Absolute Alcohol&#xA;  99-100%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the upper limit of 89.5% a person would essentially be drinking &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_Juice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;torpedo juice&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which could certainly explain the reputation that absinthe earned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="524" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T05:56:06.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1678" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1686" CreationDate="2011-04-02T09:56:16.287" Score="63" ViewCount="67436" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 2007 conspiracy theory film &lt;em&gt;Zeitgeist: The Movie&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/&quot;&gt;Website&lt;/a&gt;,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/13726978&quot;&gt;Watch online&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeist%3a_The_Movie&quot;&gt;Wikipedia Entry&lt;/a&gt;) states in Part I &quot;The Greatest Story Ever Sold&quot; that major points of the story about Jesus Christ's birth, life, death and resurrection are not original but are shared with multiple other gods or deities of older religions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The film first (at around 16min:34sec) presents &lt;em&gt;Horus&lt;/em&gt; an Egyptian God representing Light, worshiped around 3000 BC. It list the following attributes which as for I know all also apply for Jesus Christ. The attributes are numbered so they can be referenced later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Born on December 25th&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Born of a virgin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Birth was accompanied by a star in the east&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After his birth was adored by three kings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teacher at 12&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Baptized/Ministry at 30&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Had 12 disciples he traveled about with&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performing miracles: 8a. healing the sick, 8b. walking on water&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Known by many names: &quot;Lamb of God&quot;, &quot;The Truth&quot;, &quot;God's begotten(?) Son&quot;, &quot;The Light&quot;, &quot;The good Shepard&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After being betrayed:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;was crucified&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dead-for 3 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resurrected &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The film then claims that these attributes influenced other gods in other cultures over time. It follows a lists of gods/deities together with a listing for each including many but not always all of the above attributes. The listed gods/deities are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attis (Greece, 1200 BC) &amp;mdash; Attributes 1, 2, 11, 12, 13&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Krishna (India, 900 BC) &amp;mdash; Attributes 2, 3, 8, 13&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dionysos (Greece, 500 BC) &amp;mdash; Attributes 1, 2, 8b + Turning Water into Wine, 9 (&quot;God's son&quot;, &quot;Alpha and Omega&quot;, ...), 13&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mithras (Persia, 1200 BC) &amp;mdash; Attributes 1, 2, 7, 8, 12, 13, 9 (&quot;The Truth&quot;, &quot;The Light&quot;), Day of worship: &quot;Sunday&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then it is represented as a fact that there are even more, numerous saviors which have (some of) these attributes. The following list scrolls quite fast over the screen: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Krishna of Hindustan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buddha Sakia of India&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Salivahana of Bermuda&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zulis, or Zhule, also Osiris and Horus, of Egypt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Odin or Thor of the Scandinavians&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Crite of Chaldea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zoroaster and Mithra of Persia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Baal and Taut, &quot;the only Begotten of God&quot;, of Phoenicia,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indra of Tibet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bali of Afghanistan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jao of Nepal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wittoba of the Bilingonese&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thammuz of Syria&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attis of Phrygia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zalmoxis of Thrace&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zoar of the Bonzes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adad of Assyria&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deva Tat, and Sammonocadam of Siam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alcides of Thebes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Esus of the Druids&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kadmos of Greece&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ptahil of the Mandaeans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gentaut and Quexalcote of Mexico&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Universal Monarch of the Sibyls&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ischy of the island of Formosa&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divine Teacher of Plato&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Holy One of Xaca&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fohi and Tien of China&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adonis, son of the virgin Io of Greece&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ixion and Quirinus of Rome&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prometheus of Caucasus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The film than claims these common attributes to astronomical elements (virgin = new moon, three kings = three stars of Orion's belt, 12 disciples = 12 signs of the zodiac, ...). However, these claims should be asked as separate questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The question here:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there historical proof or dis-proof of the claimed similarities between Jesus Christ and Horus as well the other gods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1072" LastEditorUserId="1072" LastEditDate="2011-04-03T10:55:46.117" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T22:39:19.460" Title="Claimed similarities between Jesus Christ and Horus and other Gods" Tags="|history|religion|jesus-christ|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1674" CreationDate="2011-04-02T09:58:49.433" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I know that the pattern-seeking behavior of our brain will make us hear things that are not there, such as whispering voices in the wind, or voices in white noise. Thus, a plausible explanation of the backwards messages is that the brain makes these things up when listening to something that sounds like spoken words, as spoken words backwards clearly are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are pretty much correct with this, the official term is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradolia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pareidolia&lt;/a&gt; where the human brain makes out patterns where there really are none. There was an interesting &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4105&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Skeptoid episode&lt;/a&gt; about this and it appears most of the proof supporting the claim of the existence of back masking is carefully cherry picked and edited sections of songs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1440" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T09:58:49.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1669" CreationDate="2011-04-02T11:11:01.347" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before to compare DNA between organisms, you have to admit it is written in the same &quot;language&quot; between species (which is the case). &lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt;, by admitting that, you already admitted evolution. This is due to the &quot;universality&quot; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_%28genetics%29&quot;&gt;DNA translation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In shortcut, the DNA translation is the process that read DNA and output proteins (the building blocks). It is quite arbitrary that &lt;code&gt;AUG&lt;/code&gt; (a piece of DNA code) is translated to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methionine&quot;&gt;methionine&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;every&lt;/strong&gt; known living on the Earth use the same &quot;language&quot; with very little changes (think English vs American, not English vs German).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you proved to yourself that evolution form a common ancestor is the most simple hypothesis to justify that the same &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_code&quot;&gt;code&lt;/a&gt; is used everywhere (plants and animals, unicellular and very complex organism,...) you can now try to calculate &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; they separated from a common ancestor. And if you make this distance calculation, you obtain numbers that are not random, that is a proof of a not random hypothesis. Better, those number are the same as the geological and radiometric dating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="672" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T11:11:01.347" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1669" CreationDate="2011-04-02T11:37:40.477" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll try to answer this by using an analogy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English and German seem like two very different languages. Yet if you look a little closer you'll find similarities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Mother - Mutter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;House - Haus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Boat - Boot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Earth - Erde&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Weather - Wetter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Summer - Sommer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is this just pure coincidence? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more similarities you find, the more likely it would seem that these two languages have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Germanic_languages&quot;&gt;common ancestry&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Universality of DNA&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; means that the blueprints of all life forms on earth is written in the same language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diabeteswellbeing.com/synthetic-insulin.html&quot;&gt;Synthetic Insulin&lt;/a&gt; for diabetics: basically, the specific gene for human insulin is embedded into a bacteria's genome, and because the code is written in the same language, the bacteria 'builds' human insulin, which we can later harvest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another simple example is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold&quot;&gt;common cold&lt;/a&gt;: the virus infects our cells, injects its DNA (or RNA), and our own cells end up replicating the virus because it's blueprint is written in the same language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like with English and German one might wonder &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Is it just pure coincidence that humans, animals and plants have developed the same language?&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or does this hint, that all life on this earth is somehow connected? Maybe through common ancestry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: just saw that 'shellholic' posted a similar answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T11:37:40.477" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1670" CreationDate="2011-04-02T12:12:55.030" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say one is more likely to yawn if looking at someone yawning, but statisticaly it is tricky to answer. You can measure how many times a person would yawn seeing somene yawn as well, but you can't know if that same person would not yawn at the same time if the situation was different and no one was yawning infront of their face, because yes and no can't exist at the same time.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There are studys about yawning to read, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/14/us-yawning-study-idUSL1483150220070814&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;like one made with children&lt;/a&gt;, or  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ahealthymind.org/ans/library/Yawning.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an experiment report&lt;/a&gt;. In the second one they showed videos of people being neutral, laughing or yawning to people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The incidence rate of evoked yawning in response to watching yawning videos was 41,5%, while the rate of evoked yawning in response to non-yawning videos was only 9%. Of those who showed contagious yawning 60% yawned more than once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the fact that studies are being made about this would logically lead to the conclusion that there is an exsisting phenomenon detected, therefore, yes, yawning is ''contagious''.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1409" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T12:12:55.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1670" CreationDate="2011-04-02T12:23:51.840" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psychcentral.com/lib/2008/researchers-tackle-the-mystery-of-yawning/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Researchers tackle the mystery of yawning&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Only about half of adult humans are&#xA;  prone to contagious yawning&lt;/strong&gt;. In his&#xA;  tests, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.albany.edu/news/experts/8238.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Gordon Gallup&lt;/a&gt; found that&#xA;  susceptibility to contagious yawning&#xA;  is linked to people’s success on a&#xA;  face recognition task. Those who are&#xA;  more susceptible score lower on a&#xA;  measure of schizotypal disorder, a&#xA;  personality disorder characterized by&#xA;  a need for social isolation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gallup’s later studies used functional&#xA;  MRI, or fMRI, to view subjects’ brains&#xA;  as they watch another person yawning.&#xA;  He found that this experience triggers&#xA;  “unique neural activity” in areas&#xA;  which play a role in self-processing,&#xA;  such as autobiographical memory. “&lt;strong&gt;Our&#xA;  findings provide further support for&#xA;  the hypothesis that contagious yawning&#xA;  may be part of a neural network&#xA;  involved in empathy&lt;/strong&gt;.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psyc.leeds.ac.uk/cgi-bin/10/people/index.pl?catriona&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Catriona Morrison&lt;/a&gt; and a team of researchers from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom came to a similar conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Those who succumbed most to contagious&#xA;  yawning were the individuals who&#xA;  scored higher on the empathy test.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Psychology students scored&#xA;  significantly higher on empathy and&#xA;  yawned more often than engineering&#xA;  students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“We worked with psychologists because&#xA;  they are widely regarded to be more&#xA;  empathetic and engineers because they&#xA;  are often seen as ‘systemizers’, who&#xA;  are more interested in objects and&#xA;  functions than people,” said Dr&#xA;  Morrison. “We found the psychologists&#xA;  yawned contagiously more than the&#xA;  engineers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T12:23:51.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1678" CreationDate="2011-04-02T12:24:44.913" Score="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;The movie Zeitgeist greatly overstates the case for mythological similarities between Jesus in the Bible and those predecessors. &lt;a href=&quot;http://conspiracyscience.com/articles/zeitgeist/part-one/#horus&quot;&gt;Conspiracy Science has a detailed takedown of the Horus material&lt;/a&gt;. Here's the most important part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Horus was not born on December 25th,&#xA;  he was born on the 5th day of the&#xA;  &quot;Epagomenal Days&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, which does not&#xA;  even take place in December on the&#xA;  modern or ancient calendars, but&#xA;  rather between August 24th and 28th,&#xA;  but in terms of the rising of Sirius&#xA;  (August 4), they are July 30th through&#xA;  August 3rd[4]. His mother was also not&#xA;  a virgin. Horus's father was Osiris,&#xA;  who was killed by his brother Seth.&#xA;  Isis used a spell to bring him back to&#xA;  life for a short time so they could&#xA;  have sex, in which they conceived&#xA;  Horus[5].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I, as well as several others, as&#xA;  well as several Egyptologists you can&#xA;  find on the Internet, know of no&#xA;  reference anywhere to a &quot;star in the&#xA;  east&quot; or &quot;three kings&quot; and &quot;new-born&#xA;  savior&quot;; it is simply made up. I&#xA;  cannot find any source or information&#xA;  proving he was a &quot;teacher when he was&#xA;  12 years old&quot;, that he was &quot;baptized&#xA;  at age 30&quot;, that he &quot;walked on water&quot;&#xA;  (but on the Internet, I did find&#xA;  several places that suggest he was&#xA;  &quot;thrown in the water&quot;, but I have no&#xA;  direct source at this time for that).&#xA;  More so, I cannot find any evidence he&#xA;  was referred to as &quot;The Truth&quot;, &quot;The&#xA;  Light&quot;, Lamb of God&quot;, &quot;the Good&#xA;  Shepherd&quot;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also lacking is any evidence that he&#xA;  was betrayed by Typhon. In fact, Horus&#xA;  never died, at any time, he later&#xA;  merges with the sun god, Ra -- but&#xA;  never dies and certainly never is&#xA;  crucified, and therefore could not&#xA;  have been buried for 3 days and&#xA;  resurrected. If you want to look it up&#xA;  yourself, you can find documentation&#xA;  of Horus and Isis and Osiris here [6]&#xA;  and here [7].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see Peter Joseph has a tendency to make long lists that conform to his theory, but few of the items on the list are true or real evidence of anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://conspiracyscience.com/articles/zeitgeist/&quot;&gt;Conspiracy Science&lt;/a&gt; has a full accounting of the Zeitgeist movie and related subjects. It's well worth checking out, even if navigation of the site is a little tricky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally, did the literary Jesus take on attributes from previous savior characters? Absolutely. That's a natural process. Does this mean Jesus didn't exist as a historical person? I'd say no. Around the same time similar supernatural acts were attributed to many Roman emperors and even the mathematician &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoreanism&quot;&gt;Pythagoras&lt;/a&gt;, and we don't use that as evidence that they were fictional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to that long list of saviors, it helps to remember that much of what we know about other religions has been distorted by the lens of Christianity. Even if it's not on purpose, we tend to highlight those attributes of other religions that resemble our preconceived notions, and downplay those that are different.  Most of those on the list don't resemble Jesus's story nearly so closely as Joseph would have you think, especially the ones from non-European cultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="1343" LastEditDate="2011-04-02T14:21:58.143" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T14:21:58.143" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1678" CreationDate="2011-04-02T16:30:03.633" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I agree with Scott Hamilton for the most part, there is a legend where Horus dies and is resurrected, but it takes place while he's an infant. &#xA; He's stung by a scorpion, and dies. Thoth appears and restores the young Horus to life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/leg/leg11.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/leg/leg11.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wiki mentions Shed, a deity sometimes referred to as Savior, who was later merged with Horus in the form of Horus the Child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shed_%28deity%29&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shed_%28deity%29&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="466" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T16:30:03.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1675" CreationDate="2011-04-02T16:41:53.407" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found some information on Chizhevsky's work at a &lt;a href=&quot;http://cyclesresearchinstitute.org/cycles-research/general-chizhevsky.shtml&quot;&gt;Cycles Research Institute&lt;/a&gt; site, and downloaded his &lt;em&gt;Physical Factors of the Historical Process&lt;/em&gt;.  I wasn't impressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He picked out historical events and attempted to match them with sunspot cycles.  The means by which he picked them out isn't obvious, and the assignment of exact dates is frequently arbitrary.  Since this is matched against time periods of a few years each (the usual 11-year cycle is divided into four sections), there are certainly possibilities of cherry-picking here, and no information on how that was guarded against, and if it was.  There is a list of cholera epidemics, and no mention of other diseases.  The cycles for most of his period of study are measured nine to a century, with only moderate attempts to account for the actual cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The attempt to break WWI down by sunspot cycles seems forced.  Having read several books about it, I wouldn't have guessed 1915 as the period of greatest violence, although he claims that as a peak of violence.  There was a lot of fighting against Russia that year, although less than in 1916's Brusilov offensive, and not a whole lot in France and Belgium, particularly compared to 1916's Verdun and Somme battles.  He attributes the 1917 Russian Revolution to another outburst of sunspots, but overall the fighting had abated some since 1916, with the Russian and French armies seriously demoralized and incapable of large offensives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article that you linked was sensationalistic, and tied the maxima of 1990 to the Kuwait wars and 2001 to one (admittedly large) act of terrorism and two invasions (one in 2003), ignoring other cycle points.  Counting back from 1990 by elevens, we get 1979, which was fairly quiet, 1968, when the Vietnam War was about to wind down but still raging (like the Tet Offensive), 1957, a fairly quiet year over most of the globe, and 1946, when very little of military consequence happened, as the world tried to recover from WWII.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that any major disturbances should show up more clearly in crime rates, but I saw nothing about crime rates in a quick look at the CRI site, and I've never heard of an eleven-year cycle there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I have failed to see appropriate evidence for the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastActivityDate="2011-04-02T16:41:53.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1493" CreationDate="2011-04-02T17:49:57.700" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the main difficulty in getting a good answer to this question is the tenuous nature of the evidence and the confirmation bias that people experience when they are looking to support their pet cause.  A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?num=100&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;newwindow=1&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;biw=1920&amp;amp;bih=1071&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=TlyXTeWRD8S10QH74fDuCw&amp;amp;ved=0CBgQvwUoAQ&amp;amp;q=archaeological%20evidence%20of%20Viking%20exploration%20of%20North%20America&amp;amp;spell=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Search&lt;/a&gt; provided me with numerous citations, and cover the well known facts to this point (Greenland to the Maritime Provinces and New England).  What causes additional confusion could be things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isrl.illinois.edu/~amag/langev/paper/caldwell08BBScomments.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Convergent cultural evolution&lt;/a&gt; in the Pacific Northwest tribes and a superficial similarity with Viking technology.  If you are looking for a similarity, it's easy to see one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because something is mysterious or unexplained doesn't mean that any answer you provide is the correct answer.  This happens a lot, and even has a logical fallacy named for it, &lt;a href=&quot;https://wrtg213x.community.uaf.edu/resources/recognizing-logical-fallacies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ad ignorantiam&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another favorite &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.seattlepi.com/national/article/Documents-may-prove-ancient-runestone-fake-1141999.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;unsupported artifact&lt;/a&gt; is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_Runestone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kensington runestone&lt;/a&gt;, as well as a few others.  Why not make the case with these as well if using unsupported and weak evidence such as &quot;unexplained stone cairns&quot;?  Not to mention stone cairns are common in many, many cultures, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nativestones.com/cairns.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Native American&lt;/a&gt; ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The temperature indeed was warmer in that particular time, however, we really don't know what enough yet about how things looked in regards to a passage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in answer to your question:  Yes, they &lt;em&gt;COULD&lt;/em&gt; have sailed and traveled to many locations.  However, the evidence suggest they did not.  All the archaeological evidence that is verifiable indicates they only sailed as far south  as New England.  Of course, that doesn't mean we won't find evidence that may indicate they went other places, however, it needs to be &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;evidence&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, not wishful thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T16:00:00.253" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T16:00:00.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4921" CreationDate="2011-04-02T19:58:22.210" Score="25" ViewCount="5844" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does intermittent fasting improve immune function through autophagy? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Intermittent fasting (also known as,&#xA;  &quot;IF&quot;) is the practice of periodically&#xA;  going without food for a period of&#xA;  time, typically on the order of 20-30&#xA;  hours. [...] Increasing autophagy and&#xA;  associated immune functions, helping&#xA;  you fight off infections and the like. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Adopt-an-Intermittent-Fasting-Diet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T22:13:57.990" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T22:13:57.990" Title="Does intermittent fasting improve immune function through autophagy?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|immune-system|fasting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1699" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1733" CreationDate="2011-04-03T07:46:06.607" Score="20" ViewCount="1567" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a high school student and when I'm studying / working on homework, I often listen to music, but its very hard for me to tell whether or not this is helping me or hindering me from an objective stance. What I've heard from teachers and lecturers seems to be based on their own opinion more then anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was also the opinion of a person I know that music is good to listen to when you need to do something analytical, but it can easily have adverse effects when you are doing things which require creativity. It's also my own experience that when I'm not listening to music, I start humming myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This effect is generally known scientifically as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mozart effect&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A set of research results that indicate that listening to Mozart's music may induce a short-term improvement on the performance of certain kinds of mental tasks known as &quot;spatial-temporal reasoning;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, are there positive effects of music in terms of learning, memorising, writing and mathematical ability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1287" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-03T12:44:15.097" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T04:34:52.777" Title="Does listening to music while working improve mental ability?" Tags="|music|productivity|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1700" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1728" CreationDate="2011-04-03T11:20:54.833" Score="266" ViewCount="43512" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a ton of anecdotal evidence that adding more screen estate (more or larger monitors) leads to an increase in productivity, especially for programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, where I work, all programmers have either two 20&quot; screens or a single 24&quot; screen. There is no agreement on which is the optimal setup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question has been extensively debated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/03/does-more-than-one-monitor-improve-productivity.html&quot;&gt;Jeff Atwood&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html&quot;&gt;Joel Spolsky&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More usable desktop space reduces the amount of time you spend on window management excise. Instead of incessantly dragging, sizing, minimizing and maximizing windows, you can do actual productive work.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; Jeff Atwood&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Debugging GUI code with a single monitor system is painful if not impossible. If you're writing GUI code, two monitors will make things much easier.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; Joel Spolsky&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it seems to me that there is no indication that these effects are real, measurable and properly studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The papers linked by Jeff (and around other blog posts), are all sponsored by monitor making companies (NEC, &lt;a href=&quot;http://images.apple.com/pro/pdf/Cin_Disp30_report.pdf&quot;&gt;Apple&lt;/a&gt;...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The papers &lt;em&gt;disagree&lt;/em&gt; on their conclusions: one says that a 30&quot; monitor is better than smaller monitors, the other that there are diminishing returns.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even the bloggers do not agree whether increasing the size or the number of monitors is the correct thing to do in order to increase productivity (Jeff thinks that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/08/the-large-display-paradox.html&quot;&gt;very large monitors are bad&lt;/a&gt;, but a three monitor setup works, &lt;a href=&quot;http://techreport.com/discussions.x/14343&quot;&gt;others say exactly the opposite&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are some reliable, unbiased studies that describe correctly the relationships between number of monitors, size of monitors and productivity of software developers?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Is there a set up which is proven to work better than the others, or is this an unclear effect that needs more studies?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2018-11-12T08:39:36.150" LastActivityDate="2020-09-24T15:59:14.563" Title="Do bigger or more monitors increase productivity?" Tags="|computers|productivity|ergonomics|monitor|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1700" CreationDate="2011-04-03T14:11:02.327" Score="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/64317/interact2003-productivitylargedisplays.pdf&quot;&gt;study by Microsoft Research&lt;/a&gt; comparing a 15&quot; XGA flat panel with a prototype 42&quot; curved screen using three XGA projectors. They state in their conclusion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Users were significantly faster  working on the large display.  In&#xA;  addition, all but one  participant&#xA;  preferred carrying out the tasks on&#xA;  the  larger display surface, and user&#xA;  satisfaction measures  were&#xA;  significantly better for the larger&#xA;  display.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1375718&quot;&gt;Another study&lt;/a&gt; comparing one 1024x786 (XGA) with two XGA displays found a benefit of dual screens:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We found that multiple monitors helped&#xA;  reduce task time and workload in spite&#xA;  of a learning effect. We  also&#xA;  examined how prior multiple monitor&#xA;  usage affected  performance and found&#xA;  regular single monitor users benefited&#xA;  from a multiple monitor setting in&#xA;  terms of both task time and  workload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://infovis.cs.vt.edu/oldsite/papers/Shupp-HCI.pdf&quot;&gt;A third study&lt;/a&gt; used a 31.5 megapixel display composed of 24 17&quot; displays. They concluded&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the pixel-count is increased (up&#xA;  to 31.5  million pixels) on a&#xA;  high-resolution (96 DPI) display,&#xA;  users will perform faster on some&#xA;  tasks,  with more physical navigation&#xA;  and less frustration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this study they also make the case that the curvature of the screens is important for such large displays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-05-27T12:18:56.047" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T12:18:56.047" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1703" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2501" CreationDate="2011-04-03T15:45:25.647" Score="32" ViewCount="4480" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot is written about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/&quot;&gt;The Pomodoro Technique&lt;/a&gt; on various &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/#!5554725/the-pomodoro-technique-trains-your-brain-away-from-distractions&quot;&gt;productivity&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://programmingzen.com/2011/03/14/getting-stuff-done-with-the-pomodoro-technique/&quot;&gt;blogs&lt;/a&gt;, is there any hard evidence that it improves productivity compared to basic scheduling of work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastActivityDate="2022-05-18T12:17:35.243" Title="Does the Pomodoro Technique increase productivity?" Tags="|productivity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="301" CreationDate="2011-04-03T15:45:39.023" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Problem is, like with vitamins and minerals, your body is only going to process a certain amount of something and then dump the rest.&#xA;  If you have a healthy diet that includes fruits and veggies, you're likely getting all of the anti-oxidants you need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4086&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skeptoid on high Anti-oxidant claims&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What these tests have found, overall,&#xA;  is that a certain amount of&#xA;  antioxidants is good, but too much is&#xA;  bad; but more significantly, the&#xA;  source of the antioxidants seems to&#xA;  have more importance than the amount.&#xA;  The primary phytochemicals that&#xA;  deliver antioxidants to the body are&#xA;  vitamin C, vitamin E, and&#xA;  beta-carotene. For the superfruit&#xA;  juices to fulfill their claims, they&#xA;  must therefore contain large amounts&#xA;  of these vitamins. The American Heart&#xA;  Association evaluated five studies of&#xA;  such superfruit juices for their&#xA;  efficacy in preventing cardiovascular&#xA;  disease, which is the main health&#xA;  claim about antioxidants. Of the five,&#xA;  two showed no effects, and three&#xA;  showed negative effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioxidant&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Antioxidants&lt;/a&gt; on Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although initial studies suggested&#xA;  that antioxidant supplements might&#xA;  promote health, later large clinical&#xA;  trials did not detect any benefit and&#xA;  suggested instead that excess&#xA;  supplementation may be harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related Links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14757233&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Metabolism and function of coenzyme&#xA;Q.&lt;/a&gt; - on metabolising certain anti-oxidants from the gut.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16379550&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stability of lycopene during food processing and storage.&lt;/a&gt; - on the destruction of lycopene (an antioxidant) while preserving or cooking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.choice.com.au/reviews-and-tests/food-and-health/food-and-drink/beverages/superfruit-jucies-review-and-compare.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Superfruit juices review and compare&lt;/a&gt; - an interesting study about the amount of anti-Oxidants found in health drinks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="466" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2011-04-03T19:33:48.013" LastActivityDate="2011-04-03T19:33:48.013" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1705" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-03T16:29:17.000" Score="22" ViewCount="1569" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to clarify, I'm not asking about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep-learning&quot;&gt;Hypnopaedia&lt;/a&gt;, but about using a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream&quot;&gt;lucid dream&lt;/a&gt; as a training/rehearsal stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html#rehearsal&quot;&gt;The Lucidity Institue&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;many people&#xA;  use lucid dreaming to rehearse for&#xA;  success in waking life. Examples of&#xA;  such applications include public&#xA;  speaking, difficult confrontations,&#xA;  artistic performance and athletic&#xA;  prowess&lt;/strong&gt;. Because the activity of the&#xA;  brain during a dreamed activity is the&#xA;  same as during the real event,&#xA;  neuronal patterns of activation&#xA;  required for a skill (like a ski jump&#xA;  or pirouette) can be established in&#xA;  the dream state in preparation for&#xA;  performance in the waking world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;German Scientist &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,2040400,00.html&quot;&gt;Daniel Erlacher&lt;/a&gt; seems to concur, at least in regard of physical training:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Martin Spies-Sweetland used his lucid&#xA;  dreams to practice long jump.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Everything he learns in his waking&#xA;  dreams can then be applied to real&#xA;  life&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it really possible that things you learn in a lucid dream can be applied to real life?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2011-04-03T21:59:41.297" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T17:16:01.167" Title="Learning while you are sleeping" Tags="|sleep|lucid-dreaming|dreaming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1706" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1755" CreationDate="2011-04-03T16:37:13.413" Score="26" ViewCount="6367" Body="&lt;p&gt;Will drinking a cup of coffee before I sit down to work improve my concentration, compared to drinking a cup of water?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-10T10:24:18.317" LastActivityDate="2022-09-19T16:09:50.830" Title="Does drinking coffee improve concentration?" Tags="|neurology|natural-remedies|coffee|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1713" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1724" CreationDate="2011-04-03T19:16:06.163" Score="30" ViewCount="4877" Body="&lt;p&gt;My parents always say to me that they can't learn as well as me because it's more difficult and they forget things faster etc.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe it seems logical, but for me it would be much more logical that, if you exercised your mind, you would learn as well as you were young. Even if you have missed years of learning you can get back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the reality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1461" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T07:51:58.250" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T07:51:58.250" Title="Is learning more difficult for older people?" Tags="|psychology|cognitive-fitness|aging|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="377" CreationDate="2011-04-03T19:21:07.283" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good program to watch would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Lehner&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mark Lehner&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This Old Pyramid&lt;/a&gt;, where they attempt to build a small scale pyramid using contemporary tools.&#xA;It was done with a budget, time, and people constraint, so they did end up having to use some shortcuts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this is another case where hands-on, trial archaeology I think really proves some points. Because even the men, even the experienced masons here, were saying vehemently that this isn't going to work, and they were almost angry and irritated about it. And lo and behold, it got off the rollers.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/1915mpyramid.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also recommend a look at his book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Pyramids-Mark-Lehner/dp/0500050848&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Complete Pyramids&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know they used sleds and rollers to move heavy objects, remains of both have been found, and evidenced in reliefs like in the tomb of Djehutihotep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VdcPF.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150316163807/http://egyptologist.org/discus/messages/41/8839.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;egyptologist.org&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this example of a sled from Lisht:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lvF12.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lvF12.gif&quot; alt=&quot;sled&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-mysteries.com/mpl_2sled2.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;world-mysteries.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="466" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-02-20T05:59:30.030" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1713" CreationDate="2011-04-03T21:52:28.667" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an extremely complex topic outlined quite well &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21204352&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here (1),&lt;/a&gt; and I will try to communicate this the best that I can. As with many things, brain function seems to change as a result of the interaction of two opposing processes, one is the way the brain deteriorates with age, and the other is the way in which it continues to remodel itself in order to compensate for that change. This response is going to deal with no&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/712095_3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;n-dementia and non-Alzheimer's related changes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To really understand how this works, you need at least a basic understanding of neurogenesis, which is the process by which the body generates new neural cells from the relatively small amount of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21311170&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;multipotent stem cells (2)&lt;/a&gt; in the nervous system. There is a review of this process &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/727043&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; with its relationship to age. There is thought that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21411369&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;non-coding RNA networks may play a role (3).&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as changes which can be thought of as occurring due to the normal aging process, I'll generalize: There is a noted 10% loss of brain volume after age 80, mainly due to parenchymal shrinking.  Also the normal aging process includes a reduction in rates of available neurotransmitters, and plaque accumulations, and neurofibrillary tangles can occur in the brain as it ages(these are much more likely in the Alzheimer's brain, but can occur as a result of normal aging). A more complete description of this process is available in the review &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/712095_3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies of language aquisition in children have long been a benchmark for evaluatng this &lt;a href=&quot;http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/125/2/361.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;concept&lt;/a&gt;, with the common thought being it is much easier for children to learn languages than adults, however, this topic has its own complexities, and I'm going to stick to the more general concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though our brains deteriorate with age, that is not all they do. We can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK3879/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cerebral blood flow studies (4).&lt;/a&gt; to demonstrate that the brain does undergo a generalized age-related decline, but there is also evidence that activity increases in certain areas, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/medline/abstract/17184881&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;possibly in an attempt to compensate for this decline&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21204350&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Neural plasticity (5)&lt;/a&gt; is an interesting topic and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21151819&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;neurogenesis does continue(6)&lt;/a&gt; up to the 80 year range, which seems to indicate we retain that ability to learn and retain what we've learned well on into that decade of life, here is one study which documents the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/medline/abstract/10491610&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;regeneration of neurons in older age&lt;/a&gt;. However, the question of whether the ability of the brain is comparable to that of a younger brain is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21117337&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;still being observed (7),&lt;/a&gt; and of particular debate is the age at which these degenerative &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/medline/abstract/19487648&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;changes begin to appear and become measurable&lt;/a&gt;, some state this may be as early as the late 20's, some state not until the 50's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/medline/abstract/19506226&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Many factors have been evaluated&lt;/a&gt; over the years for an association with this decline, some include the relation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/720091&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;exposure to low-level stress over the years&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/517382&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;physical activity&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/467924&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hormone replacement therapy&lt;/a&gt; in women, and genetic factors. However, none have yielded any definitive answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evaluation of this correlation was also attempted by evaluating neurological outcomes of children with brain injuries.  However &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/726189&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; associated a younger age with a worse neurological outcome, seeming to indicate that the previous thinking that a younger brain is more malleable, therefore would do a better job recovering may not be exactly true.  However, the counterargument could be made that injury at a critical state of development may produce a greater defecit than one slightly later, when connections have had more time to become solidified. And this concept seems to deal more with the brain's response to injury rather than natural development, but still bears consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In short, I can not provide any definitive answer, only outline the current state of the science, which seems to allow for significant individual variation and the contribution of a variety of factors.&lt;/strong&gt;    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All numbered links will go to studies at pubmed. Other links will go to studies at medscape if you have access.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T06:46:04.137" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T06:46:04.137" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1700" CreationDate="2011-04-03T22:39:32.430" Score="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a valid question, and something that I'm partially looking into for my thesis. Based on some initial investigation, Microsoft has done quite a bit of research in that area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most of the papers show that increased screen estate and multiple monitor setups can indeed improve productivity by reducing detrimental effects of interruptions.&lt;/strong&gt; Modality of interruptions seems to be a very important aspect since spatial memory and visual cues are important for reducing primary task resumption times. The paper by Baudisch especially focuses on various ways that multiple monitors can be used, and which ones are most effective for particular use cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some paper titles that I have come across so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Effects of Visual Separation and Physical Discontinuities when Distributing Information across Multiple Displays (Desney S. Tan1 and Mary Czerwinski) &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.153.1822&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Partitioning Digital Worlds: Focal and Peripheral Awareness in Multiple Monitor Use (Jonathan Grudin) &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.86.833&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Toward Characterizing the Productivity Benefits of Very Large Displays (Mary Czerwinski) &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.104.607&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keeping Things in Context: A Comparative Evaluation of Focus Plus Context Screens, Overviews, and Zooming (Patrick Baudisch) &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.16.2857&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Display Space Usage and Window Management Operation Comparisons between Single Monitor and Multiple Monitor Users (Dugald Ralph Hutchings) &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=2A1DA28EF784B91AA338D353EA47C1E5?doi=10.1.1.3.5513&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using Peripheral Processing and Spatial Memory to Facilitate Task Resumption (Raj M. Ratwani) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrl.navy.mil/aic/iss/pubs/ratwani.hfes.2007.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1491" LastEditorUserId="44300" LastEditDate="2020-09-24T15:59:14.563" LastActivityDate="2020-09-24T15:59:14.563" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1729" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-03T23:55:28.667" Score="14" ViewCount="1696" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a deleted 700 Club interview archived on the internet archive at&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20000122101421/http://www.cbn.org/the700club/johannamichaelsen.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20000122101421/http://www.cbn.org/the700club/johannamichaelsen.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Johanna says you can trace occultic or&#xA;  demonic influences behind most of the&#xA;  school shootings, citing the German&#xA;  group &quot;Ramstein&quot; as being a deadly&#xA;  influence on the shooters at&#xA;  Columbine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia, Rammstein: Relation to Violent Events&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rammstein were cited in relation to&#xA;  the Columbine High School Massacre in&#xA;  1999, when photos of Eric Harris and&#xA;  Dylan Klebold wearing Rammstein&#xA;  T-shirts were revealed.[40][41] Though&#xA;  there was no evidence to correlate the&#xA;  two events, the band felt obliged to&#xA;  issue a statement: &quot;The members of&#xA;  Rammstein express their condolences&#xA;  and sympathy to all affected by the&#xA;  recent tragic events in Denver. They&#xA;  wish to make it clear that they have&#xA;  no lyrical content or political&#xA;  beliefs that could have possibly&#xA;  influenced such behaviour.&#xA;  Additionally, members of Rammstein&#xA;  have children of their own, in whom&#xA;  they continually strive to instill&#xA;  healthy and non-violent values&quot;. ...&#xA;  Following the conclusion of the Beslan&#xA;  school hostage crisis in Russia in&#xA;  September 2004, the Russian&#xA;  authorities claimed that the&#xA;  terrorists had &quot;listened to German&#xA;  hard rock group Rammstein on personal&#xA;  stereos during the siege to keep&#xA;  themselves edgy and fired up&quot;.[43] The&#xA;  claim has not been independently&#xA;  confirmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Evidence&quot; of offensive phrases found in backwards lyrics in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1674/backwards-masking-in-music&quot;&gt;Backwards masking in music&lt;/a&gt; probably helps bolster, in the minds of adherents, claims that the power of music can incite madness or homicidal behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Music has allegedly been used as an instrument of torture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_in_psychological_operations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_in_psychological_operations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Music has been used in psychological&#xA;  operations. The term music torture is&#xA;  sometimes used by critics of the&#xA;  practice of playing loud music&#xA;  incessantly to prisoners or people&#xA;  besieged. The United Nations and the&#xA;  European Court of Human Rights have&#xA;  banned the use of loud music in&#xA;  interrogations, but it is still being&#xA;  widely used. The term torture is&#xA;  sometimes used to describe the&#xA;  practice. While it is acknowledged by&#xA;  US interrogation experts that it&#xA;  causes discomfort, it has also been&#xA;  characterized by them as causing no&#xA;  &quot;long term effects.&quot;[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If music can be torture, could it destabilize some people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any medical psychiatric evidence that specific kinds of music or lyrics can incite homicidal behavior, either in average people or people having a non-homicidal mental condition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2017-05-12T13:43:22.447" Title="Can music incite murder?" Tags="|music|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1699" CreationDate="2011-04-04T00:30:49.347" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;No definitive study appears to have been carried out, but the Mozart effect has no effect on &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/026151002166433/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;spatial awareness&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was no significant main effect of music and no significant difference between the pretest and post-test scores for both groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Groups performed similarly on the control test and the experimental test, irrespective of whether they listened to Mozart or to popular dance music. Since the two different designs produced similar findings, the data suggest that the Mozart effect is so ephemeral that it is questionable as to whether any practical application will come from it. In the discussion, we suggest more fruitful avenues for future research on the relationship between music and spatial performance: arousal and transfer of learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But listening to &lt;em&gt;popular&lt;/em&gt; music has been shown to &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1196/annals.1360.013/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;improve performance&lt;/a&gt; in a paper folding exercise for 10-11 year olds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...performance on the other test (paper folding) was superior for children who listened to popular music compared to the other two groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a good overview of the history of Mozart Effect research, &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/heath/documents/BJSP,%20Mozart%20Effect.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;The Mozart effect: Tracking the evolution of a&#xA;scientiﬁc legend&lt;/em&gt; - it looks like a good read. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/mozart.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skeptic's Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; also has a good article on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T00:30:49.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1678" CreationDate="2011-04-04T03:00:45.453" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Born on December 25th&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There is no date of birth given in the bible for Jesus (hence no citation). The whole &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_calendar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Julian Calendar&lt;/a&gt; was quiet a mess until reformed by the Gregorian Calender 1582. But the date isn't important at all, from a religious viewpoint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The December 25 date may have been selected by the church in Rome in the early 4th century &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source: wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt; Born of a virgin&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This would be a longer discussion. AFAIK only catholics see it this way.&lt;/strike&gt; (see discussion with DJClayworth, which led to this correction).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Birth was accompanied by a star in the east&lt;br&gt;&#xA; Source: Mt 2.3-8. Yes, part of the myth for Jesus.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After his birth was adored by three kings&lt;br&gt;&#xA; Wise men from the East are mentioned by Mt2 and Lk2.7. Not how many of them exactly, and they aren't described as kings. This is a later legend. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T03:23:13.563" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T03:23:13.563" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1738" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4764" CreationDate="2011-04-04T05:02:26.143" Score="24" ViewCount="13350" Body="&lt;p&gt;Occasionally individuals and organizations that help drug users and addicts &lt;a href=&quot;http://axishouse.net/drug-rehab-blog/?p=234&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claim that addicts stop maturing when they become addicted to drugs&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, drugs and alcohol hinder a person’s brain function, especially that which controls critical thinking and reasoning skills. If a person;s &lt;em&gt;[sic]&lt;/em&gt; mind is not capable of these things, they can not get a feel for life’s situations, gaining perspective, learning from mistakes and forming that wisdom gained from such things to use later on in life. Instead, they simply repeat the same mistakes, over and over in life, gaining little to nothing at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addictions seem to stop a person from maturing. All they are left with is birthday after birthday, the physical signs of age, and limited knowledge or wisdom of that which is real life. It’s a sad thing to watch or even think about. Say a person’s addiction starts in their late teens to early 20s. By the time they are in their 40s, having abused drugs and alcohol for some many years, they still have the mental thought processes of the person they were 20 years before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this claim is generally made &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/alcohol-abuse/responding-to-teen-substance-use&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in reference to teenage drug abuse&lt;/a&gt;, it is often applied to addicts of any age, as shown above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence support this claim?  What criteria are used to decide when a person &amp;quot;stops maturing&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:47:46.620" Title="Do drug addicts stop maturing when they become addicted?" Tags="|psychology|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1742" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1757" CreationDate="2011-04-04T06:56:52.217" Score="25" ViewCount="1960" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every election cycle, I keep hearing that tax breaks stimulate the economy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any well-known studies or scientifically-backed examples from history that shed light on whether or not this claim is true or false?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1525" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T19:58:24.863" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T16:10:14.080" Title="Do tax cuts stimulate an economy? " Tags="|economics|politics|taxes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1744" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1761" CreationDate="2011-04-04T07:22:48.450" Score="15" ViewCount="2023" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supposedly, just &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_Castle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one man built the Coral castle&lt;/a&gt;. Jilted by the woman who would be his wife, and miraculously recovering from a terminal case of tuberculosis, Edward Leedskanlin built the structure in Florida City, Florida sometime around 1923.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is said to have worked at night, by lamplight when he could not be seen, moving and carving stones which weighed up to several tons each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It remained until around 1936, when he decided to move.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He then packed the whole structure (approximately 1,100 tons) up and took it with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using material from a nearby quarry, &lt;a href=&quot;http://miami.about.com/od/familyactivities/a/coral_castle.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;he would continue to work on it&lt;/a&gt; at his new location until he died of advanced stomach cancer in 1951.  At no point was he witnessed using modern machinery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The coral castle remains standing at this location in Homestead, Florida where it can be viewed today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the claims Leedskanlin himself made regarding various phenomena as &quot;magnetic currents&quot; there have been numerous supernatural claims made as to how this structure would have to have been built. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UWGF6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;picture of the 30 ton stone from wikipedia&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way one man, working alone, mostly at night, could have made this structure without using modern equipment? &lt;a href=&quot;http://coralcastle.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Its website is here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T19:35:52.577" Title="Could One Man Have Built The Coral Castle?" Tags="|engineering|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1758" CreationDate="2011-04-04T07:35:42.670" Score="11" ViewCount="2041" Body="&lt;p&gt;A program on History Channel describes an allegedly non-human skull found in mexico, called the starchild skull. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.starchildproject.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.starchildproject.com/&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;THE STARCHILD SKULL is a genuine&#xA;  900-year-old bone skull found in&#xA;  Mexico in the 1930s. The Starchild&#xA;  Project is an informal organization&#xA;  which began in 1999 when Ray and&#xA;  Melanie Young, the owners of the&#xA;  Starchild Skull, asked Lloyd Pye to&#xA;  head research efforts to determine&#xA;  what caused the unusual shape and&#xA;  properties of the bone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results uncovered by the research&#xA;  team ruled out all known deformities&#xA;  [click to read the report], and&#xA;  presented the scientific community&#xA;  with a genetic and physical profile&#xA;  never before seen on Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now new DNA findings indicate that the&#xA;  Starchild Skull may well be “alien”!&#xA;  Now all that remains is to determine&#xA;  whether alien means  “foreign to&#xA;  normal human genetics within the&#xA;  framework of that subject as it is&#xA;  currently understood,” or “definitely&#xA;  not from planet Earth”…. or something&#xA;  in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone heard of this? My first thought was google, then this site. Didn't find anything definitive either direction.  History Channel program seems to play up the extra-terrestrial possibilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial (uninformed) reaction; if its some sort of genetic abnormality, the skull seems very large.  900 years ago (carbon dating) wouldn't someone with a severe mutation die before maturity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has any scientific study been devoted in debunking this extra-terrestial hypothesis?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1540" LastEditorUserId="80" LastEditDate="2011-04-04T11:41:17.447" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T12:39:23.440" Title="The starchild skull" Tags="|history|biology|aliens|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1746" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1753" CreationDate="2011-04-04T07:41:27.953" Score="42" ViewCount="3686" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not hard to find &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-12-08/faith-and-ritual/28267906_1_candy-gunther-brown-intercessory-prayer-healing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims like these&lt;/a&gt; in the media or on the web from time to time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientifically verifiable evidence that prayer (in addition to appropriate medical/surgical treatment) has a benefit for a patient?  Please keep answers to &lt;em&gt;demonstrable&lt;/em&gt; evidence, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do prayed-for patients heal faster after surgery? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do they have lower rates of post-operative infection?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do they statistically demonstrate better outcomes?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-11-19T08:27:48.433" LastActivityDate="2017-11-19T08:27:48.433" Title="Does prayer help to heal?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|religion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1746" CreationDate="2011-04-04T07:49:50.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm struggling to find links to actual scientific papers, but I am aware they exist and tend to show that if someone is prayed for &lt;strong&gt;and doesn't know it&lt;/strong&gt; then there is no demonstrable increase in healing, but if someone is told that a group is praying for them they tend to heal quicker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1072638.ece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prayer does not heal the sick, study finds&lt;/a&gt; - The Times article about it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Efficacy of prayer&lt;/a&gt; - Also take a look at the references at the bottom of this wikipedia page&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://godisimaginary.com/i2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Proof #2 - Statistically analyze prayer&lt;/a&gt; - Here's another post with links to newspaper articles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1543" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2011-04-04T16:48:51.743" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T16:48:51.743" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1746" CreationDate="2011-04-04T10:26:21.823" Score="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;The American Heart Journal has published a three-year study of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16569567&quot;&gt;therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer&lt;/a&gt; of 1800 patients undergoing heart bypass surgery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study divided subjects into three groups: those receiving no intercessory prayer, those that did, but didn’t know about it, and those that did and &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; know about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its conclusion is very clear indeed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG, but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: &lt;strong&gt;prayer doesn’t help&lt;/strong&gt;. And &lt;strong&gt;if you know that you are prayed for, you do worse&lt;/strong&gt;. Only slightly, but statistically significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific American has published a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=no-prayer-prescription&quot;&gt;break-down&lt;/a&gt; of the study and its results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T10:26:21.823" CommentCount="28" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1706" CreationDate="2011-04-04T11:29:18.357" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Caffeine is a stimulant which makes you feel less tired and, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/caffeine-effects.html&quot;&gt;for athletes, delays exhaustion&lt;/a&gt;.  So if the alternative is being asleep, caffeine cetainly helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other issue is that the regular use of caffeine leads, as with other psychoactive substances, to dependency (&lt;em&gt;tolerance&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;addiction&lt;/em&gt; are other words used).  In such cases, lack of caffeine leads to withdrawal symptoms such as drowsiness and  irratability.  For dependent individuals, a cup of coffee will &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18725181.700-coffee-the-demon-drink.html?page=2&quot;&gt;remove these symptoms in the short term, aiding concentration&lt;/a&gt;, though it is less clear whether this is an improvement on never having taken caffeine.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T11:29:18.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1744" CreationDate="2011-04-04T11:47:57.523" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is possible. A guy called Wally Wallington moves huge concrete blocks by himself using pieces of wood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.videosurf.com/video/stonehenge-reloaded-177308&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Videosurf - Stone Henge Reloaded&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theforgottentechnology.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Forgotten Technology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know about how reasonable his claims to have figured out &quot;how they did it&quot; are, but it's a lot of clever moving of really big stones, done by one or a few people. So yes, it's possible, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/archimedes101761.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;given enough time and a long enough lever.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.explainxkcd.com/2011/02/07/archimedes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;:-)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is basically using a &quot;walking&quot; technique where he is putting something the block can rotate on close to the center of gravity, so that he doesn't have to lift the blocks completely, he just lifts a bit and then use the rotating point as a hinge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To lift he uses levers and lifts the blocks just a small bit at a time, and them moves in a piece of wood to act as a new hinge to lift the other side of the block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-13T19:35:52.577" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T19:35:52.577" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1742" CreationDate="2011-04-04T12:17:07.570" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taxes do affect economic growth, but not equally. From the OECD paper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecn.ulaval.ca/~sgor/cit/arnold_oecd_2008/arnold_oecd_2008.pdf&quot;&gt;Do tax structures affect aggregate economic growth? Empirical evidence from a panel of OECD countries&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results of the analysis suggest that income taxes are generally associated with lower economic growth than taxes on consumption and property. ... Property taxes, and particularly recurrent taxes on immovable property, seem to be the most growth-friendly, followed by consumption taxes and then by personal income taxes. Corporate income taxes appear to have the most negative effect on GDP per capita. These findings suggest that a revenue-neutral growth-oriented tax reform would be to shift part of the revenue base towards recurrent property and consumption taxes and away from income taxes, especially corporate taxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, upon doing a review of the economic growth literature in 2002 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.columbia.edu/cu/economics/discpapr/DP0102-47.pdf&quot;&gt;15 Years of New Growth Economics: What Have We Learnt?&lt;/a&gt;), Xavier Sala-i-Martin concluded that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The size of the government does not appear to matter much. What is important is the “quality of government” (governments that produce hyperinflations, distortions in foreign exchange markets, extreme deficits, inefficient bureaucracies, etc., are governments that are detrimental to an economy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, a government that focuses on the right tax mix (high consumption and property tax, low corporate income tax, and reasonable personal income tax), &lt;a href=&quot;http://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/2007/06/doing-it-by-the.html&quot;&gt;such as Sweden&lt;/a&gt;, will have a tax system that has little negative effect on the economy in spite of having a large public sector. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they're talking about reducing corporate income tax, they are usually right. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they're talking about personal income tax, it depends. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they're talking about consumption tax or property tax, they're usually wrong.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T12:51:14.740" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T12:51:14.740" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1745" CreationDate="2011-04-04T12:39:23.440" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the key phrase in that quote from the Starchild Project is &quot;the research team ruled out all known deformities.&quot; In fact, most independent experts think it most likely the skull is that of a child suffering from hydrocephaly. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theness.com/index.php/the-starchild-project/&quot;&gt;Dr. Steven Novella writes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The authors never directly consider&#xA;  congenital hydrocephalus as a possible&#xA;  explanation, although they dismiss it&#xA;  along with a long list of natural&#xA;  deformities. Hydrocephalus literally&#xA;  means “water on the brain,” and&#xA;  results from a blockage in the normal&#xA;  flow of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from&#xA;  where it is made inside the brain to&#xA;  the space surrounding the brain and&#xA;  spinal cord where it is reabsorbed. As&#xA;  a result of the blockage, CSF builds&#xA;  up inside the brain, pushing outward&#xA;  on the brain and skull. Because in&#xA;  young children the bones of the skull&#xA;  have not yet fused together, the skull&#xA;  is free to enlarge to accommodate this&#xA;  buildup of fluid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a child suffered from untreated&#xA;  hydrocephalus until age four or five,&#xA;  their skull would display distortions&#xA;  in almost every feature. All of the&#xA;  proper bones, prominences, holes, and&#xA;  sutures would be present, as they are&#xA;  in the Starchild skull, but they would&#xA;  be deformed and displaced. This is&#xA;  exactly what we find in the Starchild&#xA;  skull.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hydrocephalus builds up over time, so&#xA;  a child with this disorder could&#xA;  survive several years, and if&#xA;  untreated (today hydrocephalus is&#xA;  treatable with surgery to drain the&#xA;  fluid) would probably die at several&#xA;  years of age. The resulting large&#xA;  bulbous head would be vaguely&#xA;  reminiscent of the typical image of a&#xA;  gray alien.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later in the Starchild Project the promoters of the skull &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.starchildproject.com/hydrocephaly.htm&quot;&gt;dispute the hydrocephaly explanation&lt;/a&gt;. I'd like an expert on the subject to take a look at that page because I wonder if the doctors quoted could have been thrown by the fact the the &quot;Starchild skull&quot; would represent a completely untreated case of hydrocephaly, and you'd probably never see that today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T12:39:23.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1744" CreationDate="2011-04-04T15:56:31.490" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ed Leedlaskin likely used fairly simple techniques in constructing Coral Castle, a process that took him somewhere around 30 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This site features some images of Mr. Leedalskin working on the castle using block and tackle, as well as using a electronic lift, and some examples of the chains he used which are still there on site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peter-thomson.co.uk/coralcastle/coralcastle.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Peter Thomson - Coral Castle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="466" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-13T19:34:43.307" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T19:34:43.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1764" CreationDate="2011-04-04T17:12:38.927" Score="24" ViewCount="3745" Body="&lt;p&gt;The latest conspiracy theory surrounding the validity of Barack Obama's Presidency is his Social Security Number. Some people are claiming that his SSN is a Connecticut SSN, but he never lived there (his Father did though). For example, Orly Taitz &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2010/02/obamas-social-security-number/&quot;&gt;claims that:&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The social security number [Social Security Number redacted, Doc C.], that [Obama] used most often, was issued in the state of Connecticut to an individual born in 1890. Since Obama never resided in the state of Connecticut and was not born in 1890, it was a sign of clear violation of Title 42 US Code, section 408(a)(7)(B), misuse of a social security number, which is a federal felony punishable under Title 18 USC by fine or imprisonment of up to five years or both and an evidence of foreign birth and lack of proper citizenship status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She then follows with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I submitted an affidavit from a licensed investigator Susan Daniels, showing that according to her research Obama used a stolen social security number [Social Security Number redacted, Doc C.], which was issued to another individual born in 1890 in the state of CT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What proof is there, if any, that his SSN is false? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1592" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-04-04T21:31:31.957" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T21:33:29.853" Title="Is Barack Obama's SSN valid?" Tags="|politics|barack-obama|birth|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1763" CreationDate="2011-04-04T17:34:51.303" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;I gather that the only possible proof would be the Area Number, and the fact that the number (I assume 04X, like mine) is one associated with Connecticut. The underlying assumptions Taitz is making are that SSN are assigned at birth, and that the Area Number is intimately associated with the state in which you were born.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssa.gov/history/ssn/geocard.html&quot;&gt;Social Security Administration's official site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Area Number is assigned by the&#xA;  geographical region. Prior to 1972,&#xA;  cards were issued in local Social&#xA;  Security offices around the country&#xA;  and the Area Number represented the&#xA;  State in which the card was issued.&#xA;  This did not necessarily have to be&#xA;  the State where the applicant lived,&#xA;  since a person could apply for their&#xA;  card in any Social Security office.&#xA;  Since 1972, when SSA began assigning&#xA;  SSNs and issuing cards centrally from&#xA;  Baltimore, the area number assigned&#xA;  has been based on the ZIP code in the&#xA;  mailing address provided on the&#xA;  application for the original Social&#xA;  Security card. The applicant's mailing&#xA;  address does not have to be the same&#xA;  as their place of residence. Thus, the&#xA;  Area Number does not necessarily&#xA;  represent the State of residence of&#xA;  the applicant, either prior to 1972 or&#xA;  since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Generally, numbers were assigned&#xA;  beginning in the northeast and moving&#xA;  westward. So people on the east coast&#xA;  have the lowest numbers and those on&#xA;  the west coast have the highest&#xA;  numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note: One should not make too much of&#xA;  the &quot;geographical code.&quot; It is not&#xA;  meant to be any kind of useable&#xA;  geographical information. The&#xA;  numbering scheme was designed in 1936&#xA;  (before computers) to make it easier&#xA;  for SSA to store the applications in&#xA;  our files in Baltimore since the files&#xA;  were organized by regions as well as&#xA;  alphabetically. It was really just a&#xA;  bookkeeping device for our own&#xA;  internal use and was never intended to&#xA;  be anything more than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So depending on when President Obama got his SSN the area number could be based on either the office he was at when he applied for it or the return address on his application. Keeping in mind that in the past people didn't necessarily get a SSN until they actually needed it (usually when they got their first job or applied for the draft), there's a good chance that Obama applied for his sometime after 1972, and possibly during the time when he was at Columbia University in New York City. If that's the case a return address in Connecticut is hardly unlikely or suspicious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edited to debunk my own theory...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've since found a  website that has different explanation for how President Obama got a Connecticut number. Documents show Obama received his number in 1977 when he still living in Hawaii, not when he was at Columbia. However, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefogbow.com/special-reports/social-security-number/&quot;&gt;The Fogbow&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So how did President Obama get a&#xA;  Social Security number with an Area&#xA;  Code reflecting residence (or mailing&#xA;  address) in Connecticut?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most likely, this was due to a&#xA;  clerical error. At the time, President&#xA;  Obama lived with his grandparents in&#xA;  an address on Beretania Street. The&#xA;  President’s house in Hawaii was in zip&#xA;  code 96814 and the zip code for&#xA;  Danbury, CT. is 06814. Since the '0'&#xA;  and '9' on a typical typewriter are&#xA;  immediately adjacent (remember, the&#xA;  president's Social Security number was&#xA;  issued in 1977, before the age of&#xA;  computers), it would have been a&#xA;  common error to accidently type a '0'&#xA;  when the ZIP code really began with a&#xA;  '9'. Another possibility is that&#xA;  President Obama, a left-handed 15 year&#xA;  old boy at the time, may have written&#xA;  his own ZIP code in a&#xA;  less-than-fully-legible manner, making&#xA;  the '9' look somewhat like an '0'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="8163" LastEditDate="2012-09-11T21:33:29.853" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T21:33:29.853" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1652" CreationDate="2011-04-04T20:42:50.447" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are studies in this regard, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18047442&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Can electrons act as antioxidants?&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most reasonable hypothesis to&#xA;explain the beneficial effects of&#xA;earthing is that a direct earth&#xA;connection enables both diurnal&#xA;electrical rhythms and free electrons&#xA;to flow from the earth to the body. It&#xA;is proposed that the earth’s diurnal&#xA;electrical rhythms set the biological&#xA;clocks for hormones that regulate&#xA;sleep and activity. It is also&#xA;suggested that free electrons from the&#xA;earth neutralize the positively&#xA;charged free radicals that are the&#xA;hallmark of chronic inflammation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that the benefits of&#xA;many bodywork, energetic and movement&#xA;therapies, as well as of various&#xA;energy medicine devices, are partly&#xA;due to their ability to enable mobile&#xA;electrons to penetrate into the&#xA;inflammatory pockets where they&#xA;neutralize the free radicals that&#xA;contribute to so many different&#xA;chronic diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15650465&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; that looks at &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;the biologic effects of grounding the human body during sleep&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measurable improvements in diurnal&#xA;cortisol profiles were observed, with&#xA;cortisol levels significantly reduced&#xA;during night-time sleep [...]&#xA;Subjectively reported symptoms, including sleep dysfunction, pain, and stress, were reduced or  eliminated in nearly all subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results indicate that grounding the&#xA;human body to earth (&amp;quot;earthing&amp;quot;)&#xA;during sleep reduces night-time levels&#xA;of cortisol and resynchronizes&#xA;cortisol hormone secretion more in&#xA;alignment with the natural 24-hour&#xA;circadian rhythm profile.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, seeing people making money by selling &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unikeyhealth.com/earthing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Earthing Products&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; does tickle my spidey sense...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-04T20:42:50.447" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1770" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2283" CreationDate="2011-04-04T21:18:20.223" Score="29" ViewCount="2769" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a comment to one of the answers of &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1746/is-there-any-scientific-evidence-that-prayer-can-help-to-heal/1753#1753&quot;&gt;Is there any scientific evidence that prayer can help to heal?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/865/konerak&quot;&gt;Konerak&lt;/a&gt; wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That's for intercessory prayer. Praying for yourself has been correlated to increased healing, but no more than meditation or yoga.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious if it has even been established that yoga hasa so-called &quot;healing effect&quot; where it can be advocated as being superior to other light-exercises like taking a walk? I am assuming that a healing effect has the same definition as in the above-mentioned question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T14:45:53.163" Title="Has yoga been shown to have a healing effect?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|yoga|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1771" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-04T21:30:40.363" Score="25" ViewCount="2561" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a coworker who says that drinking soda leads to kidney problems. I did some Googling and while I found a lot of blogs and message board posts saying such, the only credible link I found was this paper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17525693&quot;&gt;Carbonated beverages and chronic kidney disease&lt;/a&gt;, whose abstract reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drinking 2 or more colas per day was associated with increased risk of chronic kidney disease. Results were the same for regular colas and artificially sweetened colas. Noncola carbonated beverages were not associated with chronic kidney disease. These preliminary results suggest that cola consumption may increase the risk of chronic kidney disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't read the entire paper, but the abstract makes it sound as if the risk lies more in cola consumption than carbonated water consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a scientific consensus on the risks posed by consumption of carbonated water?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T19:50:43.633" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T19:50:43.633" Title="Is carbonated water unhealthy?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2011-04-04T23:27:26.047" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related research (in no particular order) - The articles cited below are focused on Mental Imagery, not Lucid Dreaming; but they might help someone find more relevant research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is clear that &lt;strong&gt;appropriate mental imagery, &lt;em&gt;in conjunction with physical practice&lt;/em&gt;, can be as beneficial as physical practice alone for improving cognitive components of physical performance&lt;/strong&gt;; this includes things like &quot;throwing a basketball&quot; (in fact, most of the mental rehearsal research that I've read about used free throws as the physical activity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jones, L. &amp;amp; Stuth, G. (1997) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B7CRT-4FKXK9M-6&amp;amp;_user=10100718&amp;amp;_coverDate=05/31/1997&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_acct=C000054465&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10100718&amp;amp;md5=e9342676d44ac059bc5af967ccadcade&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot;&gt;The uses of mental imagery in athletics:&lt;/a&gt; An overview. &lt;em&gt;Applied and Preventative Psychology&lt;/em&gt;, 6(2), pgs 101-115   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Driskell, J.E., Copper, C, &amp;amp; Moran, A. (1994) &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.rollins.edu/~jdriskell/mentalpractice.pdf&quot;&gt;Does Mental Practice Enhance Performance&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Applied Psychology&lt;/em&gt;, 79(4), pgs 481-492   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bernier, M. &amp;amp; Fournier, J.F. (2010) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6W6K-507CRTX-1&amp;amp;_user=10100718&amp;amp;_origUdi=B7CRT-4FKXK9M-6&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_coverDate=11/30/2010&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_orig=article&amp;amp;_origin=article&amp;amp;_zone=related_art&amp;amp;_acct=C000054465&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10100718&amp;amp;md5=184ec6af441d7b47e9bc08d0f8835706&quot;&gt;Functions of mental imagery in expert golfers&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;em&gt;Psychology of Sport and Exercise&lt;/em&gt;, 11(6), pgs 444-452     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peynircioglu, Z.F., Thompson, J.L., &amp;amp; Tanielian, T.B. (2000) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.connectseward.org/shs/da1/research/free%20throw.pdf&quot;&gt;Improvement Strategies in Free-Throw Shooting and Grip-Strength Tasks&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;The Journal of General Psychology&lt;/em&gt; 127(2), pgs 145-156       &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1609" LastEditorUserId="1609" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T15:48:20.567" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T15:48:20.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1779" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-05T01:55:33.850" Score="10" ViewCount="3337" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm curious what the extent of the ideomotor effect is, and how it is precisely defined.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often hear it used to explain things as widely diverse as Ouija boards, assisted communication frauds, and even accidental animal training! (Clever Hans)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't doubt that some mechanism is at work, and I don't doubt it's powerful, but I often hear the ideomotor effect cited as a cause of a phenomenon, without it being really made clear HOW it's the cause.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I occasionally worry that it's being overused as an explanation in situations where &quot;We don't know why&quot; is the honest truth, and as such is a sort of skeptical version of the God of the Gaps fallacy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What studies are there to support that the ideomotor effect is a real, measurable phenomenon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1617" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-09T10:04:42.220" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T18:42:32.590" Title="How well is the ideomotor effect understood and defined?" Tags="|psychology|neurology|consciousness|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-11-09T01:55:25.043" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1780" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1798" CreationDate="2011-04-05T02:02:43.480" Score="21" ViewCount="9165" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://organicpassion.info/got-dandruff-use-vinegar/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; of many such sites, claims that vinegar can help with dandruff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a problem with the dreaded “dandruff?” Here’s the “sure cure” and you’ll find it in your kitchen. Vinegar!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is just off your kitchen cupboard and you do not need to spend a dime on expensive and probably not effective anti-dandruff shampoo! ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible that I can stop buying all those expensive shampoos and just use vinegar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T17:45:48.897" Title="Does vinegar help with dandruff?" Tags="|natural-remedies|vinegar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1779" CreationDate="2011-04-05T02:16:30.743" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/ideomotor.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ideomotor effect&lt;/a&gt; article on Skeptic's Dictionary says of the effect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ideomotor effect refers to the&#xA;  influence of suggestion or expectation&#xA;  on involuntary and unconscious motor&#xA;  behavior. The movement of pointers on&#xA;  Ouija boards, of a facilitator's hands&#xA;  in facilitated communication, of hands&#xA;  and arms in applied kinesiology, and&#xA;  of some behaviors attributed to&#xA;  hypnotic suggestion, are due to&#xA;  ideomotor action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's just an excerpt. The whole thing is worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1331" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-04-09T01:43:08.340" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T01:43:08.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1782" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1795" CreationDate="2011-04-05T02:24:34.350" Score="26" ViewCount="9602" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin#Circadian_rhythm_disorders&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taken 30 to 90 minutes before bedtime, melatonin supplementation acts as a mild hypnotic. It causes melatonin levels in the blood to rise earlier than the brain's own production accomplishes. This usage is now commonly used in sleep and relaxation drinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research that supports the claims that melatonin will help you sleep if you have difficulty falling asleep?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1445" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T08:13:45.177" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T06:46:46.960" Title="How effective is melatonin for aiding with sleep difficulty?" Tags="|medical-science|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1783" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10760" CreationDate="2011-04-05T01:21:37.883" Score="8" ViewCount="6043" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; Any velocity mentioned in this question is the velocity relative to the earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Warning:&lt;/strong&gt; Base your answers on formal proof and facts, moon images aren't really science...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=2QVmiMW0O0MC&amp;amp;lpg=PA439&amp;amp;ots=47tDtNc7hf&amp;amp;pg=PA439#v=onepage&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this book page&lt;/a&gt; in Astronomy: A Physical Perspective By Marc Leslie Kutner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an object going in a circular orbit around a planet the gravitational force must provide the acceleration for circular motion. If we solve this to get the orbital velocity, we get &lt;code&gt;28,000 km/h&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that we need that velocity to &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;escape&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; from the earth &lt;em&gt;if we follow the earth's orbit&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way is to send a rocket straight up as &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1783/what-speed-does-an-object-need-to-escape-from-earth-has-any-object-ever-achieved/1813#1813&quot;&gt;shown in this answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To leave the earth, you do NOT need to go at that speed of 28,000 km/h. You simply have to be going that fast when you reach that altitude. Given enough time, something travelling at 1 m.p.h can leave the earth, or the solar system. It needs enough power so that when it stops thrusting, it's current speed exceeds it's current height's orbital velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This helps explain why rockets are almost always launched east - due to the spin of the earth, they get a head start on their orbital velocity. At the Equator, you get a free boost of almost 1000 miles/hour (less so as you travel away from the equator).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, is it possible to get to the power needed to thrust a rocket so that it can &lt;em&gt;escape&lt;/em&gt; earth?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the orbital way of escaping: Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mentions a velocity of &lt;code&gt;27,870 km/h&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt; which is sufficient if you count in mathematical errors, however, unless I'm incorrect I think such speeds have only been achieved by NASA. Are there any other companies that achieved this speed? And how are such speeds measured?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone is trying to convince me that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#Records&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;maximum velocity ever reached was &lt;code&gt;3,529.6 km/h&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird and thus space exploration does not exist because nobody has ever been there, how can I prove him wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any formal proofs or facts that aren't supported solely by NASA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" OwnerDisplayName="TomWij" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T02:22:30.347" Title="Is it possible to get to the power needed to thrust a rocket so that it can escape from earth?" Tags="|physics|astronomy|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1783" CreationDate="2011-04-05T04:22:50.857" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/feMwA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;Neil Armstrong, standing in front of a X-15. ~ &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pilot_Neil_Armstrong_and_X-15_-1_-_GPN-2000-000121.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Public Domain, Wikimedia; obtained from NASA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The speed quote is from a Wikipedia article on the SR-71, the fastest &lt;em&gt;conventional&lt;/em&gt; airplane (runs on jet engines) known in the US Air Force in 1998. The &lt;strong&gt;fastest airplane&lt;/strong&gt; however happens to be the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-15&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;X-15&lt;/a&gt; which is rocket powered.   The simple answer is that your friend got their research mixed up a bit, and that there are things that go faster, and they are not airplanes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But for amusement, suppose they are right, it is impossible to go faster than a few thousand miles an hour, and besides the cops would have to give out a HUGE speeding ticket.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What all does that imply? It implies a lot of ridiculous things, thats what.  So, it must be possible to go that fast after all. This kind of reasoning is called an &lt;em&gt;indirect proof&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_contradiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;proof by contradiction&lt;/a&gt; and is a valid technique of formal logic widely used in mathematics and scientific disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's be brave, and assume it is impossible to go &quot;20,000 km/hr&quot; or whatever speed is required for escape velocity.  Then what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are no well worked out principles of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;escape velocity&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;orbits&lt;/a&gt; -- allowing for the construction of space probes -- that could be reduced to physics, algebra and calculus and then taught at the university level to prospective engineers.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Space Shuttle Columbia&lt;/a&gt; would have never burned up and broke apart on reentry, killing all 7 crew, because gaps in the heat shielding allowed the friction of the metal skin against the air at 20,000+ km/hr and burned through the hull.&lt;/strong&gt;   The news of fragments spread out over a large area wouldn't have occurred. NASA could have made everyone send back all the pieces to make the cover up complete, but then where did the pieces come from again? Did NASA put them out there surreptitiously then ask people to pick them up?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it implies no one has ever explored beyond Earth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1128/has-man-really-walked-on-the-moon&quot;&gt;There isn't any good evidence that the US sent men into space or to the moon, is there?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The US, Soviet, and ESA space programs would be frauds. Nothing ever sent back pictures from the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, or a comet.  I would post &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; of the pictures, but you said you didn't want to see them.  The pictures some people thought they saw would then have to be hoaxes [one could claim the scifi channel can do as well, but why such a complex hoax when a simple one might do?] and all the scientists who looked at them were negligent in noticing these hoaxes. Or it was quite the cover up...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There would never have been any &lt;a href=&quot;http://marsrover.nasa.gov/home/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mars rovers&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Independent radio amateurs would not be able to detect the signal of a Mars probe on the expected frequency and position in the sky, because space probes don't exist.  But &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.setileague.org/articles/mgstest.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;they did detect the probe's signals&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lJKaQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Mars Rover from nasa.gov &quot;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hMTQk.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;New Curiosity Mars Rover from nasa.gov&quot;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0apbT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Memorial to Columbia, placed on Mars Rover&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if the bits of sarcasm here and there offend some people.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you reasonably explain all of these examples? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe the objective reality of any of these examples, then using proof by contradiction it refutes the claims that speeds for orbit or escape (as appropriate) from Earth are impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T02:22:30.347" CommentCount="13" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-04-05T05:54:54.960" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1790" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-05T05:14:00.733" Score="95" ViewCount="9487" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vegetarians tend to have &lt;strong&gt;lower body mass index&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;lower levels of cholesterol&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;lower blood pressure&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;less incidence of heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes, renal disease, osteoporosis, dementias,&lt;/strong&gt; [and lower risks of] &lt;strong&gt;cancers of the esophagus, liver, colon, and the lungs.&lt;/strong&gt; [...] A 2010 study [showed] vegetarians scored &lt;strong&gt;lower on depression tests&lt;/strong&gt; and had &lt;strong&gt;better mood profiles&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, correlation =/= causation - &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of this can be explained by the fact that people who eat only (or just more) vegetables tend to be more health-conscious in other ways:  eat better, sleep more, exercise more, less likely to smoke or drink alcohol/caffeine, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any studies which show positive causal effects of giving up meat,&lt;/strong&gt; or is this all just correlational propaganda?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always hear vegetarians talk about how when they gave up meat, they suddenly felt their body and mind working so much better.  I've been eating a strict vegetarian diet for three weeks now, and the only thing that's working more are my bowels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T19:29:20.290" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T13:42:47.507" Title="Is a vegetarian (vegan) diet more healthy?" Tags="|nutrition|vegetarianism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1783" CreationDate="2011-04-05T05:14:17.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Good answers, but let me just chime in with what might be an intuitive explanation. The Earth, or any massive object, creates a &quot;gravity well&quot;. Think of it as a big funnel, with the planet at the bottom. It's a smooth funnel, like the bell of a horn, like a tuba or trumpet. I'm sure you've seen this in a museum. A small round ball, like a marble or ball bearing, is injected tangentially at the top, and it goes around and around, until because of rolling friction it finally goes lower and faster until it falls through the hole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the ball does depends on how much energy it has. If it is injected with not much speed, it goes into a low orbit, probably eliptical, maybe circular, but it stays in orbit (forever if there is no friction).&#xA;If it is injected too energetically, it flies right out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The speed it needs to fly right out and never come back is the escape velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When NASA sends a rocket to the moon, it's sending it almost all the way out of the gravity well. To send a rocket to another planet takes only a little more energy, and then it basically never comes back. With more energy still, it has enough to escape the sun's gravity well, and it will just keep going out of the solar system. We've done that too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.exo.net/~pauld/activities/astronomy/gravitywell.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's an explanation.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBQHtF3WhMw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;... and a video.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_well&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;... and some math.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="342" LastEditorUserId="342" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T02:18:05.523" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T02:18:05.523" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1783" CreationDate="2011-04-05T05:55:33.477" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/basics/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA&lt;/a&gt; the &lt;strong&gt;Space Shuttle&lt;/strong&gt; can reach a speed of &lt;strong&gt;27,875 kph&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I defy Earth's gravity daily, by walking up three flights of stairs to my apartment. As someone else has already pointed out, you don't necessarily need escape velocity to leave this planet, just &quot;continuous thrust&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there were a pole reaching into orbit, even a snail could eventually escape from earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast07sep_1/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Space Elevator&lt;/a&gt; is an example of &quot;low speed, but continuous thrust/acceleration&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y4dCx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T07:46:40.260" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T07:46:40.260" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1782" CreationDate="2011-04-05T07:32:41.763" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Melatonin does not work, or does not work very well in general. Clinically it is prescribed only for delayed sleep phase syndrome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A comprehensive review of the available studies&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, &quot;Melatonin for Treatment of Sleep Disorders&quot; was made by R. Buscemi et al in 2009. The results are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Effectiveness&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For people without sleeping disorders&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies are of low-to-moderate quality and evidence clinically insignificant effectiveness with respect to sleep onset time and effectiveness of sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Melatonin decreased sleep onset latency (SOL) in normal sleepers [...]. The magnitude of this effect appears to be clinically insignificant. There was evidence of possible publication bias in the selection of studies that were analyzed; we found a greater number of studies reporting positive results compared to negative results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Melatonin increased sleep efficiency in normal sleepers [...]. The magnitude of this effect appears to be clinically insignificant. There was considerable evidence of possible publication bias in the selection of studies analyzed; we found a greater number of studies reporting positive results compared to negative results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For people with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthcentre.org.uk/sleep-disorders/az-primary-sleep-disorder.html&quot;&gt;primary sleep disorders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies are of moderate-to-high quality and they indicate are some improvements for people with delayed sleep phase syndrome, but not with people with insomnia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;[...] SOL was decreased greatly in people with delayed sleep phase syndrome [...]. The magnitude of this effect appears to be clinically significant. SOL was decreased marginally in patients with insomnia [...]. The magnitude of this effect appears to be clinically insignificant. [...] If the analysis is approached using the Fixed Effects Model, melatonin does not have any effect on sleep onset latency in people with primary insomnia.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Melatonin did not have an effect on sleep efficiency in people with primary sleep disorders; the effects of melatonin did not vary by age, type of primary sleep disorder, dose, or duration of treatment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Melatonin did not have an effect on sleep quality, wakefulness after sleep onset (WASO), total sleep time, or percent time spent in REM sleep.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For people with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthcentre.org.uk/sleep-disorders/az-secondary-sleep-disorder.html&quot;&gt;secondary sleeping disorders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Melatonin did not have a clinically significant effect in the reviewed moderate-to-high quality studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Melatonin did not have an effect on sleep onset latency in people with a secondary sleep disorder; [...]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Melatonin increased sleep efficiency in people with a secondary sleep disorder [...] The magnitude of this effect appears to be clinically insignificant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Melatonin did not have an effect on WASO or percent time spent in REM sleep in people with a secondary sleep disorder, but increased total sleep time in this population&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Safety&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Melatonin seems safe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most commonly reported adverse effects of melatonin were nausea (incidence: ~ 1.5 percent), headache (incidence: ~ 7.8 percent), dizziness (incidence: 4.0 percent), and drowsiness (incidence: 20.33 percent); however, &lt;strong&gt;these effects were not significant compared to placebo&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1: Buscemi N., Vandermeer B., Pandya R., et al. Melatonin for Treatment of Sleep Disorders. Summary, Evidence Report/Technology Assessment: Number 108. AHRQ Publication Number 05-E002-1, November 2004. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/epcsums/melatsum.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/epcsums/melatsum.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T08:12:56.207" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T08:12:56.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1796" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1799" CreationDate="2011-04-05T08:42:37.113" Score="18" ViewCount="2361" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK, omega-3 has been a big fad, it seems. You can't seem to get away from products without it. I Although recently it has died down, it mainly stems back to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badscience.net/2006/09/the-trial-that-ate-itself/&quot;&gt;a flawed study on schoolchildren&lt;/a&gt;. Is there any peer reviewed and well researched evidence pointing to a conclusion either way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T09:29:35.810" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T17:23:08.580" Title="Do omega-3 fatty acids and fish oil improve concentration and cognitive ability?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1780" CreationDate="2011-04-05T09:02:16.493" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I could find no studies supporting that claim, however I suspect it's not going to be as effective as proper medication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dandruff is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2887514/&quot;&gt;most commercially exploited skin disease&lt;/a&gt;. All the medicated shampoos use various active ingredients, either alone or in combinations. None of them list vinagre (acetic acid) as an active ingredient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Active ingredients&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Salicylic acid &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Salicylic acid and sulfur&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zinc pyrithione &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tar &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selenium sulfide &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ketoconazole &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ciclopirox&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clobetasol&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2887514/table/T0001/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that all of these medications are &lt;em&gt;symptomatic&lt;/em&gt; because dandruff is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002421/?tool=pubmed&quot;&gt;not a well-understood disease&lt;/a&gt; - but this doesn't mean that the mechanism of action of the active components is not well understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a commercially exploited pharmacological I sincerely doubt that a cheap, safe and miraculous cure as vinagre is purported to be is not internally studied and exploited if effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, salicylic acid is used for its acidic properties -- similar to acetic acid. The difference here is that salicylic acid is more effective than acetic acid. In short, therefore, vinagre is quite likely to be a less effective symptomatic cure, with respect to the pharmacological alternatives. From the linked paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Salicylic acid is a [...] acid keratinolytic agent that is useful in removing scaly hyperkeratotic skin. It decreases cell-to-cell adhesion between corneocytes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-10T08:43:01.190" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T08:43:01.190" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1796" CreationDate="2011-04-05T10:16:50.240" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20070307/omega-3-fatty-acids-may-boost-brain&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; mentions a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17574755&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; that showed a correlation between omega-3 and gray matter volume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;analyses revealed&#xA;  positive associations between reported&#xA;  dietary omega-3 intake and gray matter&#xA;  volume in the subgenual ACC, the right&#xA;  hippocampus and the right amygdala&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;  adjusted for total gray matter volume&#xA;  of brain. Unconstrained whole-brain&#xA;  analyses confirmed that &lt;strong&gt;higher intake&#xA;  of omega-3 fatty acids was selectively&#xA;  associated with increased greater gray&#xA;  matter volume in these and not other&#xA;  regions&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Higher reported consumption of the&#xA;  long-chain omega-3 fatty acids is&#xA;  associated with greater gray matter&#xA;  volume in nodes of a corticolimbic&#xA;  circuitry supporting emotional arousal&#xA;  and regulation. Such associations may&#xA;  mediate previously observed effects of&#xA;  omega-3 fatty acids on memory, mood&#xA;  and affect regulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But don't jump to conclusions. &lt;strong&gt;The&#xA;  study doesn't prove that omega-3 fatty&#xA;  acids build gray matter&lt;/strong&gt;. Perhaps&#xA;  participants with the most gray matter&#xA;  in those brain areas happen to favor&#xA;  foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But if omega-3 fatty acids boost gray&#xA;  matter, that could explain earlier&#xA;  findings (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17991818&quot;&gt;e.g.&lt;/a&gt;) linking omega-3 fatty acids&#xA;  to mood regulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.febsletters.org/article/S0014-5793%2809%2901059-X/abstract&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; says omega-3 &lt;a href=&quot;http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=8278&quot;&gt;may help prevent brain cell death&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Previous research has suggested that&#xA;  there is a link between low levels in&#xA;  the brain of the omega-3 fatty acid&#xA;  DHA and Alzheimer’s disease&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;strong&gt;the incidence of&#xA;  neurodegenerative diseases such as&#xA;  Alzheimer’s appears to be reduced in&#xA;  populations with a high omega-3 fatty&#xA;  acid diet&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We found that when the level of DHA in&#xA;  neuronal cells drops, the level of&#xA;  zinc rises. The higher levels of zinc&#xA;  can be toxic, resulting in cell death.&#xA;  This type of cell death is a key&#xA;  feature of neurodegenerative diseases,&#xA;  including Alzheimer’s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-01-09/health/28357639_1_omega-3-dha-brain-injury&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; suggest omega-3 &quot;&lt;strong&gt;might offer a new way of protecting against traumatic brain injury&lt;/strong&gt; (TBI)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tissue damage caused by TBI was&#xA;  significantly reduced in rats taking&#xA;  the highest dose of DHA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cellular findings included a&#xA;  significant reduction in expression of&#xA;  a protein (beta amyloid protein) that&#xA;  has been implicated in the development&#xA;  of Alzheimer's disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Animals receiving the highest dose of&#xA;  DHA before TBI also had reduced&#xA;  expression of key indicators of brain&#xA;  cell death. The DHA-treated rats&#xA;  also performed better on a test of&#xA;  spatial memory, indicating less&#xA;  behavioural impairment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alzheimersanddementia.com/article/S1552-5260%2810%2900040-3/abstract&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; suggest that &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101108151346.htm&quot;&gt;DHA Improves Memory and Cognitive Function in Older Adults&lt;/a&gt;&quot;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study found that DHA taken for six&#xA;  months improved memory and learning in&#xA;  healthy, older adults with mild memory&#xA;  complaints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/304/17/1903&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Supplementation with DHA compared with&#xA;  placebo did not slow the rate of&#xA;  cognitive and functional decline in&#xA;  patients with mild to moderate&#xA;  Alzheimer disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;both studies were published in 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T13:01:20.523" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T13:01:20.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1800" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1869" CreationDate="2011-04-05T11:54:22.600" Score="16" ViewCount="4607" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost everytime I have my mobile in my shirt pocket, someone is quick to point out that I shouldn't keep it near my heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any link between a mobile phone and heart troubles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1628" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T20:01:44.300" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:52:12.403" Title="Do mobile phones cause heart troubles?" Tags="|medical-science|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1801" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2868" CreationDate="2011-04-05T11:56:00.553" Score="20" ViewCount="1570" Body="&lt;p&gt;The television program &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qclqx&quot;&gt;How the Earth Made Us&lt;/a&gt; has argued that the development of agriculture prevented a new ice age, due to methane production from livestock, and the burning of natural vegetation for farmland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't heard this claim before. The narrator isn't a climate change non-believer, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the scientific community regard it as probably correct, plausible, or an unlikely theory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T16:46:08.947" Title="Did the development of agriculture prevent an ice age occurring?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="487" CreationDate="2011-04-05T12:19:13.977" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cannabis is generally pretty innocuous as far as psychoactive drugs go.  It's not &lt;em&gt;entirely&lt;/em&gt; without negative consequences, however.  There seems to be reasonable evidence (mostly correlative, granted, but there are enough correlations to be worried) for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20217055&quot;&gt;memory deficits&lt;/a&gt; and for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20721538&quot;&gt;decreased reaction speed in the face of contradictory information&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Linked-to studies picked almost at random from among a number that have similar findings.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T12:19:13.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1803" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2185" CreationDate="2011-04-05T13:07:43.380" Score="18" ViewCount="12226" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my brother-in-law's coworkers claims that drinking hot water (straight from the tap) aids in digestion. I've been able to find a debunking of cold water causing cancer, but can't find anything related to drinking hot water (at least nothing backed by scientific evidence, or even the &lt;em&gt;appearance&lt;/em&gt; of scientific evidence). So, is there any truth to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1631" LastActivityDate="2014-12-27T05:19:17.920" Title="Does drinking warm or hot water aid in digestion?" Tags="|natural-remedies|water|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1805" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-05T13:26:44.473" Score="15" ViewCount="957" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NSdYx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;The &amp;quot;Surgeon&amp;#39;s&amp;quot; photograph&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can be no doubt that the Loch Ness Monster exploded into the public awareness in the 1933, thanks to a few sightings that made national news in Britain. What I'm wondering is if there is any evidence at all that there were sightings before 1933. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first movie about the monster, 1934's &lt;strong&gt;The Secret of the Loch&lt;/strong&gt;, has the locals claim that they've always known the monster is there. (It also has one of the very same locals theorizing the monster hatched recently from a prehistoric egg disturbed by road construction -- consistency is not the movie's strength.) That suggests that very early in the Loch Ness phenomenon this meme of the monster being an ancient legend was established, but I'm curious if there's any truth at all to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know about the Saint Columba story, but that account doesn't occur in Loch Ness at all and is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/columba-e.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;from a book full of tall tales&lt;/a&gt;. I'm looking for sightings of a creature in the Loch and ones that can be verified as having been &lt;em&gt;recorded&lt;/em&gt; before 1933. In other words, people coming forward after 1933 saying &quot;I saw the monster 20 years ago!&quot; don't count, unless they can show that somebody wrote down the details of that account at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="1343" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T19:53:38.593" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T10:06:17.580" Title="Are there any sightings of the Loch Ness Monster before 1933?" Tags="|cryptozoology|loch-ness-monster|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1806" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1807" CreationDate="2011-04-05T14:14:55.733" Score="16" ViewCount="74417" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that it is possible to unlock a car using the remote key-fob over a cell phone network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scenario: Adam locks his keys in his car.  He uses his cell phone to call his wife, Betty, who is at home with a cell phone.  Adam holds his cell phone close to the car while Betty holds the spare remote close to her cell phone and pushes the UNLOCK button.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will this unlock the car door?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastActivityDate="2022-05-17T21:52:54.720" Title="Can you unlock a car using a cell phone?" Tags="|road-vehicles|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1806" CreationDate="2011-04-05T15:30:54.803" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://auto.howstuffworks.com/remote-entry1.htm&quot;&gt;HowStuffWorks' page on How Remote Entry Works&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fob that you carry on your keychain or use to open the garage door is actually a small radio transmitter. When you push a button on the fob, you turn on the transmitter and it sends a code to the receiver (either in the car or in the garage). Inside the car or garage is a radio receiver tuned to the frequency that the transmitter is using (300 or 400 MHz is typical for modern systems).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone&quot;&gt;Telephone&lt;/a&gt; on Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The telephone [...] is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sound, most commonly the human voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And again, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone.htm&quot;&gt;HowStuffWorks on Cell Phones&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To start with, one of the most interesting things about a cell phone is that it is actually a radio -- an extremely sophisticated radio, but a radio nonetheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, nevertheless, a cell phone intentionally transmits on &lt;a href=&quot;http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone1.htm&quot;&gt;frequencies specifically assigned for mobile phone use&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, even though both cell phones and keyless entry remotes are radios, there are two main reasons why this is not possible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From the transmission end of the call, &lt;strong&gt;only audio&lt;/strong&gt; is transmitted onto the phone network (via microphone into an analog signal and then via electronic components to a digital signal, if a digital cell phone is used).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio&quot;&gt;Radio signals&lt;/a&gt; are light, and are not audible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That audio is transmitted to your cell phone via cell phone frequencies.  Your cell phone speaker only emits sound.  As mentioned above, though your cell phone is a radio transmitter, and does emit radio signals, it only emits radio signals on cell phone frequencies for the purpose of transmitting audio.  It has no functionality for transmitting on any other frequency (like the band used by your remote), let alone for any other purpose. &lt;em&gt;(See the Wikipedia page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_allocation&quot;&gt;Frequency allocation&lt;/a&gt; for information about regulation of radio frequencies)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;Subjective and speculative footnote:&lt;/em&gt; Looking at the technologies being used by cell phones and key fobs, it seems reasonable to believe that a cell phone could be built for this purpose.  However, it certainly wouldn't be a &quot;mystery&quot; function, since the device would have to have explicit approval from the FCC (in the US) to function on that band (check your key fob for its FCC approval ID).  I can't imagine any cell phone maker building this functionality, getting it approved, and then not advertising it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it's probably unlikely that it ever &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; be made due to more advanced, reliable, and propietary methods of unlocking cars (like GM's OnStar) are already in development or in use.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1073" LastEditorUserId="1073" LastEditDate="2011-04-05T16:06:25.193" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T16:06:25.193" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1806" CreationDate="2011-04-05T15:46:56.100" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was tested and busted by &lt;a href=&quot;http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/6532-mythbusters-cell-phone-remote-video.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mythbusters&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also listed as urban legend / email hoax by &lt;a href=&quot;http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_unlock_door.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;About.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The signals emitted by the car remote are mainly radio signals with a frequency of 315MHz in the US and Japan and 433.92MHz (ISM band) in Europe as explained in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maxim-ic.com/app-notes/index.mvp/id/3395/CMP/WP-19&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Requirements of Remote Keyless Entry (RKE) Systems&lt;/a&gt;. An alternative are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ece.msstate.edu/courses/ece4522/projects/2001_fall/ike/documents/docfinal.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;infrared remotes&lt;/a&gt; which are not affected by radio noise generated by some machinery e.g. in industry, but require to aim to the car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mobile (aka cell) phones are only designed to transmit human voice or digital data like text messages. The frequency bandwidth of the transmitted audio signal is in the range from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gsm#Voice_codecs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3.1kHz&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Full_Rate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;4kHz (8kHz sampling rate&lt;/a&gt;, which result in (almost) half the bandwidth following the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mobile phones use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.celtnet.org.uk/mobile-phone/how-mobiles-work-1.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;normal microphone and loud speaker and an analog-to-digital as well as a digital-to-analogue converter&lt;/a&gt; to record and play the transmitted audio signals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easily understood that a microphone can not record either radio waves nor infrared (light) signals. Also the loud speaker of a mobile phone is not able to produce radio waves or infrared signals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As shown by the above urban-legends link, this idea popped up as an email and following the technical explanation shown here can be safely taken as an hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1072" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2022-05-17T21:52:54.720" LastActivityDate="2022-05-17T21:52:54.720" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1809" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-05T15:51:13.217" Score="12" ViewCount="5560" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read a couple of texts, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fratricide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, that claims that the Ottoman sultans kill or imprison their own brothers for life to remove rival claims for the throne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the Ottoman Empire a policy of judicial royal fratricide was introduced by Sultan Mehmet II whose grandfather Mehmed I had to fight a long and bloody civil war against his brothers (which brought the empire near to destruction) to take the throne. When a new Sultan ascended to the throne he would imprison all of his surviving brothers and kill them by strangulation with a silk cord as soon as he had produced his first male heir. The largest killing took place on the succession of Mehmed III when 19 of his brothers were killed and buried with their father.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sounds too barbaric, even for the medieval age - I suppose this practice didn't actually make it until after WW I. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any historically accurate evidence that this claim is correct? If it is true, is there any information as to what extent this was implemented, and what the other members of the family, the people, and the Islamic scholars said?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1633" LastEditorUserId="1633" LastEditDate="2011-08-22T11:31:33.393" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T23:38:26.323" Title="Did the Ottoman sultans kill their own brothers?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1705" CreationDate="2011-04-05T17:16:01.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been some interesting studies by Robert Stickgold at Harvard Medical School that show sleep's role in learning. In an article from &lt;em&gt;Scientific America&lt;/em&gt; titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=tetris-dreams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tetris Dreams&lt;/a&gt;, author  Kristin Leutwyler provides an overview of some of Stickgold's experiments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The idea that sleep, and in particular dreaming, serves to cement new information and skills in the brain first gained a lot of attention when Stickgold and his colleagues described another set of findings in the March 1999 issue of the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.&lt;/em&gt; ... They showed that subjects who had slept for six hours or more after learning a new task -- in this case, spotting a visual target on a screen as quickly as possible -- improved, whereas those who didn't sleep on it didn't. Moreover, they found that those who improved the most slept for eight hours, with ample time for both slow-wave and rapid eye movement (REM) periods of sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information, check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.radiolab.org/2007/may/24/dreams/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Radiolab podcast&lt;/a&gt;, which includes an interview with Stickgold and talks about his work in this field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T17:16:01.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1805" CreationDate="2011-04-05T17:27:24.583" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Dinsdale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tim Dinsdale&lt;/a&gt; wrote in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.at/books?id=X5g9AAAAIAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA31&amp;amp;lpg=PA31&amp;amp;dq=loch%20ness%20chronicle%20of%20fortingall&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=58s1J4K2VT&amp;amp;sig=EObxbRYBklGR_y0FMUtG0LTZ9RI&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;ei=h0ubTazXEMz4sgbn_-3HBg&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=loch%20ness%20chronicle%20of%20fortingall&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Loch Ness Monster&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another more recent, though equally delightful passage, from monster history is recorded in the &lt;strong&gt;Chronicle of Fortingall&lt;/strong&gt;, which printed the following account in &lt;strong&gt;1870&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;There was ane monstrous fish seen in&#xA;  Lochfyne, having great in the head&#xA;  thereof, and at times waed stand aboon&#xA;  the water as high as the mast of a&#xA;  ship; and the said had upon the head&#xA;  thereof twa croons&lt;/em&gt;...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sighting by Duncan Campbell in 1527 is also mentioned in the book, but the source for that one is &quot;&lt;em&gt;one of several legendary excerpts and stories recorded by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/lochness/legend2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mrs. [Constance] Whyte&lt;/a&gt;, who has done much useful research on the subject&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This terrible beast - issuing out of&#xA;  the water early one morning about mid&#xA;  summer, he did very easily and without&#xA;  any force of straining of himself&#xA;  overthrow huge oaks with his tail and&#xA;  therewith killed outright three men&#xA;  that hunted him with three strokes of&#xA;  his tail, the rest of them saving&#xA;  themselves in trees thereabouts,&#xA;  whilst the aforesaid monster returned&#xA;  to the loch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lochness.com/loch-ness-monster-exhibition-3.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Loch Ness Centre &amp;amp; Exhibition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[The history of the exhibition] all&#xA;  began in 1882, just as stories of a&#xA;  &quot;huge fish&quot; were circulating in the&#xA;  village of Drumnadrochit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1916 a local gamekeeper [James Cameron] came into&#xA;  the hotel &quot;with his face as white as&#xA;  paper&quot;. His encounter, in a small boat&#xA;  on Loch Ness was, like other accounts,&#xA;  not something people cared to talk&#xA;  about in those days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Associated with the Exhibition is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lochness.com/loch-ness-project.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Loch Ness Project&lt;/a&gt;, which has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lochnessproject.org/adrian_shine_archiveroom/loch_ness_archive_timeline.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Loch Ness Timeline&lt;/a&gt; (it's a history about the loch and not just about monster sightings)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T10:06:17.580" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T10:06:17.580" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1771" CreationDate="2011-04-05T19:15:09.787" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, regarding general health effects of carbonation, in their 1992 paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.utoledo.edu/med/depts/medicine/endocrinology/pdfs/Fluid_replacement_after_dehyrd.pdf&quot;&gt;Lambert et al&lt;/a&gt; compare re-hydration after exercise for carbonated and non carbonated beverages. The paper measures blood plasma levels prior to dehydration and after the administration of test solutions concluding;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A major finding of this investigation&#xA;  was that fluid replacement was similar&#xA;  in the carbonated and non-carbonated&#xA;  treatments. ... the similar plasma&#xA;  volume and total plasma protein values&#xA;  at all time points suggest that&#xA;  beverage carbonation did not&#xA;  measurably alter the availability of&#xA;  ingested fluid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/eurojgh/Abstract/2002/09000/Effects_of_carbonated_water_on_functional.10.aspx&quot;&gt;Cuomo et al&lt;/a&gt; investigate the effects of carbonation on digestion, concluding &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In patients complaining of functional dyspepsia and constipation, carbonated water increases satiety and improves dyspepsia, constipation and gallbladder emptying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which may explain why many people use sugarless carbonated beverages (such as sprite) to calm upset stomachs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a particularly interesting paper by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jneurosci.org/content/19/18/8134.short&quot;&gt;Simons et al&lt;/a&gt; investigates the oral sensation associated with carbonated beverages, arguing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;carbonated water excites lingual&#xA;  nociceptors via a carbonic&#xA;  anhydrase-dependent process, in turn&#xA;  exciting neurons in Vc that are&#xA;  presumably involved in signaling oral&#xA;  irritant sensations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding kidney function, beverages with high fructose content may pose a risk whether carbonated or not. Studying rats, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajprenal.physiology.org/content/293/4/F1256.short&quot;&gt;Gersch et al&lt;/a&gt; find an association between fructose and kidney problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, &lt;a href=&quot;http://app2.mans.edu.eg/eulc/Libraries/StaffPapers/StaffPaper.aspx?fn=DownLoadFile&amp;amp;ScopeID=1.1.&amp;amp;PaperID=1025431.&amp;amp;FileName=10.pdf&amp;amp;frameName=&quot;&gt;El-Badrawy et al&lt;/a&gt; touch on a distinction between 'cola' and 'un-cola' beverages, finding histopathological effects (I needed a quick &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histopathology&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; to understand this refers broadly to tissue damage) from colored soft drinks only. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The kidney of rats consuming dark&#xA;  color soft drink showed congestion of&#xA;  interlobular homogenous proteinaceaus&#xA;  casts in some renal tubules (Pict.7).&#xA;  While the kidney of rats consuming&#xA;  orange color showed the previous&#xA;  changes with congestion of the&#xA;  glomerular tufts (Pict. 8). Kidney of&#xA;  rats consuming colorless soft drink&#xA;  revealed no histopathological changes&#xA;  (Pict. 9), meanwhile, kidney of rats&#xA;  consuming mixed soft drink showed&#xA;  vacuolation of endothelial lining the&#xA;  glomerular tuft together with&#xA;  necrobiotic changes of epithelial&#xA;  lining of some renal tubules (Pict&#xA;  .10).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like the original poster, I had trouble finding a credible source clearly attributing health impacts to one or more ingredients in soda individually.  Many papers unequivocally argue soft drinks are harmful to health generally, but parsing out the effect of carbonation seems more difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in a randomized setting, isolating the effect of one substance consumed in tandem with many others poses a challenge. Also, though similar in many ways, humans and rats differ. With these caveats in mind, the research outlined above seems to suggest the primary health risk associated with cola may be attributed to sugar content. That said, none of the literature I reviewed affirmed the negative, i.e. ``carbonated water &lt;em&gt;does not&lt;/em&gt; impair kidney function''.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1540" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T19:15:09.787" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1815" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1827" CreationDate="2011-04-05T19:31:05.430" Score="16" ViewCount="1271" Body="&lt;p&gt;An oft repeated conspiracy theory asserts officials in the US military had prior knowledge of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and allowed the attack to occur anyway. The conspiracy theorists point to early radar warnings being ignored, the absence of the carrier fleet on the day of the attack, et cetera. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apfn.org/apfn/pearl_harbor.htm&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; suggest FDR intentionally held out Pearl Harbor as bait, hoping an attack would shore up support for interventionism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To state the question clearly; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does credible historical analysis support the theory that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the United States government intentionally allowed Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor and/or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;manipulated circumstances to goad or bait Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor in order to manipulate its population?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1540" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-04-28T19:34:39.750" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T19:34:39.750" Title="Prior knowledge of Pearl Harbor" Tags="|history|world-war-ii|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1815" CreationDate="2011-04-05T20:52:00.937" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading John Costello's &lt;em&gt;The Pacific War&lt;/em&gt; a few months ago (see here &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0688016200&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Pacific-War-1941-1945-John-Costello/dp/0688016200&lt;/a&gt;). His analysis of the matter was that the preconditions for war were obvious and its imminence acknowledged, but that the Japanese attack was expected to be directed at the Philippines and not Pearl Harbour, as the American forces in the Philippines had been especially strengthened so as to constitute a direct threat to the Japanese homeland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am by no means an expert on the subject but Costello's book (published in 1981) would seem to be a good starting place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1639" LastActivityDate="2011-04-05T20:52:00.937" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1550" CreationDate="2011-04-05T21:24:20.583" Score="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm curious if . . . it was ever accurate.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer is &quot;yes.&quot;  Today, of course, it's ridiculous as others have pointed out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original electro-mechanical switches were called &quot;step-by-step&quot; switches in the US, or &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch&quot;&gt;Strowger&lt;/a&gt;&quot; switches in the UK. Later, electro-mechanical switches were called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/crossbar_switch&quot;&gt;crossbar&lt;/a&gt;&quot; switches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both set up a continuous metallic path through the switch which lasts the duration of the call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In fact, many of the dialing and numbering conventions - dialing &quot;0&quot; for the Operator, dialing &quot;1&quot; for Long Distance, dialing &quot;011&quot; for international, and no area codes or telephone numbers starting with &quot;0&quot; or &quot;1&quot;  - directly resulted from the way these switches were designed and wired.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSTN_network_topology&quot;&gt;telephone network was a hierarchical (5-level) network&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only &quot;Class 5&quot; switches connected to telephone &lt;em&gt;lines&lt;/em&gt; - all other levels were &quot;tandem switches&quot; designed to connect two switches together with &quot;trunks&quot;.  The equipment required to automatically bill calls (&quot;Automatic Message Accounting&quot;) was very expensive, so it was usually concentrated in Class 4 or Class 3 &quot;Toll Centers&quot; where it could serve multiple Class 5 offices (and that's why we got free local calling in the US).  Row 1 of the SXS &quot;Selector&quot; or crossbar (corresponding to the dialed digit &quot;1&quot;)  was wired directly to a &quot;CAMA trunk&quot; (Centralized AMA) to a tandem switch where the details were recorded before the call was set up.   (Similarly, row 10, corresponding to dialed digit &quot;0&quot;, was directly connected to trunks to the operator center).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So tracing a call in an all electro-mechanical network would literally require working backward from the receiving telephone line, to either the originating line (if the call originated in the same Class 5 office) or to the incoming trunk line, etc., etc.  But it wasn't &quot;digit by digit.&quot;  It would be analagous to following a piece of string to its point of origin, then making a note of the telephone number associated with the tin can the string is tied to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1ESS&quot;&gt;1ESS&lt;/a&gt; switch was introduced in the 1960s. It was a computer-controlled mechanical switch.  True digital switches like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5ESS&quot;&gt;5ESS&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DMS_100&quot;&gt;DMS100&lt;/a&gt; came along in the 1970s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Digital switching made billing and services like Caller ID a function of software, not hardware, so tracing a call in an ESS network is much simpler.  But steppers and crossbars remained in service well into the 1980s, and many were only replaced because the state Public Service Commission required it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to any differences between wireline and wireless:  let's ignore the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improved_Mobile_Telephone_Service&quot;&gt;radio-based IMTS&lt;/a&gt; and talk about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Mobile_Phone_System&quot;&gt;AMPS&lt;/a&gt; and digital (GSM, TDMA, CDMA).  All of these systems were based on digital switching fabric, and all calls were billed (so calling party number was automatically captured), so tracing a call would have been relatively simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One additional distinction: there's a difference between information available in the modern network (billing information, tower ID, GPS coordinates), and information shared with the user (Caller ID).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1640" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-04-19T10:37:20.020" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T10:37:20.020" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1823" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2565" CreationDate="2011-04-05T23:33:03.810" Score="17" ViewCount="1289" Body="&lt;p&gt;While CO₂ is not produced directly when producing electricity from nuclear power, it is obvious that obtaining the radioactive material and preparing it for its use in a plant inevitably produces some CO₂. Thus, the claim that nuclear power is CO₂ free is demonstrably false when extended to the entire process chain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, of course, can also be said about any other form of power plant: The mining of coal itself produces CO₂, obtaining the raw materials and manufacturing solar cells does it too, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is nuclear power cleaner than other means of power with respect to total CO₂ output for the entire process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T10:43:28.273" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T18:13:06.810" Title="Is the net output of CO₂ from Nuclear Energy lower than the net output of other energy sources?" Tags="|environment|energy|nuclear-energy|power-generation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1826" CreationDate="2011-04-06T01:29:13.370" Score="28" ViewCount="3223" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that anyone on the planet is connected to any other person on the planet through six degrees of separation? Why, or why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1525" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T01:58:39.983" Title="Are there any studies that prove (or disprove) the idea of &quot;Six Degrees of Separation&quot;?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1825" CreationDate="2011-04-06T01:36:29.753" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, it just so happens that there has been an experiment done on this.  The original study was from Milgram back in the 1960s (same guy that did shock experiments).  Orginal paper can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mkearns/teaching/NetworkedLife/travers_milgram.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mkearns/teaching/NetworkedLife/travers_milgram.pdf&lt;/a&gt;  However, the results are contentious.  A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.judithkleinfeld.com/ar_bigworld.html&quot;&gt;Dr. Judith Kleinfeld has a good rundown on this&lt;/a&gt;.  Her abstract starts out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The idea that people are connected through just &quot;six degrees of separation,&quot; based on Stanley Milgram's &quot;small world study,&quot; has become part of the intellectual furniture of educated people. New evidence discovered in the Milgram papers in the Yale archives, together with a review of the literature on the &quot;small world problem,&quot; reveals that this widely-accepted idea rests on scanty evidence. Indeed, the empirical evidence suggests that we actually live in a world deeply divided by social barriers such as race and class. An explosion of interest is occurring in the small world problem because mathematicians have developed computer models of how the small world phenomenon could logically work. But mathematical modeling is not a substitute for empirical evidence. At the core of the small world problem are fascinating psychological mysteries&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She concludes with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nothing is so useful as a good problem. The &quot;small world problem&quot; remains eternally fascinating and even more so in the digital age. Milgram has not shown that we live in a world of &quot;six degrees of separation.&quot; How we are connected to each other remains an important mystery....and a researchable one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also recall watching a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcCpEf6_Ofg&amp;amp;feature=related&quot;&gt;television program a while back where Mark Vidal of the Faber Institute&lt;/a&gt; distributed packages all over the world with instructions on how to get the package back to him by only sending it to people you knew (basically a repeat of the Milgram study).  I do recall that he did get his packages back, and often in less than six steps.  Although that may have been assisted for the TV show's production values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/swn.d/swn.html&quot;&gt;this paper from Cornell (The Small-World Phenomenon: An Algorithmic Perspective)&lt;/a&gt; that starts out as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Long a matter of folklore, the &quot;small-world phenomenon&quot; -- the principle that we are all linked by short chains of acquaintances -- was inaugurated as an area of experimental study in the social sciences through the pioneering work of Stanley Milgram in the 1960's. This work was among the first to make the phenomenon quantitative, allowing people to speak of the &quot;six degrees of separation&quot; between any two people in the United States. Since then, a number of network models have been proposed as frameworks in which to study the problem analytically. One of the most refined of these models was formulated in recent work of Watts and Strogatz; their framework provided compelling evidence that the small-world phenomenon is pervasive in a range of networks arising in nature and technology, and a fundamental ingredient in the evolution of the World Wide Web. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper makes a more mathematical look at it versus an experimental look, and thus concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Algorithmic work in different settings has considered the problem of routing with local information; see for example the problem of designing compact routing tables for communication networks [15] and the problem of robot navigation in an unknown environment &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/swn.d/swn.html&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;. Our results are technically quite different from these; but they share the general goal of identifying qualitative properties of networks that makes routing with local information tractable, and offering a model for reasoning about effective routing schemes in such networks. While we have deliberately focused on a very clean model, we believe that a more general conclusion can be drawn for small-world networks: that the correlation between local structure and long-range connections provides fundamental cues for finding paths through the network. When this correlation is near a critical threshold, the structure of the long-range connections forms a type of &quot;gradient&quot; that allows individuals to guide a message efficiently toward a target. As the correlation drops below this critical value and the social network becomes more homogeneous, these cues begin to disappear; in the limit, when long-range connections are generated uniformly at random, our model describes a world in which short chains exist but individuals, faced with a disorienting array of social contacts, are unable to find them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found some further studies, however, the sites require subscriptions:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&amp;amp;_&amp;amp;ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ744252&amp;amp;ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&amp;amp;accno=EJ744252&quot;&gt;http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?&lt;em&gt;nfpb=true&amp;amp;&lt;/em&gt;&amp;amp;ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ744252&amp;amp;ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&amp;amp;accno=EJ744252&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as I started off with, the results are contentious.  A final conclusion may need more research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-04-08T01:58:39.983" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T01:58:39.983" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1815" CreationDate="2011-04-06T02:06:32.853" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There were US officers that expected a Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor, but they were generally low-ranking officers, and you can typically find low-ranking officers who will believe anything.  (Gordon Prange, &lt;em&gt;At Dawn We Slept&lt;/em&gt;).  The best account I've found of exactly what went on is Lee &amp;amp; Clausen's &lt;em&gt;Pearl Harbor:  the Final Judgment&lt;/em&gt;.  There are so many conspiracy theories that it is hard to refute them all in one book, but reading a few good books on the subject will be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that most conspiracy theorists ignore is that the US Army and US Navy sent messages to Pearl Harbor ordering preparation for imminent war ten days before the Japanese attack.  It seems to me that, if you warn somebody of an impending attack, there's always the possibility they'll do something about it.  Another fallacy that&#xA;is sometimes used is the confusion of US officials expecting imminent war (which&#xA;they did) with US officials expecting an attack on Pearl Harbor (which they didn't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second question is covered thoroughly in Feis' &lt;em&gt;Road to Pearl Harbor&lt;/em&gt; (I haven't found a better source yet).  In brief, Roosevelt was dragging his heels on sanctions and the like against Japan, in the hope that the US could stay at peace with Japan.  (Roosevelt wanted to get into a war with Germany, and in September 1941 ordered the US Navy to fight the war in the Atlantic (Morison, &lt;em&gt;The Battle of the Atlantic&lt;/em&gt;).  Roosevelt was advised that the materials sent to Japan would delay US rearmament, and allowed them to be shipped anyway.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tl;dr version of the above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No high US official expected an attack on Pearl Harbor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roosevelt was taking measures to not provoke Japan, in the hopes that he could avoid that war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T02:06:32.853" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1829" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1836" CreationDate="2011-04-06T04:21:25.650" Score="21" ViewCount="1101" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard conflicting views on how effective glucosamine is in treating joint problems. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/nutrition/a/aa030901e.htm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; you can see a claim being made about stimulating cartilage growth and curing arthritis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Glucosamine Claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Protect cartilage against damage from weight-bearing exercise&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Slows cartilage breakdown&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stimulates cartilage growth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Cures arthritis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it simply a placebo drug?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1445" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T06:26:44.113" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T14:31:54.583" Title="Is there evidence that glucosamine can help repair joints?" Tags="|medical-science|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1809" CreationDate="2011-04-06T04:23:01.700" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Goodwin (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0312420668&quot;&gt;Lords of the Horizons&lt;/a&gt;), it was indeed common practice, especially in the early period. Some sultans did not have the stomach for killing their brothers, and would instead confine them to a prison within palace walls (&quot;kafes&quot;, cage) in perpetuity. Several of those captive siblings (e.g. Ahmet III) eventually assumed power, and were somewhat deranged due to long &#xA;years in captivity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barbarity was not uncommon in the Ottoman empire -- they used to make &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Tower&quot;&gt;towers from skulls&lt;/a&gt; of their defeated enemies (likely including some innocents as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="329" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T04:23:01.700" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1382" CreationDate="2011-04-06T10:07:11.837" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this data is available on a world scale. Remember, many countries didn't do any census stuff before the start of the previous century, and many still don't. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wolfram Alpha&lt;/a&gt; has some data available. This one, for instance, is the life expectancy at birth for The Netherlands:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CSgae.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the impact of the two world wars? Interestingly, the Netherlands didn't even participate in WWI...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US data Wolfram has, starts in the 1930s:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eOgUc.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UK:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kXg0j.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iceland:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hdovR.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can try some more countries for yourself, but most countries don't have data before the '40s (at least not in Wolfram Alpha's database)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1051" LastEditorUserId="1051" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T11:15:51.403" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T11:15:51.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1825" CreationDate="2011-04-06T11:47:37.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you mean by connected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe (and the numbers make sense) that we have all had air in our lungs which was also in those of Genghis Khan, for example, and you call that a connection, 6 is much greater than the real number, and everyone alive is probably connected by molecules directly or via one other person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example equation, referring to Caesar: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/archives/001392.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/archives/001392.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a connection means &quot;having had a conversation with, in person&quot; it's harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing which needs to be addressed is the variety of social networks involved.&#xA;One person has the internet, another person lives as a hunter-gatherer in the jungle.&#xA;Boundaries also need to be taken into account. A North Korean citizen and a French citizen do not have the same chance of having a connection in India. French citizens have free access to internet, can leave their country at will, unlike citizens of North Korea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking Milgrams case of the café in Tunisia, well it's a poor example. Both of the parties in conversation are privileged enough to travel to Tunisia from their respective homelands, which puts them in a minority, or a given class, if you're so inclined. Remember the case is in the 60's before the advent of high-volume, lower-cost flights. On top of that, their mutual connection, owning a chain of supermarkets, will have far greater influence than the average person, and is a far from typical case. However it does give an interesting lead in what may be the quickest way to find a connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have an algorithm where you take a person, then look for the most influential person they know, and repeat that for the next two connections, you should have a huge range of options available to you. You might want the remaining steps to focus on the individual at the other end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you think having had the same molecules in your lungs is a connection, yes it is true.&#xA;If not, it's probably a lot more complicated than has been suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1659" LastEditorUserId="1659" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T09:07:37.553" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T09:07:37.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1829" CreationDate="2011-04-06T12:26:57.367" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are numerous conflicting studies regarding the efficacy of glucosamine in treating joint conditions. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c4675&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a recent meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt; (i.e. a study of studies) by the British Medical Journal suggests that it is no better than placebo for alleviating joint pain or for narrowing of joint spacing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compared with placebo, glucosamine, chondroitin, and their combination do not reduce joint pain or have an impact on narrowing of joint space. Health authorities and health insurers should not cover the costs of these preparations, and new prescriptions to patients who have not received treatment should be discouraged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1205" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T14:31:54.583" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T14:31:54.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="256" CreationDate="2011-04-06T13:23:35.367" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can tell you right now what will happen: none of the predictions will be right, or, if any are, they will be right for the wrong reasons or in different ways from what the predicters expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even this prediction will probably be wrong in profound and unexpected ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Citation according to personal account by Robusto:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every prediction I have ever seen made concerning the end of the world has been wrong. Every prediction of the end of the world that I have ever heard of has been wrong. In fact, in spite of all of them, the world has not come to an end. So the track record of apocalyptic predictions, especially when made on religious or numerological grounds, has been dismal. In research for a book I wrote about the 11th century, numerous sources cited widespread fears that the world would come to an end in the year A.D. 1000, for no other reason than that this marked the millennial anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.altarcheologie.nl/geoarchaeology/hapgood_plim.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;first millenium doomsday prophesy&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In his book, The City of God, Augustine stated that the book of Revelations was to be understood as a spiritual allegory, that the millennium was already realized within the church, and had started with the crucifixion. This resulted in all subsequent millennial statements being viewed as unorthodox, if not heretical. Some modified their doomsday prophecies in the year 1000 A.D. When the end didn’t come, they changed the date to 1033 A.D., believing the new millennium had its beginning in the year of the crucifixion 33 A.D. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Final Addition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To date, 100% of the predictions about the end of the world seem to have been in error&lt;/strong&gt;. This, of course, will not stop unscrupulous or misguided people from trying, or gullible people from believing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="1415" LastEditDate="2020-05-23T14:48:18.743" LastActivityDate="2020-05-23T14:48:18.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1839" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1846" CreationDate="2011-04-06T13:51:52.920" Score="7" ViewCount="675" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have any engagement with current pop culture you've heard about the impending &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_doomsday_prediction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;apocalypse in 2012&lt;/a&gt;. The date is usually given as December 21, 2012, supposedly derived from the end of some or another Mayan calendar. My question is, who first proposed that the end of the Mayan calendar predicted the apocalypse? The first time I read about 2012 theology was in  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pinchbeck&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daniel Pinchbeck&lt;/a&gt;'s book &lt;strong&gt;2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl&lt;/strong&gt;, but he wasn't really predicting the end of the world so much as a universal consciousness. So when did the leap to doomsday prophecy occur, and who made it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/x0k9f.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;We Were Warned&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T21:45:17.267" Title="Who first made the connection between the Mayan calendar and something bad happening in 2012?" Tags="|extinction-event|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-05-12T08:06:24.057" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1840" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1841" CreationDate="2011-04-06T14:06:39.443" Score="44" ViewCount="21552" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been numerous videos &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt1SiJsMEDc&quot;&gt;online&lt;/a&gt; claiming that Einstein as a student had a debate with an atheist professor about God.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read the text version of this story in forums and via hearsay, but I just discovered that apparently the Macedonian Ministry of Education used this story in an ad promoting religious studies in schools:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &quot;Does God Exist?&quot; Macedonia &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt1SiJsMEDc&quot;&gt;Commercial&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this story supported by factual evidence or is it merely an anecdote to exemplify a point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1633" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-06-19T05:37:32.590" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T17:45:48.730" Title="Did Einstein as a student debate with his professor about God and Evil?" Tags="|religion|education|albert-einstein|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1840" CreationDate="2011-04-06T14:20:28.620" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that this very same debate, or with slight modifications, is found all over the internet but with different protagonists (e.g. atheist professor, Muslim student &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myiwc.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-3067.html&quot;&gt;http://www.myiwc.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-3067.html&lt;/a&gt;) should be strong evidence that this is a myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do a quick google search on &quot;Atheist Professor&quot;, you will get countless variations of the same theme: Smug, arrogant atheist professor is humiliated by Einstein/Evangelical Christian/Muslim scholar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Einstein version was debunked by Snopes:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/religion/einstein.asp&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/religion/einstein.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although 2004 tellings of the legend name Albert Einstein as the faith-driven student, there is no reason to suppose the renowned physicist had anything to do with the fictive incident. Biographies of the man are silent on his having dealt one of his teachers such a comeuppance. Moreover, this famous scientist gets used in legends whose plots call for a smart person, one whom the audience will immediately recognize as such (i.e., modern tellings of an ancient legend about a learned rabbi who switches places with his servant feature Albert Einstein in the role of esteemed scholar). This venerated cultural icon has, at least in the world of contemporary lore, become a stock character to be tossed into the fray wherever the script calls for a genius. (Thankfully, contemporary lore has other uses for him too. In a legend of entirely different character, Albert Einstein was rumored to have made a guest appearance on the television western Gunsmoke.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Doing a Google search for each year since 1990 individually, the first hit I got was in 1997. It tells the story, but does not name Einstein: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.ca/#q=professor+%22absence+of+god%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;prmd=ivns&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=Q2GeTeqTJMPgiALX7ayGAw&amp;amp;ved=0CBIQpwUoBg&amp;amp;source=lnt&amp;amp;tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1997-1-1,cd_max:1997-12-31&amp;amp;tbm=&amp;amp;fp=7e325d0b562189bc&quot;&gt;&quot;Things on Which to Reflect&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;This, of course, still does not prove that the story is wrong, &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt;, if Einstein genuinely said this, there should be an earlier reference, given that he died in 1955. Add to this that the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; sites that mention this have a clear religious intention and do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; cite a source for their claim. I believe this is more than sufficient to demand evidence from the &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; side, and, lacking this, refusing to believe that Einstein really said this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="1183" LastEditDate="2011-04-08T01:21:00.470" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T01:21:00.470" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1825" CreationDate="2011-04-06T14:50:25.940" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%A9la_Bollob%C3%A1s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Béla Bollobás&lt;/a&gt;, who is famous for having studied the properties of random graphs/networks with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Erd%C5%91s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paul Erdős&lt;/a&gt; (note &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/800/zenon&quot;&gt;Zenon's&lt;/a&gt; comment &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1825/are-there-any-studies-that-prove-or-disprove-the-idea-of-six-degrees-of-separa#comment-4577&quot;&gt;above&lt;/a&gt;), discovered loose bounds on the diameter of random regular graphs.  He proved the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Theorem 1&lt;/strong&gt; (of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stanford.edu/class/msande337/notes/the%20diameter%20of%20random%20regular%20graphs.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;em&gt;Let&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;r&lt;/em&gt; ≧ 3 &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; ε &gt; 0 &lt;em&gt;be fixed and define&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;d&lt;/em&gt; = &lt;em&gt;d&lt;/em&gt;(&lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt;) &lt;em&gt;as the least integer satisfying&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;em&gt;r&lt;/em&gt;-1)&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;d&lt;/em&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt; ≧ (2+ε)&lt;em&gt;rn&lt;/em&gt; log &lt;em&gt;n.  Then a.e. r-regular graph of order n has diameter at most d.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our case, &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; would be the world population, which we can estimate at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=human%20population&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;6.93x10&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  The parameter &lt;em&gt;r&lt;/em&gt; would be the minimum number of connections per person, which I think we can estimate at 130 (based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;statistics from Facebook&lt;/a&gt;).  Plugging in those values and solving for &lt;em&gt;d&lt;/em&gt; we get&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;d&lt;/em&gt; ≧ 1 + 0.2057692596 log(0.4082721260e14 + 0.2041360630e14 ε).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This bound strictly increases as ε → ∞, so taking the limit as ε → 0 gives us the least &lt;em&gt;d&lt;/em&gt; that satisfies Theorem 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;⌈ lim&lt;sub&gt;ε→0&lt;/sub&gt; 1 + 0.2057692596 log(0.4082721260e14 + 0.2041360630e14 ε) ⌉ = 8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, by Theorem 1, the diameter of a graph on 6.93x10&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; vertices with degrees at least 130 almost surely has a diameter of at most 8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Bollobás, this bound could even be sharpened (meaning that it is likely the actual value is lower than 8).  The bound will of course also be tighter if people actually have more than 130 connections.  Also note that this is a bound on the &lt;em&gt;maximum&lt;/em&gt; degree of separation between people; the &lt;em&gt;average&lt;/em&gt; degree would likely be much lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; In a population of 6.93x10&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; in which each person is connected to at least 130 others, it can be said with extremely high confidence that the largest degree of separation between any two people is at most 8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we assume that the number of connections per person, &lt;em&gt;r&lt;/em&gt;, remains constant at 130, then we can set &lt;em&gt;d&lt;/em&gt; to 9 and solve for &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; to get an estimate on the size of the population when the maximum degree of separation will increase.  This will happen when the population is just under 10 Trillion.  Assuming our &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=growth%20rate%20of%20the%20world%20population&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;current rate of population growth&lt;/a&gt; remains constant at about 1.14% per year, our population should reach 10 Trillion in about 640 years.  Therefore, I conjecture that in the year 2651 we will have to create the &quot;Seven Degrees of Separation Game&quot;!  ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T17:26:13.837" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1825" CreationDate="2011-04-06T14:59:14.847" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft has performed an analysis of their IM network. They wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We&#xA;  investigate on a planetary-scale the oft-cited report that people are separated by “six&#xA;  degrees of separation” and ﬁnd that the average path length among Messenger users&#xA;  is 6.6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paper is available online: &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/horvitz/leskovec_horvitz_worldwide_buzz.pdf&quot;&gt;Planetary-Scale Views on an Instant-Messaging Network&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1083" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T14:59:14.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1825" CreationDate="2011-04-06T15:04:22.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Those are further readings in the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_number&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon_number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon_number&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphy_Number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphy_Number&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, ibeatgarry.com is unavailable now, one was able to search the shortest chain he beat Garry Kasparov by (if I remember correctly) the Mega Database delivered by chessgames.com. My Kasparov-number was infinite when I checked it years ago (no beating way existed), I'm sure it is less now. The strongest player (~2100-2200 ELO-points) in my then-club had 5 or 6, I can't remember. But my non-beating, only playing number is 3, it seems to be extremely few. Kasparov -&gt; Korchnoi -&gt; Kádas -&gt; me. I can't find the Korchnoi-Kádas match, but Gábor Kádas told me they played once. And I played with Gábor in 2007, if I remember correctly, but it is impossible to find, it happened in an unofficial rapidchess event. (Trivia: I lost that match! :))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="810" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T23:06:08.230" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T23:06:08.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1839" CreationDate="2011-04-06T16:00:13.500" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skeptical-science.com/critical-thinking/2012-doomsday/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Skeptical Science&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“&lt;em&gt;there is a suggestion … that&#xA;  Armageddon would overtake the&#xA;  degenerate peoples of the world and&#xA;  all creation on the final day of the&#xA;  thirteenth [b'ak'tun]. Thus … our&#xA;  present universe [would] be&#xA;  annihilated [in December 2012] when&#xA;  the Great Cycle of the Long Count&#xA;  reaches completion&lt;/em&gt;”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Michael D. Coe&lt;/strong&gt; (1966), &lt;strong&gt;The Maya&lt;/strong&gt;. Ancient peoples and places series, no. 52 (1st ed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And of course others picked it up and repeated it, thus this meme was born,&#xA;  then grew and evolved in the 1990′s&#xA;  into what we have today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;here is the full text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The idea of cyclical creations and&#xA;  destructions is a typical feature of&#xA;  Mesoamerican religions, as it is of&#xA;  Oriental. The Aztec, for instance,&#xA;  thought that the universe had passed&#xA;  through four such ages, and that we&#xA;  were now in the fifth, to be destroyed&#xA;  by earthquakes. The Maya thought along&#xA;  the same lines, in terms of eras of&#xA;  great length, like the Hindu kalpas.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;There is a suggestion that each of&#xA;  these measured 13 baktuns, or&#xA;  something less than 5,200 years, and&#xA;  that Armageddon would overtake the&#xA;  degenerate peoples of the world and&#xA;  all creation on the final day of the&#xA;  thirteenth. Thus, following the&#xA;  Thompson correlation, our present&#xA;  universe would have been created in&#xA;  3113 BC, to be annihilated on December&#xA;  24, 2011, when the Great Cycle of the&#xA;  Long Count reaches completion&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.famsi.org/research/vanstone/2012/faq.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T08:53:21.747" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T08:53:21.747" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1825" CreationDate="2011-04-06T16:44:58.750" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well since the graph is disconnected &lt;em&gt;(that is, there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples#Brazil&quot;&gt;tribes of people who still have had no contact with the outside world&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/em&gt;, this statement &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; be true, since there is no way to reach them from any of us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T16:44:58.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1849" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1897" CreationDate="2011-04-06T19:50:40.727" Score="14" ViewCount="927" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been suggested to me that human evolution has slowed or halted because natural selection no longer &quot;weeds out the weak&quot; before they get a chance to reproduce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are still places in the world where the unnatural selection of famine, disease and war kill off children and young adults in large numbers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have we observed it happening?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1669" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T20:01:17.180" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T05:56:47.857" Title="Have we observed evolution through natural selection in areas of high child/youth mortality?" Tags="|evolution|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1851" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1865" CreationDate="2011-04-06T20:13:23.750" Score="14" ViewCount="1941" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZeMP5.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Image comes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Thylacinus.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikimedia Commons&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last known &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;thylacine&lt;/a&gt; died in 1936, and the species was officially moved from 'endangered' to 'extinct' in the 1980s.  Since the last living specimen died, there have been well over 3000 reported sightings, some with photographic evidence, of living animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike many other cryptozoological animals, like bigfoot or Ogopogo, thylacines are (or were) real animals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that some animals still survive in the less populated areas of Tasmania or mainland Australia?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2019-08-12T01:54:10.263" LastActivityDate="2019-11-04T23:53:06.083" Title="The extinction of the thylacine: could some still survive?" Tags="|zoology|australia|cryptozoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1852" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1900" CreationDate="2011-04-06T21:27:09.163" Score="37" ViewCount="3236" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my research I've found statistics for spontaneous remission from addiction: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10976668&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10976668&lt;/a&gt;. The statistics for A.A. seem to be a little more difficult to find/interpret. For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.12step.com/statistics.html&quot;&gt;http://www.12step.com/statistics.html&lt;/a&gt; seems to indicate several different 12-step recovery statistics - but indicates a lack of scientific support for any of them. This seems to be the case with most 12-step statistics sites - with the most obvious offense that they are written from a biased viewpoint (the disgruntled ex-A.A.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to my question: Are there any good statistical studies that show A.A. to have a better rate than spontaneous remission?     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user776" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T23:02:59.137" LastActivityDate="2020-06-07T04:00:04.993" Title="Is Alcoholics Anonymous effective?" Tags="|alcohol|addiction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1853" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1889" CreationDate="2011-04-06T22:21:05.340" Score="18" ViewCount="5059" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been said that the human race has basically hit a point where any further evolution is essentially unnecessary: protection from most harmful diseases is provided by medicine, we have very few natural predators, and we are very good at what we do (colonising the planet.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any sign that human evolution (at least in the first world) is slowing down, or that it has stopped, or are these claims bogus, and we are still evolving at a rapid rate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-11-15T14:37:01.130" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T11:42:33.423" Title="Is human evolution slowing down?" Tags="|evolution|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1854" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1914" CreationDate="2011-04-06T22:29:50.777" Score="27" ViewCount="2712" Body="&lt;p&gt;I attended private schools from kindergarten through secondary school and was often told by the faculty that students who attended private schools got a better education, one that made them more prepared for college, than a public school education could provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many issues that complicate a fair comparison between the two, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Parents of private school students are more likely to take interest in their children's performance because they are paying a lot of money&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Private schools have a reputation of higher teacher to student ratio&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Private schools can be more selective in which students are accepted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research that shows that one type of education is better than another, while accounting for the various demographic differences between private and public schools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-06T22:32:28.853" LastActivityDate="2019-10-28T17:41:37.557" Title="Do graduates from private secondary schools perform better in college than graduates from public schools?" Tags="|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1855" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1857" CreationDate="2011-04-06T22:34:38.777" Score="16" ViewCount="948" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been extremely sceptical of this new concept of a cyber war. That is, a malicious country or organisation could attack another country by bringing down their network through, say a DDoS or a well targeted virus attack on vulnerable systems. Part of the reason I am sceptical is I don't see it being feasible for a country to cripple another countries' internet systems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been any recorded cases of this actually happening? Or is it just hype and fear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:14:31.543" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:14:31.543" Title="Is there a &quot;cyber war&quot;?" Tags="|war|security|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1856" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1859" CreationDate="2011-04-06T22:50:48.013" Score="18" ViewCount="6357" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard from several new mothers that they are being told about &lt;strong&gt;amber necklaces&lt;/strong&gt; being sold for teething babies. (Pain relief?)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very interested to see if there is any scientific evidence behind these as a medical benefit, and not just as a distraction to the teething infant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1350" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T03:54:44.923" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T22:18:05.497" Title="Do amber necklaces work for pain relief?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1855" CreationDate="2011-04-06T23:32:40.677" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Attacking and disabling an entire country's internet system is not that hard. You don't need sophisticated equipment or even a computer to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An elderly Georgian woman was&#xA;  scavenging for copper to sell as scrap&#xA;  when she accidentally sliced through&#xA;  an underground cable and cut off&#xA;  internet services to all of&#xA;  neighbouring Armenia, it emerged on&#xA;  Wednesday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The woman, 75, had been digging for&#xA;  the metal not far from the capital&#xA;  Tbilisi when her spade damaged the&#xA;  fibre-optic cable on 28 March [2010].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/06/georgian-woman-cuts-web-access&quot;&gt;(The news broke today, how could I ignore it?)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More seriously, there are examples of real cyber attacks on level of national conflicts. Perhaps the best documented and most sophisticated is the Stuxnet worm, which was apparently engineered to find its way into facilities associated with the Iranian nuclear program. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/11/stuxnet-clues/&quot;&gt;Wired magazine writes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Stuxnet worm was discovered in&#xA;  June in Iran, and has infected more&#xA;  than 100,000 computer systems&#xA;  worldwide. At first blush, it appeared&#xA;  to be a standard, if unusually&#xA;  sophisticated, Windows virus designed&#xA;  to steal data, but experts quickly&#xA;  determined it contained targeted code&#xA;  designed to attack Siemens Simatic&#xA;  WinCC SCADA systems. SCADA systems,&#xA;  short for “supervisory control and&#xA;  data acquisition,” are control systems&#xA;  that manage pipelines, nuclear plants&#xA;  and various utility and manufacturing&#xA;  equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers determined that Stuxnet&#xA;  was designed to intercept commands&#xA;  sent from the SCADA system to control&#xA;  a certain function at a facility, but&#xA;  until Symantec’s latest research, it&#xA;  was not known what function was being&#xA;  targeted for sabotage. Symantec still&#xA;  has not determined what specific&#xA;  facility or type of facility Stuxnet&#xA;  targeted, but the new information&#xA;  lends weight to speculation that&#xA;  Stuxnet was targeting the Bushehr or&#xA;  Natanz nuclear facilities in Iran as a&#xA;  means to sabotage Iran’s nascent&#xA;  nuclear program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Symantec, Stuxnet targets&#xA;  specific frequency-converter drives —&#xA;  power supplies used to control the&#xA;  speed of a device, such as a motor.&#xA;  The malware intercepts commands sent&#xA;  to the drives from the Siemens SCADA&#xA;  software, and replaces them with&#xA;  malicious commands to control the&#xA;  speed of a device, varying it wildly,&#xA;  but intermittently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The malware, however, doesn’t sabotage&#xA;  just any frequency converter. It&#xA;  inventories a plant’s network and only&#xA;  springs to life if the plant has at&#xA;  least 33 frequency converter drives&#xA;  made by Fararo Paya in Teheran, Iran,&#xA;  or by the Finland-based Vacon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even more specifically, Stuxnet&#xA;  targets only frequency drives from&#xA;  these two companies that are running&#xA;  at high speeds — between 807 Hz and&#xA;  1210 Hz. Such high speeds are used&#xA;  only for select applications. Symantec&#xA;  is careful not to say definitively&#xA;  that Stuxnet was targeting a nuclear&#xA;  facility, but notes that “frequency&#xA;  converter drives that output over 600&#xA;  Hz are regulated for export in the&#xA;  United States by the Nuclear&#xA;  Regulatory Commission as they can be&#xA;  used for uranium enrichment.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the exact author of Stuxnet may not be known, it's tough to imagine any reason a non-nation state actor would engineer such a thing. Therefore, it probably should be considered a cyber war attack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So will countries ever really declare war over these kinds of attacks? I'm not sure. Cyber attacks are very hard to trace. It's not like planes and tanks emblazoned with flags are rolling over borders. Instead, we're talking about pieces of code that spread themselves to hundreds of thousands of computers - and on most of them, doing nothing. It could be a really interesting field of international law, once one of these attacks actually kills people or otherwise compromises some nation's security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="558" LastEditDate="2012-05-13T18:35:44.013" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T18:35:44.013" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1855" CreationDate="2011-04-06T23:36:04.353" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cyber war is very real- for example see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-29/ahmadinejad-confirms-several-iran-centrifuges-affected-by-computer-virus.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-29/ahmadinejad-confirms-several-iran-centrifuges-affected-by-computer-virus.html&lt;/a&gt; where it is suspected that another country used a virus to cause crippling malfunctions in Iranian uranium centrifuges. Even more high profile is the recent action of Wikileaks to negatively impact the U.S. government. Though some embarrassment was caused- it seems to have been forgotten about as of late. I'd say the real cyber warfare is this use of the Internet's ability to quickly disseminate information. Most advanced armies operate under the precept that the control of information is a vital part of warfare. The crippling of all forms of communication and control is surely on the table of strategic planners, including the devastation of an operating internet by virus or damage to physical facilities. Though we do, and I'm sure will, also see direct physical impacts like the first one I mentioned.        &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user776" LastActivityDate="2011-04-06T23:36:04.353" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1856" CreationDate="2011-04-07T01:13:55.243" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Again, this is an excellent opportunity to practice grass roots skepticism.  Ask yourself:  By what mechanism is this supposed to work?  How does the proposed mechanism align with what we know about science, biology, physics, etc.?  In searching around for an answer for you, I see the same info bit repeated over and over again, but no original citation for it.  It says things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One theory suggests that when amber is worn on the skin, the skin's warmth releases miniscule amounts of healing oils from the amber which are then absorbed via the skin into the bloodstream. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or even:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A second theory is based on scientific findings which have shown that amber is electromagnetically alive and therefore charged with a significant amount of organic energy. Its special attribute is the fact that it is electronegative. Wearing amber produces negative ionisation on the skin's surface. This, in turn, has a positive influence on the human body. The negative ions assist in the in the prevention of illness. These health-promoting effects apply to babies, children and adults alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exactly how do oils or negative ions actually affect the body?  Well, I have done google searches for all the .edu and .gov sites, and I am not coming up with much.  The closest I could come up with is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2194832/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the use for ions in cleaning the air&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If all this language sounds familiar&lt;/em&gt;, it may be because it's the &lt;strong&gt;same shtick as used by the PowerBlance folks&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/716/do-those-hologram-bracelets-do-anything-at-all/720#720&quot;&gt;And we have already answered questions about them.&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.startribune.com/local/blogs/113017079.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUnciatkEP7DhUsl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Power Balance must state that they have no actual scientific backing for their claims&lt;/a&gt;.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepticbros.com/placebo-bands/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Placebo band&lt;/a&gt; is just as effective, and much cheaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in other words, there is no reliable evidence.  Although, I would think two things right off&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Couldn't pieces of amber present a chocking hazard to the child?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And I'm sure that something pretty and sparkly will distract a child.  Perhaps an origin to this folk remedy?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T02:16:07.880" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1860" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1862" CreationDate="2011-04-07T01:28:58.140" Score="43" ViewCount="8068" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once had a dog that was fairly frequently given chocolate, and I never noticed any consequences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard somewhat recently that chocolate is bad for dogs. Is this true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly, too much chocolate is bad, but isn't everything bad in excessive quantities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="849" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T06:29:13.853" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T20:10:23.977" Title="Is chocolate bad for dogs?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1860" CreationDate="2011-04-07T02:04:38.720" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vets will tell you that chocolate is toxic for dogs and cats. &lt;a href=&quot;http://vetmedicine.about.com/od/toxicology/f/How-Much-Chocolate-Is-Toxic.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This page at about.com&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The toxic dose of Theobromine (and caffeine) for pets is 100-200mg/kg. (1 kilogram = 2.2 pounds). However, various reports by the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) have noted problems at doses much lower than this - i.e. 20mg/kg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translated to a &amp;quot;typical&amp;quot; scenario, and using the 20mg/kg as a measure of &amp;quot;problems can be seen at this level of ingestion&amp;quot;, a 22.7 kg (50 pound) dog would have to consume about 255 grams (9 ounces) of milk chocolate to consume the 20mg/kg amount of Theobromine. Some dogs won't see problems at this rate. Some may.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it would seem that a mid-sized dog could probably eat a typical chocolate bar without impact. But a typical mid-sized cat (say 4.5 kg or so) is asking for trouble at 28g (1 oz) of chocolate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if you prefer really strong dark chocolates, it will take less weight of candy bar to deliver the same dose as estimated for milk chocolate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the about.com piece points out, those are conservative numbers. The actual lethal dose is likely much higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other note: Caffeine is also a problem for dog and cat metabolism. That article claims a similar range for toxic doses as for theobromine. I would be careful about letting the cat finish your tall mocha latte...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some supporting links from the about.com article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nat Geo has a very visual &lt;a href=&quot;http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/10/pets/chocolate-chart-interactive.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;interactive calculator&lt;/a&gt; for dog weight vs. toxic dose for a variety of chocolate products. Its pretty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AskAVetQuestion.com has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.askavetquestion.com/chocolate_toxicity.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;toxicity calculator&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vetmedicine.about.com/od/toxicology/tp/Chocolate-Toxicity.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another page&lt;/a&gt; has technical background on chocolate toxicity, including symptoms to watch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving to a more technical source, Merck has a Veterinary Manual with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/211104.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reference page on chocolate&lt;/a&gt;. The information there generally confirms the About.com article (which should not be surprise because it is cited as a source) and is similar to other summaries for pet owners that Google turns up. It is, however, written with a practicing Vet as the intended audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The toxic effect is explained by Merck as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theobromine and caffeine are readily absorbed from the GI tract and are widely distributed throughout the body. They are metabolized in the liver and undergo enterohepatic recycling. Methylxanthines are excreted in the urine as both metabolites and unchanged parent compounds. The half-lives of theobromine and caffeine in dogs are 17.5 hr and 4.5 hr, respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means that as long as the lethal dose is not exceeded, and the dog's liver function (and kidney function as well I assume) is not otherwise compromised, the theobromine and caffeine will eventually be excreted. With a half-life of 17.5 hr, it would require about 40 hr to reduce a near lethal dose of 100mg/kg to below the mentioned clinical effect threshold of 20mg/kg. (We want to reduce the dose by a factor of 5 from 100mg/kg to 20mg/kg. So we calculate 17.5 * log&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; 5 = 17.5 * 2.32 = 40.6 and round that to 40 or so to one significant figure for a reasonable estimate. Two days is also a reasonable estimate.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="819" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T20:10:23.977" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1863" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1875" CreationDate="2011-04-07T04:11:16.883" Score="8" ViewCount="12707" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_JS1YG8H2c&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this commercial&lt;/a&gt; soccer player Ronaldinho pulls on a new pair of boots, juggles the ball and then manages to bounce the ball off the crossbar of the goal at a reasonable distance and the ball returns to his feet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was plenty of debate at the time on whether the add was a fake or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I would like to know, has there been anyone since who has been able to reproduce this trick, even if it's just once? To get the ball to bounce off a crossbar at a reasonable distance and have it return within a reasonable distance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="1343" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T13:21:58.617" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T13:21:58.617" Title="Ronaldinho crossbar commercial" Tags="|advertising|video|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1851" CreationDate="2011-04-07T06:01:03.383" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been no recorded thylacine sightings on mainland Australia in modern (European) times. Tasmania is certainly its last hope, and that hope is very small indeed. What might be called &quot;reliable&quot; evidence such as tracks, scat and vocalizations were last recorded during searches in the 1960s, although these were inconclusive. Since then it's been reported sightings only, occasionally accompanied by dubious photographic evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's likely that individual thylacines lived beyond the 1930s, it's essentially impossible, ecologically speaking, that any remnant population was large enough to sustain the species to the present day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1676" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T06:01:03.383" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1849" CreationDate="2011-04-07T07:16:36.897" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, we have seen it in resistance to diseases. Diseases spread readily in Eurasia, and over time resistance built up to them. When the colonization of the Americas started, these diseases arrived at the same time in a population that hadn't encountered them before and this had no resistance. We don't know how many died, but some estimates go as high as 95% of the indigenous population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=European_colonization_of_the_Americas&amp;amp;oldid=422664379&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;relevant Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="80" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T12:31:27.050" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T12:31:27.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1800" CreationDate="2011-04-07T09:43:45.777" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is Maybe, if you have a pacemaker, and then only potentially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normal people: &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt; as I couldn't find any warnings where I would expect to find them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I'm not a medical doctor, if you are really worried you should ask a cardiologist.  I can not be sued for malpractice (and disclaim liability for my answer), but as professionals they can be held responsible for their advice.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for the evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some guidelines for pacemaker users from a medical practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cardioassoc.com/patient_pgs/procedures/pacemaker.asp&quot;&gt;http://www.cardioassoc.com/patient_pgs/procedures/pacemaker.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cellular phones, CB radios and ham&#xA;  radios can sometimes interfere with&#xA;  the function of some pacemakers.&#xA;  Cellular phone and CB radio antennas&#xA;  must remain at least six inches away&#xA;  from the pacemaker. Hence do not carry&#xA;  a cellular phone in your chest pocket,&#xA;  even when it is turned off. When using&#xA;  a cellular phone, hold it to the ear&#xA;  farthest from the pacemaker generator.&#xA;  Ham radio antenna should remain at&#xA;  least six feet away from the&#xA;  pacemaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Power levels from amateur radio equipment (up to 1500 watts) are much higher than cellular phones (maybe a watt or so).  However, the antenna for the 1500W radio will be at least 10 or more meters away but the cellphone can be put in your pocket, much closer to the heart , and the effect of EMF is a 1/r^2 effect.   Still amateur radio is a good place to look as it has been around a lot longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/jul94.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Technology/tis/info/pdf/jul94.pdf&lt;/a&gt; notes that historical pacemakers has trouble with various EMF producing equipment such as microwave ovens, certain medical scanning equipment that produced 13 and 27Mhz signals, and welding equipment, but has not cited any information about deaths.  It claims that modern pacemaker operation should be safe in most amateur radio environments that meet RF safety standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sss-mag.com/rfsafety_bkg.html&quot;&gt;http://www.sss-mag.com/rfsafety_bkg.html&lt;/a&gt; has a nice article on RF safety.  It refers to an American Physical Society publication that could not link RF fields to cancer -- but you are asking about the heart.... The article also has a section on pacemaker safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only websites where I could find a connection between a normal heart and interference from radio transmitters (such as phones) were holistic in nature. There was also this spam embedded in an Amazon discussion group:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Chronic-Environmental-EMF-Increases-Stress/forum/Fx2QOUHMNSS61JZ/Tx3NFOKMU13WOJO/1?_encoding=UTF8&amp;amp;asin=006113029X&quot;&gt;Chronic EMF Increases Stress, Appetite, Obesity, Heart Disease, Diabetes, etc.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google &quot;American Heart Association cellphone&quot; only brings up concern in the context of pacemakers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4676&quot;&gt;http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4676&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Cellphones&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cellphones available in the United&#xA;  States (less than 3 watts) don't seem&#xA;  to damage pulse generators or affect&#xA;  how the pacemaker works. Technology is&#xA;  rapidly changing as the Federal&#xA;  Communications Commission (FCC) is&#xA;  making new frequencies available.&#xA;  Newer cellphones using these new&#xA;  frequencies might make pacemakers less&#xA;  reliable. A group of cellphone&#xA;  companies is studying that&#xA;  possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there were danger, I would expect the American Heart Association or one of the other sources to announce it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my final answer is:  &lt;strong&gt;I could find no evidence of warnings about the dangers of cellphones to a healthy heart directed at the general public at the most likely authoritative source&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are asking for personal safety reasons, you should consider that: (1) the effect of a radio transmitter is proportional to 1/r^2, twice as far away is 1/4 the signal. (2) in your automobile, an exploding airbag hitting your chest pocket may break the phone up into sharp pieces that could hurt you.... (3) there have been reports and demonstrations (e.g. on youTube) that under some circumstances Li-Ion batteries can ignite... and most phones use Li-Ion batteries.  However, there could be some warnings... like smoke and heat... and isn't common.  If any of this really worries you, just put it in another pocket&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T11:15:02.890" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T11:15:02.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1871" CreationDate="2011-04-07T10:00:17.603" Score="79" ViewCount="12331" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that it will &quot;wash away the nutrients&quot;, that it dilutes stomach acid and all kinds of things. Is this just an old-wives tale?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-08-16T20:35:22.060" LastActivityDate="2017-10-24T09:44:37.517" Title="Is drinking water during a meal bad for you?" Tags="|nutrition|water|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1870" CreationDate="2011-04-07T10:22:30.660" Score="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;This positively reeks of old-wives-tale and pseudo-science. It appears to be widespread online, mainly in 'e-health' forums. It makes sense - water dilutes acid, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right. But &lt;em&gt;diluting&lt;/em&gt; an acid doesn't make it weaker. It may slow the rate of reaction, but gastric juices are strong stuff: a glass of water will hardly touch them. It takes an alkali or amphoteric like sodium bicarbonate to neutralise them effectively. And it so happens that sodium bicarbonate is exactly what the body secretes to neutralise the gastric juices. It's also what antacid tablets are made of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/expert-answers/digestion/faq-20058348&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; from the Mayo Clinic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's no concern that water will dilute the digestive juices or interfere with digestion. In fact, drinking water during or after a meal can actually improve digestion. Water and other liquids help break down the food in your stomach and keep your digestive system on track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd rather believe a qualified gastroenterologist than a web-full of random forum posts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1205" LastEditorUserId="27189" LastEditDate="2017-10-23T02:26:29.610" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T02:26:29.610" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1873" CreationDate="2011-04-07T10:53:11.083" Score="31" ViewCount="33318" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KWjkc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Las Vegas Strip&quot;&gt; (Image: &lt;a href=&quot;http://pdphoto.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's no secret that casinos are designed to encourage visitors to stay (and hopefully gamble). But how far do casinos really go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://listverse.com/2010/02/09/10-tricks-casinos-use-on-you/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;10 Tricks Casinos Use On you&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;free drinks &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;no clocks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;no windows&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;labyrinth design&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;alluring sounds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/5013038.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This BBC article&lt;/a&gt; seems to confirm at least some of these tricks. But I'm especially interested in the &quot;&lt;strong&gt;extra oxygen&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No ordinary air-con for US casinos,&#xA;  where extra oxygen may be pumped in to&#xA;  help players stay alert. The&#xA;  manufacturer of oxygen boxes used in&#xA;  Las Vegas casinos has recently&#xA;  launched the product [in the UK].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has there ever been a report about a casino pumping extra oxygen into their rooms?&lt;/strong&gt; Wouldn't that be illegal, due to the increased fire hazard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1855015/do_casinos_pump_oxygen_into_the_air.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;L. Vincent Poupard&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In every state in the United States,&#xA;  it is illegal for an establishment to&#xA;  pump oxygen into the air ducts. All&#xA;  states enforce this law by threatening&#xA;  to take away a company's business&#xA;  license if it is found that they are&#xA;  doing this kind of act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Occasionally, members of the Las Vegas&#xA;  Gaming Commission will enter a casino&#xA;  to test the oxygen levels. This is to&#xA;  ensure the general populace that this&#xA;  action is not happening.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-04-08T09:04:57.090" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T09:30:48.597" Title="Do some casinos use extra oxygen to increase gambling, or is this a myth?" Tags="|psychology|gambling|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1872" CreationDate="2011-04-07T11:15:50.143" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;No they don't. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/luck/casino.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/luck/casino.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LEGEND: Casino Windsor pumps oxygen or some kind of scent into the gaming rooms, making patrons gamble more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;REALITY: Mundy has heard this legend many times. &amp;quot;You can't convince people it's not true,&amp;quot; he said. Pumping oxygen or anything else into a casino to make people gamble would be a felony, Mundy said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mundy believes the legend has its roots in a failed experiment in an Atlantic City casino, where a scientist asked permission to study the effects of different scents on patrons. The results were inconclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, that would increase the fire risk, and probably would be illegal in most countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as I understood it, oxygen doesn't make you more alert. That's an old myth, as assumption based on that lack of oxygen makes you tired and dizzy. But I couldn't find any references to that, except Wikipedia saying that any effects of Oxygen is likely due to the placebo effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T17:58:45.557" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1863" CreationDate="2011-04-07T12:40:36.453" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;layout=2&amp;amp;eotf=1&amp;amp;sl=auto&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http://www.vg.no/sport/fotball/artikkel.php?artid=297046&amp;amp;act=url&quot;&gt;text of a Norwegian article&lt;/a&gt; that purports to talk a director of communications at Nike about the commercial. I can't really speak to the veracity of this article, though, and the title is certainly deceptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ronaldinho admits cheating&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By Ole Kristian Strøm&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Published 18/11/1905 - 6:49, modified 11/18/2005&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ronaldinho himself, according to the&#xA;  BBC and several other sites, claiming&#xA;  that everything is authentic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the commercial for a new Nike&#xA;  soccer shoes nullify the Barcelona&#xA;  star, apparently the laws of physics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He bangs the ball on goal, hitting the&#xA;  crossbar - and the ball comes back to&#xA;  the Brazilian, which dampens it, and&#xA;  continues to perform tricks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Four times in a row. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's a pity to reveal, but where he&#xA;  hit the crossbar four times, we've&#xA;  been playing around with some digital&#xA;  solutions,&quot; said Vita Clausen,&#xA;  director of communications in northern&#xA;  Europe for Nike. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Got help &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If there is a football player who can&#xA;  do something like that, it's&#xA;  Ronaldinho. He is a wonderful and&#xA;  magical footballer. But in reality, a&#xA;  man inside the line and kicking the&#xA;  ball back to Ronaldinho. But he&#xA;  actually hit the crossbar twice in a&#xA;  row while shooting,&quot; said Clausen to&#xA;  dr.dk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nike has since cut off the man, so we&#xA;  only see Ronaldinho as juggling. The&#xA;  debate has raged on the Internet.&#xA;  Ronaldinho himself has on several&#xA;  websites cited in the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's true. It is not cheating. I usually tend to shoot the ball so&#xA;  against the crossbar in the course of&#xA;  training. I only did what I usually&#xA;  do. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is impossible &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was not meant that there would be no advertising. It would just be&#xA;  something that people could enjoy on&#xA;  the Internet. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But then it that is so, and this I am&#xA;  proud of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Zinedine Zidane has been quoted as&#xA;  saying that &quot;this is impossible.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Promotional clip is as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After trick their way to the middle of&#xA;  the 16-yard box, Ronaldinho bangs the&#xA;  ball towards goal. It hit the&#xA;  crossbar, is in a beautiful arc back&#xA;  to the Brazilian, which dampen the&#xA;  ball and continues with no tricks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then again, he sends off a rocket on&#xA;  goal, the ball hit the left crossbar -&#xA;  and goes back to Ronaldinho, without&#xA;  having touched the ground. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How's also a third and fourth time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;layout=2&amp;amp;eotf=1&amp;amp;sl=auto&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http://www.dr.dk/Sporten/Fodbold/Int.fodbold/2005/11/07/140411.htm&quot;&gt;source of the article&lt;/a&gt;, from Denmark's national channel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is as close to any official word on the commercial I've found. It seems to me it would be easy to film the player shooting the shots and have a digitally removed person throwing different balls back to simulate the catches. That would also explain why the ball does come back to him a bit quickly. So if the video was trickery to start with, there'd be little point in anyone trying to replicate it without trickery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And WOW... The new contextual translating Google does is pretty amazing. There are still some rough spots, but... WOW.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="1343" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T13:13:14.643" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T13:13:14.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1870" CreationDate="2011-04-07T13:41:28.753" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gastric acid production is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastric_acid&quot;&gt;carefully regulated&lt;/a&gt;.  Therefore, drinking water (in reasonable quantities) is very unlikely to have a significant negative impact.  (After all, any food you eat will also dilute your stomach acid, and the food very likely has pH buffers in it, unlike water.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &quot;wash away the nutrients&quot; is particularly silly--wash it away to &lt;em&gt;where&lt;/em&gt;?  It's all still in your stomach, and you have twenty feet of intestine devoted to extracting nutrients from material in your digestive tract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T13:41:28.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1878" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1880" CreationDate="2011-04-07T14:34:02.780" Score="5" ViewCount="5082" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of websites out there with domain names containing words like &amp;quot;healing&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;natural remedy&amp;quot; that suggest that your immune system can be affected by excess sugar. Others also suggest Vitamin C is affected by too much sugar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sugar depresses the immune system.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have known this for decades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The health dangers which ingesting sugar on an habitual basis creates are certain. Simple sugars have been observed to aggravate asthma, move mood swings, provoke personality changes, muster mental illness, nourish nervous disorders, deliver diabetes, hurry heart disease, grow gallstones, hasten hypertension, and add arthritis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/sugar.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sugar's effect on your health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific truth to these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T12:18:36.453" Title="Does excess sugar affect your immune system/inhibit vitamin C absorption?" Tags="|medical-science|immune-system|sugar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1853" CreationDate="2011-04-07T15:08:45.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The assumption that an absence of natural selection leads to a stop of evolution is false. In the absence of natural selection genetic mutations would still change the gene pool.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_drift&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Genetic drift&lt;/a&gt; will still happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evolution doesn't care whether it's &quot;necessary&quot; or not. As long as there are genetic factors that influence the average numbers of children of a woman you will have evolution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in Western society different women have a different number of children. It's hard to imagine that the amount of children that a women gets doesn't get influenced by some personality traits.&#xA;A lot of personality treats are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/fall06/yoonh/psy3135/articles/Jang%20et%20al_1996.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;partly heritable&lt;/a&gt;. It's highly unlikely that there won't be genes that influence the amount of children that a woman gets.&#xA;The same is true for the amount of children that men get. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Embryonic screening will add further evolutionary pressure. In the near future gene therapy might make further changes to our gene pool. We might switch a variety of enzymes against similar enzymes from other species that work more efficiently.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T01:01:57.247" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T01:01:57.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1878" CreationDate="2011-04-07T15:35:36.103" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Large amounts of excess sugar in the gut can prohibit the absorption of Vitamin C ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.nutr.25.050304.092647&quot;&gt;http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.nutr.25.050304.092647&lt;/a&gt;), and Vitamin C is an antioxidant, so the argument can be made that excess sugar affects your immune system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is not clear how much sugar is classed as 'excess'. These things are often blown out of proportion: people who go on about how terrible caffeine is for you often cite research where rats were given &lt;em&gt;massive&lt;/em&gt; doses of it, like that proves one cup a day will see you to an early grave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, antioxidants are far from being a panacaea. They are supposedly beneficial in that they destroy free radicals in the blood stream. However, free radicals are themselves essential in the immune system's destruction of pathogenic bacteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As ever, the best advice is use your common sense. Eating a lot of sugar is bad for your teeth, and if you don't burn off the calories gained from eating it you'll probably become overweight, with all the health risks that entails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But sugar in moderation is not necessarily a bad thing: recent studies have even shown that the pleasure derived from eating comfort foods, and the subsequent benefit to your mental health, outweighs the negative aspects of eating them. ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2011/03/27/Meatloaf-mashed-potatoes-fight-loneliness/UPI-79641301252021/&quot;&gt;http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2011/03/27/Meatloaf-mashed-potatoes-fight-loneliness/UPI-79641301252021/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1205" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T15:35:36.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1882" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1887" CreationDate="2011-04-07T15:49:18.847" Score="8" ViewCount="679" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to many news sources, meditation is more effecting than morphine in reducing pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to a study in Wednesday's issue of Journal of Neuroscience, meditation can reduce pain by 40 to 57 percent. That's a better figure than what's been recorded for pain-relieving medicines — including morphine — which top off at a 25 percent pain reduction.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  --&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.courant.com/2011-04-06/health/hc-weir-meditation-pain-0406-20110406_1_meditation-morphine-pain&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be reconducted to the following statements by the author of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citeulike.org/user/StephanMatthiesen/article/9112832&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt;, Fadel Zeidan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;‘We found a big effect – about a 40 percent reduction in pain intensity and a 57 percent reduction in pain unpleasantness,’ added Zeidan, post-doctoral research fellow at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre.&#xA;  ‘Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25 percent,’ said Zeidan, reports the Journal of Neuroscience.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  --&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inewsone.com/2011/04/06/over-an-hour-of-meditation-reduces-pain/41439&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like an &lt;strong&gt;extraordinary claim&lt;/strong&gt;, requiring &lt;strong&gt;extraordinary evidence&lt;/strong&gt;. Is there any study that contradicts Zeidan? Is he actually making the same claims, or is he a &lt;em&gt;victim&lt;/em&gt; of sensationalist reporting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T19:50:49.617" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T14:23:12.807" Title="Is meditation a better analgesic than morphine?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|meditation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1853" CreationDate="2011-04-07T17:04:37.690" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, a few definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evolution can be defined as the change in &quot;allele frequencies&quot; over time, where &quot;allele frequency&quot; can e.g. be &quot;how often does mutation X occur in this population&quot;, or &quot;what fraction of the population has double the copies of gene X&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This evolution can be both adaptive and non-adaptive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adaptive changes in allele frequencies are those that respond to selective pressure, i.e. these changes modify the organism such that it responds either better (positive selection) or worse (negative selection) to the environment, and is thus able to have more, or fewer viable offspring, respectively. This change in viable offspring is usually called &quot;natural selection&quot;, though the same mechanisms apply for breeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-adaptive changes in allele frequencies are those that occur regardless of any selective pressure. These include random mutations, genetic drift (i.e. changes in allele frequencies that happen by chance, and are often slightly deleterious), and recombination (the choice of which alleles you get from which grandparent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When people claim that &quot;evolution is slowing down&quot;, they usually mean that there is less adaptive evolution&lt;/strong&gt;. Before I go into that, let's quickly look at non-adaptive evolution. There would be two ways how non-adaptive evolution could slow down: Either, we are exposed to fewer mutagens, i.e. chemicals or radiation that leads to mutations. This is most likely not the case. Alternatively, non-adaptive evolution could be slowed down if we started reproducing clonally, which hasn't happened yet. In sum, non-adaptive evolution has not slowed down, and may even be speeding up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The speed of adaptive evolution depends on two factors (see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/104/suppl.1/8597.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;): The strength of the positive or negative effect of the allele, and the size of the population. Due to non-adaptive effects, such as mutation, which can revert a beneficial allele modification, or recombination, which can prevent the allele from propagating, there is always some &quot;noise&quot; when passing on alleles to the next generation. Averaged over an entire population, this noise is a lot more important when the population is small than when the population is big. Alleles whose effect is weaker than the noise level will not be selected for, because they'll simply disappear again. Thus, as population size increases, more and more alleles will have a noticeable positive or negative effect, and will thus be selected for or against.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, &lt;strong&gt;as the number of humans increases, adaptive evolution should speed up. This prediction has been shown to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/104/52/20753.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;true for humans in the last 40k years&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. However, this study could only look up to some 5-10k year ago, since not enough genome data was available at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it possible that since then, speed of adaptive evolution has slowed down? Clearly, the human population size is expanding, so we would expect that this speed-up effect should be still present today. What we can influence thanks to e.g. modern medicine is the selective pressure, i.e. there is less positive and negative selective pressure on some alleles than before. Thus, for certain specific features, adaptive evolution might in fact have slowed down, if the strength of the selection effect has decreased more than the effect of increased population size. At the same time, there are plenty of new environmental challenges for our bodies - for example, it is now quite beneficial to have a genetic makeup that allows you to respond well to mainstream drugs, and, as @Christian has mentioned, there is now the possibility of genetic screening combined with safer abortions that is already changing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-selective_abortion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;male/female ratio&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, non-adaptive evolution is possibly speeding up, and adaptive evolution is most likely speeding up as well - it's just still not as fast that people see effects within a handful of generations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastEditorUserId="1690" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T17:42:28.277" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T17:42:28.277" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1790" CreationDate="2011-04-07T18:35:30.253" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a review titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21139125&quot;&gt;&quot;Nutrition concerns and health effects of vegetarian diets&quot;&lt;/a&gt; published in the journal Nutrition in cinical practice. They summarize the research on nutrition concerns and possible health benefits associated with a vegetarian diet. One factor that makes a comparison hard is that there exists a large variety of eating patterns that fall under the label vegetarianism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the subject of cardiovascular disease they state&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compared with nonvegetarians,&#xA;  vegetarians (both lacto-ovo&#xA;  vegetarians and vegans) have a lower&#xA;  risk of death from ischemic heart&#xA;  disease, even after adjustment for&#xA;  body mass index (BMI) and smoking&#xA;  habits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A vegetarian diet is associated with lower cholesterol levels, which might be a partial explanation of this observed effect. Also the lower average BMI of vegetarians seems to play a role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the cited studies called &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=565308&quot;&gt;&quot;Hypertension and blood pressure among meat eaters, ﬁsh eaters, vegetarians and vegans in EPIC– Oxford&quot;&lt;/a&gt; examined blood pressure in 11,000 men and women in the UK. They took different nutrient intake and lifestyle differences, e.g. exercise, smoking and alcohol consumption, into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A vegetarian diet also seems to be associated with a lower &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index&quot;&gt;Body-Mass-Index&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BMI values are reported to be higher&#xA;  in nonvegetarians compared with&#xA;  vegetarians for both men and women,&#xA;  and BMI values tend to increase as the&#xA;  frequency of meat consumption&#xA;  increases&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the subject of diabetes they state&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vegetarians have significantly lower&#xA;  rates of developing type 2 diabetes&#xA;  than do omnivores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be partly explained by the lower average BMI for vegetarians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also studies listed in the review that show a lower risk for certain cancers. For osteoporosis there were no significant differences found between vegetarians and omnivores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you also have to take possible nutrient deficiencies into account, especially for the more restrictive vegetarian diets like veganism. The authors of the review conclude&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Appropriately planned vegetarian diets&#xA;  are healthful and nutritionally&#xA;  adequate and are beneficial in the&#xA;  prevention and treatment of certain&#xA;  chronic diseases. Poorly planned&#xA;  vegetarian diets can be deficient in&#xA;  vitamin B12, calcium, vitamin D, zinc,&#xA;  iron, and long-chain ω-3 fatty acids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-04-07T20:03:50.817" LastActivityDate="2011-04-07T20:03:50.817" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 2.5" />
  <row Id="1887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1882" CreationDate="2011-04-07T19:16:17.643" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The pain assay used was a semi-acute pain assay (from the paper, p. 5541):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Noxious thermal stimuli were delivered&#xA;  to the posterior aspect of the right&#xA;  calf by a 16 × 16 mm2 TSA II thermal&#xA;  stimulator (Medoc). The “heat”&#xA;  condition consisted of thermal stimuli&#xA;  that were administered in alternating&#xA;  patterns of heat (49°C) and neutral&#xA;  (35°C) with 12 s durations at each&#xA;  temperature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analgesics typically work better on chronic pain, so even if one compared directly (which the paper does not) I'm not sure that the results would seem all that surprising, especially since (at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_management&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;according to Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;) opioids &quot;do not provide complete analgesia regardless of whether the pain is acute or chronic in origin&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course one would like to see the results replicated and there may be methodological problems with the study (e.g. the training does not appear to have been done in a double-blind fashion, subjects served as their own controls, etc..).  But it doesn't seem to me to be an extraordinary claim, just an interesting one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it's worth pointing out that this is not just &quot;wishing away&quot; the pain; it's a specific meditative training regime that probably works in a very different way than &quot;wishing&quot;.  We have much more dramatic examples than this of attentional or context-specific impacts on our perception.  (E.g. a gentle touch from a loved one vs. a gentle touch when one is surrounded by spiders.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="1039" LastEditDate="2011-05-27T14:23:12.807" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T14:23:12.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1853" CreationDate="2011-04-07T21:00:25.853" Score="24" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Very short version&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evolution is not slowing down, nor it can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Intuitive version&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose there's a lot of selection pressure on height: tall people make more children. Thanks to evolution, people will get taller on average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose there's no selection pressure on height: tall and short people make the same number of children. Thanks to evolution, the variety of heights will increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, evolution is at work. It does not slow down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Lengthy version&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;There will be only Wikipedia linking here because this stuff is textbook biology. Evolution is an established scientific fact.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a lack of understanding of how modern evolution works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Mutation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to understand &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;evolution&lt;/a&gt; is by understanding that our genetic characteristics have no physical way to remain static. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our genetic code mutates via the following mechanisms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The major sources of such variation are mutation, genetic recombination and gene flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation#Causes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mutation&lt;/a&gt; occurs because of transcription errors and other radiation or chemically induced mutations happen randomly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_recombination#Chromosomal_crossover&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Genetic recombination&lt;/a&gt; happens as part of the way we reproduce. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_flow#Gene_flow_in_humans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gene flow&lt;/a&gt; is the mixing of genes that happens when people with very diverse gene sets reproduce -- think about interracial marriage. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important points to understand here are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mutations are inevitable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Natural Selection&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What happens when there are mutations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In most cases, nothing much - our DNA system is resilient to changes, our &quot;program&quot; is very stable and works anyways as expected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some cases, everything breaks, and you have genetic disease or death.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some other cases there will be differences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important point to note here is that &lt;strong&gt;some mutations will be necessarily correlated with having more offspring&lt;/strong&gt;, some other will be necessarily correlated with having less. This is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;natural selection&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Natural selection is the term in biology for the process by which biologic traits become more or less common in a population due to consistent effects upon the survival or reproduction of their bearers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Favourable &lt;strong&gt;mutations will take a large number of generations to propagate across the entire population&lt;/strong&gt;, and unfavourable mutations will also. This is because the favourable mutation happens rarely, but being favourable, it grows exponentially over time until it saturates the gene pool or becomes less favourable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mutations keep on happening as they are intrinsic in the process of reproduction. The gene pool &quot;evolves&quot; by allowing variety in the directions not suppressed by natural selection, and enforcing uniformity in the directions where natural selection is active. In either case, evolution is at work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See a very good article &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_evolutionary_synthesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for more info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-05-19T11:42:33.423" LastActivityDate="2017-05-19T11:42:33.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1894" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1929" CreationDate="2011-04-07T23:36:52.453" Score="18" ViewCount="3185" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been reports in Texas in 2004 of a creature that looks like a dog which attacks and sucks the blood from livestock. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any of those claims have any validity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1445" LastEditorUserId="1343" LastEditDate="2011-04-09T00:23:57.567" LastActivityDate="2023-08-02T15:52:06.940" Title="Is the Texas Chupacabra real?" Tags="|cryptozoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1895" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-08T00:15:02.560" Score="5" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Masters has got me in a the golf mood but I have questioned one thing. Over the last 15 years the advances in equipment such as large headed long drivers and much straighter and longer balls should in theory make the game easier. I think this is only true for already good players (single figure handicap). For middle and higher handicaps the new equipment can only help them to hit it further into the trees. Manufacturers would never admit to this as it would slow sales but is there any evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do advances in sport technology benefit newcomers and high skilled players alike, or does better equipment require a skilled player to be used effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19" LastEditorUserId="1540" LastEditDate="2011-04-08T21:33:19.660" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T21:33:19.660" Title="Has equipment made golf easier" Tags="|sport|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1896" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1899" CreationDate="2011-04-08T03:28:56.457" Score="43" ViewCount="4093" Body="&lt;p&gt;The movie &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/synopsis&quot;&gt;Idiocracy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; suggests that intelligence is hereditary; this idea has also been perpetrated by German author &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thilo_Sarrazin&quot;&gt;Thilo Sarrazin&lt;/a&gt;, who claims that due to the higher fertility of Islamic immigrants and their allegedly lower intellect, Germany was dumbing down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: &lt;strong&gt;Is IQ (mainly) a genetically inherited trait?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="11122" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T02:15:27.427" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T02:15:27.427" Title="Is IQ hereditary? If so, to what degree?" Tags="|genetics|intelligence|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1849" CreationDate="2011-04-08T04:21:27.227" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have we seen it occurring in the last ~150, i.e. since the last time there were famines in e.g. Europe? No. 150 years are only six generations. You need to have sequenced a lot of genomes to see evolution, i.e. changes in allele frequencies, over as few as six generations - unless there has been a catastrophe that has wiped out specific parts of a population. Currently, work is still ongoing to sequence even &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_1000_Genomes_Project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1000 genomes&lt;/a&gt;. Current data allows identifying selection over the last few thousand years, i.e. ~100 generations, for example in adaptation of people in the Andes and Tibet to life under low oxygen conditions (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/104/suppl.1/8655.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article from PNAS&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, we cannot observe evolution through natural selection (which Darwin termed &quot;natural&quot; to differentiate it from breeding) in humans over very short timescales at the moment. However, we can observe evolution, i.e. change in allele frequencies, due to &quot;breeding&quot; in humans, such as caused by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-selective_abortion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sex-selective abortions&lt;/a&gt;, which is shifting the ratio between boys and girls in some countries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is theoretical and empirical evidence that evolution &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1853/is-evolution-slowing-down/1884#1884&quot;&gt;is most likely speeding up&lt;/a&gt; due to the growing human population. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/108/41/17040.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A recent paper in PNAS&lt;/a&gt; describes observable microevolution in humans between the late 18th century and mid-20th century. The authors use phenotypical analysis and statistics and conclude that the changes are not compatible with genetic drift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is often claimed that modern humans have stopped evolving because&#xA;  cultural and technological advancements have annihilated natural&#xA;  selection. In contrast, recent studies show that selection can be&#xA;  strong in contemporary populations. However, detecting a response to&#xA;  selection is particularly challenging; previous evidence from wild&#xA;  animals has been criticized for both applying anticonservative&#xA;  statistical tests and failing to consider random genetic drift. Here&#xA;  we study life-history variation in an insular preindustrial&#xA;  French-Canadian population and apply a recently proposed&#xA;  conservative approach to testing microevolutionary responses to&#xA;  selection. As reported for other such societies, natural selection&#xA;  favored an earlier age at first reproduction (AFR) among women. AFR&#xA;  was also highly heritable and genetically correlated to fitness,&#xA;  predicting a microevolutionary change to- ward earlier reproduction.&#xA;  In agreement with this prediction, AFR declined from about 26–22 y&#xA;  over a 140-y period. Crucially, we uncovered a substantial change in&#xA;  the breeding values for this trait, indicating that the change in AFR&#xA;  largely occurred at the genetic level. Moreover, the genetic trend was&#xA;  higher than expected under the effect of random genetic drift alone.&#xA;  Our results show that microevolution can be detectable over relatively&#xA;  few generations in humans and underscore the need for studies of human&#xA;  demography and reproductive ecology to consider the role of&#xA;  evolutionary processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T05:56:47.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1896" CreationDate="2011-04-08T06:00:05.717" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iq-tests.eu/iq-test-Genetics-versus-environment-400.html&quot;&gt;http://www.iq-tests.eu/iq-test-Genetics-versus-environment-400.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The role of genes and environment (nature vs. nurture) in determining IQ is reviewed in Plomin et al. (2001, 2003). The degree to which genetic variation contributes to observed variation in a trait is measured by a statistic called heritability. Heritability scores range from 0 to 1, and can be interpreted as the percentage of variation (e.g. in IQ) that is due to variation in genes. Twins studies and adoption studies are commonly used to determine the heritability of a trait. Until recently heritability was mostly studied in children. These studies find the heritability of IQ is approximately 0.5; that is, half of the variation in IQ among the children studied was due to variation in their genes. The remaining half was thus due to environmental variation and measurement error. A heritability of 0.5 implies that IQ is &quot;substantially&quot; heritable. Studies with adults show that they have a higher heritability of IQ than children do and that heritability could be as high as 0.8. The American Psychological Association's 1995 task force on &quot;Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns&quot; concluded that within the White population the heritability of IQ is &quot;around .75&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1679" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T06:00:05.717" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1852" CreationDate="2011-04-08T06:23:36.683" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Wired&lt;/em&gt; magazine printed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/06/ff_alcoholics_anonymous/all/1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an excellent overview of Alcoholics Anonymous&lt;/a&gt; last year.  Here is what it had to say regarding the statistics of AA's effectiveness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But how effective is AA?&lt;/strong&gt; That seemingly simple question has proven maddeningly hard to answer. Ask an addiction researcher a straightforward question about AA’s success rate and you’ll invariably get a distressingly vague answer. Despite thousands of studies conducted over the decades, no one has yet satisfactorily explained why some succeed in AA while others don’t, or even what percentage of alcoholics who try the steps will eventually become sober as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result of these complications &lt;em&gt;[listed in the article but snipped]&lt;/em&gt;, AA research tends to come to wildly divergent conclusions, often depending on an investigator’s biases. The group’s “cure rate” has been estimated at anywhere from 75 percent to 5 percent, extremes that seem far-fetched. Even the most widely cited (and carefully conducted) studies are often marred by obvious flaws. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/105409776&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A 1999 meta-analysis of 21 existing studies&lt;/a&gt;, for example, concluded that AA members actually fared worse than drinkers who received no treatment at all. The authors acknowledged, however, that many of the subjects were coerced into attending AA by court order. Such forced attendees have little shot at benefiting from any sort of therapy—it’s widely agreed that a sincere desire to stop drinking is a mandatory prerequisite for getting sober.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet a growing body of evidence suggests that while AA is certainly no miracle cure, people who become deeply involved in the program usually do well over the long haul. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jclp.20259/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In a 2006 study, for example, two Stanford psychiatrists chronicled the fates of 628 alcoholics they managed to track over a 16-year period.&lt;/a&gt; They concluded that subjects who attended AA meetings frequently were more likely to be sober than those who merely dabbled in the organization. The University of New Mexico’s Tonigan says the relationship between first-year attendance and long-term sobriety is small but valid: In the language of statistics, the correlation is around 0.3, which is right on the borderline between weak and modest (0 meaning no relationship, and 1.0 being a perfect one-to-one relationship).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I’ve been involved in a couple of meta-analyses of AA, which collapse the findings across many studies,” Tonigan says. “They generally all come to the same conclusion, which is that AA is beneficial for many but not all individuals, and that the benefit is modest but significant … I think that is, scientifically speaking, a very valid statement.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That statement is also supported by the results of a landmark study that examined how the steps perform when taught in clinical settings as opposed to church basements. Between 1989 and 1997, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.commed.uchc.edu/match/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a multisite study called Project Match&lt;/a&gt; randomly assigned more than 1,700 alcoholics to one of three popular therapies used at professional treatment centers. The first was called 12-step facilitation, in which a licensed therapist guides patients through Bill Wilson’s method. The second was cognitive behavioral therapy, which trains alcoholics to identify the situations that spur them to drink, so they can avoid tempting circumstances. And the last was motivational enhancement therapy, a one-on-one interviewing process designed to sharpen a person’s reasons for getting sober.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Match ultimately concluded that all three of these therapies were more or less equally effective at reducing alcohol intake among subjects. But 12-step facilitation clearly beat the competition in two important respects: It was more effective for alcoholics without other psychiatric problems, and it did a better job of inspiring total abstinence as opposed to a mere reduction in drinking. The steps, in other words, actually worked slightly better than therapies of more recent vintage, which were devised by medical professionals rather than an alcoholic stockbroker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;AA is still far from ideal.&lt;/strong&gt; The sad fact remains that the program’s failures vastly outnumber its success stories. According to Tonigan, upwards of 70 percent of people who pass through AA will never make it to their one-year anniversary, and relapse is common even among regular attendees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[I retained the emphasis from the original but added links to the studies mentioned for convenience.]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article has a lot of information on the history and details of the program, including some theories as to &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it works for some people.  It also addresses some of the issues raised in the question's comments, particularly regarding exactly how the spiritual component assists in treating addiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I could spend years looking into the subject, I suspect that hundreds of studies later, I would end up drawing a similar conclusion to the article's author.  Studies on AA are all over the map and it's impossible to draw a sound conclusion at this point in time.  AA is not a panacea by any stretch of the imagination, but there is clearly some benefit to the program. More research is needed to pick out the most helpful segments of the program and combine them with other techniques, so many more people can receive successful treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T06:23:36.683" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1901" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-08T07:35:20.567" Score="16" ViewCount="722" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle&quot;&gt;Peter Principle&lt;/a&gt; states that &quot;in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence&quot;. Aside from anecdotal evidence, has this ever been proven or disproven by science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1525" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T22:39:15.360" Title="Has the 'Peter Principle' ever been proven or disproven?" Tags="|psychology|management|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1882" CreationDate="2011-04-08T08:47:26.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There nothing extraordinary about the claim. Hypnosis has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/0968130201pr175ra&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;good reputation&lt;/a&gt; for being an effective way to treat pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Guided meditation is sometimes used as a synonym for hypnosis. The subject goes in a trance and focuses his attention according to suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some subjects will find it easier to go into a trance than other but those subjects that can go into a deep trance can effectively deal with a lot of pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T08:47:26.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1904" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-08T09:05:11.397" Score="14" ViewCount="1166" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://school.familyeducation.com/intelligence/teaching-methods/38519.html&quot;&gt;common advice&lt;/a&gt; to find out whether a child is a auditory, visual or a kinesthetic  learner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For some, auditory input is most valuable; others rely upon a visual style. Still others learn through kinesthetic means, or a combination of the three. &lt;strong&gt;Every person has one primary learning mode&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that concludes that it's beneficial to test children for their learning style and teach children who are tested as auditory learners differently than those who are tested as visual or kinesthetic learners?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T20:56:39.463" Title="Are there auditory, visual and kinesthetic learners?" Tags="|education|learning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1904" CreationDate="2011-04-08T11:41:26.373" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Despite the adherence by many school systems and informal learning institutions to Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, first proposed in 1983 in his &quot;Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences,&quot; there is as yet no neurological evidence for the existence of multiple intelligences nor the effectiveness of &quot;teaching to the learning style.&quot; One comprehensive critique of the theory came from Lynn Waterhouse in a paper for Educational Psychologist (2006: 41(4), 247–255) entitled, &quot;Multiple Intelligences, the Mozart Effect, and Emotional Intelligence: A Critical Review.&quot; Dozens of others have been published noting the same lack of evidence for the theory, despite almost three decades of growing application of the theory to educational practices. Dr. Patrick Groff at the National Right to Read Foundation addressed your specific question in a brief paper, which includes references to other critiques:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrrf.org/003_auditory_vs_visual.html&quot;&gt;http://www.nrrf.org/003_auditory_vs_visual.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gardner himself has refused to define what he really means by &quot;intelligence&quot; beyond attempting to broaden our understanding of intelligence beyond IQ scoring. He has also acknowledged that there is no way to test who has what ability; he called any attempt at classification &quot;an artistic judgment.&quot; Given that, it would seem impossible to properly classify any learner and then custom-build a learning program just for that person. Even if one could, there is no existing neurological evidence that doing so would result in a measurable benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gardner does include visual, kinesthetic and auditory (musical) as part of his larger classification system, but perhaps you're referring to the more specific VAK/VARK learning methodology put forward by various people in multiple variations of neurolinguistic learning models. Most of these models developed in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, contiguous with Gardner's work, although Fleming's VARK version of the original VAK comes as late as the 1990s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those models seem to be equally unproven based on reviews of evidence and testing methodologies by non-interested parties, notably the large 2009 review done by the Association for Psychological Science and Psychological Science in the Public Interest. The conclusion was that most testing was inadequate, seriously flawed or simply missing and that justifications for belief in the efficacy of these classifications and programs was weak at best. The study did suggest a straightforward testing methodology to prove the worth of tailored learning strategies that only a few researchers had performed; in all but one case, the findings were negative for improved educational impact. So far, at least, evidence is lacking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1709" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-08T20:56:39.463" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T20:56:39.463" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1911" CreationDate="2011-04-08T11:43:14.063" Score="60" ViewCount="7275" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the course of your life time, the average person eats X spider/insects/whatever whilst they are sleeping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;X tends to vary according to who you ask. Is this just an urban legend?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T19:39:04.413" LastActivityDate="2019-01-06T21:50:02.987" Title="Do you eat a certain number of spiders whilst you sleep?" Tags="|nutrition|sleep|entomology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1908" CreationDate="2011-04-08T12:43:59.423" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/spidermyth/myths/whileyousleep.html&quot;&gt;Rod Crawford&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;Curator of Arachnids&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washington.edu/burkemuseum/index.php&quot;&gt;Burke Museum&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For a sleeping person to swallow even&#xA;  one live spider would involve so many&#xA;  highly unlikely circumstances that for&#xA;  practical purposes we can rule out the&#xA;  possibility. No such case is on formal&#xA;  record anywhere in scientific or&#xA;  medical literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] I remain unconvinced&#xA;  that a spider would visit a huge&#xA;  breathing monster and enter its mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless a spider is so small that it wouldn't realize that the &quot;hole&quot; is the mouth of a large predator, it's probably unlikely that a spider would crawl into it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T12:43:59.423" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1908" CreationDate="2011-04-08T14:02:07.310" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an utter fabrication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is thought to have started with an article in &lt;em&gt;PC Professional Magazine&lt;/em&gt; regarding ridiculous facts circulating via e-mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a 1993 PC Professional article, columnist Lisa Holst wrote about the ubiquitous lists of &quot;facts&quot; that were circulating via e-mail and how readily they were accepted as truthful by gullible recipients. To demonstrate her point, Holst offered her own made-up list of equally ridiculous &quot;facts,&quot; among which was the statistic cited above about the average person's swallowing eight spiders per year, which she took from a collection of common misbeliefs printed in a 1954 book on insect folklore. In a delicious irony, Holst's propagation of this false &quot;fact&quot; has spurred it into becoming one of the most widely-circulated bits of misinformation to be found on the Internet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/spiders.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the Snopes article itself has been called into doubt, &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2094/is-a-writer-named-lisa-holtz-responsible-for-the-belief-that-everyone-eats-eight&quot;&gt;with claims that Snopes made up the reference&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1205" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2019-01-06T21:50:02.987" LastActivityDate="2019-01-06T21:50:02.987" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1854" CreationDate="2011-04-08T15:39:54.380" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://education-portal.com/articles/Public_Schools_vs._Private_Schools%3a_New_Study_Says_There_is_No_Difference.html&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; a few years ago by the Center for Education Policy that indicates that no, it does not make a difference.  They found, in part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there is no real difference between the academic performance given by public and private school students &lt;strong&gt;from the same low-income bracket and background&lt;/strong&gt;(emphasis by me, not from the study)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study suggests that parent involvement is a bigger factor than the specific school type.  It DID show that SAT scores tend to be higher for students in private schools, but in many other criteria, students performed equally well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of their other findings include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Low-income students attending public high schools performed just as well academically as low-income students attending private high schools.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Neither private school students nor public school students with similar background characteristics were more likely to attend college. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Young adults at age 26 who attended private school are no more likely to be engaged in civic activities than young adults who attended a public school. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Private school graduates aren't any more satisfied with the jobs they hold at age 26 than are public school graduates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastEditorUserId="681" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T13:14:46.907" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T13:14:46.907" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1915" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1916" CreationDate="2011-04-08T15:54:42.333" Score="33" ViewCount="4817" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has there ever been a double-blind study of homeopathy in which the null hypothesis was rejected?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not looking for a blanket validation. Just a single study where the null hypothesis (that there is no difference between homeopathy and placebo) was rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="880" LastEditorDisplayName="user30557" LastEditDate="2016-08-08T04:17:40.243" LastActivityDate="2022-08-19T17:11:37.110" Title="Has homeopathy ever passed a double-blind study?" Tags="|homeopathy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2016-08-10T00:30:18.167" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1915" CreationDate="2011-04-08T16:59:06.427" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, loads. Here is one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s00431-005-1735-7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Homeopathic treatment of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a randomised, double blind, placebo controlled crossover trial&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know enough about medical trials to tell if this is common or not, but it seems weird to me. They first put the patients on open-label homeopathic treatment. Those who respond well to it then goes on to a double-blind cross-over study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds like the biggest selection bias this side of the Rio Grande to me. And this is the problem with most of these studies, they have a selection bias, or they have a small sample size, etc. And most damning of all: Nobody seems able to reliably repeat them. Although few even try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is a meta-study that lists studies, some of them also positive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.4065/82.1.69&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Homeopathy for Childhood and Adolescence Ailments: Systematic Review of Randomized Clinical Trials&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way to find these studies is probably through meta-studies, of which there are many (which do not show better than placebo effects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These studies, as well as cold fusion, show the importance of the word &amp;quot;repeatable&amp;quot; in &amp;quot;Controlled, repeatable experiments&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2022-08-13T21:02:48.507" LastActivityDate="2022-08-13T21:02:48.507" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1895" CreationDate="2011-04-08T17:27:34.227" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randa.org/en/Rules-and-Amateur-Status/Rules-of-Golf.aspx#/equipment/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rules of Golf are highly specific about equipment&lt;/a&gt;, to prevent too many improvements. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randa.org/en/Rules-and-Amateur-Status/Rules-of-Golf.aspx#/equipment/?ruleNum=App1953822&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Appendix III of the rules&lt;/a&gt; states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Initial Velocity:   The initial velocity of the ball must not exceed&#xA;  the limit specified (test on file)&#xA;  when measured on apparatus approved by&#xA;  the R&amp;amp;A. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Overall Distance Standard:   The combined carry and roll of the ball,&#xA;  when tested on apparatus approved by&#xA;  the R&amp;amp;A, must not exceed the distance&#xA;  specified under the conditions set&#xA;  forth in the Overall Distance Standard&#xA;  for golf balls on file with the R&amp;amp;A.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On clubs there is now &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randa.org/~/media/RandA/Equipment%20Documents/ConformingClubList_P.ashx?date=04%2bApr%2b2011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lists of approved&lt;/a&gt; and disapproved drivers updated every week, plus a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.golfalot.com/News/Features/WedgeGrooveRules.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rule on grooves for lofted clubs&lt;/a&gt; being phased in to make them spin the ball less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all designed to reduce the effect of technical advances on the game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T17:27:34.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1920" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1937" CreationDate="2011-04-08T19:27:30.993" Score="27" ViewCount="4268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been told that because I can remember shapes and objects well, and describe them in detail, I have a &quot;photographic memory&quot;. However, I looked it up (briefly), and it seems scientific consensus is that there is no such thing - everyone can really do it. So, what is the consensus? Does it exist? Does everyone have it, or only certain people? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T20:22:06.213" Title="Does &quot;photographic memory&quot; exist?" Tags="|memory|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1895" CreationDate="2011-04-08T20:59:47.703" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with any skill-based activity equipment differences usually only make a big difference for people of a high skill level. For example, if you are a master guitar player, choice of guitar matters a lot. For a beginner, there will be little difference in your music on any standard guitar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such is the same with golf. The choice of clubs makes a big difference if you are a professional. As an amateur your skills are so low that your own mistakes are going to have such a huge effect on your score. If your equipment makes any difference in your score it will be statistically insignificant compared to the difference caused by your personal skills&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1494" LastActivityDate="2011-04-08T20:59:47.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1924" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1938" CreationDate="2011-04-08T22:23:57.210" Score="53" ViewCount="6673" Body="&lt;p&gt;My city, like many, has a recycling program, which I believe is supposed to reduce pollution and create some positive economic activity.  But I've heard many people argue that recycling programs are a waste in and of themselves.  Essentially that most recycling programs are having the opposite effect than they were intended to have.  Not only are they bad for the economy, they are also bad for the environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conservapedia.com/Recycling&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Recycling&lt;/a&gt; on Conservapedia contends:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Critics dispute the net economic and&#xA;  environmental benefits of recycling&#xA;  over its costs&lt;/strong&gt;, and suggest that&#xA;  proponents of recycling often make&#xA;  matters worse and suffer from&#xA;  confirmation bias. Specifically,&#xA;  critics argue that the costs and&#xA;  energy used in collection and&#xA;  transportation detract from (and&#xA;  outweigh) the costs and energy saved&#xA;  in the production process; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are critics of recycling correct? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do recycling programs usually have a net negative effect on the &lt;strong&gt;environment&lt;/strong&gt; and the &lt;strong&gt;economy&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/z8jsw.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; height=&quot;150&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T15:40:37.560" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T16:33:36.667" Title="Does recycling create more pollution than it prevents?" Tags="|economics|environment|recycling|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1926" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1935" CreationDate="2011-04-08T23:45:21.983" Score="17" ViewCount="3153" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is &quot;common&quot; knowledge that sucking your thumb (for little kids) is a &quot;bad habit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this, and is it just a bad &lt;em&gt;habit&lt;/em&gt; or actually unhealthy for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-09T01:06:03.197" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T21:14:50.263" Title="Is sucking thumbs unhealthy?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1894" CreationDate="2011-04-09T00:17:55.917" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;For simplicity I'm going to call the creature being asked about the Texas Chupacabra, to differentiate it from the other creature dubbed the Chupacabra that was first reported in Puerto Rico in 1995.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To directly answer the question, yes, there is some validity to some of the Texas Chupacabra sightings. Heck, I'd even say to most of them. Unlike any other cryptozoological subject I can think of the Texas Chupacabra is largely defined by people finding actual animal corpses. Several  of these Texas Chupacabras bodies have been examined by experts and scientists. There are also a couple cases where living Texas Chupacabras have been caught on film. Here are a few examples of Texas Chupacabra reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ksat.com/news/20653615/detail.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blanco, TX, July 2009&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's a lot of buzz north of San&#xA;  Antonio in the city of Blanco where&#xA;  the body of what's being called the&#xA;  legendary chupacabra has turned up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's the latest in a number of&#xA;  sightings and captures of the strange&#xA;  animals bearing similar resemblance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Different, that’s for sure, very&#xA;  interesting,” said Blanco taxidermist&#xA;  Jerry Ayer with Blanco Taxidermy&#xA;  School.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ayer is preserving the frozen carcass&#xA;  that was found by one of his former&#xA;  students in Rosenberg, Texas, located&#xA;  about 40 miles southwest of Houston.&#xA;  The animal looks gray with leathery&#xA;  skin, unlike anything that is native&#xA;  to Texas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/cuero-chupa/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cuero, TX, July 2007:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As you may recall, in July 2007, the&#xA;  pictured animal (see directly below)&#xA;  was hit by a car and killed on Phylis&#xA;  Canion’s property, on Buenger Road off&#xA;  U.S. Highway 183 south of Cuero,&#xA;  Texas. Canion had said she saw this&#xA;  “animal” for two years roaming her&#xA;  property.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iRwHm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;cuero chupacabra&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2008/08/12/pkg.tx.chupucabra.kens&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cuero, TX, August 2008&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A strange animal, suspected to be the&#xA;  legendary chupucabra, has been spotted&#xA;  in a Texas town.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pa73C.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;chupacabra film&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Undeniably, these are real animals. But are they a species that was not known to science until recently? &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.txstate.edu/news/news_releases/news_archive/2007/11/Chupacabra110107.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Researchers at Texas State did a DNA analysis of the 2007 Cuero corpse, and they found&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s a coyote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The DNA sequence is a virtually&#xA;  identical match to DNA from the coyote&#xA;  (Canis latrans),” said Mike Forstner&#xA;  of the biology department at Texas&#xA;  State.  “This is probably the answer a&#xA;  lot of folks thought might be the&#xA;  outcome. I, myself, really thought it&#xA;  was a domestic dog, but the Cuero&#xA;  chupacabra is a Texas Coyote.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“DNA tells a story. It allows us to&#xA;  determine the difference between&#xA;  animal species, and while I thought it&#xA;  was a canid (one of the members in the&#xA;  dog family), I could not tell from the&#xA;  photographs which one it might be,”&#xA;  Forstner explained, pointing out that&#xA;  KENS 5 financed the testing. “From my&#xA;  perspective, we were interested in&#xA;  providing a direct answer from the&#xA;  DNA, testing the best guesses of&#xA;  experts by using the evidence from the&#xA;  animal itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Jake extracted DNA from the sample,&#xA;  then we used PCR to generate template&#xA;  DNA and a Beckman Coulter Automated&#xA;  DNA sequencer to read that sequence,”&#xA;  he said. “We choose a part of the&#xA;  mitochondrial DNA genome that is very&#xA;  informative in mammals, called the&#xA;  D-Loop.  Once we had the sequence, it&#xA;  was very easy to make an initial&#xA;  ‘match’ of the Cuero sample using the&#xA;  online genetic database, GENBANK.  We&#xA;  also completed other analyses, but&#xA;  really, that first match told the&#xA;  tale.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main mystery might be solved, but&#xA;  the DNA match doesn’t explain the&#xA;  other looming question: Why does this&#xA;  coyote look so un-coyotelike?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For what it's worth, the finder of the 2007 Cuero Chupacabra &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cuerochupacabra.com/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;disagrees with this assessment&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other Texas Chupacabra corpses have been found to be dogs, dog-coyote hybrids, and even raccoons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hairlessness seems to be a separate issue, and one that can't find nearly as much material on it as I'd like. Part of the problem seems to be that once the creatures are identified as mundane animals everyone loses interest in them. Mange is often cited as a reason for the hairlessness, which sounds credible. The problem is I can't find an example of an expert actually examining one of the corpses and finding evidence of mange. Maybe mange is hard to prove? I'm not sure. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.khou.com/home/chupacabra-wise-county-raccoon-82157362.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Occasionally the experts even go out of their way to say the dead animals didn't have mange&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers suspect the hairlessness&#xA;  is due to a congenital defect, not&#xA;  disease.  Game warden Penny Nixon&#xA;  wants to emphasize that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This is just an anomaly of a common&#xA;  species,&quot; she said. &quot;We don't want&#xA;  anyone alarmed by it. We don't want&#xA;  people to think we have a mange&#xA;  problem or any kind of problem in our&#xA;  wildlife in Wise County.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone knows more about the mange issue, please post another answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the Texas Chupacabra is not so much a zoological phenomenon as a social phenomenon. These are unusual examples of usual animals that get lumped together under the label &quot;Chupacabra.&quot; As I mentioned at the head of my answer, the Texas Chupacabra is a very different beast than the Puerto Rico Chupacabra, which pre-dates the Texas version by ten years. The identification of these strange specimens as &quot;Chupacabra&quot; is no doubt inspired by the publicity that the Puerto Rico phenomenon garnered, but the beasts being described in each area are almost completely different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, this is not the first time that a cryptozoological animal has jumped a geographical divide and changed into something very different in process. When reports of the Yeti were first made in the 1920s the general consensus was that it was an unknown species of ape because of its ape-like tracks, but when reports and footprints of &quot;America's Abominable Snowman&quot; (as Ivan T. Sanderson &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bigfoot-lives.com/html/the_strange_story_of_america_s.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dubbed Bigfoot in a seminal article&lt;/a&gt;) began showing up in America in the 1950s it had become a far more human creature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-03-25T19:01:19.700" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T19:01:19.700" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1931" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1936" CreationDate="2011-04-09T00:49:38.620" Score="38" ViewCount="28244" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.home60515.com/3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article on the website&lt;/a&gt; for from &lt;em&gt;Heterosexuals Organized for a Moral Environment&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.home60515.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;H.O.M.E.&lt;/a&gt;) claims that sexual abuse has been shown to lead to Homosexuality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a well-documented fact that many&#xA;many homosexuals were sexually abused&#xA;when young...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, there is an abundance&#xA;of evidence that many many homosexuals&#xA;were born heterosexual but were&#xA;disoriented by sexual abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conservapedia.com/Homosexuality#Sexual_Abuse_as_a_Contributing_Factor_For_Homosexuality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Conservapedia attempts to back-up this claim&lt;/a&gt; with several studies they say show that sexual abuse is a cause for Homosexuality including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1999, Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, M.D.&#xA;wrote the following regarding the&#xA;position of sexual abuse being a&#xA;contributing factor for homosexuality:&#xA;“     Many studies demonstrate a sadly&#xA;disproportionate extent of sexual&#xA;abuse in the childhoods of homosexual&#xA;men, suggesting at the least that both&#xA;homosexual unhappiness and&#xA;homosexuality itself derive from&#xA;common causes...[30]  ”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2001, the journal Archives of&#xA;Sexual Behavior published a study&#xA;entitled Comparative data of childhood&#xA;and adolescence molestation in&#xA;heterosexual and homosexual persons.&#xA;The abstract for this article states&#xA;the following: “  In research with 942&#xA;nonclinical adult participants, gay&#xA;men and lesbian women reported a&#xA;significantly higher rate of childhood&#xA;molestation than did heterosexual men&#xA;and women. Forty-six percent of the&#xA;homosexual men in contrast to 7% of&#xA;the heterosexual men reported&#xA;homosexual molestation. Twenty-two&#xA;percent of lesbian women in contrast&#xA;to 1% of heterosexual women reported&#xA;homosexual molestation. This research&#xA;is apparently the first survey that&#xA;has reported substantial homosexual&#xA;molestation of girls.[31]     ”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1998, Dr. William C. Holmes, M.D.&#xA;and Dr. Gail B. Slap, M.D. reported in&#xA;the medical journal JAMA the&#xA;following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“     Adolescent boys,&#xA;particularly those victimized by&#xA;males, were up to 7 times more likely&#xA;to identify themselves as homosexual&#xA;or bisexual than peers who had not&#xA;been abused (P&amp;lt;.001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This reasoning seems to stand counter to the idea that homosexuality has a biological origin rather than a social one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the claims that sexual abuse can lead to homosexuality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2020-08-17T20:47:36.620" LastActivityDate="2020-08-17T20:47:36.620" Title="Does sexual abuse lead to homosexuality?" Tags="|sexuality|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1908" CreationDate="2011-04-09T04:02:46.710" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1828/does-the-average-person-consume-four-spiders-per-year-in-his-sleep&quot;&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; claims that one person may accidentally swallow a large number of spiders after an egg sac bursts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Put it all together, and it would be a&#xA;  miracle for a spider to end up in&#xA;  anyone's mouth while they're sleeping,&#xA;  except for one rare circumstance--when&#xA;  a spider egg sac hatches indoors. At&#xA;  that point, you can have hundreds of&#xA;  microscopic spiders, a millimeter long&#xA;  or less, leaping into the air in a&#xA;  short time span (under an hour total)&#xA;  and trying to ride the air currents to&#xA;  freedom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, these events should be rare and the author argues that average number of spiders swallowed being so high seems doubtful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After all, most people breathe while&#xA;  they sleep (at least I do) and&#xA;  spiders, like virtually all&#xA;  arthropods, flee from breath. After&#xA;  all, there are lots of vertebrates&#xA;  that EAT arthropods, and if you're an&#xA;  arthropod and something is breathing&#xA;  on you, it's not a good idea to stick&#xA;  around. Simple enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it seems unlikely, but the arguments given in this particular article aren't conclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T04:02:46.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1926" CreationDate="2011-04-09T05:27:55.670" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;If nothing else, thumb sucking can have a pretty negative impact on teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ada.org/2977.aspx?currentTab=1&quot;&gt;The American Dental Association&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After the permanent teeth come in, sucking may cause problems with the proper growth of the mouth and alignment of the teeth. It can also cause changes in the roof of the mouth. The intensity of the sucking is a factor that determines whether or not dental problems may result. If children rest their thumbs passively in their mouths, they are less likely to have difficulty than those who vigorously suck their thumbs. Some aggressive thumbsuckers may cause problems with their baby (primary) teeth. If you notice changes in your child’s primary teeth, consult your dentist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thumb_sucking#Dental_problems&quot;&gt;decently sourced article&lt;/a&gt; on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1042" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T05:27:55.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1931" CreationDate="2011-04-09T05:31:37.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Childhood Sexual Abuse Does Not Cause Homosexuality&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the claims that sexual abuse can lead to homosexuality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously there is not a causal relationship between childhood sexual abuse and homosexuality. If childhood sexual abused &lt;strong&gt;caused&lt;/strong&gt; homosexuality then we could safely conclude that &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt; who was sexually abused as a child would be homosexual. Such a statement can be disproved by finding a single person who was sexually abused as a child and who is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a homosexual. I am confident that somewhere in the seven or so billion people that populate this earth there exists at least one person who was sexually abused as a child yet identifies as a heterosexual. Ergo, sexual childhood abuse does not cause homosexuality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, the quotations you cited did not claim that childhood sexual abuse leads to homosexuality. Rather, they note that there is a strong link between the two. So let's talk about whether there exists a &lt;em&gt;correlation&lt;/em&gt; between childhood sexual abuse and homosexuality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Correlation Between Childhood Sexual Abuse and Homosexuality&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether there is a higher incidence of childhood sexual abuse among homosexuals than heterosexuals depends on which studies you read. For instance, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6V7N-3SWVJJ8-6&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=04/30/1997&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=583ec301c8d4ecd1ca0d17bb28454aad&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The prevalence of child sexual abuse: Integrative review adjustment for potential response and measurement biases&lt;/a&gt;, authors Kevin Gorey and Donald Leslie note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Female and male child sexual abuse prevalence estimates adjusted for response rates ... and adjusted for operational definitions ... were 14.5% and 7.2%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1874190/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;History of Childhood Sexual Abuse and HIV Risk Behaviors in Homosexual and Bisexual Men&lt;/a&gt;, David Brennan et al find that &amp;quot;childhood sexual abuse was reported by 15.5% of the survey respondents.&amp;quot; (Their survey was given to men, 99.5% of which identified as gay or bisexual.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we take these numbers at face value then we are led to the conclusion that the incidence of childhood sexual abuse in homosexuals and bisexuals is nearly twice of that of the general population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;History of Childhood Sexual Abuse and HIV Risk Behaviors in Homosexual and Bisexual Men&lt;/em&gt; study notes that victims of childhood sexual abuse are much more likely to engage in risky behaviors, including HIV status, STDs, drug use, and prostitution. And Wikipedia has a rather detailed look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_sexual_abuse#Effects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;psychological and physiological harms&lt;/a&gt; caused by such abuse:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Psychological, emotional, physical, and social effects include depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, eating disorders, poor self-esteem, dissociative and anxiety disorders; general psychological distress and disorders such as somatization, neurosis, chronic pain, sexualized behavior, school/learning problems; and behavior problems including substance abuse, self-destructive behavior, animal cruelty, crime in adulthood and suicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we agree that there exists a higher incidence of childhood sexual abuse among homosexuals that implies a positive correlation, but one is left wondering whether the correlation can be described by other factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Men vs. Women&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a strong correlation between childhood sexual abuse and homosexuality and if factors such as the genders of the abuser and abused are irrelevant then we would expect to see a higher percentage of lesbians than gay males in society, given the fact that women are nearly twice as likely to be the victims of sexual abuse than men. Yet according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7611844&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The prevalence of homosexual behavior and attraction in the United States, the United Kingdom and France&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examination of homosexual behavior separately finds that 6.2 ... and 3.6 ... of females in the United States ... report having had sexual contact with someone of the same sex in the previous 5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet twice as many women suffer from childhood sexual abuse yet only half as many have homosexual experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would lead one to conclude that the correlation lies more between &lt;em&gt;same-sex&lt;/em&gt; abuse and homosexuality. Presumably, most sexual abuse perpetrators are men, so girls are suffering from heterosexual abuse while boys are suffering from homosexual abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-12-05T05:19:54.910" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1920" CreationDate="2011-04-09T09:57:53.637" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-there-such-a-thing-as&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American article&lt;/a&gt; (by &lt;a href=&quot;http://it.stlawu.edu/~asearleman/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alan Searleman&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Professor of Psychology&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;St. Lawrence University&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the scientific literature, the term&#xA;  eidetic imagery comes closest to what&#xA;  is popularly called photographic&#xA;  memory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;a common visual image that we can&#xA;  all create from memory&lt;/strong&gt; (such as an&#xA;  image of a bedroom) &lt;strong&gt;does not have the&#xA;  characteristics of most eidetic&#xA;  images&lt;/strong&gt;, which almost always fade away&#xA;  involuntarily and part by part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unlike common visual images created&#xA;  from memory, most eidetic images last&#xA;  between about half a minute to several&#xA;  minutes only, and [...] once gone from&#xA;  view, rarely can an eidetic image ever&#xA;  be retrieved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... besides often being sketchy on&#xA;  some details, it is not unusual for&#xA;  eidetikers to alter visual details and&#xA;  even to invent some that were never in&#xA;  the original. &lt;strong&gt;This suggests that&#xA;  eidetic images are certainly not&#xA;  photographic in nature but instead are&#xA;  reconstructed from memory and can be&#xA;  influenced like other memories&lt;/strong&gt; (both&#xA;  visual and nonvisual) by cognitive&#xA;  biases and expectations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The vast majority of the people who&#xA;  have been identified as possessing&#xA;  eidetic imagery are children.&lt;/strong&gt; [...]&#xA;  With a few notable exceptions,&#xA;  however, most research has shown that&#xA;  virtually no adults seem to possess&#xA;  the ability to form eidetic images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember seing a documentary where people with extraordinary memories were featured. Amongst them was the autistic &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wiltshire#cite_note-10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stephen Wiltshire&lt;/a&gt; who, after a helicopter flight along the Thames, drew a large panorama of London's skyline with amazing detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uJE2U.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; (Image &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-557942/Revealed-How-autistic-genius-Stephen-Wiltshire-drew-amazing-picture-Londons-skyline.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T09:57:53.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1924" CreationDate="2011-04-09T11:59:14.937" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/recycling/4291576&quot;&gt;Popular Mechanics&lt;/a&gt;, who I assume probably did their homework, it's worthwhile recycling newspaper and a couple of types of plastic in addition to aluminum (that aluminum recycling is wise should be utterly uncontroversial--aluminum refining is amazing, but not a low-energy process!).  There was an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/9249262?story_id=E1_JNQJNGN&amp;amp;CFID=161540127&amp;amp;CFTOKEN=74955032&quot;&gt;article in the Economist&lt;/a&gt; a few years ago that also supports the idea that recycling (at least of most things) is a net win (it also adds steel to the &quot;good idea&quot; category).  Even if you assume that not all factors have been taken into account (e.g. carbon produced by people working at the recycling plant who otherwise could do something else productive), the fraction of energy saved and large amounts of CO2 saved strongly suggest that recycling is a net positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether any individual recycling &lt;em&gt;program&lt;/em&gt; is worthwhile is harder to judge, but see the article in The Economist for a suggestion of an affirmative answer (actually, an answer of &quot;usually&quot;, 83% net positive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T11:59:14.937" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1939" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1940" CreationDate="2011-04-09T12:39:43.400" Score="30" ViewCount="2244" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard many claims that spanking is ineffective for disciplining kids? Is there any research to confirm or deny this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T12:58:26.937" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T12:58:26.937" Title="Is spanking an effective form of discipline for children?" Tags="|psychology|parenting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1939" CreationDate="2011-04-09T13:06:37.373" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is evidence that corporal punishment (CP) increases the risk of future agressive behaviour of the child (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20385647&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Mothers' spanking of 3-year-old children and subsequent risk of children's aggressive behavior&quot;&lt;/a&gt; published in Pediatrics). They state the following results of their study&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Frequent use of CP (ie,&#xA;  mother's use of spanking more than&#xA;  twice in the previous month) when the&#xA;  child was 3 years of age was&#xA;  associated with increased risk for&#xA;  higher levels of child aggression when&#xA;  the child was 5 years of age (adjusted&#xA;  odds ratio: 1.49 [95% confidence&#xA;  interval: 1.2-1.8]; P &amp;lt; .0001), even&#xA;  with controlling for the child's level&#xA;  of aggression at age 3 and the&#xA;  aforementioned potential confounding&#xA;  factors and key demographic features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From another study titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17874924&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Parental corporal punishment predicts behavior problems in early childhood&quot;&lt;/a&gt; published in the Journal of Family Psychology&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results indicate that parental CP&#xA;  uniquely contributes to negative&#xA;  behavioral adjustment in children at&#xA;  both 36 months and at 1st grade, with&#xA;  the effects at the earlier age more&#xA;  pronounced in children with difficult&#xA;  temperaments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A review titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.proxy.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/pubmed/12734459&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;The risks and alternatives to physical punishment use with children&quot;&lt;/a&gt; published in the Journal of Pediatric Healthcare states in the abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite strong evidence of negative&#xA;  developmental outcomes resulting from&#xA;  the use of physical (or corporal)&#xA;  punishment with children, its use by&#xA;  parents and other caregivers is&#xA;  common. Such negative outcomes include&#xA;  child aggression, mental health&#xA;  issues, and physical abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research on very mild forms of corporal punishment is not conclusive, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2010/05/corporal-punishment.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Kadzin states in an interview&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research on very mild, infrequent&#xA;  spanking (e.g., one time/month) is&#xA;  inconclusive. When a parent moves&#xA;  beyond that to moderate or severe&#xA;  physical punishment, there are all&#xA;  sorts of untoward&#xA;  consequences—educational delays,&#xA;  psychological disorders and physical&#xA;  disorders, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=to-spank-or-not-to-spank&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An article in Scientific American&lt;/a&gt; summarizes the results of an APA task force that reviewed  the literature on corporal punishment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a presentation, she explained that&#xA;  the group of 15 experts in child&#xA;  development and psychology found&#xA;  correlations between physical&#xA;  punishment and an increase in&#xA;  childhood anxiety and depression, an&#xA;  increase in behavioral problems,&#xA;  including aggression, and impaired&#xA;  cognitive development—even when the&#xA;  child’s prepunishment behavior and&#xA;  development were taken into&#xA;  consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One out of the 15 experts on the task force disagreed with the conclusion and recommends spanking as a backup when other way of disciplining don't work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a general consensus that corporal punishment can have a negative effect on the development of a child. As a consequence, parents should choose methods to discipline their children that have fewer negative effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-04-09T15:26:03.867" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T15:26:03.867" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1941" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2451" CreationDate="2011-04-09T14:27:59.490" Score="17" ViewCount="6358" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that you can get poisoning from cakes that contain orange zest from the preservative sprayed on the outer surface of oranges before transportation from tropical countries to our shops.&#xA;Is this true? Can you wash these preservatives off with water or something else? Does baking make the compound less/more poisonous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1730" LastActivityDate="2022-06-18T13:28:26.310" Title="Is poisoning possible from preservative on orange zest?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="569" CreationDate="2011-04-09T14:41:07.340" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelocal.se&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Local&lt;/a&gt; (Swedish news in English) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelocal.se/23672/20091205/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported in 2009&lt;/a&gt; on a study that has gone over 30 years of brain tumor history in Scandinavia offering the following summary (in a more readable format than the actual papers abstract).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though mobile telephone use soared from the 1990s , brain tumours did not become any more common, the researchers reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deltour's team analysed annual incidence rates of two types of brain tumour – glioma and meningioma – among adults aged 20 to 79, from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, from 1974 to 2003. This represented virtually the entire adult population of 16 million people, the researchers said. The Scandinavian countries all have comprehensive cancer registries that record details of known cancer cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, the use of mobile phones increased sharply in the mid-1990s; thus, time trends in brain tumour incidence after 1998 may provide information about possible tumour risks associated with mobile phone use,&amp;quot; the researchers wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the 30 years, nearly 60,000 patients were diagnosed with brain tumours. While the team did see a small, steady increase in brain tumours, this started in 1974, long before mobile phones arrived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No change in incidence trends were observed from 1998 to 2003,&amp;quot; the researchers noted. This would have been when tumours would start showing up, assuming it took five to 10 years for one to develop, they said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those interested in reading the actual study it's titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/101/24/1721.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Time Trends in Brain Tumor Incidence Rates in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, 1974–2003&lt;/a&gt; published in Journal of the national cancer institute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This issue was also brought up at the end of an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RExQFZzHXQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;interview between Richard Dawkins and Niel deGrasse Tyson&lt;/a&gt; from 2010 (according to YouTube) when one of the audience members asked this question (I've cut down the &amp;quot;uhms..&amp;quot; and so to make it more readable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;: I have a practical application question about technology and it's impact on humans, specifically cell phones cellular cell phones. I'm in health care and I'd like to know where you stand on the facts (and I know we've come a long way since the first cell phones came out), but I get particularly apprehensive when young people put cell phones to infants and go &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Talk to daddy&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Niel deGrasse Tyson&lt;/strong&gt;: With regards to cell phone use there's a very important fact to science and that is the act of measurement, it's a fascinating thing measurement, because you can never measure anything precisely. That is with unlimited precision, you can only measure it within the certainties of your measuring device and all you can do in the lab is try constrain how uncertain that measurement is, but on some level it will always be uncertain and here's what happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to measure a phenomenon that does not exist, the variation in your measurement will occasionally give you a positive signals, as well as negative signals. If your idea is that A causes B, in this case cell phones causes cancer. Then a paper gets written about that result and then people might get concerned that cell phones cause cancer or that the power-lines might cause cancer, this go way back and so if you look at the full spade of these studies even those they don't publish because it was not a positive effect there are some cases where there is in fact less cancer and so these are the phenomenon of a no-result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you actually have A causing B the signal is &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; and it's repeatable in time and in place in cell phones that repeatable signal is yet to emerge from the total experiments that are done with it. That being said, if you are worried on almost every cell phone they have the cell phone on the hip and you got the earpiece. Just do that if you are worried, but can either say the jury is still out or the experimental result is no effect at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there seem to be a strong correlation that it does not cause cancer as well as at least one high profile physicist claiming that the experimental results are showing that there is no effect on brain cancer from cell phones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T16:04:37.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1945" CreationDate="2011-04-09T15:15:11.807" Score="19" ViewCount="51983" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that rhubarb leaves are poisonous, and that you can even die from rhubarb poisoning. Is that true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1349" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-02-20T22:06:31.210" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T22:54:46.090" Title="Can eating rhubarb kill you?" Tags="|medical-science|chemistry|toxicology|plants|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1949" CreationDate="2011-04-09T15:34:22.950" Score="20" ViewCount="2257" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reluctantly dragged along to do clothes shopping in Singapore today and all over the place they advertised clothing that has supposedly been coated with some form of UV protection. As far as I'm aware Singapore doesn't have the European-style of consumer protection laws where you can only claim what you can prove, which disallows statements like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelocal.se/25492/20100312/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Volvo is the safest car in the world.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had my camera with me so I snapped a picture of the sign that claims the clothes UPF factor is the equivalent of SPF. I've never seen clothes like this before in my life, so I'm wondering if there's any research that show if this really is a feasible alternative to sun protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/urGbc.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm of course only asking about the areas the clothing actually covers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T03:28:36.097" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T03:16:25.323" Title="Is sun protection clothing a real alternative to sunscreen?" Tags="|environmental-health|advertising|clothing|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1943" CreationDate="2011-04-09T15:53:01.737" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;The green leaves of the rhubarb contain &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jbc.org/content/126/1/43.full.pdf+html&quot;&gt;large amount of oxalic acid&lt;/a&gt; and probably  toxic anthraquinone glycosides. Eating the leaves &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002876.htm&quot;&gt;can lead to acute poisoning&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13836748&quot;&gt;also death&lt;/a&gt;. The anthraquinone glycosides &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thieme-connect.com/DOI/DOI?10.1055/s-0028-1113291&quot;&gt;are thought to be the main cause&lt;/a&gt; for rhubarb leave poisoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbif.gc.ca/pls/pp/ppack.info?p_psn=171&amp;amp;p_type=all&amp;amp;p_sci=comm&amp;amp;p_x=px&quot;&gt;website of the Canadian Poisonous Plants Information System&lt;/a&gt; you find the following about rhubarb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The stalks are widely used as&#xA;  preserves and are also eaten raw,&#xA;  without problems. The toxic content is&#xA;  much lower in the stalks. Humans have&#xA;  been poisoned after ingesting the&#xA;  leaves. Human poisoning was a&#xA;  particular problem in World War I,&#xA;  when the leaves were recommended as a&#xA;  food source in Britain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, the rhubarb &lt;em&gt;stalks&lt;/em&gt; are safe, but you should never eat the rhubarb &lt;em&gt;leaves&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-04-09T17:32:39.140" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T17:32:39.140" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1943" CreationDate="2011-04-09T15:53:52.027" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rhubarbinfo.com/poison&quot;&gt;Rhubarb Info&lt;/a&gt;, the leaves are toxic, but on average require a large amount to actually poison you, though it doesn't take nearly as much to make you sick. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oxalates are contained in all parts of rhubarb plants, especially in the green leaves. There is some evidence that anthraquinone glycosides are also present and may be partly responsible. It is not clear as to the exact source of poisoning from rhubarb, possibly a result of both compounds. The stalks contain low levels of oxalates, so this does not cause problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="466" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-09T16:10:29.333" LastActivityDate="2011-04-09T16:10:29.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1477" CreationDate="2011-04-09T16:28:46.953" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One explanation to consider in terms of the proportion, is the geology of the Sphinx itself.&#xA;There are large fissues running through the Sphinx in the bottom two layers of limestone from which the Sphinx is carved.&#xA;One of these runs right across the thinnest part of the body of the Sphinx, it would have prevented a proper shaping of the rump, so they may have instead lengthened the statue to make a good finish.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;(Mark Lehner, The Complete Pyramids, page 127)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also note there's another crack running from the base of the neck of the Sphinx down to the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zLeCC.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zLeCC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;image&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aeraweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/SG4.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;aeraweb.org&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="466" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T21:04:02.057" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1970" CreationDate="2011-04-09T16:30:55.510" Score="22" ViewCount="34623" Body="&lt;p&gt;It if often cited that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler&quot;&gt;Adolf Hitler&lt;/a&gt; designed the &lt;strong&gt;VW Beetle&lt;/strong&gt;. Is there any truth to this myth, did he perhaps commission it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems strange that a car supposedly designed in the 30s could have been in production for so long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-04-09T16:33:15.773" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T15:48:18.020" Title="Did Hitler design the VW Beetle?" Tags="|history|adolf-hitler|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1944" CreationDate="2011-04-09T17:06:56.843" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clever marketing gimmick if you live in northern climes (where I have seen this marketed), but of value in hotter climates.  Basically cloth will stop/absorb UV radiation based on the weave density.  No one wearing a flannel shirt will ever get burned.  However, it is not practical to wear such thick clothing in the summer or hot climates.  So if UV absorbent chemicals are added, it will offer additional protection without the necessary bulk.  Valuable in tropical climates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skincancer.org/sun-protective-clothing.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;skin cancer foundation actually does recommend this type of clothing&lt;/a&gt; on their site.  As I said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clothes can protect your skin against the sun's harmful ultraviolet (UV) rays. But not all clothing is created equal. The tightness of the weave, the weight, type of fiber, color and amount of skin covered all affect the amount of protection they provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And they even offer a couple examples&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rule, light-colored, lightweight and loosely-woven fabrics do not offer much protection from the sun. That white T-shirt you slip on at the beach when you feel your skin burning provides only moderate protection from sunburn, with an average ultraviolet protection factor (UPF) of 7. At the other end of the spectrum, a long-sleeved dark denim shirt offers an estimated UPF of 1,700 – which amounts to a complete sun block. In general, clothing made of tightly-woven fabric best protects skin from the sun. The easiest way to test if a fabric can protect your skin is to hold it up to the light. If you can see through it, then UV radiation can penetrate it – and your skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their recommendation is as expected from this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To receive The Skin Cancer Foundation's Seal of Recommendation, sun-protective fabrics must have a minimum UPF of 30. We consider a UPF rating of 30-49 to offer very good protection, and 50+ excellent protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11312422&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The New York University School of Medicine actually did a study&lt;/a&gt; to back up the Skin Cancer foundation.  I added emphasis on the final conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BACKGROUND: The public has long been instructed to wear protective clothing against ultraviolet (UV) damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OBJECTIVE: Our purpose was to determine the UV protection factor (UPF) of two cotton fabrics used in the manufacture of summer T-shirts and to explore methods that could improve the UPF of these fabrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;METHODS: Each of the two types of white cotton fabrics (cotton T-shirt and mercerized cotton print cloth) used in this study was divided into 4 treatment groups: (1) water-only (machine washed with water), (2) detergent-only (washed with detergent), (3) detergent-UV absorber (washed with detergent and a UV absorber), and (4) dyes (dyed fabrics). Ultraviolet transmission through the fabrics was measured with a spectrophotometer before and after laundry and dyeing treatments. Based on UV transmission through these fabrics, the UPF values were calculated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RESULTS: Before any treatments, the mean UPFs were 4.94 for the T-shirt fabric and 3.13 for the print cloth. There was greater UVA (320-400 nm) than UVB (280-320 nm) transmission through these fabrics. After 5 washings with water alone and with detergent alone, UPF increased by 51% and 17%, respectively, for the cotton T-shirt fabric. Washing the T-shirt fabrics with detergent plus the UV-absorbing agent increased the UPF by 407% after 5 treatments. Dyeing the fabric blue or yellow increased the UPF by 544% and 212%, respectively. Similar changes in UPFs were observed for the print cloth fabric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CONCLUSION: The two cotton fabrics used in this study offered limited protection against UV radiation as determined by spectrophotometric analysis. Laundering with detergent and water improves UPF slightly by causing fabric shrinkage. &lt;strong&gt;Dyeing fabrics or adding a UV-absorbing agent during laundering substantially reduces UV transmission and increases UPF.&lt;/strong&gt; More UVA is transmitted through the fabrics than UVB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T03:16:25.323" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1948" CreationDate="2011-04-09T17:16:29.803" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no reliable evidence that this is the case&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What information is available?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hitler.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hitler Historical Museum&lt;/a&gt;, possibly biased, Hitler did design it on a piece of paper or a napkin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sitting at a restaurant table in Munich in the summer of 1932, Hitler designed the prototype for what would become the immensely successful Beetle design for Volkswagen&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hitler.org/artifacts/volkswagen/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However — according to practically any other source I could find — Hitler commissioned the Beetle to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Porsche&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ferdinand Porsche&lt;/a&gt;, and gave design specifications (speed, size, cost) - but the actual work was done by Porsche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Impressed by Porsche's design capabilities, Hitler delivered him the design brief of a car that could carry two adults and three children at a speed of 60mph with at least 33 mpg. The price was to be 1000 Reichmarks, not much more than a motorcycle at the time.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.volkswest.co.uk/beetle_history.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the possible bias of the museum, I am inclined to give more credence to the more common version: Hitler did indeed commission the Beetle, but did not do the actual design of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What about the evidence?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is clear evidence that Hitler commissioned the Beetle — see for example this picture of Hitler examining an early prototype at a Volkswagen factory with Porsche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0dKZZ.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0dKZZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Hitler and Porsche examine a Beetle&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://s2.hubimg.com/u/99721_f520.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hubimg.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the sketches — purportedly hand-drawn by the dictator himself — there are two versions circulating on the Internet and none of them seems to come from a reliable source.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Furthermore, they look very different — they can't possibly be both true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I find this evidence unconvincing for the above reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://www.pre67vw.com/history/images/sketch.gif&quot; alt=&quot;sketch 1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kiA0G.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kiA0G.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;sketch 2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hitler.org/artifacts/volkswagen/volkswagen.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hitler.org&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-02-18T13:23:23.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1951" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1953" CreationDate="2011-04-09T18:18:06.020" Score="25" ViewCount="4142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was travelling by air today, and I realized that there's an important difference between safety belts in cars and planes. A safety belt in a car moves from the chest on one side to the hip on the other side, while safety belts in a plane move from one hip to the other. Safety belts on the plane also seem to be quite flimsy compared to those in cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the real purpose of safety belts in a plane? Is it just a design feature they forgot to change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T06:55:55.140" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T06:55:55.140" Title="Are safety belts in planes meant for safety?" Tags="|safety|aviation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1951" CreationDate="2011-04-09T18:32:47.203" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember watching a documentary about Aloha Airlines Flight 243 where a large part of forward portion of the airplane was ripped from the plane, and the cockpit lost communication with the rest of the plane (but was still able to fly and land the airplane). The only casualty could probably have survived if she was buckled in at the time. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;From Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only fatality was flight attendant C.B. Lansing who was blown out of the airplane. Another 65 passengers and crew were injured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not exactly something to worry about considering how safe it is to fly, and I don't know if it's considered as real purpose of the belt. However if something like that were to happen, the belt should save you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-04-10T04:35:47.073" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T04:35:47.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1951" CreationDate="2011-04-09T18:33:21.133" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purpose of seat belts on aircraft are to keep you secure in case of turbulence. You become an airborne projectile once this happens so not only can you hurt yourself but you could hurt others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/21/AR2010072101302.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is an example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The National Transportation Safety Board has opened an investigation into what caused a United Airlines jetliner that departed from Dulles International Airport to experience severe turbulence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A United Airlines spokesman said 25 people were injured, including four crew members. The crew members were flight attendants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A spokeswoman for one Denver hospital said it treated seven people Tuesday from the United flight. Dee Martinez, a spokeswoman for Denver Health Medical Center, said all of the patients were treated and released. They suffered from &amp;quot;moderate head, neck and back injuries,&amp;quot; Martinez said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkup/2010/07/seat_belts_reduce_risk_of_airp.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; article mentions that according to the FAA on average 60 people a year are injured a year because of turbulence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Capt. Lim, each year about 58 U.S. passengers and flight attendants are injured by not wearing their seat belt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1445" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T03:54:15.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1954" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1957" CreationDate="2011-04-09T18:44:52.447" Score="23" ViewCount="2338" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Mf33RGS5Q&amp;amp;feature=feedrec_grec_index&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; video discusses the idea that &lt;strong&gt;religious people are happier&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;any sources that support or contradict the claims?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;any scientific papers that address the issue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T10:13:57.630" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T07:32:50.953" Title="Are religious people happier?" Tags="|psychology|religion|happiness|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1955" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-09T18:52:25.153" Score="35" ViewCount="7778" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are any of the *main** characters who appear in the Bible that are &lt;strong&gt;real historical people&lt;/strong&gt;, their existence supported by multiple sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition do their actions in the Bible support or contradict accepted history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;**Kings, princes, leaders, businessmen etc. Any notable person who may be recorded by historians*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2019-01-09T02:30:48.860" LastActivityDate="2020-12-20T17:21:29.620" Title="Are any notable biblical characters historical figures?" Tags="|history|bible|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1955" CreationDate="2011-04-09T19:20:03.993" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are definitely people mentioned in the Bible that are real historical people. When it comes to people that have multiple sources outside the bible these are generally kings, often mentioned because they invaded or ruled over Jewish lands. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great&quot;&gt;Cyrus the great&lt;/a&gt;, in the Bible known as Koresh. Not all of these are uncontroversial, Darius the Mede is mentioned in the bible, and mostly assumed to be Darius I, but there are problems with that. In general, IMO, these are most easily explained with that the Bible is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; historically accurate, and that when historical people are mentioned it often get some things wrong, and that many kings mentioned are in fact several kings mixed up in retelling to be one. In the end this kind of biblical research often ends up being subjective, and you'll find loads of opinions on each person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One parts that mention a lot of kings is the Book of Daniel. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Daniel#Historical_accuracy&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's article&lt;/a&gt; contains good information on this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the new testament it's quite likely that many people mentioned were real historical persons, but since they didn't have high societal positions there is no information about them outside the bible. The major exception to that is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod_the_Great&quot;&gt;Herod the Great&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="80" LastEditDate="2011-04-28T18:15:50.063" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T18:15:50.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1954" CreationDate="2011-04-09T21:26:42.760" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on where you look.  And exactly as people have said, what defines happiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/03/are-religious-p.html&quot;&gt;According to some studies&lt;/a&gt;, religious people tend to be happier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers accidentally discovered that people with religious beliefs tend to be more content in life while studying an unrelated topic. While not the original objective, the recent European study found that religious people are better able to cope with shocks such as losing a loved one or getting laid off of a job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then you look at overall country happiness, and very secular, irreligious nations like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/14/world-happiest-countries-lifestyle-realestate-gallup.html&quot;&gt;the Scandinavian nations are rated as the happiest&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The Scandinavian countries do really well,&quot; says Jim Harter, a chief scientist at Gallup, which developed the poll. &quot;One theory why is that they have their basic needs taken care of to a higher degree than other countries. When we look at all the data, those basic needs explain the relationship between income and well-being.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is safe to say that religiousness may not be the main factor in determining happiness, &lt;strong&gt;rather other factors&lt;/strong&gt;, and the correlation is incidental.  People searching for a specific correlation and causation will find what they are looking for.  In general, a cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy at work in both cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in the religious community, there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/human/religion-happiness-social-bonds.html&quot;&gt;ready made support structure in place for religious people&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's not their spirituality, belief in heaven, or even the ritual act of praying or going to a house of worship that leads the pious to happiness. Rather, the study found, it's the close friends people gain through their religions that makes a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be a bigger contributor to happiness than religion or no-religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2015-03-07T17:31:23.043" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T17:31:23.043" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1959" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-09T23:54:32.420" Score="22" ViewCount="1947" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conservapedia's sub-article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conservapedia.com/Abortion#Abortion_and_Breast_Cancer&quot;&gt;Abortion and Breast Cancer&lt;/a&gt; claims that there is an undeniable link between breast cancer and abortions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The vast majority of scientific&#xA;  studies have shown that abortion&#xA;  causes an increase in breast cancer,&#xA;  including 16 out of 17 statistically&#xA;  significant studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;A new study coming from researchers in&#xA;    &lt;strong&gt;Sri Lanka finds women who had&#xA;    abortions ... [had a] 3.42 [increased&#xA;    risk] ... compared with those who kept&#xA;    their baby.&lt;/strong&gt; ... The Sri Lankan study&#xA;    is the fourth epidemiological study in&#xA;    fourteen months to report an&#xA;    abortion-breast cancer link, including&#xA;    studies from the U.S., China and&#xA;    Turkey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LifeNews also reported in 2010 that a&#xA;  National Cancer Institute researcher&#xA;  admitted there was a link between&#xA;  abortion and breast cancer.&#xA;  Studies showing that abortion&#xA;  increases breast cancer predate the&#xA;  political controversy. A study at&#xA;  the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research&#xA;  Center published in 2009 confirmed a&#xA;  40% increase in risk in breast cancer&#xA;  from abortion. &lt;strong&gt;Yet the&#xA;  abortion industry conceals this&#xA;  increased risk, just as the tobacco&#xA;  industry concealed its cancer risk for&#xA;  decades&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet the National Cancer Institute's article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/abortion-miscarriage&quot;&gt;Abortion, Miscarriage, and Breast Cancer Risk&lt;/a&gt; says the opposite:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They concluded that having an abortion&#xA;  or miscarriage does not increase a&#xA;  woman’s subsequent risk of developing&#xA;  breast cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which one is correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Abortion lead to an increased risk of Breast Cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-08-20T09:33:38.180" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T09:33:38.180" Title="Do abortions cause breast cancer?" Tags="|cancer|abortion|breast|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1960" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1961" CreationDate="2011-04-10T01:13:56.107" Score="26" ViewCount="2826" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a lot of suspicion around the design of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Encryption_Standard#NSA.27s_involvement_in_the_design&quot;&gt;Data Encryption Standard (DES)&lt;/a&gt; encryption algorithm, which is not used any more for its lack of security, regarding the NSA's involvement in its design and whether they had implemented any back doors to be able to crack the encryption at their own will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that exists that suggests that the NSA have implemented back doors into modern encryption algorithms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1440" LastEditorUserId="15980" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T20:22:24.303" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T20:22:24.303" Title="Does the NSA build backdoors into encryption algorithms?" Tags="|cryptography|nsa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1960" CreationDate="2011-04-10T02:16:24.560" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Schneier&quot;&gt;Bruce Schneier&lt;/a&gt;, one of the world's most renowned cryptographers, there are some suspicions around the involvement of NSA with the NIST standard Dual_EC_DRBG:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But today there's an even bigger stink brewing around Dual_EC_DRBG. In an informal presentation at the CRYPTO 2007 conference in August, Dan Shumow and Niels Ferguson showed that the algorithm contains a weakness that can only be described as a backdoor.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.schneier.com/essay-198.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same essay, Schneier warns us against jumping to conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course, we have no way of knowing whether the NSA knows the secret numbers that break Dual_EC-DRBG. We have no way of knowing whether an NSA employee working on his own came up with the constants -- and has the secret numbers. We don't know if someone from NIST, or someone in the ANSI working group, has them. Maybe nobody does.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  We don't know where the constants came from in the first place. We only know that whoever came up with them could have the key to this backdoor. And we know there's no way for NIST -- or anyone else -- to prove otherwise.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  This is scary stuff indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note: in cryptography it is beneficial to be a bit paranoid or to have the mindset of a conspiracy theorist. In the world of cryptography, &lt;strong&gt;who did it effectively doesn't matter&lt;/strong&gt;. If the algorithm is weak, you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; assume the worst: that the NSA (or the bad guys) can crack it, and move to something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T02:16:24.560" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1963" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8308" CreationDate="2011-04-10T04:35:27.023" Score="41" ViewCount="3858" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick internet search on stretching reveals that, if physiologists were a bit more belligerent, the question of whether or not to stretch after exercise is something actual wars could be fought over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I am not trained in this field, I have come across explanations for both extremes (stretching is vastly important vs. stretching is actually harmful) that both seemed &quot;reasonable&quot; to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be great if a skeptic with a good understanding in physiology could point me to those studies that give a good answer, together with an understandable explanation that is accepted by the scientific community?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-01-27T00:41:49.913" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T22:37:16.413" Title="Is stretching beneficial after exercise?" Tags="|physiology|sport|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1964" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-10T05:10:26.333" Score="34" ViewCount="6571" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/health&amp;amp;id=7170775&quot;&gt;ABC News&lt;/a&gt; and this &lt;a href=&quot;http://archopht.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/127/12/1632&quot;&gt;Ophthalmological study&lt;/a&gt; there has been a significant increase in the number of people with myopic eyesight over a recent 30 year period. From the ABC article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are multiple theories. Some say more people are now genetically susceptible to myopia. Others blame the increase on long hours spent in front of computer screens, possibly changing the shape of our eyeballs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself A) use a computer about 12 hours a day (and have for quite some time), and B) am myopic (first having noticed in college, a few years after I began programming).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps anecdotal, I spoke to my ophthalmologist about this a decade ago and at that time he essentially said there is not enough evidence to show extended PC use causes myopia; however, he did say that myopia can sometimes be lessened in severity by spending more time each day focusing on distant objects (exercising the muscles in the eyes). To me, if one takes the contrapositive of that, it seems to imply excessive PC use might indeed lead to myopia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, the (implicit) belief today seems to be that there is no causal relationship between increased myopia and increased PC use, but is that really the case? Or is it true there may be a genetic explanation for recent trends?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="858" LastEditorUserId="858" LastEditDate="2011-04-10T05:15:45.490" LastActivityDate="2017-12-03T05:03:37.297" Title="Has increased computer use led to increased myopia?" Tags="|medical-science|genetics|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1954" CreationDate="2011-04-10T05:10:33.060" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a914111234&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=uoD1Ly9CeRAC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt; (see chapter 16), religiosity correlates with happiness, though it may be religious attendance and not religious belief that really matters (&lt;a href=&quot;http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S027795360900392X&quot;&gt;Chida et al. 2009&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many factors that correlate with happiness, and there are effective methods to become happier - religious or not.  For more info, and a ton of references, read &lt;a href=&quot;http://lesswrong.com/lw/4su/how_to_be_happy/&quot;&gt;How to Be Happy&lt;/a&gt; (free online).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; Sources, in case the links&#xA;  break: 1) Religiosity, subjective&#xA;  well-being, and neuroticism, Mental&#xA;  Health, Religion &amp;amp; Culture, Volume 13,&#xA;  Issue 1, 2010, Pages 67-79. 2) The&#xA;  science of subjective well-being By&#xA;  Michael Eid, Randy J. Larsen. 3)&#xA;  Association between attendance at&#xA;  religious services and self-reported&#xA;  health in 22 European countries,&#xA;  Social Science &amp;amp; Medicine, Volume 69,&#xA;  Issue 4, August 2009, Pages 519-528.&#xA;  &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1634" LastEditorUserId="1634" LastEditDate="2011-04-10T05:23:52.240" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T05:23:52.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1948" CreationDate="2011-04-10T09:29:54.177" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, he did not design it&lt;/strong&gt;. It was designed by Ferdinand Porsche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was however commissioned by Hitler. Hitler met with Porsche in 1933 and asked him to develop a cheap good car affordable for everybody, a &quot;Peoples Car&quot;. Porsche was a natural choice for this, because he in fact already had developed such a car, the Porsche Type 12, produced by Zündapp from 1931. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://cdn.wn.com/pd/9d/da/27c1ed804f9bcc5cab6e4b44dbd7_grande.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Porsche Type 12&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1932 he produced the Porsche Type 32, a car quite strikingly similar to the Volkswagen, including having a 4-cylinder air cooled engine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6xcWh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Porsche Type 32&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claiming that Hitler designed the Beetle is hence nonsense, as Porsche's Type 32 has most of the striking design and many of the Beetle's technical elements in place, well before Hitler and Porsche ever met, and &lt;strong&gt;looks more like a Beetle than the alleged sketches by Hitler&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading, and sources: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Beetle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Beetle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newbeetle.org/forums/rumors-insights/31170-porsche-type-12-a.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://newbeetle.org/forums/rumors-insights/31170-porsche-type-12-a.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2019-02-19T15:48:18.020" LastActivityDate="2019-02-19T15:48:18.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="1971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1964" CreationDate="2011-04-10T10:26:15.810" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason may not lie directly in the increased time spent in front of a computer screen or TV, but the decreased time spent outdoors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20090701-18628-4.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sunlight could stop short-sightedness&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Australian scientists from 'The Vision&#xA;Centre' say &lt;strong&gt;there is persuasive&#xA;evidence that increased exposure to&#xA;daylight can prevent the permanent&#xA;short-sightedness and eye damage&lt;/strong&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The finding demolishes long-held&#xA;beliefs that short sight is due mainly&#xA;to reading, and overuse of TVs and&#xA;computers by youngsters, or is&#xA;primarily linked to genetic factors...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;The prevalence of myopia in the&#xA;Australian population is dramatically&#xA;lower than in other urban societies&#xA;round the world – yet we do just as&#xA;much reading and computer work&lt;/strong&gt;,&amp;quot; says&#xA;Professor Ian Morgan of the ARC Centre&#xA;of Excellence in Vision Science (The&#xA;Vision Centre) and Australian National&#xA;University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team’s conclusions are borne out by new research in Singapore and the United States, which has reached similar conclusions. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.am/ab/more/children-who-spend-more-time-outdoors/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;e.g.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“&lt;strong&gt;We’re seeing large increases in&#xA;myopia among children in urban&#xA;societies all around the world – and&#xA;the outstanding common factor may be&#xA;less and less time spent outdoors&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The idea that ‘reading makes you&#xA;short-sighted’ has been popular for a&#xA;couple of hundred years. But recent&#xA;data shows that the time spent indoors&#xA;is a more important factor. Children&#xA;who read a lot, but still go outdoors,&#xA;have far less myopia.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“&lt;strong&gt;Our hypothesis is that the light&#xA;intensity experienced outdoors – which&#xA;can be hundreds of times brighter than&#xA;indoor light – causes a release of&#xA;dopamine, which is known to block the&#xA;growth of the eyeball.&lt;/strong&gt; This prevents&#xA;it taking on the distorted shape found&#xA;in myopic people. We are now testing&#xA;this idea.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[but] one of&#xA;the potential problems with using&#xA;increased time outdoors to prevent&#xA;myopia is the potential for increasing&#xA;skin cancers and for causing eye&#xA;damage later in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T10:40:47.920" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1973" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-10T13:17:08.440" Score="14" ViewCount="761" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2008/02/07/most-published-research-results-are-false/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;, linked to by Glen, claims most published results are false. The argument is based on an analysis of how papers relying on statistical significance analyse and report their statistical results and is bolstered by related arguments about publication bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An intuitive way to understand the possibility of publication bias is to note that insignificant results (e.g. this drug is no better than placebo) don't make great publications but apparently significant results (like MMR vaccine causes autism) will get you headlines in the popular press long after other evidence has refuted your conclusion. And trawling random data for significant results will throw up many results with p-values significant at the 5% level. Publishing such results while ignoring the insignificant results of the trawl is a poor way to determine truth but a good way to get publication kudos. Some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stats-Fooled-Statistics-Based-Research-Medicine/dp/1907313338/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1325803794&amp;amp;sr=8-1&quot;&gt;modern authors&lt;/a&gt; believe this is endemic not just in social science but in medical epidemiology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is important to know: are most published results likely to be wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-01-08T14:33:32.950" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T16:55:01.670" Title="Are most published results relying on measures of statistical significance likely to be false?" Tags="|experiments|epidemiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1963" CreationDate="2011-04-10T14:52:33.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of months ago, on NPR's Science Friday, they interviewed an exercise physiologist who was saying that current studies showed little if any actual benefit from stretching.&#xA;Other than the fact that it felt pretty good....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No increase in range of motion, no decrease in muscle soreness, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I just did a search for the terms &quot;exercise physiology&quot; and &quot;stretching&quot; on the science friday site and got nothing.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, apparently it wasn't Science Friday.   At least, this is a very similar article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130509347&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130509347&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1331" LastEditorUserId="1331" LastEditDate="2011-04-10T15:41:49.127" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T15:41:49.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1976" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="1981" CreationDate="2011-04-10T16:40:28.873" Score="78" ViewCount="5611" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ask this question because in school, students are always told &quot;do not quote wikipedia&quot; or that &quot;Do not believe everything you see on Wikipedia, we are teachers and we know when something is wrong there&quot;. (The latter being more common in my case) Anyway, Wikipedia does have an article about it &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Still the question stands about whether it is reliable, and if it is, when or if it will be permissible in the classroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any studies been made on the reliability of Wikipedia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-13T08:39:24.777" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T11:29:29.690" Title="Is Wikipedia reliable?" Tags="|internet|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="28" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1977" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-10T16:55:11.110" Score="32" ViewCount="12170" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 1998 a book was published called &lt;strong&gt;The Slaughter: An American Atrocity&lt;/strong&gt; by Carroll Case. It alleged that in June of 1943 at an Army base in Mississippi 1200 black soldiers were massacred by white soldiers, and the entire incident was covered up. The allegation prompted investigations and a documentary on the History channel, which was &lt;a href=&quot;http://archives.citypaper.net/articles/051701/cs.coverstory1.shtml?CFID=153824&amp;amp;CFTOKEN=32476812&quot;&gt;summarized as follows by the Philadelphia Citypaper&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hour-long program explores&#xA;  allegations that, upon first read,&#xA;  seem ridiculous — especially a charge&#xA;  that 1,200 African-American combat&#xA;  troops were killed by white soldiers&#xA;  in a single massacre at Camp Van Dorn&#xA;  in the isolated town of Centreville,&#xA;  MS, and that a subsequent cover-up has&#xA;  gone on for almost 60 years. That&#xA;  claim was made in a 1998 book, The&#xA;  Slaughter: An American Atrocity.&#xA;  Former Mississippi banker Carroll Case&#xA;  pursued the claim for years after one&#xA;  of his employees told Case he had&#xA;  participated in the killing. William&#xA;  &quot;Bill&quot; Martzall, who joined the&#xA;  military police of the 63rd Division&#xA;  out of his home in Dillsburg, PA,&#xA;  first told Case this tale in the&#xA;  1980s. Martzall has since died. The&#xA;  U.S. Army categorically denies&#xA;  Martzall’s version and claims he could&#xA;  not have even been in Camp Van Dorn&#xA;  during the period he described to&#xA;  Case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the &lt;a href=&quot;http://archives.citypaper.net/articles/051701/cs.coverstory2.shtml&quot;&gt;Citypaper goes on to document&lt;/a&gt; there could be no doubt that the situation at Camp Van Dorn was terrible and there certainly was violence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Letters in the National Archive and in&#xA;  NAACP files describe the events that&#xA;  ensued. &quot;We are catching hell here,&quot; a&#xA;  member of the 364th wrote. &quot;Two of our&#xA;  men have been kill [sic] and we have&#xA;  only been in this camp for six days.&#xA;  Something worse is going to happen&#xA;  soon.&quot; &quot;There have been about 20 or 25&#xA;  Negros [sic] hurt and kild [sic],&quot;&#xA;  another white soldier wrote. &quot;They&#xA;  [sic] have been 5 or ten shot right&#xA;  through the head … and we are going to&#xA;  give them hell when they come around&#xA;  us.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 364th’s Morning Reports, a kind of&#xA;  company-by-company daily attendance&#xA;  sheet, note dozens of soldiers as AWOL&#xA;  following the Walker shooting and its&#xA;  aftermath. Files in the National&#xA;  Archives trace some who made their way&#xA;  north, seeking from their local&#xA;  induction boards asylum from what they&#xA;  called a life-threatening situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Following reports of the Walker&#xA;  killing and subsequent riots, black&#xA;  leaders sought to find out what&#xA;  happened. In a June 17, 1943, memo&#xA;  President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked&#xA;  the Secretary of War Henry Stimson to&#xA;  prepare a response to a telegram from&#xA;  Edgar J. Brown, director of the&#xA;  National Negro Council. Brown asked&#xA;  that Bishop David Henry Sims, leader&#xA;  of the African Methodist Episcopal&#xA;  Church in Philadelphia, be authorized&#xA;  to investigate conditions of black&#xA;  soldiers at southern military bases,&#xA;  &quot;especially Camp Van Dorn.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brown’s request was politely declined.&#xA;  A letter prepared by Stimson for the&#xA;  president’s signature concluded: &quot;You&#xA;  may be assured that every effort is&#xA;  being made to safeguard interests of&#xA;  Negroes in the Army.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whatever happened to the 364th in the&#xA;  summer of ’43, in December the&#xA;  regiment’s remaining men were&#xA;  relocated to a far-off camp in the&#xA;  Aleutian Islands. It was then that&#xA;  their personnel roster began to show&#xA;  signs of hemorrhage. Records show that&#xA;  between 800 and 1,000 of the 3,000 men&#xA;  left the 364th before the war’s end.&#xA;  In other words, from June 1943 until&#xA;  Japan’s surrender, about one soldier’s&#xA;  name per day disappeared from the&#xA;  364th’s roster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when you get right down to it the only real evidence of the alleged mass killing is Case's account of being told about the incident by one person, now dead. In the ten years since this was first brought up has any other evidence of a massacre been found?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edited with new information&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got a copy of the book &lt;strong&gt;The Slaughter: An American Atrocity&lt;/strong&gt; and had a chance to read the source of the claim. The odd thing is that the factual part of the book is only about 50 pages, including several pages of transcripts and reproductions of official documents. The rest of the book is a fictional account of a reporter investigating a fictional hate crime vaguely based on the author's own experiences. It struck me as an odd approach to such a serious accusation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carroll Case's primary source is William &quot;Bill&quot; Martzall, who worked with Case. One day years ago, Case says, Martzall confessed his role in a massacre at Camp Van Dorn. Though really, the word &quot;confessed&quot; may be a little strong. As Case relates it, Martzall's story sounds like a race-baiting fantasy. Martzall's story starts off fairly factual, talking about how the 364th had a bad reputation from events that happened in Phoenix. Martzall says that the population of Centerville was so concerned about this influx of troublesome black soldiers (I should note that the whole account only uses the n-word to refer to them) that a local sheriff decided to kill one just to teach the others a lesson. This would appear to refer to the death of William Walker, which I'll address separately. After this, however, the story gets suspect. Martzall then says there was supposed to be a July 4th dance on base, but the black soldiers disrupted the festivities before they could start. The final straw occurred when black soldiers attacked a pregnant white woman and ripped the baby from her womb, &quot;stomping it to jelly.&quot; That night Martzall says he was assigned to a machine gun squad that gathered the 364th into an open area on the edge of the base and killed &quot;hundreds, maybe a thousand&quot; black soldiers. The bodies were loaded into a train and somehow disposed of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, if a pregnant woman and an unborn child were killed in such a gruesome manner it would be big news, but no such death is associated with the 364th. I'm pretty sure that the whole later part of Martzall's story is just a horrible racist fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story in no way specifies 1200 or 1227 dead. None of Case's sources would have any way of knowing how many dead there were, and it was not a case of simple subtraction as suggested in the comments. The math doesn't work out. I'd be interested to know where the number comes from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case also presents what he says is the &quot;smoking gun,&quot; a memo from a Major General Virgil Peterson commenting on the plan of a General McNair to discipline the 364th. We don't know what McNair's plan was, but Case assumes it must have been the massacre. I would point out that while Peterson's memo doesn't say exactly what McNair's plan is, it doesn't sound from his responses that it's anything extraordinary. For example, Peterson doesn't think the people of Centerville should be given a veto on the black soldiers' access to town. I'm not sure how that fits into a plan to kill a large number of those soldiers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this is not to say that bad things weren't going on at Camp Van Dorn. The William Walker killing, in particular, sounds like premeditated murder even in the official documents trying downplay it. Walker, on leave, was confronted by two armed MPs, a town sheriff, and an unspecified number of shotgun-toting men acting as a posse, for the &quot;crime&quot; of missing a button on his uniform. The MPs claimed that even though he was faced with what I assume must have been at least seven heavily armed men Walker started a fight and the sheriff had no choice but to shoot him. I can see why the NAACP would have taken an interest in that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="1343" LastEditDate="2011-04-24T18:08:54.677" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T02:05:58.163" Title="Were 1200 black soldiers massacred at Camp Van Dorn in 1943?" Tags="|history|world-war-ii|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1978" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-10T16:58:45.140" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pareidolia&lt;/a&gt; is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse. The word comes from the Greek para- – &quot;beside&quot;, &quot;with&quot;, or &quot;alongside&quot;—meaning, in this context, something faulty or wrong (as in paraphasia, disordered speech) and eidōlon – &quot;image&quot;; the diminutive of eidos – &quot;image&quot;, &quot;form&quot;, &quot;shape&quot;. Pareidolia is a type of apophenia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carl Sagan hypothesized that as a survival technique, human beings are &quot;hard-wired&quot; from birth to identify the human face. This allows people to use only minimal details to recognize faces from a distance and in poor visibility but can also lead them to interpret random images or patterns of light and shade as being faces. The evolutionary advantages of being able to identify friend from foe with split-second accuracy are numerous; prehistoric (and even modern) men and women who accidentally identify an enemy as a friend could face deadly consequences for this mistake. This is only one among many evolutionary pressures responsible for the development of the modern facial recognition capability of modern humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2009 magnetoencephalography study found that objects incidentally perceived as faces evoke an early (165 ms) activation in the ventral fusiform cortex, at a time and location similar to that evoked by faces, whereas other common objects do not evoke such activation. This activation is similar to a slightly earlier peak at 130 ms seen for images of real faces. The authors suggest that face perception evoked by face-like objects is a relatively early process, and not a late cognitive reinterpretation phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study helps to explain why people identify the line drawing at the top of this article as a &quot;face&quot; so quickly and without hesitation; precognitive processes are activated by the &quot;face-like&quot; object, which alert the observer to the emotional state and identity of the subject - even before the conscious mind begins to process - or even receive - the information. The &quot;stick figure face,&quot; despite its simplicity, conveys mood information (in this case, disappointment or mild unhappiness); it would be just as simple to draw a stick figure face that would be perceived (by most people) as hostile and aggressive. This robust and subtle capability is the result of eons of natural selection favoring people most able to quickly identify the mental state, for example, of threatening people, thus providing the individual an opportunity to flee and fight another day. In other words, processing this information subcortically (and therefore subconsciously) - before it is passed on to the rest of the brain for detailed processing - accelerates judgment and decision making when alacrity is paramount. This ability, though highly specialized for the processing and recognition of human emotions also functions to determine the demeanor of wildlife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combined with Apophenia, seeing patterns in randomness, and Hierophany, a manifestation of the sacred, pareidolia may have helped early societies organize chaos and make the world intelligible for our ancestors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-04-10T17:56:30.550" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T17:56:30.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1979" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-10T16:58:45.140" Score="0" Body="Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse." OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-04-10T17:56:32.377" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T17:56:32.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1976" CreationDate="2011-04-10T17:38:58.213" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The source of the data in Wikipedia is people like us, who knows about a certain topic or domain. And the sources of those data are shared at the bottom of most article. (For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse#Sources&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse#Sources&lt;/a&gt;.) You can check that on every single page as it has a discussion section where questions against the data, if any, are raised and proofs are provided if necessary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Pearl_Harbor). You yourself can raise question if you want to, they'll answer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, quoting Wikipedia is far more reliable than quoting a teacher him/herself. As the data is available there in each and every article, it has been filtered for years by millions of teachers like the one who teaches you.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your teacher still don't agree, go to Wikipedia, check the sources of their data at the bottom of the page and provide that to the teacher.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. - If sources are not available, check the references. They are always there...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1746" LastEditorUserId="1760" LastEditDate="2011-04-11T10:17:20.220" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T10:17:20.220" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1976" CreationDate="2011-04-10T18:03:31.780" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;In December 2005, the science magazine &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;conducted a study&lt;/a&gt; to determine whether Wikipedia was as accurate as traditional encyclopedias, namely the &lt;em&gt;Encyclopedia Britannica&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica&lt;/a&gt;, Daniel Terdiman summarizes the study results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia is about as good a source of accurate information as Britannica, the venerable standard-bearer of facts about the world around us, according to a study published this week in the journal Nature. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For its study, Nature chose articles from both sites in a wide range of topics and sent them to what it called &amp;quot;relevant&amp;quot; field experts for peer review. The experts then compared the competing articles--one from each site on a given topic--side by side, but were not told which article came from which site. Nature got back 42 usable reviews from its field of experts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the journal found just eight serious errors, such as general misunderstandings of vital concepts, in the articles. Of those, four came from each site. They did, however, discover a series of factual errors, omissions or misleading statements. All told, Wikipedia had 162 such problems, while Britannica had 123. &lt;strong&gt;That averages out to 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica and 3.86 for Wikipedia.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, what makes Wikipedia different from a standard encyclopedia is that it can be updated by anyone and those updates appear immediately. When there's a particular hot topic item in the news, it's not uncommon for its Wikipedia entry to be updated rapidly, both by level-headed and factual participants and by more extreme, agenda-driven actors on both sides of the issue at hand. Consequently, when you read an entry at Wikipedia it's important to bear in mind that what you are reading now might include some dogmatic if not outright incorrect statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Bibhas noted, it's important to check the sources and references. I also would encourage you to note the history of the piece you are reading. If there were many edits in a short window of time that may be a sign that there is some back and forth going between two &amp;quot;sides,&amp;quot; which could imply that the information presented might not be as objective as it was prior to the volley of edits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T18:03:31.780" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1976" CreationDate="2011-04-10T18:06:48.813" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia is an excellent source of general information when starting research.  An an example, I'm writing a review of a paper about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leishmania&quot;&gt;Leishmania&lt;/a&gt;, and the Wikipedia articles that are related and relevant to me (Leishmania, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_%28organelle%29&quot;&gt;Vaults&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7SL_RNA&quot;&gt;7SL RNA&lt;/a&gt;) are quick and easy reads, and &lt;em&gt;loaded&lt;/em&gt; with great references to further papers which makes finding them straightforward if not trivial.  I might even use the same fact as the Wikipedia article, but it's senseless to cite WP, which in-turn cites the origin of the fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside of the more scientific topics, however, the amount of references can steeply drop off, which means it won't be of much direct help for any formal research, though it can still help familiarize you with the topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia articles are &lt;em&gt;not uniformly edited&lt;/em&gt; by any stretch of the imagination.  Making generalizations about Wikipedia as a whole based on some sort of average quality metric of their articles is dubious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone (e.g. your teachers) say that &quot;Wikipedia is wrong on point X, as it's Y&quot;, that doesn't absolve them of the need to provide some sort of proof or evidence on it as well.  Sure, you might be inclined to believe some source above another, but belief shouldn't mix with fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T18:06:48.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1976" CreationDate="2011-04-10T18:14:04.983" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's Wikipedia on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The reliability of Wikipedia:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A notable early study in the journal Nature suggested that in 2005, Wikipedia scientific articles came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of &quot;serious errors&quot;.[5] This study was disputed by Encyclopædia Britannica.[6]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In areas where I actually have expertise, Wikipedia does quite well. They're not perfect, and you have to watch out for articles that are in the midst of 'editing wars', but if you want to know about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuBisCO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RuBisCO&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gamma-ray bursts&lt;/a&gt;, Wikipedia does a bangup job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T18:14:04.983" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1959" CreationDate="2011-04-10T18:42:49.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the link to the original paper by Dolle on PubMed, one of the sources from the article:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19336554&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Risk factors for triple-negative breast cancer in women under the age of 45 years.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Controls were age matched and ascertained via random digit dialing. Oral contraceptive use &amp;gt; or =1 year was associated with a 2.5-fold increased risk for triple-negative breast cancer (95% confidence interval, 1.4-4.3) and no significantly increased risk for non-triple-negative breast cancer (P(heterogeneity) = 0.008). Furthermore, the risk among oral contraceptive users conferred by longer oral contraceptive duration and by more recent use was significantly greater for triple-negative breast cancer than non-triple-negative breast cancer (P(heterogeneity) = 0.02 and 0.01, respectively).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper doesn't, at least from the abstract, make reference to abortion, but contraceptives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this paper followed by this research paper: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8133534&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Breast cancer among young U.S. women in relation to oral contraceptive use.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RESULTS: There was no increased incidence of breast cancer associated with ever having used oral contraceptives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CONCLUSIONS: Long-term oral contraceptive use among young women or use beginning near menarche may be associated with a small excess breast cancer risk, possibly due to susceptibility to genetic damage in breast epithelial cells at ages of high breast cell proliferative activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow the link for more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the initial study found some correlation in data, and then follow up studies with a larger scale testing field, disproving this correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="466" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T21:12:50.517" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2011-04-10T19:41:53.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I made that point referring to this post in which I question the conclusion of spanking causing aggressive behavior: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1939/is-spanking-an-effective-form-of-discipline-for-children&quot;&gt;Is spanking an effective form of discipline for children?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a publication bias, especially in the social sciences (can't publish insignificant effects).  When you can run controlled experiments, as in chemistry, physics, or clinical trials, the results are much more likely to be true.  However in observational studies the tempetation is to go from association to causation, which in repeated studies the effect probably does not hold. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/01/17/scientific-results-fading-over-time/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/01/17/scientific-results-fading-over-time/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1731" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T19:41:53.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1976" CreationDate="2011-04-10T21:50:30.560" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have personally edited incorrect information on Wikipedia. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prsa.org/SearchResults/download/6D-040201/0/Forced_Transparency_Corporate_Image_on_Wikipedia_a&quot;&gt;Corporations are known to use Wikipedia as a tool&lt;/a&gt; to steer their public image. &lt;a href=&quot;http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/17638311/ns/today-entertainment/&quot;&gt;Sinbad is still among u&lt;/a&gt;s. Still, wikipedia is great as a preliminary survey on most topics. I use it all the time. Just don't use it as a source on an academic paper and you'll be fine. Your teachers and/or profs are trying to get you to dig a littler deeper, that's all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastActivityDate="2011-04-10T21:50:30.560" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1990" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-11T02:10:36.450" Score="20" ViewCount="2615" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just finished watching Banksy's documentary, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1587707/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Exit Through the Gift Shop&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Brainwash&quot;&gt;Thierry Guetta&lt;/a&gt; (a.k.a. &quot;Mr. Brainwash&quot;), an eccentric filmmaker who followed the street art scene until eventually starting his own art career. Banksy and Shepard Fairey think he's mentally unstable, but nevertheless &lt;a href=&quot;http://obeygiant.com/headlines/mr-brainwash-life-is-beautiful-exhibition&quot;&gt;endorse his show&lt;/a&gt; not believing there's any harm to it. Much to their surprise, &quot;Mr. Brainwash&quot; becomes a huge hit based on their endorsements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never having heard of &quot;Mr. Brainwash&quot; before, I looked him up and found that many people believe &lt;a href=&quot;http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/04/banksy_mr_brainwash.html&quot;&gt;he's a hoax&lt;/a&gt; concocted by Banksy to make a statement about today's art scene. Others say that the amount of detail needed to create the &quot;Mr. Brainwash&quot; persona would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.boston.com/2010-04-23/ae/29314407_1_banksy-thierry-guetta-street-art&quot;&gt;too much for a simple fabrication&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there definitive proof either way? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1755" LastEditorDisplayName="user1755" LastEditDate="2011-07-02T21:02:15.220" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T22:37:52.493" Title="Is Mr. Brainwash a hoax?" Tags="|art|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1994" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2212" CreationDate="2011-04-11T10:41:36.477" Score="40" ViewCount="5956" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it so many times that I considered it a fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vpIPy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;The War of Thw Worlds&quot;&gt; (Image &lt;a href=&quot;http://underthehill.wordpress.com/2008/10/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1938 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Welles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Orson Welles&lt;/a&gt;' radio adaption of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._G._Wells&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;H.G.Wells&lt;/a&gt;' &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The War of the World&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  incited a &lt;a href=&quot;http://history1900s.about.com/od/1930s/a/warofworlds.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;nationwide panic&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All across the United States,&#xA;  listeners reacted. Thousands of people&#xA;  called radio stations, police and&#xA;  newspapers. Many in the New England&#xA;  area loaded up their cars and fled&#xA;  their homes. In other areas, people&#xA;  went to churches to pray. People&#xA;  improvised gas masks. Miscarriages and&#xA;  early births were reported. Deaths,&#xA;  too, were reported but never&#xA;  confirmed. Many people were&#xA;  hysterical. They thought the end was&#xA;  near.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/literature/war-of-the-worlds.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HowStuffWorks&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By the middle of the hour-long&#xA;  program, &lt;strong&gt;hundreds of thousands of&#xA;  Americans had bought the hoax&lt;/strong&gt;, &#xA;  believing that martians had actually&#xA;  landed on Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;a href=&quot;http://bigthink.com/ideas/24685&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[a new book offers] compelling evidence that &lt;strong&gt;the panic and mass&#xA;  hysteria so readily associated with&#xA;  The War of The Worlds program did not&#xA;  occur on anything approaching&#xA;  nationwide dimension.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Author &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520262096&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;W. Jospeh Campbell&lt;/a&gt; is cited:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Like many media-driven myths, claims&#xA;  about the 1938 radio dramatization&#xA;  seemed too good, too  delicious, to be&#xA;  true&lt;/strong&gt;. Those claims, essentially, were&#xA;  that Americans by the tens of&#xA;  thousands—even the hundreds of&#xA;  thousands—were pitched into panic and&#xA;  mass hysteria by listening to the&#xA;  radio show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The anecdotal news reports simply did&#xA;  not rise to the level of nationwide&#xA;  panic and mass hysteria&lt;/strong&gt;. Had there been&#xA;  widespread panic and mass hysteria&#xA;  that night, newspapers for days and&#xA;  even weeks afterward would have been&#xA;  expected to have published details&#xA;  about the upheaval and its&#xA;  repercussions. But as it was,&#xA;  newspapers dropped the story after&#xA;  only a day or two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s true that calls surged in many&#xA;  parts of the country, especially in&#xA;  metropolitan New York and New Jersey,&#xA;  but many of the callers were seeking&#xA;  confirmation or clarification, which&#xA;  is an altogether rational response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;newspapers seized the occasion to&#xA;  bash radio in the aftermath of the&#xA;  show. This unrelievedly  negative&#xA;  commentary reinforced the notion that&#xA;  The War of the Worlds program had sown&#xA;  panic and  mass hysteria among&#xA;  Americans&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmN33SqSLhQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a Youtube clip&lt;/a&gt; in which W. Joseph Campbell talks about the media myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it indeed just a myth that Orson Welles' radio broadcast caused a widespread panic?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the most realistc estimates of how many people actually paniced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T02:06:24.150" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T02:06:24.150" Title="Did the 1938 radio broadcast of 'The War of the Worlds' lead to mass hysteria?" Tags="|history|radio|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1996" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2000" CreationDate="2011-04-11T11:54:56.037" Score="67" ViewCount="9796" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, taking calories in general tends to make one fat. My question is whether, relatively speaking, having heavy dinner has more probability of making you fat than, say, heavy lunch. And whether late dinner (closer to your sleep, like 9pm) makes you fatter more than 7pm dinner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies confirming the claim that late night eating is linked to obesity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="954" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-11T16:16:56.293" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T19:47:53.117" Title="Does having late or heavy dinner make you fat?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1998" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-11T13:25:56.490" Score="12" ViewCount="936" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://pospapendix.blogspot.com/2008/04/richard-feynman-stories-part-three.html&quot;&gt;story about Richard Feynman&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then I looked at the bookshelf and&#xA;  said, &quot;Those books you haven't looked&#xA;  at for a while, right? This time, when&#xA;  I go out, take one book off the shelf,&#xA;  and just open it--that's all--and&#xA;  close it again; then put it back.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So I went out again, she took a book,&#xA;  opened it and closed it, and put it&#xA;  back. I came in--and nothing to it! It&#xA;  was easy. You just smell the books.&#xA;  It's hard to explain, because we're&#xA;  not used to saying things about it.&#xA;  You put each book up to your nose and&#xA;  sniff a few times, and you can tell.&#xA;  It's very different. A book that's&#xA;  been standing there a while has a dry&#xA;  uninteresting kind of smell. But when&#xA;  a hand has touched it, there's a&#xA;  dampness and a smell that's very&#xA;  distinct&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-11T20:27:59.213" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T05:11:14.157" Title="Can humans smell if a book has been opened?" Tags="|smell|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="1999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1951" CreationDate="2011-04-11T13:39:11.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's somewhat faulty to compare &quot;commercial airliner&quot; seatbelts with &quot;car&quot; seatbelts.  A more accurate comparison would be to compare commercial airliner safety equipment with bus safety equipment as a baseline, then add the air specific items.  Both count on the seatback (or empty space in front of the first row) as a part of the safety mechanism, hence no shoulder belts needed.  Air travel adds the issue of turbulence strong enough to toss one into the ceiling, hence the lap belts (although, arguably, they should be required in buses too in the event of a rollover).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if you compare car seatbelts with private single-engine airplanes (which are car sized and have similar cabin arrangement as a car), you'll find that they have the same lap and shoulder harness configuration as a road-going car.  Newer private airplane seatbelts even have integrated airbags in the lap portion (mostly because it's easier to put it there than to try to find a space on an already completely full instrument panel/yoke).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;seeming flimsy&quot; part of your question strikes me as odd and overly subjective.  I've never seen an airplane seatbelt of any kind that's flimsy compared to a car.  They use the same materials, in the same widths.  The buckles may be different, but that's mostly and age of design issue, and has nothing to do with strength (they all have to meet similar requirements).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1048" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T13:39:11.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1996" CreationDate="2011-04-11T13:43:35.350" Score="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/neco.2009.05-08-787&quot;&gt;The majority of our food is actually digested during sleep&lt;/a&gt;, so the common argument that &quot;eating late at night is bad because our metabolism [slows or shuts down] during sleep&quot; is incorrect.  With that said, there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v9/n4/abs/oby200131a.html&quot;&gt;correlation between night eating, low self-esteem, reduced daytime hunger, and weight gain among people who are already obese or prone to obesity&lt;/a&gt;, however, this correlation does not necessarily imply causation (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, the act of eating a late meal does not necessarily provoke these conditions).  It may simply be the case that the &lt;em&gt;types&lt;/em&gt; of foods that people &lt;em&gt;prefer&lt;/em&gt; to eat late at night are less healthy.  There is still much debate on the subject, however, many scientists agree that &lt;a href=&quot;http://jn.nutrition.org/content/141/1/148.short&quot;&gt;meal frequency&lt;/a&gt;, as opposed to time, is one of the best predictors for weight gain.  For example, the time between meals is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v17/n5/abs/oby2008635a.html&quot;&gt;highly correlated&lt;/a&gt; to one's waist size.  This makes some intuitive sense, since eating more, smaller meals will help regulate insulin levels, and spikes in insulin levels (which can be caused by large meals and/or large gaps in time between meals) &lt;a href=&quot;http://fitnessblackbook.com/dieting_for_fat_loss/high-insulin-levels-stop-fat-loss-and-cause-weight-gain/&quot;&gt;have been linked to weight gain&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember hearing on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/&quot;&gt;NPR&lt;/a&gt; a year or two ago about a study which specifically tried to test the claim that eating late at night is unhealthy.  The study concluded that there was absolutely no correlation between the proximity of mealtime to sleep and weight gain, other than the fact that people tend to choose to eat more unhealthy foods late at night.  I can't seem to find a reference to that study, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21527892&quot;&gt;A newer study&lt;/a&gt; followed the eating and sleeping patterns of 52 subjects over one week.  They found a correlation between &quot;late sleepers&quot; (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, people who go to sleep late and wake up late) and high body mass index, and that eating after 8pm was associated with higher body mass index.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/health/17really.html&quot;&gt;A New York Times article summarizing the results of the study&lt;/a&gt; makes the further claim that eating late at night leads to weight gain, however, I disagree with that claim on the grounds that correlation does not imply causation.  In fact, that study noted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Late sleepers consumed more calories at dinner and after 8:00 PM, had higher fast food, full-calorie soda and lower fruit and vegetable consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I think the results of the study can be interpreted to mean that there is a correlation between eating/sleeping late and a poor diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore back in 2006, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/02/060202080832.htm&quot;&gt;the same research team conducted a study on monkeys&lt;/a&gt; in which they were fed a diet similar to the average (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, high-fat) diet common in the USA.  The only variable was the time of day that the monkeys were fed.  With all else remaining constant, the researchers found no correlation between weight gain and time of feeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was really interesting to see that the monkeys who ate most of their food at night were no more likely to gain weight than monkeys who rarely ate at night.  This suggests that calories cause weight gain no matter when you eat them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2012-02-08T20:39:47.340" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T20:39:47.340" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2001" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2504" CreationDate="2011-04-11T14:34:56.030" Score="25" ViewCount="1990" Body="&lt;p&gt;My father always claims he knows when a storm is coming by the pain in his knee.  It turns out he might not be as crazy as I thought.  Many people with arthritis report varying pain levels as a result of weather changes, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/osteoarthritis/guide/arthritis-weather&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WebMD explains&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of us have an older relative who claims to have an arthritic joint with the power to tell the future, at least meteorologically. She will stare out the window on a perfectly pleasant, sunny day, distractedly rubbing her painful shoulder, and proclaim solemnly, &amp;quot;A storm's a comin'.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She's hardly alone in her belief. The idea that certain painful health conditions are affected by the weather is both widespread and ancient, dating back to at least Hippocrates in the fourth century B.C and no doubt earlier, according to James N. Weisberg, PhD, a psychologist who specializes in treating painful conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately for my dad, the article concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But despite the venerable pedigree of the belief, should we ditch our Doppler radar and our well-groomed television meteorologists and replace them with Achy Joint Bulletins issued by our great aunts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably not. Although many believe in the connection between weather and health, most medical studies have come up with equivocal support at best. So if there isn't a connection, or if the connection is relatively unimportant, why do we believe in it so strongly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Closed case?  Apparently not. &lt;a href=&quot;http://arthritis.webmd.com/news/20041018/weather-arthritis-pain-link-confirmed&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another article on the &lt;em&gt;same website&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Weather, Arthritis Pain Link Confirmed&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Arthritis Pain Increases With Cool Temps, Barometric Changes&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chalk one up for conventional wisdom: Arthritis pain and weather really do appear to be connected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cooler temperatures and changes in barometric pressure go hand-in-hand with increases in arthritis pain, according to new research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Color me confused.  Is there any evidence that weather affects arthritis pain, possibly even prior a storm?  Or should my dad leave meteorology to the professionals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2022-09-23T12:10:15.393" Title="Do weather changes affect arthritis?" Tags="|medical-science|weather|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2006" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-11T17:58:25.997" Score="4" ViewCount="315" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/534/is-it-true-that-bathing-after-having-eaten-can-make-you-drown&quot;&gt;Is it true that bathing after having eaten can make you drown?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seem to be a widespread belief that going swimming after eating is really bad. &lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/digestive/question510.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How stuff works has an article&lt;/a&gt; on this that claims it's a good advice and it attempts to reason about it medically (though I'm unconvinced about any actual danger). From my perspective swimming just seem like any other physical activity, and it's hardly like you get incapacitated even if you get cramps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is. Has there been a single death recorded that can be reasonably attributed to getting cramps due to swimming to soon after a meal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T12:53:35.257" Title="Has anyone ever died because they went swimming to soon after eating?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2011-04-12T06:44:55.180" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2978" CreationDate="2011-04-11T20:41:45.020" Score="18" ViewCount="1636" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a theory which seems to continue to percolate (e.g., Erich von Daniken is still active, though I don't know if he still advances this idea in particular) which claims that Stonehenge required advanced construction skills and design intelligence beyond the capabilities of human inhabitants of the area and time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there reasonable experiments which have replicated a plausible building process with stones of similar size and weight, or in the absence of that, analogous building techniques from elsewhere which could have been used?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if construction was possible, was the design of the site too sophisticated for the Britons of that time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="468" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-05T01:07:42.770" LastActivityDate="2012-12-05T01:07:42.770" Title="Were &quot;Ancient Astronauts&quot; or extra-terrestrials responsible for the construction of Stonehenge?" Tags="|history|aliens|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2012" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-11T23:10:26.693" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-04-11T23:10:26.693" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T23:10:26.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2013" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-11T23:10:26.693" Score="0" Body="A chemical substance with the chemical formula H₂O, and an important biological solvent." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:36:03.053" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:36:03.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2014" PostTypeId="3" CreationDate="2011-04-11T23:12:53.527" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-04-11T23:12:53.527" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T23:12:53.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2015" PostTypeId="3" CreationDate="2011-04-11T23:12:53.527" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-04-11T23:12:53.527" LastActivityDate="2011-04-11T23:12:53.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2016" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2027" CreationDate="2011-04-11T23:28:49.073" Score="19" ViewCount="1399" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any solid evidence that any country's government has been engaged in and has been proven to have farmed human organs for sale on the black market?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-08T17:29:36.257" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T13:33:43.717" Title="Has any government been farming human organs?" Tags="|government|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-11T23:50:14.693" Score="19" ViewCount="3210" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/weather/research/2008-02-29-china-weather_N.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;example article&lt;/a&gt;) that the Chinese government caused it to rain before and during the Olympics to reduce pollution levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does reliable technology currently exist that could trigger rain within a reasonable area and does technology exist that would dissipate rain clouds and prevent it from raining?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T13:19:01.333" LastActivityDate="2023-07-22T14:26:52.613" Title="Is there existing technology to make it rain or to dissipate clouds?" Tags="|technology|weather|climatology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2019" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2020" CreationDate="2011-04-12T01:25:20.810" Score="20" ViewCount="2159" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it scientifically possible for someone to die of fear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure someone can be scared enough to have a heart attack or something, but is it possible for the brain to shut down as a defense mechanism in times of intense fear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, alongside this is the idea of hair turning white from fear. Is this possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1783" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T06:27:31.813" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T18:16:19.293" Title="Can one die of fear?" Tags="|biology|psychology|mortality|emotions|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2019" CreationDate="2011-04-12T01:48:11.503" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick search on Google Scholar revealed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annals.org/content/74/5/771.short&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; paper. The abstract reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The life settings in which sudden death may occur can be classified into eight categories: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annals.org/content/74/5/771.short&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; on the impact of the collapse or death of a close person; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1806841/?tool=pmcentrez&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; during acute grief; &lt;a href=&quot;http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/cgi/content/full/101/12/574&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; on threat of loss of a close person; [4] during mourning or on an anniversary; [5] on loss of status or self-esteem; [6] personal danger or threat of injury; [7] after the danger is over; [8] reunion, triumph, or happy ending. Common to all is that they involve events impossible for the victims to ignore and to which their response is overwhelming excitation or giving up, or both. It is proposed that this combination provokes neurovegetative responses, involving both the flight-fight and conservation-withdrawal systems, conducive to lethal cardiac events, particularly in individuals with preexisting cardiovascular disease; other modes of death, however, were also noted. Better understanding of the potentially lethal life situations and identification of individuals at risk may lead to the development of practical prophylactic measures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sources claim that &lt;em&gt;Voodoo Death&lt;/em&gt; is caused not by an actual curse, but by the fear of the victim of the curse. I don't have access to the paper, which is cited as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Voodoo and Sudden Death: The Effects of Expectations on Health Transcultural Psychiatry January 1, 1982 19:75-92 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, it appears that this phenomenon exists and is under scientific investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the sudden whitening: There are some historic cases, but these most likely did not happen &quot;overnight&quot;, but rather over weeks and months. In addition, hair did not suddenly turn white, but rather a mixture of pigmented and white hair was already present, and the pigmented hair fell out. A nice overview is given in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1806841/?tool=pmcentrez&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; paper. A relevant passage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While these theories hardly stand up to even indulgent criticism, there is one explanation which appears plausible. Alopecia areata is a disease in which either patchy or diffuse hair los occurs, often in a matter of days and sometimes to an alarming degree. The cause is unknown. Many times a psychic event has been linked to its onset, but whether this was a post or praeter hoc relation is disputed. For unknown reasons the hair loss in alopecia areata confines itself almost exclusively to pigmented hairs; white hairs remain. Moreover when hair regrows in areas of previous loss, it often does so without restoration of its previous color. It is reasonable that in a person who had a mixture of pigmented and white hair, in whom rapid, difuse pigmented hair loss occurred, would appear to have grown white overnight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some of the historical cases, there appears to be another, much more banal explanation, found in &lt;a href=&quot;http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/cgi/content/full/101/12/574&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; more recent historical overview:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The use of temporary hair dyes prior to 1907 may explain some cases of sudden canities. When incarcerated and sentenced to death, it is unlikely that individuals would have access to hair dye or servants to aid application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="1183" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T02:46:30.050" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T02:46:30.050" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2021" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2198" CreationDate="2011-04-12T02:54:30.473" Score="20" ViewCount="1093" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/weird/the-right-brain-vs-left-brain/story-e6frev20-1111114577583&quot;&gt;http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/weird/the-right-brain-vs-left-brain/story-e6frev20-1111114577583&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the newspaper article makes the claim that if you look at the image and the dancer is spinning anti-clockwise, you use your left side of your brain more and clock wise if you use the right side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest this is true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS - for me, it's constantly switching although i did see it anti-clockwise first&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T01:31:37.743" Title="Is there any scientific evidence that this illusion illustrates which side of our brain we use?" Tags="|neurology|optical-illusions|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2023" CreationDate="2011-04-12T03:47:34.663" Score="22" ViewCount="3683" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard from a number of people advice that using hot water either before or during shaving &quot;opens your pores&quot; to give you a closer shave. (As discussed on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makeup-care.info/beauty/mens-skin-care/shaving-tips.htm&quot;&gt;makeup site&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theartofshaving.com/info/theperfectshave&quot;&gt;The Art of Shaving&lt;/a&gt;,  and &lt;a href=&quot;http://consumerist.com/2009/07/wet-shave-and-save.html&quot;&gt;The Consumerist&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly some people claim that rinsing or splashing with cold water will &quot;close your pores&quot; when you are done shaving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the temperature of hot water actually affect either the closeness of the shave or the size of the pores in your skin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="677" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T12:57:56.937" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T12:57:56.937" Title="Does the temperature of the water when you shave affect your pores?" Tags="|natural-remedies|cosmetics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2022" CreationDate="2011-04-12T07:35:57.127" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strictly speaking, pores are the holes through which sweat is secreted. Hot water does make them open, as part of the usual thermoregulatory response, but this plays no part in the closeness of a shave, because the hair follicles are entirely separate from the pores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what hot water &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; do is soften the actual beard hair itself. Many shaving guides recommend washing well with warm water and soap before applying the razor. 'Proper' wet shaves at a barbers will often start with a hot towel being applied to the face, which really softens up the beard. A softer beard means the razor can cut it more easily, resulting in a more comfortable shave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this means a &lt;em&gt;closer&lt;/em&gt; shave is probably debatable and dependent on the sharpness of the blade. A new blade will probably slice through the beard anyway, but an older blade needs a bit of help. In any case, the increased comfort alone is worth the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to a comfortable shave (during and after) is retention of moisture as much as possible. Shaving not only removes hair, but also a thin layer of skin and the oils that keep it moist. Splashing with cool water after shaving will cause the pores to close, with the benefit being reduced moisture loss through them. Moisturiser or balm should then be applied to replace lost oils.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1205" LastEditorUserId="1205" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T10:57:28.870" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T10:57:28.870" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2026" CreationDate="2011-04-12T09:24:18.440" Score="60" ViewCount="4706" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Assessing_the_disaster.27s_effects_on_human_health&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; on this is littered with &lt;code&gt;[citation needed]&lt;/code&gt; and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2436245a&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;commenter on hacker news&lt;/a&gt; linked to it while stating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chernobyl cost several hundred thousand lives. Let's hope and pray Fukushima will not exact a similar cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I read a recent article in the Guardian about a journalist that was seemingly desperately trying to figure out what research backs up such claims. In the link-bait titled article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/05/anti-nuclear-lobby-misled-world?CMP=twt_fd&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The unpalatable truth is that the anti-nuclear lobby has misled us all&lt;/a&gt; he states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the last 25 years anti-nuclear campaigners have been racking up the figures for deaths and diseases caused by the Chernobyl disaster, and parading deformed babies like a medieval circus. They now claim 985,000 people have been killed by Chernobyl, and that it will continue to slaughter people for generations to come. These claims are false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (Unscear) is the equivalent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Like the IPCC, it calls on the world's leading scientists to assess thousands of papers and produce an overview. Here is what it says about the impacts of Chernobyl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the workers who tried to contain the emergency at Chernobyl, 134 suffered acute radiation syndrome; 28 died soon afterwards. Nineteen others died later, but generally not from diseases associated with radiation. The remaining 87 have suffered other complications, including four cases of solid cancer and two of leukaemia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the rest of the population there have been 6,848 cases of thyroid cancer among young children – arising &amp;quot;almost entirely&amp;quot; from the Soviet Union's failure to prevent people from drinking milk contaminated with iodine 131. Otherwise &amp;quot;there has been no persuasive evidence of any other health effect in the general population that can be attributed to radiation exposure&amp;quot;. People living in the countries affected today &amp;quot;need not live in fear of serious health consequences from the Chernobyl accident&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the probably widespread belief that Chernobyl disaster has caused hundreds of thousand, or even tens of thousand deaths true when examining the literature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-28T07:05:05.980" Title="Have several hundreds of thousands of people died because of the Chernobyl disaster?" Tags="|environment|radiation|nuclear-energy|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2024" CreationDate="2011-04-12T09:37:23.833" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index1.html&quot;&gt;World Health Organisation&lt;/a&gt; (2005)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The total number of deaths already&#xA;  attributable to Chernobyl or expected&#xA;  in the future over the lifetime of&#xA;  emergency workers and local residents&#xA;  in the most contaminated areas is&#xA;  estimated to be about 4000.&lt;/strong&gt; This&#xA;  includes some 50 emergency workers who&#xA;  died of acute radiation syndrome and&#xA;  nine children who died of thyroid&#xA;  cancer, and an estimated total of 3940&#xA;  deaths from radiation-induced cancer&#xA;  and leukemia among the 200 000&#xA;  emergency workers from 1986-1987, 116&#xA;  000 evacuees and 270 000 residents of&#xA;  the most contaminated areas (total&#xA;  about 600 000). These three major&#xA;  cohorts were subjected to higher doses&#xA;  of radiation amongst all the people&#xA;  exposed to Chernobyl radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The estimated 4000 casualties may&#xA;  occur during the lifetime of about 600&#xA;  000 people under consideration.&lt;/strong&gt; As&#xA;  about quarter of them will eventually&#xA;  die from spontaneous cancer not caused&#xA;  by Chernobyl radiation, the&#xA;  radiation-induced increase of about 3%&#xA;  will be difficult to observe. However,&#xA;  in the most highly exposed cohorts of&#xA;  emergency and recovery operation&#xA;  workers, some increase in particular&#xA;  cancers (e.g., leukemia) has already&#xA;  been observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Confusion about the impact has arisen&#xA;  owing to the fact that thousands of&#xA;  people in the affected areas have died&#xA;  of natural causes. Also, widespread&#xA;  expectations of ill health and a&#xA;  tendency to attribute all health&#xA;  problems to radiation exposure have&#xA;  led local residents to assume that&#xA;  Chernobyl related fatalities were much&#xA;  higher than they actually were.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Several hundred thousand' may not have died, but&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More than 350 000 people have been&#xA;  relocated away from the most severely&#xA;  contaminated areas&lt;/strong&gt;, 116 000 of them&#xA;  immediately after the accident. Even&#xA;  when people were compensated for&#xA;  losses, given free houses and a choice&#xA;  of resettlement location, &lt;strong&gt;the&#xA;  experience was traumatic and left many&#xA;  with no employment and a belief that&#xA;  they have no place in society&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T10:06:54.417" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T10:06:54.417" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2016" CreationDate="2011-04-12T10:12:31.173" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a huge controversy towards &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/sweden&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;sweden&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;sweden&lt;/a&gt; in 2009 when &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aftonbladet.se&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aftonbladet&lt;/a&gt; one of our newspapers published that the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/israeli&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;israeli&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;israeli&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/military&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;military&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;military&lt;/a&gt; had at some point been harvesting organs of dead &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/palestinians&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;palestinians&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;palestinians&lt;/a&gt;. At the time I personally didn't believe Aftonbladets claims as virtually all Swedish newspapers are about as good as tabloids, and it sounded like something out of the Daily Mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;21th of August 2009 the Local reports in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelocal.se/21596/20090821/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Israel blasts Sweden over organ harvesting report&lt;/a&gt; calling for the Swedish government to condemn one of it's newspapers reports. Something which is nearly unthinkable in Sweden as the newspapers are completely separate entities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Israel has announced that it intends to lodge an official protest to Sweden over its refusal to condemn an article in a national newspaper which claimed Israeli soldiers harvest the organs of dead Palestinians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;21th of December 2009 the Local ran another article when this whole mess unraveled (to my surprise) titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelocal.se/23964/20091221/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Israeli military admits to organ harvesting&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following diplomatic tensions over an August article published in Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet accusing the Israeli army of illegally harvesting the organs of Palestinians, Israel has admitted its forensic pathologists removed organs from dead bodies without consent from their families, reports the Associated Press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/21/israeli-pathologists-harvested-organs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another article in the Guardian&lt;/a&gt; goes on to explain that the incidents happened in the 90's, and that the doctor responsible was removed from his post in 2004. &lt;strong&gt;As opposed to what was reported in Aftonbladet the organ-harvesting program wasn't targeting Palestinians&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Israel has admitted pathologists harvested organs from dead Palestinians, and others, without the consent of their families – a practice it said ended in the 1990s – it emerged at the weekend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The admission, by the former head of the country's forensic institute, followed a furious row prompted by a Swedish newspaper reporting that Israel was killing Palestinians in order to use their organs – a charge that Israel denied and called &amp;quot;antisemitic&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However according to the interviewer that discovered this, &lt;strong&gt;the organs weren't sold on the black market&lt;/strong&gt;, instead they were taken to public hospitals as well as was sent to be used by the Israeli military, &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/12/2009122161551898444.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as reported by Al Jazeera&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who conducted the interview, told Al Jazeera on Monday that Hiss had said the &amp;quot;body parts were used by hospitals for transplant purposes - cornea transplants. They were sent to public hospitals [for use on citizens].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's at least one incident where one country was performing organ harvesting that they've since admitted too. Now since Israel didn't sell the organs on the black market, this answer doesn't cover your entire question, but it seemed to me that the important part of this question was on non-consensual organ harvesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T18:17:39.900" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2028" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8433" CreationDate="2011-04-12T10:34:04.347" Score="57" ViewCount="8676" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always been told, or notice others being told, or hear it in popular media, that squeezing pimples or blackheads is somehow &quot;bad&quot; for you.  Certainly, when there is a chance that the skin breaks, we have to worry about introducing infections and a whole host of other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I wish to know is, can squeezing pimples cause any detrimental effect &lt;em&gt;other than the obvious&lt;/em&gt;?  Can the pimples mysteriously spread?  Can one break out in a rash?  Can one develop lumps under the skin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any kind of evidence to support the claim that squeezing pimples is bad for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1788" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-23T13:32:54.743" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T21:18:58.263" Title="Is squeezing pimples bad for you?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|dermatology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2029" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2030" CreationDate="2011-04-12T11:06:22.477" Score="35" ViewCount="5054" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had an argument with a friend in college who claimed that it was possible to remain awake with little to no detrimental affects for an arbitrarily long period of time.  I am wondering, has anybody ever tried to measure the effects of extreme sleep deprivation?  Can death result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1788" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T06:15:21.457" Title="Death by lack of sleep -- is it possible?" Tags="|medical-science|sleep|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2029" CreationDate="2011-04-12T11:29:36.753" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fatal Familial Insomnia&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia#Treatment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia#Treatment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's extremely rare, but I saw a video in a Psychology class about a man who was observed (can't find the link I'm afraid) during the 6 months of the disease activating.  Within that 6 months, they tried to drug him, which didn't make him sleep, and over due course his body degraded so rapidly that just before his death he looked like he had aged decades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia identifies 4 stages of the disease:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The patient suffers increasing insomnia, resulting in panic attacks, paranoia, and phobias. This stage lasts for about four months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hallucinations and panic attacks become noticeable, continuing for about five months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complete inability to sleep is followed by rapid loss of weight. This lasts for about three months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dementia, during which the patient becomes unresponsive or mute over the course of six months. This is the final progression of the disease, resulting in death.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Voluntary Lack of Sleep&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Randy Gardner currently holds the record for voluntary lack of sleep:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation#Longest_period_without_sleep&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_deprivation#Longest_period_without_sleep&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He went 11 days, and if I recall correctly he was studied throughout by psychologists who wanted to measure the effects of it.  There is a lot of dispute over the results about the after effects however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Other&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question stated, 'Death by lack of sleep — is it possible?' and, yes it can.  Tiredness is also proven killer for drivers, as it is in other high risk jobs/environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="973" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T11:49:18.200" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2031" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2055" CreationDate="2011-04-12T11:36:00.603" Score="15" ViewCount="781" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just moved into my own apartment, and I've taken quite an interest in being as energy-efficient as possible (simply because, hey - I'm paying the electricity bill now!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been wondering - are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp&quot;&gt;Compact fluorescent lamp&lt;/a&gt; (CFLs) as efficient as they claim to be? I detest the light that they give off, but if they're significantly cheaper to use (especially in contrast to how expensive they are in comparison to normal bulbs), then I might be persuaded to pick up a few. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work almost constantly, so I probably don't use more than 3 or 4 hours of electric light daily, anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it worth the investment (and inconvenience)? I'm just a bit skeptical of something that claims to save me money by being 4-6 times the cost of the alternative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1789" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T19:20:45.950" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T19:20:45.950" Title="Do CFLs have a significant impact on your light bill?" Tags="|economics|compact-fluorescent-lamps|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2032" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3323" CreationDate="2011-04-12T11:43:32.550" Score="5" ViewCount="3142" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine suggested me to use a wet &lt;a href=&quot;https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Alum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;alum&lt;/a&gt; stone after shaving. Is this efficient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="71" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T20:08:40.390" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T16:18:20.580" Title="Does potassium alum soften the burning sensation after shaving?" Tags="|natural-remedies|cosmetics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2033" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2038" CreationDate="2011-04-12T12:22:26.690" Score="11" ViewCount="665" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone I know complains that Fluorescent lamps are &quot;burning&quot; her skin. I searched for sites that confirmed this and I found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The safety of energy-saving light bulbs is under review over concerns the low-cost green alternative may emit potentially harmful ultraviolet radiation.&#xA;  Health Canada launched the study in December to test compact fluorescent bulbs to see if they emit ultraviolet radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/cfl_light_bulbs_may_emit_harmful_uv_radiation/&quot;&gt;http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/cfl_light_bulbs_may_emit_harmful_uv_radiation/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I want to know if there are scientific studies confirming this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1173" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T12:48:02.173" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T04:17:50.987" Title="Do CFLs irradiate ultraviolet rays in a harmful intensity?" Tags="|medical-science|compact-fluorescent-lamps|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2034" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-12T12:46:11.627" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The word cosmetics derives from the Greek κοσμητική τέχνη (kosmetikē tekhnē), meaning &quot;art of dress and ornament&quot;, from κοσμητικός (kosmētikos), &quot;skilled in ordering or arranging&quot; and that from κόσμος (kosmos), meaning amongst others &quot;order&quot; and &quot;ornament&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cosmetics are substances used to enhance the appearance or odor of the human body. Cosmetics include skin-care creams, lotions, powders, perfumes, lipsticks, fingernail and toe nail polish, eye and facial makeup, towelettes, permanent waves, colored contact lenses, hair colors, hair sprays and gels, deodorants, hand sanitizer, baby products, bath oils, bubble baths, bath salts, butters and many other types of products. A subset of cosmetics is called &quot;make-up,&quot; which refers primarily to colored products intended to alter the user’s appearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T12:46:11.627" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T12:46:11.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2035" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-12T12:46:11.627" Score="0" Body="Cosmetics are substances used to enhance the appearance or odor of the human body." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T12:46:11.627" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T12:46:11.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2024" CreationDate="2011-04-12T13:32:22.197" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taken from here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50&#xA;  deaths had been directly attributed to&#xA;  radiation from the disaster, almost&#xA;  all being highly exposed rescue&#xA;  workers, many who died within months&#xA;  of the accident but others who died as&#xA;  late as 2004.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About 4000 cases of thyroid cancer,&#xA;  mainly in children and adolescents at&#xA;  the time of the accident, have&#xA;  resulted from the accident’s&#xA;  contamination and at least nine&#xA;  children died of thyroid cancer;&#xA;  however the survival rate among such&#xA;  cancer victims, judging from&#xA;  experience in Belarus, has been almost&#xA;  99%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most emergency workers and people&#xA;  living in contaminated areas received&#xA;  relatively low whole body radiation&#xA;  doses, comparable to natural&#xA;  background levels. As a consequence,&#xA;  no evidence or likelihood of decreased&#xA;  fertility among the affected&#xA;  population has been found, nor has&#xA;  there been any evidence of increases&#xA;  in congenital malformations that can&#xA;  be attributed to radiation exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“This was a very serious accident with&#xA;  major health consequences, especially&#xA;  for thousands of workers exposed in&#xA;  the early days who received very high&#xA;  radiation doses, and for the thousands&#xA;  more stricken with thyroid cancer. By&#xA;  and large, however, we have not found&#xA;  profound negative health impacts to&#xA;  the rest of the population in&#xA;  surrounding areas, nor have we found&#xA;  widespread contamination that would&#xA;  continue to pose a substantial threat&#xA;  to human health, within a few&#xA;  exceptional, restricted areas.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking it would seem that the consequences of a nuclear disaster are drastically overestimated and the science in no way backs up the hysteria in the media whenever anything nuclear is mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastEditorUserId="1791" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T13:39:12.003" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T13:39:12.003" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2033" CreationDate="2011-04-12T13:34:51.320" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some models emit ultraviolet light at an intensity which is higher than regulatory limits in the UK, if you sit too close to them. The British government's Health Protection Agency has issued &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hpa.org.uk/NewsCentre/NationalPressReleases/2008PressReleases/081009Emissionsfromcompactfluorescentlights/&quot;&gt;this advice&lt;/a&gt; - here's a quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Agency's view is that open&#xA;  (single envelope) CFLs shown in Fig. 1&#xA;  should not be used where people are in&#xA;  close proximity - closer than 30 cm or&#xA;  1 ft - to the bare light bulb for over&#xA;  1 hour a day. The Agency advises that&#xA;  for such situations open CFLs should&#xA;  be replaced by the encapsulated&#xA;  (double envelope) type shown in Fig.&#xA;  2. Alternatively, the lamp should be moved so that it is at least 30 cm or&#xA;  1 ft away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Agency's Chief Executive Justin&#xA;  McCracken said, &quot;This is precautionary&#xA;  advice and people should not be&#xA;  thinking of removing these energy&#xA;  saving light bulbs from their homes.&#xA;  We are advising people to avoid using&#xA;  the open light bulbs for prolonged&#xA;  close work until the problem is sorted&#xA;  out and to use encapsulated bulbs&#xA;  instead. In other situations where&#xA;  people are not likely to be very close&#xA;  to the bulbs for any length of time,&#xA;  all types of compact fluorescent light&#xA;  bulbs are safe to use.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not all open (single envelope)&#xA;  fluorescent light bulbs have&#xA;  significant UVR emissions but if&#xA;  people are in very close proximity to&#xA;  some of them, the exposure to bare&#xA;  skin is like being outside in direct&#xA;  sunlight. For example, Agency&#xA;  scientists found that when very close&#xA;  (2 cm, less than 1 inch) to some open&#xA;  CFLs, the UVR level can be equivalent&#xA;  to that experienced outside in the UK&#xA;  on a sunny day in the summer and so&#xA;  some precaution is warranted. When&#xA;  further away (over 30 cm or 1 ft), the&#xA;  UVR level is much lower and less than&#xA;  being outside on a sunny day in&#xA;  winter, which is not a concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question remains of whether the regulatory limits are too conservative, and I can't answer that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1120" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T13:34:51.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2039" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2041" CreationDate="2011-04-12T14:30:39.543" Score="46" ViewCount="107506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard this claim and burst into laughter assuming it was a joke, but the person said he was being serious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true that Red Bull contains bull's sperm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="808" LastEditorUserId="808" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T06:44:15.220" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T06:44:15.220" Title="Does Red Bull Energy Drink contain sperm from a bull?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2039" CreationDate="2011-04-12T14:43:57.687" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redbull.com/cs/Satellite/en_INT/red-bull-energy-drink/001242937921959?pcs_c=PCS_Product&amp;amp;pcs_cid=1242937842064&amp;amp;pcs_pvt=ingredient&amp;amp;pcs_iid=1242940968365&quot;&gt;Red Bull&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Taurine is an amino acid which is&#xA;  naturally occurring in the human body.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  It is found in high concentrations in&#xA;  muscle, brain, heart and blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;…about the origin of taurine in Red&#xA;  Bull? Many people bet it comes from&#xA;  some delicate parts of the strongest&#xA;  and most potent bulls in the world.&#xA;  Well, &lt;strong&gt;fact is that the taurine in Red&#xA;  Bull is produced synthetically by&#xA;  pharmaceutical companies and is not&#xA;  derived from animals.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taurine&quot;&gt;Taurine&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... is named after the Latin taurus which&#xA;  means bull or ox, as it was first&#xA;  isolated from ox bile in 1827&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T14:43:57.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2039" CreationDate="2011-04-12T14:44:23.307" Score="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rumor about bull sperm originates from the the fact that Red Bull advertises that it includes taurine, a name that if broken into its constituent parts sounds enough like &quot;taur&quot; (as in bull) and &quot;urine&quot; to create a cute little urban legend. In fact taurine is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/taurine/AN01856&quot;&gt;just an amino acid&lt;/a&gt;, and the version added to food isn't an animal product at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Red Bull brand addresses this urban legend on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://energydrink-us.redbull.com/red-bull-does-not-contain-bull-sperm&quot;&gt;FAQ page on its website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IS RED BULL® ENERGY DRINK SUITABLE FOR&#xA;  VEGETARIANS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Red Bull® Energy Drink is suitable for&#xA;  vegetarians. Red Bull® Energy Drink&#xA;  does not contain any animal products&#xA;  or substances derived from animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IS RED BULL® ENERGY DRINK GLUTEN FREE,&#xA;  VEGAN, WHEAT FREE, DAIRY FREE?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes, Red Bull® Energy Drink is gluten&#xA;  free, vegan, wheat free, dairy free!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IS TAURINE MADE FROM BULLS' TESTICLES?&#xA;  IS TAURINE A DERIVATIVE OF BULLS'&#xA;  TESTICLES OR SEMEN?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The taurine in Red Bull® Energy Drink&#xA;  is a purely synthetic substance&#xA;  produced by pharmaceutical companies&#xA;  and is not derived from animals or&#xA;  animal materials. All ingredients for&#xA;  Red Bull® Energy Drink are&#xA;  synthetically produced by&#xA;  pharmaceutical companies. This&#xA;  guarantees the highest quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="11387" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T13:44:03.917" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T13:44:03.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2047" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2050" CreationDate="2011-04-12T16:30:13.823" Score="3" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've experienced significant &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporomandibular_joint_disorder&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TMJD issues&lt;/a&gt;, and I know several other people who have also had TMJD issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJD or TMD), or TMJ syndrome, is an umbrella term covering acute or chronic inflammation of the temporomandibular joint, which connects the mandible to the skull. The disorder and resultant dysfunction can result in significant pain and impairment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing we all seem to have in common is that we've previously had orthodontic work. It's a small sampling size, but in particular I know one person whose onset of TMJD issues began during orthodontic treatment, which suggests to me more than correlation but actual causation between orthodontic work and subsequent TMJD issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well, my dentist, who is also a very highly regarded professor of dentistry, has told me that many of the TMJD issues he sees (and he has seen a lot) correlate with prior orthodontic work. He noted that many dentists have similar observations, but it's not acknowledged by the official powers that be. He's noted that there is a great deal of controversy over this in the regulatory bodies that govern dentistry, and although he's made inquiries with several colleagues he's not aware of any formal studies of relationship between TMJD and orthodontic work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In light of my own experiences and anecdotal evidence, and the comments of my dentist, I'm curious about whether others have noted or are aware of any evidence that would suggest that orthodontic work causes TMJD issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T17:33:37.510" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T17:33:37.510" Title="Does orthodontic work cause (or contribute to) TMJD issues?" Tags="|medical-science|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2001" CreationDate="2011-04-12T16:38:10.460" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with your second article is that it confuses correlation with causation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Donald A. Redelmeier (professor of medicine at the University of Toronto) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-damp-or-wet-weather&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;writing in Scientific American&lt;/a&gt;, has a good readable explanation.  His conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ultimately, peoples' belief about wet&#xA;  weather and arthritis may reveal more&#xA;  about the workings of the mind than&#xA;  the body. Indeed, the innate tendency&#xA;  to identify patterns and discount&#xA;  randomness has evolutionary benefits&#xA;  because predictability can often be&#xA;  turned to advantage, whereas&#xA;  randomness is hard to exploit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T16:38:10.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2047" CreationDate="2011-04-12T17:13:13.843" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion, based upon my personal experiences with TMJ: No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's quite a few studies which would agree with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajodo.org/article/S0889-5406(94)70095-8/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ajodo.org/article/S0889-5406(94)70095-8/abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jdentaled.org/cgi/content/full/72/8/930&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.jdentaled.org/cgi/content/full/72/8/930&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first link found no correlation between orthodontic work performed and development of TMJD.  The second link discusses possible causes - injury, hormones, etc as causing the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjsportmed.com/content/25/1/49.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://bjsportmed.com/content/25/1/49.abstract&lt;/a&gt; which deals with the use of a scuba mouthpiece compounding TMJ problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For my own TMJ problems, they can be traced back to the years I spent playing softball as a catcher.  The necessary tightness of the facemask against my jaw pushed it backwards and made it ache. This was before skullcaps were obligatory - so there was no way to mediate the effect. I caught softball for 10 years, from March to August, usually 3 nights a week, 7 innings per game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T17:13:13.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2031" CreationDate="2011-04-12T20:25:20.833" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If saving ~$500usd/year is significant then yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aFDoR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;CFL v LED v INC&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://green.thefuntimesguide.com/2007/04/las_vegas_energy_use.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Las Vegas Strip: An Energy Consumption Nightmare&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other tips:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Smarter Switches&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Install motion-detecting switches that turn off lights when a room is empty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CPU Myth&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Shut down your PC if it&#xA;will be idle more than 2 hours. The&#xA;idea that turning a computer off and&#xA;on shortens its life is a relic of&#xA;the mainframe era.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bright Idea&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Use compact fluorescent&#xA;bulbs. New models illuminate just as&#xA;well as incandescents -- and operate&#xA;on just over one quarter of the&#xA;power.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cold Truth&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Keep your refrigerator or&#xA;freezer full; it operates more&#xA;efficiently that way. Low on food?&#xA;Keep a container of ice in the&#xA;freezer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/improvement/energy-efficient/4217078?click=main_sr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Popular Mechanics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="35" LastEditDate="2011-04-12T20:55:10.087" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T20:55:10.087" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2056" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2075" CreationDate="2011-04-12T21:30:45.663" Score="25" ViewCount="4140" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that the female menstrual cycle follows a pattern of the lunar cycle, mostly as an evolutionary adaptation so that menstruation (and hence detectability by predators because of the smell of fresh blood) happens on the nights where humans have the best visibility and are thus best able to see predators and defend themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know if there is any merit to this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-02-03T22:01:39.810" LastActivityDate="2018-02-03T22:01:39.810" Title="Is the human menstrual cycle related to the lunar cycle?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|physiology|moon|menstrual-cycle|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2057" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2065" CreationDate="2011-04-12T21:51:16.683" Score="51" ViewCount="6666" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there examples of evolution that can be demonstrated as proof that evolution occurs and is a useful mechanism for making predictions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples that come to mind include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Animal husbandry (e.g. cattle, dogs, etc.);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bacteria that survive antibiotics evolving resistance;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Statistics on human eye color.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know what other examples are out there, and which would be the most apparent or persuasive for convincing those skeptical of the evolutionary process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="1792" LastEditDate="2011-07-04T20:08:59.147" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T01:40:34.217" Title="Demonstrable and repeatable examples of evolution" Tags="|biology|evolution|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1790" CreationDate="2011-04-12T21:59:41.637" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your comments, I am guessing that you will be a hardened skeptic. You've come to the right place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me address a couple of points. First, I agree with you that correlation is not causation. But my guess is that you are not looking for causation (for example, the biochemical processes that causes a higher incidence of heart disease in meat eaters). After all, who knows what causes heart disease? There are experts who might guess, but I don't think any researcher has come up with a single, definitive cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(EDIT start: heightening the contrast between correlation and causation.) Let's turn our attention to the causation / correlation contrast for a different health-related matter: Smoking (perhaps unhealthy) verses Non-Smoking (perhaps healthier).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a proposition, turned into a parallel of the vegan/healthier argument. Does non-smoking cause not-lung-cancer? OR is non-smoking correlated to not-lung-cancer? (I apologize for the Aristotelian flip here, but just think &quot;absence of lung cancer&quot; as a parallel to &quot;healthier.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To ask for causation is to ask too much. Some non-smokers get lung cancer. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://carcin.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/5/875.short&quot;&gt;http://carcin.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/5/875.short&lt;/a&gt;. Therefore, there is no &lt;em&gt;causal&lt;/em&gt; link between not-smoking and absence of lung cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, science has asserted that smoking is correlated with an increased incidence of lung cancer. Now that is a different question. Even a skeptic would say there is a correlation. Non-smoking correlates to lower lung-cancer incidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be scientific, but unethical, to cage humans and force one group to smoke and not have another group smoke. It would be scientific, but unethical, to cage humans and force-feed one group meat and force-feed another group vegetables. (EDIT ends.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A scientifically accepted way to test humans is to do an epidemiological study. One type of epidemiological study would be to monitor many people over a long period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It turns out that protein intake has been studied for both monozygotic (identical) twins and vegetarianism for an epidemiological survey of a homogeneous group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first study is called “Dietary protein and blood pressure in monozygotic twins” by&#xA;Richard J. Havlik M.D, et. al, published in Preventive Medicine (Vol 19, Issue 1, pp. 31-35). It shows that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using differences in monozygotic&#xA;  twins, a direct association of dietary&#xA;  protein intake and diastolic blood&#xA;  pressure was identified and persisted&#xA;  after adjustment for known covariates&#xA;  of blood pressure. Adjusting for known&#xA;  covariates and holding total calories&#xA;  constant, a 9-g difference in daily&#xA;  protein intake was directly associated&#xA;  with a 1 mm Hg difference in diastolic&#xA;  blood pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply put, what they found was that after adjusting for differences other than genetics (because monozygotic twins have the identical genetic makeup), more protein correlates to higher blood pressure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you have noted, vegetarian diets tend to be poorer in protein. You might object that this study shows a relationship between protein and BP, not meat and BP. All that an inveterate skeptic would conclude is that this study shows a link between vegetarian diets and lower BP, but perhaps not a strong link. On to the second study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The epidemiological study may be found in Am J Clin Nutr September 1988 vol. 48 no. 3 739-748, which you may read in full, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/48/3/739.full.pdf+html&quot;&gt;online&lt;/a&gt;. It compares a large number (n=27,529) of Seventh-Day Adventists. The Adventists are prohibited from using tobacco, alcohol, and pork. They are discouraged from consuming other meats, fish and eggs. Because eating a vegetarian diet is optional, this made for an ideal epidemiological study in that the meat-eaters and the vegetarians have similar life styles and all live in the same US state (California).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I discuss the study’s conclusions, let me observe that it addresses almost all of your objections. It is a large study. It draws scientific conclusions, based on well known statistical methods. It minimizes lifestyle differences and geographic differences of the participants. It was published in a peer-reviewed journal. (The reviewers are, in a sense, skeptics-for-hire. Their job is to ferret out any design flaws, incorrect inferences, and confounding factors.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Within this population, meat&#xA;  consumption was positively associated&#xA;  with mortality because of all causes&#xA;  of death combined (in males), coronary&#xA;  heart disease (in males and females),&#xA;  and diabetes (in males). Egg&#xA;  consumption was positively associated&#xA;  with mortality because of all causes&#xA;  combined (in females), and cancers of&#xA;  the colon (in males and females&#xA;  combined) and ovary. Milk consumption&#xA;  was positively associated only with&#xA;  prostate cancer mortality, and cheese&#xA;  consumption did not have a clear&#xA;  relationship with any cause of death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Positively associated with” means more x correlates with more y. (x = meat, eggs, milk; y=death for all causes, death by colon cancer, death by heart disease). If you delve into the article, you will see that the tests are very statistically significant. For the case of all-cause mortality in males, the significance (p &amp;lt; .0001) means that only in 1 case out of 1000 would you find that the results were due to chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This significance is much higher than that you would see for drug trials, for instance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author, Dr. Snowdon, has done his job of showing correlation. (Remember, the standard is to show correlation to a given significance, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to show causation.) He even has a section about the limitations of the study. (There were three: 1) Gathering a lot of data means a simpler survey; 2) Dietary habits may have changed since the study began; 3) He did not study what substituted for meat (e.g., fruits and vegetables substituted for meat may be the cause for lower mortality).)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His only grant was from the US National Cancer Institute, so the paper was not sponsored by PETA or the Dairy industry, for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you compare the scientific studies of smoking correlating with lung cancer (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/54/22/5801.short&quot;&gt;http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/54/22/5801.short&lt;/a&gt;), you will see that for some studies, the statistical significance levels are still very high (P = 0.001), but not as high as the Adventist study. The relationship between eating meat and these major diseases is more strongly linked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1403" LastEditorUserId="1403" LastEditDate="2012-01-13T12:19:10.423" LastActivityDate="2012-01-13T12:19:10.423" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2059" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2099" CreationDate="2011-04-12T22:53:34.787" Score="52" ViewCount="6317" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a fairly common &quot;fact&quot; that if you make enough money, that you can hire lawyers who can hide all of your money, so that you end up paying little to no tax. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="987" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T19:24:47.993" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T18:24:41.880" Title="Do rich companies pay little/no corporate income taxes in the United States?" Tags="|united-states|taxes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2024" CreationDate="2011-04-12T23:30:43.097" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, now let's try another take with more numbers. I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/health_impacts.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a nice page&lt;/a&gt; with many references (NB: I haven't personally checked them all, but I've seen the Chernobyl Forum report and it lines up). Relevant quotes of the specific death numbers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apart from the initial &lt;strong&gt;31&lt;/strong&gt; deaths (two&#xA;  from the explosions, one reportedly&#xA;  from coronary thrombosis (heart&#xA;  attack), and &lt;strong&gt;28&lt;/strong&gt; firemen and plant&#xA;  personnel from acute radiation&#xA;  syndrome), the number of deaths&#xA;  resulting from the accident is unclear&#xA;  and a subject of considerable&#xA;  controversy. According to the 2006&#xA;  report of the UN Chernobyl Forum's&#xA;  'Health' Expert Group: &quot;The actual&#xA;  number of deaths caused by this&#xA;  accident is unlikely ever to be&#xA;  precisely known.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  On the number of&#xA;  deaths due to acute radiation syndrome&#xA;  (ARS), the Expert Group report states:&#xA;  &quot;Among the 134 emergency workers&#xA;  involved in the immediate mitigation&#xA;  of the Chernobyl accident, severely&#xA;  exposed workers and fireman during the&#xA;  first days, &lt;strong&gt;28&lt;/strong&gt; persons died in 1986&#xA;  due to ARS, and &lt;strong&gt;19&lt;/strong&gt; more persons died&#xA;  in 1987-2004 from different causes.&#xA;  Among the general population affected&#xA;  by the Chernobyl radioactive fallout,&#xA;  the much lower exposures meant that&#xA;  ARS cases did not occur.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Regarding the emergency workers with&#xA;  doses lower than those causing ARS&#xA;  symptoms, the Expert Group report&#xA;  referred to studies carried out on&#xA;  61,000 emergency Russian workers where&#xA;  a total of 4995 deaths from this group&#xA;  were recorded during 1991-1998. &quot;The&#xA;  number of deaths in Russian emergency&#xA;  workers attributable to radiation&#xA;  caused by solid neoplasms and&#xA;  circulatory system diseases can be&#xA;  estimated to be about &lt;strong&gt;116&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;100&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  cases respectively.&quot; Furthermore, &quot;the&#xA;  number of leukaemia cases attributable&#xA;  to radiation in this cohort can be&#xA;  estimated to be about &lt;strong&gt;30&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; Thus, 4.6%&#xA;  of the number of deaths in this group&#xA;  are attributable to radiation-induced&#xA;  diseases. (The estimated average&#xA;  external dose for this group was 107&#xA;  mSv.)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The picture is even&#xA;  more unclear for the populations of&#xA;  the areas affected by the Chernobyl&#xA;  fallout. However, the report does link&#xA;  the accident to an increase in thyroid&#xA;  cancer in children: &quot;During 1992-2000,&#xA;  in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, about&#xA;  4000 cases of thyroid cancer were&#xA;  diagnosed in children and adolescents&#xA;  (0–18 years), of which about 3000&#xA;  occurred in the age group of 0–14&#xA;  years. For 1152 thyroid cancer patient&#xA;  cases diagnosed among Chernobyl&#xA;  children in Belarus during 1986-2002,&#xA;  the survival rate is 98.8%. &lt;strong&gt;Eight&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  patients died due to progression of&#xA;  their thyroid cancer and &lt;strong&gt;six&lt;/strong&gt; children&#xA;  died from other causes. &lt;strong&gt;One&lt;/strong&gt; patient&#xA;  with thyroid cancer died in Russia.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;The &lt;strong&gt;predicted&lt;/strong&gt; lifetime excess&#xA;  cancer and leukaemia deaths for&#xA;  200,000 liquidators, 135,000 evacuees&#xA;  from the 30 km zone, 270,000 residents&#xA;  of the SCZs ['strict control zones']&#xA;  were &lt;strong&gt;2200&lt;/strong&gt; for liquidators, &lt;strong&gt;160&lt;/strong&gt; for&#xA;  evacuees, and 1600 among residents of&#xA;  the SCZs. This total, about &lt;strong&gt;4000&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  deaths projected over the lifetimes of&#xA;  the some 600,000 persons most affected&#xA;  by the accident, is a small proportion&#xA;  of the total cancer deaths from all&#xA;  causes that can be expected to occur&#xA;  in this population. It must be&#xA;  stressed that this estimate is bounded&#xA;  by large uncertainties.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   Beyond&#xA;  this, &quot;for the further population of&#xA;  more than 6,000,000 persons in other&#xA;  contaminated areas, the projected&#xA;  number of deaths was about &lt;strong&gt;5000&lt;/strong&gt;. This&#xA;  latter estimate is particularly&#xA;  uncertain, as it is based on an&#xA;  average dose of just 7 mSv, which&#xA;  differs very little from natural&#xA;  background radiation levels.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1808" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T23:30:43.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2059" CreationDate="2011-04-12T23:46:24.467" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stories like &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/general-electric-paid-federal-taxes-2010/story?id=13224558&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;General Electric Paid No Taxes In 2010&lt;/a&gt; are common in America. I can remember reading similar stories over the years. It would be surprising if only GE pays no tax - otherwise, how would other giant companies compete with GE?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1838" LastActivityDate="2011-04-12T23:46:24.467" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4780" CreationDate="2011-04-12T23:46:37.227" Score="19" ViewCount="1146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that big companies are the biggest beneficiaries of agricultural subsidies (in the US and other western countries). This would to me seem to be the opposite of the intention of those policies, and I'd like to know how true this statistic is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2018-07-20T16:51:58.967" LastActivityDate="2018-07-20T16:51:58.967" Title="Are big corporations the biggest beneficiaries from farming subsidies?" Tags="|government|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1924" CreationDate="2011-04-13T00:07:50.743" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aluminum recycling is an enormous net win, because a used aluminum can is very nearly the same thing as the output of an aluminum smelter, which consumes huge amounts of irreplaceable fossil fuels. Plastic and paper are not typically recycled at all - they are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downcycling&quot;&gt;downcycled&lt;/a&gt; into coarser forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best kind of recycling is when the original user of the product finds multiple uses for a product before disposing of it. For example, a glass pickle jar can be washed and reused for food storage practically indefinitely. This is a big win over recycling the glass and buying a brand-new plastic food container.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also a big win to rescue useful items that other people would have thrown away. Used appliances and food containers from yard sales are cheap and often perfectly functional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1838" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T00:07:50.743" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2064" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4354" CreationDate="2011-04-13T00:10:51.643" Score="33" ViewCount="3032" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that organic crops and husbandry are worse for the environment than non-organic equivalents because in the absence of pesticides and fertilizers much more land is required for an organic yield equivalent to what would be achieved with fertilizer and pesticides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I'm sure there are lots of variables across the different crops and animals, but I expect there are some generalizations that could be applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;EDIT: Reference to &quot;Organic foods&quot;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By “organic crops” in this sense, I mean “organic foods” (per &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_food&quot;&gt;Wikipedia:Organic_Food&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Organic foods are foods that are produced using methods that do not involve modern synthetic inputs such as synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, do not contain genetically modified organisms, and are not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or chemical food additives&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="37939" LastEditDate="2017-06-05T12:17:54.697" LastActivityDate="2017-11-04T19:26:17.753" Title="Organic food is worse for the environment because it requires more land than non-organic food" Tags="|nutrition|economics|environment|gmo|organic-food|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2057" CreationDate="2011-04-13T00:13:24.003" Score="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is way too wide to be answered here in full, however I gathered some evidence for you to get you started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Websites&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://evolutionwiki.org/&quot;&gt;Evowiki.org&lt;/a&gt; seems to incorporate a significant portion of the content of &lt;em&gt;TalkOrigins.org&lt;/em&gt; (below), and continues to be updated. Evowiki is also presented in the more contemporary &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mediawiki.org&quot;&gt;MediaWiki&lt;/a&gt; format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/&quot;&gt;TalkOrigins.org&lt;/a&gt; is an archive of evidence behind evolution, arising out of discussion on the Usenet group &lt;em&gt;talk.origins&lt;/em&gt; since 1986. They present no less that 29 pieces of evidence of it (confirmed by multiple studies, in principle disprovable by experiment). &lt;em&gt;Note: TalkOrigins.org doesn't seem to have been updated since 2006.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary of evidence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As presented by TalkOrigins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A unique, historical phylogenetic tree&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#fundamental_unity&quot;&gt;Unity of life&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;All species that we know of share the same basic biochemical building blocks of life, like polymers, metabolism, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#nested_hierarchy&quot;&gt;Nested hierarchies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;We have a tree of species, not a simple list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#independent_consilience&quot;&gt;Convergence of independent phylogenies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The tree of life is supported both by the morphology of the species (the phylogenetic tree, how it was originally conceived) and the molecular similarities of the DNA.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/incongruent.html&quot;&gt;Statistics of incongruent phylogenies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Not only the phylogenetic tree and the molecular tree are correlated, but the correlation has a &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt;-value ≤ 7.4 × 10&lt;sup&gt;–8&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morphological_intermediates&quot;&gt;Transitional forms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;All fossilized animals found conform to the standard phylogenetic tree.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morphological_intermediates_ex1&quot;&gt;Reptile-birds&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morphological_intermediates_ex2&quot;&gt;Reptile-mammals&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morphological_intermediates_ex3&quot;&gt;Ape-humans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morphological_intermediates_ex4&quot;&gt;Legged whales&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morphological_intermediates_ex4&quot;&gt;Legged seacows&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#chronology&quot;&gt;Chronology of common ancestors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Fossilized intermediates appear in the correct general chronological order based on the standard tree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Past history&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#vestiges&quot;&gt;Anatomical vestiges&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The various nonfunctional or rudimentary vestigial characters, both anatomical and molecular, that are found throughout biology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#atavisms&quot;&gt;Atavisms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;An atavism is the reappearance of a lost character specific to a remote evolutionary ancestor and not observed in the parents or recent ancestors of the organism displaying the atavistic character.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#atavisms_ex1&quot;&gt;Whales and dolphins with hindlimbs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#atavisms_ex2&quot;&gt;Humans tails&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#mol_vestiges&quot;&gt;Molecular vestiges&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Vestigial characters are also found at the molecular level.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#ontogeny&quot;&gt;Ontogeny and developmental biology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The morphological aspect of embryos.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#ontogeny_ex1&quot;&gt;Mammalian ear bones, reptilian jaws&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#ontogeny_ex2&quot;&gt;Pharyngeal pouches, branchial arches&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#ontogeny_ex3&quot;&gt;Snake embryos with legs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#ontogeny_ex4&quot;&gt;Embryonic human tail&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#ontogeny_ex5&quot;&gt;Marsupial eggshell and caruncle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#present_biogeography&quot;&gt;Present biogeography&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Because species divergence happens not only in the time dimension, but also in spatial dimensions, common ancestors originate in a particular geographical location. In fact, the spatial and geographical distribution of species is consistent with their predicted genealogical relationships.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#past_biogeography&quot;&gt;Past biogeography&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Past biogeography, as recorded by the fossils that are found also conforms to the standard phylogenetic tree.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#past_biogeography_ex1&quot;&gt;Marsupials&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#past_biogeography_ex2&quot;&gt;Horses&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#past_biogeography_ex3&quot;&gt;Apes and humans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evolutionary opportunism&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section3.html#morphological_parahomology&quot;&gt;Anatomical parahomology&lt;/a&gt;                      &#xA;&lt;br&gt;Parahomology, as the term is used here, is similarity of structure despite difference in function. When one species branches into two species, one or both of the species may acquire new functions. Since the new species must recruit and modify preexisting structures to perform these new functions, the same structure shared by these two species will now perform a different function in each of the two species.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section3.html#molecular_parahomology&quot;&gt;Molecular parahomology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The concept of parahomology applies equally to both the macroscopic structures of organisms and structures on the molecular level. &#xA;                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section3.html#morphological_analogy&quot;&gt;Anatomical convergence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Analogy is the case where different structures perform the same or similar functions in different species. Two distinct species have different histories and different structures; if both species evolve the same new function, they may recruit different structures to perform this new function.                  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section3.html#molecular_analogy&quot;&gt;Molecular convergence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;Like parahomology, analogy should be represented on both macroscopic and molecular levels.&#xA;                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section3.html#morphological_inefficiency&quot;&gt;Anatomical suboptimal function&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt;Evolutionary opportunism also results in suboptimal functions and structures. &#xA;                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section3.html#molecular_inefficiency&quot;&gt;Molecular suboptimal function&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;&lt;br&gt;The principle of imperfect design should apply to biomolecular organization as well.                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Molecular evidence&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html#protein_redundancy&quot;&gt;Protein functional redundancy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;The support for common descent given by studies of molecular sequences can be phrased as a deductive argument&#xA;                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html#DNA_redundancy&quot;&gt;DNA functional redundancy&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt;Like protein sequence similarity, the DNA sequence similarity of two ubiquitous genes also implies common ancestry.&#xA;                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html#transposons&quot;&gt;Transposons&lt;/a&gt; &#xA; &lt;br&gt;In many ways, transposons are very similar to viruses. However, they lack genes for viral coat proteins, cannot cross cellular boundaries, and thus they replicate only in the genome of their host. They can be thought of as intragenomic parasites.                   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html#pseudogenes&quot;&gt;Redundant pseudogenes&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt;Pseudogenes have faulty regulatory sequences that prevent the gene from being transcribed into mRNA, or they have internal stop codons that keep the functional protein from being made.&#xA;                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section4.html#retroviruses&quot;&gt;Endogenous retroviruses&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt;Endogenous retroviruses are molecular remnants of a past parasitic viral infection.&#xA;                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Change&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section5.html#genetic_change&quot;&gt;Genetic&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;&lt;br&gt;Genotype specifies possible phenotypes, therefore, phenotypic change follows genetic change.                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section5.html#morphological_change&quot;&gt;Morphological&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Macroevolution requires that organisms' morphologies have changed throughout evolutionary history; &#xA;in fact, we do observe morphological change and variation in modern populations. &#xA;                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section5.html#functional_change&quot;&gt;Functional&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt;The ability to occupy one niche over another is invariably due to differing functions. Thus, functional change must be extremely important for macroscopic macroevolutionary change.&#xA;                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section5.html#strange_past&quot;&gt;The strange past&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt;More recent fossils are more similar to contemporary life forms than older fossils.&#xA;                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section5.html#speciation_stages&quot;&gt;Stages of speciation&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt;We see all possible degrees of speciation or genetic isolation today, ranging from fully interbreeding populations, to partially interbreeding populations, to populations that interbreed with reduced fertility or with complete infertility, to completely genetically isolated populations.&#xA;                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section5.html#speciations&quot;&gt;Speciation events&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt;The standard phylogenetic tree illustrates countless speciation events; each common ancestor also represents at least one speciation event. Thus we should be able to observe actual speciation, if even only very rarely.&#xA;                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section5.html#morphological_rates&quot;&gt;Morphological rates&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt;Observed rates of evolutionary change in modern populations are greater than or equal to rates observed in the fossil record.&#xA;                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                    &lt;li&gt;&#xA;                        &lt;a href=&quot;http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section5.html#genetic_rates&quot;&gt;Genetic rates&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;&lt;br&gt;Rates of genetic change, as measured by nucleotide substitutions, must also be consistent with the rate required from the time allowed in the fossil record and the sequence differences observed between species.&#xA;                    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;                &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Books&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There's plenty of evidence in these books&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Charles Darwin, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1228&quot;&gt;On the origin of the species&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book is mostly concerned with experimental evidence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Richard Dawkins, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/059306173X&quot;&gt;The greatest show on Earth&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;entire&lt;/em&gt; book is about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="1792" LastEditDate="2011-10-14T19:45:44.403" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T19:45:44.403" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2067" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-13T00:36:44.137" Score="44" ViewCount="6204" Body="&lt;p&gt;Among some computer users I've heard the claim that turning a computer on and off reduces the life of the computer, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiatforum.com/computing/74221-does-turning-your-computer-off-damage.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here's an example of this claim&lt;/a&gt;.  In this claim, it is believed that turning the computer on and off stresses or damages various components more than leaving the machine running 24/7.  Others claim that the components are damaged more by being left running.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which claim is correct, does turning a computer on and off reduce the time to failure more than leaving it running?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or does leaving a computer running all the time, wear it out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional Details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I'm assuming that one would not turn the computer on and off more than a handful of times a day, but usually just once.  As opposed to leaving it running 24/7.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mWMqv.jpg&quot; width=&quot;170&quot; height=&quot;150&quot; &gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Side question: does &lt;strong&gt;sleeping&lt;/strong&gt; have a similar effect as turning it off?]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[What about when the computer &lt;strong&gt;Hibernates&lt;/strong&gt;?]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T14:54:16.473" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T12:46:43.733" Title="Is leaving a computer running better for it than turning it on and off?" Tags="|computers|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="923" CreationDate="2011-04-13T00:51:11.037" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find a study about the downside of eating insects, but anecdotally...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insects are generally too small for butchering. Every bite contains meat and poop and exoskeleton etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's unclear how insects could be farmed and processed with economy of scale, which is the means by which one society dominates another. On TV (Bizarre Foods etc.) insects are shown to be gathered in their natural state, or sometimes a plant is injured to encourage insects to show up. It doesn't seem possible to scale this up to create foods cheap enough to manipulate relations with other societies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In England there has been a long experiment with &lt;a href=&quot;http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mycoprotein farming&lt;/a&gt;, which IMHO takes the primary argument for insect farming to its logical conclusion - it harvests protein from organisms even smaller than insects, such that dealing with them resembles a chemical process like baking or brewing more than animal farming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1838" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T00:51:11.037" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2069" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2263" CreationDate="2011-04-13T02:14:23.637" Score="47" ViewCount="4267" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many news organizations (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/11/japan.nuclear.reactors/index.html?hpt=Sbin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/11/japan-nuclear-crisis-severity-level-chernobyl_n_847849.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;, etc) are referring to the Japan incident as something as severe as Chernobyl, i.e. a nuclear event with International Atomic Energy Agency rating &quot;7&quot;. I'm skeptical of this equivalence because the radiation from Japan's Fukushima Dai-ichi plants seems to be predominantly cesium and iodine, whereas Chernobyl's radiation included more dangerous isotopes such as plutonium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the Japan nuclear disaster as dangerous to human health as Chernobyl (both locally and around the world)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This question is similar to (but not the same as) &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/814/can-a-second-chernobyl-happen-at-the-nuclear-reactors-damaged-by-the-tsunami-in&quot;&gt;Can a “second Chernobyl” happen at the nuclear reactors damaged by the tsunami in Japan?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T02:06:11.297" Title="Is Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster &quot;on par&quot; with Chernobyl?" Tags="|radiation|nuclear-energy|fukushima-daiichi|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-13T02:53:47.273" Score="38" ViewCount="7468" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have encountered anecdotal claims that the act of taking a cold shower fairly frequently (e.g. once a day) improves health, or at least, reduces susceptibility to illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence that this does indeed work, even if only for a narrow and specifically defined segment of the human population?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1802" LastEditorDisplayName="user1802" LastEditDate="2011-04-13T13:25:30.570" LastActivityDate="2018-11-30T21:31:22.237" Title="Can regular cold showers reliably improve health?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2069" CreationDate="2011-04-13T04:05:13.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;s&gt;One difference between Fukushima and Chernobyl for human health is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/12/japan.nuclear.disaster.fukushima/?hpt=C2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;distribution of iodine tablets&lt;/a&gt;. According to the linked article, the biggest problem was radioactive iodine causing cancer, which the tablets can prevent. Chernobyl didn't distribute the tablets well, while Japan did.&lt;/s&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is only good for human health. This wouldn't affect, say, environmental impact - unless they decided to distribute tablets to the animals!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; It seems no civilians in the area used iodine tablets, on the grounds they didn't receive enough exposure for it to be justified: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7389/was-stable-iodine-distributed-post-fukushima-by-the-japanese-government&quot;&gt;Was stable iodine distributed post-Fukushima by the Japanese government?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T11:55:11.727" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2033" CreationDate="2011-04-13T04:17:50.987" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;CFL's, in fact ALL fluorescent bulbs (compact or not) naturally emit SOME ultraviolet light as a product of the process by which they produce light. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A FL is a gas discharge lamp that produces ultraviolet radiation through excitation of mercury atoms. The inside of the lamp is coated in phosphorus, that absorbs UV and emits visible light. The glass bulb itself also absorbs significant amounts of UV. In addition, if a lamp is covered with a glass lamp shade (like the ceiling lamps that provide diffuse lighting) the UV output is further decreased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question then becomes, how &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; of the UV reaches the outside world. Since the absorption cross section of the glass and the phosphorus is finite, some of UV will pass through. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is - not much - at least by any natural comparable standard. Unless you are several inches from the CFL, a full working day exposure to CFL light is equivalent to several minutes - or less - of direct sunlight. Which means that a regular human being is unlikely to experience any negative effects from the ultraviolet dose he/she receives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, an individual with UV sensitivity, might experience negative health effects even from such a limited exposure to UV radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also important to note that old or aging CFL's may have degradation of the phosphorus coating, CFL's that have a &quot;clear spot&quot; where the phosphorus has flaked off can be the source of dangerous amounts of UV and should be immediately replaced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1733" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T04:17:50.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2074" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2188" CreationDate="2011-04-13T04:19:27.460" Score="12" ViewCount="292" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that demand for ethanol and other biofuels in the west is causing lasting environmental damage to third world countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore is this demand also taking away valuable fertile land that would otherwise be used for food production. The idea is that greedy developers are starving their own people by purchasing cheap farm land to be used for biofuels, this in turn drives up the prices of food due to lack of supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/03/biofuels.renewableenergy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;example article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T23:06:42.267" Title="Is demand for biofuels causing degredation of the environment in third world countries?" Tags="|agriculture|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2056" CreationDate="2011-04-13T05:46:38.697" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7246643&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study in 1979&lt;/a&gt; that investigated this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A double-blind, prospective study during the fall of 1979 investigated the association between the menstrual cycles of 305 Brooklyn College undergraduates and their associates and the lunar cycles. All subjects were 19-35 years old and using neither OCs (oral contraceptives) nor the IUD. Approximately 1/3 of the subjects had lunar period cycles, i.e., a mean cycle length of 29.5 +/- l day. Almost 2/3 of the subjects started their October cycle in the light 1/2 of the lunar cycle, significantly more than would be expected by random distribution. The author concludes that there is a lunar influence on ovulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study &lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/00016348609158228&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;published in 1986&lt;/a&gt; found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among the 826 female volunteers with a normal menstrual cycle, aged between 16 and 25 years, a large proportion of menstruations occurred around the new moon (28.3%), while at other times during the lunar month the proportion of menstruations occurring ranged between 8.5–12.6%; the difference was significant (p&amp;lt;0.01).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T05:46:38.697" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2076" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2387" CreationDate="2011-04-13T05:58:24.383" Score="16" ViewCount="3814" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has been said a lot of times in lots of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories&quot;&gt;places&lt;/a&gt;. Did the US government know about the attacks prior to the attacks, and were they involved with the attacks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-04-13T16:30:27.963" LastActivityDate="2019-03-26T20:50:41.947" Title="Did the U.S. government have prior knowledge of 9/11?" Tags="|united-states|9-11|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2077" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-13T06:09:48.243" Score="19" ViewCount="5869" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just ate an entire medium pepperoni pizza for dinner and my roommate started lecturing me on how I'm gonna die in my 30s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does eating fatty and sugary foods make your life any shorter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1844" LastEditorUserId="39658" LastEditDate="2020-08-11T06:54:11.030" LastActivityDate="2020-08-11T06:54:11.030" Title="Will eating a lot of junk food shorten your life expectancy?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|life-expectancy|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2011-04-13T07:11:17.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously if the computer is turned off then electricity is saved (whether it is actually turned off or in standby/hibernate mode). Over time, the savings in electricity could equate to the cost of a new computer. When this intersection is reached it doesn't matter if keeping the computer on makes it last longer or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cost savings references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question328.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question328.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/fresh-greens/2009/03/25/simple-green-step-shut-down-your-computer-every-night&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/fresh-greens/2009/03/25/simple-green-step-shut-down-your-computer-every-night&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1847" LastEditorUserId="1847" LastEditDate="2011-04-13T08:31:46.623" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T08:31:46.623" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2080" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2081" CreationDate="2011-04-13T08:20:18.083" Score="74" ViewCount="11431" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that the QWERTY keyboard layout was invented to get around the problem of old fashioned typewriters getting stuck if you typed too quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this story true, or was there another reason for the QWERTY layout?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastEditorUserId="39592" LastEditDate="2017-11-01T22:43:18.310" LastActivityDate="2019-04-16T03:29:19.680" Title="Was the QWERTY keyboard layout designed to slow down typists?" Tags="|computers|keyboard|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2080" CreationDate="2011-04-13T08:49:15.867" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20070220085500/http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/whyqwert.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://home.earthlink.net/~dcrehr/whyqwert.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this document:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was made to not jam typewriters and in the process type faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, the QWERTY arrangement was selected so that letters frequently occurring together would be far apart on the keyboard, reducing the tendency to jam, and thus allowing faster typing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When Sholes built his first model in 1868, the keys were arranged alphabetically in two rows. At the time, Milwaukee was a backwoods town. The crude machine shop tools available there could hardly produce a finely-honed instrument that worked with precision. Yes, the first typewriter was sluggish. Yes, it did clash and jam when someone tried to type with it. But Sholes was able to figure out a way around the problem simply by rearranging the letters. Looking inside his early machine, we can see how he did it.&#xA;  .&#xA;  The first typewriter had its letters on the end of rods called &quot;typebars.&quot; The typebars hung in a circle. The roller which held the paper sat over this circle, and when a key was pressed, a typebar would swing up to hit the paper from underneath. If two typebars were near each other in the circle, they would tend to clash into each other when typed in succession. So, Sholes figured he had to take the most common letter pairs such as &quot;TH&quot; and make sure their typebars hung at safe distances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He did this using a study of letter-pair frequency prepared by educator Amos Densmore, brother of James Densmore, who was Sholes' chief financial backer. The QWERTY keyboard itself was determined by the existing mechanical linkages of the typebars inside the machine to the keys on the outside. Sholes' solution did not eliminate the problem completely, but it was greatly reduced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The qwerty keyboard has been so widely adopted AND there was no proof that arranging the keyboard alphabetically makes typing faster, that today it's still the qwerty that prevails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1208" LastEditorUserId="8832" LastEditDate="2019-04-16T03:29:19.680" LastActivityDate="2019-04-16T03:29:19.680" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2086" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2091" CreationDate="2011-04-13T13:33:27.977" Score="5" ViewCount="743" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard the rabies creates some vampire-like symptoms, such as fear of water, photosensitivity, and an urge to bite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is rabies the origin of what we commonly now refer to as &quot;vampires&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T18:13:13.507" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T18:13:13.507" Title="Does the idea of vampires come from rabies?" Tags="|medical-science|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2088" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2096" CreationDate="2011-04-13T14:06:34.673" Score="10" ViewCount="782" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that asphalt roads have a much shorter lifespan and much higher maintenance cost than concrete roads. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, if this is true, why do most governments seem to prefer to use asphalt over concrete?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T18:59:23.950" Title="Is asphalt less durable than concrete roads?" Tags="|government|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2024" CreationDate="2011-04-13T14:46:54.373" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nuclear power is a controversial topic and everyone is biased, especially IAEA, but even WHO. The author of the book that claims that 985,000 people have been killed by Chernobyl is also biased. I too am biased. However, I have no association with the nuclear industry and I don't personally know anyone that died because of the Chernobyl disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, I feel like all the answers up until this point has been very one-sided. The number 985,000 is based on a scientific study and I found it peculiar that no one addressed the study presented in this book. In order to be able to criticize a number you need to know what it's based on, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did some digging and actually found the book freely available as pdf:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.strahlentelex.de/Yablokov%20Chernobyl%20book.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's 349 pages, so I didn't read all of it and I certainly don't have time to make a full review. I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the_Catastrophe_for_People_and_the_Environment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; about the book where they present the following quotes from reviews of the book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The introduction addresses the issue of why assessments of health effects from Chernobyl are so disparate. The authors disparage the approach favoured by the majority of the epidemiology community, which seeks a correlation of health effects with levels of contamination or dose. They believe this approach is ‘impossible’ due to lack of measurements in the first few days, lack of information on ‘hot spots’ and lack of information on all of the isotopes involved.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;They consider that the USSR authorities distorted links between health effects and radiation exposure and they prefer therefore to rely on what they consider are independent investigations of comparative health measures in various territories that they consider are identical in terms of ethnic, social and economic characteristics and differ only in the exposure to radiation.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George Monibot comments on that review:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A devastating review in the journal Radiation Protection Dosimetry points out that the book achieves this figure by the remarkable method of assuming that all increased deaths from a wide range of diseases – including many which have no known association with radiation – were caused by the Chernobyl accident. There is no basis for this assumption, not least because screening in many countries improved dramatically after the disaster and, since 1986, there have been massive changes in the former eastern bloc. The study makes no attempt to correlate exposure to radiation with the incidence of disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, his comment is disputed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact of deliberately choosing control groups which they judge not to have been exposed for the purpose of comparison appears to contradict Monbiot's assertion that Yablokov simply assumed all increased deaths were caused by the Chernobyl accident. The review states that excess deaths recorded in the unexposed areas cited in the book were not alleged by Yablokov to be caused by the Chernobyl accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidator_(Chernobyl)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; stated that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between 1986 and 1992, it is thought between 600,000 and one million people participated in works around Chernobyl and their health was endangered due to radiation. Because of the dissolution of the USSR in the 1990s, evaluations about liquidators' health are difficult, since they come from various countries (mostly Ukraine, Belarus and Russia, but also other former Soviet republics). Furthermore, the government of Russia has never been keen on giving the true figures for the disaster, or even on making serious estimates. However, according to a study by Belarusian physicians, rate of cancers among this population is about four times greater than the rest of the population. All the figures quoted by various agencies are controversial&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I included the last quote just to point out that things like increased cancer rates in these areas are likely due to the Chernobyl disaster. However, it's hard to prove that a particular individual got cancer because of Chernobyl and not due to other causes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the main difference between WHO's report and Yablokov's is that WHO only counts deaths that is proven to be directly caused by Chernobyl, while Yablokov includes deaths that are statistically likely to have been caused by Chernobyl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion is that 985,000 is plausible, but so is 4000 and there is no way of knowing the actual number. I understand that it's in IAEA's best interest to have the public believe that nuclear power is safe and thus only include deaths confirmed to have been caused by radiation from Chernobyl. Likewise I understand that Yablokov has the opposite agenda and thus includes deaths that can't be directly linked to Chernobyl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end I think it's all about the criteria for attributing deaths to the Chernobyl disaster. If you die from cancer two years before you otherwise would have because of Chernobyl, is your death to be attributed to Chernobyl?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1159" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T14:46:54.373" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2086" CreationDate="2011-04-13T14:48:07.477" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing I did was look up just how old and widespread the disease of Rabies is, to figure out if it's even reasonable for the myth to originate from it. According to a paper titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/1291502&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rabies in Byzantine Medicine&lt;/a&gt; it's a terribly old disease that has been around for thousands of years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Known for at least 4,000 years in the Middle East, the disease spread into Asia and Europe. Rabies was present in Greece Homer's time (c. 800 B.C.), and Xenophon's in the early fourth century B.C., and it's described by Aristotele in &lt;em&gt;Historia animalium&lt;/em&gt;, as well as by various other Greek writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's no shortcut to figuring this one out. It's also incredibly hard to research, because there's a ton of noise (vampire bats have rabies, fan fiction and all kinds of stuff) and a lot of the papers are paywalled without conclusions in their abstracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a book titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.my/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=_gINLtvH_M4C&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA3&amp;amp;dq=origins%20of%20vampire&amp;amp;ots=1fNYguVLke&amp;amp;sig=Mg7_OA3rW8wrd5-pQZVwP8CuDiw#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=origins%20of%20vampire&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The monster with a thousand faces: guises of the vampire in myth and literature&lt;/a&gt; the origins of the vampire myth is discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By many names, and in a host of disparate guises, the vampire has been known to men of all nations throughout history. Indeed so immeasurable ancient is this polymorphic phenomenon that its origins can be traced back through all the ages of which there are records preserved, until they become lost in twilight of tradition and fable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book carries on to say vampires have been recorded down the Babylonians:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By the beginning of the historical era the vampire was a well-established denizen of the demon world, appearing in a variety of guises. Records left by the ancient Assyrians and Babylonians confirm that vampirish demons were a great menace to the people of those times. The most feared of all were the Seven Spirits, a consortium of tyrannical, blood-quaffing demon-gods who rampaged throughout the countryside causing havoc. A modern translation of cuneiform inscriptions describes them in the following colorful manner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;They range against mankind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;They spill blood like rain,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Devouring their flesh (and) sucking their veins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book the continues on to talk about occurances in the Hebrew Bible of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nergal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nergal&lt;/a&gt; a vampire, Nordic mythology and Greek history, but I'll spare you more block quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further there was a conference in 2004 on named &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing-files/idp/eBooks/Vampires.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vampires:&#xA;Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil&lt;/a&gt; that digested some of the littrature. One of the papers presented in the conference titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing-files/idp/eBooks/Vampires.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vampire Dogs and Marsupial Hyenas: Fear, Myth and the Tasmanian Tiger’s Extinction&lt;/a&gt; talks about how there used to be a myth in Australia that the Tasmanian tiger is a vampire, it also offers a helpful quotation of a book titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0517149893&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Vampire in Europe: True Tales of the Undead&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In tracing the origins of the European versions of these stories back to classical Greece and Rome, Montague Summers remarks that “often in modern accounts and Slav superstition it is difficult to distinguish the werewolf from the vampire.” Suffice to say that as sources of fear and anxiety in most folkloric traditions, the werewolf and the vampire are often closely allied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having scoured over a pile of research I think the only conclusion we can draw is that we don't know where the idea of vampires come from. It seem like something many different cultures around the world have believed in, in one way or another, since ancient times. It is - much like the ancient history of my home country - obscured by folk lore and myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T14:48:07.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2080" CreationDate="2011-04-13T16:46:49.770" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to offer an answer from a slightly different perspective. If the claim is that the QWERTY keyboard was designed to make typists slower, who were these typists who were so fast that they were causing problems with mechanical typewriters? Presumably on typewriters not using a QWERTY keyboard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, there were no fast typists that predate the QWERTY keyboard. What we consider the first commercially viable typewriter was the Sholes &amp;amp; Glidden typewriter, produced and sold by Remington &amp;amp; Sons. It was not a huge success. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/1988/1/1988_1_10.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;As noted in American Heritage magazine&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The original Remington typewriter,&#xA;  prototype of all modern typewriters,&#xA;  made its public debut in 1874. Hardly&#xA;  anyone noticed. “The advent of the&#xA;  first writing machine was not&#xA;  announced in cable dispatches and&#xA;  newspaper headlines,” The New York&#xA;  Times recalled later. “It slipped into&#xA;  existence quietly, timidly,&#xA;  unobtrusively, with an indifferent&#xA;  world to face.” In fact, the&#xA;  typewriter was so completely ignored&#xA;  it was nearly abandoned as a failure&#xA;  by its promoters, who had already&#xA;  faced a long succession of&#xA;  preproduction frustrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This model had a QWERTY keyboard, as would the machine's successors from Remington.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4my2K.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;The Remington #2 keyboard&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Remington #2 was the first successful typewriter, though it was still years after its 1878 introduction before it started selling in significant numbers. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/1988/1/1988_1_10.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Heritage, again&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 1878 Remington No. 2 offered both&#xA;  upper- and lower-case letters for the&#xA;  first time and was widely recognized&#xA;  by both its producers and its&#xA;  potential customers as a far superior&#xA;  machine to the 1874 model. Perhaps&#xA;  customers anticipated these&#xA;  improvements and waited for them.&#xA;  Charles E. Weller, a St. Louis court&#xA;  reporter who tested several models,&#xA;  made lists of faults with the first&#xA;  machines and then found the Remington&#xA;  No. 2 an enormous improvement,&#xA;  specifically citing the new shift&#xA;  keyboard. But technical problems also&#xA;  don’t account for the typewriter’s&#xA;  slow acceptance; the No. 2 was around&#xA;  for several years before sales took&#xA;  off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The invention of what we consider touch typing, and therefore typists who could stress the upper limits of their machines, is usually attributed to a Mr. Frank McGurren in the late 1880s. Newspaper accounts of his exploits stress that he didn't have to look at the keyboard to achieve speeds of typing on his Remington #2 that left his competitors in the dust. For example, from the &lt;em&gt;New York Times&lt;/em&gt; of August 2nd, 1888:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A speed contest for typewriters, open&#xA;  to all operators using any machine&#xA;  having upper and lower case, under the&#xA;  auspices of the Metropolitan&#xA;  Stenographers' Association, was held&#xA;  last night at the rooms of the&#xA;  association, 208 West&#xA;  Twenty-first-street. Of many operators&#xA;  who had entered only four contestants&#xA;  - two ladies and two gentlemen - appeared. The matter written was&#xA;  dictated by a reader selected by the&#xA;  association. The time allowed to each&#xA;  writer was five consecutive minutes,&#xA;  deductions being made for errors. The&#xA;  first prize of $25 was won by F. E.&#xA;  McGurrin, who wrote 479 words, Miss&#xA;  May S. Orr following with 476 words,&#xA;  and Miss M. C. Grant with 469 words.&#xA;  At the conclusion of the contest Mr.&#xA;  McGurrin gave an exhibition of writing&#xA;  blindfolded, making the extraordinary&#xA;  record of 101 words to the minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As near as I can tell most of the people competing with McGurrin were using the only other major typewriter at the time, the Caligraph. From &lt;em&gt;The Phonographic World&lt;/em&gt;, Vol. 3, #12 (August, 1888):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A grand typewriting contest, which has&#xA;  already been made the subject of&#xA;  hundreds of telegrams and&#xA;  communications to every newspaper in&#xA;  the country, took place at Cincinnati&#xA;  on the 25th last month, between two&#xA;  very expert operators, one using the&#xA;  Remington Typewriter and the other&#xA;  using the Caligraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Caligraph's keyboard layout was not quite QWERTY, but it was close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/B3QN9.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Caligraph&amp;#39;s keyboard&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even in contests where speed was the goal neither competitor was using anything significantly different from a QWERTY keyboard. (Though the Caligraph's spacebars were those paddles on the sides. Not sure who thought that was a good idea.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By  1888 the problems of the type bars jamming that existed with the earliest Sholes &amp;amp; Glidden model had been solved, so the QWERTY persisted even as speed became paramount. I would guess this is because while the QWERTY keyboard was created to solve a specific technical problem in the 1870s, it turned out that it also inadvertently made typing in general faster by maximizing the alternation of hands when typing the most common letter pairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T16:46:49.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2093" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-13T17:10:42.743" Score="17" ViewCount="5206" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've all seen the movies: Rambo runs over one of the terminals at a gas station, freeing the flow of gasoline to the street, the gasoline finds its way under a military vehicle, and the vehicle violently explodes, presumably from the gas in the gas tank. Is this actually possible/likely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember hearing somewhere that gasoline in a liquid form isn't flammable; it's really the &lt;em&gt;vapors&lt;/em&gt; that are flammable. Besides, isn't something being flammable much different than being explosive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1836" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:40:42.897" LastActivityDate="2017-04-04T01:23:59.383" Title="Would a large quantity of gasoline in a closed container explode violently when exposed to fire?" Tags="|explosives|gasoline|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2094" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-13T18:32:35.163" Score="56" ViewCount="38244" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're reading this there's a good chance you're fan of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes.com&lt;/a&gt;, and I certainly count myself as the same. However, an issue recently came up a with particular Snopes article that was invoked on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/1908/1343&quot;&gt;this very site to explain where the belief that everyone eats eight spiders a year&lt;/a&gt; comes from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/spiders.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes' explanation is as follows&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fear not.  This &quot;statistic&quot; was not&#xA;  only made up out of whole cloth, it&#xA;  was invented as an example of the&#xA;  absurd things people will believe&#xA;  simply because they come across them&#xA;  on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a 1993 &lt;em&gt;PC Professional&lt;/em&gt; article,&#xA;  columnist Lisa Holst wrote about the&#xA;  ubiquitous lists of &quot;facts&quot; that were&#xA;  circulating via e-mail and how readily&#xA;  they were accepted as truthful by&#xA;  gullible recipients. To demonstrate&#xA;  her point, Holst offered her own&#xA;  made-up list of equally ridiculous&#xA;  &quot;facts,&quot; among which was the statistic&#xA;  cited above about the average person's&#xA;  swallowing eight spiders per year,&#xA;  which she took from a collection of&#xA;  common misbeliefs printed in a 1954&#xA;  book on insect folklore. In a&#xA;  delicious irony, Holst's propagation&#xA;  of this false &quot;fact&quot; has spurred it&#xA;  into becoming one of the most&#xA;  widely-circulated bits of&#xA;  misinformation to be found on the&#xA;  Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sounds credible, but Lisa Holst, the magazine (or newsletter?) &lt;em&gt;PC Professional&lt;/em&gt;, and the text of the article are nowhere to be found on the web. At all. Other than links and references to the Snopes article there's just nothing. It's proving hard to verify that the author or the magazine existed at all! This seems to contradict Snopes' entire thesis that the Holst column was the source of the spider belief in the internet age. How could something so influential disappear without a trace?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full citation given by Snopes is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Holst, Lisa Birgit. &quot;Reading is&#xA;  Believing&quot; &lt;em&gt;PC Professional&lt;/em&gt; 7th January&#xA;  1993 (p71.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other two citations given in the article do seem to be real, though the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-4397022.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Chicago Sun-Times&lt;/em&gt; story&lt;/a&gt; has the wrong author attributed. I checked it out to see if it was the source of the Lisa Holst information, and it isn't. The other citation is for a book that pre-dates email, so it can't have anything to do with Lisa Holst. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what's going on here? I see three possibilities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Snopes had in their possession the&#xA;Lisa Holst column when they wrote&#xA;their article and had a good reason&#xA;to believe it was so influential,&#xA;but somehow every trace of it has&#xA;disappeared from the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Snopes made some mistake in the&#xA;    citation, as with the &lt;em&gt;Chicago Sun-Times&lt;/em&gt; article, and that's making&#xA;    finding the Holst column darned near&#xA;    impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Snopes made up the Holst column out&#xA;    of whole cloth, perhaps as their own&#xA;    version of a &quot;trap street,&quot; the fake&#xA;    streets map makers supposedly put on&#xA;    maps to catch other companies&#xA;    copying their material.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, can anyone find evidence that Lisa Holst and &lt;em&gt;PC Professional&lt;/em&gt; existed, outside of the Snopes article? Or that a column by Holst was source for the internet belief in spider consumption? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:19:34.587" LastActivityDate="2021-09-16T03:34:28.570" Title="Is a writer named Lisa Holst responsible for the belief that everyone eats eight spiders a year?" Tags="|quotes|entomology|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2088" CreationDate="2011-04-13T18:59:23.950" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, there's a large variation in what constitutes an 'asphalt' road -hot mix, warm mix, etc - but I think what you want to discuss is the difference between PCC and ACC - namely portland cement concrete and asphalt cement concrete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as was mentioned, location, weather, traffic patterns, etc all play a role in the 'lifespan' of a type of road covering.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrmca.org/taskforce/obsolete/impacts%20of%20cement%20concrete%20pavements.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.nrmca.org/taskforce/obsolete/impacts%20of%20cement%20concrete%20pavements.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most municipalities choose ACC over PCC because it has a lower initial cost to their budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastActivityDate="2011-04-13T18:59:23.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2059" CreationDate="2011-04-13T19:57:43.480" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, &lt;strong&gt;some&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;rich&quot; (meaning big and usually multinational) companies pay taxes that are significantly lower than predicted by their theoretical income tax rate for their income bracket. Examples include (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/01/ge-exxon-walmart-business-washington-corporate-taxes.html&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The most egregious example is General Electric ( GE - news - people ). Last year the conglomerate generated &lt;strong&gt;$10.3 billion in pretax income&lt;/strong&gt;, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.... In 2008 GE's effective tax rate was 5.3%; in 2007 it was 15%. The marginal U.S. corporate rate is 35%. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Valero was zero. One can be tempted to spin a conspiracy theory out of that one...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Verizon's was 10.5%&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;HP's rate was 18.6%. Not zero, but not 35% either.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;IBM was 25%, Procter &amp;amp; Gamble 26.3%&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Boeing was 23% (due R&amp;amp;D credits, mostly)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Several more companies (Bank of America, Citibank, Ford) on Forbes's list in the article has very low rates explicitly related to gigantic losses in the last couple of years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However a vast majority of the rest of the list (25 top US companies as Forbses titled it) was in close-to-maximum 30+% range, with the usual tax-loving-people's favorite whipping boys (oil companies) rates in 40+%.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the explanation of how that happens, an income tax code contains an enormous amount of ways for a large multinational to reduce taxes owed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among the most impactful general principles as far as this question are the ones dealing with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/losscarryforward.asp&quot;&gt;Carryforward of past losses&lt;/a&gt;. In GE's specific case, it was large losses in its financial subsidiary during the bank meltdowns and writing off the fact that they closed 20 US factories between 2007 and 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;assorted accounting rules allowing you to time-shift profits (see the discussion of cash vs. accrual basis &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/small/A-Bo/Accounting-Methods.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) to whenever you will pay the least amount of taxes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Geographical shifting - e.g. accounting so that your profits are earned outside of USA (offshore). The article linked in another answer posits that this provided a large portion of tax savings, though it didn't document that statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very detailed laymans-terms explanation is in this Bloomberg article: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html&quot;&gt;Google 2.4% Rate Shows How $60 Billion Lost to Tax Loopholes&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;numerous other loopholes and deductions to pay less taxes. This is due to two factors: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the influence of lobbyists on politicians who write the tax-affecting laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, &quot;GE became the nation's top corporate spender on lobbying, spending more than $238 million on lobbyists over the past 12 years, according to the Center for Responsive Politics&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/ge-top-corporate-spender-lobbying/story?id=13087750&quot;&gt;ABC news&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To back the article up, here's the hard #s for lobbying: 2008 - $18 million; 2009 - $26.4mm, 2010 - about $40mm (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?year=2010&amp;amp;lname=General+Electric&quot;&gt;http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/clientsum.php?year=2010&amp;amp;lname=General+Electric&lt;/a&gt;). Obviously, not all lobbying money relates to tax code, but it's hard to imagine that some of it doesn't influence it in some ways, sometime via specific regulation that changes how tax code could be applied (e.g. what is considered &quot;clean&quot; technology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for political contributions: In 2010, GEPAC raised just over $1.4 million from more than 4,000 employees and contributed $1,276,950 to federal and $126,250 to state candidates in the United States (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ge.com/citizenship/our-priorities/public-policy/political-contributions.html&quot;&gt;GE's own data&lt;/a&gt;). Non-GE numbers come &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?cycle=2008&amp;amp;strID=C00024869&quot;&gt;from opensecrets&lt;/a&gt; (Center for Responsible Politics) again: $2.5mm in 2010 and a whopping $3.6mm in total political donations in 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the fact that US government uses taxes as an instrument of social control (e.g. tax deductions for &quot;clean&quot; technology consumption AND capital investment, both of which GE can play). This factor is of course related to lobbying one above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T18:24:41.880" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T18:24:41.880" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2102" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-13T21:50:55.960" Score="12" ViewCount="805" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/370/how-bitter-is-robert-lustigs-bitter-truth-about-sugar&quot;&gt;How bitter is Robert Lustig&amp;#39;s &amp;quot;Bitter Truth&amp;quot; about sugar?&lt;/a&gt;, one of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/370/how-bitter-is-robert-lustigs-bitter-truth-about-sugar/2089#2089&quot;&gt;answers&lt;/a&gt; is claiming that there's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;High-Fructose Corn Syrup&lt;/a&gt; (HFCS) in most American grocery products:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If HFCS is in virtually every product on the grocery store shelf, and the amount in a given product is significantly higher than necessary, how is the average consumer meant to practice &quot;moderation&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't the first time I've encountered claims HFCS being in everything. Is it virtually impossible to avoid HFCS when buying food over there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By virtually impossible I assume the original claim meant to say that you can achieve a normal balanced (not necessarily all-vegetarian) diet. I.e. just eating crackers that doesn't contain HFCS or having an all-vegie diet wouldn't count using groceries found in a typical well stocked supermarket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T06:27:22.803" Title="Is there high fructose corn syrup in almost every grocery product in America?" Tags="|nutrition|hfcs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2154" CreationDate="2011-04-14T00:29:20.410" Score="10" ViewCount="1439" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that 70% of ground beef found in the United States when sold is 30% by-weight ammonia (which is not on the label), and that the beef used is essentially only usable for pet food except for the sterilization by ammonia? If this is not accurate, what is the ammonia content/policy by the US FDA/government and/or major corporations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just saw this on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamieoliver.com/foundation/jamies-food-revolution/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution&lt;/a&gt; last night, and I'd previously seen it referred to in the film &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodincmovie.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Food Inc&lt;/a&gt;. The Wikipedia website for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ammonia&lt;/a&gt; also references the use of ammonia on beef. However, I'm not sure how prevalent the process is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T23:39:41.690" Title="Ammonia content of beef in USA" Tags="|nutrition|safety|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2104" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2172" CreationDate="2011-04-14T01:08:54.467" Score="12" ViewCount="2448" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that the historical basis for the ongoing denial of UFO's by most world governments is because Winston Churchill said it would threaten the legitimacy of the church.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Winston Churchill really claim that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="8014" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T14:53:20.707" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T14:53:20.707" Title="Did Winston Churchill say that proof of alien spacecraft would threaten the Church?" Tags="|history|world-war-ii|aliens|ufo|winston-churchill|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2105" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-14T01:19:07.260" Score="6" ViewCount="2212" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/155/can-you-create-energy-out-of-nowhere&quot;&gt;Can you create energy out of nowhere ?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recall reading that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nikola Tesla&lt;/a&gt; suggested that electricity could be created from the air. This claim is stated in the following quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a humourous comic&lt;/a&gt; on the Oatmeal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You know when you need electricity for your home it simply rains down from the earth's ionosphere and charges everything wirelessly? ... Oh right, that was something Tesla invented but didn't share with the world ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and also, similarly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of Tesla's final gifts to the world was a tower near New York City that would have provided free wireless energy to the entire planet. The man who financed the construction of the tower shut it down when he learned that there would be no way to regulate the energy and therefore it wouldn't make money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have these inventions since been proven as a viable and useful technology? Do we now understand how these inventions worked, and could either of them have provided energy enough for millions of people around the world to power heat, A/C, lights, computers, stoves, refrigerators, and other appliances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I have edited this question so it is narrower than &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/155/can-you-create-energy-out-of-nowhere&quot;&gt;creating energy out of nowhere&lt;/a&gt;, specifically limited to those claims about inventions made by Tesla that I found referenced in the Oatmeal comic. (I leave it to a moderator to remove the Possible Duplicate note above and re-open, at their discretion)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T19:56:25.977" Title="Did Tesla say that one could get or transmit energy through thin air" Tags="|history|physics|quotes|energy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ClosedDate="2011-04-14T05:27:34.797" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19420" CreationDate="2011-04-14T02:55:06.017" Score="26" ViewCount="2626" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a systemic relationship between Catholic priests and sexual abuse of children?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask because I grew up in Newfoundland, which was at the time engrossed in the  abuse at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Cashel_Orphanage&quot;&gt;Mount Cashel Orphanage&lt;/a&gt; (see also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0670834815&quot;&gt;Unholy Orders&lt;/a&gt;). More recent headlines refer to similar abuses in Ireland and the United States, and there is a lengthy &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sex_abuse_cases&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on cases of Catholic sexual abuse&lt;/a&gt;. The recent cases have reaffirmed a suspicion that there is a systemic issue that results in sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With great respect to Catholics on this sensitive issue, there seems to be a systemic issue. Is it fair to say that Catholic priests are systemically prone to sexually abuse of children? If there is a systemic issue by priests or their equivalent, is this issue more prevalent in Catholicism than other religions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="1134" LastEditDate="2012-06-17T13:26:42.163" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T22:19:54.490" Title="Is there systemic sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests?" Tags="|religion|catholic-church|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2108" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2109" CreationDate="2011-04-14T02:59:38.750" Score="5" ViewCount="1763" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1368/on-9-11-was-building-7-destroyed-in-a-controlled-explosion&quot;&gt;On 9/11, was Building 7 destroyed in a controlled explosion?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having just watched the movie Zeitgeist, I'm a bit unsettled because I don't know how to refute the idea that the Twin Towers collapsed in a way that's inconsistent with known physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically it bothers me that the buildings had steel superstructures which it's claimed couldn't possibly have gotten hot enough to melt. If that's so, why did they not remain standing even when the supported floors collapsed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;NEXT DAY...&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have the rep to delete my own question here. But &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1368/on-9-11-was-building-7-destroyed-in-a-controlled-explosion&quot;&gt;this other&lt;/a&gt; question, although primarily about Building 7, has very good answers covering everything I wanted to know. My apologies if anyone feels I have wasted their time asking again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="942" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T09:48:48.447" Title="Is there anything inexplicable about how the WTC Twin Towers collapsed?" Tags="|physics|9-11|engineering|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2011-04-14T12:19:43.230" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2108" CreationDate="2011-04-14T03:28:35.757" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jeez... You might check out the James Randi forum where the refutations of the &quot;truthers&quot; are both long and detailed... Check out the &quot;conspiracy theories&quot; threads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However... One need not go into such detail.  It is not necessary for the steel support structures to &quot;melt&quot;.  Only that they be weakened.  And that's precisely what happened.  They became too weak to support the thirty-odd stories of structure above them, and they collapsed.&#xA;The kinetic energy of the falling 30-stories atop the weakened section was enormous...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider this.  In the years following 9/11, I am familiar with two incidents where gasoline tanker-trucks were involved in accidents on bridges and caught fire.  The fire,fed by thousands of gallons of gasoline, got very hot.   Both bridges collapsed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No &quot;melting&quot;, just weakening of the steel to the point it could no longer hold the structure up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1331" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T03:28:35.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2105" CreationDate="2011-04-14T03:47:32.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.free-energy.ws/nikola-tesla.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;web site&lt;/a&gt; that claimed he had a plan to extract energy from the heat in the air.  This is a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that you can only derive heat energy from a difference in temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuenergy.org/alt/tesla_energy.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; mentions cosmic rays, and then suggests that a sufficiently high wire could bridge a potential difference between the ground and the air, thereby charging a capacitor that could be tapped for power.  This could actually work, as there are often potential differences (when they get large enough, we get lightning).  Whether there would be enough usable energy to make it worthwhile is another question (and a large enough potential difference would zap right through the capacitor anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T03:47:32.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2111" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-14T05:49:17.160" Score="36" ViewCount="28382" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many cartoons and on Sesame Street there are many storylines where a character eats just before going to bed (usually pizza) and they end up having nightmares or very crazy vivid dreams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally this ends with another character pointing out that they shouldn't have eaten just before going to bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can eating (not necessarily overeating, as this is not emphasized in the above storylines) just before going to bed affect your sleep in a way that would cause you to have nightmares or vivid dreams?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2013-03-12T22:57:14.270" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T22:57:14.270" Title="Does eating just before sleeping cause nightmares?" Tags="|nutrition|sleep|dreaming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2112" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8744" CreationDate="2011-04-14T06:00:41.297" Score="24" ViewCount="4836" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Firstly:&lt;/strong&gt; please try not to bring creation/evolution into this. I will award the correct answer to a response which provides links to evidence and sound explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Motivation for the question to follow:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the common mistakes we make in evaluating claims are resisting contrary evidence, looking for confirming evidence, and preferring available evidence. To counteract these tendencies, we need to take deliberate steps to examine critically even our most cherished claims, search for disconfirming evidence as well as confirming, and look beyond evidence that is merely the most striking or memorable. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780195377927/student/chapter4/summary/?view=usa&quot;&gt;(see link)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scenario:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard about a group of people (yes they happen to be creationists with an agenda, but this should be irrelevant to the question I am posing! ) who obtained some samples of rocks from a lava flow from Mt Ngauruhoe in New Zealand. They claim that the rocks they obtained were from a lava flow which came out of the volcano in 1945. They sent these rocks to 2 labs and had them dated by potassium-argon dating to be between 270, 000 and 1 million years old. &lt;a href=&quot;http://creation.com/radioactive-dating-failure&quot;&gt;(see relevant bits of the link - and please ignore all agenda-based stuff in there! )&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the real age of the rocks was around 50 years, does this demonstrate that K-Ar dating is inaccurate? I can think of several possibilities in response to this question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;K-Ar will never give a lower number than something like 200, 000 years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They lying about the results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They sent in the wrong rocks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 &amp;amp; 3 seem easily falsifiable - anyone else could simply repeat the procedure and see if their results were the same. I haven't heard of this being done, however if you have some evidence to this effect please share it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to 1 may be what I'm after. I have very little knowledge in the field of radioactive dating, and I'm not even sure if 1 is a true statement. However if it is, then wouldnt this invalidate any results made using K-Ar dating?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please respond with and flaws in my reasoning or any additional reasons why the experiment was flawed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;edit 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;above i said &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They sent these rocks to 2 labs and had them dated by potassium-argon&#xA;  dating to be between 270, 000 and 1 million years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which i wrote based on a quick glance of table 1 in the link. however i should have read the article more carefully and written this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They sent these rocks to 2 labs and had them dated by potassium-argon&#xA;  dating to be either less than 270, 000 years or up to 3.7 million years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(the upper limit comes from the 3.5+0.2 figure in table 1). apologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="711" LastEditorUserId="711" LastEditDate="2012-04-05T00:08:27.537" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T22:25:01.613" Title="Is K-Ar a reliable method for dating rock ages?" Tags="|physics|geology|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2112" CreationDate="2011-04-14T07:55:03.793" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The accuracy of the K-Ar dating is dependent upon the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imamu.edu.sa/Scientific_selections/abstracts/Physics/A%20test%20for%20systematic%20errors%20in%2040Ar39Ar%20geochronology%20through%20comparison%20with%20UPb.pdf&quot;&gt;The accuracy of the &lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;K and K/Ar standards used in the test.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Accounting for the decay of &lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;K -&gt; &lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;Ca as well as &lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;K -&gt; &lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt;Ar&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6V61-471YPGD-90&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=03%2F31%2F1972&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_searchStrId=1717801846&amp;amp;_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=6cfba0d4dc741ca2b3eec6de3418999f&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot;&gt;The hydration level of the basalt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/161/3846/1132.short&quot;&gt;The rock itself might not be suitable for K/Ar dating&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There might also be a case for '&lt;a href=&quot;http://geology.gsapubs.org/content/26/5/427.abstract&quot;&gt;Argon inheritance&lt;/a&gt;'.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are reasons why their test could came back the way it did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2011-04-14T12:35:51.673" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T12:35:51.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2117" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2122" CreationDate="2011-04-14T08:11:45.677" Score="44" ViewCount="5921" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13072745&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wine costing less than £5 a bottle can have the same effect on the palate as those priced up to six times as much, a psychological taste challenge suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My skeptic sense is on red alert after such a statement: &quot;can have&quot;? &quot;a challenge suggests&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hoTGm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Photo credit: Robert S. Donovan/Creative Commons&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;Photo credit: Robert S. Donovan/Creative Commons&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's get to the bottom of this, &lt;strong&gt;are there any quality papers on wine testing confirming or denying this piece of news?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T17:24:36.053" Title="Are different prices in wines justified by taste?" Tags="|psychology|physiology|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2117" CreationDate="2011-04-14T08:35:17.453" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vir Sanghvi, a popular editor in India, has written &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.virsanghvi.com/vir-world-ArticleDetail.aspx?ID=397&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.virsanghvi.com/vir-world-ArticleDetail.aspx?ID=462&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; on the subject. His personal opinion is that expectation plays a very big role, and that most people can't really differentiate between good and great wines. He gives several examples from real life and some experiments to justify this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also frequently cites one famous event - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Paris_%28wine%29&quot;&gt;The Paris tasting of 1976&lt;/a&gt; as the prime example of his stance. Before the tasting, the French were very critical of the quality of Californian wines. However, in the blind tasting, famous tasters were not able to distinguish between French and Californian wines, and many Californian wines scored better. (The moral is not that Californian wines are better, but that the same people who did not like them found them good when they did not know beforehand what they were tasting.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While viewing the above page, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seattleweekly.com/2002-02-20/news/wine-snob-scandal.php&quot;&gt;a reference&lt;/a&gt; caught my eye. It describes a study of wine scoring and tasting. I can't find the original study, but the article gives some good summaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the article, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After appropriate statistical massaging, Brochet's results prove that a lot of what wine connoisseurs say about wine is humbug: A side-by-side chart of best-to-worst rankings of 18 wines by a roster of experienced tasters showed about as much consistency as a table of random numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the study itself, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tasting is [a form of] representation. Indeed, when our brain performs the task of 'recognizing' or 'comprehending,' it is manipulating representations. In reality, the taste of wine is a perceptual representation, because it manifests an interaction between consciousness and reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-14T10:19:32.913" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T10:19:32.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2117" CreationDate="2011-04-14T09:33:36.210" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the question is somewhat misleading. Wine is not actually priced according to taste. Wine pricing has a lot to do with supply and demand and taste surely has some effect on the demand side but so have multiple other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are genuinely interested in wine economics an the development of wine prices you have a rather complex construct ahead of you. to give you a little glimpse I have a couple links that show a little about the topic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;aawe (american association of wine economics): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wine-economics.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wine-economics.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;wine economics link list: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wine-economics.de/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wine-economics.de/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to me it seems you are rather interested whether a cheap wine can taste as &quot;good&quot; as an expensive wine. I think this is a rather difficult question to answer from a skeptics standpoint. How would you answer the question whether the McDonalds BigMac tastes better than the Burger Kings Double Whooper from a skeptics standpoint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only things we can scientifically analyze is the chemical makeup of a wine. But there are no tangible rules in how the chemical makeup exactly translates to taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1869" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T09:33:36.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2117" CreationDate="2011-04-14T10:03:45.363" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;This ties in with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.winebusiness.com/wbm/?go=getArticle&amp;amp;dataId=59216&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Wine Trials of Robin Goldstein&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 17 brown-bag blind tastings around&#xA;  America, &lt;strong&gt;Goldstein and his colleagues&#xA;  served more than 6,000 glasses of 500&#xA;  different wines, priced from $1.50 to&#xA;  $150, to more than 500 people.&lt;/strong&gt; The&#xA;  results surprised even the&#xA;  experimenters: the correlation between&#xA;  price and preference was actually&#xA;  negative, &lt;strong&gt;suggesting that individuals&#xA;  on average enjoy more expensive wines&#xA;  slightly less than cheaper wines&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Goldstein suggests that the answer&#xA;  lies in what he calls the &quot;wine&#xA;  placebo effect&quot;: the knowledge that a&#xA;  wine is expensive can actually&#xA;  influence its taste:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;It doesn't mean that wine aficionados&#xA;  and experts are con artists, nor does it mean that&#xA;  people don't legitimately sense&#xA;  pleasurable qualities in very&#xA;  expensive wine, even when they taste&#xA;  it blind. But it does mean that when&#xA;  we don't taste blind, it's almost&#xA;  impossible to know whether the&#xA;  pleasure of expensive wine is coming&#xA;  from its own taste, or from the taste&#xA;  of money&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-9849949-39.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; seems to concur,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the sensation of pleasantness that&#xA;  people experience when tasting wine is&#xA;  linked directly to its price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[The] &lt;strong&gt;results show that increasing the&#xA;  price of a wine increases subjective&#xA;  reports of flavor pleasantness as well&#xA;  as blood-oxygen-level-dependent&#xA;  activity in medial orbitofrontal&#xA;  cortex (mOFC), an area that is widely thought&#xA;  to encode for experienced pleasantness&#xA;  during experiential tasks&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wXZL2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Wine Tasting&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graph above shows the activity in the brain's pleasure center; &lt;strong&gt;there's more activity with wine subjects think costs $90 a bottle (top line) than the same wine priced at $10.&lt;/strong&gt; The arrow shows the moment when the subjects started tasting the wine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3qdkE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Wine Tasting&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chart above shows that &lt;strong&gt;people ranked taste of a $45 wine higher than the same wine priced at $5, and the same for a different wine marked $90 and $10.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/105/3/1050.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is the abstract of the orignal study)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen something similar done on a TV-show (can't remember which). The labels of cheap and expensive wines were swaped and 'ordinary' people rated the taste of the wine with the expensive label more highly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-04-16T17:27:44.160" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T17:27:44.160" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2108" CreationDate="2011-04-14T12:03:27.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Steel doesn't have to melt to become weaker. Blacksmiths changed the shape of steel for centuries without melting it. &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4054&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brian Dunning&lt;/a&gt; has a good explanation of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, you also have to understand that reality is complicated. If you investigate any process detailed enough then you will find stuff that you don't understand. In science you can repeat experiments and isolate factors till you understand the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In historic events you usually don't understand processes in the same detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you find something that you don't understand that doesn't mean that a conspiracy exists. It just means that you lack understanding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="10403" LastEditDate="2016-02-24T09:48:48.447" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T09:48:48.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2103" CreationDate="2011-04-14T12:33:23.627" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question seems to refer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html?pagewanted=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beef Products&lt;/a&gt;. As expected, ammonia smells, even in beef. At 30%, it would be overpowering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they're indeed using a lot of it. From the same article: &quot;The Beef Products’ study that won U.S.D.A. approval used an ammonia treatment that raised the pH of the meat to as high as 10&quot;. That's not yet household ammonia (pH 11.5), but within a factor 30. (The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PH&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pH scale&lt;/a&gt; is based on negative base-10 logarithms to measure the strength of acidity or alkalinity. 10&lt;sup&gt;-10&lt;/sup&gt;/10&lt;sup&gt;-11.5&lt;/sup&gt; = approx. 31.6)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps someone failed math there? 1/31.6 isn't 30%, but approximately 3%. Even then, household ammonia is already diluted to about 5% NH&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt; (the chemical symbol for ammonia), so in total you'd be looking at 3% * 5% = 0.15%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-27T04:07:31.400" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T04:07:31.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2128" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-14T12:47:39.470" Score="6" ViewCount="2059" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many claims about possible risks of &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/cooking&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;cooking&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;cooking&lt;/a&gt; with a cast iron skillet on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.appliancist.com/samsung-range-electric-ftq387.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;flat/glass top electric range&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the glass top can break if one is not careful;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the glass can be scratched;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thathomesite.com/forums/load/cookware/msg010049447701.html?20&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;glass top can melt&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the skillet can be prone to hot spots, producing uneven cooking; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the hot spots can &lt;a href=&quot;http://whatscookingamerica.net/Information/CeramicTopRange.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cause damage to the skillet itself&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/4734/using-cast-iron-on-a-glass-range&quot;&gt;This topic has been discussed before&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;cooking.sx&lt;/a&gt; (perhaps this question should be cross-listed over there too?), but that thread didn't cite any sources and, well, I am a skeptic.  Also, that thread did not address the possibility of damage to the skillet (claim #5 above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think claims 1 and 2 are reasonable given the coarse texture and heavy weight of some cast iron skillets, however, &lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/4734/using-cast-iron-on-a-glass-range#9394&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; seems to refute them.  Claim 3 seems unlikely.  Claims 4 and 5 seem to be open questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested because I used to live in an apartment with a glass-top electric range and I sometimes used a cast iron skillet on it.  I was diligent about avoiding sliding &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; pots/pans on the surface of the glass, not only my cast iron skillet.  The glass surface did develop some minor scratches on the surface, so I am wondering if that was due to my infrequent use of a cast iron skillet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any studies that document possible risks in using a cast-iron skillet on a glass-top electric range?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:33:29.713" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T11:43:43.733" Title="Risks of using a cast iron skillet on a flat/glass top electric range?" Tags="|physics|cooking|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2011-04-14T12:59:15.570" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;A PC has many failure modes, and it would be hard to address all of them. One of the more common is hard disk failures. Google did &lt;a href=&quot;http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf&quot;&gt;an extensive study&lt;/a&gt; and concluded that &quot;for drives aged up to two years ... there is no significant correlation between failures and high power cycles count. But for drives 3 years&#xA;and older, higher power cycle counts can increase the absolute failure rate by over 2%. We believe this is due more to our population mix than to aging effects. Moreover, this correlation could be the effect (not the cause) of troubled machines that require many repair iterations and thus many power cycles to be fixed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.e. as far as the harddisk is concerned, there's no clear benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T12:59:15.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2135" CreationDate="2011-04-14T14:21:59.727" Score="24" ViewCount="2881" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have frequently heard claims that US companies pay significantly less taxes than European ones (based on tax rates). The last time I saw this claim (and what caused me to ask this question) was Lagerbaer's comment on &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2059/do-rich-companies-really-pay-little-no-corporate-income-taxes-in-the-united-state&quot;&gt;Do rich companies really pay little/no corporate income taxes in the United States&lt;/a&gt;?&quot; question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By European standards, they'd pay &quot;next to no taxes&quot; even if they'd pay their taxes :-P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm skeptical of that claim since US has a fairly high top rate of 35% (IIRC) and I have a feeling that the claim I outlined above is mistakenly projected from &lt;strong&gt;personal&lt;/strong&gt; income tax rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone please indicate if I'm correct in my skepticism of the claim above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that I'm asking about standard tax rates, NOT effective taxes paid based on all sorts of accounting gimmicks/loopholes/etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1878" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T15:07:24.367" Title="Do US companies pay significantly less taxes than European ones (based on tax rates)?" Tags="|politics|taxes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2134" CreationDate="2011-04-14T14:27:21.530" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are correct in your skepticism: USA has one of the highest top corporate tax rates, &lt;strong&gt;as well as taxes as percentage of income&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For proof, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Please observe this graphs as illustration (from Wikimedia): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Income_Taxes_By_Country.svg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Income Tax rates by Country based on OECD 2005 data&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QCKg1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see - USA's is higher than ALL save Japan and Germany which are about the same).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Purple bars denote corporate (and you can see the green bars for personal income taxes that show USA's relatively low ones, which is as you noted a possible source of confusion).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Please see the graph in Figure 2-1 (page 36) of Congressional Budget office's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/69xx/doc6902/11-28-CorporateTax.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Corporate Income Tax Rates: International Comparisons&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. That graph is based 2003 OECD data as well. Please note that CBO is (theoretically) bipartisan/apolitical branch of congress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DZODJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For more up-to-date, here's a graph based on 2010 OECD data (Graph source is Republican party white paper; but I checked its accuracy off of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oecd.org/document/60/0,3343,en_2649_34533_1942460_1_1_1_1,00.html#C_CorporateCaptial&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;actual OECD source data&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TfNx5.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-04-14T15:11:29.727" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T15:11:29.727" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2139" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-14T16:11:01.523" Score="8" ViewCount="3621" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard people say that soda pop will cause osteoporosis. I even found this site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindconnection.com/library/health/softdrinks.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.mindconnection.com/library/health/softdrinks.htm&lt;/a&gt;, claiming that it is true(among other things). Is that true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The site claims many things bad about soda pop, but I figured that sticking to a single question at a time would be.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="630" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T16:57:39.637" Title="Does pop/soda pop cause Osteoporosis?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2141" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2147" CreationDate="2011-04-14T16:34:52.963" Score="13" ViewCount="13708" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard many times during &quot;Save water&quot; campaigns that bathing using a shower uses more water than using a bucket or bath-tub? Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="808" LastEditorUserId="1072" LastEditDate="2012-04-13T21:20:35.170" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T02:23:46.090" Title="Does bathing using a shower use more water than using a bucket or bath-tub?" Tags="|water|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2117" CreationDate="2011-04-14T16:42:08.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A part of the answer has nothing to do with wines and taste and has to do with marketing concept known as &quot;segmentation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joel Spolsky (who happens to be one of the two co-founders of Stack Exchange network :) had a VERY nice and detailed description of how segmentation works when applied to selling software:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the short version is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You can evaluate how much a given customer is likely to be willing to pay and then charge them that price &lt;strong&gt;without any major difference in the item being sold&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second, related phenomena is using the cost of what you purchase as internal/external indicator of status. A well known example of this is &quot;I am Rich&quot; iPhone app - 8 people bought an app for $999 that did NOTHING (probably more would but Apple pulled the app).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T16:42:08.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2143" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-14T17:26:23.407" Score="56" ViewCount="15554" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a quote that's being passed around:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Homosexuality is found in over 450 species. Homophobia is only found in one. Which one seems unnatural now? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all the good intentions behind what's being said -- and as much as I'd really want to believe in it -- I still have to keep a skeptical mind about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the quote was implying that we humans are the only ones to have homophobic individuals, a question comes to my mind: are humans really the only ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="686" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T17:53:33.247" Title="Are humans the only species to have homophobes?" Tags="|ethology|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2141" CreationDate="2011-04-14T19:05:32.987" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecodestore.co.uk/component/virtuemart/details/233/shallow-steel-bath-110-litre-capacity.html&quot;&gt;bath tub&lt;/a&gt; has a capacity of around 110L.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An average 80kg person has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28density%29&quot;&gt;density&lt;/a&gt; of 1010kg/m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;, therefore a volume of 0.08m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; or 80L. Let's say the person is only 50% under water when taking a bath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means around 70L of water are poured in the bath tub so that it's full to the rim when one person is sitting in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare with a shower. A typical shower would take around 10 minutes and shower heads have a water flow ranging from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.which.co.uk/environment-and-saving-energy/environment-and-greener-living/reviews-ns/water-saving-shower-heads/nordic-eco-shower-galant-shower-head/&quot;&gt;6 to 16L per minute&lt;/a&gt; or 60L (water-saving shower heads) to 160L (normal shower heads) of water per 10m shower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In practice, water saving showers are equivalent to baths, whereas normal showers use up to 2.5 times the water with respect to baths.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-14T21:41:41.570" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T21:41:41.570" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2134" CreationDate="2011-04-14T19:11:09.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some very famous US companies are famous for paying little tax. GE, Google and twitter are good example (&lt;a href=&quot;http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/04/09/206234/Twitter-Tax-Controversy-Explained-In-Cartoon-Form?utm_source=feedburner&amp;amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3a%20Slashdot/slashdot%20%28Slashdot%29&amp;amp;utm_content=Google%20Reader&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;see this summary on slashdot&lt;/a&gt;). Also, online sales company like Amazon avoid paying taxes to a very significant degree. So, there are some very famous examples in tech world of US companies not paying taxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know about Europe, but they might have stricter laws there (There was &lt;a href=&quot;http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/04/12/2050209/Senator-Wants-to-Tax-Internet-Shopping?utm_source=feedburner&amp;amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3a%20Slashdot/slashdot%20%28Slashdot%29&amp;amp;utm_content=Google%20Reader&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recently news&lt;/a&gt; about some similar proposals in the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T19:11:09.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2164" CreationDate="2011-04-14T19:34:57.417" Score="44" ViewCount="7782" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seem to be a common reaction towards finding out a man is gay where people think they should keep an eye on their children. To add at least one quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youdebate.com/cgi-bin/scarecrow/topic.cgi?forum=18&amp;amp;topic=417&quot;&gt;a rather inflammatory post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe gays should not be allowed to adopt or serve as foster parents for the simple reason gays have a greater tendency to being pedophiles than straight people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there been research done that examines if homosexual males are notably more sexually drawn towards children than straight ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-02T15:09:39.070" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T16:01:37.083" Title="Are homosexual men substantially more likely to be pedophiles than heterosexual men?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2139" CreationDate="2011-04-14T19:55:35.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Soda (nor cola) does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;cause&lt;/strong&gt; osteoporosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, studies have shown a &lt;strong&gt;correlation&lt;/strong&gt; between cola consumption and increased risk in osteoporosis. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nof.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Osteoporosis Foundation&lt;/a&gt; lists &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nof.org/aboutosteoporosis/bonebasics/riskfactors&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;several risk factors&lt;/a&gt;, noting that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies ... suggest that people who regularly drink cola drinks may be at greater risk of bone loss. Other non-cola carbonated soft drinks do not appear to have these same risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But cola consumption is just one of a plethora of risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/osteoporosis/features/soda-osteoporosis?page=2&amp;amp;print=true&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Soda and Osteoporosis: Is There a Connection?&lt;/a&gt;, author Gina Shaw examines the link between the two and has several informative quotes from reputable doctors and researchers in the field. Some choice quotes from the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There is an association between people who have high soda intake and risk of fracture, but that's probably due to the fact that if they have a high soda intake, they have a low milk intake. Those things have been shown to be linked in various studies. But when you look at the ingredients of the soda and give those to healthy people and measure what it does to their calcium composition, nothing happens at all.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;http://medschool.creighton.edu/medicine/departments/departmentofmedicine/faculty/robertheaneymd/contact/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Robert Heaney&lt;/a&gt;, MD, FACP, a professor of medicine at Creighton University&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other possible culprits include, noted in the aforementioned article, include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Phosphoric acid.&lt;/strong&gt; From the article: &amp;quot;Phosphorus itself is an important bone mineral. But if you're getting a disproportionate amount of phosphorus compared to the amount of calcium you're getting, that could lead to bone loss.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caffeine,&lt;/strong&gt; which can interfere with calcium absorption.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, cola does not &lt;em&gt;cause&lt;/em&gt; osteoporosis. And it is believed the negative effects of cola consumption can be counterbalanced. As the National Osteoporosis Foundation notes in its risk factors list, &amp;quot;You can help make up for the potential loss of calcium from sodium, excessive protein, too much caffeine and cola drinks by making sure you get enough calcium every day.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T19:55:35.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2153" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23422" CreationDate="2011-04-14T20:22:45.423" Score="48" ViewCount="6692" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a widespread belief that there are adverse effects on children reared in same-sex-parents households compared to male+female household (I can add random googled cites if necessary, but the existence of laws preventing homosexuals to adopt should be enough evidence for that belief). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effects could be either from &lt;strong&gt;absence&lt;/strong&gt; of one of the sexes, OR from having &quot;extra  same sex parent&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside non-scientific (though sometimes true) anecdotal responses that some M+F parents are worse for the child being reared than a well-motivated and caring M+M/F+F couple, my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any valid scientific study (preferably long term) that verifies the effects on the children of having two-male or two-female parent household (compared to 100% identical otherwise M+F household, and/or single-parent one). I'm looking for things such as, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sexual behavior differences (e.g. early sexual activity, risky sexual behavior etc..). I would lump in &quot;rates of homosexuality&quot; into this - assuming Kinsey graduated scale (as opposed to simpleton gay/straight), it's possible that kids who are biologically Kinseyity-X% gay would be more likely to act on that than those from straight households.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rate of relationships/marriage for straight offspring of same gender (in other words, proof of common belief that having a father figure is essential for a daughter to be able to establish healthy relationships with males later in life)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Socioeconomic success&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;IQ&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm thinking a good study to that effect would include control groups from both 2-straight-parents households, same-sex ones as well as single-parent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm looking for is whether there are any studies that, correcting for other sources of variation, exibit systemic differences (or lack thereof) in offspring that are similar between F+F household and single-mother one, e.g. stem from a lack of father (as opposed to having a second mother). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or studies that are vice versa, showing that there are differences (or lack thereof) between same-sex-romantic-partner household reared children compared to same-sex-non-romantic-partners ones (e.g. a child reared by lesbian parents vs a mother and an aunt)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. As a background, a lot of people I know (myself included) have only ONE criteria for deciding whether to support things like gay marriage/gay adoption etc...: what does science say on the matter of &quot;gay child rearing&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T11:07:31.660" LastActivityDate="2022-06-05T12:48:38.403" Title="Does child rearing by homosexual couples have any measurable negative effects?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|sociology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2103" CreationDate="2011-04-14T20:32:38.470" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In doing some research on this topic, I came across a majority of questionable sites who were obviously pushing an activist agenda for one reason or another and whose claims were largely unverifiable or contradictory. Apparently this is an issue where a lot of ideologies converge (animal rights, vegetarianism, anti-corporate, natural foods proponents, anti-chemical/preservative, etc) It was indeed difficult to come up with verifiable, credible information, but I did manage to find some sources.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I have managed to find, this question is mainly directed toward the practices of one company known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beefproducts.com/&quot;&gt;BPI (Beef Products Inc&lt;/a&gt;) which utilizes a controversial procedure to extract lean beef protein from slaughterhouse/meat packing scraps and render it fit for human consumption.  This is then sold as filler to beef distributors around the world and is mostly used in ground beef and hamburger. A short breakdown of that process is &lt;a href=&quot;http://meatblogger.org/2010/01/01/726/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. That is all I'm going to say regarding that process, because it could quickly get off topic, this question pertains to the ammonia levels.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During this process, BPI exposes the surface area of its meat to a pH raising gas, which is typically ammonia (but does not have to be). This is done in order to kill microbes or slow their growth.  Again, we could go into whether ir not this is an effective process, but that is not the question here.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some searching I found the actual &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents?id=YtsAAAAAEBAJ&amp;amp;printsec=abstract&amp;amp;zoom=4&amp;amp;source=gbs_overview_r&amp;amp;cad=0#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;patenet filed for the process of applying ammonia gas to beef&lt;/a&gt;.  This is the process apparently used by BPI, the company in question and done apparently to raise the pH of the meat in order to prevent or slow growth of bacteria.  The process has also been summarized on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20090125212632/http://beefproducts.com/the_process/index.cfm&quot;&gt;previous version&lt;/a&gt; of BPI's web site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I may be missing something, but I see no way that this process could account for 30% ammonia content of the beef that comes through the process, let alone 30% of the weight of the finished ground beef products with which it is mixed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the USDA testing process for ammoniated beef, I have found some links which may prove helpful.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsis.usda.gov/PDF/62-07_Presentation.pdf&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is one that outlines some of the process, taken directly from the USDA, it includes steps for testing of both ammoniated and non-ammoniated beef.  I could not find a definitive limit for how much would be &quot;allowable&quot; and I assume that this is probably due to the fact that ammonia occurs naturally in most meats and proteins, and ammonia levels will change as the meat ages during storage and especially as it spoils due to deamination of amino acids.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the most commonly used figures I have found tend to &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=gRSyiTDkxvYC&amp;amp;pg=PA234&amp;amp;lpg=PA234&amp;amp;dq=ammonia%20content%20of%20beef&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=p8O3OMENYb&amp;amp;sig=Mv6yZ0Ev8l-3iXWnIHKQ-jBe4hg&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=vXemTa7QBe6z0QGNyP3kCA&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=5&amp;amp;ved=0CCsQ6AEwBDgK#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=ammonia%20content%20of%20beef&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;hover around 30mg per 100g of beef&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="1952" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T00:13:40.490" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T00:13:40.490" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2011-04-14T21:00:44.210" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.altenergystocks.com/archives/2010/01/lithiumion_batteries_are_too_valuable_to_waste_on_plugin_vehicles_1.html&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; explains that if the goal is to reduce aggregate gasoline consumption, the most savings is found by spreading smaller batteries over more cars, rather than larger batteries over few cars. This is because a scarcity of battery materials limits production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The greatest savings-per-battery-materials comes from upgrading a gasoline car's battery such that it can handle the strain of turning the car off every time it stops. Upgrading N cars with such batteries saves more gasoline than upgrading proportionally fewer cars as hybrids or electrics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1838" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T21:00:44.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2117" CreationDate="2011-04-14T21:53:23.513" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think that a study can prove or disprove this. You can find out if there is a difference in taste (but a spectrometer should be able to prove the same). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble when judgment is solely based on sensory inputs (such as in, &quot;Which wine tastes better?&quot;) is that there are two strong biases present. The one is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wiwi.europa-uni.de/de/lehrstuhl/fine/mikro/bilder_und_pdf-dateien/WS0910/VLBehEconomics/Ausarbeitungen/MereExposure.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mere exposure effect&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The mere exposure effect is a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to &#xA;  develop a preference for things or people that are more familiar to them than others.&#xA;  Repeated exposure increases familiarity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any data for whether the majority of the population drinks cheap wine more often than expensive wine, but I think that it is reasonable to assume this. If the study represents the general population well, the results will be skewed towards the cheaper wines because of the mere exposure effect. This doesn't mean that cheaper wines really taste better. It is possible that the same population would have rated the wines in another way if it had been exposed to a different wine mix over the years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen a name for the second bias, but have observed it often, and there are several trends in our society which are based on it. It is probably best explained with sight. It is the fact that the less trained a person is to use a sense, the more likely they are to value very strong input impulses positive, while ignoring the weaker ones. This is the reason why small children instinctively prefer brightly colored objects. In adults, it can be observed in photography. Laymen are always very impressed by overdone HDR pictures, while photographers find these uninteresting and rate higher pictures which have a big amount of very subtle details. Similarly oversaturation: good photographs have the same saturation as the original scene, great photographs can be styled in a personal way which often includes a special level of saturation. But the brain always prefers the more saturated pictures. Not only are they perceived best by the people who don't know what saturation is, every photographer has ltaken a sober look at the results of yesterday's postproduction to detect that he pushed the slider way too high, because when you are on the slider, comparing two variants side-by-side, the more saturated one always appeals more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In music, this phenomenon is also well known: it is the reason why there are catchy tunes. Have you ever noticed how simple catchy tunes are? It is also the reason why pop music sells much better than classical music, although classical music or involved music from other styles is considered higher quality by musical experts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd say that the cheap wines are the gustatory equivalent of a catchy tune: they are liked on the first sip, especially by non-experts, because of their assertive simplicity. And the more we drink them, the more we like them. This explains the negative correlation in the studies cited, too. On the other hand, the experts have been trained/have trained themselves concentrate more on taste. Then the overly strong stimuli seem too harsh, and the subtle details are missing from the picture, leading the experts to hate wines which the general public finds perfectly drinkable. As they are willing to pay more per unit of wine, better wines easily sell at higher prices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This wasn't an argument to say that wines which cost more will always taste better to you, or even to an expert. It is not so much a case of &quot;you get what you pay for&quot;, as a case of &quot;you don't get what you don't pay for&quot;. The traditional manufacturing of wines involves very complex chemical reactions, which need lots of time. High production time is always associated with high production cost. Quickly manufactured wine takes lots of shortcuts, which don't produce such a variety of complex flavors (see McGee on food and cooking for an in-depth explanation). So it is economical suicide for the winery to sell complex wines at a low price. On the other hand, a winery selling non-complex wine at a high price is perfectly possible, and it won't be counteracted by the market's invisible hand, because neither taste prefereneces nor the willingness to pay correlate too well with wine complexity (or, for that matter, with each other), and, to a smaller degree, because of market imperfections like asymmetrical information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there isn't a price correspondence even for something objective like the chemical complexity of the wine. And because you are probably more interested in whether you can expect more expensive wine to taste better, you must accept an even weaker (or even negative) correlation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1886" LastActivityDate="2011-04-14T21:53:23.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2150" CreationDate="2011-04-14T23:28:46.037" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this literature: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html&quot;&gt;http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html&lt;/a&gt; (has further bibliography)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the present discussion, the&#xA;  important point is that many child&#xA;  molesters cannot be meaningfully&#xA;  described as homosexuals,&#xA;  heterosexuals, or bisexuals (in the&#xA;  usual sense of those terms) because&#xA;  they are not really capable of a&#xA;  relationship with an adult man or&#xA;  woman. Instead of gender, their sexual&#xA;  attractions are based primarily on&#xA;  age. These individuals – who are often&#xA;  characterized as fixated – are&#xA;  attracted to children, not to men or&#xA;  women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using the fixated-regressed&#xA;  distinction, Groth and Birnbaum (1978)&#xA;  studied 175 adult males who were&#xA;  convicted in Massachusetts of sexual&#xA;  assault against a child. None of the&#xA;  men had an exclusively homosexual&#xA;  adult sexual orientation. 83 (47%)&#xA;  were classified as &quot;fixated;&quot; 70&#xA;  others (40%) were classified as&#xA;  regressed adult heterosexuals; the&#xA;  remaining 22 (13%) were classified as&#xA;  regressed adult bisexuals. Of the last&#xA;  group, Groth and Birnbaum observed&#xA;  that &quot;in their adult relationships&#xA;  they engaged in sex on occasion with&#xA;  men as well as with women. However, in&#xA;  no case did this attraction to men&#xA;  exceed their preference for&#xA;  women....There were no men who were&#xA;  primarily sexually attracted to other&#xA;  adult males...&quot; (p.180).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#cite_note-Krafft-Ebing-32&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia#cite_note-Krafft-Ebing-32&lt;/a&gt; (bibliographic entry)&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24766&quot;&gt;http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24766&lt;/a&gt; (Gutenberg version, French language)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Unfortunately, my French isn't good enough to scan through this quickly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the english language edition at &lt;a href=&quot;http://ia700301.us.archive.org/31/items/psychopathiasex00krafgoog/psychopathiasex00krafgoog_djvu.txt&quot;&gt;http://ia700301.us.archive.org/31/items/psychopathiasex00krafgoog/psychopathiasex00krafgoog_djvu.txt&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://openlibrary.org/works/OL1854462W/Psychopathia_sexualis&quot;&gt;http://openlibrary.org/works/OL1854462W/Psychopathia_sexualis&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Practically speaking, acts of&#xA;  immorality committed on boys by men&#xA;  sexually inverted are of the greatest&#xA;  rarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="246" LastEditorUserId="246" LastEditDate="2015-10-22T16:01:37.083" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T16:01:37.083" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="564" CreationDate="2011-04-15T00:00:44.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sexual preferences cannot be chosen...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...but the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/there-is-no-gay-gene-there-is-no-straight-gene-sexuality-is-just-complex-study-confirms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;latest research&lt;/a&gt; has confirmed that it is not down to a single gene, either. Nor is it completely without genetic factors or completely down to external influences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is, according to scientists, a polygenic trait (ie. influenced by hundreds or thousands of genes) &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; influenced by environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is both &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/there-is-no-gay-gene-there-is-no-straight-gene-sexuality-is-just-complex-study-confirms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;nature &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; nurture&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while we know that sexual preferences cannot be consciously chosen, we also know &lt;a href=&quot;https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1529100616637616&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;that external factors cannot solely alter them either&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should be obvious, given &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_among_LGBT_youth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the number of people who commit suicide because of their homosexuality&lt;/a&gt;, and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/06/14/countries-where-being-gay-is-legally-punishable-by-death/39574685/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;existence of homosexual behaviour where getting caught would mean the death penalty&lt;/a&gt;, but it hasn't stopped people trying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, he Mormon Church used to recommend that its members with gay urges &lt;a href=&quot;http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/07/15734686-new-website-from-mormon-church-sexuality-is-not-a-choice?lite&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;get married as quickly as possible, and try to forget about them&lt;/a&gt;. At times they had even been known to resort to &lt;a href=&quot;http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,13104&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;electroshock therapy when trying to &amp;quot;cure&amp;quot; people of homosexuality&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of it worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you may argue that there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a way to change someone's sexuality externally, we just haven't discovered it yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as the articles I've linked to state, science says it's far too complex to be that simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One common question is: &amp;quot;Why?&amp;quot; Why does nature have homosexuality at all? (And it exists right across the animal kingdom, being &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homosexual_behavior&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;observed in nearly 1,500 species&lt;/a&gt; so far.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested, one theory as to why a certain percentage of animals/humans are gay is that they &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evoyage.com/Snipettes/Homosexual.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;might help to protect and raise the young of a given tribe&lt;/a&gt;. I.e. Without offspring of their own to look after, they are perfect uncles/aunts to help ensure the safety of children (and so the future of their group's genes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it's worth noting that Alfred Kinsey saw that sexuality &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.boundless.com/sociology/understanding-sexuality/socialization-and-human-sexuality/sexual-behavior-kinsey-s-study/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;is prone to change throughout life&lt;/a&gt;. Bisexual people often talk about feeling &amp;quot;more attracted&amp;quot; to a particular sex at different times in their life. The few people who consider themselves &amp;quot;ex-gay&amp;quot; (should they exist and are being honest with themselves) may simply be those who would have naturally changed their sexuality anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the bottom line is that your sexual preferences are largely unique to you, and outside of your control. And those skeptical of homosexuality not being a choice might ask themselves:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJtjqLUHYoY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;When did you choose to be straight?&lt;/a&gt; :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Small aside: Because of its occurrence in nature, homosexuality is, by definition, completely &amp;quot;natural&amp;quot; -- i.e. It &amp;quot;exists in nature; not made or caused by humankind&amp;quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1835" LastEditorUserId="1835" LastEditDate="2023-01-13T19:32:09.250" LastActivityDate="2023-01-13T19:32:09.250" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2166" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2171" CreationDate="2011-04-15T00:15:01.707" Score="17" ViewCount="2526" Body="&lt;p&gt;Area 51 is frequently mystified in popular movies, stories, alien investigations, and sometimes, even the media. If the US really wanted to keep this a secret, why would they allow the media to mystify it so much. Is there any evidence to support that Area 51 is not a huge secret in itself, but, rather serves as a cover-up for secret operations taking place elsewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1891" LastEditorUserId="17687" LastEditDate="2014-12-08T12:26:43.850" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T15:06:38.140" Title="Is there evidence to support that Area 51 was just a cover-up for a much larger operation?" Tags="|united-states|military|area-51|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2174" CreationDate="2011-04-15T00:15:26.637" Score="28" ViewCount="1657" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard claims that anti-malware software isn't really effective and will &quot;only catch 33% of malware&quot;, and so it's best to &quot;get rid of them; you don't have to pay, and your system will be faster&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is right here on my favorite blog, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/08/trojans-rootkits-and-the-culture-of-fear.html&quot;&gt;Coding Horror&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not only does anti-virus cripple your&#xA;  machine's performance, it doesn't even&#xA;  protect you adequately!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quote Jeff uses in his article from &lt;a href=&quot;http://chuvakin.blogspot.com/2007/04/answer-to-my-antivirus-mystery-question.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let me give you the answer: it is 33%.&#xA;  In other words, the average detection&#xA;  rate of malware from these &quot;solutions&quot;&#xA;  was 33%, with the maximum at 50% and&#xA;  the minimum at 2%. Keep this number in&#xA;  mind, that shiny anti-virus product&#xA;  you just bought might be protecting&#xA;  you from just 2% of currently active&#xA;  and common malware (not some esoteric&#xA;  and custom uber-haxor stuff)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_retro_nov2010.pdf&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, and it looks like &lt;strong&gt;60% is the highest &quot;new malware&quot; detection rate&lt;/strong&gt;. I do not know if they are scanning or actually protecting you real-time, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is true that the second best protection is your brain (the best being not turning your computer on at all), my PCTools SpywareDoctor with Antivirus &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; caught some trojans; it even cleaned it of a Rogue Antivirus application. Mind you, it definitely slows my system down noticeably, &lt;s&gt;but I'm happy enough for now (&lt;em&gt;&quot;640K ought to be enough for anybody.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/s&gt; so I have switched to the best Antimalware program in history, avast!, which is the fastest program with a &gt;95% detection rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The brain argument doesn't always hold true for non-geeks (even if they may have some amount of brains). One I considered to be tech-savvy (somewhat, at least) stared at a web page saying &quot;Your computer is infected!&quot; for a minute at school, in &lt;em&gt;IT class&lt;/em&gt;, throwing his hands up in exasperation, and getting every other student to look at it. (I of course, having been infected by Scareware before, immediately recognized it, and told him to close it.) He continued to be exasperated until the teacher came around and told him to close it. He did (too late, of course), and a few minutes later, it took over the Windows XP computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For geeks (and other people with brains), how true are these claims [con-AV]? What about &quot;normal&quot; people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="223" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:12:31.227" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:12:31.227" Title="Is anti-malware software effective?" Tags="|security|malware|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2168" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-15T00:33:43.493" Score="29" ViewCount="4705" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that today's &quot;information age&quot; with the internet, TV, cell phones, movies, iPhones, etc can decrease your attention span?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~jaimeng/techtime.html&quot;&gt;Society's impatience and short attention span is becoming a greater&#xA;  problem and is unleashing a chain reaction of stress.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://magazine.ucla.edu/features/r_u_talking_to_me/&quot;&gt;What's left may be a shorter attention span and, especially among the generation raised on technology, a decreasing ability to socialize and empathize, Small says.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&amp;amp;q=cache%3aCRfHxs-xVN0J%3awww.cpcc.edu/cpcc/millennial/presentations-workshops/faculty-or-all-college-workshop/3%2520-%2520The%2520Net%2520Generation%2520Goes%2520to%2520College.doc%20site%3aedu%20technology%20short%20attention%20span&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;gl=au&amp;amp;pid=bl&amp;amp;srcid=ADGEESjNyXfHrFaFA6s37RkNKs7R1BURc9MOFtcGgYvdW4hZ2DlnrEdiIzHEhjnsDDgp-IxScbmPvXbWcYrNpp3Vicb8q15cWfzCc7F0wYm72juTCvC8zqDYVfRprt9fGVDTCr9bltiz&amp;amp;sig=AHIEtbR2ISd6SG2dtxIJgUpt0Rd8pbftAA&amp;amp;pli=1&quot;&gt;&quot;Students have a very short attention span, &quot; she says, &quot;in part because of the media that&#xA;  we as teachers and parents have encouraged them to spend their time with, and in part&#xA;  because we haven't taught them to have longer attention spans.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1892" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-08-16T04:05:10.287" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T19:50:18.137" Title="Does technology have a negative effect on attention span?" Tags="|psychology|technology|behavior|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2150" CreationDate="2011-04-15T01:22:22.200" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There really are not adequate statistics.  What information there is tends to be victim-focused which tend need heroic assumptions to draw many conclusions about perpetrators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15894146&quot;&gt;this study in San Diego&lt;/a&gt; said: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contact CSA [childhood sexual abuse] was reported by 16% of males and 25% of females. Men reported female perpetration of CSA nearly 40% of the time, and women reported female perpetration of CSA 6% of the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming there was no response bias (optimistic but difficult to reject) and that the population of both adults and children are approximately 50:50 male:female (reasonable), then that would suggest that, weighted by victims, roughly 57% of cases were male-on-female, 23% male-on-male, 16% female-on-male, and 4% female-on-female.  Those numbers do not look implausible to me, though other studies would undoubtedly produce different proportions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next stage is harder.  Two further assumptions are needed, neither of which I think are obviously reasonable: the first is that different types of abusers have the same average number of victims; the second is whether it is meaningful to describe those who abuse children as being heterosexual or homosexual, as it may depend on whether you see sexual abuse as being related to sexual attraction or not.  If you are prepared to make both those assumptions, then you could draw the conclusion that most child sexual abuse is by male heterosexuals, followed by male homosexuals, but when taking account of their prevalence in the population, a disproportional number of cases come from male homosexuals.  Women are less likely to commit child sexual abuse (though they appear more in other non-sexual cases of child abuse and neglect).    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have also been cultural changes, which in the UK date to the early to mid 1980s, where campaigns for gay rights switched emphasis away from seeking abolition of legal ages of consent to seeking equality of ages of consent.  This was early in the rise of HIV/AIDS when it became clear that sexual liberation could have unexpected negative consequences, and also when other social liberals made it clear that what appeared to be a fetish for youth on the gay scene was not acceptable social behaviour in wider society.  Even by the 1990s there were vestiges of this remaining as seen in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/543399.stm&quot;&gt;response to a Stonewall concert&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T01:22:22.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2166" CreationDate="2011-04-15T01:42:09.540" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following answer is from &amp;quot;Expert Opinion&amp;quot; as a USAF Pilot, acquisition officer, and all around guy in the know.  ;)  I will endeavour to dig up actual links and such to support this.  Bear with me before up or down voting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, there is sort of a partial truth in that.  Groom Lake has indeed been a classified location for a very long time.  The US Air Force has developed, tested, and based aircraft such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123123845&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the F-117&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123219279&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;even the U-2&lt;/a&gt;.  These aircraft were designed to totally defeat anyone's air defenses, and in essence allow the USAF to violate sovereign airspace with impunity.  Of course they didn't want anyone to know about this capability.  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;While it is Wikipedia, they actually have a pretty thorough article on Groom Lake.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason the USAF doesn't talk about it at all is because no matter what they say, crackpots will believe what they will.  Also, the less communication, the less of a chance that there will be an inadvertent release of sensitive information (after all, the F-117 was almost a total mystery until &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=410&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Operation JUST CAUSE&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123123845&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;As this article says&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Nov. 10, 1988, the Air Force revealed the F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter to the public for the first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first F-117A was delivered in 1982,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the years.  Having a remote base like Groom Lake allows for that (as well as other extraordinary security measures).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the physical location, it is well known, and before the government took control of &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.birdandhike.com/Hike/Other_Areas/Tikaboo/_Tikaboo.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Freedom Ridge&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; people could even photograph parts of it.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foia.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-090909-048.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Also, you can request information from the DoD as long as it isn't classified&lt;/a&gt;.  It exists, and again, for what the USAF is doing, the Wikipedia article is generally accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not to say that there aren't projects going on there that no one really knows about.  We may be developing some sort of micro-UAV, or a high flying persistent ISR platform, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj00/spr00/thompson.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UCAV&lt;/a&gt;, or whatever.  What one can say with confidence is that there are no &amp;quot;mystical&amp;quot; or extra-terrestrial artifacts there.  The evidence against those items are supported by the whole of science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And keep in mind, any government project is most likely not limited to just one location.  There will be things that can only be tested at other places (like the McKinley Climatic Hangar).  And some basic science may come from AFRL in Kirtland, Wright-Patt, or wherever.  Any DoD program will by definition involve a much larger operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T01:56:05.997" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2104" CreationDate="2011-04-15T02:15:15.007" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim that Winston Churchill ordered a UFO coverup because he was worried about the mere knowledge of aliens destroying society comes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-10853905&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;documents that were released from the British National Archives in August of last year&lt;/a&gt;. However, if you look beyond that sensationalist headlines and read the documents themselves it becomes obvious that the story about Churchill and the UFO is thirdhand hearsay, and anachronistic to boot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The documents in question are letters that a scientist (his name is redacted) wrote to the defense department, looking for information about a &quot;foo fighter&quot; his mother was told about by her father (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documentsonline/details-result.asp?Edoc_Id=8564003&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DEFE 24/2013/1&lt;/a&gt;, pg. 284). In other words, the writer's grandfather. The grandfather was, apparently, a bodyguard to Winston Churchill, and claimed to have been present when Churchill was told about a metallic object that had been photographed following a British bomber. Though no date is given for the conversation there is a reference to &quot;the bunker,&quot; so we can assume it was during the Blitz of London.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the most interesting bit from the grandfather's story. (Ibid., page 208.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ld1Ej.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the term &quot;unidentified flying object&quot; hadn't been coined at the time, so the use of that term can't be correct. It's also unclear how Churchill, or anyone in Britain, could have been so sure what the capabilities of German aircraft might be, considering that Germany was fielding guided missiles that would have been unimaginable a few years before. The story just doesn't ring true. Remember, this is happening years before Kenneth Arnold and the first &quot;flying saucer&quot; sighting. That the earth was being visited by aliens was not even a fringe belief yet, and I find it hard to believe that Churchill and his advisors would make that leap in the middle of a war with an enemy known for high tech air weapons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for the alleged coverup is given by the letter writer as follows (Ibid. page 279):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. Churchill is reported to have made&#xA;  a declaration to the effect of the&#xA;  following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“This event should be immediately&#xA;  classified since it would create mass&#xA;  panic amongst the general public and&#xA;  destroy one’s belief in the Church.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So at a time when Germany was bombing London on a nightly basis and a large chunk of the population of that great city had to flee underground or face fire and death, Churchill was worried that a photo of alien spacecraft was going to shake people's faith? Really? They didn't have other things to worry about, like bombs or the fates of family members fighting overseas? No sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between the anachronistic elements obviously picked up from much later UFO-related pop culture, the hearsay twice-removed nature of the letter, and the unlikely reasoning attributed to Churchill, I don't see any reason to treat this claim as credible at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Incidentally, the Defense Department's only response was that they had no records of the foo fighter or the conversation. Many ufologists will of course claim that's part of the cover-up.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T05:25:20.057" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T05:25:20.057" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2173" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-15T03:22:27.213" Score="20" ViewCount="1341" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard this argument &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2674713&quot;&gt;time&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ivillage.co.uk/5-meals-a-day-diet-plan/77710&quot;&gt;again&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human race started off as &lt;a href=&quot;http://library.thinkquest.org/C005446/Food/English/prehistoric.html&quot;&gt;hunters&lt;/a&gt;. At that time, finding food by &lt;strong&gt;hunting was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life/human/human_evolution/leaving_home1.shtml&quot;&gt;not an easy task&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, and was not always successful. Couple this with the &lt;strong&gt;absence of refrigeration&lt;/strong&gt; and other preservation techniques, and intense competition in their society for food, there should have been heavy and less frequent meals. Doesn't this mean that &lt;strong&gt;humans are genetically tuned to eat heavy meals once in one or two days&lt;/strong&gt;? Agreed, cooking probably changed things a bit, the food could be preserved a tad longer, but probably not enough to have frequent small meals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other misconception about 'gatherer' is that prehistoric human was a vegetarian forager (in the garden of Eden?), which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/cavemen/factfiles/homo_habilis.shtml&quot;&gt;wrong&lt;/a&gt;. The presence of canines in human teeth indicates meat eating capability, hence, I am sure even gathering involved &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer#History&quot;&gt;scavenging&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBpu4DAvwI8&quot;&gt;stealing&lt;/a&gt; meat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given these, I do not feel that the statement 'eating small frequent meals is healthier' can be true. Or, am I missing something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="742" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T07:52:04.537" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T17:51:23.720" Title="Are small and frequent meals better for health?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2167" CreationDate="2011-04-15T03:33:08.823" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is mostly not true, and in my opinion perpetrated by people who just want a justification for not caring about security. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_report25.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;test&lt;/a&gt; on the detection rates. Here's a snapshot from this report:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XAvL5.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this graph plots the &lt;strong&gt;missed&lt;/strong&gt; samples, so the worst efficiency is 82%.&#xA;The above graph applies to known viruses. Of course, it is impossible to say how effective any given anti-malware software is on zero-day attacks. To prevent these, heuristics are required that detect malicious or suspicious behavior such as one program inserting code into another executable file. While these will not prevent a dedicated and personalized attack, they can at least prevent some common pathways of attack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My attention was brought to another graph for &quot;real world&quot; efficiency of malware detectors:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iPt4B.png&quot; alt=&quot;real world test of malware software&quot;&gt;&#xA;It also shows quite a high detection rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all being said, it is indeed highly dependent on the user's behavior how relevant anti malware software is. A professional user keeping her system up to date and avoiding potentially dangerous sites (porn- and warez-sites come to mind) might not need anti malware software. A &quot;casual&quot; user who does not hesitate to click on random links sent to him by email or on social networking sites and who unquestioningly install apps found wherever in the web, on the other hand, will catch some malware infection with high probability, although anti malware software might at least safe him from the most common dangers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="1183" LastEditDate="2011-04-28T18:59:55.040" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T18:59:55.040" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2177" CreationDate="2011-04-15T03:56:11.433" Score="12" ViewCount="11043" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's some snippets from a Google search:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Report: Spam now 90 percent of all e-mail&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4% of all internet traffic either DDOS packets or spam email&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more than 50% of email is SPAM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spam traffic dropped precipitously in January, falling to 78.6 percent of all emails&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a reliable source to identify the amount of total internet traffic that is spam emails?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this calculated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:12:13.537" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:12:13.537" Title="What percentage of total internet traffic is spam?" Tags="|email|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2176" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3587" CreationDate="2011-04-15T05:51:37.257" Score="48" ViewCount="4783" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techimo.com/forum/tech-news-discussion/24843-my-conspiracy-theory-about-anti-virus-companies.html&quot;&gt;forum post&lt;/a&gt; sums it up nicely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think that anti virus companies [...] are the ones who develop most of the viruses on the market today. If you think about it, it does make sence because in order to make a good product, you need to make something that wears out or needs to be refilled/recharged. [...] If nobody is writting [sic] any viruses than they are not making any money so in order to keep business going they either pay someone under the counter to develop them or develop them themselves. Hasn't it ever occured [sic] to you why the anti virus companies know exactley [sic] what to do to remedy the virus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there any  known cases, or strong suspicions based on fact (as opposed to merely logic) that antivirus companies actually do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Disclaimer: I used to work for an antivirus company&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:11:56.933" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:11:56.933" Title="Do antivirus vendors write viruses for profit?" Tags="|security|malware|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2175" CreationDate="2011-04-15T06:37:19.593" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of these statistics seem to be widely used. Due to several botnet takedowns by Microsoft along with law enforcement agencies, reduce spam amounts drastically for a few weeks but they seem to creep up again. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2011/03/rustock-repercussions-spam-down-by-a-third-at-least-for-now.ars&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; for example says Global spam 88% of emails, but spam fell by a third after the Rustock botnet takedown by Microsoft. The source seems to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.messagelabs.com/&quot;&gt;MessageLabs&lt;/a&gt;, an anti-spam brand of Symantec. They use statistics from servers running their software.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good source seems to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maawg.org/email_metrics_report&quot;&gt;MAAWG&lt;/a&gt;, which use confidential data from ISPs, mail providers etc. to collect statistics on about 500 million mailboxes. They estimate spam from between 88 to 91 percent of email traffic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastEditorUserId="1398" LastEditDate="2011-04-15T07:21:49.320" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T07:21:49.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2186" CreationDate="2011-04-15T07:34:57.177" Score="19" ViewCount="591" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a well known &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWE1tH93G9U&quot;&gt;presentation&lt;/a&gt; given by James Randi about homeopathy. At one point in his talk, James Randi issues the claim that up into the victorian era, if you consulted a doctor you reduced your chances of survival because many of the standard medications of the day where highly toxic. He goes on to say that statistics of the day seem to support that claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What statistics of the day is he talking about? It's a great story to illustrate how homeopathy had its claim to fame, but I feel very uncomfortable quoting statistics that I'm unfamiliar with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="192" LastEditorUserId="192" LastEditDate="2011-04-15T09:28:12.657" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T12:12:30.890" Title="Where can I find evidence for the prescientific-medicine-claims issued by James Randi?" Tags="|homeopathy|jref|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2070" CreationDate="2011-04-15T07:56:45.620" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any peer-reviewed research that would indicate any specific health benefits, but your claim as stated isn't really possible to answer scientifically. Perhaps a multidecade general morbidity study with cold and hot shower groups could be conducted, but as far as I can tell no such study has been published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correlation of coronary heart disease incidence with cold weather is well-supported [&lt;a href=&quot;http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/12/747.extract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://content.onlinejacc.org/cgi/content/abstract/39/5/760&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;], so it's likely that cold showers could have a similar effect, especially in susceptible groups mentioned in the paper such as the elderly. Cold showers have been shown to have significant effects on systolic and diastolic blood pressure and pulse rate [&lt;a href=&quot;http://jap.physiology.org/content/19/6/1145.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;], and there have been case studies implicating exposure to cold water in heart failure [&lt;a href=&quot;http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/38/6/e36.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One could argue that regular cold showers could condition the body so temperature shocks do not have such a drastic effect, but [&lt;a href=&quot;http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/12/747.extract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;] and [&lt;a href=&quot;http://content.onlinejacc.org/cgi/content/abstract/39/5/760&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;] show that even the weather, which fluctuates quite a lot, has no such insulating effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/12/747.extract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/92/12/747.extract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://content.onlinejacc.org/cgi/content/abstract/39/5/760&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://content.onlinejacc.org/cgi/content/abstract/39/5/760&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jap.physiology.org/content/19/6/1145.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jap.physiology.org/content/19/6/1145.abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/38/6/e36.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/38/6/e36.abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1898" LastEditorUserId="1898" LastEditDate="2011-04-15T12:13:52.790" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T12:13:52.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2181" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2193" CreationDate="2011-04-15T08:02:12.967" Score="20" ViewCount="1885" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it said that a US citizen can escape paying US income taxes by giving up their citizenship and living in a foreign country (presumably, somewhere that has lower taxes or perhaps where a deal has been made). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?  If it is true, one would expect a few rich people would emigrate... then of course there is &lt;em&gt;Atlas Shrugged&lt;/em&gt;, which is fiction -- but perpetuates this idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone noteworthy (e.g. a multi-millionaire, or an actor or other celebrity) publicized giving up their US citizenship to escape taxation ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-17T09:48:35.187" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T11:03:07.083" Title="Has anyone noteworthy given up their US citizenship to escape taxation?" Tags="|united-states|taxes|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2175" CreationDate="2011-04-15T08:50:06.123" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;MessageLabs and other Security-as-a-service providers are in an excellent position to provide these statistics. They all agree that in recent years the number has been above 80% almost continuously. Every spam botnet takedown temporarily reduces spam, however numbers rapidly increase as other spammers move in&amp;nbsp;— see &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/29/rustock_takedown_spam_stats/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article at The Register&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="164" LastEditDate="2011-04-15T08:58:04.993" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T08:58:04.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1803" CreationDate="2011-04-15T09:13:09.503" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is some scientific evidence that the &lt;em&gt;temperature&lt;/em&gt; of meal/drink has an effect on digestive system activity. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1433604/pdf/gut00229-0042.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effect of meal temperature on gastric emptying of liquids in man&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Serial studies were carried out on six healthy volunteers (19-24 years) to investigate the effect of meal temperature [either 4 degrees C (cold), 37 degrees C (control) or 50 degrees C (warm)] on the rate of gastric emptying of a radiolabelled isosmotic drink of orange juice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusions include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Warm and cold drinks appeared to empty from the stomach more slowly than the control drink. The initial rate of gastric emptying of the cold drink was significantly slower than the control drink (p less than 0.05) and the difference in emptying rates between cold and control drinks were significantly correlated with the differences in intragastric temperatures (p less than 0.01).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, in my experience, drinking half a liter of hot water (boiled cold tap water) feels like it &lt;em&gt;has an effect on digestion&lt;/em&gt;, but I wouldn't claim that it &lt;em&gt;aids digestion&lt;/em&gt;. This is so easy to try out for yourself that I'd suggest doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drinking hot tap water &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20130503070610/http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/water/colder.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;is not recommended&lt;/a&gt;. I guess it might have an effect on digestion too, depending on the plumbing and water quality. I hope this isn't the effect the claimant feels is aiding digestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastEditorUserId="23118" LastEditDate="2014-12-27T05:19:17.920" LastActivityDate="2014-12-27T05:19:17.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2178" CreationDate="2011-04-15T09:29:23.577" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0393066614&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Trick or Treatment&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/#!/edzardernst&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Edzard Ernst&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/#!/SLSingh&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Simon Singh&lt;/a&gt; also claims this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prior to the development of evidence-based medicine, doctors were spectacularly ineffective.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Those patients who recovered from disease were usually successful despite the treatments they had received, not because of them.&lt;/strong&gt; [p. 37, emphasis mine]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They cite &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0192803557&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bad Medicine: Doctors doing harm since Hippocrates&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by David Wootton for further reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, they relay statistics that have been compiled by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Nightingale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Florence Nightingale&lt;/a&gt; about the mortality in hospitals during the Crimean War. In one particular hospital in Scutari &lt;strong&gt;she managed to lower the mortality rate from 43% to 2% in just five months&lt;/strong&gt; by increasing hygiene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When challenged that the reason for this drop was due to the less severe condition of the soldiers rather than improved care, she compared the mortality rate of the hospital with that of camp-based injured soldiers: &lt;strong&gt;while the hospital had a 43% mortality rate, camp-based soldiers only had a 2.7% mortality rate&lt;/strong&gt;. This is strong evidence that becoming hospitalised did indeed decrease chances of survival drastically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note the following diagram where only &lt;em&gt;red&lt;/em&gt; areas are deaths from wounds – all other colours indicate deaths from infectious diseases, contracted in the hospital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/Nightingale-mortality.jpg/800px-Nightingale-mortality.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Diagram of the causes of mortality in the army in the east&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;em&gt;Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army&lt;/em&gt; by Florence Nightingale, 1858]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:38.263" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T12:12:30.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2181" CreationDate="2011-04-15T10:05:51.610" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT: This post turns out to be more about celebrities who renounced their citizenship for reasons other than taxation.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/us/26expat.html&quot;&gt;According to N.Y. Times&lt;/a&gt;, renouncing U.S. citizenship is becoming more and more common among expatriates. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/54863&quot;&gt;This blog post&lt;/a&gt; lists the following four people who renounced their citizenship:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Terry Gilliam (questionable, since he lives in UK where taxation is higher)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;W.E.B. Du Bois (renounced when he couldn't get a passport because of communist connections)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ted Arison&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bobby Fischer (renounced when his passport was invalidated because of connections to Yugoslavia)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT: I was assuming that taxation is the most probable reason for giving up citizenship, but the people I list seem to have other reasons (added to the list). Credits to Scott Hamilton.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also mentioned are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;President John Tyler, who accepted &quot;a post as representative of the Confederacy, basically renounced his U.S. citizenship&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Elizabeth Taylor, whose renouncement wasn't accepted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastEditorUserId="881" LastEditDate="2011-04-16T06:58:14.610" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T06:58:14.610" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2074" CreationDate="2011-04-15T11:29:38.587" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There absolutely is evidence that biofuel production adversely affects the environment. For example, Brazil is losing vast amounts of rainforest that is clearcut and burned to plant biofuel crops [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/04/18/environment-biofuels-forests-dc-idUSL1755907420070418&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;]. It has also been shown that, in the third world, biofuel combustion for heating, cooking, etc., results in 17% of the carbon dioxide and 50% of the carbon monoxide emissions that fossil fuel use does [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2002GB001952.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The emissions of CO from biofuel use in the developing world, 156 Tg, are about 50% of the estimated global CO emissions from fossil fuel use and industry. The emission of 0.9 Pg C (as CO2) from burning of biofuels and field residues together is small, but nonnegligible when compared with the emissions of CO2 from fossil fuel use and industry, 5.3 Pg C. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2002GB001952.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, corn and switchgrass biofuel production by fermentation to ethanol increases carbon emissions significantly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By using a worldwide agricultural model to estimate emissions from land-use change, we found that corn-based ethanol, instead of producing a 20% savings, nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years. Biofuels from switchgrass, if grown on U.S. corn lands, increase emissions by 50%. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/319/5867/1238.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2002GB001952.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2002GB001952.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/04/18/environment-biofuels-forests-dc-idUSL1755907420070418&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/04/18/environment-biofuels-forests-dc-idUSL1755907420070418&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/319/5867/1238.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land-Use Change. T Searchinger, et al. Science 29 February 2008: 319 (5867), 1238-1240.[DOI:10.1126/science.1151861] &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1898" LastEditorUserId="1898" LastEditDate="2011-04-15T23:06:42.267" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T23:06:42.267" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2057" CreationDate="2011-04-15T12:10:06.133" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that the most important and, in my opinion as a bioinformatician, the most interesting, evidence for evolution is found in the thousands of whole-genome DNA sequences from a wide array of species obtained in the past 33 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the sequences are compared to each other, &lt;a href=&quot;http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/phylogenetics_01&quot;&gt;cladistic&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0748-3007&quot;&gt;analysis&lt;/a&gt; and the principle of maximum parsimony can be used to map out a tree of these sequences. This tree, in virtually every case, matches perfectly with the phylogenic tree of life obtained from the fossil record through comparative homology. I would provide some references for this claim but I'm limited to 2 links, but Google Scholar is an excellent resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Darwin had no idea that genes or DNA existed when he wrote &quot;On the Origin of Species&quot;, but over 100 years later there is yet another large body of direct, objective evidence for the common descent of life on Earth. People who deny evolution just do not understand that when there is this amount of evidence for a theory, it would take an equal or greater amount of evidence to disprove it, and an explanation as to why the current body of evidence looks correct but isn't. In any real science, there are always controversies and unsolved problems. We have no idea what exactly it is that causes gravity, but no reasonable person doubts that gravity exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1898" LastEditorUserId="1898" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T11:34:17.107" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T11:34:17.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2195" CreationDate="2011-04-15T13:35:45.277" Score="6" ViewCount="782" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the 1998 film Armageddon a group of oil rig workers lead by Bruce Willis are tasked with preventing a large asteroid from colliding with the Earth and wiping out civilization.  They succeed by drilling into the centre of the asteroid and detonating a nuclear bomb, shattering it and causing it to divert from its collision course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignoring the problem of landing on the asteroid and the lack of any formal NASA training received by the oil rig workers, would the approach of detonating the bomb actually work?  Do we have a nuclear device powerful enough, and how far away would it have to be detonated to avoid a collision with the Earth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1874" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:38:56.193" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:38:56.193" Title="Would the approach of destroying an asteroid in the film &quot;Armageddon&quot; prevent a global catastrophe?" Tags="|astronomy|nuclear-weapons|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2181" CreationDate="2011-04-15T13:41:15.990" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many countries have &quot;tax treaties&quot;, which generally mean that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expatriates can avoid double taxation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Expatriates can't avoid taxation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irs.gov/businesses/international/article/0,,id=96739,00.html&quot;&gt;IRS site&lt;/a&gt; provides a list of tax treaties that the US is a member to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, however, that renouncing citizenship may not actually mean you can avoid taxation &lt;em&gt;if you are deemed to be renouncing your citizenship to avoid taxation&lt;/em&gt;. Quoting from an Australian Treasury &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/treaties/Documents/teaustra.pdf&quot;&gt;document [PDF]&lt;/a&gt; explaining the Australia-US tax treaty, as an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Article 1 of the Protocol modifies paragraph (3) of Article 1 of the Convention which permits the United States to continue to tax as U.S. citizens former citizens whose loss of citizenship had as one of its principal motives the avoidance of tax. To make the Convention consistent with U.S. law, the Protocol extends this treatment to former long term residents whose loss of such status had as one of its principal purposes the avoidance of tax. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you're planning on renouncing your citizenship to avoid taxation, it probably isn't a great idea to tell people about it ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="143" LastEditDate="2011-10-20T13:41:07.170" LastActivityDate="2011-10-20T13:41:07.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2192" CreationDate="2011-04-15T14:21:09.270" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It certainly would not work as shown in the movie.  The asteroid was too close by the time the bomb went off.  According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/armpitageddon.html&quot;&gt;Phil Plait&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Imagine the asteroid four hours before impact. Each half must move away fast enough to cover 6400 kilometers (the Earth's radius) to miss the Earth. Anything less than this means an impact. In turn, this means each half must be accelerated to a speed of 6400 km/ 4 hours=1600 kilometers an hour. That's about 1000 miles per hour, or about twice as fast as a passenger jet. But wait! This asteroid is 1000 kilometers across! It is extremely massive, and something with that much mass would take an enormous amount of energy to get moving that fast; about a hundred billion megatons, or very roughly the same amount of energy the Sun produces every second. Needless to say, one bomb ain't gonna do it. A billion or so might though. I don't think even Bruce Willis is up to that task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his book &quot;Death from the Skies&quot;, he talks about real ways to prevent an asteroid colliding with the earth.  The simple answer is that the further away it is, the less you need to deflect it.  Given enough time, a simple 100kg satellite could tow the asteroid into a new orbit that would miss the earth - but you'd need a LOT more than four hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T14:21:09.270" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2192" CreationDate="2011-04-15T14:21:36.470" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer (like many other scientific answers) depends on the dose - or in this case, the power of the nuke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527514.700-terminator-asteroids-could-reform-after-nuke.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&amp;amp;nsref=online-news&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one set of simulations&lt;/a&gt;, a small nuke wouldn't be enough since the asteroid would &amp;quot;reassemble&amp;quot; from blown-apart chunks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don Korycansky of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Catherine Plesko of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico simulated blowing up asteroids 1 kilometre across. When the speed of dispersal was relatively low, it took only hours for the fragments to coalesce into a new rock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a big enough explosion &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space.com/10489-nuke-asteroid-idea-revived-protect-earth.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;may do the job&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It (the asteroid) would be blown to smithereens,&amp;quot; said study lead author Bob Weaver of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, who presented the findings here Dec. 13 at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There was a lot of back-of-the-envelope stuff,&amp;quot; he told SPACE.com. By contrast, Weaver said, he and his colleagues developed sophisticated codes to model exactly what would happen in such an explosion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In previous studies, the researchers had modeled how a nuke would affect a solid asteroid about 1,650 feet (500 meters) long and with a shape based on a known oblong space rock called Itokawa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That work found that a nuke could blast the asteroid into pieces too small to pose much danger. And the explosion would send these pieces flying apart at tremendous speeds - fast enough that they would not re-aggregrate to threaten the Earth again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the new study, the researchers modified their codes. The size of the asteroid remained the same, at 1,650 feet long, but now the researchers stipulated that it was 25 percent porous. It was attacked with a 500-kiloton nuclear blast - about 20 to 30 times more powerful than the U.S. blast inflicted on Nagasaki, Japan, to help end  World War II.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The researchers exploded the nuke on the space rock's surface, as in previous models. And once again, the asteroid was blown to tiny, harmless bits that spread outward too quickly to be drawn back together. The best results were achieved by positioning the explosive on the asteroid's short side, Weaver said, but any orientation they tried did the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T01:00:53.210" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2197" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2205" CreationDate="2011-04-15T14:24:27.640" Score="14" ViewCount="1211" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are obviously many issues involved with human cloing.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humancloning.org/allthe.php&quot;&gt;Some for&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/medical-science/genetics-molecular-medicine/related-policy-topics/stem-cell-research/human-cloning.page&quot;&gt;Some against&lt;/a&gt;.  Has this already happened?  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/fertility-expert-i-can-clone-a-human-being-1672095.html&quot;&gt;Apparently a Dr. Zavos claimed to have done so in 2009&lt;/a&gt;, but is there any validity or evidence to that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-15T23:18:56.127" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T00:35:15.607" Title="Human Cloning. Has it already happened in 2009?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|ethics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2021" CreationDate="2011-04-15T15:05:25.387" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to visit the link above a couple of times. Each time, the initial direction of spinning was different. The reason is that the image is, in reality, a 2D image shifting back and forth. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=27&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; source, our brain has not evolved to deal with 2D images, so it takes clues from the image to reconstruct a 3D model. This happens in the Visual Cortex. It will scramble along and try to make sense of what it sees. Either direction of rotation works, so whatever is found first, it will stick. Unless you refocus and give your visual cortex a chance to come to a different conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here a quote from the source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This news article, like many others, ignores the true source of this optical illusion and instead claims it is a quick test to see if you use more of your right brain or left brain. This is utter nonsense, but the “right-brain/left brain” thing is in the public consciousness and won’t be going away anytime soon. Sure, we have two hemispheres that operate fine independently and have different abilities, but they are massively interconnected and work together as a seamless whole (providing you have never had surgery to cut your corpus callosum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also do have hemispheric dominance, but that determines mostly your handedness and the probability of language being on the right or the left. There is also often asymmetry for memory, with some being right or left hemisphere dominant. But none of this means that your personality or abilities are more right brain or left brain. That much is nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, how your visual cortex constructs this optical illusion says nothing about your hemispheric dominance, and is absolutely not a quick personality profile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I just found this image: It allows immediate switching by looking at either the left or the right instance.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/I2qw9.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Lines indicating the perceived rotation&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T01:31:37.743" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2199" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2223" CreationDate="2011-04-15T16:32:50.493" Score="13" ViewCount="13846" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any empirical studies or well-tested scientific theories on the benefits (or lack thereof) of using a home water softener?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a water softener in my house that we installed when we first built the place years ago. I have always been a bit skeptical, but I've heard and read claims about how soft water is &quot;better&quot; for your water pipes, your skin (bathing with it), your health (drinking it), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every once in a while I search the net, but I rarely see discussion of water softeners pros or cons. Those that I do fine are usually unscientific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some points anecdotes that add to my skepticism:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I personally dislike washing with soft water -- it makes it very hard to get soap off.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also have a completely separate reverse-osmosis water filter for drinking water that definitely improves the taste -- but I would expect this to function independent of the softness of the input water.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is often a build-up of particulate that appears to be salts/potassium from the soft water on surfaces such as the shower, the pan of swamp coolers, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1914" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-21T12:25:41.577" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T13:43:47.187" Title="Is there hard science behind the benefits of home water softeners?" Tags="|physics|water|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="12" ClosedDate="2012-07-26T19:09:30.583" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2178" CreationDate="2011-04-15T16:36:11.230" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of different proofs of that statements, but the one angle that had the most impact on me was first hearing about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ignaz Semmelweis&lt;/a&gt;, who first publicised the benefits of hand disinfection &lt;strong&gt;by the doctors&lt;/strong&gt; - and was roundly shunned and criticized for his outlandish views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote from Wiki (for the quality of the writing):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician described as the &amp;quot;savior of mothers&amp;quot;, who discovered by 1847 that the incidence of puerperal fever could be drastically cut by the use of hand disinfection (by means of hand washing with chlorinated lime solution) in obstetrical clinics. Puerperal fever (or childbed fever) was common in mid-19th-century hospitals and often fatal, &lt;strong&gt;with mortality at 10%–35%.&lt;/strong&gt; Semmelweis postulated the theory of washing with &amp;quot;chlorinated lime solutions&amp;quot; in 1847 while working in Vienna General Hospital's First Obstetrical Clinic, &lt;strong&gt;where doctors' wards had three times the mortality of midwives' wards&lt;/strong&gt;. He published a book of his findings in childbed fever in Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite various publications of results where hand-washing reduced mortality to &lt;strong&gt;below 1%&lt;/strong&gt;, Semmelweis's practice earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory. In 1865, a nervous breakdown (or possibly Alzheimer's) landed him in an asylum, where Semmelweis ironically died of septicemia, at age 47.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as cites, Semmelweis's book can of course serve as a cite itself since it showed results of studies; the book should be available from Google Books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T16:36:11.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2202" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2207" CreationDate="2011-04-15T16:37:28.473" Score="50" ViewCount="42002" Body="&lt;p&gt;I drink water from my plastic cup regularly and a friend commented that it could cause cancer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also added that I should not heat food in plastic containers or wrappings in the microwave as that could also cause cancer in the long run. He claimed that this is due to the plastic slowly entering what you are consuming when heated or by simple erosion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much of this is true and supported by scientific evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1703" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T15:47:53.377" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T16:19:39.943" Title="Does regularly drinking from a plastic container cause cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|consumer-products|environmental-health|cancer|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2203" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3358" CreationDate="2011-04-15T16:56:49.163" Score="29" ViewCount="7634" Body="&lt;p&gt;To quote from a comment on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2143/are-humans-the-only-species-to-have-homophobes/2145#2145&quot;&gt;my recent answer&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your quoting of Kinsey's &lt;strong&gt;bogus&lt;/strong&gt; studies on homosexuality -- criticized heavily by famed statistician John Tukey -- makes me severely doubt the rest of your answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside the point that validity of Kinsey's studies has very little logical effect on validity of the answer being commented on, it was the first time I heard something negative about Kinsey's studies (mostly since I never cared enough about them to bother checking into them). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, a skeptical me asks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any subsequent study/report which would warrant labeling as &quot;bogus&quot;/&quot;debunked&quot; either specific major parts (especially, due to the impetus of the question, the parts related to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_Reports#Sexual_orientation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sexual orientation&lt;/a&gt;), or the entire set of Kinsey's studies/reports (as far as methodology or any other criticism).&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. For those who don't understand the context, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/resources/FAQ.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr Alfred Kinsey&lt;/a&gt; was a mid-20th-century american researcher who studied human sexuality based on extensive questioning of people, and who published what was at some point considered the most important books on the subject ever written (sometimes referred to &quot;Kinsey Reports&quot;) - &quot;Sexual Behavior in the Human Male&quot; and &quot;Sexual Behavior in the Human Female&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T16:59:57.267" Title="Were Kinsey's studies debunked?" Tags="|sexuality|sociology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2204" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2224" CreationDate="2011-04-15T17:02:06.883" Score="13" ViewCount="1837" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lower legal blood alcohol concentration limit laws are passed under the assumption that a lower legal limit will reduce the number of accidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the U.S government lowered the legal BAC for driving from 0.1% to 0.08%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support that roads are made safer as a result of lowering the legal limit, or is it the case that beyond a certain level there are diminishing returns?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1892" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-15T23:29:54.877" LastActivityDate="2019-12-13T16:48:07.460" Title="Does lowering the legal BAC make driving safer?" Tags="|safety|alcohol|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2197" CreationDate="2011-04-15T18:01:21.530" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If by evidence you mean any cloned babies, the answer so far is no. From an interview with that same &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20100114185559241&quot;&gt;Dr. Zavos in January 2011&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;UWN: You have not only offered&#xA;  cutting-edge assisted reproductive&#xA;  technologies to couples, but have also&#xA;  pressed forward in development of&#xA;  human reproductive cloning. In&#xA;  conjunction with colleagues in the&#xA;  Mediterranean Region, you indicate you&#xA;  have attempted implantations of over a&#xA;  dozen cloned human embryos for&#xA;  reproductive purposes. However, to&#xA;  date, none has resulted in a birth.&#xA;  What appear to be the physiological&#xA;  difficulties of achieving a human&#xA;  clone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Zavos: Yes, we have created a number&#xA;  of cloned embryos utilising SCNT. The&#xA;  methodology for creating cloned&#xA;  embryos is not a secret, and it is&#xA;  'easy to do' for those who know how to&#xA;  perform somatic cell nuclear transfers&#xA;  (SCNT) in mammalian cells and&#xA;  understand the basics in human&#xA;  embryology and embryo culture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have published the method that we&#xA;  used in creating human cloned embryos&#xA;  very successfully in refereed journals&#xA;  already. Anyone can visit our website&#xA;  at www.zavos.org and one can read one&#xA;  of the many publications on the&#xA;  methodology used to create the&#xA;  embryos, such as: Zavos, P &amp;amp;&#xA;  Illmensee, K: Possible treatment of&#xA;  male infertility by reproductive&#xA;  cloning: Technique for creating cloned&#xA;  human four-cell embryo and subsequent&#xA;  embryo transfer. Arch. Androl.&#xA;  52:243-254, 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Meanwile, the created embryos looked&#xA;  and behaved quite normally according&#xA;  to criteria that exist in the IVF&#xA;  industry today. We realise these&#xA;  embryos are not created via IVF but&#xA;  rather via SCNT and they grow in a&#xA;  normal manner and develope equally&#xA;  well. (See&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zavos.org/library/UAAN_A_150346.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.zavos.org/library/UAAN_A_150346.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  to view the embryos.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;None of the women who received the&#xA;  embryos got pregnant and the most&#xA;  limiting factor was that we&#xA;  transferred embryos in women who were&#xA;  rather advanced in age; all of them&#xA;  were either perimenopausal or entered&#xA;  menopause years ago. They ranged in&#xA;  age from 37-52 years of age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he's publishing I'd say it's safe to say he's trying, but so far with no success, or even pregnancies. I'm also sure that if he is successful it will make headlines around the world, if only because the good doctor appears to be a bit of a publicity whore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been several other announcements that cloning has been achieved, going all the way back to 1978 and the book &lt;strong&gt;The Cloning of a Man&lt;/strong&gt;, but none of them have come close to panning out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="1343" LastEditDate="2011-04-16T00:35:15.607" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T00:35:15.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2202" CreationDate="2011-04-15T18:34:49.623" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim is most likely related to the presence of certain controversial chemicals present in some kinds of plastic. The most discussed is certainly &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bisphenol A (BPA)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IiNXJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;Bisphenol A&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemistry-reference.com/q_compounds.asp?CAS=80-05-7&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim about microvaving in plastic bottles is probably related to the fact that BPA leeches faster out of plastic with hot water than with cold water. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6TCR-4R5F02G-1&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=01/30/2008&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_searchStrId=1719805448&amp;amp;_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=8f03955e703b623c6142c69b3f3de647&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;One study&lt;/a&gt; found that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exposure to boiling water (100 °C)&#xA;  increased the rate of BPA migration by&#xA;  up to 55-fold&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bisphenol A can mimic estrogen and thereby cause a variety of health effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the review &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nrendo/journal/v6/n7/full/nrendo.2010.87.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Environmental causes of cancer: endocrine disruptors as carcinogens&quot;&lt;/a&gt; the authors state the following about the occurence of Bisphenol A:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The xenoestrogen BPA is one of the&#xA;  EDCs that has been most thoroughly&#xA;  studied. BPA is found in various&#xA;  consumer products including baby&#xA;  bottles, reusable water bottles and&#xA;  reusable food containers, polyvinyl&#xA;  chloride stretch films, papers,&#xA;  cardboards and in the epoxy resins&#xA;  lining the insides of food cans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the carcinogenic properties of BPA they state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rats exposed prenatally to&#xA;  environmentally relevant doses of BPA&#xA;  show an increased number of&#xA;  intraductal hyperplasias (precancerous&#xA;  lesions) that appear during&#xA;  adulthood, while high doses&#xA;  induce the development of carcinomas&#xA;  in situ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is still some conflict about the interpretation of the studies. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.endocrinetoday.com/view.aspx?rid=40865&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Endocrine Society is concerned&lt;/a&gt;, but many regulatory bodies like the EFSA and FDA consider the current allowed levels safe. Although recently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-europe-baby-bottles-bisphenol-a.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the EU banned BPA from baby bottles&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T11:11:55.550" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T11:11:55.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2202" CreationDate="2011-04-15T18:43:13.110" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's going to depend upon the type of plastic you're using, as they're composed of different chemical compounds. If you look at the bottom of your plastic cup (or dish, etc), there's normally a recycling symbol and a number.  The number classifies the type of plastic it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_identification_code#Plastic_identification_code/%22number%20classification%20of%20plastics%22%20here&quot;&gt;plastic classification numbers&lt;/a&gt; here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My opinion as an environmental chemist: if your drink cup is #2, #4 or #5, then your risk of exposure is low enough to not be an issue, as these classes of plastics do not normally contain bisphenol A (BPA) or phthalates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should not be using #3 (polyvinyl chloride aka PVC) for anything food related; they contain bisphenol A and phthalates; both of which are endocrine disruptors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. 6 is fine for storing foods, but you should not reheat foods in polystyrene.&#xA;No. 7 is a 'catch all' for plastics - some of these can contain BPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is nearly impossible to be completely BPA/Phthalate free; they're nearly ubiquitous in our lives: plastic wrap, the coating inside your canned beans, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are reports which suggests that BPA &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com.molly.ruc.dk/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6TC0-4P2S91P-1&amp;amp;_user=1577482&amp;amp;_coverDate=09/30/2007&amp;amp;_rdoc=7&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=browse&amp;amp;_origin=browse&amp;amp;_zone=rslt_list_item&amp;amp;_srch=doc-info%28#toc#5156#2007#999759997#668312#FLA#display#Volume%29&amp;amp;_cdi=5156&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;_ct=10&amp;amp;_acct=C000053844&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=1577482&amp;amp;md5=ba21fab18159b7694b1d7641c820e9ad&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot;&gt;causes cancer&lt;/a&gt;, and there are many published studies regarding phthalates impacting &lt;a href=&quot;http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1526/2097.full.pdf+html/&quot;&gt;sperm count and quality&lt;/a&gt;. BPA has been tentatively linked to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bprcem.com/article/S1521-690X%2802%2990184-3/abstract/&quot;&gt;premature on set of puberty&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you run off and throw out everything plastic in your house, you need to understand that you're exposed to BPA from more than just leaching from your drinking bottles &amp;amp; cups. BPA will degrade rapidly in air but it persists in water - this means that you're potentially exposed to BPA via your drinking water (if it's a public water supply) or through what you eat (fish) since BPA is both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17825522&quot;&gt;bioaccumulated and biomagnified&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, there is a risk of BPA/phthalate leaching from your cup (or container) to your water (and thus into you), however the amount leached is most likely very small. In most of the studies where laboratory rats &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17706921&quot;&gt;developed cancer&lt;/a&gt;, they were receiving large (1000-10000 ppm) doses of BPA through their food, or via subcutaneous injections. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's why they pushed to have BPA and phthalates removed from baby bottles (which are still normally marked with a 7 code!) - there was a higher risk of BPA/Phthalate exposure to infants, who are normally given their milk warm. Higher dose given + consistent exposure = increased risk.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-01-24T09:33:22.260" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T09:33:22.260" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2153" CreationDate="2011-04-15T19:14:39.767" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;There were several researches showing that there isn't any real difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The researcher and colleagues looked&#xA;  at &lt;strong&gt;data from 15 studies evaluating&#xA;  possible stigma, teasing, social&#xA;  isolation, adjustment, sexual&#xA;  orientation, and strengths&lt;/strong&gt;. The&#xA;  findings were presented here at the&#xA;  American Academy of Pediatrics&#xA;  National Conference and Exhibition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;The vast consensus of the studies is&#xA;  that children of same-sex parents do&#xA;  as well as children whose parents are&#xA;  heterosexual in every way&lt;/strong&gt;,&quot; Dr. Perrin&#xA;  said. &quot;In some ways, children of&#xA;  same-sex parents actually may have&#xA;  advantages over other family&#xA;  structures.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Based on nine studies from 1981 to&#xA;  1994 of 260 children, aged three to 11&#xA;  years, reared by either heterosexual&#xA;  mothers or same sex-mothers after&#xA;  divorce&lt;/strong&gt;, the researchers found &lt;strong&gt;there&#xA;  was no difference in intelligence of&#xA;  the children, type or prevalence of&#xA;  psychiatric disorders, self-esteem,&#xA;  well-being, peer relationships, or&#xA;  parental stress.&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;The children all had&#xA;  a similar emotional experiences with&#xA;  divorce,&quot; she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/514477&quot;&gt;medscape.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Parenting by same-sex families is just&#xA;  as good -- if not slightly&#xA;  advantageous -- for children when&#xA;  compared to heterosexual families&lt;/strong&gt;, a&#xA;  Justice Department study has&#xA;  concluded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The paper references about 100 studies&#xA;  on parenting and children’s&#xA;  development.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=38cc20ce-7f14-44ea-b4d9-d4cd16d7a269&amp;amp;k=9378&quot;&gt;canada.com&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware of only one study that showed some differences. I've never read it myself, however, it is discussed here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A study from Australia (Sarantakos,&#xA;  1996) has been cited as demonstrating&#xA;  deficits among children raised by gay&#xA;  and lesbian parents in Australia&#xA;  compared to children raised by&#xA;  heterosexual couples. The anomalous&#xA;  results reported by this study--which&#xA;  contradict the accumulated body of&#xA;  research findings in this field--are&#xA;  attributable to idiosyncrasies in its&#xA;  sample and methodologies and are&#xA;  therefore not reliable. An expert&#xA;  reading of the Sarantakos article&#xA;  reveals that certain characteristics&#xA;  of its methodology and sample are&#xA;  highly likely to have skewed the&#xA;  results and rendered them an invalid&#xA;  indicator of the well-being of&#xA;  children raised by gay and lesbian&#xA;  parents in at least three respects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The children raised by gay and lesbian parents experienced unusually&#xA;  high levels of extreme social&#xA;  ostracism and overt hostility from&#xA;  other children and parents, which&#xA;  probably accounted for the former's&#xA;  lower levels of interaction and social&#xA;  integration with peers (see pp.&#xA;  25-26);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Nearly all indicators of the children's functioning were based on&#xA;  subjective reports by teachers, who,&#xA;  as noted repeatedly by the author, may&#xA;  have been biased (see pp. 24, 26, &amp;amp;&#xA;  30); and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Most or all of the children being raised by gay and lesbian parents, but&#xA;  not the children being raised by&#xA;  heterosexual married parents, had&#xA;  experienced parental divorce, which is&#xA;  known to correlate with poor&#xA;  adjustment and academic performance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indeed, although the differences&#xA;  Sarantakos observed among the children&#xA;  are anomalous in the context of&#xA;  research on parents' sexual&#xA;  orientation, they are highly&#xA;  consistent with findings from studies&#xA;  of the effects of parental divorce on&#xA;  children (see, e.g., Amato, 2001, and&#xA;  Amato &amp;amp; Keith, 1991).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very same source also explicitly states, that &lt;strong&gt;there is no scientific evidence of any deficits of homosexual parents compared to heterosexual ones&lt;/strong&gt;; and that there isn't even any dispute about that among scientists. Which I believe does answer your question; as far as it can be answered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some nonscientific organizations have&#xA;  attempted to convince courts that&#xA;  there is an actual scientific dispute&#xA;  in this area by citing research&#xA;  performed by Paul Cameron as&#xA;  supporting the existence of deficits&#xA;  in gay and lesbian parents or their&#xA;  children compared to heterosexual&#xA;  parents or their children. In fact,&#xA;  there is no scientific evidence of&#xA;  such deficits. Cameron's research is&#xA;  methodologically suspect. His key&#xA;  findings in this area have not been&#xA;  replicated and are contradicted by the&#xA;  reputable published research. Unlike&#xA;  research that makes a contribution to&#xA;  science, his key findings and&#xA;  conclusions have rarely been cited by&#xA;  subsequent scientific studies&#xA;  published in peer-reviewed journals as&#xA;  informing their scientific inquiry.&#xA;  For a detailed critique of the&#xA;  research project on which Cameron has&#xA;  based many of his published papers,&#xA;  see Herek (1998).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/parenting.aspx&quot;&gt;apa.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user288" LastEditorDisplayName="user288" LastEditDate="2011-04-15T19:24:36.810" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T19:24:36.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2211" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-15T19:35:04.353" Score="10" ViewCount="1172" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ran into an unsourced claim form one of the commenters of the Economist where the user &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/comment/889764#comment-889764&quot;&gt;makes a claim&lt;/a&gt; about the frequency of women wearing burqas and veil two generations ago (how much time spans a generation? 20 years?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a rare instance, KAL is on the wrong side of this issue. The wearing of Islamic garb has risen with the rise in radical Islam. Two generations ago, women across the Islamic world rarely wore veils, burqas or, in some places, even hijabs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to suggest that what the commenter says is true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T16:16:37.603" Title="Is women wearing burqas or veils ubiquitously in Islamic countries a recent happening?" Tags="|islam|fashion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1994" CreationDate="2011-04-15T20:57:45.867" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that there was some mass hysteria due to the broadcast, but the numbers are greatly exaggerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The myth &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/10/invasion-from-mars-anatomy-of-panic.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;originates&lt;/a&gt; from a book by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_Cantril&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hadley Cantril&lt;/a&gt;,&amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=2c2-k6AvQtQC&amp;amp;lpg=PA225&amp;amp;ots=JHMzrKJowM&amp;amp;dq=cantril%20h.%20the%20invasion%20from%20mars&amp;amp;pg=PA58#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=million&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The invasion from Mars: a study in the psychology of panic&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;about 1,700,000 heard the broadcast as a news bullettin and about 1,200,000 people where excited by it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, such a strong statement was based on a poll of only 135 people.&#xA;Furthermore, the calls to police forces only increased by 40% (this includes any kind of calls, not necessarily related to the mass panic) and one could expect to see the effects of mass panic, for example, in a spike of the number of car accidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bainbridge (1987) is critical of Cantril for citing just a few colorful stories from a small number of people who panicked. According to Bainbridge, on any given night, out of a pool of over a million people, at least a thousand would have been driving excessively fast or engaging in rambunctious behavior. From this perspective, the event was primarily a news media creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Miller (1985, 100) supports this view, noting that while the day after the panic many newspapers carried accounts of suicides and heart attacks by frightened citizens, they proved to have been unfounded but have passed into American folklore. Miller also takes Cantril to task for failing to show substantial evidence of mass flight from the perceived attack (1985, 106), citing just a few examples and not warranting an estimate of over one million panic-stricken Americans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goode (1992, 315) agrees with Miller’s assessment, but also notes that to have convinced a substantial number of listeners “that a radio drama about an invasion from Mars was an actual news broadcast has to be regarded as a remarkable achievement.”&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_martian_panic_sixty_years_later_what_have_we_learned/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-15T20:57:45.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2211" CreationDate="2011-04-15T23:47:37.127" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is well known that the Burqa and the Hijab were in existence in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.rafed.net/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=3868%3athe-islamic-hijab-veil&amp;amp;catid=315&amp;amp;Itemid=969&amp;amp;limitstart=1&quot;&gt;Pre-Islamic Arabia&lt;/a&gt; and in Persia as part of tradition. In contemporary times on the other hand, it depends on the region. In certain parts of the world the Burqa has seen popularity and decline based on political events. For instance during &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.afghan-web.com/woman/afghanwomenhistory.html&quot;&gt;Soviet occupation&lt;/a&gt; of Afghanistan, the Burqa saw a huge decline as the communist philosophy required women to work alongside men and consequently women weren't allowed to wear it. After the Soviets left it saw a rise. This is not to imply whether Soviet occupation was good or bad or the Burqa is good or bad. However; in Pakistan, the Burqa saw a rapid decline after the 50s but mostly in the urban areas. In countries like Turkey, Iran and Malaysia the Burqa is a rare sight. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/&quot;&gt;Also Islam actually prohibits women to wear the burqa during the annual Hajj pilgrimage required for Muslims at least once in life.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Hijab on the contrary is seen across the Muslim world with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijab_by_country&quot;&gt;rough uniformity&lt;/a&gt;. So to answer your question; the Hijab I think for sure has no correlation to radicalism. Does the Burqa?? I'm inclined to say no to that as well. Personally I don't think a link between them is possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1703" LastEditorUserId="1703" LastEditDate="2011-04-16T00:40:36.600" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T00:40:36.600" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2215" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17527" CreationDate="2011-04-16T02:13:35.117" Score="45" ViewCount="5512" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the truth surrounding the popular idea that genetically modified food is dangerous to consume?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's entire websites and institutions dedicated to popularizing the alleged dangers of eating genetically modified food, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://gmo-awareness.com/&quot;&gt;GMO Awareness&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodrevolution.org/blog/former-pro-gmo-scientist/&quot;&gt;Food Revolution Network&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.responsibletechnology.org/&quot;&gt;Institute for Responsible Technology&lt;/a&gt;. There's countless articles and even a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rixyrCNVVGA&quot;&gt;TED Talk&lt;/a&gt; video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flipside, there are also lots of reputable articles saying that all evidences points to GM food being safe: This recent one in &lt;em&gt;Forbes&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2013/06/26/alleged-danger-of-gmos-not-looking-very-real/&quot;&gt;Alleged Danger of GMOs Not Looking Very Real&lt;/a&gt; or this one from &lt;em&gt;Slate&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/09/are_gmo_foods_safe_opponents_are_skewing_the_science_to_scare_people_.html&quot;&gt;GMO Opponents Are the Climate Skeptics of the Left&lt;/a&gt;. Sites such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.senseaboutscience.org/pages/cross-pollination.html&quot;&gt;Sense about Science&lt;/a&gt; point out that we've been altering plant's genetic structures for thousands of years, and genetic modification is just a new way of doing this old process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A different argument I read in the &lt;em&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/em&gt; states that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/pesticides-gmo-monsanto-roundup-resistance_n_1936598.html&quot;&gt;Pesticide Use Proliferating With GMO Crops&lt;/a&gt; is the &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; source of danger. So even if GMO food itself is fine to eat, what about the secondary dangers from increased/stronger pesticide use that comes as a direct result of GMO crops?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So much conflicting information, but what does the scientific evidence say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1835" LastEditorUserId="1835" LastEditDate="2013-09-05T14:35:05.397" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T21:02:57.333" Title="Is Genetically Modified food safe to consume?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|genetics|gmo|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2199" CreationDate="2011-04-16T02:33:33.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, there is hard science behind the fact that water comes in various degrees of hardness/softness depending on how much Calcium and Magnesium are in the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same way that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dripstone_cave&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dripstone caves&lt;/a&gt; form, hard water can (and will) leave deposits of calcium and magnesium compounds in your appliances (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limescale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Limescale&lt;/a&gt;). From that article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calcium bicarbonate is soluble in water, however at temperatures above 70 °C (158 °F) the soluble bicarbonate is converted to poorly-soluble carbonate, leading to deposits in places where water is heated.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dripstone_cave&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; Local boiling “hot spots” can also occur when water is heated, resulting in the concentration and deposition of salts from the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calcium cations from hard water can also combine with soap, which would normally dissolve in soft water. This combination often forms scum which precipitates out in a thin film on the interior surfaces of baths, sinks, and drainage pipes. Soap usually contains salts of anions from neutralized fatty acids or similar chemical compounds. The calcium salts of these anions are less soluble in water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So up to now, everything is all nice and scientific. Next: Water softeners. There is a chemical process that will replace the calcium and magnesium ions in your water with sodium ions. The resulting compounds are much more soluble in water and do not form the unsoluble compounds, so no limescale will form. Again, this is hard science: You let the water pass through a filtering system that contains certain molecules with sodium attached, whose chemical properties allow the sodium ions to be easily replaced by the calcium and/or magnesium ions. After a while, the filter becomes saturated with the Ca and Mg ions and has to be regenerated; again, there are chemical processes that will accomplish this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next: The effects. It will prevent your pipes and appliances from being clogged by limescale. But what about drinking the softened water? Hard water is not unhealthy, and softened water is not healthier. In fact, since it contains more sodium than normal water, you should be careful if you have to follow a salt-restricted diet. Also, calcium is important for bone stability. For this reason, many people opt to have one tap bypassing the water softener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T02:33:33.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2217" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-16T02:35:58.037" Score="28" ViewCount="1268" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's been a lot of reports in the media that there's been a large rise in the number of allergy-related health problems over the past decade. Some reports claim that there has been a 265% increase in the number of hospitalizations due to allergy related problems in the US over the past decade. Others say that certain allergies (such as peanut allergies) have doubled or tripled in recent years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/whats-behind-the-rise-in-allergic-reactions-457624.html&quot;&gt;&quot;What's behind the rise in allergic&#xA;reactions?&quot;, Independent, 2007&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/allergicreactions.shtml&quot;&gt;&quot;Allergies&quot;, Figures from a BBC Radio Program&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rixyrCNVVGA&quot;&gt;Robyn O'Brien, TEDx, 2011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then there's evidence against this. For example, although a US study showed that peanut allergies in children had doubled between 1997 to 2002, further digging reveals a less clear picture. For a start, it's only the one study. Secondly, the study was a survey (no actual allergy tests were taken). Thirdly, the rise was from 0.4% to 0.8%, which may not even be statistically significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there's lots of articles speculating that media hype is largely responsible for this &quot;rise&quot; in allergies, with some people claiming it is nothing more than public mass-hysteria. (To put it into perspective: Only 150 people die each year in the US from allergy related problems. Only 10 from peanut allergies. Despite this, there is a large amount of media attention given to allergies, which may have led to people becoming unduly concerned.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/are-nut-bans-promoting-hysteria/&quot;&gt;&quot;Are Nut Bans Promoting Hysteria?&quot;, New York Times, 2006&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/333/7566/494&quot;&gt;&quot;Are the dangers of childhood food allergy exaggerated?&quot;, British Medical Journal, 2006&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/05/02/us-peanut-allergy-idUSN0140180420080502&quot;&gt;&quot;Expert sees peanut allergy solution within 5 years&quot;, Reuters, 2008&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So where's the truth in all this? Has there been a genuine explosion in allergy related issues, is the public getting overly concerned due to irresponsible media reports, or has there been a change in how these issues are being treated by the medical profession?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any solid answers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1835" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T13:47:09.623" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T13:47:09.623" Title="Has there been a dramatic rise in food allergies?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|allergies|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2117" CreationDate="2011-04-16T03:42:55.397" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prompted by a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13072745&quot;&gt;recent news story&lt;/a&gt;, some thoughts on wine – specifically, on the evidence that the quality of wine and amount of pleasure one gets from drinking it has no intrinsic relationship to the wine’s price; only, to one’s perception of the price and/or quality of the wine, which can be influenced as much through labelling, marketing and &lt;a href=&quot;http://timharford.com/2008/08/why-are-friends-such-plonkers-about-fine-wine/&quot;&gt;price tag&lt;/a&gt; as much as the wine’s actual look, smell and taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/11/the_subjectivity_of_wine.php&quot;&gt;Jonah Lehrer&lt;/a&gt;‘s &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/11/expensive_wine_1.php&quot;&gt;written a lot&lt;/a&gt; about wine and how we experience and judge it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A 2001 study by Frederic Brochet of the University of Bordeaux that showed wine experts getting fooled by a white wine tinted with food coloring.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another study by the same author showing experts rating the same wine differently depending on whether the bottle looked cheap or expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/handle/37328&quot;&gt;A study&lt;/a&gt; giving wine drinkers MRIs, demonstrating the actual &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.science20.com/news_releases/neuroscience_and_marketing_if_you_pay_more_you_think_things_are_better&quot;&gt;experience of pleasure&lt;/a&gt; from a wine is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/business/09instincts.html&quot;&gt;correlated to the price level&lt;/a&gt; the drinker believes the wine is at.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are also some &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/dining/07pour.html?_r=1&amp;amp;ei=5087&amp;amp;em=&amp;amp;en=daab560feda37d6a&amp;amp;ex=1210564800&amp;amp;pagewanted=all%22%3EWhat%20Motivates%20the%20Wine%20Shopper?%20%E2%80%94%20Eric%20Asimov%20-%20New%20York%20Times%3C/a%3E&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/dining/07pour.html?_r=1&amp;amp;ei=5087&amp;amp;em=&amp;amp;en=daab560feda37d6a&amp;amp;ex=1210564800&amp;amp;pagewanted=all&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt; which discuss other experiments that appear to back this up. Many of these articles cover the same studies: I also found an article and video at Stanford on the same topic: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/baba_wine.html&quot;&gt;Does a Wine’s Pricetag Affect it’s Taste?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/8031377?story_id=8031377&quot;&gt;The Economist&lt;/a&gt; covers two studies published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wine-economics.org/journal/&quot;&gt;The Journal of Wine Economics&lt;/a&gt;, concluding “The relationship between the price of a bottle of wine and its taste is weak”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1392208&quot;&gt;Swedish study&lt;/a&gt; found gender differences, but still concluded that people enjoy cheap wine as much as more expensive bottles. ” ..results suggest that hosts offering wine to guests can safely reveal the price: much is gained if the wine is expensive, and little is lost if it is cheap. Disclosing the high price before tasting the wine produces considerably higher ratings, although only from women. Disclosing the low price, by contrast, does not result in lower ratings…”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1752328&amp;amp;show=abstract&quot;&gt;Australian study&lt;/a&gt; found “Analysis revealed price and [Country of Origin] were both stronger contributors to perceptions of wine quality than taste”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I’m convinced. Or convinced enough that I don’t want to go around looking at the research too critically, or to look for conflicting evidence. I’ve given myself permission to buy and enjoy cheap wine, and it seems as though as long as I believe that that wine’s as likely to be good as more expensive wine, I’ll enjoy it just as much. It’s not in my &lt;a href=&quot;http://timharford.com/2009/03/business-life-wine-economics/&quot;&gt;economic interest&lt;/a&gt; to try to convince myself otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1925" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-04-17T17:24:36.053" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T17:24:36.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2059" CreationDate="2011-04-16T06:19:20.147" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005&lt;/strong&gt;, according to a report released Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In 2005,&lt;/strong&gt; one in four large United States corporations paid no taxes on revenue of $1.1 trillion, &lt;strong&gt;compared with 66 percent in the overall pool&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In 2004,&lt;/strong&gt; a G.A.O. study said that 7 in 10 of all foreign corporations doing business in the United States, or foreign-controlled corporations, paid no taxes from 1996 through 2000, &lt;strong&gt;compared with 6 in 10 United States corporations&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/business/13tax.html?_r=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/business/13tax.html?_r=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story also includes a quote from a fella from the Tax Foundation, an organization well-known to peddle corporate propaganda about taxes, about how the untaxed corporations are just simply the corporations that lost money, making no profit, and thus paying no taxes.  Although such examples certainly do exist, the statement is false, as is most everything that you hear out of the Tax Foundation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/the-tax-foundation-is-not-a-reliable-source/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In fact, a NYTimes author, in a blog post&lt;/a&gt;, linked a mash-up of articles rebuffing the Tax Foundation, and I found this in that mash-up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the actual tax rates paid by US corporations are extraordinarily low, around 6%.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Remember the latest GAO report (reported elsewhere on ataxingmatter) that shows that two-thirds of US corporations pay no federal income tax. That's not just the ones that are losing money, &lt;strong&gt;but also many corporations that have record high profits (including some Big Oil companies) that end up paying next to nothing in taxes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As a result, the US is actually a corporate tax haven, with the lowest effective corporate tax rates of almost all the countries that participate in the OECD. That's a little fact that the Tax Foundation apparently doesn't want the American public to understand, since all its hype is in terms of statutory rates and not in terms of effective tax rates.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/08/the-greek-menac.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/08/the-greek-menac.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to give an example, one way to avoid paying corporate income tax is to provide goods &amp;amp; services, for pennies on the dollar, to a subsidiary operating in a foreign country that doesn't tax them.  By doing so, you erase your domestic profits by sending it to a foreign subsidiary in the form of goods &amp;amp; services, which they then use to make even larger profits, which they then send back to you, untaxed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1061" LastEditorUserId="1061" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T22:45:55.050" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T22:45:55.050" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2199" CreationDate="2011-04-16T10:09:19.003" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two types of precipitate that come out of hard water: those that form &quot;scale&quot; and those that form &quot;sediment.&quot;  Scale will cling all over stuff.  Physical removal is almost always impossible, and you typically have to use chemicals to remove it.  Sediment, on the other hand, is more loose, and if you were able to stick your hand in the water heater, you could scoop it out as if it were sand.  You're supposed to drain the sediment out, but most homeowners don't, and even if you do, it's only marginally effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is soft water better for your pipes?  Yes, definitely.  ( lots of good info: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cambridgema.gov/CityOfCambridge_Content/documents/Drinking%20WaterMy%20edition.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cambridgema.gov/...pdf&lt;/a&gt; ; also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/fact_sheets/engineering/corrosion.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cdc.gov/...htm&lt;/a&gt; , states &quot;often leaves a deposit on the inside of the pipe&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will scale buildup reduce flow?  Yes. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will it completely clog your pipes?  Probably not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will scale &amp;amp; sediment form a thermal barrier between the water and a natural gas / propane burner, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.solardepot.com/pdf/Sunearth_SolaRayAC.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;or any devices intended to create or exchange heat&lt;/a&gt; (search for &quot;scale&quot; in the pdf -- second paragraph, page 14), reducing efficiency significantly?  Yes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can sediment bury the lower element in an electric tank, causing it to overheat and fail? Yes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can scale pretty much destroy a tankless water heater's efficiency?  Definitely.  Even the tankless water heater manufacturers admit this and openly state that their systems should not be installed in hard water areas without a water softener.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can scale buildup cover your temperature &amp;amp; pressure relief valve, interfering with its operation and rendering it useless, making it possible for a malfunctioning water heater to experience a BLEVE that would pretty much completely destroy your house?  Yes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this is well-known to any plumber.  It's not hype by companies that sell water softeners.  If I'm bored tomorrow, I'll dig up more links, but you could say that I'm involved in the heat-exchanger business, and anyone that is remotely legit is very familiar with problems posed by scale and sediment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is soft water better for your skin?  In the sense that it won't leave soap on your skin, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is soft water better for your health?  Mixed reviews.  I don't think it makes much difference either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1061" LastEditorUserId="1061" LastEditDate="2011-04-16T10:15:00.897" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T10:15:00.897" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2204" CreationDate="2011-04-16T11:20:47.413" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is clear evidence that driving performance is impaired even at those levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examining the statistics of traffic accidents supports the conclusion that 0.08% is clearly related to accidents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BACs of .08 g/100 mL or higher were found in 38% of killed and 30% of injured drivers, 37% and 27% of passengers, and 35% and 22% of male motorcycle riders.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6V5S-465D5SY-1D&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=08%2F31%2F1994&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=article&amp;amp;_origin=article&amp;amp;_zone=related_art_hover&amp;amp;_cdi=5794&amp;amp;_sort=v&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_ct=527&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=123675942546444b613c8237c779b7f1&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More evidence, even for lower limits, comes from double blind experiments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Statistically significant and meaningful decrements in driving-related performance were identified at 0.05% BAC or below in many studies. Younger and inexperienced drinkers and drivers appear to be a greatest risk for alcohol-related traffic crashes. It is concluded that on scientific grounds, there is support for setting the legal limit at 0.05%.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://md1.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&amp;amp;collection=ENV&amp;amp;recid=3510308&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;uid=790625454&amp;amp;setcookie=yes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://psy.psych.colostate.edu/Research/Spring/Article7.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; also confirms the findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, are BAC lowering policies effective? Not very, unfortunately. This has been studied in Slovenia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Further concern arises from the finding that heavily drinking drivers are not responsive to penalty increases. We came to the conclusion that, in addition to raising fines and expanding penalty points, the introduction and effective enforcement of complex legislative measures together with wide community action are necessary to resolve DUI problems in Slovenia.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsisup.2009.09.009&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="38403" LastEditDate="2019-12-13T16:48:07.460" LastActivityDate="2019-12-13T16:48:07.460" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="784" CreationDate="2011-04-16T15:35:28.977" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're right to be suspicious. While there are obviously studies of &quot;body language&quot;, it's impossible to judge accurately from one photograph, or even a short video, how someone is genuinely feeling. Especially to the degree that you describe: Is a person &lt;em&gt;genuinely&lt;/em&gt; having a good time, or are they posing for the cameras?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if that person wasn't having a good time, it's impossible to say why, without asking them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Think of it as someone taking a photograph of your face in mid conversation. You may look serious as you listen to what someone is saying. You may laugh if they say something funny. But could anyone really accurately state what your feelings were about the situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: It's impossible to say with certainty what someone is feeling by their body language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/3123.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Truth Behind the Smile and Other Myths - When Body Language Lies, Harvard, 2002&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1835" LastEditorUserId="1835" LastEditDate="2013-05-04T15:21:49.420" LastActivityDate="2013-05-04T15:21:49.420" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2217" CreationDate="2011-04-16T18:34:50.390" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question seems to focus on food allergies, which isn't the whole allergy picture.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1034/j.1600-0536.2000.043002107.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chemical allergies&lt;/a&gt; are indeed on the rise, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0105-1873.2005.00605.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fragrance materials&lt;/a&gt; (of which there are over 6000 different types) are loaded into everything from our soaps to our cleaning agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Food allergies are tricky things; I myself am allergic to mushrooms.  You've never quite enjoyed life until you've been intubated while conscious, let me tell you. But there does appear to be a increasing trend in both the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2111268/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UK&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/312/7038/1050.extract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US&lt;/a&gt; of peanut allergies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT to add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/co-allergy/Abstract/2009/08000/Epidemiology_of_anaphylaxis.13.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Studies&lt;/a&gt; suggest an increase in anaphylaxis, and from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6T1B-4SDGP8F-13&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=05/09/2008&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_searchStrId=1722331646&amp;amp;_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=dd8662b122a5b8f5a535f14c4f80f965&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; Burks describes the increase as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rise in peanut allergy has been&#xA;  well documented in a population-based&#xA;  study of 3-year olds in the UK, in&#xA;  which the prevalence of sensitisation&#xA;  to peanuts rose from 1.3% to 3.2%&#xA;  between 1989 and 1995.5 National&#xA;  surveys in the USA suggest that 1.1%&#xA;  of Americans-3 million people-are&#xA;  allergic to peanuts, tree nuts, or&#xA;  both.7,9 Similarly, data from a US&#xA;  National Health and Nutritional&#xA;  Examination Survey (1988-94) indicated&#xA;  that 8.6% of Americans have skin-prick&#xA;  test evidence of sensitivity to&#xA;  peanuts.10 In a newer study in the&#xA;  USA, the rate of peanut allergy&#xA;  increased from 0.4% in 1997 to 0.8% in&#xA;  2002 in young children.7 In an&#xA;  epidemiological study in Canada, the&#xA;  estimated prevalence of peanut allergy&#xA;  in children was 1.34%.11&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rivm.nl/bibliotheek/rapporten/340350003.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Netherlands&lt;/a&gt; are also experiencing a rise in peanut allergy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastEditorUserId="1063" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T13:26:34.623" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T13:26:34.623" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2229" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2242" CreationDate="2011-04-16T19:22:10.553" Score="14" ViewCount="1663" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that people are complaining everyone are getting dumber because of popular culture and the Internet. I read an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_18983_5-complaints-about-modern-life-that-are-statistically-b.s..html&quot;&gt;article in cracked&lt;/a&gt; that said people are actually getting smarter because of improving education. The question is, are people really getting dumber or simply acting dumb?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1935" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-04-16T21:20:05.480" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T23:55:14.363" Title="Are people getting smarter or stupider in North America?" Tags="|education|intelligence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2230" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2245" CreationDate="2011-04-16T19:39:07.053" Score="18" ViewCount="2033" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a claim that evolutionary explanations are nothin more then &quot;just so stories&quot;, that is, for any trait we can find in nature, one could find a way to explain why it's adaptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You find that people cooperate, you&#xA;  say, ‘Yeah, that contributes to their&#xA;  genes' perpetuating.’ You find that&#xA;  they fight, you say, ‘Sure, that’s&#xA;  obvious, because it means that their&#xA;  genes perpetuate and not somebody&#xA;  else's. In fact, just about anything&#xA;  you find, you can make up some story&#xA;  for it.&quot;&#xA;  Noam Chomsky&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, the explanations are apparently based on a mathematical proof (ESS -Evolutionarily stable strategy) - but there are many degrees of freedom when choosing the exact mathematical model, which allow selecting a model that &quot;fits&quot; the desired results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is about evolutionary explanations - how one can use evolution to explain the existence of a trait. not about proving or falsifying the theory of evolution in general&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a evolutionary explanation that isn't a &quot;just so story&quot;&#xA;There are several methods of explaining altruism in evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kin Selection&lt;/strong&gt; - by helping others we believe that are related to us, we help our shared genes to survive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cooperation&lt;/strong&gt; - We help others, and they help us. in the long run we earn at least as much as we lose&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Handicap Principle&lt;/strong&gt; - By helping others we prove potential mates\enemies that we are powerful enough to survive even if we help others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although these are explanations to the same general trait (altruism), each explanation has different predictions regarding the details of the trait - so it's possible to evaluate the validity of each explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="212" LastEditorUserId="8600" LastEditDate="2012-09-17T22:16:28.570" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T22:16:28.570" Title="Are evolutionary explanations &quot;Just so stories&quot;" Tags="|evolution|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-12-22T14:50:31.973" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2246" CreationDate="2011-04-16T19:48:22.880" Score="44" ViewCount="2193" Body="&lt;p&gt;One hears it once in a while that many allergies are due to people overly concerned with hygiene. The rationale is that growing up in a near-sterile environment will leave your immune system confused so that you then develop allergies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this actually true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T17:02:47.520" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T14:01:52.543" Title="Are many allergies caused by too much hygiene?" Tags="|medical-science|allergies|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2230" CreationDate="2011-04-16T20:03:01.953" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Evolution itself is a fact; the theory part is the mechanism behind it all. Every trait you see in a living being has had to evolve. Therefore, it is only natural that every trait has an evolutionary explanation. &#xA;See, e.g., here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example you bring makes an attempt at ridiculing evolution, with the rationale being &quot;Since it explains both cooperation and fighting, clearly it is wrong or just arbitrary&quot;. That is a fallacy. We don't cooperate and fight at the same time. The same humans that cooperated in hunting down a mammoth would later fight for a female, or for clan leadership. So what? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim that evolutionary explanations are &quot;just so stories&quot; is also taken up at talkorigins here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA500.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA500.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, evolution cannot explain &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; traits. Only those that we observe in the real world. If we'd found rabbits in the precambrian, for example, we'd immediately know that we've got something wrong concerning the origin of species.&#xA;See here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA211.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA211.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evolution also would be unable to explain traits that are so destructive and detrimental that they cannot be remedied or outweighed by other traits. But it is quite obvious that a species with these traits would go extinct in a very short time. So again, evolution is consistent here in that it can tell us why we see certain traits, and why we don't see certain others. Like the exploding Swamp Dragons in Terry Pratchet's Discworld universe... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="1183" LastEditDate="2012-04-09T16:49:14.373" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T16:49:14.373" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2234" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-16T20:17:54.650" Score="20" ViewCount="2269" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a widespread belief among &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/programmers&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;programmers&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;programmers&lt;/a&gt; that the more dynamic and loosely typed the language, the more productive the programmer will be in it. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.python.org/doc/essays/omg-darpa-mcc-position.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guido van Rossum wrote about programming productivity using python in 1998&lt;/a&gt; and searching around the web I still see people referencing this exact claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Syntactically, Python code looks like executable pseudo code. Program development using Python is 5-10 times faster than using C/C++, and 3-5 times faster than using Java. In many cases, a prototype of an application can be written in Python without writing any C/C++/Java code. Often, the prototype is sufficiently functional and performs well enough to be delivered as the final product, saving considerable development time. Other times, the prototype can be translated in part or in whole to C++ or Java -- Python's object-oriented nature makes the translation a straightforward process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this issue been properly scientifically evaluated? If not for &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/python&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;python&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;python&lt;/a&gt; then perhaps for sibling scripting languages like &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/ruby&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;ruby&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;ruby&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/perl&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;perl&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;perl&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/php&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;php&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;php&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;I've also &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/69005/is-programming-in-python-faster-than-in-c-c-or-java&quot;&gt;asked the question over on programmers.SE&lt;/a&gt; after a suggestion by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/223/muntoo&quot;&gt;muntoo&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T13:19:14.290" Title="Is programming in Python faster than in C, C++ or Java?" Tags="|programming|programming-productivity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2236" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2256" CreationDate="2011-04-16T20:59:39.360" Score="4" ViewCount="6459" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been a lot of buzz around the web lately about Rihanna being a part of the Illuminati. Then, I was like, &quot;bah, this can't be real.&quot; Until someone pointed out small portions of her &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdS6HFQ_LUc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;S&amp;amp;M video&lt;/a&gt;, where it says &quot;Princess of the Illuminati.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm skeptical she is &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; a part of the Illuminati. There must have been something -- that I might have missed -- that might have led the artist to include blatant messages in her videos like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="686" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-22T17:32:22.953" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T06:07:25.860" Title="Rihanna is the &quot;Princess of the Illuminati&quot;?" Tags="|musicians|illuminati|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2237" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2240" CreationDate="2011-04-16T21:05:13.463" Score="4" ViewCount="2185" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the beginning of Indiana Jones - Kingdom of Crystal Skull, some Russians (posing as US miliary) force Indy to search a warehouse for a crate.  Lacking a compass, he throws a handful of gunpowder into the air, hoping the magnetic contents of the crate will pull the gunpowder toward it, showing him where the crate is in the warehouse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He does this twice with gunpowder, the cloud of gunpowder flies through the air toward the crate, underneath some lights, so its movement is visible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How strong would a magnet need to be to 'pull' a cloud of gunpowder (call the distance something like a football field, the warehouse looks pretty big in the movie) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1540" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T22:23:22.973" Title="magnetism and Indiana Jones" Tags="|magnets|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2237" CreationDate="2011-04-16T22:23:22.973" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't believe there's a magnet in existence today which could 'pull' a cloud of gunpowder the distance of a football field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason: gunpowder contains no metals, and it is not &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramagnetic&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paramagnetic&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gunpowder's main ingredients are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrocellulose&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;nitrocellulose&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroglycerin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;nitroglycerin&lt;/a&gt; (single or double based)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Indy got closer to the crate, he used the buckshot from a rifle if I recall correctly - in that case I would guesstimate the same magnetic force as an MRI machine could do it with ease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastActivityDate="2011-04-16T22:23:22.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2241" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-16T22:47:53.087" Score="37" ViewCount="4760" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been various dates that I've read about the prediction of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;peak oil&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, when global petroleum production will stop growing theoretically. Some claim 2020s; others say the 2050s as the final decade oil extraction will decrease to drips. Another website I read recently has predicted as early as 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What kind of empirical data is there for peak oil? Were &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._King_Hubbert&quot;&gt;Dr. M. King Hubbert&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak_theory&quot;&gt;predictions&lt;/a&gt; correct? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T11:04:38.843" LastActivityDate="2017-03-30T05:36:11.450" Title="Is peak oil still set for 2013?" Tags="|economics|oil|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2229" CreationDate="2011-04-16T23:13:14.040" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an example of where the confusion comes from.  This is a fairly representative USA Today story that bemoans the poor performance of U.S. students.  Many such stories have been published in the past few years.  (Indeed, probably since at least the early 80s.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-12-07-us-students-international-ranking_N.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In ranking, U.S. students trail global leaders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;United States students are continuing to trail behind their peers in a pack of higher performing nations, according to results from a key international assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note those first two words: &lt;em&gt;In ranking.&lt;/em&gt;  At first glance the story might seem to be asserting that U.S. students are getting dumber.  But after a listing of U.S. student &lt;em&gt;rankings&lt;/em&gt; among various nations of the world, the story states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Those scores are all higher than those from 2003 and 2006&lt;/strong&gt;, but far behind the highest scoring countries, including South Korea, Finland and Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai in China and Canada.  [emphasis added]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if we try to look at the scores objectively, comparing year-over-year, we may not be #1 at present, but we do seem to be getting smarter.  Right?  But then follows this quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This is an absolute wake-up call for America,&quot; U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in an interview with The Associated Press. &quot;The results are extraordinarily challenging to us and we have to deal with the brutal truth. We have to get much more serious about investing in education.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If our Education Secretary can't understand any kind of measurement except a ranking, and thus regards a measured improvement as &quot;extraordinarily challenging&quot;, then it sounds to me like Mr. Duncan himself has an education problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will give kudos to this story for being detailed.  It examines actual average score differences further down.  But it's the quotes that draw your eyes, and the quotes all say the results are a disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alfie Kohn wrote this in one of his books in regards to school or district rankings on standardized tests, and I think the same principle applies here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One expert on testing suggests that if newspapers insist on publishing such a chart, they should at least run it where it belongs, in the sports section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1919" LastEditorUserId="1919" LastEditDate="2016-03-27T23:55:14.363" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T23:55:14.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2258" CreationDate="2011-04-17T00:04:17.507" Score="10" ViewCount="2170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read a couple of books by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Suvorov&quot;&gt;Viktor Suvorov&lt;/a&gt;, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icebreaker_%28Suvorov%29&quot;&gt;Icebreaker&lt;/a&gt; as a child where he presents a theory that before World War 2, Stalin was planning to attack the West via Germany, and/or had set things up so that Germany attacked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back then I had no evidence to support or contest this, and no experience in spotting crackpots. Right now I still have no evidence for or against (because I'm pretty bad at history), but it sure does have some signs of a crackpot theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this accepted or discredited by the community of historians? Is there sufficient evidence to be sure one way or the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-05T00:50:41.117" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T00:38:39.780" Title="Was Stalin planning to attack Germany?" Tags="|history|world-war-ii|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2241" CreationDate="2011-04-17T00:46:20.387" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Maugeri&quot;&gt;Leonardo Maugeri&lt;/a&gt; of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs &lt;a href=&quot;http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Oil-%20The%20Next%20Revolution.pdf&quot;&gt;thinks otherwise.&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrary to what most people believe, oil supply capacity is growing worldwide at such an &#xA;  unprecedented level that it might outpace consumption. This could lead to a glut of &#xA;  overproduction and a steep dip in oil prices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Official oil estimates consider only proven, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/npr/publications/Oil_and_Gas_Reserves_Evaluation1.pdf&quot;&gt;recoverable crude oil reserves&lt;/a&gt;, which requires them to ignore, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale&quot;&gt;oil shale&lt;/a&gt;.  But there's a lot more oil shale than there is crude oil.  The United States has about two trillion barrels of kerogen in shale, which potentially could be economically converted to oil in the future.  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/npr/Oil_Shale_Resource_Fact_Sheet.pdf&quot;&gt;6 trillion total, 1.8 trillion potentially recoverable&lt;/a&gt;). In fact, we have more potential oil, contained within shale, than the entire world has in proven crude reserves (~1.3 trillion.)  It is much more expensive to recover, and no one has done it to date, but it would not at all be an unreasonable alternative if we were to run out of crude oil.  In that sense, we aren't running out of oil any time soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; eventually run out. If Peak Oil happens within the next decade, it's not on account of a lack of oil, but rather because renewable energy is taking over. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, renewable energy already provides a reasonable and often cheaper alternative to fossil fuels in most applications (electric car, water heating, electricity, etc.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1061" LastEditorUserId="1033" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T14:24:33.213" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T14:24:33.213" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2230" CreationDate="2011-04-17T01:37:38.557" Score="27" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's a claim that evolutionary explanations are nothin more then &quot;just so stories&quot;, that is, for any trait we can find in nature, one could find a way to explain why it's adaptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT: That's actually two false claims!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim 1: For every trait we can find in nature, one could find a way to explain why it's adaptive&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This claim is false for two reasons&lt;/strong&gt; (1) Not every trait is adaptive, and (2) At the moment, it is not technically possible to test many of the explanations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not every trait is adaptive&lt;/strong&gt;: Evolution, as in &lt;em&gt;the change in the genetic make-up of a population&lt;/em&gt;, is more than &quot;survival of the fittest&quot;. The genetic make-up of a population changes due to mutations, genetic drift, recombination, and selection. Only the latter is adaptive. The three former are non-adaptive, but can still give rise to traits that we can observe now. See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/104/suppl.1/8597.full&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; for a discussion of why it can be wrong to always look for an adaptive explanation for specific traits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Today, we simply can't know&lt;/strong&gt;: With the exception of genetically engineered organisms, genomes, and the traits derived from them that we observe today are the product of evolution. However, in many cases, we cannot know the evolutionary mechanism that gave rise to the trait, especially in humans: Was it adaptive, i.e. the trait was so beneficial to the population and/or its individuals that they were able to produce more offspring? Or did the trait get fixed in the population by chance? (note that in e.g. bacteria, with their enormous populations, we can quite safely assume that every trait we observe is selected for). There are two problems often faced when trying to answer this question. (1) You need a large amount of genetic information on many individuals in order to statistically determine how the trait has been propagated, and (2) in many cases (sickle cell anemia is a notable exception), we are not able to really quantify the fitness advantage of a trait, and/or we simply don't know where on the genome it is encoded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim 2: evolutionary explanations are nothing more than &quot;just so stories&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This claim is false in its general scope&lt;/strong&gt;. Yes, as mentioned above, not every trait is adaptive, and not every trait is well enough understood so that we can make a claim. Thus, &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; &quot;explanations&quot; (which should usually be labeled speculation) may be &quot;just so stories&quot;, though many of those are simply hypotheses that are not testable yet, at least not on the level of the genome. That is likely to change as sequencing technology improves, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://genomebiology.com/content/7/7/112&quot;&gt;$1000 genome&lt;/a&gt; becomes available (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ng/qoty/index.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for a bit of speculation what this will do for research). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are plenty of examples of evolutionary explanations involving adaptive changes, even in humans, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease&quot;&gt;sickle cell anemia&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance#History_of_genetic_prevalence&quot;&gt;lactose persistence&lt;/a&gt;, or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/104/suppl.1/8655.full&quot;&gt;adaptation to low oxygen at high altitude&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT 2: Not all &quot;explanations&quot; are equal. There is speculation, hypothesis, and what I would call founded explanation. In the OP and my above post, &quot;explanation&quot; is normally understood as hypothesis or founded explanation, rather than speculation. &quot;Speculation&quot; is what you can just make up by purely using your superior intellect, but without needing to consult actual data. Within the realm of evolution, speculation is often resulting in just-so stories, since many people tend to not understand how evolution works. &quot;Hypotheses&quot; are what you propose when you actually consider the data; they are ideally haven't-gotten-around-to-do-the-experiment, rather than not-yet-testable, and should not be sorry-can't-test-this-ever. Founded explanation is once you successfully confirmed a hypothesis. This may still turn out to be wrong, since reality, and biology in particular, tends to be more complex than what we think, but it's at least consistent with what we know right now.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastEditorUserId="1690" LastEditDate="2012-04-10T13:17:27.763" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T13:17:27.763" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2231" CreationDate="2011-04-17T01:57:59.927" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allergy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; has a good introduction to this, the &lt;em&gt;hygiene hypothesis&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allergic diseases are caused by inappropriate immunological responses to harmless antigens driven by a TH2-mediated immune response. Many bacteria and viruses elicit a TH1-mediated immune response, which down-regulates TH2 responses. The first proposed mechanism of action of the hygiene hypothesis stated that insufficient stimulation of the TH1 arm of the immune system lead to an overactive TH2 arm, which in turn led to allergic disease. &lt;strong&gt;In other words, individuals living in too sterile an environment are not exposed to enough pathogens to keep the immune system busy.&lt;/strong&gt; Since our bodies evolved to deal with a certain level of such pathogens, when it is not exposed to this level, the immune system will attack harmless antigens and thus normally benign microbial objects—like pollen—will trigger an immune response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two things at work here: first, that the immune system cannot develop a sane reaction to those irritants with which it has little experience; and second, that the immune system scales its reactions according to the amount of irritants in the environment. If that amount decreases, it adjusts its expectations to assume that any irritants outside the normal, diminished range are much more severe than they, under ordinary circumstances, would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And shortly thereafter, relevant citations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies have shown that various immunological and autoimmune diseases are much less common in the developing world than the industrialized world and that immigrants to the industrialized world from the developing world increasingly develop immunological disorders in relation to the length of time since arrival in the industrialized world. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002%2Fppul.10323&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1002/ppul.10323&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longitudinal studies in the third world demonstrate an increase in immunological disorders as a country grows more affluent and, presumably, cleaner. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0040070&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040070&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of antibiotics in the first year of life has been linked to asthma and other allergic diseases. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1378%2Fchest.129.3.610&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1378/chest.129.3.610&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, while there is significant evidence in favour of this model as the cause of &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; forms of allergy, it does not account for &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; types: for instance, it is possible (and common) to develop allergies later in life despite regular exposure to the offending material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="657" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T00:25:39.610" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2234" CreationDate="2011-04-17T13:19:14.290" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of no research corroborating the claim that loosely typed languages are more productive. In fact, I believe the opposite should be true (since stricter typing means that the language prevents the programmer from making hard to find errors, thus saving a lot of debugging time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there have been (a few) studies measuring the respective productivity of languages such as Java, Python and C++. A detailed discussion can be found on Stack Overflow, &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/q/354124/1968&quot;&gt;“Are there statistical studies that indicates that Python is ‘more productive’?”&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some work here has been done by Lutz Prechelt in &lt;a href=&quot;http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/prechelt/Biblio//jccpprt_computer2000.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An Empirical Comparison of Seven Programming Languages&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing such studies is very problematic since a lot of factors influence productivity and it’s not clear how to eliminate them systematically. The studies are also very difficult to replicate, not least of all because it takes a lot of effort to lead such a study and nobody is willing to pay for it. Finally, there is no good agreed-on measure for productivity in programming languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:24.653" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T13:19:14.290" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2230" CreationDate="2011-04-17T13:27:32.050" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are &quot;just-so&quot; stories that are amenable to testing, but after having been tested cease to be just-so stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To take one of the examples cited, kin selection, or more broadly inclusive fitness, started life as a conjecture. Although you can derive the basis of inclusive fitness from population genetics whereby if the cost of an action is less then the benefit of to others de-rated by the degree of genetic relationship through common descent (which is always a fraction less than 1) and a mutation conferring that trait happens to arise, it will increase its proportional representation within the gene pool. That's a mathematical statement made in somewhat twisted prose, the formalism is simpler:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;rB &gt; C&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where &lt;em&gt;r&lt;/em&gt; is the degree of relatedness (0.5 for full siblings, 0.125 for cousins, etc.), &lt;em&gt;B&lt;/em&gt; is the benefit and &lt;em&gt;C&lt;/em&gt; is the cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sherman's 1977 fieldwork (&lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; 197:1246) was seminal in testing the predictions of this model. They observed ground squirrels and alarm calls made when a predator is spotted. Not only did they find that the alarm call increased the risk of being eaten by the caller (&lt;em&gt;C&lt;/em&gt;) but that their likelihood of making such alarm calls was highly correlated with the presence of nearby kin (&lt;em&gt;r&lt;/em&gt;) who could benefit (&lt;em&gt;B&lt;/em&gt;) by hiding. Conversely in the absence of nearby kin, alarm calls were less likely to be given. This is strong confirmation for the inclusive fitness model and part of the corpus that has made it no longer a just-so story from the time the eminent Sir R. A. Fisher conjectured the mathematical model in 1964.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, but those are squirrels. How about humans, which is what we really care about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In incredibly detailed and careful methodology, Daly and Wilson (1998 and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bio.ilstu.edu/anderson/bsc202/Daly%20and%20Wilson%20Some%20attributes%20of%20lethal%20assaults%20on%20small%20children%20Ethology%20and%20Sociobiology.pdf&quot;&gt;1994&lt;/a&gt;) showed  that the predictions of inclusive fitness were demonstrated in differential rates of violence of step-parents toward their children than by natural parents. To make a long story short, infants were more than 100 times as likely to be killed at the hands of a step-parent. So there is a just-so story of the evil step-parent going back in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella&quot;&gt;folk-tale for milennia&lt;/a&gt; gets tested and is found to be a feature of today's human world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about the sexy son? Here's a just-so story: if women want attractive sons but good, providing cuckolded &quot;fathers&quot;, they might just adopt a strategy whereby they increase the likelihood of being inseminated by a sexy, but non-parental man. How the hell could you test that? Baker and Bellis (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.minds.nuim.ie/~buffy/dissertation_research/pregnancy.pdf&quot;&gt;1993&lt;/a&gt;) found a way, but it wasn't delicate. They measured sperm retention by women and their orgasmic frequency with their nominal partner and their extra-pair copulations. They looked at uterine &quot;upsuck&quot; in relation to female orgasm and even the ovulatory timing of extra-pair copulations. As it happens, when women do seek outside boinking, they time it to match their fertility cycle and cum harder. This fits rather nicely with the reliable 10% incidence of first-world contemporary children not being sired by their putative fathers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just-so stories can be tested, and continue to be. This tends to move them out of the realm of Kipling and into the realm of &quot;we know&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1871" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T13:27:32.050" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2236" CreationDate="2011-04-17T15:02:19.607" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you answered your own question. No artist operates in a vacuum. I'm sure Rihanna is perfectly aware of what's being said about her in the rest of pop culture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible that Rihanna really is a &quot;princess of the Illuminati&quot; (even though the historical Illuminati was anti-royalty) and she and her producers decided to reveal that in a music video? I suppose so. But when it comes to extraordinary claims we as skeptics should require extraordinary evidence, and a playful reference to silly rumors made in a music video is hardly extraordinary evidence. It would be like claiming that Harrison Ford is planning to run for President of the United States because he appeared in &lt;strong&gt;Air Force One&lt;/strong&gt; playing the President -- I don't think we need a denial from Harrison Ford to know that playing the President doesn't automatically mean you consider yourself a candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back on the subject of Rihanna, rumors about her being somehow involved with the Illuminati conspiracy that controls the world probably originated on the website &lt;a href=&quot;http://vigilantcitizen.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Vigilant Citizen&lt;/a&gt;. As far as I can tell the site's author is anonymous, though he claims &lt;a href=&quot;http://vigilantcitizen.com/about/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some experience in the music industry&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am also a music producer who has&#xA;  composed music for some fairly&#xA;  well-known “urban” artists. My work in&#xA;  the music business has led me to deal&#xA;  with talent agents, video directors&#xA;  and record companies. Through my&#xA;  experiences and my contacts,  I have&#xA;  discovered some of the darker aspects&#xA;  of the entertainment industry, which I&#xA;  found were in direct connection with&#xA;  my studies in occultism. It is&#xA;  necessary to understand of the state&#xA;  of mind that prevails in the higher&#xA;  levels of the music industry to “get”&#xA;  the full meaning of the symbolism&#xA;  found in music videos. Some things are&#xA;  simply not intended to be understood&#xA;  by all, they are meant for the “few”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't say I'm completely convinced someone who's actually worked in hip hop field would put the word &quot;urban&quot; in quotes like that, but it's impossible to know what the writer's actual level of involvement is with the music industry so long as he remains anonymous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Vigilant Citizen (or as he call himself, VC) spends a lot of time deconstructing the lyrics and imagery in music videos and claiming to find the symbolism the Iluminati use to control the rest of us &quot;sheep.&quot; Rihanna was an early target of VC, &lt;a href=&quot;http://vigilantcitizen.com/musicbusiness/occult-and-prophetic-messages-in-rihannas-umbrella/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in particular the video for the song &quot;Umbrella.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; Here's an example to give you an idea of what the website is like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LI62u.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Rihanna Umbrella&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We then see Rihanna naked, covered in&#xA;  chrome-colored liquid. Rihanna has&#xA;  been raped by the Devil and covered&#xA;  with his semen. She seems in pain and&#xA;  not herself. On the frame above we see&#xA;  her inside a triangle. This is VERY&#xA;  symbolic. For occultists, an upwards&#xA;  triangle represents the phallus, the&#xA;  penis, male energy. Rihanna is inside&#xA;  the triangle. She is completely&#xA;  “owned” and under the spell of the&#xA;  Devil’s energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VC is also convinced that &lt;a href=&quot;http://vigilantcitizen.com/musicbusiness/lady-gagas-born-this-way-the-illuminati-manifesto/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lady Gaga is constantly revealing the Illuminati's plans in great detail to those who know how to read her videos&lt;/a&gt;, which is perhaps why Rihanna chose to be the princess of the group, not the queen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While VC takes Illuminati conspiracy theories to a silly new place, that's not to say there isn't a kernel of truth in the claim that there's occult imagery in some hip hop music. There certainly is. The influential artist Jay-Z has been including occult imagery in his music for years. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112998783&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;As Mitch Horowitz told NPR&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mitch Horowitz, author of Occult&#xA;  America, says that Jay-Z has a keen&#xA;  grasp of certain esoterica, especially&#xA;  in the music video for his new single,&#xA;  &quot;Run This Town.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In an interview with Guy Raz, Horowitz&#xA;  pointed to Jay-Z's use of the phrase&#xA;  &quot;Peace God&quot; as an allusion to the Five&#xA;  Percenters. Also known as the Nation&#xA;  of Gods and Earths, they teach that&#xA;  the original black man is God — and&#xA;  that all men are potentially God.&#xA;  &quot;Peace God&quot; is a typical Five&#xA;  Percenter greeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A phrase like 'Peace God' does not&#xA;  find its way into someone's vernacular&#xA;  by accident,&quot; Horowitz says. &quot;He's&#xA;  making a very definite statement.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, Jay-Z would hardly be the first musician interested in the occult. Jimmy Page would be the classic example, and even in the world of hip hop Jay-Z was beaten to the punch by The JAMs (later known and The Timelords, and still later as The KLF). But the important point here is that just because some artists are interested in the occult that doesn't mean we should take that interest as evidence that there really is a worldwide conspiracy to mind control to world's population through symbolism. Real evidence for the Illuminati claim has never been presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="1343" LastEditDate="2011-04-17T15:10:33.533" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T15:10:33.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2243" CreationDate="2011-04-17T16:50:40.573" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The prevailing view is that Stalin saw Hitler as a kindred spirit (and it's hard to call him wrong) and he probably thought Hitler recognized this kindred spirit as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result it's documented that Stalin refused to believe that Hitler would invade, even when he got reports of a buildup. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This view is presented for example in Gabriel Gorodetsky's book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0300084595&quot;&gt;&quot;Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and in Simon Sebag Montefiore's acclaimed &lt;em&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0753817667&quot;&gt;Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, the theory is if not discredited, then at least not shared by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controversy#Reactions_and_critiques&quot;&gt;majority of historians&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the arguments put forward to support this is the lack of defensive plans. But that's easily explained away by Stalin's documented refusal to believe Hitler would invade. To make plans for something Stalin claims never will happen was like asking to get sent to Siberia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is also important to know about claims about &quot;plans&quot;, is that &quot;plans&quot; is a very vague term and can mean anything. If Stalin sat down over a cup of coffee and a smoke and thought about how he would go about invading Germany, is that a &quot;plan&quot;? In some sense it is. And the military will make plans for all sorts of events. That doesn't mean they &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; the plans to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to say that Stalin planned an attack he must have had not only military plans, but also the intent to put them into practice. So the plans can't be simply &quot;just in case&quot;. And that is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; hard to prove.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other arguments are incomprehensible. Apparently Suvorov takes the dismantling of the Stalin line (a defensive line along the Soviet borders before the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) and the building of the Molotov Line (a defensive line along the Soviet borders &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) as some sort of evidence for an invasion. How the logic there works is beyond me. The Molotov-Ribbentrop pact meant that the Soviet Union expanded westward quite a lot. It's natural that a new defensive line is built along the new border. How that is evidence of &lt;em&gt;offensive&lt;/em&gt; plans is beyond me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-17T17:22:24.983" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T17:22:24.983" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="717" CreationDate="2011-04-17T19:19:55.047" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 2011.03.30 episode of Freakonomics Radio, &lt;a href=&quot;http://freakonomicsradio.com/why-can%E2%80%99t-we-predict-earthquakes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Why Can't We Predict Earthquakes&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, discusses prediction of earthquakes with Bill Ellsworth, a geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif. Starting around 9:40:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ellsworth: We had a project that had a group of volunteers that had animals that were very sensitive to the coming of earthquakes. And the instructions were that when their animals were acting up they were to call up this number. There were never any messages left before earthquakes, but lots of messages left after earthquakes-- Oh they had &lt;em&gt;meant&lt;/em&gt; to call but they didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Host: So in other words, &amp;quot;Moments before the earthquake I noticed that my cat was pacing back and forth&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ellsworth: That's the kind of thing. Exactly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is pretty strong empirical evidence that animals (or at least domesticated American animals) have no such ability. It seems more likely that confirmation bias is at play here: unusual animal behavior that would normally be discounted might be interpreted differently if it occurs just before an earthquake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1950" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-17T19:36:56.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2262" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-17T20:21:28.613" Score="16" ViewCount="1569" Body="&lt;p&gt;As put forth by Christopher McDougall in the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0307279189&quot;&gt;Born to Run&lt;/a&gt; (more recently in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-iGZPtWXzE&quot;&gt;TED talk&lt;/a&gt;) and a number of recent articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1951" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-04-17T20:46:00.060" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T14:35:49.517" Title="Is there evidence that early humans hunted by running in packs over long distances to wear out their food?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2069" CreationDate="2011-04-17T20:49:09.237" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been some time since the accident and a number of comprehensive studies have been performed. I think it is worthwhile to start with one of the most authoritative articles by the Journal Nature, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/fukushima-s-doses-tallied-1.10686&quot;&gt;Fukushima’s doses tallied — Studies indicate minimal health risks from radiation in the aftermath of Japan’s nuclear disaster (&lt;em&gt;23 May 2012&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Few people will develop cancer as a consequence of being exposed to the radioactive material that spewed from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant last year — and those who do will never know for sure what caused their disease. These conclusions are based on two comprehensive, independent assessments of the radiation doses received by Japanese citizens, as well as by the thousands of workers who battled to bring the shattered nuclear reactors under control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first report, seen exclusively by Nature, was produced by a subcommittee of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) in Vienna, and covers a wide swathe of issues related to all aspects of the accident. The second, a draft of which has been seen by Nature, comes from the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, and estimates doses received by the general public in the first year after the accident. Both reports will be discussed at UNSCEAR’s annual meeting in Vienna this week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Chernobyl incident is now well documented, see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's article &quot;Chernobyl Disaster&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Fukushima has only just begun being studied, and much of the information still derives from contemporaneous articles (to which this article links to many).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time of this writing, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Fukushima incident will have a fraction of the impact of Chernobyl, based on the analysis below. In particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The amount of radiation released by Fukushima is a fraction of Chernobyl;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The spread of the radiation from Fukushima is unlikely to hit highly populated areas like Chernobyl's radiation did;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The types of isotopes released by Fukushima are not as dangerous as those released by Chernobyl; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reported effects of Fukushima are significantly less than Chernobyl's reported effects;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comprehensive studies indicate that the amount of cancer developed by Fukushima may actually be at or less than background rates for cancer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The impact of Fukushima could be substantially greater in one area compared to Chernobyl: post traumatic stress disorder. From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/fukushima-s-doses-tallied-1.10686&quot;&gt;Nature article&lt;/a&gt; noted above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A far greater health risk may come from the psychological stress created by the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. After Chernobyl, evacuees were more likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than the population as a whole, according to Evelyn Bromet, a psychiatric epidemiologist at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. The risk may be even greater at Fukushima. “I’ve never seen PTSD questionnaires like this,” she says of a survey being conducted by Fukushima Medical University. People are “utterly fearful and deeply angry. There’s nobody that they trust any more for information.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There remains the possibility for Fukushima to become a significantly worse disaster if an earthquake occurs, as per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/11/04/david-suzuki-fukushima-warning_n_4213061.html&quot;&gt;noted scientist and host of the Nature of Things, David Suzuki&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Three out of the four plants were destroyed in the earthquake and in the tsunami. The fourth one has been so badly damaged that the fear is, if there's another earthquake of a seven or above that, that building will go and then all hell breaks loose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And the probability of a seven or above earthquake in the next three years is over 95 per cent.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... &quot;I have seen a paper which says that if in fact the fourth plant goes under in an earthquake and those rods are exposed, it's bye bye Japan and everybody on the west coast of North America should evacuate,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not clear what paper Dr. Suzuki is referring to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the analysis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Amount of radiation by absorbed energy&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of radiation by absorbed energy in millisieverts per hours at Fukushima seems to have been a fraction of about a fiftieth (1/50th) of Chernobyl's at what seem to be comparable water sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Chernobyl&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sample recorded levels during Chernobyl (See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dodreports.com/pdf/ada335076.pdf&quot;&gt;JPRS Report Economic Affairs, &quot;Chernobyl Notebook&quot; by G. Medvedev&lt;/a&gt; June 1989):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vicinity of reactor core: 300,000 mSv/h&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Water in Level +25 feedwater room: 50,000 mSv/h&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Fukushima&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Highest reported level during Fukushima accident: 4,000 mSv/h reported as the level at a pool of water in the turbine room of reactor two. (See: The Guardian, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/07/japan-doubles-fukushima-radiation-leak-estimate&quot;&gt;Japan doubles Fukushima radiation leak estimate&quot;, June 7, 2011&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Spread of the radiation geographically&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The spread of radiation from the Japan incident over human habitats is significantly less than that of Chernobyl because much of the radiation from Japan dispersed over the Pacific ocean. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Chernobyl&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects#Short-term_health_effects_and_immediate_results&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's article &quot;Chernobyl Diaster effects&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The explosion at the power station and subsequent fires inside the remains of the reactor provoked a radioactive cloud which drifted not only over Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, but also over the European part of Turkey, Greece, Moldova, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Estonia, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Ireland, France (including Corsica&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/07/japan-doubles-fukushima-radiation-leak-estimate&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;), Canada&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster_effects#Short-term_health_effects_and_immediate_results&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; and the United Kingdom (UK).&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.living-intentionally.com/?p=548&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Fukushima&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of the Fukushima radiation has dispersed over the Pacific Ocean. (See: Christian Science Monitor, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2011/0412/Why-Fukushima-isn-t-Chernobyl-despite-rise-in-crisis-level&quot;&gt;Fukushima raised to level 7 the same category as Chernobyl but Chernobyl had10 to 100 times more radiation&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, April 12, 2011)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Amount and types of radioisotopes&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While parts of the fuel rods and graphite particles were ejected into the atmosphere at Chernobyl, only iodine, cesium and Xenon-133 have been noted in the media reports about releases from Fukushima.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While some reports of plutonium have been reported in the soil, greater amounts of plutonium were discovered in Japanese soil after overseas nuclear testing. (See: The Guardian, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/07/japan-doubles-fukushima-radiation-leak-estimate&quot;&gt;Japan doubles Fukushima radiation leak estimate&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, 7 June, 2011)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Iodine-131&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iodine released has been at a fraction of that of Chernobyl of about one fourteenth (1/14th) to one eight (1/8th). The measured amounts are: &lt;strong&gt;Fukushima&lt;/strong&gt;: 770,000 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel&quot;&gt;terabecquerels&lt;/a&gt; of iodine-131 (The Guardian, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/07/japan-doubles-fukushima-radiation-leak-estimate&quot;&gt;Japan doubles Fukushima radiation leak estimate&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, June 7, 2011); &lt;strong&gt;Chernobyl&lt;/strong&gt;:  5.2 million terabecquerels (See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/japan-haunted-by-spectre-of-chernobyl/article1981816/&quot;&gt;The Globe and Mail article &quot;Japan Haunted by spectre of Chernobyl&quot;&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Cesium-134 and -137&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/11/28319/2011/acpd-11-28319-2011.pdf&quot;&gt;A. Stohl, P. Seibert, G. Wotawa, D. Arnold, J. F. Burkhart, S. Eckhardt, C. Tapia, A. Vargas, and T. J. Yasunari “Xenon-133 and caesium-137 releases into the atmosphere from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant: determination of the source term, atmospheric dispersion, and deposition”, Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 11, 28319–28394, 2011&lt;/a&gt;, states &quot;For [cesium 137], the inversion results give a total emission of 35.8 (23.3–50.1) PBq, or about 42 % of the estimated Chernobyl emission&quot; (the &quot;Stohl paper&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this estimate Fukushima has released 40% of the radioactive caesium of Chernobyl. This is significant, and by this metric Fukushima is not on par with Chernobyl, strictly speaking, but it is in the same order of magnitude. As well, Chernobyl released many much more dangerous particles, namely radioactive isotopes of plutonium and uranium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Xenon-133&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Stohl paper, under the metric of Xenon-133 release, Fukushima exceeds Chernobyl:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Total a posteriori 133 Xe emissions are 16.7 EBq, one third more than the a priori value&#xA;  of 12.6 EBq (which is equal to the estimated inventory) and 2.5 times the estimated&#xA;  Chernobyl source term of 6.5 EBq&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors note that their measurements of Xenon-133 exceed inventory, and &quot;Emissions cannot exceed 100 % of the inventory, so this may indicate that our inversion overestimates the emissions.&quot; The estimate may be revised over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Xenon-133 has a very short half-life in the body, of &quot;a few minutes&quot;, so it doesn't stay in the body very long. There's a well &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuc.berkeley.edu/node/2607#comment-2344&quot;&gt;referenced post on the UC Berkeley Department of Nuclear Engineering&lt;/a&gt; on the effects of Xenon, which concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So the bottom line is: Xe-133 does not stay in the body very long, and it's not very dangerous even if it's in the air around you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while Xenon-133 has been released from Fukushima in amounts greater than Chernobyl, and Xenon-133 is a radioactive isotope, the effects on human health of Xenon-133 even in amounts released from Fukushima are likely a fraction of the effects of the releases of more dangerous isotopes from Chernobyl (i.e. radioactive isotopes of plutonium, uranium, caesium, iodine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Strontium 90&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strontium 90 has been noted to be seeping into the bedrock near Fukushima, by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23779561&quot;&gt;the BBC&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/19/19034221-radioactive-strontium-90-found-in-groundwater-near-fukushima-nuclear-reactor?lite&quot;&gt;NBC&lt;/a&gt;. The latter states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco), ..., said nearly 30 times the permitted level of the radioactive isotope was discovered in a well dug last month outside the turbine hall of Reactor No.2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The company said it had not detected any rise in the levels of Strontium-90 in sea water, and that it believed the substance was trapped during the initial 2011 nuclear fallout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that not a great deal of analysis has been done on amount and effect of the Strontium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;http://deepseanews.com/2013/11/true-facts-about-ocean-radiation-and-the-fukushima-disaster/&quot;&gt;True facts about Ocean Radiation and the Fukushima Disaster&lt;/a&gt; notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The leaking groundwater contains strontium and tritium which are more problematic than Cesium-137. But it sounds like strontium accumulates in bones and is only problem if you eat small fish with the bones in, like sardines (and it will only affect sardines caught near Japan since they don’t travel far).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;In general&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Radioactive_release&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on the Chernobyl disaster&lt;/a&gt; remarking on the radioisotopes released from Chernobyl:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The release of radioisotopes from the nuclear fuel was largely controlled by their boiling points, and the majority of the radioactivity present in the core was retained in the reactor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;All of the noble gases, including krypton and xenon, contained within the reactor were released immediately into the atmosphere by the first steam explosion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;About 1760 PBq or 400 kg of I-131, 55% of the radioactive iodine in the reactor, was released, as a mixture of vapor, solid particles, and organic iodine compounds.&#xA;  Caesium (85 PBq Cs-137[79]) and tellurium were released in aerosol form.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;An early estimate for fuel material released to the environment was 3 ± 1.5%; this was later revised to 3.5 ± 0.5%. This corresponds to the atmospheric emission of 6 t of fragmented fuel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two sizes of particles were released: small particles of 0.3 to 1.5 micrometers (aerodynamic diameter) and large particles of 10 micrometers. The large particles contained about 80% to 90% of the released nonvolatile radioisotopes zirconium-95, niobium-95, lanthanum-140, cerium-144 and the transuranic elements, including neptunium, plutonium and the minor actinides, embedded in a uranium oxide matrix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Reported health effects&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Chernobyl&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual effects of Chernobyl are somewhat contested and vary dramatically. At the least, it is acknowledged that 237 people reported acute radiation sickness, with 31 deaths within 3 months. Some claim the deaths may be as high as 200,000 to 900,000. (See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's article: &quot;Chernobyl disaster&quot;&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Fukushima&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;21 workers have reportedly been affected by minor radiation sickness. (See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/12/japan-fukushima-chernobyl-crisis-comparison&quot;&gt;Nuclear crises: How do Fukushima and Chernobyl compare?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the wake of the earthquake and tsunami it may be difficult to find accurate recordings of any effects of the nuclear incident alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note regarding iodine: Thyroid cancer, caused by radioactive iodine, has been considered by some to be one of the main causes of death from Chernobyl. Iodine tablets are being distributed in Japan that prevent thyroid cancer. (See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newser.com/story/113987/japan-to-distribute-iodine-tablets-near-nuclear-plant.html&quot;&gt;Japan to Distribute Iodine Tablets Near Nuclear Plant&lt;/a&gt;, Newser.com, March 12, 2011; See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Assessing_the_disaster.27s_effects_on_human_health&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's article &quot;Chernobyl disaster&quot; at Assessing the diasaster's effects on human health&lt;/a&gt;). It's also noteworthy that thyroid cancer is treatable with very high success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were reports of [Caesium in baby milk]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... tests found up to 30.8 becquerels of caesium per kilo of Meiji Step powdered milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The milk was recalled; there was no indication of the amount of distribution before the discovery. The distribution is noted to be limited to Japan only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Around &lt;a href=&quot;http://nypost.com/2013/12/22/70-navy-sailors-left-sickened-by-radiation-after-japan-rescue/&quot;&gt;70 sailors aboard the USS Reagan&lt;/a&gt; are making a claim for compensation for exposure to radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Update — January 2014&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of other recent resources have cropped up, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/fukushima-s-doses-tallied-1.10686&quot;&gt;Nature: Fukushima’s doses tallied — Studies indicate minimal health risks from radiation in the aftermath of Japan’s nuclear disaster.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Fukushima_and_Chernobyl_nuclear_accidents&quot;&gt;Comparison of Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear accidents &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/fukushima.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes: Image shows radioactive seepage spreading across the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima nuclear plant&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://deepseanews.com/2013/11/true-facts-about-ocean-radiation-and-the-fukushima-disaster/&quot;&gt;True facts about Ocean Radiation and the Fukushima Disaster&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Other resources&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some reasonably comprehensive articles on the comparison, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Globe and Mail &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/japan-haunted-by-spectre-of-chernobyl/article1981816/&quot;&gt;Japan Haunted by spectre of Chernobyl&lt;/a&gt;, Apr. 12, 2011:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The key difference between the two disasters remains that the four troubled nuclear reactors at Fukushima shut down, while Chernobyl exploded with the reactor still running, causing a catastrophic chain reaction that shot radiation into the upper atmosphere.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Guardian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/12/japan-fukushima-chernobyl-crisis-comparison&quot;&gt;Nuclear crises: How do Fukushima and Chernobyl compare?&lt;/a&gt;, April 12, 2011&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Living Intentionally (blog), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.living-intentionally.com/?p=548&quot;&gt;Radioactive Iodine And Cesium In Japan: Just The Facts&lt;/a&gt;, March 27, 2011 by Trane Francks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13050228&quot;&gt;How does Fukushima differ from Chernobyl? &lt;em&gt;16 Dec 2011&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html&quot;&gt;Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="1792" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T13:18:22.173" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T13:18:22.173" CommentCount="9" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-04-17T20:49:09.237" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2265" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-18T00:21:41.827" Score="7" ViewCount="1888" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that playing music at night for babies and toddlers (i.e. children under 2 years old) can cause or contribute to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADHD_predominantly_inattentive&quot;&gt;Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD/ADHD)&lt;/a&gt; when they get older.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to, or basis for, this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T01:08:34.610" Title="Playing music at night for babies/toddlers causes or contributes to ADD/ADHD" Tags="|medical-science|sleep|music|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2268" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6418" CreationDate="2011-04-18T05:49:04.363" Score="49" ViewCount="3558" Body="&lt;p&gt;While listening to the RSA talk &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7axaXQmdBVQ&amp;amp;feature=feedu&quot;&gt;Addiction: What to Do When Everything Else has Failed&lt;/a&gt; I'm reminded of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html&quot;&gt;an article in the Times from 2009&lt;/a&gt; about Portugal's decriminalization of drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%; drug use in older teens also declined. Lifetime heroin use among 16-to-18-year-olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8% (although there was a slight increase in marijuana use in that age group). New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003, and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half. In addition, the number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and money saved on enforcement allowed for increased funding of drug-free treatment as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the Cato report hold up under scrutiny, and is there research that paints a different picture of decriminalization? Is the effect of decriminalization in Portugal seen in other countries like the Netherlands?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:47:36.880" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:47:36.880" Title="Does decriminalizing drug use lead to less drug use?" Tags="|politics|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2167" CreationDate="2011-04-18T06:48:48.473" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short version&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A virus program will do a good job in protecting the user against himself, simply because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are not likely to be the first person to get XXX virus/malware, and the likelihood that AV company finds it first is very high.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assuming you have a good anti-virus software it is going to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eset.com/us/threat-center/threatsense-updates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;update serveral&#xA;times a day&lt;/a&gt;, basically faster than application vendors are going to close X&#xA;exploit that Y virus/malware uses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You the user are very likely to download and try to install something that contains malware.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Malware creators and virus creators often build new malware/virus based on an existing one, and this means that virus software &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; detect the shared code sometimes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Longer version&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to understand what a AV protects you against. The majority of virus programs mainly detect threats they &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antivirus_software&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;know about before hand&lt;/a&gt;. They do not detect viruses like a human can (e.g. knowing a &lt;code&gt;.exe&lt;/code&gt; is out of place or deducing the &lt;code&gt;.exe&lt;/code&gt; name is randomly generated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you are an average user needing protection, then an AV is going to do a great job detecting the vast majority, if not all, after a while, of malware. &#xA;But if you are trying to protect against a target attack on you/your organisation then they will not be that effective, especially if the attacker writes custom code for &quot;you&quot;, as most AV software is not designed to handle this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to comment I will link to the tests.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.av-comparatives.org/en/comparativesreviews&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.av-comparatives.org/en/comparativesreviews&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And taking a good result from:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_od_feb2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.av-comparatives.org/images/stories/test/ondret/avc_od_feb2011.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see detection rates over 98% - if you pick the tests that virus programs are good at (i.e. detecting known viruses), but if you pick harder tests - like using a virus program which is out of date by a month against current viruses/malware, then their detection rate drops a lot (e.g. see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eset.com/us/images/graphs/graph_proactive_threat_detection.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Link&lt;/a&gt; to NOD32, claiming they can detect ~50% of &quot;unknown&quot; viruses, as proof that detection rates are lower when the virus/malware is not known)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Link collection:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Changelog from AV to show update rate, and the fact that commen virus/malware has families: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eset.com/us/threat-center/threatsense-updates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.eset.com/us/threat-center/threatsense-updates&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Link to search engine to show that &quot;tool kits&quot; to generate viruses exist:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://duckduckgo.com/?q=virus+creator+toolkit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://duckduckgo.com/?q=virus+creator+toolkit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="971" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T15:56:27.790" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T15:56:27.790" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2262" CreationDate="2011-04-18T08:19:44.840" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's some interesting reading on the subject&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results showing evidence in support of endurance running&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canibaisereis.com/download/liebenberg-persistence-hunting-2006.pdf&quot;&gt;Persistence Hunting by Modern Hunter-&#xA;Gatherers - Louis Liebenberg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hunt takes place during the&#xA;  hottest time of the day, with maximum&#xA;  temperatures of about 39–42C. Before&#xA;  starting, the hunters drink as much&#xA;  water as they can. Then they run up to&#xA;  the animal, which quickly flees, and&#xA;  track its footprints at a running&#xA;  pace. Meanwhile, the animal will have&#xA;  stopped to rest in the shade. The&#xA;  hunters must find the animal and chase&#xA;  it before it has rested long enough.&#xA;  This process is repeated until the&#xA;  animal is run to exhaustion. The hunts&#xA;  I observed involved three or four&#xA;  hunters starting the hunt, even when&#xA;  some of them were too old or not fit&#xA;  enough to complete it. A team of&#xA;  hunters can track much faster than one&#xA;  individual on his own. In the&#xA;  beginning the fittest runner may adopt&#xA;  an easy pace while the other hunters&#xA;  do most of the work tracking and&#xA;  running. While tracking as fast as&#xA;  possible, hunters are often slowed&#xA;  down when they lose the trail and&#xA;  struggle to find it again. When the&#xA;  others drop out, the fittest runner&#xA;  must pace himself to run down the&#xA;  animal on his own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to read the full &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/2742907&quot;&gt;David R. Carrier article&lt;/a&gt;, but it may be behind a paywall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research showing results against endurance running&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6WPN-50XJBYJ-1&amp;amp;_user=2832433&amp;amp;_coverDate=11/30/2010&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_searchStrId=1721902175&amp;amp;_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&amp;amp;_acct=C000058902&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=2832433&amp;amp;md5=20cacbd81fbe3b758ef4d8e7fc34f7dd&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot;&gt;Bovid mortality profiles in paleoecological context falsify hypotheses of endurance running–hunting and passive scavenging by early Pleistocene hominins&lt;/a&gt;&quot; Nov 2010&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The world’s first archaeological&#xA;  traces from 2.6 million years ago (Ma)&#xA;  at Gona, in Ethiopia, include&#xA;  sharp-edged cutting tools and&#xA;  cut-marked animal bones, which&#xA;  indicate consumption of skeletal&#xA;  muscle by early hominin butchers. From&#xA;  that point, evidence of hominin&#xA;  meat-eating becomes increasingly more&#xA;  common throughout the Pleistocene&#xA;  archaeological record. Thus, the&#xA;  substantive debate about hominin&#xA;  meat-eating now centers on mode(s) of&#xA;  carcass resource acquisition. Two&#xA;  prominent hypotheses suggest,&#xA;  alternatively, (1) that early Homo&#xA;  hunted ungulate prey by running them&#xA;  to physiological failure and then&#xA;  dispatching them, or (2) that early&#xA;  Homo was relegated to passively&#xA;  scavenging carcass residues abandoned&#xA;  by carnivore predators. Various&#xA;  paleontologically testable predictions&#xA;  can be formulated for both hypotheses.&#xA;  Here we test four predictions&#xA;  concerning age-frequency distributions&#xA;  for bovids that contributed carcass&#xA;  remains to the 1.8 Ma. old FLK 22&#xA;  Zinjanthropus (FLK Zinj, Olduvai&#xA;  Gorge, Tanzania) fauna, which&#xA;  zooarchaeological and taphonomic data&#xA;  indicate was formed predominantly by&#xA;  early Homo. &lt;strong&gt;In all but one case, the&#xA;  bovid mortality data from FLK Zinj&#xA;  violate test predictions of the&#xA;  endurance running-hunting and passive&#xA;  scavenging hypotheses.&lt;/strong&gt; When combined&#xA;  with other taphonomic data, these&#xA;  results falsify both hypotheses, and&#xA;  lead to the hypothesis that early Homo&#xA;  operated successfully as an ambush&#xA;  predator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that this is targeting the very earliest humans, not necessary those that have evolved the necessary tracking and team working techniques required for endurance hunting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1956" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T08:19:44.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2274" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-18T10:51:26.410" Score="48" ViewCount="27311" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0RmKr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Phone Call&quot;&gt; (Image &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mchumor.com/new_2010_04_29.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_18385_7-bullshit-police-myths-everyone-believes-thanks-to-movies_p2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cracked.com&lt;/a&gt; the &quot;one phone call&quot; rule is a Hollywood invention. They base this on the information &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jkrlaw.com/video-qa/what-happens-after-arrest&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this attorney&lt;/a&gt; gives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The one phone call is another one of&#xA;  the urban myths.&lt;/strong&gt; You may or may not be&#xA;  permitted to use the phone. Generally,&#xA;  out of courtesy they will allow you to&#xA;  make one phone call. Often there are&#xA;  phones in the jail, and people can&#xA;  make as many phone calls as they want&#xA;  as long as there is somebody to accept&#xA;  collect charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also heard in movies and TV-shows is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usconstitution.net/miranda.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Miranda Warning&lt;/a&gt; (which is real):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;You have the right to remain silent.&#xA;  Anything you say can and will be used&#xA;  against you in a court of law. You&#xA;  have the right to speak to an&#xA;  attorney, and to have an attorney&#xA;  present during any questioning. If you&#xA;  cannot afford a lawyer, one will be&#xA;  provided for you at government&#xA;  expense&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It stands to reason that if &lt;em&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;you have the right to speak to an attorney&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, you should be provided with the means to do so (e.g a phone call).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legalupdateonline.com/4th/277#cont281&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; it is indeed so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An arrested person has the right,&#xA;  immediately after booking and, except&#xA;  when physically impossible, no later&#xA;  than three (3) hours after arrest, to&#xA;  make at least three (3) completed&#xA;  telephone calls.  The calls are to be&#xA;  free if completed in the local calling&#xA;  area, and are at the arrestee's&#xA;  expense if outside the local area. &#xA;  The calls must be allowed immediately&#xA;  on request, or as soon as practicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I can gather the &quot;one phone call&quot; is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a myth perpetrated by Hollywood, but indeed a right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So what's the truth?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And what's the &quot;phone call&quot; policy in other countries? Do their 'Miranda' rights include a free phone call?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just to clarify:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;I merely mention the &lt;em&gt;Miranda Warning&lt;/em&gt; because I'm speculating the 'phone call' rule might derive from there. But my question is not about Miranda, it's about whether or not the law actually grants you the &lt;strong&gt;right&lt;/strong&gt; to a phone call. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T20:01:57.720" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T20:01:57.720" Title="You have the right to one phone call when arrested - A Hollywood myth?" Tags="|united-states|law|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2203" CreationDate="2011-04-18T11:41:38.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/Articles/000,024.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/Articles/000,024.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But not all criticisms of Kinsey’s&#xA;  research were unwarranted. Writing for&#xA;  the Journal of the American&#xA;  Statistical Association in 1949, W.&#xA;  Allan Wallis noted several serious&#xA;  methodological deficiencies in&#xA;  Kinsey’s methods, which led to his&#xA;  findings not being statistically&#xA;  representative of the U.S.&#xA;  population.14 While it was largest&#xA;  survey of sexual behavior ever&#xA;  undertaken, it was hobbled by the fact&#xA;  that Kinsey didn’t trust probability&#xA;  sampling methods which were in their&#xA;  infancy in those days. (Remember, 1948&#xA;  was also the year of the famous “Dewey&#xA;  Defeats Truman” headline.) According&#xA;  to Drs. Paul Gebhard and Allen Johnson&#xA;  of Kinsey’s Institute of Sex Research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;To Kinsey, the solution to sampling problems was to increase the size and&#xA;    diversity of the sample, and he felt&#xA;    that all biases and other problems&#xA;    would average out and nullify one&#xA;    another as the sample grew and&#xA;    proliferated. 15&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One look at the&#xA;  demographics of Kinsey’s sample&#xA;  clearly showed its biases. Kinsey’s&#xA;  sample favored professionals and those&#xA;  under the age of 35. Geographically,&#xA;  Kinsey’s sample was heavily&#xA;  concentrated on the Northeast and&#xA;  Midwest, especially in the state of&#xA;  Indiana where the bulk of Kinsey’s&#xA;  surveys took place.17&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kinsey’s homosexual sample provides&#xA;  another illustration of the problems&#xA;  in Kinsey’s dataset. Because of the&#xA;  difficulty in finding homosexuals in&#xA;  the repressive atmosphere the time,&#xA;  Dr. Kinsey relied on interviews with&#xA;  members of homophile groups such as&#xA;  the Mattachine Society and homosexual&#xA;  communities in a few large cities. He&#xA;  also interviewed prisoners and&#xA;  institutional populations...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="661" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T11:41:38.397" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2277" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2296" CreationDate="2011-04-18T12:39:20.530" Score="10" ViewCount="650" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia deems this topic significant enough to merit &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fart_lighting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;its own article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fart lighting&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;pyroflatulence&lt;/strong&gt;, is the practice of igniting the gases produced by human flatulence, often producing a flame of a blue hue. The fact that flatus is flammable, and the actual combustion of it through this practice, gives rise to much humourous derivation. Other colors of flame such as orange and yellow are possible with the color dependent on the mixture of gases formed in the colon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there is little scientific discourse on the combustive properties of flatus, there are many anecdotal accounts of flatus ignition and the activity has increasingly found its way into popular culture with references in comic routines, movies, and television; including cartoons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, its sources, which include Answers.com and YouTube, leave much to be desired.    For starters, YouTube videos can easily be faked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that flatus is flammable?  If so, are there any verified cases of its ignition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-09T21:43:09.433" Title="Is flatus flammable?" Tags="|physiology|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2278" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-18T13:00:38.583" Score="17" ViewCount="8071" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am absolutely sure that humans can feel emotions in a dream. I've experienced some of the strongest anxiety in my life during nightmares. Sometimes the emotions were strong enough to persist in the real world - I remember once seeing my father at the lunch table and feeling my metaphorical hackles rise, preparing to hurl an argument at him - and being confused why I can't come up with a good argument, until I remembered that I'd just dreamed the heated argument we'd had, and my feeling mad at him wasn't due to any cause existing in waking reality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also experienced sensory inputs which were definitely present in the real world and got seamlessly incorporated in the dream, e.g. the sensation of a full bladder, or of being cold. So I'd think that in general, sensory inputs from the body can be felt when one's sleeping and dreaming. Also, I think that it is possible to dream some sensory state which doesn't have a cause in physical reality, just like it happens with emotions (but can't remember an exact dream where this happened). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, one of the most overused tropes in fiction is heroes who pinch themselves to make sure they aren't dreaming. I find this quite strange. If my understanding of sensory input in dreams is correct, a pinch shouldn't be any proof - a person could feel the pain while dreaming, and keep on dreaming. Maybe the logic behind that is that pain is such an important signal, that when it is felt, even if it was caused by a dream, the brain will awaken the body to prepare it for response to a danger - so pinching oneself in a dream will lead to dreamed pain, which will lead to an awakening. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never felt compelled to pinch myself to test if I am dreaming - certainly not in waking reality, and if I did it in a dream, I must have forgotten that dream, which means that it can't have worked. I have sometimes surfaced of a dream enough to notice that I am dreaming, decide either &quot;what a lovely dream, I want more&quot; or &quot;dumb dream, I want something more pleasant&quot; and continue dreaming without waking up, and sometimes I can really take decisions at that point which influence the story of the dream. So it is plausible that a person could decide at such a point that they will now pinch themselves, and dream that they are doing it. But will the resulting pain be enough to wake them up? Or will they experience no pain at all from a &quot;dream pinch&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And is there any way at all to make a dreaming person experience pain - either from external stimuli, or from a voluntarily dreamt pain stimulus like the pinch, or from an involuntary dreamt stimulus like the dreamer dreaming that a car is hitting them? What happens when a dreaming person experiences either of these three? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1694" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T17:22:04.947" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T00:48:56.370" Title="Is it impossible for a human to feel pain in a dream?" Tags="|sleep|dreaming|pain|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2280" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-18T14:53:30.683" Score="20" ViewCount="2677" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can the success of Microsoft be attributed to their abuse of their operating system monopolies  of MS-DOS through the various versions of Windows (and other related monopolies such as the Internet Explorer web-browser)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember Microsoft performing acts with their operating system that hindered software competition such as Novell networks, Corel/Wordperfect, PC-DOS, Internet Explorer, and others. What acts by Microsoft that abused their monopolies contributed to Microsoft's success?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some example claims of abuse (among &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cuts-international.org/pdf/New_Windows_on_Comp_The_Microsoft_Case.pdf&quot;&gt;quite a few others&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS&quot;&gt;BeOS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2002, Be Inc. sued&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/363893.stm&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt; Microsoft claiming that Hitachi had been dissuaded from selling PCs loaded with BeOS, and that Compaq had been pressured to not market an Internet appliance in partnership with Be. BeOS also claimed that Microsoft acted to artificially depress Be Inc.'s initial public offering (IPO). The case was eventually settled out of court[5] for $23.25 million with no admission of liability on Microsoft's part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.novell.com/news/press/archive/2004/11/pr04077.html&quot;&gt;Novell/Wordperfect&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Novell asserts that Microsoft withheld certain critical technical information about Windows from Novell, thereby impairing Novell's ability to develop new versions of WordPerfect and other Novell® office productivity applications. The complaint also alleges that Microsoft integrated certain technologies into Windows designed to exclude WordPerfect and other Novell applications from relevant markets. In addition, Novell asserts that Microsoft used its monopoly power to prevent hardware partners from offering WordPerfect and other applications to customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/363893.stm&quot;&gt;OS/2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... testimony from Mr Norris outlines how IBM was pressured to stop shipping its own OS/2 operating system and a series of business programmes which competed with Microsoft Office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll add other references as I come across them; please feel free to add them to the comments and I'll integrate them, or add them independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T12:14:54.770" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T14:37:07.600" Title="Can Microsoft's success be attributed to their abuse of a monopoly" Tags="|economics|marketing|software|microsoft|corporate-finance|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1449" CreationDate="2011-04-18T15:04:53.790" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;To understand how scientists came to the conclusion that these rocks came from Mars, you have to follow the timeline of meteorite classification. Meteorites are categorized by their contents, and fall into 3 broad categories (iron, stony, and stony-iron). Within these groups, there are dozens of sub-categories, depending on their exact mineral content and other factors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1992 a meteorite now knows as &quot;Allan Hills 81005&quot; was analyzed and discovered to be significantly different from other known rocks, but was found to be remarkably similar in content to rocks returned from the moon by the Apollo astronauts. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1983GeoRL..10..775M&quot;&gt;Original journal abstract&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_meteorite&quot;&gt;wiki article on lunar meteorites&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the mineral evidence seemed persuasive (with lunar rocks available for direct comparison), there must have been some way for this meteorite to get to Earth. You've already discussed the proposed mechanism (an impact throwing rocks into space), and while that seems improbable, it must have happened (since the rocks are here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as we accept the possibility of that happening for lunar rocks, meteorites from other more distant bodies (Mars, asteroids, Mercury, etc.), while likely even more rare, don't seem entirely impossible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another set of meteorites (the &quot;SNC group&quot;, 14 known at the time) had already been recognized as different than most other rocks, and were already &lt;em&gt;suspected&lt;/em&gt; of being from Mars due to similarity of content to the rocks analyzed by the 1976 Viking landers (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_meteorite&quot;&gt;wiki article&lt;/a&gt;). In 1983, trapped gas in some of them were analyzed, showing similarity to the martian atmosphere. A 2000 publication (&lt;a href=&quot;http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2000P&amp;amp;SS...48.1213T&quot;&gt;abstract&lt;/a&gt;) concluded that they either came &lt;em&gt;from Mars&lt;/em&gt; or from another body &quot;substantially identical&quot; to Mars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems persuasive (at least to me) that these rocks are, in fact, from Mars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to talk about probabilities, I would say that its &lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; more likely that they are from Mars as opposed to the chance of some random comet having both &lt;em&gt;rocks&lt;/em&gt; with similar content to Martian rocks and &lt;em&gt;gases&lt;/em&gt; similar to Mars' atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1049" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T15:04:53.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2282" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2288" CreationDate="2011-04-18T15:08:06.213" Score="26" ViewCount="12481" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Mythbusters did padlocks, but I don't know if they did the standard door lock test. We see it in movies and tv shows, but can a locked door be &quot;unlocked&quot; by shooting the lock with a handgun?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Let's keep this movie related: 1 shot, direct hit (no miss).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1964" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:38:21.837" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:38:21.837" Title="Can you shoot a locked door open?" Tags="|guns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1770" CreationDate="2011-04-18T15:09:40.917" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cochrane collaboration&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Carpal Tunnel&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yoga is successful, short term, for Carpal Tunnel Syndrome:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Current evidence shows significant short-term benefit from oral steroids, splinting, ultrasound, yoga and carpal bone mobilisation.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/CD003219&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in line with more general findings that there pain reduction can be induced via meditation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Schizophrenia&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yoga is better than regular exercise for schizophrenia patients, but not better than standard or non standard care&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One trial compared exercise with yoga and found that yoga had a better outcome for mental state.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/CD004412/SCHIZ_exercise-therapy-for-schizophrenia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source 1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/CD010554/SCHIZ_yoga-versus-standard-care-schizophrenia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source 2&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/CD012052/SCHIZ_yoga-versus-non-standard-care-schizophrenia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source 3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Depression&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, yoga had merely &quot;potentially beneficial effects&quot; on depression:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall, the initial indications are of potentially beneficial effects of yoga interventions on depressive disorders. Variation in interventions, severity and reporting of trial methodology suggests that the findings must be interpreted with caution.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16185770&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anxiety disorder&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yoga is just as effective as other relaxation/meditation techniques:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yoga did not show significant effectiveness in treating obsessive-compulsive disorders compared with Relaxation/Meditation.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/CD004998&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epilepsy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, yoga is not demonstrably effective on epilepsy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No reliable conclusions can be drawn regarding the efficacy of yoga as a treatment for epilepsy.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/CD001524/EPILEPSY_yoga-epilepsy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2018-05-04T14:45:53.163" LastActivityDate="2018-05-04T14:45:53.163" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="795" CreationDate="2011-04-18T15:14:08.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bit of a devil's advocate one here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been some research on grounding the human body, and the associated health benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.docstoc.com/docs/55262868/GROUNDING-THE-HUMAN-BODY-TO-NEUTRALIZE-BIO-ELECTRICAL-STRESS-FROM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Grounding the human body to neutralize bio-electrical stress from static electricity and EMFs&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esdjournal.com/articles/cober/bio.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A. Clinton Ober&lt;/a&gt;, ESD Journal, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esdjournal.com/articles/cober/ground.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HTML version&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To throw some numbers out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The method to effectively ground&#xA;  people while in bed was developed and&#xA;  the study began. The effort produced,&#xA;  with a control group, the following&#xA;  results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;85% went to sleep quicker&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;93% reported sleeping better&#xA;  throughout the night&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;100% reported waking, being and&#xA;  feeling more rested&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;82% experienced a significant&#xA;  reduction in muscle stiffness&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;74% experienced the elimination of/or&#xA;  a reduction of chronic back and joint&#xA;  pain&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;78% reported improved general health&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if this research into grounding is correct and the human body can store up charge then it is quite plausible that electromagnetic radiation could increase the charge levels in our bodies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you couple this with the reports that being grounding help wounds heal quicker you could say that it does have a negative affect on our body because it reduces our bodies ability to heal itself effectivly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another link to research in this area: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dick Brown, Gaétan Chevalier, and Michael Hill. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/full/10.1089/acm.2009.0399&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pilot Study on the Effect of Grounding on Delayed-Onset Muscle Soreness&lt;/a&gt;, The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. March 2010, 16(3): 265-273. doi:10.1089/acm.2009.0399. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-06-10T17:41:11.633" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T17:41:11.633" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2280" CreationDate="2011-04-18T16:55:28.267" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft is a very large company with many products, not all of them successes. It would be virtually impossible to gauge the effect their PC monopoly had on, for example, the success of the Xbox or the failure of the Zune.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Microsoft_competition_case#Judgment&quot;&gt;The EU found Microsoft had abused its monopoly power&lt;/a&gt;, and while &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Microsoft_antitrust_case&quot;&gt;the US case against them ended in a settlement&lt;/a&gt; rather than a verdict, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm&quot;&gt;Judge Jackson's initial findings of fact&lt;/a&gt; say in no uncertain words, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;None of these actions had pro-competitive justifications... Many of the tactics that Microsoft has employed have also harmed consumers indirectly by unjustifiably distorting competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;That&lt;/em&gt; being said, to &lt;em&gt;abuse&lt;/em&gt; a monopoly you must first &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; a monopoly. By most measures, that is already a degree of success. MS-DOS, and products before that, were already unequivocally &lt;em&gt;successful&lt;/em&gt; products in the software industry, making Microsoft a &lt;em&gt;successful&lt;/em&gt; company without abuse of monopoly power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has Microsoft abused its PC OS monopoly to its benefit? Yes. &quot;Abuse of monopoly&quot; is a legal accusation, and legal authorities have found Microsoft guilty of it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can Microsoft's success be attributed to abuse of its monopoly? No. Microsoft was a successful company by any measure before they had a monopoly to abuse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can Microsoft's &lt;em&gt;modern&lt;/em&gt; successes be attributed, directly or indirectly, to its abuse of its monopoly? It's probably impossible to say, although I think you might have a hard time identifying many modern successes at Microsoft anyway.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user792" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T16:55:28.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2282" CreationDate="2011-04-18T17:07:00.827" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible to breach a door using bullets, but a normal handgun is normally underpowered.&#xA;Shotguns are suited for this task. The door isn't unlocked but partly broken so that it opens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_breaching#Ballistic_breaching&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door_breaching#Ballistic_breaching&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ballistic breaching uses a projectile weapon to breach an opening. Weapons used can range from small arms to the 120mm cannon of a main battle tank with a HEAT round, which will breach most obstacles easily, though the force involved may violate the rules of engagement.[3] A less damaging ballistic breach needs to destroy either the latch and lock, or the hinges of the door, and the ideal choice for this is the shotgun. While in theory other firearms can be used, handguns are usually underpowered[4] and rifles are less effective than the shotgun and pose a far higher risk of ricochet and collateral injury.[3] Most shotgun ammunition can be used for breaching, though the risk of injury varies with type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] FM 3-06-11. US Army. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-06-11/ch3.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-06-11/ch3.htm&lt;/a&gt;.  Section 3-20, Breaching&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Don Munson. &quot;Action Target’s Tactical Breach Door&quot;. Tactical Response Magazine. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hendonpub.com/publications/tacticalresponse/forcedentry.aspx&quot;&gt;http://www.hendonpub.com/publications/tacticalresponse/forcedentry.aspx&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] US Army. FM 7-8 INFANTRY RIFLE PLATOON AND SQUAD. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/7-8/ch6.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/7-8/ch6.htm&lt;/a&gt;.  Chapter 6, Urban Operations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[4] See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_MythBusters_special_episodes#Special_9_.E2.80.94_.22Mega_Movie_Myths_2_Hour_Special.22&quot;&gt;Mythbusters Special 9&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1072" LastEditorUserId="1072" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T10:43:28.273" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T10:43:28.273" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2278" CreationDate="2011-04-18T17:20:22.463" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Experimental evidence suggests that it is possible to experience pain while dreaming, though it does appear to be quite uncommon.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I refer to two papers, both published by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, in the journal &lt;em&gt;Sleep&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7690981&quot;&gt;first&lt;/a&gt;, produced in 1993 by researchers at the Laboratoire du Sommeil, Hôpital du Sacré-Coeur de Montréal, Québec, Canada:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Experiences of dreamed pain were reported incidentally in 2 experiments on the effects of somatosensory stimulation administered during REM sleep. Dreams were selected from 5 Ss who had reported at least 1 instance of dreamed pain in the studies. Ss had undergone 42 stimulation trials over 20 nights and had reported a total of 13 dreams (31%) with 1 or more references to pain. There was a high level of individual variability in susceptibility to dreaming about pain. Most often, the references to pain appeared to be direct, untransformed incorporations of real sensations produced by stimulation. Pain was in many cases associated with strong emotion, typically anger. Thus, pain is compatible with the representational code of dreaming. Further, the association of pain with dream content may implicate brainstem and limbic centers in the regulation of painful stimuli during REM sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12405613&quot;&gt;additional paper&lt;/a&gt;, produced by researchers at the Burn Center Hĵtel-Dieu du Centre hospitalier de l'Université de Montreal, Quebec, Canada:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been shown that realistic, localized painful sensations can be experienced in dreams either through direct incorporation or from past memories of pain. Nevertheless, the frequency of pain dreams in healthy subjects is low. This prospective study was designed to evaluate the occurrence and frequency of pain in the dreams of patients suffering from burn pain. Twenty-eight nonventilated burn victims were interviewed for 5 consecutive mornings during the first week of hospitalization. A structured-interview protocol was used to collect information on dream content, quality of sleep, and pain intensity and location. Patients were also administered the Impact of Event Scale to assess posttraumatic symptoms. Thirty-nine percent of patients reported 19 pain dreams on a total of 63 dreams (30%). Patients with pain dreams showed evidence of worse sleep, more nightmares, higher intake of anxiolytic medication, and higher scores on the Impact of Event Scale than did patients reporting dreams with no pain content. Moreover, patients with pain dreams also had a tendency to report more intense pain during therapeutic procedures. Although more than half of our sample did not report pain dreams, these results suggest that pain dreams do occur at a greater frequency in suffering populations than in normal volunteers. More importantly, dreaming about pain may be an added stress for burn patients and may contribute to both poor sleep and higher pain intensity, which could evolve into a cycle of pain-anxiety-sleeplessness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="279" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T17:20:22.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2280" CreationDate="2011-04-18T18:09:56.350" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Edit: The answer may be a bit unclear if you don't have much background in economics, so here the tl;dr version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the market for a specific kind of software (like an operating system) there will always emerge a monopolist, unless you have some heavy regulation from the start (this is explained by positive externalities from the network effect, and a lock-in causing the network effect). It isn't clear who of the initial players will emerge, but he will be able to do so without any unfair business practices, because the customers will flock to him - first for some unknown reason (or one not explainable with the classic rational actor theory), then, after he gains some critical mass, just because he is bigger than the competition. Microsoft happened to emerge in the OS market. They didn't need to abuse a monopoly position for that. The correct term is &quot;natural monopoly&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The lock-in effects result in a welfare allocation which is heavily oriented towards the supplying actor and puts the demanding actor at disadvantage. It could be argued that a company which builds stronger lock-in effects is doing &quot;abuse&quot; in an everyday sense (in classic microeconomics, the actual allocation doesn't matter, as long as it is efficient. There are other branches of economy which try to achieve fairness. There are 3-4 mutually exclusive definitions of fairness used in them). But both the building-dependency practices and monopoly are results from a market which allows a lock-in effect, the monopoly isn't caused by the practices. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ergo, the success of Microsoft is not caused by its monopoly position. It is caused by unconventional qualities of the goods they produce, and the resulting market structure. They did some things which weren't nice for their customers or competitors, but these weren't result from being a monopoly. For more explanation, please read the original answer below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Monopoly&quot; is a term stemming from economics, especially microeconomics. I'd like to give you some economical analysis here, because your question is somewhat inconsistent from an economical point of view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect of a supply monopoly is that it is selling its products at a price which equals marginal revenue (instead of the usual marginal costs). This means that the supplier is selling less units at a higher price. It makes a bigger profit than under competition, but there are less people who buy the product, so the sum of the welfare over all marketplace actors is less than in the competition situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is by no means considered abuse, just rational behavior for a monopolist. It is only a market failure if the good produced is deemed to be important for social instead of economical reasons, so it is desirable to be more widely available. For example, transportation is considered very important, so it is subsidized, and the presence of airline alliances is caused by the refusal of governments to allow more merger of airlines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there is some effort made to prevent monopolies from forming, there are sometimes benefits from their existence. A monopoly's products compete only against earlier products of the same company. This is a powerful innovation driver (because they can't compete on brand image, service level, etc. against their own products), especially effective when combined with the fact that with their big market share gives them lots of capital to invest in R&amp;amp;D. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that monopolies aren't good or evil. They are just another form of market structure, which has shortcomings (reduced welfare) as well as advantages. Selling at a higher price is not &quot;abuse&quot; in the sense used by politicians. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But note that we are not talking about any market here. We are talking about selling software, and this is a market with some quite unusual qualities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the point of selling at a higher price when you are a monopoly is moot in this case. For information products, nobody ever sold at marginal costs - they were too low to reflect the value of the product in the analog age, and they are practically zero in the digital age (the marginal cost is defined to the cost of creating another unit of your product after you already have created the first n units). (OK, there are companies who do it - that's why you get so much digital products for free. But they are never pure producers, they are intermediaries which act in a very complicated market - Google gives you quality search for free, but bundles it with selling your information to advertisers for money. They are producer on the search market and intermediary on the second). So the monopoly is charging what the market can bear, and the non-monopoly is doing the same thing. How is that to be considered abuse? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another peculiarity which a software market shares with a few other markets and results in typical phenomena, including monopolies. It understandable that you confuse its effects with the effects of having a monopoly in the market. Older economical theories just noted that there are such strange cases where a market doesn't have the usual negative economies of scale (caused by excessive overhead), but that it can have positive economies of scale. As this happened in a very few markets, and ones which were heavily regulated and subsidized anyway, it wasn't such a hot research topic as it became in the days of ubiquitous information technology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, it is established that the positive economies of scale are mainly caused by positive externalities, mainly the network effect. If you are on this site, you probably have enough background in information theory to have heard that the value of a network is proportional not to its nodes number, but to its nodes number squared (IT specialists call this Metcalfe's law, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; article on it is good). This leads to the effect that the bigger a network is, the bigger it tends to get (winner takes it all phenomenon). This is what causes monopolies in markets like transport and telecommunications. While there is no network as such in software (I am talking application software here, not networking software at the low TCP/IP levels), there is another peculiar quality of software markets which creates a virtual network: The lock-in effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lock-in effect says that once you have decided that you use one supplier, you can't switch that supplier without a really high cost. This is true for software - back in the old days, you practically couldn't exchange files between Microsoft and Unix systems without major conversion issues - but also for a number of other products (print cartridges, DSLR lenses). This creates a quasi-network: your Word 97 files are much more valuable if there are more people in the world who use Word 97 instead of competing non-compatible word processors. Such lock-in effects are what you are referring to in your question body. They are not a result from the monopoly; they are its cause. So while they are quite bad for the customer, they are by no means an abuse of monopoly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a very easy way to remove such effects: Just ensure compatibility between competing products. Obviously, a company could do it, but very few of them have the interest to do so. A startup in a network market does have the interest, because else they can't gain a market share at all. This is why OpenOffice could always read and write MSOffice formats, and MS Office was slow in adding support for OO formats. There are very few exceptions where a firm in a networked market is able to hold a share with a non-compatible product without being crowded out; Apple is such an example, but it is based on a completely unrelated economic effect called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good&quot;&gt;Veblen good&lt;/a&gt;, plus some differentiation (Wintel wasn't a direct competitor in the publishing sector). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So monopoly (neither its abuse, nor its mere existence) definitely didn't cause Microsoft's success. The uncooperative business practices you mention were part of the success - it would have had less sales if it had removed the lock-in effects through embracing open standards - but I wouldn't call that abuse, just rational economical conduct. If society does not wish such a result, then it has to be observed as market failure, not as abuse, and the government should fulfil its duty of economic regulation on a failure-plagued market and impose regulation in order to change the result. (That's what the antimonopoly process against Microsoft was). Or they may let the market run its course, if the effects are not too bad for the overall welfare or for non-economic goal variables. Remember, the positive externalities create a somewhat unfair situation where the winning producer has a disproportionately big piece of the pie, the customers have a disproportionately small one, and the competitors get almost nothing - but this is not an especially bad effect in economics, mere allocation inefficiencies are considered minor there. But they also create a much bigger pie, so the general public may settle for this rather than for a heavily regulated market with a more (socially, not economically) fair allocation but less welfare overall.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to know more about the economical analysis of information markets, read &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=aE_J4Iv_PVEC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=information%20rules&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=RH2sTaPWCsmEOoWfsM0J&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA&quot;&gt;Information Rules&lt;/a&gt; by Shapiro and Varian. If you need a text on basic microeconomics (it applies to most of the &quot;new economy&quot;), the same Varian has written a very popular &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=Y0uAPgAACAAJ&amp;amp;dq=microeconomics%20varian&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=j32sTbaQJc6gOqLM5PQJ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=3&amp;amp;ved=0CC8Q6AEwAg&quot;&gt;textbook&lt;/a&gt; on that. If you are interested in analysis of more complex markets, including but not restricted to the markets for information goods, try &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=iZB2Z6mMyv4C&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=market%20microstructure&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=6X2sTbjbEYeXOvia-ecJ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA&quot;&gt;Market microstructure&lt;/a&gt; by Spulber and &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=ywGXqL9nZz4C&amp;amp;pg=PA93&amp;amp;dq=stadler%20perez&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=C36sTa6mCsSWOvr_6dUJ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA&quot;&gt;An introduction to the economics of information&lt;/a&gt; by Perez and Macho-Stadler. These are my sources for the explanation above. NB: the last two books require at least intermediate level knowledge of microeconomics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1694" LastEditorUserId="1694" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T21:18:19.830" LastActivityDate="2011-04-18T21:18:19.830" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2293" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2294" CreationDate="2011-04-18T20:19:03.687" Score="7" ViewCount="9105" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is &quot;real ale&quot;, beer brewed from traditional ingredients (malted barley, hops water and yeast), matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide healthier than other beers, e.g. lager?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have often heard that real ale is healthier in CAMRA circles. Is there evidence to support that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1972" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-04-18T20:53:48.330" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T16:04:45.343" Title="Is &quot;real ale&quot; healthier than other beers?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|beer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2293" CreationDate="2011-04-18T21:34:28.123" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of the purported health benefits of beer are based on the antioxidant prenylﬂavonoids present in the hops.  In the ale style, the beer is generally hopped more than lagers, and therefore &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.phytochem.2004.04.025&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;has about twice as much prenylﬂavonoid as lagers&lt;/a&gt; (see Table 2).  These compounds do have some estrogenic traits (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, they can act like the hormone estrogen) which can be unhealthy in large quantities, however, the quantities in ales are generally accepted as safe (see the previous link).  As for &lt;em&gt;subjective&lt;/em&gt; health (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, how good people &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt;), beer intake in general &lt;a href=&quot;http://jech.bmj.com/content/53/11/721.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;has been shown to have a negative correlation to perceived health&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, the more beer people drink, the worse they feel).  That study did not test against different types of beer, however, so we can't conclude anything specifically about real ales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10715760000300281&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another study&lt;/a&gt; concluded that low-alcohol real ales are particularly rich in antioxidant flavonoids &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; those flavonoids get are readily absorbed by the body.  The study didn't, however, test against types of beer other than low-alcohol real ale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't seem to find any studies that show any positive or negative health effects of carbonation&lt;strike&gt; or consumption of live yeast&lt;/strike&gt; (see edit below).  I do speculate that the unfiltered nature of real ales would, at a minimum, provide some additional dietary fiber.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: Since live ales are unfiltered, one consumes a greater amount of yeast when drinking them versus drinking another type of beer.  Yeast is &lt;a href=&quot;http://apjcn.nhri.org.tw/server/bookstore/foodqa/ch3/3-22.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;rich in healthy nutrients like thiamin and folic acid&lt;/a&gt;, however, it can also contribute to an increase in production of uric acid, which can contribute to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001459/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;gout&lt;/a&gt;.  Alcohol also causes an increase in uric acid, though, and at a relatively higher level than is caused by yeast, so the uric acid contribution of yeast is likely negligible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=eHArQOTf_WQC&amp;amp;lpg=PR7&amp;amp;ots=RXLr41YqrU&amp;amp;dq=health%20ale%20lager&amp;amp;lr&amp;amp;pg=PP1#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This book&lt;/a&gt; would probably have some good references, however, I do not have a copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T16:04:45.343" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T16:04:45.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2277" CreationDate="2011-04-18T22:18:43.350" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I very much wanted to base my response on the empirical data valiantly collected by my old college roommate.  However I chose not to, remembering that the plural of anecdote is not data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, flatus, farts, or whatever it is you'd like to call 'em can be flammable under the right conditions.  This is mostly because they contain methane  and hydrogen sulfide.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, each fart is as unique as the person trying to light it, and whether or not you can light a fart depends mostly on the volume of gas produced at any given time, the strength of the flame, and distance from ignition source.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most farts/flatus are made up of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;hydrogen sulfide (flammable)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;methane (flammable)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;oxygen  (not &lt;em&gt;technically&lt;/em&gt; flammable, but aids combustion)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nitrogen&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Carbon Dioxide&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many other chemicals and compounds which don't really matter for this question.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(this can be referenced in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatulence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wiki article for flatulence&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chemistry of it all looks like something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Methane burns in the presence of the O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, (ΔHc = -890 kJ/mol), as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CH&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt; + 2O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; → CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; + 2H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hydrogen sulfide also combusts (ΔHc = -520 kJ/mol) to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;S + 3O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; → 2SO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; + 2H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Found a link for the basic chem of methane combustion &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/stoichiometric-combustion-d_399.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Mostly because it's hard to write a chemical equation in this post, sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A link to the mythbusters experiment is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNA-OQyN6bw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-08-09T21:43:09.433" LastActivityDate="2011-08-09T21:43:09.433" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2309" CreationDate="2011-04-18T22:40:24.250" Score="26" ViewCount="2726" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was cruising the JREF forums, and while I am very familiar with many of the phrases he coined and popularized in the English language, &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=7065252&amp;amp;postcount=15&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a post&lt;/a&gt; makes the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shakespeare coined about two thousand words. Most English speaking people quote Shakespeare &amp;gt;&amp;gt;at least once a day without knowing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;yup....'bedroom', 'assassination', 'bump', 'road' to list a few.&#xA;actually, the bard is credited with about 1700 words, added to the English lexicon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not &amp;quot;skeptical&amp;quot; per se of the claim, I would like to see it verified.  My google fu turned up more &amp;quot;Shakespeare didn't write his stuff&amp;quot; nonsense than verification of this claim.  And I figured it would be of interest to the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is Shakespeare responsible for introducing about 1700 new words to the English language?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T09:09:18.607" Title="Did Shakespeare introduce over 1700 new words to the English language?" Tags="|language|literature|william-shakespeare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2298" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2301" CreationDate="2011-04-18T23:02:47.070" Score="4" ViewCount="3343" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that hiccuping is very bad for you. I've even heard several times that each time you hiccup it shortens your lifespan by one day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does an average bout of hiccuping have any adverse effect on your health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-09-15T19:29:54.560" LastActivityDate="2023-09-15T19:29:54.560" Title="Does hiccuping / hiccoughing have any adverse effect on your health?" Tags="|medical-science|hiccups|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2280" CreationDate="2011-04-18T23:54:37.047" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The DOJ says in it's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dhushara.com/book/multinet/gates/gatesj/find.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Findings of Fact&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;III. MICROSOFT'S POWER IN THE RELEVANT MARKET&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Microsoft enjoys so much power in the market for Intel-compatible PC&#xA;  operating systems that if it wished to&#xA;  exercise this power solely in terms of&#xA;  price, it could charge a price for&#xA;  Windows substantially above that which&#xA;  could be charged in a competitive&#xA;  market. Moreover, it could do so for a&#xA;  significant period of time without&#xA;  losing an unacceptable amount of&#xA;  business to competitors. In other&#xA;  words, Microsoft enjoys monopoly power&#xA;  in the relevant market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Viewed together, three main facts indicate that Microsoft enjoys&#xA;  monopoly power. First, Microsoft's&#xA;  share of the market for&#xA;  Intel-compatible PC operating systems&#xA;  is extremely large and stable. Second,&#xA;  Microsoft's dominant market share is&#xA;  protected by a high barrier to entry.&#xA;  Third, and largely as a result of that&#xA;  barrier, Microsoft's customers lack a&#xA;  commercially viable alternative to&#xA;  Windows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[134.] After Microsoft’s relationship with IBM ended, Microsoft launched a&#xA;  predatory campaign to drive OS/2 from the market. It pursued a course of&#xA;  conduct very similar to the one it used to exclude DR-DOS from the market.&#xA;  Thus, Microsoft relied on restrictive OEM licenses that effectively cut off&#xA;  IBM from the critical OEM channel; it made false and misleading vaporware&#xA;  announcements and pre-announcements; it refused to write its applications to&#xA;  run on OS/2; it engaged in FUD campaigns and product disparagement in an&#xA;  effort to devalue OS/2 in the minds of applications developers, OEMs and&#xA;  consumers; and it created deliberate incompatibilities between Windows and&#xA;  OS/2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have to say unequivocally yes (unless you want to argue semantics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I do agree that they achieved &quot;success&quot; with MS-DOS prior to being such a dominant industry player it's only the level of success that would have made them a footnote player in computing history. Many companies with products matching the sales of MS-DOS have come and gone and been forgotten already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The early success of Microsoft comes down to their timing. They were there at the birth of the PC providing an OS geared towards enthusiasts. There simply weren't that many competitors for programming (BASIC), OS (DOS) or spreadsheets (Excel) which were Microsoft's most successful products at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These days Microsoft does have to compete and that's when all the dirty tactics started. Like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://techrights.org/2007/10/29/exclusionary-deals-linux/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Coercing PC stores to pre-load Windows&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/05/oems-get-office-2010-starter-discount-if-they-bundle-more.ars&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;other software&lt;/a&gt; or lose access to discounts and products&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/10/23/13219/110&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Preventing OEMs from selling dual-boot systems&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bundling &quot;Windows for Workgroups&quot; features in Win95 to pull down Novell.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bundling Internet Explorer into Win95 to pull down Netscape and dominate online commerce&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://alternatives.rzero.com/isp.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Buying up ISPs in the early days of the Internet back when MSN was intended to compete with it&lt;/a&gt; (the original MSN was a dial-up service that didn't connect to the Internet at all).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/24/business/microsoft-loses-case-on-patent.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stealing ideas from competitors who couldn't afford to sue&lt;/a&gt; (note, Stac Electronics did sue)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msversus.org/microsoft-patents.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Patenting anything and everything, no matter if they invented it or not&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_Documents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scare-mongering and lies about competing products&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.istartedsomething.com/20061227/microsoft-free-ferrari/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Manipulating traditional and social media for good reviews&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://techrights.org/2009/02/27/microsoft-sap-seize-control/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Manipulating standards bodies&lt;/a&gt;, pushing documents into &quot;the cloud&quot; and promoting &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.masternewmedia.org/2003/09/05/microsoft_palladium_threat_just_around.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;trusted computing&lt;/a&gt;&quot; as methods of locking documents into their proprietary formats (search palladium).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS_7.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Price gouging and forced upgrades&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/23242/Microsoft_Attempts_To_Defend_Its_H264_Position_Fails&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Media codec lock-in&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.windows7sins.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DRM collusion with big media&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the acts above would be difficult to get away with if Microsoft didn't already control so much of the market and have such a massive legal and marketing warchest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's important to see all this in the light of consumer alternatives. In many cases it is possible to switch MS products out for software that is completely free yet feature-equivalent. When you have to choose between paying for something and getting it for free the choice should be easy. However typically MS products and OEM contracts are designed to make the transition as difficult as possible. This is abuse of a monopoly because it harms competition and consumers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the curious, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vanwensveen.nl/rants/microsoft/IhateMS.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why I hate Microsoft&lt;/a&gt;&quot; has a very complete overview of Microsofts dodgy antics since it's conception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1980" LastEditorUserId="20934" LastEditDate="2016-08-23T14:37:07.600" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T14:37:07.600" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2262" CreationDate="2011-04-19T00:09:56.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18637739&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why is alpha-actinin-3 deficiency so common in the general population? The evolution of athletic performance.&lt;/a&gt;, states in the abstract that a nonsense mutation to the gene ACTN3 that improves endurance activities has undergone strong positive selection in human evolutionary history. I'm not sure whether the paper states that the positive selection is as a result of the ability to wear out their food, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Declaration of interest: the people who worked on the paper were colleagues of mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T00:09:56.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2298" CreationDate="2011-04-19T00:27:57.810" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are certain times when this may be true.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, those situations are limited to instances where hiccups present as a symptom of an underlying pathology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These instances are limited to very specific cases where the hiccups are caused by either &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21442315&quot;&gt;cancer&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21399980&quot;&gt;neurological disorder&lt;/a&gt;, by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19359331&quot;&gt;faulted pacemaker leads&lt;/a&gt; which are causing the hiccup by stimulating diaphragmatic spasm, or by other &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21279945&quot;&gt;structural defects&lt;/a&gt;, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20427147&quot;&gt;esophageal disease&lt;/a&gt;.  So, while it is technically possible that hiccups can indicate health problems, it would be limited to situations like these where the hiccup occurrs as a presentation of an underlying condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For most of those cases, the hiccups may be particularly severe, or even intractable until the underlying cause is addressed.  For most people, the average bout of hiccups remains nothing more than an inconvenience, even though apart from cases that have been documented to have a specific cause, the physiology of the hiccup itself &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18064367&quot;&gt;remains relatively unkonwn&lt;/a&gt;.  I have not been able to find any documented evidence that the average episode of hiccups is in any way harmful.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in order to disprove the &quot;one day off of your life&quot; idea, I present the case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/05/health_guinness_medical_record_breakers/html/2.stm&quot;&gt;Charles Osbourne&lt;/a&gt; (1894-1991) who is widely documented to have hiccuped continuously from 1922 until 1990, for a total of 68 years.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T00:27:57.810" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2265" CreationDate="2011-04-19T01:08:34.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was a child (and now with my newborn son) my family has always had the habit of playing music or having some type of background noise going during sleep time. This could be anything from the aforementioned music, to a TV on low volume in another room (but still audible from the crib), to the window air conditioner in the summer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason behind this is that if the child grows accustomed to any type of background noise while sleeping, it will actually end up leading to longer and deeper sleep because the child will no longer be disturbed by the slightest creak in the floorboards. Maybe me and my son are just naturally good sleepers, but my son (who is now almost 10 months) has been sleeping for 8-10 hours every night without waking for 6 months now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the claim to this potentially leading to ADD/ADHD I find that rather hard to believe and can't find any legitimate studies to back this claim up. ADD/ADHD in itself is way too overdiagnosed as it is, and even with legitimate cases of the disorder I would imagine that there are plenty of things that are occurring (or not occurring) during the child's waking time that would have a greater impact on brain development and risk for the disorder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1981" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T01:08:34.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2304" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2305" CreationDate="2011-04-19T01:16:39.047" Score="31" ViewCount="7971" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aczN6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lemmings have become widely known for their supposed tendency to run &lt;em&gt;en masse&lt;/em&gt; off of cliffs to their deaths. The term &quot;lemming&quot; has even become a commonly used metaphor to describe the behavior of those who would mindlessly follow the crowd, despite the obvious consequences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence that mass lemming suicide is actually true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it isn't true, then what are the origins of the myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T10:47:02.997" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T09:05:00.747" Title="Do lemmings commit suicide by jumping off cliffs?" Tags="|biology|ethology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2304" CreationDate="2011-04-19T01:32:17.513" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes.com&lt;/a&gt; it is a myth, one promoted by the 1958 Disney film &lt;em&gt;White Wilderness&lt;/em&gt; which not only staged a lemming migration on a turntable, but then herded them off a cliff. There was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/21/AR2010092105782_pf.html&quot;&gt;an article in the Washington Post&lt;/a&gt; about how nature movies are made a while back that said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lemmings that plunge to their deaths in the 1958 Disney documentary “White Wilderness” were hurled ingloriously to their doom by members of the crew, as a Canadian documentary revealed. Palmer writes that Marlin Perkins, host of television’s “Wild Kingdom,” was known to bait animals into combat [..]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lemmings do migrate in response to population density and other pressures, and can swim, so there are times when some may drown trying to cross water, but they do not commit suicide.  According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1005514.ece&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Times&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, the myth was supported by sudden fluctuations in lemming populations, now believed to be caused by the predator-prey cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T04:05:59.687" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T04:05:59.687" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2304" CreationDate="2011-04-19T01:33:31.217" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lemmings became the subject of a&#xA;  popular misconception that they commit&#xA;  mass suicide when they migrate.&#xA;  Actually, it is not a mass suicide but&#xA;  the result of their migratory&#xA;  behavior. Driven by strong biological&#xA;  urges, some species of lemmings may&#xA;  migrate in large groups when&#xA;  population density becomes too great.&#xA;  Lemmings can swim and may choose to&#xA;  cross a body of water in search of a&#xA;  new habitat. In such cases, many may&#xA;  drown if the body of water is so wide&#xA;  as to stretch their physical&#xA;  capability to the limit. This fact&#xA;  combined with the unexplained&#xA;  fluctuations in the population of&#xA;  Norwegian lemmings gave rise to the&#xA;  misconception. [8]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemming&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is more on the article about how some of the mass suicides were staged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1981" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T01:33:31.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2304" CreationDate="2011-04-19T01:41:29.927" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although the lemmings in the fabulous &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmings&quot;&gt;game&lt;/a&gt; from 1991 do, the real ones don't. You can see in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&amp;amp;articles_id=56&amp;amp;issue_id=6&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article by the &lt;strong&gt;Alaska department of fish and games&lt;/strong&gt; that it is a &lt;strong&gt;myth&lt;/strong&gt; that originate from the &lt;strong&gt;Walt Disney's&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;documentary&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052389/&quot;&gt;White Wilderness&lt;/a&gt; where some footage was faked to make it more spectacular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="800" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T01:41:29.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2308" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2310" CreationDate="2011-04-19T02:13:06.580" Score="51" ViewCount="3946" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since I was a kid, I can't remember how many times I've heard that a healthy person needs to drink at least 8 glasses of water a day.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are definitely plenty of reasons to remain well-hydrated. However is there any scientific evidence of harmful effects to those who don't drink at least the &quot;recommended&quot; 8 glasses of water a day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any documented and verifiable benefits for those who do consume the 8 glasses a day, as compared to those who do not?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in a blinded study, could one group be told from the other based on objective criteria?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is this a myth? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if so how did it start?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-09T22:52:06.963" LastActivityDate="2014-11-24T13:35:27.250" Title="Do people need to drink 8 glasses of water a day?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|water|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2297" CreationDate="2011-04-19T02:22:03.960" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/4465/did-shakespeare-really-invent-1700-words&quot;&gt;As answered at English StackExchange&lt;/a&gt; (Direct Quote from the link, the first part being the relevant part):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This was on my list of questions to ask at this site! I don't have an answer but I do have some thoughts and further questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most of these words seem to be variants.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  If you look at the list here at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nosweatshakespeare.com/resources/shakespeare-words.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Words Shakespeare invented&lt;/a&gt;, most of these are variations. For example amazement is a variant of amaze. It’s a little more credible to vary an existing word than introduce a completely new one. Also could it be true that there was a lot more improvisation in the language generally at the time due to the lack of a literate populace and established written standards and dictionaries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First to use in print isn't the same as invent&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  If this was the dawn of English language publishing then presumably Shakespeare was just in the right place at the right time for be the first to print with many English Words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What of Shakespeare's Rivals?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  If Shakespeare was in the right place at the right time then so surely were Marlowe and Jonson - I haven't seen similar claims for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does every language have its Shakespeare?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  I've heard Luther being called the father of German. Would Homer be the same for Ancent Greek? What about other languages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:10.210" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T02:22:03.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2308" CreationDate="2011-04-19T02:28:28.443" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: drink when you're thirsty. There's no health reason to set an arbitrary goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Snopes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/8glasses.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tackled this issue&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2003/03/14/water_glasses030314.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2003 CBC story&lt;/a&gt; that states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;University of British Columbia nutrition Prof. Susan Barr is part of a joint Canadian and American team of doctors and nutritionists who are looking at how much water people actually need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barr said they couldn't find any scientific evidence to support the eight to 10 glass recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The confusion may have arisen because a typical adult's energy requirements call for two to three litres of fluid – but it doesn't all have to be in the form of glasses of water. All foods and non-alcoholic drinks count toward the goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2010/12/08/the-myth-behind-drinking-8-glasses-of-water-a-day/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Heinz Valtin&lt;/a&gt;, a Dartmouth Medical School physician:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notion may have started in 1945 when the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council recommended approximately “1 milliliter of water for each calorie of food,” which would amount to roughly 2 to 2.5 quarts per day (64 to 80 ounces).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In its next sentence the board stated, “[M]ost of this quantity is contained in prepared foods.” But that last sentence seems to have been missed, so that the recommendation was erroneously interpreted as how much water a person should drink each day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under some circumstances, significant fluid intake — at least eight 8-ounce glasses — is advisable: for the treatment or prevention of kidney stones, for example, as well as under special circumstances, such as performing strenuous physical activity or enduring hot weather.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most people currently are drinking enough water and, in some cases, more than enough. There is potential harm in drinking too much water (Hale, 2010). Water intoxication, a life-threatening condition, can occur when one drinks excessive amounts of water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Water intoxication occurs when the kidneys are unable to excrete enough water (as urine), which leads to dilution of blood sodium. Mental confusion and death can result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-24T13:35:27.250" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2311" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2321" CreationDate="2011-04-19T02:46:10.943" Score="24" ViewCount="20531" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure how long this particular email has floated around the internet before it landed in my inbox, but it seems to claim that you can treat a mild (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.burnsurvivor.com/burn_types_first.html&quot;&gt;First&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.burnsurvivor.com/burn_types_second.html&quot;&gt;Second&lt;/a&gt; degree) burn by covering it in ordinary flour.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It claims that the flour will not only ease the physical manifestations (blisters, etc.) but also reduce the level of pain associated with being burned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FW: Burn Remedy &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My experience with burns is this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once I was cooking some corn and stuck&#xA;  my fork in the boiling water to see if&#xA;  the corn was ready. I missed and my&#xA;  hand went into the boiling water....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A friend of mine, who was a Vietnam&#xA;  vet, came into the house, just as I&#xA;  was screaming, and asked me if I had&#xA;  some plain old flour...I pulled out a&#xA;  bag and he stuck my hand in it. He&#xA;  said to keep my hand in the flour for&#xA;  10 minutes which I did. He said that&#xA;  in Vietnam, this guy was on fire and&#xA;  in their panic, they threw a bag of&#xA;  flour all over him to put the fire&#xA;  out...well, it not only put the flour&#xA;  out, but he never even had a&#xA;  blister!!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SOOOO, long story short, I put my hand&#xA;  in the bag of flour for 10 minutes,&#xA;  pulled it out and had not even a red&#xA;  mark or a blister and absolutely NO&#xA;  PAIN. Now, I keep a bag of flour in&#xA;  the fridge and every time I burn&#xA;  myself, I use the flour and never ONCE&#xA;  have I ever had a red spot, a burn nor&#xA;  a blister! *cold flour feels even&#xA;  better than room temperature flour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Miracle, if you ask me. Keep a bag of&#xA;  white flour in your fridge and you&#xA;  will be happy you did. I even burnt my&#xA;  tongue and put the flour on it for&#xA;  about 10 minutes. and the pain was&#xA;  gone and no burn. Try it! BTW, don't&#xA;  run your burn area under cold water&#xA;  first, just put it right into the&#xA;  flour for 10 minutes and experience a&#xA;  miracle!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence to back up this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-15T14:13:06.840" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T19:56:15.370" Title="Can you successfully treat a burn by covering it in ordinary flour?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2314" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2328" CreationDate="2011-04-19T06:54:19.970" Score="50" ViewCount="16272" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of all the email I get, I don't know why this one bugged me so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an email accusing Snopes.com of deliberately &quot;lying&quot; and &quot;covering up&quot; for the Obama administration.  From the look of it, this claim has been around quite a while and seems to have grown out of the &quot;birther&quot; movement of people who seem to think Barack Obama was not born in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skepticism 101 tells me that since this is an anonymous email which does not cite even one specific incident to back the claim, it is likely that it is completely unsubstantiated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it demonstrates the kind of argument skeptics are faced with all the time, and this type of email is the kind that tends to eventually wind up in every inbox on the planet.  Despite its completely unsubstantiated claims, obvious political agenda, and numerous logical fallacies, people can easily end up persuaded by things like this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A web search led me to more than a few sites with similar claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, here it is....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have recently discovered that&#xA;  Snopes.com is owned by a flaming&#xA;  liberal and this man is in the tank&#xA;  for Obama. There are many things they&#xA;  have listed on their site as a hoax&#xA;  and yet you can go to Youtube yourself&#xA;  and find the video of Obama or others&#xA;  actually saying these things. So it's&#xA;  up to you, but what is the value of&#xA;  &quot;truth or fiction&quot; checks if the&#xA;  source is faulty? I simply can't trust&#xA;  Snopes.com....ever for anything that&#xA;  remotely resembles truth! I don't even&#xA;  trust them to tell me if email chains&#xA;  are hoaxes anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few conservative speakers on Myspace&#xA;  told me about snopes.com a few months&#xA;  ago and I took it upon myself to do a&#xA;  little research to find out if it was&#xA;  true. Well, I found out for myself&#xA;  that it is true. This website is&#xA;  backing Obama and is covering up for&#xA;  him. They will say anything that makes&#xA;  him look bad is a hoax and they also&#xA;  tell lies on the other side about&#xA;  McCain and Palin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anyway just FYI please don't use&#xA;  Snopes.com anymore for fact checking&#xA;  and make your friends aware of their&#xA;  political leanings as well. Many&#xA;  people still think Snopes.com is&#xA;  neutral and they can be trusted as&#xA;  factual. We need to make sure everyone&#xA;  is aware that that is a hoax in&#xA;  itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found a copy of something very similar to this letter, but with a signature &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usacarry.com/forums/off-topic/12469-snopes-exposed.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am admittedly a regular user of Snopes and a strong supporter of the site, but feel I should still ask this question if only to avoid being an &lt;em&gt;A Priori&lt;/em&gt;  skeptic and dismissing this claim out of hand, without at least considering it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, I think it would be more effective to &lt;strong&gt;disprove&lt;/strong&gt; this claim than &lt;strong&gt;dismiss&lt;/strong&gt; it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have to ask:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any validity to this claim that Snopes is biased and inaccurate?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the facts about the&#xA;reliability of Snopes, its objectivity and its ability to self-correct?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the best evidence skeptics can use to defend a commonly cited reference&#xA;like Snopes against claims like this?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-07-25T12:53:53.293" LastActivityDate="2017-07-25T12:53:53.293" Title="Is Snopes a &quot;hoax&quot; that is &quot;covering up&quot; for the Obama administration?" Tags="|barack-obama|internet|snopes|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2308" CreationDate="2011-04-19T07:46:17.213" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Use common sense: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much water does the human body need? Depends. A 200 pounds man needs more than a 50 pounds child, obviously. If the temperature is high or the person is doing an intensive workout, water intake has to increase proportionally to make up for losses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without going any further, you know already that it is impossible to set a fixed amount of water intake that will work for every one in all situations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, you can determine beyond doubt that the &quot;8 glasses&quot; recommendation can not be anything more than a guideline, and not a good one at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As many individual factors come into play (including body type, climate, activity, water content of food, etc.), establishing a standard amount of water intake as being good for everyone everywhere is idiotic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirst AND hunger make for a much better rule of thumb. Note that I say &quot;hunger&quot; as well, as empirically, you will often find that a sweet tooth craving can be satisfied with water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: for those who abdicate any right or ability to follow a line of reasoning without having to refer to an authority, here are a list of references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/water/NU00283&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/water/NU00283&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Drink-More-Water-Every-Day&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wikihow.com/Drink-More-Water-Every-Day&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guide2.com.au/mind-body/recommended-daily-water-intake/13/69&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.guide2.com.au/mind-body/recommended-daily-water-intake/13/69&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/treatments/healthy_living/nutrition/healthy_water.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/treatments/healthy_living/nutrition/healthy_water.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and of course, the obligatory reference to Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_water&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_water&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are probably quite relevant to the mater, yet strictly unnecessary to answer the question. But, hey, if you need somebody else's approval to think, go ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skepticism reduced to reference hunting... Oh, sweet irony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skepticism was funded on the observation that truth is not an absolute and that authorities and belief could not be relied on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there we are on &quot;skeptics&quot;, running Google searches and copying other people's supposed research, because god forbid we would be using our reasoning powers and already available data to come up with even the most simple conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's right, then perhaps I don't belong here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1025" LastEditorUserId="1025" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T12:19:02.380" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T12:19:02.380" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2311" CreationDate="2011-04-19T08:13:29.340" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an impossibility in there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2nd degree burn means that you have a blister. What the message is telling with lack of clarity, is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get burn, put your burnt part in flour and recover instantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you face this kind of accident, what you are facing is dead cells. The skin in the burn area is no more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that is possible at that point is a faster recovery. The email claims instant regeneration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you are burnt, it's important to stop the cooking effect by using cold water for 10 minutes or more on the burnt area if the burnt area is not too large. Flour would only help bake the burning area!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the burnt area is larger than the front arm, seek medical attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/first-aid-burns/FA00022&quot;&gt;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/first-aid-burns/FA00022&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://firstaid.about.com/od/injuriesathome/ht/06_burns.htm&quot;&gt;http://firstaid.about.com/od/injuriesathome/ht/06_burns.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such emails are very stupid jokes that could put somebody's life at risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1208" LastEditorUserId="1208" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T09:31:32.063" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T09:31:32.063" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2322" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2325" CreationDate="2011-04-19T08:47:20.680" Score="26" ViewCount="3541" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen some websites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://howtoluciddream.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/how-to-lucid-dream/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; that guide you to lucid dreaming, but still wondering is this just a myth? I tried to search for Lucid Dream but there seems like no result about people who sharing their dreams when they are lucid dreaming. Though wikipedia does state some of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dreaming#Notable_people&quot;&gt;lucid dreamers&lt;/a&gt; in the end of its article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it possible to lucid dream?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1321" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T09:30:05.467" LastActivityDate="2018-03-25T22:50:38.943" Title="Is it possible to induce a lucid dream?" Tags="|sleep|dreaming|lucid-dreaming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2322" CreationDate="2011-04-19T09:27:41.457" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_LaBerge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stephen LaBerge&lt;/a&gt; from Stanford did some research about lucid dreaming. He wrote a paper titled  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lucidity.com/SleepAndCognition.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lucid Dreaming: Psychophysiological Studies of &#xA;Consciousness during REM Sleep&lt;/a&gt;. Lucid dreaming is a well-documented phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="21460" LastEditDate="2018-03-25T03:42:51.870" LastActivityDate="2018-03-25T03:42:51.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="853" CreationDate="2011-04-19T09:37:35.040" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if this meets the criteria exactly, however I present Dracunculiasis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/central_african_republic.html&quot;&gt;http://www.cartercenter.org/health/guinea_worm/central_african_republic.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracunculiasis&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracunculiasis&lt;/a&gt; (I know it's a wiki page, however it has lots of links to valid references on it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the worm has matured and starts to break through your skin it causes a burning sensation to encourage the carrier to immerse themselves in water.  Once this happens the worm releases lots of larva, infecting the water supply and restarting the life cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;zombie&quot; behaviour in this instance is making the carrier seek out and immerse themselves in water as the larvae need water to be able to survive and infect new hosts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T09:37:35.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2322" CreationDate="2011-04-19T09:41:53.883" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I didn't believe this myth could be true, but i guess &lt;strong&gt;Stephen LaBerge (Ph.D)&lt;/strong&gt; proved me wrong. There's an article about him on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lucidity.com/NL53.ResearchPastFuture.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.lucidity.com&lt;/a&gt; on which he explains it is possible on how to make it happen. (Christian's post just showed up, so I guess this answer can only confirm his answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found other guidelines/steps which tell you how you can induce lucid dreaming:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Lucid-Dream&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikihow:&lt;/a&gt; 14 steps/tips on how to increase to chance of lucid dreaming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lucidity.com/LucidDreamingFAQ2.html#learnable&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAQ of lucidity:&lt;/a&gt; starting from 3.1, tips on what you can do to lucid dream&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dreamviews.com/content/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dreamviews:&lt;/a&gt; They go a step further here. They offer online classes for a more in depth learning experience.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are planning major experiments on lucid dreaming, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.som.org/NewPages/Newsite07/SOMNavigation/LucidDreaming.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;global lucid dreaming experiment.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;It involves a large group (over 1000 people, which cover the diversity of culture, nationality, and religion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is the first undertaking of this magnitude and it is only possible for it to happen now in the history of mankind, largely due to technology and the worldwide web. The experiment seeks to organize dreamers worldwide in a focused time of dreaming and, through the effort, to collect the largest body of experiential knowledge to date concerning specifically, lucid dreaming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also note of an experiment &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lucidity.com/NL42.1001Nights.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;From NIGHTLIGHT 4(2), Spring 1992&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;They've had a group of people do 3 inducing techniques, 1 technique during one week (total of 4 weeks). These are the 4 techniques:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No induction technique&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Form of auto-suggestion: before bed, they would write on a piece of paper: &quot;Tonight I will have a lucid dream&quot;, and then sign the paper. (Control, a technique that they didn't expect to work).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reality testing: asking several times a day: &quot;Am I dreaming?&quot;, testing the answer and then visualizing what is like to be dreaming and become lucid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MILD: Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreams (developed by Stephen LaBerge)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results were pretty nice: In the week they tried Reality testing, 29% of the test subjects had at least 1 lucid dream (this proves to be more effective when practiced more often during a day). In The MILD condition, 26% had a lucid dream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1762" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-03-25T22:50:38.943" LastActivityDate="2018-03-25T22:50:38.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30575" CreationDate="2011-04-19T09:57:47.113" Score="27" ViewCount="12125" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shaolin monks perform demonstrations of their skills that seem almost superhuman.  The one that really has me stumped is breaking a sharpened spear by putting the point in their neck, the other end on the floor and then pushing forward until the shaft snaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do they do this?  Weak shaft?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody have any conclusive answers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.montecasino.co.za/whatson/theatre/pages/shaolin_wheel_of_life.aspx&quot;&gt;Link to the shaolin wheel of life show where they perform the spear breaking trick&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T15:25:02.513" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T11:36:26.913" Title="How do Shaolin monks break spears with their neck?" Tags="|martial-arts|stage-magic|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2314" CreationDate="2011-04-19T10:03:51.350" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fact that everything on Snopes is backed-up by external references coupled with the fact that this email says &lt;em&gt;some guy did some research and decided that Snopes is a conspiracy&lt;/em&gt; without any links to any specific examples or articles or research to verify its claim at all kind of suggests to me that it's false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Snopes FAQ:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q: How do I know the information&#xA;  you've presented is accurate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A: We don't expect anyone to accept us&#xA;  as the ultimate authority on any&#xA;  topic. Unlike the plethora of&#xA;  anonymous individuals who create and&#xA;  send the unsigned, unsourced e-mail&#xA;  messages that are forwarded all over&#xA;  the Internet, we show our work. The&#xA;  research materials we've used in the&#xA;  preparation of any particular page are&#xA;  listed in the bibliography displayed&#xA;  at the bottom of that page so that&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;readers who wish to verify the&#xA;  validity of our information may check&#xA;  those sources for themselves.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, all of Snopes' material is written by two people,  Barbara and David Mikkelson, so I would expect the site to contain &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T17:36:57.747" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T17:36:57.747" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2314" CreationDate="2011-04-19T10:04:58.930" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/snopescom/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FactCheck.org&lt;/a&gt; looked into a similar chain mail in 2009:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This widely circulated e-mail contains&#xA;a number of false claims about the&#xA;urban legend-busting Snopes.com and&#xA;its proprietors, Barbara and David&#xA;Mikkelson, who started the site in&#xA;1995 and still run it. They're accused&#xA;of hiding their identities, doing&#xA;shoddy research, producing articles&#xA;with a liberal bent and discrediting&#xA;an anti-Obama State Farm agent out of&#xA;partisanship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We asked David. He told us that&#xA;Barbara is a Canadian citizen, and as&#xA;such isn't allowed to vote here or&#xA;contribute money to U.S. candidates.&#xA;As for him, &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;My sole involvement in&#xA;politics is on Election Day to go out&#xA;and vote. I've never joined a party,&#xA;worked for a campaign or donated money&#xA;to a candidate&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We checked online to see if he&#xA;had given money to any federal&#xA;candidates, and nothing turned up&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;Mikkelson even faxed us a copy of his&#xA;voter registration form. He asked us&#xA;not to post an image of it here, but&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;we can confirm that it shows he&#xA;declined to state a party affiliation&#xA;when he registered last year, and also&#xA;that when he registered in 2000 he did&#xA;so as a Republican&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the Snopes.com articles reveal a&#xA;political bias? &lt;strong&gt;We reviewed a sampling&#xA;of their political offerings,&#xA;including some on rumors about George&#xA;W. Bush, Sarah Palin and Barack Obama,&#xA;and we found them to be utterly&#xA;poker-faced&lt;/strong&gt;. David does say that the&#xA;site receives more complaints that it&#xA;is too liberal than that it is too&#xA;conservative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The e-mail's last paragraph advises&#xA;that everyone who goes to Snopes.com&#xA;for &amp;quot;the bottom line facts&amp;quot; should&#xA;&amp;quot;proceed with caution.&amp;quot; We think&#xA;that's terrific advice, not just in&#xA;connection with material on Snopes but&#xA;for practically anything a reader&#xA;finds online — including articles on&#xA;FactCheck.org. &lt;strong&gt;The very reason we list&#xA;our sources (as does Snopes.com) and&#xA;provide links is so that readers can&#xA;check things out for themselves&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T16:07:35.837" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2330" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2347" CreationDate="2011-04-19T10:33:12.977" Score="18" ViewCount="8943" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Torah and Talmud claim (and I have Christian friends that also claim) that eating animals that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottom_feeder&quot;&gt;bottom-feeders&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant&quot;&gt;ruminants&lt;/a&gt;—That is, eat the crud off the sea-floor, like shrimp, or digest their own waste like rabbits, pigs etc.)—&lt;em&gt;OR&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloven_hoof&quot;&gt;cloven hoof.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(but not both) is bad for your health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest that&#xA;because these animals consume&#xA;&quot;unclean&quot; foods they are themselves&#xA;unclean and therefore not fit for&#xA;consumption? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why would an ruminant animal with a&#xA;cloven hoof be OK to eat, but a&#xA;ruminant animal with any other&#xA;hoof/foot not be OK to eat?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T11:19:06.463" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T17:06:29.417" Title="Is eating cloven-hoofed animals, bottom-feeders or ruminants bad for you?" Tags="|nutrition|zoology|ethology|religious-texts|torah|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2333" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-19T11:58:14.280" Score="10" ViewCount="6441" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people report sensing a flowery smell in some places or situations in which there are no flowers present. Those sensations are sometimes related to religious experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also claims that the sensation has no scientific explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fragrance of roses and the&#xA;  smelling of roses is frequently&#xA;  mentioned in records of mystical&#xA;  experiences. How to explain it? I am&#xA;  not sure if there is a scientific&#xA;  answer. I haven't seen any, not so&#xA;  far.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (source &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catholicweb.com/media_index.cfm?fuseaction=view_article&amp;amp;partnerid=48&amp;amp;article_id=2101&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Catholic Web: Smelling Roses--What is the meaning? &lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or that is supernatural in origin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I too experienced the scent of roses. [text skipped] it impacted me so much that I KNEW it was something supernatural.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (source &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=22577&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Catholic Answers Forum: Smelling roses &amp;amp; Mary's presence&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What physical, psychological and social reasons are used for explaining such a sensation from a scientific viewpoint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T15:41:58.463" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T15:30:52.133" Title="Why is the smell of flowers sensed in some situations?" Tags="|religion|neurology|smell|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2334" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2454" CreationDate="2011-04-19T13:40:10.450" Score="42" ViewCount="4563" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does watching pornography reduce or otherwise affect the desire of men to have actual sex?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim has been made by numerous people, including Naomi Wolf in &lt;a href=&quot;http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/&quot;&gt;The Porn Myth&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The broader claim is often that pornography is addictive for men, an arms race where real women can't compete with the physical features of the women of pornography, nor the apparently endless sexual appetites of these on-screen women for increasingly male-dominant/female-submissive relations. If I can use a quote from Naomi Wolf's article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What evidence is there of the actual effect of pornography on men?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-02-08T01:07:43.757" LastActivityDate="2022-05-17T21:53:05.143" Title="Pornography and the male libido" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|pornography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2335" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2337" CreationDate="2011-04-19T14:10:51.830" Score="20" ViewCount="3127" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any observable evidence of The Big Bang?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="808" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-10-23T23:12:48.767" LastActivityDate="2013-10-23T23:12:48.767" Title="Is there any observable evidence of the Big Bang?" Tags="|physics|big-bang-theory|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2013-10-27T23:02:23.660" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2336" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2349" CreationDate="2011-04-19T14:15:01.993" Score="26" ViewCount="3583" Body="&lt;p&gt;Was there an illegal CIA project called MKULTRA, and if-so what did it involve and when did it end? Did it involve, as suggested in a quote from Ted Kennedy, a massive conspiracy involving dozens of universities and institutions to perform tests that would probably be considered illegal? From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on MKULTRA&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the Senate floor in 1977, Senator Ted Kennedy said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an &amp;quot;extensive testing and experimentation&amp;quot; program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens &amp;quot;at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign.&amp;quot; Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to &amp;quot;unwitting subjects in social situations.&amp;quot; At least one death, that of Dr. Olson, resulted from these activities. The Agency itself acknowledged that these tests made little scientific sense. The agents doing the monitoring were not qualified scientific observers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this project did exist, were all of the documents &amp;quot;deliberately destroyed in 1973 by order of then CIA Director Richard Helms&amp;quot; as the article suggests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T12:22:40.310" Title="Was there a large, illegal CIA project called &quot;MKULTRA&quot;?" Tags="|government|cia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2335" CreationDate="2011-04-19T14:27:20.053" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's plenty of evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We see the &quot;aftermath&quot; of the explosion (the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cosmic microwave background&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/media/080997/080997_5yrFullSky_WMAP_320.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;cmbr&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~mjp/hubble.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;other galaxies receding from ours with speeds proportional to the distance&lt;/a&gt; (which is consistent with an expansion of the universe)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OPIR2.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;General relativity does not allow for a static universe&lt;/a&gt;, and general relativity is very well supported by experiment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qznwr.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The general big-bang cosmology correctly predicts &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;nucleosynthesis&lt;/a&gt; (i.e. the relative abundances of atoms in the universe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8uirX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand there are still particulars we don't understand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizon_problem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Did the universe have an inflationary period? Why?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_%28arrow_of_time%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why did the big bang have such a low entropy?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why is the expansion of the universe accelerating?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:38.277" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T22:19:50.693" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5898" CreationDate="2011-04-19T14:33:59.320" Score="54" ViewCount="5053" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulitzer_prize&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pulitzer prize&lt;/a&gt;-winning journalist &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Webb&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gary Webb&lt;/a&gt; in his controversial article series &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mega.nu/ampp/webb.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Dark Alliance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the better part of a decade, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;San&#xA;  Francisco Bay Area&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_ring&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;drug ring&lt;/a&gt; sold tons&#xA;  of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cocaine&lt;/a&gt; to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crips&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crips&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloods&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bloods&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  street gangs of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Los Angeles&lt;/a&gt; and&#xA;  funneled millions in drug profits to&#xA;  an arm of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_%28guerrillas%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;contra guerrillas&lt;/a&gt; of&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nicaragua&lt;/a&gt; run by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Central&#xA;  Intelligence Agency&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mercurynews.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;San Jose&#xA;  Mercury News&lt;/a&gt; has found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially the claim states that the CIA sold drugs in California to generate untraceable funds to transfer to anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua.  The claims were taken seriously enough that in 1996 CIA director &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Deutch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Deutch&lt;/a&gt; traveled to LA to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/race_relations/july-dec96/cia_11-18.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;confront the claims&lt;/a&gt;, but the crowd he addressed remained unconvinced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has the CIA sold drugs in the US to fund rebels or to counter the rising influence of gangs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support the claims, or the CIA's position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZiyO1.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZiyO1.jpg&quot; width=&quot;130&quot; height=&quot;150&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6aSNY.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6aSNY.jpg&quot; width=&quot;155&quot; height=&quot;150&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="37939" LastEditDate="2019-05-11T23:24:41.300" LastActivityDate="2019-06-25T19:23:35.783" Title="Did the CIA sell drugs in the US?" Tags="|united-states|recreational-drugs|cia|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2342" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2345" CreationDate="2011-04-19T14:53:36.403" Score="12" ViewCount="1006" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember vividly that when i still was young, I'd examine the snow as it dropped on my winter cloths. Every time I was amazed by the nice textures I discovered. Now many years later, I'm wondering if there's a possibility that crystals can be exactly the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/snowcrystals.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Everyday Mysteries&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, I learned that there are a lot of snow crystals each winter (a trillion trillion). As you can imagine, going through all of them isn't really possible. Therefore, they suggest to rely on cloud physicists, crystallographers and meteorologists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is thus not: are all crystals different, but rather has there been any case that people found 2 identical crystals? And if not, is there any proof that they can't be identical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1762" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T15:40:13.053" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T15:40:13.053" Title="Are there no two snow crystals alike?" Tags="|physics|water|meteorology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2343" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-19T16:04:57.193" Score="44" ViewCount="37481" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see this a lot in movies. Have anyone studied whether this is easily doable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="954" LastEditorUserId="1034" LastEditDate="2011-05-13T04:48:59.300" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T15:46:40.340" Title="Can you make an explosion by shooting at fuel or fuel tank?" Tags="|guns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2330" CreationDate="2011-04-19T16:08:28.873" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shellfish do concentrate &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BfdighlyGiwC&amp;amp;pg=PA1637&amp;amp;lpg=PA1637&amp;amp;dq=shellfish%20concentrate%20heavy%20metals&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=Ks83sJv9W5&amp;amp;sig=4uNyb8b_RSrKBGMPrvLRkzUqOmU&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=5LGtTdzBMcTX8gOF49jzAQ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;ved=0CBsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=shellfish%20concentrate%20heavy%20metals&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;heavy metals and toxins&lt;/a&gt; so you could argue that they are bad for you. There is a relatively high rate of food poisoning from shellfish - but that seems to stem more consumption of them raw or undercooked, so the toxins are not being killed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worst of all from shellfish is the naturally produced &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxitoxin&quot;&gt;Saxitoxin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a result like that I'm surprised Puffer Fish weren't ruled out in the Torah and Talmud as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T16:08:28.873" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2342" CreationDate="2011-04-19T16:19:15.650" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.its.caltech.edu/%7Eatomic/snowcrystals/alike/alike.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kenneth Libbrecht&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Professor of Physics&lt;/em&gt;, Caltech)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The number of possible ways of making&#xA;a complex snowflake is staggeringly&#xA;large.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To see just how much so,&#xA;consider a simpler question:&lt;br/&gt; &lt;strong&gt;how&#xA;many ways can you arrange 15 books on&#xA;your bookshelf?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, there's 15&#xA;choices for the first book, 14 for the&#xA;second, 13 for the third, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiply it out: 15 * 14* 13 * ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and &lt;strong&gt;there are over a&#xA;trillion ways to arrange just 15&#xA;books.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a hundred books, the&#xA;number of possible arrangements goes&#xA;up to just under &lt;br/&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/USJva.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;(that's a 1&#xA;followed by 158 zeros).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That number&#xA;is about&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5PzOl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt; &lt;strong&gt;times larger than the&#xA;total number of atoms in the entire&#xA;universe!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now when you look at a&#xA;complex snow crystal, you can often&#xA;pick out a hundred separate features&#xA;if you look closely.  Since all those&#xA;features could have grown differently,&#xA;or ended up in slightly different&#xA;places, the math is similar to that&#xA;with the books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus &lt;strong&gt;the number of&#xA;ways to make a complex snow crystal is&#xA;absolutely huge. And thus it's&#xA;unlikely that any two complex snow&#xA;crystals, out of all those made over&#xA;the entire history of the planet, have&#xA;ever looked completely alike.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in theory two (or more) snowflakes can look alike, but the probability is incredibly small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is similar to humans and their fingerprints)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SQgwd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Snowflakes&quot; /&gt; (Image &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.its.caltech.edu/%7Eatomic/snowcrystals/primer/primer.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The shapes of snowflakes depend on the temperature and humidity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T16:43:14.197" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2330" CreationDate="2011-04-19T16:59:36.733" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jewfaq.org/kashrut.htm&quot;&gt;Judiasm 101&lt;/a&gt; has some interesting insights into Jewish dietary laws, although the author states, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, health is not the only reason for Jewish dietary laws. Many of the laws of kashrut have no known connection with health. To the best of our modern scientific knowledge, there is no reason why camel or rabbit meat (both treif) is any less healthy than cow or goat meat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how much I agree with that statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic tenets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Certain animals may not be eaten at all. This restriction includes the&#xA;  flesh, organs, eggs and milk of the&#xA;  forbidden animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of the animals that may be eaten, the&#xA;  birds and mammals must be killed in&#xA;  accordance with Jewish law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All blood must be drained from meat&#xA;  and poultry or broiled out of it&#xA;  before it is eaten. Certain parts of&#xA;  permitted animals may not be eaten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fruits and vegetables are permitted,&#xA;  but must be inspected for bugs (which&#xA;  cannot be eaten)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Meat (the flesh of birds and mammals)&#xA;  cannot be eaten with dairy. Fish,&#xA;  eggs, fruits, vegetables and grains&#xA;  can be eaten with either meat or&#xA;  dairy. (According to some views, fish&#xA;  may not be eaten with meat).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Utensils (including pots and pans and&#xA;  other cooking surfaces) that have come&#xA;  into contact with meat may not be used&#xA;  with dairy, and vice versa. Utensils&#xA;  that have come into contact with&#xA;  non-kosher food may not be used with&#xA;  kosher food. This applies only where&#xA;  the contact occurred while the food&#xA;  was hot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Grape products made by non-Jews may&#xA;  not be eaten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are a few other rules that are&#xA;  not universal.&#xA;  We may not eat animals that died of natural causes (Deut. 14:21) or that were killed by other animals. In addition, the animal must have no disease or flaws in the organs at the time of slaughter. These restrictions do not apply to fish; only to the flocks and herds (Num. 11:22).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.veterinaryworld.org/Vol.1%20No.10%20Full%20Text/Common%20Parasitic%20Diseases%20of%20Camel.pdf&quot;&gt;camel&lt;/a&gt;/&lt;a href=&quot;http://fohn.net/rabbit-pictures-facts/rabbit-diseases-tularemia-myxomatosis-calicivirus-disease.html&quot;&gt;rabbit&lt;/a&gt; issue; both are carriers of diseases which can affect man. Since the aforementioned diseases would also affect various organs of the animals, they would not be considered edible under Jewish dietary law. Shellfish, clams etc - you can't see the organs of them to know whether or not they're clean - therefore they aren't edible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My opinion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as not eating something that keeled over dead one day... that should be a no-brainer, as is the case with carrion - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/1291502&quot;&gt;rabies&lt;/a&gt; Since sanitation and food preparation left MUCH to be desired, foods which were 'risky' were banned, as were any animals known to commonly carry diseases which could affect men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T16:59:36.733" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2330" CreationDate="2011-04-19T16:59:43.177" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frailty-research.ca/e/bios_e/B_Shatenstein.htm&quot;&gt;Bryna Shatenstein&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.montreal-diabetes-research-center.org/en/ghadirian/ghadirian.asp&quot;&gt;Parviz Ghadirian&lt;/a&gt; did a great &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0899-9007%2897%2900425-5&quot;&gt;survey of adacemic research on the influences of diet on the health of different religious/ethnic groups&lt;/a&gt;.  Here is a summary of their results (hopefully I am not violating any copyright laws by excerpting this!):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mormons&lt;/strong&gt; (Canada): &quot;balanced diet&quot; results in low mortality from &quot;diseases of affluence&quot; (Jarvis, 1977)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seventh-Day Adventists&lt;/strong&gt; (Japan): Low intake of broiled foods and antioxidant vitamins results in low incidence of digestive tract cancer (Phillips and Kuzuma, 1977)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seventh-Day Adventists&lt;/strong&gt; (USA): Prevalence of lacto-ovo vegetarianism leads to low mortality and low incidence of coronary heart disease, cancer, and diabetes (Phillips, et al., 1980)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seventh-Day Adventists&lt;/strong&gt; (Denmark): Prevalence of lacto-ovo vegetarianism and low incidence of tobacco &amp;amp; alcohol use resulted in a low incidence of tobacco- and alcohol-related cancers (Jensen, 1983)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seventh-Day Adventists&lt;/strong&gt; (USA): Low mortality among those who are lacto-ovo, higher mortality among those who are not (Kahn, et al., 1984)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Zen Buddhist priests&lt;/strong&gt; (Japan): Traditional Japanese diet resulted in low mortality across the spectrum of all causes (Ogata, et al., 1984)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seventh-Day Adventists&lt;/strong&gt; (Japan): Lacto-ovo vegetarianism and broiled fish consumption resulted in overall reduced mortality (Kuratsune, 1986)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seventh-Day Adventists&lt;/strong&gt; (USA): Low mortality among those who have low meat and egg intake and high milk intake (Snowdon, 1988)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Old Order Amish&lt;/strong&gt; (USA): General lifestyle resulted in low hypertension, low stress, and low circulatory disease mortality (Fuchs, et al., 1990)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jat Hindus&lt;/strong&gt; (India): Unclear if any medical/nutritional conclusions were made by this study (Kapil, et al., 1990)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jews&lt;/strong&gt; (Israel): Disparity between the rate of urological cancers between Jews and non-Jews linked to diet, although not necessarily a Kosher diet (Bitterman, et al., 1991)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seventh-Day Adventists&lt;/strong&gt; (USA): Low risk of coronary heart disease among those who eat nuts and whole wheat bread (Fraser, et al., 1992)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Buddhists&lt;/strong&gt; (Taiwan): Vegetarian diet resulted in low plasma cholesterol, low glucose, and low uric acid (Pan, et al., 1993)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ultra-Orthodox Jews&lt;/strong&gt; (Canada): Low animal protein intake and the Kosher diet resulted in a high polyunsaturated:saturated ratio of diet fat, which has been shown to be correlated to low incidence of coronary heart disease (Shatenstein, et al., 1993)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, it seems like the people who avoid eating cloven-hoofed animals, bottom-feeders, and ruminants tend to also have a low intake of animal-based protein overall, which itself is healthy.  Whether or not eating those types of animals would make one's diet &lt;em&gt;worse&lt;/em&gt;, however, is a much more difficult question to answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T17:05:59.493" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T17:05:59.493" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2336" CreationDate="2011-04-19T17:01:55.267" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Kennedy quote you supplied is probably from a 1977 Congressional Joint Hearing before the Select Committee on Intelligence (and a couple other committees). There doesn't seem to have been any disagreement from the CIA witnesses at that hearing that MKULTRA had been a real program, that it was larger than previously thought, and that most of the records had been destroyed in 1973. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/13inmate_ProjectMKULTRA.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;You can read the entire hearing here.&lt;/a&gt; Here's the passage that most directly answers your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/g2Xe5.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Intelligence Committee Report&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is another quote from Ted Kennedy, but a few minutes later the then current director of the CIA, Adm. Stansfield Turner, verifies that Kennedy's account of the destruction is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xj5LN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;admiral agrees&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With no one disputing the essential facts given, I see no reason to assume they're aren't true. In this particular case there really was a conspiracy at the highest levels of the CIA to cover up uncomfortable truths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T17:01:55.267" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2350" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2355" CreationDate="2011-04-19T17:55:55.260" Score="13" ViewCount="2426" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately, I have come across numerous stories in emails, pushed by what seem to be fringe elements, discussing  various aspects of Obama's private family life.  Many of them seem to make fantastical claims:  A couple I've run across say that his aunt was living on welfare in Boston, assert that she was at one point an &quot;illegal immigrant&quot;, and one of the most strange I've come across recently is the claim  that his brother is currently destitute and penniless living in Kenya.  That last claim, in particular, is the subject of my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly, if you Google, you can find lots of articles saying that he was.  But, doing a little research, I found out that they can all be mostly traced to a single story published in mid-2008 in &lt;em&gt;Vanity Fair&lt;/em&gt;.  Putting my skeptical goggles on, I inquired at another political forum I frequent, and someone told me that it was a complete hoax made up by journalists looking for a sensational story who had misinterpreted his situation, and then promoted by political operatives, despite the fact that Obama's brother apparently had refuted all these same claims when later talked to.  I tried to follow up, but my search results are all cluttered up by links pointing to the original &lt;em&gt;Vanity Fair&lt;/em&gt; article in 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is Obama's brother really living, does anyone know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastEditorUserId="25380" LastEditDate="2015-08-01T02:28:26.347" LastActivityDate="2015-08-01T02:28:26.347" Title="Was or is Obama's brother living in a shack in Kenya on less than a dollar a day?" Tags="|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2351" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-19T18:00:18.297" Score="1" ViewCount="230" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/370/how-bitter-is-robert-lustigs-bitter-truth-about-sugar&quot;&gt;How bitter is Robert Lustig&amp;#39;s &amp;ldquo;Bitter Truth&amp;rdquo; about sugar?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the NY Times Article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?_r=1&amp;amp;pagewanted=all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is sugar toxic?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robert Lusteg, a specialist on pediatric hormone disorders and the leading expert in childhood obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, alleges that too much fructose and too little fibre is the cause of the obesity epidemic, in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;youtube lecture&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the NY Times article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... sugar has unique characteristics, specifically in the way the human body metabolizes the fructose in it, that may make it singularly harmful, at least if consumed in sufficient quantities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the assertion that sugar is toxic supported by the evidence? If so, is the term &quot;toxic&quot; being used in the ordinary sense of &quot;poisonous&quot;, or some other sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T18:00:18.297" Title="Is sugar toxic?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|biology|sugar|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2011-04-19T18:17:10.347" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2350" CreationDate="2011-04-19T18:18:05.900" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;President Obama has a half-borther that lives in Southern China &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2009-11-18/politics/obama.half.brother_1_president-obama-chinese-president-hu-jintao-big-brother?_s=PM%3aPOLITICS&quot;&gt;according to CNN&lt;/a&gt;.  They have even met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In between his arrival in Beijing, China, on Monday and his informal dinner with Chinese President Hu Jintao a few hours later, President Obama met with his half-brother Mark Obama Ndesandjo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He does not appear to be on any welfare, his occupation is listed as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a pianist in China&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/5144046/President-Obamas-half-brother-denied-entry-to-Britain.html&quot;&gt;His other half-brother is listed as running a cell phone shop near Nairobi&lt;/a&gt;.  It should be noted that he does have a bit of a checkered past, but it seems that stories are exagerated.  Also, keep in mind that standards of living vary widely throughout the world.  So while he may not have a nice standard of life compared to a middle class American, he may be doing the equivalent of &quot;well&quot; in Kenya.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Samson is one of President Obama's 11 half brothers and sisters by his father, Barack Obama Senior, who had children by four women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with that extended a family, finding dirt wouldn't be hard for anyone who wants to make an issue out of other people's behavior as opposed to focusing on the President himself (known as a red herring).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See Scott's answer for the exact brother in question (at least based on your question, that may be the one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T19:58:15.603" LastActivityDate="2011-04-19T19:58:15.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2314" CreationDate="2011-04-19T18:25:49.703" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's enumerate the claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have recently discovered that Snopes.com is owned by a flaming liberal and this man is in the tank for Obama. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The owner of Snopes.com has a strong left-wing bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are many things they have listed on their site as a hoax and yet you can go to Youtube yourself and find the video of Obama or others actually saying these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Snopes makes claims that can be readily disproved via primary sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So it's up to you, but what is the value of &quot;truth or fiction&quot; checks if the source is faulty? I simply can't trust Snopes.com....ever for anything that remotely resembles truth! I don't even trust them to tell me if email chains are hoaxes anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a claim; simply an expression of personal preference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few conservative speakers on Myspace told me about snopes.com a few months ago and I took it upon myself to do a little research to find out if it was true. Well, I found out for myself that it is true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This website is backing Obama and is covering up for him. They will say anything that makes him look bad is a hoax and they also tell lies on the other side about McCain and Palin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) Snopes.com has a political bias in favour of Obama and againt McCain and Palin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anyway just FYI please don't use Snopes.com anymore for fact checking and make your friends aware of their political leanings as well. Many people still think Snopes.com is neutral and they can be trusted as factual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We need to make sure everyone is aware that that is a hoax in itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Snopes.com is a hoax&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that's four claims to address. It's worth noting that none of these claims include any kind of substantiation, but let's move past that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claim 1 is that Barbara and David Mikkelson have a strong left-wing bias. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/snopescom/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FactCheck.org piece&lt;/a&gt; cited by Oliver_C in another answer goes a long way to address this. In addition, Snopes.com has been cited as a reference by a number of news outlets from both the left and the right wings. While not definitive, this is anecdotal evidence that a political bias is not present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claim 2 is that Snopes is making claims that can be readily refuted by primary sources (I would consider a video of a politician's speech a primary source, with the caveat that they could, of course, be doctored). There is no logical reason to accept this claim at face value. It would be just as invalid to claim the obvious (that there are no claims that can be readily refuted by primary sources).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It's the very fact that these claims &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be refuted that makes them acceptable. Snopes.com provides citations to back up their claims which means that any proof that negates these citations could refute the claim on Snopes. There is plenty of evidence on Snopes.com of articles being updated in the light of new evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claim 3 is that Snopes.com has a political bias in favour of Obama and against McCain and Palin. Of course, this claim is somewhat irrelevant in 2011, but it is really a subset of Claim 1, which has been addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claim 4 is that Snopes.com is a hoax. This site was launched in 1995 out of the alt.folklore.urban newsgroup, a group populated by any number of skeptics. In the absence of any substantiation, Occam's razor suggests that a 16 year old site that is exposed to (and born from) a large group of skeptics is unlikely to be a hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While some of these refutations are a little weak, the claims are weak and unsubstantiated. I would submit that the refutations bear greater strength and, as such, this email is demonstrated to be useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2011" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T21:03:02.053" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T21:03:02.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2350" CreationDate="2011-04-19T18:27:54.960" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;The half-sibling in question is George Obama, who has lived at various times in Kenya and South Korea. (He also never knew his father, who died in a car accident shortly after he was born.) A few months after the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/barackobama/2590614/Barack-Obamas-lost-brother-found-in-Kenya.html&quot;&gt;Italian &lt;em&gt;Vanity Fair&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; piece saying he lived in abject poverty &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2008-08-22/politics/bts.obama.brother_1_half-brother-kenyan-father-barack-obama?_s=PM%3aPOLITICS&quot;&gt;he was interviewed by CNN&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reports left him angry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I was brought up well. I live well&#xA;  even now,&quot; he said. &quot;The magazines,&#xA;  they have exaggerated everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I think I kind of like it here. There&#xA;  are some challenges, but maybe it is&#xA;  just like where you come from, there&#xA;  are the same challenges,&quot; Obama said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Obama, who is in his mid-20s, is&#xA;  learning to become a mechanic and is&#xA;  active in youth groups in Huruma. He&#xA;  said he tries to help the community as&#xA;  much as he can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By American standards George is certainly living in poverty, but standards are different in many parts of Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other element of these stories about Obama's half-siblings is strictly political, suggesting that Mr. Obama was somehow ignoring the plight of his own family. We should remember that Mr. Obama's father divorced his mother when he was three and both his  parents remarried shortly afterwards. His mother's family was living in Hawaii and then Indonesia, his father's moved to Atlanta and then Kenya. While these half-siblings may share some of Mr. Obama's DNA, they were never family in any social context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="1343" LastEditDate="2011-04-22T11:37:58.193" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T11:37:58.193" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="370" CreationDate="2011-04-19T18:33:48.653" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycolysis&quot;&gt;Glycolysis&lt;/a&gt; is the method by which glucose, fructose and galactose into pyruvate, acetic acid and a Hydrogen ion. The energy released via this process is used to form ATP and NADH, which the body uses to perform work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NADH+ must be oxidized to NAD+ or the whole glycolysis reaction stops (all the NAD+ in the cell is used up)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One method to oxidize NADH+ is fermentation - the production of ethanol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ethanol is only produced in animals in muscles which are overworked and starved of oxygen  (ie: anaerobic) - and this process CANNOT be sustained. Oxygen MUST be returned to the cell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, in aerobic organisms the NAD+ is produced (essentially) via the Krebs cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bacteria also utilize fermentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in order for the human body to be producing ethanol in amounts large enough to damage itself, it must be starved of oxygen for prolonged periods; which is lethal regardless of potential ethanol production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Campbell &amp;amp; Reece, 2005 Biology 7th Edition (International Edition), Pearson Education, Inc. 1231 pages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastEditorUserId="1063" LastEditDate="2011-08-14T22:22:52.463" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T22:22:52.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2342" CreationDate="2011-04-19T18:53:35.743" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is too long to fit in a comment on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/454/oliver-c&quot;&gt;Oliver_C&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2342/are-there-no-two-snow-crystals-alike#2345&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;, so it's getting its own answer.  Let's assume Professor Libbrecht's analysis is correct and there are 10&lt;sup&gt;158&lt;/sup&gt; possible snowflake configurations.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/1239-scientist-snowflakes-alike.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roughly 10&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; snow crystals fall on Earth per year&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If 10&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; snow flakes fall per year, then by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeonhole_principle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pigeonhole principle&lt;/a&gt; two similar flakes must fall by the time the Earth reaches the age 10&lt;sup&gt;158&lt;/sup&gt;/10&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; = 10&lt;sup&gt;135&lt;/sup&gt; years, which isn't going to happen any time soon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;With that said...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now lets assume that each one of the 10&lt;sup&gt;158&lt;/sup&gt; possible snowflake configurations is equiprobable (I am not sure if this is a reasonable assumption, but let's proceed).  If there are &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; possible types of snowflake and &lt;em&gt;i-1&lt;/em&gt; &amp;lt; &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; snowflakes have fallen, the probability that the &lt;em&gt;i&lt;/em&gt; &lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; snowflake is &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; is (&lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; - (&lt;em&gt;i&lt;/em&gt; - 1))/&lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt;.  Therefore, if &lt;em&gt;k&lt;/em&gt; snowflakes have fallen, then the probability that they are all different is the product of (&lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; - (&lt;em&gt;i&lt;/em&gt; - 1))/&lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; for &lt;em&gt;i&lt;/em&gt; ranging from 1 to &lt;em&gt;k&lt;/em&gt;.  Since &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;k&lt;/em&gt; are positive, this simplifies to (-1)&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;k&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;i&gt;n&lt;/i&gt;&lt;sup&gt;-&lt;em&gt;k&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; (-&lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;k&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt; , where &quot;(&lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&quot; denotes the &lt;a href=&quot;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PochhammerSymbol.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pochhammer symbol&lt;/a&gt;.  Plugging in 10&lt;sup&gt;158&lt;/sup&gt; for &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt; and 10&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt; for &lt;em&gt;k&lt;/em&gt;, we arrive at&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(-1)&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; (10&lt;sup&gt;158&lt;/sup&gt;)&lt;sup&gt;-10&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; (-10&lt;sup&gt;158&lt;/sup&gt;)&lt;sub&gt;10&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the probability that &lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt; years of snowfall of 10&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; flakes/year drawn uniformly from a set of 10&lt;sup&gt;158&lt;/sup&gt; possible flake configurations has produced &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; duplicate flakes.  Even plugging in &lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt; = 1 produces an underflow error on all of the numerical analysis systems I've used (is anyone else able to calculate the result?), which should tell you that the probability of all flakes being different even in a single year is very low.  The age of the Earth is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=age%20of%20the%20earth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;roughly 4.54 billion years&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, after thinking about this for a while, I realized that this is all just an instance of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Birthday Problem&lt;/a&gt;: The problem is exactly the same as finding the probability that at least two people share a birthday in a room full of 4.54x10&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;x10&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; people when there are 10&lt;sup&gt;158&lt;/sup&gt; possible birthdays.  There are well known &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem#Approximations&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;approximations&lt;/a&gt; for calculating this probability, which result in a value incredibly close to zero.  The derivation is a bit long and math-laden, so &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sultanik.com/blog/are-no-two-snowflakes-alike&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I posted it on my website&lt;/a&gt; if you are interested.  Therefore, if the configurations of snowflakes are uniformly distributed, then there is an extremely low probability that any two snowflakes have been similar in the history of the Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But wait!  Do snowflakes really occur according to a uniform distribution? I'd imagine that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/1239-scientist-snowflakes-alike.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some configurations are more rare than others&lt;/a&gt;. Like many other natural phenomena, I might guess that the distribution of configurations is closer to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zipfian&lt;/a&gt; (a.k.a. &quot;Power Law&quot;) distribution. Using this distribution unfortunately forces us to abandon the handy approximation that we used in the uniform case; we'll have to derive the probability from scratch. The probability that among &lt;i&gt;n&lt;/i&gt; snowflakes at least two are the same is this nasty expression:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 - 1/n! sum_{x&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt;=1}^{10&lt;sup&gt;158&lt;/sup&gt;} sum_{x&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;=x&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt;+1}^{10&lt;sup&gt;158&lt;/sup&gt;} sum_{x&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt;=x&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;+1}^{10&lt;sup&gt;158&lt;/sup&gt;} ... sum_{x&lt;sub&gt;n&lt;/sub&gt;=x&lt;sub&gt;n-1&lt;/sub&gt;+1}^{10&lt;sup&gt;158&lt;/sup&gt;} product_{i=1}^n x&lt;sub&gt;i&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;-2&lt;/sup&gt; / sum_{j=1}^k j&lt;sup&gt;-2&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For a prettier representation in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathjax.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MathJax&lt;/a&gt;, along with additional steps in the derivation, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sultanik.com/blog/are-no-two-snowflakes-alike&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;see my website&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This expression can be bounded below by 1 - 10&lt;sup&gt;158&lt;/sup&gt; / n! &lt;a href=&quot;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RiemannZetaFunction.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ζ&lt;/a&gt;(2)&lt;sup&gt;n&lt;/sup&gt;.  Setting n = 10&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;, this lower bound is extremely close to 1.  Therefore, if the snowflakes are configured according to a Zipfian distribution, there is a very high probability that at least two snowflakes are similar &lt;em&gt;in a single year&lt;/em&gt;!  The same applies if the snowflakes are binomially distributed (that derivation is also on my website).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T14:19:44.637" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2359" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2378" CreationDate="2011-04-19T21:56:02.897" Score="76" ViewCount="16682" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen two competing theories on the origin of pricing products at &lt;code&gt;$&amp;lt;desired dollar amount minus 1&amp;gt;.99&lt;/code&gt; (i.e. charging $19.99 instead of $20, of $5.99 instead of $6):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Psychological pricing scheme used by retailers to make products seem one dollar less expensive than they really are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As an anti theft measure; forcing store clerks to ring up orders and open cash drawers (to give customers their one cent change); rather than just pocketing the money.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither of these responses seem plausible to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, retailers are expecting people to ignore the 99 cents, but when most people check to see whether or not they have enough money in the bank are going to take these things into account. Even if there's a slight edge to be had by losing that penny, I can't believe it'd be more than the potential thousands that one cent is multiplied into when you're selling thousands of copies of a product. Plus, most mentally add a few cents for sales tax and other things anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second, I fail to see what additional security forcing someone to open the cash drawer really offers. One could easily have a bunch of pennies lying around and still be able to pull off the same theft scheme. Most retailers have computerized systems and security cameras for these purposes now anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any hard data exist which proves or disproves either of these claims, or which supports a third, heretofore unmentioned claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="882" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T11:00:25.873" LastActivityDate="2017-12-17T01:24:09.570" Title="The origin of &quot;99 cents&quot;" Tags="|history|psychology|marketing|security|price|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2360" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2364" CreationDate="2011-04-19T22:17:44.330" Score="13" ViewCount="1615" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible during the same storm for lightning to hit the same place twice? Say hitting a large tree twice or within a reasonable area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T10:48:22.387" LastActivityDate="2019-02-27T16:08:51.097" Title="Lightning never strikes in the same place twice?" Tags="|weather|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2361" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2376" CreationDate="2011-04-19T22:50:02.317" Score="14" ViewCount="5987" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it explained that your taste buds become duller as you get older and that is why I can now eat things like carrots and mushrooms that I used to think tasted like garbage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that as you get older your taste buds become duller?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T10:36:47.827" LastActivityDate="2022-09-13T15:10:46.317" Title="Do taste buds become less sensitive as you get older?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2362" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-19T22:58:57.640" Score="11" ViewCount="710" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecotax&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ecotax (short for Ecological taxation)&#xA;  refers to taxes intended to promote&#xA;  ecologically sustainable activities&#xA;  via economic incentives. Such a policy&#xA;  can complement or avert the need for&#xA;  regulatory (command and control)&#xA;  approaches. Often, an ecotax policy&#xA;  proposal may attempt to maintain&#xA;  overall tax revenue by proportionately&#xA;  reducing other taxes (e.g. taxes on&#xA;  human labor and renewable resources);&#xA;  such proposals are known as a green&#xA;  tax shift towards ecological taxation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of ecological taxation appear to be promising - add taxes to polluting (or otherwise &quot;environmentally expensive&quot; products, so their price will include the cost of the product to the environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if there's been places where such taxes actually helped reducing consumption of &quot;environmentally expensive&quot; products?&#xA;Did the taxation work in these cases better then other methods? (like education)&#xA;On the other hand, are there cases where Ecological taxes were &quot;abused&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="212" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-04-19T23:34:19.560" LastActivityDate="2017-11-17T21:30:46.827" Title="Does Ecological taxation work?" Tags="|environment|taxes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2360" CreationDate="2011-04-20T00:19:22.010" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless the lightning destroys the object so there's nothing left to hit, there is no physical reason for lightning not to hit the same place twice. The Empire State Building is a nice example of this. Here is a video where it's hit thrice.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKMdYbOfFzI&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKMdYbOfFzI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T00:19:22.010" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2335" CreationDate="2011-04-20T01:08:53.563" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the Big Bang paradigm is well entrenched I thought that skeptics&#xA;may be interested in an alternative view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In two previous threads in sci.astrophysics.research called &#xA;&quot;static universe&quot; and &quot;static universe - reply&quot; I gave &#xA;references to papers that argue that &quot;Observational&#xA;evidence favors a static universe&quot;. Unfortunately the discussion&#xA;in these threads got bogged down in s series of claims and&#xA;counter-claims that only touched on the major result of these papers.&#xA;In addition many may have found that the length of the 96 page paper&#xA;daunting. Here I will give a very brief outline of the crucial&#xA;results. For all references, caveats and full details see arXiv 1009.0953:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0953&quot;&gt;http://arxiv.org/abs/1009.0953&lt;/a&gt; (it includes a table of contents,&#xA;hyperlinks and several minor corrections) or see these papers in the Journal of Cosmology that investigate this proposal. The references are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journalofcosmology.com/crawford1.pdf&quot;&gt;http://journalofcosmology.com/crawford1.pdf&lt;/a&gt;: 2022, JCos, 13, 3875-3946&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journalofcosmology.com/crawford2.pdf&quot;&gt;http://journalofcosmology.com/crawford2.pdf&lt;/a&gt;: 2022, JCos, 13, 3947-3999&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journalofcosmology.com/crawford3.pdf&quot;&gt;http://journalofcosmology.com/crawford3.pdf&lt;/a&gt;: 2022, JCos, 13, 4000-4057&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A major difference between cosmologies in an expanding universe&#xA;and that in a static universe is time dilation. Whereas a tired&#xA;light process could explain the energy loss of photons it cannot&#xA;produce the effect of time dilation on the rate of arrival of photons.&#xA;In an expanding universe cosmology the equations for the distance&#xA;modulus and for the angular size include a term, (1+z), to allow for&#xA;time dilation. Since the similar equations for a static-universe&#xA;cosmology do not include this term its presence (or absence) makes&#xA;a suitable test for determining whether the universe is expanding.&#xA;It is assumed that the static universe obeys the perfect cosmological&#xA;principle. The same everywhere and at all times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tolman surface brightness.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sandage and Lubin analyzed the surface brightness of early-type&#xA;galaxies. A re-analysis using current Big Bang (BB) equations and&#xA;combining the two color bands (and for the Sersic radius 2.0) gives&#xA;an exponent of 2.16+/-0.13. The expected exponent is 4. &#xA;The difference is attributed to luminosity evolution. A critical part of this&#xA;analysis is the calibration of the absolute luminosity (and hence the SB) for&#xA;the absolute radii of the galaxies. Thus BB is used to compute the&#xA;radii of the distant galaxies. The surface brightness has a dependence&#xA;on the radius of SB = 9.29 + 2.83log(absolute radius).&#xA;Assuming that for a static universe the radii are all larger by a&#xA;factor (1+z) then the static universe exponent is&#xA;2.16 - 2.83/2.5 = 1.03(+/-0.14)&#xA;which is in excellent agreement with the expected value of 1.&#xA;Note Lubin and Sandage claim that their results are inconsistent&#xA;with a static universe. However they used their own tired-light model&#xA;which is different to the simple model used here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Angular size.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently Lopez-Corredoira (2010) used 393 galaxies with redshift&#xA;range of 0:2 &amp;lt; z &amp;lt; 3:2 and found that in agreement with much earlier&#xA;work the data was consistent with a Euclidean geometry and was&#xA;totally unable to fit the data to an expanding universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Type 1a supernovae.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the analysis is more complex and is based on the assumption that&#xA;these supernovae have constant energy and not constant peak&#xA;luminosity.&#xA;There is no observational difference between peak luminosity and&#xA;total energy for nearby supernovae. The total energy is a product&#xA;of the peak luminosity and the width of the light curve.&#xA;The critical part of the analysis is that the distant supernovae have&#xA;been selected to have a very small variation in their peak luminosity&#xA;computed with BB. In a static universe this means that the selected&#xA;supernovae are biased to a lower luminosity (by a factor of 1+z).&#xA;Then if on average their total energy is constant then their widths&#xA;are biased to larger values. On average a selection bias of (1+z) to&#xA;lower luminosity corresponds to a selection bias of (1+z) in width.&#xA;Exactly what is observed. A fit of total energy verses redshift has a&#xA;function (19.070+-042) + (0.047+-0.089)2.5log(1 + z) which is&#xA;consistent with zero slope. Thus no evidence of dark energy!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Gamma ray bursts.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A remarkable characteristic of gamma ray bursts is that the raw&#xA;observations of the various time measures (burst duration, spike rise&#xA;time and spike rate) do not show any significant variation with&#xA;redshift (out to z=6). The standard explanation is that there is an inverse&#xA;relationship between absolute luminosity and the time measures and&#xA;the lack of variation in the time measures is due to selection effects.&#xA;In a static universe the lack of variation is expected and the&#xA;relationship with absolute luminosity is spurious and due to the&#xA;use of an incorrect distance modulus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Galaxy luminosity function.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is shown that E-S_a galaxies have a well defined luminosity&#xA;distribution with a peak that has essentially the same shape at all&#xA;redshifts but the position of the peak varies with redshift.&#xA;When analyzed for a static cosmology the magnitude of this peak has a&#xA;constant value independent of redshift with a Chi^2 of 6.1 for&#xA;3 degrees of freedom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Quasar luminosity distribution.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a fixed redshift the SDSS quasars essentially have a power law&#xA;distribution (exponential in magnitude). Since the distance modulus&#xA;is additive and for a small range of redshifts is essentially constant&#xA;it can be derived from the distribution of magnitudes within that&#xA;redshift range. The sum of the probability of detection for each&#xA;quasar in the range multiplied by the exponential of the luminosity function&#xA;is set equal to the expected number of quasars. The only complication&#xA;is the co-moving volume and density of the quasars. Assuming the&#xA;reasonable assumption that the the static universe has the same&#xA;volume as a function of z as BB and that the quasar density is&#xA;constant the analysis shows a well defined preference for a static universe.&#xA;A BB model can only fit the data if it has a density evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Quasar variability in time.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hawkins has analyzed the time variability of 800 quasars over time&#xA;scales from 50 days to 28 years. He finds that there is no&#xA;dependence of the time variability on redshift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Butcher-Oemler effect.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They observed that the fraction of blue galaxies in galactic clusters&#xA;appears to increase with redshift. Andreon, Lobo &amp;amp; Iovino (2004)&#xA;examined three clusters around z=0.7 and did not find clear-cut&#xA;evidence for the effect. To quote one of their conclusions:&#xA;&quot;Twenty years after the original intuition by Butcher &amp;amp; Oemler,&#xA;we are still in the process of ascertaining the reality of the&#xA;Butcher-Oemler effect&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2019" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T21:07:04.340" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T21:07:04.340" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2360" CreationDate="2011-04-20T01:34:16.730" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/so884.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/so884.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Empire state building 1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/05_01/lightNYDN1805_800x572.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dailymail.co.uk&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mDFxc.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mDFxc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Empire state building 2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://hazards.umwblogs.org/files/2011/04/4.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;umwblogs.org&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dw3iA.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dw3iA.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Empire 3&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.erh.noaa.gov/okx/gif/empireltng.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;noaa.gov&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="504" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-02-27T16:08:51.097" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2368" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2380" CreationDate="2011-04-20T03:02:56.563" Score="5" ViewCount="318" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any reliable evidence to suggest that China is buying large quantities of farming land in other countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore is there any evidence if the above is true that the quantities they are buying in will cause food supply problems for those countries, whether this be minor or major?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, is there any evidence this has been commissioned at a government level or are these just investors looking for opportunities for a product they see as a valuable asset in their country?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some example headlines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chinese government quietly buying arable land abroad&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shocked Investor: Chinese Are Snapping Agricultural Land in Canada&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Australian farms up for grabs - China's Government buyers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T09:48:15.860" Title="Is China buying up the worlds arable land" Tags="|nutrition|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2362" CreationDate="2011-04-20T06:52:19.907" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ecotaxes are just one example of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pigovian taxes&lt;/a&gt;. The general idea is to make something with negative outcomes more expensive. The following illustration from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Social_cost_with_tax.svg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; illustrates this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KPeLf.png&quot; alt=&quot;The workings of Pigovian taxes&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, you can do less evil for the same price. The blue line shows the quantity/price without taxes and the red line with a Pigovian tax. Tax revenue (gray) is also generated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, it's quite easy to find academic papers showing the effectiveness of Pigovian taxes. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wber.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/3/373.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Presumptive Pigovian Tax: Complementing Regulation to Mimic an Emissions Fee&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Analysis of a well-composed program for Mexico City indicates that the emission reductions would cost 24 percent more if a tax on gasoline was not introduced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/3439329&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Optimal taxation in the presence of externalities&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper attempts to integrate the theory of optimal taxation with the analysis of the use of indirect taxation to counteract negative external effects (Pigovian taxes). A first-best solution to the problem of the optimal tax on an externality-generating good is contrasted with the case where the government also needs other, distortionary taxes in order to satisfy its revenue requirements. The main result is that the Pigovian principle holds in a modified form in the latter case as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w5993&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fullerton and Wolverton&lt;/a&gt;, a Pigovian tax is equivalent to a combination of presumptive taxes (that affect everyone) and environmental subsidies (to those that act more environment-friendly). The claim is that the two-part tax instrument is easier to enforce and enact &lt;em&gt;in some cases&lt;/em&gt;. I'm guessing it would be appropriate for production taxes, while a simple Pigovian tax would be more effective for consumer goods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper builds two simple general equilibrium models to demonstrate the equivalence between the Pigovian tax and the combination of a presumptive tax and an environmental subsidy. [...] Compared to the Pigovian tax, a two-part instrument may be easier to enforce, may be easier to enact, and can still force the market to recognize the social cost of disposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summa summarum&lt;/strong&gt;: there is evidence that Pigovian taxes in general and ecotaxes specifically have been and are effective. They aren't the only possible solution, and not always the most effective one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(all the fulltexts are behind paywalls, sorry for that)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T06:52:19.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2370" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2373" CreationDate="2011-04-20T07:02:51.190" Score="16" ViewCount="3855" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been seeing several YouTube videos that show the news hosts' eyes are doing crazy things. Sometimes their eyes change dramatically after what looks like a strange inner eyelid blinks, their eyes change color, or their pupils look vertically elongated. A common explanation seems to be that they are reptilian shape-shifting aliens, of course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was thinking that perhaps there could be another explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thoughts are that there was a change in the signal strength at some point in the broadcast, causing encoding fragments. I assume there is much proprietary signal processing done to the news streams so that the signal degrades as gracefully as possible. This could trigger all sorts of visual changes. Furthermore, facial tracking might give higher priority to certain parts of the image in the case of fluctuating signal strength. Plus people do look and act weird anyway. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was hoping someone here might know more about how news signals are handled and processed. Could that be a plausible explanation of these videos? If so, is there any way to prove this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific reason for believing that they are in fact reptilian shape-shifting aliens?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or maybe some other explanation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/qYUlCKFHeAQ&quot;&gt;CNN story on soldier's tracking devices&lt;/a&gt; (happens at several points in this. 0:50 and 1:43 for example)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/9aHk7mv-71M&quot;&gt;Video accusing ex-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/gPiokF8eYxk&quot;&gt;DEAD LINK&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strike&gt; (compilation of just the abnormalities, also has links to the original)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thats only three but I just can't bear looking through so many stupid videos to find more. I hope these are a good enough examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1750" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T00:04:43.123" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T02:06:39.037" Title="Are there reptilian creatures hosting the news?" Tags="|television|aliens|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2370" CreationDate="2011-04-20T08:14:18.247" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_multiplexing&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_multiplexing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiplexing is a common compression technique. Basically, when a video sequence is somewhat static, the bandwidth to that image decreases to allow bandwidth to increase on other channels on the same frequency with more dynamic video sequences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cable companies pump anywhere between 3 and 15 channels down each 6mhz frequency band. More channels per frequency = more multiplexing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the static to dynamic ratio changes bandwidth is allocated back and forth between channels, which can cause all kinds of artifacts, the most common being pixelization. You might notice during sporting events that as the camera sweeps from one end of the field to another the resolution drastically decreases for a brief moment. This is a direct result of multiplexing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in answer to your question... yes, facial images are the first thing to degrade generally, especially in the case of a talking head, because almost everything else in the video sequence is static except for the face of the newscaster. That would be the first place you would notice compression artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=106971&amp;amp;seqNum=3&quot;&gt;http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=106971&amp;amp;seqNum=3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MPEG-2 is a lossy video compression&#xA;  method based on motion vector&#xA;  estimation, discrete cosine&#xA;  transforms, quantization, and Huffman&#xA;  encoding. (Lossy means that data is&#xA;  lost, or thrown away, during&#xA;  compression, so quality after decoding&#xA;  is less than the original picture.)&#xA;  Taking these techniques in order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Motion vector estimation is used to&#xA;  capture much of the change between&#xA;  video frames, in the form of best&#xA;  approximations of each part of a frame&#xA;  as a translation (generally due to&#xA;  motion) of a similar-sized piece of&#xA;  another video frame. Essentially,&#xA;  there is a lot of temporal redundancy&#xA;  in video, which can be discarded. (The&#xA;  term temporal redundancy is applied to&#xA;  information that is repeated from one&#xA;  frame to another.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MPEG-2 Artifacts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are MPEG artifacts? In practice,&#xA;  all lossy encoders generate artifacts,&#xA;  or areas of unfaithful visual&#xA;  reproduction, all the time; if the&#xA;  encoder is well designed, all these&#xA;  artifacts will be invisible to the&#xA;  human eye. However, the best laid&#xA;  plans sometimes fail; the following&#xA;  are some of the more common MPEG-2&#xA;  artifacts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the compression ratio is too high,&#xA;  there are sometimes simply not enough&#xA;  bits to encode the video signal&#xA;  without significant loss. The better&#xA;  encoders will progressively soften the&#xA;  picture (by discarding some picture&#xA;  detail); however, poorer encoders&#xA;  sometimes break down and overflow an&#xA;  internal buffer. When this happens,&#xA;  all kinds of visual symptoms—from&#xA;  bright green blocks to dropped&#xA;  frames—can result. After such a&#xA;  breakdown, the encoder will usually&#xA;  recover for a short period until once&#xA;  again the information rate gets too&#xA;  high to code into the available number&#xA;  of bits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another common visible artifact is&#xA;  sometimes visible in dark scenes or in&#xA;  close-ups of the face and is sometimes&#xA;  called contouring. As the name&#xA;  suggests, the image looks a little&#xA;  like a contour map drawn with a&#xA;  limited set of shades rather than a&#xA;  continuously varying palette. This&#xA;  artifact sometimes reveals the&#xA;  macro-block boundaries (which is&#xA;  sometimes called tiling). When this&#xA;  happens, it is usually because the&#xA;  encoder allocates too few quantization&#xA;  levels to the scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NOTE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Macro-blocks are areas of 16-by-16&#xA;  pixels that are used by MPEG for DCT&#xA;  and motion-estimation purposes. See&#xA;  Chapter 3 of Modern Cable Television&#xA;  Technology; Video, Voice, and Data&#xA;  Communications by Walter Ciciora and&#xA;  others, for more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High-frequency mosquito noise will&#xA;  sometimes be apparent in the&#xA;  background. Mosquito noise is often&#xA;  apparent in surfaces, such as wood,&#xA;  plaster, and wool, that contain an&#xA;  almost limitless amount of detail due&#xA;  to their natural texture. The encoder&#xA;  can be overtaxed by so much detail and&#xA;  creates a visual effect that looks as&#xA;  if the walls are crawling with ants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are many more artifacts&#xA;  associated with MPEG encoding and&#xA;  decoding; however, a well-designed&#xA;  system should rarely, if ever, produce&#xA;  annoying visible artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and further down in this link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Statistical Multiplexing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Statistical multiplexing is a&#xA;  technique commonly used in data&#xA;  communications to extract the maximum&#xA;  efficiency from a CBR link. A number&#xA;  of uncorrelated, bursty traffic&#xA;  sources are multiplexed together so&#xA;  that the sum of their peak rates&#xA;  exceed the link capacity. Because the&#xA;  sources are uncorrelated, there is a&#xA;  low probability that the sum of their&#xA;  transmit rates will exceed the link&#xA;  capacity. However, although the&#xA;  multiplex can be engineered so that&#xA;  periods of link oversubscription are&#xA;  rare, they will occur. (See Murphy’s&#xA;  law!) In data communications networks,&#xA;  periods of oversubscription are&#xA;  accommodated by packet buffering and,&#xA;  in extreme cases, packet discard. (The&#xA;  Internet is a prime example of an&#xA;  oversubscribed, statistically&#xA;  multiplexed network where packet delay&#xA;  and loss may be high during busy&#xA;  periods.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Video material has a naturally varying&#xA;  information rate—when the scene&#xA;  suddenly changes from an actor sitting&#xA;  at a table to an explosion, the&#xA;  information rate skyrockets. Although&#xA;  MPEG-2 is designed to compensate by&#xA;  encoding more or less detail according&#xA;  to the amount of motion, the encoded&#xA;  bit rate may vary by a ratio of 5 to 1&#xA;  during a program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2023" LastEditorUserId="2023" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T09:09:43.210" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T09:09:43.210" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1926" CreationDate="2011-04-20T08:17:16.683" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can have multiple negative effects, first of all it can cause your &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ada.org/2977.aspx?currentTab=1&quot;&gt;teeth to be misaligned&lt;/a&gt;, but using a dummy (or pacifier) can also have the same effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After the permanent teeth come in,&#xA;  sucking may cause problems with the&#xA;  proper growth of the mouth and&#xA;  alignment of the teeth. It can also&#xA;  cause changes in the roof of the&#xA;  mouth. The intensity of the sucking is&#xA;  a factor that determines whether or&#xA;  not dental problems may result. If&#xA;  children rest their thumbs passively&#xA;  in their mouths, they are less likely&#xA;  to have difficulty than those who&#xA;  vigorously suck their thumbs. Some&#xA;  aggressive thumbsuckers may cause&#xA;  problems with their baby (primary)&#xA;  teeth. If you notice changes in your&#xA;  child’s primary teeth, consult your&#xA;  dentist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can also result in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.speechpathology.com/askexpert/display_question.asp?question_id=57&quot;&gt;tounge thrust that can result in speech problems&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When of short duration, they typically&#xA;  do not have a significant effect on&#xA;  the development of the oral&#xA;  musculature, the relationship of the&#xA;  dentition and occlusion, or on speech&#xA;  development and production. However,&#xA;  such practices, if persistent across&#xA;  many years may result in a&#xA;  myofunctional condition. That is, the&#xA;  muscles in the front of the mouth&#xA;  (lips and surrounding area) are used,&#xA;  while other muscles (e.g., the&#xA;  masseter) are not as active. In&#xA;  addition, a forward carriage of the&#xA;  tongue may also exist at rest and&#xA;  during swallowing. These factors in&#xA;  combination may lead to a persistent&#xA;  tongue thrust which can further&#xA;  influence the oral muscle development,&#xA;  occlusion, and alignment of teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally there is some evidence that thumb sucking can in severe cases result in &lt;a href=&quot;http://jhs.sagepub.com/content/26/6/584.abstract&quot;&gt;digit deformity&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We report our experience with severe&#xA;  digital deformities caused by&#xA;  prolonged finger sucking. Our analysis&#xA;  of nine patients demonstrated that the&#xA;  deformity was mainly located in the&#xA;  proximal and middle phalanges of the&#xA;  affected digit(s). We have reviewed&#xA;  the literature, enumerated the common&#xA;  patterns of “finger sucking” and&#xA;  explained the resulting deformities.&#xA;  Corrective osteotomy, preferably at&#xA;  the metacarpal base level, is required&#xA;  in severe deformities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that all of the above are potential risks of consistent thumb sucking for an extended period of time, it is known that thumb sucking (or use of a pacifier) for a limited time can actually be a useful way for a small child to comfort themselves.  Basically if your younster does it now and again there is no need to freak out :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some adults who like to suck thier thumb.  There is some fairly detailed information about it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thumbsuckingadults.com/mytsFAQpage.htm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but it appears to be based on personal experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T08:17:16.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2361" CreationDate="2011-04-20T08:41:25.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.care2.com/greenliving/do-your-taste-buds-change-as-you-get-older.html#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Care 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like all the other cells in the body, those special sensory cells that make up the taste buds eventually wear out. As we age, the taste buds begin to disappear from the sides and roof of the mouth, leaving taste buds mostly on our tongue. The remaining taste buds eventually become less sensitive. Smoking and eating scalding liquids can damage them further. Our sense of smell also decreases as we get older, and smell and taste are intimately linked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another article even goes deeper on the matter &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.supermarketguru.com/page.cfm/299&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Phil Lempert :&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As we become adults our sense of taste remains at roughly the same level, although our taste buds do get abuse - especially from smoking or scalding the tongue with hot beverages that dulls them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is true that some people are born with poor senses of taste or smell, but most lose them after an injury or illness. Loss of the sense of smell can result from polyps in the nasal cavities, sinus infections, hormonal disturbances, or dental problems. Loss of smell and taste also can be caused by exposure to certain chemicals such as insecticides or pesticides and by some medicines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientists also tell us that as we get older, the olfactory bulb in the brain responsible for processing smell becomes smaller. In addition, the patch of receptors in our nose that sends information to the brain begins to thin and spread out, and may be less effective at capturing scents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Getting older means that smells become more blunt and difficult to distinguish. As a result, our ability to taste food diminishes. As we said before, we are really only able to distinguish four tastes- salty, sweet, sour and bitter. The sense of smell enhances taste and provides those thousands of nuances that help us identify a flavor. As these senses diminish, food tastes blander.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Medical professionals remind us that some common illnesses like allergies and nasal infections as well as some diseases can effect tast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site MedLine Plus has very interesting informationon taste buds and aging (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/004013.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The number of taste buds decreases beginning at about age 40 to 50 in women and at 50 to 60 in men. Each remaining taste bud also begins to atrophy (lose mass). The sensitivity to the four taste sensations does not seem to decrease until after age 60, if at all. If taste sensation is lost, usually salty and sweet tastes are lost first, with bitter and sour tastes lasting slightly longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sense of smell may diminish, especially after age 70. This may be related to loss of nerve endings in the nose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Studies about the cause of decreased sense of taste and smell with aging have conflicting results. Some studies have indicated that normal aging by itself produces very little change in taste and smell. Rather, changes may be related to diseases, smoking, and environmental exposures over a lifetime.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1762" LastEditorUserId="1762" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T08:52:26.137" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T08:52:26.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2361" CreationDate="2011-04-20T08:46:43.027" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The earliest results I've found is from &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1093/geronj/14.1.56&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Effect Of Age On Taste Sensitivity&lt;/a&gt; from 1959:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Over-all taste sensitivity.&lt;/em&gt; Figure 1 summarizes the course of development and decline of over-all taste sensitivity (mean of 4 taste thresholds expressed in standard scores). [..]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract in &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1093/chemse/26.7.845&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Taste Perception with Age: Generic or Specific Losses in Threshold Sensitivity to the Five Basic Tastes?&lt;/a&gt; from 2001:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Detection thresholds for NaCl, KCl, sucrose, aspartame, acetic acid, citric acid, caffeine, quinine HCl, monosodium glutamate (MSG) and inosine 5′-monophosphate (IMP) were assessed in 21 young (19–33 years) and 21 elderly (60–75 years) persons by taking the average of six ascending two-alternative forced choice tests. A significant overall effect was found for age, but not for gender. However, an interaction effect of age and gender was found. The older men were less sensitive than the young men and women for acetic acid, sucrose, citric acid, sodium and potassium chloride and IMP. To detect the compound dissolved in water they needed a 1.32 (aspartame) to 5.70 times (IMP) higher concentration than the younger subjects. A significant decline in thresholds with replication was shown. The age effect found could be attributed predominantly to a generic taste loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results in &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/60.1.109&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Influences of Aging on Taste Perception and Oral Somatic Sensation&lt;/a&gt; goes on to investigate what it is that has changed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Significant age-associated deterioration was observed in taste but not somatic sensations such as touch and burning pain in the tongue, showing that aging affects taste perception and oral somatic sensations differently. This suggests that decreased taste perception of foods in elderly people may be caused primarily by perceptual loss of taste among oral sensations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-006-0169-9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Substance and tongue-region specific loss in basic taste-quality identification in elderly adults&lt;/a&gt; from 2007 has nice summary in the introduction, but I don't have access to the journal so I can't add or look at the references for the claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is well documented that a decrease in taste function typically accompanies normal aging. (for review see [4]), which may partly be attributed to reduction in the density of taste buds [5] and papillae.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seem to suggest that our perception of taste signals degrade with age, but that our taste buds don't lose sensitivity (unless I'm misinterpreting the meaning of &amp;quot;somatic&amp;quot;) we do however lose the amount of them we have with time. So the answer to your question is no our taste buds don't become less sensitive (as far as I can tell), but they might as well have from the perspective of the elderly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-13T15:10:46.317" LastActivityDate="2022-09-13T15:10:46.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2359" CreationDate="2011-04-20T09:03:43.273" Score="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently it is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;psychological marketing technique&lt;/a&gt; that assumes consumers ignore the least significant digit, reading from left to right. This explains why you'll often see the 99 in superscript (e.g. $19&lt;sup&gt;99&lt;/sup&gt;). A study by &lt;a href=&quot;http://nicolas.gueguen.free.fr/Articles/J-Applied-Sc2005.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nicolas Guéguen and Céline Jacob&lt;/a&gt;(pdf) found that &amp;quot;nine-ending prices led to increase the amount of purchasing of women-customers&amp;quot;. Interestingly, they also concluded that nine-ending prices do not increase the number of buyers, but does increase the number of sales from those who already buy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mean purchase amount of the customers was 6.53 €uros (SD = 1.95) in the nine-ending condition and of 5.08 €uros (SD = 2.22) in the zero-ending condition. The difference between the two means was highly significant (z = 3.72, p&amp;lt;.001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results of this experiment confirm &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6W5D-45FY2P7-X&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=04%2F01%2F1996&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=919bc2ba63e36ddf1fa6a0fc8b9c2d79&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Schindler and Kibarian’s&lt;/a&gt; results and indicate that the effect of nine-ending prices can be generalized to an other business situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for preventing theft, opening the till/cash register creates a record of the sale which could potentially decrease likelihood of pocketing the money given by a customer. Can't find any studies on this, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T09:13:28.287" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2359" CreationDate="2011-04-20T09:11:58.487" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is that this practice is marketing orthodoxy, and supported by empirical evidence; companies do this because it makes them money.  The exact cause is complex and perhaps unknowable, but the effect is real, and reasonably well documented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some common &amp;quot;folk&amp;quot; psychological explanations of the phenomena of the &amp;quot;9-fixation&amp;quot; are outlined in the paper &amp;quot;Why 99 Cents?&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://time.dufe.edu.cn/jingjiwencong/waiwenziliao/21why99.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(pdf)&lt;/a&gt; written by Economist Oz Shy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rounding illusions&lt;/strong&gt;: Consumers tend to approximate the prices they pay by a lower integer or a lower decimal number rather than a higher price. Thus, depending on the level of rounding numbers, consumers may state or report a price of $999.99 as nine-hundred-ninety-nine, as nine-hundred-ninety, or simply nine-hundred dollars. Whence, people tend to under quote a price according to the leading digits of the price. Stores, then, maximize profit by setting the last digits as large as possible, in which case they simply add the relevant sequence of 9s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consumers like to receive change&lt;/strong&gt;: Therefore, if stores take into their pricing consideration the assumption that consumers' utility is enhanced by receiving change, they will maximize profit by handing out the minimum-possible change, which is 1¢. Hence, all prices end in 99¢.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Attractive digits&lt;/strong&gt;: People find the combinations of 99, 999, 9999, and so on to be &amp;quot;nice.&amp;quot; Thus, consumers are attracted to looking at prices involving many digits of nine. Hence, this &amp;quot;elegant&amp;quot; statement of the price serves as a store-advertising mechanism since after looking at the price itself consumers are more likely to pay attention to other details and features of the store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Image of a discount retailer&lt;/strong&gt;: Discount stores tend to utilize black &amp;amp; white ads in order to create an image that the store is engaged in a significant cost cutting. Similarly, a price of 99¢  may indicate that a store is concerned with all levels of cost cutting and that even a 1¢-cost reduction is being transferred to the consumers in the form of a 1¢ price reduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various proposed psychological and economic &amp;quot;causes&amp;quot; to this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &amp;quot;Why 99 Cents?&amp;quot;, Shy proposes a game-theoretic solution, which has retailers reaching pricing equilibrium with 99 cents after the dollar amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/013026248X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing: A Guide to Profitable Decision Making&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Tom Nagle and Reed Holden suggests that people observe the &amp;quot;dollar&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;cent&amp;quot; parts of prices independently, and often ignore the cent portion as insignificant.  Capitalizing on this phenomena, retailers should maximize profit by setting the &amp;quot;cent&amp;quot; part of the price to the highest possible value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his paper &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0165-1765%2897%2900009-8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why are so many goods priced to end in nine? And why this practice hurts the producers&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; Kaushik Basu additionally offers that this phenomena is due to pricing equilibrium caused by consumers always assuming that the &amp;quot;cent&amp;quot; part of a price will be 99, and so when an item is &amp;quot;four-dollars&amp;quot;, for instance, a consumer will assume that it's $3.99 and retailers will &amp;quot;lose&amp;quot; a penny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the actual cause and effect of this phenomena, it is an empirical fact observed by André Gabor in his 1988 book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0566027038&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pricing: Concepts and Methods for Eﬀective Marketing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, who observed that the decimal portion of a price has no effect on the consumers of an item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This same phenomena was observed by Phillip Gendall in his paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/10610429810237754&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Estimating the Effect of Odd Pricing&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, who noted that &amp;quot;odd pricing generates greater-than-expected demand, at least at the individual brand level, and for the common practice of setting retail prices that end in 95 cents or 99 cents.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="279" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T09:11:58.487" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2368" CreationDate="2011-04-20T09:48:15.860" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The position is very difficult to identify.  UNCTAD published a major study a couple of years ago called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/wir2009pt2_en.pdf&quot;&gt;Transnational Corporations, Agricultural Production and Development&lt;/a&gt; as part of its World Investment Report 2009.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In it, Figure III.13 suggested that China had the third highest outward foreign direct investment stock in agriculture (after the USA and Canada and well ahead of Japan).  This has probably grown since then.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the report discusses different forms of investment and potential consequences.  One of the conclusions was &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In recent years, an increasing number&#xA;  of food importing countries have&#xA;  started pursuing a strategy of&#xA;  overseas agricultural production to&#xA;  secure food supply at home. Such&#xA;  strategies can contribute to creating&#xA;  value and generating export revenues&#xA;  in the host countries, but they can&#xA;  also have negative consequences for&#xA;  food supply in the exporting country,&#xA;  including depriving local farmers of&#xA;  land. However, a win-win situation can&#xA;  emerge if the institutional&#xA;  arrangements are carefully designed,&#xA;  and if the legislative framework and&#xA;  investment contracts ensure a fair&#xA;  sharing of the benefits between host&#xA;  countries and foreign investors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point made by UNCTAD is that many of the positive effects of such investment can be achieved through other means such as free trade and contract farming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T09:48:15.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2381" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-20T09:55:22.597" Score="5" ViewCount="256" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, most dieters will regain the weight lost and then some more after each diet. What evidence is there to support diets rather than other forms of help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T10:02:07.870" Title="Do any diets work long term?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2381" CreationDate="2011-04-20T10:02:07.870" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Diet helps loosing weight but doesn't teach the person doing the diet to eat better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep the lost weight away, healthy habit and a positive attitude must be taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once you have achieved a desired&#xA;  weight, a positive attitude is very&#xA;  important in your efforts to&#xA;  successfully manage it. To lose weight&#xA;  permanently, you must make a&#xA;  commitment to gradually adopt a&#xA;  healthier way of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=42588&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=42588&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Diet in itself is not bad but diet alone doesn't fix the core of the problem: food habits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1208" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T10:02:07.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2383" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-20T10:39:30.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Human physiology is the science of the mechanical, physical, and biochemical functions of humans in good health, their organs, and the cells of which they are composed. The principal level of focus of physiology is at the level of organs and systems within systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Physiology is closely related to anatomy; anatomy is the study of form, and physiology is the study of function. Due to the frequent connection between form and function physiology and anatomy are intrinsically linked and are studied in tandem as part of a medical curriculum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T10:39:30.117" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T10:39:30.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2384" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-20T10:39:30.117" Score="0" Body="Human physiology is the science of the mechanical, physical, and biochemical functions of humans in good health, their organs, and the cells of which they are composed. The principal level of focus of physiology is at the level of organs and systems within systems." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T10:39:30.117" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T10:39:30.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2076" CreationDate="2011-04-20T13:30:02.607" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on what you mean by prior knowledge, and what you mean by the U.S. Government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/index.htm&quot;&gt;9/11 Commission Report&lt;/a&gt; highlights many failings by the FBI and the CIA and suggests that they had credible information about the attacks even though that they did not realise what they had at the time.  This could be taken as them having prior knowledge even if they didn't know about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T13:30:02.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2391" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2395" CreationDate="2011-04-20T14:22:05.433" Score="28" ViewCount="3441" Body="&lt;p&gt;People often tap the top of coke cans to stop them foaming over like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HTVct.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest that tapping the top stops this happening?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2012-10-11T10:52:56.660" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T10:52:56.660" Title="Can tapping the top of a soda/pop stop it fizzing over?" Tags="|consumer-products|drinks|soda|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2335" CreationDate="2011-04-20T15:06:54.183" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the evidence that is observed in the universe support BOTH the big bang theory and ALSO its dual: 'The &lt;strong&gt;matter is shrinking&lt;/strong&gt;' (We measure with 'atomic' sizes and atomic 'clocks' that we presume invariants, without proof)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;|Universe | begining: the Size of Universe ('M' represents Mass, 's' for Space) &#xA;&#xA;|MMMsssMMM| at t0: distributed by 2 atoms and space with sizes multiple of M and of s &#xA;|MMsssssMM| at t1: redistributed with more space&#xA;|MsssssssM| at t2: much more expanding space and the same 2 'shrinked' atoms.&#xA;&#xA;|Universe | ending: space expanded and matter shrinked, and equal size of the Univ.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All the references presented (in some of other answers) support what I'm saying.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There is no reference in the literature contrary to what I said, IMO.&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT add&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Answer to your question:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As both theories can not coexist, I conclude that the evidence does not favor the BBT.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;EDIT add end&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comoving_distance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quote WP Comoving_distance&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Comoving coordinates are an example of&#xA;  such a natural coordinate choice. They&#xA;  assign constant spatial coordinate&#xA;  values to observers who perceive the&#xA;  universe as isotropic.  A comoving&#xA;  observer is the only observer that&#xA;  will perceive the universe, including&#xA;  the cosmic microwave background&#xA;  radiation, to be isotropic.&#xA;  Space in comoving coordinates is&#xA;  usually referred to as being &quot;static&quot;,&#xA;  as most bodies on the scale of&#xA;  galaxies or larger are approximately&#xA;  comoving, and comoving bodies have&#xA;  static, unchanging comoving&#xA;  coordinates. So for a given pair of&#xA;  comoving galaxies, while the proper&#xA;  distance between them would have been&#xA;  smaller in the past and will become&#xA;  larger in the future due to the&#xA;  expansion of space, the comoving&#xA;  distance between them remains constant&#xA;  at all times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ADVICE: The following IS A NON PEER REVIEW PAPER.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;all equations and details can be found in this model:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0208365&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A relativistic time variation of matter/space fits both local and cosmic data&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand these particulars disapeared (and many others like the BB singularity):&lt;br&gt;&#xA; - Did the universe have an inflationary period? Why?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; - Why did the big bang have such a low entropy?&lt;br&gt;&#xA; - Why is the expansion of the universe accelerating?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1071" LastEditorUserId="1071" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T16:27:29.037" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T16:27:29.037" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2394" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2397" CreationDate="2011-04-20T15:16:45.263" Score="7" ViewCount="2700" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that some people die of a heart attack caused by extreme happiness. Is it possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="808" LastEditorUserId="808" LastEditDate="2013-06-28T11:45:45.620" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T01:51:51.387" Title="Can a person die due to a heart attack caused by extreme happiness?" Tags="|cardiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2391" CreationDate="2011-04-20T15:30:38.463" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, the answer to this is simpler than that.  I learned it from Penn &amp;amp; Teller's book &lt;a href=&quot;http://openlibrary.org/books/OL313512M/Penn_Teller%27s_how_to_play_in_traffic&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How To Play In Traffic&lt;/a&gt;.  On pages 76 to 86 they describe a trick you can play on your friends called &amp;quot;I Am The God of Carbonation&amp;quot;.  They have also done this trick on talk shows.  They credit the idea for the trick to Paul Harris (and Eric Mead) in the magic book &lt;a href=&quot;http://openlibrary.org/works/OL489697W/The_art_of_astonishment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Art of Astonishment&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trick is immaterial to the answer, but it involves agitating one can as much as possible and then claiming you can transfer the carbonation energy from one can to the other.  But what it hinges on is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess they've changed the way they package soda or something. No matter how hard you shake a soda can it takes only about twenty seconds for it to completely calm down....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as your God of Carbonation ritual takes twenty seconds or more, the shaken can will not explode. Make sure you hold the can straight up, perpendicular to the ground, and open it all the way with one quick action.  That'll get rid of any little bit of fizz that didn't calm down in the twenty seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is that the tapping constitutes a ritual that just eats up time.  As long as the can is sitting in an upright position and you wait long enough, the fizzing will die down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T15:30:38.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2396" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2401" CreationDate="2011-04-20T15:49:26.230" Score="12" ViewCount="2459" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Conservapedia's article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conservapedia.com/William_Ayers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;William Ayers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In an October 2008 article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Thinker&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American&#xA;  Thinker&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Cashill&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jack Cashill&lt;/a&gt; presented&#xA;  evidence that Ayers &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwriter&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ghostwrote&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Obama&lt;/a&gt;'s&#xA;  first book, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreams_of_My_Father&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dreams From My Father&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  He based his assertion on a comparison&#xA;  of the writing styles of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bill Ayers&lt;/a&gt;'&#xA;  2001 memoir, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugitive_Days&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fugitive Days&lt;/a&gt;, and Barack&#xA;  Obama's earlier 1995 book, Dreams From&#xA;  My Father, and came to the conclusion&#xA;  that Ayres had ghostwritten Dreams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Cashill article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/who_wrote_dreams_from_my_fathe_1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Who Wrote Dreams From My Father?&lt;/a&gt;, Cashill states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As shall be seen, however, there are&#xA;  only two real possibilities: one is&#xA;  that Obama experienced a near&#xA;  miraculous turnaround in his literary&#xA;  abilities; &lt;strong&gt;the second is that he had&#xA;  major editorial help, up to and&#xA;  including a ghostwriter&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cashill then goes on to list the reasons why he believes Bill Ayers, ghost-wrote &quot;Dreams&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I bought Bill Ayers' 2001 memoir,&#xA;  Fugitive Days, for reasons unrelated&#xA;  to this project.  As I discovered, he&#xA;  writes surprisingly well and very much&#xA;  like &quot;Obama.&quot;  In fact, my first&#xA;  thought was that the two may have&#xA;  shared the same ghostwriter.  Unlike&#xA;  Dreams, however, where the high style&#xA;  is intermittent, Fugitive Days is&#xA;  infused with the authorial voice in&#xA;  every sentence. What is more, when&#xA;  Ayers speaks, even off the cuff, he&#xA;  uses a cadence and vocabulary&#xA;  consistent with his memoir.  One does&#xA;  not hear any of Dreams in Obama's&#xA;  casual speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cashill then goes on to list a myriad of ways he believes that Obama and Ayers are connected socially, politically, and ideologically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ayers_presidential_election_controversy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Obama claims to barely know Bill Ayers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a guy who lives in my&#xA;  neighborhood, who's a professor of&#xA;  English in Chicago who I know and who&#xA;  I have not received some official&#xA;  endorsement from. He's not somebody&#xA;  who I exchange ideas from on a regular&#xA;  basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would seem implied from this statement that Obama has not sought a close relationship with Ayers and thus it is unlikely that he ghost-wrote Obama's book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any truth or evidence to support Cashill's claim that Obama's book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1400082773&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dreams From My Father&lt;/a&gt;&quot; was written by Bill Ayers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1gtHS.jpg&quot; width=&quot;130&quot; height=&quot;200&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T16:10:54.597" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T17:23:39.907" Title="Did Bill Ayers ghost-write for Obama?" Tags="|politics|united-states|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2394" CreationDate="2011-04-20T16:04:45.077" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/heart_attack/article.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MedicineNet - Heart Attack (Myocardial Infarction)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Increased adrenaline, as previously&#xA;  discussed, may contribute to rupture&#xA;  of cholesterol plaques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only assume that any stress to a heart on the brink of disaster can be a trigger that send it over the edge. Getting some piece of extremely good news like winning the lotto is bound to cause an elevation in blood pressure and heart rate that could trigger this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm not sure if you are asking about a quick onset of extreme happiness like in the lottery example or if you just meant to ask if being an extremely happy person in general could cause you to be at a higher risk for a heart attack? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20100217/study-happiness-good-heart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This study seems to suggest the opposite&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dropping dead of a heart attack upon receiving some news of outrageously good fortune seems to be commonly assumed to be something that can and does happen but in searching for heart attack and lottery I was unable to find any documented stories of something like that happening, although there are plenty of documented stories of people dying from heart attacks weeks or months after winning a lotto.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be because of a newly active lifestyle or an increase in excessive indulgences with one's new found wealth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any event, given that any trigger that causes a substantial increase in heart rate or blood pressure is potentially a trigger for an unhealthy heart to go in to cardiac arrest, I think it's safe to assume that the answer to your question is yes, potentially, although there does not seem to be very many documented cases of this, or any published studies of the phenomena that I was able to find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2023" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-28T12:39:08.983" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T12:39:08.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2398" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-20T16:18:38.457" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Mechanism&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ce4Dh.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Mutation and selection&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mutation_and_selection_diagram.svg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mutation and selection&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process of natural selection is based on three conditions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All individuals are supplied with hereditary material in the form of genes that are received from their parents, then passed on to their offspring. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Organisms tend to produce more offspring than the environment can support.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are variations among offspring as a consequence of either the introduction of new genes via random changes called mutations or reshuffling of existing genes during sexual reproduction.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When these three conditions hold true, natural selection will occur.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means individuals will not have equal chances of reproductive success. Some individuals have a higher degree of fitness, a measure of success based on high numbers of surviving offspring. Traits that result in organisms being better adapted to their living conditions become more common in descendant populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason, populations will never remain exactly the same over successive generations. The forces of evolution are most evident when populations become isolated, either through geographic distance or by mechanisms that prevent genetic exchange. Over time, isolated populations can branch off into new species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Random genetic drift describes another process that regulates evolution. The majority of genetic mutations neither assist, change the appearance of, nor bring harm to individuals. These mutated genes are neutrally sorted among populations and survive across generations by chance alone. In contrast to genetic drift, natural selection is not a random process because it acts on traits that are necessary for survival.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Natural selection and random genetic drift are constant and dynamic parts of life. More than 99.9% of all species have become extinct since life began over 3.5 billion years ago. Evolution is more death than survival and over time this has shaped the branching structure in the tree of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;History&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/o3YIRm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Charles Darwin&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_Darwin_by_G._Richmond.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Charles Darwin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The modern understanding of evolution began with the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. In addition, Gregor Mendel's work with plants helped to explain the hereditary patterns of genetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fossil discoveries in palaeontology, advances in population genetics and a global network of scientific research have provided further details into the mechanisms of evolution. Scientists now have a good understanding of the origin of new species (speciation) and have observed the speciation process in the laboratory and in the wild. Evolution is the principal theory that biologists use to understand life and is used in many disciplines, including medicine, psychology, conservation biology, anthropology, forensics, agriculture and other social-cultural applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;To know more&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_evolution&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Introduction to evolution, from Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evolution, from Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-09T10:50:46.123" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T10:50:46.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2399" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-20T16:18:38.457" Score="0" Body="Evolution is the process of change in all forms of life over generations, and evolutionary biology is the study of how evolution occurs. The biodiversity of life evolves by means of mutations, genetic drift and natural selection." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-09T10:50:46.687" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T10:50:46.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2400" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2408" CreationDate="2011-04-20T16:20:57.923" Score="12" ViewCount="1284" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been told that frozen vegetables are frozen soon after harvest and as such don't get sprayed with as much preservatives. I'm also told fresh vegetables are sprayed with extra preservatives so they'll look better in the store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tested the waters with this claim once with a biology grad student (although she dealt with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleptoparasitism&quot;&gt;spiders stealing things&lt;/a&gt;). She seemed to agree with the claim while noting that vitamines in food are destroyed or diminished when frozen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that frozen vegetables are healthier than fresh ones to eat, for the reasons mentioned above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New Oxford American Dictionary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fresh: (of food) recently made or obtained; not canned, frozen, or otherwise preserved&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T20:57:17.953" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T22:34:46.467" Title="Are frozen vegetables typically healthier to buy and eat than fresh ones?" Tags="|nutrition|vegetables|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2396" CreationDate="2011-04-20T17:23:39.907" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is certainly no hard evidence that Bill Ayers had anything to do with the writing of &lt;strong&gt;Dreams from My Father&lt;/strong&gt;. There isn't much indirect evidence either, unless you agree with Cashill's frankly puerile literary analysis. (One of his arguments it that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/who_wrote_dreams_from_my_fathe_1.html&quot;&gt;only former sailors will write about the wind or use ships as metaphors&lt;/a&gt;.) There's no way to prove conclusively Ayers didn't work on the book either, but we must test the credibility of the claim based on the evidence there is, not on what some people might want to be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few other elements that should probably be considered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Timing.&lt;/strong&gt; No one, including Cashill, is claiming Ayers and Obama&#xA;knew each other in any capacity&#xA;before 1995, and the book came out in&#xA;July of that year. While it's not&#xA;impossible to produce a book that&#xA;quickly, it would have probably kept&#xA;the two from doing much else during&#xA;that time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Motive.&lt;/strong&gt; In early 1995, when Ayers and Obama would have supposedly been&#xA;working on the book together, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/us/politics/04ayers.html?pagewanted=2&quot;&gt;Obama&#xA;had not yet made his first step into&#xA;even local politics&lt;/a&gt;. So unless&#xA;Ayers or Obama somehow knew that&#xA;thirty years later Obama would be&#xA;running for a federal office where&#xA;his relationship with a local&#xA;professor could become a major&#xA;campaign issue, there's no good&#xA;reason Ayers wouldn't have just been&#xA;given a co-author credit.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cashill's credibility.&lt;/strong&gt; Cashill has made a cottage industry out of&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mediamatters.org/blog/201102240030&quot;&gt;doubting every single detail about&#xA;Barak Obama's biography&lt;/a&gt;, always&#xA;on the flimsiest evidence. Just a&#xA;couple weeks ago he published a&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&amp;amp;pageId=283881&quot;&gt;column on WorldNetDaily&lt;/a&gt; claiming&#xA;to have found proof that Barak Obama&#xA;was photoshopped into photos taken of&#xA;him with his grandparents in New York&#xA;City. The claim was so ridiculous&#xA;that even WorldNetDaily scrubbed the&#xA;photo claim from the column after a&#xA;couple days, but you can see the&#xA;photos Cashill was using &lt;a href=&quot;http://mediamatters.org/blog/201104070013&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and hear him talking about his&#xA;discovery in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA7hd3j1yHI&amp;amp;feature=player_embedded&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;. Until Cashill proves any one of his claims correct I don't see much reason to believe anything he says on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T17:23:39.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2402" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-20T18:31:27.910" Score="15" ViewCount="760" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently there is a debate in the United States over the legal status of Internet Gambling; specifically, playing Poker for &quot;real money&quot; over the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of those who are opposed to Internet Gambling in the United States claim that Internet Gambling sites are used to fund terrorist organizations &amp;amp; activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there are actual evidence to back up this claim?  Do terrorists use internet gambling sites as a source of funding or money laundering?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following appears in the Congressional Record, vols 109-122, pg 14297 (not sure if I'm citing this properly)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=yh5PKXIKU3IC&amp;amp;lpg=PA14300&amp;amp;ots=5xNh6qGvZH&amp;amp;dq=internet%20gambling%20terrorist&amp;amp;pg=PA14297#v=snippet&amp;amp;q=terrorist%20gambling&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Source link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Worse, the FBI, the Department of&#xA;  Justice, and the Department of State&#xA;  have all stated that Internet gambling&#xA;  can be exploited to launder money for&#xA;  such groups as drug dealers, organized&#xA;  crime, and terrorist organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2036" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:34:58.200" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:34:58.200" Title="Internet Gambling Linked to Terrorist Financing?" Tags="|united-states|terrorism|gambling|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2403" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2480" CreationDate="2011-04-20T19:09:42.313" Score="15" ViewCount="4168" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen people wipe the area around their nose then touch the foam/head on their beer after a bad pour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this make the foam go away faster?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1102" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T18:09:55.320" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T18:09:55.320" Title="Oils from your face will make the foam from beer subside faster?" Tags="|beer|tricks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2404" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2406" CreationDate="2011-04-20T19:31:26.647" Score="5" ViewCount="389" Body="&lt;p&gt;A realtor just told me that you're more likely to sell your house, and get a better price, if the weather is better. He said cold damp weather reduces the number of people looking and interest in properties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies to back up this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T21:19:00.810" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T21:40:47.100" Title="Does the weather affect the selling of your house?" Tags="|economics|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-20T20:07:11.243" Score="6" ViewCount="747" Body="&lt;p&gt;Andrew Gelman claims on his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2011/04/upper-income_pe.html&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Upper-income people still don't realize they're upper-income&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If people are directly asked whether they consider themselves to be upper income, do they underrate their relative wealth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2011-04-20T20:17:13.417" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T02:06:16.510" Title="Do upper-income people in the US think they aren't upper income?" Tags="|economics|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2404" CreationDate="2011-04-20T21:40:47.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are clearly seasonal effects: taking reported &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/stats/survey_of_prop/val-40000-or-above.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UK residential property completions over £40,000&lt;/a&gt;, the government statisticians seasonally adjust the numbers, for example increasing the January figures by about 32% and reducing the June numbers by about 12% each year, to smooth out the repetitive patterns and make other factors such as the impact of the recent recession more obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So people buy houses more often in summer than than in winter and my guess is that at least some of that is weather affected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T21:40:47.100" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3329" CreationDate="2011-04-20T22:29:16.000" Score="35" ViewCount="2087" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it said many times that boys perform better when they are in the same classroom as girls and girls perform better when they are by themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T18:57:32.330" Title="Boys and girls and co-education: what works best?" Tags="|education|gender|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2400" CreationDate="2011-04-20T22:34:46.467" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most commentators believe that frozen vegetables (especially peas) are better and have more vitamins than &quot;fresh&quot; vegetables picked more than a day earlier, and much better than canned vegetables which are cooked as part of the canning process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenewiceage.com/the-cold-facts/why-buy-frozen-fruit-and-vegetables&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; quotes from &lt;em&gt;Deutsches Tiefkuhlinstitut&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Quantity of Vitamin C         (mg/100g)*&#xA;&#xA;Freshly picked peas                 22.1&#xA;Fresh peas (after 2 days)           14.1&#xA;Frozen peas                         20.2&#xA;&#xA;Freshly picked spinach           17.0&#xA;Fresh spinach (after 2 days)         4.1&#xA;Frozen spinach                   14.0&#xA;&#xA;Freshly picked french beans         16.4&#xA;Fresh french beans (after 2 days)   7.9&#xA;Frozen french beans                 14.3&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article3087331.ece&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chefs seem to agree.&lt;/a&gt;  Incidentally, it is important to cook from frozen, rather than thawing first, (and to use a steel pan) according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11190845&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-04-20T22:34:46.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2409" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2415" CreationDate="2011-04-20T23:19:07.130" Score="18" ViewCount="1460" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do small businesses create the majority of the jobs in the United States?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it would depend on one's definition of small business, but stipulating that the definition is the one used by politicians when they make that claim, I wonder if it is true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1949" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T12:15:26.570" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T12:15:26.570" Title="Do small businesses create the majority of the jobs in America?" Tags="|united-states|economics|employment|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2410" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2807" CreationDate="2011-04-21T00:26:24.290" Score="21" ViewCount="2516" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a growing movement of people who thing that praise is bad for children, as for example on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://notschool.blogspot.com/2005/04/problem-with-praise.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Not School blog&lt;/a&gt;. The thesis seems to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A child who receives praise, rewards, and constant evaluation through testing and grading will tend to remain dependent on an authority to bestow a positive judgment. The academically successful child could grow up with the opposite of self-esteem-- we could call it other-esteem. Nor can I see how the current school system fosters intrinsic joy in learning or accomplishing tasks. And forget about independence, autonomy, and critical thinking. Too much &amp;quot;positive reinforcement&amp;quot; does not truly reinforce the individual; it engenders dependence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't seem to be a mainstream phenomenon (though I stand to be corrected on that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the mainstream press typically advocates praise as a crucial role in the success of children. For example the BBC's article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13128701&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;The words that could unlock your child&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; states, i.e.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This reveals a radical new approach to the way we engage with children - that we should praise effort, never talent; that we should teach kids to see challenges as learning opportunities rather than threats; and that we should emphasise how abilities can be transformed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, on the other hand, [a student] really believes that effort trumps talent - labelled the &amp;quot;growth mindset&amp;quot; - she will persevere. She will not see failure as an indictment, but as an opportunity to adapt and grow. And, if she is right, she will eventually excel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this article is only imply that praise is good, it seems to be advocating praise of effort instead of praise for results -- in other words, I read it to be saying &amp;quot;not all praise is good&amp;quot;. Leading us to my skepticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What evidence is there to support the conclusion that certain types of praise for children are bad?&lt;/strong&gt; Where &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; means, as the article suggests, children forget about &amp;quot;independence, autonomy, and critical thinking&amp;quot; and the praise &amp;quot;engenders dependence&amp;quot;. &amp;quot;Bad&amp;quot; also includes the consequences of this result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further: &lt;strong&gt;What evidence is there to support the conclusion that only certain types of praise are good, and in particular (a) only praising the efforts? or (b) only praising accomplishment?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-08-20T07:42:31.630" Title="When is praise for children harmful?" Tags="|psychology|education|children|school|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2411" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2413" CreationDate="2011-04-21T01:02:42.253" Score="73" ViewCount="84000" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why should I brush my teeth in the morning? My teeth are just going to get dirty again when I eat breakfast 5 minutes later. Plus, I've already done an extensive cleaning (floss, brush, mouthwash) the night before. My teeth should not be getting dirtier as I sleep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard people say their breakfast tastes better after brushing their teeth. I've never experienced bad taste from not brushing. I only care about the hygiene reasons for brushing in the morning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2045" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2018-11-17T23:19:05.920" LastActivityDate="2018-11-17T23:19:05.920" Title="What's the point of brushing teeth in the morning?" Tags="|dentistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2411" CreationDate="2011-04-21T02:05:10.973" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Brushing at night is the most important. Saliva naturally fights the growth of bacteria on your teeth. Your mouth dries out at night and reduces your mouth's ability to do this. Ideally, you would keep your teeth clean at all times but that's of course not realistic. A while back I read many websites and opinions about this very question. The main consensus seemed to be that people brush in the morning because it makes them feel good to start their day with a clean mouth (not because it's the best time to do it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ask.metafilter.com/64633/Whens-the-best-time-to-brush-your-pearly-whites&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a discussion about it on Ask MetaFilter&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the day, you're flapping your jaw, drinking water, chewing gum, and moving your tongue, all of which help to clean things off of your teeth. At night, your mouth is much less active, which allows bacteria more time to grow without being mechanically sloughed off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many years ago my orthodontist told me that it was most important to brush your teeth before going to sleep (I guess either for the night, or for a nap). Saliva production is down, and if you happen to sleep with your mouth gaping open, your teeth dry out and don't have that protective layer of saliva. Just the lack of movement of your lips and tongue while sleeping gives decay more of an opportunity to do its dirty work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://positivepersonality.blogspot.com/2009/02/right-time-for-brushing-teeth.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is an article by Dr. H.S. Chawla&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brushing before meals: Most people normally brush their teeth in the morning before breakfast. That is beneficial, as you have reduced the number of bacteria before exposing them to food. The amount of acid production is expected to be less, and so would be the damage to the teeth. You get an additional benefit if you use fluoride tooth paste, as the fluoride gets incorporated into the enamel and makes it strong and resistant to the effect of acid. (Fluoride converts the hydroxyl-apatite of enamel to calcium fluor-apatite).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to brush in the morning, it may actually be better to brush before you eat rather than after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;brushing right after eating is not at all advised, as the acid produced [by bacteria] has already begun the process of eroding enamel. If you brush promptly after a meal, you rub off part of the dissolved minerals of the enamel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1750" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-11-16T19:53:01.123" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2414" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3492" CreationDate="2011-04-21T02:31:15.593" Score="13" ViewCount="2879" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am familiar with the effects of sleep deprivation and some of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/physical-side-effects-oversleeping&quot;&gt;harmful effects of oversleeping&lt;/a&gt;. However, I have also heard more than once that sleeping more than 10 hours on average, even for a non-sedentary person, can lower overall brain alertness and acuity. In addition, I have heard that it can cause the premature onset of Alzheimer's disease and other brain-related diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something entirely unfamiliar to me and I was wondering: Is this supported by scientific evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1703" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T16:05:33.720" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T17:43:06.120" Title="Does sleeping an average of 11 hours or more raise one's risk of brain-related disorders?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|sleep|cognitive-fitness|psychiatry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2409" CreationDate="2011-04-21T02:35:17.597" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably the most definitive source for this information would be the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/bdm/table_f.txt&quot;&gt;&quot;Distribution of private sector employment by firm size class&quot;&lt;/a&gt; Shows the following for the most current (Q1 2010) numbers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; Firm size  % of total jobs&#xA;   1 to   4        5.31&#xA;   5 to   9        6.00&#xA;  10 to  19        7.42&#xA;  20 to  49       10.60&#xA;  50 to  99        7.96&#xA; 100 to 249       10.29&#xA; 250 to 499        7.09&#xA; 500 to 999        6.88&#xA;1000 and above    38.41&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That shows the majority working for small businesses only if we define &quot;small&quot; as meaning up to 499 employees. I think that's a bit larger than most people would normally think of as &quot;small&quot;, but I guess given the raw data, you can draw your own conclusions about what descriptions to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2046" LastEditorDisplayName="user2046" LastEditDate="2011-04-21T02:41:42.877" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T02:41:42.877" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2421" CreationDate="2011-04-21T04:37:26.610" Score="21" ViewCount="2195" Body="&lt;p&gt;My girlfriend is excited about an allergy treatment she's about to undergo.  The product is sub-lingual allergy drops with the brand name &quot;AllergyEZ.&quot;  She's told me that her allergy doctor has told her that it is not FDA approved, but that it's been in use in Europe for decades and she's researched it and is confident that it is a good product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;not FDA approved&quot; bit raises red flags to me as does the claim &quot;but it's been used for decades;&quot; these are key phrases I've heard for many snake oil products.  My faith in this product isn't helped by the fact that a Google search for the brand name only yields links to the company's site, information relating to its domain name ownership, and links to doctors who support the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any of you heard of this type of allergy treatment or this particular brand?  If so, how substantiated are their claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="225" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-04-21T08:52:06.020" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T08:09:09.003" Title="Is AllergyEZ a validated treatment for allergies?" Tags="|medical-science|allergies|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2417" CreationDate="2011-04-21T06:01:07.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Is SLIT an effective treatment?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their website has a &lt;a href=&quot;https://allergyez.com/doctor/allergyez-faq.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt; which contains the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the world-renowned Cochrane Review, a meta-analysis reviewed 22 studies involving 979 patients on sublingual immunotherapy and concluded that sublingual immunotherapy is a safe treatment which reduces symptoms and medication requirements in allergic rhinitis. SLIT is also endorsed by the World Health Organization and the ARIA (Allergic Rhinitis and its Impact on Asthma) guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did check and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab002893.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cochrane Review&lt;/a&gt; did find positive results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We included a total of 60 randomised controlled trials in the review. Forty-nine were suitable for pooling in meta-analyses [...]. Overall, we found a significant reduction in symptoms (SMD -0.49; 95% confidence interval (CI) -0.64 to -0.34, P &amp;lt; 0.00001) and medication requirements (SMD -0.32; 95% CI -0.43 to -0.21, P &amp;lt; 0.00001) in participants receiving sublingual immunotherapy compared to placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The active component of the product is serum, which I take to mean &lt;a href=&quot;http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/_/dict.aspx?word=antiserum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;antiserum&lt;/a&gt;. Basically it is composed of the specific allergens tailored to one's particular allergies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/cgi/mesh/2011/MB_cgi?mode=&amp;amp;term=Antisera&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;same component&lt;/a&gt; used in subcutaneous injections and the therapy works based on the same science as those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sublingual immunotherapy is taken as drops or tablets, placed under the tongue 3 or more times/week, containing a &lt;strong&gt;specific allergen&lt;/strong&gt; which interacts with the immune system to decrease allergic sensitivity.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublingual_immunotherapy#Mechanism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is Allergy EZ a scam company?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still have a big question on the validity of AllergyEz itself: the serum should be custom-made based on the patient allergies, however I see no mention of this in the site. It may just be a crap site (it is certainly not very good as it's raising more than one eyebrow).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, other answers claim this product is a scam. This is a completely different matter. They may claim that the product is X and in fact sell you Y -- similar to herbal V14gr@. This may be, and I would be cautious of products that are not marketed through mainstream means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been investigating this a bit further. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just like &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2417/is-allergyez-a-validated-treatment-for-allergies/2431#2431&quot;&gt;Monkey Tuesday&lt;/a&gt;, I've also contacted the firm, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mailinator.com/displayemail.jsp?email=john.howard&amp;amp;msgid=5931365&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;see email here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/htqaEb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[mirror for when mailinator purges it]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/fITqa2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[source for headers]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With some digging around I discovered this company: &quot;ALLERGY EZ, L.L.C.&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://hbe.ehawaii.gov/documents/business.html?fileNumber=84279C6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;registered in Hawaii&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The manager of the company and the sales manager share the same surname. Are they related? Possibly yes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;REVAIRX, the original brand mentioned in the email, is actually a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trademarkia.com/revairx-sublingual-immunotherapy-85281656.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;registered trademark&lt;/a&gt;, which is actually a good sign - although it proves nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The trademark is registered to MILTON RAMSEY DOCTORS L.L.C. which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://starpas.azcc.gov/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=wsbroker1/corp-detail.p?name-id=L15471452&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;registered as a company&lt;/a&gt; in Mesa, AZ in the name of the same owner as ALLERGY EZ, L.L.C.. The interesting bit here is that it is registered as a domestic L.L.C.. &lt;a href=&quot;http://images.azcc.gov/scripts/cgi/dwispart2.pl?COMMAND=4&amp;amp;SESSIONID=lEaylASnGm4O7lurVcB3Kik0w8eCagDu824642b6&amp;amp;RESULTID=2185646253&amp;amp;DISPLAYOPTIONS=0&amp;amp;DOCID=1&amp;amp;PAGERANGEOPTIONS=1&amp;amp;PAGE=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[Articles of Organization]&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The address of Milton Ramsey Doctors is also a house (possibly now a funeral home?).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Digging even further, more and more companies are appearing in Mesa (all with the same people, same signatures). See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://starpas.azcc.gov/scripts/cgiip.exe/WService=wsbroker1/names-detail.p?name-id=L10906285&amp;amp;type=CORPORATION&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HORLACHER ACQUISITIONS, L.L.C.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is a family-owned business. It sounds quite fishy for a medical company, but I still don't have any proof that it is a scam, and I do think it could be either way for what I've found so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T21:41:57.937" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2417" CreationDate="2011-04-21T06:33:23.000" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The warning flags:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have &lt;em&gt;testimonials&lt;/em&gt; all over the place, but extremely little reference to any actual science.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &quot;works for everything&quot; claim is an eerily common trait in bogus medicine, and proportionally rare among real medication&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You won’t find a more comprehensive allergy serum!  Your daily drops will fortify you against all the world’s major allergens.  No matter where you travel or how your environment changes, you’ll be protected. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://allergyez.com/patient/advantages.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AllergyEZ.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The science they do reference is a Cochrance Collaboration review, that examines whether or not sublingual immunotherapy is effective for treating allergic rhinitis. It does not specifically vindicate the efficacy of the product at hand as it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only examines the means of distributing the remedy. The fact that SLIT works &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt; does not validate one &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; SLIT treatment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only looks at allergic rhinitis, whereas AllergyEZ claims to have a much broader scope, as mentioned above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No side effects! The kind of bold claims they're making on their website without backing evidence is the kind of confidence you can only have if you don't have an active ingredient at all. How could a rigorous trial have been performed that found &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; side effects? To my knowledge, no evidence based medicine available can match that claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All-natural and extremely safe (not associated with dangerous anaphylactic reactions). &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allergyez.com/doctor/why-choose-allergyez.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AllergyEZ for physicians&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While most traditional allergy shot programs require participants to be at least 7 years old, AllergyEasy works safely and effectively for children of all ages—infants and up! &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://allergyez.com/patient/advantages.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AllergyEZ for customers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://allergyez.com/patient/resources.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;resources&lt;/a&gt; page includes some credible authorities on the subject, but visiting &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of those sites, doing a search for &quot;AllergyEZ&quot; (except for pollen.com, where I did not easily find a search feature), yields &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; results at all. AllergyEZ lends credibility from other sources, that don't validate them at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No coverage whatsoever about the product, except for that created by themselves. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/#q=allergyez+-site:allergyez.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;All search results&lt;/a&gt; are about the company of the same name, and nothing except for this very page covers the validity of the treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another SLIT treatment called RevaiRx is suspiciously similar. The page indexed by Google says &quot;How long will it take for patients to see results with Allergy EZ?&quot;, but the actual &lt;a href=&quot;http://revairx.com/faqs.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt; says the exact same thing, only &quot;... results with RevaiRx&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bMM9P.png&quot; alt=&quot;Google search result&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This appears to be a direct copy of the AllergyEZ press material, that Google indexed before they got around to even changing the product name. The two (supposedly) companies behind the different products share the same address in Stevensville, MT (&lt;a href=&quot;http://revairx.com/contact.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RevaiRx&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.superpages.com/bp/Stevensville-MT/Allergy-EZ-L2259135879.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AllergyEz&lt;/a&gt;). It looks like they're trying to push the same product under different brand names. What's the rationale for doing that for a legitimate product?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, AllergyEZ.com was registered in October 2010, and RevaiRx in Jan 2011. This seems to be a rebranding issue, however. If you look at Allergyeasy.com (of which &lt;em&gt;allergyez.com&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;myallergyeasy.com&lt;/em&gt; are mirrors), the website actually dates back to 2003. If we look at this brand name instead, there is at least some coverage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The serum contains extracts of pollens, dust, molds, and pet danders in a saline solution.  You will start with a very weak serum and over time you will gradually increase the concentration of the extracts.  Your body will gradually tolerate higher concentrations of these extracts and you notice fewer allergy symptoms as the concentration of the extracts increases. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nwhealthcare.net/index.php?id=52&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NW Integrative Medicine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mynht.com/allergy.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tacoma Naturopathic Care&lt;/a&gt; endorses Allergy Easy, citing the same &quot;Endorsed by the World Health Organization as a viable, safe alternative to allergy shots&quot;, which is taken entirely out of context. The quote is not about Allergy Easy specifically but, just as with the Cochrane review, it only refers to SLIT in general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/M6tnY.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/M6tnY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;WHO credibility&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myallergyeasy.com/_images/ads-right/world.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;myallergyeasy.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's an integrative medicine site and a naturopathy site endorsing AllergyEZ. That's all I've been able to find at the moment. Still no sight of scientific references that speficially put Allergy Easy on trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-02-25T08:09:09.003" LastActivityDate="2019-02-25T08:09:09.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2411" CreationDate="2011-04-21T10:03:57.290" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;Expanding on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2411/whats-the-point-of-brushing-teeth-in-the-morning/2413#2413&quot;&gt;Logicbird's answer&lt;/a&gt;, here is what the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emaxhealth.com/79/1063.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;British Dental Health Foundation&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acidic foods and drinks, such as&#xA;  oranges, grapefruit and fruit juices&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  that are often eaten at breakfast&#xA;  time, &lt;strong&gt;soften the enamel on your teeth&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Brushing immediately afterward wears&#xA;  the enamel away&lt;/strong&gt;, and can cause dental&#xA;  erosion, which may lead to pain and&#xA;  extreme sensitivity in the teeth, and&#xA;  also lead to cosmetic problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The saliva in your mouth neutralises&#xA;  the acidity&lt;/strong&gt; and restores its natural&#xA;  balance. However research has shown&#xA;  that &lt;strong&gt;this can take up to an hour&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their tips for avoiding dental erosion are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;brush teeth before breakfast if you    have fruit or fruit juice, or &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;wait one hour after eating or    drinking anything acidic before&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  brushing &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;use a straw when drinking acidic    drinks to reduce contact with teeth &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;drink water and milk between meals in    preference to juice and fizzy&#xA;  drinks &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;chew sugar-free gum - this will    produce more saliva to help cancel&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  out acid in your mouth &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;finish a meal with cheese or milk to    help neutralise any acids&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/dentalhealth/Pages/Teethcleaningguide.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NHS&lt;/a&gt; says the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brush your teeth in the morning before&#xA;  breakfast and last thing at night&#xA;  before you go to bed (and ideally at&#xA;  least an hour after your evening&#xA;  meal). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Brushing your teeth straight after a&#xA;  meal can damage your teeth, especially&#xA;  if you've had fruit, fizzy drinks,&#xA;  wine or any other food that contains&#xA;  acid&lt;/strong&gt;. This is because tooth enamel is&#xA;  softened by the acid and can be worn&#xA;  away by brushing. Waiting an hour&#xA;  gives your saliva chance to neutralise&#xA;  the acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T10:03:57.290" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1087" CreationDate="2011-04-21T11:42:33.523" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Germany, the event has likely triggered the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,757371,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;complete phase-out of nuclear power&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is important to have a bit of context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nuclear energy always had &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement_in_Germany&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a lot of critics in Germany&lt;/a&gt;, even in government. In fact, the previous red/green government had already signed a slow phase-out of nuclear power in 2000 (the “&lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomkonsens&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atomkonsens&lt;/a&gt;” [German]). A few years later, the current conservative government had effectively cancelled this agreement in 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current crisis, having led once again to massive protests, has merely re-initiated the nuclear power phase-out. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14912184,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Polls show&lt;/a&gt; that 80% of the Germans are against an extension of nuclear power usage. Effective immediately, seven out of the seventeen active nuclear power plants in Germany have been shut down:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Atom-Moratorium.svg&quot; alt=&quot;Moratorium&quot; /&gt;&#xA;[Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atom-Moratorium.svg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;; shut-down reactors are in red]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, public faith in nuclear power has always been low in Germany but the Fukushima events may have provided the small extra push necessary to tip the scales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T11:42:33.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2425" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2428" CreationDate="2011-04-21T12:04:54.040" Score="24" ViewCount="1444" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does low-intensity, long-duration exercise really &quot;burn fat&quot; at rates higher than highly aerobic exercise?  Is the academic case for this view actually strong?  It seems like a lot of accepted knowledge in the exercise industry has a weak scientific basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2052" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T22:37:10.967" Title="Fat Burning Zone -- Is it real?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2425" CreationDate="2011-04-21T12:29:04.730" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like you are right and the fat burning zone is a bit of a falicy. To quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colorado.edu/intphys/Class/IPHY3700_Greene/TIPS/exIntesity/Tremblay.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this research&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O2acR.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And they also have this table to show the results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/txZ1x.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At 9 times the fat burning power of low intensity exercise I know what i'm going to be doing to lose weight!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;** Edit **&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I need to clarify this.  The study above is trying to debunk some of the conventional wisdom about the fat burning potential of exercise regimes.  Two regimes were run, a low intensity study programme (ET) and a high intensity study programme (HIIT).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add another table from the link study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q2fcz.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;looking at the bottom row of the table, you can see that the ET group lost (ignoring the +/- to make the math easier) 4.5 subcutaneous skinfolds, whereas the HIIT group lost 13.9 subcutaneous skinfolds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ET programme resulted in more total time working out and used 120.4 +/- 31.0 MJ of energy.&#xA;The HIIT programme resulted in less total time working out and used 57.9 +/- 14.4 MJ of energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or from a percentage point of view the HIIT group did roughly 48%  (57.9/120.4 for the percentage) of the work that the ET group did, but the people on the HIIT study lost more body fat (note that average overall weight loss was virtually non-existant for both groups).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you now take that 48% and extrapolate it up to 100% it works out at an equivalent subcutaneous skinfolds loss of 28.99 (13.9/0.48), this equates to about 6.5 times as much subcutaneous skinfold loss.  Now i'm not a mathmatician, and I have only taken one row on the table into account without taking any standard deviations into account the the above workings out are going to be messy and inaccurate, but they should hopefully illustrate the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High impact workouts are better at reducing body fat than low impact workouts and the point of this study was to debunk the conventional wisdom given by health professionals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastEditorUserId="1791" LastEditDate="2011-04-21T22:37:10.967" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T22:37:10.967" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="450" CreationDate="2011-04-21T13:54:30.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The coriolis effect is correct, but the explanation fails to mention that the circulation you get is reversed if the fluid is being pushed outward from the center, rather than being pulled inward. That's why in the northern hemisphere, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_lows#Associated_weather&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;atmospheric lows have counter-clockwise circulation&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-pressure_area#Connection_to_wind&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;highs have clockwise&lt;/a&gt;, and it's reversed in the southern hemisphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think another useful explanation is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angular_momentum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;angular momentum&lt;/a&gt;. There is the usual image of a figure skater, when pulling in her arms and legs, spins faster, and slows down when extending them. Similarly, fluids at &quot;rest&quot; are actually sharing in the angular rotation of the Earth, which is counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere (to someone looking down toward the surface), and clockwise in the southern. So if the fluid is pulled into a center, that angular velocity is increased, and decreased if pushed outward. Of course, if some other force (like manually stirring the bucket) gives the fluid a different angular velocity, that will override the earth's angular velocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're wondering what happens near the equator, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertropical_Convergence_Zone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;check this out&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: An afterthought explanation: In rotational terms, the surface of the earth at the equator, and the air with it, is traveling eastward at about 1000 mph (25,000 m / 24 hr).&#xA;At 60 degrees latitude, north or south, it is traveling half that speed, and at the poles, zero.&#xA;So a parcel of air moving away from the equator is going to want to keep going eastward at the speed it was going,&#xA;and if it's toward the equator it's going want to go west.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since a low pressure area pulls air into it's center,&#xA;air coming from lower latitude will tend to move east,&#xA;while air coming from higher latitude will tend to move west.&#xA;There's your circulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="342" LastEditorUserId="342" LastEditDate="2011-05-22T18:46:32.230" LastActivityDate="2011-05-22T18:46:32.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2425" CreationDate="2011-04-21T14:43:32.230" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acefitness.org/blog/39/i-ve-heard-that-performing-aerobic-workouts-at-a/&quot;&gt;American Council on Exercise&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a &lt;strong&gt;30-minute aerobic exercise&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Low Intensity&lt;/strong&gt; (50% of maximum exercise capacity):&lt;br/&gt;  - you'll burn approx. &lt;strong&gt;200&#xA;  calories, 120 of them from Fat&#xA;  (60%)&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;High Intensity&lt;/strong&gt; (75% of&#xA;  maximum exercise capacity):&lt;br/&gt; - you'll burn approx. &lt;strong&gt;400 calories, 140 of&#xA;  them from Fat (35%)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;while it is true that a higher&#xA;  proportion of calories burned during&#xA;  low-intensity exercise come from fat&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  (about 60 percent as opposed to&#xA;  approximately 35 percent from&#xA;  high-intensity programs),&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;high-intensity exercise still burns&#xA;  more calories from fat in the final&#xA;  analysis&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/busting-the-great-myths-of-fat-burning.html&quot;&gt;Dummies.com&lt;/a&gt; concurs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... working at a lower intensity&#xA;  requires less quick energy and a&#xA;  higher percentage of fat is burned.&#xA;  But you'll also burn fewer calories&#xA;  than you would if, for the same amount&#xA;  of time, you work out at a harder&#xA;  intensity (e.g. running versus walking).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the same amount of time you&#xA;  don't use more calories at lower&#xA;  exercise intensities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you're trying&#xA;  to lose weight and you have only 30&#xA;  minutes to work out, you would burn&#xA;  fewer calories walking at a moderate&#xA;  pace compared to walking at a fast&#xA;  pace.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Working out at higher&#xA;  intensities may cause you to burn a&#xA;  lower percentage of fat, but since you&#xA;  burn more total calories, you still&#xA;  use more fat calories.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T14:43:32.230" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2430" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-21T17:55:45.043" Score="12" ViewCount="6560" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard the claim that Coffee is the most traded commodity in the world right after Oil. Is there any proof of that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also heard that coffee is the most consumed beverage after water? Any proof of that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2060" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T12:18:16.850" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T12:18:16.850" Title="Is Coffee the most traded commodity in the world after Oil?" Tags="|economics|marketing|coffee|drinks|commerce|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2417" CreationDate="2011-04-21T20:39:51.690" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not an answer in itself, but it’s too big for a comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just received a response from the company.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just as I received it, with the exception that I have removed names and the phone numbers included, I may add them later, once I am sure it won’t result in legal ramifications.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thank you for recent visit to&#xA;  Revairx.com.  We at Revairx are very&#xA;  excited about our product and what it&#xA;  can do to help your patients feel&#xA;  real, and permanent relief from their&#xA;  allergies and/or asthma.  Revairx is&#xA;  80% effective at treating patients&#xA;  with symptoms such as Eczema&#xA;  (including infants), conjunctivitis,&#xA;  rhinitis, animal allergies, headache,&#xA;  fatigue, chronic otitis, chronic&#xA;  sinusitis, chronic urticaria, etc... &#xA;  It is 90% effective with people&#xA;  suffering from asthma, and it is safe&#xA;  for all ages.   Sublingual&#xA;  Immunotherapy has been around for over&#xA;  100 years, and Revairx has been&#xA;  helping patients for over 25 years. I&#xA;  would love for the opportunity to&#xA;  speak to you live.  Please feel free&#xA;  to call me on my cell phone [REMOVED]&#xA;  Thank you, [REMOVED] AllergyEZ&#xA;  Director of Sales and Marketing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problems…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All of the obvious ones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lists a cell phone as a primary&#xA;contact for the company.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The last name of the person who is&#xA;identified as director of sales and&#xA;marketing is the same as that of the&#xA;person listed as living at the house&#xA;in Montana shown by google earth when&#xA;searching for the company’s address.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s fair to say that my level of suspicion has gone way past merely “dubious” with regards to this product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will be in contact with these individuals in an attempt to seek further information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am suspecting that I will likely be bringing this product and its claims to the attention of the appropriate regulatory agencies in the very near future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-04-21T20:48:20.030" LastActivityDate="2011-04-21T20:48:20.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="370" CreationDate="2011-04-22T00:00:42.500" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answers in this thread seem to be addressing HFCS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lustig does not differentiate from HFCS and Sugar in terms of what they do (he says, many times, that they are the same)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen studies that are cited in response to HFCS criticism that say it is metabolized and has effect similar to sugar and they all come down to one point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That excessive consumption of any sugar, be it HFCS, or table sugar, is bad&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lustig actually gives a number for excessive consumption when asked: 50g/day, and on average (in the US) consumption is well above this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while it is an issue of &quot;moderation&quot;, the problem is that we aren't moderating it, and in fact average sugar consumption per person is increasing. This is possibly due to sugar consumption making moderation difficult, having, when overconsumed, metabolism-breaking and addictive properties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17668074&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17668074&lt;/a&gt; (sweetness is shown to be as addictive as cocaine in rats)&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15763572&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15763572&lt;/a&gt; (sucrose shown to have similar effects to drugs of abuse in rats)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2066" LastEditorUserId="2066" LastEditDate="2011-04-22T00:30:49.667" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T00:30:49.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2438" CreationDate="2011-04-22T01:10:12.033" Score="14" ViewCount="521" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incandescent_light_bulb&quot;&gt;Incandescent light bulbs&lt;/a&gt; are now being &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_out_of_incandescent_light_bulbs&quot;&gt;phased out&lt;/a&gt; in many countries. In practice, the replacements are mostly &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp&quot;&gt;compact fluorescent lamps&lt;/a&gt; (CFL). In many cases, the energy savings created by CFLs justify this change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The used energy in incandescent light bulbs is turned almost entirely into heat. In many countries, heating is needed almost year round because of a cold climate. In some areas (the polar region), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/helsinki.html&quot;&gt;the sun shines through the night during the warmer months&lt;/a&gt;. Thus when heating isn't needed, neither is artificial light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CFLs are much more complicated and cost more than incandescent bulbs, so I figure their production might be more taxing on the environment. Is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are CFLs an ecological choice in polar regions? Are there other environmental benefits to them besides the lower energy consumption?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T17:12:02.727" Title="Are CFLs always more ecologic than incandescent light bulbs?" Tags="|environment|energy|compact-fluorescent-lamps|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2409" CreationDate="2011-04-22T04:15:01.817" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some economists have looked specifically at this question...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the paper &quot;Small business and job creation: dissecting the myth and reassessing the facts&quot; (from &lt;em&gt;Small Business Economics&lt;/em&gt; in 1996, link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=420303&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=420303&lt;/a&gt; but full paper behind a paywall)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their conclusions (from only the U.S. manufacturing sector between 1972 and 1988) were that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Large firms dominate both job creation and destruction&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gross job creation and destruction are higher for smaller firms&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Net job creation rates don't show a strong relationship to firm size&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it sounds like, at least for manufacturing, gross job creation may be higher for small firms, but gross job destruction is also higher, meaning that net, there's not an advantage for small businesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1941" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T04:15:01.817" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2437" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-22T04:44:13.980" Score="1" ViewCount="248" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/402/is-there-any-evidence-for-acupuncture-being-an-effective-treatment&quot;&gt;Is there any evidence for acupuncture being an effective treatment?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=10254&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; to the article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have fallen for the article. And now I want to know does acupuncture work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2071" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T18:09:41.077" Title="Does acupuncture work?" Tags="|medical-science|acupuncture|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2011-04-22T07:02:33.490" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2435" CreationDate="2011-04-22T07:40:06.050" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using electricity for heat is a bad idea if you get your electricity from burning fossil fuels.  For example, the efficiency of a combined cycle natural gas turbine is at best &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalgas.org/overview/uses_eletrical.asp&quot;&gt;around 60%&lt;/a&gt; (this is the best commonly used technology available).  Natural gas space heaters are over 80% efficient (see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.houseneeds.com/shop/atop/productdirectventheaters.asp&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).  So even if you have a use for the waste heat from your lighting, it's inefficient to generate heat from electricity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If all your energy comes from nuclear power, wind, hydro, or solar, then it is reasonable to simply use incandescent bulbs.  Otherwise, you should preferentially use fossil fuels for heating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T07:40:06.050" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2439" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2440" CreationDate="2011-04-22T09:22:17.317" Score="32" ViewCount="3876" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/science/13micro.html?_r=3&amp;amp;pagewanted=all&quot;&gt;article in the NY times&lt;/a&gt; about microbes and their interaction with our bodies contained the following statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have over 10 times more microbes than human cells in our bodies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a bit skeptical about that statement. It compares microbes to human cells, but since the article describes DNA analysis methods to describe our microbiome, is the statement really about genetic material and not cell number? Where can I find additional material on this subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2075" LastEditorUserId="2075" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T08:20:57.373" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T20:25:37.967" Title="Do we have 10 times more microbes than human cells in our body?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2439" CreationDate="2011-04-22T11:05:58.350" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6011/1619.summary&quot;&gt;Elizabeth Pennisi&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/&quot;&gt;Science Magazine&lt;/a&gt;, 2010)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This past decade has seen a shift in&#xA;  how we see the microbes and viruses in&#xA;  and on our bodies. There is increasing&#xA;  acceptance that they are us, and for&#xA;  good reason. &lt;strong&gt;Nine in 10 of the cells&#xA;  in the body are microbial. In the gut&#xA;  alone, as many as 1000 species bring&#xA;  to the body 100 times as many genes as&#xA;  our own DNA carries.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Their genes and ours make up a&#xA;  metagenome that keeps the body&#xA;  functioning. This past decade we’ve&#xA;  begun to see how microbial genes&#xA;  affect how much energy we absorb from&#xA;  our foods and how microbes and viruses&#xA;  help to prime the immune system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ideas of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microbiome&quot;&gt;microbiome&lt;/a&gt; and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.genomenewsnetwork.org/articles/06_03/virome.shtml&quot;&gt;virome&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  didn’t even exist a decade ago. But&#xA;  now researchers have reason to hope&#xA;  they may one day manipulate the body’s&#xA;  viral and microbial inhabitants to&#xA;  improve health and fight sickness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://discovermagazine.com/2011/mar/04-trillions-microbes-call-us-home-help-keep-healthy&quot;&gt;Discover Magazine&lt;/a&gt; (2011)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are 20 times as many of these&#xA;  microbes as there are cells in the&#xA;  body&lt;/strong&gt;, up to 200 trillion in an adult,&#xA;  and each of us hosts at least 1,000&#xA;  different species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... a person is not so much an individual&#xA;  human body as a superorganism made up&#xA;  of diverse ecosystems, each teeming&#xA;  with microscopic creatures that are&#xA;  essential to our well-being.&#xA;  &lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two of the largest efforts [to use genetic sequencing to explore how the ­diversity of the microbiome impacts our health] are the&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hmpdacc.org/&quot;&gt;Human Microbiome Project&lt;/a&gt;, funded by&#xA;  the National Institutes of Health, and&#xA;  the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metahit.eu/index.php?id=351&quot;&gt;European Union’s Metagenomics of&#xA;  the Human Intestinal Tract&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although&#xA;  these groups have only just begun to&#xA;  publish their findings, it is already&#xA;  clear that &lt;strong&gt;the micro­biome is much&#xA;  more complex and very likely more&#xA;  critical to human health than anyone&#xA;  suspected.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify a possible point of confusion, microbial biomass is only a small portion of a human body's mass, due to the small size of bacterial cells relative to human cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/100-trillion-good-bacteria-call-human-body-home-3683153.php&quot;&gt;San Francisco Chronicle&lt;/a&gt; (2012):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The human body carries more than 100 trillion bacteria - up to five pounds of the tiny &gt;single-celled organisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="16282" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T02:56:05.980" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T02:56:05.980" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2441" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2449" CreationDate="2011-04-22T11:19:06.970" Score="26" ViewCount="11519" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard of claims that aphids can be born pregnant, like tribbles in ''Star Trek''.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, doing a web search didn't provide very convincing evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/911/are-aphids-born-pregnant&quot;&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; refers to being pregnant before birth as paedogenesis. The Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paedogenesis&quot;&gt;paedogenesis&lt;/a&gt; has no citations on pregnancy before birth (it does, however, have a citation on male offspring eating its mother!). It also states that the term also refers to animals that get pregnant before they're fully sexually mature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphid&quot;&gt;Aphids&lt;/a&gt; refers to the phenomenon as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescoping_generations&quot;&gt;Telescoping generations&lt;/a&gt;, which is a single paragraph stub article that has no citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching for paedogenesis in pubmed only got 8 hits. (Is pubmed an appropriate tool for such a search?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are animals being born pregnant well-established but little discussed, or is is yet to be well-established?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: I'm referring to organisms being pregnant to their own offspring, rather than &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2987963.stm&quot;&gt;accidentally being pregnant with their own siblings&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2019-08-23T02:24:08.977" Title="Are some species of animals born pregnant?" Tags="|biology|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2442" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2444" CreationDate="2011-04-22T11:45:24.017" Score="38" ViewCount="6679" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been to astrologers couple of times. Once, whatever he said worked. Not sure if it is a coincidence. Does astrology work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2011-05-22T21:41:14.103" LastActivityDate="2022-05-11T11:47:43.850" Title="Does astrology work?" Tags="|psychology|astrology|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="18" ClosedDate="2022-05-12T13:16:02.703" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2442" CreationDate="2011-04-22T12:35:38.667" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;A guy named Shawn Carlson conducted a study, published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v318/n6045/pdf/318419a0.pdf&quot;&gt;Nature&lt;/a&gt; on December 5, 1985.  Unfortunately, that link is a paywall.  There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychicinvestigator.com/demo/AstroSkc.htm&quot;&gt;a description available&lt;/a&gt;, unfortunately not as authoritative.  Essentially, he let astrologers test themselves, by setting up a test where they would use natal charts to predict peoples' scores on standardized personality tests.  He picked thirty astrologers that were considered good by their peers.  He appears to have given astrologers every chance to prove themselves right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As people reading this might guess, the results were indistinguishable from chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T12:35:38.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2442" CreationDate="2011-04-22T13:02:13.267" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr. Phil Plait, and Astronomer, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/astrology.html&quot;&gt;has a great write up that debunks astrology&lt;/a&gt; (I cannot encourage you enough to read that page (or the google cache of it).)  Sadly his web page seems to be down, &lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.badastronomy.com%2Fbad%2Fmisc%2Fastrology.html&quot;&gt;so here’s the Google Cache copy of the same page&lt;/a&gt;.  After a long discussion and research (with sources), he concludes with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no force, known or unknown, that could possibly affect us here on Earth the way astrologers claim. Known forces weaken too fast, letting one source utterly dominate (the Moon for gravity, the Sun for electromagnetism). An unknown force would allow asteroids and extrasolar planets to totally overwhelm the nearby planets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Astrologers tend to rely on our ability to remember hits and forget misses. Even an accurate prediction may be simple chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Study after study has shown that claims and predictions made by astrologers have no merit. They are indistinguishable from chance, which means astrologers cannot claim to have some ability to predict your life's path.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is harm, real harm, in astrology. It weakens further people's ability to rationally look at the world, an ability we need now more than ever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's look at other places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to look at this scientifically though, the first questions to ask:  By what mechanism does this work?  Why are predictions always very vague?  And if the questions are specific, why are they no better than cold reading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://daphne.palomar.edu/jgilardi/astrology%20debunk.htm&quot;&gt;Emily Lu&lt;/a&gt; from the Palomar observatory (another Astronomy site) makes these great observations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the scientific knowledge that we have gained in recent history, there is little reason to place much trust in the notion that the Sun, Moon, or planets will affect your day to day life. Five thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) Distances. As anyone who has taken introductory physics should know, the force of gravity goes with the inverse square of the distance... i.e., the further a body is from you, the less it will affect you. Remember how far away Earth is from the Sun, Moon, and planets (hint: MILLIONS of miles). Though the person who delivered you at birth may be much less massive than any celestial body, they are much closer and would certainly affect you more than the positions of the planets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) Other influences. For argument’s sake, let’s say that there is some unknown force that far-away celestial bodies do exert. The laws of physics have yet to be completely understood, so I’ll concede that it may be possible that there is something that works independently of distance and might influence the lives of people. But if that force is not distance dependent, why aren’t stars, galaxies, quasars, or black holes included in astrological forecasts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. The three outermost planets were only discovered within the past three centuries. How does that work with the claim that astrologers make about the accuracy of their art for previous times?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4) Precession of the Earth. Due to the slight wobbling of the Earth’s axis, the current position of objects in the zodiac circle are no longer consistent with the tenets of astrology set up thousands of years ago. Your &quot;sun sign&quot; is actually currently shifted over by one (i.e., a Leo is really a Cancer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5) Build me a house of ham. If you’ve thought about the human reproductive process, you know that a baby spends about 9 months gestating in the mother’s womb before it is born. Why, then, does your birth time matter? Shouldn’t it really be the time of conception that would affect who the baby is to become? Or is it that the muscular lining of the mother protects the fetus from all external forces? In that case, shouldn’t a ham enclosure do the trick? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dp2Zqk8vHw&amp;amp;feature=player_embedded&quot;&gt;James Randi has a great video on the subject as well&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImaQS9NJ0nI&amp;amp;feature=player_embedded&quot;&gt;Also, here is an old video from Carl Sagan's Cosmos series that deals with Astrology.&lt;/a&gt;  Note how he is reading the same astrology sign from multiple papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ninjerktsu.blogspot.com/2011/01/carl-sagan-and-his-fully-armed.html&quot;&gt;For some humour on the subject, check out this comic (not totally relevant, but funny none the less since I mentioned Carl Sagan).&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, any sort of &quot;debunking&quot; of this fervent wish by believers will meet with resistance.  There will be explanations and rationalizations, but much like any &quot;psychic&quot;, there is no distinguishing this from chance, or the art of cold reading (should you be visiting an astrologer).  Confirmation bias will do the rest for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, keep in mind that astrology has tried to legitimize itself in complexity.  Thus there is no single one answer or smoking gun that can be used to talk about it.  Rather, a myriad of answers are required to fully understand what is going on.  The human brain's pattern recognition software is poor in this sense, and that is why people will fall for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-04-22T16:16:35.490" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T16:16:35.490" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1941" CreationDate="2011-04-22T13:19:34.913" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Orange zest itself is not poisonous.  The rind has a lot of citrus oils in it, and intensifies the orange flavour a great deal.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.recipetips.com/recipe-cards/t--2129/candied-orange-zest.asp&quot;&gt;Hence, many recipes call for orange zest as an ingredient&lt;/a&gt;.  As a matter of fact, it is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/orange-marmalade-recipe/index.html&quot;&gt;primary ingredient in orange marmalade&lt;/a&gt;.  The white part of an orange peel (the pith) is very bitter, &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1976/2&quot;&gt;but not poisonous&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are going to use an orange to make some sort of zest, a very thorough washing and scrubbing would be in order.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/oranges-are-not-the-safest-fruit--they-all-exceed-pesticide-limits-519954.html&quot;&gt;The Independent of the UK had an article talking about the rinds of oranges having a great deal of pesticide on them&lt;/a&gt;.  And this would stand to reason since generally the rind is thrown away when most people consume oranges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Checks by the Government Pesticides Residues Committee have found that every single orange examined was contaminated by pesticides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many of the chemicals found are suspected of causing cancer and &quot;gender-bender effects&quot;, about half are banned for use in Britain, and more than a third were found at levels above European or British danger limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two of the pesticides - Carbofuran and Methidathion, banned in Britain - are classified by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as &quot;highly hazardous&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the method of preservation, that varies widely by country, and even region.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/food/resourcesforyou/consumers/ucm114299&quot;&gt;Some areas only use a wax which is safe according to the FDA&lt;/a&gt; (although may feel and taste gross if you eat it).  As their web page indicates&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why are wax coatings used on fruits and vegetables?&#xA;  Many vegetables and fruits make their own natural waxy coating. After harvest, fresh produce may be washed to clean off dirt and soil - but such washing also removes the natural wax. Therefore, waxes are applied to some produce to replace the natural waxes that are lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wax coatings help retain moisture to maintain quality from farm to table including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;when produce is shipped from farm to&#xA;  market&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;while it is in the stores and restaurants&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;once it is in the home&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Waxes also help inhibit mold growth, protect produce from bruising, prevent other physical damage and disease, and enhance appearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How are waxes applied?&#xA;  Waxes are used only in tiny amounts to provide a microscopic coating surrounding the entire product. Each piece of waxed produce has only a drop or two of wax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coatings used on fruits and vegetables must meet FDA food additive regulations for safety. Produce shippers and supermarkets in the United States are required by federal law to label fresh fruits and vegetables that have been waxed so you will know whether the produce you buy is coated. Watch for signs that say: &quot;Coated with food-grade vegetable-, petroleum-, beeswax-, or shellac- based wax or resin, to maintain freshness.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise you will have to get specific on the preservative you are concerned about.  You have not provided enough information to answer the question fully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-04-22T18:01:14.920" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T18:01:14.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2441" CreationDate="2011-04-22T13:20:07.293" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;sexual reproduction would exclude the possibility (as there'd be no way to impregnate them prenatally, obviously, unless you want to have offspring impregnated by their own fathers by encapsulting some of their semen into their bodies during gestation), so you should limit your search to those creatures reproducing a-sexually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest I could find quickly was the budding of jellyfish, but that's not really the same.&#xA;Here a single polyp splits into multiple young jellyfish over time.&#xA;This is asexual reproduction of a polyp which is itself the result of sexual reproduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nice description (with a diagram) on wikipedia: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellyfish&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellyfish&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;More info confirming this on &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wildsingapore.com/wildfacts/cnidaria/others/jellyfish/jellyfish.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wildsingapore.com/wildfacts/cnidaria/others/jellyfish/jellyfish.htm&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/creature-cast/more_budding_jelly_babies&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fusionanomaly.net/jellyfish.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fusionanomaly.net/jellyfish.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T13:20:07.293" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2442" CreationDate="2011-04-22T14:53:00.760" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two claims astrologers make. First, that they can use it to predict the future:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.ca/#q=astrology+predictions+for+2011&amp;amp;fp=1&quot;&gt;Google&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, that your zodiac sign and date of birth tell something about your character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first claim is so inane that I do not think it needs much debunking. It is a mixture of self-fulfilling prophecies and overly vague statements. And, more often than not, it simply fails. Shouldn't astrologers otherwise be able to foresee natural disasters with astonishing precision? It is noteworthy that a lot of astrologers adhering to the second claim shun the first claim in an attempt to strengthen their credibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second claim is easily debunked in experiment: Here is Derren Brown doing a nice little experiment: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haP7Ys9ocTk&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haP7Ys9ocTk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In brief: He writes &quot;personal readings&quot; for his test subjects and asks them to rate the accuracy of these readings. His readings get extremely high accuracy ratings (80 - 100 %), but it turns out that he has provided everyone with &lt;em&gt;exactly the same&lt;/em&gt; reading. This is because he uses so called Barnum statements, also called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect&quot;&gt;Forer effect&lt;/a&gt; (The Wikipedia article has a link to the original work by Forer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="1183" LastEditDate="2011-04-23T02:06:48.757" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T02:06:48.757" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2441" CreationDate="2011-04-22T17:31:58.517" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good tool to use for this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt;.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;amp;q=aphid+born+pregnant&amp;amp;btnG=Search&amp;amp;as_sdt=0%2C21&amp;amp;as_ylo=&amp;amp;as_vis=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;first hit&lt;/a&gt; revealed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2974440/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; which claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most aphids are born pregnant and beget females without wastrel males. ... Embryos complete development within the mother’s ovary one after another, in assembly line fashion. These developing embryos contain developing embryos of the third generation within them, like Russian dolls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second hit is &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20100613214125/http://agronomy.cfans.umn.edu/sites/1e65c3d9-ce73-46af-a196-12323314ecc5/uploads/ragsdalesbabiology.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an interesting set of slides on the subject&lt;/a&gt;, called &quot;Aphid biology and life history: Implications for management.&quot;, and says &quot;Live birth, born pregnant&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="26361" LastEditDate="2019-08-22T05:07:58.540" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T05:07:58.540" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2450" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-22T17:37:39.807" Score="48" ViewCount="13338" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim that Hitler and the Nazis were obsessed with the occult is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=stripbooks&amp;amp;field-keywords=nazi%20occult&amp;amp;x=0&amp;amp;y=0&quot;&gt;embedded&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CCEQtwIwAA&amp;amp;url=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4360800110742625275&amp;amp;ei=5vexTeDbG6rt0gH-yICzDw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNHVE8mLJ20o143M6rk8h3IFzmqohA&amp;amp;sig2=3u4ygD21hQ8QTMbpkGXpYA&quot;&gt;in&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism_and_occultism&quot;&gt;our&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0195938/combined&quot;&gt;pop&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082971/combined&quot;&gt;culture&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097576/combined&quot;&gt;now&lt;/a&gt;, and often repeated in documentaries as if it is an established fact. (At least in the kinds of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Occult_History_of_the_Third_Reich&quot;&gt;documentaries&lt;/a&gt; that run on the History Channel.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am familiar with Otto Rahn, the German medievalist who was inducted into the SS and instructed to do research on the connection between German and French Grail traditions. What I've never seen any proof that Rahn's research was funded because of a belief in the occult, as opposed to the more political aim of proving some sort of territorial claim over France, however tenuous. I'd love some sort of primary reference as to Himmler's exact motives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the larger Nazi/occult claim? Do we have writings by Hitler or other high ranking Nazi officials on the subject of the occult? Is there good evidence that the Nazis actually expended significant manpower and money to find the Holy Grail or the Spear of Destiny? Obviously, I mean beyond the usual looting of museums that goes on in any conquest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="1343" LastEditDate="2011-04-22T21:53:46.357" LastActivityDate="2015-11-13T10:15:24.477" Title="Were Hitler and the Nazis obsessed with the occult?" Tags="|history|world-war-ii|adolf-hitler|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1941" CreationDate="2011-04-22T17:41:39.337" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether or not you can 'wash' off a pesticide/fungicide/preservative is a function of its water solubility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the cases of something which is water soluble, yes, a simple wash will suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20201101223107/http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/carbaryl-dicrotophos/carbofuran-ext.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carbofuran&lt;/a&gt; is water soluble, and its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/m760kvkr1x848163/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;half-life&lt;/a&gt; in mature fruit was estimated at 4 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20210508103640/http://extoxnet.orst.edu/pips/methidat.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Methidathion&lt;/a&gt; is also water soluble:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oranges sprayed with Supracide at a&#xA;rate of nearly 2 pounds per acre had&#xA;residues of the compound of about 0.1&#xA;ug/ml [81]. Within 2 days over 60% of&#xA;the compound was removed from the&#xA;outside of the fruit, and within 1&#xA;week, less than 1% of the compound&#xA;remained&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other produce which might be treated with an insoluble chemical compound, you can try using a vinegar wash.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6T6P-43C5J5G-F&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=08/31/2001&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_searchStrId=1727672395&amp;amp;_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=f8ab89d0a105cc1cd253df58158c34e6&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; on potatoes indicates that washing removes most compounds, as does peeling and food cooking/preparation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/07/24/ST2008072403523.html?ref=us&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carbofuran&lt;/a&gt; is no longer permitted to be used on fruits in the US, nor be present on fruits imported to the US. It is also not permitted in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2007:156:0030:0031:EN:PDF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EU&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there is a very simple manner in which you can guarantee no pesticide/fungicide/preservative contamination of your food: buy organic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I make cakes or pies which require lemon, lime or orange zest, I buy organic.  Then I don't have to worry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, given the short half-lives of these compounds on the fruits, it would be difficult (albeit not entirely impossible if someone ate 10 crates of orange zest) to be poisoned by the residue left on the zest. The same follows for any wax compound: it's a matter of the amount sprayed (which is regulated differently by country) and the amount of time it's left on the fruit.  Some waxes (beeswax) are natural products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org.molly.ruc.dk/doi/pdf/10.1021/jf950230a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;waxes&lt;/a&gt; are commonly used in citrus handling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The coatings used in this work were as&#xA;follows: Britex 505 (Brogde Co.,&#xA;Pomona, CA); PacRite-StorRite 101,&#xA;which contained polyethylene and&#xA;shellac, and  PacRite-SunShine, which&#xA;contained shellac (American Machinery&#xA;Corp.,Orlando, FL); Primafresh 30,&#xA;which contained carnauba wax and&#xA;shellac (Johnson Wax Co., Racine,&#xA;Canada); Decco Lustr 202, which&#xA;contained natural and synthetic waxes&#xA;and fatty acids (ELF Atochem North&#xA;America Inc., Munrovia, CA); and&#xA;Natural Zivdar, which contained a&#xA;carnauba wax emulsion,and  Industrial&#xA;Zivdar, which contained a polyethylene&#xA;emulsion (Saif-Pac Ltd., Kfar-Saba,&#xA;Israel)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any coating with carnauba wax will not rinse off in water, nor will it wash off with vinegar. It is soluble in ether, but that's not a big help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any coating with shellac will not rinse off in water. You will need to use an baking soda (alkaline compound) to remove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.michelman.com/solutions/michem-emulsion/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;polyethylene emulsion&lt;/a&gt; will depend on the particular compound used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-06-18T13:28:26.310" LastActivityDate="2022-06-18T13:28:26.310" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2334" CreationDate="2011-04-22T20:23:21.827" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is actually pretty hard to research because of the huge pile of papers that has been touching this subject in one way or another, but also because of paywalls. I haven't found anything that directly answers your question, but I have found a lot of things about how pornographic consumption (possibly) influences our attitudes and behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://crx.sagepub.com/content/37/3/375.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Processes Underlying the Effects of Adolescents’ Use of Sexually Explicit Internet Material: The Role of Perceived Realism&lt;/a&gt; would be interesting to dig into if it wasn't paywalled:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although research has repeatedly demonstrated a link between adolescents’ exposure to sexually explicit Internet material (SEIM) and sexual attitudes, the processes underlying this association are not well understood. [ .. ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17851749/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Self-Perceived Effects of Pornography Consumption&lt;/a&gt; reports on self-perceived influences from hardcore pornography among the Danish &lt;em&gt;consumers&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography_in_Denmark&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Denmark was supposedly the first country to legalize pornography in 1969&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The self-perceived effects of “hardcore” pornography consumption were studied in a large representative sample of young adult Danish men and women aged 18–30. [ .. ] we conclude that the overall findings suggest that many young Danish adults believe that pornography has had primarily a positive effect on various aspects of their lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-010-9714-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Associations Between Online Pornography and Sexual Behavior Among Adolescents: Myth or Reality?&lt;/a&gt; also noted that the only change in behavior was men who watch porn were less likely to use a condom:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risky sexual behaviors were not associated with online pornography exposure in any of the groups, except that males who were exposed (deliberately or not) had higher odds of not having used a condom at last intercourse. Bi/homosexual orientation and Internet use parameters were not associated either. Additionally, males in the wanted exposure group were more likely to be sensation-seekers. On the other hand, exposed girls were more likely to be students, higher sensation-seekers, early maturers, and to have a highly educated father. We conclude that pornography exposure is not associated with risky sexual behaviors and that the willingness of exposure does not seem to have an impact on risky sexual behaviors among adolescents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another Danish study &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-006-9064-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gender Differences in Pornography Consumption among Young Heterosexual Danish Adults&lt;/a&gt; comments on correlations with pornographic consumption from a sample of 688 Danes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[ .. ] Male gender, higher frequency of masturbation, lower age at first exposure, and younger age were found to account for 48.8% of the total variance of pornography consumption. [ .. ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary there's lots of differences in behavior between those that consume porn and those that don't, though they seem to be largely positive (although I didn't bother reading the papers related to crime.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I don't understand with the claim you quotes is why she is singling out men, when no small portion of women are exposed to porn (voluntarily and involuntarily) as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also don't understand why she is singling out porn when we are all ugly hobos compared to movie stars. Moreso if we can't detach fiction from reality, wouldn't we all walk around in life constantly disappointed at how the actual world is uglier than on TV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I might revisit this later, because the volume of research available on this is to much to go through in one sitting.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-05-17T21:53:05.143" LastActivityDate="2022-05-17T21:53:05.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2455" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2548" CreationDate="2011-04-22T21:35:14.550" Score="27" ViewCount="9005" Body="&lt;p&gt;Much like the question here about &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2370/are-there-reptilian-creatures-hosting-the-news&quot;&gt;reptilians hosting the news&lt;/a&gt;, I thought that there could not possibly be people who would make claims like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some searching proved me wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not particularly prevalent, there are more than a few people out there making the claim that they can survive (and remain perfectly healthy) for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asylum.com/2010/04/30/breatharian-says-hes-not-had-food-or-drink-in-70-years/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sometimes up to 70 years&lt;/a&gt; without any food and water.  However, apparently not all can achieve this degree of success, &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.breatharian.info/viewtopic.php?p=383&amp;amp;sid=0d5087ffefa71c2d89c429a9074abbcb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;and claim various ranges&lt;/a&gt;.  Some claim that they &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.angelfire.com/stars3/breathe_light/breatharianism.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;live solely on light and air&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record, there are some who call themselves &amp;quot;breatharians&amp;quot; and some who call themselves &amp;quot;inediates&amp;quot;.  I am not sure which is the preferred term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They include pages like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.angelfire.com/stars3/breathe_light/proof.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; as &amp;quot;evidence&amp;quot; for their claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some are kind enough to be willing to give their secrets freely to the public as a &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20121019164612/http://niejedzenie.info/english/text/lswf.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pdf file&lt;/a&gt; which they encourage the reader to share freely, since presumably the author has no need to waste his income on trivialities such as food or a monthly water bill.  However, there are others who offer &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breatharian.com/immortalityworkshop.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;classes for $10,000 USD&lt;/a&gt;, but throw in immortality as an added bonus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found that the &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breatharian.com/wileybrooks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Breatharian Institute of America&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; also spouts a rapid-fire &lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gish gallop&lt;/a&gt; of other &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breatharian.com/home.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; but I want to limit this question to just the scientific evidence as to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to live while&#xA;remaining healthy, without eating or&#xA;drinking for these extreme periods of&#xA;time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Has any particular individual making&#xA;these claims been subjected to&#xA;scientific study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that this is (pun intended) low-hanging fruit, but I haven't seen the question addressed here yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-12-07T03:23:28.980" LastActivityDate="2021-12-07T03:23:28.980" Title="Can &quot;breatharians&quot; live without food or water?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2456" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2463" CreationDate="2011-04-22T22:16:08.257" Score="19" ViewCount="1144" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hydraulicfracturing.com/Pages/information.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;industry website&lt;/a&gt; the process of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hydraulic Fracturing&lt;/a&gt; (or &quot;fracking&quot;) is safe.  According to an article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/10/fracking-epa-plans-to-exa_n_821011.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt; the process is not safe.  At least, there is evidence the process is not safe.  Have any independent studies been done on the issue?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related question:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5629/does-fracking-cause-earthquakes&quot;&gt;Does &amp;quot;fracking&amp;quot; cause earthquakes?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2085" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T15:52:43.163" Title="Does hydraulic fracking endanger the drinking water supply?" Tags="|water|environment|fracking|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2457" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2481" CreationDate="2011-04-22T22:38:58.383" Score="10" ViewCount="548" Body="&lt;p&gt;Various countries have forms of reservations (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reservations In India&lt;/a&gt;, many employment and educational opportunities are &quot;reserved&quot; for persons of &quot;disadvantaged&quot; birth (i.e. low caste, backward classes etc.)). I understand that the US has Affirmative Action programs, which reward companies hiring people from minority communities. What evidence is there to support that these policies are successful at achieving their goals (i.e. rise in financial conditions/social standing for the target communities)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-01-14T01:30:11.427" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T01:30:11.427" Title="Are reservations/Affirmative action programs successful at alleviating financial conditions/social standing?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2469" CreationDate="2011-04-22T22:49:22.670" Score="15" ViewCount="16108" Body="&lt;p&gt;Moult studies have shown the control power our brain has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From relaxing yourself, to decreasing your breathing rhythm and auto-hypnotizing yourself to sleep (all three of which I have experienced), we have a lot of control on our bodies and functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard (no sources to back this claim up) that one is unable to commit suicide by not breathing if in an oxygen-ful environment. The reason I heard is that one may stop breathing until passing out, but then &lt;em&gt;normal&lt;/em&gt; operation mode resumes once you are passed out: one starts breathing again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we have so much control on our bodily functions, shouldn't it theoretically be possible to commit suicide by &lt;em&gt;requesting a brain shutdown&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The heart is an automatic organ which does not need a brain to function. So stopping one's heart by will isn't possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The brain on the other hand, is easily tricked and hypnotized. Which makes me wonder if someone suffering from severe depression could hypnotize themselves / meditate into a coma which may end in death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I assuming too much power to our brain bodily function controls? Or, on the other hand, do my claims seem feasible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2086" LastActivityDate="2022-04-08T18:18:28.570" Title="Is suicide through thought possible?" Tags="|neurology|depression|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2459" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-22T23:09:54.987" Score="15" ViewCount="2902" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the weight loss program from &lt;a href=&quot;http://jennycraig.com/programs/program_options/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jenny Craig Inc.&lt;/a&gt; work in helping people lose weight and keep it off?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Borrowing the same criteria as in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/712/does-the-atkins-diet-work&quot;&gt;Does the Atkins diet work?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My question is, does this diet lead to substantial weight loss, say a 25% reduction for an obese male, without any serious adverse side affects. By serious, I mean things that would kill you. For instance a statistically significant increased risk of heart attack or cancer is a serious side affect. Also, for the purposes of this question, for a diet to &quot;work&quot; the weight has to stay down and not come back in 12-36 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2020-05-19T09:06:45.693" Title="Does Jenny Craig's weight loss program work?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2442" CreationDate="2011-04-22T23:17:25.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may find this issue of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tricksterbook.com/truzzi/ZS-TablesOfContents/ZS9-TableOfContents.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zetetic Scholar&lt;/a&gt; relevant. It contains an interesting article on the &quot;Mars effect&quot;. This revolves around &lt;a href=&quot;http://cura.free.fr/xv/14starbb.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sTARBABY&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No. Astrology doesn't work.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The links above discuss a scientific investigation of the influence of Mars on sports performance and a discussion of the sTARBABY case. The Zetetic Scholar was set up by one of the founders of CSICOP (Marcello Truzzi) to encourage communication between advocates and counter-advocates of the paranormal. The article includes commentary by IJ Good, Hans Eysenck, Piet Hein Hoebens etc.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And no. Astrology doesn't work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2087" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-23T08:49:14.550" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T08:49:14.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2458" CreationDate="2011-04-22T23:35:42.477" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breathing#Interaction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;not possible to stop breathing voluntarily.&lt;/a&gt; Unless there is a serious medical condition (e.g., sleep apnea) this is ruled out.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I assume you are talking of some sort of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;nocebo effect,&lt;/a&gt; which is voluntary. I believe nature has built life to preserve itself, hence what you are talking is not natural. This is why, most of the life sustenance operations are involuntary, not controlled by brain. If it were, the entire &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.euthanasia.com/argumentsagainsteuthanasia.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;euthanasia&lt;/a&gt; debate would be irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="742" LastActivityDate="2011-04-22T23:35:42.477" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2441" CreationDate="2011-04-23T01:02:04.420" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some gall midges, the larvae develop inside the mother even before she is mature (pupal paedogenesis). Stephen Jay Gould wrote about them in 'Ever Since Darwin,' which you can find from google books at this large link: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=_VCnI02FwHAC&amp;amp;pg=PA91&amp;amp;lpg=PA91&amp;amp;dq=gall+midges+stephen+jay+gould&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=KOHnKuFWFt&amp;amp;sig=irJkYgdR23KARbO8MGXh-8Qe_f0&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=eySyTdi-Eojh0QHH_-SbBg&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;sqi=2&amp;amp;ved=0CBgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://books.google.com/books?id=_VCnI02FwHAC&amp;amp;pg=PA91&amp;amp;lpg=PA91&amp;amp;dq=gall+midges+stephen+jay+gould&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=KOHnKuFWFt&amp;amp;sig=irJkYgdR23KARbO8MGXh-8Qe_f0&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=eySyTdi-Eojh0QHH_-SbBg&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;sqi=2&amp;amp;ved=0CBgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2089" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T01:02:04.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2456" CreationDate="2011-04-23T01:42:57.873" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The EPA studied the subject in 2005, and produced a report which, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/info%3adoi/10.1289/ehp.118-a199&quot;&gt;this article in Environmental Health Perspectives&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2005 Congress exempted fracking from regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act partly on the basis of the EPA report Evaluation of Impacts to Underground Sources of Drinking Water by Hydraulic Fracturing of Coalbed Methane Reservoirs. The authors of this report wrote that hydraulic fracturing poses “minimal threat” to drinking water and that “additional or further study is not warranted at this time.” However, the study involved no direct monitoring of water wells but instead relied on existing peer-reviewed literature and interviews with industry and state and local government officials. It also was strictly limited to one specific type of drilling and did not address the effects in substrates other than coalbeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the process of fracking has become more common and is used in many contexts other than coalbeds, the EPA is revisiting the issue with a new study that is scheduled to be released in late 2012 (Cite: &lt;a href=&quot;http://water.epa.gov/type/groundwater/uic/class2/hydraulicfracturing/index.cfm&quot;&gt;http://water.epa.gov/type/groundwater/uic/class2/hydraulicfracturing/index.cfm&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fracking undoubtedly contains substances that are hazardous to human health - the question really revolves around whether those substances reach surface or ground-water, then to humans... it seems like there are some ways for this to happen, and earlier fracking studies may have looked at properly-protected wells and less at the field epidemiology around the wells. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1941" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T01:42:57.873" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2430" CreationDate="2011-04-23T01:59:21.397" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first claim &lt;strong&gt;is definitely wrong for 2007 as far as trading value&lt;/strong&gt;, based on data in &lt;a href=&quot;http://comtrade.un.org/pb/CommodityPages.aspx?y=2007&quot;&gt;http://comtrade.un.org/pb/CommodityPages.aspx?y=2007&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The summary below (based on that URL) is quoted from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.entrepreneur.com/tradejournals/article/198849799_1.html&quot;&gt;an article by Mark Pendergrast&lt;/a&gt; &quot;Coffee second only to oil? Is coffee really the second largest commodity? Mark Pendergrast investigates and finds some startling...&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that the author is quite possible the original source of the meme/quote: In the introduction to &quot;Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World (Basic Books, 1999)&quot;, he wrote: &quot;Coffee is the second most valuable exported legal commodity on earth (after oil).&quot;. That book is listed as the main reference for the claim on Wikipedia, alongside the link to Mark's 2007 article refuting the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as far as his investigations in 2007:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The comparison with oil implies that we need to take into account not just agricultural products but other mineral commodities. This led me to the UN Comtrade website, which covers many different products (http://comtrade.un.org/pb/CommodityPa ges.aspx?y=2007). Sure enough, for the year 2007 (the latest available Comtrade tables), &quot;petroleum oils and oils obtained from bituminous minerals, crude lead the pack at $1.09 trillion, while petroleum oils (non-crude) amount to $495 billion. Natural gas is $200 billion. Copper is $120 billion, not to mention an additional $38 billion listed under &quot;copper ores and concentrates; copper mattes, copper cement.&quot; Aluminum is $116 billion, plus aluminum ores and concentrates for another $16.5 billion. Gold (non-monetary, excluding gold ores and concentrates) is $87 billion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eventually we get down to vegetable matter of one sort or another. The Comtrade list goes on and on. &quot;Wheat (including spelt) and meslin, unmilled&quot; accounts for $32.9 billion (but compare that with the FAO figure of $49.5 billion for wheat and flour in 2006). &quot;Cotton fabrics, woven,&quot; yield $25.5 billion. Meat (not divided by type of animal) accounts for $43 billion, milk for another $31.6 billion and leather $23 billion. &quot;Sugars, molasses and honey&quot; draws $25 billion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, there is &quot;coffee and coffee substitutes&quot; for $22 billion. Subtract whatever chicory, barley and other faux coffees sell for, and you have a somewhat lesser figure for pure coffee. Not exactly number two in the world, by anyone's reckoning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T01:59:21.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2470" CreationDate="2011-04-23T05:28:54.027" Score="19" ViewCount="3590" Body="&lt;p&gt;What evidence is there to show conclusively that Hitler was or was not Jewish or had Jewish ancestry even if he was not a practicing Jew?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-04-24T15:44:16.540" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T09:44:43.000" Title="Was Hitler Jewish?" Tags="|history|adolf-hitler|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2458" CreationDate="2011-04-23T07:17:23.300" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The concept of &quot;bone pointing&quot; (a.k.a. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdaitcha&quot;&gt;Kurdaitcha&lt;/a&gt;) comes from some Australian aboriginal cultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea - from Western eyes, at least - is that, once cursed, a victim becomes convinced that they will die, and soon after do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the stories about such incidents are anecdotal, folklore or there may have been other more prosaic reasons for the death, but at least one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biology-online.org/articles/scared_death.html&quot;&gt;case&lt;/a&gt; has been documented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if this were true, you could argue that it is a situation where the brain has been tricked into dying. However, in the recorded case, the victim refused food, so perhaps it cannot be counted under your definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T07:17:23.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2466" CreationDate="2011-04-23T07:23:18.597" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not known with full certainty who Hitler's father's father was (although George Hiedler is the generally accepted one). For a list of theories on the matter, see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alois_Hitler#Biological_father&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article about Alois Hitler&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Hitler's father's mother got pregnant while allegedly working for a Jewish family it has been claimed that the father is actually the 19-year old son of this Jewish family. That would make Adolf Hitler one quarter Jewish according to the race laws in Nazi Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is not a smidgen of evidence for this theory. It has become popular because of the immense potential for irony, should it be true. But it probably isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Frank McDonough, &lt;em&gt;Hitler and the rise of the Nazi Party&lt;/em&gt;, Pearson Education, 2003, p. 20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="80" LastEditDate="2013-07-14T20:46:00.093" LastActivityDate="2013-07-14T20:46:00.093" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2466" CreationDate="2011-04-23T09:40:49.300" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who is a Jew?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The definition of who is a Jew varies according to whether it is being considered by Jews based on normative religious statutes, self-identification, or by non-Jews for other reasons. Because Jewish identity can include characteristics of an ethnicity, a religion, and citizenship, the definition of who is a Jew has varied, depending on whether a religious, sociological, or ethnic aspect was being considered.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew%3F&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Genome-wise&lt;/strong&gt;: He surely shared genome with the Jewish population. We all come from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;common ancestor&lt;/a&gt;. Furthermore, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/498027/jewish/Are-Jews-a-Race.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;there is no such thing as a Jewish race&lt;/a&gt;, so the question does not make much sense when seen from this point of view. Everybody is related to Jews.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Religion-wise&lt;/strong&gt;: He had a Christian family and education:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KkDZ2.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KkDZ2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Hitler&amp;#39;s baptism certificate&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Hitler_Baptism_Certificate0002.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikimedia.org&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nationality-wise&lt;/strong&gt;: He was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/adolf-hitler.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Austrian&lt;/a&gt; first, and then German. There is no evidence or historical doubt that his &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;nationality&lt;/a&gt; was other then Austrian/German.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fWtpc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;House where Hitler was born&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Self-identification-wise&lt;/strong&gt;: He didn't really like Jews, so I doubt he self-defined as one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;If I am ever really in power, the destruction of the Jews will be my first and most important job. As soon as I have power, I shall have gallows after gallows erected, for example, in Munich on the Marienplatz-as many of them as traffic allows. Then the Jews will be hanged one after another, and they will stay hanging until they stink. They will stay hanging as long as hygienically possible. As soon as they are untied, then the next group will follow and that will continue until the last Jew in Munich is exterminated. Exactly the same procedure will be followed in other cities until Germany is cleansed of the last Jew!&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/statements.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Adolf Hitler&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;According to Nazi laws&lt;/strong&gt;: unlikely (but the laws seem recursive to me, so it's really hard to say). I doubt that any German tribunal would have declared him a Jew in those times. For more information see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischling_Test&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Nuremberg_laws.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Definition of Jew&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-02-26T09:44:43.000" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T09:44:43.000" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2458" CreationDate="2011-04-23T11:57:54.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think there a way to answer this question definitely. For ethical reasons it's not really a phenomena you would be expected to be well studied. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The heart is a bit autonomous but it's possible to effect it via thought. People can learn to affect their heart rate through &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofeedback&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;biofeedback&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the hurdle when you want to stop your own heart or lung? If you have a lot of CO2 in your blood it increases the activity of your &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sympathetic_nervous_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sympathicus&lt;/a&gt;. Sympathicus activity increases breathing rate and depth. It also increases your heart rate.&#xA;I don't know of a way to block this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of stopping your heart there's however also the possibility to speed it up. If your heart beats at 300 beats per minute it can't fill itself fully before the blood get's pumped out. Sympathicus activity would rather raise the heart rate then lower it. &#xA;Tachycardia where the heart beats too fast already happens in some people with unhealthy hearts in nature. If it's fast enough and the heart stays too long at that level of activity people die from it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of factors involved that might prevent someone from killing himself this way but I wouldn't discount the possibility.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T11:57:54.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2458" CreationDate="2011-04-23T13:29:05.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not possible for a perfectly healthy person to will themselves to die. If it were, how many seriously depressed people would just up and die?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I do believe it's quite possible for a person who is in poor health, perhaps suffering from a serious disease, or a victim of a car crash, to will themselves into a state where they just don't want to keep living, and they die. It's a documented fact, that if a person doesn't want to live, then they have a harder time surviving such an ordeal. In fact, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/156/11/1043.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a paper&lt;/a&gt; that shows that having depression is shown to increase the likelihood of death, and that it's not related to suicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="987" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T13:29:05.127" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2479" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-23T14:58:53.827" Score="21" ViewCount="7030" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewing_gum#Effects_on_health&quot;&gt;Chewing sugar-free gum is good for your teeth.&lt;/a&gt; But what about the rest of your body? Would constantly chewing gum have any negative effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An argument I have heard is that the increased amounts of saliva in your mouth constantly signal to your stomach that food is on the way. The stomach produces acids for decomposing the food, but the food never comes. According to the argument, these acids may be harmful to an empty stomach, even leading to stomach ulcers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2096" LastEditorUserId="2096" LastEditDate="2011-04-23T16:40:18.637" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T02:36:43.317" Title="Is excessive use of chewing gum bad for you?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2403" CreationDate="2011-04-23T15:54:43.580" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inserting your finger into any foam will disrupt the bubbles and cause them to come into contact with a separate surface than just the surrounding bubbles.  This agitation serves to break bubbles.  The addition of oils actually has a basis in fact because of the chemical nature of beer bubbles.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/foamy-beer-heads/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This webpage explains&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each molecule of these grain proteins have two ends with different chemical properties; one end is attracted to water, while the other is repelled by water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As gas bubbles emerge from the beer, nearby protein molecules rearrange themselves with their water-avoiding ends sticking into the gas bubble, away from the liquid. At the same time, the water-loving ends stick out into the beer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each bubble of gas is surrounded by a layer of protein molecules which are all lined up in the same direction, strengthening the surface of the bubble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oils from your skin stop the foam from overflowing by breaking up the protein layer surrounding each gas bubble. As the water-avoiding ends of the proteins are more strongly attracted to the oil than to the gas they pull out the bubble, weaken its surface, and cause it to pop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.demochem.de/D-beer_foam-e.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This web page provides an experimental set up you can perform on beer foam&lt;/a&gt;.  One of the conclusions/discussions says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soap, detergent, grease and wax residues will kill foam formation and retention actually attack the foam on a head of beer. Fatty substances are attached to the surface on the bubbles. The surface tension on the bubbles is lowered. They will burst. As a result the foamy head disappears, causing the beer to look and taste &amp;quot;flat&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not totally relevant, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/1206-mathematics_of_beer_bubbles.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;it is none the less interesting, scientists have performed mathematical studies of beer bubbles (and who wouldn't want to assist in that research?).&lt;/a&gt;  As one of the most common beverages, we do spend a lot of time studying it.  A subject I endorse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T15:54:43.580" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2457" CreationDate="2011-04-23T16:22:53.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found some links when browsing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservation_in_India&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wiki page on reservations in India.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mat.jhu.edu/~sormani/affirm-impact.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;first link&lt;/a&gt; describes a study that uses actual data over decades. The findings have been published in a book titled &quot;The Shape of the River: Long-Term Consequences of Considering Race in College and University Admissions.&quot; It was written by two former Ivy League presidents, William Bowen of Princeton University, an economist, and Derek Bok of Harvard University, a political scientist. Some quotes (from the article):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study begins by documenting the problem clearly: blacks who enter&#xA;  elite institutions do so with lower&#xA;  test scores and grades than those of&#xA;  whites. And as they work their way&#xA;  through liberal arts colleges like&#xA;  Yale and Princeton and state schools&#xA;  like the Universities of Michigan and&#xA;  North Carolina, black students receive&#xA;  lower grades and graduate at a lower&#xA;  rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But after graduation, the survey&#xA;  found, these students achieve notable&#xA;  successes. They earn advanced degrees&#xA;  at rates identical to those of their&#xA;  white classmates. They are even&#xA;  slightly more likely than whites from&#xA;  the same institutions to obtain&#xA;  professional degrees in law, business&#xA;  and medicine. And they become more&#xA;  active than their white classmates in&#xA;  civic and community activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... the more selective the college,&#xA;  the more likely were blacks who&#xA;  attended it to graduate, obtain&#xA;  advanced degrees and earn high&#xA;  salaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A more troubling question, the authors&#xA;  acknowledge, regards the white&#xA;  students whom these black students&#xA;  displaced. Would society have been&#xA;  better off if they had attended&#xA;  instead of the blacks? ... Bowen and&#xA;  Bok point out that if more than half&#xA;  of the blacks accepted at selective&#xA;  colleges had been rejected, the&#xA;  probability of acceptance for another&#xA;  white applicant would rise only 2&#xA;  percent, to 27 percent from 25&#xA;  percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But not some good news also ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They found that the black dropout rate&#xA;  for the elite institutions practicing&#xA;  affirmative action was 25 percent,&#xA;  much lower than the national black&#xA;  dropout average of 60 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The seems to be well-founded, so I guess it makes quite a case for academic affirmative action in the US. Since the system in India is quite different, I don't how much accuracy it will have over here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T16:22:53.653" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2482" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4793" CreationDate="2011-04-23T17:29:19.983" Score="14" ViewCount="3468" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/138/is-the-bates-method-for-improving-eyesight-efficacious&quot;&gt;Is the Bates Method for improving eyesight efficacious?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently read the Bate's Method question and thought of this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A while ago in some forum someone posted a note. It described how the author went from having fairly bad(though not blind/legally blind) eyesight and how it forced himself over the period of about a year to improve his eyesight to 20/20 in one eye. (not doing the treatment in the other eye as a control I suppose)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His method was fairly simple. When there is a window available or you are outside. Look at something close up(less than 2 feet away). Stare at it and focus your eyes as best you can on it. Then, as quickly as possible shift your focus to something very far away(miles) and focus as best you can, as fast as you can. And repeat going back and forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't remember the scientific explanation for why this &quot;works&quot;, but it at least doesn't seem like it'd be harmful. Is there any evidence that such a thing would work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2097" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T15:04:46.620" Title="Strange way of improving eyesight -- Could it work?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2012-05-12T08:46:51.090" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2483" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-23T20:34:23.793" Score="1" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1771/is-carbonated-water-unhealthy&quot;&gt;Is carbonated water unhealthy?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I know they contain sugar and can cause obesity etc. I refer to claims made on the internet about them being acidic enough to dissolve through teeth, about it killing small insects etc. So how much truth is there to such claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-04-23T20:34:23.793" Title="Are carbonated drinks deadly?" Tags="|medical-science|drinks|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2011-04-23T22:30:19.933" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2484" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2546" CreationDate="2011-04-23T22:02:24.567" Score="28" ViewCount="2155" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back when I was interested in theoretical physics (&amp;gt;15-20 years ago), String theory was the Hot Thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine my surprise when, in a random browsing, I stumbled upon a science-themed blog &amp;quot;Not Even Wrong&amp;quot; written by Columbia University-associated Math professor Peter Woit where &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.columbia.edu/%7Ewoit/wordpress/?p=3598#comments&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one of the comments by blog's owner&lt;/a&gt; stated (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people thought the initial 1984 models for string theory unification were elegant, hardly anyone thinks that about the complicated mess you get out of a conjectural anthropic string theory multiverse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“Enormous explanatory power” doesn’t really go with “can’t predict a single f—ing thing”…&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that forming falsifiable predictions is the cornerstone of scientific method, the above quote sounded pretty damning to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;QUESTION&lt;/strong&gt;: Is it true that since 1980s, string theory - or at least parts of it associated with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anthropic principle&lt;/a&gt; have not made any (or any non-disproven) falsifiable predictions? Or was that comment somewhat hyperbolic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T07:27:38.563" Title="Is modern String Theory stuck in the &quot;no predictions&quot; land?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2485" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2490" CreationDate="2011-04-23T23:01:51.690" Score="29" ViewCount="2877" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;With the terrible earthquake and&#xA;  resulting tsunami that have devastated&#xA;  Japan, the only good news is that&#xA;  anyone exposed to excess radiation&#xA;  from the nuclear power plants is now&#xA;  probably much less likely to get&#xA;  cancer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a direct quote from US right-wing pundit &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=42347&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ann Coulter's blog&lt;/a&gt; on 3/16/2011. She references a NY Times report from 2001 that claims an &quot;increasing number&quot; of scientists (who she fails to name) seem to think there may be a degree of exposure which can offer health benefits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;They theorize,&quot; the Times said, that&#xA;  &quot;these doses protect against cancer by&#xA;  activating cells' natural defense&#xA;  mechanisms.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She seems to be referencing an idea known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2248601/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hormesis&lt;/a&gt;, which is a phenomenon by which low level exposure to something that is normally toxic at higher or prolonged levels of exposure may have positive health effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, there is documented evidence that radiation can be used to treat cancer, but is there any evidence that uncontrolled, accidental environmental exposure can yield benefits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there documented scientific evidence that this claim is valid, or even plausible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any studies been done specifically evaluating the benefits of radiation released in nuclear accidents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would such benefits weigh against the known hazards and risks of radiological exposure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="22367" LastEditDate="2020-06-07T15:19:02.077" LastActivityDate="2020-06-07T15:19:02.077" Title="Is some level of radiation &quot;good for you&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|radiation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2485" CreationDate="2011-04-23T23:17:26.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's the famous case of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/06/hiroshima-nagasaki-survivor-dies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivor that died at the age of 93&lt;/a&gt;, although the cause of death was stomach cancer. It's hard to tell if the radiation exposure made him live longer or promoted his well-being in another way. However, it did appear to cause many radiation-related illnesses over the course of his life:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The blasts deprived him of the hearing&#xA;  in his left ear, but Yamaguchi's&#xA;  family said he was in relatively good&#xA;  health for most of his life. In later&#xA;  years he battled acute leukaemia,&#xA;  cataracts and other radiation-related&#xA;  ailments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relating to this, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dotmed.com/news/story/10571/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mice can be made immune to the effects of radiation by switching off a related inhibitory pathway that controls nitric oxide&lt;/a&gt;, so perhaps some people have similar control over the DNA damage caused by radiation. Also, conditions such as hyperthyroidism and cancer can be treated with radiation therapy (although this is extremely targeted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, there's work done by Dr Ron Mitchel, Researcher Emeritus at the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited who &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ansto.gov.au/discovering_ansto/media_centre/ansto_connect_stories/stories/a_little_radiation_might_be_good_for_you&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;presented evidence that cells are adapted to use protective mechanisms against low doses of radiation that are actually beneficial&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These studies included examinations of&#xA;  yeast, cells from mice, deer and&#xA;  humans as well as frogs in the natural&#xA;  environment that suggest low doses of&#xA;  radiation primes cells so that they&#xA;  are protected against the effects of&#xA;  exposure to large doses. One study&#xA;  performed on cancer-prone mice, for&#xA;  example, showed that exposure to 1, 10&#xA;  or 100 milligrays (mGy) actually cut&#xA;  their incidence of cancer by 3 or&#xA;  4-fold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on to say that this work could be used for sparing healthy tissue when treating cancer with radiation therapy. The work is presented on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.magma.ca/~mitchel/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;his website&lt;/a&gt;, and includes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.magma.ca/~mitchel/research_studies.htm#Low%20Doses%20of%20Radiation%20Reduce%20Health%20Risks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scientific data&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1850" LastEditorUserId="1850" LastEditDate="2011-04-24T02:35:12.723" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T02:35:12.723" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2485" CreationDate="2011-04-24T03:34:28.287" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Note: I don't know who Ann Coulter is. I can, however, comment on the generic claim that radiation is &quot;good for you&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is empirical evidence that suggests that low to medium amounts of absorbed gamma radiation boosts immunity and resilience to ailments such as heart disease, though it may (or may not) increase rates of cancer. It has been suggested and that the reduction in the probability of death from other diseases offsets the increased probability of death from cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reference I found on this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/03/21/lawrence-solomon-reactor-victims-will-benefit-studies-show/&quot;&gt;Lawrence Solomon's opinion piece in the Financial Times: Low exposure to the Nagasaki atomic blast resulted in longer lifespans&lt;/a&gt;, which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tens of thousands more distant from Ground Zero [of Nagasaki and Hiroshima], and who received lower exposures to radiation, did not die in droves. To the contrary, and surprisingly, they outlived their counterparts in the general population who received no exposure to radiation from the blasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only evidence that exists as to the health of humans who have been irradiated at low levels points to a benefit, not a harm. Difficult though it may be to overcome the fear of radiation that has been drubbed into us since childhood, there is no scientific proof whatsoever to view the radiation emitted from the Fukushima plant as dangerous to the Japanese population&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These findings are supported by (and reference) the paper &quot;Mortality of A-bomb Survivors in Nagasaki and Hiroshima&quot;, by M. MINE, S. HONDA, Y. OKUMURA, H. KONDO, K. YOKOTA and M. TOMONAGA, &lt;a href=&quot;http://probeinternational.org/library/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/MineIR10-JpSurvMort1.pdf&quot;&gt;Atomic Bomb Disease Institute, Nagasaki Univ., Sch. Med., Nagasaki 852-8523, JAPAN&lt;/a&gt;. This paper states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From the analysis of LSS’s population, RERF, lower relative risk of mortality from non-cancerous disease than control was observed for a dose range, 0.06-0.49Gy, when city was not adjusted. But when city was adjusted, lower relative risk was not observed. Although the number of subjects analyzed in Nagasaki University was smaller than that of LSS’s population, we have obtained the lower relative risk of mortality from noncancerous disease for male at a range of low doses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These correlate with my undergraduate studies in physics and later work as a health and safety worker for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL). In undergrad I recall hearing that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie&quot;&gt;Marie Curie&lt;/a&gt; and her husband wore on their arms slabs of radium and/or uranium because they were under the impression that the radiation these materials emitted boosted immunity. As a worker for AECL at a nuclear power plant, it was commonly accepted that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.safesecurevital.com/pdf/Dr_PatrickMoore_Sept-07.pdf&quot;&gt;people working at the nuclear power plant on average lived longer than the general population and had lower rates of cancer&lt;/a&gt; (Submission of Dr. Patrick Moore, Chairman &amp;amp; Chief Scientist Greenspirit Strategies Ltd. To The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Public Hearing on Potential Environmental Impacts From a License Renewal of Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, dated September 19, 2007). From that reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 2004 Columbia University Study of 35,000 respondents concluded that “…nuclear power plant workers in the United States…live longer and have significantly lower cancer rates compared to the general population.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it doesn't seem to be the study being referred to above (as the sample sizes are different), there is a 2004 study from Columbia University: &lt;a href=&quot;http://epiville.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/assets/pdfs/Howe_2.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;Analysis of the Mortality Experience amongst U.S. Nuclear Power Industry Workers after Chronic Low-Dose Exposure to Ionizing Radiation&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cohort displays a very substantial healthy worker effect, i.e. considerably lower cancer and noncancer mortality than the general population. Based on 26 and 368 deaths, respectively, positive though statistically nonsigniﬁcant associations were seen&#xA;  for mortality from leukemia (excluding chronic lymphocytic&#xA;  leukemia) and all solid cancers combined, with excess relative&#xA;  risks per sievert of 5.67 [95% conﬁdence interval (CI)22.56,&#xA;  30.4] and 0.506 (95% CI 22.01, 4.64), respectively. These estimates are very similar to those from the atomic bomb survivors study, though the wide conﬁdence intervals are also&#xA;  consistent with lower or higher risk estimates. A strong positive and statistically signiﬁcant association between radiation&#xA;  dose and deaths from arteriosclerotic heart disease including&#xA;  coronary heart disease was also observed in the cohort, with&#xA;  an ERR of 8.78 (95% CI 2.10, 20.0).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this is the study referred to or not, it supports the conclusion asserted in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, there are significant deleterious effects from significant radiation exposure. For example, while the Curies strapped radioactive materials to their arms on the basis that it benefitted their immunity, they &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=W0S86P1-IyEC&amp;amp;lpg=PA17&amp;amp;ots=-idNOAW4WD&amp;amp;dq=marie%20currie%20strapped%20uranium%20to%20arm&amp;amp;pg=PA17#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=arm&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;suffered significantly for it&lt;/a&gt; (Marie Curie: Pioneering Physicist By Elizabeth R. Cregan, p. 17).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While gamma radiation is, on the above basis, understood to have some benefits, the effects of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_particle&quot;&gt;beta&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_particle&quot;&gt;alpha&lt;/a&gt; radiation as are known to be quite destructive to cell tissue. While these forms of radiation are less common to be exposed to and easier to protect against than gamma radiation, I strongly doubt they've any positive effect at reducing the risk of cancer. The one known exception may be exposure to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine-131&quot;&gt;Iodine-131&lt;/a&gt;, a beta particle emitter, because it collects in the thyroid. While high doses will destroy the thyroid and stop iodine from collecting in the thyroid, low doses will collect there and the beta particles released by the iodine will cause thyroid cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back to the claim that those around Fukushima are &quot;much less likely to get cancer&quot; seems overstated. While evidence supports the existence of certain health benefits, and the evidence is mixed about whether exposure to radiation increases or decreases risk of cancer, I feel it's reasonably clear from the evidence we have at present is that the risk of cancer wouldn't be &quot;much less likely&quot;, as claimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well, on whether cells have a natural defence mechanism when exposed to low or medium doses of radiation: I don't know of any studies, nor do I have any other knowledge or information, that would support such a conclusion. That being said, I think it's perfectly plausible that cells could have such an ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that's helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="1792" LastEditDate="2011-04-26T18:06:42.150" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T18:06:42.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2485" CreationDate="2011-04-24T03:46:22.710" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's quite an exhaustive takedown of this claim by biologist P.Z. Myers on his blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/will_radiation_hormesis_protec.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pharyungula&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper he relies on is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calabrese EJ (2008) Hormesis: Why it is important to toxicology and toxicologists. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 27(7):1451-1474.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the effect of hormesis is real:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hormesis refers to a biphasic dose response curve. That is, when exposed to a toxic agent at very low doses, you may observe an initial reduction in deleterious effects; as the dose is increased, you begin to see a dose-dependent increase in the effects. The most likely mechanism is an upregulation of cellular defenses that overcompensates for the damage the agent is doing. This is real (I told you there's a grain of truth to what she wrote), and it's been observed in multiple situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is one important caveat: (my emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the key thing to note about hormetic effects is that they &lt;strong&gt;only apply at low dosages&lt;/strong&gt;. Low dosages tend to be where the damaging effects are weakest, anyway, and where the &lt;strong&gt;data are also the poorest&lt;/strong&gt;. The US government recommendations for radiation exposure are based on a linear no threshold model in which there is no hormesis to reduced effects at low concentrations for a couple of reasons. One is methodological. The data we can get from high exposures to toxic agents tends to be much more robust and consistent, and we do see simple relationships like a ten-fold increase in dose produces a ten-fold increase in effect, whereas at low doses, where the effects are much weaker, &lt;strong&gt;variability adds so much noise to the measurements that it may be difficult to get a repeatable and consistent relationship&lt;/strong&gt;. So the strategy is to determine the relationships at high doses and extrapolate backwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a consequence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the low dosage regime, these responses get complicated at the same time the data gets harder to collect. This is why it's a bad idea to base public policy on the weakest information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He continues to give a very simple example explaining the idea behind hormesis, before coming to his damning conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here in Minnesota in the winter we get very snowy, icy conditions. If I'm driving down the road and I sense a slippery patch, what I will immediately do is become more alert, slow down, and drive more carefully — I will effectively reduce my risk of an accident on that road because I detected ice. This does not in any way imply that ice reduces traffic accidents. Again, with the way Ann Coulter's mind works, she'd argue that what we ought to do to encourage more responsible driving is to send trucks out before a storm to hose the roads down with water instead of salt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ann Coulter is blithely ignoring competent scientists' informed recommendations to promote a dangerous complacency in the face of a radiation hazard. She's using a childish, lazy interpretation of a complex phenomenon to tell people lies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T03:46:22.710" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2492" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2539" CreationDate="2011-04-24T04:21:10.503" Score="13" ViewCount="44640" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that chickens can actually lay multiple eggs in a single day.  Is this possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that leghorn hens usually lay eggs every 25 hours or so (for an annual total of about 280-320), but can they actually lay more than one egg in a day? If so, how is that possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2069" LastActivityDate="2012-01-22T13:23:42.697" Title="Chickens that lay eggs twice a day" Tags="|nutrition|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1977" CreationDate="2011-04-24T11:09:54.770" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it would appear not. In December of 1998 the NAACP &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=VFkEAAAAMBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA48&amp;amp;lpg=PA48&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=8KvgXVZVXt&amp;amp;sig=rrcDUJhO9QUk8kjYeV4Hw2WDv20&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=BwC0Ta7WKIzcvQPIq4iABw&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;sent out a request&lt;/a&gt; for more information, stating it would like to believe the official army response but was reluctant to do this without querying its members, on account of previous incidents that were alleged to have been covered up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Google search reveals the NAACP has announced no new evidence since then. Considering the NAACP's status and access to potential sources, we can logically assume no other witness statements or evidence was forthcoming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the claim is that 1200 men were killed, it would seem unlikely that not one relative or descendent of these men would come forward with evidence in response to the NAACP's call for assistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2067" LastEditorUserId="2067" LastEditDate="2011-04-24T14:44:20.500" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T14:44:20.500" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2495" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-24T11:42:08.340" Score="11" ViewCount="1804" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Russia, a commonly accepted &quot;brosience&quot; fact was that people (or at least children) should eat &lt;strong&gt;hot&lt;/strong&gt; types of food for breakfast (e.g. that oatmeal or fried eggs are better than a sandwich or cereal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any sort of research/scientific evidence to support or refute such belief? (Assuming that all the other nutrition parameters are held equal.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T12:44:28.597" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T12:44:28.597" Title="Do we need &quot;hot&quot; breakfast food?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1056" CreationDate="2011-04-24T11:44:00.230" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, according to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/480560&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;evaluation in 1979&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Iridology had no clinical or statistically significant ability to detect the presence of kidney disease. Iridology was neither selective nor specific, and the likelihood of correct detection was statistically no better than chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10213874&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;systemic review undertaken in 1999&lt;/a&gt; also concluded iridology does not work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The validity of iridology as a diagnostic tool is not supported by scientific evaluations. Patients and therapists should be discouraged from using this method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However apart from scientific studies a skeptic may be satisfied that iridology does not work by a simple observation: if the practice was as effective as claimed, naturopaths would use iridology as the initial step in diagnosing and treating patients without requesting further information. It would be a superb way to differentiate their services from mainstream medicine and would quickly impress patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However &lt;strong&gt;this does not happen&lt;/strong&gt;. Natural health practioners, like doctors, generally require new patients to complete a survey outlining their medical history, diet, and present complaints. The introduction of iridology into a natural health session may be more useful as a secondary aid in &lt;em&gt;medical theatre&lt;/em&gt;, creating the sense that the practioner has additional powers of observation that ultimately lend more weight to the lifestyle instructions they deliver to patients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2067" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T11:44:00.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2497" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5043" CreationDate="2011-04-24T11:48:46.770" Score="35" ViewCount="22541" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend heard that reading while lying down is more strenuous (unhealthy) for eyes. &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like reading in bed (books, tablet). Is there some study that confirms this hypothesis?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I use two positions (looking to the book on the side or looking to the ceiling having the book in iron stand).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seem to be a few factors that act&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Light intensity and color&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Light direction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distance of the book&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Material of the reading item (book, tablet, laptop)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Position (on side, on back) and gravitation forcing on the liquid in the eye&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say we will define ideal conditions for points 1, 2, 3, 4. What interests me most is if the point 5 will cause something bad, if it's worse than reading while sitting or standing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2103" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-06-22T21:42:28.927" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T14:31:52.430" Title="Reading while lying down is more strenuous (unhealthy) for eyes" Tags="|biology|physiology|physics|ophthalmology|reading|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="369" CreationDate="2011-04-24T12:35:27.397" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you give more weight to independent scientific research then &lt;em&gt;yes, aspartame may cause cancer in humans&lt;/em&gt;. If you prefer industry-funded studies, then the answer is &lt;em&gt;no, aspartame has no adverse health effects for humans&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Independent scientific research has overwhelmingly found health issues with aspartame, in particular that it does cause cancer in rats. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2005/dec/15/foodanddrink.immigrationpolicy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2005 article from The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; references a 1996 review of aspartame research which found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...every single industry-funded study&#xA;found aspartame safe. But 92% of&#xA;independent studies identified one or&#xA;more problems with its safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary independent scientific studies which reported increased tumors in rats originate from the European Ramazzini Foundation of Oncology and Environmental Sciences (ERF), led by Morando Soffritti. They have conducted a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1964906/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;number&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1392232/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1196/annals.1371.080&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;carcinogenic potential&lt;/a&gt; of aspartame, concluding that aspartame is a potential carcinogen at normal dietary doses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results of this carcinogenicity bioassay confirm and reinforce the first experimental demonstration of APM’s multipotential carcinogenicity at a dose level close to the acceptable daily intake for humans. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that when life-span exposure to APM begins during fetal life, its carcinogenic effects are increased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary industry-funded review cited when dismissing safety concerns around aspartame is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&amp;amp;Cmd=ShowDetailView&amp;amp;TermToSearch=17828671&amp;amp;ordinalpos=1&amp;amp;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2007 Burdock safety evaluation&lt;/a&gt;. As this review was funded by Ajinomoto (the largest manufacturer of aspartame), and conducted by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.burdockgroup.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Burdock Group&lt;/a&gt; (an organisation whose commercial focus is on gaining regulatory approval of substances for clients) serious questions have been raised about its validity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scientists who led the Burdock safety evaluation had numerous conflict-of-interest issues, including lead scientist Bernadene Magnuson who is a consultant to the aspartame and soft drink industry, and has travelled the world &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE0809/S00126.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;funded by companies like Coca-Cola&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ERF studies led by Morando Soffritti have also been criticised as flawed, but it is interesting to note that this criticism was led by the Burdock Group. In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1289/ehp.10881R#b3-ehp0116-a0240a&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;letter to Environmental Health Perspectives&lt;/a&gt; Soffritti is highly critical of Magnuson and the Burdock Group, drawing attention to their industry funding and accusing them of misleading readers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magnuson and Williams’s letter is substantially a repetition of the arguments set forth in a recent article (Magnuson et al. 2007), which was &lt;strong&gt;a “safety evaluation” sponsored entirely by Ajinomoto&lt;/strong&gt;, the manufacturer of aspartame. Their article (Magnuson et al. 2007) and this letter contain &lt;strong&gt;numerous erroneous statements&lt;/strong&gt; about the long-term carcinogenesis studies on aspartame conducted by the European Ramazzini Foundation (ERF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To support their assertion, &lt;strong&gt;Magnuson and Williams mislead readers&lt;/strong&gt; by stating that “the lung was often the site of lymphoma again in this [second] study.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other part of your question is whether aspartame &amp;quot;stays in your body forever&amp;quot;. That is not a concern either cited by aspartame critics or mentioned in independent scientific studies, so the answer to that is &lt;em&gt;no, it does not stay in your body forever&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However that particular question is representative of the sorts of claims which can easily obscure legitimate scientific concern over aspartame. By focusing on extreme and baseless claims, and emphasizing a link to the more fringe activist groups (who tend to hold extreme views on fluoridation, vaccination and the like), it becomes that much easier to denigrate opposition to aspartame, and dissuade others from digging into the real science on which concern over aspartame is based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example which illustrate the problems faced by skeptics intent on knowing whether aspartame causes cancer is the Wikipedia article on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Aspartame_controversy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;aspartame controversy&lt;/a&gt;. A number of editors very well-versed in Wikipedia rules have ensured that over the years this particular article maintains an industry point of view. For instance, instead of emphasizing the controversy's basis in independent scientific research, the article gives undue weight to individual activists and a hoax letter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In spite of this, critics like anti-aspartame activist Betty Martini have promoted undocumented claims that numerous health risks...are associated with the consumption of aspartame...&#xA;Publicity of this controversy has been spread through an elaborate health scare and &amp;quot;Internet smear campaign&amp;quot; involving hoax e-mails repeating Betty Martini's widely circulated conspiracy theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the ERF studies by Soffriti are downplayed and dismissed, without mentioning that the criticisms originate from the Burdock Group:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A review of the literature concurred with these evaluations, finding many possible flaws in the study's design and conclusions, which are also contradicted by other carcinogenicity studies which found no significant danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Various &lt;a href=&quot;https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/index.php?title=Aspartame_controversy&amp;amp;diff=prev&amp;amp;oldid=329340541&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;attempts&lt;/a&gt; at disclosing the industry links of that particular study are eventually removed by editors. A &lt;a href=&quot;https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/index.php?title=Talk:Aspartame_controversy&amp;amp;diff=prev&amp;amp;oldid=329547604&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;number&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive629#Aspartame_articles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;concerted&lt;/a&gt; efforts at bringing more balance to the article have failed, with a recent attempt resulting in creation of an aspartame page at &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Aspartame&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sourcewatch&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A skeptic wanting to know whether aspartame causes cancer would do well to compare both the Wikipedia version and the Sourcewatch version to get a fuller pictures of the issues around this additive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2067" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T12:35:27.397" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2485" CreationDate="2011-04-24T12:37:06.973" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=42347&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ann Coulter's piece&lt;/a&gt; does cites sources and she has some valid points, but she also clearly has a bias. She even downplays Chernobyl, making it sound like there were no deaths due to radiation (she acknowledges 30 deaths, but blames it on the explosion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is &lt;strong&gt;Radiation &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hormesis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;? (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snm.org/docs/Radiation_Hormesis_JNMT_March_O3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cfHno.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;linear no-threshold (LNT) hypothesis&lt;/strong&gt; basically says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Radiation exposure is harmful at all&#xA;exposure levels&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Threshold model&lt;/strong&gt; implies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;no effects of radiation up to certain&#xA;level&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Hormetic model&lt;/strong&gt; shows&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;beneficial effects at low levels of&#xA;exposure as it drops below ZEP (&lt;em&gt;Zero-Equivalent Point&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Explanation for &lt;em&gt;Radiation Hormesis&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Because the protective and reparative&#xA;mechanisms are working at a higher&#xA;level than they would in the absence&#xA;of radiation exposure, mutations&lt;/strong&gt; (both&#xA;those caused by radiation and those&#xA;that occur spontaneously) &lt;strong&gt;are found&#xA;and repaired or destroyed&lt;/strong&gt;. Thus, the&#xA;whole-organism response to low-level&#xA;radiation exposure in the radiation&#xA;hormesis paradigm is a state of&#xA;improved health when compared with&#xA;that in the absence of radiation&#xA;exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of &lt;strong&gt;Epidemiological Studies&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/209/4459/877.full.pdf?ijkey=1bcee11f165ea8b90c9d036eb49e6072e4d7a4a6&amp;amp;keytype2=tf_ipsecsha&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;China&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;The cancer mortality rate was lower in the high-background&#xA;group, but this difference was&#xA;statistically significant only in the&#xA;40- to 70-y age group (i.e., those who&#xA;had the greatest lifelong exposure to&#xA;high background levels of radiation)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3570803?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;India&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;inverse correlation between background radiation levels&#xA;and cancer incidence and mortality&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://carcin.oxfordjournals.org/content/3/5/461.abstract?ijkey=9ca35e4f7a2f11995b3d6570b9bd20f78545fafe&amp;amp;keytype2=tf_ipsecsha&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cosmic radiation at high altitudes&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;The cancer death rate was lower in the high-altitude group.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of &lt;strong&gt;Experimental Studies&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mutage.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/2/95.abstract?ijkey=348d7fb07e141688b803f944ad0c87b1222d46d7&amp;amp;keytype2=tf_ipsecsha&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Very low doses of X-rays can cause human lymphocytes to become less&#xA;susceptible to ionizing radiation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8434119?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Decreased deletion mutation in radioadapted human lymphoblasts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8927708?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Low-dose ionizing radiation decreases the frequency of neoplastic&#xA;transformation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10360792?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The suppression of metastases and the change in host immune response&#xA;after low-dose total-body irradiation&#xA;in tumor-bearing rats&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3553079?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A review of certain low-level ionizing radiation studies in mice and&#xA;guinea pigs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2564764/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evidence for Radiation Hormesis After In Vitro Exposure of Human&#xA;Lymphocytes to Low Doses of Ionizing&#xA;Radiation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;em&gt;Radiation Hormesis&lt;/em&gt; remains a controversial subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iem-inc.com/prlnt.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (2001):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The LNT hypothesis has been adopted by&#xA;every national and international body&#xA;that offers radiation protection&#xA;recommendations or interprets&#xA;scientific data.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These include, but&#xA;are not limited to, the National&#xA;Council on Radiation Protection and&#xA;Measurements (NCRP), the International&#xA;Commission on Radiological Protection&#xA;(ICRP), the National Academy of&#xA;Sciences (NAS) Biological Effects of&#xA;Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) Committees,&#xA;the International Atomic Energy Agency&#xA;(IAEA), and the United Nations&#xA;Scientific Committee on the Effects of&#xA;Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But The &lt;strong&gt;U.S. Department of Energy&lt;/strong&gt; has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://lowdose.energy.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Low Dose Radiation Research Program&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[The] Program has been studying the&#xA;biological effects of very low doses&#xA;of ionizing radiation in relevant&#xA;experimental systems for a decade.&#xA;Program research has contributed&#xA;significantly to the body of&#xA;scientific understanding needed to&#xA;inform public debate and future&#xA;regulatory decision making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which some proponents of &lt;em&gt;Radiation Hormesis&lt;/em&gt; view as a &amp;quot;first step&amp;quot; toward acceptance of this hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T12:47:19.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1703" CreationDate="2011-04-24T13:13:32.420" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't seem to have been properly evaluated, and from what I can tell it's primarily argued to be a study help and programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-68255-4_18&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Pomodoro Technique for Sustainable Pace in Extreme Programming Teams&lt;/a&gt; has an analysis of it being used while doing XP (Extreme Programming). However the paywall is making it hard to access their analysis, but the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.slideshare.net/goberiko/the-pomodoro-technique-for-sustainable-pace&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;slideshare&lt;/a&gt; from the authors make no mention of productivity, so I believe that it's purely been used as a way to structure work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The inventor Francesco Cirillo has written &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20101214041003/http://mindshortcut.com:80/download/ThePomodoroTechnique_v1-3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Pomodoro Technique (The Pomodoro)&lt;/a&gt; a fairly thick manual, but he's not citing any studies for his claims about productivity. It instead appears to be well reasoned manual with some anecdotes, but with little supporting evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think that when you ask a question about the pomodoro technique, it's important to also ask; &amp;quot;As opposed to what?&amp;quot;. The pomodoro technique forces you to become organized and do timeboxing. It also introduces discipline into the work process by advocating that unit work are atomical, and that you have to finish it before you get to do a break. If you are completely disorganized, then just about anything reasonable should improve your productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a last resort I tried looking up research that shows organizing your work leads to productivity gains, but I can't find anything directly looking into structured work vs unstructured work in terms of productivity. Maybe for the same reasons we can't directly answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1064/is-the-use-of-parachutes-supported-by-peer-reviewed-papers/1066#1066&quot;&gt;Is the use of parachutes supported by peer-reviewed papers?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-05-18T12:17:35.243" LastActivityDate="2022-05-18T12:17:35.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2001" CreationDate="2011-04-24T15:18:40.253" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finally a question where there is a ton of research that I can dig through, I'm sorry if this is a bit long winded. There appear to have been a great deal of different results, heres a few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4057192/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Weather and arthritis symptoms&lt;/a&gt; (1985) concludes that there's no significant change in arthritis despite the patients belief that there was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a one month prospective, double blind study of 70 patients (35 with rheumatoid arthritis [RA], 35 with osteoarthritis [OA]), severity of rheumatic symptoms was compared to changes in daily weather conditions using a visual analogue scale. The majority of patients (62%) believed that various aspects of weather aggravated their symptoms. There was no difference in age, sex, diagnosis or perceived symptom severity between weather sensitive and weather insensitive patients. No significant correlation was found between symptoms of any patient group or individual and any of 13 combinations of weather features. These results suggest that contrary to the belief of the majority of patients with RA or OA external &lt;strong&gt;weather conditions do not significantly influence the day-to-day symptoms of arthritis&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1136/ard.49.3.158&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effect of weather conditions on rheumatic patients&lt;/a&gt; (1990) showed positive results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a one month prospective study of 62 rheumatic patients--16 with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), 24 with osteoarthritis (OA), 11 with inflammatory arthritis, 11 with fibromyalgia joint pain--swelling and everyday activity was compared with changes in daily weather conditions. In most patients weather changes increased arthritic symptoms. Women were more sensitive to weather than men (62% v 37%). Pain was affected positively by barometric pressure and temperature in RA, by temperature, rain, and barometric pressure in OA, and by barometric pressure in fibromyalgia. &lt;strong&gt;These results support the belief of most rheumatic patients that weather conditions significantly influence their day to day symptoms.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.93.7.2895&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;On the belief that arthritis pain is related to the weather&lt;/a&gt; (1996) says no it's probably in peoples heads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We studied patients (n = 18) for more than I year and found &lt;strong&gt;no statistically significant associations between their arthritis pain and the weather conditions implicated by each individual&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1016/S0304-3959(99)00010-X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rheumatoid arthritis patients show weather sensitivity in daily life, but the relationship is not clinically significant&lt;/a&gt; (1998) points out that of all the variables effecting pain, weather is only a small part of that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, patients with higher levels of self-reported pain demonstrated more weather sensitivity. When considering the magnitude of these effects, however, weather variables accounted for only a small amount of change in pain scores. This pattern was true even for patients with the most pronounced pain–weather relationships. &lt;strong&gt;Thus, although weather sensitivity was found, the effect sizes were not clinically meaningful.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s00296-009-1279-7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Which is the dominant factor for perception of rheumatic pain: meteorology or psychology?&lt;/a&gt; (2009) examined how strong the belief was when the subjects spent a year in a different weather:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[84%] of subjects belive in an association between weather and rheumatism, while 57% claimed to have ability to forecast weather.&lt;/strong&gt; The maximum correlation coefficient between weather and arthritis symptoms was −0.451 and the maximum contribution of weather on symptoms was 17.1%. Arthritis symptoms were significantly contributed by Beck depression score. The belief about presence of weather–arthritis association was found to be stronger than its statistical power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1002/art.24729&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does the weather really matter? A cohort study of influences of weather and solar conditions on daily variations of joint pain in patients with rheumatoid arthritis&lt;/a&gt; (2009) concludes that it depends:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weather sensitivity seems to be a continuum and a highly individual phenomenon in patients with RA. &lt;strong&gt;In the present sample, pain was significantly associated with 3 or more weather variables in 1 out of 6 patients&lt;/strong&gt;, for whom the magnitude of weather sensitivity might significantly influence pain reporting in clinical care and research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1093/rheumatology/kel414&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;What's in season for rheumatoid arthritis patients? Seasonal fluctuations in disease activity&lt;/a&gt; (2006) is a bigger study with 1665 that concludes positive results across seasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We found definite seasonal differences in RA patients, both subjectively and objectively&lt;/strong&gt;. RA disease activity was higher in spring and lower during fall. Seasonal changes may play an important role in evaluating disease activity of RA patients and should be taken into account when examining these patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jrheum.org/content/31/7/1327.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Weather effects in rheumatoid arthritis: from controversy to consensus. A review.&lt;/a&gt; is a meta-study of the research between 1985-2003 that finds that &lt;em&gt;weather&lt;/em&gt; is something that has many variables, and a problem with many studies is that the methods are so different:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CONCLUSION:&lt;/strong&gt; RA variables are positively correlated with the humidity of the microclimate at the patient's skin. High outdoor relative humidity is unfavorable, but has less influence when there are few barriers for water vapor, like clothes, and when air conditioning is used. High temperature is unfavorable since it increases absolute humidity, but beneficial as well, since it reduces the presence of barriers, and stimulates the use of air conditioning. &lt;strong&gt;The classic opinion, &amp;quot;Cold and wet is bad, warm and dry is good for RA patients,&amp;quot; seems to be true only as far as humidity is concerned.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that from the point of view of your father, if he experiences less pain in one weather than another then that should be what he should go on. It appears that what patients experience are so individual that it's hard to pin down an optimal weather condition that can be broadly suggested for everyone. It also seem that weather would be a small portion of pain management, or the research would show a strong correlation between certain conditions and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking into this reminds me of a quote from &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/569/do-mobile-phones-have-anything-to-do-with-brain-cancer/1942#1942&quot;&gt;Niel deGrasse Tyson&lt;/a&gt; about cancer and cell phones (who - like me - is not a Doctor):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you try to measure a phenomenon that does not exist, the variation in your measurement will occasionally give you a positive signals, as well as negative signals. If your idea is that A causes B, in this case cell phones causes cancer. Then a paper gets written about that result and then people might get concerned that cell phones cause cancer or that the power-lines might cause cancer, this go way back and so if you look at the full spade of these studies even those they don't publish because it was not a positive effect there are some cases where there is in fact less cancer and so these are the phenomenon of a no-result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you actually have A causing B the signal is huge and it's repeatable in time and in place in cell phones that repeatable signal is yet to emerge from the total experiments that are done with it. [..]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe what we are seeing is the noise of a no-signal or maybe the jury is still out as they are actively publishing research in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-23T12:10:15.393" LastActivityDate="2022-09-23T12:10:15.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2495" CreationDate="2011-04-24T15:40:03.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adajournal.org/article/PIIS0002822310002439/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; that suggests&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5570780/is_cold_breakfast_cereal_better_for.html?cat=25&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cold Breakfast Cereal Better for Kids Than a Hot Breakfast&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A study [using data from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey&lt;/a&gt; 1999-2006] shows that &lt;strong&gt;kids who eat cold,&#xA;  ready-to-eat cereal in the morning&#xA;  have a lower risk of obesity than&#xA;  those who eat a hot breakfast.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers studied the breakfast&#xA;  eating habits of almost 10,000&#xA;  children between the ages of 9 and&#xA;  18 to see how what they ate in&#xA;  the morning affected their total&#xA;  nutritional intake for the day - and&#xA;  their risk for obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They looked at kids who ate standard&#xA;  breakfast cereals, those who skipped&#xA;  breakfast, as well as kids who ate a&#xA;  non-cereal breakfast - such as a hot&#xA;  breakfast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The kids who skipped breakfast&#xA;  completely were the most likely to be&#xA;  obese - but the cereal eaters had a&#xA;  lower risk of being overweight or&#xA;  obese than the kids who ate a hot&#xA;  breakfast or any other type of&#xA;  breakfast.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research was funded by the &lt;strong&gt;US Department of Agriculture&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Kellogg's Corporate Citizenship Fund&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T15:40:03.977" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2507" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2524" CreationDate="2011-04-24T18:33:07.007" Score="16" ViewCount="2717" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've encountered lots of people and some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.judaismvschristianity.com/666_in_barcodes.htm&quot;&gt;other source&lt;/a&gt;s that claim that every bar-code contains the number 666 and is therefore &quot;The Number of the Beast&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first thing a scanner looks for when reading a retail bar code is the number 666! Only after finding this number can it go on to read the rest of the code!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they actually all contain 666?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-25T13:38:13.557" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T12:06:48.980" Title="Do bar-codes contain &quot;The Number of the Beast&quot;?" Tags="|religion|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2508" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-24T18:42:59.827" Score="28" ViewCount="2832" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/#!/hotdogsladies/status/2179064592&quot;&gt;As Merlin Mann once said&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are no atheists in foxholes and&#xA;  firmware updates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, scratch the firmware part, but you see the core sentiment expressed quite commonly. I've never fully understood why believers in God see this as such a great argument, as I can see the opposite scenario as being true to. If I were squatting in a foxhole being shot at and I've just put my hand in a pile of goo that used to be my best friend's face, the belief that there's a kind and loving creator would not make a lot of sense to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, has there been any research done on whether stressful/life-threatening situations make people more (or less) religious?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-29T03:55:43.817" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T17:01:41.617" Title="Are there no atheists in foxholes?" Tags="|military|religion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2507" CreationDate="2011-04-24T18:51:16.700" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, first one must settle on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_ntb5.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;whether 666 or 616&lt;/a&gt; is the number of the beast.   If the &quot;number of the beast&quot; is actually 616, then the entire premise goes out the window since the assertion is that each double set of bars represents a 6.  That would mean that the two center long bars are either a 6 or a 1.  And if people are looking for something, they will find it.  One can claim that the word &quot;giggle&quot; has the number of the beast!&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GnEk1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;giggle has the number of the beast!&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, one can find numerous barcodes that do not contain enough digits to make either number of the beast, but then you can make any other numerology number out of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is one that dismisses that urban legend:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tnWii.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Barcode without &amp;quot;number of the beast&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This comes from the CD by Elly Nieman, Circus Princes)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I'm sure that you could find more on any trip to the grocery store.  I just picked up a can of beans from the cupboard that didn't have a single 6 in it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/high-tech-gadgets/upc.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Even though the question was about the claim of 666 in barcodes, if you are interested in the history of barcodes and how they work, you can check out this &quot;How stuff works&quot; article.&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blbar_code.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This webpage states that&lt;/a&gt; The UCC (formerly The Uniform Product Code Council, Inc.) is responsible for issuing product numbers, specification, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in barcodes and their development, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.dartmouth.edu/~mqed/NLA/BarCodes/BarCodes.phtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page has a link to a PDF paper on the subject&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-04-25T20:22:29.943" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T20:22:29.943" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2511" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2520" CreationDate="2011-04-24T18:56:32.587" Score="7" ViewCount="645" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the last two years, economists and financial pundits have been arguing whether &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_vigilantes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bond Vigilantes&lt;/a&gt; (see also &lt;a href=&quot;https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/7877/bond-vigilantes-prices-yields-and-incentives&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question) exist, and if they do, if their actions are significant enough to pose a threat to economic recovery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A bond vigilante is a bond market investor who protests monetary or fiscal policies they consider inflationary by selling bonds, thus increasing yields&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This brings me to the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any evidence of bond vigilantes in the past or present?  (e.g. examples of investors or investment firms that sold bonds &lt;em&gt;en masse&lt;/em&gt; and at a large scale from fear of inflation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to objectively tell them apart from regular investors?  Are there any quantitative metrics that Economists agree on that can be used to detect and measure the macroeconomic impact of their actions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:25:35.707" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T15:38:41.353" Title="Evidence for Bond Vigilantes?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2508" CreationDate="2011-04-24T19:00:18.213" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.celebatheists.com/wiki/Pat_Tillman&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pat Tillman&lt;/a&gt;.  There is an entire &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.militaryatheists.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers&lt;/a&gt; too.  And then there is me (although I wasn't ever in a foxhole, I did my combat from 30,000 feet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The saying comes from a misconception or personal projection that great stress will cause people to retreat to something comfortable.  I can personally state that in combat situations, any &amp;quot;thought of deities&amp;quot; would have resulted in me dying as opposed to actually doing the job at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://atheism.about.com/od/atheismmyths/a/AtheistsFoxhole.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Austin Cline&lt;/a&gt; who writes numerous essays on this at about.com says a few things about this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it isn't true that there are no atheists in foxholes and that many theists leave their foxholes as atheists, why does the above myth persist? It certainly can't be employed as an argument against atheism — even if it were true, that would not mean that atheism is unreasonable or theism valid. To suggest otherwise would be little more than an ad hominem fallacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the claim that there are no atheists in foxholes meant to imply that atheists aren't &amp;quot;really&amp;quot; nonbelievers and actually harbor a secret belief in God? Perhaps, but it is a false implication and can't be taken seriously. Is it meant to imply that atheism is inherently &amp;quot;weak&amp;quot; while theism represents &amp;quot;strength?&amp;quot; Once again, that may be the case — but it would also be a false implication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the actual reasons for any particular theist to claim that there are no atheists in foxholes, it simply isn't true and should be rejected before the discussion goes any further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find &lt;a href=&quot;http://willer.berkeley.edu/Willer2009c.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; that has this as an abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recent research has focused on motivational bases of political ideology. It is plausible&#xA;that similar factors may drive the formation of religious ideology. Though explanations&#xA;of the existence of religious beliefs in terms of their satisfaction of psychological needs&#xA;date back centuries, limited empirical research exists linking motivated reasoning to&#xA;religious belief. I thoroughly review existing research on the role of motivation in the&#xA;formation of religious belief systems, specifically research related to the relationship&#xA;between fear of death and afterlife belief. Then I present the results of two original,&#xA;experimental studies investigating the hypothesis that fear of death leads to greater&#xA;religious belief. In Study 1, participants who were asked to write short essays about death&#xA;reported greater belief in an afterlife than did participants who wrote essays on a neutral&#xA;topic. Study 2 replicated this finding and also showed that increased fear of death leads to&#xA;greater belief in God. The results of the studies suggest that a more parsimonious&#xA;motivated reasoning account may explain the relationship between fear of death and&#xA;afterlife belief better than one based on Terror Management Theory. Taken together,&#xA;findings support the notion that some religious beliefs can be usefully explained in&#xA;motivational terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it does not validate the saying per se, however does show that &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; may be motivated by fear of death.  Hopefully that is more in line with what you are looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T01:13:07.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2516" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-24T21:48:00.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945?) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party, commonly known as the Nazi Party. He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and served as head of state as Führer und Reichskanzler from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is most remembered for his central leadership role in the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II and The Holocaust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-07-04T14:14:21.940" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T14:14:21.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2517" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-24T21:48:00.577" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-07-04T14:14:21.940" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T14:14:21.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2518" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-24T22:04:25.687" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Biology&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines. Among the most important topics are five unifying principles that can be said to be the fundamental axioms of modern biology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cells are the basic unit of life&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New species and inherited traits are the product of evolution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Genes are the basic unit of heredity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An organism regulates its internal environment to maintain a stable and constant condition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Living organisms consume and transform energy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Disciplines&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subdisciplines of biology are recognized on the basis of the scale at which organisms are studied and the methods used to study them: biochemistry examines the rudimentary chemistry of life; molecular biology studies the complex interactions of systems of biological molecules; cellular biology examines the basic building block of all life, the cell; physiology examines the physical and chemical functions of the tissues, organs, and organ systems of an organism; and ecology examines how various organisms interact and associate with their environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more comprehensive list is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anatomy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arachnology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Astrobiology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Botany&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Biochemistry&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Biogeography&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bioinformatics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Biophysics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cell biology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cytology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dendrology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Developmental biology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ecology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Entomology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ethology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evolutionary biology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Embryology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Genetics / Genomics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Herpetology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Histology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Human biology / Anthropology / Primatology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ichthyology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limnology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Malacology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mammalogy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marine biology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microbiology / Bacteriology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Molecular biology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mycology / Lichenology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nematology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Neurobiology / Neuroscience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ornithology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Parasitology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Palaeontology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phycology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phylogenetics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Physiology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plant pathology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taxonomy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Virology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zoology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-24T22:04:25.687" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T22:04:25.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2519" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-24T22:04:25.687" Score="0" Body="Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Use this tag for general biology questions, but also use more specific life science tags to accompany this one if applicable." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2020-07-20T23:13:58.590" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T23:13:58.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2511" CreationDate="2011-04-24T23:22:05.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think you first need to agree on a definition of &quot;Bond Vigilante&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wiki link you provided has a definition of &quot;&lt;em&gt;A bond vigilante is a bond market investor &lt;strong&gt;who protests monetary or fiscal policies&lt;/strong&gt; they consider inflationary by selling bonds, &lt;strong&gt;thus increasing yields&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. In other words, they sell to achieve some sort of political policy goal. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, your own &quot;e.g.&quot; merely says &quot;&lt;em&gt;examples of investors or investment firms that sold bonds en masse and in large scale &lt;strong&gt;from fear of inflation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. In other words people who think selling bonds will make (or not lose) them money.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former is kind of hard to imagine happening in practice (see below), although a THREAT of selling - especially by large sovereign funds (think Chinese government) might be employed. I don't think there's an actual proof (short of Geitner spilling his beans), but plenty of people are convinced Chinese did use that as leverage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As far as &quot;Bond Vigilantes&quot; as defined by &quot;people who sell bonds to achieve some political result&quot;, you gotta be effing kidding me. &lt;strong&gt;When you manage money, your one and only goal is to make and/or not lose money.&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look up &quot;fiduciary duty&quot; for explanation why no large bond holder would gamble with clients' money that way - contrary to what Bernie Madoff case might have implied to lay public, most asset managers take this stuff very seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think selling bonds makes you money (or that holding them looses you money or makes money less than other assets), then you sell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then with the earned billions, you buy politicians/political apparatus/influence to do the things you want (see Soros, George for an example, although he made his money in FX, not FI :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As far as &quot;examples of people who sell bonds for fear of inflation&quot;, who needs nebulous &quot;Bond Vigilantes&quot; when the former &quot;Bond King&quot; (in other words, the fund manager of a fund that at some point held the largest bond holdings in the world), Bill Gross of Himco, &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110424-701326.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;has been selling treasuries&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ironically enough, Gross's arch-enemy, Larry Fink of Blackrock (or at least BLK's bond fund managers) are going long treasuries. Time will show who made the right call :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-04-24T23:47:49.943" LastActivityDate="2011-04-24T23:47:49.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2521" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2522" CreationDate="2011-04-25T00:17:34.757" Score="22" ViewCount="7446" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://convictcreations.com/culture/facts.htm&quot;&gt;site&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Serious crimes, such as murder, rape,&#xA;  or impersonating an Egyptian were&#xA;  given the death sentence in England.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T21:18:01.117" Title="Was impersonating an Egyptian once a capital offense in England?" Tags="|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2521" CreationDate="2011-04-25T03:03:30.177" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;In England a law of 1713 outlawed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;all Persons pretending to be Gipsies, or Wandering in the Habit or Form of Counterfeit Egyptians, or pretending to have Skill in Physiognomy, Palmestry, or the like Crafty Science, or pretending to tell Fortunes or like Phantastical Imaginations, or using any Subtle Craft, or Unlawful Games or Plays&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: The Gypsies, by Angus M. Frasier, 1995: Blackwell Publishing. Page 136. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0631196056&quot;&gt;Amazon Link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article1009858.ece&quot;&gt;not a capital offense&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="138" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T03:03:30.177" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2525" CreationDate="2011-04-25T03:13:20.437" Score="22" ViewCount="2419" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at the side of any diet soda, you can see 0 calories, 0 fat, 0 sugar, and tons more zeros.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean that diet sodas are actually somewhat HEALTHY? Or at least not at all bad for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1783" LastEditorUserId="4569" LastEditDate="2012-06-04T22:03:24.370" LastActivityDate="2015-03-29T22:20:48.540" Title="Are diet sodas as healthy as drinking water?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2507" CreationDate="2011-04-25T03:36:39.793" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is based on the assumption that the digit 6 is encoded as 101 (bar-space-bar), then the longer guard bars at the left, right, and middle can be interpreted as 666. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, every digit is encoded as seven bits. The digit 6 is encoded as 1010000 or as the inverse 0101111. The guard bars are encoded as 101, 01010, and 101.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So although the guard bars look like part of one of the encodings for the digit 6, they aren't really the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Links&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Product_Code&quot;&gt;Universal Product Code&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the website of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.laurerupc.com/&quot;&gt;George J. Laurer&lt;/a&gt;, Inventor of the UPC:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bellsouthpwp.net/l/a/laurergj/UPC/techques.html&quot;&gt;Why are there two ways to encode each digital value and when is each used?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bellsouthpwp.net/l/a/laurergj/UPC/666quest.html&quot;&gt;Questions about the U.P.C. and the New Testament (U.P.C. Questions about 666)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2111" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T03:36:39.793" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2523" CreationDate="2011-04-25T03:51:30.967" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;In diet soda you typically have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonated_water&quot;&gt;carbonated water&lt;/a&gt;, caramel colour, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame&quot;&gt;aspartame&lt;/a&gt;, phosphoric acid, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_benzoate&quot;&gt;potassium benzoate&lt;/a&gt;, flavouring, citric acid, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine&quot;&gt;caffeine&lt;/a&gt;. These are generally non-nutritive, but as with most food products, their health effects are variously under dispute or active research. According to reason, pure water is quite simply &lt;em&gt;lower risk&lt;/em&gt; than diet soda, but there's been significant research into the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_soda#Health_concerns&quot;&gt;health effects&lt;/a&gt; of the latter, with negative effects occurring largely via the psychological and biological trickery of artificial sweeteners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A brief summary of studies of health effects of &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=jNxAnPoqzrIC&amp;amp;lpg=PA291&amp;amp;dq=aspartame%20health%20effects&amp;amp;pg=PA291#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=aspartame%20health%20effects&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;aspartame&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Long-term clinical studies with high doses of aspartame (75 mg/kg/day for 24 weeks, or about 25 times current consumption levels at the 90th percentile) resulted in no changes in clinical or biochemical parameters or adverse experiences compared with a placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of many sources of information on the health effects of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benbest.com/health/caffeine.html&quot;&gt;caffeine&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;MSDS for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sial/b3420?lang=en&quot;&gt;benzoates&lt;/a&gt;. Also, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110718012424/http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/index.php/2006/04/03/soft_drinks_and_benzene_a_primer&quot;&gt;benzene in soft drinks&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="657" LastEditorUserId="17201" LastEditDate="2015-03-29T19:33:52.483" LastActivityDate="2015-03-29T19:33:52.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2508" CreationDate="2011-04-25T06:30:18.767" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prb.org/pdf04/59.4AmericanMilitary.pdf&quot;&gt;America’s Military Population&lt;/a&gt; report (p. 25) gives the following statistics on religion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                            Civilians&#xA;                  Military  20-39  18+&#xA;Protestant             35%   45%   53%&#xA;Catholic/Orthodox      22%   26%   25%&#xA;Other Christian        11%    3%    2%&#xA;Atheist/no religion    21%   19%   14%&#xA;Jewish                 --     1%    2%&#xA;Muslim                 --     1%    1%&#xA;Buddhist/Hindu         --     2%    1%&#xA;Other/unknown/refused  11%    3%    2%&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="661" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-15T17:40:31.353" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T17:40:31.353" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2528" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-25T07:23:09.963" Score="10" ViewCount="516" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite often I hear claims that all else being equal a handwritten letter triggers more empathy in the reader compared to a printed letter so it's sometimes beneficial to use handwriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A handwritten, or typed and signed, letter is far more effective than photocopied form letters, postcard campaigns or emails. Some politicians regard handwritten letters more highly than typewritten letters&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.efa.org.au/Campaigns/lobby.html#tipsletter&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence backing up such claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="666" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-25T09:17:14.180" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T12:51:49.993" Title="Is there evidence that using handwriting increases empathy?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2528" CreationDate="2011-04-25T12:17:41.440" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20230078&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; is more of an &lt;strong&gt;indirect answer&lt;/strong&gt; to the question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolved-primate/201004/telling-lies-email-vs-pen-and-paper&quot;&gt;suggests&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;people are more willing to lie when&#xA;  communicating via e-mail, than when&#xA;  communicating via pen and paper&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(the theoretical background for this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bandura&quot;&gt;Albert Bandura&lt;/a&gt;'s mechanisms of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.american-buddha.com/psych.moraldisengagementbandura.htm&quot;&gt;Moral Disengagement&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That people are less willing to lie in a handwritten message suggests that they regard it more highly than an email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like there is more of a '&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/05/27/letters.irpt/index.html?hpt=C2&quot;&gt;human connection&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; ' with handwritten letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-04-25T12:51:49.993" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T12:51:49.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2523" CreationDate="2011-04-25T15:15:52.970" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Diet soda is, among other things, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19151203&quot;&gt;positively associated with type 2 diabetes&lt;/a&gt;.  Artificially-sweetened carbonated drinks seem to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8451310&quot;&gt;make one hungrier&lt;/a&gt;, which does not bode well for weight control.  Since people tend to be resistant to making sizable dietary changes for long periods of time as part of a study, it's hard to really nail these things down definitively, but the evidence does not indicate at this point that diet sodas are &quot;not at all bad for you&quot;.  (An exception is if you're traveling or living in a country with an unsafe water supply.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T15:15:52.970" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2450" CreationDate="2011-04-25T15:32:23.593" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hitler had a personal &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astrology.co.uk/news/worldwar2.htm&quot;&gt;astrologer&lt;/a&gt; by some claims (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Ernst_Krafft&quot;&gt;Karl Ernst Krafft&lt;/a&gt; - though that claim is disputed elsewhere).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, he had an interest in &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070928225356AAG4Q3n&quot;&gt;Numerology&lt;/a&gt; - which may or may not be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerology#Numerology_and_astrology&quot;&gt;occultic&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.meta-religion.com/Esoterism/Astrology/into_the_twentieth_century.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; referenced by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070928225356AAG4Q3n&quot;&gt;previous&lt;/a&gt; link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Interest in astrology being as intense, in Germany, as it was - Ellic Howe, in Urania's children, 1967, estimates that during the twenty years after 1921 at least four hundred specialist books and pamphlets were published in that country - it was inevitable that it should be suspected that Hitler and the Nazi party made use of astrology for their own purposes&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Dr Karl-Gunther Heimoth, for instance, a doctor and psychologist who published an astrological study of homosexuality and through it became a friend of Ernst Rohm, the chief of the Sturm-Abteilung (Hitler's private army), was murdered by the Fuhrer with Rohm and others in June 1934. The Astrological Society in Germany, on the other hand, managed to stay out of trouble, integrating with the establishment and providing a certain amount of protection for astrologers even after 1934, when the Nazis banned all 'fortune-telling', making the publication of almanacs and astrological journals illegal.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which sounds like the practice was banned. Does that mean Hitler wasn't participating? Who knows for sure - the guy who committed suicide before the Allies got to him in 1945.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is certainly evidence that occult practices were investigated for propagandic purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Krafft was summoned to Berlin by Goebbels to look through the prophesies of Nostradamus and translate any of them that could be used as propaganda against the Allies. It was felt that these, if dropped into unoccupied areas, might well do something to persuade the people that government by the Nazis was in the natural order of things&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="637" LastEditorUserId="637" LastEditDate="2011-04-25T17:46:05.413" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T17:46:05.413" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2492" CreationDate="2011-04-25T17:13:48.927" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there are chickens that lay more than one egg a day, they are very rare. The cites I can find indicate that most chickens will lay about one egg a day at the prime of their egg-laying production:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How many eggs does one hen lay per day?&#xA;  This depends on: the time of year; the breed of the hen; the diet of the hen; the age of the hen; and, how the hen is looked after.&#xA;  Most of the standard breeds of chickens that have been selected through the years for egg production will lay between 180 – 320 eggs per year for their first year of laying.&#xA;  On one extreme, there are records of hens averaging an egg a day for over a year. The rate of laying tapers in the second year and beyond, until it may only take place during the spring.&#xA;  Some of the breeds that haven’t been selected for egg production (selected for show, or other qualities, instead) may only lay eggs in the spring and early summer.&#xA;  Appropriate feed mixtures also stimulate egg production. Provide 14 to 16 hours of light for hens to lay regularly.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;One hen can only lay, at the most, seven eggs per week while most chickens lay fewer&lt;/strong&gt;. A hen which lays one egg every day is a very good layer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ruleworks.co.uk/cgi-bin/TUfaq.exe?Guide=Poultry&amp;amp;Category=Poultry%20-%20General#q9&quot;&gt;http://www.ruleworks.co.uk/cgi-bin/TUfaq.exe?Guide=Poultry&amp;amp;Category=Poultry%20-%20General#q9&lt;/a&gt; (bolding mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Egg producing chickens have been bred for maximum egg production rather than meat yield, and can produce up to 300 eggs per year.  These chickens are usually of the White Leghorn type and lay white eggs, although brown egg layers are also available.  They have a mature body weight of 1.8 to 2.0 kg (four to five lb.). &#xA;  Dual purpose chickens are raised in small flocks for both meat and egg production.  They are smaller than commercial broilers, but reach a mature body weight of approximately 2.5 kg (5.5 lb.) for females and 3.0 kg (6.5 lb.) for males.  The hens will produce 200 to 250 eggs per year.  Typically, the eggs are brown.  Available breeds include Rhode Island Red crossed with Barred Rock, Columbian Rock, or Light Sussex. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agriculture.gov.sk.ca/Introduction_Poultry_Production_Saskatchewan&quot;&gt;http://www.agriculture.gov.sk.ca/Introduction_Poultry_Production_Saskatchewan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks as though one per day is the best you can expect. Biological systems are prone to having outliers far from the mean, so it's conceivable that somewhere out there is a chicken that can lay two, but that would definitely be unusual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1941" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T17:13:48.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2540" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-25T17:15:07.987" Score="20" ViewCount="2753" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every month I peruse magazines like &lt;em&gt;Fate&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Atlantis Rising&lt;/em&gt;, and over the last few month there's been a lot of self-congratulatory chatter about the fact that Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier has supposedly done experiments that show some of the underpinnings of homeopathy have some validity. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-ullman/luc-montagnier-homeopathy-taken-seriously_b_814619.html&quot;&gt;The Huffington Post wrote&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Montagnier, who is also founder and&#xA;  president of the World Foundation for&#xA;  AIDS Research and Prevention,&#xA;  asserted, &quot;I can't say that homeopathy&#xA;  is right in everything. What I can say&#xA;  now is that the high dilutions (used&#xA;  in homeopathy) are right. High&#xA;  dilutions of something are not&#xA;  nothing. They are water structures&#xA;  which mimic the original molecules.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here, Montagnier is making reference&#xA;  to his experimental research that&#xA;  confirms one of the controversial&#xA;  features of homeopathic medicine that&#xA;  uses doses of substances that undergo&#xA;  sequential dilution with vigorous&#xA;  shaking in-between each dilution.&#xA;  Although it is common for modern-day&#xA;  scientists to assume that none of the&#xA;  original molecules remain in solution,&#xA;  Montagnier's research (and other of&#xA;  many of his colleagues) has verified&#xA;  that electromagnetic signals of the&#xA;  original medicine remains in the water&#xA;  and has dramatic biological effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Montagnier won his Nobel for work in the field of virology, so this stuff doesn't sound entirely within his wheelhouse... but it's close. I don't think it would be right to dismiss his claims out of hand. Has this research been published? Has any peer review been done, or has anyone attempted to replicate his results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T12:55:24.863" Title="Has Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier found experimental evidence for homeopathy?" Tags="|homeopathy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2540" CreationDate="2011-04-25T17:29:58.510" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a nice example of why peer review is, although being the best process currently available to evaluate the quality of a scientific paper, still far from perfect. Here, a big name was all it needed to publish a paper. A superb take-down was given by professor &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/01/24/it-almost-makes-me-disbelieve/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PZ Myers&lt;/a&gt;. Since some people on this site might be fainthearted, I'll edit out his lucid language where appropriate. Visit the site for the full tour-de-force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us begin with his summary of the work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Montagnier claims in several papers that the DNA of pathogenic bacteria emits an electromagnetic signal, and further, that if you dilute that DNA homeopathically so that no DNA is actually present, the water continues to emit that same signal. Further, if you put two vials of homeopathically diluted EMS emitting water next to each other, the signal can move from one to another. And further, only bacteria and viruses pathogenic to humans produce this signal; ordinary E. coli does not. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no sensible explanation given for this phenomenon, only some wild-eyed speculation that &amp;quot;water molecules can form long polymers of dipoles associated by hydrogen bonds&amp;quot; that may be &amp;quot;self-maintained by the electromagnetic radiations they are emitting. [...]&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This has actually been disproved in the lab. Water has no long term memory. This question was also handled &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2/the-memory-of-water-homeopathy&quot;&gt;on this site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not going to criticize the paper because it postulates a mysterious mechanism with no coherent physical cause, though. I read the paper and call it [bad] by virtue of the sloppiness of the work. I disbelieve it, not because I'm predisposed to find it unlikely (although I do), but because it's an appallingly bad paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What follows is a lengthy description of the experiments and data processing done by Montagnier, and PZ doesn't look to kindly at this. His conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of other indicators that this is pathological science. They're looking at a minuscule, variable result that is prone to be picking up all kinds of irrelevant signals, yet nowhere in the entire paper can I find the word &amp;quot;blind&amp;quot;. This is the kind of experiment that demands extreme rigor and care, yet the authors don't even bother to describe the protocols used. That's a warning sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another methodological problem that makes this paper suspicious:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are claiming the existence of a truly remarkable phenomenon. A good scientist would focus on one fundamental observation, the claim that they can record species-specific bacterial signals with their crude apparatus, and nail that one down good and hard and believably. But no. They show off some very poor raw data and then rush off to dilute the experiment a trillion fold and claim to see the same signal. I found the first observation dubious, why are you showing me something even more unlikely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the paper &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; been published in a peer-reviewed journal, there are even more problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, another suspicious sign are the dates. This paper was submitted on 3 January 2009, revised on 5 January 2009, and accepted on 6 January 2009. That's an unbelievable turnaround, especially for a paper with such incredible results, and the revisions must have been trivial to be able to be whipped around in a day. Yet it's an awful paper that I would have shredded in a sea of red ink if it had come to me. Who reviewed this, the author's mother? Maybe someone even closer. Guess who the chairman of the editorial board is: Luc Montagnier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Montagnier L, Aissa J, Ferris S, Montagnier J-L, Lavallee C (2009) Electromagnetic Signals Are Produced by Aqueous Nanostructures Derived from Bacterial DNA Sequences. Interdiscip Sci Comput Life Sci 1: 81-90.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although PZ has not published his criticism in a peer-reviewed journal himself, the reservations he voices all make sense from a skeptical point of view. The methodology &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; poor, the proceedings of the publication &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; suspicious. What I recommend from a skeptical point of view is to withhold belief in Montagnier's results until they are repeated by other labs with more attention paid to a sound methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T07:41:32.580" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2540" CreationDate="2011-04-25T19:47:15.933" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, he hasn't.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the conclusions of his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spirit-science.fr/ArchivesScientifiques/2009MontagnierElectromagnetic%20Signals.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, there's some discussion about DNA and the fact that it resonates with the EM field. Interesting, but not the claim you hear in the news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have discovered a novel property of DNA, that&#xA;  is the capacity of some sequences to emit electromagnetic waves in resonance after excitation by the ambient&#xA;  electromagnetic background. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the paper starts start talking about physics (but note that the paper is written by biologists):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The physical nature of the nanostructures which support the EMS resonance remains to be determined.&#xA;  It is known from the very early X-ray diffraction studies of DNA, that water molecules are tightly associated&#xA;  with the double helix, and any beginner in molecular&#xA;  biology knows that DNA in water solution forms gels&#xA;  associating a larger number of water molecules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note: there is no proof in the paper that this gel is the origin of the EM field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moreover, a number of physical studies have reported&#xA;  that water molecules can form long polymers of dipoles&#xA;  associated by hydrogen bonds (Ruan et al., 2004; Wernet et al., 2004).&#xA;  However these associations appear to be very short-&#xA;  lived (Cowan et al., 2005). Could they live longer, being&#xA;  self-maintained by the electromagnetic radiations they&#xA;  are emitting as previously postulated by Del Guidice,&#xA;  Preparata and Vitielo (1988)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper is bending reality a little here. Previous studies in experimental physics studies have determined that the effect does not last, then he cites as possible an older theoretical result invalidated by them. So, there is only one conclusion based on previous work: there is positive proof that water has no memory. Adding a question mark does not save the previous statement from being misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have studied the decay with time of the capacity of dilutions for emitting EMS, after they have been&#xA;  removed (in mumetal boxes) from exposure to the excitation by the background. This capacity lasts at least&#xA;  several hours, some time up to 48 hours, indicating the&#xA;  relative stability of the nanostructures.&#xA;  Are the latter sufficiently specific of DNA sequences&#xA;  to be able to carry some genetic information?&#xA;  If so, what could be their role in pathogenicity, particularly in the genesis of chronic diseases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only non-speculative statement is that they measured some effect lasting up to 48 hours, but without a solid theoretical framework it's really weak to call it positive proof for memory of water. They should not assume it's due to nanostructures or anything else unless they have a proven experimental framework or experimental proof that it is the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Further studies involving close collaboration between&#xA;  physicists and biologists are obviously needed to resolve&#xA;  these problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper is intriguing, but its conclusion is mostly speculation with respect to the memory of water. The team that performed the experiment knows this and invokes more studies done by experts in the field (biologists for the DNA part and physicists for the water part).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, to answer your question, no, Montaigner has not proven anything with regards to homeopathy, or the memory of water. He's done some experiments which had some puzzling results. If they are replicated reliably and if no experimental error can be found, then we may have some interesting phenomena here. They would still be unrelated to homeopathy, though because they are still too short lived and require concentrations and a different preparation than homeopathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-05-02T12:55:24.863" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T12:55:24.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2543" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15652" CreationDate="2011-04-25T20:40:04.733" Score="23" ViewCount="6491" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/B24WH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://idsgn.org/posts/ikea-says-goodbye-to-futura/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IKEA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The 2010 edition [of the catalogue] is the world’s third&#xA;  most printed publication&lt;/strong&gt; (next to the&#xA;  Bible and Harry Potter)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;But &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.martinrothonline.com/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Martin Roth&lt;/a&gt; wrote an article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.martinrothonline.com/ChristianLiving/MRCC23.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2002&lt;/a&gt; where he was pretty sure that IKEA was close to beating the Bible in regard of &lt;em&gt;worldwide distribution&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.martinrothonline.com/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2005 update&lt;/a&gt; he estimated that IKEA had actually overtaken the Bible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Is IKEA being overmodest with their statement? Has a furniture catalogue actually become more prevalent than the Bible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question:&lt;br/&gt; &lt;strong&gt;How does the IKEA catalogue hold up against the Bible in regard of yearly prints and worldwide distribution?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;I'm not aksing if the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1112/is-the-bible-the-most-read-book&quot;&gt;Bible is the most read book&lt;/a&gt;. I'm interested in &lt;strong&gt;yearly&lt;/strong&gt;, not all-time numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE 2&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;After reading the comments I decided to explain my motivation behind this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that &lt;em&gt;&quot;more copies&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is not the same as &lt;em&gt;&quot;more read&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;&quot;more popular&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. But the numbers for the IKEA catalogue have increased, from 115 million in 2003 to 198 million in 2010 (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1112/is-the-bible-the-most-read-book&quot;&gt;Peter's answer&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;I assume IKEA wouldn't increase the number of copies if there wasn't a demand, after all printing them does cost the company money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even though the high print run doesn't necessarily mean it's also more read or more popular, it does seem to imply that the catalogue now reaches more people than any religious (or scientific) publication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes me wonder: what does it say about our culture if the most distributed publication in our world is a furniture catalogue? (This is more of a philosphical question and therefore not part of my actual question)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:12:45.683" Title="Is the IKEA catalogue being distributed in more prints than the Bible?" Tags="|bible|media|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2450" CreationDate="2011-04-25T21:35:37.100" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_German_expedition_to_Tibet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia - 1939 German expedition to Tibet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Himmler was fascinated by Asian mysticism and therefore wished to send&#xA;  such an expedition under the auspices of the SS Ahnenerbe (SS&#xA;  Ancestral Heritage Society), and desired that Schäfer perform research&#xA;  based on Hans Hörbiger’s pseudo-scientific theory of “Glacial&#xA;  Cosmogony” promoted by the Ahnenerbe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;^ a b Isrun Engelhardt, The Ernst-Schaefer-Tibet-Expedition (1938-1939) : new light on the political history of Tibet in the first half of the 20th century in McKay Alex (ed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1767" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T15:00:32.790" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T15:00:32.790" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2543" CreationDate="2011-04-25T21:59:05.727" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/about_ikea/facts_and_figures/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;According to the official IKEA site&lt;/a&gt;, they printed 198 million copies of the 2010 catalogue in 56 editions and 27 languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The distribution statistics for the bible are much harder to assess, since it is distributed by many different publishers, and there is contention about which Christian sects' version of the bible you consider, and whether or not translations count. .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot find a reliable source for the number of bibles sold each year worldwide, but according to my &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;site=&amp;amp;source=hp&amp;amp;q=bibles+sold+each+year+worldwide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;google searches&lt;/a&gt;, 100 million seems to be a popular guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, I do not think it unlikely that more copies of IKEA catalogues than bibles were distributed in 2010, but it is nearly impossible to be much more certain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="849" LastEditorUserId="849" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T21:23:26.630" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T21:23:26.630" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2484" CreationDate="2011-04-25T22:23:39.533" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read an article in Scientific American: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-strangest-numbers-in-string-theory&quot;&gt;The Strangest Numbers in String Theory&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by John C. Baez and John Huerta, where they state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At this point we should emphasize that string theory and M-theory have as yet made no experimentally testable predictions.  They are beautiful dreams - but so far only dreams.  The universe we live in does not look 10- or 11- dimensional, and have not seen any symmetry between matter and force particles.  David Gross, one of the world's leading experts on string theory, currently puts the odds of seeing some evidence for supersymmetry at CERN's Large hadron Collider at 50 percent.  Skeptics say they are much less.  Only time will tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think our initial thoughts are in line with major names in the field.  And as the last four words say, only time will tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2011-04-25T22:23:39.533" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2455" CreationDate="2011-04-26T11:05:42.123" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well starting on the page of evidence it says that people in Hunza in Pakistan live to 200, that is false and is probably a good place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First link is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegreathunzo.blogspot.com/2009/07/hunza-longevity-myth.html?zx=85cae9e13baa1d15&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; that has some useful information, notably:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;As someone who has lived and worked in the Hunza and Baltistan&#xA;    region of northern Pakistan for a&#xA;    decade, it is important to first&#xA;    debunk the myth that the Burushushki,&#xA;    Wakhi and Shina people of the Hunza&#xA;    region are blessed with the lives of&#xA;    Methusula. This was actually a myth&#xA;    which gained momentum when it was&#xA;    written up by Dr. Alexander Leaf, in&#xA;    the January 1973 issue of National&#xA;    Geographic magazine. There is&#xA;    absolutely no scientific validity to&#xA;    his claim. People of the Hunza suffer&#xA;    from malnutrition and nutrition&#xA;    deficiencies just as much as any other&#xA;    remote mountain region in SE Asia.&#xA;    Although the predominantly Ismaeli&#xA;    faith (branch of Shi-ite muslims) are&#xA;    progressive and relatively better off&#xA;    than most of their neighbours in&#xA;    nearby regions, they will all tell any&#xA;    visitor, that their life expectancy is&#xA;    around 50 - 60 years, just like any&#xA;    other region of northern Pakistan.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would seem that there are people in Hunza who tell visitors that they are of an advanced age but they are unable to provide any proof, the whole myth around the Hunza people was due to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hrmoody.com/art1.html&quot;&gt;scientist being hoodwinked in 1973&lt;/a&gt;.  Generally the population in Hunza does seem to be reasonably long lived and the elderly in the village are in a good mental and physical state &lt;a href=&quot;http://hunzatimes.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/health-and-old-age-places-with-high-longevity-hunza/&quot;&gt;as noted by Dr Alexander Leaf at a later date&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Longevity. The longevity claims made&#xA;  for Hunzukuts by foreign visitors vary&#xA;  considerably, with the highest&#xA;  estimate being 150 years of age. Renee&#xA;  Taylor writes in her book Hunza Health&#xA;  Secrets for Long Life and Happiness:&#xA;  “In Hunza, people manage to live to&#xA;  over 100 years of age in perfect&#xA;  mental and physical health . . . men&#xA;  of 90 [are] new fathers and women of&#xA;  50 still conceive.” Betty Lee Morales,&#xA;  president of the American Cancer&#xA;  Society and a 2-time visitor to Hunza,&#xA;  reported to the Los Angeles Times&#xA;  (July 16, 1973), “It’s an exaggeration&#xA;  to say that they live to be 150 but&#xA;  there’s no need to gild the lily. The&#xA;  average age is 90 when they die.” Dr.&#xA;  Alexander Leaf, Chief of Medical&#xA;  Services at Massachusetts General&#xA;  Hospital and a professor at Harvard&#xA;  Medical School, has reliably reported&#xA;  meeting a 106-year-old man who still&#xA;  worked herding goats during the summer&#xA;  months, while “the oldest Hunzukut”&#xA;  was “revered” for being 110. Dr. Leaf&#xA;  also has pointed out that it is “the&#xA;  fitness of many of the elderly rather&#xA;  than their age that impresses me,” and&#xA;  he has noted that no written records&#xA;  of births or deaths were then kept in&#xA;  Hunza. According to the Mir of Hunza,&#xA;  out of a present population of 40,000,&#xA;  6 men are over 100 years of age and&#xA;  many are 90 years old or more. (Before&#xA;  the 1st road came, there were at least&#xA;  50 over the age of 100.) In America,&#xA;  by contrast, there are only 3&#xA;  centenarians for every 100,000 people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally there is no evidence for anybody living to an age of 200 years, the oldest people we know of all all &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_people_in_the_world&quot;&gt;well short of the magic 200 mark&lt;/a&gt; (I know it's wiki, but it has a well formatted list of all the names).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for living without food or water, it's a well known fact that we need water to live and you &lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/death-dying/live-without-food-and-water2.htm&quot;&gt;can on average only survive 3-5 days without it&lt;/a&gt;.  Of course there may be some exceptional circumstances where people have managed to go an extra day or two, but months without water is not possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Humans need water to live, plain and&#xA;  simple. We lose water through sweat,&#xA;  urine, feces and even breathing. This&#xA;  water needs to be replaced in order&#xA;  for our organs to continue to work&#xA;  properly. In severe heat, an adult can&#xA;  lose as much as 1.5 liters of water&#xA;  through sweat alone [source:&#xA;  Scientific American]. The main risk&#xA;  without water in high heat is that&#xA;  your body temperature will continue to&#xA;  rise and you'll suffer from heat&#xA;  stroke. Drinking water will cool you&#xA;  down and lower your core temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also need food, without any calorific intake we would run out of energy pretty quickly and eventually die.  How long you can go without food depends on muscle and fat stores and the body can live off them for quite some time. &lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/death-dying/live-without-food-and-water1.htm&quot;&gt;Prisoners on hunger strikes have lived 73 days without food&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;British Prime Minister Margaret&#xA;  Thatcher refused to bend, however. The&#xA;  prisoners drank small amounts of&#xA;  water, but refused food altogether.&#xA;  Sands died from starvation in a prison&#xA;  hospital on the 66th day of the&#xA;  strike. Thatcher remained steadfast&#xA;  and called Sands a criminal and his&#xA;  death a suicide. Nine more prisoners&#xA;  died from starvation after Sands.&#xA;  Thomas McElwee lasted the longest, at&#xA;  73 total days -- a full week longer&#xA;  than the next closest prisoner&#xA;  [source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://irishhungerstrike.com/&quot;&gt;irishhungerstrike.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only evidence I can find of anyone coming near to living up to the breatharian ideal is Prahlad Jani who appears to have been able to survive for 15 days in hospital without food or water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article425184.ece&quot;&gt;Hindu Times Link&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_experts-baffled-as-mataji-s-medical-reports-are-normal_1380169&quot;&gt;DNA India Link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/skeptimedia/skeptimedia90.html&quot;&gt;controversy over the results&lt;/a&gt; as Prahlad Jani was not under constant supervision and no independant review of the results has been allowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jani's handlers did not allow&#xA;  Edamaruku and his associates to be&#xA;  involved in the testing of Jani in&#xA;  2003. Nor were they allowed to be involved in the recent re-testing.&#xA;  According to Edamaruku:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;I asked to be allowed to send an independent team to survey the room&#xA;    where this test is taking place, but I&#xA;    was repeatedly turned down. It is&#xA;    ridiculous to ask people to believe&#xA;    that any man can go 15 days, let alone&#xA;    70 years, without food or water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Dr. Shah has been in charge of three similar investigations over the&#xA;    past ten years, and he has never&#xA;    allowed independent verification. In&#xA;    2000, he was asking for funds to&#xA;    investigate a man he claimed got his&#xA;    energy from the sun, just like plants&#xA;    do. In 2003, he even approached NASA&#xA;    for funds to investigate Mr. Jani,&#xA;    claiming astronauts might benefit from&#xA;    the research. This particular&#xA;    hospital, led by this particular&#xA;    doctor, keeps on making these claims&#xA;    without ever producing evidence or&#xA;    publishing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, we know that we die after about 5 days of no water, the longest hunger strike I can find is 73 days and we also know that the claims made about people living to the age of 200 are false.  The only glimmer of hope (A man who appears to have survived 15 days without food or water) appears to be false, So I can say quite conclusivly that anybody surviving on air and sunlight alone doesn't have very long to live...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-10-15T13:05:11.447" LastActivityDate="2014-10-15T13:05:11.447" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2550" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2559" CreationDate="2011-04-26T13:11:27.580" Score="10" ViewCount="34115" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are so many articles in the internet that say going out during a solar eclipse causes harm to pregnant women. Is this claim true? Why did this myth come in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4852690.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One has it that if a pregnant woman goes out during an eclipse, &#xA;        her baby will be born blind or with a cleft lip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another says that a pregnant woman should not touch her belly during a lunar &#xA;       eclipse, or she will cause the baby to be born with a birthmark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am thinking in the lines of &quot;what made people come up with these ideas in the first place?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T03:31:21.617" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T00:17:03.857" Title="Do solar eclipses cause harm to pregnant women?" Tags="|environmental-health|pregnancy|astronomy|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2551" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2553" CreationDate="2011-04-26T13:12:14.460" Score="18" ViewCount="5139" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard claims that garlic repels mosquitoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, &lt;a href=&quot;http://kerryg.hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Repel-Mosquitoes-Naturally&quot;&gt;this site claims that&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eating a diet heavy in onions and garlic can make you unattractive to mosquitoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence supporting that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-12-13T10:29:58.640" LastActivityDate="2012-08-15T18:49:18.847" Title="Does garlic repel mosquitoes?" Tags="|natural-remedies|entomology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2551" CreationDate="2011-04-26T13:39:27.407" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this site (http://www.garlic-central.com/mosquito.html) it does indeed work (and here's another one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mosquito-netting.com/2007-09-natural-mosquito-repellent.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mosquito-netting.com/2007-09-natural-mosquito-repellent.html&lt;/a&gt;).&#xA;Neither of them reference any scientific study though, and a quick search didn't turn one up (but it could of course be such things are too old to be on the net).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another one: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wildernesscollege.com/plants-that-repel-mosquitoes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wildernesscollege.com/plants-that-repel-mosquitoes.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a site (one of many) selling garlic based mozzie repellant: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mosquitobarrier.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mosquitobarrier.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this site (http://americanfolklore.net/folklore/2010/10/garlic_superstitions_folklore.html) lists it under folklore, but again without reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T13:39:27.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2551" CreationDate="2011-04-26T14:31:43.210" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is that it is a myth.  To quote this &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa011699&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most alternatives to topically applied&#xA;  repellents have proved to be&#xA;  ineffective. No ingested compound,&#xA;  including garlic and thiamine (vitamin&#xA;  B1), has been found to be capable of&#xA;  repelling biting arthropods.26-28&#xA;  Small, wearable devices that emit&#xA;  sounds that are purported to be&#xA;  abhorrent to biting mosquitoes have&#xA;  also been proved to be ineffective.29&#xA;  In our study, wristbands impregnated&#xA;  with either DEET or citronella&#xA;  similarly provided no protection from&#xA;  bites, consistent with the known&#xA;  inability of repellents to protect&#xA;  beyond 4 cm from the site of&#xA;  application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above comes from: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comparative Efficacy of Insect Repellents against Mosquito Bites&#xA;Mark S. Fradin, M.D., and John F. Day, Ph.D.&#xA;N Engl J Med 2002; 347:13-18July 4, 2002&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T11:44:05.773" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T11:44:05.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2555" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2568" CreationDate="2011-04-26T14:50:26.770" Score="30" ViewCount="2856" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do secret societies that wish to bring about a new world order still exist?  Who are they, what evidence points to their existence today, and what are their overall goals?  Also, who are the foremost experts on secret societies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question originates from a reporter seeking to find experts to appear on a popular, syndicated morning radio program at 6:00 am (Central) on Thursday, May 5.  If we cannot recommend an expert from the Stack Exchange community, the next best thing would be to point him to our collective knowledge and research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI - The program is called The Mancow Muller Radio Show, the No. 4 radio program in the country, with an average of 11 million-12 million listeners daily. The show can be heard in 200-plus markets, and segments are often replayed on FOX News.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1872" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T06:40:44.560" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T13:51:59.520" Title="Do secret societies that wish to bring about a new world order still exist?" Tags="|history|government|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2551" CreationDate="2011-04-26T15:06:22.667" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; I didn't quite finish this answer before &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/1791/ardesco&quot;&gt;Ardesco&lt;/a&gt;'s was &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2551/do-garlic-repel-mosquitoes#2553&quot;&gt;posted&lt;/a&gt;.  I'm posting this anyway, since it gives another couple sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Garlic &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/esa/jee/1970/00000063/00000004/art00046&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;does contain some essential oils that are larvicidal to mosquitos&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, the oil will kill mosquito larvae on contact).  Therefore, there &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be a &lt;em&gt;chance&lt;/em&gt; that rubbing garlic on one's self might repel mosquitos, however, the smell would likely also repel humans ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether or not &lt;em&gt;eating&lt;/em&gt; garlic provides any significant repellence to mosquitos, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0269-283X.2005.00544.x/pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a double-blind placebo controlled trial of garlic as a mosquito repellant&lt;/a&gt; by Rajan, &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt;, concluded the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The data did not provide evidence of significant systemic mosquito&#xA;  repellence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors did note, however, that prolonged ingestion of garlic was not studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-04-26T15:06:22.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2557" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-26T15:10:24.207" Score="18" ViewCount="5630" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always wondered if a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_fish&quot;&gt;fish pedicure&lt;/a&gt; (where people let fish nibble on their feet to remove dead skin) actually has any real discernible benefits for the amount of time that people put their feet in tanks for. To me, it looks like a bit of a fad, especially with the high prices that some operators are charging. There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12595809&quot;&gt;also some&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1361282/Infection-warning-fish-pedicure-craze-sweeping-Britain.html&quot;&gt;health warnings&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is this: is there any scientific evidence that shows that a fish pedicure actually does any good?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1850" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T05:29:07.410" Title="Does a fish pedicure do any good?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2550" CreationDate="2011-04-26T15:47:43.147" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/2038/brian-schroth&quot;&gt;Brian&lt;/a&gt; made a strong enough argument (albeit without references) that these superstitions are likely bogus, so&lt;/strike&gt; I am going to focus on their origins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit (over a year after I first wrote this answer):&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/2038/brian-schroth&quot;&gt;Brian&lt;/a&gt;'s answer that I referenced above has since been deleted.  In retrospect (thanks to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/96/sklivvz&quot;&gt;Sklivvz&lt;/a&gt; digging it up from the archives), that other answer turned out to not have any properly referenced statements and was generally hand-wavy.  The gist of the argument was that since many women go out in public these days while pregnant, there is likely a significant number of women who are inadvertently exposed to eclipses, yet despite this we don't see a very high rate of birth defects.  The other answer was here before mine, so I probably just referenced it out of courtesy ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7502155&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;seems like at least some of these beliefs are rooted in traditional Mexican medicine&lt;/a&gt;.  That article is in Spanish (and I don't have access to the full copy), but here is a translation of a portion of the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An analysis of the logic of one of the commonest health beliefs in rural areas of Mexico is made, taking as a starting point testimonies collected in the area of Ocuituco, in the state of Morelos. This belief suggests that a pregnant woman is in danger of having a harelipped baby during a solar eclipse. The interrelation of these beliefs with other traditional elements (such as the &quot;loss of the shadow&quot; and the &quot;hot-cold theory&quot;) is discussed. Also, some of the already existing interpretations of this belief which seek to link the &quot;loss of the shadow&quot; with the solar eclipse belief are reviewed. Finally, an alternative interpretation of this belief is made from a structuralist methodological perspective. This interpretation is grounded in the Nahuatl myth on the creation of the sun and the moon, and in an analysis of the nature of rabbits in the Nahuatl culture, according to historic secondary sources. It is suggested that the belief about the danger of a solar eclipse must be interpreted in connection to the &quot;hot-cold theory&quot;, but not to the &quot;loss of the shadow&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Loss of the shadow&quot;, or &quot;la pérdida de la sombra&quot; is a traditional belief that one's &quot;shadow&quot; (symbolizing the soul) can be separated from one's body.  Hispanic &quot;hot-cold theory&quot; is based on the belief that some diseases/ailments are &quot;hot&quot; and others are &quot;cold&quot; in nature.  Therefore, to summarize, this article is claiming that the avoidance of the eclipse among pregnant women was perhaps precipitated by a belief that it could strip one of one's soul and/or that its &quot;hot&quot; or &quot;coldness&quot; could instigate a disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The avoidance of eclipses among pregnant women is also apparently a custom in India, too.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://poi.sagepub.com/content/18/3/174.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; by Jain examined a medical center in India which had a higher-than-average rate of children born with missing limbs.  The study was unable to conclude any correlation between the environment and the high rate of birth defects, however, it did note that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An interesting finding was a history of exposure of expectant mother to the eclipse during pregnancy in 19 cases [out of 200]. Though no documentary evidence exists to correlate it with the deficiency in the literature, still many parents believe this to be the cause of limb deficiency in the new born.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T13:17:25.187" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2560" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2562" CreationDate="2011-04-26T18:55:11.423" Score="33" ViewCount="5882" Body="&lt;p&gt;When washing my hands, I was always told to use warm soapy water. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, is there any chemical or biological reason why warm soapy water is more effective to cold soapy water when trying to sanitise your hands?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a reason given for using warm water was that it opens your pores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-05-09T14:40:43.370" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T13:04:55.560" Title="Is warm water more effective than cold water for washing one's hands?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|chemistry|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3139" CreationDate="2011-04-26T19:39:46.420" Score="40" ViewCount="8376" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometime ago I'd heard someone trained in child psychology claim that crying for emotional reasons (as opposed to getting something in your eye for example) released toxins from the brain and/or body.  More specifically, she claimed that emotionally-based tears, when collected and fed to rats in their food, resulted in a markedly increased statistical rate of disease and mortality in comparison to reflex-based tears or no tears at all.  The explanation seemed a little hand-wavy, was uncited, and I was a little bit suspicious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have noticed for some time that emotionally-based tears taste different depending on the &quot;bitterness&quot; of the experience.  Then, I recently went through an extremely stressful time where I experienced levels of emotional stress higher than I ever have in my life.  I found to my surprise that my tears during this period, if allowed to drain down my throat, caused extreme soreness for a short period of time (mitigated by drinking liquids); whereas if I was careful not to allow them to, no soreness resulted.  A friend also experiencing extreme emotional stress found that the specific areas on her cheeks that her tears touched became visibly red and raw.  Again, her experience was that the rawness correlated with contact vs no contact in specific incidents--rather than frequency.  These responses seemed too specific to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosomatic_medicine&quot;&gt;psychosomatic&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, &quot;toxins&quot; is very vague and it's clear that crying is an important emotional tool regardless of whether its significance is psychologically- or physiologically-based.  My sample-space is unsatisfactorily small, but has intrigued me.  Is there any scientific evidence that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emotionally-driven tears contain&#xA;substances harmful to the body, and&#xA;if so which substances and by which&#xA;mechanisms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emotionally-driven tears contain&#xA;substances which are in some way&#xA;specifically related to stress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And, if either of the above are&#xA;true, is it scientifically plausible&#xA;that the substances in&#xA;emotionally-driven tears are in any&#xA;way originating in the brain?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm especially interested any evidence which suggests there is a good reason to fully expel emotionally-driven tears from the body, and any that suggests failure to cry under emotional stress prevents the release of a substance which ought to be released for body/brain health.  Does anyone have any good research on these topics?  My apologies for the length and detail of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I've also recently experienced stinging cheeks after an especially poignant (yet low tear volume) cry.  Since this is now a topic of curiousity for me it's hard to rule out a psychosomatic effect, but it was a distinct enough feeling to bump this post with an edit.  No hard sources out there, anyone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1861" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T06:02:28.113" LastActivityDate="2022-05-31T15:33:04.053" Title="Do emotionally-driven tears release toxins from the body?" Tags="|psychology|neurology|chemistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2560" CreationDate="2011-04-26T21:59:00.010" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/joem/Citation/2005/04000/Hot_Water_for_Handwashing_Where_is_the_Proof_.13.aspx&quot;&gt;Hot Water for Handwashing - Where is the Proof?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The initial experiment involved&#xA;  testing with bland non-antimicrobial&#xA;  soap at 5 temperatures from 4.4°C&#xA;  (40°F) to 49°C (120°F). &lt;strong&gt;Independent of&#xA;  soil or bacterial type (resident or&#xA;  transient) there was no significant&#xA;  difference in efficacy attributed to&#xA;  water temperature.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the second experiment antimicrobial&#xA;  soaps were used having different&#xA;  antimicrobial active ingredients, at&#xA;  each of two water temperatures, 29.5°C&#xA;  (85°F) and 43°C (110°F).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this experiment, &lt;strong&gt;even though&#xA;  slightly higher efficacy was seen&#xA;  with antimicrobial soaps at higher&#xA;  temperatures, overall, there was no&#xA;  statistical difference in efficacy ... at the two&#xA;  water temperatures.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Concomitant to the increase in&#xA;  efficacy at higher temperatures was a&#xA;  consistent trend for increases in&#xA;  measures of skin damage, such as skin&#xA;  moisture content, transepidermal water&#xA;  loss and erythema. This was also found&#xA;  not to be statistically significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As has been shown by many previous&#xA;  researchers, &lt;strong&gt;overall handwashing&#xA;  effectiveness is more dependent on the&#xA;  vigorousness of execution than details&#xA;  such as the type of soap, the length&#xA;  of handwash or in this case water&#xA;  temperature.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the complete text of the paper go &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1471-5740.2002.00043.x/pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (it references more than 50 publications).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T10:51:51.120" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T10:51:51.120" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2274" CreationDate="2011-04-26T22:07:05.843" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;In England and Wales, arrested persons have the right to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;have one person known to them or likely to take an interest in their welfare&#xA;  informed at public expense of their whereabouts as soon as practicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/police/operational-policing/pace-codes/pace-code-c&quot;&gt;Police and Criminal Evidence (PACE) Act 1984 - Code of Practice C, paragraph 5.1&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also have the right, usually, to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;telephone one person for a reasonable time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(paragraph 5.6)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PACE also gives the conditions in which the police are allowed to refuse the telephone call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is separate to, and in addition to the right to contact a solicitor, which will also be in the PACE codes of practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is a partial answer to your second question, &quot;And what's the &quot;phone call&quot; policy in other countries?&quot;, rather than a real answer to the main question. I would have added it as a comment instead of an answer, but I don't think I can make comments, as a new user.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2132" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-02-10T17:44:32.757" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T17:44:32.757" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2564" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2583" CreationDate="2011-04-27T00:06:51.070" Score="20" ViewCount="4162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this question is similar to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2560/is-warm-water-superior-to-cold-for-washing-ones-hands&quot;&gt;one posted&lt;/a&gt; about hand washing with either cold or warm water, but I hope it can stand on its own. If not, I'll delete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hand Sanitizers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alcohol and water are the most &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.botachtactical.com/purell.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;common ingredients&lt;/a&gt; in commercially available hand sanitizers.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;These products are marketed under a variety of names and by differing companies, but they are all &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hand-sanitizer-dispenser-review.com/hand-sanitizer-ingredients.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;relatively similar&lt;/a&gt;, even though some use ingredients like Benzalkonium Chloride instead of ethyl alcohol. For the purpose of this question, they should all be treated equally, unless a particular formula or brand can be demonstrated to clearly stand out from the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, regardless of chemical makeup, it's common to encounter statements such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kills 99.99% of most common germs that&#xA;  may cause illness in as little as 15&#xA;  seconds &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raytechcatalog.com/product_info/purell-hand-sanitizer-376.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I have had some difficulty finding anyone claiming these products to be more effective than hand washing, I have found statements such as the following...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;alcohol-based hand sanitizer with&#xA;  emollients is actually better&#xA;  tolerated than soap-and-water hand&#xA;  washing - not drying and irritating.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.germx.com/faq_detail.aspx?id=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Soap and water&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not to go into detail about the documented difficulties &lt;a href=&quot;http://semmelweis.org/about/dr-semmelweis-biography/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Semmelweis&lt;/a&gt; had in introducing this concept to other doctors as a way to slow the spread of infection, handwashing has been fairly well accepted by the scientific community and the public in general.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, for the purpose of this question, I'm only referring to handwashing with regular soaps, and not specially made antimicrobial soaps.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which method is more effective at removing germs from the hands, or are they equally effective?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T14:23:49.663" Title="Which is more effective at removing germs, washing with soap and water or using hand sanitizers?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1823" CreationDate="2011-04-27T05:21:58.113" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Low range estimate: 1.4 g CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; equivalent per kilowatt hr&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mean estimate: 66 g CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; equivalent per kWh&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High range estimate: 288 g CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; equivalent per kWh&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is from a metastudy of 103 studies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can access the full text from this page on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/backgrndhome.htm&quot;&gt;Nuclear Information and Resource Service&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to the PDF: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/sovacool_nuclear_ghg.pdf&quot;&gt;Sovacool, B. K. 2008. Valuing the greenhouse gas emissions from nuclear power: A critical survey. &lt;em&gt;Energy Policy&lt;/em&gt; v. 36 (8): 2950-2963.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For comparison, a natural gas-fired power plant might emit 515.29 g CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; per kWh (per wikipedia: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_station#Carbon_dioxide&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel_power_station#Carbon_dioxide&lt;/a&gt;; (conversion to metric mine &amp;amp; therefore mistakes are as well.) Coal and Oil-fired plants will emit more CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; than a natural gas plant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;ETA: After more thorough checking, confirmed the neighborhood for CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; equivalents emitted throughout the life cycle for natural gas and coal plants from Jarmillo et al. &quot;Comparative Life-Cycle Air Emissions of Coal, Domestic Natural Gas, LNG, and SNG for Electricity Generation&quot; in Environmental Science and Technology from 2007, link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ce.cmu.edu/~gdrg/readings/2007/09/13/Jaramillo_ComparativeLCACoalNG.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.ce.cmu.edu/~gdrg/readings/2007/09/13/Jaramillo_ComparativeLCACoalNG.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Natural Gas midpoint: 499 g CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; equivalent per kWh&#xA;Coal midpoint: 953 g CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; equivalent per kWh&#xA;These are close enough to the wikipedia figures (although not exactly the same) that it appears wiki is also using the lifecycle emissions. Again, the conversion to metric is mine &amp;amp; etc.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of science and policy work treats nuclear power as having 0 CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emissions, but that's not quite true, and especially is less true if the higher emissions numbers are more correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1941" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2012-01-28T11:02:11.963" LastActivityDate="2012-01-28T11:02:11.963" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2566" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2581" CreationDate="2011-04-27T06:20:09.070" Score="31" ViewCount="94597" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always been told that an open box of baking soda will &quot;absorb&quot; odors and make a fridge smell less.  I have even seen people with three boxes in one fridge.  My question is whether there is any scientific evidence for this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems entirely possible that it is purely confirmation bias; the boxes are always installed at the start of a keeping-the-fridge-decent campaign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2133" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-03-31T20:15:21.697" LastActivityDate="2019-02-04T14:23:23.337" Title="Does baking soda remove odors?" Tags="|chemistry|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2569" CreationDate="2011-04-27T07:19:17.093" Score="14" ViewCount="4443" Body="&lt;p&gt;Growing up, we were regularly taught in geography about the different seasons and how most trees would shed their leaves in autumn, while evergreen trees do not shed their leaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I live in India (at about 28° N), and I saw that many trees on our campus were shedding leaves in March instead. So is this shedding leaves in autumn a valid theory, or just a gross generalization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastEditorUserId="2712" LastEditDate="2012-11-27T21:11:24.057" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T21:11:24.057" Title="Do trees shed their leaves in autumn?" Tags="|biology|environment|weather|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2555" CreationDate="2011-04-27T09:23:24.000" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;We know that such societies exist because many have become exposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For historical examples, consider the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Freemasonry&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Freemasons&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Illuminati&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ku Klux Klan&lt;/a&gt;. All were, at some point, influential (more or less) secret societies consisting of people with common aims and traditions. The Wikipedia articles on these are actually very well sourced and provide a good summary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is well documented that some of these structures have survived until today, and even remain influential, such as the infamous &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_Due&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;P2 (Propaganda Due) Lodge&lt;/a&gt; (source: David Yallop, &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0553050737&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;In God’s Name&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;). The existence of P2 has also been &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/26/newsid_4396000/4396893.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;documented in press&lt;/a&gt; (where it was referred to as “a state within a state”).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exposure of P2 in 1981 revealed the membership of many influential politicians – among them Silvio Berlusconi&lt;sup&gt;1)&lt;/sup&gt; – and unearthed plans “for a consolidation of the media, suppression of trade unions, and the rewriting of the Italian Constitution.” (Wikipedia; Tobias Jones, &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B004KAB7L2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Dark Heart of Italy&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently, the Christian terrorist group &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutaree&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hutaree&lt;/a&gt; was exposed in the USA, along with their aim to stage a small-scale coup d'état (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8593975.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the fear that the deregulation of the mass media market has led to a de facto control of the public opinion by very few people (who would constitute a not-so-secret society). A rigorous examination of the situation in the USA is undertaken in the film &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0410407/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Orwell Rolls in His Grave&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1925114769515892401#&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;online video&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orwell_Rolls_in_His_Grave&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;… so &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, secret societies “that wish to bring about a new world order” did exist, some until very recently, and there is no reason to suspect that they suddenly ceased to exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are of course &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_Order_(conspiracy_theory)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;numerous allegations and conspiracy theories&lt;/a&gt; about secret societies that aren’t corroborated by facts. Being conspiracy theories, there isn’t much chance of disproving them conclusively, and nary a chance (other than by sheer coincidence) of them being true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1)&lt;/sup&gt; Berlusconi’s membership receipt:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ricevuta_di_pagamento_per_l%27iscrizione_del_dott._Silvio_Berlusconi_alla_loggia_massonica_P2.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Ricevuta_di_pagamento_per_l%27iscrizione_del_dott._Silvio_Berlusconi_alla_loggia_massonica_P2.gif&quot; width=&quot;100&quot; height=&quot;97&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that in many countries the political elite is a very tightly knit group of people. For instance, in France many of the top politicians went to the same University – Sciences Po – and knew each other even before that, sometimes through family ties. In Germany, most conservative politicians belong to tightly knit fraternities (“Studentenverbindung”). This of course means that without the right connections it is hard to gain footing in politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But none of this is secret, let alone constituting secret societies. It is also, as far as I know, entirely uncontroversial. For that reason I can’t be bothered to research references. The remark serves more as an “FYI”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T13:51:59.520" CommentCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2567" CreationDate="2011-04-27T09:48:14.290" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;The act of shedding leaves is a response to an environmental pressure (dehydration).  In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzle.com/articles/deciduous-trees-facts.html&quot;&gt;northern hemisphere&lt;/a&gt; trees 'recall' the nitrogen and carbon present in their leaves in the fall in preparation for winter, to prevent dehydration of the tree during the dry period(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your case in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tutorvista.com/biology/tropical-deciduous-forests-in-india&quot;&gt;India&lt;/a&gt;, the 'dry season' is between March-May, and as a result the trees recall their C/N at that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T09:48:14.290" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2570" PostTypeId="3" CreationDate="2011-04-27T10:42:49.990" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T10:42:49.990" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T10:42:49.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2571" PostTypeId="3" CreationDate="2011-04-27T10:42:49.990" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T10:42:49.990" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T10:42:49.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2572" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-27T10:45:09.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any healing practice, method, compound or procedure which falls outside the bounds of scientifically validated medicine either because it has not demonstrated significant, safe, repeatable results consistently under proper observing conditions, or has not yet had the opportunity to undergo such testing. Can also relate to the study, evaluation, and interpretation of data collected on such processes.  Related term: Complementary Medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T14:55:51.260" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:55:51.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2573" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-27T10:45:09.897" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for claims regarding cures and health practices which fall outside the boundaries of scientifically validated medicine." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="22367" LastEditDate="2019-05-01T04:10:02.063" LastActivityDate="2019-05-01T04:10:02.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2762" CreationDate="2011-04-27T10:46:02.030" Score="12" ViewCount="2567" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a rumor that eating &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilberry&quot;&gt;bilberries&lt;/a&gt; improves eyesight or, at least, helps to maintain it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="673" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-19T13:18:57.907" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T13:21:38.973" Title="Does bilberry improve eyesight?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2560" CreationDate="2011-04-27T12:33:45.633" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is to do with the surface tension of the water.  The hotter the water the lower the surface tension hence the easier it is to wash dirt away (obviously you still need to scrub your hands, but as the surface tension is lower dirt should come away easier).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/surten.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;To quote a physics site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The surface tension of water is 72&#xA;  dynes/cm at 25°C . It would take a&#xA;  force of 72 dynes to break a surface&#xA;  film of water 1 cm long. The surface&#xA;  tension of water decreases&#xA;  significantly with temperature as&#xA;  shown in the graph. The surface&#xA;  tension arises from the polar nature&#xA;  of the water molecule. Hot water is a&#xA;  better cleaning agent because the&#xA;  lower surface tension makes it a&#xA;  better &quot;wetting agent&quot; to get into&#xA;  pores and fissures rather than&#xA;  bridging them with surface tension.&#xA;  Soaps and detergents further lower the&#xA;  surface tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CYGHm.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should probably also mention that soap reduces the surface tension a lot more than heating the water will. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy00/phy00627.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;) Unfortunately I don't have a graph for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added a link to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.uk/patents?id=CCdeAAAAEBAJ&amp;amp;printsec=claims&amp;amp;zoom=4#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;patent for detergents&lt;/a&gt; to show that the point of detergents is to reduce the surface tension (Page 4) to improve the wetting ability of water and hence improve the washing efficiency (Page 5).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-05-09T15:27:32.003" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T15:27:32.003" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1507" CreationDate="2011-04-27T12:47:32.220" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like it's the work of DARPA (so they probably have got it working somehow):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&amp;amp;_pageLabel=PP_ARTICLEMAIN&amp;amp;node_id=222&amp;amp;content_id=CNBP_026931&amp;amp;use_sec=true&amp;amp;sec_url_var=region1&amp;amp;__uuid=1fe17a4d-1ad8-41bb-b4bd-9a1f5e03141c&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ACS Press release&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Controlling fires is an enormously&#xA;  difficult challenge,” said&#xA;  Cademartiri, who reported on the&#xA;  research. “Our research has shown that&#xA;  by applying large electric fields we&#xA;  can suppress flames very rapidly.&#xA;  We’re very excited about the results&#xA;  of this relatively unexplored area of&#xA;  research.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also reported &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geek.com/articles/news/study-finds-you-can-fight-fires-with-electricity-20110330/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and in most of the major newspapers and all over the net.  I can't find a copy of the paper, I'm guessing that it's maybe not on public distribution yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastEditorUserId="1791" LastEditDate="2011-07-01T09:22:31.307" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T09:22:31.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2578" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-27T13:01:32.267" Score="22" ViewCount="4572" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend cited a study by Rupert Sheldrake which ran an experiment over several years that video taped dogs, showing that dogs knew when their owner was coming home due to some psychic link. He published a paper called: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_14_2_sheldrake.pdf&quot;&gt;A Dog That Seems to Know When His Owner Is Coming Home: Videotaped Experiments and Observations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He seem to be a frequently well references researcher, looking over Google scholar. He even published &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0609600923&quot;&gt;a book&lt;/a&gt; about the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this been independently verified, do animals have telepathic links with their owners?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-22T23:57:12.333" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T10:04:57.130" Title="Do dogs know when their owner is coming home through some form of telepathic link?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|esp|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2566" CreationDate="2011-04-27T15:05:06.637" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The science behind the phenomenon is simply that sodium bicarbonate (as baking soda is known to its friends) is amphoteric; that is, it reacts with substances that have either strong acid or base pHs. Most things that we consider bad smelling in a refrigerator are giving off a vapor of strongly acidic particles, therefore sodium bicarbonate powder, with its large surface area, will react with those particles and neutralize them by making them less acidic. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.armhammer.com/basics/magic/#2&quot;&gt;And of course Arm &amp;amp; Hammer will be only too happy to tell you all about this.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it the science says it works in theory, but a better question might be, does it work really well? &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/chem00/chem00388.htm&quot;&gt;I found at least one chemist who doesn't think so&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The popular &quot;open box of Arm &amp;amp; Hammer®&#xA;  in the refrigerator&quot; simply provides&#xA;  an adsorbent material that can soak up&#xA;  odors -- but not very effectively. For&#xA;  example, if some of the odoriferous&#xA;  materials floating around in the&#xA;  refrigerator are acidic, the alkaline&#xA;  baking soda can absorb and neutralize&#xA;  the acid. Even in that regard, it is&#xA;  not all that effective because, as the&#xA;  powder in the box contacts water&#xA;  vapor, it tends to crust over an lose&#xA;  a great deal of its already limited&#xA;  surface activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on to suggest using activated charcoal, though I would add that activated charcoal is much more expensive and should be disposed of more carefully. So while the baking soda may not work quite as well as advertised, it may still be the best option for most people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T15:05:06.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2564" CreationDate="2011-04-27T16:06:00.223" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Generally washing is seen to be more effective as there is less chance that germs will become immune to anti bacterial agents.  Overall the findings seem to be that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fchs.ac.ae/fchs/uploads/Files/Semester%201%20-%202010-2011/2977/2977%20assessment%20item%201%20article%20for%20critique.pdf&quot;&gt;both options are roughly the same&lt;/a&gt; effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All 18 classes and 360 students&#xA;  completed the study. Of the 3 students&#xA;  who withdrew, 2 did so because the&#xA;  soap was too irritating and 1 because&#xA;  both soap and hand sanitizer were too&#xA;  irritating. Absentee data are&#xA;  presented in Table 1. Data from&#xA;  cohort A, phase 1 and cohort B, phase&#xA;  2 were combined to form the Soap and&#xA;  Water Group. Data from cohort A, phase&#xA;  2 and cohort B, phase 1 were combined&#xA;  to form the Hand Sanitizer Group.&#xA;  Absentee data from these two treatment&#xA;  groups are presented in Table 1. Both&#xA;  groups had 18 absences. The students'&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt;-test was then applied. No&#xA;  significant differences were noted&#xA;  between the groups, indicating that&#xA;  the number of student absences was not&#xA;  appreciably affected by the&#xA;  hand-cleansing technique used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims that hand sanitizers remove 99.9% of bacteria would appear to be slightly creative.  To start with how they work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hand sanitizers work by stripping away&#xA;  the outer layer of oil on the skin.&#xA;  This usually prevents bacteria present&#xA;  in the body from coming to the surface&#xA;  of the hand. However, these bacteria&#xA;  that are normally present in the body&#xA;  are generally not the kinds of&#xA;  bacteria that will make us sick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the effectiveness of hand sanitizers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She notes that the research shows that&#xA;  hand sanitizers do not significantly&#xA;  reduce the number of bacteria on the&#xA;  hand and in some cases may potentially&#xA;  increase the amount of bacteria on the&#xA;  hand. So the question arises, how can&#xA;  the manufacturers make the 99.9&#xA;  percent claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How they can be advertised as removing 99.9% of bacteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The manufacturers of the products test&#xA;  the products on inanimate surfaces&#xA;  hence they are able to derive the&#xA;  claims of 99.9 percent of bacteria&#xA;  killed. If the products were fully&#xA;  tested on hands, there would no doubt&#xA;  be different results. Since there is&#xA;  inherent complexity in the human hand,&#xA;  testing hands would definitely be more&#xA;  difficult. Using surfaces with&#xA;  controlled variables is an easier way&#xA;  to obtain some type of consistency in&#xA;  the results. But as we are all aware,&#xA;  everyday life is not as consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://biology.about.com/od/microbiology/a/handsanitizers.htm&quot;&gt;Source for the above&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some evidence that if you are trying to kill off a specific virus (e.g. the common cold) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asm.org/index.php/what-s-new/are-hand-sanitizers-better-than-handwashing-against-the-common-cold.html&quot;&gt;a hand sanitizer may be the better option&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally a quick quote about antibacterial soaps even though it wasn't a requirement for the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that antibacterial soap&#xA;  is no more effective at killing germs&#xA;  than is regular soap. Using&#xA;  antibacterial soap may even lead to&#xA;  the development of bacteria that are&#xA;  resistant to the product's&#xA;  antimicrobial agents — making it&#xA;  harder to kill these germs in the&#xA;  future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hand-washing/HQ00407&quot;&gt;Source here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastEditorUserId="255" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T18:35:39.853" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T18:35:39.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2350" CreationDate="2011-04-27T17:10:00.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please note that the first half of this question is 100% accrate claim, despite your characterization of it as &amp;quot;from fringe elements... fantastical claims&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Associate Press (not exactly known as a hotbed of anti-Obama sentiment), quoted on &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/wireStory?id=11690106&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ABC News website&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/11/01/obama_aunt_reportedly_in_us_illegally/?comments=all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a bunch of other places&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;President Barack Obama's aunt, who lived for years illegally in Boston before being granted asylum in May...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Onyango, the half sister of Obama's late father, still lives in public housing and collects $700 monthly disability. She doesn't work...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the claim from an unnamed &amp;quot;couple&amp;quot; that you so readily dismissed (the claim being &lt;code&gt;his aunt was living on welfare in Boston, assert that she was at one point an &amp;quot;illegal immigrant&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt;) is &lt;strong&gt;fully factually correct.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T17:55:24.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2587" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2596" CreationDate="2011-04-27T18:58:26.080" Score="15" ViewCount="5189" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today's claim to be skeptical about comes to us from a fairly &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Third_Man#The_.22Swiss_cuckoo_clock.22_speech&quot;&gt;infamous speech in a movie &quot;&lt;em&gt;The Third Man&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock - &lt;em&gt;Orson Welles playing Harry Lime&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that sounds like a total hyperbole, but still, it would be good to have the claim (dis)proved. So the actual questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. &lt;strong&gt;For given time periods (see below), were there significant inventions/discoveries/cultural-or-inventor-type personalities in Switzerland?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B. &lt;strong&gt;For given time periods, did Switzerland literally experience &quot;X uninterrupted years of democracy and peace&quot;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The time periods in question would be:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Renaissance period&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's defined that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#Origins&quot;&gt;very loosely&lt;/a&gt; as beginning late 13th century, or as late as 1401; to between &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance#Conception&quot;&gt;mid-16th/mid-17th century&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;During Borgia era&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make it more precise, Wiki seems to imply that the era is between Alexander and Lucrezia, so to approximate the quote's &quot;30 years&quot; we will make it &lt;strong&gt;1492 =&gt; 1519&lt;/strong&gt;, between the start of Alexander VI's papacy and death of Lucrezia.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;500 years, in case no good examples can be had in the first two periods&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the movie came out in 1949 (and was about post-war period), this should theoretically be 1450-1950. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to cheat and make Einstein to be an ineligible example despite being in this time period.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Executive summary of answers&lt;/em&gt;: the skepticism was well founded, as the speech was busted in all 3 of its assumptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Swiss didn't have much of peace and brotherly love, especially in Renaissance time frame&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Swiss had produced things/people of importance. In the relevant early timeframe, 2 great examples are Bernoulli family and H. Zwingli, and later on, Euler.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And, to top it off, as per comments, the Swiss didn't even produce the cuckoo clock! (that was Germany)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-01-04T12:15:10.767" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T12:15:10.767" Title="Did the Swiss not produce anything of importance aside from cuckoo clock?" Tags="|history|quotes|switzerland|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1664" CreationDate="2011-04-27T19:10:48.223" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, this is a misleading oversimplification.  Humans are high resistance.  Current &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; flow through a person without a high voltage to drive it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not the voltage or the current that kills you; it's the energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Physics Factbook: &lt;a href=&quot;http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/JackHsu.shtml&quot;&gt;Electric Current Needed to Kill a Human&lt;/a&gt; shows that the minimum current that can kill someone is &lt;strong&gt;70 mA&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20130903202735/http://bme.ccny.cuny.edu/faculty/mbikson/BiksonMSafeVoltageReview.pdf&quot;&gt;A review of hazards associated with exposure to low voltages&lt;/a&gt; reports people being killed by &lt;strong&gt;25 V&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet when you scuff your feet across a carpet on a dry day, you are charging yourself up to &lt;a href=&quot;http://amasci.com/emotor/voltmeas.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;thousands of volts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  When you then touch a grounded metal object, the discharge can send &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolfsonelectrostatics.com/04_news/index.html#current-and-time&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;several amps of current&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; through your body:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;about &lt;strong&gt;5 to 7 kilovolts&lt;/strong&gt; was the maximum value measured on the human subjects. ... asked him to shuffle his feet while connected to the electrostatic voltmeter. Much to the EMC lab’s surprise, the voltmeter registered &lt;strong&gt;18000 volts&lt;/strong&gt;! &lt;a href=&quot;http://incompliancemag.com/article/a-brief-history-of-electrostatic-discharge-testing-of-electronic-products/&quot;&gt;A Brief History of Electrostatic Discharge Testing of Electronic Products&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It should be mentioned that the reference model of the ESD waveform is the human-metal discharge. ... The maximum ESD current value is &lt;strong&gt;12 A&lt;/strong&gt;, whereas the IEC Standard defines &lt;strong&gt;15 A&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/3/11/1728/pdf&quot;&gt;Electrostatic Discharge Current Linear Approach and Circuit&#xA;  Design Method&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is far more than 25 V and 70 mA, so if those can each kill you, why doesn't ESD?  Because the duration of the discharge is a fraction of a microsecond, and the total energy release is only a few millijoules.  It doesn't have enough time to cause fibrillation or to heat up and burn significant amounts of tissue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The effects of electrical current passing through the human body are covered at length in the International Electro Technical Commission document IEC 479-2:1987. In this document it indicates that a transient or capacitive discharge, as is the case with static electricity, requires energy in excess of &lt;strong&gt;5 Joules&lt;/strong&gt; (5000mJ) to produce a direct serious risk to health.&quot; — &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolfsonelectrostatics.com/04_news/index.html&quot;&gt;Static electricity in modern buildings&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason this &quot;safety tip&quot; is terrible is that it misleads people into thinking that high-current power sources are dangerous to touch and high-voltage power sources are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most power sources are voltage sources, not current sources.  This means they output a constant voltage, and the current in the circuit depends on the resistance of the load (the human body, in this case).  This is true for power lines, batteries, etc.  Most people don't understand that the current listed on a power supply is just a maximum rating, and won't actually go through their body if they touch it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you connect a 1 kΩ resistor across a 12 V supply, the same 12 mA of current will flow whether the supply says 100 mA or 100 A.  The amperage rating of a power supply just tells the current it &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; source, if connected to a small enough resistance.  It doesn't &lt;em&gt;force&lt;/em&gt; that amount of current through anything it touches, or it would be constantly arcing through the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, car batteries &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; source a lot of current (hundreds of amps), but this only happens when they're connected across a small resistance.  If you connect a screwdriver across the terminals, a huge current will flow and the screwdriver will melt, battery will explode, etc.  If you put your hands across the terminals, nothing will happen.  This is because your skin's resistance is much higher than the screwdriver's resistance.  So the 12 V 600 A car battery will not harm you because the voltage is not high enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="155" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2015-06-25T03:25:43.270" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T03:25:43.270" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2598" CreationDate="2011-04-27T19:39:23.837" Score="42" ViewCount="8769" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.i-doser.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sites&lt;/a&gt; claim that you can get high using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;binaural beats&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All I-Doser doses are tested by a panel of users who consider themselves experienced in binaural beat modification. A dose is not passed on to the I-Doser Store until it is proven working by a good majority of the tester staff. We find that users of I-Doser fall into one of 3 categories: Susceptible to Binaural Beats, Originally Unsusceptible to Binuaral Beats, and Immune to Binaural Beats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://farm3.static.flickr.com/2610/4097560663_778912e708.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Digital Dose&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Photo by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/44568283@N02/4097560663/sizes/m/in/photostream/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;digitalbob8&lt;/a&gt;, Creative Commons License&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats#Unverified_claims&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia is not exactly a &lt;em&gt;true believer&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There have been a number of claims regarding binaural beats, among them that they may help people memorize and learn, stop smoking, help dieting, tackle erectile dysfunction and improve athletic performance.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Scientific research into binaural beats is very limited. No conclusive studies have been released to support the wilder claims listed above. However, some studies indicate that binaural beats may have a relaxing effect. In absence of positive evidence for a specific effect, however, claimed effects may be attributed to the power of suggestion (the placebo effect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do studies say? Are I-Doser and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;q=Binaural+Beats+buy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;all other similar sites&lt;/a&gt;, just exploiting the placebo effect, or is there some real science behind this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:38.350" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T05:03:52.583" Title="Can I get high using binaural beats?" Tags="|natural-remedies|neurology|music|placebo|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2591" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5434" CreationDate="2011-04-27T19:43:55.933" Score="25" ViewCount="4191" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_poo&quot;&gt;dubious Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; makes this claim, which I've seen numerous times before, in various forms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using shampoo every day removes sebum, the oil produced by the scalp. This causes the sebaceous glands to produce oil &lt;strong&gt;at a higher rate&lt;/strong&gt; to compensate for what is lost during shampooing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this?  How does the skin know how much oil is on it?  How is the amount of oil produced per day determined?  What biological function causes one to affect the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="155" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T17:52:42.807" LastActivityDate="2022-03-09T15:45:21.083" Title="Does &quot;stripping the skin's oils&quot; with soap or shampoo cause the skin to produce more oil than normal?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2592" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8076" CreationDate="2011-04-27T20:37:31.963" Score="20" ViewCount="8960" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was looking for an answer to this question &lt;a href=&quot;http://boingboing.net/2006/07/02/sen-stevens-hilariou.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;on the tubes&lt;/a&gt; and I was amazed to discover an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.experienceproject.com/question-answer/Why-Is-Fire-So-Mesmerizing/356890&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;impressive&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chacha.com/question/why-do-people-stare-at-fire&amp;#39;s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;set&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kgbanswers.com/why-do-people-stare-at-fire-bamf/10337129&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;completely&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chacha.com/question/why-do-people-stare-at-fire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;crap&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JGn6BpATqc4J:www.justanswer.com/general/0cz7n-people-stare-fire.html+why+do+people+stare+at+campfires&amp;amp;cd=2&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ct=clnk&amp;amp;gl=uk&amp;amp;source=www.google.co.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;answers&lt;/a&gt; to this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4014/4315525145_7c958fedec.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Mesmerizing&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Photo by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/kayaker1204/4315525145/sizes/m/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;kayaker1204&lt;/a&gt;. Creative Common License.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a long search, the closest I could find to an answer is the following claim (by coincidence similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2590/can-i-get-high-using-binaural-beats&quot;&gt;my previous question&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Actually, the ancient Greeks noted the effects of visual flicker as early as 125 AD. They noticed that people often began to daydream or get sleepy when sitting around a flickering fire. This phenomenon is still true today.  Since the flicker rate of fire light is rather slow, when you gaze in to a flickering fire, your brain activity tends to slow. This is why you might find yourself relaxing or even yawning around a kindling camp fire or a cozy fireplace.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smarterway.com/BWE.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Is this claim backed by real science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bonus Question&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt; Is there any scientific explanation to why fires are mesmerizing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2023-07-14T05:12:48.703" Title="Does staring at a flame slow brain activity?" Tags="|neurology|hypnotism|fire|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2587" CreationDate="2011-04-27T20:42:57.087" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For given time periods, did Switzerland literally experience &quot;X uninterrupted years of democracy and peace&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will concentrate on &quot;peace&quot;.  Here are some selected events suggesting that the longest period of peace has been since 1845 (104 years by 1949). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1386 Battle of Sempach (Austria)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1440–46 Old Zurich War (Zurich v. Swiss confederacy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1499 Swabian War (German)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1515 Battle of Marignano (Italian)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1529-31 Wars of Kappel (religious civil war)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1620 Massacre of Valtellina (Italian religious revolt) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1653 Swiss peasant war (revolt)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1712 Toggenburg war / second war of Villmergen (religious civil war)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1798 Overrun by French republic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1845 Sonderbund War (religious civil war)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-27T21:11:41.433" LastActivityDate="2011-04-27T21:11:41.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2594" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2776" CreationDate="2011-04-27T20:47:12.610" Score="38" ViewCount="4682" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.datelinezero.com/2011/01/17/possible-case-of-spontaneous-human-combustion-in-ireland/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; from Ireland dated January, 2011 shows that spontaneous human combustion (SHC) remains a hot topic among paranormalists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spontaneous human combustion has been defined as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) is the alleged burning of a person's body without a readily apparent, identifiable external source of ignition. The combustion may result in simple burns and blisters to the skin, smoking, or a complete incineration of the body. The latter is the form most often 'recognized' as SHC. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crystalinks.com/shc.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proponents also claim that cases of SHC may require an explanation outside that provided by science because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even the skeleton is reduced to&#xA;ashes, which does not happen even in&#xA;crematory ovens.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Damage is localized almost entirely&#xA;to the victim, often leaving even the&#xA;nearby area untouched&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The burns to the victim appear&#xA;inconsistent, as the lower legs and&#xA;hands are often found after the rest&#xA;of the body has been incinerated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick serach of Amazon shows there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_3_28?url=search-alias=stripbooks&amp;amp;field-keywords=spontaneous%20human%20combustion&amp;amp;sprefix=spontaneous%20human%20combustion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;quite a few books&lt;/a&gt; written on SHC. Most of these books posit varying ideas for the mechanism  which could be underlying the phenomenon.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Ablaze&quot;, Larry Arnold posits the existence of an entirely new particle called the &quot;pyroton&quot; which he claims may be responsible for the phenomenon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are many theories which range from outright magic to paranormal to pseudoscientific to scientific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the more popular theories include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lafd.blogspot.com/2006/11/invisible-danger-you-carry-to-gas.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Static flash fires&lt;/a&gt; - the same&#xA;mechanism behind gas station fires.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alcoholism - First popularized by&#xA;Dickens in &quot;Bleak House&quot; is the idea&#xA;that excess alcohol consumption&#xA;somehow makes the human body more&#xA;flammable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Electrical fields - somehow, the&#xA;body's electrical system becomes the&#xA;source of either the initial spark or&#xA;the resultant fire, possibly induced by&#xA;so-called &quot;mitochondrial explosions&quot;&#xA;resulting from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxidative_phosphorylation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;oxidative&#xA;phosphorylation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;External sources - Suggesting that&#xA;the fire may be started by an outside&#xA;source, usually tobacco ash.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An unusually high susceptibility to&#xA;either beta or gamma radiation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/060531-ball-lightning.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ball Lightning&lt;/a&gt; - The very existence&#xA;of ball lightning itself is&#xA;controversial.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the 200 or so claimed cases of SHC, some of the more popularly referenced ones include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://anomalyinfo.com/articles/sa00007.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mary Reeser 1951&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://anomalyinfo.com/articles/sa00056.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Maybelle Andrews 1938&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiritsociety.org/ghost.php?page=articles&amp;amp;article=shc1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Billy Peterson 1958&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://paranormal.about.com/od/humanenigmas/ig/Gallery-of-Human-Mysteries/SHC--Dr--John-Irving-Bentley.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. John Bentley 1966&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A list of other cases can found &lt;a href=&quot;http://morticom.com/categoryweirdearthspontaneouscombustion.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I have included some modern names and dates for reference, cases are cited as far back as 1731 (Countess de Bandi Cesanate) and 1673 (Case report by John Henry Cohausen).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a known process at work in SHC or does it remain unexplained?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has SHC ever been scientifically studied or replicated under proper observing conditions?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-05-19T21:11:58.963" LastActivityDate="2019-05-19T21:11:58.963" Title="Is spontaneous human combustion possible?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2587" CreationDate="2011-04-27T21:01:42.383" Score="18" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Swiss brotherly love 1450-1950:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1515 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marignano&quot;&gt;Battle of Marignano&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was one of the most savage and (for the Swiss) decisive battles of the age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It pitted the French army, composed of the best armored lancers and artillery in Europe and led by Francis I, newly crowned king of France and a day past his 21st birthday, against the heretofore invincible Swiss Mercenaries of the Old Swiss Confederacy, considered the best infantry in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1531 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_war_of_Kappel&quot;&gt;Second War of Kappel between protestants and Catholics&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_war_of_Kappel&quot;&gt;The first war of Kappel&lt;/a&gt; ended without any battle being fought after mediation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1653 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_peasant_war_of_1653&quot;&gt;Unsuccessful peasant revolt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many exponents of the insurrection were captured, tortured, and finally received heavy sentences. Niklaus Leuenberger was beheaded and quartered in Bern on September 6, 1653.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1707 Successful revolt in Toggenburg against the abbot of St. Gallen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1707 - 1738 Successful revolt against the aristocrats in Geneva who was later restored in 1782 by 11'000 soldiers from France, Berne and Piedmont.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1717 - 1729 Unsuccessful revolt of Wilchingen against Schaffhausen&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1719 - 1722 Unsuccessful revolt of Werdenberg against Glarus&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1723 Unsuccessful revolt of major Abraham Davel in Lausanne (Vaud) against Berne.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1726 - 1739 Unsuccessful revolt of the peasants of Jura against the prince-bishop of Basel &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1755 Unsuccessful revolt of the Leventina (Ticino) against Uri&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1781 &lt;a href=&quot;http://history-switzerland.geschichte-schweiz.ch/timeline-switzerlands-history.html&quot;&gt;Unsuccessful revolt of Chenaux (Fribourg) against Fribourg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1792 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=EFxoHju4iMQC&amp;amp;lpg=PA400&amp;amp;ots=xsMUNr-QvL&amp;amp;dq=1792%20geneva%20revolution&amp;amp;pg=PA400#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=1792%20geneva%20revolution&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Successful revolution in Geneva&lt;/a&gt; following the French revolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the égilaseurs rose up at Geneva, displaced the old government, and effected &quot;revolution.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1793 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://history-switzerland.geschichte-schweiz.ch/swiss-revolution-helvetic-republic-1798.html&quot;&gt;Revolt against taxes at Gossau&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1794 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://history-switzerland.geschichte-schweiz.ch/swiss-revolution-helvetic-republic-1798.html&quot;&gt;Peasant revolution&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1802 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stecklikrieg&quot;&gt;Stecklikrieg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Stecklikrieg (Stäcklichrieg) of 1802 resulted in the collapse of the Helvetic Republic, the renewed French occupation of Switzerland and ultimately the Act of Mediation dictated by Napoleon on 10 March 1803.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The insurgence originated in Central Switzerland, the cities of Zürich and Bern as well as rural parts of the Swiss plateau (Aargau and Solothurn). After several hostile clashes with the official forces of the Helvetic Republic, which were lacking both in equipment and motivation (Renggpass at Pilatus on 28 August, artillery attacks on Bern and Zürich during September, and a skirmish at Faoug on 3 October), the central government at first capitulated militarily (on 18 September, retreating from Bern to Lausanne) and then collapsed entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1845 &lt;a href=&quot;http://history-switzerland.geschichte-schweiz.ch/timeline-switzerlands-history.html&quot;&gt;Armed radicals [radicalized liberals] march for Lucerne, they are defeated by regular troops.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1847-1848 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderbundskrieg&quot;&gt;The Sonderbund War&lt;/a&gt; a civil war.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Notable historical Swiss figures 1450-1950&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leonhard-euler.ch/&quot;&gt;Leonard Euler&lt;/a&gt; (1707-1783), one of the most famous and most productive mathematicians of all time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leonhard Euler was by far the most productive mathematician in the history of humankind and one of the greatest scholars of all time. He was cosmopolitan in the truest sense of the word: he spent his first 20 years in Basel, and worked altogether more than 30 years in St. Petersburg and a quarter century in Berlin. As happens to only a very few scholars, Euler's work brought him fame and popularity, comparable to that of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Dunant&quot;&gt;Henry Dunant&lt;/a&gt; (1828-1910) founded the red cross and won the Nobel peace prize.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernoulli_family&quot;&gt;Bernoulli family&lt;/a&gt; - scholars of note in 17th-18th centuries &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answering this is such a huge undertaking I've decided to make the answer a community wiki if anyone wants to chip in with better references and to make a more complete answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-04-28T01:58:56.460" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T01:58:56.460" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-04-27T21:15:44.063" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2587" CreationDate="2011-04-27T21:09:18.360" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For given time periods (see below), were there significant inventions/discoveries/cultural-or-inventor-type personalities in Switzerland?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;#1 and #2:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zwingliverein.ch/zwi-engl.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zwingli, Huldrych&lt;/a&gt; (1484-1531)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the founding fathers of what then became Calvinism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thejesusvirus.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Zwingli.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zwingli, Huldrych http://thejesusvirus.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Zwingli.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;An easy answer to #3:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icrc.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Red Cross&lt;/a&gt; (1863)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was founded in 1863 in Geneva and has since received 4 Nobel prizes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In February of 1863 in Geneva, Switzerland, the Société genevoise d'utilité publique [Geneva Public Welfare Society] set up a committee of five Swiss citizens to look into the ideas offered by Henri Dunant in his book Un Souvenir de Solferino&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1963/red-cross-history.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Other answers to #3:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ursula ANDRESS (Actress)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daniel BERNOULLI (Physicist)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Le Corbusier (Architect)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leonhard EULER (Mathematician)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;H. R. GIGER (Painter)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Johanna SPYRI (Writer, &quot;Heidi&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.about.ch/various/famous-swiss.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source and more&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-28T01:39:41.633" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T01:39:41.633" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2590" CreationDate="2011-04-27T23:35:24.010" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sadly, no.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is another one of those cases where someone seems to have found a phenomenon and decides to ask &quot;what can I claim it does?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Binaural beats are simply an artifact of the way the brain perceives sound. &#xA;In  sense, it would be the same as someone claiming that you can treat erectile dysfunction by looking at an optical illusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/N5Xki.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem solved?  If so, send $1 to Monkey Tuesday....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Binaural beats are appropriately &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17388762&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;being studied&lt;/a&gt; for a variety of reasons, mostly due to the potential effects it may have for patients with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17471733&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cochlear implants&lt;/a&gt;, and in an attempt to better understand the relationship between neural activity and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15615831&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sensory perception&lt;/a&gt;.  They have also been used to understand complex neurological phenomena, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9671687&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;how the brain communicates with itself&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While binaural beats are being studied with regard to sensory perception, there has been no indication that they can significantly alter it (in a manner comparable to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/dmt/dmt.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DMT&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LSD&lt;/a&gt;, or even to marijuana) beyond the range in which individual perception is altered (or perceived to be altered) by either meditation or relaxation for an equal amount of time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study of EEG data regarding binaural beats showed that there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19616993&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;change in brain wave patterns&lt;/a&gt; while being exposed to them.  However, the only conclusion the study reaches is that brain wave patterns are different for those listening to binaural beats than those who are not, and that they can be detected by placing electrodes on the scalp.  In fact, a study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20123120&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; may indicate that there is little difference between a brain interpreting binaural beats and a brain interpreting acoustic beats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And again, tests like these are done to understand how the brain works, not to illustrate any purported effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Binaural beats have been tested for efficacy in treating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20117669&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ADHD&lt;/a&gt;-shown ineffective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11191043&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anxiety&lt;/a&gt; - inconclusive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9423966&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study from Duke&lt;/a&gt; with a sample&#xA;size of 29 indicates there may be&#xA;potential for affecting &quot;mood and&#xA;performance&quot; but this study is&#xA;preliminary and the claim is vague.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the claims that binaural beats &quot;may help people memorize and learn, stop smoking, help dieting, tackle erectile dysfunction and improve athletic performance&quot; binaural beats have not been shown effective, and it is not likely they will ever be proven more effective than simple relaxation for an equal period of time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am almost certain that this will be attributed to methodological problems inherent to experiments that compare treatments to relaxation, because they typically yield subjective results which become contentious and difficult to replicate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may make &quot;binaural beat therapy&quot; ripe for colonization by woo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-10T23:20:32.100" LastActivityDate="2011-06-10T23:20:32.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2599" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-28T00:47:14.580" Score="15" ViewCount="485" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my university, you must take TOEFL in order to graduate. It is not cheap. My English composition teacher told me that the test doesn't represent real English skills. But I got even more shocked when I discovered that those tests are created by a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_Testing_Service&quot;&gt;private corporation&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I've been wondering is there any study confirming or denying the effectiveness of these tests - for example correlating test score with academic success?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2145" LastEditorUserId="2145" LastEditDate="2011-04-28T12:50:21.110" LastActivityDate="2012-03-31T07:54:35.537" Title="Are commercial language proficiency tests reliable indicators of language skills?" Tags="|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2600" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-28T01:03:13.157" Score="24" ViewCount="13217" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my childhood days there was this proposition/myth that claimed there is a big chance that you'd die from a shock induced heart failure (hart attack/cardiac arrest) before hitting the ground, when jumping off a building (for suicide or for escaping a fire for instance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any validity to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1170" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-04-28T19:30:39.250" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T19:10:30.697" Title="Jump from building: die from shock induced heart failure before hitting the ground?" Tags="|biology|cardiology|mortality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2601" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-28T02:07:05.807" Score="24" ViewCount="1510" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been trying to research whether artificial hormones fed to beef cattle are harmful to the consumer, and just can't seem to find any source that I can rely on. There are a lot of people out there with &quot;better safe than sorry&quot; attitudes (which isn't good enough for me...I'd really like something better to go on). There are some that say it absolutely is bad for you and should be avoided like the plague (including an aquaintance that is an M.D.), others, including the FDA, say the likelihood of it being harmful is incredibly small (e.g. they say the amount of hormone in the beef is 200 times less than that in cabbage, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think part of the question is whether the &quot;artificialness&quot; of the hormone is likely to be harmful -- given that the actual quantity of estrogen is so tiny compared to other things like cabbage and potatoes, and not much more than the quantity in &quot;all natural&quot; beef.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've researched this to the best of my ability, but am finding that I just don't know who to trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which is it?  Should I spend far more for, say, &quot;no artificial hormone added&quot; ground beef just to avoid the hormones?  It's not like ground beef is great for you anyway, but I'd like to know if the artificial hormones issue itself is something to worry about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2144" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T10:17:02.163" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T10:17:02.163" Title="Are artificial hormones in beef something to worry about?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1840" CreationDate="2011-04-28T05:40:10.497" Score="42" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious&#xA;  convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I&#xA;  do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied&#xA;  this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me&#xA;  which can be called religious then it is the unbounded&#xA;  admiration for the structure of the world so far as our&#xA;  science can reveal it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is quote from: letter to an atheist (1954) as quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1982) edited by Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman ISBN 0-691-02368-9 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_religious_views#cite_ref-3&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Einstein did not believe in supernatural god it was not possible he would argue in favour of a supernatural god .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="808" LastEditorUserId="808" LastEditDate="2011-05-03T05:15:14.570" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T05:15:14.570" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2603" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2614" CreationDate="2011-04-28T09:19:23.073" Score="43" ViewCount="4279" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the ages there have been many accounts of ball lightning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some accounts from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the earliest descriptions was&#xA;  reported during The Great Thunderstorm&#xA;  at a church in Widecombe-in-the-Moor,&#xA;  Devon, in England, on 21 October 1638.&#xA;  Four people died and approximately 60&#xA;  were injured when, during a severe&#xA;  storm, an 8-foot (2.4 m) ball of fire&#xA;  was described as striking and entering&#xA;  the church, nearly destroying it.&#xA;  Large stones from the church walls&#xA;  were hurled into the ground and&#xA;  through large wooden beams. The ball&#xA;  of fire allegedly smashed the pews and&#xA;  many windows, and filled the church&#xA;  with a foul sulfurous odor and dark,&#xA;  thick smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ball of fire reportedly divided&#xA;  into two segments, one exiting through&#xA;  a window by smashing it open, the&#xA;  other disappearing somewhere inside&#xA;  the church. The explanation at the&#xA;  time, because of the fire and sulfur&#xA;  smell, was that the ball of fire was&#xA;  &quot;the devil&quot; or the &quot;flames of hell&quot;.&#xA;  Later, some blamed the entire incident&#xA;  on two people who had been playing&#xA;  cards in the pew during the sermon,&#xA;  thereby incurring God's wrath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One without a religious angle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1954 Domokos Tar, a physicist,&#xA;  observed a lightning strike during a&#xA;  heavy thunderstorm. A single bush was&#xA;  flattened in the wind. Some seconds&#xA;  later a speedy rotating ring&#xA;  (cylinder) appeared in the shape of a&#xA;  wreath. The ring was about 5 m away&#xA;  from the lightning impact point. The&#xA;  ring's plane was perpendicular to the&#xA;  ground and in full view of the&#xA;  observer. The outer/inner diameters&#xA;  were about 60/30 cm. The ring rotated&#xA;  quickly about 80 cm above the ground.&#xA;  It was composed of wet leaves and dirt&#xA;  and rotated counter clockwise. After&#xA;  seconds the ring became&#xA;  self-illuminated turning increasingly&#xA;  red, then orange, yellow and finally&#xA;  white. The ring (cylinder) at the&#xA;  outside was similar to a sparkler. In&#xA;  spite of the rain, many electrical&#xA;  high voltage discharges could be seen.&#xA;  After some seconds , the ring suddenly&#xA;  disappeared and simultaneously the&#xA;  Ball Lightning appeared in the middle.&#xA;  Initially the ball had only one tail&#xA;  and it rotated in the same direction&#xA;  as the ring. It was homogenous and&#xA;  showed no transparency. In the first&#xA;  moment the ball hovered motionless,&#xA;  but then began to move forward on the&#xA;  same line with a constant speed of&#xA;  about 1m/sec. It was stable and&#xA;  travelled at the same height in spite&#xA;  of the heavy rain and strong wind.&#xA;  After moving about 10 m it suddenly&#xA;  disappeared without any noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also videos purporting to be ball lightning available on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XKpY8MTyQ8&quot;&gt;YouTube&lt;/a&gt; and I have heard a hypothesis that this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veGiLlTca3U&quot;&gt;UFO incident&lt;/a&gt; could be ball lightning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question remains is ball lightning scientifically verifiable, or is there another explanation for all these events (e.g. meteorites, imaginative stories, video manipulation, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-22T22:42:44.763" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T22:07:44.820" Title="Is ball lightning real?" Tags="|weather|lightning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2605" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2609" CreationDate="2011-04-28T13:22:37.327" Score="36" ViewCount="6662" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just viewed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV2zN0cbeHg&quot;&gt;this interesting video&lt;/a&gt; about radioactive ethanol from plants as opposed to non-radioactive ethanol from crude oil. In it, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VV2zN0cbeHg&amp;amp;t=0m50s&quot;&gt;the professor says&lt;/a&gt; he's heard it's illegal in the USA to sell alcoholic drinks if they are not radioactive from carbon-14 isotopes. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not particularly worried about the implications of the radioactivity, as I indeed understand this type of radioactivity can be expected to be found in others types of food / drinks as well. Rather I am curious as to whether this is actually a way of measuring whether ethanol in drinks is not tampered with by mixing it with ethanol from petroleum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1170" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-09-12T17:49:43.870" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T16:18:36.230" Title="Is alcohol for consumption tested for carbon-14 radioactivity to be considered legal?" Tags="|nutrition|physics|united-states|law|chemistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2603" CreationDate="2011-04-28T14:09:38.913" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apologies, since this is my first post on this particular stack, I can't comment but only answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't give you any scientific answers, but it looks like you're gathering reports of Ball Lightning, so I thought that might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a book called 'Safety and security in mountain sports' by Pit Schubert, which I picked up a few years back. It describes all possible incidents ranging from a broken carabiner to into-the-void-ian stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=w7p-j3SNgRMC&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;ots=1T0kNtR0yc&amp;amp;dq=9783763360161&amp;amp;pg=PA54#v=snippet&amp;amp;q=Kugelblitz&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=w7p-j3SNgRMC&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;ots=1T0kNtR0yc&amp;amp;dq=9783763360161&amp;amp;pg=PA54#v=snippet&amp;amp;q=Kugelblitz&amp;amp;f=false&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is however ridiculously hard to find a translated version (though they exists, I had one from a library in Belgium once).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It has first hand reports of ball lightning&lt;/strong&gt; from rock climbers and I'm sure you can contact the author about it if you want to get to the bottom of these accounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Best of luck!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2153" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-28T15:04:31.470" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T15:04:31.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2405" CreationDate="2011-04-28T14:12:34.303" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The blog makes that claim that upper income people don't think they are upper income because of discrepancies in the answers to two questions, asked of &quot;upper income people&quot;. Specifically, &quot;Is the amount of tax you pay too high, too low, or about right?&quot; (to which most answered &quot;too high&quot;) and &quot;Do upper income people pay more or less than their fair share of tax?&quot; (to which they mostly answered &quot;less&quot;). But there's a disconnect between the two questions. It's perfectly possible to believe that taxes are generally too high (including taxes on themselves, as upper-income people), but that upper-income people (including themselves) pay less than their fair share. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Upper-income&quot; is not a well-defined term, so if people don't consider themselves &quot;upper-income&quot; that's their opinion, and doesn't reflect a &quot;lack of understanding&quot; at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking for evidence to actually answer the question, I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/id/2268872/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. It shows that people massively underestimate the fraction of wealth owned by the top few wealthy percent. In that sense people maybe &lt;strong&gt;overestimate&lt;/strong&gt; how far up the income ladder (technically wealth ladder) they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="164" LastEditDate="2011-05-28T16:05:27.177" LastActivityDate="2011-05-28T16:05:27.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2605" CreationDate="2011-04-28T14:39:24.430" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Richard A. Muller&lt;/strong&gt; is a Professor in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/faculty/muller.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Department of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley&lt;/a&gt;, and Faculty Senior Scientist at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://muller.lbl.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His course &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Physics for Future Presidents&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; (at &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.berkeley.edu/author/rmuller/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UC Berkley&lt;/a&gt;) has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/user/UCBerkeley/videos?query=physics%20for%20future%20presidents&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;been released online&lt;/a&gt;. In the lecture about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHwpqszz-Rc#t=56m51s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Radioactivity&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; he says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US government has decided to make it illegal to make drinking alcohol out of oil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Muller reiterates this in his books &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.at/books?id=jMWCDsJesbcC&amp;amp;pg=PA133&amp;amp;lpg=PA133&amp;amp;dq=physics%20for%20future%20presidents%20muller%20radioactive%20alcohol&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=iToKOGWCsl&amp;amp;sig=AencgiKA-RUDdW04qthjXRZlNAc&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=DJdRUKDPLqn_4QTa3YGoCw&amp;amp;ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=physics%20for%20future%20presidents%20muller%20radioactive%20alcohol&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Physics and Technology for Future Presidents&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/44418623/The-Instant-Physicist-An-Illustrated-Guide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Instant Physicist&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lW60l.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Radioactive Alcohol&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The US government has decided that alcohol for human consumption must be made from &amp;quot;natural&amp;quot; materials, such as grains, grapes or fruit. That regulation rules out alcohol made from petroleum.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Natural alcohol gets its carbon from&#xA;plants; the plants got the carbon from&#xA;atmospheric carbon dioxide.&#xA;Atmospheric carbon dioxide is&#xA;radioactive because of the continued&#xA;bombardment of cosmic rays that&#xA;collide with nitrogen molecules and&#xA;turn it into C-14, radiocarbon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Petroleum was also made from&#xA;atmospheric carbon, but it was buried&#xA;hundreds of millions of years ago,&#xA;isolated from the radioactive&#xA;atmoshphere. Radiocarbon has a&#xA;half-life of about 5700 years, and&#xA;after 100 million years, there is&#xA;nearly no atom of C-14 left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a lack of &lt;em&gt;radioactivity&lt;/em&gt; would be a giveaway that alcohol was not made from plant material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2011-title27-vol1/pdf/CFR-2011-title27-vol1-chapI.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau - Code of Federal Regulations, Title 27, Chapter 1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spirits or distilled spirits:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;em&gt;The substance known as ethyl alcohol, ethanol, or spirits of wine in any form (including all dilutions and mixtures thereof, from whatever source or by whatever process produced), but not fuel alcohol unless specifically stated. &lt;strong&gt;The term does not include spirits produced from petroleum, natural gas, or coal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to confirm that drinking alcohol must not be made from petroleum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;And according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ftc.gov/os/comments/greenguiderevisions/00334-57142.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Federal Trade Commission&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biopreferred.gov/files/SN_reprint_enright_mj11%5B1%5D.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Department of Agriculture&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; the &lt;em&gt;standard method for measuring biobased content&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ASTM D6866&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O2Xlf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Carbon&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[ASTM D6866] applies to products with&#xA;carbon-based parts that can be combusted&#xA;completely into carbon dioxide,&#xA;and &lt;strong&gt;it uses radiocarbon&lt;/strong&gt;, also known as&#xA;carbon 14, or &lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astm.org/Standards/D6866.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ASTM International&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[ATSM D6866 are] standard test methods for determining the biobased content of solid, liquid and gaseous samples using radiocarbon analysis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T12:36:13.720" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2599" CreationDate="2011-04-28T15:41:45.273" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there are two questions here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do the test results correlate to English skills?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do the test results correlate to academic success?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a quote from an article on the subject at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelinguist.com/en/en/library/item/20614/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Linguist Library&lt;/a&gt;, talking about &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; such test:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ETS has published studies showing a close correlation between the TOEIC test results and results from alternative ways of evaluating English speaking skills, such as interviews. There are other independent studies which resulted in a lower level of correlation between TOEIC results and results from other measurements of language skills. Obviously any evaluation of language skills cannot be absolutely accurate. In comparing the results of two different language tests, at best we can measure the correlation between two imprecise evaluations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That shows some differing opinions on the first question (see the page for references).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ETS claims that TOEIC is designed to be a good predictor of writing and speaking skills, even though those are not tested in TOEIC. Perhaps this is so. However, even with TOEFL, which does measure writing and speaking skills, people with similar scores will often have quite different abilities to speak and write English. There are criticisms that some students with high TOEFL scores cannot communicate well in English and do poorly at English speaking universities. Similarly, studies of IELTS results and academic success show a surprisingly low level of correlation between test scores and academic results. See TL Forum 1999: Dooey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This addresses the second question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you trust the views of The Linguist Library? I am not familiar with their work, and I can't comment on their rigour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. I can understand a university declining &lt;em&gt;admittance&lt;/em&gt; based on English skills if they could show that poor English test scores correlated very strongly with poor academic performance. However, declining a student the opportunity to &lt;em&gt;graduate&lt;/em&gt;, when they have implicitly demonstrated basic communication skills by passing the other requirements of the course seems a bit harder to justify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T15:41:45.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2612" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-28T17:38:39.743" Score="6" ViewCount="424" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe (by anecdotal experience) people are regularly advised to visit a physiotherapist when they experience &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_injury&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;repetitive strain injury&lt;/a&gt; (RSI) complaints. But have physiotherapeutic exercises actually been proven to be effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware this is a very broad question, since there will probably be numerous types of exercises. I guess my question boils down to whether simply trying to relax and perhaps do some recreational exercise (sports, take a walk, etc.) aren't just as effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1170" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-18T01:32:36.670" LastActivityDate="2024-03-04T08:11:48.133" Title="Is physiotherapy effective in reducing repetitive strain injury (RSI) complaints?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2616" CreationDate="2011-04-28T19:33:27.407" Score="11" ViewCount="3840" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm receiving advertising (from my friends) about hydrogen peroxide therapy (oxygenated water, I think). They affirm that this treatment is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a low-cost therapy based on a natural &#xA;  oxygenating substance that is easy and&#xA;  painless to use at home -- and which&#xA;  is scientifically proven to prevent&#xA;  and cure virtually all diseases&#xA;  without adverse effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm worried about my friends that are trying to convince me and they probably are drinking it. What are the dangers or risks of doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did a little research, the product is called Oxytam that is made &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;distilling hydrogen peroxide for&#xA;  propulsion purposes, leaving a residue&#xA;  that is pure bi-distilled water and&#xA;  tri-distilled hydrogen peroxide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The email has a reference to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oneminutecureforalldiseases.com&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; in order to &quot;learn more&quot; about this treatment. Although the manufacturer offers two languages to choose from in the start page, the product (Oxytam) page ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tecaeromex.com/esp/ph-cura.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.tecaeromex.com/esp/ph-cura.htm&lt;/a&gt; ) is offered only in spanish; apparently because they distribute only locally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1075" LastEditorUserId="1075" LastEditDate="2011-04-28T23:39:19.460" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T05:02:16.747" Title="Is the hydrogen peroxide therapy harmful?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2603" CreationDate="2011-04-28T19:56:18.527" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=periodically-i-hear-stori&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American has an article on the topic:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ball lightning may be more exotic than microwave oven sparks, but most scientists are convinced that it is no less real. Martin A. Uman, chair of the department of electrical computer engineering at the University of Florida at Gainesville explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Ball lightning is a well-documented phenomenon in the sense that it has been seen and consistently described by people in all walks of life since the time of the ancient Greeks. &lt;strong&gt;There is no accepted theory for what causes it.&lt;/strong&gt; It does not necessarily consist of plasma; for example, ball lightning could be the result of a chemiluminescent process. The literature abounds with speculations on the physics of the ball lightning.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if by &amp;quot;scientific proof&amp;quot; you mean &amp;quot;accepted and experimentally proven natural sciences theory explaining&amp;quot; ball lightning, the answer is &amp;quot;NO&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you mean &amp;quot;is there &lt;strong&gt;historical&lt;/strong&gt; proof that it exists and is not just a myth/rumor&amp;quot;, then yes, such phenomenon is very widely documented to have been observed. In addition to SciAm article linked above, English Wikipedia has a pretty good writeup of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_lightning#Historical_accounts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;historical evidence for it&lt;/a&gt; that I think the original question actually quoted from&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-08-04T22:07:44.820" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2613" CreationDate="2011-04-28T20:14:46.710" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Concentrated Hydrogen peroxide solutions (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emdchemicals.com/hydrogen-peroxide-solution/EMD_CHEM-HX0640/p_uuid?attachments=MSDS&quot;&gt;MSDS from Merck for a 30% solution&lt;/a&gt;) are strongly oxidizing and corrosive. Those should only be handled with proper safety procedures and euqipment (especially safety glasses). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Emergency overview from the MSDS states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DANGER! OXIDIZER. CONTACT WITH OTHER&#xA;  MATERIAL MAY CAUSE FIRE. CAUSES&#xA;  RESPIRATORY TRACT, EYE AND SKIN BURNS.&#xA;  HARMFUL IF INHALED OR SWALLOWED. MAY&#xA;  BE HARMFUL IF ABSORBED THROUGH SKIN.&#xA;  CONTAINS MATERIAL WHICH MAY CAUSE&#xA;  DAMAGE TO THE FOLLOWING ORGANS: MUCOUS&#xA;  MEMBRANES, RESPIRATORY TRACT, SKIN,&#xA;  EYE, LENS OR CORNEA, NOSE, SINUSES.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lower concentrated solutions (around 3-8% H2O2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_peroxide&quot;&gt;are used to bleach hair&lt;/a&gt;, that should give you an idea that this is a pretty reactive chemical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Hong Kong Center for Food safety &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/programme/programme_rafs/programme_rafs_fa_02_02.html&quot;&gt;says the following about ingesting highly diluted solutions of hydrogen peroxide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oral ingestion of 3% hydrogen peroxide&#xA;  solutions (household strength)&#xA;  generally does not result in severe&#xA;  toxicity but may result in vomiting,&#xA;  mild irritation to mucosa and burns in&#xA;  the mouth, throat, oesophagus and&#xA;  stomach. Ingestion of higher&#xA;  concentration, e.g. &gt;10%, can result&#xA;  in more dangerous sequelae such as&#xA;  burns to mucus membranes and gut&#xA;  mucosa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would guess that the therapy you asked about uses far lower concentrations of H2O2 than 3 percent, because the higher concentrations are likely to cause some unwanted effects. Whether the ingestion is really dangerous depends strongly on the concentration of the hydrogen peroxide solution. I personally wouldn't ingest it in any case, but if it a very highly diluted solution it probably doesn't do much of anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be worried about handling higher concentrated H2O2 solutions, e.g. if they add concentrated H2O2 to the water themselves, they have to be careful when handling it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-04-28T20:14:46.710" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2635" CreationDate="2011-04-28T20:41:26.677" Score="21" ViewCount="1359" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Whitehouse.gov - Birth Certificate Long Form&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110428203316/https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Web Archive&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the one.  I tried asking in my normal channels (hacker news, IRC) but am getting bombarded with accusations of being a Birther.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am definitely not. Someone showed me there are separate layers for the text and the rest of the document, and also that the font didn't make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am just hoping you could find evidence one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sEPT9.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sEPT9.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot of Obama's birth certificate&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2168" OwnerDisplayName="geoff" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2022-07-02T14:58:21.163" LastActivityDate="2022-07-02T14:58:21.163" Title="Has the birth certificate recently uploaded to whitehouse.gov been digitally altered?" Tags="|barack-obama|computers|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2601" CreationDate="2011-04-29T02:30:30.940" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer, no there is no direct proof of negative effects. Long answer follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, strictly speaking BGH or bovine growth hormone is definitely a bad thing, but not in the way that most people mean. Bovine growth hormone, known commercially as Posilac, increases the yield of dairy cows, but comes at the price of higher infection rates and pus content in milk. To combat the infections dairy farmers are forced to put more antibiotics into the cows to keep them healthy. Some of this filters in through the milk, which in turn can lead to resistant bacteria, which is a definite health concern for humans. However, the FDA has found no significant difference between rBGH and non-rBGH milk, Canada banned it's use for it's detrimental affects on animals, but also said that humans have no noticeable detrimental effects from rBGH milk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK15180/#A24152&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK15180/#A24152&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/ProductSafetyInformation/ucm130321.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/ProductSafetyInformation/ucm130321.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/antibiotics/&quot;&gt;http://www.sustainabletable.org/issues/antibiotics/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For beef cattle the issue remains the same the FDA has found &lt;a href=&quot;http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/factsheet/diet/fs37.hormones.cfm&quot;&gt;no link&lt;/a&gt; to any sort of health issues related to using either natural or artificial hormones. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/index.cfm?id=1416&quot;&gt;One study&lt;/a&gt; found that women who ate beef with the growth hormone produced sons with lower sperm counts, however none of the men in the study were unable to conceive normally. The EU health concerns leading to their ban of any natural or synthetic hormones is related to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/NewsEvents/FDAVeterinarianNewsletter/ucm092839.htm&quot;&gt;improper administration&lt;/a&gt; of the hormones in doses above the approved safety standards by EU member states and the US was not found to be in violation of any approved levels considered safe for human consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2159" LastEditorUserId="2159" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T14:49:05.697" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T14:49:05.697" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="145" CreationDate="2011-04-29T02:58:22.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Magicians could be using aides, but they really aren't needed. Humans are fundamentally wired to respond in certain ways, which has been shown to be accurate over and over. As a stage magician you can take use of techniques such as cold reading, suggestion, hypnosis and even the natural desire of people to want to please. This is much the way that sociopaths work ironically, except where a magician is out to entertain a sociopath is out to get their way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more in depth information into how this works check out the following resources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://revision3.com/scamschool&quot;&gt;http://revision3.com/scamschool&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologistworld.com/cognitive/cold_reading.php&quot;&gt;http://www.psychologistworld.com/cognitive/cold_reading.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The sociopath next door&quot; by Martha Stout&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-labor/7article/article35.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-labor/7article/article35.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18225612&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18225612&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ericksonian.com/?page_id=10&quot;&gt;http://www.ericksonian.com/?page_id=10&lt;/a&gt; (for the bio of Milton Erickson)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2159" LastEditorUserId="2159" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T15:32:29.310" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T15:32:29.310" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2625" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2626" CreationDate="2011-04-29T03:21:09.787" Score="20" ViewCount="10164" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Microsoft Kinect uses an IR source (laser or just diode?) to project a pattern in order to get 3D data on what it's looking at.  As low-power IR is invisible and intangible, many people have concern about it, implicating it when they feel a sensation in their eyes (e.g. a feeling like eye strain), and some claim to have measured the output to be vastly higher than permitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has the Kinect IR source been soundly implicated to cause any sorts of health problems, or has it been measured to output more than permitted by applicable regulatory bodies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T11:16:41.967" Title="Is the Kinect IR laser safe?" Tags="|safety|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2625" CreationDate="2011-04-29T03:56:05.167" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many factors play into this.  Sadly, simple google searches do not get me much data that isn't noise regarding the very question you are asking about.  That said, I am a Program Manager working on many varieties of IR lasers, so I will attempt to give you information as best as I can explain it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, anything people &quot;feel&quot; in their eyes is purely psychosomatic.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://thalamus.wustl.edu/course/eyeret.html&quot;&gt;The retina does not have any pain sensors in it&lt;/a&gt; (the linked diagram shows no nerve endings in the eye).  Any eyestrain is more than likely from spending hours in front of a TV set playing a video game as opposed to the laser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The laser itself is 780nm (visible light ending at 760 nm, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sensorsinc.com/whyswir.html&quot;&gt;thus making the Kinect laser very short wave IR, or SWIR&lt;/a&gt;).  Furthermore, it is not columnated, but rather diffused so that it covers a wide area.  The power of the laser ends up at less than 0.4 µW once it actually reaches you, so you have even less reason to worry.  It is rated as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anandtech.com/show/4057/microsoft-kinect-the-anandtech-review/2&quot;&gt;Class 1 laser device&lt;/a&gt;, which means the maximum emitted power of the laser is &amp;lt;25 μW, spread out over a circle detection area measured in feet as opposed to an aperture of less than 1 cm. This amount of power, according to current medical and physics knowledge, is safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of comparison, sunlight is one kilowatt per square meter and perhaps 5% of that is near infrared i.e. 700 to 1000 nanometers.  Just going outside will expose you to much greater power densities of SWIR than the Kinect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the way the Kinect physically generates the laser, the IR laser diode itself is capable of emitting 60 mW at 830 nm.  Should you break or remove the diffuser, various optics, and then stare into the laser emitting diode directly, you will cause retinal damage.  However, the series of steps required to do that would indicate a willful intent to cause self harm, and be beyond simple mechanical failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT TO ADD:  As previously stated, in order to be classified as a Class I laser, the emittance must be &amp;lt;25 μW. The reason that the diode generator is higher is because the optics required to create the dispersal pattern reduces the efficiency. Any time a laser passes through any optical element, you lose power. The beam divergence will also play into this. If the M2 (M squared) is close to 1, you will have problems. I have not found any measurement of the Kinect M squared, however, since it is already set to diverge, that optical path is established before it even leaves the device.  This ends up reducing the ability of the laser to be focused in any meaningful way on your retina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would call into question the methodology that people claim in measuring the power from this laser.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T22:07:07.893" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T22:07:07.893" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1872" CreationDate="2011-04-29T03:57:36.870" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's break down your question one at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uigi.com/oxygen.html&quot;&gt;Oxygen&lt;/a&gt; is not flammable, it's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cityoftyler.org/Default.aspx?tabid=422&quot;&gt;accelerant&lt;/a&gt;. You would have to be pumping dangerous amounts of oxygen to the person's health to increase the fire risk and it would have to be produced offsite and transported in liquid form to even approach the amounts needed for this, you'd see a very large white tank fenced off, that was getting filled every day or two. Check behind hospitals to see what I mean. They use a lot of oxygen and it is very expensive in heavy usage. Also the alcohol usage of people in the casino would &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7258218&quot;&gt;lower&lt;/a&gt; the effectiveness of the extra oxygen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The typical outpatient I serviced as an Oxygen Delivery Tech received a dose of 2 liters per minute. A patient who was in excruciating pain and in the process of dying would receive up to 10lpm for short periods of time. An oxygen concentrator that people typically use instead of liquid oxygen pulls oxygen from the surrounding air and only improves the patients airflow roughly 6 lpm by being directly injected into the nose through a cannula or mask, in some cases through a bipap or cpap machine, especially in the cases of sleep apnea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too much oxygen can actually be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/reporter/index.html?ID=2506&quot;&gt;detrimental&lt;/a&gt; to your health and cause euphoric like effects, along with other affects similar to oxygen deprivation. While liquid oxygen is stored cryogenically the only affect that would cause you to wake up is the affect of being surrounded by the cold. Oxygen dries you out and if you don't need it and take too much can harm you. There is no way that this is happening. Cost wise it's also cheaper to get people drunk than to give them oxygen.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From personal observation, the smoking areas in many nursing homes and hospitals I service happened to be right next to where the oxygen tanks were stored or filled. The process for refilling certain portable tanks requires that you vent the pure oxygen gas while you put the liquid oxygen into the tanks. I would have these vents pointed away from the smokers, yet without fail they would walk right into the oxygen vent stream with no deleterious affects. We even had a patient who would use his oxygen tank as an ashtray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Brian Knoblauch - typically we charged about a dollar a pound for liquid oxygen, if I remember correctly, it's definitely not cheaper than alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2159" LastEditorUserId="2159" LastEditDate="2011-04-29T15:17:02.153" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T15:17:02.153" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2628" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3087" CreationDate="2011-04-29T09:15:03.823" Score="38" ViewCount="6282" Body="&lt;p&gt;My Arabian friend showed me a video of a child getting shot. He also gave me some links after a  quick search:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gaza-i-watched-an-israeli-soldier-shoot-dead-my-two-little-girls-1452294.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Independent: I watched an Israeli soldier shoot dead my two little girls&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://justread-whatever.blogspot.com/2011/01/israeli-soldiers-kill-1337-palestinian.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Just Read blog: Israeli soldiers kill 1337 Palestinians&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found it rather disturbing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He told me that this is rather common and wasn't accidental (i.e. more common than typical civilian casualties in any war). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know its very hard to find any unbiased sources in this controversial conflict, but does anyone have any statistics on the rate of civilian deaths?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2162" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-08-25T06:12:20.880" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T06:12:20.880" Title="Do Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian kids?" Tags="|war|israel|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2014-08-29T08:36:52.237" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2629" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-29T10:14:44.073" Score="8" ViewCount="9731" Body="&lt;p&gt;Similarity between the Prince and James Hewitt have always been questioned and strengthened after Princess Diana's affair with James was confirmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1167157/The-comeback-cad-Why-James-Hewitt-STILL-dropping-tantalising-hints-Prince-Harrys-paternity.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1167157/The-comeback-cad-Why-James-Hewitt-STILL-dropping-tantalising-hints-Prince-Harrys-paternity.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1038" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T09:17:36.977" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T09:17:36.977" Title="Is Prince Harry the son of James Hewitt?" Tags="|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2632" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-29T11:17:47.197" Score="14" ViewCount="1720" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1417/are-participants-in-stage-hypnosis-paid-stooges&quot;&gt;Are participants in  stage hypnosis paid stooges?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask this after watching a recent Derren Brown (UK stage magician and hypnotist) TV program in which he sets out to discredit faith healers, yet trains his accomplices in hypnotism, apparently without irony.  I've always assumed that stage hypnotism was an obvious fake (specifically that participants pretend and lie), but am perplexed to find that the reality of the phenomenon is still controversial, at least if Google results are representative of scientific opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There ought to be falsifiable predictions arising from the reality of hypnotism as a brain phenomenon.  For example, can the response be elicited in people from cultures not exposed to Western TV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1452" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T13:57:12.840" Title="Is stage hypnotism a trick?" Tags="|hypnotism|stage-magic|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-05-19T07:30:23.240" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2555" CreationDate="2011-04-29T13:41:45.657" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the meaning of the phrase &quot;New world order&quot;? The first world war was eve of the historical period of the long 19th century. A lot of people thought that it was a bad idea that the European nation states were constantly waging war against each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Woodrow Wilson called for a &quot;New world order&quot;. He called for the foundation of a league of nations in which different nation should come together to be more peaceful. &#xA;The cosmopolitan idea. Nation states were supposed to become less powerful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even before the Second World War people like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Stresemann&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gustav Stresemann&lt;/a&gt; wanted to have more European integration. At the time there was a strong nationalist sentiment and European integration didn't happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Second World War happened. Some people said: &quot;Enough, we have to stop those nation states from waging war against each other&quot;. &#xA;They had a problem. The French were pretty nationalistic and weren't fond of the idea of being governed by a parliament that had some German parliamentarians. There was no way you could convince the French public to accept something like the current European parliament.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was better to go one step at a time. The French prime minister and foreign minister Schuman proposed in 1950 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Community&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;European Coal and Steel Community&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of people who were in favor of cosmopolitan ideas like European integration and transnational partnership started 1954 to meet in Bilderberg. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bilderberg group&lt;/a&gt; started yearly meetings that are always held at different locations. &#xA;Most people who are members of the group are pretty cosmopolitan and think that European integration was a great idea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of them subscribe to the principles that are currently know as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Consensus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Washington consensus&lt;/a&gt;. If you are a hardcore nationalist than you might want to label those ideas as New World Order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T13:41:45.657" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2621" CreationDate="2011-04-29T14:47:55.153" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks to me like the scanner that was used to make the PDF split the image into several layers during construction of the PDF in order to reduce the file size while maintaining sharp text.  If we look side-by-side at some writing that was not separated into a separate layer and some text that was, we can clearly see the effect (note that I have moved the writing around to get a good side-by-side example):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/etcXa.png&quot; alt=&quot;Hi-res text from one layer next to low-res image from Obama birth certificate&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a very common feature of scanners that produce PDFs, since your documents tend to look horrible otherwise (or are huge).  Here's an example taken from my local copier (again with text moved next to writing that was not recognized as requiring hi-res):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EesJM.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the existence of multiple layers in no way is evidence that the document is not authentic.  This is the standard way for scanners/copiers to handle scanned-document-to-PDF conversions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon review of the document, I can't find an instance of the font &amp;quot;not making sense&amp;quot;.  Looks like a typewriter to me, and the same one used for the whole document (complete with artifacts that I recall seeing before, like partially shifted caps).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/T8Uol.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; shows all the layers (thanks to geoff for finding it).  You can verify them for yourself by loading the PDF into a vector graphics tool like Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape and ungrouping the pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another edit: &lt;a href=&quot;https://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/with-drudge-report-s-help-birthers-latch-onto-phony-forgery-theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; presents the same conclusion (thanks to fred for finding it), albeit without a clear demonstration, and with some technical inaccuracies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-07-02T12:20:01.250" LastActivityDate="2022-07-02T12:20:01.250" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2641" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2642" CreationDate="2011-04-29T17:10:21.997" Score="49" ViewCount="5851" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where did the common pop-culture way of portraying pirates (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yarr.org.uk/talk/&quot;&gt;yarr!&lt;/a&gt;) come from? Did pirate captains commonly have birds on their shoulders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1892" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T10:13:42.713" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T10:13:42.713" Title="Did pirates talk the way they are currently portrayed?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2641" CreationDate="2011-04-29T17:16:27.277" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2729/why-are-pirates-depicted-with-a-parrot-on-their-shoulder&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2729/why-are-pirates-depicted-with-a-parrot-on-their-shoulder&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Piratespeak&lt;/strong&gt;. &amp;quot;Arrrr&amp;quot; showed up late, probably in movies of the 1930s. Actor Robert Newton played Silver in the 1950 version of  Treasure Island, one of the better portrayals of old-school piracy, and reprised the role in sequels and on TV; his accent featured a strong rolling R, which likely helped fix &amp;quot;arrrr&amp;quot; in the piratical canon. &lt;strong&gt;Much pirate lingo, like &amp;quot;avast,&amp;quot; was simply nautical speech of the time; &amp;quot;shiver my timbers&amp;quot; predates Stevenson, but he ran with it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To specifically prove &amp;quot;avast&amp;quot; mentioned above, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/avast&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/avast&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etymology: From the Dutch hou' vast (“hold fast”), from houd (“hold”) + vast (“fast”)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as parrots - the above linked straightdope article didn't really have enough level of details, but this blog does: &lt;a href=&quot;http://pirates2.sakraft.com/labels/History.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://pirates2.sakraft.com/labels/History.html&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Of Pirates and Parrots; Thursday, June 19, 2008&lt;/em&gt;) as well as &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://avianenrichment.com/fun_history.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Parrots in History&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; page which quotes from that blog and adds its own info:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Pirates and Parrots?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the time of the Golden Age of Piracy (1680 – 1730) there was a well established trade in parrots.  Usually animals aboard a ship were used as provisions rather than as pets but fortunately parrots weren’t a favorite meal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is thought that the pirate &amp;amp; parrot cliché originated from Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the historical journal of Pirate Captain William Dampier describes that in certain cases pirates actually did take parrots on board, most likely because they wanted to sell them at a profit to the high society of Europe. In Dampier's journal it is mentioned that parrots were stored along with other animals and provisions on the ship, while anchoring at a Caribbean island:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;The tame Parrots we found here were the largest and fairest Birds of their kind that I ever saw in the West Indies. Their colour was yellow and red, very coursly mixt; and they would prate very prettily; and there was scarce a Man but what sent aboard one or two of them. So that with Provision, Chests, Hencoops and Parrot-Cages, our Ships were full of Lumber, with which we intended to sail.&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-29T17:22:46.100" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4586" CreationDate="2011-04-29T19:00:15.307" Score="65" ViewCount="10226" Body="&lt;p&gt;In other words, are the censorship &amp;amp; ratings of movies and other forms of art based on something more than nothing? ;) Or, in a broader sense, I am questioning the very widespread belief that kids should not be allowed to watch anything sex-related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am talking only the ratings/censorship based on the nudity, sex, explicitness, etc., i.e. not violence, profanity, drugs and other things movies can get bad MPAA rating (or an equivalent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please no anecdotal evidences, nor any discussions about whether kids should be interested in these things, or do they (should they?) understand them, and so forth. I am only interested in the direct and measurable harm aspect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user288" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-02-08T01:06:52.997" LastActivityDate="2016-08-22T12:39:46.207" Title="Is the depiction of nudity or sex harmful to minors?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|children|art|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2649" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2651" CreationDate="2011-04-29T21:13:16.160" Score="32" ViewCount="11599" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Manhattan Beach, CA in 1983 members of the McMartin family were accused of a variety of abuse charges against the children in their care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was reported that the children:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;were victimized by teachers who were    members of an&#xA;intergenerational    Satanic&#xA;conspiracy.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;were required to participate in    &amp;quot;major, major sacrifices&amp;quot; connected&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;with the &amp;quot;Satanic Church.&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_mcmar.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were all manner of other abuse allegations filed, but in the end all accusations were found to be either baseless or completely disproven. The case has become now become an example of a modern-day witch hunt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It lasted six years -- the longest US&#xA;criminal trial in history. At a cost&#xA;to the state of $15 million, it was&#xA;also the most expensive. No&#xA;convictions were obtained. The main&#xA;evidence of abuse was based on what&#xA;the children testified were memories&#xA;of repeated, sadistic, ritual&#xA;molestation. Years later, child&#xA;psychologists realized that such&#xA;memories can be easily implanted in&#xA;children's minds by the interview&#xA;techniques which were used at the&#xA;time. Since psychologists and police&#xA;investigators have changed their&#xA;methods of interrogating young&#xA;children, no more MVMO cases have&#xA;surfaced in the U.S. and Canada. The&#xA;children's testimony was supported by&#xA;medical tests, which were believed at&#xA;the time to be accurate. Years later,&#xA;they were found to be useless. same&#xA;source&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While no one can argue that throughout history, there have been killings where religious inspiration is a primary motive, in America the spectre of Satanic cult killings looms mostly in stories, movies, and urban legends which tend to crop up around particularly gruesome or unexplained murders. These claims reached a peak in the 1970-1980's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems logical, even for skeptics that since believers of most faiths gather together to practice their rituals and worship that Satanic churches or cults could logically be assumed to do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But do these rituals really include murder and human sacrifice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quote from LaVey's Church of Satan states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the high volume of mail that we&#xA;receive from young people who are new&#xA;to Satanism, we have put together some&#xA;information to help answer your&#xA;specific questions and concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have read our books, you know&#xA;that Satanism isn’t about taking&#xA;drugs, and it isn’t about harming&#xA;animals or children. Unlike many&#xA;religions and philosophies, Satanism&#xA;respects and exalts life. Children and&#xA;animals are the purest expressions of&#xA;that life force, and as such are held&#xA;sacred and precious in the eyes of the&#xA;Satanist. Besides, it is very&#xA;un-Satanic to take any creature’s life&#xA;against its will. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.churchofsatan.com/home.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are many, many cases where organizations (public, religious, private, legislative) have said one thing and practiced another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some searching I have found may claims which have been hard (or impossible) to verify that Satanic churches or cults have committed anywhere from hundreds to thousands of murders nationwide over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have been unable to find any hard evidence for specific cases where a Satanic church/cult has been proven guilty (or legitimately claimed responsibility for) of either ritual murder or human sacrifice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the Church of Satan does exist, I can find no evidence that it is engaged in any national conspiracy to commit ritual murder/sacrifice and/or cover up evidence of such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you can find internet warnings such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are an estimated 100,000 or more&#xA;Satanic cults in America. Those&#xA;numbers sadly are out-dated and from&#xA;the 1980's. The numbers are much&#xA;higher now of course. But it's not a&#xA;priority of the F.B.I. to track&#xA;anymore. Police are NOT allowed to&#xA;call a ritual murder done to someone&#xA;as so. There are certain codes for&#xA;these type Satanic murders &lt;a href=&quot;http://realneo.us/content/real-threat-clean-cut-satanists&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The question is...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that there are organized Satanic churches or cults committing ritualistic murder and/or human sacrifice across America?  Or is this another conspiracy theory/urban legend which could be possible, but has little to no proven basis in reality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The question isn't...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;meant to include murders committed by&#xA;individuals who claimed Satanic&#xA;motives after the fact or to account&#xA;for the actions of disturbed or&#xA;mentally ill individuals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;meant to include speculation as to&#xA;whether or not any other religion is&#xA;spreading this information to further&#xA;their own agendas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;About anyone's personal beliefs&#xA;regarding the existence of Satan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Able to be answered by saying &amp;quot;Satan&#xA;covered up the evidence&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="15212" LastEditDate="2022-11-24T16:00:29.780" LastActivityDate="2022-11-24T16:00:29.780" Title="Did any satanic cult ever commit organised ritual murders or sacrifices?" Tags="|history|religion|mortality|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2649" CreationDate="2011-04-29T23:51:56.853" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Italy, we had the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beasts_of_Satan&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beasts of Satan&lt;/a&gt; killing 4 people for &quot;Satanic&quot; reasons, of which at least two in a satanic ritual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Lq9um.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a bit more context: two of the killers confessed to the murders and the motivation, the rest of the sect, also jailed, maintains that it was only the work of the two killers, and that the confessions are false and motivated by reduction in jail time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So on these basis, I think we can believe that at least the self-accused killers have been committing murders with a satanist ritualistic intent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wikipedia article only has links to the news. More reputable information, via Google translate, follows. I've been fixing the translation where not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the CESNUR web site, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cesnur.org/about.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Center for Studies on New Religions&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition, one of the accused, Mario Maccione, was thought to be a medium, as other members believed it to be &quot;possessed&quot; by demons during the celebration of the  homemade rites performed by the group. Even the murder of Marino and Tollis seems to be part of a satanic ritual context, however - partly because of the defensive strategies adopted by lawyers in various ways - the stories about the facts given by the accused in court show some discrepancies. In any event, on the evening of the disappearance, Fabio Tollis and Chiara Marino were killed with edged weapons and blunt instruments and thrown on top of each other in a hole, dug some days before by Pietro Guerrieri.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;amp;sl=auto&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cesnur.org%2Freligioni_italia%2Fs%2Fsatanismo_03.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the acts of the tribunal (in the words of one of the accused on his blog):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Maccione, the group was devoted to spiritualism, and he was the medium that was in a trance (p. 3), the demons spoke through him, they responded to the names of demons &quot;Noctumonium, Satemonum Delirium, Gelimer, Mortiferium Fierce and Mortifugo &quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Guerriero, Chiara &lt;em&gt;(the first victim, n.d.r.)&lt;/em&gt;, in the eyes of the group, represented the Madonna, then Maccione (or daemon through him, to be exact), gave the order to kill (77), while Fabio was killed because he imitated the trances of Maccione (95 -120). According Maccione, however, Fabio and Chiara had spontaneously decided to be killed for sacrifice to Satan (12-15-40).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;layout=2&amp;amp;eotf=1&amp;amp;sl=auto&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nobody.it%2F&amp;amp;act=url&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an interview to the group's &quot;medium&quot;, Maccione:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mario excludes the presence of a higher level in the organization, someone who was giving orders from above:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;It is true that outside there are many satanic cults. But we were alone, we killed each other out.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And the killers who survived, then? Volpe, Sapone, Leoni?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;We are all enemies.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;amp;sl=auto&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ildue.it%2FEvasioni%2FInterviste%2FpaginaInterviste.asp%3FIDprimoPiano%3D2637&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T10:59:02.977" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T10:59:02.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2654" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-30T02:25:02.863" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T02:25:02.863" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T02:25:02.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2655" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-30T02:25:02.863" Score="0" Body="Carl Gustav Jung (26 July 1875 to 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist, an influential thinker and the founder of Analytical Psychology." OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="1253" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T02:26:13.300" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T02:26:13.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2656" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-30T02:28:42.423" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Advanced by Carl Jung early in the 20th century, who suggested the existence of universal contentless forms that channel experiences and emotions, resulting in recognizable and typical patterns of behavior with certain probable outcomes. Archetypes are cited as important to both ancient mythology and modern narratives, as argued by Joseph Campbell in works such as &lt;em&gt;The Hero With a Thousand Faces&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="1253" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T03:15:03.167" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T03:15:03.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2657" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-30T02:28:42.423" Score="0" Body="Archetypes were advanced by Carl Jung early in the 20th century, who suggested the existence of universal contentless forms that channel experiences and emotions, resulting in recognizable and typical patterns of behavior with certain probable outcomes." OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="1253" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T03:15:09.640" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T03:15:09.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2658" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-30T02:34:19.490" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Theism, in the broadest sense, is the belief that at least one deity exists. In a more specific sense, theism refers to a doctrine concerning the nature of a monotheistic God and God's relationship to the universe. Theism, in this specific sense, conceives of God as personal, present and active in the governance and organization of the world and the universe. The use of the word theism as indicating a particular doctrine of monotheism arose in the wake of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century to contrast with the then emerging deism that contended that God, though transcendent and supreme, did not intervene in the natural world and could be known rationally but not via revelation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="1253" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T03:15:23.803" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T03:15:23.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2659" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-30T02:34:19.490" Score="0" Body="The belief that at least one deity exists." OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="1253" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T03:15:29.140" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T03:15:29.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2660" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-30T02:37:18.163" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mormonism is the religion practiced by Mormons, and is the predominant religious tradition of the Latter Day Saint movement. This movement was founded by Joseph Smith, Jr. beginning in the 1820s as a form of Christian primitivism. During the 1830s and 1840s, Smith gradually distinguished itself from traditional Protestantism, and what is called Mormonism today represents the new, non-Protestant faith taught by Smith in the 1840s. After Smith's death, most Mormons followed Brigham Young to the Rocky Mountains as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Other branches of Mormonism include Mormon fundamentalism, which seeks to maintain practices and doctrines such as polygamy that were discontinued by the LDS Church, and various other small independent denominations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="1253" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T03:15:13.883" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T03:15:13.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2661" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-30T02:37:18.163" Score="0" Body="The religion practiced by Mormons, predominant religious tradition of the Latter Day Saint movement founded by Joseph Smith, Jr. in the 1820s as a form of Christian primitivism." OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="1253" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T03:15:18.000" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T03:15:18.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2662" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-04-30T02:40:29.917" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T02:40:29.917" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T02:40:29.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2663" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-04-30T02:40:29.917" Score="0" Body="A virus is a small infectious agent that can replicate only inside the living cells of organisms." OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="1253" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T07:47:17.717" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T07:47:17.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-30T02:41:24.940" Score="20" ViewCount="44666" Body="&lt;p&gt;See the following claim, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the reasons I should supplement with whey protein?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To build muscle mass&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To speed recovery time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Reduce injuries related to working out&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Maintain a healthy and fit body&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Feel better during your workouts  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.powersupplements.com/protein.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any independent controlled studies that prove at statistically significant that taking whey protein as a supplement will cause you to gain muscle mass?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1892" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T13:08:35.157" LastActivityDate="2015-03-14T20:33:14.347" Title="Does taking whey protein make you gain muscle?" Tags="|nutrition|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2667" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2672" CreationDate="2011-04-30T09:21:54.103" Score="27" ViewCount="2186" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading Superfreakanomics and the book argues that we had a global cooling period 40 years ago? Is that claim accurate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-29T03:50:49.610" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T03:50:49.610" Title="Did we have a &quot;global cooling&quot; 40 years ago?" Tags="|history|environment|climate-change|climatology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2668" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2670" CreationDate="2011-04-30T09:45:57.543" Score="28" ViewCount="1638" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was wondering about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fair Trade&lt;/a&gt; foods/products (products carrying the international certificate) as I have never seen an actual policy or standards on how much farmers/producers get paid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WJaHw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a standard cut or a policy that guarantees that farmers/producers of Fair Trade foods are actually being payed more? If so, is this increase in pay even worth it (ie. does it make a real difference to the original producers)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="723" LastEditorUserId="723" LastEditDate="2011-05-01T02:14:42.657" LastActivityDate="2017-11-06T01:27:13.623" Title="Are Fair Trade products guaranteed to be 'fairer'?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2667" CreationDate="2011-04-30T09:58:54.490" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following graph shows the temperature data from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/inXBt.gif&quot; alt=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/B0FXw.gif&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see some years where the global mean temperature anomaly went down for a decade or two, mainly around 1900, 1940 and 1960. This does not really change the overall trend you see in the picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T04:46:46.093" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T04:46:46.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2668" CreationDate="2011-04-30T13:01:01.387" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/includes/documents/cm_docs/2008/F/1_Five%20Key%20Fairtrade%20Benefits.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this document&lt;/a&gt; should answer most of your questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The FAIRTRADE Mark means farmers receive a fair and stable price for their products&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A main objective of Fairtrade is to increase producer incomes. This is achieved by payment of a guaranteed, &#xA;  fair price and by reducing the number of intermediaries in the supply chain so that the growers get a larger &#xA;  share of the export price.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  FLO audits each transaction to ensure the Fairtrade price and premium are paid to the producer organisation. A &#xA;  quick reference guide to Fairtrade producer prices and premiums is available on our web site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the site, there's plenty of documentation on how much the individual producers are paid, see here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/producers/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/producers/default.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T13:01:01.387" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2667" CreationDate="2011-04-30T13:28:07.630" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;That &quot;myth&quot; was started by &lt;a href=&quot;http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Newsweek&lt;/a&gt; and irresponsible journalism more than any peer reviewed publications.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalcenter.org/Time-Ice-Age-06-24-1974-Sm.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Time&lt;/a&gt; was equally responsible.  However, if you look at the number of actual papers published on the subjects of climate change, you will see that most were actually more concerned about warming:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FvqTS.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Peer reviewed climate papers&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or viewed another way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/h4tKU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Pie graph of papers&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that climate change and global modeling was very new.  Computers of the time were not equipped to handle this sort of calculation.  Even so the 1975 US National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Report, the most comprehensive study on climate change, and closest to scientific consensus, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/nas-1975.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;issued a report&lt;/a&gt;. Their basic conclusion was &quot;…&lt;em&gt;we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate…&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in strong contrast with the &lt;em&gt;current position&lt;/em&gt; of the US National Academy of Sciences: &quot;...there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring... It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities... The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now looking at the image Fabian has given us, it only shows a little over 100 years, and one may not appreciate the severity of temperature changes.  While there are small dips and some areas with a downward trend, this does in no way cover geologic time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/T3j0g.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Temperature recently&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare this to temperature changes as derived from numerous sources for the past 1000 years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iBqhO.gif&quot; alt=&quot;1000 years of data&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these arguments come from the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hockey Stick is broken&lt;/a&gt;&quot; arguments.  Most of these come from the science not having all the tools available or developed at the initial time.  However, since these initial measurements were made, more and more tools have become available.  And they are agreeing with the initial set of measurements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6KnBZ.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Many tools reconstruct temperature&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, with all this, you will notice statistical fluctuations.  The best way to describe these would almost be to say they are weather.  Weather is not climate.  As shortlived humans, we have a difficult time remembering or projecting more than a few months in advance of our present time on a personal basis.  Hence why weather changes seem so prevalent to us, even though they may only span a series of a few years.  The overall trend is still very much upward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T14:47:48.963" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T14:47:48.963" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2673" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2676" CreationDate="2011-04-30T13:39:02.007" Score="32" ViewCount="3726" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some sports drinks, and even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1200531/The-vegetables-hydrate-glass-water.html&quot;&gt;vegetables&lt;/a&gt; claim to be 'more hydrating than water'. What does this even mean? How is 'hydration' even measured? If I ate enough cucumbers could I survive without ever drinking anything at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-04-30T15:36:24.713" LastActivityDate="2020-01-11T11:01:34.327" Title="Can anything be 'more hydrating than water'?" Tags="|nutrition|water|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2673" CreationDate="2011-04-30T14:56:57.523" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;They seem to measure hydration by seeing how much of the fluid stays in the body instead of being secreted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For milk there a &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=1057236&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; with describes the process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Urine samples were collected before&#xA;  and for 5 h after exercise to assess&#xA;  fluid balance. Urine excretion over&#xA;  the recovery period did not change&#xA;  during the milk trials whereas there&#xA;  was a marked increase in output&#xA;  between 1 and 2 h after drinking water&#xA;  and the sports drink. Cumulative urine&#xA;  output was less after the milk drinks&#xA;  were consumed (611 (sd 207) and 550&#xA;  (sd 141) ml for milk and milk with&#xA;  added sodium, respectively, compared&#xA;  to 1184 (sd 321) and 1205 (sd 142) ml&#xA;  for the water and sports drink; P &amp;lt;&#xA;  0·001). Subjects remained in net&#xA;  positive fluid balance or euhydrated&#xA;  throughout the recovery period after&#xA;  drinking the milk drinks but returned&#xA;  to net negative fluid balance 1 h&#xA;  after drinking the other drinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T14:56:57.523" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2679" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2680" CreationDate="2011-04-30T18:16:06.240" Score="35" ViewCount="29394" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently saw this video, where among other things they claimed that there is no correlation between penis size and race. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't remember everything about the video. It was animated, gave a lot of statistics about sex, and was titled something like &quot;All you wanted to know about sex&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:To be clear, I shall use this definition from Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Race is classification of humans into large and distinct populations or groups often based on factors such as appearance based on heritable phenotypical characteristics or geographic ancestry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditorDisplayName="user288" LastEditDate="2013-12-06T10:07:34.057" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T10:07:34.057" Title="Is there a correlation between penis size and race?" Tags="|race|physiology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2679" CreationDate="2011-04-30T18:48:54.653" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SUMMARY:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There doesn't seem to be enough information to fully prove or disprove the correlation, but whatever studies ARE avaiable, for most part, support the theory that there are &lt;strong&gt;no statistically significant differences&lt;/strong&gt;. Some example studies listed below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quote from one study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several areas where further work is needed. For instance, except for the Korean&#xA;study, &lt;strong&gt;there is little evidence of racial differences&lt;/strong&gt;. This runs counter to many widely&#xA;held suppositions and needs further investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study quoted is a review, conducted by Drs. Kevan Wylie and Ian Eardley of the Porterback Clinic and Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Sheffield and St. James’ Hospital in Leeds, United Kingdom, respectively, combines results from more than 50 international research projects into penis size and small penis syndrome (SPS) conducted since 1942.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drawing upon the results of 12 relevant studies, the review, detailed in the British Journal of Urology (BJU) International, finds that the average erect penis is about 5.5 to 6.2 inches long and about 4.7 to 5.1 inches in circumference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the article might be &lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&amp;amp;q=cache:1XXPGApzF7UJ:majorityrights.com/images/uploads/penis_size.pdf%20Kevan%20Wylie%20and%20Ian%20Eardley%20urology&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;gl=us&amp;amp;pid=bl&amp;amp;srcid=ADGEESgSYBZIg2qKTWDRsirXojQjZD_S1mT1ce3wuDAh5EUylOGaPcjA_XsXxsOAqsphha5RYeEPWO47WWw7_k7MuJ7bjtUYBVluc0icKFeFMyU2jaFk1HFtjp0UZOqgnyBByIhfV2Jf&amp;amp;sig=AHIEtbSMuwN3TCRco_gfLr2T3HYPI2LWiA&amp;amp;pli=1-&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;available online&lt;/a&gt;, though it's a Google Docs URL so I'm unsure of whether it will work permanently. It's worth looking at since it contains (in Table 1) the raw data on which above-quoted conclusion was made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=366192&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Answers&lt;/a&gt; has several links to other studies/statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing it did state up front (I think quoting from Wiki):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reliable penis-size studies commonly quoted in the literature&#xA;are the Kinsey study, the UCSF study, and an Italian study, none of&#xA;which even attempted to correlate size with race.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, Kinsey data - which one would have naturally started with - is noted to be problematic due to extremely small sample size for African Americans (sample in double digits).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another related data point is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11805431?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&amp;amp;ordinalpos=10&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;following study&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Should the definition of micropenis vary according to ethnicity? Cheng PK, Chanoine JP. Endocrinology and Diabetes Unit, British Columbia's Children's Hospital, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mean length -2.5 SD was used for the definition of micropenis and was 2.6, 2.5 and 2.3 cm for Caucasian, East-Indian and Chinese babies, respectively (p &amp;lt; 0.05). This is close to the widely accepted recommendation that a penile length of 2.4- 2.5 cm be considered as the lowest limit for the definition of micropenis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to round up the studies I could find quickly: &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajol.info/index.php/tjmr/article/view/30465/0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“Oversized” Penile Length In The Black People; Myth Or Reality&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; - Tropical Journal of Medical Research Vol. 11 (1) 2007: pp. 16-18&#xA;ISSN: 1119-0388&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Design: A prospective and comparative study&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting: The Nnamdi Azikiwe University Teaching Hospital, Nnewi, Nigeria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subjects and Method: Full-stretch flaccid penile lengths, and flaccid penile lengths, were measured in 115 adult men of the Black race in Nigeria. The results were compared with reported similar main studies on people of other races, which were accessible to the authors. These studies were done in Italy, Greece, Korea, Britain, and the United States of America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Result&lt;/strong&gt;: The mean full-stretch penile length of the Nigerian Blacks was 13.37cm and the mean flaccid length was 9.36cm. Similar studies reported full-stretch penile lengths of 12.50cm in Italians, 12.18cm in Greeks, 9.6cm in Koreans, 13cm in British Caucasians, and 12.45cm in the American Caucasians. &lt;strong&gt;The penile length for Nigerian Blacks was longer than those of the other races, but the differences were only statistically different in comparison with the Koreans.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;: There is the possibility of racial differences in penile sizes, but there is no convincing scientific background to support the ascription of bigger penile dimensions to people of the Black race&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T18:07:11.870" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2681" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2684" CreationDate="2011-04-30T19:14:06.963" Score="17" ViewCount="861" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the community based website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.curetogether.com/depression/treatments/&quot;&gt;Curetogether&lt;/a&gt; spending time with a pet helps people with depression. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there peer reviewed research that makes the same recommendation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2011-05-13T16:57:50.113" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T16:57:50.113" Title="Does having a pet help to cure your depression?" Tags="|psychology|zoology|depression|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2682" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-30T20:17:41.223" Score="39" ViewCount="8019" Body="&lt;p&gt;While investigating the topic of speed reading for a school project, I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/id/74766/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; Slate article. The general idea (which I encountered in most articles I read which discussed this topic) would be that speed reading is not a skill that can be trained and improved (significantly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;College-educated people who fret they read too slow should relax.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Nobody reads much faster than 400 words per minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research on this topic is hard to come by, and most articles discussing this topic cite Ronald Carver's (1990) &amp;quot;The Causes of High and Low Reading Achievement&amp;quot; and Keith Rayner's&#xA;&amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=I99QXYyzJfUC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=Keith+Rayner+papers&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=wmPdPx0SS4&amp;amp;sig=YipZC-AisDWZcENzwfTusw0Q4pA&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=Q2S8TdzeDIamhAerzanUBQ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=3&amp;amp;ved=0CCYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Keith%20Rayner%20papers&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eye movements and information processing during reading&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, both of which seem to confirm the fact that speed reading is not a skill that can be improved, due to human limitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By speed reading, I mean reading with a speed significantly above 400, in the range of 600–1000, while retaining reasonable comprehension (70%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is speed reading a skill that can be improved (significantly)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-07-09T08:29:57.737" Title="Can people read much faster than 400 words per minute?" Tags="|psychology|perception|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2681" CreationDate="2011-04-30T22:03:20.673" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4465998.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt; has an article about a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/331/7527/1231.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study with dolphins&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A University of Leicester team &lt;strong&gt;tested&#xA;the effect of regular swimming&#xA;sessions with dolphins&lt;/strong&gt; on 15 depressed&#xA;people in a study carried out in&#xA;Honduras.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found that &lt;strong&gt;symptoms improved more&#xA;among this group than among another 15&#xA;who swam in the same area - but did&#xA;not interact with dolphins.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;All the volunteers who took part in&#xA;the trial stopped taking&#xA;antidepressant drugs or undergoing&#xA;psychotherapy at least four weeks&#xA;beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two weeks later, both groups showed&#xA;improved mental health, but especially&#xA;so among patients who had been&#xA;swimming with the dolphins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15207440&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here is a study&lt;/a&gt; about how a &lt;strong&gt;cat improved depressive symptoms in elderly people&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;28 subjects with chronic&#xA;age-related disabilities living in a&#xA;nursing home ... were assigned to&#xA;a pet-therapy intervention group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results showed that patients with&#xA;animal interaction had improved&#xA;depressive symptoms&lt;/strong&gt; and a significant&#xA;decrease in blood pressure values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anthrozoology.org/animal_assisted_therapy_and_depression_in_adult_college_students&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; is about &lt;strong&gt;animal-assisted therapy in adult college students&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[The study] investigated the effects of&#xA;animal-assisted therapy (A-AT) on&#xA;self-reported depression in 44 college&#xA;undergraduates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results confirmed the positive&#xA;influence of A-AT&lt;/strong&gt; in this cohort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Here is a study about &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/49/6/797&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Effects of Animal-Assisted Therapy on Anxiety Ratings of Hospitalized Psychiatric Patients&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study examined whether a session&#xA;of animal-assisted therapy reduced the&#xA;anxiety levels of hospitalized&#xA;psychiatric patients and whether any&#xA;differences in reductions in anxiety&#xA;were associated with patients'&#xA;diagnoses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Animal-assisted therapy was associated&#xA;with reduced state anxiety levels for&#xA;hospitalized patients with a variety&#xA;of psychiatric diagnoses&lt;/strong&gt;, while a&#xA;routine therapeutic recreation session&#xA;was associated with reduced levels&#xA;only for patients with mood disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-04-30T22:03:20.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2685" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-30T22:12:23.960" Score="21" ViewCount="5124" Body="&lt;p&gt;My mom -- a doctor -- and my relatives seem to think that hanging off monkey bars make you taller as it &quot;stretches&quot; your spine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seriously doubt if this is true, unless you hang off monkey bars 24/7. (Literally.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any proof?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="223" LastEditorUserId="223" LastEditDate="2012-03-28T05:20:57.310" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T23:59:42.500" Title="Do monkey bars make you taller?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2686" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2831" CreationDate="2011-04-30T22:13:31.807" Score="12" ViewCount="9276" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard it said many times that &quot;everyone has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobia&quot;&gt;phobia&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, an irrational, overwhelming fear of something. Phobias can be anywhere from mildly inconvenient to completely debilitating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Common phobias include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;fear of spiders&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;fear of snakes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;fear of flying&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;fear of public speaking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;thinking clowns are really, really, creepy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Uncommon phobias include&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Amathophobia- Fear of dust.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Euphobia- Fear of hearing good news.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An extensive list of other phobias found &lt;a href=&quot;http://phobialist.com/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An internet search or walk through almost any bookstore will show you that there is certainly no shortage of available books, videos, self-help programs and therapies aimed at helping people overcome their phobias, whatever they may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While phobias are obviously quite common,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has it ever been proven that &lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt; everyone has a phobia?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have there been any studies done on rate or prevalence?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T06:43:30.707" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T06:43:30.707" Title="Does everyone have a phobia?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2687" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-30T22:15:26.230" Score="17" ViewCount="2920" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that one of the main advantage of CPUs that are marketed for servers (e.g. the AMD Opteron and Intel Xeon) over CPUs marketed for consumers (e.g. AMD Phenom II and Intel i7) is related to reliability under thermal strain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The response given on &lt;a href=&quot;http://superuser.com&quot;&gt;superuser.com&lt;/a&gt; to the question &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://superuser.com/questions/277537&quot;&gt;Advantages of server-versions (Xeon, Opteron) of CPU's&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; totes a common line in my searches on Google for an answer. The claims typically involve three categories of advantage (which are &lt;a href=&quot;https://superuser.com/questions/122914/intel-i7-vs-xeon-quad-core-processor&quot;&gt;quite&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=43199&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;regularly&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.overclock.net/amd-cpus/384254-phenom-vs-opteron.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;repeated&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;1. Heat resistance&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Server&amp;quot; CPUs are better able to withstand more heat for longer than their &amp;quot;consumer&amp;quot; counterparts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably the advantage would be that the &amp;quot;server&amp;quot; CPU would last significantly longer before dying if the fan cut out, or alternatively requires less cooling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2. Performance and optimization&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Server&amp;quot; CPUs have faster speeds or are optimized for server tasks, for example from the link from &lt;em&gt;techpowerup.com&lt;/em&gt; stating the advantages of a &amp;quot;server&amp;quot; version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tweaked memory controllers, Cache sizes, thermal outputs, voltages, testing scemes, HT links, pricing, included heatsink, speed binning, many things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all opty's are tweaked for higher throughput vs latency. Also their cache sizes in reguard to their speed is also larger. Voltages and TDP are lower compared to their equivelint x2 or phenom units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;3. Features&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Server&amp;quot; CPUs have certain features the &amp;quot;consumer&amp;quot; CPUs do not have, e.g. &amp;quot;HyperThreading and Virtualization Technologies&amp;quot; (from the Superuser link), or support for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECC_RAM#Errors_and_error_correction&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;error correcting code&lt;/a&gt; (ECC) memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the above advantages commonly toted as the basis for CPU manufacturers selling their &amp;quot;server&amp;quot; versions at significantly higher prices than the &amp;quot;consumer&amp;quot; versions, I'm particularly skeptical of the claim of thermal resilience. So let's ignore claims #2 (performance) and #3 (features).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of greater reliability in general, but I think it's fair to say that a significant portion of CPU failure is, in regular consumer and server usage, related to thermal resistance (i.e. heat increases the rate of failure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than differentiation between reliability based on &amp;quot;server&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;consumer&amp;quot; branding, I'd expect that all CPUs of a similar &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_%28integrated_circuit%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;die&lt;/a&gt; size would have similar thermal resistance qualities. In other words, I think die size plays a much larger role than branding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are server CPUs more resilient to the effects of heat than consumer CPUs of the same die size?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: Edited the above to limit the claims to thermal strain (i.e. removed &amp;quot;features&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;speed&amp;quot;), as per the comments of Fabian and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T16:24:31.760" Title="Thermal advantage of &quot;server&quot; CPUs over &quot;consumer&quot; CPUs" Tags="|marketing|computers|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2688" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-04-30T22:32:04.987" Score="35" ViewCount="8412" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone once told me it is possible to have a net weight gain of more than what you eat. For example if you eat a quarter pounder burger you can potentially gain more than 1/4 pounds. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T20:22:46.993" LastActivityDate="2016-07-09T12:24:42.037" Title="Can you put on more weight than what you eat?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2682" CreationDate="2011-04-30T22:39:45.190" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I personally read non-technical material at well above 400 words per minute.  My comprehension will be selective, however.  If you start asking questions about where the phrase &quot;on the other hand&quot; was first used, I'll be clueless.  If you ask me when a major character first appeared and under what circumstances, I'll be in good shape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a few years, there was a contest called &quot;Mind Sports Olympiad&quot;.  The &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20090213091548/http://www.msoworld.com/history2000/results/speed.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;results from 2000&lt;/a&gt; start like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anne Jones, 1533 WPM, 56.7% comprehension, effective WPM 869&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Benjamin Crowne, 937 WPM, 53.3% comprehension, effective WPM 500&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Andrew Havery, 545 WPM, 83.3% comprehension, effective WPM 454&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, assuming that the tests were accurate, yes, some people read &quot;much faster&quot; than 400 words per minute with reasonable comprehension.  (I'm not sure why one would set a bar arbitrarily at 70%; presumably someone who gets 50% comprehension at 1500 words per minute could go back and get 20% more comprehension without slowing all the way down to 400 wpm.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I have not been able to find good studies on how effective speed reading training is.  Obviously reading is a learned skill, so you can't speed read if you don't have training in reading.  The value of speed-reading training is somewhat unclear, however.  Speed reading books make a very reasonable-sounding point that subvocalizing the words slows you down, and the fastest people can speak is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Words_per_minute&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;just shy of 600 wpm&lt;/a&gt;.  Although this subdivides the problem—can one teach reading without vocalizing the words?—it doesn't, sadly, actually answer the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2017-07-09T08:29:57.737" LastActivityDate="2017-07-09T08:29:57.737" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2691" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2714" CreationDate="2011-04-30T23:14:57.073" Score="36" ViewCount="2950" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a paper defending homeopathy, it is argued that the observed benefits of homeopathic treatments cannot be attributed to the placebo effect because the treatments elicit similar benefits when used on babies and animals, who can have no pre-conceived expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They went on to argue that patients&#xA;  who were cured by homeopathic remedies&#xA;  could very well have been cured&#xA;  without any medicine at all, or the&#xA;  cure was just an effect of their&#xA;  belief in the medicinal efficacy, that&#xA;  is, simply attributable to “placebo&#xA;  effect.” When it is pointed out that&#xA;  homeopathy acts equally effectively in&#xA;  babies and animals, who have no belief&#xA;  or faith in the medicine, challengers&#xA;  also demand a valid explanation for&#xA;  the mechanism of action of the&#xA;  ultralow doses of medicines that could&#xA;  be acceptable within the realm of&#xA;  known scientific knowledge. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.homeopathy.org/research/cancer/Khuda-1.pdf&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can the placebo effect be observed in experiments conducted on babies or animals?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T02:09:13.720" Title="Can the placebo effect be observed in experiments conducted on animals or babies?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|placebo|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2693" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-01T01:44:23.260" Score="13" ViewCount="2099" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some products, stickers that you put onto your mobile phone for example, that claim the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Boost your natural defenses in the&#xA;  presence of electromagnetic radiation&#xA;  (EMR) emitted from mobile phones and&#xA;  other electronic wireless products.&#xA;  The Q-Link mini is great for yourself,&#xA;  your partner and young children and it&#xA;  simply sticks on your mobile phone,&#xA;  iPhone, blue tooth headset, smartphone&#xA;  or other electronic appliances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qlink.com.au/all-products.asp#&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2199" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-05-01T08:49:19.687" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T15:06:02.877" Title="Can products that claim to to reduce electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones be substantiated?" Tags="|medical-science|physics|radiation|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2694" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2713" CreationDate="2011-05-01T02:04:59.127" Score="16" ViewCount="1978" Body="&lt;p&gt;Years ago, I had a friend who was both a heavy smoker and a noted contrarian.  One day as we were driving past a large anti-tobacco billboard he told me he thought that telling smokers not smoke was actually the best way to promote smoking, since it can't be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Health_Cigarette_Smoking_Act&quot;&gt;legally advertised&lt;/a&gt; (on television, radio, and some publications) in the US.  He also vowed to smoke a cigarette every time he saw one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tobacco advertising has long been criticized for targeting children and teenagers, as evidenced by the removal of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Camel&quot;&gt;joe camel&lt;/a&gt;&quot; from the advertising of Camel cigarettes. Given the typically rebellious behavior noted in teenagers, it would stand to a certain kind of reason that these advertisements could actually encourage them to smoke, or at least be unconvincing to those who had already decided to smoke. Running across articles like &lt;a href=&quot;http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/features_julieshealthclub/2006/11/oops_antismokin.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; indicates that my contrarian friend isn't the only person to hold this view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have anti-smoking campaigns and&#xA; advertisements been shown to (either&#xA; intentionally or unintentionally)&#xA; promote smoking, either by&#xA; encouraging new smokers to start, or&#xA; by encouraging those who have already&#xA; developed the habit to smoke &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T23:46:10.410" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T23:46:10.410" Title="Are anti-smoking advertisements in actuality promoting smoking through use of reverse psychology?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2687" CreationDate="2011-05-01T07:22:18.060" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the majority of server CPUs the difference is that they support multi-CPU configurations whereas consumer CPUs don't. These multi-CPU versions are where you get the very high prices that you may be talking about, but there are no consumer versions of these CPUs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are a number of direct comparisons that can be made:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=52277&quot;&gt;Intel Xeon E3-1285&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=52213&quot;&gt;Intel Core i7-2600&lt;/a&gt; are very similar chips with almost identical specifications. If you look on the linked pages, you can see that the Xeon version supports ECC memory which is often important for servers whereas the i7 does not. There is a price premium for the Xeon, but it is fairly modest at $339 vs $294. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Intel Xeon W3580 and i7-975 Extreme Edition are also very similar. Again the Xeon supports ECC when the i7 doesn't and again the prices are very similar at $1090 vs $1050 on newegg.com. In this case the server CPU also supports faster RAM. Where the price premium does kick in is with the dual-socket version of this CPU which is the Xeon W5590 which costs $1680 on newegg.com. This version does need additional hardware to be able to support two sockets and does also support a larger amount of RAM, but I find it difficult to believe that the price difference could be justified by those differences. I suspect that the price premium here is more about being able to charge more in the dual-socket market than anything else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in these two cases, it looks like your original assertion of manufacturers charging significantly more for server versions is incorrect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2201" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T03:49:04.627" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T03:49:04.627" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2701" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2707" CreationDate="2011-05-01T11:33:15.083" Score="25" ViewCount="2464" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific proof to the feeling that time slows down when we are in danger or crisis? Do we think faster? See faster?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T18:05:28.793" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T18:05:28.793" Title="Do we perceive time passing slower during an accident?" Tags="|neurology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1230" CreationDate="2011-05-01T11:43:15.140" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, 'climate events' is something of a contradiction in terms, since climate is a statistical average of weather this Seth Roberts has probably confused weather events with climate events. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, climate is clearly far more predictable than the weather, because everyone who books a ski or sun holiday, and manages to find the snow or the sun as expected when they arrive there, successfully predicts the climate. This happens often enough that people build businesses around the concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, Global Climate Models have successfully predicted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That the globe would warm, and about&#xA;how fast, and about how much. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That the troposphere would warm and&#xA;the stratosphere would cool.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That nighttime temperatures would&#xA;increase more than daytime&#xA;temperatures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That winter temperatures would&#xA;increase more than summer&#xA;temperatures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Polar amplification (greater&#xA;temperature increase - compared to former local averages - as you move&#xA;toward the poles).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That the Arctic would warm faster&#xA;than the Antarctic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The magnitude (0.3 K) and duration&#xA;(two years) of the cooling from the&#xA;Mt. Pinatubo eruption.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They made a retrodiction for Last&#xA;Glacial Maximum sea surface&#xA;temperatures which was inconsistent&#xA;with the paleo evidence, and better&#xA;paleo evidence showed the models&#xA;were right.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They predicted a trend significantly&#xA;different and differently signed&#xA;from UAH satellite temperatures, and&#xA;then a bug was found in the&#xA;satellite data, i.e. the models were&#xA;right.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The amount of water vapor feedback&#xA; due to ENSO.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The response of southern ocean&#xA; winds to the ozone hole.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The expansion of the Hadley cells.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The poleward movement of storm&#xA; tracks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The rising of the tropopause and&#xA; the effective radiating altitude.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The clear sky super greenhouse&#xA; effect from increased water vapor&#xA; in the tropics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The near constancy of relative&#xA; humidity on global average.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That coastal upwelling of ocean&#xA; water would increase.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ModelsReliable.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bartonpaullevenson.com/ModelsReliable.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2205" LastEditorUserId="2205" LastEditDate="2011-05-01T15:00:03.923" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T15:00:03.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2701" CreationDate="2011-05-01T12:47:04.013" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are change in time perception is called &lt;em&gt;Tachypsychia&lt;/em&gt;.  Causes include the stress-related Catecholamine hormones, especially Epinephrine (adrenaline).  This is a stimulant, increasing heart rate and blood pressure, and so increasing alertness as well as strength and pain thresholds &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has negative effects: for example in &lt;a href=&quot;http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.justice.gov.uk/physical-control-in-care-training-manual-2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pages 16-19 of a UK Government training manual&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Loss of fine motor skills (clumsiness) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tunnel vision &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time distortion (including memory loss)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Auditory exclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T12:47:04.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2701" CreationDate="2011-05-01T14:29:31.380" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;An experiment was performed that showed that people don't think faster, but do have a perception that time runs slower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/05/03/time-doesn%E2%80%99t-actually-slow-down-in-a-crisis/&quot;&gt;experiment was reported&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience&quot;&gt;Not Exactly Rocket Science&lt;/a&gt;, a blog associated with &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com&quot;&gt;Discover Magazine&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Chess Stetson, Matthew Fiesta and David Eagleman demonstrated the illusion by putting a group of volunteers through 150 terrifying feet of free-fall. They wanted to see if the fearful plummet allowed them to successfully complete a task that was only possible if time actually moved more slowly to their eyes.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were given a device that flashed numbers (just) too fast to be read, to see if it could be read while falling. The answer was no. However, they &lt;em&gt;perceived&lt;/em&gt; time as slower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Unlike the slowed bullet-time of The Matrix, a person’s perception of events in time doesn’t speed up when danger looms. However, the volunteers did have a distorted view of time during their fall. Before they ascended the tower, Stetson asked each volunteer to reproduce how long a compatriot took to hit the net using a stopwatch. They were then asked to do the same after they’d had a go themselves. On average, the volunteers estimated that own experience took 36% longer than that of their fellows. Time didn’t slow down – the volunteers just remembered that it did.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the reference to the original paper, (which I have not read myself):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Stetson, C., Fiesta, M.P., Eagleman, D.M., Burr, D. (2007). Does Time Really Slow Down during a Frightening Event?. PLoS ONE, 2(12), e1295. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0001295&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T14:29:31.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2693" CreationDate="2011-05-01T14:58:30.587" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The primary source for the debunking of the Q-Link products (which was the example cited in the question) seems to have been an investigation by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badscience.net/2007/05/the-amazing-qlink-science-pedant/&quot;&gt;Bad Science's Ben Goldacre&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He opened one up to reveal the electronics inside were non-functional (i.e. just zero-ohm resistor, not connected to anything).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2007/09/your_friday_dose_of_woo_link_me_up_qman.php&quot;&gt;Respectful Insolence's Orac&lt;/a&gt; looked at the so-called scientific evidence behind the Q-Link, and showed it was lacking any substance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T14:58:30.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2710" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-01T14:59:24.943" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Religion is a cultural system that creates powerful and long-lasting meaning by establishing symbols that relate humanity to beliefs and values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to explain the origin of life or the universe. They tend to derive morality, ethics, religious laws or a preferred lifestyle from their ideas about the cosmos and human nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:25:23.773" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:25:23.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2711" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-01T14:59:24.943" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about religious practices. Do not ask questions about religious beliefs, though. Those are off-topic and there is no tag to use." OwnerUserId="808" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:25:23.773" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:25:23.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2693" CreationDate="2011-05-01T15:06:02.877" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2002, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2002/02/svicomstar.shtm&quot;&gt;found that at least two device manufacturers were making false claims&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;b&gt;FTC Charges Sellers of Cell Phone Radiation Protection Patches with Making False Claims&lt;/b&gt;&#xA;&#xA;The Federal Trade Commission has charged two companies that sold devices that purportedly protect users from electromagnetic radiation emitted by cellular telephones with making false and unsubstantiated claims. In separate court actions announced today, the FTC alleges that Stock Value 1, Inc. and Comstar Communications, Inc. (Comstar) falsely represented that their products block up to 97% or 99% of radiation and other electromagnetic energy emitted by cellular telephones, thereby reducing consumers' exposure to this radiation. According to the FTC, the defendants lacked a reasonable basis to substantiate their claims.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They issued a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt109.shtm&quot;&gt;Consumer Alert&lt;/a&gt; on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T15:06:02.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2694" CreationDate="2011-05-01T15:15:13.013" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ScienceDaily summarised an investigation into this by a group at the University of Georgia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;They found that, overall, the more the students were exposed to anti-smoking messages, the more inclined they were to smoke. The exception -- where exposure to anti-smoking ads correlated with a reduced intention to smoke -- occurred among students who said their friends were influenced by anti-smoking messages&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com%C2%AD/releases/2007/07/070719170315.htm&quot;&gt;University of Georgia (2007, July 20). Why Some Anti-smoking Ads Succeed And Others Backfire. ScienceDaily&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T15:15:13.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2691" CreationDate="2011-05-01T15:24:28.117" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue of animals (and presumably babies too) reacting to the expectation of their handlers is known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans&quot;&gt;Clever Hans Effect&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is named after a horse that could apparently answer difficult questions, which it did by watching the body language of the (unknowing) trainer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of examples similar to Clever Hans, it is necessary to ensure the people handling the animals are also blinded to the treatment when doing animal trials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional effect to be concerned about is subjective measurements being affected by the expected or desired outcome based on the treatment. (&quot;My dog looks happier ever since the treatment.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update: Additional References, in accordance with requests from comments:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badscience.net/2011/02/youre-ooonly-cheating-yourself/&quot;&gt;Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog&lt;/a&gt; discusses a study in which sniffer dogs gave false positive detections when their handlers believed drugs were present. (From memory, I don't believe the study conclusively showed that the dogs actually behaved any differently; their behaviour may just have been interpreted differently.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ben Goldacre's book of the same name has a section on Placebos and Animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=263&quot;&gt;Science Based Medicine blog&lt;/a&gt; also discusses placebos and animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An experiment described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychosomaticmedicine.org/content/37/4/333.abstract&quot;&gt;Pyschosomatic Medicine&lt;/a&gt; showed how rats could be conditioned to have immuno-response to placebos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T11:36:09.570" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T11:36:09.570" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2715" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2719" CreationDate="2011-05-01T16:17:51.760" Score="12" ViewCount="2026" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm watching &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJ-J91SwP8w&amp;amp;feature=feedrec_grec_index&quot;&gt;a video&lt;/a&gt; that claims that 40% of the US economy is made up by the financial sector. It then goes on to talk about the Financial crisis of 2008, so I would assume it's referring to pre-crisis levels. Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2011-05-01T16:21:35.747" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T18:09:28.310" Title="Did the financial sector make up 40% of the US economy before the 2008 financial crisis?" Tags="|economics|united-states|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2715" CreationDate="2011-05-01T17:08:43.710" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, the 40% figure is not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bea.gov/industry/xls/GDPbyInd_VA_NAICS_1998-2010.xls&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;These figures&lt;/a&gt; from the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the US Department of Commerce  suggest that in each year over the last decade the &lt;em&gt;finance and insurance&lt;/em&gt; industry made up about 7.2%-8.4% of GDP (&quot;value added&quot; is the technical term) and 4.5% of employment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Widening this to &lt;em&gt;finance, insurance, real estate, rental, and leasing&lt;/em&gt; gives  between 19%-22% of GDP and about 6% of employment.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bea.gov/industry/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;More tables here&lt;/a&gt; if anyone is interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T17:08:43.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2718" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3018" CreationDate="2011-05-01T17:26:48.780" Score="16" ViewCount="6371" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I recall correctly, Vitamin C plays an important role in the body's immune system. Anecdotal testing by myself gave me the impression that I could ward off a developing cold by the intake of high doses of Vitamin C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a pharmacy, I've now come across &quot;Ester-C&quot;, claiming to be a reaction product of the ascorbic acid and something else. It was marketed as &quot;the better Vitamin C&quot;, because it was alleged that it was better absorbed by the body, and better tolerated than the acid itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as good and important Vitamin C might be, there's a lot of hyper around vitamin supplements, so I'm skeptical about these claims. Here my question:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Does Ester C have the same health benefits as common vitamin C (ascorbic acid) and, in addition, is it better tolerated and absorbed?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastActivityDate="2022-05-21T22:01:16.643" Title="Ester C, the &quot;better&quot; Vitamin C?" Tags="|medical-science|vitamins|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2715" CreationDate="2011-05-01T17:29:58.277" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most standard way of looking at how much of the economy any given entity comprises is to compare the value of its production to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country for the same time period. From this perspective saying that the financial sector accounts for 40% of the economy would seem to be far overblown. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~tphilipp/papers/finsize.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NYU study&lt;/a&gt; includes a comparison of the size of the financial sector to GDP right up to the finiancial crisis, and the financial sector maxes out at about 8% of GDP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mCbiD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;financial sector as GDP&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video by postcarboninstitute doesn't give any hint as to what metric they are using, but the most likely one I could come up with with is that companies in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/e/executive_pay/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;financial sector made up 40% of all corporate profits in the years before 2008&lt;/a&gt;. The problem is that corporate profits are not &quot;the economy&quot; -- in fact all corporate profits last year amounted &lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.washingtonpost.com/political-economy/2010/11/corporate_profits_hit_record_r.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;to about $1.6 trillion&lt;/a&gt; (I couldn't find numbers that were Q4, but it probably won't change much), while the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;total annual GDP was close to $14 trillion&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this is to make a judgement on whether or not this is a good state of affairs, but postcarboninstitute should have probably phrased that statistic differently for the sake of clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T17:29:58.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2720" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-01T17:56:25.177" Score="17" ViewCount="2540" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story goes that an arcade game called Polybius was market tested around Portland in 1981, but it was pulled because it had adverse psychological effects on those children who played it. Even darker rumors claimed Men in Black were seen collecting the profits from the machines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, this arcade game probably never existed. No compelling evidence for its existence has ever been presented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But where did the urban legend come from? The oldest reference I could find to it is in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/30667/secrets-lies-page-2/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2003 issue of GamePro Magazine&lt;/a&gt;. Did GamePro make up the whole story then, or was there a real urban legend that preceded it? Anybody know if GamePro ever came clean, or if the urban legend is documented prior to 2003?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mJ2eN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Polybius&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1343" LastEditorUserId="2433" LastEditDate="2011-07-04T16:29:43.880" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T10:25:56.857" Title="Did GamePro make up the story of the arcade game Polybius?" Tags="|videogames|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2720" CreationDate="2011-05-01T21:03:52.587" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/roundup.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Snopes.com take on this&lt;/a&gt; is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No arcade game called Polybius induced&#xA;  amnesia, caused gamers to wake up&#xA;  screaming in the middle of the night,&#xA;  or attracted the attention of&#xA;  mysterious &quot;men in black&quot; who&#xA;  periodically came to &quot;collect records&quot;&#xA;  from Portland-area machines.  This one&#xA;  is just a gag someone invented several&#xA;  years ago which has now become&#xA;  enshrined on the web, another version&#xA;  of the conspiracy rumors involving&#xA;  military intelligence agents visiting&#xA;  arcades to collect stored information&#xA;  from game consoles which date to at&#xA;  least the early 1980s.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gamepro.com/article/features/30667/secrets-lies-page-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GamePro looked in 2003&lt;/a&gt; and found the evidence inconclusive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using games for military training is&#xA;  one thing; using games for mind&#xA;  control...well, that's something else.&#xA;  But there is a cryptic tale of an&#xA;  arcade game called Polybius that&#xA;  appeared in only a handful of&#xA;  locations in Portland, Oregon in the&#xA;  early 1980s. Credited to a company&#xA;  called Sinnesloschen, Polybius (named&#xA;  for a Greek historian who also dabbled&#xA;  in cryptography) was an abstract&#xA;  puzzle game that reportedly caused&#xA;  nightmares and memory loss in those&#xA;  who played it (&quot;Sinnesloschen&quot; is&#xA;  German for &quot;sense-deleting&quot;), and some&#xA;  supposedly swore off games for good.&#xA;  And to seal the deal, one arcade owner&#xA;  claimed that black-coated gentlemen&#xA;  would periodically come to collect&#xA;  data-but not coins-from the machines.&#xA;  Unfortunately, the main thing that's&#xA;  missing is proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-05-01T21:03:52.587" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2735" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2740" CreationDate="2011-05-01T23:59:39.933" Score="15" ViewCount="2321" Body="&lt;p&gt;The latest Cancer Council of Australia claims that alcohol &quot;probably caused about 5.6 per cent of cancers in Australia&quot; and that there is no safe amount of alcohol to consume. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/quit-drinking-to-cut-cancer-risk-20110501-1e38g.html&quot;&gt;http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/wellbeing/quit-drinking-to-cut-cancer-risk-20110501-1e38g.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sounds extremely high. Especially since I didn't even know alcohol was related to cancer at all (in fact, I was always told a glass of wine during a meal is good for you). Can someone find any other sources for or against this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="164" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T14:30:33.400" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T14:30:33.400" Title="Does alcohol cause cancer?" Tags="|cancer|alcohol|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2735" CreationDate="2011-05-02T01:47:19.400" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can tell you that my dentist advised me to use mouthwash twice a day to destroy bacteria that causes gum disease. He also said to rinse with water afterwards to mitigate any carcinogenic effects the mouthwash might have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, I did some research and found &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jada-plus.com/content/134/8/1079.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, which suggests that alcohol in mouthwash does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; cause cancer. It adds a footnote about potable alcohol:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results&lt;/strong&gt;. The results of six of the studies reviewed are negative and provide no support for the hypothesis that use of alcohol-containing mouthwash increases the risk of OPC. One of the three studies with positive results was a case series and included a follow-up case-control study, the results of which were negative. The authors reanalyzed the study with the most positive results. This analysis found that the study results were just as positive for nonmucosal cancers developing in the mouth as they were for the usual type of OPC. The authors concluded that this study’s positive finding resulted from recall bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clinical Implications&lt;/strong&gt;. It is unlikely that the use of mouthwashes that contain alcohol increases the risk of developing OPC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The excessive consumption of alcohol-containing beverages, or ACBs, moderately increases risks of cancers of the mouth, pharynx, larynx, esophagus and liver.**1 ACBs also interact with cigarette smoking to increase greatly the risk of several of these cancers.2 However, alcohol (ethanol) is not carcinogenic in animals,3 and only its prolonged abuse in humans is related to hepatocellular carcinoma, or HCC. Indeed, the causal nature of the ACB-HCC association has been questioned.4&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while the point remains open for further study, it does not appear that you should fear drinking in moderation. Or using mouthwash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T11:00:26.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2679" CreationDate="2011-05-02T09:38:32.150" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6161691.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; suggests that &lt;strong&gt;there is&lt;/strong&gt; a tendency for Indian men to have shorter penises than the 'International Standard'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over 1,200 volunteers from the length&#xA;and breadth of the country had their&#xA;penises measured precisely, down to&#xA;the last millimetre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scientists even checked their&#xA;sample was representative of India as&#xA;a whole in terms of class, religion&#xA;and urban and rural dwellers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion of all this scientific&#xA;endeavour is that about &lt;strong&gt;60% of Indian&#xA;men have penises which are between&#xA;three and five centimetres shorter&#xA;than international standards used in&#xA;condom manufacture&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Update&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.disinfo.com/2011/03/world-penis-size-map/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;larger report&lt;/a&gt;, collated from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.everyoneweb.com/worldpenissize/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this data&lt;/a&gt;, which included whether it is measured or reported:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D1ALA.png&quot; alt=&quot;Penis Size Map&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T17:49:53.993" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2735" CreationDate="2011-05-02T12:59:40.513" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest you read the current &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/msbgsruprofiles.pdf&quot;&gt;WHO report on Alcohol and Health 2011&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look for example at page 26, Figure 12: Alcohol abuse is the main cause of liver cancer (which can develop following liver cirrhosis) in the Western World (in other places it's still Hepatitis B). Other cancers linked to alcohol consumption are esophageal cancer, mouth and oropharynx cancer, and a few others (colon cancer, breast cancer) where it appears to be a risk factor, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from the same report (p. 20):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cancer: alcohol consumption has been&#xA;  identified as carcinogenic for the&#xA;  following cancer categories (Baan et&#xA;  al., 2007): cancers of the colorectum,&#xA;  female breast, larynx, liver,&#xA;  oesophagus, oral cavity and pharynx.&#xA;  The higher the consumption of alcohol,&#xA;  the greater the risk for these&#xA;  cancers: even the consumption of two&#xA;  drinks per day causes an increased&#xA;  risk for some cancers, such as breast&#xA;  cancer (Hamajima et al., 2002).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't found a concrete reference to &quot;5 % of all cancers in Australia&quot;, but it seems at least plausible. According to the WHO report, 21.6 % of all alcohol-attributable deaths are caused by cancer (p. 26). In Australia, alcohol appears to be the underlying risk factor responsible for 2-4.9 % of deaths (p. 27), and not all cancers are fatal, of course. So we're at least in the same ballpark...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastEditorUserId="604" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T13:17:22.127" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T13:17:22.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2735" CreationDate="2011-05-02T13:24:31.177" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the link you posted explicitly mentions &lt;strong&gt;bowel and breast cancer&lt;/strong&gt; I'll focus on those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17096321?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; (2007) is about increased bowel cancer risk:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We &lt;strong&gt;conducted a&#xA;meta-analysis of prospective cohort&#xA;studies published between 1990 and&#xA;June 2005 on the relationship between&#xA;alcohol intake and colon and rectal&#xA;cancer&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;High alcohol intake was significantly&#xA;associated with increased risk of&#xA;colon and rectal cancer when comparing the highest with the lowest category of alcohol&#xA;intake&lt;/strong&gt;, equivalent to a 15% increase&#xA;of risk of colon or rectal cancer for&#xA;an increase of 100 g of alcohol intake&#xA;per week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16783604?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; (2007) is a &lt;strong&gt;meta-analysis of studies of alcohol and breast cancer&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;98 unique studies were&#xA;included, involving 75,728 and 60,653&#xA;cases in drinker versus non-drinker&#xA;and dose-response analyses,&#xA;respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;we confirm the alcohol-breast&#xA;cancer association&lt;/strong&gt;. We compared our&#xA;results to those of an individual&#xA;patient data analysis, with similar&#xA;findings. &lt;strong&gt;We conclude that the&#xA;association between alcohol and breast&#xA;cancer may be causal&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19244173?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a study that looked into &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;moderate alcohol intake and cancer incidence in women&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A total of 1,280,296 middle-aged women&#xA;in the United Kingdom&lt;/strong&gt; enrolled in the&#xA;Million Women Study &lt;strong&gt;were routinely&#xA;followed for incident cancer.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Low to moderate alcohol consumption in&#xA;women increases the risk of certain&#xA;cancers.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For every additional drink&#xA;regularly consumed per day, the&#xA;increase in incidence up to age 75&#xA;years per 1000 for women in developed&#xA;countries is estimated to be about&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;11 for breast cancer,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 for cancers of the oral cavity and pharynx,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 for cancer of the rectum,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0.7 each for cancers of the esophagus, larynx and&#xA;liver,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;giving a total excess of about&#xA;15 cancers per 1000 women up to age&#xA;75.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I also found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17505075?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; that suggests that alcohol could &lt;strong&gt;reduce the risk of kidney cancer&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We performed a pooled analysis of 12&#xA;prospective studies that included&#xA;530,469 women and 229,575 men with&#xA;maximum follow-up times of 7-20 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Moderate alcohol consumption was&#xA;associated with a lower risk of renal&#xA;cell cancer among both women and men&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;in this pooled analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also suggest taking a look at the &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1059/is-alcohol-beneficial-in-small-amounts&quot;&gt;Is alcohol beneficial in small amounts?&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T13:24:31.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2742" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-02T15:04:50.670" Score="15" ViewCount="1061" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://thenextweb.com/facebook/2011/05/02/wikileaks-founder-facebook-is-the-most-appalling-spy-machine-that-has-ever-been-invented/&quot;&gt;this interview&lt;/a&gt; from Julian Assange:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He believes the social network is joined by Google, Yahoo and other major US organisations that have “built in interfaces for US Intelligence”:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena, they have an interface they have developed for US Intelligence to use. Now, is the case that Facebook is run by US Intelligence? No, it’s not like that. It’s simply that US Intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;It’s costly for them to hand out individual records, one by one, so they have automated the process&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the claim that US Intelligence has built-in interfaces in major social networking sites that allow them to browse personal information at will verified, or is it just guess-work by Assange?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:34:34.950" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:34:34.950" Title="Does US Intelligence have built-in interfaces in major social networking sites that allow them to browse personal information at will?" Tags="|united-states|security|social-media|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2742" CreationDate="2011-05-02T15:43:38.200" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim seems too vague to prove or disprove.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There exists a &lt;strong&gt;publically available&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://developers.facebook.com/docs/&quot;&gt;API to access FB information&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(as well as others - see MySpace APIs &lt;a href=&quot;http://developer.myspace.com/Community/blogs/devteam/archive/2008/06/26/data-availability-has-arrived.aspx&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://papermashup.com/myspace-open-search-api/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for examples)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interview in question never clarifies whether the information purported to be available to the government without subpoena involves the information NOT available (on a level of individual user) to a random developer via an API?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he merely means &quot;there an API to bulk-retrieve 100000 records, BUT only the information that - for any one of those 100000 records - a random developer would be able to retrieve as well&quot;, then it is quite possible that such bulk API exists. However, even if it exists, it does not help the US government in any way aside from lowering the processing cost from doing 100000 API requests to one bulk request. It's a minor technical convenience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he means that there's an API that would allow retrieval of information &lt;strong&gt;including&lt;/strong&gt; private information not available via one-off APIs to individual developers, there is no reference I was able to find anywhere to the existence of such API.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There exists an API for applications that run on FB as a platform to access user's information as well (contact lists etc...). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any specific FB application being legitimately proposed/proven to have been run by an intelligence agency. BUT, you can't prove or disprove whether 100% of them aren't government-run.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To address the NSA wiretapping, something like that is not 100% impossible, but less plausible for social networking sites compared to telcos. The reasons being:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Telcos own physical infrastructure vulnerable to the government, as well as non-physical ones (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fcc.gov/spectrum/&quot;&gt;spectrum&lt;/a&gt;, though I think it's only a license and not asset ownership)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Telcos are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fcc.gov/&quot;&gt;heavily regulated by the government&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Telcos &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.corp.att.com/gov/&quot;&gt;are also vendors for the government&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore there were significant levers to get them to comply with the surveillance without much fuss. Whereas privately owned FaceBook, and NewsCorp-owned MySpace are not nearly vulnerable to such pressure on either of the three points.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T16:48:54.687" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T16:48:54.687" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2744" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2745" CreationDate="2011-05-02T15:44:45.063" Score="64" ViewCount="12685" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have encountered many people in my life that believe that your blood is blue until it hits the air and only then it turns red. The blue color of our veins is also explained the same way, as the deoxygenated blood in the veins is claimed to be blue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AuvViQKr_2A89kxy.ptMZc0jzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20060606161255AAXxKgl&quot;&gt;for example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When blood gives up oxygen to the different parts of the body, it becomes blue. The veins take blood back to the heart and lungs. They are near the surface of the skin, so you can see them.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Source(s):&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I am a medical doctor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the color of human blood ever blue, and if it is not, why are our veins blue? Does the presence of oxygen change the color of blood?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1577" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T16:06:52.920" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T22:47:11.230" Title="Is deoxygenated blood blue?" Tags="|medical-science|blood|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2744" CreationDate="2011-05-02T16:17:24.317" Score="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;This paper holds the answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We investigate why vessels that contain blood, which has a red or a dark red color, may look bluish in human tissue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To summarize, the reason for the bluish color of a&#xA;  vein is not greater remission of blue light compared&#xA;  with red light; rather, it is the greater decrease in the&#xA;  red remission above the vessel compared to its&#xA;  surroundings than the corresponding effect in the&#xA;  blue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imt.liu.se/edu/courses/TBMT36/pdf/blue.pdf&quot;&gt;Why do veins appear blue? A new look at an old question&lt;/a&gt;, by Alwin Kienle, Lothar Lilge, I. Alex Vitkin, Michael S. Patterson, Brian C. Wilson,&#xA;Raimund Hibst, and Rudolf Steiner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: there are other reasons why veins are blue (due to the color of the surrounding tissue), and blood is always different tints of red but never blue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-24T20:34:57.703" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T20:34:57.703" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2746" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2747" CreationDate="2011-05-02T16:22:53.050" Score="38" ViewCount="3009" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common belief in Sweden is that carrot improve your eyesight and I was told many times when I was little to eat carrots. Although anecdotaly I have perfect vision without carrot-gluttony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any supporting evidence for that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2574/does-bilberry-or-blueberry-improve-eyesight&quot;&gt;Does bilberry improve eyesight?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T16:11:35.497" Title="Does eating carrots improve your eyesight?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2746" CreationDate="2011-05-02T16:37:37.560" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has been extensively debunked by many medical sites, and Snopes. Here are some links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/carrots.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://healthmad.com/health/do-carrots-improve-your-eyesight/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Healthmad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Snopes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While carrots are a good source of vitamin A (which is important for healthy eyesight, skin, growth, and resisting infection), eating them won't improve vision. The purported link between carrots and markedly acute vision is a matter of lore, not of science. And it's lore of the deliberately manufactured type. In World War II, Britain's air ministry spread the word that a diet of these vegetables helped pilots see Nazi bombers attacking at night. That was a lie intended to cover the real matter of what was underpinning the Royal Air Force's successes: Airborne Interception Radar, also known as AI. The secret new system pinpointed some enemy bombers before they reached the English Channel. British Intelligence didn't want the Germans to find out about the superior new technology helping protect the nation, so they created a rumor to afford a somewhat plausible-sounding explanation for the sudden increase in bombers being shot down. News stories began appearing in the British press about extraordinary personnel manning the defenses, including Flight Lieutenant John Cunningham, an RAF pilot dubbed &quot;Cats Eyes&quot; on the basis of his exceptional night vision that allowed him to spot his prey in the dark. Cunningham's abilities were chalked up to his love of carrots. Further stories claimed RAF pilots were being fed goodly amounts of this root vegetable to foster similar abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beneficial effect of eating carrots on those with vision loss due to vitamin A deficiency was well know before, and that may have been the inspiration for the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2019-04-29T16:11:35.497" LastActivityDate="2019-04-29T16:11:35.497" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2748" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-02T16:47:41.110" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T16:47:41.110" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T16:47:41.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2749" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-02T16:47:41.110" Score="0" Body="Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. The word derives from Greek μουσική (mousike), &quot;(art) of the Muses.&quot;" OwnerUserId="808" LastEditorUserId="808" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T17:01:24.017" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T17:01:24.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2750" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-02T16:48:45.837" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The United States of America (also referred to as the United States, the U.S., the USA, the States, or America) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-17T01:19:36.307" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T01:19:36.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2751" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-02T16:48:45.837" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about claims based in the United States, or limited to the United States." OwnerUserId="808" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-17T01:19:36.307" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T01:19:36.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2752" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-02T16:49:43.510" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T16:49:43.510" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T16:49:43.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2753" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-02T16:49:43.510" Score="0" Body="Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) was the 44th President of the United States from 2009 to 2017 and the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his election to the presidency in November 2008." OwnerUserId="808" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-07-31T05:27:56.007" LastActivityDate="2019-07-31T05:27:56.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2754" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2757" CreationDate="2011-05-02T16:59:42.693" Score="11" ViewCount="759" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2746/does-eating-carrots-improve-your-eyesight&quot;&gt;Does eating carrots improve your eyesight?&lt;/a&gt; - brought to mind a common piece of medical advice in USSR - to eat carrots to &lt;strong&gt;prevent&lt;/strong&gt; your eyesight from going bad (as opposed to that question's claim to improve eyesight).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it true that a lack of Vitamin A in your diet can be statistically proven to be linked to worse eyesight?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any definition of &quot;worse&quot; is acceptable for the purposes of this question, from abnormal eye pressure to nearsightedness to glaucoma to whatever else, though I personally am more interested in near-sightedness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have a cite for the claim but it was stated repeatedly by different doctors in USSR in my presence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds at least somewhat plausible in a sense of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy#Cause&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;certain diseases being obviously caused by vitamin deficiencies&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T20:47:25.017" Title="Can a lack of Vitamin A in your diet be statistically proven to be linked to worse eyesight?" Tags="|medical-science|ophthalmology|vitamins|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2744" CreationDate="2011-05-02T18:07:58.607" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2744/is-deoxygenated-blood-blue/2745#2745&quot;&gt;Sklivvz&lt;/a&gt; already gave the scientific explanation I'll stick to visual evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever donated blood?&#xA;&lt;br/&gt; The blood is usually &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/bdt/bdt_expect.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;drawn from a vein&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0oH3g.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;venous blood&quot; /&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://emssolutionsinc.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/h1n1swine-flu-illness-keeps-blood-donors-away-worries-about-whether-transfusions-spread-infection/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Image Source&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Venous (deoxygenated) blood is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalclassroom.org/blublud.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dark red&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fi.edu/learn/heart/vessels/veins.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Franklin Institute&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because it lacks oxygen, the waste-rich &lt;strong&gt;blood that flows through the&#xA;veins has a deep red color&lt;/strong&gt;, almost like maroon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the walls of&#xA;the veins are rather thin, the waste-rich blood is visible through the&#xA;skin on some parts of the body. Look at your wrist, or hands, or&#xA;ankles. You can probably see your veins carrying your blood back to&#xA;your heart. &lt;strong&gt;Your skin refracts light, though, so that deep red color&#xA;actually appears a little blue from outside the skin.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/crash-a-tale-of-two-species/the-benefits-of-blue-blood/595/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Horseshoe Crab&lt;/a&gt; does have blue blood (instead of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemoglobin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hemoglobin&lt;/a&gt; it uses &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemocyanin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hemocyanin&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z0J9J.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;horseshoe crab&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T07:54:18.943" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2754" CreationDate="2011-05-02T18:25:04.897" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Deficiency of vitamin A most certainly can lead to worsening of eyesight and blindness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A case study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21319138&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; shows that correction of vitamin A deficiency resulted in reversal of night blindness. It's findings suggest that of all the eye structures effected by vitamin A deficiency, &lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/rodcone.html&quot;&gt;rods&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-iii-retinal-circuits/s-cone-pathways/&quot;&gt;S cones&lt;/a&gt; are more likely to be damaged than are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cis.rit.edu/people/faculty/montag/vandplite/pages/chap_9/ch9p1.html&quot;&gt;L and M cones&lt;/a&gt;. Another case can be read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19809843&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21491401&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is not exactly on-topic but shows data which indicates that vitamin A supplements can prevent blindness in children infected with measles (which is a fairly rare consequence, but still noteworthy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.childinfo.org/vitamina.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Loss of visual acuity or blindness due to deficiency of vitamin A from starvation or malnourishment is still a problem faced by many developing countries.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/vad/en/&quot;&gt;It is also the leading cause of preventable childhood blindness worldwide.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is true that a severe deficiency of vitamin A can dramatically worsen eyesight, there is no convincing evidence that an otherwise healthy person can increase his/her vision by consuming more vitamin A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, consumption of too much vitamin A results in hyperv&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20395929&quot;&gt;itaminosis A&lt;/a&gt; which can be fatal. For reference, one can check the case of Xavier Mertz, the Antarctic explorer who died of this condition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-02T20:52:21.793" LastActivityDate="2011-05-02T20:52:21.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2758" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2766" CreationDate="2011-05-02T23:06:05.220" Score="50" ViewCount="10441" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the more common types of IQ tests are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, Fifth Edition (SBIS-V)&lt;/strong&gt; (Ages 2–90+)&lt;br/&gt;An update of the SB-IV. In addition to providing a Full Scale score, it assesses Fluid Reasoning, Knowledge, Quantitative Reasoning, Visual-Spatial Processing, and Working Memory as well as the ability to compare verbal and nonverbal performance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Fourth Edition (WISC-IV)&lt;/strong&gt; (Ages 6–16-11)&lt;br/&gt;An update of the WISC-III, this test yields a Full Scale score and scores for Verbal Comprehension, Working Memory, Perceptual Reasoning, and Processing speed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Woodcock-Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities&lt;/strong&gt; (Ages 2–90+)&lt;br/&gt;This test gives a measure of general intellectual ability, as well as looking at working memory and executive function skills.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cognitive Assessment System (CAS)&lt;/strong&gt; (Ages 5-17)&lt;br/&gt;Based on the “PASS” theory, this test measures ‘Planning, ‘Attention, ‘Simultaneous, and ‘Successive cognitive processes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)&lt;/strong&gt; (Ages 16-89)&lt;br/&gt;An IQ test for older children and adults, the WAIS provides a Verbal, Performance, and Full Scale score, as well as scores for verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, working memory, and processing speed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Comprehensive Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (CTONI)&lt;/strong&gt; (Ages 6–18-11)&lt;br/&gt;Designed to assess children who may be disadvantaged by traditional tests that put a premium on language skills, the CTONI is made up of six subtests that measure different nonverbal intellectual abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Universal Nonverbal Intelligence Test (UNIT)&lt;/strong&gt; (Ages 5-17)&lt;br/&gt;Designed to assess children who may be disadvantaged by traditional tests that put a premium on language skills, this test is entirely nonverbal in administration and response style.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (KABC)&lt;/strong&gt; (Ages 2-6 to 12-5)&lt;br/&gt;This test measures simultaneous and sequential processing skills, and has subscales that measure academic achievement as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;ndash;Adapted from Table 1 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/intelligenceTests.shtml#history&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;The Testing Process&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &amp;nbsp; &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yQwoY.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[cached image]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been many IQ tests used over the years, and many different proposed scales to evaluate the results.  Many tests have been revised and edited in attempts to provide more accurate results. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/intelligenceTests.shtml#history&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A general outline&lt;/a&gt; of this can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://psychology.about.com/od/psychologicaltesting/a/int-history.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is, of course, some criticism surrounding the reliability of IQ tests...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are sites like &lt;a href=&quot;https://iq-test.learninginfo.org/iq02.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; which quote sources such as Walter Lippmann who said that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We cannot measure intelligence when we have not defined it&quot; &amp;ndash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5172/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[source]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21518867&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt; which suggest that the outcome of an individual IQ test is largely dependent on the motivation of the person taking it. Or at least that individual motivation to succeed introduces a variable into the evaluation process which is not accounted for by those determining results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;theory of multiple intelligence&lt;/a&gt; seems to assert that there are levels of intelligence which are not measured by standardized IQ tests. Howard Gardner is quoted as saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the heyday of the psychometric and behaviorist eras, it was generally believed that intelligence was a single entity that was inherited; and that human beings – initially a blank slate – could be trained to learn anything, provided that it was presented in an appropriate way. Nowadays an increasing number of researchers believe precisely the opposite; that there exists a multitude of intelligences, quite independent of each other; that each intelligence has its own strengths and constraints; that the mind is far from unencumbered at birth; and that it is unexpectedly difficult to teach things that go against early 'naive' theories of that challenge the natural lines of force within an intelligence and its matching domains. (Gardner 1993: xxiii)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Has the term &quot;intelligence&quot; been defined well enough that it can be objectively measured?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If so, do IQ tests reliably determine an individual's intelligence? Or are they too subjective to be considered accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there scientific evidence to support claims of being able to accurately assess individual intelligence as related to real-world outcome?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or, are IQ tests at best a ballpark estimate of individual intelligence?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="37939" LastEditDate="2019-09-28T01:30:30.323" LastActivityDate="2019-09-28T01:34:23.573" Title="Are IQ tests reliable?" Tags="|intelligence|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2761" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2773" CreationDate="2011-05-03T03:04:51.380" Score="27" ViewCount="8091" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Martin Luther King, Jr. say &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been going around the tweeterwebs today in response to Osama bin Laden's death.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-10-05T01:41:30.293" LastActivityDate="2022-01-20T19:40:10.787" Title="Did Martin Luther King, Jr. say that &quot;I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy&quot;?" Tags="|united-states|quotes|martin-luther-king|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2574" CreationDate="2011-05-03T03:06:47.953" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The potential positive effects of Bilberry (&lt;em&gt;Vaccinium myrtillus&lt;/em&gt;  or  myrtille)  as well as Blackcurrent (&lt;em&gt;Ribes nigrum&lt;/em&gt; or cassis) on eye health and related neurological physiology is an area of active research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The association with vision is ancient, but most articles just pay homage to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hildegard_of_Bingen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hildegarde of Bingen&lt;/a&gt;. I am yet to find an easy source for the few sentences in her medical and botanic works in Latin,&lt;em&gt;Causae et Curae&lt;/em&gt;, where she wrote about this subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern studies focus on &lt;em&gt;anthocyanosides&lt;/em&gt; in those fruits. Those compounds could have other interesting &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/cog/ct/2005/00000014/00000004/art00006&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;applications&lt;/a&gt; in neurology and several parts of metabolism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teams have begun to find positive correlations for &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mnfr.200800394/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;preventive eye-related neurological use&lt;/a&gt;, but these studies are not conclusive for a human diet situation. At least one study has found that animals similar to humans in their digestive system &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf071998l&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;store anthocyanins from alimentation in key organs of their bodies&lt;/a&gt; so that a key element of evidence exists between ingestion and use by the body.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Remember: many interesting natural substances are degraded by digestion and do not reach the blood in significant concentration level to do anything. That is one reason why special preparations (like pills, concentrations, compounds, etc.) of such substances are essential if you want to obtain medically-relevant effects.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is a common trend in many studies of natural compounds: It is very difficult to go from something to eat or drink to something that would have a notable effect on your body, or from something that can work when delivered on site in vitro to something that can be taken in a self-administered manner. Many popular or newspaper reports forget to mention the concentration and equivalent quantity of products needed to reproduce the effect with conventional available products and so are misleading and very easy to contradict (apparently) by another study using other concentrations, other chemical forms, other means of applications.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peter H Canter, Edzard Ernst, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.surveyophthalmol.com/article/S0039-6257%2803%2900128-0/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Anthocyanosides of Vaccinium myrtillus (Bilberry) for Night Vision—A Systematic Review of Placebo-Controlled Trials&lt;/a&gt; Survey of ophthalmology 1 January 2004 (volume 49 issue 1 Pages 38-50 DOI: 10.1016/j.survophthal.2003.10.006) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This meta-study of research articles on bilberry related to night vision concludes that new studies should be conducted using the knowledge of all the shortcomings and discrepancies of the previous studies so that they can be compared. I hope this will happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hypothesis that V. myrtillus anthocyanosides improves normal night vision is &lt;strong&gt;not supported by evidence&lt;/strong&gt; from rigorous clinical studies. There is a complete absence of rigorous research into the effects of the extract on subjects suffering impaired night vision due to pathological eye conditions. Evidence from methodologically weaker trials and auxiliary evidence from animal studies, trials of synthetic anthocyanosides, and a recent randomized controlled trial of Ribes nigrum (black currant) anthocyanosides &lt;strong&gt;may warrant further trials&lt;/strong&gt; of V. myrtillus anthocyanosides in subjects with impaired night vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the provisional conclusion is that there are sufficient hints to explore the potential effects of these fruits on eye health but not enough evidence to conclude for saying anything else that would be useful for a layman or a physician. You cannot discard it as a myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not been able to found reports of dangerous effects of these fruits on health. As with many fruits, some substances of interest are degraded by heating, maturation or during storage. Eating them fresh and raw might increase the benefits but can be more difficult on the stomach (some varieties are quite acidic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in the meantime those two fruits are pleasant to eat (beware of teeth staining and the difficulty of cleaning stained fabric), we have nice recipes for them so we do not have to wait scientific studies to eat them with moderation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="878" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-08-23T13:21:38.973" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T13:21:38.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2763" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-03T03:08:53.547" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-05-03T03:08:53.547" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T03:08:53.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2764" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-03T03:08:53.547" Score="0" Body="Bogus quotes. Named after &quot;beam me up Scotty&quot;, which while well-known, wasn't ever said in the original series of Star Trek." OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2011-05-03T05:07:07.633" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T05:07:07.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2761" CreationDate="2011-05-03T03:51:33.503" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There is within us a moral instinct&#xA;  which forbids us to rejoice at the&#xA;  death of even an enemy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-- Henryk Sienkiewicz, &lt;em&gt;Without Dogma&lt;/em&gt; (1891)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11686&quot;&gt;Full text at Project Gutenberg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if Martin Luther King, Jr. did say it, he was likely paraphrasing Sienkiewicz (whether knowingly or unknowingly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2243" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T03:51:33.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2758" CreationDate="2011-05-03T04:32:15.637" Score="46" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Good Summary:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good summary of the literature on Intelligence can be found in the article &quot;Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https://differentialclub.wdfiles.com/local--files/definitions-structure-and-measurement/Intelligence-Knowns-and-unknowns.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(FREE PDF)&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;You will find references for the claims I make below and further discussion.&#xA;It was based on an American Psychological Association Task Force and represents propositions that received &quot;unanimous support of the entire Task Force&quot;. It addresses each of your questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below are just some general observations regarding your points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Has the term &quot;intelligence&quot; been defined well enough that it can be objectively measured?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is open to debate. There are competing definitions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Good intelligence tests certainly measure something. And that which is measured is one of the best predictors of education outcomes, and work performance, and is also a good predictor of many other important outcomes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;If so, do IQ tests reliably determine an individual's intelligence?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IQ tests are reliable in that longitudinal studies have shown that test scores are very stable over long periods of time. Thus, there is good evidence that what is measured is a trait.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IQ tests do not determine &quot;intelligence&quot;; theory would suggest that some factor in the individual determines test scores. Whether you label this factor &quot;intelligence&quot;, depends on definitions and is open to debate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Or are they too subjective to be considered accurate?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intelligence tests are not a subjective measure, in that the score derived from an intelligence test is generally objectively determined by standardised scoring processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deciding what intelligence test scores truly mean is still an open question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, plenty of research has explored the correlates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Is there scientific evidence to support claims of accuracy?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What do you mean by &quot;accuracy&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is plenty of evidence that Intelligence tests are useful in predicting important real-world outcomes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Or are IQ tests at best a ballpark estimate?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimate of what?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="539" LastEditorUserId="37939" LastEditDate="2019-09-28T01:34:23.573" LastActivityDate="2019-09-28T01:34:23.573" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2761" CreationDate="2011-05-03T05:03:10.103" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The meaning of this story is not found in the drowning of the Egyptian soldiers, for no one should rejoice at the death or defeat of a human being. Rather, this story symbolizes the death of evil and of inhuman oppression and unjust exploitation.&quot;  Martin Luther King Jr, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?ei=bpC_TdnMEsvJswaAoqnDBQ&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;id=QITZAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;dq=Martin%20Luther%20King%20Jr,%20Strength%20to%20Love&amp;amp;q=unjust%20exploitation#search_anchor&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Strength to Love&lt;/a&gt;, page 79&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2246" LastEditorUserId="1791" LastEditDate="2011-05-03T05:26:20.697" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T05:26:20.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="570" CreationDate="2011-05-03T06:54:36.350" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The amount of light emitted by the solar corona is far too little to do damage. So during a total eclipse, but only during totality, it is completely safe to look at the corona with naked eyes. NASA is a good source of information about eclipses, including safe viewing and photography techniques. According to the NASA &lt;a href=&quot;http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/safety.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eye Safety&lt;/a&gt; page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Sun can be viewed safely with the naked eye only during the few brief seconds or minutes of a total solar eclipse. Partial eclipses, annular eclipses, and the partial phases of total eclipses are &lt;em&gt;never safe to watch without taking special precautions&lt;/em&gt;. Even when 99% of the Sun's surface is obscured during the partial phases of a total eclipse, the remaining photospheric crescent is intensely bright and cannot be viewed safely without eye protection [Chou, 1981; Marsh, 1982]. &lt;strong&gt;Do not attempt to observe the partial or annular phases of any eclipse with the naked eye. Failure to use appropriate filtration may result in permanent eye damage or blindness!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it would be a good idea, especially if the eclipse is not near local sunrise or sunset, to be aware of how long totality is expected to last, and be ready to look away as soon as you glimpse the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_ring_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;diamond ring&quot;&lt;/a&gt; effect where the disk of the sun first becomes visible through a notch on the moon's limb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Photography of the eclipse with a DSLR requires that you look through the camera. If the mirror were locked up, then the camera would be projecting a nearly in focus image of the sun onto the shutter curtain, and eventually onto the film or sensor. Clearly, significant damage to your eye and/or the camera is possible. To avoid damage, &lt;a href=&quot;http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/filters.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a solar filter&lt;/a&gt; should be used in front of the lens. NASA also has a good &lt;a href=&quot;http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/eclipsePhoto.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;resource page&lt;/a&gt; related to eclipse photography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the &lt;a href=&quot;http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEmono/TSE2006/TSE2006.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2006 eclipse&lt;/a&gt; I was very close to the center of the path of totality on a yacht in the Mediterranean, attempting photography with a hand-held DSLR with a 500mm lens. I had a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thousandoaksoptical.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thousand Oaks Optical black polymer solar filter&lt;/a&gt; on the front of the lens, and it was fun to see the disk of the sun with decent magnification. However with that filter in place, the whole frame was dead black when pointed anywhere in the sky that didn't include the sun. Aiming was a bear. While practicing, I made the mistake of opening my other eye to check the larger view which was not a pleasant experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For use aboard ship, I punched one eye out of a cardboard pair of eclipse watching glasses that happened to be made with the same filter material I had on the lens. With the camera on the unfiltered eye, and the other eye filtered I was able to successfully &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/rberteig/182271212/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;aim and photograph the partial phase&lt;/a&gt; without further pain or injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During totality, I removed the filter and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/rberteig/182272426/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;shot the corona&lt;/a&gt; with the same lens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/rberteig/182271212/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Partial Phase and Sunspots by RBerteig, on Flickr&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://farm1.static.flickr.com/75/182271212_59cd3be6ed_t.jpg&quot; width=&quot;100&quot; height=&quot;100&quot; alt=&quot;Partial Phase and Sunspots&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://farm1.static.flickr.com/66/182272426_448a6d3cf3_t.jpg&quot; width=&quot;100&quot; height=&quot;100&quot; alt=&quot;Corona at Totality&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="819" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:38.377" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T21:24:39.643" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2761" CreationDate="2011-05-03T10:07:08.900" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/#!/jmadly/status/65314784136011776&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source of that particular quote&lt;/a&gt; was a Facebook post by someone named Jessica Dovey:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@pennjillette I am the original author of the &amp;quot;MLK&amp;quot; quote. Somewhere my words got mixed with his. The post: &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1XqLi.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1XqLi.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dovey said &amp;quot;I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy&amp;quot;, and then quoted Martin Luther King Jr.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.&amp;quot; - Martin Luther King, Jr.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Facebook post itself appeared as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8JxL1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;How the quote got mixed up&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="15139" LastEditDate="2022-01-20T19:40:10.787" LastActivityDate="2022-01-20T19:40:10.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2594" CreationDate="2011-05-03T11:59:16.297" Score="32" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Spontaneous Human Combustion does not exist.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Benecke&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mark Benecke&lt;/a&gt;, a forensic biologist, has researched this topic extensively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His remarks have been published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benecke.com/shcbelgium.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Geographic&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.benecke.com/index.php?title=1998-04-14_The_Daily_Telegraph:_Spontaneous_human_combustion_goes_up_in_flames&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Daily Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/158853.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;, among others. He has written a lengthy, well-sourced report for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.benecke.com/index.php?title=1998_Skeptical_Inquirer:_Spontaneous_Human_Combustion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skeptic Inquirer&lt;/a&gt; which seems to cover the topic conclusively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote the relevant bits (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pictures and reports published on SHC up to now can be explained by well-known and understood mechanisms that are regularly found at the sites of burning. &lt;strong&gt;There is no need to invent bizarre chemical reactions or paranormal activities to explain what is mistakenly called &amp;quot;spontaneous combustion.&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In forensic practice, there are no known cases in which internal organs of a burned corpse were damaged more severely than the outer parts. This practical observation is &lt;strong&gt;further proof that combustion never starts from inside a human body.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also mentions the &lt;em&gt;multiple wick effect&lt;/em&gt; to account for the partial burning of just the clothed parts of a body:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Items of clothing act as multiple wicks and support burning over a long time because the body fat in subcutaneous layers changes into a liquid form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Proponents of SHC have the facts wrong.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also debunks some of the claims made by proponents of SHC which try to undermine conventional explanations (again, emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[A proponent of SHC] seems to be under the illusion that [hydrogen and oxygen] exist as gases in the cell and are thus vulnerable to ignition, &lt;em&gt;which is, in fact, not the case.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main objection that supporters of SHC have to such ordinary explanations is that they doubt that the course of an event can be demonstrated in retrospect, especially in cases of burning. &lt;em&gt;This is not true.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Articles arguing for SHC often state that local temperatures in excess of 1,500°C are necessary to produce the &amp;quot;typical picture&amp;quot; of alleged SHC. &lt;em&gt;Again, this is nor true.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Proponents of SHC distort the evidence.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that many SHC reports are false or incomplete:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many photographs of alleged SHC appear to have fooled observers by not showing the complete remains of the bodies as found &lt;em&gt;in situ&lt;/em&gt; […]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This readily explains claims made by SHC proponents, that (as the OP said):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even the skeleton is reduced to ashes, which does not happen even in crematory ovens.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Damage is localized almost entirely to the victim, often leaving even the nearby area untouched&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The burns to the victim appear inconsistent, as the lower legs and hands are often found after the rest of the body has been incinerated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems, then, that these claims are false or highly exaggerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T12:15:04.590" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2621" CreationDate="2011-05-03T13:08:38.853" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This video: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcWQw2AAIho&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcWQw2AAIho&lt;/a&gt; does a great job of showing how this is an artifact of the scanning and compression process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2263" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T13:08:38.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2778" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-03T13:56:44.443" Score="6" ViewCount="696" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw an ad for a tire company today stating that they have the right tires for your driving style. When I buy tires I look for silent tires with long lifespan, good grip and most importantly a decent price. I've never even considered my driving style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just marketing-speak, or are certain types of tires better suited to certain drivers' driving &lt;em&gt;styles&lt;/em&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming other factors are the same (e.g. vehicle, roads, climate, conditions), does driving style influence the suitability of certain types of tires?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1159" LastEditorUserId="10630" LastEditDate="2018-07-29T14:22:39.670" LastActivityDate="2018-07-29T14:22:39.670" Title="&quot;We have the right tires for your driving style.&quot;" Tags="|road-vehicles|marketing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2018-07-27T15:02:19.120" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2789" CreationDate="2011-05-03T15:39:39.713" Score="31" ViewCount="1466" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Wikipedia puts it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In team sports, the term home&#xA;  advantage (also called home&#xA;  field/court/diamond/ice advantage)&#xA;  describes the advantage–usually a&#xA;  psychological advantage–that the home&#xA;  team is said to have over the visiting&#xA;  team as a result of playing in&#xA;  familiar facilities and in front of&#xA;  supportive fans. The term is also&#xA;  widely used in &quot;best-of&quot; playoff&#xA;  formats (e.g., best-of-seven) as being&#xA;  given to the team that is scheduled to&#xA;  play one more game at home than their&#xA;  opponent if all necessary games are&#xA;  played.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is particularly common in Football, or Soccer (for Americans) where you actually gain more points from scoring away from your home ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you really have an advantage in a game like Football where the pitch is standardized? If so what are the real advantages of this? And are they so great that it warrants more points for scoring as an away team. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2268" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2011-05-24T04:33:17.053" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T13:03:36.697" Title="Is playing sport at your 'home ground' a benefit?" Tags="|sport|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2781" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-03T17:09:41.130" Score="-3" ViewCount="2980" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by a look-a-like, or was this really just a conspiracy theory?  Is there any proof either way, or all just speculation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Paul is dead&quot; is an urban legend alleging that Paul McCartney of the English rock band The Beatles died in 1966 and was secretly replaced by a look-alike.&#xA;  In September 1969, American college students published articles claiming that clues to McCartney's death could be found among the lyrics and artwork of The Beatles' recordings. Clue hunting proved infectious and within a few weeks had become an international phenomenon. Rumours declined after a contemporary interview with McCartney was published in Life magazine in November 1969. Popular culture continues to make occasional reference to the legend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_is_dead&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_is_dead&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2262" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-03T20:46:27.207" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T11:41:01.840" Title="Is Paul McCartney dead?" Tags="|history|musicians|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2781" CreationDate="2011-05-03T17:37:32.290" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://homepages.tesco.net/harbfamily/opd/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Officially pronounced dead?&lt;/a&gt; is a site dedicated to the conspiracy. In the page &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://homepages.tesco.net/harbfamily/opd/pia.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paul is Alive&lt;/a&gt;&quot; they effectively debunk the legend by providing a very detail image comparison of pre-1996 and post-1966 Paul, including his face, but also piano and bass posture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/STrHb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Paul is NOT dead&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://maccafunhouse.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=essentials&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Macca Funhouse&lt;/a&gt; has a whole forum dedicated to debunking the myth, each additional variation, etcetera. Please read more over there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If Paul was replaced, sure fooled everyone fast. Within a week of his supposed death, his replacement is recording Penny Lane/When I'm 64 in the studio (already the best Paul sound alike/play alike in history before or since), and photos are taken (no surgical scars) and he is out and about on the London club scene. Of the many hundreds and probably thousands of people that saw him clubbing and doing interviews and other promos in London and during his US trip not long after, not a single human being reported that he looked or sounded like a different person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(this is just an example)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion: &lt;strong&gt;Absence of evidence is evidence of absence&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is not supported by convincing evidence and therefore the following image of Sir Paul McCartney shot in 2010 is enough to prove differently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O7Ohy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Paul McCartney live in Dublin&quot;&gt;. &#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/8491002@N05/4697111936&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image&lt;/a&gt; courtesy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/people/8491002@N05&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fiona&lt;/a&gt; via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_McCartney_live_in_Dublin.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-12-13T11:41:01.840" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T11:41:01.840" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10124" CreationDate="2011-05-03T18:39:48.140" Score="27" ViewCount="11330" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Apple &quot;jumpstart the USB market&quot;? An &lt;a href=&quot;http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2122920&amp;amp;cid=36012262&quot;&gt;example of the claim&lt;/a&gt; is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When Apple released their iMac there was a rush to release peripherals to support them. Before that nobody really cared about USB despite the fact that it was present on the majority of PCs. People were fine with serial and parallel ports - there was simply insufficient reasons to switch to USB. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The iMac G3 was released August 15, 1998, and according to Wikipedia it was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac#Influence&quot;&gt;the first Mac to have a USB port&lt;/a&gt;. It looks as though USB 1.0 was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#Version_history&quot;&gt;released November 1995&lt;/a&gt;, meaning the timeline correlates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How much of a factor was the iMac on the pick-up of USB, and in particular was that influence great enough to conclude that the iMac &quot;jumpstarted&quot; the USB Market?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an objective measure, did the number of USB peripherals measurably increase in production at the time of (and because of) the release of the first iMac?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if there was a measurable increase in the production of USB peripherals at the time, is there any evidence to suggest that the use of he USB port would have increased anyway (i.e. for reasons other than the iMac supporting it, e.g. because of the maturity of chipsets/drivers, etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="15980" LastEditDate="2013-11-27T17:28:50.163" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T23:05:27.690" Title="Did Apple &quot;jumpstart&quot; the USB market?" Tags="|history|technology|computers|apple-inc|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2011-05-03T18:54:32.470" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;How do you define &quot;psychological&quot;? A placebo definitely has an effect on the firing of neurons in the brain. On the other hand, psychological processes &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; the firing of neurons. So it is up to you to decide if you are calling a change in neuron firing patterns &quot;psychological&quot; or &quot;physiological&quot; effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't access the study which proved that, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/06/shyamalan_and_the_placebo_effe.php&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is a good popular science article which references it. From the article: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he gave college students electrical shocks while they were stuck in an fMRI machine. Half of the people were then supplied with a fake pain-relieving cream. Even though the cream had no analgesic properties - it was just a hand moisturizer - people given the pretend cream said the shocks were significantly less painful. The placebo effect eased their suffering. Wager then imaged the specific parts of the brain that controlled this psychological process. He discovered that the placebo effect depended on the prefrontal cortex, the center of &quot;rational,&quot; conscious thought. When people were told that they'd just received a pain-relieving cream, their frontal lobes responded by inhibiting the activity of the emotional brain areas (like the insula) that normally respond to pain. Because people expected to experience less pain, they ended up experiencing less pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing that it is the brain which &quot;decides&quot; whether the incoming nerve signals are pain or not, and that it reacts to placebo as to actual pain medication, I'll say the effect is at least neurologically well anchored. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1694" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T18:54:32.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2785" CreationDate="2011-05-03T19:45:58.797" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The iMac was not only the first Mac to include USB, it was one of the first computers in general to have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/stats/imac_ab.html&quot;&gt;USB 1.1 ports&lt;/a&gt;. USB 1.1 fixed a lot of minor glitches with 1.0, and the rise of USB might very well be attributable to that instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the iMac may have helped, not so much by including USB ports, but &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20090129040133/http://ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-spec7.html&quot;&gt;by not including any legacy ports&lt;/a&gt;. That means that you now had to buy new USB peripherals instead of your old ones. But since PC providers also started including USB it meant that the manufacturers of peripherals now could make one peripheral that would work on both platforms, and that, in my opinion, is the real reason USB took off, as hardware manufacturers had a good reason to switch to USB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2015-01-21T01:54:46.937" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T01:54:46.937" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2779" CreationDate="2011-05-03T19:49:45.657" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that this has been well studied (particularly in the context of English Football). For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a790276156&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pollard (1986)&lt;/a&gt; ran a retrospective analysis on home advantage in English Football, and found that &quot;the home team currently obtain[s] about 64% of all points gained in the English Football League&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/2348899&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clark and Norman (1995)&lt;/a&gt; found that a home ground advantage is &quot;linearly related to the distance between club grounds.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pollard suggests that the biggest factor is &quot;familiarity with conditions when playing at home, rather than the extra mental and physical effort involved in travelling to your opponent's ground,&quot; although Clark and Norman's finding would suggest the opposite would be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pollard also notes that the advantage is greatly reduced where an away win is worth more points than a home win - which may be one reason why it has become common to reward teams for away wins in knock out competitions with home and away legs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a781793320&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Page and Page (2007)&lt;/a&gt; found that the team which hosts the second match of a home and away series has a significant advantage in European Cup competitions - so the extra incentive posed by rewarding away goals more highly hasn't completely levelled the playing field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="460" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T19:49:45.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2790" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-03T19:55:36.240" Score="66" ViewCount="13796" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was discussing some things with a psychology major, and he insisted that people always use a language to think. This is quite opposed to my own experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that I am capable of formulating my own thoughts in a kind of internal monologue, which is certainly in a language. But this is just one kind of my thought process. Sometimes my thoughts seem to be less language-bound. And what I think is the most important, it happens to me sometimes that I am speaking and suddenly notice that the word I am going to say is in a different language (almost always it happens just before I say it, but after the sentence has been formed and said up to the word). I don't mean the cases where I have learned a concept in another language and I am grasping for the correct word in the language I am currently speaking, I mean perfectly everyday words, like saying &quot;I saw the book &quot; and realizing that the word which I am going to say next is &quot;gestern&quot; instead of &quot;yesterday&quot;. But at the time I realize this, I have already spoken the preceding part of the sentence. In very rare cases, I only notice it after I have said it, and hear my own wrong sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I interpret such occasions as follows: I must have thought of the time reference without using a word in a language, after that constructed a sentence without consciously choosing words (else I would have noticed that &quot;gestern&quot; is wrong), and only made use of my vocabulary after that, practically at the point of commanding the mouth to form the words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But he claimed that this isn't true, and that humans always use a language for thinking, not just for communicating. He couldn't point me to sources, or even tell me about an author researching such problems. He just claimed that he knows it for a fact, and must have learned it in a lecture. Do you know of research in that area? And what is its conclusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skivvz's comment about off-topic makes me think that maybe I didn't state my question clear enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim I am disputing is: People always use a language in their internal thought processes. I provided an example which I interpret as anecdotal evidence against the claim. I also explained my interpretation. I am not asking how good my interpretation of this example is (this is probably the content suited to a psychology forum). But if you know of research which proves or disproves the claim, I'd like to hear about it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1694" LastEditorUserId="1694" LastEditDate="2011-05-03T21:51:42.853" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T07:46:33.053" Title="Do people think in a language?" Tags="|psychology|language|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2779" CreationDate="2011-05-03T20:54:55.390" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some recent figures from the Premiership in England:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sea-    Home    Draw    Away    Goals   Goals &#xA;son     wins            wins    home    away&#xA;1011    179     111      90     617     446&#xA;0910    193      96      91     645     408&#xA;0809    173      97     110     532     410&#xA;0708    176     100     104     581     421&#xA;0607    182      98     100     552     379&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of pattern is fairly consistent over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The numbers come from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.premierleague.com/page/Statistics/0,,12306,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the official site&lt;/a&gt;, though you need to change from &quot;League Table&quot; to &quot;Home League&quot;, choose a past complete season, and add the numbers up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="949" LastEditDate="2011-05-23T23:12:27.090" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T23:12:27.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2794" CreationDate="2011-05-03T21:52:48.437" Score="16" ViewCount="3479" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Winston Churchill say, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/churchill.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;as some on the 'net claim&lt;/a&gt;, in response to being told he should not end a sentence with a preposition, something like &quot;This is just the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-22T02:18:40.307" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T13:08:06.180" Title="Churchill's quote: &quot;This is just the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put.&quot;" Tags="|history|language|quotes|winston-churchill|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2793" CreationDate="2011-05-03T22:37:51.033" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably not.  Here is evidence of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1948/mar/18/government-english#S5CV0448P0_19480318_HOC_565&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1948 attribution to Churchill in Parliament&lt;/a&gt;, though it had previously &lt;a href=&quot;http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001715.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;appeared in 1942 as an anonymous statement&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/quotations/famous-quotations-and-stories&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Churchill Centre and Museum&lt;/a&gt; concludes it was &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;an invented phrase put in Churchill’s mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T22:37:51.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2795" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2841" CreationDate="2011-05-03T23:10:28.777" Score="138" ViewCount="115367" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a myth saying that having a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_alcohol_content&quot;&gt;BAC&lt;/a&gt; in the 0.129% - 0.138% range can improve your cognitive abilities. This effect is called the Ballmer Peak (a reference to Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft) and is pictured nicely in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/323/&quot;&gt;xkcd&lt;/a&gt;. Is there any truth in this myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2092" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T15:59:12.147" LastActivityDate="2017-02-18T00:50:54.217" Title="Is the Ballmer Peak real?" Tags="|alcohol|cognitive-fitness|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2796" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3149" CreationDate="2011-05-03T23:37:03.093" Score="19" ViewCount="1898" Body="&lt;p&gt;The condition now called &quot;Gulf War Illness&quot; has been studied extensively,(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=gulf%20war%20illness&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;)(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/veterans/default2.htm&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;) however, there remains great debate about its potential causes or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10924645&quot;&gt;whether it exists as a distinct condition&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About 700,000 men and women served in the first Gulf War (Operation Desert Shield, Operation Desert Storm). Nearly a quarter million of those returning were reported to have experienced or continue to experience symptoms and illnesses which led to an investigation as to whether or not they were caused by a specific toxic/hazardous/biological exposures which occurred during these operations.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/gulfwar/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some known and documented symptoms reported by those returning from the area, as well as those who are native to the region:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kdxD7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The signs and symptoms reported by sufferers are similar to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001463/&quot;&gt;Fibromyalgia&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002224/&quot;&gt;Chronic Fatigue Syndrome&lt;/a&gt;. All of these are ill-defined clinical entities which consist mainly of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spreadia.com/Non-specific_symptom/182215949/Non-Specific_Symptoms_-_Definition_of_Non-Specific_Symptoms&quot;&gt;non-specific symptoms&lt;/a&gt; any of which could have a wide variety of causes. This makes definitive diagnosis of a specific Gulf War Illness very difficult. As it stands now, no single entity has been singled out as the cause:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It is likely that multisymptom&#xA;  illness results from the interactions&#xA;  between environmental exposures and&#xA;  genes, and genetics may predispose&#xA;  some individuals to illness,”&#xA;  - Institute of Medicine Apr. 2010 report&#xA;  to Department of Veteran's Affairs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some known and documented exposures (according to the US Dept. of Veteran's Affairs)considered as potential causes for these symptoms were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/burnpits/index.asp&quot;&gt;Burn pits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/gulfwar/chem_bio_warfare.asp&quot;&gt;Chemical and biological warfare&#xA;agents&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/depleted_uranium/index.asp&quot;&gt;Depleted Uranium&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/gulfwar/oil_well.asp&quot;&gt;Oil fires&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/gulfwar/pesticides.asp&quot;&gt;Pesticides&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/gulfwar/pyrid_bromide.asp&quot;&gt;Phyridostigmine Bromide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/gulfwar/vaccinations.asp&quot;&gt;Vaccinations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some have suggested psychological or psychogenic causes for the symptoms (which are no less legitimate medically). However, this is one of the theories that is most widely refuted, arguing that the evidence &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/GWS_panel_120208.html&quot;&gt;indicates a physical cause&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Veteran's Administration assumes that certain illnesses (even if unexplained) are related to qualifying military service. These are called “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/gulfwar/associated_illnesses.asp&quot;&gt;presumptive illnesses&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; These include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/gulfwar/medically-unexplained-illness.asp&quot;&gt;medically inexplained chronic&#xA;multisymptom illnesses&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publichealth.va.gov/exposures/gulfwar/infectious_diseases.asp&quot;&gt;Infectious disease&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001708/&quot;&gt;ALS&lt;/a&gt; diagnosed in veterans with 90&#xA;days of consecutive service.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this isn't proof that Gulf War Illness exists as a distinct clinical entity, it is acknowledged and treated under the presumption that it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conspiracy?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also many sources who cite theories of &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1996-10-10/news/1996284097_1_gulf-war-syndrome-persian-gulf-pentagon&quot;&gt;denial or cover-up&lt;/a&gt; by various governments or organizations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Estimates place the number of sick&#xA;  soldiers for more than 150,000 and&#xA;  about 10,000 being dead already&#xA;  because of the syndrome. (Estimates&#xA;  may be optimistic). A study of the&#xA;  Gulf War Syndrome clearly shows it to&#xA;  be a virus that is not natural, but&#xA;  that has all the features of one&#xA;  created in the lab. One of the main&#xA;  suspects for the syndrome is an&#xA;  artificial agent called Microplasma&#xA;  fermentans (unknown origins). It&#xA;  contains most of the HIV genes,&#xA;  suspected to have been added through&#xA;  laboratory amendments. Of all the&#xA;  countries involved in Gulf War&#xA;  coalition, only France refused the&#xA;  inoculation. Until recently, there&#xA;  weren’t any reported cases of the&#xA;  syndrome among French soldiers. &lt;a href=&quot;http://theoriesofconspiracy.com/tragedy-conspiracy/gulf-war-syndrome.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some claim non-cooperation from the government mainly inspired a lack of trust in official information, which added a level of complexity to finding the cause. They do not suggest outright conspiracy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first example of Pentagon&#xA;  non-cooperation that exacerbated&#xA;  suffering for veterans and their&#xA;  families was the constant denials,&#xA;  until 1996, of any health risks from&#xA;  widespread exposure to low levels of&#xA;  chemical agents. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ngwrc.org/docs/2010%20health%20guide.pdf&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many theories attempt to explain Gulf War Illness...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this a case of common symptoms&#xA;originating from a wide variety of&#xA;causes being grouped together after the fact, rather than one specific&#xA;illness?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there evidence that Gulf War&#xA;Illness does have a known cause that is&#xA;being covered up by a conspiracy?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Although many potential causes have&#xA;been considered, has any one specific&#xA;cause or agent been shown to be more likely&#xA;than the others?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that this question is phrased mainly with regard to American personnel, but this is only because most of the information I found had to do with the US military.  Answers can obviously include relevant information from other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T06:39:06.683" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T00:55:28.070" Title="Gulf War Syndrome, is it real?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2790" CreationDate="2011-05-03T23:53:53.687" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question reminded me TED talk:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds.html&quot;&gt;http://www.ted.com/talks/temple_grandin_the_world_needs_all_kinds_of_minds.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in which Temple Grandin explains how her autistic mind works. She says that unlike majority of people she thinks in pictures, not in language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2277" LastActivityDate="2011-05-03T23:53:53.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2799" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2801" CreationDate="2011-05-04T01:05:57.823" Score="112" ViewCount="19129" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to reports, there were 4 helicopters used in the raid on Osama Bin Laden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it conceivable that even one helicopter could be flown &lt;a href=&quot;http://goo.gl/maps/U6EM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;so close&lt;/a&gt; to the capital of another country without raising alarm bells?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering these were military helicopters and there were four of them, I am skeptical that this would be allowed. Surely the airspace in Pakistan is monitored just as well as other countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="44982" LastEditDate="2020-06-19T18:15:01.577" LastActivityDate="2020-06-19T18:15:01.577" Title="Is it possible to fly 4 helicopters anywhere in a country without official knowledge?" Tags="|history|united-states|government|aviation|military|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2679" CreationDate="2011-05-04T01:08:51.610" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, there are significant differences in testes size by race; penis &lt;em&gt;length&lt;/em&gt; is more up in the&#xA;air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can find the following information I reproduce in the book &lt;em&gt;Sexual Selection and the Origin of Human&#xA;Mating Systems&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; most current title on the subject, from a leading researcher in the field of primate sexual selection, a&#xA;certain Alan Dixson.   The title of the book hints at the evolutionary reason why such differences&#xA;should be expected and are found: Wherever the mating systems of two closely related species,&#xA;populations, races, whatever, differ, there will be differences in the size of the male sexual&#xA;appartus due to male intrasexual selection. Natural selection operates more strongly in the species,&#xA;population, race, etc. whose males percentage-wise pass fewer of their genes into the next generation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, chimpanzees, our closest cousins, have 3 times the size of testes humans do, adjusted&#xA;for body weight; in contrast to our relatively fidelitous long-term pair bonding, chimpanzees males&#xA;vie in multi-male multi-female coalitions to rise to the alpha position, where they hope to monopolize some&#xA;huge percentage of female matings by virtue of their position.  Thus, more is stake for individual&#xA;chimpanzee males than for we lucky humans; to succeed evolutionarily, each one must make the best of each opportunity it is afforded, and thus natural selection has introduced innovations like large testes,&#xA;elaborate penis morphologies, and indeed strange things like post-copulatory plugs to further those ends.&#xA;Micro-differences between human populations arise from the same architecture: For example, because polygyny is&#xA;more common as one goes towards the equator, meaning fewer males in those areas being able to pass on their&#xA;genes, one might expect to find the signs of intensified intrasexual competition, such as larger&#xA;testes, longer penises, and larger canines, and one does in fact find those things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, to the data.  Dixson begins with testes size, and so shall we:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are considerable differences in testes size and between human populations around the world.&#xA;  These differences cannot be accounted for solely on the basis of variations in body weight (Short&#xA;  1984; Diamond 1986.) [...] Although differences in body size may make some small contribution to the&#xA;  ethnic variations in testes size ....it is much more likely that fundamental differepences in testes&#xA;  size exist in different human populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, so what exactly are these differences?  Dixson informs us:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Turning to measurements of combined testes size, there is a strong trend towards the occurence of&#xA;  small testes in men from Asia (China, Japan, Korea, and perhaps in India) as compared to&#xA;  measurements from European and African populations, or their ethnic derivatives.  (e.g., in the USA&#xA;  and Australia.)  These differences are quite striking [...] smallest by far are the testes of 209&#xA;  Hong Kong Chinese, weighed in two separate studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the interleaving paragraphs, he goes on dryly about various summary statistics of the comparison,&#xA;which I'll leave for the reader to divine for themselves in the appending charts.  Continuing, Dixon&#xA;writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An interesting comparison is provided by Ajmani, Jain, and Saxena's (1985) measurements of Nigerian&#xA;  men. [...] Even if we allow for an overestimate of testicular volume in this study (due to a failure&#xA;  to control for scrotal thickness, see Table 2.2.) Nigerian men have testes more than twice as large&#xA;  as those of Hong Kong Chinese subjects of similar height [...] Next smallest are the testes of&#xA;  Japanese men (averaging 30 ml and 35 ml in studies by Nakamura (1961) and Fujii et. al (1982)). The&#xA;  same is true for studies of Korean men....by comparison, the weights or volumes of testes in men in&#xA;  UK, France, Scandinavia, and other parts of Europe, as well in the USA, Australia, and Nigeria are&#xA;  larger on average than for those men in Asian populations in which data exist...largest of all are&#xA;  the testes of 209 Nigerian medical students (50.1 ml, Amjani et al. 1985) and three black African&#xA;  Americans measured orginally by Schultz (50.2g).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intriguing.  Dixson goes on at length, with human-primate intercomparisons, which is actually the real thrust of the book. Later, though, it's on&#xA;to ethnic differences in penile length:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On average, the human penis is 15-16 cm long, and 10-12 cm in circumference, during tumescence.   There&#xA;  is considerable individual variability in penile size, however. [...] There may be ethnic&#xA;  differences in penile dimensions, but these remain uncertain, due to lack of reliable comparative&#xA;  data.   Potts and Short refer to a survey (conducted by Japanese prostitutes) reporting a slightly&#xA;  shorter average length of erection in Japanese males (13.75 cm) as compared to westerners.  Rushton&#xA;  and Bogaert (1987) cite Nobile (1982) who used the Kinsey data to examine possible differences in&#xA;  size between American Blacks and Caucasians...[they] emphasize that the length of the flaccid and&#xA;  erect penis is significantly larger in black males than in Caucasians. However, none of the&#xA;  differences they cite exceed 0.5 in., and thus one wonders whether the methods used by Kinsey et. al&#xA;  might have produced differences to subjective bias [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only other study I was able to locate...recorded that Nigerian medical students had penes&#xA;  averaging 8.16cm in length and 8.83 cm when flaccid...Kinsey['s] measurements for American&#xA;  Caucasians [are] as follows: length 9.65 cm, and circumference, 7.9 cm.  As matters stand, therefore,&#xA;  it would not be justifiable to conclude that robust ethnic differences in penile size have been&#xA;  demonstrated in human populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the study conducted directly in Africa found shorter average penis lengths than&#xA;Kinsey found, though Kinsey found the stereotyped hierarchy within his own data. However, there's an obvious paucity of data due to the sensitivity of the subject, so there is not enough to conclude that there's a significant difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, all that's left are the various charts to peruse for amusement. Do note that in the final&#xA;chart, inter-race differences between humans are larger than between species orangutan-gorilla&#xA;differences, belying all sorts of common mythology about race:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p4H4B.png&quot; alt=&quot;Testes size differences between human populations&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/doeNO.png&quot; alt=&quot;Penis size differences between human populations&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q8Q54.png&quot; alt=&quot;Testes size graph between human populations&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastEditorUserId="200" LastEditDate="2013-12-06T09:55:10.893" LastActivityDate="2013-12-06T09:55:10.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2799" CreationDate="2011-05-04T01:48:31.220" Score="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT TO ADD INFORMATION REQUESTED.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a helicopter is flying low, and not &amp;quot;squawking&amp;quot;, there is no way that any civilian radar will pick it up.  Especially in a mountainous region such as Pakistan.  Simple mechanics of radar as illustrated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answers.com/topic/under-the-radar-aviation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this picture from Answers.com&lt;/a&gt;.  Note that mountains between the radar site and aircraft will further block the ability of the radar to detect an aircraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ScZDW.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Radar Mechanics&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that if they can't be seen, they can't get shot at either.  And these are some of the best helicopter pilots on the planet.  Most radars are unable to detect anything flying contours, but I would wager that for part of this they were flying &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nap-of-the-earth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;nap of the earth&lt;/a&gt;.  The below image is taken from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/rotary-survivability.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Global Security Website&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/accp/in0800/lsn2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the exact image is from Figure 28 on this page&lt;/a&gt;) where they discuss many modes of flight for helicopter safety from enemy fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KJcd6.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Nap of the earth flying&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even larger aircraft like the FB-111 would use this technique to avoid detection without the need for stealth technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even though the airspace is monitored, if they can't be seen, it doesn't matter.  Also, I don't think this was &amp;quot;allowed&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;disallowed&amp;quot; by the Pakistani government.  Some covert operations are carried out, and then back-briefed if the target (such as Osama bin Laden) is important enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ADDED INFO:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, several folks have asked about the helicopters used, and some of their performance characteristics.  The most likely aircraft (as reported in a couple of other answers as well) is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?id=news/awx/2011/05/03/awx_05_03_2011_p0-318248.xml&amp;amp;headline=Bin%20Laden%20Raid%20May%20Have%20Exposed%20Stealth%20Helo&amp;amp;channel=defense&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MH-60 Pave Hawk&lt;/a&gt; (a Blackhawk variant modified for special operations).  Again, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/mh-60g-specs.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;to quote Global Security,&lt;/a&gt; the performance characteristics are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Primary Function   Infiltration, exfiltration and resupply of special operations forces in day, night or marginal weather conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Power Plant    Two General Electric T700-GE-01C engines&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thrust 1,630 shaft horsepower, each engine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Length 64 feet, 8 inches (17.1 meters)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Height 16 feet, 8 inches (4.4 meters)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rotary Diameter    53 feet, 7 inches (14.1 meters)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Speed&lt;/strong&gt;  184 mph (294.4 kph)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maximum Takeoff Weight 22,000 pounds (9,900 kilograms)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Range  445 nautical miles; 504 statute miles (&lt;strong&gt;unlimited with air refueling&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Armament   Two 7.62mm mini-guns&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crew   Two pilots, one flight engineer and one gunner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, note that these aircraft are mid-air refulable from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/kc-130-specs.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;KC-130&lt;/a&gt; (NOT KC-135), thus they have a nearly unlimited range.  I highly doubt that they took off from anywhere inside Pakistan (i.e. Ghazi) but rather originated in Afghanistan.  I cannot say where exactly though, but no matter where they took off from, if they received refueling prior to entering Pakistan, the range is more than adequate to get to Abbottabad and back on one tank of gas (looking at google maps, it appears that the distance is less than 350 KM from Kabul, or about 200 miles).  So a little less than 400 mile round trip, at about 200 MPH would be about 2 hours total (add in the actual assault and there you have your timeline).  These figures are approximate though because things change with load-out and other configurations.  These aircraft would probably have flown in a formation that would probably helped to disguise their true numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone mentioned that ATC must have a squawk to paint these aircraft.  That is overstated, however as previously mentioned, they were probably well below the radar, and aided by the mountainous terrain.  Add in they were most likely using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phys.hawaii.edu/%7Eanita/new/papers/militaryHandbook/emcon.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EMCON 4&lt;/a&gt; procedures, and then it would be even more difficult to pick them up by any means.  As the cited article also mentioned, the noise reduction and additional radar absorbent paint just added to the stealthiness of these aircraft (as if SPEC OPS flight patterns were not enough).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And thanks to Kit Sunde, we have further info:  Here's Pakistan denying having known about the raid, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13268517&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Bin Laden: Pakistan intelligence agency admits failures&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;BBC&lt;/em&gt; which also states: &amp;quot;US helicopters entered Pakistani airspace making use of blind spots in the radar coverage due to hilly terrain.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to leave more questions if you have them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T18:00:21.927" CommentCount="31" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4177" CreationDate="2011-05-04T02:59:08.417" Score="14" ViewCount="10774" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading Conservapedia's article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conservapedia.com/John_Maynard_Keynes_and_pederasty&quot;&gt;John Maynard Keynes and pederasty:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Keynes and his friends made numerous&#xA;  trips to the resorts surrounding the&#xA;  Mediterranean. At the resorts, little&#xA;  boys were sold by their families to&#xA;  bordellos which catered to&#xA;  homosexuals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article references an external source, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.keynesatharvard.org/book/KeynesatHarvard-ch09.html&quot;&gt;KEYNES AT HARVARD - Economic Deception as a Political Credo&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He and his fellow leftist reformers&#xA;  however, had no compunction in&#xA;  exploiting human degradation and&#xA;  misery in Tunis, Algeria, Morocco,&#xA;  Egypt and Constantinople (Istanbul).&#xA;  These served as convenient spawning&#xA;  grounds for the establishment of&#xA;  enclosed brothels filled with&#xA;  children, who were compelled to&#xA;  satisfy the unnatural lusts of&#xA;  high-born English socialists&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zygmund Dobbs is his article &lt;a href=&quot;http://bioleft.tripod.com/keynes.htm/&quot;&gt;SUGAR KEYNES&lt;/a&gt; for The Review of the News wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;His particular depravity was the sexual abuse of little boys&lt;/strong&gt;. .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that Keynes was a child molester sounded a little strange to me, so I looked on Wikipedia's article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes&quot;&gt;John Maynard Keynes&lt;/a&gt;.  I couldn't find any hint of child molestation allegations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the claims that Keynes was a child molester?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-11-18T05:50:34.800" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T05:50:34.800" Title="Was John Maynard Keynes a child molester?" Tags="|politics|sexual-abuse|celebrities|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2802" CreationDate="2011-05-04T04:08:19.890" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The linked Zygmund Dobbs write-up is kind of thinner on hard references than on flowery rhetoric when it comes specifically to pederasty, but it did provide one verifiable reference - a quote from Keynes's letter to Lytton Starchey:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &amp;quot;Tunis, “where ‘bed and boy’ were also not expensive.” - Vol. I, p. 80.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Michael Holroyd, Lytton Strachey: A Critical Biography, Heinemann, London, 1967. Printed in two volumes. Vol. II printed in 1968. An American edition distributed by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that the quote is accurate - I was able to find it via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&amp;amp;tbo=1&amp;amp;q=inauthor:%22Michael%20Holroyd%22%20lytton%20%2bexpensive%20%2btunis&amp;amp;btnG=Search%20Books&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google books&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it constitute full incontrovertible proof by itself? No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it sound like a solid enough circumstantial evidence, in light of what is generally know about both Keynes and the type of people he was hanging around? In my personal opinion, at least it sounds plausible - I can't find any possible second meaning to the quote given the extent of sexual tourism in the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T04:08:19.890" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2410" CreationDate="2011-05-04T06:11:37.960" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pervegalit.wordpress.com/2008/02/23/intelligence-vs-effort-stop-reading-start-trying/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; is a repost of a December 2007 Scientific American article which discusses the effects of praising effort over intelligence. In particular if focuses on the importance of mindset, and how some forms of praise in earlier stages of development can affect mindset. It claims that students who were praised as intelligent became worried about continuing to appear intelligent, which, it could be argued, is 'bad' praise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We validated these expectations in a study published in early 2007. Psychologists Lisa Blackwell of Columbia University and Kali H. Trzes­niewski of Stanford University and I monitored 373 students for two years during the transition to junior high school... [and]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...the students with a growth mind-set felt that learning was a more important goal in school than getting good grades. In addition, they held hard work in high regard, believing that the more you labored at something, the better you would become at it. They understood that even geniuses have to work hard for their great accomplishments. Confronted by a setback such as a disappointing test grade, students with a growth mind-set said they would study harder or try a different strategy for mastering the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The students who held a fixed mind-set, however, were concerned about looking smart with little regard for learning. They had negative views of effort, believing that having to work hard at something was a sign of low ability. They thought that a person with talent or intelligence did not need to work hard to do well. Attributing a bad grade to their own lack of ability, those with a fixed mind-set said that they would study less in the future, try never to take that subject again and consider cheating on future tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from the very &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13128701&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC article&lt;/a&gt; you cited:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carol Dweck, a leading psychologist, took 400 students and gave them a simple puzzle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterwards, each of the students were given six words of praise. Half were praised for intelligence: &amp;quot;Wow, you must be really smart!&amp;quot; The other half were praised for effort: &amp;quot;Wow, you must be hard working!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dweck was seeking to test whether these simple words, with their subtly different emphases, could make a difference to the student's mindsets. The results were remarkable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the first test, the students were given a choice of whether to take a hard or an easy test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A full two-thirds of the students praised for intelligence chose the easy task - they did not want to risk losing their &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; label. But 90% of the effort-praised group chose the tough test - they wanted to prove just how hard working they were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, the experiment came full circle, giving the students a chance to take a test of equal difficulty to the first test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The group praised for intelligence showed a 20% decline in performance compared with the first test, even though it was no harder. But the effort-praised group increased their score by 30%. Failure had actually spurred them on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T06:11:37.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2808" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2811" CreationDate="2011-05-04T09:18:56.387" Score="8" ViewCount="12266" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK, electricians tell me that 'it is against regulations' to plug a 4 way extension lead into an existing 4 way extension lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a safety issue? Surely, if the first extension lead in the chain is correctly fused, there is no real hazard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2126" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T13:48:48.233" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T13:48:48.233" Title="Is there a potential hazard daisy chaining extension leads" Tags="|safety|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2809" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2810" CreationDate="2011-05-04T10:16:06.550" Score="5" ViewCount="918" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would either be an outright ban (outlawed) or a ban on the public funding part (health care being all public in Canada).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm just asking: is there such a thing in their platform?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1964" LastEditorUserId="1964" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T13:58:12.387" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T13:58:12.387" Title="Does the Conservative Party of Canada have a ban on abortion in its platform?" Tags="|politics|canada|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2809" CreationDate="2011-05-04T11:25:30.137" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The word &lt;em&gt;abortion&lt;/em&gt; does not appear in the CPC 2011 platform &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conservative.ca/media/ConservativePlatform2011_ENs.pdf&quot;&gt;Here for Canada&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Added:&lt;/em&gt; In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/indepthanalysis/story/2011/01/17/national-stephenharperinterview.html&quot;&gt;CBC interview in January&lt;/a&gt;, Stephen Harper was asked whether he would re-open the abortion issue if his party won a majority. He replied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No, no. Look, Peter, I have&#xA;  spent my political career trying to&#xA;  stay out of that issue. It's one on&#xA;  which people, including in my own&#xA;  party, have passionate views. They're&#xA;  all over the map. And you know, what I&#xA;  say to people, as you know, many&#xA;  people I know are pro-life. What I say&#xA;  to people, if you want to diminish the&#xA;  number of abortions, you've got to&#xA;  change hearts and not laws. And I'm&#xA;  not interested in having a debate over&#xA;  abortion law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="949" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T11:48:04.480" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T11:48:04.480" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2808" CreationDate="2011-05-04T11:37:06.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite likely if you were to actually populate every socket on the extensions with a current consuming device, or even just a few high power devices like cookers, kettles, heaters and vacuum cleaners. As long as the total of &lt;strong&gt;all downstream&lt;/strong&gt; appliances connected &lt;strong&gt;peak&lt;/strong&gt; power and current usages are lower than the power/current ratings (watts and amps) of the strip and any upstream extensions leads (plus their appliances), then it would be safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hazard exists if you go over the rating, which can lead to blown fuses, or overheating cabling with melting insulation or melting sockets - which then becomes a fire hazard or exposed mains voltage hazard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As put in the UK HSE guide:&#xA;&quot;Make sure that the electrical equipment you are intending to use is suitable for the electrical supply to which you are connecting it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References: electrical safety knowledge + experience.&#xA;UK HSE Electrical Safety Guide: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hse.gov.uk/electricity/electricequip.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.hse.gov.uk/electricity/electricequip.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2283" LastEditorUserId="2283" LastEditDate="2011-05-05T14:28:31.543" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T14:28:31.543" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2799" CreationDate="2011-05-04T12:08:30.507" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recall &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust&quot;&gt;Mathias Rust&lt;/a&gt; landing a plane in the middle of Moscow during the Cold War, completely undetected and unknown to the Soviets. I'm thinking Pakistan's surveillance is probably not as good as the Soviets. In any case, by the time Pakistani authorities would have been notified about it and had time to do anything, they were already out of the country again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2287" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T15:44:16.510" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T15:44:16.510" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1670" CreationDate="2011-05-04T12:25:47.127" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a more ad-hoc 'study' the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MythBusters&lt;/a&gt; TV show (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_%282005_season%29#Episode_28_.E2.80.93_.22Is_Yawning_Contagious.3F.22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in this episode&lt;/a&gt;) had an experiment their conclusion was that &lt;em&gt;yawns are contagious&lt;/em&gt;. Their largest experiment involved a samples size of 50 people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the wikipedia summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a second test pool of 50 people where only the influence of Kari's yawn was used, those who were influenced into yawning by her yawned 29% of the time. However, those who were not influenced yawned only 25% of the time. It seems that the MythBusters also found the average time to yawn for those who did yawn was 9 minutes for those who had been influenced and 9.6 minutes for those who had not. This was enough for the MythBusters to give the Confirmed rating, although there was the 4% difference between the experimental and control groups...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1501" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T12:25:47.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2799" CreationDate="2011-05-04T14:39:01.883" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/02/osama-bin-laden-dead-pakistan&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; I understood that there was some cooperation between the Pakistani and US governments. More specifically, it is about this quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Obama praised Pakistan for its &quot;close counter-terrorism co-operation&quot;. But officials said the US was the only country that knew in advance of the operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that it is plausible that Pakistan had an agreement to allow the US to execute the raid, although the specifics were not given the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2332" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T14:39:01.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2829" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2833" CreationDate="2011-05-04T16:58:42.160" Score="40" ViewCount="4107" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a lot of bottles of so called mineral water, it is advised not to refill the bottle (with ordinary tap water, or any other drink e.g. cola) as doing so may present a health hazard. Is there any evidence behind this warning, or is it simply companies trying to get you to buy more bottles of water?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-05T00:41:02.967" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T17:57:09.983" Title="Is refilling water bottles bad for you?" Tags="|medical-science|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2790" CreationDate="2011-05-04T17:10:32.513" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No. Human thought precedes language.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;The anecdotal evidence for this should suffice, but you cannot be trusted (as you already have language skills).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Answer: Prelingual infants think.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2004 researchers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=search&amp;amp;db=PubMed&amp;amp;term=%20Hespos%2bSJ%5Bauth%5D&quot;&gt;Hespos&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Spelke&quot;&gt;Spelke&lt;/a&gt; explored Korean language concepts with a group of five-month-old (human) infants from English-speaking homes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The example they used to explore this&#xA;  question was differences between how&#xA;  different languages describe space.&#xA;  For example, the distinction between a&#xA;  tight fit versus a loose fit is marked&#xA;  in Korean but not in English. A cap on&#xA;  a pen would be a tight fit&#xA;  relationship, while a pen on a table&#xA;  would be a loose fit relationship.&#xA;  English does not mark this distinction&#xA;  in the same way, instead emphasizing&#xA;  the “containment” versus “support”&#xA;  relationship, for example: the coffee&#xA;  is in the mug or the mug is on the&#xA;  table. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/07/040722090334.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...the infants showed an understanding of events that represented a change in &quot;fit&quot;... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because this capacity is observed well&#xA;  before the acquisition of a natural&#xA;  language in infants whose ambient&#xA;  language does not mark the&#xA;  distinction, this capacity does not&#xA;  depend on language experience.&#xA;  Instead, the capacity seems to be&#xA;  linked to mechanisms for representing&#xA;  objects and their motions that are&#xA;  shared by other animals and therefore&#xA;  evolved before the human language&#xA;  faculty. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1415221/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Learning a particular language may&#xA;  lead us to favor some of these&#xA;  concepts over others, but the concepts&#xA;  already existed before we put them&#xA;  into words. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/07/040722090334.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More: Why would you think language is required ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On one hand we can claim that we can&#xA;  even think in pictures or on the other&#xA;  hand one has to think to learn a&#xA;  language. In terms of neurosciences it&#xA;  has been proved that thinking without&#xA;  language is possible. However the&#xA;  philosophical references often deny&#xA;  that one can think without language.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/40635267/Can-We-Think-Without-Language-11&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These philosophical discussions have been going on for sometime...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When people have begun to reflect on&#xA;  language, its relation to thinking&#xA;  becomes a central concern. Several&#xA;  cultures have independently viewed the&#xA;  main function of language as the&#xA;  expression of thought. Ancient Indian&#xA;  grammarians speak of the soul&#xA;  apprehending things with the intellect&#xA;  and inspiring the mind with a desire&#xA;  to speak, and in the Greek&#xA;  intellectual tradition Aristotle&#xA;  declared, “Speech is the&#xA;  representation of the experiences of&#xA;  the mind” (On Interpretation). Such an&#xA;  attitude passed into Latin theory and&#xA;  thence into medieval doctrine.&#xA;  Medieval grammarians envisaged three&#xA;  stages in the speaking process: things&#xA;  in the world exhibit properties; these&#xA;  properties are understood by the minds&#xA;  of humans; and, in the manner in which&#xA;  they have been understood, so they are&#xA;  communicated to others by the&#xA;  resources of language. Rationalist&#xA;  writers on language in the 17th&#xA;  century gave essentially a similar&#xA;  account: speaking is expressing&#xA;  thoughts by signs invented for the&#xA;  purpose, and words of different&#xA;  classes (the different parts of&#xA;  speech) came into being to correspond&#xA;  to the different aspects of thinking.&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/329791/language/27157/Historical-attitudes-toward-language?anchor=ref665950&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_von_Humboldt&quot;&gt;Wilhelm von Humboldt&lt;/a&gt;: Credited as an originator of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity&quot;&gt;linguistic relativity&lt;/a&gt; hypothesis (aka: the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Lee_Whorf&quot;&gt;Benjamin Lee Whorf&lt;/a&gt;: Widely known for his ideas about linguistic relativity, the hypothesis that language influences thought.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky&quot;&gt;Noam Chomsky&lt;/a&gt;: Well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the one hand, most people, after&#xA;  hearing evidence that language is an&#xA;  innate faculty of humans, would not be&#xA;  surprised to learn that it comes from&#xA;  the same source that every other&#xA;  complex innate aspect of the human&#xA;  brain and body comes from — namely,&#xA;  natural selection. But two very&#xA;  prominent people deny this conclusion,&#xA;  and they aren't just any old prominent&#xA;  people, but Stephen Jay Gould,&#xA;  probably the most famous person who&#xA;  has written on evolution, and Noam&#xA;  Chomsky, the most famous person who&#xA;  has written on language. They've&#xA;  suggested that language appeared as a&#xA;  by- product of the laws of growth and&#xA;  form of the human brain, or perhaps as&#xA;  an accidental by-product of selection&#xA;  for something else, and they deny that&#xA;  language is an adaptation. I disagree&#xA;  with both of them. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/932522/PINKER-Language-is-an-Instinct&quot;&gt;Pinker, Language Is a Human Instinct&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker&quot;&gt;Steven Pinker&lt;/a&gt;: Argues that language is an &quot;instinct&quot; or biological adaptation shaped by natural selection.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...These scholars, ranging from&#xA;  Aristotle to Freud, took these&#xA;  specific instances to be exceptional,&#xA;  marginal eruptions of meaning, curious&#xA;  and suggestive. But none of them&#xA;  focused on the general mental capacity&#xA;  of blending or, as far as we can tell,&#xA;  even recognize that there is such a&#xA;  mental capacity. Attentive to the&#xA;  specific attraction - the painting&#xA;  ,the poem, the dream , the scientific&#xA;  insight - they did not look for what&#xA;  all these bits and pieces have in&#xA;  common. The spectacular trees masked&#xA;  the forest.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://markturner.org/blending.html&quot;&gt;Turner&lt;/a&gt;-Fauconnier, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/37961286/Fauconnier-Turner-2002-The-Way-We-Think-Conceptual-Blending-the-Mind-s-Hidden-Complexities&quot;&gt;The&#xA;  Way We Think&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-language-shape-what&quot;&gt;Does language shape what we think ?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09/boroditsky09_index.html&quot;&gt;How does our Language shape the way we think ?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background: Why is language important ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before Homo sapiens came on the scene 150 kya innovation and change amongst the genus of the family Hominidae was pretty dull. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._habilis&quot;&gt;Homo habilis&lt;/a&gt; showed up 2.4 mya and stayed around for a million years. They had one, and only one, great idea: Stone tools. Next up was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus&quot;&gt;Homo erectus&lt;/a&gt; (1.5 – 0.2 mya). Erectus was a slow starter but about 400,000 years ago they hit pay-dirt: Controlled use of Fire. Great. For 2.2 million years of effort we have some sharp rocks and a barbeque.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then things get really interesting.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any innovation must take place within&#xA;  a species, since there is no place&#xA;  else it can do so. Natural selection&#xA;  is, moreover, not a creative force. It&#xA;  merely works on variations that come&#xA;  into existence spontaneously—it cannot&#xA;  call innovations into existence just&#xA;  because they might be advantageous.&#xA;  Any new structure or aptitude has to&#xA;  be in place before it can be exploited&#xA;  by its possessors, and it may take&#xA;  some time for those possessors to&#xA;  discover all the uses of such&#xA;  novelties. Such seems to have been the&#xA;  case for Homo sapiens in that the&#xA;  earliest well-documented members of&#xA;  our species appear to have behaved in&#xA;  broadly the same manner as&#xA;  Neanderthals for many tens of&#xA;  thousands of years. It is highly&#xA;  unlikely that another species&#xA;  anatomically indistinguishable from&#xA;  Homo sapiens but behaviorally similar&#xA;  to Neanderthals was supplanted&#xA;  worldwide in an extremely short span&#xA;  of time. Therefore, it seems&#xA;  appropriate to conclude that a &lt;strong&gt;latent&#xA;  capacity for symbolic reasoning&lt;/strong&gt; was&#xA;  present when anatomically modern Homo&#xA;  sapiens emerged and that our forebears&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;discovered their radically new&#xA;  behavioral abilities&lt;/strong&gt; somewhat later in&#xA;  time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A cultural “release mechanism” of some&#xA;  sort was necessarily involved in this&#xA;  discovery, and the &lt;strong&gt;favoured candidate&#xA;  for this role is language&lt;/strong&gt;, the&#xA;  existence of which cannot be inferred&#xA;  with any degree of confidence from the&#xA;  records left behind by any other&#xA;  species but our own. &lt;strong&gt;Language is the&#xA;  ultimate symbolic activity&lt;/strong&gt;, involving&#xA;  the creation and manipulation of&#xA;  mental symbols and permitting the&#xA;  posing of questions such as “What if?”&#xA;  Not all components of human thought&#xA;  are symbolic (the human brain has a&#xA;  very long accretionary, evolutionary&#xA;  history that still governs the way&#xA;  thoughts and feelings are processed),&#xA;  but it is certainly &lt;strong&gt;the addition of&#xA;  symbolic manipulations to intuitive&#xA;  processes that makes possible what is&#xA;  recognized as the human mind&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The origins of this mind are obscure&#xA;  indeed, especially as scientists are&#xA;  still ignorant of how a mass of&#xA;  electrochemical signals in the brain&#xA;  gives rise to what we experience as&#xA;  consciousness. But the invention of&#xA;  language would plausibly have released&#xA;  the earliest of the cultural and&#xA;  technological innovations that&#xA;  symbolic thought makes possible—in the&#xA;  process unleashing a cascade of&#xA;  discoveries that is still ongoing. One&#xA;  of the most striking features of the&#xA;  archaeological record that accompanies&#xA;  the arrival of behaviorally modern&#xA;  Homo sapiens is a distinct alteration&#xA;  in the tempo of innovation and change.&#xA;  Significant cultural and technological&#xA;  novelties had previously been rare,&#xA;  with long periods of apparent&#xA;  stability intervening between&#xA;  relatively sudden episodes of&#xA;  innovation. But once behaviorally&#xA;  modern Homo sapiens arrived on the&#xA;  scene, different local technological&#xA;  traditions—and, by extension, other&#xA;  forms of cultural diversity—began to&#xA;  proliferate regularly, &lt;strong&gt;setting a pace&#xA;  that is still gathering today&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1350865/Homo-sapiens&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Bottom Line&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you look into the eyes of the one you love and think of what they mean to you...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;What language do you think in ?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs, Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes, Being vexed, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, A choking gall and a preserving sweet. - Bill&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;What language was he thinking in ?&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T17:10:32.513" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2686" CreationDate="2011-05-04T18:00:16.727" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nimh.nih.gov/index.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Institute of Mental Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (USA) has some &lt;strong&gt;statistics&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;br/&gt; Specific Phobia&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Specific phobia involves marked and&#xA;  persistent fear and avoidance of a&#xA;  specific object or situation. This&#xA;  type of phobia includes, but is not&#xA;  limited to, the fear of heights,&#xA;  spiders, and flying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Among Adults&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y1YyU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Among Children&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eypEr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt; Social Phobia&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Social phobia is characterized by a&#xA;  persistent, intense, and chronic fear&#xA;  of being watched and judged by others&#xA;  and feeling embarrassed or humiliated&#xA;  by their actions. This fear may be so&#xA;  severe that it interferes with work,&#xA;  school, and other activities and may&#xA;  negatively affect the person’s ability&#xA;  to form relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Among Adults&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KujfO.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Among Children&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8AtlF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sources:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wwwsearch.nimh.nih.gov/?q=phobia+statistics&amp;amp;spell=1&amp;amp;access=p&amp;amp;output=xml_no_dtd&amp;amp;site=internet_collection&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;client=internet_frontend&amp;amp;proxystylesheet=internet_frontend&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Institute of Mental Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20855043&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lifetime prevalence of mental disorders in U.S. adolescents&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15939839&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of 12-month DSM-IV disorders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15939837&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These statistics are based on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/ncs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;survey&lt;/a&gt; done in the United States, with a sample of 10,000 respondents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been similar surveys done worldwide under the auspices of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/wmh/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;World Health Organization&lt;/a&gt;, but I don't have that data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T18:00:16.727" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2832" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-04T18:16:11.217" Score="25" ViewCount="16615" Body="&lt;p&gt;So there are a lot of people who say that the Dark Ages, lasting about 1,000 years, set humans back technologically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some say that since the Dark Ages really only affected Western Europe, and not the Middle East or Asia, it wouldn't make a difference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there research to backup either claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2352" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T15:58:02.807" LastActivityDate="2012-07-21T00:28:45.097" Title="Would humans be more advanced if the Dark Ages never happened?" Tags="|history|technology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2829" CreationDate="2011-05-04T18:57:04.490" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plasticsinfo.org/beveragebottles/apc_faqs.html&quot;&gt;University of Calgary study referenced here&lt;/a&gt; only has the possible build up of bacteria as a risk, and even that is avoidable if the bottles are washed between uses and occasionally something stronger such as bleach is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same link also discusses the other myths around dioxins and pthalates leaching from the plastic to the water, and the original paper on that is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sodis.ch/files/Report_EMPA.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T18:57:04.490" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2779" CreationDate="2011-05-04T19:32:06.740" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the New York Times recently I read a summary of a study which says that (a) the effect is real and (b) the reason considered most likely is &lt;em&gt;unconscious&lt;/em&gt; bias on the part of referees, umpires, and other officials.   Apparently it is unpleasant to have tens of thousands of people yelling at you, and referees unconsciously make marginal decisions in favor of the home side, so as not to be booed, taunted, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry no citation :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2356" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T19:32:06.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2835" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-04T19:36:26.577" Score="18" ViewCount="4730" Body="&lt;p&gt;The catholic church has very recently beatified late Pope John Paul II. As one of the requirements for this, the church required at least one miracle attributed to the candidate. In this case, a nun is claimed to have been cured from Parkinson's disease after praying to the late pope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since in general I know of no evidence suggesting that praying to dead people can cure you of diseases, my question would be: &lt;strong&gt;Is there a known scientific explanation for this alleged miracle? Did this event happen in the first place?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-30T19:50:34.623" LastActivityDate="2023-08-17T19:05:59.280" Title="Did Pope John Paul II perform a miracle?" Tags="|medical-science|religion|catholic-church|miracle|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2832" CreationDate="2011-05-04T19:55:09.637" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 'Dark Ages' (used here to describe approximately a thousand years following the fall of the Roman Empire) is a huge misnomer. It's often thought of as a time of stagnation between the Roman Empire and the Renaissance, but in actual fact it was a time of rapid technological progress. The later period was particularly rapid. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages#Science_and_technology&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the 12th and 13th century in Europe, there was a radical change in the rate of new inventions, innovations in the ways of managing traditional means of production, and economic growth. The period saw major technological advances, including the invention of cannon, spectacles, and artesian wells, and the cross-cultural introduction of gunpowder, silk, the compass, and the astrolabe from the east. One major agricultural innovation during this period was the development of a 3-field rotation system for planting crops (as opposed the 2-field system that was being used). Further, the development of the heavy plow allowed for a rise in communal agriculture as most individuals could not afford to do it by themselves. As a result, medieval villages had formed a type of collective ownership and communal agriculture where the use of horses allowed villages to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.middle-ages.org.uk/inventions-in-the-middle-ages.htm&quot;&gt;Other inventions made during the Middle Ages&lt;/a&gt; included: the clock, the windmill,horseshoes, the rudder, and various navigation instruments. Some of them are adoptions from other places, such as Arabic numerals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;Western Europe was unquestionably more advanced in the 15th Century than it was in the 5th Century.&lt;/strong&gt; Elsewhere in the world, where progress was continuous and just as rapid, there isn't even a question. We can safely say that the fall of the Roman Empire had minimal effect on technological progress in China and India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would Western Europe have been even more advanced if Rome hadn't fallen? That's more difficult. Rome was in many ways hidebound and bureaucratic. The renowned &quot;Roman roads&quot;, for example, were specifically designed to move troops and were not suitable for Medieval waggons, meaning that traders preferred to use other routes, even when the Roman roads were still in good repair. It's possible that a continued Roman Empire would have progressed as rapidly as the 'Dark Ages' in fact did, and starting from a more advanced base reached further - but it's also possible that they wouldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T14:29:48.890" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T14:29:48.890" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2839" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2843" CreationDate="2011-05-04T20:42:17.100" Score="40" ViewCount="22613" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QaMhP.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you didn't grow up in a tropical climate, you probably heard something like this as a child...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Put on a hat before you go out because&#xA;  you lose the most heat through your&#xA;  head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some say that the reason you lose more heat through your head is because &quot;heat rises&quot; and most of your body heat naturally escapes though your head.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does more body heat escape from our heads than from other parts of the body?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2018-12-31T20:07:33.007" Title="Do we lose most of our body heat through our heads?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2795" CreationDate="2011-05-04T20:43:14.650" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we think about driving a car, it is generally agreed that there is no alcohol level at which one is a better driver than when one is sober. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2539976/pdf/bmj00437-0009.pdf&quot;&gt;This document&lt;/a&gt; lists some of the findings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Behavioural studies suggest that driving related skills are&#xA;  significantly impaired at blood alcohol concentrations below&#xA;  10-9 mmol/l and that little evidence exists for a threshold&#xA;  below which driving related skills are unimpaired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Alcohol does of course impair judgement, so it is likely that there is an alcohol level at which one &lt;em&gt;believes&lt;/em&gt; one is a better driver, even though one isn't.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computer programming is a significantly more demanding task than driving a car, and it is extremely unlikely that there is any level of alcohol at which one is really a better programmer than when one is sober.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-05-04T21:02:04.790" LastActivityDate="2011-05-04T21:02:04.790" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2795" CreationDate="2011-05-04T21:18:09.177" Score="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://creativeeducation.metapress.com/content/3470317981880821/&quot;&gt;This article by Norlander&lt;/a&gt; specifically studies the relationship between moderate alcohol consumption (1.0ml/kg body weight) and creativity.  According to my very rough calculations, this would correspond to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_alcohol_content&quot;&gt;BAC&lt;/a&gt; in the range of 0.12–0.14 for a 73kg human.  The paper concludes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...modest alcohol consumption inhibits aspects of creativity based mainly on the secondary process (preparation, certain parts of illumination, and verification), and disinhibits those based mainly on the primary process (incubation, certain parts of illumination, and restitution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, moderate alcohol consumption does improve certain types of creative thinking, while inhibiting other types of creative thinking.  Since the skills required for computer programming are solely cognitive in nature (discounting the motor skills required to type, of course), and given that creativity is a large part of computer programming, it is at least plausible that one might gain some amount of improvement from alcohol consumption. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have also been &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.1990.tb03726.x/abstract&quot;&gt;studies on the relationship between alcohol consumption and creative output&lt;/a&gt;.  That study examined 34 well known, heavy drinking, 20&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; century writers, artists, and composers/performers.  It concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Analysis of this information yielded a number of interesting findings. Alcohol use proved detrimental to productivity in over 75% of the sample, especially in the latter phases of their drinking careers. However, it appeared to provide direct benefit for about 9% of the sample, indirect benefit for 50% and no appreciable effect for 40% at different times in their lives. Creative activity, conversely, can also affect drinking behavior, leading, for instance, to increased alcohol consumption in over 30% of the sample. Because of the complexities of this relationship, no simplistic conclusions are possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for a small portion of people there was a notable increase in creative output as a result of alcohol intake.  It does appear that the study did not control for the quantity of alcohol intake, though, so this may not be directly applicable to the Ballmer Peak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best study I was able to find on the subject was by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/1423036&quot;&gt;Lapp, Collins, and Izzo&lt;/a&gt;.  They gave subjects vodka tonics of varying strengths (by varying the ratio of tonic to vodka), some of which did not even contain any alcohol.  The subjects believed that they were drinking a standard-strength vodka tonic.  The subjects then were asked to perform a number of cognitively and creatively challenging tasks.  Here is what they conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The present results support the idea that creative people probably gain inspriation from consuming alcohol ..., but show that this effect may be due to the expected rather than the pharmacological effects of the drug. ... A convergence of evidence supported the idea that creativity is enhanced (at least in some aspects) by the expected effects of alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, alcohol can improve certain aspects of one's cognitive ability, but this effect is not likely due to any pharmacological process (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, it is often sufficient to merely &lt;em&gt;believe&lt;/em&gt; that one is drinking alcohol in order to achieve the same benefit).          &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And remember: The Ballmer Peak, as it is currently understood, is but a two dimensional projection of what in reality is a higher dimensional space, &lt;em&gt;vi&amp;amp;.&lt;/em&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sultanik.com/Blog:Ballmer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pKSmx.png&quot; alt=&quot;3D Ballmer Peak&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="33158" LastEditDate="2016-06-04T01:59:39.543" LastActivityDate="2016-06-04T01:59:39.543" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2839" CreationDate="2011-05-04T21:50:25.827" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that &lt;em&gt;the rest of the body is usually clothed&lt;/em&gt; which provides the most important insulation of the body, as can be seen in a thermal scan image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HQJws.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;thermal imaging system screening passengers for H1N1 flu&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Scale is heat loss from least (bottom, blue) to most (top, red/white); source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/129991/A-quarantine-officer-at-Incheon-International-Airport-in-South-Korea&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Britannica.com&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this image also shows that hair is actually a pretty good insulator as well. So while a clothed human indeed loses much of their heat through the head, donning a hat won’t help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another aspect: the body will strive to keep the &lt;em&gt;core body temperature&lt;/em&gt; constant. If necessary, it does this by &lt;a href=&quot;http://openwaterchicago.com/2008/05/09/hypothermia-series-part-5-the-afterdrop-phenomenon/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;down-regulating blood circulation (and consequently heat exchange) in the periphery&lt;/a&gt; (arms, legs); in contrast, the blood circulation through the head (in particular, the brain) stays almost constant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5MKrk.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Body core temperature&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, next to the trunk (clothed!) &lt;strong&gt;the head emits the most amount of heat per area&lt;/strong&gt; (skin temperature of 34.6°C) [source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=if9jXQvVylgC&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;dq=Physiology%20%5Cpathophysiology%20temperature&amp;amp;pg=PA17#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blatteis, &lt;em&gt;Physiology and pathophysiology of temperature regulation&lt;/em&gt;, p. 17&lt;/a&gt;], &lt;strong&gt;and also the most total energy of any non-clothed area&lt;/strong&gt; [ibd.].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, when clothed (and not immersed in water; this diminishes the insulating effect of clothing significantly!) we do indeed lose most of our body heat through our head. However, except for bald people, hats may not help that much (to maintain the core body temperature).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-12-31T20:07:33.007" LastActivityDate="2018-12-31T20:07:33.007" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2839" CreationDate="2011-05-04T22:29:58.833" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Apperently...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can lose 40 to 45 percent of body&#xA;  heat from an unprotected head and even&#xA;  more from the unprotected neck, wrist,&#xA;  and ankles. These areas of the body&#xA;  are good radiators of heat and have&#xA;  very little insulating fat. The brain&#xA;  is very susceptible to cold and can&#xA;  stand the least amount of cooling.&#xA;  Because there is much blood&#xA;  circulation in the head, most of which&#xA;  is on the surface, you can lose heat&#xA;  quickly if you do not cover your head.&#xA;  -  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ar15.com/content/manuals/FM21-76_SurvivalManual.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FM 21-76 US ARMY SURVIVAL MANUAL&lt;/a&gt;, BASIC PRINCIPLES OF COLD&#xA;  WEATHER SURVIVAL, PG 148.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can this be right ? Does more body heat escape from our heads than from other parts of the body ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Answer: No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general, heat loss is essential to&#xA;  provide thermoregulation and prevent&#xA;  excessive heat build-up in the body to&#xA;  avoid the consequences of heat stroke.&#xA;  However, heat loss in the head is the&#xA;  same as for any exposed body part. The&#xA;  exposed surface area of the body,&#xA;  along with relative humidity and&#xA;  temperature, determines heat loss&#xA;  primarily through evaporation and our&#xA;  head makes up only 10 percent of body&#xA;  surface area.  So, &lt;strong&gt;at rest&lt;/strong&gt;, heat&#xA;  loss through the head accounts for&#xA;  only 7-10 percent of total heat&#xA;  dissipation. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://researchfrontiers.uark.edu/12401.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See below: General heat loss through the head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;EXCEPT...&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As you &lt;strong&gt;begin&#xA;  exercise, cerebral blood flow&#xA;  increases due to increased cardiac&#xA;  output and the percentage of heat lost&#xA;  through the head accounts for about 50&#xA;  percent of total body heat loss.&lt;/strong&gt;  As&#xA;  exercise continues, more oxygen is&#xA;  directed toward muscle and blood flow&#xA;  to this tissue increases. Core&#xA;  temperature has to be maintained and&#xA;  as body heat increases, the skin&#xA;  arterioles expand, or vasodilate,&#xA;  redirecting blood flow to the skin&#xA;  which cools the blood. Hence, total&#xA;  blood flow to the brain is decreased&#xA;  and the percentage of total body heat&#xA;  lost through the head is reduced to&#xA;  about 10 percent. The percent lost&#xA;  through the scalp returns to 7 percent&#xA;  after sweating begins. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://researchfrontiers.uark.edu/12401.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shivering is exercise...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But, this is important, &lt;strong&gt;if they are&#xA;  shivering, the percent of heat loss&#xA;  via the scalp can increase to upwards&#xA;  of 55%&lt;/strong&gt;, so protecting the head well is&#xA;  a very important part of treating the&#xA;  hypothermia patient.  And as you can&#xA;  imagine, the primary defense against&#xA;  the cold and hypothermia is&#xA;  vasoconstriction of the peripheral&#xA;  circulation, this shunts blood to the&#xA;  core, reduces circulation to the skin,&#xA;  and &lt;strong&gt;increases the percent of heat loss&#xA;  through the scalp.&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://wildernessmedicinenewsletter.wordpress.com/2007/02/14/heat-loss-through-the-head-and-hypothermia/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;General heat loss through the head&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://jap.physiology.org/content/101/2/669.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thermal effects of whole head submersion in cold water on&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;nonshivering&lt;/strong&gt; humans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One hypothesis predicts a substantial&#xA;  heat loss through the head due to the&#xA;  great amount of surface blood flow in&#xA;  the scalp and because scalp blood&#xA;  vessels do not vasoconstrict in&#xA;  response to cold as do surface vessels&#xA;  in other body areas (8). An&#xA;  alternative hypothesis predicts&#xA;  minimal heat loss from the head&#xA;  because submersion of the head and&#xA;  neck would only involve 7–9% more of&#xA;  the body surface area (20). As well,&#xA;  mathematical modeling predicts minimal&#xA;  conductive heat loss directly through&#xA;  the scalp and skull (27).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The present results are consistent&#xA;  with previous data (9) in that the&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;supposition of proportionately greater&#xA;  heat loss from the head was not&#xA;  supported.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ffPDM.png&quot; alt=&quot;Cutaneous Heat Loss&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;Whole body cutaneous heat loss&#xA;  (n = 8) values for baseline (20 min)&#xA;  and immersion (30 min) periods.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  *&lt;em&gt;Greater than body-insulated conditions, P &amp;lt;&#xA;  0.001. †Greater than head-out in the same subconditions, P &amp;lt; 0.05.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The measured heat loss from the head&#xA;  in both head-in conditions was only&#xA;  100 kJ (compared with 17 kJ in the two&#xA;  head-out conditions). In contrast,&#xA;  total heat loss in the body-exposed&#xA;  configurations was 914 and 988 kJ, for&#xA;  head-out and head-in conditions,&#xA;  respectively. In the latter case, the&#xA;  head accounted for only 10% of the&#xA;  total body heat loss when both the&#xA;  head and body were submersed. The&#xA;  surface area of the submersed head is&#xA;  7% of the total surface area of the&#xA;  body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rjBp2.png&quot; alt=&quot;Total Heat Loss&quot;&gt;    &lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;Energy&#xA;  production and loss during 30 min. of&#xA;  immersion in 17°C water (n = 8). Total&#xA;  loss includes whole body cutaneous and&#xA;  respiratory heat loss. Body loss&#xA;  includes trunk, legs, and arms.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  *&lt;em&gt;Greater than body-insulated conditions, P &amp;lt; 0.001. †Greater than&#xA;  head out in the same subconditions, P&#xA;  &amp;lt;&#xA;  0.005. ‡Greater than head-out conditions, P &amp;lt; 0.001.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;These results thus indicate that heat loss from the head is not&#xA;  disproportionately increased over what&#xA;  would be expected from the head’s&#xA;  contribution to total body surface&#xA;  area.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;With the body exposed to cold water&#xA;  and shivering intact, additional&#xA;  dorsal head immersion increased core&#xA;  cooling from 3.8 to 9.4°C/h (250%) in&#xA;  1–2°C water.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Bottom Line...&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sub&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;           &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/454/oliver-c&quot;&gt;Oliver_C&lt;/a&gt; is correct: &quot;No, mom, Science says I don't need to wear a hat !...&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;...Ok, mom, I'll bring one along just in case I get cold !&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xA;Cited and worth a read...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(8) Froese G and Burton AC. Heat loses from the human head. J Appl&#xA;Physiol 10: 235–241, 1957.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(9) Giesbrecht G, Lockhart T, Bristow G, and Steinman A. Thermal&#xA;effects of dorsal head immersion in cold water on nonshivering humans.&#xA;J Appl Physiol 99: 1958–1964 2005.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(20) Layton R, Mints WJ, Annis J, Rack M, and Webb P. Calorimetry with&#xA;heat flux transducers: comparison with a suit calorimeter. J Appl Physiol&#xA;54: 1361–1367, 1983.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(27) Xu X, Tikuisis P, and Giesbrecht G. A mathematical model for human&#xA;brain cooling during cold-water near-drowning. J Appl Physiol 86: 265–&#xA;272, 1999.&#xA;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T08:51:18.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2847" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-05T00:07:15.683" Score="4" ViewCount="1459" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was scholar at one class on &quot;aircraft equipments&quot; we also talked about weapons. &#xA;The teacher mentioned that the military was developing weapons which were going to cause earthquakes. That was many years ago but whenever I hear about some earthquakes I am skeptical that maybe some of mega forces in world has madded that with reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2364" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-24T23:41:24.653" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T23:41:24.653" Title="Do the military have the technology to trigger earthquakes?" Tags="|geology|weapons|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2849" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2850" CreationDate="2011-05-05T02:52:04.993" Score="110" ViewCount="29404" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was tempted to go drop $8500 on &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B000J36XR2&quot;&gt;these awesome speaker cables&lt;/a&gt; so I could be like Whiplash (see customer pictures), but I'm curious, if I use them for my audio system, will they actually make a perceptible difference over some low gauge copper wire?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At what point do speaker cables start to suffer diminishing returns, and do &quot;audiophiles&quot; actually have the uncanny ability to detect the differences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T23:44:49.777" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T23:44:49.777" Title="Do expensive, &quot;premium&quot; speaker cables make a difference?" Tags="|perception|sound|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2849" CreationDate="2011-05-05T03:32:02.053" Score="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only perceptible difference will be the tilt of your seated body due to a substantially smaller wallet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you require speaker cable runs of 50+ feet, where shielding is actually important, there are no benefits to the exorbitantly expensive speaker cabling. There have been anectodal, supposedly blind tests &lt;a href=&quot;http://consumerist.com/2008/03/do-coat-hangers-sound-as-good-monster-cables.html&quot;&gt;confirming&lt;/a&gt; that Monster(tm) cables sound no better than a coat hanger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We gathered up a 5 of our audio buddies. We took my &quot;old&quot; Martin Logan SL-3 (not a bad speaker for accurate noise making) and hooked them up with Monster 1000 speaker cables [ed. Monster Ultra Series THX 1000 Audio Interconnects] (decent cables according to the audio press). We also rigged up 14 gauge, oxygen free Belden stranded copper wire with a simple PVC jacket. Both were 2 meters long. They were connected to an ABX switch box allowing blind fold testing. Volume levels were set at 75 dB at 1000KHz. A high quality recording of smooth, trio, easy listening jazz was played (Piano, drums, bass). None of us had heard this group or CD before, therefore eliminating biases. The music was played. Of the 5 blind folded, only 2 guessed correctly which was the monster cable. (I was not one of them). This was done 7 times in a row! Keeping us blind folded, my brother switched out the Belden wire (are you ready for this) with simple coat hanger wire! Unknown to me and our 12 audiophile buddies, prior to the ABX blind test, he took apart four coat hangers, reconnected them and twisted them into a pair of speaker cables. Connections were soldered. He stashed them in a closet within the testing room so we were not privy to what he was up to. This made for a pair of 2 meter cables, the exact length of the other wires. The test was conducted. After 5 tests, none could determine which was the Monster 1000 cable or the coat hanger wire. Further, when music was played through the coat hanger wire, we were asked if what we heard sounded good to us. All agreed that what was heard sounded excellent, however, when A-B tests occurred, it was impossible to determine which sounded best the majority of the time and which wire was in use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://home.provide.net/~djcarlst/abx_wire.htm&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; site also lists some double blind tests where listeners could not pick the difference between $990 &quot;T2&quot; Speaker Cable and cheap 16 Gauge Zip Cord. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T16:56:50.467" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T16:56:50.467" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2851" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-05T05:27:39.670" Score="9" ViewCount="570" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, how did they identify Osama bin Ladin? How can they identify with such confidence a DNA match?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can you compare DNA against a sister and determine that it is indeed Osama bin Ladin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The man could have been a relative, not a perfect match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2379" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-05T14:31:29.887" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T09:30:35.490" Title="How reliable is identification via DNA matching?" Tags="|genetics|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2853" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2855" CreationDate="2011-05-05T06:55:27.027" Score="47" ViewCount="29237" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of people have told me that it's a bad for plants to be watered in the middle of a sunny day, i.e. it's not just that you waste more water due to evaporation, but that there are actually bad effects on the plants itself. I've heard this claim specifically for watering grass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The explanation I heard is that it causes the plants to open up pores or otherwise behave as if it were raining, but the fact that the sun is actually shining leads to burning or other damage. But there are certainly other possible explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can it cause harm to plants to water them under a hot sun?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="68193" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorUserId="2712" LastEditDate="2013-07-17T15:33:18.380" LastActivityDate="2021-06-14T14:34:59.367" Title="Is watering plants under a hot sun bad?" Tags="|biology|water|weather|plants|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2854" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3434" CreationDate="2011-05-05T07:13:00.770" Score="40" ViewCount="2324" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the music industry, and perhaps the entertainment industry, being ruined by piracy (or otherwise losing a substantial amount of money?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the record label EMI has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/broadband/156126/emi-blames-internet-for-2-000-job-losses&quot;&gt;blamed piracy&lt;/a&gt; for the loss of about 2,000 jobs and a slump in revenue. However, is it just a scapegoat for poor financial performance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any &lt;em&gt;independent&lt;/em&gt; studies been conducted to see if their claims are true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-05T11:36:22.453" LastActivityDate="2011-12-21T19:16:58.493" Title="Is the music industry losing significant money because of piracy?" Tags="|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2853" CreationDate="2011-05-05T07:13:23.500" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The argument as I know it goes somewhere along the lines of &amp;quot;water drops act like lenses that focus sunbeams so that they burn the plant&amp;quot;. Several experiments have &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.vn/bK61g&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;failed to reproduce this&lt;/a&gt;, though (link in German, sorry) - a drop of water, even a perfect half-sphere simply doesn't act as a lens. However, there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2009.03150.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;circumstances where it might happen&lt;/a&gt;, and that appears to be if the structure of the leaf surface is not flat but irregular or hairy. In that case, water drops might &amp;quot;hover&amp;quot; above the actual leaf surface, and sunbeams might be focused enough to cause damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to be expected with grass, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastEditorUserId="59668" LastEditDate="2021-06-14T14:34:59.367" LastActivityDate="2021-06-14T14:34:59.367" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2858" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2860" CreationDate="2011-05-05T08:29:18.977" Score="25" ViewCount="1945" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;gate·way drug&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;noun&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A habit-forming drug that, while not itself addictive, may lead to the use of other addictive drugs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest that people who try cannabis are more likely to try other drugs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:47:00.300" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:47:00.300" Title="Is cannabis a gateway drug?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2859" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2866" CreationDate="2011-05-05T08:32:20.360" Score="27" ViewCount="90455" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently came across a new kind of sports enhancement bracelet. Apparently it emits positive ions that are good for you. The bracelet is also a watch. There are credible scientific studies on positive ion therapy and apparently positive ions are good for you. They are used to treat seasonal affective disorder (although the result of the study does go on to cast doubt about its findings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is whether it is possible for positive ions to affect your good health and if so whether a bracelet can deliver enough positive ions to have any effect at all. It would also be beneficial if you have any links to medical studies on these devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-02-01T19:20:28.637" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T11:41:09.820" Title="Do ion bracelets work?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2858" CreationDate="2011-05-05T08:38:45.623" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hardcore drug users use cannabis, but there is no evidence that cannabis is a gateway drug. The first drugs that people are exposed to are usually nicotine and alcohol. Most hardcore drug users also use cannabis, which can make a study on hardcore drug users skewed, because many of them probably use cannabis first due to it's widespread availability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the sense that marijuana use typically precedes rather than follows initiation of other illicit drug use, it is indeed a &quot;gateway&quot; drug. But because underage smoking and alcohol use typically precede marijuana use, marijuana is not the most common, and is rarely the first, &quot;gateway&quot; to illicit drug use. There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs. An important caution is that data on drug use progression cannot be assumed to apply to the use of drugs for medical purposes. It does not follow from those data that if marijuana were available by prescription for medical use, the pattern of drug use would remain the same as seen in illicit use... (Joy et al. 1999)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cannabis can be a gateway drug in one sense. Dealers who deal in cannabis try to sell their other drugs to users too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: &#xA;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugscience.org/sfu/sfu_gateway.html&quot;&gt;http://www.drugscience.org/sfu/sfu_gateway.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mit.edu/~thistle/v13/2/myths.html&quot;&gt;http://www.mit.edu/~thistle/v13/2/myths.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies related to the gateway theory are listed on Wikipedia: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_drug_theory#Studies_not_in_favor_of_the_gateway_theory&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_drug_theory#Studies_not_in_favor_of_the_gateway_theory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastEditorUserId="2171" LastEditDate="2011-05-17T00:51:46.420" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T00:51:46.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2862" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2871" CreationDate="2011-05-05T08:56:50.137" Score="11" ViewCount="1146" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are claims being made that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SSDs&lt;/a&gt; (Solid State Drives) are one of (if not THE) best investments one can make as far as PC hardware upgrades. If someone wants a cite, just pick one of 3876 glowing SSD-thumping blog posts by Mr. Atwood on a little-known Coding Horror blog (disclaimer: the number of posts might have been a mite exaggerated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/09/revisiting-solid-state-hard-drives.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sample quote&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;if you care at all about how your computer performs, solid state hard drives remain a life changing experience. Here's why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A solid state hard drive is easily the best and most obvious performance upgrade you can make on any computer for a given amount of money. Unless your computer is absolute crap to start with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jeff-zinging aside, I am a mite skeptical about SSD benefits per unit of cost owing to three concerns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The cheaper ones appear to be worse performing, possibly materially so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;SSDs are actually pretty expensive (even &amp;quot;cheaper&amp;quot; ones) - I think Mr. Atwood, being a successful entrepreneur, might have a somewhat skewed perception of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, when dealing with computer upgrades, different usage/app patterns produce different cost/benefit curves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Therefore, the question is:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a reputable detailed benchmark-backed-up cost/benefit analysis of the SSD upgrade that is deep enough to consider multiple usage scenarios as well as costs of competing non-SSD upgrades? In other words, something that would back up Jeff's generic quoted claim in a majority of situations usage-wise and upgrade-wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that I'm looking for something REALLY in-depth - e.g. something that for example evaluates the possibility that a whole brand new PC can be built/bough for not much more than the cost of even a small-capacity high end SSD (this is important, since merely adding better components to a single PC may not give nearly the real life performance boost compared to having 2 PCs side by side for many usage scenarios), and/or something that benchmarks various possible upgrade combinations from base configurations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T21:20:06.480" Title="Are SSDs the best upgrade for the money to average user (and if so, in which circumstances?)" Tags="|hardware|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2863" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2893" CreationDate="2011-05-05T09:09:14.417" Score="73" ViewCount="12910" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9101699/The_640K_quote_won_t_go_away_but_did_Gates_really_say_it_&quot;&gt;quite famous quote&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;640k ought to be enough for anybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Bill Gates say this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="808" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-12-30T21:17:03.627" LastActivityDate="2021-12-26T21:32:04.520" Title="Did Bill Gates say 640k ought to be enough for everyone?" Tags="|quotes|computers|bill-gates|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2863" CreationDate="2011-05-05T09:14:42.093" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/01/1484&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;No&lt;/a&gt;, at least not according to &lt;em&gt;Wired&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/19980209165905/http://www.htimes.com/htimes/today/access/oldfiles/gates23.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this feature&lt;/a&gt; on the Huntsville Times (Tennessee) Web site, where you can read Bill Gates' impassioned denial that he ever said anything as potentially unprofitable as the quote attributed to him, and where you can also see just how safe our bet really is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the site, Gates takes questions from kids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;QUESTION: &amp;quot;I read in a newspaper that in 1981 you said '640K of memory should be enough for anybody.' What did you mean when you said this?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ANSWER: &amp;quot;I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="47435" LastEditDate="2021-12-26T21:32:04.520" LastActivityDate="2021-12-26T21:32:04.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2859" CreationDate="2011-05-05T10:36:12.620" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related questions:  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/716/do-those-hologram-bracelets-do-anything-at-all&quot;&gt;Do those hologram bracelets do anything at all?&lt;/a&gt; and also  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/796/has-electromagnetic-therapy-been-proven-effective/&quot;&gt;Has electromagnetic therapy been proven effective?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/ozonegen.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The only FDA approved study that has any claims for the benefits of ions is for the use of air filters&lt;/a&gt;.  Any other claims are beyond the scope of any studies, and rely on the gullibility of customers.  The fact that &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chemistry.anl.gov/oldweb/Science_and_Technology/batteries/challenges.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lithium Ion&lt;/a&gt;&quot; batteries exist may add confusion for the consumers, but is a totally different thing.  There are no credible studies on these bracelets, so you will not find any links backing up their claims.  And see the bolded quote below.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/negative-ions-create-positive-vibes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WebMD article that the company used as a &quot;reference&quot;&lt;/a&gt; again refers to machines that actually expend electricity to generate negative ions in the air.  And as the article itself sates, in relation to relieving depression, or having added benefits against allergies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's too early to tell for sure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, keep in mind that machines are required for this process, not a plastic bracelet with a hologram on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an excellent opportunity to practice grass roots skepticism.  Ask yourself:  By what mechanism is this supposed to work?  How does the proposed mechanism align with what we know about science, biology, physics, etc.?  Also, you may be interested to know that in some countries, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.startribune.com/local/blogs/113017079.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUnciatkEP7DhUsl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Power Balance must state that they have no actual scientific backing for their claims&lt;/a&gt;.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepticbros.com/placebo-bands/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Placebo band&lt;/a&gt; is just as effective, and much cheaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sort of demo was done at the expo?  Was it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Piu75P8sxTo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Applied Kinesiology&lt;/a&gt; by any chance?  That is a well known bit of deliberate deception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quote from the first link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Power Balance bracelets promise to improve balance, strength and flexibility and feature some lofty endorsers: Shaquille O’Neal, Drew Brees and Nicole Branagh, an Olympian from the University of Minnesota. Yet the maker of the $30 bracelets admitted this week that there’s no scientific evidence that the things actually work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The producers of Power Balance bracelets have sold them by the millions around the globe. They adorn the celebrity wrists of Robert de Niro and Kate Middleton, among others. The hologram-embedded rubbery bracelets “work with your body’s natural energy field” in ways similar to “concepts behind many Eastern philosophies,” the Power Balance website explains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These claims got the attention of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which compelled Power Balance to issue a letter that was published in various media outlets Down Under.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims,” the company wrote. “Therefore we engaged in misleading conduct.”&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, while not a strict debunking of the &lt;em&gt;exact&lt;/em&gt; device you link to, I found this interesting write up at JREF.  I think the quackwatch link may provide you with additional information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/910-ow-to-debunk-biomagnet-therapy-in-less-than-a-minute.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Debunk Biomagnet Therapy in Less Than a Minute&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Written by Brandon Peterson&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Wednesday, 17 March 2010 10:32&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I recently had the opportunity to attend The Amaz!ng Adventure 5. While at Grand Turks, our final port, I was wandering through the duty-free shop looking for deals on liquor (Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel for $39!) when I happened upon a tableful of woo. Seeing as I was a medical student on a skeptical cruise, I had to stop and have my wife help make this video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my off-the-cuff video, I didn’t have the opportunity to mention the lack of scientific evidence for their claims. Even if the magnetic field did penetrate the skin, it still would not stimulate blood flow because the amount of iron in blood is far too small. If blood did have a strong magnetic attraction, your body would explode in an MRI (which would be cool, I admit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also didn’t have time to discuss the clinical trials that have been performed to evaluate efficacy. As usual with CAM research, earlier poor quality studies were weakly positive (1,2), while more recent high quality studies and meta-analyses are definitively negative (3,4,5).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also forgot to mention the numerous court rulings in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s against companies making false claims about these products. This issue is discussed extensively on Quackwatch for those interested (6). In a nutshell, companies that fraudulently claimed to treat specific illnesses (arthritis, diabetic neuropathy, migraines, etc.) were sued. Now, they use nebulous phrases such as “support the healing process” or “restore natural energy.” You know, phrases that have not been evaluated by the Federal Drug Administration and are not designed to diagnose, treat or blah blah blah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In short, magnet therapy is a great case study of CAM. The lack of scientific plausibility, the progression of the medical literature, and the FDA Miranda Rights statement are all characteristic of CAM. And if a lowly medical student can debunk it is less than a minute, how good can it really be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Harlow T, Greaves C, White A, et al. Randomised controlled trial of magnetic bracelets for relieving pain in osteoarthritis of the hip and knee.  BMJ 2004; 329:1450-1454&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vallbona C, Hazelwood CF, Jurida G. Response of pain to static magnetic fields in postpolio patients: A double-blind pilot study. Archives of Physical and Rehabilitative Medicine 1997; 78:1200-1203.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Winemiller MH and others. Effect of magnetic vs sham-magnetic insoles on plantar heel pain: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA2003; 290:1474-1478.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pittler MH. Static magnets for reducing pain: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials. CMAJ 2007; 177(7): 736-42.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cepeda MS, Carr DB, Sarquis T, et al.  Static magnetic therapy does not decrease pain or opioid requirements: a randomized double blind trial.   Anesth Analg 2007; 104. 290-294.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Barrett S.  Magnet therapy: a skeptical view.   Accessed March 15, 2010. Available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/QA/magnet.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/QA/magnet.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will note that there are things that electromagnetic fields &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do to the human body.  In particular the neural effects if placed about the head (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;God Helmet&lt;/a&gt;).  However, the main thing to do when dealing with claims like this is to ask yourself:  By what mechanism is this device claiming to work?  How does this align with what we know about biology, chemistry, physics, etc.?  Does the claimant use language that would be high on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;crankpot index&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are starting to see a trend here, that is because there is one.  There is no known mechanism for these things to work, and their claims are well beyond what the science would indicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T11:41:09.820" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2867" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2870" CreationDate="2011-05-05T11:01:02.173" Score="24" ViewCount="2485" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Earth in the famous Pale Blue Dot image (below) is claimed by NASA to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?vev1id=1947&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;0.12 pixel in size&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. How can something be visible on a digital screen which is smaller than a pixel (or sub-pixel, which is still only a third of a pixel)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q6Zl5.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T23:39:44.737" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T23:39:44.737" Title="Is the Pale Blue Dot smaller than a pixel?" Tags="|technology|photography|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1801" CreationDate="2011-05-05T11:29:39.350" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi?id=sc01200l&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Schmidt, Shindell and Harder (2004)&lt;/a&gt; argue that it may be possible to explain the changes Ruddiman was talking about through natural variations (including feedback responses to such variations), and that the data isn't good enough to exclude that possibility. They do not claim to disprove Ruddiman's hypothesis, merely that the evidence isn't strong enough (as at 2004) to accept it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.climate.unibe.ch/~joos/papers/joos04gbc.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joos et. al. (2004)&lt;/a&gt; find that Ruddiman's hypothesis would require a larger decrease in the atmospheric ratio of two (stable) carbon isotopes (13C:12C) than is observed in ice core data (methane has a lower ratio than the atmosphere at large, so large releases of methane would decrease the ratio in the whole atmosphere). They estimate that changes in land use around the time probably caused a 4-6ppm rise in CO2 levels, compared to a Ruddiman's 2003 estimate of 40ppm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpimet.mpg.de/fileadmin/staff/claussenmartin/publications/claussen_al_com-ruddiman_climch_05.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clausen et. al. (2005)&lt;/a&gt; take a rather nuanced view, but, while they have several issues with Ruddiman's hypothesis, and its incompatibility with Joos et. al.'s results, they acknowledge that Ruddiman has a point, and that natural variation isn't sufficient to explain pre-industrial changes observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ecospriv4.epfl.ch/pub/Kaplan_etal_holocene_carbon_emissions_manuscript_2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kaplan et. al. (2010)&lt;/a&gt; pointed out that many lines of evidence suggest that the assumptions of constant land use per capita cannot be supported, and so can revise previous estimates upwards, figuring that anthropogenic emissions contributed a 7ppm rise in CO2 levels by 1000BC, and around 22ppm by 1850AD, and that these were sufficient to alter the climate (but not necessarily enough to prevent an ice age). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2005, Gavin Schmidt (a top climate scientist, and coauthor of one the papers I mentioned earlier) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/02/strange-bedfellows/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;identified the hypothesis&lt;/a&gt; as one causing genuine debate in the scientific community. Meanwhile, Real Climate (a blog coauthored by several top climate scientists, including Schmidt) has offered Ruddiman several opportunities to expound on his hypothesis [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/12/early-anthropocene-hyppothesis/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/04/an-emerging-view-on-early-land-use/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;], most recently less than a month ago, suggesting that they see it as a legitimate question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does seem that pre-industrial human actions &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; sufficient to alter the climate to some extent. Most recent results have suggested that this impact was less than originally estimated by Ruddiman, but sufficient to have a notable impact on the climate. Whether they were enough to prevent an ice age? Probably not, but not out of the question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, Ruddiman does seem to have kicked off a very productive area of enquiry into pre-industrial anthropogenic climate changes. This does seem to be something that more sophisticated modelling and better paleoclimate data will reveal more information on in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="143" LastEditDate="2011-05-05T12:45:07.757" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T12:45:07.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2867" CreationDate="2011-05-05T12:12:10.033" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;The image was taken 4 billion miles from Earth, according to NASA. The camera is a narrow-angle camera, with the following specifications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Narrow-Angle camera optics is a&#xA;  1500mm diameter focal length&#xA;  all-spherical, catadioptric cassegrain&#xA;  telescope (a modified MVM 1973 design)&#xA;  consisting of five elements plus an&#xA;  additional dust lens located between&#xA;  the shutter and the vidicon. The f&#xA;  stop number is 8.5. (VGR ISS&#xA;  Calibration Report, 1978, an internal&#xA;  JPL document available from JPL vellum&#xA;  files). [&lt;a href=&quot;http://pds-rings.seti.org/voyager/iss/inst_cat_na1.html#inst_opt&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the image is not cropped or scaled in any way (325x441 pixels)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4 billion miles away is about 6.44&amp;times;10&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; meters. Now, techically, the 1.5m telescope compared to 6.44&amp;times;10&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; meters is virtually nothing. What we can do is work out what the field of view would be at Earth. Assuming the Earth is truly 0.12 pixels, that would make 0.12 pixels approximately 12,735,000 m, or the entire image about 3.44&amp;times;10&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; meters across. (At the distance of Earth.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At 6.44&amp;times;10&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; meters away, this would make the camera's FOV cos&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;(3.44&amp;times;10&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; / 6.44&amp;times;10&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;), or about 58 degrees. For a narrow angle lens, this sounds about right. Anyone want to verify my trig? I've probably made a mistake somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="1626" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T20:02:09.667" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T20:02:09.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2862" CreationDate="2011-05-05T12:36:39.173" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you read dutch (not needed for the basic graphs):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tweakers.net/reviews/2091/8/intel-320-ssd-meer-voor-minder-prijs-prestatieverhouding.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tweakers.net/reviews/2091/8/intel-320-ssd-meer-voor-minder-prijs-prestatieverhouding.html&lt;/a&gt;. Price (Prijs) / Performance (Prestatie) / Capacity (Capaciteit) benchmarks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tweakers.net/reviews/2091/4/intel-320-ssd-meer-voor-minder-low-level-prestaties.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tweakers.net/reviews/2091/4/intel-320-ssd-meer-voor-minder-low-level-prestaties.html&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Low level performance benchmarks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the benchmarking methodology:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tweakers.net/plan/565/tweakers-punt-net-vernieuwt-testprotocol-voor-ssds.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tweakers.net/plan/565/tweakers-punt-net-vernieuwt-testprotocol-voor-ssds.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google translate should do a reasonable job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2395" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T12:36:39.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2867" CreationDate="2011-05-05T15:17:18.133" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Each pixel records the sum of all the light from the objects that fit within the area covered by that pixel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some small fraction of that area is very bright, then it will contribute more than its fair share to the sum of the light covered by that pixel and make the whole pixel appear brighter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way, a small item 0.12 of a pixel across can make the whole pixel be bright - but not as bright as if it took up the whole area covered by the pixel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I am going to be pinged for not providing references again, but this just comes from an understanding of digital photography.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T15:17:18.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2851" CreationDate="2011-05-05T15:41:32.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20439-osama-bin-laden-how-dna-identified-his-body.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NewScientist&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using DNA from many half-siblings&#xA;  could produce a DNA match of greater&#xA;  than 90 per cent confidence, but it&#xA;  would be difficult to get as high as&#xA;  99.9 per cent without a closer relative&lt;/strong&gt; says &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsc.unt.edu/departments/Forensics/faculty.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rhonda Roby&lt;/a&gt;, a forensic&#xA;  geneticist at the University of North&#xA;  Texas Health Science Center, Fort&#xA;  Worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Roby, who led the team using DNA&#xA;  evidence to identify the remains of&#xA;  people killed in the 9/11 attacks in&#xA;  2001, says that the statistical&#xA;  analysis based on &lt;strong&gt;DNA from&#xA;  half-siblings is more complex and less&#xA;  reliable than analysis based on DNA&#xA;  from a closer relative like a parent&#xA;  or child.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/02/us-obama-binladen-son-idUSTRE7410T520110502&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; that one of bin Laden's sons was also killed in the raid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Roby says &lt;strong&gt;DNA from a son and several&#xA;  half-siblings could confirm Osama's&#xA;  identity with 99.9 per cent accuracy.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If, however, the government was able&#xA;  to obtain &lt;strong&gt;DNA from bin Laden's body,&#xA;  his son and also that son's biological&#xA;  mother&lt;/strong&gt; – who might have been at the&#xA;  compound during the raid, it &lt;strong&gt;could&#xA;  perform DNA profiling with a &quot;full&#xA;  paternity trio&quot;, assuring 99.9 per&#xA;  cent accuracy&lt;/strong&gt;, Roby says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/osama-bin-laden-relatives-dna-matching-technique-reliable/story?id=13510123&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ABC&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DNA collected from bin Laden's body&#xA;  Sunday was compared to DNA from&#xA;  multiple relatives&lt;/strong&gt;, a U.S.&#xA;  intelligence official told ABC News.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The U.S. is believed to have collected&#xA;  DNA samples from bin Laden family&#xA;  members in the years since the 9/11&#xA;  attacks&lt;/strong&gt; that triggered the U.S.-led&#xA;  invasion of Afghanistan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/science/03dna.html?_r=1&amp;amp;partner=rss&amp;amp;emc=rss&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt; says the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Officials said they collected multiple&#xA;  DNA samples from Bin Laden’s relatives&#xA;  in the years since the Sept. 11&#xA;  attacks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bin Laden did not have any full siblings. He did have more than 50 half-siblings, some of whom have close ties to the United States and had long ago distanced themselves from him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Christie Wilcox&lt;/strong&gt; explains in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=how-do-you-id-a-dead-osama-anyway-2011-05-02&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scientific American article&lt;/a&gt; how the get a &lt;strong&gt;DNA fingerprint&lt;/strong&gt; and that nowadays it takes only a few hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T15:41:32.977" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2862" CreationDate="2011-05-05T16:22:55.787" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tomshardware.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tom's Hardware&lt;/a&gt; has some excellent articles about storage device performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-array-hard-drive,2775.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Do SSDs Redefine Storage Performance?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To repost some of the conclusion here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As expected, the two SSDs in RAID 0 had an easy time outclassing an array of up to eight 3.5” SAS hard drives that spin at 15 000 RPM. &lt;strong&gt;The SSDs are better in almost every benchmark with the exception of throughput&lt;/strong&gt;, which typically scales nicely with the number of drives used. This is where the hard drives won through sheer force of numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to note that there are faster and somewhat more efficient hard drives available, which would have shifted the results a bit in favor of the hard drive arrays. Yet, &lt;strong&gt;the differences we see are significant enough to be sure that whatever you tweak on the hard drive side still cannot beat a fast and efficient SSD array&lt;/strong&gt;. Also, we had to use the 15K RPM Fujitsu drives because no hard drive maker wanted to provide drives once we told them what we were planning. This alone should speak volumes. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to comments: Whether investing in SSD makes sense for your situation is, well, situational. If you are primarily performing calculations on small datasets, obviously parallel processing would benefit far more than storage improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically if your requirements involve data access being a key factor to evaluating performance, such as database applications, file server, etc. then SSD will prove to be a more worthwhile investment. If your needs are more consumer-based such as internet surfing or gaming, then improved boot and loading times for game data will probably be less valuable than faster broadband or graphics processing power, respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost/benefit analysis of an SSD upgrade is very dependent upon the composition of your computer hardware and the expectations and demands. If you have a relatively new Windows 7 computer but for some reason only have 2GB of RAM, then you'll likely have better performance from a $50 RAM upgrade than a $300 SSD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T21:20:06.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2879" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2880" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:24:09.297" Score="16" ViewCount="19530" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a US restaurant chain called Chick-Fil-A and their motto is &quot;We didn't invent the chicken, just the chicken sandwich&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you dig deeper you find that they claim that what they really mean is that the founder, Truett Cathy, was the first person to sell a chicken sandwich in 1940s at a pre Chick-Fil-A restaurant he owned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any documented food history that can prove this claim is not true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2418" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-10-24T23:01:53.303" LastActivityDate="2019-05-01T00:54:06.587" Title="Who invented the chicken sandwich?" Tags="|nutrition|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2879" CreationDate="2011-05-05T19:47:18.573" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certainly not Chick-Fil-A:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sandwich, in its basic form, slices of meat, cheese, or other food placed between two slices of bread. Although this mode of consumption must be as old as meat and bread, the name was adopted only in the 18th century for John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who had sliced meat and bread brought to him at the gaming table so that he could continue to play as he ate. His title lent the preparation cachet, and soon it was fashionable to serve sandwiches on the European continent, and the word was incorporated into the French language.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.britannica.com/topic/sandwich&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandwich&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sandwich&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oxford Dictionaries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a curiosity, the Bible cites something similar to a lamb sandwich in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Numbers+9-11&amp;amp;version=KJV&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Numbers 9:11&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fourteenth day of the second month at even they shall keep it, and eat it [lamb] with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Google Books, the &lt;del&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=7vcZAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;dq=%22chicken%20sandwich%22&amp;amp;pg=RA7-PA25#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22chicken%20sandwich%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;first mention&lt;/a&gt; I can find of a &quot;chicken sandwich&quot; is dated 1827:&lt;/del&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google was wrong, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=v8tuHBLJlyMC&amp;amp;dq=%22chicken%20sandwich%22&amp;amp;pg=PA14#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22chicken%20sandwich%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;earliest I can find is dated 1841&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] and who, having refreshed her guest firstly with a glass of soda water fresh from the ice basket, and finally with a most unexceptionable cup of coffee and &lt;strong&gt;chicken sandwich&lt;/strong&gt;, considerately left her to the repose which a delicious couh under a waving punkah, steadily pulled during the night, irresistibly invited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=chicken+sandwich&amp;amp;year_start=1800&amp;amp;year_end=2000&amp;amp;corpus=0&amp;amp;smoothing=3&amp;amp;direct_url=t1%3B%2Cchicken%20sandwich%3B%2Cc0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the relative NGram&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-05-01T00:54:06.587" LastActivityDate="2019-05-01T00:54:06.587" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2884" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2885" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:35:36.207" Score="21" ViewCount="12324" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a friend, who adamantly believes that water calcification causes a number of problems, including poor health. He also said it made the water taste disgusting. He had recently installed a demagnetiser (or whatever it is - some kind of quack device) which is supposed to filter out the calcium by magnetically attracting it. Ignoring for now the fact that calcium isn't magnetic, of course, and magnets wouldn't have any effect. Let's presume the magic device &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; actually filter out calcium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't want to tell him he had been take for a ride (he paid about £200 for the unit), but I did agree to a taste test. I couldn't taste a difference between the uncalcified and calcified water. I've always drunk straight from the tap, with no ill effects so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What evidence is there that this water calcification, a) contributes to poor health, and/or b) makes tap water taste bad (apparently.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:32:59.563" LastActivityDate="2017-10-22T14:46:15.800" Title="Is water calcification bad for your health?" Tags="|environmental-health|chemistry|water|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2884" CreationDate="2011-05-05T20:57:18.960" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;What makes water hard is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_carbonate&quot;&gt;calcium carbonate (limescale)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only it is not unhealthy, but it is also prescribed as an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a601032.html&quot;&gt;antacid&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The myth that hard water favours kidney stones has been disproved by a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11465241&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt;, which has actually found that the opposite is true: a calcium-carbonate-poor diet increases the risk of kidney stones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A slightly lower dietary calcium intake (683 versus 711 mg/day, P = 0.04) was noted in case subjects versus control subjects, but interpretation was confounded by the study of prevalent rather than incident cases. Supplemental calcium intake &gt;500 mg/day was inversely associated with stone occurrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T20:57:18.960" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2886" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2890" CreationDate="2011-05-05T22:11:13.233" Score="7" ViewCount="1328" Body="&lt;p&gt;Went to Bestbuy. Bought an awesome tv... then the bestbuy rep tells you that the best of the best is the &quot;Monster Cable&quot; HDMI to connect the TV to my peripherals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a cable genius... but it seemed to me that buying an uber $$$ HDMI cable wasn't worth it. Did I make a good decision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2426" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T13:09:33.467" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T13:09:33.467" Title="New LED TV - Need Monster Cable HDMI for $$$ or do regular HDMI work just as well?" Tags="|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2888" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2889" CreationDate="2011-05-05T22:07:54.640" Score="23" ViewCount="1169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just attended a local technical conference and there was a robot roaming the building, talking to people.  His name was Sprockit, and he was talking with people.  He saw a guy and said &quot;Hey dude, good to see you again&quot; and the guy replied in a manner that implied that they had already talked.  At one point Sprockit said &quot;you're pulling my leg,&quot; the guy replied &quot;you don't have legs&quot; (he was on wheels), and he replied &quot;well, you're pulling my leg anyway.&quot;  I also talked with him, asked to shake hands (which we did), discussed seeing things at the conference, and I said something about him having good AI software, which he agreed with.  His responses were quick and sounded natural, he was responding to sound and movement, and able to carry one a conversation in a crowd with a lot of ambient noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OXB4S.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sprockit the robot&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Image courtesy of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=133442173345716&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sprockit facebook page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My co-workers have all been asking where the person behind the curtain was.  He certainly seemed too good to be an AI, but if he was controlled remotely, they had good microphones and cameras to pick up conversations with the crowd.  Does anyone know if he is a real AI or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I was looking for technical information, perferably from someone who had worked with it.  Thus, it was originally asked in the Programmer's forum.  Apparently some there thought that a guessed answer was what I was looking for.  Even if there is no AI, it is still impressive software and hardware, because there has to be a fast wireless communication with the controller, stereo sound, cameras, and controllers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2464" OwnerDisplayName="thursdaysgeek" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-07T10:27:31.297" LastActivityDate="2023-07-23T00:12:16.373" Title="Is Sprockit the robot an AI or a fake?" Tags="|computers|technology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2888" CreationDate="2011-05-05T22:54:55.957" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are only two things I can find out definitively:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The robot's name is &lt;strong&gt;Sprockit&lt;/strong&gt; or sometimes &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Sprockit D. Robot&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It appears to basically be a &lt;strong&gt;for-hire event novelty gimmick.&lt;/strong&gt; (For example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://washingtontalent.com/corporate-novelties/sporockit-the-interactive-robot.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SPROCKIT the Robot at the Washington Talent Agency&lt;/a&gt;, as well as many event information dockets, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://education.jsc.nasa.gov/war/archive/war_roll_up.cfm?date=20110216&amp;amp;type=week&amp;amp;yr=2011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Appeared on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSpppRPQEFY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Regis &amp;amp; Kelly&lt;/a&gt; (calls the hosts by name without introduction)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It appears to have been made by Lockheed Martin (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usasciencefestival.org/partnerportal/exhibit-page-newsearch.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://greaterjacksonbusiness.com/2011/02/%E2%80%9Clive-connected%E2%80%9D-at-lockheed-martin%E2%80%99s-third-annual-jackson-it-day/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source 2&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sprockit-The-Robot/133431486680118?sk=info&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Facebook page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is advertised in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qebnnH2KrlA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this YouTube video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The purpose is very clearly &amp;quot;entertainment&amp;quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Watching the videos, you see that the voice is very human-like and the behavior is somewhat comical.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As an event novelty gimmick, the investment needed to develop such an &amp;quot;advanced&amp;quot; AI would be unlikely to pay off.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the forums it is used in (kids' science fairs, parties, business conferences), even a real AI would likely be less impressive to that audience than a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mechanical Turk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1073" OwnerDisplayName="Renesis" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2023-07-23T00:12:16.373" LastActivityDate="2023-07-23T00:12:16.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2886" CreationDate="2011-05-05T23:11:31.457" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Popular Mechanics did a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/tests/4235717&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;shootout&lt;/a&gt; where none of their staff could pick the difference between any of the cables used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choice, a respected Australian consumer reviews organisation, did an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.choice.com.au/reviews-and-tests/technology/home-entertainment/accessories/digital-av-cables-rip-off.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HDMI cable comparison&lt;/a&gt;, slamming the expensive ones as rip-offs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is dearer better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Our testing found no statistically significant variations in score either for picture or sound. Although the results were slightly in favour of the more expensive brand for longer lengths, the differences were not enough to conclude any brand delivers a significantly better result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless you need a shielded cable (you're running it in your wall cavity near AC power, or for runs of 50+ feet) the generic cable will perform identically to an expensive one (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For longer cables over 10 metres, differences in performance may possibly be an issue if there is significant interference between the video source and display, but we did not find any difference until lengths were combined to form lengths &lt;strong&gt;more than 33 metres&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T23:11:31.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2891" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2895" CreationDate="2011-05-05T23:19:13.090" Score="13" ViewCount="483" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it mentioned in the media in different forms, the Amazon is being cleared at a phenomenal rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any factual evidence to support this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/news/features/amazon-destruction/&quot;&gt;an article from Greenpeace&lt;/a&gt;'s website from 2005 which claims the rate is 6 football fields a minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T00:13:47.247" Title="Is the Amazon being cleared at the rate of X football fields a minute?" Tags="|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2863" CreationDate="2011-05-05T23:27:36.940" Score="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bill Gates himself addressed this in 1996 in a column he wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've said some stupid things and some&#xA;  wrong things, but not that. No one&#xA;  involved in computers would ever say&#xA;  that a certain amount of memory is&#xA;  enough for all time … I keep bumping&#xA;  into that silly quotation attributed&#xA;  to me that says 640K of memory is&#xA;  enough. There's never a citation; the&#xA;  quotation just floats like a rumor,&#xA;  repeated again and again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpt from: &lt;em&gt;CAREER OPPORTUNITIES IN COMPUTING -- AND MORE&lt;/em&gt;, New York Times Syndicate, 1996 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He actually &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usnews.com/usnews/biztech/gatesivu.htm&quot;&gt;addressed it again&lt;/a&gt; in 2001:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you realize the pain the industry went through while the IBM PC was limited to 640K? The machine was going to be 512K at one point, and we kept pushing it up. I never said that statement — I said the opposite of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastActivityDate="2011-05-05T23:27:36.940" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2891" CreationDate="2011-05-06T00:13:47.247" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/amazon-rainforest-clearing-rate-falls/story-e6frg6u6-1111114183982&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; cites the Brazilian environment ministry figure of 14,000 square kilometres of forest felled from Aug 05 to July 06. If a football field is 50x100m (0.005 square kilometres), that's roughly 2.8 million football fields at rate of ~5.32 per minute. I'd say their claim is a fair one, based on the round number provided by the ministry, my lack of a specific date range and the variability in size of football pitches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, Brazil has made significant reductions in their clearing activities in recent years, and 6 football fields per minute is likely not the current rate. &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.mongabay.com/2010/1006-fao_forest_cover.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This 2010 Mongabay article&lt;/a&gt; claims that declines in annual worldwide totals for land clearing are primarily due to the reductions made by Brazil. (Emphasis below is mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FAO figures show deforestation across 121 tropical countries averaged 9.34 million hectares per year between 2000 and 2010, down from 11.33 million hectares per year in the 1990s. &lt;strong&gt;The decline has accelerated since 2005 due Brazil's dramatic reduction of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon&lt;/strong&gt;, which peaked at 27,772 square kilometers in 2004 but is expected to come in at less than 8,000 for 2010. &#xA;  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KGZSb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T00:13:47.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2849" CreationDate="2011-05-06T00:43:18.830" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of possibilities for ways that speaker wire could affect sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Larger wire will reduce DC resistance. Larger wire that isn't stranded will increase inductance, which will lead to increased impedance at higher frequencies. The insulation used will affect the capacitance between the wires. The construction of the cable (e.g., straight zip wire versus twisted or braided wires) will affect the degree to which outside electrical signals will induce a signal in the wire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get at least &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; idea of how much affect these factors could have, ran a few signals through some wire, and into the oscilloscope. The first piece of wire was a fairly normal 6 foot (or so) zip cord -- a bit heavier than many (16 gauge) but nothing terribly special. [Edit: Here's a picture: ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CwSGO.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second was a piece of &amp;quot;special&amp;quot; speaker wire the store threw in when I bought an amplifier many years ago. If memory serves, it's called Kimber cable. It has 8 separate wires (4 of each color) that look like they're probably around 20 gauge each, all braided together:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Psi8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then took the 1 KHz square wave signal my oscilloscope supplies for calibrating, ran it through each piece of wire, and captured the result:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hs0Md.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The upper trace went through the Kimber cable, the lower through the zip cord. As is pretty easily visible, there's clearly more noise present on the signal that went through the zip cord.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I should point out that this is only a 400 mV signal, and the noise on it is peaking at about 150 mV. That means the &lt;em&gt;power&lt;/em&gt; it represents is quite small: P = E&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;/R, and it's driving a 10 megohm oscilloscope input, giving roughly 2 1/4 nanowatts. If, for example, you were listening to music using an average of 1 watt, that would be a noise level around 86 dB down. Caveat: this is measuring well up into the radio frequency range, so a loudspeaker may not be able to reproduce all the noise being measured here -- but most of it is almost certainly at 60 Hz, which most loudspeakers can reproduce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH, this is noise induced &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the amplifier, so it will remain nearly constant regardless of how loudly or softly you have the volume set. I'd have some serious doubts about being able to hear noise that's 86 dB down from the signal, but if you turn the volume down a lot, this would remain (at least close to) constant, and I can believe that it &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; start to become audible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, here's a picture from just touching the scope probe with my finger, but not the ground:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0hiJB.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic sine wave is at 60 Hz, and the &amp;quot;roughness&amp;quot; of it represents the signals at other frequencies. Obviously, the vast majority is at 60 Hz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also did a trace of the 1 KHz square wave going directly from the test output to the 'scope's probe. Here it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RINF9.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least offhand, I can't see enough difference between the direction connection and the Kimber cable to claim I'm measuring any difference at all. Perhaps tests at higher frequencies or using different signals, etc. would show &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; difference, but at least based on what I've seen in this test, I can't claim to measure anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Tentative Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between zip cord and &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; speaker wire is measurable, and right at the point that it's difficult to say with certainty whether it's really audible or not. The &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; speaker wire I used, however, is passing the signal through cleanly enough that I'm &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; doubtful that anything else &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; pass the signal much more cleanly (though perhaps a lot longer cable would degrade the signal enough to leave room for something else to be better). I don't know what the Kimber cable cost, but since they threw it in with an amplifier that cost something like $600 (IIRC) I'd be &lt;em&gt;quite&lt;/em&gt; surprised if it was more than $15-20 or so -- certainly not even close to thousands of dollars in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, the scope is a Tektronix 7854, and I used a 7A26 vertical input amplifier and 7B85 horizontal unit. Realistically, the 'scope probably doesn't make much difference though. It would be a lot harder to duplicate the exact wire I used -- I can't find a brand marking on it; all it says is 60&lt;sup&gt;o&lt;/sup&gt;, UL/CSA approved, 16 AWG. For that matter, the room your stereo is in probably won't have &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; the same level of RFI as my office -- but I don't have any particular reason to believe my office is particularly above or below average either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user2046" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T13:33:40.427" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2902" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3352" CreationDate="2011-05-06T02:35:25.213" Score="37" ViewCount="19082" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is obviously related to a few answered questions already here, namely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/404/does-watching-television-damage-the-eyes&quot;&gt;Does watching television damage the eyes?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1092/is-it-harmful-to-your-eyes-to-read-in-dim-light&quot;&gt;Is it harmful to your eyes to read in dim light?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the following question is more specific, and doesn't seem to be answered: &lt;strong&gt;Does watching television in the dark hurt your eyes?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the answers to those questions suggests that watching television at night probably does not permanently harm eyesight, I ask because an optometrist recently mentioned in passing that watching television in the dark does harm eyesight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T09:17:49.920" Title="Is watching television in the dark harmful to your eyes?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|ophthalmology|television|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2903" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2905" CreationDate="2011-05-06T02:41:53.160" Score="29" ViewCount="4270" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditional folklore suggests women have a higher pain tolerance than men. I have seen a few sites suggesting otherwise. Naturally, plenty of anecdotal accounts of wussy men or women get tossed around whenever the subject is brought up which makes it a little difficult to sift through the crap. Does either sex have a higher pain tolerance than the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-27T11:08:13.563" LastActivityDate="2017-07-07T12:58:48.617" Title="Do either men or women have higher pain tolerance than the other?" Tags="|physiology|gender|pain|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2904" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-06T03:46:01.953" Score="94" ViewCount="19556" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question has probably been asked by almost everyone at some point in their lives. But the answers we receive vary from &quot;it is very good&quot; to &quot;it is very bad&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand that becoming obsessive about it is bad (in fact becoming obsessive about anything is bad). But this seems a psychological effect, not one that brings actual physical harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any definite evidence to say that it is good or bad ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By bad, I mean do we see any definite physical effects like impotency, nerve weakness (some people say your nerves weaken), etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2434" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditorDisplayName="user288" LastEditDate="2015-10-26T10:40:22.300" LastActivityDate="2021-08-13T20:40:08.263" Title="Is masturbation bad for one's health?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|masturbation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2903" CreationDate="2011-05-06T05:35:29.913" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/content/65/2/284.full&quot;&gt;test by Psychosomatic Medicine journal&lt;/a&gt; (2003), men on average have higher pain tolerance and pain threshold than women. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;METHODS&lt;/strong&gt;: To examine the influence of&#xA;  motivation on perceptual and&#xA;  cardiovascular responses to pain among&#xA;  women and men, different levels of&#xA;  monetary incentive (high vs. low&#xA;  incentive) were provided to a group of&#xA;  81 healthy young adults undergoing the&#xA;  cold pressor pain procedure. It was&#xA;  anticipated that men would have&#xA;  greater endogenous motivation and&#xA;  would therefore be less affected by&#xA;  the external incentive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RESULTS&lt;/strong&gt;: Men had higher pain&#xA;  thresholds and tolerances and lower&#xA;  pain ratings than women, but the&#xA;  incentive condition produced no&#xA;  significant effect on pain responses.&#xA;  Resting blood pressure was positively&#xA;  correlated with pain tolerance among&#xA;  the low incentive group, whereas blood&#xA;  pressure reactivity to the cold&#xA;  pressor predicted pain tolerance in&#xA;  the high incentive group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user288" LastEditorDisplayName="user288" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T05:54:04.787" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T05:54:04.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2667" CreationDate="2011-05-06T05:36:41.550" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although there is no evidence for cooling, there is evidence that the rate of warming slowed down during this time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human activity emits both greenhouse gases and aerosols (solid particles that float). Whereas greenhouse gases have a warming effect, aerosols can have a cooling effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cooling effect of aerosols can be caused both by direct interception of sunlight by the particles and by the increase in cloud cover caused by the fact that aerosols serve as cloud  condensation nuclei. See figure below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Around 1970, it was not clear if the cooling effect of aerosols or the warming effect of CO2 would have a greater effect on global climate (Rasool and Schneider, 1971)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the past few decades, in part due to the clean air act, the ratio of aerosols to CO2 has declined due to the use of cleaner burning fuels, more efficient combustion, and the removal of both gaseous and particulate pollutants from exhaust. Furthermore, aerosols, SOx, and NOx do not remain in the atmosphere as long as CO2. During this time, the warming effect of CO2 has overwhelmed the cooling effect of aerosols. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, there is no evidence that the mean global temperature was decreasing from the 1940's to the 1970's, only that the rate of warming was stalled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All info, and figure below from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IPCC Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis&lt;/a&gt;, in particular &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch9s9-es.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;chapter 9&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bQ2yt.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rasool, S.I. and  S.H. Schneider, 1971. Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate. Science 173 (3992): 138.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="238" LastEditorUserId="238" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T05:54:58.487" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T05:54:58.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2903" CreationDate="2011-05-06T05:37:21.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is a difference in pain perception. To be precise though, the way someone tolerates pain is up to the individual to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citation: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21147542&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21147542&lt;/a&gt; (Sex, gender, coping, and self-efficacy: Mediation of sex differences in pain perception in children and adolescents.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2436" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T05:37:21.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2909" CreationDate="2011-05-06T07:01:23.013" Score="12" ViewCount="2253" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is claimed that New Coke was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke#Conspiracy_theories&quot;&gt;conspiracy to boost sales&lt;/a&gt; of Classic Coke. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The company intentionally changed the formula, hoping consumers would be upset with the company, and demand the original formula to return, which in turn would cause sales to spike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T07:51:39.713" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T06:59:42.157" Title="New Coke was a conspiracy to boost sales of Classic Coke" Tags="|marketing|drink|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2908" CreationDate="2011-05-06T07:48:57.673" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Snopes debunked it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/newcoke.asp&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/newcoke.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: Sales of Coke was waning, and Pepsi was winning. So Coca Cola changed the recipe to be more like Pepsi and made a big campaign about the new recipe. This got people upset, as they felt it violated something that was an integral part of being American. People therefore demanded the old Coke back, which they got after a couple of months. The whole debacle made people who felt American switch from Pepsi to Coke, and boosted Coke sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conspiracy is that all of this was &lt;em&gt;intentional&lt;/em&gt; from Coca Colas side, which of course is completely ridiculous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010tbnd&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010tbnd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="80" LastEditDate="2011-05-13T06:59:42.157" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T06:59:42.157" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2910" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3109" CreationDate="2011-05-06T10:45:02.697" Score="16" ViewCount="5458" Body="&lt;p&gt;We obtain a great deal of data about trends in sensitive and personal topics through anonymous surveys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in a science writing class I'm taking, the professor showed us results from an anonymous survey taken by undergraduate students.  The survey showed the prevalence of various forms of academic dishonesty.  (I didn't copy down the reference, but I can get it if it's important to be specific here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The assumption here is that anonymity makes participants more likely to respond honestly. This &lt;em&gt;sounds&lt;/em&gt; plausible - it's the old &quot;strangers on a train sharing secrets&quot; story. But is it actually a valid assumption?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How honest are people's responses to anonymous surveys?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What sorts of studies are done to examine the honesty of these surveys?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2440" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T02:09:04.443" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T07:00:34.407" Title="Are people more likely to give honest responses to surveys when anonymous?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2904" CreationDate="2011-05-06T11:13:27.710" Score="86" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Masturbation is in NO way bad for your health.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just keep in mind...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Masturbation is very safe -- but not entirely safe.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But masturbation safety isn't&#xA;  guaranteed. &quot;Masturbation is just&#xA;  about the safest sex there is,&quot; says&#xA;  Cornog. &quot;But the laws of physics and&#xA;  biology don't stop operating just&#xA;  because someone is masturbating.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In certain extremely rare instances,&#xA;  masturbation and partner sex alike can&#xA;  cause penile fracture, which is a medical&#xA;  emergency that often necessitates&#xA;  surgery - &lt;a href=&quot;http://men.webmd.com/features/masturbation-5-things-you-didnt-know&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;General Health Benefits&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Muscle relaxation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Helps you to fall asleep&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Promotes release of the brain’s opioid-like neurotransmitters (endorphins), which cause feelings of physical and mental well being.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Reduces stress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Enhances Self-Esteem&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Masturbation?open&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bonus Health Benefits for Females&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Building resistance to yeast infections.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Combating pre-menstrual tension and other physical conditions associated menstrual cycles, like cramps.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Relieving painful menstruation by increasing blood flow to the pelvic region. This will also reduce pelvic cramping and related backaches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Masturbation is associated with improved cardiovascular health and lower risk of type-2 diabetes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prostate Cancer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some interesting research...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whereas frequent overall sexual&#xA;  activity in younger life (20s)&#xA;  increased the disease risk, it&#xA;  appeared to be protective against the&#xA;  disease when older (50s). Alone,&#xA;  frequent masturbation activity was a&#xA;  marker for increased risk in the 20s&#xA;  and 30s but appeared to be associated&#xA;  with a decreased risk in the 50s,&#xA;  while intercourse activity alone was&#xA;  not associated with the disease. -&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1464-410X.2008.08030.x/full&quot;&gt;Sexual activity and prostate cancer&#xA;  risk in men diagnosed at a younger&#xA;  age&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The researchers theorize that it may&#xA;  not be the masturbation itself which&#xA;  is increasing risk of prostate cancer&#xA;  in men who masturbate frequently in&#xA;  their 20s and 30s. Men who masturbate&#xA;  more may do so because they have high&#xA;  levels of male sex hormones -- and&#xA;  young men genetically predisposed to&#xA;  have hormone-sensitive prostate cancer&#xA;  will be at higher risk if they have&#xA;  more male hormones. In men over age&#xA;  50, the researchers theorize, frequent&#xA;  masturbation helps drain the prostate&#xA;  of fluids that may contain&#xA;  cancer-causing substances.. -&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://men.webmd.com/features/masturbation-5-things-you-didnt-know?page=2&quot;&gt;WebMD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Bottom Line...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Masturbation is in &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt; way bad for your health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;Sources...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,401722,00.html&quot;&gt;FOXSexpert: The Health Benefits of Masturbation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2372/is_3_41/ai_n6232414/?tag=mantle_skin;content&quot;&gt;The decloseting of masturbation ?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/Masturbation?open&quot;&gt;Masturbation - Better Health Channel: Victorian Department of Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://men.webmd.com/features/masturbation-5-things-you-didnt-know&quot;&gt;Masturbation: 5 Things You Didn't Know&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.womentowomen.com/sexualityandfertility/healthbenefitsofmasturbation.aspx&quot;&gt;Health benefits of self cultivation&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-04T07:53:27.523" LastActivityDate="2013-05-04T07:53:27.523" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2847" CreationDate="2011-05-06T13:59:25.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to know for sure because relevant research is classified. &#xA;On April 28, 1997 the US Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.defense.gov/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=674&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claimed&lt;/a&gt; in a DoD News Briefing that there are attempts to develop such weapons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Others are engaging even in an eco-&#xA;  type of terrorism whereby they can&#xA;  alter the climate, set off&#xA;  earthquakes, volcanoes remotely&#xA;  through the use of electromagnetic&#xA;  waves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T13:59:25.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2921" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4288" CreationDate="2011-05-06T16:28:39.953" Score="7" ViewCount="7476" Body="&lt;p&gt;Zerona is a laser based non-invasive procedure that claims to reduce fat in targeted areas.  They also appear to be FDA approved.  However, I have seen claims that the FDA approval is not based on any efficacy testing, merely safety.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the commonly stated claim is that the treatment can remove up to &quot;7 inches&quot;. However, this is a total reduction in at least four circumferential measurements around your body, which is a very vague and mutable standard, which is subject to a LOT of variables.  Further more, the treatment requires you to stay on specific dietary standards, take a supplement, and drink 64 oz of water a day for it's duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is enough here to be skeptical of it, but I have not heard much outcry against it, so I'm wondering if there IS any evidence it works, despite my reservations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1617" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T00:44:37.710" Title="Do Zerona laser treatments have any effect on fat reduction?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|surgery|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2922" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2924" CreationDate="2011-05-06T18:17:56.370" Score="8" ViewCount="410" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard the claim that all HIV tests are exclusively based on identification via antibodies. Supposedly, no HIV test that's used on patients works via sequencing the RNA of the virus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any AIDS test use RNA sequencing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the criteria for existence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The HIV-test is either described in detail in a academic paper by a group that used the test on multiple patients. The test finds HIV in the patients that should have HIV. It doesn't find HIV in patients that shouldn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively there could commercial vendor that sells the test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T13:45:43.670" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T07:59:51.387" Title="Are all HIV tests based on antibody analysis?" Tags="|medical-science|hiv-aids|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2867" CreationDate="2011-05-06T18:24:57.217" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can we take an image of something that is less than 1 pixel ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Because telescopes (optical systems) record images of energy functions not objects.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Telescopes, image sensors, and the human eye sense photons at various energy levels. If the photon is within the device's detectable frequency/energy range it will be recorded. The size of the object that produced the photon is immaterial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take my user icon for example...&#xA;It is an image of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/rmayhew/5275574073/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jellyfish Nebula&lt;/a&gt; taken on a 0.37m (14.5&quot;) Ritchey-Chrétien with a monochrome 4096 x 4096 CCD. The width of the nebula here is ~50 light-years and it is 5,000 light-years from Earth. The angular diameter of the full-moon is ~32.0 arcminutes. This image is 37.8 arcminutes square and is a combined average of eight 20 minute exposures. The Voyager image is a combination of three exposures (I could not find the details on durations). Given the scale and exposure details, consider the size of stars in the image and detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WpttS.png&quot; alt=&quot;IC443 Pair&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Voyager's point of view consider Earth as one of the stars in the image...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A] star’s image is not a point, but&#xA;  is the point spread function of the&#xA;  lens viewing it. This function will&#xA;  depend on the diffraction limit of the&#xA;  aperture, and the aberrations of the&#xA;  optics, but usually has most of the&#xA;  energy localized at the center and&#xA;  then trailing “skirts” farther away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PATOn.png&quot; alt=&quot;Point Spread Function&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we are recording an object with a &quot;perfect&quot; detector then our image would be identical to the original point of light. So if the relative intensity of this point of light were plotted as a function of distance, on the detector surface, such a plot would look like the dashed, vertical, green line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But none of our detectors are perfect so the relative intensity of the point of light is distributed across the detector as shown by the red curve. This curve is called the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_spread_function&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;point spread function&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (PSF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The behavior of film is to convert to&#xA;  metallic silver those areas that are&#xA;  exposed with enough energy to exceed a&#xA;  certain threshold level. Because of&#xA;  this, brighter stars, having a higher&#xA;  amplitude point spread function, will&#xA;  make a larger recorded spot. The&#xA;  relationship is not proportional, but&#xA;  depends on the details of the point&#xA;  spread function of the system, and the&#xA;  energy threshold of the film.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...or detector of your choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Bottom Line...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Given position of Voyager, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/instruments_iss_na.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;instrument&lt;/a&gt; used and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/1626/thomas-o&quot;&gt;Thomas O's&lt;/a&gt; math (brilliant btw), the &quot;image scale&quot; size of Earth is indeed ~0.12 pixels.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; Quoted Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nightscapes.net/techniques/TechnicalPapers/StarColors.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Colors of the Stars&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T18:24:57.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2922" CreationDate="2011-05-06T18:41:30.147" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can detect any RNA by transcribing it to DNA using a reverse transcriptase enzyme and subsequently performing a PCR reaction (polymerase chain reaction) to amplify this DNA. This is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_transcription_polymerase_chain_reaction&quot;&gt;reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are very basic techniques that are known for quite a while now and there is no reason why they should not work on HIV. And PCR-based tests are in fact used to measure the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_load&quot;&gt;viral load&lt;/a&gt;, basically the amount of viruses in your blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example of this kind of test is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/BloodBloodProducts/ApprovedProducts/PremarketApprovalsPMAs/ucm091626.htm&quot;&gt;Roche Amplicor HIV-1 Monitor Test&lt;/a&gt;, FDA-approved in 1999:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The  AMPLICOR  HIV-1  MONITOR’”  Test &#xA;  is  an  in  vitro  nucleic  acid &#xA;  amplification  test  for  the&#xA;  quantitation  of  Human &#xA;  lmmunodeficiency  Virus  Type  1 &#xA;  (HIV-l)  RNA  in  human  plasma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also buy an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maximbio.com/Datasheet/newHIV-M050G-2X.pdf&quot;&gt;MPCR Kit for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) Type I/II&lt;/a&gt; to perform a multiplex PCR and detect various HIV genes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T18:50:14.970" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T18:50:14.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2925" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2996" CreationDate="2011-05-06T18:46:21.573" Score="7" ViewCount="579" Body="&lt;p&gt;...other than to make you spend more money, of course. Do oxygen free (99.999% or sometimes even more) cables have any plausible effect on an audio system? What about video systems, and even digital systems (by some miracle?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="1626" LastEditDate="2011-05-06T18:58:58.817" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T10:46:15.250" Title="Is there any reason behind oxygen-free cables?" Tags="|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-06T19:01:52.663" Score="28" ViewCount="3224" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of years ago, at a party, I was invited to partake in some hookah smoking by some friends.  Going by memory, I remember the hookah being a ornate metal contraption that somehow &quot;filtered&quot; the smoke produced by burning the product.  Hookah at that time was pretty active at my college, to the point IIRC people would openly smoke it in the inner quad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/K6Tkn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;hookah&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Image courtesy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Syriancafe.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikimedia Commons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, to convince me to try it, which I did, someone told me that smoking hookah was much safer than smoking cigarettes; they said there were no carcinogens, and implored me try the &quot;pure&quot;, &quot;fruity&quot; flavor of the smoke.   I've heard similar arguments about hashish from those in the Middle East.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are: Are these claims true? Is smoking hookah safer than smoking cigarettes? Is it safe at all? Does hookah contain nicotine/carcinogens?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastEditorUserId="2047" LastEditDate="2015-08-28T23:57:15.083" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T23:57:15.083" Title="Is smoking hookah safer than smoking cigarettes?" Tags="|medical-science|smoking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2926" CreationDate="2011-05-06T19:23:53.913" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume you mean a waterpipe a.k.a qalyan. It's an instrument for smoking, you don't necessarily put hashish in it. Tobacco (or flavored tobacco), marijuana, etc., can be (and are) used as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to the most important part of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hookah smoking is not safer than&#xA;  cigarette smoking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tobacco is no less toxic in a&#xA;  hookah pipe, and the water in the&#xA;  hookah does not filter out the toxic&#xA;  ingredients in the tobacco smoke.&#xA;  Hookah smokers may actually inhale&#xA;  more tobacco smoke than cigarette&#xA;  smokers do because of the large volume&#xA;  of smoke they inhale in one smoking&#xA;  session, which can last as long as 60&#xA;  minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hookah/AN01265&quot;&gt;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hookah/AN01265&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user288" LastActivityDate="2011-05-06T19:23:53.913" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2929" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-07T02:05:06.007" Score="16" ViewCount="7598" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading about the Law of Thermodynamics, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics really interested me because the Law apparently stated that in any isolated system, the entropy of that system will increase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://physics.about.com/od/glossary/g/entropy.htm&quot;&gt;Entropy&lt;/a&gt;, is the amount of energy not available for useful work. It can also be measured as an amount of disorder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in a closed system, as the disorder increases, &lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/therm/entrop.html#e3&quot;&gt;it needs external energies to be applied to it in order for the entropy to decrease&lt;/a&gt;, apparently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr John Ross of Harvard University states:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;… there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems. …  There is somehow associated with the field of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems. It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source is: &lt;em&gt;Chemical and Engineering News&lt;/em&gt;, 7 July 1980, p. 40;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the universe is a closed system, entropy will continually increase,and consequently, the disorder in our universe will be on an uphill run. How does evolution answer this? Do we have to change the law of entropy? Or is the Theory of Evolution flawed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T07:22:39.470" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T23:38:14.867" Title="Does the theory of evolution contradict the second law of thermodynamics?" Tags="|biology|physics|evolution|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2867" CreationDate="2011-05-07T02:40:20.990" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Diffraction limited size aside, it appears that the earth lights up 3 to 4 pixels in the large tiff format NASA image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kxaa1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Pale blue dot pixels blown up to visible size&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either diffraction limit/&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airy_disk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;airy disk&lt;/a&gt; or tracking instability could be responsible for the spread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RGB (decimal) values of central 4 pixels are (clockwise from top left)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100 82 106&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100 119 104&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;150 180 158&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;145 119 172&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The background has a reddish cast averaging 100 86 83&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &quot;pale GREEN dot&quot; seems slightly more accurate than &quot;pale blue dot&quot;, once you start subtracting background, you can get a nice variety of greens, turquoises and blues as possible color descriptors for our tiny world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T02:40:20.990" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2929" CreationDate="2011-05-07T02:49:21.257" Score="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a throughly debunked canard by creationists.  Look up in the sky on a sunny day, and look at an incredible source of energy for the earth.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://factsnotfantasy.com/evolution.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;For a basic primer on evolution, go to this page and then avail yourself of the many links available&lt;/a&gt;.  You do seem to have a severe case of misunderstanding and just plain bad information that you have been exposed to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a UNIVERSE, things are indeed overall going to more entropy, &lt;em&gt;but locally, we see entropy decreasing all the time&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Or do you doubt that you were born?  Going from an egg and sperm, to a full grown adult would seem to violate your understanding of the second law of thermodynamics.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;  As has been repeated, the earth is not a closed system.  Local entropy is decreasing all over the globe, all the time.  Of course, on the whole, in our solar system, because of the way our sun works, and all the other elements of the universe, we are still seeing a net increase of entropy in the universe.  And in several trillions upon trillions of years, the ultimate fate of the universe (as best as we can tell) will be ultimate entropy, known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;heat death&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is a tiresome canard, I shall refer to a rebuttal written by a Science Writer that goes by the pseudonym &lt;a href=&quot;http://factsnotfantasy.com/creationists.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Calilasseia&lt;/a&gt; who has this to say (forgive the writing style, he is British, and slightly miffed at having to drag up such an inane argument)  (&lt;em&gt;Also, this large block of text is reproduced with permission at any location on the internet, as noted originally on the cited web page&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[27] Tiresome canards about evolution and the laws of thermodynamics.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And how tiresome these canards are. Not least because they've been debunked in the past, even without reference to relevant scientific literature, by people who pay attention to the scientific basics. Once the relevant scientific literature is consulted, these canards become visibly asinine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll deal with the Second Law of Thermodynamics to start with, because that one is a creationist favourite, though when creationists parrot this specious nonsense, they merely demonstrate that they know nothing about the relevant physics, and certainly never paid attention to the actual words of Rudolf Clausius, who erected the Laws of Thermodynamics, and who was rigorous when doing so. Therefore, let us see what Clausius actually stated, shall we?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rudolf Clausius erects this statement of the Second Law of Thermodynamics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In an isolated system, a process can occur only if it increases the total entropy of the system.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now Clausius defined rigorously what was meant by three different classes of thermodynamic system, and in his work, specified explicitly that the operation of the laws of thermodynamics differed subtly in each instance. The three classes of system Clausius defined were as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[27a] An &lt;strong&gt;isolated&lt;/strong&gt; system is a system that engages in &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; exchanges of energy or matter with the surroundings;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[27b] A &lt;strong&gt;closed&lt;/strong&gt; system is a system that engages in exchanges of energy with the surroundings, but does not engage in exchange of matter with the surroundings;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[27c] An &lt;strong&gt;open&lt;/strong&gt; system is a system that engages in exchanges of both matter and energy with the surroundings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, Clausius' statement above &lt;strong&gt;clearly and explicitly refers to isolated systems&lt;/strong&gt;, which, thus far, have been found to be an idealised abstraction, as no truly isolated system has ever been found. Indeed, in order to create even an approximation to an isolated system in order to perform precise calorimetric measurements, physicists have to resort to considerable ingenuity in order to minimise energy exchanges with the surroundings, particularly given the pervasive nature of heat. Even then, they cannot make the system completely isolated, because they need to have some means of obtaining measurement data from that system, which has to be conveyed to the surroundings, and this process itself requires energy. Physicists can only construct a closed system, in which, courtesy of much ingenuity, energy exchanges with the surroundings are minimised and precisely controlled, and to achieve this result in a manner that satisfies the demands of precise work is time consuming, expensive and requires a lot of prior analysis of possible sources of energy exchange that need to be minimised and controlled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the Earth is manifestly an open system. It is in receipt not only of large amounts of energy from outside (here's a hint: see that big yellow thing in the sky?) but is also in receipt of about 1,000 tons of matter per year in the form of particles of meteoritic origin from outer space. Some of these 'particles' are, on occasions, large enough to leave craters in the ground, such as that nice large one in Arizona. That particular dent in the Earth's surface is 1,200 metres in diameter, 170 metres deep, and has a ridge of material around the edges that rises 45 metres above the immediate landscape, and was excavated when a meteorite impacted the Earth's surface, generating a blast equivalent to a 20 megaton nuclear bomb. Hardly a characteristic of an isolated system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, physicists have known for a long time, that if a particular system is a net recipient of energy from outside, then that energy can be harnessed within that system to perform useful work. Which is precisely what living organisms do. Indeed, they only harness a small fraction of the available incoming energy, yet this is sufficient to power the entire diversity of the biosphere, and the development of organisms of increasing sophistication over time. Scientists have published numerous papers (twelve of which are known to me, and this is an incomplete inventory of the extant literature) in which calculations have been performed demonstrating that the utilisation of energy by the biosphere, and by evolution, is orders of magnitude too small to violate thermodynamic concerns. Relevant papers in question being:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Entropy And Evolution by Daniel F. Styer, American Journal of Physics, 78(11): 1031-1033 (November 2008) DOI: 10.1119/1.2973046&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Natural Selection As A Physical Principle by Alfred J. Lotka, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 8: 151-154 (1922) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/8/6/151.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;full paper downloadable from here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evolution Of Biological Complexity by Christoph Adami, Charles Ofria and Travis C. Collier, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 97(9): 4463-4468 (25th April 2000) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/8/6/151.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Full paper downloadable from here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Order From Disorder: The Thermodynamics Of Complexity In Biology by Eric D. Schneider and James J. Kay, in Michael P. Murphy, Luke A.J. O'Neill (ed), What is Life: The Next Fifty Years. Reflections on the Future of Biology, Cambridge University Press, pp. 161-172 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/8/6/151.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Full paper downloadable from here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Natural Selection For Least Action by Ville R. I. Kaila and Arto Annila, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Part A, 464: 3055-3070 (22nd July 2008) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/8/6/151.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Full paper downloadable from here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evolution And The Second Law Of Thermodynamics by Emory F. Bunn, arXiv.org, 0903.4603v1 (26th March 2009) &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0903/0903.4603v1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Download full paper from here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these peer reviewed papers establish, courtesy of rigorous empirical and theoretical work, that evolution is perfectly consistent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.richarddawkins.net/viewtopic.php?p=2447516#p2447516&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I cover several of these in detail in this post&lt;/a&gt;, and it should be noted here that &lt;strong&gt;the notion that evolution was purportedly in &amp;quot;violation&amp;quot; of the Second Law of Thermodynamics was rejected in a paper written in 1922&lt;/strong&gt;, which means that creationists who erect this canard are ignorant of scientific literature published over eighty years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While covering this topic, it's also necessary to deal with the canard that entropy equals 'disorder'. This is a non-rigorous view of entropy that scientists engaged in precise work discarded some time ago. Not least because there are documented examples of systems that have a precisely calculated entropy increase after spontaneously self-organising into well-defined structures. Phospholipids are the classic example of such a system - a suspension of phospholipids in aqueous solution will spontaneously self-assemble into structures such as micelles, bilayer sheets and liposomes upon receiving an energy input consisting of nothing more than gentle agitation. In other words, just shake the bottle. Moreover, the following scientific paper discusses in some detail the fact that entropy can increase when a system becomes more ordered, a paper that was published in 1998, and hence, has been in circulation for over a decade now:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gentle Force Of Entropy Bridges Disciplines by David Kestenbaum, Science, 279: 1849 (20th March 1998)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kestenbaum, 1998 wrote:Normally, entropy is a force of disorder rather than organization. But physicists have recently explored the ways in which an increase in entropy in one part of a system can force another part into greater order. The findings have rekindled speculation that living cells might take advantage of this little-known trick of physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Entropy, as rigorously defined, has units of Joules per Kelvin, and is therefore a function of energy versus thermodynamic temperature. The simple fact of the matter is that if the thermodynamic temperature increases, then the total entropy of a given system decreases if no additional energy was input into the system in order to provide the increase in thermodynamic temperature. Star formation is an excellent example of this, because the thermodynamic temperature at the core of a gas cloud increases as the cloud coalesces under gravity. All that is required to increase the core temperature to the point where nuclear fusion is initiated is sufficient mass. No external energy is added to the system. Consequently, the entropy at the core decreases due to the influence of gravity driving up the thermodynamic temperature. Yet the highly compressed gas in the core is hardly &amp;quot;ordered&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;STOP PRESS: as if to reinforce this point, my attention has just been drawn to this scientific paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disordered, Quasicrystalline And Crystalline Phases Of Densely Packed Tetrahedra by Amir Haji-Akbari, Michael Engel, Aaron S. Keys, Xiaoyu Zheng, Rolfe G. Petschek, Peter Palffy-Muhoray and Sharon C. Glotzer, Nature, 462: 773-777 (10th December 2009)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract is suitably informative here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Haji-Akbari, 2009 wrote: All hard, convex shapes are conjectured by Ulam to pack more densely than spheres1, which have a maximum packing fraction of φ = π/∫18 ≈ 0.7405. Simple lattice packings of many shapes easily surpass this packing fraction2, 3. For regular tetrahedra, this conjecture was shown to be true only very recently; an ordered arrangement was obtained via geometric construction with φ = 0.7786 (ref. 4), which was subsequently compressed numerically to φ = 0.7820 (ref. 5), while compressing with different initial conditions led to φ = 0.8230 (ref. 6). Here we show that tetrahedra pack even more densely, and in a completely unexpected way. &lt;strong&gt;Following a conceptually different approach, using thermodynamic computer simulations that allow the system to evolve naturally towards high-density states,&lt;/strong&gt; we observe that a fluid of hard tetrahedra undergoes a first-order phase transition to a dodecagonal quasicrystal7, 8, 9, 10, which can be compressed to a packing fraction of φ = 0.8324. By compressing a crystalline approximant of the quasicrystal, the highest packing fraction we obtain is φ = 0.8503. If quasicrystal formation is suppressed, the system remains disordered, jams and compresses to φ = 0.7858. &lt;strong&gt;Jamming and crystallization are both preceded by an entropy-driven transition from a simple fluid of independent tetrahedra to a complex fluid characterized by tetrahedra arranged in densely packed local motifs of pentagonal dipyramids that form a percolating network at the transition.&lt;/strong&gt; The quasicrystal that we report represents the first example of a quasicrystal formed from hard or non-spherical particles. &lt;strong&gt;Our results demonstrate that particle shape and entropy can produce highly complex, ordered structures.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as if the Kestenbaum paper on entropy driving ordered systems, and the empirical evidence from phospholipids were not enough, we now have this. Consequently, the message to creationists is simple: don't bother wasting your time posting the &amp;quot;evolution violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics&amp;quot; canard, because it is now well and truly busted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some creationists, however, erect a related, and in some respects, even more asinine canard, that evolution somehow violates the First Law of Thermodynamics. Guess who provided us with rigorous statements about this law? That's right, Rudolf Clausius again. Let's see what he actually stated with respect to this, shall we? The Clausius formulation of the First Law of Thermodynamics is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The increase in the internal energy of a system is equal to the amount of energy input into the system via heating, minus the energy lost as a result of the work done by the system upon its surroundings.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mathematical expression of which is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;dU = δQ - δW&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the process is reversible, then this can be recast in terms of exact differentials by noting that δW is equal to PdV, where P is the internal pressure, and V the volume occupied, and that δQ is equal to TdS, where T is the thermodynamic temperature and S is the entropy of the system. Therefore this becomes dU = TdS - PdV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh look. Clausius &lt;strong&gt;explicitly framed the First Law of Thermodynamics in terms of energy exchanges within a system.&lt;/strong&gt; He did NOT assume constancy thereof. Indeed, the rigorous framing of the First Law of Thermodynamics &lt;strong&gt;explicitly takes into account the possibility of a system being a recipient of energy that can be used to perform useful work.&lt;/strong&gt; Therefore creationist canards erected about the First Law of Thermodynamics are null and void for the same reasons as those erected about the Second Law of Thermodynamics - said canards not only ignore completely Clausius' original and rigorous formulations of those laws, and ignore completely that Clausius framed his formulations around &lt;strong&gt;energy exchanges between a system and its surroundings&lt;/strong&gt;, but rely upon outright misrepresentations of those laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, Clausius had energy exchanges in mind with respect to the Second Law of Thermodynamics as well, which is why the statement on entropy was framed in terms of an isolated system, which engages in no such exchanges with the surroundings. When energy exchanges are taking place, the operation of the Second law of Thermodynamics within such systems is subtly different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also wanted to add a bit about your silly assertion that it's only a theory...  Trust me, it's a fact, and is rejection of reality on a wholesecale level to assert anything but.  The mechanisms by which evolution happen are also quite well understood, but there are fine points that are still being worked out.  Evolution is a theory in the same way gravity is a theory, only that we actually know a great deal more about evolution than we do gravity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.notjustatheory.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific theories are NOT guesses&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a favourite (and wholly duplicitous) canard beloved of creationists, and relies upon the fact that in everyday usage, English words are loaded with a multiplicity of meanings. This is NOT the case in science, where terms used are precisely defined. The precise definition apposite here is the definition of theory. In science, a theory is an integrated explanation for a class of real world observational phenomena of interest, that has been subjected to direct empirical test with respect to its correspondence with observational reality, and which has been found, via such testing, to be in accord with observational reality. It is precisely because scientific theories have been subject to direct empirical test, and have passed said empirical test, that they ARE theories, and consequently enjoy a high status in the world of scientific discourse. As a consequence of the above, anyone who erects the &amp;quot;it's only a theory&amp;quot; canard with respect to evolution will be regarded with well deserved scorn and derision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a good visualization of evolution, maybe this picture will help you with some shorthand:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RtfaM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Evolution as a colour&quot; /&gt;&#xA;THAT is a logical process that seems to escape people who deny evolution.  Again, &lt;a href=&quot;http://factsnotfantasy.com/creationists.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I suggest you read up more at one of the earlier links provided&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T02:26:59.933" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2929" CreationDate="2011-05-07T02:51:22.880" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although the &lt;em&gt;total&lt;/em&gt; entropy increases, the &lt;em&gt;local&lt;/em&gt; entropy at some point in space can decrease, if that decrease is adeaqautely offset by an increase in entropy somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evolution on earth might reduce the entropy on earth, but this is more than offset by the increase in entropy in the sun. You can even do some back-of-the-envelope type calculations to get an idea on the numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is really sad that creationists keep repeating this thermodynamics argument and ignore that it is so plain wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please also note that evolution is a &lt;strong&gt;fact&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.notjustatheory.com/&quot;&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a theory&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;em&gt;theory&lt;/em&gt; you are referring to is called &lt;em&gt;Theory of evolution by natural selection&lt;/em&gt;. Further, the everyday use of the word &lt;em&gt;theory&lt;/em&gt; is different from how scientists use the term. For most people, it means &quot;hunch, unproven statement&quot;. For scientists, a theory is the best currently available model explaining all the available observations pertaining to a certain field. Evolution is &quot;just a theory&quot; in the same sense that electromagnetism is &quot;just a theory&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-05-07T03:09:10.983" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T03:09:10.983" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2934" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-07T04:23:30.043" Score="23" ViewCount="2972" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Foreword&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've lifted this from &lt;a href=&quot;http://audio.stackexchange.com/questions/1363/do-new-speakers-require-a-break-in-period&quot;&gt;audio.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt; where it hasn't seen a lot of discussion. It's a question that interests me though so I thought I'd post it here, verbatim, and see what comes of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some speaker manufacturers&lt;sup&gt;†&lt;/sup&gt; claim that one must &quot;break in&quot; their speakers for a given period of time before they sound optimal. This sounds fishy to me. Is there any reason speakers should need a &quot;break in&quot; period?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some resources on the web seem to argue both sides of this question convincingly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Against: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.audioholics.com/education/loudspeaker-basics/speaker-break-in-fact-or-fiction&quot;&gt;Audioholics: Speaker Break In: Fact or Fiction?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nutsvolts.com/index.php?/blog/post/speaker_break_in/&quot;&gt;Nuts &amp;amp; Volts Article (2009)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;†&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;em&gt;For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paradigm.com/index.php?view=items&amp;amp;cid=1%3aGeneral%20FAQs&amp;amp;id=70%3ais-there-a-break-in-period-for-paradigm-speakers&amp;amp;option=com_quickfaq&amp;amp;Itemid=48&quot;&gt;Paradigm recommends &quot;several hours&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over at audio.stackexchange it's been decided that, &lt;a href=&quot;http://audio.stackexchange.com/questions/1363/do-new-speakers-require-a-break-in-period&quot;&gt;'Yes, speakers do require a break-in period.'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2466" LastEditorDisplayName="user2466" LastEditDate="2011-05-16T16:44:24.357" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T20:12:03.063" Title="Do new loudspeakers require a “break-in” period?" Tags="|music|technology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2929" CreationDate="2011-05-07T05:19:01.150" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simplest answer to your question is that the theory of evolution does not claim that life will continue evolving forever.  The &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe&quot;&gt;heat death of the universe&lt;/a&gt;&quot; could well spell an end to life.  If it does, that does not have any bearing on the theory of evolution, which is a theory about how life came to be and how it will continue to work.  So in response to the question,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Since the universe is a closed system, entropy will continually increase,and consequently, the disorder in our universe will be on an uphill run. How does evolution answer this?&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evolution says, &quot;Okay.  That's fine.&quot;  It isn't related to the phenomena evolution describes because the time scale on which cosmological considerations about entropy become important is hundreds of billions of years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, it is an interesting question whether life can continue indefinitely.  The only work I know on this is in the form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Omega/dyson.txt&quot;&gt;a talk given by Freeman Dyson&lt;/a&gt;.  Dyson concludes that in an open universe (eternally expanding as it evolves according to general relativity), intelligent life could potentially continue creating and sharing ideas indefinitely.  The talk is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson%27s_eternal_intelligence&quot;&gt;summarized on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Dyson's work dates to 1979, before discovery of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_universe&quot;&gt;acceleration of the universe&lt;/a&gt;, and I do not know of any attempts to update his work to reflect our latest understanding of cosmology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2440" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T05:19:01.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2936" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2940" CreationDate="2011-05-07T05:42:10.820" Score="18" ViewCount="18882" Body="&lt;p&gt;This one seem to be all over trivia lists, but I'm having trouble finding a reference to anything credible. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.formspring.me/Amberizlame/q/824278624&quot;&gt;The claim&lt;/a&gt; goes something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to a British law passed in 1845, [attempted] suicide is a very serious crime,death sentence of hanging is the punishment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if that's true, this is not case anymore the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Eliz2/9-10/60/section/1&quot;&gt;suicide act of 1961&lt;/a&gt; decriminalizes suicide. However, did there use to be such a law?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-05-07T11:28:15.500" LastActivityDate="2022-10-04T12:13:03.167" Title="Did there use to be a law that made attempted suicide a capital offence punishable by hanging in Britain?" Tags="|law|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-07T07:00:37.180" Score="10" ViewCount="24674" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was once having a milky coffee at a cafe and I ordered an orange juice.&#xA;The waiter told me that I should wait until I've finished my coffee, because drinking milk and orange juice together causes the milk to curdle inside your stomach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any evidence of digestion or other problems being caused by drinking orange juice with milk?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2468" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2012-11-28T01:30:07.263" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T02:44:25.783" Title="Does drinking milk and orange juice together cause digestion problems?" Tags="|nutrition|milk|drinks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2938" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-07T07:05:51.747" Score="10" ViewCount="1095" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was travelling in France, I encountered toilets without toilet seats. Essentially they require the user to squat. I was told that as a result, French women had fewer birth complications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it true that regular use of squat-toilets makes giving birth easier?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, what is the mechanism by which this occurs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2468" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-07T02:34:50.753" LastActivityDate="2022-08-03T15:59:22.473" Title="Do toilets that require squatting reduce birth complications in women?" Tags="|toilets|birth|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2936" CreationDate="2011-05-07T08:21:36.850" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, attempted suicide (and perhaps suicide) was a crime. Several formal and informal sources confirm the sentence of imprisonment for attempted suicide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See section 1.3.1 and 1.3.2 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://lawcommissionofindia.nic.in/reports/report210.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this PDF&lt;/a&gt;. It confirms the existence of a law(but not the quantum of punishment) and its overruling in 1961. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.in/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=2&amp;amp;ved=0CCQQFjAB&amp;amp;url=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0447.1996.tb09857.x/pdf&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=Suicide%20as%20a%20crime%20in%20the%20UK%3a%20legal%20history,%20international%20comparisons%20and%20present%20implications&amp;amp;ei=A1TGTeifJIjJrQeSo6i-BA&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFZugHCQA4kLC63zyWTjSvtjiUZpg&amp;amp;cad=rja&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Suicide as a crime in the UK: legal history, international comparisons and present implications&quot;&lt;/a&gt; by J. Neeleman. The paper specifically states the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, &lt;em&gt;R. v. Mann (1914)&lt;/em&gt; finally clarified that suicide &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; a&#xA;  felony and that attempted suicide was a misdemeanour, punishable by&#xA;  imprisonment and hard labour. Penal sanctions against suicide&#xA;  attempters continued to be implemented until as recently as 1955 (6),&#xA;  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://atp.uclan.ac.uk/buddypress/diffusion/volume-3-issue-2/the-choice-to-give-up-living-compassionate-assistance-and-the-suicide-act&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, which references the above paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Historically, suicide was deemed&#xA;  self-murder and those who attempted&#xA;  suicide were subjected to punishment.&#xA;  However, it became recognised that the&#xA;  mental state of suicide attempters&#xA;  needed to be taken into account and&#xA;  that imprisonment should only be&#xA;  considered in the interests of their&#xA;  health and well being (R v Doody&#xA;  1854). Imprisonment as a punishment&#xA;  for attempted suicides was being used&#xA;  up until the late 1950s. Some concern&#xA;  had been expressed by magistrates over&#xA;  the use of such punishments (R v&#xA;  Trench 1955) and changing social&#xA;  attitudes brought a more compassionate&#xA;  attitude to those who attempted&#xA;  suicide (BMA 1959). Prosecuting those&#xA;  who failed in a suicide attempt did&#xA;  not assist them in their recovery.&#xA;  There was a call by the British&#xA;  Medical Association and the&#xA;  Magistrates’ Association to amend the&#xA;  law, in line with the situation in&#xA;  Scotland, so that attempted suicide&#xA;  should cease to be an offence (BMA&#xA;  1959). Subsequently, suicide was&#xA;  decriminalised by the enactment of the&#xA;  Suicide Act 1961.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some informal sources also confirm imprisonment as the sentence for attempted suicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_Act_1961&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (unreferenced):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suicide may be defined as the act of&#xA;  intentionally ending one's own life.&#xA;  Prior to the Suicide Act 1961 it was a&#xA;  crime to commit suicide and anyone who&#xA;  attempted and failed could be&#xA;  prosecuted and imprisoned, while the&#xA;  families of those who succeeded also&#xA;  could potentially be prosecuted&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_suicide_against_the_law_in_the_UK_if_so_what_happens_if_you_attempt_it_and_fail&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;answers.com&lt;/a&gt; (again unreferenced):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suicide is not against the law in the&#xA;  UK. It was until the 1961 Suicide Act&#xA;  which legalised it and introduced laws&#xA;  which dealt with assistance of&#xA;  suicide. Prior to 1961 suicide was&#xA;  illegal in the UK and was punishable&#xA;  by prison and fines (but not death!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-08-24T02:18:57.383" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T02:18:57.383" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2929" CreationDate="2011-05-07T09:11:22.200" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions.html#thermo&quot;&gt;second law of thermodynamics&lt;/a&gt; states that the &lt;em&gt;total entropy&lt;/em&gt; increases, it does not prohibit a local decrease of entropy that is offset by a larger increase in entropy somewhere else in the system. You can still have a local decrease in entropy even if the overall entropy is increasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second point is that while the universe can be regarded as a closed system, the earth is certainly not a closed system. It gets a constant supply of energy from the sun, and is therefore no closed system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T09:11:22.200" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2937" CreationDate="2011-05-07T10:28:34.613" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;As seen in &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2008/05/friday_sprog_blogging_experime.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this experiment&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;milk curdles when lemon juice is added&lt;/strong&gt; (due to the acid):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sIVOY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/Chem_AcidsBasespHScale.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Orange juice has a pH level of about&#xA;  3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so that could curdle the milk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003883.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;gastric acid has a pH level of 1.5 -&#xA;  3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;Due to the gastric acid milk would curdle in your stomach anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-05-07T10:51:06.670" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T10:51:06.670" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2934" CreationDate="2011-05-07T10:34:30.230" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems a reasonable claim, based on what I know of speaker construction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one, the voice-coil in speakers is supported by the &quot;spider&quot;, which is made of fabric impregnated resin. As it is moved back and forth, the resin would weaken, allowing freer flexing of the fabric. (this depends a lot on the resin, though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some speakers are constructed with a fabric surround, as well as a fabric spider. I would imagine that these speakers would have a more significant &quot;break-in&quot; period then other speakers, which have a rubber surround, which does not break in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this change would have any effect on the audible properties of the speaker, I have my doubts. However, there is really no material that withstands repeated flexing without &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; change of it's physical properties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;General References:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudspeaker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudspeaker&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(Looking for more)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="638" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-11T15:56:24.247" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T15:56:24.247" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2951" CreationDate="2011-05-07T13:02:51.300" Score="15" ViewCount="4988" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to many (I cannot find a source at the moment), Albert Einstein's brain weighed less than average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a common belief that there is no correlation between brain mass and intelligence. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-07T16:50:19.583" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T02:26:21.607" Title="Does brain mass have any correlation to intelligence?" Tags="|neurology|physiology|intelligence|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2948" CreationDate="2011-05-07T13:52:36.583" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there is a substantial correlation between brain size and intelligence.  The most current citation I know of is a paper from McDaniel 2005, titled: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2004.11.005&quot;&gt;Big-brained people are smarter: A meta-analysis of the relationship between in vivo brain volume and intelligence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract reads:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The relationship between brain volume and intelligence has been a topic of a scientific debate since at least the 1830s. To address the debate, a meta-analysis of the relationship between in vivo brain volume and intelligence was conducted. Based on 37 samples across 1530 people, the population correlation was estimated at 0.33. The correlation is higher for females than males. It is also higher for adults than children. &lt;strong&gt;For all age and sex groups, it is clear that brain volume is positively correlated with intelligence.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all brain regions are equal in contributing to this relationship however; the size of certain tracts, grey-matter tracts in the frontal cortex IIRC (it's been a while since I studied this myself) are the primary determiner of intelligence, as determined by IQ.  Allometric scaling probably contributes to this correlation; for example, if a gene unleashes checks on brain growth to enable greater intelligence, it might have a pleiotropic effect on other regions, so that they have to grow bigger as well, though they don't directly contribute to the intelligence of the person whose brain they make up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastEditorUserId="200" LastEditDate="2011-05-07T15:00:11.100" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T15:00:11.100" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2938" CreationDate="2011-05-07T14:19:01.593" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Humans (like other primates) have long squatted during childbirth.  The use of a birthing stool to aid the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/reprint/77/5/636.pdf&quot;&gt;upright birthing position&lt;/a&gt; was also common for centuries, and is still used today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any sources linking the use of squatting toilets to childbirth.  However, squatting to urinate/defecate isn't uncommon in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ejog.org/article/S0301-2115%2899%2900272-9/abstract&quot;&gt;undeveloped countries&lt;/a&gt;; these are also the countries most likely to utilize squatting for childbirth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the mechanism for utilizing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-0528.1997.tb11534.x/full&quot;&gt;squatting position&lt;/a&gt; it's said that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2145244/pdf/canfamphys00132-0094.pdf&quot;&gt;pelvic outlet is larger&lt;/a&gt; in the squatting position - thus more room for the child to deliver. There's also less compression upon arteries while squatting as opposed to being supine. It is also suggested that gravity is a factor: the weight of the baby dropping onto the cervix to speed dialation: most reports I linked show that squatting births were in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2889%2990315-2/abstract&quot;&gt;general faster&lt;/a&gt; but some studies report more tearing and bloodloss with the squatting position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(http://www.amazon.com.br/gobe/Parto/Prote%E7%E3o%20Perineal/Artigos%20em%20ingl%EAs/perineal%20outcomes%20and%20position.pdf) - for whatever reason that link won't link for me today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14973980&quot;&gt;basic conclusion&lt;/a&gt; from most reports: whatever position which makes Mom happy and comfortable while trying to squeeze a bowling ball out of a hole the size of a lemon is the best choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T14:19:01.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2948" CreationDate="2011-05-07T14:43:59.793" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2948/does-brain-mass-have-any-correlation-to-intelligence/2949#2949&quot;&gt;Billare&lt;/a&gt; already mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/3862-bigger-brains-smarter-people.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michael McDaniel's study&lt;/a&gt; I'll point to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Canadian researchers found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20051223/brainsize_intelligence_20051223/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;link between brain size and intelligence&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[they] examined the brains of 100&#xA;people who were given extensive IQ&#xA;tests before they died and &lt;strong&gt;found a&#xA;correlation between cerebral volume&#xA;and intelligence.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study looked specifically at the&#xA;size of the cerebrum, the thinking&#xA;part of the brain, and found a&#xA;correlation with verbal intelligence&#xA;in women. The same correlation was&#xA;found for right-handed men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.loni.ucla.edu/%7Ethompson/MEDIA/NN/nyt.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; found a link between the amount of &lt;strong&gt;grey matter&lt;/strong&gt; and intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;the amount of gray matter in the frontal&#xA;lobes turned out to be correlated with&#xA;intelligence&lt;/strong&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but &lt;strong&gt;this correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation&lt;/strong&gt;, as seen in...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/677048.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Taxi Drivers' brains &amp;quot;grow&amp;quot; on the job&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cab drivers' grey matter enlarges and&#xA;adapts to help them store a detailed&#xA;mental map of the city&lt;/strong&gt;, according to&#xA;research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taxi drivers given brain scans by&#xA;scientists at University College&#xA;London had a larger hippocampus&#xA;compared with other people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The&#xA;scientists also found part of the&#xA;hippocampus grew larger as the taxi&#xA;drivers spent more time in the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/22333/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New research suggests that &lt;strong&gt;the layer&#xA;of insulation coating neural wiring in&#xA;the brain plays a critical role in&#xA;determining intelligence&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The neural wires that transmit&#xA;electrical messages from cell to cell&#xA;in the brain are coated with a fatty&#xA;layer called myelin. Much like the&#xA;insulation on an electrical wire,&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;myelin stops current from leaking out&#xA;of the wire and boosts the speed with&#xA;which messages travel through the&#xA;brain--the higher quality the myelin,&#xA;the faster the messages travel.&lt;/strong&gt; These&#xA;myelin-coated tracts make up the&#xA;brain's white matter&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/nervous-system/men-women-different-brains1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; you can read more about &lt;strong&gt;the difference between men and women&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because brain size has been linked&#xA;with intelligence, it's very tricky to&#xA;go around saying that men have bigger&#xA;brains. Yet men do seem to have women&#xA;beat here; even when accounting for&#xA;height and weight differences, &lt;strong&gt;men&#xA;have slightly bigger brains. Does this&#xA;mean they're smarter?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Men also have approximately 6.5 times&#xA;more gray matter in the brain than&#xA;women, but before the heads of all the&#xA;men out there start to swell: Women have about 10 times&#xA;more white matter than men do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;These findings suggest that &lt;strong&gt;human&#xA;evolution has created two different&#xA;types of brains designed for equally&#xA;intelligent behavior&lt;/strong&gt;,&amp;quot; said psychology professor Richard Haier of the University of California.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1995/02/16/us/men-and-women-use-brain-differently-study-discovers.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Men and Women Use Brain Differently&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1032301,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Who Says A Woman Can't Be Einstein?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080229171609.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sex Differences Extend Into The Brain&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T14:43:59.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2952" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-07T00:16:10.983" Score="12" ViewCount="1224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just heard a story of a guy who took the subway to transport his company's off-site data back-ups for storage. When the time came for restore after a disaster, the data was corrupt and erased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being from New York City like I am, this makes me nervous about even my laptop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this subway magnetic field an urban legend, or should I beware?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2488" OwnerDisplayName="Abdu" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-29T08:56:32.297" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T10:12:10.333" Title="Subway magnetic fields and laptop hard drives" Tags="|physics|electromagnetism|magnets|hardware|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2938" CreationDate="2011-05-07T15:47:53.480" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't intended to be a complete answer to your question, but my answer is a bit too long to fit into a comment, and I think this is so amusing (and informative) that it belongs here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll let the title and abstract of this paper speak for itself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dov Sikirov.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024180319005&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Comparison of Straining During Defecation in Three Positions: Results and Implications for Human Health&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.springer.com/journal/10620&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Digestive Diseases and Sciences&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;48&lt;/strong&gt;(7):1201–1205, July 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aim of the study was to compare the straining forces applied when sitting or squatting during defecation. Twenty-eight apparently healthy volunteers (ages 17–66 years) with normal bowel function were asked to use a digital timer to record the net time needed for sensation of satisfactory emptying while defecating in three alternative positions: sitting on a standard-sized toilet seat (41–42 cm high), sitting on a lower toilet seat (31–32 cm high), and squatting. They were also asked to note their subjective impression of the intensity of the defecation effort. Six consecutive bowel movements were recorded in each position. Both the time needed for sensation of satisfactory bowel emptying and the degree of subjectively assessed straining in the squatting position were reduced sharply in all volunteers compared with both sitting positions (P &amp;lt; 0.0001).  In conclusion, &lt;strong&gt;the present study confirmed that sensation of satisfactory bowel emptying in sitting defecation posture necessitates excessive expulsive effort compared to the squatting.&lt;/strong&gt; [Emphasis is mine.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, I haven't really answered your question at all, however, in the process I've found this relatively amusing scatological study.  The study does conclude that squatting is better at least for defecation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2022-08-02T19:12:53.367" LastActivityDate="2022-08-02T19:12:53.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2958" CreationDate="2011-05-07T20:38:18.340" Score="25" ViewCount="1021" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JNFqn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earlier today, during one of my many home improvement projects (&quot;experiments&quot; may be a more appropriate term) I struck my thumb with a hammer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without thinking, I released a reflexive string of profanity which quite possibly made my dog blush and certainly caused my neighbors to stand up and take notice. However, by the time the last four-letter word escaped my lips, the pain had faded, and in fact was almost gone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost everyone can remember this happening or has at least observed it a few times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That swearing after an injury can ease pain seems to be a commonly held belief (at least in America), but is it really more effective than just screaming, or simply remaining silent? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there evidence that swearing can either lessen the pain of acute injuries or our perception of it?  Has this been studied?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T21:15:59.790" Title="Is pain lessened by swearing?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2957" CreationDate="2011-05-07T21:15:59.790" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5M2zd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/mythbusters/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-adam-savage-swearing-test.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Mythbusters&lt;/a&gt; based their experiment on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8147170.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Swearing helps to reduce pain&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr Richard Stephens, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.keele.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Keele's&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  school of psychology, came up with the&#xA;  idea for the study after swearing when&#xA;  he accidentally hit his thumb with a&#xA;  hammer as he built a garden shed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He recruited 64 volunteers to take part and each individual was asked to&#xA;  submerge their hand in a tub of&#xA;  freezing water for as long as possible&lt;/strong&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;the researchers found that the&#xA;  volunteers were able to keep their&#xA;  hands plunged in the ice water for a&#xA;  longer period of time when repeating&#xA;  [a] swear word.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt; While it is not clear how or why this&#xA;  link exists, the team believes that&#xA;  the pain-lessening effect occurs&#xA;  because swearing triggers our natural&#xA;  'fight-or-flight' response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/neuroreport/Abstract/publishahead/Swearing_as_a_response_to_pain.99989.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is the abstract of the original paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-05-07T21:15:59.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4718" CreationDate="2011-05-07T22:38:36.033" Score="14" ViewCount="704" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to get a massage in China once in a while, but when I went for one here in the USA the place was full of homeopathy, mineral spays and other junk. It is almost enough to put me off the whole practice. So I was wondering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any well-researched benefit to massage apart from a nice relaxing time? Or is any pain relief, etc. simply a placebo effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2483" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-08T15:56:16.217" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T02:25:56.170" Title="Are there health benefits from traditional massage therapy?" Tags="|medical-science|massage|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2962" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2963" CreationDate="2011-05-07T23:19:36.763" Score="35" ViewCount="3263" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to some (e.g. the documentary film &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car?&quot;&gt;Who Killed the Electric Car?&lt;/a&gt;), car and oil companies have actively tried to suppress electric cars' development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electric cars seem to have technological benefits so indeed I wonder why they're virtually nonexistent. Is it due to a market conspiracy, normal &quot;honest&quot; competition, technical reasons or something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T10:02:49.397" LastActivityDate="2014-12-12T10:16:31.697" Title="Did car and oil companies actively try to suppress electric cars' development?" Tags="|road-vehicles|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2962" CreationDate="2011-05-07T23:54:01.633" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;It comes down to a few factors. I'll answer from a US perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lack of infrastructure&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. Could the US power grid sustain the charging of millions of electric cars? One article says so&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;, but this paper disagrees. Also, individual home electric systems simply aren't built to charge electric cars, which require massive currents (80 to 100 amps) to do so. Also, consider what incentive is there for a fuel station to provide a charging point which would directly compete with their own product. The answer is little to none.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Battery technology is still behind the times. The average EV battery pack costs around $500/kWh&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;, typically more. The GM Volt has a 16 kWh battery pack, and that only goes 40 miles per charge; $8,000 for that isn't really much. Also, battery packs are almost always lithium ion, but this only has an energy density of 0.9 MJ/kg, compared to 44.4 MJ/kg for petrol/gasoline. (It's important to note though that electric motors are about 2-3x more efficient than internal combustion engines, but that still doesn't account for the massive shortfall in energy density.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it really good for the environment? It's debatable. About 55% of the power in the US is derived from coal; and burning coal puts CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; into the atmosphere. Although it's likely to result in a reduction of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, it's still going to be putting a substantial amount into the atmosphere. One article cites only a 5% reduction&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; from 180 million EVs being on the road.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CCAQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.scuderigroup.com/assets/Documents/Scuderiwpfinal.pdf&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=Lack%20of%20infrastructure%20for%20electric%20cars%20paper&amp;amp;ei=ANXFTd6NLIeahQeRitn5Aw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFJjTcu5Jk2_8WBGKkWuVWgsouCtA&amp;amp;sig2=lya0uxTwHibfdHnKtafx0g&amp;amp;cad=rja&quot;&gt;A Discussion Paper from Scuderi Group July 2010 Electric Cars&lt;/a&gt; - see section &quot;Impact of EVs on the US electric power grid&quot;, pages 4-5&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.jrc.es/pub/EURdoc/JRC54699_TN.pdf&quot;&gt;Plug-in Hybrid and Battery-Electric Vehicles...&lt;/a&gt; - page 12&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/12/180_million_plu.php&quot;&gt;Report: U.S. Power Grid Can Fuel 180 Million Electric Cars&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="1626" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T12:02:00.587" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T12:02:00.587" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2965" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2969" CreationDate="2011-05-08T03:32:48.240" Score="3" ViewCount="951" Body="&lt;p&gt;An ovulation calculator is something that apears on most pregnancy and baby sites on the internet. Searching for the term &quot;ovulation calculator&quot; on Google produces over 2 million results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &quot;tool&quot; is supposed to indicate when during a woman's menstrual cycle is the best time to try for a baby as there is supposedly a greater chance that you will be successful in this period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest that using a calendar will increase the chance of a woman being pregnant as opposed to using common sense and logic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="39663" LastEditDate="2019-12-14T21:36:41.820" LastActivityDate="2019-12-14T21:36:41.820" Title="Can an ovulation calculator increase your likelihood of getting pregnant?" Tags="|pregnancy|fertility|human-reproduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2966" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-08T06:03:57.147" Score="6" ViewCount="1119" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpBPVkpmoeg&amp;amp;feature=related&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpBPVkpmoeg&amp;amp;feature=related&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above video claims that Osama was killed a while back, and that all the tapes released since then are fakes by the US Govt. Is there any truth to either of those claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T23:09:39.773" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T23:19:03.893" Title="Was Osama Bin Laden Dead Since 2002?" Tags="|history|united-states|osama-bin-laden|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2968" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2977" CreationDate="2011-05-08T09:10:15.373" Score="24" ViewCount="1391" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just heard someone claim that Mother's Day was an invention of florists, with the aim of selling more flowers on that day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that the flower-selling industry is responsible for creating Mother's day, or at least for pushing it to the popularity it has now? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2017-04-15T05:04:11.070" Title="Is Mother's Day an invention of florists?" Tags="|history|commerce|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2965" CreationDate="2011-05-08T11:24:57.403" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order for conception to occur, there has to be an egg (or ova) present for the sperm to fertilize, where the '&lt;strong&gt;average&lt;/strong&gt;' woman will ovulate around &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epigee.org/guide/reproduction.html&quot;&gt;day 14&lt;/a&gt; (from the first day of the last menstrual period).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, not every woman is average.  Because the human ova is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fertilityfriend.com/Faqs/The-Fertile-Window---Scientific-Literature-Review.html&quot;&gt;viable&lt;/a&gt; for a short period (~24 hours), knowing the right 'window' of time is helpful if you wish to become pregnant. The calendar method can (and often is) used in conjunction with basal body temperature measurements and the examination of mucus, and is based upon &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-3.unipv.it/dipstea/workingpapers/24.pdf&quot;&gt;statistical analysis&lt;/a&gt; studies. Some calendars will show a fertility window for the next 3 months, allowing for more 'planning' of bedroom fun. (Vacation, honeymoon, etc) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll be honest, it's much easier for me to plunk down my information on a calendar, hit &quot;ENTER&quot; and get a nifty calendar in front of me for the next 3 months, than to pull out my desk calendar, find the first day of my last menstrual period, then count forward to when my next should arrive, then backwards again 14 days, then back another 4 days, etc....and to do that for the next three months?  Call me lazy, I don't mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Common sense (and logic) says that if you want to get pregnant, you need to have sex.  However, work, school, kids, and life in general can sometimes distract you - and having a calendar can give that extra 'nudge' in the right direction.  (wink wink, say no more).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is using the calendar the &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/Abstract/2002/12000/Timing_Intercourse_to_Achieve_Pregnancy__Current.27.aspx&quot;&gt;best option&lt;/a&gt;?  No, charting BBT and purchasing an ovulation test are much more precise; however they aren't free - while an online calendar is. There are also women who aren't thrilled about taking and charting their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pregnancy.org/article/how-chart-your-basal-body-temperature&quot;&gt;temperature daily&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also women who utilize it for &lt;em&gt;avoiding&lt;/em&gt; pregnancy - given the short lifespan of the ova, they know which days to avoid unprotected sex - this was called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/307/6906/723.abstract&quot;&gt;rhythm method&lt;/a&gt; Current &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282%2899%2900365-9/abstract&quot;&gt;natural family&lt;/a&gt; planning methods utilize a similar &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.contraceptionjournal.org/article/S0010-7824%2802%2900288-3/abstract&quot;&gt;approach&lt;/a&gt;, which avoids intercourse during the most fertile phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA: An overview of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6W6R-4F60C4B-9&amp;amp;_user=641802&amp;amp;_coverDate=01/31/2005&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_searchStrId=1748029174&amp;amp;_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&amp;amp;_acct=C000034418&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=641802&amp;amp;md5=30a517535b201257ce64c0f5936e5d9c&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot;&gt;high vs low tech&lt;/a&gt; contraception&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastEditorUserId="1063" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T07:48:47.167" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T07:48:47.167" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2970" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-08T11:45:15.437" Score="9" ViewCount="461" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently watched a science video in which the presenter argues that having more lean mass aids burning more calories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The below is the summary of what she said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Having more lean mass means more calories are burned. I have increased my lean mass by 7 pounds and therefore the basic metabolic rate in me can burn 1600 calories instead of 1200.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She also associates this with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcopenia&quot;&gt;sarcopenia&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The body's muscle mass degenerates as we age (Sarcopenia). This is the reason why we are not able to eat more food as grow older.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true? Does increasing the lean mass increase the over all metabolism rate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="2079" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T17:09:47.723" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T04:46:49.683" Title="Does lean mass aid burning calories?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2971" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-08T12:04:42.847" Score="33" ViewCount="2929" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know he admitted it or something in one of his earlier videos, but aside from that, do we have any actual solid evidence he ordered the September 11 attacks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like if he hadn't of admitted it, and he was captured instead of killed, would we really have had any evidence to convict him in a (fair) court of law?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="2497" LastEditDate="2011-05-09T02:28:58.650" LastActivityDate="2021-08-28T17:08:08.240" Title="Was Osama Bin Laden responsible for 9-11?" Tags="|9-11|osama-bin-laden|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2973" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-08T13:19:35.943" Score="23" ViewCount="6421" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7bH0m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;no 13th floor&quot; /&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moneyandshit.com/13th-floor/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskaidekaphobia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Triskaidekaphobia&lt;/a&gt; is the &lt;strong&gt;fear of the number 13&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;But do (western) hotels cater to this phobia by skipping/omitting the 13th floor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/money/biztravel/2007-03-08-13th-floor-usat_N.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;USA Today article&lt;/a&gt; (2007) quotes &lt;strong&gt;J.W. Marriott Jr.&lt;/strong&gt;, chairman of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriott_International&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marriott International&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;It was one of the first things I&#xA;learned: &lt;strong&gt;Don't go to 13&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. &amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also from the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hotels without a designated 13th floor&#xA;are so much the norm that fire&#xA;departments generally assume it to be&#xA;the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Changing now would be the&#xA;issue, and cause confusion&lt;/em&gt;,&amp;quot; says&#xA;Alejandra Castro-Nuñez, spokeswoman&#xA;for Miami-Dade's fire rescue and&#xA;homeland security department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dilip Rangnekar&lt;/strong&gt;, spokesman of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otis_Elevator_Company&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Otis Elevator Company&lt;/a&gt; (2002):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Based on records of buildings with&#xA;Otis brand elevators, as many as 85%&#xA;of the high rises in the world&#xA;don't have a 13th floor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://realtytimes.com/rtpages/20020913_13thfloor.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;My question: &lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there statistics on how many hotels omit the 13th floor?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;Is it just a minority or actually a widespread phenomenon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;On a side note:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;Apparently &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.seattlepi.com/airlinereporter/2009/11/13/row-13-why-some-airlines-have-it-and-others-do-not/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;there are airlines&lt;/a&gt; (e.g. Air France, Lufthansa, Continental) that don't have a 13th row.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3TUxF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;no row 13&quot; /&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikinfo.org/index.php/Unlucky_13&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-27T14:46:49.910" Title="Do hotels omit the 13th floor?" Tags="|psychology|elevators|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2975" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="2976" CreationDate="2011-05-08T14:56:52.137" Score="36" ViewCount="4804" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read somewhere, I can't seem to find it now, that in an experiment involving people learning to type, that the Dvorak keyboard didn't have a tangible typing speed benefit in comparison to the QWERTY keyboard. Do you know of any studies about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="849" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T23:57:45.707" LastActivityDate="2019-11-01T16:00:01.017" Title="Does the Dvorak keyboard increase typing speed?" Tags="|computers|keyboard|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2975" CreationDate="2011-05-08T15:43:26.163" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somewhat. Typists can, in fact, learn to type faster on a Dvorak keyboard, it's just not a big improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.santafe.edu/media/workingpapers/98-05-041.pdf&quot;&gt;The Standard and Dvorak Keyboards Revisited: Direct Measures of Speed&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Dvorak typewriter keyboard was found to produce speeds of keying 4.0&#xA;  percent faster than those of the Standard (Qwerty) keyboard. However, employers were reported&#xA;  to be unwilling to bear the costs of the several weeks required to retrain employees on the novel&#xA;  keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in &lt;a href=&quot;http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/waldfogj/987/readings/fable_keys.pdf&quot;&gt;The Fable of the Keys&lt;/a&gt;, a paper whose authors seem to have an axe to grind, admit that (full citations for these can be found in the paper):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In two studies based on analysis of hand-and-finger motions R. F. Nickells Jr. finds that Dvorak is 6.2 percent faster than Qwerty, and R. Kinkhead finds only a 2.3 percent advantage for Dvorak. Simulation studies by Donald Norman and David Rumelhart find similar results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is a speed improvement to the Dvorak keyboard over the QWERTY keyboard. It's just not a very big one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T15:43:26.163" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2968" CreationDate="2011-05-08T16:47:00.700" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, Google has their handy little graphic set up for today, and I found a page entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mothersdaycentral.com/about-mothersday/history/&quot;&gt;Mothers Day History ~ The Complete History of Mother's Day&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some relevant quotes from this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only recently dubbed “Mother's Day,” the highly traditional practice of honoring of Motherhood is rooted in antiquity, and past rites typically had strong symbolic and spiritual overtones; societies tended to celebrate Goddesses and symbols rather than actual Mothers. The personal, human touch to Mother’s Day is a relatively new phenomenon. The maternal objects of adoration ranged from mythological female deities to the Christian Church itself. Only in the past few centuries did celebrations of Motherhood develop a decidedly human focus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, there is a long tradition of celebrating mothers.  Which seems natural given what we know of anthropology and human nature.  The article goes on further to talk about the American origins and history of the holiday (which seems to be the main idea you are driving at):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first North American Mother’s Day was conceptualized with Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870. Despite having penned The Battle Hymn of the Republic 12 years earlier, Howe had become so distraught by the death and carnage of the Civil War that she called on Mother’s to come together and protest what she saw as the futility of their Sons killing the Sons of other Mothers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this didn't catch on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite the decided failure of her holiday, Howe had nevertheless planted the seed that would blossom into what we know as Mother’s Day today. A West Virginia women’s group led by Anna Reeves Jarvis began to celebrate an adaptation of Howe’s holiday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, someone took up the call:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After Anna Reeves Jarvis died, her daughter Anna M. Jarvis campaigned for the creation of an official Mother’s Day in remembrance of her mother and in honor of peace. In 1908, Anna petitioned the superintendent of the church where her Mother had spent over 20 years teaching Sunday School. Her request was honored, and on May 10, 1908, the first official Mother's Day celebration took place at Andrew's Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia and a church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The West Virginia event drew a congregation of 407 and Anna Jarvis arranged for white carnations—her Mother’s favorite flower—to adorn the patrons. Two carnations were given to every Mother in attendance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She finally had some success with her holiday:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anna Jarvis quit working and devoted herself full time to the creation of Mother's Day, endlessly petitioning state governments, business leaders, women groups, churches and other institutions and organizations. She finally convinced the World's Sunday School Association to back her, a key influence over state legislators and congress. In 1912 West Virginia became the first state to officially recognize Mother's Day, and in 1914 Woodrow Wilson signed it into national observance, declaring the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fight about commercialization seems to have come &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the creation of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as the article states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By the time of Anna M. Jarvis's death, over 40 countries observed the Mother’s Day. Here is the history of the spread of Mother's Day throughout the rest of the world:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then goes to list dates and traditions for other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-05-08T19:00:44.587" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T19:00:44.587" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2010" CreationDate="2011-05-08T18:06:41.630" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related Question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/377/how-were-the-pyramids-built&quot;&gt;How were the Pyramids Built&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is very much related to the one I answered about Pyramids.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/constructiontechniques.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;I even reference a site in that answer that is relevant to this question&lt;/a&gt;.  In particular, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/englandstonehenge.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;they have a very nice description of the site, and history behind it&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/extremasonry.htm#transportation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;And they go over how those stones were moved&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCvx5gSnfW4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The video from Scott Hamilton's comment&lt;/a&gt; also shows that this is much easier than people suppose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=putting-stonehenge-in-its-place&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stonehenge is a very well studied site&lt;/a&gt;.  We know where the materials came from.  We have a very good idea of how it was used.  And we are constantly refining our understanding of the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, so what is the point of all these links?  &lt;strong&gt;Well, just to expose the argument from incredulity.  Just because an individual is unable to imagine how something was done, does in no way mean that &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; hair-brain idea of how it was done has any more credibility.&lt;/strong&gt;  Too many people assume that because ancient people's didn't have TVs and Airplanes, that they were dumb.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  They were just like you and me.  Perfectly capable of figuring things out within the context of their upbringing.  And since they didn't have TVs and Xboxes to distract them, and were very focused on survival, they had a very detailed record of astronomical events (Stonehenge being a giant clock amongst other things) to help them know when to plant crops, or get ready for colder days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, there is absolutely no evidence anywhere on this planet for any advances species from other planets ever having visited us.  As much as I would &lt;em&gt;LIKE&lt;/em&gt; to have evidence of such, it just doesn't exist.  In light of what we know of physics and interstellar distances, such a visit will in most likelihood never happen either (and if it should, there would be no doubt about it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T15:37:04.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2979" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3057" CreationDate="2011-05-08T19:46:03.693" Score="123" ViewCount="18817" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read the above factoid many times, but sources are conflicting as to whether or not its true; that is,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;some say there's a set timer on door openings and closings that can't be budged by pressing the button  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;others say that manufacturers provide a button, but some landlords choose to disable it&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;and yet others say, it's just an archaic holdover from earlier days before elevator automation.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything definitive out there known on whether door-closing buttons in elevators work, and who's enabling and disabling what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T23:49:17.693" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T22:43:19.650" Title="Do elevator manufacturers purposefully provide a door close button that doesn't work?" Tags="|psychology|marketing|elevators|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2888" CreationDate="2011-05-08T20:24:11.547" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you have ever been to Disney World you might have met &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_the_Talking_Trash_Can&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Push the Talking Trash Can&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4kRIR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technology sounds very similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Push is controlled by a man in plain clothes, who keeps a small microphone in his hand and keeps his hands inside a bag with the transmitter and a joystick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a picture &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertmiller/1717619046/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; of the operator (black cap, white t-shirt, large black bag).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are observant, you could probably find a similar person near Sprockit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1976" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T20:24:11.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2011-05-08T20:31:53.553" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.futilitycloset.com/2010/11/04/placebo-buttons/&quot;&gt;Futility Closet&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In most elevators installed since the early 1990s, the “close door” button has no effect. &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1042577628591401304.html&quot;&gt;Otis Elevator engineers confirmed the fact to the &lt;em&gt;Wall Street Journal&lt;/em&gt; in 2003&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most other online articles ultimately all point to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://architectures.danlockton.co.uk/2008/10/01/placebo-buttons-false-affordances-and-habit-forming/&quot;&gt;same resource&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The WSJ article is: &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1042577628591401304.html&quot;&gt;Sandberg, Jared. (January 15, 2003) &quot;Employees Only Think They Control Thermostat&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.  The actual quote from the article is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That's just one of several examples where the mere illusion of control seems to satisfy us. Plenty of placebo buttons give the same false impression. That &quot;close door&quot; button on elevators? It won't work unless you're a fireman or an elevator operator with special access to the system. The rest of the time, in deference to various building codes, it's deactivated, according to engineers at Otis Elevator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the reference to building codes. This might well vary from city to city, and therefore be true in some places (say, New York City, where WSJ is published) and false in others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found another reference in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/04/21/080421fa_fact_paumgarten?currentPage=all&quot;&gt;a New Yorker article&lt;/a&gt; that seems to indicate this change dates from the 1990s:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In most elevators, at least in any built or installed since the early nineties, the door-close button doesn’t work. It is there mainly to make you think it works. (It does work if, say, a fireman needs to take control. But you need a key, and a fire, to do that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps that is when the building codes changed? I tried looking this up in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.iccsafe.org/states/newyorkcity/Building/Building-Frameset.html&quot;&gt;New York City building code&lt;/a&gt;, and saw nothing specifically mentioning buttons inside the car. (I will admit to being bad at reading legalese like this, its not very accessible prose).  However, like most local building codes in the US, they defer to national standards as set by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asme.org/&quot;&gt;ASME&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3001.2 Referenced standards. Except as otherwise provided for in this code, the design, construction, installation, alteration, repair and maintenance of elevators and other conveying systems and their components shall conform to &lt;a href=&quot;http://files.asme.org/catalog/codes/printbook/13863.pdf&quot;&gt;ASME A17.1&lt;/a&gt; as modified by Appendix K, ASME A17.2, ASME A18.1, ASME A17.5, ANSI A10.5, ASME QE1-1, ASME A90.1, ASME B20.1 as modified by Appendix K, ALI ALCTV, and for construction in areas of special flood hazard, Appendix G.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only the table of contents of &lt;a href=&quot;http://files.asme.org/catalog/codes/printbook/13863.pdf&quot;&gt;ASME A17.1 (PDF link)&lt;/a&gt; is online, ASME charges several hundred dollars to purchase this book, so I can't directly check it for the rules on close door buttons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="284" LastEditDate="2011-05-10T14:44:29.243" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T14:44:29.243" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2982" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3034" CreationDate="2011-05-08T21:58:37.660" Score="32" ViewCount="8176" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you've ever had that fleeting,&#xA;  mysterious sense that something new --&#xA;  a city or person you’re seeing for the&#xA;  first time -- is somehow familiar,&#xA;  that you’ve been there or known them&#xA;  before, then you can count yourself&#xA;  among those who have experienced déjà&#xA;  vu. It’s typically a brief sensation,&#xA;  lasting no more than 10 to 30 seconds,&#xA;  but 96 percent of the population&#xA;  claims to have experienced at least&#xA;  one occurrence. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physorg.com/news185192263.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, many people worldwide think the deja vu is real and claim to have experienced it, but has it ever been proven to exist under proper observing conditions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, is there a scientific (physiological, neurological, psychological etc) explanation for the phenomenon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T00:15:49.043" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T22:30:37.097" Title="How does deja vu work?" Tags="|psychology|biology|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2971" CreationDate="2011-05-08T23:07:34.250" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20141216173222/http://www.defense.gov/news/Dec2001/d20011213ubl.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Government translated transcript&lt;/a&gt; of a video recording of a conversation, apparently made with bin Laden's knowledge, includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UBL: ... Muhammad ((Atta)) from the Egyptian family (meaning the Al Qa’ida Egyptian group), was in charge of the group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then later&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UBL: (...Inaudible...) we calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all. (...Inaudible...) due to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-08-28T17:06:32.310" LastActivityDate="2021-08-28T17:06:32.310" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="2985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2011-05-08T23:38:16.827" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although there is plenty of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n--ne2aeVRI&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;anecdotal&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ad9RyWvrEk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;evidence&lt;/a&gt; to show that the door close button works in some modern elevators (including the one in our office building).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kone.com/countries/en_IN/elevators/Documents/KONE-Classic.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;KONE elevator information brochure&lt;/a&gt; which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Door Close button for quick closing of&#xA;doors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kone.com/countries/en_IN/elevators/Documents/KONE_Monospace.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;another from KONE&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Door close button allows the door to&#xA;be closed for a call, which shortens&#xA;the normal dwell time and improves the&#xA;interval during non-peak hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; also shows there are multiple uses for the close button:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Independent service (ISC)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The elevator will remain&#xA;parked on a floor with its doors open&#xA;until a floor is selected and the &lt;strong&gt;door&#xA;close button&lt;/strong&gt; is held until the&#xA;elevator starts to travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fire service mode (EFS)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, like independent service&#xA;mode, the car will not respond to a&#xA;car call unless the firefighter&#xA;manually pushes and holds the &lt;strong&gt;door&#xA;close button&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Medical emergency/'Code Blue' service&#xA;(EHS)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Medical personnel must then activate&#xA;the Code Blue key switch inside the&#xA;car, select their floor and close the&#xA;doors with the &lt;strong&gt;door close button&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-08T23:51:36.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2992" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-09T05:21:34.967" Score="8" ViewCount="453" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a quite popular claim among scientific communities that real science is that which is published in peer-reviewed journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, good science is about theories that can be tested, evidence that can be reproduced and verified. Peer-reviewing essentially seems to be like a popularity contest ( a model that is present from skeptics.SE to reality TV shows).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what research has been done on whether peer-reviewed journals leads to better science? About problems/drawbacks of the system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-01-14T01:20:43.340" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T01:20:43.340" Title="Do peer-reviewed journals enhance the quality of scientific research?" Tags="|history-of-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2993" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-09T05:29:02.677" Score="19" ViewCount="1087" Body="&lt;p&gt;In wake of the recent killing of OBL, Pakistan has been accused of supporting and harboring terrorists. Neighboring old-time foe India has long accused Pakistan of using terrorism as an instrument of state policy. Pakistan obviously denies all the accusations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is that is there any definite evidence to prove that Pakistan is a terrorist country?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2508" LastActivityDate="2016-11-13T01:42:58.783" Title="Does Pakistan harbor terrorists?" Tags="|politics|terrorism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2993" CreationDate="2011-05-09T07:53:59.747" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is a resounding yes. Pakistan began sponsoring anti-India terrorists around the late 1980's and early 1990's (to ferment unrest in Kashmir because it lost conventional wars), and several former Pakistani Prime Ministers and Presidents have publicly accepted this fact. Of course, they were usually referred to as &quot;freedom fighters&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the section called &quot;Admission of state sponsored terrorism by Pakistani authorities&quot; at &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic.php?t=5923&amp;amp;p=1086201&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; for further references. Some quotes from referenced links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,721110,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SPIEGEL Interview with Pervez Musharraf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SPIEGEL: Why did you form militant&#xA;  underground groups to fight India in&#xA;  Kashmir?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Musharraf: They were indeed formed.&#xA;  The government turned a blind eye&#xA;  because they wanted India to discuss&#xA;  Kashmir.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SPIEGEL: It was the Pakistani security&#xA;  forces that trained them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Musharraf: The West was ignoring the&#xA;  resolution of the Kashmir issue, which&#xA;  is the core issue of Pakistan. We&#xA;  expected the West -- especially the&#xA;  United States and important countries&#xA;  like Germany -- to resolve the Kashmir&#xA;  issue. Has Germany done that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SPIEGEL: Does that give Pakistan the&#xA;  right to train underground fighters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Musharraf: Yes, it is the right of any&#xA;  country to promote its own interests&#xA;  when India is not prepared to discuss&#xA;  Kashmir at the United Nations and is&#xA;  not prepared to resolve the dispute in&#xA;  a peaceful manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, from the same interview in 2010, allegations of continued training of terrorists in Pakistan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SPIEGEL: A German member of the&#xA;  militant Islamic Movement of&#xA;  Uzbekistan, 36-year-old Ahmad Sidiqi,&#xA;  who has been held by US forces in&#xA;  Afghanistan since July, allegedly told&#xA;  his American interrogators that he was&#xA;  trained in Pakistan and confessed&#xA;  there were plans to attack Europe.&#xA;  Why, nine years after 9/11, does&#xA;  Pakistan remain a breeding ground for&#xA;  international terrorism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Musharraf: We poisoned Pakistani civil&#xA;  society for 10 years when we fought&#xA;  the Soviets in Afghanistan in the&#xA;  1980s. It was jihad and we brought in&#xA;  militants from all over the world,&#xA;  with the West and Pakistan together in&#xA;  the lead role. After the withdrawal of&#xA;  the Soviet troops, the West left&#xA;  Pakistan with 25,000 mujahedeen and&#xA;  al-Qaida fighters, without any plan&#xA;  for rehabilitation or resettlement.&#xA;  While you were mostly concerned with&#xA;  the reunification of Germany, we had&#xA;  to cope with this. Now you expect&#xA;  Pakistan to pull out a magic wand and&#xA;  make all of this suddenly disappear?&#xA;  That is not doable -- this will take&#xA;  time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hinduonnet.com/holnus/000200907081441.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Hindu&lt;/a&gt;, July 2009&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Islamabad (PTI): For the first time,&#xA;  Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari&#xA;  admitted that militants and extremists&#xA;  were &quot;created and nurtured&quot; in the&#xA;  country as a policy to achieve some&#xA;  short-term tactical objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some confessions from Guanatanamo Bay detainees regarding ISI (Pakistan's primary intelligence and covert organization) support provided to terrorists, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindustantimes.com/rssfeed/Americas/ISI-allowed-terrorists-to-attack-India-says-WikiLeaks/Article1-695219.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;according to Wikileaks&lt;/a&gt;. From the introduction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ISI facilitated militants to cross&#xA;  the border to carry out strikes on&#xA;  Indian targets chosen by the Pakistan&#xA;  Army, several detainees at the&#xA;  Guantanamo Bay facility told US&#xA;  interrogators, according to a fresh&#xA;  set of American diplomatic cables&#xA;  released by WikiLeaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indianexpress.com/news/kasab-trial-pak-army-sponsored-the-26-11-a/588765/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pakistani army was also implicated&lt;/a&gt; (though not conclusively proved) to be involved in the Mumbai 2008 terrorist attacks, where all the participating terrorists had been given &quot;commando training&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Kasab in his confession has said one&#xA;  Major General was present during their&#xA;  training and supervised the firing&#xA;  practice. The name of this Major&#xA;  General was deliberately not revealed&#xA;  to the attackers as he occupies a&#xA;  senior position in the army,&quot; Nikam&#xA;  said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The support continues even now, but due to changing factors, the terrorists they support have now come into the global limelight(due to links with Al-Qaeda of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since terrorists receive support from the army, democratically-elected or coup-instated government heads and intelligence agencies, it would be fair to say that Pakistan is a state sponsoring terrorism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2016-11-13T01:42:58.783" LastActivityDate="2016-11-13T01:42:58.783" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2925" CreationDate="2011-05-09T10:46:15.250" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/03/audiophiles-cant-tell-the-difference-between-monster-cable-and/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/03/audiophiles-cant-tell-the-difference-between-monster-cable-and/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would it matter? - the tracks on the circuit board aren't oxygen free. Digital doesn't bear thinking about, the signal is either there or it isn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At Video frequencies capacitance and inductance matter more than whether the cable contains oxygen - does a slight change in oxygen somehow alter the capacitance of the wire - no. Consider if minute changes in oxygen somehow varied capacitance or inductance then these would be used as capacitors and inductors - e.g. 20uF = 10% oxygen, 2uF = 1% Oxygen, and so on but this doesn't happen because there is no effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2513" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T10:46:15.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="2999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2971" CreationDate="2011-05-09T11:57:38.773" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some quotes from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/osamas-prodigal-son-the-dark-twisted-journey-of-omar-bin-laden-199468/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rolling Stone's interview with Omar bin Laden&lt;/a&gt;, one of Osama's sons. He confirms that his father organized that attack. It is not definitive proof but still a strong argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interviewer writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day, around the time that bin Laden was plotting the attacks of 9/11, he tacked a piece of paper to the wall of the mosque to recruit men willing to be suicide bombers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Omar confirms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true my father put the paper up in the mosque and everyone wanted to put their name on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="874" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-08-28T17:08:08.240" LastActivityDate="2021-08-28T17:08:08.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3000" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4164" CreationDate="2011-05-09T12:42:50.443" Score="15" ViewCount="2377" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was a kid, a friend and I had a list of favourite containers for soda (specifically Coca Cola). We said that it tasted the best when coming out of a glass bottle and the worst from a plastic bottle. Our list went as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Glass bottle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Machine coke (as in at the movies).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In cans (aluminium).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Plastic bottles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is can the material of the container really make such a big difference? My logic tells me that obviously it must, but on the other hand, how big can this really be? Most of our childhood friends agreed with our ranking of the taste, but was this mostly in our heads?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, following from this, the machine coke also comes from plastic tubes, so shouldn't this then taste as bad as the plastic bottles? Lastly, if this then really affects the taste of the soda so much, doesn't it then follow that certain (potentially dangerous) particulates are being introduced into the sodas that affect the taste? (The reverse of this, if it doesn't happen, bringing me back to then why the perceived difference in tastes?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2439" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-05-09T16:52:55.410" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T21:13:17.187" Title="Does the container that soda is in affect the flavour?" Tags="|psychology|perception|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3002" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-09T13:02:20.470" Score="21" ViewCount="15999" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is said that drinking alcohol through a straw gets you drunk faster. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thedrunkpirate.com/2008/11/07/how-to-get-drunk-fast/http://www.thedrunkpirate.com/2008/11/07/how-to-get-drunk-fast/&quot;&gt;The Drunk Pirate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have absolutely no scientific explanation for why drinking alcohol through a straw gets you drunk so fast. It just does. Now granted there’s no way in hell to look cool drinking out of a straw. But if you go to a bar and order a Jack and Coke, ask for a straw. Not the little red stirring straw that comes in in the drink, a big honkin’ McDonalds straw. Start sucking your drinks up through one of those things and you’ll be invisible in about half an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried it and I feel like it works, but it could just be a placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T03:29:38.393" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T03:29:38.393" Title="Does drinking alcohol through a straw make you drunk quicker?" Tags="|alcohol|drinks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2992" CreationDate="2011-05-09T13:45:20.920" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been a lot of work on this subject, most of which has even been peer reviewed!  Even 30+ years ago, there were &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/g1l56241734kq743/&quot;&gt;studies confirming &lt;em&gt;confirmatory bias&lt;/em&gt; in peer review&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...we are left with little to defend [the peer review process] other than tradition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&quot;&gt;Confirmatory bias&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is one's tendancy to agree with conclusions that agree with one's own preconceived notions and hypotheses.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That study took 75 journal reviewers (I believe they were all from the cognitive sciences community) and presented them with papers to review.  The catch was that the papers were all identical in their experimental setup and data, however, they varied in their conclusions of the results.  The majority of the reviewers agreed with the conclusions that were similar to their own theoretical perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peer review of research grant proposals isn't much better; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/214/4523/881.short&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; from around the same time period concluded that being awarded a peer-reviewed research grant falls mostly to chance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The degree of disagreement within the population of eligible reviewers is such that whether or not a proposal is funded depends in a large proportion of cases upon which reviewers happen to be selected for it. No evidence of systematic bias in the selection of NSF reviewers was found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a philosophical perspective &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/263/10/1438.short&quot;&gt;peer-review can be very effective, however, it relies mostly on the quality of the reviewer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peer review can be performed successfully only if those involved have a clear idea as to its fundamental purpose. Most authors of articles on the subject assume that the purpose of peer review is quality control. This is an inadequate answer. The fundamental purpose of peer review in the biomedical sciences must be consistent with that of medicine itself, to cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always. Peer review must therefore aim to facilitate the introduction into medicine of improved ways of curing, relieving, and comforting patients. The fulfillment of this aim requires both quality control and the encouragement of innovation. If an appropriate balance between the two is lost, then peer review will fail to fulfill its purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/287/21/2784.short&quot;&gt;This more recent meta-study aggregated the results of 19 studies on peer review&lt;/a&gt; (having pruned away 116 other studies that did not meet their criteria).  They found that each study had widely different conclusions, many of which may not be generalizable.  They conclude that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Editorial peer review, although widely used, is largely untested and its effects are uncertain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some studies did show that peer review is effectual in improving the readability of articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, there is a lot of evidence to support the fact that the effect of peer review is often indistinguishable from chance.  It has been perpetuated due to tradition; until very recently, the dissemination of scholarly information was technologically and economically limited to distribution via printed journals, and peer review provided a means for limiting the size of those expensive journals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some more amusing reading on this subject, I suggest you check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/OPINIONS.html&quot;&gt;opinions&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doron_Zeilberger&quot;&gt;Doron Zeilberger&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion101.html&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T13:45:20.920" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3005" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-09T14:48:53.333" Score="7" ViewCount="719" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry for a catchy title. I am basically interested in some way of comparing the (non-CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;) pollution from plastics and other toxic materials that are being thrown on a landfill to that of air travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was inspired by an argument with a roommate, according to whom recycling is pointless, for one trip on an airplane offsets two years' effort of diligent recycling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it rather hard to compare the non-CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; footprint of an extra airplane vs that of the average plastic and appliances being thrown out by humans. One would have to make many estimations and assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose we do not count the pollution that is being used by the airport and on-the-ground airport vehicles, although the servicing of an airplane (and the chemicals involved that leak) is fair game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suppose the typical non-recycling person lives in the United States, follows proper procedures when it comes to discarding hazardous material such as paint, but throws out paper, plastic, glass, metal, as well as small electronic appliances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's also suppose that this person's flight pattern is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 round-trip from NYC to San Diego per year +&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 round-trip from NYC to Beijing per year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this question too vague? If so, please let me know what other assumptions I have missed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2059" LastEditorUserId="2059" LastEditDate="2011-05-09T15:38:46.910" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T16:57:05.200" Title="Not recycling vs air travel - which is worse?" Tags="|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3009" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-09T16:18:44.160" Score="14" ViewCount="1784" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the last 50 years, many dogs have jumped to death from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtoun_House#Overtoun_Bridge_dog_deaths&quot;&gt;Overtoun Bridge&lt;/a&gt; in Scotland for no apparent reason. There are many popular explanations for this weird phenomenon. According to one of them, dogs commit suicide because of depression. Could this ever be possible? Can dogs (or animals in general) commit suicide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2529" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T03:47:55.310" Title="Do dogs commit suicide at Overtoun Bridge?" Tags="|zoology|mortality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3010" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-09T16:50:24.567" Score="20" ViewCount="3953" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's say you are in a war-situation, and both you and your opponent are out of bullets. When I was in the army, I learned that the most efficient way to kill your opponent would be to kick him in the balls until he was incapacitated by the pain (one or two good hits in the nuts), then finish him off by some means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have since doubted this claim: Would you really notice the pain in such a situation? I imagine it works in a surprise attack, but is it efficient when the body is in a fight-mode and full of adrenaline? If no, how long does it take to reach such a mode where you don't feel pain from when you are mentally aware that your life is in danger?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, what triggers the no-pain-mode? Is it physical or psychological, controllable etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What exactly happens to the body when you are in a fight-mode? There are lots of rumours of huge strength increasing. For example, women lifting cars when their baby is trapped underneath, etc.) Is there any scientific studies showing that people become  able to lift heavier objects than normal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2531" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T00:19:58.493" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T00:19:58.493" Title="Do you feel pain in a life-threatening situation?" Tags="|psychology|physiology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3005" CreationDate="2011-05-09T16:57:05.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You could use one of the online &lt;a href=&quot;http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Carbon-Footprint calculators&lt;/a&gt; to work this out - just try clicking on flight, or on recycling products and check the differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course then you have to trust the calculator to have the correct figures, but most of them do state their assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastActivityDate="2011-05-09T16:57:05.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3013" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-09T17:14:05.227" Score="34" ViewCount="10562" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common saying about drinking is this:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beer before liquor, never been sicker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes this is followed by:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Liquor before beer, you're in the clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any merit to this? Assuming one drinks the exact same amount of beer and harder alcohol in the exact same time period, all other things being equal, does it matter whether they drink the beer first or drink the shots first?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also many other common ideas people have about what gets you sick drinking- one guy might be convinced that having tequila and gin in the same night is a recipe for disaster, while another might feel that mixing wine and beer is. Does the type of drink/combination of drinks matter, or is it strictly a function of the raw amount of alcohol consumed (and the other standard factors such as how long it takes to consume it and if you're drinking on an empty stomach, etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=beer+before+liquor+never+been+sicker&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com/search?q=beer+before+liquor+never+been+sicker&lt;/a&gt; turns up 10000 hits; the top ones all seem to be debunking the first claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2038" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-23T08:18:09.423" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T17:24:08.537" Title="Does consuming different types of alcohol make you more sick than others?" Tags="|medical-science|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3016" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-09T18:25:43.077" Score="18" ViewCount="3472" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MDMA&amp;amp;oldid=518940927&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MDMA page of Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; currently states: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A meta-analytic review of the published literature on memory show that ecstasy users may suffer short-term and long-term verbal memory impairment—with 70–80% of ecstasy users displaying impaired memory. Other meta analyses have reported possibility of impairment of executive functioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please assess these claims. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2536" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:46:50.123" LastActivityDate="2022-09-23T12:10:09.597" Title="Does long-term use of MDMA (&quot;Ecstasy&quot;) cause cognitive impairment?" Tags="|physiology|neurology|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2718" CreationDate="2011-05-09T19:39:03.593" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;They state two differences between their product and plain Vitamin C&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not the free ascorbic acid but the calcium salt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vitamin C metabolites are present&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first aspect is supposed to lead to a better tolerance of the Vitamin C, as the calcium ascorbate is less acidic than the free ascorbic acid. The metabolites are supposed to increase the absorption of Vitamin C, according to the claims of the company behind Ester-C&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On their homepage the company lists the two following studies as evidence for their claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s12325-008-0106-y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vitamin C metabolites, independent of smoking status, significantly enhance leukocyte, but not plasma ascorbate concentrations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02850358&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Safety and Tolerance of Ester-C® compared with regular ascorbic acid. Advances in Therapy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study about Vitamin C absorption found no difference in plasma levels, but a difference in the Vitamin C level in leukocytes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No significant difference in plasma&#xA;vitamin C levels was observed when&#xA;comparing the different preparations.&#xA;However, at 24 hours, calcium&#xA;ascorbate with metabolites resulted in&#xA;significantly higher concentrations of&#xA;vitamin C in leukocytes (P&amp;lt;0.0001)&#xA;compared with vitamin C alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study investigating if Ester-C is better tolerated found a positive effect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Investigators concluded that Ester-C&#xA;compared with AA caused significantly&#xA;fewer epigastric adverse effects in&#xA;participants sensitive to acidic foods&#xA;and that Ester-C is much better&#xA;tolerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a third, older study not mentioned on the website that &lt;a href=&quot;https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/vitamins/vitamin-C&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reportedly did not find any difference in Vitamin C absorption between Ester C and other products&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jandonline.org/article/0002-8223(94)91950-X/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Comparison of the absorption and excretion of three commercially available sources of vitamin C&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately this one does not have an abstract and the article is not freely available, I have to rely on the second-hand reporting for this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are pretty small studies (15 persons in the first one, 50 in the second one), I don't think they can settle those questions on their own. The absorption claim in general is not validated by the studies, except for the leukocytes. The better tolerance of the calcium ascorbate seems to be supported by one of the studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-05-21T22:01:16.643" LastActivityDate="2022-05-21T22:01:16.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3016" CreationDate="2011-05-09T22:58:51.613" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We don't know conclusively one way or another.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2010.03252.x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A recent 2011 study&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150513075022/http://www.cuclasses.com/stat1001/projects/documents/Residual%20neurocognitive%20features%20of%20long-term%20ecstasy.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[Full PDF Version]&lt;/a&gt; completely contradicts most of the previous research on the topic. My previous answer (left intact below) probably cited studies that used unintentionally biased groups of &amp;quot;users&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;non-users&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, this new study released compared &lt;em&gt;only those people associated with the 'rave' subculture&lt;/em&gt;. They selected participants based on the number of times they had participated in all-night raves and their levels of drug use, and thoroughly drug tested those participants who claimed no use of ecstasy. They found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast to many prior studies, ecstasy users in the new study showed &lt;strong&gt;no signs of cognitive impairment attributable to drug use&lt;/strong&gt;: ecstasy use did not decrease mental ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110215081736.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; summarising the study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The researchers fixed four problems in earlier research on ecstasy. First, the non-users in the experiment were members of the &amp;quot;rave&amp;quot; subculture and thus repeatedly exposed to sleep and fluid deprivation from all-night dancing -- factors that themselves can produce long-lasting cognitive effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, participants were screened for drug and alcohol use on the day of cognitive testing, to make sure all participants were tested while 'clean'.&#xA;Third, the study chose ecstasy users who did not habitually use other drugs that might themselves contribute to cognitive impairment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the experiment corrected for the possibility that any cognitive impairment shown by ecstasy users might have been in place before they started using the drug.&#xA;The resulting experiment whittled 1500 potential participants down to 52 carefully chosen ecstasy users, whose cognitive function was compared against 59 closely-matched non-users, with tests administered at several stages to make sure participants were telling the truth about their drug and alcohol use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the results of a ~100 person study are compelling I could not say - there have been other studies released since showing decreased brain mass cognitive impairment. What I can say is that whether a participant has frequently participated in all-night dancing (dehydration, sleep deprivation) is absolutely a factor that should be included in any studies on the drug. Either long term studies with higher numbers of high-use participants, or a meta-analysis is required to draw a conclusion one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study itself also cautions that it did not include any long-time heavy users (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one hand, it is possible that ecstasy indeed causes residual cognitive neurotoxicity, albeit perhaps only in individuals with high-level exposure, or with possible co-factors predisposing them to ecstasy-induced neurotoxicity. If so, we might have failed to detect a difference when a true difference exists, &lt;strong&gt;perhaps because we evaluated only six participants with very high ecstasy exposure (≥150 life-time episodes)&lt;/strong&gt; or perhaps because our population included few individuals with vulnerability-inducing cofactors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(Original Answer)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-007-0859-z&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110408143041/http://www2.psy.unsw.edu.au/Users/JDHenry/publications/Ecstasy%20and%20PM.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[Full PDF Version]&lt;/a&gt; UNSW study was performed solely to assess the impact on prospective memory (remembering to perform a planned action or intention at the appropriate time):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is considerable evidence that 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA; a principal ingredient in the popular&#xA;recreational drug “ecstasy”) is a serotonergic neurotoxin that&#xA;leads to degeneration of serotonergic axon terminals in&#xA;animals, including nonhuman primates (Buaumann et al.&#xA;2007; Scheffel et al. 1998). The neurotoxic effects of&#xA;MDMA appear to be long-lasting, with serotonergic depletion in one study shown 7 years after initial administration of&#xA;the drug (Hatzidimitriou et al. 1999). It has been argued that&#xA;these neurobiological changes underpin the well-documented&#xA;neurocognitive deficits associated with MDMA use in&#xA;humans (Morgan 2000).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s002130050803&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Morgan study&lt;/a&gt; mentioned there (sorry, paywall) states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;deficits in memory performance in recreational ecstasy users are primarily associated with past exposure to ecstasy, rather than with the other legal and illicit drugs consumed by these individuals, and are consistent with reduced serotonergic modulation of mnemonic function as a result of long-term neurotoxic effects of MDMA in humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the result of the UNSW study was in keeping with your quoted figure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ecstasy users were significantly impaired&lt;/strong&gt; on&#xA;Virtual Week, and these deficits were of a comparable&#xA;magnitude irrespective of the specific prospective memory&#xA;task demands. The pattern of results was unchanged after&#xA;controlling for marijuana use, level of psychopathology,&#xA;and sleep quality. Further, prospective memory was shown&#xA;to be significantly impaired for both relatively infrequent&#xA;and relatively frequent ecstasy users, although for the latter&#xA;group the magnitude of this deficit was greater.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q1NEa.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Results by task type&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-23T12:10:09.597" LastActivityDate="2022-09-23T12:10:09.597" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3020" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3036" CreationDate="2011-05-09T23:29:27.957" Score="23" ViewCount="1624" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's always this big talk about plastic bags, but how much can you compare banning them to other measures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottomline: Is it worth the whole media coverage about this issue, or is it just a pointless factoid to distract from other much more important measures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2543" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T02:05:56.123" LastActivityDate="2016-09-24T04:33:01.610" Title="Is banning plastic bags beneficial to the environment?" Tags="|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3322" CreationDate="2011-05-10T00:10:50.460" Score="45" ViewCount="76368" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does oxygen get you high? If so, is the effect strong enough to keep the average person placid during a plane crash?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/quotes&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Fight Club&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tyler Durden: [pointing at an&#xA;  emergency instruction manual on a&#xA;  plane] You know why they put oxygen&#xA;  masks on planes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jack: So you can breath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tyler Durden: Oxygen gets you high. In&#xA;  a catastrophic emergency, you're&#xA;  taking giant panicked breaths.&#xA;  Suddenly you become euphoric, docile.&#xA;  You accept your fate. It's all right&#xA;  here. Emergency water landing - 600&#xA;  miles an hour. Blank faces, calm as&#xA;  Hindu cows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:46:39.733" LastActivityDate="2017-04-07T23:33:06.840" Title="Does oxygen get you high enough to keep you calm during a plane crash?" Tags="|biology|aviation|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3023" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3030" CreationDate="2011-05-10T03:28:29.533" Score="24" ViewCount="2001" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sure paper towels don't harm the forests, because they are made from reforestation crops. So using them only harm trees that were already destined to being cut. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/id/2193740/&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; that tries to compare the carbon emissions of each &quot;paper towel session&quot; x &quot;hand drying session&quot;, and came to conclusion that using the dryer is about 5 times less harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the article is 2 years old and uses data even older. The most complex issue is: How much carbon emissions are ther in a paper towel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone can find more recent and based opinion on that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2543" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-10T04:18:36.913" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T12:52:05.460" Title="Is replacing paper towels with electric hand dryer blowers beneficial to the environment?" Tags="|environment|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3026" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3241" CreationDate="2011-05-10T07:20:17.770" Score="28" ViewCount="3463" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Was the genius behind Sherlock Holmes also behind one of the most infamous forgeries in history?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iS5ob.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.roystoncartoons.com/2010/07/not-yet-sold-sherlock-holmes-cartoon.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source:roystoncartoons.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In what could be described in retrospect as basically a shallow grave near the village of Piltdown, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Dawson&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Charles Dawson&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Smith_Woodward&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arthur Smith Woodward&lt;/a&gt; found the alleged remains of an early human fossil dubbed Eoanthropus Dawsoni. Curiously, bones of elephants, rhinos. hippos and mastadons were also found at the scene. In December 1912, they presented their finding to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Geological Society of London&lt;/a&gt;, and history was made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://historyofgeology.blogspot.com/2011/04/is-eoanthropus-dawsoni-valid-species.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Despite academic dissent&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://unmuseum.mus.pa.us/piltdown.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Piltdown Man&lt;/a&gt; was regarded as one of the oldest human fossils, as well as a possible missing link (reading list &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tiac.net/~cri_a/piltdown/readinglist.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for those not familiar). Although over time it was becoming increasingly clear Piltdown did not agree with the fossil record, and 1949 the fossils were dated by fluorine absorbtion and found to be quite recent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clarku.edu/~piltdown/map_expose/the_pilt_man_forgery.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;J.S. Weiner&lt;/a&gt; and co. later revealed to the world that the Piltdown Man was a fake consisting of human skull fragments and the mandible of a juvenile, female orangutan. Skeptics, if there was ever a time to use the phrase &quot;thoroughly debunked&quot; this would be it. And even though it seems Weiner had some suspicions as to who had perpetrated the hoax (Dawson) when he published &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0198607806&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;The Piltdown Forgery&quot;&lt;/a&gt; he does seem careful not to directly point the finger, and no definitive proof has been found. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1983, John Winslow and Alfred Meyer addressed the fact that no definite hoaxer had yet been identified despite the numerous suspects, and proposed..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But there was another interested&#xA;  figure who haunted the Piltdown site&#xA;  during excavation, a doctor who knew&#xA;  human anatomy and chemistry, someone&#xA;  interested in geology and archeology,&#xA;  and an avid collector of fossils. He&#xA;  was a man who loved hoaxes, adventure,&#xA;  and danger; a writer gifted at&#xA;  manipulating complex plots; and&#xA;  perhaps most important of all, one who&#xA;  bore a grudge against the British&#xA;  science establishment. He was none&#xA;  other than the creator of Sherlock&#xA;  Holmes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Conan_Doyle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sir Arthur Conan Doyle&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tiac.net/~cri_a/piltdown/winslow.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They argue that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The hoaxer had to have a great&#xA;knowledge of anatomy particularly of&#xA;skulls and jaws, which Doyle&#xA;obviously did.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The hoaxer had to have access to a&#xA;varied collection (due to the&#xA;peculiar thickness of the Piltdown&#xA;skull) of skulls, which Doyle did&#xA;through American phrenologist Jessie&#xA;Fowler&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The hoaxer had to have access to the&#xA;5-600 year old jawbone of an&#xA;orangutan, which Doyle did through a&#xA;former neighbor named Cecil Wray&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The hoaxer would need access to the&#xA;other exotic materials and fossilized&#xA;mammalian remains found at the site,&#xA;which have been identified as coming&#xA;from the Mediterranean, which Doyle&#xA;did through archeologist Joseph&#xA;Whitaker, as well as having visited&#xA;the region himself.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The hoaxer had to have access to the&#xA;excavation site, which Doyle obviouly&#xA;did, as he is documented there and is reported to have lived close by.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The case against him seems to be circumstantial. Has any investigation into the matter yielded compelling evidence that Doyle was involved, if not directly responsible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is this simply an attempt to involve/implicate a famous name based on little evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:56:09.973" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T08:56:09.973" Title="Was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle responsible for the Piltdown Man hoax?" Tags="|history|biology|archeology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3023" CreationDate="2011-05-10T08:50:48.450" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's see (US perspective on this issue):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hand dryer probably uses around 3000W to run the motor and the heater. It might be on for about 30 seconds. During that time, it consumes 1.5 kWm (kilowatt-minutes) or about 25 watt-hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this source&lt;/a&gt;, about 45% of the US energy supply (the largest proportion) comes from coal as of 2010. (185 GWh / 412 GWh = 44.9%), so I'll pretend that the energy comes from coal. Of course, if it comes from wind turbines, then CO2 production will be almost nil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_report/co2report.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This source&lt;/a&gt; tells us how much using 1 kWh of energy contributes to production of CO2 from coal (this is the latest data I can get, but it shouldn't drift too much):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1.341 pounds of CO2 per kilowatthour generated, also showed a slight change&#xA;  from 1.350 pounds CO2 per kilowatthour&#xA;  in 1998 (Table 1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means producing 25 Wh of electricity produces 0.034 lb of CO2 (about 15.4 grams.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An average tree absorbs from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.carbonfootprint.com/plantingtrees.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;22 pounds&lt;/a&gt; (1 tonne / 100 years) to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coloradotrees.org/benefits.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;48 pounds&lt;/a&gt; of CO2 per year (depending on who you ask - these are quite pro-tree planting, so I'd like to see if there is a source of raw data); there does not seem to be any definite figure given. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means one tree could support from 647 to 1,411 hand drying sessions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you can get far more paper from the average tree. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tappi.org/paperu/all_about_paper/earth_answers/earthanswers_howmuch.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; suggests that from just one cord of wood (8ft x 4ft x 4ft), smaller than a whole tree, you could produce 942,000 sheets of paper (A5 size, normal density.) Even if you used 10 sheets per session, it's still 66x better (in the best case for hand dryers!) And, you can recycle the paper used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, hand dryers are not better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T08:50:48.450" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3028" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7644" CreationDate="2011-05-10T08:59:29.220" Score="113" ViewCount="39712" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.excal.on.ca/news/dont-dress-like-a-slut-toronto-cop/&quot;&gt;recent controversy&lt;/a&gt; about a police officer who is reported to have suggested:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Women can avoid sexual assault by not dressing like a “slut.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we leave out the derogatory word and focus on the substance of the claim, is there any research that supports his claim or debunks it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="2353" LastEditDate="2011-05-10T13:38:59.550" LastActivityDate="2023-01-26T00:49:33.110" Title="Is a woman who dresses sexually suggestively more likely to get raped?" Tags="|psychology|sexual-abuse|clothing|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3023" CreationDate="2011-05-10T09:25:03.920" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Salon commissioned a &lt;a href=&quot;http://replay.web.archive.org/20090623104733/http://www.climateconservancy.org/salon.php&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; comparing paper towels with hot-air dryers, which found that a hand-dryer meant 9-20g per press of CO2 emissions (depending on the wattage), and paper towels were 28g per sheet - so it's a question of how many presses or sheets it takes. The resulting article is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/life/good_life/2007/11/12/bathroom_dilemma/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airdri.com/script/AirdriBobrick.pdf&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; - consider cautiously as it was conducted by a company producing hot-air dryers - found similar results, concluding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The use of the drier results in lower global warming, acidification, ecotoxicity,&#xA;  human toxicity, nutrification, ozone depletion and photochemical smog burdens. The use of paper towels results in a lower resource depletion burden than the use of the drier. The use of paper towels results in double the global warming burden when compared to the use of the hand air drier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(in case you were wondering, they figured paper to be a renewable resource, as you can grow new trees). They assumed one press of the hot-air dryer button vs two paper towels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, however, that according to a study by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.europeantissue.com/pdfs/090402-2008%20WUS%20Westminster%20University%20hygiene%20study,%20nov2008.pdf&quot;&gt;Redway and Fawdar&lt;/a&gt;, hot-air dryers took longer to dry hands, and actually increased the amount of bacteria subjects had on their hands (by 2-4 times!), whereas paper towels reduced the bacterial counts. They, however, also considered jet air dryers (such as the new Dyson ones I've seen popping up in places).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dyson's jet air dryers use &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/5402024.stm&quot;&gt;up to 83% less electricty&lt;/a&gt; than conventional hot air dryers. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mitsubishijettowel.com/calculator&quot;&gt;According to Mitsubishi&lt;/a&gt;, their version uses a tenth of the energy of a 1725W hot-air dryer (that's a relatively low wattage). According to the Redway and Fawdar study, jet air dryers are just as effective at drying as paper towels, and, while they still increased bacterial counts, it was not by nearly as much as a hot-air dryer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="143" LastEditDate="2011-05-10T13:17:05.883" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T13:17:05.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3031" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3038" CreationDate="2011-05-10T10:09:16.623" Score="11" ViewCount="15701" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was always told this as a kid, and have been told it again recently. I'm skeptical, do they actually have any medicinal properties?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0Zg45.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T10:13:23.800" Title="Does rubbing a dock leaf on a sting from a stinging nettle help to reduce pain?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|pain|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3031" CreationDate="2011-05-10T11:48:24.403" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhm.ac.uk/about-us/news/2006/may/news_8265.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Natural History Museum&lt;/a&gt; &quot;the dock leaf contains chemicals that when rubbed over the sting neutralise it and also cool the skin down.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/alternative_medicine/article564372.ece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a doctor writing in &lt;em&gt;The Times&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; said this theory &quot;has never been proved scientifically&quot; and that there are three possible reasons why it seems to work: soothing agents (though this has been challenged on with the suggestion that dock leaves have &quot;no pharmacologically relevant properties&quot;); the physical act of rubbing as a counter-stimulation; or a placebo effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T11:48:24.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2982" CreationDate="2011-05-10T13:20:02.857" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/extrasensory-perceptions/deja-vu.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HowStuffWorks&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yk8KD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Deja Vu&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are more than 40 theories as to&#xA;  what déjà vu is and what causes it&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;  and they range from reincarnation to&#xA;  glitches in our memory processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Déjà vu is extremely difficult to&#xA;  study because it occurs briefly,&#xA;  unannounced, only in certain people,&#xA;  and has no witnesses&lt;/strong&gt; or physical&#xA;  manifestations other than the person&#xA;  saying, &quot;Hey, déjà vu!&quot; Because of&#xA;  this, &lt;strong&gt;there is little firm research&#xA;  and no definitive explanations&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Firmly placing déjà vu within the&#xA;  study of memory, [researchers] hope to discover&#xA;  more about how memories are formed,&#xA;  stored and retrieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They have since determined that the&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;medial &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_lobe&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;temporal lobe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is involved in&#xA;  our conscious memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Double Perception (Divided Attention) Theory&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;when we are distracted with&#xA;  something else, we subliminally take&#xA;  in what's around us but may not truly&#xA;  register it consciously&lt;/strong&gt;. Then, when we&#xA;  are able to focus on what we are&#xA;  doing, those surroundings appear to&#xA;  already be familiar to us even when&#xA;  they shouldn't be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.smu.edu/research/2009/06/d233j224_vu_research_pushed_ar.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SMU Research (Alan Brown, Elizabeth Marsh)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&amp;amp;id=1989-31882-001&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An illusion of memory: False recognition influenced by unconscious perception&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/14/science/14deja.html?_r=1&amp;amp;pagewanted=print&amp;amp;position=&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;br/&gt;The Hologram Theory&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dutch psychiatrist &lt;strong&gt;Herman Sno proposed&#xA;  the idea that memories are like&#xA;  holograms&lt;/strong&gt;, meaning that you can&#xA;  recreate the entire three-dimensional&#xA;  image from any fragment of the whole.&#xA;  The smaller the fragment, however, the&#xA;  fuzzier the ultimate picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Déjà vu ... happens when some&#xA;  detail in the environment we are&#xA;  currently in&lt;/strong&gt; (a sight, sound, smell,&#xA;  et cetera) &lt;strong&gt;is similar to some remnant&#xA;  of a memory of our past and our brain&#xA;  recreates an entire scene from that&#xA;  fragment&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newsweek.com/1991/01/06/a-fresh-view-of-deja-vu.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Newsweek - A Fresh View Of Deja Vu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-exactly-is-dj-vu&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American - What exactly is déjà vu?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Dual Processing (Delayed Vision) Theory&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Robert Efron&lt;/strong&gt; tested an idea at the&#xA;  Veterans Hospital in Boston in 1963&#xA;  that stands as a valid theory today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He proposed that a delayed&#xA;  neurological response causes déjà vu&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because information enters the&#xA;  processing centers of the brain via&#xA;  more than one path, it is possible&#xA;  that occasionally that blending of&#xA;  information might not synchronize&#xA;  correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/86/3/403.extract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Robert Efron - TEMPORAL PERCEPTION, APHASIA AND DÉJÀ VU&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/1589-origin-deja-vu-pinpointed.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Origin of Deja Vu pinpointed?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... a new study suggests only a small&#xA;  chunk of [the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocampus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hippocampus&lt;/a&gt;, called &lt;strong&gt;the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dentate_gyrus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dentate gyrus&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;  is responsible for “episodic”&#xA;  memories—information that allows us to&#xA;  tell similar places and situations&#xA;  apart&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When Susumu Tonegawa and his team bred&#xA;  mice without a fully-functional&#xA;  dentate gyrus, the rodents struggled&#xA;  to tell the difference between two&#xA;  similar but different situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/deja-vu-0607.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MIT News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8149215&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Study: Anatomical origin of déjà vu and vivid 'memories' in human temporal lobe epilepsy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More to read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://discovermagazine.com/2005/sep/psychology-of-deja-vu&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Discover Magazine - The Psychology of Déjà Vu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T13:20:02.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3037" CreationDate="2011-05-10T14:10:59.760" Score="18" ViewCount="1629" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got this question after reading this:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://worldradio.ch/wrs/news/wrsnews/basel-study-shows-positive-side-of-depression.shtml?24427&quot;&gt;http://worldradio.ch/wrs/news/wrsnews/basel-study-shows-positive-side-of-depression.shtml?24427&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a person is depressed, is it because the brain is malfunctioning, or is it just a natural reaction for sadness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today you say to a doctor that you are sad, and he prescribes you an antidepressant without asking further questions. Instead, shouldn't depression be considered a natural reaction from the brain and be treated only for special cases where it is a syntom instead of the main disease(bipolar disorder, pacient getting suicidal, ...)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By a natural condition I point out the Basel study saying that people get more analytic during a depression. It is the way that the brain found to protect the person from getting another sadness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2333" LastActivityDate="2016-04-11T11:45:01.903" Title="Is depression a disease?" Tags="|medical-science|depression|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3020" CreationDate="2011-05-10T14:19:59.900" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm still looking for decent primary sources, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/aug/11/plastic-bags-welsh-assembly&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Guardian article&lt;/a&gt; contains some fairly revealing tidbits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2002, Ireland introduced a 15 euro cents tax on each plastic bag – the so-called &amp;quot;plastax&amp;quot; – and within a few months a 90% reduction in the number of bags being used had been recorded. But the scheme has had its critics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it was true that the tax led to a dramatic drop in the number of bags being handed out in shops, &lt;strong&gt;it also triggered a 400% increase in the number of bin liners and black refuse bags being purchased.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tax also encouraged an increased reliance on paper bags which, according to a number of life-cycle analysis studies that have compared the environmental performance of various types of bags, require more energy to manufacture and release more greenhouse gases when degrading following their disposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And while it is commonly accepted that plastic bags are a genuine blot on the landscape (and seascape), they only represent a tiny fraction of the waste stream by weight or by volume. For example, in the US they account for less than half a percent of domestic refuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goodall says that the various efforts to reduce the use of plastic bags – be it through government legislation or the voluntary efforts (spurred on by high-profile campaigns by the likes of the Daily Mail) by supermarkets to reduce their customers' reliance on such bags – are invariably littered with unintended consequences. &lt;strong&gt;As has been seen in Ireland, plastic bag taxes often lead to a rise in the number of bin liners being purchased. &amp;quot;This plastic is much thicker and will prove to be a greater environmental hazard than thin plastic bags,&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; he says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also growing rumbles of concern in San Francisco, which, in 2007, became the first city in the US to introduce a plastic bag ban.  &lt;strong&gt;An investigation by the San Francisco Weekly earlier this year found that in the period since the ban was introduced there had actually been a slight rise in the number of plastic bags picked up off the city's streets.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T14:19:59.900" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3035" CreationDate="2011-05-10T14:41:35.760" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your defenition of depression as &amp;quot;sad&amp;quot; is a missunderstanding on your part.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=11123&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Depression&lt;/a&gt; is clearly defined in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=17761&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DSM-IV&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depression that meets the DSM-IV criteria for a depressive disorder. The term is usually used to denote depression that is not a normal, temporary mood caused by life events or grieving&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;DSM describes symptoms and does not discuss the causes of the disorders&lt;/em&gt;. DSM-IV designates the 4th edition. Issued in 1993, DSM-IV is currently the latest edition (as of 2001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=46&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A better defenition would be&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chronic Depressive Disorder (Dysthymia)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Depressed mood for most of the day, for more days than not, as indicated either by subjective account or observation by others, for at least 2 years. Note: In children and adolescents, mood can be irritable and duration must be at least 1 year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B. Presence, while depressed, of two (or more) of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Poor appetite or overeating&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Insomnia or hypersomnia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Low energy or fatigue&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Low self-esteem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Poor concentration or difficulty making decisions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Feelings of hopelessness&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C. During the 2-year period (1 year for children or adolescents) of the disturbance, the person has never been without the symptoms in Criteria A and B for more than 2 months at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D. The disturbance does not occur exclusively during the course of a chronic Psychotic Disorder, such as Schizophrenia or Delusional Disorder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;G. The symptoms are not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition (e.g., hypothyroidism).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;H. The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you clear that definition up, there are of course unethical doctors who may not perform a full diagnosis and just prescribe medicine that has been show to work on the surface symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in answer to your question, yes, it is a disease.  (Although, keep in mind that a layman may think of a disease being caused by pathogens as opposed to a chemical imbalance.  This is a limitation in layman understanding).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T16:30:59.573" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3031" CreationDate="2011-05-10T14:45:36.840" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=20709&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;forum post&lt;/a&gt; so it could use a bit more of a hard reference, but it contains some useful and verifiable info:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is said that nettle stings are caused by the formic acid in the sting solution. If it were true, then Dock leaves, which contain Oxalic acid, would not be a remedy. The extremely fine syringe type hair of the Nettle breaks off easily and penetrates the skin. Within this hair is a stinging solution which is only 1% Formic acid. A 2% - 10% concentration is required for the acid to be an irritant. &lt;strong&gt;It is histamine and serotonin in the sting which cause the irritation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dock leaf sap contains a natural antihistamine.&lt;/strong&gt; If you rub too hard with the dock leaf, you will merely disturb the nettle sting in your skin and make it worse. The best way to deal with the problem is to break off some dock leaf and chew it for a few seconds, then gently rub the saliva/dock sap mixture around the sting. The antihistamine from the dock leaf together with the natural healing properties of saliva will ease the stinging sensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T14:45:36.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3028" CreationDate="2011-05-10T15:08:10.017" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;While at first it might seem obvious that women who dress provocatively &quot;ask for it&quot;, this is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; true. It is a poor excuse. In her dissertation for the degree of MSc, Sophia Shaw found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have found at the minute that people will go slightly further with women who are provocatively dressed, but this result is not statistically significant. Basically you can’t say that’s an effect, it could easily be the play of chance. I told the journalist it isn’t one of our main findings, you can’t say that. It’s not significant, which is why we’re not reporting it in our main analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We found no evidence that that women who are more outgoing are more likely to be raped, this is completely inaccurate, we found no difference whatsoever. The alcohol thing is also completely wrong: if anything, we found that men reported they were willing to go further with women who are completely sober.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Daily Telegraph turned her words completely around and reported that provocatively dressed women were more likely to get raped, whereas the actual story of the thesis was that promiscuous &lt;em&gt;men&lt;/em&gt; were more likely to rape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why does this myth persist? Because it is so convenient to put the blame on the victim. Even &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; it was true that women dressing provocatively were more likely to get raped, it would still not be their fault. It is presented as if men had no power over their actions and just couldn't help themselves at the sight of a scantily clad woman. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good writeup and starting point for inquiry is the article on Ben Goldacre's blog:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badscience.net/2009/07/asking-for-it/&quot;&gt;http://www.badscience.net/2009/07/asking-for-it/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T15:08:10.017" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3040" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4814" CreationDate="2011-05-10T16:50:49.093" Score="49" ViewCount="9427" Body="&lt;p&gt;If there is anything one takes away about US prisons from television and movies, it is that there is a &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; high chance of you getting raped in the shower or in some other dark place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I don't know that much about US prisons, but it always struck me as a bit drastic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is rape a common occurrence in US prisons? If so, how is this possible? Do the guards look the other way? Is supervision incomplete?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T00:22:34.620" LastActivityDate="2018-02-05T14:34:29.070" Title="Is there a high chance of being raped in US prisons?" Tags="|united-states|criminology|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3044" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-10T18:23:33.493" Score="8" ViewCount="5070" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen the topic of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_shift_hypothesis&quot;&gt;Earth Crust Displacement&lt;/a&gt; (a.k.a. Pole Shift Hypothesis) brought up various times in science-fiction stories and at least one movie (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190080/&quot;&gt;2012&lt;/a&gt;).  The idea is that somehow the crust of the Earth can become unstuck and shift pretty severely and move landmasses to completely different parts of the globe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The supporting points usually cited as evidence are that Einstein believed in it and that mammoths frozen in arctic ice have been found with the remains of tropical vegetation in their stomachs, indicating that what's now the arctic used to be at a much lower latitude and moved up north very quickly.  This second assertion, if it's actually true, would be very interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept seems to fail the common sense test, though.  When you consider that the recent devastating earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and Japan were caused by the earth's crust shifting by a few &lt;em&gt;feet&lt;/em&gt; each, extrapolation leads to the conclusion that a shift of a few thousand miles would cause quakes of apocalyptic magnitude that would most likely have torn apart both the bodies of the mammoths in question and the ground they were standing on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any reality to this concept, or is it just an idea that some scientists thought up back before they knew as much about the way things really work as they do now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-10-07T16:39:54.927" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T01:57:18.610" Title="Is Earth Crust Displacement real?" Tags="|geology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3046" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3260" CreationDate="2011-05-10T20:15:40.537" Score="34" ViewCount="3866" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm&quot;&gt;popularly referenced survey&lt;/a&gt; gives statistics about the number of atheists in US prisons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It suggests just 0.21% of the prison population is atheist. There are more scientologists! This is surprising because atheists represent about 15% of the US population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this survey is often used to show that atheists are more moral. (I lean towards this idea, being an atheist myself.) However, I have been told that such a survey is useless - many &quot;closet&quot; atheists would be worried about reprisal from checking the &quot;atheist&quot; box, especially in a predominantly Christian environment. This would tend to bias the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has any research been performed about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-05T01:23:10.923" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T11:42:23.263" Title="Are atheists strongly underrepresented in US prison communities?" Tags="|united-states|criminology|religion|morality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3052" CreationDate="2011-05-10T21:51:33.620" Score="52" ViewCount="19014" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think most of us is familiar with this feeling. You can tell someone (who stands behind your back) is staring at you without any physical evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible or is it just a matter of coincidence? How is this phenomena called? Was it ever proven or disproven?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2566" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T09:23:18.643" Title="Can people feel somebody is watching them?" Tags="|psychology|environment|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3053" CreationDate="2011-05-10T22:23:32.483" Score="22" ViewCount="13334" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pqn1v.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been my understanding that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EMF detectors are used for a wide&#xA;  variety of applications. For example,&#xA;  EMF detectors can be used to measure&#xA;  electrical leaks in microwave ovens as&#xA;  well as other industrial electronic&#xA;  appliances. EMF detectors are also&#xA;  used to detect the presence of&#xA;  electricity in power lines and can&#xA;  even measure free-flowing&#xA;  electromagnetic fields in space.&#xA;  Because visible light, ultraviolet&#xA;  light, infrared light, microwaves,&#xA;  x-rays, and radio signals are all&#xA;  forms of electromagnetic waves, they&#xA;  can all be measured by EMF detector.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tech-faq.com/emf-detector.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I constantly see people on tv running around dark, sometimes decrepit buildings waving these things blindly at every sound while looking for ghosts and calling it &quot;science&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also seen people asking questions aloud to a dark and empty room, then considering any flash or blinking light on the EMF meter to be some kind of &quot;answer&quot; or evidence of some &quot;presence&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sites I have found about how to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.munroe-falls-paranormal-society.com/documents/public/EMF%20Meters%20-%20A%20Practical%20Guide%20to%20using%20an%20EMF%20Meter.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;properly use an EMF meter&lt;/a&gt;&quot; mostly come from paranormalist websites and read as an exercise in how to use some gadget with blinking lights to &lt;a href=&quot;http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/anomaly-hunting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;anomaly hunt&lt;/a&gt; while being able to technically call it science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would seem to me that even if we were to grant that ghosts exist, this would not be a reliable way to detect their presence, given the range of things that these meters can detect, and  the number of things that can cause interference. Also, I have been told that the majority of paranormalists are using the meters inappropriately, and even if ghosts were to exist, their readings would be unreliable because it is almost impossible to tell if a reading is anomalous unless a reliable baseline reading is taken and the building is monitored for an extended period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also heard that these meters are used to detect fields occurring for reasons other than the supernatural, which may cause a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://liparanormalinvestigators.com/definitions.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fear cage&lt;/a&gt;&quot; effect similar to that of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Koren Helmet&lt;/a&gt; as explained by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Persinger&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michael Persinger&lt;/a&gt;.  However, this is not related to what I have seen the bulk of these meters used for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a scientific reason to think that an&#xA;anomalous electromagnetic field has&#xA;anything to do with the supernatural?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where did the idea that EMF meters&#xA;can detect ghosts come from? Why has&#xA;it become so widely accepted?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:38:06.847" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:38:06.847" Title="Can any EMF detector detect ghosts?" Tags="|psychology|neurology|ghosts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3035" CreationDate="2011-05-10T22:56:24.983" Score="17" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Yes. Depression is a disease.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/165521/disease&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Disease&lt;/a&gt;, a harmful deviation from the normal structural or functional&#xA;state of an organism.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your statements and questions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a person is depressed, is it&#xA;because the brain is malfunctioning,&#xA;or is it just a natural reaction for&#xA;sadness ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;strong&gt;big difference&lt;/strong&gt; between feeling depressed (or sad) for a few days and having a &lt;strong&gt;depressive disorder&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;See below.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today you say to a doctor that you are&#xA;sad, and he prescribes you an&#xA;antidepressant without asking further&#xA;questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wildly unethical behavior by doctors has no effect on the status of depression as a disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By a natural condition I point out the&#xA;Basel study saying that people get&#xA;more analytic during a depression. It&#xA;is the way that the brain found to&#xA;protect the person from getting&#xA;another sadness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothesis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hypotheses&lt;/a&gt; on the exact cause of depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldradio.ch/wrs/news/wrsnews/basel-study-shows-positive-side-of-depression.shtml?24427&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results of the study give weight&#xA;to one American theory on depression,&#xA;which sees the mood disorder as an&#xA;adaptation to solving complex&#xA;problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;NOTE: The authors understanding of what constitutes a &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;theory&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; is incorrect. &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, most likely, a reference to the idea of analytical rumination (one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_approaches_to_depression&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;evolutionary approaches&lt;/a&gt; to depression).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The analytical rumination (AR)&#xA;hypothesis proposes that depression is&#xA;an adaptation that evolved as a&#xA;response to complex problems and whose&#xA;function is to minimize disruption of&#xA;rumination and sustain analysis of&#xA;complex problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...evidence suggests that much of what&#xA;is currently classified as depressive&#xA;disorder represents normal&#xA;psychological functioning (Horwitz &amp;amp;&#xA;Wakefield, 2007). One likely factor&#xA;contributing to overdiagnosis is that&#xA;clinically significant impairment is&#xA;not conclusive evidence of disorder&#xA;(Spitzer &amp;amp; Wakefield, 1999).&#xA;Impairment can be caused by biological&#xA;dysfunction, but it can also be caused&#xA;by properly functioning stress&#xA;response mechanisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The AR hypothesis suggests that&#xA;psychotherapies are productive when&#xA;they help depressed people identify&#xA;and solve important problems in their&#xA;lives. It also suggests that&#xA;depressive rumination is useful and&#xA;that antidepressants may interfere&#xA;with the ability to ruminate. For&#xA;these reasons, the AR hypothesis would&#xA;place greater emphasis on&#xA;psychotherapy and less on medications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2734449/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Depression as an adaptation for analyzing complex problems.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terminology is inconsistent in this&#xA;area. Those who see depression as&#xA;intrinsically pathological tend to&#xA;reserve the word for severe states&#xA;that are mostly unrelated to ordinary&#xA;mood variation, while those who see it&#xA;as a defense use the same word to&#xA;cover a wide range of normal and&#xA;abnormal states.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Enesse/Articles/IsDepAdapt-ArchGenPsychiat-2000.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is Depression an Adaptation ?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Semantics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; might cause confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Depression&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Taken from my &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/620/do-antidepressants-work/666#666&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/620/do-antidepressants-work&quot;&gt;Do antidepressants work ?&lt;/a&gt; See also: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/37/is-there-any-scientific-basis-for-seasonal-affected-disorder-sad&quot;&gt;Is there any scientific basis for Seasonal Affected Disorder (SAD)?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a person has a depressive&#xA;disorder, it &lt;strong&gt;interferes with daily&#xA;life&lt;/strong&gt;, normal functioning, and&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;causes pain&lt;/strong&gt; for both the person with the disorder and those who care&#xA;about him or her. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;(&lt;em&gt;Emphasis mine.&lt;/em&gt;) &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;**&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;General forms of depressive disorder...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Major depressive disorder, also called major depression, is&#xA;characterized by a combination of&#xA;symptoms that interfere with a&#xA;person's ability to work, sleep,&#xA;study, eat, and enjoy once–pleasurable&#xA;activities. Major depression is&#xA;disabling and prevents a person from&#xA;functioning normally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dysthymic disorder, also called dysthymia, is characterized by&#xA;long–term (two years or longer) but&#xA;less severe symptoms that may not&#xA;disable a person but can prevent one&#xA;from functioning normally or feeling&#xA;well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Psychotic depression, which occurs when a severe depressive illness is&#xA;accompanied by some form of psychosis,&#xA;such as a break with reality,&#xA;hallucinations, and delusions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt; Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/depression/complete-index.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Institute&#xA;of Mental Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/553/brightblades&quot;&gt;Brightblades&lt;/a&gt; answer also has some &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3035/is-depression-a-disease/3037#3037&quot;&gt;excellent information on depression&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Bottom Line...&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some manifestations of disease arise&#xA;directly from a defect in the body’s&#xA;machinery while others are defenses or&#xA;dysregulations of defenses...defenses&#xA;such as pain or diarrhea are&#xA;adaptations shaped by natural&#xA;selection. Dysregulated or extreme&#xA;defenses cause many diseases, such as&#xA;chronic pain or dehydration from&#xA;diarrhea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt; Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Enesse/Articles/IsDepAdapt-ArchGenPsychiat-2000.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is Depression an&#xA;Adaptation ?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &amp;quot;depression&amp;quot; is an evolutionary adaptation...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The disease caused by its dysregulation, currently known as depression, will need a new name.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T13:16:06.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3049" CreationDate="2011-05-10T23:23:01.013" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some (in)famous experiments done by Rupert Sheldrake who claims that a so-called &quot;morphogenetic&quot; field is responsible for this sort of thing. Alas, his experiments had quite sloppy methodology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The feeling itself is real, as most here will testify. But it has nothing to do with being &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; stared at/observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ruperts-resonance&quot;&gt;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ruperts-resonance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from some technical problems with Sheldrake's experiment, here is a partial explanation for why some people really believe they can feel when they are stared at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Second, psychologists dismiss anecdotal accounts of this sense to a reverse self-fulfilling effect: a person suspects being stared at and turns to check; such head movement catches the eyes of would-be starers, who then turn to look at the staree, who thereby confirms the feeling of being stared at.&#xA;  [...]&#xA;  When University of Hertfordshire psychologist Richard Wiseman also attempted to replicate Sheldrake's research, he found that subjects detected stares at rates no better than chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the conclusion is &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, people cannot &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; feel somebody is watching them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastActivityDate="2011-05-10T23:23:01.013" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3050" CreationDate="2011-05-11T00:02:38.630" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where did the idea that EMF meters can detect ghosts come from? Why has it become so widely accepted?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hLvS5.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(But seriously, they &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; scientists and used beepy flashy things to detect ghosts)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/31/BUGDCFFS8Q1.DTL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This 2005 article&lt;/a&gt; states that EMF meters have been used for &quot;ghost hunting&quot; for decades:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A] major stimulus of today's tech-heavy ghost-hunting trend happened in 1984: The film &quot;Ghostbusters&quot; was released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...No one really knows what kind of influence a ghost might have on the environment, so ghost hunters try anything and everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If we're doing a full-scale investigation, it goes from the simple electromagnetic-field meters&quot; -- handheld devices that have been ubiquitous on ghost expeditions since the early 1990s -- &quot;all the way to digital video recorder systems with between eight and 12 cameras, depending on the size of the place,&quot; said Gloria Young, founder of the Santa Clara group Ghost Trackers. Young also uses a Geiger counter, which measures radiation; motion detectors; barometric pressure monitors; and thermometers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to quote a quotes a prominent ghost hunter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ghost hunting has grown in the past two decades from a little-known hobby to a much more popular pursuit. Ghost hunters say that, judging from the number of ghost-hunting organizations with Web sites, there are hundreds of groups with thousands of members in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And technology is a major force behind the trend, said Loyd Auerbach, director and founder of the Office of Paranormal Investigations in the East Bay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It was the late 1980s when things began to expand, and part of it was the availability of certain types of technology that we started using in the field,&quot; like electromagnetic-field detectors, which start at around $100, Auerbach said. &quot;Part of it was seeing people like me on TV.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has probably been a recent rise in popularity of EMF meters being used to detect ghosts that tracks the rise in popularity of shows like &quot;Ghost Hunters&quot; where they use the device, among others, to &quot;detect ghosts&quot;. Because if you use scientific equipment, you must be doing science, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The two featured investigators, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, are proudly blue-collar workers, not egghead Ph.D. scientists, which adds to their strong &quot;regular guy&quot; appeal.&#xA;  ...They claim to be skeptics but are very credulous and seem to have no real understanding of scientific methods or real investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you're on TV, you have to appear legitimate. From the original cited article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If you take the human factor out and just have this instrument, it (seems to) confer some legitimacy -- which these folks desperately want,&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently, all-in-one &quot;ghost detector&quot; devices have been released, which I presume are riding the coattails of popular shows such as these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a scientific reason to think that an anomalous electromagnetic field has anything to do with the supernatural?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, and ghost hunters themselves cannot cite a single possible theory that EM fields are related to the supernatural. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/4261-shady-science-ghost-hunting.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This Live Science article&lt;/a&gt; quotes a prominent ghost hunter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An EMF meter is among the most common devices used by ghost hunters today. I spoke to Tom Cook, of TomsGadgets.com, a British purveyor of &quot;scientific&quot; paranormal kits for the enterprising (and gullible) investigator. Starter kits begin at £105 (US$180) and reach up to £500 (US$850) for a custom ghost-hunting kit. (Negative Ionizer Ghost Containment packs were not listed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I asked Cook what, exactly, the scientific rationale was behind the equipment he sold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;At a haunted location,&quot; Cook said, &quot;strong, erratic fluctuating EMFs are commonly found. &lt;strong&gt;It seems these energy fields have some definite connection to the presence of ghosts. The exact nature of that connection is still a mystery. However, the anomalous fields are easy to find.&lt;/strong&gt; Whenever you locate one, a ghost might be present.... any erratic EMF fluctuations you may detect may indicate ghostly activity.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the final analysis, Cook admitted, &quot;there exists no device that can conclusively detect ghosts.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Wikipedia page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_hunting#Methods_and_equipment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ghost Hunting&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EMF meter: to detect possibly unexplained fluctuations in electromagnetic fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately in addition to being vague, that line does not cite any sources. So, if one believes (without basis) that ghosts somehow cause &quot;unexplained&quot; fluctuations in electromagnetic fields, the EMF meter would be a valid piece of equipment for hunting ghosts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the other methods and equipment listed there include dowsing rods, ghost boxes, psychics, clairvoyants and demonologists, it's unlikely that any ghost hunters have commissioned scientific studies into why background EMF levels would fluctuate without an explainable cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But really, to a ghost hunter (or TV watcher) an EMF meter is a beeping, flashing device that can &quot;go off&quot; seemingly randomly (though why that might occur is a separate question), which makes things exciting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T00:23:20.943" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T00:23:20.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2979" CreationDate="2011-05-11T00:44:37.843" Score="142" Body="&lt;h1&gt;No.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Elevator manufacturers do not purposefully provide a door close button that doesn't actually work.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elevator manufacturers provide door open and close buttons because they are required by code. &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(in the US)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CHAPTER K1         MODIFICATIONS TO&#xA;ASME A17.1 - 2000, SAFETY CODE FOR&#xA;ELEVATORS AND ESCALATORS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SECTION 2.27 EMERGENCY OPERATION AND&#xA;SIGNALING DEVICES&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.27.3.3.1 When the Phase  II  switch  is  in  the  &amp;quot;FIREMAN  SERVICE&amp;quot;&#xA;position,  the elevator shall be on&#xA;Phase II operation, and the elevator&#xA;shall operate as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(d) Open power-operated  doors  shall&#xA;be  closed  only  by  momentary&#xA;pressure  on  the  door  close&#xA;button.  &lt;strong&gt;On  cars  with two entrances,&#xA;a separate door-close button shall be&#xA;provided for each entrance  if  both&#xA;entrances can be opened at the same&#xA;landing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(e)  Opening and closing of power&#xA;operated car doors or gates that are&#xA;opposite manual swing or manual slide&#xA;hoistway doors  shall  conform  to the&#xA;requirements  of  §2.27.3.3.1(c)  and&#xA;(d). &lt;strong&gt;Door opening and closing buttons&#xA;shall be provided in the car-operating&#xA;panel&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://law.onecle.com/new-york/new-york-city-administrative-code-new-/ADC0BC-APNDXK_BC-APNDXK.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York New York City Administrative Code&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The code requires that the buttons exist and defines their functions when the elevator is in the &amp;quot;FIREMAN  SERVICE&amp;quot; operation mode. What the buttons do otherwise is of no interest to the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[S]ome say there's a set timer on door openings and closings that can't&#xA;be budged by pressing the button&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is correct...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4.10.7 Door and Signal Timing for Hall Calls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;minimum acceptable time&lt;/strong&gt; from&#xA;notification that a car is answering a&#xA;call until the doors of that car &lt;strong&gt;start&#xA;to close&lt;/strong&gt; shall be calculated from the&#xA;following equation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;T = D/(1.5 ft/s) or T = D/(445 mm/s)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where T total time in seconds and D&#xA;distance (in feet or millimeters) from&#xA;a point in the lobby or corridor 60 in&#xA;(1525 mm) directly in front of the&#xA;farthest call button controlling that&#xA;car to the centerline of its hoistway&#xA;door. For cars with in-car lanterns, T&#xA;begins when the lantern is visible&#xA;from the vicinity of hall call buttons&#xA;and an audible signal is sounded. &lt;strong&gt;The&#xA;minimum acceptable notification time&#xA;shall be 5 seconds&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9D0Jn.png&quot; alt=&quot;Door call times&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thyssenkruppelevator.com/images/brochure_images/pdf/06%20ADAEvaluation_11_06.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ADA Evaluation: ThyssenKrupp&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Bottom Line...&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once all the code requirements are met:&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Five seconds is a long time when waiting in a elevator.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T00:49:53.547" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3058" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-11T01:01:25.200" Score="21" ViewCount="24641" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently encountered the idea that plucking an area of hair (say, with tweezers) causes the hair to grow back thicker/denser/stiffer etc. yet I remain skeptical.  This concept is rampant with anecdotal evidence, mainly amongst those trying to reduce the appearance of hair (say, on a woman's legs or face).  But we all know what any good skeptic thinks of anecdotal evidence.  Here are my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any hard science to suggest that plucking, waxing, or otherwise extracting entire hairs (epilation) impacts the appearance of regrowth in that location?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And if so, in what way and by what mechanism?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is in contrast to the question on shaving asked &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/490/is-it-true-that-if-you-shave-or-wax-your-legs-the-hair-will-grow-stronger-thick&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1861" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T15:15:21.210" Title="Does plucking/epilation impact hair growth?" Tags="|biology|physiology|behavior|cosmetics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3060" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3063" CreationDate="2011-05-11T01:46:48.567" Score="186" ViewCount="21543" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming a fall from a survivable height, will a cat always land on its feet?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this been studied? Is there real data to back it up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-05T05:21:03.623" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T05:21:03.623" Title="Do cats always land on their feet?" Tags="|biology|physics|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3071" CreationDate="2011-05-11T03:21:55.880" Score="7" ViewCount="429" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was at university (in Australia) a lecturer mentioned that the Australian standard for radio frequency radiation levels were deliberately raised to accommodate mobile phone technology. So that the previous recommended level of dosage was raised so that mobile phones could be sold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true and was this done in countries other than Australia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geomantica.com/geom16.htm&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; on the internet which seems to partially confirm his claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Why do we need a new standard when&#xA;  technology is operating perfectly well&#xA;  at the present lower levels?&quot; asks EMR&#xA;  News. It seems that &quot;Last year the&#xA;  committee that devised the standards&#xA;  was told that the higher radiation&#xA;  levels were needed to accommodate new&#xA;  mobile phone technology. That begs the&#xA;  important question: has the&#xA;  standards-setting process been driven&#xA;  by scientific research or by economic&#xA;  motives?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A copy of the standard and supporting&#xA;  documents is available from ARPANSA's&#xA;  website at&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arpansa.gov.au/rf_standard.htm&quot;&gt;www.arpansa.gov.au/rf_standard.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source: EMR News June 2002.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T13:13:33.947" Title="Were radio frequency radiation levels raised to accommodate mobile phones?" Tags="|radiation|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3060" CreationDate="2011-05-11T05:08:06.680" Score="235" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No. Unless...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The cat is healthy and more than ~seven-weeks old.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If dropped from a height of more than ~1.5 feet and less than ~700 feet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The vertical velocity of the cat is less than ~60 mph (terminal velocity for cats).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A cat dropped upside-down turns over&#xA;  very rapidly - in fact, it will do so&#xA;  within its own standing height.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=ydXthgZlOoAC&amp;amp;lpg=PA1647&amp;amp;ots=K03ImPXsiL&amp;amp;dq=cats%20mcdonald%20new%20scientist%201960&amp;amp;pg=PA1647#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“How does a cat fall on its&#xA;  feet?”&lt;/a&gt;, The New Scientist, vol. 7,&#xA;  no. 189, pp. 1647-9.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne-Jules_Marey&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Étienne-Jules Marey&lt;/a&gt; experimented on cats by shooting them (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wA3If87UhA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Video&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;With his chronophotographic gun. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nXONz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The minimum height is a basic physics problem...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...use Newton's law of motion, which&#xA;  says that mass times acceleration is&#xA;  equal to the sum of all the forces&#xA;  acting on the object. Since the cat is&#xA;  falling only a short distance at a&#xA;  fairly low velocity, it is safe to&#xA;  assume that the only force acting on&#xA;  the cat is gravity. Thus,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ma = -mg,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;where m is the mass of the cat, a is&#xA;  the acceleration of the cat, and -mg&#xA;  is the force of gravity (assuming up&#xA;  is positive), where g is a constant (g&#xA;  = 979 cm/sec2 at a latitude like San Diego when you add centripetal&#xA;  acceleration to the standard value&#xA;  given for g, which is 980.7 cm/sec2 ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt; See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~jmahaffy/courses/f00/math122/lectures/de_int/deint.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Differential Equations and&#xA;  Integration&lt;/a&gt; for all the fun math. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The maximum height and velocity are related. Once weightless the cat has no &quot;down&quot; and might not maintain proper orientation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a cat, blindfolded and lying on&#xA;  its back, is dropped, it immediately&#xA;  turns into normal position to land on&#xA;  its feet, indicating that a visual cue&#xA;  is not involved in this spatial&#xA;  orientation. Function of such&#xA;  orientation response of cats was&#xA;  examined during microgravity produced&#xA;  by aircraft parabolic flights. The&#xA;  three-week-old kittens whose postural&#xA;  righting reflex was not developed,&#xA;  floated upside-down in air during&#xA;  weightlessness, whereas in the eight-&#xA;  and twelve-week-old ones whose&#xA;  reflexes were well established, the&#xA;  reflex acted for the initial several&#xA;  seconds but ceased thereafter during&#xA;  the weightless state, with or without&#xA;  blindfold;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.med.nagoya-u.ac.jp/medlib/nagoya_j_med_sci/5834/NJ580301071.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Disorientation&#xA;  of animals in microgravity.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this might not be a bad thing...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What appears to happen is that in&#xA;  falls from above 7 stories, cats have&#xA;  time to reach terminal velocity, the&#xA;  speed at which their drag due to wind&#xA;  resistance equals their weight due to&#xA;  gravity and they stop accelerating. At&#xA;  this speed, the cat relaxes its limbs&#xA;  and is better able to survive the&#xA;  impact (at a slight cost – they get&#xA;  less broken limbs, but more chest&#xA;  injuries).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://lostinscience.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/how-cats-land-on-their-feet/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally we have this &lt;strike&gt;excellent&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;strike&gt;interesting&lt;/strike&gt; questionable data from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume4/v4i4/catfeet.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Annals of Improbable Research&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cats have excellent balance, and are&#xA;  remarkably acrobatic. When turned&#xA;  upside down and dropped from a height,&#xA;  a cat generally has the ability to&#xA;  land on its feet. Until now, no one&#xA;  has systematically investigated the&#xA;  limits of this phenomenon. In this&#xA;  study, I dropped a cat upside down&#xA;  from various heights, and observed&#xA;  whether the cat landed on its feet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/c6dex.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does a cat land on its feet when&#xA;  dropped from a height of less than one&#xA;  foot? This preliminary study indicates&#xA;  that the answer may be no. However,&#xA;  further experiments, preferably with&#xA;  the same cat, are needed to settle the&#xA;  question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://161.73.1.13/schools/lifesci/runions/pdfs/Does%20a%20Cat%20Always%20Land%20on%20Its%20Feet.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does a Cat Always Land on&#xA;  Its Feet ?&lt;/a&gt; Fiorella Gambale,&#xA;  Ph.D.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NOTE: A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.begent.org/toast.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cat with a piece of buttered toast&lt;/a&gt; attached to its back, butter side up, will not land on its feet. In fact the forces create by this configuration will cause the cat to hover.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt; Related cat physics: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulhuxen.co.uk/cat.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cat Swinging. Principles &amp;amp; Mechanics.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="35" LastEditDate="2012-02-05T04:54:07.747" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T04:54:07.747" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3058" CreationDate="2011-05-11T06:31:20.353" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Caught out by the question being changed but I will leave this here as it was relevant to the question as originally asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only answer your first [now removed] question, but there was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/v55/n3/pdf/5618137a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1970 study&lt;/a&gt; performed on 5 men (on their legs) and published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology which measured rate of hair re-growth as well as hair thickness after shaving. It came to the conclusion that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VhSkZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T06:39:42.153" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T06:39:42.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3066" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-11T07:48:11.207" Score="11" ViewCount="5318" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been told that hair grows faster when you are in the sun, is there any truth to that or is it a myth among people in a sun starved country? :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3058/does-plucking-impact-hair-growth&quot;&gt;Does plucking/epilation impact hair growth?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/490/is-it-true-that-if-you-shave-or-wax-your-legs-the-hair-will-grow-stronger-thick&quot;&gt;If you shave or wax, will the hair  grow back stronger or thicker?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T03:25:07.767" Title="Does hair grow faster in the sun?" Tags="|environmental-health|hair|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3068" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3080" CreationDate="2011-05-11T08:19:12.963" Score="18" ViewCount="154803" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one episode of South Park, people start getting high on cat urine. Some preliminary searches on the net show some people agreeing and some disagreeing with this fact. It's hard to say how serious people are when they answer because they don't cite sources or use sarcasm tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some comments/answers from the first three searches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I know this is kinda late, but    actually you can, that's where south    park got it from. But it isn't like    they showed it in the&#xA;  show. Actually    what happens is people dip ciggs or    joints or&#xA;  something rolled up like    that and dip it in cat pee and let it dry. Once you smoke it after that it    is suppose to intensify your&#xA;  high or    something. I would NEVER try that. I    also heard about&#xA;  people doing that    but dipping it in PCP, which is    stupid beyond&#xA;  belief, I saw a youtube    video of a guy after doing that who    ran&#xA;  into a resturant naked shoving    ice cubes up his butt and saying all&#xA;  kinds of crazy stuff, they had him    handcuffed sitting on the ground&#xA;  with    a bag over his face.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Yes. And very high. But it has to be    warm, mixed with a dog feces and    minimum one liter of it. So you need    about ten male&#xA;  cats urine? Let me    know the ward you will be in, so I    can visit&#xA;  you in the hospital. And    you know what. Some indigenous males    in&#xA;  Africa get high after eating the    wives placenta. You'll never know &#xA;  what makes you crazy!!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;There's no such thing. We're humans not Southpark&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Yes you can theres an active metabolite within the urine that acts similar to that of DMT a chemical released by the pituitary gland&#xA;  which causes humans to dream. What happens is that it produces a&#xA;  really intense trip for about 10-15minutes then the user forgets about&#xA;  it, so basically you have to have a pen and paper on hand once you've&#xA;  come out of your trip. Hope you have fun&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it actually possible to get high on cat urine? If so, is it a wide-spread practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:46:29.607" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:46:29.607" Title="Do people get high using cat urine?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3070" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4152" CreationDate="2011-05-11T09:53:14.923" Score="25" ViewCount="31885" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies that compare WiFi and cellular data usage, in the home, over time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mainly I've heard that WiFi uses more battery (so it should emit more radiation) but OTOH it feels like 3G/cellular needs to use higher power to reach the antenna (which is much farther away than the wifi router.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="300" LastEditorUserId="300" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T12:43:07.467" LastActivityDate="2017-03-11T07:51:58.650" Title="Does home-WiFi expose you to less radiation than using the 3G on your cell-phone?" Tags="|safety|electromagnetism|mobile-phones|radio|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3062" CreationDate="2011-05-11T10:53:26.430" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icnirp.de/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ICNIRP&lt;/a&gt; is the &lt;strong&gt;International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bmHWc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;ICNIRP&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conformity.com/artman/publish/printer_210.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Image Source&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;1998&lt;/strong&gt; the &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icnirp.de/documents/emfgdl.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guidelines for Limiting Exposure to&#xA;  Time-Varying Electric, Magnetic, and&#xA;  Electromagnetic Fields (up to 300 GHz)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;were published (they include radiation from mobile phones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They form the basis of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/peh-emf/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WHO&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itu.int/net/home/index.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ITU&lt;/a&gt; recommendations to governments &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/peh-emf/standards/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;all around the world&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;These guidelines will be periodically&#xA;  revised and updated&lt;/strong&gt; as advances are&#xA;  made in identifying the adverse health&#xA;  effects of time-varying electric,&#xA;  magnetic, and electromagnetic fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icnirp.de/documents/StatementEMF.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2009 Statement on EMF Guidlines&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;You can look up the standards in your country using the &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/docstore/peh-emf/EMFStandards/who-0102/Worldmap5.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EMF World Wide Standards Database&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arpansa.gov.au/RadiationProtection/BaseStationSurvey/limits.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; the exposure limits for the relevant moblie phone frequencies of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arpansa.gov.au/Publications/codes/rps3.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ARPANSA standard&lt;/a&gt; (current standard in Australia) are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;equivalent to those of the 1998&#xA;  Guidelines published by the&#xA;  ICNIRP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T13:13:33.947" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T13:13:33.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3072" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4717" CreationDate="2011-05-11T11:22:28.667" Score="16" ViewCount="5503" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that when babies make their little noises, they are understood by surrounding babies? Is there a regular pattern in their actions and noises they make to signify their meaning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:55:40.270" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T08:55:40.270" Title="Do babies have their own language?" Tags="|psychology|children|language|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3073" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3076" CreationDate="2011-05-11T11:28:23.940" Score="10" ViewCount="875" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was once told that if a piece of plastic gets oily, it's harder to &quot;de-oil&quot; than other substances because plastics are actually made from a derivative of oil. Is this so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T07:52:10.433" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T07:52:10.433" Title="Are plastics harder to wash?" Tags="|chemistry|oil|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3074" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4404" CreationDate="2011-05-11T12:07:14.363" Score="4" ViewCount="1054" Body="&lt;p&gt;Italian inventor Andrea Rossi claims to have discovered cold fusion. There is a history of dis-proven discoveries in this area. How were they debunked and are the arguments applicable to the new case either?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Andrea_A._Rossi_Cold_Fusion_Generator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Andrea_A._Rossi_Cold_Fusion_Generator&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="828" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-01-28T07:02:14.127" LastActivityDate="2012-01-28T07:02:14.127" Title="Is the Rossi Focardi LENR true?" Tags="|energy|nuclear-energy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3073" CreationDate="2011-05-11T13:33:16.533" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plastic (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;polyethylene&lt;/a&gt;) is made mostly of hydrocarbon chains.  So is oil (both &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lipids&lt;/a&gt; (organic) and inorganic alkanes (paraffin, etc.)).  Both of these substances are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrophobe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hydrophobic&lt;/a&gt;, so it's hard to get them to mix into water--and you are washing your plastics with water, not DMSO or something, right?  But long hydrocarbon chains are happy to stick to each other, as you can tell by looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkane#Physical_properties&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;melting and boiling points&lt;/a&gt; of long alkanes (the more you want to stick, the hotter you have to be before you melt/boil).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it's not as though oil somehow knows that plastic was made from oil.  It's simply a property of the chemical interactions.  Other surfaces that are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipophilicity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lipophilic&lt;/a&gt; will have the same hard-to-wash property.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, there is research (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/la050013w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;) into materials that are both lipophobic &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; strongly hydrophobic, because almost nothing likes to stick to these and thus the surfaces are &quot;self-cleaning&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T13:33:16.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3077" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3078" CreationDate="2011-05-11T13:37:03.337" Score="28" ViewCount="3005" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is said that if someone accidentally touches a powerful electric source, they get stuck to it and often die due to the same effect. Is it true, or it is just a perception of the affected person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-06-08T18:42:02.220" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T21:14:36.380" Title="Does electricity grab?" Tags="|physiology|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3077" CreationDate="2011-05-11T14:04:33.607" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;What happens is not due to some stickiness inherent to electricity, but rather, the electric shock causes your muscles to involuntarily contract. If you're unlucky, such a contraction could effect a firm grip around the electric source, which would render you unable to let go of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_1/chpt_3/2.html&quot;&gt;All about circuits&lt;/a&gt; elaborates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The forearm muscles responsible for bending fingers tend to be better developed than those muscles responsible for extending fingers, and so if both sets of muscles try to contract because of an electric current conducted through the person's arm, the &quot;bending&quot; muscles will win, clenching the fingers into a fist. If the conductor delivering current to the victim faces the palm of his or her hand, this clenching action will force the hand to grasp the wire firmly, thus worsening the situation by securing excellent contact with the wire. The victim will be completely unable to let go of the wire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T14:04:33.607" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2479" CreationDate="2011-05-11T14:48:45.570" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sugar-free gum usually contains &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maltitol&quot;&gt;Maltitol&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbitol&quot;&gt;Sorbitol&lt;/a&gt;. These sweeteners are laxatives and can cause diarrhea if consumed in large enough quantities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T14:48:45.570" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3068" CreationDate="2011-05-11T15:28:05.010" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a variation on the &quot;Jenkem&quot; hoax. The only thing you can reliably harvest from urine (of any kind) is potassium nitrate, and ammonia. Well, and water. Ferment them, and you'll probably get methane. All these things are freely available in less repulsive forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citations:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenkem&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/jenkem.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd cite more &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UsNbsjpuLc&quot;&gt;credible&lt;/a&gt;&quot; sources, unfortunately many of them are regular news organizations who seem to believe this is a real thing. &quot;Oh those wacky kids! What will they think of next!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="114" LastEditorUserId="114" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T15:33:05.133" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T15:33:05.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3082" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-11T16:24:02.520" Score="18" ViewCount="670" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a common thing to hear among women discussing contraception, and in the press:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 45 per cent increase in the disease was found among women who had been taking the second generation Pill for three years or more.&#xA;  A ten per cent increase was found in those taking it for less than three years.&#xA;  The findings follow a study of 100,000 women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-181273/Cancer-risk-45-higher-Pill.html&quot;&gt;Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is there a link?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="92" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2011-10-17T18:08:51.903" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T02:55:37.853" Title="Does taking a contraceptive pill increase your chance of getting cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|contraception|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3082" CreationDate="2011-05-11T16:41:51.653" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I did was enter &quot;cancer contraceptive meta&quot; into the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; search engine. There are various disagreeing results. One of the more recent meta studies concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;: Previous studies convincingly showed an increase in risk of breast cancer associated with current or recent use of oral contraceptives from the 1960s to 1980s. The relation of contemporary oral contraceptive formulations to breast cancer risk is less clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Methods&lt;/strong&gt;: We assessed lifetime oral contraceptive use and the specific formulations used among 116,608 female nurses ages 25 to 42 years at enrollment in 1989, and subsequently updated this information every 2 years. We related this information to risk of breast cancer up to June 1, 2001.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results&lt;/strong&gt;: During 1,246,967 person-years of follow-up, 1,344 cases of invasive breast cancer were diagnosed. &lt;strong&gt;Past use of any oral contraceptive was not related to breast cancer risk&lt;/strong&gt; [multivariate relative risk (RR), 1.12; 95% confidence interval 0.95-1.33]. &lt;strong&gt;Current use of any oral contraceptive was related to a marginally significant higher risk&lt;/strong&gt; (multivariate RR, 1.33; 95% CI, 1.03-1.73). &lt;strong&gt;One specific formulation substantially accounted for the excess risk&lt;/strong&gt;: the RR for current use of &lt;strong&gt;triphasic preparations with levonorgestrel as the progestin&lt;/strong&gt; was 3.05 (95% CI, 2.00-4.66; P &amp;lt; 0.0001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions&lt;/strong&gt;: Current use of oral contraceptives carries an excess risk of breast cancer. Levonorgestrel used in triphasic preparations may account for much of this elevation in risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Impact&lt;/strong&gt;: Different oral contraceptive formulations might convey different risks of breast cancer; ongoing monitoring of these associations is necessary as oral contraceptive formulations change. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 19(10); 2496–502. ©2010 AACR. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yeah, since there is not the one pill, results differ among these. The risk is only &lt;em&gt;marginally significant&lt;/em&gt;, which means that if one throws levonorgestrel out of the mix, the risk will probably not be significant any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reference&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/19/10/2496.short&quot;&gt;http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/19/10/2496.short&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T16:41:51.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3085" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8375" CreationDate="2011-05-11T18:08:05.993" Score="20" ViewCount="7592" Body="&lt;p&gt;From our daily experience we know that most of the time cats and dogs are involved in fights rather than in expressions of affection. Is there an &lt;strong&gt;evolutionary basis&lt;/strong&gt;(justification) for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why would two species of animals fight each other (apparently for no&#xA;reason) wasting their precious&#xA;energy?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2601" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T00:25:17.053" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T07:53:43.253" Title="Why do cats and dogs fight?" Tags="|biology|evolution|zoology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3085" CreationDate="2011-05-11T19:10:28.903" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One interesting take on this is the following research article: &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/brill/beh/1953/00000005/00000001/art00005&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Escape Drive in Domestic Cats and the Dog and Cat Relationship&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; (Source: Behaviour, Volume 5, Number 1, 1953 , pp. 81-84(4))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Domestic cats reared without access to the street develop a pathological timidity, attributable to the escape drive being released by stimuli which would otherwise be subliminal. I suggest that in European and American cities dogs and cats form a commensality in which the cats provide the stimuli releasing the chasing instinct of dogs, and dogs the stimuli releasing the flight instinct of cats, thus mutually satisfying otherwise starved drives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T19:10:28.903" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2628" CreationDate="2011-05-11T19:13:05.867" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, since no-one provided a complete answer so far I'll try to do it (though I am an Israeli, so I'm biased).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to the question in the title is yes. The data I'm about to bring is taken from B'Tselem which is the &quot;Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/english/statistics/casualties.asp?sD=19&amp;amp;sM=01&amp;amp;sY=2009&amp;amp;filterby=event&amp;amp;oferet_stat=after&quot;&gt;the B'Tselem report&lt;/a&gt;, between Jan 19, 2009 (the end of &quot;Cast Lead&quot; operation) and Feb 28, 2011 (that is, a little over two years), 19 Palestinian minors were killed as a direct result of the armed conflict. Some of them clearly were participating in the hostilities. B'Tselem does not (so far as I could see) ask/determine whether or not the killing was accidental, but from the description it can be understood that at least some of the deaths were accidental (specifically: mortar fire isn't overly accurate.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should say that there isn't a statistic that is acceptable to all and even B'Tselem &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/b_tselem&quot;&gt;has come under criticism&lt;/a&gt;. This is unavoidable due to &quot;fog of war&quot; and the fact that there are (usually) several conflicting descriptions of the same event. Still I believe (and it is quite generally accepted) that B'Tselem is a reliable source of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The military police policy for investigating incidents involving the death and/or injury of Palestinians &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/English/Accountability/Investigatin_of_Complaints.asp&quot;&gt;has been criticized by B'Tselem&lt;/a&gt; and led to the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://dover.idf.il/IDF/English/News/today/2011/04/0604.htm&quot;&gt;IDF statement&lt;/a&gt;. B'Tselem also criticized &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/english/publications/summaries/200203_trigger_happy.asp&quot;&gt;the IDF open fire policy&lt;/a&gt; in 2002, but at no time was it suggested that the killing of children is an encouraged policy. I hope these two examples will be enough that this isn't the case. The Hebrew Wikipedia has &lt;a href=&quot;http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%94%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%A4%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%97%D7%94_%D7%91%D7%90%D7%A9&quot;&gt;partial information regarding the IDF open fire protocol&lt;/a&gt; if anyone cares to read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="1253" LastEditDate="2012-11-06T06:05:10.867" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T06:05:10.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3089" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-11T20:01:12.380" Score="47" ViewCount="44837" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1bCql.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Beta vs VHS&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://peliculasdeculto.blogspot.com/2008/02/beta-vs-vhs.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;For many years I have heard the legend that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the porn industry played a crucial role in the victory of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHS&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;JVC's VHS&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  over &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sony's Betamax&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;It resurfaced during the format war between &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_DVD&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HD DVD&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blu-ray&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.macworld.com/article/50627/2006/05/pornhd.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Macworld&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just as in the 1980s, when the Betamax&#xA;  and VHS video formats were battling it&#xA;  out for supremacy, the pornography&#xA;  industry will likely play a big role&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  in determining which of the two&#xA;  blue-laser DVD formats ... will be the winner ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/06/0604vhs-ces/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wired&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Long before the battle between Blu-ray&#xA;  and HD-DVD, there was another&#xA;  home-video standards war that pitted&#xA;  Sony against another Japanese company,&#xA;  JVC. It was VHS vs. Betamax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ultimately, VHS won the battle, and&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;tech lore has it that the porn&#xA;  industry played a big role in that&#xA;  victory&lt;/strong&gt;. Sony reportedly wouldn’t let&#xA;  pornographic content be put on Betamax&#xA;  tapes, while JVC and the VHS&#xA;  consortium had no such qualms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jan2007/gb20070122_279828.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Businessweek&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One oft-recalled explanation for the&#xA;  failure of Sony's Betamax&#xA;  videocassette format in the 1980s was&#xA;  the Japanese company's ambivalence&#xA;  towards producers of pornographic&#xA;  videos.&lt;/strong&gt; By contrast, proponents of&#xA;  VHS, Betamax's rival, welcomed adult&#xA;  content with open arms and, the legend&#xA;  goes, caused Betamax's demise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;My question:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How much truth is behind this lore?&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;&lt;br/&gt;To what extend, if at all, did the porn industry contribut to VHS winning the format war?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Further reading material:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_18888_5-ways-porn-created-modern-world.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cracked.com - 5 Ways Porn Created the Modern World&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T14:53:07.370" Title="VHS vs Betamax: How influential was the pornography industry in the format war?" Tags="|history|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2479" CreationDate="2011-05-11T20:20:41.270" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 1996, there was a publication by Greaves et al. in the Lancet titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2896%2908190-1/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An air stewardess with puzzling diarrhoea&lt;/a&gt;&quot; about a stewardess who presented with a 7-year history of abdominal pain and diarrhoea (up to 10 times a day). The cause they finally found was overuse of sorbitol-containing chewing gum. (Unfortunately the article can't be accessed for free)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more case reports like this, for example in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190242/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;British Medical Journal&lt;/a&gt; where people consuming sorbitol in amounts of about 20-30 grams a day (one chewing gum stick contains about 1.25 g, apparently) had similar problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors conclude&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;that sorbitol consumption can cause&#xA;  not only chronic diarrhoea and&#xA;  functional bowel problems but also&#xA;  considerable unintended weight loss&#xA;  (about 20% of usual body weight).&#xA;  Thus, the investigation of unexplained&#xA;  weight loss should include detailed&#xA;  dietary history with regard to foods&#xA;  containing sorbitol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&amp;amp;cmd=link&amp;amp;linkname=pubmed_pubmed&amp;amp;uid=8942779&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;related links can be found her&lt;/a&gt;e - it appears to be more frequent than I thought, even Vitamin C supplements containing sorbitol have been found as a cause of diarrhea...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastEditorUserId="604" LastEditDate="2011-05-11T20:26:21.967" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T20:26:21.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1219" CreationDate="2011-05-11T21:57:39.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like a myth based in fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence that Salicylic acid can be used to chemically extract splinters (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freepatentsonline.com/EP0376986.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Patent here&lt;/a&gt;).  Salycilic acid is extracted from Willow bark and is usually then combined with an organic base to enable it to be applied.  One of these organic bases is pig fat (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1862029&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;as it is cheap and easy to obtain&lt;/a&gt;) which would probably explain where the rumour came from.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pork fat on its own does not contain Salicylic acid and there is no evidence that pork fat would work if applied to a splinter.  Splinters can naturally work thier own way out which would probably account for various anecdotal evidence of &quot;it worked for me&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T21:57:39.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3093" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4301" CreationDate="2011-05-11T22:00:29.990" Score="38" ViewCount="2436" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an interesting trend in test scores in exams (GCSE and A-level) in the UK: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2010/08/24/merthyr-gcses-increase-in-grades-across-borough-91466-27126992/&quot;&gt;they&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6958992.stm&quot;&gt;are&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6949084.stm&quot;&gt;increasing&lt;/a&gt;, or so the trend in the grades would tend to show. This is known as grade inflation and affects other countries, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this? I have heard several reasons. The first is that students are just generally getting smarter. The second reason I have heard is that exams are getting easier. To me (as a student), it personally seems like the exams are getting easier, although it is hard to judge. What independent research has been performed to determine if it is exams or students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T07:07:25.807" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T15:40:55.577" Title="Are exams getting easier, or are students getting smarter?" Tags="|education|intelligence|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1052" CreationDate="2011-05-11T22:01:07.890" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a full-on mathematical definition of certainty and uncertainty according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probability&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;probability&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;information theory&lt;/a&gt;, the reality is that most historical questions are only &quot;known&quot; to very low degrees of certainty.  As a result, people often do not notice that they have transitioned from discussing what the percentage chance is that event x occurred or that article y is from time period z, to discussing whether evidence against that hypothesis outweighs evidence in support of it; i.e. whether the probability of the hypothesis being true is 50.0001% vs 49.9999% (as opposed to %50 for answer truly unknown).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your question is whether there exists a nearly 100% certainty that the shroud is a forgery, the answer is clearly no.  &lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt; we can say authoritatively that from the available information (listed and referenced extensively on this page already) there is a statistically significant deviation towards the forgery side of the equation, as opposed to the non-forgery or &quot;genuine&quot; side.  Most telling is the fact that the entity holding the most information, the Vatican, prefers to emphasise the symbolism of the shroud over its historical nature (which they surely would if they believed there to be good evidence for it).  From the pope's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/Benedict%2002May2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recent meditation&lt;/a&gt; on the shroud:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...One could say that the Shroud is&#xA;  the Icon of this mystery, the Icon of&#xA;  Holy Saturday...the Turin Shroud&#xA;  presents to us an image of how his&#xA;  body lay in the tomb during that&#xA;  period which was chronologically brief&#xA;  (about a day and a half), but immense,&#xA;  infinite in its value and in its&#xA;  significance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who venerate the shroud, the significance of this image is probably much more important than the shroud's historical nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1861" LastActivityDate="2011-05-11T22:01:07.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3095" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3740" CreationDate="2011-05-11T22:16:47.943" Score="24" ViewCount="2269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently came a cross a &lt;a href=&quot;http://reuma0.wordpress.com/2011/05/08/intersex/&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; that talked about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders_of_sex_development&quot;&gt;DSD&lt;/a&gt; or Intersexuality as they rather call it. One of the claims that was made is that gender identity (that is, whether I think of myself as male or female) is a social construct (and implicitly, has no biological basis). This was taken to be almost self-evident due to the existence for trans genders (if there is a male which think and feel like his a female than obviously gender identity can't be the result of his biology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to argue that this logic is flawed - since identity is product of the brain and not the sex organs. So the question becomes: is there any evidence to support that? Now, I seem to remember and old science TV show which argued that there are physiological differences between male and female brains and that in trans genders you really do find a female brain inside a male body (for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Am I just imagining things? Any good studies to show one way or the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a bonus question: If there really is such a difference, can it be measured in new-borns?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-05-25T05:36:10.230" LastActivityDate="2018-12-26T19:56:56.073" Title="Is there a relation between brain physiology and gender identity?" Tags="|physiology|neurology|gender|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3100" CreationDate="2011-05-11T23:26:57.257" Score="46" ViewCount="4266" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any scientific truth to the common maxim &quot;opposites attract&quot; when applied to romantic relationships?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not necessarily looking for one blanket answer, though an overall trend or pattern would be helpful as part of a more complete answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some related questions that you might consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there certain &quot;opposite&quot; personality traits (e.g. introversion vs. extraversion, rational vs. emotional decision making, etc.) that are more likely to &quot;attract&quot; than others?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any similar patterns regarding physical characteristics (e.g. height, hair color, athletic ability, etc.)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any data on the difference between or sameness of people affecting the long-term success of committed relationships?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An evolutionary perspective would also be welcome.  For example, is there any data that suggests that a tendency towards genetic diversity might drive such behavior (if in fact, it does exist)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe this question is too broad or needs to be clarified in any way, please make suggestions in the comments, and I will address them promptly.  Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2243" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:38:34.900" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:38:34.900" Title="Do opposite types in romantic relationships attract?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3099" CreationDate="2011-05-12T00:47:54.680" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question is, for the most part, &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;:  &lt;strong&gt;Opposites do not attract.&#xA;Like-minded people attract&lt;/strong&gt;; that is, the relationships they form are fuller and longer-lasting&#xA;than when paired with an opposite-minded partner.  This is despite the fact that people often claim,&#xA;in surveys and when asked directly by interviewers, that they would like someone with personality&#xA;characteristics different from their own; revealed preference and lived experience show that they&#xA;really don't know what they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP06595602.pdf&quot;&gt;Do People Know What They Want: A Similar or Complementary&#xA;Partner?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, by a certain Pieternel Dijkstra,&#xA;reviews the hypotheses, and the research, better than I could give myself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With regard to [] “relative” mate preferences two hypotheses have been presented. First, according&#xA;  to the “similarity-attraction hypothesis” individuals feel most attracted to potential partners who,&#xA;  in important domains, are similar to themselves (e.g., Lucas, Wendorf, and Imamoglu, 2004). Similar&#xA;  individuals are assumed to be  attractive because they validate our beliefs about the world and&#xA;  ourselves and reduce the  risk of conflicts (e.g., Morry and Gaines, 2005). &lt;strong&gt;Not surprisingly&#xA;  therefore, similarity between partners contributes to relationship satisfaction (e.g., Lutz-Zois,&#xA;  Bradley, Mihalik, and Moorman-Eavers, 2006). Because a happy and long-lasting intimate relationship&#xA;  contributes to both psychological and physical health (e.g., Berkman and Syme, 1994), similarity&#xA;  between partners increases their own and their offspring’s chances of survival by helping maintain&#xA;  (the quality of) the pair bond.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In contrast, according to the “complementarity hypothesis” individuals feel most attracted to&#xA;  potential partners who complement them, an  assumption that reflects the saying that “opposites&#xA;  attract” (e.g., Antill, 1983). Complementary individuals are assumed to be so attractive because&#xA;  they enhance the likelihood that one’s needs will be gratified (e.g., De Raad and Doddema-Winsemius,&#xA;  1992). For example, young women who lack economic resources may feel attracted to older men  who&#xA;  have acquired economic resources and therefore may be good providers (Eagly and Wood, 1999). In&#xA;  addition, from an evolutionary perspective, one might argue that seeking a complementary mate,&#xA;  rather than a similar one, may help prevent inbreeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, this is the punchline (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Studies on mate selection have consistently found support  for the “similarity attraction”&#xA;  hypothesis. Homogamy has been reported for numerous characteristics such as physical attractiveness&#xA;  (e.g., White, 1980), attachment style (e.g., Klohnen and Luo, 2003), political and religious&#xA;  attitudes (e.g., Luo and Klohnen, 2005), socio-economic background, level of education and IQ (e.g.,&#xA;  Bouchard and McGue, 1981). In contrast, support for the “complementarity hypothesis” is much&#xA;  scarcer. Although many individuals occasionally feel attracted to “opposites”, attractions  between&#xA;  opposites often do not develop into serious intimate relationships and, when they do, these&#xA;  relationships often end prematurely (Felmlee, 2001).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a particular area where people often do seek partners different from themselves, that's hot in the field of evolutionary psychology, and is extensively researched &amp;mdash; that would the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_histocompatibility_complex&quot;&gt;major&#xA;histocompatability complex&lt;/a&gt;, or MHC, in human mate choice.   The MHC is a genomic region which codes for&#xA;protein receptors, MHC proteins, which are heavily involved in the immune system and autoimmunity;&#xA;the body uses them as antigens so that T cells and NK-cells, our immune's system &quot;policemen&quot;, can&#xA;recognize foreign elements and differentiate them from &quot;self&quot;. To protect against the great&#xA;diversity of bacterial and viral invaders, the MHC genome region needs to be highly polymorphic;&#xA;that means inbreeding at those loci (by mating with a &quot;more-alike&quot; partner) would be deleterious and&#xA;evolutionarily disfavored because inbreeding homogenizes alleles, which in turns means that mating with an &quot;alike&quot; individual would decrease the recognition ability of their offspring to detect pathogens. Thus, research often finds that humans often favor&#xA;dissimilar MHC alleles in their mates, which some researchers have hypothesized is mediated through&#xA;olfaction.  Here is the abstract of one such study finding these preferences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Preferences for mates that possess genes dissimilar to one's own at the major histocompatibility&#xA;  complex (MHC), a polymorphic group of loci associated with the immune system, have been found in&#xA;  mice, birds, fish, and humans. These preferences may help individuals choose genetically compatible&#xA;  mates and may adaptively function to prevent inbreeding or to increase heterozy-gosity and thereby&#xA;  immunocompetence of offspring. MHC-dissimilar mate preferences may influence the psychology of&#xA;  sexual attraction. We investigated whether MHC similarity among romantically involved couples (N =&#xA;  48) predicted aspects of their sexual relationship. All women in our sample normally ovulated, and&#xA;  alleles at three MHC loci were typed for each person. &lt;strong&gt;As the proportion of MHC alleles couples&#xA;  shared increased, women's sexual responsivity to their partners decreased, their number of extrapair&#xA;  sexual partners increased, and their attraction to men other than their primary partners increased,&#xA;  particularly during the fertile phase of their cycles.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that, I can't think of anything else; the rule is pretty much, &lt;em&gt;like attracts like&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastEditorUserId="200" LastEditDate="2013-10-27T07:17:15.237" LastActivityDate="2013-10-27T07:17:15.237" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3085" CreationDate="2011-05-12T02:40:03.310" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stanley Coren (in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/074320297X&quot;&gt;How to Speak Dog&lt;/a&gt;) notes that the body language of cats and dogs often mean opposite things (for example, a dog on his back is being submissive (or friendly) while a cat on its back is in a fighting posture) and speculates that this may be part of the historic problem between dogs and cats (he explains it better in &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=DeyzQI_a8EsC&amp;amp;pg=PT192&amp;amp;lpg=PT192&amp;amp;dq=%22stanley%20coren%22%20dogs%20and%20cats&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=NMVcoDbPyJ&amp;amp;sig=I6qzBdgqew_zJIizHq9xHW19qfA&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=BUfLTbykEsn00gGdyaTuCA&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=2&amp;amp;ved=0CB4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;this google book snippit&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="603" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T02:40:03.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3103" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-12T02:52:19.207" Score="9" ViewCount="603" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_20/b4228031594062.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on Bloomberg, it seems clear that the goverment is forcing banks to issue risky loans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the government really being this stupid, or is there more to it that this article does not mention?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Clarify: The article seemed to show that the government was again trying to force banks to make risky loans. That sort of activity was one of the things many people pointed to as a cause of the meltdown. Can anyone could show that the gov't wasn't being as imprudent as the article seemed to indicate? Maybe someone could show me that the gov't was just telling them to go into low income or minority areas but still use sensible lending techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T14:03:31.870" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T14:03:31.870" Title="Did anti-discrimination efforts lead to the sub-prime mortgage bubble?" Tags="|economics|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="195" CreationDate="2011-05-12T04:03:19.633" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/appi.ajp.2011.10101532v1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;South Korean  study&lt;/a&gt;, that was &lt;a href=&quot;http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/autism-prevalence-higher-than-thought/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recently covered&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/author/snovella/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Steven Novella at the Neurologica blog&lt;/a&gt; found that - if you actually look carefully - the incidence of autism is around 2.6% (i.e. 26 on your chart), which is much higher than the normal diagnosis rate, and around double what was than previously thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has a number of consequences, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;providing support for the idea that we will continue find many more cases as we look harder (even without the underlying rate of incidence changing), and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;also supporting the idea that there is a spectrum of symptoms and severity for autism. This makes the prevalence very dependent on our definitions of when autism is considered a disorder.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These ideas are discussed further by Steven Novella, in the above article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="11122" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T12:43:40.287" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T12:43:40.287" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2664" CreationDate="2011-05-12T05:10:12.467" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just whey protein consumption by itself won't make you gain muscle. As far as whey is concerned it is a fast moving protein so if the body doesn't have any place to store the incoming whey it is simply burned off for energy. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/nutrient-intake-nutrient-storage-and-nutrient-oxidation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's the resource&lt;/a&gt; for this info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Muscles growth is based on two factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Necessity for the muscle tissue to grow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adequate nutrition that can help it to grow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you engage in adequate exercise that force your muscles to increase so as to handle the stress of exercise then taking some amount of whey (or better, some slow moving protein) post exercise would help in muscle recovery and growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;W.r.t. the second part of your question, the same site also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/nutrition/what-are-good-sources-of-protein-speed-of-digestion-pt1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cites a Boirie study&lt;/a&gt; from 1997 which compares the effects of Whey VS Casein on muscle growth in athletes. You might find your answer there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2640" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T05:10:12.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3110" CreationDate="2011-05-12T08:33:09.730" Score="68" ViewCount="9026" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this one repeated by women I know a few times, but it sounds like a product of confirmation bias to me. Is there supporting evidence for the claim that if you don't wear a bra you should expect saggier boobs at old age?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T03:25:22.397" Title="Do bras prevent you from getting saggy boobs?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3002" CreationDate="2011-05-12T09:53:40.263" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The theory behind this is that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ethanol resorption can occur in the&#xA;mouth (which is true)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Orally absorbed ethanol&#xA;doesn't pass first through the&#xA;liver, yielding a higher&#xA;bioavailability (which is at least to be expected considering the anatomy of the local blood vessels)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drinking with a&#xA;straw is supposedly slower, allowing&#xA;the ethanol a longer contact time&#xA;with the oral mucosa (which at best sounds plausible but hardly evident).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, studies appear to contradict this. According to the book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=-GroRJnvzXIC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Alkohol und Alkoholfolgekrankheiten&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Singer/Teyssen (in German, sorry), studies during wine degustations (where ethanol is brought in contact with the oral mucosa but not swallowed), there was &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=-GroRJnvzXIC&amp;amp;pg=PA557&amp;amp;lpg=PA557&amp;amp;dq=resorption%20ethanol%20strohhalm&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=d40lGewj1W&amp;amp;sig=v3jFirBNroXDDtvGQtSwY4PbC9o&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;ei=nqvLTZKnDcrRsgaIzJnbAQ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=8&amp;amp;ved=0CEsQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;no relevant rise in blood alcohol levels&lt;/a&gt;, unless contact was for more than one hour (and then only to a BAC of 0.015).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude that a stronger buzz after drinking ethanol through a straw has never been scientifically observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T09:53:40.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2910" CreationDate="2011-05-12T10:55:18.373" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A majority of the literature on the net seems to support that non-anonymous and anonymous-surveys give very similar results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&amp;amp;uid=2000-08082-002&quot;&gt;A comparison of confidential versus anonymous survey procedures: Effects on reporting of drug use and related attitudes and beliefs in a national study of students&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; studies anonymous vs. confidential surveys in a specific case (drug usage reported in 8th and 10th graders), and concluded that there was a very modest or possibly no effect on the data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study presents a comparison of&#xA;  reporting of drug use and related&#xA;  attitudes and beliefs by national&#xA;  samples of 8th and 10th grade students&#xA;  under two different modes of&#xA;  administration conditions:&#xA;  confidential and anonymous. Data come&#xA;  from the Monitoring the Future project&#xA;  for the year 1998. The results show&#xA;  that there were clearly no differences&#xA;  between the conditions in 10th&#xA;  graders' reports of drug use and&#xA;  related attitudes and beliefs. With&#xA;  8th graders, the results show, at&#xA;  most, only a very modest mode of&#xA;  administration effect and quite&#xA;  possibly no effect at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same conclusion is drawn in more countries in the paper &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a903286276&quot;&gt;Adolescent Substance Abuse in Mexico, Puerto Rico and the United States: Effect of Anonymous versus Confidential Survey Formats&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly another study &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-0277.1997.tb03813.x/abstract&quot;&gt;The Effect of Anonymous Vs. Nonanonymous Rating Conditions on Patient Satisfaction and Motivation Ratings in a Population of Substance Abuse Patients&lt;/a&gt;&quot; concluded that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anonymity had either no effect on&#xA;  ratings or accounted for &amp;lt;1% of the&#xA;  variance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a study about collecting data regarding bullying, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://spi.sagepub.com/content/26/4/443.short&quot;&gt;The Efficacy of Non-Anonymous Measures of Bullying&lt;/a&gt;&quot; concluded that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The findings supported the hypotheses&#xA;  that the respondents did not differ in&#xA;  their report of the incidence of&#xA;  either bullying or victimization,&#xA;  regardless of whether they were&#xA;  required to identify themselves by&#xA;  writing down their names on the&#xA;  questionnaire forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6VDC-4BY3TYH-2&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=11/30/2005&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=gateway&amp;amp;_origin=gateway&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;view=c&amp;amp;_searchStrId=1749644284&amp;amp;_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=67bd4248da5a8f5cbd246e6252d9abf6&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot;&gt;Differences between ‘talking about' and ‘admitting' sensitive behaviour in anonymous and non-anonymous web-based interviews&lt;/a&gt;&quot; which (among other things) compared difference between two questionnaire modes- anonymous web-based forms or dektop-based video interviews concluded that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, the expected differences&#xA;  between the interview modes were not&#xA;  observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smw.ch/docs/pdf200x/2003/07/smw-10124.pdf&quot;&gt;High risk behaviour and fertility desires among heterosexual HIV-positive patients with a serodiscordant partner – two challenging issues&lt;/a&gt;&quot;(PDF) says that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Non-anonymous data collection on&#xA;  condom use may underestimate high risk&#xA;  behaviour&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are several caveats to these papers, some issues which may need exploring:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The surveys sometimes seems to be&#xA;carried out through a trusted&#xA;authority. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The surveys seem to&#xA;    target some specific portion of the&#xA;    population. The validity for general&#xA;    polls like opinion polls etc. may be&#xA;    different. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-anonymous may mean&#xA;    several things, perhaps each with&#xA;    it's own effect on results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastEditorUserId="1398" LastEditDate="2011-05-12T11:42:06.337" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T11:42:06.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3107" CreationDate="2011-05-12T11:04:33.717" Score="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassiere#Bra_impact_on_sagging&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; (with sources), &lt;strong&gt;not even bra manufacturers claim that bras prevent saggy breasts&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this is of course not conclusive. I have found two studies, that go further and claim that wearing no bra actually trains the chest muscles, making the breasts firmer and thus prevent sagging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is a Japanese study, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2092072&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Breast form changes resulting from a certain brassière&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; from 1990. Their salient finding is that, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In all subjects, after 3 months of brassière constraint … the breasts tended to hang down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the study only had 11 subjects so its expressive power is very low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second study is by Pierrot L., &lt;em&gt;Evolution du sein après l'arrêt du port du soutien gorge, étude préliminaire longitudinale sur 33 sportives volontaires&lt;/em&gt; from 2003. Unfortunately, I cannot find this study online. It is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.e-sante.be/soutien-gorge-en-question/actualite/1805&quot;&gt;referenced&lt;/a&gt; by a lot of health sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key points are referred in the linked article (in French) are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There were 33 test subjects between 18 and 25 years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After one year of going bra-less, there was an improved development of the pectoral muscles, and a reduction of sagging (measured by a reduced distance between acromion and nipple).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In conclusion&lt;/em&gt;, nobody seriously claims that bras prevent saggy breasts (when no bra is worn). Furthermore, two studies tentatively confirm the idea that &lt;strong&gt;wearing bras actually &lt;em&gt;causes&lt;/em&gt; saggy breasts&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It should be noted though that this is not an &lt;em&gt;exclusive&lt;/em&gt; cause: breasts will start sagging with age regardless of whether a bra is worn, but wearing a bra can accelerate the effect.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-05-12T16:56:30.807" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T16:56:30.807" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3111" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-12T11:05:32.673" Score="16" ViewCount="1704" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/268/17/2420.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1992 paper&lt;/a&gt; that introduced the term evidence-based medicine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence-based medicine de-emphasizes intuition, unsystematic clinical experience, and pathophysiologic rationale as sufficient grounds for clinical decision making and stresses the examination of evidence from clinical research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should physicians disregard their intuition, their unsystematic clinical experience and pathophysiological rationales?&#xA;Is there evidence that physicians who follow this approach closely are more effective at treating their patients than doctors who don't? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not about whether individual treatments are supported by studies. Of course they are. It is about whether physicians who adhere to the standards of evidence-based medicine actually achieve on average better health outcomes for their patients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-08T12:43:11.427" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T12:43:11.427" Title="Do physicians that use the paradigm of evidence-based medicine achieve better health outcomes for their patients?" Tags="|medical-science|epistemology|philosophy-of-ebm|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3112" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-12T11:14:51.010" Score="19" ViewCount="1095" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read in a book that apparently a 'sea salt' or sailor could smell the rain and then predict oncoming weather. Is this true, can people smell rain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T02:57:02.790" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T15:50:36.110" Title="Can we smell coming rain?" Tags="|weather|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3116" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-12T13:50:59.347" Score="8" ViewCount="986" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard the claim that it is almost impossible to succeed as a professional bicycle racer without taking drugs because everyone else is taking it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="4082" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T12:35:09.573" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T12:35:09.573" Title="Do most professional bicycle racers take performance enhancing drugs?" Tags="|medications|sport|bicycles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3117" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-12T13:56:40.823" Score="29" ViewCount="2024" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the book Freakanomics, the author speculated that due to the legalization of abortion in the US, crime rates fell because the people that would normally go out and commit these crimes, well they were never born in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the evidence and arguments used in the book itself, are there any evidence to support or repute this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his speculation of the possible reasons for the crime drop which was strongly correlated with legalizing abortion (with the appropriate delay) (drop also happened when the consensus among experts was that we were headed for a dramatic rise in crime), this was the rough chain of logic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unwanted children are the most likely to grow up to become criminals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unwanted children are the most likely children to be aborted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Legalizing abortion increases the aborting of unwanted children and thus reduces the number of children in the category defined in #1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-09T10:47:42.463" LastActivityDate="2012-09-09T10:47:42.463" Title="Did the legalisation of abortion result in lower crime rates?" Tags="|criminology|abortion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3118" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-12T14:09:36.117" Score="12" ViewCount="3787" Body="&lt;p&gt;He'd be quite old now so even if he did fake his death, he's probably dead anyway, but over the years, there's been many Elvis sightings. Have there been any actual credible ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:21:55.400" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T18:42:13.420" Title="Did Elvis fake his own death?" Tags="|history|celebrities|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3117" CreationDate="2011-05-12T14:21:31.667" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf&quot;&gt;The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime&lt;/a&gt;, in THE&#xA;QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS Vol. CXVI May 2001 Issue 2 by John Donohue III and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Levitt&quot;&gt;Steven Levitt&lt;/a&gt; (one of the authors of Freakonomics):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We offer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed signicantly to&#xA;  recent crime reductions.&lt;/strong&gt; Crime began to fall roughly eighteen years after abortion&#xA;  legalization. The ve states that allowed abortion in 1970 experienced declines&#xA;  earlier than the rest of the nation, which legalized in 1973 with Roe v. Wade.&#xA;  States with high abortion rates in the 1970s and 1980s experienced greater crime&#xA;  reductions in the 1990s. In high abortion states, only arrests of those born after&#xA;  abortion legalization fall relative to low abortion states. Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors posit the basis for this, in the conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to a&#xA;  recent National Academy report, there appears to be “a causal&#xA;  and adverse effect of early childbearing on the health and social&#xA;  and economic well-being of children; this effect is over and above&#xA;  the important effects of background disadvantages” [Institute of&#xA;  Medicine 1995, p. 58]. Moreover, unintended pregnancies are&#xA;  associated with poorer prenatal care, greater smoking and drinking during pregnancy, and lower birthweights. Consequently, the&#xA;  life chances of children who are born only because their mothers&#xA;  could not have an abortion are considerably dampened relative to&#xA;  babies who were wanted at the time of conception. The drop in the&#xA;  proportion of unwanted births during the 1970s and early 1980s&#xA;  appears to be the result of the increasing availability and resort&#xA;  to abortion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;These estimates suggest that legalized abortion is a primary&#xA;  explanation for the large drops in murder, property crime, and&#xA;  violent crime that our nation has experienced over the last decade.&lt;/strong&gt; Indeed, legalized abortion may account for as much as&#xA;  one-half of the overall crime reduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously there is bias in the source I've given because it's the same author as the claim being analyzed. However, the paper spells out in better detail the actual claims Levitt has made, and further it provides the basis and references for those claims &amp;mdash; The evidence put forward in the paper supports the conclusions in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, analysis by individuals other than the author of the book would better illuminate how well supported the conclusions are, but I wasn't able to find any right away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T14:21:31.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3122" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-12T14:53:12.880" Score="20" ViewCount="5259" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TgXqM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Beer Goggles&quot; /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wallpaper4me.com/wallpaper/Beer-Goggles/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/beer-goggles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Cambridge Online Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If you say that someone is wearing &lt;strong&gt;beer goggles&lt;/strong&gt;, you mean that they have been drinking so  much alcohol&#xA;that they think someone is more&#xA;sexually attractive than they really&#xA;are.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-beer-googles-minimyth.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mythbusters&lt;/strong&gt; tested this&lt;/a&gt; in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/episode/episode-tab-04.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Season 6 episode&lt;/a&gt; and deemed it &lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Plausible&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/archive/2002/Title,42523,en.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Researchers&lt;/a&gt; from the &lt;strong&gt;Universities of St Andrews&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Glasgow&lt;/strong&gt; seem to concur:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;men and women who have consumed a&#xA;moderate amount of alcohol find the&#xA;faces of members of  the opposite sex&#xA;25% more attractive than their sober&#xA;counterparts&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor Barry Jones said his study&#xA;suggests that alcohol boosts the&#xA;activity of the part of the human&#xA;brain which is used to determine&#xA;facial attractiveness, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleus_accumbens&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;nucleus&#xA;accumbens&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/human/alcohol-attraction-symmetry.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lewis Halsey&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;strong&gt;Roehampton University in London&lt;/strong&gt; also supports &lt;em&gt;beer googles&lt;/em&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Drinking alcohol hurts our ability to&#xA;detect asymmetrical faces.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's more, the data suggest that men&#xA;were less prone to losing their&#xA;symmetry-detecting ability when&#xA;intoxicated than women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5182492/Beer-goggles-idea-is-a-myth-claim-scientists.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vincent Egan&lt;/a&gt; from the &lt;strong&gt;University of Leicester&lt;/strong&gt;, says different and &lt;strong&gt;debunks&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;beer goggles&lt;/em&gt; in his study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... found that &lt;strong&gt;alcohol actually has&#xA;the opposite effect and made men see&#xA;women as less attractive&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;My question:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can alcohol influence your brain in such a way that ugly ducklings transform into beauties?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-08-02T13:09:25.850" Title="Beer goggles: Can alcohol make people look more attractive?" Tags="|psychology|biology|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3123" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32305" CreationDate="2011-05-12T15:44:01.297" Score="20" ViewCount="2570" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read an article years ago about the Vatican City going bankrupt and subsequently being bailed out by the CEO of a large sneaker company (Nike, Adidas or Reebok, etc. - I can't remember which). I recall this happened in the 1980's. Is this true, and if so what actually happend?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;EDIT:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've dug up some articles that indicate that the Vatican was indeed impoverished, but no articles indicating an insolvency or bankruptcy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an article from 1991 that implies a potential looming bankruptcy: &lt;a href=&quot;http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=PG&amp;amp;p_theme=pg&amp;amp;p_action=search&amp;amp;p_maxdocs=200&amp;amp;p_topdoc=1&amp;amp;p_text_direct-0=0EADE7FB769B03ED&amp;amp;p_field_direct-0=document_id&amp;amp;p_perpage=10&amp;amp;p_sort=YMD_date%3aD&amp;amp;s_trackval=GooglePM&quot;&gt;POPE ASKS CATHOLICS FOR FINANCIAL BAILOUT, Date: April 15, 1991&lt;/a&gt;, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another article from the Youngstown Vindicator dated August 13th, 1979, entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=6upIAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=xIIMAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=1212,4987389&amp;amp;dq=vatican%20insolvent&amp;amp;hl=en&quot;&gt;&quot;Funerals and Conclaves throw Vatican More Deeply into Debt&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which states &quot;... the most serious problem with the Vatican is ... poverty. The Vatican does not have enough money to meet its expenses.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If indeed the Vatican was in financial hardship as far back as 1979 through 1991, it stands to reason that there was a period of some insolvency or debt restructuring. I remember this being a &quot;big deal&quot; at the time, so I'm somewhat surprised that there are no references to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;EDIT:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems I have confused the Vatican City with the Vatican Bank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quote from the Wikipedia article &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Works_of_Religion&quot;&gt;Institute for Works of Religion&lt;/a&gt; (the Vatican Bank):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The [Vatican Bank] was involved in a major political and financial&#xA;  scandal in the 1980s, concerning the 1982 $3.5 billion collapse of&#xA;  Banco Ambrosiano, of which it was a major shareholder. The head of IOR&#xA;  from 1971 to 1989, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, was under consideration&#xA;  for indictment in 1982 in Italy as an accessory of the bankruptcy;&#xA;  however, he was never brought to trial due to the Italian courts'&#xA;  ruling that the priest, being a high-ranking prelate of the Vatican,&#xA;  had diplomatic immunity from prosecution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for the purpose of this question, let's take it that the &quot;Vatican&quot; went through financial catastrophe. The question then becomes: &lt;strong&gt;Was the Vatican Bank bailed out by the CEO of a large sneaker company (or other such philanthropist)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="1792" LastEditDate="2012-04-02T17:24:04.893" LastActivityDate="2016-03-30T19:31:00.667" Title="Was the Vatican bailed out from bankruptcy by private interests in the 1980s?" Tags="|history|economics|religion|catholic-church|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3116" CreationDate="2011-05-12T15:46:06.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Voet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Willy Voet&lt;/a&gt;, a physiotherapist, claimed as much in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0224061178&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Breaking the Chain: Drugs and Cycling: The True Story&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. The book contains a detailed account of a wide range of drug abuses, in the period leading up to the nineties. It is, btw, thoroughly recommended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Circumstantial evidence against Lance Armstrong is outlined in this book : &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._A._Confidentiel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LA Confidentiel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, of course, most recently Contador, Floyd Landis, Michael Rasmussen, Team Astana.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To say &quot;most professional cyclists&quot;? Well, I guess you'll never know. But the sheer number that have been caught is very high in both absolute and percentage terms.  All may protest their innocence, but they were caught with banned drugs in their system - it's quite simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A comprehensive list is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_doping_cases_in_cycling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and a quick count shows that in 2006, for example, 42 separate cases occurred throughout the year.  The biggest court case, as fair as I know, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operaci%C3%B3n_Puerto_doping_case&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Operación Puerto&lt;/a&gt; carried out in Spain&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="427" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-17T15:32:46.210" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T15:32:46.210" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7469" CreationDate="2011-05-12T15:48:09.093" Score="17" ViewCount="2133" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28game%29&quot;&gt;Go&lt;/a&gt; is an ancient game, popular today in China, Korea and Japan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was first learning to play I was told 'it was used to train generals and sometimes even played in place of fighting a war.'  Since then I have heard this repeated multiple times but have never seen any evidence to support it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2632" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-01-07T17:26:51.420" LastActivityDate="2012-01-15T22:29:20.983" Title="Has Go ever been used to decide a war?" Tags="|history|china|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3103" CreationDate="2011-05-12T15:57:55.530" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of points to be made here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes. The government did, indeed, force the lenders to make riskier loans in the name of combating real and/or perceived discrimination. The most relevant example is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Reinvestment_Act#Regulatory_changes_1995&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Community Reinvestment Act&lt;/a&gt; (CRA) - most notably, the 1993-1995 changes driven by President Clinton's administration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that &quot;riskier&quot; here is a technical financial term. While I don't have a public cite, I have seen first hand reports that showed higher risk on the loans specified to be in red-line zones vs outside them, with all other loan factors being equivalent.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No, CRA did not have any &lt;strong&gt;direct&lt;/strong&gt; major contributions to the 2008 meltdown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most relevant reference is a paper by a former Fed Governor Randall Kroszner titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frbsf.org/publications/community/cra/cra_recent_mortgage_crisis.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Community Reinvestment Act and the Recent Mortgage Crisis&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Too much to cite (and most of it relevant), so only a small quote here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We found that&#xA;  the loans that are the focus of the CRA represent a very&#xA;  small portion of the subprime lending market, casting&#xA;  considerable doubt on the potential contribution that the&#xA;  law could have made to the subprime mortgage crisis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Second, we asked how CRA-related subprime&#xA;  loans performed relative to other loans. Once again,&#xA;  the potential role of the CRA could be large or small,&#xA;  depending on the answer to this question. We found that&#xA;  delinquency rates were high in all neighborhood income&#xA;  groups, and that CRA-related subprime loans performed&#xA;  in a comparable manner to other subprime loans; as&#xA;  such, differences in performance between CRA-related&#xA;  subprime lending and other subprime lending cannot lie&#xA;  at the root of recent market turmoil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, outside of subprime metdown effects question, CRA may not have actually had ANY measurable effect in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a 2003 research paper &quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.federalreserve.gov/communityaffairs/national/CA_Conf_SusCommDev/pdf/cannerglen.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Effects of the Community Reinvestment Act on Local Communities&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, economists at the Federal Reserve could not find clear evidence that the CRA increased lending and home ownership more in low income neighborhoods than in higher income ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Federal Reserve chair Ben Bernanke has stated in &quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/Bernanke20070330a.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Community Reinvestment Act: Its Evolution and New Challenges&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&quot; that an underlying assumption of the CRA – that more lending equals better outcomes for local communities – may not always be true and is hard to measure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The CRA is clearly far from perfect. Although its objectives are broad and ambitious, &lt;strong&gt;its net effects on lower-income neighborhoods are difficult to measure with precision&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, that second reference (Bernanke speech) also notes that at least in some instances:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;the CRA has served as a catalyst, inducing banks to enter under-served markets that they might otherwise have ignored&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there's no data in that speech to indicate whether that catalyst effect may or may not have had anything to do with the bubble (the speech is from 2007).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, the anti-discrimination angle &lt;strong&gt;contributed to preventing the government from strongly pushing to STOP the proliferation of sub-prime loans&lt;/strong&gt; by all actors, CRA related or not (as such an effort, pre-2008 crisis, would have had really bad political optics). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would such an effort have prevented the crisis? Likiely no - there were many other factors to the meltdown (too many and too far off-topic for the question to list).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it have made the crisis smaller? It would have. Subprime and derivatives based on it were a major driver in the speed of the meltdown - with less of them unwinding the bubble would have been cheaper/easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would such an effort have been made had the anti-discrimination angle not been in play? Pretty hard to answer objectively.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-05-12T16:30:05.307" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T16:30:05.307" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3129" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3143" CreationDate="2011-05-12T18:27:57.780" Score="17" ViewCount="1731" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't recall exactly the words he used, but to the best of my recollection Darwin was quite certain that all living things share a common ancestor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, and more important, was there a &quot;killer argument&quot; available to Darwin for believing in a &lt;em&gt;single&lt;/em&gt; common ancestor? Why might he not have supposed, for example, that life arose once and evolved into plants, and again giving rise to animals. Or once for mammals, once for birds, once for fish, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LATER - I'm still not clear on the reasons for getting downvoted, but just to clarify. There's disagreement over whether Darwin actually believed life started once only, as opposed to anywhere between twice and ten times, but that (possible) minor mistake on his part wasn't really my point. Suppose for the sake of argument that he did get it 'right'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in the possibility that there might have been knowledge and evidence available to Darwin that he just happened not to be aware of, or things he knew but didn't recognise as relevant. It's commonplace today to say we know evolution is true because the DNA record is irrefutable. But that wasn't available to Darwin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="942" LastEditorUserId="942" LastEditDate="2011-05-13T03:21:43.210" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T21:49:52.633" Title="How could Darwin be sure all life has a common origin" Tags="|biology|evolution|charles-darwin|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3130" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3538" CreationDate="2011-05-12T18:45:39.443" Score="34" ViewCount="1991" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/id/2287227/&quot;&gt;&quot;The Make-Believe Billion - How drug companies exaggerate research costs to justify absurd profits&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in Slate the author writes about a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pharmamyths.net/files/Biosocieties_2011_Myths_of_High_Drug_Research_Costs.pdf&quot;&gt;new study about the costs of drug development&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The common cost for the development of a new drug that I have heard several times, and that is also mentioned in the article as a comparison, is about 1 billion US dollars. The new study now seems to claim that the real cost is only 55 million US dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The statistic Big Pharma typically&#xA;  cites [...] is&#xA;  that the cost of bringing a new drug&#xA;  to market is about $1 billion. Now a&#xA;  new study indicates the cost is more&#xA;  like, um, $55 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is &quot;Big Pharma&quot; exaggerating the development costs for new drugs or is this new study underestimating the true costs enormously?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2024-03-04T12:35:34.023" Title="Is drug development far cheaper than Big Pharma wants us to believe?" Tags="|medical-science|economics|medications|drug-development|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3146" CreationDate="2011-05-12T19:02:49.983" Score="19" ViewCount="4659" Body="&lt;p&gt;A well reputed professor of neurology once mentioned to me that no drugs have been invented to cure human afflictions since the 1950's or 60's. Are there any drugs that have been invented since that time that are permanent cures of human ailments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is somewhat related to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3130&quot;&gt;Is drug development far cheaper than Big Pharma wants us to believe?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2018-08-21T22:52:11.430" Title="Have any &quot;cures&quot; been invented since the 1950's or so?" Tags="|medical-science|history|medications|drug-development|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="19" ClosedDate="2018-08-22T09:11:40.393" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3132" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3134" CreationDate="2011-05-12T19:30:42.563" Score="192" ViewCount="31002" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/52NA4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Welcome to installment #2 of my &quot;the science of animals falling&quot; series of questions....&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard it said many times since childhood that if you are to find a baby bird on the ground which appears to have fallen from the nest you should not pick it up and put it back.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was told that once the baby bird has your scent on it, the mother will not take it back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that this is just something parents tell their kids to keep them from touching birds which are notorious for carrying germs (as are kids), but it is a very commonly held belief in America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any scientific evidence to&#xA;explain why this would happen?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has this been studied?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-14T15:26:20.753" LastActivityDate="2017-09-04T15:38:38.687" Title="Will a mother bird abandon her young if touched by a human?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3137" CreationDate="2011-05-12T20:09:04.487" Score="12" ViewCount="1035" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GyFQ1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Photo by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathaninsandiego/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nathan Rupert&lt;/a&gt; - via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathaninsandiego/2554860649/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flickr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorphin#Runner.27s_high&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as follows&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A publicized effect of endorphin production is the so-called &quot;runner's high&quot;, which is said to occur when strenuous exercise takes a person over a threshold that activates endorphin production. Endorphins are released during long, continuous workouts, when the level of intensity is between moderate and high, and breathing is difficult. This also corresponds with the time that muscles use up their stored glycogen. During a release of endorphins the person may be exposed to bodily harm from strenuous bodily functions after going past his or her body's physical limit. This means that runners can keep running despite pain, continuously surpassing what they once considered to be their limit.&lt;sup&gt;[citation needed]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the nice [citation needed] :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A two-part question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the runner's high exist?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A lot of joggers claim to achieve it: is it possible to get the runner's high by running up to an hour?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-05-27T05:28:25.090" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T05:28:25.090" Title="Is the runner's high a real phenomenon?" Tags="|physiology|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3132" CreationDate="2011-05-12T20:21:20.787" Score="202" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20140712025704/http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/mythbusters/710/abandoned_birds.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fortean Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Birds have little or no sense of&#xA;smell&lt;/strong&gt;, and will be unaware of your&#xA;molestation. Besides, they will not&#xA;lightly abandon their offspring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20140323044514/http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/animalsnature/animal-myths-busted/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Geographic&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most birds have a poorly developed&#xA;sense of smell&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;,&amp;quot; says Michael Mace,&#xA;bird curator at San Diego Zoo's Wild&#xA;Animal Park. &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;They won't notice a&#xA;human scent&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One exception: vultures,&#xA;who sniff out dead animals for dinner.&#xA;But you wouldn't want to mess with a&#xA;vulture anyway!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/babybird.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; also debunks it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mother birds will not reject their babies because they smell human scent on them, nor will they refuse to [sit] on eggs that have been handled by a person. &lt;strong&gt;Many birds have a limited sense of smell and cannot detect human scent, or if they can detect it, do not react to it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-09-04T15:38:38.687" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3135" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3151" CreationDate="2011-05-12T20:32:32.163" Score="30" ViewCount="8809" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard many times that touching a butterfly will remove some &amp;quot;special&amp;quot; powder from its wings preventing it to ever fly again, effectively killing it or condemning it to die of starvation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.mcse-security.net/2008/01/never-touch-butterfly-wing-with-your.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on a blog&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you touch a butterfly, you get dust on your hands. Ever wondered what it really is? I did, but never thought this much about it before. Butterflies and moths belonging to the genus Lepidoptera, meaning scale-wing, are named referring to the scale cell structures on its wings. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Butterfly wings will not be structurally sound and strong if you remove a bunch of them, thus harming the small insect. This[sic] ridges of our fingerprint or oil on our skin is more than enough to pry these wing scales loose, even with the slightest (caring) touch. The dust that comes off, when you touch a butterfly is its wing scales. Be careful next time you wish to touch it! You could endanger it’s[sic] life without meaning to harm it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WCxf3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Photo credit: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/arcticpuppy/2927140520/sizes/m/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flickr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Poor butterflies! We should never ever touch them, right? Or is it a cute myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-06-09T19:21:49.863" Title="Will a mere touch kill a butterfly?" Tags="|mortality|entomology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3133" CreationDate="2011-05-12T20:42:13.717" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, runner's high has been proven to exist. This happened just a few years ago, in an article published in the publication &lt;a href=&quot;http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cerebral Cortex&lt;/a&gt; called &lt;a href=&quot;http://cercor.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2008/02/21/cercor.bhn013.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Runner’s High: Opioidergic Mechanisms in the Human Brain&lt;/a&gt; in February 2008. The publication is owned by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oxford University Press&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is still relatively new science, but according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/health/nutrition/27best.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article in the New York Times&lt;/a&gt;, leading endorphin researchers are on board with the findings stated in the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The researchers involved tested 10 runners pre-run, and 2 hours into the run using PET scans. They did not determine whether or not runner's high could be achieved in a shorter duration of exercise. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Get-a-Runner&amp;#39;s-High&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this WikiHow answer&lt;/a&gt;, runner's high can be achieved in 30-45 minutes, but there is some debate on the validity of some of WikiHow's articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want more info on running and some of the running-related phenomena (myths and facts) check out some of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/running&quot;&gt;running questions over at the Fitness &amp;amp; Nutrition site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="995" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:51.697" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T20:50:30.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3129" CreationDate="2011-05-12T20:48:54.540" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;… to the best of my recollection Darwin was quite certain that all living things share a common ancestor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, Darwin played with the idea, and there’s his famous sketch, the tree of life …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y80pc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;I think&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Darwin was &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; certain (and even if he personally believed it, I need to stress that he was not &lt;em&gt;certain&lt;/em&gt;) that there was only one common ancestor. All he was certain about is captured in these famous words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice the “into a few forms”. The idea that there might have been just one appears rather as an afterthought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in the meantime we &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; that there was only a single common ancestor due to the universality of the genetic code. But this evidence emerged long after Darwin’s death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Darwin, C., &lt;em&gt;The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle For Life&lt;/em&gt;, London, John Murrary, 1859, p. 490&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2011-05-13T19:10:42.527" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T19:10:42.527" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2561" CreationDate="2011-05-12T21:03:52.303" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;There does seem to be a distinct difference in composition of emotional tears, compared to basal and reflex tears (&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s00347-009-1966-5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;review in German&lt;/a&gt;). The emotional tears were found to contain about 24% more protein than reflex tears (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.proxy.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/pubmed/7294117?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Frey et al., 1981&lt;/a&gt;). Also found were increased concentrations of Prolactin, manganese, potassium compared to serum concentrations, as well as increased serotonin concentrations compared to reflex tears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This research shows that emotional tears are different from reflex tears, but it doesn't really support the claim that toxins are eliminated through crying. The german review I linked states that it is unlikely that toxin elimination through tears has a therapeutic effect. One additional aspect arguing against that is the fact that a large part of the tears is usually reabsorbed through the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean that there are no psychological or social effects of crying. But I could not find any evidence for specific toxins that are excreted via tears, the substances in the research I mentioned are not really toxins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-05-31T15:33:04.053" LastActivityDate="2022-05-31T15:33:04.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3131" CreationDate="2011-05-12T21:13:54.923" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let’s have a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/InformationOnDrugs/ApprovedDrugs/ucm254242.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of drugs approved in the USA in 2011 alone&lt;/a&gt; – particularly at the active ingredients, since presumably this is what the professor meant because it’s what “makes the cure tick”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/summary/summary.cgi?cid=3086674&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ioflupane&lt;/a&gt;, not a cure in the strict sense (a carrier for a radioactive iodine isotope) entered into the database in 2005.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/summary/summary.cgi?cid=183094&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spinosyn D&lt;/a&gt;, first described in 1998 according to PubMed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/summary/summary.cgi?cid=6918313&amp;amp;loc=ec_rcs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vilazodone hydrochloride&lt;/a&gt;, entered into the database in 2006.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/summary/summary.cgi?cid=449193&amp;amp;loc=ec_rcs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roflumilast&lt;/a&gt;, first published in 2001 according to PubMed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;…&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the list goes on. The claim is so trivially wrong and, quite frankly, ridiculous that I can’t help wondering in what context it was used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-12T21:13:54.923" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3132" CreationDate="2011-05-12T21:15:08.163" Score="118" Body="&lt;h1&gt;No.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A mother bird will not abandon her young if it's touched by a human.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Birds do not identify their offspring by smell nor do they abandon their young without a good reason.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter how flighty birds appear,&#xA;they do not readily abandon their&#xA;young, especially &lt;strong&gt;not in response to&#xA;human touch&lt;/strong&gt;, says Frank B. Gill,&#xA;former president of the American&#xA;Ornithologists' Union.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-birds-abandon-young-at-human-touch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sight and sound: Baby birds chirp for a reason.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a myth that parent birds will&#xA;abandon young that have been touched&#xA;by humans—most birds have a poor sense&#xA;of smell, and birds in general&#xA;identify their young &lt;strong&gt;using the same&#xA;cues we humans do—appearance and&#xA;sound&lt;/strong&gt;. It's perfectly safe to pick up&#xA;a fallen nestling and put it back in&#xA;the nest, or to carry a fledgling out&#xA;of danger and place it in a tree or&#xA;shrub.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutbirds.org/Page.aspx?pid=1098#q-if-i-handle-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some don't even care, or know, if it is not their offspring&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both the male and female Western&#xA;Bluebirds &lt;strong&gt;fed unrelated nestlings&lt;/strong&gt; at&#xA;the same rate as their own offspring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither male nor female Western Bluebirds&#xA;preferentially fed related nestlings, suggesting&#xA;that they may not recognize their own young.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v112n04/p1062-p1064.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Preservation of the species.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This prevalent belief, however, is for&#xA;the birds: it denies animal parents'&#xA;innate drive to nurture their broods&#xA;and &lt;strong&gt;ignores a bird's basic biology&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, most creatures find&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;extraordinary ways to ensure the&#xA;survival of their young&lt;/strong&gt;. Killdeer and&#xA;ducks will feign a broken wing to lure&#xA;a predator away from their babies, and&#xA;raccoons and tree squirrels will&#xA;speedily relocate their progeny to&#xA;more protected pastures when a&#xA;potential threat is skulking about.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-birds-abandon-young-at-human-touch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nests are a different matter.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, there's good reason not to go&#xA;fiddling around in an occupied nest.&#xA;&amp;quot;The fact is, birds don't abandon&#xA;their young in response to touch,&#xA;[but] they will abandon [their&#xA;offspring and their nest] in response&#xA;to disturbance,&amp;quot; explains biologist&#xA;Thomas E. Martin of the University of&#xA;Montana and the U.S. Geological&#xA;Survey, who has handled birds from&#xA;Venezuela to Tasmania without&#xA;instigating abandonment. &amp;quot;They are&#xA;likely &lt;strong&gt;responding to disturbance in&#xA;relation to risk of harm to young&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-birds-abandon-young-at-human-touch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disease may be one source of this myth...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each spring, some &lt;strong&gt;children become&#xA;infected with Salmonella&lt;/strong&gt; after&#xA;receiving a chick or other baby bird&#xA;for Easter. It is important to&#xA;remember that illness can occur from&#xA;these baby birds or adult birds at any&#xA;time of the year, and not just during&#xA;the Easter season.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/Features/SalmonellaBabyBirds/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rabbits are not birds&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wild rabbits are the exception to this&#xA;rule. &amp;quot;These animals seem to be the&#xA;most sensitive to human and other&#xA;smells. They're a flighty, high-stress&#xA;species,&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you suspect that a rabbit's nest&#xA;has been abandoned, the Humane Society&#xA;recommends making an &amp;quot;X&amp;quot; out of yarn&#xA;or string over the nest and checking&#xA;approximately 10 hours later to see if&#xA;it has been moved. If the X has been&#xA;pushed aside but the nest is still&#xA;covered, that's a good indication that&#xA;the mother has returned, nursed her&#xA;young, and then re-covered them. If&#xA;the X stays in place for 12 hours&#xA;after the traumatic event, it's likely&#xA;that the young rabbits have been&#xA;deserted.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-birds-abandon-young-at-human-touch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Bottom Line.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt; &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Birds identify their young by sound and appearance not smell (or taste) and being touched by a human does not modify a young bird's appearance or the sounds it makes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Studies have show many species of bird will feed and care for offspring other than their own.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Like most creatures, birds have a strong biological instinct to care for their young and will not abandon them without just cause.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you find a baby bird&#xA;put it back in its nest. If it is in&#xA;danger: Get it  out of danger and&#xA;place it in a tree or shrub.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not disturb bird nests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wash your hands.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T01:16:55.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3129" CreationDate="2011-05-12T22:34:02.853" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Konrad Rudolph's partially correct answer, let's talk about this more.  The quote you are looking for may be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their cellular structure, and their laws of growth and reproduction. We see this even in so trifling a circumstance as that the same poison often similarly affects plants and animals; or that the poison secreted by the gall-fly produces monstrous growths on the wild rose or oak-tree. &lt;strong&gt;Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; (1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same page as Konrad's quote.  Keep in mind that writing in the 1800s was different in style than today.  Quite often an author will say something contradictory to their position, before getting to their point (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_quoting_out_of_context#.22Absurd_in_the_highest_degree.22&quot;&gt;Like Darwin did on the complexity of the eye example that creationists commonly refer to&lt;/a&gt;).  Because, just &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; that, he says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Therefore I cannot doubt that the theory of descent with modification embraces all the members of the same class. I believe that animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read the full text of Chapter 14 of his book here:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter14.html&quot;&gt;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter14.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to address the second part of your question, this quote came at the end of his book.  it was based on the complete body of his work, not just one &quot;killer argument&quot;.  There is no such thing.  A subject as vast, complex, and diverse as biology will never have a single killer argument.  To look for one would be a fool's errand, and to believe one would be the mark of a fool.  A singular killer argument is the sign of a simple question.  Something evolution most decidedly is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that pretty much every discovery in Biology (especially genetics) has supported his argument should lend credence to Darwin being right.  There is no way a Victorian era gentleman would know about DNA to the level we do now, and yet he was so amazingly right about the things he wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, he posits that perhaps plants, animals, and things that just appear too different from each other to be related may have had their own start, but then his final argument most likely lays in his inference reached by his body of work, and deduction.  And keep in mind, given what knowledge was available to him in his time, his deduction was the best he could go with.  All the supporting evidence came long after his death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it &lt;em&gt;CAN&lt;/em&gt; be argued that Charles Darwin was not the first to think of this.  Thus his final inference may have been built upon not only the totality of his own work, but the previous thoughts of other individuals.  His own &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=XRUaAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;hl=en#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;grandfather Erasmus&lt;/a&gt; once posited in 1795:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[W]ould it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations; and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you go further back, in the 1740s Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis suggested common descent in &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=Fkqg3TIkBJwC&amp;amp;pg=PA107&amp;amp;dq=Essai%20de%20Cosmologie%20%22blind%20destiny%22&amp;amp;cd=1#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Essai%20de%20Cosmologie%20%22blind%20destiny%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Essai de Cosmologie&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Could one not say that, in the fortuitous combinations of the productions of nature, as there must be some characterized by a certain relation of fitness which are able to subsist, it is not to be wondered at that this fitness is present in all the species that are currently in existence? Chance, one would say, produced an innumerable multitude of individuals; a small number found themselves constructed in such a manner that the parts of the animal were able to satisfy its needs; in another infinitely greater number, there was neither fitness nor order: all of these latter have perished. Animals lacking a mouth could not live; others lacking reproductive organs could not perpetuate themselves ... The species we see today are but the smallest part of what blind destiny has produced ..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there was Gregor Mendel's work in genetics that played into this.  All the discoveries after Darwin's publication have just continued to lead up to verifying the idea of common descent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also suggest that anyone interested in evolution head over to &lt;a href=&quot;http://factsnotfantasy.com/links.php&quot;&gt;http://factsnotfantasy.com/links.php&lt;/a&gt; and check out more resources on evolution and its veracity as well as history.  Even Wikipedia has a very good series of discussions on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1)  Darwin, C., &quot;&lt;em&gt;The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle For Life&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, London, John Murrary, (1859) p. 490&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-05-13T21:49:52.633" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T21:49:52.633" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3132" CreationDate="2011-05-12T22:53:08.370" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have pointed out, birds certainly wouldn't be likely to use their sense of smell to identify and reject a replaced fledgling. Luckily for cuckoos!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a general principle you shouldn't interfere with the natural process. That fledgling may be defective in some way. Maybe it's too stupid or too adventurous to stay safely in the nest. Maybe it's diseased and the parent recognises this in some way. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a713666027&quot;&gt;This link&lt;/a&gt; might not put the position as strongly as I would, but it leans in the same direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't really matter. The point is if you save that potentially unfit animal, it may grow up and mate. Possibly leading to more defectives that otherwise wouldn't have been born. Possibly depriving some other &lt;em&gt;fit&lt;/em&gt; bird from getting the chance to mate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nature got along fine for billions of years without human intervention, and much of the current evidence (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-17-florida-reef_x.htm&quot;&gt;Tire Reef&lt;/a&gt; and just about everything in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.how2immigrate.com/wordpress/articles/guided-hunting-in-new-zealand&quot;&gt;New Zealand&lt;/a&gt;) suggests that when we &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; intervene, we often mess things up anyway. Grit your teeth and let Nature take its course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="942" LastEditorUserId="942" LastEditDate="2011-05-13T00:32:40.943" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T00:32:40.943" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3131" CreationDate="2011-05-12T23:56:49.477" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is an incorrect statement, if we're stricts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bone marrow transplant&lt;/strong&gt; to cure children lymphoma is a good example of a cure developed after the 50's: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fhcrc.org/science/clinical/ltfu/faqs/transplantation.html&quot;&gt;http://www.fhcrc.org/science/clinical/ltfu/faqs/transplantation.html&lt;/a&gt; . The major breakthrough was to obtain successful allogeneic grafts, which was not possible before late 60's-early 70's. There's a classic review in the New England Journal of Medicine of 1975 talking about these advances: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM197504172921605&quot;&gt;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM197504172921605&lt;/a&gt; (part 1) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM197504242921706&quot;&gt;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM197504242921706&lt;/a&gt; (part 2). Also, you might want to look at Donall Thomas' 1990 Nobel Laureate lecture: &lt;a href=&quot;http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1990/thomas-lecture.pdf&quot;&gt;http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1990/thomas-lecture.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stent grafts&lt;/strong&gt; to restore blood flow and prevent (diminish the chance of) restenosis. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fauchard.org/history/articles/jdh/v49n2_July01/charles_stent_49_2.html&quot;&gt;http://www.fauchard.org/history/articles/jdh/v49n2_July01/charles_stent_49_2.html&lt;/a&gt; for the origin of the word stent and its many applications, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/palmaz.html&quot;&gt;http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/palmaz.html&lt;/a&gt; for endovascular stents in particular.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look for drug examples, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Imatinib&lt;/strong&gt; (Gleevec) fits the description. For treating leukemia. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20010528,00.html&quot;&gt;http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20010528,00.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abciximab&lt;/strong&gt; (Reopro) saved a huge number of lives after heart attacks. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10155090&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10155090&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Statins&lt;/strong&gt; to reduce the cholesterol level (even with its abuse and lack of concurrent diets). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v2/n7/fig_tab/nrd1112_I1.html&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v2/n7/fig_tab/nrd1112_I1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Combination drugs like the &lt;strong&gt;HAART&lt;/strong&gt; therapy against AIDS is another. You could argue that it does not &quot;cure&quot; AIDS, but the vast increase in life expectancy with it makes it worth being in the list. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1716971/&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1716971/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, it is true that the &lt;em&gt;pace&lt;/em&gt; in which cures have been achieved diminished considerably. We could hypothesise for a long time about &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; this is happening, including (but clearly not limited to) stricter regulations and higher costs, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2680" LastEditorUserId="2680" LastEditDate="2011-05-13T21:30:25.593" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T21:30:25.593" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3010" CreationDate="2011-05-13T00:19:58.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are really interested, I suggest you to read this review in the Journal of Clinical Investigation (a very well known basic and clinical research publication): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jci.org/articles/view/43766&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.jci.org/articles/view/43766&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The endogenous (i.e., not induced by drugs) reduction in pain is achieved at several levels in the endocrine and nervous systems. There is no such thing as &quot;no pain state&quot;, but the feeling can be reduced drastically. More importantly, you may &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; you're in pain, but you do not &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; so much it. Propioception (the physical self awareness) is still there, but the pain pathways are partially blocked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the increased strength, I would believe it is due to a reduced fear to damage yourself and again increased pain tolerance, that allow you to perform tasks that you would not normally do. Lifting a car can be quite painful to your arms, so in normal situations you might not use your strengh at full capacity just so you do not damage yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2680" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T00:19:58.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3135" CreationDate="2011-05-13T00:39:51.867" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scales are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reimangardens.iastate.edu/index.cfm?nodeID=7002&amp;amp;audienceID=1&amp;amp;action=display&amp;amp;newsID=500&quot;&gt;not used in flight&lt;/a&gt;, but &lt;strong&gt;those scales are important for other things&lt;/strong&gt;. However, the same article points out that the wings are very fragile, and are easily broken (which would doom the butterfly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reimangardens.iastate.edu/en/butterflies/butterfly_wing_rules/&quot;&gt;Reiman Gardens, Iowa State University&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not touch or grab the butterflies. They’re quite fragile and their wings are easily damaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amnh.museum/exhibitions/butterflies/faq.php&quot;&gt;American Museum of Natural History&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't touch a butterfly's wing—the &quot;powder&quot; that rubs off is actually the scales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T00:39:51.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2796" CreationDate="2011-05-13T00:55:28.070" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2008 there was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3aGWI_and_Health_of_GW_Veterans_RAC-GWVI_Report_2008.pdf&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; (Wikipedia mirror, trying to download the original ends in broken links) released by a federal panel of scientific experts and veterans and commissioned by the Department of Veterans' Affairs which found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gulf War illness fundamentally differs from trauma and stress-related syndromes described after other wars. Studies consistently indicate that Gulf War illness is not the result of combat or other stressors and that Gulf War veterans have lower rates of posttraumatic stress disorder than veterans of other wars. No similar widespread, unexplained symptomatic illness has been identified in veterans who have served in war zones since the Gulf War, including current Middle East deployments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the report does indicate two causal links for GWI, it was unable to rule out the influence of a number of additional factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Committee found that an association between Gulf War illness and several other exposures could not be ruled out. These included low-level exposures to nerve agents, extended exposure to smoke from oil well fires, receipt of large numbers of vaccines, and combinations of neurotoxic exposures. There is some evidence supporting a possible association between these exposures and Gulf War illness, but that evidence is inconsistent&#xA;  or limited in important ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this a case of common symptoms originating from a wide variety of causes being grouped together after the fact, rather than one specific illness?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, but there is valid evidence pointing to a real illness specific to the original Gulf War, which many sufferers of &quot;GWI&quot; actually have. Since GWI has not yet been officially defined, any person who served in the Gulf War and who suffers one or more of the many listed symptoms could rightfully call themselves a sufferer of GWI. That does not imply, however, that an &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; GWI does not exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there evidence that Gulf War Illness does have a known cause that is being covered up by a conspiracy?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, based on the federally funded programs researching GWI. The department of veterans' affairs set up and funded &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.va.gov/rac-gwvi/&quot;&gt;the committee&lt;/a&gt; investigating GWI. Why would a government attempting to cover this up fund scientific inquiry into it? Or do the conspiracy theorists believe the department of veterans' affairs and scientific researchers are &quot;in on it&quot; as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to its charter, the guiding principle for the work of the Committee shall be the premise that the fundamental goal of Gulf War-related government research is to improve the health of ill Gulf War veterans.   Research priorities will be judged against this standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Although many potential causes have been considered, has any one specific cause or agent been shown to be more likely than the others?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt; The report states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The panel cited two Gulf War exposures consistently found to be causally associated with Gulf War illness: (1) the drug pyridostigmine bromide (PB), given to troops to protect against nerve gas, and (2) pesticides that were widely used, and often overused, during the Gulf War.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T00:55:28.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4162" CreationDate="2011-05-13T01:05:48.807" Score="11" ViewCount="4573" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, there are two groups of boys at school. One group has one or more girl friends and the other has no girlfriends due to lack of charm or maybe just because they don't want any. However, the group with girlfriends always seem to score lower in their tests. They don't seem to work as effeciently, or get as good scores. Is this due to the fact that they have girlfriends? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying all the guys who don't have girlfriends get high scores, either; some of them also get pretty lousy scores sometimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2015-11-01T13:04:39.517" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T13:04:39.517" Title="Do romantic relationships have a negative impact on academic performance?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|cognitive-fitness|mating|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3135" CreationDate="2011-05-13T01:43:52.210" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Butterflies won't &lt;strong&gt;necessarily&lt;/strong&gt; die if you touch their wings and dislodge some scales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://animals.howstuffworks.com/insects/butterfly-wing-fragility.htm&quot;&gt;How stuff work&lt;/a&gt;s has this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While you don't want to manhandle the&#xA;  beautiful creatures, knowledgeable&#xA;  researchers have been trapping and&#xA;  tagging butterflies for years to track&#xA;  their whereabouts. These scientists&#xA;  and volunteers use nets to corral the&#xA;  flying insects, then gently scrape&#xA;  enough scales from a small area to&#xA;  expose the wing's clear membrane ...&#xA;  Not only do butterflies survive these&#xA;  seemingly traumatic encounters, but&#xA;  they've also been known to fly away&#xA;  from bird attacks and yes, even&#xA;  rainstorms, unscathed. Some have even&#xA;  flown away after having a small&#xA;  portion of their wing torn off&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And cites &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lerner, K. Lee and Brenda Wilmoth Lerner, eds. &quot;Butterflies.&quot; &lt;em&gt;Gale Encyclopedia of Science&lt;/em&gt;. 2008 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the wings are fragile and the scales do serve a purpose. So it's better not to pick butterflies up by the wing if you don't have a good reason to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2368" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T01:43:52.210" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3116" CreationDate="2011-05-13T03:26:40.053" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very hard question to answer - how do you prove that a given cyclist isn't taking some undetectable drug?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can say is, in recent years, cycling has developed one of the most rigorous testing programs in all sports. Each professional cyclist has their own &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_passport&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;biological passport&lt;/a&gt; which tracks markers associated with drug use - the point is not to test for known drugs but for the likely effects of doping. If an athlete has a sudden rise in red blood cells, or makers associated with growth hormone, they're investigated or stood down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A particular case in point is Brad Wiggins surprise result in the 2009 Tour de France. When he rode better than most people expected, he was able to show &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slipstreamsports.com/2009/07/31/bradley-wiggins-releases-blood-profiles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a long-term series of blood results which didn't show any evidence of doping&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, you will have to make your own judgement, but I think the level of testing used in modern professional cycling, and the fact only a relatively small number of cyclists are found guilty of doping, makes it reasonable to infer that most of the peleton are not cheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uci.ch/Modules/ENews/ENewsDetails.asp?MenuId=&amp;amp;id=NTQzOA&amp;amp;LangId=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;there is more information on the biological passport here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2368" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T03:26:40.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3111" CreationDate="2011-05-13T04:34:23.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only speak to the one instance of evidence-based medicine I've seen in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few years back, there was a study in mammography that claimed that only women above the age of 50 should be screened for breast cancer, and even then, only once every two years (and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspsbrca.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here's the task force link there&lt;/a&gt;).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study caused the doctors I was working with at the time to cringe, because &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9709283&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;younger women develop cancers faster&lt;/a&gt;.  In fact, the week the study was released, we saw two patients, one of which was 32 and was diagnosed with stage 3 cancer right after giving birth (she thought the breast stiffness was due to preparation for lactation), and another woman who had nothing on her priors when she was 42 and had full-blown metastasized cancer 2 years later.  Those are anecdotal results, but when contrasted with that overall guidance, they show the cherry-picking of the evidence done by the task force.  A younger woman who doesn't get screened at least yearly could develop stage 3 or 4 cancer by the time the biennial screening comes around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, if you back far enough away from the statistics, it could be argued that mammograms aren't useful in younger women because of the breast density preventing accurate screening results.  However, with the move to digital, more of the dense breast is now available to mammographers (as reported in the NYTimes &lt;a href=&quot;http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and elsewhere &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eradimaging.com/site/article.cfm?ID=28&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).  And as that previous reference pointed out, younger women have more aggressive cancers, so reducing their screenings mean that these patients will more likely suffer from more developed cancers and increased mortality with less screening. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways of interpreting evidence.  Personally, I don't think that that task force interpreted the evidence properly, although my bias is also tainted by those cases I saw.  I'm pretty sure that this kind of interpretation problem will occur in many other fields as well.  So will following such task force recommendations make doctor's better?  I'd say that the next step, at least in mammography, is to see how the breast cancer mortality rate will change as doctors follow these new recommendations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2158" LastEditorUserId="2158" LastEditDate="2011-05-13T04:40:50.460" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T04:40:50.460" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3157" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3161" CreationDate="2011-05-13T06:09:59.230" Score="4" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen movies at different cinemas, but sometimes I could swear that some scenes were addded or removed to the point of almost making the movie having a completely different impact! First time I noticed this was watching the &quot;Brotherhood of the Wolf&quot; ( french movie ) at the same cinema two days apart.  Seeing the second time with a friend there were additional scenes that depicted the torment of the &quot;bad guy&quot; to the point of feeling pity for him, yet at the first screening without those scenes he just aperaed to be an evil dude by choice!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was my most notable recollecation of this issue, but for years been wondering if some cinemas on purpose been showing a different version than others, or even the cinema decides to split some scenes? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that TV stations cut movies to fit them within a time frame, but each cinema and potentially groups of people are segregated from others as hardly people watch the same movie twice at different locations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is, is it a common practice to have separte releases by suburb, even movie times where different groups of people walk away with differnt impressions of the movie?  ( it is possible different regional releases are edited for cultural issues but edits with the same city, suburb or cinema timing?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1708" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-13T06:14:23.247" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T07:09:54.753" Title="Are different versions of movies being released on purpose? or do some cinemas censor parts of movies?" Tags="|consumer-products|mind-control|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3131" CreationDate="2011-05-13T06:33:32.223" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imipenem&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's one&lt;/a&gt; pretty much picked at random. There have been quite a few antibiotics - entirely new classes - developed since the 1960s. These antibiotics cure disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other chemotherapeutic agents (antibiotics are a type of chemotherapy) have also been developed since the 60s and these agents cure cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is a resounding, 'Yes'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2466" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T06:33:32.223" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3157" CreationDate="2011-05-13T07:09:54.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the United States, &lt;a href=&quot;http://insidemovies.ew.com/2011/03/24/the-kings-speech-pg-13-version/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The King's Speech&lt;/a&gt; was censored by the distributor after the Oscars to remove f-words so as to obtain a different rating.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other films have seen different editions, with descriptions such as &quot;the Director's Cut&quot;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&amp;amp;STORY=/www/story/08-15-2008/0004868161&amp;amp;EDATE=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brotherhood of the Wolf&lt;/a&gt; is an example of this, at least for DVD, so perhaps the cinema discovered this and changed the edition it was showing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T07:09:54.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3162" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-13T07:33:28.373" Score="36" ViewCount="2292" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any reviews out there of scientific studies conforming or invalidating the common claim that sexual activity is a good way to burn calories? Have quantitative measurements of work exerted (i.e., energy spent) during sex ever been undertaken?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine that the popularity of this idea has lead to some testing over the ages, but use of the scientific method might have been impeded as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it was a rather taboo topic until&#xA;the sexual revolution&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are so many variables involved (type of sexual activity,&#xA;just to name one).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried some research myself, but generic web search engines for such keywords are overloaded by content of a, let's say, totally unacademic type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2002" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-02-07T00:45:21.800" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T15:54:30.297" Title="Does sexual activity burn a significant amount of calories?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|sexuality|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3163" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-13T12:44:43.293" Score="12" ViewCount="816" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Sharper Image Air Ionizer was a hot seller a few years ago, and a few models included an &quot;Ozone&quot; feature.  This blue light would create O&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt;, and supposedly were useful for cleaning the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read reports about the O&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt; emitted by this devices, and had personal experience with my mother getting asthma coincidentally at the same time the device was turned on in her apartment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the ozone emitted by this device cause negative health effects? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-11-16T01:16:19.063" LastActivityDate="2023-11-16T19:07:55.190" Title="Is the ozone in the Sharper Image Air Ionizer unhealthy or can it cause asthma?" Tags="|medical-science|air|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3010" CreationDate="2011-05-13T13:17:04.933" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Increased strength seems farfetched, although the decreased pain may allow the person to lift more than what s/he could handle before, there is no physiological reason that your body would get actually stronger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I watched a National Geographic program about this: someone trapped under a slab of rock that had fallen on his chest, and sliding towards a cliff edge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He did a bench press that pushed the rock off him: the push was successful, but he ripped ligaments in his arms/shoulders/chest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think we're theoretically strong enough to rip ligaments. We're physiologically/neurologically inhibited from doing so (from exercising so much of that strength) under normal circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The same NG documentary also featured someone's sprinting away from a fire.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T13:17:04.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3163" CreationDate="2011-05-13T14:17:25.057" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mayoclinic.com/health/asthma/AN00443&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.mayoclinic.com/health/asthma/AN00443&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer from James T. Li, M.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite manufacturers' claims, ozone air purifiers don't remove asthma triggers from the air. &lt;strong&gt;In fact, inhaled ozone can make asthma worse.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inhaling ozone, even in small amounts, can irritate the lungs. Specific effects may include throat irritation, coughing, chest pain and shortness of breath, as well as an increased risk of respiratory infections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good source is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.epa.gov/apti/ozonehealth/effects.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.epa.gov/apti/ozonehealth/effects.html&lt;/a&gt; -  it has too many points of interest to cite, so I picked one study at random:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use of inhaled beta-adrenergic agonist medication to alleviate asthma aggravation is plotted against ozone concentrations during summer asthma camps conducted for children 7 to 13 years old, during the last week of June, 1991 through 1993, in the Connecticut River Valley, downwind of New York City. Each child's normal physician-prescribed medications were maintained throughout each week. &lt;strong&gt;An increase in the 1-hour daily maximal ozone concentration from 84 to 160 ppb was significantly associated with increased unscheduled medications administered per day.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Source: Thurston et al., 1997&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="30258" LastEditDate="2023-11-15T23:28:16.707" LastActivityDate="2023-11-15T23:28:16.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3162" CreationDate="2011-05-13T14:30:26.617" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/cjsportsmed/Fulltext/2000/10000/Does_Sex_the_Night_Before_Competition_Decrease.1.aspx?WT.mc_id=HPxADx20100319xMP&quot;&gt;Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine&lt;/a&gt;: October 2000 - Volume 10 - Issue 4 - pp 233-234&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Considering that normal sexual intercourse between married partners expends only 25-50 calories (kCal)(the energy equivalent of walking up two flights of stairs),&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; it is doubtful that sex the previous night would affect laboratory physiological performance tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &quot;Jeremy Brecher - &lt;a href=&quot;http://baywood.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&amp;amp;backto=issue,4,6;journal,138,162;linkingpublicationresults,1:300313,1&quot;&gt;Sex, Stress, and Health&lt;/a&gt; - International Journal of Health Services, 1977 - Baywood&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each partner uses approximately 100 calories (kCal)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://clearblucreative.com/centerforsexualhealthstl/PDF/BetterSexFINAL.pdf&quot;&gt;Better Sex Through Exercise&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, by Cathy K. Naughton, MD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sex may be considered a type of physical activity. Indeed, a 180 pound (82 Kg) individual burns approximately 120 calories (kCal) engaging in one hour of sexual activity using vigorous effort;&#xA;  burns 100 calories (kCal) using moderate effort; and burns 80 calories (kCal) kissing and hugging. The&#xA;  physical exertion required for sexual activity and therefore, calories burned may vary&#xA;  widely among individuals [Cited: DeBusk RF.: Am J Cardiol 86 (Suppl 1): 51F-56F, 2000.].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. A less scholarly but more fun read is &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=x3eMlB0EGCsC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA7&amp;amp;dq=%22sexual%20activity%22%20calories%20burn&amp;amp;ots=wwavqWxjO8&amp;amp;sig=uGzSW9yiZHB7i2hZ_n_Rm6U-d9U#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22sexual%20activity%22%20calories%20burn&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;The dieter's guide to weight loss during sex&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Richard Smith.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T15:54:30.297" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T15:54:30.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3218" CreationDate="2011-05-13T14:52:41.373" Score="42" ViewCount="40869" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people say that holes in latex are large enough for the AIDS-causing HIV and chlamydia to pass through, so that condoms do not protect against these STDs. Others dispute this statement and consider condoms to be effective in blocking HIV transmission. What is the typical size of holes in latex and how does it compare to the size of viruses? Are viruses like HIV able to get through these holes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="673" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-05-13T15:09:42.777" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T07:02:51.897" Title="Do condoms have large enough holes for HIV to pass through?" Tags="|medical-science|hiv-aids|contraception|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3131" CreationDate="2011-05-13T15:43:29.927" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've started a community wiki to consolidate the answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professor I spoke with mentioned one drug that was discovered, alas serendipitously, by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_Rosenberg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Barnett Rosenberg&lt;/a&gt; that effectively cures (with over 85% success) testicular and ovarian cancer: Cisplatin. This is an ideal counter-example to the skepticism (though at it's heart the skepticism is about the ability of our economic and legal incentives to procure cures, pardon the pun).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other drugs that effectively cure anything that had not already been cured? Ideal answer would be listed as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;date, &lt;strong&gt;Cure&lt;/strong&gt;, ailments cured (references)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drugs that do not qualify as cures include those that are not cures (i.e. address symptoms), those that are ineffective (i.e. never go &quot;flat&quot; on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/047141137X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cure rate model&lt;/a&gt; of e.g. Berkson and Gage, etc). I would consider vaccines to be cures because they effectively cure the spread of disease, and further they're cost effective prevention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two issues that present challenges when answering this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drugs that improve on existing cures; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advancements in treatment of symptoms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Improving cures&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A drug improves a cure if the number of people surviving increases significantly. When asserting that this invention is an improvement, a reference ought to give the measure of improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Advances in treatments&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there have been significant advances in treatment of symptoms (AIDS, type-I diabetes, etc), proper cures of the same would respectively be: an anti-viral that eliminates HIV; a drug that eliminates the need for treatment of diabetes. I also acknowledge that some treatments have advanced, such as childhood cancers, while there are questions of long-term survival rates and recurrence, the real issue is whether the ailment can be permanently resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cures discovered since 1969:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1978, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisplatin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cisplatin&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, testicular and ovarian cancer (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_Rosenberg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Barnett Rosenberg/Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1987, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicobacter_pylori_eradication_protocols&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Triple therapy&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, cures &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicobacter_pylori&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Helicobacter pylori&lt;/a&gt; infection (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/12/4888.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;World Journal of Gastroenterology&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1988, &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/palmaz.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intravascular Stent&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, cures post-angioplasty closing of arteries&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1993, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPV_vaccine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HPV Vaccine&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, cures HPV-6, 11, 16 &amp;amp; 18 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/7/433.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oxford Journals&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="1792" LastEditDate="2011-05-13T21:01:44.380" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T21:01:44.380" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-05-13T15:43:29.927" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3131" CreationDate="2011-05-13T17:44:45.933" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's another class of drug that I didn't think of before: Antidotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flumazenil&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flumazenil&lt;/a&gt; is a benzodiazepine antagonist. It was released in the 1980s. Benzodiazepines are commonly used sedatives. It's not uncommon to see patients in the A&amp;amp;E Department having administered an intentional benzodiazepine overdose. Due to their CNS depressant properties, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzodiazepine_overdose#Signs_and_symptoms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;benzodiazepine overdose&lt;/a&gt; is associated with respiratory depression, reduced psychomotor function, right through to coma and death (although death is uncommon when &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; benzodiazepines are involved).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flumazenil will very effectively reverse the effects of benzodiazepines. It does have a fairly limited clinical use mind you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is: Is intensional benzodiazepine overdose a 'human affliction'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB: Other places to look for new 'cures' would include anti-venoms, chelation therapy, radioactive isotopes, fentanyl analogues administered intrathecally (in order for this to be a pain 'cure' it would require that the patient die fairly soon after these were administered). There may be some others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2466" LastActivityDate="2011-05-13T17:44:45.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3131" CreationDate="2011-05-13T18:03:41.733" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omeprazole#History&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Omeprazole&lt;/a&gt; was released in the 1980s. Other 'meprazoles' have appeared later. They are all proton pump inhibitors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are commonly used as part of triple-therapy (i.e. Omeprazole &amp;amp; Amoxicillin &amp;amp; Clarithromycin) for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicobacter_pylori_eradication_protocols&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Helicobacter pylori&lt;/em&gt; eradication&lt;/a&gt;. Successful eradication will cure most peptic ulcers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Australian &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Barry Marshall&lt;/a&gt; was awarded the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall#Awards_and_honours&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine&lt;/a&gt; for 'discovery of the bacterium &lt;em&gt;Helicobacter pylori&lt;/em&gt; and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, Amoxicillin is an older drug, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarithromycin#History&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clarithromycin was released in the late 1980s&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2466" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-10-01T17:59:17.060" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T17:59:17.060" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3167" CreationDate="2011-05-13T20:46:39.057" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r2x4m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/oct/09/aids&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As nicely as I am willing to put this, &lt;strong&gt;the idea that condoms have pores in them large enough to allow the HIV virus to pass easily through is complete and utter nonsense which has likely caused the deaths of thousands, if not far more&lt;/strong&gt;. It is peddled by those pushing a moral or social agenda and is blatantly contrary to the scientific evidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE: For this answer, I am referring to Latex condoms only, not any of the other varieties&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, before answering I first double-checked the sources. On the vatican's website I found some of the same arguments..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“There are two types of efficacy&#xA;  that  could be considered in&#xA;  particular.   First, ‘technical’&#xA;  efficacy: since   when did the condom&#xA;  ‘prevent’ the risk  of contamination?&#xA;  In scientific   circles, it is openly&#xA;  admitted that   condoms are in fact&#xA;  not 100% safe. On   an average, it is&#xA;  said that there is a  10-15%&#xA;  inefficacy, since the AIDS   viruses&#xA;  are much more ‘filtrating’   [able to&#xA;  pass through] than the   sperm.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/412444&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;13&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  Therefore, even at a   ‘technical’&#xA;  level of efficacy, one   should&#xA;  question the scientific   seriousness&#xA;  and the consequent   professional&#xA;  seriousness of the condom  campaign.&#xA;  There is a great risk   involved: to&#xA;  ‘deceive’ persons by   propagating&#xA;  ‘safe sex because one is   protected’,&#xA;  while in fact it is not   safe, or is&#xA;  not safe in the way it   might be&#xA;  thought to be. The illusion   becomes&#xA;  much more dangerous and   serious when&#xA;  there is an even greater   duty for&#xA;  persons ‘at risk’ or who   indulge in&#xA;  promiscuous sexual   relationships not&#xA;  to spread the   infection (both to the&#xA;  partner and,   eventually, to present&#xA;  or future   children).’” &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/sinodo/documents/bollettino_23_ii_speciale-africa-2009/02_inglese/b31_02.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The failure rate of condoms mentioned here is largely due to inconsistent or incorrect use, not due to inherent flaws, or &quot;pores&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As regards the AIDS plague, it is&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  reemphasized that the Church is in the&#xA;  front line of the struggle against the&#xA;  virus and in treating its victims, and&#xA;  that the question will not be resolved&#xA;  by handing out condoms.s&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/news_services/press/sinodo/documents/bollettino_23_ii_speciale-africa-2009/02_inglese/b31_02.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ource&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a fairly succint statement of their thoughts on the matter.  In a sense, they are correct, condoms alone will not stop the spread of HIV-AIDS, but &lt;em&gt;nearly every single study shows that it will greatly slow the rate of transfer&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, perhaps acknowledging the severity of the problem (death total in the millions worldwide), the church does admit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given that AIDS is a serious threat,&#xA;  any inadequate information based on&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  false security offered by condoms used&#xA;  as prophylactics would be a grave&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  irresponsibility &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/family/documents/rc_pc_family_doc_20031201_family-values-safe-sex-trujillo_en.html#ConcernMoralists&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same document goes on to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This means that the safe sex Russian&#xA;  Roulette becomes even more serious&#xA;  with repeated condom use.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/family/documents/rc_pc_family_doc_20031201_family-values-safe-sex-trujillo_en.html#ConcernMoralists&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently clarifying what they consider to be adequate information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ON THE OTHER HAND..&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of many studies done on the spread of HIV explains that moral/religious reasons are most often given as the reason for not only refusal to &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; condoms but for a refusal to &lt;em&gt;teach others&lt;/em&gt; how to appropriately use condoms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Differences were observed across&#xA;  settings in the prominence accorded to&#xA;  condoms, the assessment of their&#xA;  effectiveness, and certain barriers to&#xA;  and facilitators of their use.&#xA;  Moralization emerged as a key&#xA;  impediment to positive representations&#xA;  of condoms &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21388731&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;THE SCIENCE...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Catholic church's argument may or may not be based on the following quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;the rubber comprising latex condoms&#xA;  has intrinsic voids [pores] about 5&#xA;  microns (0.00002 inches) in size.&#xA;  Since this is roughly 10 times smaller&#xA;  than sperm, the latter are effectively&#xA;  blocked.... Contrarily, the AIDS virus&#xA;  is only 0.1 micron (4 millionths of an&#xA;  inch) in size. Since this is a factor&#xA;  of 50 smaller than the voids inherent&#xA;  in rubber, the virus can readily pass&#xA;  through.&quot; - Editor of Rubber Chemistry&#xA;  and Technology, Dr. C. Michael Roland&#xA;  of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory&#xA;  in Washington D.C&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, there are a few problems with this reasoning..&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;size of water molecule is .278nm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/emboj/journal/v22/n7/fig_tab/7595054ft.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;electron microscopy of HIV virion&lt;/a&gt; shows an average size of 120-200nm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If water molecules, which are smaller do not leak through latex condoms, the larger HIV virion will not pass through.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;study confirms this with leak testing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;11 condoms with leak rates were nl/s&#xA;  vs. 6 condoms with leak rates 1-9 nl/s&#xA;  (p .002). The widely used 300 ml water&#xA;  test did not indicate any pores in any&#xA;  of the condoms. In the extreme and&#xA;  highly unlikely scenario of all the&#xA;  fluid being pumped out of the condom,&#xA;  the transfer rate would be about 0.1&#xA;  mcl after 10 minutes of thrusting&#xA;  after ejaculation filled the condom&#xA;  with semen (i.e., 0.01% of a typical 3&#xA;  ml ejaculate). Thus proper use of&#xA;  latex condoms would result in exposure&#xA;  reduction from HIV of at least 4&#xA;  orders of magnitude. These findings&#xA;  demonstrated that use of latex condoms&#xA;  can significantly reduce the risk of&#xA;  HIV transmission, but it does not&#xA;  eliminate that risk. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1411838&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar findings from the CDC&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can HIV leak through microscopic holes in latex condoms? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a study in&#xA;   the July-August 1992 issue of &quot;STD&quot; which examined whether&#xA;   HIV-sized glass beads could be forced through latex condoms&#xA;   under stressful laboratory conditions.  These conditions&#xA;   included higher concentrations of the &quot;virus&quot; (glass beads)&#xA;   than in semen, a fluid that doesn't stick together as much as&#xA;   semen, and forces that simulated 10 minutes of thrusting AFTER&#xA;   ejaculation.  Most latex condoms leaked absolutely nothing.&#xA;   The worst condom found would still reduce exposure risk by&#xA;   10,000-fold, i.e., only 1 HIV virus might &quot;leak&quot; through only&#xA;   1 of every 90 condoms.  Other tests have shown that under&#xA;   &quot;normal&quot; conditions, HIV does not pass through a latex condom&#xA;   that is not torn or broken.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is not because of surface tension or hydrogen bonding in water, it is because electron microscopy has shown that the &quot;pores&quot; or &quot;holes&quot; mentioned in the argument are not there not there to begin with.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet another problem with this reasoning is that Roland's information is based on a study of latex rubber gloves.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Cecil Adams:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This sounds scary, but there are a&#xA;  couple problems with it. First, Roland&#xA;  bases his statement about a 5 micron&#xA;  latex pore size on a study of rubber&#xA;  gloves, not condoms. The U.S. Public&#xA;  Health Service says that condoms are&#xA;  manufactured to higher standards than&#xA;  gloves. Condoms are dipped in the&#xA;  latex twice, gloves only once. If just&#xA;  4 out of 1,000 condoms fail the leak&#xA;  test, the whole batch is rejected; the&#xA;  standard for gloves is 40 out of&#xA;  1,000. A study of latex condoms by the&#xA;  National Institutes of Health using an&#xA;  electron microscope found no holes at&#xA;  a magnification of 2000 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1178/can-hiv-pass-through-the-pores-in-latex-condoms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standards by which condoms must be manufactured are overseen by the World Health Organization under the International Male Natural Rubber Latex Condom Standard ISO 4074 and can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unfpa.org/webdav/site/global/shared/procurement/malecondoms_specs_procurement_2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the general safety of the latex condom, the CDC offers this information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JgUq4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HIV infection is, by far, the most&#xA;  deadly STD, and considerably more&#xA;  scientific evidence exists regarding&#xA;  condom effectiveness for prevention of&#xA;  HIV infection than for other STDs. The&#xA;  body of research on the effectiveness&#xA;  of latex condoms in preventing sexual&#xA;  transmission of HIV is both&#xA;  comprehensive and conclusive. The&#xA;  ability of latex condoms to prevent&#xA;  transmission of HIV has been&#xA;  scientifically established in&#xA;  “real-life” studies of sexually active&#xA;  couples as well as in laboratory&#xA;  studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Laboratory studies have demonstrated&#xA;  that latex condoms provide an&#xA;  essentially impermeable barrier to&#xA;  particles the size of HIV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Theoretical basis for protection.&#xA;  Latex condoms cover the penis and&#xA;  provide an effective barrier to&#xA;  exposure to secretions such as&#xA;  urethral and vaginal secretions,&#xA;  blocking the pathway of sexual&#xA;  transmission of HIV infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Epidemiologic studies that are&#xA;  conducted in real-life settings, where&#xA;  one partner is infected with HIV and&#xA;  the other partner is not, demonstrate&#xA;  that the consistent use of latex&#xA;  condoms provides a high degree of&#xA;  protection. source&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, condoms are not 100% effective, because nothing is, but Myron S. Cohen sums up the issue nicely in an academic context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is virtually no evidence to&#xA;  support the idea that knowledge or&#xA;  availability of condoms reduces rates&#xA;  of abstinence, or inspires promiscuity&#xA;  or riskier sexual behaviors. Condoms&#xA;  are clearly not perfect. They can be&#xA;  misused or (more rarely) fail or&#xA;  break. The benefits of condoms may not&#xA;  extend to protection from all STD&#xA;  pathogens, nor has their usage to&#xA;  prevent transmission of all STD&#xA;  pathogens been studied. However, the&#xA;  ability of condoms to prevent&#xA;  transmission of HIV is well&#xA;  established, and condoms must remain a&#xA;  first line of defense in any HIV&#xA;  prevention campaign - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/412444&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Protective&#xA;  Efficacy of Condoms? Myron S. Cohen,&#xA;  MD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for pure eloquence, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrAlWqnF6Os&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stephen Fry from the Intelligence Squared Debate&lt;/a&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hchf-OT9b8k&amp;amp;NR=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;part2&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-15T19:41:17.293" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T19:41:17.293" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3175" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-13T21:04:37.997" Score="11" ViewCount="5112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard many times the claim that drug companies purposely make treatments and avoid selling/researching cures instead. Are there any documented cases of this behavior happening or any concrete reason to believe this is the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1892" LastActivityDate="2023-10-22T12:06:32.960" Title="Do drug companies purposely avoid cures to make more money on treatment?" Tags="|pharmaceutical|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3175" CreationDate="2011-05-13T21:43:15.030" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I apologize if this sounds a little rude, but the question does not really make much sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no possibility to &quot;avoid cures&quot;, for many reasons. One being that the drug development pipeline takes too long and is too inefficient to let it go when finally a good product is obtained (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/horizon/chemicalspace/background/odyssey.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;see graph&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most of the research funding comes from Government agencies, not pharmaceutical companies.&lt;/strong&gt; The basic research to find the mechanisms of disease and thus allowing the developing of new drugs are done in Universities/Research Institutes. Big pharma companies may run (usually in cooperation with universities) large-scale chemical compounds testing and fund some pre-clinical studies and the clinical trials (again, usually in collaboration with universities/hospitals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is plausible that a company may delay the release of a new drug to maximize the revenue of an older generation drug, but it is impossible for them to block the research in other places. So, if they have a magic cure, they will try to sell it as fast as they can. If not, the drug may be found by some other company or even may be published by an academic institution, preventing the use of any patent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Budget data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US Pharma Industry R&amp;amp;D spending anual budget: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimated by the companies: &lt;strong&gt;~38 B&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estimated by the NSF (National Science Foundation): &lt;strong&gt;~15 B&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference stems mostly on research performed outside the US and post-market follow up of drugs. &lt;strong&gt;Source&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=7615&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Congressional Budget Office 2006&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of this budget, Canadian data suggest that approximately 15-20% is spent on basic research (i.e., drug discovery), 50-60% in preclinical and clinical trials and 20% in bioavailability and post-market (phase IV) studies. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmprb-cepmb.gc.ca/english/view.asp?x=1340&amp;amp;mid=1196&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Canadian Patented Medicine Prices Review Board Annual Report 2009&lt;/a&gt;. US-based pharma companies may spend close to 80% in clinical research. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://appliedclinicaltrialsonline.findpharma.com/appliedclinicaltrials/CRO%2FSponsor/Sizing-Up-the-Clinical-Research-Market/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/660749&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Applied Clinical Trials&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, many of the drugs that have appeared in the market derive from Government-funded research. In the last two decades, universities and research institutes have been patenting its own research and have reached licensig agreements with the pharma industry. There is a very good article about this issue: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1008268#t=article&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stevens et al, N Engl J Med 2011; 364:535-541&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US Government annual budget:*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NIH: ~32 B. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nih.gov/about/director/budgetrequest/fy2012budgetslides.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NIH&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CDC: ~6 B**. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/fmo/topic/Budget%20Information/CDC_FY12_Budget_Overview_Slides.ppt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NSF: ~7 B***. NSF Bio: 800 M. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aibs.org/public-policy/resources/AIBS_Budget_Report_FY_2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Institute of Biological Sciences&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.* It does not include State budgets, Senator's discretional budgets or smaller program budgets scattered in diverse departments.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;.** Only a portion is dedicated to research.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;.&lt;em&gt;*&lt;/em&gt; From that, a portion is dedicated to bionanotechnology. The rest may not be relevant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2680" LastEditorUserId="2680" LastEditDate="2011-05-14T03:53:37.300" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T03:53:37.300" CommentCount="29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3179" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-13T23:55:24.793" Score="8" ViewCount="527" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7953/does-the-us-government-voluntarily-underreport-inflation&quot;&gt;Does the US government voluntarily underreport inflation?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/cpi/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Consumer Price Index&lt;/a&gt; claims to reflect &quot;changes in the prices paid by urban consumers for a representative basket of goods and services.&quot; The &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&amp;amp;s[1][id]=PCEPI&amp;amp;s[1][transformation]=pch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Personal Consumer Expenditures Price Index&quot;&lt;/a&gt; is also, I believe, produced by the government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On their face, such statistics do not seem to show inflation at a particularly high level. However, there seems to be a widespread perception of high inflation in the United States, at least among certain constituencies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google was said to be developing an inflation index derived from Web spidering (although, amusingly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=google+inflation+index+site:google.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a Google search&lt;/a&gt; doesn't bring up any primary documents. This caused some excitement because it would presumably work with larger datasets and without any kind of political tampering. But subsequent to an initial flurry of reports, it seems little has come of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the CPI and PCEPI understating the inflation being experienced by most (or some well-defined subset of) Americans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: MIT's Billion Prices Project &lt;a href=&quot;http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/&lt;/a&gt; seems to track slightly higher than the CPI and considerably lower than the &quot;Shadow Government&quot; numbers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T07:09:56.260" Title="Is inflation in the US higher than government statistics suggest?" Tags="|united-states|economics|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2012-02-11T16:15:18.593" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3184" CreationDate="2011-05-14T00:08:05.233" Score="10" ViewCount="2124" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure if there's a better Stack Exchange for this, but &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3129/how-could-darwin-be-sure-all-life-has-a-common-origin&quot;&gt;How could Darwin be sure all life has a common origin&lt;/a&gt; triggered this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, prions are pretty much protein-based viruses. I know that there's no perfect definition of &quot;living,&quot; but if you put a virus in that set, ought you not also include prions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence of prions evolving from a xNA-based organism? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Edit --&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@OliverC spoke most directly to the thoughts I had in mind, which I suppose I can restate as a question about &quot;natural origin of replicating, (perhaps) evolutionarily-capable entities.&quot; Admittedly, it requires a protein &quot;environment&quot; which originates from nucleic acids, but &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; prion replication began without evolving from, e.g., viral replication, then it seems to me an astonishing thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T20:19:16.377" Title="Do prions qualify as living and, if so, do they argue for a second origin of life?" Tags="|biology|evolution|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ClosedDate="2015-03-26T21:05:39.460" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3180" CreationDate="2011-05-14T00:29:58.297" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;common definition of life&lt;/a&gt; consists of the following characteristics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Homeostasis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Metabolism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adaptation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Growth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Response to stimuli&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reproduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could argue that they fulfill the reproduction critera, as the disease-causing, misfolded prion protein PrP&lt;sup&gt;Sc&lt;/sup&gt; can convert other prions into the misfolded state. To reproduce  PrP&lt;sup&gt;Sc&lt;/sup&gt; needs the whole protein synthesis machinery of the cell to produce normal prions it can convert, it cannot reproduce independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean they are alive, they don't fulfill any of the other conditions usually associated with life. Don't take me wrong, the reproduction of prions is an amazing and previously unexpected phenomenon, but that doesn't mean they are alive in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Viruses are also not generally considered alive, as they don't fulfill all of the common criteria for live. The exact definition of life is more of a debate, you could certainly argue that viruses are alive in some way, but that is not a universally accepted claim in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-05-14T13:48:02.173" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T13:48:02.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3180" CreationDate="2011-05-14T01:02:47.230" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Setting aside the issue of whether prions are considered &quot;alive&quot; (which is &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2919/is-mrsgren-correct/2920#2920&quot;&gt;as much about English definitions&lt;/a&gt; as any facts), there is the question of whether they came from RNA/DNA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090928131210.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScienceDaily&lt;/a&gt;, they reported about a study that looked at the evolutionary origins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;The prion protein was discovered over twenty years ago and has been studied intensively. Nobody, however, knew its evolutionary origin and much confusion surrounds its physiological function,&quot; says Prof. Schmitt-Ulms. The team's analysis suggests that the prion gene is descended from the more ancient ZIP family of metal ion transporters. Members of the ZIP protein family are well known for their ability to transport zinc and other metals across cell membranes.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Although no single evidence firmly established the phylogenetic relationship between ZIP and prion genes, Schmitt-Ulms is confident that the many corroborating pieces of evidence collected and, equally important, the absence of any conflicting observations, allow no other conclusion to be drawn.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University of Toronto. &quot;Evolutionary Origins Of Prion Disease Gene Uncovered.&quot; ScienceDaily, 29 Sep. 2009. Web. 14 May 2011.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gerold Schmitt-Ulms, Sepehr Ehsani, Joel C. Watts, David Westaway, Holger Wille. Evolutionary Descent of Prion Genes from the ZIP Family of Metal Ion Transporters. PLoS ONE, September 28, 2009 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0007208&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T01:02:47.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3180" CreationDate="2011-05-14T03:47:54.623" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;proteins&lt;/a&gt; and we all have them in us, in abundance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PrP&lt;sup&gt;C&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is the normal form and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17875293&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;actually good for us&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acnp.org/g4/GN401000147/CH144.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;abnormal form&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;evil twin&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; : &lt;strong&gt;PrP&lt;sup&gt;Sc&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;PrP&lt;sup&gt;CJD&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aLUW8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Evil Twins&quot; /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=705666&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;When the &lt;strong&gt;evil twin&lt;/strong&gt; encounters the &lt;strong&gt;good twin&lt;/strong&gt; things go awry, because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com/olcweb/cgi/pluginpop.cgi?it=swf::535::535::/sites/dl/free/0072437316/120088/bio43.swf::How%20Prions%20Arise&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;good&lt;/strong&gt; joins the dark side and turns into &lt;strong&gt;evil&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LI7FA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Prions&quot; /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://virology-mb0802.blogspot.com/2009/02/prions-viroids-and-virusoids.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Sou&lt;/a&gt;rce&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;So like &lt;strong&gt;zombies&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;Agent Smith&lt;/strong&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0234215/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Matrix&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tl3p0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Matrix&quot; /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://techniche.blogspot.com/2006/09/agent-smiths-on-orkut.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PrP&lt;sup&gt;Sc&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; / &lt;strong&gt;PrP&lt;sup&gt;CJD&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; multiplies by &amp;quot;touch&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why it doesn't&#xA;need DNA or RNA to reproduce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Interestingly, prions might be able to &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/12/evolution_without_genes_-_prions_can_evolve_and_adapt_too.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;evolve and adapt&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If prions can evolve, and if they can&#xA;show the same sort of adaptive&#xA;resistance as bacteria or fungi, &lt;strong&gt;does&#xA;this mean that they are alive?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scripps.edu/newsandviews/e_20040112/weissmann.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Charles&#xA;Weissman&lt;/a&gt; doesn't think so on the grounds that&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;prions are completely dependent on&#xA;their hosts for reproduction.&#xA;They&#xA;need normal proteins that are encoded&#xA;within the genome of their host to&#xA;make more copies of themselves&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He&#xA;says, &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;The remarkable finding that&#xA;prions can mutate and adapt to their&#xA;environment imbues them with a further&#xA;attribute of living things, without&#xA;however elevating them to the status&#xA;of being 'alive'&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T03:47:54.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3185" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-14T04:06:29.160" Score="11" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone I know was powdering her face and decided to do me the favor of applying some to my face as well. She then laughed and said I will get pimples because I don't have something to remove the makeup with later. She thought that the powder will block my pores, they'll get infected and I'll get pimples. What basis is there for that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T00:57:24.820" Title="Will you get pimples if you don't remove your makeup?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3186" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3187" CreationDate="2011-05-14T04:57:43.470" Score="9" ViewCount="2988" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that women who 'go on the pill' experience effects like vomiting, head-aches, skin-problems more than women who don't? Are these pills actually bad for health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-14T15:22:07.810" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T05:22:25.287" Title="Do anti-pregnancy pills have a negative effect on health?" Tags="|medical-science|medications|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3186" CreationDate="2011-05-14T05:54:35.337" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I copy below the side effects reported on MedlinePlus (part of the National Library of Medicine, NIH).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every drug may have side effects. Those will vary with every person and the dosage used. If you read the prospect that comes with the drug, you can find all the reported side effects in there. It will include the side effects observed during the clinical trials as well as any post market effect observed during phase IV studies. &lt;strong&gt;Does this mean that every person will have problems? No. Will these problems be serious? It depends.&lt;/strong&gt; All it means is that these effects have been observed, and the most probable cause is the drug administration. As always, ask your doctor!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a601050.html#side-effects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a601050.html#side-effects&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What side effects can this medication&#xA;  cause? Oral&#xA;  contraceptives may cause side effects.&#xA;  Tell your doctor if any of these&#xA;  symptoms are severe or do not go away:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;nausea&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;vomiting&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;stomach cramps or bloating&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;diarrhea&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;constipation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;gingivitis (swelling of the gum tissue)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;increased or decreased appetite&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;weight gain or weight loss&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;brown or black skin patches&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;acne&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;hair growth in unusual places&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;bleeding or spotting between menstrual periods&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;changes in menstrual flow&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;painful or missed periods&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;breast tenderness, enlargement, or discharge&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;swelling, redness, irritation, burning, or itching of the vagina&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;white vaginal discharge&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some side effects can be serious. The&#xA;  following symptoms are uncommon, but&#xA;  if you experience any of them, call&#xA;  your doctor immediately:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;severe headache&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;severe vomiting&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;speech problems&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;dizziness or faintness&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;weakness or numbness of an arm or leg&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;crushing chest pain or chest heaviness&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;coughing up blood&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;shortness of breath&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;pain, warmth, or heaviness in the back of the lower leg&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;partial or complete loss of vision&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;double vision&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;bulging eyes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;severe stomach pain&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;yellowing of the skin or eyes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;loss of appetite&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;extreme tiredness, weakness, or lack of energy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;fever&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;dark-colored urine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;light-colored stool&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;swelling of the hands, feet, ankles or lower legs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;depression, especially if you also have trouble sleeping, tiredness, loss&#xA;  of energy, or other mood changes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;unusual bleeding&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;rash&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;menstrual bleeding that is unusually heavy or that lasts for&#xA;  longer than 7 days in a row&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oral contraceptives may increase the&#xA;  chance that you will develop liver&#xA;  tumors. These tumors are not a form of&#xA;  cancer, but they can break and cause&#xA;  serious bleeding inside the body. Oral&#xA;  contraceptives may also increase the&#xA;  chance that you will develop breast or&#xA;  liver cancer, or have a heart attack,&#xA;  a stroke, or a serious blood clot.&#xA;  Talk to your doctor about the risks of&#xA;  using oral contraceptives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oral contraceptives may cause other&#xA;  side effects. Call your doctor if you&#xA;  have any unusual problems while taking&#xA;  this medication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you experience a serious side&#xA;  effect, you or your doctor may send a&#xA;  report to the Food and Drug&#xA;  Administration's (FDA) MedWatch&#xA;  Adverse Event Reporting program online&#xA;  [at&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch]&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fda.gov/Safety/MedWatch]&lt;/a&gt; or&#xA;  by phone [1-800-332-1088].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2680" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T04:33:38.480" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T04:33:38.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3188" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3198" CreationDate="2011-05-14T07:25:20.437" Score="12" ViewCount="3655" Body="&lt;p&gt;This statement of the law in days of old is a staple of saloon-bar conversation, but is it actually true that it was legal to hang any Welshman found within the walls of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chester&quot;&gt;Chester&lt;/a&gt; after sunset?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some versions of the story have it as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrewsbury&quot;&gt;Shrewsbury&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereford&quot;&gt;Hereford&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1639" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-07-04T13:18:35.610" LastActivityDate="2018-01-20T14:21:42.273" Title="Was it legal to hang any Welshman found in Chester after sunset?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14647" CreationDate="2011-05-14T07:49:09.030" Score="8" ViewCount="788" Body="&lt;p&gt;So someone I know posted a link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://inhabitat.com/its-official-cell-phones-are-killing-bees/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Inhabitat Blog article&lt;/a&gt; on Facebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists may have found the cause of the world’s sudden dwindling population of bees – and cell phones may be to blame. Research conducted in Lausanne, Switzerland has shown that the signal from cell phones not only confuses bees, but also may lead to their death. Over 83 experiments have yielded the same results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Led by researcher Daniel Favre, the alarming study found that bees reacted significantly to cell phones that were placed near or in hives in call-making mode. The bees sensed the signals transmitted when the phones rang, and emitted heavy buzzing noise during the calls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the argument makes sense on the surface, but doesn't seem to hold up under scrutiny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The title says 'It's Official' but the text in the article is less confident&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Placing a mobile phone directly beneath a hive is hardly a 'real world' situation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Daily Mail is cited as a source.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it likely that mobile phone use is causing a decline in honey bee population?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2483" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T12:13:44.457" Title="Are mobile phones causing the demise of bees?" Tags="|mobile-phones|bees|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3191" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3272" CreationDate="2011-05-14T09:59:04.267" Score="57" ViewCount="7201" Body="&lt;p&gt;My girlfriend sent me this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8510711/Belief-in-God-is-part-of-human-nature-Oxford-study.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article from the Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;. This is an excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Led by two academics at Oxford University, the £1.9 million study found that human thought processes were “rooted” to religious concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YJ8Lu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Photo from the article&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not having &lt;em&gt;ever been religious&lt;/em&gt; myself I am very skeptical of these claims. Please read the article for more details on the claim. Besides me thinking that it's an incorrect claim, I also don't think that it is actually possible to produce a reliable scientific study on religious belief and genetics&amp;mdash;so the studies must be misquoted somehow or not scientifically based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does this piece of news correspond to the findings of the studies?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Are the studies scientific or are they philosophical essays?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-08T07:52:35.180" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T12:37:59.487" Title="Are human beings naturally predisposed to believe in God?" Tags="|psychology|religion|anthropology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3189" CreationDate="2011-05-14T13:30:40.630" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tend to go with the explanation that colony collapse is caused by a virus and fungus acting together, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/10/dying-bee-colonies-linked-to-a-fungus-and-virus-in-cahoots.ars&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;as described by Ars Technica&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Colony collapse disorder (CCD), wherein entire bee colonies die suddenly for unknown reasons, has been a concern for scientists and beekeepers since 2006. CCD swept bee colonies throughout the world, killing them off in no discernible pattern and generally freaking everyone out. Naturally, some people blamed cellphones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a lot of research has been done to try and sort out the cause, some of the conclusions have been contradictory—for instance, researchers in Spain pinpointed the fungus Nosema ceranae as the cause, while a study in the US found no correlation between the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this new study, researchers looked at bee colonies that had died off due to CCD, or were in the process of failing, and compared them to a few that had no history of the problem. They couldn't pin down a single pathogen as the problem—however, they could pin down two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this study is questionable for two reasons.  First, the authors had a conflict of interest, in that the study was funded by a pesticide company that would not be predisposed to blame themselves for the problem.  Second, the link is correlative, not causative, meaning that they could show the combination infection in collapsing colonies and not in healthy one.  So, still up in the air, from what I can gather.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2158" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T23:05:27.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3194" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-14T13:41:33.847" Score="5" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3191/are-human-beings-naturally-predisposed-to-believe-in-god&quot;&gt;Are human beings naturally predisposed to believe in God?&lt;/a&gt; one &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/2725/joe-blow&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; makes the following claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note that social-mental questions as basic as &quot;is Sex innate?&quot; or &quot;IQ, breeding or rasing?&quot; are not at all answered with any clarity, in our era. There are NO social-mental questions that have definitive answers today. Maybe 1000 years from now everything will be different. Today, they answer is very simply &quot;we don't know&quot; and &quot;academics and others argue about it furiously.&quot; They tend to be contentious, and definitely unsettled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The user later continues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But anyway, the answer to your specific question is extremely simple: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Currently, no social-mental issues, whatsoever, are 'settled' in any way, shape or form.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; That's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there really no already settled issues that has both a social and a psychological component, or is every such topic still being debated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T19:15:27.590" Title="Have any questions where the underlying cause was thought to have had both a psychological and social component been thoroughly settled?" Tags="|psychology|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3191" CreationDate="2011-05-14T13:51:36.583" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT TO ADD&lt;/strong&gt;: dancek (who gets a +1 from me) found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cam.ox.ac.uk/research/cognition-religion-and-theology/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;actual study and the relevant information on the study&lt;/a&gt;.  Given the list of authors, this seems to be a theology/philosophy study rather than hard science.  Furthermore, since this appears to have the hallmarks of a meta study, I must add in my thoughts on that.  The correlation factor (oft called Gamma) is pulled out of the air and pretty much reflects the bias of the people funding the 'study'.  They often rely on something called a Gaussian copula. Here's an article about a famous, Nobel Prize winning one.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;different use, but similar method.  Basically the heart of the Wired article says that people will see what they want to see.  A sort of confirmation bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;Original text follows&lt;/em&gt;)  Sadly it's very difficult to answer your question directly since the Telegraph article does not link to the studies themselves.  Furthermore, it seems to be (at least the title question) a very philosophical question.  At this point in time, the only thing we can say for sure is that we don't know if humans are predisposed to believe in anything. Although I am familiar with some of the discussions based on personal research and discussions, so let's see if we can possibly get at the root of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First to address the actual questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this piece of news correspond to the findings of the studies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the studies scientific or are they philosophical essays?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In looking at the claims of the article, I would &lt;em&gt;guess&lt;/em&gt; that this is a meta study that would include elements of both.  Without a link to the actual papers and studies though, we are left very short on an actual answer.  &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Every single search on the internet led back to an article similar to the one in the Telegraph with no additional citations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's see if we can ferret out some of the roots of this sort of thinking.  If you are familiar with Richard Dawkins's series &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Root of all Evil&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;, he posits the idea of religion seen as a virus in the sense of a meme. He begins by explaining how a child is genetically programmed to believe without questioning the word of authority figures, especially parents – the evolutionary imperative being that no child would survive by adopting a skeptical attitude towards everything their elders said. But this same imperative, he claims, leaves children open to &amp;quot;infection&amp;quot; by religion. (1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would personally posit that evolutionarily, we are predisposed to listen to authority figures.  An evolutionary benefit is that we would behave as a cohesive unit, and if this authority figure is older, or possesses some unique trait that allowed him/her to survive, that information would be a benefit.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sanctuaryweb.com/authoritarianism.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;There are numerous studies showing how humans gravitate to authoritarian behaviour, such as the Milgram studies, or the Stanford prison experiments&lt;/a&gt;.  Religion has managed to hijack this particular evolutionary trait in such a way as to become pervasive throughout human society.  And if there is no specific religion, then another authority figure steps in to fill the void (such as a cult of personality or a political idea).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In searching for the evolutionary basis of religious thought, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13983-religion-is-a-product-of-evolution-software-suggests.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I did find this New Scientist article&lt;/a&gt;.  It has a great deal to say on the subject, and contains many useful links that could have been part of the meta study.  For instance, on sentence mentions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theories on the evolution of religion tend toward two camps. One argues that religion is a mental artefact, co-opted from brain functions that evolved for other tasks.  Another contends that religion benefited our ancestors. Rather than being a by-product of other brain functions, it is an adaptation in its own right. In this explanation, natural selection slowly purged human populations of the non-religious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another site seems to be dedicated to ferreting out how religion evolved in humans.  I haven't perused this site much, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://evolution-of-religion.com/aims/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://evolution-of-religion.com/aims/&lt;/a&gt; may give some data.  Be aware that this site is funded by the Templeton Foundation, but their aims seem to be interesting at least.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://evolution-of-religion.com/publications/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This page gives an EXTENSIVE list of publications on the subject&lt;/a&gt;.  I am not that familiar with all the authors, but I have a new reading list I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the idea that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16687&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;human brains are naturally tending towards purpose driven explanations for things&lt;/a&gt; as opposed to understanding the full spectrum of how the world around us really works.  This is a hallmark of a young and immature mind, yet many adults exhibit this behaviour as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;called promiscuous teleology - in young children. Seven and eight-year olds agree with teleological statements such as &amp;quot;Rocks are jagged so animals can scratch themselves&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Birds exist to make nice music&amp;quot;. These mistakes diminish as kids take more science classes and learn causal explanations for natural events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A first round of experiments suggested that adults make more teleological mistakes when pressed for time than when not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA610.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Talk Origins has a page dedicated to the evolution of religion&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, searching for &amp;quot;the evolution of religious thought&amp;quot; turns up a lot of silly articles about evolution itself being a religion...  &lt;strong&gt;Anyway, the links provided are a good start for further research since the media doesn't seem to want to tell us what studies were used in making their headline&lt;/strong&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Lifted from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Root_of_All_Evil?&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia description of his show&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T15:05:17.813" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3150" CreationDate="2011-05-14T14:36:35.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies at Loyola University have found no statistically significant correlation between GPA and &lt;a href=&quot;http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.edu/manuscripts/398.php&quot;&gt;relationship status&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://clearinghouse.missouriwestern.edu/manuscripts/465.php&quot;&gt;sexual activity&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="661" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T14:36:35.537" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3188" CreationDate="2011-05-14T15:00:55.663" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20100702063002/https://www.cheshirewestandchester.gov.uk/visiting/heritage/chester_history_and_heritage/history_facts.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cheshire West &amp;amp; Chester council&lt;/a&gt; said &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The story about the Welsh being excluded from Chester after dark originated during the Glyndwr rebellion of 1403. Henry, Prince of Wales (future Henry V) was also Earl of Chester and on 4 Sept 1403 he ordered that all Welsh people and Welsh sympathisers should be expelled from the City; none should enter the city before sunrise or stay after sunset on pain of decapitation (not hanging, but it would have the same effect!). There are records of people standing surety for the good behaviour of Welshmen arrested under the order. The text books don't refer to anyone ever paying the maximum penalty for this 'crime'. Concern over 'the Welsh threat' continued into the 15th century and Chester was seen very much as a border town. There is no record that Henry V's order was ever repealed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it was not a freedom granted to anybody, but a wartime instruction to the City authorities soon after the Battle of Shrewsbury, similar to a selective curfew. In any case, within five years the citizens of Chester elected a Welsh mayor, John Ewloe, who did not arrest or execute himself.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="949" LastEditDate="2018-01-20T14:21:42.273" LastActivityDate="2018-01-20T14:21:42.273" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2644" CreationDate="2011-05-14T16:20:36.620" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9068/index1.html&quot;&gt;Rand Corporation&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/114/3/e280.full&quot;&gt;American Academy of Pediatrics&lt;/a&gt;, watching sex on TV is correlated to earlier sexual activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9068/index1.html&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results showed that heavy exposure&#xA;  to sexual content on television&#xA;  related strongly to teens’ initiation&#xA;  of intercourse or their progression to&#xA;  more advanced sexual activities (such&#xA;  as “making out” or oral sex) apart&#xA;  from intercourse in the following&#xA;  year. Youths who viewed the greatest&#xA;  amounts of sexual content were two&#xA;  times more likely than those who&#xA;  viewed the smallest amount to initiate&#xA;  sexual intercourse during the&#xA;  following year (see figure) or to&#xA;  progress to more-advanced levels of&#xA;  other sexual activity. In effect,&#xA;  youths who watched the most sexual&#xA;  content “acted older”: a 12-year-old&#xA;  at the highest levels of exposure&#xA;  behaved like a 14- or 15-year-old at&#xA;  the lowest levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/114/3/e280.full&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results. Multivariate regression&#xA;  analysis indicated that adolescents&#xA;  who viewed more sexual content at&#xA;  baseline were more likely to initiate&#xA;  intercourse and progress to more&#xA;  advanced noncoital sexual activities&#xA;  during the subsequent year,&#xA;  controlling for respondent&#xA;  characteristics that might otherwise&#xA;  explain these relationships. The size&#xA;  of the adjusted intercourse effect was&#xA;  such that youths in the 90th&#xA;  percentile of TV sex viewing had a&#xA;  predicted probability of intercourse&#xA;  initiation that was approximately&#xA;  double that of youths in the 10th&#xA;  percentile, for all ages studied.&#xA;  Exposure to TV that included only talk&#xA;  about sex was associated with the same&#xA;  risks as exposure to TV that depicted&#xA;  sexual behavior. African American&#xA;  youths who watched more depictions of&#xA;  sexual risks or safety were less&#xA;  likely to initiate intercourse in the&#xA;  subsequent year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="661" LastEditorUserId="661" LastEditDate="2011-05-14T18:13:42.820" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T18:13:42.820" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3201" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-14T17:47:06.477" Score="8" ViewCount="762" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not long ago there was an intense debate in Germany over early childcare, with conservatives advocating incentives for mothers to stay at home and progressives advocating for improving early childcare so mothers could continue their careers without too much disruption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advocates of housewife-mothers claimed that children given into early childcare (at the age of three) would later experience problems in their emotional development as a fixed person to relate to would be missing from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am quite skeptical of this claim as other countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway) have quite an intensive early childcare system and I cannot imagine that all their children are troubled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there any studies been done on this question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; I see that this might be a bit broad and depends both on the parents as well as on the daycare. So let us make some of the parameters equal and suppose that the parents and the childcare educators are both just as qualified in terms of education. Is it then problematic that the child in a childcare center has not a single reference person, i.e. today it's Alice, tomorrow it's Bob etc.? This was argued by the conservative part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="1183" LastEditDate="2011-05-15T15:25:51.060" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T17:09:47.973" Title="Are there negative developmental effects for children given into early childcare?" Tags="|psychology|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3202" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3252" CreationDate="2011-05-14T18:16:59.597" Score="15" ViewCount="4183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember a bit of folklore that suggested it was more hygienic to put the lid (that's the lid on the seat) down after use. Is this the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1972" LastEditorUserId="1972" LastEditDate="2012-01-01T10:55:35.253" LastActivityDate="2012-01-01T10:55:35.253" Title="Is it more hygenic to keep the lid down on the toilet after use?" Tags="|hygiene|toilets|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3206" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3208" CreationDate="2011-05-14T20:01:11.927" Score="11" ViewCount="1687" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live in the UK, and my dad has told me &quot;It is not possible to drive at 70 mph on the motorway. Everyone goes at 80 mph and [the police] don't care.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When he says &lt;em&gt;nobody&lt;/em&gt; he means the &lt;strong&gt;majority&lt;/strong&gt; of people drive at 80 mph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The speed limit for motorways in the UK for cars is 70 mph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a fairly common belief, but is it true? And does it apply for other countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-03-19T12:56:14.973" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T12:56:14.973" Title="Do the majority of people go 80 mph on the motorway?" Tags="|road-vehicles|united-kingdom|road|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3206" CreationDate="2011-05-14T20:33:14.037" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;No&lt;/em&gt; it's not true, although a lot of people drive faster than they should.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On motorways in 2009, 52 per cent of cars exceeded the 70 mph speed limit. In addition, 16 per cent of cars were recorded as travelling at 80 mph or faster.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/roadstraffic/speedscongestion/roadstatstsc/roadstats09tsc&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to your edit: the majority of people drive &lt;em&gt;below&lt;/em&gt; 80mph. only 1 in 6 drives at 80mph or over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-14T21:40:47.603" LastActivityDate="2011-05-14T21:40:47.603" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3206" CreationDate="2011-05-15T00:51:26.027" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most people are under the illusion that the speed they are travelling at is the speed shown on the speedometer. This is a fair assumption but not a correct one.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The speedometer - whether electronic or analogue - makes some assumptions about tyre size. Because the tyres wear/get changed and with other inaccuracies in the measurement can be introduced between the tyres and the speedometer, the speedometer is calibrated to be typically 10% or so 'out', over estimating the speed. In this way, no matter what happens to the tyres, the speedometer is not underestimating the speed, which would be illegal (&lt;a href=&quot;http://live.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trans/main/wp29/wp29regs/r039r1e.pdf&quot;&gt;UNECE 39&lt;/a&gt;).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, the motorist travelling at '80 mph' is more likely be travelling nearer 70 m.p.h. and, with the police allowing 'a few m.p.h.' over 70, what that means is that, when travelling at a speedometer-measured 80 m.p.h. there is no real reason to slow down to speedometer measured 70 m.p.h. just because there is a police car in the mirrors. However, in practice, 85 rather than 80 mph might be the speed of the traffic and all the drivers around might slow down to 70 instinctively on sight of a police car, forcing you to do likewise.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would be nice is if there was scope to tune one's speedometer to show actual speed rather than '110% + up to 6.5 m.p.h.'. Theoretically this could result in a more accurate car mileage that, come resale time, could be ~10% less than it would be if set to manufacturer defaults. This could result in higher resale value for the car. However, any effort at 'adjustment' may be deemed 'tampering', get it wrong and it could cost around £700 for a proper, garage installed replacement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/safety-regulatory-devices/speedometer.htm&quot;&gt;How Stuff Works&lt;/a&gt; have more information on how the car speedometer works including the history of the invention and some maths about how tyre size can affect measured speed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What amuses me about motoring programs is how the likes of Richard Clarkson-May will have a cutaway shot of the speedometer hitting some exciting top speed. Now, if you were the manufacturer, what would you want that speed to show, 180 mph or 200 mph? (where the 200 mph would be ~ 180 mph x 110% + 6.5 mph) Certainly the exaggerated speed would be more impressive and unlikely to be achieved in real life by any customers outside of Germany.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2408" LastEditorUserId="2408" LastEditDate="2011-05-18T12:54:53.327" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T12:54:53.327" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3191" CreationDate="2011-05-15T00:54:09.053" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LbtpF.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Cognition, Religion &amp;amp; Theology logo&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The referred research project is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ianramseycentre.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cognition, Religion and Theology&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cam.ox.ac.uk/research/cognition-religion-and-theology/publications/topics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;summaries of the topics covered&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; are available (containing citations to actual publications, including empirical research).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ianramseycentre.info/seminars&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt; that states the project goal as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The overarching goal of the project is&#xA;  to support scientific research that&#xA;  promises to yield new evidence&#xA;  regarding &lt;strong&gt;how the structures of human&#xA;  minds inform and constrain religious&#xA;  expression&lt;/strong&gt;. The project will conduct&#xA;  research on the &lt;strong&gt;cognitive&#xA;  underpinnings of religious concepts&#xA;  and practices&lt;/strong&gt; – for example, ideas&#xA;  about gods and spirits, the afterlife,&#xA;  spirit possession, prayer, ritual,&#xA;  religious expertise, and connections&#xA;  between religious thought and morality&#xA;  and pro-social behaviour. Research is&#xA;  not limited to any particular&#xA;  religious belief or tradition. Indeed,&#xA;  much scholarship in this area is&#xA;  concerned to explain broad patterns of&#xA;  recurrence and variation in religious&#xA;  concepts and practices across diverse&#xA;  cultural and ecological contexts, and&#xA;  throughout history and pre-history.&#xA;  The project forms part of a broader&#xA;  field of interdisciplinary scholarship&#xA;  on the cognitive foundations of&#xA;  cultural expression more generally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the front page the research team is introduced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The research team consists of &lt;strong&gt;experimental psychologist&lt;/strong&gt; Dr Justin Barrett (Primary Investigator, Centre for Anthropology and Mind), &lt;strong&gt;philosopher&lt;/strong&gt; Prof Roger Trigg (Co-Investigator, Ian Ramsey Centre), and Dr Miguel Farais (&lt;strong&gt;Theology&lt;/strong&gt;). Ms Ann Cowie is Programme Administrator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It seems to me like the research would lean towards philosophy and theology.&lt;/em&gt; However, the project has included a huge amount of research on different topics by different teams, and I can't currently be bothered to really look deep into their research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: A couple of quite good articles from New Scientist say that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16687&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;humans find purpose even where there's none&lt;/a&gt; and that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.templeton-cambridge.org/fellows/showarticle.php?article=8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;children naturally believe in supernatural things&lt;/a&gt;. These articles are be based on empirical research (though of course New Scientist is no peer-reviewed journal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard this kind of claims elsewhere, and I find quite believable that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People believe in purpose (even in some random things)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Children can believe in God/gods without anyone telling them to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess one could simplify and combine &lt;em&gt;a prioris&lt;/em&gt; like these, and come up with the claim &lt;em&gt;&quot;human thought processes are rooted to religious concepts&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T09:42:23.897" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T09:42:23.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3185" CreationDate="2011-05-15T00:57:24.820" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Older formulations of makeup may cause acne by blocking pores; this is known as acne cosmetica (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acne_cosmetica&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://skinchannel.com/acne/acne-cosmetica/&quot;&gt;Skin Channel&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://acne.about.com/od/acnebasics/p/acnecosmetica.htm&quot;&gt;About.com Acne&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/acne/acne-vulgaris-what-increases-your-risk&quot;&gt;WebMD&lt;/a&gt;).  Many modern cosmetics are marketed as &quot;non-comedogenic&quot;, which means that they do not block pores and therefore are not likely to cause pimples, although there are still some products that contain comedogenic ingredients and can cause acne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T00:57:24.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3167" CreationDate="2011-05-15T06:28:37.417" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Concerning the question of whether the HIV virus can pass through condoms, the answer appears to depends on the type and condition of the condom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first question is, what kind of condoms?  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.classbrain.com/artteensb/publish/article_123.shtml&quot;&gt;It seems that the available internet literature readily acknowledges that&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Condoms manufactured from latex are&#xA;  the most popular, and studies&#xA;  conducted on the ability of condoms to&#xA;  prevent the transmission of STDs and&#xA;  HIV most often involve latex condoms.&#xA;  Condoms manufactured from lambskin,&#xA;  also known as &quot;natural skin,&quot; or&#xA;  &quot;natural membrane,&quot; are made from the&#xA;  intestinal lining of lambs. While&#xA;  these condoms can prevent pregnancy,&#xA;  they contain small pores that may&#xA;  permit passage of some STDs, including&#xA;  HIV, the hepatitis B virus, and the&#xA;  herpes simplex virus.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These kinds of condoms were not widely available at one time. Users would be well advised to recognize this point in making their condom selection if the interest is to avoid the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (“STD”s), including AIDS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, presumably, natural membrane condoms presumably make dandy water balloons. Likewise, rubber gloves are “water tight” but HIV can pass through the pores in rubber gloves, which is why the latex used for condoms is manufactured to more rigorous specifications.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1178/can-hiv-pass-through-the-pores-in-latex-condoms&quot;&gt;According to Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'll say. Your clip is a 1992 letter&#xA;  to the editor from Mike Roland, editor&#xA;  of Rubber Chemistry and Technology, a&#xA;  publication of the American Chemical&#xA;  Society. Roland argued that &quot;the&#xA;  rubber comprising latex condoms has&#xA;  intrinsic voids [pores] about 5&#xA;  microns (0.00002 inches) in size.&#xA;  Since this is roughly 10 times smaller&#xA;  than sperm, the latter are effectively&#xA;  blocked.... Contrarily, the AIDS virus&#xA;  is only 0.1 micron (4 millionths of an&#xA;  inch) in size. Since this is a factor&#xA;  of 50 smaller than the voids inherent&#xA;  in rubber, the virus can readily pass&#xA;  through.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This sounds scary, but there are a&#xA;  couple problems with it. First, Roland&#xA;  bases his statement about a 5 micron&#xA;  latex pore size on a study of rubber&#xA;  gloves, not condoms. The U.S. Public&#xA;  Health Service says that condoms are&#xA;  manufactured to higher standards than&#xA;  gloves. Condoms are dipped in the&#xA;  latex twice, gloves only once. If just&#xA;  4 out of 1,000 condoms fail the leak&#xA;  test, the whole batch is rejected; the&#xA;  standard for gloves is 40 out of&#xA;  1,000. A study of latex condoms by the&#xA;  National Institutes of Health using an&#xA;  electron microscope found no holes at&#xA;  a magnification of 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://reviews.ebay.com/CONDOMS-A-complete-guide-to-associated-risks_W0QQugidZ10000000002131516&quot;&gt;This seems to be the an article on the original report on holes in latex gloves.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the point that HIV molecules are larger than water is a “red herring” with respect to determining whether condoms are useful to preventing the transmission of HIV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, and a more precise question is, can HIV pass through latex condoms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Straight Dope quote indicates, there was an FDA report indicating that under extreme test conditions – certainly unlikely to replicated in actual performance -  HIV viruses were found to have passed through latex condoms.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Internet literature from AIDS information sites - that do not seem to have an &quot;anti-condom&quot; agenda - seem to agree that the “pores” in latex condoms are approximately .5 microns in size, whereas the HIV virus size is .1 microns.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.arizona.edu/health_topics/sexual_health/sextalk/2010/sextalk%2005.01.10.pdf&quot;&gt;this Arizona health site for corroboration&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be some dispute as to whether infection can occur through the virus alone. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1178/can-hiv-pass-through-the-pores-in-latex-condoms&quot;&gt;According to Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As for the substantive issue you&#xA;  raise, it's true &quot;the transmission of&#xA;  HIV by genital fluids most probably&#xA;  occurs through virus-infected cells&#xA;  since they can be present in larger&#xA;  numbers than free virus in the body&#xA;  fluids&quot; (Jay Levy, &quot;Pathogenesis of&#xA;  Human Immunodeficiency Virus&#xA;  Infection,&quot; Microbiological Reviews,&#xA;  March 1993--an exhaustive treatment of&#xA;  the subject). But it would be wrong to&#xA;  construe this to mean that HIV is&#xA;  transmitted only by cells. When I&#xA;  spoke to Dr. Levy he readily conceded&#xA;  that HIV may be transmitted by free&#xA;  virus as well. He did add that the&#xA;  viscosity of semen may hinder the&#xA;  passage of such virus through the&#xA;  latex barrier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this information is outdated it would be nice to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of internet sources quote the “factoid” that condoms have “pores” of .5 microns in size.  I suspect from my efforts to chase down the source of this information that it may come from the 1992 report based on an examination of latex gloves noted above.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Latex+films+are+barriers+to+viruses.-a014090418&quot;&gt;This site directly addresses the “pore hypothesis” and concludes that the double layers of latex in condoms prevents the formation of holes or pores that go through the entire condoms.&lt;/a&gt; That seems to be the best explanation for the anomaly of HIV not passing through condoms like &quot;bullets through a netting.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the answer seems to be that outside of artificially created circumstances and assuming properly manufactured, non-defective, non-deteriorated condoms, the HIV virus will not pass through latex condoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, an even more precise question, is whether HIV can pass through condoms under ordinary usage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A caveat to arguments about the effectiveness of condoms is always that they have to be used properly and invariably.  Proper usage involves more than mechanics.  Health sites often contain warnings that deterioration, and opening up condom practices with teeth or nails, can introduce tears into the condoms.  For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://hiv.healthcommunities.com/hiv-aids/prevention.shtml&quot;&gt;Health Communities.com states&lt;/a&gt;:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Condoms should be purchased from a&#xA;  source that can guarantee product&#xA;  reliability and freshness. Heat,&#xA;  pressure, and age can break down&#xA;  latex. Condoms should not be used more&#xA;  than 5 years after the manufacture&#xA;  date. If the condom looks deteriorated&#xA;  or discolored, or feels sticky or&#xA;  brittle, it should be discarded. If&#xA;  the packaging is torn or damaged, the&#xA;  condoms should not be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Condoms are easily torn if they are&#xA;  handled roughly or with sharp&#xA;  fingernails, so care should be taken&#xA;  while putting them on and taking them&#xA;  off. Petroleum or oil-based lubricants&#xA;  (e.g., Vaseline, baby oil) can break&#xA;  down latex and should not be used.&#xA;  Water-based lubricants (e.g., KY&#xA;  Jelly) should be used and are usually&#xA;  labeled &quot;For use with latex condoms or&#xA;  diaphragms.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, fresh out of the box condoms provide a level of protection that may not be found in one left in a wallet or the glove compartment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, even if all things go right, are condoms always effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is clearly “no,” as suggested by the 4 out of 1,000 flaw rate mentioned above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3127299.html&quot;&gt;According to this site&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Generally, the condom's effectiveness&#xA;  at preventing HIV transmission is&#xA;  estimated to be 87%, but it may be as&#xA;  low as 60% or as high as 96%.&#xA;  Conclusions: Consistent use of condoms&#xA;  provides protection from HIV. The&#xA;  level of protection approximates 87%,&#xA;  with a range depending upon the&#xA;  incidence among condom nonusers. Thus,&#xA;  the condom's efficacy at reducing&#xA;  heterosexual transmission may be&#xA;  comparable to or slightly lower than&#xA;  its effectiveness at preventing&#xA;  pregnancy.  Family Planning&#xA;  Perspectives, 1999, 31(6):272-279&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Condoms are clearly effective in decreasing the odds of being infected, but, clearly they are not absolutely effective.  It appears, though, that the risk of infection from an HIV viruses making its way through a non-defective, non-compromised condom is de minimis. One, however, should not be entirely sanguine about the effectiveness of condoms under all circumstances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="524" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T06:28:37.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3219" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-15T11:34:27.493" Score="97" ViewCount="19938" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have friends that are very picky when it comes to MP3 bitrate, and will always look for the 320 kbps version of a file. However, I have never noticed any differences, they sound the same to me. I remember reading somewhere, can't remember where, that the human ear is simply incapable of sensing the difference, even if present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone shed some light on the 192 vs. 320 kbps issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T13:15:49.893" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T01:11:33.840" Title="Are there any perceptible differences between the sound quality of 192 versus 320 kbps MP3 files?" Tags="|music|sound|perception|hearing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3219" CreationDate="2011-05-15T13:34:03.787" Score="67" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is one surprising result, from an experiment described in Maximum PC's article &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maximumpc.com/article/do_higher_mp3_bit_rates_pay_off?page=0,0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Do Higher MP3 Bit Rates Really Pay Off?&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[No other] Maximum PC Challenge has ever surprised us as much as this one. It’s downright humiliating, in fact, that in many cases, we were unable to tell the difference between an uncompressed track and one encoded at 160Kb/s, the bit rate most of us considered the absolute minimum acceptable for even portable players.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some follow-up testing confirmed our suspicions: variable bit rate encoding makes a tremendous difference in the audio quality results, certainly enough to justify—many times over—the slight file size increase. Capping the bit rate at 160Kb/s in MP3 files can be pretty harsh on a track, but allowing the bit rate to wander upwards during more complex passages—as variable bit rate encoding does—and throttle down during quieter sections captures an astonishing amount of complexity while keeping file sizes down to an impressive minimum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself took a similar test and failed as much as I succeeded in identifying which track was which (160 vs 320), a result which is no better than random guessing. I can hear a very slight difference most of the time between LAME-encoded (--alt preset standard*) MP3 files and CD audio, but only on an expensive system with terrific speaks in a quiet room. For earbuds and car listening it doesn't really seem to matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest difference seems to be not in 160 vs. 320 but CBR vs. VBR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* &amp;quot;Current consensus is that settings &amp;quot;--alt-preset standard&amp;quot; are recommended for most cases. This results in a very high quality VBR MP3s, giving you bitrates around 200kbps, depending heavily on the music. Mellow rap can go much lower and loud heavy metal can result higher bitrates. The quality will always remain very high.&amp;quot; — &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/1912&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cd-rw.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum 7 years later&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rick Beato has a great video on this topic, which I just discovered on YouTube: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgEjI5PZa78&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Audiophile or Audio-Fooled&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T01:11:33.840" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3222" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3224" CreationDate="2011-05-15T14:11:15.127" Score="13" ViewCount="2952" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a friend (the same guy that believes &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2884/is-water-calcification-bad-for-your-health&quot;&gt;calcium in water is bad for you&lt;/a&gt;) who is germaphobic. That is, he will avoid germs at any expense. For example, kitchen surfaces will be pristine, using some kind of brand name anti-bacterial cleaner. The slightest piece of dirt will be eliminated. And touching a suspect surface entails cleaning hands shortly afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am sceptical that avoiding germs at every cost is good for you. For example, if you do finally get an infection (and that is inevitable), it could be very bad because you have not built up a strong immunity against germs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is being a germaphobe good for you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T02:35:28.477" Title="Is it good to be germaphobic?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|hygiene|infection|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3222" CreationDate="2011-05-15T14:51:05.150" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=162&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Well, a PHOBIA could be considered a mental disorder&lt;/a&gt;.  Does he really have a phobia, or is he borderline?  The impact to his life is possibly more than just having clean surfaces in his house.  How much time does he spend dealing with cleaning?  Does it affect his ability to socialize?  Does it affect his ability to perform a job by which he can support himself?  etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your question about infections and such, that is known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hygiene hypothesis&lt;/a&gt; (WP).  However, that is mostly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070905174501.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;associated with childhood immunities and allergies&lt;/a&gt; as opposed to the effects on adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The natural immune system does not have as much to do as it did 50 years ago because we’ve increased our efforts to protect our children from dirt and germs,” says McMorris.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Allergies are on the rise because our society has changed the way we live. As a result, people with allergies are having children with others who have allergies, which in turn creates a natural increase in the prevalence of allergies in our society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line on this hypothesis is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usc.edu/hsc/info/pr/hmm/00-01winter/germs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;more research is required&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He (Richard G. Barbers, M.D., USC professor of medicine at the Keck School) also gives credence to the hygiene hypothesis in that &amp;quot;we may be over-protecting kids, and their immune systems, consequently, do not become well-developed.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barbers notes that only time and a lot more research will tell whether the hygiene hypothesis is valid, and whether, once again, parents should let their kids play in the dirt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some indication though that cleaning too much may impact your well being, not in the way you posited in your question, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080208163244.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;rather through reactions to all the cleaning agents&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Some people scrub their toilet bowl with a product that contains ammonia to remove rust stains, then follow up by pouring down a shot of bleach. They think that extra little bit of effort will kill germs. Actually, they’re making chlorine gas, a caustic mixture that actually was used as a weapon during World War I,” Duberg says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physorg.com/news183810398.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;generally understood that interaction with beneficial germs is good for you&lt;/a&gt;.  However, normal cleaning will not destroy these germs since they reside within you (unless his germaphobia induces him to take antibiotics).  The human immune response doesn't particularly work that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The investigators show that &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; bacteria in the gut keep the immune system primed to more effectively fight infection from invading pathogenic bacteria. Altering the intricate dynamic between resident and foreign bacteria - via antibiotics, for example -- compromises an animal's immune response, specifically, the function of white blood cells called neutrophils.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another component of your question relates to perhaps &amp;quot;boosting&amp;quot; your immune system.  A reporting group known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vaccinetimes.com/can-the-immune-system-be-boosted/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vaccine Times&lt;/a&gt; reported on this with some interesting links and thoughts that may be of use (but would not support the idea that your friend is weakening himself to disease).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The immune system is a network of cells, tissues, and organs that work together to defend the body against attacks by “foreign” invaders. These are primarily microbes—tiny organisms such as bacteria, parasites, and fungi that can cause infections. Viruses also cause infections, but are too primitive to be classified as living organisms. The human body provides an ideal environment for many microbes. It is the immune system’s job to keep them out or, failing that, to seek out and destroy them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if your friend has suffered from germaphobia since a young age, if the hygiene hypothesis has any merit, I would wonder what his allergy status is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T15:16:28.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3219" CreationDate="2011-05-15T14:52:13.527" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is a distinct difference, however whether it's perceivable, and how much, depends on many factors.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I can't access the full articles, however here's the abstract of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=15074&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;very relevant article&lt;/a&gt;, emphasis mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mp3 compression is commonly used to reduce the size of digital music files but introduces a number of potentially audible artifacts, especially at low bitrates. We investigated whether listeners prefer CD quality to mp3 files at various bitrates (96 kb/s to 320 kb/s), and whether this preference is affected by musical genre. Thirteen trained listeners completed an A/B comparison task judging CD quality and compressed files. &lt;strong&gt;Listeners significantly preferred CD quality to mp3 files up to 192 kb/s for all musical genres. In addition, we observed a significant effect of expertise (sound engineers vs. musicians) and musical genres (electric v.s acoustic music).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this study finds that the answer is that above 192Kbit/s, further gains depend on the genre and the training of the listener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=12896&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;another study&lt;/a&gt; finds that perceived quality depends on whether you are using headphones or not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The impact of using loudspeaker versus headphone playback on the subjective quality of compressed audio is investigated. It is shown that reverberation and to a lesser extent cross-talk, which both are introduced naturally in loudspeaker playback, can effectively hide coding artifacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurasip.org/proceedings/eusipco/eusipco2006/papers/1568979126.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This other paper&lt;/a&gt; describes the differences between different bitrates and different ways of testing. In all cases it shows a very minor difference between 192Kbit/s and 256Kbit/s and basically no difference between 256Kbit/s and 320Kbit/s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/agUKc.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, above 192Kbit it becomes quite hard to tell the difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T14:52:13.527" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3201" CreationDate="2011-05-15T15:18:18.257" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there negative developmental effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that childcare has any effect at all (e.g. more socialization, more familiarity with strangers), that same effect could be described as &quot;negative&quot; (e.g. less dependent on or 'close' to parents): so, whether any given effect is &quot;negative&quot; might be a (hard to quantify) subjective / value judgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect it also depends on the type of daycare. For example, putting a toddler into an overcrowded warehouse to watch TV isn't the same as putting them into a daycare environment that's richer in various ways (with better teachers, curriculum, socializing activities, teaching materials, etc.): so IMO the question is too broad to be meaningful ... the answer is, &quot;well it depends on &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; daycare.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're talking about daycare's &quot;opportunity cost&quot;: that by going to daycare children forego the opportunity to spend formative years with their parent[s]. And &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; depends on whether the parents are available (on whether they're working); and also, partly, on how rich the experience of spending time with them is (whether they're interested, available, educated, educating, etc.): so, the answer is also &quot;well it also depends on which parents.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;conservatives advocating incentives for mothers to stay at home and progressives advocating for improving early childcare&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sounds like it might be a political question (not just an educational/developmental question): e.g. motivated by the perceived role of (private) home and family versus (public) state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;suppose that the parents and the childcare educators are both just as qualified in terms of education&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The childcare educators might have two or three years of specifically ECE college training (developmental psychology, curriculum planning, etc.); and, 5 to 20 years of teaching experience, of teaching 10 or 20 children each year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not saying that parents would be less qualified, but their qualifications are normally different (unless they're trained and experienced daycare teachers themselves, which most people aren't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'At home' and 'at daycare' are also different environments: the daycare has a peer group of 10 or 20 other children in the class (so there's socialization), likely a different time-table, and a different set of physical resources (I'm thinking of having and understanding e.g. the &quot;Montessori materials&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think it's sensible or possible to try to narrow the question by assuming that parents and teachers are &quot;just as qualified&quot; (i.e. that their 'qualifications' are equivalent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it then problematic that the child in a childcare center has not a single reference person, i.e. today it's Alice, tomorrow it's Bob etc.? This was argued by the conservative part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience with daycares is that there are two or three more or less constant teachers per classroom. There may be some small variation, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One extra teacher for half the day every day, if there are more children in the classroom for one half of the day (e.g. because some children do half-day kindergarten and half-day daycare)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An occasional substitute teacher if a principal teacher is temporarily ill (or, for a longer period, on maternity leave)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An occasional special-subject teacher (e.g. a visiting musician once a week, or a visit to the local municipal library, for the librarian to read a story) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A child is likely then to be with the same two or three teachers for the whole year (and maybe for more than one year in succession).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm talking about where the teachers have permanent (and more or less full-time) jobs, and the child is enrolled for every day for the whole year: the child would have a class, and that class would have a regular set of teachers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of a situation where there's &quot;not a single reference person&quot;: IMO there are usually reference people (children and teachers get to know each other within the first week or so), and if there are several reference people (almost always at least two adults per class simultaneously: not 'on successive days', but at the same time) then that's not a bad thing either (people don't usually have political objections to there being more than one parent, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is (so I'm told) some bonding (trust, knowledge, affection) which develop between the (regular) teacher and the child (to call the existence of such a relationship &quot;negative&quot; would be, IMO, unfortunate, but that's my political opinion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2011-05-15T17:09:47.973" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T17:09:47.973" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3228" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-15T16:30:13.287" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-05-15T16:30:13.287" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T16:30:13.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3229" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-15T16:30:13.287" Score="0" Body="Atheism is, in a broad sense, being without a belief in the existence of deities." OwnerUserId="808" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-04-28T03:37:37.827" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T03:37:37.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2011-05-15T16:38:30.207" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Race is one of the most misunderstood words in the English language. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It literally refers to &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; genetically passed traits that are shared within a group. This can include skin-colour, but it also includes hair colour, freckles, even &lt;em&gt;nationality&lt;/em&gt;. In other words, &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; shared genetic traits mean you share the same &quot;race&quot; as someone. As you can imagine, this makes the term rather meaningless for lots of reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, because of the huge amount of genetic diversity in Africa, two people from two different African nations will have less in common, genetically, than a European and someone from an African nation. And yet the average person would most likely guess it was the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps because humans are very visually orientated, however, we have now becomes fixated on skin-colour, and using that to define &quot;race&quot;. Unfortunately people don't understand that there is little or no biological basis for any other traits, beyond skin colour. For example, The gene for skin-colour has no relation to things like musical ability, eye shape, athletic ability, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genetic traits are measurable, and often have other effects on a person (blonde people are more likely to have fairer skin, and so get sunburned more easily, etc), but other traits are stored in completely different areas of the human genome. A good way to look at it is to remember that skin colour is as biologically significant as hair colour or eye colour. The biggest mistake is thinking that &quot;race&quot; means something more significant about someone more than just &quot;shared genetic history&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until people understand that the difference between a black person and a white person is as biologically significant as someone who has freckles and someone who doesn't, common misunderstandings about the importance of race are likely to continue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people don't even understand that &quot;French&quot; people are a race, for example, and I've even been &quot;corrected&quot; by people using it in that way!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: So much talk about &quot;race&quot; has placed far too much emphasis on the word, as if it means something significant. It doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/race/001_WhatIsRace/001_00-home.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PBS.org: What is Race?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://racerelations.about.com/od/understandingrac1/a/WhatIsRace.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;About.com: &quot;There's no scientific basis for races&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Race&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Definition of the world &quot;race&quot;:&lt;/a&gt; &quot;A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics. A group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographic distribution: the German race.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/race.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harvard Review (1994): &quot;race does not have a biological meaning&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a billion other papers and research all saying the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1835" LastEditorUserId="1835" LastEditDate="2013-02-27T22:51:56.433" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T22:51:56.433" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3233" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-15T17:46:11.677" Score="10" ViewCount="651" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bill Gates makes the claim that Masters degrees don't increase the ability of teachers in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_unplugged.html&quot;&gt;TED talk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the characteristics of this top quartile? What do they look like? You might think these must be very senior teachers. And the answer is no. Once somebody has taught for three years their teaching quality does not change thereafter. The variation is very, very small. You might think these are people with master's degrees. They've gone back and they've gotten their Master's of Education. This chart takes four different factors and says how much do they explain teaching quality. That bottom thing, which says there's no effect at all, is a master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-15T19:18:00.980" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T19:18:00.980" Title="Do masters degrees in education improve teaching performance?" Tags="|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3234" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-15T17:46:52.417" Score="14" ViewCount="986" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently heard from a preschool teacher that they now have kids wash their hands many times throughout the day. When they enter the classroom, before they eat, after they eat, after playing on the playground, after blowing their nose, after going to the bathroom. And this is all done with antibacterial soap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We tell people to hold a paper towel when turning off the faucet or opening the door of the bathroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, hand sanitizer dispensers appear everywhere today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My grandparents didn't live this way. Has something changed? Does this sanitizing really make people healthier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2083" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T14:04:14.163" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T14:04:14.163" Title="Does regular handwashing with antibacterial soap prevent disease?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3235" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5128" CreationDate="2011-05-15T17:49:32.080" Score="31" ViewCount="5513" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is the idea that mental work is tiring. &#xA;Does the brain as a whole need to consume more glucose and oxygen when we are &quot;mentally active&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="3194" LastEditDate="2011-07-09T10:45:55.703" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T07:57:40.073" Title="Does the brain use more energy during mental work?" Tags="|physiology|neurology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3234" CreationDate="2011-05-15T18:01:31.163" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3222/is-it-good-to-be-germaphobic&quot;&gt;See this related answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your specific questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has something changed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, we have access to these products now, whereas we didn't before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this sanitizing really make people healthier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is a subject of debate.  While it can prevent rapid spread of some things, keep in mind that anti-bacterial soaps should only have specific uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol7no3_supp/levy.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The CDC has concerns about the prevalent use of these products&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists are concerned that the antibacterial agents will select bacteria resistant to them and cross-resistant to antibiotics. Moreover, if they alter a person's microflora, they may negatively affect the normal maturation of the T helper cell response of the immune system to commensal flora antigens; this change could lead to a greater chance of allergies in children. As with antibiotics, prudent use of these products is urged. Their designated purpose is to protect vulnerable patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is some concern as outlined by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hygiene hypothesis&lt;/a&gt; (WP).  However, that is mostly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070905174501.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;associated with childhood immunities and allergies&lt;/a&gt; as opposed to the effects on adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The natural immune system does not have as much to do as it did 50 years ago because we’ve increased our efforts to protect our children from dirt and germs,” says McMorris.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Allergies are on the rise because our society has changed the way we live. As a result, people with allergies are having children with others who have allergies, which in turn creates a natural increase in the prevalence of allergies in our society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line on this hypothesis is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usc.edu/hsc/info/pr/hmm/00-01winter/germs.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;more research is required&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He (Richard G. Barbers, M.D., USC professor of medicine at the Keck School) also gives credence to the hygiene hypothesis in that &amp;quot;we may be over-protecting kids, and their immune systems, consequently, do not become well-developed.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barbers notes that only time and a lot more research will tell whether the hygiene hypothesis is valid, and whether, once again, parents should let their kids play in the dirt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physorg.com/news183810398.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;generally understood that interaction with beneficial germs is good for you&lt;/a&gt;.  However, normal cleaning will not destroy these germs since they reside within you (unless his germaphobia induces him to take antibiotics).  The human immune response doesn't particularly work that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The investigators show that &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; bacteria in the gut keep the immune system primed to more effectively fight infection from invading pathogenic bacteria. Altering the intricate dynamic between resident and foreign bacteria - via antibiotics, for example -- compromises an animal's immune response, specifically, the function of white blood cells called neutrophils.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using too many anti-bacterial soaps has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2005/11/14/hlsc1114.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;raised quite a few concerns even still&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soaps and lotions that include antibacterial agents have no benefit over ordinary soap and water, but more research is needed to allay or substantiate concern that these substances may be leading to increased rates of antibiotic resistance. This is the conclusion of the Food and Drug Administration's Nonprescription Drugs Advisory Committee, which met last month to consider the use of these products outside of the health care setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In the absence of proven benefit, there's no real reason to encourage the use of these products,&amp;quot; said Alastair J.J. Wood, MD, committee chair and associate dean at Tennessee's Vanderbilt Medical School.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.com/health/article/0,,20433634,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;That is not to say that their use should be discontinued entirely&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;strong&gt;Two MDs weigh in and &lt;em&gt;conclude&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Opt for regular soap and water, unless you’re at a hospital or doctor’s office, where it’s best to use antibacterial soap. But if you’re out and about and antibacterial soap is the only kind around, it’s fine to wash with it—and it’s worth keeping in the kitchen to use after handling raw meat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T21:07:39.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3233" CreationDate="2011-05-15T18:04:17.737" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;He says that being a 'top teacher' (however that was measured) doesn't correlate with having a master's degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not quite the same thing as saying that getting a master's degree won't make you better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's saying that it's something other than a master's degree (and, he said a few seconds earlier, something other than long experience, too) that's important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T18:04:17.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3234" CreationDate="2011-05-15T18:10:48.153" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does this sanitizing really make people healthier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A purpose (the reason why they advertise hand-washing here, as a public safety measure) is to reduce the spread of epidemics: e.g. of influenza.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's not that it will make you measurably healthier each day, but it might keep you from getting sick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My grandparents didn't live this way. Has something changed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, yes: any number of things. More air travel; different factory farming techniques (resulting in e.g. 'swine flue' and 'bird flu' in humans); increased life expectancy. You could almost ask instead whether there's anything that hasn't changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hand-washing to avoid the flu, by the way, presumably doesn't have to be with antibacterial soap: the flu is a virus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Daycares (children) are a slightly unusual situation: children put their hands in their mouths (and eyes and noses, and on the ground, and everywhere else) more than adults do, they have immature immune systems, and they're in a (crowded) institutional setting (not entirely unlike a hospital), e.g. they're sharing toys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2011-05-15T18:36:16.620" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T18:36:16.620" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3219" CreationDate="2011-05-15T18:26:33.453" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends on a number of factors. Some of them are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The age of the listener, the older you get, the less high frequency sounds you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.roger-russell.com/hearing/hearing.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hear&lt;/a&gt;. Besides age, there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3558959&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;more individual factors&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The quality of the music equipment, on a nice home stereo you are much more likely to note a difference than on an Ipod on a busy street.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The quality depends on which encoder program was used. The encoder basically decides which sounds to encode in the audio stream and which sounds to omit. Encoder programs have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoacoustics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;psycho-acoustic model&lt;/a&gt; that tells them which sounds are important to the listener and which ones not so much. The quality of the output depends a lot on the model (and therefore the software that was used to encode the MP3).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The kind of music you listen to makes a difference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: it is &lt;strong&gt;not only&lt;/strong&gt; about the bit rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These and more points are addressed in this introductory article from Karlheinz Brandenburg (Co-developer of MP3): &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.26.5956&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MP3 and AAC explained&lt;/a&gt; (PDF, 143KB).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2745" LastEditorUserId="2745" LastEditDate="2011-05-16T18:24:06.903" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T18:24:06.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3026" CreationDate="2011-05-15T19:11:03.073" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;My dad says I should try to answer some questions, so here goes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, which would make more sense.  That an author would do this for no fame, or the discoverers did it to gain fame?  That's what I thought about at first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/piltdown.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Talk Origins had an interesting site explaining the whole Piltdown Man history&lt;/a&gt;.  Some relevant &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/piltdown/piltref.html.20050111.bak&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quotes about the forgery&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sir Arthur Keith dies. Almost immediately a letter is published in which Keith had said he thought Dawson was behind the forgery (Anon 1955b; Hampton 1955).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are long discussions about the hoaxers and why the did it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who did it? Who perpetrated the hoax? When the hoax was exposed nobody knew who the perpetrator was. No one confessed to the deed. For forty odd years people have speculated about the identity of the culprit; over time an impressive list of suspects has accumulated. The case against each suspect has been circumstantial, a constellation of suspicious behaviour, of possible motives, and of opportunity. In this section we present summaries of the arguments against the principal candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A comprehensive listing of the accusations, when they were made, who made them, and who the accused were can be found in Tom Turrittin's Piltdown man overview; it includes details not given here including the particulars of 30 separate books or papers making accusations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the hoax was first exposed Dawson, Teilhard, and Woodward were the obvious suspects; they had made the major finds. In 1953 Weiner fingered Dawson as the culprit. Stephen Jay Gould argued that Teilhard and Dawson were the culprits. Woodward generally escaped suspicion; however Drawhorn made a strong case against him in 1994. Grafton Elliot Smith and Sir Arthur Keith were prominent scientists that played key roles in the discovery. Millar argued that Smith was the culprit; Spencer argued that it was a conspiracy between Dawson and Keith. Other candidates that have been mentioned over the years include Arthur Conan Doyle, the geologist W. J. Sollas, and the paleontologist Martin Hinton. This is by no means the end of the list; other people accused include Hargreaves, Abbot, Barlow, and Butterfield.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This fraud is quite unique. Most scientific frauds and hoaxes fall into a few categories. There are student japes, students conconcting evidence to fit a superior's theories. There are confirming evidence frauds, in which a researcher fabricates findings that they believe should be true. There are outright frauds for money, fossils that are fabricated for gullible collectors. There are rare cases of fabrication for reputation, done in the knowledge that the results will not be checked. And, upon occasion, there are frauds concocted simply as an expression of a perverse sense of humor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Piltdown hoax does not seem to fit any of these categories well. This was not an ordinary hoax; it was a systematic campaign over the years to establish the existence of Piltdown man. The early skull fragments were created in advance and salted with the foreknowledge that more extensive finds would be planted later. The hoaxer had to have good reason to believe that the salted fossils would be found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the critical factors in any theory is to account for the fact that the perpetrator had to be confident that the salted fossils would be found. That suggests that either Dawson, Teilhard, or Woodward was involved since they alone made the initial finds. At first sight it would seem that Dawson must have been guilty since he made the initial find of the first two skull fragments. However he didn't! They were made by anonymous workmen. The &amp;quot;find&amp;quot; could have been arranged for a handful of coins. As Vere pointed out, the labourer Hargreaves, employed to do most of the digging, was also present at the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another critical factor to be accounted for is access to the specimens that were used in the hoax. Likewise the question of skill and knowledge required for the hoax must be taken into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/piltdown.html#who_doyle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;They even specifically talk about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument for Doyle was made in an article in Science in 1983 by the anthropologist John Winslow. The Spring 1996 issue of Pacific Discovery has an excellent article by Robert Anderson on the Doyle theory. Doyle was a neighbour of Dawson, was an amateur bone hunter, and participated briefly in the digs. The principal arguments for Doyle as the culprit are circumstantial and literary; it has been argued that The Lost World describes the execution of the hoax in veiled terms. Anderson argues that the exact location of the planted fossils is spelled out in The Lost World as a puzzle. The essential weakness of the case against Doyle is that it would not have been possible for him to have planted the bones with any expectation that they would have been found. Walsh analyzes the case against Doyle in detail and finds it wanting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The principal proponent of the Doyle theory, Richard Milner who is a historian of science from the American Museum of Natural History, still holds Doyle was responsible. In a debate staged by the Linnaean Society in March 1997 as part of National Science Week he argued the case for Arthur Conan Doyle and against the case for Hinton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sir Arthur was a zealous spiritualist, embittered by the exposure and prosecution of Henry Slade, one of his favourite psychics. It is suggested that Doyle sought to discredit the scientific establishment by faking evidence of something they wanted to believe in thereby showing scientists knew less than they thought they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So reading all that, I don't think he did do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-15T19:11:03.073" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3235" CreationDate="2011-05-15T20:30:58.087" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;fMRI scanner images show increased areas of blood flow in parts of the brain during mental work. Increased neural activity causes an increased demand for oxygen, and the vascular system actually overcompensates for this, increasing the amount of oxygenated hemoglobin relative to deoxygenated hemoglobin&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because deoxygenated hemoglobin attenuates the MR signal, the vascular response leads to a signal increase that is related to the neural activity&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, it is not known if this correlates precisely with neural activity, and it is an ongoing area of research&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6275909&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oxygenation dependence of the transverse relaxation time of water protons in whole blood at high field&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692634/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cellular mechanisms of brain energy metabolism and their relevance to functional brain imaging&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20633664&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Baseline GABA concentration and fMRI response&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1850" LastEditorUserId="35" LastEditDate="2011-05-16T17:54:06.837" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T17:54:06.837" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3250" CreationDate="2011-05-15T20:37:10.827" Score="9" ViewCount="639" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mUaJn.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/12/11/web_filters_block_health_sites/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; is from 2002, so it may be outdated, but it claims that when web filters are set to the more restrictive settings, such as in libraries or schools, they are more likely to block sites with health/medical information than pornography.&#xA;Is this a common occurrence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T18:11:18.720" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T18:11:18.720" Title="Do web filters block more health/medical information than porn?" Tags="|medical-science|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3248" CreationDate="2011-05-15T21:50:06.860" Score="16" ViewCount="1309" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence for the theory that things taste better if they contain nutrients that the body needs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a banana this morning and it tasted great. Is that why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2752" LastEditorUserId="2680" LastEditDate="2011-05-16T04:52:37.463" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T05:09:02.143" Title="Do things taste better if they contain nutrients that the body needs?" Tags="|nutrition|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3246" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3247" CreationDate="2011-05-16T00:47:26.640" Score="47" ViewCount="48110" Body="&lt;p&gt;France is commonly made fun of for not having won a war, for instance when they rejoined NATO and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1161642/As-France-rejoins-NATO-humorous-reminder-missed-them.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the daily mail&lt;/a&gt; made fun of them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why did the French celebrate their World Cup in 1998 so wildly?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was their first time they won anything without outside help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why are the French afraid of war?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would be, too, if you had never won one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any examples with clear French victories of war? A good example would be where conquered another nation, a large area of land without immediately losing it or gained a ceasefire/surrender through skill or force. War of alliances are fine as long as France is the main contributor and the military leader similar to how America is sometimes joined by much smaller contributions by other nations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The French derived their name from the Franks which existed around 700AD, so that seem like a good starting point unless anyone feel like arguing that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-05-29T21:29:36.520" Title="Has France ever won a war?" Tags="|history|war|military|france|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3246" CreationDate="2011-05-16T03:17:04.577" Score="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;First of all, a concise yes/no answer heavily depends on&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What the timeframe was&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you include pre-Roman Gauls? Frankish kings? Medieval period? Post-Westphalian nation state only? Modern era only? (e.g. post late 18th century)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How you define &quot;French&quot;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is somewhat tied in with timeframe? Do you include only post-Westphalian-soveregnity nation state? Do you included decidedly non-French nationals leading French armies? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, do you include wars where France was part of a winning alliance? and where do you draw the line? (on a spectre from Crimean war to WWII)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How you define &quot;&lt;em&gt;war&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you include only conflict among nation states? Or do you include &quot;unfair&quot; conflicts such as a colonial war against poorly armed militia? Technically the latter should be included - &lt;em&gt;à la guerre comme à la guerre&lt;/em&gt; ;), but the deeper philosophical root of the original claim would not really be in tune with the asnwer that said &quot;lost all wars except against these poorly equipped 10,000 sized rebel force&quot; (that's like asking &quot;did this boxer win any fights&quot; and the answer is &quot;Yes, if you include one with a 10 year old he he was 18&quot; :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does winning a major battle count if the overall war was lost? Does winning a single war count if it was part of a coherent series of wars that were lost overall (the latter especially applies to Napoleonic era).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How you define &quot;&lt;em&gt;winning&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you include cases where most of the war was fought by other powers? Nominally, the French were part of the side that won WWII. How much that was attributable to French martial efforts is a different story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you include a war that concluded in - effectively - a draw judging by the results of the war?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thus, depending on your definitions:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;NO&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, French never won a war against another major nation-state &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;without outside help&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;since 1648&lt;/strong&gt; (when the concept of nation states came into existence at the end of 30-year war and Peace of Westphalia). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;YES&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, French won a &quot;war&quot; single-handedly between 1648 and 1860, if you count Napoleon's wins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Napoleon Bonaparte&lt;/a&gt; won several sub-wars that were part of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleonic_Wars&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Napoleonic wars&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, strictly speaking, they shouldn't be counted because &lt;strong&gt;the Napoleonic wars as a whole were a loss for France&lt;/strong&gt; in the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;YES&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, French won at least major war single-handedly prior to 1648.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a stunning reverse of the picture of Napoleonic Wars, they lost nearly every sub-war at the start of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theotherside.co.uk/tm-heritage/background/100yearswar.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;100 years war&lt;/a&gt; - but by the year 116 of that war, &lt;strong&gt;the overall conflict was won by the French.&lt;/strong&gt; Extinguishing all English claims to French territory. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/7555/2086&quot;&gt;Another answer&lt;/a&gt; covered Charlemagne pretty well. Whether that counts as &quot;French&quot; depends on which timeframe you look at. Ditto Charles Martel.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;YES&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, French did win a couple of wars as a major part of an alliance since 1638.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many of them counts depends heavily on the defined scope as discussed above. Only one of them was 100% clear win under any scope one can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;French won the second Italian War of Independence&lt;/strong&gt; against Austria (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Magenta&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Magenta&lt;/a&gt;) during &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Italian_War_of_Independence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Second Italian War of Independence&lt;/a&gt;. &quot;The next year, in 1860, with French and British approval, the central Italian states — Duchy of Parma, Duchy of Modena, Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Papal States — were annexed by the Kingdom of Sardinia, and France would take its deferred reward, Savoy and Nice.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Italian_War_of_Independence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Second Italian War of Independence&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another war they won that may or may not be counted depending on your scope (they fought as a major part of larger alliance; and they got no tangible benefits from the win) was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean_War&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crimean War&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, I only included these for completeness of data. &lt;strong&gt;None of these counts towards the letter of the original claim&lt;/strong&gt; that explicitly said &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;without outside help&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some people prefer to include as &quot;win&quot; WWI or WWII - but both of them France effectively lost until USA and Britain (Battle of the Marne) intervened. And the same was true for &lt;strong&gt;every single time in the war that mattered&lt;/strong&gt; - e.g. at Verdun, the French didn't start winning till Russian Brusilov offensive and British-dominated Somme offensive drew off German resources. But yes, they technically were among the winning allies in the end of the war (&lt;strong&gt;which does nothing to address the original claim's spirit or letter&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;NO&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, French did not win any war that they fought against a major nation since 1860, with or without caveats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WWI/WWII don't count as French &quot;win&quot; under any reasonable interpretation of the claim being examined (see above for more details on WWI).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;YES&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, French won numerous wars against rebels/natives in colonial conflicts, at various points in history including modernity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Invasion of Algiers in 1830. I think that qualifies as unconditional victory. So strictly speaking the answer to your question is &quot;yes&quot;. This can be padded by yet more colonial-type victories that I'm too lazy to copy/paste out of Wiki (IndoChina)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Serval&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Malian Intervention&lt;/a&gt; was won by the French&lt;/strong&gt; controlling all cities previously held by the guerrillas. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technically speaking, these all count as &quot;Winning a war&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; and thus satisfy the original claim being examined. The fact the opponents were severely outclassed and outnumbered and out-resourced is worth noting, however. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;YES&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, non-French entities that lived in territory that of modern France won wars in the distant past, such as Viking-descended Normans winning &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hastings&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Battle of Hastings&lt;/a&gt; and the whole &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Conquest_of_England&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Norman conquest of England&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;YES&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, there were some other military victories. But none of them should really count as they all come with major caveats. E.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Allia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Battle of the Allia&lt;/a&gt;: Win. But that was Gauls, not really modern French. And Gauls lost the overall war to Rome.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the list of military conflicts that they had lost is indeed much longer, though some of &lt;a href=&quot;http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/jokes/bljokefrenchmilitaryhistory.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;that list&lt;/a&gt; is humorous spin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. People seem to be questioning why I don't count WWI as being within the scope of the claim. I'll detail below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The claim very specifically was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;anything &lt;strong&gt;without outside help&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...  War of alliances are fine as long as France is the main contributor and the military leader &lt;strong&gt;similar to how America is sometimes joined by much smaller contributions by other nations&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Based on those clarifications, the whole history of WWI leads to it not being even remotely in-scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First of all, Russian army and Britain combined provided more raw manpower than France (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;); AND suffered more casualties combined (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second, non-French participation was critical to France not losing to Germany in all 3 pivotal moments in the war:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;France was very nearly 100% conquered in 1914, with the only 2 reasons that it didn't happen being (a) BEC's participation in the Battle on the Marne, where they were instrumental to breaking the German line and (b) Russian/Serbian wins over Austria (which caused Germans to shift divisions to Eastern front, which created the lack of troops that contributed to the break in the line to be exploited). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even discounting that, we have similar situation in Verdun - where French weren't winning (admittedly, not losing either) until (a) British-led offensive on the Somme drew off some German troops from Verdan and (b) More importrantly, Brusilov offensive drew off even more German forces to the Eastern Front.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;British naval blockade stacked the war economically against Germany (French Navy wasn't even close to preventing German trade with the rest of the world, especially USA)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a bonus, Germany invested enormous resources into its navy which it couldn't use for anything productive in the end - which carried clear opportunity cost in terms of economic value of that investment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Additional meaningful non-French contributions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Americans financed British and French military capability heavily, both financially and through weapons sales.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;American entry into the war after Russia was knocked out of revolution shouldn't be discounted either, though that's the weakest argument among these.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of those contributions separately - and especially all of them conbined - far surpass the plank of &quot;without outside help&quot; or &quot;joined by &lt;em&gt;much smaller contributions&lt;/em&gt; by other nations&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2020-05-29T21:29:36.520" LastActivityDate="2020-05-29T21:29:36.520" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3244" CreationDate="2011-05-16T03:32:07.153" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In principle, yes. There are a few reports in the literature demonstrating that nutritional needs affect taste responsiveness. But, probably, is not known how extensive is the change or what is the threshold in nutritional status required for the change in taste responsiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Database searched: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Search terms: &lt;strong&gt;food taste nutritional needs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below, I show you the titles (with links to the abstracts), and one highlighted sentence of the abstract per publication. I did not read each whole article, but these are peer-reviewed, indexed publications, meaning that independent researchers in the field evaluated the text before being approved for publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20547661&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Glucagon signaling modulates sweet taste responsiveness.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In mice,) glucagon, which plays important roles in the maintenance of glucose homeostasis, enhances sweet taste responsiveness through local actions in the mouse gustatory epithelium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19860987&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Can Iberian red deer (Cervus elaphus hispanicus) discriminate among essential minerals in their diet?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, deer may be selecting minerals according to nutritional requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12035867&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Children's food acceptance patterns: the interface of ontogeny and nutrition needs.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Children's eating behaviors are driven by nutrient needs for growth and health&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1959039&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Appetite and taste preference in growing rats given various levels of protein nutrition.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The animals' primary concern was energy intake and their second concern was protein nutrition, regardless of flavoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2680" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T05:09:02.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3179" CreationDate="2011-05-16T05:00:30.467" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem here is in how you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shadowstats.com/article/cpi-glossary&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;define &amp;quot;inflation&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; and in the methodology differences in calculating it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a great example of the latter, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shadow Government Statistics's graph&lt;/a&gt; showing inflation using current vs. 1980 methodology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alternate Inflation Charts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CPI chart on the home page reflects our estimate of inflation for today as if it were calculated the same way it was in 1990. The CPI on the Alternate Data Series tab here reflects the CPI as if it were calculated using the methodologies in place in 1980. In general terms, methodological shifts in government reporting have depressed reported inflation, moving the concept of the CPI away from being a measure of the cost of living needed to maintain a constant standard of living.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fUncD.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T05:00:30.467" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3243" CreationDate="2011-05-16T05:40:15.650" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;What the article actually says is that increasing the severity of the filter has more effect on the number of health sites blocked than on the number of porn sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not the same thing as saying that they're more likely to block health sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a completely hypothetical example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Total number of health sites: 100&#xA;Total number of porn sites: 100&#xA;&#xA;Number of health sites blocked with less restrictive filtering: 1&#xA;Number of porn sites blocked with less restrictive filtering: 90&#xA;&#xA;Number of health sites blocked with more restrictive filtering: 50&#xA;Number of porn sites blocked with more restrictive filtering: 92&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, increasing the severity has little effect on the number of porn sites blocked (increasing from 90% to 92%, which is not much change) but has a big effect on the number of health sites blocked (increasing from 1% to 50%, which is a big change).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2011-05-16T13:17:31.967" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T13:17:31.967" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3251" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-16T05:40:21.653" Score="5" ViewCount="238" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to aromatherapists and articles such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://drdeborahserani.blogspot.com/2009/07/aromatherapy-enhances-our-immune-system.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, good smells boost our immune system, and conversely, bad smells deteriorate our bodies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a plausible mechanism to explain why this would happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this claim ever been validated by scientific evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-07-25T06:42:03.050" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T06:42:03.050" Title="Can good smells boost our immune system?" Tags="|biology|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3202" CreationDate="2011-05-16T05:47:00.573" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, if you close the lid &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; you flush.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/07/01/1143577.htm&quot;&gt;topic was report by Karl S. Kruszelnicki&lt;/a&gt;, a noted skeptic, science reporter and popular-science author in Australia. He cited Dr. Charles Gerba, a microbiologist from the University of Arizona, who has published on the topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;If you flush with the lid up, a polluted plume of bacteria and water vapour erupts out of the flushing toilet bowl.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, Dr Karl (as he is known) did not provide a detailed reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-05-16T06:17:01.920" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T06:17:01.920" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3253" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3261" CreationDate="2011-05-16T06:24:26.900" Score="69" ViewCount="7895" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today in the cafeteria my friend dropped a chicken wing on the floor and immediately picked it up and ate it. Afterward he claimed that the chicken wing was still safe to eat if it was consumed within 5 seconds after being on the floor. He said that it's the &quot;five second rule&quot;. Is this rule safe to follow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2760" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-25T11:30:30.133" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T21:17:38.953" Title="Is food still safe to eat within 5 seconds after being dropped on the floor (5 second rule)?" Tags="|medical-science|hygiene|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3254" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-16T06:32:40.420" Score="7" ViewCount="485" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there harmful levels of mercury in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;High Fructose Corn Syrup&lt;/a&gt; (HFCS)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was first alerted by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/5-reasons-high-fructose-c_b_861913.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; which claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She was then promptly shipped a big vat of HFCS that was used as part&#xA;  of the study that showed that HFCS often contains toxic levels of&#xA;  mercury because of chlor-alkali products used in its manufacturing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High fructose corn syrup is always found in very poor quality foods&#xA;  that are nutritionally vacuous and filled with all sorts of other&#xA;  disease promoting compounds, fats, salt, chemicals and even mercury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A further web search turned up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19171026&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this 2009 article&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;em&gt;Environ Health&lt;/em&gt;. Extract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mercury cell chlor-alkali products are used to produce thousands of&#xA;  other products including... high fructose corn syrup. A pilot study was&#xA;  conducted to determine if high fructose corn syrup contains mercury... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The samples were found to contain levels&#xA;  of mercury ranging from below a detection limit of 0.005 to 0.570&#xA;  micrograms mercury per gram of high fructose corn syrup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest mercury at the levels mentioned in the research above are at a harmful level and are uncommon as compared to other processed foods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2547" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T09:05:55.087" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T09:05:55.087" Title="Are there harmful levels of mercury in High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS)?" Tags="|nutrition|safety|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3255" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-16T06:33:02.077" Score="12" ViewCount="1703" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been claimed that selective breeding has resulted in fruit that is high in sugar and just as bad as eating candy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They have selectively bred fruit trees&#xA;   to much higher (sweeter sells better)&#xA;   sugar content fruit then your&#xA;   ancestors ate.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diabetesnewspaper.com/moderatesugar.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fruit has been described as &quot;nature's candy,&quot; because it is so high in sugar...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   Fruits in those days contained much&#xA;   less sugar and much more fiber than&#xA;   the modern fruits that have been&#xA;   derived from selective breeding&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wilstar.com/lowcarb/fruit.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-08-16T04:40:47.453" LastActivityDate="2016-03-11T16:27:49.163" Title="Has selective breeding increased the sugar level of fruits?" Tags="|nutrition|agriculture|sugar|fruit|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30367" CreationDate="2011-05-16T08:26:05.767" Score="30" ViewCount="2010" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently was e-mailed this link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://mashable.com/2011/05/09/sitting-down-infographic/&quot;&gt;Sitting down is killing you.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently this is based on a medical study and much of what is said in this range of adverts campaigning against sitting down makes sense and they do cite quite a few references. However, this particular campaign just seems a little bit too over the top for me. I'm wondering how much of it is accurate and how much is inflated to get a reaction out of the public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but the figures they give in these ads and the way it's portrayed makes it seem like sitting down as most of us do in the average desk job is going to kill you much quicker than I can accept as plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance I can agree that the human body wasn't designed to sit down for 8+ hours a day. But if I eat healthy and still go to the gym three times a week and stay reasonably mobile while not at work, can it be that dangerous? This particular range of ads even goes as far to suggest that even exercising doesn't lower the health-risks that the evil chairs are contributing by much. I find that very hard to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2439" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-06-08T18:40:42.177" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T06:40:08.197" Title="Is sitting dangerous?" Tags="|medical-science|behavior|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3046" CreationDate="2011-05-16T09:42:14.903" Score="22" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 0.2% statistic comes from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/&quot;&gt;The&#xA;  Home Office in the UK&lt;/a&gt;, not the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs/hosb1501.pdf&quot;&gt;Religion in Prisons 1999 and 2000&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I found it on&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://thoughtfulfaith.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/atheists-in-prison/&quot;&gt;thoughtfulfaith.wordpress.com&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;  which claims to debunk this claim and&#xA;  has a good use of internal citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(For archival purposes)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;[...] 31.9% of inmates claimed to&#xA;  have no religion, of whom 0.2% who&#xA;  specifically answered that they were&#xA;  atheists and 0.1% who answered that&#xA;  they were agnostic.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thoughtfulfaith.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/atheists-in-prison/&quot;&gt;Thoughtful Faith&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The blog is indeed true, as sad as it&#xA;  is. I checked the report and verified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is from the Atheism Stack Exchange Data Dump. I don't know the author since data dumps are anonymized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="808" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-06-14T07:35:20.927" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T07:35:20.927" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3253" CreationDate="2011-05-16T11:10:26.820" Score="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Five_second.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HppqF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Image Source&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howard.edu/newsroom/releases/2004/041001clarke.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jillian Clarke&lt;/a&gt; researched this in 2003 when she was a high school science intern at the &lt;strong&gt;University of Illinois&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/news/stories/news2467.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Among Clarke's findings&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;70% of women and 56% of men are familiar with the 5-second rule, and most use it to make decisions about tasty treats that slip through their fingers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Women are more likely than men to eat food that's been on the floor. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cookies and candy are much more likely to be picked up and eaten than&#xA;  cauliflower or broccoli&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;And, &lt;strong&gt;if you drop your food on a floor that does contain&#xA;  microorganisms, the food can be&#xA;  contaminated in 5 seconds or less&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clarke was awarded the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners#2004&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2004 IG Nobel Prize&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;strong&gt;Public Health&lt;/strong&gt; for her work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Food Scientist &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clemson.edu/public/psatv/health/five-second-rule.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paul Dawson&lt;/a&gt; at &lt;strong&gt;Clemson University&lt;/strong&gt; also looked into it. &lt;br/&gt;His findings were published in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2672.2006.03171.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Journal of Applied Microbiology&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Three experiments were conducted to&#xA;  determine the survival and transfer of&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Salmonella Typhimurium&lt;/em&gt; from wood, tile&#xA;  or carpet to bologna (sausage) and&#xA;  bread&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the case of the 5-second-rule &lt;strong&gt;we&#xA;  found that bacteria was transferred&#xA;  from tabletops and floors to the food&#xA;  within five seconds&lt;/strong&gt;, that is the 5-second-rule is not an accurate guide&#xA;  when it comes to eating food that has&#xA;  fallen on the floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;MythBusters&lt;/strong&gt; also &lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/db/human-body/5-second-rule-with-food.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;busted the 5-second-rule&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even if something spends a mere&#xA;  millisecond on the floor, it attracts&#xA;  bacteria. &lt;strong&gt;How dirty it gets depends on&#xA;  the food's moisture, surface geometry&#xA;  and floor condition — not time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-five-second-rule-minimyth.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is the video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-05-17T00:32:18.747" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T00:32:18.747" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3264" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3266" CreationDate="2011-05-16T12:43:04.730" Score="13" ViewCount="1377" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;http://hubpages.com/hub/Scientists_cure_cancer__but_no_one_takes_notice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice&lt;/a&gt; claims big pharma and the media are ignoring dichloroacetate because it's out of patent protection - but that question is answered at &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/250/dichloroacetate-dca-as-a-cure-for-cancer&quot;&gt;Dichloroacetate (DCA) as a cure for cancer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bit I'm interested in is where it says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In human bodies there is a natural&#xA;  cancer fighting human cell, the&#xA;  mitochondria, but they need to be&#xA;  triggered to be effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they fight cancer in any way, shape or form, or is the author mistaking them with &lt;a href=&quot;http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Midi-chlorian&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;midi-chlorians&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, are mitochondria cells?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-04-14T21:10:03.117" Title="Are mitochondria &quot;natural cancer fighting cells&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3264" CreationDate="2011-05-16T12:59:38.893" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, mitochondria are not cells, they are organelles and reside inside the cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statement is probably a simplification (or misunderstanding) derived from the observation that a lot of cancer cells get their energy from glucose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many cancer cells consume glucose avidly and produce lactic acid rather than catabolizing glucose via the TCA cycle, which is key for generating ATP in nonhypoxic normal cells. The avid uptake of glucose by tumors is the foundation for the detection and monitoring of human cancers by fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/66/18/8927.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CancerRes.AACRJournals.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mitochondria are often colloquially referred to as the cell's &quot;power plant&quot;. It oxidizes glucose to produce ATP. From this it follows that if you could stimulate the mitochondria further, it'd consume glucose at higher levels, thus effectively &quot;starving&quot; the cancer cells that also consume glucose, and as such inhibit cancerous growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the production of ATP from glucose is a key part of our metabolism. This is an end in itself, and I do not think it is reasonable to interpret the mitochondrial consumption of glucoses as an active adaption for fighting cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T12:59:38.893" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3264" CreationDate="2011-05-16T13:14:19.967" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aside from their main function in cellular respiration, mitochondria &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9721092&quot;&gt;play an essential role in the regulation of programmed cell death&lt;/a&gt; (apoptosis). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A variety of key events in apoptosis&#xA;  focus on mitochondria, including the&#xA;  release of caspase activators (such as&#xA;  cytochrome c), changes in electron&#xA;  transport, loss of mitochondrial&#xA;  transmembrane potential, altered&#xA;  cellular oxidation-reduction, and&#xA;  participation of pro- and&#xA;  antiapoptotic Bcl-2 family proteins. -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9721092&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cancer cells have to find a way to evade triggering apoptosis in order to survive, and the treatment of cancer often relies on triggering apoptosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, it is now clear that some&#xA;  oncogenic mutations disrupt apoptosis,&#xA;  leading to tumor initiation,&#xA;  progression or metastasis. Conversely,&#xA;  compelling evidence indicates that&#xA;  other oncogenic changes promote&#xA;  apoptosis, thereby producing selective&#xA;  pressure to override apoptosis during&#xA;  multistage carcinogenesis. Finally, it&#xA;  is now well documented that most&#xA;  cytotoxic anticancer agents induce&#xA;  apoptosis, raising the intriguing&#xA;  possibility that defects in apoptotic&#xA;  programs contribute to treatment&#xA;  failure.  -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10688869&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strictly speaking the statement is wrong, mitochondria are not cells and they don't explicitly fight cancer. But they are involved in apoptosis, a very important mechanism against cancer. This sounds pretty much like a reporter trying to summarize a topic he doesn't understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-05-16T13:49:23.583" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T13:49:23.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3264" CreationDate="2011-05-16T15:00:32.457" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mitochondria contain a large number of radicals.  The good thing is that these radicals are &lt;a href=&quot;http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/C/CellularRespiration.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;safely tucked away on the inside of a cell wall which comprises the mitochondria&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cell death, the cell wall sometimes fractures.  I haven't been reading up on mitochondrial research recently, so I can't place the timing of the cell wall rupture prior to the cell death (which might indicate it is a causal relationship) or after the cell death (which would indicate a consequence of the preceding death).  In either case, without a &lt;a href=&quot;http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/C/CellularRespiration.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;functioning mitochondria, nearly 80% of the energy available from glucose is unattainable&lt;/a&gt;, so mitochondrial damage and cell death are closely related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem with combating cancer is that it's an overly broad description which applies to any unwanted / unregulated growth.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://pshycopymedia.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-cancer-develops.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Any malfunction of the cell where it stops responding to cues that regulate growth is called cancer&lt;/a&gt;.  Normal cells detect their neighbors and slow down the growth process, while cancerous cells grow regardless of feedback signal(s).  Sometimes this leads to localized starvation of sugars, oxygen, or other resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human cells have a fail-safe in that they &lt;a href=&quot;http://agham.asti.dost.gov.ph/3rd/inside/extras/p53_mole.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;contain a protein p53&lt;/a&gt; which is triggered under certain circumstances.  This protein signals the cells to &quot;cellularly age&quot; meaning the cell will no longer be able to reproduce, but will maintain and repair itself.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telomere&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This cellular aging is based on a clock which seems to count its time in number of divisions&lt;/a&gt;.  It has been a long time since I did such research, but if I recall correctly, a cell has about 90 divisions prior to aging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some cancers manage to disrupt this safeguard, and they are referred to as &quot;growths&quot;, &quot;benign tumors&quot;, &quot;dead cancer cells&quot;, &quot;non-cancerous tumors&quot;, etc. while active growths are generally referred too as cancer.  In the research fields we view(ed) reality as it all being cancer, but some of it was &quot;arrested&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-radical_theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;There is a theory that cancer can be induced by damaging cellular components with free radicals&lt;/a&gt;.  A leak in a mitochondria might allow damage to a cell, and depending on what is damaged (and to what degree) it might actually trigger a cancer.  While the possibility exists, rest assured that it is so small that you manage to carry around multiple millions of cells for upwards of 80 years without guaranteeing that it will happen in a single cell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rice.edu/~jenky/sports/antiox.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This free radical theory is the reason why people believe that eating anti-oxidants can promote better health&lt;/a&gt;; however, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wellnessletter.com/html/ds/dsEnzymeSupps.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I am not aware of any research (due to ignorance, not necessarily because it is a false theory) that indicates that anti-oxidants survive the transition from stomach to bloodstream&lt;/a&gt;, or that they get internalized from the bloodstream to the cellular cytoplasm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the public &quot;knows&quot; that cancer is a growth of existing cells, the entire public reaction is to deal with the problem as a disease.   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3274977&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This dichotomy might be the reason that the public has so many misconceptions about cancer.&lt;/a&gt;  We &quot;catch cancer&quot; and &quot;get rid of it&quot; in casual talk; but, in reality (with the exception of a very few viral cancers) there is no outside agent: one might as well be talking about catching a lung or a kidney.  It requires quite a bit of discipline to readjust our thinking to &quot;our bodies are malfunctioning&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as mitochondria, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v38/n11/fig_tab/ng1106-1232_F1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;their role is to provide a cellular membrane where the process of the electron transport chain can occur&lt;/a&gt;.  That provides both energy and free radicals.  The energy is not tagged for a particular consumer, and a the cell that needs it to survive is the same cell that will use it when malfunctioning in a manner we call cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2767" LastEditorDisplayName="user2767" LastEditDate="2011-05-16T20:56:17.833" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T20:56:17.833" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3191" CreationDate="2011-05-16T17:20:13.747" Score="39" Body="&lt;h1&gt;God? No.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does this piece of news correspond to&#xA;  the findings of the studies?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8510711/Belief-in-God-is-part-of-human-nature-Oxford-study.html&quot;&gt;Belief in God is part of human nature&lt;/a&gt;  - The Telegraph&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/12/religious-belief-is-human-nature-huge-new-study-claims/?hpt=T2&quot;&gt;Religious belief is human nature, huge new study claims&lt;/a&gt; - CNN    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All correspond to the findings of a press release...    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2011/110513.html&quot;&gt;Humans 'predisposed' to believe in gods and the afterlife&lt;/a&gt; - University of Oxford&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and to any interviews given by the two academics from Oxford University that led the studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are the studies scientific or are they&#xA;  philosophical essays?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Philosophical essays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ianramseycentre.org/&quot;&gt;The Cognition, Religion, and Theology Project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Funding source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.templeton.org/&quot;&gt;John Templeton Foundation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grant Amount: $3,876,247&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Start Date: October 2007     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our Philosophy Grantmaking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The division of labor and increasing&#xA;  specialization in most fields mean&#xA;  that some of the most interesting,&#xA;  difficult, and profound questions do&#xA;  not get addressed. We try to give&#xA;  great minds the space and resources to&#xA;  stretch their imaginations. We want to&#xA;  work with contrarians, with&#xA;  intellectual entrepreneurs. -&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/our-philosophy-grantmaking&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Leader(s)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cam.ox.ac.uk/staff/dr-justin-barrett/&quot;&gt;Justin L. Barrett&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, Senior Researcher&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icea.ox.ac.uk/&quot;&gt;Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology&lt;/a&gt; [ICEA]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isca.ox.ac.uk/&quot;&gt;Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology&lt;/a&gt; [ISCA], University of Oxford&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/people/associates/trigg/&quot;&gt;Roger Trigg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, Senior Research Fellow&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ianramseycentre.info/&quot;&gt;The Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion&lt;/a&gt;, University of Oxford&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project goals.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The overarching goal of the project is&#xA;  to support scientific research that&#xA;  promises to yield new evidence&#xA;  regarding how the structures of human&#xA;  minds inform and constrain religious&#xA;  expression. The project will conduct&#xA;  research on the cognitive&#xA;  underpinnings of religious concepts&#xA;  and practices – for example, ideas&#xA;  about gods and spirits, the afterlife,&#xA;  spirit possession, prayer, ritual,&#xA;  religious expertise, and connections&#xA;  between religious thought and morality&#xA;  and pro-social behavior. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cam.ox.ac.uk/fileadmin/CAM/Anthropology_CRT_FAQs.pdf&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Science...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/3270329&quot;&gt;Towards a Cognitive Science of Religion&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://religion.ua.edu/aboutrelbiolawson.html&quot;&gt;E. Thomas Lawson&lt;/a&gt;, 2000.    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iacsr.com/Home.html&quot;&gt;International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion&lt;/a&gt; (IACSR) founded in 2006.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...CSR’s ability to bridge the gap&#xA;  between strictly evolutionary or&#xA;  biological treatments of religion and&#xA;  strictly social approaches. Evidently,&#xA;  however, the issues addressed by this&#xA;  field are gaining momentum in the&#xA;  public sphere in part because of the&#xA;  anti-religious rhetoric that has come&#xA;  to parasitize the field. We aim to&#xA;  harness this momentum and attention to&#xA;  maximize the scientific potential of&#xA;  CSR, and to engage theological and&#xA;  philosophical perspectives in a&#xA;  potentially mutually productive,&#xA;  instead of antagonistic, manner,&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;pursuing truth wherever the evidence&#xA;  leads&lt;/strong&gt;. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cam.ox.ac.uk/research/cognition-religion-and-theology/archive-of-cognitive-science-of-religion-methods/more-on-csr/&quot;&gt;Project website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Main findings of the Cognition, Religion and Theology Project&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Studies by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icea.ox.ac.uk/about-us/staff/students/emily-burdett/&quot;&gt;Emily Reed Burdett&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cam.ox.ac.uk/staff/dr-justin-barrett/&quot;&gt;Justin Barrett&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2011/110513.html&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;...press release text.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm/volumeID_24-editionID_199-ArticleID_1826-getfile_getPDF/thepsychologist%5Cpsy0411barrett2.pdf&quot;&gt;The cognitive science of&#xA;religion.&lt;/a&gt; Barrett, Burdett.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bu.edu/psych/faculty/dkelemen/&quot;&gt;Deborah Kelemen&lt;/a&gt; from Boston&#xA;University finds&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2011/110513.html&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;...press release text.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bu.edu/childcognition/publications/KelemenRosset%282009%29.pdf&quot;&gt;The Human Function Compunction: Teleological explanation in adults.&lt;/a&gt; Kelemen, Rosset. 2009&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scipie.net/docs/2007/Kelemen_PS_2004.pdf&quot;&gt;Are Children ‘Intuitive Theists’?&lt;/a&gt; Kelemen, 2003.     &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Experiments involving&#xA;adults&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2011/110513.html&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;...press release text.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jessebering.com/pdf/cognitive-psychology-of-belief-in-supernatural.pdf&quot;&gt;The cognitive psychology of belief in the supernatural.&lt;/a&gt; Bering, 2006. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jessebering.com/pdf/reasoning-about-dead-agents.pdf&quot;&gt;Reasoning about dead agents reveals possible adaptive trends.&lt;/a&gt; Bering, et al. 2005.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jessebering.com/pdf/development-of-afterlife-beliefs.pdf&quot;&gt;The development of ‘afterlife’ beliefs in secularly and religiously schooled children.&lt;/a&gt; Bering, et al. 2005.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Cognition, Religion and Theology Project's interpretation of the main findings&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/news_stories/2011/110513.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;From the press release...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The studies (both analytical and&#xA;  empirical) conclude that humans are&#xA;  predisposed to believe in gods and an&#xA;  afterlife, and that both theology and&#xA;  atheism are reasoned responses to what&#xA;  is a basic impulse of the human mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;‘This project does not set out to&#xA;  prove god or gods exist. Just because&#xA;  we find it easier to think in a&#xA;  particular way does not mean that it&#xA;  is true in fact. If we look at why&#xA;  religious beliefs and practices&#xA;  persist in societies across the world,&#xA;  we conclude that individuals bound by&#xA;  religious ties might be more likely to&#xA;  cooperate as societies. Interestingly,&#xA;  we found that religion is less likely&#xA;  to thrive in populations living in&#xA;  cities in developed nations where&#xA;  there is already a strong social&#xA;  support network.’&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Project Director Justin Barrett, Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;‘This project suggests that religion&#xA;  is not just something for a peculiar&#xA;  few to do on Sundays instead of&#xA;  playing golf. We have gathered a body&#xA;  of evidence that suggests that&#xA;  religion is a common fact of human&#xA;  nature across different societies.&#xA;  This suggests that attempts to&#xA;  suppress religion are likely to be&#xA;  short-lived as human thought seems to&#xA;  be rooted to religious concepts, such&#xA;  as the existence of supernatural&#xA;  agents or gods, and the possibility of&#xA;  an afterlife or pre-life.’&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Project&#xA;  Co-Director Professor Roger Trigg&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Reality&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; &lt;/sub&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The science does not support the conclusion.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given Dr. Barrett knows he is...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...an observant Christian who&#xA;  believes in “an all-knowing,&#xA;  all-powerful, perfectly good God who&#xA;  brought the universe into being,” as&#xA;  he wrote in an e-mail message. “I&#xA;  believe that the purpose for people is&#xA;  to love God and love each other.” -&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html?pagewanted=11&amp;amp;ei=5087&amp;amp;em&amp;amp;en=166dbd9e75680e73&amp;amp;ex=1173243600&amp;amp;adxnnlx=1305522983-QuW2p/rqr7fhZhVgOHHeqg&quot;&gt;nytimes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He must also know this increases the chances his research could be skewed by&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Confirmation bias&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These intriguing findings would&#xA;  certainly be strengthened by&#xA;  replications with additional stimuli&#xA;  sets, alternative methods, and with&#xA;  different cultural populations. As&#xA;  they stand, they suggest one possible&#xA;  cognitive reason for the culturally&#xA;  widespread existence of religious&#xA;  beliefs in deities that either order&#xA;  or create the natural world: such&#xA;  ideas resonate with an early&#xA;  developing and persistent intuition&#xA;  that the &#xA;  natural world looks&#xA;  purposefully designed.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Positing a&#xA;  designer (or designers) fits with our&#xA;  intuitions. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm?volumeID=24&amp;amp;editionID=199&amp;amp;ArticleID=1826&quot;&gt;Barrett&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the problem of&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias#Biased_interpretation&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Biased interpretation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are moral realists. Gods, by virtue&#xA;  of having access to the facts of any&#xA;  matter, also know the moral facts of&#xA;  the matter, and (perhaps not&#xA;  surprisingly) tend to see things the&#xA;  way we do. Theists, then, can glibly&#xA;  accept moral realism. Not so for the&#xA;  atheist. Atheists may have&#xA;  approximately the same moral&#xA;  intuitions and behave just as morally&#xA;  as theists, but have some intellectual&#xA;  work to do that the theist has managed&#xA;  to avoid by relying on the authority&#xA;  of the gods. Atheists have this extra&#xA;  work to do in the moral domain, but&#xA;  that does not mean that it cannot be&#xA;  done. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://files.meetup.com/918043/Barrett%202009.pdf&quot;&gt;Barrett&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And good old fashioned&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonization&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Demonization&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Refusing to accept that, in principle,&#xA;  science could ever allow space for&#xA;  non-material, even theistic,&#xA;  explanations demands philosophical&#xA;  argument, not an assertion of the&#xA;  supremacy of science. The obscurantist&#xA;  refusal to allow the theory of&#xA;  Intelligent Design to be even&#xA;  discussed in a scientific context can&#xA;  only be the product of a&#xA;  deeply-ingrained materialism, even&#xA;  atheism.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/cis/trigg/lecture.html&quot;&gt;The Religious Roots of Science&lt;/a&gt;, Roger Trigg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Bottom Line...&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; &lt;/sub&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Essence of the Skeptical Position*.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(edited for brevity)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The burden of proof lies with the claimant.     &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The claim stands or falls on the quality  of the evidence the proponent&#xA;  can provide.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To be taken seriously, claims must be testable, at least in principle. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Claims must be falsifiable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The evidence must be public and accessible to all competent critics. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Science is a public activity based on &lt;strong&gt;trust&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Failed on all counts.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sld.cu/galerias/pdf/sitios/revsalud/beyerstein_cience_vs_pseudoscience.pdf&quot;&gt;Distinguishing Science from Pseudoscience&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Beyerstein&quot;&gt;Beyerstein&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Misc...     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brill.nl/journal-cognition-and-culture&quot;&gt;Journal of Cognition and Culture&lt;/a&gt;, ED: E. Lawson and Pascal Boyer. Book editor: Justin L. Barrett.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2009/08/07/cognitive-science-gaining-ground-in-us-academic-religion-studies/&quot;&gt;Cognitive science gaining ground in U.S. academic religion studies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-08T09:04:30.413" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T09:04:30.413" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2314" CreationDate="2011-05-16T17:39:30.750" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;General claims need to be backed up by specific instances.  The only specific instance cited (actually contained within a link) was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usacarry.com/forums/off-topic/12469-snopes-exposed.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.usacarry.com/forums/off-topic/12469-snopes-exposed.html&lt;/a&gt; where &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few months ago, when my State Farm agent Bud Gregg in Mandeville hoisted a political sign referencing Barack Obama and made a big splash across the Internet, 'supposedly' the Mikkelson's claim to have researched this issue before posting their findings on snopes.com. In their statement they claimed the corporate office of State Farm pressured Gregg into taking down the sign, when in fact nothing of the sort 'ever' took place. I personally contacted David Mikkelson (and he replied back to me) thinking he would want to get to the bottom of this and I gave him Bud Gregg's contact phone numbers - and Bud was going to give him phone numbers to the big exec's at State Farm in Illinois who would have been willing to speak with him about it. He never called Bud. In fact, I learned from Bud Gregg that no one from snopes.com ever contacted anyone with State Farm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in reference to this article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/chicken.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/chicken.asp&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up, snopes wrote an article about a state farm agent in Mandeville, Louisiana posting a sign that on one side said &quot;A Taxpayer voting for Barack Obama is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders&quot; and on the other side said &quot;SAY WHAT???  `My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world.  I hope you'll join me as we try to change it.' -Barack Obama&quot;.  Snopes traced the &quot;chicken voting for colonel sanders&quot; simile to several previous political uses dating back to 1978 with cited sources, and traced the debunked Obama quote to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/change.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;joke posted to a National Review Online blog&lt;/a&gt;.  The snopes article mentions in passing that they contacted &quot;A State Farm representative [who] said that Bud Gregg's office sign bore these messages until July 3, 2008 and that the company had requested the sign be removed as soon as they became aware of it because the sign was inconsistent with State Farm's policy of not endorsing candidates or taking sides in political campaigns.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the writer (who lists his address in &quot;Studio City, CA. 91604-5039&quot;) mentioned that Bud Gregg was his personal insurance agent (sort of strange having an agent in Louisiana when he lists his address in California).  His only concrete argument against the page, was that his friend Bud Gregg told him that he was never contacted by State Farm or Snopes, and that nobody from Snopes ever talked to any representative at State Farm.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/snopescom/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Factcheck.org looked into it&lt;/a&gt; and got a nearly identical response from state farm about the matter with the same details mentioned in the snopes article.  Factcheck further goes on to see no evidence of liberal/conservative bias from the sampling of articles reviewed at snopes, saying they maintain a &quot;poker face&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2773" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T21:03:14.907" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T21:03:14.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3274" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3281" CreationDate="2011-05-16T17:57:38.707" Score="17" ViewCount="3107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always thought &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_pitch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;perfect pitch&lt;/a&gt; was a lot like language - it's significantly easier to learn/retain if it was learned as a child, but it's still possible to learn as an adult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are &lt;a href=&quot;https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/811/what-programs-help-me-to-learn-obtain-an-absolute-pitch-hearing&quot;&gt;some musicians&lt;/a&gt; who believe either is &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; to be learned as a child, or you have to be &lt;em&gt;born&lt;/em&gt; with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any cases of adults learning to have perfect pitch, or any studies which suggest that they can't?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:41:41.063" LastActivityDate="2022-08-09T11:51:38.600" Title="Is perfect pitch something you're &quot;born with?&quot;" Tags="|psychology|music|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3246" CreationDate="2011-05-16T21:07:35.783" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with DVK's analysis that the question requires knowing (a) who are the French? and (b) what is winning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, France was until its loss to the Prussians in 1870 the pre-eminent military power in Europe, which is why it generally fought alone against coalitions, and, also, why coalitions were formed to contain it. Until 1870, it was the French who had the reputation for being militaristic organizational geniuses and the Germans who had the reputation for being artists and philosophers, but militarily ineffective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of uncontested French wins, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theotherside.co.uk/tm-heritage/background/100yearswar.htm&quot;&gt;the French were victorious at the close of the 100 Years War, which resulted in the extinguishing of English claims to large swathes of French territory.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="524" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T21:07:35.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3274" CreationDate="2011-05-16T22:59:23.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oliver Sacks (psychologist) wrote a book called &quot;Musicophelia&quot; which addresses how our brains process and are affected by music:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1400033535&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Musicophilia-Tales-Music-Revised-Expanded/dp/1400033535/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1305586514&amp;amp;sr=8-1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also talks about things that go wrong...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He mentions the incidence of &quot;perfect pitch&quot; or more properly &quot;absolute pitch&quot; as a rather small percentage of the population.   Most can accurately sing a melody they've heard only one time or so... But the ability to accurately name pitches is considerably rarer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is... &quot;That's a B-flat above middle C&quot;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This ability can degrade; he lists cases of individuals with the ability who will loose part of the listening range at various points in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He does think that this is an ability that a percentage of the population is simply born with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1331" LastActivityDate="2011-05-16T22:59:23.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3274" CreationDate="2011-05-16T23:38:11.743" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sakakibara, A. (1999). A longitudinal study of a process for acquiring absolute pitch. Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology 47.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;lists that everyone is born with the ability to learn absolute pitch and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Saffran, J. R. &amp;amp; Griepentrog, G. J. (2001). Absolute pitch in infant auditory learning: Evidence for developmental reorganization. Developmental Psychology 37: 74–85. Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;lists that people can learn absolute pitch just like they learn color names, but they are, however, a lot behind. Imagine yourself learning color names at your current age: it's hard, but it's not impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.color-hex.com/colorimg.php?color=abcdef&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blue-shaded square http://www.color-hex.com/colorimg.php?color=abcdef&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not just &lt;em&gt;blue&lt;/em&gt;, it could be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shades_of_blue&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one of the many shades of blue&lt;/a&gt;. Is it baby blue, maya blue, sky blue, light blue, or powder blue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastEditorDisplayName="user1755" LastEditDate="2012-01-06T23:51:34.620" LastActivityDate="2012-01-06T23:51:34.620" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3253" CreationDate="2011-05-16T23:45:30.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2007/05/5second_dropped.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2007/05/5second_dropped.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it is, in fact, 30 seconds for wet food, or much longer for dry food, according to this study&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2786" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-09-10T11:31:04.953" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T11:31:04.953" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="943" CreationDate="2011-05-17T02:21:07.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Human growth hormone, while technically a peptide hormone and not a steroid hormone, might otherwise fit your criteria at least in spirit.  It's been involved in many high profile doping scandals; for example, Ben Johnson, Tim Montgomery, and of course Sylvester Stallone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In long-term use, it &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; cause users to develop &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acromegaly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;acromegalic&lt;/a&gt; features, the most superficially obvious of which would be a prominent &quot;lantern jaw&quot; and forehead &quot;bossing&quot;. The growth of the jaw would also cause spreading of the teeth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I can't find a credible source where Arnold admits to anything other than anabolic steroid use, I have been told by a professor that Arnold Schwarzenegger's face is the classic manifestation of this side-effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for this specific example, yes, there may be some visible signs of using an exogenous substance versus &quot;dieting and exercise&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies for the shortage of citations, I'm apparently limited to 2 links as a new user.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1038/bjp.2008.99/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; verifies the use, the biology, and the allegations against the athletes listed in the first paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2465" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T02:21:07.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3253" CreationDate="2011-05-17T02:33:25.083" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;While perhaps not a real answer for the question, I would like to highlight some grass roots skepticism that a question such as this can be the basis for.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/04/health/webmd/main1774287.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An actual scientific study on this phenomenon/saying was conducted by a High School senior&lt;/a&gt;.  See, ANYONE can do real science, and it may even prove interesting to folks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, someone really has conducted a scientific study of the five-second rule. It was the project of high school senior Jillian Clarke during a six-week internship in the food science and nutrition department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Meredith Agle, then a doctoral candidate, supervised the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Jillian swabbed the floors around the University in the lab, hall, dormitory, and cafeteria to see how many organisms we could isolate,&amp;quot; Agle tells WebMD. &amp;quot;We examined the swabs, and there were very few microorganisms. That surprised me. I told her to do it again.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results were the same. Agle has since earned her doctoral degree and is a scientist in new product development for Rich Foods in Buffalo, N.Y. &amp;quot;I think the floors were so clean, from a microbiological point of view, because floors are dry, and most pathogens — like salmonella, listeria, or E. coli — can't survive without moisture.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_%28video_game%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Just remember, if it's cake on the floor, it's a lie!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T21:17:38.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3118" CreationDate="2011-05-17T02:53:38.343" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LoVTZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Humour&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no credible sightings for Elvis.  In actuality, a real Elvis sightinig ranks up there with the Ivory Billed Woodpecker, Bigfoot, or Chupecabra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elvispresleynews.com/ElvisDeathCertificate.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This website has Elvis's death certificate, autopsy report, and exhumation examination posted on it&lt;/a&gt;.  There was some controversy about the cause of death, and the final attribution.  One of Elvis's doctors was under investigation for malpractice (and considering the prescriptions in Elvis's possession, with good cause).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jkCLf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Death Certificate&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wy2ir.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Elvis Exhumed&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/theres_no_debate_elvis_is_not_alive/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry also did a write up and study&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no facts to support the theory that Elvis faked his death, and the debate itself is not valid. It is time to set the record straight and properly frame the issue because this faulty debate has gone on far too long. Many Elvis fans are tired of it, the tabloids seem to have become tired of it, and certainly the Presley family has heard enough about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article concludes with an interesting bit (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several years ago, another construct of the alive vs. dead debate was presented to me in the form of a question: &lt;em&gt;“Can you prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Elvis Presley died on August 16, 1977?” How did the burden of proof get shifted to the side where all the direct and circumstantial evidence supports the fact that Elvis Presley did in fact die on August 16, 1977?&lt;/em&gt; By asking this question, the Alivers are attempting to prop up the debate as if they bear no burden to prove their claims. They are insinuating that if I cannot absolutely prove that Elvis Presley died, he must have faked his death. It’s a nice trick, but it doesn’t work. The burden of proof, by legal standards, lies with the person who makes the charge. When a person charges that Elvis Presley faked his death—a claim that defies all wisdom, logic, and documented information—the burden to prove that charge falls squarely on that person’s shoulders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the person making the charge must not only establish positive evidence of his claim but must also negate the oppositional evidence. Have the Alivers negated the statements of eyewitnesses who saw Elvis’s body after he was pronounced dead at 3:30 pm that day? No, they have not. Have they negated the voluminous body of documentation pertaining to the death? No, they have not. Have they negated the statements, many taken under oath, from the physicians who conducted the autopsy on Elvis’s body? No, they have not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are two opposing sides and one side has no facts and no evidence, can there be a valid debate? The answer is no, which is why the idea that Elvis faked his death should be erased from our collective consciousness. The debate itself is not valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either that, or you can take Skava's comment as the answer.  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ljUFA.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Evil Elvis Lives&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T02:53:38.343" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3288" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3297" CreationDate="2011-05-17T03:13:14.300" Score="13" ViewCount="985" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many articles on how baldness is inherited (mostly from the mother's side of the family). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the BBC Life program, the narrator linked baldness to higher levels of testosterone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is baldness inherited?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2011-05-17T11:42:51.320" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T11:42:51.320" Title="Is baldness inherited?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|genetics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3288" CreationDate="2011-05-17T03:31:24.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, baldness is hereditary. In fact, it has to do with your mother. Apparently, you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.essortment.com/male-pattern-baldness-59917.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;inherit baldness from your mother&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baldnessnews.com/general-information/baldness-and-heredity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.baldnessnews.com/general-information/baldness-and-heredity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T03:31:24.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3292" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3298" CreationDate="2011-05-17T04:07:26.007" Score="23" ViewCount="5960" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do we have more archaeological evidence than the artists and writers in the Romatic period to support the idea that Vikings don't wear horned helmets in battles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2189/did-vikings-really-wear-horns-on-their-helmets&quot;&gt;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2189/did-vikings-really-wear-horns-on-their-helmets&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would &quot;common sense&quot; be a sufficient reason to support such an idea (that warriors wearing horned helmets are more easily caught and killed by enemies)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2547" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-11-26T20:00:16.433" LastActivityDate="2021-07-27T18:23:09.317" Title="Did Vikings wear horned helmets in battles?" Tags="|history|vikings|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3288" CreationDate="2011-05-17T05:33:38.890" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Baldness is heritable, it does have to do with testosterone and you inherit one of the responsible genes from you mum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, a  particular variant of the gene that makes a protein called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_receptor&quot;&gt;Androgen Receptor&lt;/a&gt; is required for the most common form of baldness to develop. Androgen receptor binds to testosterone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, the AR gene lives on the X-chromosome. Because all males inherit their Y-chromosome for their Dad, they have to get their X- from Mum. So, if you're worried about going bald you should look at your mum's brothers to get an idea of what you might have inherited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no doubt other genes that contribute to baldness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the paper that uncovered the link for AR (open access FTW):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hillmer, A. M., Hanneken, S.,&#xA;Ritzmann, et. al  2005 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1226186/?tool=pubmed&quot;&gt;Genetic&#xA;Variation in the Human Androgen&#xA;Receptor Gene Is the Major&#xA;Determinant of Common Early-Onset&#xA;Androgenetic Alopecia&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Am J Hum&#xA;Genet&lt;/em&gt;, 77, p.140-148.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2368" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T05:33:38.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3292" CreationDate="2011-05-17T08:26:28.850" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;We don't have any evidence they &lt;strong&gt;did&lt;/strong&gt; wear horned helmets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Weapon-DK-Publishing/dp/0756622107/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1305620253&amp;amp;sr=1-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Weapon - A Visual History Of Arms And Armor&lt;/a&gt;, describes viking equipment on pages 53-56; the most common viking helmets were the simple metal plated helmet, Gjermundbu-style helmets and Wenceslas helmets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Horned helmets are not even mentioned.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The leftmost helmet is a Wenceslas helm, and rightmost is a Gjermundbu-style helmet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DHWlt.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regia.org/helmet.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; website; it mentions viking equipment, and there's no trace of horned helmets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So where did the image of a horned-helmeted Viking come from?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, the idea of vikings wearing horned helmets originated from one of the tapestries discovered on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oseberg_ship&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oseberg ship&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What we do have is one single piece of&#xA;  evidence, the ninth century Oseberg&#xA;  tapestry, suggesting a rare ceremonial&#xA;  use (the relevant figure on the&#xA;  tapestry may even be that of a god,&#xA;  rather than representative of real&#xA;  Vikings)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Oseberg tapestry:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9QXFw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="1781" LastEditDate="2011-07-07T20:29:51.920" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T20:29:51.920" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3274" CreationDate="2011-05-17T13:55:19.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is good evidence that, in practice, one should not expect to learn perfect pitch as an adult.  One &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aip.org/148th/deutsch.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;relevant study&lt;/a&gt; shows a very clear decline in the rates of having perfect pitch as a function of when musical training began--but that downward trend is swamped by the huge influence of being a native tonal language speaker.  Thus, it is quite clear that perfect pitch is not rare given appropriate experience as an infant, but there's a strong suggestion that it gets increasingly hard to learn as one gets older.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look hard enough, you can probably find an instance of someone learning perfect pitch as an adult, but that would be extraordinary; normally, by the time you're an adult, your opportunity to develop perfect pitch has passed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T13:55:19.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3303" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3305" CreationDate="2011-05-17T14:20:11.450" Score="81" ViewCount="8152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always believed that Ostriches when frightened bury their heads in the sand.&#xA;Upon closer re-examination of this belief, I came to the following conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ostriches typically live in arid areas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arid areas have dry surfaces.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dry surfaces need significant digging in order to create a depth in which an Ostrich can &quot;bury&quot; its head.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific research discussing this behavior and noting whether it indeed does or does not happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2798" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T10:17:19.337" LastActivityDate="2011-11-13T19:20:52.513" Title="Do Ostriches bury their heads in the sand" Tags="|biology|ethology|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3303" CreationDate="2011-05-17T16:08:30.610" Score="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/91Nsn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Ostrich&quot; /&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/animalsnature/animal-myths-busted/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/animalsnature/animal-myths-busted/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Geographic&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ostriches don't bury their heads in&#xA;the sand—they wouldn't be able to&#xA;breathe!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they do dig holes in the&#xA;dirt to use as nests for their eggs.&#xA;Several times a day, a bird puts her&#xA;head in the hole and turns the eggs.&#xA;So it really does look like the birds&#xA;are burying their heads in the sand!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-ostrich.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;San Diego Zoo&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.. &lt;strong&gt;that’s a myth: ostriches do not&#xA;bury their heads in the sand!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When an&#xA;ostrich senses danger and cannot run&#xA;away, it flops to the ground and&#xA;remains still, with its head and neck&#xA;flat on the ground in front of it.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;Because the head and neck are lightly&#xA;colored, they blend in with the color&#xA;of the soil. From a distance, it just&#xA;looks like the ostrich has buried its&#xA;head in the sand, because only the&#xA;body is visible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2006/11/02/1777947.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ABC Science&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The ostrich does many things, but&#xA;hiding its head in the sand is not one&#xA;of them&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;Ostriches have three main strategies&#xA;when attacked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they can run away,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they&#xA;can kick,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or they can try to hide (eg,&#xA;when nursing the eggs).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When hiding,&#xA;they will sometimes lay flat on the&#xA;ground, with the long neck and head&#xA;also on the ground.&lt;/strong&gt; In the rippling&#xA;heat haze of their native Africa, they&#xA;can look just like a grassy mound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1644/do-ostriches-really-bury-their-heads-in-the-sand&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two theories about how this&#xA;rumor got started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/teacher_resources/remarkable_animals/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the World Wide Fund for&#xA;Nature&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;the ostrich lowers its head&#xA;toward the ground in reaction to&#xA;danger&lt;/strong&gt;, especially when it's sitting&#xA;on a nest (the female keeps the eggs&#xA;warm during the day and the male sits&#xA;on the eggs at night).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Male ostriches use their bills to dig&#xA;shallow nests in the sand and move&#xA;their eggs around. From a distance,&#xA;this could look like the ostrich's&#xA;head is disappearing in the sand.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;That's the other theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T17:13:34.677" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3312" CreationDate="2011-05-17T18:39:01.243" Score="13" ViewCount="9518" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common quotation attributed to Alexander the Great is as follows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bury my body, don't build any monument. Keep my hand outside so that the world knows, one who won the world had nothing in hand when he died&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did he said it? Is it documented reliable-where?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2803" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-25T14:30:45.620" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T14:30:45.620" Title="Did Alexander the Great say the following quotation?" Tags="|history|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3310" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3311" CreationDate="2011-05-17T18:40:29.523" Score="14" ViewCount="1688" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the ever growing series of questions &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/948/are-more-crimes-committed-during-a-full-moon&quot;&gt;about time or weather dependencies of crime&lt;/a&gt; or other kinds of behavior, I have heard several times people pretend that the suicide (and attempted suicide) rate is higher during the week-end and the holidays, especially holidays associated with family reunion (such as Thanksgiving in the USA, or Easter for catholics, etc.) in most countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is tempting to believe this, but as loneliness is certainly not the only cause for suicide (but is usually an important circumstance), I doubt it.  Are detailed statistics available to study this phenomena? If so, is it culturally dependent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="878" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T19:10:25.910" Title="Are suicide rates higher during week-ends and holidays?" Tags="|sociology|suicide|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3310" CreationDate="2011-05-17T19:04:55.637" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a culturally independent phenomena, more precisely, culturally independent myth :) Or at least here in Europe this myth is very widespread as well as in US. Not sure if it is known in, i.e. China or Papua New Guinea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here's how media sees it:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In an analysis &lt;strong&gt;of newspaper articles&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  about suicide between Thanksgiving and&#xA;  Christmas in 1999, researchers found&#xA;  nearly half of them associated suicide&#xA;  with the winter holidays&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200401/holiday-suicide-myth&quot;&gt;Psychology today&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And this is how it really works:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Various studies have found that&#xA;  depression and suicide rates are not&#xA;  linked to the holidays. Despite the&#xA;  media focus on suicides during the&#xA;  holiday season, the Center for Disease&#xA;  Control and Prevention and the&#xA;  National Center for Health Statistics&#xA;  report that suicide rates in the&#xA;  United States are lowest during the&#xA;  winter months and highest in the&#xA;  springtime (the reasons for this are&#xA;  not clear). Some authorities speculate&#xA;  that during springtime, when moods&#xA;  tend to improve after dark, winter&#xA;  days, those with depression may not&#xA;  feel happier while others around them&#xA;  do, thus encouraging suicidal&#xA;  feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://healthlibrary.epnet.com/GetContent.aspx?token=0a1af489-5b4c-4f2d-978e-3930be13b1f6&amp;amp;chunkiid=156980&quot;&gt;healthlibrary.epnet.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the Center for Disease&#xA;  Control and Prevention,  the holiday&#xA;  season actually is the time of the&#xA;  year when there are the least amount&#xA;  of suicides with the lowest point&#xA;  being December 1st and the lowest rate&#xA;  of the year by month being in&#xA;  December.  The highest suicide rates&#xA;  actually appear during Spring time and&#xA;  then peak once again during Fall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.misconceptionjunction.com/index.php/2010/12/the-holiday-season-has-the-lowest-suicide-rate-of-any-time-of-the-year-not-the-highest/&quot;&gt;misconceptionjunction.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/suicide.asp&quot;&gt;article at snopes.com&lt;/a&gt;, which finds the claim &lt;strong&gt;false&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are not exactly the same holidays you mentioned, but it looks like it's just another flavor of the same myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user288" LastEditorDisplayName="user288" LastEditDate="2011-05-17T19:10:25.910" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T19:10:25.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3309" CreationDate="2011-05-17T19:20:51.390" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is doubtful, we have not a direct record of his own words and it did not happen anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We have today only secondary sources about Alexander the Great&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that primary sources existed (Aristobulus, Callisthenes, Ptolemy) and were used by the secondary sources we have (Arrian, Plutarchus, Curtius). One of his main biographers, Aristobulus, who used to be a close friend, an architect, a man of letters and officer in the Macedonian army, was keen to present Alexander as a benevolent and socializing philosopher-king instead of only a very successful, abusive and violent conqueror. He adds his own interpretation and explanations of Alexander's behavior. One of the main other source, Callisthenes was not very critic either. Ptolemy was establishing his legitimacy as the new ruler of Egypt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another attributed quotation exists on the subject of burial and glory&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is at the same time sufficiently different and sufficiently close to suggest fabrication  from common elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, one could easily assign the OP's quotation to visits of Alexander to famous tombs of conquerors and mythical heroes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arrian among others reports that Alexander visited Protesilaus' tomb (An. Alex. 1.11) then Achilles' tomb (1.12) and complained there about the lack of a great writer or poet to celebrate his deeds. Alexander visited Sardanapalus' tomb in Anchialus (An. Alex. 2.5), ordered the tomb of Cyrus restored (An. Alex. 6b.29) and questioned the gardians of this tomb to find the authors of the profanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This and many aspects of his behavior is not compatible with a simple burial&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the religious tradition of the Macedonians would have him buried in the homeland, in Aegae, with great ceremony, with previous kings and that Perdiccas, one time his successor, had organized the corpse to be sent there during 322 BC from Mesopotamia after having been placed in a gold decorated sarcophage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His corpse was an object of political, religious and military conflict immediately after his death. Ptolemy succeeded in having it transported to Egypt, in Memphis then in Alexandria, where a monument was constructed. So we cannot really know what he wanted as all of his close companions (Antipater, Seleucos, Nearchus, Ptolemy, ...) had diverging interests about this subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0140442537&quot;&gt;Arrian's Anabasis translated in english in an affordable edition&lt;/a&gt; but I have used my own copies of the Loeb Library Edition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An excellent &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0807813648&quot;&gt;biography of Arrian&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pothos.org/content/&quot;&gt;Pothos&lt;/a&gt; A site dedicated to Alexander&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livius.org/aj-al/alexander/alexander00.html&quot;&gt;Alexander The Great related articles on Livius&lt;/a&gt; by  Jona Lendering&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="878" LastEditorUserId="878" LastEditDate="2011-05-17T21:05:19.813" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T21:05:19.813" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3313" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8486" CreationDate="2011-05-17T19:27:41.600" Score="22" ViewCount="7867" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-rape_device#Rape-aXe&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rape-aXe&lt;/a&gt; was a prototype of a female condom designed to attach itself to an attacker's penis with barbs if an attacker attempts to penetrate the woman wearing the Rape-aXe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The inventor claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The barbed shafts can only safely be removed by a surgeon. The offender will cause serious and possibly permanent damage, should he try to remove Rape-aXe himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this, they claim that the Rape-aXe aids in prosecuting the attacker, since the rapist will have to go to a hospital to get it removed, and the device tags him as a rapist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not being one to trust the marketing hype of a security product, I want to know: is this claim true? Is there special medical knowledge or tools involved in removing the Rape-aXe, or are we likely to see instructions for a build-your-own removal kit using commonly available tools and requiring minimal know-how to actually remove a Rape-aXe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1916" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-02-28T11:56:25.317" LastActivityDate="2013-02-28T11:56:25.317" Title="Can the Rape-aXe only be removed by a doctor?" Tags="|medical-science|marketing|sexual-abuse|security|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3343" CreationDate="2011-05-17T20:15:51.573" Score="11" ViewCount="1623" Body="&lt;p&gt;A relative of mine works for a big bank (of bailout fame) in the investment division. We had a discussion where he claimed that what he does is actually a science. Me being an engineer called baloney on this. IMHO there is no science that can predict the future without a decent mathematical model, and I think the world of investing lacks said models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the arguments he presented have to do with the sophisticated software models that are used for automated trading. The argument I presented is that all models are wrong (see 2008) and they are just delusional in their science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To settle this, I need to know if there is any falsifiable and repeatable propositions that form the basis of the science for big time, multi-billion dollar bank investing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I found an older article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathworks.com/company/newsletters/articles/macroeconomic-modeling-and-inflation-rate-forecasting-at-the-reserve-bank-of-new-zealand.html?issue=nn2010&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; with mathematical modeling for macroeconomics for the Bank of New Zealand, and it shows (below) the forecast (wide gray areas) nowhere near the actual data (dashed lines). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LkIoS.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Model Predictions for Bank of NZ&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1066" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-05-21T05:48:27.417" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T14:25:21.847" Title="Is mathematical modelling of investment markets a &quot;science&quot;?" Tags="|finance|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2015-10-26T09:10:19.183" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3316" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-17T21:15:09.080" Score="32" ViewCount="2375" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there anything special about &lt;strong&gt;apples&lt;/strong&gt; that gives them particular health benefits to justify this statement we all know from childhood?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is eating an apple more healthy than any standard fruit serving?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there long-term health-benefits to adding an apple to a standard diet (not changing in any other way)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any &lt;em&gt;risks&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; associated with eating a lot of apples?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1: I actually ask this question because I tried &amp;mdash; for 3 days &amp;mdash; and my teeth became so sensitive I could barely brush them anymore!&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1073" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T13:49:23.083" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T02:32:42.513" Title="Does an &quot;apple a day keep the doctor away&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3317" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3318" CreationDate="2011-05-17T21:25:46.973" Score="5" ViewCount="1183" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/250/dichloroacetate-dca-as-a-cure-for-cancer&quot;&gt;Dichloroacetate (DCA) as a cure for cancer&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw this today:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hubpages.com/hub/Scientists_cure_cancer__but_no_one_takes_notice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://hubpages.com/hub/Scientists_cure_cancer__but_no_one_takes_notice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Canadian researchers find a simple&#xA;  cure for cancer, but major&#xA;  pharmaceutical companies are not&#xA;  interested.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers at the University of&#xA;  Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada have&#xA;  cured cancer last week, yet there is a&#xA;  little ripple in the news or in TV. It&#xA;  is a simple technique using very basic&#xA;  drug. The method employs&#xA;  dichloroacetate, which is currently&#xA;  used to treat metabolic disorders. So,&#xA;  there is no concern of side effects or&#xA;  about their long term effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PUImN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is, is this real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T00:46:51.713" Title="Does dichloroacetate cure cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-05-19T14:16:13.923" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3317" CreationDate="2011-05-17T21:35:07.787" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another superb example of science reporters doing a terrible job. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is some indication that dichloroacetate has some effects on cancer &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; so far there have been no clinical studies on humans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important thing to note: Cancer is not &lt;strong&gt;a&lt;/strong&gt; disease. Cancer is a super-class of a multitude of different diseases. Some cancers are malign, some are benign, some metastasize heavily, some don't. Some can be &quot;cured&quot; with chemotherapy, some with radiation, some not really at all. Some are caused by viruses, some by currently unknown effects. And for the same reason that cancer is not &lt;strong&gt;a&lt;/strong&gt; single disease, there will not be &lt;strong&gt;a&lt;/strong&gt; single cure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very thorough overview of the research, and how it got mangled in the reporting process, is given by PZ Myers: &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/05/dichloroacetate_and_cancer.php&quot;&gt;Pharyngula Blog: Dichloroacetate and cancer&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;The gist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The simple summary is this: &lt;strong&gt;that claim is a lie&lt;/strong&gt;. There have been &lt;strong&gt;no clinical trials&lt;/strong&gt; of dichloroacetate (DCA) in cancer patients, so there is &lt;strong&gt;no basis for claiming they have a cure&lt;/strong&gt;; some, but not all, cancers might respond in promising ways to the drug, while others are likely to be resistant (cancer is not one disease!); and there are potential neurotoxic side effects, especially when used in conjunction with other chemotherapies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a grain of truth to the allegation that &quot;big pharma&quot; has no interest in it, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can't blame the industry for not following up on this: a clinical trial costs millions of dollars, and even if DCA pans out, there is no profit at all to be gained from it. For this research, we have to turn to public support (they have an interest in better cancer treatments!) and to scientists and doctors themselves, who of course have a great personal interest in seeing their patients get better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T21:35:07.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3315" CreationDate="2011-05-17T22:32:27.977" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if you would regard this as 'science' or 'art' but there are definitely mathematical models for stockprizes and investing. The theory of stochastic differential equations and stochastic processes deal with modeling these kinds of situations. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_differential_equation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_math#Mathematical_tools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, for example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, yes, this is a science. Since it's not about what we feel mathematics to be (a science or an artform) but it's about how these models are used to describe real life phenomenon. Any selfrespecting mathematicians will use scientific rigor in applying these models (fitting a model to real life data, reformulating a theory if there seems to be a difference between real life and the model describing it, etcetera). So it's definitely  a science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2793" LastEditorUserId="2793" LastEditDate="2011-05-17T23:14:05.193" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T23:14:05.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3315" CreationDate="2011-05-17T23:42:42.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Economics can not be a science because the study itself effects the markets they're studying. Expectations can be self-validating, therefore removing independence between observer and subject that is necessary to be considered a science. George Soros figured it out decades ago but, because it negates economics all together, it never really caught on. The concept is called reflexivity and it demotes economics to a fancy &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouija&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ouija&lt;/a&gt; board. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_%28social_theory%29#Reflexivity_in_Economics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_(social_theory)#Reflexivity_in_Economics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2030" LastActivityDate="2011-05-17T23:42:42.857" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3309" CreationDate="2011-05-18T01:30:45.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mary Renault's novel doesn't portray him as having said that, nor anything like it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that she doesn't mention it is significant: I think that she includes every known/accepted fact/story about his life (and, for the sake of the novel, adds details where the details aren't known: so the fact that a detail is in the novel wouldn't be significant necessarily, but the fact that something isn't in the novel is significant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The novel does add that a) succession wasn't assured (e.g. no primogeniture, no automatic transmission of the throne to his child); b) burying the previous king was a ceremony performed by the next/newly-chosen king (which explains &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; his body was an object of political/military value).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T01:30:45.233" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3022" CreationDate="2011-05-18T01:50:23.913" Score="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KuKa2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Who's talking to who?&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, at the altitudes that airplanes fly at, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caregiver.org/caregiver/jsp/content_node.jsp?nodeid=575&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;you can suffer brain damage form hypoxia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The brain requires a constant flow of oxygen to function normally. A hypoxic-anoxic injury, also known as HAI, occurs when that flow is disrupted, essentially starving the brain and preventing it from performing vital biochemical processes. Hypoxic refers to a partial lack of oxygen; anoxic means a total lack. In general, the more complete the deprivation, the more severe the harm to the brain and the greater the consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't get oxygen, &lt;a href=&quot;http://aviationknowledge.wikidot.com/aviation:hypoxia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;you will most likely pass out&lt;/a&gt; and then you won't feel anything at all.  As a matter of fact, the higher you go, the faster you will pass out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Altitude    Time of Useful Consciousness&#xA;20,000ft    All unacclimatised persons lose useful consciousness within 10 minutes&#xA;25,000ft    Useful consciousness is lost after 2.5 minutes or less&#xA;30,000ft    approx. 30 seconds&#xA;37,000ft    approx. 18 seconds&#xA;45,000ft    approx.15 seconds&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Airliners commonly fly at 37,000 feet, so 18 seconds is usually enough time to get the mask on, and not pass out, and then suffer brain damage.  As a matter of fact, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airsafe.com/stewart.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hypoxia is basically what killed Payne Stewart on his civilian LearJet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conditions of the windows are consistent with a loss of pressurization and a subsequent rapid drop of temperature. It is likely that the pilots and occupants may have lost consciousness due to hypoxia, or a lack of oxygen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MzmCa.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Payne Stewart's LearJet&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, if he had been on a USAF C-21 (Lear35 variant), that accident most likely could have been prevented with the way their pressurization system works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pure Oxygen?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to breathing pure oxygen, it does not get you &amp;quot;high&amp;quot; in any way.  Consider that oxygen masks are deployed when the pressure is low, you actually need more oxygen to actually get into your blood stream.  NASA would employ a trick of using less atmospheric pressure in their capsules, and having the astronauts breathe pure oxygen.  That practice was &lt;em&gt;mostly&lt;/em&gt; stopped after the Apollo 1 Accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iDudI.png&quot; alt=&quot;Apollo 1 Fire&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, for physiological reasons, &lt;a href=&quot;http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/eva/outside.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;every once in a while the astronauts must go on 100% oxygen in order to perform specific tasks&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spacewalkers must wear pressurized spacesuits in order to work in space. These suits have pressures significantly lower than ambient cabin pressure of a spacecraft. This makes spacewalkers subject to decompression sickness, more commonly known as the &amp;quot;bends.&amp;quot; Decompression sickness results from nitrogen bubbles forming in the tissues or blood stream and moving to other areas of the body. Therefore, spacewalking crewmembers must perform a pre-breathe protocol, which is designed to wash out any excess nitrogen from the body, before a spacewalk. This protocol takes advantage of the fact that exercise increases the speed at which nitrogen is removed from the body by increasing blood circulation through the extremities. The ISS pre-breathe protocol involves breathing pure oxygen for a total of 2 hours and 20 minutes and includes a short period of high-intensity exercise at the beginning of the pre-breathe procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Station astronauts begin the pre-breathe protocol by exercising vigorously on the space station's cycle ergometer for a total of 10 minutes while breathing pure oxygen via an oxygen mask. After 50 total minutes of breathing pure oxygen, including the 10 minutes initially spent exercising, the pressure in the station's airlock will be lowered to 10.2 pounds per square inch, or psi [or 703 hPa]. During airlock depressurization, the spacewalkers will breathe pure oxygen for an additional 30 minutes. At the end of those 30 minutes, with the airlock now at 10.2 psi, the spacewalkers will put on their space suits. Once their spacesuits are on, the spacewalkers will breathe pure oxygen inside the suits for an additional 60 minutes before making final preparations to leave the station and begin their spacewalk. This protocol provides a total of 2 hours and 20 minutes of pre-breathe time, including the 10 minutes of vigorous exercise at the beginning of the procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should hope those guys aren't high up there (in the sense of mental impairment)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a pilot, I have breathed 100% oxygen many times as well, and I can anecdotally report that if it is supposed to make you high, I am sorely disappointed in the feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OVjSY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Gangload that oxygen mask&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T22:35:34.143" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2032" CreationDate="2011-05-18T02:05:29.547" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://potassiumalum.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;It just so happens that Potassium Alum has registered its own domain name&lt;/a&gt;!  They tout the uses there as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Potassium alum has been a sought after natural mineral salt for thousands of years due to its abilities to effectively contribute to water purification, pickling, tanning, medical procedures and in cosmetics as an aftershave or deodorant.  Additionally, due to its attractive crystal appearance, potassium alum has become a favorite amongst mineral collectors.  Potassium alum is antimicrobial and can therefore be used as a natural deodorant by inhibiting the growth of the bacteria responsible for body odor. It is also used in medical procedures as a local astringent  and styptic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is efficient in stopping germ grown and constricting the skin to stop bleeding.  Generally, after shaving, most men want some sort of relief from &quot;razor burn&quot; after shaving.  This is generally caused by the removal of skin along with the hair.  Potassium Alum is a type of salt.  So throwing this on your face will probably make you forget about the razor burn, and concentrate on the salt burn that your raw skin is now enduring.  Of course, this is the same mechanism that many alcohol based after shaves will use (although the mechanisms for providing relief are different).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alcohol evaporates quickly, causing the surface of the skin to feel cool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potassium alum tightens the skin as a dehydrating effect of the salt, and gives a refreshing feeling in that manner.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tech-faq.com/potassium-alum.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Again, it's more meant as an astringent and styptic though&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T02:05:29.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3324" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3328" CreationDate="2011-05-18T02:26:56.923" Score="9" ViewCount="855" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uRIyS.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Spotted&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=207586&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Currently at the JREF forums, there is a big debate going on about possible Ivory Billed Woodpecker sightings&lt;/a&gt;.  This bird has been thought to be extinct for over 50 years, and no reliable sightings that I am aware of have come forth.  Unless one wants to count very blurry and out of focus images (apologies to Mitch Hedberg, maybe the bird itself has evolved out of focus?).  Amongst enthusiasts, this bird seems to be bordering on an obsession to many, and any refutation of supposed evidence is met with hostility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How likely is it for this bird to not actually be extinct given what we know about the destruction of its habitat and how it was hunted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-07-07T03:24:29.670" LastActivityDate="2012-07-07T03:24:29.670" Title="How likely is it that the Ivory Billed Woodpecker is not extinct?" Tags="|biology|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3326" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-18T03:25:47.527" Score="8" ViewCount="1814" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past week or so there have been several news articles from major news sources including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504784_162-20063282-10391705.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one from CBS&lt;/a&gt; about a boy that has apparent magnetic powers (metal things stick to him).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible that someone could have properties similar to a magnet that would allow metal to stick to them or is this something like sweat glands gone crazy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this article something that could be taken seriously? Have there been others like it before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T00:46:12.790" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T10:13:04.970" Title="Do metal items stick magnetically to &quot;Magnet Boy&quot;?" Tags="|physiology|magnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3327" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3350" CreationDate="2011-05-18T05:14:10.787" Score="5" ViewCount="2275" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p1qgP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard it said more than once that everyone has an evil twin out there somwhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &quot;evil twin&quot; I mean someone who is non-genetically related but bears a striking, (I realize that term is subjective but try to work with me) if not identical resemblance to ourselves. Of course, they don't necessarily have to be evil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fun, websites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.findmydoppelganger.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; are using facial recognition software to compare the faces of their users to those of celebrities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the likelihood of two random,&#xA;unrelated people sharing identical&#xA;features? Has anyone studied this?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have there been documented cases of&#xA;this occurring?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T20:12:37.823" Title="Do evil twins exist?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3324" CreationDate="2011-05-18T05:17:30.597" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not entirely out of the question.  There have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.animalport.com/extinct-animals/extinct-animals-found-alive.html&quot;&gt;many previous cases&lt;/a&gt; of animals that were not sighted for years eventually showing up again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ivory-billed woodpecker &lt;em&gt;normally&lt;/em&gt; requires hardwood forests (see Wikipedia), but the problem with assuming that the animal is gone because the hardwood forests were largely cleared is that we can't be sure that the bird could not possibly adapt to another environment, at least for a while (e.g. the population growth might be negative, but it might take a while for the last animals to disappear).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So given that the habitat of the woodpecker is not a blasted wasteland and is not entirely urbanized, I'd be surprised if one could come up with any firm probabilities aside from, &quot;Likely extinct, but don't bet too much on it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T05:17:30.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2407" CreationDate="2011-05-18T05:40:20.400" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is partially true. Girls perform better in all girls schools according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/5008712/Girls-do-better-in-single-sex-schools.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analysis of Key Stage 2 and GCSE&#xA;scores of more than 700,000 girls has&#xA;revealed that those in all-female&#xA;comprehensives make better progress&#xA;than those who attend mixed&#xA;secondaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But boys don't perform better in co-ed classes with girls. They perform better in all boys classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The researchers found that at age 16,&#xA;girls in girls’ schools were more&#xA;likely to gain maths and science&#xA;A-levels, and boys in boys’ schools&#xA;more liable to gain A-levels in&#xA;English and modern languages than&#xA;their peers in co-educational schools.&#xA;Girls and boys in single-sex schools&#xA;also had more confidence in their&#xA;ability to do well in these subjects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cls.ioe.ac.uk/news.asp?section=000100010003&amp;amp;item=335&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Centre for Longitudinal studies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user288" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T18:57:32.330" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3330" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-18T06:53:42.993" Score="2" ViewCount="1852" Body="&lt;p&gt;My father told me that if you cut hair or garden grass during waning moon, they will grow slower. Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="939" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T08:14:49.520" Title="Do hair and grass grow slower if you cut them during waning moon?" Tags="|moon|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3331" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3336" CreationDate="2011-05-18T07:22:54.510" Score="26" ViewCount="18854" Body="&lt;p&gt;In India, a large number of people believe in black magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Black magic is the belief of practices of magic that draws on assumed malevolent&#xA;       powers.This type of magic is invoked when wishing to kill, steal, injure, cause &#xA;       misfortune or destruction, or for personal gain without regard to harmful&#xA;       consequences.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;               -wikipedia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have personally seen people speak of this thing and how it has spoiled their health/business etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In India , there are even products that claims to protect one from black magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does black magic really work ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T08:32:03.780" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T08:32:03.780" Title="Does black magic work?" Tags="|psychology|india|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3332" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3344" CreationDate="2011-05-18T08:05:47.627" Score="40" ViewCount="7948" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9JqS8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think everyone may have heard this at one time or another, but it's said that women prefer men with a &quot;good sense of humor&quot;. The idea is so commonly held, it even has its own abbreviation on dating services: GSOH. I know I've seen this claim more than a few times over the years, but mostly in magazines known more for their fashion advice than their academic rigor. However, I came across this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/awtJd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ii5eM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5083702/Men-can-laugh-women-into-bed-with-GSOH-say-psychologists.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; seems to contribute to this idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this claim ever been scientifically validated? Or is all the evidence merely anecdotal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could this be due to post-hoc rationalization, as Chris Rock noted when he said, &quot;women don't like men with a sense of humor, they just like it when they guy they want to f@#k happens to be funny.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T14:41:18.027" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T14:41:18.027" Title="Do women prefer men with a sense of humor?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|humor|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3330" CreationDate="2011-05-18T08:14:49.520" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course not. Even if grass or hair would be affected by the moon phase (which I doubt), the speed with which they grow would be affected by what the phase is, not what the phase was when you cut it. Hair is dead, and the root of the hair do not know when the top was cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no references for this answer, because I can't find anyone that has researched this. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T08:14:49.520" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3331" CreationDate="2011-05-18T08:15:26.243" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence that any superatural claims have any sort of validity. This includes all forms of magic. Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html&quot;&gt;http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T08:15:26.243" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3332" CreationDate="2011-05-18T08:33:01.783" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The study &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/ep01116126.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mate selection criteria: A trait desirability assessment study of sex differences in Serbia (PDF)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; gives the following table (my highlight) stating that yes, women do value a good sense of humour, but not above all else, and not significantly more so than men:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZiMGx.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above figures are as rated by the men and women themselves, in questionnaires. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that study is somewhat of a fishing trip. Another study, looking specifically at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(05)00056-5/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The influence of humor on desirability&lt;/a&gt; finds the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Participants chose which person was a more desirable partner for a romantic relationship, and which individual was more likely to have several personality traits. Only women evaluating men chose humorous people as preferred relationship partners. For both sexes, humorous individuals were seen as less intelligent and trustworthy than their nonhumorous counterparts, but as more socially adept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion might be that the topic is controversial, which you'll certainly find with a lot of studies on aspects of personality and psychology, and there could very well be cultural discrepancies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;The influence of humor&lt;/em&gt;, participants were asked to identify the most desirable partner for a romantic relationship, using the same subjects, and having a humorous or neutral autobiographical description as the only variable. The difference in study design could potentially explain some of the discrepancies in the conclusions of the two studies, in that the former measures what traits people perceive that they value, and the latter measures to what extent they're actually taken into account. This means that the latter study could cover subconscious parts of decision making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible interpretation is that the two results are entirely compatible, and that this is exactly what you can expect when you're specifically testing a hypothesis, and compare that to result of a more qualitative study design. For instance, it is quite possible that the table from the first study matches exactly the weighting that was applied in the decision making in the second study. That could be explained by the other traits; e.g. &lt;em&gt;Beauty&lt;/em&gt; - which is the only &lt;em&gt;p&amp;lt;.01&lt;/em&gt; difference, remember - might be so strong a determinant in the male respondents that the humorous/neutral tagline variable didn't affect the outcome, whereas the female respondents, quite in line with what the first study reports, doesn't pay as much attention to beauty, and therefore allow the humour variable to affect the outcome to a greater degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do recall Richard Wiseman citing support for the idea that women do value humour significantly higher than men, in his book &lt;em&gt;59 Seconds&lt;/em&gt;, but I don't have it available at the moment to be able to check those sources, or even what the exact claims are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="100" LastEditDate="2011-05-18T13:50:47.123" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T13:50:47.123" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3331" CreationDate="2011-05-18T09:00:35.037" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Black magic&quot; is a really large umbrella for a wide range of claims, but the very &lt;em&gt;definition&lt;/em&gt; of any &quot;magic&quot; is that it is somehow supernatural. Naturally (!), no compelling evidence has ever been put forth for any supernatural phenomenon. Once a phenomenon is observable, reproducible, and testable, and shown to exist, it may turn out to violate our &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; understanding of the natural laws, but if the phenomenon is for real, we shall have to adjust our views to accommodate this, and the phenomenon shall cease to be considered supernatural. &quot;Magic&quot; will never be shown to exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All rigorously tested supernatural claims have turned out to be fake, and the great number of untested supernatural claims can most likely be largely attributed to the fact that the practitioners are aware of their fraud, and reluctant to be exposed; see the million dollar challenge in Regebro's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, in regions of India there is a somewhat widespread belief in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantra&quot;&gt;tantra&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. While few practitioners would lend themselves to scientific studies for reasons explained above, there has been one notable appearance where Indias allegedly most powerful tantrik was challenged in live TV in front of an audience of millions of people, to kill a person with the aid of black magic alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/65M9N.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rationalistinternational.net/article/2008/20080310/en_1.html&quot;&gt;Rationalist International&lt;/a&gt; has a good writeup on the story. In short, the tantrik claimed he could kill any person he wanted within three minutes, but did not manage to inflict any sort of damage during what went on for more than three hours. Rationalist International concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tantra power had miserably failed. Tantriks are creating such a scaring atmosphere that even people, who know that black magic has no base, can just break down out of fear, commented a scientist during the program. It needs enormous courage and confidence to challenge them by actually putting one’s life at risk, he said. By doing so, Sanal Edamaruku has broken the spell, and has taken away much of the fear of those who witnessed his triumph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T09:00:35.037" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3337" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-18T09:39:00.697" Score="17" ViewCount="22628" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard the above mentioned many times growing up that chewing your fingernails will expose you to more germs than to licking a public toilet seat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies for the provacative title, but here are quotes from the top 4 Google results from Australia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cause biting your fingernails is really worse then licking a dirty toilet seat!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did you know that biting your nails is the bacteria equivallent of licking the toilet seat? It's true.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“BITING YOUR NAILS IS WORSE THAN LICKING A PUBLIC TOILET SEAT”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Biting your nails is like licking the doorknob of a PUBLIC restroom.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-07T02:33:26.840" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T11:12:19.970" Title="Is chewing your finger nails as bad as licking a public toilet seat?" Tags="|hygiene|toilets|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3338" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3357" CreationDate="2011-05-18T10:38:50.673" Score="10" ViewCount="4080" Body="&lt;p&gt;Amongst other claims at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lowdosenaltrexone.org/&quot;&gt;Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) Home Page&#xA;&lt;/a&gt; is for example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Low-dose naltrexone holds great&#xA;  promise for the millions of people&#xA;  worldwide with autoimmune diseases or&#xA;  central nervous system disorders or&#xA;  who face a deadly cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LDN is also said to have no significant side effects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any documented cases or even anecdotal accounts of LDN being effective in curing autoimmune diseases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1237" LastEditorUserId="1237" LastEditDate="2011-05-19T08:47:28.433" LastActivityDate="2015-10-17T21:38:35.720" Title="Is low dose naltrexone effective?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3246" CreationDate="2011-05-18T12:25:07.053" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;France won the revolutionary/civil war in Algeria in the 1950s, before pulling out and granting the country its independence (you could consider that a loss, but they won a military victory if not a politicial one).&#xA;That some 100 years after they initially conquered the place, which would also be a win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/dztoc.html&quot;&gt;Library of Congress Country Studies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/15078/Algerian-War&quot;&gt;Encyclopedia Brittanica&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-01-13T15:12:49.427" LastActivityDate="2012-01-13T15:12:49.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3332" CreationDate="2011-05-18T12:29:56.663" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought about this long time ago, and the main reason I thought of was: only a successful person or a person who knows he is good can joke a lot (and even joke about himself).   For example, a student with a 4.00 GPA can joke, &quot;nah, I was really stupid...&quot;  But a student with a 2.3 GPA will try his best to show that he is smart and never joke about himself being stupid, because he worries that he is in fact stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Female pick up hint for that, that the man who is successful and can joke about himself, or know he is good and can joke about himself, is the one that female prefers, not because he can joke about things, but that he is successful (and/or he can fit in nicely in the world).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2827" LastEditorUserId="2827" LastEditDate="2011-05-18T12:36:15.847" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T12:36:15.847" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3315" CreationDate="2011-05-18T13:01:59.100" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A famous example of the efficacy (and also problems inherent in) mathematical modeling is the concept of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2704stockmarket.html&quot;&gt;Dynamic Hedging&lt;/a&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&amp;leftarrow; a transcript of an excellent documentary on the subject.&lt;/sub&gt;  The model was created by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black%E2%80%93Scholes&quot;&gt;Black and Scholes&lt;/a&gt;, for which they were awarded the Nobel prize in Economics.  Under certain reasonable assumptions, their model is guaranteed to reduce risk in proportion to the amount of investment one has made (which seems a bit counter-intuitive at first).  The best analogy up with which I can come is that Dynamic Hedging is a lot like opening a casino.  The model ensures that the odds will always be in the house's favor, so in the long run you will, in expectation, make a profit.  The problem is that every once in a while someone will likely &quot;win big&quot;, and your casino will have to make a payout to them.  That's fine, as long as you have enough liquid money to make that payout; you'll eventually recoup the loss in the long run.  The problem is that, unlike a casino, the instantaneous risks of the market are unbounded.  For example, there is unbounded risk associated with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_%28finance%29&quot;&gt;shorting a stock&lt;/a&gt;.  Therefore, as long as you have an unlimited supply of liquid cash (or credit) to deliver those payouts along the way, you are guaranteed to at least break even.  Black and Scholes' model was implemented in the form of a number of hedge funds, most notably &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management&quot;&gt;Long-Term Capital Management&lt;/a&gt;, which enjoyed spectacularly consistent returns in the 40% range throughout the 1980s and most of the 1990s.  The problem (I'm greatly simplifying things here) was that eventually the fund got so big that it was no longer able to borrow/acquire enough liquid capital to sustain itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what's happening these days?  The financial concepts of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrage&quot;&gt;arbitrage&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_%28finance%29&quot;&gt;hedging&lt;/a&gt; are theoretically guaranteed to be risk-free.  The idea is quite simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A widget is being sold by party &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; in London for $5.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the exact same point in time, due to market fluctuations, the same type of widget is being bought by party &lt;em&gt;Y&lt;/em&gt; in New York for $6.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If we can find out about #1 and #2 quicker than &lt;em&gt;Y&lt;/em&gt; can find that same information, then we can buy the widget from &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; and sell it to &lt;em&gt;Y&lt;/em&gt; at a $1 profit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why we currently see the &quot;big banks&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://tegenlicht.vpro.nl/afleveringen/2010-2011/the-future-of-finance/money-and-speed.html&quot;&gt;investing millions (and some speculate billions) of dollars into high-tech computer centers very close to the big stock exchanges.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;sub&gt;(Sorry, that video is in Nederlands, but a lot of it is just dubbed English, and many Dutch words are mutually intelligible with English.)&lt;/sub&gt; Since almost all trading is done electronically these days, the quicker one can get information from and make trades on the markets, the greater chance one has at exploiting arbitrage.  In practice, though, stochasticity of the market does induce risk, which has led to widespread use of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_arbitrage&quot;&gt;statistical arbitrage&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel I should elaborate on the &quot;science&quot; &lt;em&gt;vs.&lt;/em&gt; &quot;art&quot; component of this question, and why I brought up the question of their differentiation in the original set of comments.  In my mind, the classifications of science and art are not mutually exclusive.  The primary defining characteristic of science is a &lt;em&gt;method&lt;/em&gt; by which predictions about a previously mysterious process can be made.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://oed.com/view/Entry/11125?rskey=mKrJwa&amp;amp;result=1&amp;amp;isAdvanced=false#eid&quot;&gt;Art is the &lt;em&gt;display, application, or expression&lt;/em&gt; of a method, almost always with the intention of affecting others' emotions or intellect&lt;/a&gt;.  By these definitions, science and art are not mutually exclusive, &lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt;, I believe one could make an argument that cooking is both a science and an art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, without getting sidetracked too much, I also want to mention models.  I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_mechanics&quot;&gt;Newtonian mechanics&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation&quot;&gt;Newton's law of universal gravitation&lt;/a&gt; are great examples.  Newton's models for the way the universe works are extremely good at &quot;predicting the future&quot;, at least on the scale of ordinary interactions here on Earth.  Unfortunately, Newton's models break down if we change the scale.  For example, if we look at a planetary scale, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kepler_problem_in_general_relativity&quot;&gt;they don't accurately predict the perihelion of Mercury&lt;/a&gt;; it wasn't until the turn of the 20&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; century that models were created that could both accurately predict mechanics on the scale of humans and also mechanics on the scale of planets (most notably &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity&quot;&gt;Einstein's general relativity&lt;/a&gt;).  Given that we know there are phenomena in the universe that Newton's model is incapable of predicting, does that mean Newton's model isn't science or is &quot;delusional in [its] science&quot;?  Of course not.  In fact, we still use Newton's model for many tasks (&lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt;, engineering) down on the human scale, because it's a lot easier to use than the more robust models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I apologize for all of the Wikipedia references; I just think they're a good way to get a high-level understanding of some of these concepts.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2011-05-19T12:14:19.417" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T12:14:19.417" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3332" CreationDate="2011-05-18T13:02:09.240" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kwntC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Tips for success with women&quot; /&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badmotive.com/1643&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200508/humors-sexual-side&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Psychology Today&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;strong&gt;Eric Bressler&lt;/strong&gt;, a&#xA;psychologist at &lt;em&gt;McMaster University in&#xA;Canada&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;men and women don't mean the&#xA;same thing when they say they value&#xA;humor in a long-term partner&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[He] found that &lt;strong&gt;women want a man&#xA;who is a humor &amp;quot;generator,&amp;quot; while men&#xA;seek a humor &amp;quot;appreciator.&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138%2805%2900076-0/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Production and appreciation of humor as sexually selected traits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... a German study found that &lt;strong&gt;when male&#xA;and female strangers engaged in&#xA;natural conversation, the degree to&#xA;which a woman laughed while talking to&#xA;a man was indicative of her interest&#xA;in dating him&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How much the woman&#xA;laughed also predicted the man's&#xA;desire to date her&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip side,&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;how often a man laughed was unrelated&#xA;to his interest in a woman&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(the study was conducted by &lt;strong&gt;Karl Grammer&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Irenaus Eibl-Eibesfeldt&lt;/strong&gt;, but at the moment I can't find it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/2559&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; mentions in its abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are a relatively small&#xA;number of studies in the area, those&#xA;looking at humour have found &lt;strong&gt;strong&#xA;correlations between humour and&#xA;increased attractiveness, but only for&#xA;women rating men.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Psychologist &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1166446/Funny-men-laugh-ladies-bed-theyre-seen-intelligent.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kristofor McCarty&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;em&gt;Northumbria University&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;A quick browse of lonely hearts ads&#xA;will confirm that women look for a&#xA;good sense of humour in a potential&#xA;partner&lt;/strong&gt; - our research may explain why&#xA;this is the case.&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;McCarty asked 45 women to rate the&#xA;personalities behind a selection of&#xA;lonely hearts ads drawn up especially&#xA;for the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The&#xA;funny men were rated as more&#xA;intelligent, despite the ads&#xA;containing no clues on IQ.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;They were also seen as more honest and&#xA;better material for a relationship and&#xA;for friendship.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;The results of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&amp;amp;_udi=B6W4M-52P0M8M-1&amp;amp;_user=10&amp;amp;_coverDate=04%2F22%2F2011&amp;amp;_rdoc=1&amp;amp;_fmt=high&amp;amp;_orig=browse&amp;amp;_origin=browse&amp;amp;_zone=rslt_list_item&amp;amp;_srch=doc-info(%23toc%236546%239999%23999999999%2399999%23FLA%23display%23Articles)&amp;amp;_cdi=6546&amp;amp;_sort=d&amp;amp;_docanchor=&amp;amp;_ct=6&amp;amp;_acct=C000050221&amp;amp;_version=1&amp;amp;_urlVersion=0&amp;amp;_userid=10&amp;amp;md5=42fcf40aa0b5c5a9d57ad0ff80a7e6c1&amp;amp;searchtype=a&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;... suggest that the human sense of humor evolved at least partly&#xA;through sexual selection as an&#xA;intelligence-indicator.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;On the biological differences between men and women:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/biology_evolution/article7009688.ece&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Times&lt;/strong&gt; - One day, girls, you will laugh at this&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scienceinschool.org/2010/issue17/allanreiss#Reiss&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Experiments&lt;/a&gt; at &lt;strong&gt;Stanford University&lt;/strong&gt; in&#xA;California found &lt;strong&gt;that women use more&#xA;parts of the brain than men to process&#xA;jokes and have less expectation that&#xA;they will find them funny&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The experiments found that &lt;strong&gt;women&#xA;displayed more intense activity than&#xA;men in the prefrontal cortex&lt;/strong&gt; of the&#xA;brain, which controls language&#xA;interpretation and in-depth analytical&#xA;processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They took slightly longer&#xA;to react to jokes that were funny, but&#xA;enjoyed the punchlines more&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;Researchers, however, said &lt;strong&gt;the time&#xA;difference was marginal&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T13:02:09.240" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3345" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-18T14:35:52.703" Score="45" ViewCount="7792" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard from more than a few Brits that if you own a TV but don't pay your license fee, they'll come after you with unexpected visits and or fines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbctvlicence.com/Detector%20vans.htm&quot;&gt;example article&lt;/a&gt; debating their existence.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you smuggle your TV into the country and set it up in a windowless room, supposedly they still have the technology to find out.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the BBC have TV detector vans and what technology do they use to find people who have are not paying a license fee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastEditorUserId="190" LastEditDate="2013-08-29T16:40:56.373" LastActivityDate="2016-09-05T01:36:03.313" Title="Does the BBC have TV detector vans and how can they tell if you aren't paying a license fee?" Tags="|technology|television|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3345" CreationDate="2011-05-18T14:47:31.223" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a TV to be able to interpret the information, the high-frequency input is mixed with a local oscillator signal. This is the signal that the detector van can pick up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ovFxl.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bushywood.com/tv_detector_vans.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Heaps more info here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a very similar system in Sweden. The IT magazine &lt;em&gt;Ny Teknik&lt;/em&gt; wrote an article called &amp;quot;Yes, you can detect flat screen TV's as well&amp;quot;, to debunk the somewhat popular claim to the contrary. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyteknik.se/popular_teknik/teknikfragan/article37940.ece&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Article (swedish)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;layout=2&amp;amp;eotf=1&amp;amp;sl=sv&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyteknik.se%2Fpopular_teknik%2Fteknikfragan%2Farticle37940.ece&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Terrible Google translate&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article makes the following points (my translation):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New LCD TV's can be detected as long as they have a mid-frequency receiver that modulates the broadcasted TV signal to a base band signal. Its components are subsequently demodulated to become image- and sound signals, respecitvely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TV detection is entirely independent of what technique is used to display the image to the viewer. LCD or plasma makes no difference. VCRs, TV-cards for computers and video cameras with built in TV-tuner has this oscillator as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The shift to flat screens does not as such present any problem to the TV detectors. What's worse is the shift to digital TV. If you have a TV receiver that only receives digital signal then there is no local oscillator for the detectors to detect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with TV detector vans is not that they don't work at all, but rather that they are just now ceasing to be effective, as we're moving towards exclusively digital signals. As TV detection yields diminishing returns, the cost/benefit balance will soon turn TV detection into an unreasonable endeavour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Techniques that are not as likely to go out of date include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requirement for TV retailers to report all purchases&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phone calls and house visits to try and hear/see a TV&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eye witness won't legally get them very far, though, and you are never required to let such visitors inside your house. Still, this is usually enough to manage to coerce most people caught escaping their license into paying up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not familiar with the particulars of BBC, but I doubt kidnapping was ever a part of their profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T15:02:43.333" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3348" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3419" CreationDate="2011-05-18T14:51:34.550" Score="57" ViewCount="66878" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that frame-rates above 60fps all look the same to the human eye. Is that true? Why? If so, why do graphics cards boast anything higher than that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2829" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-25T10:29:17.400" LastActivityDate="2018-03-23T06:15:58.200" Title="Can the human eye distinguish frame rates above 60 Hz?" Tags="|computers|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3327" CreationDate="2011-05-18T15:49:16.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even &lt;a href=&quot;http://multiples.about.com/od/funfacts/a/differenttwins.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;identical twins don't share the same features exactly&lt;/a&gt;; there are developmental differences.  And the chance of being genetically identical-enough is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=128&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;vanishingly small&lt;/a&gt;; hundreds of genes affect appearance, so even multiple (non-identical-twin) children from the same couple don't look that much like each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, given that a genetic match is out of the question, is there some chance that we just can't tell that many people apart so that you will have a very very close look-alike somewhere?  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=celebrity+look-alikes&amp;amp;tbm=isch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Celebrity look alikes&lt;/a&gt; provide some data as to how alike people look.  There is no particular reason to believe that celebrities are more or less likely to have look-alikes than anyone else, and there is strong pressure to find celebrity look-alikes, so this gives a reasonable estimate of the level of similarity one should expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also research into the dimension of &quot;face space&quot;--that is, in how many independent characteristics can faces vary?  The answer, according to both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17496382&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;psychology&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/106/17/6895.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;modeling&lt;/a&gt;, is in the range of 100-200.  Since there are so many independent characteristics, the chance that two unrelated people will share essentially all of them is vanishingly small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T15:49:16.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3327" CreationDate="2011-05-18T16:20:45.630" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is the likelihood of two random, unrelated people sharing identical features?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To start off, it's kind of hard to answer since you didn't define &quot;identical&quot;. A good definition would probably use terminology/methodology from image/facial recognition software world.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I will assume common cultural understanding of the term (e.g. look-alikes and Doppelgängers):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &quot;evil&quot; connotation, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelg%C3%A4nger&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelg%C3%A4nger&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For simple resemblance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look-alike&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look-alike&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Have there been documented cases of this occurring?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, for &quot;evil&quot; twins: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelg%C3%A4nger#Notable_reports&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelg%C3%A4nger#Notable_reports&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For simple lookalikes, Wiki has a hilarious example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;During the 1920s, Charlie Chaplin once went to a Charlie Chaplin-look-alike competition. Chaplin didn't even make it to the finals. (source: &lt;em&gt;Howell, Melissa; Howell, Greg; Pierce, Seth (1 August 2010). Fusion: Where You and God Connect. Review and Herald Pub Assoc. p. 275. ISBN 9780828025478&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another notable example, though to be honest they don't look all that similar to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NjKyK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Paul McCartney and William Shears Campbell&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And here's Stalin's body double&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lIK9r.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="255" LastEditDate="2011-05-18T20:12:37.823" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T20:12:37.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3351" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3355" CreationDate="2011-05-18T17:31:14.287" Score="21" ViewCount="726" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three parts to this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does speed have an effect on miles-per-gallon? Is there a more accurate causal effect than speed that would also cause a connection at varying speeds? (perhaps RPM; weather; tire pressure)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are speed limits set at an appropriate point to directly affect miles-per-gallon? Should they be higher; lower? (Not to imply that gasoline usage is a relevant factor in speed limits.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do drivers react to speed limits enough to matter? As in, do drivers obey speed limits enough to change their speed to one that improves their gas milage?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, I would imagine that city and highway driving may have different results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-09-01T03:14:17.260" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T03:14:17.260" Title="Do lower speed limits reduce gasoline usage?" Tags="|road-vehicles|government|behavior|gasoline|driving-speed|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2902" CreationDate="2011-05-18T17:58:59.600" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Brian,  optometrists are not immune form urban legends.  As the two related questions indicated, it's not bad.  It's no worse than a camera operating in low light.  Here are some relevant links that may apply more specifically to your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skeptically.org/kooks/id5.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eye exercise and other care myths&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s time we put those myths to rest. Dr. Theodore Lawwill of the American Academy of Ophthalmology said TV won’t do any lasting harm to your eyes even if you sit close to it. Kids, he said, like to be as close to the set as possible but nothing bad will come out of this habit. That’s because their eyes can easily focus whether the object is far or two inches or less away from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should you worry if the room is too dark? Not really. On the contrary, people with mild cataracts may even see better in dim light. But this can cause eyestrain. To remedy this, simply adjust the set to get a better picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The contrast between a bright set and a dark room temporarily tires some people’s eyes as does the reflective glare off the screen from a poorly placed lamp, but neither situation will lead to long-term damage,&amp;quot; said Deborah Franklin in Health magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Choose a seat in relation to a movie or television screen at whatever distance is most comfortable to you. As long as you do that, you will not harm your eyes,&amp;quot; Rosenfeld added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=42;t=000154;p=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes.com forum discussion&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060425015643.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Also found an article on ScienceDaily that talks about this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Eyestrain can occur when the eyes are fixed on an object for a long period of time, there is poor lighting, or there is glare,” explains John Bullough, Ph.D., lighting scientist at the LRC and lead researcher on the television study. “One scenario believed to cause eyestrain is watching television in a dark room. In this case, visual discomfort is caused by the large difference in luminance between the television screen and the room’s dark background.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though the effects were modest, they were measurable. The results are consistent with prior literature supporting the concept of limiting luminance ratios between a visual task and its surround, according to LRC researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases, they key word is &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;fatigue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, not damage.  &lt;strong&gt;So the bottom line, it will make your eyes more tired, but it won't harm them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T18:33:08.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3353" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3354" CreationDate="2011-05-18T18:53:57.993" Score="4" ViewCount="6839" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard it said that you could tell if someone had lied recently by looking at their fingernails. White spots indicated lies, with supposedly bigger spots indicating bigger lies.&#xA;I've observed white spots (and damage to the nails) moves away from the lunula at a fairly steady rate... if there was any truth (sorry) to the suggestion then you could also determine approximately how long ago the lie took place based on it's distance from the lunula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2247" LastActivityDate="2017-12-27T15:27:46.380" Title="Could white spots under fingernails be an indicator of recent lies?" Tags="|physiology|lie-detection|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3353" CreationDate="2011-05-18T19:44:21.273" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/643/what-causes-white-spots-on-your-fingernails&quot;&gt;According to the straight dope&lt;/a&gt; the white spots (also called leukonychia) are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The precise cause of leukonychia is a mystery. It's said to be more common in the young and in women, and often shows up when the body undergoes stress or trauma, such as a blow to the fingertips. Excessive manicuring can make things worse; so can working in a pickle factory, of all things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site lists many other causes of these white spots which are much more worrisome.  However, getting gifts or lying is NOT amongst the causes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wisegeek.com/what-causes-white-spots-on-fingernails.htm&quot;&gt;WiseGeek agrees&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you notice white spots, also known as leukonychia, on your nails, they unlikely to have been caused by a vitamin or mineral deficiency. In a few cases, white spots on fingernails can indicate an underlying infection, but much more commonly, they are the result of injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/11574/1/What-Causes-White-Spots-on-Fingernails.html&quot;&gt;HealthGuidance explains more&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The appearance of these white spots can be a result of a possible injury to the base of the nail, which is called as the matrix. Usually, these injuries would have occurred in the past, but the white spot on the fingernail takes time to appear. By the time that this white spot makes an appearance, you would have forgotten about the injury. A normal banging of the finger on the door or the countertop can result in the injury and the occurrence of white spot on the fingernail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, nothing about lies or gifts.  And just because we don't know exactly how something happens, is no reason to accept whatever made up outlandish tale someone comes up with....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T19:44:21.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3351" CreationDate="2011-05-18T19:47:57.237" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two very obvious reasons that higher speeds can reduce gas mileage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) drag and wind resistance: the faster you go the more the wind pushes back. Drag force scales with the &lt;em&gt;square&lt;/em&gt; of velocity IIRC (and to overcome that force factors as a &lt;em&gt;cube&lt;/em&gt; of the velocity) ( see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_%28physics%29&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_%28physics%29&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) vehicle tuning: cars get the best mileage in an optimal band, and many (non-performance) cars are set up so that optimal mileage in the highest gear coincides with the expected national speed limit (and EPA testing procedure for MPG stickers in the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/factors.shtml&quot;&gt;http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/factors.shtml&lt;/a&gt; for a list of other common factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="482" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T19:47:57.237" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3348" CreationDate="2011-05-18T20:19:15.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The human eye is not able to distinguish between 60 Hz and 100 Hz when only watching (even less could suffice provided the image is prepared correctly, as evidenced by movies projected at 24 Hz in the theather), but there is a distinction when interacting - you can notice the response is faster even beyond 60 Hz. This is augmented by the fact response time (latency between the input and the displayed image) is often several frames because of pipelined nature of the rendering technology, therefore the latency of 60 Hz game is typically over 60 ms, as evidenced by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3725/measuring_responsiveness_in_video_.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gamasutra Measuring Responsiveness in Video Games&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-05-18T20:41:21.197" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T20:41:21.197" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-05-18T20:19:15.327" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3338" CreationDate="2011-05-18T21:04:38.207" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this answer, you're going to see some of the same arguments and tactics as you see from those pushing DCA as a potential cure for cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is mainly because this particular line of treatment may yield some legitimate benefits for a variety of related conditions, but has not yet been been appropriately tested, even though studies are underway (as I'll show later).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply put, until the data is in, there is no reason to think that Low-Dose-Naltrexone is a miracle cure for anything, or that there is some conspiracy to keep evidence from coming to light.  Steve Novella and PZ Myers take a good look at this issue in both &lt;a href=&quot;http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/another-cure-for-cancer/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;neurologicablog&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/index.php?page=2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pharyngula&lt;/a&gt; it's with regard to DCA and cancer, but they address the issue of jumping the gun before the research is in and the &quot;big pharma is covering this up&quot; aspect of the argument, which is essentially the same here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is Naltrexone?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DpD7K.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naltrexone&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Naltrexone&lt;/a&gt; is an opiate antagonist.  Essentially what it does is block the receptors in the body which opiate drugs (heroin, morphine, oxycontin) would bind to in order to stop them from having an effect. It is most often used clinically to treat opiate dependence, and occasionally alcoholism.  It is also sometimes used in emergency detoxification from opiate overdoses, but only in a hospital setting. &#xA;Instructions for patients regarding its use can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0000853/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, including why it is typically prescribed, what the dangers are, and what to consult with your physician about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reasons to be skeptical of this claim&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9nygu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any time you see a claim that a variety of conditions such as this can be affected by one drug or therapy, there is reason to be skeptical.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, just because something is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/drugs/developmentapprovalprocess/howdrugsaredevelopedandapproved/default.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FDA approved&lt;/a&gt; for one condition does not automatically make it safe or even reasonable for other conditions.  For example, radiation therapy is FDA approved to treat certain cancers, but that does not mean it should be used to treat the common cold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skepticism is especially warranted when you see arguments like this:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GUjkZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;(which is literally the same argument made for the big pharma suppression of DCA for cancer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the claim that it has &quot;no side effects&quot;, this is just a general point to apply any time one is skeptically evaluating medical claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone says that a medication has no side effects, that person is either lying or horribly misinformed.  Every medication has side effects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly naltrexone has side effects, and some are mentioned at the link provided in your question. Although they aren't particularly focused on, presumably this is because the dosage rates they are reccommending haven't been studied enough yet to know what those side effects would be.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, naltrexone is NOT without patent protection and in fact, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents?q=naltrexone&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;patents seem to be held for the compound in several forms&lt;/a&gt; and this statement seems to be included mostly to drum up support for research into using Low-Dose-Naltrexone (LDN) for the variety of conditions mentioned.  However the fact that this can be disproved with a simple web search can cause the claim to lose credibility, regardless of the science.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claims like this call for skepticism, but one incorrect aspect of the argument does not necessarily mean that all of the information is incorrect. Here we have to especially careful to separate the science from the &quot;conspiracy&quot; elements of the claim, and evaluate the science on its own merit while not allowing ourselves to be swayed by the supposed conspiracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the mechanism of action for Low-Dose-Naltrexone?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposed mechanism by which LDN therapy is theorized to work is a little complex, and is explained by its proponents &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ldnscience.org/how-does-ldn-work&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to understand how LDN works,&#xA;  it is crucial to briefly introduce the&#xA;  workings of the ‘natural opioid’&#xA;  (endorphin) system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Endorphins are opiate-like molecules&#xA;  produced naturally in the body. The&#xA;  term ‘endorphin’ comes from&#xA;  ‘endogenous morphine’, meaning that it&#xA;  is created within the body, and&#xA;  differentiating it from opioids that&#xA;  are administered from external&#xA;  sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Endorphins are produced in most cells&#xA;  in the body, and are important&#xA;  regulators of cell growth and&#xA;  therefore the immune system. Disorders&#xA;  of the immune system can occur with&#xA;  unusually low levels of these&#xA;  endorphins.  The particular endorphin&#xA;  that has been found to influence cell&#xA;  growth as well as immunity is called&#xA;  Opioid Growth Factor (OGF) or&#xA;  Met-Enkephalin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For an endorphin such as OGF to exert&#xA;  its beneficial effects, it must&#xA;  interact with the body’s cells. It&#xA;  does this by binding to a receptor on&#xA;  the surface of the cells. The receptor&#xA;  to which OGF binds is the ‘Opioid&#xA;  Growth Factor Receptor’ (OGFr) –&#xA;  previously known as the Zeta (ζ)&#xA;  receptor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus, for the endorphin system to be&#xA;  fully functional, two elements are&#xA;  required: opioid production and cell&#xA;  interaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Naltrexone is an externally&#xA;  administered drug that binds to opioid&#xA;  receptors.  In doing so, it displaces&#xA;  the endorphins which were previously&#xA;  bound to the receptors. Specifically,&#xA;  by binding to the OGF receptor, it&#xA;  displaces the body’s naturally&#xA;  produced OGF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a consequence of this displacement,&#xA;  the affected cells become deficient in&#xA;  OGF and three things happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1.Receptor production is increased, in order to try to capture more OGF.&#xA;  2.Receptor sensitivity is increased, also to try to capture more OGF.&#xA;  3.Production of OGF is increased, in order to compensate for the perceived&#xA;  shortage of OGF. Since LDN blocks the&#xA;  OGF receptors only for a few hours&#xA;  before it is naturally excreted, what&#xA;  results is a rebound effect; in which&#xA;  both the production and utilization of&#xA;  OGF is greatly increased. Once the LDN&#xA;  has been metabolized, the elevated&#xA;  endorphins produced as a result of the&#xA;  rebound effect can now interact with&#xA;  the more-sensitive and more-plentiful&#xA;  receptors and assist in regulating&#xA;  cell growth and immunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The duration of the rebound effect&#xA;  varies from individual to individual,&#xA;  but generally persists for about one&#xA;  day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The benefits of the rebound effect can&#xA;  only be utilized by taking a low dose&#xA;  of regular naltrexone. Taking a high&#xA;  dose of naltrexone or using a&#xA;  timed-release formulation will result&#xA;  in continuous blockade of OGF&#xA;  receptors, and the rebound effect will&#xA;  not serve any useful purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In scientific terminology, the use of&#xA;  regular-dose naltrexone results in&#xA;  ‘continuous opioid receptor blockade’&#xA;  whilst the use of LDN results in&#xA;  ‘intermittent opioid receptor&#xA;  blockade’. In order to benefit from&#xA;  the rebound effect and achieve the&#xA;  therapeutic benefit of LDN, it is&#xA;  essential to avoid timed-release&#xA;  versions of naltrexone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Individuals vary in their metabolic&#xA;  speed and this will result in&#xA;  inter-patient variation in the speed&#xA;  at which LDN is eliminated from the&#xA;  body, as well as the length of the&#xA;  rebound effect. Whilst a single daily&#xA;  dose of between 3mg and 5mg will be&#xA;  suitable for most patients, individual&#xA;  modification of dose or frequency is&#xA;  sometimes needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This explanation remains theoretical and controversial, although it is currently being studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Low-dose Naltrexone is currently being studied for :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21584896&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck&lt;/a&gt; - preliminary study, shows potential as novel treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hu&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21531450&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;man ovarian cancer&lt;/a&gt; (in mice) - preliminary, indicates native opiate pathway may suppress human ovarian cancer in mice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21256121&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Multiple Sclerosis (MS)&lt;/a&gt; - Study on mice with experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE, an animal model used to study MS in the laboratory) indicates LDN therapy is non-toxic to patients, did not exacerbate symptoms, but also may have positive effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20695007&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quality of Life Study for patients&#xA;with MS&lt;/a&gt; - promise is shown,&#xA;further study appears to be&#xA;warranted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21174518&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amylotrphic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)&lt;/a&gt; - currently being studied but as of now, I find the data unavailable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20014017&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crohn's Disease&lt;/a&gt; - treatment of at least one pediatric patient was attempted, however the data is unavailable at this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A larger study of crohn's patients&#xA;can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21380937&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Preliminary&#xA;findings indicate mucosal healing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LDN has been studied with regard to Fibromyalgia as well, but I am not going to consider those trials, mostly due to the fact that fibromyalgia itself remains controversial.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data from the AIDS study is still unavailable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, Low-Dose-Naltrexone shows some promise in a few conditions.  However, the research is still quite preliminary, and likely will not be in for years. However, until its mechanism of action, and potential side effects have been better studied, LDN will be ripe for colonization by woo and there will likely be those who will claim it to be a cure for everything from athlete's foot to xenophobia, because &quot;they haven't proven it's not&quot;.  It will also probably fall victim to the general public's lack of knowledge of how the research process works, and will probably be sensationalized by the media more than once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, it seems that some are jumping on the LDN bandwagon a little prematurely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-19T12:24:52.153" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T12:24:52.153" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2203" CreationDate="2011-05-18T21:05:44.557" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 1979, Paul Gebhard and Alan Johnson of the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University spent years &quot;cleaning&quot; the data of suspected contaminants (some of which are mentioned in dan04's answer).  Their results were published in &lt;em&gt;The Kinsey Data: Marginal Tabulations of the 1938-1963 Interviews Conducted by the Institute for Sex Research&lt;/em&gt; (1979), &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=s7dvxScuTWMC&amp;amp;pg=PA8&amp;amp;lpg=PA8&amp;amp;dq=kinsey+data+clean&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=Dl9JOZ4LkD&amp;amp;sig=3t0Ic_hrmPt4eMOUSg8DeINFTWA&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=0CPUTaXALqPZiAKixuWlBA&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=2&amp;amp;ved=0CC4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;portions of which are available online via Google Books&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This excerpt lists some of the individuals excluded from the re-evaluation of Kinsey's data (the groups mentioned are the sample divided by college education and race):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All of these groups were cleaned in the sense of removing individuals who had derived from sources with known sexual bias. By known sexual bias we mean a group which we know to be substantially biased in some sexual way before we began interviewing its members. Examples include the Mattachine Society (a homosexual orginization), the occupants of homes for unwed mothers, prostitutes employed by a famous madam, personal friends of individuals known to be sexually deviant, and patients in mental hospitals. Also, all individuals who had been convicted of any offense other than a traffic violation were excluded since we now know that such individuals (as a group) differ in terms of sexual attitides and behavior from persons who have never been convicted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the changes only led to a handful of differences.  The authors attributed many to the improved statistical methods they were able to employ in the reevaluation, but some to the &quot;cleaning&quot; of Kinsey's data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In another example, the effects of the cleaning of the sample were evident. The incidence figures of homosexual activity for single and married college-educated males, Table 90 in the &lt;em&gt;Male&lt;/em&gt; volume, are quite similar to those of this volume, but our current noncollege sample has much lower incidences than Kinsey's grade-school and high-school-educated samples. A major cause of this discrepancy is clear; Kinsey's noncollege samples included persons who had been incarcerated in jails and prisons (where homosexual activity is relatively common) whereas our present sample excluded them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite these differences, the authors maintained that no significant conclusions produced by the earlier Kinsey studies were debunked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite the flaws of our earlier pioneering publications and the difficulties of comparing them with this volume, it is clear that the major findings of the earlier works regarding age, gender, marital status, and socioeconomic class remain intact. Adding to and cleaning our samples has markedly increased their value, but has not as yet caused us to recant any important assertion. In using our new Ns in analyses, we anticipate we will discover relationships previously unknown to us and we will undoubtedly have to modify some prior statements, but we feel the important contributions of Dr. Kinsey will stand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, the original Kinsey study indicated that 37% of males has had at least one homosexual experience to orgasm.  The re-evaluation placed that figure at that 36.4%.  The original study only found that 4% of the white male population to be completely homosexual (a 5 or 6 on the infamous Kinsey scale), while the re-evaluation placed that figure at 9.9% for the college-educated group and 12.7% for those with lesser education, astounding considering opponents expected that latter figure to be much smaller after omitting convicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most resources criticizing Kinsey's work fail to take this re-evaluation into account at all, so it's hard to ascertain whether they missed anything or not.  All of the flaws in Kinsey's original work seem to be accounted for.  Furthermore, no study of this magnitude has been conducted since.  Kinsey's study is by no means perfect, but neither has it been conclusively debunked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="334" LastEditDate="2011-08-03T05:10:47.030" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T05:10:47.030" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3359" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3361" CreationDate="2011-05-18T21:16:50.007" Score="24" ViewCount="2453" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that premium and/or high-octane fuel (petrol/gas for cars):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;improves performance; and/or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;improves engine longevity; and/or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;improves mileage so that money is saved on fuel, even when taking into account the extra cost of it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm somewhat sceptical of the claims of fuel companies, especially given the price of premium fuel. Have &lt;em&gt;independent&lt;/em&gt; tests been performed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T13:53:44.810" Title="Is premium fuel &quot;better&quot;?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3360" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3362" CreationDate="2011-05-18T21:38:33.660" Score="19" ViewCount="8523" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it claimed from various people that we have historical records for the darkness that was said to engulf the earth when Jesus was crucified. In the bible, it claims that there was, but I would like more scientific/verifiable accounts on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, do we have any non-biblical, reliable sources that there was an eclipse of some sort when Jesus was crucified? Or are people who claim that there was a documented eclipse during this time mistaken? Do we have any evidence that an eclipse did not happen? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2808" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T00:44:33.340" LastActivityDate="2015-10-18T17:15:32.167" Title="Was there an eclipse when Jesus was crucified?" Tags="|history|religion|jesus-christ|bible|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3359" CreationDate="2011-05-18T22:13:47.337" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems to be a yes based on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thorneymotorsport.co.uk/tuning/ford/focus-rs/focus-rs-fuel-testing.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.thorneymotorsport.co.uk/tuning/ford/focus-rs/focus-rs-fuel-testing.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Remember this is completely standard&#xA;  car, no mapping no toys just as it&#xA;  came from the dealer. Peak power went&#xA;  from 272bhp to 293bhp – 20bhp for&#xA;  doing nothing more than putting better&#xA;  fuel in the car. MPG also went from an&#xA;  average (dash display so hardly that&#xA;  accurate) 22.3mpg to 24.8mpg and that&#xA;  only took three tanks, its now on&#xA;  25.6mpg now that its modified. Its a free lunch, it really is. But don’t&#xA;  trust us, try it, just run three tanks&#xA;  through the car, we can guarantee that&#xA;  the car will feel better, you’ll get&#xA;  more power and cover more miles, try&#xA;  it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/llOwS.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Fuel Comparison&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastActivityDate="2011-05-18T22:13:47.337" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3360" CreationDate="2011-05-18T22:37:48.593" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Passover occurs at the middle of the month &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.judaismvschristianity.com/Passover_dates.htm&quot;&gt;in a lunar calendar&lt;/a&gt; which starts with the new moon.  Since the crucifixion was supposed to happen close to Passover (around April), and therefore close to a full moon, there could not have been a solar eclipse, which occurs with a new moon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you disbelieve the Passover part of the story, you can check &lt;a href=&quot;http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/JSEX/JSEX-AS.html&quot;&gt;solar eclipses&lt;/a&gt; around Jerusalem here.  Year 32 has a solar eclipse sort of close to Passover (i.e. two weeks away).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/JLEX/JLEX-AS.html&quot;&gt;lunar eclipse&lt;/a&gt;--which does happen with a full moon--then the only matching date is the 3rd of April, year 33.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, there were certainly solar and lunar eclipses then as there are now, but given how difficult it is to come up with any independent confirmation of when the crucifixion happened, finding historical reports of eclipses won't help answer anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="677" LastEditDate="2011-06-06T22:08:11.880" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T22:08:11.880" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3364" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3365" CreationDate="2011-05-19T01:14:35.427" Score="29" ViewCount="17907" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently was in a discussion where one of the people, as an argument, claimed that Jews have been known to participate in activities clearly detrimental to Jews as a whole (the argument itself had nothing to do with Jews, it was merely an analogy). To support his argument, he made two claims that really didn't sound very convincing to me though he indicated he was certain both were factual as opposed to myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first claim he made was that there was at least one Jew who was among the Nazi army high level brass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question is, &lt;strong&gt;Is there a historical record of a Jew (who was officially considered Jewish by the contemporary Nazi Germany laws), who nevertheless served as high level officer in German army?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that I'm interested in someone who's &lt;strong&gt;documented&lt;/strong&gt; (as opposed to rumored) to be Jewish. Also, to avoid &quot;who's Jewish&quot; definition arguments, I am using the most applicable (though abhorrent) definition - the Nazi law on who is a Jew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2801" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2019-11-12T07:16:09.167" LastActivityDate="2019-11-12T07:16:09.167" Title="Were there any Jews among the Nazi top people?" Tags="|history|nazi-germany|jews|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3364" CreationDate="2011-05-19T01:17:16.003" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would need to research further to confirm, but I have the feeling that the person who made that argument may have meant &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Milch#1933.E2.80.931939&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Erhard Milch&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Wiki, it sounds that he was, indeed, high level brass:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1933, Milch took up a position as State Secretary of the newly-formed Reichsluftfahrtministerium (&amp;quot;Reich Aviation Ministry&amp;quot; – RLM), answering directly to Hermann Göring. In this capacity, he was instrumental in establishing the Luftwaffe, originally responsible for armament production&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the outbreak of World War II Milch, now with the rank of general, commanded Luftflotte 5 during the Norwegian campaign. Following the defeat of France, Milch was promoted to field-marshal (Generalfeldmarschall) and given the title Air Inspector General. Milch was put in charge of the production of planes during this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, it appears that in answer to your very specific question, Erhard Milch did NOT indeed fit the specific definition you used.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His father was Jewish, which means he had at most 2 documented Jewish grandparents - the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew?#Nazism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nazi laws&lt;/a&gt; classified him as a &lt;em&gt;Mischling&lt;/em&gt; (&amp;quot;crossbreed&amp;quot;) and not a full Jew (3+ Jewish grandparents).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wiki provides the following detail (sources apparently from &lt;em&gt;Benno Müller-Hill, Murderous science: elimination by scientific selection of Jews (1998), p. 26&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1935, Milch's ethnicity came into question because his father, Anton Milch, was a Jew. This prompted an investigation by the Gestapo that Göring squelched by producing an affidavit signed by Milch's mother stating that Anton was not really the father of Erhard and his siblings, and naming their true father as Karl Brauer, her uncle. These events and his being issued a German Blood Certificate prompted Hermann Göring to say famously &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich&amp;quot; (&amp;quot;I decide who is a Jew&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An independent confirmation is quoted in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/projects/jewishlife/JewishSoldiersMark.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;project&lt;/a&gt; from UCSB's class &amp;quot;for Prof. Marcuse's lecture course Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Holocaust; UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2005&amp;quot;. The quote is apparently from &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/righit.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rigg, Mark. Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers, University Press of Kansas, 2002&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Field Marshal and State Secretay of Aviation Erhard Alfred Richard Oskar Milch’s &amp;quot;Aryanization&amp;quot; was the most famous case of a Mischling falsifying a father. In 1933, Frau Clara Milch went to her son-in-law, Fritz Heinrich Hermann, police president of Hagen and later SS general, and gave him an affidavit stating that her deceased uncle, Carl Brauer, rather than her Jewish husband, Anton Milch, had fathered her six children.… In 1935, Hitler accepted the mother’s testimony… (&lt;em&gt;Rigg, 29&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He's still a good example of what most people whould consider &amp;quot;somewhat Jewish&amp;quot; person serving the Nazis at the top, but he does NOT fit the claim as you defined it in your question.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. As a caveat, Erhard Milch was not in the army (as your arguer claimed) - he was in the air force (Luftwaffe). So either the person was mistaken slightly, or they meant a different person and my asnwer is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T01:37:15.517" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3364" CreationDate="2011-05-19T01:31:54.367" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Milch&quot;&gt;Erhard Milch&lt;/a&gt; was a German Field Marshall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, his father was Jewish, and there were perhaps even some claims that his mother was Jewish too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you accept that being Jewish is some sort of inherited property (as opposed to a belief in Judaism, acceptance into/of a religious organisation, self-description or of cultural practices), then it could be argued that he was a Jew who served as a high-level officer in the German Army.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in 1935, Milch's mother claimed that Milch's putative father was not his real father, and named another man. This allowed him to be issued with a German Blood Certificate. So, by the contemporary Nazi Germany laws, he was declared &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; Jewish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T01:31:54.367" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3368" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3369" CreationDate="2011-05-19T01:47:03.030" Score="10" ViewCount="903" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently was in a discussion where one of the people, as an argument, claimed that Jews have been known to participate in what's activities clearly detrimental to Jews as a whole (the argument itself had nothing to do with Jews, it was merely an analogy). To support his argument, he made two claims that really didn't sound very convincing to me though he indicated he was certain both were factual as opposed to myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second claim (first one brought on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3364/were-there-any-jews-among-the-nazi-top-people&quot;&gt;this Q&lt;/a&gt;) was that there were known large Jewish organizations that officially and actively support/lobby for the destruction of Israel today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do such organizations (as opposed to one or two wacky individual Jews) exist? Or was that just an exaggeration for the sake of making an argument?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that I'm not asking about some supposedly rumored jew (e.g. president of Iran is not a valid example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2801" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T00:49:40.010" Title="Do any Jewish organizations lobby for destruction of Israel?" Tags="|history|politics|religion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3368" CreationDate="2011-05-19T01:49:57.737" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;This one (unlike your first question's claim) is actually fully true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neturei_Karta&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neturei_Karta&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neturei Karta opposes Zionism and calls for a peaceful dismantling of the State of Israel, in the belief that Jews are forbidden to have their own state until the coming of the Messiah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/Zionism/judaism_isnot_zionism.cfm&quot;&gt;http://www.nkusa.org/AboutUs/Zionism/judaism_isnot_zionism.cfm&lt;/a&gt; (their own web site) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/nk.html&quot;&gt;http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/nk.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that these are not the only ultra-orthodox Judaism group to hold such views, merely the most well publicized and acting internationally - the others are mostly just acting in Israel itself (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edah_HaChareidis&quot;&gt;Edah HaChareidis&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-05-19T13:01:20.063" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T13:01:20.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3315" CreationDate="2011-05-19T03:07:01.093" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The argument I presented is that all models are wrong (see 2008) and they are just delusional in their science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is medicine a science? Medicine has test tubes, and statistics, and machines with blinky lights. And, models: trials, hypotheses, etc. So it looks like a science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But sometimes people die. Unexpectedly. Does that mean that &quot;all models are wrong&quot;, to quote your argument?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly I think that investing is a science, with various caveats which apply to medicine too, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't know everything&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't always apply the model correctly (the right model at the right time, given that different models are appropriate for different times)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T03:07:01.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3371" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3372" CreationDate="2011-05-19T05:26:40.893" Score="237" ViewCount="33732" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that hot water freezes faster than cold water and if so, what practical applications have there been found for this phenomenon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2836" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T07:52:17.000" LastActivityDate="2022-07-20T09:30:59.117" Title="Does hot water freeze faster than cold water?" Tags="|physics|water|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3371" CreationDate="2011-05-19T05:36:27.993" Score="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;In certain settings, cold water freezers slower than hot water. This is called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mpemba effect&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mpemba effect is the observation that warmer water sometimes freezes faster than colder water. Although the observation has been verified, there is no single scientific explanation for the effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/hot_water.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Can hot water freeze faster than cold water?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, Monwhea Jeng, University of California, 1998&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hot water can in fact freeze faster than cold water for a wide range of experimental conditions.  This phenomenon is extremely counterintuitive, and surprising even to most scientists, but it is in fact real.  It has been seen and studied in numerous experiments.  While this phenomenon has been known for centuries, and was described by Aristotle, Bacon, and Descartes [1—3], it was not introduced to the modern scientific community until 1969, by a Tanzanian high school student named Mpemba.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some suggested reasons given in the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Evaporation — As the initially warmer water cools to the initial temperature of the initially cooler water, it may lose significant amounts of water to evaporation.  The reduced mass will make it easier for the water to cool and freeze.  Then the initially warmer water can freeze before the initially cooler water, but will make less ice. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dissolved Gasses — Hot water can hold less dissolved gas than cold water, and large amounts of gas escape upon boiling.  So the initially warmer water may have less dissolved gas than the initially cooler water. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2820" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T11:55:56.813" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3373" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-19T06:31:53.237" Score="14" ViewCount="9516" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has there been any research in criminology, psychology, or some other related field? Something that shows a correlation between the everyday facial expression someone wears on their face, and whether they have murdered someone? In the absence of research, is there at least an expert opinion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2668" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T20:53:46.263" Title="Do murderers have &quot;the eyes of a killer&quot;?" Tags="|psychology|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3373" CreationDate="2011-05-19T07:02:38.913" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The field of trying to work out a person's personality from their face is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiognomy&quot;&gt;Physiognomy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;It is now being revived again as some new research indicates that people's faces can indicate such traits as trustworthiness, social dominance and aggression. The latter trait seems to be determined by the level of the hormone testosterone during puberty, which affects the ratio between the height and width of the face - aggressive individuals are found to have wider faces.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are references there about detecting people's political preferences too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect (without evidence) that detecting criminality would be swamped more by factors of clothes, cosmetics (including hairstyles and tattoos) and racial profiling than actual facial characteristics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-05-19T12:36:04.680" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T12:36:04.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3348" CreationDate="2011-05-19T10:12:31.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once pressed a gamer about why he tried to boost his framerates into hundreds (severely sacrificing picture quality, of course). In the end it turned out it was because some games couldn't properly handle extreme framerates and exploits started appearing (such as enemies not hearing your footsteps and the like).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this does not apply to all games or all people, but it is one reason for trying to squeeze as much as possible out of your VGA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make this less anecdotal I did some Googling. Here's an analysis of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.funender.com/quake/articles/fps.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quake 3's 125fps jumping bug&lt;/a&gt;. Apparently similar bugs are carried over to other games which use an engine derived from Quake's. Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.modsrepository.com/index.php/Call_of_Duty_%3a_A_Study_on_FPS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;another analysis&lt;/a&gt; both for Quake3 and Call of Duty, which focuses on jumping and running sounds. The magical 333fps count stands out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While googling I came upon many forum threads, and I gather from those that official tournaments have FPS limits to prevent players from using these exploits. However many threads mentioned that &quot;everybody is doing this&quot; which suggests that for simple game servers this is a widespread practice. This is quite understandable, because if one person does this, then others get an unfair disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2857" LastEditorUserId="1134" LastEditDate="2011-08-09T09:50:28.990" LastActivityDate="2011-08-09T09:50:28.990" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3383" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3400" CreationDate="2011-05-19T10:47:59.523" Score="29" ViewCount="10601" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard this many times, sometimes worded &lt;a href=&quot;http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080704015718AAZYw0I&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as such&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ears by 700 times&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering, is this true and, if so, does it pose a threat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="664" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T20:58:14.090" LastActivityDate="2013-02-01T02:27:10.350" Title="Does wearing headphones for long periods increase dangerous bacteria in your ear?" Tags="|medical-science|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3371" CreationDate="2011-05-19T11:20:18.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is true, in proper circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Scientific explanation for that relates to the fact the freezing temperature may increase with the pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mpemba effect is about freezing hot samples faster than cold which may not represent a substantial difference with small pressure variations but phenomenons like supercooling and superheating do have practical applications such as better preservation of organs in medical refrigerators and superconductivity in electrical devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find more about this in:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.animations.physics.unsw.edu.au/jw/Mpemba.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Mpemba effect: why hot water can sometimes freeze faster than cold&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2867" LastEditorUserId="31604" LastEditDate="2018-03-02T10:57:41.457" LastActivityDate="2018-03-02T10:57:41.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2973" CreationDate="2011-05-19T11:21:47.107" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not about hotels, but an analysis about &lt;strong&gt;all closed co-op and condo sales in Manhattan, in 2009&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://matrix.millersamuel.com/?p=9939&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jonathan Miller&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;did an &lt;a href=&quot;http://matrix.millersamuel.com/?p=8450&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;analysis by floor level of&#xA;Manhattan co-ops and condos&lt;/a&gt;, which&#xA;illustrated the market phenomenon of&#xA;the missing 13th floor in Manhattan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Older buildings are more likely to be missing the 13th floor than new ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;13th floor – data suggests &lt;strong&gt;only 18.4%&#xA;of buildings with a 13th floor&#xA;actually call it that.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/El4iX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;building market share&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://therealdeal.com/newyork/articles/the-cost-of-a-view&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Real Deal Magazine&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Miller's analysis [...] found&#xA;quantitative evidence that, yes,&#xA;apartments on the 13th floor are&#xA;statistically unusual (note that&#xA;floor's small market share for 2009&#xA;sales). That superstition, it seems,&#xA;dies hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-27T13:27:02.973" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3387" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3392" CreationDate="2011-05-19T13:02:12.480" Score="8" ViewCount="2276" Body="&lt;p&gt;So a few months ago there was a spout of stories in the UK papers pertaining to squatters, and the fact that they have just been breaking into houses and changing the locks whilst the owners had been on holiday. This was apparently resulting in the squatters being able to legally stay due to some laws that allowed this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So whilst in a conversation yesterday the subject came up and one of those people went off on a rant how it's &quot;absolutely ridiculous&quot; and &quot;totally absurd that out government can allow strangers to take our property, when it's OURS!&quot;. I hadn't really given this much thought until now but am of the opinion that if you have enough money to own multiple houses that lay vacant for most of the time, I really have no pity for them if they discover some less-fortunate people are living there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was the holiday thing I had a problem with, my in-built lie detector was going off something wicked at the idea that someone could acquire your property legally whilst on holiday. I am assuming, for the moment, that this is a dreadful media spin to perpetuate nationalism and segregation as most of the squatters were from less affluent countries. But as we all know personal opinions and speculation don't mean anything outside our own heads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what's going on here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2869" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T02:05:45.167" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T15:49:39.493" Title="Are media reports about squatters' rights accurate?" Tags="|politics|law|united-kingdom|government|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3359" CreationDate="2011-05-19T13:30:38.337" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Car and Driver&quot; did a test which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caranddriver.com/features/01q4/regular_or_premium_-feature/test_results_page_2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;concluded&lt;/a&gt; that cars designed for premium fuel (which in general are higher-performance cars) do run better on premium fuel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, at least one of the claims can be confirmed. With respect to the longevity claim, Car and Driver offers an opinion: a dirty engine will increase knock, which can be ignored by using premium fuels or solved by cleaning the engine. The reason is that soot deposits act as ignition sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T13:30:38.337" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3389" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3398" CreationDate="2011-05-19T13:38:28.347" Score="14" ViewCount="3733" Body="&lt;p&gt;The manufacturers of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sensodyne.com.au/howsensodyneworks.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sensodyne&lt;/a&gt; toothpaste claims their products &quot;helps relieve the pain of sensitive teeth&quot;, using the active ingredients of (either) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sensodyne.com.au/howsensodyneworks.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Strontium Chloride or Potassium Nitrate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Sensodyne toothpaste actually reduce sensitivity in one's teeth? If so, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2667" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-01T06:04:53.463" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T06:04:53.463" Title="Does Sensodyne Toothpaste reduce teeth sensitivity?" Tags="|medical-science|dentistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3390" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-19T13:43:54.893" Score="8" ViewCount="6535" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is said that no matter how far you take away a cat from home, it always come back from anywhere. Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this pre-supposes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Home is some place that the cat lived in for a while&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Home is a geographic location, NOT &quot;where the owners are&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is about cat's homing abilities, as opposed to some psychic connection with the owners.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Taking &quot;away&quot; is limited to land-based travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. not topologically separated by geographical/spacial features impassable by a cat unassisted (ocean, vacuum of space, etc..)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-05-19T17:32:03.957" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T21:09:02.217" Title="Do cats always come back home from anywhere?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3387" CreationDate="2011-05-19T13:54:03.340" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can only enter a building and claim squatters rights if there is no forced entry, i.e. if there is a window open, and they can get in, without breaking and entering, then I believe they can claim squatters rights.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there's been several cases where squatters have committed breaking and entering and repaired the damage and said to the authorities, that the door was ajar.  Hard to prove otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laws have changed since the early 80's, when it was ridiculously easy to claim squatters rights, but you still can.  I actually lived briefly in a squat in London in the early 80's; a council block of flats due for rebuilding.  Was a bit of fun for a few weeks, but no water,m no electricity, etc, wasn't all that after a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the courts are far likely to side with a home owner nowadays.  I have a large alarm on the house now, which reports B&amp;amp;E when i am away, if it were to happen, so I have a legitimate legal come back; I have rights now which allow their easy removal due to proof there was a Breaking and Entering, not a door, or window ajar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Land Registration Act 2002&#xA;Allows squatters to apply to own the property if they have lived there for 10 years.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.propertylawuk.net/adversepossessionsquatters.html&quot;&gt;http://www.propertylawuk.net/adversepossessionsquatters.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under the terms of the Land Registry Act 2003, &quot;squatters&quot; are permitted to enter an uninhabited property and apply for ownership after the 7 year period under the following conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) They did not break in to the property (doing so is a criminal matter and they could be prosecuted). Basically, they have to have to entered the property by simply opening the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) They have to prove that they have lived in the property for that time and produced gas, electricity and water bills and dated pictures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) They have to have a key to the property, allowing them unhindered access in and out of the building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) The property cannot have been furnished by the &quot;previous&quot; owners, prior to them inhabiting the property.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(5) They can proove that they reasonably believed that the property belonged to them during this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(6) The owners are notified and have the right to fight them in court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly though, Occupiers of non-residential properties and those who are not displaced residential occupiers or protected intending occupiers of residential properties can’t force their way into a property when someone there opposes entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What that means is that if you live in the house, come back and find someone in there, you are a displaced resident and can apply to the police to get them removed, which could take a few weeks.  However, if you own rental property's, and don't live there, you cannot force the door down and remove the squatters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, there are no 'squatters rights' in Scotland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/HomeAndCommunity/WhereYouLive/Derelictbuildingsandsquatters/DG_10022452&quot;&gt;http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/HomeAndCommunity/WhereYouLive/Derelictbuildingsandsquatters/DG_10022452&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can squatters take ownership of a property?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process for someone who isn’t the legal owner of a property to take ownership after living in it for a certain amount of time is called ‘adverse possession’. It is very rare for squatters to be able to do this because they have to stay in a property without the owner’s permission for at least 10 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of time a squatter needs to stay in a property before they can get ownership depends on whether the land is registered or unregistered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the land is unregistered, a squatter would generally need to occupy it for 12 years to get ownership. If the land is registered and a squatter lives there for 10 years, they can apply for registration. The current registered owner will be able to object and in most circumstances will be able to stop squatters from taking ownership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession&quot;&gt;Adverse possession&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 makes it an offence to force entry to a building which is occupied, and this includes squats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Squatting is legal because trespassing is not a crime in English and Welsh law.  Trespassing is a civil issue, a dispute about who has the right to the land or property, to be settled between two individuals in a civil court.  It has nothing to do with the criminal law.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Squatters also rely on section six of the Criminal Justice Act 1977, which makes it a criminal offence for anyone to break into a squat or any other home as long as someone is inside who is opposed to their entry.  The police have no more power to enter a squat than any other home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, hit is a legal defintion of what are squatters rights:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.landlordsolicitor.com/squatters-rights.html&quot;&gt;Squatters rights&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that should cover it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2883" LastEditorUserId="2883" LastEditorDisplayName="user288" LastEditDate="2015-11-30T15:49:39.493" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T15:49:39.493" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3348" CreationDate="2011-05-19T14:28:39.130" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Frame Rate&lt;/a&gt; suggests, IMO,  that 60 Hz is not really the far end of the spectrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Major institutions such as Snell have&#xA;  demonstrated 720p72 pictures as a&#xA;  result of earlier analogue&#xA;  experiments, where 768 line television&#xA;  at 75 FPS looked subjectively better&#xA;  than 1150 line 50 FPS progressive&#xA;  pictures with higher shutter speeds&#xA;  available (and a corresponding lower&#xA;  data rate). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the link to the cited article is broken. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, from same article, and more relevant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Higher frame rates, including 300 FPS,&#xA;  have been tested by BBC Research over&#xA;  concerns with sports and other&#xA;  broadcasts where fast motion with&#xA;  large HD displays could have a&#xA;  disorientating effect on viewers. &lt;a href=&quot;http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP169.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Whitepaper link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A higher FPS will also yield a natural motion blur, something that is usually computationally expensive to render, even at a lower FPS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="300" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T14:28:39.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3390" CreationDate="2011-05-19T14:41:21.183" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, if you put a cat on the moon not only would it not make it home, it would die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&#xA;Improved question, improved answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cats have impressive memories for directions that often enable them to find their way home after travelling long distances. This superior navigation ability is believed to derive from two things: using the angle of the sun for navigation (which can be done even on cloudy days because the cat uses polarized light for wayfinding) and being sensitive to the Earth’s magnetic fields. This latter hypothesis was borne out when it was found that attaching a magnet to a cat will disrupt his navigational skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story that dramatically illustrates the phenomenal feline navigational ability is that of Howie the Persian, who crossed 1,000 miles of brutal Australian outback to find his family. Howie had been left in the care of his owner Kirsten’s grandparents while Kirsten went on an overseas trip, but had disappeared from their home while Kirsten was away. A year later, a mangy stray showed up on Kirsten’s doorstep. Upon cleaning up the filthy, skinny, injured animal, they realized that it was Howie, who had fought his way back through a vast expanse of harsh desert and wilderness to return to the family he loved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Cat Facts, by Marcus Schneck and Jill Caravan. Barnes &amp;amp; Noble Books: 1993.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2893" LastEditorUserId="2893" LastEditDate="2011-05-19T21:09:02.217" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T21:09:02.217" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3390" CreationDate="2011-05-19T14:46:59.807" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There were no legit studies of this that that I could find on Google Scholar. The only study I know of was by some parapsychologist who claimed it was because of some psychic connection, so take that for what it's worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are apparently several documented confirmed examples of that happening - the most famous one was OK-&gt;CA move by a family which left the cat (Sugar) in CA and returned back home to OK. Sugar came to OK on her own. Details and the cite are here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12092530&amp;amp;postcount=5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=12092530&amp;amp;postcount=5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The common stories of Sugar the family finding cat all seem to leave out one thing. Apparently the cat used to live on the farm in Oklahoma where it returned to from California (assuming the identification was correct that it was the same cat). This version is told in a 2006 book called Understanding and Training Your Cat or Kitten tells a version that makes it slightly less mystical in terms of the cat's people finding skills. The authors cite a 1970 young adult non-fiction book for the story (The Strange World of Animals and Pets by Vincent H. Gaddis and Margaret Gaddis; this book in turn recounts that the event took place in 1952.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as plausible mechanisms (discounting the psychic connection), none have been researched as far as cats, but we know that birds orient &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/asc/Bingman/Default.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;both by magnetic sensing and by the sun&lt;/a&gt;. Whether the cats can have a similar mechanism, or whether any of the rare known cases are just unlikely random events that happened, does not seem to be known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T14:46:59.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3389" CreationDate="2011-05-19T15:31:14.310" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sensodyne.com.au/howsensodyneworks.aspx&quot;&gt;Sensodyne&lt;/a&gt; marketing includes an explanation, &lt;em&gt;some of which&lt;/em&gt; includes a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim that the products containing Potassium Nitrate work because the potassium stops the nerves from firing, citing &lt;em&gt;Nagata, T. et al, Clinical evaluation of a potassium nitrate dentrific for the treatment of dentinal hypersensitivity, J Clin Periodontal. 1994;21:217-221.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim the products containing Strontium Chloride work by blocking the exposed tubules within the dentinal tissue, that stops fluid flow that triggers pain. They do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; provide references on their web-site to support that claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T15:31:14.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3399" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-19T15:32:12.897" Score="5" ViewCount="6297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was told of an incident where a French general in 1920 after having put down an  anti-colonial uprising, supposedly went on to insult the grave of Saladin. I attempted to find a source for that belief but the nearest I come is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EC20Ak06.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; that doesn't state sources which has the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Similarly, it has not forgotten either the content or the tone of the statements made by French General Henri Gouraud when he entered Damascus in July 1920. Striding to Saladin's tomb next to the Grand Mosque, Gouraud kicked it and exclaimed, &quot;Awake Saladin, we have returned. My presence here consecrates the victory of the Cross over the Crescent.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any reliable sources for this claim, or do we have some idea where it's originating from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2011-05-20T14:54:27.087" LastActivityDate="2017-04-13T04:14:22.987" Title="Did the French General Henri Gouraud kick and insult Saladins grave in 1920 after putting down an anti-colonial uprising?" Tags="|history|france|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3383" CreationDate="2011-05-19T16:12:32.567" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is false.  Cecil Adams, from The Straight Dope, took a look at the claim and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2740/does-wearing-headphones-increase-bacteria-in-the-ear&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;summarizes his findings&lt;/a&gt; in the following manner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statistic you cite is fairly accurate up through &amp;quot;ears,&amp;quot; after which it goes awry. The problems are (1) the rumored scale of the phenomenon is way off and (2) the stat may not tell us too much, besides that ears are livelier places than one might imagine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on to explain that the source of the notion probably is &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1288/00005537-199201000-00017/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Changes in the microbial flora of airline headset devices after their use&lt;/a&gt;, published in the medical journal &lt;em&gt;Laryngoscope&lt;/em&gt;, in which the researchers evaluated the bacterial flora of twenty headsets before and after they were worn for one hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He notes that, while the study supports an increase in bacteria after wearing headsets, it does not support the &amp;quot;700 times&amp;quot; figure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the beginning of the experiment, the typical headset had 60 microorganisms on its surface; after an hour's use of the headphones by a volunteer, that number went up to 650 - roughly 11, not 700, times more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that figure, rather, he blames an New York Times column from 1993 by Betsy Wade: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/03/travel/practical-traveler-that-airline-pillow-may-be-well-traveled.html?ref=practicaltraveler&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PRACTICAL TRAVELER; That Airline Pillow May Be Well Traveled&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the article, Wade summarizes the aforementioned study in the following fashion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; Dr. Brook's new work focused on the bacteria found on the headset after use for 60 minutes. In this test, he used sterile headsets of the type most often found, ones with the smaller earphones, usually covered with gray plastic foam. The research showed a 100- to 700-fold increase in bacteria on the set, including staphylococci of three types and streptococci of two types. After this conclusion, Dr. Brook said, he does not feel comfortable wearing the headsets, and he said that people whose immune systems are compromised, including those undergoing chemotherapy, should be quite concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having read the study, Cecil Adams concludes that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the Straight Dope staffers and I have turned that study upside down and can't fathom how Wade got her numbers. Whether they arose from a cryptic reading of the data, a misreading, or a proofreader's slip, it's of such that Internet factoids are born.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there you have it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2893" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T16:33:36.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2032" CreationDate="2011-05-19T16:18:20.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alum is a double salt...and a very good Astringent which precipitates proteins,..&#xA;During shaving our skin is exposed to harsh condition..i.e shaving blade rubbing on our skin which damages the skin and open pores which might cause irritation and burning... Thus ALUM being a very good Astringent precipates the proteins which are the constituent of the pores of our skin helps reducing the Burning and soften the skin...they also constricts the open tissues (blood vessels, nerve endings if exposed any....) thus prevent bleeding and give a smooth feel to the skin....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using ALUM during summers can also prevent excess sweating and give a good feel to the skin as it blocks the pores on the face...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2904" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T16:18:20.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3402" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3408" CreationDate="2011-05-19T16:33:44.717" Score="22" ViewCount="4302" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Bill Nye get booed by a room full of Texans for saying that the moon reflected the Sun's light instead of coming from God? This is a well-known internet rumour. Is there any evidence proving/refuting it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="808" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-14T11:49:18.130" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T23:30:23.557" Title="Did Bill Nye get booed by a room full of Texans for saying that the moon reflected the suns light?" Tags="|astronomy|moon|sun|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3402" CreationDate="2011-05-19T16:49:35.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The original article is &lt;a href=&quot;http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=WTHB&amp;amp;p_theme=wthb&amp;amp;p_action=search&amp;amp;p_maxdocs=200&amp;amp;p_text_search-0=nye&amp;amp;s_dispstring=nye%20AND%20date%284/6/2006%20to%204/6/2006%29&amp;amp;p_field_date-0=YMD_date&amp;amp;p_params_date-0=date%3aB,E&amp;amp;p_text_date-0=4/6/2006%20to%204/6/2006%29&amp;amp;xcal_numdocs=20&amp;amp;p_perpage=10&amp;amp;p_sort=YMD_date%3aD&amp;amp;xcal_useweights=no&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. It is archived and unfortunately you have to subscribe to access the full article which you may want to do depending on how much you want to find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does say in the brief description that he &quot;ruffled a few religious feathers along the way&quot; so it would be fair to believe that the moon comment was not the sole reason for the booing however it would be the most outrageous objectionable point (for them of course) to pick up on for a perplexing news article, and it would also contribute to the crowds reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2869" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T16:49:35.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3404" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3416" CreationDate="2011-05-19T17:06:36.513" Score="12" ViewCount="28846" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen on a lot of websites that nail-biting behaviour is due to lack of iron in the blood. I'm wondering if is this actually true, or just an urban myth which has spread and spread?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1850" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T10:56:37.953" LastActivityDate="2023-04-03T21:44:56.460" Title="Does nail-biting indicate iron deficiency?" Tags="|biology|nutritional-supplements|physiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3402" CreationDate="2011-05-19T17:34:14.713" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wwMAX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Bill Nye&quot;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/skepticism-in-national/memekiller-makes-a-meme-with-waco-moonbat-bill-nye-story&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/skepticism-in-national/reporter-of-bill-nye-moonbat-story-speaks&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What happened:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Emmy-winning scientist angered a&#xA;  few audience members when he&#xA;  criticized literal interpretation of&#xA;  the biblical verse &lt;strong&gt;Genesis 1:16&lt;/strong&gt;, which&#xA;  reads: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“&lt;em&gt;God made two great lights -&#xA;    the greater light to govern the day&#xA;    and the lesser light to govern the&#xA;    night. He also made the stars&lt;/em&gt;.”   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He&#xA;  pointed out that the sun, the “greater&#xA;  light,” is but one of countless stars&#xA;  and that the “lesser light” is the&#xA;  moon, which really is not a light at&#xA;  all, rather a reflector of light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;This &lt;strong&gt;happend in 2006&lt;/strong&gt;, but the story &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bsalert.com/news/1990/Bill_Nye_Bood_In_Texas_For_Saying_The_Moon_Reflects_The_Sun.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;resurged in 2007&lt;/a&gt; and then again in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thinkatheist.com/profiles/blogs/bill-nye-bood-in-texas-for&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2009&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;But according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/skepticism-in-national/reporter-of-bill-nye-moonbat-story-speaks&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the reporter who wrote the original article&lt;/a&gt; for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wacotrib.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Waco Tribune&lt;/a&gt; the later retellings &lt;strong&gt;overplayed what happened&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;There was some mischaracterization of&#xA;  what happened&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;,&quot; Tim Woods says. It seemed&#xA;  like the story was always construed in&#xA;  such a way to make his hometown look&#xA;  like backwoods idiots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;The one that&#xA;  always floors me is they say, oh, he&#xA;  was booed. &lt;strong&gt;No, he wasn’t booed&lt;/strong&gt;. I've&#xA;  gone back through the story, and&#xA;  nowhere does it say he was booed&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T17:34:14.713" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3407" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-19T18:17:25.860" Score="26" ViewCount="14617" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is like an urban myth and a classic prank, but I never saw it in action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supposedly if someone is passed out or sleeping, the contact with water &lt;strong&gt;will make him pee&lt;/strong&gt;. Is this true? If true, why does this happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2914" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-19T23:26:18.387" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T16:20:15.720" Title="If you put your hand in water while sleeping/drunk, will you pee yourself?" Tags="|water|sleep|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3402" CreationDate="2011-05-19T18:33:56.360" Score="19" Body="&lt;h1&gt;No. Understandable ? Sure.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well maybe by one lady and there was a low murmur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like everything started with this article...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The Science Guy is entertaining and provocative at MCC lecture&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Thursday, April 06, 2006&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;By Tim Woods Waco Tribune-Herald&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The original article is behind a pay wall. A good facsimile might be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message776077/pg1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dylan Otto Krider has a series of posts explaining how the whole thing went down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/skepticism-in-national/just-shoot-me-some-walk-out-on-bill-nye-for-saying-moon-reflects-light&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just shoot me... Some walk out on Bill Nye for saying moon reflects light&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/skepticism-in-national/memekiller-makes-a-meme-with-waco-moonbat-bill-nye-story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Memekiller makes a meme with Waco-Moonbat-Bill Nye story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/skepticism-in-national/reporter-of-bill-nye-moonbat-story-speaks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reporter of Bill Nye, Moonbat story speaks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though the bulk of his story&#xA;talked about how most everyone enjoyed&#xA;the show, people latched onto the&#xA;country bumpkin angle. Compounding the&#xA;problem was that the 2007 post&#xA;mentioned the story had been &amp;quot;removed&amp;quot;&#xA;and people were left with BSAlert's&#xA;interpretation of events. The wording&#xA;of the post, in fact, was identical to&#xA;a post that would surface again on&#xA;ThinkAtheist in February 2009, which&#xA;was latched onto by this Examiner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Krider's interview with Woods...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There was some mischaracterization of&#xA;what happened,&amp;quot; Woods says. It seemed&#xA;like the story was always construed in&#xA;such a way to make his hometown look&#xA;like backwoods idiots. &amp;quot;The one that&#xA;always floors me is they say, oh, he&#xA;was booed. No, he wasn’t booed. I've&#xA;gone back through the story, and&#xA;nowhere does it say he was booed.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Would you describe it as a huff?&amp;quot; we&#xA;asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No,&amp;quot; Woods says, &amp;quot;More of a low&#xA;murmur.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skeptics take note...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in the end, it is an illustrative&#xA;story worthy of posting on, but not&#xA;the booing crowd we made it out to be.&#xA;A few religious people in a crowd of&#xA;600, storming out, visibly angry, and&#xA;the lecture went on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Skeptics, it's not just an example&#xA;of this kind of conditioning that&#xA;allows people to close themselves off&#xA;from any contrary evidence to their&#xA;views, no matter how obvious and&#xA;common sensical, but how, in the&#xA;Internet age, stories take on a life&#xA;of their own and are more likely to&#xA;catch fire because they are cast in&#xA;their most sensationalistic light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2020-07-20T23:30:23.557" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T23:30:23.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3409" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-19T19:24:08.600" Score="26" ViewCount="1998" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are recent ads from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sweetsurprise.com/myths-and-facts/faqs-high-fructose-corn-syrup/fructose?utm_source=google&amp;amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;amp;utm_term=high%20fructose%20corn%20syrup&amp;amp;utm_campaign=Caloric%20Sweeteners&amp;amp;gclid=CP2UvZve9KgCFUNJ3god71kMUA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Corn Sugar&lt;/a&gt; industry telling us that 'sugar is sugar'. While I appreciate the &amp;quot;natural&amp;quot; sugar of fruit juices vs refined sugar question - and its answer does touch on this tangentially, I am looking for something more specific with regard &lt;em&gt;to two highly refined products&lt;/em&gt;. The answer may well be that what happens in The Liver stays in The Liver and it doesn't matter one hoot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All I typically find is anecdotal &amp;quot;sugar is bad for you regardless so just cut it out and get over it&amp;quot; information (see ehow.com #&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/about_5379818_pure-high-fructose-corn-syrup.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;5379818&lt;/a&gt;). I'm limiting this to HFCS and cane sugar because they seem to be the &lt;a href=&quot;http://sweetscam.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;most discussed&lt;/a&gt; with regard to refined sweeteners from 'natural' sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does the human body respond differently to HFCS than it does to&#xA;cane sugar? (i.e. does the body differentiate between these two&#xA;different &lt;em&gt;refined&lt;/em&gt; sugars in its response with insulin levels)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If yes, is HFCS able to do damage that cane sugar cannot (given reasonable/similar ingestion amounts) due to the different response?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Could there be a beneficial reason for different responses to two refined sugars?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--If everything comes from something, then technically everything counts as 'natural', sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--Ok, I'm also still annoyed at the anecdotal advice of a supposed medical professional who told me to chew sugared gum as opposed to sugar free because of my low blood sugar levels - see &amp;quot;Artificial sweeteners do not contain carbohydrates so they do not cause blood sugar to elevate, whereas, sugar alcohols have some effect on blood sugar. &amp;quot; see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ynhh.org/about-us/sugar_alcohol.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4279/brown-sugar-is-healthier-than-white-sugar&quot;&gt;Is brown sugar healthier than white sugar?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/370/how-bitter-is-robert-lustigs-bitter-truth-about-sugar&quot;&gt;How bitter is Robert Lustig&amp;#39;s &amp;quot;Bitter Truth&amp;quot; about sugar?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2690" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T19:48:31.147" Title="High Fructose Corn Syrup vs Cane Sugar (aka Battle of the Bulge)" Tags="|nutrition|hfcs|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3410" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3417" CreationDate="2011-05-19T20:20:26.237" Score="27" ViewCount="61296" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it claimed that there are no naturally blue foods and that blueberries don't count, because they are more purple. However, I have a hard time believing such a blanket statement so I want to ask this here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you count foods that are blue in nature, but not blue when prepared, is this statement false?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there no foods, in the state that we eat them, that are naturally blue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of a definition for food, it would be something that is not only edible, but is commonly eaten by any group of people. So, something that is edible, but not commonly eaten by any group of people would not be considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blue is a light wave having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 440–490 nm. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue&quot;&gt;Defined specifically by Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2808" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-05-20T11:29:59.697" LastActivityDate="2016-08-29T08:08:14.763" Title="Are there no naturally blue foods?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3411" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5388" CreationDate="2011-05-19T20:25:17.573" Score="19" ViewCount="3213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read in several places that people use big, fancy, complicated, and little known words (such as Brobdingnagian) to give the impression that they are knowledgeable, smart, and professional. Does that work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1936" LastEditorDisplayName="user1936" LastEditDate="2012-02-21T23:44:18.610" LastActivityDate="2019-03-24T00:23:32.173" Title="Does using big words make people sound more professional?" Tags="|language|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3410" CreationDate="2011-05-19T20:50:44.760" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;One example of a blue food would be Prunus spinosa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a picture:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kndgw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a source that mentions word &amp;quot;blue&amp;quot; in description of the species:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hedgerowmobile.com/blackthorn.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://hedgerowmobile.com/blackthorn.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another would be Prunus domestica subspecies insititia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hyBdw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is commonly eaten fresh, so the blue color remains.&#xA;Unfortunately, I'm unable to find a source which actually describes blue as of of the colors of the subspecies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="549" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T21:11:29.187" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3410" CreationDate="2011-05-19T21:38:57.743" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The place I would look to find a counter example would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://homecooking.about.com/library/weekly/blflowers.htm&quot;&gt;edible blooms&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://courses.nres.uiuc.edu/hort343/images/herbs/lavandula.jpg&quot;&gt;Lavander&lt;/a&gt; (which is usual more purple, but some varieties are bluish)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/54476/&quot;&gt;Blue nasturtium&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mediasoft.it/fiori/imgfiori/6a.jpg&quot;&gt;Snapdragons&lt;/a&gt; (a lot of color variation, but the image shows some that are quite blue to my eye)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.henriettesherbal.com/files/images/photos/p14/viola-odorata-4.jpg&quot;&gt;violets&lt;/a&gt; (again, usually more purple than blue, but they vary)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and some suggested in the comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornflower&quot;&gt;cornflowers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baivan.com/images%20baivan/Butterfly%20Pea1.gif&quot;&gt;Clitoria ternatea&lt;/a&gt; which user boehj writes as &quot;ดอกอัญชัน&quot;, and appears to be called &quot;butterfly pea&quot; and a few other names in English.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="782" LastEditorUserId="782" LastEditDate="2011-05-23T16:02:35.327" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T16:02:35.327" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3404" CreationDate="2011-05-19T23:31:43.320" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two manifestations of iron deficiency that could explain this claim: koilonychia and pica.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koilonychia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Koilonychia&lt;/a&gt; or &quot;spoon nails&quot; is when the nail becomes concave.  It can be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aafp.org/afp/2004/0315/p1417.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;classic sign of iron deficiency&lt;/a&gt; on physical exam.*  The nails of iron-deficient patients may also &lt;a href=&quot;http://dermnetnz.org/systemic/iron-deficiency.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;become brittle and/or split lengthwise.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cKkN3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Koilonychia&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pica_%28disorder%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pica&lt;/a&gt; is present in &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/235/25/2765.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;about half&lt;/a&gt; of cases of iron deficiency.  It &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1579989/?page=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;describes a broad range of eating disorders&lt;/a&gt;, often associated with mineral deficiencies, where a person will compulsively eat or chew on an unusual substance.  Common examples are ice, clay, laundry starch, hair, and the classic, lead paint chips.  However nailbiting itself has not been classified as a form of pica, possibly because it's so common among people &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; any nutritional deficit.  Nailbiting (fancy medical word: onychophagia) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=dCwpAiGycekC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA144#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;overwhelmingly attributed&lt;/a&gt; to anxiety, general compulsive behavior, or just being a kid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's not inconceivable that an iron-deficient person with a tendency to put unusual things in their mouth and brittle, misshapen nails might start chewing on them.  But it would be a fairly useless diagnostic sign because nailbiting due to other causes is so common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Koilonychia, like many &quot;classic&quot; signs, may be more common on med school exams than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/3/5668/436.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in real life&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2465" LastActivityDate="2011-05-19T23:31:43.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3410" CreationDate="2011-05-20T01:59:38.113" Score="45" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Blåbär (Common Bilberry)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I come from a berry obsessed culture that every year consume a wide array of different berries. One of the most common ones that are native to my country is &lt;em&gt;Vaccinium myrtillus&lt;/em&gt; more commonly called &lt;a href=&quot;http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bl%C3%A5b%C3%A4r&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blåbär&lt;/a&gt; in Swedish which literally means blue berry. They aren't the same as the American blue berry (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_highbush_blueberry&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vaccinium cyanococcus&lt;/a&gt;) that George Carlin most likely made fun of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ls7jX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Blue Crawdads&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crawdads are sometimes blue, but they turn red on cooking. I'm not sure if that would count under your criteria, but people certainly find them appetizing enough to try to cook them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BPDvV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Atlantic lobsters&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://marinebio.org/species.asp?id=533&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Homarus Americanus&lt;/a&gt; are also blue until cooked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uKNFu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Starflowers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borage&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Borago officinalis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is sometimes eaten fresh and apparently has a cucumber-like taste. It grows in Asia and the middle east.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9aDwQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Indigo Milk Cap&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lactarius indigo, commonly known as the indigo milk cap, the indigo Lactarius, or the blue milk mushroom, is a species of agaric fungus in the family Russulaceae. [..]  It is an edible mushroom, and is sold in rural markets in China, Guatemala, and Mexico.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/65i2K.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Source Wikipedia&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2013-09-13T09:33:07.337" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T09:33:07.337" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2578" CreationDate="2011-05-20T02:10:54.327" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/Examskeptics/Dawkins.html&quot;&gt;Telepathy is a throughly debunked idea&lt;/a&gt;.  I'd even say foolish.  The reasons this guy's dog knows he's coming home:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It happens on a schedule&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dogs have excellent hearing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Confirmation bias&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Separation anxiety&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean dogs are dumb.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/how-smart-dogs.html&quot;&gt;They are very smart (and cute).  As Neil Degrasse Tyson found out on Nova Science Now&lt;/a&gt;.  I would bet the owner just got fooled by his dog.  Maybe in this case, the dog is smarter than the owner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T13:31:12.880" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T13:31:12.880" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3348" CreationDate="2011-05-20T02:42:27.030" Score="39" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Eyes? No. Humans? Yes.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You'd be hard pressed to get 60fps out of the human eye.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In laboratory conditions, it takes&#xA;  around 150 ms for neurons in the&#xA;  visual system to begin to recognize&#xA;  and categorize a newly appearing&#xA;  visual input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, this little factoid is not the frame rate specification for human vision.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If real-world perception were to&#xA;  follow this same pattern, then for a&#xA;  considerable time after each &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade#Saccades_and_vision&quot;&gt;saccade&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  we would still be perceiving the old&#xA;  retinal input, rather than the&#xA;  information currently on the retina.&#xA;  In fact, we should have to wait around&#xA;  150 ms to ‘see’ what is in front of&#xA;  our eyes after each saccade, by which&#xA;  time the oculomotor system has already&#xA;  begun to choose the next saccadic&#xA;  target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would suck.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fortunately, the human eye is more than a camera* with fat pipe connection to the brain.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While holding a pen, for example, the&#xA;  sensory input is limited to the&#xA;  receptors of a few fingers, leaving&#xA;  the majority of the surface of the pen&#xA;  outside of our direct sensory range.&#xA;  Nonetheless, we perceive a complete&#xA;  object, not a pen with holes where our&#xA;  fingers do not touch. Similarly, our&#xA;  visual system actively perceives the&#xA;  world by pointing the fovea, the area&#xA;  of the retina where resolution is&#xA;  best, towards a single part of the&#xA;  scene at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Human vision does not have properties like frame rate, latency, resolution, et al.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Visual constancy can also be viewed as&#xA;  a temporal phenomenon: objects appear&#xA;  to be continuously present over time.&#xA;  Yet the duration of external events&#xA;  are typically longer than that of a&#xA;  single sensory ‘sample’ such as a&#xA;  fixation. Although movements of the&#xA;  eyes, head and body disrupt our steady&#xA;  access to these objects and events,&#xA;  the stream of consciousness continues&#xA;  smoothly across these sensory&#xA;  disruptions. This is an amazing feat,&#xA;  given that each saccadic eye movement&#xA;  creates a temporal disruption in the&#xA;  flow of information from the retina to&#xA;  higher perceptual areas. The motor&#xA;  smear on the retina during the saccade&#xA;  is suppressed, making us largely&#xA;  unaware of the retinal stimulation&#xA;  during this time period. In addition,&#xA;  each saccade requires the visual&#xA;  system to ‘re-perceive’ the&#xA;  information from a new fixation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time is relative...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...perceived time seems to shift&#xA;  forward, towards the beginning of the&#xA;  new fixation, essentially compressing&#xA;  the time immediately before and during&#xA;  the saccadic eye movement. One&#xA;  possible interpretation is that space&#xA;  and time are inextricably linked in&#xA;  the brain, with the pattern of strange&#xA;  perceptual effects reported for&#xA;  stimuli flashed around the time of&#xA;  saccades reflecting a spatio-temporal&#xA;  transformation between fixations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Bottom Line...&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Human vision is not bound by frame rate.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source of all quotes: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1564/468.full&quot;&gt;Visual stability&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1564/468.full#ref-list-1&quot;&gt;References&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalofvision.org/content/9/9/1.abstract?ijkey=3b0db481d3c00124f2e44914ea6fd5ce8ee5df78&amp;amp;keytype2=tf_ipsecsha&quot;&gt;Looking ahead: The perceived direction of gaze shifts before the eyes move&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110110103737.htm&quot;&gt;How Human Vision Perceives Rapid Changes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v3/n12/full/nn1200_1340.html&quot;&gt;From eye movements to actions: how batsmen hit the ball&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1564/596.abstract?ijkey=38a676745aa16ee559784996b994209fd9bf2cd1&amp;amp;keytype2=tf_ipsecsha&quot;&gt;Vision and the representation of the surroundings in spatial memory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;Actually comparing the human eye to a camera is like comparing a thermonuclear weapon to a pen-knife.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="35" LastEditDate="2011-05-23T16:14:09.003" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T16:14:09.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3420" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-20T03:03:50.507" Score="11" ViewCount="952" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20110518/od_yblog_upshot/new-book-says-ussr-behind-roswell-ufo;_ylt=ApCZHP9_4CrXdtd5iA20TNus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNjYm9tdGJuBGFzc2V0A3libG9nX3Vwc2hvdC8yMDExMDUxOC9uZXctYm9vay1zYXlzLXVzc3ItYmVoaW5kLXJvc3dlbGwtdWZvBHBvcwM1BHNlYwN5bl9tb3N0X3BvcHVsYXIEc2xrA25ld2Jvb2tzYXlzdQ--&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; and the included Daily Show video which discusses a theory for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_UFO_incident&quot;&gt;Roswell incident&lt;/a&gt;. To summarize the claims, what was recovered in Roswell was not an alien space craft. It wasn't a weather balloon or test plane. Instead it was a flying saucer developed from Nazi technology by the Soviets and piloted by tiny mutant child people. It was sent in order to cause a scare in the US that aliens were invading or amongst us or some such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems the claims cannot be falsified without the release of classified docs. However, are these claims plausible or can they be at all substantiated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course I think this all sounds nuts, but its worth asking because the book appears to be getting a lot of buzz in various forms of media and if its debunkable, what better place to do it then here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1139" LastEditorUserId="1139" LastEditDate="2011-05-20T11:17:00.107" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T11:46:01.760" Title="Did the USSR send a flying disk with mutant childlike aviators to Roswell in 1947?" Tags="|ufo|area-51|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3421" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-20T03:33:07.230" Score="6" ViewCount="618" Body="&lt;p&gt;To save me from the embarrassment of a growling stomach my friend claimed that if I hold my stomach in, it restricts room for the stomach to move, and therefore cease its growling.  Does this method actually work, if so can someone tell me why it does/doesn't work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-20T04:55:27.400" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T04:55:27.400" Title="Does holding your stomach in prevent it from growling?" Tags="|biology|physiology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3423" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3425" CreationDate="2011-05-20T04:37:55.870" Score="13" ViewCount="2758" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-do-you-get-laryngitis&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt; spoke with Rebecca N. Gaughan, an ear, nose and throat (ENT) doctor in private practice in Olathe, Kan., to learn the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;According to both Dr. Gaughan and my mother, whispering is a good way to worsen a sore throat.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SA: So it's bad to whisper if you have laryngitis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RG: Whispering is one of the worst things you can do because it's like yelling. It strains, or pulls, on the vocal chords. Instead you want to try to take a deep breath and then exhale as you talk. Try to relax your voice and not strain it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An uncited commentator claims this to be incorrect but with a caveat of sorts: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Whispering INCORRECTLY is one of the worst things you can do. But whispering PROPERLY is fine.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So has there been any conclusive research here? The best I can find is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16503476&quot;&gt;sometimes&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although whispering involves more severe hyperfunction in most patients, it does not seem to do so in all patients. In some patients, it may be less traumatic than normal voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a harmful way to whisper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is whispering ever ok?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can it really make a sore throat worse? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2690" LastEditorDisplayName="user5841" LastEditDate="2012-01-26T15:22:25.930" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T15:22:25.930" Title="Is whispering harmful?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3423" CreationDate="2011-05-20T05:44:26.047" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jvoice.org/article/S0892-1997%2804%2900173-0/abstract&quot;&gt;Laryngeal Hyperfunction During Whispering: Reality or Myth?&lt;/a&gt;, sometimes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although whispering involves more severe hyperfunction in most patients, it does not seem to do so in all patients. In some patients, it may be less traumatic than normal voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6664755&quot;&gt;Is quiet whisper harmful to the vocal mechanism? A research note.&lt;/a&gt; on this that I cannot access in full. The abstract seems to indicate that it is not as harmful as it was believed to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recent physiological studies of whisper indicate that quiet whisper may not, as implied in past literature, be harmful to the voice. The present study examined differences in judged vocal quality pre- and post-whisper in 10 dysphonic patients, mostly college students. Results showed a significant preference for the vocal quality following a week of quiet whisper. The results are discussed in relation to clinical implications as well as clinical application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Paper The Whisper and the Whistle: The Role in Vocal Trauma (excerpt from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canadianvoicecarefdn.com/PDF/2000%20Spring.pdf&quot;&gt;Canadian Voice Care Foundation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whispering, on the other hand, does not result in as forceful&#xA;  apposition of the vocal folds that occurs with normal speaking.&#xA;  It is possible, therefore, that less mucosal injury would occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hufnagle and Hufnagle found a significant preference for&#xA;  vocal quality following a week of quiet whispering in 10&#xA;  dysphonic patients, but no controls were used to compare&#xA;  the rapidity of improvement. Presman and Keleman found&#xA;  the vocal folds to assume a position only a little more&#xA;  approximated than for quiet respiration during quiet&#xA;  whispering. These findings would suggest that quiet&#xA;  whispering may actually be protective for the traumatized&#xA;  larynx.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess &quot;It is bad sometimes, but not as bad as we used to think&quot; is the conlusion here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2820" LastEditorUserId="2820" LastEditDate="2011-05-20T07:27:46.347" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T07:27:46.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3426" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3427" CreationDate="2011-05-20T06:16:53.320" Score="12" ViewCount="1471" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the Hindu religious epic, the Mahabharata, says one of the warriors learns a battle tactic hearing his father speaking, while he is still in the womb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Keeping the religious aspect out of this&lt;/em&gt;, my question is whether such detailed learning is possible or proven?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhimanyu#Birth.2C_Education_and_War&quot;&gt;summary of this episode&lt;/a&gt; in the Mahabharata &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an unborn child in his mother's&#xA;  womb, Abhimanyu learned the knowledge&#xA;  of entering the deadly and virtually&#xA;  impenetrable Chakravyuha (see Wars of&#xA;  Hindu Mythology) from Arjuna, his&#xA;  father. The epic explains that he&#xA;  overheard his Arjuna talking about&#xA;  this with his wife Subhadra from the&#xA;  womb. Arjuna explains to Subhadra in&#xA;  detail, the technique of attacking and&#xA;  escaping from various vyuhas (an array&#xA;  of army formation) such as&#xA;  Makaravyuha, Kurmavyuha, Sarpavyuha&#xA;  etc. After explaining all the vyuhas,&#xA;  he explains about the technique of&#xA;  cracking Chakravyuha. Arjuna explains&#xA;  to her how to enter the Chakryavyuha.&#xA;  When he was about to explain how to&#xA;  exit from the Chakravyuha, he realises&#xA;  that Subhadra is asleep and stops&#xA;  expounding on the Chakravyuha further.&#xA;  As a result, the baby Abhimanyu in the&#xA;  womb did not get a chance to learn how&#xA;  to come out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastEditorUserId="2027" LastEditDate="2011-06-10T07:05:42.527" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T02:59:14.213" Title="Can you remember specific things you learn in the womb?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3426" CreationDate="2011-05-20T07:46:00.263" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I highly doubt that, especially because of the well-known condition called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Childhood_amnesia&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Childhood Amnesia&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10659077&quot;&gt;Assumptions of infantile amnesia: are there differences between early and later memories?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most adults are able to provide few, if any, reports of autobiographical memories from the first years of life. Early memories that do exist have been characterised as highly emotional, containing an abundance of perceptual as opposed to propositional information, and more often in the third than the first person perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2004/12/bauer.aspx&quot;&gt;Oh Where, Oh Where Have Those Early Memories Gone? A Developmental Perspective on Childhood Amnesia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whereas memories of many past experiences seemingly come and go, there is a period of life from which adults reliably fail to recall much if anything at all. Well over 100 years ago, Miles (1893) published the first account in a psychological journal of the phenomenon that would come to be known as infantile amnesia or childhood amnesia: the relative paucity among adults of verbally accessible memories from the first 3-4 years of life. The phenomenon was subsequently amended with the observation that from the ages of 3 to 7 years, adults have fewer memories than would be expected, based on forgetting alone (e.g., Pillemer &amp;amp; White, 1989; Wetzler &amp;amp; Sweeney, 1986). The observation is one of the most replicable in the literature: Whether tested in 1893 or 1999 (West &amp;amp; Bauer, 1999), among adults in Western cultures, the average age of earliest memory is age 3 to 3½ years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2820" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T07:46:00.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3429" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5257" CreationDate="2011-05-20T08:06:31.510" Score="10" ViewCount="18793" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometimes when I cross my legs, my leg goes numb. This also happens when I sit, &quot;Indian-style&quot;. Googling for &quot;don't cross your legs&quot; results in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.girishk.com/2007/04/30/don%E2%80%99t-cross-your-legs-%E2%80%93-it%E2%80%99s-unhealthy/&quot;&gt;a page proclaiming&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People who are habitual leg-crossers have more acid crystals stored in the feet than those who never cross their legs. Crossing the legs is one of the worst postural habits of man. It throws the hips, spine and head off balance and it’s the most common cause of chronic backaches, headaches and varicose veins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there evidence that crossing your legs, regular style or Indian style when you're sitting affects your health? Assume that a person &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; crosses their legs when they sit, the male or female way or Indian style way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1390" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2020-10-01T09:03:00.250" LastActivityDate="2020-10-01T09:03:00.250" Title="Does crossing your legs have bad health effects (short or long term)?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3431" CreationDate="2011-05-20T09:06:16.583" Score="56" ViewCount="67759" Body="&lt;p&gt;So here's the premise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A cat reaches its terminal velocity after around 10meters of free fall.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A cat can survive a landing from a speed equal to its terminal velocity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Therefore a cat can survive a fall from any height.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems actually quite feasible and would be tremendous if it holds some truth in the majority of cases. I guess there are plenty of animals that can survive their own terminal velocity but a cat somehow just seems too close to home, too familiar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also realise that this is a difficult claim to prove or falsify as throwing cats out of windows for experimental purposes doesn't seem the most moral thing. Maybe a collated record of accidents? But that's not too scientific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2869" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-05-24T07:13:12.943" LastActivityDate="2017-10-28T13:21:51.907" Title="Can cats survive a fall from any height?" Tags="|physics|zoology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3430" CreationDate="2011-05-20T09:28:25.683" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;As was brought up on in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1064/is-the-use-of-parachutes-supported-by-peer-reviewed-papers&quot;&gt;Is the use of parachutes supported by peer-reviewed papers?&lt;/a&gt; Where &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/104/andrew-grimm&quot;&gt;Andrew Grimm&lt;/a&gt; pointed to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3692980&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a study from 1987&lt;/a&gt; which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1143/do-cats-always-land-unharmed-on-their-feet-no-matter-how-far-they-fall&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;widely&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-rise_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; (it's paywalled so I can't check myself) to say that not only do cats survive terminal velocity, but that their chance of survival increase over some shorter distances. That said the actual study cites that the cats falling from buildings had a 90% survival rate (after treatment), but also a lot of injuries. From the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High-rise syndrome was diagnosed in 132 cats over a 5-month period. The mean age of the cats was 2.7 years. Ninety percent of the cats had some form of thoracic trauma. Of these, 68% had pulmonary contusions and 63% had pneumothorax. Abnormal respiratory patterns were evident clinically in 55%. Other common clinical findings included facial trauma (57%), limb fractures (39%), shock (24%), traumatic luxations (18%), hard palate fractures (17%), hypothermia (17%), and dental fractures (17%). Emergency (life-sustaining) treatment, primarily because of thoracic trauma and shock, was required in 37% of the cats. Nonemergency treatment was required in an additional 30%. The remaining 30% were observed, but did not require treatment. Ninety percent of the treated cats survived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1143/do-cats-always-land-unharmed-on-their-feet-no-matter-how-far-they-fall&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; details how far the cats fell which mentions terminal velocity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here's the weird part. When the vets analyzed the data they found that, as one would expect, the number of broken bones and other injuries increased with the number of stories the cat had fallen — up to seven stories. Above seven stories, however, the number of injuries per cat sharply declined. In other words, the farther the cat fell, the better its chances of escaping serious injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors explained this seemingly miraculous result by saying that after falling five stories or so the cats reached a terminal velocity — that is, maximum downward speed — of 60 miles per hour. Thereafter, they hypothesized, the cats relaxed and spread themselves out like flying squirrels, minimizing injuries. This speculation is now widely accepted as fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the Straight Dope is also careful to point out that perhaps the reason why more terminal velocity cats appear to survive is that the one that didn't land so gracefully wasn't brought into the emergency room and as such the statistics could be skewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15363762&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A more recent study from 2004&lt;/a&gt; cites the previous study as well as several others. The cats in this study had a higher survival rate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High-rise syndrome was more frequent during the warmer period of the year. 96.5% of the presented cats, survived after the fall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also go into a rather deep detail on various injuries sustained by the cats in all the studies, also stating cats don't reach terminal velocity until after the 6th floor and reaches the same conclusion as the previous studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This substantiates the theory that cats falling at least seven stories flex their limbs so that truncal injuries are more common, while cats falling from distances lower than seven stories extend their limbs, the consequence being a greater incidence of limb fractures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhat interestingly and related it cites a study on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8420897&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;high rise syndrome in dogs&lt;/a&gt; from 1993 that says dogs cannot survive a fall from more than 6 stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we want to investigate further perhaps we should ask &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2304/do-lemmings-commit-suicide-by-jumping-off-cliffs/2305#2305&quot;&gt;Disney&lt;/a&gt; to record a movie on the life of wild cats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-04-08T15:14:54.480" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3432" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-20T09:54:50.473" Score="14" ViewCount="1272" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the 1999 paper by Kruger and Dunning &amp;quot;Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments&amp;quot; reliably prove that incompetents have a consistently higher self-appraisal than competents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm accepting that the gap between self-appraisal and reality is greater for incompetents than for competents (the paper discusses the potential for a regression effect in their statistical analysis), and that most people think they are above average (&amp;quot;Illusory superiority&amp;quot; or the &amp;quot;Lake Woebegone effect&amp;quot;), but the paper says that more than that is going on. It describes Charles Darwin as saying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;ignorance more frequently begets&#xA;confidence than does knowledge&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and this study has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/91253/make-the-sorry-we-cant-accept-this-question-message-more-helpful/91321#91321&quot;&gt;cited by the general public&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@gilles that's kind of intentional; we&#xA;basically don't want these users.&#xA;en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect&#xA;– Jeff Atwood♦ May 15 at 20:03&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As far as I can tell, Atwood was implying that incompetent users are more likely to think that there's an error on the Stack Exchange servers than competent users)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has the methodological rigour, and the relevance, of the paper been generally accepted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, is their claim that incompetents have a higher self-appraisal than competents been treated by the scientific community as strongly confirmed, or is there still doubt about this claim within the mainstream?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the claims are true, how come there wasn't a negative correlation between actual ability and perceived ability in figures 1, 3 and 4 in the 1999 paper? &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.64.2655&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(PDF)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Figure 1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ePAVc.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Figure 3&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dWp0U.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Figure 4&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/poYXP.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2022-08-20T03:27:50.123" Title="Does &quot;Unskilled and Unaware of it&quot; prove that incompetents have a higher self-appraisal than competents?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3433" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3438" CreationDate="2011-05-20T10:20:09.453" Score="159" ViewCount="16178" Body="&lt;p&gt;My computing teacher told us that closed source software is more secure than open source software, because with open source &quot;anyone can modify it and put stuff in.&quot; This is why they do not want to use open source alternatives for learning to program, such as FreePascal (currently using Embarcadero Delphi, which is slow and buggy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is completely wrong. For example Linux seems to be considerably more resilient to exploits than Windows; although it could be down to popularity/market share.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What studies have been performed which show that open source or closed source is better in terms of security?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T00:58:44.137" LastActivityDate="2017-07-23T23:55:03.047" Title="Is closed-source code more secure than open-source?" Tags="|security|software|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2854" CreationDate="2011-05-20T10:56:07.173" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;As one can imagine, many studies have been conducted regarding the relationship between the rise of P2P networks and the drop of CD sales. I have looked at several papers, some come to the conclusion that file sharing actually contributed to more CDs being bought, others attribute atleast some part of the decline of CD sales to file sharing. What some studies also suggest is, that music sales have shifted some what from the majors to smaller labels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifo.de/portal/pls/portal/docs/1/1189386.PDF&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THE EFFECT OF INTERNET PIRACY ON CD SALES: CROSS-SECTION EVIDENCE&lt;/a&gt;, 2004, CESIfo: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] we find that music downloading could have caused a 10% reduction in CD sales worldwide in 2001. [...]&#xA;   The story for 2002 is different, at least for the US, as the number of people downloading music has&#xA;  only slightly increased. As a matter of fact, our estimates imply a 2% loss in CD sales due to&#xA;  music downloads, a small number compared to the observed 9% drop in 2002 in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the paper also points out, that the music industry could benefit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Besides, there are reasons to believe that the music industry might actually benefit from digital distribution.&#xA;  Indeed, numerous surveys (documented in Peitz and Waelbroeck 2003b) highlight the potential&#xA;  sampling role of digital copies. [...] As a result, labels may benefit from file-sharing because, as Peitz and Waelbroeck (2003c) have&#xA;  argued, they may be able to save on marketing and promotion costs, by letting consumers search&#xA;  for their most preferred music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In   [The Impact of Digital File Sharing on the Music Industry: An Empirical Analysis] (http://www.bepress.com/bejeap/topics/vol6/iss1/art18/), 2005, Nicholls State University:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Music industry representatives argue that the practice decreases CD sales, while supporters of file-sharing allege the practice could actually increase sales. Using household-level      data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we find support for the claim that file-sharing has decreased sales. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~felten/boorstin-thesis.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Music Sales in the Age of File Sharing&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For younger people, Internet access predicts a decrease in sales. For older people, Internet access predicts an increase in sales. The overall effect of Internet access is positive -- the magnitude of the Internet effect is larger in the older age groups, and the older age groups represent a greater proportion of the population. This strongly suggests&#xA;  that file sharing is not the cause of the recent decline in the record industry &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even if the RIAA’s lawsuits against file sharers successfully deter people from&#xA;  sharing music over P2P networks, I would not expect to see a short term increase in sales.&#xA;  If the older demographic is more responsive to the threat of legal action than the younger&#xA;  demographic, the lawsuits would even tend to decrease sales in the short run&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://econpapers.repec.org/article/bpjbejeap/v_3atopics.5_3ay_3a2005_3ai_3a1_3an_3a21.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;File Sharing and International Sales of Copyrighted Music: An Empirical Analysis with a Panel of Countries&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I find that countries with higher internet and broadband penetration have suffered higher drops in music sales, suggesting that music downloads may explain at least part of the recent reduction in sales. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://files.publico.es/resources/archivos/2007/11/6/1194346400418informep2p.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Impact of Music Downloads and P2P File-Sharing on the Purchase of Music: A Study for Industry Canada&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the aggregate, we are unable to discover any direct relationship between P2P filesharing&#xA;  and CD purchases in Canada. The analysis of the entire Canadian population&#xA;  does not uncover either a positive or negative relationship between the number of files&#xA;  downloaded from P2P networks and CDs purchased. That is, we find no direct evidence&#xA;  to suggest that the net effect of P2P file-sharing on CD purchasing is either positive or&#xA;  negative for Canada as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, our analysis of the Canadian P2P file-sharing subpopulation suggests that&#xA;  there is a strong positive relationship between P2P file-sharing and CD purchasing. That&#xA;  is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file-sharing increases CD purchasing.&#xA;  We estimate that the effect of one additional P2P download per month is to increase&#xA;  music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2820" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T10:56:07.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3440" CreationDate="2011-05-20T11:14:47.503" Score="26" ViewCount="4930" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know there is global warming, and I know that it is caused by human activity, but is carbon dioxide the cause of it? I read somewhere that apparently increase of CO₂ doesn't cause the increase in global temperatures, but rather, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.warmingscaretactics.com/&quot;&gt;global temperatures cause the increase of CO₂.&lt;/a&gt; Can someone verify or disprove this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="46077" LastEditDate="2019-02-05T22:28:54.547" LastActivityDate="2020-05-06T16:22:53.933" Title="Does CO₂ cause Global Warming?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2854" CreationDate="2011-05-20T11:17:55.107" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a study somewhere, which showed sales down amongst computer owners, but stable with non puter owners, and that sales for computer owners raised when Napster shut down.  I think that means there is a direct correlation to being able to file share and stopping sales. However, the same report suggested more obscure artists benefit from file sharing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll try and find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2006/09/7832.ars&quot;&gt;This is the closest match I could find to this report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2883" LastEditorUserId="2883" LastEditDate="2011-05-23T06:40:00.617" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T06:40:00.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3433" CreationDate="2011-05-20T11:22:47.940" Score="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;Software being open source doesn't mean anyone can change it (often anyone can &lt;strong&gt;fork&lt;/strong&gt; it, but that will be &lt;strong&gt;new&lt;/strong&gt; derived software) - only dedicated people have access to the repository. For example, if I want to submit a change to &lt;a href=&quot;http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org&quot;&gt;Tortoise SVN&lt;/a&gt; I have to mail my change to a dedicated mail list and then developers will see it, &lt;strong&gt;review it&lt;/strong&gt;, and commit it to the codebase.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chromium.org/getting-involved&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/become-a-committer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, anyone can read the sources. That's not a big deal either. Look at contemporary cryptography. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_algorithms#Cryptography&quot;&gt;Algorithms&lt;/a&gt; are public and researched and tested by numerous people. How can they be used for protecting data? They use small portions of secret data (encryption keys) to parameterize the algorithm. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AES_implementations&quot;&gt;Everyone&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHA-2#Implementations_in_common_languages&quot;&gt;knows&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/users/wwwb/cgi-bin/tr-get.cgi/1997/CS/CS0891.ps&quot;&gt;the&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5#Algorithm&quot;&gt;algorithm&lt;/a&gt;, but only people who need that know the secret keys and algorithms are successfully used for data protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, software being open source and software being secure (or reliable) are completely independent - comparing those is like comparing apples versus oranges. Yes, open source software can be buggy. So can closed source software. It's how the development process is organized, not whether you disclose the sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chromium.org/getting-involved&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Submit patches (submit enough and you&#xA;  can become a committer!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chromium.org/getting-involved/become-a-committer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; (Slightly modified)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Technically, a committer is someone&#xA;  who has write access to the&#xA;  SVN repository. A committer can submit his&#xA;  or her own patches or patches from&#xA;  others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="666" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-11T15:59:59.437" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T15:59:59.437" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3433" CreationDate="2011-05-20T11:23:01.253" Score="140" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Secure design, source code auditing,&#xA;  quality developers, design process,&#xA;  and other factors, all play into the&#xA;  security of a project, and none of&#xA;  these are directly related to a&#xA;  project being &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;open or closed source&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source&lt;/strong&gt; : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/269&quot;&gt;Open Source Versus Closed Source Security&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2944" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T11:23:01.253" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3439" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-20T12:42:40.000" Score="14" ViewCount="11695" Body="&lt;p&gt;Critics of Islam state that Muhammad had sex with Aisha bint Abu Bakr when she was nine years old, and that this was sexual abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.truthknights.com/viewtopic.php?f=26&amp;amp;t=216&quot;&gt;defense&lt;/a&gt; made against the claim is that women become sexually mature earlier in hot climates like arabia than in cooler climates like northern Europe: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5- Medical &amp;amp; Scientific opinion about&#xA;  Aisha’s age for marriage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a-Classic Encyclopedia states that:&#xA;  Puberty in hot climate areas is much&#xA;  earlier &amp;amp; faster than that in cold&#xA;  ones. So girls puberty age could reach&#xA;  8 or 9 years in hot climate areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As stated by “Classic Encyclopedia”: [Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 edition]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“In northern countries males enter&#xA;  upon sexual maturity between the age&#xA;  of fourteen and sixteen, sometimes not&#xA;  much before the eighteenth year,&#xA;  females between twelve and fourteen.&#xA;  In tropical climates puberty is much&#xA;  earlier.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Puberty&quot;&gt;http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Puberty&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence to back up this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This isn't the only defense made against the claim - other Muslims claim that Aisha wasn't nine when Muhammad had sex with her)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T04:30:57.183" Title="Could climate affect Aisha's age of sexual maturity?" Tags="|biology|sexuality|islam|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3435" CreationDate="2011-05-20T14:04:12.863" Score="25" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Earth’s greenhouse effect is a natural occurrence that helps regulate the temperature of our planet. When the Sun heats the Earth, some of this heat escapes back to space. The rest of the heat, also known as infrared radiation, is trapped in the atmosphere by clouds and greenhouse gases, such as water vapor and carbon dioxide. If all of these greenhouse gases were to suddenly disappear, our planet would be 60ºF (33ºC) colder and would not support life as we know it. Human activities have enhanced the natural greenhouse effect by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, very likely (greater than 90 percent chance) causing the Earth’s average temperature to rise. These additional greenhouse gases come from burning fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil to power our cars, factories, power plants, homes, offices, and schools. Cutting down trees, generating waste and farming also produce greenhouse gases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (via the Internet Archive: URLs listed here are the &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; locations)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120511022154/http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/fq/science.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/fq/science.html, as it appeared in May 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120511021853/http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/stateofknowledge.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/stateofknowledge.html, as it appeared in May 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This page acknowledges the gaps in scientific climate knowledge, and differentiates fact from speculation/uncertain predictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding a NASA site which specifically references CO2 as a greenhouse gas:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/carbon-dioxide/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2949" LastEditorUserId="2949" LastEditDate="2019-02-06T21:50:21.827" LastActivityDate="2019-02-06T21:50:21.827" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3435" CreationDate="2011-05-20T14:08:44.537" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZjW02.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Global Warming&quot; /&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainworker.ch/r-evolution/heiss.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucar.edu/learn/1_3_1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Carbon Dioxide&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Carbon dioxide is one of the&#xA;greenhouse gases&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When its atoms are&#xA;bonded tightly together, &lt;strong&gt;the carbon&#xA;dioxide molecule can absorb infrared&#xA;radiation&lt;/strong&gt; and the molecule starts to&#xA;vibrate. &lt;br/&gt;Eventually, the vibrating&#xA;molecule will emit the radiation&#xA;again, and it will likely be absorbed&#xA;by yet another greenhouse gas&#xA;molecule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dz0aN.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Carbon&quot; /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucar.edu/learn/1_3_1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This&#xA;absorption-emission-absorption cycle&#xA;serves to keep the heat near the&#xA;surface, effectively insulating the&#xA;surface from the cold of space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/papers-on-laboratory-measurements-of-co2-absorption-properties/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here are some research papers&lt;/a&gt; on the absorption properties of CO2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-do-we-know-CO2-is-causing-warming.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Cook&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In 1970, NASA launched the &lt;a href=&quot;http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experimentDisplay.do?id=1970-025A-03&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IRIS&#xA;satellite&lt;/a&gt; that measured infrared&#xA;spectra&lt;/strong&gt; between 400 cm&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt; to 1600 cm&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;In 1996, the Japanese Space Agency&#xA;launched the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADEOS_I&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IMG satellite&lt;/a&gt; which&#xA;recorded similar observations&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6826/abs/410355a0.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[Harries&#xA;2001]&lt;/a&gt; compared both sets of data to&#xA;discern any changes in outgoing&#xA;radiation over the 26 year period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What they found was a drop in outgoing&#xA;radiation at the wavelength bands that&#xA;greenhouse gases such as CO2 and&#xA;methane (CH4) absorb energy&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The&#xA;change in outgoing radiation was&#xA;consistent with theoretical&#xA;expectations. &lt;br/&gt;Thus &lt;strong&gt;the paper found&#xA;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;direct experimental evidence for a&#xA;significant increase in the Earth's&#xA;greenhouse effect&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This result has&#xA;been confirmed by subsequent papers&#xA;using data from later satellites&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://spiedigitallibrary.org/proceedings/resource/2/psisdg/5543/1/164_1?isAuthorized=no&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Griggs 2004&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.131.3867&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chen 2007&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simply put:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;Satellites measuring infrared (heat) radiation coming from our Earth found that CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) won't let it escape into space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tyfob.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Greenhouse effect&quot; /&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boilermakers.org/resources/news/climate_change/discovery_of_global_warming&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T15:27:32.660" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3442" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3445" CreationDate="2011-05-20T14:15:28.843" Score="14" ViewCount="4841" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a relatively common trope with regards to the powers of hackers in film: Someone hacks into the &quot;Traffic Control Center&quot; and gains instant access to all stoplights in an area. This includes the option of turning everything red; everything green; etc. &lt;em&gt;Hackers&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Italian Job&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Live Free or Die Hard&lt;/em&gt; are examples that come to mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone ever done something like this? Is it possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:38:12.990" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T13:44:59.467" Title="Has anyone ever hacked into a traffic control system to change the stoplights?" Tags="|technology|computers|hacking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3442" CreationDate="2011-05-20T14:42:55.673" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's two versions of this: a hardware hack and a software hack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hardware hack (otherwise known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.i-hacked.com/content/view/176/44/&quot;&gt;DIrtY MIRT,&lt;/a&gt; aka &quot;Do It Yourself Mobile Infra Red Transmitter&quot;) is definitely doable and possible, as they are both being built, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-269356.html&quot;&gt;sold&lt;/a&gt;, and even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/08/68507&quot;&gt;having laws passed prohibiting their sale/usage&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as software hacks, this was also done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jan/09/local/me-trafficlights9&quot;&gt;http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jan/09/local/me-trafficlights9&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;officials now allege that two engineers, Kartik Patel and Gabriel Murillo, figured out how to hack in anyway. With a few clicks on a laptop computer, the pair -- one a renowned traffic engineer profiled in the national media, the other a computer whiz who helped build the system -- allegedly tied up traffic at four intersections for several days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://weirdwebtoday.com/?p=412&quot;&gt;http://weirdwebtoday.com/?p=412&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Transportation bosses in the Netherlands are trying to find out who hacked the traffic-light computer system to show a couple making love when the lights turned green.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The altered lights in Nijmegen, Holland, stopped traffic when passersby kept pressing the pedestrian buttons to see the couple having doggie-style sex on the green light, the Austrian Times reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;* Dead link. Dutch regional news item on YouTube: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qewWW-mSua0&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qewWW-mSua0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2016-10-14T13:44:59.467" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T13:44:59.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3433" CreationDate="2011-05-20T15:02:38.377" Score="33" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My computing teacher told us that closed source software is more secure than open source software, because with open source &quot;anyone can modify it and put stuff in.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your teacher is flat wrong.  The correct statement is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;anyone can fork it, and put stuff in &lt;em&gt;their fork&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open source means that anyone can read the source code corresponding to the distributed binary.  Usually it also means that anyone can read from the master repository where development occurs, in order to test new unreleased changes.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freepascal.org/develop.var&quot;&gt;FreePascal follows this general pattern: &quot;As an alternative to the daily zip files of the SVN sources, the SVN repository has been made accessible for everyone, with read-only access.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not require that the general public can write to the master repository, in fact write access being limited to trusted project members is the general rule.  In some cases, the repository accepts patches from anyone but they are quarantined to separate branches until a trusted member merges the change into the master (trunk) codebase.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freepascal.org/contrib/add.php3&quot;&gt;It appears that FreePascal follows this latter model, you need only a free account to upload patches, but they won't be integrated into the mainline without review.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask your teacher to back up their words with actions -- you have FreePascal installed on your computer, if he thinks that's &quot;insecure&quot;, ask him to &quot;modify it and put in&quot; an insulting message that appears next time you run it.  Won't happen, there's this huge chasm between the modified copy in his home directory and the version you download and compile on your computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your final sentence, asking for studies performing statistical comparison of open-source vs closed-source, shows that you've adopted one of your teacher's bad practices: the fallacy of applying the law of averages to an individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I submit that the utility to you of drawing software from a category which is more secure on average is essentially nil.  You should be interested instead in programs which are individually and specifically highly secure, no matter what characteristics they share with insecure software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2954" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-18T10:11:12.460" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T10:11:12.460" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3451" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3526" CreationDate="2011-05-20T15:59:23.527" Score="21" ViewCount="15546" Body="&lt;p&gt;After stumbling upon a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ql74_MlCl9s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video of a guy getting knocked down in one hit&lt;/a&gt;, I did some quick research and couldn't conclude if this is a myth or not. The video in itself is very a compelling evidence for fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often we see it used as a plot resource in movies, when someone knocks the other person unconscious by hitting their head. Sometimes not even very hard. And we do see people get knocked out in real tv as well, although they often hide the technical details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also heard / read to actually manage to knock someone unconscious in reality, a very strong hit with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traumatic_brain_injury#Causes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Traumatic brain injury&lt;/a&gt; must be caused, potentially leaving scars on the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what's the verdict?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefuly we wouldn't need a scientific research to come up with a conclussion (phun intended)... I mean, there must be enough statistics about this just from sports or hospitals already! :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1125" LastEditorUserId="1125" LastEditDate="2016-03-04T14:13:18.080" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T14:13:18.080" Title="Are one-hit knockouts possible?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|sport|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3433" CreationDate="2011-05-20T15:59:39.573" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back in 2002, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2575.2002.00118.x/pdf&quot;&gt;Payne conducted a study&lt;/a&gt; comparing three similar Unix-like operating systems, one of which was closed-source (Solaris) and two of which were open-source (Debian and OpenBSD) across a number of security metrics.  He concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results show that, of the three systems, OpenBSD had the most number of security features (18) with Debian second (15) and Solaris third (11). Of these features, OpenBSD's features rated highest scoring 7.03 out of 10 while Debian's scored 6.42 and Solaris’ scored 5.92. A similar pattern was observed for the vulnerabilities with OpenBSD having the fewest (5).&lt;br /&gt;...&lt;br /&gt;Based on these results it would appear that open source systems tend to be more secure, however, ... in scoring 10.2, OpenBSD was the only system of the tree to receive a positive score and, a comparison with the magnitudes of the other two scores suggests this is a relatively high score also. Therefore, the significant differences between Debian and OpenBSD's score support the argument that making a program ‘open source’ does not, by itself, automatically improve the security of the program (Levy, 2000), (Viega, 2000). What, therefore, accounts for the dramatically better security exhibited by the OpenBSD system over the other two? The author believes that the answer to this question lies in the fact that, while the source code for the Debian system is available for anyone who cares to examine it, the OpenBSD source code is regularly and purposefully examined with the explicit intention of finding and fixing security holes (Payne, 1999), (Payne, 2000). Thus it is this auditing work, rather than simply the general availability of source code, that is responsible for OpenBSD's low number of security problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; To summarize, Payne explains his results by claiming that it is the &lt;em&gt;culture&lt;/em&gt; of security itself that promotes actual security.  While that is likely true, I think it is also important to note that, with all else being equal, the general public can't independently audit that which is not open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That study is a bit dated and of limited breadth, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried looking for a more comprehensive study, but I couldn't really find anything substantive (there are many &quot;opinion pieces&quot; giving arguments as to why open source is better, but not much data).  Therefore, I took a quick look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://nvd.nist.gov/&quot;&gt;National Vulnerability Database&lt;/a&gt;, which collects, rates, and posts software vulnerabilities.  It has a database dating back into the 1980s.  I quickly hacked together this perl script to parse the database:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;#!/usr/bin/perl -w&#xA;use Cwd 'abs_path';&#xA;use File::Basename;&#xA;use XML::Parser;&#xA;my @csseverity;my @osseverity;my @bothseverity;&#xA;my $numNeither = 0;&#xA;sub mean {&#xA;  my $result; return 0 if(@_ &amp;lt;= 0); foreach (@_) { $result += $_ } return $result / @_;&#xA;}&#xA;sub stddev {&#xA;  my $mean = mean(@_); my @elem_squared; foreach (@_) { push (@elem_squared, ($_ **2));     }&#xA;  return sqrt( mean(@elem_squared) - ($mean ** 2));&#xA;}&#xA;sub handle_start {&#xA;    if($_[1] eq &quot;entry&quot;) {&#xA;        $item = {};&#xA;        undef($next) if(defined($next));&#xA;        for(my $i=2; $i&amp;lt;@_; $i++) {&#xA;            if(!defined($key)) {&#xA;                $key = $_[$i];&#xA;            } else {&#xA;                $item-&amp;gt;{$key} = $_[$i];&#xA;                undef($key);&#xA;            }&#xA;        }&#xA;    } elsif(defined($item)) {&#xA;        $next = $_[1];&#xA;    }&#xA;}&#xA;sub handle_end {&#xA;    if($_[1] eq &quot;entry&quot;) {&#xA;        if(!exists($item-&amp;gt;{'reject'}) || $item-&amp;gt;{'reject'} != 1) {&#xA;            my $score = $item-&amp;gt;{'CVSS_score'};&#xA;            my $d = $item-&amp;gt;{&quot;descript&quot;};&#xA;            my $isOS = 0;&#xA;            my $isCS = 0;&#xA;            $isOS = 1 if($d =~ m/(^|\W)(linux|nfs|openssl|(net|open|free)?bsd|netscape|red hat|lynx|apache|mozilla|perl|x windowing|xlock|php|w(u|f)-?ftpd|sendmail|ghostscript|gnu|slackware|postfix|vim|bind|kde|mysql|squirrelmail|ssh-agent|formmail|sshd|suse|hsftp|xfree86|Mutt|mpg321|cups|tightvnc|pam|bugzilla|mediawiki|tor|piwiki|ruby|chromium|open source)(\W|$)/i);&#xA;            $isCS = 1 if($d =~ m/(^|\W)(windows|tooltalk|solaris|sun|microsoft|apple|macintosh|sybergen|mac\s*os|mcafee|irix|iis|sgi|internet explorer|ntmail|sco|cisco(secure)?|aix|samba|sunos|novell|dell|netware|outlook|hp(-?ux)?|iplanet|flash|aol instant|aim|digital|compaq|tru64|wingate|activex|ichat|remote access service|qnx|mantis|veritas|chrome|3com|vax|vms|alcatel|xeneo|msql|unixware|symantec|oracle|realone|real\s*networks|realserver|realmedia|ibm|websphere|coldfusion|dg\/ux|synaesthesia|helix|check point|proofpoint|martinicreations|webfort|vmware)(\W|$)/i);&#xA;            if($isOS &amp;amp;&amp;amp; $isCS) {&#xA;                push(@bothseverity, $score);&#xA;            } elsif($isOS) {&#xA;                push(@osseverity, $score);&#xA;            } elsif($isCS) {&#xA;                push(@csseverity, $score);&#xA;            } else {&#xA;                $numNeither++;&#xA;                #print $d . &quot;\n&quot;;&#xA;            }&#xA;        }&#xA;        undef($item);&#xA;    }&#xA;}&#xA;sub handle_char {&#xA;    $item-&amp;gt;{$next} = $_[1] if(defined($item) &amp;amp;&amp;amp; defined($next));&#xA;    undef($next) if(defined($next));&#xA;}&#xA;my($scriptfile, $scriptdir) = fileparse(abs_path($0));&#xA;sub process_year {&#xA;    my $filename = 'nvdcve-' . $_[0] . '.xml';&#xA;    system(&quot;cd $scriptdir ; wget http://nvd.nist.gov/download/&quot; . $filename) unless(-e $scriptdir . $filename);&#xA;    $p = new XML::Parser(Handlers =&amp;gt; {Start =&amp;gt; \&amp;amp;handle_start,&#xA;                                      End   =&amp;gt; \&amp;amp;handle_end,&#xA;                                      Char  =&amp;gt; \&amp;amp;handle_char});&#xA;    $p-&amp;gt;parsefile($filename);&#xA;}&#xA;my($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$mon,$currentyear,$wday,$yday,$isdst) = localtime(time);&#xA;$currentyear += 1900;&#xA;for(my $year=2002; $year&amp;lt;=$currentyear; $year++) {&#xA;    &amp;amp;process_year($year);&#xA;}&#xA;print &quot;Total vulnerabilities: &quot; . (@osseverity + @csseverity + @bothseverity + $numNeither) . &quot;\n&quot;;&#xA;print &quot;\t  # Open Source (OS): &quot; . @osseverity . &quot;\n&quot;;&#xA;print &quot;\t# Closed Source (OS): &quot; . @csseverity . &quot;\n&quot;;&#xA;print &quot;\t              # Both: &quot; . @bothseverity . &quot;\n&quot;;&#xA;print &quot;\t      # Unclassified: &quot; . $numNeither . &quot;\n&quot;;&#xA;print &quot;OS Severity: &quot; . &amp;amp;mean(@osseverity) . &quot;\t&quot; . &amp;amp;stddev(@osseverity) . &quot;\n&quot;;&#xA;print &quot;CS Severity: &quot; . &amp;amp;mean(@csseverity) . &quot;\t&quot; . &amp;amp;stddev(@csseverity) . &quot;\n&quot;;&#xA;print &quot;Both Severity: &quot; . &amp;amp;mean(@bothseverity) . &quot;\t&quot; . &amp;amp;stddev(@bothseverity) . &quot;\n&quot;;&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to modify the code, if you'd like.  Here are the results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full database has 46102 vulnerabilities.  My script was able to classify 15748 of them as specifically related to open source software, 11430 were related to closed source software, 782 were applicable to both closed source and open source software, and 18142 were unclassified (I didn't have time to optimize my classifier very much; feel free to improve it).  Among the vulnerabilities that were classified, the open source ones had an average severity of 6.24 with a standard deviation of 1.74 (a higher severity is worse).  The closed source vulnerabilities had an average severity of 6.65 (stddev = 2.21).  The vulnerabilities that were classified as both had an average severity of 6.47 (stddev = 2.13).  This may not be a completely fair comparison, though, since open source software has become much more popular in recent years.  If I restrict the results to the years 2003 to the present, we get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Total vulnerabilities: 39445&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;# Open Source (OS): 14595&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;# Closed Source (CS): 9293&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;# Both: 675&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;# Unclassified: 14882&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avg. OS Severity: 6.25 (stddev 1.70)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avg. CS Severity: 6.79 (stddev 2.24)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both Severity: 6.52 (stddev 2.15)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't had time to do any statistical analysis on these results, however, it does look like, on average, the vulnerabilities affecting open source software have a slightly lower severity rating than vulnerabilities affecting closed source software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I get some more time, I'll try and generate a graph of the running average of severity over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2011-05-21T12:18:25.643" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T12:18:25.643" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3430" CreationDate="2011-05-20T16:00:38.823" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the parachute question, the accepted answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1064/is-the-use-of-parachutes-supported-by-peer-reviewed-papers/1066#1066&quot;&gt;noted&lt;/a&gt; that a few individuals who fell 5,000 metres or even 10,000 metres have survived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a human can fall that far, it's plausible that a cat falling that far can potentially survive. But there's a big difference between &quot;can&quot; and &quot;definitely will&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T16:00:38.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3432" CreationDate="2011-05-20T16:47:35.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the Wikipedia article covers the support for this phenomenon adequately in its &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect#Supporting_studies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;supporting studies&lt;/a&gt;&quot; section.  There's no reason to doubt that it's a real effect given the number of confirmations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, Burson, Larrick, and Klayman (2006) set out to test the effect, asking whether people were judging task difficulty instead of their own ability.  They performed similar tests but with varying difficulties and reproduced the original results, i.e., that people are poor at estimating their relative ability (Figure 4):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CVVqG.png&quot; alt=&quot;Burson et al, Figure 4&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gold standard of rigor in sciences is ability to replicate findings (that's the point of being rigorous!), so in this regard the paper passes: even if there were some methodological problems (it's often really hard to tell), the results seem sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to confidence vs. ability, the Burson paper shows conditions (such as the &quot;Hard Trivia&quot; line above where the &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt; performers have the most inaccurate estimate of confidence.  This argues against Kruger &amp;amp; Dunning's hypothesis that higher ability is (necessarily) linked to more accurate judgments of self-ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you ask whether that the authors' claim that &quot;incompetents have a higher self-appraisal than competents&quot; is tested and accepted.  That claim is tested &lt;em&gt;and refuted&lt;/em&gt; by the authors, by Burson et. al, and others: correlations with performance are typically positive or non-existent, not negative.  But the authors do not make the claim (quote from Darwin notwithstanding)!  Here are a selection of quotes from Kruger and Dunning about what they do claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Prediction 1&lt;/em&gt; Incompetent individuals, compared with their more competent peers, with dramatically overestimate their ability and performance &lt;strong&gt;compared to objective criteria&lt;/strong&gt;. (p. 1112)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emphasis mine: the claim is that they overestimate the most, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; that their estimates are even higher than the estimates of high-performers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To be sure, they [the poor-performers] had an inkling that they were not as talented in this domain as were participants in the top quartile, as evidenced by the &lt;strong&gt;significant correlation between perceived and actual ability&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, they agree that poor performers do not give estimates that outstrip the estimates of top performers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bottom-quartile participants were less successful than were top-quartile participants in the metacognitive tasks of discerning what one has answered correctly vs. incorrectly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Language like the above is seen throughout: not a statement that bottom-quartile estimates themselves higher than top-quartile estimates themselves, but that bottom-quartile has got it really badly wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other studies (e.g. Burson et al.) use similar language and show similar effects (though there is not solid agreement on the causes of the effects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that claim isn't made by the authors (at least in this paper), and if someone in the general public were to make such a claim they should be aware that it has been (weakly) refuted by (at least some) studies of these effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="1039" LastEditDate="2015-03-02T21:52:29.137" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T21:52:29.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3458" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-20T18:04:57.850" Score="11" ViewCount="9290" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that by law (assuming US law) all modern laptops must have built in GPS. Presumably than, your laptop could be tracked down if it were stolen. This seems unrealistic, however, I've read that there are &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/35566/2004&quot;&gt;similar laws for modern cell phones&lt;/a&gt; (used for calling 911). In the world of TV fiction, I have seen this for phones and laptops, both of which could be remotely activated and then located. It seems logistically much more difficult for laptops than cell phones. Is there any truth to this whatsoever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1750" LastEditorUserId="2004" LastEditDate="2016-11-01T05:04:52.390" LastActivityDate="2016-11-02T04:35:17.267" Title="Do all modern laptops have traceable GPS?" Tags="|computers|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2016-11-02T15:37:22.257" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3458" CreationDate="2011-05-20T18:26:16.730" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cell-phone wise, that is indeed the case (a FCC rule). From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/80085/qualcomm_turns_cell_phones_into_gps_systems.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PCWorld&lt;/a&gt;: :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Enchanced 911&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mobile phone companies are under orders from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to incorporate some kind of location-reporting technology into cellular phones. Dubbed E-911, or enhanced 911, the communication initiative is meant to give law enforcement and emergency services personnel a way to find people calling 911 from mobile phones when callers don't know where they are or are unable to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No carrier was able to make an October deadline to fully implement E-911. The FCC issued waivers permitting carriers to add location-detection services to new phones over time, so that 95 percent of all mobile phones are compliant with E-911 rules by 2005.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More details from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1#Requirements&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requirements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/wireless911srvc.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The U.S. Federal Communications&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Commission (FCC) has several&#xA;requirements applicable to wireless or&#xA;mobile telephones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Basic 911: All 911 calls must be relayed to a call center, regardless&#xA;of whether the mobile phone user is a&#xA;customer of the network being used.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E911 Phase 1: Wireless network operators must identify the phone&#xA;number and cell phone tower used by&#xA;callers, within six minutes of a&#xA;request by a PSAP.&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E911 Phase 2&#xA;95% of a network operator's in-service phones must be E911&#xA;compliant (&amp;quot;location capable&amp;quot;) by&#xA;December 31, 2005. (Several carriers&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/sprint-alltel-usc-fined-missed-e911-deadline/2007-08-31&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;missed this deadline&lt;/a&gt;, and were fined&#xA;by the FCC.)&#xA;Wireless network operators must provide the latitude and&#xA;longitude of callers within 300&#xA;meters, within six minutes of a&#xA;request by a PSAP. Accuracy rates&#xA;must meet FCC standards on average&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rcrwireless.com/article/20080314/SUB/431138710/carriers-push-e-911-lawsuit-in-court-despite-winning-deadline&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;within any given participating PSAP&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;service area by September 11, 2012&#xA;(deferred from September 11, 2008).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Location information is not only&#xA;transmitted to the call center for the&#xA;purpose of sending emergency services&#xA;to the scene of the incident, it is&#xA;used by the wireless network operator&#xA;to determine to which PSAP to route&#xA;the call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Please note that GPS specifically is NOT required - merely some means of location.&lt;/strong&gt; Wikipedia again:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To locate a mobile telephone&#xA;geographically, there are two general&#xA;approaches. &lt;strong&gt;One is to use some form of&#xA;radiolocation from the cellular&#xA;network&lt;/strong&gt;, and the other is to use a Global&#xA;Positioning System receiver built into&#xA;the phone itself. Both approaches are&#xA;described by the Radio resource&#xA;location services protocol (LCS protocol).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: To the best of my knowledge, there are no similar rules for laptops, since they are done for 911 purposes and laptops aren't very suitable for that purpose due to low # of people owning them. So there's no point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-09T23:10:10.983" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3359" CreationDate="2011-05-20T18:58:16.380" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  Higher octane fuel is not &quot;better&quot;, it simply burns at a higher temperature/pressure.  The advantage that high octane fuel has is that you can build the engine to use a higher compression ratio which allows you to get more fuel, and hence, more power, into and out of each stroke.  If the fuel is too low octane for the engine, you will get pre ignition ping, otherwise known as knocking, because the fuel explodes too early.  If the octane is too high, then it explodes too late or won't burn at all.  These days the electronic control systems can play games with the valve timings to compensate somewhat so that you don't get knocking, but it still isn't doing the engine any favors to use the wrong fuel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the bottom line is: use whatever fuel the engine was designed for, no higher, and no lower.  For most non sports cars, that means 87 octane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_knock&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_knock&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ask.metafilter.com/128168/Does-high-octane-gas-matter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ask.metafilter.com/128168/Does-high-octane-gas-matter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toyotaperformance.com/fuel_octane_vs_horsepower.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.toyotaperformance.com/fuel_octane_vs_horsepower.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/39/what-are-the-benefits-of-premium-high-octane-petrol&quot;&gt;https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/39/what-are-the-benefits-of-premium-high-octane-petrol&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There also is, of course, the owners manual of pretty much any car that will tell you what octane fuel to use, and they don't specify X &lt;em&gt;or better.&lt;/em&gt;  Some manuals, like my Toyota Prius, explicitly specify NOT to use higher octane fuel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2978" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:47:21.433" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T13:53:44.810" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3407" CreationDate="2011-05-20T19:40:00.620" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK, I'm gonna try a few links on you, not sure how &quot;approved&quot; they will be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/639/why-does-putting-someones-hand-in-warm-water-make-them-go-to-the-bathroom&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The effectiveness of the stunt is a&#xA;  matter of debate. Some urologists&#xA;  scoff at the idea. But other medical&#xA;  types have been known to tell patients&#xA;  having a tough time urinating after&#xA;  rectal surgery to put their hands in&#xA;  warm water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wry extract from a pretty useless forum thread on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=18867&quot;&gt;The Naked Science Foundation&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Short answer no with a but..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;long answer yes with an if...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urination#Voluntary_control&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says (but the cite is a dead link):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The mechanism is unclear. The&#xA;  phenomenon (...) of immersing the hand&#xA;  of a sleeping person in water to make&#xA;  this victim urinate in sleep, although&#xA;  the efficacy of the trick is disputed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2192" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T19:40:00.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3433" CreationDate="2011-05-20T22:21:20.283" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think John provides the best answer when he says that many other factors can influence security. However it is worthwhile to see how openness can affect security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The earliest work in this direction was in 1883 by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Kerckhoffs&quot;&gt;Auguste Kerckhoffs&lt;/a&gt; and is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerckhoffs%27_principle&quot;&gt;Kerckhoffs's Principle&lt;/a&gt;. He argued that for any system to be secure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Cryptosystem should be secure even&#xA;  if everything about the system, except&#xA;  the key, is public knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important interpretation from &lt;a href=&quot;http://artofinfosec.com/335/crypto-kerckhoffs-principle/&quot;&gt;Art of Information Security&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kerckhoffs’ Principle does not require&#xA;  that we publish or disclose how things&#xA;  work. It does require that the&#xA;  security of the system must not be&#xA;  negatively impacted by such a&#xA;  disclosure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most closed-source systems do not actually violate Kerckhoffs' principle, so open-source cannot be said to be inferior or superior to closed-source by this measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two models are often used with regard to software &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity&quot;&gt;Security through obscurity&lt;/a&gt; vs. Security through disclosure/openness. The arguments for and against them are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_through_obscurity#Viewpoints&quot;&gt;rehashed on wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistically, Linux suffers from a much lower rate of infection than Windows. This is usually attributed to the open-source model, but some other alternative reasons (like lower market share) are also proposed as the explanation. Firefox also claims to have a lower number of open security exploits than Internet Explorer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it should be noted that &lt;em&gt;more eyes less bugs&lt;/em&gt; only works for popular open-source software, and may not be viable for less popular/custom software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastActivityDate="2011-05-20T22:21:20.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3465" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3502" CreationDate="2011-05-20T23:15:58.480" Score="52" ViewCount="11182" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a little tool called &lt;a href=&quot;http://stereopsis.com/flux/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;f.lux&lt;/a&gt; that claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the day, computer screens look good — they're designed to look like the sun. But, at 9PM, 10PM, or 3AM, you probably shouldn't be looking at the sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;F.lux fixes this: it makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's even possible that you're staying up too late because of your computer. You could use f.lux because it makes you sleep better, or you could just use it just because it makes your computer look better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that the color temperature of a computer screen could upset one's biorhythm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2023-12-06T13:01:41.330" Title="Does the color temperature of a computer screen affect sleep patterns?" Tags="|physiology|sleep|computers|technology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3433" CreationDate="2011-05-20T23:38:50.527" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not going to answer this question myself.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://dodcio.defense.gov/OpenSourceSoftwareFAQ.aspx&quot;&gt;United States Department of Defense&lt;/a&gt; has done it much better than I could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dodcio.defense.gov/OpenSourceSoftwareFAQ.aspx#Q%3a_Doesn.27t_hiding_source_code_automatically_make_software_more_secure.3F&quot;&gt;Q: Doesn't hiding source code automatically make software more  secure?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No. Indeed, vulnerability databases&#xA;  such as CVE make it clear that merely&#xA;  hiding source code does not counter&#xA;  attacks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dynamic attacks (e.g., generating input patterns to probe for&#xA;  vulnerabilities and then sending that&#xA;  data to the program to execute) don’t&#xA;  need source or binary. Observing the&#xA;  output from inputs is often sufficient&#xA;  for attack.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Static attacks (e.g., analyzing the code instead of its execution) can use&#xA;  pattern-matches against binaries -&#xA;  source code is not needed for them&#xA;  either.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if source code is necessary (e.g., for source code analyzers),&#xA;  adequate source code can often be&#xA;  regenerated by disassemblers and&#xA;  decompilers sufficiently to search for&#xA;  vulnerabilities. Such source code may&#xA;  not be adequate to cost-effectively&#xA;  maintain the software, but attackers&#xA;  need not maintain software.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even when the original source is necessary for in-depth analysis,&#xA;  making source code available to the&#xA;  public significantly aids defenders&#xA;  and not just attackers. Continuous and&#xA;  broad peer-review, enabled by publicly&#xA;  available source code, improves&#xA;  software reliability and security&#xA;  through the identification and&#xA;  elimination of defects that might&#xA;  otherwise go unrecognized by the core&#xA;  development team. Conversely, where&#xA;  source code is hidden from the public,&#xA;  attackers can attack the software&#xA;  anyway as described above.  In&#xA;  addition, an attacker can often&#xA;  acquire the original source code from&#xA;  suppliers anyway (either because the&#xA;  supplier voluntarily provides it, or&#xA;  via attacks against the supplier); in&#xA;  such cases, if only the attacker has&#xA;  the source code, the attacker ends up&#xA;  with another advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hiding source code does inhibit the&#xA;  ability of third parties to respond to&#xA;  vulnerabilities (because changing&#xA;  software is more difficult without the&#xA;  source code), but this is obviously&#xA;  not a security advantage. In general,&#xA;  “Security by Obscurity” is widely&#xA;  denigrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This does not mean that the DoD will&#xA;  reject using proprietary COTS&#xA;  products. There are valid business&#xA;  reasons, unrelated to security, that&#xA;  may lead a commercial company selling&#xA;  proprietary software to choose to hide&#xA;  source code (e.g., to reduce the risk&#xA;  of copyright infringement or the&#xA;  revelation of trade secrets).  What it&#xA;  does mean, however, is that the DoD&#xA;  will not reject consideration of a&#xA;  COTS product merely because it is OSS.&#xA;  Some OSS is very secure, while others&#xA;  are not; some proprietary software is&#xA;  very secure, while others are not.&#xA;  Each product must be examined on its&#xA;  own merits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit to add:  There's an answer to the malicious code insertion question, too:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dodcio.defense.gov/OpenSourceSoftwareFAQ.aspx#Q%3a_Is_there_a_risk_of_malicious_code_becoming_embedded_into_OSS.3F&quot;&gt;Q: Is there a risk of malicious code becoming embedded into OSS?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The use of any commercially-available software, be it proprietary or&#xA;  OSS, creates the risk of executing malicious code embedded in the&#xA;  software.   Even if a commercial program did not originally have&#xA;  vulnerabilities, both proprietary and OSS program binaries can be&#xA;  modified (e.g., with a &quot;hex editor&quot; or virus) so that it includes&#xA;  malicious code.  It may be illegal to modify proprietary software, but&#xA;  that will normally not slow an attacker. Thankfully, there are ways to&#xA;  reduce the risk of executing malicious code when using commercial&#xA;  software (both proprietary and OSS).  It is impossible to completely&#xA;  eliminate all risks; instead, focus on reducing risks to acceptable&#xA;  levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The use of software with a proprietary license provides absolutely no&#xA;  guarantee that the software is free of malicious code. Indeed, many&#xA;  people have released proprietary code that is malicious. What's more,&#xA;  proprietary software release practices make it more difficult to be&#xA;  confident that the software does not include malicious code.  Such&#xA;  software does not normally undergo widespread public review, indeed,&#xA;  the source code is typically not provided to the public and there are&#xA;  often license clauses that attempt to inhibit review further (e.g.,&#xA;  forbidding reverse engineering and/or forbidding the public disclosure&#xA;  of analysis results). Thus, to reduce the risk of executing malicious&#xA;  code, potential users should consider the reputation of the supplier&#xA;  and the experience of other users, prefer software with a large number&#xA;  of users, and ensure that they get the &quot;real&quot; software and not an&#xA;  imitator.   Where it is important, examining the security posture of&#xA;  the supplier (e.g., their processes that reduce risk) and&#xA;  scanning/testing/evaluating the software may also be wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Similarly, OSS (as well as proprietary software) may indeed have&#xA;  malicious code embedded in it. However, such malicious code cannot be&#xA;  directly inserted by &quot;just anyone&quot; into a well-established OSS&#xA;  project. As noted above, OSS projects have a &quot;trusted repository&quot; that&#xA;  only certain developers (the &quot;trusted developers&quot;) can directly&#xA;  modify.  In addition, since the source code is publicly released,&#xA;  anyone can review it, including for the possibility of malicious code.&#xA;  The public release also makes it easy to have copies of versions in&#xA;  many places, and to compare those versions, making it easy for many&#xA;  people to review changes.  Many perceive this openness as an advantage&#xA;  for OSS, since OSS better meets Saltzer &amp;amp; Schroeder's &quot;Open design&#xA;  principle&quot; (&quot;the protection mechanism must not depend on attacker&#xA;  ignorance&quot;).  This is not merely theoretical; in 2003 the Linux kernel&#xA;  development process resisted an attack.  Similarly, SourceForge/Apache&#xA;  (in 2001) and Debian (in 2003) countered external attacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As with proprietary software, to reduce the risk of executing&#xA;  malicious code, potential users should consider the reputation of the&#xA;  supplier (the OSS project) and the experience of other users, prefer&#xA;  software with a large number of users, and ensure that they get the&#xA;  &quot;real&quot; software and not an imitator (e.g., from the main project site&#xA;  or a trusted distributor). Where it is important, examining the&#xA;  security posture of the supplier (the OSS project) and&#xA;  scanning/testing/evaluating the software may also be wise. The example&#xA;  of Borland's InterBase/Firebird is instructive. For at least 7 years,&#xA;  Borland's Interbase (a proprietary database program) had embedded in&#xA;  it a &quot;back door&quot;; the username &quot;politically&quot;, password &quot;correct&quot;,&#xA;  would immediately give the requestor complete control over the&#xA;  database, a fact unknown to its users. Whether or not this was&#xA;  intentional, it certainly had the same form as a malicious back door.&#xA;  When the program was released as OSS, within 5 months this&#xA;  vulnerability was found and fixed. This shows that proprietary&#xA;  software can include functionality that could be described as&#xA;  malicious, yet remain unfixed - and that at least in some cases OSS is&#xA;  reviewed and fixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note that merely being developed for the government is no guarantee&#xA;  that there is no malicious embedded code.  Such developers need not be&#xA;  cleared, for example.  Requiring that all developers be cleared first&#xA;  can reduce certain risks (at substantial costs), where necessary, but&#xA;  even then there is no guarantee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note that most commercial software is not intended to be used where&#xA;  the impact of any error of any kind is extremely high (e.g., a large&#xA;  number of lives are likely to be immediately lost if even the&#xA;  slightest software error occurs).  Software that meets very high&#xA;  reliability/security requirements, aka &quot;high assurance&quot; software, must&#xA;  be specially designed to meet such requirements.  Most commercial&#xA;  software (including OSS) is not designed for such purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1748" LastEditorUserId="1748" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T20:18:26.377" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T20:18:26.377" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3467" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3468" CreationDate="2011-05-21T00:57:37.960" Score="15" ViewCount="1198" Body="&lt;p&gt;When two cars get into an accident the cars around them need to slow down to avoid hitting the cars involved in the collision.  This causes a backup in traffic.  People have often told me that traffic around an accident is caused by people 'rubber necking' or slowing down to see what is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience most drivers will quickly speed up as soon as there is open road in front of them, regardless of if there is a car off the road nearby.  Have there been any studies that prove that people slow down just because there is a car off the road? Or is the traffic just due to the initial slow down filtering itself out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2632" LastEditorUserId="334" LastEditDate="2011-06-05T21:29:14.887" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T21:29:14.887" Title="Does 'Rubber Necking' happen after an accident?" Tags="|road-vehicles|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3467" CreationDate="2011-05-21T01:48:26.823" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.highways.gov.uk/business/19765.aspx&quot;&gt;a page on rubbernecking&lt;/a&gt; from the UK's Highways Agency:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Congestion caused by incidents is a significant cause of delay on the Strategic Road Network. In many cases, incidents can cause secondary congestion on the opposite carriageway due to road users slowing down to look at the incident scene (known as 'rubbernecking').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Agency believes the problem to be so bad that it suggests putting up portable screens to block the accident scene from view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blocking the passing drivers' view of the scene with an incident screen helps address this issue; work carried out by the TIM team has demonstrated the benefit of incident screens in reducing secondary congestion caused by 'rubbernecking'. Incident screens remain a key project within TIM and have been featured in the Bulletin on several occasions, the last article in June 2008 focused on a recent trial of a free-standing incident screening system in Area 5 .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T01:48:26.823" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3469" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3482" CreationDate="2011-05-21T02:53:13.287" Score="33" ViewCount="13564" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aqFbo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've encountered this one many times over the years, mostly in those &quot;useless facts&quot; books and sites such as the one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.useless-facts.net/Insects-Spiders.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, it's been one of those bits of trivia I seem to have unconsciously taken for granted as true, probably due to the sheer number of times I've heard it. It occurred to me though that while I've often heard the claim stated, I've never seen it proven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has it been scientifically proven that ants are capable of lifting 50 times their weight?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the pedants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It doesn't matter what kind of ant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We are assuming an otherwise healthy and normal ant (of any kind).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2022-06-03T10:14:21.413" Title="Can ants lift 50 times their weight?" Tags="|biology|entomology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3469" CreationDate="2011-05-21T04:36:52.357" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fifty?  Pah!  Try &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/7277169/Weight-lifting-ant-wins-competition.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one hundred&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These sorts of feats of strength are not very useful, though, even if they are possible, just like humans don't routinely lift the kinds of weights that champion weightlifters do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leafcutter ants, who specialize in cutting leaves and carrying the loads back to their nest are probably the most heavily studied load-carriers; they will tend to carry only a few times their body weight.  For example, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00317902&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roces and Hölldobler, &amp;quot;Leaf density and a trade-off between load-size selection and recruitment behavior in the ant &lt;i&gt;Atta cephalotes&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;. Oecologia Volume 97, Number 1, pp. 1-8 (1994)&lt;/a&gt;, Figure 2A, where the 4 mg ants cutting 0.22 mg/mm&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; leaves cut about 60 mm&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;, which gives about 13 mg for a 4 mg ant (3x body weight).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-06-03T09:37:49.060" LastActivityDate="2022-06-03T09:37:49.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3409" CreationDate="2011-05-21T05:51:13.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background information&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(OP: feel free to copy-paste this into the question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucrose#Metabolism_of_sucrose&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucrose#Metabolism_of_sucrose&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In mammals, sucrose is readily&#xA;  digested in the stomach into its&#xA;  component sugars, by acidic&#xA;  hydrolysis. This step is performed by&#xA;  a glycoside hydrolase, which catalyzes&#xA;  the hydrolysis of sucrose to the&#xA;  monosaccharides glucose and fructose.&#xA;  Glucose and fructose are rapidly&#xA;  absorbed into the bloodstream in the&#xA;  small intestine. Undigested sucrose&#xA;  passing into the intestine is also&#xA;  broken down by sucrase or isomaltase&#xA;  glycoside hydrolases, which are&#xA;  located in the membrane of the&#xA;  microvilli lining the duodenum. These&#xA;  products are also transferred rapidly&#xA;  into the bloodstream. Sucrose is&#xA;  digested by the enzyme invertase in&#xA;  bacteria and some animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fructose is absorbed from the&#xA;  gastrointestinal tract by a different&#xA;  mechanism than that for glucose.&#xA;  Glucose stimulates insulin release&#xA;  from the isolated pancreas, but&#xA;  fructose does not. Fructose is&#xA;  metabolized primarily in the liver.&#xA;  Once inside the liver cell, fructose&#xA;  can enter the pathways that provide&#xA;  glycerol, the backbone for&#xA;  triacylglycerol. The growing dietary&#xA;  amount of fructose that is derived&#xA;  from sucrose or HFCS has raised&#xA;  questions about how children and&#xA;  adults respond to fructose alone or&#xA;  when it is accompanied by glucose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to comparison between sucrose and HFCS, the debate becomes much more intractable. The Wikipedia HFCS article cited a large number of studies - too numerous to list here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2547" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T05:51:13.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3315" CreationDate="2011-05-21T06:08:04.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There a two questions mixed in together here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is whether the mathematical modelling they do is a science. That question can't be answered until we have an agreed definition of science (or at least an approximate one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If science is about producing and testing theories that model the real-world, then yes, it is a science. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If having issues with reflexivity (see separate answer) means it can't be called a science, then no, it is not a science. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the best theories are not perfect means it is not a science, then no it isn't a science and your definition of science is pretty poor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If peer-review is a key requirement for science, then many of the proprietary models that individual organisations are using are not science, but other elements discussed in universities are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point here is that the question is futile, if we can't agree on the definition. Once we agree on the definition, the answer will be trivial and uninteresting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is whether the modelling is successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is moderately successful. Not all of it is perfect - some people may have private models that are plain wrong. Even the higher-quality models may not be perfect, and have limitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal, though, is not to be always right, but to be right often enough to make a living.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: In the example fan-chart given, the blue lines do not represent all of the possibilities, but just the 95% confidence range (or 99% confidence range or the 99.997 confidence range - alas the reference did not define it.) Coming up with one example of it being outside this range counts as anecdote in a world where risk is an intrinsic part of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(No references, because this is all my basic understanding from working in a related field of mathematical modelling, where being right 55% of the time would be very profitable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T06:08:04.250" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3477" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5230" CreationDate="2011-05-21T07:13:40.183" Score="33" ViewCount="6460" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/513/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hSpPp.png&quot; alt=&quot;xkcd #513 &amp;quot;Friends&amp;quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xkcd.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;xkcd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; #513 &lt;em&gt;Friends&lt;/em&gt;  by Randall Munroe&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might think this is something men parrot to justify their lack of luck with the ladies, but ask any &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/androphile&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;androphile&lt;/a&gt; and we'll tell you there's just something about &amp;quot;bad boys&amp;quot; that drives us wild.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, there might be some scientific basis for this.  ABC News &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=5197531&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bradley.edu/academics/las/psy/facstaff/schmitt/documents/Jonason-Schmitt-2009-DarkTriad-STM.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study published in the &lt;em&gt;European Journal of Personality&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces gave 200 college students personality tests to see how many of what psychologists call &amp;quot;dark triad traits&amp;quot; they possessed. These traits include callousness, impulsive behavior, extroversion, narcissism and various other anti-social traits for which &amp;quot;bad boys&amp;quot; are known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We would traditionally consider these dark triad traits to be adverse personality traits, and we think women would avoid these kinds of men, but what we show is counterintuitive -- that women are attracted to these bad boys and they do pretty well in terms of sheer numbers of sexual partners,&amp;quot; Jonason explained. &amp;quot;They're taking quantity over quality as their sexual agenda, being serially monogamous and having multiple partners or one-night stands.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, they say that doesn't translate into success with long-term relationships:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The manipulative 'It's all about me, so tell 'em anything to get sex' behavior is likely to have more short-term sexual success,&amp;quot; Worthington said. &amp;quot;A strategy of building trust and intimacy and commitment is, by nature, going to take longer. Thus, the payoffs are likely to be greater in the short term. However, long-term relationship survival is likely to be strongly disadvantaged in people with dark triad traits.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the study only covers college students, so there's a possibility people &amp;quot;grow up&amp;quot; and start seeking better traits in their partners.  A widespread study would be more convincing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, the problem with &amp;quot;nice guys&amp;quot; might be their other traits, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_guy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia indicates&lt;/a&gt; quoting &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10546171&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study published in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Sex &amp;amp; Marital Therapy&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Some women offered flattering interpretations of the 'nice guy', characterizing him as committed, caring, and respectful of women. Some women, however, emphasized more negative aspects, considering the 'nice guy' to be boring, lacking confidence, and unattractive.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a negative correlation between how kind one is and one's ability to find a partner?  If so, could that be caused by factors other than their kindness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-01-06T22:01:05.963" Title="Do nice guys finish last?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3433" CreationDate="2011-05-21T08:05:27.033" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A cursory examination of the controversies in the weekly kernel sections on Linux Weekly News[1] shows just how hard it often is for extremely experienced developers with great reputations to get their code into reputable projects.  If you're downloading from a project or distribution that has standards and enforces them on public mailing lists, you can make a more informed decision about the reliability and trustworthiness of the code than if you're buying proprietary software from companies with unknown processes whose development practices you cannot scrutinize.  If you're downloading from Will's World of Warez, you're in trouble, regardless of the development model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;http://lwn.net/&quot;&gt;http://lwn.net/&lt;/a&gt; Linux Weekly News. Weekly editions other than the latest are free to non-subscribers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2995" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T08:05:27.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3481" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-21T08:17:32.780" Score="-5" ViewCount="6216" Body="&lt;p&gt;When animals evolve, they go into transitional states, when they were still in the process of evolving and haven't reached its complete change. There are bound to be organisms in the transitional state that die and get fossilized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any records of transition fossils being found? If not, does this disprove evolution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-05-21T08:35:09.503" LastActivityDate="2023-05-15T07:49:29.010" Title="Have any transitional fossils (missing links) been found?" Tags="|biology|evolution|fossil-record|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3469" CreationDate="2011-05-21T10:31:05.420" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/H0df6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Ant carrying 3 sandwich cookies&quot; /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sritweets.com/facts-regarding-the-weight-lifting-capacity-of-ant/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3469/can-ants-lift-50-times-their-weight/3471#3471&quot;&gt;Rex Kerr&lt;/a&gt;'s answer has linked to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-02/load-bearing-ant-carries-100-times-its-body-weight-well-photo-competition?page=&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;photographic evidence&lt;/a&gt; of an &lt;strong&gt;Asian Weaver ant lifting 100 times its bodyweight&lt;/strong&gt; (no, it's not the one above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The picture won first prize in the first &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council&lt;/a&gt; science photo competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me the amazing thing is that the ant is actually &lt;strong&gt;clinging upside-down to a smooth surface&lt;/strong&gt; while lifting that 500mg weight:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2nHcw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;ant - 500mg&quot; /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-02/load-bearing-ant-carries-100-times-its-body-weight-well-photo-competition?page=&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ants are actually &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; stronger than humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;The reason why ants can lift so much is due to &lt;strong&gt;scaling&lt;/strong&gt;, meaning it has to do with math, not muscles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Strength&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The strength of a muscle scales with&#xA;the cross-sectional area&lt;/strong&gt;. (Exercise makes a muscle bigger, but not longer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jL0XJ.gif&quot; alt=&quot;illustrated bicep cut in half to show cross section&quot; /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ftexploring.com/think/superbugs_p2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means, &lt;strong&gt;the strength of an organism increases&#xA;as the square of the scale factor&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mass:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The mass of an object depends on its&#xA;volume.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/x6cI0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;spider small&quot; /&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/t6sJz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;spider&quot; /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/scalefactor/factors2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The spider on the right is &lt;strong&gt;3x the size&lt;/strong&gt; of the small spider, but it &lt;strong&gt;weighs 27x as much&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The weight of an object increases as&#xA;the cube of the scale factor&lt;/strong&gt; (3&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;=27)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mass increases faster than strength.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/k6U8Q.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;graph: mass of ant would increase exponentially if it had to be the same size as a human, but lifting power is nearly linear&quot; /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1999-05/927263695.Gb.r.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if an ant would be human size&#xA;it &lt;strong&gt;wouldn't&lt;/strong&gt; be able to lift 100x&#xA;its bodyweight anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or going the other way, playing&#xA;&amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097523/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Honey I Shrunk the Kids&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nUBM1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Honey I shrunk the kids, tiny kids in the grass&quot; /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://disneyandmore.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ant size humans would be as strong as ants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sources:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worsleyschool.net/science/files/scalefactor/factors2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scale Factors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ftexploring.com/think/superbugs_p2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why the little guys can do all the pushups&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1999-05/927263695.Gb.r.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How can ants carry so much weight in proportion to their size?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.truefalse.co.nz/articles/truefalse68-antslifting.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;True / False - Ants can lift huge weights&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howitworksdaily.com/environment/%EF%BB%BFwhy-can-ants-carry-items-much-&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why can ants carry items much heavier than themselves?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/20/science/20qna.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ant Power&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-06-03T10:14:21.413" LastActivityDate="2022-06-03T10:14:21.413" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3481" CreationDate="2011-05-21T11:55:08.910" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any records of transition fossils being found?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Millions of them. Because every single fossil is a fossil of a 'transitional' form. Note that this term isn't even used in science in this sense. Because no 'transitional states' exist, every single animal is a transition between it's ancestors and it's offspring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If not, does this disprove evolution?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If no fossil were found - and I am talking any fossil, because they are not divided into 'transitional' and 'final' ones - that wouldn't disprove evolution by any means. There are loads and loads of evidence in favor of theory of evolution besides the fossils, and there isn't even any alternate theory. As R. Dawkins said, fossils are just &quot;nice bonus&quot;, they aren't really a necessary evidence for evolution. Genetics alone offers a plenty of evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;R. Dawkins. &quot;The Selfish Gene&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;R. Dawkins. &quot;The Blind Watchmaker&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user288" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T11:55:08.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3486" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-21T13:19:22.100" Score="17" ViewCount="1970" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are quite a few studies debunking the effectiveness of Open-Plan Offices (sometimes named Open Space), such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16732/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study by the Queensland University of Technology&lt;/a&gt;. However, I wonder whether it might be true that OPOs might have any positive impacts. Is there any proof for that or is there only evidence to the contrary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3002" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T21:49:32.003" LastActivityDate="2020-05-08T05:41:15.473" Title="Do Open-Plan Offices have productivity advantages?" Tags="|productivity|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3487" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-21T13:58:37.177" Score="11" ViewCount="1046" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the last couple of years, petrol companies have started offering petrol with 10% ethanol in them, presumably at a cheaper price than normal unleaded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I've noticed (although this is just from a gut feeling), that my car when using fuel with 10% ethanol in it, seems to use up the fuel much faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;does ethanol actually save you money? Is it better for the environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone done any tests to see if the fuel economy is the same with ethanol fuel vs normal unleaded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cause if it is 10% less efficient, isn't that a false economy? You might as well just buy 10% less normal petrol - in fact, it'll be better cause your car will weigh less because you're carrying around less fuel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:18:51.223" LastActivityDate="2012-01-14T15:18:51.223" Title="Does using ethanol fuel save money, and is it better for the environment?" Tags="|economics|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3488" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-21T14:08:24.800" Score="4" ViewCount="4757" Body="&lt;p&gt;My old house mate told me this. And when I went to the shopping mall recently, I realized it was raining and it did seem unusually busy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would've thought it'd be the opposite. If it's raining, I'd much rather stay at home. But based on what I've seen, it seems it could be somewhat true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:21:35.243" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T06:44:17.930" Title="Are shopping centres busier when it rains?" Tags="|psychology|behavior|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3486" CreationDate="2011-05-21T15:37:11.633" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cost of fit-out for open-plan areas is much lower than traditional offices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apexei.com.au/faqs.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this interior decorator suggests&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;An open plan office design traditionally cost approx $400 per square meter.&#xA;An average office fitout with a few offices traditionally costs approx $550 - $750 per square meter depending on the level of finish required.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(That's Australian dollars, but the units are largely irrelevant.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you squeeze more people per square metre into an open-plan area than a traditional office, that is even more savings per employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm half-expecting responses that this is a false economy, but that is largely dependent on the commercial conditions the company finds itself in. There may well be some situations where it makes good economic sense to sacrifice longer term productivity in order to reduce up-front costs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T15:37:11.633" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3481" CreationDate="2011-05-21T15:37:55.097" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every fossil, and indeed every living creature, is transitional between an older form and a newer (or yet to come) form. We have a pretty good collection of fossils that show a transition from older forms to newer forms, such as the transition of large land mammals to whales. Scientists using the Theory of Evolution have even predicted a transitional form and where to find it. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14952&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This transitional fossil, tiktaalik, was found based on these predictions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More details have emerged about the anatomy of Tiktaalik, the &amp;quot;fishopod&amp;quot; that bridges the gap in evolutionary history between swimming fish and four-legged land-dwelling animals. The new findings bolster its position as a key transition or &amp;quot;missing link&amp;quot; fossil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, POPULATIONS evolve, NOT individuals.  That is a huge misunderstanding that creationists seem unwilling to learn.  &lt;em&gt;There is no such thing as Cameron's crockoduck&lt;/em&gt;.  It never could exist, and the theory of evolution never said it would.  Nor is there a fronkey, or any other such nonsense.  I suggest you read these books (&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0143116649&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why Evolution is True&lt;/a&gt;  and &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1416594795&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Greatest Show on Earth&lt;/a&gt;) to get an idea of what evolution actually states as opposed to the gross caricature you seem to have in your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/photogalleries/darwin-birthday-evolution/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Geographic published this article back in Feb, 2009&lt;/a&gt;.  It does a nice job listing some of the better documented transitions we have (although not the only 7, just some of the ones that would be impossible to ignore without willful mental gymnastics).  They give you Tiktaalik (like I did), Archaeopteryx, Amphistium, Ambulocetus,  Homo Ergaster, Hyracotherium/Eohippus, and Thrinaxodon.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_forms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;And here is an even longer list of transitional fossils&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Or if you prefer, the wikipedia list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skeptic.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michael Shermer&lt;/a&gt; tackles this assertion straight on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;15&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are no transitional forms in the fossil record, anywhere, including and especially humans.  The whole fossil record is an embarrassment to evolutionists.  What about Neanderthals?  These are all diseased skeletons-arthritis, rickets, etc., that create the bowed legs, brow ridge, and larger skeletal structure.  Homo erectus, and Australopithecus, are just apes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creationists like to quote Darwin's famous passage in the Origin of Species in which he asks: &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links?  Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;  One answer is that there are plenty of examples of transitional forms that have been discovered since Darwin's time.  Just look in any paleontology text.  A second answer was provided in 1972 by Eldredge and Gould when they demonstrated that gaps in the fossil record do not indicate missing data of slow and stately change; rather, it is evidence of rapid and episodic change.  Using Mayr's &amp;quot;allopatric speciation,&amp;quot; where small and unstable &amp;quot;founder&amp;quot; populations are isolated at the periphery of the larger populations's range, they show that the relatively rapid change in this smaller gene pool creates new species but leaves behind few, if any, fossils.  The process of fossilization is rare and infrequent anyway.  It is almost nonexistent during these times of rapid speciation.  A lack of fossils is evidence for rapid change, not missing evidence for gradual evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=15-answers-to-creationist&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American adds this&lt;/a&gt; in an article debunking 15 unoriginal and poorly thought out false assertions by creationists:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;13&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock's worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition [see &amp;quot;The Mammals That Conquered the Seas,&amp;quot; by Kate Wong; Scientific American, May]. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds--it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features. They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group. Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from molecular biology. All organisms share most of the same genes, but as evolution predicts, the structures of these genes and their products diverge among species, in keeping with their evolutionary relationships. Geneticists speak of the &amp;quot;molecular clock&amp;quot; that records the passage of time. These molecular data also show how various organisms are transitional within evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://factsnotfantasy.com/creationists.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;And because I also have this at my fingertips, here is Calilasseia's reply to this oft debunked canard&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(14) The &amp;quot;no transitional forms&amp;quot; canard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to deal with this one, I have the following to ask. Namely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Have you ever studied comparative anatomy in detail, at a proper, accredited academic institution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Do you understand rigorously what is meant by &amp;quot;species&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Do you understand even the basics of inheritance and population genetics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) Do you understand the basics of the workings of meiosis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you cannot answer &amp;quot;yes&amp;quot; to all four of the above, then you are in no position to erect this canard. And, canard it is, as anyone with a proper understanding of the dynamic nature of species will readily understand, a topic I have posted at length on in the past. Indeed, you only have to ask yourself the following question, &amp;quot;Am I identical to either of my parents?&amp;quot; in order to alight quickly upon why this canard IS a canard. Your own family photo album supplies you with the answer here. YOU are a &amp;quot;transitional form&amp;quot; between your parents and your offspring, should you have any offspring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a good visualization of evolution, maybe this picture will help you with some shorthand:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RtfaM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Evolution as a colour&quot; /&gt;&#xA;THAT is a logical process that seems to escape people who deny evolution.  Again, &lt;a href=&quot;http://factsnotfantasy.com/creationists.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I suggest you read up more at one of the earlier links provided&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT TO ADD&lt;/strong&gt;:  And the ever popular goalpost moving, ThirdIdiot (or whatever name he's using) has asked for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html#aethiopicus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;transitional fossils in the line of human evolution&lt;/a&gt;.  If that link is not enough, there is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stephen Jay Gould list of links that may also provide a great deal of information&lt;/a&gt;.  Of course, that assumes you are willing to let go of the wildly inaccurate caricature of evolution that you seem to be holding on to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T08:30:38.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3488" CreationDate="2011-05-21T15:57:12.193" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Martha Starr looked to see whether there was an effect between weather and sales:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;unusual weather has a modest but significant role in explaining monthly sales fluctuations. However, lagged effects often offset original effects, so that weather's influence tends to wash out at a quarterly frequency.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e. while weather may have a small affect on sales, it only changed &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; people spent their money - not how much people spent in a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I don't have access to the paper to confirm the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether the effect was to &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; the business during rain. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether the overall effect also applied to malls.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether rain was considered &quot;unusual&quot; or whether she was only looking at blizzards and the like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: Starr, Martha, The Effects of Weather on Retail Sales (January 12, 2000). FEDS Working Paper No. 2000-08. Available at SSRN: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ssrn.com/abstract=221728&quot;&gt;http://ssrn.com/abstract=221728&lt;/a&gt; or doi:10.2139/ssrn.221728,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I have spoken to parents who find that children cooped up in their homes during long periods of rain become restless. Whether that is true or not, the parents would arrange trips to malls to try to relieve the boredom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-05-22T09:41:26.930" LastActivityDate="2011-05-22T09:41:26.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2414" CreationDate="2011-05-21T17:35:50.060" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;.There has been no research which points to over sleeping leading to brain disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conversely, certain brain disorders&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzle.com/articles/causes-of-sleeping-too-much.html&quot;&gt;can&lt;/a&gt; cause oversleeping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oversleeping has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/guide/physical-side-effects-oversleeping&quot;&gt;shown&lt;/a&gt; to cause diabetics, obesity and other health problems but &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; any serious brain disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://topnews.net.nz/content/2430-over-sleeping-including-afternoon-naps-can-increase-alzheimer-risk&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt; that long sleeps and after noon naps may &lt;em&gt;lead to Alzheimer's disease&lt;/em&gt; could in fact be due to the &lt;em&gt;reverse correlation&lt;/em&gt;, i.e people who are prone to develop Alzheimer's disease in future are over-sleepers, probably due to other brain related issues (&lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; the &lt;em&gt;other way&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2601" LastEditorUserId="2601" LastEditDate="2011-05-21T17:43:06.120" LastActivityDate="2011-05-21T17:43:06.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3498" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3797" CreationDate="2011-05-21T20:28:13.493" Score="18" ViewCount="2341" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people claim that &quot;crying it out&quot; is harmful. For example, the article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdinparenting.com/2008/07/05/no-cry-it-out/&quot;&gt;PhD Parenting&lt;/a&gt; states that crying it out is harmful to a child. I've heard others suggest that it's neglectful. I expect many of these references are to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babycenter.com/0_the-ferber-method-demystified_7755.bc&quot;&gt;Ferber method&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferber_method&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific basis for concluding that &quot;crying it out&quot; or the Ferber method are harmful to a child?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastActivityDate="2018-08-04T20:10:48.863" Title="Is sleep training a form of neglect or harmful?" Tags="|medical-science|sleep|children|psychiatry|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3465" CreationDate="2011-05-22T02:46:27.673" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;One study says, &amp;quot;possibly&amp;quot;.  Note that the illumination provided by the light sources used in the study may not be consistent with the light coming from a computer monitor.  Also note that the sample size is not large, and a mechanism for the effect is not proposed.  (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15840951&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;J Physiol Anthropol Appl Human Sci. 2005 Mar;24(2):183-6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Effect of color temperature of light sources on slow-wave sleep.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kozaki T, Kitamura S, Higashihara Y, Ishibashi K, Noguchi H, Yasukouchi A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Department of Physiological Anthropology, Faculty of Design, Kyushu University, Japan. kozaki@design.kyushu-u.ac.jp&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to examine whether the spectral compositions of light source may affect sleep quality, sleep architecture under different color temperatures of light sources was evaluated. Seven healthy males were exposed to the light sources of different color temperatures (3000 K, 5000 K and 6700 K) for 6.5 h before sleep. The horizontal illuminance level was kept at 1000 lux. Subjects slept on a bed in near darkness (&amp;lt; 10 lux) after extinguishing the light, and polysomnograms recorded the sleep parameters. In the early phase of the sleep period, the amount of stage-4 sleep (S4-sleep) was significantly attenuated under the higher color temperature of 6700 K compared with the lower color temperature of 3000 K. Present findings suggest that light sources with higher color temperatures may affect sleep quality in a view that S4-sleep period is important for sleep quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent article in Scientific American (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-hidden-organ-in-our-eyes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;) discussed a possible mechanism for the effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many years later researchers extended Keeler’s observation, showing that mice genetically engineered to lack rods and cones (the light receptors involved in vision) nonetheless reacted to changes in light by adjusting their circadian clock—the internal timer that synchronizes hormone activity, body temperature and sleep. The animals performed the usual daytime activities when in daylight and nighttime activities when in the dark. They could do so even though their retinas lacked the photoreceptor cells that vertebrate eyes use to form images, although surgically removing their eyes abolished this ability. This phenomenon may be common to many mammals, including humans: recent experiments have shown that certain blind people can also adjust their circadian clocks and constrict their pupils in response to light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastEditorUserId="30258" LastEditDate="2023-12-06T13:01:41.330" LastActivityDate="2023-12-06T13:01:41.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3451" CreationDate="2011-05-22T03:27:34.813" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see two questions here: &quot;How hard is it to knock someone out with a single blow?&quot; and &quot;Is doing so likely to cause long-term brain damage?&quot;.  The first question is tough to quantify but I did find some relevant research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How hard is it to knock someone out with a single blow?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1725037/pdf/v039p00710.pdf&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; had Olympic boxers throw (gloved) punches at modified crash test dummies and measured the resultant forces of impact.  These measurements were compared to head injury risk thresholds previously established in NFL studies.  Linear forces were not judged sufficient to produce concussion, however average &lt;em&gt;rotational&lt;/em&gt; acceleration was comparable to the NFL thresholds.  So a single punch by an Olympic-caliber boxer was shown to be at least &lt;em&gt;capable&lt;/em&gt; of producing concussion.  Note that only a minority of concussions lead to loss of consciousness (LOC).  Thus it seems an exceptional blow would be required for a one-punch KO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blackbeltmag.com/daily/traditional-martial-arts-training/dim-mak/dim-mak-martial-arts-touch-of-death/&quot;&gt;controversial theory&lt;/a&gt; in some martial arts circles that a sharp, well-placed blow to the corner of the jaw (much as in the video linked in the question) may activate the baroreceptors in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carotid_sinus&quot;&gt;carotid sinus&lt;/a&gt;, causing rapid &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroreflex&quot;&gt;reflexive drop in blood pressure&lt;/a&gt; and LOC.  While the mechanism is at least semi-plausible, as far as I can tell it has never been demonstrated in practice.  That claim might be worthy of its own question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is a one-punch knockout likely to cause long-term brain damage?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1724567/pdf/v036p00394.pdf&quot;&gt;Amateur boxing medical guidelines&lt;/a&gt; say that any boxer rendered unconscious should immediately be brought to an emergency department for evaluation.  The boxer shouldn't return to competition until a minimum of 28 days have passed and they've been cleared by a neurologist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone who experiences LOC after a blow to the head has at least mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acrm.org/pdf/TBIDef_English_Oct2010.pdf&quot;&gt;definition&lt;/a&gt;.  According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/158/15/1617&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Patients who are symptomatic after MTBI generally recover over a 3-month period in terms of ability to perform well on neuropsychological measures and ability to return to work despite the possible persistence of minor symptoms. It has been shown that focal parenchymal lesions on MRI scans of the brain resolve within 1 to 3 months and that these changes are paralleled by improvement in performances on neuropsychological tests and resumption of previous routine activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 10% to 15% of patients who are still symptomatic 1 year after injury ... are at high risk for emotional and cognitive disabilities that may involve the inability to carry out ordinary daily activities and work responsibilities and to maintain important social relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Longer duration of unconsciousness predicts increased likelihood of these long-term complications.  Successive head injuries cumulatively increase both the risk of LOC and the likelihood of long-term complications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, yes, a head impact resulting in LOC is a much more serious injury than is portrayed in the movies, but won't &lt;em&gt;necessarily&lt;/em&gt; lead to permanent damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2465" LastActivityDate="2011-05-22T03:27:34.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3371" CreationDate="2011-05-22T06:20:08.213" Score="119" Body="&lt;h3&gt;This was, actually, my &lt;strike&gt;6&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strike&gt; 5&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; grade Science Fair experiment. :)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I'd never heard of this effect before; it was a random experiment I thought of and tried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer: &lt;strong&gt;it depends&lt;/strong&gt; on what you mean by &lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;freeze&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cold water &lt;strong&gt;starts freezing&lt;/strong&gt; sooner (entering 0 degrees C), but hot water &lt;strong&gt;finishes freezing&lt;/strong&gt; sooner (leaving 0 degrees C). I measured this with a digital thermometer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No idea why, but I'm darn sure my experiment was accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Edit:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;I found the data!&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0ZBb.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/b0ZBb.png&quot; alt=&quot;Page 1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gtVAo.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gtVAo.png&quot; alt=&quot;Page 2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I blurred out the years to avoid carbon dating myself. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1854" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-13T22:07:09.727" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3506" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3519" CreationDate="2011-05-22T11:16:58.027" Score="123" ViewCount="20223" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend told me that he doesn't bother voting any more in elections, because &quot;it's not like one vote ever made a difference.&quot; I will vote when I can and I think it is important, and although I share his sentiment about politicians... it got me thinking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there ever been any &lt;em&gt;major&lt;/em&gt; election (around 1 million votes or more) where a &lt;em&gt;single&lt;/em&gt; vote has decided the result? e.g. Candidate A got 1,000,000 votes and Candidate B got 1,000,001 votes. If the voter for candidate B did not vote it would be a tie and there might be a run-off election or some other system used to determine the winner and thus B may have lost if that one vote was not cast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:20:51.593" LastActivityDate="2022-08-01T19:12:07.800" Title="Has one vote ever made a difference?" Tags="|politics|" AnswerCount="13" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3507" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-22T12:51:10.150" Score="12" ViewCount="3029" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember I read somewhere that the US Nielsen rating was calculated by something like 25,000 households. That sounds extremely small compared to the number of people that actually have TVs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's more - these ratings are then broken into demographics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, aside from the sample size, there is statistical bias. I would think that someone who actually wants to participate in one of these things would be different to just your average person. There's probably a good deal of measurement error, as you are reliant on people keeping log books etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, these ratings are what TV channels use to auction off their advertising time and decide on which shows they choose to keep or cancel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any evidence supporting why TV ratings are a accurate mesasure of how popular or watched a show is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:51:02.477" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:51:02.477" Title="Are Nielsen TV ratings accurate?" Tags="|economics|television|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3508" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3513" CreationDate="2011-05-22T12:53:57.453" Score="32" ViewCount="5183" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/A0q4x.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Mouse and Elephant&quot; /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/2010/10/03/rebooting-the-wardman-wire-after-3-years/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;I have heard from people working in zoos that &lt;strong&gt;the myth of elephants being afraid of mice is not true&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqg3H0Sa7FM&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a short video&lt;/a&gt; of a zoo elephant clearly not caring about a mouse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't find it surprising that such a domesticated elephant has learned that mice pose no danger, but what about elephants living in the wild?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are (wild) elephants &amp;quot;naturally&amp;quot; afraid of mice?&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;What is their initial reaction when encountering a mouse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.andrews-elephants.com/elephants-faq.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elephant FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... research has shown that &lt;strong&gt;they are, in&#xA;fact, wary of mice and will back away&#xA;when confronted with one&lt;/strong&gt;, but not to&#xA;the hysterical degree portrayed in&#xA;many stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The simple fact is that&#xA;elephants will back away from&#xA;something strange&lt;/strong&gt;, and so this may not&#xA;be an actual fear of the mouse itself&#xA;but just of a new experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.steveirwin.com/our-animals/animal-news/index.php?article=796&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Australian Zoo&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elephants don't have the best eye&#xA;sight, only seeing up to about ten&#xA;meters in front of them, and not much&#xA;of a neck, so they certainly have&#xA;difficultly seeing anything running&#xA;underneath them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;[if a] small animal was to&#xA;run underneath one of our elephants,&#xA;they may indeed get a fright!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lEbjj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;MythBusters&quot; /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/mythbusters/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;MythBusters&lt;/strong&gt; also &lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/db/animals/elephants-afraid-mice.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;looked into it&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;found that a wild elephant did back off when it suddenly saw a mouse&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a control test showed that it wasn't just the sudden movement on the ground that provoked the reaction (&lt;em&gt;the mouse didn't actually move much at all&lt;/em&gt; ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can watch a video of their experiment &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpTSA_25wGE&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they only tested one elephant, so it wasn't very conclusive. They tagged the myth &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Plausible&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;My question:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there scientifically more sound experiments/studies on (wild) elephants' reaction to mice?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do (wild) elephants get startled by any small, unknown animal, or is there something special about mice? (&lt;em&gt;After all there are also humans who are afraid of mice, but not of hamsters or guinea pigs.&lt;/em&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T23:31:47.290" Title="Are (wild) elephants afraid of mice?" Tags="|biology|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3506" CreationDate="2011-05-22T13:30:22.927" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofindiana00stol/historyofindiana00stol_djvu.txt&quot;&gt;History of the Indiana Democracy 1816-1916&lt;/a&gt;&quot; written by John B. Stoll in 1917, describes the outcome of an Indiana state senate election in 1841:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. Madison Marsh, noted Democrat of the county, lost on the face of the returns by one vote to his Republican opponent. Captain Beall. On a contest it was decided that one vote for Mr. Marsh, that of Henry Shoemaker, whose ballot had been received after the time limit but before the box was closed, had been improperly thrown out and he was declared elected to the Legislature. Edward A. Hannegan was elected United States Senator by one vote, Dr. Marsh casting the deciding vote. Texas was admitted to the Union, it is declared, by a majority of one, Hannegan being (he [sic] man of destiny to decide the momentous issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/exhibits/annexation/part5/question12.html&quot;&gt;Texas State Library and Archives Commission&lt;/a&gt; confirms that one step of the annexation process passed 27-25 in the US Senate.  Of course history doesn't record whether Mr. Shoemaker himself supported the annexation of Texas.  A Hoosier in the 1840s might have had mixed feelings about adding another southern slave state to the Union.  But his one vote evidently did &quot;make a difference&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2465" LastEditorUserId="2465" LastEditDate="2011-05-22T13:48:20.563" LastActivityDate="2011-05-22T13:48:20.563" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3506" CreationDate="2011-05-22T13:37:54.867" Score="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Danish Parliamentary election in 1998 was decided by 179 Faroese votes out of about 2 million votes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a single vote, but close enough that that year every vote counted.  I believe that percentage-wise it was even closer than the Bush-Gore election in 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/htm/baggrund/tema2001/fv2001/327.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nyrup vandt nervepirrende valg&lt;/a&gt; (&quot;Nyrup won the nerve-wracking election&quot; in Danish)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3021" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-09-28T23:00:52.423" LastActivityDate="2019-09-28T23:00:52.423" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3506" CreationDate="2011-05-22T13:40:58.860" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most electoral systems have provisions in case of ties, though with large amount of voters this is rare in public elections. Tiebreakers usually take place in form of coin toss or some similar game of chance. Ties are (comparatively) common in legislative bodies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110623005402/http://www.aolnews.com/2011/04/21/drawing-cards-to-settle-an-election-tie-in-north-las-vegas/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;King Trumps 5 as Card Flip Settles an Election Tie in North Las Vegas&lt;/a&gt; describes such an election in Nevada where the election result was decided through a tiebreaker (card draw). Similarly &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/uk_politics/2000/local_elections/736660.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an election in the UK&lt;/a&gt; was decided by a coin toss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a personal anecdote, in my hostel elections once the winning candidate won by one or two votes. My roommate had cited personal inconvenience and the above mentioned &amp;quot;one vote does not make a difference&amp;quot; and decided not to vote, but was persuaded by people to vote. He always claimed credit for the winning vote later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-08-01T19:12:07.800" LastActivityDate="2022-08-01T19:12:07.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3508" CreationDate="2011-05-22T14:17:47.930" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PMcww.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Eek!&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I too recall that Mythbusters episode, and that was going to be my answer, but you stole my thunder.  ;)  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremescience.com/zoom/index.php/animal-kingdom-records/18-elephants-afraid-of-mice&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Extreme Science tackles this episode with some analysis&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) Definition of 'fear' response - while the elephant in the experiment clearly responds to the presence of the mouse in front of it, it can be argued that the elephant's response is not one of fear, but of surprise. This elephant only stops in its tracks when it sees the mouse and then sidesteps, avoiding coming any closer to the mouse as it scurries across the elephant's path. It may even be argued that the elephant notices the mouse, recognizes it as another living creature, and is merely moving around to avoid stepping on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That begs the question; was the elephant startled by the sudden appearance of the mouse from under the ball of dung, or was it startled by the fact that there was a mouse in its path?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Holding conditions constant - not enough controls were implemented to determine if the presence/existence of the mouse caused the elephant to respond the way it did. What if the mouse had been a different color, other than white? Or a rat, a gerbil, rabbit, a snake, turtle, remote-controlled toy car, etc? What if the mouse/rat/gerbil was introduced to the elephant from different angles, so the elephant could see it approaching through its peripheral vision, at ground level, or up in a tree? I'd be curious to see if that same elephant would have responded the same way to a wind-up ladybug toy suddenly appearing from under a ball of dung in its path.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pre-existing conditions - had this elephant been exposed to mice before? Was this a wild elephant in its natural habitat, or a domesticated elephant released into the field for purposes of this test? Are domesticated elephants living in captivity used to the presence of mice in their feed and, therefore, unafraid of them, while wild elephants are unaccustomed to seeing mice? What was the previous lifetime experience/exposure of this particular elephant to mice specifically, and to small(er) animals, in general? Was this animal put in a trailer and driven to this location to be filmed for this experiment? If so, has it traveled this way before? Was it amongst strange elephants, or was there something about the presence of the film crew that made it anxious before the experiment began?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sample size - most importantly, guys, an experiment with a sample size of one does not a 'scientific' study make! In order to draw the conclusion, 'Elephants are afraid of mice', it would be necessary to experiment with a representative sample size of elephants, so that a normal distribution of an elephant population is represented in your study.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Conclusion&lt;/em&gt;: More study is needed (more subjects and better controls).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1954484&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ABC News also did a small sample size experiment&lt;/a&gt;, and came to a different conclusion (although this was with circus elephants):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And what would one of these elephants do if we showed it a mouse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not much. Troy Metzler, the circus' elephant trainer, let me take one white mouse and show it to an elephant that only looked bored by it all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/elephant.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes dismisses the legend as false outright&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing a Google search on only .edu sites, I didn't see any results that were beyond anecdotal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BOTTOM LINE:&lt;/strong&gt;  It would seem that people have been interested in this subject, however no one has dared the IG Nobel prize to perform a rigorous study yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-05-23T23:31:47.290" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T23:31:47.290" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3515" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3518" CreationDate="2011-05-22T15:15:52.383" Score="39" ViewCount="16619" Body="&lt;p&gt;Or, at least, has a questionable business model?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kiva.org&quot;&gt;Kiva&lt;/a&gt; is a website/organization that allows private persons to give micro-loans out to (very) small businesses in developing countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their idea seems rather nice to me, however there is quite a sprawling discussion on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?t=76720&quot;&gt;this forum at scam.com&lt;/a&gt; where people argue back and forth that Kiva is a scam because while you loan your money out interest free, the microlenders charge relatively high interest rates. The discussion becomes quite vitriolic and certainly doesn't meet the standards of skeptical rigor, so I thought I ask here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is Kiva a scam or operates in a deceiving way?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T15:47:16.977" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T15:46:17.207" Title="Is Kiva a scam?" Tags="|finance|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3516" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-22T15:21:30.077" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;DO NOT USE!&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions should be asked in a neutral manner. Do not tag something as SCAM if you suspect that it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-04T00:35:20.157" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T00:35:20.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3517" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-22T15:21:30.077" Score="0" Body="DO NOT USE!&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Questions should be asked in a neutral manner. Do not tag something as SCAM if you suspect that it is." OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-04T00:35:20.157" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T00:35:20.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3515" CreationDate="2011-05-22T15:40:31.983" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not a scam unless they are blatantly lying about something. Kiva itself doesn't charge interest rate instead their &quot;field partners&quot; do, which seem to be independent organizations that Kiva is partnering with. Here's information directly from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kiva.org/about/how&quot;&gt;their website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Field Partner collects repayments from Kiva entrepreneurs as well as any interest due and lets Kiva know if a repayment was not made as scheduled. Interest rates are set by the Field Partner, and that interest is used to cover the Field Partner's operating costs. Kiva doesn't charge interest to its Field Partners and does not provide interest to lenders. Kiva also gives Field Partners the option to cover currency losses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://na3.salesforce.com/_ui/selfservice/pkb/PublicKnowledgeSolution/d?orgId=00D500000006svl&amp;amp;id=50150000000IIav&quot;&gt;They promise&lt;/a&gt; not to have field partners that charge an absurdly high interest rate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our Field Partners are free to charge interest, but Kiva will not partner with an organization that charges exorbitant interest rates. We also require Field Partners to fully disclose their interest rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what would constitute as an exorbitant interest rate in this case, but I'm going to assume they are keeping that promise as they also have open books by providing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kiva.org/partners&quot;&gt;list of all their partners&lt;/a&gt; with the interest rates charged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you click the various partners you will get to see statistics for how much has been invested through that partner, how good they are at collecting money and so on. Kiva also outlines exactly how high the interest rate is with the partner you are viewing, how it compares to other partners in the same country and how it compares to the average across all Kiva partners. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kiva.org/partners/4&quot;&gt;Here's one example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                      This field partner     Median for MFI         All&#xA;                                             Peers in Country         &#xA;Kiva Partners&#xA;Average Interest       12.50%                16.17%                37.03%&#xA;Rate and Fees&#xA;Borrowers Pay&#xA;(Portfolio Yield)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anything (although I'm not exactly familiar with aid organizations or micro-finance) Kiva seem to be doing a really good job at being transparent by providing all of this information so readily accessible on their website. It is as far as I'm concerned the donors fault if they give money to an organization that uses it in ways they do not approve of, when the donor hasn't done at least basic research first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless there's strong evidence to suggest Kiva is actively misleading people, and/or exploiting poor people for the purpose of economic gain, I don't see how they could be called a scam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-05-22T15:54:28.133" LastActivityDate="2011-05-22T15:54:28.133" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3506" CreationDate="2011-05-22T16:12:00.463" Score="138" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Answer: Yes!&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Although they weren't major. Örebro (Sweden) has around 100,000 inhabitants.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In local municipality elections in Sweden, there have been cases of one vote making a difference in determining which party gets a seat. In the election of 2010, this single vote difference in determining the last seat of Örebro municipality actually meant that the socialist block got the majority there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, every vote counts. And every vote makes a difference, so it wasn't one vote that made a difference it was all the votes that made a difference. Every single one of the votes for the socialist block gave the victory to that block, because without just one of them, it would have been a lottery. (Literally, they would have had a tombola draw.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/en-rost-avgjorde-valet-i-orebro_5409769.svd&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;En röst avgjorde valet i Örebro&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;SvD&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?layout=2&amp;amp;eotf=1&amp;amp;sl=auto&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/en-rost-avgjorde-valet-i-orebro_5409769.svd&amp;amp;act=url&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;English translation&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are other cases of this in Sweden. In a referendum in 1971 there was only one vote's difference. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vt.se/historia/historia/artikel.aspx?articleid=5780437&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;En enda röst avgjorde när Gamleby bestämde sig&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;vt.se&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http://www.vt.se/historia/historia/artikel.aspx?articleid=5780437&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;English translation&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="22266" LastEditDate="2019-09-28T22:26:14.030" LastActivityDate="2019-09-28T22:26:14.030" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3520" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-22T16:30:54.147" Score="27" ViewCount="5640" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can one obtain a sufficient amount of energy for a household's needs by indirect means (induction or otherwise) from nearby high-voltage power lines? Are there any documented cases of such attempts (successful or not) and are there any negative effects should this be possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not asking to validate a specific claim of someone that says they've done it, I&quot;m asking because there are many places online where people are interested in this (&lt;a href=&quot;http://hacknmod.com/hack/field-of-fluorescent-tubes-powered-by-ambient-current/&quot;&gt;http://hacknmod.com/hack/field-of-fluorescent-tubes-powered-by-ambient-current/&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.drumulinvingatorilor.ro/index.php?topic=1154.15&quot;&gt;http://forum.drumulinvingatorilor.ro/index.php?topic=1154.15&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elforum.ro/viewtopic.php?f=13&amp;amp;t=12814&quot;&gt;http://www.elforum.ro/viewtopic.php?f=13&amp;amp;t=12814&lt;/a&gt; (content in Romanian)) and I'd like to know if there is any truth to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for people asking for actual claims of success in this field:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ndep.us/Power-Harvesting-Induction-Magic&quot;&gt;http://www.ndep.us/Power-Harvesting-Induction-Magic&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2836" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-11-12T12:55:06.133" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T02:36:59.797" Title="Is it possible to obtain current indirectly from power lines?" Tags="|physics|electromagnetism|power-generation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3507" CreationDate="2011-05-22T17:09:24.317" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://nielsen.com/us/en/measurement/television-measurement.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nielsen&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electronic metering technology is at the heart of the Nielsen ratings process. Our tools capture not only what channel is being watched, but also who is watching and when, including “time-shifted” viewing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nielsen’s TV families represent a cross-section of representative homes throughout the U.S. Their viewing is measured by our TV meters and Local People Meters which capture information on what’s being viewed and when and, in the major U.S. markets, specifically who and how many are watching. Additionally, we collect more than two million paper diaries from across the country each year during “sweeps.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The method that the asker calls into question is Nielsen's traditional diary based ratings calculations. (Although note that even the automated data collection is only permitted in households that have been invited by Nielsen). Put simply, the diary ratings work like this: A call center places calls to households in target market areas and ask for permission to send a &amp;quot;ratings diary&amp;quot;. If the household agrees, they will be sent one diary for each working television in the household (up to five), and each diary will contain a cash (the amount varies) as an incentive to complete the diary. The notion that &amp;quot;only certain types of people&amp;quot; would take time to complete the diaries is strictly opinion, but it isn't a far stretch to think that perhaps more retired or unemployed people would find this arrangement ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The diaries usually contain fourteen pages (although if the household has digital video recording hardware two additional pages are included, allowing for the previously mentioned 'time-shifted' viewing to be recorded). Each page can hold twelve hours worth of viewing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this picture of an actual diary page by searching Google images:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k170/Bittybell/Scans/NielsenDiary-2.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://i88.photobucket.com/albums/k170/Bittybell/Scans/NielsenDiary-2.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the household is expected to provide the following information for every fifteen minutes during the survey period (of seven days):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I. Whether or not the tv is on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;II. The call letters of the station, or the name&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;III. The channel number&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IV. The name of the program&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;V. Who is viewing the program&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The household can indicate an above response by drawing a vertical line under the information that they wish to &amp;quot;carry down&amp;quot; to lower grids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While theoretically perfect in it's design, the diaries are rarely filled out with 100% accuracy. So how are the books interpreted? An office in Venice, FL collects all of the diaries via US mail, and specially trained temporary employees enter the data into computer terminals. If data on the diaries conflicts (basic example: what if the channel number does not match the supplied call letters?) a stringent set of guidelines is used to come up with the appropriate data, and sometimes the data cannot be used. The information entered into the terminals is double checked by separate employees who's only job is to verify. The Nielsen company claims that this results in over 99% accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One personal criticism of the system as it exists now is this: sometimes households misinterpret how to fill out the diaries. As simple as they seem, some people struggle with them. If the employee receives a filled-out diary with information that seems &amp;quot;sketchy&amp;quot; at best (for example: a user mistakes the &amp;quot;tv on&amp;quot; column for the &amp;quot;tv off&amp;quot; column and indicates that the tv is always on), the procedure is to enter the data regardless (in some occasions). The method is scientific (they can't prove the user was confused, what if they really DID mean to do this?), but I'm unconvinced they've really taken into account the margin of human error on the household's end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is that nobody can provide a definite answer in regards to whether or not the ratings are 100% accurate, the numbers are just too high. In my opinion they're as accurate as they're going to get until Nielsen adopts a strictly electronic form of television viewership monitoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-22T17:09:24.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3525" CreationDate="2011-05-22T18:27:47.367" Score="15" ViewCount="4359" Body="&lt;p&gt;While answering the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3508/are-wild-elephants-afraid-of-mice&quot;&gt;question about elephants and mice&lt;/a&gt;, I was reminded of a clip I saw on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tvfanatic.com/quotes/shows/the-big-bang-theory/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Big Bang Theory&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zT4Yc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sheldon and Elephants&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The common lore is that they eat the fermenting fruit of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sclerocarya_birrea&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marula Tree&lt;/a&gt;.  But that makes me wonder:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there enough alcohol to affect an elephant?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this really true, or do they just like the Marula fruit?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.craigboyce.com/w/2011/05/african-happy-hour/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example claim&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T02:41:31.597" Title="Do elephants like to get drunk?" Tags="|alcohol|ethology|elephants|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3523" CreationDate="2011-05-22T19:51:49.967" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this article:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1219_051219_drunk_elephant.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1219_051219_drunk_elephant.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;They doubt it for several reasons&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the first flaw in the drunken-elephant theory is that it's unlikely that an elephant would eat the fruit if it were rotten, Morris says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elephants eat the fruit right off the tree, not when they're rotten on the ground, he explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;This a largely self-evident fact,&amp;quot; he said, &amp;quot;since elephants will even push over trees to get the fruit off the tree, even when rotten fruit is on the ground.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And considering how heavy an elephant is, it would take a lot of alcohol to get them drunk.  As the same article says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This raises another question: Even if, under very peculiar circumstances, an elephant were exposed to alcohol, how much would it take to get it drunk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Through calculations of body weight, elephant digestion rates, and other factors, the study authors conclude that it would take about a half gallon (1.9 liters) of ethanol to make an elephant tipsy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16555195&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article also debunks the myth&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Africa can stir wild and fanciful notions in the casual visitor; one of these is the tale of inebriated wild elephants. The suggestion that the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) becomes intoxicated from eating the fruit of the marula tree (Sclerocarya birrea) is an attractive, established, and persistent tale. This idea now permeates the African tourist industry, historical travelogues, the popular press, and even scholastic works. Accounts of ethanol inebriation in animals under natural conditions appear mired in folklore. Elephants are attracted to alcohol, but there is no clear evidence of inebriation in the field. Extrapolating from human physiology, a 3,000-kg elephant would require the ingestion of between 10 and 27 L of 7% ethanol in a short period to overtly affect behavior, which is unlikely in the wild. Interpolating from ecological circumstances and assuming rather unrealistically that marula fruit contain 3% ethanol, an elephant feeding normally might attain an ethanol dose of 0.3 g kg(-1), about half that required. Physiological issues to resolve include alcohol dehydrogenase activity and ethanol clearance rates in elephants, as well as values for marula fruit alcohol content. These models were highly biased in favor of inebriation but even so failed to show that elephants can ordinarily become drunk. Such tales, it seems, may result from &amp;quot;humanizing&amp;quot; elephant behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="496" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T02:41:31.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3451" CreationDate="2011-05-22T20:15:05.273" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In movies, knocking someone unconscious can look like this:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WokPN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be a PG-13 way to take care of a bad guy, who wakes up sometime later with only a headache.&#xA;(However, more realistic depictions can be found, usually in war movies.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In real life, it looks more like this:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uLH9P.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What isn't shown is that in reality a person knocked unconscious is usually knocked out only for a few seconds, minutes at most.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a person is knocked out for longer than that, this may indicate severe brain damage, which could lead to loss of function, life-long debilitation, coma, and death.  Essentially, a blow hard enough to knock a person unconscious is classified as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).&lt;/a&gt;  Since most guards,henchmen,etc.in movies are knocked out for extended periods of time, it quite possible that they may suffer severe brain damage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the force (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=5538765E-E7F2-99DF-393E0A0CD7821157&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American has one pro boxer's punch at 400kg&lt;/a&gt;)required to knock someone out might also break the skull or kill the person. Even wikipedia's article on boxing states that there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;no clear line drawn between the force needed to knock someone out and the force needed to kill that person&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, knocking someone unconscious by hitting them in the head is clearly not as practical or consequence-free as tv and movies might lead one to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common causes of being knocked unconscious are related to either falls or vehicle crashes.  However, direct trauma to the head is another cause, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/causes.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC lists assault as accounting for 10% of reported cases&lt;/a&gt;.  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fact: Chuck Norris is responsible for 9.7%&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is TBI?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Traumatic brain injury is the most&#xA;  common cause of death and disability&#xA;  in young people. There is much hope&#xA;  for improvement in early care and&#xA;  functional outcome by use of&#xA;  scientific evidence-based guidelines.&#xA;  Traumatic brain injury is graded as&#xA;  mild, moderate, or severe on the basis&#xA;  of the level of consciousness or&#xA;  Glasgow coma scale (GCS) score after&#xA;  resuscitation (panel). Mild traumatic&#xA;  brain injury (GCS 13–15) is in most&#xA;  cases a concussion and there is full&#xA;  neurological recovery, although many&#xA;  of these patients have short-term&#xA;  memory and concentration&#xA;  difficulties.1 In moderate traumatic&#xA;  brain injury (GCS 9–13) the patient is&#xA;  lethargic or stuporous, and in severe&#xA;  injury (GCS 3–8) the patient is&#xA;  comatose, unable to open his or her&#xA;  eyes or follow commands. Patients with&#xA;  severe traumatic brain injury&#xA;  (comatose) have a significant risk of&#xA;  hypotension, hypoxaemia, and brain&#xA;  swelling. If these sequelae are not&#xA;  prevented or treated properly, they&#xA;  can exacerbate brain damage and&#xA;  increase the risk of death. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sbn.com.br/download/artigos/Ghajar_TBI_2000.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, TBI consists of more than just the initial impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 1: Impact&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing to keep in mind is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although TBI is a problem of major&#xA;  medical and socioeconomic&#xA;  significance, its pathogenesis is&#xA;  incompletely understood, and it is&#xA;  often difficult to reconstruct the&#xA;  events leading to the primary and&#xA;  secondary lesions of varying severity&#xA;  and regional distribution that&#xA;  constitute TBI &lt;a href=&quot;http://vet.sagepub.com/content/39/6/679.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that while there are some general aspects and theories we can apply broadly to patients with TBI, it is by no means a cut-and-dry phenomenon, and individual cases show great variation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6SQzl.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time of the initial impact, the brain is injured in two places, the place of the impact and the side opposite the place of impact. This happens because the brain is surrounded by fluid and can be moved if if enough force is applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In movies, it is this intial impact which renders the victim unconscious, however in reality, this is not always the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Step 2: Secondary Injuries:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, the person may not be rendered unconscious by the primary injury.  However, they may become unconscious later due to the secondary injuries. Secondary injuries are typically caused by bleeding or swelling within the skull which compresses the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The principal mechanisms of TBI are&#xA;  classified as (a) focal brain damage&#xA;  due to contact injury types resulting&#xA;  in contusion, laceration, and&#xA;  intracranial haemorrhage or (b)&#xA;  diffuse brain damage due to&#xA;  acceleration/deceleration injury types&#xA;  resulting in diffuse axonal injury or&#xA;  brain swelling.2404649 Outcome from&#xA;  head injury is determined by two&#xA;  substantially different&#xA;  mechanisms/stages: (a) the primary&#xA;  insult (primary damage, mechanical&#xA;  damage) occurring at the moment of&#xA;  impact. In treatment terms, this type&#xA;  of injury is exclusively sensitive to&#xA;  preventive but not therapeutic&#xA;  measures. (b) The secondary insult&#xA;  (secondary damage, delayed&#xA;  non-mechanical damage) represents&#xA;  consecutive pathological processes&#xA;  initiated at the moment of injury with&#xA;  delayed clinical presentation.&#xA;  Cerebral ischaemia and intracranial&#xA;  hypertension refer to secondary&#xA;  insults and, in treatment terms, these&#xA;  types of injury are sensitive to&#xA;  therapeutic interventions. &lt;a href=&quot;http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/99/1/4.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some common occurrences in head injuries:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Concussions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word &quot;concussion&quot; has many different meanings to patients, families, and physicians. One definition:&lt;em&gt;a condition in which there is a traumatically induced alteration in mental status, with or without an associated loss of consciousness (LOC).&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A broader definition for concussion: &lt;em&gt;A traumatically induced physiologic disruption in brain function that is manifest by LOC, memory loss, alteration of mental state or personality, or focal neurologic deficits&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are many individual variations, concussions usually result in relatively temporary impairment of neurologic function&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, things are not so clear cut when dealing with concussions, and post-concussion syndromes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Post concussive syndrome (PCS), a&#xA;  sequela of minor head injury (MHI),&#xA;  has been a much-debated topic. Muddled&#xA;  by conflicting findings regarding&#xA;  symptom duration, an absence of&#xA;  objective neurologic findings,&#xA;  inconsistencies in presentation,&#xA;  poorly understood etiology, and&#xA;  significant methodologic problems in&#xA;  the literature, postconcussive&#xA;  syndrome (PCS) remains controversial.&#xA;  Depending on the definition and the&#xA;  population examined, 29-90% of&#xA;  patients experience postconcussive&#xA;  symptoms shortly after the traumatic&#xA;  insult.&lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/828904-overview&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;(medscape link)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(One symptom of concussions is nausea/vomiting which you don't see in movies too often.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intracranial Hematomas&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A hematoma is a swelling of blood&#xA;  confined to an organ or tissue, caused&#xA;  by hemorrhaging from a break in one or&#xA;  more blood vessels. As a cerebral&#xA;  hematoma grows, it damages or kills&#xA;  the surrounding brain tissue by&#xA;  compressing it and restricting its&#xA;  blood supply, producing the symptoms&#xA;  of stroke. The hematoma eventually&#xA;  stops growing as the blood clots, the&#xA;  pressure cuts off its blood supply, or&#xA;  both. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthline.com/galecontent/cerebral-hematoma&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are classified from small to massive depending on diameter and volume. Effects vary according to size and location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sxO0D.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;white arrows are pointing to the hematoma&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;White arrows are pointing to the hematoma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intracranial Hemmorhages&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oIKPi.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Black arrows point to subdural bleeding&#xA;White arrow points to the midline shift of the brain.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The build-up of blood in the skull is putting extensive pressure on the brain.  Enough bleeding will essentially &quot;crush&quot; the brain, causing the brainstem to herniate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Diffuse Axonal Injury&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Basically this is extensive damage to the white matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YFutw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Diffuse axonal injury is one of the&#xA;  most important types of brain damage&#xA;  that can occur as a result of&#xA;  non-missile head injury. Increasing&#xA;  experience with fatal non-missile head&#xA;  injury in man has allowed the&#xA;  identification of three grades of&#xA;  diffuse axonal injury. In grade 1&#xA;  there is histological evidence of&#xA;  axonal injury in the white matter of&#xA;  the cerebral hemispheres, the corpus&#xA;  callosum, the brain stem and, less&#xA;  commonly, the cerebellum; in grade 2&#xA;  there is also a focal lesion in the&#xA;  corpus callosum; and in grade 3 there&#xA;  is in addition a focal lesion in the&#xA;  dorsolateral quadrant or quadrants of&#xA;  the rostral brain stem. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2559.1989.tb03040.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Diffuse axonal injuries can occur at the time of the initial impact, or develop during the minutes or hours after the injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Length of time unconscious correllates to severity of the brain injury&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EE0zq.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post-traumatic amnesia(PTA) is defined as the time from the initial injury until the patient can demonstrate conscious memory of what is going on around him/her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The duration of PTA was the best&#xA;  predictor of outcome selected in this&#xA;  model for all endpoints and elements&#xA;  of the physical examination provided&#xA;  additional predictive value. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/medline/abstract/16238482&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; (medscape link)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Age is also a factor in predicting outcome...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Duration of PTA appears to be a useful&#xA;  variable in predicting specific&#xA;  functional outcome in the TBI&#xA;  population receiving inpatient&#xA;  rehabilitation services. The use of&#xA;  age as a factor in addition to&#xA;  duration of PTA enhances the&#xA;  prediction of functional outcome.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/medline/abstract/9339160&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;(medscape link)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Concluding&lt;/strong&gt; (finally)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most movies simply cherry-pick the most convenient aspects of head injury to advance their plot.  Either the person will only be unconscious for a very short time and wake up relatively fine, or the person will be unconscious for an extended time, but likely suffer severe consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-23T20:14:34.600" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T20:14:34.600" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3527" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-22T20:35:28.727" Score="9" ViewCount="4177" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a common wives' tale that putting peanut butter (or sometimes just butter) on a cat's paws will help a cat not get lost in a new environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advocates of this give many varying reasons why it's true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf66441364.tip.html&quot;&gt;Some say:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;when they lick off the butter, they remove traces of the old territory (their comfort zone or 'home') which makes them less likely to try to stray to refind their comfort zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070622101908AAUTopq&quot;&gt;Others say:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the butter and the bits of debris that will eneviatibly stick to it will annoy the cat. Thus, making the cat sit down for a minute and take in it's surroundings creating a mental map of where it's home it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also been told that it helps them take in the new scents before they go to far without having a good familiarly with the scents that indicate there new home. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cat-world.com.au/cat-myths&quot;&gt;Some people reject it altogether:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Putting butter on your cat's paws won't stop it from getting lost when it moves to a new home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there any real evidence that supports any of these claims? In lieu of a controlled study, is there more precise scientific reasoning that would support one claim over the others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1750" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-05-23T01:51:16.883" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T06:22:49.343" Title="Will putting peanut butter or butter on a cat's paws help them to not get lost?" Tags="|biology|zoology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4111" CreationDate="2011-05-22T20:55:37.890" Score="71" ViewCount="20633" Body="&lt;p&gt;Moses is, arguably, the most significant prophet in Judaism and is credited with leading the enslaved Jewish population out of Egypt and into the promised land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the Torah, are there any verifiable records or concrete evidence that there was an actual Moses? Is he mentioned at all by the Egyptians during the exodus, or cited by other cultures or religions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T11:18:05.463" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T11:18:05.463" Title="Did Moses live?" Tags="|history|religion|religious-texts|torah|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3531" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5014" CreationDate="2011-05-22T22:08:33.510" Score="24" ViewCount="1705" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oNoyz.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comedian Stephen Wright once joked that 42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, &lt;a href=&quot;http://kyl.senate.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arizona Senator and notably stubborn Jon Kyl&lt;/a&gt; provided us with the most famous example of just such behavior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He can be seen here, stating that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAryQP_Iz9A&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;well over 90% of what planned parenthood does is abortions&lt;/a&gt;, despite the fact that the real amount is 3%. Later, he attempted to claim that his words were &quot;not intended to be a factual statement&quot; once it became clear he had just made up the 90% figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BF1qw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a perfect world, all claims would be appropriately and accurately referenced, but we all know this just simply isn't the case, especially when it comes to politicians, the media, and those pushing an agenda dishonestly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has there ever been any scientific examination into how often quoted statistics are just made up?&#xA;Do we honestly have any way to figure this out?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume any study of this would have to be limited to verifiable instances, such as recorded speeches or publications, as there would be no way to evaluate the amount of times it's done in personal conversations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:50:25.883" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:50:25.883" Title="Can we determine the percentage of statistics made up out of thin air?" Tags="|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3532" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3536" CreationDate="2011-05-22T22:30:51.237" Score="10" ViewCount="596" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the risk of airborne transmission of disease increases based on proximity, but are airplane cabins &lt;em&gt;particularly&lt;/em&gt; more unhealthy than, say, train cabins? Is there something (e.g., air recirculation) that justifies greater than normal caution? Anyone who's been to an airport convenience store knows that there are several products that play up this belief, but I'm not asking about the merits of such products, only the underlying premise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T13:27:19.130" Title="Are plane cabins particularly unhealthy environments?" Tags="|medical-science|aviation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2442" CreationDate="2011-05-22T22:50:14.783" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may also be worth pointing out that your familiar &quot;astrological sign&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/4667-astrological-sign.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ignores precession&lt;/a&gt; so to the extent the question relates to the &quot;popular&quot; astrology of newspapers and so forth, even if there were a mechanism, the predictions would be significantly off-base. I believe that even &quot;serious&quot; astrologers rely on the traditional &quot;houses&quot; and would be subject to the same bad data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T13:27:50.510" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T13:27:50.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3534" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3537" CreationDate="2011-05-22T23:08:34.477" Score="41" ViewCount="48515" Body="&lt;p&gt;Relating to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3451/how-much-of-the-loss-of-consciousness-from-head-trauma-portrayed-in-the-media-is&quot;&gt;Are one-hit knockouts possible?&lt;/a&gt; : It was a common trope in the 60s for heroes to knock out evildoers with a open-handed chop to the base of the neck (preferably accompanied with a high-pitched cry of 'Kee-YAH!'). I believe the claim is that a brisk thump 'stuns' the vagus nerve and down goes the bad guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, boxing and MMA show that there are certain spots (the temple, the jaw) that are more likely than others to cause sudden loss of consciousness. But although chokeouts are common in MMA fights, I don't think I've ever seen a knockout based on a &lt;em&gt;blow&lt;/em&gt; to the base of the neck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this form of knockout?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I'm not even going to ask, but if there's some justification for the Vulcan nerve pinch, I'd consider that on-topic...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T14:24:32.307" Title="Can a blow to the base of the neck cause unconsciousness? (i.e., &quot;Karate...CHOP!&quot;)" Tags="|physiology|martial-arts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3532" CreationDate="2011-05-23T00:03:41.713" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.u-bordeaux2-medtrop.org/doc2/Revue_litterature_DrLeLoup/2009%2003/20090315%20Medical%20issues%20commercial%20flights.pdf&quot;&gt;This review&lt;/a&gt; &quot;Medical issues associated with commercial flights&quot; from &lt;em&gt;The Lancet&lt;/em&gt; in 2009 covers most of the points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most substantial issue seems to be cabin pressure, causing fatigue, headache, lightheadedness, and nausea, and other more serious problems for those with certain medical conditions.  The review then goes through other issues such as venous thromboembolism risk, cosmic radiation, jet lag, and infectious diseases.  My impression is that these may be in the authors' view of the order of significance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On air recirculation, there was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/288/4/483.short&quot;&gt;2002 study&lt;/a&gt; not suggesting there is extra risk, though there have been many cases of infection traced to aircraft; there clearly is the general issue that in an aircraft you are more likely to be sitting next to somebody with an exotic foreign disease than if you are in your own car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T00:03:41.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3534" CreationDate="2011-05-23T02:28:06.217" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zXeT2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of all the ways to knock someone out, a karate chop to the neck is one of the least effective and least reliable ways to do it.  Actually, significant impact to the neck and cervical spine is probably more likely to result in serious neurological consequences such as paralysis rather than a simple knockout as shown on tv.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How could a karate chop knock someone out?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are actually some plausible, if improbable mechanisms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vagus Nerve&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8WLlq.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that a well-placed strike to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagus_nerve&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;vagus nerve&lt;/a&gt; in the neck under the appropriate conditions could render someone temporarily unconscious, however this would not be likely to last more than few seconds. This would be the most likely explanation (if it isn't staged) for the video &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67isFmH5vQ8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uPupp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sodium/Potassium Exchange&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The body contains dissolved sodium, potassium and calcium, collectively known as electrolytes, which are responsible many functions, including conducting nerve impulses. These electrolytes need to remain in a very delicate balance in the body, otherwise significant problems can occur. Every time someone receives a blow to a nerve such as the vagus nerve pictured above, potassium leaves the cell and calcium rushes in, destabilizing the electrolyte balance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The body does all it can to keep these levels balanced. With each successive strike, this balance becomes harder for the body to maintain. When the body reaches the point where the damage outweighs the body's ability to repair itself, the brain shuts down to fix the injured neurons, and the person becomes unconscious. An abstract outlining the way electrolytes behave in nerve conduction can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accessmedicine.com/content.aspx?aid=3641088&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this process usually requires repeated strikes, such as in a boxing match, and a single karate chop to the neck is probably not likely to have this effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The &quot;Whiplash&quot; Effect&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the term &quot;whiplash&quot; is not a medical term, but I think most people can understand what it means in this context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/09zVy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible, if struck hard enough in the neck, to cause &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.traumaticbraininjuryatoz.org/Mild-TBI/Coup-Contrecoup.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;coup-countrecoup injury&lt;/a&gt; to the brain by essentially rattling it around inside the skull and causing a concussion or other injury. Of course, in this situation, you have all the same problems you would have with &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3451/how-much-of-the-loss-of-consciousness-from-head-trauma-portrayed-in-the-media-is/3526#3526&quot;&gt;a direct blow to the head as discussed in the other question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s important to know that&#xA;  coup-contrecoup injuries can happen as&#xA;  the result of trauma without direct&#xA;  impact to the head, since it is the&#xA;  movement of the brain inside of the&#xA;  skull that causes the injury.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.traumaticbraininjuryatoz.org/Mild-TBI/Coup-Contrecoup.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this is highly improbable from a single karate chop. If anything, that karate chop of significant force would more likely result in damage to the neck, soft tissue, and cervical spine.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Vulcan Nerve Pinch&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, it only works if you're a Vulcan, or LoneStar...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XKJvo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T04:32:23.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3130" CreationDate="2011-05-23T04:56:35.210" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title question isn't really answerable. But there are certainly other sources which bear on that estimate. I'm going to gloss over the different estimates here for a moment. The article claimed the W&amp;amp;L estimate was $55M, one of the authors (I'll quote below) claimed $59M, and I've heard $43M and $53M in reference to this article... let's just say &amp;quot;approximately $50M&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To start with the obvious one, the study was primarily a counter to DiMassi's study that concluded the &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.128.4362&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cost was around $800M per drug&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some important considerations to make on this study. Roughly half of this $800M was &amp;quot;cost of capital&amp;quot; associated with keeping the pipeline open for an average of 96months/8years (the average length of time it takes to get a drug through clinical trials). For those of us who don't work with millions of dollars spent over decades, I don't think it's unfair to characterize the cost in the DiMassi study as $400million. Another criticism of the DiMassi study is that the source data was somewhat opaque. A third criticism (made in the L&amp;amp;W paper) is that the companies take excessive tax credits on R&amp;amp;D, and that drives their real costs down from what DiMassi claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I feel the $800M figure may be overstating things a bit, this newer study also has some severe problems. The most obvious issue is the cost of a phase III trial. Phase III trials usually have between 1,000 and 3,000 subjects, with an average cost of $26,000 per patient(“Clinical Operations: Accelerating Trials, Allocating Resources and Measuring Performance”, 2006). If you assumed no Phase III trial ever failed, that would still almost eat up the entire W&amp;amp;L cost estimate, just for a a phase III trial of 2,000 patients. Given that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v10/n2/full/nrd3375.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;failure rate is approximately 50%&lt;/a&gt;, I don't see how the ~$50M figure is defensible. You still have to accommodate the costs of pre-clinical development, Phase I and II trials and manufacturing development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some additional problems with the estimates come out when the original authors were questioned on it. Rebecca Warburton said in the comments section of that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/id/2287227/pagenum/2#add-comment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slate article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our estimate of $59 million is the&#xA;median development (the “D” in R&amp;amp;D)&#xA;cost per average drug, not just NMEs&#xA;(new chemicals) and does not include&#xA;basic research costs, for which there&#xA;is no reasonable estimate available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in spite of the fact that they referred to &amp;quot;R&amp;amp;D&amp;quot; throughout the paper, and actually did factor in 'basic research' costs to their estimate, while claiming that companies hardly do any. (I'll deal with that at the end).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rebecca also claims that they did take failed drugs into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The discussions with the authors attached to that article are worth reading. Donald Light seems to be saying that he took DiMassi's estimate, and then subtracted everything he thought was unreasonable... rather than approaching the task at hand and estimating costs/discounts/etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a direct confrontation between DiMassi and Donald Light, you can visit the abstract comment section of &lt;a href=&quot;http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/25/2/461.abstract/reply&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the L&amp;amp;W paper&lt;/a&gt;. One important point to make (from that comment section) is that the R&amp;amp;D costs of a particular drug have no particular bearing on its price. Drug development is a sunk cost, after it is developed, the people who are buying it are paying for the development of the next generation of drugs. This is not a complex idea, and one that both DiMassi and Light understand (although there appears to have been a bit of a vocabulary misunderstanding early on)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim was made both in the L&amp;amp;W paper and in the comments section of this question that &amp;quot;most drug discovery is not done by companies&amp;quot;. There actually is some data out there in the form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v9/n11/abs/nrd3251.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;. The sources of NMEs that eventually become drugs are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;58% from pharmaceutical companies. (big pharma)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;18% from biotech companies.. (startups, VC-funded ventures)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;16% from universities, transferred to biotech.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;8% from universities, transferred to pharma.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper is quite worth reading for other breakdowns (universities are responsible for starting roughly 1/3rd of the 'innovative' drugs that make it to market, which is a significant increase).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TLDR: The $55M estimate is almost certainly too low. But the previous estimate of $800M is almost certainly too high. Nobody has the data we would like to have on this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that my lack of rep here forbids me from using too many links, a somewhat ridiculous problem on a site that could basically be named &amp;quot;citationneeded.com&amp;quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2845" LastEditorUserId="22266" LastEditDate="2024-03-04T12:35:34.023" LastActivityDate="2024-03-04T12:35:34.023" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3539" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3549" CreationDate="2011-05-23T05:36:03.927" Score="9" ViewCount="1641" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both issues are hard to measure statistically because very few will pay attention to it, and if it ever happens, the persons involved will quickly correct it and try to hide it from others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is technology to measure reliability (reproducibility and distortion) of barcode reading, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4263232&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies comparing the relative frequency of barcode misreads and cashiers giving out the wrong change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2547" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T01:46:57.387" Title="Is a barcode misread less frequent than cashier giving out the wrong change?" Tags="|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3542" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-23T08:14:22.953" Score="6" ViewCount="25557" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone told me that the average number of legs in the human population is less than 2, because there are more amputees than those with multiple limbs. I found it odd at the time (a statistics teacher told me it), but now it got me thinking. Has anyone &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; measured this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T00:54:02.020" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T17:05:18.227" Title="What is the average number of legs per human?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3542" CreationDate="2011-05-23T08:57:14.633" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amputee-coalition.org/fact_sheets/amp_stats_cause.html&quot;&gt;This fact-sheet&lt;/a&gt; from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amputee-coalition.org/&quot;&gt;Amputee Coalition of America&lt;/a&gt; should have the figures you need to approximate the average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;In the United States, there are approximately 1.7 million people living with limb loss. It is estimated that one out of every 200 people in the U.S. has had an amputation.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of those without limbs are missing arms, not legs. To figure out the number of missing legs, you will need to do a bit of data-crunching - they have figures of upper versus lower-body limbs, but they are generally not given per capita, but per hospital discharge, by cause, so you will need to multiply these out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, if a person has multiple amputations of the same limb (at different points) that will confuse the averages, but that should be close enough for your needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(When you have finished using their figures, perhaps you should consider donating to the organisation that produced them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T08:57:14.633" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3544" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-23T12:33:24.383" Score="11" ViewCount="608" Body="&lt;p&gt;The burden of proof is on the people who believe they have sighted the Loch Ness Monster to prove it exists with verifiable evidence, however it would be possible to remove all doubt by thoroughly searching Loch Ness. Has this ever been suggest, attempted or completed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3055" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T02:12:11.450" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T05:01:48.363" Title="Has there ever been a thorough search of Loch Ness (for the Loch Ness Monster)" Tags="|cryptozoology|loch-ness-monster|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3544" CreationDate="2011-05-23T12:41:52.710" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A simple Wikipedia search lists some of the more extensive searches:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness_Monster#Searches_for_the_monster&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loch_Ness_Monster#Searches_for_the_monster&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some seem rather extensive, involving sonar surveys of the entire loch, submarine expeditions, microphones, etc.  The lack of data/evidence is deafening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-02-15T05:01:48.363" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T05:01:48.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3548" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4809" CreationDate="2011-05-23T14:12:56.527" Score="19" ViewCount="85427" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some colleagues told me recently that you should not lay LCD screens (e.g. TVs and computer monitors) flat. They should never be put face down horizontally, but kept vertical, or they may go bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that were true, digital watches, laptops should not even exist, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do I do? When I'm moving LCD screens, should they be kept upright or may they be laid flat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2629" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-25T14:25:40.523" LastActivityDate="2015-09-03T22:23:28.363" Title="Does laying LCD screens flat harm them?" Tags="|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3539" CreationDate="2011-05-23T14:28:07.557" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is confusing two separate issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cashiers can give wrong change independently of whether bar-codes or price-tags are used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bar-codes are intended to lead to fewer data-entry errors and faster data-entry than price-tags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a quote from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adams1.com/faq.html&quot;&gt;Bar-Code FAQ&lt;/a&gt; at adams1.com.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;b&gt;What are the advantages and disadvantages of barcode?&lt;/b&gt;&#xA;&#xA;There are two basic advantages to barcode over manual data entry: Speed, and Accuracy. For 12 characters of data, keyboard entry takes 6 seconds. Scanning a 12 character barcode takes .3 seconds. The error rate for typing is one substitution error in every 300 characters types. Error rated for barcode range from 1 substitution error in every 15,000 to 36 trillion characters scanned (depending on the type of barcode).&#xA;&#xA;[...]&#xA;&#xA;The only disadvantage is that data must be coded in the barcode.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T14:28:07.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3550" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3578" CreationDate="2011-05-23T14:37:49.637" Score="9" ViewCount="583" Body="&lt;p&gt;AFAIK this is quite established in both US and Japan (and I guess in other countries, too), and I myself have faithfully followed this advice whenever I had interaction with a depressed person.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder though on what kind of evidence this is based. Does somebody know a study on this topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2307" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T06:42:17.617" Title="Is it always harmful to tell a depressed person something that equates to &quot;toughen up&quot; or &quot;make more effort&quot;?" Tags="|depression|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3387" CreationDate="2011-05-23T14:45:27.957" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is something that we at the nearly legal blog sometimes write about, for instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nearlylegal.co.uk/blog/2010/10/squatters-make-good-stories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://nearlylegal.co.uk/blog/2010/10/squatters-make-good-stories/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A squatter does not, strictly speaking, have any &quot;right&quot; to be in a property (unless they obtain ownership of it by adverse possession which takes a long time and requires inaction by the owner). The foundation for the &quot;right&quot; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1977/45/section/6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977&lt;/a&gt; which makes it a criminal offence to use violence to secure entry to premises when you know there is someone on the premises who is opposed to your entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But - and this is the important but - it does not apply to a displaced residential occupier or a protected intending occupier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the situation you envisage - a person going on holiday - you would be a displaced residential occupier and you could use force to re-enter and have a common law right to use reasonable force to remove any trespassers from the premises. While it might be wise to have police around (to prevent a breach of the peace for example) there is no need to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are a displaced residential occupier, the squatters are almost certainly also committing an offence against &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1977/45/section/7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;section 7&lt;/a&gt; of the same act which makes squatting in those circumstances a criminal offence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, squatting is really only sustainable in empty properties which no-one intends to occupy in the near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3059" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T11:34:25.063" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T11:34:25.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3552" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3556" CreationDate="2011-05-23T16:48:17.990" Score="16" ViewCount="1072" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've all seen this type of scene before in period dramas; think &lt;em&gt;Gladiator&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;The Last Samurai&lt;/em&gt;.   We have a valiant hero, killing many men on the field of battle.   After dispatching hundreds, in climax he is grievously stricken with injury delivered by the other side's champion, or perhaps in an unsporting play like a treacherous arrow from afar.   He enters delirium and fever, as a result of say infection/shock/blood loss.  Then, it's usually up to his love interest to nurse him back to health &amp;mdash; which she does by repeatedly wiping his face or the wound in warm water.   Most of the time he fully recovers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand why directors and screenwriters love these sort of scenes; it gives them a chance to bring the love interest into close physical proximity with the hero, so they can proceed to liplock through the caressing action of sponging off of the face.  But JUST doing that seems decidedly primitive to me, for &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; historical era &amp;mdash; is there any reason that would be effective?  I would expect herbs, or poultices, or even quack medicines, but the commonness of this trope leads to me wonder whether it has any historical basis at all.   Was a common prescription in the old days, &quot;wipe down the treated man's face&quot;?  How in accordance is this sponging off with water with historical records of the manner wounded men were treated after injury in battle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's recapitulate my question for the TL;DR folks:  &lt;strong&gt;Is there any evidence that the method for treating injury in olden times was sponging of the injured party's face with water and rag?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastEditorUserId="200" LastEditDate="2011-05-23T16:53:34.677" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T03:20:38.907" Title="In movies, the hero is often nursed to health by sponging his face with a wet rag. How true is this to actual history?" Tags="|medical-science|history|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3552" CreationDate="2011-05-23T19:47:41.870" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, for &lt;strong&gt;fever&lt;/strong&gt; (as opposed to physical injury), the wet towel is an officially recommended &lt;strong&gt;useful thing to do&lt;/strong&gt; (please note the difference between that and &quot;remedy&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source: at least 3 different pediatricians when my kids had virus-originated fevers.&lt;/em&gt; (NOTE: this is somewhat tongue in cheek, but is based on sound evidence as linked to below)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This serves 3 medical benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the temperature of water, it cools down the person if it is below the skin temp. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003090.htm&quot;&gt;NIH&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;By wetting down the face and then allowing the water to evaporate, it allows the person to cool down faster/better. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/sweat.html&quot;&gt;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/sweat.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It removes eeky sweat generated when one has a fever. if nothing else, that makes you feel less unpleasant and thus has non-negligible contribution to well being. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Add an overall sense of being cared for, AND a calming effect of doing something helpful for a parent - both are important. Source: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.capmh.com/content/1/1/7&quot;&gt;Managing childhood fever and pain – the comfort loop&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, Jacqui Clinch and Stephen Dale, &lt;em&gt;Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I found at least one study which contradicts this on some level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to whit, the study showed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It improves the fever short term (1 hr). &lt;strong&gt;SUPPORT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Has no effect longer term (2+ hr). &lt;strong&gt;NO Support, but the claim didn't specify time period&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Study showed correlation between bath and discomfort. See my opinion of that below.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9115527&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9115527&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The efficacy of tepid sponge bathing to reduce fever in young children.&#xA;Sharber J.&lt;/strong&gt; College of Nursing, University of Arizona, Tucson 85721, USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt; : Tepid sponge baths distress febrile children, and their efficacy at reducing fever has not been established. This study compared fever reduction and with (1) acetaminophen alone and (2) acetaminophen plus a 15-minute tepid sponge bath. Twenty children, ages 5 to 68 months, who presented to the emergency department or urgent care center with fever of &gt; or = 38.9 degrees C were randomized to receive (1) acetaminophen alone or (2) acetaminophen plus a 15-minute tepid sponge bath. All subjects received a 15-mg/kg dose of acetaminophen. Tympanic temperature was monitored every 30 minutes for 2 hours. Subjects were monitored for signs of discomfort (crying, shivering, goosebumps). Sponge-bathed subjects cooled faster during the first hour but there was no significant temperature difference between the groups over the 2-hour study period (P = .871). Subjects in the sponge bath group had significantly higher discomfort scores (P = .009).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my own experience, the final conclusion of the study may plausibly be &lt;strong&gt;wrongly attributed&lt;/strong&gt; (the child may be discomforted because they don't like sponge baths in the first place, especially when in fever and wants to be held still or not bothered) - once my kids were older and could consciously consent to it, the exhibited discomfort went from 50% of cases to 0%. The abstract didn't specify any details discomfort-wise, so i don't know if they bothered with adjusting for that effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a second study showing the same results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&amp;amp;q=cache%3azx67lbhQD0wJ%3amedind.nic.in/ibv/t09/i2/ibvt09i2p133.pdf%20fever%20sponge%20bath%20study&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;gl=us&amp;amp;pid=bl&amp;amp;srcid=ADGEESjyvkz8Ti9efh-fwCWb1r-LE0TrAhu1q8p8sHoeiZOF2LlPW9GKxYDyXY_WRWcE2OI6RIm-2dqQhLyr63z0ReRIe9ltt2icWtixVNWbCFqzZVT5amaPjkvlCCQ8hVgZc9p6wLSu&amp;amp;sig=AHIEtbR7xgqocXczid3bbnCxEvU2oFHWsg&quot;&gt;Comparative Effectiveness&lt;/a&gt; of Tepid Sponging and Antipyretic Drug Versus Only Antipyretic Drug in the Management of Fever Among Children: A Randomized Controlled Trial&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;S THOMAS, C VIJAYKUMAR, R NAIK, PD MOSES AND B ANTONISAMY&lt;/em&gt;; From the Department of Child Health Nursing, *Child Health Department and **Department of Biostatistics,&#xA;Christian Medical College, Vellore, India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results&lt;/strong&gt;: The reduction of body temperature in the tepid&#xA;  sponging and antipyretic drug group was significantly&#xA;  faster than only antipyretic group; however, by the end of 2&#xA;  hours both groups had reached the same degree of&#xA;  temperature. The children in tepid sponging and&#xA;  antipyretic drug had significantly higher discomfort than&#xA;  only antipyretic group, but the discomfort was mostly mild.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;: Apart from the initial rapid temperature&#xA;  reduction, addition of tepid sponging to antipyretic&#xA;  administration does not offer any advantage in ultimate&#xA;  reduction of temperature; moreover it may result in&#xA;  additional discomfort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-05-23T20:15:13.390" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T20:15:13.390" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3557" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-23T20:03:43.810" Score="10" ViewCount="3545" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed a warning on a hypnosis/self-help audiobook that read as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Warning: This audiobook contains&#xA;  powerful techniques.  Do not listen if&#xA;  you suffer from epilepsy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My inclination is to believe this is simply a marketing tactic to make the product seem dangerously potent. However, I understand that some sensory input - including sounds - can induce epileptic seizures. Is it possible the warning is legitimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3062" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-29T14:46:23.587" LastActivityDate="2015-08-21T17:45:41.337" Title="Can a hypnosis audiobook induce epileptic seizures?" Tags="|sleep|hypnotism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3558" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3563" CreationDate="2011-05-23T20:23:18.417" Score="26" ViewCount="15328" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common statement that passengers of a car are protected from lightening while inside  because the car has rubber tires (which are insulators). An alternative theory often put forward is that the vehicle is made of a metal conductor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are passengers protected from lightning while inside a car?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If so, is this protection from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. The rubber tires; or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. the metal shell of the car?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T16:34:14.860" Title="Are passengers inside cars protected from lightning because of the tires?" Tags="|road-vehicles|electromagnetism|lightning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3410" CreationDate="2011-05-23T20:28:12.303" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't believe no one mentioned blue corn:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TDPrI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XMzLW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="406" LastActivityDate="2011-05-23T20:28:12.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3558" CreationDate="2011-05-23T20:42:17.847" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Passengers inside a steel bodied car are protected from lightning because the car behaves like a 'Faraday Cage'. When lighting hits the car it wants to take the shortest path with the least resistance to ground. That is via the body shell and not via the occupants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was demonstrated several years ago on the BBC entertainment show 'Top Gear' where they put a hamster inside a car:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.topgear.com/uk/videos/car-lightning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.topgear.com/uk/videos/car-lightning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the tyres, made of rubber, which does not conduct electricity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, the tyres are made of vulcanized rubber and the black stuff in them is carbon that does conduct electricity, as do the steel belts inside the tyre. The question is how much does this conducting-electricity-thing amount to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pneumatic tires which contain carbon black generally have a resistance of approximately 10^6 ohms, measured from the crown to the bead. There is a provisional specification for this measurement, this being laid down in the WDK guideline 110. According to this a pneumatic tire belongs to &amp;quot;electrostatically active Class I&amp;quot; if it has a leakage resistance of less than 10^6 ohms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pneumatic tires which do not contain carbon black do not satisfy this test; their electrical leakage resistance is approximately 10^10 ohms.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5853461/description.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does that compare to plain old air, as in that stuff we breath?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally we do not use air or any other gasses to conduct electricity and, for the sums, air is considered to be of infinite resistance. But, where there is a will there is a way and, if you place a big enough potential difference across air it will conduct. When this happens the little electrons in the air get scared and do a runner from the nuclei that they have been bonded to in a process called ionization. All of a sudden the air conducts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what does Mr Lightning make of this? Well, he knows he can ionize air as he has already done quite a lot of that already making his way through loads of sky. However, as he gets to the ground he wants to be lazy and discharge his electrical load as easily as he can. Spotting a car in his path he thinks 'I will go and hit that rather than the nearby ground as that is closer and less effort'. Then he gets to the bottom of the car and sees some more of that air stuff. Not wanting to strip all those air molecules apart again he cheats and goes for the tyres. The carbon-black tyres are planted on the ground and, although not exactly as easy a ride as copper would be, he does the maths (10000000 ohms resistance is better than infinite) so he goes that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a cheeky so-and-so Mr Lightning would dearly like to zap the hamster in the car, however, no matter how hard he tries he just cannot ionize the air inside the car in the way that he has been used to to so far. Not because the air conditioning is off, but he cannot get the required potential difference, what with that tin box conducting so readily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer the question. The tyres play no role in protecting the occupant from lightning strikes. This is not because they are insulators, but because they conduct electricity instead. They have to conduct electricity to prevent static build-up in the car and there are standards in place to make sure that they do not have too high a resistance, even if they do not have 'carbon black' used in their manufacture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the Faraday cage of the car that protects the occupant, a wrap-around lightning conductor that works very well so long as it is made of a metal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2408" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T00:08:42.227" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3562" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3565" CreationDate="2011-05-23T21:04:35.303" Score="35" ViewCount="2807" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be little doubt in public opinion that second hand smoke is dangerous, and I can see why. But many smokers have claimed to me that it is not dangerous at all and it is all media hype. What is the scientific consensus? I have heard that second hand smoking is almost equivalent to smoking a cigarette directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T20:11:10.463" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T20:11:10.463" Title="Is secondhand smoke dangerous?" Tags="|medical-science|smoking|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3558" CreationDate="2011-05-23T21:06:08.623" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/hnx/LightningMyths-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - TOP 10 Myths o Lightning Safety&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lightning laughs at two inches of rubber!&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;  &lt;br&gt;Most cars are reasonably safe from lightning. But &lt;strong&gt;it’s the metal&#xA;  roof and metal sides that protect you, not the rubber tires.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus convertibles, motorcycles, bicycles, open&#xA;  shelled outdoor recreational vehicles, and cars with plastic or fiberglass shells offer no lightning protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But closed cockpits&#xA;  with metal roof and sides are safer than going outside. &#xA;  &lt;br&gt;And don’t even ask about sneakers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/connect/chat/lightning_chat.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA - Ask an Expert&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the car is metallic -- not a convertible! -- then a person is shielded by the metal of the car and lightning would be safely conducted around the people inside. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This has nothing to do with the rubber tires! This is know in physics as a &lt;em&gt;&quot;Faraday cage&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ready.gov/thunderstorms-lightning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FEMA - Thunderstorms &amp;amp; Lightning&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... rubber-soled shoes and &lt;strong&gt;rubber&#xA;  tires provide NO protection from&#xA;  lightning.&lt;/strong&gt; However, the steel frame of&#xA;  a hard-topped vehicle provides&#xA;  increased protection if you are not&#xA;  touching metal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ec.gc.ca/foudre-lightning/default.asp?lang=En&amp;amp;n=5AF4A9FB-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Environment Canada - Lightning facts and fiction&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rubber-soled shoes and rubber tires provide no protection from lightning.&lt;/strong&gt; The lightning strike between the cloud and the ground has potentially traveled thousands of meters through thin air, therefore rubber soled footwear or tires are inconsequential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, the metal shell of a car provides a pathway for the lightning strike to flow around the vehicle provided the car has a hardtop metal roof (not a convertible).&lt;/strong&gt; Although such vehicles do not offer you absolute protection from lightning, you and others are much safer inside a car with your hands on your lap, than outside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weatherimagery.com/blog/rubber-tires-protect-lightning/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Weather Imagery - Do Rubber Car Tires Protect Me From Lightning?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The truth is, &lt;strong&gt;the rubber tires don’t&#xA;  deter lightning in the least bit.&lt;/strong&gt; By&#xA;  the time a lightning bolt reaches your&#xA;  car, it has been traveling for miles&#xA;  and miles through the air which is&#xA;  many orders of magnitude more&#xA;  resistant than a few inches of rubber.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_pls/vehicle_strike.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lightning Safety - Vehicles and Lightning&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rubber tires provide zero safety from&#xA;  lightning.&lt;/strong&gt; After all, lightning has&#xA;  traveled for miles through the sky:&#xA;  four or five inches of rubber is no&#xA;  insulation whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popsci.com/breakdown/article/2008-06/electric-aviation-experience&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;POPSCI - An Electric Aviation Experience&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... the aluminum &lt;strong&gt;hull of an aircraft&#xA;  is highly conductive&lt;/strong&gt; ... &lt;strong&gt;it forms a Faraday cage&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For the same reason, you don't get electrocuted when lightning strikes your car&lt;/strong&gt; (provided your car is made of metal and not fiberglass, you don't have a cloth convertible roof, and you're not touching the outside surface). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's a common misconception that the insulating rubber tires protect you. Not true. It's the Faraday cage.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8248775/video-shows-lightning-bolt-hit-plane&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a video&lt;/a&gt; of a plane getting hit by lightning in mid-air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eey4W.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Plane&quot;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8248775/video-shows-lightning-bolt-hit-plane&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;None of the 500 people on board the Emirates Airlines Airbus A380 were injured as the plane flew through a storm as it approached London's Heathrow Airport on April 23 2011. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A United Emirates spokesperson told the newspaper lightning strikes are not uncommon and that every plane in its fleet is designed and certified to withstand a lightning strike. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pa.msu.edu/~duxbury/courses/phy294H/lectures/lecture6/lecture6.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Faraday Cage&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... a closed metal surface, no matter what&#xA;  it's shape, screens out external&#xA;  sources of electric field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bWFTS.png&quot; alt=&quot;Faraday Cage&quot;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.learningelectronics.net/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvmHCARMqjY&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a video&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;strong&gt;MythBuster&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Adam Savage&lt;/em&gt; demonstrating the &lt;strong&gt;Faraday Cage&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3lmzt.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Adam Savage - Faraday&quot;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/05/makers_on_parad.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-06-24T08:53:17.867" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T08:53:17.867" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3562" CreationDate="2011-05-23T23:18:08.393" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Surgeon General of the United states issued &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/secondhandsmoke/&quot;&gt;a report in 2006&lt;/a&gt; about second-hand smoke. The six major conclusions were: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many millions of Americans, both children and adults, are still exposed&#xA;  to secondhand smoke in their homes and&#xA;  workplaces despite substantial&#xA;  progress in tobacco control.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Secondhand smoke exposure causes disease and premature death in&#xA;  children and adults who do not smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Children exposed to secondhand smoke are at an increased risk for&#xA;  sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS),&#xA;  acute respiratory infections, ear&#xA;  problems, and more severe asthma.&#xA;  Smoking by parents causes respiratory&#xA;  symptoms and slows lung growth in&#xA;  their children.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exposure of adults to secondhand smoke has immediate adverse effects on&#xA;  the cardiovascular system and causes&#xA;  coronary heart disease and lung&#xA;  cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The scientific evidence indicates that there is no risk-free level of&#xA;  exposure to secondhand smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Eliminating smoking in indoor spaces fully protects nonsmokers from&#xA;  exposure to secondhand smoke.&#xA;  Separating smokers from nonsmokers,&#xA;  cleaning the air, and ventilating&#xA;  buildings cannot eliminate exposures&#xA;  of nonsmokers to secondhand smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar information can be obtained from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/secondhand_smoke/general_facts/index.htm&quot;&gt;Centers for Disease Control&lt;/a&gt; (also see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5935a4.htm?s_cid=mm5935a4_w&quot;&gt;Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report&lt;/a&gt;), the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iom.edu/~/media/Files/Report%20Files/2009/Secondhand-Smoke-Exposure-and-Cardiovascular-Effects-Making-Sense-of-the-Evidence/Secondhand%20Smoke%20%20Report%20Brief%203.pdf&quot;&gt;Institute of Medicine&lt;/a&gt;, the journal &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1480505/?tool=pmcentrez&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Environmental Health Perspectives&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Tobacco/ETS&quot;&gt;National Cancer Institute&lt;/a&gt; (part of the National Institutes of Health), and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/secondhand-smoke/CC00023&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A full list of research can be found at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/secondhandsmoke.html&quot;&gt;MedLine&lt;/a&gt;, and it includes research from the American Heart Association, &lt;em&gt;North Carolina Medical Journal&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Current Opinions in Pulmonary Medicine&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;British Medical Journal&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;Neurotoxicology and Teratology&lt;/em&gt;. (This is all in the first 15 articles.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="677" LastEditorUserId="677" LastEditDate="2011-05-24T00:05:32.677" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T00:05:32.677" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3567" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-23T23:33:58.810" Score="9" ViewCount="11523" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that oranges contain vitamin C and eating them can prevent colds and flus. However, recently, I caught a bit of flu, and during this period of illness, I once wanted to eat oranges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I was told that oranges are good for preventing illness, but bad for you during your flu or cold. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sydney.edu.au/medicine/alumni/reunions/reports/knox-longmire.pdf&quot;&gt;Nepalese Culture&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://figur8.net/baby/2009/09/30/what-food-and-drinks-aggravate-coughs/&quot;&gt;Figur8 Q&amp;amp;A&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://juliekirsten.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/youd-better-eat-some-cold-foods/&quot;&gt;Chinese students debate oranges causing too much Yang&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081210221651AA4lk7q&quot;&gt;Someone using Yahoo Answers instead of seeking medical attention for &quot;stomach flu&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-04T15:00:34.700" LastActivityDate="2011-12-03T04:39:34.897" Title="Is eating oranges during a bout of flu bad for you?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3568" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3585" CreationDate="2011-05-23T23:44:16.353" Score="46" ViewCount="77237" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's where it gets interesting; I don't mean erase them from an object, I mean from your fingers directly.  Some people claim there is a way to do it, some people claim it's impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a friend (no, really, she exists, I swear) who is attempting to write a novel, and for once, someone turned to a skeptic in an attempt to get the science right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She's been apparently scouring sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081020100905AAenEAb&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; in an attempt to find a plausible method, presumably because there aren't many places to go for hard facts on this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there's very little (I couldn't find any) scientific study published on this topic, and many proposed solutions to the problem seem to be quite painful, bloody, and ultimately futile.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also probably safe to assume the people offering advice via message boards on this particular topic are at best speculating, haven't actually had any practical or relevent experience, and are most likely basing claims on exaggerated or fictional accounts rather than demonstrable evidence.(Interestingly, I kept running across stories involving John Dillinger attempting this which may or may not be true). However, without the data, there's obviously no way for me to say for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though none of them sound like advice I would be willing to take, nor do they come from credible sources, some suggestions so far have been...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/18551934/Changing-Your-Fingerprints&quot;&gt;Cut them off&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - (not your fingers, just your fingerprints) Apparently this does&#xA;not work that well, is obviously&#xA;painful and could possibly make&#xA;fingerprints more distinctive&#xA;according to some.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Can_acid_or_surgery_successfully_remove_your_fingerprints&quot;&gt;Using a corrosive substance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - Does&#xA;not seem to yield acceptable results,&#xA;as much like cutting them off, they&#xA;will regrow.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ask.com/questions-about/How-to-Burn-off-Your-Fingerprints&quot;&gt;Burning them off&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - This has received&#xA;some questionable support, but many&#xA;seem to think they will grow back.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onin.com/fp/wwwbd/messages/4/2029.html?1240958462&quot;&gt;Rubbing them off&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - some claim this&#xA;smooths them out, and is certainly not as gory but they quickly&#xA;return to normal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/more_criminals_using_acid_surgery_and_burning_to_alter_fingerprints/&quot;&gt;Surgical removal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - I ran across some&#xA;unverifiable claims about this&#xA;method.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rotteneggsx.com/r3/show/se/179977.html&quot;&gt;one strange method&#xA;involving a pineapple&lt;/a&gt; which only&#xA;attempts to alter them, not remove&#xA;them entirely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I keep thinking that there's something I'm missing here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have any of those methods ever been&#xA;proven to be successful?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has anyone ever successfully had&#xA;his/her fingerprints erased&#xA;successfully by any method?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a scientifically valid way&#xA;to do it, even if it's extremely&#xA;improbable?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is this all just spy-movie stuff with no hard science behind it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="15345" LastEditDate="2013-09-06T06:03:19.337" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T06:37:03.783" Title="Can anything remove fingerprints from your fingers?" Tags="|biology|criminology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3562" CreationDate="2011-05-24T00:50:49.937" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not a pro-smoking crusader. (Can't stand the things) But in the interest of balance, there has been at least one study which somewhat contradicts the commonly accepted theme on second hand smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/90/19/1440.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/90/19/1440.full.pdf&lt;/a&gt; is a largish WHO study that described an apparently (and surprising) protective effect of second hand smoke on children of smokers. From the abstract: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our results indicate no association&#xA;  between childhood exposure to ETS and&#xA;  lung cancer risk. We did find weak&#xA;  evidence of a dose-response&#xA;  relationship between risk of lung&#xA;  cancer and exposure to spousal and&#xA;  workplace ETS. There was no detectable&#xA;  risk after cessation of exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that in this particular study, with &quot;a total of 650 patients with lung cancer and 1542 control subjects&quot;, found the reduced chance of lung cancer among children of smokers to be statistically significant, but the &quot;weak evidence&quot; in this case is code for &quot;not what would normally be called statistically significant&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2845" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T00:50:49.937" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3571" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="51860" CreationDate="2011-05-24T01:27:10.820" Score="33" ViewCount="10112" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;The Runaway Brain&lt;/em&gt; by Christopher Wills, the author illustrates the fact that ostriches aren't too bright by saying that an ostrich has been recorded as getting tangled in the fork of a tree, panicking, and pulling off its own head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to back this up? Is it even plausible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="942" LastActivityDate="2021-06-16T13:46:34.103" Title="Did an ostrich pull off its own head?" Tags="|zoology|behavior|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4779" CreationDate="2011-05-24T02:22:51.670" Score="13" ViewCount="12485" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can one get drunk with Vodka vapour using a &lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=514916&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;humidifier&lt;/a&gt;? As it was shown in a Simpsons episode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1708" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T00:53:41.663" LastActivityDate="2017-04-16T11:05:30.470" Title="Can you get drunk with Vodka vapour using a humidifier?" Tags="|biology|alcohol|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2779" CreationDate="2011-05-24T03:00:06.160" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In US and Canadian major sports, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scoresreport.com/2008/10/23/which-sport-has-the-biggest-home-field-advantage/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; shows some comparative figures (the site explains where its figures come from).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In baseball, hockey, and football, the home team wins about 55% of the time.  The advantage is larger for basketball, about 60%.  The site does some speculation on why the larger advantage, for those interested.  All information is from the highest-level professional leagues.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.angelfire.com/ia2/minnesotavikings/metrodomefaq.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; refers to setting up noisy fans (human sports enthusiasts) in the right place for Minnesota Vikings games in the Metrodome.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.thesmartmarks.com/lofiversion/index.php?t37759.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This is a local newspaper article&lt;/a&gt; (can't find a link to the original) about manipulation of the fans (the mechanical air-movers) to give Twins hitters an advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find a newspaper article from late 1987, but somebody conducted a study of fan noise by time in that World Series.  They found that the Twins fans actually fell reasonably quiet when the one of the Cardinals hit the ball, and got noisier when one of the Twins did.  The stadium was very loud, so Twins fielders got a certain hush to do their job in, while the Cardinals had to perform in much louder situations.  The conclusion was that this likely helped the Twins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastEditorUserId="39" LastEditDate="2011-05-24T13:35:48.257" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T13:35:48.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3410" CreationDate="2011-05-24T06:29:37.010" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A mushroom known as &quot;blue cup fungi&quot; may be edible, although it is more likely used in some herbal medicines.  If it is edible, then it would certainly qualify as a &quot;naturally blue food&quot; but this is an important question for this mushroom -- is it edible?  It looks nice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/C3r5e.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3068" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T06:29:37.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2107" CreationDate="2011-05-24T06:41:22.440" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most exhaustive analysis on this question was performed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0195145976&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Philip Jenkins in his book Pedophiles and Priests: Anatomy of a Contemporary Crisis.&lt;/a&gt; Jenkins conclusions, in a nutshell, are that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Catholic priests do not commit sexual abuse against minors at a rate higher than other faiths or occupations, and in fact may have rates of sexual abuse less than that of many or most other professions  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that the incidence of &quot;pedophilia&quot;, i.e., sexual relations with pre-pubescent child, as compared with &quot;ebophilia,&quot; sexual relations with post-adolescent teenagers, is extremely small&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the popular perception of pedophilia and Catholic priests owes much to deeply imbedded historical, American anti-Catholic prejudice and a confluence of sociological factors, including the breakdown of Catholicism as a key identity of Catholics, and the fact that because of its structure, the Catholic Church has &quot;deep pockets&quot; that make it&#xA;an attractive &quot;target&quot; for suits.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jenkins' study was performed in the late '90s, but its conclusions have held up over time. The recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usccb.org/mr/causes-and-context-of-sexual-abuse-of-minors-by-catholic-priests-in-the-united-states-1950-2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;John Jay College Report on the Causes and Context of Sexual Abuse of Minors by  Catholic Priests in the United States, 1950 - 2010&lt;/a&gt;, published in May of 2011, confirms that the number of priests accused of child abuse was around 4% of the total number of priests, that the number of priests who were true pedophiles was around 5% of priests acccused of child abuse, and that the incidence of child abuse peaked around 1970 and has fallen since that time.  [One should also be aware that not all &quot;child abuse&quot; allegations involve allegations of physical impropriety.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The John Jay Report contains information about the incidence of child abuse within other faiths and child service organizations.  Making a precise comparison of other institutions with the Catholic Church is hampered by the fact that while the Catholic Church has made its data known, other faiths and institutions have engaged in pretty much the behavior that the Catholic Church engaged in prior to the child care scandal shining the light on the issue on the Catholic Church.  The publicity given to the Catholic Church has permitted other institutions to escape attention. For example, a report by Charol Shakeshaft in 2004 has been largely ignored. That report synthesized data found from a variety of sources and concluded that 7% of students in grades 8 to 11 had experienced an unwanted sexual contact, with 21% of those being perpetrated by educators.  There has, as yet, been no public outcry against schools or educators with respect to &quot;pedophilia&quot; as there has been against the Catholic Church.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The John Jay Report purports to exonerate homosexuality and celibacy as the &quot;causes&quot; of the pedophilia crisis, preferring instead to assign the cause to the general breakdown of social mores during the &quot;Woodstock era.&quot;  Given the fact that celibate priests are no more likely to engage in pedophilia/ebophilia than other groups, and that the number of child abuse incidents have declined notwithstanding the continuation of the celibacy requirement, it seems contrary to the facts to argue that celibacy causes child abuse or that Catholicism has some propensity toward child abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="524" LastEditorUserId="13764" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T22:19:54.490" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T22:19:54.490" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3550" CreationDate="2011-05-24T06:42:17.617" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect it depends on the individual since each person may handle any given situation quite differently from another.  Being depressed is incidental (as is being neurotically happy), but I would be concerned that the reaction from someone who is actually depressed could potentially be more dangerous (more likely to themselves).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it would also be important to understand the root cause of the depression (e.g., psychological, physical, a recent nasty divorce that separated the person from their children, a recent death in the family, survival of a violent illegal act, a wrongful criminal conviction, etc.), the person's environment, other mental/health conditions (e.g., they could be taking anti-depressant medication to counteract the side-effects of some other medication that is post-treatment for a recent life-saving surgery, in which case telling them to &quot;toughen up&quot; may only create more stress for them without actually being helpful), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these factors (and many others) are very difficult for any study to take into consideration.  If I knew someone who was depressed, making sure that they were at least getting some help from an expert who is qualified to deal with depression properly would be higher on my list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3068" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T06:42:17.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3579" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3580" CreationDate="2011-05-24T06:52:27.390" Score="46" ViewCount="4351" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common argument against the legalization of prostitution, and I'm curious if there's any truth to the claim that human trafficking actually increase when prostitution is made legal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T18:24:39.457" Title="Does legalizing prostitution lead to an increase in human trafficking?" Tags="|law|prostitution|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3579" CreationDate="2011-05-24T07:59:17.910" Score="30" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The claim makes absolutely no sense. Source: Economics 101. If you decrease the cost of being a prostitute (e.g. no more danger of arrest), you increase the supply of prostitutes. The reason for trafficking is that - given the payoff - not enough people want the job voluntarily, so you need to being in involuntary (slave) labor. Increasing the supply due to legalization removes that need. Please note that legalizing prostitution STILL keeps both trafficking and child exploitation laws in place.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, looks like there's absolutely no proof (despite major allegations by interested parties) that the center of legalized prostitution in the USA (e.g. Nevada) has a big trafficking problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2007/jan/29/do-we-have-a-human-trafficking-problem/&quot;&gt;http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2007/jan/29/do-we-have-a-human-trafficking-problem/&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Terri Miller, ATLAS's civilian director and long one of the top Nevada activists against the sexual exploitation of women and children, and her boss, Metro Capt. Terry Lesney, say the need for the group is clear: There is a &quot;huge&quot; and growing sex-oriented trafficking problem in Las Vegas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yet they quickly add that no statistics have ever been gathered and law enforcers never before have made it a top priority - so the scope of the problem still needs to be determined.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... The task force's first task was to determine whether, in fact, there was a human-trafficking problem, Lesney says. &lt;strong&gt;But because of the lack of hard data, she says, &quot;we were struggling to quantify what we're dealing with.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... The largest human trafficking bust in the area in recent years was Operation Jade Blade. A national sting in 2000 netted five Las Vegas Valley residents, who were arrested for trafficking Asian prostitutes into the city. The women had been smuggled into the country for a fee, then were forced to pay back their debt by working as prostitutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editorial note here - this is the LARGEST bust - and it's not, strictly speaking, about trafficking. The women came to the USA voluntarily. The crime was in forcing them to pay, and it &lt;strong&gt;has nothing to do with prostitution&lt;/strong&gt; - the &lt;strong&gt;same exact&lt;/strong&gt; problem exists/existed with Asians being smuggled all over the country and forced to work off their fees in sweatshops, often textile related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, not only are the provable trafficking numbers WAY low (the article further details several - as in, less than 10 in several years) - there's absolutely ZERO proof on anyone's part that it's something specific to Las Vegas or has any correlation - never mind causation - with legalized prostitution. Remember, these are the people who are in CHARGE of fixing the supposed problem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-05-24T14:04:02.470" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T14:04:02.470" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3571" CreationDate="2011-05-24T09:27:23.133" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do you mind if I go back over a century for a reference!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/stream/homelifeonostric00martrich#page/n173/mode/2up&quot;&gt;&lt;i&gt;Home Life on An Ostrich Farm&lt;/i&gt; by Annie Martin, (George Philip &amp;amp; Son, Liverpool, 1890), page 151&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;One of T&amp;mdash;'s birds performed the &quot;happy despatch&quot; in quite a novel manner. Seeing a tempting quince growing on the further side of a hedge, he squeezed his head and neck through the narrow fork in the branches to reach it. Having secured and eaten his prize, he tried to draw his head back. But what was difficult enough before was now impossible; his neck, bulging with the quince, kept him a prisoner, there was no one at hand to help, and the more he tugged and jumped in the frenzied manner of ostriches when held by the head, the more firmly he stuck. And he was found at last, with his neck broken, and his head, to all intents and purposes, pulled off.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T09:27:23.133" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3568" CreationDate="2011-05-24T10:50:27.060" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mlIP8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Fingerprints&quot;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fountainmagazine.com/article.php?ARTICLEID=790&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CNN article from 2010&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2010-07-23/justice/mutilated.fingerprints_1_mutilation-fingerprint-forensics?_s=PM:CRIME&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fingerprint mutilation on the rise, but it's practically pointless&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Stephen G. Fischer Jr., a&#xA;  spokesman for the &lt;em&gt;FBI's Criminal&#xA;  Justice Information Services&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;methods of&#xA;  fingerprint mutilation can vary&#xA;  depending on the circumstance and the&#xA;  criminal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;It can go from people chewing on&#xA;  fingers, using a knife, burning acid&#xA;  or cigarettes. Or if&#xA;  you have a career criminal or someone&#xA;  who is a little more affluent, they&#xA;  might go to a surgeon.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While no hard data on fingerprint&#xA;  mutilations exist, Fischer says the&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;FBI's forensics examiners have noticed&#xA;  the uptick over the last few years&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;  though the reason is unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But &lt;strong&gt;advancements in forensics&#xA;  technology have made fingerprint&#xA;  mutilation increasingly difficult to&#xA;  pull off&lt;/strong&gt;, as even severely damaged&#xA;  fingers will provide investigators&#xA;  with clues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;We can identify prints that we&#xA;  couldn't 10 or 15 years ago. Basically, they're going&#xA;  through all this pain and expense for&#xA;  no reason&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=lose-your-fingerprints&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Singaporean &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article6368231.ece&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cancer patient was&#xA;  detained by U.S. customs&lt;/a&gt; because his&#xA;  cancer treatment had made his&#xA;  fingerprints disappear&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As it turns out, &lt;strong&gt;the drug,&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capecitabine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;capecitabine&lt;/a&gt; (brand name, &lt;em&gt;Xeloda&lt;/em&gt;) had&#xA;  given him a moderate case of something&#xA;  known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmar_plantar_erythrodysesthesia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hand–foot syndrome&lt;/a&gt; (aka&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18394404?ordinalpos=3&amp;amp;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;chemotherapy-induced acral erythema&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are some other ways that fingerprints can disappear?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;bricklayers&lt;/strong&gt; — who wear down ridges on their prints handling heavy, rough materials frequently&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;people who work with lime&lt;/strong&gt; [calcium oxide] - because it's really basic and dissolves the top layers of the skin. The fingerprints tend to grow back over time. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;surprisingly, &lt;strong&gt;secretaries&lt;/strong&gt; - because they deal with paper all day. The constant handling of paper tends to wear down the ridge detail.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;also, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anti-aging-treatment-science&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;elasticity of skin decreases with age&lt;/a&gt;, so a lot of &lt;strong&gt;senior citizens&lt;/strong&gt; have prints that are difficult to capture. The ridges get thicker; the height between the top of the ridge and the bottom of the furrow gets narrow, so there's less prominence. So if there's any pressure at all [on the scanner], the print just tends to smear.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;But Forensics expert &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.lsu.edu/index.cfm?geaux=profiles.showbio&amp;amp;personnel=CF6477F7-1372-69E5-F7752289253E812B&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Edward Richards&lt;/a&gt; notes:&#xA;  &lt;br/&gt;&quot;... &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;your skin replaces at a fairly good rate, so unless you've done permanent damage to the tissue, it will regenerate&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/09/060922-fingerprints.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Geographic - Born Without Fingerprints&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Two rare and related diseases leave&#xA;  their sufferers with no fingerprints&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naegeli%E2%80%93Franceschetti%E2%80%93Jadassohn_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Naegeli syndrome&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermatopathia_pigmentosa_reticularis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dermatopathia pigmentosa reticularis&lt;/a&gt; (DPR).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One case of DPR is &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2771451&amp;amp;page=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flight attendant Cheryl Maynard&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T10:50:27.060" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2176" CreationDate="2011-05-24T14:50:15.523" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back in the early days of the computer virus problem (the 1980s and 1990s), there was a certain plausibility to this question. Viruses began, in most cases, as mere forms of vandalism created by experimenters (&quot;hackers&quot;) for their own amusement or bragging rights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple anti-virus vendors emerged with solutions, and eventually they started advertising their products based on various parameters including the number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://antivirus.about.com/od/whatisavirus/a/virussignature.htm&quot;&gt;virus signatures&lt;/a&gt; included. As these things tend to do, this briefly escalated into a &quot;signature war&quot; where each vendor claimed to have more signatures than the others. Vendors jealously guarded their signatures so they would have an advantage over their competitors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would have been easy during this era to imagine that there couldn't possibly be enough teenage hackers out there to create the thousands of viruses that the top vendors were claiming. In a search for other sources, one might assume that the anti-virus vendors themselves (who stand the most to gain) were creating the viruses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of developments around this time (the early 1990s) tend to provide alternate explanations for the virus boom. One was the emergence of virus creation kits such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_Creation_Laboratory&quot;&gt;Virus Creation Laboratory&lt;/a&gt;, which allowed someone with a very low level of expertise to create new viruses at will. Another was the emergence of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymorphic_code&quot;&gt;polymorphic code&lt;/a&gt;, a technique where viruses would alter their own code specifically to evade signature-based anti-virus software. Multiple polymorphic versions of the same virus would sometimes inflate signature counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the emergence of polymorphic code, many anti-virus vendors were forced to change their software (and their advertising messages) to get away from the idea of signature counts. Instead they used other heuristic ways to detect viruses. Frankly, trying to battle in the market over signature count is not a good long-term strategy anyway - your customers get tired of hearing the same message, it becomes costly to keep up your signature collection efforts, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This led to anti-virus vendors beginning to cooperate with each other on signature collection. For a long time the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wildlist.org/&quot;&gt;Wildlist&lt;/a&gt; was a one way the vendors very quickly handed over new virus samples to each other, so all vendors would be able to respond to new threats in a timely manner. This continues to this day in sites such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.offensivecomputing.net/&quot;&gt;Offensive Computing&lt;/a&gt;, where millions of samples of actual malware are available to logged-in users. The standards committees have even gotten involved, with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://standards.ieee.org/develop/indconn/icsg/malware.html&quot;&gt;IEEE forming a malware working group&lt;/a&gt; to develop standards for rapid sharing of malware samples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Logic would tend to dictate: if the vendors are rapidly sharing samples, why create new ones themselves?  And indeed, anti-virus vendors have always reacted negatively when others have publicly created malware for various purposes. Examples of such backlashes have included against a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.securityfocus.com/news/5698&quot;&gt;college class in 2003&lt;/a&gt; and against &lt;a href=&quot;http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2006/08/17/6346065-consumer-reports-creating-viruses&quot;&gt;Consumer Reports in 2006&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the tagging on this question would suggest, it is more correct now to refer not just to the virus problem, but the more general &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware&quot;&gt;malware&lt;/a&gt; problem. This includes such concepts as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet&quot;&gt;botnet&lt;/a&gt;, something we never saw in the early pre-internet virus era. And that change in definitions leads us to the biggest alternate explanation for the explosion of malicious code. As before, the explanation involves money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are hundreds of ways to make money online, and many of them are well suited to abuse. This has resulted in the emergence of large numbers of cyber criminals who take advantage of these forms of abuse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These monetary incentives include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Send &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2011/03/spamming-botnets-are-big-busin.html&quot;&gt;spam or phish emails from multiple sources&lt;/a&gt;, avoiding blacklists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware&quot;&gt;Spy on end-users&lt;/a&gt; in order to commit identity theft&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commit &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/17/android_trojan_click_fraud_scam/&quot;&gt;click-fraud on pay-per-click advertising&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Install &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adware&quot;&gt;adware&lt;/a&gt; to advertise to end users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manipulate &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/23/eve_online_botnet_mayhem/&quot;&gt;online games to obtain items&lt;/a&gt; that can be exchanged for cash&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this creates a &lt;a href=&quot;http://securitylabs.websense.com/content/Blogs/3576.aspx&quot;&gt;tremendous monetary incentive&lt;/a&gt; to evade signature-based anti-malware, so polymorphic malware and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit&quot;&gt;rootkits&lt;/a&gt; have proliferated amongst these online criminals. A current article indicates that as a result the very idea of &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/magazineContent/Antivirus-vendors-go-beyond-signature-based-antivirus&quot;&gt;signature-based malware detection is dying&lt;/a&gt;, and has been for some time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lone hackers still exist, they are by far a minor component of the modern malware problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: no current anti-malware vendor would ever see the need to create their own viruses or malware. It is everything they can do to keep up with what's out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Disclosure: I've worked for computer security software vendors, but have never worked directly on an anti-virus product. I have taught classes in how to reverse-engineer malware. The Offensive Computing site is run by a friend of mine.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T14:50:15.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3591" CreationDate="2011-05-24T16:38:15.157" Score="8" ViewCount="461" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen many studies comparing proposed cures to placebo, but what about any studies actually investigating the effectiveness of placebo effect itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, has there been any study as to the effectiveness of placebo in ameliorating certain affliction' symptoms, compared to no treatment at all? In which illnesses has it been determined to be most potent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2836" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T00:52:59.430" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T00:52:59.430" Title="Is the placebo effect effective?" Tags="|medical-science|placebo|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3590" CreationDate="2011-05-24T16:43:39.680" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are numerous studies where there was a control group with placebo and control group without placebo (on top of whatever was being tested against placebo, aka &amp;quot;active treatment&amp;quot; group). The data from such study can be easily cleansed of &amp;quot;actual drug&amp;quot; third group and turned into placebo vs. nothing efficacy comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also studies which only use placebos, some telling the patient that it's placebo, some not telling them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one example of the comparison of the two approaches: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3008733/?tool=pmcentrez&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3008733/?tool=pmcentrez&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Placebos without Deception: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Irritable Bowel Syndrome&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Ted J. Kaptchuk, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Findings&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open-label placebo produced significantly higher mean (±SD) global improvement scores (IBS-GIS) at both 11-day midpoint (5.2±1.0 vs. 4.0±1.1, p&amp;lt;.001) and at 21-day endpoint (5.0±1.5 vs. 3.9±1.3, p = .002). &lt;strong&gt;Significant results were also observed at both time points for reduced symptom severity (IBS-SSS, p = .008 and p = .03) and adequate relief (IBS-AR, p = .02 and p = .03); and a trend favoring open-label placebo was observed for quality of life (IBS-QoL) at the 21-day endpoint (p = .08).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Placebos administered without deception &lt;strong&gt;may be an effective treatment for IBS&lt;/strong&gt;. Further research is warranted in IBS, and perhaps other conditions, to elucidate whether physicians can benefit patients using placebos consistent with informed consent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another study showing placebo efficacy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Levine JD, Gordon NC, Smith R, Fields HL (1981). &amp;quot;Analgesic responses to morphine and placebo in individuals with postoperative pain&amp;quot;.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0304395981900993&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pain 10 (3): 379–89. doi:10.1016/0304-3959(81)90099-3. PMID 7279424&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effects of placebo and varying doses of intravenous morphine were studied in 74 patients. All patients underwent extraction of impacted mandibular third molars. Two hours after onset of anesthesia all patients received a placebo (intravenous saline). One hour after the placebo administration each patient received either a second placebo or, 4, 6, 8 or 12 mg of morphine, double blind, via a hidden intravenous line. Pain level was evaluated 50 min after morphine administration using a visual analog scale. Pooled data from all patients produced a dose-response curve asymptotic by 8 mg. &lt;strong&gt;The mean pain relief following the second placebo was found to be between that obtained following hidden administration of 4 and 6 mg of morphine.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hoffman GA, Harrington A, Fields HL (2005). &amp;quot;Pain and the placebo: what we have learned&amp;quot;. Perspect Biol Med 48 (2): 248–65. doi:10.1353/pbm.2005.0054. PMID 15834197.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T17:08:04.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3592" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3593" CreationDate="2011-05-24T17:15:30.617" Score="17" ViewCount="961" Body="&lt;p&gt;These are excerpts from what could be considered the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manhattan-institute.org/pdf/_atlantic_monthly-broken_windows.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source for the Broken Windows theory&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A]t the community level, &lt;strong&gt;disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked&lt;/strong&gt;, in a kind of&#xA;  developmental sequence. Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in run-down ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, &lt;strong&gt;one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing&lt;/strong&gt;. (It has always been fun.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the theory, this &quot;not caring&quot; signal escalates further and further until it becomes likely that serious crimes are as inevitable as one broken window leads to all broken windows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The unchecked panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window. Muggers and robbers,&#xA;  whether opportunistic or professional, believe they reduce their chances of being caught or even identified if they operate on streets where potential victims are already intimidated by prevailing conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution presented in the original article is one of foot patrolling (as opposed to patrolling in vehicles); the community's interaction with a police officer on foot encourages a sense of security that counters feelings of &quot;no one cares.&quot; This, in turn, helps the community as a whole avoid the Broken Windows of drunks, gang members or prostitutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not so much interested in the foot patrolling aspect of this article. Rather, I am interested in the concepts of crime escalation and prevention with regards to activities seen as petty crimes. This is the broad form of my question: Is there any evidence for or against the Broken Windows theory with regards to &lt;em&gt;preventing&lt;/em&gt; such an escalation in crime by addressing the beginning phases of the escalation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A slightly more focused question: &lt;strong&gt;Is there any correlation between action taken against petty crimes and the prevention of future serious crimes within the same community?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-27T13:24:54.240" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T13:24:54.240" Title="Does addressing the issues focused on by the Broken Windows theory have a measurable impact on crime?" Tags="|government|sociology|criminology|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3592" CreationDate="2011-05-24T18:15:22.393" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.city-journal.org/2009/nytom_ny-crime-decline.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a good first article showing the link between exactly the Broken Windows philosophy and crime reduction. New York is the poster child for this policy, and its adoption coincided with an astonishing reduction in the crime rate. Given the impossibility of doing controlled experiments on a city, this is probably as good as you are going to get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However &lt;a href=&quot;http://www18.georgetown.edu/data/people/ludwigj/publication-18261.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; also indicates that the results might not be as positive everywhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taken together, the evidence from New York City and from the five-city social experiment &#xA;  provides no support for a simple first-order disorder-crime relationship as hypothesized by Wilson and Kelling, nor for the proposition that broken windows policing is the optimal use of scarce law enforcement resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://economics.uwo.ca/undergraduate/undergraduatereview/undergraduatereview05/1_Kanji.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; examines the economics aspects, also with less than positive results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-05-24T18:22:17.253" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T18:22:17.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3594" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4829" CreationDate="2011-05-24T18:29:39.470" Score="17" ViewCount="33606" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a company called &lt;a href=&quot;http://norwex.com/&quot;&gt;Norwex&lt;/a&gt;, started in Norway and now in other countries including Canada and the US, which claim its products &quot;Clean without Chemicals&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our line of cleaning products will save you time &amp;amp; money, improve health, and move towards creating a better environment.  Norwex microfiber goes beyond &quot;surface clean&quot; with the innovative use of silver particles integrated into synthetic microfiber cloth ensure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Single-celled micro-organisms such as bacteria, fungi, yeast, and viruses cannot survive or adapt in silver exposure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Surface-to-surface cross-contamination is eliminated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Rapidly drying cloths prevent bacteria growth in the cloth itself&#xA;  Cleaning with water only produces a healthy outcome for us and the environment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Laboratory tests have proven that Norwex antibacterial microfiber reduced bacteria by 99.99% in 24 hours!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company also mentions a &lt;a href=&quot;http://cleanclothproject.com/&quot;&gt;research project&lt;/a&gt; related to its microfiber cloths:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the past year Norwex has been working with The Norwegian National Institute of Technology to establish a research project funded by the European Union in Brussels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are Norwex's claims true? Does the research project have any merit to satisfy those claims? And, perhaps too subjectively, would any harm come from exclusive use of Norwex's products (i.e., to the exclusion of traditional/popular chemicals)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3075" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-07T20:25:51.643" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T01:39:30.030" Title="Can one use microfiber cloths and products to &quot;clean without chemicals&quot;?" Tags="|chemistry|consumer-products|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3598" CreationDate="2011-05-24T19:31:55.217" Score="28" ViewCount="20535" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mwLJh.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mwLJh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;kangaroo&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.flickr.com/photos/shebalso/1928593646&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.exploringnature.org/db/detail.php?dbID=17&amp;amp;detID=136&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Exploring Nature&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They cannot jump backward because of&#xA;  their thick, muscular tail. &lt;strong&gt;Their long&#xA;  feet and heavy tail also make walking&#xA;  impossible, forward or backward&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itsanhonour.gov.au/coat-arms/index.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Australian 'Coat of Arms'&lt;/a&gt; features an &lt;strong&gt;Emu&lt;/strong&gt; and a &lt;strong&gt;Kangaroo&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GumjO.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Coat of Arms&quot;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itsanhonour.gov.au/coat-arms/index.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some say the kangaroo and emu were&#xA;  chosen to symbolise a nation moving&#xA;  forward. This is based on the &lt;strong&gt;common&#xA;  belief that neither animal can move&#xA;  backwards easily&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;My question:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can kangaroos walk backwards?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;Is walking backwards just difficult for them or is it anatomically impossible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="4254" LastEditDate="2019-05-14T23:39:18.837" LastActivityDate="2020-10-29T00:05:37.210" Title="Can kangaroos walk backwards?" Tags="|biology|zoology|australia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1538" CreationDate="2011-05-24T20:02:40.030" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moon-dust.html&quot;&gt;This link&lt;/a&gt; gives a thorough criticism of the &quot;moon dust&quot; argument. The estimate of dust deposit used in these figures is hugely flawed, and better estimates have existed for a long time, but were not used in the Creationist tracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Morris chooses to pick obsolete data with known problems, and call it the &quot;best&quot; measurement available. His calculations are based on a figure that is nearly three orders of magnitude too high. With the proper values, the expected depth of meteoritic dust on the moon is less than one foot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T20:02:40.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3596" CreationDate="2011-05-24T21:23:04.390" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kangaroos cannot move backwards easily.  But they do it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEDq0SAYW44&quot;&gt;while fighting&lt;/a&gt; (YouTube, 0:35 is particularly clear where one is jumping backwards away from another).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T21:23:04.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3600" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-24T21:47:45.220" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-24T21:47:45.220" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T21:47:45.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3601" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-24T21:47:45.220" Score="0" Body="Investigation of health-related states or events events in a population. Can also include analysis of data collection methods, study design, statistical analysis, documentation, review, and publication of results relating to those matters.&#xD;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-24T21:47:45.220" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T21:47:45.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3590" CreationDate="2011-05-24T22:57:42.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only do placebos often work better that no treatment - certain placebos are better than others!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brand name pain relievers work better than generic ones, even though they have same active ingredients (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1505530/?tool=pmcentrez&quot;&gt;Braithwaite and Cooper, 1981&lt;/a&gt;). Pills that patients consider more expensive are better than cheap ones, even when both are the same placebo (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.299.9.1016&quot;&gt;Waber et. al, 2008&lt;/a&gt;). The placebo effect is stronger when the same 'drug' was assumed to have worked before (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.painjournalonline.com/article/S0304-3959%2806%2900194-1/abstract&quot;&gt;Colloca and Benedetti, 2006&lt;/a&gt;) and when doctors expressed optimism in the outcome (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pain.2006.12.006&quot;&gt;Linde et al, 2007&lt;/a&gt;). Perhaps most amazingly, the colour of a pill actually influences the degree to which it works (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2359128/?tool=pmcentrez&quot;&gt;Craen et. al, 1996&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2368" LastActivityDate="2011-05-24T22:57:42.447" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3603" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3604" CreationDate="2011-05-24T23:00:40.403" Score="18" ViewCount="14160" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/2164/how-important-is-it-that-a-person-be-able-to-touch-their-toes/2178#2178&quot;&gt;How important is it that a person be able to touch their toes?&lt;/a&gt;, someone said that they found out they had an extra vertebra from their chiropractor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical about their specific claim if it's based on an evidence-challenged medicine practitioner, but is it possible for a human to have extra vertebrae without noticing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:51.697" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T00:12:37.843" Title="Can humans have extra vertebrae without noticing them?" Tags="|biology|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3603" CreationDate="2011-05-25T00:14:37.573" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, and this is fairly common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not an &quot;extra&quot; vertebra as such, but is actually nonfusion of a vertebra that is supposed to fuse. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_lumbarization_of_the_s1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikianswers&lt;/a&gt; (I know, bad source, but it's a good summary):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sacrum bone in the posterior pelvis comes from the fusing of 5 sacral vertebrae, which are numbered from superior (S1) to anterior (S5). The sacral bones fully fuse typically by around age 23, but &lt;strong&gt;sometimes the S1 vertebra does not fuse with the others. When this happens, it's called lumbarization.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RAHSp.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/55466181/lumbosacral&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image credit&lt;/a&gt;, the disc where the white arrow is pointing is more commonly not present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence to suggest this would make a person taller or affect their flexibility, and is probably not even associated with increased lower back pain. Pubmed (paywall) has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2526193&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a study&lt;/a&gt; from the Australian Spinal Association that studied around 500 spinal x-rays and found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The prevalence of... lumbarization [was] 6.0%... There was no greater prevalence in patients suffering from low back pain when compared against those who did not...  Contrary to previous claims that lumbarization is more common in men, we found a moderate predilection for this finding among women. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Indian anatomical department did &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20869006&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a study&lt;/a&gt; where they directly examined 332 dried sacra, and found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A total of 3.9% of sacra presented lumbarization, seven (2.1%) with partial and six (1.8%) with complete separation of the S1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2011-05-25T00:28:57.350" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T00:28:57.350" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3552" CreationDate="2011-05-25T03:20:38.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to be a St John first aid volunteer and attended children's sporting events, where we were instructed to stay off the field until the referee summoned us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, after a tackle left a young player lying on the ground, we would watch carefully as the coach would come out with a wet sponge, wipe the kids face and/or injury, and the kid would get up and get back into the game, perhaps limping slightly for effect. (The limp had generally disappeared a minute later, when the player was running for the ball.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ritual of the &quot;magic sponge&quot; (as we first aiders knew it) was effective as it included the elements of a placebo:  some attention, a little bit of rest for the pain and adrenaline to recede, and (by wiping away the tears, and giving an excuse for being better, despite the initial dramatics) gave back some dignity to the child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if the injury was more serious, we were standing by with some non-placebo remedies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate this does NOT directly address your question of movies and &quot;olden times&quot; medicine. However, it provides some anecdotal support that sponges can be effective  placebos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T03:20:38.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1779" CreationDate="2011-05-25T04:55:38.860" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The following argument is a &quot;strong opinion, weakly held&quot; - very weakly held. I am not offering it as a real answer, but instead as a deliberately provocative position to be attacked, in order to trigger some more robust answers than we have seen in skeptical publications. If we can't produce a more robust answer, perhaps it is time to question the theory.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a dowser claims that &quot;The corpuscles ... that rise from the Minerals, entering the rod, determine it to bow down&quot; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing#Suggested_explanations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;William Pryce, 1778&lt;/a&gt;] I smile at the invented explanation that has no explanatory or predictive power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When skeptics claim that dowsing is just the &quot;ideomotor effect&quot; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ukskeptics.com/article.php?article=ideomotor_effect.php&amp;amp;dir=articles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;for example&lt;/a&gt;], I frown, because it sounds like just another invented explanation that has no explanatory or predictive power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently read a passage in a Tom Stafford &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121022-the-psychology-of-tetris&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC Future&lt;/a&gt; story about the (unrelated) Zeigarnik Effect explaining that the term:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;describes a phenomenon, but it doesn’t really give any reason for why it happens. This is a common trick of psychologists, to pretend they solved a riddle of the human mind by giving it a name, when all they've done is invented an agreed upon name for the mystery rather than solved it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This immediately brought to mind this issue with the ideomotor effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that there are volitive movements and reflexive movement [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.barrettdorko.com/articles/ideomotor.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;], but simply declaring that there is a third type of movement between the two (where our bodies secretly act in line with our expectations, without any conscious awareness), and referencing a study 150 years old to back it up, is not terribly convincing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if a person has the expectation that the dowsing rods will cross, the idea that that will be automatically turned into exactly those movements requirement by the hands to enact  such movement is an extraordinary claim. That those movements would turn out to be extremely subtle (as opposed to macro-level movements, immediately perceptible to anyone watching) is another extraordinary claim. Finally, that, unlike breathing or the reflex to retract from a hot surface, the conscious mind will be completely unaware of these movements (post hoc), even when thinking about them - seems quite unbelievable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If skeptics are to dismiss many different paranormal effects as being due to the &quot;ideomotor effect&quot; they should have substantially more evidence (and preferably a model of the mechanism) than a Latin phrase and the same &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=KaTQ8Qs1j88C&amp;amp;pg=PA147&amp;amp;lpg=PA147&amp;amp;dq=%22On+the+influence+of+suggestion+in+modifying+and+directing+muscular+movement,+independently+of+volition.%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=k1kgwhyvpA&amp;amp;sig=FftMSSMQwyX4sw50p_ayy7j52Z0&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=U4PcTb_tHuvUiAKK96gZ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=4&amp;amp;ved=0CDIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22On%20the%20influence%20of%20suggestion%20in%20modifying%20and%20directing%20muscular%20movement%2C%20independently%20of%20volition.%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1852&lt;/a&gt; paper that seems to be the primary source to many of their documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not enough to prove that dowsing doesn't work under controlled conditions. If you are going to make the positive claim that dowsing appears to working under uncontrolled conditions purely through the mechanism of the ideomotor effect, you need to have some substantial evidence to support that the ideomotor effect exists and can meet all of the above extraordinary claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-07T23:30:37.317" LastActivityDate="2012-11-07T23:30:37.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3579" CreationDate="2011-05-25T06:07:13.333" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Germany changed their laws in 2002, making prostitution equal to any job, so you have to pay taxes and get social security etc. There is no indication this increased the amount of trafficking. But then again prostitution was semi-legal already before 2002.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.icmpd.org/1465.html&quot;&gt;http://research.icmpd.org/1465.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sweden criminalized prostitution in 1999. One of the stated arguments was lowering trafficking. Unfortunately there was no statistics available before 2003 (see above ref), so we don't know if it has increased or decreased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is no data to say either way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T06:07:13.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3612" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3613" CreationDate="2011-05-25T08:48:46.960" Score="18" ViewCount="8404" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does &lt;strong&gt;sleeping orientation (pointing one's head in a specific direction)&lt;/strong&gt; has anything to do with any health problems(even minor ones)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If Earth's magnetic field has any&#xA;  detrimental effects on our brains,&#xA;  then the orientation of our sleeping&#xA;  posture might have an affect on our&#xA;  body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2601" LastEditorUserId="2601" LastEditDate="2011-06-13T07:29:38.183" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T15:12:23.103" Title="Does sleeping with our heads pointing towards north pose any health risks?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|physiology|magnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3612" CreationDate="2011-05-25T09:23:00.540" Score="30" Body="&lt;h1&gt;No&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no detrimental effects on the human body of static magnetic fields. This goes for even strong magnetic fields and certainly weak magnetic fields like the Earth's have no influence whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1522-2586%28200007%2912:1%3C2::AID-JMRI2%3E3.0.CO;2-V/full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Safety of Strong, Static Magnetic Fields&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Issues associated with the exposure of patients to strong, static magnetic fields during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are reviewed and discussed. The history of human exposure to magnetic fields is reviewed, and the contradictory nature of the literature regarding effects on human health is described. In the absence of ferromagnetic foreign bodies, there is no replicated scientific study showing a health hazard associated with magnetic field exposure and no evidence for hazards associated with cumulative exposure to these fields. The very high degree of patient safety in strong magnetic fields is attributed to the small value of the magnetic susceptibility of human tissues and to the lack of ferromagnetic components in these tissues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-02-02T15:12:23.103" LastActivityDate="2018-02-02T15:12:23.103" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3614" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3622" CreationDate="2011-05-25T10:01:42.053" Score="16" ViewCount="7737" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/13/evan-longoria-catch-video_n_861824.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's what I'm talking about&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of opinions whether it's fake or not, I really don't know!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the chances that one (even a professional player, let alone common mortals) can somehow &lt;em&gt;feel the ball&lt;/em&gt; (did he hear it or what?), make it in 0.5 second to &lt;em&gt;extend the arm&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;catch with a bare hand&lt;/em&gt; the ball approaching at a huge speed (really, how fast is it?)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T02:05:34.243" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T02:05:34.243" Title="Did Evan Longoria save a reporter with bare-hand catch?" Tags="|physiology|sport|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3616" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-25T11:26:25.793" Score="29" ViewCount="7172" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is stated that giving women equality and control over their reproduction reduces the poverty in any community. Christopher Hitchens: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We already know the cure to poverty...it's quite simply, the empowerment of women.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I tend to believe this person -- I would like to have more facts and explanations about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any factual evidence for such an assertion? And if there is -- what are the explanations for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="108" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-05-29T09:46:15.013" LastActivityDate="2018-05-29T09:46:15.013" Title="Is empowerment of women a cure for poverty?" Tags="|economics|gender|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="28" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3618" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-25T12:42:35.727" Score="7" ViewCount="722" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have Vegemite, Marmite and other yeast extracts been banned in Denmark?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;: I've heard this being claimed in the news, but there was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegemite#Rumour_of_ban_in_United_States&quot;&gt;false report&lt;/a&gt; of it being banned in the United States back in 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T13:35:11.057" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T03:41:24.270" Title="Have Vegemite, Marmite and other yeast extracts been banned in Denmark?" Tags="|nutrition|government|denmark|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3506" CreationDate="2011-05-25T13:04:58.083" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has a list of them at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_close_election_results&quot;&gt;List of close election results&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It lists several cases where the vote was tied, or had margins of one or more vote, but most of the cases it lists are individual seats being decided by a single vote, rather than the balance of power in parliament/congress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only vote with wider significance would be the Massachusetts gubernatorial election, 1839. Wikipedia claims that Marcus Morton won by two votes, which would mean that one person could have changed the margin from 2 votes to a dead heat. However, it doesn't provide a citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T00:16:13.563" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T00:16:13.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3646" CreationDate="2011-05-25T13:10:36.550" Score="13" ViewCount="3999" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common movie scene. Someone falls in a large body of water and drowns, losing consciousness. Our hero rescues the victim, gives 10 seconds of CPR, emits various imprecations to the tone of &quot;Wake up, g**damnit!&quot; and our victim coughs up some water and wakes up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CUT to Bremmer, who drives a terrified Marcy in an SUV. &quot;We can all be together now, Rose,&quot; Bremmer tells Marcy. The car slows as it approaches a police checkpoint. Ashley and Derek roar up behind Bremmer who SLAMS on the gas. The SUV races for the lake and PLUNGES into the water. Derek dives in after the car and pulls Marcy from the passenger-side window. Just then, Bremmer opens his eyes and grabs Marcy's legs. Out of nowhere, Hotch appears and FIRES his gun underwater, killing Bremmer. Moments later, Derek administers CPR on Marcy. &quot;Stay with me!&quot; he yells. Suddenly, the girl GASPS and spits up a stream of water. She will live. Case closed ... or is it?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1875189/synopsis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Criminal Minds&quot; Out of the Light (2011)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ohktI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the breakdown of the claims I think are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; debatable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That CPR actually revives people, instead of merely keeping them alive until help arrives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That CPR is actually effective on someone who breathed water&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That if the patient is revived, they will simply cough up a glass of water&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That someone can actually be conscious and merely a bit stunned after being revived by CPR.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are any of these supported by facts? If not, how would our hero save the damsel in distress in real life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T02:05:08.023" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T02:05:08.023" Title="Does Baywatch-style CPR work?" Tags="|medical-science|mortality|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3614" CreationDate="2011-05-25T13:10:54.530" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article does a very good job of piling on the evidence for the video being &lt;strong&gt;fake&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2011/may/24/evan-longoria/rays-3b-evan-longorias-spectacular-barehanded-catc/&quot;&gt;http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2011/may/24/evan-longoria/rays-3b-evan-longorias-spectacular-barehanded-catc/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence is primarily circumstantial, so far no one involved has explicitly admitted it was fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the video there are four Gillette logos visible -- two behind home plate and two on a roof facade over the third-base bleachers. But those logos aren't part of McKechnie Field in real life, Trevor Gooby, the Pirates' director of Florida operations, told a reporter for Patch.com. The logos were added digitally and included in the final video that was posted on YouTube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Already we know that &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; aspect of the video was altered. It would be a fallacy of generalization to then say that the catch itself was therefore also altered, but the evidence supports that theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video itself was uploaded by a person who lists their company as Gillette and the recording itself was recorded following a 6 hour recording session for Gillette commercials featuring Evan, suggesting that it too is part of their marketing campaign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're still looking for evidence that this was not meant to be part of an actual newscast,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there's the reporter and the video graphic identifying Longoria. There is no television station symbols or letters on the video, and the reporter is holding a microphone without a &quot;flag&quot; that identifies the station where the reporter works. Perhaps even stranger, we could not find the video posted on any news site. (Surely, a TV station would love to claim the video as theirs.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The circumstances of the batting practice also seemed contrived, according to baseball reporter Topkin of the times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Topkin noted several things that aren't typical during a batting practice session. There is no cage surrounding the batter to catch foul balls or stop pitches that aren't hit. There's also no screen protecting the batting practice pitcher. There are no coaches in the video hitting ground balls and no other fielders on the baseball diamond to track down any hits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the batter himself acts oblivious to the entire event. He never yells a warning when the ball heads straight for the interview and crew, and after the catch is made, he resumes a normal batting stance and ignores the congregation in spite of the cheers from the other supposed players on the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the physics side, while the initial hit and resulting trajectory is normal, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlIteL1qAWc&quot;&gt;frame by frame&lt;/a&gt; of the video shows abnormal ball movement right when the catch is made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ball that's caught clearly comes from a different location and angle than the ball hit their direction. You probably saw this in the original video, but this was slowed down to 1FPS to make it more clear. The ball clearly doesn't move for multiple frames, then changes direction, [that's] clear video tampering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the words of Gillette spokesperson Norton addressing questions about the video were a cryptic refusal to claim the video was real or admit it was fake, which is very much in the spirit of viral marketing campaigns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The video was filmed while on location for a Gillette Fusion ProGlide commercial... We'll leave the 'is it real?' debate up to the viewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as I said, primarily circumstantial evidence along with a fairly solid theory on the frames surrounding the catch being doctored, as the Gillette logos in the park were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T13:10:54.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3618" CreationDate="2011-05-25T13:30:06.010" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Denmark says the sale of Marmite or Vegemite &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uk.foedevarestyrelsen.dk/ImportExport/Legislation_on_import_of_food/Marmite_not_banned_in-Denmark.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;haven't been banned&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It states that foods fortified with vitamins, minerals or other substances, such as the abovementioned foods, can't be marketed unless Denmark's food authorities approve the products. The products in question haven't had marketing approval requested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2011-05-25T23:03:49.480" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T23:03:49.480" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3614" CreationDate="2011-05-25T13:30:58.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;FWIW, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/photos/advertisements/longoria.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;snopes.com&lt;/a&gt; has an article on it in which they have quotes from Longoria.  Unfortunately, they don't list a source for the quotes, which is rather unlike them.  It's a fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T13:30:58.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3625" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3626" CreationDate="2011-05-25T13:31:47.817" Score="19" ViewCount="1378" Body="&lt;p&gt;A classic movie threat: quicksand that will ensnare you and kill you by drowning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/j81l0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Still from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[Still from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0367882/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's in countless movies and TV, but does quicksand pose any significant life-threat to people? Is the best strategy to hold still (as opposed to just try to walk or swim away, that is)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:37:38.893" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:37:38.893" Title="Is quicksand deadly?" Tags="|mortality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3625" CreationDate="2011-05-25T13:57:17.397" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quicksand isn't nearly as deadly as the movies would have us believe. You can be killed in it, but if you behave sensibly then you shouldn't find any trouble getting out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quicksand is, essentially, a mix of sand and water. That means it looks like sand, but when you step on it you sink into it like water. However, by definition, it's denser than water, and that means two things: 1) you sink into it less quickly than you would if you stepped onto water 2) you can float in it, or swim - more easily than water in fact. The problem comes because quicksand is very sticky (viscous) and if you step in it, it can be hard to pull yourself out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0928_050928_quicksand.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is a National Geographic article&lt;/a&gt; giving the science, and an explanation of how to get out of quicksand if you end up in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you do step into quicksand, you'll only sink in a little deeper than your waist. &quot;I would say there would be some pressure on the chest, but not enough to cause serious trouble.&quot; So how do you get out? &quot;The way to do it is to wriggle your legs around. This creates a space between the legs and the quicksand through which water can flow down to dilate [loosen] the sand. You can get out using this technique, if you do it slowly and progressively.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-02-13T00:35:22.150" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T00:35:22.150" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3616" CreationDate="2011-05-25T14:10:08.033" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hitchens doesn't mean that empowerment of women is the only issue with regard to poverty, and he certainly isn't talking about &quot;women's suffrage&quot;. What he is talking about is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many places in the world where there is endemic and widespread poverty, women have essentially zero economic resources. Their only tasks are the raising of children and manual labour in either the home or fields. For these and other reasons women are hugely more likely to be poor than men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most effective ways that has been found for dealing with this poverty is the encouragement of small businesses. Often this has been done through Microfinance, and it's been widely noted that (for whatever reason) women have been the most effective recipients of Microfinance. Again for whatever reason, these businesses also appear to raise the economic level of the community they live in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://natlex.ilo.ch/wcmsp5/groups/public/---ed_emp/documents/publication/wcms_117993.pdf&quot;&gt;Here is a scholarly article&lt;/a&gt; looking at exactly this question.  Here are some others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.undp.org/poverty/topics3_women_economic_empowerment.shtml&quot;&gt;a UN assessment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.endpoverty2015.org/gender-equity/news/empowering-women-key-achieving-un-millennium-goals-%E2%80%93-migiro/19/nov/07&quot;&gt;DefeatPoverty&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=34207&amp;amp;Cr=women&amp;amp;Cr1=&quot;&gt;Another UN article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-05-25T16:07:41.027" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T16:07:41.027" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3616" CreationDate="2011-05-25T14:24:55.317" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Canada &lt;a href=&quot;http://plancanada.ca/becauseiamagirl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;they&lt;/a&gt; are arguing that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most poor people are girls&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Girls use their wealth (money, health, and education) to better their families&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And yet research is also clear that&#xA;  when girls reach their full potential,&#xA;  through improved status, better health&#xA;  care, and education, it is the most&#xA;  effective development tool for society&#xA;  as a whole. As a country's primary&#xA;  enrolment rate for girls increases, so&#xA;  too does its gross domestic product&#xA;  per capita.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-- Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://plancanada.ca/becauseiamagirl/page.aspx?pid=3848&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Learn More.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T14:24:55.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3629" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3694" CreationDate="2011-05-25T14:33:10.633" Score="41" ViewCount="2195" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all joke about it but there's probably lots of people that took him seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that the world hasn't ended, many are claiming he is a fraud and a con man. Did Harold Camping or his Family Radio statement benefit financially from making this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, how? Through donations? Publicity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T07:11:48.867" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T15:34:14.170" Title="Did Harold Camping profit from his false prediction that the world would end?" Tags="|religion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3632" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-25T16:44:52.657" Score="37" ViewCount="7764" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know they say &quot;Flushable&quot; right on the package, but are they?  Do they break down fast enough to not cause problems in septic/sewer systems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2262" LastEditorUserId="6777" LastEditDate="2015-06-12T02:00:57.430" LastActivityDate="2022-02-02T15:51:16.580" Title="If I buy &quot;flushable&quot; wipes, can I flush them without problems?" Tags="|consumer-products|hygiene|marketing|advertising|toilets|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3632" CreationDate="2011-05-25T17:35:07.927" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inda.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;INDA&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edana.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EDANA&lt;/a&gt; are industry groups representing the Nonwoven Fabrics (wipes) industry. They have defined &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inda.org/press/2008/flushabilityGuidelines_May20.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flushability Guidelines&lt;/a&gt;. The full spec is kept behind a $3000 paywall, but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inda.org/pubs/tests/Flushability_ES.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Executive Summary&lt;/a&gt; explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;For a product to be flushable it must:  &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Clear toilets and properly maintained drainage pipe systems under expected product usage conditions;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Be compatible with existing wastewater conveyance, treatment, reuse and disposal systems; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Become unrecognizable in a reasonable period of time and be safe in the natural receiving environments.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Organisations such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://nsf.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NSF International&lt;/a&gt; provide a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.org/business/flushability/faq.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;certification service&lt;/a&gt; for showing your product conforms to the guidelines. Once you have been certified, you can display a &amp;quot;Certified Flushable&amp;quot; mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether a particular product that you see on the shelves is, in fact, Certified Flushable, depends on the particular brand and product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, the manufacturers can self-declare their compliance to the standard (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cottonelle.com/en-us/faq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;for example&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2022-02-02T14:57:58.733" LastActivityDate="2022-02-02T14:57:58.733" CommentCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3635" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3636" CreationDate="2011-05-25T18:45:45.087" Score="21" ViewCount="2288" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all know that volcanoes emit a tremendous amount of CO₂ when they erupt. I've often heard people argue that the amount of CO₂ an erupting volcano emits dwarfs the amount of CO₂ that humans emit in an entire year. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I don't mean human biological emissions (alone). I mean all natural and human-produced CO₂ emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3091" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T10:37:37.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T10:37:37.730" Title="Do active volcanoes emit more CO₂ than humans?" Tags="|environment|climate-change|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3635" CreationDate="2011-05-25T18:51:27.060" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, that’s not true.&lt;/strong&gt; In fact,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Humans emit 100 times more CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; than volcanoes.&lt;/strong&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so it’s the exact opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in 2008 humans emitted about 36 &lt;em&gt;billion&lt;/em&gt; metric tons of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;. In that same year, the highest (!) estimates for all volcanoes combined (submarine volcanoes included) were just 270 &lt;em&gt;million&lt;/em&gt; metric tons (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earthmagazine.org/earth/article/371-7da-7-1e&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gerlach, 2010&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim to the contrary, for instance voiced here by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/29320.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ian Plimer on ABC&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the past 250 years, humans have added just one part of CO2 in 10,000 to the atmosphere. One volcanic cough can do this in a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is an artful lie. This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/29320.html#m_ucMessageDisplay209769_m_anchMessageAnchor&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;exposed wonderfully in a comment&lt;/a&gt; to that article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our emissions since [before the Industrial Revolution] have raised the level [from 280 ppm] to around 390 ppm, an increase in the CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; concentration of around 40%!! The increase of 110 ppm is 1.1 per 10,000 - roughly Ian's magic number. […]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 in 10,000 of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; [of 390 ppm] would add 0.039 ppm which a [volcanic] 'cough' could easily do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Ian Plimer arrives at his assertion by comparing two different numbers: the number of &lt;em&gt;overall&lt;/em&gt; increase in CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; in the atmosphere (110 ppm), and a &lt;em&gt;relative&lt;/em&gt; percentage of the atmospheric concentration (0.039 ppm), and alleges that these numbers are the same. That’s like saying that 10$ and 10% of 10$ (= 1$) are identical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-25T19:23:18.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3637" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3690" CreationDate="2011-05-25T19:02:50.027" Score="15" ViewCount="10109" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've all been there: you're discussing the recent launch of a rocket carrying a satellite to orbit, or what have you, and suddenly someone pops in and makes a comment like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yeah, it's amazing and scary how powerful spy technology has become. They're probably watching us, as we speak!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I know that such a statement is extremely unrealistic. There are simply not enough satellites up there to be constantly monitoring every square meter of the planet. But do such statements have some truth in them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that, as far as spy satellites are concerned, many things could be unknown because of their classified nature. But is technology advanced enough to monitor something relatively small from space? Like what someone looks like (or at least what the top of their head looks like, assuming the view is from the top), or the security code on a piece of paper, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastEditorUserId="2694" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T00:19:37.847" LastActivityDate="2019-09-12T02:49:16.387" Title="Are military spy satellites as advanced as people think they are?" Tags="|technology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3638" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-25T19:10:41.657" Score="26" ViewCount="43859" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently heard this claim referred to on House M.D. when the titular character is experiencing phantom sounds, and the show appeared to give the idea some credibility.  So I decided to look it up, but only found half hearted explanations or theories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is three-fold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can fillings (presumably on metallic fillings) &quot;pick up&quot; radio waves?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, under what conditions can this occur?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, can the radio waves be &quot;interpreted&quot; correctly or near enough to make the noise identifiable as a broadcast?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1617" LastActivityDate="2020-02-18T15:21:21.437" Title="Is it possible to pick up radio signals from dental fillings?" Tags="|electromagnetism|dentistry|radio|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3687" CreationDate="2011-05-25T19:19:59.303" Score="20" ViewCount="3405" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has there ever been a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptid&quot;&gt;cryptid&lt;/a&gt; proven to exist? A creature that general scientific consensus had regarded as being a myth for a long time, but finally proven to be real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2836" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T14:19:23.097" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T22:54:06.737" Title="Has there ever been a cryptid proven to exist?" Tags="|zoology|cryptozoology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-25T22:15:40.313" Score="8" ViewCount="1104" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this rather weak claim in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13541148&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC news article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several newspapers, including the Guardian, the Sun and the Daily Telegraph, have claimed the yeasty spread to be the perfect defence against mozzies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any good evidence that this is the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-05-27T12:22:06.523" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T09:59:59.717" Title="Does Marmite keep away mosquitoes?" Tags="|natural-remedies|entomology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3638" CreationDate="2011-05-26T00:13:31.893" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/fillings.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; has an article regarding a story told by Lucille Ball of just such a thing happening to her personally.  It's listed as 'undetermined' but does seem somewhat plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So has this ever been documented?  The folks at '&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/657/is-it-possible-to-hear-radio-broadcasts-through-your-teeth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;' ferreted out two instances outside of Lucille Ball, one of which sounds like this exact phenomena.  This would make it pretty rare, and might explain why the Mythbusters were unable to reproduce it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3104" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2020-02-18T15:21:21.437" LastActivityDate="2020-02-18T15:21:21.437" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3621" CreationDate="2011-05-26T00:47:43.657" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gDDRu.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CPR on Television&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how many times I've seen CPR done on television where the patient immediately wakes without exhibiting any major outward signs of the effects caused by either the cause of the cardiac arrest or the CPR itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the real world, this is very, very often not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are some aspects of CPR as shown on television which are correctly portrayed, there are also some which are incorrect or at least inaccurate. Whether this is done for dramatic purposes or due to lack of knowledge on the subject is up for debate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For the purposes of this answer, it will be much easier if we assume that all CPR done on television is done correctly.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The science...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paper studying depictions of CPR in 3 different (Rescue 911, ER, Chicago Hope) American television programs states quite clearly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The survival rates in our study are&#xA;  significantly higher than the most&#xA;  optimistic survival rates in the&#xA;  medical literature, and the portrayal&#xA;  of CPR on television may lead the&#xA;  viewing public to have an unrealistic&#xA;  impression of CPR and its chances for&#xA;  success. Physicians discussing the use&#xA;  of CPR with patients and families&#xA;  should be aware of the images of CPR&#xA;  depicted on television and the&#xA;  misperceptions these images may&#xA;  foster.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samblackman.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/1578.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The breakdown of this study by victim is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/J9lwt.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent study examined 26 episodes of Casualty, Casualty, 25 episodes of Holby City, 23 episodes of Grey's Anatomy and 14 episodes of ER screened between July 2008 and April 2009 and came to a similar conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whilst the immediate success rate of&#xA;  CPR in medical television drama does&#xA;  not significantly differ from reality&#xA;  the lack of depiction of poorer medium&#xA;  to long term outcomes may give a&#xA;  falsely high expectation to the lay&#xA;  public. Equally the lay public may&#xA;  perceive that the incidence and likely&#xA;  success of CPR is equal across all age&#xA;  groups. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19699021&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Already we can see that research indicates a sharp disparity between the effectiveness of CPR in reality and on film. Survey data cited by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation further indicates that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The public seriously overestimates&#xA;  CPR's effectiveness. A survey that&#xA;  included health care workers found&#xA;  that those who were over 65 years old&#xA;  predicted a 59 percent survival rate&#xA;  for a person treated with CPR. People&#xA;  under 30 were even more optimistic,&#xA;  predicting a 75 percent survival rate.&#xA;  s&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?id=21335&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ource&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This data sheds light on the fact that &lt;strong&gt;the success rate of CPR may not only be misrepresented by the media but by the textbooks as well&lt;/strong&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even more troubling, the surveyors&#xA;  found, was that those who had medical&#xA;  training estimated CPR's effectiveness&#xA;  at 75 percent! In an effort to&#xA;  understand why this would be so, the&#xA;  authors examined a standard text used&#xA;  to train health care workers and found&#xA;  only a brief acknowledgement that CPR&#xA;  was unlikely to be effective. The&#xA;  handbook that the Red Cross uses to&#xA;  teach its CPR classes to the public&#xA;  did not confront the issue of low CPR&#xA;  success at all. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?id=21335&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;CPR in the real world&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q: Does CPR alone revive people?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A: No. But it depends on if the person receiving it was actually in cardiac arrest to begin with. And what was wrong with him in the first place.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we've already seen, the effectiveness of CPR (when done correctly) varies widely, even when combined with other therapies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite the development of electrical&#xA;  defibrillation and the more recent&#xA;  implementation of lay rescuer&#xA;  defibrillation programs, the vast&#xA;  majority of these victims do not leave&#xA;  the hospital alive. In studies over&#xA;  the past 15 years, only 1.4% of&#xA;  patients with out-of-hospital arrest&#xA;  in Los Angeles, Calif, survived to&#xA;  hospital discharge; in Chicago, Ill,&#xA;  the number was 2%, and in Detroit,&#xA;  Mich, it was &amp;lt;1%. Conversely, a few&#xA;  municipalities such as Seattle, Wash,&#xA;  report much higher survival rates from&#xA;  SCA—more than 15% in 1 study—which&#xA;  suggests that survival rates need not&#xA;  remain so low. Recent work in Europe&#xA;  and elsewhere has confirmed that a&#xA;  higher survival-to-hospital discharge&#xA;  rate is indeed a realistic goal, with&#xA;  survival rates as high as 9% reported&#xA;  in Amsterdam and 21% in Maribor,&#xA;  Slovenia. &lt;a href=&quot;http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/117/5/704?eaf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the innumerable causes which can lead to cardiac arrest, I obviously cannot address them all, however, there may be some instances when CPR alone can be lifesaving, or appear to the lay rescuer that it is lifesaving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblog.com/community/older/2000/A/200000488.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Recent revisions of standards&lt;/a&gt; by the American Heart Association no longer call for lay-people to perform a pulse check prior to initiating CPR if they find an unconscious victim who appears not to be breathing.  So, the person receiving the CPR may not always be in cardiac arrest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible in these situations for the painful stimuli to rouse the unconscious (usually intoxicated) person in a manner similar to what is seen on tv.  To the lay person and to bystanders without medical training, this would look exactly like what is pictured on tv.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ventricular Tachycardia, Ventricular Fibrillation vs. True Asystole&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The human heart requires both electrical and mechanical activity to pump blood effectively. A patient who is pulseless and not breathing may not necessarily be &quot;flat-lined&quot; and in certain cases, the inititation of CPR immediately may have an effect similar to that of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heartcentertraining.com/blog/precordial-thump&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;precordial thump&lt;/a&gt;(which is now reccomended in certain situations), in that the force of the impact induces an electrical stimulus which jolts the heart out of a non-perfusing rhythm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001239/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ventricular Tachycardia&lt;/a&gt;, the heart's electrical activity looks like this, but the person will often not have a pulse (because although the heart has electrical activity and some mechanical activity as well, it is inadequate to pump blood properly):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JBlJq.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0004467/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ventricular Fibrillation&lt;/a&gt;, the heart's activity looks like this, but the person will NOT have a pulse (again, because in this rhythm, the heart is unable to effectively pump):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cvOmN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In true asystole (flatline) there is neither electrical nor mechanical activity in the heart:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KQUif.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, without an EKG it is impossible to tell which rhythm a person's heart is in, and there is some chance (although probably quite remote) that the initial compression of CPR might jolt a person out of the first two, but not the third.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, reversing a cardiac arrest is dependent largely on fixing the underlying cause.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hmc.org.qa/heartviews/VOL1NO1/03BACK_BASICS.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CPR is mainly effective by continuing to perfuse the body's tissues&lt;/a&gt; (especially the brain) with oxygen (and some other things), which will lessen damage and increase the chance of survival while other treatments (which are more effective at increasing survival rates) are administered. Typically, this involves electrical, drug, or surgical treatments. Although there are many variations, here is one example of an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acls.net/aclsalg.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ACLS protocol&lt;/a&gt; for treating a cardiac arrest in full asystole, as you can see, it often requires much more than just CPR. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MYyCj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An often unaddressed factor in television is the potential for injuries caused by the CPR itself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most common injuries from chest&#xA;  compressions are rib fracture (∼30&#xA;  percent) and sternal fracture (∼20&#xA;  percent). Other common&#xA;  complications include aspiration,&#xA;  gastric dilatation, anterior&#xA;  mediastinal hemorrhage, epicardial&#xA;  hematoma, hemopericardium, myocardial&#xA;  contusion, pneumothorax, coronary air&#xA;  embolus, hemothorax, lung contusion,&#xA;  and oral and dental injuries. &#xA;  The liver is the most commonly&#xA;  injured intraabdominal organ, with&#xA;  rupture occurring in about 2 percent&#xA;  of cases. The spleen is infrequently&#xA;  injured and ruptures in less than 1&#xA;  percent of resuscitation attempts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rare injuries (incidence less than 1&#xA;  percent) include tracheal injuries,&#xA;  esophageal rupture, gastric rupture,&#xA;  cervical spine fracture, vena caval&#xA;  injury, retroperitoneal hemorrhage,&#xA;  and myocardial laceration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Complications may occur even with&#xA;  properly performed CPR, especially rib&#xA;  and sternal fractures. The possibility&#xA;  of injury should not deter the&#xA;  vigorous application of CPR, since the&#xA;  outcome without effective&#xA;  resuscitation is certain death.&#xA;  Life-threatening injuries from CPR,&#xA;  such as laceration of the heart or&#xA;  great vessels, are rare. Proper&#xA;  techniques will lessen the incidence&#xA;  of serious complications. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctsnet.org/edmunds/Chapter14section3.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q:  Is CPR actually effective on someone who breathed water?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A:  Sometimes, but not as often as television would have you think.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some debate about the effectiveness of rescue breathing in CPR, and in fact, lay rescuers are now taught a compressions-only method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The role of rescue breathing is&#xA;  currently debated; however, it is&#xA;  likely important in prolonged arrests&#xA;  or those of non-cardiac etiology.&#xA;  Current recommendations encourage&#xA;  inclusion of rescue breaths by trained&#xA;  responders, but allow for elimination&#xA;  of rescue breathing and emphasis on&#xA;  chest compressions for responders&#xA;  untrained or unconfident in rescue&#xA;  breathing.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21516073&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study done in a lifeguarded waterpark environment yields the following information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Analysis of 63,800,000 guests with&#xA;  56,000 rescues and 32 LSR rescues&#xA;  shows that children and shallow water&#xA;  both had relatively high levels of&#xA;  rescues [62.6% for children aged 1-12&#xA;  years and 42% for water depth less&#xA;  than 1.52 m (5 ft)] and LSR rescues&#xA;  [53.2% for children aged 1-12 years&#xA;  and 65.6% for water depth less than&#xA;  1.52 m (5 ft.)] with 87.5% of the LSR rescues resuming spontaneous&#xA;  respiration and 75% having a poolside&#xA;  neurological rating of Alert. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21500049&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The numbers here seem to indicate a much more impressive success rate than demonstrated above with CPR, but to understand how this works, it's important to understand the physiology of drowning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data appears favorable, mainly because these victims are often unconscious, but not yet in cardiac arrest.  Also, the age of the patient, time spent without oxygen, and many other factors can affect survival rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When water enters the lungs the&#xA;  victim's blood chemistry is rapidly&#xA;  altered, often leading to heart&#xA;  failure. In fresh water drownings&#xA;  inhaled water is immediately absorbed&#xA;  into the blood causing hemodilution.&#xA;  The diluted blood quickly leads to&#xA;  heart failure due to ventricular&#xA;  fibrillation, a condition simply&#xA;  described as shivering of the heart,&#xA;  or anoxia (oxygen starvation). Sea or&#xA;  salt water creates the opposite&#xA;  effect. Water is drawn from the blood&#xA;  into the lungs. This process causes&#xA;  the blood to become more concentrated,&#xA;  leading to an increased load on the&#xA;  heart and heart failure. Older&#xA;  drowning victims may experience&#xA;  immediate heart failure as a result of&#xA;  the initial trauma of drowning,&#xA;  particularly in extremely cold&#xA;  water.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lib.niu.edu/1982/ip820732.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does the drowning process happen?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very basic outline of the drowning process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Panic and violent struggle to return to surface&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Period of Calmness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Swallowing of fluid, followed by vomiting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Terminal Gasp&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Unconsciousness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Possible Seizures&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Death&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;*The time that this takes is variable, but it could be as little as 12 to 20&#xA;  seconds from the first panic to unconsciousness. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sutcliffe.ca/joel/nls/drowning.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book on forensic pathology details the process a little more delicately:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WAD0R.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=XyG3802xSdwC&amp;amp;pg=PA400&amp;amp;lpg=PA400&amp;amp;dq=physiology%20of%20drowning&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=cVYOavjOsl&amp;amp;sig=a5P3sbIWkV4valM7MVSza4UB7BU&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=5FzdTeSAGdSEtgfe9ojPDw&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=4&amp;amp;ved=0CDUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=physiology%20of%20drowning&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it could be argued that (since we have no way of knowing) some of the drowning victims portrayed in shows like Baywatch are in the very earliest stages of drowning and have only gone unconscious rather than gone into cardiac arrest, which would make their resuscitation plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it does seem awfully convenient that they often revive their victims consistently in the most dramatic (yet, consistently vomit-free) way possible. Again, as it would seem is often the case with television and film, those telling the story tend to cherry-pick the most convenient and plot-friendly aspects of CPR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-27T19:21:54.060" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T19:21:54.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2720" CreationDate="2011-05-26T01:41:35.723" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been suggested that a person by the user name of &quot;cyberyogi&quot; or &quot;CYBERYOGI=CO= Windler&quot; made up the Polybius story as an April Fool's joke.  I believe the rumor is that he posted it on Usenet, but I have not seen this purported original post.  Cyberyogi is German, and his real name is Christian Oliver Windler.  Here is some of him on the web:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://weltenschule.de/e_index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://weltenschule.de/e_index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://weltenschule.de/historicalVideogames.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://weltenschule.de/historicalVideogames.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I've never emailed him and asked if he made up the Polybius myth.  But if any person was so inclined to get to the bottom of this urban legend, I would recommend doing just that very thing...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3106" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T01:41:35.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3638" CreationDate="2011-05-26T02:21:46.450" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard the story that at higher outputs (250,000 watts and up) than the traditional 50,000-watt &amp;quot;clear channel&amp;quot; stations,  dental fillings became receivers. Here's someone who reports experiencing such an occurrence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your wifi, your cellphone, your Bluetooth, all have antennas buried in&#xA;them.  But at 800 or 1850 or 1900 or 2450 Mhz, their wavelengths are&#xA;VERY short, a few cm of a metal strip against the plastic case under&#xA;your hand.  HF antennas at much lower frequencies must be longer, much&#xA;longer.  &lt;strike&gt;Here's a proper HF transmitting antenna:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hawkins.pair.com/voanc/voanc14.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.hawkins.pair.com/voanc/voanc14.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strike&gt;&#xA;It's about 400M high for reference, but we can't fit it on the boat!&#xA;It radiated to Europe for 50 years American propaganda, mostly for&#xA;Russians.  The transmitter was from 250,000 to 1,000,000 watts.  I've&#xA;been there when it was on the air.  Your tooth fillings talk to you...&#xA;(c;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the antenna in question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1UnMR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Voice of America antenna in North Carolina&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe he's exaggerating, maybe not. Here's more testimony from the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Robert Hunsucker, a professor emeritus at the Geophysical Institute with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, my phone isn't that complicated, and neither is a receiver circuit. A receiver is so simple, Hunsucker said, that anything from a phone to a person's mouth can act as one ... Hunsucker said the problem can sometimes be cured with a radio-frequency filter that can be attached to the phone line. He also said that if the radio signal is very strong, a filter might not be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such is the extremely rare case when a person's mouth acts as a receiver. The electrical conductivity of the human body can act as an antenna. &lt;strong&gt;A metallic filling in a tooth, reacting just so with saliva, can act as a semiconductor to detect the audio signal. The speaker in this case could be anything that vibrates within the mouth enough to produce noise, such as bridgework or maybe a loose filling.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;[Emphasis added.]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He says it's extremely rare, but he also describes how it could happen. Failure to reproduce the case by Mythbusters shouldn't hold any water in that case. A thing may be rare and difficult to reproduce, yet still happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit to add a further account from a seemingly credible source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's real. I attended a Field Day setup a few years ago, staged by the Westside Amateur Radio Club in Los Angeles. They had one of their stations inside a trailer, and the radio had an automatic antenna tuner. Well, SOMEBODY didn't ground the thing right. I was inside the shack about 5' from the radio when the op said, &amp;quot;Well, 15 meters is dead; let's tune it up on 20.&amp;quot; He changed bands and hit the deadly little &amp;quot;Automatic Tune&amp;quot; button. The radio began buzzing as the tuner went to work. Also, I let out a scream as one of my teeth with a nice filling in it suddenly felt like a dentist was drilling in it with NO anesthetic! I RAN from that trailer uttering obscenities and the pain vanished as soon as I got clear of the thing. Needless to say I didn't hang around that particular shack much during the rest of the contest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am persuaded by the proximity argument. Since electromagnetic radiation diminishes proportional to the square of the distance, it is credible that running away would decrease the effect. If he was standing five feet away from the transmitter to start, ten feet would reduce the effect to 25%, 20 feet to 6.25%, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NB&lt;/strong&gt; The links have all rotted away over the past nine years, so I am removing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-02-18T14:47:21.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3651" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-26T04:25:57.423" Score="4" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/641/is-graphology-grounded&quot;&gt;Is graphology grounded?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I walked across the street , I found the following poster.This is an advertisement for  a Graphology institute that claims to teach the &quot;right way of writing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iP7Id.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel, it is totally absurd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are any of the claims in the image proved or scientifically studied ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T05:01:39.567" Title="Is graphology a scientific method?" Tags="|graphology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-05-26T06:00:13.663" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3557" CreationDate="2011-05-26T04:42:18.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sound has been shown to be a possible trigger of seizures, so it's possible, but I've only found documentation of music triggering seizures, not speech. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a good summary of possible seizure triggers at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org/about/types/triggers/livingtrigger.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;epilepsyfoundation.org&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other types of sensory stimuli, such as light touch, tapping or soaking in hot water, can be associated with reflex seizures; &lt;strong&gt;auditory stimuli are less common triggers of seizures.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Musicogenic&quot; -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/News/story?id=4156548&amp;amp;page=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;music-triggered seizures are possible&lt;/a&gt;, but these triggers vary widely from person to person. Music &lt;a href=&quot;http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/health&amp;amp;id=5898312&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;may set up patterns in the brain&lt;/a&gt; that can lead to a seizure. Music &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070801122226.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;triggers different regions of the brain&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I was unable to find a correlation between non-music audio triggering seizures. It seems likely that it's possible, but I find no documentation of speech triggering a seizure. The warning on the audiobook may well be a marketing ploy, since this is &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt;; I'd be interested to know if the publisher knows of any cases of their product triggering seizures or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="408" LastEditorUserId="408" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T04:55:18.107" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T04:55:18.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3439" CreationDate="2011-05-26T10:09:49.190" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;And this is still two separate questions, but I'll make an attempt to answer one of them. Or maybe a half. Namely &quot;did Muhammad have sex with Aisha when she was nine years old&quot;. And the answer to that is as far as we can ascertain, &lt;strong&gt;a big question mark&lt;/strong&gt;. We simply don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sources on Aisha is the Hadith, which are texts collected about Muhammad about a 100 or 200 years after his death. We don't know how accurate they are, but they are generally seen to be quite trustworthy, but they are at best second-hand accounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These sources (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/058.sbt.html#005.058.234&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/bukhari/062.sbt.html#007.062.064&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/muslim/008.smt.html#008.3309&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/hadith/abudawud/041.sat.html#041.4915&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;,) agree on that Muhammad and Aisha was engaged when she was 6 years old. But they can be separated according to who is the original source. Many of them attribute themselves to Aisha herself. She consistently says that she moved into Muhammad's household at the age of 9. No quote attributed to her says that the marriage was consummated at that (or any other) time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other quotes do say that is was consummated when she was nine. But the question then is how they know? Reasonably only Muhammad and Aisha knew. And the question also arises to what &quot;consummated&quot; means. In western tradition the marriage is consummated when you have intercourse. I can't find any source that says what word is used in the Arabic originals, so I don't know if the implications are the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Aisha never had any children. But she used her position as Muhammads wife to wield power after his death, claiming to be his favorite wife in some of the quotes above. With her youth combined with the fact that she had no children, it might have been that people claimed that their marriage had never been consummated in an effort to minimize her influence. In that case of course other trustworthy people would have to step up and say that it was consummated. And since the culture at this time had no qualms about marriages to children, they didn't claim that it was consummated when she was 18 (at which point Muhammad was dying anyway) but more realistically that it was consummated when she joined Muhammad's household. And today people then go &quot;Ugh, child molester!&quot; as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the end, the only sources we have are third-hand sources saying that the marriage was consummated when she was nine, although we don't know exactly what that means, and we can't be sure what happened, because only Aisha and Muhammad knew for sure, and they didn't say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T10:09:49.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3660" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-26T10:20:57.107" Score="15" ViewCount="1239" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the term &quot;Al Qaeda&quot; made up by the CIA or the FBI? (Tweet of a colleague, citing Adam Curtis' documentary &quot;The Power of Nightmares&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even OBL hadn't heard the name &quot;Al Qaeda&quot; until the FBI/CIA decided it needed a name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, I've heard that it really means &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&amp;amp;aid=24738&quot;&gt;The Database&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shortly before his untimely death,&#xA;  former British Foreign Secretary Robin&#xA;  Cook told the House of Commons that&#xA;  &quot;Al Qaeda&quot; is not really a terrorist&#xA;  group but a database of international&#xA;  mujaheddin and arms smugglers used by&#xA;  the CIA and Saudis to funnel&#xA;  guerrillas, arms, and money into&#xA;  Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Courtesy&#xA;  of World Affairs, a journal based in&#xA;  New Delhi, WMR can bring you an&#xA;  important excerpt from an Apr.-Jun.&#xA;  2004 article by Pierre-Henry Bunel, a&#xA;  former agent for French military&#xA;  intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T11:46:45.100" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T02:29:45.313" Title="Is the phrase &quot;Al Qaeda&quot; a made up term?" Tags="|cia|osama-bin-laden|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3661" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-26T10:55:55.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Head of al qaeda, the organization responsible for 9/11 and other terrorist attacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T11:29:19.180" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T11:29:19.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3662" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-26T10:55:55.983" Score="0" Body="Head of al qaeda, the organization responsible for 9/11 and other terrorist attacks." OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T11:29:15.983" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T11:29:15.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3663" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-26T10:59:24.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Islamist organization responsible for 9/11 and other terrorist attacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T11:29:08.823" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T11:29:08.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3664" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-26T10:59:24.187" Score="0" Body="An Islamist organization responsible for 9/11 and other terrorist attacks." OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T11:29:10.397" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T11:29:10.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3665" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3670" CreationDate="2011-05-26T11:03:27.400" Score="33" ViewCount="7681" Body="&lt;p&gt;In TV show or films, it seems that throwing any mains-powered electrical device (such as a television or radio)  in a bathtub can kill the person in said bathtub. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this happen? It appears to me that power should shut down almost instantly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3112" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:37:02.453" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:37:02.453" Title="Can a television thrown in a bathtub kill someone?" Tags="|electromagnetism|television|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3668" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-26T11:19:07.560" Score="20" ViewCount="15466" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember reading that workers pooped in the hallways of Versailles for their own pleasure some years ago, but can't find a confirming source by Googling.   Can anyone enlighten me as to the actual history and whether what I heard is correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="200" LastEditorUserId="1183" LastEditDate="2011-07-04T17:25:22.233" LastActivityDate="2016-11-14T01:58:33.373" Title="Did workers defecate in the hallways of the Palace of Versailles when they were building it?" Tags="|history|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3665" CreationDate="2011-05-26T11:44:30.310" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very simply, it &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; but with modern electrical safety systems, it's &lt;em&gt;unlikely&lt;/em&gt;. A modern television is not earthed, as the casing is usually plastic, although some bigger sets have grounds. The reason for this is because the class Y capacitors used to filter EMI &lt;a href=&quot;http://my.execpc.com/~endlr/line-filter.html&quot;&gt;require an earth conductor&lt;/a&gt;. Bigger sets emit more EMI because they use more power, thus can require an earth connector. In which case, earth must be connected to exposed metal parts, if any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they have a direct ground, water is likely to short live to the earthed case and trip the RCD/GFCI &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.powercords.co.uk/howrcd.htm&quot;&gt;within 30 ms&lt;/a&gt;, with a current as low as 30mA. A general rule is that you can feel &lt;a href=&quot;http://warrior.eccc.edu/ComptiaAPlus/Lists/Team%20Discussion/DispForm.aspx?ID=4&amp;amp;RootFolder=/ComptiaAPlus/Lists/Team%20Discussion/The%201-10-100%20Rule%20and%20Safety%20Example&quot;&gt;1mA, 10mA is painful and 100mA can stop the heart&lt;/a&gt;. As you can't get out, this leads to death... and it's not nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, then it could be fatal if the bathtub is not correctly earthed which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diyfixit.co.uk/electrics/earthing.html&quot;&gt;according to regulations it &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; be&lt;/a&gt;. If the bathtub is earthed, the water will allow enough current to flow from live to earth to trip the RCD/GFCI. It would hurt, but you'd be able to get out usually.  Modern household RCD/GFCI devices will trip on the current required to cause fibrilation - often much lower to make it safer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that RCD/GFCI devices don't measure earth current but instead the imbalance between live and neutral so even without a proper mains earth for the bath they will work. All that is important is that the current has some way to avoid going from live to neutral. If that is through the plumbing, it could save your life, though any assailant throwing TVs at you is likely to have more devious plans in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="1626" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T12:20:03.907" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T12:20:03.907" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3678" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3714" CreationDate="2011-05-26T12:26:57.017" Score="7" ViewCount="28215" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can yeast extracts, such as vegemite and marmite treat ulcers within your mouth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-05-27T07:40:25.480" LastActivityDate="2019-03-20T16:33:34.250" Title="Can vegemite or marmite heal ulcers?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3618" CreationDate="2011-05-26T13:00:39.913" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It hasn't been banned, it simply needs to apply for a license to be able to be sold.  Rice Crispies and other such fortified cereals have also had their license revoked, and have been asked to re-submit an application to be licensed for sale, due to the added minerals and bits and bobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, Marmite has been sold for ages without the correct license&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should this also state that they mean Marmite in england, as Aussie Marmite is different, with sugar and caramel added (for god knows what reason).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uk.foedevarestyrelsen.dk/Food_Safety/Fortified_food/forside.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Marketing fortified food in Denmark&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/8537021/Marmite-makers-urged-to-fight-Denmark-ban.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Telegraph confirmation of license application needed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2883" LastEditorUserId="2883" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T13:27:08.443" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T13:27:08.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3683" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-26T13:28:09.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Foodstuffs [citation needed] such as vegemite and marmite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T14:07:44.463" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T14:07:44.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3684" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-26T13:28:09.640" Score="0" Body="Foodstuffs [citation needed] such as vegemite and marmite." OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T14:07:40.470" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T14:07:40.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3686" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6979" CreationDate="2011-05-26T14:19:00.973" Score="30" ViewCount="4698" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0425308/&quot;&gt;Noise&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That movie got me thinking, because it makes a number of claims about car alarms that jive with my personal feelings about them.  They're noisy, obnoxious, tend to go off at night, and are almost universally ignored by passersby, people in nearby houses, and the car owners themselves.  Despite these flaws, having one is almost default for new automobiles, and you even get a discount on insurance if you have one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is:  Do car alarms actually reduce the incidence of theft of or from automobiles in which they are installed?  If so, by how much?  Whether or not the reduction (if any) is worth the hassle and noise will, of course, be a matter of opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:  I'm not, of course, referring to car security systems in general.  I'm only questioning the usefulness of the loud noise making aspect of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1617" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:36:42.283" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:36:42.283" Title="Do car alarms provide a significant reduction in automobile theft?" Tags="|road-vehicles|criminology|sound|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3639" CreationDate="2011-05-26T14:58:23.057" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three confirmed animals on the list Konrad Rudolph provided:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingiso&quot;&gt;Dingiso (or Bondegezou)&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoan_Kiem_turtle&quot;&gt;Hoan Kiem turtle&lt;/a&gt; and&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuvier%27s_beaked_whale&quot;&gt;Cuvier's beaked whale&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Though the turtle is most likely actually an already known species, just in an odd and not-usually-seen location.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two that are oddly (to me) not on the list are probably the most famous:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okapi&quot;&gt;Okapi&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_squid&quot;&gt;Giant squid&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3114" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T14:58:23.057" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3616" CreationDate="2011-05-26T15:30:25.977" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since no answer showed actual economics research, I'll present at least one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~mdo738/research.html#femalepower&quot;&gt;http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~mdo738/research.html#femalepower&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does Female Empowerment Promote Economic Development?&lt;/strong&gt; Matthias Doepke, Michele Tertilt&#xA;; April 2011&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Empirical evidence suggests that money in the hands of mothers (as opposed&#xA;  to their husbands) benefits children. Does this observation imply that&#xA;  targeting transfers to women is good economic policy? We develop a series&#xA;  of noncooperative family bargaining models to understand what kind&#xA;  of frictions can give rise to the observed empirical relationships. We then assess&#xA;  the policy implications of these models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We find that targeting transfers&#xA;  to women can have unintended consequences and may fail to make children&#xA;  better off&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Moreover, different forms of empowering women may lead to opposite&#xA;  results.&lt;/strong&gt; More research is needed to distinguish between alternative&#xA;  theoretical models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T15:30:25.977" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3637" CreationDate="2011-05-26T16:11:37.550" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The satellites for which there is publically available info** are definitely incapable of resolutions supporting reading written text or even car license plates; nor distinguish facial features.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best ones are supposed to be Keyhole-class KH-7 (2.5&amp;quot;) followed by KH-11 (4-6&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Detailed quotes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, some results from &lt;a href=&quot;http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/JeannelleLouis.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/JeannelleLouis.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(&lt;strong&gt;Resolution of a Spy Satellite&lt;/strong&gt;, The Physics Factbook™; Edited by Glenn Elert -- Written by his students)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source&lt;/em&gt;: Massive New Top Secret Spy-Satellite Program to Cost up to $25 Billion. Los Angeles Times. 7 June 2001.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Data&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;Approximately 6 inches on current satellites&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source&lt;/em&gt;: Satellites System Overview Articles. America Online: Path: Spy Satellites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Data&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;Type KH-11 Spy Satellites, 10 cm/4 inch resolution; KH-7 -1966 2&amp;quot; Resolution.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source&lt;/em&gt;: Silber, Kenneth. Spy Satellites: Still a Few Steps Ahead. 21 September 1999.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Data&lt;/em&gt;: According to an estimate by the private Federation of American Scientists (FAS), three satellites operated by the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) have &lt;strong&gt;resolutions as sharp as 10 centimeters (3.93 inches)&lt;/strong&gt; -- in other words, the satellites can discern a softball-sized object from several hundred miles away.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3077885/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/spy-satellites-enter-new-dimension/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3077885/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/spy-satellites-enter-new-dimension/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three are “visible light” satellites, the most recent of which resemble the Hubble Space Telescope and were built by the same contractor at the same Lockheed Martin facility in Sunnyvale, Calif. They are known in the spy trade as “Keyhole-class” satellites. And &lt;strong&gt;they have a resolution of 5 to 6 inches&lt;/strong&gt;, meaning they can distinguish an object that small, but no smaller, on the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two other satellites are radar-imaging, built by Lockheed Martin in Watertown, Colo. &lt;strong&gt;Their resolution is about 3 feet.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While satellites cannot read license plates, they can tell if a car has one. While they cannot tell a mullah by the length of his beard, they can help analysts figure out how many people are chanting along with him at a street demonstration. And while they cannot hover over an area and provide real-time images, other “assets” such as unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones, can do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that in addition to classified proprietary tech, the modern movenet is towards using commercial capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22046019/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/us-plans-next-gen-spy-satellite-program/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22046019/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/us-plans-next-gen-spy-satellite-program/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bulk of the article talks about cancellation of Boeing's Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) program. The rest covers what replaced it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;U.S. commercial satellites now have better than two-foot resolution, &lt;strong&gt;meaning each pixel in a digital image spans 24 inches&lt;/strong&gt;. In April, a satellite will be launched with 16-inch resolution. By 2011, that is expected to narrow to nearly 10 inches. Tighter resolutions let analysts see details that allow them to accurately identify missiles and other targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dodbuzz.com/2009/04/07/president-approves-new-satellite-system/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.dodbuzz.com/2009/04/07/president-approves-new-satellite-system/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a GeoEye spokesman noted today, his company has already committed more than $30 million dollars to the next generation satellite, known as GeoEye 2, and ITT is already grinding its 1.1 meter mirror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ground resolution for pictures taken from this satellite would be a remarkable &lt;strong&gt;9.75 inches.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In addition, from the Washington Post article (&amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;A LOOK AT Spy Satellites &amp;amp; Hollywood&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; By Dwayne A. Day); now saved at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.c4i.org/spysats.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.c4i.org/spysats.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Dwayne Day is a space policy analyst and historian who lives in Northern Virginia. He is the editor of &amp;quot;Eye in the Sky&amp;quot; (Smithsonian Institution Press), a book about early spy satellites.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if a satellite had the right angle on the license plate, it wouldn't be able to make out the letters and numbers. The best resolution of an American spy satellite, &lt;strong&gt;achieved by an older series no longer in use, was reputed to be about 2 1/2 inches.&lt;/strong&gt; This means that the smallest visible object would be the size of a baseball, not the thin letters and numbers on a license plate. And smoke, haze, smog or clouds would all reduce the quality of the resolution, as would the distance required to see the license plate from an angle. Memo to future filmmakers: License plates cannot be read from satellites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I presume he meant KH-7.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T16:40:23.487" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3691" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-26T16:23:43.323" Score="6" ViewCount="1045" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many media reports say that Twitter and Facebook played critical roles in the so-called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_spring&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arab Spring&lt;/a&gt;. However, I find it hard to believe this, and I really haven't seen any concrete examples of how Facebook/Twitter started/caused/significantly promoted these revolutions. At best, I believe that they played the role of a new kind of telephone system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any concrete analyses/data about the role of social media in the protests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastEditorUserId="2433" LastEditDate="2011-05-26T18:23:18.477" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T18:23:18.477" Title="What role did Facebook/Twitter play in the &quot;Arab Spring&quot;?" Tags="|social-media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3695" CreationDate="2011-05-26T16:47:09.427" Score="79" ViewCount="6152" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does wearing a helmet while bicycling make an individual cyclist safer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, in the case of an accident, is one safer wearing an helmet? If yes, are the odds of an accident lower, higher or identical if one is wearing a helmet? If the odds of an accident are higher when wearing an helmet, does the added safety of an helmet in the case of an accident makes the practice worthwhile? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To substantiate this claim being in the wild, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikael_Colville-Andersen&quot;&gt;Mikael Colville-Andersen&lt;/a&gt; casts doubt at a &lt;a href=&quot;http://video.tedxcopenhagen.dk/video/911034/mikael-colville-andersen&quot;&gt;TEDxCopenhagen talk saying they make things worse&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;To my surprise, it didn't take me very long to figure out that the bicycle helmet doesn't have a very impressive track safety record, scientifically. The scientific community has been completely split for years on the subject 50/50 down the middle. If you look at this way, if the bicycle helmet was a vaccine or a medicine there is no way it would be anywhere near getting approved by a ministry of health. There is simply not enough proof. [...] There are actually scientific studies that show your risk of brain injury is higher when you wear a helmet. You have a 14% greater chance of getting into an accident with a helmet on.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While The League of American Bicyclists' contradicts that in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bikeleague.org/about/positions/helmetuse.php&quot;&gt;Helmet use when Cycling&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Helmets are safety devices which prevent or mitigate head injuries in a crash or fall, not substitutes for education which is aimed at the prevention of crashes and falls. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="408" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T19:11:12.043" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T12:36:03.433" Title="Does wearing a bicycle helmet make the cyclist safer?" Tags="|safety|bicycles|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3691" CreationDate="2011-05-26T16:56:28.750" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strategic Forecast (stratfor.com) had a pretty decent analysis that touched on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110202-social-media-tool-protest&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110202-social-media-tool-protest&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Social Media as a Tool for Protest&lt;/strong&gt; By Marko Papic and Sean Noonan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, a factoid:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shutting down the Internet did not reduce the numbers of Egyptian protesters in the streets. In fact, the protests only grew bigger as websites were shut down and the Internet was turned off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, a couple of relevant points of analysis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A leadership too reliant on social media can also become isolated from alternative political movements with which it may share the common goal of regime change. This is especially the case when other movements are not “youth movements” and therefore are not as tech savvy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And their summary:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Social media represent only one tool among many for an opposition group to employ. Protest movements are rarely successful if led from somebody’s basement in a virtual arena. Their leaders must have charisma and street smarts, just like leaders of any organization. A revolutionary group cannot rely on its most tech-savvy leaders to ultimately launch a successful revolution any more than a business can depend on the IT department to sell its product. It is part of the overall strategy, but it cannot be the sole strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As an excellent couple of example proving these idea are:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Iran. What you see on Twitter/Facebook is NOT always what the bulk of the society's picture is (Stratfor's separate analysis zeroed in on this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand and telecommunications magnate, has used his skills to hold video conference calls with stadiums full of supporters, and launched two massive waves of protests involving some 100,000 supporters against the Thai government in April 2009 and April and May 2010, yet he still has not succeeded in taking power. He remains a disembodied voice, capable of rocking the boat but incapable of taking its helm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read more: Social Media as a Tool for Protest | STRATFOR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a less scholarly note, now that the idealistic ... wise people... may be started to realize that the &amp;quot;Arab Spring&amp;quot; just might not necessarily bring to power a wonderful western democracy style groups, but people some of whom &lt;em&gt;gasp&lt;/em&gt; were affiliated with Al Qaeda, &lt;strong&gt;Facebook's Big Boss Mark Zuckerberg decided to play it humble and down-play the importance of Facebook:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking at a meeting for internet governance, the so-called e-G8 summit in Paris, Zuckerberg said: &amp;quot;It would be extremely arrogant for any specific technology company to claim any meaningful role.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He said the wave of protests against autocratic governments sweeping through the Arab world could have been organised using other websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 27-year-old CEO of the world's largest social networking site said: &amp;quot;The thing that was both necessary and sufficient was a population of people who felt very strongly that change needed to happen.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T18:10:08.707" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3629" CreationDate="2011-05-26T16:57:41.080" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would seem not. Certainly not much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Donations to Family Radio were huge over the last few years, but it does appear that the money was spent on advertizing the date of the Apocalyse, which was of course the point. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_18089431?nclick_check=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; talks quite a bit about the finances of Family Radio:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2009, in the last Family Radio tax return that was made public, the group collected $18.4 million in contributions, and earned more than $1 million in investment and other income. That year the group spent $36.7 million, and $41.2 million the previous year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Donations have picked up, but not enough to offset the amount of money we're spending,&amp;quot; said [Family Radio board member Tom] Evans&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, Family Radio was spending more than it earned on the Apocalyse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Camping says that he works on a voluntary basis for Family Radio. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summary&amp;amp;orgid=3686&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Charity Navigator&lt;/a&gt;, with which Family Radio has a 4 star rating, backs this up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T16:57:41.080" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3692" CreationDate="2011-05-26T17:37:12.537" Score="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take this study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Objectives. —To examine the protective effectiveness of bicycle helmets in 4 different age groups of bicyclists, in crashes involving motor vehicles, and by helmet type and certification standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research Design. —Prospective case-control study&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting. —Emergency departments (EDs) in 7 Seattle, Wash, area hospitals between March 1, 1992, and August 31, 1994.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Participants. —Case subjects were all bicyclists treated in EDs for head injuries, all who were hospitalized, and all who died at the scene. Control subjects were bicyclists treated for nonhead injuries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main Results. —There were 3390 injured bicyclists in the study; 29% of cases and 56% of controls were helmeted. Risk of head injury in helmeted vs unhelmeted cyclists adjusted for age and motor vehicle involvement indicate a protective effect of 69% to 74% for helmets for 3 different categories of head injury: any head injury (odds ratio [OR], 0.31; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.26-0.37), brain injury (OR, 0.35; 95% CI, 0.25-0.48), or severe brain injury (OR, 0.26; 95% CI, 0.14-0,48). Adjusted ORs for each of 4 age groups (&amp;lt;6 y, 6-12 y, 13-19 y, and ≥20 years) indicate similar levels of helmet protection by age (OR range, 0.27-0.40). Helmets were equally effective in crashes involving motor vehicles (OR, 0. 95% CI, 0.20-0.48) and those not involving motor vehicles (OR, 0.32; 95% CI, 0.20-0.39). There was no effect modification by age or motor vehicle involvement (P=.7 and P=.3). No significant differences were found for the protective effect of hard-shell, thin-shell, or no-shell helmets (P=.5).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions. —Bicycle helmets, regardless of type, provide substantial protection against head injuries for cyclists of all ages involved in crashes, including crashes involving motor vehicles.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/276/24/1968.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/276/24/1968.short&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, this should be a basic physics question: The severity of head injuries clearly depends on the force of the impact. If that force is reduced in any way, this will mean less severe injuries. In a way, this question is similar to the question if there are studies regarding the usefulness of parachutes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; There was the added question of increased odds of accident when wearing a helmet. This is the theory of &lt;strong&gt;risk homeostasis&lt;/strong&gt;. According to that theory, each individual has a personal target level for the risk it takes. If safety measures reduce the risk, behavior is adapted to bring it to the higher level again. A discussion of this effect regarding bicycle helmets is found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/7/2/89.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/7/2/89.full&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;However, there is apparently no consensus and no study regarding the specific question of risk homeostasis for bicycle helmets. Subsequent studies proved to be inconclusive as well, and there are many more effects to take into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-26T18:45:22.790" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3701" CreationDate="2011-05-26T18:28:50.640" Score="20" ViewCount="2889" Body="&lt;p&gt;A commonly taught adage is to never accept a ride from a stranger. This applies mostly to children and goes hand in hand with warnings about accepting gifts from strangers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, having grown older, I cannot think of anyone amongst my friends, associates or acquaintances that would ever willing harm a child by giving them a lift and stealing them away. Is riding with strangers truly unsafe for children?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help define the question: How many child kidnappings (or other crimes) began by the child accepting a ride from a stranger? How does this compare to other kidnappings or other sources of danger for children?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bonus question here involves hitchhiking, which is essentially the same thing but over long distances and usually by people much older.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastActivityDate="2019-06-10T21:25:06.640" Title="Is riding with strangers unsafe?" Tags="|safety|children|traffic|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3696" CreationDate="2011-05-26T20:55:47.197" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120308232351/https://www.cbc.ca/news/background/missingchildren&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a link that puts child kidnappings and disappearances in context. The figures are for Canada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing to notice is that of the 60,000 or so missing children in a typical year, there are about 100 times as many runaways as there are kidnappings. Of those kidnappings, 80-90% are parental abductions. The number of kidnappings by someone other than a parent (not necessarily a stranger) are around the 30-60 range per year. Essentially that means your likelihood of having a child kidnapped by a non-parent is about the same as winning a million dollars on the lottery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160603180835/http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/pubs/omc-ned/abd-rapt-eng.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is an exceptionally detailed study of kidnappings in Canada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-06-10T21:25:06.640" LastActivityDate="2019-06-10T21:25:06.640" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3696" CreationDate="2011-05-26T21:00:34.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mostly it is going to depend on how safe of a driver the person is.  Because most people are generally good and unless you provoke them excessively are not going to harm you.  But some people are just bad drivers and I would wager that the odds are more in favor of being harmed in an accident caused by their bad driving than any ill intent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120217212517/https://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/transportation/motor_vehicle_accidents_and_fatalities.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This link&lt;/a&gt; shows over 2.2 million accidents with injuries in the US in 2009.  (Note 2009 is not abnormally high).  There were about &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140629055513/http://www.project.org/info.php?recordID=158&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;500000 missing people reported in 2002&lt;/a&gt; that were not family abductions.  This number includes people who have runaway or just gone missing.  But assuming that even 50% of these are stranger abductions there is still a greater risk of being hurt in a car accident than of being abducted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acquaintance kidnapping involves a “comparatively high percentage of&#xA;  juvenile perpetrators, has the largest percentage of female and&#xA;  teenage victim, is more often associated with other crimes (especially&#xA;  sexual and physical assault), occurs at homes and residences and has&#xA;  the highest percentage of injured victims.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stranger kidnapping “victimizes more females than males, occurs&#xA;  primarily at outdoor locations, victimizes both teenagers and&#xA;  school-age children, is associated with sexual assaults in the case of&#xA;  girl victims and robberies in the case of boy victims, and is the type&#xA;  of kidnapping most likely to involve the use of a firearm.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://codeambernews.blogspot.com/2010/05/us-kidnapping-statistics-have-not-been.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Code Amber News&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-06-10T21:22:38.253" LastActivityDate="2019-06-10T21:22:38.253" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3703" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-26T21:20:35.380" Score="9" ViewCount="317" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7219/does-the-presence-of-a-cellphone-affect-sperm-count-or-heart-rate&quot;&gt;Does the presence of a cellphone affect sperm count or heart rate?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is cell phone use harmless or is there a chance that it lowers the sperm count of men?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;New independent studies offer proof&#xA;  that confirms findings from the&#xA;  Council of Europe: pulsed digital&#xA;  signals from cell phones disrupt DNA,&#xA;  impair brain function, and &lt;strong&gt;lower&#xA;  sperm count&lt;/strong&gt;, according to a&#xA;  statement by the Environmental Health&#xA;  Trust (EHT).&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kurzweilai.net/new-studies-reveal-evidence-that-cell-phone-radiation-damages-dna-brain-and-sperm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T14:35:10.567" Title="Does frequent cell phone use reduce the sperm count of men?" Tags="|medical-science|radiation|mobile-phones|fertility|sperm|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2011-12-13T10:35:02.977" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1178" CreationDate="2011-05-27T00:16:53.487" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did find &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehib.org/emf/RiskEvaluation/ExecSumm.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one study about WiFi and trees&lt;/a&gt;. Conclusion translated to English from Dutch:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wageningen University was commissioned by the municipality of Alphen aan den Rijn how the increasing number of sources of electromagnetic radiation, such as masts, could play a role in the deteriorating health of the trees. It was a growing cell the effect of radiation of known WiFi access points on small Esboompjes investigated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The notes were exposed for more than three months to six sources of radiation with frequencies ranging from 2412 to 2472 MHz and a power of 100 mW EIRP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An association between the studied wifi radiation and the wide range of symptoms in adult trees can not be explicitly placed on the basis of the present study.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/environment/info/dudek/ECOSUB/Attach%203-C%20Electric%20and%20Magnetic%20Fields.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study by the California Department of Health Studies&lt;/a&gt; -- be advised, this is about EMFs from power lines, and I'm not clear how much stronger / weaker those are compared to radio frequency EMFs from cell phones and wifi:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On behalf of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), three scientists who work for the California Department of Health Services (DHS) were asked to review&#xA;  the studies about possible health problems from electric and magnetic fields (EMFs) from power lines, wiring in buildings, some jobs, and appliances. The CPUC request&#xA;  for review did not include radio frequency EMFs from cell phones and radio towers. Reviewer 1, Vincent Delpizzo, Ph.D., is a physicist and epidemiologist; Reviewer 2,&#xA;  Raymond Richard Neutra, M.D., Dr.P.H., is a physician epidemiologist; and Reviewer 3, Geraldine Lee, Ph.D., is an epidemiologist with training in genetics. All three&#xA;  have published original research in the EMF area and have followed the field for many years. They were assisted in their reviews by DHS toxicologists, physicians, and&#xA;  epidemiologists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The EMF Program’s policy analysis required each of the three DHS scientists to express in numbers their individual professional judgments that the range of added&#xA;  personal risks suggested by the epidemiological studies were “real.” They did this as a numerical “degree of certainty” on a scale of 0 to 100. For the conditions with the&#xA;  most suggestive evidence of EMF risk, the three scientists each came up with a graph that depicts their best judgments with a little “x” and the margin of uncertainty with&#xA;  a shaded bar: The differences in certainty between the three reviewers arises primarily from how sure they were that they could rule out study flaws or other explanatory&#xA;  agents and how much the evidence on one disease influenced certainty in the findings for other diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/H9QsT.png&quot; alt=&quot;degree of certainty graph&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see from the &quot;degree of certainty&quot; from these professionals, the jury is very much out on this one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my &lt;em&gt;opinion&lt;/em&gt; in the absence of even &lt;em&gt;mildly&lt;/em&gt; compelling proof of danger, I don't think there is harm from reasonable, typical exposure to WiFi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29" LastEditorUserId="29" LastEditDate="2011-05-27T00:56:46.487" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T00:56:46.487" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4953" CreationDate="2011-05-27T01:11:52.043" Score="31" ViewCount="13129" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sea salt has been getting much more popular lately due to a perception that it tastes better than regular salt. Since it has negligible amounts of iodine, and tends to replace iodized salt in our diet, I understand that some iodine-deficiency-related diseases are on the rise in the U.S. Other than that, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_salt#Health&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; tells me that the health consequences of ingesting sea salt or regular salt are the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there really a difference in the way they taste? Have any scientific taste-tests been done to see if people could tell the difference in flavor when sea salt is used in or on their food?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1314" LastEditorUserId="1314" LastEditDate="2011-05-27T15:39:56.583" LastActivityDate="2019-09-06T14:18:19.487" Title="Can people tell the difference between sea salt and table salt in food?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3707" CreationDate="2011-05-27T01:35:07.543" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was an article in &lt;em&gt;The Times&lt;/em&gt; from May 8, 2009: &lt;em&gt;Designer salt? Take that with a pinch of you-know-what&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article6243845.ece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;original, now dead link&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20090515125627/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article6243845.ece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;archived copy&lt;/a&gt; ). It isn't from a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but describes two blinded taste-tests of different salts, where the author is surprised to find that the difference is detectable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;We tried Sainsbury’s own-brand table salt versus the common French sea salt, La Baleine. We tasted them blind. They were both fine-ground. I expected a dead heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the difference in taste was amazing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="34796" LastEditDate="2019-09-06T12:51:22.367" LastActivityDate="2019-09-06T12:51:22.367" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3710" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23597" CreationDate="2011-05-27T03:47:10.897" Score="11" ViewCount="1673" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mean looking at a partial or annular eclipse, or before or after totality, and specifically the claim that it is more dangerous than looking into the sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard two versions of this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is more dangerous because you'll be tempted to not look away (i.e. &quot;a plain circle isn't interesting&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is more dangerous, even for a brief instant, because the pupils are dilated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a surprising number of places don't explain at all, just saying it is dangerous to look directly at the sun without explaining why they're specifically repeating the warning for the eclipse when everyone knows not to look at the sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there any truth to this, and more specifically to the idea that it does permanent damage instantly (so if you're looking at the corona and totality ends, you won't get a chance to look away)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1998" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T03:29:45.970" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T03:07:38.683" Title="Is looking into a solar eclipse especially dangerous?" Tags="|environmental-health|ophthalmology|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3710" CreationDate="2011-05-27T04:38:20.373" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is more dangerous because the sun appears darker during an eclipse, making it more &quot;pleasant&quot; (or less unpleasant) to look at it for a longer period of time. Add to this the dilated pupils, and the fact that the retina itself doesn't feel pain and the adverse effects set on only after a couple of hours...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An excellent resource is this &lt;a href=&quot;http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/safety.html&quot;&gt;NASA Website&lt;/a&gt;, which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even when 99% of the Sun's surface is obscured during the partial phases of a total eclipse, the remaining photospheric crescent is intensely bright and cannot be viewed safely without eye protection [Chou, 1981; Marsh, 1982]. Do not attempt to observe the partial or annular phases of any eclipse with the naked eye. Failure to use appropriate filtration may result in permanent eye damage or blindness!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="2002" LastEditDate="2011-05-27T08:52:06.313" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T08:52:06.313" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3713" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3718" CreationDate="2011-05-27T07:20:41.170" Score="24" ViewCount="15761" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep on reading about people living in the Northern Hemisphere who warn their children not to get their feet wet or else they will &quot;catch the death of your cold&quot;. Is this really true? I mean will they catch cold? If so, why? Because in Australia, I can stand in the rain and not catch cold. I play footy, and it rains, and its autumn, but I don't get sick. However, when I play, I don't get my feet wet. Do you really catch cold if your feet get wet? And if you get wet but your feet don't, will you still become sick?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-06-27T19:14:58.707" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T16:18:58.647" Title="Will getting your feet wet make you sick?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3678" CreationDate="2011-05-27T07:38:59.693" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found many personal anecdotes recommending Vegemite and/or Marmite for mouth ulcers. However, I have not found a study that shows that Vegemite and/or Marmite actually work. I also found &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AAphthous_ulcer/Archive_1#Marmite_should_be_deleted&quot;&gt;a personal anecdote&lt;/a&gt; that Marmite actually caused and worsened ulcers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, vitamin B&lt;sub&gt;12&lt;/sub&gt; has been associated with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphthous_ulcer&quot;&gt;Apthous ulcers&lt;/a&gt; (a.k.a canker sores - one of two types of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouth_ulcer&quot;&gt;mouth ulcer&lt;/a&gt;) in two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some patients with recurring ulcers were found to be deficient in vitamin B&lt;sub&gt;12&lt;/sub&gt;. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/105102&quot;&gt; Nutritional deficiencies in recurrent aphthae. Wray D, Ferguson MM, Hutcheon WA, Dagg JH. J Oral Pathol. 1978;7(6):418-23. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0714.1978.tb01612.x. PMID 105102.&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vitamin B&lt;sub&gt;12&lt;/sub&gt; (in pill or injection form?) was found to be effective as a treatment for recurring ulcers (regardless of whether deficiencies were initially present) in a small placebo-controlled, double-blind trial. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/105102&quot;&gt;Volkov I, Rudoy I, Freud T, et al (2009). &quot;Effectiveness of vitamin B12 in treating recurrent aphthous stomatitis: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial&quot;. J Am Board Fam Med 22 (1): 9–16.doi:10.3122/jabfm.2009.01.080113. PMID 19124628.&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that raises the question whether the application of Vegemite or Marmite may help through the ingestion of B&lt;sub&gt;12&lt;/sub&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vegemite, however, contains no B&lt;sub&gt;12&lt;/sub&gt;! [Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegemite#Nutritional_information&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, and not contradicted by the jar of Vegemite I consulted, that lists B&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt;, B&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; and B&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt; levels.] Marmite, on the other hand, is rich in B&lt;sub&gt;12&lt;/sub&gt;. [Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmite#Nutritional_information&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, I found no scientific evidence that Vegemite or Marmite might help ulcers topically (although I may have missed it). I found a plausible mechanism where a diet rich in B&lt;sub&gt;12&lt;/sub&gt; (including Marmite, but not aided by Vegemite) might assist in reducing the recurrence of Aphthous ulcers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would highly recommend consulting a doctor (who has a wide range of clinically-tested treatments to address mouth ulcers), rather than relying on ill-considered folk remedies you hear about on the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T07:38:59.693" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3713" CreationDate="2011-05-27T09:04:35.477" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Colds are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16253889&quot;&gt;caused by viruses&lt;/a&gt; (over 200 types). There are lots things which increase the chance of you getting a cold which include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Touching your face with contaminated fingers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spending lots of time in enclosed, warm, moist areas with other people. (This is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12357708&quot;&gt;main reason&lt;/a&gt; we get colds in winter—because we spend lots of time indoors).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fampra.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/6/608&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; by Claire Johnson and Ronald Eccles entitled &quot;Acute cooling of the feet and the onset of common cold symptoms&quot; concluded&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acute chilling of the feet causes the onset of common cold symptoms in around 10% of subjects who are chilled. Further studies are needed to determine the relationship of symptom generation to any respiratory infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in fact some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17705968&quot;&gt;further studies&lt;/a&gt; do show such an relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...most of the available evidence from laboratory and clinical studies suggests that inhaled cold air, cooling of the body surface and cold stress induced by lowering the core body temperature cause pathophysiological responses such as vasoconstriction in the respiratory tract mucosa and suppression of immune responses, which are responsible for increased susceptibility to infections&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me it seems that being cold makes your body weaker in some ways, and less able to deal with viruses. But it is not the low temperature that directly gives you a cold, it is still a virus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7824024-ah-choo&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt;, people with very strong immune systems are &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; likely to develop symptoms of a cold because the symptoms are due to the way your body fights off a virus. The harder it fights, the worse your symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T09:04:35.477" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3692" CreationDate="2011-05-27T10:02:38.337" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;What I want to point out is that there are also some influences coming from the fact of wearing an helmet. I'm thinking about 2 aspects have heard of  :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It has been proven by metric analysis (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457506001540&quot;&gt;reference&lt;/a&gt;) that the vehicule pass closer by a bike if the cyclist wear an helmel. As to say &quot;He is protected, so there will be less damage in case of accident&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The cyclist may feel &quot;protected&quot; in a way he/she drives with less attention.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Ok, it not really an answer in itself, but this is an aspect of the question that should be mentioned&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="873" LastEditorUserId="873" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T14:43:24.860" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T14:43:24.860" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3194" CreationDate="2011-05-27T16:22:55.970" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question pertains to the nature-nurture debate, as can be seen from the topics given as examples (IQ, religiousness) even though the terms (innate vs. &quot;social&quot;) aren't the usual ones.&#xA;There is an answer on this site about the debate regarding the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1896/is-iq-hereditary-if-to-what-degree&quot;&gt;heredity of IQ,&lt;/a&gt; but it does not address the question of the source of the strife that accompanies this debate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a recent seminar, we read &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=DeDzuoKJpRQC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PR6&amp;amp;ots=rkhXdkhgEn&amp;amp;sig=bAMoG0M-idIQESBTRR8OC3A3bnE#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michael Rutter's book Genes and Behavior: Nature-nurture interplay explained&lt;/a&gt;, which I can recommend for an understandable and (rather) dispassionate review of the debate. He also focuses on IQ because it is one of the most contentious but also best-researched of such topics. He's not too flexible on ethics, so you might want to look to other authors for less retricted viewpoints on the ethical aspects. I think he does a great job pointing out methodological concerns and their implications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Is it settled?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If by settled, you mean &lt;strong&gt;settled either way&lt;/strong&gt;, I'd rather not reply, because usually you can always find some hypothetical counter-argument when you come up with something.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I think it's instructive, however, because it shows that the variation in nurture and nature matters.&#xA;For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenylketonuria&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PKU&lt;/a&gt; used to entail a dramatic reduction in IQ and it is definitely due to the genotype – however, now that the process is understood and the afflicted maintain a special diet, there is &quot;nurture&quot; variance – some people know about that diet and maintain it more or less well. Before that diet was known, the environmental variance was low. This would also affect the hereditity quotient of PKU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If by settled, you mean &lt;strong&gt;do academics agree&lt;/strong&gt;, I'd say, yes. Those who consider both biological as well as environmental factors (for example psychologists like Rutter, biologists, &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; sociologists like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/2808017&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Udry&lt;/a&gt;) in their analyses usually find some agreement: environmental as well as biological factors and their interactions matter and you can also arrive at conclusions which factors explain how much variance (in, say, &lt;strong&gt;IQ&lt;/strong&gt;). However, it is complicated and in the case of IQ for example, the degree of social variance (for example mandatory public school vs. only the privileged have any education) and biological variance (a small town, where everyone is related) play a role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there are contentious debates even among those academics who agree that both factors and their interaction play a role. For example, the &lt;strong&gt;Flynn&lt;/strong&gt; effect (IQ test scores rose in the developed countries in the last 100 years) has been the matter of contentious debate (in short the hugeness of the rise isn't easily reconciled with the huge portion of variance explained by biological factors), but I think few who are actually involved in that debate would say &quot;maybe we'll know in 1000 years&quot;. Instead they peddle their pet theories from heterosis to prenatal environmental influence etc., but that's just science in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the answer you linked to, I suspect appealing to lack of clarity was an attempt to stir some dust up, so as not to concede being wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the contentiousness of these questions stems from the fact that to the uninformed some of the conclusions seemingly conflict with dearly-held convictions like &lt;em&gt;equality of chances&lt;/em&gt;. I think truth should not be judged by what &quot;ought to be&quot;, but for any individual it's hard to keep them apart in every line of thought. But among serious academics these convictions probably only make some round their estimates of heredity down or up, not reject one source of variance out of hand (well you can probably find someone who still does, but I doubt they could answer a few simple questions about their premises correctly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T19:15:27.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3099" CreationDate="2011-05-27T16:42:00.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;However, at least for personality (in this case Big 5, extraversion, neuroticism etc.) there is evidence, that it is actually not similarity that drives relationship satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/99/4/690/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dyrenforth et al. (2010)&lt;/a&gt; who used a rather new methodology called Actor-Partner-Interaction-Models didn't find effects of similarity.&#xA;Instead they find &lt;strong&gt;actor effects&lt;/strong&gt; (your personality matters for how satisfied you are in your relationship) and &lt;strong&gt;partner effects&lt;/strong&gt; (your partner's personality matters for how satisfied you are in your relationship).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are different ways to assess similarity (which the article addresses), but the article sidesteps &lt;em&gt;homogamy&lt;/em&gt; and the possibility that people who are in relationships (the population, not the couple) may, by chance (pick any two), be more alike than people who are not in relationships. This is plausible, however, because some personality traits make you less likely to enter and stay in relationships (emotional instability/neuroticism).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three very large, nationally&#xA;  representative samples of married&#xA;  couples were used to examine the&#xA;  relative importance of 3 types of&#xA;  personality effects on relationship&#xA;  and life satisfaction: actor effects,&#xA;  partner effects, and similarity&#xA;  effects. Using data sets from&#xA;  Australia (N = 5,278), the United&#xA;  Kingdom (N = 6,554), and Germany (N =&#xA;  11,418) provided an opportunity to&#xA;  test whether effects replicated across&#xA;  samples. Actor effects accounted for&#xA;  approximately 6% of the variance in&#xA;  relationship satisfaction and between&#xA;  10% and 15% of the variance in life&#xA;  satisfaction. Partner effects (which&#xA;  were largest for Agreeableness,&#xA;  Conscientiousness, and Emotional&#xA;  Stability) accounted for between 1%&#xA;  and 3% of the variance in relationship&#xA;  satisfaction and between 1% and 2% of&#xA;  the variance in life satisfaction.&#xA;  Couple similarity consistently&#xA;  explained less than .5% of the&#xA;  variance in life and relationship&#xA;  satisfaction after controlling for&#xA;  actor and partner effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T16:42:00.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3725" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-27T17:31:41.147" Score="17" ViewCount="4897" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not talking about someone who sits in a chair all day and never moves. I mean the difference between the people who go jogging then go to the gym for an hour or two compared to the people who just take casual strolls once in awhile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why Im skeptical is because, honestly, every single &quot;healthy&quot; person I've ever known has died before 50. As an example, my father was a fire fighter, trained all the time, but he did drink. He exercised and also did construction. He died before 50. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our neighbor did all kinds of outdoor stuff. He'd ride kayaks, go white water rafting, mountain biking etc, died before 50. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A co-worker of my dad's who worked in the office of the fire dept was always going to the gym and exercising and only ate healthy foods. She got lung cancer and died and she didnt even smoke and cancer wasn't in her family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even professional athletes die from things like this, or they end up like Lance Armstrong almost dying and fighting cancer constantly or .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have more examples, but you get the idea. Are there studies that really, actually show that people who exercise and eat healthy frequently will live longer that aren't by lobbyists or people who would benefit off of dietary or exercise videos, books, etc? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this might sound stupid, but we're already living nearly 3x longer than we did in the past, is eating a salad instead of a cheese burger or pumping iron instead of walking to the store really going make you live longer when you take into account every other disease?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3160" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T14:10:53.503" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T16:26:11.630" Title="Does exercise and eating healthy  make you live longer?" Tags="|nutrition|mortality|medical-science|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3727" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-27T17:45:02.163" Score="15" ViewCount="1453" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can link to thousands of sources from all types of studies, but I don't know which one to believe. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sweetsurprise.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sweetsurprise.com/&lt;/a&gt; looks like a lobbyist site, but they link to third party studies, but I have no idea if they were funded by them or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Corn syrup just looks like syrup and looking at it, it has to be bad&quot;, or that's what friends say. When I read about it tho it's made from all natural things. They basically convert it to fructose which in essence is fruit sugar, no?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm just super skeptical because people have said all my life I'll get fat if I drink this much sugar. They've said I'll get diabetes (and it even runs in my family). My dentist said it'll rot my teeth and said it'll ruin the glue of my braces when I was a child and they'd come off. None of this has happened in the 20 years of drinking soda. I drink a can in the morning, can at can for lunch, can for dinner, and then 1 - 2 cans at night. No one I know who drinks lots of soda has any issues either and the one friend I know who has diabetes only ate healthy as a child. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just mention soda because it has the highest amount of HFCS (or so I've read).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;==EDIT==&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who wanted clarification on &quot;bad for you&quot;. Bad for you in my mind means kills you or ends up making you sick or gives you a shorter life span.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;==EDIT 2==&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is so &quot;subjective&quot; I'll try to make it as clear as possible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has it ever been shown that there is a difference in lifespan in an average daily use of HFCS and someone who's never used it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Change HFCS to something obviously not good for you, like drinking rubbing alcohol. A constant, daily ingestion of it will destroy your liver and do all sorts of damage. I can link to articles about it and tell you exactly the difference in people who drink it and those who don't. That's what I'm asking. What's the difference, and what are the risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3160" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-06-21T20:08:35.043" LastActivityDate="2018-06-24T07:17:39.820" Title="Is HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup) bad for you?" Tags="|medical-science|sugar|hfcs|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3729" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-27T19:46:38.550" Score="9" ViewCount="3038" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does braking using your left foot (like Formula 1 drivers would) make you a better/faster driver?&#xA;And why? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it only better/faster if you don't have a &lt;em&gt;clutch&lt;/em&gt;? So then it would not be impressive at all if you use your left foot to brake for mundane driving?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3168" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2012-11-01T15:29:32.617" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T02:14:46.510" Title="Does left-foot braking result in faster driving?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="57" CreationDate="2011-05-27T19:53:10.577" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the accepted answer is in some ways misleading. There are still a good number of psychoanalysts who practice therapy in a way that is fairly orthodox to Freud (or interpretation of his work) and even among those who deviate from the orthodox a lot of  work is not grounded in empirical science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-shrink-tank/201201/oops-another-flawed-report-long-term-psychodynamic-psychotherapy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;acknowledged by its defenders too&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/em&gt; That blog post is pure, unfiltered bias and misinformation, please read the comment section and the Coyne piece he's reacting to. It's almost funny how bad the defence is. But even he acknowledges that the scientific method was basically a foreign concept to psychoanalysis practitioners until recently, though he pretends this changed by much. It hasn't, which can be clearly seen from the small number of studies on psychodynamic therapy compared to number of practitioners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also think it is important to differentiate between effectiveness, efficience and validity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Effectiveness - Does it help the psychologically ill?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is research to support the notion that psychodynamic therapy helps against some psychological illnesses (more than placebo? - difficult to say). There is considerably more research done on cognitive behavioural therapy (the academically most accepted paradigm). When they are compared, the effect is often &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/abs/effectiveness-of-cognitivebehavioural-personcentred-and-psychodynamic-therapies-in-uk-primarycare-routine-practice-replication-in-a-larger-sample/1C88E98166A7009AC506EBB40A0B3CA8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;equivalent&lt;/a&gt;, but this may be due to low statistical power (i.e. sample sizes are usually small, so you find only very large differences and will overlook clinically significant smaller differences). There is less evidence, the stronger the research paradigm (few RCTs with long follow-ups and often the control condition is not evidence-based therapy but a wait list condition, so you have placebo effects all around). For schizophrenia for example, psychodynamic therapy is clearly &lt;a href=&quot;https://academic.oup.com/schizophreniabulletin/article/32/suppl_1/S64/1917522&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;inferior&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lack of evidence for the efficacy of psychodynamic therapies in schizophrenia has&#xA;also been confirmed by a recent meta-analysis of Malmberg and Fenton. Therefore, the&#xA;findings of meta-analyses seem to confirm the theoretical assumptions provided by the&#xA;vulnerability-stress-coping models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Efficiency - Is it good use of therapists' and patients' time?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, psychoanalytic therapy usually takes much longer and is no more or less effective. A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272735811001863&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;good meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt; evaluating long-term psychodynamic therapy (that includes but is not limited to classical psychoanalysis) found it to be worse than shorter, evidence-based therapies. This &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-skeptical-sleuth/201201/is-long-term-psychodynamic-psychotherapy-worthwhile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog post discussing it&lt;/a&gt; also sheds some light on the problems of allegiance bias and using doubtful methods to prove LTPP's worth to insurances in previous meta-analyses. Here's another recent blog post from the same author on &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170904064145/http://blogs.plos.org/mindthebrain/2014/01/07/less-cognitive-behavior-therapy-vs-psychoanalysis-bulimia/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an RCT on bulimia where short-term CBT beats LTPP&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Validity - Is it grounded in reality?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the theory is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Psychoanalysis&amp;amp;oldid=430998769#Criticism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;made up&lt;/a&gt; and some of it sounds plainly ridiculous today. To me this is the biggest problem - why build on theories that have been proven wrong in empirical science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;References:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit dusty maybe, but we're talking about the old school anyway. &lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/5/4/190&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hilgard on Psychoanalysis as Science&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most appropriate retrospective view on Hilgard's lectures on&#xA;psychoanalysis comes from Hilgard himself and helps to explain why, in the&#xA;face of such poor science, the field&#xA;of psychodynamics continues to claim&#xA;scientific interest. &amp;quot;A sense of&#xA;wonder before the unknown,&amp;quot; he wrote,&#xA;&amp;quot;appeals to me more than the&#xA;confidence that comes from always&#xA;having something to say that dissolves&#xA;the mystery. To say, 'It couldn't have&#xA;been otherwise,' does not itself move&#xA;us very far along&amp;quot; (Hilgard, 1974, p.&#xA;153).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and for friends of strong language: &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03003694&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is psychoanalysis alive and well at 85? A rejoinder&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In therapy you could argue &amp;quot;anything that works and I'll take the placebo effect too, thanks&amp;quot;, but why stick with PA when it's clearly not superior &amp;amp; takes more time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in a comparison with homeopathy and whether there is a lobby at work here, too, or if ignorance can just prevail for so long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-06-06T19:14:20.937" LastActivityDate="2022-06-06T19:14:20.937" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2625" CreationDate="2011-05-27T22:10:00.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just directly measured the Kinect laser's output power, which I posted on Youtube:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qLDzLYPG-w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qLDzLYPG-w&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short of it is that the Kinect is a BLINDING HAZARD if you look at the laser from 2 inches away or less.  Be very careful of children poking their heads in front of the Kinect while it's on!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a distance of one foot and more from the Kinect, the laser's power per area drops to levels lower than ambient lighting, so as long as you don't play absurdly close, there will not be any detrimental health effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3170" LastActivityDate="2011-05-27T22:10:00.913" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3095" CreationDate="2011-05-28T06:34:42.493" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I did some searching on this and there does seems to be some research to support my claim! After some digging a found tht someone has already compiled a long list of papers on the subject: &lt;a href=&quot;http://aebrain.blogspot.com/p/reference-works-on-transsexual-and.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://aebrain.blogspot.com/p/reference-works-on-transsexual-and.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that my initial though was right, going over the some (not all!) of this stuff there does appear to quite established that there are biological diffrences between &quot;male brain&quot; and &quot;female brain&quot;, though the exact cause(s) to that and the process by which this comes to be are very much under research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found a research done on mice: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14559357?dopt=Citation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14559357?dopt=Citation&lt;/a&gt; (you can read a short press article about it here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csulb.edu/~pamela/readings/Gender_Identity.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.csulb.edu/~pamela/readings/Gender_Identity.pdf&lt;/a&gt;), which seems to suggest that we can go back as far as the embryo and still be able to say something about the future gendar\sexual of the mouse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comining the two together, it doesn't really provide an answer (to the bonus question) - but I now strongly believe (and I think with a good reason) that the answer would be &quot;yes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="980" LastActivityDate="2011-05-28T06:34:42.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3737" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-28T08:58:56.450" Score="4" ViewCount="233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm watching a documentary on National Geographic on a case where they were tracking down a gang trading in tigers in Thailand. It was claimed that tiger farms, who has the purpose of breeding tigers for trade drive up demand and further hurt the wild tiger population. Is there any basis for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-05-28T12:54:44.873" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T09:57:59.287" Title="Will tiger farming drive up demand for wild tigers and lead to them being hunted to extinction?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3738" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-28T11:25:22.057" Score="17" ViewCount="5974" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WuvZG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Seinfeld: Tim Whatley&quot;&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.malcolminthemiddle.co.uk/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=6729&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be a common belief and I have heard it mentioned in movies (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0190138/&quot;&gt;The Whole Nine Yards&lt;/a&gt;) and TV shows (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0697814/&quot;&gt;Seinfeld&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dentists have the highest suicide rate&#xA;  of any profession&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;I don't really see a reason why dentists should be more suicide prone. There are certainly more stressful professions (physically more demanding, longer hours, more responsibility, ... )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;My question:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are dentists more prone to commit suicide than the general public?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T09:43:59.723" Title="Do dentists have an unusually high suicide rate?" Tags="|psychology|sociology|dentistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3095" CreationDate="2011-05-28T14:28:09.470" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Going through the different parts of this question, here are the answers I found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Are male and female brains different?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. While searching around the internet I found a handfuls of websites with nearly all of them pointed to the same set of differences. I also found various references to studies that I was unable to access (or, admittedly, understand.) But I did find the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n11/mente/eisntein/cerebro-homens.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Are There Differences between the Brains of Males and Females?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; which I consider well presented, written and referenced. The article was by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sabbatini.com/renato/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Renato M.E. Sabbatini&lt;/a&gt; and appears legit. The references are at the bottom of that page and seem to be from 1999 and before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main takeaways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most interesting differences appear in the way men and women estimate time, judge speed of things, carry out mental mathematical calculations, orient in space and visualize objects in three dimensions, etc. In all these tasks, women and men are strikingly different, as they are too in the way their brains process language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, women are better than men in human relations, recognizing emotional overtones in others and in language, emotional and artistic expressiveness, esthetic appreciation, verbal language and carrying out detailed and pre-planned tasks. For example, women generally can recall lists of words or paragraphs of text better than men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These areas match up with the other sites I found. Also, apparently male brains are physically larger (but this has no notable impact on intelligence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How are the differences measured?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working from the same article above, the measurable differences &lt;em&gt;used&lt;/em&gt; to be behavioral. People watched men and women do things and recorded the differences. More recently, they get to study the volume of certain areas of the brain; use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_imaging&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;functional imaging&lt;/a&gt; to determine brain activity during different tasks; and studying the brains of the dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these methods were used when determining the above differences. The article details different methods used and provides example studies with their conclusions. Two such examples (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another research, a group from the University of Cincinnati, USA, Canada, presented morphological evidence that while &lt;strong&gt;men have more neurons in the cerebral cortex, women have a more developed neuropil&lt;/strong&gt;, or the space between cell bodies, which contains synapses, dendrites and axons, and allows for communication among neurons (8). According to Dr. Gabrielle de Courten-Myers, this research &lt;strong&gt;may explain why women are more prone to dementia&lt;/strong&gt; (such as Alzheimer's disease) than  men, because although both may lose the same number of neurons due to the disease, &amp;quot;in males, the functional reserve may be greater as a larger number of nerve cells are present, which could prevent some of the functional losses.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although most of the anatomical and functional studies done so far have focused on the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for the higher intellectual and cognitive functions of the brain, other researchers, such as Dr. Simon LeVay, have shown that &lt;strong&gt;there are gender differences in more primitive parts of the brain&lt;/strong&gt;, such as the hypothalamus, where most of the basic functions of life are controlled, including hormonal control via the pituitary gland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Do the differences in the male and female brains alter gender identity?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isna.org/node/564&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study on 14 infants&lt;/a&gt; born with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloacal_exstrophy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cloacal exstrophy&lt;/a&gt; suggests that social impact alone may not completely override what we consider gender identity. Cloacal exstrophy is a horrible anatomical defect that involves severe complications to handfuls of different organs. Among the affected are both male and female genitalia. After birth, &amp;quot;the trend had been to surgically reassign males with cloacal exstrophy as females by removing the testes and constructing labia.&amp;quot; The children were then raised as female.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study included 16 subjects (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of their 16 affected subjects, 14 had been reassigned female at birth. At follow-up, between ages 5 to 12, &lt;strong&gt;8 of those reassigned female now identified as boys&lt;/strong&gt;. The children and their parents completed a battery of questionnaires assessing psychosexual development, sexual identity, and gendered behavior. Follow-up assessments were done at least annually ranging from 34 to 98 months follow-up. &lt;strong&gt;All of the subject had moderate-to-marked male-typical attitudes and interests.&lt;/strong&gt; The two children reared as males continued to identify as males. Of the 14 reassigned female at birth, five still persistently identified as girls, four spontaneously declared a male identity, and four chose to identify as boys after told that they were born male. Reiner and Gearhart note, in passing, that none of their genetically female patients with cloacal exstrophy demonstrated atypical gendered behavior or gender uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How young can differences be measured?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sabbatini article only offers this note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, gender differences are already apparent from just a few months after birth, when social influence is still small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More searching led me to a completely different article responding to the question, &amp;quot;Are there actually significant differences between a girl's brain and a boy's brain?&amp;quot; Unfortunately, the site is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.singlesexschools.org/research-brain.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Association for Single Sex Education&lt;/a&gt;, so they have some invested interest in this material. The references seem solid, however, so I will include the main points anyway (emphasis original):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most profound difference between girls and boys is not in any brain structure per se, but rather in the &lt;strong&gt;sequence of development&lt;/strong&gt; of the various brain regions. &lt;strong&gt;The different regions of the brain develop in a different SEQUENCE in girls compared with boys&lt;/strong&gt; -- this is the key insight from recent research in brain development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Harriet Hanlon and her associates at Virginia Tech] found that while the areas of the brain involved in language and fine motor skills mature about six years earlier in girls than in boys, the areas of the brain involved in targeting and spatial memory mature about four years earlier in boys than in girls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The age ranges relevant here drift from 8 to 11 to as young as 5. This last blurb pushes that even earlier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, researchers at Wellesley College found that 3-year-old girls could interpret facial expressions as well or better than 5-year-old boys could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while I wasn't able to find something directly mentioning infants (other than &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/heshe.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one site&lt;/a&gt; debunking brain &lt;em&gt;size&lt;/em&gt; as an identifier), it seems logical that more and more differences will be discovered between the male and female brain, some of which will probably be noticeable at birth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Summary and conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Male and female brains are different. The differences are measurable through methods that involve the actual &lt;em&gt;brain&lt;/em&gt; instead of just categorizing behavior. In addition, that behavior pushed through social efforts to subvert gender identity in at least one study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The differences between the male and female brain can be noticed in schoolchildren. Specifically, their abilities to process information of certain types. These differences appear to be mostly behaviorally studied but the edge of where those studies are is continually creeping toward infancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To directly answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to argue that this logic is flawed - since identity is product of the brain and not the sex organs. So the question becomes: is there any evidence to support that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. There is evidence to support that gender identity is based on the physical brain (and its gender) and not merely socially assigned gender roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a bonus question: If there really is such a difference, can it be measured in newborns?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wasn't able to find a specific reference to an observable difference in newborns but strongly suspect that such a difference exists based on the articles and studies I was able to find. Most of these studies appear to be focusing on overall differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I seem to remember and old science TV show which argued that there are physiological differences between male and female brains and that in trans genders you really do find a female brain inside a male body (for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the articles I read even mentioned this topic. I suspect the problem here is just that of definition: Is sex or gender based on genitalia or neurology? It would make sense to pick one and work from there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But regardless of the terms, there have been documented cases of people being born with both sets of genitalia. However you classify their body, the idea that their brain is either male or female (or both?) would assume that the brain is in a body that doesn't gender match. The topic is that of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;intersex&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, an otherwise normally male brain in an otherwise normally female body is not quite a certainty based on the information I found. Most of the studies seem to be identifying male or female and then studying the brain. What you are looking for is a way to determine if a particular brain is male or female. That seems likely in the future. It also seems likely that people will be born with brains outside of the typical male/female definitions. Considering the varying intersex examples, it seems reasonable to think that your brain &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be gender swapped. But I suspect we need to wait awhile for confirmation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-12-26T19:56:56.073" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3637" CreationDate="2011-05-28T15:55:03.820" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add to what DVK said, the latest 'supposedly' advanced image satellite was launched in January 2011, dubbed USA-224.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-224&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA-224&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be based on the Lockheed KH-11 which was manufactured between 1976-1990. Though it is more likely to be based on a newer version ( sometimes called the KH-13) the KH-11 was the last numbered satellite before they started naming them randomly, so that the actual names are most likely still classified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The KH-11, during the 80's , had a 2.4-meter mirror with a resolution of 6 inches. I don't think it too far fetched to say that image resolution technology and optics have come a long way since the 80's, though there are undoubtedly physical and other constraints, I would think if they are not currently able to reading license plates size lettering they are pretty damn close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also to note that image enhancement is getting better.     &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iipl.fudan.edu.cn/~zhangjp/publications/ICME2009.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.iipl.fudan.edu.cn/~zhangjp/publications/ICME2009.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3181" LastEditorUserId="782" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T00:36:04.640" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T00:36:04.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3738" CreationDate="2011-05-28T20:54:25.677" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an article from the American Psychological Association from 2001 that discusses the futility of even trying to measure this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/monitor/jan01/suicide.aspx&quot;&gt;http://www.apa.org/monitor/jan01/suicide.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only about half the states put&#xA;  occupation on their death&#xA;  certificates. And even when they do,&#xA;  there are questions as to whether the&#xA;  physician, medical examiner or coroner&#xA;  filling in the certificates always&#xA;  gets the occupation or the cause of&#xA;  death right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Often the studies are only of one&#xA;  geographic area, sometimes they have&#xA;  methodological problems, and sometimes&#xA;  they contradict each other&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the end, say some researchers,&#xA;  occupation may not be much of a factor&#xA;  in suicide. Psychologists have long&#xA;  documented that among the top&#xA;  predictors for suicide are diagnosable&#xA;  mental disorder, co-morbid substance&#xA;  use, loss of social support and&#xA;  availability and access to a firearm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there's no particular reason to think dentists have the highest suicide rate, although some study somewhere may have come to that conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3188" LastActivityDate="2011-05-28T20:54:25.677" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3748" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3754" CreationDate="2011-05-28T22:56:46.543" Score="6" ViewCount="7300" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read a number of articles suggesting that the USA has a Mars colony, including (if I recall correctly, but I can't find the link now) one where an official in China stated that they believed the USA had a secret military base on Mars, and another that indicates that the USA attempted to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/exopolitics-in-seattle/whistleblower-laura-magdalene-eisenhower-ike-s-great-granddaughter-outs-secret-mars-colony-project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recruit the great-granddaughter of President Eisenhower&lt;/a&gt; for a Mars colony project. While the latter seems to likely be malarkey, it seems to be one of the more common references to a USA Mars colony project. I'm curious about whether anyone's put any serious thought whether the USA could secretly create a Mars colony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that the USA either has or plans a secret colony on Mars?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it logistically possible that the USA could start a Mars colony and keep it secret?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 2020&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting the newsworthy claims of Haim Eshed, noted in numerous news articles including NBC's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nbcnews.com/news/weird-news/former-israeli-space-security-chief-says-extraterrestrials-exist-trump-knows-n1250333&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Former Israeli space security chief says extraterrestrials exist, and Trump knows about it&amp;quot;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A former Israeli space security chief has sent eyebrows shooting heavenward by saying that earthlings have been in contact with extraterrestrials from a &amp;quot;galactic federation.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The Unidentified Flying Objects have asked not to publish that they are here, humanity is not ready yet,&amp;quot; Haim Eshed, former head of Israel's Defense Ministry's space directorate, told Israel's Yediot Aharonot newspaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eshed said cooperation agreements had been signed between species, including an &amp;quot;underground base in the depths of Mars&amp;quot; where there are American astronauts and alien representatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="1792" LastEditDate="2020-12-09T14:25:58.237" LastActivityDate="2020-12-09T14:25:58.237" Title="Could the USA have a secret colony on Mars?" Tags="|united-states|military|mars|space-flight|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="643" CreationDate="2011-05-28T23:04:49.840" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/world/10_largest_world.php&quot;&gt;is a list of the 10 largest earthquakes&lt;/a&gt; measured since 1900. We have about 1.3 Million earthquakes of magnitude 2 to 2.9, and 134 of 6 to 6.9 per year. But most of them happen in the sea, in deserts or far from cities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we have an increasing world population, so the number of affected persons can climb over the century. We have increasing numbers of artifacts which can be damaged, and therefore increasing damages in form of costs, while predictions of earthquakes get better, and the number of EQ-resistant builduings increases, which meanwhile lowers, but doesn't compensate, the damages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And we have an increasing number of stations which measure EQs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php&quot;&gt;Numbers of USGS&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://geofon.gfz-potsdam.de/db/eqinfo.php&quot;&gt;GFZ Potsdam&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh - I forgot the answer: :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;NO&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the last 100 years, there is no increasing number of EQs. But the timespan of interest might be choosen to fit the claim. You could watch just for a few weeks and EQs stronger than x. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it isn't possible to count prehistoric earthquakes today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastActivityDate="2011-05-28T23:04:49.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="643" CreationDate="2011-05-28T23:25:10.913" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This kind of conclusion suffer from the problem of lack of baseline level. How many major earthquake per year should be considered normal? Almost nobody have the slightest idea. This does stop people from saying that some catastrophic event is happening more frequently than it should. Without the baseline, the reasoning is clearly invalid. The issue is that this is a rare event. So when it does strike, people subjectively see it happen more than it &quot;should&quot;. Also people will almost never arrive in the opposite conclusion. E.g. &quot;we are without a significant earthquake in the last 100 years, this is not normal...&quot; No, this doesn't bother them because earthquake is suppose to be rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The covers the reasoning of general public. I have no information on any comprehensive scientific study on the earthquake frequency. One thing is certain, you need far more data than just 2 major earthquake to draw any valid conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3175" LastActivityDate="2011-05-28T23:25:10.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3748" CreationDate="2011-05-29T00:58:01.667" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps we can turn this ridiculousness into a lesson about skepticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Scientific skeptics attempt to evaluate claims based on verifiability and falsifiability and discourage accepting claims on faith or anecdotal evidence. Skeptics often focus their criticism on claims they consider to be implausible, dubious or clearly contradictory to generally accepted science. Scientific skeptics do not assert that unusual claims should be automatically rejected out of hand on a priori grounds - rather they argue that claims of paranormal or anomalous phenomena should be critically examined and that extraordinary claims would require extraordinary evidence in their favor before they could be accepted as having validity. [Wikipedia: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_skepticism&quot;&gt;Scientific Skepticism&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This idea that &quot;extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence&quot; (also known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan&quot;&gt;Sagan's Standard&lt;/a&gt;) means that we must provisionally accept the more prosaic explanation - e.g. that there is &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; secret colony on Mars - until some significant evidence suggests the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an extraordinary claim. It would require a huge conspiracy far beyond the bounds of any we have ever discovered to date. Because that extraordinary evidence is lacking - in fact any evidence at all is lacking - the only reasonable answer that can be given is &quot;No.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T00:58:01.667" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3748" CreationDate="2011-05-29T03:05:35.163" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course there is a secret colony on Mars.  The same people that kept the secret that we faked the moon landing are also keeping the secret that we went to Mars and established a colony...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, in all seriousness, please select a launch that was supposed to have sent anything off to Mars that included people or the equipment to support those people.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/missions/past/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a list of all past NASA launches for you to choose from&lt;/a&gt;.  I'm sure that whatever mission you choose, I will be able to knock a hole through any conspiracy theory that even the 9/11 troofers will think anyone who believes this is nuts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The logistics in launching a manned mission to Mars would be so large that it would be impossible to hide it.  Conservative estimates place the price-tag at &lt;a href=&quot;http://membership.cagw.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&amp;amp;id=8992&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;$1 TRILLION&lt;/a&gt;, and hiding that sort of spending would be nigh on impossible (and keep in mind that most estimates of any government program are usually way under the real cost).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_mission_to_Mars&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;There are many ideas for a Mars mission&lt;/a&gt;, and if anyone got there, it would be a coup of historic proportions that no one would want to keep it secret.  Much like with the moon landing hoax insanity, if we hadn't got there, the Russians would have been all over it.  If the US has managed to get to mars, it would be front page news all over the world, and would be used in every possible manner to showcase the US in a positive light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Oddthinking said, &quot;extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence&quot;, and I have seen none!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="15728" LastEditDate="2015-03-05T14:28:35.103" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T14:28:35.103" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3738" CreationDate="2011-05-29T09:43:59.723" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Australian Institute of Criminology found, when &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/4/9/0/%7B490EDFD9-212E-414F-B4E5-F3DA8A6D0413%7Dti52.pdf&quot;&gt;looking at the patterns of suicide by occupation&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;The general pattern&#xA;in Australia is that those in unskilled&#xA;and semi-skilled blue-collar&#xA;occupations which are characterised&#xA;by low job autonomy, greater external supervision, less&#xA;on-the-job training, poorer promotional&#xA;possibilities, lower wage levels and&#xA;greater sensitivity to market forces tend to have&#xA;high suicide rates. Furthermore, their suicide rates increase&#xA;significantly with age. Occupations which are generally high status&#xA;and have good career paths, and are&#xA;well paid, have lower suicide rates.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They did not explicitly mention dentists, which I interpret to mean there is no unusual association that needed mentioning when discussing the topic of occupational risk. Thus, it would be expected that Australian dentists have a low suicide risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is safe to assume that suicide profiles in Australia are similar to other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T09:43:59.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3759" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-29T10:39:01.180" Score="22" ViewCount="1626" Body="&lt;p&gt;Teeth whitening toothpaste is one of the latest marketing tools or alleged added functions of many brands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also read several &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.girlclumsy.com/2011/01/nothing-but-tooth.html&quot;&gt;blogs&lt;/a&gt; or journalists who have had teeth whitening laser treatment and claimed it wasn't &quot;7 shades brighter&quot; or whatever was claimed, essentially claiming they were fooled out of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there reliable research to back up claims by toothpaste companies or by laser whitening services?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually the measuring tool is a card with different shades of white and you measure yourself against one and then after a certain period of time you claim you are now x# of shades lighter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2021-09-11T17:13:37.060" Title="Does teeth whitening toothpaste or laser whitening work?" Tags="|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1062" CreationDate="2011-05-29T12:53:28.847" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This doesn't answer your question directly. But I agree with user unknown that you would need a meta system to ascertain this. I also think jwenting's anecdotal evidence and Paul's theoretical ideas (I would attack jury independence most) don't give you the whole picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was actually surprised (or is there a more fitting word when I just didn't bother finding out?) to find there is a field devoted to &lt;a href=&quot;http://keenetrial.com/blog/2010/12/17/simple-jury-persuasion-use-christian-religious-concepts-to-increase-racial-prejudice/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;researching and mitigating jury biases&lt;/a&gt;, though their research could arguably be easily used to exploit jury biases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So if you are representing an African American client—you may want to avoid those religious similarity references because they could activate biases against your client. You want to play up similarities between your client and the jury that do not include religious activities (which would draw attention to your clients ‘differentness’). If you are inclined to make use of religious allusion or rhetoric, include a discussion of the risk of racism very overtly, to avoid the priming affect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ittakes30.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/what-the-judge-ate-for-elevenses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study in Israel&lt;/a&gt; caused a stir. They found that having a snack / lunch predicted clemency in parole hearings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course they don't cancel each other out. You could meta-analyze the findings to find where the biases are worse and choose the lesser evil or you could think forward (clear decision rules, lengthy expert essays on non-objective evidence, ...?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="2722" LastEditDate="2011-05-29T15:53:24.630" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T15:53:24.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3763" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-29T13:16:54.043" Score="5" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1118/are-personal-electronics-a-risk-to-commercial-aviation&quot;&gt;Are personal electronics a risk to commercial aviation?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only the electrical devices using EM wave (ex: Cellphone, RC car, ...), but other electrical devices (ex: MP3, Nintendo DS, ...) are also prohibited in airplane, when it's landing or departing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard that using any electrical devices can corrupt communication between the airplane and the airport, but I don't think that my little MP3 player will corrupt the communication. And that claim doesn't make sense, I think, because it is true that RC car controller can corrupt listening radio broadcast, but I have never seen that a camera or an MP3 player corrupts radio broadcast or communication between cellphones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do electrical devices &lt;strong&gt;that doesn't directly use electromagnetic wave&lt;/strong&gt; corrupts communication between the airplane and the airport? If those do, how much those corrupts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2863" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T13:16:54.043" Title="Why 'every' electrical devices in an airplane are prohibited during landing and departing?" Tags="|electromagnetism|radio|aviation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2011-05-29T14:47:43.680" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3235" CreationDate="2011-05-29T16:57:11.530" Score="7" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Edit: I've learned that this article should not be trusted, due to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9849/does-willpower-depend-on-the-amount-of-glucose-in-the-body/10009#10009&quot;&gt;multiple weaknesses&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uky.edu/~njdewa2/gailliotetal07JPSP.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gailliot et al.&lt;/a&gt;'s&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; work on blood glucose and self-control is a more  direct answer than the fMRI results (I'm also a bit skeptical like footnote 3). I think the link with blood glucose is not specific to self-control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The present work suggests that&#xA;  self-control relies on glucose as a&#xA;  limited energy source. Laboratory&#xA;  tests of self-control (i.e., the&#xA;  Stroop task, thought suppression,&#xA;  emotion regulation, attention control)&#xA;  and of social behaviors (i.e., helping&#xA;  behavior, coping with thoughts of&#xA;  death, stifling prejudice during an&#xA;  interracial interaction) showed that&#xA;  (a) acts of self-control reduced blood&#xA;  glucose levels, (b) low levels of&#xA;  blood glucose after an initial&#xA;  self-control task predicted poor&#xA;  performance on a subsequent&#xA;  self-control task, and (c) initial&#xA;  acts of self-control impaired&#xA;  performance on subsequent self-control&#xA;  tasks, but consuming a glucose drink&#xA;  eliminated these impairments.&#xA;  Self-control requires a certain amount&#xA;  of glucose to operate unimpaired. A&#xA;  single act of self-control causes&#xA;  glucose to drop below optimal levels,&#xA;  thereby impairing subsequent attempts&#xA;  at self-control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Gailliot, Matthew T.; Baumeister, Roy F.; DeWall, C. Nathan; Maner, Jon K.; Plant, E. Ashby; Tice, Dianne M.; Brewer, Lauren E.; Schmeichel, Brandon J.&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Journal of Personality and Social Psychology&lt;/em&gt;, Vol 92(2), Feb 2007, 325-336. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.92.2.325 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-07-03T07:57:40.073" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3772" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-29T21:29:39.503" Score="12" ViewCount="5089" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently it has been claimed that Audrey Tomason, the US government's Director for Counter-Terrorism has written a master's thesis about an &quot;apocalypse equation&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;[Audrey Tomason] wrote a master thesis [...] suggesting that it would be more humane for our world to undergo a “planned and controlled genocide” rather than to see it descend into the abyss of chaos it is now entering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ms Tomason argues in her thesis that our world’s population has been “artificially inflated” for the past nearly 100 years by a “non-sustainable” petrochemical and fossil fuel based global economy that if left “unchecked” could very well destroy all life on Earth, not just human beings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1477.htm&quot;&gt;What Does It Mean news service&lt;/a&gt;]&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Caution! May be virus infected. See comments: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whenshtf.com/showthread.php?40642-Tomason-s-Apocalypse-Equation-A-Heartless-Woman-s-Sinister-Proposal&quot;&gt;Thread on WhenSHTF.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=apocalypse%20equation&quot;&gt;Google Search&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that a thesis written by Audrey Tomason exists? If so, is the content of this thesis really about an apocalypse equation as claimed in the links above? What is the form (mathematically) of that apocalypse equation? Is there any relation to the apocalypse equation by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_Lyttle&quot;&gt;Bradford_Lyttle&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3199" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2011-09-19T12:45:44.940" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T14:45:24.750" Title="Does Audrey Tomason's apocalypse equation thesis exist?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3773" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-29T22:20:27.507" Score="3" ViewCount="1363" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read many articles listing the benefits of buying locally grown food and many of the benefits sound plausible. But today I read the following, which left my skepto-meter tingling (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did you know that the produce in the supermarket (whether it is organic or conventional) travels, on average, 1,500 miles from the farm to your plate? Not only is all that travel taxing on the environment, but &lt;strong&gt;it also gives the produce a chance to lose some of its nutritional value along the way.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do vegetables, fruits or meats lose nutritional value between the time they are picked / rendered and the time they end up on grocery store shelves? Or is it that the mere act of  transportation somehow affects the nutritional content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both propositions sound spurious to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T01:33:41.253" Title="Do longer shipping times and/or distances impact the nutritional content of produce?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3748" CreationDate="2011-05-29T22:22:14.527" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.universetoday.com/7024/the-mars-landing-approach-getting-large-payloads-to-the-surface-of-the-red-planet/&quot;&gt;no one knows how to land a large payload safely on the surface of mars.&lt;/a&gt; According to that link, the prevailing opinion is that we have landed manned spacecraft on the moon, which is small and has no atmosphere; and that we've also landed manned spacecraft on earth, which is large with a thick atmosphere. Mars is inbetween the earth and the moon both in size and atmospheric density, so it should be easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not so: the atmosphere isn't thick enough to appreciably slow a large vehicle enough to safely land or deploy parachutes, like they do on earth. But it's thick enough that, while hitting the atmosphere going mach 26 or so, you can't use rocket engines to slow the spacecraft: the exhaust from such a retro-engine would act like an unstable nose-cone, which would shake the spacecraft to pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with current technology, the only way to land a colony on mars is if you send them off with a &quot;it's about the journey, not the destination&quot; mentality, since upon arrival they will become a smoky crater.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastActivityDate="2011-05-29T22:22:14.527" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1304" CreationDate="2011-05-29T23:40:07.813" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is interestingly linked to the Flynn effect (secular trend of rising intelligence) in some of the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the case of at least one of the&#xA;  other trends, height, all four&#xA;  features of the IQ paradox have been &#xA;  documented, thus creating a “height&#xA;  paradox” identical to that seen  in&#xA;  IQ. Even one of the earliest MZA [Monozygotic twins reared apart] twin&#xA;  studies of height,  conducted in a&#xA;  U.S. population that was much shorter&#xA;  than today’s  population, showed the&#xA;  reunited twins to be remarkably&#xA;  similar in  height (Newman, Freeman, &amp;amp;&#xA;  Holzinger, 1937). This would sug- &#xA;  gest that whatever presumed&#xA;  environmental factor was stunting the &#xA;  population must have been so uniform&#xA;  in its effects that it did not  matter&#xA;  whether monozygotic twins were raised&#xA;  in the same or  different homes; they&#xA;  were still stunted to virtually the&#xA;  same  enormous extent. Also, there is&#xA;  no evidence of any birth order  effect&#xA;  in height (Ernst &amp;amp; Angst, 1983).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One major difference between research&#xA;  into the height and IQ  trends,&#xA;  however, is that among researchers&#xA;  investigating the height  trend, there&#xA;  is not the same general recognition&#xA;  that the high  heritability of the&#xA;  trait poses theoretical problems for&#xA;  environmental hypotheses as there&#xA;  is among IQ researchers.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all from Mingroni (2007). &lt;strong&gt;He argues that heterosis / hybrid vigour / outbreeding elevation (basically the opposite of incest) is&lt;/strong&gt; (part of the) &lt;strong&gt;the reason.&lt;/strong&gt; Basically people are more mobile and no longer have to sex up their cousins, etc. It's been a while since I read the article, but it's a good review. According to him, most of what he says about IQ applies to  height as well. I think he sums the evidence up fairly and Psych Review is a high-profile journal. The author is pretty elusive though – can't find out much about him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/fe/LinkedDocuments/mingroni2007.pdf&quot;&gt;Mingroni, M. A. (2007).&lt;/a&gt; Resolving the IQ paradox: Heterosis as a cause of the &#xA;Flynn effect and other trends. &lt;em&gt;Psychological Review, 114,&lt;/em&gt; 1104. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="2722" LastEditDate="2012-07-16T10:15:14.647" LastActivityDate="2012-07-16T10:15:14.647" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3777" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3780" CreationDate="2011-05-30T00:46:41.190" Score="29" ViewCount="27247" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember growing up and my mom always telling me to not take a shower while it was thunderstorming. I've done it a few times but I always try to keep the water not flowing over my body in case it ever did happen it wouldn't cross my heart and kill me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, can you be electrocuted while taking a shower during a thunderstorm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2708" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T04:37:20.900" Title="Can you be electrocuted while taking a shower during a thunderstorm?" Tags="|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3725" CreationDate="2011-05-30T01:17:08.727" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez/7707624?dopt=Abstract&amp;amp;holding=f1000,f1000m,isrctn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A 1995 Harvard study&lt;/a&gt; found &quot;a graded inverse relationship between total physical activity and mortality&quot;. There seemed to be an important relationship between 'vigorous' exercise and longevity, though they note that nonvigorous exercise has been shown to benefit other aspects of health as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a broader note, the health benefits of exercise in an aging society should probably be emphasized at least in a policy context. The more people take care of themselves, the longer and better lives they'll live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="187" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T01:17:08.727" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3777" CreationDate="2011-05-30T01:35:03.603" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Take a look at this document talking about lightning myths - &lt;a href=&quot;http://newweb.wrh.noaa.gov/hnx/LightningMyths-1.pdf&quot;&gt;http://newweb.wrh.noaa.gov/hnx/LightningMyths-1.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You must avoid any conducting path&#xA;  leading outside, such as corded&#xA;  telephones, electrical appliances,&#xA;  wires, TV cables, plumbing (including&#xA;  plastic pipes with water in them),&#xA;  metal doors or window frames, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also from here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/can-lightning-strike-you-in-the-shower/&quot;&gt;http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/can-lightning-strike-you-in-the-shower/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Metal is a good conductor, so if&#xA;  lightning strikes an unprotected&#xA;  house, chances are the current will&#xA;  travel through any metal pipes. What’s&#xA;  more, the tap water moving in these&#xA;  pipes contains impurities that help&#xA;  the water conduct electrical current.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you’re wet, the natural&#xA;  resistance of your body is cut by&#xA;  half, and the salt and contaminants on&#xA;  your skin decrease your resistance&#xA;  further. So basically, being wet can&#xA;  make the difference between an&#xA;  unpleasant electrical shock and a&#xA;  deadly one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3202" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T01:35:03.603" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3316" CreationDate="2011-05-30T01:41:30.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The phrase comes from Old English where apple used to mean any round fruit actually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apples may be good for us but it&#xA;  wasn't their precise medicinal&#xA;  properties that were being exalted&#xA;  when this phrase was coined. In Old&#xA;  English the word apple was used to&#xA;  describe any round fruit that grew on&#xA;  a tree. Adam and Eve's forbidden&#xA;  fruit, which they ate in the Garden of&#xA;  Eden, is often described as an apple&#xA;  but, in the 1611 King James Version of&#xA;  the Bible, it is just called 'a&#xA;  fruit'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/an-apple-a-day.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/an-apple-a-day.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3202" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T01:41:30.897" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3725" CreationDate="2011-05-30T02:13:52.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a huge number of studies that do indicate that exercise is good for you, in that it reduces your chance of getting various serous diseases, and hence causes you to live longer. The link is widely recognised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, these things are always a statistical likelihood. If they have a genetic problem, or are just plain unlucky, some people will get a serious disease and peg out when they are forty, no matter how much they exercise. Some people who don't exercise get lucky and live to be a hundred. It's a statistical thing. Professional athletes are a bad example because they also push their bodies to, or sometimes past, the limits and will give themselves health problems because of it. (It's also true that extreme exercise isn't necessarily better for you than moderate exercise.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With genetics there are sometimes many people in a family who die early despite exercise, or die late despite lack of it. If you're going to get cancer when you're fifty, exercise probably won't make much difference to your lifespan. But in general if you want to live as long as you can, your chances are much greater if you do your exercise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some studies that show up easily on the internet are here. There are hundreds more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=does-exercise-really-make&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/exercise-healthy-heart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WebMD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springtimeinparis.ca&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Washington Post (reporting Erasmus University Medical Centre)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/news/2007/January08/Pages/Exerciseandlivelonger.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;British National Health Service&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/exercise/HQ01676&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-05-30T02:20:45.123" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T02:20:45.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3725" CreationDate="2011-05-30T03:12:10.907" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Eating healthy and exercising is, of course, not guaranteed to make &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; live longer - &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; could get hit by a bus tomorrow, after all. Nor is there a causal relationship between the two, as you have cited examples where those who ate healthy and exercised lived a short life. But if you look at a sufficiently large population there is a positive correlation between healthy eating and exercise and life expectancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One such study that reveals this correlation is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurses%27_Health_Study&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harvard Nurses' Health Study&lt;/a&gt;, which was started in 1976 and continues to follow more than 120,000 female nurses. Initially, the survey assessed risk factors for cancer and cardiovascular diseases, but was later updated to include assessing diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.channing.harvard.edu/nhs/?page_id=197&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;findings from the study&lt;/a&gt; include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Higher intake of red meat increases risk of premenopausal breast cancer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A Mediterranean-type diet reduces risk of incident CHD and stroke. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Fish intake reduces risk of stroke. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Nut and wholegrain consumption reduces risk of CHD. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Refined carbohydrates and trans fats increase risk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Higher vegetable intake, especially green leafy vegetables, reduces risk of cognitive impairment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Higher intake of fish may reduce risk of cataracts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Physical activity, including walking, reduces risk of CHD and stroke.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;More physical activity, including walking, reduces risk of hip fracture.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Moderate physical activity reduces risk of cognitive impairment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Obesity increases risk of colon cancer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Obesity increases risk of breast cancer among postmenopausal women&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been more than 1,000 peer-reviewed articles written that were based on the results from this longitudinal study. An approachable overview of this study is available in the book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://goo.gl/frAql&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, penned by Walter Willett, M.D., who led the Harvard Nurses' Study for many years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://goo.gl/frAql&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ExV81.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T03:12:10.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3316" CreationDate="2011-05-30T05:51:19.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's such a thing as apple allergy (I should know, I'm allergic to them myself) which in mild cases leads to diarrhea, in severe cases requires hospitalisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, an apple a day doesn't keep the doctor away for at least some people. In fact it might bring them to the doctor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Had to look these up, didn't know there were people who can go into cardiac arrest from eating apples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;eHow: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/about_5108205_signs-symptoms-apple-allergy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Signs &amp;amp; Symptoms of an Apple Allergy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;University of Manchester: &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/informall/allergenic-food/?FoodId=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Allergy information for: Apple &lt;em&gt;(Malus domestica)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Right Diagnosis: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/f/food_allergy_apple/intro.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Food Allergy -- apple&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Livestrong.com: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/196685-apple-allergy-symptoms/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apple Allergy Symptoms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2017-08-29T02:32:42.513" LastActivityDate="2017-08-29T02:32:42.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3786" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="42125" CreationDate="2011-05-30T05:52:58.833" Score="33" ViewCount="4673" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cCpe0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Women creating punch cards&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Long before the Internet existed, &lt;a href=&quot;http://boingboing.net/2011/02/09/women-computers-of-w.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;computers &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; women&lt;/a&gt;. (United States Census Bureau, courtesy of the University of Hartford)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a well-known trope that &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;there are no girls on the Internet&lt;/a&gt;.  In fact, apparently that is a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/rules-of-the-internet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;rule of the Internet&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;30&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;There are no girls on the internet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At any rate, I know a few women who do, in fact, use the Internet, so that I can at least anecdotally refute that statement.  Furthermore, it seems highly unlikely that 51% of the world population has been excluded from one of mankind's greatest achievements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, it stands to reason that such a widely espoused viewpoint might have some basis in reality.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any evidence that more men than women use the Internet?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-08-26T23:17:51.803" LastActivityDate="2021-10-14T11:27:02.790" Title="Do more men use the Internet than women?" Tags="|gender|sociology|internet|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3786" CreationDate="2011-05-30T06:10:58.530" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR - Not much solid data aside from UK where numbers are stated as almost equal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know Facebook is not the internet, but it has a huge slice of the traffic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These statistics from early 2009 suggest there are more female users than males &lt;em&gt;using&lt;/em&gt;* Facebook than males. Although the data is not entirely clear it is at least based on actual Facebook data according to the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On average, the ratio of male to&#xA;  female Facebook users is .85, meaning&#xA;  that there are significantly more&#xA;  Female facebook users than male ones.&#xA;  This plays out with general trends in&#xA;  social networking gender demographics,&#xA;  which tend to show a predominantly&#xA;  female base of users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;Unfortunately this does not state clearly what they mean by usage&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many sites out there that claim to represent a bias towards females and many sensationalist articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these are based on &quot;various sources&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One such example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://boingboing.net/2007/04/15/female-internet-user.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; from Cory Doctrow in 2007:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IZaxF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has its source as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emarketer.com/Welcome.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;eMarketer&lt;/a&gt; who according to themselves is based on &quot;Data from over 4,000 Worldwide Sources&quot;. Which in itself is not a reasonable source for this site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems this question came up around 2007 and there was some interest in it, but as most of it was tripe and unprovable people stopped paying attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reliable source would be a national census. I am a non-American, so can't say for the USA and unfortunately for Australia the last available data is from 2000 which is now over 10 years old. A further search revealed little information from American census data that was recent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accoding to this report  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/nojournal/internet-access-q1-2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Office for National Statistics - Internet Access Quarterly Update, May 2011&lt;/a&gt; from the UK Office for National statistics is says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The numbers of male and female&#xA;  Internet users were similar, at 20.51&#xA;  million and 20.27 million&#xA;  respectively. Men were more likely to&#xA;  have used the Internet than women,&#xA;  with 84.6 per cent of men having used&#xA;  it compared with 79.8 per cent of&#xA;  women. There were 1.45 million more&#xA;  women than men who had never used the&#xA;  Internet; 5.08 million women compared&#xA;  with 3.63 million men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Information about how this data is collected can be read in the linked document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-05-30T07:45:11.183" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T07:45:11.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3748" CreationDate="2011-05-30T06:42:42.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another idea would be radio amateurs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Radio amateurs regularly pick up communications between ground stations and spacecraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example we have the story of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/getstart/getstart.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; guy and  if you're willing to believe agencies of US government, there's also &lt;a href=&quot;http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/reference/radio/sarex.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; project for space shuttles and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ariss-eu.org/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;another&lt;/a&gt; project for ISS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point would be various SETI programs that are currently in existence. Unfortunately, I don't have any links at the time, but I believe that some of them could notice communication between a Mars colony and Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="549" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T06:42:42.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3777" CreationDate="2011-05-30T07:12:56.257" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It happens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are more examples than just this, but these two examples were on the first page of search results. You don't have to look far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2007&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article491125.ece&quot;&gt;http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article491125.ece&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2008&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kcci.com/r/16265120/detail.html&quot;&gt;http://www.kcci.com/r/16265120/detail.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3206" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T07:12:56.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-30T09:29:59.830" Score="22" ViewCount="3098" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.boots.com/fertility/features/increasing-sperm-count&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The advice&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;wear boxer shorts instead of briefs&lt;/strong&gt; seems reasonable at first glance, since&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;for testes to produce sufficient&#xA;  quality and quantity of sperm, the&#xA;  temperature of testes must be lower&#xA;  than the core body temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;But is the temperature difference between boxers and briefs actually high enough to matter?&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9751347&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This study from 1998&lt;/a&gt; suggests &quot;&lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In our study there was no difference&#xA;  in scrotal temperature depending on&#xA;  underwear type. It is unlikely that&#xA;  underwear type has a significant&#xA;  effect on male fertility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;My question:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there studies that support the claim that switching from briefs to boxer shorts (or other &quot;loose&quot; undergarments) can improve fertility?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T16:28:50.970" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T16:28:50.970" Title="Can switching from briefs to boxer shorts improve your fertility?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|fertility|human-reproduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3794" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6049" CreationDate="2011-05-30T09:34:27.640" Score="9" ViewCount="2172" Body="&lt;p&gt;Searching for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.ca/search?q=glycogen+restoration+window&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;glycogen restoration window&lt;/a&gt; returns a lot of results, saying that it's good to refuel within about 60 minutes of exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WfUFuffwtQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;different source&lt;/a&gt; says that you might as well just eat at regular meal-times, that there's &quot;nothing magic about that window of opportunity&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask this question because &lt;a href=&quot;https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/3941/why-recover-with-carbohydrates-instead-of-with-protein/3947#3947&quot;&gt;someone in another forum said&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The optimal window for glycogen&#xA;  restoration is 30 minutes once&#xA;  exercise stops! Your muscles are&#xA;  depleted and craving carbs. Once you&#xA;  get into the habit of doing this, you&#xA;  will be shocked if you miss this&#xA;  window how much more slowly you&#xA;  recover.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:40.750" LastActivityDate="2011-09-05T16:12:25.870" Title="Is the 'glycogen restoration window' real?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3772" CreationDate="2011-05-30T12:52:14.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A partial answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Bradford Lyttle's Apocalypse Equation is a stochastic model, initially proposed in 1982, linking the risk of (accidental) nuclear apocalypse with the number of nuclear weapons being stored. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspacifistparty.org/essays/EnolaGay-Apocalypse.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v9n5/196_The_apocalypse_equations.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Audrey Tomason's alleged master's thesis is allegedly about economic collapse being triggered by an unsustainable oil industry. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1477.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OP's ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are unrelated issues, and therefore there is no relation to terms &quot;Apocalypse Equation&quot; between the two uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-30T12:52:14.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3498" CreationDate="2011-05-30T14:42:25.977" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question asks &quot;Is there any scientific basis for concluding that &quot;crying it out&quot; or the Ferber method are harmful to a child?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is: Yes, there is some scientific basis, but that the results are controversial, and there are (or have been) some gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the question, there is a reference to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phdinparenting.com/2008/07/05/no-cry-it-out/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article in PhD in Parenting&lt;/a&gt; which argues against Crying It Out. That article doesn't always stick with scientific claims (arguing, for example, that &quot;crying it out&quot; is disrespectful, which is hardly something that could be proven or disproven scientifically).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it provides a number of references to support the scientific claims it does make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the first reference is to &lt;a href=&quot;http://askdrsears.com/html/10/handout2.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a handout from &quot;Dr Sears&quot;&lt;/a&gt; which links to a number of relevant studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another link that sounded promising was titled &quot;Macall Gordon – Is “crying it out” appropriate for infants? A review of the literature on the use of extinction in the first year&quot;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talaris.org/pdf/research/CIOPoster.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;URL to the poster&lt;/a&gt; is broken, and now redirects to the Talaris Institute home page, who are the previous employers of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/pub/macall-gordon/9/9a0/89&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Macall Gordon, an MA in Psychology specialising in the area&lt;/a&gt;. (I am assuming she is no longer employed by the Talaris Institute, as she does not turn up in searches on their site, and it seems they have pulled down the poster originally referenced.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That same poster (presented in 2006) is archived from &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20131001115022/http://www.infantsleep.org/cryingitoutresearch.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;infantsleep.org&lt;/a&gt;. It points out where the existing (as of 2006) research has gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gordon's poster is &lt;a href=&quot;http://mainstreamparenting.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/the-not-quite-anti-cio-poster-child-macall-gordon/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;criticised here&lt;/a&gt;, and defended by Macall Gordon in the comments, who describes herself as &quot;in the middle of two very contentious sides who appear to have little interest in open-minded dialogue&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it seems that there has been active scientific research in the area, supporting some of the aspects of Crying It Out and others attacking some aspects of the practice. There have also been some critics of that research, and critics of those critics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Welcome to the cutting edge of a difficult and controversial problem...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2018-08-04T20:10:48.863" LastActivityDate="2018-08-04T20:10:48.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4132" CreationDate="2011-05-30T15:46:56.837" Score="3" ViewCount="1006" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard some people claim that the Tyrolean crossing is named after the Tyrol region in Austria, but I cannot find any reference to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this practice from Tyrol?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3213" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T14:14:28.867" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T14:14:28.867" Title="Does the Tyrolean crossing (zip line) from Tyrol?" Tags="|history|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3773" CreationDate="2011-05-30T19:45:51.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most produce is picked before it is ripe. This is so that it is firm enough to travel without spoiling and so that it arrives on sale in a fresh condition with some shelf life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Produce that is picked before it has become ripe is less nutritious than produce that is picked when it is ripe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Fruits and vegetables destined to be shipped to the fresh-produce aisles around the country typically are picked before they are ripe, which gives them less time to develop a full spectrum of vitamins and minerals. Outward signs of ripening may still occur, but these vegetables will never have the same nutritive value as if they had been allowed to fully ripen on the vine. In addition, during the long haul from farm to fork, fresh fruits and vegetables are exposed to lots of heat and light, which degrade some nutrients, especially delicate vitamins like C and the B vitamin thiamin.&quot;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eatingwell.com/nutrition_health/nutrition_news_information/fresh_vs_frozen_vegetables_are_we_giving_up_nutrition_fo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The local supplier clearly does not have to account for the same amount of time in transport as the geographically challenged supplier and can therefore provide produce that is naturally more ripe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2408" LastEditorUserId="2408" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T01:33:41.253" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T01:33:41.253" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4806" CreationDate="2011-05-30T19:58:21.957" Score="8" ViewCount="1164" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's what a friend of mime recently stated. I.e. if one owns a pet one is less likely to be parent and vice-versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any data available to support such a claim? I'm sceptical, because there is also the classical &lt;code&gt;family + dog&lt;/code&gt; cliché. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly for fun I've drawn a graph with dog traces to visualise the assertion ;-)&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/T64FF.png&quot; alt=&quot;dog traces&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2051" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:38:55.460" LastActivityDate="2021-01-10T13:15:11.647" Title="Is there a negative correlation between parenthood and pet ownership?" Tags="|psychology|zoology|sexuality|children|parenting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3803" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3804" CreationDate="2011-05-30T22:58:39.783" Score="8" ViewCount="10178" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many pubs, bars and clubs peanuts are provided as a convenience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The saying goes that throughout the night, grubby dudes who don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom come out and taint the peanuts. By the end of the night the peanuts are supposedly infected with several sources of urine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/food/tainted/mints.asp&quot;&gt;From snopes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On 13 July 2005, while a guest on The&#xA;  Tonight Show With Jay Leno, Johnny&#xA;  Depp stated that a study done on bar&#xA;  peanuts revealed the presence of 27&#xA;  different types of urine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Snopes article does not address peanuts, only mints, and peanuts are still available in many Australian bars and clubs I have been to)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2016-02-11T19:30:10.130" Title="Are bar peanuts regularly tainted by urine?" Tags="|nutrition|urine|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3803" CreationDate="2011-05-31T01:37:37.977" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't find any evidence of a study done on peanuts, however here are some other interesting articles that appear to have research to back them up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=1641825&amp;amp;page=1&quot;&gt;Fast food ice dirtier than toilet water&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mlive.com/health/index.ssf/2011/03/study_finds_fecal_matter_on_ov.html&quot;&gt;72 percent of shopping carts had a positive marker for fecal bacteria and half had Escherichia coli&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/01/30/fecal-bacteria-found-in-nearly-half-of-soda-fountains.aspx&quot;&gt;Fecal Bacteria Found in Nearly Half of Fast Food Soda Fountains&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to my question is likely that wherever peoples hands go so goes bacteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also appears there is no study on nuts in bars, so hopefully people can stop saying &quot;a &lt;em&gt;study&lt;/em&gt; was done a few years ago on peanuts in bars and... blah&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T01:37:37.977" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3805" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3820" CreationDate="2011-05-31T02:34:31.803" Score="24" ViewCount="15803" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many claims made about the source of fluoride in our water, some examples are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gwarehouse.com.au/articles/water-fluoridation/chemistry-water-fluoridation&quot;&gt;Intentional dosing of municipal water supplies with fluoride waste products from industry&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thehealthvine.net/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=1&amp;amp;Itemid=59&quot;&gt;Increased cancer risk from using phosphate waste to fluoridate drinking water&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qawf.org/pages/ActuallyInWater.html&quot;&gt;Most of the Queenslanders [...]are drinking water fluoridated with imported Chinese industry waste products&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the fluoride added to the water supply produced as an industrial waste product? And does it due to this origin contain any harmful components in significant amounts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T10:12:03.750" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T21:31:12.780" Title="Is fluoride in water an industry waste product?" Tags="|medical-science|chemistry|fluoride|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3803" CreationDate="2011-05-31T07:40:21.727" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the man in the video there are no harmful 'poo' bacteria to be found on bar snacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hypothesis is that the salt on the bar snaxxx are hostile to the bacteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://health.discovery.com/videos/dr-know-bar-snacks-and-bacteria.html&quot;&gt;http://health.discovery.com/videos/dr-know-bar-snacks-and-bacteria.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2408" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T07:40:21.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3812" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-31T09:55:45.557" Score="29" ViewCount="1573" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is an off-shoot of from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3692/does-wearing-a-bicycle-helmet-make-the-cyclist-safer&quot;&gt;discussion about helmet safety&lt;/a&gt;. There is an assertion that when a car passes a bicycle, it allows less space to those who wear a helmet than those without. While this is metric is only one part of the larger picture regarding bicycle safety, it is often cited by helmet skeptics as scientific evidence to show wearing helmets has a negative effect on safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The assertion seems to base on a single study by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drianwalker.com/overtaking/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ian Walker&lt;/a&gt;. He says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Drivers also tended to pass notably&#xA;  closer to the rider when he wore a&#xA;  helmet than when he did not.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And he reasons that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The helmet effect is likely the&#xA;  result of drivers judging cyclists’&#xA;  skill levels from their appearance and&#xA;  adjusting their overtaking&#xA;  accordingly&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm rather skeptical of his study. The chief problem is, in the eyes of a driver, bicycle helmets are not a salient feature. The driver's cognitive capacity is already taxed in judging the relative speed and space required for passing and often have to make a move in a short time window. There is little capacity to check out other details like helmets, let alone to use this to make a judgment and consciously vary his driving strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone taken a critical look at his study? Does anyone have another related result? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3175" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T06:03:40.767" Title="Do cars pass with less space for bicyclists who wear helmets?" Tags="|road-vehicles|safety|bicycles|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3805" CreationDate="2011-05-31T10:34:26.353" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer will focus on &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;water fluoridation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Virtually all water contains some&#xA;amount of fluoride.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Water fluoridation&#xA;is the process of adding fluoride to&#xA;the water supply so that the level&#xA;reaches approximately 1 part fluoride&#xA;per million parts water (ppm) or 1&#xA;milligram fluoride per liter of water&#xA;(mg/L); this is the optimal level for&#xA;preventing tooth decay. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/fluoridated-water&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/oral_health/media/en/orh_cdoe_319to321.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;World Health Organization&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research on the oral health effects of&#xA;fluoride started around 100 years ago&lt;/strong&gt;;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;The focus has been on the link between&#xA;water and fluorides and dental caries&#xA;and fluorosis, topical fluoride&#xA;applications, fluoride toothpastes,&#xA;and salt and milk fluoridation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WHO recommends for public health that&#xA;every effort must be made to develop&#xA;affordable fluoridated toothpastes for&#xA;use in developing countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Water&#xA;fluoridation, where technically&#xA;feasible and culturally acceptable,&#xA;has substantial advantages in public&#xA;health&lt;/strong&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, fluoridation of&#xA;salt and milk fluoridation schemes may&#xA;be considered for prevention of dental&#xA;caries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/bdj/journal/v199/n7s/full/4812863a.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;History of Water Fluoridation&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Water fluoridation has been described&#xA;by the &lt;em&gt;Centre for Disease Control&lt;/em&gt; (CDC) as&#xA;one of the ten most important public&#xA;health advances of the 20th Century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, &lt;strong&gt;some 40 countries have&#xA;artificial water fluoridation schemes&#xA;in existence&lt;/strong&gt;. ... it is &lt;strong&gt;estimated that 400 million people have access to fluoridated water worldwide.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. (numbers are from 2004)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;USA (64%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Canada (43%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Panama (18%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Republic of Ireland (73%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Australia (61%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New Zealand (61%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Israel (75%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Malaysia (70%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;United Kingdom (10%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Singapore (100%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brazil (41%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Argentina (21%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chile (40%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spain (10%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Columbia (80%).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fW6Kc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Water fluoridation&quot; /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fluoridated-water-extent-world.svg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;If you live in the USA, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/nohss/FluoridationV.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC lists fluoridation levels by state&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/bdj/journal/v199/n7s/full/4812863a.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Safety of Water Fluoridation&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of the safety of water&#xA;fluoridation has been investigated&#xA;time and time again by a variety of&#xA;national and international&#xA;commissions, most notably in recent&#xA;times by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/projects/water_fluoridation.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NHS Centre for Reviews&#xA;and Dissemination in 2000&lt;/a&gt; (the York Review).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;York's main conclusion was that &lt;strong&gt;there&#xA;was no clear evidence of any adverse&#xA;effect from water fluoridation other&#xA;than staining of enamel&lt;/strong&gt; (dental&#xA;fluorosis).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The York Review has been followed up&#xA;in the United Kingdom by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mrc.ac.uk/Utilities/Documentrecord/index.htm?d=MRC002482&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Medical&#xA;Research Council&lt;/a&gt; (MRC).&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;The MRC's view is that &lt;strong&gt;there is very little cause for concern on any potential general health issue in relation to water fluoridation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/fluoridated-water&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The National Cancer Institute&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of the studies reviewed for the&#xA;Public Health Service (PHS) report,&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;scientists at the National Cancer&#xA;Institute evaluated the relationship&#xA;between the fluoridation of drinking&#xA;water and the number of deaths due to&#xA;cancer in the United States during a&#xA;36-year period, and the relationship&#xA;between water fluoridation and number&#xA;of new cases of cancer during a&#xA;15-year period.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After examining more&#xA;than 2.2 million cancer death records&#xA;and 125,000 cancer case records in&#xA;counties using fluoridated water, &lt;strong&gt;the&#xA;researchers found no indication of&#xA;increased cancer risk associated with&#xA;fluoridated drinking water&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;But there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v298/n1/full/scientificamerican0108-74.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;concerns about water fluoridation&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some recent &lt;strong&gt;studies suggest that&#xA;overconsumption of fluoride can raise&#xA;the risks of disorders affecting&#xA;teeth, bones, the brain and the&#xA;thyroid gland&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/fluoride_drinking_water/en/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WHO acknowledges this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fluoride is one of the very few&#xA;chemicals that has been shown to cause&#xA;significant effects in people through&#xA;drinking-water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fluoride has&#xA;beneficial effects on teeth at low&#xA;concentrations in drinking-water, but&#xA;excessive exposure to fluoride in&#xA;drinking-water, or in combination with&#xA;exposure to fluoride from other&#xA;sources, can give rise to a number of&#xA;adverse effects.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What is used for Water Fluoridation?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdph.ca.gov/certlic/drinkingwater/Documents/Fluoridation/CDC-FluoridationManual-1986.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC - Water Fluoridation Manual&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several practical&#xA;considerations involved in selecting&#xA;compounds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the compound must have sufficient solubility to permit its use in&#xA;routine water plant practice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the cation to which the fluoride ion is attached must not have any&#xA;undesirable charasteristics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the material should be relatively inexpensive and readily available in&#xA;grades of size and purity suitable&#xA;for their intended use.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sodium Fluoride&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br/&gt;The first&#xA;fluoride compound used in water&#xA;fluoridation. It was selected on the&#xA;basis of the above&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;criteria and also because its toxicity&#xA;and physiological effects had been so&#xA;thoroughly studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sodium Silicofluoride&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br/&gt; As with most&#xA;silicofluorides, &lt;em&gt;it is generally&#xA;obtained as a &lt;strong&gt;by product&lt;/strong&gt; from&#xA;manufacture of phosphorus&#xA;fertilizers&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;br/&gt;Once it was shown&#xA;that ... there is no difference in the&#xA;physiological effect, silicofluorides&#xA;(and hydrofluosilic acid) were rapidly&#xA;accepted for water fluoridation, and&#xA;in many cases, have displaced&#xA;the use of sodium fluoride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other Fluoride Chemicals&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;Hydrofluoric acid (not&#xA;hydrofluosilici acid), although low in&#xA;cost, presents too much safety and&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;corrosion hazard to be acceptable for&#xA;water fluoridation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: A &amp;quot;by product&amp;quot; isn't automatically a &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; thing. It just means it's not the primary product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;More Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Centers for Disease Control - Water Fluoridation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/iyh-vsv/environ/fluor-eng.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Health Canada - Fluoride and Human Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dentalhealth.org/tell-me-about/topic/sundry/fluoride&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;British Dental Health - Fluoride&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moh.govt.nz/fluoride&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fluoridation in New Zealand&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.vic.gov.au/environment/fluoridation/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flouridation in Australia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doh.gov.za/department/fluoridation.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fluoridation in South Africa&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fluorideinfo.org/fluoride_claims-vs-facts.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fluoride Information Network - Claims vs Facts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.org/03HealthPromotion/fluoride.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quackwatch - Fluoridation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T15:00:24.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3812" CreationDate="2011-05-31T10:47:57.753" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[An aside, before I start: I think your question about the mechanism is a reasonable one, but I trust your skepticism, upon gathering more evidence, will lead you to provisionally accepting the evidence of a peer-reviewed controlled scientific experiment over a gut feel, if it turns out that the study holds it own! In particular, it doesn't take many drivers to be held up (or at least to perceive it that way) behind a cyclist, who have time to register the helmet and to cut too close to the rider, to sway the statistics.]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked for any replication or criticism of the study. I started by finding the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457506001540&quot;&gt;original study&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?cluster=3640837071493925433&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=2005&amp;amp;sciodt=0,5&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt;. Then I skimmed through the 28 citations. (Google Scholar may not be the best Citation Index, but it is easy and free.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't see any replications (although this &lt;a href=&quot;http://digitalcommons.bolton.ac.uk/ri_2009/3/&quot;&gt;instrumented bike&lt;/a&gt; project sounded like a promising source.)  It was (positively) cited in a number of other papers (&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=IlRychZFYwQC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA139&amp;amp;ots=9rTplqgUg0&amp;amp;sig=FXNmqD5I3GFdg1x5h_jQja5RwdE&quot;&gt;e.g.&lt;/a&gt;), including reference to the helmets, suggesting other peers had found the experiment valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also discovered that Ian Walker had a &lt;a href=&quot;http://bamboobadger.blogspot.com&quot;&gt;personal blog&lt;/a&gt;. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://bamboobadger.blogspot.com/2009/03/bicycle-overtaking-and-rebuttals.html&quot;&gt;one blog post&lt;/a&gt;, he explained he had achieved some infamy from the original article and highlighted a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cyclistview.com/overtaking/files/A-Draft-Rebuttal-of-Walker-Paper-Rev-4.pdf&quot;&gt;draft rebuttal by Dan Gutierrez&lt;/a&gt; (which includes an experimental result which, while not replicating the same helmet versus non-helmet experiment, suggested the helmet differences was minor compared to other factors.). Ian Walker then provided a defence to that rebuttal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, yes, Ian Walker's paper has provoked a reaction from the cycling community, but the scientific community have, by and large, accepted the result. I found no replications, but hope that the instrumented bike project might offer such replications in the future. This was a rapidly performed literature review; a more detailed one may provide more support to either side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T10:47:57.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3812" CreationDate="2011-05-31T12:23:57.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may want to check out some psychology of risk literature. I remember chatting with a psychology professor who specialised in risk and he pointed out that filling cars with safety devices (like air-bags and seat-belts) seems to encourage risk taking behaviour on the part of drivers, because the environment is seen as being &quot;safer&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to your example I might imagine that car users who see a helmet wearing cyclist may feel that the situation is safer and thus they take more risk in passing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure a psychinfo search could give you more. Be safe, or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: A quick search of psychinfo turns up this abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is evidence linking certain&#xA;  vehicle characteristics to crash&#xA;  involvement and one possible mechanism&#xA;  behind this relationship is that these&#xA;  vehicle characteristics influence&#xA;  drivers' risk-taking behaviour. In&#xA;  order to investigate this, we&#xA;  conducted a roadside observation&#xA;  survey and a questionnaire-based&#xA;  study. Both revealed a significant&#xA;  relationship between vehicle&#xA;  performance and drivers' risk-taking&#xA;  behaviour. The causal direction of&#xA;  this relationship has important&#xA;  consequences. If drivers' risk taking&#xA;  predicts their car choice, then it&#xA;  could be justifiably argued that&#xA;  individuals who take more risks when&#xA;  driving simply choose more powerful&#xA;  vehicles to facilitate their&#xA;  behaviour. However, if it is the case&#xA;  that vehicle characteristics adversely&#xA;  influence drivers' risk-taking&#xA;  propensity then this has implications&#xA;  for vehicle design. Results indicated&#xA;  that the causal pathway operates&#xA;  independently in both directions.&#xA;  Finally, we sought to determine which&#xA;  vehicle characteristics influenced&#xA;  risk-taking intentions independently&#xA;  of other confounded characteristics.&#xA;  We found that high vehicle performance&#xA;  and a greater number of safety&#xA;  features led independently to greater&#xA;  intended risk taking in general, while&#xA;  higher internal car noise led to&#xA;  closer car following and more risky&#xA;  gap acceptance, but not to greater&#xA;  speed. Vehicle smoothness and handling&#xA;  did not affect risk-taking intentions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: The effect of vehicle characteristics on drivers' risk-taking behaviour 2002&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2087" LastEditorUserId="2087" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T08:18:26.547" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T08:18:26.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3805" CreationDate="2011-05-31T12:34:41.510" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a former resident of Queensland, I looked with interest at the third link provided in the question. The claims are extreme, so I believe it is valuable to address their claims directly, line by line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;WHAT DO THEY ACTUALLY PUT IN THE WATER?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The three Fluoride chemicals that could be added to Queensland water supplies for fluoridation are Hydrofluorosilicic Acid, Sodium Silicofluoride or Sodium Fluoride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to take their word for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hydrofluorosilicic Acid and Sodium Silicofluoride are collectively known as the Silicofluorides and are the chemicals used most in other Australian states fluoridation schemes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to take their word for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The two Silicofluorides chemicals used, are waste products of Phosphate fertilizer manufacture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the fundamental concepts of Chemistry - one of the most important ideas that have advanced science - is that everything is made of atoms. It doesn't matter, chemically, where the atoms come from, they still react the same way. So, from a health perspective, that they are waste products of another process is irrelevant. [Reference: Year 8 high school science class.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;em&gt;political&lt;/em&gt; standpoint that may be relevant, but that's not being argued here. From an &lt;em&gt;emotional&lt;/em&gt; standpoint, we associate &quot;waste&quot; with &quot;bad&quot;. If we replaced the emotive term &quot;waste&quot; with &quot;recycled&quot; suddenly it sounds positive!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They are industrial grade, not pharmaceutical grade products and can contain small residues of toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury or lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The introduction of the phrase &quot;pharmaceutical grade&quot; here is a red herring. Most items we ingest are not pharmaceutical grade. The sugar you put in your coffee isn't pharmaceutical grade, and nor is the coffee itself. Why should the water be? The standard here should be &quot;food grade&quot;, and the water coming from the tap (certainly in first world countries) is rigorously monitored and controlled. (I'd include a reference here, but it is dependent on your local government, so I can't give a universal answer. I have examined the regulations for a number of states here in Australia, and there are a huge number of pollutants tested for, including heavy metals.) Once the chemicals coming in are dissolved to 1 ppm (see other answer), the &quot;small residues&quot; are going to be diluted even further, making the issue of industrial versus food grade &lt;em&gt;inputs&lt;/em&gt; irrelevant. It is the output that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The two Silicofluoride compounds used DO NOT EVEN OCCUR IN NATURE, yet fluoridation promoters call fluoride &quot;NATURAL”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will take their word for the fact that the compounds don't occur in nature. Not only is the &quot;natural&quot; argument irrelevant (as they later point out themselves), but the reagents used are irrelevant, as the flouride is no longer attached to the rest of the compound once it is in solution. [Reference: Year 11 high school Chemistry class]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would, however, like citations for where flouridation promoters call it natural. Are they referring to the silicofluorides or to the idea of fluoride being dissolved in fresh water?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No toxicology studies have ever been performed on the Silicofluoride used in water fluoridation schemes.  The only toxicology studies ever done, have been done on Pharmaceutical&#xA;  grade Sodium Fluoride as is used in toothpaste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Toxicology studies have been done on the fluoride dissolved in the drinking water (see other answer), which is where it is relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently less than 5% of Queensland's population drinks fluoridated water.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll take their word for it, but irrelevant to the argument (except to explain why there is a motivation to start flouridating water.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sodium Fluoride is a waste product of Aluminium smelting and is the fluoridation chemical used in Queensland in Dalby, Mareeba, Moranbah and Townsville/ Thuringowah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the source of the chemical is irrelevant from a chemical/health perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Freedom of Information reveals that water supply of Bamaga is fluoridated with a Silicofluoride and that Sodium Fluoride used in other Queensland areas is imported from China.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It would appear that most of the Queenslanders that are currently drinking fluoridated water are drinking water fluoridated with imported Chinese industry waste products, probably sourced as a waste product of the Chinese Aluminium smelting industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly the source country is irrelevant for health effects. It is only relevant to trigger emotive patriotic and political concerns.  Similarly, it doesn't matter how the information was obtained - citing &quot;Freedom of Information&quot; strikes an emotive chord that the government may be trying to otherwise hide something. I would like to see a cite of the request and the resulting data, to ensure we aren't being exploited by people putting in FoI requests where a regular request (or even web search!) would get the same information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Water from rivers, creeks or dams does contain small amounts of natural fluoride.  Levels of fluoride in SE Qld surface waters are usually only about 0.1 parts per million, or nine times less the amount of the Fluoride that Queensland Government plans on adding to Brisbane's water supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, I'll take their word for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fluoride occurs naturally in water when water flows though or over rocks and abrades rocks that contain Fluorspar, or Calcium Fluoride (Ca F2). Calcium fluoride is very insoluble.  Water that contains natural Fluoride from abraded Fluorspar containing rocks also contains Calcium which can offer some protection from Fluoride.  Fluoride binds with Calcium readily and Calcium is given as a treatment for Fluoride poisoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of this sounds plausible, and I confirmed that Calcium Flouride is very insoluble on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_fluoride&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, so no disagreements here. Note: they are straying awfully close to the &quot;natural is good&quot; fallacy that they themselves later attack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Calcium Fluoride (the natural form of Fluoride) is not permitted to be added to any Australian water supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like a cite for that. I note that it has been approved for food by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://fluoridealert.org/calcium.fluoride.html&quot;&gt;EU&lt;/a&gt;. If there is such a restriction, is it just to avoid unnecessary mining? (5 Billion kg mined annually [Holleman, A. F.; Wiberg, E. &quot;Inorganic Chemistry&quot; Academic Press: San Diego, 2001. ISBN 0-12-352651-5., via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_fluoride&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;]) Or concerns that there is a cost of extracting the Flouride with concentrated Sulphuric Acid (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_fluoride&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;) before adding it to the water, thus defeating the purpose of using a &quot;natural&quot; source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Groundwater as in bore water or well water can contain very high levels of &quot;natural&quot; fluoride and in parts of China, India and the Rift Valley, natural Fluoride has led to devastating health effects such as crippling Skeletal Fluorosis for millions of people.  Arsenic, Lead and Mercury are also &quot;natural&quot;.  Natural does not necessarily mean good or desirable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe all of this to be true. If anyone proposed to set flouride levels to the point they could trigger &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_fluorosis&quot;&gt;skeletal fluorosis&lt;/a&gt;, that would be terrible. Fortunately, I have seen no proposals to exceed the World Health Organization recommended maximum fluoride value at which fluorosis should be minimal [ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/fluoride_drinking_water_full.pdf&quot;&gt;Fawell J, Bailey K, Chilton J, Dahi E, Fewtrell L, Magara Y. Fluoride in Drinking-water [PDF]. World Health Organization; 2006. ISBN 92-4-156319-2. Guidelines and standards. p. 37–9.&lt;/a&gt; via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Silicofluoride compounds used for water fluoridation are very acidic and addition to water often entails addition of other chemicals such as soda ash to neutralize the acidity to prevent corrosion of water reticulation equipment.  Appendix one of the 1999 NHMRC Review of water fluoridation was a questionaire for Councils which fluoridate and included a request for any evidence for Fluoride incompatibilities, such as enhanced corrosion or breakdown of gaskets or seals, in the water distribution network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay. Someone asked a question. And?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Queensland Government has said they would pay the setting up costs of fluoridation, but will not be paying for any recurrent and on going costs.  Any Fluoride caused corrosion problems in water treatment plants or water reticulation systems would be to the future cost of Councils and ratepayers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Queensland Government is funded by tax-payers. The local council is funded by tax-payers. This isn't a health argument, it is an argument about which bucket of tax-payer money should be used within a political system, and therefore is not subject to scientific scrutiny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion: there are a number of emotive arguments here, but no references, and some half-truths. I would look elsewhere for evidence that flouridation contains harmful components. It may be right that that the flouride is extracted from the output of other industrial processes, but that is both irrelevant (from a consumer health and safety perspective) and claimed without evidence here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T12:34:41.510" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3821" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3822" CreationDate="2011-05-31T12:37:34.887" Score="3" ViewCount="11207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live on the 21&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt; floor of a building and I ride an elevator everyday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if I got stuck in the elevator for an extended length of time, could I use up all of the air in the elevator car and suffocate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="160" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T12:46:45.810" Title="Is it possible to suffocate if you get trapped in an elevator for a long period of time?" Tags="|elevators|suffocation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3821" CreationDate="2011-05-31T12:46:45.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No for Normal / slow speed elevators, they usually have a ventilator to run a fan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High speed elevators are some times are pressurized , those I guess may block out air ventilation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2697" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T12:46:45.810" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3824" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-05-31T14:08:52.380" Score="10" ViewCount="8278" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was a kid, comic books and specifically cartoon characters who had a toothache were always drawn with bandages around their head, usually knotted above the head. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to know is whether or not there is any medical basis for this, or is it simply just a convenient method to visually depict that a character has a toothache? What is the reason for drawing them like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Example of such a cartoon.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/foN92.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Toothache&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2439" LastEditorUserId="2439" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T14:15:22.670" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T07:42:04.513" Title="Does wearing a headband help for toothache?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3824" CreationDate="2011-05-31T14:14:24.653" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it was used to hold in place a poultice [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oldtimeremedies.co.uk/2008/11/toothache-home-made-poultice-for.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;e.g.&lt;/a&gt;]&#xA;Such poultices could no longer be recommended where antibiotics and analgesics are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, it may be being used to hold an ice-pack in place.There are plenty of examples of people getting the advice to use ice-packs on tooth pain: [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_2135033_manage-toothache-pain.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;e.g.&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T14:19:47.093" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T14:19:47.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3639" CreationDate="2011-05-31T15:14:38.633" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't work out whether the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus&quot;&gt;Platypus&lt;/a&gt; counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story goes that when the first Platypus specimen was sent to England, it was perceived to be a fake (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eumyeducation.com/EUMY-SBM-01-classification/mammals.htm&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;) by the scientist, Dr George Shaw, who examined it with a pair of scissors in an effort to expose the fraud (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.platypus.asn.au/historical_background.html&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The unreferenced web-sites I have checked differ in a few minor details: was it more than one naturalist who was doubtful? Can the scissor marks still be seen in the British Museum's specimen? I can't be sure.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one bloke from a museum in England can be counted as &quot;general scientific consensus&quot; (and perhaps, in 1799, he could!) then the platypus must count as a cryptid!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(There's a similar story about black swans, but I found even less evidence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T15:14:38.633" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3831" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4103" CreationDate="2011-05-31T15:36:08.403" Score="19" ViewCount="1477" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of my college psychology classes, a few years ago, my teacher claimed that first impressions drastically shaped our perceptions. To make his point, he said the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the beginning of a semester, researchers asked a teacher to enter his class for only 30s seconds and then to get out immediately. The researchers then asked the students to describe their impression of the teacher. By the end of the semester, after the students spent over 45 hours with the teacher, they asked the students to describe their impression of the teacher now; there was practically no difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took it at face value then, but looking at it from a more skeptical point of view, that seems a bit far-fetched. I can see first impression having an impact on perception, but this little change after so 45 hours is pretty incredible. It could have been simply a teacher trying to get the attention of his apathetic students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has such a study been conducted with a large sample?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have the researchers taken step to differentiate&#xA;&quot;first impressions shape our perceptions&quot; from &quot;first impressions are a surprisingly good judge of character&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="2433" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T18:35:15.807" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T18:48:22.883" Title="Are first impressions unchangeable?" Tags="|psychology|perception|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3833" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4102" CreationDate="2011-05-31T17:21:15.187" Score="15" ViewCount="4029" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've already seen a few questions about toilet hygiene but these styles of questions/myths more or less &lt;em&gt;assume&lt;/em&gt; that toilet seats are the bottom of the hygienic barrel. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To wit, I have personally heard the following places and objects compared to toilet seats in such a way as to lower the perceived hygienic status of the objects. If toilet seats aren't really that bad, than the usefulness of these comparisons is questionable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sponges,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3337/is-chewing-your-finger-nails-as-bad-as-licking-a-public-toilet-seat&quot;&gt;fingernails&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;kitchen countertops,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;floors or walking around with bare feet,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the goal of providing a baseline for toilet seat hygiene, how germy is the typical seat? How does this compare with regards to a typical standard of cleanliness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To fit this topic into less subjective terms, here are three potential phrasings of the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compared with all other surfaces in a typical private residence, is a toilet seat above or below the average measure of hygienic quality?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compared with other publicly accessible surfaces, is a toilet seat in a public restaurant above or below the average hygienic quality?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And the kicker: How do public gas station toilet seats fare against other gas station surfaces?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T01:19:35.127" Title="Are toilet seats extremely unhygienic?" Tags="|hygiene|toilets|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="569" CreationDate="2011-05-31T17:52:05.343" Score="44" Body="&lt;h3&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just read an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.brainandlife.org/the-magazine/article/app/7/4/7/this-way-in-how-safe-are-cell-phones&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;excellent article&lt;/a&gt; which discusses the WHO review. I thought it good to add the link as some have interpreted the WHO's addition of cellphones to Group 2A (Probably carcinogenic to humans) status to be &amp;quot;conclusive evidence&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The May report from the IARC moved cell phones from Group 4—probably not carcinogenic—to Group 2B, or possibly carcinogenic. Also in that group: coffee, pickled vegetables, engine exhaust, and working as a carpenter or a dry cleaner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;World Health Organization Reclassification&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;World Health Organization&lt;/a&gt; has just released the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lyon, France, May 31, 2011 ‐‐ The WHO/International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), based on an increased risk for glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer1, associated with wireless phone use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From May 24–31 2011, a Working Group of 31 scientists from 14 countries has been meeting at IARC in Lyon, France, to assess the potential carcinogenic hazards from exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields. These assessments will be published as Volume 102 of the IARC Monographs, which will be the fifth volume in this series to focus on physical agents, after Volume 55 (Solar Radiation), Volume 75 and Volume 78 on ionizing radiation (X‐rays, gamma‐rays, neutrons, radio‐nuclides), and Volume 80 on non‐ionizing radiation (extremely low‐frequency electromagnetic fields).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IARC Monograph Working Group discussed the possibility that these exposures might induce long‐term health effects, in particular an increased risk for cancer. This has relevance for public health, particularly for users of mobile phones, as the number of users is large and growing, particularly among young adults and children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Given the potential consequences for public health of this classification and findings,&amp;quot; said IARC Director Christopher Wild, &amp;quot;it is important that additional research be conducted into the long‐ term, heavy use of mobile phones. Pending the availability of such information, it is important to take pragmatic measures to reduce exposure such as hands‐free devices or texting.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source (PDF link): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2011/pdfs/pr208_E.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IARC classifies Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Fields as possibly Carcinogenic to Humans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-04-25T17:53:01.170" LastActivityDate="2021-04-25T17:53:01.170" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3835" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3909" CreationDate="2011-05-31T18:56:10.917" Score="13" ViewCount="5226" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;updated&lt;/strong&gt; to include using hydrogen in place of natural gas/gasoline, instead of solely to produce electricity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that while this question is somewhat about law, lawyers cost money, and I don't intend on trying this. I find this subject fun to think/argue about, and I figured others might too. My goal is to obtain some logical ammunition for my pursuit in convincing a friend, and not necessarily to find real legal information (I doubt it exists anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine is &lt;em&gt;convinced&lt;/em&gt; that it is against the law to build a hydrogen burning car, or a small hydrogen power plant to power your house for &quot;free.&quot; His reasoning is that, because fuel and energy are such a large part of the economy, the government doesn't want everybody becoming the wiser and cutting their power lines and converting their cars to hydrogen (I don't know anything about the feasibility of burning hydrogen gas in an internal combustion engine, or of converting an electric car to use fuel cells) and avoid paying fuel and electrical taxes forever. I mention his reasoning because he framed it like a conspiracy-cover-up magnitude &quot;law,&quot; where it's not really a law, but that The Man will swoop down and lock you up if you try this, to keep the idea quiet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the premises that energy taxes are extremely valuable to the government, and that governments wish to protect this resource, are true. But the conclusion seems absurd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He referred to this as &quot;free&quot; energy -- and since in many cases producing hydrogen is expensive, I assume he was referring to a cheap method of obtaining hydrogen such as electrolysis which can have somewhere between 50-70% efficiency according to some reports. His reason for believing that &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; method was so illegal (instead of say, wind generation) is that water can be readily obtained from any creek or lake and is untaxable, and that hydrogen gas could be produced by electrolysis by another freely available energy source such as solar or wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He cited a case (which I couldn't find a record of) in which a farmer set up a makeshift hydrogen power plant to save money. He was thrown in jail shortly thereafter for producing hydrogen for the purpose of generating electricity. I argued that if this is true, the arrest was probably for other reasons, such as not being qualified to engineer such a beast, not having a licence (if one is required in this case) to operate a power plant, or having built it in an way which is dangerous. He assured me it was because of the hydrogen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would assume that you do need a licence of sorts in order to generate lots and lots of power, to use the equipment necessary to build a hydrogen power plant, or to own equipment which has been re-tooled to run on hydrogen gas. Since hydrogen has such a high energy density, and electrolysis is relatively simple and cheap, this would be a worthwhile endeavor for a hobbyist. I again argued that it would be extremely dangerous for people to do this and therefore of course illegal, but he maintained that they would be arrested even if they were qualified and had proper equipment. I said that I doubted you could even run such an operation in a residential zone, but he said it would only serve a single household, so wouldn't need a special zone, and referred again to the case of the poor farmer where neighbors would be few and far between (and I believe people do operate wind generators on farms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this idea hold water? Is the government even concerned with how much they can tax you vs. how much energy/fuel you are able to obtain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastEditorUserId="10" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T19:49:14.610" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T19:18:12.713" Title="Is it illegal to use freely produced hydrogen in place of costly/taxed natural gas and gasoline, or to produce electricity?" Tags="|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3835" CreationDate="2011-05-31T19:33:31.040" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several points to answer here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First is that &lt;strong&gt;the whole physics basis of your friend's scheme is fundamentally flawed&lt;/strong&gt;. Electrolysis creates hydrogen and oxygen from water by breaking chemical bonds, using the energy from electricity. Combustion of hydrogen creates water from hydrogen and oxygen by reforming the bonds, releasing the bond energy as heat. If you performed these actions with perfect efficiency you would get back in the combustion the energy you put in with the electroysis. Since the processes are (much) less than perfect, you end up getting considerably less back. In other words the electrolysis to generate the hydrogen will always take more energy than you get back from the combustion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your friend has a source of hydrogen other than electroysis that is a different matter. One of the scenarios in which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ballard.com/Stationary_Power/Cogeneration_Fuel_Cells/Fuel_Cell_Benefits.htm&quot;&gt;Ballard Power&lt;/a&gt; recommends fuel cells is for chemical plants that already produce hydrogen. (Thanks to Randolf Richardson for that link)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To move on to the legal question, most jurisdictions have &lt;strong&gt;no laws about generating your own electricity&lt;/strong&gt;. I can't speak for the various US states, but in Canada plenty of off-grid homes have their own generating equipment. However there certainly are &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/news/news_detail.cfm/news_id=6436&quot;&gt;regulations about what you can connect to the grid&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, and you need some kind of approval in order to put power into the grid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another aspect is that &lt;strong&gt;storage and use of flammable gasses in any quantity requires permits&lt;/strong&gt; (for what I hope are obvious reasons if you think about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz2DLc3s52Q&quot;&gt;consequences of untrained and irresponsible people handling them&lt;/a&gt;) and there are rules governing them. Your friend would have to abide by them in order to get his scheme working. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/list_6932963_laws-regulations-hydrogen-use.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. If the farmer in the story was arrested because he had lots of hydrogen stored in an unsafe way, then that was nothing to do with 'free energy', and was probably a good thing for his neighbours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as Randolf Richardson points out, there are certainly installations of fuel cells which have been approved. See the Ballard link above. The Men in Black have so far not come to arrest any of the installers for reducing the profits of Big Power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T19:49:56.917" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T19:49:56.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3835" CreationDate="2011-05-31T19:40:03.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Canada we can get this technology here, and our government hasn't shut it down:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; Ballard - Residential fuel cell cogeneration systems&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ballard.com/Stationary_Power/Cogeneration_Fuel_Cells/Fuel_Cell_Benefits.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ballard.com/Stationary_Power/Cogeneration_Fuel_Cells/Fuel_Cell_Benefits.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I find that many conspiracy theorists worry a lot about what they think their government might do to them if they do something that they think is outrageous.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing for your friend to do is to get the required permits to build whatever he/she wishes to build.  Since it involves major electrical work, there will likely be many permits involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to electrical products that involve the use of 110 VAC and higher power in any way, there are certain standards that must be met and organizations like the CSA provide testing for these things.  If your friend wishes to build their own power generation equipment, they may be required by law to adhere to some standards like this, and if I were living next door I would want to be assured that there was no danger to me or my family (which is part of the reason why these regulations are in place).  I would be equally concerned if your friend was installing a new gas fireplace without first obtaining the proper permits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding motor vehicles, there are many strict safety regulations that have to be adhered to that can be very limiting on how vehicles can be designed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that the main reason people don't get permits, workers' compensation coverage, etc., is to save money and reduce paperwork.  Unfortunately for them the government sometimes uses a heavy-handed approach in dealing with them.  On the flip-side a &quot;slap-on-the-wrist&quot; (e.g., a small fine only) also isn't appropriate when peoples' lives could be put at risk because it doesn't send a strong enough message that these regulations are important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I suggest that your friend take that product from Ballard Power (or one like it) and go ask the local government &quot;What permits do I need to install and use a product like this?&quot;  If your friend genuinely wants to do this, then they'll be very happy if they can get a list of permits and other requirements they have to meet (because then they can proceed with a plan).  If your friend just likes to spout off conspiracy theories, as a lot of people do, then there will probably be a wide variety of excuses for not doing it along with continued talk about the conspiracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3068" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T19:40:03.107" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3838" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T19:40:32.123" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T19:40:32.123" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T19:40:32.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3839" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T19:40:32.123" Score="0" Body="December 2012 marks the conclusion of a b'ak'tun; a time period in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, typically referred to in popular culture as the &quot;Mayan&quot; calendar. It is proposed by some that the ending of this count will coincide with the coming of the end of the world by any of a variety of ways.  One of the more famous and popular &quot;doomsday&quot; predictions." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T19:40:32.123" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T19:40:32.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3840" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T19:47:53.333" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T19:47:53.333" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T19:47:53.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3841" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T19:47:53.333" Score="0" Body="September 11, 2001, the date of terrorist attacks on the United States involving the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the crash of United Airlines flight 93. Also can refer to any of the theories regarding motives behind the acts, speculation regarding guilty or involved parties, existence of theoretical conspiracies, and contemplation of the evidence pertaining to those actions and events." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="22367" LastEditDate="2018-12-12T19:53:29.977" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T19:53:29.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3843" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T19:57:11.090" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T19:57:11.090" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T19:57:11.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3844" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T19:57:11.090" Score="0" Body="Termination of pregnancy by removal of fetus or embryo from the mother body.  This process can occur naturally (as in spontaneous abortion/miscarriage) or as a result of a medical procedure/process involving either chemical or surgical interventions.  Also may refer to any of the numerous legal, social, political, ethical, religious, moral, philosophical, medical, scientific topics of debate which surround the issue.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T19:57:11.090" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T19:57:11.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3845" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:06:23.980" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T20:06:23.980" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:06:23.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3846" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:06:23.980" Score="0" Body="Traditionally Eastern process possibly dating back as far 2nd century BCE, which consists mainly of treating certain conditions in patients by the insertion and manipulation of small needles in the body at certain points to alter/redirect the body's forces/life energies." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T20:06:23.980" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:06:23.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3847" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:14:49.053" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T20:14:49.053" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:14:49.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3848" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:14:49.053" Score="0" Body="Continued physical or psychological dependence on a substance or behavior despite negative or even life-threatening physical or societal consequences. Can also refer to any of the many and varied treatments available for addiction, any of the many and varied explanations for the proposed mechanisms behind addictive behavior, or other social, physical, political, moral, ethical, medical, religious, and legal issues surrounding addiction and its treatment." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-05-23T20:12:08.210" LastActivityDate="2019-05-23T20:12:08.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3849" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="3854" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:17:32.747" Score="17" ViewCount="3613" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Roman Catholic Church claims that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorruptibility&quot;&gt;some corpses have supernaturally slow decomposition&lt;/a&gt;. Were those bodies examined by skeptics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1173" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T11:18:43.770" Title="Are there incorruptible corpses?" Tags="|medical-science|religion|mortality|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3850" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:19:43.213" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T20:19:43.213" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:19:43.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3851" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:19:43.213" Score="0" Body="The process of deliberately making something known publicly.  Can also refer to any of the methods used in this process, or directly to the business of advertising products or services for profit." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T20:19:43.213" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:19:43.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3852" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:22:49.013" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T20:22:49.013" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:22:49.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3853" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:22:49.013" Score="0" Body="Concerned with the observation, creation and appreciation of things considered &quot;beautiful&quot; or &quot;pleasing&quot; to the senses.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T20:22:49.013" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:22:49.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3849" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:29:52.283" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, some of those bodies were examined by skeptics. Io and behold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20010610014402/http://www.discover.com/june_01/featsaints.html&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20010610014402/http://www.discover.com/june_01/featsaints.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the saints had been mummified by skilled preparators, sometimes natural conditions significantly slowed decay. Sometimes, the corpse was just replaced again and again with a newly deceased one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article above concludes with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the face of science, the roman Catholic Church has now virtually abandoned the notion of incorruptibility. It no longer accepts physical preservation as one of the two miracles required before a saint can be recognized by the Pope. Still, suppressing a sense of astonishment is difficult in the presence of a saint's preserved body. It is an amazing affirmation, a testimony to one person's significance in a universe often stony with indifference. It seems to hold out hope that death will not be the end of us, that there is some salvation from the final annihilation that we fear awaits us all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we know that both natural and artificial mummification exist, so the burden of proof lies with anyone who claims that it was the work of god.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:29:52.283" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3855" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:30:55.713" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T20:30:55.713" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:30:55.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3856" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:30:55.713" Score="0" Body="Collective term for policies (employment/education/public contracting/health/etc)that take factors including &quot;race,color,religion,gender,or national origin&quot; into consideration in order to benefit a given group,usually as a means to counter the effects of historical discrimination, historically beginning with Executive Order 10925 signed by American President John F. Kennedy in 1961." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T20:30:55.713" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:30:55.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3857" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:46:18.500" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T20:46:18.500" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:46:18.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3858" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:46:18.500" Score="0" Body="Referring to the surrounding ecosystem of the planet Earth, its natural mechanisms and balances, and study of the effects of human interaction with it." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T20:46:18.500" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:46:18.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3859" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:50:21.523" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T20:50:21.523" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:50:21.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3860" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:50:21.523" Score="0" Body="Assessment of the biological processes which are directly relatable to the length of time an organism has been alive." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T20:50:21.523" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:50:21.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3861" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:51:48.027" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T20:51:48.027" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:51:48.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3862" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T20:51:48.027" Score="0" Body="The science and/or practice of soil cultivation and farming" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T20:51:48.027" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T20:51:48.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3863" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:01:50.480" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:01:50.480" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:01:50.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3864" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:01:50.480" Score="0" Body="Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) has been shown to be caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).Generally regarded to have been first reported on Jun.5,1981 by the CDC in the United States,the disease results in loss of natural immune function in the host which potentially causes illness and death.Can also refer to the social,political,economic,religious,moral,etc issues relating to the disease,its sexual transmission or pandemic status." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:01:50.480" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:01:50.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3865" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:03:33.550" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:03:33.550" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:03:33.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3866" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:03:33.550" Score="0" Body="Includes all man-made craft (manned or un-manned) which are capable of flight." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:03:33.550" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:03:33.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3867" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:07:57.583" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:07:57.583" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:07:57.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3868" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:07:57.583" Score="0" Body="Referring to Aisha bint Abu Bakr generally thought to have lived from 612 - 678, one of the wives of the Prophet Muhammad in the Islamic religion." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:07:57.583" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:07:57.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3869" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:16:25.077" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:16:25.077" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:16:25.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3870" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:16:25.077" Score="0" Body="Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955).  Theoretical Physicist known popularly for his profound intelligence.  Einstein is responsible for, among other things: The Theory of Relativity and The Photoelectric Effect, which revolutionized modern physics.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:16:25.077" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:16:25.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3871" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:21:24.993" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:21:24.993" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:21:24.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3872" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:21:24.993" Score="0" Body="Commonly used term which refers to ethanol-containing alcoholic beverages.  However, more broadly, the term can also be applied to any organic compound with a hydroxyl functional group bound to a carbon atom, such as methanol. " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:21:24.993" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:21:24.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3873" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:32:19.503" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:32:19.503" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:32:19.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3874" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:32:19.503" Score="0" Body="American Vice Presisdent, Senator, Presidential Candidate and Environmentalist known for the film &quot;An Inconvenient Truth&quot; among other things." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:32:19.503" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:32:19.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3875" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:34:14.090" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:34:14.090" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:34:14.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3876" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:34:14.090" Score="0" Body="Term applicable to forms of life with a proposed extraterrestial origin." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:34:14.090" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:34:14.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3878" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:50:46.750" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:50:46.750" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:50:46.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3879" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:50:46.750" Score="0" Body="A term for the biological antigen-antibody reaction which causes various symptoms ranging from rashes to anaphylaxis in sensitized people who encounter certain particles. Can also refer to the study of these interactions, treatment of afflicted patients, intensity of reaction, and study of reaction prevalence in a given population." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:50:46.750" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:50:46.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3880" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:58:54.837" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:58:54.837" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:58:54.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3881" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T21:58:54.837" Score="0" Body="Comprehensive term referring to the North American Nation of the United States of America and all things related to the nation including, but not limited to history,government,and policy." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T21:58:54.837" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T21:58:54.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3882" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:00:51.810" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:00:51.810" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:00:51.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3883" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:00:51.810" Score="0" Body="A chemical compound made of Hydrogen and Nitrogen in the form NH4.  Can refer to the chemical structure, its properties, or its current, former, and potential uses." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:00:51.810" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:00:51.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3884" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:14:05.417" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:14:05.417" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:14:05.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3885" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:14:05.417" Score="0" Body="British physician and researcher most notable for his claim of a link existing between the MMR vaccine and Autism Spectrum Disorder, and his paper on the topic published in the Lancet which was subsequently retracted." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:14:05.417" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:14:05.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3886" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:15:34.280" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:15:34.280" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:15:34.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3887" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:15:34.280" Score="0" Body="The loss of normal perception of pain either through natural processes or medical intervention." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:15:34.280" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:15:34.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3888" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:18:15.033" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:18:15.033" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:18:15.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3889" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:18:15.033" Score="0" Body="Any of the organisms which exhibit the qualities necessary to be classified under the kingdom Animalia." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:18:15.033" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:18:15.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3831" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:20:56.053" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;of course NOT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work/get to know somebody long enough and whatever first impression you had will adapt to this long-view character. This question/statement implicates that one can measure a (first) impression two times, one would call an oxymoron. If you make the questioning utterly superficial and short you will earn these self-fulfilling prophecies result. One can ask &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How can I improve first impression on something&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to change first impression on something&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if impression changes itself, it is not a scientific objective measurable question, as it is a singular event per se. Its like asking people to describe thier impression on a bomb explosion and they only tell you the color keeps the same between 2 time points. Or watching the explosion one time with your eye and second time with an ultra slow mow camera showing you much more details. U cannot variate just any desired parameter, so you can conclude anything from it according how you set up the measurement. Especially if the impression also depens on the state of the measurement apparatus (here the human - prejudice, selective view,... )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone makes statements on such multi-factor phenomenon and there isn't at all a differentiation into factors necessary/sufficient but implicating mono-causality first question has to be does the question vive out measurable observables, how was it measured, how has it to be measured.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone posting here a study &quot;verificating&quot; this question should accurately look at these points, I doubt serious psychological scientist to even consider such questions... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;edited more detailed answer&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be cautios on general mono-causal statements, especially in psychology and social sciences. Ask yourself, would such a study question really make sense and can it prove a mono-causal connection? &quot;American scientist found out... &quot;, I had to think on this statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the question itself is quite superficial, what is impression, how deep does it go in a passive teaching course, how deep in a vis a vis discussion, in a dialog, how interactive is the teaching, how active are the pupils. How you define these parameters will change the whole result. Are self-fulfilling prophecies excluded? You know when you watch a movie, you often pretty immediately know by only watching the actors who is the bad, who the good guy. So your impression is based on prejudice.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We did a lot of prof teaching rating at university with lot of questions and non superficial properties like competence, pronounciation, etc... If a psychological test is made by letting describe someone something vocally, it cannot be very methodical &amp;amp; scientific. There are clear criteria how such a test has to be structured, how many questions (also doubled) have to be asked at least to get a statistical significant result. Maybe you generalized the statement of your teacher as your question here too drastically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3194" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T13:58:03.210" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T13:58:03.210" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3891" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:21:17.680" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:21:17.680" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:21:17.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3892" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:21:17.680" Score="0" Body="The science of studying man with regard to place in the animal kingdom as well as human origins, development, social habits, cultural development and related topics." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:21:17.680" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:21:17.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3893" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:23:17.160" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:23:17.160" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:23:17.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3894" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:23:17.160" Score="0" Body="A compound which is thought capable of inhibiting the chemical reactions which produce free radicals.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:23:17.160" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:23:17.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3895" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:27:14.323" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:27:14.323" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:27:14.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3896" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:27:14.323" Score="0" Body="for questions about the fruit of the apple tree. For questions relating to the company and manufacturer of electronics, use [apple-inc]." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-08-02T09:37:32.407" LastActivityDate="2019-08-02T09:37:32.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3897" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:29:49.617" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:29:49.617" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:29:49.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3898" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:29:49.617" Score="0" Body="Study of ancient history history and pre-history based on interpretation of artifacts and found physical remains." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:29:49.617" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:29:49.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3899" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:33:19.290" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:33:19.290" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:33:19.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3900" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:33:19.290" Score="0" Body="Facility operated by the US military, it is a detachment of the Edwards Air Force Base, located in southern Nevada.  Known mainly in popular culture for the speculation it may be somehow involved with extraterrestial contact or other paranormal activity." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:33:19.290" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:33:19.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3901" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:35:38.040" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:35:38.040" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:35:38.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3902" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T22:35:38.040" Score="0" Body="Practice of using olfactory stimulation to induce changes in either the health or state of mind of a person.  Can also refer to the study of effects of such olfactory stimulation on the physiology/psychology of patients." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T22:35:38.040" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T22:35:38.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3903" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T23:49:47.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A neurophysiological disorder typically characterized by impairment of social interaction/function and communication.  Autism is classified as a Spectrum Disorder because it encompasses a very wide and often disparate variety of symptoms. While there has been no definitive cause identified, there are several prominent theories which remain the subject of much contention.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-17T01:23:17.393" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T01:23:17.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3904" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T23:49:47.390" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions with claims about autism and its causes" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-17T01:23:17.393" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T01:23:17.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3905" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T23:55:44.153" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T23:55:44.153" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T23:55:44.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3906" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T23:55:44.153" Score="0" Body="Pertaining to the area of human accomplishments in which intangible creative elements are applied to produce the final product.  Can pertain to the production, interpretation or appreciation of works created to evoke specific emotional responses, such as in painting or music.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T23:55:44.153" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T23:55:44.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3907" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-05-31T23:57:26.723" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T23:57:26.723" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T23:57:26.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3908" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-05-31T23:57:26.723" Score="0" Body="Elements or items which benefit those who possess them, either financially or otherwise." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-05-31T23:57:26.723" LastActivityDate="2011-05-31T23:57:26.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3835" CreationDate="2011-06-01T00:12:28.697" Score="18" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;At least not in the U.S.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Utilities &lt;strong&gt;must&lt;/strong&gt; buy your excess power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode16/usc_sup_01_16_10_46.html&quot;&gt;Public Utility Regulatory Policy&#xA;  Act of 1978&lt;/a&gt; (PURPA) &lt;strong&gt;requires power&#xA;  providers to purchase excess power&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  from grid-connected &lt;strong&gt;small renewable&#xA;  energy systems&lt;/strong&gt; at a rate equal to what&#xA;  it costs the power provider to produce&#xA;  the power itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(11) Net metering Each electric&#xA;  utility shall make available upon&#xA;  request net metering service to any&#xA;  electric consumer that the electric&#xA;  utility serves. For purposes of this&#xA;  paragraph, the term “net metering&#xA;  service” means service to an electric&#xA;  consumer* under which electric energy&#xA;  generated by that electric consumer&#xA;  from an &lt;strong&gt;eligible on-site generating&#xA;  facility&lt;/strong&gt; and delivered to the local&#xA;  distribution facilities may be used to&#xA;  offset electric energy provided by the&#xA;  electric utility to the electric&#xA;  consumer during the applicable billing&#xA;  period. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode16/usc_sec_16_00002621----000-.html&quot;&gt;TITLE 16 CHAPTER 46&#xA;  SUBCHAPTER II § 2621&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;The term “electric consumer” means any person, State agency, or Federal agency, to which electric energy is sold other than for purposes of resale.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Implementation is left to the individual states (as usual). In Missouri you get the money that would have gone to the &lt;strike&gt;evil&lt;/strike&gt; fossil fuel producers. &lt;em&gt;No spendy. No taxy.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If during the billing period, the&#xA;  customer generates more power than is&#xA;  used, the utility provides the&#xA;  customer a 'credit' for the surplus&#xA;  power. The credit is based on the cost&#xA;  the utility would have &lt;strong&gt;incurred to&#xA;  purchase the fuel consumed&lt;/strong&gt; to generate&#xA;  an equal number of kilowatt-hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as you produce your hydrogen from a renewable source Missouri is cool with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To be eligible, electricity must be&#xA;  produced from wind, solar thermal&#xA;  sources, hydroelectric sources,&#xA;  photovoltaic cells and panels, fuel&#xA;  cells &lt;strong&gt;using hydrogen produced by one&#xA;  of the above named electrical energy&#xA;  sources&lt;/strong&gt;, and other sources of energy&#xA;  that become available after August 28,&#xA;  2007, and are certified as renewable&#xA;  by the Department of Natural&#xA;  Resources. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dnr.mo.gov/pubs/pub2238.pdf&quot;&gt;Missouri Net Metering&#xA;  and the Easy Connection Act&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Federal, state and local codes apply. In general the standards are not much different than those concerning propane, CNG, et al. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fire safety under &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nfpa.org/catalog/product.asp?pid=5505&quot;&gt;NFPA 55&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colorado.edu/FacMan/pdc/safety/documents/CR-CompressedHydrogen.pdf&quot;&gt;Compressed Hydrogen&lt;/a&gt; should be memorized if you go this way.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Bottom Line...&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hydrogen is not a special case under U.S. law. Follow the appropriate building codes and you're all good.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did I mention...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fire safety under &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nfpa.org/catalog/product.asp?pid=5505&quot;&gt;NFPA 55&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colorado.edu/FacMan/pdc/safety/documents/CR-CompressedHydrogen.pdf&quot;&gt;Compressed Hydrogen&lt;/a&gt; should be memorized if you go this way.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T00:12:28.697" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3910" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T00:30:21.237" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T00:30:21.237" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T00:30:21.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3911" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T00:30:21.237" Score="0" Body="Refers to the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized  mainly by producing difficulty breathing due to bronchospasm.  Symptoms, which can range from mild to life-threatening, can be varied and recurring. An asthmatic reaction can be triggered by any of a wide variety of particles." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T00:30:21.237" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T00:30:21.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3912" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T00:32:38.507" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T00:32:38.507" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T00:32:38.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3913" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T00:32:38.507" Score="0" Body="A system by which position of celestial bodies at various times is claimed to exert varied effects on the lives of human beings." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T00:32:38.507" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T00:32:38.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3914" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:18:59.337" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:18:59.337" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:18:59.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3915" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:18:59.337" Score="0" Body="Typically pertains to the study of aircraft. Can relate to the theories, design, construction, behavior and use of such craft." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-13T02:18:27.493" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T02:18:27.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3916" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:21:46.417" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:21:46.417" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:21:46.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3917" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:21:46.417" Score="0" Body="Science dealing with the study of space and celestial bodies.  Can pertain to the composition, origin, motion, behavior or physical aspects of bodies in space as well as the practical applications of such information (ie: navigation)." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:21:46.417" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:21:46.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3918" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:24:52.340" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:24:52.340" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:24:52.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3919" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:24:52.340" Score="0" Body="Commonly used term for the human child, typically within the first 30 days after birth, although commonly used to describe the very young.  Also a colloquial term for very young offspring of any species." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:24:52.340" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:24:52.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3920" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:26:53.367" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:26:53.367" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:26:53.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3921" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:26:53.367" Score="0" Body="Term for any edible meat of the bovine, or cow.  The term is culinary in origin rather than scientific." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:26:53.367" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:26:53.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3922" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:29:32.303" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:29:32.303" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:29:32.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3923" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:29:32.303" Score="0" Body="One of the most commonly consumed alcoholic beverages in the world.  A fermented beverage made of grain, barley and hops. " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:29:32.303" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:29:32.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3924" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:32:58.400" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:32:58.400" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:32:58.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3925" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:32:58.400" Score="0" Body="Flying insects of the family Apoidea.  Bees are typically known for honey production, role in pollination, and of course for their ability to sting." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:32:58.400" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:32:58.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3926" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:36:32.810" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:36:32.810" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:36:32.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3927" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:36:32.810" Score="0" Body="Common name for an area in the Atlantic where a number of vessels and people have allegedly gone missing under mysterious circumstances over the years.  The area is also known as the Devil's Triangle and is known popularly for its purported supernatural and/or paranormal activity." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:36:32.810" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:36:32.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3928" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:38:50.077" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:38:50.077" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:38:50.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3929" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:38:50.077" Score="0" Body="The observation of the actions of any particular life form, which may include contemplation and study of the motives and processes underlying such actions." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:38:50.077" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:38:50.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3930" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:42:12.227" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:42:12.227" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:42:12.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3931" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:42:12.227" Score="0" Body="An observer's inclination to hold a partial view either intentionally or unintentionally when evaluating data.  Can also refer to the effects which such inclinations can bring about with regard to scientific methodology." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:42:12.227" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:42:12.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3932" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:44:31.457" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:44:31.457" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:44:31.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3933" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:44:31.457" Score="0" Body="Typically the lists of collected canonical text used in Christian religions.  Can also refer to any set of collected works which are purported to sum up or represent the central beliefs of any group." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:44:31.457" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:44:31.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3934" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:49:47.363" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:49:47.363" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:49:47.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3935" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:49:47.363" Score="0" Body="Theory of cosmological origin which states that the entirety of spacetime was at one point contained in an extremely compact area of near infinite desity which then expanded rapidly, giving rise to all we know as the universe approximately 13.7 billion years ago. " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:49:47.363" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:49:47.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3936" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:52:31.150" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:52:31.150" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:52:31.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3937" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:52:31.150" Score="0" Body="Common term for the Sasquatch, a North American hominid-like creature of legend which has been reported to have been seen by many and filmed occasionally over the years.  No definitive proof currently exists to corroborate the existence of such a creature." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:52:31.150" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:52:31.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3938" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:55:10.430" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:55:10.430" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:55:10.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3939" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:55:10.430" Score="0" Body="William Henry Gates III, born Oct. 1955 most widely known as the chairman of the Microsoft company and depending on current standings, one of the most wealthy men in the world.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:55:10.430" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:55:10.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3940" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:57:15.000" Score="1" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:57:15.000" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:57:15.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3941" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T01:57:15.000" Score="0" Body="William Sanford Nye, born November, 1955.  Nye is most notable for his role as &quot;Bill Nye the Science Guy&quot; an American educational program which popularized science mainly to a younger audience." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T01:57:15.000" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T01:57:15.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3942" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:03:14.913" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:03:14.913" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:03:14.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3943" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:03:14.913" Score="0" Body="Science consisting of the combined disciples of physical science and biology, which can include study of things from the molecular level to that of complex ecosystems." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:03:14.913" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:03:14.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3944" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:04:37.797" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:04:37.797" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:04:37.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3945" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:04:37.797" Score="0" Body="The act of producing offspring." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:04:37.797" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:04:37.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3946" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:06:40.057" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:06:40.057" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:06:40.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3947" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:06:40.057" Score="0" Body="Sodium Hypochlorite, used commonly as a cleaning product worldwide, most widely known for its ability to whiten objects by oxidation, as well as for its disinfective properties." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:06:40.057" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:06:40.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3948" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:07:56.903" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:07:56.903" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:07:56.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3949" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:07:56.903" Score="0" Body="Commonly used term to refer to &quot;web logs&quot; which are posts by individuals in a journal-like fashion on various internet sites.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:07:56.903" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:07:56.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3950" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:10:05.793" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:10:05.793" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:10:05.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3951" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:10:05.793" Score="0" Body="A fluid which delivers substances to various cells within an organism's body.  The most common fucntion are the delivery of nutrients and the transportation of waste products.  Composition varies widely across species." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:10:05.793" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:10:05.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3952" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:14:07.770" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:14:07.770" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:14:07.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3953" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:14:07.770" Score="0" Body="General term for the analysis of inherited, antigenic substances on the surface of red blood cells (generally in humans) which identify blood as belonging to one of any number of specific &quot;groups&quot;.  These substances may vary in composition and serve a variety of functions.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:14:07.770" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:14:07.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3954" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:16:03.477" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:16:03.477" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:16:03.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3955" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:16:03.477" Score="0" Body="General term for the increase of skeletal muscle mass and/or the improvement of overall health through a variety of methods, often for sport or other competitive reasons.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:16:03.477" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:16:03.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3956" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:23:01.690" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:23:01.690" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:23:01.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3957" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:23:01.690" Score="0" Body="Generally a number of printed pages fastened together and presented as a single work.  A book can exist as either a distinct physical object or as an electronic file." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:23:01.690" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:23:01.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3958" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:24:57.773" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:24:57.773" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:24:57.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3959" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:24:57.773" Score="0" Body="Lack of interest. Shortage of intellectual, physical, or mental stimulation." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:24:57.773" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:24:57.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3960" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:27:23.697" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:27:23.697" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:27:23.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3961" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:27:23.697" Score="0" Body="Area of scientific study specifically concerned with the study of all aspects of plant life. " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:27:23.697" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:27:23.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3962" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:28:42.557" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:28:42.557" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:28:42.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3963" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:28:42.557" Score="0" Body="An item, usually jewelery, worn around the wrist for any of a multitude of reasons." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:28:42.557" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:28:42.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3964" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:30:08.483" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:30:08.483" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:30:08.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3965" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:30:08.483" Score="0" Body="Pertains to any of several malignant or benign cancerous growths which originate in breast tissue." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:30:08.483" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:30:08.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3966" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:31:37.890" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:31:37.890" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:31:37.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3967" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:31:37.890" Score="0" Body="Items of differing manufacture which can be implanted in the chest in order to improve breast size or appearance.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:31:37.890" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:31:37.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3968" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:34:31.100" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:34:31.100" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:34:31.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3969" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:34:31.100" Score="0" Body="A garment worn by women of certain, typically Islamic religions.  The garment is intended to cover the entire body, when worn in conjunction with the appropriate head covering and/or veil." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:34:31.100" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:34:31.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3970" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:35:46.060" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:35:46.060" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:35:46.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3971" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:35:46.060" Score="0" Body="Any organization which intends to operate legitimately for profit.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:35:46.060" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:35:46.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3972" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:39:48.080" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:39:48.080" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:39:48.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3973" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:39:48.080" Score="0" Body="A widely consumed xanthine alkaloid first isolated by Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge in 1820, which functions as a psychoactive stimulant.  Caffeine is typically found in sodas, teas, and coffees, as well as a wide variety of other sources." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:39:48.080" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:39:48.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3974" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:42:58.997" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:42:58.997" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:42:58.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3975" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:42:58.997" Score="0" Body="Chemical element with atomic number 20, and the 5th most abundant element (by mass) in the Earth's crust.  Also an essential element for living organisms, as it plays a vital role in many necessary processes." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:42:58.997" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:42:58.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3976" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:44:44.377" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:44:44.377" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:44:44.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3977" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:44:44.377" Score="0" Body="Generally regarded as the center of the nervous system in most living beings." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:44:44.377" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:44:44.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3978" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:48:29.863" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Canada is a North American country made up of 10 provinces and 3 territories.  The name is reported have been derived from an Iroquoian word &quot;kanata&quot; which means &quot;village&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-07-24T16:47:55.533" LastActivityDate="2019-07-24T16:47:55.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3979" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:48:29.863" Score="0" Body="for questions about claims based in Canada, or limited to Canada. Can also refer to any element of Canada's history, policy, government, or politics." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-07-24T05:39:38.003" LastActivityDate="2019-07-24T05:39:38.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="3980" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:52:07.520" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:52:07.520" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:52:07.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3981" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:52:07.520" Score="0" Body="Blanket term for a class of diseases in which cells lose the function called apoptosis&quot; and continue to grow uncontrolled. Can also refer to the study of this uncontrolled growth, as well as its invasion and/or destruction of other tissues which is known as metastasis.  The term &quot;cancer&quot; covers hundreds of different conditions." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:52:07.520" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:52:07.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3982" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:53:26.833" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Road vehicle with four wheels and an engine intended to be a means of transport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:20:30.187" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:20:30.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3983" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:53:26.833" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for question about cars, trucks and other road transport." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:20:30.187" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:20:30.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3984" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:54:45.473" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:54:45.473" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:54:45.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3985" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:54:45.473" Score="0" Body="Term applying to any mobile or hand-held phone which can perform a wide variety of functions." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:54:45.473" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:54:45.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3986" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:56:27.437" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:56:27.437" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:56:27.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3987" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:56:27.437" Score="0" Body="Tea commonly purported to aid in inducing sleep.  This tea is often made from any of a variety of daisy-like plants." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:56:27.437" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:56:27.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3988" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:58:49.087" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:58:49.087" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:58:49.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3989" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T02:58:49.087" Score="0" Body="Romantic, emotional or physical attraction and/or behavior between members of the same sex." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T02:58:49.087" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T02:58:49.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3990" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:01:45.340" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:01:45.340" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:01:45.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3991" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:01:45.340" Score="0" Body="Legal definitions of charity vary depending on region, but generally a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing about some social improvement as addressed in that organization's mission statement." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:01:45.340" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:01:45.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3992" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:05:59.670" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:05:59.670" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:05:59.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3993" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:05:59.670" Score="0" Body="A medical procedure which attempts to remove potentially toxic heavy metals by administering  any of a variety of compounds which bind to those metals and allow them to be excreted.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:05:59.670" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:05:59.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3994" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:08:51.010" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:08:51.010" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:08:51.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3995" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:08:51.010" Score="0" Body="The science of matter and the changes it can undergo." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:08:51.010" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:08:51.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3996" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:16:23.700" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:16:23.700" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:16:23.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3997" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:16:23.700" Score="0" Body="Theory proposed by some stating that the trails left in the sky by passing aircraft potentially contain any of a number of unidentified chemicals which may or may not be responsible for a wide variety of phenomena." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:16:23.700" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:16:23.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3998" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:21:37.623" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:21:37.623" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:21:37.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="3999" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:21:37.623" Score="0" Body="April 26,1986 nuclear power accident occurring in Ukraine.  Can also refer to any aspect relating to that disaster, including theories, biological and environmental impact, etc." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:21:37.623" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:21:37.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4000" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:26:13.657" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:26:13.657" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:26:13.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4001" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:26:13.657" Score="0" Body="Term has many and varied definitions depending on context, but is generally accepted as the period in life between birth and puberty, although this can be argued.  Can also refer to offspring at any stage in life." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:26:13.657" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:26:13.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4002" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:29:58.330" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:29:58.330" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:29:58.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4003" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:29:58.330" Score="0" Body="Populous eastern Asian nation which has undergone a myriad of changes over the years, but remains one of the oldest civilizations in the world.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:29:58.330" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:29:58.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4004" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:34:23.973" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:34:23.973" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:34:23.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4005" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:34:23.973" Score="0" Body="Steroid compound manufactured in either the liver or intestines. Cholesterol comes in two main forms: High Density Lipoprotein (HDL) and Low Desnity Lipoproteins (LDL).  Cholesterol serves many functions in the human body, but is mainly known for its role in cardiovascular disease." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:34:23.973" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:34:23.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4006" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:39:22.530" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:39:22.530" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:39:22.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4007" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:39:22.530" Score="0" Body="English translation of the term &quot;goat sucker&quot;. It is a creature of legend claimed to exist predominantly in the American southwest and Mexico but reports have been made elsewhere in the Americas. Descriptions of this cryptid are many and varied, and its presence is usually associated with livestock deaths and reports of &quot;cattle mutilations&quot;.  To date, there is no definitive proof of the existence of such a creature. " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:39:22.530" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:39:22.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4008" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:44:15.457" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:44:15.457" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:44:15.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4009" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:44:15.457" Score="0" Body="Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill (1874-1965) Twice prime minister, he is probably best known for his leadership of the UK during WWII and known widely in popular culture for the number of witty, wise and intelligent quotes attributed to him." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:44:15.457" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:44:15.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4010" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:48:33.957" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A complete history of the CIA and its current mission can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/about-cia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;About the CIA&quot;&gt;about the CIA at CIA.gov&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="4301" LastEditDate="2017-06-12T11:51:40.767" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T11:51:40.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4011" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:48:33.957" Score="0" Body="The Central Intelligence Agency is an official United States government organization concerned with matters of national security and intelligence.  It is known widely in popular culture as an enigmatic, powerful entity, often theorized to have a hand in a wide variety of suspicious events and phenomena." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="4301" LastEditDate="2017-06-12T11:51:47.843" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T11:51:47.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4012" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:54:26.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For female genital mutation, use &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/female-genital-mutilation&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;female-genital-mutilation&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;female-genital-mutilation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-10-01T02:52:47.733" LastActivityDate="2017-10-01T02:52:47.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4013" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:54:26.740" Score="0" Body="Use this for male circumcision. For female genital mutation, use &quot;female-genital-mutilation&quot;. Circumcision is the surgical removal of the foreskin from the penis for any of a number of medical or cultural reasons." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-10-01T02:52:59.273" LastActivityDate="2017-10-01T02:52:59.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4014" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:57:24.710" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:57:24.710" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:57:24.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4015" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:57:24.710" Score="0" Body="The study of weather conditions and patterns as averaged over a given period of time." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:57:24.710" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:57:24.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4016" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4040" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:58:24.723" Score="25" ViewCount="5672" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eHB9v.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Calvin hops on his bicycle again. Hobbes tells him that people say once you&amp;#39;ve learned to ride, you never forget. Calvin believes that. After he again crashes, he says it works on the same principle as electroshock therapy.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt that people never forget to ride a bicycle. If my grandfather, who hasn't ridden a bicycle in over 30 years, were to hop on one and start riding, I would be immensely surprised. Are there any sources that either confirm or deny that learning to ride a bike is permanent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="849" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-07-16T12:13:08.653" LastActivityDate="2022-06-28T02:56:50.517" Title="Can people forget how to ride a bike?" Tags="|biology|neurology|memory|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4017" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:59:47.250" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:59:47.250" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:59:47.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4018" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T03:59:47.250" Score="0" Body="A set of procedures in medical research designed to collect information regarding the safety and efficacy of a drug or procedure, generally under controlled conditions." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T03:59:47.250" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T03:59:47.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4019" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:00:58.153" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:00:58.153" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:00:58.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4020" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:00:58.153" Score="0" Body="Garments, and the way in which they are worn and the material they are made from" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2020-06-27T20:54:20.587" LastActivityDate="2020-06-27T20:54:20.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4021" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:04:37.523" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:04:37.523" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:04:37.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4022" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:04:37.523" Score="0" Body="A typically black sedimentary rock composed mainly of carbon which is mined and then burned in power plants, although it has a wide variety of other uses." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:04:37.523" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:04:37.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4023" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:08:42.340" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:08:42.340" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:08:42.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4024" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:08:42.340" Score="0" Body="A widely popular, often caffeinated, drink brewed from roasted beans of the coffee plant.  There are a wide variety of coffees available worldwide.    " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:08:42.340" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:08:42.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4025" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:13:15.547" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:13:15.547" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:13:15.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4026" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:13:15.547" Score="0" Body="Word describing &quot;the proscesses of the (human) mind&quot;. Cognition may encompass an individual's ability to perceive, process, and recall information, may include mental development, natural decline with age, and an individual's ability to learn and think.  Can also deal with disruption in any of these processes." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:13:15.547" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:13:15.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4027" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:16:48.850" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:16:48.850" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:16:48.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4028" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:16:48.850" Score="0" Body="Common term for an upper-respiratory viral infection caused by any number of viral agents. Cold is commonly identified by the symptoms, which are characterized by cough, sneezing, sore throat, congestion, fever and other symtoms." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:16:48.850" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:16:48.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4029" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:20:19.267" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:20:19.267" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:20:19.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4030" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:20:19.267" Score="0" Body="A small body composed typically of ice, dust, and rocky particles traveling through space which displays a visible tail when close enough to the sun due to the combined effect of solar radiation, solar wind, and the nucleus of the comet itself." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:20:19.267" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:20:19.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4031" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:22:02.993" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:22:02.993" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:22:02.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4032" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:22:02.993" Score="0" Body="Common term for an upper-respiratory viral infection caused by any number of viral agents. Cold is commonly identified by the symptoms, which are characterized by cough, sneezing, sore throat, congestion, fever and other symtoms" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:22:02.993" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:22:02.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4033" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:23:35.253" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:23:35.253" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:23:35.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4034" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:23:35.253" Score="0" Body="Blanket term concerning the interactions of business entities conducted for profit." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:23:35.253" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:23:35.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4035" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:28:51.097" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:28:51.097" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:28:51.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4036" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:28:51.097" Score="0" Body="Designed as a replacement for the incandescent lamp, CFL is claimed to emit the same amount of light as a standard incandescent while using less energy to do so." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:28:51.097" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:28:51.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4037" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4336" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:32:02.263" Score="25" ViewCount="7316" Body="&lt;p&gt;The internet is full with stories about how soy contains phytoestrogenes, how the protein is actually not readily used by our bodies etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I especially remember quite a long rant in Tim Ferriss's book &quot;The 4 hour body&quot;, which I consider a great source for asking questions on this site as, although he claims to be scientific in his approach, relies too much on anecdotes for my taste. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, here my question: &lt;strong&gt;Are &quot;normal&quot; levels of soy intake harmful to the body? For definiteness, let us define normal as: Using soy milk in your breakfast cereal and having some stir fried tofu once in a while in your dinner or soy bean sprouts in your salad. &#xA;EDIT: Add a bit of soy sauce once in a while to the mix&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="7933" LastEditDate="2012-11-21T16:33:09.420" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T16:33:09.420" Title="Is Soy bad for you?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4038" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:44:45.740" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:44:45.740" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:44:45.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4039" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:44:45.740" Score="0" Body="Referring to mental acuity, concentration is a person's ability to intentionally focus on a specific, selected task." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:44:45.740" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:44:45.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4016" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:48:35.473" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had come across this article about research on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3350217/Why-you-never-forget-how-to-ride-a-bike.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why you never forget how to ride a bike&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is more like you pick up the unused skills quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I associate things like this to muscle memory. Also, when riding a bike or driving a car, sometimes you might actually be thinking about something else. (I have done it many times, though dangerous!) After you reach home, you have very little recollection of the ride. You just drive!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3202" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-06-18T13:49:02.323" LastActivityDate="2022-06-18T13:49:02.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4041" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:48:52.413" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:48:52.413" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:48:52.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4042" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:48:52.413" Score="0" Body="Blanket term for the interaction between the mind and the world.  Consciousness is a complex topic which covers the many stages and varieties of what is commonly  considered &quot;awareness&quot; and the ways in which it can be altered.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:48:52.413" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:48:52.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4043" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:52:08.010" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:52:08.010" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:52:08.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4044" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:52:08.010" Score="0" Body="Blanket term for any of several methods used to prevent fertilization or pregnancy from resulting due to a sexual act." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:52:08.010" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:52:08.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4045" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:53:17.010" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:53:17.010" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:53:17.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4046" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:53:17.010" Score="0" Body="Any method which prepares food to be eaten.&#xD;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:53:17.010" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:53:17.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4047" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:55:35.697" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:55:35.697" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:55:35.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4048" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:55:35.697" Score="0" Body="Element with atomic number 29. Copper has a wide variety of known uses, but is best recognized for its conductive properties." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:55:35.697" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:55:35.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4049" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:57:26.850" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:57:26.850" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:57:26.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4050" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:57:26.850" Score="0" Body="Structure created by Edward Leedskalnin, reportedly done alone while working at night and without modern equipment.  Currently the structure is still standing in southern Florida." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:57:26.850" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:57:26.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4051" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:58:35.630" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:58:35.630" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:58:35.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4052" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:58:35.630" Score="0" Body="Any action which violates an established law within a given society." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:58:35.630" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:58:35.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4053" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:59:51.790" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:59:51.790" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:59:51.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4054" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T04:59:51.790" Score="0" Body="The study of criminal behavior in both the individual and within a given society." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T04:59:51.790" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T04:59:51.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4055" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:04:21.210" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:04:21.210" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:04:21.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4056" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:04:21.210" Score="0" Body="Patterns created by deliberately flattening the crops in a field.  While some crop circles are documented as having a human source, there are some who argue for a paranormal and/or supernatural explanation.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:04:21.210" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:04:21.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4057" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:06:46.573" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:06:46.573" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:06:46.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4058" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:06:46.573" Score="0" Body="Any life form whose existence is suggested either through either local legend or anecdotal evidence, but has not been proven conclusively by scientific evidence." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:06:46.573" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:06:46.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4059" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:08:15.260" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:08:15.260" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:08:15.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4060" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:08:15.260" Score="0" Body="Practice of coding and decoding messages, and the related science." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:08:15.260" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:08:15.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4061" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:09:40.890" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:09:40.890" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:09:40.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4062" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:09:40.890" Score="0" Body="Investigation into the existence of life forms which have not been scientifically proven to exist, but are thought to due to local legends, myths, or anecdotal claims.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:09:40.890" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:09:40.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4063" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:13:26.267" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:13:26.267" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:13:26.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4064" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:13:26.267" Score="0" Body="Style of writing intended to allow the writer to compose messages more quickly by minimizing the amount of pen strokes.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:13:26.267" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:13:26.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4065" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:18:48.367" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:18:48.367" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:18:48.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4066" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:18:48.367" Score="0" Body="The riding of bicycles for either transportation or competitive sport.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:18:48.367" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:18:48.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4068" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:22:59.390" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:22:59.390" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:22:59.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4069" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:22:59.390" Score="0" Body="Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) most notable for his articulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection in &quot;On the Origin of Species&quot;.  Can also refer to any of the theories mentioned in his work or the controversy surrounding them." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:22:59.390" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:22:59.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4070" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:23:44.727" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:23:44.727" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:23:44.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4071" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:23:44.727" Score="0" Body="Cessation of the biological processes necessary to sustain life." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:23:44.727" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:23:44.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4072" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:25:09.170" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:25:09.170" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:25:09.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4073" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:25:09.170" Score="0" Body="Within certain beliefs, the idea that malevolent spirits, beings, or entities can have an effect on the physical world." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:25:09.170" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:25:09.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4074" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:27:08.573" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:27:08.573" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:27:08.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4075" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:27:08.573" Score="0" Body="The study or practice of medicine as it relates to the oral cavity and related structures." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:27:08.573" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:27:08.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4076" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:31:22.517" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:31:22.517" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:31:22.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4077" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-01T05:31:22.517" Score="0" Body="A condition which can originate from any of a wide variety of sources and is often characterized by aversion to activity, saddened or somber mood, and feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness, guilt or restlessness.  " OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T05:31:22.517" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T05:31:22.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4085" CreationDate="2011-06-01T06:43:38.683" Score="44" ViewCount="25606" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ran across something odd today...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an iPhone app that lists facts, trivia, and other useless information (it's called Cool Facts, downloaded from iTunes).  So far, nothing I've found on it has been terribly inaccurate. However, flipping through it today, I came across this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hIEOZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan. There was never a recorded Wendy before it.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To say the very least, I'm skeptical. So the question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Was the name &quot;Wendy&quot; actually created by J.M. Barrie for &lt;em&gt;Peter Pan&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, if this is a myth, does anyone know where it originated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-22T02:20:48.187" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T23:59:11.350" Title="Was the name &quot;Wendy&quot; created for Peter Pan?" Tags="|history|quotes|literature|etymology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4081" CreationDate="2011-06-01T06:55:51.827" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's one source disproving the fact that the name didn't exist before Peter Pan (It's a quote from a third source, so take with some dose of skepticism :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wendy.com/wendyweb/history.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.wendy.com/wendyweb/history.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mail from someone who does genealogical research shows that &amp;quot;Wendy&amp;quot; might have been in use before Peter Pan and might even have been a boy's name:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must admit to being annoyed when I tell people my name. They always insist on mentioning Peter Pan. During my family reseach I have come across the name Wendy twice in the 1881 census of England, one born 1840, and one born in 1880. The magazine Family History also states that Wendy, along with the names Marian and Shirley were once boys names, and that in 1797 a boy named Wendy was apprenticed to some one in Glos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babynology.com/otherorigins-wendy-f1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;theorized&lt;/a&gt; that the very-rarely-used name was derived from a Welsh name rooted in &amp;quot;gwen-&amp;quot; which means &amp;quot;white/dazzling/holy&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I have seen, there is no evidence to prove or dis-prove whether Barrie was aware of the existence of the Welsh-derived name or not; but due to its rarity pre-Peter-Pan, it is quite plausible that he was not aware and re-invented it on his own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T07:01:02.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4083" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4090" CreationDate="2011-06-01T07:37:35.470" Score="23" ViewCount="2663" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard on the radio today that apparently a woman's hands are colder than a man's hands, but her heart is warmer. I didn't really believe this, but they stated that it was apparently scientifically proven, and what really astounded me was that they actually stated the margin: a woman's hands are 2.4°C colder than a man's, and her heart is 0.4°C warmer. Is there any evidence proving or disproving this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-27T11:08:32.533" LastActivityDate="2011-11-27T11:08:32.533" Title="Are women's hands colder, and their hearts warmer?" Tags="|biology|gender|physiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4081" CreationDate="2011-06-01T07:40:32.943" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Wendy&quot; is actually short for &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wendy&quot;&gt;&quot;Gwendolyn&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This name was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy&quot;&gt;originally used in United States&lt;/a&gt; before &lt;em&gt;Peter Pan&lt;/em&gt; was written, so &quot;Wendy&quot; was actually recorded before &lt;em&gt;Peter Pan&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="2382" LastEditDate="2011-06-02T04:41:51.307" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T04:41:51.307" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4081" CreationDate="2011-06-01T07:53:41.910" Score="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2057/was-the-name-wendy-invented-for-the-book-peter-pan&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All kidding aside, J. M. Barrie did&#xA;  not invent the name Wendy for his 1904&#xA;  play Peter Pan, the Boy Who Wouldn't&#xA;  Grow Up (the book form of the story,&#xA;  Peter and Wendy, was published in&#xA;  1911).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But we have absolute proof that there&#xA;  were earlier Wendys, thanks to the&#xA;  just-released 1880 U.S. Census and the&#xA;  1881 British Census (available&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.familysearch.org/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These documents show that the name&#xA;  Wendy, while not common, was indeed&#xA;  used in both the U.S. and Great&#xA;  Britain throughout the 1800s. I had no&#xA;  trouble finding twenty females with&#xA;  the first name Wendy in the United&#xA;  States, the earliest being Wendy Gram&#xA;  of Ohio (born in 1828).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.familysearch.org/search/records#count=20&amp;amp;query=+givenname%3awendy~%20+any_year:1820-1830&quot;&gt;Using the search above&lt;/a&gt; you can see the results for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T07:53:41.910" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4086" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17796" CreationDate="2011-06-01T08:31:29.417" Score="19" ViewCount="1549" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;http://jalopnik.com/5760248/how-ferrari-spins&quot;&gt;How Ferrari spins&lt;/a&gt; by Chris &quot;Monkey&quot; Harris contains claims that Ferrari has dishonest practices with the press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How bad has it been? I honestly don't know where to start. Perhaps the 360 Modena &lt;strong&gt;press car that was two seconds faster to 100mph than the customer car&lt;/strong&gt; we also tested. You allow some leeway for &quot;factory fresh&quot; machines, but this thing was ludicrously quick and sounded more like Schumacher's weekend wheels than a street car. Ferrari will never admit that its press cars are tuned, but has the gall to turn up at any of the big European magazines' end-of-year-shindig-tests with &lt;strong&gt;two cars&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;One for straight line work, the other for handling exercises.&lt;/strong&gt; Because that's what happens when you buy a 458: they deliver two for just those eventualities. The whole thing stinks. In any other industry it wouldn't be allowed to happen. It's dishonest, but all the mags take it between the cheeks because they're too scared of not being invited to drive the next new Ferrari.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article is fun to read but is presented like a conspiracy theory: nobody else tells you this, since they fear Ferrari so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does Ferrari really give better cars to the press than they sell to customers?&lt;/strong&gt; (And by 'better' I mean more suited to the tests that will be performed)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastActivityDate="2018-07-03T19:09:14.320" Title="Does Ferrari cheat at track tests?" Tags="|road-vehicles|media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4087" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4089" CreationDate="2011-06-01T08:52:53.727" Score="13" ViewCount="723" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a ubiquitous belief that &quot;elephants never forget&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know we aren't suggesting that elephants have unlimited memory, but have there ever been any scientific studies/case studies that suggest that elephants have a profound ability to remember places, people, smells, faces, sounds etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/z9yVp.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T11:32:55.573" Title="Do elephants never forget?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|memory|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4083" CreationDate="2011-06-01T09:37:05.067" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is an interesting quote which may support the claim. From the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article5106854.ece&quot;&gt;Why do women always feel colder than men?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mark Newton, a scientist at W.L. Gore,&#xA;  the company that makes Gore-Tex, and a&#xA;  researcher at the University of&#xA;  Portsmouth, explains: 'Women have a&#xA;  more evenly distributed fat layer and&#xA;  can pull all their blood back to their&#xA;  core organs.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, this female heating system&#xA;  means that less blood flows to their&#xA;  hands and feet, and as a result they&#xA;  feel cold. So there is literal truth&#xA;  in the old saying cold hands, warm&#xA;  heart. One theory as to why women have&#xA;  evolved this system, says Newton, is&#xA;  to enable them to survive freezing&#xA;  temperatures. Women carry less fat and&#xA;  muscle mass than men, and so need a&#xA;  more efficient technique of protecting&#xA;  their core body temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have just &lt;a href=&quot;http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/sex/the-reason-couples-fight-over-heat-women-really-are-colder-than-men-2452566&quot;&gt;found an article&lt;/a&gt; from 2011 where this suggestion is reinforced by the same Mark Newton, who is now a Professor Mark Newton. So hopefully that will suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was also a quilt that was sold in Australia a few years back (I can't source it now). Where the women's side was actually made from warmer material than the men's half of the quilt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T09:37:05.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4087" CreationDate="2011-06-01T09:55:45.667" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there have been such &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=UG9CtFD56VEC&amp;amp;lpg=PA143&amp;amp;ots=HGevJPI3-k&amp;amp;dq=elephants%20memory%20%22never%20forget%22&amp;amp;lr&amp;amp;pg=PA162#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=durability&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They used a 7-8 month break and found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mean choice accuracy before the break (7.40) was not significantly different from that after the break (7.36).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was just 5 elephants (though that small a difference probably wouldn't have been significant in a larger sample either), maybe someone else finds something with a larger sample. It would also be interesting to see this in comparison with humans and other animals, but of course it's not so easy to just use the same paradigm across species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="2722" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T11:32:55.573" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T11:32:55.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4083" CreationDate="2011-06-01T10:01:38.693" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;The study the radio is talking about might be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2805%2978875-9/fulltext&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Physician &lt;strong&gt;Han Kim and his colleagues&#xA;  surveyed 219 men and women&lt;/strong&gt;, from&#xA;  babies to octogenarians, and measured&#xA;  the temperatures in their ears and on&#xA;  their fingernails, which they took to&#xA;  be measures of core and hand&#xA;  temperature, respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They&#xA;  reported that for women:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;core temperature was on average 0.4&#xA;  degrees higher than for men&lt;/strong&gt; (97.8&#xA;  degrees instead of 97.4 degrees).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But hand&#xA;  temperature was 2.8 degrees lower than for men&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  (87.2 degrees instead of 90.0&#xA;  degrees).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/id/2282969/&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there might be caveats with this study, since &lt;strong&gt;core temperature possibly varies due to things like age, level of fitness and menstrual status&lt;/strong&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17176167&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.harvard.edu/press_releases/normal_body_temperature&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11706289?ordinalpos=1&amp;amp;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&amp;amp;linkpos=5&amp;amp;log%24=relatedreviews&amp;amp;logdbfrom=pubmed&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10902935?ordinalpos=1&amp;amp;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11007575?ordinalpos=1&amp;amp;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; did a &quot;&lt;em&gt;Comparison of thermoregulatory responses between men and women immersed in cold water&lt;/em&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They found that &lt;strong&gt;the rate at which&#xA;  rectal temperature dropped was related&#xA;  to peoples' body fat as well as their&#xA;  surface-area-to-volume ratio&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People&#xA;  who are smaller, as women on average&#xA;  are, tend to have higher&#xA;  surface-area-to-volume ratios, which&#xA;  means they're likely to lose heat and&#xA;  to experience drops in core&#xA;  temperature more quickly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Still, &lt;strong&gt;if a&#xA;  man and woman were matched for both&#xA;  measures, they should have the same&#xA;  response to cold&lt;/strong&gt;, says researcher Peter Tikuisis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/id/2282969/&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;more reading material:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/id/2282969/&quot;&gt;Slate Magazine - Are women really more likely to feel cold than men?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/health/27real.html&quot;&gt;The New York Times - The Claim: Men and Women Differ in Their Tolerance to Cold&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2396/why-are-women-always-cold&quot;&gt;Straight Dope - Why are women always cold?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T10:07:55.910" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T10:07:55.910" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3089" CreationDate="2011-06-01T11:28:25.483" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR: Porn was available on beta, but did not represent the majority of sales or rentals of cassettes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I'll point out that pornography was available on Betamax because it is claimed and disputed all over the net that it wasn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Playboy_videos&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Playboy_videos&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first videos released under the&#xA;  Playboy banner were issues of Playboy&#xA;  Video Magazine (also known as Playboy&#xA;  Video and Playboy Video Collectors&#xA;  Edition). Twelve issues were released&#xA;  in this series, from 1982 to 1987.&#xA;  Early volumes appeared on CED,&#xA;  laserdisc, and Japanese VHD, while all&#xA;  volumes appeared on Betamax and VHS.&#xA;  Issues contained content similar to&#xA;  the magazine;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now how influential is the porn industry and is it big enough to have influenced the choice of VHS over BETA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://Louis%20Fisher.%20American%20Constitutional%20Law.%201995,%20ISBN%200-07-021223-6&quot;&gt;quotes this book&lt;/a&gt; as saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 1979 Revision of the Federal&#xA;  Criminal Code stated that &quot;in Los&#xA;  Angeles alone, the porno business does&#xA;  $100 million a year in gross retain&#xA;  volume&quot;.According to the 1986 Attorney&#xA;  General's Commission on Pornography,&#xA;  American adult entertainment industry&#xA;  has grown considerably over the past&#xA;  thirty years by continually changing&#xA;  and expanding to appeal to new&#xA;  markets, though the production is&#xA;  considered to be low-profile and&#xA;  clandestine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://luiscabral.org/economics/teaching/blockbuster.pdf&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; quotes source: The Entertainment Merchant Association (US), Annual Report, 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1986 Combined video rentals ($3.37&#xA;  billion) and sales ($1.01 billion)&#xA;  eclipsed box office revenues ($3.78&#xA;  billion) for first time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/25/0524porn.html&quot;&gt;this Forbes article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1998, Forrester did publish a&#xA;  report on the online &quot;adult content&quot;&#xA;  industry, which it pegged at $750&#xA;  million to $1 billion in annual&#xA;  revenue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So around 1986 the value should be somewhere between $100 million and $1 billion which makes it still only a fraction of the $4.47 billion claimed above in 1986.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FACT: Porn was available on Betamax&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FACT: There was a lot more porn produced on VHS than Betamax&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also appears that the porn is only a fraction of the market of video sales and rentals and therefore couldn't have been the key influencer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T11:28:25.483" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3793" CreationDate="2011-06-01T12:18:38.267" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthlibrary.epnet.com/GetContent.aspx?token=d1db22f9-c4e0-4d22-bfa3-887872398b64&amp;amp;chunkiid=157009&quot;&gt;this Health Library article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few studies have shown a decrease in&#xA;  sperm concentration and motility when&#xA;  subjects wore tight-fitting underwear&#xA;  compared to loose-fitting underwear&#xA;  (such as boxer shorts). It is worth&#xA;  noting that most of these studies were&#xA;  conducted on very small numbers of&#xA;  subjects. One study published in the&#xA;  Lancet included nine subjects; another&#xA;  published in Reproductive Toxicology&#xA;  studied only two subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However small, both of those studies&#xA;  concluded that wearing tight-fitting&#xA;  underwear does increase scrotal&#xA;  temperature enough to significantly&#xA;  reduce sperm count and motility.&#xA;  Neither of these studies, though,&#xA;  suggested that the deleterious effect&#xA;  on sperm was long-lasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the largest studies supporting&#xA;  the claim was conducted on 50 men at&#xA;  Leibig University in Germany. Its&#xA;  results indicated that high scrotal&#xA;  temperatures (defined as near body&#xA;  core temperature) negatively affected&#xA;  spermatogenesis (the development of&#xA;  mature sperm cells). The German study,&#xA;  published in Human Reproduction,&#xA;  measured scrotal temperatures on men&#xA;  wearing cotton jockey briefs, cotton&#xA;  boxer shorts, or no underwear, and&#xA;  compared the temperatures after the&#xA;  men completed physical activity&#xA;  (walking for 45 minutes on a&#xA;  treadmill), and after they sat in a&#xA;  fixed position for 45 minutes. The&#xA;  study found significantly higher&#xA;  scrotal temperatures while the&#xA;  subjects wore jockey briefs versus&#xA;  boxers, regardless of activity level,&#xA;  and the lowest scrotal temperatures&#xA;  when the subjects wore no&#xA;  undergarments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It lists references at the bottom of the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it looks like there are studies that support the claim which answers your question. However, the numbers are significantly low to make a solid claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T12:18:38.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3529" CreationDate="2011-06-01T12:36:59.553" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on Moses&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prominent archaeologists and&#xA;  Egyptologists dispute the existence of&#xA;  Moses as well as the veracity of the&#xA;  Exodus story, citing logical&#xA;  inconsistencies, new archaeological&#xA;  evidence, historical evidence, and&#xA;  related origin myths in Canaanite&#xA;  culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citing the following references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5036.html&quot;&gt;Princeton University Press Press Reviews&lt;/a&gt;, retrieved 6th June 2009&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Quest for the Historical Israel: Debating Archeology and the History of Early Israel, 2007, Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta, ISBN 978-1-58983-277-0.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;John Van Seters, &quot;The life of Moses&quot;, ISBN 903900112X&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tradition of Moses as a lawgiver&#xA;  and culture hero of the Israelites can&#xA;  be traced to 8th or 7th century BCE in&#xA;  the kingdom of Judah. Moses is a&#xA;  central figure in the Deuteronomist&#xA;  account of the origins of the&#xA;  Israelites, cast in a literary style&#xA;  of elegant flashbacks told by Moses.&#xA;  The Deuteronomist relies on earlier&#xA;  material that may date to the United&#xA;  Monarchy, so that the biblical&#xA;  narrative would be based on traditions&#xA;  that can be traced to about four&#xA;  centuries after the supposed lifetime&#xA;  of Moses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-11T12:38:37.617" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T12:38:37.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3000" CreationDate="2011-06-01T12:46:21.403" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Accoding to &lt;a href=&quot;http://elkhorn.unl.edu/epublic/pages/publicationD.jsp?publicationId=362&quot;&gt;Drinking Water: Storing an Emergency Supply&lt;/a&gt; published by the University of Nebraska:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many types of containers are available&#xA;  for water storage, including those&#xA;  made of glass and plastic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some containers deemed safe for water&#xA;  storage may affect the taste of stored&#xA;  water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/programs/extension/publicat/wqwm/emergwatersuppl.html&quot;&gt;EMERGENCY DRINKING WATER SUPPLIES&lt;/a&gt; from Bio. and Ag. Engineering of NC State University&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some plastic containers may affect the&#xA;  taste of stored water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T12:46:21.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4098" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-01T13:47:20.693" Score="16" ViewCount="12285" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indian Water Therapy is an ancient practice which involves drinking 1-1.5 litres of water every day as soon as you wake up, then not eating anything until 40 minutes has passed, at which point you can carry on your day as normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anvari.org/fun/Truth/Water_Therapy_from_India.html&quot;&gt;There is an amazing list of ailments which can supposedly be cured.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does pure water act? Consuming&#xA;  ordinary drinking water by the right&#xA;  method purifies human body. &lt;strong&gt;It renders&#xA;  the colon more effective by forming&#xA;  new fresh blood&lt;/strong&gt;, known in medical&#xA;  terms as &lt;strong&gt;Haematopaises&lt;/strong&gt;. That the&#xA;  mucousal folds of the colon and&#xA;  intestines are activated by this&#xA;  method, is an undisputed fact, just as&#xA;  the theory that new fresh blood is&#xA;  produced by the mucousal fold. If the&#xA;  colon is cleaned then the nutrients of&#xA;  the food taken several times a day&#xA;  will be absorbed and by the action of&#xA;  the mucousal folds they are turned&#xA;  into fresh blood. The blood is all&#xA;  important in curing ailments and&#xA;  restoring health, and for this water&#xA;  should be consumed in a regular&#xA;  pattern&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc-of-fitness.com/info/water-therapy.asp&quot;&gt;Other&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiaparenting.com/health/325_2079/benefits-of-water-therapy.html&quot;&gt;sites&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifespy.com/2007/the-good-and-bad-of-water-therapy/&quot;&gt;make&lt;/a&gt; similar claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder, is there any proof that such a practice can actually improve your health more than if you just drank the same amount of water spread out across the day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="833" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-07T11:33:41.203" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T07:37:04.590" Title="Does Indian Water Therapy have healing effects?" Tags="|medical-science|water|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3833" CreationDate="2011-06-01T13:55:26.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Toilet seats are nothing special. That have that &quot;ick&quot; factor when people think about them, but in fact other places are worse. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.happynappy.ca/DIY-washing-at-home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's a reference:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For instance, Gerba, a microbiology professor in the University of Arizona's soil, water and environmental sciences department, warned that bacteria such as E-coli and salmonella can be rampant in kitchen sinks, on counters and on cutting boards, often spread by sponges and dishrags contaminated by meat or poultry. Or as he puts it, ``There are a hundred times more bacteria on a cutting board than a toilet seat, so lick a toilet seat rather than a cutting board.''&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T13:55:26.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4037" CreationDate="2011-06-01T14:52:37.967" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This doesn't relate to the phytoestrogen side of things, but to soy products. In particular the so-called 'dark' soy sauces contain a high concentration of free glutamates. Some people are exquisitely sensitive to glutamates (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MSG&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate#Health_concerns&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Australia and New Zealand&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Food Standards Australia New&#xA;  Zealand (FSANZ) cites&#xA;  &quot;overwhelming evidence from a large&#xA;  number of scientific studies&quot; to&#xA;  explicitly deny any link between MSG&#xA;  and &quot;serious adverse reactions&quot; or&#xA;  &quot;long-lasting effects&quot;, declaring MSG&#xA;  &quot;safe for the general population&quot;. &lt;em&gt;It&#xA;  does, however, describe that in less&#xA;  than 1% of the population, sensitive&#xA;  individuals may experience &quot;transient&quot;&#xA;  side effects such as &quot;headache,&#xA;  numbness/tingling, flushing, muscle&#xA;  tightness, and generalised weakness&quot;&#xA;  to a large amount of MSG taken in a&#xA;  single meal.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Emphasis mine.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;United States&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Monosodium glutamate is one of several&#xA;  forms of glutamic acid found in foods,&#xA;  in large part because glutamic acid,&#xA;  being an amino acid, is pervasive in&#xA;  nature. Glutamic acid and its salts&#xA;  can also be present in a wide variety&#xA;  of other additives, including&#xA;  [...] &lt;em&gt;soy extracts&lt;/em&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Emphasis mine.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The toxicity of MSG is an area of some debate. The noted scientist John Olney (of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olney%27s_lesions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Olney's lesions&lt;/a&gt; fame) was an outspoken critic of the addition of MSG to foods. I would say that the vast majority of people are not too concerned about this, or are simply unaware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some evidence that MSG may be linked to obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v16/n8/full/oby2008274a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Association of Monosodium Glutamate Intake With Overweight in Chinese Adults: The INTERMAP Study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study examines the association&#xA;  between MSG intake and overweight in&#xA;  humans. We conducted a cross-sectional&#xA;  study involving 752 healthy Chinese&#xA;  (48.7% women), aged 40–59 years,&#xA;  randomly sampled from three rural&#xA;  villages in north and south China.&#xA;  [...] With adjustment for potential&#xA;  confounders including physical&#xA;  activity and total energy intake, MSG&#xA;  intake was positively related to BMI.&#xA;  Prevalence of overweight was&#xA;  significantly higher in MSG users than&#xA;  nonusers. [...] This research provides&#xA;  data that MSG intake may be associated&#xA;  with increased risk of overweight&#xA;  independent of physical activity and&#xA;  total energy intake in humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side of the coin, a study funded by a Japanese MSG manufacturer (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajinomoto&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ajinomoto&lt;/a&gt;) found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938408001583&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MSG intake suppresses weight gain, fat deposition, and plasma leptin levels in male Sprague–Dawley rats&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Monosodium l-glutamate (MSG), an umami&#xA;  taste substance, may be a key molecule&#xA;  coupled to a food intake signaling&#xA;  pathway, possibly mediated through a&#xA;  specific l-glutamate (GLU) sensing&#xA;  mechanism in the gastrointestinal&#xA;  tract. Here we investigated the effect&#xA;  of the spontaneous ingestion of a 1%&#xA;  MSG solution and water on food intake&#xA;  and body weight in male Sprague–Dawley&#xA;  rats fed diets of varying caloric&#xA;  density, fat and carbohydrate&#xA;  contents. Fat mass and lean mass in&#xA;  the abdomen, blood pressure, and&#xA;  several blood metabolic markers were&#xA;  also measured. Rats given free access&#xA;  to MSG and water showed a high&#xA;  preference (93–97%) for the MSG&#xA;  solution, regardless of the diet they&#xA;  consumed. Rats ingesting MSG had a&#xA;  significantly smaller weight gain,&#xA;  reduced abdominal fat mass, and lower&#xA;  plasma leptin levels, compared to rats&#xA;  ingesting water alone. Naso-anal&#xA;  length, lean mass, food and energy&#xA;  intakes, blood pressure, blood&#xA;  glucose, and plasma levels of insulin,&#xA;  triglyceride, total cholesterol,&#xA;  albumin, and GLU were not influenced&#xA;  by the ingestion of the MSG solution.&#xA;  These same effects were observed in a&#xA;  study of adult rats. Together, these&#xA;  results suggest that MSG ingestion&#xA;  reduces weight gain, body fat mass,&#xA;  and plasma leptin levels. Moreover,&#xA;  these changes are likely to be&#xA;  mediated by increased energy&#xA;  expenditure, not reduced energy intake&#xA;  or delayed development. Conceivably,&#xA;  these effects of MSG might be mediated&#xA;  via gut GLU receptors functionally&#xA;  linked to afferent branches of the&#xA;  vagus nerve in the gut, or the&#xA;  afferent sensory nerves in the oral&#xA;  cavity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some people, low doses of soy products may cause health problems such as obesity, headache, flushing, sweating, facial pressure or tightness, numbness, tingling or burning in face, neck and other areas, rapid, fluttering heartbeats (heart palpitations), chest pain, nausea, weakness.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/monosodium-glutamate/AN01251&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic: &lt;em&gt;My favorite Chinese restaurant has a sign that says &quot;No MSG.&quot; What is MSG? Is it bad for you?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2466" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-10-01T17:59:51.567" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T17:59:51.567" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3833" CreationDate="2011-06-01T14:52:39.997" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the Mythbusters, there are &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; things we come into contact with daily that have more potentially harmful germs than toilet seats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a nutshell, first they compared 8 objects via a swab-petri dish-incubate-test for colonies method and here were the rankings from WORST (most microorganisms) to best (fewest): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;kitchen sponge (most colonies)&#xA;money&#xA;light switch&#xA;computer keyboard&#xA;hotel remote&#xA;shopping cart&#xA;cell phone&#xA;toilet seat (fewest colonies)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a second test they had a microbiologist re-rank those colonies on the &lt;em&gt;harmfulness&lt;/em&gt; of the organisms present, with the following results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;kitchen sponge (most nasty)&#xA;money&#xA;light switch&#xA;computer keyboard&#xA;toilet seat&#xA;cell phone&#xA;shopping cart&#xA;hotel remote (least nasty)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more detail, see this:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/hidden-nasties&quot;&gt;http://mythbustersresults.com/hidden-nasties&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3246" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T14:52:39.997" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3831" CreationDate="2011-06-01T15:05:42.540" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did not find the study you mentioned, but I know a very similar classic (371 citations on Google Scholar). Maybe you meant &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=7495394177741801984&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=1,5&amp;amp;as_subj=bio%20med%20soc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ambady &amp;amp; Rosenthal (1993)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They used the &lt;strong&gt;thin slices paradigm&lt;/strong&gt; (showing people very small amounts of information/behaviour) and predicted end-of-the-semester student evaluations. The people who saw the short video clips were different from the students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the 1st study, consensual [aggregated across 9 student raters (in their first study)] judgments of college teachers' molar nonverbal behavior based on very brief (under 30 s) silent video clips significantly predicted global end-of-semester student evaluations of teachers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So they significantly predicted them and some of the correlations were quite large (.84 for optimism). Some correlations weren't significant, so this is of course not in the realm of &quot;there was practically no difference&quot; (quoting you), but it's also a different study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This wasn't such a small sample to begin with (13 teachers, 8-20 students per class, so at least 104) and they varied it too (thinner slices, predicting principal's ratings of high school teachers). The paradigm is used quite often in different variations nowadays. You actually asked about a different study, so I didn't go in very deeply. Maybe you think my answer strays too far from the original question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Question two &quot;Are first impressions a surprisingly good judge of character?&quot;:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, this step has been taken, but I wouldn't call it &lt;em&gt;surprisingly&lt;/em&gt; good. Peer ratings, even by friends, aren't usually highly correlated with self-reported personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a classic &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=7495394177741801984&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=2005&amp;amp;sciodt=1,5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;meta-analysis about &lt;em&gt;thin slices&lt;/em&gt; by Ambady &amp;amp; Rosenthal (1992)&lt;/a&gt;. They found no increase in accuracy of predictions of various objective outcomes after half a minute (to 5 minutes).&#xA;It's contradicted &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=14303103883017769130&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=1,5&amp;amp;as_subj=bio%20med%20soc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Carney, Colvin, &amp;amp; Hall (2007)&lt;/a&gt; who found that accuracy increased with exposure time, which they varied from 5s to 5min (peak for extraversion after 5 min clip .55). &#xA;Extraversion after 20 seconds was .41 correlated with self-report. I don't know if you consider this &quot;surprisingly good&quot;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The results are different for less obvious traits (openness).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Are first impressions unchangeable?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=11221269898152262128&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=1,5&amp;amp;as_subj=bio%20med%20soc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Srivastava, Guglielmo, &amp;amp; Beer (2010)&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;great&lt;/em&gt; names, simply great names) found that stability of &lt;strong&gt;perceiver effects&lt;/strong&gt; (peer ratings in students) increases over time. Across the Big Five: Week 1-2: .37; Week 2-3: .55, Week 3-4: .65.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So, they are certainly &lt;strong&gt;not unchangeable&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="2722" LastEditDate="2011-06-03T18:48:22.883" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T18:48:22.883" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3759" CreationDate="2011-06-01T15:12:17.100" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an article in a peer reviewed journal (granted, not all peer-reviewed journals have the same standards) that compares the efficacy of two at-home bleaching gels (the ones you use in trays):  &lt;a href=&quot;http://jada.ada.org/content/131/9/1269.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://jada.ada.org/content/131/9/1269.full&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both CP and HP are effective at-home bleaching agents when daytime bleaching is preferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found an entire issue of The American Journal of Dentistry (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amjdent.com/Archive/2007/Sept%202007%20Special%20Issue.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pdf&lt;/a&gt;) dedicated to tooth whitening (and, again, I am not a dentist nor a professional researcher, so I can't evaluate the scientific methods employed), but these &lt;em&gt;appear&lt;/em&gt; to be valid scientific approaches).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From personal (anecdotal) experience, I've used the bleaching gels (H202 based) for years and they definitely work -- you can see the difference in pictures, for example.  I use mine overnight once every 4 months or so for maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3246" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T15:59:14.800" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T15:59:14.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4105" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-01T16:06:45.410" Score="12" ViewCount="2039" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was sent an article from Natural News and am trying to check the claims [1]. One of them is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The British Medical Journal also failed to disclose that its own finances are largely funded by vaccine manufacturers who fill the journal with paid advertising, and that such financial ties may have influenced the journal's decision to attempt to destroy the reputation of a researcher whose findings threatened the profits of its top sponsors. If you follow the money in this story, in other words, it leads right to the editors of BMJ, whose salaries are effectively financed by vaccine manufacturers. This all-important conflict of interest is almost never discussed in the mainstream media, by the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can anyone point me to a source regarding the BMJ's funding sources?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any evidence to support the specific statement that &quot;its own finances are &lt;em&gt;largely&lt;/em&gt; funded by vaccine manufactueres&quot;? I'd call largely perhaps &gt; 25%, but I have no idea what this source's criteria are. I don't have access to the full journal, but I would find it interesting if someone looked through ~5 of them and created a list of all the ads. I realize that's a ton of work (depending on the length), but it would help quantify the amount of ads being purchased by vaccine manufacturer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does anyone have a ballpark on how much a journal ad costs?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does anyone have data on typical sources of income for journals of this approximate readership size (all from ads? Sponsorships? Other sources?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for any input. I'm hoping to respond to the sender, as I am suspicious of the claims, especially from Natural News as they always tend to be extremely bold with claims and extremely lacking in sources (except pointing to other extremely similar sites like Mercola).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I found some of my own answers just now, but not the specifics I was looking for. The BMJ discussed receiving funding from Merck and GSK and have a list of revenue sources (type, not source), but no figures that I've found yet. [2] [3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/031117_BMJ_Dr_Andrew_Wakefield.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.naturalnews.com/031117_BMJ_Dr_Andrew_Wakefield.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d1335.full/reply#bmj_el_251470&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d1335.full/reply#bmj_el_251470&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;http://group.bmj.com/group/about/revenue-sources&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://group.bmj.com/group/about/revenue-sources&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2011-06-01T16:49:40.583" LastActivityDate="2020-12-08T14:15:45.623" Title="Is the British Medical Journal largely funded by vaccine manufactuers?" Tags="|medical-science|vaccines|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4109" CreationDate="2011-06-01T16:39:43.757" Score="20" ViewCount="5898" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you search through the internets to find reasons why the television show Firefly was cancelled, you often find disparaging remarks about Fox and the Executives behind the cancellation. These can range from &amp;quot;Oh how stupid&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;Ulterior motives were behind the cancellation.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fireflyfans.net/feature.asp?f=39&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;thorough examples&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis original):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They &lt;em&gt;wanted&lt;/em&gt; to kill this show. I believe that, as surely as I do that the sun rises in the east. Had they really been behind the series, and wanted it to &amp;quot;go&amp;quot; somewhere, they would have first of all given it a decent time-slot, one in which it would have had a chance to find an audience—the nine-o'clock (Eastern) slot on Sunday nights, vacated by that overwrought piece of dreck &lt;em&gt;The X-Files&lt;/em&gt;, would have been perfect. It is—was—&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; an eight o'clock primetime &amp;quot;kiddie&amp;quot; show. It was a serious drama with a fantastic setting. And it was simply without question the &lt;em&gt;best&lt;/em&gt; show of its type ever made for television.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why did Fox kill &lt;em&gt;Firefly&lt;/em&gt; so deliberately? Did they want to punish creator Joss Whedon for his &amp;quot;unexpected&amp;quot; successes with &lt;em&gt;Buffy the Vampire Slayer&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Angel&lt;/em&gt;? Demonstrate to him conclusively that it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the few genuinely creative people in Hollywood who hold the real power in the industry, but the men and women who hold the purse strings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typical excuses I have heard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone had a problem with strong female characters&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The powers that be just didn't like Joss Whedon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The cultural themes were too &amp;quot;out there&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Executive backstabbing sabotaged the show for the purposes of making someone else look bad&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the question at heart is this: Did something or someone specific target Firefly for cancellation aside from the reasons that typically get shows cancelled? Or, more bluntly, did an executive actively sabotage the show (or Joss Whedon) in such a way that resulted in Firefly getting cancelled?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T21:08:54.497" Title="Was Firefly pre-targeted for cancellation by Fox executives?" Tags="|television|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4108" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4110" CreationDate="2011-06-01T16:57:36.610" Score="20" ViewCount="2410" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently sent an article and am trying to evaluate some of the claims. [1] The claim of interest here is this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In light of new evidence that has emerged clearing Dr Wakefield of the allegations that he fabricated study data involving MMR vaccines and symptoms of autism, Dr Wakefield is now publicly demanding a retraction from the British Medical Journal and author Brian Deer. Documents just made public reveal that another medical research team which included a senior pathologist independently documented evidence of a possible MMR vaccine - autism link 14 months before Dr Wakefield's paper first appears in The Lancet -- based on several of the same children appearing in Dr Wakefield's study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, the Lancet retracted Wakefield's original 1998 paper after finding that he had altered data. [2] The British Medical Journal discussed this fraud in detail. [3] The article above claims that Wakefield didn't tamper with the diagnoses because he couldn't have -- due to a researcher named Walker-Smith having discussed 7 of the 12 children's diagnoses 14 mos. prior to the publishing of the 1998 Lancet paper. [4] Since these &quot;new documents&quot; have been uncovered, Wakefield has demanded a retraction. [5]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if this is true, does it change the &lt;em&gt;implications&lt;/em&gt; of the BMJ allegations? In other words, the BMJ accusation is that of incorrectly reporting various facts. For example, the 1998 paper reports children having contracted autism-like symptoms days after vaccination, while follow up investigation by journalist Brian Deer found that in many cases, it was actually &lt;em&gt;months&lt;/em&gt; before the onset of symptoms. Thus, while perhaps it wasn't fraud, am I correct that the &lt;em&gt;core content&lt;/em&gt; is unchanged -- the 1998 paper still featured incorrect data and thus its conclusions were ill-founded?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What conclusions, if any, can be drawn by the fact that Walker-Smith is a co-author of the 1998 paper? In other words, I find that Natural News is treating this as though an independent research team unconnected with Wakefield verified what he wrote in his paper... but the very person who is being used to show that Wakefield didn't make up these findings was actually a &lt;em&gt;co-author&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is anyone familiar enough to offer a cited summary of where this all stands? It's been difficult to track down exactly how this has played out. How many of the 12 children actually ended up with autism diagnoses or bowel disorders? Is there a summary of their symptoms and time until onset after vaccination? This is a very he-said she-said topic, I'm finding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/031117_BMJ_Dr_Andrew_Wakefield.html&quot;&gt;http://www.naturalnews.com/031117_BMJ_Dr_Andrew_Wakefield.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673697110960/fulltext&quot;&gt;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673697110960/fulltext&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452.full&quot;&gt;http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452.full&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[4] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vaccinesafetyfirst.com/pdf/BRIAN%20DEER%20IS%20THE%20LIAR%20.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.vaccinesafetyfirst.com/pdf/BRIAN%20DEER%20IS%20THE%20LIAR%20.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[5] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vaccinesafetyfirst.com/pdf/BMJ%20MUST%20RETRACT.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.vaccinesafetyfirst.com/pdf/BMJ%20MUST%20RETRACT.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-11-28T17:07:05.417" Title="Do &quot;new documents&quot; change anything about the Wakefield/MMR vaccine paper/retraction/fraud situation?" Tags="|medical-science|vaccines|andrew-wakefield|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4107" CreationDate="2011-06-01T17:23:02.960" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gail_Berman&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gail Berman&lt;/a&gt;, who served as the &lt;strong&gt;Fox Entertainment president&lt;/strong&gt; at the time, was the one who pulled the plug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;She served as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0075762/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;executive producer on &amp;quot;Buffy&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Angel&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In her own words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Canceling Firefly was as difficult as&#xA;anything I'd ever been involved in&#xA;because Joss and I had been creative&#xA;partners at one time. I&#xA;worked with him very closely on this&#xA;particular show and when it didn't&#xA;perform [in the ratings], having to&#xA;cancel it was very difficult&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ology.com/screen/gail-berman-why-firefly-had-be-cancelled&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whedon.info/Why-Firefly-failed-on-Fox-This-Is.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Whedon.info&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scifi author Keith R.A. DeCandido&#xA;recently noted that Fox canceled&#xA;&amp;quot;Firefly&amp;quot; for the same reason why any network&#xA;cancels any TV show : it was not&#xA;making enough money to justify its&#xA;existence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Firefly was an extremely expensive&#xA;show to make. It was&#xA;over $2 million an episode, which is a&#xA;ridiculous amount of money. It needed&#xA;to draw in more viewers than it got in&#xA;order for them to make it back on the&#xA;advertising&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Keith R.A. DeCandido &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfsite.com/%7Esilverag/decandido.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wrote the novelization&lt;/a&gt; of the movie &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379786/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Serenity&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T17:23:02.960" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4108" CreationDate="2011-06-01T18:03:22.287" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;Natural News' claims of fraud on the part of BMJ hinge on two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BMJ is allegedly &quot;largely&quot; funded by the very vaccine makers they are allegedly &quot;protecting&quot; by unfairly attacking Dr. Wakefield's paper published in The Lancet in 1998.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The BMJ's claims of fraud are disproved by research presented by Professor Walker-Smith and Dr. Amar Dhillon that &quot;independently&quot; presents identical data on 7 of the 12 children in Wakefield's paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is simply laughable. Even if we assume that Natural News' claim that the BMJ is &quot;largely funded&quot; by vaccine manufacturers is true (and while I have no evidence, I suspect it is not), it's not relevant. The BMJ published a series of articles by journalist Brian Deer, who (apparently) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c7452.full&quot;&gt;originally uncovered the fraud in 2004&lt;/a&gt;. Once the original evidence came to light, the GMC investigated Wakefield, his co-authors, and his paper, and concluded (wholly independently of the BMJ) that Dr. Wakefield et al had engaged in fraud in their paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also hypocritically uses the specter of &quot;biased funding source&quot; to attack the BMJ, while conveniently ignoring the fact that it was &quot;biased funding source&quot; (to the tune of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1265373.ece&quot;&gt;over £400,000&lt;/a&gt;) that originally lead to the investigation of Dr. Wakefield in the first place!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second claim here... I'll go ahead and call it outright fraudulent. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1265373.ece&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; from The Sunday Times in 2006, Dr. Wakefield's research began 2 years before his paper was published in The Lancent in February of 1998; roughly the first quarter of 1996. This puts his research beginning almost a full year before &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/031117_BMJ_Dr_Andrew_Wakefield.html&quot;&gt;Walker-Smith and Dhillon presented their own &quot;independent&quot; findings in December of 1996&lt;/a&gt;. Notice how weasel-worded Natural News and Dr. Wakefield's writings are, careful to always say that this was 2 years before The Lancet &lt;em&gt;published&lt;/em&gt; their paper, carefully avoiding the fact that it was almost 1 year &lt;em&gt;after their research for the paper began!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second claim further hinges on the alleged fact that Prof. Walker-Smith and Dr. Amar Dhillon &lt;em&gt;independently&lt;/em&gt; verified Wakefield's research, when in fact there was &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; independent about it -- &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; individuals are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673697110960/fulltext&quot;&gt;co-authors on Wakefield's 1998 The Lancet paper&lt;/a&gt; (registration required to read the full text, but the authors list is there without it), and in fact Prof. Walker-Smith was himself &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ageofautism.com/2010/05/uks-general-medical-council-professor-john-walkersmiths-name-should-be-erased-from-the-medical-regis.html&quot;&gt;investigated and determined to be guilty of Serious Professional Misconduct&lt;/a&gt; by the UK's General Medical Council in relation to -- coincidentally -- &lt;em&gt;7 of the 12 children in the 1998 The Lancet paper!&lt;/em&gt; (This was actually the very first Google result when searching for Walker-Smith's name; I unfortunately could find no additional information on Dhillon.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that Natural News is blatantly biased -- their &quot;articles&quot; on this conclude as ads for Dr. Wakefield's book -- and that they are clearly misrepresenting (at best) the facts, I don't think we need to consider Wakefield's paper to be any more valid now than we did before these &quot;new documents&quot; were released, especially since they fail in any way to refute any of the reasons for Wakefield's paper to have been retracted and he and many of his co-authors to be sanctioned by the GMC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3251" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T18:03:22.287" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3529" CreationDate="2011-06-01T19:18:31.023" Score="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no direct evidence, outside of the Torah and the literary traditions which followed, that Moses ever existed.  Whether he was made up out of whole-cloth, or whether there is some historical basis behind the legend, is impossible to say.  The best you can do is consider that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Extensive archeological surveys&#xA;throughout the Sinai region seem to&#xA;have thoroughly discredited the possibility that any&#xA;population movement as massive as&#xA;the Exodus described in the Torah&#xA;ever occurred.  (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3529/is-there-any-verifiable-historical-and-or-scientific-evidence-that-moses-lived/4095#4095&quot;&gt;xiaohouzi79's answer&lt;/a&gt; for references)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some details of Moses' life seem to&#xA;have been lifted from earlier&#xA;legends; specifically, the idea that&#xA;his mother placed him in a basket&#xA;and floated him down a river is&#xA;reminiscent of a legend involving&#xA;Sargon of Akkad.  See Pritchard, J.&#xA;&quot;Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating&#xA;to the Old Testament&quot;, Page 119&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, in the legend of&#xA;Sargon it is written that &quot;&lt;em&gt;my&#xA;mother, the high priestess, bore me&#xA;in secret.  She set me in a basket&#xA;of rushes, with bitumen she sealed&#xA;my lid.  She cast me into the&#xA;river...&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare this with Exodus 2:3 (NIV): &quot;&lt;em&gt;But&#xA;when she could hide him no longer,&#xA;she got a papyrus basket, for him&#xA;and coated it with tar and pitch.&#xA;Then she placed the child in it and&#xA;put it among the reeds along the&#xA;bank of the Nile.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, however, that it is not&#xA;necessarily the case that the&#xA;Hebrews lifted the basket motif&#xA;directly from this Akkadian legend,&#xA;as the earliest known copy of the&#xA;Akkadian legend dates to after the&#xA;time the relevant passage in Exodus&#xA;was probably written (8th century&#xA;B.C.E).  However, it is likely the&#xA;legend about Sargon comes from&#xA;earlier, Babylonian sources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While there is no direct evidence&#xA;that the Hebrews were ever enslaved&#xA;by the Egyptians, there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;evidence that Semitic slaves were&#xA;kept in Egypt, however the texts&#xA;which prove this date to 600 years&#xA;before the generally accepted date&#xA;of the Exodus (~1200 B.C.E).  See&#xA;&quot;&lt;em&gt;Asiatics in Egyptian Household&#xA;Service&lt;/em&gt;&quot; from Pritchard, J. &quot;Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old&#xA;Testament&quot;, Page 553&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This document records the names of&#xA;various slaves in service in&#xA;Egyptian households, including one&#xA;Menahem, which was later a common&#xA;Hebrew name, as well as the name of&#xA;a Hebrew king.  Another slave name&#xA;is &quot;Sephra&quot;, which is etymologically&#xA;similar to the Hebrew name&#xA;&quot;Sapphira&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't prove that the Hebrews&#xA;were enslaved as described in&#xA;Exodus, however it does demonstrate&#xA;that it wasn't anything out of the&#xA;ordinary for Semitic peoples to&#xA;serve as slaves in Egypt (especially before the Hyksos period).  It is&#xA;therefore possible that the Exodus&#xA;story has &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; kernel of truth to&#xA;it, even if it has been exaggerated&#xA;beyond recognition.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of particular interest is Papyrus&#xA;Anastasi V (British Museum 10244),&#xA;dating to around the time of the&#xA;Exodus, (13th century B.C.E), which&#xA;records a correspondence regarding&#xA;the pursuit of two runaway slaves.  See Pritchard, J. &quot;Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old&#xA;Testament&quot;, Page 259&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is notable because the route&#xA;taken by these slaves took them past&#xA;the watchtower at Migdol, which is&#xA;the same route mentioned in Exodus,&#xA;where Moses led the Israelites&#xA;before stopping in front of the sea.&#xA;(See Exodus 14:2-3)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, linguists have speculated that&#xA;the name &quot;Moses&quot; is etymologically&#xA;connected with the Egyptian name&#xA;Rameses.  &quot;Ra-Moses&quot; is a legitimate&#xA;name for an Egyptian living at the&#xA;relevant time period.  (I can't find&#xA;a great reference for this one, but&#xA;see&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989815-3,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989815-3,00.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this comes even close to giving us direct evidence that the Exodus occurred or that Moses himself even existed.  However, it does demonstrate that the Exodus account may be based on one or more (much more mundane) historical incidents, which are now permanently intertwined with later mythological embellishments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3253" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T19:30:53.717" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3529" CreationDate="2011-06-01T19:20:45.637" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: there is no historical evidence of Moses' life outside of Israelite texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps an appropriate question you didn't ask is should we expect there to be evidence of Moses outside of the texts of ancient Israel?  If the stories are false, obviously we would not.  If the stories are true, there is good reason to expect other ancient civilizations would not be interested in recording them either because they represent defeat or because they were irrelevant to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among the first category would be the Egyptians who according to the Torah lost a large pool of labor, significant military power, various crops and herds, and every first-born son.  It would have been a complete humiliation and a blot on the current pharaoh's name.  Assuming such an event were ever recorded, it seems unlikely that the record would be as widely copied as a major victory.  (In this sense at least, history really does belong to the victor.)  Similarly, the Canaanite peoples who were displaced by the Hebrew people would not be interested or even able to record their own defeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the later category would be the vast majority of the rest of civilization for whom even such a remarkable event as the Exodus would be a minor rumor at best.  According to it's own history, Israel was only relevant internationally for the short period of monarchy culminating in the reign of Solomon.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=Deuteronomy%207&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deuteronomy&lt;/a&gt; emphasizes the insignificance of the Hebrews at the time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, it would be somewhat surprising if we found evidence of the Exodus outside of the Hebrew records.  And if the Exodus story were not recorded, then there's no reason to expect the life of Moses to be recorded either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tellingly, the earliest extra-Biblical evidence we have that such a people as Israel exists comes as a brief mention of their defeat and extermination (declared prematurely as it turns out) at the hands of Merenptah, an Egyptian pharaoh.  The relevant line &lt;a href=&quot;http://bibledudes.com/biblical-studies/finds/merneptah-translation.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;translated&lt;/a&gt; reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;Israel is wasted, bare of seed,&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the sort of evidence we might expect outside of Hebrew sources.  It's also typical of the records we have from the period: biased and self-serving.  (Seriously, read the whole thing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Torah is atypical of the period in that sense—it records both the victories and the follies of the Hebrew people and of Moses.  Compared to most ancient rulers, Moses seems surprisingly human.  Is that evidence that the Torah dates back to near the end of the events it claims to record?  Of course not.  But it's the sort of thing that makes dating the early Hebrew texts such an interesting puzzle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?q=Exodus%202&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the first story&lt;/a&gt; of Moses' adulthood is an account him murdering an Egyptian:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, “Why do you strike your companion?” He answered, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, and thought, “Surely the thing is known.” When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another oddity of the Torah that doesn't prove anything, but is a puzzle for those holding a late date for it, is that the city of Jerusalem is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnpcb.org/esv/search/?words=Jerusalem&amp;amp;phrase=&amp;amp;not-words=&amp;amp;scope=Old%20Testament&amp;amp;matches=&amp;amp;search-text=all&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;not mentioned&lt;/a&gt;.  It isn't until David is said to move the royal residence from Shiloh to Jerusalem that the city is given any importance.  The important center for the Hebrew patriarchs according to the Torah seems to be the city of Hebron.  Given the reverence that Jerusalem is held in by the majority of Jewish texts, it's surprising that the city remains unnoticed in the Torah.  But we are pretty far afield from the original question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: there is no independent evidence of Moses, there's no reason to expect any, but the evidence in the Torah seems unusual if read as myth and legend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3252" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T20:28:24.147" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4113" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4114" CreationDate="2011-06-01T19:58:09.707" Score="24" ViewCount="5320" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0x9fg.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ever since childhood I've been told that if you encounter an unfamiliar dog, you should not show fear, because if you do, the dog is more likely to become aggressive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been told that this is because &quot;dogs can smell fear&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure there are many other factors which could potentially affect this interaction, but for the purposes of this question, I want to focus mainly on the ability to &quot;smell fear.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the acuity of the canine sense of smell, it has always seemed plausible that the dog may smell slight persperation or even potentially some subtle shift in body chemistry associated with the &quot;fight or flight&quot; response, but &lt;strong&gt;has it been scientifically proven that dogs can actually &lt;em&gt;smell&lt;/em&gt; fear?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T21:39:18.460" Title="Can dogs smell fear?" Tags="|biology|zoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4113" CreationDate="2011-06-01T20:37:21.587" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://zebra.sc.edu/smell/ann/myth5.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://zebra.sc.edu/smell/ann/myth5.html&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thompson (1988) suggests that human thermoregulatory responses to stress or fear may provide a valid measure of the intensity of emotion, but do not provide much specific information about which emotion an individual is experiencing. Thus, if a person becomes fearful in the presence of an animal, that animal may be able to detect a new odor, and may therefore be alerted to the person's presence. it is, however, unlikely that such an olfactory cue provides the animal with enough information to detect that the person is fearful. Additionally, &lt;strong&gt;it is unlikely that such an olfactory cue acts alone to incite aggression in the animal&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(Thompson, J. G. 1988. The Psychobiology of Emotions. New York: Plenum Press. )&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fear is motivating, and the fear response in most animals includes behavior modification. Therefore, &lt;strong&gt;in addition&lt;/strong&gt; to the production of a &amp;quot;fear scent&amp;quot; by certain mammals (&lt;strong&gt;for which evidence does not abound&lt;/strong&gt;), the fear response in animals includes a series of behaviors which can incite an aggressive response in a potential attacker. Even slight behavioral signs of fear which result from an animal's detection of a nearby predator might make it more vulnerable to attack. For example, the unusual or irrational movements which result from a fear response can immediately catch a predator's attention, and result in instantaneous attack &lt;em&gt;(Curio, E. 1976. Zoophysiology and Ecology: The Ethology of Predation. Vol 7. New York: Springer-Verlag. )&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional tidbit (not research backed up but to the best of my prior knowledge true):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who are afraid of dogs often stare at them, which the dog interprets as being confrontational (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://canidaepetfood.blogspot.com/2009/11/do-dogs-sense-fear.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://canidaepetfood.blogspot.com/2009/11/do-dogs-sense-fear.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T20:42:46.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4115" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-01T20:53:31.073" Score="17" ViewCount="2388" Body="&lt;p&gt;During adolescence, teens are often taught to not store condoms in their wallet because it causes the condom to deteriorate. In fact, the National Institute of Health &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/004001.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not carry condoms in your wallet&#xA;for long periods of time. Replace them&#xA;every once in a while. Friction from&#xA;opening and closing your wallet, and&#xA;from walking (if you carry your wallet&#xA;in your pocket) can lead to tiny holes&#xA;in the condom. Nevertheless, it is&#xA;better to use a condom that has been&#xA;in your wallet for a long time than to&#xA;not use one at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the NIH does not quantify &amp;quot;long periods of time.&amp;quot;  While the intuition behind the adverse affects of carrying a condom in a wallet makes sense, the NIH does not back its claim with any additional evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research done on how storing a condom in a wallet deteriorates the success rate of the condom?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3255" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T02:36:46.737" Title="Do condoms stored in a wallet deteriorate faster?" Tags="|contraception|condoms|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2832" CreationDate="2011-06-01T21:30:33.400" Score="-6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, your question reminds me of everything they taught in public school which I unlearned when I started to read Chesterton.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://librivox.org/orthodoxy-by-gk-chesterton/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's his answer, from Orthodoxy&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://joeversusthevolcano.blogspot.com/2008/09/gk-chesterton-dark-ages.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quoted from this website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...the idea that Christianity belongs to the Dark Ages. Here I did not satisfy myself with reading modern generalisations; I read a little history. And in history I found that Christianity, so far from belonging to the Dark Ages, was the one path across the Dark Ages that was not dark. It was a shining bridge connecting two shining civilizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any one says that the faith arose in ignorance and savagery the answer is simple: it didn’t. It arose in the Mediterranean civilization in the full summer of the Roman Empire. The world was swarming with sceptics, and pantheism was as plain as the sun, when Constantine nailed the cross to the mast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is perfectly true that afterwards the ship sank; but it is far more extraordinary that the ship came up again: repainted and glittering, with the cross still at the top. This is the amazing thing the religion did: it turned a sunken ship into a submarine. The ark lived under the load of waters; after being buried under the debris of dynasties and clans, we arose and remembered Rome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If our faith had been a mere fad of the fading empire, fad would have followed fad in the twilight, and if the civilization ever re-emerged (and many such have never re-emerged) it would have been under some new barbaric flag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the Christian Church was the last life of the old society and was also the first life of the new. She took the people who were forgetting how to make an arch and she taught them to invent the Gothic arch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a word, the most absurd thing that could be said of the Church is the thing we have all heard said of it. How can we say that the Church wishes to bring us back into the Dark Ages? The Church was the only thing that ever brought us out of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suffice it to say, all the Christian institutions which do so much good in the world today, arose in the 'dark ages' and are the firmament which western civilization is built and without which, western civilization would not be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T21:30:33.400" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4113" CreationDate="2011-06-01T21:39:18.460" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not really proven, but there is circumstantial evidence to back this up. For example, when you are scared, you give off &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_hormone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stress hormones&lt;/a&gt;. And they have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://1staidkit.com/knowledgebase/view/2668/Absolute_fear__Do_you_think_a_dog_would_react.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;smell&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The flood of epinephrine, norepinephrine and dozens of other hormones do release a very distinctive smell. This smell may not be obvious to most humans but there is no doubt a dog can smell it simply because their senses are greater than a human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dog may also be smelling the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hyperhidrosisweb.com/excessive-sweating.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;increase of sweat from you&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The impact of excessive sweating grows worst under stress which may be psychological or emotional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://stopsweatingfast.com/stress-anxiety-sweating&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there is ample medical evidence that points to a link between sweating excessively and anxiety and stress&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a dog may not just smell your new odour, but detect a change in your heartbeat. It can sense your heartbeat from five feet away, and so if it was close enough, can detect your heart going faster and faster, which is caused by smell hormones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastActivityDate="2011-06-01T21:39:18.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4118" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4121" CreationDate="2011-06-01T22:33:29.373" Score="26" ViewCount="3984" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard many times that women talk more than man. Sometimes numbers were included: women talk, on average, 25.000 words per day; men talk only 15.000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are women more talkative than men?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2092" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-02T17:37:38.937" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T01:11:00.137" Title="Do women talk more than men?" Tags="|gender|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4123" CreationDate="2011-06-01T23:39:58.450" Score="36" ViewCount="2519" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the site for this year's Amazing Meeting, there's a little joke about how &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazingmeeting.com/&quot;&gt;organizing skeptics is like herding cats&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a common belief that (possibly) due to their strong will and independent nature, cats cannot be herded as say, sheep can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the phrase &quot;like herding cats&quot; is commonly used to describe an incredibly difficult, labor-intensive and ultimately futile task. Of course this got me to thinking, has anyone ever actually tested this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any scientific evidence indicating whether or not cats &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be herded?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2016-05-07T18:32:22.857" Title="Can cats be herded?" Tags="|biology|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4120" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5380" CreationDate="2011-06-01T23:47:07.417" Score="17" ViewCount="2171" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all have learned our mother's tongue with much more ease than we learn any additional language, and I am always amazed at how effortlessly little kids seem to pick up sports and skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there ever been a scientific study to verify that grown ups indeed learn much slower than kids?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: My question is not limited to languages; that was just an example. Other new skills (cycling, rock climbing, chess, math, knitting, whatever) are just as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-07-24T22:41:31.683" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T22:41:31.683" Title="Is it harder for adults to learn new skills?" Tags="|cognitive-fitness|learning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4118" CreationDate="2011-06-02T00:42:12.023" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of books written on the subject that would seem to confirm that this is the case, but they are written without any scientific basis. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/317/5834/82.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; 2007 study published in &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; of 396 men and women found no such distinction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Women are generally assumed to be more talkative than men. Data were analyzed from 396 participants who wore a voice recorder that sampled ambient sounds for several days. Participants' daily word use was extrapolated from the number of recorded words. Women and men both spoke about 16,000 words per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=women-talk-more-than-men&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This analysis&lt;/a&gt; of the paper provides an interesting point on variability within the gender groups:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In most of the samples, the average number of words spoken by men and women were about the same. Men showed a slightly wider variability in words uttered, and boasted both the most economical speaker (roughly 500 words daily) and the most verbose yapping at a whopping 47,000 words a day. But in the end, the sexes came out just about even in the daily averages: women at 16,215 words and men at 15,669. In terms of statistical significance, Pennebaker says, &quot;It's not even remotely close to different.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psr.sagepub.com/content/11/4/328.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt; published in the Personality and Social Psychology Review came to a similar conclusion (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three separate sets of meta-analyses were conducted of studies testing for gender differences in adults' talkativeness, affiliative speech, and assertive speech. Across independent samples, statistically significant but negligible average effects sizes were obtained with all three language constructs: &lt;strong&gt;Contrary to the prediction, men were more talkative (d = —.14) than were women.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt; to satisfy Macke's suggestion below, the first study I cited doesn't list the median, but judging from the histogram it did include, it seems doubtful that that median woman is significantly more talkative than the median man (and the sample size would probably be too small to draw anything meaningful from that if it was the case):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BhHCl.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2011-06-02T22:34:02.280" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T22:34:02.280" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3833" CreationDate="2011-06-02T01:19:35.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember hearing about this a while back, particularly, in contrast with the kitchen counters.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/life/story.html?id=827301e3-b08b-49bf-b9a8-b7fdb2ea1672&amp;amp;k=62619&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This 2007 article claims, that kitchen counter ranks with toilet as a pathogen paradise&lt;/a&gt;, and some even go so far as to claim that a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chacha.com/question/what-generally-carries-more-germs,-a-toilet-seat,-a-kitchen-counter-or-kitchen-sink&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;kitchen counters may be more loaded with bacteria than a typical toilet seat&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But apparently, this may be a myth. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/707/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this interview with Gillian Fraser&lt;/a&gt;, from the University of Cambridge, who ran a little experiment against a toilet seat and kitchen counter, the sample taken from the toilet seat actually contained more bacteria than the sample from a kitchen counter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So there you go, in our test we found many more bacteria on a toilet seat than we did on a kitchen work surface, and even some indication that the bacteria that were there could survive inside your intestines&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while this may not be conclusive evidence to rule that they are extremely unhygienic, toilet seats certainly aren't the cleanest places at home :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3259" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T01:19:35.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4119" CreationDate="2011-06-02T01:25:28.023" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lonestar.edu/departments/libraries/APA_HerdingCats_2009_%282%29.pdf&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; I think goes into enough detail and looks at the possibility to train cats in groups which could be used to herd cats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More recently, Electronic Data Systems&#xA;  (EDS) aired a commercial during the&#xA;  2000 Super Bowl that impressed and&#xA;  amused countless television viewers.&#xA;  Cowboys were actually herding cats, thousands of cats, it&#xA;  seemed, though “about 60 cats were&#xA;  used, each with special skills such as&#xA;  running, swimming and sleeping”&#xA;  (LeSueur, 2000). The rest of the herd&#xA;  was created by computer enhancement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As also indicated in the paper, cats can become attached to the person that feeds them regularly and will happily follow the owner around if there is the promise of food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk7yqlTMvp8&quot;&gt;link to the video&lt;/a&gt; on youtube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-06-02T01:35:20.000" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T01:35:20.000" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4124" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4127" CreationDate="2011-06-02T01:34:01.600" Score="63" ViewCount="4225" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been admonished not to ever shine a laser into the night sky as it might &quot;dazzle pilots&quot; and potentially bring down airplanes. This seems kind of illogical for a number of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a plane is flying perpendicular to the earth, a laser from the ground would have to hit it at a significant angle, much more akin to pointing a bit higher than the horizon rather than straight up, for the actual pilot of the plane to see the laser output.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While lasers can be deadly accurate, I find it hard to believe that any old Joe Shmoe can track the cockpit of an airplane at +10,000 feet, possibly miles away, and this would at the very least have to be deliberate. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most commercial airplanes fly for the most part (save takeoff and landing) on autopilot! Let's say you actually succeeded in temporarily blinding the pilot. The plane just keeps flying, as it exists in the 21st century and uses a computer. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unless you have something greater than a 1000mW laser (not easy or legal to acquire these days), won't the distance be too great to actually cause significant problems? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were once playing on a military beach at night with a simple, store-bought green laser, shining it into the sky, when a scruffy old man approached us and reprimanded us for shining it into the sky, claiming that we might &quot;dazzle a pilot.&quot; Is this just fallacy? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1836" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T09:50:17.670" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T22:31:09.687" Title="Is it possible to cause problems to an aircraft pilot with an &quot;over-the-counter&quot; laser?" Tags="|ophthalmology|aviation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4124" CreationDate="2011-06-02T01:38:25.210" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lasers_and_aviation_safety&quot;&gt;Laser and aviation safety&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under certain conditions, laser light&#xA;  or other bright lights (spotlights,&#xA;  searchlights) directed at aircraft can&#xA;  be a hazard. The most likely scenario&#xA;  is when a bright visible laser light&#xA;  causes distraction or temporary flash&#xA;  blindness to a pilot, during a&#xA;  critical phase of flight such as&#xA;  landing or takeoff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that the people shining the lasers are doing it when the planes are getting near to landing, above suburban areas, so they aren't flying high above the clouds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it may not effect the planes control it is a jerk thing to do because you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/bus-driver-hospitalised-by-laser-attack/story-e6frewt0-1226020417938&quot;&gt;seriously damage someone's eyesight&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T01:38:25.210" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4124" CreationDate="2011-06-02T02:04:31.937" Score="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a real threat.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.faa.gov/pilots/safety/pilotsafetybrochures/media/laser_hazards_web.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Enough of a threat for the FAA to mail out a Pilot Safety Notice&lt;/a&gt; (Linked PDF).  Let me explain why, as a counter to each of your points in the original question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First of all, planes bank and turn, so they aren't always perpendicular to the ground.  Also, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&amp;amp;metadataPrefix=html&amp;amp;identifier=AD0689372&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Plexiglas material that aircraft windshields are made of further scatter and intensifies the dazzle effect&lt;/a&gt; on a pilot that happens to be sitting right up on the window.  So you don't need to shine it directly at the pilot, just the cockpit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The greatest danger is not for high flying aircraft, but rather while aircraft are in critical phases of flight.  That is not to say that you can't have an effect on higher flying aircraft.  There is a property of lasers called divergence that will allow you to cover a fair area of the sky.  Although, then the inverse square law takes over, so the power getting to a pilot at those distance normally wouldn't be a concern for most, although it may screw up night vision.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You greatly overestimate the amount of time an aircraft is on autopilot.  Generally, below 10,000 feet is where most professional pilots will take over from the autopilot in order to warm up for the landing phase.  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1994/call-haiti-94-3_chp3.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This is a TTP for pilots&lt;/a&gt;.) It actually tunes you in for greater Situational Awareness (SA), and will have you looking out of the cockpit more than when on autopilot.  Thus making you more susceptible to a laser dazzling effect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It only takes a small amount of light to screw up your vision for landing phases.  This is especially dangerous during night operations.  It is also intensified again by the scattering that you get from the Plexiglas as I mentioned in item 1.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gslb.optoiq.com/index/photonics-technologies-applications/lfw-display/lfw-article-display.articles.laser-focus-world.volume-46.issue-6.features.short-wavelength-laser.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Add to that that green light is the most &amp;quot;dazzling&amp;quot; wavelength&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific effects &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Laser_Safety_in_Navigable_Airspace&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as listed here are&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Distraction and Startle&lt;/strong&gt;: This occurs when an unexpected laser (or other bright light) can distract a pilot during a night time take-off or approach/landing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Glare and Disruption&lt;/strong&gt;: This occurs as the intensity of the laser light increases such that it starts to interfere with vision; night vision starts to deteriorate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Temporary Flash blindness&lt;/strong&gt;: This effect is similar to that experienced when looking at a bright camera flash. There is no injury, but a portion of the visual field is temporarily knocked out. Sometimes there are ‘afterimages’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you are lucky that the old guy didn't call the Military Police on you.  They have a procedure for reporting these incidents (called a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_military_abbreviations#S&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SAFIRE&lt;/a&gt;).  It has even happened with civilians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.birminghammail.net/news/birmingham-news/2010/01/15/new-law-to-combat-louts-dazzling-pilots-over-birmingham-with-lasers-pens-97319-25602624/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New law to combat louts dazzling pilots over Birmingham with lasers pens&lt;/a&gt; (that's Birmingham in the UK).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PILOTS flying over the skies of Birmingham are facing a greater threat of being dazzled by a laser pen than almost anywhere else in the country, it has emerged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The region is third in a ‘league of shame’ of hotspots for the crime according to a report by the UK Civil Aviation Authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now they have introduced a new law to target the reckless offenders putting the lives of those in airliners and helicopters at risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/08/31/us-france-airport-idUSTRE67U43N20100831&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Man arrested for trying to dazzle pilots with laser&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Reuters) - A man appeared in court on Tuesday accused of trying to dazzle pilots with a laser beam as they were landing at France's second-busiest airport Paris Orly, aviation authorities said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Several pilots complained and the man was arrested near the runway,&amp;quot; a spokesman for the civil aviation authority said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/03/australian_airliner_laser_attacks/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aussie laser-pointer dazzle attacks on airliners: Bad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Australian politicians are demanding restrictions on the ownership of laser pointers in the land down under. The banning calls follow a series of widely-reported incidents in which individuals on the ground have attempted to dazzle pilots of commercial aircraft making approaches to landing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A particularly troublesome dazzling attack took place last Friday, involving at least four comparatively-powerful green laser pointers in the Bexley area of Sydney. Six passenger flights were affected, with air-traffic controllers having to re-route the planes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The use of these laser pointers against aeroplanes is unbelievably stupid and cannot be tolerated,&amp;quot; Australian Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus told the Sydney Morning Herald.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T21:08:06.927" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4124" CreationDate="2011-06-02T02:05:18.680" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Laser_Safety_in_Navigable_Airspace&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Permanent physical damage to the eye is highly unlikely (at time 3:48 in the video)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even pointers can have effects that include startle, distract, glare, and 'flash blindness'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strike is likely to be intermittent (small beam on moving target at long distance)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maximum legal power for a green laser pointer is 5 mW (which can damage eyes if held on the same point of the retina for several seconds from within 50 feet); but distract can happen at 3,700 feet, and flash blindness at 1,200 feet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T02:05:18.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3498" CreationDate="2011-06-02T03:16:29.510" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently not, as the following evidence shows, quoting from various doctors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babyzone.com/baby/sleep/photos_crying_it_out&quot;&gt;Doctor Richard Ferber&lt;/a&gt;: he states it is not the best option, but no damage occurs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cry-it-out stance: &quot;Going 'cold turkey'—putting your child in the crib at bedtime, letting him cry, and not returning until morning—is far from ideal,&quot; writes Dr. Ferber. &quot;[But] allowing some crying … will never cause psychological damage.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.askdrsears.com/&quot;&gt;Dr. William Sears&lt;/a&gt;, a prominent opponent of the crying it out technique,&#xA;wrote an article called Science Says: Excessive Crying Could Be Harmful to Babies.&#xA; In it he notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One study showed infants who experienced persistent crying episodes were 10 times more likely to have ADHD as a child, along with poor school performance and antisocial behavior. The researchers concluded these findings may be due to the lack of responsive attitude of the parents toward their babies. &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&#xA;  ...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers at Pennsylvania State and Arizona State Universities found that infants with excessive crying during the early months showed more difficulty controlling their emotions and became even fussier when parents tried to console them at 10 months.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/parenting/archive/2009/06/30/cry-it-out-method-sleep-ferber.aspx&quot;&gt;Chad Skelton&lt;/a&gt;, who did research on Dr. William Sears article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Curious, I tracked down the two studies to see if I could learn more (the numbers beside each statement corresponded to two specific studies included in Sears' footnotes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To my surprise, neither study (which you can read for yourself here and here) appeared to have anything at all to do with the cry-it-out method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skelton went on to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, rather than looking at whether leaving children alone to cry (for whatever reason) caused  problems later in life, both studies instead examined whether persistent crying in infancy was a symptom of underlying problems, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indeed, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hhdev.psu.edu/ebp/stifter%20and%20spinrad%202002.pdf&quot;&gt;Penn State study&lt;/a&gt; even made a point of noting that how responsive a mother was to her chid's cries didn't appear to make a difference, since &quot;the infant who cries excessively in early infancy will be likely inconsolable.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor Cynthia Stifter, lead author of the Penn State study, states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there is nothing in the paper to suggest either 'crying it out' is an effective or ineffective method for getting children to sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, Professor Dieter Wolke wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Extinction is a powerful learning method. However, in clinical practice, most parents find it very difficult to apply as they are very distressed by their baby’s crying. Thus, a staged process of “crying it out”, the checking method has been developed that is much more acceptable for many parents (i.e. check after 10 mins when baby is crying – but no reinforcement, i.e. no touching or picking up; next time after 15 mins checking, next time 20 mins etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's up to you to decide from the evidence above, whether or not it is &quot;neglectful&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/109/6/1054.full&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;http://www.hhdev.psu.edu/ebp/stifter%20and%20spinrad%202002.pdf&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T03:16:29.510" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3798" CreationDate="2011-06-02T06:07:40.020" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The thread below is the only mention of the people first responsible for the traverse. This is credited as &lt;a href=&quot;http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tita_Piaz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tita Piaz&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://Hans%20D%C3%BClfer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hans Dülfer&lt;/a&gt; (although due to the lack of quantity of information there may have been others involved).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of note is this translation of the wikipedia article on Tita Piaz:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is also popular with climbers for&#xA;  inventing the technique of &#xA;  rappelling . Today his technique,&#xA;  which went into disuse with the advent&#xA;  of harnesses and modern belay devices&#xA;  , is known simply as &quot;Piaz method&quot; or&#xA;  &quot;Dulfer-Piaz&quot; (also the mountaineer&#xA;  Hans Dulfer is considered the inventor&#xA;  of this technique).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this one from the Hans Dülfer wikipedia page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition to success in climbing,&#xA;  layback was very important for the&#xA;  technical innovations introduced. The&#xA;  best known are the techniques of&#xA;  abseiling that still bears his name,&#xA;  Dülfersitz, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=jl1RVN79N-EC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PP8&amp;amp;dq=%22Hans%20D%C3%BClfer%22&amp;amp;ots=J8Xen5dfaI&amp;amp;sig=Fqz9Fjg_bPLGpA-Z2vtdEhlMo4g#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=hans&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; and the technique for&#xA;  ascending layback cracks in the rock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also of note is this mention in &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=jl1RVN79N-EC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PP8&amp;amp;dq=%22Hans%20D%C3%BClfer%22&amp;amp;ots=J8Xen5dfaI&amp;amp;sig=Fqz9Fjg_bPLGpA-Z2vtdEhlMo4g#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=hans&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pilgrims of the Vertical&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...and by 1900 Hans Dülfer, Otto&#xA;  Herzog, and Hans Fiechtl had refined&#xA;  and systematized aid climbing. They&#xA;  forged harder pitons for the thinner&#xA;  cracks, steel snap-links (carabiners)&#xA;  to connect pitons to the rope, and&#xA;  rope ladders (etriers) to attach to&#xA;  pitons. but the values inscribed in&#xA;  their climbs and writings had already&#xA;  reshaped the sport.They also created&#xA;  new techniques such as a body belay to&#xA;  hold falls, a way to wrap the rope&#xA;  around a body and rap- pel downward,&#xA;  and a method of penduluming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=484041&amp;amp;tn=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thread: History of the Tyrolean Traverse:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Piaz and Duelfer were contemporaries--&#xA;  Piaz claims to have done the first,&#xA;  but I doubt that we could definitively&#xA;  credit one or the other at this point.&#xA;  There's no doubt that it was part of&#xA;  the technical innovation to come out&#xA;  of the Dolomites and the Kaisergebrige&#xA;  in the Tirolian Alps. Pitons,&#xA;  rappelling, tension traverses, aid&#xA;  climbing, stirrups, pendulums, and the&#xA;  Tirolian traverse were all developed&#xA;  by Bavarian, Tirolian and South&#xA;  Tirolian climbers in the late 19th and&#xA;  early 20th century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ezra.cornell.edu/posting.php?timestamp=1302159600&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ezra.cornell.edu/posting.php?timestamp=1302159600&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“‘Tyro’ is short for Tyrolean&#xA;  Traverse, a climbing system using&#xA;  ropes to horizontally cross a barrier&#xA;  such as a raging river, a crevasse,&#xA;  or, in this case, one of Cornell’s&#xA;  famous gorges.  It was first developed&#xA;  by climbers in the eastern Alps of&#xA;  Austria/Italy, in a region called&#xA;  Tirol.  Think of it as a practical zip&#xA;  line, where the goal is not to go&#xA;  fast, but to simply to cross an&#xA;  otherwise impassible barrier.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://knol.google.com/k/history-of-the-zipline#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;History of the zipline&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's no doubt that it was part of&#xA;  the technical innovation to come out&#xA;  of the Dolomites and the Kaisergebrige&#xA;  in the Tirolian Alps. Pitons,&#xA;  rappelling, tension traverses, aid&#xA;  climbing, stirrups, pendulums, and the&#xA;  Tirolian traverse were all developed&#xA;  by Bavarian, Tirolian and South&#xA;  Tirolian climbers in the late 19th and&#xA;  early 20th century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-06-06T00:16:10.333" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T00:16:10.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4133" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-02T07:57:56.343" Score="15" ViewCount="20146" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some gardening sources recommend watering lawn in the morning, with the reason being water is needed for photosynthesis, and the grass can use it straight away after watering. Some sources say the evening is the best time as the water does evaporates slower when it is colder and there is no sun, therefore the water has more time to soak into the ground. To make it even more complicated, there is an argument against evening watering stating that grass staying wet through the night may increase risk of diseases (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.american-lawns.com/lawns/watering.html&quot;&gt;Watering efficiently&lt;/a&gt;) .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a water conservation point, which is better time for watering, morning or evening? Was there some controlled experiments done, with grass or other plants, with the goal of maximizing plant mass growth with a given amount of water?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the best time is confirmed to be very early morning (that would probably make sense from the reasons above, but experimental evidence would still be preffered), but I am unable or not willing to do that, which of the easily available options (morning, evening, or both - with the amount split between them) is the best?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-06-03T11:23:17.363" LastActivityDate="2017-04-26T22:56:57.270" Title="Is it better to water lawn in the morning or in the evening?" Tags="|biology|water|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4599" CreationDate="2011-06-02T09:35:21.217" Score="13" ViewCount="35209" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a child I was always told not to drink after eating lots of fruits, especially cherries, as it would supposedly cause a belly-ache. Not only I never dared to try drinking after eating cherries, I see this to be observed quite strictly by most people around here and therefore have no first hand experience. The reason given at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canaryzoo.com/Around%20the%20World%20-%20QaA%20Drinking%20Water%20and%20Eating%20Fruit.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Around the World Q/A&lt;/a&gt; seems almost the same as in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1870/is-drinking-water-during-a-meal-bad-for-you&quot;&gt;Is drinking water during a meal bad for you?&lt;/a&gt;, which was determined to be wrong. What is the truth, is it harmful or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a bonus, if it is proven to be  nonsense, it would be interesting for me to known if this is a habit only locally (I live in Czech Republic, Central Europe), or if people around the world often think the same as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2023-08-28T09:37:24.943" LastActivityDate="2023-08-28T09:37:24.943" Title="Does drinking after eating fruits cause a belly-ache?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|fruit|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4135" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4138" CreationDate="2011-06-02T10:11:41.053" Score="27" ViewCount="31155" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question arose from my personal experience — after quitting coffee, I switched to drinking tea (a lot of tea). One day there was no tea, and I had a terrible headache, similar to the first days without coffee. A friend of mine suggested there is more caffeine in black tea than in coffee, and suggested green tea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This made me wonder:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How much caffeine is there in the average teabag, as opposed to two teaspoons of grain coffee? How about caffeine contents of other tea varieties (green, white)?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="22266" LastEditDate="2024-02-02T04:36:27.900" LastActivityDate="2024-02-02T04:36:27.900" Title="Does tea contain as much (or more) caffeine as coffee?" Tags="|coffee|tea|caffeine|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4136" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4145" CreationDate="2011-06-02T10:13:49.013" Score="17" ViewCount="1517" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've generally read that a fry-up, AKA the Full English breakfast, comprised of bacon, sausages and fried bread, is full of trans-fats, and hence is bad for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article3758517.ece&quot;&gt;Why the great British breakfast is a killer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/why-ill-never-eat-a-fryup-again-908395.html&quot;&gt;Why I'll never eat a fry-up again&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along comes this news that researchers in the US have now declared &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1263778/Why-British-fry-healthiest-breakfast-.html&quot;&gt;the British fry-up is the healthiest breakfast&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence either way, &lt;em&gt;other than the last link&lt;/em&gt;? &#xA;Are they good for you or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T02:35:04.320" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T02:35:04.320" Title="Is a Full English Breakfast good for you?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4135" CreationDate="2011-06-02T10:49:14.090" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Comparing the caffeine in a cup of tea with a cup of coffee (both brewed, prepared with tap water) on average:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mhqAj.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3FmWa.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that these values values vary wildly according to where you look. The above data is averaged from a large number of sources, available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28amount%20of%20caffeine%20in%20a%20cup%20of%20tea%29%20vs%20%28amount%20of%20caffeine%20in%20a%20cup%20of%20coffee%29&amp;amp;a=UnitClash_*cup.*Cups.dflt--&amp;amp;a=*DPClash.ExpandedFoodE.coffee-_*Coffee.dflt-&amp;amp;a=*EAC.ExpandedFood.Tea-_**a.Tea-.dflt-&amp;amp;a=*EAC.ExpandedFood.Coffee-_**Coffee.*Food:CookingMethod_Food:Brewed.Food:MadeFrom_Food:PreparedWithTapWater---&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, surprisingly, no. Brewed coffee generally has more caffeine than brewed tea. However, &lt;em&gt;dry&lt;/em&gt; tea contains more caffeine than &lt;em&gt;dry&lt;/em&gt; coffee (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stashtea.com/caffeine+and+tea.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;) but since we don't usually eat dry coffee or dry tea leaves, it is safe to say your friend is wrong about caffeine content but right to suggest green tea as an alternative. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.energyfiend.com/the-caffeine-database&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Green tea&lt;/a&gt; contains around 25mg per cup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T10:49:14.090" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4139" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-02T10:59:38.843" Score="22" ViewCount="7110" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5nOAb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Alcatraz Escape Triathlon&quot; /&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://briannastri.blogspot.com/2009/06/escape-from-alcatraz.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They said it could not be done, and&#xA;the official history of the island&#xA;prison says it never was done: no one&#xA;ever escaped from Alcatraz Island&#xA;during the 29 years (1934-63) it was a&#xA;federal penitentiary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newsinhistory.com/blog/two-escape-%E2%80%98escape-proof%E2%80%99-alcatraz&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;There have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alcatrazhistory.com/escapes1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;attempts&lt;/a&gt;, and maybe the most famous one &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/12/newsid_4464000/4464939.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;happened in 1962&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frank Lee Morris, Clarence and John&#xA;Anglin were never recaptured and&#xA;opinion is divided as to whether they&#xA;succeeded in their escape, were&#xA;drowned or eaten by sharks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FBI&#xA;spent years investigating the case and&#xA;finally concluded the men had failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The film &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079116/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Escape from Alactraz&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; (1979) was based on this attempt, starring &lt;strong&gt;Clint Eastwood&lt;/strong&gt; as Frank Morris.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;MythBusters&lt;/strong&gt; looked into it: [&lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-clips-escape-from-alcatraz.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;watch video&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did three prisoners in 1962 build a&#xA;raft out of raincoats and use it to&#xA;escape from Alcatraz?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9UaA2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Mythbusters&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though they have their doubts that Morris and the Anglin brothers made it, they deemed it &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Plausible&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alcatrazhistory.com/escapes1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alcatraz History&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;to this day there are five&#xA;prisoners listed as &amp;quot;missing and&#xA;presumed drowned.&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;My question:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How legitimate is it to &amp;quot;pressume&amp;quot; that one of those missing prisoners didn't drown?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;Are there clues that suggest an escapee survived?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T17:38:34.493" Title="Did anyone ever escape from Alcatraz?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4141" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4143" CreationDate="2011-06-02T11:58:57.053" Score="17" ViewCount="2308" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that S. 510 FDA Food Saftey Modernization Act makes it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infowars.com/senate-bill-s510-makes-it-illegal-to-grow-share-trade-or-sell-homegrown-food/&quot;&gt;illegal to grow, share, trade or sell homegrown food&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does S. 510 make it illegal to grow or trade food?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two main arguments are that people can no longer keep seeds, and nor can they keep food for more than 30 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T22:19:08.363" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T22:19:08.363" Title="Does Senate Bill 510 (S. 510) have the power to prosecute people for growing their own vegetables" Tags="|law|fda|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4141" CreationDate="2011-06-02T13:25:46.140" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To research this question I had to wade through a huge number of fringe articles, many of them identically worded to the one above. It took me a while to find a reputable news organization. But &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/1123/Food-safety-bill-101-What-are-the-facts-and-myths&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;eventually I did.&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can I still share (and sell) vegetables from my garden?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Farmers who sell most of their harvest directly to restaurants, food co-ops, farm stands, and farmers' markets wouldn't have to register with the FDA under SB 510. And they wouldn't be subject to the regulations in the legislation. But such farmers would still have to abide by current state laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say the bill isn't controversial. Many people are opposing it on the grounds of increased regulatory burden on small food producers and sellers. Many people are supporting it since it holds food producers responsible for contaminated food, and makes it easier to track the source of such food. But in the specifics of this question, no. As one article puts it, Grandma's home grown pickles are safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T13:25:46.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4141" CreationDate="2011-06-02T13:28:06.073" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just a note for those researching this: the article linked in the question incorrectly links to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2749&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;H.R. 2749&lt;/a&gt;, which never became law. The correct bill is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2751&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;H.R. 2751&lt;/a&gt; which replaced &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-510&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;S. 510&lt;/a&gt; and became law on January 4, 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full text of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-111publ353/pdf/PLAW-111publ353.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Public Law No: 111-353 as enacted is here in PDF form&lt;/a&gt;.  If you search for the word &amp;quot;exempt&amp;quot; you can find (in obtuse legalese, of course) the sections that enact the exemptions mentioned in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/1123/Food-safety-bill-101-What-are-the-facts-and-myths&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Christian Science Monitor article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can I still share (and sell) vegetables from my garden?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Farmers who sell most of their harvest directly to restaurants, food co-ops, farm stands, and farmers' markets wouldn't have to register with the FDA under SB 510. And they wouldn't be subject to the regulations in the legislation. But such farmers would still have to abide by current state laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there seem to be exemptions for businesses who sell less than $500K worth of food per year, and businesses that only sell food within the state that they operate (and thus would not be subject to Federal regulation under the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Commerce Clause&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T13:41:15.087" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4136" CreationDate="2011-06-02T13:35:26.163" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at the structure of the article, it starts by mentioning a study, and then it jumps to some advice and recipes from an unrelated nutritionist. To my eye, it doesn't even appear as though the nutritionist is responding to the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what did the study say? I confess, I didn't read it. But I found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://main.uab.edu/Sites/MediaRelations/articles/75217/&quot;&gt;press release&lt;/a&gt; (which tend to be much closer to the original study than reports on science in a &lt;strike&gt;cookbook&lt;/strike&gt; daily newspaper, but could still contain misleading information.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The press release was from March 2010, and talks about an upcoming publication in the International Journal of Obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;[It] examined the influence exerted by the type of foods and specific timing of intake on the development of metabolic syndrome characteristics in mice. The UAB research revealed that mice fed a meal higher in fat after waking had normal metabolic profiles. In contrast, mice that ate a more carbohydrate-rich diet in the morning and consumed a high-fat meal at the end of the day saw increased weight gain, adiposity, glucose intolerance and other markers of the metabolic syndrome.&#xA;&#xA;[...]&#xA;&#xA;Bray and Young said further research needs to test whether similar observations are made with different types of dietary fats and carbohydrates, and it needs to be tested in humans to see if the findings are similar between rodents and humans.&#xA;&quot;We're also working on a study right now to determine if these feeding regimens adversely affect heart function,&quot; Young said.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: They weren't studying the difference between high-fat in the morning versus low-fat in the morning (e.g. fry-up versus toast) but high-fat in the morning versus high-fat in the evening (e.g. do you eat toast for breakfast and a fry-up for dinner, or a fry-up for breakfast and toast for dinner.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, an intriguing study in mice, a year ago, but not yet understood nor tested in humans gave the Daily Mail (and other newspapers) an excuse to publish some recipes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;More info:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Int J Obes (Lond). 2010 Nov;34(11):1589-98. Epub 2010 Mar 30.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20351731?dopt=Abstract&quot;&gt;Time-of-day-dependent dietary fat consumption influences multiple cardiometabolic syndrome parameters in mice.&#xA;Bray MS, Tsai JY, Villegas-Montoya C, Boland BB, Blasier Z, Egbejimi O, Kueht M, Young ME.&#xA;Source&#xA;Department of Epidemiology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excess caloric intake is strongly associated with the development of increased adiposity, glucose intolerance, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, and hyperleptinemia (that is the cardiometabolic syndrome). Research efforts have focused attention primarily on the quality (that is nutritional content) and/or quantity of ingested calories as potential causes for diet-induced pathology. Despite growing acceptance that biological rhythms profoundly influence energy homeostasis, little is known regarding how the timing of nutrient ingestion influences development of common metabolic diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;* OBJECTIVE:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To test the hypothesis that the time of day at which dietary fat is consumed significantly influences multiple cardiometabolic syndrome parameters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;* RESULTS:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We report that mice fed either low- or high-fat diets in a contiguous manner during the 12  h awake/active period adjust both food intake and energy expenditure appropriately, such that metabolic parameters are maintained within a normal physiologic range. In contrast, fluctuation in dietary composition during the active period (as occurs in human beings) markedly influences whole body metabolic homeostasis. Mice fed a high-fat meal at the beginning of the active period retain metabolic flexibility in response to dietary challenges later in the active period (as revealed by indirect calorimetry). Conversely, consumption of high-fat meal at the end of the active phase leads to increased weight gain, adiposity, glucose intolerance, hyperinsulinemia, hypertriglyceridemia, and hyperleptinemia (that is cardiometabolic syndrome) in mice. The latter perturbations in energy/metabolic homeostasis are independent of daily total or fat-derived calories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;* CONCLUSIONS:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The time of day at which carbohydrate versus fat is consumed markedly influences multiple cardiometabolic syndrome parameters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-02T15:36:02.330" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T15:36:02.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4146" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4149" CreationDate="2011-06-02T14:17:04.653" Score="8" ViewCount="1000" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard claims that contactless cards and NFC is no less secure than chip and PIN as indicated below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.barclays.co.uk/Helpsupport/Barclayscontactlessdebitcards/P1242561764200&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;According to Barclays&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All our new Contactless debit cards&#xA;  include the latest advanced security&#xA;  features required by the payment card&#xA;  industry. Payments are processed&#xA;  through the same secure Visa&#xA;  technology as your Chip and PIN&#xA;  transactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are just as secure as chip and PIN, what's to stop someone creating a portable card reader that charges the max amount allowed (£15 in the UK) then just walking around with it, perhaps in a packed out train?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3268" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:56:20.273" LastActivityDate="2018-07-17T09:17:52.140" Title="Are contactless payment cards/phones insecure?" Tags="|economics|security|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4146" CreationDate="2011-06-02T16:11:05.637" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you point out, Contactless Payment cards have a relatively low maximum transaction limit. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactless_payment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US$25 in the US and under £15 in the UK&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they are known to be breakable [&lt;a href=&quot;http://eprint.iacr.org/2005/052&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;] that puts an upper limit on a single case of fraud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where there are multiple, systemic frauds (as described in your example), the pattern is  detectable, [&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_card_fraud&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Further reading&lt;/a&gt;], in which case the bank can reverse all transactions performed by that merchant (and perhaps start criminal proceedings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Banks are in a position can require high-levels of authentication for their merchants, require a merchant to leave a deposit or delay the outgoing payments to ensure that they can take remedial action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to remember that payment systems do not need to be perfect to be profitable; they need only be better than the existing alternatives - neither cheques nor cash, for example, are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheque_forgery&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;risk&lt;/a&gt;-&lt;a href=&quot;http://mrwavetheory.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-to-steal-in-broad-daylight-from.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;free&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: These systems are known to be insecure, but the banks can use measures to protect against rampant fraud. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-02T16:21:44.587" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T16:21:44.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4158" CreationDate="2011-06-02T17:13:05.920" Score="35" ViewCount="4192" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hear this very often, while woman can do several things at a time. If this is true, what are the &lt;em&gt;qualifications&lt;/em&gt; that make woman capable of doing several things at once?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick Google search returned an obviously popular book;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/R7Iju.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I haven't read it and I'm not planning to. Plans may change if this gets interesting though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any evidence that support the idea/ theory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3271" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-03T02:22:17.617" LastActivityDate="2018-05-03T10:27:48.960" Title="Do women statistically have better multitasking ability than men?" Tags="|gender|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4151" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4185" CreationDate="2011-06-02T17:34:06.080" Score="13" ViewCount="12714" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen hundreds of reports, from various sources online claiming that Red Bull contains a substance that causes cancer and that so far it may have &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/1435409.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;killed three people&lt;/a&gt;. However I believe in most cases this has been due to exceeding the recommended allowance and I'm looking for reports of Red Bull being consumed in moderation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sources&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.michigandaily.com/content/alcohol-red-bull-mix-may-lead-death&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Michigan Daily. Alcohol, Red Bull mix may lead to death&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Bull#Cardiovascular_effects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia. Red Bull: Cardiovascular effects.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rense.com/general88/bull.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rense.com. Red Bull Drink = Slow Death?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2712" LastEditorUserId="2712" LastEditDate="2017-11-13T10:04:17.930" LastActivityDate="2017-11-13T10:04:17.930" Title="Is Red Bull carcinogenic and does it pose a health risk?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|drink|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3070" CreationDate="2011-06-02T17:47:49.400" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like you might be confusing some terms here... using more battery/power doesn't necessarily translate into more or less radiation. The radiation strength is determined by the frequency that the devices operate at, i.e., the frequency of the radiation they emit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3G devices (in the U.S.A.) don't really have a set frequency, but rather will operate at various levels ranging from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_frequencies&quot;&gt;~800 MHz to just shy of 2.4 GHz&lt;/a&gt; (more if you're using Bluetooth or 4G phones). WiFi signals, on the other hand, share the same general frequency as microwave ovens at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moonblinkwifi.com/2point4freq.cfm&quot;&gt;right around 2.4 GHz&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But because of how we use these signals, it becomes a battle of distance and duration. Cell phones are right next to our skin for short bursts of time, while routers or laptops generally sit far away from us for extremely prolonged periods of time. The UK's Health Protection Agency &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6676129.stm&quot;&gt;noted in 2007&lt;/a&gt; that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;sitting in a wi-fi hotspot for a year results in receiving the same dose of radio waves as making a 20-minute mobile phone call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the thing to pull away from all of this is that you probably don't have to worry too much about this kind of radiation having any seriously dangerous long-term (cancerous) effects on you (provided you're not walking around with wireless devices taped to every inch of your skin). That's not to say long term exposure to low-level radiation might not have other adverse health effects, but it's hugely unlikely to be cancer. Any radiation below ultraviolet (radio, microwave, infrared, and visible light) is non-ionizing and won't penetrate bone, meaning it can't break down atoms (and consequently DNA, leading to cancer) and it can't get to your sweet, delicious brain. The &quot;do power lines/microwaves/cell phones/next radiation-emitting-device-that-most-people-don't-fully-understand give you cancer?&quot; studies are all, as they'll always be, resoundingly inconclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the newest WHO review of cell phones (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.html?hpt=hp_t1&quot;&gt;described by CNN with a typically alarmist title&lt;/a&gt;) somehow &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/PublicHealth/26776&quot;&gt;makes the claim&lt;/a&gt; that cell phones are &quot;possibly carcinogenic to humans,&quot; despite the fact that &quot;The WHO work group did not find that there was sufficient evidence linking cancer and environmental or occupational exposures with microwave energy,&quot; implying that the possible carcinogens must come from the phones themselves, and not the radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also worth noting is that the WHO group also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_2B_carcinogens&quot;&gt;puts coffee, pickled vegetables, and tea&lt;/a&gt; into the same classification. There's a lot to be worried about in the world; this probably oughtn't be too high on anyone's list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3114" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T17:47:49.400" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4153" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4155" CreationDate="2011-06-02T18:54:53.237" Score="9" ViewCount="3294" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine was drinking a bottle of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunnyD&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sunny D&lt;/a&gt; today, and we got talking about the stories of people that had been turned &quot;yellow&quot; from drinking too much - I thought that it was just something made up by the media to scare people, but he was convinced that this was true and had been proven so by science!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this been found to be true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3004" LastEditorUserId="4322" LastEditDate="2011-08-05T02:02:53.330" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T02:05:01.163" Title="Can Sunny D turn you yellow?" Tags="|nutrition|lifestyle|drinks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4153" CreationDate="2011-06-02T19:17:49.667" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;High doses of beta-carotene &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9567001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;can be deposited in your skin and can lead to a yellow color&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_Carotene&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beta-carotene&lt;/a&gt; is a pro-vitamin and an orange dye, if it accumulates in the skin it will turn it yellow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excessive consumption of Sunny D, which contains beta-carotene, has been observed to colour the skin of a toddler yellow (&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/578945.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;see this report from the BBC&lt;/a&gt;). This can happen with anything containing high amounts of beta-carotene, but it is not dangerous. But you need to drink an excessive amount of Sunny D for it to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T19:17:49.667" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4157" CreationDate="2011-06-02T19:51:12.663" Score="9" ViewCount="17959" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was going back through the app that gave us the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4081/was-the-name-wendy-created-for-peter-pan&quot;&gt;Wendy question&lt;/a&gt;, when I found this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eggs sink in water when they are fresh&#xA;  and float when expired&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found this advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fresh eggs will sink to the bottom of&#xA;  the bowl and lie on their sides. &#xA;  Slightly older eggs (about one week)&#xA;  will lie on the bottom but bob&#xA;  slightly.  If the egg balances on its&#xA;  smallest end, with the large end&#xA;  reaching for the sky, it's probably&#xA;  around three weeks old.  Eggs that&#xA;  float at the surface are bad and&#xA;  should not be consumed. &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080723104108AAWeyzl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is any of this validated by scientific evidence, or is it just an old wives' tale?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T19:55:11.843" Title="Do expired eggs float in water?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4156" CreationDate="2011-06-02T19:55:11.843" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;An egg absorbs air through the shell and discard water/vapor. Old eggs will have enough air to float.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the egg ages, moisture and carbon&#xA;  dioxide leave through the pores of the&#xA;  shell, air enters to replace them and&#xA;  the air cell becomes larger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An air cell (space) forms when the&#xA;  contents of the egg cool and contract&#xA;  after the egg is laid. The air cell&#xA;  usually rests between the outer and&#xA;  inner membranes at the egg’s larger&#xA;  end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edinformatics.com/math_science/science_of_cooking/how_fresh_is_that_egg.htm&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; for more info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="300" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T19:55:11.843" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4150" CreationDate="2011-06-02T20:08:42.287" Score="26" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Edit: Now there's some evidence for this idea&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought I'd come back to this question, because I wasn't really satisfied with what the literature yielded back then and the paper that Peters mentioned (there had only been a press release) has come out.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/2050-7283/1/18/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stoet, O'Connor, Conner, &amp;amp; Laws (2013)&lt;/a&gt; looked at this and found some evidence for the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from their abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There seems to be a common belief that women are better in&#xA;  multi-tasking than men, but there is practically no scientific&#xA;  research on this topic. Here, we tested whether women have better&#xA;  multi-tasking skills than men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Methods&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Experiment 1, we compared performance of 120 women and 120&#xA;  men in a computer-based task-switching paradigm. In Experiment 2, we&#xA;  compared a different group of 47 women and 47 men on&#xA;  &quot;paper-and-pencil&quot; multi-tasking tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Results&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Experiment 1, both men and women performed more slowly when&#xA;  two tasks were rapidly interleaved than when the two tasks were&#xA;  performed separately. Importantly, this slow down was significantly&#xA;  larger in the male participants (Cohen’s d = 0.27). In an everyday&#xA;  multi-tasking scenario (Experiment 2), men and women did not differ&#xA;  significantly at solving simple arithmetic problems, searching for&#xA;  restaurants on a map, or answering general knowledge questions on the&#xA;  phone, but women were significantly better at devising strategies for&#xA;  locating a lost key (Cohen’s d = 0.49).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Conclusions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Women outperform men in these multi-tasking paradigms, but&#xA;  the near lack of empirical studies on gender differences in&#xA;  multitasking should caution against making strong generalisations.&#xA;  Instead, we hope that other researchers will aim to replicate and&#xA;  elaborate on our findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--- end edit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Old answer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;No, there is no such evidence.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently there didn't use to be much evidence against it either, but I found two recent studies by Noemi Peters (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tinbergen.nl/files/theses/mphil079.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2010&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economists.nl/files/20110223-MultitaskingTI.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2011&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First I did a search on &quot;sex&#xA;differences&quot; multitasking and similar&#xA;terms, but I could only find a dodgy&#xA;study in support and not much&#xA;well-received publications in the&#xA;field anyway. Apparently Ms Peters found the&#xA;same dearth in the literature. The fun part:&#xA;I found her publications by looking &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=2183100993815825692&amp;amp;as_sdt=2005&amp;amp;sciodt=1,5&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;who had&#xA;cited the Pease book&lt;/a&gt; :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I searched extensively for peer-reviewed scientiﬁc publications that&#xA;  examine gender differences in multitasking ability, but the closest I&#xA;  could ﬁnd is Criss (2006) and Havel (2004), which are manuscripts that&#xA;  are made available online at  the website of the National&#xA;  Undergraduate Research Clearinghouse. Both examined subjects who had&#xA;  to perform some  speciﬁed tasks while tallying keywords from a&#xA;  song/story.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;None of them found gender differences&lt;/strong&gt; in productivity when  multitasking, but Criss (2006) found that women were better at&#xA;  accuracy. Nonetheless, we do not know whether the ﬁndings can be&#xA;  attributed to multitasking as &lt;strong&gt;none&lt;/strong&gt; of them &lt;strong&gt;had a control&#xA;  group&lt;/strong&gt;. Besides, some British newspapers reported  recently about an&#xA;  experiment that supports the view that women are better (see Gray,&#xA;  2010), but when I contacted the lead researcher, Professor Keith Laws,&#xA;  it turned out that there is not even a working paper yet that I could&#xA;  discuss here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her evidence to the contrary wasn't published&#xA;in peer reviewed journals, so if somebody&#xA;has something stronger, better pay attention to that instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;From the abstract of her dissertation:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The view that women are&#xA;  better at multitasking is widely held,&#xA;  however &lt;strong&gt;there is no scientiﬁc &#xA;  evidence supporting it&lt;/strong&gt;. This&#xA;  experiment examines whether there are&#xA;  gender differences in multitasking&#xA;  ability and in the inclination to&#xA;  multitask. To this end, I conduct an&#xA;  experiment with  three treatments: one&#xA;  where subjects have to execute two&#xA;  tasks sequentially, one where subjects&#xA;  are forced to multitask with the two&#xA;  tasks, and one where they can choose&#xA;  freely how to organize  their work.&#xA;  The results of the third treatment&#xA;  indicate that there is &lt;strong&gt;no gender&#xA;  difference in the inclination to&#xA;  multitask&lt;/strong&gt;. As far as multitasking&#xA;  ability is concerned, I do ﬁnd a&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;gender difference but it is contrary&#xA;  to the widely held beliefs&lt;/strong&gt;: point&#xA;  estimates indicate that men perform&#xA;  better both under forced and voluntary&#xA;  multitasking. This gender difference&#xA;  reaches statistical signiﬁcance in&#xA;  case of voluntary multitasking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="2722" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T15:42:27.527" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T15:42:27.527" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4159" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-02T20:09:53.573" Score="42" ViewCount="5798" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd have thought this would have been asked already but I didn't see it. Is driving the speed limit safer on a highway? By &quot;highway&quot; I mean high-traffic areas, such as 4-lane divided thoroughfares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having commuted for some time, I've noticed that people who clearly drive at excessive speeds seem to be dangerous. However, more often than not the danger I see is from people who are driving slower than the prevailing rate (where the prevailing rate is generally more than the speed limit). This seems more dangerous because it disrupts the flow of traffic, irritates drivers and people behind the slow driver end up tailgating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;speed limits on highways improve the safety of people driving on those highways?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people driving the speed limit and those around them are safer than those travelling at the prevailing rate of traffic - even where that prevailing rate is faster than the speed limit?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; It is noteworthy that there has been news recently that Google's self-driving car is programmed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28851996&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;to go faster than the speed limit&lt;/a&gt;, apparently because it can be safer in some scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; In line with this is a comment from the video &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/4oqfodY2Lz0?t=1m30s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why you shouldn’t drive slowly in the left lane&lt;/a&gt; by Vox, which states “Research has shown that the strongest predictor of an accident is variance from the average”.  Which seems obvious (and hence this question), but I would like to know what the paper is and whether it's been debunked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-09-01T03:14:49.417" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T16:15:43.570" Title="Is driving the speed limit on a highway safer?" Tags="|road-vehicles|traffic|driving-speed|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4174" CreationDate="2011-06-02T20:19:03.523" Score="28" ViewCount="4274" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro04/web2/epowell.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;It is reasonably well accepted that alcohol lowers your inhibitions.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sn0Ax.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Better than drunk girl&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I often hear it claimed that specific alcohols &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070529224125AAqdwNr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;make me mean&lt;/a&gt;&quot; or &quot;I become a different person&quot;.  Is this claim really the result of alcohol inducing an &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; significant change of personality, or is it just a result of inhibitions being lowered, and a person acting out on naturally suppressed tendencies?  To be be specific, what is the nature of this supposed change?  Are there any studies that support either assertion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-07T13:35:58.660" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T19:01:34.703" Title="Does alcohol alter your personality?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3150" CreationDate="2011-06-02T20:31:49.530" Score="6" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Yes (at least there are cross-sectional correlations back up your intuition)&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mpq/summary/v048/48.1brendgen.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bukowski et al. (2002)&lt;/a&gt; found a negative link. Their study was cited 39 times, pointing to more acceptance in the scientific community in comparison to the National Undergraduate Research Clearinghouse. You might want to go through the citing papers to find some information about the mechanism, the article is paywalled for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;From their abstract:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results showed that having a boyfriend/ girlfriend was related to poorer emotional and behavioral adjustment for those early adolescents who were unpopular among same-sex peers. For adolescents who were popular among same-sex peers, romantic involvement was not related to emotional and behavioral adjustment. Independently of same-sex peer acceptance, however, romantic involvement was negatively related to &lt;strong&gt;academic performance&lt;/strong&gt;, albeit &lt;strong&gt;only for girls&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What does this say?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, it doesn't really give a hint for a causal relationship in either direction.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;You can't (ethically and practically) do experimental random pairings of high school students, so the best we could hope for is natural experiments (looking at the time-lagged effects of getting in a relationship). &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2001-05428-017&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Neyer &amp;amp; Asendorpf&lt;/a&gt; did that and found stable increases in conscientiousness and decreases in neuroticism (both of which could be good for academic performance). N&amp;amp;A had a student sample and they didn't assess academic performance, but I wanted to show an example of the research design, that would provide the best possible evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="2722" LastEditDate="2011-06-03T10:12:25.650" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T10:12:25.650" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3000" CreationDate="2011-06-02T21:13:17.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few different factors at play here which might affect the taste between containers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Formulation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most Coca-Cola is sweetened with High-Fructose Corn Syrup, but there are a number of ways to obtain Coke &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/june-2009/food/coke-vs-coke/overview/coke-vs-coke-ov.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sweetened with Sugar&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Transport/Carbonation strategy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottled/Canned soda is carbonated by the manufacturer in the bottle, then shipped in sealed containers, while &quot;Machine Coke&quot; as you call it is shipped as concentrated syrup in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bag-In-Box&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bag-In-Box&lt;/a&gt; that is mixed with carbonated water on-site. Most fountain soda systems allow the owner to adjust the ratio of carbonated water to syrup, as well as the temperature and amount of ice that gets served to you in the cup. All of those will affect flavor, to varying degrees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Container Taste&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3000/does-the-container-that-soda-is-in-affect-the-flavour/4096#4096&quot;&gt;xiaohouzi79&lt;/a&gt; provides some good references that plastic containers may impart flavors on the finished product, and this article from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/id/2223475&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slate&lt;/a&gt; suggests that metal cans also will change the flavor of the soda, although this effect gets diminished as can-lining technology gets better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Carbonation Leakage&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That same &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/id/2223475&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slate Article&lt;/a&gt; claims that plastic is also more CO2-permeable than aluminum, which will (over time) mean that the plastic bottle will yield &quot;flatter&quot; soda than the aluminum can. I suppose a similar question could be asked about the quality of the seal between the metal cap and the glass bottle. Differing levels of carbonation will affect the &quot;mouthfeel&quot; and also the taste by means of &lt;a href=&quot;https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Carbonated_water#Chemistry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carbonic Acid&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other effects&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different containers will retain heat differently (conductors vs. insulators), which will affect how the soda tastes in your mouth as well as how the can, bottle, or cup feels on your hand and lips (not strictly part of taste, but affects the soda-drinking experience). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2958" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T21:13:17.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4165" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8401" CreationDate="2011-06-02T21:18:44.737" Score="11" ViewCount="13325" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read this tweet recently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There are more possible games of&#xA;  chess lasting 40 moves than there are&#xA;  atoms in the entire universe.&#xA;  Intriguing to know.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this highly doubtful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could anyone verify this for me please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1292" LastEditorUserId="36598" LastEditDate="2019-01-17T08:12:19.560" LastActivityDate="2019-01-18T16:14:28.303" Title="Are there more 40-moves chess games than atoms in the universe?" Tags="|physics|mathematics|games|chess|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4139" CreationDate="2011-06-02T21:20:31.637" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've really answered your own question. Frank Lee Morris, Clarence and John Anglin were the only people to have attempted escape from Alcatraz and not be be accounted for. As you put it yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The FBI spent years investigating the case and finally concluded the men had failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well as assessing the chance that they could have successfully made the crossing, they also looked for evidence of the men being alive. Did none of these people ever make contact with their loved ones, even in secret? Did none of them appear in a safe country decades after and offer to write a book about their experiences? Did nobody in the area report seeing three wet guys getting into a car?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the summary you have is probably the truth. While it is possible that these men survived, escaped, and hid out for decades, it's unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Since I've been asked for references for the above quote, &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/june/12/newsid_4464000/4464939.stm&quot;&gt;here they are&lt;/a&gt;. Note that the reference was actually given in the question, which is where I took the statement from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-07-04T19:41:28.197" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T19:41:28.197" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4168" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4179" CreationDate="2011-06-02T21:39:51.330" Score="22" ViewCount="70188" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps we've all heard this, but if not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a common belief that lighting a match after using the bathroom (in a particularly odoriferous way, mind you) will &quot;burn up&quot; or extinguish the fiendish fragrance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the skeptical question is, is it true that lighting a match snuffs the stink &lt;em&gt;(or does it just hide it)&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="43" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T15:02:54.127" Title="Does lighting a match eradicate offensive odors in the bathroom or just cover them up?" Tags="|smell|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4165" CreationDate="2011-06-02T21:44:57.827" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;After some better searching I found this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Shannon number&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Allis also estimated the game-tree&#xA;  complexity to be at least 10^123,&#xA;  &quot;based on an average branching factor&#xA;  of 35 and an average game length of&#xA;  80&quot;. As a comparison, the number of&#xA;  atoms in the observable universe, to&#xA;  which it is often compared, is&#xA;  estimated to be between 4×10^79 and&#xA;  10^81.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, here is someone who &lt;a href=&quot;http://andyrantsandraves.blogspot.com/2009/10/number-of-possible-different-games-of.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tries to explain it more clearly&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1292" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T21:44:57.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4165" CreationDate="2011-06-02T21:48:32.240" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A little google searching turns up these estimates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Atoms in universe: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#Matter_content&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10^80&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;40-move chess games: &lt;a href=&quot;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Chess.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10^40&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;give or take a few zeroes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="342" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T21:48:32.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4165" CreationDate="2011-06-02T21:55:39.103" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 2019-01:&lt;/strong&gt; answering this question boils down to knowing how many possible ways there are to play 40 move games of chess and how many atoms there are in the universe. The latter is known, and all of these answers ultimately cite chess experts, only varying in their interpretation of their figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like the answer from Douglas S. Stones the most as it is the most original. It constructs a move tree that by itself exceeds the number of atoms in the universe, thus directly answering the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DavePhD also has the quotes laid out most explicitly, showing that my reliance on the Wolfram site was wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I'll leave the original as it stands, but want to add a correction thanks to Mike Dunlavey's comment. I misread the question and thus if the question is, indeed, asking whether games lasting &lt;em&gt;40 moves or less&lt;/em&gt; (I read 40 moves or more) is greater than the number of atoms in the universe, I'm switching my answer to &lt;em&gt;disagree.&lt;/em&gt; The numbers are all there below, but now we're comparing 10^80 (# of atoms) vs. 10^43 (# of 40 move or less chess games). Thus the number of atoms is greater.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would agree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#Matter_content&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; provides this figure on the number of atoms in the universe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two approximate calculations give the number of atoms in the observable universe to be close to 10^80.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess#Mathematics_and_computers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; provides the Shannon number as the number of possible chess games that can be played:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The game-tree complexity of chess was first calculated by Claude Shannon as 10^120, a number known as the Shannon number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Chess.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wolfram Mathworld&lt;/a&gt; provides a figure for the number of games &lt;em&gt;less than 40 moves&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The number of possible games of 40 moves or less P(40)  is approximately 10^40 (Beeler et al. 1972) ...Shannon (1950) gave the estimate: P(40) = 64! / (32! * 8!^2 * 2!^6) = 10^43.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see some other answers have come in while I've been typing. They seem to compare &lt;em&gt;total possible games&lt;/em&gt; (10^120) to the number of atoms in the universe (10^80), but you're looking for the number of atoms compared to &lt;em&gt;games longer than 40 moves&lt;/em&gt;. In that case, we look at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10^80 vs. 10^120 - 10^43 (to be conservative)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be fair, the poster's (@Vian) own answer is correct, as 10^43 doesn't even dent 10^120 and thus it's still essentially comparing 10^80 and 10^120. Just wanted to spell out why I think the question is slightly different than just comparing # of atoms and # of &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; possible chess games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2019-01-18T16:14:28.303" LastActivityDate="2019-01-18T16:14:28.303" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2056" CreationDate="2011-06-02T22:12:39.437" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's unlikely, given that many of our close relatives have a menstrual cycle of a length other than 30 days. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/aboutp/anat/menstrual.html&quot;&gt;University of Wisconsin&lt;/a&gt; says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The duration of the menstrual cycle&#xA;  varies with species; about 29 days in&#xA;  orang-utans, about 30 days in gorillas&#xA;  and about 37 days in chimpanzees.&#xA;  Incidentally, the duration of estrus&#xA;  also varies in these species; about&#xA;  4-6 days in female orang-utans, about&#xA;  2-3 days in gorillas and about 10-14&#xA;  days in chimpanzees. Both the&#xA;  menstrual cycle and estrus vary in&#xA;  duration somewhat among females of the&#xA;  same species. The figures given here&#xA;  are approximations or averages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cynomolgus monkey, meanwhile, has a menstrual cycle averaging at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6814931&quot;&gt;29.4 days&lt;/a&gt;. Other animals are much further from a lunar cycle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The corresponding estrus cycles of&#xA;  some other mammals are 28 days for&#xA;  opossums, 11 days for guinea pigs, 16&#xA;  to 17 days for sheep, 20 to 22 days&#xA;  for sows, 21 days for cows and mares,&#xA;  24 to 26 days for macaque monkeys, 37&#xA;  days for chimpanzees, and only 5 days&#xA;  for rats and mice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George O. Abell, quoted by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1348/whats-the-link-between-the-moon-and-menstruation&quot;&gt;Cecil Adams&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2974" LastActivityDate="2011-06-02T22:12:39.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4161" CreationDate="2011-06-02T22:48:09.063" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, maybe it doesn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes alcohol does &quot;increas[e] the effects of the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA&quot;. But how that manifests itself is not always equal. It seems that alcohol, depending on context has quite a different impact on individuals. (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sirc.org/publik/drinking4.html&quot;&gt;http://www.sirc.org/publik/drinking4.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On long term usage, alcohol will work as a depressant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more info, see this wikipedia entry: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_alcohol_on_the_body#Moderate_doses&quot;&gt;Effects of alcohol on the body - Moderate doses&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3281" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2011-06-12T01:17:59.580" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T01:17:59.580" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4176" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4190" CreationDate="2011-06-03T00:43:33.780" Score="30" ViewCount="1319" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support the claim that software patents stifle creativity and put many people at risk of legal action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If necessary refer to some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/07/the-coming-software-patent-apocalypse.html&quot;&gt;background reading&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Seriously think about it. Every time&#xA;  you write code -- even a brand new&#xA;  algorithm in a clean room&#xA;  environment-- you could be infringing&#xA;  a patent, somehow, somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's probably not fair to say that&#xA;  software patents are 100% evil. But&#xA;  from what I've read, I'd say they're&#xA;  99 and 44/100ths percent evil. I'm not&#xA;  sure what any of us can do about this,&#xA;  but it's clear that the current&#xA;  situation is untenable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Something has to be done, or else we truly are staring down a coming software patent apocalypse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="21712" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T13:37:10.450" LastActivityDate="2018-05-23T06:30:26.847" Title="Do software patents stifle creativity?" Tags="|law|software|patents|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2802" CreationDate="2011-06-03T03:17:34.110" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your definition of &quot;molesting&quot; and &quot;pederasty&quot; are likely based on your personal beliefs, so I do not know if this is helpful or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a reference in the original Conservapedia article to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://moreintelligentlife.com/node/824&quot;&gt;article in the Economist&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That article examines Keynes' own sex diaries:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;The first diary is easy: Keynes lists his sexual partners, either by their initials (GLS for Lytton Strachey, DG for Duncan Grant) or their nicknames (&quot;Tressider,&quot; for J. T. Sheppard, the King's College Provost). When he apparently had a quick, anonymous hook-up, he listed that sex partner generically: &quot;16-year-old under Etna&quot; and &quot;Lift boy of Vauxhall&quot; in 1911, for instance, and &quot;Jew boy,&quot; in 1912.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Born in mid 1883, he would have been about 28 in 1911.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, according to his diaries, he had sex with a 16-year-old, while aged 28, and others that he described as &quot;boys&quot; (which can be a broad term for ages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if the age of consent has changed recently in Italy (which I assumed is the Etna referred to), but it is currently &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Europe#Italy&quot;&gt;14 years old&lt;/a&gt;, so if he did that today, he would &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be committing a crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judging historical figures' behaviour by today's/local social mores is often tricky. (Somehow, I don't think he would have written it in his diary if he knew, a century later, the semantics would be debated in public.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, of course, his ideas should be argued on their merits, not on his taste in sexual partners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T03:17:34.110" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4168" CreationDate="2011-06-03T03:53:59.493" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/apr99/923460606.Ch.r.html&quot;&gt;study:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a match is struck, the first thing to burn is the head. The head of a &#xA;  match contains a chemical cocktail that includes a lot of sulfur. In the &#xA;  initial burst of combustion products there is therefore a lot of sulfur &#xA;  dioxide. Sulfur dioxide is an extremely pungent substance, to which the &#xA;  smell receptors are extremely sensitive. But it also has a very efficient &#xA;  numbing effect on the sense of smell. You can smell a minute amount of &#xA;  sulfur dioxide, but when you have done so, you will not smell anything else &#xA;  for a while. Sulfur dioxide is a gaseous combustion product, so if this is &#xA;  the main factor no-one wins the bet. It is not flame (plasma) nor smoke &#xA;  (solid aerosol). You can easily test this one, because if it is the main &#xA;  factor, other flames, like a spirit stove, a cigarette lighter, or a candle &#xA;  will not mask smells nearly as effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://ask.yahoo.com/20061109.html&quot;&gt;aother forum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The TV show &quot;MythBusters&quot; covered this topic and &lt;a href=&quot;http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/03/franklins_kite_flatulence.html&quot;&gt;concluded&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  that matches mask the methyl mercaptan found in flatulence and feces. So, a match may not eliminate odors, but it will push them to the background. Most of the time, that's good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I assume it is just covered up, not burned up, as shown in the Mythbusters experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T03:53:59.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2217" CreationDate="2011-06-03T04:23:33.450" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;At the end of the 19th century, allergy prevalence may therefore be estimated at 0.1% in England, as well as in the United States of America… By 1928 the prevalence of hay fever had risen from a few affected people to approximately 1%… Only a short time period later [1939] that number increased to between 4 and 5 million, corresponding to a prevalence of 3%… In Switzerland, for example, the prevalence of hay fever rose from anestimated 0.82 percent in 1926 to 5 percent in 1958, and to approximately 10 percent by the 1980s… between 1980 and 2000 allergy prevalence reached an all-time high with up to 30% of the population being affected.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aacijournal.com/content/pdf/1710-1492-5-8.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.aacijournal.com/content/pdf/1710-1492-5-8.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3286" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T04:23:33.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4037" CreationDate="2011-06-03T04:43:20.883" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Soybean fed rats had significantly&#xA;heavier pancreases and lighter&#xA;livers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calves receiving 30% of their protein&#xA;from cooked soybean flour experienced&#xA;diarrhea, lost 75 g body weight&#xA;daily, and several pancreatic ducts&#xA;became obstructed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10% of rats fed raw soya flour for a&#xA;year develop pancreatic cancer, and&#xA;all rats become more susceptible to&#xA;pancreatic cancer-causing agents&#xA;generally.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Of rats fed iodine deficient diets,&#xA;gluten-protein fed rats had thyroid&#xA;stimulating hormone levels of 5 ng/ml&#xA;vs soybean-protein fed's 126 ng/ml.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Soy protein “significantly decreased”&#xA;dihydrotestosterone (DHT) and&#xA;DHT/testosterone in healthy young&#xA;men.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In healthy adults fed 30 g soybeans a&#xA;day for 3 months, thyroid stimulating&#xA;hormone rose significantly, and 50%&#xA;of subjects experienced goiter&#xA;(swelling of the thyroid) or symptoms&#xA;such as malaise, constipation,&#xA;sleepiness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In humans, 60 g daily soy protein for 1 month&#xA;significantly delayed menstruation,&#xA;caused a significant 47% increase in&#xA;estradiol (growth hormone for&#xA;reproductive organs) during one stage&#xA;of the menstrual cycle, a significant&#xA;67% decrease in luteinizing hormone&#xA;(triggers ovulation and testosterone&#xA;production) during midcycle, and a&#xA;significant 47% decrease in follicle&#xA;stimulating hormone during midcycle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5% raw soybean meal protein caused&#xA;nearly maximal growth retardation in&#xA;chicks, and supplementing a&#xA;protein-degrading enzyme fixed this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only post two hyperlinks due to my account status, but the sources can be found here, &lt;a href=&quot;http://flare8.net/health/doku.php/antinutrients_in_food#other_organs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://flare8.net/health/doku.php/antinutrients_in_food#other_organs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3286" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T04:43:20.883" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4183" CreationDate="2011-06-03T04:44:50.903" Score="14" ViewCount="6716" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while ago, someone studying a health related subject (not necessarily medicine, but I forgot) claimed that &quot;real&quot; allergies could only be caused by protein-like substances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was told this after I claimed I was allergic to kiwi fruit, which I then was told wasn't possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there in medicine some subtle definitions that differentiate between allergies in that narrow sense, and, maybe, &quot;intolerances&quot; of a broader sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastActivityDate="2018-09-28T06:57:41.630" Title="Can &quot;true&quot; allergies only be caused by proteins and protein-like substances?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4182" CreationDate="2011-06-03T05:31:55.157" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, a common allergy is that to nickel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nickel allergy is one of the most common causes of allergic contact dermatitis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you have nickel allergy, your body&#xA;  reacts to nickel and possibly to other&#xA;  metals, such as cobalt and palladium.&#xA;  In other words, it's mistakenly&#xA;  identified nickel as something that&#xA;  could harm you. Once your body has&#xA;  developed a reaction to a particular&#xA;  agent (allergen) — in this case,&#xA;  nickel — your immune system will&#xA;  always be sensitive to it. That means&#xA;  anytime you come into contact with&#xA;  nickel, your immune system will&#xA;  respond and produce an allergic&#xA;  response.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and from &lt;a href=&quot;http://dermnetnz.org/about.html&quot;&gt;New Zealand Dermatological Society Incorporated&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nickel allergy is one of the most&#xA;  common causes of contact allergic&#xA;  dermatitis. In affected individuals,&#xA;  dermatitis (eczema) develops in places&#xA;  where nickel-containing metal is&#xA;  touching the skin. The most common&#xA;  sites are the earlobes (from&#xA;  earrings), the wrists (from a watch&#xA;  strap) and the lower abdomen (from a&#xA;  jeans stud); the affected areas become&#xA;  intensely itchy and may become red and&#xA;  blistered (acute dermatitis) or dry,&#xA;  thickened and pigmented (chronic&#xA;  dermatitis).&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nickel was named 'Allergen of the Year for 2008' by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nickelallergyinformation.com/2008/06/nickel-named-2008-contact-alle.htm&quot;&gt;The American Contact Dermatitis Society&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/nickel-allergy/DS00826&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic: &lt;em&gt;Nickel allergy&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dermnetnz.org/dermatitis/nickel-allergy.html&quot;&gt;DermNet NZ: &lt;em&gt;Nickel allergy&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2466" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-10-01T18:00:03.003" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T18:00:03.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4151" CreationDate="2011-06-03T05:50:43.413" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR: All the ingredients have approval to be in the drink and have had toxicity testing done. However the scope of this testing is considered to be limited in certain cases and there may be a risk at the quantities included in &lt;em&gt;certain&lt;/em&gt; energy drinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redbull.com/cs/Satellite/en_INT/Products/Red-Bull-Energy-Drink-021242751115866?p=1242745950125&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Red Bull website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Red Bull contains taurine, glucuronolactone, caffeine, B vitamins, sucrose, and glucose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Red Bull sugar-free also contains aspartame, acesulfame K, and sucralose in place of sucrose and glucose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/food/fs/sc/scf/out22_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Opinion on Caffeine, Taurine and D-Glucurono - g -Lactone as constituents of so-called &amp;quot;energy&amp;quot; drinks (expressed on 21 January 1999)&lt;/a&gt; published by the EU looked specifically at &amp;quot;the safety of caffeine, taurine and D-glucurono- g -lactone as constituents of so-called &amp;quot;energy&amp;quot; drinks.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And found the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caffeine&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It concluded at that time that there&#xA;was no apparent reason for concern&#xA;about carcinogenic or mutagenic&#xA;effects of caffeine in man at normal&#xA;levels of intake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Taurine&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Toxicological studies did not reveal&#xA;any indication for a genotoxic,&#xA;carcinogenic or teratogenic potential&#xA;of taurine. 52-64 However, there is no&#xA;adequate study on chronic&#xA;toxicity/carcinogenicity.&#xA;Investigation of subacute/subchronic&#xA;toxicity has also been fragmentary.&#xA;65-71 Overall, the available data are&#xA;insufficient to establish an upper&#xA;safe level for daily intake of&#xA;taurine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;g-Lactone&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The available toxicity studies are&#xA;extremely limited. Acute toxicity&#xA;studies have been carried out in rat,&#xA;mouse, dog, rabbit and cat by oral,&#xA;intravenous, intraperitoneal and&#xA;subcutaneous routes. 76 It is of low&#xA;acute toxicity, with the oral route&#xA;being the least toxic;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human metabolic considerations&#xA;indicate the body is likely to handle&#xA;small quantities of glucuronolactone&#xA;without any problems. However, the&#xA;intake of glucuronolactone from&#xA;consumption of some &amp;quot;energy&amp;quot; drinks is&#xA;possibly as much as two orders of&#xA;magnitude greater than that from the&#xA;rest of the diet. There is very little&#xA;information available for risk&#xA;assessment of glucuronolactone at such&#xA;intakes. While there is no indication&#xA;from the available data that there is&#xA;any risk to health from consumption of&#xA;high amounts of glucuronolactone,&#xA;there is a lack of scientific evidence&#xA;to support the safety of&#xA;glucuronolactone present in beverages&#xA;at concentrations that may result in&#xA;intakes as much as two orders of&#xA;magnitude greater than that obtained&#xA;from the rest of the diet. As was the&#xA;case with taurine, there is&#xA;insufficient information on which to&#xA;set an upper safe level for daily&#xA;intake of glucuronolactone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Aspartame&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken from Borror0's answer to this question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/369/does-aspartame-cause-cancer&quot;&gt;Does aspartame cause cancer?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redbull.com/cs/Satellite/en_INT/Products/Red-Bull-Energy-Drink-021242751115866?p=1242745950125&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to the National Health Institute&lt;/a&gt;, there is no evidence suggesting aspartame causes cancer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A study of about half a million people, published in 2006, compared people who drank aspartame-containing beverages with those who did not. Results of the study showed that increasing levels of consumption were not associated with any risk of lymphomas, leukemias, or brain cancers in men or women. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/food/fs/sc/scf/out22_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Question 2&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Researchers examined the relationship between aspartame intake and 1,888 lymphomas or leukemias and 315 malignant brain cancers among the participants of the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study from 1995 until 2000. Development of these cancers was not associated with estimated aspartame consumption, refuting a recent animal study with positive findings for lymphomas and leukemias and also contradicting claims regarding brain cancer risk. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/369/does-aspartame-cause-cancer&quot;&gt;Questions 3&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redbull.com/cs/Satellite/en_INT/Products/Red-Bull-Energy-Drink-021242751115866?p=1242745950125&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acesulfame K&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/artificial-sweeteners&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cancer.gov&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acesulfame potassium (also known as&#xA;ACK, Sweet One®, and Sunett®) was&#xA;approved by the FDA in 1988 for use in&#xA;specific food and beverage categories,&#xA;and was later approved as a general&#xA;purpose sweetener (except in meat and&#xA;poultry) in 2002.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before approving these sweeteners, the&#xA;FDA reviewed more than 100 safety&#xA;studies that were conducted on each&#xA;sweetener, including studies to assess&#xA;cancer risk. The results of these&#xA;studies showed no evidence that these&#xA;sweeteners cause cancer or pose any&#xA;other threat to human health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there are several journals etc. that say testing on artificial Acesulfame K was conducted in the past, was limited in scope and more modern equipment and testing methods area available and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1289/ehp.114-a516b&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;more adequate long-term carcinogenicity testing should be conducted&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T05:50:43.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4186" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4197" CreationDate="2011-06-03T05:54:16.863" Score="12" ViewCount="9658" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a popular belief that celery increases male sexual performance (some claim that it influences penis size, others that it increases semen count, or that it helps men maintain an erection for a longer time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this? Have there been any studies to test for any of these effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2836" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T02:31:24.090" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T02:31:24.090" Title="Does celery have an effect on male sexual performance?" Tags="|nutrition|sexuality|plants|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4187" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-03T06:25:00.833" Score="47" ViewCount="6683" Body="&lt;p&gt;Amnesty International wants the Egyptian military to stop the practice of rounding up all the female protesters to investigate if their hymens are unbroken as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/05/amnesty-international-egypt-virginity-tests.html&quot;&gt;virginity check&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An Amnesty International researcher said accounts gathered from women who were subjected to the tests showed they were done to check whether their hymens were broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I recall some feminist on TV claiming that it's not possible to check if a girl is a virgin that way. Is a hymen check or some other method reliable for determining if a girl is still a virgin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case only vaginal penetration by the male reproductive organ counts as losing ones virginity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T01:56:43.513" LastActivityDate="2018-04-05T15:04:44.150" Title="Is it possible to reliably examine if a girl is a virgin?" Tags="|sexuality|egypt|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4187" CreationDate="2011-06-03T07:16:10.957" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;Checking the hymen is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a reliable way of establishing virginity. The hymen can be broken by a number of non-sexual activities one of which is horse-riding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthcaremagic.com/questions/Hymen-broken-after-effects/129377&quot;&gt;Dr. Mrs Radha Narayanan, Radiologist&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hymen can be broken even with horseriding...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/12449-female-hymen/&quot;&gt;website:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hymen is also not an indicator of virginity. The tissues of the vulva are generally very thin and delicate prior to puberty, so many girls and teens tear or dilate their hymen while participating in sports like bicycling, horseback riding, gymnastics or while inserting tampons. A girl may not even know this has occurred, since there may be little or no blood or pain involved when this happens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's more from &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ehealthforum.com/health/can-hymen-be-broken-without-sex-t275897.html#ixzz1OG32TQ9h&quot;&gt;Dr. Madhumita Avinash Paul&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hymen is made of connective tissue membrane and is located in the entrance of the vagina. It usually has a round or elongated hole in the middle through which the menstrual blood flows. It might be perforated by sexual intercourse, but there are various other non-sexual activities might cause the hymen to rupture as well. &#xA;  These include exercises that might rupture the hymen like: riding a bicycle, horseback riding, and gymnastics, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="2382" LastEditDate="2011-06-03T23:17:30.793" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T23:17:30.793" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4206" CreationDate="2011-06-03T07:21:09.047" Score="22" ViewCount="10403" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asexuality.org/home/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;em&gt;human&lt;/em&gt; asexuality, and I cannot figure out if it's real or if people are just making stuff up. Have studies been done about this phenomenon and what explains it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="13" LastEditDate="2011-06-03T23:23:40.450" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T21:09:29.257" Title="Is asexuality real?" Tags="|biology|sociology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4176" CreationDate="2011-06-03T07:24:54.347" Score="26" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Yes&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Patents stifle, not creativity, but innovation (which I'm sure you meant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We argue that when innovation is&#xA;  “sequential” (so that each successive&#xA;  invention builds in an essential way&#xA;  on its predecessors) and&#xA;  “complementary” (so that each&#xA;  potential innovator takes a different&#xA;  research line), patent protection is&#xA;  not as useful for encouraging&#xA;  innovation as in a static setting.&#xA;  Indeed, society and even inventors&#xA;  themselves may be better off without&#xA;  such protection. Furthermore, an&#xA;  inventor's prospective profit may&#xA;  actually be enhanced by competition&#xA;  and imitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1756-2171.2009.00081.x/full&quot;&gt;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1756-2171.2009.00081.x/full&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And not only in software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, the recent proliferation of&#xA;  intellectual property rights in&#xA;  biomedical research suggests a&#xA;  different tragedy, an “anticommons” in&#xA;  which people underuse scarce resources&#xA;  because too many owners can block each&#xA;  other. Privatization of biomedical&#xA;  research must be more carefully&#xA;  deployed to sustain both upstream&#xA;  research and downstream product&#xA;  development. Otherwise, more&#xA;  intellectual property rights may lead&#xA;  paradoxically to fewer useful products&#xA;  for improving human health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/280/5364/698.short&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/280/5364/698.short&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, Bill Gates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If people had understood how patents&#xA;  would be granted when most of today’s&#xA;  ideas were invented and had taken out&#xA;  patents, the industry would be at a&#xA;  complete stand-still today. The&#xA;  solution . . . is patent exchanges . .&#xA;  . and patenting as much as we can. . .&#xA;  . A future start-up with no patents of&#xA;  its own will be forced to pay whatever&#xA;  price the giants choose to impose.&#xA;  That price might be high: Established&#xA;  companies have an interest in&#xA;  excluding future competitors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fred Warshofsky, The Patent Wars 170-71 (NY: Wiley 1994).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T07:24:54.347" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4195" CreationDate="2011-06-03T11:09:21.247" Score="10" ViewCount="7410" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often when anchors in the studio are talking to reporters or people from a long distance, there is a small delay in the response, maybe one or two seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This got me thinking, why is there such a delay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've observed the delay seems mostly independent of distance, from as little as half a second to as much as five seconds. Also, the transmission delays don't add up: you could send a broadcast around the Earth in about 500ms by pinging e.g. Japan from where I am, over the internet, and a video link is far simpler (with fixed latencies mostly.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it is a deliberate delay created by the reporter, so they have time to think about the answer to a question; or perhaps it is added by the studio so that in case a man-in-the-street interview goes a bit bad they can cut it off?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="1626" LastEditDate="2011-06-03T11:16:33.963" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T18:18:06.547" Title="Is the delay on long distance interviews on TV real?" Tags="|television|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4192" CreationDate="2011-06-03T12:12:42.547" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oftentimes the interviews are done over satellite uplinks.  Normally, with geosynchronous satellites, so there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a bit of a delay due to the fact that the speed of light is annoyingly slow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1048" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T12:12:42.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4192" CreationDate="2011-06-03T12:13:51.833" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some transmissions are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_news-gathering#DSNG&quot;&gt;routed via satellite&lt;/a&gt;: so there's a bigger end-to-end delay, due to the longer distance, due to targeting satellites which are in distant, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_orbit&quot;&gt;geosynchronous orbits&lt;/a&gt; (instead of going the shortest route).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get to geosynchronous orbit and back is necessarily a round trip of 100,000 km, or about 0.3 seconds (due to the speed of light).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I experienced such a round-trip delay myself, when I phoned Australia from England in the 1980s: before transcontinental, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html&quot;&gt;undersea cables&lt;/a&gt; (which route signals over much shorter distances than sending them into orbit and back) became more common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, general-purpose IP networks (i.e. simple packet switched versus circuit switched networks) adds extra delay to real-time signals: because they're 'bursty', it's not enough for the signal to have enough bandwidth 'on average' ... you want the signal to get through all the time, and so they'll be using a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_delay_variation&quot;&gt;jitter buffer&lt;/a&gt; somewhere, which adds an extra delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say that there isn't also some extra seconds for editorial/censorship purposes. But the best case for a conversation that's routed entirely via geosynchronous satellite is a (noticeable) delay of more than half a second (4 legs: the outgoing question beams up and then down, and then the interviewee's reply also beams up and then down).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T12:13:51.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4192" CreationDate="2011-06-03T12:16:53.433" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;When broadcasting across a distance data needs to be compressed and it is buffered for this purpose. The buffer is a certain size, say 5 seconds at a time. When broadcasting live this buffering can cause overhead in the processing of the signal and can cause the signal to be delayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pryb2.gif&quot; alt=&quot;buffer&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The codec needs a buffer because it&#xA;  analyzes video content over a period&#xA;  of time. For example, it analyzes&#xA;  movement or change from one video&#xA;  frame to the next in order to reduce&#xA;  the bit rate of the content as much as&#xA;  possible and produce high-quality&#xA;  images. To compress data at one point,&#xA;  it might use the analysis of data that&#xA;  occurs two seconds later. Therefore,&#xA;  the more data it can analyze, the&#xA;  better it can compress the stream.&#xA;  Reducing the buffer shortens the&#xA;  delay, but can result in lower quality&#xA;  images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://billbirney.com/Text/broadcastdelay.htm&quot;&gt;Reducing Broadcast Delay&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases this is unnoticeable due to modern technology. However when a reporter is on location they don't always have access to equipment to be able to stream without delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadcast_delay&quot;&gt;deliberate delay&lt;/a&gt; included:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In radio and television, broadcast&#xA;  delay refers to the practice of&#xA;  intentionally delaying broadcast of&#xA;  live material. A short delay is often&#xA;  used to prevent profanity, bloopers,&#xA;  violence, or other undesirable&#xA;  material from making it to air,&#xA;  including more mundane problems such&#xA;  as technical malfunctions or coughing.&#xA;  In this instance, it is often referred&#xA;  to as a seven-second delay or&#xA;  profanity delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best reference in the above article is &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2004-02-05/entertainment/sprj.aa04.abc.oscar.delay_1_delay-oscar-telecast-halftime-show?_s=PM:SHOWBIZ&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These days the broadcasts can be seamless although when reporters are coming out of places like Libya etc. and they are using Skype or other internet video technology you will notice there is still a lag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorDisplayName="user1770" LastEditDate="2011-06-03T18:12:28.327" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T18:12:28.327" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4133" CreationDate="2011-06-03T12:43:38.617" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answers provided from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/owow_keep/NPS/toolbox/other/wiexwatering.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lawn Watering&lt;/a&gt; from the EPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;From a water conservation point, which is better time for watering, morning or evening?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Early morning watering will minimize&#xA;  evaporation and help newly seeded&#xA;  areas through the day’s heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If watering is done in the evening,&#xA;  grass stays wet all night, thus&#xA;  increasing risk of disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Was there some controlled experiments done, with grass or other plants, with the goal of maximizing plant mass growth with a given amount of water?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a separate question altogether: water conservation and plant growth are two completely different things. And now you are asking about plant growth and not about grass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For grass only:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s best to water established lawns&#xA;  at the rate of one inch per week,&#xA;  applied all at one time to promote&#xA;  deep rooting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clevelandturf.com.au/maintenance.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cleveland Turf Supplies&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The amount of water your lawn requires&#xA;  and receives will determine its&#xA;  overall health, beauty and ability to&#xA;  withstand use and drought. Keep in&#xA;  mind that too much water can ruin a&#xA;  lawn just as fast as too little water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One inch (2.5cm) a week is a &quot;watering&#xA;  rule of thumb&quot; suggested for most&#xA;  lawns; however, this will vary between&#xA;  different turf species and even among&#xA;  cultivars of a species. There will&#xA;  also be varying water requirements for&#xA;  seasonal changes and still more&#xA;  differences brought about because of&#xA;  different soil types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If the best time is confirmed to be very early morning... which of the easily available options (morning, evening, or both - with the amount split between them) is the best?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, if the best time is morning and you are not willing to do it in the morning, then the best option is still morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-06-03T13:55:07.223" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T13:55:07.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4186" CreationDate="2011-06-03T12:54:55.367" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Celery is believed to be an aphrodisiac because it contains androstenone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androstenone&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Androstenone (5α-androst-16-en-3-one)&#xA;  is a steroid found in both male and&#xA;  female sweat and urine. It is also&#xA;  found in boar's saliva, and in celery&#xA;  cytoplasm. Androstenone was the first&#xA;  mammalian pheromone to be identified.&#xA;  It is found in high concentrations in&#xA;  the saliva of male pigs, and, when&#xA;  sniffed by a female pig that is in&#xA;  heat, results in the female assuming&#xA;  the mating stance. Androstenone is the&#xA;  active ingredient in 'Boarmate', a&#xA;  commercial product made by DuPont sold&#xA;  to pig farmers to test sows for timing&#xA;  of artificial insemination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In humans, androstenone also has been&#xA;  suggested to be a pheromone; however,&#xA;  scientific data to support these&#xA;  claims are scant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;em&gt;Kirk-Smith, M.D., and Booth, D.A. (1980) &quot;Effect of androstenone on choice of location in others' presence&quot;. In H. van der Starre (Ed.), Olfaction and Taste VII, London: Information Retrieval Ltd., pp.397-400.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also suggested that we would be unable to sense its presence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The vomeronasal organ is an auxiliary&#xA;  olfactory sense organ responsible for&#xA;  the detection of pheromones as more&#xA;  than just an odor. Most adult humans&#xA;  possess something resembling this&#xA;  organ, but there is no active&#xA;  function. Humans lack the sensory&#xA;  cells that exist in other mammals&#xA;  needed to detect pheromones beyond a&#xA;  smell. Humans also lack the genetic&#xA;  ability to produce these sensory cells&#xA;  actively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spinney, Laura. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13927-five-things-humans-no-longer-need.html&quot;&gt;Five things humans no longer need&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. New Scientist. Retrieved 2008-05-20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T12:54:55.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4187" CreationDate="2011-06-03T12:59:14.147" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was actually reading about this the other day as Boing Boing provided &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scarleteen.com/article/politics/20_questions_about_virginity_scarleteen_interviews_hanne_blank&quot;&gt;this excellent link&lt;/a&gt; to Scarleteen. It is an interview with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanne_Blank&quot;&gt;Hanne Blank&lt;/a&gt; the author of &lt;em&gt;Virgin: The Untouched History&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scarleteen: Does it need to be&#xA;  &quot;broken?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HB: No. The hymen will sometimes be&#xA;  abraded or torn during intercourse&#xA;  because it is being stretched further&#xA;  than it has been before, but not&#xA;  always. Some hymens are stretchier&#xA;  and/or more durable than others, and&#xA;  they may not have any problems at all&#xA;  with stretching to accommodate things&#xA;  like tampons, fingers, or a penis.&#xA;  Others are less stretchy and more&#xA;  fragile and they may tear at the&#xA;  slightest touch. And some are in&#xA;  between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The big reason that a hymen doesn't&#xA;  have to be &quot;broken&quot; is that unless it&#xA;  happens to be an imperforate hymen&#xA;  (see above) it already has a hole in&#xA;  it. Hymens exist because the vaginal&#xA;  opening forms. Nothing needs to be&#xA;  &quot;broken&quot; in order to create that&#xA;  opening -- it was already there before&#xA;  the woman was even born.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scarleteen: What does the hymen have&#xA;  to do with virginity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HB: Not much, necessarily. As I've&#xA;  said, hymens may or may not be&#xA;  affected in any way by sexual&#xA;  activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T12:59:14.147" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4133" CreationDate="2011-06-03T13:17:31.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The simple answer is at Night, between 10pm and 6am.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.garden4less.co.uk/watering-the-lawn-at-night.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.garden4less.co.uk/watering-the-lawn-at-night.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You shouldn't water in the morning because water spots on leaves will cause leaf-burn when the sun gets hot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best advise, I could give for plants and such like, which works for me, is to water very early in the morning, and only water the roots, thoroughly.  Because if you don't water well, the roots come up slightly, and these will burn and get damaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is grass, I think the maxim is 1 inch a week, as too much water is as bad as not enough.  Due to the difficulty of getting the grass leaves to dry out properly, before the sun burns them, the recommendation is to do this at night, leaving plenty of time for it to be sucked up before evaporation takes hold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for not watering at night, as the plants would catch rot, mildew, etc.  well, in the UK, we have a high dew point where the grass is &lt;strong&gt;always&lt;/strong&gt; wet at night and it, mine, and other lawns, survive.  My sprinkler goes on about 9-10pm, FWIW&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2883" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T13:17:31.113" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4201" CreationDate="2011-06-03T13:23:22.137" Score="21" ViewCount="2407" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read Howard Pyle's &lt;em&gt;Robin Hood&lt;/em&gt; wherein it is written (on whatever it is they write it on up there):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A certain one sayeth that upon a stone at Kirklees is an old inscription. This I give in the ancient English in which it was written, and thus it runs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HEAR UNDERNEAD DIS LAITL STEAN LAIS ROBERT EARL OF HUNTINGTUN NEA ARCIR VER AS HIE SAE GEUD AN PIPL KAULD IM ROBIN HEUD SICK UTLAWS AS HI AN IS MEN VIL ENGLAND NIDIR SI AGEN OBIIT 24 KAL. DEKEMBRIS 1247.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So naturally I was curious and I found this grave marker in a Google search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0mfxh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Robin Hood's tomb&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that anyone is buried underneath this stone?  Can you date an inscription like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-06-10T05:14:30.417" Title="Did Robin Hood exist and get buried here?" Tags="|history|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4200" CreationDate="2011-06-03T14:23:18.623" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;That inscription is not original, so dating it is not going to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The inscription is probably from the 18th or 19th century when the current monument was made, although the text is older and was recorded already in 1632. However, even that is of course many hundred years later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://britannia.com/tours/rhood/rhgrave.html&quot;&gt;http://britannia.com/tours/rhood/rhgrave.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T14:23:18.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4200" CreationDate="2011-06-03T15:07:19.803" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a book on the history of archery called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0821204491&quot;&gt;&quot;The Grey Goose Wing&quot;:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The author discusses the Robin Hood legend, and essentially says it is impossible to pin down. Evidently there were several figures in history with some-what similar stories and the legend may have been knocking around for many years prior to the events depicted in the books and movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1331" LastEditorUserId="2382" LastEditDate="2011-06-04T12:27:34.360" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T12:27:34.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4203" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4255" CreationDate="2011-06-03T15:31:17.850" Score="20" ViewCount="6600" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've often heard that students (science/math Ph.D. candidates, in particular) who study too diligently and for long periods over longer spells develop mental health problems like depression, anxiety, agoraphobia, etc. That students should &quot;take a break&quot; or they'll &quot;crack&quot; is also an adage resounding on campuses worldwide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any merits to these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3291" LastEditorDisplayName="user3291" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T13:48:51.637" LastActivityDate="2018-05-01T09:21:29.300" Title="Does too much study cause mental illness?" Tags="|medical-science|psychiatry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4159" CreationDate="2011-06-03T16:22:52.193" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Higher average speed will lead to more accidents. This is because braking distance doesn’t just double from 100 km/h to 200 km/h. In fact, it quadruples. It’s nonlinear, but people think it’s linear. Insufficient following distance is the second-biggest cause of accidents (the biggest is excessive speed). Translate this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sicherestrassen.de/Ausarbeitungen/Frameaufbau.htm?http://www.sicherestrassen.de/Ausarbeitungen/muellerAbstand.htm&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might have thought that big traffic jams are mainly caused by accidents. But in fact, it’s the difference in speed that will on higher speed increase non-linearly probability of abrupt braking, insufficient car-to-car distances and longer braking distance of cars. Modern traffic systems try to decrease the human factor as much as possible in order to &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&amp;amp;langpair=de%7Cen&amp;amp;u=http://www.zukunft-mobilitaet.net/verkehrssicherheit/verkehrssicherheit-sartre-volvo-technologie-verkehr/3362/&quot;&gt;reduce braking distance&lt;/a&gt;. Then you can increase speeds. This is because several cars will behave like a railway train with fixed distances between train carriages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second point you mention to adapt to avg. speed (&gt; speed limit) to drive safer is kind of misleading and mirroring this linear thinking (esp. for very old drivers with reduced reflexes), as people will tend to choose non-linearly too small distances to the car in front with increasing speed. Trucks in the right-hand (slow) lane are very unlikely to cause traffic jams. This is because they behave mostly like the &quot;road train&quot; that was described in the hyperlink in the previous paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do a lot of traffic research here in Germany. This is because some of our speed-limit signs are computer-controllable, depending on traffic density, average speed, and traffic-jam messages from drivers. These limits get adapted temporally on highly frequented highways, but only downward from the maximum speed limit. Also you probably know of new car features like &quot;Autonomous cruise control system&quot;, that will use computer control to control the speed and distance to cars in front to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So of course if the speed limit is 100 km/h, one shouldn’t drive 50 km/h in the rightmost lane. Small speed-limited two-wheeled motor vehicles (max. 50 km/h) are forbidden on German highways. As far as I know, in Europe the highway speed limit of around 120 km/h and an advisory speed limit around 80 km/h is the best compromise of fast traffic and human factor. In Germany we have, in some areas, no general speed limit, since we are car fanatics and have a strong lobby :) However, most European countries have a general speed limit of around 120 km/h.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3194" LastEditorUserId="6777" LastEditDate="2012-04-16T10:04:30.910" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T10:04:30.910" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4189" CreationDate="2011-06-03T17:07:24.663" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is estimated that ~1% of population is asexual (at least in the UK).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2004-10-14/tech/asexual.study_1_sexuality-new-study-new-scientist?_s=PM:TECH&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://articles.cnn.com/2004-10-14/tech/asexual.study_1_sexuality-new-study-new-scientist?_s=PM:TECH&lt;/a&gt; (discussing a study by Anthony Bogaert, a psychologist and human sexuality expert at Brock University in St. Catherines, Ontario)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bogaert's analysis looked at responses to another study in Britain, published in 1994. That study was based on interviews of 18,000 people about their sexual practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It offered respondent a list of options. One read: &amp;quot;I have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all.&amp;quot; One percent said they agreed with the statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it doesn't look like there are a lot - or any - studies on the topic which are more legit (e.g. not based on &amp;quot;have you had sex recently&amp;quot; surveys)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T17:07:24.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4189" CreationDate="2011-06-03T17:11:49.890" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, but&lt;/strong&gt; until now only hypotheses on reasons for asexuality are available. &lt;a href=&quot;http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1870&quot;&gt;Experiments&lt;/a&gt; on male gerbils show refused mating with female gerbils, indicating there are &lt;strong&gt;epigenetic, prenatal period&lt;/strong&gt; factors causing diff. sexual orientation/behaviour:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A study on Mongolian gerbils showed&#xA;  that part of a population of male&#xA;  gerbil fetuses that developed between&#xA;  two female fetuses refused to mate,&#xA;  but instead spent almost 50% more time&#xA;  taking care of the young than male&#xA;  gerbils who as fetuses were positioned&#xA;  between two other males. They were&#xA;  also about 30% more likely to stay&#xA;  with a nest when the mother had left.&#xA;  This suggests that, although not&#xA;  perpetuating their own genes, they&#xA;  helped perpetuate their sisters'&#xA;  genes, which has evolution benefits&#xA;  for at least half that family's genes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For humans&lt;/strong&gt; there has to be distinguished between an &lt;strong&gt;asexual lifestyle&lt;/strong&gt; and sexual &lt;strong&gt;excitability/reduced libido&lt;/strong&gt;, as &lt;strong&gt;some self-called asexuals are masturbating&lt;/strong&gt; and obviously can feel orgasms, better called &lt;strong&gt;auto-sexual&lt;/strong&gt;. Currently from a scientfic point of view there is no clear &lt;a href=&quot;http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1870&quot;&gt;definition&lt;/a&gt;, but above mentioned properties would be obviously crucial. &lt;a href=&quot;http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1870&quot;&gt;These&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nzherald.co.nz/human-science/news/article.cfm?c_id=314&amp;amp;objectid=10455823&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; sheds some light on classification of several defintions and genuine causes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There have been very few studies about&#xA;  asexuality in humans, most of which&#xA;  were about the stereotype that&#xA;  disabled people are made asexual as a&#xA;  result of their condition. One of the&#xA;  only studies that looks at asexuality&#xA;  as a possible orientation was actually&#xA;  a reexamination by Anthony F. Bogaert&#xA;  of a survey of 18,000 British about&#xA;  general sexuality and STDs. 1.05% of&#xA;  the respondents to the survey reported&#xA;  &quot;I have never felt sexually attracted&#xA;  to anyone at all,&quot; very close to the&#xA;  1.11% who responded they were homosexual or bisexual, although more&#xA;  women tended to be the former than the&#xA;  later, and more men tended to be the&#xA;  later than the former. Bogaert noted&#xA;  this asexual group to have poorer&#xA;  health, shorter stature, less body&#xA;  weight, higher attendance at religious&#xA;  services, lower socio-economic status,&#xA;  and asexual women had a later onset of&#xA;  menarche, all when compared to sexual&#xA;  people. Although these are only&#xA;  correlations, they may help form later&#xA;  hypothesis about the cause of&#xA;  asexuality, and whether asexuality is&#xA;  a valid orientation at all. Bogaert&#xA;  suggests some of his own. Perhaps the&#xA;  factors affecting height growth and&#xA;  weight gain also affected a region of&#xA;  the brain vital to sexuality, or&#xA;  education or other resources dependent&#xA;  on socio-economic status are somehow&#xA;  vital in sexual development, or maybe&#xA;  asexuals had fewer &quot;sexual&#xA;  conditioning&quot; experiences growing up&#xA;  (i.e. masturbation) which might also&#xA;  explain the high proportion of women&#xA;  and religious (both groups are less&#xA;  likely to masturbate). Youth, however,&#xA;  was not correlated with asexuality,&#xA;  indicating these individuals were not&#xA;  merely &quot;late bloomers;&quot; asexuals&#xA;  actually tended to be older. Major&#xA;  limitations to the study, besides&#xA;  being merely correlative and not&#xA;  actually about asexuality, include its&#xA;  high non-response bias (30%) and its&#xA;  face-to-face style of interviewing&#xA;  (which may have pressured individuals&#xA;  to alter their answers). However, the&#xA;  study does contain enough correlative&#xA;  evidence to warrant future research in the area. (6) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;phenomenological&lt;/strong&gt; asexuality seems more to be a &lt;strong&gt;female &quot;property&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, making a epigenetic more plausible than pure genetic causing of asexuality, as one would expect equal distribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1870&quot;&gt;Differences&lt;/a&gt; in human brain structure indicate, that asexuality is also not caused by purely psychological/social development reasons&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since scientists have already noted&#xA;  that the brain of homosexual men is&#xA;  structurally different from that of&#xA;  heterosexual men (cell structure of&#xA;  gay mens' hypothalamus more closely&#xA;  resembles that of a heterosexual&#xA;  female's), that the asexual brain may&#xA;  too be structurally different should&#xA;  not be too easily dismissed. The&#xA;  existence of animal displays of&#xA;  asexuality run contradictory any&#xA;  suggestions that asexuality is a&#xA;  problem caused by psychological issues&#xA;  such as fear of commitment, or&#xA;  conscious/unconscious repression of&#xA;  sexuality, as animals are presumed to&#xA;  be incapable of both, although this&#xA;  rests upon the assumption that&#xA;  asexuality has the same cause in&#xA;  humans and animals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a link between hormone production and libido, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_castration&quot;&gt;chemical castration&lt;/a&gt; can force a reduction in libido; some countries use it for &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&amp;amp;langpair=de%7Cen&amp;amp;u=http://www.tagesspiegel.de/weltspiegel/zwangsweise-chemische-kastration/1621122.html&quot;&gt;pedophiles therapy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Speculative reasoning:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an evolutionary point of view one has to ask how likely a pure genetic heredity of a general asexual property is, as humans mainly bear single not several babies and the development help similar to the mentioned gerbil case cannot play a role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asexuality as a mammal phenomenon exists, but currently its not clear how much genetic, epigenetic and post-birth development factors actually contribute to this phenomenon. But current knowledge emphasize factors influencing fundamental brain structure rather than psychologigal/social reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Special cases like genetic caused Asperger, Autism reducing will of physical closeness to other humans show set of difficulties defining and reasoning asexuality on humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3194" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-09-05T19:01:28.083" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T19:01:28.083" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4189" CreationDate="2011-06-03T17:20:44.350" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recalling the teasing due to my 'eponymous' syndrome in 7th grade,  there is such a thing as &lt;a href=&quot;http://children.webmd.com/turner-syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Turner Syndrome&lt;/a&gt; which leaves a person with a single X chromosome.   Such a person would be asexual (although female), as the lack of the second X chromosome somehow inhibits development during puberty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T17:20:44.350" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4209" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4213" CreationDate="2011-06-03T18:36:04.443" Score="56" ViewCount="9484" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always heard that you should change your oil every 3,000 miles (5,000 km). That little sticker you get on your windshield after an oil change agrees. Growing up, my parents told me the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt that you &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; to change your oil that often to maintain a healthy engine. I suspect it's a ploy by the companies to increase profits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really necessary to change your oil that frequently to get the most life out of your vehicle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3073" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T14:19:28.037" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T15:36:59.307" Title="Is it necessary to change motor oil every 5,000km/3,000 miles?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4210" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="53206" CreationDate="2011-06-03T18:37:17.713" Score="7" ViewCount="1527" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a night owl, I was joking around with a friend of mine that dentists like to schedule morning sessions to kick up a notch on the torture factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, someone mentioned that pain tolerances are actually lower in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would pain tolerance be lower in the morning than in the afternoon? Shouldn't it be the opposite, since your nerves are all rested, and more ready to take the beating of the day to come?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3259" LastActivityDate="2022-04-17T01:03:39.910" Title="Is pain tolerance lower in the morning?" Tags="|medical-science|pain|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3498" CreationDate="2011-06-03T19:20:21.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since, as someone mentioned, &quot;harming&quot; is hard to measure and the rest of the thread here seems to be geared towards anecdotal evidence, I want to share this site in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drmomma.org/2009/12/sleep-training-review-of-research.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.drmomma.org/2009/12/sleep-training-review-of-research.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The content is mixed. Some is referenced. Some is anecdotal. Some is pure inspirational.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, when someone is asking this question, the person is oftentimes really asking for motivation to still be walking the baby on the sixth night solid in a colicky week. For that, I believe that that site is excellent.&#xA;I don't know if the term &quot;anthropomorphize&quot; applies since a baby obviously IS a person, but there is obivously a danger of projecting qualities upon the baby that it hasn't developed yet. Anyway, the &quot;Babies aren't soldiers&quot; article from the site gave me a perspective that I hadn't earlier considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your question, I would answer that &lt;strong&gt;neither extreme&lt;/strong&gt;, CIO or attachment parenting, &lt;strong&gt;is considered harmful as in &quot;harming your baby&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; simply on the basis that the topic is old and &lt;strong&gt;there is no law against either&lt;/strong&gt;. And there is plenty of activism on baby's rights when it comes to forms of neglect and abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2177" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T19:20:21.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4209" CreationDate="2011-06-03T19:49:15.307" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3,000_mile_myth&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; on this myth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;California's efforts to debunk this myth &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/UsedOil/OilChange/&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Synopsis: follow the manual's recommended oil change schedule, not the 3,000 mile recommendation that has become commonplace advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To translate that into some figures, I looked around for publicly available service manuals (just a few as I don't want to take all my time with this...):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2002 Mazda Protege (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freepdfdownload.net/ebook/automotive/mazda-car&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;): 6mos or 7,500 miles, whichever comes first, Sec. 8-4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2006 Volvo, all models (&lt;a href=&quot;https://pictures.dealer.com/volvooflisle/2006_maint.pdf&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;): 7,500 miles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2011 Ford Explorer (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.motorcraftservice.com/pubs/content/~WOBEXP/~MUS~LEN/42/11expog4e.pdf&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;): when light comes on (up to 10,000 miles or 1 year), pgs. 417, 420&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2008 Cadillac CTS (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cadillac.com/assets/pdf/owners/manuals/manuals_2008/2008_cadillac_cts_owners.pdf&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;): up to a year, Sec. 6-4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2000 Oldsmobile Alero (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=7&amp;amp;ved=0CEcQFjAG&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fcontent.gmownercenter.yahoo.com%2Fdocs%2Fmanuals%2Foldsmobile%2F2000_oldsmobile_alero_owners.pdf&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=oldsmobile%20alero%20manual%20pdf&amp;amp;ei=KTnpTdDsLcTj0gGL5uigAQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNEwAcLsL31x2KhPULDI7nhQyxNrwQ&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;): whenever the light comes on, typically between 3,000-7,500 miles, but never longer than 7,500 miles or 1 year, Sec. 7-6&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I thought it might be helpful to know typical driving distances per year, since that came up in the comments. They are listed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; by the US Dept. of Transportation (current as of 4/2011). The average for all age groups across both genders is ~13,500/year. This would equate to 4-5 oil changes based on the 3,000 recommendation vs. 1-2 for the typical manufacturer's recommendations above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one last add-in, some in the comments brought up idle time. I don't know where that figures in. I'm assuming this question has to do with general use, however, not extreme cases of little/no usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2011-06-03T19:58:32.993" LastActivityDate="2011-06-03T19:58:32.993" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1955" CreationDate="2011-06-03T20:12:47.643" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a rather extensive and well referenced list of Old Testament historical figures in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48969466.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;.  It lists 61 people, most of whom are identified in the records or monuments of non-Hebrew civilizations, or on archeological finds such as seals and signet rings.  Included in the commentary before the list are three criteria for inclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;name&lt;/em&gt; of the person must be found in some independent source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The name must have a clear &lt;em&gt;connection&lt;/em&gt; to a Biblical story.  (A seal with the name Baruch may not be connected since many Baruchs may have existed, but &amp;quot;Baruch son of Neriah&amp;quot; found both in the Bible and and on a seal would likely be connected.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;context&lt;/em&gt; (especially in chronology) of the evidence must fit with the context of the Biblical story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article further argues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;To my mind, it is not the verification of the major personalities that is so impressive but rather the verification of the more obscure Biblical characters is the more astonishing.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be argued that many of the finds suffer from selection bias (if you can find a connection to the Bible, you are more likely to publish a find than not).  But that does not make the evidence go away, it merely lowers our expectation that new evidence will crop up in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether these Biblical characters are consistent with outside history is hard to know since the independent evidence mostly records their names and positions.  Most historical records from the time are uninterested in describing the character of historical figures.  At most, we receive broad accounts of their actions and those do seem consistent with the Biblical sources, for what it's worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also evidence of New Testament characters to be found in Roman and Jewish records.  I didn't find a list as condensed as the one for the Hebrew Bible, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://virtualreligion.net/iho/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; includes not just independent sources for Biblical people, but also the political, social, intellectual, and cultural climate in which early Christianity was formed.  If the list were compiled it would be fairly long, but I'd like to point out the unusual case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamaliel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gamaliel&lt;/a&gt;, who is well-regarded in both Jewish and Christian traditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are quite dependent on Josephus for most of our history surrounding Judea leading up to and through the destruction of the Temple.  He has gotten a bad name in recent years because his mention of Jesus (the &lt;a href=&quot;http://virtualreligion.net/iho/jesus.html#testimonium&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Testimonium Flavianum&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;) was &amp;quot;punched up&amp;quot; by some later scribe to be more favorable to Christianity.  A 1971 discovery of an Arabic copy of &lt;em&gt;Antiquities&lt;/em&gt; does not include as many Christian interpolations suggests the passage is not entirely spurious.  Peter Kirby has written a pretty good &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/testimonium.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;survey&lt;/a&gt; of research  surrounding the passage.  On the other hand, references to other Biblical characters such as James, the brother of Jesus, and John the baptist are more commonly accepted.  Of course, references to various officials who also appear in the Bible are not contested at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jesus himself is of course well-attested in Christian sources, but also receives mention in &lt;a href=&quot;http://virtualreligion.net/iho/jesus.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;non-Biblical texts&lt;/a&gt;.  Not surprisingly given the antipathy of almost everyone to the early Christians, the non-Christian sources sharply contradict the Biblical account of his character and the meaning of his life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20100418005052/http://www.facingthechallenge.org/arch2.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;list&lt;/a&gt; of New Testament figures associated with archeological finds that match the above criteria include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lysanius - ruler of Abilene&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pontius Pilate - governor of Judea&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sergius Paulus - governor of Cyprus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Erastus - city treasurer of Corinth&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gallio - governor of Corinth&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these are non-Jewish officials who left monuments recording their names and titles that fit the Biblical accounts.  It also seems that Luke, the author of the earliest church history, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20100621011225/http://www.facingthechallenge.org/titles.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;had good knowledge&lt;/a&gt; of the rather intricate use of official titles in that period.  None of this should be surprising, however, since all canonical New Testament texts were written within 70 years of the events they describe.  It seems unlikely that the authors would need to (or even be able to pull off) inventing characters from whole cloth to fill out the stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More difficult is finding compelling archeological evidence for Jewish personalities—partially because Jerusalem was fairly effectively destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD and partially because most of the Jewish characters mentioned in the New Testament were unremarkable except for their connection to Christianity.  (It seems unlikely that we would have any independent record of a Galilean fisherman, for instance.)  Even so, a number of ossuaries (bone boxes) have been found with New Testament names.  Few of them can be connected to a Biblical character according to criterion #2 above and those that have are in dispute according to criterion #3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;em&gt;Caveat emptor!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the physical artifacts that &lt;em&gt;seem&lt;/em&gt; to corroborate biblical figures appeared without provenance on the antiquities market. This can be a problem for historians. For instance, the second of two &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_ben_Neriah#Historicity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bullae attributed to Baruch ben Neriah&lt;/a&gt; is likely a modern forgery. Unfortunately, objects that connect to characters in the Bible command higher prices than other artifacts and so liable to be forged. (To be clear, forgeries fail the third criterion above.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution for buyers (whether paying to own the object or investing credence in it) is to demand documentation showing where the object was discovered. For instance, several other seals similar to the Baruch bulla were &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?ArticleId=292&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;found in an archaeological excavation in Jerusalem&lt;/a&gt;. We can be more confident that the object existed at a particular time that can be reliably estimated from context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3252" LastEditorUserId="3252" LastEditDate="2020-12-20T17:21:29.620" LastActivityDate="2020-12-20T17:21:29.620" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4215" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-03T20:50:43.043" Score="44" ViewCount="7029" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/06/24/usa-russia-idUSN2413146620100624&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2010 news article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obama noted that Medvedev had opened a&#xA;Twitter account while visiting the&#xA;company's headquarters in California.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;I have one, as well, so we may be&#xA;able to finally throw away &lt;strong&gt;those red&#xA;phones&lt;/strong&gt; that have been sitting around&#xA;for so long&lt;/em&gt;,&amp;quot; he said to laughter,&#xA;referring to &lt;strong&gt;the Cold War-era direct&#xA;hotline between U.S. and Kremlin&#xA;leaders&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow-Washington_hotline&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; has a picture of Jimmy Carter's &amp;quot;Red Phone&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZNAF9.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Jimmy Carter's phone&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;But according to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20080923200642/http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/10/spotlight/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to popular myth and Hollywood&#xA;portrayal, &lt;strong&gt;the hot line has never been&#xA;a pair of red telephones&lt;/strong&gt;, one in a&#xA;drawer in the Oval Office, the other&#xA;in the Kremlin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At first it was a set&#xA;of teletypes&lt;/strong&gt; with messages punched in&#xA;at a rate of about one page every&#xA;three minutes. That system was&#xA;replaced in the late 1970s with two&#xA;satellite systems, as well as an&#xA;undersea cable link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jproc.ca/crypto/hotline_phones.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crypto Machines&lt;/a&gt; also says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people believe that a red&#xA;telephone was part of the&#xA;Washington-Moscow Hotline (WMH). &lt;strong&gt;There&#xA;were NO phones at all on the hotline,&#xA;let alone red ones.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The so-called &amp;quot;RED&#xA;HOTLINE&amp;quot;  between Washington and&#xA;Moscow was actually a &lt;a href=&quot;http://jproc.ca/crypto/hotline.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;secure TELETYPE&#xA;link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zdZu6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Teletype&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;My question:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it just a myth that the U.S. President has/had a phone that is actually red?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;If yes, what's the explanation for Jimmy Carter's red phone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T03:35:13.067" Title="Does the U.S. President have a red phone?" Tags="|history|united-states|government|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4216" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4250" CreationDate="2011-06-03T22:46:06.330" Score="6" ViewCount="5401" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a car that has over 140k on it. Are there any valid reasons to use high milage oil instead of conventional oil? Or is it just a marketing gimmick? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly what's the difference between standard oil and synthetic oil?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1307" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T15:57:01.220" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T15:57:01.220" Title="Does the type of oil you use in your car make a difference?" Tags="|road-vehicles|oil|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4217" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-03T23:04:31.627" Score="24" ViewCount="2517" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend said that if you fast for say two weeks or thirty days, it will really improve the health of your body. He said it includes the flushing out the toxins in your fat of the body, improving the senses, increasing immune system, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I had to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fitwise.com/fasting_program.asp&quot;&gt;define fasting:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Registered Dietitian Gail Sommerfeld of Loyola University and Peter Vash, M.D., Medical Director of Lindora (Calif.) Medical Clinic and past president of the American Society of Bariatric Physicians, a fast means no food whatsoever and no liquid except water. And if it is for less than 24 hours it isn't a fast, it's skipped meals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked &lt;a href=&quot;http://livelighter.org/is-fasting-healthy/&quot;&gt;fasting up:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to The Prescription for Nutritional Healing, Fourth Edition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Fasting is recommended for any illness, as it gives the body the rest it needs to recover. Acute illnesses, colon disorders, allergies, and respiratory diseases are most responsive to fasting, while chronic degenerative diseases are least responsive. By relieving the body of the work of digesting foods, fasting permits the system to rid itself of toxins while &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/is_fasting_healthy&quot;&gt;well as this:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fasting and Weight Loss&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you weed through all the controversy, you'll find that most medical experts agree on one thing: fasting is not a healthy weight loss tool&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is fasting really healthy, as my friend said it is, or is there medical evidence disproving it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="1633" LastEditDate="2011-08-22T14:28:05.200" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T12:32:45.690" Title="Is fasting healthy?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|fasting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4221" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4224" CreationDate="2011-06-04T02:49:15.933" Score="13" ViewCount="812" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there corroborating evidence to support &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Church-abuse-scandal-not-cause-by-celibacy-says-study-122308244.html&quot;&gt;the arguments put forward in a recent study by the U.S. Conference of Bishops&lt;/a&gt; that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;neither celibacy nor homosexuality can be blamed for the clerical abuse scandal within the U.S. Catholic Church.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;clerical abuse is a result of ill-prepared, inadequately monitored and overworked priests performing their duties during the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and 1970s&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies that support this, or conclude otherwise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2011-07-14T19:00:16.033" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T23:44:06.580" Title="Cause of Catholic clergy sexual abuse is the attitude of the 60's and 70's" Tags="|religion|sexual-abuse|sexuality|catholic-church|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4221" CreationDate="2011-06-04T04:38:04.307" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This report was &lt;a href=&quot;http://mirandaceleste.net/2011/05/24/a-worthless-and-dangerous-report/&quot;&gt;criticised in detail&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://mirandaceleste.net&quot;&gt;Miranda Celeste&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are just some of the claims she makes in her blog article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;this report’s findings are neither credible nor insightful&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The funding provided a conflict of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It used &quot;limited and untrustworthy data&quot;, which was also &quot;acceptable but insufficient&quot;, and that the researchers fail &quot;to acknowledge the highly flawed nature of the data in question indicates that the researchers are not credible and that the Causes and Context study’s conclusions are, for the most part, neither trustworthy nor deserving of serious consideration.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;One of the most egregious aspects of this report is that the researchers arbitrarily redefine “pedophilia” as sexual abuse of victims that were ten years old or younger at the time, despite the fact that the DSM sets the cutoff age at thirteen.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to the second sentence quoted in the original question, she remarks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;This argument indicates that the researchers need to be reminded of two things: that correlation does not equal causation, something that they either do not understand (doubtful) or actively chose to ignore, and that equating divorce with the “use of illegal drugs” and “crime” and the sexual abuse of children is problematic, to say the least.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;[Defending an assertion] required the researchers to employ painfully convoluted logic including, once again, the “correlation equals causation” fallacy&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2011-06-06T10:46:29.883" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T10:46:29.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4226" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4239" CreationDate="2011-06-04T05:53:49.863" Score="8" ViewCount="624" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was told in the bar at a wargames convention about an event that is supposed to have taken place on 7th June 1944, when suddenly the Allies lost all radio communication. There was a great deal of concern that the Germans had somehow managed to find a way to jam Allied signals, but this concern faded as communications where gradually restored over the next few hours and days (for smaller transmitters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is further said that the Germans lost all radio communication at the same time and were concerned that the Allies had found a way...etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the story goes, the cause was later tracked down as a cosmic particle shower resulting from an X-ray burst event in the Andromeda galaxy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know: is there a speck of truth in any of this, and where I might find out more about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1639" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T14:50:58.700" Title="Did an X-ray burst interrupt radio signals shortly after D-Day?" Tags="|history|physics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4226" CreationDate="2011-06-04T06:39:42.297" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a little out of my comfort zone here, but I'll give it a stab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Cosmic rays are energetic charged subatomic particles, originating from outer space. They may produce secondary particles that penetrate Earth's atmosphere and surface.The term ray is historical as cosmic rays were thought to be electromagnetic radiation. Most primary cosmic rays (those which impact the atmosphere from deep space) are composed of familiar stable particles that normally occur on Earth, such as protons, atomic nuclei, or electrons. However, a very small fraction are stable particles of antimatter, such as positrons or antiprotons, and the nature of this remaining fraction is an area of active research. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_ray&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;This release of energy may be observed as in increase in the star's luminosity with a space telescope, and is called an &lt;strong&gt;X-ray burst&lt;/strong&gt;. These bursts cannot be observed on Earth's surface because our atmosphere is opaque to X-rays. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_burster#Observation_of_bursts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cosmic particles and X-Ray bursts are made of difference sorts of things, and both come from outer-space (as opposed to be created in the atmosphere). X-Ray bursts don't get through the atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So suggesting a X-ray burst (electromagnetic rays from outer space) caused a cosmic shower (particles from outer space) causing radio interference (electromagnetic noise) at the surface of the Earth (beneath the protection of the atmosphere) makes no sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T06:39:42.297" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2560" CreationDate="2011-06-04T07:42:05.367" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent scientific study showed that cold water works just as well. This is not the most recent study, but here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/health/13real.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article from The New York Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15824636?ordinalpos=1&amp;amp;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In a 2005 report in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine&lt;/a&gt;, scientists with the Joint Bank Group/Fund Health Services Department pointed out that in studies in which subjects had their hands contaminated, and then were instructed to wash and rinse with soap for 25 seconds using water with temperatures ranging from 40 degrees Fahrenheit to 120 degrees, the various temperatures had “no effect on transient or resident bacterial reduction.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3312" LastEditorUserId="2433" LastEditDate="2011-06-07T04:37:47.897" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T04:37:47.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4237" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-04T13:44:41.210" Score="4" ViewCount="895" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1590/does-gender-affect-driving-skill&quot;&gt;Does gender affect driving skill?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time and time again I hear that &quot;women shouldn't be allowed on the road because they are bad drivers&quot; or similar stories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm personally of the opinion that with an activity like driving a car (primarily non-physical - unless it breaks down!), there shouldn't be much of a difference in potential ability - is there any evidence to support this argument?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3004" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T14:36:58.643" Title="Is there a difference in driving ability between men and women?" Tags="|biology|road-vehicles|gender|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2011-06-04T20:59:12.790" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4237" CreationDate="2011-06-04T14:36:58.643" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You don't really say what you mean by &amp;quot;ability&amp;quot; here. But let's presume a definition of driving ability includes &amp;quot;operating a vehicle in a safe manner.&amp;quot; So if we may judge by who &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insweb.com/auto-insurance/men-women-state-rates.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;has lower auto insurance rates&lt;/a&gt;, and if you think safety is an important component of skillful driving, then women may actually be the better drivers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to information collected by InsWeb, the median car insurance rate for women is about 9% lower than the rate for men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The national median rate for women is $698 for a six-month policy. For men, it's $765.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, according to the linked table, in only one state in the U.S. (Iowa) did women pay (slightly) higher premiums than men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other factors considered in the study, including size of car, relative horsepower, etc. But insurance companies make money by matching premiums to the size of the risk. And clearly they think women are a better bet to be good drivers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T14:36:58.643" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4226" CreationDate="2011-06-04T14:50:58.700" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.solarstorms.org/STechHist.html&quot;&gt;solar storms site&lt;/a&gt; (no opinion of its reliability) says that sunspots caused radio problems in 1943 in the invasion of Italy (not enough detail to tell whether they're talking about Sicily or Salerno), which would be close enough for a wargames convention bar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T14:50:58.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4241" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-04T17:46:16.353" Score="9" ViewCount="526" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this just a lazy publicity stunt (intended or otherwise)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.sky.com/story/860603/hypnotists-mishap-leaves-people-in-trance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Hypnotist's Mishap Leaves People In Trance&quot; Via Sky News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sceptical of hypnosis, but haven't seen anything definitive either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastEditorUserId="22919" LastEditDate="2014-12-07T02:35:34.960" LastActivityDate="2014-12-07T02:35:34.960" Title="Did this hypnotist accidentally leave participants 'in a trance'?" Tags="|hypnotism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4187" CreationDate="2011-06-04T21:34:03.547" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the other answers, it's actually also possible to get your &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymenorrhaphy&quot;&gt;hymen surgically restored&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hymenorrhaphy or hymen reconstruction&#xA;  surgery is the surgical restoration of&#xA;  the hymen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The normal aim is to cause bleeding&#xA;  during post-nuptial intercourse, which&#xA;  in some cultures is a considered proof&#xA;  of virginity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1398" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T21:34:03.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4245" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4249" CreationDate="2011-06-04T22:25:28.497" Score="21" ViewCount="12000" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read it on &lt;a href=&quot;https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronronnement#Un_moyen_de_gu.C3.A9rison_.3F&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's article about purring (in French)&lt;/a&gt;, which I will paraphrase as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Veterinarians think that cats heal fractures etc. more rapidly than dogs. [citation]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;A hypothesis alleges that purring may have a healing effect on bones etc. [no citation]&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Many cats emit purring whose frequency permits calming of pain. [citation to a psychology article]&#xA;Purring might therefore be a way to maintain the health of the cat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another quote about it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The type of frequencies that are found in the cat's purr are good for healing muscle, tendon, and ligament injuries, as well as for muscle strengthening and toning. They are good for any type of joint injury, wound healing, reduction of infection and swelling, pain relief, and relief of chronic pulmonary disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160319212253/http://www.luisprada.com:80/Protected/the_cats_purr_for_healing.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source: The Cat's Purr for Healing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If true, could you please tell me about how much effect it has?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3323" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-06-10T10:15:57.427" LastActivityDate="2023-04-20T17:23:15.317" Title="Can a cat's purr heal injuries?" Tags="|medical-science|zoology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4245" CreationDate="2011-06-04T23:48:12.873" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many things that work in medicine/healthcare without people knowing exactly why. Trial and error is par for the course, particularly with psychology. As of yet there are no hospitals with beds that vibrate or play sounds similar to a cat's purr.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Desmond Morris has opinion on why cats purr when they are in a bad way, e.g. on the table at the vet's. He believes the purr is to induce a calm 'don't hurt me' mood. His book is a good read for any cat lover:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0031RS5C4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Catwatching-Essential-Guide-Behaviour-ebook/dp/B0031RS5C4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just hope you don't have to find your cat injured from a road accident and purring, it is very sad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2408" LastActivityDate="2011-06-04T23:48:12.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="475" CreationDate="2011-06-05T00:00:51.103" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The magic formula: Random, controlled, double-blind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, put the magnetic band in a bag, and put it close to your brother-in-law's body. Re-run the tests he did, to establish that the magnetic band still works in a bag, when your brother-in-law knows it  is in there. Do this first, so there can be no complaints later that the bag interfered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, &lt;em&gt;repeat&lt;/em&gt; the following experiment several times:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In another room, have one person put the magnetic band in one bag, and something about the same size and weight in another identical bag. That person should stay out of the room.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have another person, who doesn't know which is which, put each bag in turn close to his body, and do the tests, and record which bag succeeds better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then, and only then, look in the bags to see which one is which.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your brother-in-law is right, he should be able to tell which one is which much more often than he gets it wrong. If he is wrong, it should be &lt;em&gt;approximately&lt;/em&gt; 50-50.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important that the allocation to the bags is unpredictable (random). It is important that neither your brother-in-law nor the person in the room doing the test know which bag contains the real magnetic band (double-blind). And it is important to compare both with and without the band - which you were already doing (controlled).  It is also important that the person in the room have no idea what the test is, or what the bands are (to complete the double blind).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-07-01T21:14:58.953" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T21:14:58.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4245" CreationDate="2011-06-05T00:23:28.223" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting claim! My delving suggests that this might be a fine line between truth and woo. First, the woo. I have strong suspicions about the following quotes from your provided source, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160319212253/http://www.luisprada.com:80/Protected/the_cats_purr_for_healing.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Cat's Purr for Healing&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since cats purr when they are severely injured or dying, it has to be survival-related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not really. See some reasons cats might purr on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purr#Purpose&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;. Note that I said &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt;. It doesn't seem that we really know. Self-healing is speculated, but I followed Wiki's link for that suggestion to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-cats-purr/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt; and was sorely disappointed. No sources, no specifics cited... it reads like an editorial opinion piece based simply on intuition and speculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The type of frequencies that are found in the cat's purr are good for healing muscle, tendon, and ligament injuries, as well as for muscle strengthening and toning. They are good for any type of joint injury, wound healing, reduction of infection and swelling, pain relief, and relief of chronic pulmonary disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wow. Huge claim and one would think that we'd have heard about it by now if it had such wide effects. My honest thought when reading this is that the same could be said of certain shades of purple quartz — but &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; certain shades. Again, no sources whatsoever about how such effects were determined as &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; for such illnesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some stats for cat vs. dog lameness and other sicknesses are given (cats come out ahead — surprise), followed up by this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This basically says that cats are in fact healthier than dogs are. People like to say, &amp;quot;Oh, that's just coincidence,&amp;quot; but it can't be. The odds of its being coincidence are like three billion to one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No idea where the statistics are coming from. By this reasoning, if we take any species and compare illness rates to another species, should we conclude that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; instances in which one does better than another simply &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; be a coincidence? Re. the claim that cat bones heal faster; I could find no such evidence in my searching. Every search phrase returns that site or a copy-cat of it, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Animals have so much more than we have. As humans we are limited by what we're able to see, hear, and smell. Our senses are nowhere near as keen as those of a dog or a cat.  You may have seen your own cat at times looking at something you cannot even sense, much less see.  Most humans presume that their cats are just staring into space, but they are tracking something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, we have &lt;em&gt;no idea.&lt;/em&gt; A cat literally &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be spacing out. We anthropomorphize and pattern-seek out a &amp;quot;contemplative look&amp;quot; on their faces and thus assume they must actually be contemplating. Until we rig up some better inter-species communication or analysis techniques for lower animals, we just won't know what a cat/dog is &amp;quot;thinking.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, onto the potential truth. First of all, I think this area has been clouded with woo. Note the results for the google phrase, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=%22using+sound+waves+for+healing%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;using sound waves for healing&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Lots of hinting at &amp;quot;deeper levels,&amp;quot; spiritual refreshment, the bringing about of &amp;quot;oneness&amp;quot; and the like. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160320043029/http://biotune.net/Power-Of-Sound.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Power of Sound&lt;/a&gt; for an example of what I'm talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; find some references that indicate that audio frequencies may be beneficial for bone growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19309060/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Augmentation of bone healing by specific frequency and amplitude compressive strains (abstract)&lt;/a&gt; is a study in which a 1Hz frequency on the tibias of rabbits provided measured improvement in bone strength.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_intensity_pulsed_ultrasound&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Low intensity pulsed ultrasound&lt;/a&gt; has Wiki's summary of beneficial results from low frequency ultrasound stimulation of bone and teeth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://patents.google.com/patent/US4905671/en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Inducement of bone growth by acoustic shock waves&lt;/a&gt; is a 1990 granted patent for bone growth therapy via &amp;quot;acoustic shock waves.&amp;quot; Skip down to the bottom of the second to last page and last page for what are called the &amp;quot;claims.&amp;quot; These are the directly stated novel inventions being claimed. Note that the treatment requires shock waves powerful enough to cause the bone to bleed in order to stimulate growth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/t43491k0v5458117/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; (link broken) is a summary of an experiment to examine ultrasound on animal bones, but no results are provided.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... what to make of this? It seems that low intensity ultrasound has definite evidence going for it in terms of bone growth stimulation. Also, acoustic shockwaves from the patent are also cited, but my skim showed them referring to frequencies in the ultrasonic range as well (I could have missed something, though). However, a cat purr is not going to use their supplied method of causing bone bleeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could find no evidence for the claims that I think would be required to support what you're asking about, thought. Namely, nothing supporting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cat purrs themselves for healing bones, various illnesses and/or other bodily damage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;acoustic waves themselves in the range of 50-150 Hz (the range of purring frequencies) for healing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one last thought... we are quite ignorant of all the variables involved the body's healing. One's outlook, the placebo effect, stress levels, etc. I wouldn't doubt that one's psychological disposition due to the presence of a beloved pet really &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; have an effect — I just don't think there's anything particularly amazing about the &amp;quot;power of a purr&amp;quot; at this particular moment :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2023-04-20T17:23:15.317" LastActivityDate="2023-04-20T17:23:15.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4216" CreationDate="2011-06-05T00:45:28.507" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cars are designed to operate with a minimum oil film thickness in all the contacts. This is a function of viscosity and oil feed rate. Heat up the oil too much and the viscosity reduces to the point where the oil film cannot support the contact and you have metal to meta wear (really bad). On the other hand if the viscosity is too high, then you cannot flow enough oil (i.e. cold starts) to support the contact also. Note that besides temperature, mechanical load (pressure) affects the viscosity. Strangely, idling a car a lot puts a lot of stresses on the mechanical contacts on the valve-train, and reduces the oil feed rate because the rpms are low. Remember the oil pump is crankcase driven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what does this have to do with what oil you use? Well the manufacturers and suppliers spend A LOT of time and money making sure the parts work well under with the oil specifications stated in the owners manual. Use the wrong oil and you might have trouble. As far as the synthetic vs. mineral oil goes, that is another topic to discuss elsewhere. Your best bet is whatever oil can maintain the &lt;strong&gt;required&lt;/strong&gt; film thickness on the metal contacts the longest, and under all the varied environments we drive through. Synthetics are more stable and last longer, but they are not required usually unless you have a turbo car where proper lubrication is super-duper critical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the type of oil, the oil grade defines the viscosity, and thus how well it works with the engine. There are well defined SAE limits on this. A worn engine will have a tougher time supporting the right oil thickness because a lot of the asperities that retain oil will be worn out (polished away actually) so you might need a slightly thicker oil as time goes by, but then you have to be careful at cold temperatures. The high mileage oils may be tweaked for such conditions, or maybe it is just marketing. The important thing, again, is to retain good oil quality while the engine is operating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1066" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T00:45:28.507" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4251" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4253" CreationDate="2011-06-05T01:18:09.940" Score="5" ViewCount="1550" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chess.com/article/view/the-shortest-stalemate-possible&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; is often stated as being the shortest stalemate ever, however, is it actually the shortest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for any brute-force attempts that show that 10 moves is the absolute minimum for a stalemate in the game of chess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T02:43:37.417" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T02:43:37.417" Title="Is the shortest stalemate in chess ten moves long?" Tags="|games|chess|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4251" CreationDate="2011-06-05T01:51:53.280" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is the shortest stalemate ever found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was discovered by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Loyd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sam Lloyd&lt;/a&gt;. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Loyd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frederick Rhine discovered a similar stalemate, also in 10 moves: 1.d4 c5 2.dxc5 f6 3.Qxd7+ Kf7 4.Qxd8 Bf5 5.Qxb8 h5 6.Qxa8 Rh6 7.Qxb7 a6 8.Qxa6 Bh7 9.h4 Kg6 10.Qe6. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalemate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lloyd's contribution continues to be quoted &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chess.com/article/view/the-shortest-stalemate-possible&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/lab/7378/loyd.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mychess.de/stalemate_ChessWiki.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sites&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/Stalemate?cx=partner-pub-0939450753529744%3Av0qd01-tdlq&amp;amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;q=Stalemate&amp;amp;sa=Search#922&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;maintained&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chess.com/chessopedia/view/stalemate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;by experts&lt;/a&gt; as the shortest stalemate ever found, despite there being strong competition to beat it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Some juniors in Sweden actually played out this (pre-arranged) match in 1995. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chess.com/chessopedia/view/stalemate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T01:51:53.280" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4203" CreationDate="2011-06-05T02:31:00.940" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mentalhealth.com/mag1/p51-str.html&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;'s a list of things to do to manage stress:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Decrease or Discontinue Caffeine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Regular Exercise&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Relaxation/Meditation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sleep&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Time-outs and Leisure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Realistic Expectations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Reframing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Belief Systems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ventilation/Support System&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Humor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice how many of these the hard-working students are NOT doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High stress is associated with mental illness. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0447.1991.tb03157.x/abstract&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886901000125&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; are two studies specifically about students (there are many more making the connection regardless of occupation), though the first of them mentions that Norwegian med school students overall don't have more mental health issues than the general population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion: Not relaxing can lead to stress-related issues, but you don't need to specifically study quantum electrodynamics to become depressed - studying hard and worrying about passing that exam (and possibly being a foreign student in a strange culture, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0147176704000446&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) suffices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastEditorUserId="1690" LastEditDate="2011-06-05T02:55:35.170" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T02:55:35.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4259" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-05T09:17:50.167" Score="11" ViewCount="976" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anybody know if there is any study of a link between being religiously influenced at a young age and later general ability for critical thinking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean ASIDE from the context of the specific religion to which the child was exposed. &#xA;Many excellent scientists were religious. &#xA;And most skeptics have other biases, even though we mostly don't defend them as feverently as religious people do. James Randi is quite vocal about that.&#xA;&quot;Keeping falsehood out of your head is a full time job&quot;, as was the latest SGU quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see a lot of the rhetoric used in skeptic activism (some of which I voice myself) is based on the presumption: &lt;em&gt;Religious upbringing/influence from parent, school or other significant adult at an early age will undermine later general rational faculties.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that most of us have compartmentalized our skepticism to some extent. The religious folks just have an easily identified one. One which safeguards itself from scrutiny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2177" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T14:07:15.257" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T14:07:15.257" Title="Does religious influence at young age affect later development of general critical faculties?" Tags="|religion|parenting|school|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4262" CreationDate="2011-06-05T12:34:37.847" Score="4" ViewCount="7047" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has there been any independent study to confirm that the method of recovery from spinal injury proposed by Dr. Valentin Dikul is really as effective as he claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3295453.ece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this The Sunday Times article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Dikul's] method seeks to encourage certain nerves and muscles to compensate for those that no longer function. As patients embark on a rigorous physical therapy programme, which lasts at least a year, their bodies are said to learn to reroute nerve impulses to healthy muscle groups, creating greater freedom of movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any merit to this method? Has it or any similar nerve impulse rerouting technique ever proven to work to a certain degree?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2836" LastEditorUserId="2433" LastEditDate="2011-06-06T22:14:03.737" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T09:11:22.693" Title="Is Dr. Valentin Dikul's method of recovery from spinal injury effective?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4261" CreationDate="2011-06-05T13:14:26.280" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out the official web-site of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dikul.ru&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dikul's Rehabilitation Centre in Moscow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignore the &quot;English&quot; link - it is broken, but Google's Translate tool does a passable job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is much discussion about the technique, including a section titled &quot;Medical and psychological basis of the methodology&quot; (Google translated) . However, nowhere are there any references to any medical journals whatsoever. The only sources are the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dikul.ru/index.php?link=krug&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;book by Dikul&lt;/a&gt; describing his anecdotal experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was surprised to find the web-site does not even provide testimonies from other patients! I had a bit of a web-search and found a lot of desparate, hopeful people trying to learn more, and some patients saying it was too expensive to finish the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is fairly reasonable to conclude that if there was scientific evidence to support the effectiveness of the treatment, it would be cited somewhere on a web-site designed to attract new patients and tell them about the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T13:14:26.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4263" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4335" CreationDate="2011-06-05T13:50:43.310" Score="24" ViewCount="1795" Body="&lt;p&gt;With all the science of genetics, and genetic engineering, would reviving an extinct species possible? &#xA;Yes, akin the story of &quot;Jurassic Park&quot;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Would it be possible now, with the science we have today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="742" LastActivityDate="2022-07-08T16:48:10.780" Title="Is reviving an extinct species possible? " Tags="|biology|genetics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4265" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4268" CreationDate="2011-06-05T14:25:38.490" Score="10" ViewCount="2327" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am having a discussion with a friend trying to convince him that we do not use only %10 of our brains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware of the answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/59/do-we-only-use-10-of-our-brain&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; as well as the Snopes and Wikipedia pages (which actually have the exact same answer), as well as various other sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, he has counter arguments to several points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the Localization of function, Brain Damage and Neural disease he makes the point that much of the brain may be necessary as some sort of messaging system without being used directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He dismissed the evolutionary argument as simply being a theory and for that particular argument (not evolution in general) lacking adequate evidence. I have tried explaining theory in a scientific context vs a layman context but that has not made a difference so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So finally he attacks the various brain imaging technologies as being too inaccurate to show the entire brain is used. In his words showing layers or various sections in use is not equivalent to showing the entire brain in use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, these are not my arguments but I am looking for advice/empirical evidence that I can use to make my argument. I am not looking for personal advice or advice on how to deal with overly skeptical people....just for further evidence or sources, or explanations I can provide that show we do in fact use all of our brains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, how precise/accurate is our various brain imaging technology? Is it capable of showing every cell or neuron in use at once? Is the technology we have able tt show we do use 100% of our brain, every part of our brain without question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T17:39:49.910" Title="Disproving the 10% brain myth with empirical evidence" Tags="|medical-science|biology|neurology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4263" CreationDate="2011-06-05T14:42:54.510" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the information that you need to revive an extinct specifies should be stored in the DNA.&#xA;With present technology that means that you can theoretically revive species that died in the last ~100 000 years.&#xA;There are currently &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120505084429/http://www.aolnews.com:80/2011/01/18/can-woolly-mammoth-be-cloned-from-frozen-dna/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;efforts&lt;/a&gt; underway to revive mammoths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-07-08T16:48:10.780" LastActivityDate="2022-07-08T16:48:10.780" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4259" CreationDate="2011-06-05T14:50:27.560" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Preface:&lt;/strong&gt; I somewhat wanted to post a comment vs. an answer, but this is obviously far too long. Take it how you want. I've got some sources, but not what you were really looking for. The tl;dr summary is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I concur with the compartmentalization theory, and think we all have our irrationalities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Religiosity may be primarily influenced by genetics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My personal experience as a deconvert surrounded by religious relationships supports the compartmentalization theory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I see less critical thinking issues in religions where no testable claims even exist and thus think critical thinking development is not hindered &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; the religion itself... but wonder about religions/pseudoscience indoctrination (like homoepathy) where the foundations of critical thinking itself (like empirical evidence) are undermined.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you're on the right track when you bring up compartmentalism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some sources suggesting a connection with genetic inheritance when it comes to religiosity (thus critical thinker or not... one might be a bit more predisposed toward religious/spiritual beliefs):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scilogs.eu/en/blog/biology-of-religion/2011-03-12/religiosity-genes-again-confirmed-by-another-twin-study&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mono vs. dizygotic twin study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://susansayler.wordpress.com/2011/01/22/religion-fertility-and-genes-a-dual-inheritance-model/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a discussion/overiew of the paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/01/07/rspb.2010.2504.full#sec-14&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; on genes/religiosity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do I bring this up? Because I think the causation lines (if any) may run the opposite direction. I would not be surprised to learn that critical thinking/analytical tendencies are correlated with lack of religion such that the former implies the latter vs. the latter &lt;em&gt;preventing&lt;/em&gt; the development of the former.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It seems that most of us have compartmentalized our skepticism to some extent. The religious folks just have an easily identified one. One which safeguards itself from scrutiny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be the exact case. I don't know if you're familiar with &lt;a href=&quot;http://yudkowsky.net/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eliezer Yudkowsky&lt;/a&gt; and the rationality-dedicated site he created, &lt;a href=&quot;http://lesswrong.com/lw/1/about_less_wrong/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LessWrong&lt;/a&gt;, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://lesswrong.com/lw/9n/the_awful_example_of_theism/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a discussion of this exact quote. The author points out that theism has become the &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; fairly agreed upon example of irrationality (non-critical thinking) and questions whether this should be the case. Not a great source, but just thought I'd point you in the direction of others like yourself asking this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I diverge into experience/background. I deconverted from devout, wholehearted, fervently lived Catholicism about 18mos ago (full story if you really want it &lt;a href=&quot;http://technologeekery.blogspot.com/2011/01/my-cumulative-case-my-story-part-1-of-3.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;). What I wrote above &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; track with my experience and my nature. I have &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; been analytical and curious. I'm an engineer and took things apart as a kid. I want to know everything by the time I die. I analyzed and analyzed before I could buy something because I &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt; to have the best purchase supported by the evidence (specs, user reviews, magazine reviews, etc.). I fact-checked claims I heard. I made spreadsheets to make sure I had the finances to buy a laptop when I was in college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; turned my critical gaze toward religion. I literally just thought it was correct (and that was supported by a conversion experience I had) and started from that point -- in other words, my intellectual investment was in &lt;em&gt;theology&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;spirituality&lt;/em&gt;, not apologetics our the foundations for &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day I wondered if non-gospel writers had written about Jesus and was sorely disappointed by my research results compared to what I expected. That was all it took for me to pursue my religion just like all my other endeavors. I suspected that the best way to analyze it's truth was to suspect its falsehood and try to prove it back to myself. I've failed in these past 18mos and am a non-believer, but one who's still got some books on my to-do list in order to put the case to rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm surrounded by believers (7 years of my adult life was spent building friendships and relationships with other Catholics), and my experience has been that many &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; critical thinkers... but I would almost describe it as them not being &lt;em&gt;free or able&lt;/em&gt; to question their own religion when we get into discussions. If I construct a complete analog for another religion or particular diddy from pseudoscience, they will agree wholeheartedly. But  it's like there's a complete disconnect when those same critical principles start poking around theism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... my answer is that 1) genes probably have a lot to do with it in the first place and 2) my suspicion (yet to be confirmed by studies) is that indoctrination might be more accurately said to create a &quot;shell&quot; around one particular area such that one can be highly critical but still a believer. And 3) we all compartmentalize, but the beliefs just aren't as divisive and so we aren't nearly as aware of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll end by saying that I think most religions don't have a very good intersection with test-this-claim-now areas of the world; their claims are not predictable, verifiable, testable, reproducible, universally discoverable, etc. Thus, I think I'm gaining leniency with particular forms of theism that don't really matter except in the believer's. Sure, phrases like, &quot;I'll pray for you&quot; may be grating, but many/most will still recommend chemo, counseling, etc. to get &quot;real&quot; treatment. It's like a play belief that they don't &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be much more interested in whether indoctrination with things like homeopathy, crystal healing, etc. prevent critical thinking, for in those ideologies, there seems to be a direct suggestion that evidence isn't &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; evidence, that all &quot;supposed&quot; scientists are involved in a gigantic conspiracy and don't &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; know what they're talking about or don't have the &quot;spiritual eyes&quot; to see, etc. In &lt;em&gt;those&lt;/em&gt; types of belief, I really could see a hindrance of critical thinking, because they entail a direct opposition to empirical evidence and other foundations of critical thinking in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the rest, I think their sources of evidence are generally one sided and many may simply never get the &quot;itch&quot; to research their beliefs -- or a crack in the shell that lets them do so. But, I'm skeptical that such occurrences prevent critical thinking elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T14:50:27.560" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4265" CreationDate="2011-06-05T15:06:17.130" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The method generally used to observe which parts of the brain are currently active is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_magnetic_resonance_imaging&quot;&gt;functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)&lt;/a&gt;. Specifically the BOLD (Blood-oxygen-level dependence) is used to measure the blood oxygen level that is influenced by the energy used by active neurons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The oxygenation state of haemoglobin influences the transverse relaxation rate of the water protons in blood (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0304416582903336&quot;&gt;Thulborn et al., 1982&lt;/a&gt;). This transverse relaxation rate can be measured by MRI, and thereby the activity of the neurons in the brain can be observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The spatial resolution you can achieve with modern, high-field MRIs is about 1x1x3 mm&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S105381190900500X&quot;&gt;van der Zwaag et al., 2009&lt;/a&gt;). This is far larger than a neuron, so observing individual neurons inside the brain is not currently possible with this method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is of course an indirect measure of brain activity, you're measuring energy consumption, not the neural activity directly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been t&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=%22fmri%22%5BAll%20Fields%5D&quot;&gt;housands of studies performed using fMRI&lt;/a&gt;, if we used only 10% of our brain somebody would have noticed that. You could of course poke holes into that and argue the limitations of the current methods, but according to everything we currently know we use our whole brain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not discount the supporting evidence so lightly, especially the fact that when you damage some part of the brain, it usually has a pretty dramatic effect on a person. We have pretty solid empirical evidence that all parts of our brain are doing something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part about messaging is also a strange argument. The main function of neurons is to pass electrical signals along, that is essentially &quot;messaging&quot;. Arguing that this is &quot;doing nothing&quot; doesn't make much sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T15:06:17.130" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4263" CreationDate="2011-06-05T15:08:48.590" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you count viruses, then yes, it has been done: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/media/pressrel/r051005.htm&quot;&gt;Reconstruction of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic virus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T15:08:48.590" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4270" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-05T15:18:49.373" Score="40" ViewCount="3283" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anecdotal evidence blames the consumption of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate&quot;&gt;MSG&lt;/a&gt; for several symptoms such as headache, nausea, weakness, heart palpitations etc. Most migraine literature cites MSG as a potential trigger (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pedneur.com/article/S0887-8994%2802%2900466-6/abstract&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;) but usually without any scientific basis. A quick &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.au/search?q=monosodium+glutamate+health&quot;&gt;google search&lt;/a&gt; gives plenty more reasons that it might be bad for your health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any reliable studies that support MSG being associated with any kind of health problem, major or minor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3333" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T00:16:02.660" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T03:35:10.050" Title="Is monosodium glutamate (MSG) bad for you?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|chemistry|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4272" CreationDate="2011-06-05T16:22:25.770" Score="11" ViewCount="2389" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard people making this claim both in real life and on TV; but I think one can also argue that children growing up with separated parents are more likely to be careful when getting married, and therefore increase the chances of a divorce-less marriage. Psychological arguments can be both in favor and against the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I'm not looking for sociological or psychological explanations of what goes into a successful marriage ( or what makes one fail ); I only want to know whether there is any &lt;strong&gt;statistical evidence&lt;/strong&gt; supporting ( or refuting ) the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="1781" LastEditDate="2011-06-05T16:28:19.533" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T16:49:41.247" Title="Are children from divorced families more likely to become divorced themselves?" Tags="|sociology|marriage|divorce|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4271" CreationDate="2011-06-05T16:43:25.507" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I just did a quick google, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/8349.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;found this particular entry that said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first study to examine genetics as a culprit in the higher-than-usual divorce rate among children of divorced parents found that the parents' divorce itself, not genes or even problems such as parental substance abuse or delinquency, played a key role in the failed unions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Children of divorced parents are roughly twice as likely to see their relationships end in divorce compared to their peers from intact families.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the link, the full article with data can be found at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D'Onofrio's findings appeared in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Marriage and Family&lt;/em&gt;. Co-authors include Eric Turkheimer, Robert E. Emery and K. Paige Harden, professors at the University of Virginia; Wendy S. Slutske, professor at the University of Missouri; Andrew C. Heath and Pamela A.F. Madden, professors at Washington University School of Medicine; and Nicholas G. Martin, professor at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have access to that journal, so I don't know how definitive it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been looking for other studies and data that will either align or contradict this particular report, however, most of the data doesn't look as much at the relationships of the children of divorced parents as opposed to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stanford.edu/%7Ermahony/Divorce.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the general mental well being of these children&lt;/a&gt;.  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csun.edu/%7Epmm40071/DC.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Or something like this paper&lt;/a&gt;.)  In that regard, it does seem that in general, &lt;a href=&quot;https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/handle/1811/32230?mode=full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;children of divorced parents do show some resilience&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/8349.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The first paper&lt;/a&gt; may indicate or is searching for a genetic link in the divorce behaviour.  This may over ride rational attempts to be &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;more likely to be careful when getting married&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; as you posited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T16:49:41.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2921" CreationDate="2011-06-05T17:55:35.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/lsm.21016/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a paper in &quot;Lasers in Surgery and Medicine&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, use of Zerona with or without supplement showed no statistically significant reduction 1 week or 1 month post-treatment.  It was an extremely small study with only 5 subjects, but it does question Zerona's claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3335" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T17:55:35.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4275" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-05T18:42:27.527" Score="8" ViewCount="2741" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was a child, I was told that reading a book on a moving vehicle (a car or a bus) could cause the retina to detach. I always doubted that, since I could not imagine how it would happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to that statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3336" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T00:18:26.060" Title="Can reading on a moving vehicle cause retinal detachment?" Tags="|ophthalmology|reading|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4278" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-05T21:06:43.603" Score="27" ViewCount="4860" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are so many kids in this world who go to sleep with teddy bears and dolls.  It seems like they &lt;em&gt;need&lt;/em&gt; these toys to go off to Dreamland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just recently realised this because my own child, about 5 yrs. old, told me he couldn't go to sleep without it. Does a teddy bear really help a person sleep better? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies on this showing that a child actually sleeps better with a teddy bear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about adults? Does this affect them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="4322" LastEditDate="2011-08-05T02:25:10.557" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T06:12:30.150" Title="Do teddy bears help people go to sleep better?" Tags="|psychology|sleep|parenting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4279" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4280" CreationDate="2011-06-05T21:36:49.883" Score="18" ViewCount="4667" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that before. The reasoning is, &quot;&lt;em&gt;White sugar is more 'processed' than brown sugar, so it's not as healthy.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="223" LastEditorUserId="1134" LastEditDate="2013-01-06T23:03:02.140" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T23:03:02.140" Title="Is brown sugar healthier than white sugar?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|sugar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4279" CreationDate="2011-06-05T23:35:01.127" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Brown sugar is often &quot;more processed&quot; than white sugar: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_sugar&quot;&gt;Brown sugar&lt;/a&gt; is a sucrose sugar product with a distinctive brown color due to the presence of molasses. It is either an unrefined or partially refined soft sugar consisting of sugar crystals with some residual molasses content, &lt;strong&gt;or it is produced by the addition of molasses to refined white sugar&lt;/strong&gt;. Brown sugar contains from 3.5% molasses (light brown sugar) to 6.5% molasses (dark brown sugar). The product is naturally moist from the hygroscopic nature of the molasses and is often labelled as &quot;soft.&quot; The product may undergo processing to give a product that flows better for industrial handling. The addition of dyes and/or other chemicals may be permitted in some areas or for industrial products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chsugar.com/consumer/dark_brown.html&quot;&gt;C&amp;amp;H has nasty things to say&lt;/a&gt; about brown sugar prepared by treating white beet sugar with molasses: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If cane sugar is not specified on the label, the sugar may be beet sugar. What beet sugar makers call &quot;brown sugar&quot; starts out as white sugar crystals that are then sprayed with a brown coating. Often the center of the crystal remains white and the brown molasses coating can be rubbed off in your hands. Not exactly what you want when you go to the effort of baking something fresh from scratch!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brown sugar and white sugar are both crystallized products. Even in the unlikely circumstance that repeated crystallization removes some essential goodness from the products, you cannot point to one or the other and say with certainty which product has been crystallized more times. Sometimes it's the brown, sometimes it's the white.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastActivityDate="2011-06-05T23:35:01.127" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4275" CreationDate="2011-06-06T00:18:26.060" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/retinal-detachment/DS00254&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic page on retinal detachment&lt;/a&gt; does not list either trains or reading as causes, and the closest it comes to reading on a vehicle for risk factors is &quot;Previous severe eye injury or trauma&quot;, which you don't get without something bad happening to the vehicle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T00:18:26.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4282" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-06T00:22:49.630" Score="16" ViewCount="14396" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most schools and public pools have the policy of closing swimming areas during thunderstorms for fear of electrocution. I was wondering how logical or reasonable this policy is, given that most pools are relatively small bodies of water in urban or suburban environments with taller building all around. More specifically are there any documented cases of lightning hitting pools or similarly sized bodies of waters (say a pond in a city park) that would justify this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a related question about &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/466/is-it-unsafe-to-swim-during-a-lightning-storm&quot;&gt;swimming during a lightning storm&lt;/a&gt; however,the question there seems to focus on much larger bodies of water. Like lakes, where there is a distinct possibility that the person (or boat) is the path of least resistance for lightning to hit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1733" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T13:51:20.040" Title="Is it necessary to leave a pool during a thunderstorm?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4270" CreationDate="2011-06-06T01:07:23.610" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DISCLAIMER&lt;/strong&gt;: I've just ripped this, almost verbatim, from my answer to the Is &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4037/is-soy-bad-for-you&quot;&gt;Soy bad for you?&lt;/a&gt; question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people are exquisitely sensitive to glutamates (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MSG&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monosodium_glutamate#Health_concerns&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Australia and New Zealand&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Food Standards Australia New&#xA;  Zealand (FSANZ) cites&#xA;  &quot;overwhelming evidence from a large&#xA;  number of scientific studies&quot; to&#xA;  explicitly deny any link between MSG&#xA;  and &quot;serious adverse reactions&quot; or&#xA;  &quot;long-lasting effects&quot;, declaring MSG&#xA;  &quot;safe for the general population&quot;. &lt;em&gt;It&#xA;  does, however, describe that in less&#xA;  than 1% of the population, sensitive&#xA;  individuals may experience &quot;transient&quot;&#xA;  side effects such as &quot;headache,&#xA;  numbness/tingling, flushing, muscle&#xA;  tightness, and generalised weakness&quot;&#xA;  to a large amount of MSG taken in a&#xA;  single meal.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Emphasis mine.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;United States&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Monosodium glutamate is one of several&#xA;  forms of glutamic acid found in foods,&#xA;  in large part because glutamic acid,&#xA;  being an amino acid, is pervasive in&#xA;  nature. Glutamic acid and its salts&#xA;  can also be present in a wide variety&#xA;  of other additives...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The toxicity of MSG is an area of some debate. The noted scientist John Olney (of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olney%27s_lesions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Olney's lesions&lt;/a&gt; fame) was an outspoken critic of the addition of MSG to foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some evidence that MSG may be linked to obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v16/n8/full/oby2008274a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Association of Monosodium Glutamate Intake With Overweight in Chinese Adults: The INTERMAP Study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study examines the association&#xA;  between MSG intake and overweight in&#xA;  humans. We conducted a cross-sectional&#xA;  study involving 752 healthy Chinese&#xA;  (48.7% women), aged 40–59 years,&#xA;  randomly sampled from three rural&#xA;  villages in north and south China.&#xA;  [...] With adjustment for potential&#xA;  confounders including physical&#xA;  activity and total energy intake, MSG&#xA;  intake was positively related to BMI.&#xA;  Prevalence of overweight was&#xA;  significantly higher in MSG users than&#xA;  nonusers. [...] This research provides&#xA;  data that MSG intake may be associated&#xA;  with increased risk of overweight&#xA;  independent of physical activity and&#xA;  total energy intake in humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side of the coin, a study funded by a Japanese MSG manufacturer (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajinomoto&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ajinomoto&lt;/a&gt;) found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938408001583&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MSG intake suppresses weight gain, fat deposition, and plasma leptin levels in male Sprague–Dawley rats&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Monosodium l-glutamate (MSG), an umami&#xA;  taste substance, may be a key molecule&#xA;  coupled to a food intake signaling&#xA;  pathway, possibly mediated through a&#xA;  specific l-glutamate (GLU) sensing&#xA;  mechanism in the gastrointestinal&#xA;  tract. Here we investigated the effect&#xA;  of the spontaneous ingestion of a 1%&#xA;  MSG solution and water on food intake&#xA;  and body weight in male Sprague–Dawley&#xA;  rats fed diets of varying caloric&#xA;  density, fat and carbohydrate&#xA;  contents. Fat mass and lean mass in&#xA;  the abdomen, blood pressure, and&#xA;  several blood metabolic markers were&#xA;  also measured. Rats given free access&#xA;  to MSG and water showed a high&#xA;  preference (93–97%) for the MSG&#xA;  solution, regardless of the diet they&#xA;  consumed. Rats ingesting MSG had a&#xA;  significantly smaller weight gain,&#xA;  reduced abdominal fat mass, and lower&#xA;  plasma leptin levels, compared to rats&#xA;  ingesting water alone. Naso-anal&#xA;  length, lean mass, food and energy&#xA;  intakes, blood pressure, blood&#xA;  glucose, and plasma levels of insulin,&#xA;  triglyceride, total cholesterol,&#xA;  albumin, and GLU were not influenced&#xA;  by the ingestion of the MSG solution.&#xA;  These same effects were observed in a&#xA;  study of adult rats. Together, these&#xA;  results suggest that MSG ingestion&#xA;  reduces weight gain, body fat mass,&#xA;  and plasma leptin levels. Moreover,&#xA;  these changes are likely to be&#xA;  mediated by increased energy&#xA;  expenditure, not reduced energy intake&#xA;  or delayed development. Conceivably,&#xA;  these effects of MSG might be mediated&#xA;  via gut GLU receptors functionally&#xA;  linked to afferent branches of the&#xA;  vagus nerve in the gut, or the&#xA;  afferent sensory nerves in the oral&#xA;  cavity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some people, low doses of MSG may cause health problems&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; such as obesity, headache, flushing, sweating, facial pressure or tightness, numbness, tingling or burning in face, neck and other areas, rapid, fluttering heartbeats (heart palpitations), chest pain, nausea, weakness.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;I have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retinitis_pigmentosa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;retinitis pigmentosa&lt;/a&gt;. One of the prominent aspects of the disease is severe &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photopsia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;photopsia&lt;/a&gt;. MSG is the best trigger factor I have found for photopsia. I realize this is an n=1 study group size but I thought I'd put it out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/monosodium-glutamate/AN01251&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic: &lt;em&gt;My favorite Chinese restaurant has a sign that says &quot;No MSG.&quot; What is MSG? Is it bad for you?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2466" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T18:00:23.390" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4282" CreationDate="2011-06-06T01:27:13.233" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are two documented cases of lightning hitting a swimming pool:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2000/07/19/lightning000719.html&quot;&gt;http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2000/07/19/lightning000719.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lightning hit an indoor pool in&#xA;  Beaupré, Que. on Tuesday, electrifying&#xA;  the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 20 people swimming in the pool&#xA;  when the lightning struck were brought&#xA;  to hospital as a preventive measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/5213234.stm&quot;&gt;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/5213234.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Devon man has been killed by lightning&#xA;  while on holiday in Italy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Michael Haffenden, 50, was dangling&#xA;  his legs in a swimming pool at a villa&#xA;  in Tuscany when the storm struck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your question to how reasonable the policy is;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do you want to be the person who puts their hand up and be responsible for the deaths of a bunch of school kids (even if statistics say its unlikely, it plays on the mind).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's possible insurance companies would not pay up in this circumstance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There may be council regulations or other policies which sit at a higher level, so it's not the choice of the school or the operator of the pool.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-06-06T01:32:17.413" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T01:32:17.413" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4270" CreationDate="2011-06-06T01:28:04.043" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did look this up sometime ago, in the context of pregnancy. Almost all the health concerns are skeptical &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/scienceandeducation/factsheets/factsheets2008/msginfood.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;based on random and possible connections&lt;/a&gt; I have not found any documented scientific experiments/studies with proven results; either way. On the other hand, asian cuisine has used MSG for years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing to be careful of, is if you are allergic to MSG. There have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19389112&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recorded incidents of serious reactions to MSG.&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="742" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T03:35:10.050" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T03:35:10.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4316" CreationDate="2011-06-06T01:49:15.720" Score="16" ViewCount="1679" Body="&lt;p&gt;Especially in sitcoms men are made out to be slackers when it comes to doing the housework. There is a belief that men don't help out as much with the kids and don't pull their weight when it comes to doing their share of the housework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this still hold up in modern times? Have their been any recent studies into the split of housework and whether men spend equal time with children?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2022-07-20T00:29:05.773" Title="Do women do more housework than men?" Tags="|gender|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2022-07-20T07:51:06.530" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2921" CreationDate="2011-06-06T03:08:05.870" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR - FDA granted market clearance based on the paper linked below. Which was a double-blind, randomized, placed-controlled study. With a success criteria of 3 inches and 35% individual success rate which was exceeded. There were no dietary or exercise requirements placed on patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://baumanmedical.typepad.com/files/clinical-trial-zerona.pdf&quot;&gt;this clinical trial paper&lt;/a&gt; published in Lasers in Surgery and Medicine 41:799–809 (2009) which details results of the double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, multi-center trial of non-invasive body slimming ZERONA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Study Design/Patients and Methods:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Double-blind, randomized,&#xA;  placebo-controlled trial of a 2-week&#xA;  noninvasive laser treatment conducted&#xA;  from May 2007 to June 2008 across&#xA;  multiple-private practice sites in the&#xA;  United States of America. Sixty-seven&#xA;  volunteers between the ages of 18–65&#xA;  with a body mass index (BMI) between&#xA;  25 and 30 kg/m2 and who satisfied the&#xA;  set inclusion criteria participated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Participants in the treatment group&#xA;  demonstrated an overall reduction in&#xA;  total circumference across all three&#xA;  sites of 3.51 in. (P&amp;lt;0.001) compared&#xA;  with control subjects who revealed a&#xA;  0.684 reduction (P&amp;lt;0.071745).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Success criteria as defined by the FDA:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The overall study success criterion,&#xA;  established by Food and Drug&#xA;  Administration (FDA), was defined as&#xA;  at least a 35% difference between&#xA;  treatment groups, comparing the&#xA;  proportion of individual successes in&#xA;  each group. It was determined by the&#xA;  FDA that a reduction of at least 3.0&#xA;  in. was clinically meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the results (refer to the paper) 62.86% of the test group met the individual success criteria of 3 inches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a long enough paper, so I've deliberately tried to display the most relevant information to the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also of note is this passage here, and I'm not a doctor, but refer to the context yourself if you think I'm taking this out of context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Discussing the basic principles of&#xA;  laser therapy as described above could&#xA;  help guide further investigations&#xA;  towards uncovering the exact mechanism&#xA;  employed by laser therapy that&#xA;  ultimately results in the formation of&#xA;  the adipocyte membrane aperture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would seem from the quote above the exact mechanism is not entirely know. That doesn't sound comforting to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/fda-grants-market-clearance-for-erchonias-zerona-laser-1314679.htm&quot;&gt;found this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The FDA granted market clearance&#xA;  following the completion of a&#xA;  placebo-controlled, randomized,&#xA;  double-blind, multi-site clinical&#xA;  investigation evaluating sixty-seven&#xA;  study participants. The results&#xA;  obtained from that study demonstrated&#xA;  an average inch loss reduction of 3.65&#xA;  inches across patient's waist, hips,&#xA;  and thighs in as little as two weeks.&#xA;  The clinical trial, absent of diet&#xA;  restrictions, exercise requirements,&#xA;  or any other adjunctive components&#xA;  properly illustrated the clinical&#xA;  utility of the Zerona and set the&#xA;  precedent on how aesthetic devices&#xA;  should be evaluated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would appear from the above that the study I have mentioned in my answer was the one used by the FDA to allow market clearance. And further to your question (and as per quote above) the trial was done &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;absent of diet&#xA;  restrictions, exercise requirements,&#xA;  or any other adjunctive components&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T03:08:05.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4289" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-06T03:48:56.050" Score="8" ViewCount="1942" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I had been seeing some websites that suggest not to drink anything before going to bed. One of the reasons is to prevent waking up feeling want to pee. And it disturbs your sleep. But I feel really thirsty at night and I tend to drink a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does the &quot;not drinking water&quot; part really help you sleep better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1321" LastEditorUserId="1321" LastEditDate="2011-06-06T03:54:10.850" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T06:01:35.893" Title="Does &quot;not drinking water&quot; help you sleep better?" Tags="|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4290" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4297" CreationDate="2011-06-06T03:54:54.893" Score="35" ViewCount="42555" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm extremely skeptical of the idea of magnetic water softeners (strong magnets attached to pipes), but desperately wish it were true because I hate lugging 40# bags of salt out to my well house in the hot Texas sun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love to see some objective research results on the subject from someone who isn't selling a magnetic water softening system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the purposes of this question, &quot;work&quot; is defined as changing the properties of water treated with the system to: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Substantially improve the effectiveness of soap products using the output water.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Minimize scale buildup on fixtures, in pipes, and on dishes.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I'm being so specific is that I've seen some defenders of this technology that claim you get the &lt;em&gt;benefits&lt;/em&gt; of soft water using their systems, but because of the way it works it doesn't show any difference on standard water hardness tests. That is, it is pseudo-soft water, but acts like soft water for all practical purposes. Just the fact that they have a miracle solution, that involves magnets, and is resilient to empirical testing makes me &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; skeptical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1227" LastEditorUserId="892" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T12:49:41.073" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T10:22:12.407" Title="Do magnetic water softeners work?" Tags="|water|chemistry|magnets|consumer-products|magnetism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4293" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4303" CreationDate="2011-06-06T04:24:48.047" Score="11" ViewCount="2691" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was in high school there was a story about a man who won millions of dollars playing keno.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of money and the location appear to be true based upon &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeljko_Ranogajec&quot;&gt;this wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1994, Ranogajec reportedly won a&#xA;  $7.5 million Keno jackpot at the&#xA;  leisure and entertainment complex&#xA;  North Ryde RSL Club, of New South&#xA;  Wales, after reportedly betting&#xA;  &quot;significantly more than $7.5 million&quot;&#xA;  to win it but coming out ahead on&#xA;  account of the additional, smaller&#xA;  prizes awarded along the way to the&#xA;  jackpot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, with a reasonable knowledge of statistics and enough money (say $10 million) is it possible to win the KENO jackpot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The version of KENO I am referring to is the on on this site: &lt;a href=&quot;http://playkeno.com.au&quot;&gt;http://playkeno.com.au&lt;/a&gt; and I cannot confirm how many numbers he matched to get the jackpot (so was did it match smaller numbers with a larger investment or visa-versa).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As commented below, What I'm trying to get across is that this wasn't just some guy off the street, he is a highly seasoned gambler and maybe one of the best in the world. He played for a long period of time with large amounts of cash wagered. He seemed to expect that he was going to win. If you read his wiki article you will see he always tries to stack the odds in his favor. So why Keno, if it's just any old game? This is not just a question of maths or just saying if gambling you will always lose. He obviously didn't think so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:49:53.663" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:49:53.663" Title="Is there a statistical advantage in playing KENO for a long period of time?" Tags="|gambling|games|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4295" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-06T05:53:45.273" Score="21" ViewCount="12159" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has there been any scientific investigation into the nature of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Fire&quot;&gt;Holy Fire&lt;/a&gt;, to either clearly debunk it or be determined inconclusive (thus allowing for a margin of plausibility)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Patriarch Diodoros of Jerusalem has&#xA;  described the process of the coming&#xA;  down of the fire as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I find my way through the darkness towards the inner chamber in which I&#xA;  fall on my knees. Here I say certain&#xA;  prayers that have been handed down to&#xA;  us through the centuries and, having&#xA;  said them, I wait. Sometimes I may&#xA;  wait a few minutes, but normally the&#xA;  miracle happens immediately after I&#xA;  have said the prayers. From the core&#xA;  of the very stone on which Jesus lay&#xA;  an indefinable light pours forth. It&#xA;  usually has a blue tint, but the color&#xA;  may change and take many different&#xA;  hues. It cannot be described in human&#xA;  terms. The light rises out of the&#xA;  stone as mist may rise out of a lake&#xA;  it almost looks as if the stone is&#xA;  covered by a moist cloud, but it is&#xA;  light. This light each year behaves&#xA;  differently. Sometimes it covers just&#xA;  the stone, while other times it gives&#xA;  light to the whole sepulchre, so that&#xA;  people who stand outside the tomb and&#xA;  look into it will see it filled with&#xA;  light. The light does not burn. I have&#xA;  never had my beard burnt in all the 16&#xA;  years I have been Patriarch in&#xA;  Jerusalem and have received the Holy&#xA;  Fire. The light is of a different&#xA;  consistency than normal fire that&#xA;  burns in an oil lamp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At a certain point the light rises and forms a column in which the fire&#xA;  is of a different nature, so that I am&#xA;  able to light my candles from it. When&#xA;  I thus have received the flame on my&#xA;  candles, I go out and give the fire&#xA;  first to the Armenian Patriarch and&#xA;  then to the Coptic. Hereafter I give&#xA;  the flame to all people present in the&#xA;  Church.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2836" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-02T19:32:30.533" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T10:57:32.670" Title="Does a miracle of spontaneous &quot;holy fire&quot; occur in a Jerusalem church every year?" Tags="|religion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4289" CreationDate="2011-06-06T06:01:35.893" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is, it depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should begin with the common sense fact that the more you drink the more likely you are to pee. So to reverse your question, not drinking water helps you to sleep better &lt;em&gt;IF&lt;/em&gt; you are not sleeping well because you need to frequently get up and pee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturia&quot;&gt;Nocturia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nocturia (derived from Latin nox,&#xA;  night, and Greek [τα] ούρα, urine),&#xA;  also called nycturia (Greek&#xA;  νυκτουρία), is the need to get up in&#xA;  the night to urinate, thus&#xA;  interrupting sleep. Its occurrence is&#xA;  more frequent in pregnant women and in&#xA;  the elderly. Nocturia could result&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;simply from too much liquid intake&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  before going to bed (usually the case&#xA;  in the young), or it could be a&#xA;  symptom of a larger problem, such as&#xA;  sleep apnea, hyperparathyroidism,&#xA;  chronic renal failure, urinary&#xA;  incontinence, bladder infection,&#xA;  interstitial cystitis, diabetes,&#xA;  congestive heart failure, benign&#xA;  prostatic hyperplasia, ureteral pelvic&#xA;  junction obstruction or prostate&#xA;  cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T06:01:35.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4290" CreationDate="2011-06-06T06:10:52.490" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been a few studies on the efficacy of magnetic water softening systems. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/567404-bQ4DwB/webviewable/567404.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This one&lt;/a&gt; (PDF) from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory compares chemical and magnetic systems against a control. The table of results for scale buildup are pretty compelling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GENCb.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the Polyphosphate chemical process was effective, and the magnetic one was not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Army Corps of Engineers also conducted &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;ct=res&amp;amp;cd=10&amp;amp;ved=0CEIQFjAJ&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wbdg.org%2Fccb%2FARMYCOE%2FPWTB%2Fpwtb_420_49_34.pdf&amp;amp;ei=WB6US9iQM4uVtgfvkdTVCg&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNHneVmGETv4RDlDVpmkz3XIBQENpQ&amp;amp;sig2=LK75yPeENvRfDEr6p9LQtA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a study&lt;/a&gt; on three magnetic water softening devices which found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The results of this study do not indicate any clear advantage for any of the three devices tested versus a control for the inhibition of mineral scale formation or the corrosion of copper.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2011-06-06T06:17:43.580" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T06:17:43.580" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4298" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-06T07:45:19.500" Score="21" ViewCount="8191" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many news stories and plenty of ensuing comments about geishas have people making a strong point that geishas are not prostitutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geisha&quot;&gt;wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; makes a meal out of the topic and makes various claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the past:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The highest yūjo class was the Geisha's predecessor, called &quot;Oiran&quot;, a combination of actress and prostitute&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The geisha who worked within the pleasure quarters were essentially imprisoned and strictly forbidden to sell sex in order to protect the business of the Oiran. While licensed courtesans existed to meet men's sexual needs, machi geisha carved out a separate niche as artists and erudite female companions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some women would have sex with their male customers, whereas others would entertain strictly with their art forms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And currently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before the war, a maiko's virginity would be auctioned (the original &quot;mizuage&quot;) this was outlawed in 1959, but has been reported as relatively normal in the 1990s, and happening &quot;on a limited basis&quot; in 2001 (&lt;em&gt;this doesn't sound like it died out to me&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the opposite end of the spectrum are the hot-spring geisha. These geisha work in the spa resorts and are viewed by most Japanese as no better than a common prostitute. They normally cater to far less exclusive patrons, and are much less expensive. If their income is supplemented by selling sex, they remain distinct from regular prostitutes; like all geisha, they are trained in the art of Japanese dance and music. (&lt;em&gt;are they still considered geisha?&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There remains some confusion about the nature of the geisha profession. Geisha are regarded as prostitutes by many non-Japanese. However, legitimate geisha do not engage in paid sex with clients.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-12-14T09:38:36.403" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T17:42:41.013" Title="Is prostitution uncommon among geishas?" Tags="|japan|prostitution|culture|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2847" CreationDate="2011-06-06T08:58:52.763" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may or may not be relevant to part of your question, but in 2006, exploratory drilling near Basel in Switzerland was considered responsible for a minor earthquake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Home/Archive/Man-made_tremor_shakes_Basel.html?cid=46232&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Home/Archive/Man-made_tremor_shakes_Basel.html?cid=46232&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It even went to &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8414795.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;trial in 2009&lt;/a&gt;, and from what I can see, further drilling was suspended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2192" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T08:58:52.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4295" CreationDate="2011-06-06T09:41:22.473" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;White phosphorus will spontaniously combust when exposed to air.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm reasonably sure that this video of somebody demonstrating candles lighting themselves is a demonstration of this. I assume he is trying to debunk holy fire, but as I have no sound here I don't know exactly what is being said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR6zNTcE_k8&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR6zNTcE_k8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to more scientific evidence I present the following link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Phosphorus&quot;&gt;http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Phosphorus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When exposed to air it ignites&#xA;  spontaneously, burning to form white&#xA;  fumes of phosphorus pentoxide, P2O5.&#xA;  Because of its toxicity and pyrophoric&#xA;  nature, phosphorus is stored&#xA;  underwater. Contact with the skin may&#xA;  cause burns. White phosphorus is&#xA;  phosphorescent (i.e., glows without&#xA;  emitting heat).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I don't know if Holy Fire gives off the same flame colour as phosphorus, but I would suggest that if the fire changes from one form to another that would be consistent with phosphorus being used to ignite a candle and when it has burnt out, the lit wick reverting to normal flame colour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, there are no known studies that perform experiments on Holy Fire that I am aware of.  However the act of spontanious conbustion is known to exist and we can replicate the effects of Holy Fire quite easily using Phosphorus.  With this in mind I would suggest a hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T09:41:22.473" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3093" CreationDate="2011-06-06T11:21:05.420" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea that people are getting smarter in recent years is known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect&quot;&gt;Flynn Effect&lt;/a&gt; after James R. Flynn who promoted the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is more prominent on IQ tests which are standardised against the population average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;The only way to compare the difficulty of two versions of a test is to conduct a separate study in which the same subjects take both versions. Doing so confirms IQ gains over time. The average rate of increase seems to be about three IQ points per decade in the US on tests such as the WISC. The increasing raw scores appear on every major test, in every age range and in every modern industrialized country although not necessarily at the same rate as in the US using the WISC.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well as giving an overview, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; discusses many of  studies on the effect, possible causes (including better nutrition) and the theory that it may be slowing down recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T11:21:05.420" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4293" CreationDate="2011-06-06T11:54:54.950" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ah, good old Zeljko Ranogajec. He has so secretive and has so many rumours of his super-human abilities flying about, he's like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyser_S%C3%B6ze&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Keyser Söze&lt;/a&gt; of the gambling world!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keno&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Keno&lt;/a&gt; has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://playkeno.com.au/payscales.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;growing jackpot&lt;/a&gt;, where a portion of the losses from previous players accumulate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The expected return (in the statistical sense of &quot;expected&quot;) of a ticket depends on the size of the jackpot. Generally, the expected return is negative. If the jackpot is exceptionally large, which occurs rarely, it could actually turn out to have a positive expected return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such rare cases, it may make sense to purchase a large number of tickets. It would take millions of dollars to bring the expected variance in the return down to a manageable level, but Ranogajec (allegedly!) spends that sort of money on bets regularly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard other (plausible but unsubstantiable) rumours that Ranogajec gets substantial discounts from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tab.com.au/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TABCorp&lt;/a&gt; in return for his business. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.casinoonline.co.uk/news/zeljko-ranogajec-named-worlds-biggest-gambler-1475&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Casino Online&lt;/a&gt; claims it accounts for 6-8% of TABCorp's revenues.) [I heard discounts as high as 7%, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/taking-a-gamble-just-a-numbers-game/story-e6frf7jo-1225829865406&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this newspaper article&lt;/a&gt; suggests 4%.] This should be factored in when trying to work out the estimated return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Gambling is an area where skepticism is particularly called for, and problem gambling is a real problem. Please consider your own situation carefully before placing a bet.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just snuck a look at the original anecdote that was deleted from the question, and that was not inline with this answer. It suggested long-term play for a smaller amounts. It also suggested that Keno organisation asked him not to continue. I find both of these claims unlikely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keno has, long-term, a negative expected outcome, and only becomes positive occasionally when jackpots are particularly high. After the jackpot has been won, the professional player will stop playing voluntarily, as the return has become negative again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The casino (i.e. TABCorp in this case) knows they have a positive expected return, and would therefore always encourage further play (even when the jackpot is high, as that money is always set aside, and not considered profit. They aren't &quot;risking&quot; it in the normal sense.) They have no motivation in turning down a winner from betting again. (This is not necessarily the case in all situations - including blackjack, and smaller bookies declining to accept large bets.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://afr.com/p/national/no_humbling_great_gambler_1RahGi92iAkDFfUmE87CeO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Australian Financial Review&lt;/a&gt; piece suggests that Ranogajec's syndicate won at least four Keno jackpots (out of North Hobart in Tasmania, not North Ryde in NSW). The article leans heavily on hearsay, but suggests that, indeed, they bet when the Keno jackpot was high, and that they had negotiated a considerable reduction in the agent's commission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-06-16T17:40:59.613" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T17:40:59.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4304" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4305" CreationDate="2011-06-06T12:47:11.260" Score="7" ViewCount="710" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has autotune made singing as easy as people claim? Or is it just a tool that &lt;em&gt;slightly&lt;/em&gt; aids already trained singers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an example of the claim, see this (SFW) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S46Md0cfiVY&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;parody music video, by KSics and Alex&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never tried autotune (but I will soon). Is it really the end of any trust in 'the professionals'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3345" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-07T05:30:03.893" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T05:30:03.893" Title="Does auto-tune make singing (without talent) easy?" Tags="|music|musicians|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4304" CreationDate="2011-06-06T12:52:38.273" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Has the autotune phenomena really made singing as easy as people claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example of autotune: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carl Sagan - 'A Glorious Dawn' ft Stephen Hawking (Symphony of Science)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an example of someone (Carl Sagan) singing without, obviously, even trying to sing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T12:52:38.273" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4265" CreationDate="2011-06-06T13:43:33.993" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some paranormalist such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw_O9Qiwqew&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dean Radin&lt;/a&gt; advocate a hypothesis according to which the brain is like a radio:&#xA;The brain receives information via the senses. It sends the information through some kind of telepathic medium to the soul which isn't &quot;in the brain&quot;. The soul in turn uses the same telepathic medium sends commands back to the brain.&#xA;The brain then redirect those commands to various parts of the body to get the body to act. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;fMRI measures brain activity indirectly through energy consumption. A radio that sends and receives commands does also consume energy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When parts of the brain get damaged through brain surgery the mind stops working. A radio also stops working and plays crude sounds when you damage it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the present we don't have the ability to reconstruct a brain in a computer model to show that neuron activity is alone sufficient to explain the mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At present we don't have evidence that let's us reject the radio hypothesis. We haven't found any evidence that supports it either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T13:43:33.993" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4312" CreationDate="2011-06-06T15:24:36.833" Score="15" ViewCount="2464" Body="&lt;p&gt;I watched something a bit back and was thinking about one of the claims this morning as I listened to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theskepticsguide.org/&quot;&gt;SGU&lt;/a&gt; on the way to work. I unfortunately can't recall the source anymore, but am fairly confident that it was either  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodincmovie.com/&quot;&gt;Food, Inc.&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sweetremedy.tv/pages/sweetremedy.html&quot;&gt;Sweet Remedy&lt;/a&gt;, or perhaps this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.minnesotabirth.com/parents-a-babies/helpful-knowledge/281-vaccine-decision-making&quot;&gt;vaccine class&lt;/a&gt; with a nearby chiropractor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, the claim was that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not actually conduct any of its own tests in order to approve foods or drugs as safe for public consumption/treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The implication is that the companies seeking approval can &quot;doctor&quot; the data and test methods however they want in order to pass the FDA approval process, and I'm blanking on what the specific was at this point -- it might have been MSG, aspartame or a particular vaccine... I can't recall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it the case that the FDA does no actual testing itself, only reviews of other studies?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, is it left up to the company to conduct it's own studies, and are these studies verified by independent and/or trusted testing agencies?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the above are true, have there been cases of substance/drugs being recalled because falsified data, improper test methods, and/or suppression of potential negative effects allowed a drug to pass the FDA approval process when they were actually unsafe?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T22:17:11.860" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T22:17:11.860" Title="Does FDA not test anything in order to approve it?" Tags="|nutrition|medications|philosophy-of-ebm|fda|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4192" CreationDate="2011-06-06T18:09:52.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I worked on VoIP telephones systems, so apologies for limited references - this is from my working knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several sources of delay, and the human ear can start detecting it at very small values. (I saw a reference about 7-8 years ago that 20-30 milliseconds delay was enough to be noticeably annoying, although the delays on tools like Skype and mobile phones is typically much greater. Other people seem to have far more tolerance for this than me!) You will probably find that the delays that you find so annoying are generally only several hundred milliseconds - enough to disrupt conversation, as turn-taking cues are missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources for the delay include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Frame size: When your voice is sent over the Internet or your work network,  it is broken up into &quot;frames&quot; of varying length, depending on the codec.  10ms is typical (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.729&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;G.729&lt;/a&gt;) but for lower-bandwidth applications frames may be 30ms. (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.723.1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;G.723.1&lt;/a&gt;) The first part of the frame is not sent until the last part of the frame is recorded, so there is up to 30ms delay already. Your old-fashioned land-line didn't have this problem - it would be transmitting immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Speed-Of-Light Delay: As you point out, it can take a couple of hundred milliseconds for the signal to travel half-way around the world - more as it doesn't follow the shortest (Great Circle) distance. Others have pointed out that going via a geo-stationary satellite adds a huge additional delay - one that is normally avoided if possible. (I was told once that, back when satellites were more commonly used that, wherever possible, the satellite would only be used for one direction, and under-sea cables for the other, to reduce round-trip delays.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Congestion: If packets are sent over an internet connection there may be points at which they contend for bandwidth with other packets, adding delay. Even if there are no other packets to content with, each router along the way adds some processing delay.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jitter Buffer: Packets sent over the Internet are not guaranteed to all arrive in a set time. Some may be a few milliseconds faster or slower than others. In extreme cases, they can even be overtaken. This variance in delay is known as jitter. Any jitter in the actual playing of the sound causes the human ear to have trouble making out the words. So the receiver has to queue up the packets for a short period, to line them up evenly for smooth playing. (The jitter buffer turns jitter into delay, which is a compromise solution.) This jitter buffer size varies on the quality of the connection, but can easily add 60 ms to the delay.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Algorithmic Delay: It takes time to process the compression - it is very CPU intensive, especially with transcoding, where it is necessary to convert from one compression format to another). Also, some compression techniques require &quot;lookahead&quot;, which for G.723 adds an additional 7.5 ms delay. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.723.1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are using a general-purpose operating system (e.g. a Windows laptop) that isn't made for real-time audio systems, you can expect to add some additional delays in the OS's and sound-card's responsiveness; these aren't the typical operations the OS is optimised to handle. They are tuned to run some longer jobs faster, not to handle very small jobs responsively.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember, when you see a person hesitating to respond, you are seeing the round-trip delay - therefore you need to double the total delays mentioned here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Any delays for beeping out obscenities and the like will occur &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the conversation is recorded. That is, you will hear the broadcast a few seconds later, but they won't interfere with the conversation being held between the interviewer and interviewee. Adding a 5-7 second delay at that point would make the conversation untenable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-06T18:18:06.547" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T18:18:06.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4309" CreationDate="2011-06-06T18:18:08.733" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first two parts are easy to address. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/HowDrugsareDevelopedandApproved/default.htm&quot;&gt;the FDA's own website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The mission of FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) is to ensure that drugs marketed in this country are safe and effective. CDER does not test drugs, although the Center's Office of Testing and Research does conduct limited research in the areas of drug quality, safety, and effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drug companies seeking to sell a drug in the United States must first test it. The company then sends CDER the evidence from these tests to prove the drug is safe and effective for its intended use. A team of CDER physicians, statisticians, chemists, pharmacologists, and other scientists reviews the company's data and proposed labeling. If this independent and unbiased review establishes that a drug's health benefits outweigh its known risks, the drug is approved for sale. The center doesn't actually test drugs itself, although it does conduct limited research in the areas of drug quality, safety, and effectiveness standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The testing is done by the company that wants to sell the drug, and the results verified by the FDA.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T18:18:08.733" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4319" CreationDate="2011-06-06T18:58:15.640" Score="35" ViewCount="3950" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can go from working hard on algorithmic programming a whole day, and feeling totally mentally exhausted, to playing chess. As far as I can understand, these two types of thinking should be strongly related. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is therefore, whether mental exhaustion is something real or is it just imagined, and instead is a question about boredom or loss of motivation? In other words, can mental exhaustion be measured?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="561" LastEditorUserId="561" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T12:23:03.243" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T12:23:03.243" Title="Is mental exhaustion something real?" Tags="|psychology|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4286" CreationDate="2011-06-06T19:21:13.973" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, women do more housework than men, but it's shifting in the direction of more equal distribution of labor. There's a fantastic and well-referenced summary of current understanding on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pobronson.com/factbook/pages/278.html&quot;&gt;Po Bronson's site&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Marriage and Family&lt;/em&gt; in 2002, women do more housework than men, but not all of it by any means. (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/lab_gen_div_of_hou-labor-gender-division-of-housework&quot;&gt;this graph&lt;/a&gt; of the results by country.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much more detail can be found in &lt;a href=&quot;http://family.jrank.org/pages/408/Division-Labor-Contemporary-Divisions-Labor.html&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; from the &lt;em&gt;Marriage and Family Encyclopedia&lt;/em&gt;, which suggests that since the first major studies in the 1970s, men have been taking on more of the housework, although women still do more than men in most households.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to an article from 2000: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Household work continues to be divided&#xA;  according to gender, with women&#xA;  performing the vast majority of the&#xA;  repetitive indoor housework tasks and&#xA;  men performing occasional outdoor&#xA;  tasks &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken from: Coltrane, S. (2000). &quot;Research&#xA;on Household Labor: Modeling and&#xA;Measuring the Social Embeddedness of&#xA;Routine Family Work.&quot; &lt;em&gt;Journal of&#xA;Marriage and the Family&lt;/em&gt; 62:1208–1233.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar information can be found from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unc.edu/~pnc/gs04.pdf&quot;&gt;Philip N. Cohen&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/2675569&quot;&gt;Suzanne M. Bianchi et al.&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://srmo.sagepub.com/view/british-social-attitudes-the-24th-report/n3.xml&quot;&gt;Crompton Rosemary and Lyonette Clare&lt;/a&gt;, and many others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="677" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T19:21:13.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4317" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4325" CreationDate="2011-06-06T19:47:25.833" Score="15" ViewCount="32364" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard claims of airborne poop particles that fly into the air everytime one flushes a toilet. Here's some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tbyil.com/Exposed_Toothbrushes.htm&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; someone states that flushing the toilet &quot;aerosolizes&quot; water/poop into the air&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://offbeathome.com/2011/04/make-your-bathroom-smell-less-like-poop&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is another article referencing such high flying particles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/germs-in-bathroom&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a WebMD article featuring the same&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The central quote from the last two is from Charles Gerba, PhD, a professor of microbiology at University of Arizona in Tucson:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Polluted water vapor erupts out of the flushing toilet bowl and it can take several hours for these particles to finally settle — not to mention where.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, I've heard that hand dryers spew these particles out onto one's hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2007/09/why-i-hate-restroom-hand-dryers.html&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is an example of a claim like that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://community.discovery.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7501919888/m/80419542301&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a short forum discussion about the same&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True? Worrisome? Also, I'd love any references as to the method of making the particles airborne if they do occur. I had the understanding that to aerosolize, one needed to overcome the cohesive forces of the material -- hence forcing them apart into small particles via strong jets of air vs. the nominal droplet size of the liquid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical that a toilets have the power necessary to aerosolize, except for perhaps the &quot;jet-powered&quot; public toilets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-07T02:32:57.603" LastActivityDate="2020-12-29T21:32:10.307" Title="Are there airborne poop particles flying around bathrooms?" Tags="|hygiene|toilets|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4315" CreationDate="2011-06-06T20:05:54.183" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mental exhaustion (also mental fatigue, mental stress) is certainly absolutely real, and in no way related to boredom or loss of motivation. In fact the opposite is usually the case - many studies relate mental exhaustion to a perceived inability to perform a task that they really want to perform. A significant instance is RAF fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain, who were frequently (and understandably) &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0142004669&quot;&gt;found to have a high level of mental exhaustion&lt;/a&gt;. Even at this stage they had a high level of motivation, and frequently had to be explicitly ordered, against their own request, to take a break before their fatigue caused them to become ineffective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some studies on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jap.physiology.org/content/106/3/857.&quot;&gt;Journal of Applied Physiology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/02/24/us-brain-exercise-idUSTRE51N73H20090224&quot;&gt;University of Wales, reported by Reuters&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4806572/Exercise-is-better-in-the-morning-if-you-have-a-stressful-job-study-suggests.html&quot;&gt;Daily Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/5624551/5639312/05639579.pdf?arnumber=5639579&amp;amp;authDecision=-203&quot;&gt;IEEE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://learning.cas.nyu.edu/object/tlc.study_tips_to_consider&quot;&gt;New York University&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/1/4/97/&quot;&gt;American Psychology Association&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-06-07T15:25:08.013" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T15:25:08.013" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4320" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4333" CreationDate="2011-06-06T20:14:55.883" Score="9" ViewCount="5153" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that if you smoke at most three cigarettes a day you don't get addicted to smoking. A similar idea was introduced in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Cigarette_Ever&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How I Met Your Mother episode&lt;/a&gt;. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2092" LastEditorUserId="1072" LastEditDate="2012-04-19T08:32:09.073" LastActivityDate="2016-07-21T20:25:13.710" Title="Does smoking under three cigarettes a day prevent addiction?" Tags="|addiction|smoking|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1091" CreationDate="2011-06-06T21:34:10.080" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing is certain.  In the book &quot;Vaccines, are they really safe and effective?&quot;  page 20-21  Says that in 1959 , Bernice Eddy discovered that polio vaccines being administered throughout the world contained an infectious agent capable of causing cancer.   SV-40  is what is was.  Here is how it works    1. Monkey kidneys are used to develop polio vaccines  2. SV-40 , a cancer causing virus , thrived in monkey kidneys.    3. Polio vaccines were contaminated   4.  Millions of people in the USA and throughout the world were infected   5. Cancer rates have increased.  SV-40 is found in the brain tumors, bone cancers, lung cancers and leukemia.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:   National Morbidity Reports taken from the U.S. Public Health surveillance reports.  Lancet ( April 18, 1950)  pp. 659-63.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vaccines are one of many sources of cancer.  War on cancer is lost, Nixon declared the war on cancer and there is no end in site.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and we live longer due to 2 proven facts.&#xA;1. HVAC  (Heating especially )&#xA;2. Modern septic systems&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3312" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T21:34:10.080" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4317" CreationDate="2011-06-06T22:23:56.733" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_%282004_season%29#Toothbrush_Surprise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mythbuster Episode 11 of 2004 Series&lt;/a&gt; showed that fecal matter did seem to get everywhere, and the explanation appeared to be through aerosol, or at least flung out of the toilet somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2014-05-16T23:44:01.403" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T23:44:01.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4037" CreationDate="2011-06-06T22:46:54.670" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;If it seems like soy foods appeared out of nowhere to be regarded as the “miracle health food” of the 21st Century, it’s because they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From 1992 to 2006, soy food sales increased from $300 million to nearly $4 billion, practically overnight, according to the Soyfoods Association of North America. This growth came about due to a massive shift in attitudes about soy. And this shift was no accident—it was the result of a massive investment in advertising by the soy industry that’s been wildly successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soy is indeed big business, very big business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From 2000 to 2007, U.S. food manufacturers introduced more than 2,700 new soy-based foods, and new soy products continue to appear on your grocer’s shelves.&#xA;Fermented soy products are the only ones I recommend consuming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the primary fermented soy products you’ll find:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tempeh a fermented soybean cake with a firm texture and nutty, mushroom-like flavor.&#xA;Miso, a fermented soybean paste with a salty, buttery texture (commonly used in miso soup).&#xA;Natto, fermented soybeans with a sticky texture and strong, cheese-like flavor.&#xA;Soy sauce, which is traditionally made by fermenting soybeans, salt and enzymes; be wary because many varieties on the market today are made artificially using a chemical process.&#xA;Please note that tofu is NOT on this list. Tofu is not fermented, so is not among the soy foods I recommend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vitamin K2: One of the Major Benefits of Fermented Soy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the main benefits of fermented soy, especially natto, is that it is the best food source of vitamin K2. Vitamin K2 is essential to preventing osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, and diseases of the brain such as dementia, and protecting you from various cancers including prostate, lung, liver cancer and leukemia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vitamin K acts synergistically with vitamin D to keep you healthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/09/18/soy-can-damage-your-health.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/09/18/soy-can-damage-your-health.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/09/18/soy-can-damage-your-health.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/09/18/soy-can-damage-your-health.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3312" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T22:46:54.670" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2847" CreationDate="2011-06-06T23:05:01.263" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funny that you bring this up, just this evening some drunk in the subway claimed that recent tsunamis were caused by submarines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For earthquakes, however, there is even research as to whether large-scale earthquakes may have been caused by human activity (not deliberately in this case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, Kerr et al. argue that there may have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/323/5912/322.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a Human Trigger for the Great Quake of Sichuan?&lt;/a&gt;. There is speculation that the man-made Zipingpu reservoir caused or at least triggered the quake, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://inside.mines.edu/~ninglu/Lu%20publications/NLJ54200903.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;data is bad&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Still, no one is near to proving that the Wenchuan quake was a case of reservoir-triggered seismicity. “There's no question triggered earthquakes happen,” says seismologist Leonardo Seeber of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. That fact and the new evidence argue that the quake-dam connection “is worth pursuing further,” he says, but proving triggering “is not easy.” And the Chinese government is tightly holding key data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; is paywalled to you, here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/02/02/did-a-new-hydropower-dam-trigger-chinas-deadly-2008-earthquake/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Discover magazine article discussing said paper.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T23:05:01.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4329" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4332" CreationDate="2011-06-06T23:24:43.110" Score="14" ViewCount="11434" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the claim that people who have ring fingers that are longer than their index fingers are attracted to the opposite sex?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, in the picture below, the hand on the left belongs to a heterosexual person, while the hand on the right belongs to a homosexual person&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Wlnyf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3259" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:13:50.060" LastActivityDate="2012-01-14T15:13:50.060" Title="Correlation between ring finger length and sexual preference" Tags="|sexuality|causality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4265" CreationDate="2011-06-06T23:58:43.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To put this whole vague matter into a nutshell:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; is in use, is working, it consumes energy. Point :)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question i looked for changes of brain activity (sleep, resting, cognitive tasks...) and overall energy consumption of the brain. 2 very good articels putting your question into a bigger picture, quite academically written, but focus on the statements concerning energy consumption. The articels also discuss, what actually can be derived from brain imaging data (fMRI, PET), how higher conscious brain functions relate to physiological changes measured by these techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The basic conclusion is, that the brain doesnt variate much its energy consumption, whether resting, tasked&lt;/strong&gt;,...Contrary it needs a average high activity (high metabolism, energy consumption) to make specific functionality possible at all. So its not like a computer, where you start a program (analog higher conscious brain function, e.g. playin chess) and then processor and memory consume raise, the energy consumption is already and constantly on a high average level, otherwise the operating system (brain) couldnt run at all a distinct software (function). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;quoted the to me most important parts, but both articles give pretty good overview and draw bigger picture around ur question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;brain represents about 2% of the body&#xA;  weight. Remarkably, despite its&#xA;  relatively small size, the brain&#xA;  accounts for about 20% of the oxygen&#xA;  and, hence, calories consumed by the&#xA;  body (1). This high rate of metabolism&#xA;  is remarkably constant despite widely&#xA;  varying mental and motoric activity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should clearly indicate, that we &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;need&lt;/strong&gt; the brain pretty much from a evolutionary point of view&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;showing that the maximum values of&#xA;  oxygen consumption and spike frequency&#xA;  achieved during stimulation were&#xA;  approximately the same from both&#xA;  baselines (i.e., both levels of&#xA;  anesthesia). The authors assert that&#xA;  an overall level of ongoing activity&#xA;  must be achieved for a particular&#xA;  function to occur&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This high metabolic activity is&#xA;  present when we are completely passive&#xA;  and resting as well as when we are&#xA;  observably doing something. Two lines&#xA;  of investigation have recently&#xA;  converged in their analysis on how&#xA;  this energy is being used. Both have&#xA;  focused on the metabolic requirements&#xA;  associated with glutamate signaling in&#xA;  the brain. This focus would seem&#xA;  reasonable, considering that greater&#xA;  than 80% of neurons are excitatory and&#xA;  greater than 90% of synapses release&#xA;  glutamate (6, 7). Attwell and Laughlin&#xA;  (8) have taken a bottom up modeling&#xA;  approach using extant data on the&#xA;  blowfly retina and the mammalian&#xA;  cerebral cortex. Estimates from their&#xA;  approach indicate that most of the&#xA;  energy used in the brain is required&#xA;  for the propagation of action&#xA;  potentials and for restoring&#xA;  postsynaptic ion fluxes after&#xA;  receptors have been stimulated by the&#xA;  neurotransmitter. In contrast,&#xA;  maintenance of the resting potential&#xA;  in neurons and glial cells accounts&#xA;  for less than 15% of the total energy&#xA;  consumption. Shulman and his&#xA;  colleagues (9, 10) in a very different&#xA;  approach using MRS in anesthetized&#xA;  rats have shown remarkably converging&#xA;  evidence that a very large fraction&#xA;  (≈80%) of the energy use in the brain&#xA;  is correlated with glutamate cycling&#xA;  and, hence, active signaling processes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An intriguing hypothesis has emerged&#xA;  that the responsiveness of neurons to&#xA;  changes in their input depends on a&#xA;  continuous, high-level but balanced&#xA;  input of both excitatory and&#xA;  inhibitory activity (for review, see&#xA;  ref. 29). Importantly, it is the&#xA;  balance between this continuous&#xA;  excitatory and inhibitory input that&#xA;  determines the gain or responsiveness&#xA;  of the neurons to correlations in&#xA;  their input. In this formulation,&#xA;  spontaneous ongoing activity becomes a&#xA;  critical enabling factor in the&#xA;  creation of functional connections&#xA;  within circuits responsible for&#xA;  specific behaviors. Furthermore, this&#xA;  correlation-induced functional&#xA;  connectivity can be modified without&#xA;  causing variations in the mean firing&#xA;  rates of the involved cells. As&#xA;  Salinas and Sejnowski have pointed out&#xA;  in their review (29), balanced neurons&#xA;  have rich dynamics and can react to&#xA;  external stimuli on effective&#xA;  timescales that are much smaller than&#xA;  the membrane time constant of a single&#xA;  neuron.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, how might this relate to our&#xA;  analysis of the energy budget of the&#xA;  brain? It should be noted that most of&#xA;  the neurophysiology discussed above&#xA;  concerns synaptic activity at the&#xA;  input to neurons. Because the highest&#xA;  energy-demanding processes in the&#xA;  brain are centered at these sites (27,&#xA;  28), it suggests that much of the&#xA;  ongoing or baseline metabolism is&#xA;  devoted to processes occurring there.&#xA;  We might therefore posit that, in the&#xA;  brain, a large majority of its&#xA;  metabolic activity is devoted to&#xA;  ongoing synaptic processes associated&#xA;  with maintaining a proper balance&#xA;  between excitatory and inhibitory&#xA;  activity. Maintenance of this balance&#xA;  allows neurons to respond&#xA;  appropriately to correlational changes&#xA;  in their input and establish the&#xA;  functional connectivity as required&#xA;  for a particular task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus, we may entertain the possibility&#xA;  that the very high baseline or ongoing&#xA;  metabolic activity of the brain not&#xA;  only supports processes necessary for&#xA;  the maintenance of the proper&#xA;  responsiveness of neurons for the&#xA;  transient and ever changing functions&#xA;  of the brain but also instantiates a&#xA;  sustained functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/99/16/10237.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indeed, relative to the high rate of&#xA;  ongoing or “basal” brain metabolism,6&#xA;  the amount dedicated to task-evoked&#xA;  regional imaging signals is remarkably&#xA;  small (estimated to be less than 5%).&#xA;  The brain continuously expends a&#xA;  considerable amount of energy, even in&#xA;  the absence of a particular task&#xA;  (i.e., when a subject is awake and at&#xA;  rest). A significant fraction of the&#xA;  energy consumed by the brain (quite&#xA;  possibly the majority) has been shown&#xA;  to be a result of functionally&#xA;  significant spontaneous neuronal&#xA;  activity.7 From this cost-based&#xA;  analysis of brain functional activity,&#xA;  it seems reasonable to conclude that&#xA;  intrinsic activity may be as&#xA;  significant, if not more so, than&#xA;  evoked activity in terms of overall&#xA;  brain function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2855379/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So overall high average energy consumption of brain in conjunction with share of the total body energy consumption should make ur point very clear. Saying &quot;but how often we actually use our conscious brain functions&quot; is no counter argument, as the whole &quot;software package&quot; is needed, the brain doesnt behave as a multi-core cpu, its one big decentral core and software is consistently rewritten (e.g. dreaming, the brain doesnt deeply rest, when you sleep. Also some savants show ability to memorize immense amount of data when drawing conscious e.g. a detailed landscape they saw, while the picture saving with their eyes was a highly short &amp;amp; unconscious process, they dont see more than a average joe, they manage somehow unconscious to recall or save simply more information out of/in the brain)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3194" LastActivityDate="2011-06-06T23:58:43.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4278" CreationDate="2011-06-07T00:13:44.317" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This phenomenon is described under &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-sleeping&quot;&gt;co-sleeping&lt;/a&gt; in psychology. Its based on childs being used to lying beside mother/father. In the transition phase to sleeping alone the teddy is compensation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a adult is affected by not having a teddy, should look for a good therapist ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=NGtd6HRRpMMC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PT8&amp;amp;dq=baby%20sleep%20%22own%20bed%22%20relationship%20%7C%20binding%20cry%2a%20mother%20psychology%20stuffed%20toy&amp;amp;ots=EWX8JHBZx2&amp;amp;sig=oDjWLzTp1e6QiyJUggzt2pMz7F4#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=stuffed%20animal&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/icd.524/abstract&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3194" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T00:13:44.317" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4329" CreationDate="2011-06-07T01:19:52.647" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an example, see this study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/readings/homofinger/homo_finger.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/readings/homofinger/homo_finger.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finger-length ratios and sexual orientation&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;(&lt;em&gt;Department of Psychology and Graduate Groups Neuroscience, Endocrinology, UCB&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our results suggest that events before birth (or even before conception in the case of older brothers) influence human sexual orientation. The masculinized right-hand 2D:4D ratio in homosexual women may reflect fetal androgen levels that are slightly higher than in heterosexual women. Homosexual men without older brothers have 2D:4D ratios indistinguishable from heterosexual eldest sons, indicating that factors other than fetal androgen (such as genetic influences[8], [9]) also contribute to sexual orientation. Finger measures indicate that men with more elder brothers, including those men who develop a homosexual orientation, might be exposed to greater than normal levels of prenatal androgen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.8. Bailey, J. M. &amp;amp; Pillard, R. C. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 48, 1089-1096 (1991). Links&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.9. Hamer, D. D., Hu, S., Magnuson, V. L., Hu, N. &amp;amp; Pattatucci, A. M. L. Science 261, 321-327 (1993). Links&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A more layman's summary of the same study from BBC:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists from California found that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;lesbian women&lt;/em&gt; have a greater difference in length between their ring finger and index finger than straight women do&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same pattern was also found for homosexual men - but only when the researchers looked at those males that had several older brothers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that the study did not indicate direct causality, merely correlation, though it did propose a theory deriving the higher likelyhood of both traits (finger length ration and homosexuality) from the same underlying cause - fetal androgens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T01:25:34.577" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4320" CreationDate="2011-06-07T01:42:40.917" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To disprove this theory, would you need to find one person who had never smoked more than 3 cigarettes a day, but who is addicted? To prove this theory, would you need to find several people who frequently smoke up to 3 cigarettes a day, but who are not addicted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking for myself, I'm an ex-addict: I've quit several times, and I've discovered (empirically) that I can't have even one or two without becoming addicted again - which disproves the theory - unless, you discount me as an example because I used to have more than 3 and am therefore arguably 'already addicted'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract from &lt;a href=&quot;http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/20/3/201.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this paper (Children's loss of autonomy over smoking: the global youth tobacco survey)&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The prevalence of lost autonomy was&#xA;  40% among subjects who smoked 1 or 2&#xA;  days/month and 41% among subjects who&#xA;  averaged less than one cigarette/day&#xA;  and increased in a dose-response&#xA;  pattern. Regression models derived&#xA;  from the Cyprus data were replicated&#xA;  by the Greek data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two national surveys confirm previous&#xA;  reports of difficulty with smoking&#xA;  cessation with infrequent smoking.&#xA;  Since loss of autonomy is universally&#xA;  recognised as a core feature of&#xA;  addiction, our data indicate that&#xA;  young adolescents experience symptoms&#xA;  of nicotine addiction with infrequent&#xA;  tobacco use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: Also your question title says &quot;prevent&quot; as if smoking less than 3 is the cause of non-addiction: but instead there may be a different, pre-existing cause. For example, maybe some people are inherently more resistant (and others less resistant) to addiction, for all sorts of reasons (mental, physical, social, etc.). The people who are able to smoke less than 3 per day are the very people who were resistant to addiction. Whereas the people who are prone to addiction might start, saying, &quot;Oh I'll just smoke 3, I won't get hooked&quot;: and then they don't stop; and then they can't stop even when they want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2011-06-08T03:44:23.213" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T03:44:23.213" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4263" CreationDate="2011-06-07T02:28:28.620" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a slightly tricky question - in that it's certainly plausable that &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; species could be resurrected, but probably not others (at least, not with technology as it stands).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The easiest way - cloning from preserved tissue/cells.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For recently extinct species that have close living relatives, cloning is one way get them back. You could take the nucleus from a normal 'body' cell in the preserved tissue and implant it in the egg or a modern relative of the original species (so called &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transfer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/4409958/Extinct-ibex-is-resurrected-by-cloning.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Researchers tried this with a sub-species of goat that went extinct at the turn of the century, but failed&lt;/a&gt;. It's likely that part of the problem here, is that embryonic development of mammals depends greatly on cues from the mother - and the domestic goat used in these attempts may have been a poor surrogate. I gather &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20111120044722/http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/18/can-woolly-mammoth-be-cloned-from-frozen-dna/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the mammoth example cited in another answer&lt;/a&gt; is attempting to take the same route&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A harder way - creating a synthetic genome&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For most species that people would want to resurrect, well preserved cells or tissue just aren't avaliable. In these cases it might be possible to use ancient DNA techniques get genomic sequences (especially creatures that die in permafrost like mammoths!). The problem here is going from DNA sequences as letters on a computer to a physical genome. It's possible to make &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_life#Mycoplasma_laboratorium_controversy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a synthetic bacterial genome&lt;/a&gt;, but even that had to be inserted into an existing cell. Inserting a eukarotic genome into the nucleus of egg cell would be much harder, because eukaryote genomes are (mainly) big, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130803055229/http://www.emunix.emich.edu:80/%7Erwinning/genetics/chrom.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;packaging them into chromosomes is very complex&lt;/a&gt; (try to ignore the 90s webdesign there...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you'd done that you still have the problem of finding a surrogate the develop the eggs, or a machine to do the job. Not easy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible we will eventually be able to do all this. But it's a long from the synthetic bacterial genome to there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2368" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-06-24T15:05:06.657" LastActivityDate="2022-06-24T15:05:06.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4037" CreationDate="2011-06-07T03:10:37.843" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tofu and other soy are listed/recommended (along with many other foods) in the context of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/choose-choix/meat-viande/tips-trucs-eng.php&quot;&gt;Canada's Food Guide&lt;/a&gt; (which is a summary of the Canadian government's recommendations for healthy eating).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/prodnatur/legislation/docs/rapport_tech_report_soya-eng.php&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; explains why Health Canada (i.e. the relevant department of the government of Canada) does or doesn't warn various categories of people against using using various quantities of soy isoflavone products: it includes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/prodnatur/legislation/docs/rapport_tech_report_soya-eng.php#q&quot;&gt;this statement for vegetarians&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/allerg/fa-aa/allergen_soy-soja-eng.php&quot;&gt;Soy - One of the nine most common food allergens&lt;/a&gt; says that you can be allergic to soy: in which case I suppose it is harmful to you, and you'd better avoid it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/soynorris&quot;&gt;http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/soynorris&lt;/a&gt; starts with,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are at least 30 - 40 scientific&#xA;  papers on soy published each month. If&#xA;  you do a search on PubMed, you will&#xA;  find almost 7,000 papers with “soy” in&#xA;  the title and over 19,000 with soy in&#xA;  the abstract. So, it would be quite&#xA;  easy to build a false case against soy&#xA;  by citing a handful of these thousands&#xA;  of studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It then goes on to give its opinion on each of the various ways in which soy is said to be potentially bad for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thyroid Problems (people who have a reliable source of iodine can safely eat soy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Breast Cancer (it appears safe for women with and without breast cancer to eat moderate amounts of soy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dementia (mixed results, slight differences)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feminizing Characteristics (not really, IMO)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kidney Stones (limit soy intake if you are prone to kidney stones because soy is high in oxalates)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My opinion after doing this research is that there is no conclusive (strong, widely accepted) evidence of harm; and that that implies that the 'normal' or 'occasional' dosages mentioned in the OP are, typically, relatively harmless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be worth noting too that there's little or nothing that's absolutely harmless - if you want to worry about soy, it's also possible to worry about the various alternatives (e.g. milk, meat, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2011-06-07T14:09:30.387" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T14:09:30.387" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4338" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6214" CreationDate="2011-06-07T08:06:31.530" Score="10" ViewCount="9420" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read it &lt;a href=&quot;http://graphjam.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/farts.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and I couldn't believe it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So can a person still fart after dying ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="808" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2015-10-16T12:00:13.083" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T12:00:13.083" Title="Can a person still fart after death?" Tags="|biology|mortality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4339" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-07T08:12:04.010" Score="17" ViewCount="25455" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't get this, I see it on crime TV programs a lot, they stuff a cloth in the mouth of someone so they can't scream/shout for help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I put a sock in my mouth once, it was pretty easy to push it out with my tongue, gg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is this nonsense?  I can't see it working unless you put tape over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="973" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2018-03-16T00:54:46.947" LastActivityDate="2018-03-16T00:54:46.947" Title="Can you put a gag in someone's mouth to prevent them from talking?" Tags="|television|criminology|clothing|prisoner|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4340" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4344" CreationDate="2011-06-07T08:14:50.117" Score="13" ViewCount="7218" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://humanresources.about.com/od/interviewing/a/interview_quest.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;About.com&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you a U.S. citizen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every interview I have had has asked this. Even pre-interview screening includes this question. Is it really illegal for them to ask this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Not really permissible on this site, but what would a good reply to such a question be if asked during an interview and you know that &amp;quot;the wrong answer&amp;quot; means no continuation interview?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the people who are not in the job-search mode. The typical question asked are verbatim,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Do you have the legal right to work in the US?&amp;quot; — which I believe is legal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Do you now or in the future require a work visa to continue to work&amp;quot; — which is a round-about way to ask about citizenship because non-citizens are the only ones who need the work visa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CLARIFICATION:&#xA;Since people are misunderstanding my use of CITIZEN. I am referring to any individual who has the same employment rights as a citizen as a citizen, this includes people who are PR's(green card) or citizens, or hold permanent authorization to work in the US (O-1 etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T15:35:02.923" Title="Is asking about U.S. citizenship an illegal interview question?" Tags="|united-states|government|employment|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4320" CreationDate="2011-06-07T08:25:40.150" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Non-smokers are obviously not addicted to cigarettes.&#xA;As non-smokers smoker 0 cigarettes a day, and 0 is less than 3, there's some truth to the assertion.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;That said, this report &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110502174226.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110502174226.htm&lt;/a&gt; suggests even secondhand smoke can cause nicotine addiction, one symptom of smoking addiction.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugabuse.gov/DrugPages/nicotine.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.drugabuse.gov/DrugPages/nicotine.html&lt;/a&gt; possibly has more information, don't have time now to browse through the entire site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T08:25:40.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4340" CreationDate="2011-06-07T10:42:49.503" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is illegal to discriminate based on national origin, which a question about citizenship is an obvious potential proxy for. That said, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/i-9.pdf&quot;&gt;Form I-9&lt;/a&gt; is used to determine the eligibility of a person to work in the US, and allows a person to assert US citizenship. This is really the only context in which this question should ever be asked. Also, for companies large enough to have an HR department, Form I-9 generally ought not go anywhere but HR -- the people actually making the hiring decision should not be asking the question or seeing the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that permanent residents are not US citizens, but are allowed to remain indefinitely and work without restriction (sans some government-related jobs), so &quot;Are you a U.S. citizen?&quot; is NOT an appropriate proxy for &quot;Will we have to sponsor a visa?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question &quot;Will we have to sponsor a visa?&quot; is probably itself inadvisable. Form I-9 even specifically states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ANTI-DISCRIMINATION NOTICE: It is illegal to discriminate against work-authorized individuals. Employers CANNOT specify which documents they will accept from an employee. &#xA;  The refusal to hire an individual&#xA;  because the documents have a future&#xA;  expiration date may also constitute&#xA;  illegal discrimination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it's not that specific &lt;em&gt;questions&lt;/em&gt; are &quot;illegal&quot; per se, but that they create an perception -- accurate or not -- that discrimination is occurring, and can be used as strong evidence of such in lawsuits and regulatory actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UCIS also has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uscis.gov/files/form/m-274.pdf&quot;&gt;Employer Handbook&lt;/a&gt; regarding Form I-9 that may be interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3356" LastEditorUserId="3356" LastEditDate="2011-06-07T10:55:16.087" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T10:55:16.087" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4098" CreationDate="2011-06-07T11:47:43.303" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rafflesmedicalgroup.com/health-articles/ask-a-raffles-doctor/food-and-nutrition/is-water-therapy-harmful-to-the-body.aspx&quot; title=&quot;DR&quot;&gt;Dr Stanley Liew Choon Fong, Specialist in Endocrinology, Raffles Hospital&lt;/a&gt; claimed, in response to a question about water therapy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no scientific evidence that “water therapy” has any specific benefits to people with hypertension or diabetes. In fact, healthy diet, regular exercise and keeping body weight in the healthy range are the best lifestyle modifications for people with hypertension and diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consuming 1.5 litre of water in one go can even be harmful as this is almost approaching the limit which can result in water intoxication. Also, drinking an excessive amount of fluid is not advisable for those with weak heart, which can be present in people with hypertension and diabetes. If in doubt, they should consult their doctors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T11:47:43.303" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4348" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4353" CreationDate="2011-06-07T13:06:23.687" Score="16" ViewCount="1580" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/05/antimatter_for_1000_seconds/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Register&lt;/a&gt;, talking about the recent CERN antimatter experiment.  I'm not concerned with the experiment itself, but rather this claim &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This, in turn, would help us understand how come our universe is asymmetrical, home to vastly more matter than anti-matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm very skeptical of this claim because it seems to be making a definitive statement about something that appears unmeasurable.  Is there legitimate scientific backing to this statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2019-06-18T04:25:23.863" LastActivityDate="2019-06-23T21:50:46.050" Title="Is there &quot;vastly more matter than anti-matter&quot; in the Universe?" Tags="|physics|astronomy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2402" CreationDate="2011-06-07T13:14:08.393" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, according to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/05/AR2007070501945.html&quot;&gt;Washington Post&lt;/a&gt; report of a 2007 case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;According to documents gathered by law enforcement officials, the three men used stolen credit card numbers at hundreds of online stores to buy items that fellow jihadists might need in the field. Authorities also say the men laundered money from stolen credit card accounts through more than a dozen online gambling sites.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Al-Daour also allegedly laundered money through online gambling sites, using accounts set up with stolen credit card numbers and victims' identities, and ran up thousand-dollar tabs at such sites as AbsolutePoker.com, BetFair.com, BetonBet.com, Canbet.com, Eurobet.com, NoblePoker.com and ParadisePoker.com. Al-Daour and other members of the group conducted 350 transactions at 43 different online wagering sites, using more than 130 compromised credit card accounts. Winnings were withdrawn and transferred to online bank accounts the men controlled.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, charges made by authorities are sometimes wrong, but I note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;they changed their pleas to guilty. They were sentenced yesterday to prison terms ranging from 6 1/2 to 10 years.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives more veracity to the investigator's claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T13:14:08.393" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4348" CreationDate="2011-06-07T15:05:34.627" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Matter/antimatter annihilation produces gamma rays at specific frequencies. That means we can detect regions of space where matter and antimatter are interacting.&#xA;The logic showing matter antimatter asymmetry thus goes something like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obviously in our local area of the Universe (solar system, Milky Way) consists of matter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can’t tell if distant galaxies consist of matter or antimatter– spectra etc. all the same. Universe could consist of domains of matter and antimatter, with net baryon asymmetry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If matter/antimatter domains are in contact, gamma rays produced at boundary from annihilation. Cosmic gamma ray background indicates domains must be at least ~Gpc in size.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Voids between domains would show up in the CMB.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(list from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;sqi=2&amp;amp;ved=0CBkQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~golwala/ph135c/14SaraswatBaoBaryogenesis.pdf&amp;amp;ei=_jjuTZvlFof1-gb_3dCkCA&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNHX0QQUKSSebTj51zsEzkABBv8RRA&quot;&gt;The Origin of Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry&lt;/a&gt; - pdf)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/gammaray_best.html&quot;&gt;gamma ray background doesn't reveal domain borders.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/1yr_release.html&quot;&gt;WMAP does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; show voids between large domains&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&#xA;So if there's a lot of antimatter out there, it's not in contact with matter anywhere that we can see, and it's not separated from normal matter by cosmic voids either. That doesn't leave much room for antimatter in the observable universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T15:05:34.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2064" CreationDate="2011-06-07T15:43:25.267" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Techniques like Life Cycle assesment (LCA) can be used to answer this kind of questions, but these techniques often need to make many assumptions. &#xA;Some example studies and their references can be found in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifoam.org/about_ifoam/around_world/eu_group-new/events/climatecamp/ppt/JohnHermansen.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;presentation&lt;/a&gt;. It cites 20 studies that state that conventional agriculture has lower green house gas emissions than organic agriculture, vs 8 that state the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However in my opinion: if you would use a technique like LCA to find out the best management for a specific piece of land, you might end up with eg a agroforestry system which uses chemical fertiliser. This is not 'conventional' agriculture. It is not 'organic' agriculture. It is a combination of techniques without being dogmatic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, if you compare such a system vs a 'organic' system, it would have the same environmental impact if no changes are made, but if some techniques which are not allowed in organic farming are used wisely the environmental impact (according to the metric you chose) may decrease. A clever usage of all available technologies, some of which are not allowed by organic farming, should therefore always score 'better' than organic farming, and also better than 'conventional' farming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to read this Nature article, which actually supports the same claim: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6827/full/410409a0.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Urban myths of organic farming&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.land-care.org.uk/environment/current_topics/leaf_conference/trewavas_articles/trewavas_2001_nature.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(free download)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Organic agriculture was originally formulated as an ideology, but today's global problems — such as climate change and population growth — need agricultural pragmatism and flexibility, not ideology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean that some of the issues that organic farming tries to tackle are not real. I like some of the research of Jules Pretty, who has been looking to external costs of agriculture: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0308-521X%2800%2900031-7&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;external cost UK agriculture&lt;/a&gt;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefightside.com/uploads/3/7/9/5/37958949/an_assessment_of_the_total_external_costs_of_uk_agriculture.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Free download&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastEditorUserId="34588" LastEditDate="2017-11-04T19:26:17.753" LastActivityDate="2017-11-04T19:26:17.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4355" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4356" CreationDate="2011-06-07T15:48:22.643" Score="35" ViewCount="4033" Body="&lt;p&gt;Users of programmable text editors such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/&quot;&gt;Emacs&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vim.org/&quot;&gt;Vim&lt;/a&gt; claim that using a mouse for day-to-day programming and computing tasks makes you less efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in this playful &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/6999927&quot;&gt;Welcome to Vim&lt;/a&gt; video by Derek Wyatt, he calls the mouse a &quot;rat-tailed beast&quot; [6:17]. It's clearly done in jest, but I get the feeling he's only half joking, and every accomplished Vim user I've spoken to seems to feel the same way about using Vim in conjunction with a mouse. (i.e. They don't do it and ridicule those who do.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having used Vim/gVim for about a year, I love the modal editing system, but I'm not convinced yet that keyboard-only input is more efficient than mouse and keyboard input combined. My feeling is that the preference for keyboard-only input expressed amongst hackers stems more from a connection with the past, a necessity for a reliable input method with servers and mouse-less machines, and the feeling of superiority and 'eliteness' it may bring to some users. So...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any non-anecdotal evidence (e.g. usability study) to suggest that using a mouse in conjunction with a keyboard is less efficient than using only the keyboard?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3358" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T23:59:27.887" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T11:27:03.703" Title="Is using a mouse less efficient?" Tags="|computers|keyboard|hardware|hacking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4355" CreationDate="2011-06-07T16:58:57.270" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the standard references on the topic is an article by Bruce Tognazzini, the founder of the Apple Human Interface Group and a renowned usability expert about using the keyboard vs. using the mouse: &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Keyboard vs. The Mouse, pt 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; (Originally published in the AppleDirect, August, 1989; Republished as Chapter 6, in Tog on Interface). Among the long discourse:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We’ve done a cool $50 million of R &amp;amp; D on the Apple Human Interface. We discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing.&#xA;The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding. &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, having provided one reputable reference, I will trump that with the resident $deity. In a Jeff Atwood's 2008 Coding Horror post titled '&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/03/revisiting-keyboard-vs-the-mouse-pt-1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Revisiting &amp;quot;Keyboard vs. The Mouse, pt 1&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;', he takes issue with the naive interpretation of Tog's article linked above (namely, only using the quote that I myself shown out of context), and points to another very relevant snippet from the same article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, in fact, I find myself on the opposite side in at least one instance, namely editing. By using Command X, C, and V, the user can select with one hand and act with the other. Two-handed input. Two-handed input can result in solid productivity gains (Buxton 1986).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Atwood concludes, wisely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think anyone would argue that &lt;strong&gt;learning&lt;/strong&gt; keyboard shortcuts is faster than using the mouse to navigate and learn a program. Clearly it isn't -- it's quite painful, as anyone who has ever been stranded at a Unix command prompt can probably tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as Tog himself notes, &lt;strong&gt;when the keyboard shortcut is already memorized and well understood, it's a clear productivity win.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, Jeff provides this obvious one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that we're typing some text into a document of some kind, and we wish to save the document we're working on.... If it &lt;strong&gt;seems ridiculous&lt;/strong&gt; that the mouse method:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Take your right hand off the keyboard&#xA;2. Place your right hand on the mouse&#xA;3. Mouse over to the File menu&#xA;4. Click File&#xA;5. Click Save&#xA;6. Place your right hand back on the keyboard &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could be measurably faster than the keyboard method:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Use your left hand to press Control+S&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assure you that you are not alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why this is true is alluded to by Jeff, but to elaborate on it a bit using the basic User Interface Design 101 concepts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is very easy to start moving the mouse&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is very hard to stop moving it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, clicking on a menu item that is in the corner (best) or at the very top edge of the screen (worse but OK) is a fairly easy UI task for a human hand-eye coordination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clicking on a small element of the sub-menu 3 levels deep in menu tree, on the other hand, is much harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, as noted in my comment, the efficiency answer depends to a large part on the specific task to be done and a specific interface (or rather its design from mouse and keyboard work perspective).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T11:27:03.703" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4357" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4364" CreationDate="2011-06-07T17:03:47.770" Score="2" ViewCount="904" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to be common knowledge that using peanut butter is good for removing chewing gum from hair or the bottoms of shoes. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thriftyfun.com/tf978270.tip.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;One&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Gum-out-of-Your-Hair&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Two&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://askville.amazon.com/gum-hair-cutting/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=37634&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Three&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1494" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T23:45:07.577" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T23:45:07.577" Title="Is peanut butter good for removing gum?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4358" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4362" CreationDate="2011-06-07T17:06:42.590" Score="18" ViewCount="6643" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common belief that you should use tomato juice to remove the smell after you get sprayed by a skunk. Does it work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1494" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T10:13:58.097" LastActivityDate="2018-07-16T00:18:50.917" Title="Is tomato juice useful for removing skunk smell?" Tags="|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4115" CreationDate="2011-06-07T17:24:45.400" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I emailed every manufacturer listed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.safesense.com/manufacturers.shtml&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; (except Trojan -- could not find an email contact method on their site) the email found &lt;a href=&quot;http://pastebin.com/abAxzJQ5&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;. I received one bounced email, one instruction to actually call the company (which I didn't really feel like doing), but I just got a written response today that I think is quite helpful!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The email is from a Regulatory Affairs / Quality Assurance Manager at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalprotection.com/groovy/gp_home.html&quot;&gt;Global Protection Corporation&lt;/a&gt;. Now, I don't actually know which brand uses this company -- they appear to be a manufacturer and perhaps they are re-branded and sold under one of the more common names at the link above. In any case, here was the response:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Mr. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;_&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Condoms are a medical device regulated by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Health Canada and other regulatory bodies.  Guidelines are provided that outline labeling and language requirements, storage, and testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Physical testing is performed on each lot of condoms and includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Dimensional Testing for length, width and thickness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Air Inflation Testing for volume and pressure at burst&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Leakage Testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Visible Defects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Freedom From Holes testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Package Integrity Testing &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Colour fastness (for color condoms only)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please note that every condom is electronically tested for reliability and safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prior to receiving approval to sell condoms in the United States or International Markets, biological testing is required to assure the safety of the materials.  Additionally, stability studies have been conducted and demonstrate the shelf-life of condoms to be 5 years.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Storage of condoms in a wallet is not recommended as damage to the product could occur.  Short-term storage in a wallet is less of a concern than longer-term storage. Degradation will occur at higher temperatures, and continued pressure or folding of the condoms can weaken the latex.  There is no study that I am aware of that specifically tests condoms in wallets.  The warning comes from general knowledge that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Higher temperatures for extended periods degrades latex and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Pressure on the condom for extended periods can degrade the latex.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is recommended that condoms be stored in a cool, dry place (below 100° F) and avoid exposure to direct sunlight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please let me know if you have any additional questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my takeaway is that the recommendation is due to materials science factors and degredation of the latex. I don't know that I buy the &quot;pinholes from rubbing&quot; explanation, though I suppose these could come about -- we'd need to know what failure mechanism latex degredation leads to. Pinholes &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be it, but it could simply be breakage once the condom is actually used vs. a failure before hand. Not sure!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll update the answer if I hear back from any other manufacturers I emailed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T17:24:45.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4340" CreationDate="2011-06-07T17:38:40.063" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US Employment is considered &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;At Will&lt;/a&gt;.  Employers have the right to choose who they hire.  It is not illegal to ask a question.  It is not Illegal for you to decline to answer a question.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://jobsearch.about.com/od/interviewsnetworking/a/illegalinterv.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Asking certian questions opens your company up for a complaint to the EEOC.&lt;/a&gt;  The employer may have to pay a penalty and perhaps damages to you but they will not be forced to provide you with employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2011-06-07T18:54:16.897" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T18:54:16.897" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4358" CreationDate="2011-06-07T17:39:10.013" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: I can't find a conclusive answer! At best it's &quot;maybe&quot;, but I suspect it's actually &quot;not really&quot;. There are no scholarly studies on the subject in evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need only google for &quot;skunk&quot; and &quot;tomato&quot; to find a lot of vague, poorly-if-at-all cited discussions on the subject, but they tend to come down on the side of &quot;even if it works, there's a better way&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://animals.howstuffworks.com/mammals/skunk-spray-tomato-juice1.htm&quot;&gt;One page&lt;/a&gt; attributes the perceived effect to &quot;olfactory fatigue&quot;, which sounds plausible, but again there's no clear evidence of a careful scientific examination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oddly enough, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Removal_of_Skunk_Odor/Removing_Odor&quot;&gt;rather stubby Wikibooks page&lt;/a&gt; is the most information-dense I've found, and points to a fellow named &lt;a href=&quot;http://home.earthlink.net/~skunkremedy/home/&quot;&gt;Paul Krebaum&lt;/a&gt;, who apparently has an academic and professional background in chemistry, who worked out a baking soda and hydrogen peroxide mix that breaks down the thiols in the spray quite effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was &lt;a href=&quot;http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2004/09/mythbusters_solar_death_ray_sk.html&quot;&gt;tested in a MythBusters episode&lt;/a&gt;, where apparently they labelled tomato juice as &quot;plausible&quot; (I haven't seen that particular episode, though, so I don't know how careful they were to avoid the possible &quot;olfactory fatigue&quot; effect&quot;), a couple others &quot;busted&quot;, and the Paul Krebaum-style mixture as &quot;confirmed&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, I'd go for the peroxide/soda/soap mix. I mean really, who actually wants the mess of tomato juice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3356" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T17:39:10.013" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4339" CreationDate="2011-06-07T17:39:10.263" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csuchico.edu/~pmccaffrey/syllabi/SPPA342/342unit3.html&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Poor velopharyngeal closure will&#xA;  affect speech but is not a matter of&#xA;  great concern in regard to swallowing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if I read it correctly (entirely possible that I did not), then the velopharyngeal closure is a complicated way of saying &quot;mouth&quot;.  So getting something in there will affect your ability to scream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the second part, can you get something in there not easily dislodge with a tongue?  Hopefully this is easily enough observed that I won't get hit for references.  If you open your mouth as wide as you can, you will observe that you can still pull it open more with your fingers (though it hurts) and when you release it will return to the prior gap.  So yes, you can cram enough in there such that your tongue cannot deliver enough force to dislodge, though a sock may not be enough.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T17:39:10.263" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4357" CreationDate="2011-06-07T18:09:17.780" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems true. Loads of vidoes on Youtube, though many of the first ones I found only started showing footage &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; peanut butter was already in the hair, thus you couldn't really see the gum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by_Qn9NboBg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is one that seems to illustrate it working, though you only see footage after peanut butter is already obstructing the view. It does look like gum being removed at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that anything oily may work as well. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6hXiKW1JSg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a shot of a mother using extra virgin olive oil and shows the gum before, the oil on the hair/gum, and the gum coming out. Assuming you trust there was no funny business when the video cut, that's a fairly conclusive video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0NdaWJsi6I&amp;amp;NR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is another with what looks like real gum and recommendations for either olive oil or peanut butter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEDtVQqDQ4E&amp;amp;NR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is one more, where if you buy they didn't do anything funny before hand, they removed gum quite easily with olive oil but also mentioned that peanut butter works as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize these are sources from YouTube, but with a lack of peer-reviewed journal publications, I figured videos answering the question would be great, though they require trusting that they're not all conspiring just to get more people to pointlessly fill their hair with oily substances...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T18:09:17.780" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4366" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4368" CreationDate="2011-06-07T19:21:30.760" Score="10" ViewCount="967" Body="&lt;p&gt;The description from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban#Comparison_with_other_logical_languages&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lojban (pronounced &lt;code&gt;[ˈloʒban]&lt;/code&gt;) is a constructed, syntactically unambiguous human language based on predicate logic, succeeding the project of Loglan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that this is the &lt;em&gt;goal&lt;/em&gt; of the language. Has it succeeded? I skimmed through the Wikipedia article but wasn't able to quickly find a clarification on its ambiguity. I did notice this in the &quot;Future Goals&quot; header:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eliminating ambiguity in language&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am having trouble understanding the distinction here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T20:05:09.690" Title="Is Lojban completely unambiguous?" Tags="|language|logic|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4367" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-07T20:01:22.240" Score="12" ViewCount="1044" Body="&lt;p&gt;With recent earthquakes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/06/global-warming-natural-disasters-conference&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327273.800-climate-change-may-trigger-earthquakes-and-volcanoes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt; have started &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-03-11-todays-tsunami-this-is-what-climate-change-looks-like&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claiming&lt;/a&gt; that this is a sign of the change we are causing.  This &lt;a href=&quot;http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/368/1919/2317.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; indicates a historical association (but does not claim causal relationship).  In the media this appears to have started with a claim by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/15/danny-glover-haiti-earthq_n_425160.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Danny Glover&lt;/a&gt; which was originally not taken seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a substantial amount of independent scientific research (more than three papers, by at least two unaffiliated groups) indicating that increasing the temperatures of the earth by a few degrees over a century will cause more earthquakes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the purpose of this question let's assume that AGW is correct and that we are affecting the temperature at least 1 degree Celsius over the next hundred years.  That way we can discuss the actual question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1 degree is not meant to be a limitation.  I would take as evidence any historical earthquake triggered by global temperature change.  The last comment was just to avoid AGW arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T21:44:28.797" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T21:44:28.797" Title="Do increasing global temperatures cause earthquakes?" Tags="|climate-change|geology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4366" CreationDate="2011-06-07T20:05:09.690" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Lojban&quot;&gt;Lojban site&lt;/a&gt; seems to clarify, indicating that &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, it has succeeded in at least being syntactically unambiguous (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lojban has an unambiguous grammar (proven by computer analysis of a formal grammar with YACC), pronunciation, and morphology (word forms). [1]&lt;/strong&gt; The person who reads or hears a Lojban sentence is never in doubt as to what words it contains or what roles they play in the sentence. Lojban has no words that sound alike but have different meanings (like &quot;herd&quot; and &quot;heard&quot;), that have multiple unrelated meanings (&quot;set&quot;), or that differ only in punctuation but not in sound (like the abominable &quot;its&quot; and &quot;it's&quot;). There is never any doubt about where words begin and end (&quot;cargo shipment&quot; can be heard as 2, 3, or 4 words). The function of each word is clear; there is nothing like the English &quot;Time flies like an arrow.&quot;, in which any of the first three words could be the verb. Precision in no way confines the meaning of a Lojban sentence. &lt;strong&gt;It is possible to speak nonsense, to tell a lie, or to be misunderstood.&lt;/strong&gt; You can be very specific, or you can be intentionally vague. &lt;strong&gt;Your hearer may not understand what you meant, but will always understand what you said.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lojban.org/tiki/Lojban%20Introductory%20Brochure#unambiguity&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, without being 100% clear on your question, it appears that one could take this two different ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, Lojban has succeeded in making an unambiguous language with respect to word roles (verb, adjective, noun, etc.), word used (as in nothing like &quot;witch/which&quot; when listening or &quot;flies (bugs)/flies (flight)&quot; when reading) and the like.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, the human intentionality component still appears to allow the speaker to be vague or intentionally misleading, which still allows for ambiguity with respect to the content.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that the goal was to eliminate common hangups with misunderstandings that occur as a result of syntax, not as a result of being imprecise or misleading. Thus, again, the answer may depend on what you're asking. It appears that &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; goal was always to eliminate &lt;em&gt;syntactic&lt;/em&gt; sources of ambiguity and that they have succeeded in doing so, as shown through the success of parsing the language with a compiler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yacc&quot;&gt;YACC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T20:05:09.690" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4370" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4371" CreationDate="2011-06-07T21:57:30.827" Score="16" ViewCount="1103" Body="&lt;p&gt;This came up in chat where it was claimed that about 20% of Canadians are not born in the country itself, is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;20% of Canadians were not born in Canada&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-06-07T22:28:46.163" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T03:47:26.033" Title="Are only 80% of Canadians born in the country?" Tags="|canada|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4370" CreationDate="2011-06-07T22:02:37.253" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2006 the number was very close to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The census enumerated 6,186,950 foreign-born in Canada in 2006. They represented virtually one in five (19.8%) of the total population, the highest proportion since 1931, when 22.2% of the population was foreign-born. In 2001, the foreign-born represented 18.4% of the population.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full details of this information is available from Statistics Canada, which is an official federal department of the Canadian Government:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; Immigration in Canada: A Portrait of the Foreign-born Population, 2006 Census:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; Immigration: Driver of population growth&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; Proportion of foreign-born highest in 75 years&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/as-sa/97-557/p2-eng.cfm&quot;&gt;http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/as-sa/97-557/p2-eng.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Canadian Government conducts a &quot;Census&quot; regularly, which Canadians are required by law to answer fully and truthfully.  The information is assumed to be accurate, and the questionnaire is short and easy to understand (I'm Canadian, and I just filled one out recently after receiving it in the mail).  That information I just quoted is based on official Census data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3068" LastEditorUserId="3068" LastEditDate="2011-06-07T22:10:21.783" LastActivityDate="2011-06-07T22:10:21.783" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4373" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-07T22:42:58.730" Score="179" ViewCount="27676" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blackle.com/&quot;&gt;Blackle&lt;/a&gt; is a search engine that claims to save energy because it uses a black background. Is there any evidence to back up their claim that a website using a black background will save energy, and if so, how much energy will be saved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1936" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:34:03.290" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T06:04:26.067" Title="Does a webpage with a black background save energy?" Tags="|environment|computers|energy|software|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4373" CreationDate="2011-06-08T01:28:48.633" Score="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blackle.com/about/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blackle&lt;/a&gt; actually cite a real reference to backup their claims. Credit to them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blackle.com/about/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;About page&lt;/a&gt; they quote a line from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://enduse.lbl.gov/Info/LBNL-48581.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Energy Use and Power Levels in New Monitors and Personal Computers&lt;/a&gt;, Roberson et al, Environmental Energy Technologies Division, &#xA;Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, UCLA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That line does actually appear in the report, and is backed by the following data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/c6yrk.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Table 8 from report&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reports goes on to conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Among the few LCD monitors in the table, the power used to display a white screen is indistinguishable from power used to display the desktop.  Thus, it appears that display color is a significant determinant of on power for CRTs, but not for LCDs.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, in LCD technology terms, 2002 is a long time ago. I have no knowledge of any power-saving innovations in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T01:28:48.633" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4215" CreationDate="2011-06-08T01:55:20.510" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the very same &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow-Washington_hotline&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; article that you cite, the discrepancy is made clear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;The first generation of the hot line had no voice element at all; the memorandum called for a full-time duplex wire telegraph circuit, based on the idea that spontaneous verbal communications could lead to miscommunications and misperceptions.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;In September 1971, it was decided to upgrade the system with better technology. [...] A phone was installed, and the main telegraph line was complemented by two new satellite communication lines, one formed by two US Intelsat satellites and the other composed of two Soviet Molniya II satellites. This phase of upgrade lasted from 1971–1978, and in the process the Washington-Tangier-Moscow radio line was eliminated. [...]&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, Jimmy Carter was president 1977–1981, overlapping the late stages of the implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T01:55:20.510" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4381" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4461" CreationDate="2011-06-08T02:38:20.163" Score="20" ViewCount="4586" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife is often telling me that drinking coffee later in the day will lower my &quot;quality of sleep.&quot; Is this so? For an example of a bit beefier of a source for this claim, consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://paleozonenutrition.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/caffeine-affects-your-sleep-no-ifs-no-buts/&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; blog post, featuring the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today’s NZ Sunday Star Times&#xA;  had a short article on how and why any amount of caffeine can affect your sleep, from research done at &lt;a href=&quot;http://sleepwake.massey.ac.nz/&quot;&gt;Massey University’s Sleep / Wake Research Centre&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Myth:&lt;/strong&gt; Coffee has no effect on me.  I can have a coffee right before bed and have no problem going to sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fact:&lt;/strong&gt; If you ingest enough caffeine you may have trouble getting off to sleep but in a regular caffeine consumer this is not usually where the damage is done.  Caffeine adversely affects the quality of your sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I wandered over to the link to the Massey/Wake Research Centre, but the link was only to their home page. I clicked around to their list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://sleepwake.massey.ac.nz/frame/frm_pub.htm&quot;&gt;PUBLICATIONS&lt;/a&gt; and searched the page for the terms &quot;caffeine&quot; or &quot;coffee.&quot; I got one hit: &lt;em&gt;The suitability of a caffeinated energy drink for night-shift workers. Physiology and Behaviour&lt;/em&gt;. The abstract is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16574171&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;, but I can't get the full article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They tested 15 night shift workers, giving them energy drinks containing actives (caffeine, etc.) during one period and a placebo energy drink during another period and monitored their &quot;wakefulness&quot; and sleep. The abstract certainly seems to indicate some effect, but I'm hazy as to what this might mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sleep efficiency was also significantly reduced from 91.8+/-.9% [placebo energy drink] to 84.7+/-2.7% [active energy drink] (p&amp;lt;.05).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there other studies/sources answering whether caffeine later in the day reduces one's quality of sleep?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If quality &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; reduced, is there any way to translate that into approximate perceived effect? As in, are there any sources for what &quot;quality of sleep&quot; is necessary to feel refreshed? Or, per the above, what is &quot;sleep efficiency&quot; and how much difference does 7% make?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask the last question because I think there's something to the following hypothetical study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Measure the &quot;quality of sleep&quot; of many subjects during various night's sleeps&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask them in the morning to report their perceived &quot;refreshed-ness&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compare the measured quantity with their answers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If measured and reported do not correlate, then &quot;quality of sleep&quot; probably isn't the quantity any of us cares about with respect to living life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T21:16:54.463" Title="Does caffeine later in the day affect quality of sleep?" Tags="|sleep|caffeine|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4386" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4417" CreationDate="2011-06-08T06:12:06.767" Score="12" ViewCount="6134" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does tooth paste cause acne around the mouth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This source claims it can, but gives no sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another cause of acne around the mouth is toothpaste. The flavors and perfumes added to flavored toothpaste can cause breakouts around the mouth in the same way that the flavors and perfumes in lip balm can cause breakouts around the mouth, but most brands of toothpaste have an additional problem ingredient, sodium lauryl sulfate.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facingacne.com/tips-treatments-acne-mouth/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Best Tips and Treatments for Acne Around the Mouth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="854" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2017-12-12T05:07:59.427" LastActivityDate="2017-12-12T05:07:59.427" Title="Does toothpaste cause acne?" Tags="|medical-science|dentistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4381" CreationDate="2011-06-08T07:19:12.173" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you are used to: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(quote and link from wikipedia):&#xA;Caffeine tolerance develops very quickly, especially among heavy coffee and energy drink consumers. Complete tolerance to the sleep disruption effects of caffeine develops after consuming 400 mg of caffeine 3 times a day for 7 days. Complete tolerance to subjective effects of caffeine was observed to develop after consuming 300 mg 3 times per day for 18 days, and possibly even earlier. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acnp.org/G4/GN401000165/CH161.html&quot;&gt;http://www.acnp.org/G4/GN401000165/CH161.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, when I was heavily addicted to coffee, I even would miss sleep due to withdrawal effect. Also this has been described in literature:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007%2Fs00213-004-2000-x&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007%2Fs00213-004-2000-x&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(Even though the abstract does not mention insomnia, many references are given to studies which mention insomnia as an effect of caffeine withdrawal. It was not included in the abstract because the data were not quantitative)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastEditorUserId="1735" LastEditDate="2011-06-08T12:11:03.813" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T12:11:03.813" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4381" CreationDate="2011-06-08T09:54:08.023" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sleep efficiency: the number of minutes of sleep divided by the number of minutes in bed. Normal is approximately 85 to 90% or higher.&#xA;  From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysomnography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, but I assure that is the standard definition among sleep researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is a &lt;strong&gt;large&lt;/strong&gt; effect (did I do the math right? are those CIs or SDs?), but it's a small sample. They didn't detect any bad &quot;hard&quot; outcomes (lower performance, more lapses, more sleepiness), but this might be a power problem. But then again, this one night didn't press levels down to anything anormal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, sleep efficiency is not the best measure of sleep quality (polysomnographs give better estimates of NREM sleep, stage changes, etc.). Essentially they did what you had in mind already, right? But it was &lt;strong&gt;just one night&lt;/strong&gt; and they call for longer tests (I have access to the full text, but I probably am not allowed to send it to you?!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From their conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This investigation is the first of its kind to examine the effects of FEDs on sleep. It was illustrated that the FEDs administered during a simulated first night shift did not significantly impact on SOL nor the amount of SWS obtained during subsequent daytime recovery sleep. While TST was reduced significantly, by 29.1 min, post recovery-sleep performance was unaffected. Potentially however, is this TST reduction occurs over successive days, it may contribute to increased sleepiness during night-shifts. This investigation indicates that FEDs do have the potential to be used by the night-shift working population. It is evident however, that if they are to be used regularly, further investigation is required to maximise their positive impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you want to go through their references and those &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=11037406225931567003&amp;amp;as_sdt=2005&amp;amp;sciodt=1,5&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;who cite them&lt;/a&gt;, if you care about this research area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T09:54:08.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="145" CreationDate="2011-06-08T13:33:27.417" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a logical (or perhaps statistical) fallacy to assume that it is an aide. Let me see if I can explain why, &lt;em&gt;with sufficient references!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll starting with two premises:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Yes, magicians sometimes uses stooges in the audience. [Ref: (1) My grade 4 teacher, Miss Knott, used me as the stooge. (2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.somethinkodd.com/oddthinking/2008/02/03/greater-than-three-stooges/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I once used more than one stooge.&lt;/a&gt; Okay, these are both anecdotes, but this is hardly an extraordinary claim.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) But magicians also do tricks that DON'T require volunteers from audience members. [Ref: Duninger's Complete Encyclopedia of Magic, by Joseph Duninger, (1967), to pick a random book of magic off my bookshelf.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With those two premises, the rest is simple logic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have volunteers, then clearly you don't have stooges. So, it is possible to do illusions that fool people - ones where the lay public cannot see any possible explanation of how something was done - that do not rely on stooges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if magicians can regularly perform illusions that have no need for stooges, it is a fallacy to assume that any trick involving volunteers that you cannot explain must be done with stooges. It is even a fallacy to assume that it is a &lt;em&gt;likely&lt;/em&gt; explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it would be a similar fallacy to assume that it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; performed by stooges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, magicians have many different techniques, and using stooges is only one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Anecdotally, I have been dragged on stage by magicians, and had tricks performed on me where I have not been a stooge and have no explanation of how they were done, which you would expect to happen occasionally if stooges were not used.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of Randi's trick, I &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; know how he did it, and if I did, I &lt;em&gt;would not&lt;/em&gt; tell you. Given I don't know, and I am only guessing wildly, I don't mind sharing my thoughts: he spent more time than he needed to explaining that the gave the volunteer his pen and his magazine, and IIRC, that he took the magazine back afterwards. This suggests to me he may have had a mechanism for determining the chosen word. Historically, I have been frequently wrong at guessing the mechanism of tricks, so this is wild speculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T19:29:55.530" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T19:29:55.530" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4398" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4402" CreationDate="2011-06-08T17:40:21.297" Score="39" ViewCount="2499" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen numerous claims that circumcision reduces HIV risk, both on TV and &lt;a href=&quot;http://aids.about.com/od/hivprevention/a/circumcision.htm&quot;&gt;online&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been any studies to verify if circumcision does or doesn't reduce HIV risk in a statistically-significant manner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2836" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-09T11:26:15.680" LastActivityDate="2022-06-15T13:28:50.333" Title="Does circumcision reduce HIV risk?" Tags="|medical-science|hiv-aids|circumcision|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4399" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-08T17:45:14.073" Score="14" ViewCount="399" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was sent the video &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBsRoQBtKvY&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; a bit back, which gave me pause. It was sent by a family member who at least grants plausibility to 9/11 conspiracies and some other, shall we say, &quot;fringe&quot; theories about various topics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the claims about such a doomsday scenario in this video are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Gulf of Mexico oil spill was not/will not be completed with cleanup efforts; the impending disaster may have only begun&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ships using GPS and depth finders have discovered a bubble under the Gulf floor between 15-20 miles across, 10s of feet high&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The well was 22,500 feet deep with pressures of ~100,000 psi, so high they cannot be contained by current technology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a bubble emerged from this well, it would sink ships for miles around via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavitation&quot;&gt;cavitation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Such a bubble would create a tsunami traveling at 400-600 mph&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My key questions&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there such a bubble and is it a realistic threat?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it even possible to identify a gas bubble underneath the ocean floor via GPS and depth finders?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, some things that flagged my skepticism with this video were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The gentleman producing the claims stated that he has &lt;em&gt;very credible inside sources&lt;/em&gt; from BP and the US government, &lt;em&gt;but will not mention any of their names&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The experts this gentleman refers to are said to have &quot;been way ahead of the game&quot; and predicted the spill much in advance -- I am not aware of anyone who successfully predicted this event&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.calctool.org/CALC/other/games/depth_press&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; calculator which provides a pressure of about 10,000 psi for a depth of 22,500 feet; such pressures are easily dealt with today&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Moreover, googling &quot;pressure vessel rated for 100,000 psi&quot; reveals that &lt;a href=&quot;http://harwoodeng.com/innovations/&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; company had such a containment unit in &lt;em&gt;1964&lt;/em&gt; as just one example of showing that we can handle such pressures -- perhaps not the size of 15 miles in diameter, but the implication in the video was that such pressures are so unthinkably high that we can't even deal with them on any level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He states that there are over 40,000 oil wells in the Gulf; I found two sources that put it at least an order of magnitude lower, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/ng_prod_wells_s1_a.htm&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; with the US Energy Information Administration putting the 2009 count around 2,000 (hard to imagine a 38,000 increase in one year when the video was created) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3aGulf_Coast_Platforms.jpg&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; with an NOAA aerial image showing ~4,000 counted wells&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; These sources and a bit of googling reveals that this might have begun circulating around a year ago. My apologies if I'm the only one who never got the memo that it's been debunked (if it has). Nevertheless, I still thought I'd post the question for future reference for others, and for an opportunity to learn of some solid sources on this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-06-08T20:28:59.747" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T20:28:59.747" Title="Is there a huge gas bubble below the Gulf of Mexico floor ready to wreak havok?" Tags="|environment|safety|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4398" CreationDate="2011-06-08T17:58:55.067" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;My own answer ripped straight from &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1367/does-circumcision-lead-to-a-net-increase-in-quality-of-life/1454#1454&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160820093007/http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/circumcision.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC concludes that circumcision does reduce risk of disease&lt;/a&gt; based on multiple lab studies and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00124878?term=circumcision%20AND%20uganda&amp;amp;ran%20k=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;controlled intervention trials&lt;/a&gt;, in addition to the statistical research that opponents focus on for &amp;quot;refuting&amp;quot; the evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a topic where &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20061212194024/http://www.ias-2005.org:80/admin/images/upload/557.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt; has been done and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/adult-male-circumcision-significantly-reduces-risk-acquiring-hiv&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;confirmed&lt;/a&gt;, it boils down to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research indicates reduced HIV risk for circumcised men, both in labs and in the real world (where people don't always wear condoms, for whatever reason).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.circumcisionandhiv.com/files/Auvert_study.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ANRS 1265 Trial&lt;/a&gt;, with the conclusion: &amp;quot;Male circumcision provides a degree of protection against acquiring HIV infection, equivalent to what a vaccine of high efficacy would have achieved. Male circumcision may provide an important way of reducing the spread of HIV infection in sub-Saharan Africa.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-1293.2008.00596.x/abstract;jsessionid=3927EAF8D0B13A99DCBE4901E3383CC0.d02t03&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Male circumcision for the prevention of heterosexually acquired HIV infection: a meta-analysis of randomized trials involving 11 050 men&lt;/a&gt;. A meta-analysis concluding that the studies are valid. In particular, it concluded that &amp;quot;Male circumcision is an effective strategy for reducing new male HIV infections. Its impact on a population level will require consistently safe sexual practices to maintain the protective benefit.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s10461-008-9453-6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Further meta-analysis concluding causal link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20131102141243/http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2006/s18/en/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WHO statement&lt;/a&gt;: &amp;quot;Male circumcision reduces the risk of becoming infected with HIV, but does not provide complete protection&amp;quot; (well of course it's not complete protection...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically every significant health organization in the world is behind this, entailing almost 40 different clinical trials since the 1980s and numerous lab trials demonstrating that the uncut penile tissue around an intact foreskin is more receptive to HIV infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also of note, this only speaks to the risk to the male in question.  It also may not apply to subsets (for any medical research you will always be able to find some subgroup of the population that has a different outcome)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to @OddThinking it appears another &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20210420172354/http://sciencespeaksblog.org/2011/07/20/male-circumcision-curbs-spread-of-hiv-over-time-risky-behavior-does-not-increase/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;real world trial&lt;/a&gt; has been performed supporting this claim.  This study directly provides real evidence against the risk compensation claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three years after the voluntary medical male circumcision (MC)&#xA;campaign rolled out in the Orange Farm Township in South Africa, the&#xA;first “real world” results are available showing a marked reduction of&#xA;HIV acquisition among circumcised adult men with a 55 percent lower&#xA;HIV prevalence (proportion of HIV-infected people) among circumcised&#xA;men compared to their uncircumcised counterparts and overall reduction&#xA;in HIV incidence (the number of new cases) among men 15 to 34 years&#xA;old of 76 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-06-15T13:28:50.333" LastActivityDate="2022-06-15T13:28:50.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4398" CreationDate="2011-06-08T18:25:38.173" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would have to respectfully disagree with &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4398/does-circumcision-really-reduce-hiv-risk/4400#4400&quot;&gt;Russell's answer&lt;/a&gt; and say: &lt;strong&gt;No. Circumcision does not reduce HIV risk&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/full/10.2217/17469600.2.3.193&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;controlled intervention trials&lt;/a&gt; suffer from some VERY major &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publichealthinafrica.org/index.php/jphia/article/view/jphia.2011.e4/html_9&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;design flaws&lt;/a&gt;, which cast more than a reasonable doubt about the supposed 'benefit' of circumcision in males.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mrc.ac.za/policybriefs/Malecircumcision.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cochrane&lt;/a&gt; review of circumcision questions the validity of previously performed studies on circumcision for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performance bias&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Attrition bias&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selection bias&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They identified 14 cross sectional studies with inconsistent findings - 4 were statistically significant for a benefit to circumcision, 2 were statistically significant for &lt;em&gt;harm&lt;/em&gt; from circumcision. They also mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Study_heterogeneity&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study heterogeneity&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They summarize with (bolded emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In assessing the quality of the&#xA;observational studies we identified 10&#xA;potentially important confounders that&#xA;studies would need to ensure were&#xA;either balanced between circumcised&#xA;and uncircumcised groups or, if&#xA;unbalanced, that were adequately&#xA;adjusted for (see Box 2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Many studies&#xA;either did not measure these variables&#xA;or, if reported, were either not&#xA;balanced between groups or not&#xA;adjusted for.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to note&#xA;that observational studies, unlike&#xA;RCTs, can only adjust for known&#xA;confounders, and only then if they are&#xA;measured without error. The effect of&#xA;unknown confounders may well be&#xA;operating in either direction within&#xA;and across all of the included&#xA;studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies from high-risk&#xA;groups included in this review do&#xA;report a powerful protective effect of&#xA;circumcision, measured by both&#xA;unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios.&#xA;More mixed results were reported for&#xA;the general population. &lt;strong&gt;As all the&#xA;observed results could be explained by&#xA;likely confounding, RCTs are essential&#xA;before circumcision is implemented as&#xA;a public health intervention.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Implementation of circumcision will&#xA;encounter cost, both financial and in&#xA;terms of potential personal harm; no&#xA;adverse effects are reported in this&#xA;review only because none of the&#xA;observational studies investigated&#xA;them. Feasibility issues of&#xA;implementation are beyond the scope of&#xA;this review but need to be carefully&#xA;considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If those clinical trials in Africa are flawed, how can one justify using them as the basis for a policy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a real risk of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0040138&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;risk compensation&lt;/a&gt; reducing the 'benefit' of circumcision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The various pro-circumcision studies all cite the need for 'other' forms of prevention, ie. condoms - which in Africa aren't as available (or used) as they are elsewhere in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further Reading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20168206&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Circumcision status and HIV infection among MSM&lt;/a&gt;: Reanalysis of VAXGen VAX004 HIV vaccine clinical trial data, with conclusion: &amp;quot;Among men who reported unprotected insertive anal sex with HIV-positive partners, being uncircumcised did not confer a statistically significant increase in HIV infection risk. Additional studies with more incident HIV infections or that include a larger proportion of uncircumcised men may provide a more definitive result.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19901865&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Circumcision status and HIV/STI amongst MSM&lt;/a&gt;: Study with conclusion &amp;quot;Our findings suggest that male circumcision would not be likely to have a significant impact on HIV or sexually transmitted infections acquisition among MSM in Seattle.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2960998-3/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Study of male to female transmission&lt;/a&gt; (By the same researcher that produced the Uganda RCT!). An RCT (aborted early due to &amp;quot;futility&amp;quot;) with conclusion: &amp;quot;Circumcision of HIV-infected men did not reduce HIV transmission to female partners over 24 months; longer-term effects could not be assessed.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAbstracts/ma?f=102282676.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Case-Controlled Study of US Navy Men&lt;/a&gt; with conclusion: &amp;quot;[male circumcision] is not associated with HIV or STI prevention in this U.S. military population.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://samj.org.za/index.php/samj/article/viewFile/1811/2152&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Neonatal Circumcision&lt;/a&gt; does not reduce HIV/AIDS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/circumcision.htm#ref5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC Fact Sheet: Male Circumcision and Risk for HIV Transmission and Other Health Conditions: Implications for the United States&lt;/a&gt;, as cited by Russell. As mentioned above, this is countered by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12917962&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cochrane study&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The above fact sheet cites this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15097799&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source (#1)&lt;/a&gt;, but that was debunked above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The above fact sheet cites this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/320/7249/1592.extract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source (#3)&lt;/a&gt; re: foreskin tearing aiding HIV infection.  This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/320/7249/1592.extract/reply#bmj_el_164598&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;discussed here&lt;/a&gt; and an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7721293&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;alternative solution has been proposed&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The above fact sheet cites this &lt;a href=&quot;http://sti.bmj.com/content/82/2/101.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source (#4)&lt;/a&gt;, which is countered &lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/200/3/370.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, where it is determined to be &amp;quot;unlikely to have a substantial public health impact in reducing acquisition of most STIs in homosexual men&amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/200/12/1813.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1867269/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This Lab Study&lt;/a&gt; suggested that &amp;quot;Circumcision likely reduces risk of HIV-1 acquisition in men by decreasing HIV-1 target cells&amp;quot;, but is countered by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v13/n3/full/nm1541.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this letter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll be happy to counter the other sources at a later point, it's 10:30 pm here and I'm knee deep in setting OEL limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T11:47:06.730" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3074" CreationDate="2011-06-08T19:23:21.297" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the Rossi Focardi LENR true?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Unknown.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have kept the details secret. I refer to sufficient detail to attempt to reproduce in a scientific research laboratory. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4212428/Italian-scientists-claim-cold-fusion-success&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4212428/Italian-scientists-claim-cold-fusion-success&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is reported that Focardi and Rossi&#xA;  have had their paper refused by&#xA;  peer-review publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wipo.int/patentscope/search/docservicepdf_pct/id00000011868762?download&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;effectively refused&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?IA=IT2008000532&amp;amp;DISPLAY=STATUS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WIPO patent application&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uibm.gov.it/uibm/dati/Avanzata.aspx?load=info_list_uno&amp;amp;id=1610895&amp;amp;table=Invention&amp;amp;#ancoraSearch%20Patent%20Issued%20by%20Italian%20Patent%20Office&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;accepted Italian patent&lt;/a&gt; lack meaningful detail.&#xA;Note the Italian one was submitted just before &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.va.camcom.it/files/marchi_brevetti/decreto_27_giu_2008.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;stricter technical requirements&lt;/a&gt; were brought in.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;see also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3173090.ece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nyteknik.se/nyheter/energi_miljo/energi/article3173090.ece&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example claim 6 of the WIPO patent refers to &quot;catalyzer materials&quot; with no further details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How were they debunked and are the arguments applicable to the new case either?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They (like any other claim) cannot be definitively scientifically debunked by argument alone, only by multiple independent experimentation trials. Disclosure of full details is a prerequisite for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please beware that there have been numerous professional scams for many years involving claims of cheap or free energy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are more interested in the theory of cold fusion et al then I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Physics Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3288" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:12.727" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T19:23:21.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4406" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-08T20:32:38.823" Score="1" ViewCount="1621" Body="&lt;p&gt;After being asked by a friend if there is a way to make yoghurt from scratch, I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/332305&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two ways to get the bacteria, that we found; one, using the soil from an anthill, or using crushed ant eggs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot vouch however for American ants, I don't know if they carry the same bacteria as ants in Turkey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim I want to investigate is whether ant eggs or ant hill soil actually has the bacterium - &lt;em&gt;Lactobacillus bulgaricus&lt;/em&gt; or one of its cousins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-11T06:53:57.550" Title="Can you make yogurt with cultures from ant-eggs?" Tags="|biology|cooking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4415" CreationDate="2011-06-08T20:35:33.570" Score="32" ViewCount="29930" Body="&lt;p&gt;At about the 11:40 point in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrCVu25wQ5s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;class day 2009 lecture by Robert Sapolsky&lt;/a&gt; the claim is made that humans are the only species that engage in non-reproductive sex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there solid evidence for or against the idea that only humans have non-reproductive sex? (Oh and it's a fun lecture.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-06-25T11:06:40.817" LastActivityDate="2022-06-25T11:06:40.817" Title="Do other animals have non-reproductive sex?" Tags="|biology|zoology|sociology|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4408" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4418" CreationDate="2011-06-08T20:40:44.380" Score="6" ViewCount="680" Body="&lt;p&gt;The news is full of claims today that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1394873/Drinking-coffee-bring-hallucinations-warn-scientists.html&quot;&gt;5 cups of coffee a day is enough to cause auditory hallucination&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Professor Simon Crowe, of La Trobe University in Melbourne...&#xA;  ‘The combination of caffeine and stress affect the likelihood of an individual experiencing a psychosis-like symptom.’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the summaries in the news, it seems the researchers compared participants receiving various levels of stressors and coffee, and encouraged them all to report hearing a song that wasn't there. It's not obvious to me that the participants who reported hearing the song were sure that they heard it (were really hallucinating) rather than just trying to comply...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having trouble looking this one up and interested in any other evidence regarding a correlation between caffeine and auditory hallucination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2812" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T22:09:11.657" Title="Is there a correlation between coffee (or caffeine) and auditory hallucinations?" Tags="|hallucinations|coffee|caffeine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4409" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-08T20:53:38.337" Score="24" ViewCount="3593" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard many women say that they like taller men. As a possible explanation I heard that they feel more secure with a taller men than a shorter one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do women tend to prefer men who are tall, men who are taller than themselves, or is there no relation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3433" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T08:05:45.657" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T20:39:49.717" Title="Do women prefer taller men?" Tags="|psychology|gender|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4407" CreationDate="2011-06-08T21:25:41.287" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;As one example, bottlenose dolphins routinely engage in non-reproductive intercourse - this can be when females are not in estrus (I can't locate the reference though), and there is also a lot of non-intercourse sexual behaviour between individuals, even between males (Mann, J. 2006. Sociosexual behaviour among Indian Ocean bottle-nose dolphins and the development of male-male bonds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In: Homosexual Behaviour in Animals: an Evolutionary Perspective&#xA;(Ed. by P. Vasey &amp;amp; V. Sommer), pp. 107-130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3436" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-06-09T01:50:35.127" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T01:50:35.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4407" CreationDate="2011-06-08T21:45:59.560" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.primates.com/bonobos/bonobosexsoc.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bonobos are a prime example of sex for the sake of sex&lt;/a&gt;.  Also Capuchins.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130417111236/http://www.metacafe.com:80/watch/2750606/bloodhound_gang_discovery_channel/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anyone who has watched the Discovery Channel enough knows about this behavior&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/srgiP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Do it like on the discovery channel&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am quite surprised that the lecturer would make such a blatantly wrong statement.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20190515053213/http://www.bonobo.org:80/whatisabonobo.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bonobos have their own domain that even states&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sex permeates the fabric of bonobo society, weaving through all aspects of daily life. It serves an important function in keeping the society together, maintaining peaceful, cooperative relations. Besides heterosexual contact, both male and female bonobos engage in same-sex encounters, and even group sex occurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a scholarly paper (with abstract quoted below), I suggest: &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026395829818&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nonconceptive Sexual Behavior in Bonobos and Capuchins&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sexual behavior by infecundable females, and by same-sex and adult-immature dyads, occurs in wild and captive bonobos (Pan paniscus). Proposed functions of these behaviors, in social primates generally, include practice, paternity confusion, exchange, and communication as well as appeasement. We used this framework to interpret and to compare observations of sexual behavior in a captive bonobo group and a wild white-faced capuchin (Cebus capucinus) group. In both species, (a) sexual behavior was no more frequent in cycling females than in pregnant or lactating females and (b) same-sex and adult-immature dyads engaged in as much mounting or genitogenital contact as adult heterosexual dyads did. The species differed in that (a) bonobos engaged in sexual behavior 65 times as frequently as capuchins, (b) only bonobos engaged in sexual contact other than ventrodorsal mounting during focal observation, and (c) bonobo sexual contact was concentrated most heavily in socially tense situations in adult female–female dyads, whereas capuchin sexual contact was concentrated most heavily in socially tense situations in adult male–male dyads. These data and published literature indicate that (a) practice sex occurs in both species, (b) paternity confusion may be a current function of C. capucinus nonconceptive sex, (c) exchange sex remains undemonstrated in capuchins, and (d) communication sex is more important to members of the transferring sex—female bonobos and male capuchins—than to members of the philopatric sex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kYz6K.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Monkey Sex/porn&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would treat ANY statement made to make humans appear truly unique in the animal kingdom with a great deal of skepticism.  We are only animals after all (only marginally more clever than others).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="8883" LastEditDate="2022-06-23T10:40:56.387" LastActivityDate="2022-06-23T10:40:56.387" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4407" CreationDate="2011-06-08T21:49:08.617" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonobo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bonobos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; are an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.nus.edu.sg/lsm1303student2011/2011/04/04/sex-works/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Discovering Animal Behaviour&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sex is key to the social life of the&#xA;Bonobo. &lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They largely use sex as a means to alleviate conflicts or resolve them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When ill feelings begin to form between Bonobos– everything stemming from territorial issues to competition for food– their first reaction is to smooth it over with sexual contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bonobo.org/whatisabonobo.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bonobo.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonobos seem to ascribe to the 1960s&#xA;hippie credo, &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;make love, not war&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot;&#xA;They make a lot of love, and do so in&#xA;every conceivable fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sex in bonobo&#xA;society transcends reproduction&lt;/strong&gt;, as it&#xA;does in humans. &lt;strong&gt;It serves as a way of&#xA;bonding, exchanging energy and sharing&#xA;pleasure.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;More Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://songweaver.com/info/bonobos.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bonobo Sex and Society&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/07/3/l_073_03.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PBS - Chimps and Bonobos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awf.org/content/wildlife/detail/bonobo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;African Wildlife Foundation - Bonobos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T21:49:08.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4407" CreationDate="2011-06-08T22:00:50.537" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mallard ducks are reported to both attempt to rape ducks of the same sex, as well as practice necrophilia. Either of those should qualify on some level as non-reproductive sex, even if not consensual for the one in a pickle. This discovery earned Kees Moeliker the &lt;a href=&quot;http://improbable.com/ig/ig-pastwinners.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ig Nobel prize in 2003&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/mar/08/highereducation.research&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The guardian reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ducks behave pretty badly, it seems. It is not so much that up to one in 10 of mallard couples are homosexual - no one would raise an eyebrow in the liberal Netherlands - but they regularly indulge in &amp;quot;attempted rape flights&amp;quot; when they pursue other ducks with a view to forcible mating. &amp;quot;Rape is a normal reproductive strategy in mallards,&amp;quot; explains Mr Moeliker&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr Moeliker suggests the pair were engaged in a rape flight attempt. &amp;quot;When one died the other one just went for it and didn't get any negative feedback - well, didn't get any feedback,&amp;quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole article is a great read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-08T22:07:17.070" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4386" CreationDate="2011-06-08T22:22:24.510" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; This got quite long, primarily because it was very interesting to follow around various sources and try to cross-check them. My summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The claim that &lt;em&gt;fluorinated&lt;/em&gt; toothpaste causes acne around the mouth is definitely widespread&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was at least some indication via an un-controlled experiment by a dermatologist in 1975 that indicated that, assuming other variables remained unchanged, cessation of fluorinated toothpastes among ~60 patients caused a significant reduction in acne&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There appears to have been no replication of this experiment under more stringent conditions to test the hypothesis and thus it remains unconfirmed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are sources linking &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; fluoride-containing compounds, namely steroids, to perioral dermatitis, a form of acne.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In my digging (which you'll see below was reasonably extensive), all claims for this connection either 1) contained no sources or 2) tracked back to this 1975 dermatologist's editorial letter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My digging seems to come up with this as an unresolved question that will require a further study. The link you posted may feature the original source for this claim, namely &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fluoridealert.org/health/allergy/saunders-1975.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt;, a letter to the editor of the Journal, &lt;em&gt;Dermatology&lt;/em&gt;, by Dr. Milton A. Saunders in 1975 entitled &quot;Fluoride Toothpaste: A Cause of Acne-like Eruptions,&quot; summarized here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Saunders was treating ~60 patients between 20-40 years of age with acne around chin area that were resistant to treatment and swore that such acne was not from hand/mouth area contact or wearing cosmetics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Saunders wondered what else might be the cause and thought of fluoride-containing toothpaste&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He asked the patients to switch to non-fluoride-containing toothpaste and 50% cleared up; the remaining 50% remained as they were, with acne&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The asked the patients still afflicted to switch to baking soda and Scope mouthwash, and almost all of these patients cleared of almost all of their acne&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some patients who had achieved an improved state switched back to fluoride toothpaste  and their acne returned&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fairly impressive so far. In continued hunting, I found a response &lt;a href=&quot;http://archderm.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/summary/112/7/1033-a&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; from Dr. Ervine Epstein to Dr. Saunders which appeared in the same journal a year later (1976). It stated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I read the letter from Dr Saunders on fluoride toothpastes as a cause of acne-like eruptions. His observations are interesting and possibly important. However, I would like to offer the following comments: (1) The ingestion of fluorides neither precipitates nor aggravates acne. (2) Fluorides are much more closely related chemically to chlorides than to iodides or bromides, although all are halogens. There is no evidence that chlorides per se cause or irritate acne. (3) Dr Saunders has not established that nonfluoride toothpastes do not cause acneiform eruptions. (4) A survey among dentists indicates that, due to the efforts of Madison Avenue, 60% to 80% of all people, and especially women, use fluoride toothpastes. Therefore, 46 out of 46 cases is less impressive. (5) It has not been established that the fluorides in the toothpaste are the actual cause of the eruption described by Dr Saunders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Saunders published a response that same year in &lt;em&gt;Dermatology&lt;/em&gt;, stating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First of all, the letter to the editor was not intended in any way to represent a well-controlled scientific study of statistical significance; rather, it was an observation that I hope will encourage others to investigate the subject more thoroughly in a double-blind, large-scale study, so that it may be established whether these observations are valid. In reply to the numbered comments in Dr Epstein's letter, I submit the following: Dr Epstein stated that the ingestion of fluorides neither precipitates nor aggravates acne. No implication that the ingestion of the fluorides had anything to do with the acne-like eruptions involved was made or intended in my letter. Rather, I suggested the possibility that salivary nocturnal drainage may carry fluorides...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, all three of these are inaccessible to me, so I'm not sure what the full text might reveal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an article from Pediatrics and Child Health found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S175172221000199X#sec8.5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; entitled &quot;Treatment of acne vulgaris&quot; in which the following is found under the heading, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002426/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;perioral dermatitis&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Papules, pustules and erythema in the perioral, paranasal or periorbital areas, sparing the lip border, characterize perioral dermatitis. &lt;strong&gt;Possible triggers include&lt;/strong&gt; potent topical steroids, chemicals (cosmetics, &lt;strong&gt;toothpaste&lt;/strong&gt;), local infection, hormonal changes, sunlight and rarely foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since further digging around the areas of &quot;acne&quot; and &quot;fluoride&quot; and &quot;toothpaste&quot; were not bringing up anything new, I thought I'd focus on this particular condition since it's at least a more specific term to examine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found conflicting &quot;layman&quot; evaluations of whether perioral dermatitis was acne or not. Some state that it is an imposter or a rash, however &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benthamscience.com/open/todj/articles/V002/36TODJ.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; 2008 article from the Open Journal of Dermatology states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perioral dermatitis is a facial condition that looks often like a rash, but is a form of acne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with that out of the way, here's some sources on perioral dermatitis:&#xA;- A blog-like site dedicated entirely to this condition, &lt;a href=&quot;http://perioraldermatitis.net/toothpaste.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;perioraldermatitis.net&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recent studies prove on one side that fluoride toothpaste can cause perioral dermatitis**, or if the condition already exists, it can be aggravated. In recent studies, it is shown that most of the patients suffering of this condition stopped using toothpaste containing fluoride and switched to another type of toothpaste, approximately half of their lesions disappeared within four weeks. Patients who started using again dermatitis toothpaste with fluoride, developed a recurrence of the disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds suspiciously like the Saunders experiment above (references to half of their lesions disappearing (though Saunders reported that half of the &lt;em&gt;patients&lt;/em&gt; had a decrease in acne) and the re-occurrence of symptoms when switching back to fluouride-containing toothpaste). If so... 1975 isn't a year I would put under the category &quot;&lt;em&gt;recent&lt;/em&gt;&quot; in terms of medical understanding. No source is given for the claim...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/guide/perioral-dermatitis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WebMD&lt;/a&gt; states the following about perioral dermatitis:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The exact cause of perioral dermatitis is not known. However, it may appear after topical steroid creams are applied to the face to treat other conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One might expect toothpaste to make this list if it were a well-known, study-proven cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aocd.org/skin/dermatologic_diseases/perioral_dermatiti.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; article from the American Osteopathic College of Dermatology states the following:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There may be more than one cause of perioral dermatitis... Overuse of heavy face creams and moisturizers are another common cause. Other causes include skin irritations, &lt;strong&gt;fluorinated toothpastes&lt;/strong&gt;, and rosacea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same fluorinated toothpaste comment; no source is provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perioral_dermatitis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; lists fluorinated toothpastes as a cause of perioral dermatitis as well, citing no source. However, following the link for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucocorticoid&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;glucorticoids&lt;/a&gt; reveals a journal article from &lt;em&gt;The Annals of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology&lt;/em&gt; entitled, &quot;Disease management of atopic dermatitis: a practice parameter (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allergyparameters.org/file_depot/0-10000000/30000-40000/30326/folder/73825/1997AtopicDerm.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;), which contains the following under the &quot;Management&quot; section (as in, how to manage dermatitis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Potent fluorinated corticosteroids should be avoided on the face, the genitalia, and the intertriginous areas as well as in young infants&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there may be something to be said for fluorinated compounds, at least steroids, being avoided on the face due to a potential risk of dermatitis. Nothing about fluorinated toothpaste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To close, the waters appear murky, very possibly due to an old source that has never been experimentally verified under controlled conditions, and thus in the absence of known causal factors with respect to perioral dermatitis (and many sources state that the exact cause is unknown and do not list toothpaste), these old sources and folk theories have been substituted for the simpler phrase, &quot;We don't know.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that fluoride-containing &lt;em&gt;steroids&lt;/em&gt; are also known to cause or agitate this condition may not help the situation, and perhaps the various regurgitators of information use this to boost the possibility that fluoride-containing &lt;em&gt;toothpastes&lt;/em&gt; might also be a cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd end by saying that in Saunders' 1976 reply to Epstein, he states that his theory is that fluoride-containing &lt;em&gt;saliva&lt;/em&gt; is the cause of acne. Thus, if one could eliminate drooling or coating of the mouth area with saliva after brushing teeth, or determine the mechanism of fluorinated compounds causing acne and verify that the levels in saliva post teeth-brushing are not high enough, we might also be able to test the theory via those routes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By far, the best thing that could ever happen to this question is to have a controlled experiment of large sample size done to test it. My counts-as-nothing hunch is that if such a thing hasn't been done in almost 40 years... there at least hasn't been enough interest in the possibility to drive such an experiment, increasing my probability estimate for the myth being unfounded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2017-12-12T03:09:59.740" LastActivityDate="2017-12-12T03:09:59.740" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4408" CreationDate="2011-06-09T00:06:19.897" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR summary:&lt;/strong&gt; This claim seems overstated in its current form. In short, the subjects in the study cited were &lt;em&gt;primed&lt;/em&gt; to hallucinate; they were played a song, then told that the song &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be embedded in white noise, and then were played white noise for three minutes and told to push a button whenever they heard fragments of the song.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subjects who self-identified as having high stress and as intaking high amounts of caffeine were found to be more prone to reporting hearing fragments of the song.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, yes, those in this group &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; &amp;quot;hallucinate,&amp;quot; but on a practical level, the amounts of publicity this has received (just note how the floodgates open &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;q=caffeine+auditory+hallucinations&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;) seem to overstate the conclusion and blow things out of proportion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally question whether a primed response even counts as &amp;quot;hallucination&amp;quot; in the same way that some are implying it, such as being connected with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/3230-caffeine-hallucinations.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;psychosis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim in whole, &amp;quot;that caffeine causes auditory hallucinations,&amp;quot; seems to be false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initial results didn't turn up much; I searched &amp;quot;caffiene hallucination&amp;quot; on google scholar, which revealed &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;amp;q=caffeine+hallucination&amp;amp;btnG=Search&amp;amp;as_sdt=0%2C24&amp;amp;as_ylo=&amp;amp;as_vis=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; list. There was one result of interest, a blind study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1536300&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;, that found that caffeine given intravenously led to olfactory (smell) hallucinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, the actual study, published in the journal, &lt;em&gt;Personality and Individual Differences&lt;/em&gt;, is found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019188691000591X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;. Note the following characteristics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sample size: 92&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Divided into four groups: high stress/low caffeine, high stress/high caffeine, low stress/low caffeine, low stress/high caffeine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All subjects were played Bing Crosby's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJSUT8Inl14&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;White Christmas&lt;/a&gt; and then told the following:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The White Christmas song you just heard might be embedded in the white noise, below the auditory threshold. If you think or believe that you hear the song, or a fragment of the song clearly, please indicate so by pressing the hand counter. Of course, you may press the counter several times if you think that you heard several fragments of the song (p. 140).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The high stress/high caffeine group pressed the button more than the other groups&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there's some interesting features in the discussion section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They mention a similar study from 2009 by Jones and Fernyhough in the same journal, found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886908004121&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; which asked 219 participants to report their caffeine intake, and then measured the following items via questionnaires:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hallucination-proneness:&lt;/em&gt; This was assessed using the modified Launay-Slade Hallucination Scale (LSHS-M: Laroi &amp;amp; van der Linden, 2005), a 16-item instrument designed to measure predisposition to hallucination-like experiences. Each item is scored on a five-point Likert’s scale ranging from ‘‘Certainly applies to me” (4) to ‘‘Certainly does not apply to me” (0).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Proneness to persecutory delusion-like beliefs:&lt;/em&gt; The Persecutory Ideation Questionnaire (PIQ; McKay, Langdon, &amp;amp; Coltheart, 2006) is a 10-item questionnaire designed to measure persecutory ideation in both clinical and non-clinical samples. Items are rated on a five-point Likert’s scale ranging from ‘‘Very True” (4) to ‘‘Very Untrue” (0).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stress:&lt;/em&gt; This was determined by the Perceived Stress Questionnaire (Levenstein et al., 1993), a 30-item instrument which assesses the levels of stress an individual perceives themselves to have been under during the last year. Examples of items include ‘‘You feel tense” and ‘‘You have many worries”. Items are scored on a four-point Likert’s scale ranging from ‘‘Almost Never” (1) to ‘‘Usually” (4). A total score is derived using the formula ((raw score – 30)/90).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found that caffeine intake was correlated with both stress levels and hallucination proneness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Crowe says the following about the above Jones study, however:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jones and Fernyhough (2009) found that caffeine consumption predicted hallucination proneness. Yet, contrary to our hypothesis, we found no correlation between hallucination proneness and the actual occurrence of false alarms as measured by our procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting. So, if caffeine &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; correlated to questionnaire determined &amp;quot;hallucination proneness,&amp;quot; (via Jones, 2009), but &amp;quot;hallucination proneness&amp;quot; isn't correlated to &lt;em&gt;actual false alarms&lt;/em&gt; (hallucinations) (Crowe, 2011)... then hallucination proneness may not be a very reliable quantity of measure with respect to anything usefully predictive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, this statement was perhaps the most informative:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other potential influences that may explain the occurrence of hallucinatory experiences (including creative experiences, imagery ability and social desirability seeking) were also ruled out in the current investigation, which is a strength of the study.&#xA;There are however a number of limitations that can be identified with the study. Concerning the effects of caffeine, it is important to note that we did not take into consideration all possibly influential factors that could affect an individual’s ambient level of caffeine. &lt;strong&gt;There are a number of factors that are known to mediate the effects of caffeine. This includes factors such as age, gender, body mass, habitual user status, caffeine source, liver function, cigarette smoking, use of oral contraceptives and pregnancy&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1997-08837-000&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;James, 1997&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; of other factors to control for in a future study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The conclusion of the study was this:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results from this study demonstrate that increased caffeine consumption, combined with high levels of stress, has the ability to increase the experience of psychotic symptoms, specifically auditory hallucinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While that conclusion certainly seems to provide an affirmative source to support the claim, I'd be hesitant to accept it &lt;em&gt;in full&lt;/em&gt;, as I stated at the beginning of this answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are a lot of other variables to control for in a further experiment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;priming&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; to be a &lt;em&gt;huuuge&lt;/em&gt; design flaw in the experiment. If one were not going to see something, but saw it due to priming, is that really in the &lt;em&gt;hallucination&lt;/em&gt; category? For example, consider this fantastic example from Michael Shermer (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eju9mm6eCa4#t=1m15s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;). If one hears the words in Stairway to Heaven in reverse &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; being primed, is this hallucination?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, high stress and high caffeine &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; been shown to lead to a higher incidence of auditory hallucination &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; being directly primed for the &amp;quot;hallucination&amp;quot; -- hearing fragments of a song &amp;quot;embedded&amp;quot; in what was really white noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as those concerned with such results, my suggestion would be to wait until replication that controls for other factors as well as another test method which does not prime. In other words, I assume that anyone wishing to translate this study into action would do so on the basis of safety or health concerns. I don't personally consider hearing song fragments after being primed to hear them in that category. Thus, if another study comes along and finds that subjects hear things &lt;em&gt;on their own&lt;/em&gt;, without priming, and that such occurrences could be unsafe or unhealthy, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; I'd act on such studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T00:06:19.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4409" CreationDate="2011-06-09T00:46:46.600" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness#Height_and_erect_posture&quot;&gt;the Wikipedia page on Physical Attractiveness&lt;/a&gt;, which is well referenced, this is true. &#xA;Note however that it also says there that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While women usually desire men to be at least the same height as themselves or taller, several other factors also determine male attractiveness, and the male-taller norm is not universal. In certain non-Western cultures, the relative heights of partners have been shown to be irrelevant in their choice of mate, which suggests that Western height preferences may be sociocultural, rather than genetic, in nature. Professor Adam Eyre-Walker, from the University of Sussex, stated that there is, as yet, no evidence that these preferences are evolutionary preferences, as opposed to merely cultural preferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-09T06:17:55.047" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T06:17:55.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4420" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-09T01:07:55.560" Score="35" ViewCount="13314" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TJQZy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;hello mr. hen, this picture is quite vital, I assure you.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to superstars of his level, there always seem to be controversies, conspiracies, or some other mystery, and just one of the many surrounding Michael Jackson is &lt;em&gt;that he for some reason intentionally had his skin color altered&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the cause, there is no denying he exhibits a dramatic difference in pigmentation between the time he shot the '&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thriller&lt;/a&gt;&quot; video and the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2AitTPI5U0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Black or White&lt;/a&gt;&quot; video.  And ever since I was young, everyone seems to have had their opinion as to why this happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard the same old rumors (as I'm sure many others have) since the early 1990's, some insisting Jackson had his skin somehow lightened, either chemically or medically.  Others explain that he had a skin condition known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001834/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;vitiligo&lt;/a&gt;, which turns skin lighter through depigmentation.  People counter that argument by saying there has never been a documented case of vitiligo causing depigmentation as widespread as Jackson's. I've yet to see either argument backed by compelling data, and to the best of my knowledge, this debate continues informally to this day, along with whether or not Elvis is still alive and whether or not Paul McCartney is an impostor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are of course countless internet debates such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100928082139AAnjgbk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; where people voice one opinion or the other, although I notice a startling lack of any real evidence to back up these claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I cannot say I find the argument of either side terribly compelling, and have yet to come across an explanation I would be willing to accept as both &lt;em&gt;correct&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;complete&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, where does the science come down on this one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any scientific evidence that Michael Jackson intentionally lightened his skin?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Could his extensive (some would say unprecedented) depigmentation be explained by vitiligo?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it even scientifically possible to lighten skin that dramatically through either chemical or medical procedures?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T19:53:28.747" Title="Did Michael Jackson artificially lighten his skin?" Tags="|biology|dermatology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4421" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4439" CreationDate="2011-06-09T02:56:17.000" Score="7" ViewCount="1325" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least one person has &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4320/does-smoking-under-3-cigarettes-a-day-prevent-addiction/4337#4337&quot;&gt;published alleged doubts&lt;/a&gt; about whether cigarettes are addictive, with their doubt/claim being supposedly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100713144920.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;backed by at least one scientific study&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a reasonable question (for example is there a good definition of the word &quot;addiction&quot;), and if so &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/777/untruthable-questions/788#788&quot;&gt;what is the answer&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:46:19.097" Title="Are cigarettes addictive?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|recreational-drugs|addiction|cigarettes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4421" CreationDate="2011-06-09T04:10:32.243" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;National health authorities publish assertions (citing scientific/other studies) that cigarettes are addictive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hc-ps/tobac-tabac/body-corps/addiction-dependance-eng.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Health Canada&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T04:10:32.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4423" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-09T07:23:24.890" Score="39" ViewCount="3864" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've known it like forever, I think I was told so since I was a kid. But how true it actually is? I clearly can't see what's the connection between the sound of water and a natural need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my own experience I'd say that sometimes it works, and other times, like when under a stress, it doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/53592/Running-water-and-urination&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Running Water and Urination, &lt;em&gt;IHS Engineering360&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090514164500AAVePlF&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Why does running water make you want to pee?&quot;, &lt;em&gt;Yahoo! Answers&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2015-11-06T02:15:07.907" LastActivityDate="2015-11-06T02:15:07.907" Title="Does the sound of water make one want to pee?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4373" CreationDate="2011-06-09T07:55:56.727" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;LCD panels make black pixels by blocking the colour filtered back-light from exiting the panel. It therefore uses a little more power to make black than to make white&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lcd2.htm&quot;&gt;http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/lcd2.htm&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LCD TV's sometimes have &quot;dynamic contrast&quot; LED back-lighting which should save power in black. This feature is sometimes found on high end IPS LCD monitors, though is useless for general computer use as the LED back-light resolution does not match the actual LCD resolution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OLED panels use power to make each individual coloured pixel, so black would save power. Who uses a couple of 24&quot; OLED's yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/oled2.htm&quot;&gt;http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/oled2.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And more interestingly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-09/mit-scientist-explains-oled-function-glowing-pickle&quot;&gt;http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2009-09/mit-scientist-explains-oled-function-glowing-pickle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3444" LastEditorUserId="3444" LastEditDate="2011-06-09T08:05:45.263" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T08:05:45.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4425" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4433" CreationDate="2011-06-09T08:37:33.827" Score="19" ViewCount="5707" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across Lilith in the graphic novel &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucifer_%28DC_Comics%29&quot;&gt;Lucifer&lt;/a&gt;, but it seems she is mentioned in Jewish mythology Babylonian Talmud among other texts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.utopiatemple.com/archive/index.php/t-25112.html&quot;&gt;The story goes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lillith was in the original creational&#xA;  myth, where she was created along side&#xA;  with Adam. However, she refused to&#xA;  submit to him in the missionary&#xA;  position, and left Eden, and later&#xA;  borne Cain's and the Lucifer's&#xA;  children. Some Islamic versions and&#xA;  Orthodox version of Genesis still have&#xA;  this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://hubpages.com/hub/Sunday-School-Lesson-101-Lilith&quot;&gt;extensive article on this&lt;/a&gt; is here&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So why was the Lilith's story left out&#xA;  of the bible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think in part that the Lilith story&#xA;  was left out because this story gives&#xA;  woman some pretty serious power. Now&#xA;  think about that for a moment. At the&#xA;  time that the our Holy Canon was first&#xA;  put together, the Roman Catholic&#xA;  Church was under the direct rule of&#xA;  the strict Roman Emperor Constantine.&#xA;  The Emperor Constantine was the&#xA;  epitome of what it meant to be Roman,&#xA;  and although wealthy, aristocratic,&#xA;  Roman women could rule and hold power-&#xA;  the majority of Roman women lived&#xA;  under the poverty line, and no better&#xA;  off than was the common, household,&#xA;  slave at that time. Average Roman&#xA;  women were not allowed to be a man's&#xA;  equal. It just wasn't allowed.&#xA;  Therefore how then could they be equal&#xA;  in the eyes of God?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is any of this proven or just folklore?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know whether this is mentioned in Jewish religious texts or the Quran?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:12:59.433" LastActivityDate="2020-11-25T22:46:44.613" Title="Was the character of Lilith written out of the Bible?" Tags="|religion|bible|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4420" CreationDate="2011-06-09T11:43:59.047" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing this doesn't count as evidence by a long shot, but on this website there are some interesting photos of Michael Jackson (though some of them don't show his face, so no proof that it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; really him). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-310669.0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;For All Those Who Thought Michael Bleached His Skin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the really interesting photo is the example of a completely different girl going from 'black' to 'white'. Once again, no proof that it's the same person in each photo...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5nuAX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2192" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T11:43:59.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4098" CreationDate="2011-06-09T11:59:33.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the site you mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By research and experience, the&#xA;following diseases are observed to be&#xA;cured with this therapy within the&#xA;indicated days as below&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constipation: 1 day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acidity: 2 days&#xA;-Diabetes: 7 days&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BP &amp;amp; Hypertension: 4 weeks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cancer: 4 weeks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm always suspicious of any treatment that claims to 'cure' cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does pure water act? Consuming&#xA;ordinary drinking water by the right&#xA;method purifies human body. It renders&#xA;the colon more effective by forming&#xA;new fresh blood, known in medical&#xA;terms as Haematopaises. That the&#xA;mucousal folds of the colon and&#xA;intestines are activated by this&#xA;method, is an undisputed fact, just as&#xA;the theory that new fresh blood is&#xA;produced by the mucousal fold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An undisputed fact? Blood is formed in the medulla of the bone (someone more familiar with English might check the right word), not in the colon or intestines (unless in severe circumstances). A good explanation is given here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://greenfield.fortunecity.com/rattler/46/haemopoiesis.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://greenfield.fortunecity.com/rattler/46/haemopoiesis.htm&lt;/a&gt; and also wikipedia gives the same interpretation: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haematopoiesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haematopoiesis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe it is not necessary to try to find other arguments why this therapy should work/should not work. In that case, we could as well try to do the same for the 51272 therapies generated on this website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.denayer.com/inspiratie/index_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.denayer.com/inspiratie/index_en.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This experiment was started from the observation that alternative therapies are typicall using vague, almost absurd description. You will find that an alternative therapy often&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;refers to the age of the therapy (older = better)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;refers to far away/mysterious countries (oriental is preffered)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;has a very broad reach (it is useful for everything)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T11:08:33.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4425" CreationDate="2011-06-09T13:09:45.380" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found an &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jewishchristianlit.com//Topics/Lilith/overview.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Overview of Lilith&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; from an &lt;a href=&quot;http://jewishchristianlit.com/author.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alan Humm&lt;/a&gt;. His (own) biography page lists him as a PhD in Religious Studies but a quick searching of the internet didn't reveal much information about him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevant parts of the Lilith notes (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lilith is the most important of a small collection of named female demons in Jewish legend. Historically, she is actually &lt;strong&gt;older than Judaism&lt;/strong&gt; (at least Judaism as defined as a post-restoration phenomenon). Her earliest appearance is probably in ancient Sumer. Although it is far from certain, she may be a minor character in a prologue to the Epic of Gilgamesh. In the ancient world she also sometimes appears in magical texts, amulets, etc., intended to thwart her activities. &lt;strong&gt;She appears once in the Bible&lt;/strong&gt; (Isaiah), in a context that associates her with demons of the desert, and again in some Dead Sea Scroll passages clearly based on the Isaiah reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And later in the article (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhere between the &lt;strong&gt;eighth and tenth centuries, CE&lt;/strong&gt;, she makes an appearance in a satirical work entitled the Alphabet of Ben Sira. It is here that she is &lt;strong&gt;first given what has become her most famous persona: the first wife of Adam (before Eve)&lt;/strong&gt;. In this story, she is created at more or less the same time as Adam, and, as was Adam, out of the ground. Because of this she tries to assert her equality -- an assertion which Adam rejects. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is true that there was a rabbinic tradition that Adam briefly had another wife before the creation of Eve (Genesis Rabbah), there is a great deal of doubt as to whether Lilith had any connection at all to this first wife of Adam story prior the publication of the Alphabet. &lt;strong&gt;The satirical nature of the Alphabet casts further doubt on the authenticity of this Lilith connection.&lt;/strong&gt; [...] As a midrash, it also helps to solve a problem that arises from the fact that Genesis 1 has mankind created &amp;quot;male and female,&amp;quot; but when we get to Genesis 2, Adam seems to be alone and in need of a partner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other interesting details about Lilith (associations with feminism, vampires, baby-stealing) but the gist appears to be that the origins of Lilith as &amp;quot;Adam's wife&amp;quot; are directly traceable to a satirical piece that was clearly never intended to be part of the Holy Bible. The concept of Adam's pre-Eve wife does have some merit in the &lt;em&gt;Genesis Rabbah&lt;/em&gt; but the stories are drastically different. &lt;a href=&quot;http://jewishchristianlit.com//Topics/Lilith/genRab.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;From the same author as above&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genesis Rabbah contains two references to a tradition that may be related to the &lt;em&gt;Alphabet of Ben Sira&lt;/em&gt;, although &lt;strong&gt;probably not directly to Lilith&lt;/strong&gt;. Here we find a much earlier example of the idea that Eve was Adam's second wife. But in this tradition the first woman is unnamed, and &lt;strong&gt;there is no reason to think that she should be identified with Lilith&lt;/strong&gt;. In addition, the reason given for the failure of the first marriage is entirely different than that given in the Alphabet. &lt;strong&gt;Whereas Ben Sira has the problem center around sexuality and dominance, R. Judah b. Rabbi has Adam apparently disgusted by seeing the process of the woman being created &amp;quot;full of discharge and blood&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt; (although this may instead be a reference to menses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this information, Lilith was never &amp;quot;meant&amp;quot; to be in the Bible and, therefore, could not have been written out. Even if the concept of Adam's pre-Eve wife were somehow excluded, that wife would not likely have been Lilith.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-10-10T15:05:07.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4434" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4436" CreationDate="2011-06-09T13:32:35.130" Score="8" ViewCount="1249" Body="&lt;p&gt;In western movies, it is a common trope that the person to draw first usually loses in a gunfight.  Is there any truth to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:36:22.163" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:36:22.163" Title="In a gunfight, does the person who draws first usually lose?" Tags="|guns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4420" CreationDate="2011-06-09T13:52:50.930" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, it's pretty well documented that Michael Jackson suffered from some form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitiligo&quot;&gt;vitiligo&lt;/a&gt;, which is a skin disorder that causes uneven depigmentation of the skin.  This results in having a blotchy, uneven skin tone, or what is sometimes described as a &quot;harlequin&quot; appearance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found that this website had the most thorough explanation of his particular struggle with vitilgo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://floacist.wordpress.com/2007/06/10/vitiligo-photos-michael-jackson/&quot;&gt;Vitiligo Photos (and Lupus) Michael Jackson&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two candid pictures from the Triumph tour where Michael’s very heavy stage make-up is be running. (Read more about stage make up in reference to this discussion here). People made fun of him in the 1980s because of all the make up he wore (i.e. made him look feminine) but there was a reason as to why he used it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever else you may say about the King of Pop regarding surgery, possible misdeeds, or how he handled his condition, it's pretty evident that he HAD a condition.  Whether or not he later chose to bleach his skin in order to give himself a more even complexion, I cannot say.  Most times you see him, he is wearing extensive makeup anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as whether or not skin bleaching is even possible, the answer is &quot;Yes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin_whitening&quot;&gt;Skin Whitening&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1617" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T13:52:50.930" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4434" CreationDate="2011-06-09T13:54:54.827" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Experts draw and shoot pretty darn quickly (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iK2ndUyKE8&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a &quot;gun-slinger's paradox&quot;, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/news/sci-tech/gunslinger-shooting-back-faster/&quot;&gt;apparently the effect of that is not very significant&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the assertion is true I'm going to guess it's because the person who draws first is relatively inexperienced/unpracticed/inexpert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, an expert can &lt;strong&gt;react&lt;/strong&gt;, draw, and shoot within 300 msec (see link above): so unless their opponent can &lt;strong&gt;initiate&lt;/strong&gt;, draw and shoot in &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt; than 300 msec then they'll 'lose'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2011-06-09T14:01:26.613" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T14:01:26.613" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4438" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-09T14:06:42.940" Score="7" ViewCount="698" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live in Quebec, and one of the strangest thing here is that every time that some clouds are in the sky, all public pools in the cities are evacuated. This is done for our &quot;safety&quot; with the argument that lightning can strike the pool and I guess kill us all. Although I have seen in the news people hit by lightning in the middle of a lac, I have never seen anyone killed by lightning in a urban pool. &#xA;So, is there any case anywhere of someone being killed in a urban pool by lightning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I think my question is more specific then &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/466/is-it-unsafe-to-swim-during-a-lightning-storm&quot;&gt;Is it unsafe to swim during a lightning storm?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="800" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T15:26:22.087" Title="Is there any case of someone being hit by lightning in a urban pool?" Tags="|lightning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4421" CreationDate="2011-06-09T14:09:23.890" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;A huge number of studies indicate that nicotine, which is present in all cigaretes, is highly addictive. Here are some references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www1.umn.edu/perio/tobacco/nicaddct.html&quot;&gt;University of Minnesota&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.med.upenn.edu/cirna/&quot;&gt;University of Pennsylvania&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugabuse.gov/infofacts/tobacco.html&quot;&gt;US National Institute on Drug Abuse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Medicine/PsychiatryPsychology/?view=usa&amp;amp;ci=9780195064414&quot;&gt;Oxford University Press&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nycclash.com/nicotine.html&quot;&gt;This book&lt;/a&gt; questions the addictive properties of nicotine, but even it admits: &quot;Nicotine is almost universally believed to be the major factor that motivates smoking and impedes cessation.&quot;. While I don't have access to the book, it seems likely that the author believes that some other ingredient of cigarettes causes addiction rather than cigarettes not being addictive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the huge majority of informed opinion says Yes, cigarettes are addictive. It may be that a few people dissent from that view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-06-10T13:33:03.143" LastActivityDate="2011-06-10T13:33:03.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4441" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-09T14:40:41.797" Score="7" ViewCount="856" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hear a lot of people talk about how bad processed foods are for you, but I am having trouble finding supporting evidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can certainly understand that such foods are not healthy per se, but when people make positive claims they they are damaging to your health, then I would like to see some evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1392/whats-wrong-with-processed-food&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question which does not really answer my question above. It mentions some theories, but no real evidence or studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I can find, the few things that may be harmful to you are only harmful in mass amounts, significantly more than any person is going to consume in a server.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think it stands to reason that in developed countries the relevant governmental department such as the FDA ensures the food sold is not harmful to people. Certainly they may cause weight gain or hinder a healthy lifestyle, but that is quite a separate thing from actually causing any damaging condition such as diabetes or cancer or problems with various organs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is not to say that these foods are not doing that, but from what I can tell we have no evidence to support the claim that they are at present. If anyone could point me in the direction of such studies or evidence, that would be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T02:31:56.390" Title="Are chemically treated/heavy foods bad for you?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4438" CreationDate="2011-06-09T15:18:41.437" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Various links suggesting there are no documented cases in indoor pools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weatherquesting.com/indoor-pool-lightning.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.weatherquesting.com/indoor-pool-lightning.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bigeye.com/indoorswimmingpools.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bigeye.com/indoorswimmingpools.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aquaticsintl.com/2008/novdec/0811_rm.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.aquaticsintl.com/2008/novdec/0811_rm.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately though, it does happen outdoors (at least in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-397501/Husband-dies-holiday-pool-hit-lightning.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Italy&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-06-09T15:26:22.087" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T15:26:22.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4448" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4452" CreationDate="2011-06-09T16:30:34.240" Score="10" ViewCount="1534" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to CNN iReport article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-592395&quot;&gt;Alien Body Discovered in Russia After Reported UFO Crash&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Around one month ago this publication reported on a major UFO event that occurred in the region of Irkutsk in Russia's Siberia. Hundreds of villagers saw a huge object, glowing pink and blue, hurtle towards Earth before loudly impacting the ground  in a wooded area . The event received widespread coverage in Russia and was reported by Inter-fax, Russia's government news agency. In the West the event was completely ignored if not deliberately kept from public view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An enormous team of government officials, including military personal, secret service agents and science ministry officials made their way to the UFO crash site within hours of the event occurring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now it seems a video has been leaked onto the Internet showing a dead Alien found in the Republic of Buryatia, not far from the site of the UFO crash.&#xA;  Some of the Translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;we found him over there&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We found him around two hours ago&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It must have been lying here for days&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I first learned of this from Allnewsweb.com.  Now much of the major media is covering it as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this yet another Alien hoax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-06-12T02:48:07.817" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T02:48:07.817" Title="Was an Alien body found in the Republic of Buryatia?" Tags="|aliens|ufo|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4448" CreationDate="2011-06-09T17:16:26.707" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/news/dead-alien-siberia-body/&quot;&gt;Russia Today News reports&lt;/a&gt; (Apr 19):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;A video of what was claimed to be a mutilated alien corpse, which scored hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube, has turned out to be fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tiny “dead alien” is just skin from chicken filled with bread, reports the website 7d.org.ua. Police questioned the men who claimed to have found the “body” and they allegedly confessed to creating it themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-09T18:16:40.313" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T18:16:40.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4448" CreationDate="2011-06-09T17:21:12.867" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;And this is why I don't watch CNN.  Poor quality video, no effort at validation, etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of reasons to be skeptical of this.  For one the skin color and patterning is similar to any number of historical desicated corpses found in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citylife.co.uk/news_and_reviews/news/12719_lindow_man_display_wins_award&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bogs&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://echostains.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/preserved-in-time-otzi-the-iceman/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ice&lt;/a&gt;, etc.  For another, the &quot;body&quot; is something any a half decent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myvpal.com/fake-corpse-dead-body-halloween-bfx/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;special effects artist&lt;/a&gt; could produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simplest explanation is that it's a hoax.  The next best is that perhaps the crash unearthed a preserved body.  There's no excuse for this sort of news &quot;story&quot; to even be published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-06-09T17:26:44.440" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T17:26:44.440" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4454" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-09T18:07:37.340" Score="12" ViewCount="1620" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/12/021218075118.htm&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; article says that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you avoid bright light, loud&#xA;  noises, heavy perfumes and itchy&#xA;  clothing, you may find that you avoid&#xA;  hot and cold foods because you have&#xA;  sensitive teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard before that people who suffer sensitive teeth are more likely to need sunglasses in bright sunlight and from my own anecdotal, personal experience the quotation above is 100% true. But is there any scientific explanation for this? Do certain individuals really have overly-sensitive senses or is it just coincidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of what I can find online appears to be extrapolated from the single study discussed in the link above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="611" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T06:00:48.990" LastActivityDate="2013-05-26T23:19:12.073" Title="Do some people have 'sensitive senses'?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4454" CreationDate="2011-06-09T18:14:19.067" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yep, particularly common among those with &lt;a href=&quot;http://autism.lifetips.com/cat/66419/sensory-issues-and-autism/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;autism&lt;/a&gt;.  It can present itself either as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ct-asrc.org/docs/sensoryissues.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;over or under-sensitivity&lt;/a&gt;.  It can be affect just about any of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.autismtoday.com/articles/Sensory_Disorder.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;senses&lt;/a&gt; (of which there are more than five).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's considered to be just an error in the brains filter.  We are likely all that sensitive, most of us just filter it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_Processing_Disorder&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; has a reasonable summary.&#xA;Other good &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.autismtoday.com/articles/Sensory_Disorder.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; with more depth about hypersensitivy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Supersensitive' hearing - found in&#xA;  the child Generally not perceived as a&#xA;  problem  who can hear a 'silent dog&#xA;  whistle' or the 'far end' but may be&#xA;  factor in hyperacusis - of a telephone&#xA;  conversation. (i.e. hypersensitivity&#xA;  to sound).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hyperacusis - often associated with&#xA;  tinnitus. Avoidance of particular&#xA;  situations. Makes  Stressed by&#xA;  particular sounds that do not&#xA;  socializing, shopping, travelling etc.&#xA;  bother other people. Such sounds&#xA;  generally extremely difficult.  seem&#xA;  much louder than they actually are &amp;amp;&#xA;  the person is unable to block them out&#xA;  easily. The sounds are individual &amp;amp;&#xA;  can include people eating, television,&#xA;  vacuum cleaners &amp;amp; also quieter sounds&#xA;  like a zip being pulled. Hyperacusis&#xA;  is also found in over 40% of people&#xA;  with tinnitus as well &amp;amp; may prove to&#xA;  be a factor in the development of some&#xA;  tinnitus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-22T13:57:08.497" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T13:57:08.497" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4456" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4457" CreationDate="2011-06-09T18:24:45.490" Score="17" ViewCount="2299" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Bechdel Test is named for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://alisonbechdel.blogspot.com/2005/08/rule.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;author of a comic&lt;/a&gt; that popularized the following three &amp;quot;rules&amp;quot; that must be fulfilled before a movie passes the test:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The film must have at least two women in it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The two women must talk to each other during the film&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At least one of these discussions must be about something besides a man&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The premise of the comic (and the proponents of the rule) is that a striking majority of films fail this test. The implication is that the film industry has a strong gender bias toward male characters or male-centric plots such that the women are only really there to talk about the men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevant questions are such:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do a strong majority of modern films regularly fail this test? (Say, at least 75%.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does flipping the gender of the test result a drastically different outcome? (Say, a difference of 33% or more.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These percentages are arbitrary, but they provide a starting point. A clarification of the last question: If the female Bechdel test fails 75% but the male Bechdel test fails 25% of the time, the difference would be 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help restrict the data set if a larger one is not practical, feel free to concentrate on extremely popular or critically acclaimed films from the previous decade (2000-2010). This, again, only serves to provide a starting point. (An alternative would be the decade surrounding the comic's printing: 1980-1990.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T16:10:56.753" Title="Is the Bechdel Test an accurate critique of the film industry?" Tags="|gender|movies|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4456" CreationDate="2011-06-09T19:34:44.660" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://bechdeltest.com/statistics/&quot;&gt;site&lt;/a&gt;, which uses a community effort to rank movies, 50% of all movies pass the test, and only 10% fail on all three points.  So no a strong majority does not fail the test.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the validity of the measure at all is questioned, for instance &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheBechdelTest&quot;&gt;tvtropes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;a fair number of top-notch works have legitimate reasons for including&#xA;  no women (e.g. ones set in a men's&#xA;  prison or on a WorldWarTwo military&#xA;  submarine or back when only men were&#xA;  on juries or with no conversations at&#xA;  all, or with only one character).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A movie can easily pass the Bechdel Test and still be incredibly&#xA;  misogynistic. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;it's also possible for a story to fail the test and still be strongly&#xA;  feminist in other ways&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It would appear that the only thing the Bechdel test is good at measuring is whether or not something passes the Bechdel test&lt;/strong&gt;.  If it misidentifies mysogenist movies as feminist and vice-versa then it cannot be said to be a valid measure or critique of the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T19:34:44.660" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4470" CreationDate="2011-06-09T19:38:53.287" Score="12" ViewCount="7454" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common assumption about household pets is that there is a mutual endearment between owner and pet. Searching the internet finds handfuls of people asking the same question and there are plenty of editorial comments on whether our fluffy friends love us back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To approach this from a skeptical standpoint, what emotional details do we know about animals? Have studies been done on emotional attachments of dogs to people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Love&quot; is a difficult term to pin down even with regards to human interaction but, for the sake of this question, here is a definition I pulled from the dictionary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;love &amp;mdash; an intense feeling of deep affection&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To phrase this as applicable to dogs: Can dogs possess feelings of deep affection for their owners? Aside from purely behavioral traits, is there any evidence one way or the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T07:14:23.697" Title="Can dogs love their owners?" Tags="|psychology|neurology|zoology|emotions|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4459" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4617" CreationDate="2011-06-09T20:39:27.843" Score="12" ViewCount="16161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got an email with a link to a Facebook page with information about some obscure Princeton University research on how decorative refrigerator magnets increase the risk of cancer due to consumption of irradiated food by the fridge users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For several months, they were feeding&#xA;  two groups of mice: the first group&#xA;  with food kept in a refrigerator, and&#xA;  the second group with food kept in a&#xA;  refrigerator as well but with several&#xA;  decorative magnets on the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The objective of this experiment was&#xA;  to see how electromagnetic radiation&#xA;  (that coming out from the decorative&#xA;  magnets on the door) affect food&#xA;  items. Amazingly, rigorous clinical&#xA;  studies stated that the group of mice&#xA;  that consumed the &quot;radiated&quot; food had&#xA;  as much as 87% higher probability to&#xA;  get cancer than the other group of&#xA;  mice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though it sounds absurd to me, can this be true? Also is there any indication that magnets actually become so dangerous when they come in contact with electric devices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3080" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T02:17:09.737" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T02:17:09.737" Title="Are decorative magnets on refrigerator dangerous?" Tags="|medical-science|radiation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4381" CreationDate="2011-06-09T21:16:54.463" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thanks for the answers, everyone! I think I found a source that takes the cake, though. &lt;a href=&quot;http://intraspec.ca/Effects-of-caffeine-on-human-health.pdf&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a full-text meta-analysis of many, many studies about caffeine, including its effects on sleep. See the section entitled &quot;Effects of caffeine on sleep.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer my own question, I'd have to say that the answer is both &quot;yes&quot; and &quot;no.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes:&lt;/strong&gt; From an analytical/research/measurement perspective, it appears that there have been a considerable number of studies showing that caffeine does, in fact, affect sleep quality (duration, efficiency, latency, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No:&lt;/strong&gt; From what I would consider a practical perspective, two bolded studies below show that despite being able to measure caffeine's effects on sleep... these measurements do not seem to correlate with mood or performance the next day. Thus, I'm left to ask if I should/need to care about such measured effects in daily life.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To dig into the linked paper above, here are the main points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Caffeine increases sleep latency (the time required to fall asleep from being awake ([LINK}(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_onset_latency)). [1]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Caffeine reduces sleep duration. [2]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Caffeine administered in the early morning can affect sleep. [3]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Individuals in studies have &lt;strong&gt;reported&lt;/strong&gt; that they can consume caﬀeine bedtime with no adverse effects. [4] [5]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High caffeine consumers appear less &lt;strong&gt;report&lt;/strong&gt; sleep disturbance infrequent consumers. [6]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tolerance develops to the effects of caffeine sleep. [1]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are no withdrawal effects on sleep once caffeine consumption is ceased. [7]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is unclear whether there is any correlation between measured sleep disturbance and changes in mood and performance on the following day.&lt;/strong&gt; [8]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is easy to demonstrate that caffeine consumed late at night produces effects on sleep; it is difficult to show the same for &lt;em&gt;high&lt;/em&gt; consumption levels of caffeine in general.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An inverse relationship has been found between daily caffeine consumption and sleep duration, but &lt;strong&gt;no significant relationship has been found between caffeine consumption and sleep satisfaction.&lt;/strong&gt; [2]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Several studies are listed which found little evidence to correlate caffeine consumption and and sleep. [9] [10] [11]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three conclusions drawn from the meta-analysis are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Over 3 mg/kg of caffeine in a single beverage consumed in the late evening will both increase sleep latency and reduce duration. Smaller amounts vary considerably between individuals, and there is evidence to support that high consuming individuals are more resistant to sleep side effects of caffeine. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impacts on next-day behavior after caffeine-induced sleep effects is not known. Neither are effects on long term health (assuming long term health effects related to sleep alterations, but it's not specified).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High levels of caffeine have not been strongly related to sleep parameters, but this may be due to the scheduling of consumption as to not adversely affect sleep (i.e. not drinking caffeine later in the day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I bolded a couple of studies, as their methods indicate that patients were asked to self-report. I see potential sources for error and bias in methods like these. I happen to drink a lot of coffee, and could see having a vested interest in making myself look better, and thus skewing responses toward the &quot;little/no adverse effects&quot; end of the spectrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll close by saying that further studies would be helpful to 1) eliminate self-reporting bias (use objective measurements rather than subjective questions) and 2) examine more handles than just &quot;mood&quot; and &quot;performance&quot; to establish/dis-establish the connection between sleep disturbance and any practical effects on the life/experience of the individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;[1] Zwyghuizen-Doorenbos, A., Roehrs, T.A., Lipschutz, L., Timms, V., Roth, T., 1990. Eﬀects of caﬀeine on alertness. Psychopharmacology 100, 36–39.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;[2] Hicks, R.A., Hicks, G.J., Reyes, J.R., Cheers, Y., 1983. Daily caﬀeine use and the sleep of college students. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 21, 24–25.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;[3] Landolt, H.P., Werth, E., Borbely, A.A., Dijk, D.J., 1995. Caﬀeine intake (200mg) in the morning aﬀects human sleep and EEG power spectra at night. Brain Research 675, 67–74.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;[4] Colton, T., Gosselin, R.E., Smith, R.P., 1967. The tolerance of coﬀee drinkers to caﬀeine. Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics 9, 31–39.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;[5] Levy, M., Zylber-Katz, E., 1983. Caﬀeine metabolism and coﬀee attributed sleep disturbances. Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics 33, 770–775.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;[6] Snyder, S.H., Sklar, P., 1984. Behavioral and molecular actions of caﬀeine: focus on adenosine. Journal of Psychiatric Research 18, 91–106.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;[7] Searle, G.F., 1994. The eﬀect of dietary caﬀeine manipulation on blood caﬀeine, sleep and disturbed behaviour. Journal of Intellectual Disability Research 38, 383–391.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;[8] Smith, A.P., Maben, A., Brockman, P., 1993b. The eﬀects of caﬀeine and evening meals on sleep and performance, mood and cardiovascular functioning the following day. Journal of  Psychopharmacology 7, 203–206.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;[9] Lee, K.A., 1992. Self-reported sleep disturbances in employed women. Sleep15, 493–498.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;[10] Greenwood, K.M., Rich, W.J., James, J.E., 1995. Sleep hygiene practices and sleep duration in rotating-shift shiftworkers. Work and Stress 9, 262–271.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[11] Bliwise, N.G., 1992. Factors related to sleepquality in healthy elderly women. Psychology and Aging 7, 83–88.  &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-06-09T21:16:54.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4462" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-09T22:30:03.237" Score="14" ViewCount="6621" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember reading about this as a form of ancient torture, but I am unable to find evidence that is suggestive of that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did however find on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_torture&quot;&gt;this wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;uses a heavy chain to tie a cauldron to her stomach, then shoved rats under the rim of the pot. He put hot coals on the top, causing the rats to claw at Cara to try and get away from the rising temperature inside the pot&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that a rat will actually eat/burrow through flesh if it is placed on a person with hot coals surrounding an encapsulating &quot;pot&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T05:54:26.093" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T23:06:28.017" Title="Will rats eat/burrow through human flesh?" Tags="|biology|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4472" CreationDate="2011-06-09T23:18:41.170" Score="21" ViewCount="3846" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many cities have added &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_occupancy_vehicle_lane&quot;&gt;carpool lanes&lt;/a&gt; to their roads, in hopes of encouraging people to carpool and reduce traffic. The idea is that, not only does the road now have an extra lane, there will also be less cars on it as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had friends claim, however, that they are actually less effective than an extra lane. They claim less people drive in the lanes, so they aren't actually helping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there any evidence, either way, that &lt;strong&gt;carpool lanes reduce traffic congestion more than a normal, extra lane would?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2808" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T09:39:02.663" Title="Do carpool lanes help reduce traffic congestion more than adding an extra lane would?" Tags="|road-vehicles|traffic|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4434" CreationDate="2011-06-09T23:59:56.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In another fictional reference relating to the time period in question - namely the movie &quot;Unforgiven&quot;, how fast you are has little relation to who &quot;wins&quot;. It better boils down to the character of the person doing the shooting. Namely, whether that person is capable of killing another human being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, on the other hand, is quite well documented. During WWII, Brigadier General S.L.A Marshall &lt;a href=&quot;http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IBR/is_3_33/ai_109580229/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;conducted several surveys&lt;/a&gt; of riflemen who had seen combat and found that only about 15-20% would take &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; part with their weapons. In fact, most would prefer to put themselves into harms way rather than kill enemy soldiers. His work has been disputed, but tests involving recreations of historical battles using non-lethal laser weapons, and comparing them to historical casualty rates (referenced &lt;a href=&quot;http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/hope_on_the_battlefield&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) showed that these numbers were fairly accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another take on the Hollywood gunfight-in-the-street is the reason for the standoff in the first place: namely, that he who goes for his weapon first is the aggressor, and the one who shoots last is acting in self-defence. As such, with witnesses present, the former would likely be convicted of murder, and the latter would not. Which is why in old movies, the one who draws last is always the one who wins. It makes the conclusion less ambiguous and takes less time in the movie. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3458" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T15:57:00.277" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T15:57:00.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4441" CreationDate="2011-06-10T03:51:58.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I hear a lot of people talk about how bad processed foods are for you, but I am having trouble finding supporting evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first google hit for 'health canada' and 'processed foods' is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/sr-sr/activ/consprod/trans-eng.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One type of 'processed food' are the baked goods which are sold e.g. on supermarket shelves. These may be made with e.g. trans fats, which extend their shelf life (e.g. prevent them going stale within the first day of their being baked, like normal baked goods do if you live in France). An excess of trans fats is bad for you (for example: it promotes heart disease). The harm you incur from eating a single baked good isn't sufficient to justify outlawing it. Nevertheless, it's not the healthiest thing you could eat, and an excess of it is harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason, people are counselled to &quot;avoid processed foods&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2011-06-10T03:51:58.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4469" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-10T04:40:40.703" Score="2" ViewCount="1235" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do a majority (e.g. &gt;50%) of people form positive opinions about an individual's knowledge on the subject matter if the speaker/writer is more eloquent(well versed in grammar, clear and concise)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/789/is-anonymity-not-allowed-on-this-site&quot;&gt;example of the claim&lt;/a&gt; from the meta.Skeptics.SE forum, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the very least it tends to make for a more pleasant read and there's probably some &quot;intelligence-bias&quot; going on which leads others to respect statements by more eloquent writers/speakers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is true, I am also interested in knowing why this occurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:58.097" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T21:58:23.233" Title="Are people more likely to believe eloquent people?" Tags="|behavior|language|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4458" CreationDate="2011-06-10T12:04:43.797" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;After some research, I was elated to find out that studies have been conducted, about dogs in general and specifically about their affection towards owners. As a disclaimer, I don't claim my answer &lt;em&gt;proves&lt;/em&gt; dogs can love their owners - but existing evidence seems to suggest they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to determine whether dogs can posses deep affection towards their owners, we need to establish whether dogs have such feelings. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347204003392&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results suggest that playful,&#xA;  social, exploratory, avoidant and&#xA;  aggressive behaviour in dogs is&#xA;  influenced by stable dispositions;&#xA;  i.e. personality traits, that seem to&#xA;  have been important during the&#xA;  evolution of the domestic dog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's behind a pay wall, so unfortunately we cannot scrutinize the methodology, but this study concludes that dogs do have what could be classified as personality traits. If we accept this, then we can safely assume a dog's behavior - more specifically, behaviour identified with affection - can very well be influenced by factors outside the physiological realm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then we have &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&amp;amp;id=2001-10046-012&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; study - it's research subjects are specifically dogs living at rescue centers, so whether it's conclusions can be applied to dogs in general is debatable. However, citing from the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The specific response of the handled&#xA;  dogs toward the handler fulfilled the&#xA;  operational criteria of attachment. In&#xA;  shelter conditions, the remarkable&#xA;  demand for social contact with humans&#xA;  may result in rather fast forming of&#xA;  attachment even in adult dogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, existing research seems to corroborate the common sense claims that dogs &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; develop &lt;em&gt;affection&lt;/em&gt; towards their owners. As for how much affection, I doubt research is available. However, anecdotal reports abound, such as the very touching case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fallendogs.com/story.php?dogID=34&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cpl. Liam Tasker and his dog, Theo:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2ZZI3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dog died shortly after it's owner was killed in a firefight, for no apparent reason other than the death of it's caring owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="1781" LastEditDate="2011-06-10T12:13:31.157" LastActivityDate="2011-06-10T12:13:31.157" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4466" CreationDate="2011-06-10T14:37:55.810" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Reliable source for this answer: Me. I've been involved in traffic and public transportation politics for years (although I stopped ten years ago). I'll try to find other reliable sources too if I can and have time. :-)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a congestion problem there are a bunch of different things you can do about it. The thing that is most natural: Add an extra lane or a whole new road, is at best a short-term solution. &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=1kJoPSirITcC&amp;amp;lpg=PA1&amp;amp;ots=sbPzEBOqNb&amp;amp;dq=building%20more%20roads%20does%20not%20help%20congestion&amp;amp;lr&amp;amp;pg=PA37#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=building%20more%20roads%20&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;In most cases what it does is only move the congestion from one place to another.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you for example have small highly trafficked road into a city, making a highway there will only cause congestion once the highway reaches the city and you can't have a highway. Boston famously tried to solve this by simply tearing down parts of it's center and building a highway straight through Boston, finished in 1959. However, it was quickly evident that it didn't help, since all these cars still needed to get off into town, and there was limited space for off-ramps. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bostonroads.com/roads/central-artery/&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt; Already 1972 plans started for burying the whole elevated roadway in tunnels instead, which happened in the 1990's and finished in 2007. And congestion is not gone either. It's right now 10:17AM, after the morning rush is over, and many parts of Boston traffic (viewable &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boston.com/news/traffic/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) is congested, with MA-9 east running on an average of 10mph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not to say that you shouldn't build roads. People will need to get into the city, you need to move goods etc. But it is not a very good way to get rid of congestion. This is to some extent an effect of supply and demand. Roads are free to use, and therefore there is nothing to regulate demand, so people will over use it. That suggests other solutions, like congestion charges. Simply speaking, you'll have to pay tolls to use roads that are highly trafficked, therefore giving an incentive to those who don't have to go in rush-hour to go earlier or later. Stockholm did this with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stockholmsforsoket.se/upload/Rapporter/Expert_group_summary_060621.pdf&quot;&gt;success&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also go for straight toll booths, but that also requires you to have good options to go around the city. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another option is to extend public transportation. If it's faster to take the train into the city than to sit in the traffic jams, people will take the train.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one option is, of course, to make carpool lanes, or similar. Do they work? Yes, at least sometimes. They work by encouraging people to carpool, which lessens the amount of traffic. This means, most importantly, that you are not just moving the congestion from one place to another, you are actually reducing traffic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But just as congestion charges it has to be applied wisely to be effective, and in some cases a carpool lane can probably create congestion where there was no congestion before by using up one of the existing lanes. It needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2011-09-22T08:32:15.943" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T08:32:15.943" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4473" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4474" CreationDate="2011-06-10T15:05:35.567" Score="24" ViewCount="28312" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine is a former prosecutor for the Crown/State. He's observed that it was often harder to investigate whether a deceased person was murdered when they own cats because the cats will eat the corpse of their owner. He also observed that dogs will starve to death before they eat their owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I don't doubt the veracity of his observations, I am wondering if is this a known phenomenon that can be generalized for all cats and all dogs, or just a sampling peculiar to his practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, one must admire the loyalty of the dog and the survival instinct of the cat!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="2433" LastEditDate="2011-06-10T15:24:53.497" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T07:32:07.647" Title="Will cats eat their deceased owner, but dogs will starve to death instead?" Tags="|zoology|mortality|ethology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4473" CreationDate="2011-06-10T15:56:13.967" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google &quot;Dog eats Owner&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/05/15/austria.dog/&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://english.pravda.ru/society/stories/30-09-2008/106502-dog-0/&quot;&gt;Pravda&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-409885/Dog-eats-dead-master-wife.html&quot;&gt;Mail Online&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't appear to be common, but then the circumstances in which this occurs aren't real common either as it requires someone dying in a confined area with a dog and not being discovered before the dog runs out of better pickings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though google also seems full of some crazy story about a dog saving a diabetic man by eating his toes (though links seems to disagree on where this happened and the number of toes)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-09T21:59:56.780" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T21:59:56.780" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2962" CreationDate="2011-06-10T18:23:23.827" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mostly, it's the cost of the car itself, not any externalities. &lt;a href=&quot;http://green.autoblog.com/2010/05/05/report-nissan-leaf-battery-pack-costs-only-6-000-9-000-or/&quot;&gt;High-density batteries cost a lot of money&lt;/a&gt; for the amount of energy they store - especially in comparison to gas - and cheap batteries have such low energy density that you may as well not even bother. Compare a Tesla Roadster at  to a gasoline car of similar performance, which you can typically get at half that cost from premium brands like Porsche. Likewise, a Nissan Leaf costs around &lt;a href=&quot;http://green.autoblog.com/2010/03/30/2011-nissan-leaf-us-pricing-officially-announced-as-low-as-25/&quot;&gt;$32,780&lt;/a&gt; (link includes original press release), while a comparatively equipped Toyota Matrix costs around &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toyota.com/byt/pub/setStartOptions.do?seriesCategory=10&amp;amp;zipCode=90210&amp;amp;tabname=packages&amp;amp;lang=&amp;amp;restoreSession=CURRENT&quot;&gt;$22,900&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, that cost is &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt; at a point where it can be considered feasible. For example, you can reasonably expect to &lt;a href=&quot;http://gromm.livejournal.com/215602.html&quot;&gt;spend $10,000 in gas&lt;/a&gt;[1] (and much, much less on electricity for the Leaf) for that Matrix inside of about 8 years, but you will probably have to upgrade the battery in the Leaf after about 10 or 12 years (Nissan says they plan to produce a Leaf with twice the battery capacity by &lt;a href=&quot;http://green.autoblog.com/2009/11/30/nissan-expects-to-double-energy-capacity-of-battery-by-2015/&quot;&gt;2015&lt;/a&gt;). That said, you don't have to look far to find other examples of similarly-sized, gas powered hatchbacks at the $32,000 price point, either (the Audi A3 or Mercedes Benz B-class for example). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that we are at this point is a testament to recent improvements in battery density and cost, and in the future we will very likely see electric cars that cost the same or only slightly more than gas-powered ones. In the past (say, in 1998), the idea was completely infeasible from an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_EV1#Costs&quot;&gt;economic standpoint&lt;/a&gt;[2], which is why so few automakers are making electric cars &lt;em&gt;today&lt;/em&gt;. Next year, that will change as several automakers that aren't already making electrics are bringing them to market, and several more also have plans in place to do so in the next two or three years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to say that there's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries&quot;&gt;conspiracy among automakers to not make electric cars&lt;/a&gt;[3] is not true since at least 5 - GM, Nissan, Ford, Volvo, and VW are either now making them, or explicitly plan to in the near future. That oil companies are actively trying to suppress the technology may be true, but it doesn't seem to be in their hands anymore. Chevron may own the patent for NIMH battery chemistry, but it doesn't for the Lithium Ion batteries that are now favoured for electric cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;FOOTNOTES:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Link shows my own analysis, showing the math to demonstrate how I got there. I adjusted downwards from $16,640 to $10,000 to reflect that my pricing is in Canadian dollars, with local gas prices being about 40% higher than most of the US, plus the fact that gasoline prices are anything but stable. If anything, $10,000 USD is a low estimate, but it certainly falls within the difference in purchase price between a Leaf and a Matrix. I used a Toyota Matrix in my comparison because the car's dimensions are almost exactly the same (the Leaf is 4cm longer but otherwise identical), and the features of the Matrix S are very similar to the Leaf's base model, with similar power output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Wikipedia references a Washington Post article that is no longer online, stating that each EV1 produced cost GM about $80,000. Another reference in book form states that they cost $100,000 each. This was far in excess of what GM was leasing the cars for, in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] Yes, another Wikipedia reference, but they bring together &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; sources that do a better job of describing this phenomenon than I ever could in my short article, which is decidedly &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; about any such conspiracy anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3458" LastEditorUserId="3458" LastEditDate="2011-08-15T19:04:02.540" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T19:04:02.540" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4469" CreationDate="2011-06-10T19:10:15.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I hacked this down quite a bit to try to make it more readable and pertinent to the question, which was helped by some comments below illustrating what the question actually was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As pointed out below, the question is more accurately, &quot;All else being equal (subject knowledge, intelligence, etc.), will the more eloquent individual be more persuasive?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll go along with the Wiki definition found &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eloquence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eloquence (from Latin &lt;em&gt;eloquentia&lt;/em&gt;) is fluent, forcible, elegant or persuasive speaking. It is primarily the power of expressing strong emotions in striking and appropriate language, thereby producing conviction or persuasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=lfo43QWsPiwC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA22&amp;amp;dq=factors+increase+persuasiveness&amp;amp;ots=rrnUF_Croo&amp;amp;sig=ylX_wIpFrCTCcc7J84uC2PPEo6g#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=factors%20increase%20persuasiveness&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a preview for book, &quot;Public Communication Campaigns.&quot; See the section &quot;Conventional analysis of source variables.&quot; Among the factors increasing speaker persuasiveness are credibility (seeming honest and perceived expertise). Then follows:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perceived source expertise, in turn, derives from characteristics such as the sources's general education level, familiarity with the subject matter, and &lt;strong&gt;speaking in an authoritative tone.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the section entitled &quot;Message variables that increase persuasive impact&quot; is not available via Google, but a summary chart of factors that increase persuasiveness features this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Message (&lt;strong&gt;appeal&lt;/strong&gt;, inclusion/omission, &lt;strong&gt;organization, style&lt;/strong&gt;, repetitiveness, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.151.8489&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; paper on credibility with respect to Artificial Intelligence states the following, building on the work of Aristotle:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus, persuasion is not  solely concerned with developing sound arguments and proofs; it also &lt;strong&gt;involves putting the audience into a receptive frame of mind and convincing them that the speaker is a credible person.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://home.honolulu.hawaii.edu/~littledo/credibility4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is an article by Dr. Doric Little, a professor in speech skills, discussing the role of rhetoric in persuasion (also referring to Aristotle). Note this:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite the very reasonable judgement that a person with the most proof or facts should be the most persuasive, Aristotle and numerous speech researchers in this century have concluded that &lt;strong&gt;the credible person, the person who is perceived as trustworthy, is most persuasive.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She also cites research by Samuel Becker at the University of Iowa (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uiowa.edu/commstud/people/sam_becker.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;) as having shown the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... Becker found that... Content/analysis and delivery equaled about 45% each of the perceived speaking effectiveness while language constituted 10%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a911942140&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; is the Becker study being referenced. I would bundle &quot;facts, figures, data&quot; with content/analysis and &quot;eloquence, rhetoric, mastery of language, etc.&quot; with the delivery and language categories. If you agree, then Becker's study supports the idea that eloquence is at least a component of the factors that sway 65% of one's perceived credibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Click on the preview for &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/007256296X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; book, &quot;The Art of Public Speaking,&quot; and look at the Table of Contents. Note chapters devoted to &quot;Analyzing the Audience,&quot; &quot;Using Language,&quot; and &quot;Delivery.&quot; Note that the chapters are not all variants of &quot;Improve knowledge of the subject matter&quot; -- in other words, &lt;em&gt;eloquence matters&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; related to eloquence is mentioned &lt;em&gt;in addition&lt;/em&gt; to knowledge of the subject matter alone shows that eloquence is a component, and thus given two speakers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a subject expert, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a subject expert who is also eloquent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The eloquent speaker will have a higher persuasive impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also asked &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; this might be. I'm not exactly sure. One factor might be that &quot;practice makes perfect.&quot; The more one studies, discusses, and teaches, the more familiar one becomes with the subject matter, corresponding vocabulary, terminology, and minute details of the subject. I have found that in my area of work and in my personal areas of more intense study/reading, I find myself able to access somewhat esoteric vocabulary words and phrases that might have once caused met to previously stumble while looking for the exact wording to express a concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, &quot;sounding like an expert&quot; may cause the unfamiliar to think one &quot;is an expert.&quot; While this can be used to mislead, it can also assist in &lt;em&gt;preventing others from being misled.&lt;/em&gt; Take the &quot;expert sounding&quot; speakers on creationism or homeopathy. Say you're extremely confident that such areas are false, but are not a geological expert or haven't been through med school. I consider it advantageous to &lt;em&gt;be eloquent&lt;/em&gt; when discussing such matters as to not be outdone by my opponents and lose others into murky waters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2011-06-12T21:58:23.233" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T21:58:23.233" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4373" CreationDate="2011-06-10T19:57:53.620" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;When blackle came out (2007) the majority of users still had CRT monitors.&#xA;There's  a nice discussion of this here &lt;a href=&quot;http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/08/history-in-january-2007-mark-ontkush.html&quot;&gt;http://ecoiron.blogspot.com/2007/08/history-in-january-2007-mark-ontkush.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the above link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Criticisms&#xA;There has been both praise and criticism for this initiative, with its supporters citing it as a great example of environmental thinking, and its detractors pointing out usability and aesthetic problems, as well as questions about the scientific validity of the claims. Some of the issues are listed below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since the technique is most effective on CRT monitors, some proxy sites have been criticized for not mentioning this fact. In particular, the Blackle site has been heavily criticized, as it is probable that they are generating an substantial Adsense revenue stream from implementing the concept.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CRT monitors are being phased out; about 75% of monitors in active use worldwide are LCDs. Additionally, countries with a high percentage of CRT are replacing them rapidly; for example, Display Search projects that only 18% of the monitors in China will be CRTs by the end of 2007. Therefore, although the technique would be effective for a limited period, it is questionable whether the disruption would be beneficial.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CRTs are generally darker than LCDs, and the text on many of the proxy sites is barely readable on monitors of this type. For example, Blackle uses a small grey font on an all black background. It is possible that these 'all black' proxy sites are only usable on LCD screens, and this would negate the energy savings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proxy sites cannot handle the heavy load that high volume sites are accustomed to. For example, on August 1st, 2007 and several prior occasions, the Blackle web server was producing intermittent error messages for extended periods of time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, already back in 2007, most people were questioning the usefulness for the black background web pages for saving energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we were all still using CRT monitors then yes you could save a lot of energy by using the black backgrounds.  But, this is 2011 and the few CRT monitors left in existence are sitting in the corner of our basements unplugged and waiting to be taken to the electronics recycling graveyard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3471" LastEditorUserId="4727" LastEditDate="2012-01-29T21:36:36.073" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T21:36:36.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4481" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-10T20:29:38.473" Score="12" ViewCount="1152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that the reason that the XBox live games cannot be played with friends on Windows machines is that when MS tried it out, the keyboard-based players were so dominant that Microsoft decided not to allow the capability. Specifically, I've heard this about FPS games. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is repeated in many places, for example on this forum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Definitely PC on the FPS front. Unless you plug in a mouse to the console. Mouse and WSAD are -much- better than console autoaim and all that, to be honest. Not to mention that due to more control, the PC FPS games tend to be more fast-paced than console ones, where part of the difficulty of the game actually lies in the controller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frihost.com/forums/vt-67494.html&quot;&gt;Console vs. Computer: FPS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So have Windows-based FPS players been proven to be generally superior to console FPS players, thus making this story plausible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T09:51:37.383" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T09:51:37.383" Title="Are PC-based players generally superior to console-based players in first-person shooters?" Tags="|consumer-products|ergonomics|videogames|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3426" CreationDate="2011-06-10T20:42:08.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recent evidence shows memory for in utero (prenatal) experiences is expressed as conditioned response, most likely from statistical learning. These experiences show that newborns respond to the mother’s voice and the prosaic patterns music or passages, but this leans more towards a set of response preferences(1). It maybe possible that some experiences in the womb may be retained however there currently is no evidence that it is anything other than statistical learning. As a side note adults or at least people 13 years or older in a recent study have shown that people can access memories as far back as 31.25 months on average, the earlier figure of 3-4 years is based on a summation of studies over the last 100 years on adults, research participants typically provide memories in written format in group administrated tasks(2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) DeCasper,A.J.,&amp;amp; Spence, M.J. (1991) Auditory mediated behavior during prenatal period: A cognitive view.&#xA;(2) Peterson,C. (2010) Infantile amnesia and gender: does the way we measure it matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3473" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-06-16T08:45:53.563" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T08:45:53.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4483" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5410" CreationDate="2011-06-10T20:54:31.233" Score="45" ViewCount="19802" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard as long ago as 2003 that trying to call a cell phone while it's inside a microwave (with the microwave &lt;em&gt;off&lt;/em&gt;, of course) could be used to test if the shielding of the microwave was intact. I recall trying it and that it worked (the phone did not ring). I've tried in other microwaves and it has &lt;em&gt;sometimes&lt;/em&gt; worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim appears fairly common: See &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_check_for_a_radiation_leak_in_a_microwave&quot;&gt;WikiAnswers&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Check-a-Microwave-for-Leaks&quot;&gt;WikiHow&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/region_central_southern_az/other/urban-legend:-does-your-microwave-leak-radiation&quot;&gt;ABC News&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this method reliable?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why or why not?&lt;/strong&gt; Currently, explanations mostly occur in forums and none are well-supported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a very related note, a similar test involves doing this with a netbook and attempting to communicate with it via wireless connectivity (e.g. to ping it). See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/16/stupid-netbook-tricks-diy-microwave-shield-testing/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for an example, claiming that this works since the two frequencies are very close. Coincidentally (or not), the comments feature suggestions to use a cell phone instead...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="7286" LastEditDate="2014-11-16T22:23:35.593" LastActivityDate="2014-11-16T23:14:32.290" Title="Can you test for microwave leaks by putting a cell phone inside and calling it?" Tags="|mobile-phones|microwaves|diagnostic-test|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4484" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4499" CreationDate="2011-06-10T20:59:48.327" Score="11" ViewCount="4575" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yux4E.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;hello MrHen, this picture is again essential, I assure you:)&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When encountering the average bumpy railroad crosssing such as the one pictured above, does slowing down almost to the point of stopping (as you would for a speed bump) produce less stress on the vehicle than simply continuing over the crossing at a normal rate of speed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of varying opinions on this topic, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.maxima.org/general-maxima-discussion/328776-do-you-slow-down-over-train-tracks-bumpy-roads.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this discussion&lt;/a&gt; taken from the Nissan Maxima board (which I picked because it represents sort of an &quot;average&quot; car in the US).  I have heard people argue quite passionately for either method.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has scientific study ever yielded an answer to this question, or even produced a reliable set of guidelines based on demonstrable evidence?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, I'm aware that a truck designed for off-roading or heavy hauling is less likely to be damaged than a low-riding sports car.  While that is an important factor to take into consideration when answering, that's not the central question here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Photo Source &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.hernandotoday.com/content/2011/feb/24/241633/rough-crossing/news/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tampa Tribune&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-09-01T03:16:35.687" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T03:16:35.687" Title="Is it better to cross rough railroad tracks very slowly or at normal/higher speeds?" Tags="|road-vehicles|driving-speed|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4483" CreationDate="2011-06-10T22:31:46.310" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microwave in the microwave oven is usually at 2.45 gigahertz&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven#Principles&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_oven#Principles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wireless LAN protocols, such as Bluetooth and the IEEE 802.11 specifications, also use microwaves in the 2.4 GHz range&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave#Communication&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave#Communication&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So using Bluetooth / WiFi is a very good test for seeing if the microwave oven has a leak. The ping is a very good test, since what you really want to see is if any microwave comes out, so even if the laptop within the oven, say, can receive the request, the reply (ECHO_REPLY) should not be sent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cellphone frequencies vary a lot. Within GSM there are various frequencies and CDMA is different so using cellphones is not a good test for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On significance of frequencies / wavelengths for shielding Microwaves in specific and Electromagnetic waves in general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The shielding is based on the wavelength  of the wave which is inversely proportional to the frequency. The wavelength of a wave can be correlated to the size of it if it were a particle. Now for the shielding to work the holes in the shielding material should be smaller than the wavelength of the waves. So, while a Cell phone microwave frequency being much lesser than that of WiFi / Bluetooth, the wavelength of Cell Phone microwave is much bigger than WiFi / BlueTooth. So it is easier to block cell phone microwaves than it is to block WiFi / Bluetooth so if you find a cell phone signal to be blocked in the microwave, the smaller wavelength ( higher frequency ) WiFi / Bluetooth signals may not be blocked and hence the similar frequency microwaves in the oven may actually not shielded properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3202" LastEditorUserId="3202" LastEditDate="2011-06-11T00:36:28.683" LastActivityDate="2011-06-11T00:36:28.683" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4488" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8696" CreationDate="2011-06-11T00:42:38.597" Score="12" ViewCount="7557" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SEQMZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spoiler alert for those who haven't seen the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1433108/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Faster&lt;/a&gt;.  There is a scene in the movie where the character played by Dwayne &quot;The Rock&quot; Johnson is shot in the back of the head by Billy Bob Thornton with a Glock 22 .40 caliber handgun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His character is known to have a metal plate in his head from a previous bullet wound which he survived (but we won't go into that one.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some Hollywood suspense the Rock emerges, seemingly with no severe injuries associated with his being shot in the back of the head at the range shown above, or at least demonstrating that he is able to function with no noticeable physical/neurological deficits.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His survival is attributed to the claim that the bullet struck the metal plate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is a fictional scenario, but is it possible in real life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there documented cases of implanted metal plates deflecting/stopping bullets?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this scenario based on real science, or is it just Hollywood hyperbole?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:35:37.140" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T21:27:55.530" Title="Can a metal plate in the head stop a bullet?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|physiology|weapons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4491" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4494" CreationDate="2011-06-11T03:02:48.297" Score="6" ViewCount="2585" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard recently that there are more Greeks currently living outside of Greece than inside it. My source, of course, didn't qualify whether that statistic only includes people who were born there, but let's include for the sake of argument any 1st or 2nd generation children of Ex-pats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this claim? Is it even a close call?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1227" LastEditorUserId="164" LastEditDate="2011-06-11T09:46:34.003" LastActivityDate="2011-06-11T09:46:34.003" Title="Are there more Greeks living outside of Greece than inside it?" Tags="|culture|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3506" CreationDate="2011-06-11T03:07:44.780" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, the economists behind Freakonimics tackled this topic in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/magazine/06freak.html?_r=2&amp;amp;n=Top/Features/Magazine/Columns/Freakonomics&amp;amp;oref=slogin&amp;amp;oref=slogin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article for the NY Times&lt;/a&gt; about 5 years ago. It's a good read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The odds that your vote will actually affect the outcome of a given election are very, &#xA;  very, very slim. This was documented&#xA;  by the economists Casey Mulligan and&#xA;  Charles Hunter, who analyzed more than&#xA;  56,000 Congressional and&#xA;  state-legislative elections since&#xA;  1898. For all the attention paid in the media to close elections, it turns&#xA;  out that they are exceedingly rare.&#xA;  The median margin of victory in the&#xA;  Congressional elections was 22&#xA;  percent; in the state-legislature&#xA;  elections, it was 25 percent. Even in&#xA;  the closest elections, it is almost&#xA;  never the case that a single vote is&#xA;  pivotal. Of the more than 40,000&#xA;  elections for state legislator that&#xA;  Mulligan and Hunter analyzed,&#xA;  comprising nearly 1 billion votes,&#xA;  only 7 elections were decided by a&#xA;  single vote, with 2 others tied. Of&#xA;  the more than 16,000 Congressional&#xA;  elections, in which many more people&#xA;  vote, only one election in the past&#xA;  100 years - a 1910 race in Buffalo -&#xA;  was decided by a single vote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But there is a more important point:&#xA;  the closer an election is, the more&#xA;  likely that its outcome will be taken&#xA;  out of the voters' hands - most&#xA;  vividly exemplified, of course, by the&#xA;  2000 presidential race. It is true&#xA;  that the outcome of that election came&#xA;  down to a handful of voters; but their&#xA;  names were Kennedy, O'Connor,&#xA;  Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas. And it&#xA;  was only the votes they cast while&#xA;  wearing their robes that mattered, not&#xA;  the ones they may have cast in their&#xA;  home precincts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record, I think that last bit about the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court decision is obscenely oversimplified and in my personal opinion an inaccurate characterization of what happened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1227" LastEditorUserId="1227" LastEditDate="2015-07-06T00:06:03.550" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T00:06:03.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4406" CreationDate="2011-06-11T04:37:41.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://ijs.sgmjournals.org/content/20/3/325.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lactobacilli are ubiquitous&lt;/a&gt; and can be found in abundance as oral and mammary flora in humans and other fuzzy things like cows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since milk is already pre-doped with Lactobacillus, one can easily start a yogurt culture by doing nothing at all. This leads me to believe that the anthill explanation could be true, but adding pebbles, coins, or polystyrene beads would likely have the same effect. That is, the ants contribute nothing to the enterprise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a practical perspective, home microbiology is often a dicey proposition. You will very likely get a good starter from the milk itself or a small amount of human saliva. You can also accidentally wind up culturing equally omnipresent &lt;em&gt;Staphylococcus&lt;/em&gt; or less pleasantly even &lt;em&gt;Clostridium botulinum&lt;/em&gt; (of botulism fame) or MRSA, which can easily ruin your afternoon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1871" LastActivityDate="2011-06-11T04:37:41.197" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4491" CreationDate="2011-06-11T06:55:49.290" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.culturalpolicies.net/web/greece.php?aid=346&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Council of Europe&lt;/a&gt; the&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_diaspora&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Greek diaspora&lt;/a&gt; is estimated to be &lt;strong&gt;8.5&#xA;million people&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br/&gt;(&lt;em&gt;the number is from 2008&lt;/em&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From a news article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-12-09/greece-selling-diaspora-bonds-mimics-israel-overseas.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Businessweek&lt;/a&gt; (2010):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Diaspora bonds will tap millions of&#xA;Greeks abroad who want to help the&#xA;country, &lt;strong&gt;Finance Minister George&#xA;Papaconstantinou&lt;/strong&gt; said in September.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are as many&#xA;Greeks living overseas as the 11&#xA;million at home, he said.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;George Papaconstantinou's estimate seems realistic if &lt;em&gt;people of greek descent&lt;/em&gt; count as &amp;quot;greeks&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-11T06:55:49.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4498" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4500" CreationDate="2011-06-11T15:52:56.373" Score="537" ViewCount="60808" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effectiveness_of_torture_for_interrogation&quot;&gt;Effectiveness of torture for interrogation&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Torture has been used throughout history for the purpose of obtaining information in interrogation. &lt;strong&gt;Some arguments say that it is an effective way of making someone divulge vital information whilst others say it is [violent, horrific and] useless.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It links to a New York Times article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/us/politics/23detain.html?_r=0&quot;&gt;Interrogations’ Effectiveness May Prove Elusive&lt;/a&gt;, which includes opinions from both sides of the debate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, completely disregarding moral aspects and other consequences, &lt;strong&gt;is torture useful in interrogation&lt;/strong&gt;?  Is it feasible to torture accurate information out of people?  Is it feasible to determine whether the information is likely accurate without outside confirmation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also related would be whether other interrogation techniques are better at extracting accurate information and confirming its accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T17:44:56.947" LastActivityDate="2022-07-30T14:14:04.473" Title="Does torture work well as an interrogation technique?" Tags="|history|psychology|politics|law|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4484" CreationDate="2011-06-11T16:17:17.280" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.autospectator.com/cars/mercedes-benz/0021502-mercedes-benz-body-durability-testing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; summary of the Mercedes-Benz C-Class test procedure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...every kilometre completed on one of the state-of-the-art installations [test simulators] is 150 times more intensive than normal driving on the road. The test runs for a total of 2000 kilometres. In terms of the stresses and loads exerted on the car, this is equivalent to a Mercedes customer driving for 300,000 kilometres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2000-kilometre stretch on the test rig lasts four to five weeks and simulates driving on various route profiles at speeds of just 25 and 60 km/h... A total of 26 vertically and horizontally arranged servo cylinders pound the car body mercilessly. A hydraulic system... generat[es]... immense forces of up to 20,000 Newtons, which are applied in quick succession by computer control and shake the car to its core...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now &lt;a href=&quot;http://chrisescars.com/volt-durability-testing/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; is a video of the durability test for the Chevy Volt. They record the local roads and then use the hydraulic simulator to recreate those conditions. The interviewee stated that the the &amp;quot;car life&amp;quot; is 100,000 miles and they run &amp;quot;three lives&amp;quot; worth of tests (300k total miles). He didn't mention train tracks, but did mention simulating &amp;quot;block&amp;quot; roads (in the video, the part where the car is driving over that uneven brick material).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caradvice.com.au/117405/video-volkswagen-and-audi-durability-testing/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; are similar videos for VW and Audi tests, though I find the Audi one more believable. If the VW video &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; actually part of a [probably older] durability test, then I think it can stand up to train tracks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While these new simulators are pretty impressive, I wondered about taking into account weather aging factors. Audi mentions artificial aging (from the video looks like this includes salt, moisture, and heat/cold cycles). Not sure if the vehicle re-undergoes impact tests &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the car has been artificially aged 10-12 years or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.pepublishing.com/index/y57818v427727564.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; paper was quite fantastic in terms of a presentation of how, exactly, one simulates road conditions artificially. It also revealed some values used by the industry for roads. For example, it appears that road roughness values are conveyed in meters of accumulated suspension travel per kilometer of driving distance (m/km). The paper states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on personal communication with PACCAR Inc. (2007) and SoMat (2009), many&#xA;automotive companies design their vehicles for the 80th-95th percentile road roughness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's comforting, though I'd suggest perusing that paper, as it quite clearly shows a direct relationship between road roughness values and vehicle damage -- in other words, the bigger the &amp;quot;bump&amp;quot; (or the more of them there are), the higher the probability of damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this really answers the question after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that several factors come into play -- age of the vehicle, stress history (how much roughness has already been accumulated), weathering, and size of the particular bump to encountered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must call this answer to a close right now, but may edit it later as I think the best answer to this question will involve a discussion of &lt;em&gt;probability&lt;/em&gt; of failure, which may assist in making a prediction on individual cases based on input criteria. For now, it seems that auto manufacturers do a fairly rigorous job in pre-testing vehicles to find out where things will wear, and there is a definite scientific interest in simulators and analysis, as I've found in the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, these are &lt;em&gt;mechanical&lt;/em&gt; systems, and the &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; fail -- thus, I think this question is about the &lt;em&gt;likelihood&lt;/em&gt; of failure, not necessarily a purely yes or no answer. Based on what I've seen, however, for a new car I don't think you need to worry. But the  more bumps one flies over, the higher the fatigue stress that is added to each part, thus increasing the probability of failure down the road compared to having taken it slower. In any case, I still hope that the answer helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Not quite train tracks, but obviously potholes are raising hell:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kxnet.com/getARticle.asp?ArticleId=770192&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt; about pothole damage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AAA estimates ~5 billion a year in pothole damage related repairs (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.wsls.com/business/2010/feb/24/aaa_says_drivers_spend_nearly_5_billion_per_year_i-ar-369804/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recommendations by the AAA on how to deal with potholes (&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.carjunky.com/car_safety/potholes_cause_car_damage.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crookstontimes.com/news/x128433030/Minn-cities-unlikely-to-pay-for-pothole-damage&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a reference to St. Paul, MN dealing with pothole damage claims each year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, damage definitely occurs. Again, these aren't tracks and we don't know how big these potholes are and how the geometry differences affect how the vehicle handles them... but this shows that bumps at least &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; and do damage vehicles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T22:20:43.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4498" CreationDate="2011-06-11T18:06:00.270" Score="757" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer&lt;/strong&gt;: Your friends who think torture is effective at getting &lt;em&gt;reliable&lt;/em&gt; information are &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;wrong&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;New Edit/info&lt;/strong&gt;:  Since this is in the news (December 2014), the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150524072101/http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has just recently issued a report (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; on torture activities that the US engaged in (the link is the 500 page version). While the majority of details concern specific activities and practices, there are several conclusions that came from this report.  One of the chief findings regarding the effectiveness of torture was that it wasn't, and any instances of it being reported as having played a role were fabrications by the CIA to justify their continued program (findings and conclusions items #1 and #2 as well as #10 stating the dissemination of inaccurate information). Finding and conclusion #8 would even indicate that these actions complicated and impeded US security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/policy/army/fm/fm34-52/chapter1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Army Field Manual 34-52 Chapter 1 says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/12/torture200812?currentPage=2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The C.I.A.’s 1963 interrogation manual stated&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intense pain is quite likely to produce false confessions, concocted as a means of escaping from distress. A time-consuming delay results, while investigation is conducted and the admissions are proven untrue. During this respite the interrogatee can pull himself together. He may even use the time to think up new, more complex ‘admissions’ that take still longer to disprove.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.newsweek.com/neurosciencetorture-doesnt-work-and-heres-why-79365&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The act of torturing can even interfere with a subject's &lt;em&gt;ability&lt;/em&gt; to tell the truth&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solid scientific evidence on how repeated and extreme stress and pain affect memory and executive functions (such as planning or forming intentions) suggests these techniques are unlikely to do anything other than the opposite of that intended by coercive or 'enhanced' interrogation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Newsweek article also links to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110721131955/http://neuroscience.tcd.ie/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience&lt;/a&gt; in Dublin that has a paper in the journal &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Trends in Cognitive Science&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364661309001995&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;It will cost you nearly $40 for the paper itself though&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In specifically dealing with the post 9/11 world, a work entitled &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-004-0011-y&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A utilitarian argument against torture interrogation of terrorists&lt;/a&gt; states in its abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drawing from criminology, organizational theory, social psychology, the historical record, and my interviews with military professionals, I assess the potential of an official U.S. program of torture interrogation from a practical perspective. The central element of program design is a sound causal model relating input to output. I explore three principal models of how torture interrogation leads to truth: the animal instinct model, the cognitive failure model, and the data processing model. These models show why torture interrogation fails overall as a counterterrorist tactic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone remember the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_of_Command_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Star Trek episode&lt;/a&gt; that dealt with this issue?  And this was before Waterboarding was part of our lexicon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.spssi.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.viewpage&amp;amp;pageid=1460&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...there is no evidence that torture is an effective means of gathering reliable information.  Many survivors of torture report they that would have said anything to “make the torture stop” (Mayer, 2005; McCoy, 2005).  Those who make the claim that “torture works” offer as evidence only unverifiable anecdotal accounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.livescience.com/4651-torture-long-history-working.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LiveScience sums it up very well in the title of an article from October 2007&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Torture Has a Long History ... of Not Working&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went through the USAF SERE School, and I can tell you that even though we weren't &amp;quot;tortured&amp;quot; we were placed under numerous stressors, and we would do as many deceitful things to get out of those situations as possible (i.e. tell them what they wanted as opposed to the truth).  And we were even taught how to evade the torture by supplying plausible lies, and then &amp;quot;recover&amp;quot; from anything that may have been detrimental to our position as a POW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT TO ADD&lt;/strong&gt;:  Someone asked if there are any methods for getting information quickly, and reliably.  The answer is, &amp;quot;It depends.&amp;quot;  There are many, many techniques out there (Good Cop-Bad Cop, surprise, sympathy, etc.).  All of those really depend on the state of mind of the subject.  One really needs to get to know the subject before you can start to whittle away at them and find what you want/need.  And even then, it is wildly variable and depends a great deal on psychology.  The link to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/policy/army/fm/fm34-52/chapter1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Army Field Manual 34-52&lt;/a&gt; mentions some specialized training required:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interrogator requires specialized training in international regulations, security, and neurolinguistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neurolinguistics is a behavioral communications model and a set of procedures that improve communication skills. The interrogator should read and react to nonverbal communications. An interrogator can best adapt himself to the source's personality and control his own reactions when he has an understanding of basic psychological factors, traits, attitudes, drives, motivations, and inhibitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, keep in mind that HUMINT can be gathered much more reliably via other methods than direct interrogation.  The recent example of the courier that led to the raid on Osama bin Laden was all HUMINT gathered via tailing and observation.  DuckMaestro is interested in data, and every source I find says that interrogation isn't even a science, but rather an art...  How is one supposed to get data on that?  &lt;a href=&quot;https://scholarworks.utep.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1036&amp;amp;context=christian_meissner&amp;amp;sei-redir=1#search=%22comparison%20of%20interrogation%20techniques%20effectiveness%22&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A scholarly paper on Police Interrogation techniques, even highlights the art nature more than anything&lt;/a&gt; (PDF File).  The most effective that has some backing by studies seems to be the &lt;a href=&quot;https://reid.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reid Technique of investigative interviewing&lt;/a&gt;, which seems to be a recap from the Army Field Manual.  Also, some folks may be interested in reading about &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hanns Scharff&lt;/a&gt;, considered one of the most successful interrogators of WW II.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has been highly praised for the success of his techniques, in particular because he never used physical means to obtain the required information&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WHY USE IT?&lt;/strong&gt;  So why do people use it, or promote it?  While probably beyond the scope of the answer, I wanted to address this with a couple of thoughts.  First of all, human beings are animals.  There is a visceral need to hurt your enemy.  If you have captured an enemy, it may seem callous to hurt him for the sake of hurting him, so &amp;quot;enhanced interrogation&amp;quot; is a nice &lt;em&gt;rationalization&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7791278.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;And as long as you are told to do so by an authority figure, many people will comply&lt;/a&gt; (as also highlighted by the original &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Milgram Experiment&lt;/a&gt;).  Also, many of the proponents for torture have a vested interest in ensuring that it isn't deemed illegal.  They would face prosecution should their actions be deemed illegal!  That is self-preservation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I will add, torture IS effective at intimidation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, and keeping people &amp;quot;in line&amp;quot; under an authoritative regime.  In that respect, there is a great deal of historical evidence (recent history like Saddam, Pinochet, Iran; or older history like the Inquisitions or Roman methods).  In that sense, it is a very effective tool, but generally not for the stated purpose of getting reliable information.  But it will get a lot of false confessions that can be used for propaganda and other purposes.  Not only that, &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; people will indeed give information (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2004/12/tort-d13.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as cited in this article&lt;/a&gt;), however the overwhelming evidence is again that it may not be reliable, and what have you sacrificed in order to obtain that information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;INFORMATION BEYOND JUST INITIAL REFUTATION&lt;/strong&gt;: I just found a HUGE list of quotes as well.  Let me go through them and get a few more for you.  This is a long list of policy quotes, and people involved in the intelligence fields, so it really won't have a lot of actual research citations to back it up, since researching torture is highly unethical.  Although, I think the &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.stanford.edu/pr/97/970108prisonexp.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stanford Study&lt;/a&gt; may be about as close as you can get.  My apologies for some of the references, they aren't always the most impartial, or reliable, so anything below this should probably be taken with a grain of salt.  And of course, should you want to read it all, the inescapable conclusion is that torture does not work as a reliable interrogation technique, and never has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Washington Post, the CIA’s top spy – &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20141111220857/http://blog.washingtonpost.com/spy-talk/2010/04/cias_top_spy_no_losses_from_wa.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michael Sulick, head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service – said&lt;/a&gt; that the spy agency has seen no fall-off in intelligence since waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration. “I don’t think we’ve suffered at all from an intelligence standpoint.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ig-report-waterboarding-w_n_201733&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CIA’s own Inspector General wrote&lt;/a&gt; that waterboarding was not “efficacious” in producing information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks (Milton Bearden) &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/020609a.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;says (as quoted by senior CIA agent and Presidential briefer Ray McGovern)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is irresponsible for any administration not to tell a credible story that would convince critics at home and abroad that this torture has served some useful purpose.  This is not just because the old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work — it doesn’t — but also because they know that torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A former high-level CIA officer (Philip Giraldi) &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120405133741/http://www.campaignforliberty.com:80/article.php?view=94&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;states&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many governments that have routinely tortured to obtain information have abandoned the practice when they discovered that other approaches actually worked better for extracting information. Israel prohibited torturing Palestinian terrorist suspects in 1999. Even the German Gestapo stopped torturing French resistance captives when it determined that treating prisoners well actually produced more and better intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A retired C.I.A. officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/us/politics/04torture.html?_r=3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Glenn L. Carle) says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Coercive techniques] didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information…Everyone was deeply concerned and most felt it was un-American and did not work.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A former top Air Force interrogator who led the team that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has conducted hundreds of interrogations of high ranking Al Qaida members and supervising more than one thousand, and wrote a book called &lt;em&gt;How to Break a Terrorist&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110515064449/http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-20/torture-doesnt-work/#&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;writes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the senior interrogator in Iraq for a task force charged with hunting down Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former Al Qaida leader and mass murderer, I listened time and time again to captured foreign fighters cite the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as their main reason for coming to Iraq to fight. Consider that 90 percent of the suicide bombers in Iraq are these foreign fighters and you can easily conclude that we have lost hundreds, if not thousands, of American lives because of our policy of torture and abuse. But that’s only the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhere in the world there are other young Muslims who have joined Al Qaida because we tortured and abused prisoners. These men will certainly carry out future attacks against Americans, either in Iraq, Afghanistan, or possibly even here. And that’s not to mention numerous other Muslims who support Al Qaida, either financially or in other ways, because they are outraged that the United States tortured and abused Muslim prisoners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, torture and abuse has made us less safe because detainees are less likely to cooperate during interrogations if they don’t trust us. I know from having conducted hundreds of interrogations of high ranking Al Qaida members and supervising more than one thousand, that when a captured Al Qaida member sees us live up to our stated principles they are more willing to negotiate and cooperate with us. When we torture or abuse them, it hardens their resolve and reaffirms why they picked up arms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20201109015040/https://www.rawstory.com/news/2008/Former_interrogator_speaks_out_against_torture_1204.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;He also says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Torture is] extremely ineffective, and it’s counter-productive to what we’re trying to accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we torture somebody, it hardens their resolve … The information that you get is unreliable. … And even if you do get reliable information, you’re able to stop a terrorist attack, al Qaeda’s then going to use the fact that we torture people to recruit new members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802242.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;And he repeats&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.huffpost.com/entry/torture-may-have-slowed-h_n_858642&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;He said last month&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They don’t want to talk about the long term consequences that cost the lives of Americans…. [The way the U.S. treated its prisoners] was al-Qaeda’s number-one recruiting tool and brought in thousands of foreign fighters who killed American soldiers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/img-src-http-talkingpointsmemo-com-images-zubaydah-muck-jpg-vspace-5-hspace-5-align-left-today-s-must-read&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FBI interrogators who actually interviewed some of the 9/11&lt;/a&gt; suspects say torture didn’t work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.newsweek.com/ali-soufan-breaks-his-silence-77243&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another FBI interrogator of 9/11 suspects said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was in the middle of this, and it’s not true that these [aggressive] techniques were effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://boingboing.net/2008/03/10/fbi-interrogator-tor.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A third former FBI interrogator — who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects — says categorically that torture does not help collect intelligence&lt;/a&gt;. On the other hand he says that torture actually turns people into terrorists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20111017002530/http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/022306/1261.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The FBI warned military interrogators in 2003 that enhanced interrogation techniques are “of questionable effectiveness”&lt;/a&gt; and cited a “lack of evidence of [enhanced techniques’] success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“When long-time FBI director Mueller was asked whether any attacks on America been disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through “enhanced techniques”, he responded &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/12/torture200812?currentPage=4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“I don’t believe that has been the case.”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously &lt;a href=&quot;https://harpers.org/archive/2008/12/hbc-90004012&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;found&lt;/a&gt; that torture doesn’t work, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20190930211243/https://washingtonsblog.com/2008/12/its-official-torture-doesnt-work.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;stating&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The administration’s policies concerning [torture] and the resulting controversies damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The military agency which actually provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects warned the Pentagon in 2002 that those techniques would produce “&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/24/AR2009042403171_pf.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;unreliable information&lt;/a&gt;.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20210126145400/https://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/02/general-patraeus-torture-is.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;General Petraeus says&lt;/a&gt; that torture is unnecessary, hurts our national security and violates our American values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retired 4-star General Barry McCaffrey – who Schwarzkopf called the hero of Desert Storm – &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2009/04/22/723297/-4-Star-General-Calls-for-Probe-of-Bush-White-House&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;agrees&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number 2 terrorism expert for the State Department &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20090429095902/http://www.washingtonsblog.com:80/2009/02/high-level-counter-terrorism-official.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;says torture doesn’t work&lt;/a&gt;, and just creates more terrorists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Former Navy Judge Advocate General &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Retired-officers-urge-Obama-to-end-harsh-1775419.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Admiral John Hutson says:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fundamentally, those kinds of techniques are ineffective. If the goal is to gain actionable intelligence, and it is, and if that’s important, and it is, then we have to use the techniques that are most effective. Torture is the technique of choice of the lazy, stupid and pseudo-tough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2011/0505/Military-interrogators-Waterboarding-didn-t-yield-tips-that-led-to-bin-Laden&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Army Colonel Stuart Herrington&lt;/a&gt; – a military intelligence specialist who interrogated generals under the command of Saddam Hussein and evaluated US detention operations at Guantánamo – notes that the process of obtaining information is hampered, not helped, by practices such as “slapping someone in the face and stripping them naked”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Herrington and other former US military interrogators say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know from experience that it is very difficult to elicit information from a detainee who has been abused. The abuse often only strengthens their resolve and makes it that much harder for an interrogator to find a way to elicit useful information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150313063155/http://www2.gwu.edu:80/%7Ensarchiv/torturingdemocracy/interviews/thomas_romig.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Major General Thomas Romig, former Army JAG, said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you torture somebody, they’ll tell you anything. I don’t know anybody that is good at interrogation, has done it a lot, that will say that that’s an effective means of getting information. … So I don’t think it’s effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brigadier General David R. Irvine, retired &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120520142905/http://www.alternet.org/rights/28585/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Army Reserve strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner interrogation and military law for 18 years&lt;/a&gt; with the Sixth Army Intelligence School, says torture doesn’t work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/21/AR2009042104334.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The head of all U.S. intelligence said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world … The damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Former counter-terrorism czar &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/29/AR2009052901560.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Richard A. Clarke says&lt;/a&gt; that America’s indefinite detention without trial and abuse of prisoners is a leading Al Qaeda recruiting tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.huffpost.com/entry/moveon-pushes-back-on-git_n_209047&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;former U.S. interrogator and counterintelligence agent&lt;/a&gt;, and Afghanistan veteran said,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Torture puts our troops in danger, torture makes our troops less safe, torture creates terrorists. It’s used so widely as a propaganda tool now in Afghanistan. All too often, detainees have pamphlets on them, depicting what happened at Guantanamo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first head of the Department of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge – &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7903516.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt; we were wrong to torture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The former British intelligence chairman &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140806095843/http://www.rawstory.com:80/rs/2010/11/09/british-minister-calls-bush-liar-waterboarding-stop-terror-plots/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt; that waterboarding didn’t stop terror plots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A spokesman for the National Security Council (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/us/politics/04torture.html?_r=2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tommy Vietor) says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is this: If we had some kind of smoking-gun intelligence from waterboarding in 2003, we would have taken out Osama bin Laden in 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fbi-werent-the-only-ones_b_190708&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marines weren’t keen on torture&lt;/a&gt;, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/12/torture200812&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vanity Fair reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In researching this article, I spoke to numerous counterterrorist officials from agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Their conclusion is unanimous: not only have coercive methods failed to generate significant and actionable intelligence, they have also caused the squandering of resources on a massive scale through false leads, chimerical plots, and unnecessary safety alerts…Here, they say, far from exposing a deadly plot, all torture did was lead to more torture of his supposed accomplices while also providing some misleading “information” that boosted the administration’s argument for invading Iraq.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Army psychologist – Major Paul Burney, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/documents/report-by-the-senate-armed-services-committee-on-detainee-treatment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Army’s Behavior Science Consulting Team psychologist – said (page 78 &amp;amp; 83)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was stressed to me time and time again that psychological investigations have proven that harsh interrogations do not work. At best it will get you information that a prisoner thinks you want to hear to make the interrogation stop, but that information is strongly likely to be false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interrogation techniques that rely on physical or adverse consequences are likely to garner inaccurate information and create an increased level of resistance…There is no evidence that the level of fear or discomfort evoked by a given technique has any consistent correlation to the volume or quality of information obtained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An expert on resisting torture – Terrence Russell, JPRA’s manager for research and development and a SERE specialist – said (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/documents/report-by-the-senate-armed-services-committee-on-detainee-treatment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;page 209&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;History has shown us that physical pressures are not effective for compelling an individual to give information or to do something’ and are not effective for gaining accurate, actionable intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, I think that's enough for this answer.  I'll try to come back to this from time to time to add references and answers to questions.  Keep in mind this is a charged subject, but the main science says it isn't reliable.  And even if it were reliable, the ethics would cloud the issue beyond this site's charter, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2022-07-30T14:14:04.473" LastActivityDate="2022-07-30T14:14:04.473" CommentCount="38" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5579" CreationDate="2011-06-11T19:42:14.687" Score="18" ViewCount="4731" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking&quot;&gt;Van Eck phreaking&lt;/a&gt; perform as described, i.e. allow a person to observe what is being displayed on a given computer screen (notably a LCD) from a distance without having any physical connection to the machine being monitored, and without the knowledge of the person being observed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T02:45:25.180" Title="Does Van Eck Phreaking work?" Tags="|computers|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4502" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4530" CreationDate="2011-06-11T20:27:21.630" Score="12" ViewCount="1489" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Richard Hammond of Top Gear, Renault's entry into the people carrier market sold &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VJDIeeSdAE&quot;&gt;just nine cars in its first month&lt;/a&gt; (1:18 - 1:27). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I cannot find a single source to back up Hammond's claims. Is it true that this car was a flop on launch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:49:05.200" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:49:05.200" Title="Did the Renault Espace sell only 9 cars when it was launched?" Tags="|economics|road-vehicles|corporate-finance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4501" CreationDate="2011-06-11T20:47:08.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ5HS8GWIec&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt; (2:10 onwards) shows Van Eck phreaking working with a CRT monitor, although it claims that the process works through the cable, not the monitor itself; if that is true, then it would work regardless of the display technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also claims that keyboard data can be captured too. I find that difficult to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastActivityDate="2011-06-11T20:47:08.673" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4505" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4507" CreationDate="2011-06-11T21:14:32.087" Score="32" ViewCount="4431" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that the Coca-Cola company is responsible for the creation of the Modern Santa Claus? e.g. as seen in the attached image&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9x91Y.jpg&quot; width=&quot;240&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/img/cokelore_santa_spriteboy.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Source: The Coca-Cola Company Web Site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2016" LastEditorUserId="5120" LastEditDate="2011-12-26T03:44:29.030" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T03:12:14.377" Title="Was the modern Santa Claus created by CocaCola?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4505" CreationDate="2011-06-11T21:44:30.207" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is what the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_santa.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Coca Cola Company says:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's a common misconception that Santa&#xA;wears a red coat because red is the&#xA;color of Coca-Cola.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rLd3b.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Santa&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, Santa&#xA;appeared in a red coat before artist&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Haddon Sundblom&lt;/strong&gt; painted him for&#xA;Coca-Cola advertising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Civil War cartoonist &lt;strong&gt;Thomas Nast&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;drew Santa Claus for &lt;em&gt;Harper's Weekly&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;in 1862; Santa was shown as a small&#xA;elf-like figure who supported the&#xA;Union.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nast continued to draw Santa&#xA;for 30 years and along the way changed&#xA;the color of his coat from tan to the&#xA;now traditional red. Though some&#xA;people believe the Coca-Cola Santa&#xA;wears red because that is the Coke®&#xA;color, &lt;strong&gt;the red suit comes from Nast's&#xA;interpretation of St. Nick&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ld4gy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Thomas Nast's Santa Claus&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allposters.com/-sp/The-Coming-of-Santa-Claus-Posters_i143815_.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Coming of Santa Claus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; by Thomas Nast&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/santa/cocacola.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; also debunks the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/J1LFb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Snopes&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BUT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this isn't to say that Coca-Cola&#xA;didn't have anything to do with&#xA;cementing the modern image of Santa&#xA;Claus in the public consciousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In an era before the advent of&#xA;television, before color motion&#xA;pictures became common, and before the&#xA;widespread use of color in newspapers,&#xA;Coca-Cola's magazine advertisments,&#xA;billboards, and point-of-sale store&#xA;displays were for many Americans their&#xA;primary exposure to the modern Santa&#xA;Claus image.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T08:52:52.790" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4508" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4509" CreationDate="2011-06-11T23:47:13.347" Score="115" ViewCount="17181" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was once watching a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.securitytube.net/video/127&quot;&gt;slideshow&lt;/a&gt; about the new IPv6, and it mentioned that it is large enough for every grain of sand on earth to be IP addressable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any grain of truth behind this? (no pun intended)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="686" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:33:48.317" LastActivityDate="2016-12-18T20:58:04.437" Title="Can every grain of sand be addressed in IPv6?" Tags="|geology|networks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4508" CreationDate="2011-06-12T00:06:17.657" Score="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;Estimating the number of grains of sand on Earth is difficult. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hawaii.edu/suremath/jsand.html&quot;&gt;This source suggests 7.5x10&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt; grains&lt;/a&gt; (7.5 quintillion), but only includes beaches (deserts, under-sea sand and other sources not included.) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/ast99/ast99215.htm&quot;&gt;This source suggests 10&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; to 10&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; grains&lt;/a&gt; (up to septillion grains of sand). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of addresses IPv6 could possibly address is 2&lt;sup&gt;128&lt;/sup&gt; (excluding reserved addresses), or about 3.4x10&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt; (340 decillion). Even if you remove the reserved addresses you're still left with far more IPs than grains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, assuming the most number of grains of sand - around 10&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; - 294 &lt;em&gt;femtopercent&lt;/em&gt;  (yes, femto, 10^-15) would be used if every grain were allocated an IP. You could allocate 340 billion planets with the same number of grains of sand before you even came close to filling up the address space. After &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; that, you'd still have 2.8x10^35 (280 decillion) addresses free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-12-18T20:58:04.437" LastActivityDate="2016-12-18T20:58:04.437" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4105" CreationDate="2011-06-12T07:17:58.560" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a brit whose family are doctors and am training to be one myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The BMJ is run out of advertisements and out of subscriptions like any magazine. It is part of the British Medical Association which is the trade union for doctors (the medical board that tests and registers doctors to ensure they are up to scratch is the General Medical Council). The cost is roughly a £100 a year and there are multiple journals that are more specific. The BMJ is a general medicine journal and usually you get one of the other journals more pertaining to your field. For example I would get the Student BMJ (student journals) and the real BMJ to keep abreast of medical writing. Doctors also submit non-medical work to the BMJ such as history and anecdotes. The BMJ is an informal journal, think of it as a doctors-only Scientific American or a New Scientist. The BMJ's individual journals are all serious though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Majority of the cash used for its running of the magazine since it is peer reviewed. The BMJ actively states that it can only run adverts for peer reviewed and tested drugs, and only to doctors who are more interested in statistics than in shiny adverts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://group.bmj.com/group/advertising/mediapack/2295_bmj_mediapack_2011_5th.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pricing of advertising&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the BMJ is to act as a medical journal. People submit papers and the journal prints them. And anyone who says that vaccines don't work is outright lying. The amount of time, money and effort saved as a whole is phenomenal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3499" LastEditorUserId="949" LastEditDate="2020-12-08T14:15:45.623" LastActivityDate="2020-12-08T14:15:45.623" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4481" CreationDate="2011-06-12T09:07:09.587" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this is the reason MS made this decision, but I do know that there are numerous videos on the Internet for products that let you connect a keyboard and mouse to an XBox 360.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnZvrjv1_JI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnZvrjv1_JI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://xim3.com/?page_id=185&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://xim3.com/?page_id=185&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The videos are being used as advertising for the product itself, however, so take that with a grain of salt.  The motion of the video does seem like keyboard and mouse to me instead of controller, however.  That said, I know of no direct competition between equally skilled players.  The player in these videos may simply be highly skilled and playing against relatively unskilled players.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1748" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T09:07:09.587" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4516" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4528" CreationDate="2011-06-12T12:31:22.733" Score="9" ViewCount="1318" Body="&lt;p&gt;With all of the fad diets, books, websites, etc dedicated to selling people on dieting &quot;secrets&quot; or even selling them the food under the guise of some sort of metabolic trick to &quot;kickstart&quot; your metabolism.  Low carb, Paleo, high protein, low fat, the list goes on and on. I wonder if there is any scientific proof that any of these 'tricks' actually work or are they simply masquerading as simple calorie deficit diets.  The more I dig, the more I find that diets are like a religion to some people.  None can provide me with evidence that a diet works better for health or weight loss across the board for most people.  So I ask, is there any diet that is metabolically superior?  Or is simply eating less still the only way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3507" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T15:53:20.827" Title="Is there a metabolically superior diet?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4521" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4522" CreationDate="2011-06-12T13:38:28.300" Score="24" ViewCount="1462" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read in a few places including in comments in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/steve-irwin-made-me-nervous-says-grylls/comments-fn7x8me2-1226073619206&quot;&gt;recent article&lt;/a&gt; that Man vs. Wild is staged and he has every necessity covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Man vs. Wild staged or is Bear Grylls actually in dangerous situations when we see him hanging from rocks above rapids etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This fraud is a fairy-floss adventurer&#xA;  who always has a full production crew&#xA;  along on his &quot;solo&quot; adventures. Not&#xA;  much chance of him getting into real&#xA;  strife as even his cook could save&#xA;  him. And, BTW, his real name is&#xA;  Humphrey!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T18:22:38.330" Title="Is &quot;Man vs. Wild&quot; staged?" Tags="|television|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4521" CreationDate="2011-06-12T13:42:50.250" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The guy was &lt;a href=&quot;http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/07/24/a-tv-survivalist-caught-cutting-corners/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;caught sleeping in a hotel&lt;/a&gt;, fer Pete's sake. From &lt;em&gt;The New York Times&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as Mark Weinert, who said he served as a consultant on the show, told The Times of London, “If you really believe everything happens the way it is shown on TV, you are being a little bit naive.” More details from The New York Post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Weinert, while filming in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains — an episode in which Grylls, 33, is seen biting off the head of a snake for breakfast — Grylls actually spent some nights with the show’s crew in a lodge outfitted with television, stone fireplaces, hot tubs and Internet access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in direct contrast with Grylls' stated position:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meant to counter that disbelief is a statement by Mr. Grylls at the beginning of each show, saying he undertakes his adventures carrying only a flint, a knife and maybe some water, and that a camera crew following his journey through the wilderness would not aid him in any way. [Same article]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T13:42:50.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4527" CreationDate="2011-06-12T14:29:40.733" Score="14" ViewCount="5116" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; Infrared is maybe the wrong term, I took it to mean anything that we do not currently perceive with a longer wavelength than what we see as red. I don't think in the following they refer to &quot;seeing &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; light with long wavelengths&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I encountered a &lt;a href=&quot;http://vm.uconn.edu/~lundquis/links.html#infrared&quot;&gt;fourth-hand claim&lt;/a&gt; of army experiments to give humans infrared vision a while ago.&#xA;He quotes in full from a textbook (Sekuler, R., and Blake, R. (1994). Perception (3rd ed.). Springfield, Ill.: Thomas.) pp. 62-63:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following story dramatizes &lt;strong&gt;how photopigments determine what one can see&lt;/strong&gt;. During World War II, the United States Navy wanted its sailors to be able to see infrared signal lights that would be invisible to the enemy. Normally, it is impossible to see infrared radiation because, as pointed out earlier, the wavelengths are too long for human photopigments. In order for humans to see infrared, the spectral sensitivity of some human photopigment would have to be changed. Vision scientists knew that &lt;strong&gt;retinal, the derivative of vitamin A&lt;/strong&gt;, was part of every photopigment molecule and that various forms of vitamin A existed. If the retina could be encouraged to use some alternative form of vitamin A in its manufacture of photopigments, the spectral sensitivity of those photopigments would be abnormal, perhaps extending into infrared radiation. Human volunteers were &lt;strong&gt;fed diets rich in an alternative form of vitamin A but deficient in the usual form&lt;/strong&gt;. Over several months, &lt;strong&gt;the volunteers' vision changed, giving them greater sensitivity to light of longer wavelengths&lt;/strong&gt;. Though the experiment seemed to be working, it was aborted. The development of the &quot;snooperscope,&quot; an electronic device for seeing infrared radiation, made &lt;strong&gt;continuation of the experiment unnecessary&lt;/strong&gt; (Rubin and Walls, 1969). Still, the experiment demonstrates that photopigments select what one can see; changing those photopigments would change one's vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second-hand source is &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=3004479736773055360&amp;amp;as_sdt=2005&amp;amp;sciodt=1,5&amp;amp;hl=en&quot;&gt;cited 4 times according to Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt;, so apparently some people had access to it (or were unscrupulous about scraping references from another textbook...). But in the one citing paper I have access to, they cite it for a different claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a Wikipedia talk page about infrared vision, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/carrots.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; report was considered relevant. While the claim is much more crude and about Britain's airforce instead of the US navy, it does have some similarities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lundquis states himself he couldn't get his hands on the second-hand source, so we don't know the authors of the first study. I tried finding it via Google too (a while ago) and didn't succeed. I don't know how navy experiments are published (delayed maybe?!), so that was a probable hindrance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="2722" LastEditDate="2011-06-12T17:12:33.423" LastActivityDate="2020-12-25T04:06:45.173" Title="Were there army experiments to give humans infrared vision?" Tags="|ophthalmology|military|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1091" CreationDate="2011-06-12T15:15:40.673" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of environmental factors which can influence cancer in man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracken&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bracken ferns&lt;/a&gt; (eaten in the US, Canada and Japaan as Fiddlehead ferns) contains the compound ptaquiloside (PTQ). PTQ is a known carcinogen - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.staff.kvl.dk/~lhr/Documents/Rasmussen%20Ptaquiloside%20-%20an%20environmental%20hazard.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;and it's responsible for some forms of cancer (gastric) in both animals and humans&lt;/a&gt;.  Obviously those at greatest risk are those living in areas with a large Bracken fern population, as it does leach to the groundwater and does pass into the milk of cows (which could be a potential exposure route to other populations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also been suggested that PTQ can, in conjunction with other viruses (HPV) be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9414951&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;contributing factor to squamous cell carcinomas&lt;/a&gt; in cattle and possibly in &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=c-PHkwgH-EIC&amp;amp;pg=PA379&amp;amp;lpg=PA379&amp;amp;dq=hpv%20and%20ptaquiloside&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=f0-Wx7Ms5x&amp;amp;sig=WDAec6HmF6Fr22Kp1cex0ZQbSaA&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=kdf0TcPVIMb0-gad8PjzBg&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=2&amp;amp;ved=0CB0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=hpv%20and%20ptaquiloside&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;humans&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, cancer is not a 'man made' disease - there are a number of natural sources of cancer in the environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T15:15:40.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4523" CreationDate="2011-06-12T16:49:36.680" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is very much related to this question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2746/does-eating-carrots-improve-your-eyesight&quot;&gt;Does eating carrots improve your eyesight&lt;/a&gt;?  Although this specifically gets at attempting to see into the infrared spectrum.  I will get to two main things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthmad.com/health/do-carrots-improve-your-eyesight/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vitamin A is instrumental in healthy eyes&lt;/a&gt;, which in essence will help your eyesight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are physiological limits that nature has placed on us.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698996001204&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The vitreous humour of the eye actually absorbs IR radiation&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698904001737&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;so even if we had the photochemical ability to detect it&lt;/a&gt;, most wouldn't reach the retina.  Then, if it reached the retina, and was detected, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/93/2/582.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;we don't have the neural structure to interpret that data&lt;/a&gt;.  As if all this wasn't bad enough, if we had all the required mechanisms in place, we'd end up blinding ourselves with our own body heat!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second point is that the US DoD has invested money in many very questionable research projects.  For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_viewing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;remote viewing is one of the better known ones&lt;/a&gt;, or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stargate Project&lt;/a&gt; (yeah, they actually used that name!).  Most of this stems from wanting to explore every possible advantage you can possibly get.  And no matter how unlikely an idea is, there will be an advocate for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, this guy has given the issue some thought as well.  While checking trackbacks on some of my quoted references, &lt;a href=&quot;http://hplusbiopolitics.wordpress.com/2008/09/15/therma-vision/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I found this site&lt;/a&gt;, which has an expanded discussion and additional references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, immediately in front of the photoreceptors in the eye of all vertebrates is a few centimetres of water-based vitreous and aqueous fluid. Infra-red radiation is much lower in energy than visual light (remember the energy of a photon is inversely proportional to its wavelength), and water is very good at absorbing infra-red light. Therefore the eye would not actually be transparent for infra-red light, so may absorb a substantial fraction of the photons (van der Berg, 1997) before it hits the retina. It’s might not be so bad, though, because at the low energy of 10000nm, the light may even be too weak to be absorbed by water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, neither of the two photo-active molecules in vertebrates photoreceptors, 11-cis-retinal (A1) or 11-cis-3,4-dehydroretinal (A2), would not stable if it was absorbing at this wavelength. In order to activate these pigments, energy must be supplied from either the light or from the thermal energy (Ala-Laurila et al, 2004). The lower the wavelength of light, the less energy the photons have, so the greater the thermal energy must contribute to the activation energy. The thermal energy, however, can activate the photoreceptor by itself – one of the reasons why cold-blooded creatures are theoretically more sensitive to single photons (because a single photon even is indistinguishable from random thermal activation, and cold creatures will have less thermal activity) (Aho et al, 1988). If we were trying to set up a molecule that would activate from an infra-red photon, even one with a much shorter wavelength than 10 microns, we’d have a molecule that would activate very easily due to thermal noise. In other words, we’d have a lot of ‘static’ in a thermal visual system – so much so, that I doubt we’d be able to even see anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third problem is the neural circuitry that would be required to process another colour. The retina has colour opponent ganglion cells, which feed into the colour-sensitive parvocellular layers of the lateral geniculate nucleus, which in turn stimulate sets of neurons called blob cells in the the visual cortex (Dacey, D.M., 1996). These systems are responsible for processing colour differences (for example, the difference between green and blue). There is a rare syndrome known as cerebral achromatopsia, where a person has a loss of colour vision (see the world in shades of gray) despite fully function cone photoreception, because of lesions to the parts of the brain responsible for this colour discrimination (Barbur et al, 1994). That said, it may be an undamaged brain will be able to adapt to accommodate any changes to colour-related inputs, even during adulthood (Neitz et al, 2002).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last problem and perhaps the greatest problem with allowing humans to visualise thermal emissions, is that the eye itself it an emission source. The eye is covered in warm blood vessels, each emitting at the same wavelength as the other humans who we would like to detect with our thermal vision. Thermal signals from behind the photoreceptors could perhaps be shielded, allowing the photoreceptor cells to only detect signals from directly in front of it, but even the aqueous and vitreous humours and corneal cells are emitting thermal signals. The internal signal would still likely be greater than that reaching the photoreceptors from external emissions sources (like another person) . Pythons and pit vipers are cold-blooded, so they don’t have this problem. But to a warm-blooded human, it would be like trying to look out into the night from inside a brightly-lit room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this write-up, I think I would venture to say that the results may have been part of tactical deception as indicated by Snopes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T16:55:38.317" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4516" CreationDate="2011-06-12T16:57:51.607" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/diet/default.htm&quot;&gt;Eat properly, exercise more&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;  That's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep caloric intake at a level commensurate with your goals (less for weight loss, more for weight gain, even for maintenance).  of course, it's hard doing that, so people will look for shortcuts, or magic pills.  The effort they want to put into it normally doesn't equal the effort required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some basic educational/government links on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://health.nih.gov/topic/WeightLossDieting&quot;&gt;http://health.nih.gov/topic/WeightLossDieting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/svp/uhs/eating/eating-faddiets.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/svp/uhs/eating/eating-faddiets.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://efed.aces.uiuc.edu/dieters/index.html&quot;&gt;http://efed.aces.uiuc.edu/dieters/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-weight/&quot;&gt;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-weight/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09363.html&quot;&gt;http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09363.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone with common sense and google can find these.  There are no &quot;secrets&quot; or &quot;kickstarts&quot; for dieting.  If anything, &lt;a href=&quot;http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/Dieting-Does-Not-Work-UCLA-Researchers-7832.aspx?RelNum=7832&quot;&gt;dieting as a temporary behaviour has been shown generally not to work&lt;/a&gt;.  It needs to be an overall behavioural modification.  As I said earlier, it's not something that is easy to do.  The effort required is generally much more than the effort folks are willing to put into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-06-13T01:40:00.663" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T01:40:00.663" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4502" CreationDate="2011-06-12T17:16:16.527" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Renault publish &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.renault.com/en/finance/chiffres-cles/pages/ventes-mensuelles.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sales figures&lt;/a&gt; but only back to 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.automobilesreview.com/auto-news/renault-espace-celebrates-silver-jubilee/14591/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Automobiles Review&lt;/a&gt; concur with Top Gear, stating that, in July 1984:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Commercial launch in France with only nine sales in first month and 2,427 sold in the year.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they don't cite sources, note the additional full year figure, which suggests they did not source this information from Top Gear themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also notice that the Espace was not launched in the UK until July 1985, so when Hammond says &quot;racked up worldwide sales... of nine&quot;, it is strictly true, but was really limited to the French market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside: I know little about the sales and distribution channels of Renault in 1984, but with the products I have been involved with, I note that there was often a gradual roll-out (rather than a giant flashy launch), as the new distribution and retail processes get set-up and the gremlins sorted out. In such cases, there initial roll-out can be deliberately limited, and a small first month is not seen as a failure, but as planned. Once it has been established that orders can be fulfilled correctly, the marketing effort can begin in earnest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-12T17:43:34.557" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T17:43:34.557" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4516" CreationDate="2011-06-12T20:27:54.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Eating a diet with includes Vitamin C is superior to a diet that doesn't include it at all. Lack of vitamin C leads to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scurvy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the same token you need to consume other substances to be healthy. You have to eat enough &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;essential amino acids&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T20:27:54.930" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4532" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4541" CreationDate="2011-06-12T20:34:44.130" Score="36" ViewCount="4161" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1311/is-there-any-explanation-for-a-near-death-experience&quot;&gt;Is there any explanation for a near-death experience?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That question is about vague, light-in-the-tunnel near death experiences (NDEs). This question is about very specific claims I've heard advanced by Dr. Gary Habermas, a Christian apologist, who uses them in debates to argue for the existence of an afterlife/soul. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.garyhabermas.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;his website&lt;/a&gt; for more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are three examples of the extraordinary claims made by Dr. Habermas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg7rYJxHA4Y&amp;amp;t=34m45s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A debate&lt;/a&gt; involving Arif Ahmed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some [NDE] cases that are so evidential -- this doesn't make them true, this doesn't force them -- but they've been written up in from (sic) 10 to 20 different peer-reviewed medical journals have covered these cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.garyhabermas.com/audio/ttmm_nde_pt3.mp3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Part III&lt;/a&gt; of a debate posted on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.garyhabermas.com/audio/audio.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Habermas' website&lt;/a&gt;, he says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of a case where a guy who had no activity, who was clinically dead. [...] They resuscitated him at the hospital, the guy says, &amp;quot;Hey, I was watching you do all this,&amp;quot; and he explained things. [...] He said &amp;quot;I noticed there was a number on top of your ambulance. This is the number.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7QtGQ0uT5A&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;, Habermas presents the story of a girl who was underwater for 19 minutes, taken to the hospital with no eye movement and no brain activity, and put in the ICU. Three days later she spontaneously awoke and claimed to have watched the doctors working on her, was able to describe the ER (that she was no longer in), said an angel allowed her to look into her home, and reported details from home such as a song that came on the radio and what her mom made for dinner. Habermas reports that the story was written up in the Journal of Pediatrics and another journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there many of these &amp;quot;evidential cases&amp;quot; about NDEs written u pin peer-reviewed medical journals as Habermas claims?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there examples where specific things someone reports to have seen were shown to be true or false? In other words, are there any specific cases describing a definitive resolution with evidence vs. word of mouth stories?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; as a fun and related counterexample, here is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NwKkbd2e-c&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a fantastic clip&lt;/a&gt; from James Randi in which he describes his own out of body experience in which he saw vivid, specific details about the room: the color of the bedspread and where they cat was laying. When he recounted the event upon waking, others pointed out that the bedspread was in the laundry and that the cat had been outside all night long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-01-10T15:31:24.267" Title="Near death experiences -- clinically dead person &quot;sees&quot; something, later verified to be true?" Tags="|psychology|neurology|physiology|near-death-experience|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4516" CreationDate="2011-06-12T21:47:50.560" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from the correct answers that eating less and exercising more is the only real way to loose fat, some &lt;strong&gt;minor effects&lt;/strong&gt; have been documented in different studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first type of diets are diets containing a lot of proteins. One mechanism is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16002798&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reduction in appetite&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;A second reason is that the metabolism indeed seems to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20826169&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;slightly higher&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the effects are relatively small. Substances that increase the metabolism much more exist  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levothyroxine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Levothyroxine&lt;/a&gt; is an example, and stimulants often either boost the metabolism or reduce the appetitet (eg &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adderall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;adderall&lt;/a&gt; and methylphenidate; illegal drugs like Cocaine and speed probably have similar effects). Different studies prove that other substances may increase the metabolism a little bit. But think about it in this way: &lt;strong&gt;if they would have strong effects, they would have strong side effects, and would be only available on prescription&lt;/strong&gt;. A different way to look at it is: if it was easy to loose weight (eg take one pill everyday), why are there so many obese people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, common substances include caffeine and green tea. With caffeine the most effective one (but also with many side effects). Read more about them here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ergo-log.com/caffeinemosteffective.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ergo-log.com/caffeinemosteffective.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v63/n1/abs/1602901a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v63/n1/abs/1602901a.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T21:47:50.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4532" CreationDate="2011-06-12T22:40:04.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Michael Shermer, editor in chief of Skeptic magazine, recounts an out of body experience he had experienced himself in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_People_Believe_Weird_Things%3a_Pseudoscience,_Superstition,_and_Other_Confusions_of_Our_Time&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If memory serves, he had driven himself into a hallucinatory state while on an endurance bicycle ride and believed that his support team who caught and cared for him were abducting aliens. Shermer's point was that even a well trained skeptic can readily cast himself into a state of confusion such that ordinary activities are interpreted as wildly counterfactual. Thus, the subjective &quot;evidence&quot; of a percipient is useless and isn't evidence in any meaningful sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the events reported by Habermas were properly cited, they all rely on the percept of a compromised mind. No matter how reliable the journal, they are citing self-reported anecdotes that simply are not subject to empirical verification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1871" LastActivityDate="2011-06-12T22:40:04.077" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="41571" CreationDate="2011-06-13T03:41:45.660" Score="42" ViewCount="55533" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is widely claimed that children who injure or kill animals as children are more likely to exhibit violent behavior as adults, committing domestic violence or murder.  A site dedicated to discussing &amp;quot;killer kids&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20110717210411/http://www.violentkids.com/violence_facts.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;describes &amp;quot;cruelty to animals &amp;amp; smaller children&amp;quot; as one of the &amp;quot;warning signs of kids who kill&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who actually cite some sources, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peta.org/issues/Companion-Animals/animal-abuse-and-human-abuse-partners-in-crime.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;states that this goes both ways&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acts of cruelty to animals are not mere indications of a minor personality flaw in the abuser; they are symptomatic of a deep mental disturbance. Research in psychology and criminology shows that people who commit acts of cruelty to animals don’t stop there—many of them move on to their fellow humans. “Murderers ... very often start out by killing and torturing animals as kids,” says Robert K. Ressler, who developed profiles of serial killers for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies have shown that violent and aggressive criminals are more likely to have abused animals as children than criminals who are considered non-aggressive. A survey of psychiatric patients who had repeatedly tortured dogs and cats found that all of them had high levels of aggression toward people as well. According to a New South Wales newspaper, a police study in Australia revealed that “100 percent of sexual homicide offenders examined had a history of animal cruelty.” To researchers, a fascination with cruelty to animals is a red flag in the backgrounds of serial killers and rapists. According to the FBI’s Ressler, “These are the kids who never learned it’s wrong to poke out a puppy’s eyes.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, even as adults such individuals &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanhumane.org/interaction/support-the-bond/fact-sheets/animal-abuse-domestic-violence.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;are still violent toward animals&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence of a correlation between childhood violence toward animals and violent behavior as an adult (or vice versa)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-06-26T09:45:52.903" Title="Do children who kill animals turn out to be violent?" Tags="|psychology|children|violence|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4532" CreationDate="2011-06-13T04:18:07.903" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I've looked into this and am updating it to the full answer. Here goes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Re. Habermas and his claims in particular&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I emailed the source of these claims, Dr. Habermas, to try and obtain the &quot;list of over one-hundred evidential cases&quot; he refers to in his debates/talks. He did not have such a list (I can provide the exact email if requested). He suggested checking out his book, &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0891079998&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beyond Death&lt;/a&gt; and other articles/interviews/etc. for more sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I followed up with a request for a reference to the girl who was underwater for 19 minutes (mentioned in the question, with a video link). He provided a reference to the journal in which the article appeared, the journal, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cppah.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Current Problems in Pediatrics and Adolescent Heath Care&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tracked down the article, available from Dr. Morse's (the author) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiritualscientific.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SITE&lt;/a&gt;, available for download &lt;a href=&quot;http://spiritualscientific.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/Near_Death_Experiences_and_Death_Related_Visions_in_Children_Implications_for_the_Clinician.65195853.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;. The mention of that case is, indeed, very short and disappointing, which surprised me if Habermas' account of the same girl is correct; compare the amazing story in my question by Habermas with Morse's account here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I reported the first pediatric NDE, a 7-year-old girl who was without spontaneous heartbeat for 19 minutes and had fixed and dilated pupils. She recovered to give a detailed description of her own resuscitation including hearing pieces of conversations in the emergency room, accurately describing her own resuscitation with details such as nasal intubation and being placed in a CT scanner. This was followed by a spiritual journey with a spirit guide through a dark tunnel to a heavenly realm and a decision to return to consciousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No mention of seeing her mother/brothers at their home some distance away and recalling details which were &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; verified to be true. The fact that she recounted details about what was happening to her own body are &lt;em&gt;far&lt;/em&gt; less impressive, at least to me. The paper cited for this short summary is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6613940&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; and I don't have access, so I admit the possibility that far more details are present in the original paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will note that Morse's site (linked above) is absolutely filled with references to religion (Jesus/Christianity in particular), a spirit/soul, etc. While these details don't establish anything by themselves, I'm simply noting that he may have a particular interest in these experiences leaning in one particular direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, I'll note that Morse believes he can successfully &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_viewing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;remote view&lt;/a&gt;. The religious motivations are one thing, but belief in remote viewing abilities are another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://spiritualscientific.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/We_Restore_Sam_Harriss_Faith_with_Remote_Viewing.6645408.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; Morse presents a document showing how he successfully remote viewed (cough)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqwzvMNDplc&amp;amp;NR=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;, Morse performs a remote viewing live on video. I noted that his adjective list includes about everything one can imagine in describing what he's &quot;seeing,&quot; many of them seeming like antonyms: lights, darks, flat, etched...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Near Death Experiences in general&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To close up, I'll list some interesting material I found on NDEs in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/HNDEs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; is an absolutely outstanding summary (fairly up to date as well) of NDE studies by Keith Augustine, including specific cases, references, and all. Just wonderful. Notable statements include:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/HNDEs.html#cross-cultural&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a section showing that non-Western NDEs have almost none of the features of &quot;prototypical Western NDEs,&quot; decreasing the probability that an NDE is a snapshot into an objective, universal post-death reality by the NDEr&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/HNDEs.html#veridical&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;, Augustine presents essentially what I was looking for in a section called, &quot;Veridical Paranormal Perception During OBEs?&quot; He takes several cases and shows that there need be nothing &quot;paranormal&quot; about patients' recollection of details. He also states that no conclusive studies have cleared the air about whether any details have been 1) impossible to know without &quot;leaving&quot; the body and 2) verified conclusively:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But at the end of the day, we are left with no compelling evidence that NDErs have actually been able to obtain information from remote locations, and we have clear evidence that NDErs sometimes have &lt;em&gt;false perceptions&lt;/em&gt; of the physical world during their experiences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300957200003282&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; paper examines near death experiences in cardiac arrest patients and makes this statement:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is not clear whether the experiences of patients, who report that they have ‘left their bodies’ and viewed their own resuscitation procedures are veridical or are hallucinations.&lt;/strong&gt; Some patients do appear to have obtained information which they could not have obtained during unconsciousness. If this is so, it would suggest that some element of human consciousness is capable of separating from the body and obtaining information at a distance. However, it is also possible that the information that they report may have been gained from ordinary sensory sources. In this study, no out of body experiences occurred. &lt;strong&gt;The authors know of no prospective studies which have helped clarify this point.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not necessarily related, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/cc8952.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; study shows that Catholics, Muslims, and atheists experience NDEs at approximately the same rate of occurrence (NDEs per survived cardiac arrest patient).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it seems that at least two investigators familiar with the area of inquiry (Augustine's full article displaying an extremely long list of sources) have concluded that there are no known instances in which a patient knew of details that were later verified to be true and could not be learned by any method other than leaving the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an entertaining piece of dessert, I recalled James Randi's own Out of Body Experience, found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NwKkbd2e-c&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;. He &quot;floated&quot; out of his body one night and recounted vivid details to his step-son the next morning (color of bed spread, where his cat was on the bed, and what the cat's eyes looked like), only to find that the specific bedspread was in the laundry and that the cat had been outside all night. Not an NDE, but in listening to him, it sounds like such a &quot;typical&quot; OBE, and it's just so fantastic that Randi of all people experienced it and then learned it was not real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2020-01-09T01:40:49.490" LastActivityDate="2020-01-09T01:40:49.490" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4544" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4548" CreationDate="2011-06-13T06:14:16.153" Score="20" ViewCount="2789" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has it been statistically or empirically proven that elderly drivers (65 and over) are responsible for more accidents than any other age group?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uctc.net/access/23/Access%2023%20-%2003%20-%20Older%20Drivers.pdf&quot;&gt;offer figures&lt;/a&gt; such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2001 drivers over 70 were involved in fewer crashes per 100,000 population than&#xA;  those 16 to 54 and almost half as many as those 21 to 24.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smartmotorist.com/traffic-and-safety-guideline/older-drivers-elderly-driving-seniors-at-the-wheel.html&quot;&gt;others&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, statistics show that older&#xA;  drivers are more likely than younger&#xA;  ones to be involved in multi-vehicle&#xA;  crashes, particularly at&#xA;  intersections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="2433" LastEditDate="2011-06-13T18:34:50.637" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T14:24:07.770" Title="Do elderly drivers cause the most accidents?" Tags="|road-vehicles|safety|aging|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4544" CreationDate="2011-06-13T08:53:46.230" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, elderly drivers account for fewer accidents, as you correctly pointed out in your question.  However, as age increases, fatality rate increases drastically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between April 2001 and March 2002, the&#xA;rate of fatal crash involvement per&#xA;100 miles driven for older drivers was&#xA;higher than any other age group&#xA;besides teenagers (See graph 4). The&#xA;over 85 age group had the highest [rate].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On closer inspection, it turns out the higher fatality rate of crashes involving the elderly is due to their own fragility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per licensed driver, drivers 75 and older kill fewer pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, and occupants in other vehicles compared with drivers aged 30-59. The majority of the harm caused by elderly drivers is inflicted on themselves and on other elderly passengers, as 75% of people who die in crashes involving elderly drivers are either an elderly passenger or driver themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So elderly drivers do not cause the most accidents.  And regarding the accidents they do cause, they are a bigger threat to themselves than to pedestrians or passengers of other cars.  Check out the source for some interesting graphs regarding these statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.senatormoore.com/issues/indepth/seniors/resources/Elderly%20Drivers%20Research.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3523" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T16:15:42.417" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4549" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-13T12:41:35.510" Score="11" ViewCount="395" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/health/research/04salt.html?_r=1&amp;amp;ref=salt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A new study found that low-salt diets&#xA;  increase the risk of death from heart&#xA;  attacks and strokes and do not prevent&#xA;  high blood pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should the general population eat more salt or are there problems with the study and this interpretation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T21:42:07.850" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T23:18:13.757" Title="Are low-salt diets effective?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4550" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-13T12:46:56.773" Score="5" ViewCount="6027" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there peer reviewed evidence that looked at whether the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emporiumonnet.com/beauty_health/imis/Kumkumadi-Lepana-Acne.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kumkumadi Lepana&lt;/a&gt; is an effective treatment for acne?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Imis Kumkumadi Lepana Cream is widely used for removing black heads and pimples, and for having soft skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Imis Kumkumadi Lepana :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Eradicates causative bacteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Brings glow to the skin.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Adds radiance to the skin.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Removes pimples, blemishes, scars and wrinkles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Exerts antimicrobial, anti inflammatory anti oxidant properties.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Exhibits potent wound healing property.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2015-03-09T12:45:07.593" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T06:11:47.030" Title="Does Kumkumadi Lepana cure acne?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|acne|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4551" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4562" CreationDate="2011-06-13T14:01:21.770" Score="23" ViewCount="1696" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had more than a few people tell me about &lt;em&gt;Personal Development Seminar X&lt;/em&gt; that they attended. Immediately afterward, they feel renewed, invigorated, excited. For months afterward they extoll the virtues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The umbrella term for the types of groups I'm referring to seems to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Group_Awareness_Training&quot;&gt;LGAT&lt;/a&gt;: Large Group Awareness Training. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I roughly understand how these groups operate. They seem to push neural buttons to trigger emotional experiences in their attendees. I like to call them very targeted and efficient &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viruses_of_the_Mind&quot;&gt;mind-viruses&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That makes me a bit uneasy, but I also want to keep an open mind. I recognize that they're not the only events that push these same buttons. Causing this reaction isn't the same as being nefarious. Getting real results is worth spending time and money on. I can deal with the &quot;advertising&quot; that friends do for these events (as long as they're not &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; pushy). Just because the means have been abused in the past doesn't mean that there's not some real results now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in general, can they be &quot;worth it&quot;? Do any of them have real long-term personal benefits that make them worth the costs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="489" LastEditorUserId="489" LastEditDate="2011-06-14T12:53:32.193" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T12:53:32.193" Title="Do Personal Development Seminars bring real long-term benefits?" Tags="|psychology|mind-control|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3058" CreationDate="2011-06-13T15:15:21.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.keratin.com/aa/aa011.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hair Growth Rates&lt;/a&gt;  The source includes the a table &lt;strong&gt;Hair follicle regeneration after plucking by body region&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So once the hair is plucked you have a certian number of days before that hair regrows.  New hairs will grow in the area. So in the short term it will appear much thinner.  However after a certain amount of time with out repeating the epilation process the hair density will return to a simalar density from before the initial epilation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T15:15:21.210" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4551" CreationDate="2011-06-13T15:34:55.463" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; This is stated verbatim below, but just so it's reiterated and clear (comments seemed to indicate it wasn't):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I just wanted to offer this answer as &lt;strong&gt;related&lt;/strong&gt;, as I used to follow Luke's blog and recalled him having mentioned that he had read so many of these types of books; &lt;strong&gt;if it helps, great, but perhaps someone will find something specifically on &lt;em&gt;seminars&lt;/em&gt; that will help even more.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe not the most authoritative source (your call on that), but Luke Meuhlhauser of &lt;a href=&quot;http://commonsenseatheism.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Common Sense Atheism&lt;/a&gt; has read 340 self-help books (&lt;a href=&quot;http://lukeprog.com/selfhelp/list_of_self_help_books.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;) and makes the following statement (&lt;a href=&quot;http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=12651&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;, emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My conclusion from all that reading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;95% of self-help books are complete bullshit...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here’s the thing. Self-help books are written to &lt;em&gt;sell&lt;/em&gt;, not to help. Most books are structured around a gimmick that will sell well. The authors usually show no interest what-so-ever in testing to see if their advice actually works. In fact, &lt;strong&gt;I sometimes suspected the book was being written to get people motivated without actually giving them good advice so that when they failed to achieve their goals six months later they would assume it was their fault but look back positively on their initial motivation, and then buy the next heavily-marketed self-help book to come out the pipe.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this is not identical to the question, but if &quot;Personal Development Seminars&quot; are like self-help books (except spoken vs. written), I thought this input might help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more, &lt;a href=&quot;http://lukeprog.com/selfhelp/guru_ratings.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; Luke has come to his various conclusions, including some criteria for evaluating &quot;self help&quot; types of material:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ask yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Do you think each of those books has anything new and useful to say?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If there was a “simple secret” to living your dreams, wouldn’t everyone be doing it?”&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Are those books written to help you, or to sell?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Does anyone review those books for accuracy?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're trying to do the last bit right now. I just wanted to offer this answer as related, as I used to follow Luke's blog and recalled him having mentioned that he had read so many of these types of books; if it helps, great, but perhaps someone will find something specifically on &lt;em&gt;seminars&lt;/em&gt; that will help even more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/The_Science_of_Winning_at_Life&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is another writeup of Luke's knowledge on the &quot;self-help&quot; arena and applying techniques effectively to &quot;win&quot; at life on &lt;a href=&quot;http://lesswrong.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LessWrong&lt;/a&gt;. The site functions very similarly to this one, with upvotes/downvotes. Seeing as though he started writing there only a few months ago and is now one of the top contributors (according to upvotes/points), I'd say that the rationalist community there thinks he has something to offer on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://lesswrong.com/lw/3nn/scientific_selfhelp_the_state_of_our_knowledge/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; post as a summary of the state of &quot;self-help.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2011-06-13T22:57:06.803" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T22:57:06.803" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3331" CreationDate="2011-06-13T16:29:21.730" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of it is psychology. It's like the statement that the effect of Voodoo only works if you believe in voodoo. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of indians believe in things like the Evil Eye (going so far as to putting fake moles on their babies to Ugly Things Up). A lot of indians are superstitious, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5h6K6GhaKO3qSTUllBv5EoZsb5kCQ?docId=6894311&quot;&gt;Believing in witches and black magic&lt;/a&gt;, to the insane practices of palmistry and &lt;a href=&quot;http://edathirinji.tripod.com/id7.html&quot;&gt;horoscopes&lt;/a&gt; in everything from business decisions to naming their children to even deciding potential brides/husbands for their children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is that people who believe in something only see it when it succeeds and not when it fails. There are countless people whose lives are ruined by following these practices but people will only care about those who succeed thus perpetrating the myth that these practices do work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And many of these practices work for other reasons. People in India say that Western or &quot;love&quot; marriages often end in divorce while their horoscope backed marriage does not. They fail to place into account that most marriages in the west are between two equals while in India women are expected to be subservient and divorce is still heavily stigmatised so couples stay together despite horrific treatments. Some of these ideas work but not due to the reasons people think they do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3499" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T16:29:21.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4559" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6567" CreationDate="2011-06-13T17:28:35.737" Score="41" ViewCount="2493" Body="&lt;p&gt;Historian A. Roger Ekirch contends that in ancient times, people naturally had two sleeping periods at night- the first starts shortly after sundown and ends in an short break, where people were semi-conscious and would speak to each other about their dreams, or pray, or talk, or have sex. Wikipedia summary &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_sleep&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The second sleep would then end at dawn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/19/opinion/19ekirch.html&quot;&gt;Here's&lt;/a&gt; a good NYT article by him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is, it seems like this is a pretty major claim- that the ancients had multiple sleep periods, yet there doesn't seem to be a lot of coverage of this theory, nor any academic critiques as far as I can find. Is this a legitimate theory, or does it have any possible problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3567" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T10:16:47.607" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T17:52:20.660" Title="Were our ancestors segmented sleepers?" Tags="|psychology|sleep|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4703" CreationDate="2011-06-13T17:37:19.947" Score="47" ViewCount="25290" Body="&lt;p&gt;A suggested reason why doctors get paid so much more in the US as opposed to other developed countries is that the American Medical Association (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ama-assn.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AMA&lt;/a&gt;) artificially limits the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physician_supply&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;physician supply&lt;/a&gt; in order to drive up salaries. I found &lt;a href=&quot;https://wallstreetpit.com/5769-the-medical-cartel-why-are-md-salaries-so-high&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; which blames the AMA, but gives as its only source Milton Friedman's book from 1962.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/1986/06/14/us/ama-board-studies-ways-to-curb-supply-of-physicians.html?pagewanted=all&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;more recent&lt;/a&gt; article dates from 1986. Lew Rockwell &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lewrockwell.com/archives/fm/08-90.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;also blames&lt;/a&gt; the AMA, but he also doesn't cite too many sources nor go into specifics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does the AMA limit doctor certifications in order to increase salaries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: At Cos's suggestion, I would like to remark that it is unlikely that you will find an interview with the head of the AMA saying &amp;quot;we want to screw over new doctors so existing ones get paid more.&amp;quot; So the standard of evidence is something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has the AMA (since 1962) had policies (or taken action) to restrict the expansion of existing medical schools or discourage the creation of new medical schools?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are doctors in short supply? If so, can this be explained independently of the AMA policies?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastEditorUserId="37939" LastEditDate="2020-08-20T16:10:31.890" LastActivityDate="2020-08-20T16:10:31.890" Title="Does the AMA limit the number of doctors to increase current doctors' salaries?" Tags="|medical-science|economics|united-states|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4551" CreationDate="2011-06-13T18:19:18.910" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is &lt;strong&gt;It Depends&lt;/strong&gt;. There are lots of factors involved in whether any adult learning method is effective. I've tried to cover the major points below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many unknowns in the training effectiveness field. We can say that in any training situation, some people learn more than others, but the question is how to determine what affects whether the training helps. (And yes, I'm considering self-development seminars as a subset of training -- since that's the general academic term for adult learning in a non-academic setting.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Needs Analysis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first point, and I suspect what many people worry about in the self-improvement classes (as opposed to therapy) is that one-size fits all doesn't. The best trainers first perform a needs analysis to make sure that they know what people need to learn. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1989-98681-002&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Assessing training needs: Critical levels of analysis. Training and development in organizations&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=836813&amp;amp;show=abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Proactive Model for Training Needs Analysis&lt;/a&gt; as sample articles. Or look at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=training%20needs%20analysis&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;btnG=Search&amp;amp;as_sdt=1,33&amp;amp;as_sdtp=on&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Scholar search&lt;/a&gt; for more.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the people conducting a self-improvement seminar don't conduct a needs analysis, they're going to end up sticking to basic concepts that may or may not help the attendees. There are certain concepts that you can cover in any such seminar -- such as the fact that if you want things to change, you have to take action. If you keep doing the same thing, nothing will change. (Which, of course, is common sense. But there are psychological motivations that keep people from acting -- and good self-improvement seminars would help people identify some of those factors for themselves.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design of Class and Teacher Style&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the design of the training and the effectiveness of delivery affect the results. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/apl/88/2/234/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effectiveness of training in organizations: A meta-analysis of design and evaluation features&lt;/a&gt; for a statistical analysis of design factors. For discussion of the affect of the trainer's style on results, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a911383968&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The relationship between verbal teacher immediacy behaviors and student learning&lt;/a&gt; or this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a911383968&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google scholar search&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Effectiveness Measures&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, we can quantify the effectiveness of training by two means -- information retention and behavior change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/trainsta.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;One site I found&lt;/a&gt; references an article that suggests that the initial training transfer rate is 62% (Saks, A. M., &amp;amp; Belcourt, M. (2006). An investigation of training activities and transfer of training in organizations. Human Resource Management, Winter 2006, Vol. 45, No. 4, Pp. 629­648). In other words, immediately after training, attendees retain about 62% of the information presented in that training. The numbers drop over time, however. In addition, that rate is simply for information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10 to 20% of training transfers to actual job performance. (Baldwin, T.T, Ford, J.K (1988), Transfer of training: a review and directions for future research, Personnel Psychology, Vol. 41 pp.63-105.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Outside Factors: Attitudes, Context, etc.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why so little change? There are a number of outside factors that can affect how well attendees at a training learn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the attitudes and motivation of the trainees can affect how well they integrate what they learn. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/258393&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Trainee's Attributes and Attitudes: Neglected Influences on Training Effectiveness. &lt;em&gt;Academy of Management Review&lt;/em&gt;. 1996&lt;/a&gt;) Also see &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1986.tb00950.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Influence of Trainee Attitudes on Training Effectiveness: Test of a Model&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/apl/85/5/678/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Toward an Integrative Theory of Training Motivation: A Meta-Analytic Path Analysis of 20 Years of Research&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, factors external to the training -- such as the personality of the trainees and the work environment of the people being trained can affect how well the training works (&lt;a href=&quot;http://cqx.sagepub.com/content/36/6/36.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Training Effectiveness: Accounting for Individual Characteristics and the Work Environment&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Specific Seminars&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, having said all that, there are some studies on particular types of personal development seminars. For example, EST was discussed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/135/6/686&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Observations on 67 patients who took Erhard Seminars Training&lt;/a&gt;, and in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/134/11/1254&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Psychiatric disturbances associated with Erhard Seminars Training: II. additional cases and theoretical considerations&lt;/a&gt;. You can always try to learn more about any particular system by doing similar research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="677" LastActivityDate="2011-06-13T18:19:18.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4544" CreationDate="2011-06-13T20:58:10.013" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Older drivers make up 15% of the licensed drivers, but only 12% of the drivers involved in fatal crashes.&#xA;Older drivers  are usually the ones who get hit in an fatal accidents with younger drivers.&#xA;Men vs. women is a much sharper divide than old vs. young.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811391.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;. This is current (2009) data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2001 version of this is the source data for the original quote, but 2001 data is getting pretty old if you are talking about current trends.  In fact, this paper shows a chart from 2001-2009, and there are drastic decreases across just that time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveat: You could reasonably argue that stats should be per mile driven rather than per person, but the original question just stated &quot;more accidents&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811400.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;young driver's version&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3572" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-14T14:24:07.770" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T14:24:07.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4566" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-13T22:34:23.517" Score="6" ViewCount="1782" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW3tXzq8YVE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt; shows a cool trick involving a powerful electromagnet and balls with controlled electromagnets inside them. The result looks very cool. According to the video, the balls are controlled by a computer, which is what allows for the intricate patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a physics standpoint this video looks fake, though. It wouldn't be easy to control them as shown (they would likely all be attracted to the magnet due to the inverse square law), and a number of things are wrong - for example, no shadow is cast by the ball statue. It would be far easier to produce this through a video editing program. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is it fake, or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I speak it is going viral. I checked five minutes ago and it has gained about 2,000 views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T07:58:10.553" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T07:58:10.553" Title="Is this magnetically-controlled balls video fake?" Tags="|physics|magnetism|video|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4566" CreationDate="2011-06-13T23:16:38.277" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fake.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This video was created by the CGI/post company &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physaliastudio.com/&quot;&gt;Physalia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Physalia is a &lt;strong&gt;motion-graphics and visual effects&lt;/strong&gt; studio based in Barcelona.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and was created for a short film festival. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physaliastudio.com/f5-2011.html&quot;&gt;From their website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Happy&quot; was the theme we were given by the organizers for this year's F5 Re:Play Fest, held in April in NYC, to create this edition's pieces, probably the hardest thing to convey in any artistic expression. After a good deal of introspection, and teaming up with awesome motion graphics artist Gerardo del Hierro, we decided that happy wasn't happy for Physalia unless pliers, microchips and a bit of soldering were involved, and with this idea we resolved to create the happiest machine Physalia has built to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2011-06-14T22:34:27.290" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T22:34:27.290" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4569" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4570" CreationDate="2011-06-14T00:51:13.193" Score="9" ViewCount="4489" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been having an ongoing discussion with my parents lately about penicillin's constitution. They firmly believe that it is, or at least was at some point in its history, made with pregnant mare's urine, despite my research on the subject yielding no results corroborating their story. Wikipedia tells me that penicillin comes from fungi. The only thing that I have found about urine is this quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] during the early penicillin era, the drug was so scarce and so highly valued that it became common to collect the urine from patients being treated, so that the penicillin in the urine could be isolated and reused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know if there is some truth to the use of pregnant mare's urine in penicillin? If this is absolutely false, where would this thought come from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3579" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T07:56:36.263" LastActivityDate="2019-02-20T04:50:46.650" Title="Was penicillin ever made with pregnant mare urine?" Tags="|medical-science|urine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4569" CreationDate="2011-06-14T00:57:36.723" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your parents seem to have mixed up penicillin with premarin, they sound similar enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premarin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Premarin&lt;/a&gt; — named after &lt;strong&gt;PRE&lt;/strong&gt;gnant &lt;strong&gt;MAR&lt;/strong&gt;es' ur&lt;strong&gt;IN&lt;/strong&gt;e.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="164" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T15:47:27.737" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T15:47:27.737" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-06-14T01:38:05.410" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4566" CreationDate="2011-06-14T03:20:33.993" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the video, at the 0:06 second mark, there is a shot of an eBay auction for a &quot;Scrapyard-like HUGE ELECTROMAGNET&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has an eBay item number of 260750939029.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the real eBay auction with that item number is for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&amp;amp;_trksid=p4340.l2557&amp;amp;item=260750939029&amp;amp;nma=true&amp;amp;rt=nc&amp;amp;si=HVi%252BgWshjYgV3M64UK%252BdAyDgolo%253D#ht_930wt_901&quot;&gt;WAKI Kydex Sheath SCRAPIZASHI SCIZZY SCRAPYARD KNIFE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This shows that, if nothing else, the eBay auction page was faked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-14T04:45:30.477" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T04:45:30.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4573" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4671" CreationDate="2011-06-14T09:26:53.810" Score="36" ViewCount="14655" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across this video that makes a series of claims based around a position that a person can apparently get stuck in around a pole, and unintentionally kill themselves:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c95iKhNmeSY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hot girl tied to tree with no rope&lt;/a&gt; (Youtube)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video demonstrates and explains a series of claims that people can't escape from this position without the aid of something else to pull them up (such as a rope or another person), and after 15 minutes their leg muscles will cramp (the cramping seems plausible), followed by throwing themselves backward in a manner that can result in their death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I'm particularly skeptical about the final death portion of this series of claims, my set of three questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it impossible for a human to free herself/himself from this position?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will humans in this position for an extended period of time always throw themselves backward, perhaps after developing leg cramps?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is death the expected result of throwing oneself backward while stuck in this position?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3068" LastEditorUserId="24628" LastEditDate="2021-02-10T23:57:49.340" LastActivityDate="2021-02-10T23:57:49.340" Title="Can you get your legs stuck around a pole, leading to cramping and then death?" Tags="|physiology|safety|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4584" CreationDate="2011-06-14T10:38:08.343" Score="37" ViewCount="7384" Body="&lt;p&gt;Various articles online claim anecdotal evidence from witnesses that a man's guillotine severed head remains conscious for some time after decapitation (&lt;a href=&quot;http://mindhacks.com/2009/08/06/how-long-is-a-severed-head-conscious-for/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;'s an example). Some cite sources that the author no longer remembers clearly, or provide references to medical journals that turn out to be dead links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there any merit to such claims? Has there been any documented case of a person actually being proven conscious after complete decapitation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2836" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T03:18:07.117" Title="Does one remain conscious after decapitation?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4540" CreationDate="2011-06-14T12:31:10.117" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Is there any evidence of a correlation?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. There are known common causes, and those are classified as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.suite101.com/content/empathy-a11170&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;empathy disorders&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wattpad.com/816530-brainwaves-are-different-in-veg-ns-than-omnis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fMRI results&lt;/a&gt; show that lack of empathy is a real, fundamental brain effect, and humans normally have empathy towards fellow humans as well as animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that last result showed that empathy towards other people is not a good predictor for empathy towards animals. I can't obviously cite references for your particular case, but I expect you killed fish for food. That's another part of the brain, gathering food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastEditorUserId="25415" LastEditDate="2018-05-30T09:47:37.157" LastActivityDate="2018-05-30T09:47:37.157" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4367" CreationDate="2011-06-14T13:31:45.813" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it started with Danny Glover, although I can't be bothered to try and find out what he was talking about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article you cite from &lt;em&gt;The Guardian&lt;/em&gt; attributes the claim to &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Song/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tony Song&lt;/a&gt;, who's a scientist, not an actor. He &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abuhrc.org/newsmedia/Pages/event_view.aspx?event=5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gave a presentation on this topic&lt;/a&gt;, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.jpl.nasa.gov/people/Song/Song_JPL_CVFeb%202011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;doesn't seem to have published a paper on it&lt;/a&gt; [PDF]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, he's not the only scientist to have made the case for a causal link between climate and plate tectonics. See, e.g., &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cpeople.rses.anu.edu.au/iaffaldano_g/CONTENT/ihb_epsl_2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Monsoon speeds up Indian plate motion&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; published in &#xA;&lt;em&gt;Earth and Planetary Science Letters&lt;/em&gt;, by Giampiero Iaffaldano, Laurent Husson, and Hans-Peter Bunge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2004 paper by Jeanne M. Sauber and Bruce F. Molnia, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921818104000487&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Glacier ice mass fluctuations and fault instability in tectonically active Southern Alaska&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; [subscription required, see also this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2004/0715glacierquakes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;news story&lt;/a&gt; and this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasaimages.org/luna/servlet/detail/NSVS~3~3~13747~113747%3aGlaciers-Spur-Alaskan-Earthquakes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;visualization&lt;/a&gt;, published in &lt;em&gt;Global and Planetary Change&lt;/em&gt;, found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our results suggest that a cumulative decrease in the fault stability margin at seismogenic depths, due to ice wastage over 80 years, was large, up to 2 MPa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=13922413671363376754&amp;amp;as_sdt=5,36&amp;amp;sciodt=0,36&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;citations&lt;/a&gt; of that paper, you'll find plenty more by unaffiliated groups. And there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2002JB002182.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;even more&lt;/a&gt;, if you look hard enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems likely that &lt;em&gt;local&lt;/em&gt; climate change can cause earthquakes. &lt;strong&gt;What your question implies, but doesn't state, however, is, &quot;Does &lt;em&gt;global&lt;/em&gt; warming &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; earthquakes overall?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that's a settled question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there is such a thing as a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glacial_earthquake&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;glacial earthquake&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; but I'm presuming you're asking about the sort involving the Earth's crust. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3617" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T13:31:45.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4580" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4581" CreationDate="2011-06-14T14:30:29.727" Score="13" ViewCount="1460" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth behind this phrase? I was always skeptical and figured that the body needed energy from food to fight whatever illness it may have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have even heard people say it in reverse: &quot;Feed a fever, starve a cold&quot;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Feed a fever and a cold;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Feed a fever, starve a cold;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Feed a cold, starve a fever; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Starve a fever, starve a cold?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T15:14:48.957" Title="&quot;Feed a cold, starve a fever&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|common-cold|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4580" CreationDate="2011-06-14T14:58:15.327" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthlibrary.epnet.com/GetContent.aspx?token=9076b2c9-0730-4f1a-b6fa-5a462bb0a011&amp;amp;chunkiid=156982&quot;&gt;Albert Einstein Healthcare Network&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For the claim:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br/&gt;A Dutch research team conducted a small, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1777-feed-a-cold-starve-a-fever-may-be-right.html&quot;&gt;preliminary study&lt;/a&gt; that provides some indirect support for the old myth. They found that the subjects’ immune systems responded differently under the conditions of feeding versus starvation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While these are intriguing findings, they say little about how a person suffering from a cold or a fever can expect to actually feel when fed or starved. Although the study was small and inconclusive, the idea that food consumption may have a short-lived effect on the immune system is a new one, as previous studies have focused on more long-term effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Against the claim&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;  &lt;br/&gt;Current medical opinion puts the “feed a cold, starve a fever” maxim in the same category as other medical advice from the Middle Ages–false and maybe even dangerous! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An infection–particularly one associated with fevers– is no time to deny your body the nutrients and fluids it needs. Like any bodily system, the immune system requires energy to function properly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Whether you’re thirsty or not, drink plenty of fluids. And, if you’re hungry–eat!&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dukehealth.org/health_library/health_articles/feed_a_cold&quot;&gt;Duke Health&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although a few small-scale studies&#xA;  have suggested that “feed a cold,&#xA;  starve a fever” loosely represents&#xA;  sound medical advice, &lt;strong&gt;Duke medical&#xA;  experts caution against putting too&#xA;  much faith in the adage&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eufic.org/web/page.asp?cust=1&amp;amp;lng=en&amp;amp;page=FAQ&amp;amp;faqid=215&quot;&gt;European&#xA;Food Information Council&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You do not need to do either.&lt;/strong&gt; Instead&#xA;  it's better to follow your appetite,&#xA;  although if you are sweating a lot&#xA;  [...] it is really&#xA;  important to increase your fluid&#xA;  intake to avoid becoming dehydrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The stress of illness can increase protein demands.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br/&gt; Other important nutrients needed for the production of &quot;germ-gobbling&quot; cells in the immune system are zinc (in seafood and red meat) plus folic acid and pro-vitamin A (beta carotene) in broccoli, spinach and carrots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;More Sources that say &lt;strong&gt;the claim has little merit&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/health/13real.html&quot;&gt;New York Times article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ColdandFluQuestions/story?id=5678126&quot;&gt;ABC News - Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/starve-cold-feed-fever&quot;&gt;WebMD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/cold-flu/starve-a-fever.htm&quot;&gt;Discovery - Fit &amp;amp; Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-06-14T15:14:48.957" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T15:14:48.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4582" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-14T16:58:13.847" Score="30" ViewCount="1917" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/Features/SkinCancer/&quot;&gt;warnings of skin cancer&lt;/a&gt; due to exposure to sun, which have turned sunscreen lotions/creams/sprays into a big industry.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from the problem in the product, my question is, &lt;strong&gt;are sunscreens needed&lt;/strong&gt;? Today's average Joe is &lt;strong&gt;less exposed to sun&lt;/strong&gt; (housing, covered vehicles, clothes) than ever before. If the sun was &lt;strong&gt;not a problem for thousands of years of human history&lt;/strong&gt;, and if even today a majority of world population has not even heard about sunscreens, how valid are these health concerns? Or, does it dependent on &lt;strong&gt;certain geographic areas&lt;/strong&gt; (US is somehow in the high-skin-cancer-risk-sunlight area)? Do the problems with the solution(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/browse.php?category=sunscreen%3A_SPF_greater_than_30&amp;amp;showmore=products&amp;amp;start=0&amp;amp;order=webscore+DESC&quot;&gt;toxicity&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pressroom.cancer.org/index.php?s=43&amp;amp;item=256&quot;&gt;suspicious ingredients&lt;/a&gt;) outweigh the benefits? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: I did find two interesting links about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1977777/&quot;&gt;possible reasons&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=wxVbEUQA-hMC&amp;amp;lpg=PA24&amp;amp;pg=PA24#v=onepage&quot;&gt;also that melanoma is old&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="742" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T03:23:58.097" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T15:45:52.073" Title="Are sunscreens necessary?" Tags="|environmental-health|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4582" CreationDate="2011-06-14T17:04:48.727" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes. Sunscreen reduces the incidence of skin melanomas. And skin melanomas kill.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking those two claims separately:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Does sun-screen reduce melanomas?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/12/07/3086658.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ABC News&lt;/a&gt; reported in December 2010 on some randomly-controlled research, with 1600 people participating, and published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;It provides the first scientific data that shows that sunscreen can be beneficial for melanoma prevention,&quot; [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They randomly assigned participants to either receive standard advice on how to use SPF15+ sunblock, or to were given sunblock along with careful instructions and supervision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After 15 years, there were twice the number of melanomas&lt;/strong&gt; in the group members who applied sunblock 'now and then', compared to the daily use group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original Study: &lt;a href=&quot;http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/29/3/257.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reduced Melanoma After Regular Sunscreen Use: Randomized Trial Follow-Up&lt;/a&gt;, Adèle C. Green, Gail M. Williams, Valerie Logan and Geoffrey M. Strutton, JCO January 20, 2011 vol. 29 no. 3 257-263, doi: 10.1200/JCO.2010.28.7078]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Are melanomas serious?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationmaster.com/red/graph/mor_mal_mel_of_ski-mortality-malignant-melanoma-of-skin&amp;amp;b_map=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NationMaster.com&lt;/a&gt; have mortality statistics for malignant melanomas. The incidence depends on the country, but with 7,420 reported deaths in the USA, it is quite serious (per year? it isn't 100% clear, but that's my assumption.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to compare countries due to different reporting systems, but Australia has only 7% of the population of the USA, but 14% of the malignant melanoma deaths (and a health care system that is at least comparable), suggesting that some countries have a more serious problem with melanoma deaths than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A critical review of the existing evidence for sun-screens has been published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Burnett, M. E. and Wang, S. Q. (2011), &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0781.2011.00557.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Current sunscreen controversies: a critical review&lt;/a&gt;. Photodermatology, Photoimmunology &amp;amp; Photomedicine, 27: 58–67. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0781.2011.00557.x&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Routine use of sunscreen has been shown to be effective at reducing the development of both [Squamous cell carcinoma] SCC and actinic keratoses, which are known precursors to SCC. However, a statistically significant protective benefit of sunscreen has not been demonstrated against either [basal cell carcinoma] BCC or malignant melanoma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T15:45:52.073" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T15:45:52.073" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4574" CreationDate="2011-06-14T18:04:12.703" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the evidence available is anecdotal, but the general consensus seems to be  that there is no consciousness, or, if there is, it lasts &amp;quot;only a few seconds before the massive drop in cerebral blood pressure causes them to lose consciousness.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to study this using modern techniques, as not many (if any?) countries use beheading as a method of execution anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most often quoted story supporting consciousness after beheading is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guillotine.dk/Pages/30sek.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1905 eye-witness report by Dr. Gabriel Beaurieux&lt;/a&gt; of a man named Languille.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, then, is what I was able to note immediately after the decapitation: the eyelids and lips of the guillotined man worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about five or six seconds. This phenomenon has been remarked by all those finding themselves in the same conditions as myself for observing what happens after the severing of the neck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] I waited for several seconds. The spasmodic movements ceased. The face relaxed, the lids half closed on the eyeballs, leaving only the white of the conjunctiva visible, exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to see every day in the exercise of our profession, or as in those just dead. It was then that I called in a strong, sharp voice: &amp;quot;Languille!&amp;quot; I saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contractions – I insist advisedly on this peculiarity – but with an even movement, quite distinct and normal, such as happens in everyday life, with people awakened or torn from their thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves. I was not, then, dealing with the sort of vague dull look without any expression, that can be observed any day in dying people to whom one speaks: I was dealing with undeniably living eyes which were looking at me. &amp;quot;After several seconds, the eyelids closed again, slowly and evenly, and the head took on the same appearance as it had had before I called out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was at that point that I called out again and, once more, without any spasm, slowly, the eyelids lifted and undeniably living eyes fixed themselves on mine with perhaps even more penetration than the first time. The there was a further closing of the eyelids, but now less complete. I attempted the effect of a third call; there was no further movement – and the eyes took on the glazed look which they have in the dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] The whole thing had lasted twenty-five to thirty seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/18249769/JAMA-Sept-9-1939-Queries-and-Minor-Notes-Decapitation-and-Consciousness&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1939 issue of JAMA&lt;/a&gt; tried to debunk this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Le Journal&lt;/em&gt; indicates that physicians other than Dr. Beauieux were present and says that they came to the conclusion that vital perception lasted no longer than ten seconds after the execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] The following facts indicate fairly conclusively that conscious processes in the brain of man cease almost simultaneously with the severance of the head from the body:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The brain of man is so dependent on oxygen in the arterial blood and the continued removal of carbon dioxide and other wastes by the capillary circulation in the brain that a few seconds of complete inhibition of the heart procudes unconsciousness and fainting.  Circulation of blood in the brain stops at once with teh severance of the head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A blow directed toward any part of the head, even not severe enough to break any bones of the skull or jaw (&amp;quot;the knockout blow&amp;quot;) is known to produce unconsciousness [...].  In beheading a man, the jar to the skull [...] is in all probability as severe as any knock-out blow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The movements of tongue, jaw, facial muscles, eyelids, or pupils that may occur after beheading are in all probability due to stimulation of the lower reflex centers in the brain by the state of asphyxia and in no wise[sic] indicate conscious processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the case of lower vertebrates (birds, reptiles, frogs, and fishes) in which the brain is less immediately dependent on the oxygen of the arterial circulation, it is known that ordinary reflexes can be elicited through the brain of the severed head for several minutes after such severance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Less authoritatively, a forum user claiming to be a pilot gives &lt;a href=&quot;http://everything2.com/title/Lifespan+of+a+beheaded+head&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a possible explanation for Dr. Beaurieux's observations&lt;/a&gt; using his own experiences with oxygen-deprivation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm not a doctor, something I wanted to add to this discussion was the experiences I have had in altitude chambers, where we were exposed to oxygen deprevation and hypoxia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They bring the altitude chamber to 25,000, 30,000, and/or 35,000 feet, depending on the training (I've done all 3) and individuals take turns removing their oxygen masks and trying to function at those altitudes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One student, a pilot training candidate, took his off at 35,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within approximately 20 seconds, his lips and fingernails were blue (cyanosis), his speech was slurred, and he was having difficulty thinking (we're asked to perform simple tasks, like writing our names, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By 30 seconds, he was no longer responding; however, his eyes were opened and he was looking around. He didn't fall over or pass out. This is normal for hypoxia, though it differs from how Hollywood and the media portray it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was told he was &amp;quot;going to die&amp;quot; if he &amp;quot;didn't put his mask on&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After repeated attempts, finally the instructor told the student next to him to put the incapacitated student's mask back on for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before he could do that, one of the other students yelled, &amp;quot;EJECT, EJECT, EJECT!&amp;quot; The hypoxic student immediately started reaching for the ejection handles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As soon as his mask was back on, the student returned to trying to write his name on the paper and was unaware of what happened inbetween, thus he had no memory of being told he was going to die or that he tried to eject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the lesson here is that there are reflexive responses and there are conscious responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of beheading, yelling the victim's name and having him look towards you definitely indicates brain activity on some levels, &lt;em&gt;but the response may be purely reflexive, and does not necessarily indicate that the victim is conscious and aware&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only article I was able to find that is unrelated to Dr. Beaurieux's account is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tafkac.org/medical/decapitated_head_blinking_more.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1886 Proges Medical Journal article&lt;/a&gt; detailing the study of a single head/body after beheading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These researches show that not a trace of consciousness remains two seconds after beheading; that reflex movements of the cornea can be excited for a few seconds; that the heart may beat for an hour, the auricles continuing to pulsate alone for half that period; and that, putting aside the reflex movements of the eyelid, the contraction of the jaws and the jets of blood from the carotids, it seemed in this case as though a corpse had been decapitated, so inert were the remains of the convict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all of these accounts, it is unknown if the head's actions are due to consciousness or simply reflexes.  However, if it is consciousness, it definitely lasts no more than a few seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T03:18:07.117" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4521" CreationDate="2011-06-14T18:22:38.330" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this has already gotten the check-mark, but I feel like there's a bit more to contribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer: Robusto's answer is correct, but take note that the NYT article is from 2007, when the controversy about the show initially erupted. It's all &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_vs._Wild#Show.27s_response_to_criticism_with_changes&quot;&gt;well described in the Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;, but the gist of it is that the show initially was edited to make it look like Grylls did everything on his own. When it was discovered this wasn't the case, Discovery channel apologized, re-edited older episodes to clarify when he gets help, and the show has for years now had a disclaimer stating that he gets help from his crew. So yes, he receives help from his crew when his game traps fail (most of the time, it seems), when extra equipment is needed, or to just go to sleep at a hotel somewhere. The disclaimer also states that he puts himself into situations you could probably avoid in order to show survival tactics... but that's kind of the point, isn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few people probably genuinely watch this show to learn how to survive; they want to be entertained, and Grylls knows that. So if his crew provides him with a rabbit or a harness or helps him make a tree shelter, does that really matter? Does that actively take away from the end result? I suppose it did when the show had the pretense of being &quot;real,&quot; but it dropped that years ago. Now his crew is just helping him get into and out of trouble, and that's entirely what makes the show fun. It's staged, sure, but being staged doesn't mean Grylls didn't actually just hop into some peat-pit for no reason, or didn't just scale a mesa without any ropes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One final comment: according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Grylls&quot;&gt;his own Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;, his birth name isn't Humphrey, it's Edward. (Not that it matters.) And the name Bear comes from a nickname his sister gave him as a child. He's a legitimate climber, though: he's scaled Everest. Check out the page to see some of the other kinda ridiculous things he's done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3114" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T18:22:38.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2644" CreationDate="2011-06-14T20:29:21.730" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that all of the answers have gravitated towards depictions of sex. Either because nudity equals sex (while in Hollywood, this appears to generally be the case - it's extremely rare to see a nude scene that isn't purely for titillation, rather than because someone just woke up or got out of the shower), or because it hadn't occurred to them that they might be separate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to know if &lt;em&gt;social&lt;/em&gt; nudity - namely nudity that is purely nonsexual - has any effect on children, just ask a nudist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.montananaturist.org/Naturism%20and%20Children.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This document&lt;/a&gt; explains one nudist club's stance on the effects of social nudity on children, and cites several studies. The conclusion they reach is that there is absolutely no &lt;em&gt;negative&lt;/em&gt; effect, and there may be a positive effect on the psyche. The basic nudist philosophy is that the extreme modesty of the Victorian era was in fact harmful (which was proven by many studies before and since), and as such, perhaps its inverse - a total lack of modesty - is beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies aside, nudists themselves have observed no obvious negative effects in children - very young children especially &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; to be naked, and generally the idea that there's nothing inherently wrong with the human body in its natural state promotes better body image in older children as well. See the bottom of the document above about Casler's study, and the older children's reactions in his interviews. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's generally parents' negative reactions to nudity in TV and film that are most harmful to children. Especially if that reaction is particularly unhinged and panicked - see also: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl_XXXVIII_halftime_show_controversy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a paper written on this subject (actually, of children witnessing &lt;em&gt;parental&lt;/em&gt; nudity and sexual activity, which of course, is different from what you see on TV, since parents have such a central and authoritative role in a child's life) in the Journal of Sex Research. The paper can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freebeaches.org.nz/TAASALibrary52.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consistent with the&#xA;  cross-sectional retrospective literature (and with our expectations), no harmful main&#xA;  effects of these experiences were found at age 17-18. Indeed, trends in the data that were&#xA;  significant at p [less than] 0.05 but did not reach significance following the Bonferonni&#xA;  correction indicated primarily beneficial correlates of both of these variables. Exposure to&#xA;  parental nudity was associated with positive, rather than negative, sexual experiences in&#xA;  adolescence, but with reduced sexual experience overall. Boys exposed to parental nudity&#xA;  were less likely to have engaged in theft in adolescence or to have used various&#xA;  psychedelic drugs and marijuana.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taken as a whole then, effects are few, but generally beneficial in nature. Thus, results of&#xA;  this study add weight to the views of those who have opposed alarmist characterizations&#xA;  of childhood exposure both to nudity and incidental scenes of parental sexuality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is very likely the kind of thing (historically speaking, of course, which the paper touches on) that the MPAA and the government bases such things upon. Mostly this seems to harken back to Freud and early students thereof, who assumed that nearly every psychological disorder originated from witnessing such things as a small child. The paper linked above questions this assumption and tries to find actual clinical research to support the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3458" LastEditorUserId="26361" LastEditDate="2016-08-22T12:39:46.207" LastActivityDate="2016-08-22T12:39:46.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4588" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4590" CreationDate="2011-06-14T21:26:48.337" Score="22" ViewCount="1613" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who told me that one of the reasons why he participates actively in his religion is because praying helps him get through tough times in his life, mainly because he can believe that God will take care of his problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if humans &lt;em&gt;in general&lt;/em&gt; benefit from religion in any positive &lt;em&gt;psychological&lt;/em&gt; way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1936" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-22T10:26:01.687" LastActivityDate="2012-01-22T10:26:01.687" Title="Are there any psychological benefits from participating in a religion?" Tags="|psychology|religion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4588" CreationDate="2011-06-14T22:54:47.050" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of studies suggesting within a given society that more religious people are happier than less religious people.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggested reasons for this include having a higher purpose and current rewards making difficulties such as unemployment or marital separation less painful &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7302609.stm&quot;&gt;as reported here&lt;/a&gt;, or giving a sense of community and contribution to wider society &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/human/religion-happiness-social-bonds.html&quot;&gt;as reported here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other studies suggesting that the effect of religious belief and practice on happiness is greater in more religious societies &lt;a href=&quot;http://epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/2011/05/religion-only-makes-for-happy-people-if.html&quot;&gt;as reported here&lt;/a&gt;, and that in societies which a strong social safety net such as northern Europe relatively low levels of national religious belief can be combined with relatively high levels of national happiness &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201102/does-religion-make-people-happier&quot;&gt;as reported here&lt;/a&gt;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T22:54:47.050" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4588" CreationDate="2011-06-14T22:58:06.940" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Levin &amp;amp; Chatters, &lt;em&gt;Journal of Aging and Health&lt;/em&gt; -- &amp;quot;Religion, Health, and Psychological Well-Being in Older Adults&amp;quot; (1998):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These findings provide mixed support for the three study hypotheses, with Hypothesis 1 (an association between organizational religiosity and health status) farinb best. In general, results suggest that (a) &lt;strong&gt;religious involvement is moderately and significantly associated with health status and psychological well-being&lt;/strong&gt;; (b) these associations withstand controlling for effects of key sociodemographic constructs such as age, race, and gender; (c) these associations emerge across a variety of indicators; and (d) results are present, though inconsistent, across samples drawn from three large-scale national probability surveys conducted in the 1970s and 1980s. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67623/2/10.1177_089826439801000406.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a meta-analysis of several surveys from the 70s and 80s, so the data may not be representative of society today. There are some caveats provided in the discussion, as well, such as that one set of data did favor the correlation between religiosity and health, but &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; religiosity and psychological well-being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abdel-Khalek, &lt;em&gt;Mental Health, Religion, &amp;amp; Culture&lt;/em&gt; -- &amp;quot;Happiness, health, and religiosity: Significant relations&amp;quot; (2006):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the self-rating scales, the current data provide strong evidence that, among a large sample of Kuwaiti Muslim undergraduate students, religious people are happier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...the main predictor of happiness was mental health. So, the self-rating of religiosity came as a predictor of happiness, but to a lesser degree. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Abdel-Khalek-Happiness-health-and-religiosity-Significant-relations.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ross, &lt;em&gt;Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion&lt;/em&gt; -- &amp;quot;Religion and Psychological Distress&amp;quot; (1990):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The positive emotional function of religion has been well accepted, but the evidence has not been conclusive. Furthermore, research has rarely made explicit comparisons to persons who claim to have no religion. Using a representative sample of Illinois residents (and controlling for sociodemographics and willingness to express feelings), I found that the stronger a person's religious belief, the lower the level of psychological distress. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/1387431&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an old study, and featured in a journal with a title that may reveal an agenda. I can't be sure, but at least want to mention it. I would be thrilled to see a footnotes for the statement that &amp;quot;the positive emotional function of religion has been well accepted...&amp;quot; That might provide many more sources for this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Levin, &lt;em&gt;Social Science &amp;amp; Medicine&lt;/em&gt; -- &amp;quot;Religion and health: Is there an association, is it valid, and is it causal?&amp;quot; (2002):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper reviews evidence for a relationship between religion and health. &lt;strong&gt;Hundreds of epidemiologic studies have reported statistically significant, salutary effects of religious indicators on morbidity and mortality.&lt;/strong&gt; However, this does not necessarily imply that religion influences health; three questions must first be answered: “Is there an association?”, “Is it valid?”, and, “Is it causal?” Evidence presented in this paper suggests that the answers to these respective questions are “yes,” “probably,” and “maybe.” (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277953694901090&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chida, Steptoe, Powell, &lt;em&gt;Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics&lt;/em&gt; -- &amp;quot;Religiosity/Spirituality and Mortality&amp;quot; (2008):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results of the meta-analyses showed that religiosity/spirituality was associated with reduced mortality in healthy population studies... but not in diseased population studies. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Chida-Religiosity-Spirituality-and-Mortality.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this is not a psychological benefit, but still found it interesting, and it appears (from the comments) that your original question may have included requests for examining correlation between religion and other benefits as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Davidson et al., &lt;em&gt;Psychosomatic Medicine&lt;/em&gt; -- &amp;quot;Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation&amp;quot; (2003)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We report for the first time significant increases in left-sided anterior activation, a pattern previously associated with positive affect, in the meditators compared with the nonmeditators. We also found significant increases in antibody titers to influenza vaccine among subjects in the meditation compared with those in the wait-list control group. Finally, the magnitude of increase in left-sided activation predicted the magnitude of antibody titer rise to the vaccine. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/content/65/4/564.full?ijkey=ad6454f747329753c6e432b298e953c38cc6857&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was actually forwarded this study a few weeks ago and list it here to show that while the literature suggests that religion &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have a positive effect on health and psychological states, so does mindfulness/meditation. Davidson also gives a talk entitled, &amp;quot;Be Happy Like a Monk&amp;quot; -- one can watch it or request the transcript &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.portalwisconsin.org/search.cfm?rid=34233&amp;amp;startrow=1&amp;amp;keyword=davidson&amp;amp;rtype=all&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;, if interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just for some counter-points, I thought I'd list these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Effects of participation in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) (&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/ccp/65/5/768/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Affiliation with AA after treatment was related to maintenance of self-efficacy and motivation, as well as to increased active coping efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I offer this simply to illustrate that (as Levin's paper about causality also aims at), it might not be merely &lt;em&gt;religion&lt;/em&gt; that improves psychological conditions, but the aspects of social bonding, support, being accepted, having an important goal, a common purpose, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paul, &lt;em&gt;Journal of Religion &amp;amp; Society&lt;/em&gt; -- &amp;quot;Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies&amp;quot; (2005):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies (Figures 1-9). The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I add this, as these individual effects of religiosity may be measurable, but perhaps religiosity on the societal level, or at least various forms of it, are not correlated in the same manner, at least with external/societal benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always, correlation does not equal causation. While there is evidence supporting the claim examined here, the fact that it doesn't seem to matter &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; religion it is, that AA may have such benefits, and that individual benefits doesn't scale as a society makes me want to look further. I'd be particularly interested in the Levin paper above, for the abstract also contains this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, alternative explanations for observed associations between religion and health are described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding this and other papers looking at similar things might be quite interesting, unless the only question of interest here is purely about religion/health/well-being. Personally, I'd like to know the underlying mechanisms as well, as the benefits of religion might be reducible to lower factors that could prove useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-14T22:58:06.940" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3668" CreationDate="2011-06-15T00:39:26.060" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found my copy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/006171951X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Clockwork Universe&lt;/a&gt;.  On page &lt;em&gt;xvi&lt;/em&gt; of the preface, the author writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well over a century later, hygiene had scarcely improved.  At about the time of Louis XIV's death in 1715, a new rule was put in place requiring that the corridors in the palace at Versailles be cleaned of feces once a week.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cited reference for that information in the book is: Katherine Ashenburg, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B004KAB5AK&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Dirt on Clean&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, pg. 116.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems unlikely that the workers building it would be conscientious about &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; defecating in the hallways when the residents who moved in once it was complete felt that doing so was perfectly acceptable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="3451" LastEditDate="2011-06-17T12:26:15.840" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T12:26:15.840" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2011-06-15T02:28:56.390" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt; -- while some of the wage gap can be explained by choices, not all of it can. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nywaepcnyc.org/wp-content/themes/redaccent/images/2012/03/SimpleTruthAboutPayGap.pdf&quot;&gt;American Association of University Women&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After accounting for college major,&#xA;  occupation, industry, sector, hours&#xA;  worked, workplace flexibility,&#xA;  experience, educational attainment,&#xA;  enrollment status, GPA, institution&#xA;  selectivity, age, race/ethnicity,&#xA;  region, marital status, and number of&#xA;  children, &lt;strong&gt;a 5 percent difference in&#xA;  the earnings of male and female&#xA;  college graduates one year after&#xA;  graduation was still unexplained.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A similar analysis of full-time&#xA;  workers 10 years after college&#xA;  graduation found a &lt;strong&gt;12 percent&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  unexplained difference in earnings.&#xA;  [emphasis in original]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much more information, including information about the pay gap in many different countries can be found by following the links on &lt;a href=&quot;http://gstudies.asp.radford.edu/sources/wage_gaps/worldwide.htm&quot;&gt;this page from Radford University&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Earnings&amp;amp;ContentRecord_id=db19df76-9299-4b46-a98c-ef33c21dab3d&amp;amp;ContentType_id=2206321f-9e59-4f98-b972-d78c64abf642&amp;amp;Group_id=51e071bd-07e9-46f2-bb70-cfc28baec8be&quot;&gt;A chart from the U.S. Senate&lt;/a&gt; breaks down the pay gap into explained (by factors such as hours worked and experience) and unexplained. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0435.pdf&quot;&gt;This is the Government Accounting Office report&lt;/a&gt; that explains where that chart comes from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also see similar analysis in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w11240.pdf&quot;&gt;What Do Wage Differentials Tell Us about Labor Market Discrimination?&lt;/a&gt; from the National Bureau of Economic Research. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catalyst.org/file/340/pipeline%27s_broken_promise_final_021710.pdf&quot;&gt;A similar analysis&lt;/a&gt; from a nonprofit working to expand opportunities for women in business found similar results in 2010. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="677" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-06-04T01:56:17.943" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T01:56:17.943" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4593" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-15T02:31:47.390" Score="16" ViewCount="1461" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard, and even once recall reading, that people have a sort of &quot;6&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; sense&quot; where they can tell if they're being looked at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From personal experience, there were many times where I felt I was being watched, turned around, and indeed - someone was there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is this just a coincidence, or is there any truth behind the claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3097" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:03:22.560" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:03:22.560" Title="Do people know when they're being looked at?" Tags="|psychology|environment|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4597" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4605" CreationDate="2011-06-15T08:34:30.510" Score="9" ViewCount="604" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the following article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/14/ice_age/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/14/ice_age/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sunspot activity is rapidly declining, and when this has happened in the past this has led to a mini ice age.  I'm pretty sceptical about it myself, but is there any truth to it at all?  Should I start stocking up on fire wood, and winter coats, or is this just propaganda from climate change deniers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3658" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T17:51:47.463" Title="Are we heading for a mini ice age?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4134" CreationDate="2011-06-15T09:10:44.830" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daserste.de/wwiewissen/beitrag_dyn~uid,wibedlqeu7939ox3~cm.asp&quot;&gt;German article about this&lt;/a&gt; (link is dead: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20101023141051/http://www.daserste.de/wwiewissen/beitrag_dyn~uid,wibedlqeu7939ox3~cm.asp&quot;&gt;archive.org alternative&lt;/a&gt;). It describes the reasoning behind this like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fruit contain sugar and yeast (sugar inside the fruit yeast on the outside). If you drink water after eating sweet fruits (in germany the warning is mainly about cherries), your stomach acid is watered down to a point where the yeast can survive and produce alcohol and CO2, which in turn causes flatulence and pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It (the article) continues to point out that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even after eating lots of fruits and drinking lots of water, the stomach still has an ph of 2-4, way to acidic for yeast and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the fruits just don't stay in there for more than 2-3 hours. Yeast needs much more time to proliferate to a point where they could produce enough CO2 to be felt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to get belly-ache from eating fruits but this isn't connected to drinking water. If you eat a real lot of fruit or salad or raw vegetables, your regular digestive microbes produce more CO2 than your guts can handle painlessly but that's nothing else than everyone knows from onions, peas or beans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article states self experiments by Dr. Eckart von Hirschhausen (the author) and Michael Blaut (German Institute of Nutrition Sciences / Deutsches Institut für Ernährungsforschung), both ending without any painful experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2780" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T09:38:31.827" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T09:38:31.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3049" CreationDate="2011-06-15T09:59:14.320" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cornell psychologist &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_B._Titchener&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Edward Titchener&lt;/a&gt; (who studied under &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Wundt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wundt&lt;/a&gt;) tested the ability to detect &lt;em&gt;unseen&lt;/em&gt; staring and published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/8/208/895.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science (1898)&lt;/a&gt;. His conclusion: people cannot detect when they are being stared at, though a great many believe they can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though others have tested this `ability' over the years (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sheldrake.org/experiments/staring/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rupert Sheldrake&lt;/a&gt;), the results are mixed, and when statistically significant results are got, this is usually because of sloppy procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Titchener would be rolling in his grave to know this sh*t is still being discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a short summary (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.everythingispointless.com/2006/12/stop-staring-at-me.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Titchener] reported that over the years he had conducted a large number of informal tests and found no evidence for this particular claim. As far as Titchener was concerned people were not able to demonstrate their widely held belief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He went on to provide a very good normal explanation for why people have this belief. First he noted that &lt;strong&gt;humans have forward facing vision&lt;/strong&gt;, which &lt;strong&gt;leaves us exposed to the rear&lt;/strong&gt; and he suggested that when in a situation where you are forced to present your back to a group of people, that there &lt;strong&gt;may be some psychological discomfort in that&lt;/strong&gt;. He went as far to say that our ancestors must surely have devoted constant care to the defence of their backs. Titchener claimed that this back vigilance is the first element of staring detection: that people protect their backs by being aware of the environment behind them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the feeling to turn around has formed, it is followed by an executing of the behavioural component: turning the head around and examining the back environment. Attention moves across the back of the room, scanning it to update their information as to what is actually going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Titchener next turned his attention to what might be happening behind the individual. He noted that his students could be engaged in a range of different behaviours (playing with their hair, eating food etc) and that it should be expected that some of the people sitting behind may be staring in the general direction of the individual. When they turn around, they disturb the visual field for those people who happen to have been looking in their general direction. This movement is a strong stimulus for people sitting behind, which they are required to attend to. There may in fact be any number of people who have the person in their visual field and who suddenly respond to the movement of the person looking around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is this coincidence which Titchener argued is the basis for the belief. Why do people feel the special tingling in their neck though? Titchener remarked that &lt;strong&gt;this no different from the feeling experienced in the bottom after sitting down for a long time!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2087" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T11:06:38.993" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4603" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4792" CreationDate="2011-06-15T11:37:45.470" Score="13" ViewCount="4242" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend knows how to wiggle his right ear only, and I tried to wiggle my ears as well, but he told me that I can't learn it, it has to be natural. Is there any study on this, or is it actually possible to learn how to wiggle my ears?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T13:07:16.673" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T13:07:16.673" Title="Can you &quot;learn&quot; to wiggle your ears?" Tags="|physiology|ear|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ClosedDate="2016-04-15T00:35:39.723" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4597" CreationDate="2011-06-15T12:57:05.330" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As Craig Stuntz said in the comments, little of what the article says seems to actually come from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one citation it gives&lt;/a&gt;. If you read over that article published by NASA, and also the &lt;a href=&quot;https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;other NASA article it links to&lt;/a&gt;, you'll quickly see the Register author drew some hefty/seemingly unsupported conclusions. At no point in either article do they claim we're heading for another &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Maunder Minimum&lt;/a&gt;, so... that's kind of that. We're certainly in a low sunspot cycle; that much is pretty well established. Here are a few diagrams showing that fact from the NASA articles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sunspot activity over the last 250 years:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/Zurich_Color_Small.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;1750-2050 Sunspot numbers&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sunspot predictions for the next decade (the second NASA article talks about how the predictions are made, nice details):&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_predict_l.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Sunspot predictions&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, NASA isn't really predicting we're heading for another Maunder Minimum. It'll most likely be one of the lowest cycles in recent history, but I sincerely doubt there's much need to worry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, on an interesting note: The correlation between the Maunder Minimum and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Little Ice Age (LIA)&lt;/a&gt;. It's certainly there, but it's also completely unknown if it was correlation or causation (or just dumb random chance). In the Wiki articles on the Maunder Minimum and the LIA, you can see that there definitely seems to be some relationship between lowered solar activity and cooler climatic periods, but no one really understands why. (It looks like the LIA could have happened due to volcanic activity, or even a slowdown of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;thermohaline circulation&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what no one seems to have looked at is the relationship between the sunspot cycle and the various cooling periods within the LIA. &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Glossary/?mode=alpha&amp;amp;seg=l&amp;amp;segend=n&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA defines the LIA&lt;/a&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A cold period that lasted from about A.D. 1550 to about A.D. 1850 in Europe, North America, and Asia. This period was marked by rapid expansion of mountain glaciers, especially in the Alps, Norway, Ireland, and Alaska. There were three maxima, beginning about 1650, about 1770, and 1850, each separated by slight warming intervals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the Maunder Minimum data (from the original NASA article), you see this sunspot cycle:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_yearly.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Maunder Minimum sunspot data&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the Minimum corresponds to the 1650 cool period. But sunspots sure don't seem to account for the 1770 or the 1850 periods. All in all, there's something going on here that we don't fully understand. But it really doesn't look like sunspots are the culprit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: No. Well, probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Linked to in comments by Larian LeQuella, here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/06/17/are-we-headed-for-a-new-ice-age/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a great Bad Astronomy article&lt;/a&gt; discussing all this and more. Hooray, same conclusions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3114" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:38.397" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T17:51:47.463" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4606" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-15T13:19:17.380" Score="13" ViewCount="2236" Body="&lt;p&gt;For much of human history, it was &quot;common knowledge&quot; that women were much more emotional than men. This belief still appears to be widely held.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does either gender experience emotions either more frequently or stronger?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If there is a difference, does biology play a significant role in causing this difference?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorDisplayName="anon" LastEditDate="2014-06-02T09:52:55.010" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T09:52:55.010" Title="Do women experience more emotion than men?" Tags="|gender|emotions|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4607" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4610" CreationDate="2011-06-15T13:27:53.883" Score="9" ViewCount="3130" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the television show &lt;a href=&quot;http://abc.go.com/shows/jamie-olivers-food-revolution&quot;&gt;Jame Oliver's Food Revolution&lt;/a&gt; there is a memorable scene, when he asks a Grade 1 class (I think) to identify common vegetable, such as potatoes, tomatoes, broccoli and radishes. The children could not identify many of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the scene was not staged but that it isn't something you would see in the average school.  However, my dad thinks it's completely staged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was this scene staged and completely untrue?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Is this possible by handpicking a certain school where the producers know the children will how little knowledge of food.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Or is this a more general trend that could be seen in any classroom in the US?    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody have any other information on this particular event, or on the knowledge of school-children in general?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case anyone is interested, here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiShJt2XVdw&quot;&gt;the scene&lt;/a&gt; I am referring to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3211" LastEditorUserId="3211" LastEditDate="2011-06-15T13:43:40.130" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T01:52:59.317" Title="Can young children in the United States not identify common fruits and vegetables" Tags="|nutrition|education|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4607" CreationDate="2011-06-15T13:54:42.857" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;While researching this, I found a number of people had found the ability of students to identify vegetables question interesting - as they studied whether familiarity with the vegetables made children more likely to eat them. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://ucanr.org/repository/cao/landingpage.cfm?article=ca.v055n01p43&amp;amp;fulltext=yes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;For example.&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding the actual data from peer-reviewed studies was a little harder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-101397-204434/unrestricted/etd.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Master's Thesis&lt;/a&gt; showed that preschool students could fairly reliably identify carrots, but that is a common vegetable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/bitstream/10288/1163/1/ChelseaOsborneHonors.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Honors Thesis&lt;/a&gt; showed that common fruit and vegetables where easier than others, for a sample of 40 children around 6 years of age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;When children were asked if they could identify the&#xA;healthful foods on the cards [...],&#xA;they were generally better at identifying and classifying more commonly eaten foods&#xA;such as apples and carrots than less common foods such as Brussels sprouts or exotic&#xA;foods such as starfruit [...]. Overall, children were able to correctly identify more than half of the fruits (M = 58% ± 11.9) and vegetables (M = 50.03% ±&#xA;18.91) on the cards.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen the Jamie Oliver show, but with recognition figures of around 50%, I would think there would be plenty of ammunition for an skilled editor to slant the results either way, without needing to stage anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Clarified task performed by eliding extraneous task. These numbers are for identifying the names of vegetables, not for classifying them as fruit versus vegetable (which was also studied, and had higher numbers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-16T01:52:59.317" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T01:52:59.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4607" CreationDate="2011-06-15T14:41:54.793" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;This isn't really an answer, but I thought it was interesting and it's too long to fit in a comment:&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;(This is more of an answer now; see the edit at the bottom.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/23/oddthinking&quot;&gt;Oddthinking&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4607/can-young-children-in-the-united-states-not-identify-common-fruits-and-vegetables#4609&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; inspired me to do some digging of my own, and I too was met with a lack of immediately relevant academic research.  I therefore decided to go about this indirectly by looking at the fruit and vegetable intake of children.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jada.2008.11.022&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This 2009 study&lt;/a&gt; by Lorson, Melgar-Quinonez, and Taylor found that 74.1% of children in the US between the ages of 6 and 11 do not meet the recommended daily intake of fruit (on average, these children consume 71.5% of the recommended daily intake).  Likewise, among the same group of children, 83.8% did not meet the daily recommended intake of vegetables (on average, consuming 58.3% of the recommended intake).  While this study only measured the &lt;em&gt;quantity&lt;/em&gt; of intake, I think it is at least plausible to hypothesize that a lack of quantity should be correlated to lack of variety (and thereby lack of familiarity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publichealthreports.org/archives/issueopen.cfm?articleID=2269&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This 2009 study&lt;/a&gt; by Coyle, Potter, Schneider, May, Robin, Seymour, and Debrot surveyed a number of students of different ages in Mississippi, USA, as to their familiarity with different types of fruits and vegetables.  The survey asked the students if they were familiar with or had ever eaten 13 common fruits and 7 common vegetables.  The 5&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; grade students, on average, were familiar with only 85% of the fruits and only 61% of the vegetables.  The familiarity did increase slightly with age, with a value of 91% for fruits and 68% for vegetables by grade 10.  Therefore, I think it is reasonable to hypothesize that 6 year olds, although not studied, would have had no better (and most likely worse) familiarity than the 5&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; graders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 2&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need to clarify my summary of the survey method from the second study, as the paper is a little ambiguous.  After having re-read the paper, it seems as if the survey listed 13 fruits and 7 vegetables and then asked something like, &quot;List all of the fruits/vegetables you can think of that you have ever eaten, including but not limited to those above.&quot;  The percentages I quoted are just the number of fruits or vegetables the students listed divided by the number of examples the survey listed.  Therefore, if a student received a &quot;score&quot; of 0.77 for fruits, that means that he or she could only recall the names of 0.77*13 = 10 different fruits that he or she had eaten in his or her lifetime.  It is therefore possible to have &quot;scores&quot; higher than 1.0.  Off the top of my head, I can easily think of at least two dozen different types of fruit that I've eaten throughout my life, which would have given me a score of 24/13 = 1.85.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T21:30:50.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4611" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4614" CreationDate="2011-06-15T14:57:02.207" Score="25" ViewCount="4867" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/06/11/burzynski-the-movie.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Mercola announcement&lt;/a&gt;  for the movie, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.burzynskimovie.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Burzynski&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Burzynski&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stanislaw Burzynski&lt;/a&gt;'s (allegedly) amazing cure for cancer, which uses &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antineoplaston&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;antineoplastons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mercola article claims some fairly hefty things, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Burzynski, the Movie is the story of a medical doctor and Ph.D biochemist named Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski who won the largest, and possibly the most convoluted and intriguing legal battle against the Food and Drug Administration in American history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will learn that not only did the US Federal government spend 14 years actively suppressing a cancer treatment that had a FAR greater success rate than any other treatment available, they also spent well over $60 million of US taxpayer dollars trying to put the inventor of the treatment in jail in order to steal his patents and either suppress or cash in on his discovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Burzynski&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Burzynski had appealed the limitations on his advertising [due to a cease and desist order from the FDA] on the grounds of free speech, but the appeal court upheld the decision, stating that &amp;quot;Burzynski's commercial speech does not concern a lawful activity.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...The 2010 film Burzynski directed by Eric Merola, documents Burzynski's &lt;strong&gt;efforts&lt;/strong&gt; to gain FDA approval for the therapy. [emphasis mine]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My resultant questions are:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any evidence for his &amp;quot;cure&amp;quot;? In order for the FDA to suppress a cure that had a &amp;quot;FAR greater success rate than any other treatment available,&amp;quot; well, it has to be shown to be successful at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is Mercola correct in reporting that Burzynski &lt;em&gt;won&lt;/em&gt; the most important battle against the FDA in American history? Wikipedia seems to indicate that the FDA ruling still stands.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that the new, shiny developments in this industry that one doesn't hear about until Mercola advertises it were probably never much to begin with. Also, they unsurprisingly tend to involve aspects of a &amp;quot;big government conspiracy,&amp;quot; and the bundled accusation that the only thing the US government cares about is keeping its citizens diseased and broke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, I'm still interested in facts others can find, as well as making this a reference for other googlers. I will say that he has quite the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.burzynskiclinic.com/publications.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of publications&lt;/a&gt;, but it's difficult to find reviews of Burzynski's work that &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; published by him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T22:17:19.610" Title="Does Burzynski have a miracle cancer cure being suppressed by the FDA?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|cancer|fda|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4597" CreationDate="2011-06-15T15:11:01.060" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Register report is not particularly informative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is news from the American Astronomical Society meeting in New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, being widely reported, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space.com/11960-fading-sunspots-slower-solar-activity-solar-cycle.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;for example here&lt;/a&gt;.  The often skeptic site Watt's Up With That has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/14/all-three-of-these-lines-of-research-to-point-to-the-familiar-sunspot-cycle-shutting-down-for-a-while/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;copy of the press release&lt;/a&gt;, which seems to have been the basis of the Register story.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the current sunspot Cycle 24 started late and is predicted to be lower than previous cycles, as discussed in erekalper's answer, this is not news.  What is news is that different organizations are failing to see the usual precursors of Cycle 25, and so are suggesting that it may be very low.    Whether this turns out to be correct will be seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The press release has quotes from Dr. Frank Hill, associate director of the National Solar Observatory’s Solar Synoptic Network.  It ends with &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All three of these lines of research to point to the familiar sunspot cycle shutting down for a while.  “If we are right,” Hill concluded, “this could be the last solar maximum we’ll see for a few decades. That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth’s climate.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with any such research, stating a possible link to climate may suggest that more research needs to be funded.  When the magnitude of the links to climate are uncertain, as with all such climate-related claims of &quot;could&quot; or &quot;may&quot;, they should be treated with the skepticism they deserve, whether they point upwards or downwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T15:11:01.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4611" CreationDate="2011-06-15T16:07:15.430" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;From 2008:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/antineoplastons/patient/page1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/antineoplastons/patient/page1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My government firewall strips all formatting, so I can't do what is required to make this answer look pretty, but the basic gist is (again, suggest you go to the Cancer.gov site for the links, and emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Antineoplastons are chemical compounds that are found normally in urine and blood. For use in medical research, antineoplastons can be made from chemicals in a laboratory. (See Question 1.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Antineoplaston therapy was developed by Dr. S. R. Burzynski, who proposed the use of antineoplastons as a possible cancer treatment in 1976. (See Question 2.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No randomized, controlled trials showing the effectiveness of antineoplastons have been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.&lt;/strong&gt; (See Question 6.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonrandomized clinical trials are ongoing at Dr. Burzynski’s clinic to study the effect of antineoplastons on cancer. (See Question 6.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Antineoplastons have caused mild side effects and some serious nervous system problems. (See Question 7.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Antineoplastons are not approved by the U. S. Food and Drug Administration for the prevention or treatment of any disease. (See Question 8.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT TO ADD:&lt;/strong&gt;  You have to ask, if this is a cure, and the FDA is supressing it, why isn't it being used in areas that the FDA has no authority?  Things that make you go &amp;quot;Hmm?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit from Asker:&lt;/strong&gt; This was a great answer! I'm simply adding links to two more resources I found on my own to add to it for anyone else who stumbles across this (hope the answerer does not mind!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.houstonpress.com/2009-01-01/news/cancer-doctor-stanislaw-burzynski-sees-himself-as-a-crusading-researcher-not-a-quack/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is quite a long writeup/interview with Burzynski by the Houston Press.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1998, Paul Goldberg, editor of The Cancer Letter, a D.C.-based newsletter covering cancer research and drug approval, investigated Burzynski's claims up to that point. He asked three renowned and independent researchers to examine Burzynski's scientific protocols — all three said they could not make sense of the data, saying it did not resemble any commonly accepted models. Ten years later, Goldberg and two of those doctors don't feel any differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Henry Friedman, a neuro-oncologist at the Duke University Medical Center, was one of the independent doctors who reviewed the data for Goldberg. [He said,] &amp;quot;Despite thousands of patients treated with the antineoplastons, no one has yet shown in a convincing fashion, [through] the rigorous requirements for peer review, that the therapy works&amp;quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/burzynski1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a summary about Burzynski from QuackWatch.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Burzynski has never demonstrated that A-2.1 (PA) or &amp;quot;soluble A-10&amp;quot; (PA and PAG) are effective against cancer or that tumor cells from patients treated with these antineoplastons have been &amp;quot;normalized.&amp;quot; Tests of antineoplastons at the National Cancer Institute have never been positive. The drug company Sigma-Tau Pharmaceuticals could not duplicate Burzynski's claims for AS-2.1 and A-10. The Japanese National Cancer Institute has reported that antineoplastons did not work in their studies. No Burzynski coauthors have endorsed his use of antineoplastons in cancer patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T14:39:33.787" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4611" CreationDate="2011-06-15T17:10:52.030" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I concur with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4611/does-burzynski-have-a-miracle-cancer-cure-being-suppressed-by-the-fda/4614#4614&quot;&gt;answer from Brightblades&lt;/a&gt;, which addresses the lack of clinical evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That leaves the question about the legal situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Wikipedia page references, I found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.3rdcoa.courts.state.tx.us/opinions/HTMLopinion.asp?OpinionID=847&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;decision for case NO. 03-95-00222-CV&lt;/a&gt; at the Texas Court of Appeals, in the case between Burzynski and the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its summary states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Appellant Texas State Board of Medical Examiners (&quot;the Board&quot;) ordered that appellee Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski's license to practice medicine be suspended and that such suspension be stayed with Dr. Burzynski being placed on probation for ten years under certain conditions. (1) Upon judicial review of the Board's order, the district court reversed the order in its entirety and dismissed the cause. In two points of error, the Board asserts that the trial court erred in finding that TMPA section 5.09(a) authorizes Dr. Burzynski's use of antineoplastons in Texas and that the false advertising statute is unconstitutional. We will reverse the judgment of the trial court and render judgment in accordance with the order of the Board.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise the summary: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Board suspended his license. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The District Court reviewed and reversed the suspension. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Texas Court of Appeals reversed the reversal, leaving his license suspended again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This confusing back-and-forth explains why the difference sources appear to be contradicting each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T17:16:04.507" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4606" CreationDate="2011-06-15T18:24:18.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;More&quot; is a difficult thing to prove. Different, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we found left-lateralized&#xA;  activations in the extended amygdala in females&#xA;  and right-sided lateralization in the hippocampus in&#xA;  men, indicating that emotion-memory circuits in&#xA;  the limbic system may be activated differently for&#xA;  men and women&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/tor/Papers/Phan_Wager_2004_CNS_Emotion_review.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/tor/Papers/Phan_Wager_2004_CNS_Emotion_review.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/tor/Papers/Wager_NIMG90_inpress.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/tor/Papers/Wager_NIMG90_inpress.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3672" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T18:24:18.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4459" CreationDate="2011-06-15T18:49:23.967" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have good reason to think this sounds absurd, because, well, this is absurd. The answer to your question is unequivocally, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;no!&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first warning signs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grammatical/typographic/formatting errors in the warning itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Asking to &quot;Kindly pass this information to your contacts.&quot; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_%28Monty_Python%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eric Idle said it best&lt;/a&gt;, spam spam spam spam.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The misnomer of calling what should be &quot;irradiated&quot; food &quot;radiated&quot; food. Radiated food would just be food emitted from someone or something, which would be a great idea for a super-power...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If this was a legitimate study, it would be groundbreaking, and would be receiving enormous media attention. Just think about how many official studies and media buzzes one encounters (and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/569/do-mobile-phones-have-anything-to-do-with-brain-cancer&quot;&gt;how&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2652/do-cell-phones-really-expel-dangerous-amounts-of-radiation&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3070/does-home-wifi-expose-you-to-less-radiation-than-using-the-3g-on-your-cell-phone&quot;&gt;questions&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3703/does-frequent-cell-phone-use-reduce-the-sperm-count-of-men&quot;&gt;have&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3062/were-radio-frequency-radiation-levels-raised-to-accommodate-mobile-phones&quot;&gt;been&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1138/are-cell-phones-dangerous-to-use-at-the-gas-station&quot;&gt;asked&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1800/do-mobile-phones-cause-heart-troubles&quot;&gt;on&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2693/can-products-that-claim-to-to-reduce-electromagnetic-radiation-from-mobile-phones&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3189/mobile-phones-are-the-cause-of-the-demise-of-the-bees&quot;&gt;site&lt;/a&gt;) regarding cell phone radiation and health. Wouldn't this be an even bigger bombshell?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put a little actual backbone into it, though, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hoax-slayer.com/refrigerator-door-magnet-warning.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;check out this site&lt;/a&gt;; it does a nice job at quickly and simply debunking this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize the finer points of the above link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.princeton.edu/research/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Princeton's research page&lt;/a&gt; - you won't find it there!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The author claims to have contacted Princeton about this, and received the following reply from a spokesperson (granted, without seeing an email, this is just as specious as the claim itself):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To confirm, we are not aware of any such research affiliated with anyone at Princeton and unfortunately we do not know where or why this e-mail chain started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We appreciate you informing your readers that this e-mail is a hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't forget, how do you think refrigerator doors stick when closed? Magnets! Furthermore, many electric motors (like the one that makes refrigerators work) generate electric and magnetic fields on their own - certainly larger than the miniscule one produced by a refrigerator magnet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The above site also links to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/magnetic-fields&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Cancer Institute&lt;/a&gt;, a great source for this kind of information. Looking at this linked page, one can see (with regard to humans):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No consistent association between magnetic fields and leukemia or brain tumors has been established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to follow up on the whole mouse thing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Animal studies have not found that magnetic field exposure is associated with increased risk of cancer (2). The absence of animal data supporting carcinogenicity makes it biologically less likely that magnetic field exposures in humans, at home or at work, are linked to increased cancer risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no. There is nothing to worry about with refrigerator magnets. Unless you eat them. That might be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I also think a fair name for this whole fiasco could be: decorative magnets, how do they work!?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3114" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T18:49:23.967" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4618" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4620" CreationDate="2011-06-15T18:54:17.073" Score="8" ViewCount="605" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read an article on a website about preparing for exams, and it stated that because the brain consists of 1/5 Omega-3 fatty acids, it is important to eat fish, so your brain will get better at communicating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being very skeptic about the statement I tried to search the Internet for more information on the topic, but I was unable to get a clear answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really true that the human brain consists of that much fatty acid, and if yes, is all of it Omega-3?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3515" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T07:52:27.173" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T06:00:46.173" Title="Does brain consist of 20% Omega-3 fatty acid?" Tags="|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4618" CreationDate="2011-06-15T19:19:06.877" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/facts.html&quot;&gt;The brain doesn't have 20% lipids of any kind&lt;/a&gt;. So no, it's not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3617" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T19:19:06.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4648" CreationDate="2011-06-15T19:34:54.273" Score="19" ViewCount="2944" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was buying a house, one of the environmental checks that had to be done was the level of radon buildup in the building.  It turns out the house that I bought has &lt;em&gt;just below&lt;/em&gt; the recommended safe level in this country (UK) of radon buildup, and I was advised to leave windows open to let the radon dissipate whenever possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Radon is the second most common cause of lung cancer, after smoking... and yet, when I looked into whether areas in the country with higher radon ground output had statistically higher incidences of lung cancer, they did not.  Does radon gas really pose a significant threat in causing lung cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3447" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T05:48:23.557" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T16:47:37.280" Title="Does radon gas significantly increase one's chances of getting lung cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|radiation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4622" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-15T20:11:03.787" Score="60" ViewCount="5843" Body="&lt;p&gt;To quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rickconner.net/spamweb/spamrules.html&quot;&gt;Rick's Spam Digest&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s just too likely that &lt;strong&gt;the spammer uses the “removal” feature as a means to compile lists of known-deliverable e-mail addresses, and you could simply wind up getting more spam&lt;/strong&gt; for your trouble. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.philb.com/spamex.htm&quot;&gt;Phil Bradley&lt;/a&gt; actually did a little experiment (in 2002) and confirmed it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I was soon to discover opting out of a&#xA;  mailing list is like wandering into&#xA;  the rapids just wearing a small life&#xA;  protector - you're going to get swept&#xA;  along very quickly and end up&#xA;  drowning!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;I have never really doubted that unsubscribing from unwanted email will only result in more unwanted email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then I stumbled upon &lt;strong&gt;two articles that say it's a myth&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pcworld.about.net/magazine/2208p107id116572.htm&quot;&gt;Busting the Biggest PC Myths&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/1713421/the-biggest-spam-myths&quot;&gt;The 10 Biggest Spam Myths&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=383027&quot;&gt;Here is a discussion&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;strong&gt;Straight Dope forum&lt;/strong&gt;, with one user commenting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Of course it's a myth. They send out&#xA;  many millions of spam messages a day,&#xA;  a high proportion of which bounce&#xA;  back. What do they care if you &quot;prove&quot;&#xA;  your address is real? They already&#xA;  have it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;My question:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have there been tests (aside from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.philb.com/spamex.htm&quot;&gt;Phil Bradley&lt;/a&gt;'s) which confirm that unsubscribing from spam will result in even more spam?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do spammers actually compile lists of &quot;known deliverable email addresses&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:32:58.643" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:32:58.643" Title="Will unsubscribing from spam get you even more spam?" Tags="|security|email|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4606" CreationDate="2011-06-15T21:04:07.983" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, there is no simple Yes/No as investigating and judging emotionality is different game in different aspects of emotion. So one cant draw a overall picture of current scientific knowledge and sum it up to a simple &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; as there are too many apples and oranges to compare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;what Wikipedia says on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_emotion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gender and emotion&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies of psychological gender&#xA;  differences are controversial and&#xA;  subject to error. Many small-scale&#xA;  studies report differences that are&#xA;  not repeated in larger studies.&#xA;  Self-report questionnaires are subject&#xA;  to bias, particularly if the subjects&#xA;  are told that the questionnaire is&#xA;  testing for gender roles. It is also&#xA;  possible that commentators may&#xA;  exaggerate or downplay differences for&#xA;  ideological reasons&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have to distinguish into social &amp;amp; non-social emotions, look &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotion_classification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;emotion classification&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;noteworthy there doenst exist a common classification system&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;more&quot; is inexact here&lt;/strong&gt;, and to be answerable should be specified as something measurable, e.g.: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;emotional strength/sensitivity (e.g. pain, gender dependent pain-treshold, stronger perception of pain with  same stimulus)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;divergent emotions in the sense of the above classification systems (does a male orgasm feel like a female one? This is known as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;qualia-problem&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_emotion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sex and emotion Wiki-article&lt;/a&gt; shows some gender differences. Male hormone Testosterone for example seems to reduce pain sensitivity, and female estrogen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-02/uomh-pat020703.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;raises it&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a more exact answer, you have to make a more specific claim, e.g. gender dependence of pain perception or empathy ability are, in my opinion, more precise, answerable questions. Other aspects of emotion are extremely hard to define and objectively measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3194" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2011-06-20T06:42:34.613" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T06:42:34.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4625" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4626" CreationDate="2011-06-15T22:08:49.973" Score="8" ViewCount="1250" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a typical claim of many alternative therapies: a cure for cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there are any documented cases of people who were cured from cancer without any of the typical therapies (surgery, radiation and chemotherapy). Eg cases where cancer was detected and dissappeared after some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T22:30:48.507" Title="Are there documented cases of people that were cured from cancer without surgery,radiation and/or chemotherapy?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4625" CreationDate="2011-06-15T22:30:48.507" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are inquiring about is known as &quot;spontaneous remission&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_remission&quot;&gt;WIKI&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...unexpected improvement or cure from a disease which usually is taking a different course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the rest of that article for some additional summary information concerning frequency, causes of this phenomenon, and more references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for more sources...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Answering a religious claim to healing vs. one from alternative medicine, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acampbell.ukfsn.org/essays/skeptic/miraculouscures.html&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a referenced list of types of cancer known to spontaneously remit (See the page for expanded references):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;adult T-cell leukaemia/lymphoma (Takezako et al., 2000)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;adult T-cell leukaemia (Murakawa M et al., 1990)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;oesophageal leiomyosarcoma (Takemura et al., 1999)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;lung cancer following myxoedematous coma (Hercbergs, 1999)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;hepatocellular carcinoma (2 cases; Magalotti et al., 1998)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;non-small-cell lung cancer (Kappauf et al., 1997)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;lung metastases from primary uterine cancer (Mastall H, 1997)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;liver cancer (Van Halteren HK et al., 1997)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;pleural and intrapulmonary metastases from renal carcinoma (Lokich J, 1997)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;squamous cell lung cancer (Schmidt W., 1995)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;bladder cancer (Hellstrom PA et al., 1992)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;intrahepatic, peritoneal and splenic metastases after hepatectomy for hepatocellular&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;carcinoma (Terasaki et al., 2000)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;disappearance of lung metastases from hepatocellular carcinoma (Toyoda et al., 1999)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;large-cell and polymorphic lung cancer with extensive metastatic disease (Kappauf H. et al., 1997)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;metastatic malignant melanoma (Hurwitz PJ. 1991); several similar cases cited in the literature&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0306987778900579&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a 1978 article examining spontaneous cases, which states:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is indisputable scientific evidence of a spontaneous regression of cancer in several cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://media.noetic.org/uploads/files/App1.pdf&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is an appendix of a paper from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://noetic.org/&quot;&gt;Institute of Noetic Sciences&lt;/a&gt;, which opens:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Appendix One presents review articles of spontaneous regression of cancer that have appeared in the medical literaure over the last 100 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, there are definitely cases. It appears that the mechanism is unknown and that it may occur more/less frequently depending on the type of cancer as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T22:30:48.507" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4627" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4629" CreationDate="2011-06-15T22:57:34.297" Score="16" ViewCount="1513" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cUlKi16WdA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;youtube video&lt;/a&gt; video from &lt;a href=&quot;http://howround.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How Round is Your Circle?&lt;/a&gt; claims you can estimate area with a tool created from a bent coat-hanger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a little skeptical about the claim which is why I am posting this here as opposed to &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;math.se&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really a way to measure area, and if so what is it called (and maybe why it works)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-16T05:14:15.320" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T16:55:03.803" Title="Can you measure the area of a shape with a ruler and a bent coathanger?" Tags="|mathematics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4627" CreationDate="2011-06-15T23:25:25.783" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is, the device is called a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.planimetervault.com/hatchet/hatchet.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;planimeter&lt;/a&gt; and it works because of... &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planimeter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a whole bunch of terrifying maths&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2368" LastActivityDate="2011-06-15T23:25:25.783" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4627" CreationDate="2011-06-15T23:30:32.617" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this particular device is known as a &lt;em&gt;hatchet planimeter&lt;/em&gt; - invented by Captain Prytz. See this &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=mP4tAAAAIAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA977&quot;&gt;Encyclopædia britannica page.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the mathematical theory of the device see Robert L. Foote: &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/math/9808070&quot;&gt;Geometry of the Prytz Planimeter.&lt;/a&gt; See also Mark Levi and Serge Tabachnikov &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.psu.edu/levi/Bicycle_papers_files/bicycle10.pdf&quot;&gt;On bicycle tire tracks geometry, hatchet&#xA;planimeter, Menzin’s conjecture and oscillation&#xA;of unicycle tracks,&lt;/a&gt; and Tom Apostol and M. Mnatsakanian: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mamikon.com/USArticles/Gazette.pdf&quot;&gt;The method of sweeping tangents.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3677" LastEditorUserId="3677" LastEditDate="2011-06-16T00:58:29.117" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T00:58:29.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4630" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4634" CreationDate="2011-06-16T02:58:01.413" Score="68" ViewCount="4672" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reddit is all abuzz about DRM, piracy and all related topics. I don't really know much about the details in the technology here, but people were throwing around statements like these (all pulled from the same &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/i0g78/i_am_a_game_developer_and_im_going_to_explain_to/&quot;&gt;thread&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DRM would only affect pirates if everyone had to crack their game, but no, anyone can easily play these games because someone has already cracked the DRM, so it's no use at all, NO pirates have to deal with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My problem with DRM is that I don't see any evidence that it actually does anything to prevent piracy. [...] DRM only seems to end up inconveniencing legitimate paying customers. In some cases it's bad enough that after purchasing a game I will just go ahead and illegally download it because in doing so I'm getting a superior version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And other similar comments can be quickly found. The basic gist seems to be that DRM is so easily bypassed by pirates that it may as well not be there. So, assuming that the purpose of DRM is to prevent pirating a game, does it work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T10:25:03.917" Title="Is DRM effective?" Tags="|software|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4641" CreationDate="2011-06-16T07:42:53.080" Score="4" ViewCount="890" Body="&lt;p&gt;A relative of mine tells us he suffered from &lt;strong&gt;epileptic fits as a child&lt;/strong&gt;, and they've gone away without having taken any medication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have never seen him in any &quot;fit&quot; ourselves - and are now skeptical as to if this could indeed have gone away without any medication (if that's possible) or was this all a yarn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastActivityDate="2014-11-02T07:42:11.100" Title="Can epilepsy be cured without any medication?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4632" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4637" CreationDate="2011-06-16T08:27:10.750" Score="9" ViewCount="936" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2359/the-origin-of-99-cents&quot;&gt;The origin of &amp;ldquo;99 cents&amp;rdquo;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Wikipedia, the article for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;psychological pricing&lt;/a&gt; (ending prices in -99 or similar) gives the following suggestion for why it is done, as opposed to the psychological aspect behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Others have suggested that fractional&#xA;  pricing was first adopted as a control&#xA;  on employee theft. For cash&#xA;  transactions with a round price, there&#xA;  is a chance that a dishonest cashier&#xA;  will pocket the bill rather than&#xA;  record the sale. For cash transactions&#xA;  with an odd price, the cashier must&#xA;  make change for the customer. This&#xA;  generally means opening the cash&#xA;  register which creates a record of the&#xA;  sale in the register and reduces the&#xA;  risk of the cashier stealing from the&#xA;  store owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not cited or sourced, so I wonder if any studies have been performed on this? Is it actually harder to steal from the store with odd prices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T09:35:21.460" Title="Psychological pricing: reducing theft?" Tags="|psychology|criminology|price|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2011-06-17T19:04:49.683" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4630" CreationDate="2011-06-16T08:53:58.357" Score="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer: You need to look at the definition of &quot;effective&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it accomplish the purpose of preventing people from pirating the game it protects? &lt;em&gt;Sometimes&lt;/em&gt;. And even then, usually only briefly. As a case study, let's look at Assassin's Creed 2 by Ubisoft. According to press releases at the time they had instituted a radical new DRM method that required the player to be &lt;em&gt;constantly&lt;/em&gt; connected to the internet to make sure their account was and remained verified, and losing connection to the authentication servers for more than thirty seconds dropped you out of the game. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ubisoft hailed it as the ultimate anti-piracy solution and smugly dismissed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/things_you_should_boycott_assassin%E2%80%99s_creed_ii_and_its_god_awful_drm&quot;&gt;everyone who complained&lt;/a&gt; about how it's ridiculous for a single-player game to require an internet connection or how it massively inconvenienced anyone with a spotty connection as 'whining would-be pirates'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a (mostly) working crack &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/new-ubisoft-drm-cracked-on-day-one&quot;&gt;almost before the game was good and well released&lt;/a&gt;, and a fully functioning one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geekosystem.com/assassins-creed-2-drm-crack-ubisoft/&quot;&gt;within a month&lt;/a&gt;. The crack was thorough enough that Ubisoft's next game using the same DRM was fully cracked within days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total &quot;effectiveness&quot; of this DRM scheme: One month of possibly limited piracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Negative consequences: Severely inconvenienced paying customers who needed permanent internet connections just to be able to play a single-player game; &lt;em&gt;massive&lt;/em&gt; inconvenience when the release day instant load took the authentication servers down (Ubisoft swears up and down that it was a DDoS by said whining pirates, disregarding the fact that said pirates were the only ones at that point that &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; play the game); enraging a nontrivial chunk of their &lt;em&gt;former&lt;/em&gt; customer base who have subsequently declined to buy &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; new Ubisoft games and instead take their money to companies that don't accuse them all of thievery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was this &quot;effective&quot;? Not unless the intended purpose was to lose business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't get me wrong. I understand the publishers' dilemma -- they really would like to get paid for the games they design, create and/or publish. And I have no objection to paying them, and if they want some kind of reassurance that the people who play their games did pay for them, that's entirely reasonable. And I &lt;em&gt;like&lt;/em&gt; digital distribution -- it means not having to spend time traveling to town and searching five different game stores only to discover that the game is completely sold out -- and I understand that said digital distribution means that asking for a word in the manual doesn't really work anymore. And far too many pirates try to justify themselves with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/02/19/&quot;&gt;this kind of circular logic&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &quot;reasonable&quot; efforts to check whether a game hasn't been pirated do not, in my opinion, extend to the electronic equivalent of a body cavity search every time you make a purchase at the supermarket - another notorious example is the StarForce &quot;Copy Protection Scheme&quot; that amounted to &lt;a href=&quot;http://sillydog.org/forum/sdt_11182.php&quot;&gt;the equivalent of a rootkit&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You may note that the various mouthpieces defending StarForce also all insist that everyone complaining about it are 'obviously from international piracy groups' that really are only fearmongering because of the way the awesome system completely thwarts them. It's a recurring refrain)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the above doesn't cover the long-term problem of what happens when, say, your old install CD gets too scratchy for the CD check DRM to recognize it (happened to me with three separate games; I wound up downloading a crack for one of them, purchasing the second via Steam when it was on sale and getting the third when it appeared on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gog.com/&quot;&gt;GOG.com&lt;/a&gt;. Funny anecdote, but the game I'd downloaded the crack for always had some kind of issue with the in-game cutscenes not playing, which was cleared up by the crack as well. Score one for the pirates.) &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/488/&quot;&gt;XKCD pointed out that basic problem very succinctly&lt;/a&gt;, and it doesn't apply to just games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; DRM solutions that are more acceptable -- stepping away from the purity pedestal insisting that &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; DRM is ever &quot;acceptable&quot; -- such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://httml://www.steampowered.com&quot;&gt;Steam&lt;/a&gt;, which not only checks just once during install, and lets you play entirely offline if that's what you want, but also serves big heaps of added value such as automatic updating, keeping track of what you bought so you can reinstall it at any time, an easy to access storefront, regular sales and a social network to sweeten the pot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the way Gabe Newell is rolling in cash at the moment, you'd almost have to suspect that maybe the whole &quot;let's not treat our customers like criminal scum&quot; approach has something going for it. Incidentally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99088-GDC-2010-Gabe-Newell-Bashes-DRM&quot;&gt;he had a few things to say about DRM as well&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, many &quot;indie games&quot; don't bother with DRM at all, or at most use a serial key -- the additional cost to develop or license a DRM solution would eat unacceptably into their  profits. Again, given the popularity of a lot of these, the lack of DRM doesn't seem to have hurt their business model much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to summarize: In my opinion - and that of several fairly big names in the game industry as well - overly restrictive DRM does far more harm than good, especially when customers realize that they can either pay money for the game and suffer the DRM's inconveniences, or download the pirated version, play the game for free &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; have a better gaming experience because the DRM isn't getting on their nerves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, nonrestrictive DRM that adds significant value to the playing experience makes for repeat customers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2828" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-01-26T10:25:03.917" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T10:25:03.917" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4636" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4776" CreationDate="2011-06-16T09:20:23.860" Score="11" ViewCount="1141" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a story I have been told many times: if you want to preserve the taste and sparkle of an opened bottle of champagne, you just need to hang a (silver) spoon in the bottle's neck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always applied this trick but recently somebody told me it's actually a myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I started searching for it on the Internet but didn't really find a satisfactory answer on the question of whether it's a myth or not. I did find &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.stanford.edu/pr/94/941221Arc4008.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; study that claims it's a myth but also that hanging a spoon in the bottle is actually better than re-corking the bottle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does anybody know some (scientific) evidence (dis)proving this claim. And, if it's disproved, maybe also a way to actually preserve the taste and sparkle of an opened bottle of champagne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3690" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T05:52:20.400" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T11:38:50.293" Title="Is the taste of champagne preserved by hanging a spoon in the bottle?" Tags="|taste|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4632" CreationDate="2011-06-16T09:23:22.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.econ.kuleuven.be/tem/jaargangen/2001-2010/2008/RBE%202008-4/2008-4%20-%20Van%20Caneghem.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Psychological Pricing: Private vs. Professional Vendors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While it has been argued that psychological pricing was originally introduced as an&#xA;  aid to prevent theft by employees (Gendall et al., 1996), it is nowadays common&#xA;  belief that psychological prices boost sales&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find the quoted paper behind paywalls here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=1185497659407632930&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;as_sdt=0,5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=1185497659407632930&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;as_sdt=0,5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.misrc.umn.edu/workingpapers/fullpapers/2005/0512_050605.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PRICE POINTS AND PRICE RIGIDITY ON THE INTERNET: A MASSIVE QUASI-EXPERIMENTAL DATA MINING APPROACH&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Historically, odd pricing was developed to control &#xA;  employee theft from cash registers, by requiring change to be given to the customer so the sale &#xA;  was recorded.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/40325699&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;$9.99: CAN &quot;JUST-BELOW&quot; PRICING BE RECONCILED WITH REALITY&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cash register made it easier for store owners to prevent employee theft since it kept a record of each transaction rung up by the employee. However, the employee could still pocket the money and not ring up the sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2820" LastEditorUserId="2820" LastEditDate="2011-06-16T09:35:21.460" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T09:35:21.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4638" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-16T10:15:41.560" Score="12" ViewCount="7598" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Vasilescu-Karpen&quot;&gt;Karpen Pile&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;claimed by some to be a battery that has provided continuous energy for over 60 years, making the Karpen Pile either a supremely effective method of storing energy or a Perpetuum mobile.&lt;/blockquote&gt; &#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been any studies to research the claim that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Vasilescu-Karpen&quot;&gt;Karpen Pile&lt;/a&gt; actually works as described by its inventor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the abstract concept may be thought to violate a series of principles of physics, but perhaps there's some validity to the claim, as it might harvest energy rather than only generate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2836" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:19:22.783" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T10:30:12.853" Title="Does the Karpen Pile work, producing continuous energy without refueling?" Tags="|physics|environment|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30051" CreationDate="2011-06-16T10:23:04.877" Score="19" ViewCount="15659" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard from various sources since I was growing up that during hot weather one should drink warm or hot drinks and during cold weather one should rather drink cold drinks, but a quick google found no satisfying expert(ish) answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, if its hot outside (in temperature and also humidity), then should I drink a bottle of cold water like 10-12°C or e.g. a warm tea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2162" LastEditorUserId="2162" LastEditDate="2011-06-18T07:18:15.777" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T00:42:59.793" Title="Is drinking hot water more beneficial during hot weather?" Tags="|water|weather|drink|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4638" CreationDate="2011-06-16T11:53:16.943" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This probably isn't a &quot;proof&quot; answer like you're asking in the question, but aside from the &quot;we can't put it into an exposition because we can't afford security&quot; line it sounds suspicious as hell -- not to mention similar to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_Electric_Bell&quot;&gt;Oxford Bell&lt;/a&gt; which has a number of similar characteristics and most definitely &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; an infinite energy source, merely a very efficient battery delivering a very small charge to keep something very simple running...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2828" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T11:53:16.943" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4631" CreationDate="2011-06-16T11:54:40.093" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if this is a case of incorrect terminolgy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term 'epileptic fit' is commonly misappropriated for all types of seizure or convulsive-type activity. For example, in children &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Febrile_seizure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;aged between six months and six years&lt;/a&gt;, seizures due to fever are quite common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A person is usually diagnosed as&#xA;  having epilepsy if they have had two&#xA;  or more seizures that started in the&#xA;  brain. However, getting a diagnosis of&#xA;  epilepsy can be difficult because&#xA;  there is no single test that can&#xA;  diagnose epilepsy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because there is no obvious sign a&#xA;  person has epilepsy, unless they are&#xA;  having a seizure, it can make&#xA;  diagnosing epilepsy difficult. A&#xA;  diagnosis is usually made after a&#xA;  person has had more than one epileptic&#xA;  seizure. &lt;em&gt;When a person has had a&#xA;  seizure they may not remember what&#xA;  happened, so it can be helpful to have&#xA;  information from someone who saw the&#xA;  seizure happening&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Anyone can have a single epileptic&#xA;  seizure at some point in their life.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  This is why a diagnosis of epilepsy is&#xA;  usually only considered when a person&#xA;  has had more than one seizure.&#xA;  However, if you have had only one&#xA;  suspected seizure your doctor may&#xA;  still want to investigate it, as there&#xA;  can be various possible causes.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emphasis mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite possible that your relative did have a seizure or some type of convulsive activity as a child. That doesn't necessarily mean he had/has epilepsy. That said, if he did indeed have epilepsy, remission is commonly seen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Whether your child &quot;outgrows&quot; epilepsy&#xA;  will be dependent upon several&#xA;  factors.&lt;/em&gt; First, the diagnosis should&#xA;  be clarified. Epilepsy is defined as&#xA;  at least 2 seizures occurring more&#xA;  than 24 hours apart without acute&#xA;  provocation. &lt;em&gt;Therefore, if your child&#xA;  had one seizure or had only febrile&#xA;  seizures, she does not have epilepsy.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  Epilepsy can be described by seizure&#xA;  type and also by syndrome. Prognosis,&#xA;  or whether your child outgrows&#xA;  epilepsy, will depend most on the&#xA;  epilepsy syndrome. Seizure syndrome is&#xA;  based on the age of onset of seizures,&#xA;  electroencephalographic (EEG) pattern,&#xA;  and seizure type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some epilepsy syndromes are &quot;benign,&quot;&#xA;  meaning that the seizures will remit&#xA;  within a certain age&#xA;  range.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emphasis mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;: Either he had epilepsy and has outgrown it, or never had epilepsy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/AboutEpilepsy/Diagnosis/Howepilepsyisdiagnosed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The National Society for Epilepsy&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;About epilepsy &gt; Diagnosis &gt; How epilepsy is diagnosed&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epilepsyinstitute.org/faq/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Epilepsy Foundation of Metropolitan New York&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;My child was diagnosed with epilepsy, will she outgrow it?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2466" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-10-01T18:00:41.067" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T18:00:41.067" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4643" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4822" CreationDate="2011-06-16T13:19:22.520" Score="37" ViewCount="15300" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently had some potatoes that were said to benefit from being planted at an advantageous time because of the lunar cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had never heard of such a thing, but apparently &quot;it is quite common on the continent&quot;(European mainland).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My immediate reaction was that it was hoopla, but the potatoes were the best I have tasted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies to show the benefits or otherwise of planting at different phases of the moon? Is it actually used in mainstream agriculture?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2518" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T02:56:51.650" LastActivityDate="2018-12-06T13:15:27.407" Title="Does planting during different lunar phases affect growth?" Tags="|moon|agriculture|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2011-06-16T13:48:42.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Race is a discredited concept. All variation is on a spectrum. There is no way to draw a line between races. This is very well explained &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepticallyspeaking.ca/episodes/83-race-and-reality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://skepticallyspeaking.ca/episodes/83-race-and-reality&lt;/a&gt; in discussion with  Guy P. Harrison, author of Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know about Our Biological Diversity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a very eye opening look at the real biological facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3699" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T13:48:42.937" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4645" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-16T13:59:39.117" Score="2" ViewCount="183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember reading an article about Tuesday being the best day to get maximum reach for your message.  I think this study came from Harvard.  The content of the message could be PR or some other communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastEditorUserId="2162" LastEditDate="2011-06-16T14:11:29.727" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T17:57:00.013" Title="Is Tuesday a better day for Press Releases and similar information?" Tags="|psychology|advertising|work|management|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4638" CreationDate="2011-06-16T14:31:39.280" Score="21" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Welcome to Wikipedia in action.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go back to the &lt;em&gt;older&lt;/em&gt; versions of the article, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicolae_Vasilescu-Karpen&amp;amp;oldid=303099125&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Nicolae Vasilescu-Karpen&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, you'll see that the operation of the device was explained as thermal siphoning.  Then someone &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicolae_Vasilescu-Karpen&amp;amp;diff=prev&amp;amp;oldid=304144048&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Nicolae Vasilescu-Karpen&quot;&gt;copied a press story into the article&lt;/a&gt; (complete with headline and subhead, notice).  Someone else &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicolae_Vasilescu-Karpen&amp;amp;diff=367255876&amp;amp;oldid=333365002&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Nicolae Vasilescu-Karpen&quot;&gt;tried to tidy up the resultant mess&lt;/a&gt;. A third person &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicolae_Vasilescu-Karpen&amp;amp;diff=409374769&amp;amp;oldid=407907615&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Nicolae Vasilescu-Karpen&quot;&gt;copied &lt;em&gt;another&lt;/em&gt; press story into the article wholesale&lt;/a&gt;.  A fourth person &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicolae_Vasilescu-Karpen&amp;amp;diff=next&amp;amp;oldid=409374769&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Nicolae Vasilescu-Karpen&quot;&gt;tried to tidy that up&lt;/a&gt;. And thus we are where we are now, with an article that is the result of well-intentioned copy editors tidying up after plagiarists: one that is in large part lightly revised copies of uncritical news coverage rather than original and neutral encyclopaedic writing that presents known facts.&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth observing that the article by Ovidiu Sandru, a partial copy of which forms much of Wikipedia's article right now, goes on to say, in the part &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; quoted in Wikipedia, that &quot;[s]ome scientists say the device works by transforming thermal energy into mechanical work&quot;, but the museum director disagrees with them.  Sandru very clearly sides with the museum director rather than the scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proper target for skepticism here is &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;.  You've got an article that has been built by a succession of plagiarists who cannot themselves write copying sensationalist snippets from news articles.  Those snippets have usually been the first couple of paragraphs, which of course will contain the attention-grabbing speculative sensation rather than the boring old facts about what scientists who've looked at the thing say, that were buried 10 paragraphs in.  As a result of this plagiarize-tidy-plagiarize-tidy cycle the article is biased towards sensation and speculation and low on the boring old facts of the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware taking as factual encyclopaedia articles &lt;em&gt;created by people who cannot write&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3698" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-06-05T17:29:50.567" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T17:29:50.567" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4647" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4655" CreationDate="2011-06-16T14:35:28.317" Score="28" ViewCount="8096" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oNfkA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;We find it&amp;#39;s always better to fire people on a Friday&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we all learned from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Office Space&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;studies have statistically shown that there's less chance of an incident if you do it at the end of the week.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also heard that Mondays are better, because it allows the former employee to immediately start looking for new work, and theoretically cuts down on the individuals from stewing over their job loss during the weekend, hopefully resulting in less incidences of retaliatory violence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there been any study that shows real benefits to terminating an employee's job on a particular day of the week?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit - to clarify the terminology, I am referring to any form of termination of employment, and not specifically &quot;termination for cause&quot;, which is a common interpretation of the term &quot;fired&quot; (but not the only one).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-09-22T10:02:54.933" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T10:02:54.933" Title="Are certain days &quot;better&quot; than others to terminate employees?" Tags="|psychology|employment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4621" CreationDate="2011-06-16T14:54:15.837" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;It does indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To start with, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon&quot;&gt;the Wikipedia page on radon&lt;/a&gt; is pretty great (it's rated a &quot;good article&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for facts: Radon was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,895156,00.html&quot;&gt;discovered to be a problem&lt;/a&gt; (woohoo, 1960's Time article) through studies of miners back in the 1950's, when just a few too many non-smoker miners started getting lung cancer. These were all uranium miners, and as radon is a direct byproduct of uranium decay, &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/262/5/629.abstract&quot;&gt;one thing led to another&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To estimate the risk of lung cancer mortality among nonsmokers exposed to varying levels of radon daughters, &lt;strong&gt;516 white men who never smoked cigarettes, pipes, or cigars were selected from the US Public Health Service cohort of Colorado Plateau uranium miners&lt;/strong&gt; and followed up from 1950 through 1984. Age-specific mortality rates for nonsmokers from a study of US veterans were used for comparison. &lt;strong&gt;Fourteen deaths from lung cancer were observed among the nonsmoking miners, while 1.1 deaths were expected&lt;/strong&gt;, yielding a standardized mortality ratio of 12.7 with 95% confidence limits of 8.0 and 20.1. These results confirm that &lt;strong&gt;exposure to radon daughters in the absence of cigarette smoking is a potent carcinogen&lt;/strong&gt; that should be strictly controlled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/radon&quot;&gt;Adam Davis' commented link&lt;/a&gt; to the National Cancer Institute is certainly informative, as are a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/radon/pubs/citguide.html#risk&quot;&gt;few&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/radon/healthrisks.html&quot;&gt;pages&lt;/a&gt; created by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (both links share a certain amount of information). The first (both, in fact) EPA link has a nice &quot;risks chart&quot; for smokers and non-smokers, showing the levels of radon exposure and the correlation to cancer occurrence. This chart will be better understood, though, if one knows something about measurement meanings (units are in this case, as in most cases when dealing with radiation, diverse and un-unified at best). Taken from the Wiki article above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Radon is often measured in picocuries per liter (pCi/L).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The more &quot;standard&quot; (read: SI) measurement is becquerels per cubic meter, where 1 pCi/L = 37 Bq/m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The mining industry uses something entirely different, of course, called a working level (WL). Since this is where all the data initially came from, what we now use has been translated from it. But for consistency's sake, one month's worth of exposure to a WL, a working level month (WLM), is &quot;roughly equivalent to living one year in an atmosphere with a radon concentration of 230 Bq/m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It'll be even better understood once one knows that, from the second EPA article, &quot;The average radon concentration in the indoor air of America’s homes is about 1.3 pCi/L&quot; (~48 Bq/m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;). But some are going to be more, and it should absolutely be tested on a case by case basis (a figure the Wiki article claims in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon#Concentration_scale&quot;&gt;Concentration Scale section&lt;/a&gt; is a universal rating of 100 Bq/m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; (2.7pCi/L) for a house, which is certainly higher than the EPA's recommended amount).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To wrap this up with some more modern statistics, take a look at the EPA fact sheet from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/radon/pdfs/na_rn_pooling.pdf&quot;&gt;pooled study from 2005&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine, extra parenthesis and spacing issues theirs):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall, the odds &lt;strong&gt;ratios for lung cancer increased with increasing radon exposure&lt;/strong&gt; categories, with an odds &lt;strong&gt;ratio of 1.37 (0.98-1.92)) for concentrations exceeding 200 Bq/m3 [5.4 pCi/L]&lt;/strong&gt; relative to concentrations under 25 Bq/m3 [.68 pCi/L].The overall estimate of the excess odds &lt;strong&gt;ratio for lung cancer per 100 Bq/m3 [2.7 pCi/L] was 11% (0%-28%)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That info appears to meld smokers and non-smokers, but that's fine. The standard claim (from almost all of the citations here) seems to be that about 21,000 Americans die every year from radon exposure, which is also a combined number (about 2,900 non-smokers, according to the second EPA page). One can quickly see that this 21,000 number is far less than 11% (which is good, especially since that's only the increased &lt;em&gt;odds&lt;/em&gt; of getting cancer, not dying from it) - it's actually 0.007% of the overall population, or about 0.001% for non-smokers (given an American population of about 300 million). This shows that our houses, on average, are pretty good about having low radon levels. If we take the 1.3 pCi/L (48 Bq/m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;) EPA estimate to be true, then we're at about half of the &quot;universal number.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even if you're a smoker, radon isn't going to &lt;em&gt;enormously&lt;/em&gt; change your risk of dying from cancer (unless you live in a particularly radioactive area), but there is a definite and defined increase, and you'll certainly be more likely to develop the disease. It's a very easy &quot;better safe than sorry&quot; call to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I apologize that all of this data primarily concerns the US and not the UK, but I'm sure this all holds roughly true anywhere in the world.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3114" LastEditorUserId="3114" LastEditDate="2011-06-20T12:29:21.850" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T12:29:21.850" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4650" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4656" CreationDate="2011-06-16T17:05:36.593" Score="14" ViewCount="5251" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Dr. Janet Smith's lecture &quot;Contraception Why Not&quot; the Family of the Americas Foundation performed a study regarding rates of divorce and the use of Natural Family Planning techniques (as opposed to oral contraception, sterilization, etc...). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statistic of 5% divorce rate for couples using NFP is what I commonly hear and &lt;a href=&quot;http://onemoresoul.com/downloadable-pamphlets/why-use-natural-family-planning.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;read&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perhaps this is why divorce rates for&#xA;  NFP users are between 1/10 and 1/25 of&#xA;  the overall divorce rate in the United&#xA;  States in the 90s.4 Indeed, a study&#xA;  conducted by the Family of Americas&#xA;  Foundation found only 16 women ever&#xA;  divorced among 505 NFP users, a rate&#xA;  of 3.6%!5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://familiadelasamericas.org/inc/data/divorce_study_eng_wilson.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Link to the study: [http://familiadelasamericas.org/inc/data/divorce_study_eng_wilson.pdf]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the text of the study, this is the first study of it's kind.  Was it so conclusive that it was also the last study of its kind?  Does Natural Family Planning really dramatically reduce the chance of a couple to get divorced? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/nfp/cmrsumfl01.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;USCCB (United States Council of Catholic Bishops says&lt;/a&gt; the correct way to do the study would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if a researcher wanted to determine&#xA;  whether there is a difference in&#xA;  divorce rates among married couples&#xA;  who use NFP versus couples who use&#xA;  oral contraception, the study would be&#xA;  designed to track first time NFP and&#xA;  first time oral contraception users&#xA;  over a 10 to 20 year period. But what&#xA;  if a researcher did not have the time&#xA;  or money to track couples over a long&#xA;  period of time but still wanted to&#xA;  investigate the same issue? A &quot;cross&#xA;  sectional&quot; longitudinal study could be&#xA;  conducted instead. To do this study a&#xA;  large sample of married couples from&#xA;  NFP centers that have records from the&#xA;  1970s and early 1980s would be needed.&#xA;  Next, a comparison of that data with a&#xA;  large sample of married couples who&#xA;  attended family planning clinics to&#xA;  obtain oral contraception in the same&#xA;  time period would have to be done.&#xA;  Once large enough samples are obtained&#xA;  from each grouping, an interview (by&#xA;  phone, in person or through mail) of&#xA;  the participants would have to be&#xA;  conducted in order to determine which&#xA;  of the couples divorced and the&#xA;  frequency of doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that sufficient,  does the Family of the Americas Foundation even come close? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Divorce rates among Catholics (who make up the majority of the study) have been shown to be similar to other sects.  An easy assumption is that this study just proves that faithful Catholics are far less likely to wind up divorced, but that should  have no bearing on the question.  But if correlation doesn't imply causation, does that assumption even have any merit?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="1134" LastEditDate="2012-04-13T17:21:15.150" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T05:13:42.663" Title="Does natural family planning decrease divorce rates?" Tags="|contraception|divorce|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4650" CreationDate="2011-06-16T17:41:29.507" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, class, say it with me. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation&quot;&gt;Correlation does not imply causation&lt;/a&gt;. There could be many confounding factors that explain the correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my original draft of this answer, I tried to show that religiosity is one such confounding factor. I showed that contraceptive use is inversely correlated with religiosity (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/feh/feh_25religiosityabortion1.html&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;). But when I went to show divorce rates were also inversely correlated to religiosity, I found that wasn't true - not even in the religious groups that eschew contraception! (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you will just have to come up with your own ideas for confounding factors...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T17:41:29.507" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4650" CreationDate="2011-06-16T17:48:30.953" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The study referenced is fundamentally flawed. The correct way to do a study like this is to make a random sample of people, and get some to practice NFP and some to practice other methods. Then compare the results. Failing that it is possible to conduct a study based on non-random samples, provided you make sure both samples are representative of the general population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study doesn't come close to that. It's based on a survey of people who were trained, and practice, NFP. And unsurprisingly, according to the study &lt;strong&gt;91% of the people practicing NFP gave their religion as Roman Catholic&lt;/strong&gt;. It's not surprising because the Roman Catholic church is one of very few organizations recommending NFP as a means of contraception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, the Roman Catholic church also forbids divorce. So it is completely unsurprising that the people in the survey also have a very low divorce rate, compared with the general population. But it isn't NFP that's causing it - it's the fact that Active Roman Catholics have both a much higher rate of NFP use and &lt;a href=&quot;http://brewright.blogspot.ca/2006/11/divorce-rates-by-religious-affiliation.html&quot;&gt;lower divorce&lt;/a&gt; (23%). It's correlation, but not causation. The comments made by Dr Smith are entirely bogus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It's true that Catholics in general have only a slightly lower divorce rate than the general population, but non-active Catholics are unlikely to be practicing NFP)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to summarize, &lt;strong&gt;the survey is of a self-selecting sample that has a high NFP use rate and also is almost guaranteed to have a much lower divorce rate than the general popuation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-04-12T20:56:09.470" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T20:56:09.470" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4645" CreationDate="2011-06-16T17:57:00.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends what sort of press release you are talking about. You may like to focus the question more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in a recent document, three accountancy researchers claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;While there is considerable research on the timing of&#xA;interim and annual financial reports, there is a scarcity of research on the timing of nonperiodic disclosures.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &#xA;Balatbat, Maria C. A., Gallery, Gerry Thomas and Jackson, Andrew B., &lt;a href=&quot;http://ssrn.com/abstract=1827188&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Strategic Timing of Management Earnings Forecasts&lt;/a&gt; (February 15, 2011)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They go on to provide evidence that organisations do deliberately delay financial disclosures to hit certain days of the week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this was for a conference proceeding, and not peer-reviewed, but was based on a PhD thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-06-16T17:57:00.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4647" CreationDate="2011-06-16T18:07:24.833" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most studied article I've seen on the matter comes from USC School of Library and Information Science: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.libsci.sc.edu/bob/class/clis724/SpecialLibrariesHandbook/Termination_101.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Termination 101&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What Time Is Best?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many managers have preferences about when and how to terminate&#xA;  employment.  Some managers say&#xA;  Thursday is the best day to fire an&#xA;  employee, so that the other employees&#xA;  will have a chance to discuss the&#xA;  matter on Friday and come in ready for&#xA;  work the following Monday (Butcher). &#xA;  Many managers believe that Mondays and&#xA;  Fridays should be avoided (Ward).  The&#xA;  time of year should also be considered&#xA;  when making the decision to fire. &#xA;  Terminating and employee right before&#xA;  a holiday, such as Christmas, is not&#xA;  only ethically disturbing, but may&#xA;  make that employee more likely to file&#xA;  a lawsuit against the organization&#xA;  (Ward). Many times, employers fire&#xA;  employees either very early or very&#xA;  late in the day so that the individual&#xA;  will have time to gather his or her&#xA;  things out of the sight of other&#xA;  employees. In truth, there is no&#xA;  correct time to fire an employee. &#xA;  Instead, the manager should be&#xA;  practical, picking a day and time when&#xA;  everyone concerned is able to meet&#xA;  (Rubin).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.libsci.sc.edu/bob/class/clis724/SpecialLibrariesHandbook/Termination_101.html#bibliography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;references&lt;/a&gt; numerous publications from business and management journals and magazines, some of which are peer reviewed. Still, of these publications, I haven't seen any studies done which attempt to correlate incidents of law suits and/or violence with the day an employee was fired. Responses tend to be based on reasoning and management experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty interested in this, so I'll keep looking and edit the response if I find any statistically based studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Success!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1238&amp;amp;context=articles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Descriptive Analysis&lt;/a&gt; of Layoffs in Large U.S. Firms Using Archival Data over Three Decades, &lt;em&gt;Cornell University&lt;/em&gt;, 8/29/2005 - Analyzed day of the week by decade and found that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in all decades &lt;strong&gt;Friday is the most&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;common&lt;/em&gt; day&lt;/strong&gt; for an&#xA;  announced layoff, and Monday is less&#xA;  important over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KS1Mh.png&quot; alt=&quot;Most common layoff day of week by decade.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfoi/work_hom.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Workplace Shootings&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;US Bureau of Labour Statistics&lt;/em&gt;, July 2010 - Good resource for occupational homicide statistics, but none of the selected characteristics include the circumstances of termination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2011-09-22T08:32:26.987" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T08:32:26.987" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4650" CreationDate="2011-06-16T18:17:53.973" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like I was beaten to the punch, but there are &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of issues here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, as Kibbee said in the comments, this is a whole lot of correlation, not necessarily causation. That should be enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is also, to put it delicately, a very biased study (if you want to even call it a study). Right off the bat, just from the name of the organization, you can see that they obviously had a goal in mind when publishing this. From that alone, I'm not at all convinced that they're not skewing data towards their goals as much as possible. But that position is further reinforced in the very first paragraph (emphasis mine):&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authentic Natural Family Planning never interferes with the transmission of life; its sincere openness to the &lt;strong&gt;Will of God&lt;/strong&gt; and respect for life is its most vital virtue. Various natural methods are being taught throughout the world that respect the &lt;strong&gt;natural law&lt;/strong&gt; and are accepted by most cultures and religions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the third page, we start to see unfounded, personal opinion (emphasis mine): &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In contrast, couples who use artificial methods of birth control seem to &lt;strong&gt;experience disturbing spiritual, and psychological as well as physical risks to their body and soul&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We see more of this on the fourth page as well (emphasis and footnotes mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Artificial methods &lt;strong&gt;do not encourage intimate communication between spouses as they transfer the burden of responsibility primarily on the woman&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. Artificial birth control places an artificial barrier between husband and wife and limits the most intense physical expression of human love. Such methods facilitate the couple’s use and misuse of each other rendering them unable to fully appreciate the gift of their sexuality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1: Really? I mean, I have no data to back this, but it sure seems like male condoms are probably the most prevalent form of birth control worldwide...&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;But then, also on page four, the actual scientific problems with the study/survey start. They freely admit that this is a non-random, non-representative study of the general population in America (emphasis and footnotes mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;505 women returned useable completed questionnaires to an independent investigator retained by Family of the Americas Foundation to provide data entry and descriptive statistical analysis. The survey achieved a 74% response rate. &lt;strong&gt;Sampling for the NFP study was nonrandom&lt;/strong&gt;, although the investigator did attempt to generate a representative sample of women in the U.S. who practice NFP.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1: Impossible, since they're intentionally only drawing from their pool of active participants.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The last straw for me before I stopped reading was on page five, when they give the demographics of the women involved (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The NFP respondents had taken instruction in Natural Family Planning at least three to over ten years ago. &lt;strong&gt;92% of the women were White&lt;/strong&gt;, 6% Hispanic and the remaining 2% Other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are just so many things wrong here, that any result they come up with should not be taken at all seriously. They've got an agenda, they most likely had a hypothesis they were out to prove, they're introducing opinion into what should at least try to be a scientific paper, they're not sampling randomly, they're only taking from their own participant pool, and the participant pool itself was demographically skewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did they look at age? Income? The number of years a couple had been together/had been married? If the couple had lived together before getting married? If they had already had kids or not before getting married? If they had already had kids or not before getting divorced? If so, how many? This is all just off the top of my head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, I sincerely doubt Natural Family Planning dramatically reduces the chance of a divorce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Responding to the modified parts of your question. I wasn't sure what the USCCB was, but Googling it led me to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, so I'm assuming that's what you're referring to. The quote you've posted (seeing where you got it from would be nice) is a much better track to take, but as has been said, FAF isn't really approaching that at all. Think about all the questions I asked at the end of my original answer, and whether they (and others) are being addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the assumption you make that the study proves that faithful Catholics are less likely to be divorced... well... that's really quite an assumption. What defines a Catholic as faithful? That the Church condemns divorce and so they'd never do it? Were all the people in FAF's study part of that group? Is that really &quot;faith&quot;? I could just as easily assume that all the study proves is that white people are far less likely to wind up divorced. When you get into subjective land, it's tough to get out. So no, that assumption really doesn't have much merit either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3114" LastEditorUserId="3114" LastEditDate="2011-06-17T12:31:27.093" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T12:31:27.093" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4657" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5329" CreationDate="2011-06-16T19:12:56.183" Score="19" ViewCount="3173" Body="&lt;p&gt;On another SE site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dogsbite.org/reports/dogsbite-report-us-dog-bite-fatalities-2006-2008.pdf&quot;&gt;this report&lt;/a&gt; was cited as evidence that some breeds of dogs are inherently more dangerous than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some serious issues with that report (not least of which is that it is clearly heavily agenda-laden, and that it cites &quot;googling news articles&quot; as the research method). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is breed a valid method of determining relative safety of a given dog? In particular I'm interested in likelihood of attacks, as opposed to overall destructive capabilities.  Clearly an American Bulldog can do more physical harm than a Pomeranian, but assuming equal training, is one more likely to bite than the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit - I believe any information derived from incidents involving dogs specifically trained to attack/guard, or any from dogs involved with dog fights or other forms of abuse should be discarded.  Any dog can be trained to be aggressive.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-13T22:21:41.770" LastActivityDate="2019-10-17T01:37:08.683" Title="Are some breeds of dog inherently dangerous, despite training?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|dogs|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4687" CreationDate="2011-06-16T20:50:06.800" Score="17" ViewCount="57086" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a female friend who refuses to use a straw or water bottle because she thinks that using one will put air in her stomach and make her look &quot;fat&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can't be any way this is true and I want to prove that the Internet is full of false information.  Can anyone help me here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="662" LastActivityDate="2016-05-14T12:03:18.773" Title="Does drinking from a straw cause excess air in the stomach?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4561" CreationDate="2011-06-16T21:14:11.840" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the dearth of answers, I tried to do some more research. I found the following suggestive statistic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2002, there was a baseline of 16,488 annual admissions to LCME medical schools; by 2009, the number of medical students enrolled had increased by 11.6 percent to 18,393... From 2002 to 2009 there was a 62.2 percent increase in annual enrollment [of osteopathic schools] - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/bin/e/l/COGME_20_prim_care.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CGME 20th report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that allopathic and osteopathic degrees are legally equivalent, we might expect demand to be equivalent. So it is suggestive that AMA-accredited schools have much smaller growth in enrollment than non-AMA-accredited schools. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, from 2002-2013, there will be 3k more DOs (an increase of 99%) and 3.5k more MDs (an increase of 30%). So again, unless there is just a huge shift in preference for DO vs. MD, it seems unlikely that this is the result of a free market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: As far as I can tell, DO and MD are quite similar:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Osteopathic physicians, known as DOs, are licensed to practice medicine and surgery in all 50 states and have full scope of medical practice in over 50 countries...  “We now find ourselves living at a time when osteopathic and allopathic graduates are both sought after by many of the same residency programs; are in most instances both licensed by the same licensing boards; are both privileged by many of the same hospitals; and are found in appreciable numbers on the faculties of each other's medical schools.&quot; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteopathic_medicine_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DOs are allowed to prescribe meds, do surgeries etc. the same as MDs. Further certifications (e.g. anesthesiology) are open to them just as if they were MDs. I don't think that DO is exactly equivalent to MD, but they seem similar enough that we would expect demand to be approximately the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCME&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LCME&lt;/a&gt; accredits allopathic schools; it's made up of the AMA and the AAMC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT 2&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.econ.yale.edu/seminars/strategy/st03/nicholson-031002.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; is more recent (from 2003) and claims that the AMA engages in rent-seeking behavior. It also gives as one of the reasons for the shortage a minimum wage requirement for residents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ACGME historically has required that teaching hospitals pay residents a reasonable wage and pay residents in all specialties the same amount. However, the wage that clears the market for residents in pediatrics or family practice may be too high to clear the market for surgical residents... I estimate that medical students would be willing to pay teaching hospitals for residency training in dermatology, general surgery, orthopedic surgery, and radiology. [As opposed to the hospitals paying residents]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastEditorUserId="1094" LastEditDate="2011-06-29T20:07:51.097" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T20:07:51.097" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4661" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4760" CreationDate="2011-06-17T00:26:03.170" Score="33" ViewCount="6157" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say it's a commonly held belief that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers&quot;&gt;Wright brothers&lt;/a&gt; were the first to achieve controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than air human flight, as it can be found in most history books.  However, there are many who say that this might not be so....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most notable man claiming to have flown before the Wrights was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Whitehead&quot;&gt;Gustave Whitehead&lt;/a&gt;, who is purported to have designed, built and flown his own craft approximately two years before Orville and Wilbur Wright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Two years, four months and three days&#xA;  before the successful flights of the&#xA;  Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, a&#xA;  birdlike monoplane took to the air at&#xA;  early dawn on August 14, 1901, near&#xA;  Bridgeport, Connecticut, carrying its&#xA;  inventor and builder, Gustav&#xA;  Whitehead, a distance of approximately&#xA;  a half mile.&quot; Stella Randolph, &lt;em&gt;The&#xA;  Lost Flights of Gustave Whitehead&lt;/em&gt;.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://gustavewhitehead.org/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An article from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deepsky.com/~firstflight/Pages/article3.html&quot;&gt;New York Herald dated August 19, 1901&lt;/a&gt; is quoted as saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. Whitehead last Tuesday night, with&#xA;  two assistants, took his machine to a&#xA;  long field back of Fairfield and the&#xA;  inventor; for the first time flew in&#xA;  his machine for half a mile. It worked&#xA;  perfectly, and the operator found no&#xA;  difficulty in handling it Mr.&#xA;  Whitehead's machine is equipped with&#xA;  two engines, one to propel it on the&#xA;  ground, on wheels, and the other to&#xA;  make the wings or propellers work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, while this sounds quite convincing, an article from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deepsky.com/~firstflight/Pages/article1.html&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt; dated 1901 perhaps sheds some light on why Gustave Whitehead is not known today as the first aviator:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A novel flying machine has just been&#xA;  completed by Mr. Gustave Whitehead, of&#xA;  Bridgeport, Conn., and is now ready&#xA;  for the preliminary trials. Several&#xA;  experiments have been made, but as yet&#xA;  no free flights have been&#xA;  attempted&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could be that the Wrights were the first to achieve flight, even though Whitehead's machine may have been built earlier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wright-brothers.org/History_Wing/History_of_the_Airplane/Who_Was_First/Gustav_Whitehead/Gustav_Whitehead.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; offers this simpler explanation; that there was simply no evidence to back Whitehead's claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He continued building and&#xA;  experimenting with airplanes, and his&#xA;  supporters claim that he made powered&#xA;  flights in both Pittsburgh in 1899 and&#xA;  Bridgeport in 1901 and early 1902. His&#xA;  letters to periodicals and interviews&#xA;  in newspapers claim powered flights as&#xA;  early as 1898 and as late as 1903. He&#xA;  was, in fact, one of a several&#xA;  turn-of-the-century experimenters who&#xA;  regularly issued press releases that&#xA;  described successful flights with no&#xA;  real evidence to back his claims.&#xA;  Whitehead made his last airplane in&#xA;  1908 — which did not fly — then went&#xA;  on to build helicopters which did not&#xA;  fly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research into the topic can yield credible-sounding claims for either side, and my current position can be summed up by this particular quote I happened across at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flyingmachines.org/gwhtd.html&quot;&gt;flyingmachines.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;That Whitehead designed and built&#xA;  (and flew) gliders and designed and&#xA;  built powered flying machines is not&#xA;  in dispute. That any of his&#xA;  heavier-than-air powered machines flew&#xA;  is.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there credible evidence proving Gustave Whitehead achieved powered heavier-than-air human flight before the Wright brothers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-06-17T20:00:04.377" LastActivityDate="2018-12-28T21:33:28.723" Title="Were the Wright Brothers the first to fly?" Tags="|history|aviation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4639" CreationDate="2011-06-17T07:29:34.323" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your body has to bring the cold water up to its own temperature, thereby burning calories.  Therefore the answer to your question has certain conditions: if you value calories over being cooled down, then yes, you should drink warm water, but if you value being cooled down over calories, then you should drink cold water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you want to be cooled down, however, you should still avoid very cold drinks if you're exercising, as they can give you a stomach ache and even make you vomit.  (YMMV.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you simply want to know if your body burns calories warming up the water, &lt;strong&gt;the answer is yes&lt;/strong&gt;. [emphasis mine]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/diet-fitness/weight-loss/question447.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/diet-fitness/weight-loss/question447.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, avoid very cold drinks, because they can cause stomach cramps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bt.cdc.gov/disasters/extremeheat/heattips.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bt.cdc.gov/disasters/extremeheat/heattips.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1061" LastEditorUserId="1061" LastEditDate="2012-06-06T20:04:28.217" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T20:04:28.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4670" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7909" CreationDate="2011-06-17T08:29:05.337" Score="48" ViewCount="2781" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's common knowledge that mice love cheese. Do they, or is it just that they'll eat anything that's available? What's the origin of the mouse-cheese belief?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T10:12:55.180" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T20:33:04.263" Title="Do mice love cheese?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4573" CreationDate="2011-06-17T09:08:07.957" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, the evidence that this position actually works and has been used in practice comes from the 1942 book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0873640020&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Get Tough! How to Win in Hand-to-Hand Fighting, as Taught to the British Commandos, and the U.S. Armed Forces&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by then-Captain &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_E._Fairbairn&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;W.E. Fairbairn&lt;/a&gt;. The technique is called the Grape Vine, and is described on page 37. The relevant passage can currently be read on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vrazvedka.ru/main/learning/ruk-b/fairbairn-01_09.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even though you have left your prisoner's hands free, it will, if he has been forced well down the tree, be almost impossible for him to escape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried this with my friends back in my youth. The &quot;average&quot; person can't free themselves from this position. A friend of mine that weighed little and had strong arms, however, could pull himself up the pole with his hands and free himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of us, myself included, stayed for quite a long time trying to get free, eventually lying backward with exhaustion. There &lt;em&gt;seems&lt;/em&gt; to be no danger involved. The position is quite uncomfortable after you stop supporting yourself with your muscles, so probably blood circulation to the feet is partly restrained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The possible causes of death from being in this position would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hitting the head when falling backwards.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There's no easily conceivable reason the fall would be uncontrolled. If it were, the force caused by the fall is considerably lesser than when falling backwards from a standing position. It's not uncommon for this kind of fall to happen in boxing, but it's rare to die from that (at least &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=-Vk9C_Cgo20C&amp;amp;lpg=PA447&amp;amp;ots=W_aS7QD8iY&amp;amp;dq=blow%20to%20occiput%20death&amp;amp;pg=PA447#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=blow%20to%20occiput%20death&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one recorded case&lt;/a&gt; exists). So death from falling backwards seems improbable. Still, &lt;em&gt;Get Tough&lt;/em&gt; claims that people throw themselves backwards and are killed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Normally, the average man placed in this position would get cramp in one or both legs within ten to fifteen minutes, when it is not at all unlikely that he would throw himself backwards. This would kill him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lessened blood circulation to the feet.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This could &lt;em&gt;eventually&lt;/em&gt; develop a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangrene&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dry gangrene&lt;/a&gt;, which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanillnesses.com/original/E-Ga/Gangrene.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;is &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; not life threatening&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (unlike other forms of gangrene).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thirst/hunger&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If there's no water available, death from dehydration will occur &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120114021724/http://www.survivaltopics.com/survival/how-long-can-you-survive-without-water&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in 2-10 days, depending on temperature&lt;/a&gt;. For death from hunger, see the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/5871/881&quot;&gt;Fasting for 40 days - is it possible?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say dying from thirst is the most probable cause, since that will definitely eventually happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The position is very easy and fun to try out for yourself in controlled circumstances with at least two friends. However, this is not advice to do that.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-05-29T14:34:05.003" LastActivityDate="2019-05-29T14:34:05.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4673" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="41776" CreationDate="2011-06-17T09:42:16.040" Score="19" ViewCount="8091" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many websites that give tips on increasing mileage mention (typically in passing) that you should not accelerate hard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples include (from the first two google hits on &quot;increase gas mileage&quot;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aggressive driving (speeding, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/driveHabits.shtml&quot;&gt;rapid acceleration&lt;/a&gt; and braking)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By minimizing the number of times you brake hard or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extragasmileage.com/what-is-hypermiling/&quot;&gt;accelerate rapidly&lt;/a&gt;, you can save on gas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(to be fair, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt064.shtm&quot;&gt;The third hit&lt;/a&gt; does not mention this and merely comments on the fact that &quot;Letting up on the gas often eliminates the need for braking&quot;, which is not what I'm skeptical about.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also had multiple friends comment (sometimes claiming personal experience) that I should not floor to save on gas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it runs contrary to my personal experience with my current car, which I happen to share with a person that has a very different driving style. I typically get better mileage while mostly flooring when accelerating, but anticipating braking quite a lot more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a physics perspective, it does not seem obvious why this would be the case. After all, the chemical energy from the gas is converted to kinetic energy and heat (and wasted gas?). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... Why would the efficiency ratio significantly change if I floor the gas pedal? Does it at all? Is it engine/car dependent ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1786" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-17T12:01:00.683" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T05:41:09.320" Title="Does flooring the gas pedal reduce mileage?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4673" CreationDate="2011-06-17T10:15:35.167" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Flooring the pedal is fine if you make use of the energy you've consumed, and keep going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a recommended technique: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy-maximizing_behaviors#Burn_and_coast&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Burn and Coast&lt;/a&gt; (or Pulse and Glide) tries to make best use of the accumulated kinetic energy. Apologies for the Wikipedia link: here's another recommendation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lafn.org/~dave/trans/energy/case4coasting.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;coasting&lt;/a&gt;, which also points out the value of working the engine in its most efficient range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a possibility that by opening the throttle too much, the engine burns too rich a fuel/air mixture and wastes fuel, but modern engine management systems usually take care of that by interpreting your throttle input as merely a &lt;em&gt;request&lt;/em&gt; to go faster - the ECU then decides how much more fuel it should use, possibly optimizing for efficiency over outright performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What really ruins mileage is braking, because you're throwing away that kinetic energy you've built up and discarding it as heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the reason for the advice &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to accelerate hard is that in traffic you would soon have to slow down again, in which case the rapid acceleration costs you more fuel, but brings no benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2765" LastEditorUserId="2765" LastEditDate="2011-06-17T14:52:14.607" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T14:52:14.607" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4661" CreationDate="2011-06-17T10:46:32.213" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends what you call &quot;to fly&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cl%C3%A9ment_Ader&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clément Ader&lt;/a&gt; is sometimes said to be the first to fly, but that's a disputed assertion, especially outside of France.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="627" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T10:46:32.213" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4661" CreationDate="2011-06-17T12:07:42.117" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Karl Wilhelm Otto Lilienthal (* 23. Mai 1848 in Anklam; † 10. August 1896 in Berlin after a crash with one of his flying machines). &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Lilienthal&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He invented the principle of the profile of the wing, and was one of the first, who recognized, that you needn't be thinner than air, to fly (principle of the Mongolfiere). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T12:07:42.117" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4681" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4682" CreationDate="2011-06-17T13:53:33.810" Score="13" ViewCount="13806" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard recently that apple seeds contain arsenic.  Is this true?  Should apples not be eaten then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3725" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-28T00:37:02.357" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T00:37:02.357" Title="Do apple seeds contain arsenic?" Tags="|nutrition|chemistry|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4681" CreationDate="2011-06-17T13:56:15.770" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like a simple google search yields my answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/apples.asp&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/apples.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The seeds actually contain a cyanide compound, not arsenic.  But, the amount is so trivial that there is no harm in eating the apples.  And the seeds are encased in a indigestible material so they pass through our systems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3725" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T13:56:15.770" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4681" CreationDate="2011-06-17T14:01:24.743" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, but they do &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/apples.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;contain a cyanide compound and are poisonous.&lt;/a&gt; You do have to eat quite a lot (and probably chew the seeds, not just swallow them) to get poisoned though. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/a/apple_seed_poisoning/intro.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wrongdiagnosis.com&lt;/a&gt;, hospitalisation is recommended after eating more than 50 seeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3727" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-25T00:44:25.863" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T00:44:25.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4681" CreationDate="2011-06-17T14:08:14.503" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arsenic&lt;/a&gt; is a metal - a chemical element that can't be manufactured. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cyanides are organic poisons&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if your soil doesn't contains arsenic in the first place, there is no way the apples you grow on it can contain arsenic. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://brokensecrets.com/2011/09/25/some-fruit-seeds-contain-cyanide/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;apples do contain cyanide&lt;/a&gt; which can be synthesized by the plant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="627" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-25T00:48:21.863" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T00:48:21.863" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4658" CreationDate="2011-06-17T14:18:00.893" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Yes, actually. I think. Maybe. It probably depends on the person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no scientific studies to back me on this, but it's entirely possible that that's because there... are no scientific studies on this. I wasn't able to find any, at least. (If anyone actually knows of any, please post them!) So I'm going to Albert Einstein this with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment&quot;&gt;Gedankenexperiment&lt;/a&gt;, with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peacehealth.org/xhtml/content/symptom/gas.html#aa113297&quot;&gt;few&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthcentral.com/encyclopedia/408/359.html&quot;&gt;additional&lt;/a&gt; websites thrown in that talk about gastrointestinal issues and gas and bloating, so take what you will from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever one chews or drinks, one is inhaling air into the stomach. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burp#Physiology&quot;&gt;That's just the way&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthcentral.com/encyclopedia/408/359.html#description&quot;&gt;ingesting food works&lt;/a&gt;. That said, people really don't inhale too much air in this fashion, but that ingested air is the primary reason we burp and, to a lesser extent, flatulate (possibly the best word ever). The amount of air we ingest can be increased in a variety of ways, basically any time one actively takes more in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gulping/sipping/slurping (sipping hot coffee, one can hear the air being ingested)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chewing gum&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sucking on candy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smoking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drinking anything with carbonation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://airtasting.com/2011/04/22/what-is-air-tasting/&quot;&gt;Air tasting&lt;/a&gt; (no, not really)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And, finally, drinking through a straw&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be inclined to say, however, that straws are probably not the biggest culprit on the list. Whenever one drinks from a straw, it seems like there's really only a minimal amount of extra air being swallowed (whatever is present in the tube above the liquid line). (Extra air on top of that isn't being swallowed, as the mechanism for drinking through a straw is actually due to the drinker relaxing the jaw, which increases the amount of volume in the mouth/throat, which decreases the interior air pressure. Outside atmospheric pressure then forces the liquid up and in.) A confounding factor for your friend might be that a common beverage taken in through a straw is soda, which will &lt;em&gt;definitely&lt;/em&gt; add more air (carbon dioxide) to the stomach, possibly causing feelings of bloating. Or if she's convinced of this, it might even be a placebo effect at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to sum up: yes, drinking through a straw causes &quot;excess&quot; air in the stomach. But probably not too much, as regular eating and drinking will do that as well, as will many other daily activities (as I noted, slurping hot coffee is probably a much bigger/more frequent culprit than anything else). So tell her she's right that it'll put air in, but it's most likely not that big of a deal. Live a little! Use a bendy straw! Burp!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I apologize for being unable to back any of this up with hard numbers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3114" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T14:18:00.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4673" CreationDate="2011-06-17T19:06:33.320" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...with the caveat that there are some &lt;em&gt;slightly&lt;/em&gt; conflicting opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/we-test-the-tips.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TEST&lt;/a&gt; of various fuel economy tips by Edmunds.com:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you slowed your 0-to-60-mph acceleration time down from your current 10 seconds to a more normal city pace of 15 seconds, you'll feel the savings immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up to 37 percent savings, average savings of 31 percent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The method, summarized below, is found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/we-test-the-tips.html#test1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cycle 15 times from 0-75mph at 3/4 throttle, braking hard in between, total: 55 miles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cycle 15 times from 0-75mph at 1/4 throttle, braking lightly in between, total: 55 miles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cycle 25 times from 0-65mph at 3/4 throttle, braking hard in between, total: 25 miles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cycle 25 times from 0-60mph at 1/4 throttle, braking lightly in between, total: 25 miles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I really, really, really wish they had isolated their variables. I don't know why they considered it necessary to vary the braking style and top speed in these cycles. There's at least some indication here, though, that accelerating faster decreases fuel economy. I consider &amp;quot;flooring it&amp;quot; to be a subset of &amp;quot;accelerating faster.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/pdfs/OwnerRelatedFuelEconomyImprovements.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; 2001 paper from Energy and Environmental Analysis, Inc., on which the US Dept. of Energy bases it's fuel economy recommendations &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/driveHabits.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; tested 17 cars and the effects of &amp;quot;aggressive driving cycles&amp;quot; (faster acceleration/deceleration, different maximum speeds, etc.) and concluded that:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very powerful cars exhibit negligible fuel economy penalties, while an average car is likely to experience a penalty of about six percent [at lower speeds]. At higher speeds, typical of urban expressway driving, however, the fuel economy penalty of aggressive driving is both significant in magnitude and more consistent across all cars. The average car is likely to experience a penalty of 33 percent, with more powerful cars experiencing a somewhat lower penalty of about 28 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... there &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; a loss due to aggressive driving, but it's not &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; high and doesn't square with what Edmunds.com said, either (Edmunds.com had much higher loss reports). This paper &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; didn't isolate all variables, but went with a &amp;quot;driving style.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.utwente.nl/ctw/aida/research/publications/voort_maarseveen.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; paper by Dr. van der Voort, looking to design a dashboard device to provide driver feedback in order to increase fuel economy. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/07/technology/what-s-next-dashboard-miser-teaches-drivers-how-to-save-fuel.html?src=pm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a layman's writeup about his summary from The New York Times.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From The Times' article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;People were shifting too late from first to second, and from second to third,&amp;quot; Dr. van der Voort said. People saved the most gasoline when they pushed down on the accelerator briskly and then shifted quickly, keeping the revolutions per minute low -- not by accelerating very gently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from van der Voort's actual paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further analysis revealed that drivers without support [the dashboard display instructing them on optimum driving habits] shifted significantly more times too late from 1st to 2nd gear and from 2nd to 3rd gear than drivers who received support (and drove more fuel-efficiently). No significant differences between the groups were found with regard to shifting from 3rd to 4th gear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we can see that late shifting results in a decrease in fuel economy. In automatic transmission cars, &amp;quot;flooring it&amp;quot; will result in the car being kept in as low of a gear as possible, thus bypassing the optimum shift point for maximum fuel economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish the sources had been as simple as &amp;quot;faster acceleration yields lower fuel economy,&amp;quot; but it wasn't quite that simple. For instance, I was quite surprised to find that more powerful cars did not suffer as badly from aggressive acceleration in the second source! The overall convergence of the sources is that faster acceleration (or at the very least, not shifting as speed increases) yields lower fuel economies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really wanted to answer this in terms of power curves and torque, but could not get my head around enough to put the facts together. I think the real &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; of this answer would lie in keeping the power output of the transmission (which is the torque of the engine &amp;quot;filtered&amp;quot; through your gear box) matched for the speed of the vehicle. My attempts at digging there tended to come up primarily with &amp;quot;hot rod&amp;quot; types of sites that are primarily focused on maximizing acceleration, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; fuel economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T19:06:33.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5901" CreationDate="2011-06-17T21:04:52.660" Score="23" ViewCount="20408" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his 1971 book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/840206972X&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Wheels&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Arthur Hailey claims that cars that were primarily assembled on a Monday or Friday would suffer from quality problems due to worker performance/absenteeism issues associated with those days.  Now, I realize that this was a work of fiction, but as an origin to this becoming a widely held belief, &lt;a href=&quot;http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=20;t=000639;p=0&quot;&gt;there are folks at Snopes curious about it&lt;/a&gt; (and repeat they have heard this from some un-named source), as well as other &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.i-mockery.com/forum/showthread.php?t=16881&quot;&gt;random internet forums discussing this &quot;fact&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.  And in 1979, Vance Muse wrote a book called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://openlibrary.org/books/OL4732069M/Don%27t_buy_a_car_made_on_Monday&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Don't buy a car made on Monday&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&quot; which appears to be an advice book!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while the origin seems to be a work of fiction, is there any truth to this widely-held belief?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-18T09:52:06.313" LastActivityDate="2017-07-12T12:50:42.633" Title="Do cars primarily built on a Monday or Friday have lower quality?" Tags="|manufacturing|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4657" CreationDate="2011-06-17T21:07:03.387" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cesar Milan, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cesarsway.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dog expert with a TV show&lt;/a&gt;, firmly believes it's the handler and training/raising (socialization in particular) and current &quot;pack&quot; of a dog that determines aggressiveness and general state of being much more than breed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often mentioned on his shows as well is that small dogs acting aggressive is often seen as cute instead of dangerous. Until it acts that way in front of a larger dog that doesn't take it. Then the larger dog is blamed, put down and added to the statistics...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also states that some breeds have inbred behaviors/needs that you have to deal with. For a outside reference on this you can check this article: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120305175151/http://www.workingdogs.com/doc0182.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Behavioral View on Dog Aggression&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://dogobedienceadvice.com/dog-breeds.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dogobedienceadvice.com&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://caninebreeds.bulldoginformation.com/dog-aggression-fear-dominance.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;caninebreeds.bulldoginformation.com&lt;/a&gt; state that some breeds are more prone to aggression but also advise that proper training can prevent this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3508" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-17T01:29:45.067" LastActivityDate="2019-10-17T01:29:45.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4695" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4702" CreationDate="2011-06-17T21:45:57.890" Score="11" ViewCount="31989" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always been told that one should wait (at least) 3 minutes after turning on an air-conditioner before turning it off, and wait 3 minutes after turning off an air-conditioner before turning it back on. I have also heard that not doing so breaks the air-conditioner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this have any truth to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3097" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-18T09:48:07.470" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T21:47:43.237" Title="Do air-conditioners need a 3 minute break after being started or stopped?" Tags="|machines|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4681" CreationDate="2011-06-17T23:13:38.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Arsenic in apple seeds is not so easy to discount: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1469-8137.2002.00363.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Historically, the use of arsenic-based pesticides has led to considerable contamination of domestic and agricultural land, through their use as lawn herbicides, and insecticides for rice, &lt;strong&gt;orchards&lt;/strong&gt; and cotton.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, there's arsenic in many soils. Arsenic compounds are takn up by apple trees, and do show up in the fruit (&lt;em&gt;ibid&lt;/em&gt;).&#xA;I'd be &lt;em&gt;surprised&lt;/em&gt; if arsenic compounds didn't appear in apple seeds when the material is taken up by the tree, but a quick search for actual measurements of Arsenic in apple seeds ran up against the paywall which hides so many academic publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastActivityDate="2011-06-17T23:13:38.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4695" CreationDate="2011-06-18T01:13:14.347" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first thought was that this was certainly a myth, but it seems like I was quite wrong - this appears to be true (or at the very least, it's corroborated/perpetuated by a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of sources).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://manuals.frigidaire.com/prodinfo_pdf/Edison/2020215a0479en.pdf&quot;&gt;From Frigidaire (page five)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please always wait 3 minutes when turning unit off then on again, and when changing from cool to fan and back to cool. This prevents compressor from overheating &amp;amp; possible circuit breaker tripping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amana-ptac.com/Portals/3/PTAC/PDF/IO-RAC4%209-12.pdf&quot;&gt;From Amana (page 17)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you turn off the air conditioner, wait at least 3 minutes before turning it back on. This prevents the air conditioner from blowing a fuse or tripping a circuit breaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And page 18:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the air conditioner is off and then turned on while set to a COOL setting, or if it is turned from a fan setting to a COOL setting, it may take approximately 3 minutes for the compressor to start and cooling to begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://whirlpool.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/618&quot;&gt;From Whirlpool&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you turn off the air conditioner, wait at least three minutes before turning it back on. This helps to avoid the air conditioner blowing a fuse or tripping a circuit breaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.air-conditioner-home.com/manuals/HWR05XC7Manual.pdf&quot;&gt;From Haier (page nine)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also when you shut off the air conditioner wait for 3 minutes before turning it on again. This is the compressor cycle time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toplinehvac.com/ToplinehvacMaintenance.html&quot;&gt;from Topline HVAC&lt;/a&gt;, an HVAC company out of Chicago (which has one of the more irritating websites I've come across in a while, do check it out, including the home page):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When turning your air conditioner off, try to wait 3 to 5 minutes to allow the refrigerant pressure to equalize before turning your air conditioner back on.  It gets very hard on your compressor, when it tries to start under high pressure, if you do not wait for your system pressures to equalize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also about a million other results from Google. It's entirely possible this is all a super-safety-precaution, like a warning that peanut butter contains peanuts, and you might never experience any problems at all. But it's easy to be better safe than sorry here and let the compressor units stabilize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3114" LastActivityDate="2011-06-18T01:13:14.347" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4561" CreationDate="2011-06-18T03:26:56.473" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-03-02-doctor-shortage_x.htm&quot;&gt;This USA today article&lt;/a&gt; from 2005 confirms that the AMA and other organizations were indeed actively seeking to limit the number of new physicians being trained to prevent a projected surplus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the past quarter-century, the American Medical Association and other industry groups have predicted a glut of doctors and worked to limit the number of new physicians. In 1994, the Journal of the American Medical Association predicted a surplus of 165,000 doctors by 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However once the looming shortage became apparent, these efforts were reversed.  For example the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) set the goal of increasing medical school enrollment by 30% from 2002 levels by 2015.  Unfortunately &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.aamc.org/download/82788/data/enrollmentreport.pdf&quot;&gt;they are already behind on this goal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, medical school itself is not the rate-limiting step in training new physicians.  As a recent, excellent &lt;a href=&quot;http://seattlepostglobe.org/2011/03/07/warnings-of-doctor-shortage-go-unheeded&quot;&gt;article in the Seattle Times&lt;/a&gt; points out,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to become practicing physicians, graduates must complete at least three years of residency training, usually in large teaching hospitals. Without more residency slots, the number of physicians entering the workforce cannot increase. (If the number of U.S. medical school graduates increased, but the cap were left in place, graduates of U.S. medical schools, who have preference for residency slots, would replace graduates of foreign schools, but that would have no net impact on total physician supply.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article goes on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The logjam in residency openings stems from the 1997 Balanced Budget Act. At that time, the number of residency slots funded by Medicare (the principal source of residency funding) was capped at around 100,000, and that cap has remained in place ever since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also includes a fairly in-depth account of the mid-00's reversal of fears from surplus to shortage which I won't bother to blockquote here.  It's worth reading if you're really interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, while this claim may have had some truth in the past, it is certainly not true now as the major professional organizations are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ama-assn.org/resources/doc/mss/lobby-day-gme.pdf&quot;&gt;actively lobbying&lt;/a&gt; to expand medical education.  Unfortunately at the moment the major limiting factor in that expansion is federal health spending, which in the current political environment is a hard sell even for the powerful AMA lobby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2465" LastActivityDate="2011-06-18T03:26:56.473" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4749" CreationDate="2011-06-18T07:49:58.763" Score="8" ViewCount="6679" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read &lt;em&gt;Macbeth&lt;/em&gt; and I looked up its history, and apparently there is such a thing as &quot;The Curse of Macbeth&quot;. The story is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shakespeare, in writing the play, included a lot of details about witchcraftery, and their methods i.e. The excerpt below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Round around the cauldron go;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In the poison'd entrails throw.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Toad, that under cold stone&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Days and nights has thirty-one&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Swelter'd venum sleeping got.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Boil thou first i' the charmed pot… &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story then goes on to say that, the witches of the day, and the socerors were furious with the publicising of their deeds, so they cast a curse on the play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The uncanny thing is, there have been an abnormal amount of incidences for this play in history:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1st  performance,1606 -- Shakespeare himself was forced to play Lady Macbeth when Hal Berridge, the boy designated to play the lady with a peculiar notion of hospitality, became inexplicably feverish and died. Moreover, the bloody play so displeased King James I that he banned it for five years.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Amsterdam, 1672 -- the actor playing Macbeth substituted a real dagger for the blunted stage one and with it killed Duncan in full view of the entranced audience.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;London, 1703 -- on the day the production opened, England was hit with one of the most violent storms in its history.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1721 – during a performance, a nobleman who was watching the show from the stage decided to get up in the middle of a scene, walk across the stage, and talk to a friend. The actors, upset by this, drew their swords and drove the nobleman and his friends from the theatre. Unfortunately for them, the noblemen returned with the militia and burned the theatre down.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1775 -- As Lady Macbeth, Sarah Siddons was nearly ravaged by a disapproving audience.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;New York’s Astor Place, 1849 -- a riot broke out when a crowd of more than 10,000 New Yorkers gathered to protest the appearance of British actor William Charles Macready, who was engaged in a bitter public feud with an American actor, Edwin Forrest. The protest escalated into a riot, leading the militia to fire into the crowd. Twenty-three people were killed, 36 were wounded, and hundreds were injured.    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;April 9, 1865 -- Abraham Lincoln chose to take Macbeth with him on board the River Queen on the Potomac River.  The president was reading passages, which happened to follow the scene in which Duncan is assassinated, aloud to a party of friends.  Within a week, Lincoln himself was dead by a murderer's hand.    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1882 -- on the closing night of one production, an actor named J. H. Barnes was engaged in a scene of swordplay with an actor named William Rignold when Barnes accidentally thrust his sword directly into Rignold's chest. Fortunately a doctor was in attendance, but the wound was supposedly rather serious.    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1926 -- Sybil Thorndike was almost strangled by a burly actor.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Royal Court Theatre, London, 1928 -- during the first modern-dress production at the, a large set fell down, injuring some members of the cast seriously, and a fire broke out in the dress circle.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getemreading.com/thecurseofmacbeth.doc&quot;&gt;http://www.getemreading.com/thecurseofmacbeth.doc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is, is this document a hoax, or are there any studies or investigations into this that confirms its evidence. Does this then prove that The Curse of Macbeth is true or false?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T13:07:58.507" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T12:12:11.627" Title="Is Macbeth cursed?" Tags="|history|literature|william-shakespeare|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4716" CreationDate="2011-06-18T10:30:19.710" Score="23" ViewCount="2592" Body="&lt;p&gt;These days it's common to hear a woman's professional tennis match punctuated by loud grunts and outright screams whenever the ball is hit.  Several players either claim that they can't help doing this, or even that it &lt;a href=&quot;http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/sport/maria-sharapova/&quot;&gt;helps them concentrate&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although at first her popularity among the public was not as much for her sportsmanship, as for her model looks and loaded grunts on court. Other players and even supervisors complained about the decibel level (measured at 101 DB) of her scream. But to most tennis fans her shouting was not such a big deal, and even gave the young beautiful player character and charm. She was nicknamed ‘Screaming Cinderella’ and ‘The Siberian Siren’ by the press. Maria herself says that the scream helps her concentrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this claim seems decidedly dodgy to me.  Many a great female player of the modern era (Steffi Graf, Martina Hingis, etc.) has played excellent tennis without screaming when hitting the ball.  Moreover, the 2004 Wimbledon's ladies final was contested between Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams - two of the loudest screamers in the woman's game today - and one of the most noticeable things about it was the complete lack of screaming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CimRAAaX6xI&amp;amp;feature=feedf&quot;&gt;An example of the relative quietness of the players.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two of them played excellent quality tennis, as is &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/tennis/3860923.stm&quot;&gt;widely&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2004/jul/05/wimbledon2004.wimbledon1&quot;&gt;attested&lt;/a&gt;, but shortly after it seems they decided that this quality could not be maintained unless they started screaming when hitting the ball.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the screaming help improve female players' tennis at all?  Could it help them concentrate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3447" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-01-24T05:29:16.637" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T17:31:29.230" Title="Does screaming help in tennis?" Tags="|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4709" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-18T11:47:03.063" Score="22" ViewCount="4899" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a lot of people, doctors have awful handwriting. First, is this true - is there a statistically significant proportion of doctors who have handwriting which control groups would find hard to read? Secondly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1578074,00.html&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; claims that because it is so bad, it can kill patients due to mistakes involving drug dosages, or incorrect surgery, or by other means. Really?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T23:48:57.613" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T13:35:51.637" Title="Doctors and Handwriting: is it so bad that it inadvertently kills patients?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4709" CreationDate="2011-06-18T13:42:29.993" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The source behind the Time article is a July 2006 report from the Institute of Medicine entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iom.edu/Reports/2006/Preventing-Medication-Errors-Quality-Chasm-Series.aspx&quot;&gt;Preventing Medication Errors: Quality Chasm Series&lt;/a&gt;. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iom.edu/~/media/Files/Report%20Files/2006/Preventing-Medication-Errors-Quality-Chasm-Series/medicationerrorsnew.pdf&quot;&gt;brief (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; is available online and the information here is from that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The topic revolves around &lt;em&gt;adverse drug events&lt;/em&gt; (ADEs) which includes errors caused by faulty prescriptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some of these “adverse drug events [ADEs],” as injuries due to medication are generally called, are inevitable—the more powerful a drug is, the more likely it is to have harmful side effects, for instance—but sometimes the harm is caused by an error in prescribing or taking the medication, and these damages are not inevitable. They can be prevented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of preventable ADEs is extremely large. The report suggests that a typical hospital patient is subjected to at least one medication error a day. Different studies have claimed 380,000 and 450,000 preventable ADEs per year. The committee behind the report considers these low estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One study calculates, for example, that 800,000 preventable ADEs occur each year in long-term care facilities. Another finds that among outpatient Medicare patients there occur 530,000 preventable ADEs each year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It again considers those numbers low estimates and then notes that none of these studies involve prescriptions that should have happened but never did &amp;mdash; errors of omission. The committee concludes with the number 1.5 million preventable ADEs occurring&#xA;in the United States each year as their lowball estimate which one of the numbers used in the Time article. So far so good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the brief does not break down these numbers further. The only mention of handwriting is in a section about how using new technologies can help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even more promising is the use of electronic prescriptions, or e-prescriptions. By&#xA;  writing prescriptions electronically, doctors and other providers can avoid many of&#xA;  the mistakes that accompany handwritten prescriptions, as the software ensures that&#xA;  all the necessary information is filled out—and legible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The note on legibility here is not hardly the focus of the section. While it does admit that poor handwriting plays a part in preventable ADEs, the brief alone does not provide enough reason for the Time article's comments that &quot;Doctors' sloppy handwriting kills more than 7,000 people annually.&quot; Digging into the full report, I did find a few more notes on handwriting issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Poorly handwritten prescription orders are the chief culprit in miscommunications among prescribing clinicians, nurses, and pharmacists, and have often resulted in serious injury or death due to incorrect understanding of the drug or its dosage, route, or frequency (Cohen, 2000).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was also a note about &lt;em&gt;transcription&lt;/em&gt; errors which could be seen as a container for handwriting errors. One study &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11623&amp;amp;page=122&quot;&gt;labeled 29 of the 334 errors&lt;/a&gt; found as transcription errors. But nowhere in the report did I find an estimated &lt;em&gt;death&lt;/em&gt; count for anything specifically targeting handwriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking closer at the Time article, I realized it may have just been tricky writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doctors' sloppy handwriting kills more than 7,000 people annually. It's a shocking statistic, and, according to a July 2006 report from the National Academies of Science's Institute of Medicine (IOM), preventable medication mistakes also injure more than 1.5 million Americans annually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1.5 million statistic &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; come from the IOM report but the 7,000 people killed is entirely unsourced. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2736/a-prescription-for-death&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope comments&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The actual stat alluded to - apparently from a 1998 Lancet paper via subsequent reports by the Institute of Medicine - is that each year 7,000 U.S. deaths result from all medication-related errors of any sort, inside and outside hospitals, and not just those tied to poor penmanship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Time article was way off the mark with regards to their statistic &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; juxtaposing that statistic with an unrelated source. But the direct answer to the question, &quot;Does bad handwriting kill people?&quot; is that yes, it can, if it is the underlying cause for an ADE that results in patient death. Is it a rampant problem? Not when compared to the other preventable ADEs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="2433" LastEditDate="2011-06-19T14:06:30.960" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T14:06:30.960" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4200" CreationDate="2011-06-18T13:54:58.613" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best book on Robin Hood is by J.C. Holt.  The earliest sources of the Robin Hood legend are ballads written before 1450.  In one of them a King Edward comes to Yorkshire to capture Robin Hood but comes to like him and makes him one of his yeomen.  The only King Edward who was in Yorkshire before 1450 was Edward II, who came to Yorkshire in 1323.  Documents of the time list one of the men in his service in 1323 as Robyn Hod.  I base my novel The Robin Hood Chronicles on the identity of Robin Hood and Robyn Hod, though Holt is not so positive in his identification as I am.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3748" LastActivityDate="2011-06-18T13:54:58.613" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4714" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4715" CreationDate="2011-06-18T21:50:16.157" Score="58" ViewCount="8434" Body="&lt;p&gt;About a year ago I heard that burning your food can lead to an increased risk of getting cancer. The explanation was that the burned portion of the food was carcinogenic. The Carbon that would be produced in burning of the food was also involved in this somehow although its relevance wasn't clearly explained. I was dubious of the claim until I posed the question to some chemist friends of mine who, to my surprise, were not as dismissive of the idea as I was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is burning your food something that can increase the likelihood of getting cancer and, if so, it the increase enough to be concerned about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question has hit the headlines again (at least in the UK early in 2017). For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/cancer-roast-potatoes-burnt-toast-starchy-foods-could-cause-cancer-acrylamide-food-standards-agency-a7540916.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Independent&lt;/a&gt; reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over-cooked potatoes and burnt toast could cause cancer, new research suggests&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The headlines have emerged because the Food Standards Agency has issued new advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has issued a public warning over the risks of acrylamide - a chemical compound that forms in some foods when they are cooked at high temperatures (above 120C).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new campaign tells people how they can cut their risk, including opting for a gold colour - rather than darker brown - when frying, roasting, baking, grilling, or toasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The warnings are not just about &lt;em&gt;burnt&lt;/em&gt; food but about well-cooked food and specifically mention acrylamide as the guilty party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;update 2018&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story has reappeared (again) in the UK where a major supermarket has been criticised by several bodies for selling &amp;quot;well fired&amp;quot; bread:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7852636/sainsburys-under-fire-selling-well-fired-loaves-bread/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Sun&lt;/a&gt;, for example, reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experts claim that the company should warn people of the blackened edges of the bread, as they may contain a cancer-causing chemical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story appears to be based on the same Food standards Agency advice that triggered some of the previous stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3159" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-11-29T13:35:26.297" Title="Does burning your food increase your risk of getting cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|cancer|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4714" CreationDate="2011-06-18T23:09:55.717" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Acrylamide&lt;/a&gt; (C&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt;H&lt;sub&gt;5&lt;/sub&gt;NO) is a chemical compound &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/FoodContaminantsAdulteration/ChemicalContaminants/Acrylamide/ucm053549.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;produced when starchy foods are burnt&lt;/a&gt;. It is also in &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20060618173600/http://www.jifsan.umd.edu/presentations/acry2004/acry_2004_dinovihoward.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;coffee, prunes and olives&lt;/a&gt; amongst other foods, and is inhaled from &lt;a href=&quot;http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/16/11/2471&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cigarette smoking&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ingestion of acrylamide has been linked to a number of health concerns, including &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arno.unimaas.nl/show.cgi?fid=14506&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;postmenopausal&#xA;endometrial and ovarian cancer in women&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;neuropathy and male fertility issues at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/chem/en/acrylamide_summary.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;extreme&lt;/em&gt; doses&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Direct exposure to acrylamide causes problems too, but that's out of scope here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For balance, acrylamide has been ruled out of causing several other concerns, such &lt;a href=&quot;http://arno.unimaas.nl/show.cgi?fid=14506&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;breast cancer&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/joem/Abstract/2007/01000/Mortality_Patterns_Among_Workers_Exposed_to.10.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cancer through exposure at work&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page on acrylamide&lt;/a&gt; provides a more comprehensive list of the research and various government's strategies for dealing with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; None of this answer addresses the seriousness of the dosages found on a typical piece of burnt beef. The issue may be too small for serious concern, when placed in the context of other dietary concerns. &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/36852/23&quot;&gt;@Matt Black's answer&lt;/a&gt; addresses this shortcoming - please consider it for an upvote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2017-06-07T18:18:38.860" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T18:18:38.860" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4708" CreationDate="2011-06-19T02:04:56.180" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has always struck me as plausable that there was a psychological advantage to the grunting. Perhaps in convincing yourself your performing at your limits or to put off your opponent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However Professor Alison McConnell of Brunel University has said: ‘By inhaling before the ball is hit then crying out at the moment of impact, a player's throat narrows, keeping some wind in the lungs to improve core strength and balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brunel.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/news-items/ne_80231&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.brunel.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/news-items/ne_80231&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor McConnell explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We all instinctively inhale just before we make a physical effort such as lifting furniture or swinging a racquet at a ball. We do this because holding air in the lungs helps to provide the stability required for injury-free and forceful movements of the trunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Maximising the power of a tennis shot is created by transferring muscular force to the racquet head efficiently. A strong core and trunk is vital for this process because the force transmission starts below the players’ waist. The muscles in the trunk also contribute to racquet head speed by providing a rotational force between the hips and shoulders.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how does this cause a player to grunt as they strike the ball? According to Professor McConnell it all comes down to breathing techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Efficient breathing is an incredibly important contributor to performance in all sports, but especially in a high-intensity, skill-based game like tennis. Any coach will tell you that the heart of a good stroke is a relaxed rhythm, part of achieving this rhythm is getting your breathing and stroke in tune.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply exhaling as soon as the player has hit the ball will dissipate the stability and control in their core, this can throw them off balance and break that all-important rhythm. The solution, according to Professor McConnell is through controlled, forceful exhalation using the larynx, or voice-box, to maintain stability in the core.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Narrowing the opening of your lungs will slow down the rate of airflow from them, while maintaining stiffness in the trunk and control over the breathing rhythm. It is in using this technique that some players feel the need to grunt. Of course this braking action doesn't actually need to result in audible grunting but it is easier to coach the controlled exhalation if you can hear it. As a result some younger players may well be ?taught to grunt as a means of breath control.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor McConnell goes on to suggest that the reason grunting is more common amongst women that men is that their upper bodies are generally weaker than those of men and thus require stronger control and stability through breathing techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She has a vested interest in promoting this idea though see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breathestrong.com/home/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.breathestrong.com/home/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But has published academic papers in this area: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/acad/sse/ssestaff/sportsstaff/alisonmcconnell&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/acad/sse/ssestaff/sportsstaff/alisonmcconnell&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="432" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T20:30:11.493" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3072" CreationDate="2011-06-19T02:16:50.640" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is not, as such, a baby language that we could understand or that other babies would understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there is a regularity in the way babies produce sounds as this is part of the process of aquiring language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturalistic studies of children's spontaneous speech (MacWhinney &amp;amp; Snow, 1985, 1990; MacWhinney, 1991) have indicated that anguage acquisition begins very early in the human lifespan, and begins, logically enough, with the acquisition of a language's sound patterns. The main linguistic accomplishments during the first year of life are control of the speech musculature and sensitivity to the phonetic distinctions used in the parents' language. Interestingly, babies achieve these feats before they produce or understand words, so their learning cannot depend on correlating sound with meaning. That is, they cannot be listening for the difference in sound between a word they think means bit and a word they think means beet, because they have learned neither word. They must be sorting the sounds directly, somehow tuning their speech analysis module to deliver the phonemes used in their language (Kuhl, et al., 1992). The module can then serve as the front end of the system that learns words and grammar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shortly before their first birthday, babies begin to understand words, and around that birthday, they start to produce them (see Clark, 1993; Ingram, 1989). Words are usually produced in isolation; this one-word stage can last from two months to a year. Children's first words are similar all over the planet. About half the words are for objects: food (juice, cookie, body parts (eye, nose), clothing (diaper, sock), vehicles (car, boat), toys (doll, block), household items (bottle, light, animals (dog, kitty), and people (dada, baby). There are words for actions, motions, and routines, like (up, off, open, peekaboo, eat, and go, and modifiers, like hot, allgone, more, dirty, and cold. Finally, there are routines used in social interaction, like yes, no, want, bye-bye, and hi -- a few of which, like look at that and what is that, are words in the sense of memorized chunks, though they are not single words for the adult. Children differ in how much they name objects or engage in social interaction using memorized routines, though all children do both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Around 18 months, language changes in two ways. Vocabulary growth increases; the child begins to learn words at a rate of one every two waking hours, and will keep learning that rate or faster through adolescence (Clark, 1993; Pinker, 1994). And primitive syntax begins, with two-word strings like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; All dry.            All messy.          All wet.&#xA; I sit.              I shut.             No bed.&#xA; No pee.             See baby.           See pretty.&#xA; More cereal.        More hot.           Hi Calico.&#xA; Other pocket.       Boot off.           Siren by.&#xA; Mail come.          Airplane allgone.   Bybebye car.&#xA; Our car.            Papa away.          Dry pants.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our car. Papa away. Dry pants. Children's two-word combinations are highly similar across cultures. Everywhere, children announce when objects appear, disappear, and move about, point out their properties and owners, comment on people doing things and seeing things, reject and request objects and activities, and ask about who, what, and where. These sequences already reflect the language being acquired: in 95% of them, the words are properly ordered (Braine, 1976; Brown, 1973; Pinker, 1984; Ingram, 1989).&#xA;Even before they put words together, babies can comprehend a sentence using its syntax. For example, in one experiment, babies who spoke only in single words were seated in front of two television screens, each of which featured a pair of adults dressed up as Cookie Monster and Big Bird from Sesame Street. One screen showed Cookie Monster tickling Big Bird; the other showed Big Bird tickling Cookie Monster. A voice-over said, &quot;OH LOOK!!! BIG BIRD IS TICKLING COOKIE MONSTER!! FIND BIG BIRD TICKLING COOKIE MONSTER!!&quot; (Or vice-versa.) The children must have understood the meaning of the ordering of subject, verb, and object, because they looked more at the screen that depicted the sentence in the voice-over (Hirsh-Pasek &amp;amp; Golinkoff, 1991).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the random noises that babies make are only structured in so much as the child is striving to imitate sounds it hears adults make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough whilst looking into this I found some anthropological research that suggested that &quot;babytalk&quot; as spoken by adults to babies contains some universal elements common across cultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="432" LastEditorUserId="2382" LastEditDate="2011-07-01T12:22:51.310" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T12:22:51.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2961" CreationDate="2011-06-19T02:25:56.170" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Cochrane collaboration has performed a number of meta-analysis on the claimed benefits of massage therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab001929.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab001929.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of lower back pain massage might be beneficial for patients with subacute (lasting four to 12 weeks) and chronic (lasting longer than 12 weeks) non-specific low-back pain, especially when combined with exercises and education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab004871.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab004871.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No firm conclusions can be drawn looking at neck pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of other reviews exploring the issue however it is difficult to answer this question fully as what is considered &quot;traditional&quot; massage will vary from culture to culture and country to country. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some types of massage there will be effective pain relief and for others there will not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="432" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T02:25:56.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3567" CreationDate="2011-06-19T02:32:48.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I present an article from my own website as evidence here is that ok? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thetwentyfirstfloor.com/?p=767&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thetwentyfirstfloor.com/?p=767&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short the answer is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2007, the Cochrane Collaboration published a report which examined, collectively, all&#xA;  of the good studies that had investigated the role of Vitamin C in prevention and cure of&#xA;  the common cold. Their conclusions were unremarkable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First of all, the good news. If you take high doses of Vitamin C (around 1g per day –&#xA;  approximately 16x RDA or 22 oranges) every day then there is a suggestion that, when you&#xA;  get a cold, you’ll experience a very modest 7% reduction in the length of the illness&#xA;  (for children the effect is larger – around a 13% reduction). This amounts to an average&#xA;  half a day’s reduction in service to Kleenex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, the investigation (analysing the results of up to 29 different studies,&#xA;  involving more than 11,000 people) found no reliable evidence that regularly dosing&#xA;  yourself with Vitamin C greatly decreases the risk of actually catching a cold in the&#xA;  first place. Nor has there been convincing evidence that you can shorten the duration&#xA;  of a cold or reduce the severity of its symptoms by upping your intake of Vitamin C&#xA;  after you’ve started feeling ill. One study, alone, suggested that an enormous 8g dose&#xA;  of Vitamin C taken at the onset of symptoms could modestly reduce the length of a cold,&#xA;  but the study was beset with methodological problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It seems, then, that the practise of reaching for the Jaffas at the first hint of a&#xA;  sniffle is misguided. It’s a popular belief drawn from the flawed hypothesis of an old&#xA;  scientist who was speculating about topics outside of his field. There admittedly is&#xA;  evidence that suggests long-term intake of high doses of Vitamin C (around 22 oranges&#xA;  worth, no less) may help you recover less than half a day quicker than usual, but this is&#xA;  confounded by the notorious difficulty in measuring the beginning and end of a cold. Can&#xA;  you say when the last cold you had ended with an accuracy of less than half a day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the evidence that eating jaffas help is weak and there has been no suggestion in the trials that doing so is harmful in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to overdose on vitamin C but I suspect in the duration of an average cold you would have to consume a heroic amount of very potent oranges to suffer any ill effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="432" LastEditorUserId="3497" LastEditDate="2011-08-05T02:25:42.743" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T02:25:42.743" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3433" CreationDate="2011-06-19T08:51:24.820" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I've noted in comments, a complete, reasoned analysis is presented at &lt;a href=&quot;https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/4441/open-source-vs-closed-source-systems&quot;&gt;Open-source vs closed-source systems&lt;/a&gt;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for the sake of argument, I will present a single example as evidence: the first real rootkit - and, apparently the most widespread - was in very popular open source package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rootkit#History&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rootkit History (Wikipedia)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ken Thompson of Bell Labs, one of the creators of Unix, subverted the C compiler in a Unix distribution and discussed the exploit in the lecture he gave upon receiving the Turing award in 1983. The modified compiler would detect attempts to compile the Unix &quot;login&quot; command and generate altered code that would accept not only the user's correct password, but an additional password known to the attacker. Additionally, the compiler would detect attempts to compile a new version of the compiler, and would insert the same exploits into the new compiler. A review of the source code for the &quot;login&quot; command or the updated compiler would not reveal any malicious code.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/712.fall02/papers/p761-thompson.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, Ken's own words from that paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The  moral  is obvious. You  can't  trust  code  that  you  did &#xA;  not  totally create  yourself.  No  amount  of &#xA;  source-level verification or  scrutiny will protect  you &#xA;  from  using  untrusted  code. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open source would not help you here.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In fact, insisting on the inherent security in opensource is irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-17T13:14:43.757" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T13:52:03.573" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4723" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-19T14:10:10.443" Score="1" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/716/do-those-hologram-bracelets-do-anything-at-all&quot;&gt;Do those hologram bracelets do anything at all?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, many shops sell energy bracelet which claims to improve your health because the bracelet have some kind of force field around your hand. This claim is rather non-sense to me and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepticblog.org/2010/09/23/power-balance-magical-energy-bracelets-or-nonsense/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;guy&lt;/a&gt; also disagree with this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you scientist make some test to these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2242" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T17:52:10.763" Title="Does the Power Balance energy bracelet make you healthier?" Tags="|medical-science|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-06-19T14:28:43.790" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4754" CreationDate="2011-06-19T15:41:31.140" Score="36" ViewCount="2583" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard a lot of hype lately about Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity and seeing people buy plenty of &quot;Gluten-Free&quot; goodies at the local grocery store, I am wondering. Is Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity an actual illness or just another trendy diet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3759" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-06-20T23:16:11.013" LastActivityDate="2016-10-20T09:26:32.173" Title="Is Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity an actual illness or is it another trendy diet?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4725" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4727" CreationDate="2011-06-19T16:23:37.893" Score="8" ViewCount="15538" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can taking less pain medication (i.e. Vicodin, Acetaminophen, Ibuprofen, etc) reduce the amount of time it takes an injury or surgery to heal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard this one a few times now. One was through a roommate when his doctor was surprised at how fast he was healing and asked him if he was taking his pain medication. My roommate said no and the doctor mentioned this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also seem to remember where I read that women who do natural childbirths tend to heal more quickly because they do not get Epidurals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2708" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T05:48:55.507" LastActivityDate="2022-07-05T07:23:55.167" Title="Does reducing pain medication decrease healing time?" Tags="|medical-science|pain|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4726" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4741" CreationDate="2011-06-19T16:27:26.777" Score="10" ViewCount="2146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought about posting this at parenting.SE and might cross-link to it, but for now I see it as somewhat of a claim that's tossed around and in the same bucket as some others (like not standing too close to a microwave). In any case, my parents bought my wife and I a video called &quot;The Importance of Being an Infant&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kindyroo.com.au/pricelist.php&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;) (didn't realize how expensive those were until I looked for a link!). The video mentions that crawling for a certain amount of time and not moving on to walking too early is extremely critical for proper development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were having dinner the other day with some friends and they referenced that bit of &quot;wisdom&quot; and said that it was complete BS, referencing some of their siblings who never crawled but are great at sports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video is actually quite well done, referencing some reflexes and how such reflexes might not be grown out of if the crawling phase is skimped on, and prior to hearing my friends' comments, I had never really doubted it. There's other sources for this claim as well, for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.minti.com/parenting-advice/885/The-Importance-of-Crawling/#&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It appears that in some kids this reflex does not dissipate.  The cause could be genetics, &lt;strong&gt;little time spent crawling or extended periods of time spent in walkers or exersaucer.&lt;/strong&gt;  Whatever the cause, there are some hypothesized negative outcomes for some kids when this reflex does not subside...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;is there any scientific literature showing the critical/beneficial nature of a &quot;proper&quot; crawling period for childhood development?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd have to fire up the DVD, but I recall it giving a specific length of several hundred hours of crawling prior to walking and suggesting that parents not hold their kids in standing position to help them walk any earlier. A secondary question if the above is &quot;Yes&quot; is how much time is suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T12:53:47.487" Title="How necessary is crawling for proper childhood development?" Tags="|children|parenting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4725" CreationDate="2011-06-19T17:20:30.167" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answers: &lt;strong&gt;it depends&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pain inhibits healing through several mechanisms. According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2882705/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nimmo and Duthie&lt;/a&gt; as quoted in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldwidewounds.com/2001/march/Pediani/Pain-relief-surgical-wounds.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article from World Wide Wounds&lt;/a&gt;, there are four major problems with severe pain after surgery:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Decreased respiratory movement especially after upper laparotomy or&#xA;thoractomy. A decreased functional&#xA;lung capacity, difficulty in breathing&#xA;deeply and in coughing all contribute&#xA;to hypoxia after operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Decreased mobility because of pain on movement. Early mobilisation is&#xA;more difficult and the risk of deep&#xA;venous thrombosis is increased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Increased sympathetic activity leads to a release of catecholamines&#xA;which has adverse effects such as&#xA;hypertension followed by myocardial&#xA;ischaemia and decreased blood flow to&#xA;some tissues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hormonal and metabolic activity resulting from surgery and made worse&#xA;by pain increases protein breakdown&#xA;and mobilisation of free fatty acids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reducing pain (through medication or other means) then aids in healing. So taking pain medication would help you heal faster, rather than the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, there are questions about the best pain management techniques and methods. Not all medicines are appropriate for all causes of pain. Many people are studying pain management to determine which is the most effective treatment. For example, in a a &lt;a href=&quot;https://journals.lww.com/anesthesia-analgesia/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2003&amp;amp;issue=09000&amp;amp;article=00043&amp;amp;type=Fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;comparison of three pain medicines/techniques after surgery&lt;/a&gt;, researchers found that patient-controlled epidural analgesia was the most effective both in reducing pain and in immune response to the injury. (The other two mechanisms weren't &lt;em&gt;quite&lt;/em&gt; as effective in reducing pain, and didn't help the immune system bounce back from the lowered levels after the surgery.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some pain medications don't help, it is also possible (although I didn't find human studies to confirm) that a particular pain medication could inhibit healing. Rat studies suggest that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/kvktxfblrqumya31/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diclofenac inhibits bone healing&lt;/a&gt;, as does &lt;a href=&quot;https://journals.lww.com/jorthotrauma/Abstract/2005/11000/A_Comparison_Between_the_Effects_of_Acetaminophen.7.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Celecoxib&lt;/a&gt;. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20121122230407/http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/pubmedhealth/PMH0000882/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diclofenac&lt;/a&gt; is marketed under the brand names Cataflam and Voltaren. &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20121122131003/http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/pubmedhealth/PMH0001050/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Celecoxib&lt;/a&gt; is marketed as Celebrex.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to your question would depend on the cause of the pain, the effects of the pain (if it's not inhibiting healing, it's not a problem), and on the effects of the particular pain medication on your condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="677" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-07-05T07:23:55.167" LastActivityDate="2022-07-05T07:23:55.167" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4606" CreationDate="2011-06-19T17:23:17.560" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only evidence I've found on a difference is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15006679&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;emotional speech tends to activate the inferior frontal cortex more in women than in men&lt;/a&gt;. From a study done at The Max Planck Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We investigated the brain regions that mediate the processing of emotional speech in men and women by presenting positive and negative words that were spoken with happy or angry prosody. Hence, emotional prosody and word valence were either congruous or incongruous. We assumed that an fRMI contrast between congruous and incongruous presentations would reveal the structures that mediate the interaction of emotional prosody and word valence. The left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) was more strongly activated in incongruous as compared to congruous trials. This difference in IFG activity was significantly larger in women than in men. Moreover, the congruence effect was significant in women whereas it only appeared as a tendency in men. As the left IFG has been repeatedly implicated in semantic processing, these findings are taken as evidence that semantic processing in women is more susceptible to influences from emotional prosody than is semantic processing in men. Moreover, the present data suggest that the left IFG mediates increased semantic processing demands imposed by an incongruence between emotional prosody and word valence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If semantic processing is indicative of overall &quot;experiencing of emotions&quot; then this would seem to offer evidence that women do experience &quot;more emotion&quot; than men. Or it could simply mean that women can use language to mediate their emotions better than men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastActivityDate="2011-06-19T17:23:17.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3433" CreationDate="2011-06-19T17:42:15.470" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another point not already covered, but going in the same direction as most answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even without the source, in many environments, you can place a series of jumps at the beginning of an executable binary to go to a place where you have compiled your own little piece of software, then resuming normal operation of the code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_cracking&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The binary is then modified using the debugger or a hex editor in a manner that replaces a prior branching opcode with its complement or a NOP opcode so the key branch will either always execute a specific subroutine or skip over it. Almost all common software cracks are a variation of this type. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as this is what many viruses and cracked versions of commercial software do, it may be detected as suspicious by antivirus utilities or blocked because of checksum verifications by the code itself, the loader/linker, the OS, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="878" LastEditorUserId="878" LastEditDate="2011-08-17T15:54:41.230" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T15:54:41.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4731" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4733" CreationDate="2011-06-19T20:02:33.613" Score="12" ViewCount="2924" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does human flesh tastes like pork? I have heard from TV shows that it may taste like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/05/human-meat-taste-cannibal&quot;&gt;pork or chicken&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2381" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T19:02:31.127" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T19:22:58.607" Title="Does human flesh tastes like pork?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4731" CreationDate="2011-06-19T23:04:57.870" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, by some reports from cannibalistic tribes, human flesh is reported to taste more of pork than chicken.  The chicken taste is actually more of a joke (EVERYTHING tastes like chicken).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find this first hand account:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Seabrook&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;William Buehler Seabrook&lt;/a&gt;, a journalist with the New York Times, traveled to West Africa and lived with the Guere tribe. He asked the chief what human meat tasted like, but the chief couldn't describe it to Seabrook's satisfaction. Seabrook had the opportunity to try it himself, from a man who had recently died in an accident. He got a portion of stew with rice as well as a &amp;quot;sizeable rump steak, also a small loin roast to cook or have cooked&amp;quot; however he wanted. In his book &amp;quot;Jungle Ways,&amp;quot; he described it as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Polynesians and Melanesians in the South Pacific called Europeans '&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Long Pig&lt;/a&gt;' because they claimed their flesh tasted sweet like pork and much different compared to their neighbors. American firefighters often cannot stand the smell of bacon because it reminds them of burnt human flesh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So we have two opinions: veal and pork.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with any meat sold in the market, the taste will vary depending on what the person was raised on. A high-pork diet such as Europeans have, will result in a &amp;quot;pork&amp;quot; flavor. A high beef diet will result in a taste of veal (such as the quote above). An all-fish or vegan diet will probably produce a completely different taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for heath effects, many are concerned about &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceline.org/2008/01/ask-stern-cannibal/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;possible prion diseases&lt;/a&gt; associated with eating human flesh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prion diseases, a group of uncommon and deadly brain diseases, can be spread by eating the contaminated flesh of humans or other animals. The human brain is more contaminated with prions than other body parts, though bone marrow, the spinal cord and the small intestine also contain these fatal brain-eating malformations. Prion diseases occur when the prion protein misfolds, causing a cascade of misfolding prion proteins that clump in the brain and damage or destroy nerve cells, creating sponge-like holes. Current examples include kuru and Creutzfeld-Jacob disease in humans, and mad cow disease in animals, both of which cause brain deterioration, loss of motor control and ultimately death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the early 20th century, a kuru epidemic devastated the Fore, a tribe of cannibals in the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea. The kuru epidemic was linked to a Fore ritual of feasting on the brains of the dead. In the mid-1950s, Australian authorities banned these feasts. After this, the incidence of kuru declined, and no new cases have cropped up in people born since the ban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not to mention the psychological effects on cultures that view cannibalism as taboo!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT TO ADD:  In all my survival training, I was never instructed or even suggested to eat other people (&lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/bear-grylls-better-drink-my-own-piss#.Tf6F61upjAw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;or drink my own piss&lt;/a&gt;).  Training may differ for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20030930153919/http://orangecow.org/pythonet/sketches/lifeboat.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Royal Navy&lt;/a&gt; though!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T19:22:58.607" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4735" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4737" CreationDate="2011-06-20T11:17:32.410" Score="8" ViewCount="1383" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia defines &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;psychological projection&lt;/a&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;a psychological defense mechanism where a person unconsciously denies his or her own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, usually to other people. Thus, projection involves imagining or projecting the belief that others originate those feelings.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It ascribes the theory to Sigmund and Anna Freud. My limited understanding of the field is that Sigmund Freud was both the father of psychotherapy with many genius ideas and also a poor scientist who did not robustly test his own hypotheses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: Is psychological projection a hypothesis that is accepted in modern psychology, presumably as part of a model that makes testable predictions? Or is it an old pseudo-scientific idea that is no longer accepted by scientists? Or has it a different status again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Wikipedia provides references, but to papers written by (for example) Freud and Jung, many of them dated around 30-70 years ago. The more modern references (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heretical.com/sexsci/bpsychol.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;) didn't seem to have much empirical evidence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T05:09:32.060" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T05:09:32.060" Title="Is projection a modern psychological theory?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4735" CreationDate="2011-06-20T11:57:43.310" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.fortlewis.edu/burke_b/personality/readings/freuddefense.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Freudian Defense Mechanisms and Empirical Findings in Modern Social Psychology ...&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The simpler, more loosely defined version of projection is&#xA;  fairly well documented. The false consensus effect, first described by&#xA;  Ross, Greene, and House (1977), is probably the best-known form of this,&#xA;  insofar as it is a broad tendency to assume that others are similar to&#xA;  oneself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;None of these findings links seeing the trait in others to denying it in&#xA;  oneself, and so they fall short of the more rigorous definition of projection.&#xA;  Given the failure to show that projective responses can function to&#xA;  conceal one’s own bad traits, Holmes (1968, 1978, 1981) concluded that&#xA;  defensive projection should be regarded as a myth. In retrospect, it was&#xA;  never clear how seeing another person as dishonest (for example) would&#xA;  enable the individual to avoid recognizing his or her own dishonesty. The&#xA;  notion that projection would effectively mask one’s own bad traits was&#xA;  perhaps incoherent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Conclusion&lt;/em&gt;. Considerable evidence indicates that people’s conceptions&#xA;  of themselves shape their perceptions of other people. The tendency to&#xA;  see others as having one’s own traits has limitations and is found with&#xA;  good traits along with bad ones. &lt;strong&gt;The view that people defensively project&#xA;  specific bad traits of their own onto others as a means of denying that&#xA;  they have them is not well supported.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper has a great chapter about projection and more modern theories, with many more sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2820" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T11:57:43.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4759" CreationDate="2011-06-20T15:02:30.923" Score="14" ViewCount="2649" Body="&lt;p&gt;A video and some news are spreading like wildfire on the internet about some artificial meat made from human feces. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://idle.slashdot.org/story/11/06/15/219200/Japanese-Scientist-Creates-Meat-Substitute-From-Sewage&quot;&gt;summary from slashdot&lt;/a&gt;, for example, says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hold on to your hamburgers — Japanese scientist Mitsyuki Ikeda at the Environmental Assessment Center in Okayama has invented an artificial meat substitute made from human feces. The unseemly meal is made by extracting protein and lipids from 'sewage mud.' The lipids are then combined with a reaction enhancer and whipped into 'meat' in an exploder. Ikeda makes the 'meat' more palatable by adding things like soy protein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Googling either “Mitsyuki Ikeda” or “Environmental Assessment Center in Okayama” only seems to bring back more references to the story, but no references to the supposed scientist or any track to the original research project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all seems very fishy, so the question is whether there is any truth to this story? or was it just simply made up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T19:17:44.033" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T09:02:20.093" Title="Has a meat substitute from human feces been developed in Japan?" Tags="|nutrition|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4740" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-20T15:55:04.963" Score="53" ViewCount="9706" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone who is opposed towards energy saving and climate change (I did not realise they existed until I met him) has told me that public transport (buses, trains and so on) are less efficient than individual cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found it difficult to believe. A bus is very big, but it can hold many people. A car could carry maybe 5 people maximum and usually, when commuting only one or two people will come. A bus could hold 30 or more. That means that an average car doing 35 mpg would only be better if a bus did about 1.2 mpg, which I find difficult to believe. I don't know about trains, though. This is also assuming the bus is full which it might not be, but probably is most of the time, especially during morning commutes, in my experience. Maybe not all day, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this guy lying to make a point, or does he actually have a point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T16:28:18.157" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T18:36:52.223" Title="Is public transport less fuel-efficient than cars?" Tags="|economics|environment|transportation|" AnswerCount="9" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4726" CreationDate="2011-06-20T15:55:49.477" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that the claim about the importance of crawling is most likely false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was not able to find evidence supporting this theory.  The closest I could find was a reference to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medcentral.org/main/Whatssoimportantaboutcrawling.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; in the same book cited in the article you linked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The book &quot;Stopping ADHD&quot; cites a study by Dr. Miriam Bender that found that at least 75 percent of the learning-disabled people surveyed had an immature symmetric tonic neck reflex contributing to their disability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is impossible from this statement to identify any positive causality between lack of crawling and ADHD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.centeredge.com/ArticPDF/STNR.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; paper suggests that it is lack of &lt;em&gt;&quot;tummy time&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, rather than crawling, that leads to retention of STNR, and that insufficient &quot;tummy time&quot; makes learning how to crawl more difficult and frustrating for the infant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=24&amp;amp;ved=0CC0QFjADOBQ&amp;amp;url=http://www.internationalsped.com/documents/%283%29TaylorADHD.doc&amp;amp;ei=YGv_TYiWMoS6tgetkey-Dg&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGc4HIyfRc3inNDTSTTU7zBX0Ox6Q&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; paper suggests that the link between reflex retention and ADHD is not specific to the STNR, and that most of the typical ADHD symptoms are more likely to be associated with retention of earlier-stage reflexes (primarily the Moro reflex). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of children skipping crawling seems to be on the increase, and this is likely due to the movement away from allowing infants to sleep on their bellies in an effort to reduce SIDS (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/29/us/baby-not-crawling-reason-seems-to-be-less-tummy-time.html?src=pm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;).  Note that a study referenced in that article found that there was no difference in other developmental milestones for the children who either learned to crawl later or skipped it altogether:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A long-term study of child&#xA;  development, intended to follow nearly&#xA;  15,000 infants from birth until&#xA;  adulthood, began in 1990, just as&#xA;  Britain began its Back to Sleep&#xA;  campaign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. Peter Fleming of the University of&#xA;  Bristol, a director of the British&#xA;  study, said that at first doctors and&#xA;  parents were wary about the new&#xA;  advice, and many doctors suggested&#xA;  that the babies lie on their sides.&#xA;  But gradually, as their fears were&#xA;  allayed and data accumulated tying&#xA;  sudden infant death syndrome to&#xA;  sleeping on the stomach, virtually all&#xA;  doctors began urging parents to keep&#xA;  their babies on their backs. The&#xA;  British study tracked this change. In&#xA;  the early 1990's, when most babies&#xA;  slept on their stomachs, they turned&#xA;  over and crawled when the books said&#xA;  they should. Within the last five&#xA;  years, as parents uniformly began&#xA;  putting babies on their backs, more&#xA;  and more babies did not roll over or&#xA;  crawl on schedule, and increasing&#xA;  numbers never crawled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But, Dr. Fleming said, the babies were&#xA;  normal by every other measure. ''In&#xA;  medicine, whenever you introduce&#xA;  something new, you worry that it might&#xA;  cause problems,'' he said. But, he&#xA;  added, that did not happen. ''When the&#xA;  cohort was 18 months old we looked&#xA;  again at developmental milestones and&#xA;  there was absolutely no difference in&#xA;  these children's development,'' Dr.&#xA;  Fleming said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=crawling-may-be-unnecessary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; suggests that crawling may have become a common developmental milestone only relatively recently, as leaving a child to crawl on the ground was frequently either unsafe, unsanitary, or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be little to no supporting evidence for the theory that crawling is a crucial process for moving past the STNR, and the problems cited in conjunction with late retention of the STNR seem to be correlation without causality.  This is supported by the similar correlation with late retention of earlier reflexes, as well as the study showing changes in crawling milestone achievement did not impact other milestones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="3451" LastEditDate="2011-10-24T12:53:47.487" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T12:53:47.487" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4740" CreationDate="2011-06-20T16:07:46.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, individual buses are ridiculously less efficient than cars. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy00osti/26758.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Santa Barbara study&lt;/a&gt; (link blatantly stolen from Wiki) showed them to have a MPG rating between 4.8 and 6.0. This is obviously far worse than even the evil hummer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cars average something in the mid-20s MPG (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_04_23.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;according to bts.gov&lt;/a&gt;).&#xA;In order to be more fuel efficient than individual cars, buses need to be carrying on-average 4-6 cars worth of people. I'm not finding any good statistics on the average number of people per car in US cities, and that's obviously needed to determine the &quot;break-even point&quot; for buses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also need to factor in the movement of the bus from parking spot to its route (not an issue for individual's cars), and include that time in the &quot;average&quot; vs the number of passengers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2845" LastEditorUserId="1227" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T14:01:44.443" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T14:01:44.443" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4707" CreationDate="2011-06-20T18:16:46.450" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4222&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link to a Skeptoid episode&lt;/a&gt; that investigates this. As @Lagerbaer mentioned in a comment on the question, if you look into any play that's been performed as many times as Macbeth has over the last 400 years, you're bound to find a long list of accidents and problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1011" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T18:16:46.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4747" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4763" CreationDate="2011-06-20T18:17:59.957" Score="16" ViewCount="9320" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_bar&quot;&gt;Oxygen bars&lt;/a&gt; are a pretty common sight and I've heard many claims from their proponents about the alleged health benefits of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, everything I hear about them tends to be anecdotal, so I am somewhat skeptical. I've also heard they can be bad for your health as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you are a normal, healthy individual without respiratory problems, do oxygen bars provide any provable benefit?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2808" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-06-20T23:55:17.403" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T17:16:29.643" Title="Do oxygen bars provide health benefits to a normal person?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4740" CreationDate="2011-06-20T18:24:19.240" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ethicalman/2009/11/why_cars_are_greener_than_buses.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an interesting article&lt;/a&gt; that seems to back up your friend's claims. The article says that bus occupancy is about 9, and car occupancy about 1.57, and cites a study that buses are more polluting than cars at these figures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T18:24:19.240" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4707" CreationDate="2011-06-20T18:29:03.997" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll just go ahead and start with: &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;. Unfortunately, this can't really be backed up scientifically... but that's because it's not being put forth scientifically. It could theoretically be backed up statistically, by showing the proportion of Macbeth performances with issues compared to those without, and then by comparing that to the amount of other plays with issues to those without globally, but... that's... well, just too much data. And as far as I can tell (&lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4222&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;and as far as Skeptoid can tell&lt;/a&gt;), it doesn't exist. It would be a huge time investment to disprove something that there's no scientific evidence of in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that you're asking about... well, a curse. There's a big presumption here, and it's that curses exist. To prove something does or doesn't exist, one must be able to point at an observable phenomenon and attribute it to a natural mechanism. We have neither an observable phenomenon here nor a mechanism with which to understand it. It's the same problem with questions on God or other deities: we can have faith and believe, but there is no scientific, empirical study or experiment that can be done to prove &lt;strong&gt;or&lt;/strong&gt; disprove their existence. Something like this is a proof by tautology: it is because it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related is the assumption that witches of the time--in whatever form they did or didn't exist--could actually cast such a curse. Again, we have no way of proving this (or knowing that there were witches present, or that Shakespeare got his info from witches, or whatever story one wants to believe. Very few of these earlier tales can be cited, as Skeptoid explains above). There's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3331/does-black-magic-work&quot;&gt;good question here on Skeptics about black magic&lt;/a&gt; that concludes it's not real, but again for this kind of claim, it's nearly impossible to &quot;really&quot; disprove it since one is disproving not-phenomona with more not-phenomena.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is really a curse, though, let's call it what it is: a curse of bad luck (both of which are pretty synonymous anyway). But &lt;strong&gt;luck is just a human construct that we create to try to find patterns and order between otherwise unrelated events&lt;/strong&gt;. And in the end, that's what all of these are: unrelated events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a rumor goes on this long, as Lagerbaer said in the comments, it creates a pretty powerful self-fulfilling prophecy. People are going to look in one place for problems, ignore them elsewhere, and cry loudly when they arise. What really needs to be asked is, &quot;Are these events, true or false, atypical?&quot; We're talking about one of the most popular plays/stories in the world, one that's been performed for over 400 years now. How many thousands, hundreds of thousands of performances is that? Google &quot;Macbeth performances&quot; and find almost nine million hits. Of course they're not all unique or useful, but this is an exercise in massive scale. Let's say Macbeth is only performed once per year. Your source document has 27 instances noted, but even 27 terrible incidents out of 400 is just 6.75%. Is the margin for accidents in stage performances so drastically less than 6.75% worldwide that this deserves to be considered bad luck?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, in looking for a curse, one finds oneself attaching mishaps to an event that would otherwise have no relevant place in that event's context (and are certainly in no way provably causal). England was hit with an extremely violent storm on the day production opened. So? What other billions of actions were taken that day, and why didn't they cause the storm? Lincoln was reading Macbeth a week before he was killed... and? That's not even talking about stage productions, that's implying any one of us could be stricken down for a 9th grade reading assignment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're looking for a pattern that's not there, that's all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In more fun news, in searching for the curse of Macbeth, I first accidentally looked for the &quot;curse of hamlet,&quot; and came upon &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_Ham&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this little gem&lt;/a&gt;, which seems appropriate here in name (given the asker's name), though certainly not in meaning (though if one does choose to believe in curses, it certainly helps in setting a very old precedent of sorts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3114" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T12:12:11.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4740" CreationDate="2011-06-20T19:21:07.427" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, public buses appear to be worse than cars, at least based on the data I found for the US.&#xA;(At present and on average. See the &quot;Caveats&quot; section for a discussion about this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; the answer from DJClayworth appears to be based on the same information, I just noticed. bbc.co.uk just links to the overview for the Dept. of Energy report, but doesn't break things down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; I used data from National Transit Database (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ntdprogram.gov/ntdprogram/data.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;) to calculate BTUs/passenger-mile for every US city. I was initially unsure of how to do this, but I just wasn't looking at the right documents. The data I used is available in the bundle of Excel files titled, &quot;RY 2009 Data Tables - Complete Set (Self-extracting xls)&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ntdprogram.gov/ntdprogram/pubs/dt/2009/excel/data_tables_2009.exe&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;). The necessary files are &quot;T17_Energy_Consumption.xls&quot; and &quot;T19_Op_Stats_Service.xls.&quot; From these, I was able to compare fuel used to passenger-miles traveled for all buses in the country. The results are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/keU4p.png&quot; alt=&quot;Passenger-miles for buses in the US&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Excel files above list all public transportation by type, so I sorted and pulled out all bus listings, then summed the listed passenger-miles for each state. I also used the conversion factors mentioned below to convert all of the fuel listing into BTUs and then simply divided BTUs by passenger-mile to find the rates. I used the value of 3,400 BTUs/passenger-mile as listed below and inserted &quot;Car&quot; into the chart. It appears 6th in the list; in other words, only five US states have achieved an efficiency higher than a car for transporting individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;See below for discussion about BTUs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I left the rest of the answer mostly as it was -- it jives fairly well with this data, other than the bus average coming out to about 5,000 BTUs/passenger-mile with the National Transport Database data vs. the Department of Energy value below of 4,300.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Data/Analysis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Data to attempt to answer this question may reside in The Transportation Data Energy Book, published by the US Department of Energy (DoE). We will be pulling from Edition 29, published in June 2010 (available &lt;a href=&quot;http://cta.ornl.gov/data/download29.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Table 2.12 is shown here (&lt;a href=&quot;http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb29/Edition29_Chapter02.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;):&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BrhJT.png&quot; alt=&quot;Table 2.12 All Vehicle Statistics&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To highlight the pertinent values for 2008:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cars:&lt;/strong&gt; 137 million cars traveled 1.6 quadrillion miles for a total of 2.6 quadrillion passenger-miles, and consumed 8.8 quadrillion BTUs of energy to do so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Buses:&lt;/strong&gt; 67,000 buses traveled 2.4 billion miles for a total of 21.9 trillion passenger-miles and consumed 95 trillion BTUs of energy to do so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Passenger-miles are a summation of (passenger&lt;sub&gt;n&lt;/sub&gt; * miles&lt;sub&gt;n&lt;/sub&gt;) for all passengers (1 passenger mile = 1 passenger travelling 1 mile, 2 passengers travelling 0.5 miles, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key value is &lt;strong&gt;BTU/passenger-mile&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cars:&lt;/strong&gt; 3,437 BTUs/passenger-mile&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Buses:&lt;/strong&gt; 4,348 BTUs/passenger-mile&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that, &lt;em&gt;on average&lt;/em&gt;, it is taking buses &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; energy than it takes cars to transport a given number of individuals a given amount of distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By using BTUs, fuel types are normalized by converting to energy per volume. See Table 2.5 in Chapter 2 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb29/Edition29_Chapter02.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;) for a breakdown of fuel type usage by vehicle type. Also, Appendix A (&lt;a href=&quot;http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb29/Edition29_Appendix_A.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;) provides the conversion factors for different fuels to BTUs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BTU Discussion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_thermal_unit&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;British Thermal Unit&lt;/a&gt; is a unit of energy. Analogs would be the calorie and the joule. Thus, the Department of Energy has taken each fuel type and translated it to an energy per volume output. Thus, if we know that a gallon of fuel X outputs Y BTUs, and we know the average number of BTUs required to move vehicle type Z a given distance, we have an efficiency value for each type of vehicle that has been normalized from fuel type to energy. Then we can analyze the energy required to transport a vehicle with it's typical passenger load (9.2 passengers per vehicle for buses, and 1.57 passengers per vehicle for cars) and determine energy per &quot;passenger-mile.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We want a &lt;em&gt;lower&lt;/em&gt; value here, since lower BTUs/passenger-mile means that it takes less energy to transport a given number of passengers a given distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See Table 11.11 in Chapter 11 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb29/Edition29_Chapter11.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;) for a breakdown of emissions by fuel type. Buses primarily use diesel, while cars primarily use gasoline; the emissions for these two aren't all that different, with diesel at 10,000 grams/gallon emitted and gasoline at 8,800 grams/gallon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caveats&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, this is only US data. I have no idea how the rest of the world compares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, this is a &lt;em&gt;snapshot&lt;/em&gt;. If buses were to increase their average &quot;load factor&quot; (persons/vehicle) such that their passenger miles were 30,000, they would be more efficient than cars &lt;em&gt;on average.&lt;/em&gt; If buses reduced their BTU consumption, this would also help a great deal (I was blown away by the fact that buses require almost 8x the BTUs to travel 1 vehicle-mile compared to cars and 7x for trucks). Now, this is the data for all buses in all cities in operation. Thus, there are probably some cities doing quite well, while others are doing &lt;em&gt;horribly&lt;/em&gt;. This paper abstract seems to confirm the same (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The simulation results show that substitution of bus for car travel generally decreases the overall costs, particularly the costs of congestion, but &lt;strong&gt;increases exhaust emission costs if bus load factors are insufficiently high&lt;/strong&gt;. In order to reduce exhaust emission costs from car to bus transfer at given load factors, the most effective policy option is to encourage the reduction of particulate emissions from bus engines. In terms of the overall costs, &lt;strong&gt;increasing bus load factors by relatively modest amounts can lead to substantial reductions in these overall costs&lt;/strong&gt;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1361920998000285&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it seems to depend on the usage efficiency of the vehicle. I also note that the rail figures in Table 2.12 shows that &quot;rail&quot; travel does better than cars, so whatever circumstances are surrounding that mode may be of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, suggested by @Ian, is that this comparison doesn't take into account the travel by individuals to the public transport departure location. This could be neutral in the case of walking, but it could be optimistic if folks are driving cars to a pickup location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T14:07:53.343" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T14:07:53.343" CommentCount="35" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3072" CreationDate="2011-06-20T19:32:12.523" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know the powers that be don't want me to base this on personal experience, but I'm a father of twins. Consider this field research. My twins, just turned two, absolutely understand each other's babble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plenty of times, I've seen one babble at the other and his brother (identical boys) will bring him something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for non-twins, I have no idea if they can understand each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3772" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T19:32:12.523" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4707" CreationDate="2011-06-20T19:40:19.210" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The play is cursed by tradition not by labor statistics.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Not that I could find any labor statistics or peer reviewed studies on the subject.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The curse in a nutshell...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Theater people are superstitious.&#xA;  There are lists of things that are&#xA;  prohibited when you are in a theater,&#xA;  things you must not do, otherwise the&#xA;  performance will go terribly wrong.&#xA;  For example, no actor would ever say&#xA;  the word Macbeth in a theater – it&#xA;  would bring certain disaster. Actors,&#xA;  instead, call it “The Scottish Play”&#xA;  and the title character “the Scottish&#xA;  Lord” in order to avoid pronouncing&#xA;  the word.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.steppenwolf.org/watchlisten/backstage/detail.aspx?id=23&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Theatre Superstitions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why are theatre people superstitious?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... on why it shouldn't surprise&#xA;  anyone that actors hold superstitious&#xA;  beliefs. In the best case, when you&#xA;  put on a show you choose to place&#xA;  yourself on the knife-edge between&#xA;  life and death. Yes, the death is&#xA;  metaphoric (nearly always), but that&#xA;  changes nothing. People who exist on a&#xA;  knife-edge are bound to pay close heed&#xA;  to anything they think will tip them&#xA;  one way or the other. Put that&#xA;  together with an innate organizing&#xA;  faculty and what results? A belief in&#xA;  gods. &lt;strong&gt;So actors follow a simple&#xA;  religion: Don't piss off the theater&#xA;  gods&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(emphasis mine)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benteague.com/books/titles/supernatural.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Review&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0800874951&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Supernatural&#xA;  on Stage: Ghosts and Superstitions of the Theatre&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the best explanation...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nonbelievers in the curse hold that&#xA;  aspects of the tragedy make it&#xA;  accident-prone. The chief culprits are&#xA;  dim lighting and stage combat,&#xA;  especially when performed with heavy,&#xA;  unwieldy broadswords. Also, since&#xA;  Macbeth is a popular and comparatively&#xA;  short play, it has frequently served&#xA;  as a late addition to a theater season&#xA;  if the company is struggling&#xA;  financially. Therefore, productions&#xA;  are under-rehearsed, resulting in&#xA;  on-stage calamity, and the curse gets&#xA;  blamed for an already-failing&#xA;  company’s subsequent closing.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gurnettheatre.com/images/Dramturg_Macbeth.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why You Shouldn’t Say “Macbeth” in a Theatre&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;see also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2267/whats-the-story-on-the-curse-of-em-macbeth-em&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What's the story on the curse of Macbeth?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Macbeth in a nutshell...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Tragedy of Macbeth&lt;/strong&gt; (commonly&#xA;  called Macbeth) is a play by William&#xA;  Shakespeare about a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regicide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;regicide&lt;/a&gt; and its&#xA;  aftermath. It is Shakespeare's&#xA;  shortest tragedy* and is believed to&#xA;  have been written sometime between&#xA;  1603 and 1607. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macbeth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The summary of the synopsis in a nutshell...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Three witches hatch a plan.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Macbeth and a buddy talk about the weather.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The witches tell Macbeth he will be king and stuff.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Macbeth writes a letter to his wife about the king idea.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lady Macbeth comes up with a plan to murder the king.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Macbeth doesn't think it's such a hot idea.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lady Macbeth calls him a chicken.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Macbeth murders the king and promptly freaks out.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Macbeth murders some guards and acts freaky.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Macbeth becomes king.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Macbeth talks with a ghost.    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The witches tell Macbeth &quot;beware Macduff&quot; and other stuff.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Macduff goes on holiday.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Macbeth stops by Macduff's castle and murders everyone: wife, kids, farm animals, etc.    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lady Macbeth totally loses it and kills herself.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Macduff comes back from holiday with an army.    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a battle with lots of blood.    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Macduff cuts off Macbeth's head. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And then is heard no more. It is a tale&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Signifying nothing. &lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt; - Macbeth, Act V, scene v.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Tragedy: A dramatic form (structure) first defined in Aristotle's Poetics (c.335 BCE).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T19:40:19.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4753" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-20T22:51:18.743" Score="20" ViewCount="2143" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6aRj3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Thorium&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that, as of lately &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;thorium&lt;/a&gt; is steadily increasing in popularity, as an alternative to traditional nuclear fuels. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vzotsvvkw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;'s Mr. Kirk Sorensen in a TED video advocating the use of thorium. Thorium even has a nice, green &lt;a href=&quot;http://energyfromthorium.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;, among other resources expounding on how awesome it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general picture projected by thorium advocates is that it is very much like a silver bullet for the energy crisis. This sounds wonderful, but also too good to be true. If it's as good as they say, how come thorium reactors are not common ? Surely it has disadvantages as well ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-01-28T07:00:45.347" LastActivityDate="2023-01-17T20:29:28.243" Title="Can thorium end the energy crisis?" Tags="|energy|nuclear-energy|power-generation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4724" CreationDate="2011-06-20T23:45:01.313" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because the condition is so variable and widely thought to be underdiagnosed, it's a little of both, actually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the term &quot;non-celiac sensitivity&quot; usually refers to sub-clinical cases of Celiac where the symptoms are present, but not of such a nature that the patient ever seeks medical attention regarding them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First, what is Celiac?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Celiac disease (CD) is an&#xA;  immune-mediated disease of the&#xA;  intestines that is triggered by the&#xA;  ingestion of gluten in genetically&#xA;  susceptible individuals. Gluten is the&#xA;  major protein component of wheat, rye,&#xA;  and barley.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1790189-overview&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; (medscape link)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the condition can be explained as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The susceptible person ingests gluten&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The body's immunologic response goes haywire, because it identifies the protein on the &#xA; wheat gluten (usually &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.celiac.com/articles/8/1/What-is-gluten-What-is-gliadin/Page1.html&quot;&gt;gliadin&lt;/a&gt;) as &quot;foreign&quot; and attacks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The intestinal mucosa is damaged in the cross-fire.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The damaged mucosa is no longer able to function properly and as a result will not properly &#xA; absorb nutrients until it is repaired.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current research is indicating a possible genetic link....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Genetic predisposition plays a key&#xA;  role in CD and considerable progress&#xA;  has been made recently in identifying&#xA;  genes that are responsible for CD&#xA;  predisposition. It is well known that&#xA;  CD is strongly associated with&#xA;  specific HLA class II genes known as&#xA;  HLA-DQ2 and HLA-DQ8 located on&#xA;  chromosome 6p21.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1790189-overview&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; (medscape link)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The signs and symptoms a person with this condition will manifest are dependent on many things, such as the length of intestine involved, and age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In infants&lt;/strong&gt; Celiac can be life-threatening or cause permanent sequelae such as growth and developmental delays, weakness and muscle wasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In older children&lt;/strong&gt; gastrointestinal symptoms are often seen, such as abdominal pain, diarrhea, dyspepsia, flatulence and weight loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In adults&lt;/strong&gt; the condition is less likely to be life-threatening and are often vague or non-specific symptoms such as impaired fertility, fatigue, depression, anemia, and sometimes short stature.  Adults are more likely to manifest these symptoms than the digestive symptoms displayed in younger patients with celiac.  The symptoms exhibit this wide range and variety of presentations because they often co-present with the symptoms of malabsorbtion caused by the damage done, which is dependent on the amount of intestine the disease has damaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also relevant is the fact that up to 40% of patients who have been diagnosed serologically (In the US, serologic tests are usually IgA endomysial Antibody Test and IgA tTG antibody test which have &gt;90% sensitivity and a &gt;95% specificity for celiac, so they are fairly reliable.  There are also other tests available, though) for celiac have the &quot;silent&quot; form of the condition, in which there are little to no symptoms present.  The reason for this remains unclear (This comes directly from &lt;a href=&quot;http://accessmedicine.com/resourceTOC.aspx?resourceID=1&quot;&gt;Current Medical Diagnosis &amp;amp; Treatment&lt;/a&gt;, but the one my shelf, sorry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those who may have a &quot;silent&quot; or sub-clinical(sometimes referred to as &quot;Non-Celiac sensitivity popularly, but not by the medical community) case of Celiac will of course benefit from reducing, if not eliminating gluten from the diet.  However, true elimination of gluten exposure is &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; difficult, as it is in practically everything, not merely food products, but many medications, some glues, such as one used in certain brands of cigarettes (I know, yet another reason not to smoke).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though attempts at self diagnosis are almost always unwise even for trained medical professionals, if a person perhaps has a family history of the disease or a strong reason to suspect they might be experiencing a reaction to gluten, certainly a trial of a gluten free diet for a period of time is a relatively safe way to see if improvement occurs.  However there are certain &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.celiacguide.org/aboutcd.html#Co-Morbidities&quot;&gt;comorbidities&lt;/a&gt; with celiac disease that should be looked into by a physician, such as diabetes, osteoporosis, increased risk for certain cancers, if you think you actually do have celiac.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And now for the fads....&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main &quot;selling point&quot; for the gluten-free diet is the reported under-diagnosing of celiac (at least in the US).  As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/HB_web/getting-out-the-gluten.htm&quot;&gt;Harvard Health&lt;/a&gt; reminds us:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Celiac specialists say the disease&#xA;  isn’t diagnosed as often as it should&#xA;  be. As a result, many people suffer&#xA;  with it for years, often after getting&#xA;  other — and incorrect — diagnoses and&#xA;  useless treatments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leaves much room for people to peddle the gluten-free diet. Especially if those selling the plans and products can convince you that you are in that 40% mentioned above who may have &quot;silent&quot; or sub-clinical celiac.  Also, since there are virtually no documented side effects of an otherwise healthy person adopting a gluten-free diet, there's the added selling point of the &quot;what's the harm?&quot; argument. However, just because there aren't many documented adverse effects does not mean there are benefits, and even most of the advocates for the diet make vague and weak arguments as to the benefits of a gluten free diet a healthy individual, sometimes relying on the &quot;common sense&quot; argument that people adhering to a gluten-free diet would also be avoiding many of the most common fried and fattening foods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Basing your diet off of the&#xA;  gluten-free phenomenon can be&#xA;  genuinely healthy and may benefit your&#xA;  cholesterol levels, digestion, and&#xA;  energy level. You don’t have to worry&#xA;  about the little things like soy sauce&#xA;  and malt flavorings, but if you avoid&#xA;  the major red flags in the gluten-free&#xA;  diet, you just might start to feel&#xA;  healthier. For example, you would have&#xA;  to avoid everything that’s fried&#xA;  because of the breading, which would&#xA;  allow you to avoid the oil and fat, as&#xA;  well.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hivehealthmedia.com/enjoying-benefits-gluten-free-diet/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another argument which falls on the side of those selling the gluten-free diet is that there has been at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21605198&quot;&gt;one study&lt;/a&gt; done indicating that the higher cost and lower availability of gluten-free products is one of the chief factors for non-compliance in diagnosed celiac patients, and an increase in the popularity and availability of gluten-free products may help this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusions:  There is limited&#xA;  availability of gluten-free foods and&#xA;  they are generally more expensive than&#xA;  their standard counterparts. This may&#xA;  impact on compliance to a gluten-free&#xA;  diet, with potential nutritional and&#xA;  clinical consequences, together with&#xA;  an increased risk of complications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been some study done into how gluten metabolism affects the natural bacterial activity in the intestines, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21671042&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The activity of the intestinal&#xA;  microbiota is modified by gluten&#xA;  intake in the diet. The incorporation&#xA;  of gluten in the diet increases the&#xA;  activity of a gluten proteolytic&#xA;  activity in the faeces&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but however, there is no proven practical application for this finding, as far as I know.  And there have been no documented instances of benefits for non-celiac patients adopting the gluten-free diet, even though there has been some mention of a weak correlation with lower cholesterol levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, it's not likely to harm you.  But then again, it's probably not likely to help you, unless you actually are in that 40% of &quot;silent&quot; celiac cases.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-20T23:57:11.120" LastActivityDate="2011-06-20T23:57:11.120" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4740" CreationDate="2011-06-21T03:52:08.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This page with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www3.ttc.ca/About_the_TTC/Operating_Statistics/2010.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2010 statistics for Toronto's public transport&lt;/a&gt; includes ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;124 million km by bus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;477 million passengers (total: by bus and subway)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you assume that each passenger rides the bus for several ('x') km on average, that implies an average of approximately 4'x' passengers per bus (or actually a bit less because some number of those passengers only take the subway and not a bus ride).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to guess: and my guess is that this 'x' is greater than 2 (km per average passenger trip). The &quot;Table 1.2&quot; shown in other answers suggests you need an average of 11 passengers/bus to break even with cars (measuring fuel/passenger/distance), and therefore it seems to me that the TTC might break even on that metric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fuel consumption for a (unloaded) bus is relatively high (buses are neither light-weight nor aerodynamic, and outside the stop-and-start of the down-town core, expensive hybrid technologies like regenerative braking result in fuel economies of only about 10%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that the TTC doesn't publish and perhaps doesn't even collect statistics on passenger-miles: they'e only/mostly/more interested in vehicle miles, number of fares (passenger trips, not passenger distances, because fares are fixed-rate and distance-independent), and vehicle occupancy when and only when the occupancy get high enough to require scheduling more vehicles (in rush hour).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside of rush hour they are scheduled to provide convenient service (e.g. bus routes having service 4 or 5 times an hour throughout the day and into the night as well, and not only during rush hour), even when occupancy is low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two points to note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For each new passenger, it is 'greener' if they take the bus: because, the bus is running anyway.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2011/cc/comm/communicationfile-18682.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;communication published by the City of Toronto&lt;/a&gt; (which doesn't reference the source of every statistic, and which is written by an city counsillor who is an &quot;environmental activist&quot;) says of public transit that we &quot;we couldn't afford to do without it&quot;, according to a dozen or more other metrics (economic, social, and environmental).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On its page 11, Marilyn Churley's report cited above says, &quot;average bus occupancy is about 20 people&quot;: but without explaining that figure. For all I know, that figure might be rush-hour-only: but if so that wouldn't be the first time that some expensive system is engineered to cope primarily with peak demand (it's ditto electricity generation, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T13:09:40.413" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T13:09:40.413" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4630" CreationDate="2011-06-21T07:43:29.357" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: We do not know for sure, but &lt;strong&gt;it is likely for most products some DRM is better than none.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer: There were no controlled experiments done which would reliably answer this. The experiments which were done (like DRM-free product &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gog.com/en/frontpage/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sales of old games&lt;/a&gt;) are not representative enough, as the product sold is different from a typical new game and even the target audience is likely to be different. There are few things to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What is DRM&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything which tries to prevent obtaining unauthorized copies of a digital product is a  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DRM&lt;/a&gt;. It may be something very simple (like a serial number) or complicated (like StarForce or SecuROM copy protection schemes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No protection - plenty of copying&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When price is high and there is nothing preventing copying, it is very likely there will be many people copying the product. The exact number varies with platform, genre and location.  It is estimated around 70 % of the users for most new PC games did not buy the game (see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://gametheoryonline.com/2010/08/30/console-piracy-pc-game-pirate/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why Aren’t Console Piracy Rates Higher?&lt;/a&gt;). What is not established (and it is hard to establish) is how many of those people would buy the product if copying would not be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still I think we can formulate a following assumption: &lt;strong&gt;(i) by making DRM more efficient in preventing copying there will be more people who will buy the game instead of copying it&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Too much protection - reduced sales&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When DRM is perceived to be too restrictive (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.videogamer.com/news/gamers_angry_over_spore_copy_protection.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;it was in case of EA Spore&lt;/a&gt;, or many &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.glop.org/starforce/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;StarForce protected&lt;/a&gt; games), it harms sales. &lt;em&gt;Note: in the end it does not matter if the DRM is really restrictive or not, it is enough it is percieved as such and receives a bad publicity.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads to another assumption: &lt;strong&gt;(ii) by making DRM too restrictive there will be less people bying the game, as more of them will decide to copy it instead, or not to have it at all&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Thought experiment - finding optimum DRM&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of DRM forms, with varying efficiency and varying adverse effects for legitimate users. Generally the more successful is DRM to prevent copying, the more it is restrictive as well. If there would be a DRM which would reliably prevent making illegal copies but would present no restrictions to a legitimate user, it is likely to be very effective in increasing sales (even this is not 100 % sure, as sometimes illegal copies may actually increase sales by serving as a means to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peterkentconsulting.com/geek/feb97.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;try before you buy&lt;/a&gt;). However let us assume now that as DRM increases efficiency, it also increases adverse effects (and often also cost of implementing DRM increases). If publisher is interesting in maximizing his profits, he needs to find optimum of the function:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;+ profits gained by people buying instead of copying (assumption (i))&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;- profits lost by people not buying (assumption (ii))&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;- cost of implementing and applying the DRM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is obvious that in most cases the optimum point will lie somewhere in the middle. It is hard to establish where exactly the optimum is, but it is very unusual that it would be no DRM at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some DRM causes increased profits, but as DRM becomes perceived as too much restrictive, it lessens the profits. The exact optimum varies with product and platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I am aware assumption (i) is central and critical assumption. I doubt there are any controlled experiments done in this area, but I think it is quite safe to assume the people behavior is similar for digital products as for real products. A simple analogy: almost no  store assumes people will pay &amp;quot;just because they want&amp;quot;, but there is usually some kind of &amp;quot;anti-stealing measures&amp;quot;, like having the cashier near the store exit, so that customers have to go around it. Such measures are not too restrictive (no shop owner is searching each customer for stolen items) and exact optimum depends on how much goods cost and how easy it is to steal them. I have yet to see a self-service jewelry store, but such arrangement is common for groceries.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T19:34:33.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4740" CreationDate="2011-06-21T10:00:40.377" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other answers have &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4740/is-public-transport-worse-than-cars/4750#4750&quot;&gt;shown&lt;/a&gt; evidence that public transport, particularly buses, is less efficient than car transport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, from the data, it looks like this is due to the buses being under capacity. They are inefficient compared to cars because they are much bigger and use more fuel while only providing transport for a few more people. From the table:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VxxZZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;http://i.imgur.com/o8710.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transit buses provide an average load factor of 7.61 people/vehicle more than cars. Their energy use is much higher such that for these load factors, it is less efficient to use bus transport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't really a fair comparison because both vehicles could take more passengers. It is known that vehicles are most efficient per passenger when they hold the maximum number of passengers they can. This is because the extra energy cost of adding a person to a vehicle is much less than having another partially filled vehicle making the same journey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a proper comparison, we would need data for the Btu per passenger mile for each vehicle used at its maximum capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this person isn't lying as such but the way he is using the data is misleading. The data used is based upon inefficient use of transport. If more people took the bus, the buses would become more efficient (a lower Btu per passenger-mile) and it would eliminate extra cars which themselves are currently expending energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-03-14T18:36:52.223" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T18:36:52.223" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4739" CreationDate="2011-06-21T11:07:24.037" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;This appears to be inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%E2%80%93Korea_disputes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Japan vs. Korea disputes&lt;/a&gt; that continue to plague us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20110617-00000078-scn-kr&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to Yahoo News Japan&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Japanese people create meat from human&#xA;feces; Korean net users say&#xA;'President's office should buy'&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Korean &amp;quot;No Cut News&amp;quot;,&#xA;a Japanese scientist has created &amp;quot;dung&#xA;meat&amp;quot; out of human feces. It is said&#xA;to be high in nutritious value. This&#xA;news has hit the Korean web by storm,&#xA;and many Korean Internet users are&#xA;taking the opportunity to take jabs at&#xA;the Korean government. Reported by&#xA;China Net Japanese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the report, Japanese&#xA;scientist Ikeda Mitsuyuki has&#xA;determined in reprocessing experiments&#xA;that human feces are rich in proteins,&#xA;and has created edible &amp;quot;dung meat&amp;quot;.&#xA;Ikeda explains, &amp;quot;This dung meat is&#xA;comprised of proteins distilled from&#xA;human feces, along with bean products&#xA;and beef. It tastes the same as beef.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &amp;quot;meat&amp;quot; contains 63% protein as&#xA;well as 25% carbohydrates. It is thus&#xA;highly nutritious, and costs 10 to 20&#xA;times more than normal meat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been a large response on&#xA;Korean portal site &amp;quot;Daum&amp;quot;. One user&#xA;made a comment regarding Korean&#xA;government officials, stating &amp;quot;The&#xA;Government house should buy a ton of&#xA;this dung meat. I'd like to see them&#xA;set up cameras in their cafeterias and&#xA;televise their meals. It'd be fun to&#xA;watch the government eat sh#t.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another user writes, &amp;quot;Japanese&#xA;scientists are able to make food out&#xA;of sh#t. They are clearly very&#xA;technologically advanced. Korean&#xA;scientists have a lot to learn from&#xA;them.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Edited by Yonehara Yuko)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not surprisingly, the comments are full of racism towards Koreans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Japanese scientist is well aware of the Koreans' tastes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd &lt;em&gt;report&lt;/em&gt; this? How stupid do you have to be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'cuz the Koreans love their dung wine, right? lol, it's perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To hell with all that K-Pop and Korean dramas they show in the Japanese media. Start showing them all this stuff!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You want to steal it from us again and sell it as a Korean delicacy along with ttongsul, don't you? Be my guest, you can have this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the ttongsul in the last comment, it's a dung wine that's rumored in Japan to be a delicacy in Korea. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nemopan.com/board/1762629/page/235&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;story there&lt;/a&gt; is disgustingly symmetrical (forgive me if my translation is incorrect; my Korean is terrible and Naver Dictionary/Translate can only help so much):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Koreans drink 'ttongsul (dung wine)',&#xA;says Japanese article&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is commotion on a popular&#xA;Japanese portal site regarding an&#xA;article that states falsely that&#xA;&amp;quot;Koreans enjoy ttongsul&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Japanese blog news site &amp;quot;Rocket News&#xA;24&amp;quot; wrote last July 31st entitled&#xA;&amp;quot;What does Korean human feces wine&#xA;'ttongsul' taste like?&amp;quot;. It writes of&#xA;how a Japanese woman learned of this&#xA;supposedly traditional Korean wine. It&#xA;also describes how this ttongsul is&#xA;supposedly manufactured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article writes that it is an item&#xA;of Chinese (Oriental) medicine, and&#xA;that people still drink it&#xA;recreationally, especially in the&#xA;countryside. The article was published&#xA;on popular Japanese search portal site&#xA;Livedoor. It is based on a blog post&#xA;by a Japanese woman who apparently&#xA;married in Korea, and was told of this&#xA;by her husband.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to historical documents,&#xA;ttongsul has indeed existed, and was&#xA;used to treat blood congestion as well&#xA;as back pain. Dog and bird feces were&#xA;also said to be used to make wine.&#xA;However, it would not be an&#xA;overstatement to say that virtually no&#xA;one drinks such wines now, being used&#xA;only as fertilizer in some cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Netizens express disbelief that such a&#xA;fallacious article could reach the top&#xA;of Japan's most popular portal site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this &amp;quot;dung meat&amp;quot; rumor is likely a retaliatory effort by some faceless troll.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This pisses me off beyond words -- not because the &amp;quot;dung meat&amp;quot; thing is so racist, but because the Japanese are going to believe they're justified in their rampant belligerent racist attitudes when in fact we've been pulling this exact same nonsense the whole time -- and evidently aren't even admitting to it despite being aware of the fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are any Koreans reading this, I'm sorry that you have to put up with this. This is extremely disheartening. Because you know what? &lt;em&gt;We&lt;/em&gt; started it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3776" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T09:02:20.093" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4661" CreationDate="2011-06-21T14:29:18.970" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;When asking &amp;quot;who was the first to fly?&amp;quot; the question is usually interpreted to mean &amp;quot;who was the first to achieve powered, controlled flight in a heavier than air machine&amp;quot;. That excludes a number of glider builders, the most prominent being Otto Lillienthal, who nonethless deserve credit for being great aviation pioneers and inventors, on whose shoulders the powered aircraft pioneers built their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best resource I have found on this subject is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/history/q0159.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, detailing the work of some aviation pioneers contemporary and previous to the Wright Brothers. A number of people claim (or have claimed for them) powered controlled flight prior to the Wright Brothers, but all of them have difficulty with their claims. Here are a few extracts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Augustus Moore Herring, October 1898&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;quot;Herring is reported to have flown his powered glider on two attempts. [...] While Herring's craft probably did fly with an engine aboard, the craft was not controlled and the flight was not sustainable.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Preston Watson, summer 1903&lt;/strong&gt; Local residents recalled witnessing Watson making short flights of an aircraft powered by a single engine between 1903 and 1904, but no one could remember any exact dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gustave Whitehead, August 1901&lt;/strong&gt; According to Whitehead supporters, his greatest success came on 14 August 1901 when Gustave is said to have made as many as four test flights of the No. 21. [...] Unfortunately, the evidence to back up any of these rather extraordinary claims is sketchy, at best. The most ardent believers in Whitehead's accomplishments did not publish any of their claims until over 30 years after they are alleged to have occurred. By this time, only one eye witness could be found to corroborate the stories, and this individual had a financial interest in a book being written about Whitehead. [...] Perhaps the most telling evidence of all is the fact that his wife could not remember any instance of seeing her husband flying in one of his planes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional article can be found in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-equivocal-success-of-2003-12&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other contenders for the &amp;quot;first airplane&amp;quot; laurels merely made short or uncontrolled flights. Clement Ader can be credited with the first powered takeoff in 1890. But his steam-powered aircraft reached an altitude of eight inches, sufficient to classify it as a flight only to his French countrymen. German-born Gustave Whitehead was adept at fabricating stories about flying in the U.S., but he never built a workable airplane. New Zealanders are proud of Richard Pearse: in March 1903 this reclusive, eccentric farmer flew his bamboo-and-canvas monoplane for about 450 feet before crashing into a gorse hedge. His example illustrates, rather painfully, the need for controllability in aerial navigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By appropriately expanding the definition of &amp;quot;fly&amp;quot; (or by choosing to believe some undocumented and implausible claims) you can make a case for some of the other pioneers. But the Wrights undoubtedly have the best documented and most credible case for being the first to fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T14:36:06.703" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4761" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5628" CreationDate="2011-06-21T14:42:01.997" Score="11" ViewCount="742" Body="&lt;p&gt;Iran has claimed that it intends to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space.com/11982-iran-launches-observation-satellite-rasad.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;put someone on the moon by 2025&lt;/a&gt;. I find it hard to believe that Iran has the necessary financial resources to accomplish such a mission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding some unpredictable advances in the cost-effectiveness of space-travel, is it likely or even possible that Iran will have the ability to finance the innovation or (if such a market exists) purchase of the technology necessary to put a person on the moon by the year 2025? In other words, is the projected financial cost of putting a person on the moon in 2025 beyond what Iran can feasibly afford by 2025?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd expect the cost of putting a living person on the moon to be beyond what all but a few countries can afford, even over the course of the next 14 years. That being said I don't know how much space travel to the moon would cost today – much less in 14 years. I also don't know what Iran can reasonably afford to pay for such a venture. As a result, I am skeptical of the plausibility of Iran's claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:41:22.417" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:41:22.417" Title="Can Iran afford to put someone on the moon by 2025?" Tags="|economics|space-flight|iran|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4762" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-21T15:04:59.163" Score="9" ViewCount="12222" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was out to breakfast with a friend today and he's started on the &amp;quot;Karen Hurd diet.&amp;quot; I've heard of this dietitian before in my circles and several follow her like a savior. In fact, when my wife was pregnant with our first, she was told that Karen Hurd had a &amp;quot;cure&amp;quot; for morning sickness: &lt;em&gt;soluble fiber&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This morning I found out that Karen also has a cure for high cholesterol (drum roll): &lt;em&gt;soluble fiber&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've looked into this a bit before, particularly when my wife was nauseous. She brought home a writeup of Karen Hurd's theory and I didn't buy it (this was about 3.5 years ago).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bile is a digestive enzyme designed to break down the fatty acids that we eat. When we have no fatty acids in our duodenum (the first part of the small intestine and what most people commonly call “the stomach”), there is nothing to digest but YOU! This causes us to feel nauseous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to make sense that if the bile is meant to digest fatty acids, all we need to do is give the bile the fatty acids it wants to digest. Then the bile will not bother our intestinal lining making us feel nauseous. But, when we eat foods with fats in them, it actually causes a further release of bile. Now we have the original bile making us feel queasy PLUS a new onslaught of this same nauseous-causing substance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soluble fiber and bile (or any fatty acid) have a great affinity toward one another. In fact, they will bind so tightly together that they cannot be parted. As no fiber (soluble or insoluble) can cross the intestinal barrier, all the bile that has been bound together with the soluble fiber will exit the body through a bowel movement. That means the bile will not recycle. That means the bile will not grow nasty with accumulating debris. That means you will feel less nauseous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is quite similar in her writeup on high cholesterol:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our Creator designed our bodies to use cholesterol in the making of bile. Bile is a digestive enzyme that aids in the breaking down of fats in the intestinal tract. If a person can produce a regular supply of bile, then cholesterol levels will drop as this raw material is converted into a useful digestive enzyme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soluble fiber binds tightly with bile in the intestinal tract, in fact, so tightly that the bile cannot be reabsorbed through the intestinal tract and return to the liver...Over the course of time, levels will fall to the point of a total cholesterol of 150 or below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...it is this author’s hypothesis that the liver releases an enzyme at this point of 150 and below that literally melts the hardened plaque off the interior of the blood vessel walls, so that the oxidized cholesterol is then available in the bloodstream for the liver to utilize in the making of bile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any evidence to support these claims about the interaction between bile, cholesterol, hormones, and soluble fiber?&lt;/strong&gt; I became suspicious when I read the writeup on morning sickness many years ago, but to hear such a similar hypothesis (bile, etc.) being proposed re. high cholesterol &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; struck me as odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oddly enough, check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;q=bile+site%3Awww.karenhurd.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; google search for the word &amp;quot;bile&amp;quot; on her site. Quite a few of her writeups mention it. I've never heard of bile being so destructive or such an integral component to various health issues before hearing about this dietitian and want to investigate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sources&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Karen Hurd site (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.karenhurd.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writeup on morning sickness (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.karenhurd.com/concern_morning_sickness.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Writeup on cholesterol (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.karenhurd.com/concern_high_cholserterol.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2021-12-01T12:33:01.837" Title="Is soluble fiber a miracle dietary component?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|cholesterol|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4747" CreationDate="2011-06-21T17:53:01.040" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;This one was fun to look into, as I've often wondered about those bars, as well as football players/other athletes as they sit on the sidelines and suck down O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; from a mask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;strong&gt;Nope!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, for a &quot;normal, healthy individual without respiratory problems,&quot; they're not really gonna hurt anyone, either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer, with science and stuff:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rcjournal.com/abstracts/2004/?id=OF-04-010%20Cullen&quot;&gt;small study that was done in 2004 at Indiana University&lt;/a&gt;, researchers took some college students with no heart or lung conditions, and did a single-blind test where some were given oxygen to consume, and some were given regular compressed air. They found that (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Data gathered from the evaluation concluded that there was little to no difference with SaO2, HR, and post-VAS measures, or improvement post-gas administration between the oxygen and sham group. &lt;strong&gt;Calculations indicated there were no statistical significances between those who received oxygen and those who received air. Any purported beneficial effects by proponents of oxygen bars are yet to be substantiated.&lt;/strong&gt; Large scale studies determining the benefits of oxygen bars should be conducted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out the abstract there for a table with the actual figures. The table goes a long way towards showing that people claiming to physically feel different are probably heavily placebo influenced. Their heart rates are elevated, but the oxygen content of their blood is the same (more on this later). It follows that some people might feel (un)pleasantly lightheaded or something else, but it's unlikely to be anything serious or particularly meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earlier than that, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mamashealth.com/doc/oxygen.asp&quot;&gt;a report from a 2002 issue&lt;/a&gt; of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/default.htm&quot;&gt;FDA Consumer&lt;/a&gt; (reproduced here at a different website) about oxygen bars made a lot of points to help debunk the idea that inhaling extra oxygen is good for you/useful at all (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The American Lung Association says that &lt;strong&gt;inhaling oxygen at oxygen bars is unlikely to have a beneficial physiological effect&lt;/strong&gt;, but adds &quot;there is no evidence that oxygen at the low flow levels used in bars can be dangerous to a normal person's health.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comparing to what we normally breathe (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But &lt;strong&gt;there are no long-term, well-controlled scientific studies that support these claims for oxygen in healthy people. And people with healthy lungs don't need additional oxygen&lt;/strong&gt;, says Mary Purucker, M.D., Ph.D., a pulmonary specialist in CDER. &quot;We've evolved for millions of years in an atmosphere of about 21 percent oxygen.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning how the bars generally get the oxygen to you, and its composition (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many oxygen bars use a concentrator, which filters out the nitrogen and other gases in the air circulating in the room, and then delivers the concentrated oxygen, about 95 percent pure, through a hose at a continuous flow rate. But oxygen users inhale the surrounding air along with the oxygen pumped through the nose hose, which decreases the concentration. The concentration is further decreased when oxygen is pumped through an aroma. According to one oxygen bar supplier, the customer gets less than 50 percent pure oxygen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although breathing these low levels of oxygen may not hurt a healthy person, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;people have nothing to gain by frequenting oxygen bars&lt;/strong&gt;, and subject themselves to unnecessary risk,&quot; says Purucker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I alluded to above, and as Dr. Purucker explains, humans are pretty heavily adapted to optimally breathe oxygen from an en environment of ~78% nitrogen and ~21% oxygen. In fact, blood leaving the lungs is &lt;strong&gt;already &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uic.edu/classes/bios/bios100/lecturesf04am/lect20.htm&quot;&gt;97% saturated with oxygen&lt;/a&gt;, just from breathing normally&lt;/strong&gt;. It seems highly unlikely that even breathing a solution of 95%-100% oxygen is going to do much more to optimize one's blood oxygenation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I know it wasn't explicitly asked about, but I feel like it's also worth including some information about athletes breathing supplemental oxygen. The same FDA report explains about athletes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;They don't need it,&quot; says Conrad Earnest, Ph.D., director of exercise physiology at the Cooper Institute in Dallas. &quot;It's one of the biggest placebo effects going,&quot; he adds. &quot;It's a combative activity, so yes, the [football] players are going to be out of breath, but it's because of massive exertion--not because of lack of oxygen.&quot; The exception, says Earnest, might be athletes who play at higher elevations than they are used to, and don't have time to acclimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/262/2/264.full.pdf&quot;&gt;an older study&lt;/a&gt; (subscription only, sorry) from the Journal of the American Medical Association found that (footnotes mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Winter et al's]&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; simple, but elegant, experiment shows no difference in plasma lactate levels after a maximal exercise test, or in subsequent maximal exercise performance after breathing 100% oxygen for 4 minutes of recovery. Strengths of the study include a randomized, double-blind, crossover design and the study subjects were highly trained... professional soccer players.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1: Winter FD, Snell PG, Stray-GundersenJ. Effects of 100% oxygen on performance of professional soccer players. JAMA. 1989;262:227-229&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to reiterate what was already concluded here, this time by citing a study over 30 years ago (footnote numbering theirs, source and emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The nearly complete saturation of arterial blood with oxygen while breathing atmospheric air makes it improbable that oxygen enriched air will have any benefit on recovery from exercise.&lt;/strong&gt; Moreover, although oxygen is usually administered to athletes with the belief that it will aid in lactate clearance, &lt;strong&gt;it is ironic that athletes would probably lower lactate concentrations more rapidly if they would walk during recovery rather than sit and breathe 100% oxygen.&lt;/strong&gt; In 1975, Beicastro and Bonen&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; showed that lactate removal from the blood was more rapid if subjects exercised at 30% or 45% of VO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;max than if they rested immediately after strenuous exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7: Belcastro AN, Bonen A. Lactic acid removal rates during controlled and uncontrolled recovery exercise. J Appl Physiol. 1975;39:932-936.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3114" LastEditorUserId="3114" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T18:07:42.080" LastActivityDate="2011-06-21T18:07:42.080" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1738" CreationDate="2011-06-21T18:38:39.963" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not positive on the definitive answer -- this may be very difficult to extract a causal relationship from in terms of the available literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I have found, many suggest that those who use drugs in the first place already have some difficulties/pre-dispositions to such usage. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fergusson/Horwood, &amp;quot;Early onset cannabis use and psychosocial adjustment in young adults,&amp;quot; 1997 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.1997.tb03198.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, those electing to use cannabis were a high risk population characterized by social disadvantage, childhood adversity, early onset behavioural difficulties and adverse peer affiliations. Secondly, early onset cannabis use was associated with subsequent affiliations with delinquent and substance using peers, moving away from home and dropping out of education with these factors in turn, being associated with increased psychosocial risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Newcomb/Bentler, &amp;quot;Impact of adolescent drug use and social support on problems of young adults,&amp;quot; 1988 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/97/1/64/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We obtained data from 654 teenagers when they were in early and late adolescence and used it to evaluate resultant problems reported by this same group of youngsters when they were young adults. General, or polydrug, use increased drug and alcohol, health, and family problems... Alcohol use, which was not reflected in General Drug Use, had no specific negative effects, but it reduced loneliness in romantic relationships, self-derogation, and family problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;General social support during adolescence provided a significant amelioration of all seven young-adult problem areas.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Newcomb/Bentler, &amp;quot;Consequences of adolescent drug use: Impact on the lives of young adults (Book),&amp;quot; 1988 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&amp;amp;uid=1988-98105-000&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/143883&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Table of Contents&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using its unique data base of 654 young adults who have been followed since early adolescences, &lt;strong&gt;the book assesses the effects of adolescent drug use on young adult family formation and stability, deviant behavior, sexual behavior and involvement, educational pursuits, livelihood pursuits, mental health, and social integration.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trinidad/Johnson, &amp;quot;The association between emotional intelligence and early adolescent tobacco and alcohol use,&amp;quot; 2000 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886901000083&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study was conducted to explore the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and adolescent tobacco and alcohol use (TAU). Subjects were 205 multi-ethnic adolescents (52% male) from middle schools in southern California (mean AGE=12.63 years), 153 from a public school and 52 from a parochial school. An abbreviated version of the Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale... was used to assess the EI of the students. &lt;strong&gt;EI was negatively correlated with a general, overall measure of tobacco and alcohol use, and with individual tobacco and alcohol scales and items.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does all of this amount to? I'm not quite sure, but I'd at least put forward the following as potential hypotheses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At least two of the studies have shown that those who began to use &lt;em&gt;already&lt;/em&gt; had some family, psychological issues, and lack of social support. This might be a case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hindsight bias&lt;/a&gt;, in which development issues that were unnoticed prior to drug usage are now explained away as &amp;quot;common sense&amp;quot; once drug usage escalates.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The study showing that social support alleviated some of the negatives typically brought about by drug use may shed some light on the source of issues/immaturity. Perhaps one's peer group and their influences matter more than consumed substances.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The work by Newcomb/Bentler, particularly the book, might be fantastic follow-up material. They appear to have gauged the effects of younger-aged drug use on later life endeavors. While not particularly evaluating emotional growth &lt;em&gt;during&lt;/em&gt; usage, this book might shed light on whether post-usage individuals displayed significant differences from peers that had not previously used.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find a study indicating that drug use may affect age-critical neurological development:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Crews, et al., &amp;quot;Adolescent cortical development: A critical period of vulnerability for addiction,&amp;quot; 2006 (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009130570600400X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frontal cortical development is later in adolescence and likely contributes to refinement of reasoning, goal and priority setting, impulse control and evaluating long and short term rewards. Adolescent humans have high levels of binge drinking and experimentation with other drugs. &lt;strong&gt;This review presents findings supporting adolescence as a critical period of cortical development important for establishing life long adult characteristics that are disrupted by alcohol and drug use.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, these folks at least make the case that drug use may negatively affect a critical period in brain development and lead to negative outcomes. Toward the bottom of that article, they put forward this graphic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jCrkk.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Map of drug use effects on development&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read the report at your leisure, but this model appears to suggest that heavy consumption disrupts development such that one stabilizes at a &lt;em&gt;lower level&lt;/em&gt; than one who never experienced disrupted growth. Thus, this might support the idea that one stagnates for some time during addiction, or at least slows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll conclude there -- I wish I had been able to find something more definitive. I may revise the answer if I get time to look into this from another angle which occurred to me: one could examine what contributes to increased maturity and see if drugs are used as an alternative or &amp;quot;escape&amp;quot; from such mechanisms, events. For example, perhaps the death of a loved one, dealt with among friends and families and long hard times of thought would bring about some quotient of maturity, while simply using drugs to &amp;quot;escape&amp;quot; would not be as beneficial. This is speculation at present, but it's another route to trying to answer this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, it may be that addicts simply display less maturity and thus simply &lt;em&gt;appear&lt;/em&gt; to have stunted their growth. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WIKI&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addiction can also be viewed as a continued involvement with a substance or activity despite the negative consequences associated with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, in the end, it may be tautological that an addicted person &lt;em&gt;appears&lt;/em&gt; to not be maturing, since maturity is generally seen as shaping behaviors toward positive goals, avoiding detrimental consequences, appropriate action, etc. Addiction, by the definition, implies an immaturity of choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully I haven't clouded the waters too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T05:08:04.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4767" CreationDate="2011-06-21T18:48:49.797" Score="33" ViewCount="1759" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time ago, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://therunningbarefoot.com/&quot;&gt;barefoot running movement&lt;/a&gt; started, claiming that it is more natural and reduces chronic pain. Has there been some &lt;strong&gt;research&lt;/strong&gt; on it since then? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of people claim that it helped them, but it may be confirmation bias (only those with good experiences wrote about it, the others thought they had bad technique or there is something wrong with their feet or they started too quickly...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3098" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-06-24T12:14:00.853" LastActivityDate="2020-07-04T08:47:12.383" Title="Is running barefoot healthier for your feet?" Tags="|medical-science|sport|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4765" CreationDate="2011-06-21T20:17:51.797" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer, basically, is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;.  Though &quot;healthier&quot; is not a claim that is testable, there is a great deal of research on barefoot running that shows that if you run barefoot you will be injured less, and that there are other benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research papers on barefoot running include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/abstract/1987/04000/running_related_injury_prevention_through_barefoot.14.aspx&quot;&gt;&quot;Running Related Injury Prevention Through Barefoot Adaptations&quot;&lt;/a&gt; by Steven E. Robbins and Adel M. Hanna of the Human Performance Group at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec found &quot;an extremely low rate of running-related injury in barefoot populations&quot;, and concludes that the &quot;modern running shoe appears responsible for the high injury frequency associated with running&quot;.  This article was published by The American College of Sports Medicine's official journal, &quot;Medicine &amp;amp; Science in Sports &amp;amp; Exercise&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another study, published in the &quot;International Journal of Sport Medicine&quot; titled &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thieme-connect.com/ejournals/abstract/sportsmed/doi/10.1055/s-2004-821327&quot;&gt;&quot;Mechanical Comparison of Barefoot and Shod Running&quot;&lt;/a&gt; done by a group of scientists at the University of Saint-Etienne, France and the Department of Preventive and Rehabilitative Sports Medicine, University of Freiburg, Germany suggests that there is greater muscle activation throughout the body when running barefoot, and that the impact of each step is lesser.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archiveouverte.campus-insep.net:81/archimede/INSEP/118/6-7-118-20060524-1.pdf#page=79&quot;&gt;&quot;Barefoot Running&quot;&lt;/a&gt; which was presented at the 3rd International Sports Science Days in 2004 by Michael Warburton, and summarized the state of the research on the effects barefoot running:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Running in shoes appears to increase the risk of ankle sprains, either by decreasing awareness of foot position or by increasing the twisting torque on the ankle during a stumble.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Running in shoes appears to increase the risk of plantar fasciitis and other chronic injuries of the lower limb by modifying the transfer of shock to muscles and supporting structures.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Running in bare feet reduces oxygen consumption by a few percent.  Competitive running performance should therefore improve by a similar amount, but there has been no published research comparing the effect of barefoot and shod running on simulated or real competitive running performance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research is needed to establish why runners choose not to run barefoot. Concern about puncture wounds, bruising, thermal injury, and overuse injury during the adaptation period are possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Running shoes play an important protective role on some courses, in extreme weather conditions, and with certain pathologies of the lower limb.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="279" LastEditorUserId="3068" LastEditDate="2011-08-22T20:05:03.797" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T20:05:03.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2668" CreationDate="2011-06-21T20:29:47.467" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very little of the extra the end customer pays goes actually to the primary producer. While the fair trade goods cost usually substantially more than competitive products (often +50-100 %), the price difference paid to the primary producer is only marginally smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/business/yourmoney/fair-prices-for-farmers-simple-idea-complex-reality.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fair Prices for Farmers: Simple Idea, Complex Reality&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Farmers often receive very little,&amp;quot; said Lawrence Solomon, managing director of the Energy Probe Research Foundation, a Canadian firm that analyzes trade and consumer issues. &amp;quot;Often fair trade is sold at a premium, but the entire premium goes to the middlemen.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fair Trade labels don't list the amount paid to farmers; that sum requires research. The amount can vary depending on the commodity. An analysis using information from TransFair shows that cocoa farmers get 3 cents of the $3.49 spent on a 3.5-ounce chocolate bar labeled &amp;quot;organic fair trade&amp;quot; sold at Target. Farmers receive 24 cents for a one-pound bag of fair trade sugar sold at Whole Foods for $3.79.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The coffee farmer who produced the one-pound bag of coffee purchased by Mr. Terman received $1.26, higher than the commodity rate of $1.10. But whether Mr. Terman paid $10 or $6 for that fair trade coffee, the farmer gets the same $1.26&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases, the individual farmers may receive less than fair trade rules require because the money goes to cooperatives, which have their own directors who decide how much to pass on to farmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We did a breakdown and saw that sometimes, what they're paying farmers is only 70 cents to 80 cents a pound&amp;quot; for coffee instead of the entire fair trade price of $1.26, said Christy Thorns, a buyer at Allegro Coffee, a roaster in Thornton, Colo., that is owned by Whole Foods. &amp;quot;There are so many layers involved.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, FairTrade also requires certification and annual fees, and they are quite substantial:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flo-cert.net/_admin/userfiles/file/Fees/aug2010/PC%20FeeSysHLSinglePlantation%20ED%2021%20en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flo-Cert Producer Certification System&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Initial Basic Fee at least € 1.400.00&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Annual Fee at least € 1,137.50&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: this does not include &amp;quot;organics&amp;quot; certification. If the producer is to receive organics&#xA;premium, it has to undergo another certification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be fair, the price difference may differ. When free market price drops down (like it was in years 2001-2005, see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rozvojovka.cz/download/pdf/news_516.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tables in this fair trade report&lt;/a&gt;), the fair trade price still stays at a decided minimum level, which at some periods meant the farmer received 100 % more (with free market coffee price $.60 the producer still gets $1.21). Still, this 100 % represents only minor part of the difference the end consumer pays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-11-06T01:27:13.623" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4769" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-21T20:50:15.060" Score="16" ViewCount="767" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first time I came across these arguments against solar energy was in &quot;Overload&quot; by Arthur Hailey. Admittedly, this is fiction, but the arguments seems to have some merit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using solar cells to produce comparable amount of energy will need so much area that it will cut out sun light from that much area and this is also a type of pollution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The cost of solar energy is so high that it creates more damage than other sources indirectly. The extra cost of solar energy can be used to offset the ill-effects(?) of conventional energy sources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, are these arguments valid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3781" LastEditorUserId="3781" LastEditDate="2011-06-21T22:20:27.540" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T04:13:16.427" Title="Solar energy in place of conventional energy sources" Tags="|environment|energy|power-generation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-04-02T03:29:08.930" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4771" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4803" CreationDate="2011-06-22T00:31:06.793" Score="38" ViewCount="39433" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are conflicting reports of whether it is possible to safely recharge &lt;em&gt;alkaline&lt;/em&gt; batteries (not lithium) that are not sold as rechargable.  The packaging for batteries regularly has cautions against recharging.  However, there are also claims that they can be successfully recharged (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsclever.com/product/alkaline-battery-charger-mains-SBC1001&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.instructables.com/id/Easily-recharge-alkaline-batteries/&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.batteryxtender.com/&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the recharger manufacturers claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our Alkaline battery charger will recharge standard alkaline batteries up to 20 times depending the type and quality of batteries used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unclear whether the battery manufacturers claims are just trying to sell more batteries.  Can single-use, alkaline batteries be safely and successfully recharged in standard battery chargers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1850" LastEditorUserId="190" LastEditDate="2012-08-13T07:08:41.790" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T14:33:01.063" Title="Can you recharge non-rechargeable alkaline batteries?" Tags="|physics|safety|chemistry|energy|battery|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4636" CreationDate="2011-06-22T04:52:39.520" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I'm not sure how to quantify &quot;taste and sparkle,&quot; but if &quot;sparkle&quot; means carbonation, it appears that Straight Dope tested this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/697/will-a-silver-spoon-in-the-neck-preserve-your-leftover-new-years-eve-bubbly&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; and found it lacking. Their method was simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;open three bottles of champagne&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;recork one, leave one open to the air, and hang a silver chain in the last (they didn't have a spoon small enough to fit)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in the morning put a condom over the top and shake to see how much the condom inflates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recorked bottle overflowed the condom, the open bottle inflated it, but the silver chain bottle would not inflate it, regardless of how much they shook the bottle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wine Lover's Page tested this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wineloverspage.com/wineadvisor1/tswa041227.phtml&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; as well and found that both an open bottle and one with a silver spoon in the mouth maintained their carbonation overnight (makes one wonder about Straight Dope's test).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You already found the Stanford writeup (which was quite narrative and inconclusive), and @warren linked to the Mythbusters &quot;busted&quot; rating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, just to complicate things, we have &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.kumkani.com/?p=730&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; writeup in which some folks took pictures of champagne that had been left open and been kept with a spoon and then digitally examined the poured glasses for bubble count and size... and they conclude that the spoon method &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; preserve more bubbles!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's about all I can find on the &quot;myth.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of how to store it, it seems that the recommended method is an air-tight special stopper for carbonated wines, like are mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;http://ask.yahoo.com/20020124.html&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seriouseats.com/2008/09/preserving-wine-cava-sparkling-glass-of-bubbles.html&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;. Don't know what &quot;experts&quot; to turn to regarding champagne storage, as there's not really scientific literature on this... but they at least &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; make such stoppers specifically for champagne, so I'm assuming people really do use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T04:52:39.520" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4778" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4781" CreationDate="2011-06-22T06:04:08.753" Score="24" ViewCount="2684" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do humans secrete chemicals that attract the opposite sex? Some cheesy advertisements in magazines would make one believe pheromones exist. When's the last time you said &quot;&lt;em&gt;that girl/guy is butt ugly&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, then walked closer to smell her/him and said &quot;&lt;em&gt;damn girl/boy, you fine!&lt;/em&gt;&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2045" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T23:32:16.560" Title="Do human pheromones exist?" Tags="|chemistry|sexuality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3574" CreationDate="2011-06-22T06:19:44.267" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Wow, I hate to do this after being accepted, but I need to change my answer! Vartec made the fantastic point that I was considering one had to get the entire amount of alcohol in a shot into one's blood stream. He is correct that I &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; goofed on the amounnt and should have focused on Blood Alcohol Content (BAC), not how much one usually has to ingest to get drunk. If we keep the rest constant below, assuming all alcohol inhaled is absorbed, we just need the point at which there are ~5mL of alcohol in the blood (assuming an average total blood volume of 5L).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;With this adjustment, this method becomes incredibly more possible.&lt;/strong&gt; Again, my apologies for the whiplash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; If one perfectly vaporized 750 mL of 80 proof liquor (40% alcohol), one could achieve a BAC of 0.1 after ~900 respirations (45-75min) in a small room assuming that no alcohol escapes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here goes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assume a room of 3m x 3m x 3m (27m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nebulize a 750 mL bottle of vodka (assume immediate/complete/uniform dispersion)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At 40% alcohol, this means there are 300 mL of alcohol vapor in the air&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A standard shot is 1.5 fluid ounces, or ~44 mL, and let's say that if one can breath in 2 shots (88 mL), inebriation will be experienced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We'll also assume that all alcohol breathed will be absorbed by the lungs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The volume of an average human breath size is 500 mL (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_volume&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 mL = 0.001 L = 10&lt;sup&gt;-6&lt;/sup&gt; m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Drunk&quot; is a blood alcohol content of 0.1 (0.1% of the blood is alcohol)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The average human blood volume is 5L; &quot;drunk&quot; is when the blood contains 5mL of alcohol&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, now we'll use the size of a breath, and concentration of alcohol in the air to determine the amount of vodka absorbed over time. We'll assume that the room is essentially sealed such that no alcohol vapor is removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't drag this out. I ran such breath iterations in an Excel formula like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Alc (mL)    Air (m^3)   Alc in Air (%)   Alc in breath (mL)  Air in breath (mL)&#xA;300.00      27.000      0.00111%         0.00556             499.99&#xA;299.99      27.000      0.00111%         0.00556             499.99&#xA;299.99      27.000      0.00111%         0.00556             499.99&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It pretty much just keeps going like that (the volume of alcohol is so small that it barely changes anything through time). For the formulas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alc (mL): Alcohol in the air. Each cell subtracts the alcohol breathed from the previous volume that was present. The second value, for example, is subtracting the breathed amount of 0.00556 mL from the initial contents of 300 mL&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Air (m^3): Just subtracts the current alcohol content from 27 m^3 total room volume&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alc in Air (%): divides the alcohol by air in room to get a percent content value&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alc in breath (mL): 500mL breath volume * current alcohol percent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Air in breath (mL): 500mL breath volume * (1 - current alcohol percent)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the amount of alcohol is fairly small, the change over time is also &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; small. Thus, we can estimate that each breath will bring in 0.00556mL of alcohol into the system. To achieve drunkenness, one would need to respirate 5mL / (0.00556mL / respiration) = ~900 times. This would take 45-75min based on 12-20 respirations per minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To decrease time, one could reduce the size of the room, or atomize more alcohol. The content will scale linearly, so using two bottles of vodka will take only half the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Final caveat:&lt;/strong&gt; This has all been theoretical, and I'm not sure how efficient the lungs would be at absorbing alcohol. I can find sources that give a rate of 25% for oxygen extraction from air, so this would have to be figured in as well. If the rate were only 25% for alcohol, it would take 4x as long as above, or 3-5 hours. Using more bottles would reduce that proportionally. Typical rooms also aren't sealed, and thus alcohol is going to diffuse to the outside air and reduce the concentration. This rate will vary by the room, but may have a huge effect on how this works. Reducing the room volume or creating a tent of sorts will help this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion? I originally found this nearly impossible due to my faulty assumption that one needed to breath the same amount as one needed to drink. &lt;strong&gt;Complete credit goes to vartec for this correction&lt;/strong&gt; which, &lt;em&gt;very surprisingly&lt;/em&gt;, swung the answer completely in the other direction. It now appears quite possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2011-06-22T13:12:58.613" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T13:12:58.613" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2062" CreationDate="2011-06-22T06:56:41.520" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm unsure of where to find this for other countries, but I was able to find &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d01606.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; report from the Government Accountability Office. The report may be a bit dated (2001, so 10 years old), but in looking through the first part alone, I see &lt;em&gt;nothing but&lt;/em&gt; tables and charts showing that big farms receive more subsidy payments than medium or small farms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skimming aside, the report quite clearly states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...the 7 percent of farms nationwide with gross agricultural sales of $250,000 or more— received about 45 percent of the payments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Lennart pointed out though, larger farms &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt;, by definition, producing more crops. Subsidies (unsure of units, but say payed per volume or weight), therefore, would be paid in higher proportion to those producing more goods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find the chart below, which suggests that small farms may actually be getting more payments per value of their establishments compared to large farms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FyVLN.png&quot; alt=&quot;Subsidies per value for various farm sizes&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This bit preceded that table:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example in 1999, large farms received 45 percent of the payments, while accounting for&#xA;46 percent of the planted acreage and 52 percent of the value of production of the eligible crops. Small farms received 14 percent of the payments and accounted for 10 percent of planted acreage and 8 percent of the value of production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was actually curious about this, wondering if large farms received a proportional payment &lt;em&gt;per volume of crop&lt;/em&gt; compared to small farms. It seems that they actually receive less by value than small farms!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report does give some explanations for the smaller payments to smaller farms, one being the obvious one already mentioned that larger farms produce more product. Another, however, was based on the &lt;em&gt;type&lt;/em&gt; of goods typically produced by the farm sizes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...beef is not one of the commodities for which farm payments are generally made. According to the Economic Research Service officials, beef is the primary commodity of about 40 percent of small farms, compared to 20 percent of medium farms and 10 percent of large ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, small farms are substantially more targeted toward a non-subsidized product compared to their larger counterparts, and thus aren't receiving subsidies for those goods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be great to see more current data on this topic, as the intro to the report states (addressed to the Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture at the time):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Mr. Chairman,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;strong&gt;Concerned that farm payments are not being effectively targeted to aid the&#xA;survival of small farms and the entry of young people into agriculture&lt;/strong&gt;, you&#xA;asked us to (1) determine the distribution of farm payments over the past&#xA;decade by farm size, operators’ age, state, and crop and (2) identify the&#xA;major barriers that make it difficult for young people to enter farming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leaves me wondering what the results were -- were the findings that the situation at the time was fair, or was action taken to rectify anything, have payment distributions changed much in 10 years, etc.? If I find answers to these questions, I'll update the answer to include them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T15:04:51.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4778" CreationDate="2011-06-22T07:16:38.110" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many perfume companies offering products that claim to contain human pheromones, and this one has an interesting claim on its home page that attempts to convince potential customers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Human Sex Pheromones&lt;/strong&gt; are natural chemical scents the body produces in order to attract others.  &lt;strong&gt;Animal Sex Pheromones&lt;/strong&gt; are well documented in the animal kingdom as the force that controls all social behaviour, including mating.  Scientists are now finding that human behavior is also heavily influenced by &lt;strong&gt;Human Pheromones&lt;/strong&gt;, the ultimate invisible social magnets.  By intensifying the sex pheromones that already occur naturally, you will experience not only a boost in confidence, but also increased sex appeal. ...&quot;  (&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.love-scent.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.love-scent.com/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any references to studies on that web site regarding &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; types of Pheromones -- I would like to see even one study they're relying on to back up their claim that &quot;&lt;em&gt;Animal Sex Pheromones are well documented in the animal kingdom as the force that controls all social behaviour, including mating&lt;/em&gt;,&quot; which is a good reason for you to be skeptical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People do have olfactory systems that help to discern smells though, and since people do exhibit a variety of natural odours (possibly influenced by a combination of genetics, state of health, diet, exercise habits, etc.), I would expect the effects to be at least somewhat selective since what is perceived as a bad smell by one person may be a good smell to another.  There is an interesting paper on this that references a long list of studies, including some studies performed on rats (in particular, see the sections entitled &quot;Human Pheromones&quot; and &quot;Is a Mammalian Model Applicable to Human Behavior?&quot;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; Human Pheromones: Mammalian Olfactory, Genetic, Neuronal, Hormonal,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; and Behavioral Reciprocity and, Human Sexuality (May 16, 1996)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/images/human_pheromones.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/images/human_pheromones.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first paragraph in the &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Introduction&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; section (paragraph 3) reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Pheromones are social-environmental chemical stimuli (e.g., odors). They are produced by one individual and detected by another individual of the same species. Typically, pheromonal communication elicits physiological and behavioral changes. These changes are expected to benefit both individuals. Pheromones exert their influence whether or not an animal is conscious of pheromone detection; the animal may not be aware that it is responding to an odor.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first paragraph in the &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Human Pheromones&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; section (paragraph 9) reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Evidence from human studies that suggests we produce pheromones and that we are not exempt from prenatallypredisposed mammalian olfactorygeneticneuronalhormonal relationships involving pheromones, genes in GnRH neurosecretory neurons, and the influence of GnRH secretion on levels of other hormones, is found in the following ...&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fifth paragraph in the &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Is a Mammalian Model Applicable to Human Behavior?&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; section (paragraph 53) reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;It is difficult to validate cross-species comparisons because of inherent difficulties either in carrying out controlled human studies of olfactory transduction or of its association with odor hedonics, mood, memory, motivation, expressions of effect, cognitive behavioral state, potentiating responses to other stimuli (see Ehrlichman &amp;amp; Bastone, 1992 for review), and neural circuitry.  This failure to validate cross-species comparisons contributes to a common belief among scientists and laypersons: that--unlike many other mammals--humans learn more through visual cues than through socialenvironmental chemical cues.  However, just as a child born blind does not learn to prefer one color to another, a child who is born anosmic does not develop odor preferences.  Similarly, innate differences in visual or other sensory acuity suggest that many mammalian, including human, behaviors are initially genetically predisposed.  Subsequently, behaviors appear to be conditioned through olfactory and other sensory stimuli (Kirk-Smith, 1996).  For instance, it seems likely that our food preferences are based upon innate differences in the chemical senses (taste and olfaction), which are present before we are able to respond to a food's visual appeal and that, subsequently, food preferences may be based upon the pairing of olfactory (or taste) stimuli with a visually conditioned response to the sight of an appetizing item.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hypothetically, if these pheromones were powerful enough to have an immediate effect on a person so as to completely change their perception of how attractive another person is, then I strongly suspect that these products would likely be classified as dangerous (since they could be used to commit crimes of a sexual nature, etc.) by local government regulators (just like many pharmaceuticals are) with their distribution prohibited (which would consequently make it illegal to sell).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in an attempt to &lt;strong&gt;answer your questions&lt;/strong&gt;:  It seems that Humans do secrete these chemicals, but I would classify the rest of the exaggerations and claims by the marketers as something along the lines of &lt;strong&gt;mythical&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3068" LastEditorUserId="3068" LastEditDate="2011-06-22T07:22:36.313" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T07:22:36.313" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4782" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-22T08:10:08.180" Score="1" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1202/is-there-any-proof-of-alien-life&quot;&gt;Is there any proof of alien life?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i am surprise no one has ever asked this on skeptics .. do aliens exist i want to see people support thier answers with proof. And if you disagree you must say why aliens do not exist !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3787" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T08:10:08.180" Title="Does intelligent life exist in the galaxy or universe?" Tags="|aliens|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-06-22T08:35:24.843" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4740" CreationDate="2011-06-22T09:13:59.693" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;David JC MacKay's excellent book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/withouthotair/c20/page_120.shtml&quot;&gt;Sustainable Energy - without the hot air (free ebook)&lt;/a&gt;, has a nice chapter on public transport. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At its best, shared public transport is far more energy-efficient than individual car-driving. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A diesel-powered coach, carrying 49 passengers and&#xA;doing 10 miles per gallon at 65 miles per hour, uses 6 kWh per 100 p-km (passenger-km) –&#xA;13 times better than the single-person car. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vancouver’s trolleybuses consume 270 kWh per vehicle-km, and have an average speed of 15 km/h. If the trolleybus has 40 passengers on board, then its passenger transport&#xA;cost is 7 kWh per 100 p-km.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;London underground trains, at peak times, use 4.4 kWh per 100 p-km – 18 times&#xA;better than individual cars. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even high-speed trains, which violate two of our energy-saving principles by going twice as fast as the car and weighing a lot, are much more energy efficient: if the electric high-speed train is full, its energy cost is 3 kWh per 100 p-km – that’s 27 times smaller than the car’s!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, we must be realistic in our planning. Some trains, coaches, and buses are not full (figure 20.6). So the average energy cost of public transport is bigger than the best-case figures just mentioned. What’s the average energy-consumption of public transport systems, and what’s a realistic appraisal of how good they could be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2006–7, the &lt;strong&gt;total energy cost of all London’s underground&lt;/strong&gt; trains, including lighting, lifts, depots, and workshops, was 15 kWh per 100 p-km – &lt;strong&gt;five times better than our baseline car&lt;/strong&gt;. In 2006–7 the energy cost of all London buses was 32 kWh per 100 p-km. Energy cost is not the only thing that matters, of course. Passengers care about speed: and the underground trains delivered higher speeds (an average of 33 km/h) than buses (18 km/h). Managers care about financial costs: the staff costs, per passenger-km, of underground trains are less than those of buses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3789" LastEditorUserId="3789" LastEditDate="2011-06-22T13:39:49.707" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T13:39:49.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4784" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-22T10:29:59.407" Score="14" ViewCount="35799" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen some nutritional advice that claims that it is possible to absorb calories through the skin, from face products for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like nonsense to me, can anyone confirm that and explain why it would not be possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to clarify the question a little, it was specifically related to dieting to aid weight loss and therefore whether calories absorbed from face products etc should be avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="270" LastEditorUserId="270" LastEditDate="2011-06-29T14:04:44.953" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T22:22:32.597" Title="Can the human body absorb calories through the skin?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4636" CreationDate="2011-06-22T11:38:50.293" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The results from MythBusters are summarized here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/special1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://mythbustersresults.com/special1&lt;/a&gt;, where they said &quot;busted&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="637" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T11:38:50.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4787" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4790" CreationDate="2011-06-22T13:06:50.803" Score="17" ViewCount="1171" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/genetic/old-couples.htm&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; to prove this I can find quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/11/science/long-married-couples-do-look-alike-study-finds.html&quot;&gt;a 1987 study&lt;/a&gt; which found &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Couples who originally bore no&#xA;  particular resemblance to each other&#xA;  when first married had, after 25 years&#xA;  of marriage, come to resemble each&#xA;  other, although the resemblance may be&#xA;  subtle&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All the couples in the photographs&#xA;  were white, lived in Michigan or&#xA;  Wisconsin and were between 50 and 60&#xA;  years old at the time of the second&#xA;  picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems quite a small set to derive this conclusion or is that a standard research pattern?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask whether there have been &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) any recent studies. Perhaps not as &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2011/06/09/old-study-sought-to-get-to-bottom-of-old-married-couple-look-alike-conundrum/&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; suggests&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) covering other ethnic groups such as (example only) Indians/Chinese or other wider audiences &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in this area&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-22T13:36:10.917" LastActivityDate="2022-07-06T11:22:02.890" Title="Do long married couples look more alike?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4787" CreationDate="2011-06-22T13:33:04.523" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The original study was by a group of researchers lead by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zajonc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Robert Zajonc&lt;/a&gt;. (Wikipedia attempts to describe the research, but does a rather ordinary job in this case.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992848&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Convergence in the physical appearance of spouses&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;R. B. Zajonc, Pamela K. Adelmann, Sheila T. Murphy and Paula M. Niedenthal&#xA;MOTIVATION AND EMOTION Volume 11, Number 4, 335-346, (1987) DOI: 10.1007/BF00992848&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;This study attempted to determine whether people who live with each other for a long period of time grow physically similar in their facial features. Photographs of couples when they were first married and 25 years later were judged for physical similarity and for the likelihood that they were married. The results showed that there is indeed an increase in apparent similarity after 25 years of cohabitation.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also proposed some mechanisms for this, which I didn't find awfully convincing (and neither did some other scientists quoted in your original article.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their results is contradicted by :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1992-19646-001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shared experiences and the similarity of personalities: A longitudinal study of married couples.&lt;/a&gt; Caspi, Avshalom; Herbener, Ellen S.; Ozer, Daniel J.&#xA;Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 62(2), Feb 1992, 281-291. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.62.2.281&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Do spouses become more similar over time? What processes contribute to enduring similarities between them? Using the 20-yr Kelly Longitudinal Study of couples, no support for the hypothesis that couples increasingly resemble each other with time was found. Rather, couples maintain the same degree of similarity across 20 yrs.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've only found two contradictory studies to choose between, so it is hard to form a firm conclusion, but my interpretation would be that the Zajonc paper was a preliminary investigation in 1987 that suggested there may be a correlation worth following up, and the Caspi paper in 1992 finding that any effect was just an anomaly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-07-06T11:22:02.890" LastActivityDate="2022-07-06T11:22:02.890" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4603" CreationDate="2011-06-22T14:38:29.563" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Much to my surprise, it looks like this is probably true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/omim&quot;&gt;a database on inheritance&lt;/a&gt; maintained by Johns Hopkins University and the National Institute of Health, it would appear that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/omim/129100&quot;&gt;ear wiggling&lt;/a&gt; is in fact an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/omim/129100?dopt=Synopsis&quot;&gt;autosomal dominant trait&lt;/a&gt;. That means that if a person has at least one dominant version of the ear wiggling gene, then that person should be able to wiggle his/her ears. (If anyone would like a to brush up on dominance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_%28genetics%29&quot;&gt;Wikipedia (of course) has a decent article&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting, however, that I could find &lt;em&gt;no other published information&lt;/em&gt; about this alleged gene. It looks like there's a gene there, but we don't yet have it mapped, and it's not being actively studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find an &lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/05/24/earclicks_hum.html?category=health&amp;amp;guid=20060524091822&quot;&gt;interesting article published by Discovery&lt;/a&gt; that doesn't talk about genetics, but rather about the physical mechanism for ear movement (among other aural phenomena). Here's the part about wiggling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The mechanism behind ear movements is sophisticated,&quot; said Bastiaan ter Meulen, who led the ear wiggling study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ter Meulen, a researcher at Erasmus MC, a university medical center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, added that, unlike other facial muscles, ear muscles have their own accessory nucleus -- a control area for muscle function -- in the brainstem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Compared to animals, especially bats and cats, this nucleus is rather small in humans,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He explained to Discovery News that a muscle involved in eye movement also directly controls ear motion. That's why when we look left or right, our ears slightly withdraw on both sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Breathing and swallowing are also linked to ear movement through muscles and neuronal pathways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ter Meulen and his team made these determinations after conducting an EEG, or brain wave test, on a 43-year-old woman who lost consciousness and experienced rhythmic bursts of ear movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if we assume that the gene does exist, then unless one has the gene, it's true, one cannot &quot;learn&quot; to wiggle one's ears. That's not to say, however, that a person with the gene is just going to be able to wiggle away. As the Discovery article implies, it doesn't look like it's a movement that comes particularly naturally to humans - it might still wind up being a learned process for some people. Point being, it's entirely possible one can &quot;learn&quot; to wiggle, but it looks like one probably needs a specific dominant gene to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; As Fabian let me know, the original study I initially found is freely available online. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1601-5223.1949.tb03359.x/pdf&quot;&gt;The .pdf can be found here&lt;/a&gt;, the study is on pages 620-621. Worth noting is that the author of the study essentially gives the same &quot;this study is small and not necessarily indicative of anything&quot; warning that I did above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the material is small, we must not, however, attach too much importance to these figures. Even if these results appear to indicate dominance with a relatively high penetrance, the results must nevertheless be verified on a larger material before they can be considered as convincing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3114" LastEditorUserId="3114" LastEditDate="2011-06-22T16:24:15.723" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T16:24:15.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2482" CreationDate="2011-06-22T15:04:46.620" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; My approach was to use the fact that I personally went through &quot;vision therapy&quot; to identify a similar exercise to what the question describes (one which alternates between extreme divergence (looking far away) and convergence (focusing up close)). This allows us to examine the literature for the field of vision therapy for determinations of efficacy. I used sources to confirm my descriptions/experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I took a look at the available literature for the field of vision therapy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There does not appear to be any scientific support for vision therapy in terms of improving visual acuity and/or reducing myopia (nearsightedness).&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using &quot;improving eyesight&quot; to mean increasing acuity (require lower prescription glasses or no glasses), which also entails reducing farsightedness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As shown in the sources section, there &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be improved &lt;em&gt;farsightedness&lt;/em&gt;, as the literature indicates that convergence exercises have some benefit. Improving the ability of the eyes to converge and bring something into focus up close would, indeed, have the potential to assist those with trouble seeing up close. The literature simply mentions that convergence is improved, but didn't specify on whether that translated into a reduction in hyperopia (farsightedness, which probably requires reading glasses for seeing up close).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would fall under the umbrella of &quot;Behavioral Vision Therapy,&quot; something I went through as a child for several years. Wiki has an article about it &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_therapy&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;, and there is a link there from the General Research section of the Bates Method page (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bates_method#General_research&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;), so I think the two are at least somewhat similar in their approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exercises involve several techniques (this is from personal involvement in this method, though many more are listed on the Wiki page):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brock_string&quot;&gt;brock strings&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heartland-eye.com/visiontherapy.asp&quot;&gt;balancing&lt;/a&gt; (see picture of girl on balancing board) while looking at a &lt;a href=&quot;http://visionhelp.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/hart-chart-photo.jpg&quot;&gt;hart chart&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://oep.excerpo.com/index.php?action=show_details&amp;amp;product_id=3149&quot;&gt;marsden ball&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tossing bean bags at something like &lt;a href=&quot;http://oep.excerpo.com/index.php?action=show_details&amp;amp;product_id=3742&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; and catching them with alternating hands or spinning around between throwing and catching&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many other methods, such as using prismatic glasses, 3D images and trying to get it to &quot;pop&quot; or &quot;recess&quot; (based on whether you are converging or diverging your eyes); many of these techniques are shown &lt;a href=&quot;http://strabby.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/6-its-working-and-silo/&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; in this blog post (used this site because it contained the most helpful/various pictures in one place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your specific exercise&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you are describing sounds like a variation on a convergence/divergence exercise. In particular, I used one of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bernell.com/product/3230/154&quot;&gt;THESE&lt;/a&gt; lifesaver cards. They are clear or opaque; with the clear cards, one stands in front of a window and looks through the card toward something very far away and as a result, the red and green lifesavers will come together and form a 3D image. One gets them to &quot;lock,&quot; (verified by reading the letters on the lifesaver), holds, and then converges (crossing eyes -- same as looking at something very close) to form a 3D image from the red and green images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the same phenomenon as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.magiceye.com/3dfun/stwkdisp.shtml&quot;&gt;magic eye&lt;/a&gt; images. When one changes the point of focus to a point behind or in front of the image, the images from the left and right eye will superimpose upon one another and form a new, composite image, which appears to be 3D if different features are present in each of the respective images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://mainosmemos.blogspot.com/2011/05/lifesaver-cards-bi-divergence.html&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; video instruction for using lifesaver cards as a validation of my explanation. The video is from a Behavioral Optometrist, shown by the FCOVD after the name (Fellow in the College of Optometrists in Vision Development).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using my past experience and participation in vision therapy, combined with illustrating that this particular exercise seems to perform the same mechanics (focusing up close, then looking far away) to find a &quot;field&quot; one can examine for efficacy. With just the description alone, it may have been tough to figure out of such a method has been tested, but, if we can pin the words &quot;vision therapy&quot; to it... we have a much better base in the available literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Efficacy/Sources&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helveston, &quot;Visual training: current status in ophthalmology,&quot; 2005 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16310470&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most visual training is now done by optometrists and others who say it works. Based on an assessment of claims and a study of published data, the consensus of ophthalmologists regarding visual training is that, except for near point of convergence exercises, visual training lacks documented evidence of effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of &quot;near point convergence exercises&quot; are &quot;pencil push-ups,&quot; shown &lt;a href=&quot;http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9083952245590514014#&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;, is the practice of taking a small object and moving it closely toward the nose. The patient tries to focus on it as it approaches; if/when the eyes cannot maintain the convergence, two images will form. This is not the same as alternating between extreme convergence and extreme divergence in order to improve vision. This is to assist those who have trouble focusing up close and tracking movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rawstron, &quot;A systematic review of the applicability and efficacy of eye exercises,&quot; 2005 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15825744&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Forty-three refereed studies were obtained. Of these, 14 were clinical trials (10 controlled studies), 18 review articles, 2 historical articles, 1 case report, 6 editorials or letters, and 2 position statements from professional colleges. Many of the references listed by the larger reviews were unpublished or published in obscure or nonrefereed sources and therefore were not accessible. Conclusions: Eye exercises have been purported to improve a wide range of conditions including vergence problems, ocular motility disorders, accommodative dysfunction, amblyopia, learning disabilities, dyslexia, asthenopia, myopia, motion sickness, sports performance, stereopsis, visual field defects, visual acuity, and general well-being. &lt;strong&gt;Small controlled trials and a large number of cases support the treatment of convergence insufficiency. Less robust, but believable, evidence indicates visual training may be useful in developing fine stereoscopic skills and improving visual field remnants after brain damage. As yet there is no clear scientific evidence published in the mainstream literature supporting the use of eye exercises in the remainder of the areas reviewed, and their use therefore remains controversial.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, again we have support for convergence insufficiency (mentioned above), some evidence indicating that regaining depth perception (stereoscopic skills) after brain injury is supported... but overall, nothing supporting the use in other areas (such as improvements in &quot;visual acuity&quot; -- what we typically mean when we say &quot;better vision&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Barrett, &quot;A critical evaluation of the evidence supporting the practice of behavioural vision therapy,&quot; 2008 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-1313.2008.00607.x/full&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although there are areas where the available evidence is consistent with claims made by behavioural optometrists (most notably in relation to the treatment of convergence insufficiency, the use of yoked prisms in neurological patients, and in vision rehabilitation after brain disease/injury), a large majority of behavioural management approaches are not evidence-based, and thus cannot be advocated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read the previous text, this study examined the efficacy for reducing myopia (nearsightedness, which requires glasses to see things at a distance), which I'll group in the &quot;better vision&quot; category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I stated in the intro, these sources &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; mention convergence improvement techniques may be valid, but I'm not sure how that translates into practical details -- are reading glasses prescriptions able to be reduced, for example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, convergence exercises is not what you're describing here, and so it's somewhat irrelevant. You are describing an alternating convergence/divergence exercise, and it does not appear to be supported by the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T15:04:46.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3326" CreationDate="2011-06-22T16:30:55.077" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;James Randi wrote about this exact boy &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1311-talcum-powder-cures-magnetism.html&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As you might have seen on a video clip from one of the programs I did on Seoul Broadcasting a few years ago, I defeated the similar claims of a Chinese gentleman who even stuck a porcelain toilet-lid to his own son’s chest to prove how magnetic his whole family was. I dusted father and son with talcum powder, and their powers evaporated…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writeup on the referenced Chinese gentleman is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/jr/082704gluton.html#7&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Randi also points out that aluminum and copper stick to him (not sure where this was seen/documented), and that this rules out the magnetism hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... does this disprove &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; specific case? Not necessarily. The family would simply need to be willing to douse their son in oil or talcum powder or have him put on a shirt to &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; illustrate that it's not a hoax. Prior incidences of similar &quot;powers&quot; having been disproved sways me much more in the &quot;hoax&quot; direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T16:30:55.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4796" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4802" CreationDate="2011-06-22T18:18:14.513" Score="38" ViewCount="2303" Body="&lt;p&gt;Avoiding exceptions for same-sex couples, is abuse in heterosexual couples more commonly initiated by the husband? I am mostly interested in physical violence that is non-reciprocal. In other words, in a couple where only one spouse beats the other, is it significantly more common for the man to beat the women?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This belief seems stemmed from the idea that men are more violent and are physically stronger. &quot;Wife-beater&quot; is a commonly heard accusation; I cannot recall hearing &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; stories of &quot;husband-beaters&quot;. I have also seen claims by mens rights groups suggesting that women are more often the abuser in such a relationship. Given the contended point, is there a statistical difference between the initiating gender?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2011-06-23T02:30:30.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T10:15:15.733" Title="Is spousal abuse primarily initiated by males?" Tags="|gender|marriage|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4797" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4801" CreationDate="2011-06-22T18:43:46.597" Score="36" ViewCount="6662" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently watched the film &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119891/&quot;&gt;Phantoms&lt;/a&gt;. A scientist in the movie claimed that flatworms were able to &quot;consume&quot; memories from other flatworms. The specific example was that of learning the solution to a maze by digesting ground up flatworms that had already solved the maze.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand how memories could possibly survive being ground up, let alone survive an entire digestive system, and be recreated from its parts. But a quick searching of the internet reveals other discussions on the topic including comments that someone actually conducted such an experiment. Here are two such articles: &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifeos.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/flatworms/&quot;&gt;Example 1&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.this-magic-sea.com/MEMORY2.HTM&quot;&gt;Example 2&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-04-13T13:18:14.343" LastActivityDate="2017-09-17T19:22:38.173" Title="Can flatworms learn a maze by digesting other flatworms?" Tags="|biology|memory|cannibalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4796" CreationDate="2011-06-22T18:58:29.923" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dvrc-or.org/domestic/violence/resources/C61/&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; gives statistics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Women accounted for 85% of the victims of intimate partner violence, men for approximately 15%.&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;(Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it also says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Surveys find that men and women assault one another and strike the first blow at approximately equal rates. &#xA;  &lt;em&gt;(Archer, J. (2000).  Sex differences in aggression between heterosexual partners:  A meta-analytic review.  Psychological Bulletin, 126 (5), 651-680.&#xA;  Dutton, D., Kwong, M., &amp;amp; Bartholomew, K. (1999).  Gender differences in patterns of relationship violence in Alberta.  Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 31, 150-160&#xA;  Morse, B. (1995).  Beyond the Conflict Tactics Scale:  Assessing gender differences in partner violence.  Violence and Victims, 10 (4), 251-269.&#xA;  Straus, M. (1993).  Physical assaults by wives:  A major social problem.  In R. Gelles &amp;amp; D. Loseky (Eds.), Current controversies on family violence (pp. 67-87).  Newbury Park, CA:  Sage.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only speculate that the first refers to reported crimes, and the second to all forms of aggression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-06-22T20:18:09.493" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T20:18:09.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4784" CreationDate="2011-06-22T20:07:01.747" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;We know there are a wide variety of substances which can be absorbed through the skin and metabolized,(some which spring immediately to mind are nicotine, sunlight to make vitamin D, fentanyl) but research about whether or not calorically dense substances such as fatty acids can be successfully absorbed and used is still very preliminary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some &lt;a href=&quot;http://medind.nic.in/ibv/t05/i3/ibvt05i3p255.pdf&quot;&gt;preliminary research indicating&lt;/a&gt; it may be possible to use transcutaneous absorbtion of lipids from certain oils as a nutrtional supplement in preterm babies.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Transcutaneous absorption of a mixture&#xA;  of coconut oil and meadowfoam oil in&#xA;  preterm babies has been successfully&#xA;  demonstrated for the first time. The&#xA;  variations observed in the amount and&#xA;  the number of marker fatty acids is&#xA;  probably due to the dynamic state of&#xA;  triglycerides which are continuously&#xA;  metabolized. Coconut oil has&#xA;  predominantly short chain and&#xA;  saturated fatty acids. These are&#xA;  normally present in the serum of an&#xA;  individual, diet being one of the&#xA;  important source&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;however, with regard to this particular data it is important to note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The skin of the preterm neonate has&#xA;  increased permeability as compared to&#xA;  full term babies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is not yet a clear understanding of which fatty acids are best absorbed, indicating that some may absorbed at better rates than others possibly due to their structure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fatty acids with two double bonds&#xA;  (C20 ∆5,13) appears to be better&#xA;  absorbed as compared to fatty acid&#xA;  with single double bond&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the relatively modest effects shown in this study only indicate that there appears to be some evidence for a plausible mechanism by which this occurs.  It's still a long way away from determining if it a reasonable and effective way to supplement nutrition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that this study was performed on premature neonates, extrapolation of this data with regard to older children and adults seems unwise to me at this point. Also, it would seem unlikely that transient amounts found in the localized application of various lotions and creams would have any tangible effect, and would probably only be able to shown by taking repeated blood draws before and after the application of one of these creams or lotions. It certainly would not be likely to have any effects noticeable outside perhaps, of a laboratory specifically looking for a serological rise in a certain compound.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-23T18:18:26.023" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T18:18:26.023" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4800" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4807" CreationDate="2011-06-22T20:24:50.507" Score="16" ViewCount="2535" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/4797/619&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; regarding flatworms remembering things experienced by other flatworms they have eaten, there was a quote on &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://lifeos.wordpress.com/2008/06/06/flatworms/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; regarding another memory transfer mechanism:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the reports of transplant patients&#xA;  having memories related to the donors&#xA;  are legion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/028537_organ_transplants_memories.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; on naturalnews.com, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/cellular.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; on skepdic.com and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/Departments/StudentJournal/volume2/kate.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; from Montgomery College.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can it be true that memories are somehow carried within transplanted organs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-09-04T10:00:07.113" Title="Can transplant patients remember things their donors experienced?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4797" CreationDate="2011-06-22T20:54:59.553" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, they cannot.&lt;/strong&gt; They were experiments done which indicated the possibility, but the results were never reproduced, therefore it is most likely their setup was somehow wrong. Moreover, no mechanism which could cause such effect is known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tracing the original experiment, I have found the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dur.ac.uk/robert.kentridge/bpp2mem1.html&quot;&gt;Investigations of the cellular bases of memory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1962 McConnell performed an experiment which appeared to be even more dramatic demonstration of this. After training some planaria he ground them up an fed them to other planaria. These animals were quicker at learning the light-shock association than controls who were fed ground-up untrained worms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is weaker here, only only they were quicker at learning, not learning everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_V._McConnell&quot;&gt;James V. McConnell&lt;/a&gt; says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although well publicized, his findings were not completely reproducible by other scientists and were therefore completely discredited (for review, see Chapouthier, 1973).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The maze question was &lt;a href=&quot;http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=4910&quot;&gt;asked at snopes forum&lt;/a&gt;, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=826389&quot;&gt;linked Everything2 topic&lt;/a&gt; seems a bit confused, giving the date of preceding 1953 experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a comment to the topic there by dmd, agreeing with the Wikipedia negative conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the interests of maintaining high scientific standards, I feel obligated to note that before the cold fusion debacle, McConnell's planaria study was the standard by which Bad Science was judged.&#xA;  &quot;McConnell's research program with planaria collapsed when other scientists failed to replicate the phenomenon of memory transfer.&quot; -- American Psychologist 51:589-598.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;McConnell's results on transferred memories did not hold up. A great discussion of the failure of McConnell's research can be found in The Making of Memory: From Molecules to Mind by Steven Rose (1993, ISBN 0385471211).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also mentioned by C. Sagan in &lt;a href=&quot;http://isbndb.com/d/book/the_demon_haunted_world.html&quot;&gt;The Demon-Haunted World&lt;/a&gt;, ISBN: &lt;a href=&quot;http://isbndb.com/d/book/the_demon_haunted_world.html&quot;&gt;978-0345409461&lt;/a&gt;, p. 221 as a known example of pseudoscience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Typical offering of pseudoscience and superstition ... are ... &quot;the aledged discovery that untrained flatworms can learn a task by eating the ground-up remains of other, better educated flatworms&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For completeness, here is a reference to the relevant original studies (copied from the everything2 page):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;McConnell, JV. 1962. Memory transfer through cannibalism in planarians. Journal of Neuropsychiatry 3 (Supplement no. 1): 542-548.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hartry, AL et al. 1964. Planaria: memory transfer through cannibalism re-examined. Science 146: 274-275.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, as it seems, no one was able to reproduce it since then, it most likely means the theory is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-06-23T18:00:42.190" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T18:00:42.190" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4796" CreationDate="2011-06-22T20:55:21.003" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;Statistics don't always agree on this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/reprint/97/5/941&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost 24% of all relationships had&#xA;some violence, and half (49.7%) of&#xA;those were reciprocally violent. &lt;strong&gt;In&#xA;nonreciprocally violent relationships,&#xA;women were the perpetrators in more&#xA;than 70% of the cases.&lt;/strong&gt; Reciprocity was&#xA;associated with more frequent violence&#xA;among women (adjusted odds ratio&#xA;[AOR]=2.3; 95% confidence interval&#xA;[CI]=1.9, 2.8), but not men (AOR=1.26;&#xA;95% CI=0.9, 1.7). Regarding injury,&#xA;men were more likely to inflict injury&#xA;than were women (AOR=1.3; 95% CI=1.1,&#xA;1.5), and reciprocal intimate partner violence was associated with greater&#xA;injury than was nonreciprocal intimate&#xA;partner violence regardless of the&#xA;gender of the perpetrator (AOR=4.4;&#xA;95% CI=3.6, 5.5).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Methodology looks rock solid to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We analyzed data on young US adults&#xA;aged 18 to 28 years from the 2001&#xA;National Longitudinal Study of&#xA;Adolescent Health, which contained&#xA;information about partner violence and&#xA;injury reported by 11 370 respondents&#xA;on 18761 heterosexual relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that men are stronger, I think is obviously true - which leads to women being more likely to suffer injuries. However, according to this study and others, women can be plenty aggressive as well, and it often seems as if society simply ignores this fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although apparently there's no shortage of &lt;strong&gt;physical&lt;/strong&gt; violence of women against men, it is true that you won't see this often in the mainstream media. But it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/sep/05/men-victims-domestic-violence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;does&lt;/a&gt; happen, occasionally. Quote from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mankind.org.uk/pdfs/DVGovtStatsJan08.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; discussed in the Guardian article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the year preceding the survey, and&#xA;excluding stalking, &lt;strong&gt;5.6% of women and&#xA;4.1% of men reported having suffered non-sexual partner abuse (any abuse,&#xA;threat, or force from a partner or&#xA;ex-partner), a proportion of male&#xA;victims of about 42%. Of these, 2.7%&#xA;of women and 2.0% of men reported&#xA;suffering actual force [assault or&#xA;violence], a proportion of male&#xA;victims of about 43%, which was&#xA;designated as ‘severe’ in the case of&#xA;1.8% of women and 1.6% of men, a proportion of male victims of about&#xA;47%.&lt;/strong&gt; These proportions are slightly&#xA;higher than those found by Study 276&#xA;some four years earlier. Such&#xA;proportions of male victims are almost&#xA;double those found by the BCS of&#xA;2004/05 (23% based on numbers of&#xA;incidents) and that of 2005/06 (20%).&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;This suggests either a significant&#xA;level of under-reporting especially by&#xA;male victims of domestic abuse to&#xA;these routine annual surveys or that&#xA;basing the proportion on the numbers&#xA;of incidents distorts the actual&#xA;prevalence of male victims.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize: &lt;strong&gt;existing research doesn't necessarily support the stereotype of an abusive male partner&lt;/strong&gt;, violence seems to be a problem for both genders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T09:52:07.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4771" CreationDate="2011-06-22T21:25:22.850" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;So far, this appears to be a &lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, provided one has the right tools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was first going to look at the chemistry involved, but figured it would be easier to just look at one of the top hits for chargers claiming to do this and examine its patent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One such device is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theweb2u.com/battery_xtender_detail.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Battery Xtender&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched for patents containing &quot;alkaline battery recharger&quot; and came across a few. I wanted to try to figure out which one was responsible for the &quot;patented technology&quot; claim in the link above. I simply searched the applicant's name and &quot;battery xtender&quot; and got it on the first hit: JD Pfeiffer of Quebec, Canada, owns the trademark to Battery Xtender, and his patent application was granted under US Patent #5,543,702 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;vid=USPAT5543702&amp;amp;id=oIEmAAAAEBAJ&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;dq=alkaline+battery+recharger&amp;amp;printsec=abstract#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=alkaline%20battery%20recharger&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read the patent, which contains circuit diagrams and descriptions of preferred current supplies and test methods to determine when charging is completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now... does it work? I can't be sure without testing one, but one of the requirements for a granted US Patent is &lt;em&gt;utility&lt;/em&gt; -- it has to be useful (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitlaw.com/patent/requirements.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;). A charger that doens't charge is not useful. Assuming the US Patent Office is doing their job, the data provided by the applicant with the application showed that this device was useful!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have to jump through some hoops for this -- charging alkaline batteries requires that they &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be depleted. Here's a page from their manual (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theweb2u.com/PDF/Xtender%20Owners%20Manual.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hdMyC.png&quot; alt=&quot;battery xtender manual page&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, note that instead of using an alkaline battery until it's dead, one would cut it off about about &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;/&lt;sub&gt;5&lt;/sub&gt; to &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;/&lt;sub&gt;6&lt;/sub&gt; of it's normal life and recharge it. I don't know how long it takes to recharge, but this might amount to having an extra set or two of batteries if one is to keep cycling like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wiki has an article &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recharging_alkaline_batteries&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; about this which references pulsed current for charging; the whole article is quite vague and un-referenced, though. I didn't see anything about pulsing in my read of the Pfeiffer patent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, with the right type of charger, one does appear to be able to recharge alkaline batteries intended for single use if recharged frequently and before draining very much.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish there were more available test data from this device from external users/organizations. So far, nothing like that. Here's the best I was able to find. Perhaps some independent, controlled tests/reviews will come about down the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T14:33:01.063" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T14:33:01.063" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4762" CreationDate="2011-06-22T21:59:54.770" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Holy cow! Apparently, &lt;strong&gt;soluble fiber &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; been shown to reduce cholesterol and reduce risk of various heart issues!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fernandez, &quot;Soluble fiber and nondigestible carbohydrate effects on plasma lipids and cardiovascular risk,&quot; 2001 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/co-lipidology/Abstract/2001/02000/Soluble_fiber_and_nondigestible_carbohydrate.7.aspx&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several large-scale cohort studies have documented that dietary fiber lowers the risk for coronary heart disease. In addition, there is substantial evidence from randomized controlled clinical trials that a mean reduction of 9% in LDL-cholesterol can be achieved by intake of different sources of soluble fiber.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bell et al., &quot;Cholesterol-lowering effects of soluble-fiber cereals as part of a prudent diet for patients with mild to moderate hypercholesterolemia,&quot; 1990 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/52/6/1020.short&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Soluble-fiber breakfast cereals were examined for their cholesterol- lowering ability in 58 male patients with mild to moderate hypercholesterolemia in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study...During the cereal-plus-diet phase, total and LDL cholesterol values of the pectin-enriched cereal group dropped an additional 2.1% (P = 0.243) and 3.9% (P = 0.16), respectively, and they dropped 5.9% (P = 0.005) and 5.7% (P = 0.034), respectively, in the psyllium-enriched cereal group. During the cereal-plus-diet phase, no significant effects on HDL cholesterol, triglyceride, or body weight were found within or between any cereal groups. These results support use of soluble-fiber cereals as an effective and well-tolerated part of a prudent diet in the treatment of mild to moderate hypercholesterolemia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jenkens et al., &quot;Combined effect of vegetable protein (soy) and soluble fiber added to a standard cholesterol-lowering diet,&quot; 1999 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0026049599901841&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compared with the low-fat control diet, the test diet [vegetable protein and soluble fiber) decreased total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, apolipoprotein B, and the ratios of LDL to high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and apolipoprotein B to A-I. A combination of vegetable protein and soluble fiber significantly improved the lipid-lowering effect of a low-saturated-fat diet. The results support expanding the current dietary advice to include increased vegetable protein and soluble fiber intake so that the gap in effectiveness between a good diet and drug therapy is reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; idea. I guess that the recommendations about soluble fiber and cholesterol are true, after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more, I found these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jenkins, &quot;Effect on blood lipids of very high intakes of fiber in diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol,&quot; 1993 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8389421&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The loss of fecal bile acids was 83 +/- 14 percent greater during the soluble-fiber period than during the insoluble-fiber period (P &amp;lt; 0.001) and was related to the differences in total and LDL cholesterol and apolipoprotein B levels...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Incredible&lt;/em&gt;! Bile really does seem to have had an increase in excretion rates when soluble fiber was consumed. Whether this is due to Hurd's &lt;em&gt;binding&lt;/em&gt; theory or not, I'm not sure -- but at the least, bile &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; being expelled at a greater rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lia et al., &quot;Oat beta-glucan increases bile acid excretion and a fiber-rich barley fraction increases cholesterol excretion in ileostomy subjects,&quot; 1995 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/62/6/1245.short&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 24-h excretion of bile acids was 53% higher in the [oat bran] diet period than in the [oat bran with beta beta-glucanase] diet period and also was significantly higher than in the [barley] and [wheat] diet periods (P &amp;lt; 0.05). Median (range) bile acid excretion was 851, and 606 mg/d in the [oat bran], [oat bran with beta-glucanase], [barley], and [wheat] diet periods, respectively. The excretion of cholesterol was significantly higher in the [barley] diet period than in the [oat bran with beta-glucanase] and [wheat] diet periods (P &amp;lt; 0.05), but the mechanism behind this effect of barley fiber is unknown. In oat bran, however, beta-glucan mediates an increase in bile acid excretion, which most probably explains the effect of oat fiber in lowering serum lipids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, again, bile acid increased with test diets, but it appears that the mechanism is unknown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still have no evidence for soluble fiber binding with Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and/or bile to reduce morning sickness. It's also undetermined exactly &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; soluble fiber is dealing with cholesterol or bile, at least from my survey. So... it's unclear as to whether Hurd is just speculating or has any basis for her claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least, I can say that my research surprised me a great deal (due to finding the positive connection with soluble fiber, cholesterol decreases, and increase in bile expulsion rates), but I'm still skeptical about mechanisms and morning sickness. This is all I've found for now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-06-22T21:59:54.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3802" CreationDate="2011-06-22T22:48:23.153" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This appears to be &lt;em&gt;false&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knudson, &amp;quot;The Pet Food Market,&amp;quot; 2003 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110124171128/http://www.productcenter.msu.edu/documents/Working/1-12031.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pet ownership is higher in households with children than in those without children.  In a survey conducted by Mintel, &lt;strong&gt;64 percent of households with children present owned pets whereas 52 percent of those without children owned pets&lt;/strong&gt; (Mintel, p. 67).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mintel paper referenced is titled, &amp;quot;The U.S. Pet  Food &amp;amp; Supplies Market,&amp;quot; but I can't find a link to an abstract or something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Westgarth et al., &amp;quot;Factors associated with dog ownership and contact with dogs in a UK,&amp;quot; 2007 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20100706012101/http://www.anthrozoology.org/factors_associated_with_dog_ownership_and_contact_with_dogs_in_a_uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study supports the suggestion that dogs are more common in families who have older children (6-19 years), as has been generally observed in other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The tables &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/424_household_pet_ownership_and_by_selected.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;, based on data from the &amp;quot;U.S. Pet Ownership &amp;amp; Demographics Sourcebook (2007 Edition)&#xA;&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120723093640/http://www.avma.org:80/reference/marketstats/sourcebook.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;) seems to indicate that families with children own more pets than children-less families (potentially).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example (values in percents):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;div class=&quot;s-table-container&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;table class=&quot;s-table&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Family Size&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Dog&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Cat&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Bird&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Horse&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;One person&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;13.2&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;16.8&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;12.7&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;12.1&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;Two persons&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;31.0&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;32.6&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;27.9&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;29.1&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;Three persons&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;21.4&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;20.6&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;20.4&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;22.0&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;Four or more persons&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;34.5&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;29.9&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;38.9&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;36.7&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;/table&gt;&#xA;&lt;/div&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, we see a see higher rates of ownership for households with more individuals living in them. I said &amp;quot;potentially&amp;quot; above, as we don't know the ages of these increased individuals. I will say, there's an obvious dip for three person households, so perhaps two parents with one child are seen with pets less often, and thus this hypothesis was created? Pure speculation, but I did see the big dip between two and four person households.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Australian Bureau of Statistics features some helpful data on this as well (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834efa/5ef8016f420622a3ca2570ec00753524!OpenDocument&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/T0piA.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/T0piA.gif&quot; alt=&quot;ABS data on ownership stats&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we see that families with all ranges of kids own pets all at rates above 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same site also has a similar breakdown to the table above (values in percents):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;div class=&quot;s-table-container&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;table class=&quot;s-table&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Family Size&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Dogs&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Cats&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Birds&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Fish&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;All&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;Married couple with dependants&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;49.0&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;32.9&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;21.0&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;16.0&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;74.0&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;Other married couple&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;37.3&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;25.7&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;16.3&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;5.4&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;59.4&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;Lone parent with dependants&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;41.1&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;29.5&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;11.4&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;7.5&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;62.2&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;Lone person aged less than 35&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;18.9&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;7.9&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;5.6&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;2.8&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;30.2&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;Lone person aged 60 or more&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;15.8&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;15.4&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;8.9&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;0.4&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;32.3&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;/table&gt;&#xA;&lt;/div&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we see the highest rates of ownership for married couples with dependents and single parents with dependents (at least for all pets except birds). The next highest rates of ownership are from married couples with no dependents (I'm assuming that's what &amp;quot;other married couples&amp;quot; means).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I saved this source for last, as I couldn't track the figures cited to something more reliable... &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160830090555/http://www.americanhumane.org:80/interaction/support-the-bond/fact-sheets/animal-abuse-domestic-violence.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a page from the American Humane Association, featuring this tidbit:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pets live most frequently in homes with children: 64.1% of homes with children under age 6, and 74.8% of homes with children over age 6, have pets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have quite a list of sources at the bottom of the page, but without footnotes, I don't particularly want to figure out which one might contain this information. I'm thinking it might be the &amp;quot;U.S. Pet Ownership &amp;amp; Demographics Sourcebook&amp;quot; listed above, as this appears in the list of references. The webpage linked above for the sourcebook does have the following in it's list of figures provided (&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120723093640/http://www.avma.org:80/reference/marketstats/sourcebook.asp#Figures&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distribution of households that owned pets versus all households, both pet-owning and nonpet-owning, by marital status, 2006&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distribution of households that owned pets versus all households, both pet-owning and nonpet-owning, by household size, 2006&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Percentage of households that owned pets by life stage, 2006&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those would be the statistics to know, but I'm not paying $264 for the book! Nevertheless, the rest of the sources above seem to indicate that pet ownership is actually quite high among families with children, or at least higher for families with more than one child than with married/no-kid families.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="38358" LastEditDate="2021-01-10T13:15:11.647" LastActivityDate="2021-01-10T13:15:11.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4800" CreationDate="2011-06-22T22:52:05.617" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can transplant recipients remember things their donors experienced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a word, &lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can't examine this claim without addressing the purported idea of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wTvGx.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cellular memory&lt;/a&gt;&quot; a topic already dealt with very nicely at the skeptic's dictionary. And by Suma in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4797/can-flatworms-learn-a-maze-by-digesting-other-flatworms&quot;&gt;flatworms question&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The idea that transplanting organs&#xA;  transfers the coding of life&#xA;  experiences is unimaginable.&quot;  --Dr.&#xA;  John Schroeder,  Stanford Medical&#xA;  Center&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;There is simply no scientific reason to think that somehow memories of one person are stored in cells and can be passed from one person to another during transplantation.  There is not even a scientifically theorized mechanism by which it could happen&lt;/em&gt;.  The claim remains purely pseudoscientific and proponents often rely on anecdotes, coincidence, and anomaly hunting to make their case.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; such a thing were true, I might call attention to the problems which would be faced by the following people:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wTvGx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/infant-receives-baboon-heart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HHUw3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://xenotransplant.ineu.org/xenotrans/news/19920629.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and of course, the comically terrifying applications it would have considering this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KlAU8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026844.500-pig-organs-ready-for-humans-at-last.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, receiving a life-saving or life-changing organ transplant has profound physiological, social and psychological effects on a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An organ transplant is a life-altering&#xA;  experience, literally. In many cases,&#xA;  it might well be compared to the&#xA;  near-death experience since many&#xA;  transplants are done only if death is&#xA;  imminent. It should not be surprising&#xA;  to find that many transplant&#xA;  recipients change significantly. Some&#xA;  of these changes might easily be&#xA;  interpreted as being consistent with&#xA;  the donor's likes and dislikes or&#xA;  behaviors. Recipients would want to&#xA;  know about their donor and might&#xA;  consciously or unconsciously be&#xA;  influenced by stories about the person&#xA;  who now &quot;lives inside them.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unos.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not surprising how many people could conceivably interpret a mystical significance to some of the changes they are experiencing, but as we can see, changes are normal after such a procedure, even ones the general public might not expect, such as &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a789236207&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;memory improvement following cardiac transplantation&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pre-transplant testing revealed normal&#xA;  intelligence and normal attentional,&#xA;  language, and executive abilities but&#xA;  impaired recent memory. Following&#xA;  heart transplant, memory functioning&#xA;  improved significantly, reaching&#xA;  normal levels. Other cognitive&#xA;  abilities remained unchanged. Results&#xA;  suggest that cardiomyopathy is&#xA;  associated with mesial temporal&#xA;  dysfunction, possibly attributable to&#xA;  inadequate or reduced cerebral blood&#xA;  flow and related hypometabolism&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it's quite tempting to think simply that the transplanted heart might have come from a very intelligent person, especially if it &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; happen to come from an individual with above average intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are bound to be strange coincidences, strange similarities between donor and recipient.  There are bound to be anecdotal stories which sound astonishing, but given the sheer volume of transplants performed this year alone&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/juDLa.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unos.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the 73 cases Pearsall lists in his book (cited in the question) seem even less compelling.  Especially since he has had some noted &quot;credibility&quot; issues in the past&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr Pearsall claims that he is “Fully&#xA;  licensed and board certified clinical&#xA;  neuropsychologist, License Number&#xA;  000773″ Even better, the American&#xA;  Board of Clinical Neuropsychology&#xA;  lists all its members and guess what,&#xA;  under ‘P’ for Pearsall, no-one of that&#xA;  name exists. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2006/04/cellular-memory-fails-memory-test.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I certainly wouldn't say these claims are &quot;legion&quot;.  But of course, you can try to stretch the data that way if you keep the claims vague and apply them to subjective things like &quot;developing tastes&quot; or &quot;artistic capability&quot; such as the case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-381589/The-art-transplant.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;William Sheridan&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;William Sheridan's drawing skills were&#xA;  stuck at nursery level. His stick&#xA;  figures were the sort you would expect&#xA;  of a child. But as he convalesced&#xA;  after a heart transplant operation, he&#xA;  experienced an astonishing revelation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that's subjective, as his art went from this....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VjqNR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y8kjr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which could likely be explained by any number of natural mechanisms, such as having more time to practice drawing while recovering, or even perhaps as a result of the increase in cognitive function seen in some heart transplant patients as I noted above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to the much more widely-known case of Claire Sylvia, one needs only to look at the words of William Novak, one of her supporters....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The point is that Claire  is not&#xA;  claiming that you take  on the entire&#xA;  personality of the donor, just&#xA;  fragments that come through. One  of&#xA;  the things I like about her is that&#xA;  she doesn't make grand, sweeping, hard&#xA;  to believe  claims. She  doesn't claim&#xA;  she  is two people  at once, but she &#xA;  does believe that something unusual&#xA;  has happened&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.open-source-cranio.com/resources/articles/transplant.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is absolutely correct, something unusual &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; happen.  Claire Sylvia was &lt;em&gt;the first woman in New England to successfully undergo a heart-lung transplant&lt;/em&gt;. It's easy to see how her entire case could get blown out of proportion, especially given the media's tendency to report &quot;the miracles of modern medicine&quot; as simply &quot;miracles&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sylvia, 47, was dying from pulmonary&#xA;  hypertension — a disease that&#xA;  increases the body's blood pressure in&#xA;  the lung vasculature and most often&#xA;  leads to death — in 1988 when she&#xA;  became the first person in New England&#xA;  to have a heart-lung transplant.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,349770,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and as such, she was given some attention from the media,and anything she said was almost guaranteed an audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because I was the first person in the&#xA;  state to have such an operation, there&#xA;  was a lot of publicity, and two&#xA;  reporters came to the hospital to&#xA;  interview me.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-558256/I-given-young-mans-heart---started-craving-beer-Kentucky-Fried-Chicken-My-daughter-said-I-walked-like-man.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also very possible that the life and death of the donor could have received equal attention from the journalists, even if it was not equally reported. This could quite logically have caused Sylvia to be exposed to leading questions from journalists who had already researched the life and death of Tim Lamirande. The always-tragic motorcycle crash death of an 18 year old boy is likely to make the news, let alone when it becomes intertwined with a medical &quot;breakthrough&quot; such as this.  But that's just one explanation that doesn't resort immediately to mystical thinking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T21:56:54.840" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4796" CreationDate="2011-06-23T02:45:26.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have also seen claims by mens rights groups suggesting that women are more often the abuser in such a relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some countries, the term &quot;spousal abuse&quot; isn't limited to physical violence. For example according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/pi/fv-vf/facts-info/sa-vc.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Canadian government definition&lt;/a&gt; it includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Physical abuse&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sexual abuse and exploitation (includes ... using ridicule or other tactics to try to denigrate, control or limit their sexuality)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Emotional abuse (includes verbal attacks, such as yelling, screaming and name-calling.  Using criticism, verbal threats, social isolation, ... threatening a person or their loved ones, damaging their possessions, or harming their pets)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Economic or financial abuse includes stealing from or defrauding a partner &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Spiritual abuse&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to that same document, &quot;women are more likely to report being assaulted&quot; in almost every category of abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T02:45:26.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3548" CreationDate="2011-06-23T02:48:40.747" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This appears to have a valid concern (increased risk of scratching the screen when laid flat), but has been mistakenly extended into a blanket recommendation with no basis (nebulous concerns about TVs/monitors &quot;going bad&quot;).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How did I come to this conclusion? I figured one way to go about this would be to look into LCD TV/Monitor manufacturer's manuals to see if there were any warnings about this. While not guaranteed, I'd figure those who make these devices should know about this and at the very least have a vested interest in not being liable for returns if customers broke products and no warnings were given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, pictures say it much better than words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LG LCD TV manual (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.retrevo.com/samples/LG-LCD-TV-manuals.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;) :&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uXahR.png&quot; alt=&quot;lg lcd tv manual&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LG W2753VC LCD Monitor manual (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.retrevo.com/samples/LG-manuals.html#Monitor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lngVX.png&quot; alt=&quot;lg lcd monitor manual&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vizio M260MV LCD TV manual ([LINK](&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.retrevo.com/samples/Vizio-manuals.html#LCD&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.retrevo.com/samples/Vizio-manuals.html#LCD&lt;/a&gt; TV)):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hCDtJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;vizio m260 installation&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QWWCD.png&quot; alt=&quot;vizio m260 repacking instructions&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(No mention of how to transport in terms of orientation, just that using original packing material is recommended.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Panasonic TC-L42U30 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.retrevo.com/samples/Panasonic-LCD-TV-manuals.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iObfZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;panasonic manual&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sharp 70&quot; 70LE732U (&lt;a href=&quot;http://files.sharpusa.com/Downloads/ForHome/HomeEntertainment/LCDTVs/Manuals/tel_man_LC60LE632U_70LE732U.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EutD3.png&quot; alt=&quot;sharp manual&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on all of these images, it seems that we can draw a couple of conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The pure orientation component cannot have anything to do with this &quot;folk&quot; recommendation, otherwise manufacturers would specify that laying them flat would be disastrous.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Several manufacturers (all except one) recommend putting a soft cloth down under the screen. I see two possible reasons for this:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put something &quot;cushy&quot; under the screen so that if there are any irregularities on the surface, it doesn't damage the screen, and because a cloth won't scratch the screen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Support the screen/glass to prevent deflection which might damage it. There are discussions on many forums about the glass potentially breaking if laid flat (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=64061&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; for an example).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't tell from the manuals whether cracking is the concern, or whether it's scratches/uneven pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To see if cracked glass was a real concern, I tried finding complaints online about this issue. After all, if this truly happens, individuals should be complaining and asking for input after it happens to them! Alas, no such luck. While absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, I would have expected to find more online in forums if this was a common occurrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Takeaway:&lt;/strong&gt; In the end there's &lt;em&gt;no mention whatsoever&lt;/em&gt; of concerns about the horizontal orientation of monitors &lt;em&gt;except&lt;/em&gt; for scratching the screen. Nothing about sagging potential, cracked glass, electronics, having liquid crystals go bad, etc. If laying a monitor flat was &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; big of a concern, I'd at least expect a mention in the caution sections (I looked at them in all manuals above) of even a &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; issue. Nothing of the sort. Also, there's no bread crumb trail of real users complaining about their stupidity for breaking their precious screens. Therefore, I see no basis for the concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T14:25:52.053" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T14:25:52.053" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4810" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4849" CreationDate="2011-06-23T03:02:15.557" Score="22" ViewCount="1189" Body="&lt;p&gt;A company called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lytro.com/&quot;&gt;Lytro&lt;/a&gt; claim to be producing a light-field camera that has a key feature that the focus point can be moved after the image has been taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their claims have been questioned by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jwz.org/blog/2011/06/lytro/&quot;&gt;jwz&lt;/a&gt;, a well-known blogger who says he can't understand how their diagram/explanation makes any sense. He points out that it includes lenses, which are about discarding  the very information about light fields the company claims to capture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The web-site includes some demonstrations which would be moderately easy to fake (Take the original shot with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.petapixel.com/2011/04/19/frazier-ultimate-lens-shows-everything-in-focus-with-massive-depth-of-field/&quot;&gt;Frazier lens&lt;/a&gt;, and then blur selective parts afterwards, or lots of photos of each layer photoshopped together.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The web-site notably does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; include any photographs of a prototype product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CEO, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren_Ng&quot;&gt;Dr Ren Ng&lt;/a&gt; won the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/press-room/news-releases-2007/internal/&quot;&gt;2006 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award&lt;/a&gt; for his research in the area. (Note: It was awarded in 2007, which explains some discrepancies about the award date.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a real product being developed? A fake? Or is there another option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-06-26T03:36:58.900" Title="Do light field cameras exist?" Tags="|photography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4811" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-23T04:32:25.073" Score="10" ViewCount="3281" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Probably related:&lt;/strong&gt; What does Myers-Briggs Type Indicator tell about a person? (&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/575/what-does-myers-briggs-type-indicator-tell-about-a-person&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know a few people who are quite &amp;quot;into&amp;quot; the Enneagram (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;), including some family members of mine. I was sent a book on it recently from some of them. It's a personality analysis/self-knowledge type of system that has supposed benefits. From their FAQ (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enneagraminstitute.com/FAQs.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the Enneagram?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don Riso has defined the Enneagram as &amp;quot;a geometric figure that delineates the nine basic personality types of human nature and their complex interrelationships.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What use is the Enneagram? How can it help me?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Enneagram can be extremely useful to everyone as a source of self-knowledge because it acts as a kind of &amp;quot;mirror&amp;quot; to reveal features of our personality that normally are invisible to us. Most of the time, people function habitually, as if on &amp;quot;automatic pilot,&amp;quot; according to the pattern of their basic personality type. Usually this allows people to get along well enough in their lives, but when their normal routines break down or the stresses of their lives increase too much, their normal way of coping also tends to break down or become dysfunctional. Seeing clearly what our habitual patterns are—seeing what we are doing and why we are doing it, and at what cost to ourselves and others—holds the key to our liberation. By knowing your type correctly, you are able to see yourself—to &amp;quot;catch yourself in the act&amp;quot;—as you move throughout the day. With this increased self-awareness, you are also able to avoid reacting in negative and potentially dangerous ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, is there any evidence to support the Enneagram, its method, its potential beneficial effects on the individual if understood/studied, etc.?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-02-14T03:57:12.817" Title="Does the Enneagram personality test have any established benefits?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4813" CreationDate="2011-06-23T05:23:18.353" Score="19" ViewCount="11472" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit2:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm revising the question &lt;em&gt;again&lt;/em&gt;. Please note that &lt;em&gt;I am not talking about card tricks like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AewhMHhCmNQ&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. I'm talking about specific examples below which are at least portrayed as &lt;em&gt;far more&lt;/em&gt; complex, ornate, and supposedly based on psychology and suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Derren Brown (&lt;a href=&quot;http://derrenbrown.co.uk/&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;) is described as being a &quot;a British illusionist, mentalist, painter, writer and sceptic&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown&quot;&gt;WIKI&lt;/a&gt;). He pulls off various feats that are, indeed, &lt;em&gt;insanely&lt;/em&gt; amazing [looking]. Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rOqyMykIso&quot;&gt;Guiding someone via seemingly nebulous questions to a buried container in the desert&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqszfa3aVi8&quot;&gt;Convincing someone to want the exact present that Derren has pre-wrapped for them&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQjr1YL0zg&quot;&gt;Influencing two individuals to make logos and slogans that he predicted ahead of time&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-VEdzz3ixA&quot;&gt;Predicting the path someone would take through a grocery store and what they would buy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Derren's website (as noted by @Oliver_C) states that he &quot;combines magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship in order to seemingly predict and control human behaviour, as well as performing mind-bending feats of mentalism.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not consider the above to be in the magic category, and know that some believe he is using NLP to accomplish these feats (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlpconnections.com/forum/617-derren-brown-exposed.html&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;), despite his own denial of using such a method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one holds that this is &quot;magic,&quot; please make a solid case for &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it is in such a category other than citing his website or methods, for his stated methods &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; include psychology and misdirection. I classify the above as those which &lt;em&gt;appear&lt;/em&gt; to be using psychology or suggestive wording to influence others and make &quot;predictions&quot; appear real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it possible to influence people's choices so precisely via psychology or linguistic suggestion, as to accomplish what is shown above?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T02:04:47.517" LastActivityDate="2022-06-27T14:43:41.493" Title="Is it possible to do the things Derren Brown does with just psychology or linguistic suggestion?" Tags="|stage-magic|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4812" CreationDate="2011-06-23T05:57:20.320" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your own research answers this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Derren Brown is, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;by your own reference&lt;/a&gt;, an illusionist. By his own admission, he uses &amp;quot;magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brown performs some tricks with props and sleight-of-hand, such as with cards and cigars, but he is famous for his &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stage_hypnosis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;stage hypnosis&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mentalism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mentalism&lt;/a&gt;. As @Oliver_C has pointed out, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrHWgWNXveY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;History of Magic&lt;/a&gt; documentary has some background on the History of Mentalism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an illusionist, you should &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; that when he is performing that he &amp;quot;lies&amp;quot; about he does. Furthermore, he even admits to that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;I am often dishonest in my techniques, but always honest about my dishonesty. As I say in each show, 'I mix magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship'. I happily admit cheating, as it's all part of the game. I hope some of the fun for the viewer comes from not knowing what's real and what isn't. I am an entertainer first and foremost, and I am careful not to cross any moral line that would take me into manipulating people's real-life decisions or belief systems.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;(Source: His book, &lt;em&gt;Tricks of the Mind&lt;/em&gt;, via the Wikipedia page.)&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same Wikipedia page explains he &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown#Neuro-linguistic_programming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;does not claim to use NLP&lt;/a&gt;, describing aspects of it as limited. However, in a 1999 lecture &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=57m54s&amp;amp;v=brfFCpVtvkY&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;he does&lt;/a&gt; claim to use NLP techniques. Note: Just because he believes/believed they worked, doesn't &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5134/is-it-possible-to-determine-if-a-person-is-telling-the-truth-by-which-direction&quot;&gt;mean&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/74/any-scientific-basis-for-neuro-linguistic-programming&quot;&gt;they&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9792/do-eye-movements-reveal-how-a-person-is-thinking&quot;&gt;do&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same page, there are links to Simon Singh, a noted skeptic, who wrote &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/3309267/Ill-bet-1000-that-Derren-cant-read-my-mind.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; where he exposed one of the card tricks as a straight-forward magic trick, and objected to Brown claiming that it was done through psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not think it is appropriate to reveal a magic trick that is being presented as such, and I consider Derren Brown to be presenting himself as a magician, despite Singh's concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brown reveals some of his tricks himself in his book &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20131027154513/http://derrenbrown.co.uk/devilspicturebook2/store.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Devils Picture Book&lt;/a&gt;, which has limited availability, to magicians only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in conclusion, Brown is not using psychology to the extent that he appears when in the middle of performing a trick, but he admits as much at the beginning of the show and off-stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-06-27T14:43:41.493" LastActivityDate="2022-06-27T14:43:41.493" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3040" CreationDate="2011-06-23T06:22:43.243" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's important to compare with what you'd expect in the general population against what you'd expect in prisons. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/crimedata.html&quot;&gt;the Twelfth United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;the incidents of rape in the US is 28.6 per 1000 in 2008&lt;/strong&gt; (on a steady decline from 31.6 in 2003).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came upon &lt;a href=&quot;http://reason.com/archives/2011/06/20/rape-factories&quot;&gt;an article in reason.com&lt;/a&gt; reporting that the DOJ (U.S. Departement of Justice) has recently attempted to estimate the amount of sexual abuse in prisons in  America. I've emailed the reporter asking for directions to the actual report, but the reason.com give these statistics that I found interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The U.S. Department of Justice recently released its first-ever estimate of the number of inmates who are sexually abused in America each year. According to the department’s data, which are based on nationwide surveys of prison and jail inmates as well as young people in juvenile detention centers, &lt;strong&gt;at least 216,600 inmates were victimized in 2008 alone. Contrary to popular belief, most of the perpetrators were not other prisoners but staff members—corrections officials whose job it is to keep inmates safe.&lt;/strong&gt; On average, each victim was abused between three and five times over the course of the year. The vast majority were too fearful of reprisals to seek help or file a formal complaint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However you shouldn't assume that people who work in prisons are abusive, even going by accusation it's a low number of the total. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/plus/e0904.pdf&quot;&gt;A DOJ report&lt;/a&gt; from September 2009 reports that 4.7% of all staff members under the BOP (Federal Bureau of Prisons) has been accused of sexual assault, it doesn't however seem to break it down into categories containing the nature of the abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the bright side I did find out that congress &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justice.gov/oig/reports/plus/e0904.pdf&quot;&gt;has attempted&lt;/a&gt; to do something about prison rape back in 2003:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 directs prison officials to make the prevention of sexual abuse in prisons a top management priority. The Prison Rape Elimination Act defines “prisons” broadly to include not only federal and state prisons and local jails, but also short-term lockups such as cellblocks and other holding facilities regardless of their size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a placeholder until I can find the DOJ statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-06-24T23:27:29.600" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T23:27:29.600" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4816" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4818" CreationDate="2011-06-23T11:06:43.577" Score="43" ViewCount="27404" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just recently received my first pair of eyeglasses.  My eye doctor stated that contrary to popular belief, that wearing the glasses will not weaken my eyes any further.  However my sister-in-law went to her eye doctor just last week where her doctor said the exact opposite, that she was wearing her glasses too much, which caused her eyes to weaken.  Is this simply a myth?  All I can seem to find is personal experiences rather than firm facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3804" LastActivityDate="2021-06-03T23:14:13.780" Title="Does wearing prescription eyeglasses weaken your eyes?" Tags="|medical-science|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="598" CreationDate="2011-06-23T13:08:41.067" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having just read a Slashdot article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://games.slashdot.org/story/11/06/23/0323257/Violent-Games-Credited-With-Reducing-Crime-Levels&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Violent Games Credited With Reducing Crime Levels&lt;/a&gt;&quot; on this topic that suggests that violent video games reduce violent crime, I thought it worthwhile to post it to this interesting thread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Slashdot article cites the paper &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1804959&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Understanding the Effects of Violent Video Games on Violent Crime&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, dated April 7, 2011, the abstract for which is (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Psychological studies invariably find a positive relationship between violent video game play and aggression. However, these studies cannot account for either aggressive effects of alternative activities video game playing substitutes for or the possible selection of relatively violent people into playing violent video games. That is, they lack external validity. We investigate the relationship between the prevalence of violent video games and violent crimes. Our results are consistent with two opposing effects. First, they support the behavioral effects as in the psychological studies. Second, they suggest a larger voluntary incapacitation effect in which playing either violent or non-violent games decrease crimes. &lt;strong&gt;Overall, violent video games lead to decreases in violent crime.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer, based on this study, is: &lt;strong&gt;Violent video games cause or correlate with an increase in violent behaviour.&lt;/strong&gt; However, it's worth noting that this violent behaviour is offset by the distraction and release of aggression through playing of the (violent or non-violent) video games, resulting in an &lt;strong&gt;overall reduction in violent crime&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this study purports to answer the question, a lack of consensus is likely to remain on the topic. I think this study is, however, an important piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;— EDIT —&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also add a reference to the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-11/ica-nlf102814.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;No link found between movie, video game violence and societal violence (2014)&lt;/a&gt;, which is summarized:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Christopher Ferguson (Stetson University) published his findings in the Journal of Communication. Ferguson conducted two studies that raised the question if whether the incidence of violence in media correlates with actual violence rates in society. The first study looked at movie violence and homicide rates between 1920 and 2005. The second study looked at videogame violence consumption and its relationship to youth violence rates from 1996-2011. He found that societal consumption of media violence is not predictive of increased violence rates in society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Entertainment Software Ratings Board ratings were used to estimate the violent content of the most popular video games for the years 1996-2011. These estimates of societal video game violence consumption were correlated against federal data on youth violence rates during the same years. Violent video game consumption was strongly correlated with declines in youth violence. However, it was concluded that such a correlation is most likely due to chance and does not indicate video games caused the decline in youth violence. ... Previous studies have focused on laboratory experiments and aggression as a response to movie and videogame violence, but this does not match well with real-life exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be worth noting that this appears to be the first article by Christopher Ferguson on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="1792" LastEditDate="2014-11-09T00:55:20.043" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T00:55:20.043" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4816" CreationDate="2011-06-23T13:30:30.657" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agingeye.net/visionbasics/visionmyths.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Unversity of Illinois Eye &amp;amp; Ear Infirmary - Clinical &amp;amp; Research Facilities&lt;/a&gt; website states as a counter to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Myths about Vision and Eyeglasses&#xA;  &quot;Although eyeglasses makes you see&#xA;  better, they cause vision to get worse&#xA;  over time. Eyeglasses will need to be&#xA;  constantly changed with higher powered&#xA;  one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reply&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course it is possible that your eye&#xA;  power may also have increased as you&#xA;  age - but this increase would have&#xA;  happened regardless of whether you&#xA;  wore the glasses or not. When children&#xA;  become nearsighted (myopic), usually&#xA;  between the ages of 8 and 12, there is&#xA;  a natural progression in their myopia&#xA;  and a need for a stronger correction&#xA;  over the next few years. These&#xA;  children, as well as nearsighted&#xA;  adults, may believe that glasses have&#xA;  weakened their eyes when their lens&#xA;  prescription needs to be made strong.&#xA;  Glasses, however, do not weaken eyes;&#xA;  they are simply aids to improve&#xA;  vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally I can add I have been wearing spectacles for short-sightedness since the age of 10, and the power increased every 6 months or so until the age of 16 - after which it has been steady. As per the above article, it would have got that way irrespective of having worn spectacles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above link is one side of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;a href=&quot;http://library.thinkquest.org/28030/bates.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;William Bates&lt;/a&gt; used to advocate not using spectacles,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The usual method to correct faulty&#xA;  vision is by wearing prescribed&#xA;  glasses. But, some people have claimed&#xA;  that this would not improve vision,&#xA;  i.e. not solving the root of the&#xA;  problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first person to publicly spread&#xA;  this message was William Bates of the&#xA;  1900's. To him, wearing glasses merely&#xA;  makes our faulty vision more&#xA;  persistent. Just as over-strained&#xA;  muscles could improve, our eye can&#xA;  improve with the use of routine eye&#xA;  exercises&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but the Bates Method has &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/138/is-the-bates-method-for-improving-eyesight-efficacious&quot;&gt;already been discussed&lt;/a&gt; on these pages and not proven to be effective. It's been derided on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bates_method&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;it's own Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to farsightedness, other than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eyesonbroadway.co.nz/Hyperopia-long-sight/menu-id-42.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link from an eye care provider&lt;/a&gt; - no surprises there - I have come across forums that state &quot;the doctor only asks you to wear them when reading and not always&quot; - Is that what you've been told or heard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rd.com/health/5-eyesight-myths-dispelled/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Readers Digest&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fact: If you are prescribed glasses&#xA;  for distance or reading, use them.&#xA;  Trying to read without reading glasses&#xA;  will simply strain your eyes and tire&#xA;  them out. Using glasses won’t weaken&#xA;  your vision or lead to eye disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems generic, but I infer the &quot;glasses for reading&quot; bit covers farsighted users too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T15:25:26.480" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4740" CreationDate="2011-06-23T14:12:40.400" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this guy lying to make a point, or does he actually have a point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's difficult to know what his motive is (and if he does have a point then it's probably better if he expresses it than me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/915&quot;&gt;misleading, in various ways&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you limit the discussion to only fuel efficiency, more relevant than average fuel efficiency is the incremental or marginal cost: for various (other, sufficient) reasons the buses are running anyway: so if you make a trip via public transport that uses no extra fuel; whereas if you take a private car that does use extra fuel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your using public transport increases total fuel consumption only at peak/rush-hour times (i.e. if you contribute to the bus being so full that they need to supply an extra bus). Note that this (peak/rush-hour utilization with full-buses) is exactly the time at which buses are actually more fuel-efficient per average-passenger-mile than cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T16:38:42.083" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T15:13:58.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4821" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4858" CreationDate="2011-06-23T16:53:58.363" Score="13" ViewCount="5109" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt; Is there any evidence to support the benefits of lunar planting? (&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4643/is-there-any-evidence-to-support-the-benefits-of-lunar-planting&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple years ago, I first ran across something called &amp;quot;moon wood,&amp;quot; described as follows (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.best-eurospruce.com/4.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moonwood has recently received a good revival among the guitar community and scientists... Moonspruce is simply a name for spruce that was harvested and handled according to a century-old tradition from the Alp-regions in Europe. Carpenters and luthiers had recognized that wood that was cut under certain conditions, differs from wood that is not cut using the old traditional way of handling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[It is] Cut an according tree within the last quarter of waning moon (end of waning moon phase) in the wintertime after the growing period of the tree has stopped (low sap flow).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tonewood.ch/moonwood.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; site also gives some characteristics and claims evidence supports these desirable qualities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The amalgam of the data material... and the use of specific, statistic-based analysis allow for a determination of significant...lunar oriented components in the variability of moisture loss, shrinkage and relative weight.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was determined that the division waxing...and waning...points to significant, across-the-board differences in shrinkage, but final results are still outstanding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...The inclusion of the reference weight (taken before felling)of each individual tree, independent of time, shows that this factor plays a superordinate role, but confirms the significance of the lunar models tested.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also allegations that Stradivarius used &amp;quot;moon woods&amp;quot; to accomplish the legendary sound of his violins (mentioned in the source above as well as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124437&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; as &amp;quot;legend has it&amp;quot; in a forum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are guitars sold today boasting &amp;quot;moon harvested spruce&amp;quot; as a selling point (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dreamguitars.com/new/tippin/tippin_crescendo_0508001/tippin_crescendo_508001.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EXAMPLE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any evidence to support the superior qualities (either inherent qualities such as moisture retention, shrinkage, stiffness, etc. or end-product qualities such as sustain, complexity of tone, frequency profile, resonance, etc.) of moon-harvested woods used in musical instruments?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any evidence to support the claim that this is an &amp;quot;age-old&amp;quot; tradition used for  many centuries? I ask as sources above discuss this as sort of following the wisdom of the &amp;quot;ancient experts&amp;quot; -- I'm wondering if it was completely fabricated more recently and just stuck because people tend to be fascinated with &amp;quot;the moon&amp;quot; and celestial influences on things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T07:34:16.567" Title="Is wood harvested during a full moon (&quot;moon wood&quot;) better for musical instruments?" Tags="|music|moon|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4643" CreationDate="2011-06-23T17:17:04.520" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;Moon Planting philosophy is a &lt;strong&gt;Myth&lt;/strong&gt; in that &lt;strong&gt;it does not work for the reason Lunar Planters think it does&lt;/strong&gt;, but there are several reasons why people swear by it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How They Think It Works&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two main ideas behind moon gardening practices. First, lunar gardeners believe the moon's gravitational pull affects the flow of moisture in the soil. Just as the moon has a noticeable effect on the oceans in the tides, the moon may have a subtler effect on smaller bodies of water and thus change the levels of water in the soil. For example, to take advantage of the lunar cycle, a gardener would avoid turning over the soil in his or her garden when there is the most moisture in it (and thus when the soil was hardest to turn over) which lunar gardeners propose is during the new and full moons. Another, less direct, proposed connection between the moon and gardening is that moonlight is thought to have an effect on seed germination because exposure to light can enhance germination.  [&lt;a href=&quot;http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=701&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What's Going On&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let’s look at a possible scenario.&#xA;Gardener I is a moon planter; Gardener&#xA;II isn’t. Both gardeners wait till&#xA;spring to plant their beans. (No sensible&#xA;cool climate gardener will plant&#xA;beans in winter. It’s too cold for them&#xA;to germinate, and many seeds will rot&#xA;or be taken by ants.)&#xA;But come the first warm spell Gardener&#xA;II succumbs to one of the great&#xA;spring urges and plants the beans at&#xA;the first hint that spring has arrived.&#xA;Gardener I, on the other hand, waits&#xA;till the next good moon planting time&#xA;before planting the seeds.&#xA;Early warm spells are usually&#xA;followed by another cold one… and&#xA;again seed planted too early may rot.&#xA;Even if it doesn’t, plants that suffer&#xA;any set-back when they are young&#xA;usually don’t do as well as plants&#xA;that have flourished right from the&#xA;start. (The set-back can be from cold,&#xA;boggy soil, snail or scale attack —&#xA;the effect is the same). So counterintuitively,&#xA;beans that are planted&#xA;later in spring will probably do better&#xA;than beans planted too early. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://danfingerman.com/skeptic/Moon_planting.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result is essentially that what may seem as an intuitively good time to do gardening is often counter-productive, and anyone adhering to a fixed schedule independent of the weather is likely to do better than the intuitive gardener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reverse may happen in autumn&#xA;— the moon planting gardener will&#xA;be aware that they only have one&#xA;good time to plant, so may get their&#xA;seeds in without delay — and in&#xA;autumn, earlier planting into&#xA;warmer soil usually means bigger&#xA;plants.&#xA;It’s this tendency to slightly later&#xA;spring planting and perhaps slightly&#xA;earlier autumn planting, that I suspect&#xA;is the reason so many gardeners&#xA;will swear that they see an effect.&#xA;(One keen gardener who has been&#xA;following moon planting for more&#xA;than 30 years once told me that he&#xA;finds moon planting more effective&#xA;for early rather than late spring&#xA;plants, though he believes it’s because&#xA;the young spring moon is more&#xA;powerful.)&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Which means that generations of&#xA;gardeners may not be deluded about&#xA;the efficacy of moon planting. It just&#xA;works for a different reason than the&#xA;one they believed.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, those enjoying the superior goods of moon planters are likely to find them better for reasons other than moon planting. &lt;strong&gt;Confirmation Bias&lt;/strong&gt; likely plays a role, but even more than that - someone who is attentive enough to their garden to adhere to moon planting folklore is likely to be doing other things to ensure the health of their crops - such as using healthy soil, watering properly, and being generally more attentive. &lt;strong&gt;In short, most of the gardening behaviour that goes hand in hand with the superstitious tendencies will have an actual positive effect on the crop.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/07/0710_030710_moongarden.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this national geographic article&lt;/a&gt; Michael Jawson, US Department of Agriculture Systems Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reported benefits of moon-gardening practices are most likely indirect effects that stem from gardener’s attentive care. The indirect effect could be one simply of overall better management because of being careful to do good practices at more optimum times in relation to plant growth cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few studies have been done to test the veracity of lunar gardening. This due in large part to the fact that such experiments would need to be performed over multiple years, since weather, time of year and other external factors immediately affect plant growth. The few studies that have been done have questionable methods, limited time frame, inconclusive results or conflicting results. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.co.uk/facts_7487357_vegetable-gardening-moon-phase.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a study done by the Agricultural Research Service in Iowa where they found a link between weed germination and exposure to light. They determined that tilling the soil (i.e. bringing weeds to the surface) was best done at night by a new moon (when there was as little light as possible). Tilling in the dark led to less weed seed germination and thus to fewer weeds in the garden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1086674/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pubmed&lt;/a&gt; - Lowell W. Woodstock and Don F. Grabe. &lt;strong&gt;Relationships Between Seed Respiration During Imbibition and Subsequent Seedling Growth in Zea mays L.&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Plant Physiol&lt;/em&gt;. 1967&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would suggest that freshly tilled gardens exposed to the outdoors are less likely to become weedy when it's dark out (obscured moon or cloudy weather), and facilitate false attribution of the outcome to astrological myths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biodynamic.org.uk/fileadmin/user_upload/Documents/Evidence_for_Lunar_Sideral__Rhythms_in_Crop_Yield_An_overview.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Biodynamic&lt;/a&gt; - Nicholas Kollerstrom and Gerhard Staudenmaier. &lt;strong&gt;Lunar-Sidereal Rhythms in Crop Yield&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Biological Agriculture and Horticulture&lt;/em&gt;, 2001&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article summarizes a large number of older studies, many of which appear to support planting by the moon or other astrological principles. Invariably, the studies are near sighted, providing only a single (anecdotal) data point in time, mistakenly claiming statistical significance due to a large number of sample germinations. Studies that confirm the behaviour fail to account for the majority of independent variables which are known or theorized to affect germination and growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 1990s, discussions in print of the biodynamic calendar in Europe,&#xA;America and New Zealand, have alluded to the experiments conducted by&#xA;Spiess as having tested the Thunhypothesis and failed to replicate it (e.g., N.Z.&#xA;Biodynamic Association, 1989; Llewellyn, 1993). Enjoying widespread&#xA;publicity, and published by the Forschungsring of the German biodynamic&#xA;movement, the Spiess results have worked to discredit biodynamic calendars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An attempt at a conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question precisely, I would say that yes, there is plenty of evidence to support the benefits of lunar planting - but this evidence is often attributed to confirmation bias, improperly conducted experiments, and a failure to account for uncontrolled variables affecting the entire test population. We have yet to produce a long term scientific study which supports lunar planting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, the time at which you plant something certainly does play a factor in how well it grows, but the thing that makes that time better or worse is not the moon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is much easier, is the task of dismissing the proposed mechanisms behind lunar planting. The suggestions that astrological alignment of the moon and constellations, or that lunar gravity impacts the moisture of soil, can be easily dismissed with grassroots skepticism and a basic understanding of physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T19:01:20.290" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4823" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4841" CreationDate="2011-06-23T17:21:03.660" Score="11" ViewCount="791" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.farmersalmanac.com/about/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Farmer's Almanac&lt;/a&gt; is used by many farmers to time plantings, harvesting, fertilizing, etc., based upon the results of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.farmersalmanac.com/long-range-weather-forecast/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;long-term weather prediction&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  Is there any evidence that such predictions have any accuracy (more-so than simple educated guessing)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;**Edit: To clear up some confusion, here are some additional examples of long-term weather prediction: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.almanac.com/weather&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Old Farmer's Almanac&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/tropicalcyclone/seasonal/forecast2007.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Met Office's dynamical climate &#xA;model forecasts of tropical storms in the Atlantic Sector&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T06:22:03.827" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T06:22:03.827" Title="Is long-term weather prediction effective?" Tags="|weather|forecasting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4824" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4839" CreationDate="2011-06-23T17:36:17.140" Score="8" ViewCount="2978" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard this claim in the past, and have found a few references to it (&lt;a href=&quot;http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.radio.amateur.antenna/2006-03/msg00061.html&quot;&gt;Example 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://everything2.com/user/archiewood/writeups/MiG-25+Foxbat&quot;&gt;Example 2&lt;/a&gt;).  Supposedly military avionic radar units are so powerful that they are capable of killing small animals, or even humans, simply by being powered up in their vicinity during low-altitude flights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible? How large of an animal is in danger of this?  Could it kill humans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T00:09:05.487" Title="Can radar from low-flying planes kill small animals?" Tags="|aviation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4826" CreationDate="2011-06-23T18:02:49.850" Score="28" ViewCount="12711" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's long floated around my ears that Disney movies have &quot;adult content&quot; secretly/intentionally &quot;embedded&quot; in their various movies. I've heard examples from Lion King, Aladdin, and the Little Mermaid. There may be others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://foolmoon.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/94289/site_id/1&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is another example of such a claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've known for awhile that some of Disney's children movies contain sexual scenes &amp;amp;/or words in them. Last night I thought, could these same movies be putting sexual messages in children's subconscious?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Little Mermaid: The priest has an errection during the ceremony...On the cover of this movie there is a penis. If you have a copy, one of the first 200, you can see it. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InFLnzeQjWw&quot;&gt;VIDEO&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Aladdin: When he's at Jasmin's window &amp;amp; trying to calm her tiger down he says &quot;Good teenagers take off their clothes.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4piZV5wPrw&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Lion King: When Simba jumps in the dust to run after his father the word &quot;sex&quot; can be seen in the dust. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIpDvv_Fq5Q&quot;&gt;VIDEO&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have these, and other claims like them, shown to be conclusively false?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T19:15:18.177" Title="Do Disney movies have &quot;adult content&quot; subliminally embedded in them?" Tags="|psychology|children|movies|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4825" CreationDate="2011-06-23T18:42:47.367" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is all taken from &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/films.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes - Disney Films&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Lion King&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bi91o.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Lion King&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Status: &lt;strong&gt;UNDETERMINED&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The generally accepted explanation is&#xA;that the letters were slipped in by a&#xA;special effects group to form the&#xA;abbrevation &amp;quot;&amp;quot;S-F-X&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Little Mermaid&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ElP69.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Mermaid&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://iamthelittlemermaid.tumblr.com/post/881178067/disney-hiddensecrets-some-versions-of-the&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Status: &lt;strong&gt;FALSE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plain truth is that the resemblance between the castle spire and a penis was purely accidental...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Aladdin&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Status: &lt;strong&gt;FALSE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Listen for yourself: &lt;a href=&quot;http://67.19.222.106/disney/audio/aladdin.wav&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wav Audio&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever is being said, to the casual&#xA;listener the resulting phrase can&#xA;certainly sound like &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Good teenagers,&#xA;take off your clothes&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;, although the&#xA;phrase is clearly the combination of&#xA;two different voices speaking in two&#xA;different tones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;The image of a topless woman in &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/rescuers.asp#zoom&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Rescuers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; has been confirmed though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bvYPp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Rescuers&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Status: &lt;strong&gt;TRUE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike most rumors of risque words&#xA;images hidden in Disney's animated&#xA;films, this one is clearly true, and&#xA;the images were undeniably purposely&#xA;inserted into the movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73fCLx-mFLg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;YouTube - Subliminal Messages in Disney Movies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1802/do-disney-movies-contain-subliminal-erotica&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Straight Dope - Do Disney movies contain subliminal erotica?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aiesalas.com/2010/05/disney-s-most-outrageous-hidden-message.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aie Salas - Disney's Most Outrageous Message&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.moviefone.com/2011/02/16/disney-subliminal-sex-images/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Moviefone - Tangled&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/twfA4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Tangled&quot; /&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-23T19:37:25.127" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4828" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-23T20:39:49.633" Score="11" ViewCount="3407" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been reading a lot of news reports online about a type of home brewed heroin used in Russia.  Apparently, it makes your flesh literally fall from your body if this highly addictive substance is abused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The drugs street name apparently is called 'Krokodil'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below apparently is a picture of said effects of this drug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WARNING EXTREMELY GRAPHIC&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;http://animal[removethis]newyork.com/2011/06/flesh-rotting-cheap-heroin-alternative-is-hot-in-russia/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't believe a drug can do that to the human body, especially in regards to the arm picture.  Is this real?  Or exaggerated?  It looks so B movie style, it seems rather unbelievable to me that a substance could do that to a body, and people would carry on using it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="973" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-06-23T20:46:58.833" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T19:30:50.067" Title="Krokodil, new home brewed drug" Tags="|medical-science|medications|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3594" CreationDate="2011-06-23T22:37:45.197" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence for both of the following claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Silver particle loaded fibers inhibit bacterial organism growth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microfiber cloths are able to pick up a very large portion, if not all, of organisms on many different surfaces and under various levels of adherence to the surfaces&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, provided Norwex is using silver particles of the characteristics established to be effective by the available literature as well as a high-efficiency microfiber cloth as shown effective in the literature... then &lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Yes,&amp;quot; their product will perform as described.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the comments note, the antimicrobial properties of silver are well known, and there are several studies showing the beneficial performance of various polymeric fibers coated/loaded with silver particles in the nanometer range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chen/Chiang, &amp;quot;Preparation of cotton fibers with antibacterial silver nanoparticles,&amp;quot; 2007 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167577X0800356X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The surviving number of bacterium was about 550 after incubation...When the E. coli solution was sterilized with CFGI2/silver nanocomposite, the average number of surviving bacterium was less than 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Son et al. &amp;quot;Antimicrobial cellulose acetate nanofibers containing silver nanoparticles,&amp;quot; 2006 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144861706000610#secx9&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this study, the antimicrobial activity of the CA nanofibers containing Ag nanoparticles with an average size of 21 nm was tested against Gram-positive S. aureus and Gram-negative E. coli, K. pneumoniae and P. aeruginosa by the nonwoven fabric attachment method...&lt;strong&gt;When these bacteria were incubated on the CA nanofibers, no bacterial colonies were observed.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lorenzi et al., &amp;quot;Biocide activity of microfiber mops with and without silver after contamination,&amp;quot; 2011 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S1413-86702011000300003&amp;amp;script=sci_arttext&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results obtained lead to the conclusion that silver microfiber mop was significantly more effective in reducing bacterial load despite initial high level contamination (106-107 CFU/50 cm2). &lt;strong&gt;Indeed, after low temperature washing, the bacterial load was already completely eliminated...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we have evidence for silver particles killing off bacteria by themselves, as well as a combination of fibers and silver particles in a product which has been shown to stunt bacterial growth. However, at least from what I can tell from the methodologies, they are examining the growth rate of bacteria &lt;em&gt;once it has been added to the silver-containing material.&lt;/em&gt; In other words, these aren't wiping/cleaning tests for a contaminated surface; they're simply finding out if bacterial cultures grow on the material, and find that they don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what we need to know is whether or not microfibers are effective at collecting all bacteria from a surface. I don't think we can figure out exactly what type of microfiber Norwex is using, but there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; some data on the efficacy of microfibers for cleaning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rutala et al., &amp;quot;Microbiologic evaluation of microfiber mops for surface disinfection,&amp;quot; 2007 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019665530700524X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The microfiber system demonstrated superior microbial removal compared with cotton string mops when used with a detergent cleaner (95% vs 68%, respectively).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diab-Elschahawi et al., &amp;quot;Evaluation of the decontamination efficacy of new and reprocessed microfiber cleaning cloth compared with other commonly used cleaning cloths in the hospital,&amp;quot; 2009 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196655309009365#sec3.2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New microfiber cloths achieved significantly higher decontamination for S aureus than new cotton cloths (P = .0012; regression coefficient = 1.0766), new sponge cloths (P = .001; regression coefficient = 1.0971), and disposable paper towels (P &amp;lt; .0001; regression coefficient = 1.5455) in wet condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this same study showed a negligible difference in removal once the various cloths had been washed 20 times. Unfortunately, I can't quite tell what the reduction was. The beginning contamination was 5 x 10&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; Colony Forming Units (CFU) per milliliter. The levels after cleaning are listed at around ~3-4 CFU... but I'm not sure if that really means it was taken from something in the 10s of millions down to 3-4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wren et al., &amp;quot;Removing bacteria from hospital surfaces: a laboratory comparison of ultramicrofibre and standard cloths,&amp;quot; 2007 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195670108003174#sec3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We showed that ultramicrofibre cloths consistently outperformed conventional cloths in their decontamination ability, across all surfaces, and irrespective of whether the bacteria were coated on to the surfaces with phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) or PBS containing horse serum to simulate real-life soiling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In many cases, passage of UMF cloth over surfaces seeded with 2 × 10&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; organisms resulted in total bacterial removal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I think we have seen evidence for both of the following claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Silver particle loaded fibers inhibit bacterial organism growth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microfiber cloths are able to pick up a very large portion, if not all, of organisms on many different surfaces and under various levels of adherence to the surfaces&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, provided Norwex is using silver particles of the characteristics established to be effective by the available literature as well as a high-efficiency microfiber cloth as shown effective in the literature... then &lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Yes,&amp;quot; their product will perform as described.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ethicalocean.com/blog/eco-friendly-cleaning-is-nano-silver-safe/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; blog states (unsure of where the claims are from, but seems to reference Norwex's site) that the bacteria are killed over a period of hours. This seems to track with the literature above, that silver kills by inhibiting further growth, not the immediate killing of organisms. Thus, it seems that some caution might be warranted, as there still may be live organisms on the cloth for a period of time after use and before they die off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T11:06:43.753" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4828" CreationDate="2011-06-23T22:49:15.363" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's probably no way of reliably proving that those particular images are of &quot;krokodil&quot; users ( if you look at the comment section for the article linked in the question, one of the images is supposedly of a heroin addict ), but they could very well be - according to the resources below, in extreme cases krocodil can cause gangrene, which may lead to loss of limbs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quote from IDPC ( International Drug Policy Consortium ) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idpc.net/sites/default/files/library/IDPC-briefing-paper-heroin-draught.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;March 2011 briefing paper&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Russia, some street dealers have&#xA;  begun to offer desomorphine instead of&#xA;  heroin. Desomorphine is a powerful&#xA;  synthetic opiate, which can be&#xA;  prepared from codeine, a legal&#xA;  medication which is widely available&#xA;  from pharmacies. In come cases,&#xA;  desomorphine is supplied in pre-loaded&#xA;  syringes, representing an obvious&#xA;  potential for blood-borne virus&#xA;  transmission.4 &lt;strong&gt;The drug has also&#xA;  resulted in serious vein damage and in&#xA;  extreme harms such as loss of limbs.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Users’ responses to these trends are&#xA;  discussed below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Desomorphine is also discussed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ihraconferences.com/2011/index.php?page=browseSessions&amp;amp;abstracts=show&amp;amp;form_session=60&amp;amp;presentations=show&amp;amp;print=head&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IHRA's 22nd International Conference 2011&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Harm reduction and drug treatment&#xA;  services from all over the country&#xA;  (Moscow, Tatarstan, Yakutia etc)&#xA;  report about severe health&#xA;  consequences caused by use of&#xA;  desomorphine, tianeptine, and&#xA;  tropicamide. Injections of tianeptine&#xA;  and desomorphine which home production&#xA;  involves the use of sulphur, benzene,&#xA;  iodine and hydrochloric acid &lt;strong&gt;lead to&#xA;  rapid progression of thrombosis,&#xA;  trophic ucler, necrosis and gangrene.&#xA;  One of the most sereve consequences of&#xA;  desomorphine use is bisphosphat&#xA;  necrosis.&lt;/strong&gt; As a result of poor access&#xA;  to health care among IDUs in Russia,&#xA;  medical help is often offered only at&#xA;  the late stage of disease. Specialized&#xA;  surgical interventions are expensive&#xA;  and can be performed only in several&#xA;  hostpitals in the RF, and for &lt;strong&gt;many&#xA;  drug users use of pharmaceutical drugs&#xA;  ends with amputation and even death.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should also be noted that Medvedev specifically &lt;a href=&quot;http://lenta.ru/news/2011/04/18/drugs/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;requested&lt;/a&gt; (russian) for sites describing how to &quot;cook&quot; krokodile to be taken down, which gives us a good grasp of the magnitude of this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="1781" LastEditDate="2011-06-24T11:47:31.060" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T11:47:31.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4832" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-24T03:12:40.383" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-24T03:12:40.383" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T03:12:40.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4833" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-24T03:12:40.383" Score="0" Body="A dermatological condition often characterized by the appearance of skin blemishes, such as pimples or zits." OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-24T03:12:40.383" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T03:12:40.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4825" CreationDate="2011-06-24T03:23:40.370" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disney is not nearly unique in this. If you go beyond pure images, Russian childrens cartoons are famous for unintentional (?) double entendres:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Winnie the Pooh has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJJHq1tvUT4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an episode&lt;/a&gt; where they give Eeyore a BDay present.... a jar and a popped balloon. Here's the dialog, exactly translated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Yours can not enter. But mine can enter. In. And Out.&quot; (это у тебя не входит! А у меня все входит. И выходит). It loses the obvious context in trnslation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A famous cartoon &quot;Blue puppy&quot; had a song with lines &quot;Blue, blue, don't wanna play with you&quot;. Which kinda sounds VERY weird in russian since in Russian culture a &quot;blue&quot; person means &quot;gay&quot; &lt;em&gt;(source: Kozlovskii, Vladimir. Argo russkoi gomoseksual'noi subku'ltury [The Slang of Russian Homosexual Subculture]. Benson, VT.: Chalidze Publications, 1986)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2015-02-11T19:15:18.177" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T19:15:18.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4836" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-06-24T03:24:03.437" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-24T03:24:03.437" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T03:24:03.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4837" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-06-24T03:24:03.437" Score="0" Body="Fuels derived from renewable biomass as opposed to substances which have undergone transformation by geological processes to become petroleum or coal.&#xD;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2011-06-24T03:24:03.437" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T03:24:03.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4838" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-24T05:58:38.317" Score="20" ViewCount="1405" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Insanely related:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/569/do-mobile-phones-have-anything-to-do-with-brain-cancer&quot;&gt;Do mobile phones have anything to do with cancer?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was just sent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.powerwatch.org.uk/news/20110623-tumours-rise-shares-fall.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; article, which claims that a new study &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; show a link between brain cancer and cell phones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This new study has been published in the International Journal of Oncology. They concluded that there was a significantly increased risk for glioma from the long-term use of a mobile or cordless phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risk increased with latency time and cumulative use in hours and was highest in subjects with first use before the age of 20 - in this group there was almost 5 times the risk after 10 years mobile phone use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract for the referenced study, published in May 2011, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21331446&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;, and features this quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, an increased risk was found for glioma and use of mobile or cordless phone. The risk increased with latency time and cumulative use in hours and was highest in subjects with first use before the age of 20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I realize that the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/569/do-mobile-phones-have-anything-to-do-with-brain-cancer&quot;&gt;related post&lt;/a&gt; clearly has an answer citing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17148772&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; study which found no correlation. This new study, however, is five years more recent and &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a peer reviewed article concluding that there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, I saw value in a question for this new evidence, and I'm specifically looking for answers to these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does this new paper bring legitimate, solid new evidence to the table on this issue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; bring evidence forward, can someone explain exactly what the implications are? As in, perhaps it is similar to the answer in the original question on cell phones/cancer in which it was pointed out that the WHO's rating of cell phones as a 2B carcinogen was nothing to be concerned about after all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;, is anyone able to explain why by critiquing the methodology or some other flaw in the study (or perhaps this has been done elsewhere already)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T11:48:25.017" Title="Is this new study on cell phone / cancer connection legitimate?" Tags="|environmental-health|cancer|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4824" CreationDate="2011-06-24T08:03:05.080" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the radar, for example radar of AWACS would literally fry people, in case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/aircraft/e-3.htm&quot;&gt;Boeing E-3 Sentry&lt;/a&gt; it's 1MW (1 million watt), that's why it's not allowed to use it on low altitude and within close proximity of other planes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also military radars have tracking mode, which means that rather than having wide beam, it's concentrated in very narrow beam. Theres has been some experimenting in using this to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?46778-JSF-Raptor-Radar-Can-Fry-Enemy-Sensors&quot;&gt;fry electronic of incoming missiles&lt;/a&gt; with short burst of radars power. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you'd point military grade radar in tracking mode at an animal, no doubt you could kill it. However, it's highly unlikely, and I really doubt it could kill animal just by passing by. Normally radars operate in scan mode, which means that beam is scattered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-06-24T15:44:38.203" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T15:44:38.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4840" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4857" CreationDate="2011-06-24T08:25:05.990" Score="30" ViewCount="100604" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this video fake?&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyHYbsXt05k&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyHYbsXt05k&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the links according this video have no information besides the video itself and are very recent. How should I proceed to get more information about this expedition? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2769" LastEditorUserId="1134" LastEditDate="2011-12-23T21:32:06.013" LastActivityDate="2020-01-18T17:07:05.753" Title="Is the &quot;Tribe meets White Man for the First Time&quot; video fake?" Tags="|anthropology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4823" CreationDate="2011-06-24T09:13:08.120" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way the majority of the weather forecasters, including the Meteorological Office in the UK do it is by &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/weather/joint-centres/predictability&quot;&gt;running multiple computer simulations with slightly different parameters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (as no model is perfect - or even can be perfect, according to chaos theory)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where all the simulations agree, there is a high likelihood the forecast is correct, but this confidence reduces as there is more disagreement in results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can imagine, the results are very similar at short times, however the further into the future you look, the more divergence you would expect from the differing parameters, so trying to get long term predictions is unreliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, in some parts of the world it is much simpler than others - the UK, for example, is notoriously unreliable as it is a meeting point for various weather systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in summary - if a large number of simulations agree, then you have a reasonable likelihood of an accurate prediction, so I think there is an element of truth in this one, but also a large uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/tropicalcyclone/seasonal/forecast2007.pdf&quot;&gt;The Met Office predict some things 6 months in advance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8462890.stm&quot;&gt;some of their predictions are better than others&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-06-24T18:59:09.203" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T18:59:09.203" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4842" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-24T10:17:31.690" Score="6" ViewCount="596" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not &lt;a href=&quot;http://bringchristiehome.blogspot.com/2008/06/shes-fighter.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;difficult&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.southernoregoncw.com/articles/rabies-8-california-girl.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;to&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1650150/tj-lavin-suffered-brain-bleeding-bmx-crash-friend.jhtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;find&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/local/metro-west/12003658933564/newton-student-in-coma-after-car-accident/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cases&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.philboxing.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&amp;amp;t=109921&amp;amp;p=2522956&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;where&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spinalcolumn.org/q4_10/pdf/sc_fall10_comatocollege.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;relatives&lt;/a&gt; of coma patients claim something along the lines of &quot;He/She is a fighter, and so we think they will recover.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also heard it first hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical that a person's personality can affect their chances of recovery in a situation where they are unconscious, but I concede I could be wrong, because I have heard that outlook can affect outcomes of a number of other illnesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any effect of personality on recovery chances from being in a coma, or are these cases of loved ones understandably looking for hope in a scary and stressful situation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-09-04T08:42:09.007" Title="Does your personality affect your chances of awakening from a coma?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4840" CreationDate="2011-06-24T13:06:21.367" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Update: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4840/is-the-tribe-meets-white-man-for-the-first-time-video-fake/4857#4857&quot;&gt;Borror0's answer&lt;/a&gt; suggests that the video is either fake or, at the very least, disingenuous. The video appears to be correctly attributed but the date of filming does not match some of the YouTube uploads. The contended issue is the declaration that the tribe in the video had not encountered white skinned people before. Borror0's research heavily suggests that this is not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The information below is still accurate but I reckon that it should be filed under &quot;interesting&quot; instead of &quot;evidence&quot;. The counter-evidence makes too strong of a case against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jean-Pierre Dutilleux is credited as the maker of the film. He has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://jpdutilleux.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;personal website&lt;/a&gt; with a full biography. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0244792/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IMDb&lt;/a&gt; also has a page for him. Notable achievements include being nominated for an Academy Award for his 1978 film &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078140/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Raoni&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His own website &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20171027233145/http://www.jpdutilleux.com/collections/toulambi.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gives this information&lt;/a&gt; about the video being reposted on YouTube:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other [tribes] previously known have left their villages to move deeper in the forest to escape conflicts or the religious zeal of evangelical preachers only to be rediscovered and labeled as lost tribes. European explorers first encountered the Toulambi in 1993.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pictures from that page also match the people in the video (note the distinctive nose piercing):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8It41.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Toulambi man&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the information provided by the filmmaker is coherent and matches the video on YouTube. I was unable to locate secondary references to the video or a tribe named Toulambi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Actually, this is a different upload of the same video I was using to find the above information. The video linked claims this was from 1976; Dutilleux's page claims that the tribe wasn't encountered until 1993.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_New_Guinea#Demographics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia provides&lt;/a&gt; an entirely unsourced comment about Papua New Guinea's tribes that may help provide some credibility to a tribe not being contacted until the video:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Papua New Guinea is one of the most heterogeneous nations in the world. There are hundreds of ethnic groups indigenous to Papua New Guinea, the majority being from the group known as Papuans, whose ancestors arrived in the New Guinea region tens of thousands of years ago. Many remote Papuan tribes still have only marginal contact with the outside world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The listing for &quot;minor ethic groups&quot; simply says &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Papua_New_Guinea#Minor_ethnic_groupings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wopkaimin and over 700 others&lt;/a&gt; (again unsourced.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2020-01-18T16:23:10.123" LastActivityDate="2020-01-18T16:23:10.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4856" CreationDate="2011-06-24T15:37:16.613" Score="30" ViewCount="20789" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always thought pilots were paid well. I am currently watching the movie &quot;Capitalism, A love Story,&quot; and Michael Moore interviews some pilots, in which the pilots say they make around $19,000 - $25,000 per year as their starting salary flying commercial airline passenger flights. Some say they even worked second jobs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they make such little money? Are there any concrete data for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-06-24T18:48:43.903" LastActivityDate="2021-11-04T13:15:34.657" Title="Do commercial airline pilots make around $19,000 - $25,000 per year?" Tags="|economics|aviation|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4847" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-24T16:19:29.283" Score="15" ViewCount="3686" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1167/does-using-a-laptop-on-your-lap-lower-your-sperm-count&quot;&gt;Does using a laptop on your lap lower your sperm count?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3793/can-switching-from-briefs-to-boxer-shorts-improve-your-fertility&quot;&gt;Can switching from briefs to boxer shorts improve your fertility?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard that riding a bicycle, especially for extended periods of time reduces sperm count/fertility. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-372526.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE's&lt;/a&gt; an example of such a discussion in a bike forum going back and forth about whether it's true or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that two of the questions above discuss the link between either tight fitting clothes and temperature increase, but I'm unsure about whether such conditions apply when bicycling or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this just folklore, or are the conditions created when riding a bicycle sufficient that one might actually experience a reduction in fertility?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the previous answer is &quot;Yes,&quot; is the effect severe, and what is the duration of the effect (in other words, is it even worth worrying about)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T12:35:15.487" Title="Does riding a bicycle reduce sperm count/male fertility?" Tags="|sport|human-reproduction|fertility|sperm|bicycles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4842" CreationDate="2011-06-24T16:22:01.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not confident that the description of a coma patient being a fighter is meant to reveal anything other than the current status of &quot;Still in coma; not dead yet.&quot; By not dying, they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; a fighter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, a positive attitude has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-10-12-mind-body_x.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;suggested&lt;/a&gt; to aid one's recovery:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There is a science that is emerging that says a positive attitude isn't just a state of mind,&quot; [Carol Ryff, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has been studying whether or not high levels of psychological well-being benefit physical health] says. &quot;It also has linkages to what's going on in the brain and in the body.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full article draws comparisons to new-age or alternative medicine and should be taken with a grain of salt. But other sources make similar suggestions, especially regarding maintaining low stress levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, someone in a coma isn't likely to have &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; specific attitude, let alone one of a fighter. Here, we enter a collision of terms regarding &lt;em&gt;personality&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;attitude&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;coma&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;unconsciousness&lt;/em&gt;. The general description of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coma&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;coma&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In medicine, a coma is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconsciousness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;unconsciousness&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unconsciousness is the condition of being not conscious—in a mental state that involves complete or near-complete lack of responsiveness to people and other environmental stimuli.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the point of entering a coma, it is unlikely that one's attitude is directly affecting your health. The Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_%28psychology%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;attitude&lt;/a&gt; isn't much help but did lead me to the term &lt;em&gt;implicit attitude&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is also considerable research on implicit attitudes, which are generally unacknowledged or outside of awareness, but have effects that are measurable through sophisticated methods using people's response times to stimuli.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it isn't sourced and links only to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_Association_Test&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Implicit Association Test&lt;/a&gt; which continues to discuss active (albeit implicit) reactions to stimuli such as pictures of various races. Someone in a coma is unable to respond to such stimuli. Strictly speaking, someone in a coma has no idea they are even in a coma. Even if they &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; a &quot;fighter&quot;, they wouldn't realize there was anything to fight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is any effect of personality on one's survivability rate of comas, the relevant effects would have needed to take place &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; entering the coma. In other words, if there is a general health benefit from possessing the personality of a &quot;fighter&quot;, it could increase your chances to recover from a coma. Given the ambiguity of the description &quot;fighter&quot;, I doubt there are any studies on this. (Admittedly, I did not look.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which again leads us to my original point. The description of someone a coma as being a fighter is an anthropomorphisation of an inactive, unconscious personality. It is accurate in the sense that it describes an event (they are still alive); it is inaccurate in the sense that personality probably has nothing to do with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T16:22:01.690" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4810" CreationDate="2011-06-24T16:24:45.890" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Light field cameras exist, and they are &lt;em&gt;awesome&lt;/em&gt;. I remember first hearing about this a few years ago from Adobe, as they had done a bunch of research into it for future Photoshop use, in creating software that could properly work with plenoptic images. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenoptic_camera&quot;&gt;Plenoptic&lt;/a&gt; is another word for light-field.) However, there's still certainly plenty of evidence that this is the real deal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/&quot;&gt;Ren Ng's original Stanford site&lt;/a&gt; about the camera project.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From that website, &lt;a href=&quot;http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/lfcamera-150dpi.pdf&quot;&gt;the tech report about the research&lt;/a&gt; (Hendy linked to this).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also from that website, &lt;a href=&quot;http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/lfcamera.avi&quot;&gt;a video demonstration and explanation&lt;/a&gt; (this is incredible).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/22/technology/22camera.html?_r=1&quot;&gt;A New York Times article&lt;/a&gt; from just a few days ago talking about it, which reveals that he's received $50 million in venture capital backing... quite a lot to put in if the investors aren't confident there's something there. And it should be a pretty public announcement. From the article:&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Ng] thinks a popular use may be families and friends roaming through different perspectives on pictures of, say, vacations and parties posted on Facebook (Lytro will have a Facebook app).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2005/11/69594&quot;&gt;An article from Wired&lt;/a&gt; in 2005 when Ng was still a grad student talking about the early stages of the development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2011-05/cameras-40000-lenses-help-salvage-blurry-images&quot;&gt;an article from Popular Science&lt;/a&gt; about Raytrix, the German company that Oliver_C mentioned. Problem here is one needs to request prices on their cameras on their websites, though Popsci apparently went and did that, to the tune of $30,000. Good money on Ng's being cheaper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technology has amazing applications, though. It basically is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EnhanceButton&quot;&gt;Enhance Button&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3114" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-26T03:36:58.900" LastActivityDate="2011-06-26T03:36:58.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4740" CreationDate="2011-06-24T16:27:37.763" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, public transport is not just buses. In fact buses are the least efficient. Metro (aka subway) and electric trains and trams (streetcars) are more efficient and can use green power. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aebamsterdam.com/en/home&quot;&gt;all of Amsterdam's trams run on green power&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you're talking buses, they can run on all kinds of green fuels, as they don't usually depend on random gas stations. There are buses running on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioEthanol_for_Sustainable_Transport#Ethanol-powered_buses&quot;&gt;ethanol&lt;/a&gt;, on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netinform.net/h2/H2Mobility/H2MobilityStart.aspx?CATID=2&quot;&gt;hydrogen&lt;/a&gt; etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also while comparing MPG you have to take in account huge difference in MPG in urban cycle, mixed cycle, and highway cycle. Buses ride mostly in the cities, while 20-something MPG for cars quoted above &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_04_23.html&quot;&gt;&quot;assumes 55% city and 45% highway-miles&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Difference between urban and combined with car is about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_per_gallon#Differing_measuring_regimes&quot;&gt;20-40% more fuel burned in the city&lt;/a&gt;. Thus 20MPG in combined cycle translates to something like 14-16MPG in urban cycle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Talking about massive transport we should also include air transport. Airbus A380 has &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2007-10-25/tech/fsummit.climate.A380_1_largest-commercial-airliner-carbon-emissions-biggest-passenger-plane?_s=PM%3aTECH&quot;&gt;fuel efficiency of 2.9L/100km per passenger&lt;/a&gt; (that's 82 passenger-miles per gallon). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T16:27:37.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4845" CreationDate="2011-06-24T16:53:01.843" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I still think the question is too broad, but...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2009/06/16/pilot-pay-want-to-know-how-much-your-captain-earns/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wall Street Journal&lt;/a&gt; report from 2009, a first year pilot at USAirways would earn a minimum of $21,600.  Many factors can affect this, but that is the contractual minimum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, USAirways is a fairly major carrier.  There are regional airlines that go between a major hub city to smaller towns.  These pilots would most likely earn less, since the company is smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T16:53:01.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4845" CreationDate="2011-06-24T16:58:28.917" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a few good sites that do seem to confirm this, but on the whole captains, officers, and engineers seem to be very well compensated for the major airlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Airline_Pilot%2c_Copilot%2c_or_Flight_Engineer/Salary/by_Employer&quot;&gt;From PayScale.com&lt;/a&gt;, there's a decent chart displaying the average range of salaries of all positions of some major airlines, which shows that United might have a fairly low salary for certain positions. That said, the average seems to fall around $100,000, and some easily go above $200,000 (most likely for captains).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is confirmed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.willflyforfood.com/airline-pilot-salary/compare_pay_rates.php?type=airlines&amp;amp;popup=true&quot;&gt;this interactive chart&lt;/a&gt;, which is just pretty darn cool in its own right. If one chooses to look at United, it looks like their first officers in their first year don't make a whole lot, but that number quickly rises over the years to the average mentioned above. And captains, as I speculated, seem to be able to make just about $200,000 per year with enough experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is probably true in specific cases, and Moore was exemplifying that to make some point, I'm sure, but is widely false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3114" LastActivityDate="2011-06-24T16:58:28.917" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4845" CreationDate="2011-06-24T18:26:55.007" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;The pay of pilots covers a huge spectrum. Experienced pilots for major airlines are well paid. However the pilots of regional airlines and commuter lines are sometimes paid much much less. This is partly because there is a glut of pilots right now, and also because pilots use these jobs as a way to gain the experience they need to be hired by the major airlines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Airline_Pilot,_Copilot,_or_Flight_Engineer/Salary/by_Employer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; (thanks erekalper) gives ranges of salaries. Note that some of them (hello United) go down to $21,000! Delta goes down to $35,000 and SkyWest to $45,000, neither a lot of money for someone who has had to undergo years of training and qualification and who literally has your life in their hands. The difference from airline to airline is also huge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2009/06/16/pilot-pay-want-to-know-how-much-your-captain-earns/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wall Street Journal article&lt;/a&gt; (thanks fred) points out that the starting salary for US Airways is $21,000. Since they haven't been hiring for years there are no pilots on 'starting salary', but that's what they would get. The pilots of the Colgan Air plane that crashed into Buffalo were on about $24,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in short:&lt;strong&gt;Yes, it is perfectly possible that the guy piloting your plane could be earning a poverty wage&lt;/strong&gt;. Make of that what you will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-airline commercial piloting jobs are paid even less, because they are the stepping stone to the junior airline positions (there is, incidentally, a licensing difference between an 'airline pilot' and a 'commercial pilot' - any reference to 'airline pilots' should exclude the guy flying a Piper Cub, even for money).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Technically some of the salaries in the first survey could be for a flight engineer, but flight engineers are a vanishing breed in these days of two-person cockpits.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/06/AR2009080602580.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Washington Post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thetruthabouttheprofession.weebly.com/professional-pilot-salaries.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Professional Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: jwenting says that the low figures for United may be because pilots working their regional subsidiaries list &amp;quot;United&amp;quot; as their employer. Looking for confirmation of that. And of course it still means there are low-paid pilots out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2021-11-04T13:15:34.657" LastActivityDate="2021-11-04T13:15:34.657" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4840" CreationDate="2011-06-24T18:33:49.387" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;The description of the video claims that &amp;quot;Tribe in Papua New Guinea meets white man for the first time. Filmed in 1976. They have never seen modern civilization, or any modern technology.&amp;quot; First of all, it is not from 1976. The date is incorrect on many videos because, most likely, someone misread the following disclaimer, at the bottom &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cYC7BJ0Zc8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;of the original upload&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copyright Disclaimer under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;All rights reserved to the owners the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding the original upload gives us also a lot more information to go with, from it's description box:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The white man in the video is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jpdutilleux.org/en/biography&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the film director Jean-Pierre Dutilleux&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The tribe in question is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angu&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Toulambis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The video is allegedly filmed in 1998 (which, again, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liberation.fr/medias/0101169409-coup-de-bambou-sur-les-papous-dix-anthropologues-critique&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;is false&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using that information, I was able to find &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00223340410001684868&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The hunt for authenticity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, an article published in the peer-reviewed journal The Journal of Pacific History, in which the author claims the video is fake but not in the way you would expect. To quote the abstract,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Living neither as cavemen nor as colonized subjects, the Ankave-Anga (Papua-New Guinea) are sufficiently isolated for journalists to have seen them as a “lost tribe”, even though their “contact” with the outside world dated from the 1950s. Nonetheless, decades of interactions with the state, church and marketplace have not deeply altered their society. Australian archives and accounts of life “before the white man came”, even though they refute journalistic dreams of authenticity, paradoxically portray places and times that history can hardly explain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there is no English version of the article freely available online. There is, however, a French version of the article which can be read &lt;a href=&quot;http://terrain.revues.org/2820#tocto1n5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. According to the article, it is apparently largely documented that Jean-Pierre Dutilleux was not the first white man to meet the Toulambis. From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00223340410001684868&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2004 English translation&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although they intermarry with the groups from the two other valleys (who are at a distance of one or two days’ walk), are initiated at the same time as them and visit them regularly, they are sufficiently isolated for every European who passes through to feel compelled to take photographs of them. Prior to their appearance in the Stone Age in &lt;em&gt;Paris-Match&lt;/em&gt;, they had allowed at least three anthropologists to photograph them: Jadran Mimica in 1979, myself in 1985 and Pascale Bonnemère in 1987.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Situated downstream of the trade route that has historically provided the rest of the Ankave tribal group with steel tools ... the Yoye Amara/‘Toulambi’ abandoned their stone adzes at least 50 years ago. ‘At least’, because our informant Idzadze Erauye, who was born around 1945, had never seen any stone adzes in use; or again, because Witi Dzadze, Erwanguye Patse and Idzi Erauye (all about 60 years old in 1990) were very young initiates when the first steel blades arrived. The length of time that has passed since this move ‘from stone to steel’ is confirmed by a patrol officer who crossed the southern part of Ankave territory in August 1950.  Though ‘worn almost paper thin’, metal tools were rare and were used communally, but they were well known, particularly to the ‘Toulambi’ who traded them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Australian colonial archives also indicate that ‘Toulambi’ territory was&#xA;visited by at least six government patrols between 1929 and 1972:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, Jean-Pierre Dutilleux is also cited in the article, defending himself that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“If the  Toulambis are actors, we should give them &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9sar_Award&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a César Award&lt;/a&gt;.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case, if you are fluent in French and are curious to see the whole documentary, it can be purchased online &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vodeo.tv/documentaire/toulambis-les-fantomes-de-la-foret&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for about three euros.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-01-18T17:07:05.753" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4821" CreationDate="2011-06-24T19:57:31.053" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The suggestions that astrological alignment of the moon and constellations means anything, or that lunar gravity impacts moisture in soil or anything else, can be easily dismissed with grassroots skepticism and a basic understanding of physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scale of the changing force of gravity due to the moon rotating about the earth (which affects the ocean tides) is completely negligible for objects on the surface of the earth such as humans, trees, and water droplets in between particles of soil. Gravitationally, the moon only affects &lt;em&gt;unbounded&lt;/em&gt; bodies of water, and that found in organic and inorganic compounds is bound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the tidal force of the moon on the earth depends on its distance from earth, not its phase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whereas the synodic period is 29.53&#xA;  days, it takes 27.5 days for the moon&#xA;  to move in its elliptical orbit from&#xA;  perigee to perigee (or apogee to&#xA;  apogee). Perigee (when the moon is&#xA;  closest to earth) can occur at any&#xA;  phase of the synodic cycle. Higher&#xA;  tides do occur at new and full moons,&#xA;  but not because the moon's&#xA;  gravitational pull is stronger at&#xA;  those times. Rather, the tides are&#xA;  higher then because the sun, earth,&#xA;  and moon are in a line and the tidal&#xA;  force of the sun joins that of the&#xA;  moon at those times to produce higher&#xA;  tides [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/fullmoon.html&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2011-06-25T08:50:53.127" LastActivityDate="2011-06-25T08:50:53.127" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4845" CreationDate="2011-06-24T20:02:32.513" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; @DJClayworth pointed out that the primary question is whether &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; pilots make between $19k - $25k per year. I more took the question to be whether pilots, in general, are being paid these amounts. I dug a bit more and tracked down a survey by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fltops.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FltOps&lt;/a&gt;, an aviation professional assistance company, whose reports on lowest and highest reported salaries for various pilots is found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fltops.com/content.asp?ID=57&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wmmxT.png&quot; alt=&quot;pilot wages&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US Airways is definitely in this range with their lowest reported figure of $21,600. United airlines is also close at $27,392, with American Airlines coming in at 3rd with $30,984.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this survey, &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;, some pilots are being paid in the range that Moore reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics for &quot;Aircraft pilots and flight engineers&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat39.txt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;       Both Sexes              Men                Women&#xA;    Number    Median     Number    Median     Number   Median &#xA;    of        weekly     of        weekly     of       weekly &#xA;    workers   earnings   workers   earnings   workers  earnings&#xA;    82        1,365      79        1,360      3        (1) &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translating into yearly rates, we have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Both sexes: $1,365 * 52 = $70,980&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Men: $1,360 * 52 = $70,720&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We would need more statistics to figure out the distribution of pilot earnings, but the data above supports that pilots &lt;em&gt;tend&lt;/em&gt; to earn quite a bit more than the values reported by Moore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also just found about the coolest site ever while digging around for this. Laborista (&lt;a href=&quot;http://laborsta.ilo.org/STP/guest&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;) allows you to select any country and view available data for it's wage rates by occupation! They list their sources and methodology for each country &lt;a href=&quot;http://laborsta.ilo.org/applv8/data/SSM2/E/SSM2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here was my method:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I downloaded their data for all countries (click &quot;O1: Download all countries&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://laborsta.ilo.org/STP/guest&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I grabbed all data for job code 118, Air Transport Pilot and only the data for &quot;Average earnings&quot; and &quot;Wages or salary rates&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I used the currency converter &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xe.com/ucc/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; to find values for all currencies in US Dollars&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I then calculated wages based on payment time interval (per month/week/etc.) and currency conversion rate to come up with a yearly salary in USD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once I had the values, I doubled checked for currency issues on any really, really oddball values (there were many!). In many cases, they had given a pre-euro value and some euro values, and this skyrocketed the apparent wage. In those cases, I deleted the euro values (there was often only 1) and went with the pre-euro conversion rates for the obsolete currency.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I pruned unnecessary country data (sometimes there were six various listings for a country), favoring the &lt;em&gt;lower&lt;/em&gt; values that were present to make this on the safe side&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, I sorted the data and made the plot below&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The final spreadsheet I ended up with is available for inspection &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/jwhendytank/home/pilot_wages.xls?attredirects=0&amp;amp;d=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here are the pilot wages for numerous countries (click to enlarge):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Uocz.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Uocz.png&quot; alt=&quot;airline pilot wages&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the data... &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;, there are pilots' in the US and world wide being paid values that track with what Moore reported; if the conversions and data collection techniques are accurate for the non-US countries, many make &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; less, in fact. (Though, we have no idea what the standard of living, economies, etc. are like in those countries, either.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think the question is particularly well phrased. Data supports &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; pilots making lower-than-expected amounts. We don't necessarily know their circumstances, size of the operations they work for, etc. Perhaps were Moore to interview only the top 10% of airline pilots we would be answering a question on this site about whether they &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; make $200,000 per year, as it seems so high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistical analyses should sample randomly to create an accurate distribution; Moore probably does not have this aim, despite whatever good objectives he was trying to fulfill with his documentary. Just some things to consider about the type of source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T14:29:09.167" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T14:29:09.167" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4860" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-24T20:25:23.243" Score="9" ViewCount="1024" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2601/are-artificial-hormones-in-beef-really-something-to-worry-about&quot;&gt;Are artificial hormones in beef really something to worry about?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1414/does-organic-food-have-more-vitamins-than-nonorganic-food&quot;&gt;Does organic food have more vitamins than nonorganic food?&lt;/a&gt; (kind of)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I watched Food, Inc. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodincmovie.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;) perhaps two years ago and recalled a clip from Joel Salatin (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Salatin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wiki&lt;/a&gt;), a &quot;natural only&quot; farmer who started &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.polyfacefarms.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Polyface Farms&lt;/a&gt;. There's a clip from the movie in which Joel is killing and de-feathering chickens and says that when the USDA tried to shut him down for butchering/preparing meat in the open air, he had his meat tested at a local microbiology lab. The lab found that Joel's chickens had 133 Colony Forming Units (CFU, a measure of microbe concentration levels) and local grocery store meat had 3600 CFU, supposedly after being through many chlorine baths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The clip is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnfE721NKDw#t=2m58s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; and opens to the moment right before he makes these claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any evidence to support the claim that grass-fed or &quot;naturally raised&quot; chickens (or any meat for that matter) will contain less bacteria than &quot;traditionally raised&quot; (feedlots/slaughterhouses) animal products? Put another way, is there evidence to support that naturally raised chickens (or other animals) would have &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;/&lt;sub&gt;30&lt;/sub&gt; of the amount of bacteria compared to meat one would buy at a grocery store?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Secondly (and more for curiosity's sake), are chickens actually processed through many chlorine baths?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm fine with answerers proposing what the alternative to &quot;naturally raised&quot; actually is. Perhaps comparing Joel's method to whatever &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tyson.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tyson&lt;/a&gt; does is the route to take? I'd like to evaluate his claim compared to whatever was likely at the grocery store, so evaluating against a &quot;big name&quot; method of raising chickens may be the best approach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-06-17T11:01:49.943" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T11:01:49.943" Title="Do &quot;naturally raised&quot; animals contain less bacteria?" Tags="|nutrition|hygiene|organic-food|chlorine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4840" CreationDate="2011-06-24T21:04:11.440" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article claims it's fake:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;amp;sl=fr&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rue89.com%2F2011%2F06%2F23%2Fcrainte-et-curiosite-premiere-rencontre-avec-des-hommes-blancs-210642&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;amp;sl=fr&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rue89.com%2F2011%2F06%2F23%2Fcrainte-et-curiosite-premiere-rencontre-avec-des-hommes-blancs-210642&lt;/a&gt; (Original in french, Google translated).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article says that several knowledgeable anthropologists denounced the fake video after it was shown on TV. From the article (sorry about the bad quality automatic translation):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Pierre] Lemonnier knows well the tribe. In&#xA;  an article entitled &quot;The Hunt for Authenticity&quot; , published in 1999 by the&#xA;  magazine &quot;Land&quot;, he writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223340410001684868&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2004 English version&lt;/a&gt;:]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Goaded into tasting matches, spitting out rice and taking fright at his own image in a mirror, the principal actor in this sketch played out in the name of authenticity told me that he had later cried in shame at his part in this charade. The Toulambi could only follow to the letter the stage directions dictated to them according to some vision of the Stone Age by the Papuan guides who had been sent out to meet them. Having hidden their metal tools and taken off their chestbands of plastic beads and the pieces of European clothing they were wearing, they followed the orders given in the name of the male nurse who had previously spread the news of their ‘discovery’. For people who live four days’ walk from the nearest dispensary, in a region where malaria is endemic, a little quinine is well worth participating in such a farce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[back to Google translate:]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dutilleux, for his part, has&#xA;  maintained his story &quot;If the Toulambi are actors, they deserve an Oscar,&quot;&#xA;  he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Still, before Dutilleux, had left the&#xA;  Toulambi photographed by three&#xA;  anthropologists: Jadran Mimica (1979),&#xA;  Pierre Lemonnier (1985), and Pascale&#xA;  Bonnemere (1987)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some additional information on Pierre Lemonnier, one of the anthropologists reporting the video as fake:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;layout=2&amp;amp;eotf=1&amp;amp;sl=fr&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Ffr.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPierre_Lemonnier_%28ethnologue%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;layout=2&amp;amp;eotf=1&amp;amp;sl=fr&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Ffr.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FPierre_Lemonnier_%28ethnologue%29&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that additional information about Jean-Pierre Dutilleux, different from his 90's styled homepage, is very hard to come by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given all these informations, I'm starting to be convinced that the video may be false indeed. If somebody who speaks french could perform some additional research and provide further insight, that would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3826" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2020-01-18T16:57:43.407" LastActivityDate="2020-01-18T16:57:43.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4862" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4866" CreationDate="2011-06-25T01:52:29.067" Score="11" ViewCount="881" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am referring to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.malaysia-today.net/mtcolumns/newscommentaries/41386-sex-video-us-experts-confirmed-its-anwar&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;news item&lt;/a&gt; here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the whole issue, given a black and white &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4l6tm2SHno&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; with mute sound, is it possible to tell that the actor 99.99% resembles a certain prominent figure? In the article it says that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shafee further said that according to&#xA;  the June 4 report by professors Hany&#xA;  Farid and Lorenzo Torresani from&#xA;  Dartmouth College there is a 99.99&#xA;  percent match of the male in the video&#xA;  clip to a known photo of Anwar based&#xA;  on facial recognition analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to my layman judgement, it think it is quite amazing that one can readily identify someone to such a degree of precision in a black and white video. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how did the experts manage to arrive at the 99.99% conclusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: From my research, it seems that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/02/science/02conv.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hany Farid is a pioneer in digital forensics&lt;/a&gt;, the detection of doctored photos. Matching a face in a video to a photograph doesn't seem like his expertise. A red flag. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit 2: It should be remarked that, the 99.99% remark is based on a secondary report from a guy name Shafee (not exactly the most impartial guy on earth, I must add), and so far Hany and Lorenzo have been silenced on this. How much can I trust a second-hand report from a biased party who has a political agenda behind him? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="214" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:18:24.267" LastActivityDate="2012-01-14T15:18:24.267" Title="Can facial recognition analysis confirm that it's 99.99% him?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4864" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6825" CreationDate="2011-06-25T03:38:24.100" Score="36" ViewCount="6702" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of products on the market that claim to be &quot;better alarm clocks&quot; that allows you to feel more refreshed when you wake - even if you sleep a few minutes or tens of minutes less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two claims: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;that one feels more refreshed if one wakes during the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_eye_movement&quot;&gt;REM phase of a sleep cycle&lt;/a&gt;, and&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;by monitoring movement as one sleeps, devices can determine the sleep cycle. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of products that make such claims include: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sleeptracker.com/how-it-works/&quot;&gt;Sleep tracker&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.smart-alarm-clock.com/&quot;&gt;Smart Alarmclock&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SleepTracker’s SmartStart Technology monitors your sleep stages throughout the night and then uses that data to determine the exact moment when you should be awoken helping you feel refreshed and energetic. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sleeptracker.com/how-it-works/&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these alarm clocks really make you feel more refreshed? Is such a thing feasible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-04T16:35:32.397" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T16:35:32.397" Title="Can devices detect your sleep cycle and wake you in a more refreshed state?" Tags="|sleep|technology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4862" CreationDate="2011-06-25T08:00:38.020" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A possible misinterpretation of the quote. A 99.99% match does not mean a 99.99% chance that this is him. For instance, if (a) the analysis checked 10,000 different things to determine a match and (b) this particular analysis found that 9,999 of those things did match then (c) we would have a 99.99% &lt;em&gt;match&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saying that there is a 99.99% &lt;em&gt;chance&lt;/em&gt; that the face in the video belongs to a specific person would need to check how many different faces could have matched with the same type of analysis. If 100 people could have matched, then we have a 1% chance that this is the right face based on the analysis alone. (Other information could later narrow it down further.) Saying that the analysis is 99.99% chance this is the right person means that roughly 1 out of every 10,000 people could match in the same way. More gritty details below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statgun.com/research/bayes-law.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bayes' law&lt;/a&gt;, we see that the probability that the matching man is the same man in the video is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(The prior probability that the man was in the video *&#xA; the probability that a video of him would give a 99.99% match to his face) /&#xA;(The prior probability that it was another man in the video *&#xA; the probability that a video of another man would give a 99.99% match to his face)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get an idea of the likelihood of this person being the one in the video, we'd have to look at the accuracy and recall of this face matching system (i.e. a ballpark estimate for probabilities 2 and 4 in the above formula).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, to say that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This means that A and B is the same person&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is not an equivalent statement without additional justification.  However, it seems to be from a different source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3828" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-01T09:03:33.887" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T09:03:33.887" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4867" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-25T08:18:52.203" Score="9" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/351/does-a-car-with-a-hybrid-engine-and-lithium-batteries-pollute-more-than-a-car-wit&quot;&gt;Does a car with a hybrid engine and Lithium batteries pollute more than a car with conventional technology?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We hear a lot about electric cars being the future. But we also heard a lot about corn ethanol being the future. Corn ethanol has suffered some public relations backlash and is no longer wholly in favour with the green industry. Most people still take electric cars seriously. However I am skeptical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's why. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car#Air_pollution_and_carbon_emissions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia says:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 2011 report prepared by Ricardo found that hybrid electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and all-electric cars generate more carbon emissions during their production than current conventional vehicles, but still have a lower overall carbon footprint over the full life cycle. The initial higher carbon footprint is due mainly to battery production. As an example, the study estimated that 43 percent of production emissions for a mid-size electric car are generated from the battery production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's not all of the story. There is also the fact that you then have to dispose of or recycle the battery. Also, what are these batteries made of? Can we really sustain switching all vehicles to these batteries? I assume the batteries are also made of non-renewable resources, so aren't we just switching non-renewable resource dependencies from oil to battery materials (whatever they are).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems this is just another side-step, not a real solution.  Are electric cars really a good idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3829" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T16:46:32.520" Title="Are electric cars better for the environment than internal-combustion cars?" Tags="|road-vehicles|electromagnetism|energy|fossil-fuel|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2011-10-08T05:41:36.660" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4868" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4987" CreationDate="2011-06-25T12:09:26.823" Score="29" ViewCount="18281" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9awsl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;HD Freeze&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://server.dzone.com/news/what-do-when-hard-drive-fails&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be (anecdotal) evidence that &lt;strong&gt;putting your hard drive in the freezer can make it readable again&lt;/strong&gt;, at least for a short time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5515337/save-a-failed-hard-drive-in-your-freezer-redux&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lifehacker - Save a Failed Hard Drive in Your Freezer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Geeks are Sexy - Freeze your hard drive to recover data: Myth or reality?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.datarecoverypros.com/hard-drive-recovery-freeze.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Data Recovery Pros - Freezing Method&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I guess that by doing this, some metal&#xA;  parts in the HD could contract,&#xA;  putting back in place defective parts,&#xA;  and making everything work again for a&#xA;  few minutes.&lt;/em&gt; &#xA;  [&lt;a href=&quot;http://geeksaresexy.blogspot.com/2006/01/freeze-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;But data recovery expert &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gillware.com/about.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scott Holewinski&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;advises against it&lt;/strong&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad1uVAB5bNA&amp;amp;feature=related&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; (YouTube), saying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... putting your hard drive into the&#xA;  freezer is the WORST thing you could&#xA;  possibly do in your attempt to recover&#xA;  your data as it can actually render your HD completely unrecoverable (due to water condensation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;But people who say it does work usually recommend wrapping the HD in a sealed bag to avoid condensation (see picture above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;My question:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the method of freezing your HD for data recovery viable?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;Will sealing the HD in a ziploc bag actually help avoid the condensation problem?&#xA;&lt;br/&gt; (AFAIK there is air inside the HD)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="1134" LastEditDate="2012-04-19T00:55:30.213" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T12:41:25.143" Title="Will freezing your hard drive help recover its data?" Tags="|computers|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4871" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5070" CreationDate="2011-06-25T17:20:30.233" Score="8" ViewCount="6875" Body="&lt;p&gt;My mother just told me about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsperson.com/index.html&quot;&gt;highly sensitive person test&lt;/a&gt;. I'm skeptical to what this scale can actually tell about me, if it is scientifically accurate and used by other academics as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The homepage claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are you highly sensitive? You can find out by taking the self-test. This test, the result of empirical research on the trait, gives you a good sense of what high sensitivity is, as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder: Is there empirical research behind this, is being a highly sensitive person a &quot;real&quot; medical condition and if so, can a simple test where I answer questions about myself determine if I have this condition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="1183" LastEditDate="2011-06-25T23:22:54.950" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T16:53:54.153" Title="Highly Sensitive Person Scale" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4873" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4920" CreationDate="2011-06-25T17:51:48.923" Score="43" ViewCount="35209" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everybody keeps telling me &lt;em&gt;don't put knives in dishwashers&lt;/em&gt;. And if I ask them why, nobody seems to have an answer or an argument to support his/her advice. So I thought I'll shoot the question to stackexchange:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do knives get dull in dishwashers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3014" LastEditorUserId="26412" LastEditDate="2015-05-28T15:54:48.373" LastActivityDate="2023-01-16T20:21:36.687" Title="Do knives get dull in dishwashers?" Tags="|physics|water|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4878" CreationDate="2011-06-25T20:04:00.383" Score="14" ViewCount="4446" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always thought that nicotine has really bad health effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, I've found the following statement on the website of one of the major &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nicorette.co.uk/quitting/myths&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nicotine Replacement Therapy products producers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Myths: Nicotine is carcinogenic&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Fact: Nicotine is not proven to cause cancer. There are more than 4,000 other chemicals in cigarette smoke, many of which are known to cause cancer. In particular it is the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and nitrosamines that are the probable causative agents for lung and other cancers. The risks associated with NRT, to aid with nicotine withdrawal, significantly outweighed by the risks of smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Myths: Nicotine causes the diseases related to smoking&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Fact: Cigarettes are a well-known cause of cancer, chronic lung disease, heart disease, and other disorders. It is the myriad of toxins in cigarette smoke, rather than the nicotine content, that is responsible for the majority of the harmful effects. In other words, it is the delivery system, not the addictive drug, which is responsible for the vast majority of tobacco-related diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Myths: Nicotine is responsible for adverse health effects related to smoking&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Fact: The main adverse nicotine effect in tobacco products is nicotine addiction, which sustains tobacco use. Because most smokers are nicotine-dependent, they continue to expose themselves to toxins from cigarettes. It is the other chemicals in cigarettes, not nicotine, which are responsible for most of the adverse health effects   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, &lt;strong&gt;the only thing one should be worried about with nicotine is the addiction that&amp;mdash;potentially&amp;mdash;comes with it&lt;/strong&gt; (and they actually say that it's only addictive when smoked because of the &quot;hit&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why not use nicotine to achieve its beneficial effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At low doses, nicotine potently enhances the actions of norepinephrine and dopamine in the brain, causing a drug effect typical of those of psychostimulants. At higher doses, nicotine enhances the effect of serotonin and opiate activity, producing a calming, pain-killing effect.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Psychoactive_effects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question: while there is &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/514/are-there-any-viable-shortcuts-to-stop-smoking&quot;&gt;little doubt that NRT products help a bit to quit smoking&lt;/a&gt;, the statements on Nicorette's web site seem to me quite unbelievable. What is actually proven about the safety or toxicity of nicotine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-06-26T01:19:44.987" Title="Is nicotine a relatively safe substance?" Tags="|medical-science|medications|smoking|nicotine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4876" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5071" CreationDate="2011-06-25T22:41:33.757" Score="5" ViewCount="8748" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windex&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Windex&lt;/a&gt; and other commercial window cleaners better at cleaning windows than vinegar and water (and other household chemicals)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.care2.com/greenliving/the-best-window-cleaner.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;care2.com suggests&lt;/a&gt; the following is the best window cleaner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Make a great all-purpose window cleaner by combining 1/4 cup vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon liquid soap or detergent, and 2 cups of water in a spray bottle. Shake to blend and spray on your windows!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do commercial window cleaners offer any advantage over vinegar + water (+ dish soap), the best window cleaner suggested by some web-sites?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T17:46:02.910" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T17:46:02.910" Title="Windex &gt; Vinegar + Water" Tags="|chemistry|hygiene|advertising|vinegar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4877" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4896" CreationDate="2011-06-26T00:45:57.410" Score="32" ViewCount="2066" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen commercials of &quot;TENS&quot; (Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation) devices that you strap on to your stomach or thighs, which zaps you continuously making your muscles contract, supposedly burning calories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm somewhat of a lazy tub myself, so if this worked it would be a miracle device; slimming me down and working on my six pack whilst I'm at work programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously I'm highly skeptical of this wonder-machine, hence &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Skeptics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Open fire!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="56" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T20:36:04.893" Title="Are electric zaps effective for exercising?" Tags="|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4875" CreationDate="2011-06-26T01:19:44.987" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemical/nicotine.htm#PartTitle:7.%20TOXICOLOGY&quot;&gt;Nicotine is a toxin&lt;/a&gt;, which is why plants produce it for self-protection.  This is not usually an issue for smokers or those on NRT used as specified because of the dosage levels, but can be for tobacco workers and those using it as an insecticide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As nicotine is a physical stimulant (though it can also act as a relaxant), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/1756.aspx?CategoryID=53&amp;amp;SubCategoryID=534&quot;&gt;NRT is often seen as unsuitable&lt;/a&gt; for those with heart or circulation conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest problem is that the most popular form of taking nicotine is smoking, which involves a lot of other nasties.  I suspect that that is because smoking delivers nicotine in a &quot;better way&quot; in some sense for the smoker (whether this is the stenghth or speed of the hit, or the ease of control of the dose, I don't know), as otherwise more people would have switched to other forms of delivery.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-06-26T01:19:44.987" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4860" CreationDate="2011-06-26T01:43:53.667" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, bacteria-free doesn't really exist. For example it is estimated that a human contains about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080603085914.htm&quot;&gt;ten times&lt;/a&gt; as many &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.textbookofbacteriology.net/normalflora.html&quot;&gt;bacterial cells&lt;/a&gt; as there are human cells. I'd be extremely surprised if that wasn't also true for other animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why worry about cleanliness then? Chicken meat can carry disease-causing bacteria, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmonella&quot;&gt;salmonella&lt;/a&gt;, which infects chicken as well as humans. In addition, there are plenty of problematic bacteria in feces (&lt;em&gt;E.coli&lt;/em&gt; comes to mind), and if the chicken aren't reared in very good hygienic condition, it is possible that contamination happens during the slaughter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that if you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_5639943_avoid-salmonella-chicken.html&quot;&gt;handle chicken meat properly&lt;/a&gt; - don't undercook the meat, don't lick your fingers after touching the meat, don't re-use the knife to spread peanut butter without washing it first etc -, the chances of infecting yourself with salmonella or other bacteria is very low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A farmer rearing a small number of chickens and taking good care of them will have an easier time spotting an infected chicken, and manual slaughtering/defeathering chickens is less likely to lead to contamination of meat with feces (depending, of course, on where you do it. In the open air next to a pile of cow dung is not ideal). Feed has not much do do with this, though, as long as the chicken don't eat their own feces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the chlorine bath: Yes, that is apparently true. In fact, it appears the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.inventhelp.com/Articles/Food-Beverage/Inventions/sanitizing-rinse-12430.aspx&quot;&gt;the EU prohibited import of chicken from the US due to the chlorine treatments&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastActivityDate="2011-06-26T01:43:53.667" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4882" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4959" CreationDate="2011-06-26T10:43:48.747" Score="12" ViewCount="1731" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the weekend I saw the movie &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1219289/?ref_=sr_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Limitless&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;lt;SPOILER ALERT&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that, the main character takes a drug, and he says that because of his prolonged usage of the drug, his synapses changed permanently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not the first time I have heard such a claim. For example, that a heroin users' brain chemistry and balance changes after its first use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I was wondering: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can the prolonged usage of drugs permanently change your neurology and thus your personality?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do people who take anti-depressants for a while, and then stop, become less depressed individuals?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2124" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:45:48.023" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:45:48.023" Title="Can drugs cause permanent neurological change?" Tags="|neurology|recreational-drugs|medications|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4884" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4885" CreationDate="2011-06-26T13:41:40.490" Score="6" ViewCount="894" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the link that was shared with me on Twitter: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140209104110/http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3660007/UFOs-seen-in-day-over-London.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UFOs seen in sky over London&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something about it strikes me as fake but I'll let the experts judge.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Can anyone tell me how can this happen if it's not a genuine UFO sighting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1921" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-07-23T19:14:29.240" LastActivityDate="2022-07-23T19:14:29.240" Title="Is this a genuine UFO sighting in London or a hoax?" Tags="|ufo|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2015-09-10T00:23:16.673" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4884" CreationDate="2011-06-26T15:18:06.350" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As commenter, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/user/SubZero1703&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SubZero1703&lt;/a&gt; pointed out on this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtiylJCma9c&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;YouTube video of (apparently) the same phenomena&lt;/a&gt;,  at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtiylJCma9c&amp;amp;t=0m20s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;20 second mark&lt;/a&gt; there is point where the camera moves, and the UFOs move with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unlikely that real world objects would happen to speed-up/slow-down exactly in time with the camera movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is highly suggestive that the UFOs are fakes, added in post-production, with a small glitch in their camera-tracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been some claims that the work was done by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BEAM.TV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beam.TV&lt;/a&gt;, who have an office nearby the video you cited, but I haven't found any substantive evidence of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-07-23T19:07:27.263" LastActivityDate="2022-07-23T19:07:27.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4886" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4887" CreationDate="2011-06-26T15:32:13.717" Score="22" ViewCount="1194" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can buy 300 10-mg tablets of Loratadine for about $15, and 90 10-mg tablets of Claritin™ costs about $35. These days my health insurance charges me $50 for the name-brand, and as little as $2.91 (yeah, really) for the generic equivalent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am familiar with the concept of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_%28chemistry%29&quot;&gt;chirality&lt;/a&gt;, which turned out to be the reason one particular isomer of one particular drug was safe while another caused birth defects. From an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide&quot;&gt;article on Thalidomide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was soon discovered that only one particular optical isomer of thalidomide caused the teratogenicity. The pair of enantiomers, while mirror images of each other, cause different effects ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is really about quality control (I understand that the problem in the Thalidomide case wasn't due to poor QA, but a failure to understand how two versions of the same chemical could have such different effects). When a pharmacy sells you a generic pharmaceutical, how can you be sure you're getting something that was manufactured correctly? Is it any agency's job to do QA on these things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T15:57:44.963" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T12:41:04.137" Title="Are generic drugs equivalent to the &quot;name-brand&quot; alternatives?" Tags="|medical-science|government|pharmaceutical|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4886" CreationDate="2011-06-26T16:10:16.113" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, in the United States it is the job of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/&quot;&gt;FDA&lt;/a&gt;, to check that the medicine contains what the manufacturer claims also with generic drugs. As per their &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/QuestionsAnswers/ucm100100.htm&quot;&gt;Generic Drugs: Questions and Answers&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What standards do generic drugs have to meet?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Health professionals and consumers can be assured that FDA approved&#xA;  generic drugs have met the same rigid standards as the innovator drug.&#xA;  To gain FDA approval, a generic drug must:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;contain the same active ingredients as the innovator drug (inactive ingredients may vary)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;be identical in strength, dosage form, and route of administration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;have the same use indications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;be bioequivalent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;meet the same batch requirements for identity, strength, purity, and quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;be manufactured under the same strict standards of FDA's good manufacturing practice regulations required for innovator products&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Further Reading (for US):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/AboutFDA/Transparency/Basics/ucm194879.htm&quot;&gt;What does FDA regulate?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070909162853/http://www.fda.gov/cder/news/nightgenlett.htm&quot;&gt;Therapeutic Equivalence of Generic Drugs: Letter to Health Practitioners&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-06-21T13:24:25.827" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T13:24:25.827" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4888" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4889" CreationDate="2011-06-26T16:17:04.190" Score="11" ViewCount="1873" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that foot size is linked to the size of a man's penis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="160" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T12:47:47.803" LastActivityDate="2022-09-16T19:07:46.170" Title="Does foot size correlate to penis size?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4888" CreationDate="2011-06-26T16:28:57.270" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Human_penis_size&amp;amp;oldid=434279337#Penis_size_and_size_of_other_body_parts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;human penis size&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence both for and against&#xA;a link between penis size and the size&#xA;of other body parts. One study found a&#xA;weak correlation between the size of&#xA;the stretched penis and foot size and&#xA;height. Another investigation failed&#xA;to find any evidence for a link&#xA;between shoe size and stretched penis&#xA;size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A potential explanation for a link is&#xA;that the development of the penis in&#xA;an embryo is controlled by some of the&#xA;same Hox genes (in particular HOXA13&#xA;and HOXD13) as those that control the&#xA;development of the limbs. Mutations of&#xA;some Hox genes that control the growth&#xA;of limbs cause malformed genitalia&#xA;(Hand-Foot-Genital Syndrome).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper Wikipedia cites for a positive correlation is &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00849563&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Siminoski, K., Bain, J. The relationships among height, penile length, and foot size. Annals of Sex Research 6, 231–235 (1993)&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. But the abstract of that paper has some key points which differ slightly from what's mentioned on Wikipedia. Mainly,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Penile length was found to be&#xA;statistically related to both body&#xA;height and foot length, but with &lt;strong&gt;weak&#xA;correlation coefficients&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Height and foot size would &lt;strong&gt;not serve&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;as practical estimators of penis&#xA;length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-16T19:07:46.170" LastActivityDate="2022-09-16T19:07:46.170" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4890" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-26T17:25:00.047" Score="3" ViewCount="1214" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://allafrica.com/stories/200409280168.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Are coffee beans often contaminated with significant amount of DDT&lt;/a&gt;? And are those levels known to have any negative health effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3834" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T03:45:56.220" LastActivityDate="2012-01-14T03:45:56.220" Title="Health effects of DDT contamination of coffee" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4891" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-26T22:50:00.767" Score="42" ViewCount="1748" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that many times and I really have that sensation. Does anyone have a good explanation why that is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Psychologists assert that time seems to go faster with age, but the literature on this age-related perception of time remains controversial.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_perception#Long-term&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3836" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-06-26T23:17:09.540" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T02:20:54.090" Title="Do we perceive time to pass faster as we age?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4886" CreationDate="2011-06-27T01:47:06.290" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes and no. As Lennart said, the FDA verifies that generic drugs have the same ACTIVE ingredients in the same amounts as name-brand drugs are. &lt;strong&gt;So for most of us, the answer is a simple &quot;yes.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you have problems with certain common ingredients, like those with celiac disease, the filler (excipients), or INACTIVE ingredients can be problematic. A lot of drug fillers contain gluten, which will damage the intestinal lining of anyone with celiac disease. Name-brand drug manufacturers can generally tell you whether any of their fillers contain a certain ingredient (such as gluten) if you call their customer service (my wife has to do this for her clients periodically). In prescriptions, where only active ingredients are generally listed, generic manufacturers use whatever fillers are cheapest at a given moment, so a generic drug made this week might have different inactive ingredients than the same pharmacy's generic brand of the same drug made last week or the week before (according to some of the manufacturers when called by medical professionals asking on behalf of their clients). None of the labeling requirements for food with respect to common allergens apply to drugs. (Celiac is not an allergy, but since wheat is a common allergen, those with celiac benefit from the food labeling requirements). With non-prescription drugs, where inactive ingredients are listed, you should be able to scour through the label and find out if its ingredients will be problematic, but you'll need to read the label, since, as your question asks, the generics are not &quot;really equivalent&quot; to name-brand drugs in terms of their inactive ingredients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect the same is true for some other conditions, but the amount of inactive ingredient in your typical drug is unlikely to be enough to be a problem for people with food sensitivities or allergies. A person would need to have a condition that makes them sensitive to very small amounts of an ingredient (or take a very large quantity of a given drug) for this to be an issue. Again, to emphasize the point, &lt;em&gt;for the vast majority of us, this is not a problem&lt;/em&gt;, and we only need to be concerned about the active ingredients, which &lt;strong&gt;ARE&lt;/strong&gt; equivalent between generic and name-brand drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few points of reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;A href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/food/labelingnutrition/FoodAllergensLabeling/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/ucm106187.htm&quot;&gt;Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act of 2004&lt;/a&gt; provides some help to those with Celiac by requiring foods containing wheat products to be clearly labeled (unless a food contains barley or rye, which aren't wheat but contain the type of gluten that celiacs must avoid), but &lt;em&gt;drugs are not included in this regulation&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A 2007 article from the journal Practical Gastroenterology titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/medicine/divisions/digestive-health/nutrition-support-team/nutrition-articles/PlogstedArticle.pdf&quot;&gt;Medications and Celiac Disease—Tips From a Pharmacist&lt;/a&gt; discusses the challenges celiac patients have with drugs.  One key quote related to the response above: &quot;The drug manufacturers must utilize only FDA approved excipients, but the quantity and type of excipient is not specifically regulated. This is important to understand, especially in the manufacturing of generic drug products, &lt;em&gt;since generic product does not have to contain the same excipients as the brand name product.&lt;/em&gt; The generic drug manufacturers must demonstrate certain absorption characteristics when they reproduce a drug, but all other aspects can differ.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Last year, my wife presented at an FDA hearing on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/ForIndustry/DevelopingProductsforRareDiseasesConditions/HowtoapplyforOrphanProductDesignation/ucm216122.htm&quot;&gt;Development of Articles for Rare Diseases&lt;/a&gt; on behalf of the Celiac Sprue Association to make a case for celiac-friendly labeling on drugs. If you can load the morning presentation (it seems to promt for a login, but offer no way of registering), the relevant material starts at about 2h14m into the recording.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The National Center for Celiac Awareness's article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.celiaccentral.org/Resources/Gluten-in-Medications/111/&quot;&gt;Gluten in Medications for Patients&lt;/a&gt; goes over some of these same issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3838" LastEditorUserId="3838" LastEditDate="2011-06-27T22:21:39.210" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T22:21:39.210" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4845" CreationDate="2011-06-27T04:59:46.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Patrick Smith, the author of Salon's &quot;Ask the Pilot&quot; column, has done several exhaustively detailed pieces on pilot wages and working hours.  Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2006/02/17/askthepilot174/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2006/02/17/askthepilot174/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2009/03/20/askthepilot313/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2009/03/20/askthepilot313/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3840" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T04:59:46.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4823" CreationDate="2011-06-27T07:28:43.420" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rory's answer is good, but I though i'd make it clear that there are really two different sorts of 'long range forecast'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To meteorologists, a long range forecast is about 7 days. Because the weather systems are chaotic (in fact, Lorenz who founded much of chaos theory, did so as a result of his work on weather forecasting) the longer out you go the bigger the uncertainty gets and meteorologists wouldn't claim even their 7 day forecasts are incredibly accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there are forecasts like the Farmer's Almanac who make predictions more than a year our, using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.farmersalmanac.com/astronomy/2010/04/26/what-are-sunspots/&quot;&gt;in their own words&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a top-secret mathematical and&#xA;  astronomical formula that figures in&#xA;  sunspot activity, tidal action, the&#xA;  position of the planet in relation to&#xA;  the Sun, and a number of other&#xA;  factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That probably set off your skeptical-spidey-sense, and indeed wikipedia says cites an article (Walsh and Allen (1981) &lt;em&gt;Weatherwise&lt;/em&gt; 212-215, not avaliable online as far as I can tell) that says they do no better than chance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In New Zealand we have someone similar in Ken Ring, who claims to be able to predict the weather using astrology (the moon in particular). He's also been tested and found wanting [&lt;a href=&quot;http://sciblogs.co.nz/the-atavism/2010/11/19/ken-ring-cant-predict-the-weather/&quot;&gt;disclosure: this is from an article on my own blog&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His prediction was only on the right&#xA;  side of the average 17 times in 48&#xA;  attempts, about 35% accuracy and&#xA;  significantly worse that you would&#xA;  expect to get from tossing a coin (if&#xA;  you’re one of those p-value fetishists&#xA;  p, in this case, is equal to about&#xA;  0.03) .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read the Farmer's Almanac predictions, or how they claim 85% accuracy, but Ken Ring's &lt;em&gt;post hoc&lt;/em&gt; justifications will be familiar to skeptical types. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.predictweather.com/ArticleShow.aspx?ID=270&amp;amp;type=home&quot;&gt;Here's a page on his website in which he rates his ability&lt;/a&gt; - my favourite among them is this one&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prediction&lt;/strong&gt;: There's 2 rain days around 19th-20th; possible rain in excess of 100mm each day &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Result&lt;/strong&gt;:     Happened further west - Broken Hill got about 20mm on the 22nd&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hit! Just further West, a fifth as much rain and two days later&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2368" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T07:28:43.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4821" CreationDate="2011-06-27T07:34:16.567" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from the mumbo jumbo, any sap flow during or right before harvesting the trees would have no effect on the instrument once completed. It'd have to be decades of that different sap flow to have any influence on the structure of the wood. Sap flows only directly under the bark the wood used in instrument construction is wood from beneath that layer.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arborday.org/trees/RingsTreeNatomy.cfm&quot;&gt;http://www.arborday.org/trees/RingsTreeNatomy.cfm&lt;/a&gt; see here for how a tree trunk is laid out internally, including where the sap actually flows. It's only a very thin layer right under the bark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's Bob Taylor (Taylor guitars, one of the best) talking about wood: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taylorguitars.com/guitars/features/woods/Videos/&quot;&gt;http://www.taylorguitars.com/guitars/features/woods/Videos/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br/&gt; Notice in the first video that the wood as delivered to the factory has the bark stripped already, thus the area where the sap would flow most is gone.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taylorguitars.com/guitars/features/woods/WoodFacts/&quot;&gt;http://www.taylorguitars.com/guitars/features/woods/WoodFacts/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember though that to make a guitar the wood has to be dry, all the saps are effectively removed over a period of time before the wood is cut (and then again, usually, after it's roughly cut and before the final milling to ensure the final piece isn't going to warp.&#xA;So even if the sap flow we in any way affecting the tree during the full moon and if that sap were present in the wood that's used to make a guitar (rather than in the capilaries just under the bark), that sap would not be present in the finished instrument except a small amount in the form of resins left over after the sap dries out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T07:34:16.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4877" CreationDate="2011-06-27T09:56:09.043" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthpsych.psy.vanderbilt.edu/AbSonic.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vanderbilt University&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no doubt in the medical&#xA;community that it is possible to&#xA;transcutaneously, that is, through the&#xA;skin, stimulate nerves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A variation&#xA;of EMS (&lt;em&gt;electrical muscle stimulation&lt;/em&gt;) is &lt;em&gt;transcutaneous electrical&#xA;nerve stimulation&lt;/em&gt; (TENS). TENS is a&#xA;pain management system that uses less&#xA;intense shocks to block pain signals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The question about EMS is can&#xA;it really burn enough calories to&#xA;reduce a waistline, decrease body fat,&#xA;and strengthen muscles?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A full research study was conducted at&#xA;the University of Wisconsin&lt;/strong&gt; and&#xA;published in 2002 by &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Effects%20of%20Electrical%20Muscle%20Stimulation%20on%20Body%20Composition,%20Muscle%20Strength.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Porcari et al&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study was to test the claims of&#xA;EMS manufactures on there marketing of&#xA;&amp;quot;rock-hard abs&amp;quot; and other weight loss&#xA;claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They took 29 college aged students&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;that had not been in a formal exercise&#xA;program within the past 6 months and&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;assigned them to either a treatment&#xA;EMS group or a control group that was&#xA;given faulty EMS equipment&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The groups came in to &lt;strong&gt;use it 3 times&#xA;per week for 8 weeks&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subjects used the device on five muscle groups:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bilateral biceps&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;triceps&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quadriceps&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hamstrings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;abdominal muscles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SxFma.gif&quot; alt=&quot;muscle groups&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Results:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results showed &lt;strong&gt;no significant&#xA;changes in weight, percent body fat,&#xA;girth or strength&lt;/strong&gt; of the treatment&#xA;areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The EMS device did not work&#xA;for any of the claims.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZYDsO.gif&quot; alt=&quot;table 1&quot; /&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3SYqt.gif&quot; alt=&quot;table 2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the United States EMS devices are regulated by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_240.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FDA&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of these electrical devices in&#xA;health clubs, beauty salons and figure&#xA;salons has been increasing for several&#xA;years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;While there are legitimate uses&#xA;for both muscle stimulators and&#xA;iontophoresis devices, they are&#xA;prescription devices and are&#xA;misbranded when labeled for lay use&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, &lt;strong&gt;muscle stimulators are&#xA;misbranded when any of the following&#xA;claims are made&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;girth reduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;loss of inches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;weight reduction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cellulite removal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bust development&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;body shaping and contouring&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;spot reducing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T09:56:09.043" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="351" CreationDate="2011-06-27T11:43:33.623" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even if you'd disregard how much pollution is created while making batteries, just the fuel efficiency of hybrid cars is actually much worse than that of modern eco-turbodiesel. Especially &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueMotion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;VolksWagen's &lt;em&gt;BlueMotion&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (aka &lt;em&gt;EcoMotive&lt;/em&gt; in SEATs and &lt;em&gt;Greenline&lt;/em&gt; in Škodas)  line of engines is exceptionally fuel efficient. Fuel efficiency translates to less pollution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hybrid: &lt;strong&gt;2010 Toyota Prius&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://carfueldata.direct.gov.uk/search-new-or-used-cars.aspx?vid=27182&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4.0 L/100 km (58.8 mpg&lt;sub&gt;us&lt;/sub&gt;), CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emission of 92g/km&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Diesel: &lt;strong&gt;2010 VolksWagen Polo&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; &lt;a href=&quot;http://carfueldata.direct.gov.uk/search-new-or-used-cars.aspx?vid=25449&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3.50 L/100km (67.2 mpg&lt;sub&gt;us&lt;/sub&gt;), CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emission of 91g/km;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-07-22T09:15:25.613" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T09:15:25.613" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4899" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4900" CreationDate="2011-06-27T13:13:11.320" Score="19" ViewCount="10528" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a common belief that according to the known laws of physics, bumble bees should not be able to fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote usually goes something like this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Aerodynamically, the bumble bee&#xA;  shouldn't be able to fly, but the&#xA;  bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes&#xA;  on flying anyway.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been any papers published (or can someone show me some calculations) on bumble bee flight which dispels this myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-08T21:49:59.037" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T07:42:18.530" Title="Bumble bees shouldn't be able to fly?" Tags="|zoology|entomology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4899" CreationDate="2011-06-27T14:40:46.423" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/March00/APS_Wang.hrs.html&quot;&gt;Bumblebees finally cleared for takeoff&lt;/a&gt; is a good summary of a Cornell physicist's research in the year 2000 mathematically demonstrating and simulating why bees and similar insects can fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The computer-modeling accomplishment - which is expected to aid the future design of tiny insect-like flying machines and should dispel the longstanding myth that &quot;bumblebees cannot fly, according to conventional aerodynamics&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The old bumblebee myth simply reflected our poor understanding of unsteady viscous fluid dynamics... Unlike fixed-wing aircraft with their steady, almost inviscid (without viscosity) flow dynamics, insects fly in a sea of vortices, surrounded by tiny eddies and whirlwinds that are created when they move their wings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T14:40:46.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4902" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4916" CreationDate="2011-06-27T17:24:37.267" Score="13" ViewCount="1160" Body="&lt;p&gt;My mother always told me &quot;eating that chocolate bar will give you pimples.&quot; Is there any truth to the claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find an article on about.com that verifies that this is a common myth, and suggests that chocolate bars do not cause acne: &lt;a href=&quot;http://acne.about.com/od/acnefaqs/f/chocolate.htm&quot;&gt;Does Eating Chocolate Cause Acne?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T12:15:45.800" Title="Do chocolate bars cause pimples?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|biology|disease|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4868" CreationDate="2011-06-27T17:46:32.370" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I speak as a professional who has worked as a Data Recovery specialist for a firm that specialised in this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three common types of hard drive failure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000446.htm&quot;&gt;Control Board failure&lt;/a&gt;: This is where there is a short or surge that damages the controller board of your hard drive.  The symptoms of this are the drive not being found by the BIOS, the drive not &quot;spinning up&quot;, sometimes an odor of ozone (if the short is active).  &lt;strong&gt;Freezing will not fix this failure.&lt;/strong&gt;  Replacing the board usually allows for full recovery of the data.  The difficulty is finding a board that works with your exact model of hard drive.  If you have one, it's very simple to replace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hddoctor.net/hard-drive-spindle-motor/&quot;&gt;Motor Seized&lt;/a&gt;: This is the motor that causes the hard drive to spin.  It was fairly common in the early hard drives.  Parts overheat and expand causing the parts to wedge themselves in a position that doesn't allow the drive to spin freely. &lt;strong&gt;Often you could put these in the freezer and it would cause those parts to contract and release allowing the drive to work again.&lt;/strong&gt;  The miniaturization of the motors have reduced the frequency of this failure, and made it so that the damage from them is often irreversible.  The data is still on the platter and can be recovered.  Symptoms: Drive is recognized by the BIOS But does not spin up.  Sometimes you can hear the motor trying to move but it is a constant whine (older drives only).  Data recovery places do not want you freezing these for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is an easy fix, if you know how to fix it and have the time, so they can charge a lot of money and recover all of your data (win win), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if it is not a motor failure and is other mechanical failure you can cause data corruption(see below)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harddrivecrashes.com/hard-drive-head-crash/&quot;&gt;Head Crash&lt;/a&gt;: This is the noticable kerthunk kerthunk kerthunk that anyone who has ever heard it remembers.  The drive seems to spin up, thunks 3 or 4 times then spins down - rinse &amp;amp; repeat.  Sometimes it will even boot up.  This thunk is the drive head making contact with the platter and being propelled away (momentum) every time the head touches the platter it scrambles some of the data on it.  The more often the head crashes the more data is destroyed, the less likely to recover what you want.  &lt;strong&gt;No amount of freezing is going to help here&lt;/strong&gt;.  There is physical damage to the parts that are responsible for reading the data.  In order to recover data from this we have to replace the drive heads in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.envirco.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=35&amp;amp;Itemid=77&quot;&gt;positive flowbench&lt;/a&gt; (a poor-man's clean-room) and hope the disk damage does not cause them to crash again.  These are generally a bit more interchangable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidence: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-disk-failures.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/hard-disk-failures.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2011-06-30T13:17:08.767" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T13:17:08.767" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4905" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4942" CreationDate="2011-06-27T18:37:17.853" Score="12" ViewCount="7681" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard numerous &lt;a href=&quot;http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/21689083/ns/today-good_news/t/dolphins-save-surfer-becoming-sharks-bait/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;anecdota&lt;/a&gt;l claims of people being rescued from shark attacks by dolphins.  One &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dolphins-world.com/Dolphins_Rescuing_Humans.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; mentions that such rescues happen &quot;surprisingly often&quot;, and cites three unreferenced incidents, including one where a pod of dolphins supposedly fended off a 10-foot great white shark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elasmo-research.org/education/topics/b_corner.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; references a program in the 1960's by the U.S. Navy that trained Bottlenose Dolphins to incapacitate large sharks.  The program appears to have been a qualified success: the dolphins would readily attack sharks not known to attack dolphins in the wild, but they refused to approach Bull Sharks (which are known to attack dolphins in the wild).  That site summarizes with this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the wild, similar-sized dolphins&#xA;  and sharks pretty much leave each&#xA;  other alone. Some 75% of wild dolphins&#xA;  show some degree of shark scarring —&#xA;  and we usually see only the ones that&#xA;  got away. I have pulled dolphin&#xA;  remains from the stomachs of many&#xA;  sharks over the years, particularly&#xA;  from Tiger Sharks (Galeocerdo cuvier).&#xA;  Thus, it seems that in most battles&#xA;  between dolphins and sharks in the&#xA;  wild, dolphins get the worst of the&#xA;  encounter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seemingly contradictory information makes me question whether dolphins really risk confronting large, aggressive, dolphin-eating sharks to protect random humans, anecdotal data aside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there more concrete information about dolphin-human-shark interaction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit: In light of a comment in ChrisW's answer, I would also be interested in any studies confirming that dolphins attack large, aggressive, dolphin-eating sharks &lt;em&gt;in the absence of&lt;/em&gt; distressed humans.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2016-03-22T12:43:13.537" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T12:43:13.537" Title="Do dolphins attack dangerous sharks?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|dolphins|sharks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4890" CreationDate="2011-06-27T19:48:36.207" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on where the coffee is grown, it is quite possible it could be contaminated with DDT. In a study by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://nationalzoo.si.edu/SCBI/MigratoryBirds/Coffee/whitepaper.pdf&quot;&gt;Smithsonian (R. Rice, J. Ward, 1996)&lt;/a&gt;, they examined the amounts of DDT and DDD (DDT's toxic metabolite) present in green coffee beans. The limit of detection was 0.001 ppm, and they reported amounts ranging from 0.001 to 0.019 ppm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no 'allowed use' for DDT in the US/Canada as it is banned there (and in 33 other countries) and DDT is only used for malaria control as per the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_Convention&quot;&gt;Stockholm Convention&lt;/a&gt;. It is a persistent organic pollutant (POP), and is known to both bioaccumulate and biomagnify. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DDT has been linked to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16901337?dopt=Abstract&quot;&gt;poor semen quality in men&lt;/a&gt;, and a 5-fold increase in risk of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17938728?dopt=Abstract&quot;&gt;breast cancer&lt;/a&gt; in women born after 1931, who were exposed to the highest amounts of DDT before its use was halted in 1972. Prenatal exposure has been linked to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16968864?dopt=Abstract&quot;&gt;decrease in cognitive skills in preschoolers&lt;/a&gt; when the cord serum contained DDT in excess of 2 ppb (ng/ml). Researchers are also studying the possibility of a link between pesticides and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2022638/&quot;&gt;autism&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the half-life of DDT when mixed into the soil (between 5-8 years, taking between 25-40 years for a 90% reduction in DDT levels), it is possible to still find residue on produce today.  The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)'s report on DDT can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol53/mono53-9.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. They've classified it as a 2B - Possibly carcinogenic to humans. They also list the maximum allowed DDT residue limits for a number of countries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now - what constitutes a 'significant' amount?  It depends on the context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The drinking water guidelines (according to the IARC report, above) list the WHO limits for DDT of 1 ug/L (1 ppb), and the US EPA allows 2.85 ug/L (2.85 ppb). The report doesn't list coffee limits for the US, but other beans for other countries are listed between 0.05 - 7 mg/kg (1 mg/kg = 1 ppm in soil).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For drinking water standards, the amount of DDT on coffee beans would be significant. For foodstuff standards, it is not considered significant.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as negative health effects - there is no definitive cancer link for human exposure to DDT (plenty of animal studies, however).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/f?./temp/~kdEQtO:1&quot;&gt;Toxnet&lt;/a&gt; lists a number of studies delineating the body burden of DDT - all of which are much greater in concentration than what is found in those coffee beans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For healthy adults, the risk posed by those concentrations would currently be considered small, as exposure to DDT is not solely restricted to coffee beans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's still so much we don't know about the long term effects of DDT, to be honest - but then that's the case with many chemicals we use today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastEditorUserId="919" LastEditDate="2011-06-27T21:12:04.033" LastActivityDate="2011-06-27T21:12:04.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5045" CreationDate="2011-06-27T21:46:01.723" Score="11" ViewCount="1964" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rumors in my office abound that neckties are bad for your health. One manager often scoffs that &quot;they even did studies&quot; and that ties impair blood flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Checking Wikipedia offers a few hints but the relevant parts undersourced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[V]ascular constriction occurs with over-tight collars. Studies have shown increased intraocular pressure in such cases, which can aggravate the condition of people with weakened retinas.[14] There may be additional risks for people with glaucoma. Sensible precautions can mitigate the risk. Paramedics performing life support remove an injured man's necktie as a first step to ensure it does not block his airway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necktie#cite_note-Teng-13&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[14]&lt;/a&gt; appears to be a study specifically focused on the &quot;effect of a tight necktie on intraocular pressure&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from intraocular pressure issues, do neckties pose any health threat with regards to blood flow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T15:10:50.980" Title="Are neckties unhealthy?" Tags="|medical-science|fashion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4909" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4910" CreationDate="2011-06-27T22:54:10.133" Score="32" ViewCount="32058" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always heard that way-back-when, the simplest way to rewind a car's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odometer&quot;&gt;odometer&lt;/a&gt; was to drive backwards (at least in some models). Is this true? Did those manufacturers miss such an obvious gaming method?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3097" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:56:14.457" LastActivityDate="2018-06-06T02:44:21.057" Title="Did older car odometers rewind when driving backwards?" Tags="|history|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4909" CreationDate="2011-06-28T00:04:01.593" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, older cars used &lt;a href=&quot;http://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/safety-regulatory-devices/odometer1.htm&quot;&gt;mechanical odometers&lt;/a&gt;, which go forward or backwards, depending on which way the gears are turned. Modern cars use electronic odometers. I couldn't find anything indicating over what time period this changed. It was well before my time behind the wheel, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found a January 1961 article from &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=UyYDAAAAMBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA59&amp;amp;lpg=PA59&amp;amp;dq=car%20odometers%20going%20backwards&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=F6m7mgpm_T&amp;amp;sig=J39jT-r58TYctq-AU778VDA5Qls&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=IBsJTtnoNMnf0QGZ_Y2yAQ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=10&amp;amp;ved=0CGIQ6AEwCTgU#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Popular Science Magazine&lt;/a&gt; on the prevalence of odometer rollback fraud. (Page 59, if the link doesn't jump right to it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3838" LastEditorUserId="3838" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T00:11:39.813" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T00:11:39.813" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4912" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5333" CreationDate="2011-06-28T01:32:44.753" Score="29" ViewCount="69677" Body="&lt;p&gt;The AC guy that fixed my AC recently said I should turn my AC fan on 24/7 and this would increase the efficiency of my AC system. I looked it up and found this same claim in several places:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.city-data.com/forum/house/185032-ac-should-run-all-time-2.html&quot;&gt;City Data forum thread about keeping AC running&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several places say to use ceiling fans to circulate air as it makes the air &quot;feel&quot; cooler but do not increase the efficiency of the AC unit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use a ceiling fan or portable fan to supplement your air conditioning.&#xA;  A fan can make you feel three to four degrees cooler (and only costs a&#xA;  half-cent per hour to operate) so you can set your thermostat a few&#xA;  degrees higher and save on cooling costs. Use in occupied rooms since&#xA;  fans cool people, not rooms.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.syntrol.net/2011/06/tips-on-saving-money-on-your-energy-bill/&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.syntrol.net/2011/06/tips-on-saving-money-on-your-energy-bill/&quot;&gt;Syntrol Plumbings homepage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you choose to operate your fan and your AC simultaneously, you will&#xA;  be comfortable at a higher thermostat setting because of the cooling&#xA;  effect of moving air. Higher thermostat settings result in energy&#xA;  savings.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/using-ceiling-fans-keep-cool-without-ac&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/musings/using-ceiling-fans-keep-cool-without-ac&quot;&gt;Green Building Advisor article about ceiling fans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, I'm talking about the fan system in the AC unit running, and not the compressor running.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of everyone's claim that it would increase the efficiency of the AC unit considering it's not introducing cooler air into the house if it is 105 degrees outside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is leaving the AC fan on 24/7 more efficient than leaving it on auto?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To further clarify, this is with regard to a central system in houses and not a window unit. Although I think this same question could probably apply to window units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3742" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T14:24:06.660" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T01:01:48.623" Title="Is leaving your AC fan (blower) on 24/7 during summer more efficient than leaving it on auto?" Tags="|physics|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3660" CreationDate="2011-06-28T01:34:02.520" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've never heard any claim that it was made up by CIA or FBI. Bin Ladin himself claimed the term was originally for &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/02/05/binladen.transcript/index.html&quot;&gt;training camps for our mujahedeen against Russia's terrorism&lt;/a&gt;&quot; in a videotaped interview (Since I don't speak Arabic, I didn't seek out the original video tape, but trusted the English transcript), crediting Abu Ebeida El-Banashiri with the naming. I've always heard the translation being &quot;the base,&quot; not &quot;the database,&quot; which doesn't make much sense to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's even an assertion that the name was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/aug/24/alqaida.sciencefictionfantasyandhorror&quot;&gt;adapted from Isaac Asimov's &quot;The Foundation&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. That seems a bit far fetched to me, but I suppose it's possible. I think it's more likely a coincidence, and the explanation given by bin Laden makes a lot more sense to me (being the simpler explanation, and seeing as it explains the name growing naturally from the movement before it formed into an organization).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3838" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T01:34:02.520" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4909" CreationDate="2011-06-28T08:30:39.863" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mechanical odometers could be tampered with in myriad ways.  I have seen people literally use a screwdriver to manually move the numbers backwards, I have seen drills used and various other methods. Even now, you can have your 'mileage adjusted' digitally; it's a huge area of crime here in the UK and people are still getting jailed for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://automotiveservices.blogspot.com/2011/02/functions-of-odometer.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Odometer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This link actually mentions Ferris Buellers Day off:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can also see that mechanical odometers like this one are rewindable. When you run the car in reverse, the odometer actually can go backwards -- it's just a gear train. In the movie &quot;Ferris Bueller's Day Off,&quot; in the scene where they have the car up on blocks with the wheels spinning in reverse -- that should've worked! In real life, the odometer would've turned back. Another trick is to hook the odometer's cable up to a drill and run it backwards to rewind the miles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/safety-regulatory-devices/odometer1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How stuff works&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2883" LastEditorUserId="16700" LastEditDate="2014-05-16T13:12:41.343" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T13:12:41.343" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4902" CreationDate="2011-06-28T12:15:45.800" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a study demonstrating that cocoa, which differs chocolate from other sweets is not responsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Study in question is Fulton JE Jr, Plewig G, Kligman AM. &lt;em&gt;&quot;Effect of chocolate on acne vulgaris.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; The Journal of the American Medical Association. 1969 Dec 15;210(11):2071-4. Cited in PubMed; PMID 4243053.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 1969 study was aimed at&#xA;  determining whether chocolate and acne&#xA;  are related. Two groups were given&#xA;  chocolate bars. One group was given&#xA;  chocolate bars with zero cocoa&#xA;  content, and the other group was given&#xA;  chocolate bars with a huge cocoa&#xA;  content. The two groups fared equally&#xA;  well as far as their acne was&#xA;  concerned. However, the chocolate bars&#xA;  both had sugar, milk, etc. The study&#xA;  was only testing cocoa in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what's nowadays called &quot;chocolate bar&quot; has actually very little chocolate at all. It's mainly sugar in various forms. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/mars-mars-bar-11372641&quot;&gt;Mars bar is 60% sugar (35g of 58g)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dermaharmony.com/adultacne/dietinsulinandyourskin.aspx&quot;&gt;Sugars are known to induce acne&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;high-glycemic diets, with their higher&#xA;  carbohydrate and sugar contributions,&#xA;  generally do give rise to increased&#xA;  plasma levels of insulin.&#xA;  High-glycemic diets also promote&#xA;  increased blood levels of another&#xA;  substance: free insulin-like growth&#xA;  factor (IGF-1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IGF-1 is thought to promote acne in a&#xA;  similar way to insulin, by promoting&#xA;  follicular obstruction through&#xA;  inducing androgen-mediated sebum&#xA;  production, but also hyperkeratosis, a&#xA;  thickening of the outer layers of&#xA;  skin, and epidermal hyperplasia, a&#xA;  proliferation of skin cells. A study&#xA;  of post-adolescent women, ages 20–25&#xA;  years, found increased levels of IGF-1&#xA;  in those suffering from acne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So given that it's fair to say that eating excess of candy bars (aka &quot;chocolate&quot; bars) could induce acne. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T12:15:45.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2011-06-28T14:01:20.487" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110713112838/http://edgecraft.com/tips_myth_all.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chef's Choice&lt;/a&gt; notes that the environment in a dishwasher would cause metals of different electronegativity to react (working principle of a battery), and that the force of the water may knock knifes against other objects. I.e. it proposes at least two specific risks. However, for both mechanisms, the effect depends on other objects. A knife in a dishwasher on its own would be safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-01-16T20:21:36.687" LastActivityDate="2023-01-16T20:21:36.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4873" CreationDate="2011-06-28T14:35:08.507" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, knives get dull in the dishwasher, through rubbing against other items.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I bought a set of nice Wüsthof-Trident kitchen knives, I heard this rumour too. I also heard that cutting onto a plate can dull them. As this was about 25 years ago, in the days before I had heard of the web, let alone a StackExchange, I wrote to my knives' manufacturer, Wüsthof, asking for advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They kindly sent me a brochure which has this section (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Caring for Fine Knives&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;li&gt;The best of edges will quickly dull if it strikes metal, glass or formica. A soft wood or plastic cutting board makes the best surface. And if a slip occurs, a proper cutting board is safer for the user.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Knives should be used only for the purpose intended. Never use good cutlery to cut string or paper - it is an outrage to cut bones or metal with a good blade.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blades should never be heated in a flame in an oven. Elevated temperatures will destroy the temper of the steel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After use, knives should not be allowed to soak in water. The best practice is to hand wash and dry them immediately. This is especially true if they have been used on fruit or salty foods, which may cause some staining, even of stainless steel blades. &lt;strong&gt;Although Wusthof-Trident knives can be cycled in a dishwasher, it is not recommended. High water pressure will dull the cutting edges by knocking them again the rack and against other objects.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fine knives should be carefully stored in their own block, or special vinyl &quot;roll&quot; produced by Wusthof for this purpose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Wüsthof brochure, vintage ~1994. (I still have it, and can scan it in if required.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I avoided putting them in the dishwasher, until I had a partner who refused to treat them with such respect. (To quote Wüsthof, it was an &quot;outrage&quot;!) For domestic harmony reasons, I got over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T14:35:08.507" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1696" CreationDate="2011-06-28T15:28:30.930" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Autophagy improves overall health&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;amp;q=autophagy%20aging&amp;amp;btnG=Search&amp;amp;as_sdt=2000&amp;amp;as_ylo=2005&amp;amp;as_vis=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mutitude&lt;/a&gt; of Google scholar results confirms that Autophagy (in simple terms, cellular self-digestion) has a myriad of health benefits. The best example is probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2670399/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract: Autophagy, or cellular self-digestion, is a cellular pathway involved in protein and organelle degradation, with an astonishing number of connections to human disease and physiology. For example, autophagic dysfunction is associated with cancer, neurodegeneration, microbial infection and ageing. Paradoxically, although autophagy is primarily a protective process for the cell, it can also play a role in cell death. Understanding autophagy may ultimately allow scientists and clinicians to harness this process for the purpose of improving human health. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2670399/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Autophagy leads to improved immune function&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question targets improvements to immune function in particular. This is confirmed by the following articles following articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to &amp;quot;simple&amp;quot; breakdown of pathogens, it has also been shown that at least in some cell types (plasmacytoid dendritic cells) autophagy play a role in detection of virus by the so-called pattern recognition receptors (PRR), which are part of the innate immune system. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/315/5817/1398.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The importance of autophagy for cell survival has long been appreciated, but more recently, its essential role in both innate and adaptive immunity has been characterized. Autophagy is now recognized to restrict viral infections and replication of intracellular bacteria and parasites... Thus, the immune system utilizes autophagic degradation of cytoplasmic material, to both restrict intracellular pathogens and regulate adaptive immunity. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cell.com/immunity/abstract/S1074-7613%2807%2900340-8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Autophagy plays a key role in the prevention of aging, cancer and neurodegenration but also in the innate immune system against intracellular pathogens. Autophagy has been shown to interact with pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), such as the Toll-like receptors (TLRs). [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.invivogen.com/family.php?ID=274&amp;amp;ID_cat=2&amp;amp;ID_sscat=115&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These citations all seem to indicate that, in particular, autophagy of unhealthy cells is a function of good immune response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; * My research has yet to show whether autophagy of healthy cells contributes specifically to improved immune function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intermittent fasting leads to increased autophagy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cell.com/retrieve/pii/S0092867407016856&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Autophagy in the Pathogenesis of Disease&lt;/a&gt; (2008) is one study that mentions the effects of fasting in particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;self-digestion by autophagy—a process that is potently triggered by fasting—is now emerging as a central biological pathway that functions to promote health and longevity. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/315/5817/1398.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also confirmed by a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969996109000047&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2009 study&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;em&gt;Neurobiology of Disease&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dietary restrictions, including intermittent fasting (IF), provide a non-pharmacological approach to improve the ability of cells to enhance[...] Chaperone production and protein degradation through the autophagy... [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969996109000047&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study focused on Paraneoplastic neurological syndromes, and how intermittent fasting increased autophagy of Schwann cells (which is apparently a good thing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16874025&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;final article&lt;/a&gt;, a little older than the others, but that will probably interest you more, is a generic treatment of how autophagy is triggered by caloric restriction and leads to a decrease in age-related manifestations that are a result of reduced autophagic activities. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16874025&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; * My research has yet to show whether intermittent fasting leads to increased autophagy of infected cells that would not normally undergo autophagy as part of the natural immune response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resources seem to suggest that intermittent fasting is a feasible way to increase autophagy, but by no means suggest that this is the best (most effective or healthiest) method. Many sources suggest that mere caloric restrictions, not outright fasting, are the key. There are some very popular diets that specifically target autophagy. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atkins_Diet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atkins Diet&lt;/a&gt; relies heavily on ketosis as a method of reducing body fat, which, in itself, could be considered a form of cellular autophagia. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autophagy#Examples&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It remains to be shown&lt;/strong&gt; (by my research) whether intermittent fasting promotes autophagy in infected cells where it wouldn't otherwise be triggered, or whether the promotion of autophagy in healthy cells improves to immune function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://Autophagy,%20or%20cellular%20self-digestion,%20is%20a%20cellular%20pathway%20involved%20in%20protein%20and%20organelle%20degradation,%20with%20an%20astonishing%20number%20of%20connections%20to%20human%20disease%20and%20physiology.%20For%20example,%20autophagic%20dysfunction%20is%20associated%20with%20cancer,%20neurodegeneration,%20microbial%20infection%20and%20ageing.%20Paradoxically,%20although%20autophagy%20is%20primarily%20a%20protective%20process%20for%20the%20cell,%20it%20can%20also%20play%20a%20role%20in%20cell%20death.%20Understanding%20autophagy%20may%20ultimately%20allow%20scientists%20and%20clinicians%20to%20harness%20this%20process%20for%20the%20purpose%20of%20improving%20human%20health.&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;] Mizushima, Noboru et al. &lt;strong&gt;Autophagy fights disease through cellular self-digestion&lt;/strong&gt;. February 2008, &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;, 451(7182), pp.1069–1075.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/315/5817/1398.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;] Lee, Heung Kyu et al. &lt;strong&gt;Autophagy-Dependent Viral Recognition by Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells&lt;/strong&gt;. March 2007, &lt;em&gt;Science Magazine&lt;/em&gt;, 315(5817), pp. 1398-1401.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cell.com/immunity/abstract/S1074-7613%2807%2900340-8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;] Schmid, Dorothee and Münz, Christian. &lt;strong&gt;Innate and Adaptive Immunity through Autophagy&lt;/strong&gt;. July 2007, &lt;em&gt;Immunity&lt;/em&gt; 27(1), pp. 11-21.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cell.com/retrieve/pii/S0092867407016856&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;] Levine, Beth and Kroemer, Guido. &lt;strong&gt;Autophagy in the Pathogenesis of Disease&lt;/strong&gt;. January 2008, &lt;em&gt;Cell&lt;/em&gt;, 132(1), pp.27-42,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969996109000047&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;] Madorsky, Irina et al. &lt;strong&gt;Intermittent fasting alleviates the neuropathic phenotype in a mouse model of Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease&lt;/strong&gt;. April 2009, &lt;em&gt;Neurobiology of Disease&lt;/em&gt;,&#xA;34(1), pp.146-154.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16874025&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;] Cuervo, AM et al. &lt;strong&gt;Autophagy and aging: the importance of maintaining &amp;quot;clean&amp;quot; cells&lt;/strong&gt;. Dec 2005, &lt;em&gt;Autophagy&lt;/em&gt;, 1(3), pp.131-40.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T14:38:49.830" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4923" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4945" CreationDate="2011-06-28T16:02:06.387" Score="32" ViewCount="20181" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been sent an email saying that every generation thought that kids were too stupid or unruly, with this text as evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Our Earth is degenerate in these later&#xA;  days; there are signs that the world&#xA;  is speedily coming to an end; bribery&#xA;  and corruption are common; children no&#xA;  longer obey their parents; every man&#xA;  wants to write a book and the end of&#xA;  the world is evidently approaching.&quot;&#xA;  From an Assyrian clay tablet, circa 2800 BC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this attribution accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3855" LastEditorUserId="38773" LastEditDate="2017-03-07T17:24:25.073" LastActivityDate="2023-07-03T08:49:55.983" Title="Was this quote on a clay tablet about unruly kids written by an Assyrian?" Tags="|history|quotes|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4927" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4931" CreationDate="2011-06-28T16:53:55.517" Score="12" ViewCount="1370" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, a food desert is a low income area where people there cannot access high quality or nutritional food, due to either a lack of transportation or a lack of real grocery stores. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, &lt;strong&gt;are food deserts statistically proven to exist due to a significant inability to obtain quality food by low income communities within the United States? Or are they an exaggeration of data?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2808" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T13:57:23.643" Title="Are food deserts a real phenomenon?" Tags="|nutrition|economics|sociology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4927" CreationDate="2011-06-28T17:06:27.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; has a number of links to reports by reliable organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/AP/AP036/AP036fm.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is a good one&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of all households in the United States, 2.3 million, or 2.2 percent, live  more than a mile from a supermarket and do not have access to a vehicle.   An additional 3.4 million households, or 3.2 percent of all households,  live between one-half to 1 mile and do not have access to a vehicle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The current state of research is insufﬁcient to conclusively determine &#xA;  whether some areas with limited access have inadequate access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T17:06:27.480" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4927" CreationDate="2011-06-28T19:30:43.870" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/ERR108/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nearly 13% of all households in Washington D.C. were struggling with hunger in 2007–2009&lt;/a&gt;.  The district is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_neighborhoods_of_the_District_of_Columbia_by_ward&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;divided into wards&lt;/a&gt;, much like townships.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dchunger.org/about/facts.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to D.C. Hunger Solutions&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wards 7 and 8, which have the District's highest poverty rates, also have the city's highest obesity rates and are home to large &quot;food deserts.&quot;&#xA;  Of the city's 43 full-service grocery stores&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;, only two are located in Ward 4, four in Ward 7, and three in Ward 8. By contrast, Ward 3 - the highest-income Ward - has eleven full-service stores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; see the second comment, below, for my interpretation of &quot;full-service grocery store&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neighborhoodinfodc.org/wards/nbr_prof_wrd8.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ward 8's poverty rate in 2009 was 35%&lt;/a&gt;.  I couldn't find an exact statistic for the area of Ward 8, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:DC_Ward_Map.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;it appears to be at least 1/8&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; the area of the entire district&lt;/a&gt;, which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_DC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;100 square miles&lt;/a&gt; (260km&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;).  Assuming each of the ward's three grocery stores services an equal 100/8/3 ≈ 4 square mile area, I think it is plausible that a good number of the ward's residents live at least one mile from a supermarket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; The original question is just asking if food deserts exist.  The problem is that the definition of a &quot;food desert&quot;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a low income area where people there cannot access high quality or nutritional food&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is a bit subjective: One can &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; have access to high quality or nutritional food if one is willing to spend enough &lt;em&gt;time&lt;/em&gt; to travel to it.  If a person lives a couple miles away from a grocery store but has &quot;access&quot; via expensive (to them) public transport, does that constitute &quot;access&quot;?  Technically, of course, yes.  But what I &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/2808/agentkc&quot;&gt;AgentKC&lt;/a&gt; is really asking—and the question I have been trying to answer—is: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Is there any statistical correlation between proximity to full-service grocery stores, obesity, and poverty?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;  I think the answer to that is &quot;yes&quot;.  Answering &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; is a much more difficult (and perhaps open) question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some more points that came up in the discussion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/1617/john-rhoades&quot;&gt;John Rhoads&lt;/a&gt; pointed out, a mile walk to a grocery store isn't really very far. The problem is that, at least in urban environments, there are usually much more convenient and much less healthy options that are closer. Why would I walk 2+ miles to buy some veggies, fruit, and raw ingredients if I could walk to the end of my block and get an already prepared fast food hamburger or fried chicken for likely the same price?  (When I lived in a not-so-savory part of Philadelphia, I could buy a whole fried chicken at the end of my block for the same price as a raw chicken from the 1-mile-away grocery store). And if one is already obese, that walk to the store is even harder.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/1044/dvk&quot;&gt;DVK&lt;/a&gt; pointed out, many of these urban centers have extensive public transport systems that would allow carless residents to commute back-and-forth to a supermarket.  Here are some counter-arguments:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For people that live below the poverty line (the average per capita income in Camden, NJ, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camden,_New_Jersey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;is less than $12k&lt;/a&gt;), a public transit ride for as little as $3 is a significant expense.  And as &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/3838/erik-harris&quot;&gt;Erik Harris&lt;/a&gt; noted, it is likely more expensive in DC.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many shopping bags can one person reasonably carry home without a car?  Enough for a week's worth of food for a family of four?  I know that at least extrapolating from the way I shop, I'd have to make multiple trips per week to feed a family of 4, which is a further expense.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As DVK rightly noted, many of these factors are likely social/cultural in nature, however, that only speaks to the underlying cause; it does not change the fact that there is a correlation between availability of produce, obesity, and poverty.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jn.nutrition.org/content/131/6/1738.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Townsend, &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt;, did a study on the correlation between food insecurity and obesity&lt;/a&gt;.  Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/pdf/em/em8828-e.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;summary from Oregon State University&lt;/a&gt;:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Obesity] may also result from periodic episodes of food insecurity.  For many people, food stamps and money for food run out before the end of the month.  Among respondents to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oregonfoodbank.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the 2004 Oregon Hunger Factors Assessment&lt;/a&gt;, 95 percent ran out of food stamps at least 1 week before the end of the month.  When money and food stamps become available again, some may overeat low-cost, high-calorie foods that have limited nutrient density.  This could result in gradual weight gain over time, especially for mothers with dependents in the household.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T13:57:23.643" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4932" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-28T20:02:55.810" Score="11" ViewCount="1696" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a million articles that say basically, &quot;Be very careful what you put on Facebook because employers check that before they hire you... would you want them seeing pictures of your drunken party?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These advice articles never address the obvious question of... how can random employers see my profile?  Can't all this &quot;advice&quot; be addressed by simply checking your privacy settings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3278" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T10:16:16.547" LastActivityDate="2023-06-13T10:22:06.853" Title="Can employers check your facebook?" Tags="|social-media|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4932" CreationDate="2011-06-28T21:33:02.613" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This advice is based on default privacy settings as of 2010, for which pretty much everything except personal contact info was totally public. And with Facebook's SEO efforts, for many people would be top hit on Google when searching for their full name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TiPqj.png&quot; alt=&quot;FB default privacy as of 2010&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evolution of Facebook Privacy Policies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since then, after lot of criticism privacy setting have been improved and advanced privacy settings introduced. So now you can keep everything private, with privacy groups you can separate your work friends, family, close buddies etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-06-29T08:39:08.463" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T08:39:08.463" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4937" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4941" CreationDate="2011-06-28T23:12:54.730" Score="17" ViewCount="3794" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many commentators in the developed countries insist that bribery is a form of corruption and needs to be stamped out in developing countries, contending that it is bad for the people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main argument is that increases the gap between the rich and the poor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does bribery have more negative effects on a developing nation than positive effects, if any?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="919" LastEditDate="2011-06-28T23:33:03.660" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T09:01:59.987" Title="Is bribery damaging to society?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4549" CreationDate="2011-06-28T23:18:13.757" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/305/17/1777.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The study quoted&lt;/a&gt;, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2a.cdc.gov/phlp/conferencecd2006/docs/bio_briss.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Peter Briss&lt;/a&gt; of the CDC, has the following problems, which may lead one to conclude that the study doesn't affect the same population that the CDC is concerned about when they discuss &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/salt/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;low salt diets&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was small&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It included relatively young subjects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It had relatively few cardiovascular deaths&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It appears that some significant portion of the study participants were reporting urine volumes less than expected, suggesting that not all 24 hour urine sample periods were completed correctly, which would shift many people from the higher salt ranges into the lower salt ranges, thus increasing the apparent morbidity of the lower salt ranges&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, one needs to understand that the CDC does NOT recommend a low salt diet, except for those in the following categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are 51 years of age or older.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are African American.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have high blood pressure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have diabetes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You have chronic kidney disease.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They recommends that everyone else maintain 2,300 mg sodium per day or less.  This is not a low sodium diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucsfhealth.org/education/guidelines_for_a_low_sodium_diet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;most Americans consume 20 more times the sodium&lt;/a&gt; than what the body needs. What the CDC recommends is that people consume the recommended daily amount (RDA) or less.  Most people are consuming more.  So the general call to reduce sodium intake is, for most Americans, a call to get back down to the RDA, not to start on a 1,500 mg diet which is typical for an at-risk patient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, this is the &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; study to correlate higher morbidity with lower sodium intake, and due to the issues with it no doctors are currently using it as a basis for patient care.  There are many, many studies that back up the CDC's recommendations, and thus people should wait for more information before rejecting the current recommendations for a possible correlation, suggested by one flawed study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="919" LastActivityDate="2011-06-28T23:18:13.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4939" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-28T23:40:32.287" Score="15" ViewCount="979" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZtX32sKVE&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpZtX32sKVE#t=2m16s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2:16 to 2:55&lt;/a&gt;) makes several rather serious claims in the intro, although it is somewhat believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary claims are that colleges and universities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conspire with book publishers to produce custom textbooks which change year-on-year, creating a monopoly;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conspire to make last years' textbook obsolete with minor revisions or alterations, which stifles the used book market (see below);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conspire to destroy the used book market (presumably with explosives?!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By doing all of the above prices rise and the colleges take this in as extra funding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source of the video is a biased source. So it must be taken with a grain of salt. But can we critically analyse this: is it true that there is a conspiracy here? Or, is it blown out of proportion - more likely, prices are high because the subject is a specialised area (low demand?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-06-29T23:28:43.860" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T14:19:19.123" Title="Are colleges/universities conspiring with book publishers to inflate prices of textbooks?" Tags="|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4937" CreationDate="2011-06-29T00:15:48.767" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it does. Source: any textbook on game theory or economics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bribery changes the payoff of the game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a simple model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say an official needs to decide 1000 things. In 100 of them the payoff function is skewed by things like currying political favor/nepotism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The payoff function for the other 900 is &quot;How will those decisions affect my job performance&quot;. Imperfectly, the job performance somewhat correlates with how good those decisions were. E.g. if you're in charge of building a factory, your decisions affect how cheap and fast it is built. Your bosses would reward you (presumably, all other things being equal) for faster/cheaper result. So you will make decisions which achieve that result, thus enhancing productivity. This is good for your country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, say you HAVE bribery. On 600 of those 900 decisions, your payoff function suddenly becomes different - if the amount of bribe exceeds the extra benefits to you from doing the job well on that decision, you will make a less productive decision to get the bribe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This decreases productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional problem is that bribery imposes extra costs (and thus hampers economic output), especially on smaller firms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rru.worldbank.org/documents/publicpolicyjournal/074ackerm.pdf&quot;&gt;http://rru.worldbank.org/documents/publicpolicyjournal/074ackerm.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-06-29T00:20:53.073" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T00:20:53.073" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4905" CreationDate="2011-06-29T00:22:26.697" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the presence of a shark, dolphin anti-predator behavior varies with the circumstances. Some simply swim away from the shark, others ram or bite it, and yet others launch coordinated group attacks to drive the predators away. -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://nationalzoo.si.edu/scbi/aquaticecosystems/dolphins/aboutdolphins/reproduction.cfm&quot;&gt;Smithsonian National Zoo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If dolphins interact with sharks in defense of members of their pod (e.g., protecting young), it might explain the (occasional) defense of humans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: &quot;There are a lot of publications on sharks attacking / predating dolphins, but I've been unable to find any in the other direction.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://swfsc.noaa.gov/staff.aspx?&amp;amp;id=804&quot;&gt;Jim Carretta SWFSC, NMFS, NOAA&lt;/a&gt; [personal communication] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2011-07-01T16:55:56.557" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T16:55:56.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4937" CreationDate="2011-06-29T00:56:18.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I like DVK's answer, let's add another one that is I hope simpler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An official has to decide which contractor to use to build a bridge. In the absence of bribery they will choose the bid that gets the best value, to the best of their ability. All well and good. With bribery in the picture the contract will go to a contractor with a higher price, or lower quality, costing the bridge builder (usually a government) more money. The actual amount of the bribe is usually trivial compared with the cost of the bridge, and doesn't figure in the calculation - it's the increased cost that causes the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With other kinds of bribes there are bigger problems. Let's say the bridge builder uses substandard concrete and bribes the quality inspector not to notice. Now you have a faulty bridge and the cost of replacing it when it collapses (plus some dead people if it collapses at the wrong time). Or your police official is bribed to not arrest a crime lord. Crime usually costs someone money, so society is again worse off by quite a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-01T09:01:59.987" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T09:01:59.987" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4923" CreationDate="2011-06-29T04:13:11.417" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In this answer, I address some moderately pedantic issues that make the answer to the question &quot;No&quot;, but I do not address the substantive question of whether that quote is more than 90 years old.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several versions of the quotation floating around. So, the first step is to try to find the earliest mention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, I am leveraging off the work of Jim L who addressed this same question on &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110623072610AAySOe5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a competing Q&amp;amp;A site&lt;/a&gt;. (He concluded that the quote was invalid, but that site has differing standards of evidence than here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He found two cites that I have been unable to beat:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A November 1922 &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=9bQYAQAAIAAJ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;State of Connecticut Public Document 13: Report of the State Librarian&lt;/a&gt; (p 93)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A tablet (Assyrian) 2800 B. C. says :&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot; Our earth is degenerate in these latter days ; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common ; children no longer obey their parents ; every man wants to write a book, and the end of the world is evidently approaching.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Tablet preserved in Constantinople &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A 1923/1924 book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015001674079;q1=degenerate;start=1;size=100;page=root;view=image;seq=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nineteenth century evolution and after; a study of personal forces affecting the social process, in the light of the life-sciences and religion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, by Marshall Dawson, which contains the quote (p 76):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An Assyrian tablet, dating from 2800 B. C., preserved in Constantinople, says:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Our earth is degenerate in these latter days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book, and the end of the world is evidently approaching.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dawson provides no further reference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From here, two points stick out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is &quot;write a book&quot;? This is written on tablets! What is the Assyrian word for book?  I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt here to Dawson — perhaps the translation was very literal, and the word &quot;book&quot; had a different meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is that it is said to be an Assyrian tablet in 2800 BC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some debate about whether Asyrria existed in 2800 B.C. (for example, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyria&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;poorly cited Wikipedia entry&lt;/a&gt; suggests it was formed when the Akkadian Empire fell circa 2080 BC, while also suggesting it was a part of the earlier Akkadian Empire.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it existed as a geographical place, there is another question of whether it existed as a language. Jim L., (above), claims, without substantial evidence the Assyrian language hadn't been developed by then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Andrew George explains that the some earlier Akkadian works, were ascribed to Assyrian:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because the first substantial discoveries of written Akkadian where made in the ruins of Assyrian cities, Akkadian was known to its first decipherers as Assyrian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: George , Andrew (2007) &lt;a href=&quot;http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/3139/1/PAGE_31-71.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Babylonian and Assyrian: a history of Akkadian&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. In: Postgate, J. N., (ed.), Languages of Iraq, Ancient and Modern. London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq, pp. 31-71.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[Note: I had some difficulty displaying that link in my browser, but found it worked by downloading it and opening it directly]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his time-chart (Table 2), George shows Old Assyrian didn't develop until 2000 BC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the same chart, it seems suggestive that even Akkadian writings didn't exist in 2800 BC. Certainly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mythome.org/cuniformdevelopment.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some forms of writing, such as Sumerian&lt;/a&gt; did, but I haven't found any references that claim to have samples of Akkadian writing prior to 2500 BC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have not shown whether or not this is a quote from an ancient work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've shown that the quote, and its provenance has survived largely intact since the 1920s at least.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In particular, it has been traced far further back than Sir Isaac Asimov's book (as suggested by others here).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, I have shown it was not &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; Assyrian and from 2800 BC. It may have in Akkadian, a related language, from 2800 BC, but that is earlier than any references I found so I find it unlikely. It might have been Sumerian. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IMHO, given the dubious provenance of the source, a more likely scenario is that it is either a true quote, oddly translated, from a much later date, or invented in the early 20th Century.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2017-07-25T19:41:38.890" LastActivityDate="2017-07-25T19:41:38.890" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4932" CreationDate="2011-06-29T11:43:38.543" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Facebook divulges a lot of information through its API, and tools such as Maltego can provide you with vast quantities of relationships between individuals, information from their facebook accounts, linked to other social media accounts etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a look at &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/thrashor/hacker-tool-talk-maltego&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this presentation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for some deeper information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the 'can' they doesn't always line up with 'are they legally allowed' to - in may jurisdictions it is likely to be an offence... however that isn't really answering the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T11:43:38.543" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4951" CreationDate="2011-06-29T11:55:03.857" Score="8" ViewCount="17516" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always kept bottles of fizzy drinks inside the fridge, but I've been told by many that doing so will result in the drink becoming flat much quicker and that I should keep bottled fizzy drinks outside the fridge. I guess I've just blindly accepted the &quot;keep refrigerated&quot; marker on the bottle. So, the question is, which is correct? Should they be kept outside the fridge or inside?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3863" LastEditorUserId="3863" LastEditDate="2011-06-30T13:11:28.730" LastActivityDate="2019-12-02T22:59:31.337" Title="Is it better to store fizzy drinks inside the fridge or outside?" Tags="|drinks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4937" CreationDate="2011-06-29T12:11:03.900" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a paper by Jennifer Hunt and Sonia Laszlo, from McGill University, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.econ.berkeley.edu/users/webfac/qian/e261_s06/jennyhunt1.pdf&quot;&gt;Bribery: Who Pays, Who Refuses, What Are The Payoﬀs?&lt;/a&gt;, the authors cite work of Shleifer and Vishny that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...suggest[s] that bribery of public&#xA;  oﬃcials has economic eﬀects that can&#xA;  prove more distortionary than&#xA;  taxation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their study's introduction, the authors continue to cite supporting evidence of bribery being detrimental to a country's development:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mauro (1995) ﬁnds cross–country evidence that corruption reduces&#xA;  economic growth. Moreover, many development economists fear that corruption reduces&#xA;  equity as well as eﬃciency, constituting a regressive tax, causing the poor to be excluded&#xA;  from public services, and skewing growth in favor of the rich.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For their case study of Peru, the authors conclude that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compared with a client dealing with an oﬃcial acting scrupulously, a client who pays&#xA;  a bribe reluctantly has a slightly lower probability of concluding her business with the&#xA;  oﬃcial, a client who pays a bribe voluntarily has a similar probability, while a client who&#xA;  refuses to bribe has a much lower probability (by 16 percentage points)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;therefore, bribery actually delays resolution of official matters instead of facilitating it, with a significant impact on those who refuse to pay or cannot afford it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2836" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T12:11:03.900" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4948" CreationDate="2011-06-29T12:15:10.890" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Solubility of gases, including CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/174temppres.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;decreases with temperature.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r65z2.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, with constant pressure, warm carbonated drink will go &quot;flat&quot; much sooner than cooled one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of sealed bottle, effect is much lesser, because solubility increases with pressure. Leaving your sealed soda bottle warm will build up pressure with CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; escaping the water, preventing more gas from escaping the solution. This is described by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.800mainstreet.com/9/0009-006-henry.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Henry's law&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-06-29T12:21:30.750" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T12:21:30.750" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3707" CreationDate="2011-06-29T15:05:28.527" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cooksillustrated.com/&quot;&gt;Cooks Illustrated&lt;/a&gt; did a non-peer-reviewed blind taste test back in 2002 (available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cooksillustrated.com/tastetests/overview.asp?docid=9842&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but it's behind a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paywall&quot;&gt;paywall&lt;/a&gt;).  They compared nine different salts, including iodized table salt, non-iodized table salt, non-iodized kosher salt (of different brands and coarsenesses), and a bunch of different sea salts.  They performed five different tests:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tests were divided into three categories: salt used at the table (we sprinkled each sample on roast beef), salt used in baking (we used a plain biscuit recipe), and salt dissolved in liquids (we tested each salt in spring water, chicken stock, and pasta cooking water).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tests did uncover &quot;profound differences&quot; in the types of salt used, especially in the beef tenderloin test, with large flaked sea salt winning by a large margin.  Texture seemed to be important, as table salt (both iodized and non-iodized) won in the baking category due to their small crystals that evenly distribute in batter.  None of the tasters could detect the difference between any of the salts when dissolved in liquids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T15:05:28.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4954" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4958" CreationDate="2011-06-29T15:49:30.167" Score="44" ViewCount="4813" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/95/just-how-inaccurate-are-vaccine-myths&quot;&gt;Just how inaccurate are vaccine myths?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/328/is-it-dangerous-to-have-several-vaccines-at-the-same-time&quot;&gt;Is it dangerous to have several vaccines at the same time?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was passed along an article reporting that a new study found that despite having the highest number of vaccines in its recommended schedule, the United States is ranked 34th in infant mortality rates (IMR) in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mercola presents this &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/06/20/uk-scraps-pneumonia-vaccines-because-they-dont-work.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report abstract is &lt;a href=&quot;http://het.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/05/04/0960327111407644&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and the full text is &lt;a href=&quot;http://het.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/05/04/0960327111407644.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A closer inspection of correlations between vaccine doses, biochemical or synergistic toxicity, and IMRs, is essential. All nations—rich and poor, advanced and developing—have an obligation to determine whether their immunization schedules are achieving their desired goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's their plots of number of vaccines in a country's schedule with infant mortality rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CUTzj.png&quot; alt=&quot;IMR vs. number of vaccines&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I take this to mean that they are suggesting that vaccine toxicity has a causal relationship to infant deaths, or that the vaccines are innefective, despite a high number in one's scheduled dosage recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I immediately wondered what contributes to infant mortality rate. Is it just vaccine-preventable illnesses and the paper is suggesting incorrectly that vaccines are ineffective? Do deaths during delivery count... and can those even possibly be related to vaccination schedules?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They mention that there are 130 categories of infant deaths:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many nations adhere to an agreed upon International Classification of Diseases (ICD) for grouping infant deaths into 130 categories. Among the 34 nations analyzed, those that require the most vaccines tend to have the worst IMRs. Thus, we must ask important questions: is it possible that some nations are requiring too many vaccines for their infants and the additional vaccines are a toxic burden on their health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They only discuss SIDS as a potential vaccine side effect; I would be curious to know what the other 130 categories are and whether or not they have a possibility of being related to vaccines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They mention some limitations here...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This analysis did not adjust for vaccine composition, national vaccine coverage rates, variations in the infant mortality rates among minority races, preterm births, differences in how some nations report live births, or the potential for ecological bias. A few comments about each of these factors are included below&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This followed by a discussion of why they don't think these categories would sway the results [much].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this paper's methodology/conclusion sound? Is there a valid concern here about a potential causal relationship between vaccines and infant mortality rates?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there studies that have alternative explanations to why the US infant mortality is high compared to similarly developed nations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2018-06-29T23:14:10.687" Title="Is the number of childhood vaccines correlated with infant mortality?" Tags="|medical-science|mortality|children|vaccines|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4955" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4968" CreationDate="2011-06-29T16:24:35.377" Score="24" ViewCount="7207" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4954/paper-correlating-number-of-vaccines-given-with-infant-mortality-rate-for-many-co&quot;&gt;Paper correlating number of vaccines given with infant mortality rate for many countries?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same paper in the related article above states (abstract &lt;a href=&quot;http://het.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/05/04/0960327111407644&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;/full text &lt;a href=&quot;http://het.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/05/04/0960327111407644.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prior to contemporary vaccination programs, ‘Crib death’ was so infrequent that it was not mentioned in infant mortality statistics.** In the United States, national immunization campaigns were initiated in the 1960s when several new vaccines were introduced and actively recommended. For the first time in history, most US infants were required to receive several doses of DPT, polio, measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines. Shortly thereafter, in 1969, medical certifiers presented a new medical term—sudden infant death syndrome. In 1973, the National Center for Health Statistics added a new cause-of-death category—for SIDS—to the ICD. SIDS is defined as the sudden and unexpected death of an infant which remains unexplained after a thorough investigation. Although there are no specific symptoms associated with SIDS, an autopsy often reveals congestion and edema of the lungs and inflammatory changes in the respiratory system. By 1980, SIDS had become the&#xA;  leading cause of postneonatal mortality (deaths of infants from 28 days to one year old) in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Basically, it seems to say that we went through a progression from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Few vaccines and extremely few cases of SIDS/&quot;crib death&quot;... to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increased vaccine rates... to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Within 10 years of the rate increase, enough cases of &quot;crib death&quot; to create a standardized name/description for it in the medical field... to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having SIDS as the highest named cause for deaths over 28 days of age -- with this transition occurring within 20 years of increased vaccination rates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this accurate? Were these sorts of deaths &quot;unheard of&quot; before contemporary vaccine schedules (pre 1960s)? Was there an upheaval of &quot;crib deaths&quot; timed with an increase in vaccinations, such that it led to a standardized name/description from health agencies? Are there any alternative views to what led to the increase?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2018-07-15T16:32:04.063" Title="Was SIDS unheard of before &quot;modern vaccine schedules&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|children|vaccines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4956" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4957" CreationDate="2011-06-29T17:23:31.440" Score="8" ViewCount="842" Body="&lt;p&gt;After the match between the United States and North Korea in the Women's World Cup in 2011 where the USA won the match 2-0, lightning was blamed by the North Korean manager.  He is quoted as saying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;During training [in North Korea] our players were hit by lightning, and more than five of them were hospitalized, the goalkeeper and the four defenders were most affected, and some midfielders as well.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/06/29/137496813/north-korea-soccer-players-hit-by-lightning-before-loss-to-u-s&quot;&gt;NPR&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible that a lightning strike could have affected so many players in a single strike? Would it require hospitalization, and if so, could they be expected to return to play? Is this a plausible excuse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1269" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T08:34:43.987" Title="Could lightning have struck the entire North Korean women's soccer team?" Tags="|weather|sport|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4956" CreationDate="2011-06-29T17:40:00.923" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.burnsurgery.org/Documents/lightning.doc&quot;&gt;Flash Discharge and ground currents&lt;/a&gt; are both means by which an indirect strike by lightning can cause injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, strikes that directly hit multiple people, while rare, apparently are not unheard of (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the contest between people and&#xA;  lightning, lightning wins. &lt;strong&gt;Although&#xA;  lightning rarely strikes more than one&#xA;  person at a time&lt;/strong&gt;, over the course of a&#xA;  year the damages, deaths and injuries&#xA;  add up to make lightning a serious&#xA;  threat. By studying the outcome of&#xA;  human-lightning encounters, scientists&#xA;  hope to find more ways to prevent such&#xA;  meetings from occurring in the first&#xA;  place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1999/essd18jun99_1/&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T17:40:00.923" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4954" CreationDate="2011-06-29T17:47:15.823" Score="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first author &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Z._Miller&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Neil Z Miller&lt;/a&gt; is the director of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thinktwice.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thinktwice Global Vaccine Institute&lt;/a&gt;, which is decidedly anti-vaccination as a short look at their website will confirm. He also published a series of books on vaccination. This does not mean the paper is necessarily biased, but it is an undisclosed conflict of interest which is not a good sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are also not providing any evidence for causation, the linear regression graphs in your question is essentially the whole analysis the authors performed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/vaccine-schedules-and-infant-mortality-a-false-relationship-promoted-by-the-anti-vaccine-movement/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;excellent deconstruction of this specific study by David Gorkski on the Scienced Based Medicine blog&lt;/a&gt;. I recommend to read the whole article, I will only summarize a few points here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Gorski also notes the conflict of interest that I observed when I researched the first author. One aspect he point out is that the authors used only the data for one year (2009) and only for countries with IMR lower than the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Miller and Goldman only looked at one&#xA;year’s data. There are many years&#xA;worth of data available; if such a&#xA;relationship between IMR and vaccine&#xA;doses is real, it will be robust,&#xA;showing up in multiple analyses from&#xA;multiple years’ data. Moreover, the&#xA;authors took great pains to look at&#xA;only the United States and the 33&#xA;nations with better infant mortality&#xA;rates than the U.S. There is no&#xA;statistical rationale for doing this,&#xA;nor is there a scientific rationale.&#xA;Again, if this is a true correlation,&#xA;it will be robust enough to show up in&#xA;comparisons of more nations than just&#xA;the U.S. and nations with more&#xA;favorable infant mortality rates.&#xA;Basically, the choice of data analyzed&#xA;leaves a strong suspicion of cherry&#xA;picking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I saw the graph on the right with the grouped data I was suspicious as I could not see any reason to arbitrarily group the data. It looked like a cheap way to make the plot look better, not like an analysis that would actually provide more insight. David Gorsky shares my suspicion and notes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More dubiously, for some reason the&#xA;authors, not content with an weak and&#xA;not particularly convincing linear&#xA;relationship in the raw data, decided&#xA;to do a little creative data&#xA;manipulation and divide the nations&#xA;into five groups based on number of&#xA;vaccine doses, take the means of each&#xA;of these groups, and then regraph the&#xA;data. Not surprisingly, the data look&#xA;a lot cleaner, which was no doubt why&#xA;this was done, as it was a completely&#xA;extraneous analysis. As a rule of&#xA;thumb, this sort of analysis will&#xA;almost always produce a much&#xA;nicer-looking linear graph, as opposed&#xA;to the “star chart” in Figure 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As pointed out by &lt;a href=&quot;http://justthevax.blogspot.com/2011/05/oh-goodness-here-i-wanted-to-go-to-bed.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Catharina from the Just the Vax blog&lt;/a&gt;, the paper also contains an error regarding the german vaccination schedule. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.euvac.net/graphics/euvac/vaccination/germany.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The German Childhood Vaccination Schedule&lt;/a&gt; recommends additionally Hepatitis B from birth on, as well as MMR and Chickenpox vaccinations starting at 11 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other studies that examined the association of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) and vaccinations, &lt;strong&gt;a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17400342&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;meta analysis&lt;/a&gt; concluded that vaccinations help to prevent SIDS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Immunisations are associated with a&#xA;halving of the risk of SIDS. There are&#xA;biological reasons why this&#xA;association may be causal, but other&#xA;factors, such as the healthy vaccinee&#xA;effect, may be important.&#xA;Immunisations should be part of the&#xA;SIDS prevention campaigns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;US infant mortality rate&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a report from the CDC addressing the high infant mortality rate in the United States: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db23.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Behind International Rankings of Infant Mortality: How the United States Compares with Europe&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Infant mortality rates for preterm (less than 37 weeks of gestation)&#xA;infants are lower in the United States&#xA;than in most European countries;&#xA;however, infant mortality rates for&#xA;infants born at 37 weeks of gestation&#xA;or more are higher in the United&#xA;States than in most European&#xA;countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One in 8 births in the United States were born preterm, compared with 1 in&#xA;18 births in Ireland and Finland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the United States had Sweden’s distribution of births by gestational&#xA;age, nearly 8,000 infant deaths would&#xA;be averted each year and the U.S.&#xA;infant mortality rate would be&#xA;one-third lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The main cause of the United States’ high infant mortality rate when&#xA;compared with Europe is the very high&#xA;percentage of preterm births in the&#xA;United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion is that the higher rate of preterm infants explains a large part of the higher infant mortality rate, but not the whole discrepancy between Europe and the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following figure shows the IMR comparison if you exclude births earlier than 22 weeks, the US rate is significantly lower, but still higher than in most european countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WgHku.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, infant mortality rates for&#xA;infants born at 37 weeks of gestation&#xA;or more are generally higher in the&#xA;United States than in European&#xA;countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report does not speculate what the source of the remaining difference between Europe and US infant mortality rate could be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole paper looks more like a fishing expedition to me than a thorough and objective analysis. They used an arbitrarily limited subset of the available data and did not correct for any potential confounding factors. This looks suspiciously like they played around with the data until they found the correlation they searched for, especially given the known bias of the authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-29T18:30:44.430" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4882" CreationDate="2011-06-29T18:16:26.907" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This document, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acnp.org/g4/GN401000166/CH162.htm&quot;&gt;Chronic Amphetamine Use and Abuse&lt;/a&gt;, goes into great detail on the effects of chronic amphetamine use and abuse, and will hopefully help to answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;STIMULANT TOXICITY&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Neurotoxic Effects of Stimulant Drugs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sustained high-dose administration of amphetamines (especially methamphetamine) to experimental animals produces a persistent depletion of [dopamine] which is associated with terminal degeneration (62, 182, 195), as well as neuronal chromatolysis in the brain stem, cortex and striatum (42, 182).  ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect that different drugs will have different effects, both long-term and short-term, and since you didn't specify a particular drug I thought amphetamines would be a good one to look at because crystal meth in particular is known to be one of the dangerous ones (particularly with illegal meth labs, that police keep having to shut down, and then reports on the radio follow with observations that there may have been attempts to save money or create something unique by substituting or mixing in other chemicals which, if true, could result in the creation of an even more dangerous substance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3068" LastEditorUserId="3068" LastEditDate="2011-06-30T04:14:18.217" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T04:14:18.217" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4961" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-29T19:43:05.077" Score="8" ViewCount="1843" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a variety of different electronic toothbrushes on the market. If you ignore features like a timer that tells you when you have brushed the planned time, is there a measurable difference in the ability of different electronic toothbrushes to brush teeth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, are claims that more expensive electronic toothbrushes remove so-and-so percent more plaque backed up by peer-review research or even realistic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="35554" LastEditDate="2016-09-05T20:54:03.113" LastActivityDate="2016-09-05T20:54:03.113" Title="Do expensive electronic toothbrushes outperform cheaper models?" Tags="|medical-science|hygiene|dentistry|advertising|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4963" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4975" CreationDate="2011-06-29T22:01:40.563" Score="9" ViewCount="562" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most people have heard the phrase &quot;summer cold.&quot;  Is there any truth to the concept that people are more prone to the common cold during summer months?  More generally, is there any particular (preferably specific) time of year that people are more susceptible, outside of &quot;winter&quot; (given the discussion on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/88/cold-and-catching-colds-temperature-and-disease&quot;&gt;Does being cold increase your chances of catching the common cold?&lt;/a&gt;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the summer cold is concerned, it seems there's some thought that people's allergy symptoms are incorrectly attributed to a cold (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=6729&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MedicineNet&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2010-06-14/health/summer.cold.runny.nose_1_allergy-sufferers-runny-nose-greenspan?_s=PM:HEALTH&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a CNN article from last year&lt;/a&gt;), but it seems likely that those conditions would also be present in the spring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2519" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T13:43:09.740" Title="Is time of the year a factor on the risk of catching a common cold?" Tags="|medical-science|common-cold|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4939" CreationDate="2011-06-29T22:14:52.443" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/acsfa/edlite-txtbkstudy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US Department of Education&lt;/a&gt; did a study on this and determined the cause for growing prices. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/acsfa/turnthepage.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The study says the problem is as follows:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The market for textbooks and learning resources is broken. Faculty select textbooks from publishers, bookstores order them, and students must pay. The end consumer has no direct influence over the price, format, or quality of the product. In the long term, the supply-driven, producer-centric market of today must be transformed into the demand-driven, college- and student-centric market of tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This system is certainly set up such that a professor could easily request a high-priced book and the students have little say over it. Some professors I have had force you to buy the book, because they give out homework questions directly from the book. I've had professors require you to buy a book they wrote themselves because the homework questions are in it! You couldn't even buy the book used, because the professor had a new one published with different questions every year. The book was published directly by the university though, so there was no direct third party to conspire with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I've also had professors who deliberately use old editions or let students borrow their copy of the book for homework, so I doubt this is a universal occurrence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also had professors who don't really care much about the book and just tell you to get their favorite one as a reference if you need it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is more specific to if the professors and university are directly conspiring with the publisher. While it appears as if the system is set up to favor the publishers and colleges to begin with, they are not conspiring with each other directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oregon State University &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarsarchive.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/handle/1957/3011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;did a study on this&lt;/a&gt; and claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;College bookstores see the used book market as a service to their students but also recognize that their margin on used books (34.9%) is higher than new books (22.5%). This puts them at odds with publishers who see the used book market as a direct threat their livelihood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it would seem unlikely that bookstores would want to sale new books often, because they make more money on used books. This means bookstores are not likely to conspire directly with publishers or authors, who only earn money on new books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's important to keep in mind that &lt;a href=&quot;http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ffp0005s.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;all college costs are increasing significantly faster than inflation&lt;/a&gt; and textbooks are just another part of college costs. Non-textbook reference books can be costly as well, due to the labor-intensive nature of gathering reliable information and writing books. There is a certain element of inevitability with the high prices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a conspiracy going on across all colleges and publishers? I seriously doubt it. Are some professors and some publishers doing this? It certainly seems plausible it's going to occur at some point. The very nature of the system is such that it's easy to take advantage of students and people will inevitably do so. However, it seems to be more on a case-by-case basis than anything organized. It's that the system has already been set in place for prices to be arbitrarily high and it's easy for a professor to take advantage of it if she/he was the one to write the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2808" LastEditorUserId="2808" LastEditDate="2011-06-30T14:19:19.123" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T14:19:19.123" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4963" CreationDate="2011-06-30T02:15:55.400" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What is called a &quot;cold&quot; isn't even well defined and can be caused by many viruses.  However there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lungusa.org/lung-disease/influenza/in-depth-resources/facts-about-the-common-cold.html&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/commonCold/Pages/cause.aspx&quot;&gt;indications&lt;/a&gt; that infection is much more common in the winter.  Explanations for this range from the drier air found in heated homes, to the increased density inside, and the US school calendar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the wide range speculation by multiple reputable sources indicates that this is something we are far from understanding with any certainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spam prevention restricts the number of sources I can post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3868" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T02:15:55.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4955" CreationDate="2011-06-30T03:00:52.773" Score="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, the rise in any particular cause of death requires that this cause of death is generally accepted as a cause of death by those who write the death certificates. Most of the rise in SIDS that came as you notice in the wake of vaccinations, come because terms like crib death and SIDS didn't exist before, and became gradually more accepted during this time. Causes of death are subject to trends and fashions too. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statistics.gov.uk/articles/hsq/HSQ18mortality.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why does this arise after vaccines? Well, the rise of crib death does not come from a rise in babies suddenly dying for unknown causes, it comes from a &lt;em&gt;decline&lt;/em&gt; in babies dying. Child mortality had &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$state$time$value=2009&amp;amp;delay:188.1419354838712;&amp;amp;entities$filter$;;&amp;amp;marker$select@$geo=gbr&amp;amp;trailStartTime=1933;&amp;amp;$geo=are&amp;amp;trailStartTime=1922;&amp;amp;$geo=swz&amp;amp;trailStartTime=1800;;&amp;amp;axis_x$which=time&amp;amp;domainMin:null&amp;amp;domainMax:null&amp;amp;zoomedMin=1800&amp;amp;zoomedMax=2009&amp;amp;allow$scales@=linear&amp;amp;=log&amp;amp;=time;;;&amp;amp;axis_y$which=child_mortality_0_5_year_olds_dying_per_1000_born&amp;amp;domainMin:null&amp;amp;domainMax:null&amp;amp;zoomedMin=1.7&amp;amp;zoomedMax=682&amp;amp;scaleType=log;&amp;amp;size$domainMin:null&amp;amp;domainMax:null&amp;amp;extent@:0.022083333333333333&amp;amp;:0.4083333333333333;;&amp;amp;color$which=world_6region;;;&amp;amp;chart-type=bubbles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;declined from 400 in 1000 to 3-8 in 1000&lt;/a&gt; in the rich countries since 1800.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, 200 years ago, 2 of every 5 kids would die before they reached 5 years of age. That children died was so normal that nobody outside the immediate family would really take much notice. And the amount of reasons were so many and so badly understood that nobody would be surprised that a child died for no apparent reason. And much of this decline came about because of vaccines! Still in the 50's 30 out of every 1000 children would die before 5 in the USA, four times as many as now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result is that now, thanks to better hygiene and general vaccinations it is now very unusual when babies die. And parents nowadays want to know &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; their baby died. 200 years ago, there was no why. It was gods decision. He picked 2 out of 5, and that was that. But now both parents and doctors get frustrated when they can't find out why, because that means that can't prevent it in the future. So since the 50's when there is no obvious cause, you start noting that there is no obvious cause, and hence you get a rise in unexplained SIDS / cot death /crib death, up until it's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC478641/pdf/brjprevsmed00003-0001.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;general acceptance of the condition in the 1970's.&lt;/a&gt; Since the mid &lt;a href=&quot;http://sids.org/what-is-sidssuid/incidence/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;80's the rate has been sinking,&lt;/a&gt; as the problems causing this are getting better understood, and recommendations to not smoke and put the baby on it's back has taken hold. That sinking rate could not have happened if vaccines was the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OVzh2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;SIDS death rates since 1980&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is related to vaccines, but in the completely opposite way from how the conspiracy people think it is. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More references: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.human.cornell.edu/hd/circ/publications/upload/HE-CIRC-pb-LipsittPDF.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.human.cornell.edu/hd/circ/publications/upload/HE-CIRC-pb-LipsittPDF.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-07-15T16:32:04.063" LastActivityDate="2018-07-15T16:32:04.063" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="4969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4963" CreationDate="2011-06-30T04:10:34.353" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I'm going to do a subtle bait-and-switch in my answer, so I can match the evidence I found! Watch for it, and vote accordingly.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People use the term &quot;cold&quot; and &quot;flu&quot; rather loosely. The generic term of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza-like_illness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Influenza-like Illness&lt;/a&gt; covers both influenza, common colds (caused by a number of different viruses) and other causes. I assume &quot;summer cold&quot; applies to all of these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Influenza&lt;/a&gt; itself, is seasonal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;In the Northern hemisphere, winter is the time for flu. The timing and duration of flu seasons vary. While flu outbreaks can happen as early as October, most of the time influenza activity peaks in January or later. The figure below shows peak influenza activity for the United States by month for the 1976–77 through 2008–09 influenza seasons. The month with the highest percentage of cases (nearly 50%) was February, followed by January with 20% and March and December, with approximately 15% of all cases.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cGNpW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Peak Month of Influenza Activity&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peak Month of Influenza Activity&#xA;1976—77 through 2008—09 Seasons&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source for this is the US &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Center for Disease Control&lt;/a&gt;. They are an authoritative source for disease information, but their information is poorly cited on their web-site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;The bait-and-switch was that the OP asked about common colds, I generalised to Influenza-like Illness, and then gave evidence about Influenza alone. I should only get away with this if you agree that Influenza fits as one of the key diseases referred to under 'Summer Cold'.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T04:10:34.353" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4970" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-06-30T06:13:54.253" Score="15" ViewCount="4320" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my childhood, I heard that the safest place indoors during an earthquake is in any doorway or in the bathroom (toilet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doug Copp, Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International (ARTI), recommends (via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPTFExoc8PM&quot;&gt;viral videos&lt;/a&gt; and emails) looking for solid items that protect against ceilings pancaking (&quot;triangles of life&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, FEMA recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fema.gov/hazard/earthquake/eq_during.shtm&quot;&gt;Drop, Cover and Hold On&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there been any research done into the safest place indoors during an earthquake?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-06-30T06:28:04.567" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T20:04:20.070" Title="What's the safest place in a house during an earthquake?" Tags="|safety|natural-disasters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4970" CreationDate="2011-06-30T06:30:18.123" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about research as such, but acording to '&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getthru.govt.nz/web/GetThru.nsf/web/BOWN-7GY5TP&quot;&gt;Get Thru&lt;/a&gt;' (a New Zealand Civil Defence website) doorways aren't the best bet, and it's better to get underneath a sturdy piece of furniture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SAFE PLACES IN AN EARTHQUAKE Somewhere&#xA;  close to you, no more than a few steps&#xA;  or less than three metres away, to&#xA;  avoid injury from flying debris.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under a strong table. Hold on to the&#xA;  table legs to keep it from moving away&#xA;  from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Next to an interior wall, away from&#xA;  windows that can shatter and cause&#xA;  injury and tall furniture that can&#xA;  fall on you. Protect your head and&#xA;  neck with your arms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that in modern homes,&#xA;  doorways are no stronger than any&#xA;  other part of the structure and&#xA;  usually have doors that can swing and&#xA;  injure you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT since the question has changed a little. I don't know of any research directly in this area, but every expert earthquake saftey organisation I've seen explicitly says no to doorways and yes to &quot;drop cover and hold on&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fema.gov/hazard/earthquake/eq_during.shtm&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redcross.org/portal/site/en/menuitem.53fabf6cc033f17a2b1ecfbf43181aa0/?vgnextoid=6f461c99b5ccb110VgnVCM10000089f0870aRCRD&amp;amp;currPage=13cbb969ae282210VgnVCM10000089f0870aRCRD&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redcross.org/portal/site/en/menuitem.53fabf6cc033f17a2b1ecfbf43181aa0/?vgnextoid=6f461c99b5ccb110VgnVCM10000089f0870aRCRD&amp;amp;currPage=13cbb969ae282210VgnVCM10000089f0870aRCRD&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=7&amp;amp;ved=0CCoQFjAG&amp;amp;url=http://www.unisdr.org/asiapacific/ap-publications/docs/unesco-primer-ndp-coping-mechanisms.pdf&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=drop%20earthquake%20site%3ahttp://www.unisdr.org/&amp;amp;ei=FXqITKrbPIH6sAPRtLy0Cg&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFF_6Pywj52vSUI0IVbf3NNJVRbzg&amp;amp;cad=rja&quot;&gt;4[pdf]&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/faq/?categoryID=14&amp;amp;faqID=76&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the 'triangle of life', &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.civildefence.govt.nz/memwebsite.nsf/wpg_URL/For-the-CDEM-Sector-E-Bulletin-E-Bulletin-Mar10?OpenDocument#triangle&quot;&gt;New Zealand Cival Defence says&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Drop, cover and hold' is the official&#xA;  advice of the New Zealand Government&#xA;  developed collaboratively with expert&#xA;  agencies such as GNS Science, EQC and&#xA;  the Society of Earthquake Engineers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and cites Petal (1999) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.civildefence.govt.nz/memwebsite.nsf/Files/E-Bulletin_links/%24file/Copp-academic.pdf&quot;&gt;[pdf]&lt;/a&gt; as a source for how wrong the triangle of life is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2368" LastEditorUserId="2368" LastEditDate="2011-07-01T09:55:44.803" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T09:55:44.803" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4972" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4981" CreationDate="2011-06-30T06:33:15.443" Score="4" ViewCount="2835" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clearly fats increase the amount of cholesterol in our blood, which is a risk factor in heart attacks. On the other hand, cholesterol builds up over relatively long amounts of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to eat enough fats, so that cholesterol becomes a significant risk factor for heart attacks by the age of 21?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3113" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2013-04-29T21:03:53.653" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T16:33:51.370" Title="Can excessive intake of butter cause heart attacks at age 21?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|cardiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4961" CreationDate="2011-06-30T10:51:43.200" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/&quot;&gt;Cochrane Collaboration&lt;/a&gt; are a well-respected organisation that do meta-analysis reviews of other studies. That is, they systematically examine all of the studies related to an area, discard the ones that are not high-quality (according to a pre-determined system), and pool the results to produce a high-quality result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the fact that there is a Cochrane Review of electric toothbrushes makes the skeptics' job much easier. Someone has done all the hard-lifting. That's the good news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Deacon SA, Glenny A-M, Deery C, Robinson PG, Heanue M, Walmsley AD, Shaw WC. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab004971.html&quot;&gt;Different powered toothbrushes for plaque control and gingival health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2010, Issue 12. Art. No.: CD004971. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD004971.pub2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They concluded that some types of tooth-brush &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be a little better than others at removing plaque and gingivitus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;The review included data from 17 trials with 1369 participants. There is evidence from seven trials of up to three months and at unclear/high risk of bias that rotation oscillation brushes reduce plaque (SMD 0.24; 95% CI 95% 0.02, 0.46) and gingivitis (SMD 0.35; 95% CI -0.04, 0.74) more than side to side brushes. Due to the dearth of trials, no other definitive conclusions can be stated regarding the superiority of one mode of powered toothbrush over any other. Only minor and transient side effects were reported.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors summarised this as: &lt;blockquote&gt;This difference is small and it's clinical importance is unclear.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bad news is that despite the fact they set out to look at other factors (&quot;calculus and stain removal, &lt;strong&gt;cost&lt;/strong&gt;, dependability and adverse effects&quot;), they didn't find a conclusion (&quot;Cost, dependability were not reported.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While some electric toothbrushes mechanisms might be a little better than others, there isn't much in it (and I can stop looking, because if Cochrane didn't find it, it isn't there on the available evidence in the literature.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't answer whether the expensive ones correlate to the better ones. I can note, informally, that cost, when it comes to consumer goods, may be regional and more related to branding, colour, battery-life, dependability and other factors not related to the toothbrush's efficacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T10:51:43.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4963" CreationDate="2011-06-30T11:59:01.497" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Severe cases of common cold cause set of symptoms know as &quot;influenza-like illness&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acha.org/ILI_Project/ILI_case_definition_CDC.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC definition&lt;/a&gt; of &quot;influenza-like illness&quot; case is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;fever ≥ 100&amp;deg;F AND cough and/or sore throat &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no doubt, that &quot;flu-like&quot; is seasonal, with peak just past mid-winter.&#xA;This can be clearly seen from effect of collaboration between CDC and Google, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.org/flutrends/about/how.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Flu Trends&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LHZZo.png&quot; alt=&quot;FluTrends US&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific basis on these studies are described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en//archive/papers/detecting-influenza-epidemics.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Google Research paper&lt;/a&gt;, which has been originally published &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7232/full/nature07634.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in Nature&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-06-30T13:43:09.740" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T13:43:09.740" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4977" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4979" CreationDate="2011-06-30T14:10:21.923" Score="24" ViewCount="7091" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this story for years: After you bring a mattress home, dust mites move in (possibly even before).  Like all creatures, they create waste products, which allegedly accumulate over time.  The story goes that after 10 years, there is so much excrement that the mattress doubles its original weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example being used in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/v/O6ao7Bn2xK4&quot;&gt;advert to sell mattresses&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone ever actually weight a mattress before and after (say) 10 years of use?&#xA;Does the weight go up significantly?&#xA;Could there be other causes to weight gain (salt buildup from users perspiration, for example)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="681" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-02T06:05:42.853" LastActivityDate="2011-07-02T06:05:42.853" Title="Do mattresses double their weight after 10 years?" Tags="|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4978" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4980" CreationDate="2011-06-30T15:42:33.523" Score="21" ViewCount="2795" Body="&lt;p&gt;This hit all the papers a week or so ago and seemed like something to be skeptical about.  Is there any evidence that a 600 calorie diet can cure diabeties in humans?  Or is this some theory that the papers have picked up and hyped as reality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story in question is reported here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jun/24/low-calorie-diet-hope-cure-diabetes&quot;&gt;http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jun/24/low-calorie-diet-hope-cure-diabetes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastEditorUserId="791" LastEditDate="2012-09-08T08:39:40.627" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T01:27:34.463" Title="Can a 600-calorie diet cure Type 2 diabetes?" Tags="|medical-science|diabetes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4977" CreationDate="2011-06-30T15:55:22.060" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't meant to be a complete answer (at least not to my usual standards), but a very good treatment in Straight Dope is worth mentioning. This isn't an act of scientific research, so much as investigative journalism. Cecil Adams (the journalist), did a lot of footwork to get to the bottom of this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An article in the February 18 [2000] Wall Street Journal says, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;The average mattress will double its weight in ten years as a result of being filled with dust mites and their detritus.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cecil described his efforts in tracking down the source of the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I contacted the Wall Street Journal reporter who wrote the article in question (&quot;Those Costly Weapons Against Dust Mites May Not Be Worth It&quot;). She said she'd gotten this[...] story from a source at Ohio State University[...] I tried reaching Emmett Glass, described in the story as &quot;an OSU research associate leading the university's ongoing Dust Mite Management Study.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cecil later received correspondence from &lt;strong&gt;Emmett Glass of Ohio State University&lt;/strong&gt;, who is the purported source behind the claim that appeared in Wall Street Journal and exploded into the public eye. Emmett wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I never quoted that statistic. I told [the reporter] that Internet web sites have statistics that try to strike fear in the consumer, thus promoting their products. I gave her a few off the top of my head (two million mites in an average mattress, mattress doubling in weight, etc.) that I read over the years. She asked me if any of these statistics have any scientific merit and I told her that &lt;strong&gt;none of them are in the literature. To the layman that is NO!&lt;/strong&gt; In fact I asked the Wall Street Journal writer to call an expert on mattresses at the internal sleep products association. She did and was told that the statistic on mattresses doubling in weight was far from the truth. The journalist choose to include it in the story anyway. She liked the statistic because it made her story more interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it would seem that that should set the record straight. It does not explain where the mattress companies originally came up with this flawed statistic - but it's unsupported by scientific evidence, and perpetuated by tabloid journalism and opportunists seeking to profiting from customers’ false beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2545/does-a-mattress-double-its-weight-due-to-dust-mites-and-their-debris&quot;&gt;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2545/does-a-mattress-double-its-weight-due-to-dust-mites-and-their-debris&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2157.html&quot;&gt;http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2157.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="2382" LastEditDate="2011-07-01T12:05:20.953" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T12:05:20.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4978" CreationDate="2011-06-30T16:13:13.657" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, just as the article in the Guardian says, there has been a small clinical trial, which shows some very promising results. As the article suggests it is premature to recommend people go on such a diet for this reason alone, and medical supervision on such a diet would be advisable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is based around this paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168743/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reversal of type 2 diabetes: normalisation of beta cell function in association with decreased pancreas and liver triacylglycerol&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, E. L. Lim &amp;amp; K. G. Hollingsworth &amp;amp; B. S. Aribisala &amp;amp; M. J. Chen &amp;amp; J. C. Mathers &amp;amp; R. Taylor. Received: 22 March 2011 / Accepted: 5 May 2011. Diabetologia DOI 10.1007/s00125-011-2204-7 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncl.ac.uk/press.office/press.release/item/diet-reverses-type-2-diabetes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Press Release&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They studied 11 obese patients with recently acquired Type 2 diabetes, who were put on a multi-week, 2.5 MJ (600 kcal)/day diets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They had matched controls of non-diabetic patients who where not put on diets. (I haven't understood the value of a non-diabetic control.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well as significant weight loss, they found: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Normalisation of both beta cell function and hepatic insulin sensitivity in type 2 diabetes was achieved by dietary energy restriction alone. This was associated with decreased pancreatic and liver triacylglycerol stores. The abnormalities underlying type 2 diabetes are reversible by reducing dietary energy intake.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a 12 week follow-up, 3 of the 10 patients available had returned to a diabetic condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The take-home message that the authors seemed to push in their paper is that this offers hope for what was thought to be an irreversible condition, and some inkling of the causes for diabetes, rather than a ready-to-go cure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-08T01:27:34.463" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T01:27:34.463" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4972" CreationDate="2011-06-30T16:47:08.157" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out &amp;quot;Blood cholesterol and vascular mortality by age, sex, and blood pressure: a meta-analysis of individual data from 61 prospective studies with 55 000 vascular deaths&amp;quot;, from &lt;em&gt;The Lancet&lt;/em&gt;, Volume 370, Issue 9602, Pages 1829 - 1839, 1 December 2007. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CBcQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18061058&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=Blood%20cholesterol%20and%20vascular%20mortality%20by%20age,%20sex,%20and%20blood%20pressure:%20a%20meta-analysis%20of%20individual%20data%20from%2061%20prospective%20studies%20with%2055%20000%20vascular%20deaths&amp;amp;ei=TqYMTtPRCMjYgQeY5_D8DQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNE0M_wHe33G4dsYQ6Z7PsZf9SyjFQ&amp;amp;sig2=QgPPbvBIip4iQDuhtQrxfg&amp;amp;cad=rja&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesterol#Hypercholesterolemia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hypercholesterolemia&lt;/a&gt; (High cholesterol) generally find that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;strong&gt;cardiovascular disease is relatively rare in the younger population&lt;/strong&gt;, the impact of high cholesterol on health is still larger in older people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total cholesterol was positively associated with IHD mortality in both middle and old age and at all blood pressure levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends screening above the age of 20 , but Canada only recommends screening for ages 40 or over. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0749-3797%2801%2900255-0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many articles discussing high cholesterol in young men are due to genetic factors (Familial Hypercholesterolemia), not eating habits. See &amp;quot;Coronary flow reserve is impaired in young men with familial hypercholesterolemia&amp;quot; from &lt;em&gt;Journal of the American College of Cardiology&lt;/em&gt; Volume 28, Issue 7, December 1996, Pages 1705-1711. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735109796003762&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question, &lt;strong&gt;Yes, it is possible&lt;/strong&gt; to eat enough fats that cholesterol becomes a significant risk factor for heart attacks by the age of 21? However, this is only a high risk if you have a genetic predisposition (Familial Hypercholesterolemia). Cases of hypercholesterolemia induced cardiac arrest are relatively extremely rare in non-genetically predisposed youth, but do exist. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&amp;amp;q=Hypercholesterolemia%20%2221%20year%20old%22&amp;amp;sa=N&amp;amp;tab=sw#sclient=psy&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;source=hp&amp;amp;q=%22young%20male%20with%20Hypercholesterolemia%22&amp;amp;aq=f&amp;amp;aqi=&amp;amp;aql=&amp;amp;oq=&amp;amp;pbx=1&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&amp;amp;fp=f93cf2a52e0e454&amp;amp;biw=1120&amp;amp;bih=749&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T16:47:08.157" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3772" CreationDate="2011-06-30T16:55:34.173" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Theses and dissertations, by their nature, are intended to be publicly available documents.  As such, all reputable universities of which I know &lt;em&gt;require&lt;/em&gt; that theses be indexed in the school's library or archive.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://library.tufts.edu/search~S1/?searchtype=a&amp;amp;searcharg=Tomason,%20Audrey&amp;amp;searchscope=1&amp;amp;SORT=D&amp;amp;extended=0&amp;amp;SUBMIT=Search&amp;amp;searchlimits=&amp;amp;searchorigarg=aAudrey%20Tomason&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Audrey Tomason&quot; does not appear at all in the Tufts University library index.&lt;/a&gt;  According to Harvard's archives, &lt;a href=&quot;http://hcl.harvard.edu/research/guides/dissertations/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;all abstracts of Masters theses written after 1988 are electronically available&lt;/a&gt;, however, the only link to &quot;Audrey Tomason&quot; on the Harvard library's index is for this paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hollis.harvard.edu/?itemid=%7Clibrary/m/aleph%7C009117506&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The United States' role in drug control policy for Afghanistan&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/pub/allison-cohen-neale/4/b79/6b8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Allison Cohen&lt;/a&gt; and Audrey Tomason.  John F. Kennedy School of Government Policy Analysis Exercises, 2003.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I can only think of three possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Audrey Tomason did not write a Master's thesis;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;she wrote a Master's thesis at a university other than Tufts or Harvard; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the record of her thesis was either accidentally or intentionally removed from the online index (or it was never included in the first place).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/3790/vartec&quot;&gt;vartec&lt;/a&gt;'s comment about classification, if that is truly the case, then that falls under the third possibility I listed above and it is likely unverifiable unless a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.state.gov/m/a/ips/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FOIA&lt;/a&gt; request is made.  It should be noted, however, that there are restrictions on how and when the US government can classify civilian documents.  From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13526&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Executive Order 13562 Section 1.7 parts (b) and (c)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(b) Basic scientific research information not clearly related to the national security shall not be classified.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;(c) Information may not be reclassified after declassification and release to the public under proper authority unless:&lt;br /&gt;...&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;(2) the information may be reasonably recovered without bringing undue attention to the information;&lt;br /&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Master's thesis &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; (although not necessarily) constitute &quot;basic scientific research&quot;.  Also, from the quotes in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/3772/6629&quot;&gt;asmaier&lt;/a&gt;'s question, it doesn't seem like the thesis is directly related to national security.  Finally, I interpret part (c)(2) to mean that once a thesis is made available publicly (especially on the Internet), it is likely difficult to increase its classification level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T14:45:24.750" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4986" CreationDate="2011-06-30T17:55:09.210" Score="16" ViewCount="9199" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my area, it is widely believed that the popularity of spicy cuisine in Southern countries like Mexico can be attributed to its antibacterial traits; i.e. because it is otherwise difficult to preserve food in a hot climate, they used hot spices for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to it? Couldn't it be explained simply by the fact that there is bigger spice variety available in hot countries, as opposed to e.g. Siberia? ;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user288" LastEditorDisplayName="user288" LastEditDate="2011-07-01T15:40:51.790" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T15:40:51.790" Title="Does spicy food have antibacterial traits?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4988" CreationDate="2011-06-30T17:57:35.313" Score="21" ViewCount="39347" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read the odds of dying as around 1 : 250 000 each day, which presumably is based on the global death rate. I use this when people buy lottery tickets to point out they have more chance of dying than winning the money. &lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-436623.html&quot;&gt;This forum thread&lt;/a&gt; is one example how the odds are worked out, but there are also no doubt plenty of others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a good way to base it? Is it actually measurable at all? And does this chance increase when you drive a car, fly, cycle etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:48:44.770" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T00:20:44.137" Title="Are the chances of dying each day 1 : 250 000?" Tags="|mortality|sociology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4984" CreationDate="2011-06-30T20:30:24.960" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Survival Analysis&lt;/a&gt;, hazard is defined as the instantaneous probability of the event occurring (such as death) per unit time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the hazard of death were constant over our lifetimes and were the same for everybody, and if the mean life expectancy were 80 years, say, that comes out to a hazard rate of 1/(80*365.25) = 1/29220 per day.&#xA;That's about 10 times larger than 1/250000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the hazard of death is not constant or the same for everybody.&#xA;It starts out high at birth, then drops to near zero, then gradually rises, in what's called a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;bathtub curve&quot;&lt;/a&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022519306005534&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;], and depends on all kinds of risk factors.&#xA;For someone in their 20s or 30s it might well be as small as 1/250000.&#xA;Risky behavior, like drinking and driving, will have the opposite effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actuarial_table&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Actuarial Table&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="342" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-03T22:13:32.563" LastActivityDate="2011-07-03T22:13:32.563" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4983" CreationDate="2011-06-30T21:04:50.893" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of course, this would differ from spice to spice. The archetypical &quot;hot&quot; spice is the active ingredient in hot chili peppers: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin&quot;&gt;Capsaicin&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A really quick search on Google Scholar brought up this link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOTAL-SPKX200608012.htm&quot;&gt;Study on Antibacterial Activity of Capsaicin&lt;/a&gt; WEI Yu-xi, SHUAI Li, GUO Dao-sen, LI Shan, WANG Fu-li, AI Gui-hua, published in the Chinese journal &quot;Food Science&quot; in 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Capsaicin from Capsicum annuum is one of the principle substances which have many important biological activities in food and medicine. In this paper its antibacterial activity was studied through the method of stiletto on capsaicin crystal. &lt;strong&gt;The results showed that capsaicin has strong antibacterial activity to bacteria supplied, but weak to mold&lt;/strong&gt;. Furthermore, its concentration affects the antibacterial activity, and no inhibition effect is found when the concentration of capsaicin is less than 0.0125mg/ml. It indicated that capsaicin can be a good antibacterial agent as well as a pungent agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Killing bacteria is an important aspect in preserving foods, so indeed, if the spice contains capsaicin, it has antibacterial traits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-01T11:01:03.293" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T11:01:03.293" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4868" CreationDate="2011-06-30T21:20:30.070" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: &lt;strong&gt;No, it's not a viable method, it will likely cause damage and will not likely work at all.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what the largest data recovery firms say on the matter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.datarecovery.com&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;datarecovery.com&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stamped on pretty much every page of the site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please keep in mind that hard drives are delicate instruments. Like any other delicate instrument, if they are not handled with care or properly cooled, you may experience a failure. &lt;strong&gt;Hard drives are sensitive to heat, rapid temperature changes, static electricity, power surges and physical shock. We estimate that most hard drive failures occur due to operating conditions&lt;/strong&gt;, not manufacture defects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which pretty much means, don't mess around with temperatures because HDs are very sensitive to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.krollontrack.com/data-recovery/hard-drive-clean-room-technology/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;krollontrack.com&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, hard drives are so temperature dependent that thermal expansion (and I am adding: thermal contraction) are relevant to the design of the base casting assembly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today’s hard drives have no room for errors when it comes to platter and head alignment. The tolerances are so exacting that hard drive manufacturers even design ways to keep the Base-Casting Assembly, where all the components are attached to, from shifting due to high temperature situations. For instance, one hard drive manufacturer of high performance SCSI based drives actually designs their Base-Casting Assembly with pre-stress points. &lt;strong&gt;The assembly does not line up from corner to diagonal corner—it’s pre-torqued. When the casting assembly heats up, the unit actually twists back (thermal expansion) into a true line-up from corner to corner.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unsurprisingly, the correct advice abounds on data recovery sites, for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.datarecoverylabs.com/hard-drive-data-recovery.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;datarecoverylabs.com&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a drive is making unusual mechanical noises, &lt;strong&gt;turn it off immediately and contact a data recovery specialist.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.securedatarecovery.com/laptop-data-recovery.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;securedatarecovery.com&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;mdash;boasting high-profile customers, from Nasa to Microsoft&amp;mdash;also gives the same advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stopping all use&lt;/strong&gt; of the damaged equipment or medium is the &lt;strong&gt;single most important step&lt;/strong&gt; in any data loss scenario.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Attempting to perform data recovery on your own is very dangerous - if you are not absolutely sure of what you are doing, you might jeopardize the safety of your data. Do not attempt to use data recovery software, and never try to disassemble the hard drive on your own. Continuing to use your hard drive while it is in a degraded state can endanger your data and make the data recovery process more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think nobody makes it more explicit than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.datarecovery.net/data-recovery-tips.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;datarecovery.net&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;DO NOT put your drive in the freezer and then try to spin it up. It is possible that moisture has condensed on the media surfaces. This WILL cause head contact if it has and will destroy the drive.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;DO NOT listen to your friends or continue to look for home remedies on the net such as the one mentioned above, seek professional help if you value the lost data.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note: not a single one boasts &quot;cryogenic units&quot; or anything similar. All the most reputable ones boast clean rooms and privacy/security standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-06-30T21:20:30.070" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4984" CreationDate="2011-06-30T21:37:03.410" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is based on numerous flawed assumptions. It should not be calculated in such a simplistic way, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;chance of dying in given time is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; uniformly distributed among people, there are great variety of factors (genetic, behavioral and environmental); For example there &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;are numerous wars going on right now&lt;/a&gt;, greatly increasing chances of death in these zones.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;chance of dying of one single person is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; uniformly distributed in time, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz%E2%80%93Makeham_law_of_mortality&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gompertz–Makeham law of mortality&lt;/a&gt; applies;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;total death rate takes in account infant death, children death etc. For calculating the life expectancy for person who has already lived &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; years, you should only take in account deaths of people &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; or older. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kfcxo.png&quot; alt=&quot;Graph of Gompertz-Makeham law&quot;&gt;&#xA;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USGompertzCurve.svg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, that vertical scale in above graph is logarithmic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-07-01T09:55:47.143" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T09:55:47.143" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4989" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4994" CreationDate="2011-07-01T02:08:59.653" Score="17" ViewCount="26158" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that most birds learn to fly by being pushed out of the nest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen this most often in cartoons and quoted all over the net.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awla.org/baby-birds.shtml&quot;&gt;example quote&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A fledgling is a baby bird that has&#xA;  some feathers and can hop around. Its&#xA;  parents have pushed it out of the nest&#xA;  on purpose to help it learn how to&#xA;  fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T15:45:43.937" Title="Are birds pushed out of the nest?" Tags="|biology|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4990" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4998" CreationDate="2011-07-01T03:56:11.090" Score="31" ViewCount="3135" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different groups argue that the numbers of religious people are either shrinking or growing, often depending on which group they are from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example of the shrinking religious viewpoint is the intro to this video talk by Dan Dennett &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5tGpMcFF7U&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5tGpMcFF7U&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example of the growing religious viewpoint is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=23018&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; from the Vatican:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Catholic Church growing, especially in&#xA;  Asia, Africa&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting enough the numbers on the wikipedia page for &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claims_to_be_the_fastest-growing_religion&quot;&gt;Claims to be the fastest-growing religion&lt;/a&gt;&quot; show positive growth rates for various religions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, some claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are less people participating in organised religious activities and thus religion is slowly dying&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others claim :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our religion is experiencing healthy growth and will continue forever because we have God on our side&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there solid data to support arguments that suggests less people are participating in religious activity (either donating to religious organisations or regularly attending religious activities)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:48:23.693" LastActivityDate="2016-07-09T18:57:31.120" Title="Is the religious population declining?" Tags="|religion|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4992" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="4993" CreationDate="2011-07-01T07:51:27.483" Score="10" ViewCount="1833" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been told that dyslexia is unheard of in Spain, and presumably other Spanish-speaking cultures, because Spanish is pronounced as it is spelt. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unifon.org/dyslexia.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Cases of dyslexia and illiteracy after four years of schooling are extremely rare or undetected in Italy, Spain, Turkey, Finland, and other countries with highly phonemic or transparent orthographies.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1641" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-07-01T10:17:41.517" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T11:02:57.917" Title="Is dyslexia unheard of in Spain?" Tags="|education|language|spain|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4992" CreationDate="2011-07-01T09:23:31.763" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is dyslexia unheard of in Spain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's heard of, as dyslexia has much broader meaning than just phonetic problems. There is for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fedis.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FEDIS&lt;/a&gt; (Spanish Dyslexia Federation), which advocates for special treatment of children with dyslexia in Spanish education system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is grain of truth in this. Indeed Spanish children affected by dyslexia have much less problems reading and properly pronouncing words, than English speaking children.&#xA;It has been demonstrated in this study: &lt;a href=&quot;http://sid.usal.es/idocs/F8/ART11455/valoracion_procesamiento_ortografico.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Valoración del procesamiento ortográfico en niños españoles con dislexia: El papel de las unidades léxicas y subléxicas&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (roughly translated title: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Evaluation of orthographic processing of Spanish children with dyslexia: The role of lexical and sublexical units&quot;&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Los resultados de la presente&#xA;  investigación tienen implicaciones en&#xA;  la práctica  educativa. Sugieren que&#xA;  mientras que es necesario entrenar en&#xA;  la estrategia léxica a los niños  con&#xA;  dislexia, ya que muestran un déficit&#xA;  en esta habilidad de procesamiento, no&#xA;  parece  indicado entrenarles en&#xA;  habilidades morfológicas, ya que, en&#xA;  un sistema ortográfico  transparente&#xA;  como el español, el morfema no es&#xA;  imprescindible para acceder al léxico.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(translation):&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  Results of current investigation have implication in education practice. &#xA;  They suggest, that while it is necessary to train children with dyslexia &#xA;  in lexical strategy, given that they do have difficulties with processing &#xA;  abilities, it doesn't seem appropriate &#xA;  train their morphological abilities, as in spelling system as transparent as Spanish, &#xA;  morpheme is not indispensable to access the lexicon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the part that directly compares Spanish to English:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sin embargo, algunas ortografías,&#xA;  distintas al  español, no son&#xA;  enteramente predecibles sobre las&#xA;  bases de los fonemas ya que no son &#xA;  sistemas transparentes. Esto es así&#xA;  para la notoriamente lengua&#xA;  “irregular”, como el inglés y,  por&#xA;  extensión, el danés y el francés.&#xA;  Estas lenguas están gobernadas, no&#xA;  sólo por la fonología  sino también&#xA;  por la morfología.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(translation):&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  However, some spelling systems,&#xA;  other than Spanish, are not&#xA;  entirely predictable on&#xA;  basis of phonemes as they are not&#xA;  transparent systems. This is&#xA;  the case of notoriously &#xA;  &quot;irregular&quot; language as the English, and&#xA;  by extension, also Danish and French.&#xA;  These languages ​​are governed, not&#xA;  only by phonology but also&#xA;  by morphology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW. Spanish (and few other languages) are pronounced as they are spelled, but that doesn't work other way around. &lt;a href=&quot;http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homofon%C3%ADa&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;There are many homophones in Spanish.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-07-01T11:02:57.917" LastActivityDate="2011-07-01T11:02:57.917" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4989" CreationDate="2011-07-01T11:52:18.520" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do not think so. According to Jessica Griffiths:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Birds do not, as a rule, push their young out of the nest,” says Jessica Griffiths, Coordinator of the Big Sur Ornithology Lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People claim that the only species of bird to practise pushing their young out is the eagle, but according &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newhavenrtc.com/blog/emptying-the-nest/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;to studies:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ornithologists have observed eagles coaxing, even taunting, their young from the nest, rather than just giving them a shove. When the fledgling eagle is almost ready to fly, parents have been observed to swoop by the nest with a fresh kill. Instead of landing in the nest as usual to share the meal, the parent lands near the nest and eats in plain view of its squawking, hungry teenager. This behavior continues until the fledgling is hungry enough to venture out of the nest, at which point the parent will share its food. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is backed up by this discussion, answer by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/eagle/ExpertAnswer00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eagle Expert Peter Nye:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No! The adults may withhold food as the eaglets get near fledging, and encourage them to fly to a nearby perch to get their meal, but that's about it. Usually, no coaxing is necessary and the eaglets are all too anxious to test their wings!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't place too much on the next excerpt; it is by an anonymous person on the web, who claims to be an  &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101230225602AAleN1Z&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ornithologist:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Actually birds don't push their young out of the nest at all..that is a myth. They may coax their chicks out of the nest but pushing them out before they are ready would mean they would most likely not survive. That would be very counterproductive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up, taken from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.placeforwildbirds.org/myths.html#anchor3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ornithology site:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MYTH:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Mother birds will push their young out of the nest if they are defective, or when it is time for them to leave.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   FALSE!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Fledgling birds that are around 14-18 days old (with a tail length of around 1/4&quot;-1/2&quot; long) begin to get curious about the world and leave the nest on their own. Parent birds will sometimes remove an egg that has not hatched, but will not push their young out of the nest. Sometimes a nest gets crowded and one of the nestlings gets accidentally knocked out by a nestmate. But it is unfortunately all too common for many baby birds to be pulled out of the nest by predators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-03T23:01:35.037" LastActivityDate="2011-07-03T23:01:35.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4996" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5000" CreationDate="2011-07-01T13:35:15.993" Score="14" ViewCount="2548" Body="&lt;p&gt;With &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/US/james-ray-found-guilty-negligent-homicide-arizona-sweat/story?id=13908037&quot;&gt;James Ray being found guilty of culpable homicide&lt;/a&gt; over three fatalities in a sweat lodge in Arizona, I was wondering if saunas really do benefit your health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it effect your skin, heart, muscles toxin levels and more? Are sauna benefits, like weight loss, detoxification, negative ions and lowered blood pressure, true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthy-holistic-living.com/sauna-health.html&quot;&gt;Sauna benefits 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cyberbohemia.com/Pages/saunahealth.htm&quot;&gt;Sauna benefits 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.steam-sauna-benefits.com/sauna_benefits.html&quot;&gt;Sauna benefits 3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2883" LastEditorUserId="2883" LastEditDate="2011-07-01T14:26:36.547" LastActivityDate="2021-07-25T18:03:24.533" Title="Do saunas affect your health?" Tags="|medical-science|weight-loss|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="4998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4990" CreationDate="2011-07-01T19:35:14.213" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some reason, when reading about, or listening to claims about things people argue over, and disagree with, I am reminded of a quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&#xA;- Mark Twain's Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this is &lt;em&gt;ESPECIALLY&lt;/em&gt; true, when the speaker is supporting a viewpoint or idea that they have any investment in.  Such as Dan Dennett supporting the idea that religious adherence is declining, or the Catholic Church supporting the idea that Catholicism is increasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A site that I am fond of for researching the things people do and don't believe in concerning deities, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adherents.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;adherents.com&lt;/a&gt;.  Another site is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;religioustolerance.org&lt;/a&gt;.  What these sites do is basically collect the info from population sites and surveys and collate it.  Keep in mind, the gathering of religious data is notoriously difficult because the identification system used varies throughout the world, and within many different cultures and countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, about the specific claim?  Well, they are both right in a way.  It all depends on how you look at the numbers.  There are declines in attendance over all as a percentage (and in some cases by sheer numbers).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_tren.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;If you look at this page (and I recommend you look at the whole page, not just this bit I am quoting)&lt;/a&gt;, some interesting bits of data to support Dennett are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are some interesting signs that religion is in a state of rapid flux, both in the U.S. and around the world:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The percentage of American adults who &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_prac2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;identify themselves as Christians dropped from 86% in 1990 to 77% in 2001&lt;/a&gt;. This is an unprecedented drop of almost 1 percentage point per year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The percentage of American adults who identify themselves as Protestants dropped below 50% about the year 2005.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_conf.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confidence in religious institutions has hit an all-time low&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;There appears to be a major increase in interest in spirituality among North Americans. However, this has not translated into greater church involvement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Mainline denominations have been losing membership for decades in the U.S.; conservative denominations have been growing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;At the present rates of change, Islam will become the dominant religion in the world before 2050 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/ce.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;At the present rate of change, most Americans would identify themselves as non-religious or non-Christian by the year 2035 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/ce.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The numbers of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/us_rel.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;unchurched&quot; people has increased rapidly in the U.S.&lt;/a&gt; These are individuals who have not attended church in recent months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Agnostics, Atheists, secularists. and NOTAs (none of the above) are growing rapidly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Interest in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/cultmenu.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;new religious movements&lt;/a&gt; (e.g. New Age, Neopaganism) is growing rapidly. In particular, Wiccans are doubling in numbers about every 30 months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The influence of the central, program-based congregation is diminishing as more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_cell.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cell churches&lt;/a&gt; are being created.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Many Christians have left congregations and formed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_hous.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;house churches&lt;/a&gt; - small groups meeting in each other's homes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, there is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1012/1012.1375v2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A mathematical model of social group competition with application to the growth of religious non-affiliation&lt;/a&gt; (PDF link)&quot; Daniel M. Abrams and Haley A. Yaple Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois which also &lt;em&gt;supports&lt;/em&gt; Dennett's position, although I would caution that it's not definitive, since it is just a projection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What about the claim by the Vatican?&lt;/strong&gt;  Well, they are very actively recruiting on the African continent, and have reported that consistently.  Another factor could also be the catholic &lt;em&gt;teaching&lt;/em&gt; (vice dogma) of large families and no contraception has aided in keeping their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/3510718&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;population growth marginally higher than other populations in&lt;/a&gt; the same area (although this has probably changed as many adherents pick and choose specific teachings which to follow).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/worldrel.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This page has a table that shows major religions at a top level&lt;/a&gt;.  And it notes that as a percentage, some are declining, others are growing.  And here it lists Christianity as declining.  So perhaps the growth of the Catholics is a consolidation of other Christians as well?  Thank you to Randolph for pointing me to the religion in Canada page.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Canada#Religious_mix&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;As you can see from the Wikipedia page on the Canadian Census results&lt;/a&gt;, there is a growth in Catholicism AND Christianity.  Although, neither growth rates match the population growth rate.  On the affiliations that have a very low total number of adherents, a relatively small numerical growth will skew for a very significant percentage growth.  In looking at Canada, we do see somewhat similar trends in other countries that track religious affiliation, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_Kingdom#Statistics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;like the United Kingdom (although they don't have a nice table like the Canadian page, but the graph is telling)&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/f2d9t.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Wikitable&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in answer to your question, they are both right in their own way.  The only way to really know whose vision will bear out in the end though is to wait until the future arrives.  And my prediction will be that everyone will be consistently incorrect in some way or another.  Although, in the developed world, Dennett is more correct, and in the undeveloped world, the church is more correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-07-03T13:39:59.490" LastActivityDate="2011-07-03T13:39:59.490" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4996" CreationDate="2011-07-02T03:31:03.707" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;When any benefits are listed in the same sentence as &quot;detoxification&quot; and &quot;negative ions,&quot; it's hard to give them any credibility at all. The first two sites you link to delve into pseudoscientific explanations. Ironically, the one with &quot;holistic&quot; in its domain name seems to have the most reasonable answer.  I'll refer to the research Brian Dunning has already done on some of the claims...  The first site claims that sauna will &quot;strengthen&quot; your immune system, which is kind of a meaningless claim, as explained pretty well in &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4227&quot;&gt;Skeptoid #227&lt;/a&gt; (refs at the end of the transcript). &quot;Detoxification&quot; is a common buzzword used by many alt-med practitioners, but none can define it in a verifiable way, so all it really does to do is serve to tell you when someone is feeding you a line. The excellent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/detox.html&quot;&gt;Skepdic entry on detoxification&lt;/a&gt; includes a section specifically on saunas, along with lots of links references (mostly in the form of links to Wikipedia articles, which themselves have numerous references)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saunas are relaxing for most people (heat relaxes muscles), so that's a pretty clear benefit. Tension causes and exacerbates all sorts of problems, so it can have secondary benefits as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll sweat in a sauna, so you'll lose water weight. That's weight loss on the scale, but it's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12968210&quot;&gt;basically just dehydration&lt;/a&gt;. I looked around, and I can't find anything really credible that suggests you'll burn a significant number of calories by sitting in a sauna (all the claims that you can come from questionable sites like the ones you linked to, which are promotional, not research-baed). It makes sense that, just by virtue of increasing your temperature, you'll burn some more, but probably nowhere near as many as if you were physically active.  The claim is commonly made, but it doesn't appear to have any significant evidence behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does look like there might be some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11165553&quot;&gt;preliminary evidence to suggest that it might help lower blood pressure for those with hypertension&lt;/a&gt;. It sounds like the case for that may not yet be very strong, based on the (lack of) results I got when looking for it. I had always heard when growing up that people who have any kind of heart-related problems should avoid saunas, but I can't say that I'm certain that advice was sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, I think that if you're expecting a sauna to offer any benefits beyond those conferred through relaxation, you're probably grasping at straws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3838" LastActivityDate="2011-07-02T03:31:03.707" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5002" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5198" CreationDate="2011-07-02T07:30:32.110" Score="18" ViewCount="2829" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is commonly said that eating slower will reduce your appetite. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dumblittleman.com/2007/12/6-reasons-to-slow-down-while-eating.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt;, for example, claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Portion control &amp;amp; Overeating prevention.&lt;/strong&gt; When you eat slowly it is definitely hard to overeat. Slow eating little by little decreases the desire to eat, so you can stop eating before your plate is empty. It is suggested that it takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to produce the hormones telling your brain that you are full.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Weight control benefits.&lt;/strong&gt; Slowly eating habit reduces the risk of becoming overweight. Recently Japanese researches found strong positive correlation between higher eating speed and obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that eating a meal more slowly will make one prefer to eat less?&#xA;Could this help to lose weight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-06-30T16:29:58.510" Title="Does eating slower make you lose weight?" Tags="|nutrition|weight-loss|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5003" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-02T11:55:33.677" Score="27" ViewCount="13957" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/f5dH3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Skin&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/mythbusters/1044/dust.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fortean Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I first heard the claim that &lt;strong&gt;house dust is mostly made up of human skin&lt;/strong&gt; on a TV show, when I was a kid (probably Cheers, where Cliff makes this comment at the beginning of a Season 9 episode), but even today I often hear this &amp;quot;fact&amp;quot; being repeated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/House_dust_mite&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Better Health&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The main component of dust is shed skin flakes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microbiologybytes.com/video/mite.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MicrobiologyBytes&lt;/a&gt; even gives a percentage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About 80% of the material seen&#xA;floating in a sunbeam is actually&#xA;flakes of skin&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;But according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/mythbusters/1044/dust.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fortean Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There’s no evidence to suggest that dust is mostly made up of any one ingredient&lt;/strong&gt;; rather, it is a delightful salmagundi or potpourri of everything that is likely to be drifting around your house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The precise ingredients and proportions present will presumably depend in part on where you live, as well as how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;My question:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is house dust mostly made up of our shed skin flakes?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-06-09T17:04:32.927" Title="Is house dust mostly made up of human skin?" Tags="|biology|hygiene|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3010" CreationDate="2011-07-02T14:29:32.157" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/human-body/systems/endocrine/adrenaline-strength.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discovery Health - How can adrenaline help you lift a 3,500-pound car?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When adrenaline is released&lt;/strong&gt; by the&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/A/Adrenals.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;adrenal medulla&lt;/a&gt; it allows blood to&#xA;flow more easily to your  muscles.&#xA;This means that &lt;strong&gt;more oxygen is carried&#xA;to your muscles by the extra blood,&#xA;which allows your muscles to function&#xA;at elevated levels&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adrenaline also facilitates the&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elmhurst.edu/%7Echm/vchembook/604glycogenesis.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;conversion of the body's fuel source&#xA;(glycogen) into its fuel (glucose)&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;This carbohydrate gives energy to&#xA;muscles, and a sudden burst of glucose&#xA;also allows muscles to strengthen&#xA;further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;But of course an adrenaline rush can't boost your strength to infinity. Every body has physical (muscles, tendons, bones) limitations that can't be exceeded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More Sources:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2636/supermom&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Straight Dope - Could a mother actually lift a car to save her child?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4255&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skeptoid - Superhuman Strength during a Crisis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;News articles:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newsmax.com/US/nick-harris-ashlyn-hough-kansas/2009/12/18/id/343904&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kansas Dad Lifts Car Off 6-Year-Old&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://azstarnet.com/news/local/crime/article_e7f04bbd-309b-5c7e-808d-1907d91517ac.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Man lifts car off pinned cyclist &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/best-mothers-ever&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SuperMom - Angela Cavallo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-02T14:51:41.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1990" CreationDate="2011-07-02T15:16:53.017" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Full disclosure, I have not seen this film.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like so many other instances in real life, perhaps it's a bit of both.  And keep in mind, &lt;em&gt;proof&lt;/em&gt; is generally limited to mathematics.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/22/entertainment/la-et-oscar-exit-20110222&quot;&gt;An LA Times investigative reporter dug into this a bit&lt;/a&gt;, and found a few details that support Thierry Guetta's biography.  He is indeed a real individual, and he was born in France, moved to the US, and is involved in the art scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence that he was displaying his video work, with the 2006 posting of LIFE REMOTE CONTROL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, keep in mind that a director could &quot;embellish&quot; aspects of a person's life if they were motivated to highlight a parody on the art scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course, it is impossible to prove whether his latest incarnation, Mr. Brainwash, is sincere. The film suggests that Guetta's artistic alter ego is largely a creation of Banksy, a notion Guetta doesn't refute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, there is some vagueness in statements by Guetta, such as (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite an unvarnished anger for Banksy and Guetta today, Levy nevertheless says the story in &quot;Exit&quot; is &lt;em&gt;almost entirely true&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when there are a lot of public documents and records showing that people have taken out sums of money that need to be repaid, there is certainly a motivation to hype and promote something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Exit&quot; is rather explicit about Banksy's role engineering the film's final act&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would indicate that the credited director is indeed making every effort to ensure that he makes some money off the deal.  Does this mean that Guetta is fabricated?  Probably not.  Again, documentation exists back to his birth in 1966, as well as supporting his lifestyle as an artist, and even his compulsive video taping of things starting in the late 1990s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/artist-at-center-oscar-nominated-195544&quot;&gt;outside of Bansky's influence Glen Friedman (a famous photographer in his own right)&lt;/a&gt; and Guetta dramatics is covered in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/jun/08/banksy-thierry-guetta-lawsuit&quot;&gt;an article by the Guardian&lt;/a&gt;, which also suggest that this is for the most part &quot;real&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as the comment by Lennart, it's a mixture of both elements, although a preponderance of evidence points to this guy and his story being for the most part real..  Think of it as a promotional activity that has taken on a life larger than the individual originally portrayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-07-03T13:43:18.563" LastActivityDate="2011-07-03T13:43:18.563" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4295" CreationDate="2011-07-02T19:05:58.910" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the alleged miracle of the Holy Fire is a very complex issue, please allow me to leave a link to an extensive related article right here. The article was originally written by me in Greek and translated by the greek atheists for the english version of their blog: &lt;a href=&quot;http://onthewaytoithaca.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/the-holy-light-of-jerusalem-debunked/&quot;&gt;&quot;The “Holy Light” of Jerusalem debunked&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who speak or understand German, there's more stuff &lt;a href=&quot;http://wasistwahrheit.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;on my German-language blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the links I posted above, I thought it might be useful to summarize some facts concerning the alleged miracle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Until the middle of the 8th century century, the ceremony of the holy fire was in no way linked to any miracle. Not a single earlier source mentions or implies a light descending from heaven.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;KALOKYRIS, Konstandinos: Το αρχιτεκτονικό συγκρότημα τού Ναού της Αναστάσεως Ιεροσολύμων και το θέμα του Αγίου Φωτός (english: The building complex of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalemin and the issue of the Holy fire). Thessaloniki, University Studio Press, 1999, p. 164–169. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The same applies to the prayer recited by the patriarch: not a single word in it mentions or in any way implies a light being sent down by God. The only request we can find is that the flame which the patriarch humbly and piously lights in rememberance of Jesus, may be filled up with His Holy Grace and bless the faithful. No lights coming down from heaven, no candles ignitiing spontaneously, no nothing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;KALOKYRIS, 1999, p. 222–228.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Online: &lt;a href=&quot;http://onthewaytoithaca.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/the-holy-light-of-jerusalem-debunked/#contents04&quot;&gt;http://onthewaytoithaca.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/the-holy-light-of-jerusalem-debunked/#contents04&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full prayer text can also be found on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jerusalem-patriarchate.info/en/agion_fos.htm&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; of the Jerusalem Patriarchate, BUT: two crucial parts of the translation are highly misleading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a. &lt;strong&gt;English translation:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So with happy heart and spiritual joy,&#xA;  on this most blessed Saturday, Your&#xA;  most salvific mysteries which You&#xA;  divinely executed on earth and under&#xA;  the earth we celebrate, and we&#xA;  remember You, the exhilarating and&#xA;  appealing light which You divinely&#xA;  shone in the underworld, &lt;strong&gt;we celebrate&#xA;  the&lt;/strong&gt; appearance of the light, &lt;strong&gt;Your&#xA;  congenial divine appearance to us&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is what the greek text really says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So with happy heart and spiritual joy,&#xA;  on this most blessed Saturday, Your&#xA;  most salvific mysteries which You&#xA;  divinely executed on earth and under&#xA;  the earth we celebrate, and in&#xA;  rememberance of You, the exhilarating&#xA;  and appealing light which divinely&#xA;  shone in the underworld, &lt;strong&gt;we create&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  appearance of light, &lt;strong&gt;re-enacting&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Your congenial divine appearance to&#xA;  us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b. &lt;strong&gt;English translation:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By this, &lt;strong&gt;having received&lt;/strong&gt; with&#xA;  piety, from this, Your light-bearing&#xA;  Tomb we offer it to those believing in&#xA;  You, the true light and ask and&#xA;  supplicate Most Holy Despota that You&#xA;  make this a gift of sanctification and&#xA;  full of Your every divine grace&#xA;  through the grace of your Most Holy&#xA;  and light- bearing Tomb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Greek original: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By this, &lt;strong&gt;we receive&lt;/strong&gt; with piety&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;from the everlasting light, which is constantly burning on this&#xA;  light-bearing Tomb of Yours&lt;/strong&gt; and we&#xA;  offer it to those believing in You,&#xA;  the true light and ask and supplicate&#xA;  Most Holy Despota that You make this a&#xA;  gift of sanctification and full of&#xA;  Your every divine grace through the&#xA;  grace of your Most Holy and&#xA;  light-bearing Tomb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No body search is performed on the patriarch! The removal of his outer vestments is just a part of the ritual expressing humility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;KALOKYRIS, 1999, p. 219.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: YouTube video: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z-NBUyklf8&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z-NBUyklf8&lt;/a&gt; . User: davidtlig: Miracle of the Holy Fire, Jerusalem 2008, 04.04.2010, 0:29–1:25 (03.07.2011).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;YouTube video: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzDaVyWEjtQ&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzDaVyWEjtQ&lt;/a&gt; . User: Photoplay1999: ΑΓΙΟ ΦΩΣ- holy light (Orthodox easter) Jerusalem. Grizes Zones, PART 1/2. 17.04.2009: 5:16-5:40 (03.07.2011). (In this video, Archbishop Aristarhos of Constantina and Elder Chief Secretary of the Jerusalem Patriarchate, verifies that no body search is performed.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the website of the Jerusalem Patriarchate though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Following the Holy litany the&#xA;  Patriarch stands in front of the door&#xA;  of the Holy Edicule, removes his&#xA;  ceremonial vestments and waits with&#xA;  his sticharion (white robe),&#xA;  epitrahilion (stole) and his belt. &lt;strong&gt;The&#xA;  heterodox examine the Patriarch to&#xA;  ensure he has nothing on Him that&#xA;  could arouse or draw suspicion&lt;/strong&gt; [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of cource, that is a lie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In 1995, just a few days before the locum tenens of the Patriarchal throne, Metropolitan Cornelius of Petra, received the Holy Fire in the place of patriarch Irenaeus, he declared in a television interview that the holy fire is a natural light, lit by the patriarch from the Sanctuary Lamp! And then came the big shock: “The miracle is the prayer that hallows the light”. (The light which supposedely comes from heaven!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzDaVyWEjtQ&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzDaVyWEjtQ&lt;/a&gt; (5:16-5:40, 7:03-7:15).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3897" LastEditorUserId="3897" LastEditDate="2011-07-04T17:37:58.720" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T17:37:58.720" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5012" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5027" CreationDate="2011-07-02T23:51:20.073" Score="12" ViewCount="2273" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several people have claimed that the singers accents are lost or reduced when they sing, or even that they tend to sing in an American accent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some online discussions of the issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=1500.0&quot;&gt;Naked Scientists&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stuartbuck.blogspot.com/2005/07/singing-accents.html&quot;&gt;Stuart Buck&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.albertastars.com/posts.php?forum=11&amp;amp;topic=1897&quot;&gt;Alberta Stars&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lexiophiles.com/english/on-singing-accents&quot;&gt;Lexiophiles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In those discussions, there are diverse suggested claims such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Singers do it consciously to suit the market.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is because of the phonetics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Singers do it because they are duplicating others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The English accent requires tighter muscles which aren't conducive to singing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suggestions that it is because different parts of the brain are responsible for singing versus speaking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People claiming it isn't true for all accents, for example, or Australian accents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People claiming it is also true for French accents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What these claims all have in common is a lack of any evidence provided to support them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do singers have different singing and speaking accents?&#xA;Is this unconscious or deliberate?&#xA;Is it toward a particular accent or is it that singing somehow removes accent features?&#xA;What is the cause?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2045" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-03T06:48:38.520" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T05:41:02.063" Title="Do people lose their accent when they sing?" Tags="|voice|linguistics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3531" CreationDate="2011-07-03T03:59:12.450" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Noted skeptic, Ben Goldacre, took part in a published study recently. It doesn't directly answer your stated question, but it does address some of the concern behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benjamin E.J. Cooper, William E. Lee, Ben M. Goldacre, Thomas A.B. Sanders, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pus.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/04/08/0963662511401782.abstract&quot;&gt;&quot;The quality of the evidence for dietary advice given in UK national newspapers&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &#xA;Public Understanding of Science, April 2001, doi: 10.1177/0963662511401782&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goldacre described the research in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/17/bad-science-health-reporting&quot;&gt;Guardian column&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They didn't look at all statistics quoted. They restricted their scope to health claims (note: not just statistics) made by newspapers. They diligently tried to find evidence to support them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Can someone please invite those researchers to come to this site next, and use those same skills?)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goldacre summarised in his column:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Here's what we found: 111 health claims were made in UK newspapers over one week. The vast majority of these claims were only supported by evidence categorised as &quot;insufficient&quot; (62% under the WCRF system). After that, 10% were &quot;possible&quot;, 12% were &quot;probable&quot;, and in only 15% was the evidence &quot;convincing&quot;. Fewer low quality claims (&quot;insufficient&quot; or &quot;possible&quot;) were made in broadsheet newspapers, but there wasn't much in it.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-07-03T03:59:12.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5003" CreationDate="2011-07-03T06:58:11.610" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You have three claims described there. Skin is more than 80%, more than 50% or less than 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, I only have a partial answer. I can show that it is less than 69%. [*]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calabrese EJ, Stanek EJ, &lt;a href=&quot;http://md1.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&amp;amp;collection=ENV&amp;amp;recid=2807585&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;uid=790860132&amp;amp;setcookie=yes&quot;&gt;&quot;What proportion of household dust is derived from outdoor soil?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, Journal of Soil Contamination [J. SOIL CONTAM.]. Vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 253-263. 1992. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This report estimated the amount of outdoor soil in indoor dust [...]. The estimate used data on outdoor soil and indoor dust in the homes of 60 children with eight tracer elements (Al, Ba, Mn, Si, Ti, V, Y, and Zr). The model estimated that 31.3% of indoor dust had an origin of outdoor soil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If 31.3% comes from outdoor soil, then only 68.7% can come from other sources (inside or out), putting an upper figure on the human skin cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[*] For a sample of 60 homes. I imagine it is very dependent on the home. Anecdotally, when I lived near an  intersection, it struck me that the dust on the side of my home closer to the road was grimier and darker than the dust on the other side, suggesting even within one house they proportions can be significantly different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="1835" LastEditDate="2015-11-30T16:02:37.580" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T16:02:37.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4891" CreationDate="2011-07-03T14:19:11.677" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been studies that show that our sense of time changes with situations and with age. &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/05/03/time-doesn%E2%80%99t-actually-slow-down-in-a-crisis/&quot;&gt;This is a study done where people were dropped from a height:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stetson and co believe that people lay down richer, denser memories when they experience shocking events. These ‘flashbulb memories’ include emotional content, which involves the brain’s emotional centre – the amygdala. As these memories are played back, their unusual richness could fool the brain into thinking that the recorded events took up more time than was actually the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eaglemanlab.net/time/essay-brain-time&quot;&gt;more from one of the authors on time perception&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/25/110425fa_fact_bilger?currentPage=all&quot;&gt;another article about Eagleman&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the seats of emotion and memory&#xA;  in the brain is the amygdala, he&#xA;  explained. When something threatens&#xA;  your life, this area seems to kick&#xA;  into overdrive, recording every last&#xA;  detail of the experience. The more&#xA;  detailed the memory, the longer the&#xA;  moment seems to last. “This explains&#xA;  why we think that time speeds up when&#xA;  we grow older,” Eagleman said—why&#xA;  childhood summers seem to go on&#xA;  forever, while old age slips by while&#xA;  we’re dozing. The more familiar the&#xA;  world becomes, the less information&#xA;  your brain writes down, and the more&#xA;  quickly time seems to pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3902" LastEditorUserId="334" LastEditDate="2011-07-08T02:20:54.090" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T02:20:54.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-03T14:22:56.323" Score="16" ViewCount="19162" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does Zepter's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bioptron.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bioptron&lt;/a&gt; Light Therapy fall into science-based medicine (rigorously tested, proven benefits, sound principles...) or is it &quot;alternative medicine&quot; pseudo-science/fraud?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BIOPTRON can help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Promote wound healing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Relief pain and decrease its intensity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;In dermatological disorders and skin problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;In pediatrics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;In Seasonal Affective Disorders (SAD)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BIOPTRON Light has biostimulative effects: when applied to the skin, it stimulates light-sensitive intracellular structures and molecules. This initiates cellular chain reactions and triggers so-called secondary responses, which are not only limited to the treated skin area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3903" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-25T15:33:11.387" LastActivityDate="2014-04-08T13:16:45.863" Title="Does Bioptron VIP (Visible Incoherent Polarized) Light Therapy heal wounds and help with skin problems?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5017" CreationDate="2011-07-03T15:48:46.697" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't looked at the site very deeply, however, upon a first look, it appears that they are extrapolating a known phenomenon (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/vitamin-d-000340.htm&quot;&gt;Vitamin D light therapy&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/utsw/cda/dept25741/files/121047.html&quot;&gt;some skin conditions&lt;/a&gt;) that has a sound scientific basis, and extrapolating it to a whole host of unrelated benefits and applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the standard mode of operation of most pseudo-scientific claims out there.  They will take a phenomenon that the general public doesn't understand that well, and make claims that sound somewhat related to an actual benefit, and over hype it...  So going from accepted treatments, to promoting wound healing and pain relief is a bit of a stretch beyond what the established benefits of light therapy are.  Of course, the UV light a inhibit some bacterial growth in a wound, so if you are prone to getting red and inflamed wounds, it may indeed help, but not because that's the main purpose of these devices, but just aids in a process that someone may otherwise neglect (i.e. keeping wounds clean).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bioptron.eu/?m=421&amp;amp;m0=420&amp;amp;m1=421&quot;&gt;this helps with burns&lt;/a&gt; is especially dubious.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umm.edu/dermatology-info/sun.htm&quot;&gt;UV radiation is the main component that helps develop a sunburn&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bioptron.eu/?m=422&quot;&gt;The claim that it helps with pain management is also very dubious&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://omlc.ogi.edu/news/jan98/skinoptics.html&quot;&gt;Light is absorbed by the skin, and penetrates at most only a fraction of a millimeter&lt;/a&gt;.  Any actual effect on deeper structures in your body is very dubious at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bioptron.eu/?m=411&quot;&gt;I'll note they give an impressive sounding list of documents to support their claims&lt;/a&gt;, until you look at it more closely.  The studies that support some of their dubious claims are &quot;unpublished&quot; or &quot;pilot studies&quot;.  Furthermore, I would be interested in exactly what those studies say.  Just because a study has a title that supports a product, doesn't mean that the content of the study bears out with what the product promoter says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2011-07-03T15:48:46.697" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5020" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5036" CreationDate="2011-07-03T17:09:33.787" Score="19" ViewCount="1775" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've seen the movies: the cop-action-hero's car blows up and he is forced to bust out his gun and his badge and commandeer a civilian's vehicle for transportation. How often does this actually happen? Is it actually even legal in the United States? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1836" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:34:52.357" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:34:52.357" Title="How often do law enforcement authorities commandeer civilian transportation?" Tags="|united-states|law|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5021" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5088" CreationDate="2011-07-03T19:15:55.583" Score="21" ViewCount="1992" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple times I've seen advertised on TV and in supermarkets electronic devices that allegedly irritate all sort of insects and rodents, such as mosquitoes, mice, and rats, forcing them away from the ultrasonic sound or other emissions of the device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific basis behind these products?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that these products repel pests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Related: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5945/do-ultrasonic-cat-repellents-work&quot;&gt;Do ultrasonic cat repellents work?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3910" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T22:38:12.680" Title="Ultrasound pest control devices" Tags="|biology|physics|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5021" CreationDate="2011-07-03T21:38:53.763" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not effective against mosquitoes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070417194230.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Electronic Mosquito Repellents Don't Work, Say Researchers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Study investigators had counted mosquitoes landing on bare body parts — mostly arms, legs and feet — during specified time periods in which an EMR was switched on or off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were no significant differences in the landing rates with and without EMR, making the devices ineffective for preventing malaria transmission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-03T21:38:53.763" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5026" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5097" CreationDate="2011-07-04T02:51:09.320" Score="20" ViewCount="10876" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a number of websites, &quot;almost everything you have been told about heartburn, indigestion, and common stomach ailments are lies&quot;, and heartburn is actually caused by &lt;em&gt;too little&lt;/em&gt; stomach acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The truth about most stomach disorders is that they are caused by not having enough acid, so the industry has made fools out of most of us.  The true reason behind acid reflux and indigestion is that when the stomach is lacking enough acid, it must churn violently to make the best use of its limited acid during these times of deficiency, which in turn causes pressure and back flows of the existing acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://healthwyze.org/reports/221-why-you-should-use-apple-cider-vinegar-instead-of-antacids-and-baking-soda-for-indigestion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why You Should Use Apple Cider Vinegar Instead of Antacids and Baking Soda for Indigestion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.silvermedicine.org/apple-cider-vinegar.html#treat&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;What has Apple Cider Vinegar been Successfully Used for? Acid Reflux Syndrome (Heartburn)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drinking apple cider vinegar is supposed to fix this by adding acid to the stomach.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The science behind the apple cider vinegar cure for heartburn is simple–the stomach uses natural acids to digest food, and apple cider vinegar is very similar in acidity to your stomach acid. Heartburn happens when there is too little acid in the stomach itself to digest your food. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zimbio.com/Health+Websites/articles/ZDAJ9j8Ahtx/No+More+Heartburn&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;No More Heartburn - Organic Apple Cider Vinegar&lt;/a&gt; (dead link)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wayback.archive.org/web/20110805123403/http://heartburncureshq.com/322/apple-cider-vinegar-for-heartburn-relief/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apple Cider Vinegar for Heartburn Relief&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some people who experience heartburn may not have enough digestive acid.. Apple cider vinegar is acidic in nature and thus it helps. If the sphincter esophagael contains the acid, it closes the LES (lower esophageal sphincter) to protect the esophagus by reflux.  And the LES is to open at regular intervals when there is too little acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acidrefluxremedies.myweightlosssystem.com/apple-cider-vinegar-for-acid-reflux-treatment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apple Cider Vinegar For Acid Reflux Treatment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this?  I tried apple cider vinegar once, and not only does it taste and smell terrible, it made my heartburn &lt;em&gt;worse&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="155" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2016-03-18T15:45:19.477" LastActivityDate="2022-02-22T22:20:04.327" Title="Is acid reflux (&quot;heartburn&quot;) caused by having too little stomach acid?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|vinegar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5012" CreationDate="2011-07-04T03:53:10.850" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I was waiting for somebody with much better understanding of linguistics theory to take a stab at this. But no one has come forth and, in the meantime, many people have started questioning the pertinence of the question itself, so let me give it a try:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off (contrary to what many of the comments above have suggested): dialectal accents are &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; well defined in linguistics. There is such a thing as an &quot;objective&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_accents_of_English&quot;&gt;classification of regional English accents, based on well-defined phonetic criteria&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two of the most common (and strongest) differences between English accents are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents&quot;&gt;Pronunciation of rhotic consonants&lt;/a&gt;. E.g.: words like 'metal' and 'medal' will sound more or less alike depending on the speaker's regional accent.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diphthongs#English&quot;&gt;Pronunciation of diphthongs&lt;/a&gt;. E.g: 'low' vs 'loud' vs 'lout' etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many research &lt;a href=&quot;http://asadl.org/jasa/resource/1/jasman/v115/i1/p352_s1?isAuthorized=no&quot;&gt;papers&lt;/a&gt; make mention of a &quot;neutral regional accent&quot;, as mainly defined with regard to these two characteristics (moderately rhotic consonants, vowels that tend toward &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_vowel&quot;&gt;pure vowels&lt;/a&gt; and diphthongs that tend to get monophthongized).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://mej.sagepub.com/content/19/1/28.extract&quot;&gt;standard Western view on good singing diction&lt;/a&gt; encourages pure vowels and clearly enunciated consonants, removing many of the degrees of freedom differentiating between regional accents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And thus, there is an objective, phonetics-based, rationale for singing accents' tendency to converge toward a &quot;neutral&quot; accent (perhaps misidentified as &quot;American&quot;, due to some of the neutral features of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_English_regional_phonology#Western_Dialect&quot;&gt;Western&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_English_regional_phonology#Western_New_England&quot;&gt;Northeastern&lt;/a&gt; American dialects, compared to the strongly non-rhottic UK and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_English_phonology&quot;&gt;Australian&lt;/a&gt; dialects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I would expect there to be some scientific literature detailing the topic, this is not my field and all I was able to find through a cursory search on Google Scholar was this musicology article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mej.sagepub.com/content/19/1/28.extract&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Vocal Diction&quot; -- In a Nutshell&lt;/em&gt;, by T. Campbell Young. London, 1932&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ancient as it may be, it seems its musicology/phonetics contents should still hold by modern scientific standards.&#xA;Its lengthy technical description of diction standards of sung English is introduced by the following general remark:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is equally true to say that&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;language, in song, has been&#xA;  standardized&lt;/em&gt; to such an extent that it&#xA;  has become universal and homogeneous.&#xA;  It follows naturally that when words&#xA;  and music are allied, the former must&#xA;  be pronounced in such a way as to&#xA;  conform with the accepted principles&#xA;  of good singing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, along with the above notes on the phonetics of regional accents, will hopefully do as a placeholder answer, until somebody with much deeper knowledge of linguistics than I, cares to step in and give some stronger references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3768" LastEditorUserId="3768" LastEditDate="2011-07-04T05:41:02.063" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T05:41:02.063" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3360" CreationDate="2011-07-04T06:10:46.757" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse#Occurrence_and_cycles&quot;&gt;reasonably easy to establish whether an eclipse (lunar or solar) occurred at a specific date&lt;/a&gt; in the past. The main problem, here, is to agree on &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; that date is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The commonly-held date of &quot;33 AD&quot; for this event, relies on the accuracy of the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini&quot;&gt;Anno Domini&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; system, itself based on the hotly-debated year of Jesus' birth (relative to us). Its epoch was devised long after its reported occurrence, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini#History&quot;&gt;in 525 AD&lt;/a&gt;. It is now generally &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini#Birth_of_Jesus&quot;&gt;agreed by historians&lt;/a&gt; that, had this event occurred, its date would be off by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nativity_of_Jesus#Date_and_place_of_birth&quot;&gt;at least 4 years&lt;/a&gt; (but beyond the existence of an error, no strong consensus exists on what the accurate year may be).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this uncertainty, it seems difficult to answer your question in a &lt;em&gt;scientifically satisfying&lt;/em&gt; way: you could of course work from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhistory/SEhistory.html&quot;&gt;table of astronomically-predicted historical eclipses&lt;/a&gt;, to find a potential candidate year, but this would obviously fail the standard of rigorous hypothesis testing (since you would incorporate the desired result in your prior probability).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that both the above &lt;a href=&quot;http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhistory/SEhistory.html&quot;&gt;NASA reference&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion_eclipse#Total_solar_eclipse&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; have discussions on the potential conjunction of these events (but both fail at establishing the necessary independent statistical hypothesis, so could not constitute a scientific argument for the accuracy of the events reported in religious texts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3768" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T06:10:46.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5034" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-04T09:45:38.890" Score="18" ViewCount="1985" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard said that the opposition of the church to any form of contraception - or any attempt to prevent conception (pulling out, oral sex, etc.) while still performing coitus - was &lt;em&gt;originally&lt;/em&gt; based in an outdated and wrong scientific view that sperm contained a fully formed human fetus that would mature in the womans uterus. (See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus#Homunculi_in_preformationism&quot;&gt;This Wiki Link&lt;/a&gt; for an overview).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theory goes that strong opposition to contraception by church leaders was based on the view that wasting sperm is equivalent to killing a tiny, but fully formed human being - a conclusion reached due to incorrect and outdated scientific theory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there is any truth to that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;note: Obviously, The church no longer advocates this view, I'm interested in the &lt;strong&gt;historical&lt;/strong&gt; aspect behind the policy against contraception.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;I have heard this theory told to me before, but wrote it off as nonsense/urban legend. What prompted me to ask this question is that it was repeated on the rational wiki page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Contraception#Opposition_to_contraception&quot;&gt;contraception&lt;/a&gt; . While not as big as a wiki as wikipedia, it does have a sizable audience, and for a wiki that purports to be anti-antiscience and anti-pseudoscience, having an unsubstantiated claim goes against its mission - especially since this article was featured on the front page recently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify - Contraception, means any natural or artificial method to prevent conception except for abstinence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1733" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2011-12-04T00:47:27.100" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T17:11:54.827" Title="Was the opposition of the Catholic Church to contraception based on the Homunculi theory?" Tags="|biology|history|sexuality|catholic-church|contraception|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5020" CreationDate="2011-07-04T12:32:04.543" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it actually even legal in the United States? From the Straight Dope:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, is it legal for the police to order me around and take my stuff? The experts agree: Probably. Many jurisdictions require civilians not only to surrender their property to a police officer in an emergency but to help officers subdue suspects on command.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How often does this happen? Policeman don't do it as frequently as the movies come out, I am guessing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, snopes.com found an interview with one officer who had commandeered three vehicles in a 26-year career. Blackman v. City of Cincinnati, a 1942 Ohio Supreme Court case, involves a police officer who ordered a driver to use his vehicle to chase a fleeing felon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because this is an international site, I have included this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today most jurisdictions have rules empowering sheriffs, and the police generally, to command assistance from the public. These laws are sometimes called posse comitatus (&amp;quot;the power of the county&amp;quot;) statutes. Ironically, England repealed its statute permitting sheriffs to command assistance in 1967. However, Blue says, &amp;quot;English constables are still thought to have the power to call upon bystanders to assist them in cases of reasonable necessity.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In America:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Supreme Court has upheld the federal government's power to commandeer private property but imposed strict limits. In United States v. Russell, the court noted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extraordinary and unforeseen occasions arise, however, beyond all doubt, in cases of extreme necessity in time of war or of immediate and impending public danger, in which private property may be impressed into the public service, or may be seized and appropriated to the public use, or may even be destroyed without the consent of the owner . . . but the public danger must be immediate, imminent, and impending, and the emergency in the public service must be extreme and imperative, and such as will not admit of delay or a resort to any other source of supply, and the circumstances must be such as imperatively require the exercise of that extreme power in respect to the particular property so impressed, appropriated, or destroyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There you are... for Americans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2247/can-cops-really-commandeer-cars&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T12:32:04.543" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5034" CreationDate="2011-07-04T12:38:15.457" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The immediate origin of the policy is Old Testament (the story of Onan) and is basically a legal interpretation of the overarching principle of &quot;be fruitful and multiply&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first mitzvah (commandment from God) in the Torah states: &quot;And God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it'&quot; (Genesis 1:28).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The origin of the &quot;&quot;be fruitful and multiply&quot; is 100% clear if you think from game theory point of view - in the times before 1000BC, with low population density, low productivity and high mortality, the society which carried the birth control meme was at best easily out-competed by the one that carried &quot;as many children as possible&quot; meme; and at worst simply died out on its own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that this logic is independent of anyone's view on whether Genesis was a literal word of G-d, or divinely inspired work, or a set of codified moral rules, or a work of fiction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, on an individual level, a fairly un-nuanced evolutionary explanation is that an average male had VERY low chance of procreation (most males left no descendants) and therefore if you HAD a chance to score, and didn't use it, your memes and genes that predisposed you to use birth control didn't survive. I don't have a more scholarly cite handy, but from &lt;a href=&quot;http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/is-there-anything-good-about-men-and-other-tricky-questions/&quot;&gt;http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/is-there-anything-good-about-men-and-other-tricky-questions/&lt;/a&gt;, quoting &lt;code&gt;Dr. Baumeister, a prominent social psychologist who teaches at Florida State University&lt;/code&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The “single most underappreciated fact about gender,” he said, is the ratio of our male to female ancestors. While it’s true that about half of all the people who ever lived were men, the typical male was much more likely than the typical woman to die without reproducing. Citing recent DNA research, Dr. Baumeister explained that today’s human population is descended from twice as many women as men. Maybe 80 percent of women reproduced, whereas only 40 percent of men did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-07-04T12:57:34.340" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T12:57:34.340" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5034" CreationDate="2011-07-04T12:43:02.377" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be shown with some simple history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ban on male contraceptives dates back to the Talmudic tradition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kathleen O'Grady, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mum.org/contrace.htm&quot;&gt;Contraception and religion: A short history&lt;/a&gt; explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Genesis 38:9-10, states that during intercourse Onan &quot;spilled his seed on the ground&quot; (coitus interruptus). This was &quot;evil in the sight of the Lord&quot; and was punished by Onan's death. Jewish Talmudic literature builds on this passage and prohibits the use of any contraceptive device for use by men which would waste the &quot;male seed&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;O'Grady doesn't seems cite a reference for this exact claim, but gives a number of references at the end, and this particular one appears to come from the footnotes of &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=K676_GJT-bsC&amp;amp;pg=PA269&amp;amp;lpg=PA269&amp;amp;dq=Humanae+Vitae%3a+A+Generation+Later&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=SoLfczjKzM&amp;amp;sig=8FW0Jtk9kQAKpGcCEq5-Un3rUGo&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=qK8RTpTdHvDymAWW_cmNBw&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=2&amp;amp;ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Onan&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Humanae Vitae: A Generation Later&lt;/a&gt; which seems like a good historical reference (perhaps politically biased) for this area.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermist_theory&quot;&gt;Spermist theory&lt;/a&gt; dates back to Pythagoras, the idea of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus&quot;&gt;homunculi&lt;/a&gt; came about during the Renaissance, and is generally ascribed to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Hartsoeker&quot;&gt;Nicolaas Hartsoeker (1656-1725)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;(Yeah, it's only a Wikipedia link, but not a particularly extraordinary claim. It cites: Hill, K.A. (1985). &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3889137&quot;&gt;Hartsoeker's Homonculus: a corrective note&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 21 (2): 178–179. doi:10.1002/1520-6696(198504))&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So opposition to contraception predates homunculi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am no theologian, but the modern arguments against contraception by the Catholic Church appear to be based on an 1968 Encyclical by Pope Paul VI, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html&quot;&gt;Humanae Vitae&lt;/a&gt; which contains no mention of homunculi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-05T02:34:18.303" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T02:34:18.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5039" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-04T13:10:09.220" Score="3" ViewCount="2021" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a TV show a hypnotist told stories that how he hypnotised some people and took them back in past (usual method in psychology), and he kept doing it till they reach their time of birth. After going more backward, the person jumped back in time somewhere speaking a language he never knew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One explanation given is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsara&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reincarnation&lt;/a&gt; and another pseudo-scientific explanation is transfer of information through DNA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this all true? Is their any evidience of going back in time before birth with hypnotism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-09-13T13:08:45.480" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T13:08:45.480" Title="Is it possible to recall pre-birth memories via hypnosis?" Tags="|hypnotism|reincarnation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4753" CreationDate="2011-07-04T14:52:42.377" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can thorium end the energy crisis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, it cannot&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current &quot;energy crisis&quot; is basically the high price of crude oil, on the demand side driven mainly by the transportation sector. And it's not going to change soon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The transportation sector accounts for&#xA;  the largest increment in total liquids&#xA;  demand, making up nearly 80 percent of&#xA;  the world increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/ieo/liquid_fuels.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/ieo/liquid_fuels.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;energy crisis&quot; in case of electric energy. In fact, in case of electricity &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/ieo/electricity.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;supply grows faster, than demand&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no plans for nuclear powered cars. For electric ones there is already a surplus of electricity, thus having more efficient nuclear power doesn't change much in that equation. It has many other advantages, but that's beyond scope of this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="1760" LastEditDate="2015-07-18T15:31:10.597" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T15:31:10.597" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5039" CreationDate="2011-07-04T17:04:14.087" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to address the question, I suppose we have to temporarily suspend disbelief and &quot;admit&quot; some initial (highly debatable) assumptions. Namely that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;stage hypnotism is a scientifically-backed practice and...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;people who are hypnotised are recollecting actual past memories and/or exhibiting behaviours tied to actual past events, not acting out randomly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With these two fairly strong (euphemism) assumptions, your question then becomes about the existence of fetal memory. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1651-2227.1996.tb14272.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Studies&lt;/a&gt; suggest foetuses do have short-term and possibly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(00)02766-5/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;long-term&lt;/a&gt; memory functions (in agreement with what is known of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_development#Neural_induction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;early brain development&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; scientific evidence that this memory extends beyond  an order of days (and studies on infants and young children &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cd.23219801008/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;suggest they only slowly reach an order of years, in the years after birth&lt;/a&gt;). On the contrary, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273229703000418&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;studies suggest that memory of particular events starts at a much later age of development&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Foreign Language&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;speaking a language he never knew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term for this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossolalia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;glossalia&lt;/a&gt;. It isn't really language, but just gibberish. There are several &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossolalia#Scientific_explanations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;scientific explanations&lt;/a&gt; for it that do not require pre-natal memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Saṃsāra Explanation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saṃsāra, as defined by Wikipedia, is a theological concept, not a scientific hypothesis. As a model, it doesn't make any testable predictions, and is unfalsifiable. Therefore, it doesn't count as an &quot;explanation&quot; in the context of skeptical investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DNA Explanation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For our purpose, the genetic make-up of an individual &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ploidy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;is solely dependent on its parents (and on a very limited range of conditions during a comparatively negligible interval of time around fertilisation)&lt;/a&gt; and has absolutely &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; to do with potential pre-natal conditions, let alone some hypothetical transfer of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, strictly speaking, &quot;pre-birth hypnotism&quot; is neuro-biologically &lt;em&gt;plausible&lt;/em&gt;, though unbacked by current scientific studies, &lt;strong&gt;if&lt;/strong&gt; you overlook the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2632/is-there-a-scientific-consensus-on-the-reality-of-stage-hypnotism-if-not-why-no&quot;&gt;questionability of the two essential assumptions above&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3768" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T07:25:24.800" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2497" CreationDate="2011-07-04T17:14:47.410" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since our &lt;a href=&quot;http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/variation/eye/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eyes evolved in a constant 1G environment&lt;/a&gt;, and the fact that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dartmouth.edu/~humananatomy/part_8/chapter_46.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;vitreous humour&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; only weighs a few grams, the orientation of our eyes while doing any activities should not be a factor what so ever.  If anything, lying on your back could possibly aid in that the mass of the &lt;em&gt;vitreous humour&lt;/em&gt; is more evenly spaced out on the photo-receptors as opposed to graduated when standing/sitting upright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, once we get outside the constant 1G, walking/running speed environment, all bets are off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As all the related questions have shown (&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/404/does-watching-television-damage-the-eyes&quot;&gt;Does watching television damage the eyes?&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1092/is-it-harmful-to-your-eyes-to-read-in-dim-light&quot;&gt;Is it harmful to your eyes to read in dim light?&lt;/a&gt;), the eye is a versatile and resilient organ.  Most of these questions are the result of misrepresentations of other physiological effects, that have grown into &quot;old-wives-tales&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-07-10T23:00:01.583" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4908" CreationDate="2011-07-04T18:23:52.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although all I can see is the abstract, this pubmed entry: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21076611&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21076611&lt;/a&gt; indicates that for healthy subjects, &quot;There was a reduction in cerebrovascular reactivity&quot; but it was &quot;still within a range of considered normal&quot;.  People with other vascular risk factors might have some issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16276286&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16276286&lt;/a&gt; also indicates an increase in intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients wearing tight neckties, but doesn't seem to indicate that the increase in pressure is a huge problem, although another study indicated that a tight necktie could mess up diagnosis and management of glaucoma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the bigger problem with neckties is that they can offer bacteria a free ride from one place to another.  I saw a couple titles for papers on pubmed about this, but alas no abstracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T18:23:52.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5046" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5078" CreationDate="2011-07-04T18:38:38.290" Score="14" ViewCount="8029" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatline&quot;&gt;Wikipedia notes&lt;/a&gt; that the technical term for &lt;em&gt;flatline&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;em&gt;asystole&lt;/em&gt; and adds this comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite defibrillation commonly appearing on medical dramas as a remedy for asystole, it is usually not done when there is a total absence of electrical activity, as it could actually make it more difficult to restart the heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defibrillation#Popular_culture_references&quot;&gt;article on defibrillation&lt;/a&gt; makes a similar comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Similarly, medical providers are often depicted defibrillating patients with a &quot;flat-line&quot; ECG rhythm (also known as asystole); this is not done in real life as the heart is not restarted by the defibrillator itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither of these two claims are referenced. Searching quickly, I find plenty of references that defibrillators are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; usable on flatlined patients but none of them appear to be authoritative. Pop culture apparently thinks it does work; the internet considers it a myth. Which is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T05:55:27.347" Title="Can defibrillation revive a flatlined patient?" Tags="|medical-science|electromagnetism|mortality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4847" CreationDate="2011-07-04T19:04:06.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This pubmed abstract: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20102446&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20102446&lt;/a&gt; seems to indicate that there is a relationship between bicycle riding and erectile dysfunction through perineal compression. This abstract is from a literature review and indicates more research is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study indicates that all seats lead to a decrease in penile oxygen pressure: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12074400&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12074400&lt;/a&gt; but that the wider the seat the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the studies talked about sperm count.  Their main concern seemed to be erectile dysfunction through decreased blood flow, oxygen availability and perineal compression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T19:04:06.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4937" CreationDate="2011-07-04T20:05:03.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This type of &quot;questions&quot; can mostly be answered looking at the &lt;strong&gt;worst-case scenario&lt;/strong&gt;. Thats what actually surprises me. After nuclear disaster in &lt;strong&gt;Japan&lt;/strong&gt; and state bankrupt of &lt;strong&gt;Greece&lt;/strong&gt; one should already know before finishing the formulation of the question, in which contexts bribery can not only damage, but ruin whole societies.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Japan one may say, it was technological mismanagment, but according to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr Shoji Sawada is a theoretical&#xA;  particle physicist and Professor&#xA;  Emeritus at Nagoya University in&#xA;  Japan. He is concerned about the types&#xA;  of nuclear plants in his country, and&#xA;  the fact that most of them are of US&#xA;  design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Most of the reactors in Japan were&#xA;  designed by US companies who did not&#xA;  care for the effects of earthquakes,&quot;&#xA;  Dr Sawada told Al Jazeera. &quot;I think&#xA;  this problem applies to all nuclear&#xA;  power stations across Japan.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using nuclear power to produce&#xA;  electricity in Japan is a product of&#xA;  the nuclear policy of the US,&#xA;  something Dr Sawada feels is also a&#xA;  large component of the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Most of the Japanese scientists at&#xA;  that time, the mid-1950s, considered&#xA;  that the technology of nuclear energy&#xA;  was under development or not&#xA;  established enough, and that it was&#xA;  too early to be put to practical use,&quot;&#xA;  he explained. &quot;The Japan Scientists&#xA;  Council recommended the Japanese&#xA;  government not use this technology&#xA;  yet, but the government accepted to&#xA;  use enriched uranium to fuel nuclear&#xA;  power stations, and was thus subjected&#xA;  to US government policy.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;one has to ask, if japan scientists were just overruled or the wrong scientists/politicians, giving legitimation to nuclear power plants (not optimized towards Japan unique environmental risks), were bribed. Same with security inspectors for local plants...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Greece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Economy of Greece:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The country suffers from high levels&#xA;  of political and economic corruption&#xA;  and low global competitiveness&#xA;  compared to its EU partners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3194" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T20:05:03.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5049" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-04T21:32:28.370" Score="36" ViewCount="4507" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Harvey_Oswald&quot;&gt;L.H. Oswald&lt;/a&gt; claimed he was innocent and didn't kill J.F. Kennedy. There are various theories on what could have happened that day, but I didn't &quot;study&quot; all the evidence and research, so I don't know what really happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ten-month investigation of the Warren Commission of 1963–1964 concluded that the President was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone and that Jack Ruby acted alone when he killed Oswald before he could stand trial. These conclusions were initially supported by the American public; however, polls conducted from 1966 to 2004 found that as many as 80 percent of Americans have suspected that there was a plot or cover-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination&quot;&gt;Warren Commission conclusion&lt;/a&gt; that Oswald killed Kennedy supported by factual evidence, or is there reasonable space for some doubt and/or alternative theories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1252" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-07-30T22:56:44.187" LastActivityDate="2018-05-26T13:46:08.720" Title="Did Lee Harvey Oswald kill John F. Kennedy?" Tags="|history|united-states|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5050" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-04T22:39:29.177" Score="16" ViewCount="2821" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that brushing your teeth too often (usually stated as more than 3 times per day) will cause the enamel on your teeth to become damaged or wear away, is this possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060626034621AAahmPG&quot;&gt;Example 1:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the abrasives found in just some of&#xA;  the toothpastes available are the&#xA;  things that wear down the enamel&#xA;  coating your teeth.Once the enamel is&#xA;  broken down....teeth rot&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2999806.stm&quot;&gt;Example 2 (A study of 12 people over four weeks, not very convincing):&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A study by researchers at Newcastle&#xA;  University say there is little&#xA;  evidence to show that longer and&#xA;  harder brushing makes teeth cleaner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, they found that it increases&#xA;  the risks of permanently damaging the&#xA;  protective layer on teeth and harming&#xA;  gums.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They suggest that people should brush&#xA;  their teeth for two minutes and apply&#xA;  pressure equivalent to the weight of&#xA;  an orange at 150 grams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Those recommendations are based on a&#xA;  study of 12 people over four week&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T16:04:53.123" Title="Can brushing your teeth too often damage your teeth?" Tags="|medical-science|dentistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5051" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-04T23:47:36.893" Score="5" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the past couple of years people have been claiming that storms are getting more severe in Australia. Some linking this to global warming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically Professor &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Garnaut&quot;&gt;Ross Garnaut&lt;/a&gt; in the opening paragraph of his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.garnautreview.org.au/update-2011/update-papers/up1-weighing-costs-benefits-climate-change-action.html&quot;&gt;first in a series of eight updates&lt;/a&gt; of his landmark 2008 climate report says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Extreme climatic events have become&#xA;  immediately more intense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.garnautreview.org.au/update-2011/garnaut-review-2011/introduction.html&quot;&gt;2011 update&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;New observations of a changing climate&#xA;  include an increase in extreme weather&#xA;  events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/severe-storms-will-get-worse-garnaut-says/story-e6frg6zo-1226000414704&quot;&gt;Severe storms will get worse: The Australian&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But there is a general view among&#xA;  weather forecasters and climate&#xA;  scientists that, in the longer term,&#xA;  higher global temperatures will create&#xA;  the right conditions for more intense,&#xA;  but not more frequent, storms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/07/04/3260664.htm&quot;&gt;recent news article&lt;/a&gt; a Dr. Jorgen Frederiksen from the well respected CSIRO says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr Jorgen Frederiksen from the the&#xA;  CSIRO says there has been a 50-year&#xA;  decrease in the average intensity of&#xA;  storms hitting Australia, a trend&#xA;  which is forecast to continue for&#xA;  another 50 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The drop in winter and autumn rainfall&#xA;  observed across southern Australia is&#xA;  due to a large downturn in the&#xA;  intensity of storm formations over at&#xA;  least the last three decades compared&#xA;  with the previous three decades, and&#xA;  these effects have become more&#xA;  pronounced with time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it is not linked it mentions the research is from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The findings come from recent CSIRO&#xA;  and Bureau of Meteorology research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these seem contradictory to me, although this could be just my lack of understanding. I have not personally reviewed any figures, but the claims made in public seem to be clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is one group incorrect or is it just the media taking things out of context?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-07-04T23:47:36.893" Title="Are storms getting more or less severe in the long term for Australia?" Tags="|environment|weather|climate-change|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5052" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-04T23:54:50.300" Score="22" ViewCount="1685" Body="&lt;p&gt;I &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/392347/high_speed_adult_content_may_drive_nbn_uptake/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;constantly see people and articles referencing&lt;/a&gt; how porn drove the adoption of the Internet, VHS, DVD, Blu-Ray, Mobile, insert your technology of choice, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm not discounting he popularity of &quot;adult entertainment&quot; on those mediums but I've never seen anyone actually back up such assertions with actual numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there actual statistics or studies to back up the claim that adoption of technologies such as the Internet and DVD were speed up by the availability of pornography on those mediums?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Related question&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3089/vhs-vs-betamax-how-influential-was-the-pornography-industry-in-the-format-war&quot;&gt;VHS vs Betamax: How influential was the pornography industry in the format war?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3927" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T10:54:25.140" Title="Is the porn industry important in the adoption of new technology or media?" Tags="|technology|pornography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5053" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-05T00:23:47.327" Score="16" ViewCount="343" Body="&lt;p&gt;In April a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturenews/8452907/Chinese-censors-attack-frivolous-time-travel-dramas.html&quot;&gt;bunch&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://boingboing.net/2011/04/08/chinese-censors-ban.html&quot;&gt;news&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/13/chinese-government-bans_n_848769.html&quot;&gt;services&lt;/a&gt; claimed that the Chinese government had banned shows displaying time travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In May came &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13308162&quot;&gt;this announcement on BBC&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;China has ordered TV stations across&#xA;  the country not to air any detective&#xA;  shows, spy thrillers or dramas about&#xA;  time-travel for the next three months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is their any truth behind the claim made in May that detective shows, spy thrillers or dramas about time-travel are off air for the next three months?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the time travel claim first came out I investigated it. One of the original articles from April 8 in BoingBoing links to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sarft.gov.cn/articles/2011/03/31/20110331140820680073.html&quot;&gt;SARFT statement&lt;/a&gt;. As I read by comments of some Chinese students the SARFT doesn't mention anything of a ban and doesn't even specifically mention time travel. So it would appear that the media is making this up based upon spurious claims. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a cut down version of what is being said in SARFT statement (translation mine and paraphrased):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recently the content has been good,&#xA;  however we discovered certain programs&#xA;  were displaying programs that were&#xA;  creatively inaccurate. These include&#xA;  stories about spirits, fairy tales,&#xA;  reincarnation and superstitions... In&#xA;  this I hope that creative departments&#xA;  will... make efforts to carry on the&#xA;  fine tradition of Chinese culture and&#xA;  make efforts to improve the dramas&#xA;  ideological and artistic quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why I'm skeptical of later reports that now apparently include crime TV and soap operas as the original reports appear to be false and I can't see any report to back up the claim of 3 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-07-05T03:05:42.647" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T03:05:42.647" Title="Have Chinese regulators ordered TV stations not to broadcast crime or time travel shows?" Tags="|television|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3579" CreationDate="2011-07-05T07:23:40.187" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to the failure of Nevada to collect hard data in the past, the State Department commission Dr. Melissa Farley to study prostitution and trafficking in Nevada and compile an empirical report.  The results were far worse than most would have anticipated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Prostitution and Trafficking in Nevada&quot; addresses the scope of the sex industry in Nevada, including human rights violations against women in the Nevada legal brothels. The book describes how the multibillion-dollar illegal sex industry in Las Vegas works. Sex trafficking from within and outside of the US, advertising for prostitution, political corruption, pornography, organized crime and the constant demand of men for paid sex - all contribute to prostitution and trafficking in Nevada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Legalization of prostitution in Nevada, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands has resulted in an increase in illegal, hidden, and street prostitution. Decriminalization and legalization promote sex trafficking. Germany and the Netherlands are currently reconsidering whether to get rid of legal prostitution because of these social problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/faq/000146.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Myths &amp;amp; Facts About Nevada Legal Prostitution&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also read the fact sheet here.:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nevadacoalition.org/factsheets/LegliznFactSheet091707c.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nevadacoalition.org/factsheets/LegliznFactSheet091707c.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you should refrain from making such a judgment until you read the report (which actually turned into a book) that is full of well-documented, scientifically-gathered, verifiable and replicatable data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might not be of the opinion it is credible, but John Miller, (Research Professor of International Affairs, George Washington University; Ambassador at Large on Modern Day Slavery 2004-2006; Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State 2002-2006; Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking) is an expert at both research and the topic of trafficking, and he called it a must read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Finally, here's a book about sex&#xA;  slavery not just in distant lands but&#xA;  in Nevada, USA. If you've wanted to&#xA;  know what really goes on in the sex&#xA;  industry in Las Vegas and nearby&#xA;  Nevada counties, this is an unpleasant&#xA;  but must read.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/faq/000146.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/prostitution_research/000168.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a study published in the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nevadacoalition.org/factsheets/LegliznFactSheet091707c.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/laws/000151.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check the references - those below are just a snippet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sexual violence and physical assault&#xA;  are the norm for women in all types of&#xA;  prostitution. One Canadian observer&#xA;  noted that ninety-nine percent of&#xA;  women in prostitution were victims of&#xA;  violence, with more frequent injuries&#xA;  “than workers in [those] occupations&#xA;  considered . . . most dangerous, like&#xA;  mining, forestry, and firefighting.”20&#xA;  Prostituted women in Glasgow said that&#xA;  violence from customers was their&#xA;  primary fear.21 Physical abuse was&#xA;  considered part of the job of&#xA;  prostitution, with the payment&#xA;  sometimes determined by each&#xA;  individual blow of a beating or&#xA;  whipping.22&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Violence is commonplace in&#xA;  prostitution whether it is legal or&#xA;  illegal.23 Eighty-five percent of&#xA;  prostituted women interviewed in&#xA;  Minneapolis-St. Paul had been raped in&#xA;  prostitution.24 Another study found&#xA;  that eighty percent of women who had&#xA;  been domestically or transnationally&#xA;  trafficked suffered violence-related&#xA;  injuries.25 Of 854 people in&#xA;  prostitution in nine countries,&#xA;  eighty-nine percent wanted to leave&#xA;  prostitution but did not have other&#xA;  options for survival.26 Researchers&#xA;  have found that two factors are&#xA;  consistently associated with greater&#xA;  violence in prostitution: poverty and&#xA;  length of time in prostitution. The&#xA;  more customers serviced, the more&#xA;  women reported severe physical&#xA;  symptoms.27 The longer women remained&#xA;  in prostitution, the higher their&#xA;  rates of sexually transmitted&#xA;  diseases.28 When prostitution is&#xA;  assumed to be a reasonable “job&#xA;  option,” women’s intense longing to&#xA;  escape it is made invisible.29&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From policyinnovations.org you can find this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;According to a study published in the&#xA;  American Journal of Epidemiology, the&#xA;  average age of death of prostitutes is&#xA;  34. In the United States, the rate at which prostitutes are killed in the&#xA;  workplace is 51 times that of the next&#xA;  most dangerous occupation for women,&#xA;  working in a liquor store. Other&#xA;  studies show that nine out of ten&#xA;  prostitutes urgently want to escape&#xA;  the job. Almost half have attempted&#xA;  suicide at least once.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And much more. There is research available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3931" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-07-05T10:14:07.533" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T10:14:07.533" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5056" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5060" CreationDate="2011-07-05T10:19:40.883" Score="22" ViewCount="2968" Body="&lt;p&gt;In numerous movies police or military &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_disposal&quot;&gt;EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) technicians&lt;/a&gt; defuse bombs by cutting wires. It is common enough to be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WireDilemma&quot;&gt;trope&lt;/a&gt;. On the other hand if you read actual news, it's most often that either &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.visaliatimesdelta.com/article/20110609/NEWS01/106090319/Suspicious-package-COS-mailroom-destroyed-police-investigate?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Frontpage&quot;&gt;blow the battery off with water cannon&lt;/a&gt; or just take suspicious package to safe distance (or clear the area) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freep.com/article/20110615/NEWS01/110615009/Video-Authorities-detonate-suspicious-package-near-IRS-building-Detroit&quot;&gt;detonate it.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do EOD technicians &lt;strong&gt;ever&lt;/strong&gt; attempt to defuse bombs the Hollywood way?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are they even trained and allowed to do so?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:34:43.520" LastActivityDate="2021-06-16T21:54:03.920" Title="&quot;cut the blue wire&quot; - do EOD technicians ever do that?" Tags="|explosives|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5057" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5098" CreationDate="2011-07-05T11:57:35.430" Score="33" ViewCount="3375" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it is projected that man's potential&#xA;  to pollute will increase 6 to 8-fold&#xA;  in the next 50 years. If this&#xA;  increased rate of injection... should&#xA;  raise the present background opacity&#xA;  by a factor of 4, our calculations&#xA;  suggest a decrease in global&#xA;  temperature by as much as 3.5 °C. Such&#xA;  a large decrease in the average&#xA;  temperature of Earth, sustained over a&#xA;  period of few years, &lt;strong&gt;is believed to be&#xA;  sufficient to trigger an ice age&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, that's not some journalist's imagination running wild, not a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2667/did-we-have-a-global-cooling-40-years-ago/2672#2672&quot;&gt;&quot;myth  started by Newsweek and irresponsible journalism&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, but a scientific paper published in Science in 1971 ( &quot;Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide and Aerosols: Effects of Large Increases on Global Climate&quot; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/173/3992/138.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science 173, 138–141&lt;/a&gt;]) by Prof. Stephen H. Schneider. To make it even more interesting, three decades later&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...The author...] was a Coordinating&#xA;  Lead Author in Working Group II IPCC&#xA;  TAR and was engaged as a co-anchor of&#xA;  the Key Vulnerabilities Cross-Cutting&#xA;  Theme for the Fourth Assessment Report&#xA;  (AR4)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was there as much &quot;scientific consensus&quot; on &quot;anthropogenic global cooling&quot; in 1970s, as there was on &quot;anthropogenic global warming&quot; in 2000s?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one of research papers used in linked question, one can find following sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By the early 1970s, when Mitchell&#xA;  updated his work (Mitchell 1972), the&#xA;  notion of a global cooling trend was&#xA;  widely accepted&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T16:59:11.413" Title="Did &quot;global cooling&quot; have as much scientific consensus as &quot;global warming&quot; has now?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5059" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-05T13:15:26.847" Score="17" ViewCount="70627" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium#Tobacco&quot;&gt;Many cigarettes contain radioactive polonium&lt;/a&gt; from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webspawner.com/users/radioactivethreat/&quot;&gt;use of phosphate/apatite fertilizers&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ors.od.nih.gov/sr/drs/training/GRS/Pages/sectionf.aspx&quot;&gt;The National Institutes of Health lists&lt;/a&gt; tobacco as by far the largest source of radiation for the American public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common argument for organic cigarettes is that they don't contain as much radioactive material, and are therefore much safer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Surprisingly, radiation seems to be the most dangerous and important factor behind tobacco lung damage. ...  The unnecessary radiation delivered from soil-damaging, synthetic chemical fertilizers can easily be reduced through the use of alternative phosphate sources including organic fertilizers. ... Tobacco smokers can also use this information to avoid radioactive brands of tobacco. American Spirit is one of a few companies that offers an organic line of cigarettes, and organic cigars are also available from a few companies. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acsa.net/HealthAlert/radioactive_tobacco.html&quot;&gt;Radioactive tobacco&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The best thing about organic cigs is the fact that they aren’t allowed to use radioactive fertilizer. This means that you won’t get a large dose of radiation like regular cigs. ... &#xA;  Actually smoking organic cigarettes is MUCH better than smoking commercial american grown cigarettes. American tobacco growers use phosphate fertilizers that are tainted with radioactive Polonium and Lead. The metals get stuck in bifurcations in our lungs which results in large amounts of ionizing radiation. This radiation causes about 97% of all lung cancers.  Organically grown tobacco makes no use of contaminated fertilizer and hence you are ALOT LESS LIKELY to get cancer from smoking. ... &#xA;  Get all the chemicals out and the radioactive fertilizers and you have the same stuff or close to what the american indians were smoking and they had NO cancer. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://grassrootsgourmet.net/2009/04/21/organic-cigarettes-saving-your-american-spirit-one-puff-at-a-time/#comment-891&quot;&gt;Blog comments&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Radiation comes from commercial tobacco because it is grown with radioactive fertilizers that leave Polonium 210 and Lead 210 concentrated in the tobacco. This is the major cause of cancer. Organic tobacco lacks these radioactive carcinogens, (yes it contains dozens of other carcinogens so it is not safe) but those dozens of other carcinogens only cause 10% of tobacco’s cancerous effects. &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/mikethemadbiologist/2009/03/14/organic-cigarettes/#comment-8943&quot;&gt;Blog comment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the claims that the &quot;organic&quot; label implies a lower amount of radiation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="155" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2012-09-10T00:12:00.347" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T07:35:59.897" Title="Do organic cigarettes, such as American Spirit, contain less radioactive material than other brands?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|radiation|organic-food|cigarettes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5056" CreationDate="2011-07-05T13:34:49.177" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, but wearing a protective suit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Marc Roy, manager of the explosives&#xA;  portfolio for CRTI, said the training&#xA;  is expected to re-create real life&#xA;  scenarios such as the 2005 subway and&#xA;  bus bombings in London and earlier&#xA;  terror attacks in Madrid and Bali.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It is taking explosive incidents that&#xA;  occurred around the world and training&#xA;  with those type of incidents in mind,&quot;&#xA;  he said. &quot;It is advanced training for&#xA;  explosive ordinance disposal.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No real explosives will be used in the&#xA;  simulations, but devices have been&#xA;  designed by police experts to look and&#xA;  act like the real thing to create the&#xA;  most realistic training environment&#xA;  possible, Insp. Copeland added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We set up a simulated suspicious&#xA;  package or IED and then the&#xA;  participants are asked to deal with&#xA;  the issue,&quot; he said. &quot;It's render safe&#xA;  procedures, putting on the bomb suit&#xA;  or using a robot to go and dismantle&#xA;  or disrupt the device they have before&#xA;  them.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=7fa84daf-b960-4cdf-9dbe-1cbbe1e51740&quot;&gt;Bomb disposal pros train in Ottawa - Published in the Ottawa Citizen&lt;/a&gt; (the &lt;em&gt;Ottawa Citizen&lt;/em&gt; is Ottawa's ordinary daily newspaper)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or without a suit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His medal citation read: &quot;Dealing with&#xA;  any form of IED is dangerous; to deal&#xA;  with seven VO (victim operated) IEDs&#xA;  in a single circuit, in a mass&#xA;  casualty scenario, using manual&#xA;  neutralisation techniques once, never&#xA;  mind three times, is the single most&#xA;  outstanding act of explosive ordnance&#xA;  disposal ever recorded in&#xA;  Afghanistan.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/what-lies-beneath-armys-bombdisposal-teams-in-training-1939871.html&quot;&gt;What lies beneath: Army's bomb-disposal teams in training - Published in the Independent&lt;/a&gt; (the &lt;em&gt;Independent&lt;/em&gt; is one the UK national daily newspapers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2011-07-05T14:11:36.023" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T14:11:36.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5061" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5083" CreationDate="2011-07-05T14:58:05.043" Score="17" ViewCount="21355" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been sent chain emails about pornography industry revenues and was quite flabbergasted by some of the figures. The version I recalled hearing was that pornography brings in more revenue than all US sports franchises &lt;em&gt;combined&lt;/em&gt;. I looked around for some quotes so I could ask about this here, and it turns out that there are several related stats, so I included them all:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bigger than all sports franchises in the US &lt;em&gt;combined&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sex industry is HUGE - $57 Billion Worldwide, $12+ Billion in the United States. It is larger than all the sport franchises put together. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://skyviewcounseling.com/PAGES/skyview_areas_of_speciality.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adult entertainment model Jasmine Mai told the BBC: &amp;quot;The adult industry is bigger than every professional sport combined. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6258291.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bigger than all top technology companies &lt;em&gt;combined&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pornography industry is larger than the revenues of the top technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.familysafemedia.com/pornography_statistics.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bigger than top television broadcasting channels &lt;em&gt;combined&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US porn revenue exceeds the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.familysafemedia.com/pornography_statistics.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Does the pornography industry have higher earnings than the respective combined earnings of US sports franchises, top tech companies, and top broadcasting networks (ABC/NBC/CBS)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2022-12-08T18:52:47.073" Title="Does pornography bring in more money than all US sport franchises combined?" Tags="|united-states|pornography|finance|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4908" CreationDate="2011-07-05T15:10:50.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/vasovagal-syncope/DS00806&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vasovagal Syncope Syndrome&lt;/a&gt; (common fainting) and neck ties do make it much more likely to trigger an event. The danger comes from possible injury during fainting. Nevertheless I avoid ties like the plague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason is the blood flow restrictions might be perceived by the system as possible blood loss situation and trigger the syncope reflex as a defense mechanism so I don't bleed to death (so my parasympathetic nervous system thinks). Of course, with people like me I don't actually have to have a severed limb to trigger the reflex, just a sudden change in blood flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1066" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T15:10:50.980" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5063" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-05T15:23:58.680" Score="28" ViewCount="1536" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window&quot;&gt;Overton Window&lt;/a&gt; is a political theory that 'describes a &quot;window&quot; in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible options on a particular issue.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I have heard the Overton Window discussed it is usually in reference to a later concept:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other formulations of the process created after Overton's death add the concept of moving the window, such as deliberately promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous &quot;outer fringe&quot; ideas, with the intention of making the current fringe ideas acceptable by comparison.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise the idea in my own words: You can persuade people to move their opinion slightly and to accept ideas that are current unpalatable, by publicly proposing extreme, over-the-top views, until the more moderate versions seem like a reasonable compromise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia didn't cite any peer-reviewed articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any research to support or discredit the idea that publicly proposing unrealistically extreme views tends to move public opinion toward more moderate versions that are in the same political direction?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I learnt while researching this question, that there is a novel by political commentator, Glenn Beck, by the same name. I haven't read this novel, and I am not attempting to address any of its contents.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: I see a few people repeating the claim in the comments, but still no-one has provided any evidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is at least one competing model: that fringe elements on one side of a political spectrum will pollute the pool for others. That is, that people will dismiss moderate views because the extremists are so fringe. We could provide anecdotes for both of these theories, but that isn't evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-23T19:56:22.587" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T15:10:29.240" Title="Can the Overton Window be deliberately moved by espousing extremist views?" Tags="|politics|sociology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5061" CreationDate="2011-07-05T15:35:51.610" Score="27" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sex industry is HUGE - $57 Billion Worldwide [...]&#xA;  The pornography industry is larger&#xA;  than the revenues of the top&#xA;  technology companies combined:&#xA;  Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay,&#xA;  Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even assuming that $57 billion figure is true, not only is it not bigger than all of the companies combined, it's not even bigger than just one of them. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:MSFT&amp;amp;fstype=ii&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microsoft's revenue for 2010 was $62.4 billion&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for being bigger than all professional sport, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plunkettresearch.com/sports%20recreation%20leisure%20market%20research/industry%20statistics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here are some figures&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;total US sports industry is estimated to have a revenue of $414bn;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MLB ($6.8bn) + NFL ($7.8bn) + NBA ($4.0bn) + NHL ($3.0bn) = $21.6bn; which is far more than $12bn; estimated for US sex industry. And that's just 4 leagues, not all professional sport.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T22:13:50.137" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T22:13:50.137" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4559" CreationDate="2011-07-05T15:50:42.390" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in sleep patterns in humans, the blog &quot;A Blog Around the Clock&quot; written by Bora Zivkovic is a really good place to start.  He makes a lot of the research about circadian rhythms easier to understand for the average person.   His post &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.coturnix.org/2009/07/11/everything_you_always_wanted_t_5/&quot;&gt;Everything you always wanted to know about sleep (but were afraid to ask)&lt;/a&gt; directly addresses this question.  I know that this blog post isn't primary research, but circadian rhythms are his specialty and he seems to treat the subject like it's pretty much a given (that is, non-controversial).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you search pubmed for &quot;chronotype&quot; you will find a lot of articles about individual variation in sleeping patterns, so I think the idea of individual variation is probably well established. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17936039&quot;&gt;Here is an example&lt;/a&gt;  I couldn't, however, find anything specifically about ancient humans collectively having a couple hour period of wakefulness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastActivityDate="2011-07-05T15:50:42.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5059" CreationDate="2011-07-05T22:29:20.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of your various questions, I think the only useful response is to your title: &lt;strong&gt;Are Organic Cigarettes Free of Radioactive Material?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is obviously &lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf30.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;naturally occurring radioactive materials&lt;/a&gt; all over the planet - and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ratical.org/radiation/NRBE/NRadBioEffects.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;radiation does get everywhere&lt;/a&gt;, especially since Trinity and Bikini etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have valid questions as @Sklivvz said - but you should ask 1 question at a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T15:43:01.273" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T15:43:01.273" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3727" CreationDate="2011-07-06T00:19:47.263" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a couple of studies from from the Journal of the American Medical Association.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/199317&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sugar-Sweetened Beverages, Weight Gain, and Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes in Young and Middle-Aged Women&lt;/a&gt; JAMA. 2004;292(8):927-934. doi:10.1001/jama.292.8.927&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/185711&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Caloric Sweetener Consumption and Dyslipidemia Among US Adults&lt;/a&gt; JAMA. 2010;303(15):1490-1497. doi:10.1001/jama.2010.449&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These studies seem to indicate that increasing the amount of soda you drink (and consequently HFCS) can lead to weight gain and associated health risks (like obesity and type 2 diabetes).  If what you are asking is something along the lines of &quot;is HFCS poison&quot;, then I think the answer is no.  As indicated in the study, however, consumption of excess calories (which is easy when you are drinking a lot of soda every day) can be a problem.  The problem seems to be more the consumption of large amounts of calories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2018-06-24T07:17:39.820" LastActivityDate="2018-06-24T07:17:39.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4871" CreationDate="2011-07-06T00:47:34.757" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The website notes that the scientific term for this is Sensory-Processing Sensitivity.  A pubmed search brought up 8 papers using this term.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://utpa.academia.edu/GrantBenham/Papers/378676/The_Highly_Sensitive_Person_Stress_and_Physical_Symptom_Reports&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This paper. quoted below, in particular may be helpful&lt;/a&gt; as it discusses some of the personality markers and how they can manifest themselves in a person. For instance shyness, stress (especially in situations with lots of people), and possibly feelings of poorer health.  I should note also that SPS and introversion seem to be closely tied, but SPS seems to be may not be exactly the same thing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) scale is a measure of sensory-processing sensitivity, which is conceptualized as involving both high levels of sensitivity to subtle stimuli and being easily overaroused by external stimuli. The current study examines the relationship between an individual's sensory-processing sensitivity, self-perceived stress, and phsyical symptom reports. Results indicated that sensory-processing sensitivity is positively correlated with levels of stress and symptoms of ill-health. After controlling for self-perceived stress and gender, the HSP scale added significantly to a hierarchical regression model predicting self-reported health. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://utpa.academia.edu/GrantBenham/Papers/378676/The_Highly_Sensitive_Person_Stress_and_Physical_Symptom_Reports&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Highly Sensitive Person: Stress and phsyical symptom reports&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Grant Benham, Personality and Individual Differences 40 (2006), p1433-1440/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What may be important to remember here also is that this is ONE aspect of a person's multifaceted personality that can change from day to day, in certain situations with certain people and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21707197&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;probably over time as well.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastEditorUserId="5625" LastEditDate="2016-09-23T16:53:54.153" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T16:53:54.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4876" CreationDate="2011-07-06T02:22:02.633" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B001U8PEB6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Windex brand does make a vinegar cleaner&lt;/a&gt;  It seems like most of the websites that are suggesting vinegar and water instead of Windex are doing so because it's a cost-cutting measure (which can make it an attractive option for reasons other than efficacy). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that probably the real difference between the two lies in the quality of the solvent used and ultimately the shelf life.  Vinegar is acidic and a solvent. Ammonia (which, incidentally is also suggested as an additive to the vinegar home-made solution) and isopropyl alcohol are both solvents contained in windex.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foothill.edu/printmaking/MSDS/Windex_MSDS.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is the materials safety data sheet for windex (PDF)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one is &quot;better&quot; or not may entirely depend on your situation.  If you are going to be eating off of a surface, or have small children or pets who are going to be eating off of a surface, then vinegar might be a better option.  Shelf life might be another consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T02:22:02.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4550" CreationDate="2011-07-06T02:55:36.927" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the Mayo clinic, the causes of acne are: Overproduction of oil, irregular shedding of dead skin cells and buildup of bacteria.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/acne/DS00169/DSECTION=causes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is an overview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why I actually wanted to post to this might not be to answer your question directly, but I did want to point out something about the link that you provided.  One of the listed ingredients is Mercurous chloride.  According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemicalbook.com/CASEN_10112-91-1.htm#MaterialSafetyDataSheetMSDS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Material Safety Data Sheet&lt;/a&gt; mercurous chloride : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Risk Statements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;R22: Harmful if swallowed.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  R36/37/38: Irritating to eyes, respiratory system and skin.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  R50/53: Very Toxic to aquatic organisms, may cause long-term adverse effects in the aquatic environment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Safety Statements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;S13: Keep away from food, drink and animal feeding stuffs.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  S24/25: Avoid contact with skin and eyes.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  S46: If swallowed, seek medical advice immediately and show this container or label.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  S60: This material and/or its container must be disposed of as hazardous waste.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  S61: Avoid release to the environment. Refer to special instructions safety data sheet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the dose makes the poison, but you may want to check into that before purchasing any.  In the meantime, try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21691566&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some benzoyl peroxide or salycylic acid&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-07-07T13:25:01.860" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T13:25:01.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4871" CreationDate="2011-07-06T03:39:33.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Okay, so now we have two names for it! However, but the original question hasn't been addressed. Is it scientific model with predictive power? – Oddthinking♦&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is being a highly sensitive person a &quot;real&quot; medical condition&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the definitions of whether a mental state is a &quot;real medical condition&quot; is whether it's described in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DSM&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, &quot;introversion&quot; is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; mentioned in version 4 of the DSM: and &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5#Personality_disorders&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;proposed for inclusion in the next version,  DSM-5&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if so, can a simple test where I answer questions about myself determine if I have this condition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes it can (as you have seen), however the test result might not be accurate, might not be communicable, and might not be actionable or prescriptive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2011-07-06T03:47:58.347" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T03:47:58.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5050" CreationDate="2011-07-06T04:31:13.317" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the American Dental Association, brushing your teeth too much seems to result in problems not with your teeth, but with your gums (for example receding gums that can lead to tooth sensitivity.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ada.org/3058.aspx?currentTab=1&quot;&gt;Here is the sensitive teeth link.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also recommend brushing twice a day with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ada.org/5624.aspx?currentTab=1#tips&quot;&gt;soft-bristled brush.&lt;/a&gt;  The Mayo Clinic also recommends that if you eat or drink something that you know is acidic you should &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/brushing-your-teeth/AN02098&quot;&gt;wait 30 minutes&lt;/a&gt; before brushing because you might damage the tooth enamel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T04:31:13.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1018" CreationDate="2011-07-06T04:56:19.567" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, people are exposed to more radiation from coal power plants than from nuclear power plants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Coal&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dosage comparison from Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to U.S. NCRP reports &lt;em&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/archive_pdf/vol26-3-4.pdf#page=30&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncrppublications.org/Reports/092&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;92&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncrppublications.org/Reports/095&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;95&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/em&gt;, population exposure from 1000-MWe power plants amounts to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;490 person-rem/year for coal power plants and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants during normal operation, the latter being &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;136 person-rem/year for the complete nuclear fuel cycle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So coal power plants are irradiating you 4 to 100 times as much as nuclear plants.  (The complete fuel chain dose for coal is not known.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to answer my own question, coal power plants and nuclear plants produce similar amounts of radioactive waste:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;US nuclear&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;nuclear energy generation is consistently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/nuc_generation/gensum.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;about 800 TWh/yr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US produces &quot;a total of about 2,000 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/nuclear_statistics/nuclearwasteamountsandonsitestorage/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2,300 metric tons&lt;/a&gt; of used fuel per year&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;= &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2300%20tons%20/%20800%20TWh%20to%20tons%20per%20TWh&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2.9 metric tons&lt;/a&gt; of radioactive waste per TWh (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whatisnuclear.com/articles/waste_per_person.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; uses EIA data to reach &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=8.193%20%C2%B7%2010%5E%E2%88%9210%20grams%2FJ%20to%20metric%20tons%20per%20TWh&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the same number&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;France nuclear&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;produces &lt;a href=&quot;http://greenworldinvestor.com/2011/04/13/nuclear-waste-storage-a-complete-mess-with-lack-of-policy-temporary-nuclear-sites-in-usajapan-and-france-waiting-for-a-permanent-nuclear-facility/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1179 tonnes&lt;/a&gt; of nuclear waste per year&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;has 58 nuclear reactors ... supplying over &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;430 billion kWh per year&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;= &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1179%20tonnes%20/%20430%20billion%20kWh%20to%20metric%20tons%20/%20TWh&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2.7 tons&lt;/a&gt; of radioactive waste per TWh&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;US coal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The actual average generated power from coal in 2006 was 227.1 GW&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_power_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WP&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;In 2006, the U.S. consumed 1,026,636,000 short tons (931,349,000 metric tons)&quot; of coal (WP)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Using these data, the releases of radioactive materials per typical plant &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/archive_pdf/vol26-3-4.pdf#page=30&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;can be calculated for any year&lt;/a&gt;&quot; ... &quot;assuming coal contains uranium and thorium concentrations of 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively&quot; ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they produce &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.3%20ppm%20of%20931,349,000%20metric%20tons&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1210 tons&lt;/a&gt; of uranium and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3.2%20ppm%20of%20931,349,000%20metric%20tons&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2980 tons&lt;/a&gt; of thorium ash each year.  Combined and divided by energy produced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;= &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%282980%2b1210%29%20tons%20/%20227.1%20GW*year%20to%20tons%20/%20TWh&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2.1 metric tons&lt;/a&gt; of radioactive waste per TWh&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for a given amount of energy, the tiny fraction of uranium/thorium in the ash created by coal power plants is similar in mass to the &lt;em&gt;total amount of radioactive waste&lt;/em&gt; produced by nuclear plants, which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_nuclear_fuel#Uranium&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mostly uranium&lt;/a&gt;.  I don't know how much of this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/10/millions-of-tons-of-toxic_n_156813.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;stored in ash ponds&lt;/a&gt; vs dumped into the atmosphere, but it's certainly not held to the same standards as nuclear power plant waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="155" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2016-06-07T15:29:57.223" LastActivityDate="2016-06-07T15:29:57.223" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5046" CreationDate="2011-07-06T05:55:27.347" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;@crastic makes a good point that your heart has to be fibrillating to be defibrillated.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/Arrhythmia/AboutArrhythmia/Ventricular-Fibrillation_UCM_324063_Article.jsp&quot;&gt;Here is a link to the American Heart Association (AHA)&lt;/a&gt; which explains Ventricular Fibrillation (unsynchronized pumping).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/Arrhythmia/PreventionTreatmentofArrhythmia/Defibrillation_UCM_305002_Article.jsp&quot;&gt;Defibrillation&lt;/a&gt; delivers a shock to the heart which should (hopefully) restart the normal cardiac rhythm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I couldn't find anything that specifically address actually trying to defibrillate a flatlining person, &lt;a href=&quot;http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/reprint/CIR.0b013e31820b5328&quot;&gt;this article (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; notes that out of hospital cardiac events can sometimes only be reversed with a defibrillator, and the chance of survival decreases by 7-10% for each minute of delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/110/21/3385&quot;&gt;This article from the AHA&lt;/a&gt; indicates that an asystolic rhythm is non-shockable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shockable/nonshockable rhythm refers to the first monitored rhythm, which when analyzed by the person interpreting the monitor/defibrillator or an AED, was found to be treatable by attempted defibrillation (ie, shockable or nonshockable). In general, shockable cardiac arrest rhythms are further divided into ventricular fibrillation and pulseless ventricular tachycardia. Nonshockable cardiac arrest rhythms can be categorized as either asystole or PEA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T05:55:27.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3389" CreationDate="2011-07-06T06:17:49.543" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a couple of sources that might be helpful:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19081901&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; addressed the &quot;clinical effectiveness of strontium chloride&quot; and found that out of a group of 132 patients, 72% had reduced discomfort and pain. No mechanism was offered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21411060&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; seems to indicate that fluid flow is associated with dentinal pain (this addresses thermal stimulation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12167939&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; indicates that potassium nitrate works through desensitization of nerve tissue within the tubules&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastActivityDate="2011-07-06T06:17:49.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5061" CreationDate="2011-07-06T14:15:24.257" Score="28" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sex industry is HUGE - $57 Billion Worldwide, $12+ Billion in the United States. It is larger than all the sport franchises put together&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NFL had 7.2 Billion In gross revenue in 2010 [ &lt;a href=&quot;http://nfldraftrage.com/nfl-lock-out-how-to-fix-it/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt; ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The MLB had 6.6 Billion in revenue in 2009 [ &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bizofbaseball.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=4124:mlb-sees-a-record-66-billion-in-revenues-for-2009&amp;amp;catid=30:mlb-news&amp;amp;Itemid=42&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt; ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NHL projected about 2.7 Billion in revenue for the 2009-2010 season [ &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Journal/Issues/2010/06/20100628/This-Weeks-News/NHL-Expects-Total-Revenue-To-Top-$27B.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt; ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These totals would exceed the &amp;quot;$12+ Billion in the United States&amp;quot; cited by the source with out including Nascar (I can find claims of around 3 billion with no source but seems reasonable), Golf, Tennis, Other racing ( I would love to see statistics of all the revenue from the local tracks ), or any of the less followed sports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is that one sport with the usually white and black truncated icosahedron shaped ball that a handful of people follow around the world... ($216B world wide) [ &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/1142861?story_id=1142861&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt; ]   thats almost 4x the estimate from the post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bigger than all top technology&#xA;companies combined:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apple had 65 Billion in sales in 2010 [ &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasdaq.com/asp/quotes_reports.asp?symbol=AAPL&amp;amp;selected=AAPL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt; ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft had 62 Billion [ &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasdaq.com/asp/quotes_reports.asp?symbol=MSFT&amp;amp;symbol=AAPL&amp;amp;selected=MSFT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt; ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google had 29 Billion [ &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasdaq.com/asp/quotes_reports.asp?symbol=GOOG&amp;amp;selected=GOOG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt; ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think that compared to the 57 billion thats busted.  Even if it has duobled since 2005 these 3 still beat it. (No pun intended)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bigger than top television&#xA;broadcasting channels combined:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comcast(NBC) had revenues of almost 38 billion [ &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasdaq.com/asp/quotes_reports.asp?symbol=CMCSA&amp;amp;selected=CMCSA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt; ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disney(ABC) and revenues of 38 billion [ &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasdaq.com/asp/quotes_reports.asp?symbol=DIS&amp;amp;symbol=VIA&amp;amp;symbol=CMCSA&amp;amp;selected=DIS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt; ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Viacom(CBS) had revenues of 14 billion ins 2008 (for ease since it gets messy with mergers and sales) [ &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasdaq.com/asp/quotes_reports.asp?symbol=VIA&amp;amp;symbol=CMCSA&amp;amp;selected=VIA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt; ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Disney is more than just ABC, and Comcast is more than just NBC, Viacom is just a broadcast company.  It alone exceeded the 12 billion quoted above for the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2022-12-08T18:52:47.073" LastActivityDate="2022-12-08T18:52:47.073" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5059" CreationDate="2011-07-06T17:32:50.170" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/em&gt; has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2727/does-smoking-organically-grown-tobacco-lower-the-chance-of-lung-cancer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a good article on this&lt;/a&gt;, essentially refuting the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But tobacco's hardly the only place one encounters polonium. Other plants absorb it too, meaning it's in the food we eat, possibly as much as 20 cigarettes' worth in a day's intake; at any given time our bodies contain about 23,000 cigarettes' worth of polonium, largely in the liver, kidneys, spleen, and bone marrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to data from Argonne National Laboratories, the chances of polonium causing fatal cancer in a two-pack-a-day smoker after 25 years may be less than one in 1,000; by contrast, World Health Organization figures suggest that cigarettes kill about half of all smokers, with half of those deaths coming in middle age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also says that the quote from Everett Koop (Surgeon General, alleged in the ACSA net article to have said &amp;quot;tobacco radiation is probably responsible for 90% of tobacco-related cancer&amp;quot;) can't be tracked down (quoted on the web thousands of times, but no indication of when and on what programme he allegedly said it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T18:17:32.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5086" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-06T23:47:53.330" Score="16" ViewCount="16238" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been various claims that a process called 'Theta Healing' can achieve profound improvements in people's health.  Various &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=-zBLqhx-s9cC&amp;amp;lpg=PT36&amp;amp;dq=%22theta%20healing%22&amp;amp;pg=PT36#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22theta%20healing%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;books&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1142191/&quot;&gt;papers&lt;/a&gt; mention it, not to mention the fact that it's had some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsh35lVGfS8&amp;amp;playnext=1&amp;amp;list=PLFAE89C997B8107BC&quot;&gt;news coverage&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eze_j-HwWFE&amp;amp;feature=related&quot;&gt;conferences&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though it seems unlikely it is true, could Theta Healing work?  People in the news coverage talk of very quick healing of broken bones through this technique... how else would this happen, or would they simply be lying for the news report?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3447" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T21:13:02.960" Title="Does or could Theta Healing work?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3066" CreationDate="2011-07-07T00:11:41.513" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16311170&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; indicates that although sun can't hurt the hair shaft, some people use hair sun-screens to reduce damage (perhaps from bleaching?) to the hair.  It also notes that any damage done to the hair shaft itself is replaced by new hair growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19158839&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; studies the effect of ultraviolet radiation on the hair follicle (the part that the hair actually grows out of) and indicates that UV radiation is detrimental to the health of the hair follicle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies say: wear a hat :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T00:11:41.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5021" CreationDate="2011-07-07T00:28:29.750" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the study above, the Federal Trade Commission (in 2001) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2001/05/fyi0128.shtm&quot;&gt;warned manufacturers of these devices&lt;/a&gt; that they needed to support their claims with evidence in order to continue to sell the devices.  They had specific claims that they found to be problematic, and also indicated that the idea of ultrasonic devices was problematic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the claims that the FTC wanted the manufacturers to substantiate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Eliminates rodent infestations;&#xA;Repels insects;&#xA;Serves as an effective alternative to conventional pest-control products;&#xA;Increases or assists the effectiveness of other pest-control methods;&#xA;Eliminates fleas on dogs or cats; and&#xA;Scientific tests prove product effectiveness.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prior FTC complaints alleged that any reaction by rodents to ultrasound would be temporary at best because rodents become accustomed to ultrasound and will return to their nesting or feeding areas even in the presence of an ultrasonic device. Furthermore, previous FTC complaints alleged that ultrasound devices do not control insects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2002, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2002/08/lentek.shtm&quot;&gt;Lentek International was charged&lt;/a&gt; by the FTC with making false and unsubstantiated claims about their pest-control products.  In 2003, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/07/global.shtm&quot;&gt;Global Instruments settled with the FTC&lt;/a&gt;.  The settlement prohibited them making their claims about the devices unless they came up with substantiating evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T00:28:29.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5090" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-07T02:34:49.690" Score="6" ViewCount="3251" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does applying a tea bag to a canker sore cause it to diminish or disappear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of this claim include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kidshealth.org/teen/diseases_conditions/mouth/canker.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kid's Health&lt;/a&gt; (See Page 3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some doctors suggest putting wet black tea bags on sores. Black tea contains tannin, a substance that can relieve pain. You can also find tannin in some over-the-counter medicines&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/health/12-ways-to-heal-a-canker-sore-2495140&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have some tea.&lt;/strong&gt; Several experts, among them dermatologist Jerome Z. Litt, M.D., recommend applying a wet, black tea bag to the ulcer. Black tea contains tannin, an astringent that &quot;may pleasantly surprise you&quot; with its pain-relieving ability, he says. There are over-the-counter medications available that contain tannin, such as Tanac.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.free-health-care.com/contagious_diseases/canker%20sore.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Free-Health-Care&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Try using a used &lt;strong&gt;tea bag&lt;/strong&gt; on the canker. Press it on the sore like a wad of chewing tobacco and hold it there as long as you can. The tannic acid in the tea is an astringent and will relieve pain and aid healing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3678/can-vegemite-or-marmite-heal-ulcers&quot;&gt;Can vegemite or marmite heal ulcers?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3960" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T04:42:43.493" Title="Can tea cure canker sores?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2217" CreationDate="2011-07-07T03:33:25.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another aspect to this question may be cross-contamination at factories/bakeries/etc that produce more than one type of food.  Although the allergen may not be present in the food you are eating, it may be present at the factory where that food is produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/LabelingNutrition/FoodAllergensLabeling/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/ucm106546.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;From the FDA Allergy Warning Letter (1996):&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another area of concern is the potential, inadvertent introduction of an allergenic ingredient to a food (e.g., in a bakery that is manufacturing two food products on one production line, one product with peanuts and one without, where traces of peanuts, or peanut products, may end up in the product that does not normally contain peanuts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2008, the FDA &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm089307.htm#FDAPublicHearingonLabeling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;held a public hearing on food labeling&lt;/a&gt; and noted that contamination can occur during harvesting, manufacturing, transportation, processing and storage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T03:33:25.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5052" CreationDate="2011-07-07T05:59:45.410" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer this question as broadly as possible I have found&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.indiana.edu/fclj/pubs/v49/no1/johnson.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; really nice essay by a lawyer, Peter Johnson, which is itself well referenced. It starts by giving exemples of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How it help unify languages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1387) and Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (1349-51), larded with the sexy and the scatological, passed in manuscript from hand to hand and read aloud to a largely illiterate populace, helped create national languages in both countries. [i.e. England Italy]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How it popularized the printing press:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The printing press appeared a half-century after Chaucer's death in 1400[...] twp less noble works did more to popularize print and bring literacy to the masses than the scholarly works. These were Pietro Aretino's Postures (1524)(14) and Francois Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel (1530-40)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that it was photography:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three hundred years after Rabelais, photography became a new medium for porn to exploit . [...] It was not long, however, before the Civil War taught photography two new uses. The first and more famous was the battlefield photography of Mathew Brady. The second, the more infamous, was pornography. Soldiers demanded more than letters from home, they demanded erotica. So great was the traffic to the front, not only of dirty books, but soon of erotic daguerreotypes and photographs, that Congress passed the first U.S. law proscribing obscenity via the mails. Congress, as usual, was late. By the time the bill passed, it was 1865, the war was over, and the boys were home with their pictures in their pockets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the current book formats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The later part of the nineteenth century saw the growth of the &quot;dime&quot; novel, a brassy subculture to the mainstream three-volume hardcover that monopolized legitimate fiction. Printed on cheap paper, and hence called &quot;pulp&quot; fiction, early paperbacks included westerns, mysteries, tall tales, foreign-language stories for the growing immigrant market, and, of course, pornography. Increased literacy kept paperbacks thriving, though somewhat scorned, until World War II. Then, suddenly, the paperback's cheapness became its strength: wartime shortages demanded that books be printed cheaply; books shipped wholesale to readers overseas had to be lightweight. Paperbacks filled both bills. A government-financed publishing project, the Armed Services Editions, adopted &quot;pulp&quot; technology wholesale,(31) and, after the war, the paperback became the legitimate heir to publishing's crown. Here, then, is a true example of pornography actually developing a new technology that, first, the government (no less) and then the legitimate market adopted whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cable companies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When cable systems began competing to wireup entire communities, one of the things communities demanded was leased- or public-access channels, to keep the cable operator from entirely dominating local programming. What they wanted was worthy alternative programming produced by local civic and educational groups. What they got was porn. Midnight Blue, produced by Screw magazine, is one of leased access' longest running shows. So are the offerings of ecdysiast Robin Byrd and Lou Maletta of the Gay Cable Network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="800" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T05:59:45.410" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5095" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5096" CreationDate="2011-07-07T10:41:50.077" Score="18" ViewCount="4122" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seriously, I've have been informed that, as a baby, Oliver Cromwell was kidnapped by his grandfather's pet monkey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first glance this smells like a myth but does anyone know of any documentary evidence that suggests this might actually be true? Or at least the source of the myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="497" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T11:35:58.020" Title="Was Oliver Cromwell kidnapped by a monkey?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5095" CreationDate="2011-07-07T11:35:58.020" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story or myth is found on various biographies of Oliver Cromwell notably&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=marshall&amp;amp;book=cromwell&amp;amp;story=childish&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Through Great Britain and Ireland With Cromwell&lt;/a&gt;  by children's history author &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Elizabeth_Marshall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a story told—I will not say&#xA;  that it is a true one—of how, one day,&#xA;  when Oliver was still a baby, he had&#xA;  been taken to see his grandfather. He&#xA;  lay asleep in his cradle, and his&#xA;  nurse must have been careless, for he&#xA;  was left all alone. As he lay there, a&#xA;  monkey came lolloping into the room&#xA;  and right up to the cradle. The monkey&#xA;  thought that the baby would be a&#xA;  lovely plaything, so he seized him and&#xA;  ran away with him. Leaping, swinging,&#xA;  clinging with hand and tail, he swung&#xA;  himself and his prize up to the flat&#xA;  lead roof of the house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Soon the baby was missed, and when it&#xA;  was discovered that the monkey was&#xA;  playing with him on the roof, the&#xA;  whole household was thrown into a&#xA;  state of confusion. Beds and blankets&#xA;  were brought out and placed on the&#xA;  ground, to catch the baby, in case the&#xA;  monkey should drop or throw him down.&#xA;  But the monkey was careful, and&#xA;  presently he brought Oliver safely to&#xA;  the ground again. So the baby was&#xA;  saved to grow up to be a great man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and again in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hinchhouse.org.uk/civilwar/oliver.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;chapter on the Civil War&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The man who became Lord Protector was&#xA;  nephew to the Sir Oliver Cromwell who&#xA;  owned Hinchingbrooke.It is said that&#xA;  as a child he was taken by a pet&#xA;  monkey and carried to the roof of&#xA;  Hinchingbrooke. It is also said that&#xA;  he met the young Charles at&#xA;  Hinchingbrooke and gave him a bloody&#xA;  nose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I must quote straight from Ted Vallance's website -someone who has spent a lot of effort researching this -  and has a dedicated blogpost &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://edwardvallance.wordpress.com/2009/07/28/oliver-cromwell-and-the-monkey/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oliver Cromwell and the Monkey&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wondered how old that particular&#xA;  story was. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thomas Cromwell’s Oliver Cromwell and&#xA;  His Times (1822) lists the story as&#xA;  one of the many extravagant claims&#xA;  inserted into hostile biographies of&#xA;  his ancestor (referring here to Mark&#xA;  Noble’s Memoirs of the Protectoral&#xA;  House of Cromwell (1787)) Noble&#xA;  claimed that he received this story –&#xA;  and the other familiar one of the&#xA;  young Oliver coming to blows with a&#xA;  young Charles Stuart – from ‘the rev.&#xA;  dr. Lort’s M.S.S.’ (Perhaps Michael&#xA;  Lort, the Georgian antiquary?) who in&#xA;  turn received this from ‘Mr. Audley’&#xA;  (the non-juror Edward Audley).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exact passage on &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=GIQpTMZo5FIC&amp;amp;pg=PA34&amp;amp;lpg=PA34&amp;amp;dq=oliver%20cromwell%20monkey&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=C7tiQdtwul&amp;amp;sig=n0BktQEmaJ-9JN8iqxnuy6CBWuA&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=TcluSv7UAdCgjAe3r9GfBQ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=8#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=oliver%20cromwell%20monkey&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google docs quotes the original incident&lt;/a&gt; thus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His very infancy,&quot; says Noble, if we&#xA;  believe what Mr. Audley, brother to&#xA;  the famous civilian, says he had heard&#xA;  some old men tell his grandfather, &quot;&#xA;  was marked with a peculiar accident,&#xA;  that seemed to threaten the existence&#xA;  of the future Protector: for his&#xA;  grandfather, Sir Henry Cromwell,&#xA;  having sent for him to Hinchinbrooke,&#xA;  (near Huntingdon, the ancient family&#xA;  seat) when an infant in arms, a monkey&#xA;  took him from his cradle, and ran with&#xA;  him upon the lead that covered the&#xA;  roofing of the house. Alarmed at the&#xA;  danger Oliver was in, the family&#xA;  brought beds to catch him upon,&#xA;  fearing the creature's dropping him&#xA;  down; but the sagacious animal brought&#xA;  the ' Fortune of England' down in&#xA;  safety: so narrow an escape had he,&#xA;  who was doomed to be the Conqueror and&#xA;  Sovereign Magistrate of three mighty&#xA;  nations, from the paws of a monkey.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So in conclusion, there is an anecdote and an original reference point for the anecdote - but whether it was true or not is still debatable&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, Andrew Barclay delves in some more and offers this comment on Ted Vallance's website to dig down the source of this tale&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Noble’s sources are actually rather&#xA;  interesting. The implication is that&#xA;  Lort was getting his information from&#xA;  ‘mr. Edw. Audley’. There is certainly&#xA;  another story told by Noble several&#xA;  pages later on which is explicitly&#xA;  said to derive from ‘The rev. dr.&#xA;  Lort’s M.S.S. from papers communicated&#xA;  by mr. Audley’ (1787 edn. i. p. 94n).&#xA;  (Do those Lort MSS survive?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moreover, on the previous page (i. p.&#xA;  91n), Noble mentions ‘Mr. Edw. Audley,&#xA;  a draper of Huntingdon, and brother of&#xA;  the chancellor of York’, who had owned&#xA;  the house in Huntingdon in which&#xA;  Cromwell had been born. This is&#xA;  clearly the same man. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This provenance looks plausible. The&#xA;  brother was presumably John Audley,&#xA;  the chancellor of the archdiocese of&#xA;  York in the early Hanoverian period.&#xA;  My guess would be that John and Edward&#xA;  Audley were the two sons of Edward&#xA;  Audley who, according to the IGI (used&#xA;  with all the usual caveats etc. etc.),&#xA;  were baptised at Huntingdon in 1680&#xA;  and 1682 respectively. Checking&#xA;  whether the former is indeed the&#xA;  future civil lawyer wouldn’t be too&#xA;  difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Running the name Edward Audley through&#xA;  the Cambridgeshire Archives online&#xA;  catalogue&#xA;  (http://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/leisure/archives/catalogue/)&#xA;  throws up a number of documents,&#xA;  including a will of 1757 of an Edward&#xA;  Audley of Huntingdon, gent., in a&#xA;  collection of documents relating to&#xA;  Cromwell House, Huntingdon. An earlier&#xA;  Edward Audley (the father?) seems to&#xA;  have been one of the Huntingdon&#xA;  aldermen in 1686. Further research&#xA;  might establish whether there was an&#xA;  Audley grandfather who, as Noble&#xA;  claims, could have heard the story&#xA;  about the monkey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the story might&#xA;  well be a genuine example of&#xA;  Huntingdon oral tradition. But Michael&#xA;  Lort cannot have heard it much before&#xA;  the middle of the eighteenth century&#xA;  (he was only born in about 1725) and&#xA;  at best Audley was reporting hearsay&#xA;  at several removes. So we still can’t&#xA;  assume that the story was actually&#xA;  true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastActivityDate="2011-07-07T11:35:58.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5026" CreationDate="2011-07-07T12:16:49.377" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it's wise to define heartburn as gastric reflux, to exclude ischaemic heart disease. The suggested &quot;churning&quot; hypothesis doesn't relate to heart disease at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, there does exist a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/stomach/parietal.html&quot;&gt;feedback mechanism&lt;/a&gt; to deal with a lack of gastric acid. That's not (as the vinegar peddlers suggest) mechanical, but simply chemical. Gastric acid is hydrochloric acid, which the body can synthesize from salt and water&amp;mdash;you'd be dead before you run out of the building blocks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A further problem with the vinegar theory is that Histamine (H2) receptor antagonists are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimetidine&quot;&gt;FDA approved medicines&lt;/a&gt;, from which we can conclude they work better than placebos. The vinegar theory implies that they'd work &lt;em&gt;worse&lt;/em&gt; than placebos, because they reduce acidity, not increase it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastEditorUserId="988" LastEditDate="2011-08-23T02:30:49.853" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T02:30:49.853" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5057" CreationDate="2011-07-07T12:56:26.440" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a word, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could cite sources, but William Connolley has already &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/&quot;&gt;exhaustively researched this&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/&quot;&gt;summary here&lt;/a&gt;), including Rasool and Schneider. Nothing in your question implies that he has incorrectly characterized the prevailing scientific views at the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Connolley &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/nas-1975.html&quot;&gt;cites&lt;/a&gt; a 1975 NAS report as more representative of the &lt;em&gt;scientific&lt;/em&gt; (not media) consensus of the time. You can &lt;a href=&quot;http://logicalscience.blogspot.com/2006/11/wooden-stake-in-newsweeks-global.html&quot;&gt;read the forward here&lt;/a&gt;. This report notes that scientists were not confident in their ability to predict climate trends back then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines it's course. Without this fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate-neither in short-term variations nor in any in its larger long-term changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper you cite is one assertion that &quot;global cooling&quot; is possible. It is not a consensus. One or two assertions don't make a consensus, especially a paper like Rasool and Schneider, which is riddled with flaws. There appear to have been other scientists with similar concerns, and perhaps fewer analytic errors in their work, as well, but again, a handful of people don't make a &quot;consensus.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cherry picking one or two examples which happen to run against the prevailing scientific views at the time -- which were, in short, that climatologists in 1975 were not confident in their ability to predict climate changes &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt; -- in no way suggests any kind of consensus. There is no credible claim of a consensus for global cooling in your question, only a dodgy paper and an unsupported assertion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Connolley's own conclusion, from reading the papers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wmconnolley.org.uk/sci/iceage/&quot;&gt;cited&lt;/a&gt;, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/&quot;&gt;as follows&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, its clear that there were concerns, perhaps quite strong, in the minds of a number of scientists of the time. And yet, the papers of the time present a clear consensus that future climate change could not be predicted with the knowledge then available. Apparently, the peer review and editing process involved in scientific publication was sufficient to provide a sober view. This episode shows the scientific press in a very good light; and a clear contrast to the lack of any such process in the popular press, then and now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your partial-sentence quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1&quot;&gt;Peterson, Connolley, and Fleck&lt;/a&gt;, let's look at the whole sentence, in context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indeed, the Earth appeared to have been cooling for more than 2 decades when scientists first took note of the change in trend in the 1960s. The seminal work was done by J. Murray Mitchell [in 1963, showing that] global temperatures had increased fairly steadily from the 1880s, the start of his record, until about 1940, before the start of a steady multidecade cooling (Mitchell 1963). By the early 1970s, when Mitchell updated his work (Mitchell 1972), the notion of a global cooling trend was widely accepted, albeit poorly understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite clear, in context, that this refers to the post-1940s cooling rather than to supposed predictions of a new ice age. Today it is understood that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aip.org/history/climate/20ctrend.htm&quot;&gt;this (ultimately temporary) drop was due to aerosols and industrial pollution and was mainly a Northern Hemisphere, rather than a global trend.&lt;/a&gt; But yes, it's correct to say that scientists in the seventies agreed that there was cooling from the 40s through the early 70s, and, with the caveats noted above, they still do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3617" LastEditorUserId="4082" LastEditDate="2011-08-19T23:15:32.813" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T23:15:32.813" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5101" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-07T17:17:08.607" Score="31" ViewCount="1320" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering everything that goes into producing a single PV solar panel; from obtaining the necessary materials, transportation etc. is there a net benefit to the environment over the lifetime of the panel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A net benefit would be one in which less hazardous material is produced as a result of having created and used the panel over its 25 year warranty period as opposed to using regular grid power*.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To provide something of a typical example for which to make calculations from the Australian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.energymatters.com.au/climate-data/grid-calculate-solar.php&quot;&gt;Energy Matters&lt;/a&gt; site it provides the following figures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;System specifications&lt;/strong&gt; Grid connect solar inverter, 6 x 175W solar panels&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Warranty on Solar Panels&lt;/strong&gt;    25 years&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;System annual output&lt;/strong&gt;    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1.566 MWh per year&#xA;39.15 MWh over warranty period&#xA;62.64 MWh over solar panel expected lifetime&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Greenhouse gas emission reduction&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;2035.8 kg per year&#xA;50895 kg over warranty period&#xA;81432 kg over solar panel expected lifetime&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Expected annual energy consumption after install&lt;/strong&gt; 4274 kWh per year&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Energy consumption reduction&lt;/strong&gt; 26.82%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the purpose of this exercise, consider the panel to be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.energymatters.com.au/sharp-solar-panel-175watt-24volt-mono-p-4.html?zenid=hg0jl8o3b8es1sobhnmr1ssp93&quot;&gt;Sharp 175Watt 24Volt&lt;/a&gt; which has been used in many installations in Australia and what I have on my roof:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High Power module 175W using 125mm&#xA;square single-crystal silicon solar&#xA;cells with 13.5% module conversion&#xA;efficiency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Photovoltaic module with bypass diode minimises power drop caused by&#xA;shade.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anti Refection Coating and BSF (Back Surface Field) structure to&#xA;improve cell conversion efficiency:&#xA;16.4%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;White tempered glass, EVA resin and a weatherproof film along with an&#xA;aluminum frame for extended outdoor&#xA;use&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;24VDC system and high-voltage output for grid-connected system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Multi-contact style output leads with waterproof connectors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Australia's electricity is currently a mix of (approx.):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;65% coal&#xA;15% hydro&#xA;15% natural gas&#xA;5% other&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Note regarding grid power. Some energy providers in Australia now provide a green option for electricity where they can source up to 25% of their electricity from renewable sources for as little as $1 extra per quarter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3965" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-07-08T00:10:45.677" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T11:25:25.750" Title="Does the production of a home PV solar panel provide a net benefit to the environment?" Tags="|environment|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5102" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5103" CreationDate="2011-07-07T18:26:37.483" Score="21" ViewCount="5098" Body="&lt;p&gt;One thing many manufactures of laptops and cellphones recommend is that you wait until the battery is completely dead before you recharge it or else it will slowly loose its maximum capacity or have a reduced lifespan. To what extent is this true? Is this only true for certain rechargeable battery varieties?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2808" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T04:59:03.440" Title="Does recharging a battery when it is only half-way dead decrease its life span?" Tags="|electromagnetism|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5102" CreationDate="2011-07-07T20:16:38.920" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very complicated issue because of number of myths surrounding it and low speed of information transition from battery manufacturers to equipment manuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's start with the lithium batteries. There are several types of them (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Li-Ion&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_polymer_battery&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Li-Po&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LiFePO4&lt;/a&gt;) but they have many similarities when discharge is concerned. The most important feature of them is that they are dead when completely discharged. For that reason the nominal discharge voltage is set to around 2.75 V. At that time, the battery is considered to be &amp;quot;discharged&amp;quot;. For example here are some datasheets which show the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.all-battery.com/%5Cdatasheet%5Clipo25AhDatasheet.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Datasheet of Li-Po 75212223--Tenergy &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.batteryspace.com/prod-specs/3.7V_40Ah_hi_polymer.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Product Specification: Polymer Li-ion Rechargeable Battery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110304130845/http://www.aplus-heli.com/images/AplusBatteriesDataSheet.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aplus: Li-Po Rechargeable Batteries Data Sheet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discharging battery to that voltage may cause problems and may make it unrecoverable. Some battery manufacturers recommend that the batteries shouldn't be discharged below 3.3 V/cell (for example &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110831041134/http://thunderpowerrc.com/PDF/THPSafetyWarnings.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ThunderPower&lt;/a&gt;) and that they should be used at lower currents for first few cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I was unable to find a good source for lithium battery best practices, but here are some I found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20060117223749/http://www.rm.com:80/_RMVirtual/Media/Downloads/Lithium_Ion_Batteries_Care.doc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Li-On Battery Do's and Don'ts&lt;/a&gt; (download link)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130619085339/https://netcommunity.hermits.com/Document.Doc?id=61&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tech Note: Battery Best Practice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hpcfactor.com/support/cesd/h/0015.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lithium Ion, Nickel Cadmium, Nickel Metal Hydride Battery Best Practise Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also &lt;a href=&quot;http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; interesting article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What they basically say it that batteries shouldn't be allowed to discharge completely, shouldn't be allowed to remain in the discharged state and that they don't have the &amp;quot;memory&amp;quot; effect (an explicit claim for that can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://mobile.datalogic.com/upload/pages/pdf/differentiators/dlm_battery_care_best_practices.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rathboneenergy.com/batteries/battery_cells_by_mfg/panasonic/Pan_LiON_pdfs/Panasonic_LiIon_Overview.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand,  it is considered that nickel-cadmium based batteries have memory effect (some believe that NiMH do too, but that is a separate story) and should be completely discharged to their nominal discharge voltage which is (according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://batteries.sanyo-component.com/fileadmin/EDITORS/BATTERIES/industrial/datasheets/nicd/KR-1200AAE.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; datasheet for example [link now broken]) 0.8 V. For NiMH batteries, the discharge voltage is 1.0 V, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://batteries.sanyo-component.com/fileadmin/EDITORS/ENELOOP/PICTURES/CONSUMER_BATTERIES/NIMH/DATA_sheets/HR-3U_2700_.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; datasheet [link now broken]. The base for the discharge claim comes from various best practice documents. For example, there's an article &lt;a href=&quot;http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_restore_nickel_based_batteries&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; which claims that discharging batteries to voltages lower than their nominal discharge voltage will increase amount of charge the battery can hold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is interesting in this whole story is that I've been unable to find a document from a battery manufacturer which explicitly explains how to properly condition batteries. It would be great if someone could dig up such documents, if they exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="549" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-05-07T04:59:03.440" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5105" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5107" CreationDate="2011-07-08T02:17:10.690" Score="6" ViewCount="10660" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was just sent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hoax-slayer.com/infant-car-seat-gang-warning.shtml&quot;&gt;this hoax email&lt;/a&gt;, but wanted to check one of the claims in it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IF YOU ARE DRIVING AT NIGHT AND EGGS&#xA;  ARE THROWN AT YOUR WINDSCREEN, DO NOT&#xA;  STOP TO CHECK THE CAR, DO NOT OPERATE&#xA;  THE WIPER AND DO NOT SPRAY ANY WATER&#xA;  BECAUSE EGGS MIXED WITH WATER BECOME&#xA;  MILKY AND BLOCK YOUR VISION UP TO&#xA;  92.5%, AND YOU ARE THEN FORCED TO STOP BESIDE THE ROAD AND BECOME A VICTIM OF&#xA;  THESE CRIMINALS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true if an egg is thrown at your windscreen and you use the wipers + water then you will lose enough visibility that you would need to pull off the road?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T13:41:25.097" Title="Eggs + Water = Total windscreen blindness!" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5106" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5108" CreationDate="2011-07-08T03:44:25.650" Score="15" ViewCount="2176" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many variations of this popular idea, but some the main formulations would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fishfriend.com/articles/fish_bowls_instruments_of_torture.html&quot;&gt;Fish will never &quot;outgrow&quot; their fishtank&lt;/a&gt; (small fishbowls will result in smaller fishes than larger ones, for same species and diet).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The larger the fishtank, the larger a fish will grow (essentially the same idea, from a different angle).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to such claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(despite having a hard time finding online traces of these claims, I hope they are pervasive enough in everyday popular culture to deserve mention here)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3768" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T14:00:17.817" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T18:42:19.403" Title="Do fish grow to the size of their fishbowl?" Tags="|biology|zoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5105" CreationDate="2011-07-08T05:29:00.397" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;On this claim, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/eggthrow.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Snopes says&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While a mixture of raw egg and water&#xA;  vigorously stirred together in a glass&#xA;  will produce a somewhat milky-looking&#xA;  liquid (which might be the source of&#xA;  this tale), there's nothing about the&#xA;  interaction of egg and water that&#xA;  renders the resulting combination into&#xA;  a substance guaranteed to completely&#xA;  block a driver's vision. Egg alone or&#xA;  egg-and-water solutions are thin&#xA;  liquids and so are relatively easy to&#xA;  see through, with the vehicle's wipers&#xA;  generally sweeping away the worst of&#xA;  the mess fairly easily. Moreover, it&#xA;  would take a number of extremely&#xA;  well-placed eggs (a hen's typical&#xA;  offerings aren't that big) to splat a&#xA;  windshield so thoroughly as to&#xA;  completely impair the driver's view&#xA;  and force him to stop immediately -&#xA;  unless the visibility conditions were&#xA;  already poor, a motorist with a&#xA;  splattered windshield would generally&#xA;  still to be able to see well enough to&#xA;  continue driving out of range of the&#xA;  egg-throwing hooligans to a safe&#xA;  stopping place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 92.5% claim seems totally bogus. Is it 92.5% of the entire windshield or 92.5% of the driver's direct visible area - assuming the driver is looking straight ahead on the road. Let us assume that any &lt;em&gt;spreadable surface area under the wipers&lt;/em&gt; - on any model of car - will be affecting the driver's direct visibility since that's what wipers are meant to keep clear in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if there is a light milky substance on the windscreen, how badly does that obstruct vision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gent actually &lt;a href=&quot;http://stephenstephen.blogspot.com/2007/07/eggs-on-windscreen.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tested this in 2007&lt;/a&gt; with a single egg and on two different cars. You can see the outcome with pictures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even armed with decent wipers, &lt;strong&gt;it can get blurry at night&lt;/strong&gt; but does not seem to be enough to &lt;em&gt;obstruct&lt;/em&gt; your vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He concludes it's not safe to turn on the wipers but based on the images, I think this needs more testing with a larger number of eggs to be convinced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastEditorUserId="2027" LastEditDate="2011-07-08T06:02:00.060" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T06:02:00.060" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5106" CreationDate="2011-07-08T05:43:30.357" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegab.org/Goldfish/goldfish-basics.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Goldfish and Aquarium Board&lt;/a&gt; (linked from the Goldfish Society of America) notes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He may look like a tiny thing but goldfish live long lives and grow continuously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/kent/7352909.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This BBC article&lt;/a&gt; tells of a woman who had a 2lb goldfish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(From the same article):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Dick Mills, secretary of the Federation of British Aquatic Societies (FBAS), said Goldie's size was &amp;quot;not that unusual&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I would think there are probably a few bigger goldfish that people don't think of as record holders, perhaps in ornamental lakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Goldfish are very long lived animals and consequently if they're in the right environment they will get large.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Federation of British Aquatic Societies &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbas.co.uk/FCUGoldfish.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;single-tail goldfish&lt;/a&gt; care sheet notes that they can grow up to 350mm (almost 14 inches) but rarely do as most are kept in aquariums.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbas.co.uk/PC6.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pond Care sheet&lt;/a&gt; also notes that &amp;quot;Pond Goldfish will grow to around 200mm/8&amp;quot; depending on the size of pond as they tend to adapt their size to the environment.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goldfish websites did note, however, that in order to be happy, healthy fish they do need at least a 10 gallon tank.  As the link you sourced noted, small goldfish bowls are unhealthy and do not allow proper space or gas exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a goldfish the size of a shark, though, I think you are out of luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T05:43:30.357" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5109" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-08T06:35:03.680" Score="18" ViewCount="6235" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard this on multiple occasions at the dentist and a quick search lists dentist after dentist telling patients to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tricountyoms.com/surgical/wisdom_tooth_removal.html&quot;&gt;These facial surgeons&lt;/a&gt; recommend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If bleeding continues, bite on a moistened tea bag for thirty minutes. The tannic acid in the tea bag helps to form a clot by contracting bleeding vessels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/408796-healthy-food-to-eat-after-wisdom-teeth-surgery/&quot;&gt;Livestrong&lt;/a&gt; does not tell readers to use a tea bag at the site of extraction, but offers the advice that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unique compounds found in green tea known as catechins are responsible for combating inflammation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that either of these claims are medically true for the compounds indicated (or others found in tea)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note: by &quot;tea&quot; I mean leaves from the &lt;em&gt;Camellia Sinensis&lt;/em&gt; plant.  Although &quot;tea&quot; also comes in the forms of herbal infusions containing mint and chamomile (for example), I would not expect these to contain the same compounds.  If your research suggests otherwise, please include that information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T13:43:54.827" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T01:24:01.903" Title="Is placing a tea bag at the site of wisdom tooth extraction beneficial?" Tags="|medical-science|livestrong|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5110" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5111" CreationDate="2011-07-08T09:11:57.360" Score="4" ViewCount="771" Body="&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3562/is-secondhand-smoke-dangerous&quot;&gt;Is secondhand smoke dangerous?&lt;/a&gt; ( thanks JoseK )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard this argument many times, the logic being that the smokers body is used to the toxins inside the cigarettes, which leads to more damage being caused to non-smokers. However, it could also be possible that only a reduced amount of dangerous substances is inhaled via secondhand smoking - which would lead to less damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, I have two personal friends. They're brothers: one smokes and the other does not. The smoker often smokes in the proximity of his brother. They recently had their lungs checked, and the non-smokers lungs were in much worse condition than the smokers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, that does not imply that the damage was caused by the cigarettes, but is that common? I'm referring to situations when non-smokers spend a lot of time in the proximity of heavy smokers. To rephrase, &lt;strong&gt;is it likely that regularly inhaling cigarette smoke could cause the same amount of damage ( or more ) as smoking ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T13:00:47.473" Title="Is smoking more damaging to non-smokers who spend a lot of time around a smoker than it is to the actual smoker?" Tags="|medical-science|smoking|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5110" CreationDate="2011-07-08T10:12:33.767" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  You would need to find a mechanism, such as arguing that a smoker breathes in filtered smoke which the person next to them breathes in unfiltered smoke.  Since almost all smokers do not have a cigarette in their mouths all the time, this is highly dubious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence from second-hand smoke studies is that the risk to the non-smoker is small but clear: examples include an odds ratio for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14735478&quot;&gt;non-smokers exposed to long-term spousal smoking&lt;/a&gt; of 1.23 (95% CI = 1.01-1.51) compared with those not exposed, which is small.  Other studies have also produced low numbers, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/326/7398/1057.full.pdf+html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;.  The odds ratios for actual smokers are far higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is about relative risk.  It is certainly possible for a particular exposed non-smoker to be more affected than a particular smoker (as someone betting in roulette can win with 0 and somebody else lose on red), but overall smoking directly is a far greater risk than exposure to secondhand smoke.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T10:12:33.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5110" CreationDate="2011-07-08T10:12:47.493" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3562/is-secondhand-smoke-dangerous&quot;&gt;related question has already established the overall dangers of secondhand smoking&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;I'll focus on the claim that it's likely or possible that secondhand smoke can cause &lt;strong&gt;more damage to the inhaler&lt;/strong&gt; than the smoker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bhf.org.uk/heart-health/prevention/smoking.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;British Lung Foundation claims that it is more dangerous&lt;/a&gt; to the inhaler in this manner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Passive smokers inhale smoke breathed&#xA;  in and out by smokers. &lt;strong&gt;They also&#xA;  breathe in the smoke from the burning&#xA;  tips of cigarettes. This smoke&#xA;  contains more of the harmful chemicals&#xA;  than the smoke which has passed&#xA;  through the cigarette filter.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add more from &lt;a href=&quot;http://convergence.ucsb.edu/article/secondhand-smoke&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joe Zasadzinski a UCSB professor of chemical engineering&lt;/a&gt; who researched this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Second hand smoke—the fumes and&#xA;  particulate matter, both drifting&#xA;  directly from burning cigarettes,&#xA;  cigars, and pipes (sidestream smoke)&#xA;  and exhaled by smokers (mainstream&#xA;  smoke)—contains more than 5,000&#xA;  chemical compounds, including the same&#xA;  multitude of carcinogens and toxins&#xA;  inhaled by smokers, including carbon&#xA;  monoxide, cyanide, benzene,&#xA;  formaldehyde, and arsenic. (It’s a&#xA;  Group A carcinogen, along with&#xA;  asbestos, benzene, arsenic, and&#xA;  radon…)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The chemistries of primary and&#xA;  second-hand smoke are basically the&#xA;  same,” Zasadzinski says, “although&#xA;  “people argue about concentrations a&#xA;  lot—about who gets more.” When they&#xA;  suck on cigarettes, smokers are, of&#xA;  course, intending to inhale a hefty&#xA;  hit of nicotine-laden smoke. However&#xA;  “the smoker has a filter on his or her&#xA;  end of the cigarette,” Zasadzinski&#xA;  points out, “but there’s no filter on&#xA;  the secondhand smoke that comes out&#xA;  the other end. It’s tough to say who&#xA;  gets the worst of it—the active smoker&#xA;  or the passive bystander.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regular smokers, however, develop some&#xA;  degree of resilience to the persistent&#xA;  assaults on their lungs, notes Kamlesh&#xA;  Asotra of California’s Tobacco-Related&#xA;  Disease Research Program (TRDRP).&#xA;  Non-smokers don’t, so second hand&#xA;  smoke causes more damage to their&#xA;  lungs than direct smoke does to&#xA;  smokers, Asotra says&lt;/strong&gt;. (TRDRP disperses&#xA;  funds from state cigarette taxes to&#xA;  researchers—including Zasadzinski.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To look at the effects of second-hand&#xA;  smoke, Zasadzinski, working with&#xA;  Patrick Stenger and Coralie Alonso,&#xA;  also of UCSB’s Department of Chemical&#xA;  Engineering, and researchers at UCLA&#xA;  and UC Davis, focused on a crucial&#xA;  component of the respiratory system:&#xA;  the thin film of liquid on the inside&#xA;  of the lungs. This epithelial lining&#xA;  fluid helps the lungs function and&#xA;  protects them from damage. “If you&#xA;  smoke or you’re around smoker, this is&#xA;  the first place the smoke will hit…”&#xA;  Zasadzinski says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To study how second hand smoke affects&#xA;  lung surfactants, Zasadzinski and his&#xA;  colleagues used biologically-based&#xA;  replacement surfactants in a lab setup&#xA;  that replicates how smoke interacts&#xA;  with the fluid lining of the lungs—“a&#xA;  very, very elegant” method of&#xA;  mimicking what happens in a living&#xA;  lung, Asotra says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The researchers produced second-hand&#xA;  smoke by burning cigarettes in&#xA;  controlled conditions using a “smoking&#xA;  machine” at UC Davis’ Institute of&#xA;  Toxicology and Environmental Health.&#xA;  They exposed purified water to this&#xA;  smoke for six hours, to create a&#xA;  tainted brew that they then used to&#xA;  test the effects of second-hand smoke&#xA;  on replacement lung surfactants.&#xA;  Zasadzinski and his colleagues&#xA;  reported their results recently in the&#xA;  international journal Biochimica et&#xA;  Biophysica Acta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The extent of the smoke damage to&#xA;  surfactants was “very surprising,”&#xA;  Zasadzinski says. The researchers&#xA;  focused on two proteins that are&#xA;  important in the surfactant function,&#xA;  and found they were both “really badly&#xA;  chewed up” by second-hand smoke. Smoke&#xA;  exposure changed the chemical&#xA;  composition and structure of the&#xA;  surfactants in the study—most likely&#xA;  by damaging crucial proteins&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will highly depend on the level of exposure to the smoke, time spent daily in such exposure, and in the case of &quot;&lt;em&gt;smoke from the burning tips&lt;/em&gt;&quot; the proximity to such &quot;burning tips&quot;. How much time would a family member be spending next to the smoker's cigarette each day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot find a more accurate article quoting Kamlesh Asotra and whether any scientific study was carried out to prove this statement, though he has been quoted in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2010/02/08/dangers-of-third-hand-smoke/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Berkeley study on Third Hand Smoke&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for some overall stats that I came across, a study on &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/86/2/699.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Environmental tobacco smoke and cardiovascular disease. A position paper from the Council on Cardiopulmonary and Critical Care, American Heart Association &#xA;AE Taylor, DC Johnson and H Kazemi &#xA;Office of Scientific Affairs, American Heart Association, Dallas, TX 75231-4596.&lt;/a&gt; quotes &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The risk of death due to heart disease&#xA;  is increased by about 30% among those&#xA;  exposed to environmental tobacco smoke&#xA;  at home and could be much higher in&#xA;  those exposed at the workplace, where&#xA;  higher levels of environmental tobacco&#xA;  smoke may be present. Even though&#xA;  considerable uncertainty is a part of&#xA;  any analysis on the health affects of&#xA;  environmental tobacco smoke because of&#xA;  the difficulty of conducting long-term&#xA;  studies and selecting sample&#xA;  populations, an estimated&#xA;  35,000-40,000 cardiovascular&#xA;  disease-related deaths and 3,000-&#xA;  5,000 lung cancer deaths due to&#xA;  environmental tobacco smoke exposure&#xA;  have been predicted to occur each year&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_smoking#Evidence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent studies in terms of numbers&lt;/a&gt; are available and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1430287/Passive-smoking-may-not-damage-your-health-after-all-says-research.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;report of a scientific refutal on the effects of passive smoking&lt;/a&gt; which seems to be biased and incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2011/01/americans-for-nonsmokers-rights.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link states about lung cancer alone&lt;/a&gt;, but does not cover the gamut of other diseases non-smokers can be affected by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The relative risk of lung cancer among&#xA;  active smokers is about 17, while the&#xA;  relative risk of lung cancer among&#xA;  passive smokers is about 1.3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T10:27:40.037" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5113" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-08T11:08:05.233" Score="18" ViewCount="930" Body="&lt;p&gt;Antioxidants are often touted as some kind of miracle cure for all kinds of illnesses. They are supposed to prevent damage caused by reactive oxygen species (ROS) to the cells by scavenging those ROS before they can cause any damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link between antioxidants and cancer seems plausible at first glance, ROS can react with DNA and cause mutations through that mechanism. The accumulation of certain mutations can lead to the development of cancer, so the idea that preventing the damage caused by ROS to the DNA by consuming antioxidants could prevent cancer seems plausible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any hard evidence that consuming antioxidants can prevent the development of cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-07-08T11:17:15.630" LastActivityDate="2017-11-23T21:57:21.170" Title="Can antioxidants prevent cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|antioxidant|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5114" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14058" CreationDate="2011-07-08T14:08:56.137" Score="54" ViewCount="11386" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2009 COBOL turned 50 years old. It got some publicity with claims, which I find rather hard to believe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/apr/09/cobol-internet-programming&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Cobol hits 50 and keeps counting&amp;quot; article in the Guardian&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to David Stephenson, the UK&#xA;manager for the software provider&#xA;Micro Focus, &amp;quot;some 70% to 80% of UK&#xA;plc business transactions are still&#xA;based on Cobol&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of this maintenance and&#xA;development takes place on IBM&#xA;products. The company's software group&#xA;director of product delivery and&#xA;strategy, Charles Chu, says that he&#xA;doesn't think &amp;quot;legacy&amp;quot; is pejorative.&#xA;&amp;quot;Business constantly evolves,&amp;quot; he&#xA;adds, &amp;quot;but &lt;strong&gt;there are 250bn lines of&#xA;Cobol code working well worldwide.&lt;/strong&gt; Why&#xA;would companies replace systems that&#xA;are working well?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often quoted &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.desilashkary.com/forum/showthread.php?t=956&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;forum/blog post &amp;quot;50 years on, Cobol still as influential&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statistics on Cobol attest to its&#xA;huge influence on the business world:&#xA;There are over &lt;strong&gt;220 billion lines of&#xA;Cobol in existence, a figure which&#xA;equates to about 80 per cent of the&#xA;world’s actively used code. There over&#xA;a million Cobol programmers in the&#xA;world.&lt;/strong&gt; There are 200 times as many&#xA;Cobol transactions that take place&#xA;each day than Google searches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jeff Atwood took a stab at it in his blog post &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2009/08/cobol-everywhere-and-nowhere.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;COBOL: Everywhere and Nowhere&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Problem is, that it's only anecdotal evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/45754/over-a-million-cobol-programmers-in-the-world&quot;&gt;subject surfaced on Programmers.SE&lt;/a&gt;, but so far it's also only anecdotal evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any hard data on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;total number of lines of all code in use?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;total number of lines of COBOL code in use?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;total number of all programmers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;total number of COBOL programmers?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T11:44:33.897" Title="Did COBOL have 250 billion lines of code and 1 million programmers, as late as 2009?" Tags="|computers|technology|software|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5115" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5126" CreationDate="2011-07-08T14:26:39.897" Score="9" ViewCount="2801" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1592403379&quot;&gt;American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China&lt;/a&gt;, the author describes his exposure to, and training in, some of the so-called &quot;iron techniques&quot; of martial arts.  The techniques, according to the author, involve subjecting specific areas of the body to repeated and consistent abuse, while treating them with &quot;medicinal herbal mixtures&quot;.  The result is that the area of the body can supposedly sustain tremendous stresses, and becomes much more durable and resilient than untrained body parts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author trained in &quot;iron forearm&quot;, because he feared the disfigurement of joints, and general swelling, that apparently accompanied training in some of the other variants.  At one point I believe he mentioned that you could easily spot practitioners of &quot;iron fist&quot; because one of their hands would be significantly larger than the other, and marred by swollen and grotesque fingers resulting from them being repeatedly broken and reset during the course of training.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other styles include &quot;iron stomach&quot;, &quot;iron skull&quot;, &quot;iron legs&quot; and even &quot;iron penis&quot;.  &quot;Iron stomach&quot; demonstrations frequently involve placing the point of a sharp spear against the abdomen, and leaning into it until the spear bends almost in half, without piercing the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These styles also have a history of appearing in various martial arts entertainment movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have their been any studies comparing the reputed strength and durability of limbs trained with these techniques versus the limbs of athletes employing more traditional training and conditioning practices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the reputed resistance to piercing and cutting attributed to skin subject to this training significantly different than the properties of &quot;untrained skin&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-vR_VfEriI&quot;&gt;Here is a video of Shaolin Monks demonstrating one of the more extreme versions of the technique&lt;/a&gt;.  Is this merely a trick exploiting the natural elasticity of human skin (which is often underestimated), or is this really the result of special conditioning to toughen the skin far beyond norm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWT6daKGJlY&amp;amp;feature=related&quot;&gt;Here is another demonstration&lt;/a&gt; that shows spears supporting a man's weight, with a demonstration of the supposed &quot;iron crotch&quot; (although the video looks like the stick may actually miss the monk's testicles, there are numerous references to demonstrations that were too graphic to be easily faked in the book mentioned earlier).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbRkqNXkiqY&amp;amp;feature=related&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a monk putting the point of a spear against his throat and pushing a van with the haft of the spear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9i3cj2onWk&amp;amp;feature=related&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a demonstration where blunt force is applied to the stomach with no apparent effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="3451" LastEditDate="2011-07-08T23:52:41.973" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T15:47:48.387" Title="Can martial artists strengthen limbs, appendages, and other parts of their bodies to &quot;super-human&quot; degrees?" Tags="|biology|physiology|martial-arts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5039" CreationDate="2011-07-08T14:58:38.857" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three separate questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do participants experience something that feels like going back in time and replaying &quot;prebirth memories&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to help people with their psychological problems by exploring &quot;prebirth memories&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do those &quot;prebirth memories&quot; reflect past experiences? Do the contain information that an individual wouldn't have known if the individual wouldn't have access to prebirth experiences?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there prebirth information storage that hasn't much to do with cognitive memories. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as (1) goes, the commercial success of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timelinetherapy.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;timeline therapy&lt;/a&gt; indicates that individuals are willing to pay money to get those experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as (2) goes, there's a lot of anecdotal evidence but to my knowledge there no study that investigated whether the claim is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as (3) goes, I don't know of an reliable experiment that demonstrated such an effect. I don't even think that there a reliable demonstration of any real-experience-memory from the first two years of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as (4) goes cognitive memory isn't the only kind of information storage. If we get ill our body stores information about the antigen's of the foreign virus or bacteria.&#xA;The information storages matters but it's nothing that we can access like an memory of an experience.&#xA;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_nutrition_and_birth_weight&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dutch Famine of 1944&lt;/a&gt; illustrates that our bodies remember conditions of starvation that happened during pregnancy and thereby increases the likelihood of obesity. This process of &quot;remembering&quot; gets likely facilitated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_methylation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DNA methylation&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;DNA methylation is however a quite simple process that doesn't allow to store complex information about experiences in a way that's similar to how neurons can store it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T14:58:38.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5119" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-08T15:57:39.413" Score="9" ViewCount="1180" Body="&lt;p&gt;In public media the notion that climate change is more than global warming gets repeated frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there strong predictions that show that the climate becomes more irregular? Would we expect the weather in any particular place to  suffer greater extremes (of temperature, precipitation, wind, etc.)? Are extreme weather events likely to increase (e.g. hurricane frequency or intensity, major wildfires...)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is repeated often in the media. Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/05/extreme-weather-forecast-storm-climate-change&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Guardian's recent take&lt;/a&gt; (decrying the fact that some US sources fail to make a link that is widely accepted elsewhere; highlights are mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase &amp;quot;extreme weather&amp;quot; flashes across television screens from coast to coast, but its connection to climate change is consistently ignored, if not outright mocked. If our news media, including – or especially – the meteorologists, continue to ignore &lt;strong&gt;the essential link between extreme weather and climate change&lt;/strong&gt;, then we as a nation, the greatest per capita polluters on the planet, may not act in time to avert even greater catastrophe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An older &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/climate/evidence/extreme.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;archived link from the BBC&lt;/a&gt; also makes the point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Increasing temperatures means the World is likely to see less frosty days and cold spells, but we are expected to experience an increase in heat waves and hot spells&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Greater risk of drought in continental areas&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Increase in extreme precipitation events&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hurricanes likely to be more intense in some parts of the World due to more rainfall and more intense winds&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An intensification of the Asian summer monsoon is expected&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these reliable predictions or global climate models or are they just the material that makes news a little more &lt;em&gt;interesting&lt;/em&gt; thereby leading to coverage being dominated by the less solid parts of climate science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On of the key things that separates a scientific prediction from the kind of predictions that you read in newspapers is that science isn't vague. A scientist should be able to give you a probability for whether the event he predicts happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB the question is about whether weather variability changes, not just the average weather. That is, is the &lt;em&gt;normal range of variation&lt;/em&gt; higher across a year as a result of climate change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-21T00:03:42.053" Title="Does climate change mean that weather becomes more variable in addition to being warmer?" Tags="|climate-change|meteorology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5121" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5124" CreationDate="2011-07-08T21:28:56.957" Score="19" ViewCount="6844" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I have been reading the wrong kind of scurrilous literature, but I have seen it asserted that the Empress Catherine the Great of Russia died from injuries received by committing unnatural acts with a stallion. Is there any truth in this assertion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1639" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T01:55:26.947" LastActivityDate="2020-03-27T21:27:38.357" Title="Did Catherine the Great die of injuries from a horse?" Tags="|history|zoology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5122" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5125" CreationDate="2011-07-08T22:56:26.380" Score="20" ViewCount="2763" Body="&lt;p&gt;Calories in food is a measurement of the amount of energy it will provide to the body. I've heard that eating some foods actually make you USE more calories than you consume. Do any foods actually contain less calories than it takes to chew and digest them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this isn't a significant amount of calories and I don't expect this to be some miracle weight loss technique. I'm simply interested if the calorie use to actually process food is small enough to let some foods &quot;slip by&quot; calorie wise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1783" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-10T04:47:10.243" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T19:49:50.807" Title="Does the digestion of some foods burn more calories than it supplies?" Tags="|nutrition|energy|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5121" CreationDate="2011-07-08T23:03:03.873" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer is &lt;strong&gt;NO, NOT True.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Straight Dope has a good though un-sourced article on it: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/100/is-it-true-about-catherine-the-great-and-the-horse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/100/is-it-true-about-catherine-the-great-and-the-horse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actual details of death (In bed, after a stroke) can be found, for example, in this book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rounding, Virginia (2007) &quot;Catherine the Great: Love, Sex, and Power&quot; (New York: St. Martin’s Press ISBN 9780312328870), pages 499-502     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason the rumors are easy to believe is that she did, admittedly, lead a very active sexual life, taking many young lovers up to pretty advanced age. Wiki has all the sordid and not so sordid details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="35731" LastEditDate="2016-11-12T14:35:30.550" LastActivityDate="2016-11-12T14:35:30.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5121" CreationDate="2011-07-08T23:07:15.560" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim doesn't seem to have any factual underpinning; none of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&amp;amp;field-keywords=catherine+the+great&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;books about Catherine the Great&lt;/a&gt; support it. While I haven't read any of them, I did read the reviews on Amazon, and none mentioned such an event; some reviewers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R3G9S47RL0NFRS/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;ASIN=0099462346&amp;amp;nodeID=&amp;amp;tag=&amp;amp;linkCode=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;specifically point out&lt;/a&gt; that there are no records of Catherine the Great having equine sex partners.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, a number of other on-line resources discuss this issue, and all come to the same conclusion, that this rumor is false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://europeanhistory.about.com/od/catherinethegreat/a/histmyths1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;europeanhistory.about.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Catherine-Great-Legend-Oxford-Lives/dp/0195061624/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1310164938&amp;amp;sr=1-5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alexander's book&lt;/a&gt; goes on to explain&#xA;  (in paragraphs rarely quoted) how&#xA;  Catherine was laid in her bed as&#xA;  doctors tried to save her body and&#xA;  priests made rites to save her soul.&#xA;  Throughout she was racked with pain,&#xA;  her convulsing appearance causing&#xA;  great distress to her consorts. It was&#xA;  over twelve hours after Zotov found&#xA;  her, well past nine o'clock at night,&#xA;  that &lt;strong&gt;Catherine finally died of natural&#xA;  causes, in bed and surrounded by&#xA;  friends and carers&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/100/is-it-true-about-catherine-the-great-and-the-horse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The simple answer to your question is&#xA;  no, the rumor is not true. However,&#xA;  that won't stop us from repeating the&#xA;  rumor, to wit: that Catherine the&#xA;  Great, empress of Russia in the latter&#xA;  part of the 18th century, was crushed&#xA;  to death when attendants lost their&#xA;  grip on ropes supporting a horse that&#xA;  was being lowered on her for, ah,&#xA;  sexual purposes. This is without doubt&#xA;  the most outrageous story I heard&#xA;  during my entire college career, which&#xA;  is when you usually come across these&#xA;  historical tidbits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The boring truth is this: &lt;strong&gt;Catherine&#xA;  the Great died of a stroke while&#xA;  sitting on the commode in the palace&#xA;  at St. Petersburg.&lt;/strong&gt; Another less&#xA;  commonly circulated rumor has it that&#xA;  Catherine was so grossly fat (true in&#xA;  itself) that she broke the commode and&#xA;  died of blood loss from resultant&#xA;  injuries, but this is regarded as a&#xA;  fabrication also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/risque/animals/catherine.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Catherine the Great actually expired&#xA;  alone and of natural causes.&lt;/strong&gt; On the&#xA;  morning of 5 November 1796, Catherine&#xA;  arose, drank coffee, and sat down to&#xA;  write. About three hours later her&#xA;  chamberlain, curious that he had not&#xA;  been summoned as usual, found her&#xA;  barely conscious on the floor of a&#xA;  closet adjacent to her bedroom. As her&#xA;  servant summoned help, Catherine&#xA;  lapsed into unconsciousness from which&#xA;  she never awakened and died at 9:45 PM&#xA;  the next day. &lt;strong&gt;An autopsy conducted the&#xA;  next day determined the cause of death&#xA;  to be a cerebral hemorrhage.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is safe to conclude that there is not a single speck of truth in the assertion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="36019" LastEditDate="2020-03-27T21:27:38.357" LastActivityDate="2020-03-27T21:27:38.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5122" CreationDate="2011-07-08T23:36:57.933" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be some evidence to support it: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/celery.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes.com&lt;/a&gt; claims most of the benefit comes from the energy used trying to digest what is largely cellulose; it suggests that chewing has little impact on energy use.  It also states that while eating celery you are not eating something else (though I would have thought that that depends on how it is prepared and presented);&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2507/does-chewing-celery-consume-more-calories-than-it-provides&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; takes this second point further, showing that the time taken to eat celery involves more calorie expenditure (from being alive) than the usable calories in the celery.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it depends on what you regard as negative-calorie food. Cold water, since the body has to heat it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-07-08T23:36:57.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5115" CreationDate="2011-07-09T00:52:55.280" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can martial artists strengthen limbs, appendages, and other parts of their bodies to “super-human” degrees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends how you define 'super-human'. If you mean 'abnormal' or 'super-normal', then yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.ca/search?q=high+impact+bone+density&quot;&gt;It is well-known&lt;/a&gt; that 'high impact' exercises increase, for example, bone density: which makes the bones stronger i.e. less prone to fracture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of 'high impact' training for a martial artist include and kicking things (e.g, hitting '&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punching_bag&quot;&gt;punching bags&lt;/a&gt;').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reference ... &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yENNqRJ2mu0&quot;&gt;National Geographic video - &quot;hard body training&quot;&lt;/a&gt; - illustrates &quot;Wolff's law&quot; and its  implication for striking in martial art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: someone should add a reference to 'load bearing' exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2011-07-12T03:50:31.033" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T03:50:31.033" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3235" CreationDate="2011-07-09T10:42:15.847" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/3242/23&quot;&gt;Chris Dennet's answer&lt;/a&gt; is a bit misleading, and I would like to see quoted sections for such a complex question rather than some lonely links. In my opinion, there is &lt;strong&gt;no direct link between fMRI signal and neuronal activity&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked for research on the changes of brain activity (sleep, resting, cognitive tasks...) and overall energy consumption of the brain. I found two very good articles putting your question into a bigger picture, quite academically written, but they focus on the statements concerning energy consumption. The articles also discuss what actually can be derived from brain imaging data (fMRI, PET) and how higher conscious brain functions relate to physiological changes measured by these techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic conclusion is that &lt;strong&gt;the brain doesn't vary its energy consumption much, whether resting, tasked&lt;/strong&gt;. In fact, it needs high average activity (high metabolism, energy consumption) to make specific functionality possible at all. So it's not like a computer where you start a program (analogous to higher conscious brain function, e.g. playing chess) and then the processor and memory consumption rises. Instead, the energy consumption is already and constantly on a high average level, otherwise the operating system (brain) couldn't run distinct software (function) at all.**&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've quoted the most important parts, but both articles give a pretty good overview and draw the bigger picture around your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;brain represents about 2% of the body&#xA;weight. Remarkably, despite its&#xA;relatively small size, the brain&#xA;accounts for about 20% of the oxygen&#xA;and, hence, calories consumed by the&#xA;body. This &lt;strong&gt;high rate of metabolism&#xA;is remarkably constant despite widely&#xA;varying mental and motoric activity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;showing that the maximum values of&#xA;oxygen consumption and spike frequency&#xA;achieved during stimulation were&#xA;approximately the same from both&#xA;baselines (i.e., both levels of&#xA;anesthesia). The authors assert that&#xA;an &lt;strong&gt;overall level of ongoing activity&#xA;must be achieved for a particular&#xA;function to occur&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;strong&gt;high metabolic activity is&#xA;present when we are completely passive&#xA;and resting as well as when we are&#xA;observably doing something&lt;/strong&gt;. Two lines&#xA;of investigation have recently&#xA;converged in their analysis on how&#xA;this energy is being used. Both have&#xA;focused on the metabolic requirements&#xA;associated with glutamate signaling in&#xA;the brain. This focus would seem&#xA;reasonable, considering that greater&#xA;than 80% of neurons are excitatory and&#xA;greater than 90% of synapses release&#xA;glutamate (6, 7). Attwell and Laughlin&#xA;(8) have taken a bottom up modeling&#xA;approach using extant data on the&#xA;blowfly retina and the mammalian&#xA;cerebral cortex. &lt;strong&gt;Estimates from their&#xA;approach indicate that most of the&#xA;energy used in the brain is required&#xA;for the propagation of action&#xA;potentials and for restoring&#xA;postsynaptic ion fluxes after&#xA;receptors have been stimulated by the&#xA;neurotransmitter&lt;/strong&gt;. In contrast,&#xA;maintenance of the resting potential&#xA;in neurons and glial cells accounts&#xA;for less than 15% of the total energy&#xA;consumption. &lt;strong&gt;Shulman and his&#xA;colleagues (9, 10) in a very different&#xA;approach using MRS in anesthetized&#xA;rats have shown remarkably converging&#xA;evidence that a very large fraction&#xA;(≈80%) of the energy use in the brain&#xA;is correlated with glutamate cycling&#xA;and, hence, active signaling processes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An intriguing hypothesis has emerged&#xA;that the &lt;strong&gt;responsiveness of neurons to&#xA;changes in their input depends on a&#xA;continuous, high-level but balanced&#xA;input of both excitatory and&#xA;inhibitory activity&lt;/strong&gt; (for review, see&#xA;ref. 29). Importantly, it is the&#xA;balance between this continuous&#xA;excitatory and inhibitory input that&#xA;determines the gain or responsiveness&#xA;of the neurons to correlations in&#xA;their input. In this formulation,&#xA;spontaneous &lt;strong&gt;ongoing activity becomes a&#xA;critical enabling factor in the&#xA;creation of functional connections&#xA;within circuits responsible for&#xA;specific behaviors&lt;/strong&gt;. Furthermore, this&#xA;correlation-induced functional&#xA;connectivity can be modified without&#xA;causing variations in the mean firing&#xA;rates of the involved cells. As&#xA;Salinas and Sejnowski have pointed out&#xA;in their review (29), balanced neurons&#xA;have rich dynamics and can react to&#xA;external stimuli on effective&#xA;timescales that are much smaller than&#xA;the membrane time constant of a single&#xA;neuron.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how might this relate to our&#xA;analysis of the energy budget of the&#xA;brain? It should be noted that most of&#xA;the neurophysiology discussed above&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;concerns synaptic activity at the&#xA;input to neurons. Because the highest&#xA;energy-demanding processes in the&#xA;brain are centered at these sites (27,&#xA;28), it suggests that much of the&#xA;ongoing or baseline metabolism is&#xA;devoted to processes occurring there.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;We might therefore posit that, in the&#xA;brain, a large majority of its&#xA;metabolic activity is devoted to&#xA;ongoing synaptic processes associated&#xA;with maintaining a proper balance&#xA;between excitatory and inhibitory&#xA;activity. Maintenance of this balance&#xA;allows neurons to respond&#xA;appropriately to correlational changes&#xA;in their input and establish the&#xA;functional connectivity as required&#xA;for a particular task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, we may entertain the possibility&#xA;that the very high baseline or ongoing&#xA;metabolic activity of the brain not&#xA;only supports processes necessary for&#xA;the maintenance of the proper&#xA;responsiveness of neurons for the&#xA;transient and ever changing functions&#xA;of the brain but also instantiates a&#xA;sustained functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/99/16/10237.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, relative to the high rate of&#xA;ongoing or “basal” brain metabolism,6&#xA;the &lt;strong&gt;amount dedicated to task-evoked&#xA;regional imaging signals is remarkably&#xA;small (estimated to be less than 5%)&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;The brain continuously expends a&#xA;considerable amount of energy, even in&#xA;the absence of a particular task&#xA;(i.e., when a subject is awake and at&#xA;rest). A significant fraction of the&#xA;energy consumed by the brain (quite&#xA;possibly the majority) has been shown&#xA;to be a result of functionally&#xA;significant spontaneous neuronal&#xA;activity.7 From this cost-based&#xA;analysis of brain functional activity,&#xA;it seems reasonable to conclude that&#xA;intrinsic activity may be as&#xA;significant, if not more so, than&#xA;evoked activity in terms of overall&#xA;brain function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2855379/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3194" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T01:35:59.040" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5130" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-09T11:15:01.817" Score="8" ViewCount="967" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that fruits and vegetable have much more vitamins when we eat them in normal way (biting) then when we use juicer and drink only the juice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that juice from fresh fruit and vegetable is less quality and most of the healthy material is solid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What percent of the vitamins, enzymes and other healthy stuff will end in the garden as compost after juicing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to juice apples, oranges, carrot, broccoli and red beet most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thank you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2103" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-23T05:56:20.830" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T05:56:20.830" Title="Do juicers preserve the nutritional quality of fruit and vegetables?" Tags="|nutrition|consumer-products|cooking|fruit|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5119" CreationDate="2011-07-09T17:58:50.477" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Entropy and Variance are different kind of quantities. Variance is a quantity to describe mathematically the fluctuation of a distribution of measurement values for e.g. Temperature. Temperature is thermodynamical linked to Entropy of a System (defined by the probabilistic model of a distinct system). Entropy is physcial prinicple and used in climate modeling to rule out distinct unphysical/unlikely scenarios. Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/a1073p1051357517/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Paywall) article&lt;/a&gt; using a &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/pdf/1104.0265&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;maximum entropy method&lt;/a&gt; to calculate local climate annual cycle. AFAIK this method plays no important role in several current IPCC climate models. But some do write papers &amp;amp; blogs about it, judge yourself if its a discussion or monolog ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But IMO your question basically is, will the variance of global average temperature development be higher than in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qEVhs.png&quot; alt=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Warming_Predictions.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This past-future prediction of global average temperature shows imo the answer. If you compare the fluctuations of the average temperature of the red lines in past and future, you cant make up a big difference despite it gets hotter. These models are based on calculations and assumptions how climate parameters will develop in future (economic growth, environmental changes,...). Also climate can become less predictable (doesnt have to mean less irregular!), which would mean, the variance between different climate model scenarious inreases, as models are based on physics of deterministic chaos (e.g. additional physical processes, new environment influencing technologies). The more unknown parameter, the less predictable these model calculations get of course. But for a single line (model) in the picture there is no much bigger fluctuation of the average global temperature (e.g. no sinus like cycles) despite the rising trend. Interesting would be how variance of global avg. temp. relates to 0-1900 but this is outside data and simulation capabilities to make senseful comparisons&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beside this you have to distinguish between climate and local weather. Weather will actually become more irregular in sense of more or stronger &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_impacts_of_climate_change#Weather&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;extreme weather&lt;/a&gt;. Here is a scientific consensus by a majority&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3194" LastActivityDate="2011-07-09T17:58:50.477" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5133" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5163" CreationDate="2011-07-09T20:40:36.877" Score="25" ViewCount="12391" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard there are more Chinese who speak English than there are Americans who speak English. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3849" LastActivityDate="2021-03-03T16:33:34.877" Title="Are there more English speaking people in China than in the USA?" Tags="|language|china|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5144" CreationDate="2011-07-09T21:00:38.253" Score="19" ViewCount="1318" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that people look up and to the left if they are not truthful, and up and to the right if they are telling the truth. Is there any truth to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3849" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2011-07-10T10:56:06.450" LastActivityDate="2018-10-02T22:43:01.060" Title="Is it possible to determine if a person is telling the truth by which direction they look?" Tags="|psychology|behavior|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5135" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5140" CreationDate="2011-07-09T21:21:07.593" Score="24" ViewCount="4048" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.captcha.net/&quot;&gt;CAPTCHA&lt;/a&gt; website says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...humans can read distorted text as the one shown below, but current computer programs can't...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this technique is widely used, and that this &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; indicate that they are indeed effective, however visual analysis is an extremely advanced field, and so when recently filling one of these challenges out, I became curious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, at work our manufacturing plants have cameras/software that can scan items going by at thousands of parts per minute and correct for printing or packaging offsets down to &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; small discrepancies. These things are &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; accurate, and do what they do at &lt;em&gt;ridiculous&lt;/em&gt; speeds.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://new.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/&quot;&gt;WhatTheFont&lt;/a&gt; where you can upload a picture of sample text, and some sort of algorithm will try and match what font it used.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://zbar.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;Zbar&lt;/a&gt; software can take an image file of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code&quot;&gt;QR Code&lt;/a&gt; and output the decoded information. I used this just last week and was surprised that the command line took an image &lt;em&gt;file&lt;/em&gt; (not an image as seen through a camera) as the input.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__XcgKOyf_8#t=2m10s&quot;&gt;iNote pen&lt;/a&gt; manufacturer claim to be able to convert handwriting to text as you write.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... can no image recognition software, analysis algorithm, etc. actually detect, read and/or interpret a CAPTCHA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; In response to @Christian, I guess the type/variant of CAPTCHA needs to be specified. I wasn't aware of this. Perhaps using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/recaptcha/whyrecaptcha&quot;&gt;reCAPTCHA&lt;/a&gt; project would suffice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way of approaching this would be to rephrase like so: &quot;&lt;em&gt;Are there any known instances of some type of system being able to interpret the primary CAPTCHAs mentioned on the official site?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A free, secure and accessible CAPTCHA implementation is available from the reCAPTCHA project. Easy to install plugins and controls are available for WordPress, MediaWiki, PHP, ASP.NET, Perl, Python, Java, and many other environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T01:37:53.960" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T13:10:30.623" Title="Can CAPTCHA images be read automatically?" Tags="|computers|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5137" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-09T22:21:28.290" Score="5" ViewCount="854" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/490/if-you-shave-or-wax-your-legs-will-the-hair-grow-stronger-thicker-or-similar&quot;&gt;If you shave or wax, will the hair grow back stronger or thicker?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of my friends seem to have the same impression. Shaving daily your face seems to make hair grow faster compared to shave it only every 3-4 days. Is this kind of self-deception (short hair grows nonlinearly faster then longer one) and if thats the case, is there a psychology term for this phenomenon. Or do pre and after shave chemicals maybe have a influence on hair growth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3194" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-07-10T13:38:16.980" Title="Does shaving your beard more frequently make it grow faster?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2011-07-10T13:36:56.483" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5135" CreationDate="2011-07-10T01:42:53.713" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is &lt;strong&gt;yes, computers can read CAPTCHAs.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as mentioned on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAPTCHA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;, in most papers/articles discussing this issue, and in the comments above, it depends very much on the CAPTCHA and the algorithm used - some are easy to decode, and other are very hard ( no solutions exist so far ). Font detection is useful for simple CAPTCHAs, but characters can be deformed ( or the image altered ) in ways that render font irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;reCAPTCHA is discussed in &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/448963/has-recaptcha-been-cracked-hacked-ocrd-defeated-broken&quot;&gt;this stackoverflow question&lt;/a&gt;, the accepted answer providing a link to site that claims to decode reCAPTCHAs - but it is offline now. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/448963/has-recaptcha-been-cracked-hacked-ocrd-defeated-broken/801565#801565&quot;&gt;second answer&lt;/a&gt; is more informative, mentioning the manipulation of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1894028,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;third annual TIME 100 poll&lt;/a&gt; by the infamous Anonymous. &lt;a href=&quot;http://musicmachinery.com/2009/04/27/moot-wins-time-inc-loses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's&lt;/a&gt; a full description of the operation; the salient points being that The Times employed reCAPTCHA after realizing a subversion attempt is under way, which forced Anonymous to vote in an almost brute-force manner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Update – Just to be perfectly clear,&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;anon didn’t hack reCAPTCHA. It did&#xA;  exactly what it was supposed to do. It&#xA;  shut down the auto voters instantly&#xA;  and effectively.&lt;/strong&gt; The only option left&#xA;  after Time added reCAPTCHA to the poll&#xA;  was a brute force attack.    Ben&#xA;  Maurer,  (chief engineer on reCAPTCHA)&#xA;  comments on the hack: “reCAPTCHA put&#xA;  up a hard to break barrier that forced&#xA;  the attackers to spend hundreds of&#xA;  hours to obtain a relatively small&#xA;  number of votes. reCAPTCHA prevented&#xA;  numerous would-be attackers from&#xA;  engaging in an attack. In any&#xA;  high-profile system, it’s important to&#xA;  implement reCAPTCHA as part of a&#xA;  larger defense-in-depth strategy”.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  As Dr. von Ahn points out  “&lt;strong&gt;had Time&#xA;  used reCAPTCHA from the beginning,&#xA;  this would have never happened — anon&#xA;  submitted &lt;em&gt;tens of millions&lt;/em&gt; of votes&#xA;  before Time added reCAPTCHA, but they&#xA;  were only able to submit ~200k&#xA;  afterwards. And to do this, they had&#xA;  to resort to typing the CAPTCHAs by&#xA;  hand!&lt;/strong&gt;” One thing that Time inc. did&#xA;  that made it much easier for the&#xA;  anonymous hack was to allow leave the&#xA;  door open for cross-site request&#xA;  forgeries which allowed anon to create&#xA;  a streamlined poll  that never had to&#xA;  fetch data from Time.com.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They did, however, manage to significantly optimize the process, but that is outside the scope of this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another interesting aspect is mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/448963/has-recaptcha-been-cracked-hacked-ocrd-defeated-broken/567785#567785&quot;&gt;another answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adaptive Security&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;reCAPTCHA is a Web service. That means&#xA;  that all the images are generated and&#xA;  graded by our servers. In addition to&#xA;  the convenience that this provides&#xA;  (you don't have to run costly image&#xA;  generation scripts on your own&#xA;  servers), this also provides an extra&#xA;  level of protection: &lt;strong&gt;our CAPTCHAs can&#xA;  be automatically updated whenever a&#xA;  security vulnerability is found.&lt;/strong&gt; For&#xA;  example, if somebody writes a program&#xA;  that can read our distorted images, we&#xA;  can add more distortions in very&#xA;  little time, and without Web masters&#xA;  having to change anything on their&#xA;  side. This is significantly more&#xA;  secure (and convenient) than having to&#xA;  re-install a CAPTCHA every time a&#xA;  vulnerability is found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably true of most CAPTCHA web services - it is much easier to change the CAPTCHA generating algorithms, then it is for hackers to crack them - other methods would yield better results, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluehatseo.com/creating-an-army-of-free-captcha-typers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;crowdsourcing to China&lt;/a&gt;, or trying to &lt;a href=&quot;http://vorm.net/captchas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hack the audio CAPTCHA&lt;/a&gt;, where available. But a good CAPTCHA has to be readable by humans - which limits the amount of obfuscation that can be employed; a researcher seems to have been able to break reCAPTCHA in 2010, with a success rate of 30%; here's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.darkreading.com/authentication/167901072/security/vulnerabilities/226700514/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;, and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLgvrsAoPeE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt;; however, reCAPTCHA seems to have fixed the implementation since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;reCAPTCHA has also allegedly been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/01/12/vbulletin-forums-hit-by-recaptcha-cracking-spam-bot/?DCMP=NLC-Newsletters#ixzz1AuRKe1mu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cracked&lt;/a&gt; in February 2011, but no evidence was provided to back the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted, however, that some popular web sites still use 'broken' CAPTCHAS; for example, PayPals CAPTCHAs can be read by &lt;a href=&quot;http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/PWNtcha&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PWNtcha&lt;/a&gt;, a program that hasn't been updated for three years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:24.653" LastActivityDate="2011-07-10T01:42:53.713" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5141" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8691" CreationDate="2011-07-10T04:05:56.823" Score="9" ViewCount="1203" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it realistic to suppose an alien civilisation 60 light-years away could now be receiving tv transmissions of &quot;I Love Lucy&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space.com/2533-listening-ets-television.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; site says emphatically not, but my brother say ET could easily do it if he wanted to. Please settle the argument, somebody!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ADDED 11th July: Just to clarify, my brother is prepared to assume ET's detection facilities could be &lt;em&gt;incredibly&lt;/em&gt; good (i.e. - receiver array as wide as a planet or larger, focussed exactly on the earth), and almost infinite processing power to separate signal from noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the question comes down to whether there's some upper limit on how close ET would need to be, before 'background noise' would overwhelm any feasible attempt at detection. I don't know enough about information theory to even know whether such a limit can be proven to exist, let alone whether it can be calculated to an actual value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="942" LastEditorUserId="942" LastEditDate="2011-07-21T23:39:28.110" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T19:59:22.753" Title="Is ET watching &quot;I Love Lucy&quot; right now?" Tags="|physics|aliens|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2080" CreationDate="2011-07-10T05:49:20.953" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the case for the affirmative, I'd submit an academic paper presented to a 1977 conference of the Printing Industry Research Association&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pira-international.com/About-us.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.pira-international.com/About-us.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;by Lillian Malt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.maltron.com/lillian-malt-papers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.maltron.com/lillian-malt-papers.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the first page she states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;One piece of equipment which is universally recognised as being ill-fitted to human operation is the ubiquitous typewriter keyboard. The standard Sholes-designed keyboard with its QWERTY letter layout, must be one of the very few pieces of equipment which has entirely resisted improvements, which could and should have been made to complement our advancing technological ability.&#xA;It has been said of the Sholes letter layout that it would probably have been chosen if the objective was to find the least efficient—in terms of learning time and speed achievable—and the most error producing character arrangement. This is not surprising when one considers that &lt;strong&gt;a team of people spent one year developing this layout so that it should provide the greatest inhibition to fast keying&lt;/strong&gt;. This was no Machiavellian plot, but necessary because the mechanism of the early typewriters required slow&#xA;operation.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3978" LastEditorUserId="42412" LastEditDate="2017-10-30T23:19:25.693" LastActivityDate="2017-10-30T23:19:25.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5141" CreationDate="2011-07-10T08:36:22.200" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Transmission of uncollimated TV and radio background signals seems to die out after 1 lightyear&#xA;source:http://www.davidbrin.com/SKEPTICcontactperils.pdf&#xA;first page, second paragrph&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1300" LastActivityDate="2011-07-10T08:36:22.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5144" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5134" CreationDate="2011-07-10T10:34:10.970" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are probably talking about &lt;strong&gt;eye accessing cue&lt;/strong&gt; of &lt;strong&gt;NLP&lt;/strong&gt; (Neuro-Linguistic Programming).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NLP&lt;/strong&gt; is a &lt;strong&gt;pseudo-science&lt;/strong&gt; and many skeptics &amp;amp; experts &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming#Scientific_criticism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;expressed their opinion in various documents&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Criticisms about NLP commonly mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a pseudo-science (no scientific proof provided)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It references outdated theories &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It uses manipulation and misinterpretation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may be sectarian in some cases&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NLP is a huge success because it makes people believe they will be able to control others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I firmly believe NLP is a huge &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zimbio.com/Neuro-linguistic+programming/articles/SFHxUaZ_h5v/NLP+PSEUDO+SCIENCE+FAKE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;brainscam&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pseudo-sciences.org/spip.php?article153&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Christian Balicco's article in French&lt;/a&gt; (translatable using Google). Christian has a PhD in Psychology and is a member of the American Psychological Association. He wrote another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prevensectes.com/pnl1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; published on an anti sectarian website.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NLP &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.miviludes.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/MILS_Rapport_2001_fr.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;listed as a sectarian organisation&lt;/a&gt; in an anti-sectarian association report.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/neurolin.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Detailed description&lt;/a&gt; from Skeptic's Dictionary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interview of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.presentationworks.me/index.php/2009/11/mehrabian-on-the-myth/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Albert Mehrabian&lt;/a&gt; about misinterpretation body language formula.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0471983039&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mind Myths&lt;/a&gt;: Exploring Popular Assumptions About the Mind and Brain (book)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1405174021&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Teaching Critical Thinking in Psychology&lt;/a&gt;: A Handbook of Best Practices (NLP is used here to describe what a pseudoscience is for undergraduates in Psychology)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3979" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditorDisplayName="user3979" LastEditDate="2018-10-02T22:43:01.060" LastActivityDate="2018-10-02T22:43:01.060" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5141" CreationDate="2011-07-10T11:07:14.410" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Since the link in the question actually gives a good answer I'll use it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seti.org/shostak&quot;&gt;Seth Shostak&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;SETI&lt;/strong&gt; Institute), via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space.com/2533-listening-ets-television.html&quot;&gt;Space.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The first episode of &quot;I Love Lucy&quot; was&#xA;  broadcast sometime on October 15,&#xA;  1951.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[The signal] is still going. Every day, that&#xA;  first installment passes through an&#xA;  additional 4 thousand trillion&#xA;  trillion trillion cubic kilometers of&#xA;  the cosmos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given that stars in our galactic&#xA;  neighborhood are separated by about 4&#xA;  light-years, it's easy to figure that&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;roughly 10 thousand star systems have&#xA;  been exposed to &quot;I Love Lucy&quot; in the&#xA;  past five decades&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That may suggest a&#xA;  high Nielson rating, but &lt;strong&gt;the chance&#xA;  that extraterrestrials are now hooked&#xA;  on 1950s television is low.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Imagine that there are alien couch&#xA;  potatoes 55 light-years away&lt;/strong&gt; who,&#xA;  bored with their own Fall lineup, have&#xA;  constructed a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lofar.org/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LOFAR&lt;/a&gt;-style antenna&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;a telescope consisting&#xA;  of 25 thousand tent-shaped antennas&#xA;  spread across Holland and Germany&lt;/em&gt;) in&#xA;  hopes of picking up &quot;I Love Lucy's&quot;&#xA;  debut. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OK, &lt;strong&gt;how strong is that signal by the&#xA;  time it reaches our putative alien&#xA;  audience at 55 light-years distance?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not very. The megawatt broadcast&#xA;  washes over ET's world with a power&#xA;  density of about &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;0.3 million million&#xA;  million million millionths of a watt&#xA;  per square meter&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;which is not exactly&#xA;  a scorching signal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Could their LOFAR-style antenna find&#xA;  that carrier, thereby indicating that&#xA;  a program was on the air? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well,&#xA;  engineers have computed that at the&#xA;  frequency of VHF television, LOFAR&#xA;  will have an effective collecting area&#xA;  similar to that of the 305-meter&#xA;  diameter Arecibo antenna in Puerto&#xA;  Rico.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That's big. That's brawny. But not&#xA;  brawny enough. In our SETI experiments&#xA;  at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory&quot;&gt;Arecibo&lt;/a&gt;, we could find a signal if&#xA;  it were about &lt;em&gt;0.1 million million&#xA;  million millionths of a watt per&#xA;  square meter&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That number, you will&#xA;  notice if you count up the words, is a&#xA;  million times bigger than the &quot;I Love&#xA;  Lucy&quot; carrier at 55 light-years. &lt;strong&gt;The&#xA;  aliens' LOFAR would be inadequate to&#xA;  detect the broadcast by a factor of a&#xA;  million&lt;/strong&gt;, a not entirely negligible&#xA;  amount. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simply stated: LOFAR couldn't&#xA;  hear it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LOFAR would only be able to find TV&#xA;  signals comparable to ours from a&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;distance of much less than one&#xA;  light-year!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computing.edu.au/~bvk/astronomy/HET608/essay/&quot;&gt;Radio Leakage: Is anybody listening?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hypothetically, &lt;strong&gt;assume that the&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory&quot;&gt;Arecibo telescope&lt;/a&gt; was put on the back&#xA;  of a starship making its way into deep&#xA;  space.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If it was possible to point the&#xA;  telescope back towards Earth, &lt;strong&gt;how far&#xA;  could the starship travel and still be&#xA;  able to detect terrestrial&#xA;  electromagnetic radiation&lt;/strong&gt; leaking into&#xA;  space?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neglecting atmospheric effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;An AM radio broadcast could only be&#xA;  detected out to 0.0074 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_unit&quot;&gt;Astronomical&#xA;  Units&lt;/a&gt; (AU).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;FM Radio could be&#xA;  detected out to 5.4 AU.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A 5 Megawatt&#xA;  UHF television picture could be&#xA;  detected out to 2.5 AU&lt;/strong&gt;, although the&#xA;  carrier wave could be detected much&#xA;  further; out to 0.3 light years.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecalculatorsite.com/conversions/length/light-years-to-astronomical-units.php&quot;&gt;1 light year ~ 63,000 AU&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://setifaq.org/faq.html#1.2.3&quot;&gt;SETI FAQ&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Detection of broadband signals from&#xA;  Earth such as AM radio,&#xA;             FM radio, and television picture and sound would be&#xA;             extremely difficult even at a fraction of a light-year&#xA;             distant from the Sun.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;strong&gt;a TV picture having 5&#xA;             MHz of bandwidth and 5 MWatts of power could not be detected&#xA;             beyond the solar system even with a radio telescope with 100&#xA;             times the sensitivity of the 305 meter diameter Arecibo&#xA;             telescope.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-01/scientists-warn-invisible-earth-hostile-ets-cambridge-alien-conference&quot;&gt;PopSci&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Frank Drake, the father of SETI,&#xA;  worried that the switch from analog&#xA;  television and radio signals to&#xA;  digital cable and satellite radio&#xA;  would render Earth invisible to aliens&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  looking for other life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... as more and more people&#xA;  receive their media beamed down to&#xA;  them from digital satellites, not up&#xA;  to them from analog radio towers, that&#xA;  signal slowly fades away, drastically&#xA;  reducing the chance that aliens might&#xA;  detect our tiny blue rock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/jan/27/aliens-cant-hear-us-astronomer&quot;&gt;Guardian - Aliens can't hear us&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7544915.stm&quot;&gt;BBC - Can our TV signals be picked up on other planets?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-07-10T17:36:47.757" LastActivityDate="2011-07-10T17:36:47.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5134" CreationDate="2011-07-10T11:26:12.477" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Richard Bandler and John Grinder proposed in &lt;em&gt;Frog into Princes&lt;/em&gt; that the direction in which people look when they access information has something to do with the mental processes that they use to access the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposed that subjects look instinctively to their right when they construct a new mental image but look to their left when they remember something. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They propose the principle as a general rule but at the same time assert that there are individuals differences between people. An NLP practitioner is supposed to look whether the rule applies to a certain individual at certain question where he knows that the person remembers something to calibrate to the specific individual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NLP practitioners are supposed to train their calibration skills through practice. As far as I know there are no studies that investigate whether trained NLP practictioners can use the eye accessing cues to infer something about the mental state of another person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kevin Hogan did an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kevinhogan.com/NLPeyeaccess.htm&quot;&gt;experiment&lt;/a&gt; in which he tried to test his interpretation of NLP's eye accessing cues. He found that eye accessing cues didn't work the way he saw them portrayed in the NLP literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NLP practitioners on the other hand assert that Hogan's experiment tested a misunderstanding of their eye accessing cues concept.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case it isn't as simple as having a straightforward rule that you precisely whether the other person is lying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2011-07-10T11:26:12.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5148" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5275" CreationDate="2011-07-10T14:44:54.667" Score="45" ViewCount="6076" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of the advocates of school uniforms claim that uniforms for students in K-12 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-467353/School-uniform-improves-pupils-behaviour-school.html&quot;&gt;reduce behavior problems such as bullying&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What evidence exists to support or contradict these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it's fair to say that students are less likely to be bullied on the basis of clothing when everyone wears the same thing. But does overall bullying reduce with uniforms in the absence of any other changes? How about other behavioral or academic changes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="677" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:14:06.847" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T14:04:45.583" Title="Do school uniforms improve student behavior?" Tags="|education|children|clothing|causality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5151" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-10T22:39:03.537" Score="15" ViewCount="533" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine said that he could apparently get better mileage using Chevron oil instead of Shell's (and other brands). Is there any substance to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2495" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T17:55:37.170" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T11:03:36.247" Title="Does the gasoline of different gasoline brands have any real acknowledgable difference?" Tags="|road-vehicles|gasoline|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2080" CreationDate="2011-07-11T00:55:17.477" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ooo oo, I know this one! The answer: sorta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sholes’s first keyboard used piano keys in a single row, with the letters in alphabetical order. But he was soon forced to change that arrangement, because his type bars responded sluggishly. When he struck one key soon after another, the second key’s type bar jammed the first bar before the first could fall back, and the first letter was printed again. Key jamming was still an occasional problem some 80 years later, when I had chicken pox, but at least by then the type bars struck the paper from the front side, so you could immediately see what was happening and separate the keys with your fingers. Alas, with Sholes’s machine and most other typewriters until the early part of the century, the type bars struck the invisible rear side of the paper, and you didn’t know the bars had jammed until you pulled out the page and saw that you had typed 26 lines of uninterrupted E’s instead of the Gettysburg Address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To overcome the problem of invisible jamming, Sholes applied antiengineering principles with the goal of slowing down the typist and thus preventing the second bar from jamming the falling first bar. At that time, modern typing speeds were not yet a goal. The idea of eight-finger touch typing was still unknown. Typists rummaged around with one or two fingers while looking at the keyboard, and Sholes was ecstatic if the resulting typing rate reached a measly 20 or 30 words per minute, the rate of writing by hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://discovermagazine.com/1997/apr/thecurseofqwerty1099/article_view?b_start:int=2&amp;amp;-C=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://discovermagazine.com/1997/apr/thecurseofqwerty1099/article_view?b_start:int=2&amp;amp;-C=&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2080/was-the-qwerty-keyboard-layout-designed-to-slow-down-typists/2081#2081&quot;&gt;ndefontenay&lt;/a&gt;, however, makes a point I hadn't thought of before. Sholes' alterations would have the net effect of &lt;em&gt;speeding up&lt;/em&gt; typing since, as pointed out above, a jam on a mechanical typewriter is very costly. Think of it as the difference between running and walking; sure, you can move a lot faster in the short term if you sprint, but over a long haul walking will get you there faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, QWERTY was developed to be the fastest keyboard layout... for an 1870's Remington typewriter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more useful question is if QWERTY is slower on modern keyboards. Since that's off-topic, I'll only link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/8/28/21547/2069&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;my propaganda&lt;/a&gt; on that subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3987" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T00:55:17.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5155" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5164" CreationDate="2011-07-11T02:35:35.437" Score="6" ViewCount="902" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a dietitian tell me that I should never buy vitamins from places like Walmart, Walgreens, or similar stores because the potency is never guaranteed.  She said that the potency greatly varies from pill to pill and sometimes is only 25% as potent as listed on the label.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She directed me to online stores that sell awfully expensive vitamins that &quot;guarantee&quot; the potency.  I checked the nutritional labels between both the Walmart and &quot;designer&quot; brands and they both have the exact same dosage per pill, the only difference is brand and price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her claim is that I'm simply wasting money on these generic vitamins and I am simply taking a pill that mainly contains inert ingredients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I worked in the breakfast foods industry for a few years and I know that the FDA would be all over us if we lied on our product labels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that the generic, cheap vitamins are less potent than more expensive vitamin preparations? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3989" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-07-11T05:54:33.297" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T15:32:08.773" Title="Are &quot;designer&quot; vitamins more potent than &quot;generic&quot; vitamins?" Tags="|medical-science|vitamins|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5156" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-11T03:54:58.477" Score="16" ViewCount="6200" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related&lt;/strong&gt; (slightly): &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3040/rape-in-us-prisons&quot;&gt;Rape in US prisons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two movies I know of, one I recently watched, suggest that if one is going to prison, the best way to survive is to find someone on the first day and beat the hell out of them. The idea is that if others get the idea that you won't go easily, you'll be more likely to be left alone, less likely to be raped, and less likely future target for attack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;del&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kf67tlAtiRY#t=3m15s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;25th hour&lt;/a&gt; (YouTube link that opens right to the quote)&lt;/del&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Update 2018-02:&lt;/strong&gt; video reported as down, and I cannot locate a replacement. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/25th_Hour#Uncle_Nikolai&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Per Wikiquote&lt;/a&gt;, here is the statement from Uncle Nikolai:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is my advice to you: When you get there, figure it out who's who. Find the man nobody's protecting. A man without friends. And beat him until his eyes bleed. Let them think you are little bit crazy, but respectful, too. Respectful of the right men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Office space (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/quotes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt; to imdb list of quotes):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rob Newhouse:&lt;/strong&gt; Conjugal visits? Mmmm. Not that I know of. Y'know, minimum-security prison is no picnic. I have a client in there right now. He says the trick is: kick someone's ass the first day, or become someone's bitch. Then everything will be all right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does this approach give one an advantage in terms of survival and/or not being a target of future assault/rape (I realize that rape apparently isn't &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; common, or as common as it's made out to be, per the related question above)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2018-05-25:&lt;/strong&gt; Ben Barden does not believe movie claims count as specific enough. I don't know what that means, but to populate this with other examples that this is a sufficiently notable claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/39wv0j/they_say_to_beat_someone_up_your_first_day_in/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;They say to beat someone up your first day in prison, but what if you start a fight and lose?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/7scz5e/shocking_prison_secrets_that_noone_tells_you/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shocking prison secrets that no-one tells you&lt;/a&gt; (satire, but contains the claim)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/Should-I-fight-back-in-prison&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Should I fight back in prison?&lt;/a&gt; (granted, not about the &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; day specifically, but aligns heavily with the sentiment of this claim):&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His advice is that yes, it is absolutely critical you fight as hard and viciously as you can the first time you get into a confrontation. It is prison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=435243&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Am i gonna be a target in prison?&lt;/a&gt;. Asked by someone supposedly going to prison:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;also is it true that u are supposed to try to kick someones ass the first day so that no one fucks with you? thats wat every1 has been sayin but honestly i dont know ok thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vulture.com/2014/02/a-letter-from-the-biggest-meanest-looking-guy-in-the-prison-yard-by-erik-voss.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Letter from the Biggest, Meanest-Looking Guy in the Prison Yard, by Erik Voss&lt;/a&gt; (satire, but contains the claim)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That said, coming from the biggest, meanest-looking guy in the prison yard, please, don’t walk up and punch me in the face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that these show the claim is well known enough to exist on this site. It may not be answerable, but it's a claim people make that &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be answered with the right data (which may or may not exist).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2018-05-25T17:50:32.067" LastActivityDate="2018-05-25T17:50:32.067" Title="If one goes to prison, does beating up someone on the first day increase chances of survival?" Tags="|survival|prisoner|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5157" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-11T04:14:04.940" Score="13" ViewCount="3244" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard on some occasions that programs for digital media, such as Adobe Photoshop, embed hidden watermarks in the pictures that make it possible to spot a pirated copy and trace it to the person using that copy. This point typically comes up in discussions &quot;GIMP vs Photoshop&quot; which begin by someone mentioning that GIMP is free, which gets the response that Photoshop could be pirated, which is then shot down by the &quot;they're gonna catch you via the watermarks&quot; answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems plausible to me that this can be done at the technical level, but is it really used in the industry to find and persecute software pirates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T15:49:08.053" Title="Are individual watermarks widely used to fight piracy?" Tags="|software|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5178" CreationDate="2011-07-11T06:58:44.667" Score="70" ViewCount="8697" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I've asked this before but people had troubling separating the question from just the gender pay gap. This is a way I was suggested to ask it, so I am giving it a try)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one can deny the gender pay gap exists, but is it evidence of discrimination? I would like to limit my question to western countries, as the question becomes irrelevant or too complex when looking at countries where gender equality is not a consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to many parties, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gender pay gap has many contributing factors and causes, of which discrimination is only one. According to various groups of activists or protestors the primary reason for the gender pay gap is pay discrimination on the basis of gender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the more simple explanations such as differences in hours worked(men tend to work more hours) and types of jobs(men tend to do more laborious intensive or dangerous jobs) does it still make sense to consider gender pay discrimination a significant factor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that the gender pay gap is only apparently when looking at the entire set of women compared to the entire set of men, regardless of jobs or hours worked. When you look at any specific field men and women earn equivalent wages, based on experience or skills and not gender. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are women with equivalent skills and experience as men being paid less for the same position on a wide enough scale to contribute to the pay gap?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the reason for this would be the anti-discrimination legislation, simply not making it worth it to discriminate with pay based on gender. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is not to deny that discrimination happens, but to say that it happens on a large enough scale to result in the gender pay gap is surely incorrect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is the gender pay gap evidence of discrimination, or simply evidence of a pay gap?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2018-02-05T17:19:53.173" LastActivityDate="2018-02-05T17:19:53.173" Title="Is the gender pay gap evidence of discrimination?" Tags="|economics|gender|discrimination|society|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5113" CreationDate="2011-07-11T07:12:29.553" Score="10" Body="&lt;h3&gt;No hard evidence yet.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/prevention/antioxidants&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Cancer Institute&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considerable laboratory evidence from chemical, cell culture, and animal studies indicates that antioxidants may slow or possibly prevent the development of cancer. However, information from recent clinical trials is less clear. In recent years, large-scale, randomized clinical trials reached inconsistent conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/63/15/4295.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2003 article at the American Association for Cancer Research&lt;/a&gt;, the last part of the abstract states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of antioxidants during cancer therapy is currently a topic of heated debate because of an overall lack of clear research findings. Some data suggest antioxidants can ameliorate toxic side effects of therapy without affecting treatment efficacy, whereas other data suggest antioxidants interfere with radiotherapy or chemotherapy. Overall, examination of the evidence related to potential interactions between ROS and dietary antioxidants and effects on human health indicates that consuming dietary antioxidant supplements has pros and cons for any population and raises numerous questions, issues, and challenges that make this topic a fertile field for future research. Overall, current knowledge makes it premature to generalize and make specific recommendations about antioxidant usage for those at high risk for cancer or undergoing treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T07:12:29.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5133" CreationDate="2011-07-11T10:08:28.713" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to 2010 figures in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (drawn from a variety of sources), the USA is top with India second, Nigeria third and the UK fourth. China is way down in 17th place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;USA - 251,338,301 - 95.81% of the population (age 5+)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;India - 125,226,429 - 11.38% of the population (age 5+)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;China - 10,000,000 - 0.83% of the population (age 5+)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a note that the 10 million figure for China is being used because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The oft-cited figure of 300 million is for &amp;quot;learners.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which it distinguishes from those who are fluent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="38912" LastEditDate="2021-03-03T16:33:34.877" LastActivityDate="2021-03-03T16:33:34.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5159" CreationDate="2011-07-11T10:55:03.273" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As gender roles are strongly tied to culture, it's hard to answer this in absolute terms. It would be hard to even speak about a gender gap in countries like Saudi Arabia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Europe, however, gender equality is the norm. For that reason, the EU considers the gender pay gap a relevant (supernational) subject. &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.136.4054&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Its report&lt;/a&gt; is available, and covers 30 European countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The persistence of the gender pay gap [...] results from direct&#xA;  discrimination against women and structural inequalities, such as&#xA;  segregation in sectors, occupations, and work patterns, access to&#xA;  education and training, biased evaluation and pay systems and&#xA;  stereotypes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T10:55:03.273" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5133" CreationDate="2011-07-11T11:08:44.317" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends what you mean by &quot;speaking English&quot;. There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=433481&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reports that 250-300m Chinese people are&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;learning&lt;/strong&gt; English. However, that doesn't mean that they speak it fluently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just how many millions are there? China’s huge English-knowing population of 200–350 million is often cited as evidence of the language being nativized in the world’s most populous country. We may note, however, that the words user and learner are used interchangeably in reference to its speakers of English. When however the focus is on the nativization of English in China, a country in Kachru’s ‘Expanding Circle’ of Englishes, it is imperative to distinguish between users and learners of the language. Kachru points out that institutionalized varieties of English in Outer Circle countries have four functions: the instrumental, the regulative, the interpersonal, and the imaginative/innovative. For English to perform any such functions, there needs to be a large number of proficient bilingual users of the language – which seems not to be the case in China, where English is primarily learned in the classroom as a foreign language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="22504" LastEditDate="2016-01-18T19:49:13.810" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T19:49:13.810" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5155" CreationDate="2011-07-11T11:11:39.360" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The concept is not entirely a sham. The formal name is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioavailability&quot;&gt;&quot;Bioavailability&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. It doesn't matter how much of a vitamin is present in a pill, when it isn't used by the body. Yet the label lists what's present in the pill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, evolution has made us quite efficient in getting vitamins from food, where they're relatively unavailable because they're locked up inside cells. It would take malice to make pure vitamin C not bio-available. It's a very simple molecule. Vitamin B12 is notorious, on the other hand. It must be actively extracted by your intestines. In that case, pills are still not a good idea: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17959839&quot;&gt;B12 availability is capped per meal.&lt;/a&gt; A high peak (i.e. from a pill) wouldn't be absorbed (low bio-availability) because your body doesn't have the capacity to deal with the excess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T11:11:39.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5165" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-11T12:13:17.433" Score="1" ViewCount="347" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2139/does-pop-soda-pop-cause-osteoporosis&quot;&gt;Does pop/soda pop cause Osteoporosis?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to several studies, drinking carbonated drinks elads to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Osteoporosis&#xA;  According to &quot;Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics,&quot; there exists an association between lowered bone mass density in children and consuming carbonated beverages. These findings apply to both the diet and the regular carbonated cola formulations. Additionally, there is also positive correlation between bone fracture risk in children and carbonated beverage consumption. Carbonated drinks also contribute to bone loss in children. A decreased intake of milk in combination with an increased consumption of soda also contributes to an increase in cases of osteoporosis observed in pediatric medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I drink an absurd amount of sparkling water and wondered if this is building myself up for many issues later in life.  I don't really enjoy tap water so compensate by drinking around 3 litres of sparkling a day, every day, for the past 10 years odd.  I was just told this will lead to calcium stripping of my bones.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2883" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T12:13:17.433" Title="Does drinking sparkling water lead to Osteoporosis?" Tags="|medical-science|water|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2011-07-11T13:46:48.010" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5155" CreationDate="2011-07-11T15:32:08.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As was mentioned in a comment, the FDA does not provide strict regulation of dietary supplements. The FDA allows questionable fillers and binders such as; cork by products, chemical FD&amp;amp;C dyes, sodium benzoate, dextrose, ethycellulose, and propylene glycol to name only a few. These additives, in addition to the quality of the actual desired supplement, may decrease your ability to absorb the vitamin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This impacts the concept of Bioavailability mentioned in @MSalter's answer.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, there are distinct grades of vitamins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hubpages.com/hub/Pharmaceutical-Grade-Vitamins&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pharmaceutical Grade Vitamins&lt;/a&gt; meet the standards set by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pharmacistsguide.blogspot.com/2009/10/pharmaceutical-grade-vitamins-are-they_26.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US Pharmocepia guidelines (USP)&lt;/a&gt; for dissolution of the capsule or tablet.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vitamins that are not identified as Pharmeceutical Grade are typically Food Grade, which merely means that it is safe for human consumption.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The upshot is, you really won't be able to guarantee the purity, strength, quality or identity of the ingredients within an over the counter vitamin supplement whereas pharmaceutical grade vitamins need to contain exactly what they say they contain in the measurements stated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastActivityDate="2011-07-11T15:32:08.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5179" CreationDate="2011-07-11T17:43:57.260" Score="30" ViewCount="62543" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/c1tuM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;pic of this in action&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Image source:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.miniseed.com/2009/01/27/cellphone-keyless-entry&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Miniseed blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard this before and anecdotally have thought I've experienced it working, but I thought I'd ask here. Many years ago, someone told me that putting a car remote (unlock/lock/alarm/auto-start) under my chin would increase the effective range and let me control the car from distances that would not work otherwise. It's pretty easy to find others saying the same (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.robertomazzoni.com/networking/put-the-remote-under-your-chin/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you too far away [sic] from your car and the remote doesn’t lock ro [sic] unlock your doors, try to stick it under your chin and will reach much further. This simple trick can make the difference between having to walk back to your car or stay comfortably where you are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the blog which was the source of the picture (link above):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now one neat trick I knew is that if the car is just out of range of the remote, putting it under your chin while pressing the button will give the remote an extra boost, as your skull will act as an antenna and give you an extra few yards of slack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Will placing a remote under one's chin increase its range?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bonus:&lt;/strong&gt; If so, is the mechanism known?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-01-02T16:10:46.363" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T16:10:46.363" Title="Will putting a car remote under your chin increase its range?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5159" CreationDate="2011-07-11T21:07:47.707" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes it is&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll notice I say it is &lt;em&gt;evidence&lt;/em&gt; of discrimination, not &lt;em&gt;proof&lt;/em&gt; of discrimination. There are studies that show that the gender gap is not only between 'women and men and as a whole', which could as you say be accounted for by other factors, but between women and men even after taking into account a large number of those factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies have been quoted &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/908/are-women-underpaid-relative-to-men&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. A key study is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nywaepcnyc.org/wp-content/themes/redaccent/images/2012/03/SimpleTruthAboutPayGap.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After accounting for college major, occupation, industry, sector, hours worked, workplace flexibility, experience, educational attainment, enrollment status, GPA, institution selectivity, age, race/ethnicity, region, marital status, and number of children, a 5 percent difference in the earnings of male and female college graduates one year after graduation was still unexplained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar analysis of full-time workers 10 years after college graduation found a 12 percent unexplained difference in earnings. [emphasis in original]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence it states that SOME of the pay gap is accounted for by college major, occupation, industry, hours worked, etc. But when these are taken into account, over and above that there is a &lt;strong&gt;part of the pay gap not accounted for by all those things&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it could certainly be that there are other factors, not considered by the study, which accounts for the disparity, though it becomes harder to think of any they haven't considered. It's also possible that the discrimination is 'unconscious', by which I mean that managers promote and reward characteristics that males are more likely to possess (possibly because they are ones they themselves have) without intending to be biased against women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/CP200.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;London School of Economics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-04T01:56:26.307" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5172" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5174" CreationDate="2011-07-11T23:26:13.133" Score="7" ViewCount="3420" Body="&lt;p&gt;The saying that &quot;&lt;em&gt;one rotten apple spoils the bunch&lt;/em&gt;&quot; is typically used as a metaphor to describe how one person with a bad attitude or dissenting opinion can turn others to his/her side. Also more recently, the phrase &quot;Bad Apple&quot; pops up in reference to Apple the company (as anyone who's ever been embarrassed by the auto-correct feature will tell you), but is there any truth to the original saying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has scientific evidence ever shown whether or not the addition of one&#xA;already rotting apple is likely to ruin others in a given container?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-23T08:20:36.500" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T08:20:36.500" Title="Will one rotten apple spoil the bunch?" Tags="|apple|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5172" CreationDate="2011-07-12T01:34:10.030" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;, one rotten apple can spoil the bunch, due to the release of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;ethylene&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.education.com/science-fair/article/rotting-fruit-fruits-rot-fastest/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Education.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The fruits themselves are producers of ethylene which is a ripening&#xA;  agent.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fruits will remain fresh and firm until the concentration of&#xA;  ethylene surrounding them becomes high enough to stimulate further&#xA;  ripening.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many fruits are shipped when they are not fully ripe and&#xA;  then sprayed with ethylene gas on arrival.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://mcintosh.botany.org/bsa/misc/mcintosh/badapple.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Botanical Society of America&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In general, plant tissues communicate using classes of compounds&#xA;  called hormones&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These are defined as substances produced in one&#xA;  location that have an effect on target cells in a non-adjacent&#xA;  location.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In plants, germination, growth, development, reproduction,&#xA;  and environmental response are all coordinated through hormones.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although most of the main plant hormones are transported in the&#xA;  vascular system of the plant, &lt;strong&gt;one class of hormones is transferred in&#xA;  gaseous phase. This class includes the plant hormone ethylene.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ethylene promotes fruit ripening.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Apple growers take advantage of this by picking fruit when it is not ripe, holding it in enclosed conditions without ethylene, and exposing it to ethylene right before taking it to market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This process is why we have newly ripened apples grown in temperate North America even in the spring and summer (apples ripen in the fall).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/ornamentals/floriculture/ethylene.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;British Columbia Ministry of Agriculture&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ethylene is considered to be a plant hormone, a growth&#xA;  regulator ... It&#xA;  has sometimes been called the death hormone, because it promotes the&#xA;  aging and ripening of many fruits and flowers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ethylene evolves naturally from plant&#xA;  materials that are aging, ripening or rotting.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/mole00/mole00291.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NEWTON, Ask a Scientist&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The goal of a fruit is to spread its seed, so it needs to rot in order&#xA;  to get the seeds out of the fruit. &lt;strong&gt;There are actually hormones,&#xA;  especially ethylene oxide that promote fruit ripening.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you want to&#xA;  get a piece of fruit to ripen, put it in a bag with an apple which&#xA;  generates a lot of ethylene oxide.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencebuddies.com/mentoring/project_ideas/PlantBio_p009.shtml?from=Home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Science Buddies - One Bad Apple Spoils the Whole Bunch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plant-hormones.info/ethylene.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Plant Hormones - Ethylene&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T01:34:10.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5141" CreationDate="2011-07-12T13:03:00.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously all calculations based on inverse square law (i.e. strength of a signal is inversely proportional to the square of distance) is proof enough. But I'd like to remind you of few more factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TV signal back then was VHF, and Earth's troposphere and ionosphere will reflect VHF waves at acute angles back to the surface. See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.df5ai.net/Material/articles3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.df5ai.net/Material/articles3.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Given that, only signal which goes practically straight up has chance to leave the Earth's atmosphere;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wirelesscommunication.nl/reference/chaptr03/antgain.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Characteristics of dipole antenna&lt;/a&gt; (which happen to be the kind of antennas that were used for TV broadcast at the time), practically prevents any signal to travel straight upwards.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another argument, would be that the Earth is in a constant movement. It's spinning around it's axis at 360&amp;deg;/24h, which means that Earth spins 7&amp;deg; during one episode of &lt;em&gt;&quot;I Love Lucy&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. Also Earth travels around the Sun at angle velocity of 360&amp;deg;/365&amp;frac14;d. Note, that few degrees off might not seem much, but at a distance of 55 light years 1&amp;deg; off translates into 1 light year off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T13:03:00.737" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5159" CreationDate="2011-07-12T15:41:50.233" Score="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like anything else, it's a combination of factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/CP200.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;London School of Economics&lt;/a&gt; did a pretty in-depth study and found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main cause of this is that many women continue to take breaks from paid employment when they have children. The problem is not that women are choosing one career – such as hairdressing – rather than another – such as plumbing. It is that they are continuing to choose family over career at some point in their life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the same study also goes on to say that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While career breaks clearly have an impact,&#xA;  my research with Joanna Swaffield finds that&#xA;  most of the gender gap in wage growth&#xA;  among young workers cannot be explained&#xA;  by differences in labour market attachment.&#xA;  For example, we estimate that a woman&#xA;  who has worked full-time ever since leaving&#xA;  full-time education can still expect to be&#xA;  paid 12% less than an equivalent man after&#xA;  10 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cause appears to be a combination of factors. This study sites the following as the cause:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One way of seeing this is in the evidence&#xA;  that women are much less likely to become&#xA;  managers...Some recent research (see Babcock and Laschever) suggests that&#xA;  systematic differences in personality are&#xA;  responsible – for example, that women are&#xA;  intrinsically less competitive than men, tend&#xA;  to be less self-confident and less effective in&#xA;  negotiation. This might be because of&#xA;  intrinsic differences between men and&#xA;  women or because of gender stereotyping&#xA;  within the education system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report ends with the remark that, &quot;that it is now not so easy to&#xA;identify the remaining causes of the gender&#xA;pay gap.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to summarize this study, the main causes seem to be breaks from employment and personality differences. The study also mentions that the pay gap has been decreasing in recent years, although does not mention if this is due to less focus on staying home with the kids or less discrimination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Ian Watson (published in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://business.curtin.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2016/05/AJLE-v13n1-Watson.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Austrian Journal OF Labour Economics&lt;/a&gt;) takes a slightly different opinion on this. The abstract of his study is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results&#xA;  show that female managers earned on average about 27 per cent less than their male counterparts and the decompositions suggest that somewhere between 65 and 90&#xA;  per cent of this earnings gap cannot be explained by recourse to a large range of&#xA;  demographic and labour market variables. A major part of the earnings gap is simply&#xA;  due to women managers being female.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read the statistics in the paper, but the results are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The extent to which discrimination accounts for the gender pay gap varies between&#xA;  65 per cent and 94 per cent, depending on the approach one takes. The higher figure&#xA;  comes from using the Oaxaca method, while the lower figure comes from the Blinder&#xA;  method. These decomposition results are shown in summary form in table 5 and with&#xA;  a more detailed breakdown in table 6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-08-799&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;U.S. Government Accountability Office&lt;/a&gt; did another study and determined that discrimination is indeed a factor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2003, GAO found that women, on average, earned 80 percent of what men earned in 2000 and workplace discrimination may be one contributing factor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.econ.jku.at/papers/2003/wp0311.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;meta analysis&lt;/a&gt; done on various studies and this analysis found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results show that data restrictions – i.e.&#xA;  the limitation of the analysis to new entrants, never-marrieds, or one narrow&#xA;  occupation only – have the biggest impact on the resulting gender wage gap.&#xA;  Moreover, we are able to show what effect a misspecification of the underlying&#xA;  wage equation – like the frequent use of potential experience – has on the&#xA;  calculated gender wage gap. Over time, raw wage differentials worldwide have&#xA;  fallen substantially; however, most of this decrease is due to better labor market&#xA;  endowments of females.&#xA;  ... Our results show that data restrictions have&#xA;  the biggest impact on the resulting gender wage gap...For example, in the fixed effects regressions we find&#xA;  that studies where work experience is missing seriously overestimate the&#xA;  unexplained gender wage gap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the study does still say there is some discrimination, but it is not as dramatic as others make it out to be. The resulting decrease in the pay gap is due to training and some decrease in discrimination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From the 1960s to the 1990s, raw wage differentials worldwide have fallen&#xA;  substantially from around 65 to only 30%. The bulk of this decline, however,&#xA;  must be attributed to better labor market endowments of females which came&#xA;  about by better education, training, and work attachment...The ratio of what women would earn absent of discrimination relative to&#xA;  their actual wages decreased approximately by 0.17% annually. This indicates&#xA;  that a continuous, even if moderate, equalization between the sexes is taking&#xA;  place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to note as well is that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://business.curtin.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2016/05/AJLE-v13n1-Watson.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pay gap is higher in the public sector than the private sector&lt;/a&gt;. This tends to show there is an element of discrimination, as public sector jobs tend to have pretty strict promotion/pay increase rubrics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, it's caused by a number of factors, but it would be incorrect to make the claim that discrimination is not one of them. However, it's certainly not the only cause and it may or may not be the greatest cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of the pay gap being evidence of discrimination, it certainly is, as most of the statistical studies say the gap is unexplained by other factors. The gap may not be caused solely by discrimination, but it does show evidence of some unexplained factor causing pay differential, which is usually attributed to discrimination when the other causes are explained. Causes such as time off for family and personality are included in the studies, but there is a statistically significant gap left unexplained that can be reasonably filled with discrimination. According to the studies I've posted, the gap decreases in the public sector and in large companies with pay scales. This points towards the pay gap being evidence to discrimination. Hence, the pay gap is evidence of an unexplained discrimination of women in terms of their compensation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2808" LastEditorUserId="36593" LastEditDate="2016-11-03T19:44:53.847" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T19:44:53.847" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5167" CreationDate="2011-07-12T18:02:10.783" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answer: Seemingly yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus: Probably simpler than most people think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, this is a great question. I've heard many people claim this is true, though not having a remote keyless system, haven't had a chance to do it myself. Looking it up online, there's virtually no &quot;official&quot; information about why this works. I'm going to list the most credible sounding reasons/sources I could find, explain why I think they're partially right, and then propose a mechanism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/19/technology/personaltech/19basics.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times tech article&lt;/a&gt; that has a small section on remote keyless systems. Quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The trick turns your head into an antenna, says Tim Pozar, a Silicon Valley radio engineer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. Pozar explains, “You are capacitively coupling the fob to your head. With all the fluids in your head it ends up being a nice conductor. Not a great one, but it works.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The article also talks about freezing hard drives to bring them back to life, a somewhat contentious issue that's been addressed here as well: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4868/freezing-your-hard-drive-to-recover-data&quot;&gt;Will freezing your hard drive help recover its data?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There's also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tomsguide.com/us/pictures-story/83-2-tricks-keyboard-dishwasher.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article from Tom's Guide&lt;/a&gt; that mentions capacitive coupling. Quote from the 4th page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I recently had the chance to meet several engineers at Intel, including radio expert Robert Paxman. He told me: “It comes down to antenna efficiency. If a transmitter operating at ‘x’ frequency range has an antenna that might be lacking in efficiency and you couple it to something that creates a situation for better efficiency, getting that added range is plausible. Because the body has some conductivity, placing it close to some body part would create a coupling effect. Think back to the days of TVs having “rabbit ears” for antennas. Sometimes the best reception and clearest picture was had when you were touching it. The same principle applies here.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally--and we're getting into un-credible territory here--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physicsforums.com/archive/index.php/t-87571.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a post about LC circuits on Physics Forums&lt;/a&gt; got me thinking. Quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the main components of any radio tuner is called the &quot;LC Tank&quot; or &quot;LC circuit&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LC_circuit&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LC_circuit&lt;/a&gt; It's a very simple circuit and the frequency it resonates to (is tuned to) is given by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;f = 1/(2*pi(sqrt(LC)))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can't really have much effect on &quot;L&quot; the unless you come into direct contact with the circuit. &quot;C&quot; however is the capacitance and will be affected by conductive bodies close to it. Proximity relationship is exponential... that is 1&quot; away is far more of an effect that twice the effect from 2&quot; away. So as your body comes into contact with the plastic body of the fob the value of C has now changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything these three sources put forward is mostly correct. Your body does indeed act as an extended antenna, and that's why contact and body position can help clarify the signal on a radio or TV (or any) antenna. But that's receiving. When transmitting, there are a few items of importance: antenna shape, antenna orientation, and transmission power. Transmitting a more powerful signal would be the easiest way to overcome all of these issues - a bigger battery for the key fob would mean a stronger, longer signal, and that's all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's usually not a simple option, so we work at optimizing the orientation. What most people talking about this issue seem to forget is, as long as you're holding the fob, you're part of the antenna. Touching it to your head is just changing the overall orientation, not suddenly turning you into a magic instrument - you're always an antenna. Does putting your head against a set of rabbit ears work better than adjusting with your hand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a slight aside, the whole changing capacitance idea makes no real sense. One only has to look at the equation posted above to see why (ironic that it was posted as a reason that it &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; make sense). Frequency is inversely proportional to capacitance (since C is in the denominator of that equation, a larger capacitance = larger denominator = smaller frequency), so as capacitance increases, frequency decreases. If the transmitted frequency changes &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; much, the receiver just won't receive any signal, since it's no longer looking for the &quot;right&quot; broadcast. Designers had to have had this in mind, so it's really doubtful that by touching the fob or the key you're really changing much at all about the inherent transmission properties. Again, what matters is orientation... one part of the body over another shouldn't really make a difference (re: the first quote, if liquid is the mechanism, your head definitely doesn't have more liquid in it than, say, your torso).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm betting what's likely here is a kind of pseudo-confirmation bias. You're expecting it to work when you hold it to your chin or temple or wherever, and you see that it does, so that's it. But it's pretty clear that people are doing this outside on the street or in parking lots where many variables are unaccounted for rather than in any kind of controlled environment. If it stops working at hip level but then works against the chin, that's all well and good, but you've only done the test in one of 360 directions. Ten feet over it might work just as well in the original orientation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best explanation is that it's a combination of &lt;strong&gt;height and directionality&lt;/strong&gt;. The higher you hold the fob, the longer the transmission can go. The receiver's location on various car models is bound to differ, but by holding the transmitter higher up, there's far less chance of obstructions interfering with the signal. Same reason radio towers are tall or on top of tall buildings/land formations. And by holding the fob against your head, you're unwittingly creating a transmitting loop antenna with your arm and body (far larger than the tiny circuit loop antenna inside the fob), so this is probably helping as well (holding on chin vs. temple will alter the directionality by 45°, further changing efficiency depending on where your car is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Untested, but if you try holding your keys &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dJolYw8tnk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a la He-Man and saying &quot;I HAVE THE POWER,&quot;&lt;/a&gt; you might get the best results yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3114" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2011-07-12T18:02:10.783" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5180" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-12T19:42:18.143" Score="23" ViewCount="4562" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seem to be a lot of articles and reports floating on the Internet stating that one among three porn viewers is a woman (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/05/25/1179601669066.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=one+among+three+porn+viewers&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;). But to reach such a conclusion, you'd have to either (1) take the statistics from accounts on various pornographic sites or (2) conduct a survey on a group of individuals i.e, ask them explicitly. I don't see how any result based on (1) can be considered correct as you can't expect all users to report their sex truthfully. And (2) seems far too unrealistic. So are these statistics true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand pornography statistics related to the amount of porn viewers from a country, the time they spent on such sites, the amount of porn sites etc. are fairly easy to determine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-09T07:12:59.853" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T14:56:42.487" Title="Are one in three porn viewers female?" Tags="|pornography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5186" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5196" CreationDate="2011-07-13T02:41:26.387" Score="6" ViewCount="1935" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard and read claims suggesting that California passed a law when Ronald Reagan was governor that lead to a surge of homelessness and that explains to a large extent the relative high rate of homelessness &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.data360.org/pub_dp_report.aspx?Data_Plot_Id=603&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(1)&lt;/a&gt; in the state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples of sources that echo and discuss such claims: &lt;a href=&quot;http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=37;t=001063;p=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(2)&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&amp;amp;address=104x1759081&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(3)&lt;/a&gt;.   As context to the question, below are two quotes from &quot;A New Vision for Mental &#xA;Health Treatment Laws: A Report by the LPS (Lanterman–Petris–Short) Reform Task Force&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/storage/documents/report%20by%20the%20lps%20reform%20tast%20force%20%20rdc%20pdf.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(4)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reagan's role, besides signing the bill, was using it as a reason to&#xA;  cut his budget. What Reagan did was, at the same time the bill was&#xA;  passed, to reduce the budget for state mental hospitals. His budget&#xA;  bill &quot;abolished 1700 hospital staff positions and closed several of&#xA;  the state-operated aftercare facilities. Reagan promised to eliminate&#xA;  even more hospitals if the patient population continued to decline.&#xA;  Year-end population counts for the state hospitals had been declining&#xA;  by approximately 2000 people per year since 1960.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Frank Lanterman would say days before his death, &quot;I wanted the LPS Act&#xA;  to help the mentally ill. I never meant for it to prevent those who&#xA;  need care from receiving it. The law must be changed&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any evidence (besides the quoted report) supporting these claims? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To what extent can the relative high rate of homelessness in California &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.data360.org/pub_dp_report.aspx?Data_Plot_Id=603&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(1)&lt;/a&gt; be attributed to the signing of this act?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="943" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-02-22T04:15:28.540" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T04:15:28.540" Title="Did Ronald Reagan's LPS Act increase homelessness in California?" Tags="|history|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5188" CreationDate="2011-07-13T07:57:31.513" Score="14" ViewCount="6327" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently someone at a party told me thieves could detect a laptop in the car boot, even when turned off. At first I thought this was ridiculous, but I found some google queries provided a theory, the thieves used an inductive amplifier to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.fooyoh.com/6263485&quot;&gt;detect the wires inside of a laptop&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm still a bit sceptical. Isn't the car full of wires anyway? Wouldn't the car's hull hide the laptop from the inductive amplifier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4007" LastEditorUserId="612" LastEditDate="2011-07-13T15:03:56.093" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T07:41:10.523" Title="Is it possible to detect a laptop inside of a car boot?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5187" CreationDate="2011-07-13T09:55:09.513" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to detect a laptop inside of a car boot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, having &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.3dx-ray.com/security/border-control&quot;&gt;equipment&lt;/a&gt; like used for example by Customs and Border Protection, you can. I'm not sure though if that would be in common thieves' league. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] thieves used an inductive amplifier to detect the wires inside of a laptop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, that is not possible. Each of the reasons below is enough to make it impossible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inductive_amplifier&quot;&gt;inductive amplifier&lt;/a&gt; can only detect powered wire. It cannot detect powered down laptop;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unless you happen to drive plastic/carbon-fiber car, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_shielding&quot;&gt;metal shields electromagnetic field&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;range of inductive amplifier is 10-20cm (4-8 inches), depth of car boot is much more;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it's very possible that car thieves have been caught with inductive amplifiers, as they would use them to detect car alarm wires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-07-14T07:58:17.947" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T07:58:17.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5187" CreationDate="2011-07-13T15:24:09.650" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the actual incidents that caused the media to get interested were based around bluetooth, rather than any more arcane techniques. Many people just put their laptops into standby, not full powerdown, and in this state, bluetooth may be enabled and running, in which case it can respond to probes - thus leading to a simple identification for attackers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6334240/Bluetooth-motorists-losing-laptops-and-satnav-in-car-trick.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the Telegraph&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; has some high level info - I don't think there have been large numbers of attacks, but it is tricky to point the finger. You'd have to catch someone in the act of scanning for bluetooth, and you can do that without any kit other than a smartphone...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T15:24:09.650" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5191" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-13T18:36:51.880" Score="24" ViewCount="3114" Body="&lt;p&gt;v0.2 of myself was Catholic; subsequent revisions have removed this feature from my code base. In any case, I went through Catholic marriage prep, and was married in the Catholic Church. At the preparation retreat, which is obligatory if one wants to be married in a Catholic Church, they stressed quite strongly that cohabiting (living together before marriage) drastically increased the likelihood of divorce. This would be followed by an appeal to separate, even for a short time, before marriage to &amp;quot;reset&amp;quot; the relationship on good grounds and do things the Catholic way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The United States Conference of Catholic Biships (USCCB) has a report (&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110806055151/http://www.usccb.org/laity/marriage/cohabiting.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An Information Report on New Realities&#xA;and Pastoral Practices&lt;/a&gt;) featuring some claims about this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When cohabitors do marry, they are more at risk for subsequent divorce than those who did not cohabit before marriage. In the United States, the risk of divorce is 50% higher for cohabitors than non-cohabitors. In some western European countries, it is estimated to be 80% higher. &lt;em&gt;(Bumpass &amp;amp; Sweet, 1995; Hall &amp;amp; Zhao, 1995; Bracher, Santow, Morgan &amp;amp; Trussell, 1993; DeMaris &amp;amp; Rao, 1992; Glenn, 1990)&lt;/em&gt; [1]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When previously married cohabitors marry, their subsequent divorce rate is higher than that of cohabiting couples who have not been previously married. &lt;em&gt;(Wineberg &amp;amp; McCarthy, 1998; Wu, 1995; Bumpass &amp;amp; Sweet, 1989)&lt;/em&gt; [2]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is some indication that the divorce rate is higher for people who cohabit for a longer period of time, especially over three years. The data on this are mixed. &lt;em&gt;(Brown &amp;amp; Booth, 1996; Stets,1993; Thomson &amp;amp; Colella, 1991)&lt;/em&gt; [3]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cohabitors who marry break up in the earlier years of marriage. Cohabitors and noncohabitors have the same rate of marriage stability if the marriage remains intact over seven years. &lt;em&gt;(Lillard Brien &amp;amp; Waite, 1995; Thomson &amp;amp; Colella, 1991; Bennett, Blanc &amp;amp; Bloom, 1988)&lt;/em&gt; [4]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cohabitors who do choose to marry appear to be of lesser risk for later divorce than those cohabitors who choose not to marry would be. They appear to be the best risk of a high risk group. &lt;em&gt;(Bumpass, Sweet &amp;amp; Cherlin, 1991; Bennett, Blanc, &amp;amp; Bloom, 1988)&lt;/em&gt; [5]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, fairly well cited claims, but I'm a bit skeptical. There's the obvious personal component, as I no longer espouse the views of Catholicism, but there's a purely skeptical component as well in that the Catholic Church stands to gain support for its teachings if it can show evidence to support their benefits... and lo and behold, they have found evidence to support their teachings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this strikes me as quasi-related to evidence that condom distribution, after all, is somehow &lt;em&gt;increasing&lt;/em&gt; the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. In other words &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702825.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the pope was right&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions:&lt;/strong&gt; So, I'm curious. Is cohabiting increasing the probability that those who move forward from it to marry will divorce? Is any sociological/psychological mechanism known for why this might be? Are there credible sources with views divergent from those above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an intuitive point of view, I'd wonder why cohabiting might give couples a period of time to work out potential conflicts that might arise from constant close contact and interaction rather than entering blindly and being surprised/overwhelmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources (first listed of each bullet):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[1] Bumpass &amp;amp; Sweet (1995), &lt;em&gt;The changing character of stepfamilies: implications of cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing.&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/article/10.2307/2061689?from=SL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[2] Wineberg &amp;amp; McCarthy (1998), &lt;em&gt;Living arrangements after divorce: cohabitation versus remarriage.&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12179708/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[3] Brown &amp;amp; Booth (1996), &lt;em&gt;Cohabitation Versus Marriage: A Comparison of Relationship Quality.&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/353727&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[4] Lillard Brien &amp;amp; Waite (1995), &lt;em&gt;Premarital cohabitation and subsequent marital.&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/article/10.2307/2061690?from=SL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[5] Bumpass, Sweet &amp;amp; Cherlin (1991), &lt;em&gt;The Role of Cohabitation in Declining Rates of Marriage.&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/352997&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-03-22T10:18:56.567" LastActivityDate="2022-03-22T10:18:56.567" Title="Cohabiting couples more likely to divorce?" Tags="|sexuality|marriage|catholic-church|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5192" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-13T18:54:09.690" Score="7" ViewCount="412" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/news/20051020/early-retirement-early-death&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; here says that there is a link between retiring early and dying early. Is it true that, on average, early retirees will die sooner than their longer working counter parts? Is this a casual link or is the link caused by something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2808" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T23:12:16.220" Title="Does retiring earlier cause one to die earlier?" Tags="|medical-science|mortality|work|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5192" CreationDate="2011-07-13T23:12:16.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any causal link is more likely to be in the other direction: healthier people may be more willing and able to work longer.  The article you point to has the quote&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This difference could not be attributed to the effects of sex,&#xA;  socioeconomic status, or calendar year of the study, although the&#xA;  poorer health status of some early retirees may play some part,&quot; note&#xA;  Shan P. Tsai and colleagues at Shell Health Services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T23:12:16.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5191" CreationDate="2011-07-13T23:39:52.423" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume that USCCB are quoting accurately, though I suspect they may also be being selective.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If their hypothesis is that cohabiting couples are more likely to divorce, a reasonable question is what would be the alternative. If it is younger marriage (i.e. living together but not &quot;in sin&quot;) then it is well known that those marrying for the first time at a young age are more likely to divorce, and to do so earlier in the marriage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychpage.com/family/mod_couples_thx/cdc.html&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt;, quoting 2002 US data from the Center for Disease Control, says  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Divorce is more likely when women marry at a younger age (48% of&#xA;  brides married before age 18 divorce in 10 years, compared to 24%&#xA;  married at age 25 or later)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what you need to do to test the proposition would be to compare couples who cohabit at age X and marry at age Y with couples who marry at age X not having previously cohabited and are still married at age Y (you also have the added complication of different ages of the man and woman in the couple).  This requires a rather more complicated analysis of the data than that anything quoted above.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue which would affect analysis of the statement &quot;Cohabiting couples more likely to divorce&quot; is to look at cohabiting couples which split up before marriage, and to try to calculate how many divorces might have occurred if they had instead married: I suspect that USCCB may dislike divorce more than they dislike cohabitation.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-07-13T23:39:52.423" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2479" CreationDate="2011-07-14T02:36:43.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chewing gum all day can aggravate a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporomandibular_joint_disorder&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TMJ&lt;/a&gt; injury if you have one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overworking the jaw muscles can also strengthen them, which is bad considering &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSAj83LJFVI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some people take botox injections to weaken the mastication muscles as a treatment for TMJ&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3704" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T02:36:43.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5186" CreationDate="2011-07-14T07:40:53.110" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ronald Reagan did sign a law in 1967, namely the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanterman%E2%80%93Petris%E2%80%93Short_Act&quot;&gt;Lanterman–Petris–Short Act&lt;/a&gt;, which reduced the ability of the state to institutionalise mentally ill people involuntarily.  It had the causal consequence of increasing the number living on the streets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was not Reagan's proposal, so it is difficult to blame him for this law; since it was seen as increasing the civil rights of mentally ill people, it is difficult to blame him for not vetoing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bigger question is whether there was sufficient out-patient care and hostel housing provided to meet the resulting demand.   But even if there had been, there would probably have been an increase in homelessness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T07:40:53.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5002" CreationDate="2011-07-14T11:46:21.943" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Japanese research indicated is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a2002.full&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; in the BMJ. It is based on a survey of &gt;3000 people's self reported eating habits in a Japanese village.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it does show a very strong correlation between people indicating they &quot;eat quickly&quot; or who &quot;eat until they are full&quot; and incidence of obesity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/337/7676.press-release.html&quot;&gt;The BMJ itself wrote that participants were according to this report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The researchers also found that both men and women in the &quot;eating&#xA;  until full and eating quickly&quot; were three times more likely to be&#xA;  overweight than the participants from the &quot;not eating until full and&#xA;  not eating quickly&quot; group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now obviously correlation is not causation, but it is at the least an indicator that changing your eating habits to take more time can mean less energy intake at mealtimes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this will lead to one losing weight long term is obviously dependent on a whole host of other factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3606" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T11:46:21.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5199" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5212" CreationDate="2011-07-14T17:58:20.783" Score="35" ViewCount="14222" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a widely held stereotype that Russians drink a lot of alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research supporting or refuting this belief?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible metrics I can think of (though you're welcome to add more) can be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Average volume of alcoholic drinks consumed in a year per capita. Ideally somehow normalized for alcohol content.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;% of population medically classified as suffering from alcoholism&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mortality directly or indirectly attributable to alcohol (this one is tricky to get right I guess)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm fine with studies assuming either of definitions of &quot;russian&quot; that you want to pick - ethnically russian people; population of current Russian Federation, population of former USSR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't care if the study includes/excludes expatriates/emigrants, but would ESPECIALLY be interesting to see a study covering differences between those and people living in Russia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T14:31:37.620" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T15:00:51.020" Title="Do Russians drink as much alcohol as their stereotype suggests?" Tags="|alcohol|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5191" CreationDate="2011-07-14T18:03:01.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's more at stake than just the marriage itself, but the happiness within the marriage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a common belief that, although a smaller percentage of&#xA;  Americans are now marrying than was the case a few decades ago, those&#xA;  who marry have marriages of higher quality. It seems reasonable that&#xA;  if divorce removes poor marriages from the pool of  married couples,&#xA;  and if cohabiting couples’ “trial marriages” deter some bad marriages&#xA;  from forming, then the remaining marriages should be happier on&#xA;  average. The best available evidence on the topic, however, does not&#xA;  support these assumptions. Since 1973, the General Social Survey has&#xA;  periodically asked representative samples of married Americans to rate&#xA;  their marriages as either “very happy,” “pretty happy,” or “not too&#xA;  happy.” As Figure 4 [a graph showing a slow decline in the number of happily married adults] indicates , the percentage of both men and women&#xA;  reporting “very happy” has declined moderately over the past 35&#xA;  years. This trend has essentially flattened out over the last decade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.virginia.edu/marriageproject/pdfs/Union_11_12_10.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.virginia.edu/marriageproject/pdfs/Union_11_12_10.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiddler_on_the_Roof&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;remained unhappily married for a long time&lt;/a&gt; and I believe the above info is the most telling.  There is a correlation between divorce rate and cohabitation. Since 1970  &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.sfgate.com/2000-02-15/news/17637322_1_cohabitation-study-reports-divorce-rate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cohabitation is up&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bsos.umd.edu/socy/vanneman/socy441/trends/divorce.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;divorce is down.&lt;/a&gt; The commonly stated &quot;Half of all marriages end in divorce&quot; was only true in the USA if you got &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/d/divorce.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;married around 1970&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The better question to ask is, &quot;Do religious people have more satisfying marriages?&quot; that's a subjective question to ask an individual, but I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/3510722&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;there might be data.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, since you mentioned it, I invite you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catholicscomehome.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;roll back the changes&lt;/a&gt; your codebase before you check out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2012-11-22T20:14:45.973" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T20:14:45.973" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5201" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-14T18:06:52.553" Score="8" ViewCount="974" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a lately-somewhat-widely held &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html&quot;&gt;belief&lt;/a&gt;  that there's a strong correlation (and to a certain extent, a fairly obvious causation) between &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome&quot;&gt;Asperger's syndrome&lt;/a&gt; (or Autism spectrum disorders in general) and being a &quot;geek&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since defining a &quot;geek&quot; precisely is not easy, I will ask a somewhat related question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any large scale study analyzing correlation and/or causation between higher levels of IQ and diagnosed Aspergers (or Autism spectrum in general)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in broad averages, NOT edge cases like idiot savants. I'll take any study, but if possible I would be more interested in ones covering people with high-functioning autism and especially high-functioning Aspergers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastActivityDate="2017-02-21T00:13:18.087" Title="Are there large scale studies investigating relationship between IQ and autism spectrum disorders (especially Aspergers)?" Tags="|medical-science|autism|intelligence|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5202" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-14T19:42:16.933" Score="13" ViewCount="3640" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Has the Catholic Church ever made a proclamation &lt;em&gt;ex cathedra&lt;/em&gt; (as in, one which it declares is infallible) that it later retracted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could literally be &lt;em&gt;any form&lt;/em&gt; of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some statement X was made, intended to be infallible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Later, X was retracted/reformulated/revised by a subsequent &amp;quot;infallible&amp;quot; statement, illustrating that the previous statement was obviously not infallible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I was recently shown the site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catholicscomehome.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Catholics Come Home&lt;/a&gt; and was perusing their &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120709233432/http://www.catholicscomehome.org/top-ten-reasons.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;top ten reasons to &amp;quot;come home,&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; which featured this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This [Catholic] Church has been guided by the Holy Spirit and protected from teaching error on issues of faith and morals from generation to generation for some two thousand years, as Our Lord Jesus promised: (foretold Isaiah 22:15-25) Matt 16:13-20; Matthew 18:15-18 (in this verse the word is church, not community); 1 Tim 3:15.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the phrase above seems bold, I have the feeling its meaning applies only to statements made &lt;em&gt;ex cathedra&lt;/em&gt; (from the chair), i.e. those statements made explicitly as infallible by the Pope. For background, the Church's stance on papal infallibility only applies to faith and morals (hence I'm thinking the above quote is only referring to those instances):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To fulfill this service, Christ endowed the Church's shepherds with the charism of infallibility in matters of faith and morals. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p123a9p4.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Catechism of the Catholic Church, #891&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a short list of times this actually happened see &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility#Instances_of_infallible_declarations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia’s list of infallible declarations.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found some people asking this question on Catholic Answers Forum, most notably &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.catholic.com/showpost.php?p=2928324&amp;amp;postcount=4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this list (link dead)&lt;/a&gt;, extracted from a recommended book on the matter, &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0895550091&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-04-12T12:00:33.783" LastActivityDate="2021-04-13T18:37:12.737" Title="Has the Catholic Church ever retracted an &quot;ex cathedra&quot; statement?" Tags="|history|religion|catholic-church|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5034" CreationDate="2011-07-14T19:58:47.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm extremely sceptical that St. Thomas Aquinas - or for that matter St. Augustine - had any notion of 'the wee man', because in the 1000 years of Christendom before the renaissance, there wasn't a lot of interest in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=aa05&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;human anatomy or microscopy.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2017-02-17T17:11:54.827" LastActivityDate="2017-02-17T17:11:54.827" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5204" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5214" CreationDate="2011-07-14T20:04:07.087" Score="49" ViewCount="9357" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard at least a few times now from apologists that Christianity is responsible for science. For some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From a commercial for the site, Catholics Come Home (video &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WujKBJc_yMg#t=0m28s&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt; that opens right to the quote):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We [The Catholic Church] developed the scientific method and laws of evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The downloadable PDF they have at their site for this video (LINK) provides sources for the video's claims. Extracted are these for the above quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We developed the scientific method....&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source: From How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Dr. Thomas&#xA;  Woods, page 94 and following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Roger Bacon, a Franciscan who taught at Oxford, was admired for his work in&#xA;  mathematics and optics, and is considered to be a forerunner of modern scientific&#xA;  method.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Like Roger Bacon, Saint Albert [the Great] was careful to note the importance of&#xA;  direct observation in the acquisition of knowledge about the physical world. In De&#xA;  Mineralibus, he explained that the aim of natural science was 'not simply to accept the&#xA;  statements of others, that is, what is narrated by people, but to investigate the causes&#xA;  that are at work in nature for themselves.'&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;...and laws of evidence.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source: From How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Dr. Thomas&#xA;  Woods, page 187 and following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“...Cases like this have led legal scholar Harold Berman to observe that modern&#xA;  Western legal systems „are a secular residue of religious attitudes and assumptions&#xA;  which historically found expression first in the liturgy and rituals and doctrines of the&#xA;  church and thereafter in the institutions and concepts and values of the law...‟&quot;&#xA;  (Berman‟s work: Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've also read Dinesh D'Souza's What's So Great About Christianity, which makes the following statements:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Why did science arise here and nowhere else? In his September 12, 2006, speech in Rosenberg, Germany, Pope Benedict XVI argued that it was due to Christianity's emphasis on the importance of reason...modern science is an invention of medieval Christianity, and that the greatest breakthroughs in scientific reason have largely been the work of Christians.&quot; (pgs. 83-84)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions:&lt;/strong&gt; Is this the case? Is it &lt;em&gt;Christianity&lt;/em&gt; (and no other source) that brought about the scientific method? In other words, if we looked at all the variables of those credited for early forms of modern science, would their Christian beliefs be the single most prominent causal factor that led such contributions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-08-07T15:53:36.190" LastActivityDate="2017-11-25T17:05:15.167" Title="Is Christianity responsible for the scientific method?" Tags="|history|religion|catholic-church|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5205" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-14T20:31:47.373" Score="16" ViewCount="1734" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.counterpunch.org/sherman06102011.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; we've got a claim that infant mortality in select US cities on the west coast has increased by 35% since the nuclear meltdown.  This claim is based on two data points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 - 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;10 weeks ending May 28, 2011  - 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://canadianawareness.org/2011/07/sudden-infant-deaths-spike-in-british-columbia/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elsewhere,&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://flyingcuttlefish.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/unit-1-spiking-fukushima-japan-news-july-8-2011/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;people are&lt;/a&gt; worried that an increase in infant mortality in British Columbia is the fault of Fukushima.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“There have been 21 sudden infant deaths in B.C. so far this year, while there were 16 sudden infant deaths for all of 2010″&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Increases in infant mortality rates is now almost across the board in North America since the disaster and the STILL continuing nuclear crisis in Japan. But in Canada it is because of “unsafe sleep practices”? Are we really going to fall this nonsense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these increases significant?  Is there any evidence that they are the result of Fukushima?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="155" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-01-28T06:50:57.700" LastActivityDate="2023-05-13T18:46:53.453" Title="Is the Fukushima disaster causing an increase in infant mortality on the west coast of North America?" Tags="|medical-science|fukushima-daiichi|natural-disasters|nuclear-energy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5199" CreationDate="2011-07-14T21:15:43.053" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Russia comes in at #4 for alcohol consumption in the world based on a World Heath Organization report on alcohol published in 2011. But pretty much any country in that region is &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; close, so Russia probably enjoys a disproportionate amount of negative publicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/en/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a 2011 World Health Organization (WHO) report about alcohol consumption. Download it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/entity/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/msbgsruprofiles.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; and scroll down to Appendix III, Alcohol Consumption Data. Here are the countries in Russia's ballpark, rates in liters per capita for those over 15 years of age:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Republic of Moldova: 18.22&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Czech Republic: 16.45&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hungary: 16.27&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Russia: 15.76&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Republic of Korea: 14.8&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Andorra: 15.48&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Belarus: 15.13&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slovania: 15.19&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lithuania: 15.03&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ireland: 14.41&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;United Kingdom: 13.37&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Austria: 13.24&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a report just on the European Region (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/entity/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/msbgsreur.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;) with this breakdown for the Russian Federation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y55Lv.png&quot; alt=&quot;graph for Russia&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page 5 of the main report features a breakdown by world region. Check the report for all the region names and included countries, but &lt;strong&gt;the European region averages 12.18 liters/capita compared to the world average of 6.13&lt;/strong&gt;. In pictures, that looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EVTyg.png&quot; alt=&quot;world graph of consumption&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of their sources, the WHO data comes from the The Global Information System on Alcohol and Health (GISAH), which the report says this about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The GISAH is the portal to the Global Alcohol Database (GAD) which WHO has been building since 1997 through the compilation of information from published and grey literature, government documents, national statistics, national and global surveys, the industry, intergovernmental organizations, and data collection through the Global Survey on Alcohol and Health (see Box 1). Currently, GISAH encompasses more than 200 alcohol-related indicators in more than 225 countries and territories. Over time, indicators will be updated, improved and new ones added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T15:00:51.020" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T15:00:51.020" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5205" CreationDate="2011-07-14T22:16:09.703" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both of the statistics quoted lacks several vital pieces of information. These include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how much the death rate varies naturally from year to year;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why the &quot;select cities&quot; mentioned in the article were selected, and what the rate becomes if you select different ones;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also lacks any explanation of how the alleged radiation could have caused these deaths. The usual statement has to be made about all such allegations:&quot;correlation is not causation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Canadian article is just a rant with no information. It doesn't even state whether the infant death rate went up before or after the Fukushima tragedy (which took place halfway through the period that article claims to have figures for).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Against this is the truth that the amounts of radiation which reached the US (and Canada) were absolutely trivial. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/651035.html&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is an article giving some information: initial readings are &quot;about a billion times beneath levels that would be health threatening.&quot; People who don't understand radiation often assume that &quot;any radiation causes disease&quot;, forgetting that we are all subjected to much more radiation than reached North America from Japan just from natural sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-07-19T17:20:21.227" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T17:20:21.227" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5201" CreationDate="2011-07-14T23:23:56.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some reading material if you'd like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/6479/1/6479.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scheuffgen et al.&lt;/a&gt; argue for a different view on intelligence based on the peculiar patterns with autistic children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently DSM-IV defines Asperger's as autism without language delay and cognitive impairments.&#xA;However, at the moment it looks like Asperger's will be collapsed into autism as a diagnosis in the upcoming DSM-5. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=97#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The discussion&lt;/a&gt; is interesting and also addresses group differences in IQ. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question probably isn't that interesting after all, since Asperger's is by definition &lt;em&gt;not impaired cognition&lt;/em&gt; but it's a mainstream idea in research, that there is no clean cutoff to be found between Kanner-Autism and Asperger's. So the correlation between Asperger's and intelligence probably wouldn't mean very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A correlation of intelligence with autism spectrum disorder would be negative, I guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Sorry, this was a comment that turned out to be too long, don't have much time now)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastActivityDate="2011-07-14T23:23:56.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5210" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5211" CreationDate="2011-07-14T23:48:43.533" Score="63" ViewCount="63576" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to hear this all the time when I was growing up.  Just ignore bees, don't swat at or try to kill them, because if they die, they'll send a &quot;signal&quot; to the hive that will attract dozens more.  After forgetting about it for many years, I recently heard the same claim from adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've killed and seen killed several bees and haven't been subsequently visited or attacked by swarms the size of a grand piano, but maybe they were just very far away from their hive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's all sorts of anecdotal/non-credible mentions of this claim, but I've never seen anything convincing.  For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thebeekeeper.org/FAQs.html&quot;&gt;from an exterminator's site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not swat at bees. Swatting bees causes the release of an alarm signal and only increases the intensity of an attack by stimulating other bees to attack&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or from a September 1988 issue of &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=qS3cOPe_H_sC&amp;amp;lpg=PA43&amp;amp;ots=yVSibJufX-&amp;amp;dq=field%20and%20stream%20bee%20swat&amp;amp;pg=PA43#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Field and Stream&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't kill bees.  Injured or dying bees are thought to emit a cry of distress, which other bees respond to quickly. The alarm signal sends squadrons of armed investigators to the scene. These rescuers often attack anything that moves or that has body temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final example from this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2016392/why_do_bees_attack.html?cat=58&quot;&gt;Associated Content&lt;/a&gt; article, which references a semi-trustworthy &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ars.usda.gov/Research/docs.htm?docid=11067&amp;amp;page=8&quot;&gt;government source&lt;/a&gt; but it is not clear where this specific claim was derived from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To avoid getting attacked by bees, one should never swat or threaten a bee. The reason for some swarm of bee attacks are due to the release of a pheromone a threatened bee will emit. This pheromone sends a distress signal to all other bees in the area, and will attract the whole swarm to come in and defend them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It mentions a pheromone being responsible, but the government source, quoting &lt;em&gt;another&lt;/em&gt; primary source, only seems to talk about this in the context of colony defense, and if I'm reading it correctly, releasing the pheromone is only really effective in proximity to the hive and is also one of the &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; things a defender does (long before one would have a chance to swat).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the claim of dead/dying bees sending off an &quot;alarm signal&quot;?  Is it backed by research, or is it just an old wives' tail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4021" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-07-16T19:34:46.643" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T03:01:35.353" Title="Does swatting/killing a bee cause the hive to attack?" Tags="|biology|ethology|entomology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5210" CreationDate="2011-07-15T00:31:39.057" Score="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a primary source, a research done on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ars.usda.gov/Research/docs.htm?docid=11067&amp;amp;pf=1&amp;amp;cg_id=0&quot;&gt;Honey Bees:&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The bee's response to the first (alerting) stimulus strengthens her guarding stance; for instance the abdomen is raised, possibly with the sting protruded, and the antennae are waved. In addition, the bee may recruit other bees to guard activity, by entering the colony with her sting chamber open and the sting prodtruded, &lt;strong&gt;thus releasing alarm pheromone.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/b/bee_sting.htm&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Science Daily&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The stinger's injection of apitoxin into the victim is accompanied by the release of alarm pheromones, a process which is accelerated if the bee is fatally injured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Release of alarm pheromones near a hive or swarm may attract other bees to the location, where they will likewise exhibit defensive behaviors until there is no longer a threat (typically because the victim has either fled or been killed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These pheromones do not dissipate nor wash off quickly, and if their target enters water, bees will resume their attack as soon as the target leaves&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A biology site here tells us there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://biologydaily.com/biology/Pheromone_%28honey_bee%29&quot;&gt;different types&lt;/a&gt; of pheromone released, and the specific one released, is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://biologydaily.com/biology/Pheromone_%28honey_bee%29#Alarm_pheromone&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;attack pheromone&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two main alarm pheromones have been identified in honeybee workers. One is released by the Koschevnikov gland, near the sting shaft, and consists of more than 40 chemical compounds, including isopentyl acetate (IPA), butyl acetate, 1-hexanol, n-butanol, 1-octanol, hexyl acetate, octyl acetate, n-pentyl acetate and 2-nonanol. These chemical compounds have low molecular weights, are highly volatile, and appear to be the least specific of all pheromones. Alarm pheromones are released when a bee stings another animal, and attract other bees to the location and causes the other bees to behave defensively, i.e. sting or charge&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is released, but how quickly does it take effect? I looked at a beekeeper's site, because they have the most experience as to the speed with which bees attack after pheromone is released.&#xA;Let's look at a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beecare.com/indexDynFrames.htm?http://www.beecare.com/Apiary/Etiquette/Apiary%20Etiquette%20-%20Rule%2012.htm&amp;amp;1&quot;&gt;beekeeping site:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Immediately and steadily back away from the hives, without swatting at the bee, screaming, convulsing, or otherwise freaking out.  When you are away from the hives, kill the bee by slapping it soundly.  Kill the bee before it escapes from your hair or clothing, as it will likely sting you when it is free.  Discard the dead bee outside the apiary and apply smoke liberally to the area on your body where the bee was killed.  Smoking the area will mask the alarm pheromone secreted when the bee was crushed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pheromone is produced, but it doesn't reach the hive immediately. It will eventually be detected if you are near enough, but it does take some time. If you are far away from the hive, the bees might not smell it either, as the pheromone will dissipate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That may be the reason why you could kill a bee with impunity. Note also how the beekeeper instructs to back away from the hives, then kill the bee, and then smoke the area. It's safe to kill the bee in two situations:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You're far away.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You smoke the area of your body after you kill it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pheromone takes approximately a few minutes to be detected if you are near enough. You are safe for a few minutes. This can be seen here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a bee stings you, don't panic and immediately run, and especially don't make a lot of jerky, sudden movements.  This just increases your chances of being stung again.  Instead, calmly back away a few feet from the hive and use the edge of your fingernail, the hive tool, or a knife, to scrape the sting sac out from the side.  Never grab the stinger and pull it out -- this only injects more venom.  After the sting sac is removed and discarded away from your body and the hives, smoke the area of the sting to mask the odor of the alarm pheromone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You actually have time to remove the sting sac and smoke the area, and this is being done by bee-keepers all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, pheromone is produced, it's not a house-wives' tale, and it does ignite the hive to attack, but you could mask it, or if you are far away, it won't be detected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="29680" LastEditDate="2016-05-31T22:26:43.613" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T22:26:43.613" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5199" CreationDate="2011-07-15T00:39:46.717" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to existing evidence, it is true that Russians drink a lot of alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Adult Per Capita Consumption&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The World Health Organization &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/msbgsruprofiles.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2011 Global status report&#xA;on alcohol and health&lt;/a&gt; provides us with statistics in regard to average alcohol consumption per year, for people aged 15 and above, in liters of pure alcohol. &lt;strong&gt;Russia ranks fourth, with 15.76 liters&lt;/strong&gt; ( of which 6.88 liters are consumed in the form of &quot;spirits&quot; ), more than double the world average - 6.13.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Alcoholism&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report provides no information specifically about alcoholism prevalence in Russia, but using The Global Information System on Alcohol and Health ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/globalatlas/alcohol&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.who.int/globalatlas/alcohol&lt;/a&gt; ) shows Russia as having the highest rate of males aged between 18 and 65, which are dependent on alcohol: &lt;strong&gt;17.61%&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Mortality&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report tells us that Russia has one of the highest proportion of alcohol-attributable mortality, but doesn't give precise numbers - most of the data in this report is given by WHO subregion. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=russia%20alcoholism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wolfram Alpha&lt;/a&gt;, 8327 deaths per year occur due to alcohol use disorders - 0.35% of the total, much higher than the world probability of 0.16%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this figure doesn't seem to be accurate according to the WHO report - which, although it doesn't give exact numbers, does say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By far the highest proportion of alcohol-attributable mortality is in&#xA;  the Russian Federation and neighbouring countries, where every fifth&#xA;  death among men and 6% of deaths among women are attributable to the&#xA;  harmful use of alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NkALB.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the map above, we can estimate the minimum number of alcohol-attributable deaths to 10% of Russia's 2010 deaths ( 2028516 ), which gives us ~200.000, and the maximum ( 1/5 of the total ) to ~400.000. In 2004, 3.8% of all global deaths were attributable to alcohol, 6.2% for men and 1.1% for women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the ethnic identity of the drinkers, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://ecgi.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=353112008124001074091001087116004024084009029087084092125015007009021121016090105121118023071072022029075005004005108101021000021114031&amp;amp;EXT=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; study: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ethnic identity of drinkers cannot be established on the basis of&#xA;  available state statistics and, to the best of my knowledge, neither&#xA;  state statisticians nor academic analysts have ever looked at ethnic&#xA;  differentials in per capita consumption of alcohol. These&#xA;  differentials are, however, significant and cannot be disregarded in&#xA;  any serious analysis of the alcohol situation in the country.&#xA;  According to my rough estimates people of the Muslim culture consume&#xA;  on a per capita basis slightly less than half of the alcohol consumed&#xA;  by Slavs and other ethnic groups in Russia.11 As the result, regions&#xA;  of Russia in which Muslims constitute a significant part of the&#xA;  population show lower incidence of alcohol-related mortality and&#xA;  morbidity and socially disruptive alcohol abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The high-risk groups are mainly &lt;strong&gt;adult male Slavs&lt;/strong&gt; (Russians,&#xA;  Ukrainians, and Belarusians) and the main explanation of alcohol abuse&#xA;  is not only the relatively high level of overall consumption of&#xA;  alcohol, but the high share of alcohol consumed in the form of vodka&#xA;  and samogon, as can be seen in Table 8-3. Drinking vodka results in&#xA;  faster intoxication, more frequent violence, and more serious somatic&#xA;  effects, particularly accidents of different types and fatal alcohol&#xA;  poisonings (see Section 5 below), than drinking wine or beer. A&#xA;  second, equally important factor is the &lt;em&gt;mode of drinking prevalent&#xA;  among Slavs&lt;/em&gt;, which characteristically consists of &quot;drinking&#xA;  binges&quot;--the intermittent consumption of large quantities of alcohol&#xA;  in a relatively short period of time and often without accompanying&#xA;  meals. It should be noted that a small group of Russian alcohol&#xA;  specialists have long suggested that total alcohol prohibition is&#xA;  fruitless and that the most promising policy would be to educate the&#xA;  public in &quot;civilized&quot; drinking. This position was never popular in the&#xA;  Soviet Union and its proponents had been all but silenced during&#xA;  Gorbachev's anti-drinking campaign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, it would appear that the widely held beliefs hold true - Russian do drink a lot, much more than the world average. It appears to be a huge problem for the country, and for many of countries that were part of USSR. Medvedev &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/6190439/Dmitry-Medvedev-begins-tough-anti-alcohol-campaign-in-Russia.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;called&lt;/a&gt; Russia's drinking problem a &quot;national disaster&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastActivityDate="2011-07-15T00:39:46.717" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5204" CreationDate="2011-07-15T02:33:48.307" Score="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is an emphatic &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anything, an early Persian could be credited with the most modern version of the scientific method.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method#Ibn_al-Haytham&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ibn al-Haytham&lt;/a&gt; (Wikipedia which is reliable enough for this sort of discussion) specifically championed the following method:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explicit statement of a problem, tied to observation and to proof by experiment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing and/or criticism of a hypothesis using experimentation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interpretation of data and formulation of a conclusion using mathematics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publication of the findings&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that isn't the scientific method, I don't know what is!&#xA;Even before that, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method#Aristotelian_science_and_empiricism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aristotle championed an empirical method of scientific thinking&lt;/a&gt;.  Which absolutely predates even the concept of Christianity.  Not to mention that science and technology was also flourishing in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_China&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;China&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://india_resource.tripod.com/scienceh.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;India&lt;/a&gt; with no influence from the West or any Christian influences.  And it has been argued by some that it was actually the influences of the far east that were transported over by the ancient Muslim scholars that kicked off the Renaissance (as opposed to the Muslim scholars preserving the ancient Greek ideas only).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That should have been a very easy bit of propaganda to debunk with minimal effort.  If you don't think Wikipedia is impartial enough, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificmethod.com/sm5_smhistory.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page also offers a history&lt;/a&gt;, essentially agreeing with the Wikipedia entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.experiment-resources.com/history-of-the-scientific-method.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; actually credits the Muslim age of science much more than the christian religion (as well as aligning with the Wikipedia entry and the previous link).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The early Islamic ages were a golden age for knowledge, and the history of the scientific method must pay a great deal of respect to some of the brilliant Muslim philosophers of Baghdad and Al-Andalus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, a lot of the enlightenment though was actually more a preservation of knowledge from other cultures (such as commonly credited, the Greeks).  Although, there may be a bit of western bias in that history, since a great deal of science also came from India and China in those times.  Generally people just aren't made aware of that (for instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history-science-technology.com/Articles/articles%205.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the origin of &amp;quot;Damascus Steel&amp;quot; is actually from India&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T21:34:13.317" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5202" CreationDate="2011-07-15T07:34:08.597" Score="16" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No clear case known&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some statement X was made, intended to be infallible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Later, 1) evidence has shown X to be false or 2) X was retracted/reformulated/revised by a subsequent statement, illustrating that the previous statement was obviously not infallible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not possible to find a simple contraction like this, because the statement is mostly not marked as &amp;quot;infallible&amp;quot; when made, its infallibility is only derived from context. There are only two statements made by a pope which are not disputed regarding their &amp;quot;ex cathedra&amp;quot; status, and those are two recent dogmas of the Immaculate Conception (1854) and the Assumption (1950). See &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility#Instances_of_infallible_declarations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Instances of papal infallibility in Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With any other statement which you may think that it was made ex-cathedra in its time and can be shown as not held any more, or not true, the proponents of the papal infallibility faith will claim it was not made &amp;quot;ex cathedra&amp;quot; at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I will try to search for some particular case which could could be used to demonstrate this, but as it is time consuming, I have no idea now when I will be able to do it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What is ex-cathedra&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The currently used definition comes from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Vatican_Council&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;First Vatican Council (1869-1870)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;When the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra...as the pastor and teacher of all Christians [and] defines a doctrine of faith and morals that must be held by the Universal Church, he is empowered, through the divine assistance promised him in blessed Peter, with the infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed to endow his Church.&amp;quot;(24)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A trouble is there is not a clear consensus between catholics regarding how to recognize when a statement is made Ex cathedra, therefore it may easily happen a statement which might had been considered as ex cathedra at the time it was issued is classified as an ordinary statement later. See e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05413a.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Encyclical entry in the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it is generally admitted that the mere fact that the pope should have given to any of his utterances the form of an encyclical does not necessarily constitute it an ex-cathedra pronouncement and invest it with infallible authority. The degree in which the infallible magisterium of the Holy See is committed must be judged from the circumstances, and from the language used in the particular case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility#Conditions_for_teachings_being_declared_infallible&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;guide how you can distinguish an &amp;quot;infallible statement&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; nowadays, as accepted by the Catholic Church is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;the Roman Pontiff&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;speaks ex cathedra&amp;quot; (&amp;quot;that is, when in the discharge of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, and by virtue of his supreme apostolic authority….&amp;quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;he defines&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;that a doctrine concerning faith or morals&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;must be held by the whole Church&amp;quot; (Pastor Aeternus, chap. 4)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are similiar rules for &amp;quot;infallible council teaching&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a verbal formula indicating that this teaching is definitive (such as &amp;quot;We declare, decree and define...&amp;quot;), or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an accompanying anathema stating that anyone who deliberately dissents is outside the Catholic Church.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is a caveat: there is no guarantee the guide will not change in the future, as it has never been rigorously formulated by an &amp;quot;infallible&amp;quot; authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-04-13T18:37:12.737" LastActivityDate="2021-04-13T18:37:12.737" CommentCount="8" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-07-17T20:18:09.060" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5217" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-07-15T09:56:57.117" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, reporting more than a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Catholic Church is among the oldest institutions in the world and has played a prominent role in the history of Western civilisation. It teaches that it is the one true Church founded by Jesus Christ and that its bishops are the successors of Christ's apostles and the Pope of St. Peter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Catholic doctrine maintains that the Church is infallible when it dogmatically teaches a doctrine of faith or morals. Catholic worship is centred on the Eucharist in which the Church teaches bread and wine are supernaturally transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Church holds the Blessed Virgin Mary in special regard. Catholic beliefs concerning Mary include her Immaculate Conception without the stain of original sin and her bodily Assumption into heaven at the end of her earthly life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-07-15T09:56:57.117" LastActivityDate="2011-07-15T09:56:57.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5218" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-07-15T09:56:57.117" Score="0" Body="The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, reporting more than a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-07-15T09:56:57.117" LastActivityDate="2011-07-15T09:56:57.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5219" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-15T10:51:31.270" Score="3" ViewCount="485" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wondered how powerful &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_blaster&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;air blasters&lt;/a&gt; are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible for one to be so powerful that the shock wave passes through walls, floors and ceilings? Could it make bumps on metallic surfaces or at least an audible noise, like a pebble falling on it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I ask, is that I'm trying to debunk a claim that someone is being assaulted by a neighbor through some kind of sound waves or pressure waves. I'm highly skeptical, but I'm trying to figure out a possible mechanism in the eventuality the person is right, and the only reasonable thing I could come up with is a pressure cannon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1213" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T13:21:42.357" Title="How powerful are air cannons?" Tags="|physics|sound|machines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5199" CreationDate="2011-07-15T14:44:55.827" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fame comes not from &lt;strong&gt;how much&lt;/strong&gt; they drink, but from &lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; they drink. So looking at the annual average does not give you real picture, as Russian annual average (15.7L/y) is similar to European average (12.2L/y). However, if you look at the drinking patterns, Russia and Ukraine clearly stand out with the most risky ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aFvMH.png&quot; alt=&quot;drinking patterns&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Patterns of drinking score (PDS)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Patterns of drinking score reﬂects&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;how&lt;/strong&gt; people drink instead of &lt;strong&gt;how much&lt;/strong&gt; they drink. Strongly  associated&#xA;with the alcohol-attributable burden of disease of a country, PDS is&#xA;measured on  a scale from 1 (least risky pattern of drinking) to 5&#xA;(most risky pattern of drinking). The higher  the score, the greater&#xA;the alcohol-attributable burden of disease. Notably, different&#xA;drinking  patterns give rise to very different health outcomes in&#xA;population groups with the same level  of consumption. Estimating PDS:&#xA;the PDS is based on an array of drinking attributes, which are&#xA;weighted  differentially in order to provide the PDS on a scale from 1&#xA;to 5:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the usual quantity of alcohol consumed per occasion;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;festive drinking;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;proportion of drinking events, when drinkers get drunk;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;proportion of drinkers, who drink daily or nearly daily;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;drinking with meals;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;drinking in public places.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Data for 2005 on the&#xA;above measures stem from survey information&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/msbgsruprofiles.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Global status report on alcohol and health, by WHO&lt;/a&gt;, p.15&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-15T15:52:59.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5222" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5224" CreationDate="2011-07-15T14:49:11.930" Score="45" ViewCount="19651" Body="&lt;p&gt;My father and I couldn't be more different when it comes to sleep. I rarely go to bed before midnight, while he will often retire around 9:30. While growing up, we'd often get into discussions on the topic of our sleep habits. Over and over I heard him make an assertion that he heard once years ago:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;You sleep better in the hours before midnight....&quot;. In his mind, even if I sleep from 12-8am, I'm still worse off than if I went to bed at 9:30pm and slept for the same amount of time. Is there any evidence one way or the other on this subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measures of what might qualify as &quot;better&quot; sleep could include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perceived refreshedness upon waking (does one feel ready to &quot;jump out of bed&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rate of diminishing alertness/mood as the day proceeds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Objective measurements such as REM/deep sleep or tossing and turning per sleep session&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some other suggested method of comparing sleep quality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, any way to compare some measured/perceived &quot;quality&quot; of sleep based on the time of day of the sleep session (much prior to midnight or at/after midnight) while keeping duration relatively constant could answer this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1632" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2011-07-15T15:54:11.570" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T10:03:24.827" Title="Is it better to sleep before midnight?" Tags="|sleep|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5222" CreationDate="2011-07-15T16:32:48.977" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might depend on how you define the quality, but if alertness suffices, then &lt;strong&gt;No, it does not seem to be any better to get more sleep before midnight if duration is relatively constant.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/04/24/night-owls-have-more-staying-power-than-early-birds-brain-study-shows/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; Discover Magazine blog post, which summarizes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/5926/516&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; Science Magazine study. Here are the pertinent bits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a sleep lab, the researchers studied people with extreme bedtimes, or chronotypes, both early and late. The larks in the study typically woke up between 4 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. and went to bed by 9 p.m. The night owls, or evening chronotypes, left to their own devices would go to bed at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. and rise at noon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, both groups sleep between 7-9 hours per night, but the time of day is significantly different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the test subjects...took tests measuring their alertness 1.5 hours after waking, and again 10.5 hours after waking. &lt;strong&gt;In the earlier test researchers saw no difference between the two groups’ performances, but in the later test the night owls performed better than the early birds, and also topped their own prior test results.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FMRI brain scans told the rest of the tale. In the night owls, increased activity was seen in two parts of the brain at 10.5 hours — the suprachiasmatic nucleus area and the locus coeruleus — that are involved in regulating the circadian signal. Essentially, the circadian signal was winning out over the pressure to sleep. In the early birds, on the other hand, “the sleep pressure prevents the expression of the circadian signal,” so those individuals were less able to keep their attention focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it seems that despite not getting to bed before midnight at all, the study shows the night owls fared just as well or better as early birds on measures of alertness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The post concludes with the caveat that outside the lab, some who are prone to night-owl activities might not have the luxury of a noon wake up time, and thus do worse if they heed the desire to stay up late while also being required to get up early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked around for more, but this was the best I found that seemed like it could try to answer the question based on some metric (alertness throughout the day) to look at simply the time of day of sleep while keeping duration constant. If there &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; more, I'd be quite interested in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;perceived refreshedness after a sleep session&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if this claim stems from the fact that many who go to bed late might need to get up early and thus be in a bit of sleep deprivation vs. how the study above proceeded with those who maintained a consistent schedule but simply had their sleep session shifted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-15T16:32:48.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5226" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5246" CreationDate="2011-07-15T18:02:37.620" Score="13" ViewCount="1746" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this suggestion made in several places; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1373073/Are-secret-U-S-army-tests-blame-TV-presenters-speaking-utter-gibberish.html&quot;&gt;here's one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Around the time of April 2011, several US news presenters or personalities descended into speaking gibberish on national TV.  Some have &quot;cited an on-air experiment broadcast some years ago in the U.S. in which two scientists directed electromagnetic signals into the brain of a reporter, prompting him to start speaking gibberish.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could this be the reason for these TV presenters descending into gibberish in an uncannily short time period of one another?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A video compilation of several of these supposed occurrences is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHDVZfKQ1Fk&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;, and another summary mentioning Judge Judy is &lt;a href=&quot;http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/judge-judy-the-4th-to-talk-gibberish-on-air/&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3447" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2011-07-15T18:23:52.097" LastActivityDate="2024-01-16T14:22:49.877" Title="Are secret U.S. army tests to blame for TV presenters speaking gibberish?" Tags="|united-states|microwaves|army|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5227" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-15T18:57:35.470" Score="16" ViewCount="31312" Body="&lt;p&gt;Human height growth tends to saturate at age of 15 in females and 18-20 in males. But, many claim (i.e. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.squidoo.com/How-To-Increase-Your-Height-With-Easy-Exercises&quot;&gt;How to increase your height with easy exercises&lt;/a&gt;&quot;) that it is possible to increase your height even after the those ages, and even beyond 25.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims are made on the basis of stretching and their straightening the spine, for a modest (less than 2 inch) difference. Many studies refer to the &quot;cobra stretch&quot;, &quot;cat stretch&quot;, one leg straight up and other straightening exercises. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Does a 25-year-old doing such exercises on regular basis have any chance of increasing their height?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4025" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-05-08T11:15:40.493" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T02:00:18.183" Title="Is it possible for people over 25 years old to to grow taller?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3477" CreationDate="2011-07-15T23:00:48.537" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt; for short term, probably not for long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you somewhat answered this already, at least for short term mating/relationships (per Jonason). There &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; seem to be evidence that the &quot;dark triad&quot; personality provides an advantage when it comes to short term mating, but perhaps not for long term relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jonason, et al. &lt;em&gt;The Dark Triad: Facilitating a Short-Term Mating Strategy in Men&lt;/em&gt;, European Journal of Personality, 2009 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysmu.edu/faculty/normanli/JonasonLiWebsterSchmitt2009.pdf&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We found that the scores on the &lt;strong&gt;Dark Triad traits were positively related to having more sex partners, an unrestricted sociosexuality and a greater preference for short-term mates.&lt;/strong&gt; We demonstrated that the association between the Dark Triad composite was correlated with short-term mating above and beyond effects of participant’s age, sex and extraversion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, from the same report, we have this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whereas such a strategy capitalises on quantity at the cost of receiving long-term benefits, &lt;strong&gt;individuals who are not high on the Dark Triad traits—the majority of populations—may be better equipped to form cooperative long-term relationships&lt;/strong&gt; and, to a lesser degree, short-term relationships without deception. This long-term, nonexploitive strategy may represent a slower but more stable approach to reproduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jonason, et al., &lt;em&gt;The costs and benefits of the Dark Triad: Implications for mate poaching and mate retention tactics&lt;/em&gt;, Personality and Individual Differences, 2010 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886909004619#secx7&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study finds that high scorers on the dark triad scale are more likely to &quot;poach&quot; those already in a relationship and/or to &lt;em&gt;be poached&lt;/em&gt; by others in a relationship:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...scores on the Dark Triad were correlated with rates of poaching mates from others for new relationships and being poached by others for new relationships. Such associations may explain the higher numbers of sexual partners by high scorers on Dark Triad traits (Jonason et al., 2009). That is, by being willing to poach others away from their relationships and by being willing to leave ongoing relationships for new ones, such opportunistic individuals enjoy access to more novel romantic or sexual partners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this to work... there's at least &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; indication that dark rriad traits are enough to promote infidelity in a previously existing relationship... but we don't know if &quot;nice guys&quot; are the ones having their mates poached. In fact, the same study goes on to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dark Triad individuals tend to have their own mates poached away by others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alia &amp;amp; Chamorro-Premuzic, &lt;em&gt;The dark side of love and life satisfaction: Associations with intimate relationships, psychopathy and Machiavellianism&lt;/em&gt;, Personality and Individual Differences, 2010 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886909004279#secx13&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study finds that Machiavellianism (one of the dark triad traits) is negatively correlated with relationship intimacy (which I take to imply a lower long-term relationship satisfaction):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Machiavellianism was negatively associated with life satisfaction and intimacy, which is not surprising when considering that this trait is associated with negative emotions (e.g., McHoskey et al., 1998) and a lack of interpersonal affect in interpersonal relationships&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jonason &amp;amp; Kavanagh, &lt;em&gt;The dark side of love: Love styles and the Dark Triad&lt;/em&gt;, Personality and Individual Differences, 2010 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886910002771#secx6&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This last study may suggest, again, that dark triad high-scorers are more apt to choose short term mating strategies vs. long term endeavors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These individuals may go into relationships of any kind because of their own needs; the other individual may be immaterial or irrelevant. That is, the features of the other person are not the determining factors that lead to relationships emerging for those who are high on the Dark Triad. Instead, these individuals may “use” others to get what they want. We do not contend that these individuals are ambivalent to the attractiveness of their partners, but instead, their short-term mating lifestyle may be expressed in a “whatever I can get” attitude. However, this question does deserve future attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wilbur &amp;amp; Cambell, &lt;em&gt;What do women want? An interactionist account of women’s mate preferences&lt;/em&gt;, Personality and Individual Differences, 2010 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886910003235#secx25&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, this article suggests that women want primarily attractiveness for short-term mates, and both attractiveness and ambition (signaling genetic fitness and a good provider) for dating and long-term relationships:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...attractive targets were preferred as short-term sexual partners...ambitious men were preferred as dating partners [and] attractive men were preferred as dating partners...ambitious men were preferred as long-term romantic partners [and] attractive men were preferred as long-term romantic partners...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gangestad et al.,  &lt;em&gt;Women's Preferences for Male Behavioral Displays Change Across the Menstrual Cycle&lt;/em&gt;, Psychological Science, 2004 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/15/3/203.short&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be the money study/quote right here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A sample of 237 normally ovulating women viewed 36 or 40 videotaped men who were competing for a potential lunch date and then rated each man's attractiveness as a short-term and a long-term mate. &lt;strong&gt;As predicted, women's preference for men who displayed social presence and direct intrasexual competitiveness increased on high-fertility days relative to low-fertility days, but only in a short-term, not a long-term, mating context.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One would need the whole report to know what &quot;social presence&quot; and &quot;intrasexual competitiveness&quot; implies -- I'm reading this as dominating/confidence and attractiveness. Now quite the &quot;dark triad&quot; but perhaps related. At the very least we find that desires for &quot;alpha&quot; signals wane as relationship desires shift from short to long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; So, from your own sources and some I've provided, I'd put the results like so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Women &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; prefer &quot;bad boys&quot; for short-term mating choices, despite the intuitively negative desirability of such choices&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High &quot;dark triad&quot; scorers self report more sex partners than non-high-scorers (so they're obviously finding willing participants)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High &quot;dark triad&quot; scorers self-identify as preferring short term mating scenarios&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At least one of the dark triad components, Machiavellianism, seems to diminish relationship intimacy (which I think decreases long term relationship predicted success, but I could be wrong)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Women seem to prefer attractiveness and ambition, period&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Women's desires changed based on both fertility and whether or not they are seeking short or long-term relationships (short-term seeking and fertility increases desirability of &quot;alpha male&quot; signals)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for long term strategies, it doesn't seem that dark triad high-scorers will fare as well. Across the board, attraction and ambition (or money) influence relationship partner choices a lot, and fertility and the type of mate (long vs. short term) will also affect what about a male is attractive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that doesn't cloud the water too much -- none of these provided &lt;em&gt;quite&lt;/em&gt; what I hoped, but I think they are related enough to list as an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-07-15T23:00:48.537" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5234" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5251" CreationDate="2011-07-16T12:45:30.987" Score="15" ViewCount="965" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent opinion piece in Al Jazeera titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/07/20117313948379987.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Mass psychosis in the US&quot;&lt;/a&gt; claims that antipsychotic drugs are overused in the US, mostly due to the influence of &quot;Big Pharma&quot; which is pushing new atypical antipsychotics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Has America become a nation of psychotics? You would certainly think&#xA;  so, based on the explosion in the use of antipsychotic medications. In&#xA;  2008, with over $14 billion in sales, antipsychotics became the single&#xA;  top-selling therapeutic class of prescription drugs in the United&#xA;  States, surpassing drugs used to treat high cholesterol and acid&#xA;  reflux.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article states that the sales of antipsychotics have surpassed the sales of blockbusters such as statins. The article also quotes several people implying that the increased use of those drugs is caused by the pharmaceutical industry pushing to widen the criteria of mental ilnesses in order to be able to sell more drugs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under the tutelage of Big Pharma, we are &quot;simply expanding the&#xA;  criteria for mental illness so that nearly everyone has one.&quot;&#xA;  Fugh-Berman agrees: In the age of aggressive drug marketing, she says,&#xA;  &quot;Psychiatric diagnoses have expanded to include many perfectly normal&#xA;  people.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article cites the revenue data for the drugs, but that can be misleading as the drugs are not all equally priced. It seems hard to believe that antipsychotics are more often used than statins considering the frequent reports of an obesity epidemic. Are the revenue numbers due to a vast increase in prescription of antipsychotics, or are there other factors at play like e.g. generics that push down the price of certain drugs and decrease the total revenue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that antipsychotics are widely prescribed unnecessarily like the article implies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-11T07:10:35.800" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T07:10:35.800" Title="Are antipsychotic drugs vastly overused in the US?" Tags="|medical-science|united-states|medications|psychiatry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5234" CreationDate="2011-07-16T23:45:15.940" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Increasing off-label use of antipsychotic medications in the United States, 1995–2008&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pds.2082/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety&#xA;Volume 20, Issue 2, pages 177–184, February 2011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Antipsychotic use increased from 6.2 million (M) treatment visits (95%&#xA;  CI, 5.4–7.0) in 1995 to 16.7 M visits (15.5–18.2) in 2006, then&#xA;  declined to 14.3 M visits (13.0–15.6) by 2008.&lt;/strong&gt; A shift occurred from&#xA;  typical agents in 1995 (84% of all antipsychotic visits) to atypical&#xA;  agents by 2008 (93%). As they declined, typical medications shifted&#xA;  toward use in schizophrenia (30% in 1995 to 48% 2008). In contrast,&#xA;  use of atypical agents expanded for bipolar affective disorder (10 to&#xA;  34%), remained stable for depression (12 to 14%), and declined for&#xA;  schizophrenia (56 to 23%). Overall, antipsychotic use for indications&#xA;  without FDA approval increased from 4.4 M visits in 1995 to 9.0 M in&#xA;  2008. The estimated cost associated with off-label use in 2008 was&#xA;  US$6.0 billion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2011-07-16T23:45:15.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5238" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-17T00:55:39.067" Score="5" ViewCount="2697" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just saw in a movie, a guy jumped off a building using a lawn umbrella as a parachute.  Would that work in reality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4039" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:32:54.027" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T16:15:31.493" Title="Lawn umbrella as a parachute?" Tags="|physics|parachutes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5238" CreationDate="2011-07-17T10:30:05.920" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The science entertainment television show, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters&quot;&gt;MythBusters&lt;/a&gt;, investigated this claim in their 18th episode (in the 2004 season).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_%282004_season%29#Episode_18_.E2.80.93_.22Beat_the_Radar_Detector.22&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; summarised their findings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Opening an umbrella will slow a fall from a building enough to make it survivable: Busted&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Though different umbrellas did slow a fall, the impact was still deadly. A real parachute was also tested but found to be unable to properly arrest a fall from only 60 feet (18 m). The best an umbrella can do is hold the person somewhat upright, causing less damage to the head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The MythBusters team do an excellent job of promoting the concepts of testing claims through experiment, but they cannot be considered the most rigorous of scientific investigators. However, for a claim of this level of unimportance, it seems a sufficient level of evidence. If you were planning to risk your life jumping off buildings with just an umbrella, I would urge further experimentation!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-07-17T10:30:05.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5226" CreationDate="2011-07-17T13:57:40.440" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;What conspiracionists claim is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spontaneous-gibberish-talking is not the symptom of any known illness.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Some have claimed those were MK-Ultra breakdowns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is absolutely untrue, as this is well know medical condition known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/brain/aphasia-causes-symptoms-types-treatments&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;aphasia&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aphasia gets in the way of a person's ability to use or understand&#xA;  words. Aphasia does not impair the person's intelligence. People who&#xA;  have aphasia may have difficulty speaking and finding the &quot;right&quot;&#xA;  words to complete their thoughts. They may also have problems&#xA;  understanding conversation, reading and comprehending written words,&#xA;  writing words, and using numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Causes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;more common in older adults, particularly those who have had a stroke.&#xA;  [...] Aphasia may also be caused by a brain tumor, brain infection, or dementia such as Alzheimer's disease. In some cases, aphasia is an episodic symptom of epilepsy or other neurological disorder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2011-07-17T13:57:40.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5249" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-17T18:09:51.810" Score="8" ViewCount="1183" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think everybody heard this claim, and its opposite, a million times. Students or teachers commonly speak about having talents for a particular subject or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subject is debated, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a-genius-to-do-maths/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does one have to be a genius to do mathematics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is an emphatic NO. In order to make good and useful contributions to mathematics, one does need to work hard, learn one’s field well, learn other fields and tools, ask questions, talk to other mathematicians, and think about the “big picture”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While people may have different acquired &amp;quot;tastes&amp;quot; in knowledge and put different amounts of enthusiasm and effort when studying different subjects, and thus get better or worse knowledge and grades, &lt;strong&gt;is it scientifically proven that people are &amp;quot;born&amp;quot; with &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; mathematical or language (or any other subject-specific) talents?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, please do exclude extreme examples from any answers, e.g. idiot-savants, etc. The claim is commonly made about the general population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-27T14:35:31.930" Title="Can one be naturally better at computers than English or Maths?" Tags="|genetics|intelligence|school|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5269" CreationDate="2011-07-17T18:11:44.243" Score="16" ViewCount="2891" Body="&lt;p&gt;In January 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;successfully ditched in the Hudson River adjacent to midtown Manhattan six minutes after takeoff from LaGuardia Airport after being disabled by striking a flock of Canada Geese during its initial climb out. The incident became known as the &quot;Miracle On The Hudson&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia page goes onto explain the crew were awarded citations that read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reactions of all members of the crew, the split second decision making and the handling of this emergency and evacuation was 'text book' and an example to us all. This emergency ditching and evacuation, with the loss of no lives, is a heroic and unique aviation achievement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been described as &quot;the most successful ditching in aviation history.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no doubt that it was a very successful result for a dangerous and terrifying situation. It seems that the crew did follow their training well under trying conditions (possibly with a couple of minor and inconsequential deviations - e.g. an incorrect call-sign and not operating the &quot;ditch switch&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My interest is in the accolades for heroism granted to the crew and, particularly, to Captain Sullenberger. Their actions were described as heroic by a number of politicians and pundits, including the last two US Presidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know enough about being a pilot to know if these accolades are because the crew did an exceptional job, or if they &quot;merely&quot; did their job. It seems that the safety equipment plus the &quot;text book&quot; actions were appropriate in this case to save lives. Given the same situation, I wonder how many other pilots would have achieved a similar result or better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there studies of how flight crews react in emergency situations? Do they successfully follow their training and make appropriate decisions that maximise their chances of survival? Do they tend to panic and make mistakes? Are there any meaningful figures on this subject?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I am &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; saying the crew did a bad job. I am asking if other crews, put in the same terrible situation, wouldn't typically have the same result. Should I be hailing Captain Sullenberger as an exceptional hero, or sharing the accolades with all pilots who are trained and capable of dealing with emergencies I could never imagine having to face?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related Question&lt;/strong&gt;: Since this question was asked, Aviation.SE was created, and now has &lt;a href=&quot;https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/31485/how-miraculous-was-the-miracle-on-the-hudson?newreg=000d54d0ca0a4f5480ac5c04ebaa135a&quot;&gt;a similar question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:59:54.117" LastActivityDate="2016-09-16T13:47:39.367" Title="Did the the crew of Flight 1549 (that ditched in the Hudson) do an exceptionally good job?" Tags="|aviation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5234" CreationDate="2011-07-17T18:58:55.707" Score="15" Body="&lt;h1&gt;The Numbers&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugs.com/top200_units_2009.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Top 200 Pharmaceutical Sales 2009&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imshealth.com/portal/site/ims/menuitem.d248e29c86589c9c30e81c033208c22a/?vgnextoid=8890ba440c900310VgnVCM10000071812ca2RCRD&amp;amp;cpsextcurrchannel=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;U.S. Sales and Prescription Information 2009&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cj87q.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mTlE6.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Shenanigans&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About a year ago, patients began trooping into the office of UCLA&#xA;  psychiatrist Andrew Leuchter, asking whether an antipsychotic drug&#xA;  called Abilify &quot;might be right for them.&quot; Few appeared to be&#xA;  delusional, plagued by hallucinations or suffering fearsome mood&#xA;  swings. Mostly, they were depressed or anxious, and frustrated by the&#xA;  pace of their recovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leuchter wondered what was up: Depressed patients didn't usually seek&#xA;  out drugs used to quell psychiatry's most disturbing symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What was up, he soon discovered, was spending on a new advertising&#xA;  campaign touting Abilify as an &quot;add-on&quot; treatment for depression. For&#xA;  the first time since the arrival of a new generation of antipsychotic&#xA;  medications -- six drugs called the &quot;atypicals&quot; because they work&#xA;  differently from the earlier generation of antipsychotic drugs -- the&#xA;  makers of one, Abilify, had been granted the legal right to market to&#xA;  a vast new population of patients beyond those with schizophrenia or&#xA;  bipolar disorder. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/13/health/he-antipsychotics13&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK. Nothing wrong with some advertising, right? We know the rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Advertising and Marketing - Pharmaceutical manufacturers make&#xA;  substantial investments on marketing to consumers and physicians,&#xA;  which may influence consumer demand and physician prescribing&#xA;  practices. Furthermore, the most heavily advertised products tend to&#xA;  be newer, more expensive drugs. This results in overall increases in&#xA;  spending. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kaiseredu.org/Issue-Modules/Prescription-Drug-Costs/Background-Brief.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The guys at Healthcare Finance News are bullish...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The broad clinical profile of atypical antipsychotics allows them to&#xA;  target a spectrum of psychiatric indications, increasing access to a&#xA;  wider variety and larger number of patients and therefore driving&#xA;  sales prescriptions and revenues. Pursuing indication expansion,&#xA;  AstraZeneca’s Seroquel (quetiapine) and Eli Lilly’s Zyprexa&#xA;  (olanzapine) became the biggest selling antipsychotics in 2008 with&#xA;  global sales of $5.5 bn and $5.4 bn respectively. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/press-release/pipeline-antipsychotic-drugs-drive-next-market-evolution&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2007: Fine: $515 million. Oops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2007, Bristol-Myers Squibb and a subsidiary paid $515 million to&#xA;  settle federal and state investigations into marketing of its&#xA;  antipsychotic drug Abilify. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/business/27drug.html?adxnnl=1&amp;amp;hpw=&amp;amp;adxnnlx=1310897548-XS3Sv4DGBGnTngXAvRz1AQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2009: $615 million penalty for the federal criminal charge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Eli Lilly &amp;amp; Co.]’s internal documents, which number about 10,000&#xA;  pages, were unsealed as part of suits against the drugmaker by health&#xA;  insurers and pension plans seeking to recoup monies spent on Zyprexa.&#xA;  The insurance plans contend the papers indicate that Lilly promoted&#xA;  the antipsychotic to doctors treating elderly patients even after&#xA;  March 2001.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The plaintiffs cite documents including a 2002 business plan calling&#xA;  for expanding prescriptions in off-label use. They also point to notes&#xA;  from Lilly sales representatives through 2003 recording efforts to&#xA;  press doctors to prescribe elderly patients Zyprexa for mood symptoms,&#xA;  irritability and insomnia. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;amp;sid=aTLcF3zT1Pdo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2009: Fine: $520 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AstraZeneca becomes the fourth pharmaceutical giant in the last three&#xA;  years to admit to federal charges of illegal marketing of&#xA;  antipsychotic drugs, a lucrative category of medications that have&#xA;  quickly risen to the top of United States sales charts. Aggressive&#xA;  sales and promotional practices have helped expand the use of powerful&#xA;  new antipsychotic drugs for children and the elderly. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/business/27drug.html?adxnnl=1&amp;amp;hpw=&amp;amp;adxnnlx=1310897548-XS3Sv4DGBGnTngXAvRz1AQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Manageable side effect&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2001, marketing executives advised salespeople not to duck&#xA;  questions about whether Zyprexa caused some users to gain weight,&#xA;  according to an internal memo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Acknowledge weight gain but present it as a manageable side effect,”&#xA;  Lilly advised its sales force, according to the documents. “With most&#xA;  customers, we will continue to address the diabetes concern only when&#xA;  it arises,” the December 2001 document said. “Get back to selling!” -&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;amp;sid=aTLcF3zT1Pdo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Smoke and mirrors&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The company has argued that people who were found to have diabetes&#xA;  after taking Seroquel already had diabetes or had existing conditions&#xA;  that made them at high risk of the disease.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to company e-mail unsealed in civil lawsuits, AstraZeneca&#xA;  “buried” — a manager’s term — a 1997 study that showed Seroquel users&#xA;  gained 11 pounds a year, while publicizing a study that claimed users&#xA;  lost weight. Company e-mail messages also refer to doing a “great&#xA;  smoke-and-mirrors job” on unfavorable studies. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/business/27drug.html?adxnnl=1&amp;amp;hpw=&amp;amp;adxnnlx=1310897548-XS3Sv4DGBGnTngXAvRz1AQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Of course nobody did anything wrong...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In its statement, Lilly said the settlement did not change its views&#xA;  that Zyprexa is a safe and effective treatment for mental illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We wanted to reduce significant uncertainties involved in litigating&#xA;  such complex cases,&quot; Sidney Taurel, Lilly’s chief executive, said in&#xA;  the statement. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/04/business/04cnd-drug.html?hp&amp;amp;ex=1167973200&amp;amp;en=32c3e3c2d5309a8b&amp;amp;ei=5094&amp;amp;partner=homepage&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Bottom Line.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Is there evidence that antipsychotics are widely prescribed unnecessarily like the article implies?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt; In fact, there is evidence that the article is right about many things.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;However, it would be better served if it did not take liberties with statistics.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="35" LastEditDate="2011-07-19T07:37:25.987" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T07:37:25.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5254" CreationDate="2011-07-17T20:24:35.180" Score="18" ViewCount="2206" Body="&lt;p&gt;People going to Lourdes sometimes return and tell stories about a miraculous healing they have witnessed. Do visitors of Lourdes experience spontaneous recovery more often than would be expected by chance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Question motivated by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/991/why-arent-question-about-religion-closed-as-off-topic/1000#1000&quot;&gt;meta&lt;/a&gt; discussion, I think it is one of real questions people with Catholic background ask, and I would like to see it answered.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:58.097" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T03:00:16.797" Title="Do visitors of Lourdes experience spontaneous recovery more often than would be expected by chance?" Tags="|medical-science|catholic-church|miracle|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5252" CreationDate="2011-07-17T21:33:14.973" Score="31" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The spontaneous remission rate of all cancers, lumped together, is&#xA;  estimated to be something between one in ten thousand and one in a&#xA;  hundred thousand. If no more than 5 percent of those who come to&#xA;  Lourdes were there to treat their cancers, there should have been&#xA;  something between 50 and 500 'miraculous' cures of cancer alone. &#xA;  Since only three of the attested 65 cures [accepted by the R C Church&#xA;  as miraculous cures] are of cancer, the rate of spontaneous remission&#xA;  a Lourdes seems to be lower than if the victims had just stayed at&#xA;  home.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash;From Carl Sagan, &lt;em&gt;The Demon-Haunted World&lt;/em&gt; p. 221.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will reconstruct the references independently because the book has a very poor references section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;spontaneous remission of cancer can be estimated between 1 and 10 cases every million (so it's much rarer than Sagan assumed) &lt;a href=&quot;http://bioinfo.tg.fh-giessen.de/cancer/hobohm-2005-bjc.pdf&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is estimated that 200 million people have visited Lourdes since 1860 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sacredsites.com/europe/france/lourdes.html&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are 67 recognised &quot;miracle healings&quot; at Lourdes, of which only 5 are cancer-related &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lourdes-france.org/upload/pdf/gb_guerisons.pdf&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cancer accounts for way more than 5% of deaths, so we can assume it's an underestimation. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/dth1010.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; we can verify that at least 16.8% of male deaths and 11.7% of female death are due to cancer, at least in UK.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no particular preference for cancer victims to go to Lourdes over victims of other illnesses, so we can estimate that at most 12-17% of the critically/terminally ill are there for cancer-related reasons (one of the preconditions for a &quot;miraculous cure&quot; is a diagnosed disease).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all people go to Lourdes for a terminal illness though, so the more conservative 5% figure that Sagan provided potentially compensates for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if 5% of people coming to Lourdes are there to cure cancer, then their number would amount to 10 million people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of a set of 10 million cancer victims, we should normally expect between 10 and 100 cases of spontaneous remission of the disease, statistically speaking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, only 5 cases of &quot;cancer miracles&quot; are reported from Lourdes, making the healing powers of Lourdes statistically insignificant over pure chance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the other alleged &quot;cures&quot; are pre-1970 and related to TBC and MS, which are now either curable or known to have high rates of temporary remission. Funnily enough, the number of alleged &quot;cures&quot; has diminished as medical science has learned to heal patients of the most common ailments and to properly diagnose common remissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-07-18T15:48:37.273" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T15:48:37.273" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5250" CreationDate="2011-07-17T22:04:36.907" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there studies of how flight crews react in emergency situations?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, Every air accident or near miss is investigated in details by the appropriate authority. Such an investigation always includes an analysis of the crew actions and their correctness. Here are a number of sites with exhaustive lists of such analyses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/aviation/index.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Canada&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/index.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NTSB (US)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaib.gov.uk/publications/index.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AAIB (UK)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google will find any others you are looking for. You might like to read a few to get a feel for how &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any meaningful figures on this subject?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not as far as I can tell. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This table&lt;/a&gt; is closely related in that it gives pilot error-induced accidents as a proportion of all accidents. I'm going to guess that the &quot;pilot error (weather related)&quot; and &quot;pilot error (mechanical related)&quot; might be cases where pilots reacted wrongly to a bad but not necessarily fatal situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there some examples?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even a fairly brief reading of these accidents will reveal cases where the aircrew did not follow their proper training even under normal circumstances - they show up in the accident reports because their actions &lt;em&gt;caused&lt;/em&gt; an accident. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the question a useful one?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your tone you seem to be asking whether Cpt Sully and his crew deserve to be called heroes, or if they just did their job. Why are the two contradictory? If we think about firefighters, police, soldiers, coastguard rescue, they are trained exactly to respond to extreme situations, and it's what we expect of them; that shouldn't stop us from calling them heroes when they do it. Nobody should be dragged from a burning building and say to the firefighter who did it:&quot;Hey, you were just doing your job&quot;. Civilian aircrew aren't quite in the same category - most pilots never go through a situation half as extreme as this for real. But if they correctly respond to an emergency as they were trained, under extreme pressure and when every human instinct is to cover your eyes and scream, they deserve all the hero-credit they can get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-07-18T02:10:37.120" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T02:10:37.120" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5256" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5267" CreationDate="2011-07-17T23:14:58.880" Score="15" ViewCount="1364" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Lawyers in the United States have been known to use the following&#xA;  reason for striking down potential jurors: the prospective juror is&#xA;  well educated in science, or has some knowledge of genetics or&#xA;  probability theory.&quot; - Richard Dawkins &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0618056734&quot;&gt;Unweaving the Rainbow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, this quote comes from the same year (2000) as the debut of forensic procedural television show &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0247082/&quot;&gt;CSI: Crime Scene Investigation&lt;/a&gt;, and is one of the earliest I've found to (popularly) call attention to the idea that the outcome of criminal cases &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be becoming more contingent upon the ability of all involved (police, jurors, lawyers, technicians, judges, experts, etc.) to correctly interpret and understand scientific evidence, but perhaps are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been reported by some that the immense popularity of American television shows such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation are having an apparent impact on the verdicts juries render by causing them to demand more television-style forensic proof, while contributing to a general misunderstanding of the real-life forensic investigative processes in use today. However, the demonstrable effects of such a phenomenon, if it exists, seem to be unclear.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;programs also foster what analysts say is the mistaken notion that&#xA;  criminal science is fast and infallible and always gets its man.&#xA;  That's affecting the way lawyers prepare their cases, as well as the&#xA;  expectations that police and the public place on real crime labs. Real&#xA;  crime-scene investigators say that because of the programs, people&#xA;  often have unrealistic ideas of what criminal science can deliver&quot;.&#xA;  source&#xA;  There is disagreement as to whether or not the effect is real and demonstrable, but there is also some debate as to which side is affected more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many lawyers, judges and legal consultants say they appreciate how&#xA;  CSI-type shows have increased interest in forensic evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Talking about science in the courtroom used to be like talking about&#xA;  geometry — a real jury turnoff,&quot; says Hirschhorn, of Lewisville,&#xA;  Texas. &quot;Now that there's this almost obsession with the (TV) shows,&#xA;  you can talk to jurors about (scientific evidence) and just see from&#xA;  the looks on their faces that they find it fascinating.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But some defense lawyers say CSI and similar shows make jurors rely&#xA;  too heavily on scientific findings and unwilling to accept that those&#xA;  findings can be compromised by human or technical errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prosecutors also have complaints: They say the shows can make it more&#xA;  difficult for them to win convictions in the large majority of cases&#xA;  in which scientific evidence is irrelevant or absent. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-08-05-csi-effect_x.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has it been proven that television shows such as CSI are affecting verdicts by influencing the way jurors interpret evidence (or lack thereof) presented in court?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If so, has it been shown to work in favor of either the prosecution or the&#xA;defense?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T10:07:02.097" Title="The CSI effect: Have television shows been shown to influence jury verdicts?" Tags="|forensics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3429" CreationDate="2011-07-18T00:07:56.643" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. General medical consensus appears to be that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.womenshealth.gov/publications/our-publications/fact-sheet/varicose-spider-veins.cfm#B&quot;&gt;vericose veins are caused by congenitally weak valves in the veins&lt;/a&gt;. The condition can be exacerbated by standing, but there are no references to sitting in any particular style.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many theories exist for why varicosities occur in veins, but the consensus is that defective/damaged valves within the veins are to blame. Valves prevent backward flow of blood within the vein. They keep blood in the vein moving toward the heart. Why the valves stop working is up for debate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acid crystals are caused by high &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uric_acid&quot;&gt;levels of uric acid&lt;/a&gt; in the blood serum, so how one sits would not be indicated as a cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Bad posture&quot; isn't a medical condition. (Personally, I think it's unlikely that the brilliant machine we call the human body is so stupid it can't sit any way it feels comfortable without doing terrible damage to itself.) Most information on bad posture is anecdotal at best; either there's a diagnosed error in the formation of the body or there isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4047" LastEditorUserId="4047" LastEditDate="2011-07-18T19:31:50.670" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T19:31:50.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5258" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5265" CreationDate="2011-07-18T00:39:40.537" Score="16" ViewCount="3821" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have another baby on the way and I was thinking about asking this previously, but wasn't sure how common it was as our first child predates this site by about 4 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we have another on the way it has come up again and people keep telling us we shouldn't be announcing our pregnancy until the second trimester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their suggestion is that it is more likely that there will be complications in the first semester and this will ultimately lead to our embarrassment. This is usually mentioned quite abruptly as if this a regular occurrence and we will suffer the consequence of going around telling everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on fact, in the developed world do more deaths happen during the first trimester or during the rest of the pregnancy including labor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be for a healthy female aged 18 - 35.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also don't know if this has any effect on the figures, but it should be assumed that during the first trimester a pregnancy is not identified until after 5 - 6 weeks has already passed. As nobody would go around announcing something that never happened if there was some sort of complication during that period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T09:29:16.327" Title="Shouldn't tell about pregnancy in first trimester" Tags="|mortality|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5002" CreationDate="2011-07-18T01:02:13.953" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, because overweight is a metabolic issue and not a behavioral one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's currently the fashion to believe that overweight people suffer from sloth and gluttony; however, adipose tissue is not the result of character defects but rather of metabolic function. As it turns out, the obese don't consume more calories than the lean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Most studies comparing normal and overweight people suggest that those who are overweight eat fewer calories than those of normal weight.” [National Academy of Sciences, &lt;em&gt;Diet and Health&lt;/em&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all calories are created equal. The body metabolizes them differently. The current belief is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A calorie of protein provides the same amount of energy to the body as a calorie of fat or carbohydrate. Lost in this distillation is the fact that the effects of these different nutrients on metabolism and hormone secretion are so radically different, as is the manner in which the body employs the nutrients, that the energetic equivalence of the calories themselves is largely irrelevant to why we gain weight. As Rubner suggested more than a century ago, “the effect of specific nutritional substances upon the glands” may be the more relevant factor. [Taubes, Gary (2007). &lt;em&gt;Good Calories, Bad Calories&lt;/em&gt; (p. 276). Anchor.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.life-enhancement.com/article_template.asp?id=677&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Insulin regulates body fat&lt;/a&gt;. Modern diets are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-carbohydrate_diet#Beginnings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;full of refined carbohydrates&lt;/a&gt; that cause excessively high blood glucose, and this in turn causes the pancreas to secrete insulin to force the tissues store it as fat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To lose fat, keep the blood sugar under control by avoiding refined carbohydrates like white sugar, white flour, potatoes, beer, and white rice. You don't need to force yourself to eat slowly. (The research doesn't yet exist for me toI can't &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; this assertion, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_research_related_to_low-carbohydrate_diets&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here is a great list&lt;/a&gt; of the current state of research.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current wisdom is that to lose weight, one must eat less and exercise more (as if the human body were a car, and all food was petrol), and yet anyone who has ever tried this approach knows it's uncomfortable at best. However, it's beginning to appear that changing the types of calories we consume rather than the quantity is actually more appropriate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/utsw/cda/dept353744/files/636301.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Limiting carbs, not calories, reduces liver fat faster&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21400557&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A prolonged hypocaloric diet low in carbohydrates and high in fat has the same beneficial effects on intrahepatic lipid accumulation as the traditional low-fat hypocaloric diet.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_research_related_to_low-carbohydrate_diets#New_England_Journal_of_Medicine%3a_2003&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The low-carbohydrate diet produced a greater weight loss than did the conventional diet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're beginning to see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_research_related_to_low-carbohydrate_diets#Meta-analytic_summaries&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;meta studies&lt;/a&gt; as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An even more recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2008.00518.x/abstract;jsessionid=4361C56F2745C3546F483C0615A9D39F.d01t01&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;meta-study of randomized controlled studies&lt;/a&gt; that compared low-carbohydrate diets to low-fat/low-calorie diets found that measurements of weight, HDL cholesterol, triglyceride levels and systolic blood pressure were significantly better in groups that followed low-carbohydrate diets. The authors also found a higher rate of attrition in groups with low-fat diets. They conclude that &quot;Evidence from this systematic review demonstrates that low-carbohydrate/high-protein diets are more effective at 6 months and are as effective, if not more, as low-fat diets in reducing weight and cardiovascular disease risk up to 1 year.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4047" LastEditorUserId="4047" LastEditDate="2011-07-18T20:58:55.920" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T20:58:55.920" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5250" CreationDate="2011-07-18T01:09:22.547" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, I will answer this as a pilot, since that is an area of expertise for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, how people react under serious stress has been recorded, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fi.edu/learn/brain/stress.html&quot;&gt;it varies with the individual&lt;/a&gt;.  You can train people, however, when &quot;The Real Thing&quot; happens, there is always the element of unknown reactions.  Although, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atsl.cee.vt.edu/trb_papers.htm&quot;&gt;the goal of all the repetitive emergency procedures training and exposure to situations in a simulator, is meant to reduce the likelihood of someone freezing up or reacting incorrectly&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to, did they &quot;merely&quot; do their job question.  I have always said that having a boring flying career is the most preferable state of events.  The best pilots use their knowledge and judgment so that they don't have to use their skill.  It is indeed a very ingrained part of pilot training to handle these emergencies.  The amount of training is reflected in the significant investment it takes to become an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_Transport_Pilot_License&quot;&gt;ATP&lt;/a&gt; pilot, as well as the experience one needs to show in order to become a captain on one of the &quot;majors&quot;.  Most people have no idea how tightly regulated and trained pilots are, hence they may attribute some aspects of job performance to superior heroism, when in most cases it is training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, unlike most career fields out there, pilots are annually subjected to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practical Flying Exam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flying Rules Written Exam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aircraft Systems Written exam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weather written exam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emergency Procedures exam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aviation knowledge oral exam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://flightphysical.com/part67/Class1/67subb.htm&quot;&gt;Full Class I Physical&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then, depending on the airline, or aviation field, they could also get psychological exams, additional testing, and of course, continuing education such as Crew Resource Management training, additional upgrade training and type ratings, etc.  Being a pilot is unlike any other career field that I am aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that's probably why you see such humility from pilots.  They feel like they really are only doing their jobs, but the average citizen has no idea what they have done to become a pilot, so anything they do seems heroic.  Although, that still doesn't change the fact that this was indeed a very special event pulled off by the crew (although not totally unique as Suma points out in his answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, let's address each of your bolded questions now that I have given you an extensive pre-amble:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there studies of how flight crews react in emergency situations?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every single accident is tracked by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/index.aspx&quot;&gt;NTSB&lt;/a&gt;.  Part of the charter of the NTSB, FAA, and nearly any worthwhile flying organization is to use those accidents as lessons learned.  In USAF pilot training, we have a book called &quot;Road to Wings&quot; which the students affectionately call the &quot;Bloody Road to Wings&quot; because it is a summation of all pilot training accidents, and what was learned from them.  These lessons learned are also taken into classes such as crew resource management (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/anesthesiology/acute/learningmaterials/videos/Crisis-Resource-Managment-Article-2.pdf&quot;&gt;which by the way is also finding it's way into the medical field&lt;/a&gt; because the principles are so successful).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do they successfully follow their training and make appropriate decisions that maximize their chances of survival?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not really sure exactly what you are asking here.  All I can say is emphatically &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;!  That's the whole &lt;em&gt;purpose&lt;/em&gt; of the training they receive.  One can also argue that the reason that airline captains are paid so much (aside from the extreme training, and awesome responsibility, but you also want the guy to have something to live for when things go wrong (although I personally find that a poor argument)).  Keep in mind, there is a history that got us to the point of having these checklists (like I mentioned, the Bloody Road to Wings).  There is a manual that the USAF has for each aircraft that we call the Dash One.  In it are things called Notes, Cautions, and Warnings.  Each and every note, caution, and warning is written in someone's blood.  Same way with checklists (and again, as I mentioned earlier, checklists are finding their way into medicine and other consequence driven fields).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do they tend to panic and make mistakes?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, that's the purpose of the training.  Keep in mind, things don't happen &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; often.  Most of the time, when something does happen, it doesn't even make the news because very few people even know something is happening (for instance, a hydraulic failure, or something like that, is generally never broadcast to the passengers unless it's incredibly severe, and they need to prepare the passengers).  Overall, when we DO have accidents, it is a result of an error that led the crew into an unrecoverable situation (what we call the &quot;error chain&quot;).  The dual flame out bird strike is not really one of those type of events (like flying into icing conditions with anti-ice off like happened near Buffalo, NY).  At that point, the pilot hasn't been part of a series of mistakes that are building up, and thus can hopefully let all that training and preparation take over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any meaningful figures on this subject?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that the USAF keeps a lot of figures and statistics from all aircraft investigations.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwards.af.mil/library/flightsafety/&quot;&gt;They also have a very formalized flight safety program&lt;/a&gt; that has publications, courses, and officers in each and every flight squadron whose job it is to promote the training that will let pilots do their jobs when the feces impacts the rotating air oscillator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, was sort of free flow typing there.  let me see if I can bring some other sources into the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-07-19T01:21:36.213" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T01:21:36.213" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5258" CreationDate="2011-07-18T02:06:02.370" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is only part of an answer, hopefully others can provide more &lt;em&gt;facts&lt;/em&gt; from around the globe. From my own searching, actual statistics are hard to find for miscarriage figures (this may be only in Australia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In referring to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18310375&quot;&gt;this research&lt;/a&gt; done by Dr. Stephen Tong of Monash University:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research was conducted on 696 asymptomatic women carrying one fetus who attended their first prenatal visit between 6 and 11 weeks of pregnancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The risk of miscarriage among the entire cohort was 11 of 696 (1.6%).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The risk fell rapidly with advancing gestation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;9.4% at 6 (completed) weeks of gestation, 4.2% at 7 weeks, 1.5% at 8 weeks, 0.5% at 9 weeks and 0.7% at 10 weeks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would assume you won't be telling friends and family until you have been to a GP and confirmed your pregnancy and will likely be around 6/7 weeks after being assured that you have missed your most recent period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be wise to hold off a couple of weeks, but by week 8 there is already quite a high chance that things will progress normally. This is still 4 weeks from the second trimester.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally think at 6 weeks and 9.4% you can still be justified in announcing to your friends and family early even if things don't work out. Assuming you are healthy and have not had previous complications or miscarriages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T02:06:02.370" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4876" CreationDate="2011-07-18T03:52:27.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2008, a random blog, called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.somethinkodd.com/oddthinking/2008/09/27/the-2008-big-clean-off/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OddThinking&lt;/a&gt; (ahem) tried a controlled experiment to compare glass cleaning products on a troublesome glass shower screen. White Vinegar and Windex were two of the products compared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I concluded... err... I mean, the researcher concluded that neither did a good job, but Windex had some effect where vinegar had none at all. One of my friends... err... the peer reviewers challenged the result, arguing that the method with vinegar should have been soaking overnight, however that is outside the scope of your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are limitations to this study including, but not limited to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only one type of situation/dirt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not blinded.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not published in a peer-reviewed journal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The author hasn't publicly declared whether he has any conflicts of interest; but he assures me isn't being paid by lobbyists from Big Creme Cleanser (private communication).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;it does provide the single counter-example anecdote required&lt;/strong&gt; to show that white vinegar is not universally the best window cleaner in all situations - that when it comes to my shower screen, Windex is better and that others are better still.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-27T14:21:59.773" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T14:21:59.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5264" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5309" CreationDate="2011-07-18T05:38:50.093" Score="23" ViewCount="15360" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard quite a few times that a certain percentage (usually claimed 1%) of the noise you see on TV comes from the background radiation of the Big Bang. Is this a myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, I seems like a reasonably complicated claim to substantiate (interference of other radiation, etc.). But maybe that's just my poor understanding of the mechanics of measuring such a phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1170" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T16:06:45.853" Title="Is x% noise on TV due to Big Bang's background radiation?" Tags="|radiation|television|big-bang-theory|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5258" CreationDate="2011-07-18T08:08:31.703" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the first trimester is the most risky one, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanpregnancy.org/pregnancycomplications/miscarriage.html&quot;&gt;American on Pregnancy Association on miscarriage&lt;/a&gt; tell us:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most miscarriages occur during the first 13 weeks of pregnancy.&#xA;  Studies reveal that anywhere from 10-25% of all clinically recognized pregnancies will end in miscarriage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit more info about how the probability evolves is provided by &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2176898.stm&quot;&gt;a BBC Q&amp;amp;A Miscarriage&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The risk of miscarriage lessens as the pregnancy progresses. It decreases dramatically after the 8th week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compared to this, probability of later miscarriage (12-20 weeks) is 3 % and probability of stillbirth (after 20 weeks) is 1 %, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzle.com/articles/miscarriage-statistics.html:&quot;&gt;Buzzle Miscarriage Statistics&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;About 75% of all miscarriages, occur during the first trimester only.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Chances of miscarriage during 12 to 20 weeks is only 3%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Chances of stillbirth after 20 weeks drop to mere 1%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Miscarriage statistics after heartbeat is less than 4%. If you hear a strong heart beat on the ultrasound around 9 to 12 weeks, then you have very little chance of miscarriage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, knowing the probability when miscarriage happens in not enough from a practical point of view, as you need to consider a possibility of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pregnancyetc.com/what-is-a-missed-miscarriage.htm&quot;&gt;missed miscarriage&lt;/a&gt;, a miscarriage which is undetected for a few weeks, therefore in a normal situation, where you visit a doctor not more often then once per month, you may detect the miscarriage at the very end of the first trimester (anecdotally I know two couples who experienced this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A missed miscarriage typically happens within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, most often occurring soon after the fetus has been implanted in the rich lining of the uterus. With a missed miscarriage, the woman has no exterior symptoms of losing the pregnancy because the body fails to &quot;notice&quot; the loss of the baby. As a result, the fetal tissue is not immediately expelled by the uterus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And last, which is perhaps not what you would expect from a skeptics site, but given the sensitivity of the subject, I think would be a shame to miss it (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.womens-health.co.uk/miscarriage-misconceptions.html&quot;&gt;Women's Health Misconceptions About Miscarriage&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you think that you are alone when you miscarry - you aren't. You'll probably find, if you start to talk to your friends, many of them have miscarried as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T09:29:16.327" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T09:29:16.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5256" CreationDate="2011-07-18T10:07:02.097" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal-pocket-part/criminal-law-and-sentencing/the-csi-effect:-fact-or-fiction/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yale Law Journal&lt;/a&gt; (2006):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As chief prosecutor for Maricopa County, which includes the city of&#xA;Phoenix, my office prosecutes about 40,000 felonies each year and&#xA;includes a staff of 300 prosecutors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In June 2005, &lt;strong&gt;we surveyed 102 of&#xA;those attorneys&lt;/strong&gt;, all of whom had trial experience, and &lt;strong&gt;they reported&#xA;that the CSI effect is no myth:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the prosecutors we surveyed,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;38% believed they had at least one trial that resulted in either&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;an acquittal or hung jury because forensic evidence was not&#xA;available, even though prosecutors believed the existing testimony&#xA;was sufficient by itself to sustain a conviction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In about 40% of these prosecutors’ cases, jurors have asked&#xA;questions about evidence like “mitochondrial    DNA,” “latent&#xA;prints,” “trace evidence,” or “ballistics”—even when these terms&#xA;were not used at trial.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What may be of greatest concern is what goes on in the jury room,&#xA;after arguments have been made. &lt;strong&gt;In 72% of cases, prosecutors suspect&#xA;that jurors who watch shows like CSI claim a level of expertise during&#xA;jury deliberations that sways other jurors who do not watch those&#xA;shows.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Although verdicts have not yet noticeably changed from guilty to not&#xA;guilty, prosecutors have had to take more and more preemptive steps to&#xA;divert juries from reliance on television-style expectations.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/15949089&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Economist&lt;/a&gt; (2010):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2008 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marymount.edu/spotlightDetails.aspx?Channel=/Channels/Site%20Wide%20Content&amp;amp;WorkflowItemID=1eb82907-1ad1-4237-91d0-81567d58672d&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Monica Robbers&lt;/a&gt;, an American criminologist, &lt;strong&gt;defined [the CSI effect] as “&lt;em&gt;the&#xA;phenomenon in which jurors hold unrealistic expectations of forensic&#xA;evidence and investigation techniques, and have an increased interest&#xA;in the discipline of forensic science&lt;/em&gt;.”&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now another American researcher has demonstrated that the “CSI effect”&#xA;is indeed real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evan Durnal&lt;/strong&gt; of the &lt;em&gt;University of Central Missouri’s&#xA;Criminal Justice Department&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;has collected evidence from a number of&#xA;studies to show that exposure to television drama series that focus on&#xA;forensic science has altered the American legal system in complex and&#xA;far-reaching ways.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsijournal.org/article/S0379-0738%2810%2900067-8/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;His conclusions have just been published in&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Forensic Science International&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The most obvious symptom of the CSI effect is that jurors think they&#xA;have a thorough understanding of science they have seen presented on&#xA;television, when they do not.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Mr Durnal, &lt;strong&gt;prosecutors in the United States are now&#xA;spending much more time explaining to juries why certain kinds of&#xA;evidence are not relevant.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples&lt;/strong&gt; (via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forensicscience.net/the-csi-effect&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ForensicScience.net&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/jc2008/references/csi/CSI_Effect_report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;State v. James Calloway&lt;/a&gt;, officers from the Arizona&#xA;Department of Corrections discovered a syringe in a cell with a&#xA;note attached to it, signed “Jimbo”—an inmate who just so happened&#xA;to have a fresh mark on his arm consistent with syringe use. Jimbo&#xA;even admitted that the syringe was his.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;However, the jury in this&#xA;case criticized the prosecution because no DNA or fingerprint&#xA;analysis was done on the syringe, and they demanded a handwriting&#xA;comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ce9.uscourts.gov/jc2008/references/csi/CSI_Effect_report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;State v. Everett Black&lt;/a&gt;, the defendant was caught&#xA;carrying drugs in a cigarette  pack. The defendant admitted that it&#xA;was his pack, but he denied  owning the drugs.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt; At trial, the jury's&#xA;foreman said that, based on  what he had seen on “CSI”, the&#xA;investigators should have done  extensive fingerprinting, DNA&#xA;testing, and other forensic procedures.  This foreman convinced the&#xA;entire panel that the police had not done  their job well enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 2004, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/articles/050425/25csi_2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a gang member in Peoria, Ill&lt;/a&gt;., stood trial for raping&#xA;a  teenager in a local park. The case looked like a slam-dunk. The saliva on the victim's breast matched the defendant's saliva, and there was plenty of compelling testimony from the victim and  responding officers.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;However, the jury found the defendant not guilty. They felt that the “debris” found on the victim should have been tested to see if it matched the park's soil. According to the&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;prosecutor, the jury claimed “they knew from ‘CSI' that police could test for that sort of thing.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/05/28/ohio-takes-action-against-the-csi-effect-on-juries/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ohio Takes Action Against the “CSI Effect” on Juries&lt;/a&gt; (2010):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Ohio State Bar Association this week addressed the issue head on,&#xA;creating &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://juries.typepad.com/juries/2010/05/new-ohio-jury-instructions-dont-rely-on-judge-judy-.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;jury instructions&lt;/a&gt; that explicitly warn about the influence of&#xA;CSI and other TV legal dramas, including Boston Legal and Judge Judy.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;em&gt;there are many reasons why you cannot rely on TV legal programs,&#xA;including the fact that these shows:&#xA;(1) are not subject to the rules&#xA;of evidence and legal safeguards that apply in this courtroom, and (2)&#xA;are works of fiction that present unrealistic situations for dramatic&#xA;effect.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;While entertaining, &lt;strong&gt;TV legal dramas condense, distort, or even&#xA;ignore many procedures that take place in real cases and real&#xA;courtrooms. No matter how convincing they try to be, these shows&#xA;simply cannot depict the reality of an actual trial or investigation.&#xA;You must put aside anything you think you know about the legal system&#xA;that you saw on TV&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;More:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://promega.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/the-reality-of-crime-scene-investigation-part-i-common-myths/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Reality of Crime Scene Investigation - Part 1 - Common Myths&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://promega.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/the-reality-of-crime-scene-investigation-part-ii-the-csi-effect-in-the-courtroom/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Reality of Crime Scene Investigation - Part 2 - The CSI Effect in the Courtroom&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T10:07:02.097" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5268" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-18T11:02:55.487" Score="11" ViewCount="5438" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was at school, the teachers always forbade us from using our mp3s, and we weren't allowed to listen to any music while in class. The reason being that it seems the music would distract us, that is, we won't be able to concentrate as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Why do the swimmers then listen to music before they swim? I heard once that it was to help them focus and concentrate. So, does music really distract one, or does it actually help you concentrate better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm asking this because I believe it helps me concentrate better, but my sister also recently told me that it wasn't good for concentration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has a study been done on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T14:04:41.613" LastActivityDate="2020-04-24T19:45:29.017" Title="Is listening to music while studying distracting?" Tags="|music|learning|concentration|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5250" CreationDate="2011-07-18T11:18:26.233" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.equipped.com/ditchingmyths.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ditching Myths Torpedoed!&lt;/a&gt; you can find analysis of 179 ditches from NTSB Records, years 1985-1990 and 1994-1996:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Myth 1: Most Ditchings Aren't Survivable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe this, you've been led seriously astray. Of the 179 ditchings we reviewed, only 22, or 12 percent, resulted in fatalities. Although survival rates vary by time of year and water-body type, the overall general aviation ditching survival rate is 88 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: it is not clear what aircraft types were involved in this report. Given how rarely airliner ditches happen, most likely no airliner ditch was recorded during that period. Still, while vast majority of the ditches concerns small (single engine) airplanes, the analysis specifically mentions &amp;quot;15 percent are multi-engine airplanes&amp;quot;. Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_landing#Survival_rates_of_passenger_airplane_water_ditchings&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;list can be found at Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (and in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2009/01/23/askthepilot306/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ask the Pilot article&lt;/a&gt; linked below), which, while not guaranteed to be complete and unbiased, at least shows there happened multiple airliner ditches before, some of them with no fatalities at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On 21 August 1963, an Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-124 ditched into the Neva River in Leningrad after running out of fuel. The survival rate was 100%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In October 1956, Pan Am Flight 6 (a Boeing 377) ditched northeast of Hawaii, after losing two of its four engines.  The survival rate was 100%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On 16 January 2002, Garuda Indonesia Flight 421 (a Boeing 737) successfully ditched into the Bengawan Solo River near Yogyakarta, Java Island after experiencing a twin engine flameout during heavy precipitation and hail. The survival rate was 98%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the light of such facts this particular ditch does not seem to be that exceptional, unless there are some other factors which would show the conditions were worse compared to other ditches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what the crew done was heroic, but pilots are expected to be able to do heroic things, this is why they get such high social status (reputation, paycheck).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Media are prone to exaggerating events like this. Furthermore, sometimes media write  extraordinary things (often said by &amp;quot;experts&amp;quot;), like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/1487553&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Help! There's nobody in the cockpit Economist article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;no large airliner has ever made an emergency landing on water&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was later referenced by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2009/01/23/askthepilot306/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Patrick Smith in Ask the pilot Salon.com column&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record, US Airways 1549 was one of only a handful of intentional &amp;quot;water landings&amp;quot; involving a commercial airliner in the modern era.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both this and another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2009/01/30/askthepilot307/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article from &amp;quot;Ask the Pilot&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, make very interesting reading, it is very insightful. I will only quote a few related parts about media coverage from it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if we're going to praise men like Sullenberger, who indeed saved the day, what about others who did the same? There are many out there. Chances are you've never heard of them, mostly because their planes didn't come splashing down alongside the world's media capital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not, for a second, to suggest that Sullenberger and Skiles don't deserve the highest praise. The flight attendants as well, by all accounts, reacted admirably. A multiple engine failure and subsequent crash landing is a dire emergency even in the most ideal of conditions. I am not slighting the crew. I am slighting the media for sensationalizing and distorting the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-21T14:35:40.590" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5268" CreationDate="2011-07-18T11:30:00.570" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most famous study is talking about so called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1281386/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;The Mozart effect&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1993 Rauscher et al. made the surprising claim that, after&#xA;listening to Mozart's sonata for two pianos (K448) for 10 minutes,&#xA;normal subjects showed significantly better spatial reasoning skills&#xA;than after periods of listening to relaxation instructions designed to&#xA;lower blood pressure or silence. The mean spatial IQ scores were 8 and&#xA;9 points higher after listening to the music than in the other two&#xA;conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An enhancement of spatial-temporal reasoning performance after listening to Mozart's music for 10 minutes has been reported by several, but not all, researchers. Even in the studies with positive results the enhancement is small and lasts about 12 minutes. The effect varies between individuals and depends upon the spatial tasks chosen; &lt;strong&gt;general intelligence is not affected&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, that this study has been somewhat controversial, as many researches failed to reproduce any results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also studies, that give &lt;a href=&quot;http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/27/music-may-harm-your-studying-study-says/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quite the opposite result&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Music may impair cognitive abilities in these scenarios because if&#xA;you're trying to memorize things in order, you may get thrown off by&#xA;the changing words and notes in your chosen song, the authors&#xA;speculate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.heartmath.org/assets/uploads/2015/01/music-mood-effects.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;And another one&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;McCraty, R., Barrios-Choplin, B., Atkinson, M., &amp;amp; Tomasino, D. (1998). The effects of different types of music on mood, tension, and mental clarity. &lt;em&gt;Alternative therapies in health and medicine, 4&lt;/em&gt;(1), 75-84.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They tested four genres of music from&#xA;various corners of the music world; Grunge Rock, New Age, Classical,&#xA;and Designer. The results were conclusive in revealing that grunge&#xA;rock evoked hostility and greatly reduced mental clarity and&#xA;motivation. We found this particularly important to our studies as we&#xA;also plan to test primarily college students who commonly listen to&#xA;grunge music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I've read (can't quite find the reference now), is that music with lyrics decreases you concentration because your brain will involuntarily interpret what the song is saying. Obviously, classical music, like Mozart, is purely instrumental.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-04-24T19:45:23.417" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5282" CreationDate="2011-07-18T11:58:27.320" Score="64" ViewCount="30995" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of us might recall learning in school that when Christopher Columbus reached the New World, he believed that he had reached India.  For that reason, Native Americans are often called Indians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Wikipedia claims &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus&quot;&gt;he actually knew where he had arrived&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Never admitting that he had reached a continent previously unknown to Europeans, rather than the East Indies he had set out for, Columbus called the inhabitants of the lands he visited &lt;em&gt;indios&lt;/em&gt; (Spanish for &quot;Indians&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the only sources are books so I can't check up on them.  Did Columbus know he had reached a new continent?  If so, why would he lie to the Spanish government?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="334" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-04-21T06:06:12.577" LastActivityDate="2019-01-22T08:16:54.787" Title="Did Christopher Columbus believe America was India?" Tags="|history|christopher-columbus|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="956" CreationDate="2011-07-18T13:10:21.340" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.library.ethz.ch/en/Resources/Digital-collections/Einstein-Online/Youth-1879-1896&quot;&gt;Einstein online&lt;/a&gt; mentions Einstein had some problems passing an exam so that he can start Polytechnical Institute studies at earlier age then normally allowed, but his problems were limited to linguistic and historical subjects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the beginning of October 1895 Einstein wrote this exam. He obtained the best results in the mathematical- and natural science subjects, but in the linguistic- and historical subjects his achievements were unsatisfactory. His overall result was rated as insufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T13:10:21.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5274" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5277" CreationDate="2011-07-18T14:19:56.263" Score="18" ViewCount="2857" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many a times in hollywood, blondes are projected as unitellegent, stupid and dull-witted. In fact a perception around the world can be realized about the same. In friends circle, TV shows and social networks, everyone keeps hinting in one way or the another that blondes lack intelligence or good judgement.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is, Is this true and do we have any research material that backs these sarcastic humor against blond women??  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4025" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-23T08:15:43.247" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T02:45:43.010" Title="Are blondes dumb or is it just a sarcastic saying?" Tags="|intelligence|hair|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5148" CreationDate="2011-07-18T14:27:27.433" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading around this subject there appears to have been a 1998 summary in the US which is quoted a lot in political debates &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.members.tripod.com/rockqu/uniform.htm&quot;&gt;full report here.&lt;/a&gt;. This research summarised that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our findings indicate that student uniforms have no direct effect on&#xA;  substance use, behavioral problems or attendance. A negative effect of&#xA;  uniforms on student academic achievement was found&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which seems to be opposite to the prevailing wisdom about uniform promoting good behaviour.&#xA;There is also a study from 1998 study Into things which effect behaviour ins schools with a specific section on schools that can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.keystosaferschools.com/Reports/Order%20in%20the%20Classroom-Violence,%20Discipline.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;This study also concluded&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The notions that school uniforms and zero tolerance for gangs would&#xA;  reduce school disorder and consequently improve student academic&#xA;  performance were not supported&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking for contraindications to the above evidence there is an article quoted around a bit from psychology today which indicated &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199909/uniform-improvements&quot;&gt;that uniforms had a &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; positive impact.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I suspect there is a correlation not the direct causality indicated there (but without paying I can't access the full article). Indeed one of the quotes from people associated with the schools said this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dick Van Der Laan of the Long Beach Unified School District explained,&#xA;  &quot;We can't attribute the improvement exclusively to school uniforms,&#xA;  but we think it's more than coincidental.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this quote highlights one of the problems with researching the issue of school uniforms. School's do not exist in a vacuum, and a whole host of things change from term to term when there is a problem with behaviour in an attempt to sort out issues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to tell whether benefits are anything to do with the school uniform itself, or other reforms which happened around the same time. One can also guess that schools with strict dress policies and/or uniform policies will also be more strict on behavioural terms (just being consistent) so any study just considering uniforms may be skewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotal evidence is available on the department of education website &lt;a href=&quot;http://ed.gov/updates/uniforms.html&quot;&gt;too&lt;/a&gt;. But there still seems to be a lack of direct evidence. It can be noted that this page indicates that schools should&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Treat school uniforms as part of an overall safety program&#xA;  And not treat it as a single fix for anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actual statistical comparisons seem to be thin on the ground apart from the first two studies, and most of the stuff I read calls for more studies, however I can see difficulties with producing comprehensive and verifiable information about the effect of uniforms in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3606" LastActivityDate="2011-07-18T14:27:27.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5274" CreationDate="2011-07-18T15:35:15.477" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you take a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rlynn.co.uk/pages/article_intelligence/t4.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IQ by the country table&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YELzW.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and cross reference it with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blond#Geographic_distribution&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;countries with significant blond population&lt;/a&gt;, you'll see that these countries are very close to top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eIBno.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;yellow represents 80%+ light hair &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;light orange is 50-79% light hair &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;light brown is 20-49% light hair &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;dark brown is 1-19% light hair &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;black represents no presence of light hair&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note however, that above map refers to &lt;strong&gt;natural&lt;/strong&gt; blond, while stereotype does not make that distinction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there seems to be some confusion, let me explain few things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The claim in the question is that blonds are dumber. Lack of negative correlation of prevalence of natural blond with IQ proves, that in case of natural blonds the claim is &lt;strong&gt;false&lt;/strong&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are great many definitions of intelligence, it's known that IQ does not measure intelligence directly, but it is highly correlated with it. Even if you do not agree with particular metric, it doesn't change the fact that's its highly correlated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-07-19T16:50:18.477" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T16:50:18.477" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5278" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5699" CreationDate="2011-07-18T15:52:35.990" Score="17" ViewCount="1236" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been some fierce discussion about this subject in blogosphere and on Programmers.SE.  It all started with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDevelopers.html&quot;&gt;Joel Spolsky's claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] putting on headphones to drown out the ambient noise has been shown&#xA;  to reduce the quality of work that programmers produce&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found &lt;a href=&quot;http://fullof.bs/joel-on-software-please-get-off-of-software/&quot;&gt;following retort&lt;/a&gt; (not well referenced though):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;RAND data says exactly the opposite: that programmers&#xA;  who choose to listen to music see a 30% productivity boost. Of course,&#xA;  that’s probably because RAND is taking numbers from tens of thousands&#xA;  of industrial programmers who already have a reasonable place to work,&#xA;  whereas you’re looking at a dozen or so goons in a basement burning a&#xA;  million dollars of VC on ping pong tables and being confused why they&#xA;  can’t focus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Maybe you should learn that correlation does not imply causation,&#xA;  and that the productivity drops you see might be a result of the&#xA;  disasterously low quality work environment that you attempt to explain&#xA;  away as acceptable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel both opinons are quite single-sided, but what does science say on the subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-11T12:58:24.370" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T12:58:24.370" Title="Does using headphones to drown out ambient noise reduce the quality of work?" Tags="|computers|productivity|programming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5279" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-18T16:40:14.317" Score="20" ViewCount="5819" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2326/how-do-shaolin-monks-break-spears-with-their-neck&quot;&gt;How do Shaolin monks break spears with their neck?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For anyone unacquainted with the fairly impressive looking feat of breaking bricks (or wood) in martial arts, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFwtZlzoBEE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; 1.5min video. I'd say most people tend to view this practice as impressive, requiring skill and training, etc. Recently, though, I've been wondering if that's really the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any analyses of the various factors involved in this feat which suggest that it either is as impressive as it it made to look or isn't?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ability of a &quot;common&quot; man of decent strength to do the same thing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Typical mechanical properties of the materials used&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What types/thickness of wood (pine would be much different than hard maple)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Density or type of concrete brick/block material used&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Force analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identification of any mechanical &quot;tricks&quot; (leverage, why spaced apart, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical, as the materials are always very wide in aspect ratio (thin but long), are always many small pieces vs. a bigger one of equivalent thickness (why break 20 very thin &quot;bricks&quot; when one could break a slab as thick as all put together?), and are always stacked with a space between adjacent blocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; is the practice of breaking things in martial arts a skilled, impressive feat of strength and ability... or is this far more achievable by the &quot;average Joe&quot; than we're led to think? One other option is that it's primarily an illusion created with some knowledge of force mechanics and material properties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break some river stone with a whip of two fingers: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V0_Xj9dZWI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Break some thick looking ice: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiCsUDLNpNs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vid suggesting not just &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt; can do this (epic fail): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp7XQCYBLbo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everything (some brick, then wood): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtnQlT9VIqE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LINK&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T07:59:27.287" Title="Is breaking bricks/wood &quot;karate style&quot; an impressive feat?" Tags="|physiology|physics|martial-arts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5249" CreationDate="2011-07-18T18:03:32.517" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fluid intelligence (the capacity to think logically and solve problems in novel situations) is an incredibly important piece of &amp;quot;computer abilities&amp;quot; in general. As shown by study cited below, it has a high heritability and therefore that means &amp;quot;being born&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;computer talents&amp;quot; is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1980.tb00809.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1980.tb00809.x/abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;THE HERITABILITY OF FLUID, gf, AND CRYSTALLISED, gc, INTELLIGENCE, ESTIMATED BY A LEAST SQUARES USE OF THE MAVA METHOD&lt;/strong&gt; -  R. B. CATTELL&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fluid intelligence, on the other hand, has the highest heritability between families, reaching a mean of 0·92&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, those same IQ attributes are not unique to computers vs. other fields (Mathematics specifically) and therefore it's a lot more accurate that you're born with talent to excel in fields requiring a lot of logical thinking and problem solving - &lt;strong&gt;which include but aren't limited to computers&lt;/strong&gt;. This is illustrated by looking at most good software developers - they are rarely &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; good at computers - they are usually good at Math as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T08:01:51.287" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5271" CreationDate="2011-07-18T22:58:06.890" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;Michael Shermer covers this in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0805091254&quot;&gt;The Believing Brain&lt;/a&gt;, stating that Columbus held this belief until his death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umc.sunysb.edu/surgery/america.html&quot;&gt;Vartec's link&lt;/a&gt; also supports this from an EDU site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Columbus, who, to his death, clung to the idea that he had found the shores of Asia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Shermer's book, he talks about finding data that is totally unexpected, so that you can't accept the new information, and thus integrate it with your already held notions.  That is in essence what Columbus did.  Columbus had no reason to &quot;lie&quot; since he was convinced by his own brain that he had found Asia, and he was going to stick to that story.  He even had incentive to say he found new lands according to the wikipage you cited:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the contract that Columbus made with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, if Columbus discovered any new islands or mainland, he would receive many high rewards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He didn't, although he did take on governorship of the islands he believed to be the Indies, and acted &quot;poorly&quot; as said governor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-20T01:13:19.583" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T01:13:19.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5283" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5285" CreationDate="2011-07-19T01:23:36.883" Score="27" ViewCount="40018" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_fries#Variants&quot;&gt;McDonalds and other fast food chains&lt;/a&gt; coat their fries in sugar water before frying to aid in color development, but the official &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutritionexchange/nutritionfacts.pdf&quot;&gt;McDonalds nutrition information&lt;/a&gt; (see page 2) indicates that their fries contain no sugar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that McDonalds uses sugar to prepare their fries and if so is it just too negligible an amount to show up in the nutritional info?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4055" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T17:24:01.587" LastActivityDate="2015-09-22T19:21:17.410" Title="Are McDonald's fries coated in sugar before cooking?" Tags="|nutrition|cooking|sugar|mcdonalds|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5283" CreationDate="2011-07-19T06:19:38.817" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;A small amount of sugar is used to even out the appearance - to ensure an even quantity of reducing sugar is available for Maillard's reaction to proceed equally everywhere (see Wikipedia link for more info). However, the amount does not affect significantly the taste or nutritional values of the fires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Washing the potatoes with slightly sugary water] It’s not done for flavouring and it doesn’t mean you’re eating additional sugar.  In fact, total sugar represents approximately .007% per pound of potato, so it’s an extremely small part of the finished product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://mcdonalds.com.au/about-us/qna#Q16&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;McDonald's Australia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the common claim that the fries are sweet because of this, there is, in fact, evidence of the contrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sugar, when exposed to high temperatures such as that of the oil blend that McDonald's uses when frying, caramelises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iLlQJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Creme-Caramel&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;The dark brown colour at the top of a creme-caramel is due to caramelisation of sugar&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast food fries are most definitely not caramelised. The browning of the chips is through &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Maillard's reaction&lt;/a&gt; and not caramelisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/k5S1E.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Chips&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;The light brown colour of French fries is due to Maillard's reaction.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fries are sweet because the starch is first gelatinised during cooking and then broken down into glucose thanks to the amylase enzyme present in our mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Facts and references&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oil used by McDonald's to fry: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food/food_quality/see_what_we_are_made_of/your_questions_answered/canola_blend_oil.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Canola oil&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Canola oil smoking point: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_oil&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;230˚C&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Common fry temperature for chips: &lt;a href=&quot;http://uktv.co.uk/food/stepbystep/aid/533102&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;200˚C&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Caramelisation temperature for sugar: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caramelization&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;160˚C&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maillard's reaction temperature: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;154˚C&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Temperature at which starch gelatinises: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starch_gelatinization&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;55–85˚C&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Saliva contains: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amylase&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;amylase&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T07:46:28.203" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5287" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5308" CreationDate="2011-07-19T09:05:28.413" Score="17" ViewCount="18577" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know if the scientific claims about &lt;a href=&quot;http://blackcumin.blogspot.com/2011/06/black-seed-herbs.html&quot;&gt;black seed oil talked about here&lt;/a&gt; are true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of black seed's primary bioactive components is thymolquinone, or&#xA;  TQ, which is found in its essential oil. So far, notes Aggarwal,&#xA;  botanists have established black seed as the only source of TQ.&#xA;  Scientific evidence shows that TQ can protect cells from oxidative&#xA;  damage. Additionally, TQ demonstrated anti-inflammatory action in the&#xA;  laboratory, according to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center,&#xA;  MSKCC. Other constituents of black seed exhibited antihistamine,&#xA;  diuretic and antispasmodic properties. MSKCC also explains that black&#xA;  seed may be utilized for other conditions, such as asthma, epilepsy,&#xA;  liver protection and high blood pressure. Seek advice from a health&#xA;  practitioner before ...sing black seed medicinally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among black seed's amazing properties is its ability to battle cancer,&#xA;  according to Aggarwal. According to a 2009 article in &quot;Molecular&#xA;  Cancer Therapeutics,&quot; Aggarwal and other scientists found that TQ&#xA;  hindered tumor growth in laboratory animals. He also writes that this&#xA;  herb may be effective against ovarian, prostate, breast, colon and&#xA;  pancreatic cancers, to name a few. Moreover, black seed can initiate&#xA;  cancer cell death and halt the process of metastization, or the&#xA;  spreading of cancer cells. Ask your physician which herbal remedies&#xA;  are appropriate for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4059" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-19T11:54:07.643" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T03:28:00.967" Title="Does black seed oil help treat various cancers, asthma, epilepsy, liver conditions, high blood pressure and more?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3487" CreationDate="2011-07-19T09:07:40.657" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a complicated question, because there are many variables to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which ethanol are you talking about?  There are many ways to make ethanol, some more efficient than others, and with different environmental impacts. Many studies seem to indicate that corn-based ethanol, which currently is most popular in the U.S., is not a very efficient way to produce ethanol. But there are many other feedstocks--sugar cane, potatoes, and other grains are also common in some places. Even sawdust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read about some estimates of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-true-cost-of-corn-ethanol/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;true cost of corn-based ethanol&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are only asking about the cost of fuel per mile, then consider that ethanol contains about 33% &lt;a href=&quot;http://zfacts.com/p/436.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;less energy&lt;/a&gt; by volume, compared to gasoline.  This means that to break even, financially, in terms of cost-per-mile, you must pay 33% less for ethanol versus gasoline.  For E10 (10% ethanol, 90% gasoline), that means you would need to pay 3.3% less (than for 100% gasoline)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Different fuels require different hardware.  To run E85, for instance, you need a flex-fuel vehicle, which may have different manufacturing costs than a &amp;quot;standard&amp;quot; gasoline-only vehicle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ethanol also has a different &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octane_rating&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;octane rating&lt;/a&gt; than gasoline, which can affect engine performance (positively or negatively, depending on your engine specifications).  Over long periods of time, this may either positively or negatively impact the cost associated with maintenance on your engine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Different fuels may have difference maintenance-related costs associated with them, such as the types of fuel filters, pumps, injectors, timings, etc, that must be used (some of this is covered by the &amp;quot;flex-fuel&amp;quot; system, of course, which I already mentioned).  And different fuel types may lead to failures--and thus replacement costs--of some of these systems more rapidly than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T09:07:40.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5222" CreationDate="2011-07-19T11:15:05.087" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You also need to consider the effect of age. Young people naturally have body clocks that tend to both sleep and rise late, whereas the very young (pre-teen) and the older have body clocks that sleep and rise earlier. There is a very interesting BBC documentary on the effect of the body clock and how it's biological that teenagers and young adults sleep in late. This easily explains the effect of the difference between you and your father. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00hxtwc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Secret Life of Your Bodyclock&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it is not available for viewing, although you can still find it if you're familiar with the Internet's darker corners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4061" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-30T10:03:24.827" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T10:03:24.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5291" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-19T13:01:34.077" Score="30" ViewCount="3463" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PGS8m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Numbers Station&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theartlife.com.au/?p=3454&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.noiseaddicts.com/2008/09/numbers-stations-encoded-spy-messages-conet-project/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NoiseAddicts&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Static. Faint voices. Seven slow, monotonous tones. A pause.&#xA;Suddenly, you hear music–one of those wind-up songs played by a&#xA;child’s toy. The melody repeats three times. A pause. Suddenly, you&#xA;hear a female voice counting off the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,&#xA;9, 0 in German. A pause. She repeats the numbers. A pause. The&#xA;children’s toy melody returns.&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEgty4OWaUo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Listen to it&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Mysterious shortwave radiobroadcasts similar to the one above have been featured in TV-shows like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0411008/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LOST&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1119644/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FRINGE&lt;/a&gt;, but are actually a real world phenomenon known as &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Numbers Stations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Numbers stations generally broadcast artificially generated voices&#xA;reading streams of numbers, words, letters, tunes or Morse code.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are in a wide variety of&#xA;languages and the voices are usually female, although sometimes men's&#xA;or children's voices are used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6K948YNtY4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a scene from &lt;strong&gt;FRINGE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; where Nina Sharp gives a short summary of the phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/11/65698&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wired&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some have speculated that the signals from these &amp;quot;numbers stations&amp;quot;&#xA;are operated by drug cartels. However, it's more &lt;strong&gt;likely they're run by&#xA;intelligence agencies&lt;/strong&gt;, as tacitly acknowledged by the British&#xA;government, and accidentally &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2001-02-08/news/espionage-is-in-the-air/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;by the Cubans&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No government has ever acknowledged a numbers station&lt;/strong&gt;, but the British&#xA;Department of Trade and Industry told London's Daily Telegraph in 1997&#xA;that there was no mystery and that the stations were not &amp;quot;intended for&#xA;public consumption.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/details/ird059&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Conet Project&lt;/a&gt; has a collection of Numbers Stations recordings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;Some of these transmissions are rather &amp;quot;unusual&amp;quot;, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_Sam_%28shortwave%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yosemite Sam&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-08/25/russian-numbers-station-broadcast-changes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Buzzer&lt;/a&gt;, so naturally there are speculations that at least some of these Numbers Stations are used for purposes outside the spying game. Maybe some of them are even hoaxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;My questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there verified cases of Numbers Stations being used for an explicit, verified purpose?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there stations that are known to be hoaxes?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T16:22:43.117" Title="The mystery of &quot;Numbers Stations&quot;" Tags="|history|radio|cryptography|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5249" CreationDate="2011-07-19T14:46:44.193" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different styles of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_styles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Learning&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA; When you are taught using one that works well for you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldwidelearn.com/education-articles/how-do-you-learn.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;you learn well&lt;/a&gt;.  When it is not unless you can adapt that to your style then you do not.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if you do not reach your potential then how can you measure your capacity.  How can you tell if someone has reached their optimum potential. (For this the point where additional training and practice has negligible effect)  It is claimed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10000 hours of practice&lt;/a&gt; is required to achieve &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;expert&lt;/a&gt; level performance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thought Experiment on how to do good evaluation as the question asks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to create an experiment that could measure what you are asking for you would need to introduce controls.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Detemine the best way to teach each of  students.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Force them to learn the same things in the way that teaches them the best. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Carefully measure the results after certian numbers of hours and get a statisical sample.    &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then selectively inter breed them with each other. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gather data. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Repeat the  process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably repeat for several generations...  Do we see the problems with this?`&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2011-07-20T20:47:26.960" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T20:47:26.960" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5294" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5299" CreationDate="2011-07-19T14:57:48.723" Score="2" ViewCount="951" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone recently sent me &lt;a href=&quot;http://video.designworldonline.com/bugbots.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;THIS&lt;/a&gt; video about &quot;micro air vehicles&quot; (MAVs), essentially bug and bird look-alikes that are really airborne spy drone vehicles for military surveillance. It's just a concept video, but I'm wondering if anyone can confirm/deny that the US Air Force Research Laboratory (credited in the beginning and end) are actually working on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask because it struck me as odd to have a concept video out on the internet explaining exactly what a military organization is planning in terms of covert surveillance in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some basic checks pan out; for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.generaldynamics.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;General Dynamics&lt;/a&gt; exists and makes defense related products&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The phone number &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;q=937-255-2074&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;937-255-2074&lt;/a&gt; appears to be for the Air Force Research Laboratory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://us.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Isiah/Davenport&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Isiah Davenport&lt;/a&gt;, credited with the production of the film, does appear to be working in animation/filming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I'm over thinking this, and thus will put two questions forward:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can the future plan to use bug/bird-like MAVs for surveillance purposes by the US military be confirmed or denied?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In general, are these &quot;concept videos&quot; quite a bit more common than I thought, or is intuition correct that the military would be secretive about the future directions of research and development?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, are there known instances where a military organization produces something like this in order to deceive others as to its real technology directions (there's no intention of working on MAVs, but it is desirable to make other groups think they are)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T18:07:29.707" Title="Are MAVs (micro air vehicles) a legitimate future possibility?" Tags="|technology|military|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5295" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5297" CreationDate="2011-07-19T16:02:29.100" Score="21" ViewCount="1146" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard in school of the story of a king, who used to take small amounts of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conium&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;conium&lt;/a&gt;. When someone tried to poison him he was immune to that poison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that even remotely possible ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3855" LastActivityDate="2021-11-01T18:32:57.593" Title="Is it possible to be immunized to a poison?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5295" CreationDate="2011-07-19T17:14:42.793" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.straightdope.com/21343869/what-poisons-can-i-safely-take-to-build-immunity-to-toxic-substances-does-eating-poison-ivy-build-re&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; has an article on this practice (exposing yourself to incrementally greater doses of poison; called mithridatization, after King Mithridates VI of Pontus, who reputedly pursued such a regimen as per Roman writer &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliny_the_Elder&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pliny&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article confirms the known case of arsenic mithridatization in Austria, as well as the fact that you can mithridatize yourself to an extent against poison ivy reaction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the earliest scientific mentions I was able to find is &amp;quot;PROFESSOR VON BEHRING'S TREATMENT OF TUBERCULOSIS&amp;quot; published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA577&amp;amp;lpg=PA577&amp;amp;dq=mithridatization%20study&amp;amp;sig=B3uihMniZ7RxhIc3roFiGq4RNdc&amp;amp;ei=l7slTvrEAcuugQerreCCCA&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;id=SUoBAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;ots=V4EQ19sl-0&amp;amp;output=text&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;British medical journal, Volume 2, Page 577&lt;/a&gt; in 1906.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A somewhat later material was &amp;quot;Journal of medical genetics, Volume 8&amp;quot; published by British Medical Association in 1971, referenced mithridatization as a process but I can't get access to full text discussing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-11-01T18:32:57.593" LastActivityDate="2021-11-01T18:32:57.593" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5298" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5316" CreationDate="2011-07-19T17:20:45.340" Score="7" ViewCount="937" Body="&lt;p&gt;Army and police training are physically daunting tasks; everyone knows that. One particular reason is to make the trainees physically strong and fit. But, on more than one occasion, I have heard people (sometimes army personnel themselves) saying that &quot;Training is made tougher so as to make the officer learn to take orders from superiors&quot;, in other words to reduce the reasoning ability and make them just follow orders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4025" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-27T13:22:08.380" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T13:22:08.380" Title="Are Police and Army training made tough to ensure that the personnel learn to follow orders?" Tags="|military|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5294" CreationDate="2011-07-19T17:41:22.157" Score="6" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can the future plan to use bug/bird-like MAVs for surveillance purposes by the US military be confirmed or denied?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on pure common sense and logic, it is obvious the military would be working on something like this. Heck, the thing is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_air_vehicle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on the Wiki&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;! What the feasibility status/progress is would be a different story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As far as specifically AFRL:&lt;/strong&gt;: A couple of documents straight from the horse's mouth - in this case, Wright Patterson Air Force Base web site which houses AFRL documents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mission:&lt;/strong&gt; The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) &lt;a href=&quot;http://%5D%5B5%5D&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Air Vehicles Directorate Micro Air Vehicle Integration &amp;amp; Application Research Institute&lt;/a&gt; (µAVIARI) is dedicated to the development and testing of Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wpafb.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-100715-045.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AFRL cuts ribbon on new Micro Air Vehicle research facility&lt;/a&gt;: In a ceremony held May 27, 2010, AFRL Executive Director Joe Sciabica cut the ribbon on the Micro Air Vehicle Integration and Application Research Institute (μAVIARI) Indoor Flight Test Laboratory, a new $1.5 million facility dedicated to the advancement of Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) technologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Close to the topic at hand, there are published confirmations that AFRL is working on MAVs:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?newspaperUserId=27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&amp;amp;plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&amp;amp;plckController=Blog&amp;amp;plckElementId=blogDest&amp;amp;plckPostId=Blog:27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post:59a3a468-e1b4-4fbb-bbec-f3d028cfcd16&amp;amp;plckScript=blogScript&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aviation Week:&lt;/em&gt; &amp;quot;AFRL Aims for MAV Lead&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the US Air Force Research Laboratory is considering developing an MAV Collaborative Center, where academia, industry, the Air Force and other DoD organizations can work together to build and test prototypes, and has issued a request for information to identify potential collaborators. AFRL's plan is to demonstrate a bird-sized MAV in 2015 and an insect-sized MAV in 2030&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/01/killer-micro-drone/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Wired&lt;/em&gt;: &amp;quot;Air Force Completes Killer Micro-Drone Project&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; discusses &amp;quot;Prioject Anubis&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as non-AFRL projects, the linked-above Wiki states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In January 2010, the Tamkang University (TKU) in Taiwan realized autonomous control of the flight altitude of an 8-gram, 20-centimeter wide, flapping-wing MAV. (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.multiupload.com/GPAG93UIJI&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; for video download.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example from Wiki:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In early 2008 the United States company Honeywell received FAA approval to operate its MAV in the national airspace on an experimental basis. The gMAV is the fourth MAV to receive such approval. The Honeywell gMAV uses ducted thrust for lift. No performance figures have been released. It was originally developed as part of a &lt;strong&gt;DARPA&lt;/strong&gt; program, and its initial application is expected to be with the police department of Miami-Dade County, Florida. &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Honeywell Wins FAA Approval for MAV, Flying Magazine, Vol. 135., No. 5, May 2008, p. 24&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a couple of actual deployed MAVs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wasp: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avinc.com/uas/small_uas/wasp/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.avinc.com/uas/small_uas/wasp/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wasp III: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.afsoc.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=9114&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www2.afsoc.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=9114&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In general, are these &amp;quot;concept videos&amp;quot; quite a bit more common than I thought, or is intuition correct that the military would be secretive about the future directions of research and development?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this is such an obvious and straightforward idea that keeping the concept secret would make no sense. Whether the video makes specific and accurate claims as to the technical/tactical characteristics of the planned MAVs or current progress is a different story. It was TL;DR - if you post specific claims that the video made we would be able to try to confirm or debunk them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T18:07:29.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5300" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5346" CreationDate="2011-07-19T17:48:18.577" Score="2" ViewCount="621" Body="&lt;p&gt;3d printers look pretty awesome, but I can't help but think that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZboxMsSz5Aw&amp;amp;feature=youtube_gdata_player&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; youtube clip was a little doctored. Not because of the printer, but because of the scanner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can they really figure out the mechanics of a crescent wrench that quickly with their awesome scanner gizmo?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believed my eyes for a minute it until I started reading the comments and got to thinking that it seemed a little strange.  How could the inside of the crescent wrench be discovered by reflecting light at it?  How could it discover, without some sort of x-ray, gears you can't even see?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="3256" LastEditDate="2011-07-21T04:01:22.340" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T06:14:11.497" Title="Can a 3D scanner work as shown in this youtube video?" Tags="|machines|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4765" CreationDate="2011-07-19T18:37:44.467" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. Basically when you run in barefeet you land more carefully, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08723.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reducing the risk of injury&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jrnj-7YKZE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here is a video&lt;/a&gt; by the author of that paper, Harvard professor Daniel Lieberman).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3704" LastEditorUserId="25415" LastEditDate="2020-07-04T08:21:35.680" LastActivityDate="2020-07-04T08:21:35.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5302" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-19T18:42:25.273" Score="11" ViewCount="1919" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does pulling/tugging at your soft cartilage cause it to grow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of claim on &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_you_make_your_nose_smaller_without_using_plastic_surgery&quot;&gt;answers.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't pick your nose. Compulsive nose picking, known as rhinotillexomania, can increase the size of your nose and introduce infections or more serious problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3704" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-05-03T00:16:40.463" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T00:16:40.463" Title="Does picking your nose make it grow?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5300" CreationDate="2011-07-19T20:30:09.767" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The person in the video admitted that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm2jvB3jhxM#t=1m36&quot;&gt;this was partially fake&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;… there’s no way [that the scanner] could have gotten the internal structure of the wrench … &lt;strong&gt;the implication that that thing … that we scanned was the thing we printed was wrong&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, 3D printers like shown in the vide exist. The German branch of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.h-online.com/&quot;&gt;the H&lt;/a&gt; (heise.de / c’t) &lt;a href=&quot;http://heise.de/-1266906&quot;&gt;showcases several different work pieces&lt;/a&gt; that have been produced by 3D printer web stores. As these videos show, it’s in particular possible to print devices with moving parts in one single go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who want to try this out themselves, there are several online services that offer 3D printing services, among them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://i.materialise.com/&quot;&gt;i.materialise&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sculpteo.com/en/&quot;&gt;Sculpteo&lt;/a&gt; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shapeways.com/&quot;&gt;Shapeways&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2011-07-19T20:39:04.117" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T20:39:04.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5300" CreationDate="2011-07-19T22:36:00.980" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;let me bust this by looking at the details of what's shown in the vid&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if you look carefully at the real thing at 0:14 and compare it with the copy at 3:36 you'll see that the shape of the head doesn't match&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;note the ring at the end of the handle: on scanned wrench at 2:30 it's a D-ring on the original it's a hole in the handle &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3508" LastActivityDate="2011-07-19T22:36:00.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5287" CreationDate="2011-07-20T04:32:47.987" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some kernels of legitimate facts in here, however, upon reading further, it becomes quite clear that they are not understood properly by the author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scant amount of real facts can be hard to discern from this site mainly because the author's inability to interpret scientific evidence is surpassed only by her inability to form a coherent (and spell-checked) argument. For this degree of scholarship to be made widely available, I say, thank you, internet....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it was not so much her misrepresentation of the research (either deliberate or unintentional) which bothered me as much as the truly reprehensible way in which she words her article so as to allow the reader to draw his/her own fantastic conclusions by implication while at the same time DELIBERATELY NEVER MAKING A SINGLE CLAIM ABOUT THE PRODUCT ITSELF, so as to avoid giving those of a dissenting viewpoint any easy ground to stand on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However she does leave enough blatant errors to more than make up for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll apologize, because I'll undoubtedly spend more time picking apart her atrocious rhetoric and pointing out egregious errors than providing the simple facts regarding what's currently understood about the main ingredient mentioned in the article.  So, scroll down until you see &lt;strong&gt;FINALLY! THE FACTS&lt;/strong&gt; if you want the quick answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;otherwise, enjoy the rant... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way I can think to do this properly is to take the site point by point.  So here goes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Black cumin oil is safe enough to use as a household remedy for almost&#xA;  every ailment from stomach ache, insect stings, allergies, colds, flu,&#xA;  bruises, hair loss, lethargy etc.. This wonder herb is also powerful&#xA;  enough to be used at a Practitioners level with astounding&#xA;  versatility. It is used for serious diseases such as asthma, diabetes,&#xA;  colon cleanse, candida, immune system disorders, hepatitis, AIDS and&#xA;  even cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop&quot;&gt;Gish gallop&lt;/a&gt; of disparate, fantastic, and completely unverified claims comes right from the top of the site, and of course is an immediate skeptical red flag.The author certainly has heaped on the reader quite the list of claims to investigate, lest the reader be chided for dismissing them &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ukskeptics.com/article.php?dir=articles&amp;amp;article=skeptics_are_disbelievers.php&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And of course the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UrhJ8P8iZ8&amp;amp;playnext=1&amp;amp;list=PLCC46B29B3BD13FB6&quot;&gt;colon cleanse&lt;/a&gt; fails by all criteria to qualify as a serious disorder.  It is only a symptom of a much more serious disorder: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/woowoo.html&quot;&gt;an unfounded belief in pseudoscience&lt;/a&gt;.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, fortunately for us the site has not yet made a single claim about the product or its effectiveness for us to disprove....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;safe enough to use as a household remedy&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;while sounding impressive enough to allow the reader to draw his/her own conclusions does not indicate effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;powerful enough to use at a Practitioner's level&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, practitioner of what?  Not specified.  Second, there is no claim made regarding either efficacy &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Used for serious diseases&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, used by whom?  And again there is no claim to effectiveness. or safety.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving on, the introduction to this site has said &lt;em&gt;absolutely nothing&lt;/em&gt; about the product while encouraging the reader to think very much of it.&#xA;Next...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Around 1325 B.C., the Pharaoh Tutankhamen's servants entombed him with&#xA;  the precious artifacts he would require in the afterlife. Black seed&#xA;  was found among the selected items, proving that this spice's value&#xA;  extends back to ancient times. Roman, Greek and Arab cultures utilized&#xA;  it as an herbal remedy and a culinary ingredient. Today, medical&#xA;  researchers hypothesize that black seed may have antioxidant,&#xA;  anti-cancer and cardioprotective properties, according to professor of&#xA;  cancer research, Bharat Aggarwal, author of &quot;Healing Spices.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the author uses &quot;the argument from antiquity&quot; surreptitiously by allusion in order to suggest that the possibility of ancient knowledge of the compound somehow validates any of the things hinted at in the introduction.  But those were not intended to be actual claims anyway, just to sound like them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also contend that the author attempts the worst celebrity endorsement ever; by proposing a link to the world's most famous mummy, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgTPH5y1-ZI&quot;&gt;King Tut&lt;/a&gt;. Although this factoid is not unique to the author, I have run across it in other places. It seems to originate from some interpretation of the information contained in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Anthropology/BiologicalPhysicalAnthropology/?view=usa&amp;amp;ci=9780198503576&quot;&gt;Domestication of Plants in the Old World: The Origin and Spread of Cultivated Plants in West Asia, Europe, and the Nile Valley&lt;/a&gt; but the $150.00 price tag and limited availability makes this a hard source to check.I would be interested to know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, a complete archive of items found in the tomb is kept by the Griffith Institute and can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/4tut.html&quot;&gt;found and searched here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The search function failed to yield confirmation, so I looked through the archive item by item ( I had a little time) and this is the best I could find: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/043q%285%29-c043q.html&quot;&gt;(5) Small seed of (?): not corn&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course since the ancient Egyptians clearly had deeper and more profound understanding of medicine than scientists today, as they also included &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/gri/carter/050-099.html&quot;&gt;nearly 50 boxes of prepared food&lt;/a&gt; (repeatedly proven essential for the growing boy mummy) and a few chariot wheels.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, not only does that statement seem to be questionable, but at best it would convey only that the Egyptians seemed to view the black seed as being of equal medicinal value to the chariot wheel, and possibly less so, as there is documented presence of more than one chariot wheel, but only one seed..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bharat Aggarwal is a published, noted, and quite legitimate researcher at the University of Texas, although he seems to have an oddly narrow (but seemingly valid) area of focus.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His group has identified over 50 compounds from dietary sources and&#xA;  traditional medicine that interrupt these cell-signaling pathways;&#xA;  have been tested in various animal models and some are in clinical&#xA;  trials &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uthouston.edu/gsbs/faculty/faculty-directory/faculty-profiles.htm?id=1346133&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His name appears mainly to be listed here as an appeal to authority, and his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1402776632&quot;&gt;&quot;Healing Spices&quot;&lt;/a&gt; seems to be slightly more academically rigorous and based in cited research than some others of its ilk, I would call it at best controversial from what I've managed to find of it, as it seems to contain some leaps of logic from preliminary research straight to dietary advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Black seed comes from the Nigella sativa plant, which is native to the&#xA;  Mediterranean region, and now grows the Middle East and India as well.&#xA;  An annual herb, it blooms with fragile, pale blue flowers. It is often&#xA;  confused with several other black seed spices. Black seed, Nigella&#xA;  sativa, is commonly known as charnushka in the United States or&#xA;  kalonji in India. Black cumin, Buniun persicum, for example, is an&#xA;  altogether different spice, according to Aggarwal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, again she mentions his findings with regard to black seed in a manner that will allow the average reader to draw his/her own conclusions regarding the effect black seed can have on cancer, which as I'll show later is promising, but still very preliminary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my absolute favorite implosion of logic so far comes from this very statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Black cumin, Buniun persicum, for example, is an altogether different&#xA;  spice, according to Aggarwal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HUH?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But wait, if &lt;em&gt;Black Seed&lt;/em&gt; is not the same as &lt;em&gt;Black Cumin&lt;/em&gt;, what did we read at the top of the page?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vYYYY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is it, you're talking about?  Black seed? which looks like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DJM1U.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or black cumin?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sBdN7.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This legitimately reeks of someone who has not thoroughly researched the topic about which she chooses to promote.  And the best part is, her inconsistency is pointed out in the the quote from the expert she chose to cite!  It couldn't possibly get better!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ah, but it does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do a quick google search for the the word &quot;Buniun persicum&quot;.  You'll get this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Lm80s.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and for fun, an image search for the incorrect spelling gives us:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oM5d8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why, it's none other than the author of the site used in the question, what are the odds? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this indicates that the misspelling is localized, if not unique to her, and article cited in the original question.  So, not only did the author quote an expert who ended serving no purpose other than calling attention to the fact that her claims not only aren't valid, &lt;em&gt;but aren't even claims&lt;/em&gt;, but she then goes on to misspell an essential term.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of black seed's primary bioactive components is thymolquinone, or&#xA;  TQ, which is found in its essential oil. So far, notes Aggarwal,&#xA;  botanists have established black seed as the only source of TQ.&#xA;  Scientific evidence shows that TQ can protect cells from oxidative&#xA;  damage. Additionally, TQ demonstrated anti-inflammatory action in the&#xA;  laboratory, according to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center,&#xA;  MSKCC. Other constituents of black seed exhibited antihistamine,&#xA;  diuretic and antispasmodic properties. MSKCC also explains that black&#xA;  seed may be utilized for other conditions, such as asthma, epilepsy,&#xA;  liver protection and high blood pressure. Seek advice from a health&#xA;  practitioner before ...sing black seed medicinally&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;FINALLY! THE FACTS!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does TQ have anti-inflammatory effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly.  Or something similar. At least in mice. According to one study which indicates it may be potentially useful to study for its antinociceptive (painkilling) effects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The antinociceptive effect of morphine was significantly reduced in&#xA;  thymoquinone- and N. sativa oil-tolerant mice, but not vice versa.&#xA;  These results suggest that N. sativa oil and thymoquinone produce&#xA;  antinociceptive effects through indirect activation of the supraspinal&#xA;  mu(1)- and kappa-opioid receptor subtypes. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10913589&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do other constituents of black seed exhibit antihistamine, diuretic&#xA;and antispasmodic properties?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as those &quot;other constituents&quot; remain unnamed I won't dignify this nonsense with a response.  This is akin to saying that &quot;other constituents&quot; of a slice of bread (approx 42% water as a conservative estimate, but can be more depending on the type of bread and preferences of the baker) will cure dehydration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does TQ treat asthma?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again.  Possibly.  In mice.  But only if the same anti-inflammatory processes noted above are actually sound, this appears to be only the very earliest preliminary extrapolation of the effects it &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; have.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Administration of TQ before OVA challenge inhibited 5-lipoxygenase,&#xA;  the main enzyme in leukotriene biosynthesis, expression by lung cells&#xA;  and significantly reduced the levels of LTB4 and LTC4. This was&#xA;  accompanied by a marked decrease in Th2 cytokines and BAL fluid and&#xA;  lung tissue eosinophilia, all of which are characteristics of airway&#xA;  inflammation. These results demonstrate the anti-inflammatory effect&#xA;  of TQ in experimental asthma &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16624488&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so, there is potential for TQ to operate on the immunologic response which mediates inflammation and asthma.  At least in animal models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does TQ Exhibit antihistamine properties?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently being studied &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4394727&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, most likely because it is logical that something which has an effect on the inflammatory asthmatic process may have an effect on the allergic process, as they are similar in some ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does TQ exhibit anticonvulsive effects?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A pilot study done on 22 subjects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RESULTS: the reduction of frequency of seizures at the end of first&#xA;  period in comparison with the same period before the study&#xA;  demonstrated a significant difference between two groups (thymoquinone&#xA;  and placebo) (P=0.04). Also reduction of frequency of seizure has&#xA;  shown significant difference between two groups at the end of second&#xA;  period in comparison with end of first period (P=0.02). The parental&#xA;  satisfaction showed significant difference between the two groups at&#xA;  the end of the first period (P=0.03).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSION: it can be concluded that thymoquinone has anti-epileptic&#xA;  effects in children with refractory seizures.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21112742&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may seem to clearly indicate promise, until one remembers that this is only a &lt;em&gt;pilot study&lt;/em&gt; and involved &lt;em&gt;only a group of 22&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skipping the &quot;liver protection&quot; inference, because it is not a testable claim.  Protection from what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does TQ help to treat diabetes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sigh.  Again.  Possibly.  In rats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our data demonstrated a significant decrease in the numbers of&#xA;  neonates born to diabetic rats compared with those born to control&#xA;  rats. GD led to macrosomic pups with several postpartum complications,&#xA;  such as a significant increase in plasma levels of the&#xA;  pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-1β, IL-6, and TNF-α (but not of IL-10);&#xA;  a marked decrease in the plasma level of IL-2; a marked reduction in&#xA;  the proliferative capacity of superantigen (SEB)-stimulated&#xA;  T-lymphocytes; and an obvious reduction in the number of circulating&#xA;  and thymus homing T cells. TQ supplementation of diabetic mothers&#xA;  during pregnancy and lactation periods had an obvious and significant&#xA;  effect on the number and mean body weight of neonates. Furthermore, TQ&#xA;  significantly restored the IL-2 level and T cell proliferation and&#xA;  subsequently rescued both circulating and thymus homing T cells in the&#xA;  offspring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSIONS: Our data suggest that nutritional supplementation of GD&#xA;  mothers with the natural antioxidant TQ during pregnancy and lactation&#xA;  periods improves diabetic complications and maintains an efficient T&#xA;  cell immune response in their offspring, providing a protective effect&#xA;  in later life. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21295287&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regarding cancer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some preliminary study indicates a possibility for potential as a chemotherapeutic agent in the future, for brain tumors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our results indicate that thymoquinone induces DNA damage, telomere&#xA;  attrition by inhibiting telomerase and cell death in glioblastoma&#xA;  cells. Telomere shortening was found to be dependent on the status of&#xA;  DNA-PKcs. Collectively, these data suggest that thymoquinone could be&#xA;  useful as a potential chemotherapeutic agent in the management for&#xA;  brain tumours. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0012124&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Concluding...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the substance may have some potential in treating specific tumors in the future, this in no way should be taken to imply that it is effective against &quot;cancer&quot; or any of the other conditions mentioned, at least not yet, and probably not for many years.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it certainly does not imply that a natural basis for a chemotherapeutic cancer drug is that unusual, and of course to assume that whatever comes of this research would be somehow safer or better than currently used treatment modalities would be to commit the naturalistic fallacy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, black seed oil may become an interesting avenue for future research, mainly due to its potential anti-inflammatory and anti-neoplastic properties.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;At the very least the evidence we currently have indicates it may at the very least be beneficial for rats.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's far too early to make any claims as to the medicinal value of compounds extracted from black seed oil and is ludicrous to think that dietary consumption of it will have the same or even similar effects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be another case of the journalism getting &lt;em&gt;way&lt;/em&gt; ahead of the science, and in this case, it seems to have been delivered very poorly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="486" LastEditDate="2012-05-16T19:05:25.180" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T19:05:25.180" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5264" CreationDate="2011-07-20T06:35:24.147" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;The static on &lt;strong&gt;analog televisions&lt;/strong&gt; has been attributed to Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation by a variety of scientific sources such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.exploratorium.edu/origins/cern/ideas/bang.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CERN&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/starsgalaxies/cobe_background.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA&lt;/a&gt; and this primer from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astro.ubc.ca/people/scott/faq_basic.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Douglas Scott ( University of British Columbia)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I see the CMB for myself? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact you can! If you tune your TV set&#xA;  between channels, a few percent of the &quot;snow&quot; that you see on your&#xA;  screen is noise caused by the background of microwaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CMB radiation is in fact considered the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;best available evidence of the Big Bang Theory&lt;/a&gt;. So &lt;strong&gt;far from being a myth, this is used to prove the Big Bang happened&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;actual amount of static&lt;/strong&gt; attributed to BB &lt;strong&gt;is debatable&lt;/strong&gt;. CERN and NASA do not state a number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;1% as the amount of static&lt;/em&gt; caused by BB is claimed on various other sources with no clear explanation of how it is measured at 1% and whether the &lt;a href=&quot;http://stargazerslounge.com/archive/index.php/t-146640.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;other 99% covers all sorts of things, including stuff induced from sparks, lightning, stars&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is found in this presentation by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astro.yale.edu/vdbosch/cmb_Osher.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prof Frank Van Den Bosch from Yale (slide 4)&lt;/a&gt; and another on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physics.buffalo.edu/pasi/PASI2010_BigBang.ppt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Buffalo, NY, Physics Dept (PPT)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Roughly 1 percent of the static on your TV is CMB!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astro.ubc.ca/people/scott/theory.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lots more links to Theory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, why did I mention analog earlier? Because with digital signals, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.universetoday.com/25560/the-switch-to-digital-switches-off-big-bang-tv-signal/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;you will no longer see leftover radiation from the Big Bang as static on your television screen.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;when you are between channels on an analog television, the snow that&#xA;  you see on the screen is made up of interference from background&#xA;  signals that the antenna on your TV is picking up. Some of the “snow”&#xA;  is from other transmissions here on Earth, and some is from other&#xA;  radio emissions from space. Part of that interference – about 1% or&#xA;  less – comes from background radiation leftover from the Big Bang,&#xA;  called the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The same is true for FM&#xA;  radios – when the radio is tuned to a frequency that is between&#xA;  stations, part of the hiss that you hear, called “white noise”, is&#xA;  leftover radiation from  the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Digital signals eliminate the interference while watching a program&#xA;  because instead of broadcasting the picture as a radio wave which&#xA;  communicates to the CRT or plasma screen what to “paint” on the screen&#xA;  by the frequency of the signal, all a digital signal communicates is a&#xA;  1 or 0, and the digital converter takes care of decoding and sending&#xA;  information as to what the picture and sound on your screen should&#xA;  look like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastEditorUserId="22307" LastEditDate="2017-04-03T16:06:45.853" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T16:06:45.853" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5313" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-20T09:04:09.900" Score="3" ViewCount="6048" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not the first time I've heard of this, and I'm not really sure this is true. Then I came across this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Robinson_Crusoe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;book review:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe, first published in 1719 and sometimes regarded as the first novel in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I started wondering, is this really true? What about other books like &lt;em&gt;Utopia&lt;/em&gt; by More? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have evidence as to whether or not &lt;em&gt;Robinson Crusoe&lt;/em&gt; is the first novel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose it depends on the definition of a novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-07-20T12:30:20.820" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T12:30:20.820" Title="Is Robinson Crusoe the first English novel?" Tags="|history|literature|books|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5313" CreationDate="2011-07-20T09:14:47.840" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;For English you can find a list of multiple &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_novel_in_English&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;first novels&lt;/a&gt;, which mentions the definition problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are multiple candidates for first novel in English partly because of ignorance of earlier works, but largely because the term novel can be defined so as to exclude earlier candidates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following works of literature have each been claimed as the first novel in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, (written circa 1470, published 1485)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;William Baldwin, Beware the Cat, (written 1553, published 1570, 1584)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;John Lyly, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit (1578) and Euphues and his England (1580)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Philip Sidney, The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia (1581)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (1678)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;George Ashwell (translator), Philosophus Autodidactus (1686)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (1688)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Simon Ockley (translator), The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan (1708)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Daniel Defoe, Moll Flanders (1722)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Samuel Richardson, Pamela (1740)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-07-20T09:21:34.397" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T09:21:34.397" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5291" CreationDate="2011-07-20T11:20:49.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue with number stations is that there is no, publicly verifiable, information that details their purpose.  As such it is difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain if the intent of a specific station is &quot;spying game&quot;, government/military misdirection or simply a hoax.  That said some number stations have been triangulated to emit from Akrotiri UK military base in Cyprus[*].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reason we are aware of there existence is that they are broadcast over frequencies that can be easily accessed with basic equipment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of years ago BBC Radio 4 broadcast &quot;Tracking the Lincolnshire Poacher&quot;, a radio documentary related to number stations.  A wma of the broadcast can be found here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simonmason.karoo.net/page485.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.simonmason.karoo.net/page485.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[*] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station#Identifying_and_locating&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station#Identifying_and_locating&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://numberstations.co.uk/the-lincolnshire-poacher/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://numberstations.co.uk/the-lincolnshire-poacher/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4071" LastEditorUserId="4071" LastEditDate="2011-07-20T11:42:17.923" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T11:42:17.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5298" CreationDate="2011-07-20T13:36:52.267" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a huge mistake to think that the army (at least a modern well-trained army) wants to reduce the reasoning ability of its soldiers. It's also a huge mistake to assume that the ability to follow orders contradicts reasoning ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a number of official and semi-official army documents that show that initiative, judgement and reasoning are essential parts of military leadership:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/army_board_study_guide_topics/leadership/army-leadership-doctrine-.shtml&quot;&gt;Army Study Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm6-22.pdf&quot;&gt;Army Field Manual 6-22&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baseops.net/basictraining/airforce.html&quot;&gt;Air Force basic training&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, one of the things a soldier is expected to do is obey orders when needed&amp;mdash;because, as one of the documents puts it, &quot;instant obedience may one day save your life&quot;. Training certainly teaches them to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In answer to a question, sleep shortage and other stressors do play part of military training. Their purpose is to teach recruits to operate under stress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-07-20T15:12:44.220" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T15:12:44.220" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5317" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5320" CreationDate="2011-07-20T13:52:35.710" Score="12" ViewCount="12947" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Dmitri Mendeleyev conjure the organization of elements into the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table&quot;&gt;periodic table&lt;/a&gt; in a dream?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among the several places I've seen this suggested is the review of a book (that I haven't read) &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0425184676&quot;&gt;on Amazon&lt;/a&gt; called &quot;Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest for the Elements&quot;, which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the night of February 17, 1869, the Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleyev went to bed frustrated by a puzzle he had been playing with for years: how the atomic weights of the chemical elements could be grouped in some meaningful way--and one that, with any luck, would open a window onto the hidden structure of nature. He dreamed, as he later recalled, of &quot;a table where all the elements fell into place as required.&quot; His intuition that when the elements were listed in order of weight, their properties repeated in regular intervals, gave rise to the Periodic Table of the Elements--which, though much revised since, underlies modern chemistry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was this actually a dream that occurred during sleep, as this suggests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T15:45:31.887" LastActivityDate="2016-10-12T11:32:13.317" Title="Was the periodic table discovered in a dream by Dmitri Mendeleyev?" Tags="|history|physics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7706" CreationDate="2011-07-20T14:07:09.723" Score="14" ViewCount="1040" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's these incessant commercials I always see on my TV. &amp;quot;Install our product, and we will make your PC up to 100% faster!&amp;quot; Then they usually go through a few customer use cases (typically involving elderly folk) about how they installed it and found they could read e-mails much quicker and that their startup time was cut in half, their programs loaded quicker, and many more wonderful and seemingly desirable things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a software engineer I am skeptical of these commercials and these products. I understand there can be registry errors (one of the things they say they can fix) and that there could be other programs unnecessarily running on startup which could slow boot time, and a severely fragmented disk which could slow seeking and loading files, but really?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these products do anything useful, other than make their developers rich? And furthermore, if they claim to fix registry errors, how do they know what was supposed to be in the registry in the first place on third party software, as far as I know there is no central &amp;quot;this is what a registry should look like&amp;quot; database?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I'm just skeptical about software which claims to be the end-all of software issues. But please, you thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Do these products provide measurable speed increases or decrease the frequency of crashes/freezes on one's system as a result of using them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some specific examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://download.cnet.com/CleanMyPC-Registry-Cleaner/3000-18512_4-42984.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Registry Cleaner&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CleanMyPC Registry Cleaner will check your Windows registry and then remove any incorrect or obsolete information in the registry. Repairing these faulty registry items will allow your PC to run faster and error free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mycleanpc.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;My Clean PC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quickly clean your system and increase speed...Prevent annoying screen freezes, crashes and errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcdocpro.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PC Doc Pro&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Get rid of crashes, freezes, and long wait times with our 1-click software right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3759" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-08-20T12:23:48.627" LastActivityDate="2022-08-20T12:23:48.627" Title="Do off-the-shelf software products which claim to &quot;Clean Your PC&quot; work?" Tags="|software|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5319" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-20T15:38:56.823" Score="1" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1118/are-personal-electronics-a-risk-to-commercial-aviation&quot;&gt;Are personal electronics a risk to commercial aviation?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flight attendants usually asks for cell phone to be switched off throughout the flight, and other electronic device (including ipods or phones set to flight mode) during take off and landing. What are the verifiable explanation that such devices can interfere with flight communication and/or are dangerous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="954" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T15:38:56.823" Title="Is it bad to turn on a cell phone and electronic devices during a commercial flight?" Tags="|safety|aviation|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2011-07-20T16:03:05.613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5317" CreationDate="2011-07-20T16:27:57.890" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there was, indeed a dream. Pretty much everything else in the common story is, however, not quite accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to Mendeleev's statement to Prof. A.A.Inostrantsev, the dream DID help him somewhat to finalize/formalize the idea. The quote is indeed &amp;quot;a table where all the elements fell into place as required&amp;quot;, but the drafts (v3) after that dream were not exactly the final form of the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was a dream during the day, when he nodded off after several hours work on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The dream was not the main source of the table - nor was it the final version of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that Mendeleev was working on a way to pattern the elements very extensively for a long time, and in the days preceding 1869/02/17 he was playing with a &amp;quot;solitair&amp;quot; deck of cards with elements on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full timeline and discussion with major list of russian sources can be found here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeleev.nw.ru/period_law/ver_trif.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.mendeleev.nw.ru/period_law/ver_trif.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main source is &amp;quot;Трифонов Д. Н. Версия-2: к истории открытия периодического закона Д.И. Менделеевым // а) Вопросы истории естествознания и техники 1990, N2. C. 25-36; б) Там же, 1990, N3. C. 20-32.&amp;quot; - &amp;quot;Trifinov D.N, Version-2: the history of discovery of Periodic Table by D.I Mendeleev&amp;quot;. &amp;quot;History of natural sciences and technology&amp;quot;, 1990, N2, pp. 25-36 and N3. C. 20-32.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A full biboliography: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeleev.nw.ru/period_law/litera.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.mendeleev.nw.ru/period_law/litera.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough a similar story - this time confirmed 100% straight from the scientist's words - is associated with the discovery of the ring shape of benzene molecule. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzene&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here Kekulé spoke of the creation of the theory. He said that he had discovered the ring shape of the benzene molecule after having a reverie or day-dream of a snake seizing its own tail (this is a common symbol in many ancient cultures known as the Ouroboros or Endless knot). This vision, he said, came to him after years of studying the nature of carbon-carbon bonds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-21T01:56:29.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5321" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5322" CreationDate="2011-07-20T17:11:23.643" Score="8" ViewCount="1102" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a video on YouTube proclaiming to be showing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZneGwS6t594&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the world's largest scrotum&lt;/a&gt;. [Caution: Video contains disturbing images and may be not safe for work settings.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After searching online, I can't find news articles nor otherwise explaining how this would happen or verifying if this is real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the video real?  And if so, what could have caused this condition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3733" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-21T01:32:56.920" LastActivityDate="2011-07-21T08:47:21.043" Title="World's largest scrotum?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5321" CreationDate="2011-07-20T17:18:13.677" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks to me like the classic elephantiasis sufferer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Elephantiasis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; has more detail on the disease itself. It sounds unverified what the final cause of the thickening skin is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, the disease itself is a result of a complex interplay between several factors: the worm, the symbiotic Wolbachia bacteria within the worm, the host’s immune response, and the numerous opportunistic infections and disorders that arise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2011-07-21T08:47:21.043" LastActivityDate="2011-07-21T08:47:21.043" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5324" CreationDate="2011-07-20T17:31:20.107" Score="4" ViewCount="1451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard many times before that people with mental disorders become hyperactive during the full moon. I have never believed it, but has there been any scientific study carried out to prove it one way or the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4073" LastEditorDisplayName="user1770" LastEditDate="2011-07-20T19:36:10.703" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T19:36:10.703" Title="Do people with mental illnesses feel the effect more during the full moon?" Tags="|moon|psychiatry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5323" CreationDate="2011-07-20T18:46:27.440" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Such studies actually exist. The Skepdic entry for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/fullmoon.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Full moon and lunar effects&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; gives a full list of things that have been studied, but in particular there was insufficient evidence to support that the following correlate with a full moon (that means that such a correlation doesn’t exist):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;psychiatric admissions [one study found admissions were lowest during a full moon]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;behavioral outbursts of psychologically challenged rural adults &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;epilepsy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of which are different effects of mental illness. The list comes from the 1996 review by Kelly, I. W., James Rotton, and Roger Culver, &lt;em&gt;The Moon was Full and Nothing Happened: A Review of Studies on the Moon and Human Behavior and Human Belief&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2011-07-20T18:46:27.440" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5327" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-20T22:47:50.190" Score="4" ViewCount="4434" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw a video recently that seemed to show a fire being started from a potato, salt, toothpaste, a couple of wires, and what appears to be cotton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A video showing this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-make-fire-from-potatoes-salt-and-toothpaste-fake-90487/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;. To summarize, it looks like they:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cut a potato in half&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cut a rounded out hollow in one half and filled it with a mixture of salt and toothpaste&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;put wires through the other half and folded them over so that when the two halves were placed together, the two ends were both in the salt/toothpaste mixture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;put the halves together and put a piece of cotton (or something else) around one of the exposed wire ends coming out of the potato halves&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;waited a few minutes and then touched the other wire to the cotton and it started on fire&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread419289/pg1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; is a forum where people are talking about the video and many seem to think it's real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this video showing something possible or was it faked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1608" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2011-07-21T01:19:32.587" LastActivityDate="2016-08-06T13:23:21.570" Title="Make fire with a potato, salt, and toothpaste?" Tags="|chemistry|video|fire|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4657" CreationDate="2011-07-21T04:57:09.287" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.avma.org/public/Health/Documents/dogbite.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Veterinary Medical Association&lt;/a&gt; has this to say on dog bites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Statistics on fatalities and injuries caused by dogs cannot be&#xA;  responsibly used to document the “dangerousness” of a particular&#xA;  breed, relative to other breeds, for several reasons. First, a dog’s&#xA;  tendency to bite depends on at least 5 interacting factors: heredity,&#xA;  early experience, later socialization and training, health (medical&#xA;  and behavioral), and victim behavior. Second, there is no reliable&#xA;  way to identify the number of dogs of a particular breed in the canine&#xA;  population at any given time (eg, 10 attacks by Doberman Pinschers&#xA;  relative to a total population of 10 dogs implies a different risk&#xA;  than 10 attacks by Labrador Retrievers relative to a population of&#xA;  1,000 dogs). Third, statistics may be skewed, because often they do&#xA;  not consider multiple incidents caused by a single animal. Fourth,&#xA;  breed is often identified by individuals who are not familiar with&#xA;  breed characteristics and who commonly identify dogs of mixed ancestry&#xA;  as if they were purebreds. Fifth, the popularity of breeds changes&#xA;  over time, making comparison of breed-specific bite rates unreliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that for &quot;pit bulls&quot; in particular, just about any medium to large size mixed breed dog with a squarish head could be called a &quot;pit bull&quot; right now, particularly if it has been aggressive.  The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.akc.org/dog-breeds/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AKC&lt;/a&gt; does not list &quot;pit bull&quot; as a breed, although it does have a few bull terrier breeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly to determine if a breed is dangerous (as opposed to a dog), the real question is not &quot;how many bites were from breed X&quot; but rather &quot;what is the probability that breed X will bite?&quot; (which the above study says is hard to determine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="603" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-17T01:25:57.993" LastActivityDate="2019-10-17T01:25:57.993" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5331" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-21T11:23:30.283" Score="18" ViewCount="9067" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an episode in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Mile_%28film%29&quot;&gt;The Green Mile movie&lt;/a&gt; where the death row servicemen rehearse the upcoming execution that is done using an electric chair. One of them says (quoted from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/g/green-mile-script-transcript-darabont.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Roll on one.&#xA;  [pause]&#xA;  &quot;Roll on one&quot; means I turn the generator up full. The lights go brighter in half the prison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;he says that and indeed ceiling lights in the building go brighter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which implies that the electric chair requires a generator that produces suitable voltage and also adds extra power required to sustain the peak power consumption of the chair. This part makes sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the &quot;lights go brighter&quot; part implies that the generator is somehow connected to the mains in the prison. This makes no sense to me - connecting a high-voltage (more than a kilovolt) generator to 110 volts mains would cause electrical problems and would likely not give any advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any evidence of such setups - electric chair powered by a generator connected in any way to the mains of the building. Do such setups exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="666" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:32:40.327" LastActivityDate="2018-08-20T04:00:50.747" Title="Are electric chairs powered by generators connected to the mains in the same building?" Tags="|physics|electromagnetism|criminology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5332" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-21T13:17:29.410" Score="23" ViewCount="42823" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently purchased a memory foam (polyurethane) mattress and was looking online to see how long they take to &quot;air out&quot;.  They produce a strong odor for awhile after manufacture.  However, instead of finding my answer I found seemingly endless reports on websites claiming that memory foam gives off potentially toxic fumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.softpedia.com/news/Can-Your-Mattress-Kill-You-76887.shtml&quot;&gt;http://news.softpedia.com/news/Can-Your-Mattress-Kill-You-76887.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is clear that the hydrocarbons evaporate and load the sleeping&#xA;  room. Most of the hydrocarbons are powerful carcinogenic chemicals and&#xA;  attack, with severe damages, the immune and nervous systems. Most&#xA;  autoimmune disorders (like arthritis, lupus, allergies asthma, and&#xA;  others) have been connected with or thought to be boosted by increased&#xA;  exposure to petroleum. Interestingly, in the US there are no exposure&#xA;  limits for carcinogenicity in the case of the polyurethans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myfoammattress.net/compare/organic.html&quot;&gt;http://www.myfoammattress.net/compare/organic.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recent findings also showed that petroleum-based foam mattresses may&#xA;  be a source of cancer-causing chemicals. During use, all these foams&#xA;  break down in dangerous by-products: toxic dust under the bed and&#xA;  formaldehyde gas in the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Additionally, the average mattress seems to contain around a pound of&#xA;  fire retardants called PDBE (polybrominated diphenyl ethers), already&#xA;  banned in Europe and the US. These PDBE have only been recently banned&#xA;  (January 2005) so the mattress you currently sleep on probably still&#xA;  contains them. Tests show that these chemicals may be especially toxic&#xA;  to kids, potentially affecting their hearing, memory and even&#xA;  intelligence after sleeping on PDBE-treated cribs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am doubtful of these claims, because it seems to me that if they were true, these mattresses either wouldn't be on the market or you'd hear more about these problems.  Second, most of these websites seem to be marketing alternative &quot;natural organic latex&quot; mattresses, so their motives are suspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question then:  Is there any evidence that memory foam (polyurethane) mattresses give of toxic gasses, and if so, do they do so in quantities that can have a noticeable effect on a sleeper's health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1617" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T00:06:35.630" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T00:06:35.630" Title="Do memory foam mattresses give off toxic fumes?" Tags="|environmental-health|sleep|toxicology|memory-foam|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4912" CreationDate="2011-07-21T13:51:32.630" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer seems to be &quot;it depends&quot;.  Given the commerciality and competitive nature of the HVAC industry, I had a lot of trouble finding peer reviewed academic studies that test your claims.  Therefore, I took a look at the patent records for evidence, which led me to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents?id=UCkcAAAAEBAJ&amp;amp;zoom=4&amp;amp;dq=air%20conditioning%20blower&amp;amp;pg=PA26#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;US Patent #5492273&lt;/a&gt;.  This patent, owned by General Electric, describes a variable-speed blower that can be controlled independently of the compressor.  Here are some claims made in the background section of the patent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general, total heating of air conditioning capacity of a system increases as the indoor air flow rate increases.  However, upon reaching a particular air flow rate, the blown air will be less warm or less cool, depending on the mode of the HVAC system, than the air in the room.  For air conditioning systems, the indoor coil, or evaporator, tends to &quot;saturate&quot;.  In other words, the the coil extracts incrementally less energy from the air for equal incremental changes in air flow.  Further, the electric power consumed by the indoor blower motor increases rapidly as the air flow rate increases.  The system dissipates electric energy as heat in the same air that is being cooled by the system thereby reducing its net cooling capacity.  Due to the effects of coil saturation and blower motor power consumption, net total capacity peaks at a certain airflow rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me briefly summarize the salient points of that paragraph before continuing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For traditional, single-blower-speed air conditioning systems, the efficiency of the system does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; scale linearly with air flow speed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The blower motor's electrical usage scales superlinearly with respect to air speed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The faster the air speed the more the coil heats up, thus reducing its cooling efficiency the next time the condenser turns on:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;an increase in the air flow rate beyond what is required warms the evaporator coil to produce a higher load on the compressor motor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The patent goes on to explain that the reason why most traditional, single-speed blowers don't keep the blower on after the condenser has turned off is exactly because of point #3: The airflow will heat up the coil and require the condenser to remain on longer during the next cycle.  The patent also claims that some traditional systems try and avoid this by only switching off the compressor when in blower-only mode (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;,  also keeping pumping the refrigerant), however, the patent says that that uses almost as much electricity as running the entire system:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conventional systems ... [delay] turning off the indoor blower fan after after the compressor cycles off. However, &lt;strong&gt;the system also continues to draw power at the same level as during the cycle&lt;/strong&gt; and causes additional energy to be consumed in the indoor fan motor.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;sub&gt;[Emphasis is mine.]&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is a bit surprising.  The patent could of course be embellishing that claim in order to make its technology seem more useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The patent describes a variable speed blower motor that can work independently of the condenser to set the air flow to the optimal speed for cooling.  The thermostat, with information from both indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity sensors, can then intelligently decide how to control both the blower and the condenser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I'd say that if you have one of these variable-speed blowers and intelligent thermostats (they're getting more common now; I have one in a house I recently bought), I'd say that it would be a bad idea to force the blower to stay on all the time because the system is smarter than you!  If, however, you have an older, single-speed system, that question is a lot more complicated, and it might actually be detrimental to run the blower all of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2011-07-21T14:53:49.127" LastActivityDate="2011-07-21T14:53:49.127" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5334" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5698" CreationDate="2011-07-21T14:08:15.430" Score="15" ViewCount="584" Body="&lt;p&gt;On my way in to work today there was a guest on the radio claiming that the &quot;Heat Dome&quot; was the result of the disturbance of natural wind patterns by the windfarms that have proliferated the midwestern US in the last decade.  He also said that it was not being moved out because of this disturbance as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen some of the data about the bird kills and local impacts but is there any evidence that these wind farms can have an impact that is this widespread and lasting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there are just as many on the other side claiming this is global warming and I am not asking about the cause of the Heat Dome just if there is any evidence of the windfarms having an effect that impacts more than local weather patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-24T15:46:49.530" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T23:33:51.293" Title="Do wind farms have a significant impact on weather patterns in the US?" Tags="|united-states|weather|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5335" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5336" CreationDate="2011-07-21T14:15:03.080" Score="10" ViewCount="37523" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that one shouldn't drink alcohol or coke right after eating &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durian&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;durian&lt;/a&gt;, because this will cause death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="214" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T00:25:45.373" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T04:41:24.653" Title="Is drinking alcohol or coke, right after eating durian, deadly?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5335" CreationDate="2011-07-21T14:41:19.637" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's not lethal. It will however make your hangover worse:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814609004324&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Inhibition of aldehyde dehydrogenase enzyme by Durian (Durio zibethinus Murray) fruit extract&amp;quot;, John S. Maninang, Ma. Concepcion C. Lizada and Hiroshi Gemma:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The scientific basis of the adverse, or at times lethal,&#xA;effect of ingesting durian (Durio zibethinus Murray) while imbibing&#xA;alcohol has not been established.&lt;/strong&gt; Symptoms are reminiscent of the&#xA;disulfiram–ethanol reaction (DER) arising from the inhibition of&#xA;aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH). Cognizant of the inhibitory effect of&#xA;sulphur compounds like disulfiram on ALDH and the rich sulphur content&#xA;of durian, the influence of durian fruit extract on the ALDH-mediated&#xA;oxidative metabolism of acetaldehyde was investigated. We report a&#xA;dose-dependent inhibition of yeast ALDH (yALDH), at most 70% at 0.33&#xA;ppm (mg extract/l assay mix), by dichloromethane:pentane extracts.&#xA;Sulphur-rich TLC fruit extract fractions that eluted farthest from the&#xA;origin effected the greatest inhibitory action. yALDH assay using&#xA;diethyl disulfide as internal standard further supports the role of&#xA;durian’s sulfury constituents in the fruit’s ALDH-inhibiting property.&#xA;Insight into the etiology of DER-like symptoms felt upon simultaneous&#xA;durian and alcohol consumption is hereby presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-21T14:41:19.637" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5337" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5338" CreationDate="2011-07-21T14:57:04.820" Score="2" ViewCount="445" Body="&lt;p&gt;This odd claim is presented in a comment thread at the blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2011/07/worst_city_council_in_america.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dispatches from the Culture Wars&lt;/a&gt; in comment #6 on the linked post. It refers to a city council banning a community group. Seems to me this would be a violation of the First Amendment right to freely assemble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a power of local governments to ban political groups anywhere in the United States?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1941" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-07-22T20:02:35.180" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T20:57:28.070" Title="Do states give local governments the power to ban opposing political groups?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5337" CreationDate="2011-07-21T15:33:31.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tricky area.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US Constitution&lt;/a&gt; forbids the federal government (refered to as the state) from infringing on the rights of its citizens.  The states then each have their own governing document, most of which incorporate the restrictions to include the state government.  There is a point of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Constitution#Controversy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;controversy&lt;/a&gt; among some as to wether or not those restrictions are automatically conferred upon any governments underneath them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a copy of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arktimes.com/images/blogimages/2011/07/13/1310568750-gouldordinance.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ordinance in question&lt;/a&gt;. (Thank you Oddthinking)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/assembly/Summary/ArkansasConstitution1874.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Arkanasas Constitution&lt;/a&gt; I would expect that the Article 1 Section 4 may provide some protection to the group:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Right of assembly and of petition. The right of the people&#xA;  peaceably to assemble, to consult for the common good; and to&#xA;  petition, by address or remonstrance, the government, or any&#xA;  department thereof, shall never be abridged.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Article 12 (Starts page 40) deals with the powers of local governments and businesses incorporated in the state of Arkansas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 4:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Limitation on legislative and taxing power - Local bond issues. No&#xA;  municipal corporation shall be authorized to pass any laws contrary to&#xA;  the general laws of the state;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(There is more to it on the site that does not seem relavent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However Arkansas does allow &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_rule_in_america&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;limited home rule&lt;/a&gt; which I would assume was used to enact this law.  I would expect that the state constitution protections above would protect from this should it ever get to court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2011-07-22T20:57:28.070" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T20:57:28.070" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5343" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5345" CreationDate="2011-07-22T03:42:54.507" Score="1" ViewCount="1420" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just had my car serviced today, and my mechanic mentioned that canola oil was invented (or originally used) as a form of motor oil. Is it true that the canola oil we use in the kitchen is the same as an oil that's been marketed as a motor oil?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T13:58:32.100" Title="Was canola oil developed for automobiles?" Tags="|marketing|oil|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5344" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5349" CreationDate="2011-07-22T04:11:26.617" Score="32" ViewCount="14138" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is the Daddy Long Legs (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pholcus_phalangioides&quot;&gt;Pholcus phalangioides&lt;/a&gt;) spider is the most venomous spider in the world, but that its fangs are too small to be able to penetrate human skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wikipedia article calls it an urban myth and links through to some supposed &quot;research&quot;, but its just some guy claiming:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no scientific basis for the supposition that they are deadly&#xA;  poisonous and there is no reason to assume that it is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which I don't feel a lack of evidence should stand as claimed scientific research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a link to a myth busters episode where they apparently get a Daddy Long Legs spider to bite someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible for the Pholcidae spiders fangs to penetrate the skin and has there been any official measurement into the common dose size and toxicity of the venom?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T19:37:02.217" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T19:37:02.217" Title="Is the Daddy Long Legs spider the world's most venomous?" Tags="|biology|toxicology|entomology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5343" CreationDate="2011-07-22T05:36:46.293" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canola&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Canola&lt;/a&gt; is variant of rapeseed &quot;genetically modified&quot; (see comments) through artificial selection techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rapeseed&lt;/strong&gt; appears to have been used as a motor oil:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rapeseed oil was produced in the 19th century as a source of a lubricant for steam engines.&#xA;  - Uncited claim in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed#Cultivation_and_uses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;canola&lt;/strong&gt; was bred in the 1970s by Richard Keith Downey and his team for the nutritional value of its oil (i.e. it was edible, unlike the original rapeseed oil!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.science.ca/scientists/scientistprofile.php?pID=348&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Profile of Richard Keith Downey, Science.ca&lt;/a&gt;, which has references to this, now extinct, &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20030111064526/http://res2.agr.ca/research-recherche/media/hallfame/downey.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Agriculture and Agrifood Canada page&lt;/a&gt; (via the Wayback machine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-26T13:58:32.100" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T13:58:32.100" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5300" CreationDate="2011-07-22T05:58:26.410" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scanner is from creaform, and indeed it does scan that fast.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have pointed out, it's not an xray scanner, so it can't discern the internal structure of the part, and it's quite obvious that they printed a crescent wrench they already had designed in 3D, not the one they scanned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, these scanners do exist, they do work, and they do work that fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20080201101&quot;&gt;US Patent 20080201101&lt;/a&gt; (also in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20080201101.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.creaform3d.com/en/products.aspx&quot;&gt;Creaform Handyscan 3D scanners&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, if you peek through the Lord of the Rings extra features, you'll find that they used these scanners to capture cast faces for 3D digital compositing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=handy%20scan%203d&amp;amp;tbm=vid&quot;&gt;countless videos&lt;/a&gt; that demonstrate the speed and range of these devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="919" LastEditorUserId="919" LastEditDate="2011-07-22T06:14:11.497" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T06:14:11.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5344" CreationDate="2011-07-22T07:54:51.710" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1447/is-a-daddy-long-legs-the-most-poisonous-spider&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Straight Dope:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Herman Vanuytven came forth from the Arachnology Home page (http://www.ufsia.ac.be/Arachnology/Arachnology.html). Herman's response:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The problem with the 'Daddy Longlegs' is that the name is used for several kinds of animals, 2 of them arachnids:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) The family Phalangiidae (a part of the opilionids [harvestmen], a different order than spiders)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) a spider: Pholcus phalangioides&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Number one doesn't have poison glands. Number two has poison glands but as far as is known in the scientific world, nobody has ever been bitten by one of them. It's not sure if the poison has ever been investigated since there was no need for it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short, this has never been investigated, and it hasn't been determined whether or not Daddy Long-legs are the most poisonous spiders. It is possible that they are the most poisonous spiders, but it hasn't been found out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="2382" LastEditDate="2011-07-22T08:45:52.717" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T08:45:52.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5344" CreationDate="2011-07-22T08:33:31.023" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's a myth.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://spiders.ucr.edu/daddylonglegs.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of California, River&lt;/a&gt;side:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;There is no&#xA;scientific basis for the supposition that they are deadly poisonous&#xA;and there is no reason to assume that it is true.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no reference to any pholcid spider biting a human and causing&#xA;any detrimental reaction.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these spiders were indeed deadly&#xA;poisonous but couldn't bite humans, then the only way we would know&#xA;that they are poisonous is by milking them and injecting the venom&#xA;into humans. &lt;br/&gt;For a variety of reasons including &lt;em&gt;Amnesty International&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;and a humanitarian code of ethics, this research has never been done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, there are no toxicological studies testing the lethality&#xA;of pholcid venom on any mammalian system (this is usually done with&#xA;mice). Therefore, no information is available on the likely toxic&#xA;effects of their venom in humans, so the part of the myth about their&#xA;being especially poisonous is just that: a myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What about their&#xA;fangs being too short to penetrate human skin?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pholcids do indeed have&#xA;short fangs, which in arachnological terms is called &amp;quot;uncate&amp;quot; because&#xA;they have a secondary tooth which meets the fang like the way the two&#xA;grabbing parts of a pair of tongs come together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brown recluse spiders&#xA;similarly have uncate fang structure and they obviously are able to&#xA;bite humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be a difference in the musculature that houses&#xA;the fang such that recluses have stronger muscles for penetration&#xA;because they are hunting spiders needing to subdue prey whereas&#xA;pholcid spiders are able to wrap their prey and don't need as strong a&#xA;musculature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, again, &lt;strong&gt;the myth states as fact something about which&#xA;there is no scientific basis.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-daddy-longlegs-minimyth.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;video of the &lt;strong&gt;MythBusters&lt;/strong&gt; can be watched here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supposedly, daddy longlegs possess extremely powerful poison, but&#xA;their fangs are too short to penetrate human skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To find out, &lt;strong&gt;Jamie&#xA;and Adam hunted down a host of daddy longlegs and took them to a&#xA;spider specialist who could milk out their venom.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, &lt;strong&gt;the spider&#xA;specialist compared the toxicity of daddy longlegs venom to black&#xA;widow venom (on mice). The red-bellied widow won out, busting the myth.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A microscopic measurement of the long-legged spider's fangs proved &lt;strong&gt;their&#xA;miniscule quarter-millimeter length could puncture human skin&lt;/strong&gt;, taking&#xA;a double bite out of the daddy longlegs myth. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/db/animals/daddy-long-leg-spiders.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As seen in the video Adam did let himself get bitten and only felt &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;a tiny little burning&lt;/em&gt; &amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T08:39:59.817" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5327" CreationDate="2011-07-22T08:44:38.177" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_battery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Making electricity from potatoes is nothing new.&lt;/a&gt; However for that to happen you need two different metals (typically copper and zinc). It may have been different metals in these wires, but they don't say so. And you need an acid. Which salt and toothpaste isn't. And it won't be enough electricity to make a spark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might be some sort of chemistry happening with starch+salt+something in toothpaste, but I doubt it. And even if it would generate electricity, it surely will not do so if you put both wires in the toothpaste. One needs to go in the potato, the other in the paste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is bogus, without a doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="2382" LastEditDate="2011-07-22T08:48:31.437" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T08:48:31.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5352" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5355" CreationDate="2011-07-22T10:44:11.510" Score="19" ViewCount="5358" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently came across the following quote on the twitters, attributed to Albert Einstein:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb&#xA;  a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt that it's a genuine quote, but is the implied claim that all fish are incapable of climbing trees true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Related question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6732/did-einstein-actually-say-the-fish-quote-that-many-are-attributing-to-him-on-fac&quot;&gt;Did Einstein say the &amp;quot;if you judge a fish&amp;quot; quote that many are attributing to him?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T04:08:16.657" Title="Can any fish climb trees?" Tags="|biology|zoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5352" CreationDate="2011-07-22T10:56:45.783" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;What a ridiculous question! Of course not!... Oh, wait... Errr.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more than one fish that can climb trees. [Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://quantumbiologist.wordpress.com/2011/01/28/the-fish-that-climb-trees/&quot;&gt;Quantum Biologist&lt;/a&gt;, which is &quot;only&quot; a blog, I dug further.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example that the Quantum Biologist describes is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangrove_rivulus&quot;&gt;Mangrove Rivulus&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They lose their aggressive habits, climb the nearest tree or rotting log, and stuff themselves into the cracks and insect-bored holes. Their physiology changes: instead of breathing through their gills, they breathe (and excrete waste) through their skin. They can stay that way, a literal fish out of water, for over two months, just waiting in the trees for rain to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Quantum Biologist&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found several sources (including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/11/15/us-fish-idUSN1522299020071115?pageNumber=1&quot;&gt;Reuters&lt;/a&gt;) that confirmed it could live outside of the water, inside damp logs and crab burrows for long periods during dry spells, but I couldn't find any that use the word &quot;climb&quot;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/gallery/descript/mangroverivulus/mangroverivulus.html&quot;&gt;Florida Museum of Natural History&lt;/a&gt; use the term &quot;slithering and flipping&quot; in its search for a place to hide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElZ3xGuA-qo&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt; showing the fish inside a log, but the quality is very poor, and hardly proof of anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US Department of Commerce has declared it a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/pdfs/species/mangroverivulus_detailed.pdf&quot;&gt;Species of Concern&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-22T11:12:21.690" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T11:12:21.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5352" CreationDate="2011-07-22T11:35:27.580" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://treesandshrubs.about.com/b/2011/04/01/some-fish-can-climb-trees.htm&quot;&gt;several fish&lt;/a&gt; which are capable of achieving this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mangrove killifish&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The mangrove killifish (Rivulus marmoratus), found among the mangroves in Florida, Latin American and Caribbean, is a strange fish indeed. For starters, this is the only vertebrate animal that is known to fertilize its own eggs. There are males and females, but most of these little fish are hermaphrodites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mangrove killifish are able to alter their gills to be able to live out of the water. When the water around the mangroves dries up, these fish climb up into the trees and hide in logs until the water returns. Once it's safe, they change their gills back and venture back to the water.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Climbing Gourami&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Shirlie from Freshwater Aquariums told me about these fish when I was excitedly telling her about the mangrove killifish. I've always been a fan of the beautiful gouramis in my own aquarium, but I never knew that any of them could climb. They hail from Africa and Southern Asia.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One is called a climbing perch (Anabas testudineus). If the water it lives in dries out, it will climb out and travel in search of a new home. Its gills are spiny, and the climbing perch can use them (as well as its anal fin) to even climb up trees.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Climbing Catfish&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Finally, scientists have discovered Lithogenes wahari recently. This member of the catfish family can actually grasp with its pelvic fin. They have been finding specimens clinging to rocks, but it's not a stretch to think that they could climb trees too. This fish also has a sort of bony armor that protects its head and tail.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencecentric.com/news/09012209-new-species-climbing-fish-shakes-the-catfish-family-tree.html&quot;&gt;Science Centric&lt;/a&gt; regarding the climbing catfish: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the bony armour that protects its head and tail, and a grasping pelvic fin that allows it to climb vertical surfaces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's definitely true that some fish can climb trees. It's certain that they don't do it very often.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastActivityDate="2011-07-22T11:35:27.580" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5357" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5358" CreationDate="2011-07-22T13:48:20.467" Score="12" ViewCount="935" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm seeing lots of claims that photography could contribute to terrorism, and photographers are being stopped on a regular basis in many more places than before, especially in the UK (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.met.police.uk/campaigns/campaign_ct_2008.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.met.police.uk/campaigns/campaign_ct_2008.htm&lt;/a&gt;, especially &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.met.police.uk/campaigns/counter_terrorism/ct_camera_2008.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.met.police.uk/campaigns/counter_terrorism/ct_camera_2008.pdf&lt;/a&gt;).  Photographers are trying to counter these claims and the laws creating these restrictions and regain their right to take pictures in most public areas (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.not-a-crime.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.not-a-crime.com/&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://photographernotaterrorist.org/&quot;&gt;http://photographernotaterrorist.org/&lt;/a&gt;).  Can photography actually be used for terrorism?  If so, under what circumstances?  Can restricting photography reduce terrorism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2730" LastEditorUserId="2730" LastEditDate="2011-07-22T14:07:54.030" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T08:01:15.343" Title="Can photography be used for terrorism, and can restricting it reduce terrorism?" Tags="|law|terrorism|photography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5358" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5357" CreationDate="2011-07-22T14:33:08.340" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can photography actually be used for terrorism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can absolutely be used for &lt;strong&gt;aiding&lt;/strong&gt; in planning terror attacks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have the articles handy at the moment but a good source is StratFor's series of counter-terrorism and security articles. To paraphrase their many articles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any planned terror attack has standard phases, one of which is recon of the objective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;StratFor's Vulnerabilities in the Terrorist Attack Cycle&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the target selection and planning stages, terrorists conduct pre-operational surveillance...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Al Qaeda training manuals, including the infamous “Military Studies in the Jihad against the Tyrants,” and their online training magazines instruct operatives to perform surveillance, and even go so far as to discuss what type of information to gather.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army/guidterr/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Military Guide to Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, DCSINT Handbook No.1, 2007 Appendix A: Terrorist Planning Cycle&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Phase II: Intelligence Gathering and Surveillance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Taking photographs is both a good cover for hanging around a public place and checking things out without looking conspicuous; also photographs provide a wealth of possible information in post-recon planning phase - both to remind of the details that are otherwise forgotten and to help with visual/spacial reconstruction of the target environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (9/11 report)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(84) On the group's &lt;strong&gt;surveillance and photography activities&lt;/strong&gt;, see trial testimony of L'Houssaine Kherchtou, United States v. bin Laden, Feb. 21, 2001 (transcript pp. 1499-1500); FBI reports of investigation, interviews of L'Houssaine Kherchtou,Aug. 18, 2000; Oct. 18, 2000; see also FBI report of investigation, interview of confidential source, Sept. 16, 1999. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://globaljihad.net/view_news.asp?id=1722&quot;&gt;On or about 05/15/2010&lt;/a&gt;, at a hotel in Herndon, Farooque Ahmed allegedly agreed to watch and photograph another hotel in Washington, D.C., as well as a Metro station in Arlington to get information about their security and busiest periods&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, photography can be possibly used as cover for actual attack execution (OBL's assassination of Ahmad Shah Massoud, Northern alliance commander, on 9/9/2001, was done by a guy posing as a news reporter with the bomb hidden in video camera).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can restricting photography reduce terrorism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not likely, since you can always use other means of helping with recon. In addition, these days surreptitious photography is extremely accessible, with spy cameras of low end type going for like $20-$50 on meritline.com -  I can provide a link if one is required as proof. Not to mention there are photos of most public places all over Internet these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-07-24T08:01:15.343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T08:01:15.343" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5360" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-22T16:22:57.287" Score="22" ViewCount="2622" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to several people and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whattravelwriterssay.com/glacierexpressswitz.html&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt;, the train timings are so good in Switzerland that they use it to set their watches. (Not the other way around.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Traveling in Switzerland is relaxing and easy; it is also legendary when time is concerned. The Swiss don't run their trains by the clock; it's vice versa - they set their Swiss army watches by the arrival and departure of the train! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignoring the humour is it true that Switzerland has exceptionally good train timings, compared to other countries? Or is it just an urban myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-01-04T12:14:46.387" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T12:14:46.387" Title="Are Swiss trains exceptionally punctual?" Tags="|transportation|switzerland|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5360" CreationDate="2011-07-23T00:53:05.493" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes this is true. According to CSC, the Swiss did this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A superprecise dispatching system designed and implemented by the Swiss Federal Railway (SBB) with CSC is helping them run like clockwork. The Rail Control System (RCS) was developed over four and a half years by a team of about 100 rail and technology experts. CSC’s Matthias Krista, Benedikt Soom, Frédéric Auberson and Gilles Iachelini played key roles in the architecture, business analytics and software implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RCS is a powerful solution for analyzing complex interactions between trains and providing fast, accurate operational data to dispatchers, ultimately keeping trains on time and passengers happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results of RCS can be seen here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RCS provides near-real-time information on the current operational status of approximately 2,000 trains and 3,000 kilometers of track, and their corresponding switches and signals in the Swiss Federal Railways system. Overall punctuality has improved from 94 percent to 96 percent, making Switzerland the leader in international punctuality statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as you can see, they are the most accurate and precise train system in the world. Apparently, Swiss people are generally very punctual, and it has been said that they only lose &lt;strong&gt;one minute of time per year&lt;/strong&gt;. I generally lose one minute an hour, being late to most things, including going to bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enough of that, Swiss trains are accurate, and that's for sure.&#xA;To help you visualize this, try looking at this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swisstrains.ch/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.swisstrains.ch/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the train tracker of SBB. It is a realtime tracker of the trains around Zurich.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csc.com/features/stories/48346-controlling_the_swiss_rail_system&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.csc.com/features/stories/48346-controlling_the_swiss_rail_system&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-23T00:53:05.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5366" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-23T01:15:16.513" Score="3" ViewCount="18215" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know about you, but I heard this one day. It was because I was sucking lemons, and someone was like, &quot;Why do you suck lemons, isn't it soooo sour?&quot;. I said it was very sour, but I liked sour. He said, &quot;Ooo, don't you know, you'll have like girls for kids next time.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, I discovered he was serious. He said he'd read it off the newspapers or somewhere.&#xA;He also said it doesn't seem to apply to sweet things, only to sour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mind having girls, but I'd just like to make sure I have at least one son as well.:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, Is this seriously true? Has any study been done to confirm/refute this?  Would it be due to the acids having some effects on my male chromosomes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I just remembered my Mom telling me this as well when I was a little kid, cause I liked sour things even back then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T08:01:12.997" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T08:01:12.997" Title="Does eating sour increase the chance that your children will be female?" Tags="|nutrition|human-reproduction|alkaline-diet|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5366" CreationDate="2011-07-23T03:56:20.003" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are studies that has shown a link between what you eat and how likely you are to get a girl or a boy. The difference is very small though, and &quot;sour&quot; doesn't seem to be relevant. The only food item they studied that had an effect seemed to have been cereal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/201006/women-s-preconception-diets-and-their-likelihood-have-boy&quot;&gt;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/201006/women-s-preconception-diets-and-their-likelihood-have-boy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study looked at the amount of calcium, magnesium, sodium and potassium ingested, and the authors advise that a woman who wants to conceive a boy should eat foods high in sodium  and potassium for a girl, she should eat foods high in calcium and magnesium:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6111483&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6111483&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they seem to have been claiming this since the early 80's without anyone else corroborating this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(When scanning the net, I also encountered claims that making the body more alkaline, including eating a lot of lemons would produce a &lt;strong&gt;boy&lt;/strong&gt;. :-) )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastActivityDate="2011-07-23T03:56:20.003" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5249" CreationDate="2011-07-23T08:10:31.300" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can be naturally better at it. People with Aspergers are often highly logical and intelligent and good at computers. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aspergers is over-represented in computing&lt;/a&gt;, and generally accepted as being just a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/01/software-developers-and-aspergers-syndrome.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sort of computer-nerdery turned up to 11&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people with Aspergers are better at maths and computers than people in general, and there is little doubt &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/asperger/detail_asperger.htm#179693080&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;genetics are involved&lt;/a&gt; in Aspergers. Hence it is clear that genetics can cause you to be so disposed that you have a easier time for the types of formal logical thinking that computers and maths require.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aspergers is also not a on/off disorder, but a spectrum where everyone ends up somewhere on the spectrum. At one end there are people who are autistic, and on the other end people who have very high social IQ's. So how good you are at maths or computers are at least partially determined by your genetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Math skills has also been shown to be heritable in many studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar to our results at 7 years, all mathematics&#xA;scores at 9 years showed high heritability&#xA;(.62–.75) and low shared environmental estimates&#xA;(.00–.11) for both the low performance group and&#xA;the full sample. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atypon-link.com/AAP/doi/pdf/10.1375/twin.10.1.106&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The section of brain used for math computations may be 85 percent dependant on hereditary, genetic factors, according to the UCLA scientists. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/health/Bad-at-Math-Blame-It-on-Your-Parents.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should of course not be a surprise to anyone, it's pretty obvious really. The answer to &amp;quot;Nature vs Nurture&amp;quot; is always &amp;quot;Both&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that this is not the same as saying that all math skills are genetic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T13:36:20.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5373" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5377" CreationDate="2011-07-23T18:27:02.453" Score="8" ViewCount="3406" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since today Amy Winehouse died, she joined the 27 club.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club&quot;&gt;The Club 27&lt;/a&gt; is based around the statement that the death at the age of 27 for famous musicians is more common than in any other group of people. Is there any other similar group of people that their age of death has been compared to and showed this as a relevant fact?&#xA;Is there any explanation to this? (Let's say, something in the lines of: &quot;The abuse of drugs, or reckless living style, is more common among musicians than among actors&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1173" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-24T11:13:20.083" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T09:15:05.303" Title="Do famous musicians die at the age of 27 more often than other humans?" Tags="|mortality|musicians|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5373" CreationDate="2011-07-23T20:42:35.617" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the biggest thing going on here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/08/ajb/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Confirmation_bias.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;confirmation bias&lt;/a&gt; as opposed to any other phenomenon.  There are thousands and thousands of musicians, and the &amp;quot;27 Club&amp;quot; has only 45 members (as defined by wikipedia, and going back to 1908).  I think this particular phenomenon also has some hallmarks of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4542341&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Birthday Paradox&lt;/a&gt; in that people will always have a specific age when they die.  Naturally, some will have the same age.  (This is a weak analogy, I am thinking of a better one, and am open to suggestions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what really drives people to the confirmation bias inherent in this is that 27 is a rather young age for anyone to die.  To have musicians be very famous by that age, makes them stand out even more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for other people dying at 27, I think that you can list many other groups that have a much higher chance of dying.  For instance, in the commercial sector, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.workforceexplorer.com/article.asp?ARTICLEID=8616&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;being a fisherman is the deadliest demographic as far as profession goes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, in 2006 it became in fact the deadliest job in the country with a fatality rate of 141.7. Fishers didn’t have the highest number of fatalities over all (51 reported fatalities in 2006) but due to the relatively small amount employed, it had the highest rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of overall numbers, drivers/sales workers suffered by far the most on-the-job fatalities – 940 in 2006. The strong majority of these fatalities occurred among heavy truck drivers. Because of the large labor force of drivers, the fatality rate (27.2) was lower than for fishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, soldiers aren't mentioned.  And of course, these are deaths due to accidents.  Suicides, drug overdoses, and the like attributed to the &amp;quot;27 Club&amp;quot; are tracked under different methods (such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/suicide/statistics/aag.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC&lt;/a&gt;).  In a cursory look at that data, it doesn't seem like there is anything particularly different about musicians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Jader mentions in the comments, the average death rate for people in the 25-34 age group is about 1.7%.  Now look at the &amp;quot;27 Club&amp;quot; that is listed on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.  That's 45 of them in over 100 years!  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos095.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to the labor bureau&lt;/a&gt;, there are &lt;em&gt;currently&lt;/em&gt; 186,000 PROFESSIONAL musicians in the US for 2008, with a 10 year delta growth of just over 14,000.  If anything, the 27 club seems to be &lt;strong&gt;UNDER&lt;/strong&gt; represented  on the wiki page if it can only find 45 in 100 years!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, consider that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-eggman.com/writings/death_stats.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.the-eggman.com/writings/death_stats.html&lt;/a&gt; link gives deaths for the 25-34 age category under accidents at a higher 12% rate!  I think it could be argued that most of those deaths also involved some level of &amp;quot;accident&amp;quot; such as overdose, suicide, etc.  I refer you to the answer by Sklivvz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T13:42:29.340" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5373" CreationDate="2011-07-24T00:58:02.863" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the other thing going on here is that 27 may be a common age by which an entertainer is widely known (if they are ever going to be widely known.)  Let's face it, if you're an entertainer making a mark, you're probabably not too young (very few 5 year old rock and roll singers) and not too old (if you're 40 and a musician, you usually hit your peak earlier, or no one has heard of you.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that there is something mystical about musicians dying at 27 is like finding something mystical in the average age of first marriage for women being 26.  Most women aren't getting married for the first time at 7 or 57.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4091" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-07T09:15:05.303" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T09:15:05.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5373" CreationDate="2011-07-24T12:22:10.300" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's easy to be seen that this is a prime example of confirmation bias:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Take a list of famous musicians with birth and death dates.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I've used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.classical.net/music/composer/dates/comp2.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; which lists famous composers, but any other better list can be used if found.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Calculate the age at death (or lifespan)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oQriw.png&quot; alt=&quot;Lifespan calculation&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Plot on a graph.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/diNka.png&quot; alt=&quot;Composer lifespan&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Age on the x-axis, number of occurrences on the y-axis.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does the age 27 look particularly significant? &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand we could have a &quot;club 67&quot;... ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T12:22:10.300" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4120" CreationDate="2011-07-24T15:49:23.930" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it is difficult to precisely answer this question, as the way a child learns something is not necessarily the same as an adult does. Also, depending on the task, young children may be at disadvantage, due to their lack of abstraction abilities. A child may be able learn a language faster, but an adult may pick up subtilities such as humour, double senses etc. better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, aside from these purely personal considerations, there seems to be quite a lot of literature at this regard: I am not a great expert on the topic, so I will just cite some papers but there may be more appropriate ones around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, face learning ability and time perception are better in adults than in children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21130422&quot;&gt;Where cognitive development and aging meet: face learning ability peaks after age 30.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21334637&quot;&gt;Cognitive abilities explaining age-related changes in time perception of short and long durations.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Young children are also slower in learning new syntactic constructs compared to older kids or adults (in this case the abstracting capabilities of the subjects were tested)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21729367&quot;&gt;Young children fail to fully generalize a novel argument structure construction when exposed to the same input as older learners&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it has been shown that children can learn pronunciation of a second language faster and better than adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21603058&quot;&gt;A one-year longitudinal study of English and Japanese vowel production by Japanese adults and children in an English-speaking setting.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11961421&quot;&gt;The production of english vowels by fluent early and late Italian-English bilinguals.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it seems that learning music at a young age can influence brain structure in adulthood (but this is probably a slightly different problem from what you are asking)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20408216&quot;&gt;Motor cortex and hand motor skills: structural compliance in the human brain.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the same topic, this is an interesting read&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15772967&quot;&gt;Are there critical periods for musical development?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citing from there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Music is a complex human activity, involving many aspects and layers of complexity. Thus, there can be no simple answer to the question of critical periods for musical development. In general, more evidence for critical periods has been found to date for basic aspects of musical behavior, such as tonotopic map formation and absolute pitch perception, in comparison to more complex aspects such as scale structure, harmony, musical interpretation, and composition. Although in most children sensitivity to relative pitch and sensory consonance emerges very early in infancy, scale knowledge during the first years of life, and harmonic knowledge between about 6 and 12 years of age, the effects of early enrichment or early deprivation on the emergence of sensitivity to these various aspects of music pitch structure&#xA;  remain largely unknown.We still do not knowthe answers to basic questions such as whether a person who is not exposed to music based on Western scale structure until the age of 2 years, 6 years, or older will develop the brain circuits for processing Western scales or Western harmonic structure or whether exposure to another musical system prior to this will help or hinder acquisition of Western musical structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastActivityDate="2011-07-24T15:49:23.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5381" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5408" CreationDate="2011-07-24T16:15:12.080" Score="26" ViewCount="6514" Body="&lt;p&gt;As we were looking for laundry detergent yesterday, I noted that my wife was quite swayed by brand reputation/impressions than price. She stated that she didn't think one type of detergent really removed stains. I asked if she'd ever consciously been aware of this and noticed, and she said &quot;No.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not hard to find some other references like this, such as About's list of top detergents &lt;a href=&quot;http://housekeeping.about.com/od/productreviews/tp/laundrysoap.htm&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These laundry detergents are some of the most effective and efficient available to keep your clothing clean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Tide Laundry Detergent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Gain Joyful Expressions Laundry Detergent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Purex Complete 3 in 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Method Laundry Detergent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Cheer TrueFit Laundry Detergent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They don't really describe anything about how they came to these conclusions, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; Is there available evidence in which someone has attempted a controlled experiment evaluating different detergents for their ability to remove (make un-detectable by sight, touch, or smell) stains/dirt? Perhaps in addition, some site that has compared soil-removing ability with price?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; Freebie for an answerer... Consumer Reports apparently tested 50 detergents &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2010/july/home-garden/laundry-detergent/detergents/index.htm&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt;. The abstract indicates that Tide, indeed, was the best, but that there was a law of diminishing returns at play. Anyone with a subscription who can post some key quotes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2011-07-24T17:19:29.057" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T02:47:38.587" Title="Are some laundry detergents better than others?" Tags="|chemistry|advertising|experiments|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5382" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5405" CreationDate="2011-07-24T17:03:56.180" Score="11" ViewCount="2732" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/328/is-it-dangerous-to-have-several-vaccines-at-the-same-time&quot;&gt;Is it dangerous to have several vaccines at the same time?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4954/is-the-number-of-childhood-vaccines-correlated-with-infant-mortality&quot;&gt;Is the number of childhood vaccines correlated with infant mortality?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/95/just-how-inaccurate-are-vaccine-myths&quot;&gt;Just how inaccurate are vaccine myths?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was sent a &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/11/03/hepatitis-b-vaccines-at-birth.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mercola article&lt;/a&gt; in which he comments on the &amp;quot;risks&amp;quot; of newborn Hepatitis B vaccination. This question is not about autism; I'm purely interested in two of the claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Risk of adverse effects:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The array of serious health problems people have reported experiencing after hep B vaccinations is quite shocking: Multiple sclerosis (MS), Guillain Barre syndrome, Bell's Palsy, Diabetes, Rheumatoid arthritis, Lupus, Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia purpura, Convulsions, and brain disorders such as encephalitis (brain swelling) and brain demyelination, Immune dysfunction, Visual and hearing impairments, including optic neuritis,&#xA;Pancreatitis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost-effectiveness (from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/07/24/barbara-loe-fisher-on-jumbotron-ad-controversy-part-1.aspx?e_cid=20110724_SNL_Art_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;related article&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citing Barbara Loe Fischer, the founder of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), Mercola writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no common sense applied to this recommendation and implementation because the child is only at risk for hepatitis B if the mother has the active infection. So why don't we just test the mother for hepatitis to see if the vaccine is warranted, instead of routinely vaccinating all babies? This would not only protect the child from unnecessary harm, it would also be far more cost effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I think cost effectiveness is something that really needs to be looked at in this economic climate that we're in,&amp;quot; Fisher says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the first claim is one of safety, suggesting that it's not safe for newborns to receive the Hep B vaccine. Perhaps a helpful statement for formulating a specific claim is (from teh first article):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For most children, the risk of a serious vaccine reaction may be 100 times greater than the risk of hepatitis B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/vis/downloads/vis-hep-b.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC info brochure on Hep B&lt;/a&gt;, which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Severe problems are extremely rare. Severe allergic reactions are believed to occur about once in 1.1 million doses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is risk of Hep B something like 1 in 110 million for children? In other words, &lt;strong&gt;does the Hep B vaccine produce a higher rate of &amp;quot;serious vaccine reactions&amp;quot; to newborns than the number of Hep B infections in unvaccinated 5-7 year olds (the length of time the Hep B vaccine offers protection per &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepatitis_B_vaccine#Duration_of_protection&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, &lt;strong&gt;is the unanimous vaccination decision for newborns less cost effective than testing suspect mothers and only vaccinating those who test positive?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be tricker to answer, as &amp;quot;total cost&amp;quot; might come down to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Less efficient to run ad-hoc tests (requiring lab work) than the cost of all of the vaccines kept on-hand?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Total cost of Hep B if acquired by a newborn vs. cost of vaccines + any potential adverse effects?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other factors?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T04:28:16.723" Title="Are hepatitis B vaccines for newborns safe and cost-effective?" Tags="|medical-science|vaccines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5383" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5395" CreationDate="2011-07-24T19:39:22.557" Score="7" ViewCount="20788" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone sent me &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUsW1CDJdxc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; of a car salesman supposedly working for Ralph Williams, a dealership owner in the Bay Shore area. There are lots of references online to this video. See the google results for a search on &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;q=ralph+williams+bay+shore#q=ralph+williams+bay+shore&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;prmd=ivnso&amp;amp;ei=3W8sTq7lHo7-sQKzg9WdCw&amp;amp;start=10&amp;amp;sa=N&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&amp;amp;fp=6738bf4e4a8a45f4&amp;amp;biw=1252&amp;amp;bih=603&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ralph williams bay shore&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote going along with this clip is as follows (it was in the email containing the video sent to me, and I found it verbatim &lt;a href=&quot;http://olddogg.com/offbeat/live-commercial-from-the-60s-car-salesman-unhappy-with-his-boss-nsfw-language/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;elsewhere&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the late 60's, most television programs and commercials were live. There were no &amp;quot;pre-recorded&amp;quot; programs. There were some obvious problems with this method. No &amp;quot;retakes&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;bloopers&amp;quot; were a regular occurrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is no blooper! This guy was just VERY upset with his boss, and told it like he thought it was. What a great job of ad-libbing. He never misses a beat while the camera man is just about to lose it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The commercial got on the air... but only once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have to assume he quit right after the commercial -- one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an extremely hard time imagining that this ever aired. Can anyone confirm or deny the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This commercial actually aired on TV&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During the late 60's, most television programs and commercials were live&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-03-20T08:23:14.913" Title="Is the Ralph Williams angry car salesman clip real?" Tags="|united-states|video|television|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5385" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-24T22:31:22.890" Score="28" ViewCount="3720" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2017818/Embryos-involving-genes-animals-mixed-humans-produced-secretively-past-years.html&quot;&gt;claim is made here that none have.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of the 80 treatments and cures which have come about from stem cells,&#xA;  all have come from adult stem cells – not embryonic ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-07-25T06:44:06.807" LastActivityDate="2018-09-08T15:23:50.427" Title="Has any cure come from embryonic stem cells?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5386" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5392" CreationDate="2011-07-24T22:37:09.533" Score="13" ViewCount="9650" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I child I had the habit of chewing on ice cubes and was told that this damages your teeth. Now my son has this habit and I'd like to know if it is true. Does chewing on ice cubes damage your teeth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T05:54:05.603" Title="Does chewing ice cubes damage your teeth?" Tags="|dentistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5385" CreationDate="2011-07-24T23:09:27.083" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;As seems to be the case with complicated issues, any side of a debate will attempt to over simplify the issues involved.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=results%20from%20embryonic%20stem%20cell%20research&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=0&amp;amp;as_vis=1&amp;amp;oi=scholart&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;If it wasn't for embryonic stem cell research, there never would have been any adult stem cell advancements&lt;/a&gt;.  We didn't know how to manipulate adult stem cells until we figured out more about them, specifically using embryonic stem cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, these papers are what started our understanding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0014482791904303&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Establishment of a germ-line competent C57BL/6 embryonic stem cell line&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/282/5391/1145.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Derived from Human Blastocysts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081013132250.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;great deal of argument about the full efficacy of the adult stem cells&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3 . Adult stem cells are like supporting actors in the quest for stem cell treatments.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adult stem cells are more specialized cells that arise from embryonic stem cells. Also known as tissue-specific stem cells, they are present in adults – but contrary to their name, they’re also found in children, newborn infants and developing fetuses. They have the ability to make one or two kinds of cells, such as blood and immune system cells, brain or muscle cells. Adult stem cells have a more limited capacity to replace themselves than do embryonic stem cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full article does a good job of talking about the reasons for embryonic research versus adult stem cell research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SUPPLEMENTAL INFO:&lt;/strong&gt;  (This is not so much a response to the question, but rather more information as to why it is important to continue embryonic stem cell research.  The reason this is included is that &lt;em&gt;generally&lt;/em&gt; the claim in the question is made because they wish to discontinue said research.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umich.edu/stemcell/faq/#section2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The University of Michigan also talks about why it is necessary to do embryonic research&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why is embryonic stem cell research important?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research with embryonic stem cells may lead to new, more effective treatments for serious human ailments and alleviate the suffering of thousands of people. Diseases such as juvenile diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, heart failure and spinal cord injuries are examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why do embryonic stem cells hold such promise?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They can develop into any cell type in the body.&#xA;     They can form unlimited quantities of any cell type in the body.&#xA;     They will help us understand inherited diseases by allowing us to study human cells bearing the exact genetic defects that cause disease in patients.&#xA;     They will allow us to discover safer and more effective drugs by making it easier to screen drug candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;What has stem cell research accomplished?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bone marrow transplants have been performed for decades and involve the infusion of adult stem cells. Research based on embryonic and adult stem cells has yielded promising results for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and diabetes Stem cell research also has generated new knowledge about basic cell mechanisms that is critical to understanding the causes of disease, such as cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some have criticized embryonic stem cell research by arguing that adult stem cells have delivered more treatments, but &lt;strong&gt;that observation is misleading&lt;/strong&gt;. While adult stem cells have been studied for decades, human embryonic stem cells were first isolated in 1998. There has not yet been time to develop new therapies using embryonic stem cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The overwhelming majority of stem cell scientists believe that to make the most rapid progress against disease, researchers must use all the weapons in their arsenal. That means using both embryonic and adult stem cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How long will it take for human embryonic stem cell research to yield medical treatments?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We can’t say how long it will take to find new treatments for any specific disease using embryonic stem cells. Biomedical research typically has a time frame of 10, 20, even 30 years. Fourteen years elapsed between the first unsuccessful clinical trial of bone marrow transplantation and the first successful transplant among unrelated patients. Now bone marrow transplants are widely touted as the best example of a successful stem cell therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Biomedical research takes a long time, but the sooner the research starts, the sooner it will yield new insights and new treatments. If research were stopped by uncertainty, we never would have developed blood transfusions, cardiac bypass surgery, insulin therapy for diabetes, kidney dialysis, antibiotics, organ transplants and many other treatments we now take for granted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So note that in this emotionally charged issue, people will tend to hyperbole and appeals to emotion in an attempt to shore up their argument over the other viewpoint.  As even the University of Michigan states, those positions are misleading.  Although it is notable that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinya_Yamanaka&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;generation of adult stem cells was motivated by a scientist with religious reasons for doing so&lt;/a&gt;, and overall, I find that his accomplishment is commendable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-07-26T23:07:24.290" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T23:07:24.290" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3411" CreationDate="2011-07-25T00:16:46.367" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although this doesn't answer your question directly, I think it does a good job of answering indirectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research shows a strong correlation between vocabulary and general intelligence. So does using big words make you appear smart, maybe, but having a high level of vocabulary (and being able to use it) would indicate that you actually &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; smarter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key to the sentence above is actually being able to use the words correctly. Just going out and learning a bunch of words is not going to immediately make you smarter, but having a strong grasp of the language and a wide vocabulary indicates you are smarter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question has a large subjective part to it, because if I am really clever and use lots of clever words I may be smarter than someone with a low I.Q, but they may just think I'm a dick. This means that your question answered in that way can't be answered objectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now on to some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Analysis indicated strong correlations between the two measures,&#xA;  particularly between the CREVT General Vocabulary and WISC-III Verbal&#xA;  IQ (r = .80), WISC-III Verbal Comprehension Index (r =.83), and the&#xA;  Vocabulary subtest (r =.76). These results held across the grades. &#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15773700&quot;&gt;(Smith, Smith, Taylor, &amp;amp; Hobby, 2005)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acquisition of word meanings, or vocabulary, reflects general mental&#xA;  ability (psychometric g) more than than do most abilities measured in&#xA;  test batteries. Among diverse subtests, vocabulary is especially high&#xA;  on indices of genetic influences. &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=136477&quot;&gt;Behavioral and Brain Sciences&#xA;  (2001), 24: 1109-1110 Copyright © 2001 Cambridge University Press&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordsmartsoftware.com/bibliography2.php&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; provides about 10 examples with unlinked references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shows high positive correlation between JOCRF vocabulary score and&#xA;  SAT-verbal. Bowker, R. (1976)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“English vocabulary level has been shown to be strongly related to&#xA;  educational success. In addition, it is related to the level of&#xA;  occupation attained. It is highly correlated with measures of reading&#xA;  ability and intelligence” Bowker, R. (1981)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T00:16:46.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5386" CreationDate="2011-07-25T03:45:41.320" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is definitely some basis for this claim. According to Dr. Michael Payne, damage to teeth due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://straightteethnews.com/?p=417&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;chewing on ice occurs:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that chewing ice on a regular basis can cause damage to your teeth....&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  chewing ice can cause fracture lines in your teeth which might lead to cold sensitivity, pain or biting pressure.  The habit may actually cause a tooth to fracture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question was also asked on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/102759#ixzz1T5HqiDfK&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;theanswerbag.com&lt;/a&gt;, and I don't know how much trust could be placed on this, but one of the users states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It does cause damage. My mom used to be a dental assistant and she said that you could see the tiny holes it puts in your teeth when you looked carefully. But it's not like that stopped me, I love ice!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting to note that there is a thing called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pagophagia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pagophagia&lt;/a&gt;, which is the compulsive disorder to chew on ice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drsmile.com.ph/clinic/index.php?q=node/122&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dental clinic,:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The dangers of chewing ice are real enough that American insurance companies do not include dental procedures for teeth damaged as a result of, well, chewing ice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more, see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.5min.com/Video/Chewing-Ice-114223101&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link, where Dr. Bill Dorfman&lt;/a&gt; explains the Dangers of Chewing Ice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T03:45:41.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5391" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-25T05:11:35.367" Score="18" ViewCount="5337" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an article on the blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fluentin3months.com/passive-learning/&quot;&gt;Fluent in Three Months&lt;/a&gt; is a claim that listening to hours of a foreign language without really concentrating on it is &quot;barely better than nothing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The shocking truth is that passive listening is never going to get you to fluency in a language. What’s even worse is that it won’t even help your ability to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that active learning is better than passive learning when it comes to languages but from personal experience, I would say that passive listening has been a non-trivial element of my learning arsenal. In addition, the whole &quot;language immersion&quot; method seems to be a big advocate of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there been any scientific study regarding passively listening and whether it has any real benefit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-24T05:36:28.213" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T09:40:47.740" Title="Is passive listening useless when learning a language?" Tags="|language|learning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5386" CreationDate="2011-07-25T05:54:05.603" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is certainly a lot of people claiming it to be true, including various dentists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On their web-site, Colgate &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colgate.com/app/CP/US/EN/OC/Information/Articles/ADA/2006/article/ADA-07-Chew-On-This.cvsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;make the claim&lt;/a&gt;, quoting the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ada.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Dentists Association&lt;/a&gt; in 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visiting the ADA web-site, the closest I found was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ada.org/sections/publicResources/pdfs/watch_module02_extra.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the claim&lt;/a&gt; appearing in some unreferenced teaching materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what scientific evidence is there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only did a quick literature search, and what I found was less than convincing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One article in an industry journal made the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Teeth with occlusal interferences, especially in patients with pathological occlusal habits, are more likely to develop fractures due to nonaxial forces directed on cuspal inclines. Other habits, especially ice chewing, eating pretzels or hard candy, or even gum chewing contribute to tooth fracture formation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but did NOT provide a cite. Shame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Ref: &lt;em&gt;Managing Incomplete Tooth Fractures&lt;/em&gt;, J. Edward Ailor Jr., &lt;a href=&quot;http://jada.ada.org/content/131/8/1168.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Journal of the American Dental Association August 1, 2000 vol. 131 no. 8 1168-1174&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=bbuYu0IX-EwC&amp;amp;lpg=PA108&amp;amp;ots=3wRlEvObeP&amp;amp;dq=chewing%20ice%20fractures&amp;amp;lr&amp;amp;pg=PA114#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=chewing%20ice%20fractures&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Endodontics: Principles and Practice, by Richard E Walton and Mahmoud Torabinejad&lt;/a&gt;, chapter 7, it is claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cracked teeth are often found in patients who chew hard, bittle substances (ice, unpopped popcorn kernels, hard candy, and so on). These patients may have prominent masticatory muscles and show excessive occlusal wear as a result of heavy occlusal forces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Annoyingly, I can see that they &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; have a cite for this, but Google Books won't show it to me. :-(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amongst 15-16 year old girls, a statistically significant association was found between &quot;crushing ice and muscle sensitivity to palpation&quot;. (Of course, correlation does not imply causation, and ice chewing was determined by survey.) The researchers were looking for &quot;temporomandibular disorders&quot;, so tooth fractures were probably outside their remit. Nonetheless, this may be enough to encourage people to avoid chewing ice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Ref: &lt;em&gt;Oral habits and their association with signs and symptoms of temporomandibular disorders in adolescent girls&lt;/em&gt;, A Gavish, M Halachmi, E Winocur, E Gazit, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/research/oral-habits-association-signs-symptoms-temporomandibular-disorders-adolescent-girls-6/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal of Oral Rehabilitation (2000), Volume: 27, Issue: 1, Pages: 22-32&lt;/a&gt;, ISSN: 0305182X, PubMed: 10632840]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A somewhat negative result was found by one report:&#xA;[Ref: &lt;em&gt;Risk indicators for posterior tooth fracture&lt;/em&gt;, James D Bader, Daniel A Shugars and Jean A Martin.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jada.ada.org/content/135/7/883.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Journal of the American Dental Association July 1, 2004 vol. 135 no. 7 883-892&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Similarly, the behaviors of chewing ice and biting or holding hard objects in the mouth were not significantly different between case and control subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This report looked at &lt;em&gt;one class of tooth fracture&lt;/em&gt;, and the results probably cannot be extended to all teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=aV1kEf7mlckC&amp;amp;lpg=PA674&amp;amp;dq=chewing%20ice%20fractures&amp;amp;pg=PA674#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=chewing%20ice%20fractures&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ingle's Orthodontics 6&lt;/em&gt; by John Ide Ingle&lt;/a&gt; (2008) sits on the fence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With respect to care of teeth, a question sometimes raised is, it it damaging to chew on ice? The dental literature is not very informative on the topic; Brown et al in 1972 used thermal cycling-alternating exposure to very cold and very hot stimuli to extracted teeth - and reported extensive cracking in the teeth. It is not clear if this information can be applied to the question of ice chewing, but until more information becomes available, it seems reasonable to advise against chewing on ice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(His reference to Brown is to: Brown WS, Jacobs HR, Thompson RE. &lt;em&gt;Thermal fatigue in teeth&lt;/em&gt;. J Dent Res 1972;51:461-7.  I haven't read this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I note Ingles is referring the cracking through thermal cycling, whereas others have reported &quot;microcracks&quot; and &quot;pitting&quot; due to the hardness of the ice. These effects seem unrelated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some reputable people and organisations making the claim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, having looked at many of the claims on the web, I can see few providing links to scientific evidence of it occurring in practice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The limited scientific evidence I was able to find did not suggest that there was a link. Absence of evidence proves little in this case; a more thorough literature search may provide the smoking gun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, for what little that is worth, it is probably true. I'm going to start avoiding chewing on ice in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T05:54:05.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5391" CreationDate="2011-07-25T06:11:51.973" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done a reasonable amount of searching and was only able to find one experiment that provided solid data on what you were asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ilabs.washington.edu/kuhl/pdf/Kuhl_etal_PNAS_2003.pdf&quot;&gt;Foreign-language experience in infancy: Effects of&#xA;short-term exposure and social interaction on&#xA;phonetic learning (Kuhl et al. 2003)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results indicate limits on phonetic learning; 9-mo-old infants&#xA;  exposed to foreign-language material from DVDs did not reverse the&#xA;  decline in phonetic perception. The AV and A exposure sessions&#xA;  duplicated Experiment 1’s live sessions, yet no learning occurred. The&#xA;  results suggest that phonetic learning from complex language input&#xA;  relies on more than raw auditory sensory information. At this age,&#xA;  learning is influenced by the presence of a live person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The current results are consistent with a&#xA;  variety of studies on older children (preschool age) exposed to&#xA;  language material, both native and foreign, from children’s TV shows.&#xA;  The results indicate that, although there is evidence that specific&#xA;  vocabulary items can be learned through exposure to television&#xA;  programs, the more complex aspects of language, such as phonetics and&#xA;  grammar, are not acquired from TV exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not been able to track down information specifically on adults learning a second language and the effect of passive listening. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that passive listening is not putting a language tape in and repeating the words, its sitting in a room full of native speakers and just listening to what they are saying or having a foreign language television on in the background while you go about some other task. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could sit in a room full of nuclear physicists and listen to them talk all day, but even though I know rudimentary mathematics what I can learn from them is going to be very little if nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think research would suggest as per the child study that having a live adult engaging with you versus passive listening provides significantly greater benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T06:11:51.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5383" CreationDate="2011-07-25T08:47:47.200" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hmmm. my gut says this is an outtake of some sort done for fun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed several of the links I found whilst searching for this clip referred to it as an outtake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several things that strike me as &quot;odd&quot; in this story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First - I think the statement &quot;During the late 60's, most television programs and commercials were live&quot; is probably demonstrably untrue (especially for TV).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a couple of anecdotal sounding links listing the sort of TV watched in the 60's, mostly pre-recorded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://the60sofficialsite.com/Television_in_the_60s.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;List of 60's television shows.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.downthelane.net/growing-up-50s-60s/tv-1960s.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's a UK style list&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second - As I said, several clips I found were referred to as out-takes. Indeed &lt;a href=&quot;http://hogwhitman.com/2010/12/31/cracking-under-the-strain/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; describes it as a&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here’s a very NSFW, &lt;strong&gt;never broadcast&lt;/strong&gt; outtake from one of those early&#xA;  spots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chap doing the talking is apparently Chick Lambert, there's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=60045&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes thread&lt;/a&gt; on this which is pretty much inconclusive, but comes up with similar points to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other (mildly) circumstantial evidence for this being never broadcast is that there are several links referring to the advertising rivalry between Chick Lambert, and Cal Worthington, but not one mentions Chick Lambert turning on his boss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2008/dec/21/local/me-then21&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Heres  a NY Times Article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://michaelconnelly.websitetoolbox.com/post?id=4895139&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A bit of oral/anecdotal history&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a &quot;smoking gun&quot; saying this was definitely fake, or if there is I couldn't find it, but I find it hard to believe this wouldn't be referred to in articles looking back at the times if it were true. Especially when referencing the competing ad campaigns etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3606" LastEditorUserId="3606" LastEditDate="2019-03-20T08:23:14.913" LastActivityDate="2019-03-20T08:23:14.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3122" CreationDate="2011-07-25T12:24:35.777" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Referring to &lt;a href=&quot;http://nfs.sparknotes.com/macbeth/page_64.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shakespeare&lt;/a&gt; shows the Beer Googles effect is not particularly new.... :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance. Therefore,&#xA;  much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously though, there have been numerous studies on the effects of alcohol, agreeing with Shakespeare's ribald Porter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2660179&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alcohol and human sexuality: review and integration.&#xA;Crowe LC, George WH. in 1989 found that..&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The review concludes (a) that alcohol disinhibits psychological sexual&#xA;  arousal and suppresses physiological responding, the former effect&#xA;  being stronger at lower doses of alcohol and the latter effect at&#xA;  higher doses; (b) that although suppression is strictly&#xA;  pharmacological in nature, disinhibition appears to be both&#xA;  pharmacological (the result of cognitive impairment) and psychological&#xA;  (the result of socially learned expectancies); and (c) that&#xA;  expectancies and cognitive impairment can disinhibit separately or&#xA;  jointly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this interesting though &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14689506&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;- there is a measurable effect on vision after alcohol consumption&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alcohol, thus, appears to have both global and local effects upon the&#xA;  neural correlates of the MVPT-R (The Motor-Free Visual Perception Test-Revised) task, some of which are dose&#xA;  dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - let us observe someone who is intoxicated with alcohol. He has increased Psychological arousal, whilst his visual Perception is also affected. If you throw into this mix that alcohol also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/hoakenpdfs/Pihl,%20Paylan,%20Gentes-Hawn,%20Hoaken%202003%20-%20pdf.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;has detrimental effects on his reasoning&lt;/a&gt;, it seems less likely that an intoxicated man will notice imperfections in a potential partner, and will probably have lesser ability to discriminate too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3606" LastEditorUserId="3606" LastEditDate="2017-08-02T13:09:25.850" LastActivityDate="2017-08-02T13:09:25.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5397" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-25T13:37:25.847" Score="7" ViewCount="1163" Body="&lt;p&gt;And do they show when they know it's going to rain by lying down, as the common saying suggests. Or is this just folklore?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quote on &lt;a href=&quot;http://community.discovery.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9701967776/m/4311965169&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Discovery Channel discussion board&lt;/a&gt; says this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cows are quite large and heavy which could easily put a lot of strain&#xA;on their joints and cause a lot of arthritis. &lt;strong&gt;Arthritis flares up&#xA;when a low pressure system comes along, which could make cows want to&#xA;lay down and take the pain off their aching joints.&lt;/strong&gt; Of course there&#xA;is no real way to test this. It is just a thought. With no way to test&#xA;it it's just pseudo-science, but it does at least show there could be&#xA;a logical reason this belief COULD be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there ever been any studies on the subject? Any conclusions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="612" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-25T13:37:25.847" Title="Can cows accurately predict when it is going to rain?" Tags="|zoology|weather|divination|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5399" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5417" CreationDate="2011-07-25T17:02:48.507" Score="20" ViewCount="4828" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something I remember hearing pretty often as a kid. Specifically, that you shouldn't eat too much candy or it will give you tooth decay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the case? Does eating a lot of candy make your teeth decay? Or is it a lack of proper dental hygiene that leads to the decay, with the consumption of candy not making a significant difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2808" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T20:40:12.680" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T08:25:39.967" Title="Does eating too much candy make your teeth rot?" Tags="|nutrition|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5402" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5403" CreationDate="2011-07-25T20:51:45.043" Score="42" ViewCount="8680" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's commonly believed that a frog will not perceive a rise in temperature, and will boil alive. And, of course, if it were to be put in already-boiling water, it will immediately jump out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any truths to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="686" LastEditorUserId="4179" LastEditDate="2011-07-27T21:12:35.843" LastActivityDate="2017-11-17T23:52:58.440" Title="Can a frog be slowly boiled alive without it noticing?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5402" CreationDate="2011-07-25T20:57:33.427" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, they don't just hang out in the water until dead.  If you think about it this doesn't make sense from an evolutionary standpoint.  A frog evolved in an environment where water heats slowly, not where water is suddenly boiling (boiling water isn't terribly common in nature).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uga.edu/srel/ecoviews/ecoview021118.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.uga.edu/srel/ecoviews/ecoview021118.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.asp&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-07-26T13:29:47.247" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T13:29:47.247" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5402" CreationDate="2011-07-25T21:00:25.723" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes tackled this myth&lt;/a&gt; and the answer is that this is untrue. Although &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiled_frog#Scientific_background&quot;&gt;older experiments&lt;/a&gt; support this, it's been pretty debunked by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uga.edu/srel/ecoviews/ecoview021118.htm&quot;&gt;modern science&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Snopes quotes a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ou.edu/cas/zoology/Hutchison.htm&quot;&gt;Dr. Victor Hutchison&lt;/a&gt;, Research Professor Emeritus from the University of Oklahoma's Department of Zoology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The legend is entirely incorrect! The 'critical thermal maxima' of&#xA;  many species of frogs have been determined by several investigators.&#xA;  In this procedure, the water in which a frog is submerged is heated&#xA;  gradually at 2 degrees Fahrenheit [about 1.1 degrees Celsius] per minute. As the temperature&#xA;  of the water is gradually increased, the frog will eventually become&#xA;  more and more active in attempts to escape the heated water. If the&#xA;  container size and opening allow the frog to jump out, it will do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2808" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-29T23:00:22.790" LastActivityDate="2011-10-29T23:00:22.790" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5382" CreationDate="2011-07-25T23:21:51.147" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does the Hep B vaccine produce a higher rate of &quot;serious vaccine reactions&quot; to newborns than the number of Hep B infections in unvaccinated 5-7 year olds (the length of time the Hep B vaccine offers protection per Wikipedia)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, there have been no recorded deaths due to reactions to current vaccines, and the claims of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurology.org/content/63/5/838.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MS&lt;/a&gt; (possible increased risk, needs further research), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2928079/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bell's Palsy&lt;/a&gt; (one single case, no causal link proven, patient recovered within weeks), &lt;a href=&quot;http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/153/12/1279&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SIDS&lt;/a&gt; (not caused by vaccine) and other adverse affects are either fairly flimsy or completely baseless. With so many children being vaccinated, one would expect an increase in the instances of these health problems from 1991 onwards, when universal Hep B vaccination was introduced. I have seen no such research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, Chronic Hepatitis B is incurable, can result in liver cirrhosis, liver cancer, and death, so an instance of Hep B infection and an instance of adverse reaction (normally a severe allergic reaction) should not be compared as though they are equal in severity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, selecting the 5-7 age group is flawed for a few reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most infants have been vaccinated in the US since 1991&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many infants maintain some immunity beyond the expected 5-7-year efficacy lifetime of the vaccine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some infants are vaccinated at birth, others much later (up to 32 months old), so it's not as though every child is vulnerable to Hep B at ages 5-7,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Infection rates would be different for newborns and 5 year olds.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the rate of adverse reaction, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chop.edu/service/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-safety/#Is_the_hepatitis_B_vaccine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; cites &lt;em&gt;Vaccines: What You should know, 3rd edition&lt;/em&gt; for the following stat:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hepatitis B vaccine has few side effects. However, one side effect is serious. &lt;strong&gt;About one of every 600,000 doses of hepatitis B vaccine is complicated by a severe allergic reaction&lt;/strong&gt; called anaphylaxis...  Although no one has ever died because of the hepatitis B vaccine... Children are much more likely to develop these severe and often fatal consequences of hepatitis B virus infection if they get infected when they are very young. For this reason, the hepatitis B vaccine is recommended for newborns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the risk of infection for unvaccinated infants, this is extremely difficult to measure, for the reasons stated above - nearly everyone is vaccinated nowadays. Nonetheless, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm#hepb&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this CDC page&lt;/a&gt; states the following infection rate for unvaccinated infants of uninfected mothers before universal vaccination was introduced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;approximately 33,000 children (10 years of age and younger) of mothers who are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; infected with hepatitis B virus were infected each year before routine recommendation of childhood hepatitis B vaccination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005067.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; lists the US birth rate in 1990 at around 4 million, so the chance of contracting Hep B before the age of 10, if universal immunization is not used, is &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; roughly 1/121.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Infected children are also far more likely to develop chronic symptoms, be carriers, and pass the virus onto others. It is currently recommended that all infants receive the vaccine before leaving the hospital for this reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pregnant women &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; screened for the virus&lt;/strong&gt; as the vaccine should be given to infants within 24 hours in the case of an infected mother. In the case of an uninfected mother, the CDC recommends vaccination before hospital discharge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5416a1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This CDC page&lt;/a&gt; gives the coverage figure for expectant mothers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recent estimates indicate that &gt;95% of pregnant women are tested&lt;/strong&gt; for HBsAg, and case management has been effective in ensuring high levels of initiation and completion of postexposure immunoprophylaxis among identified infants born to HBsAg-positive women. Hepatitis B vaccine has been successfully integrated into the childhood vaccine schedule, and infant vaccine coverage levels are now equivalent to those of other vaccines in the childhood schedule. &lt;strong&gt;During 1990--2004, incidence of acute hepatitis B in the United States declined 75%. The greatest decline (94%) occurred among children and adolescents, coincident with an increase in hepatitis B vaccine coverage.&lt;/strong&gt; As of 2004, among U.S. children aged 19--35 months, &gt;92% had been fully vaccinated with 3 doses of hepatitis B vaccine (8). This success can be attributed in part to the established infrastructure for vaccine delivery to children and to federal support for perinatal hepatitis B prevention programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sii16.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5416a1.htm#fig2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Reference&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the unanimous vaccination decision for newborns less cost effective than testing suspect mothers and only vaccinating those who test positive?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is flawed as explained above - although everyone receives the vaccination within 6 days of birth, children of HB infected mothers require the vaccination within 24 hours of birth, and &lt;strong&gt;over 95% of pregnant women in the US are already screened.&lt;/strong&gt; The reason for vaccinating every child is to eventually eliminate the virus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to cost, &lt;a href=&quot;http://mdm.sagepub.com/content/13/1/4.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; (paywall) is admittedly a bit dated, coming from 1993, but I suspect the cost of vaccinations has dropped considerably since then (citation needed). It compares the cost of vaccinating all newborns with the costs of treating the illness if this wasn't done. It should be noted that universal vaccination has since been adopted in the US and is recommended by the WHO. I don't have full access, but from the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A decision-analytic model involving a Markov process to model the long-term sequelae of HBV infection was constructed to estimate the expected costs and life expectancies for a cohort of newborns under two strategies: the current screening policy (SELECTIVE), which involves active and passive vac cination of infants born to carrier mothers, and a policy that combines the current screening strategy (including active and passive vaccination of infants born to carriers) with active vaccination alone for children of non-carriers (UNIVERSAL). A hypothetical cohort of children born in either Canada or the United States in 1991 was examined. Cost estimates were derived for Ontario. From a societal perspective, the incremental cost required to achieve one extra life year was found to be $30,347, comparable to the cost-effectivenesses of other health care strategies commonly used in North America. The result is sensitive to the duration of vaccine effectiveness and particularly to the price of the vaccine. Universal vaccination results in net cost saving at a vaccine price of approximately $7 per dose, from a societal perspective. &lt;strong&gt;It is concluded that universal vaccination against HBV in infancy is economically attractive, comparable in cost-effectiveness to existing health care interventions. Lower vaccine prices would substantially improve the attractiveness of such a program.&lt;/strong&gt; Implementation of universal vaccination should be considered in North America, contingent on vaccine price reduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should also be noted that vaccinating all children is not done purely for cost reasons. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5746a1.htm?s_cid=mm5746a1_e&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this CDC page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HepB vaccination of newborns also provides early preexposure protection to infants born to uninfected women during a period when, if HBV exposure were to occur, the risk for developing chronic HBV infection is greatest (i.e., during the first year of life). Infants who become HBV infected have an approximately 90% risk for developing chronic HBV infection, and when chronically infected, have a 25% risk for dying prematurely from cirrhosis or liver cancer. Thus, newborn HepB immunization is a key intervention to prevent perinatal HBV transmission and a critical strategy to reduce the global morbidity and mortality associated with hepatitis B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Infants can contract Hep B from a number of sources (infected persons, latent blood/saliva, needle stick injuries, etc.). The aim of infant vaccination is to eventually lead to the elimination of Hepatitis B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2011-07-26T03:40:56.887" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T03:40:56.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5409" CreationDate="2011-07-26T14:57:07.527" Score="14" ViewCount="702" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sounds completely bogus to me, but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblog.com/46622/minority-rules-scientists-discover-tipping-point-for-the-spread-of-ideas/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; is reputable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't sound right: what if two ideas compete, and each has 10% of the population convinced? Also, 10% sounds like a magic &quot;made up&quot; number&amp;mdash;while it makes sense then when some sizable part of the population is convinced the rest follows, it's not clear at all why this threshold should be that number (or a fixed share at all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is a reputable, non peer reviewed source, so it may as well be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it true that 10% of believers in an idea will always eventually convince the majority of a population?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link above is a ScienceBlog summary of the actual paper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pre.aps.org/abstract/PRE/v84/i1/e011130&quot;&gt;&quot;Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, Physical Review E Vol. 84 Issue 1, July 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-10-18T18:21:32.523" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T15:30:38.790" Title="If 1 in 10 is convinced, will the rest follow?" Tags="|sociology|behavior|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5381" CreationDate="2011-07-26T15:19:32.157" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, there's a difference.&lt;/strong&gt; I found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cftbv.nl/excel/13.Research%20Report%202007-02%20-%20Discriminative%20Power%20of%20Testmaterials.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;test report&lt;/a&gt; executed by a producer of standard stains. They're showing off their stain set against ther competitors, and to prove their relevance they test with 10 different detergents. While unnamed, the results do differ significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It's also a telltale sign that there are multiple R&amp;amp;D labs that provide standard stains to detergent producers; they must spend quite a lot on R&amp;amp;D if they can support multiple suppliers for such a specialized product line)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The test method used prepared controlled samples of cotton cloth, stained with the following materials (chart from page 3 of linked report):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YehsZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;stain types&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To determine how clean the clothes were after washing, they used reflectivness, as explained here (from page 6):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The highest reflection value after the wash. This indicates how clean the testmaterial, washed with the best performing detergent, is. The most cotton reflects ca. 87-90% when unsoiled. The more this value reaches this point the closer it gets to completely clean. When a testmaterial is cleaned completely by one or more of the detergents there is no room for differentiation left, this is therefore unwanted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Results are presented visually in a bar chart of stain type vs. delta-R (change in reflectivity from stained cloth to cleaned cloth) for all detergents. A sample chart for the wine stained cloths (there is one for each stain type) is shown here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sikiw.png&quot; alt=&quot;wine stain chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T15:03:10.830" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T15:03:10.830" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5407" CreationDate="2011-07-26T16:53:10.800" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, in &quot;real life,&quot; this [probably] does not happen&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the paper establishes what it says... &lt;em&gt;it is based on computer simulated social networks&lt;/em&gt; and does not track with actual human behavior/psychology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer from &lt;a href=&quot;http://pre.aps.org/pdf/PRE/v84/i1/e011130&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;full text PDF&lt;/a&gt; of the article being discussed, &quot;Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities&quot;, Physical Review E Vol. 84 Issue 1, July 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper simulates person-to-person interactions in a social &quot;network&quot; by creating a system of nodes governed by something called &lt;em&gt;binary agreement model&lt;/em&gt;, summarized by the paper this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The evolution of the system in this model takes place through the usual NG dynamics, wherein at each simulation time step a randomly chosen speaker voices a random opinion from his list to a randomly chosen neighbor, designated the listener. If the listener has the spoken opinion in his list, both speaker and listener retain only that opinion, or else the listener adds the spoken opinion to his list (see Table I).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Table 1 from the paper, showing the potential variations between speaker and listener for two opinions, A and B, is shown here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dcBu8.png&quot; alt=&quot;table 1 showing binary agreement model outcomes&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study did the following to determine how &quot;unshakable opinions&quot; would influence things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here, we study the evolution of opinions in the binary agreement model starting from an initial state where all agents adopt a given opinion B, except for a finite fraction p of the total number of agents who are committed agents and have state A. Committed agents, introduced previously in, are defined as nodes that can influence other nodes to alter their state through the usual prescribed rules, but which themselves are immune to influence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in essence, this means that if we have a network of nodes having a distribution of opinions A and B, playing by the rules of the binary agreement model, over time, the majoriby view will win out. But, this study introduced some nodes, say containing belief A, that could influence others, but not be influenced. Rewriting the above table for uninfluencable nodes gives this new variant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;S=speaker&#xA;O=opnion spoken&#xA;L=listener&#xA;&#xA;| S  | O | L  | Normal Outcome | Outcome faroving A |&#xA;|----+---+----+----------------+--------------------|&#xA;| A  | A | A  | A-A            | A-A                |&#xA;| A  | A | B  | A-AB           | A-AB               |&#xA;| A  | A | AB | A-A            | A-A                |&#xA;| B  | B | A  | B-AB           | B-A*               |&#xA;| B  | B | B  | B-B            | B-B                |&#xA;| B  | B | AB | B-B            | B-AB*              |&#xA;| AB | A | A  | A-A            | A-A                |&#xA;| AB | A | B  | AB-AB          | AB-AB              |&#xA;| AB | A | AB | A-A            | A-A                |&#xA;| AB | B | A  | AB-AB          | AB-A*              |&#xA;| AB | B | B  | B-B            | AB-B*              |&#xA;| AB | B | AB | B-B            | AB-AB*             |&#xA;|----+---+----+----------------+--------------------|&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've starred those outcomes that are different. What we have with these uninfluenced nodes is that any AB speaker will not drop A when telling opinion B to a B listener; instead tehy will retain A. Any listener containing A alone will not add B to their list when told B by either a B or AB speaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, this is surely enough to clarify that these are vastly simple rules carried out in a computer simulation. While I know that appealing to &quot;common sense&quot; and &quot;logic&quot; may be frowned upon, I'm dearly hoping I don't need a source to back up the statement that humans aren't this simple when it comes to adopting one opinion or another during person-to-person interaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to know whether the paper even attempts to say what ScienceBlogs says it does, though. For example, from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblog.com/46622/minority-rules-scientists-discover-tipping-point-for-the-spread-of-ideas/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScienceBlogs summary&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the word &lt;em&gt;&quot;always&quot;&lt;/em&gt; -- this doesn't leave room for the type of belief, at least in my own read. Note this from the introduction of the actual paper, though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The binary agreement model is well suited to understanding how opinions, perceptions, or&#xA;  behaviors of individuals are altered through social interactions specifically in situations where the cost associated with changing one’s opinion is low&lt;/strong&gt;, such as in the pre-release buzz for a movie, or where changes in state are not deliberate or calculated but unconscious. Furthermore, by its very definition, the binary agreement model may&#xA;  be applicable to situations where agents, while trying to influence others, simultaneously have &lt;strong&gt;a desire to reach global consensus.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it appears that they were specifically looking at a simulation known to work acceptably for &lt;em&gt;low-cost/low-investment&lt;/em&gt; &quot;opinions/perceptions.&quot; I was far more interested in the implications for major beliefs such as religion, global warming, vaccines, etc. I'm leaning toward saying that this type of simulation has nothing to do with these types of strongly emotional, personal, family-history-influenced, local-culture, and [even sometimes!] evidence-based beliefs. It seems more suited toward simulations situations where individuals want to make a quick decision that is mostly irrelevant to the grand scheme, and move on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the paper is primarily discussing the mathematical results of the simulations, illustrating what percentage of &quot;unconvincable&quot; nodes were required to win the overall group to a particular opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, if this were true, one could wonder (thanks @vartec) why Macs have not taken over yet (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh#Market_share_and_user_demographics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; on Apple market share, stating that they are at that 10% mark), or perhaps more obviously why the US hasn't entirely converted to some form of Christianity since about &lt;a href=&quot;http://religions.pewforum.org/reports&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;78% of Americans are Christian&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/report-religious-landscape-study-chapter-2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;most recent Pew Forum survey&lt;/a&gt; seems to indicate that non-belief, in the form of atheism/agnosticism, is actually on the rise. See page 24 for a table indicating that among those surveyed, a combined ~0.8% were atheists/agnostics in their youth, compared to ~4.0% when surveyed recently in adulthood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T15:30:38.790" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T15:30:38.790" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4483" CreationDate="2011-07-26T17:23:41.787" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the answer from @manojlds was reasonable, I wasn't satisfied. The key question is not whether the seals on a microwave can be tested using Wifi at the same operating frequency (2.4GHz), but whether a &lt;em&gt;cell phone&lt;/em&gt; is an accurate way of testing these same seals. In other words, will something that filters out 2.4GHz &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; filter out 900-1800MHz?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did my own digging and am still not entirely satisfied, but wanted to report the results. I found a tutorial from Clemson University Vehicular Electronics Laboratory entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.learnemc.com/tutorials/Shielding02/Practical_Shielding.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Practical Electromagnetic shielding&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, and tried to understand it. The key formula I thought might be helpful was this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lAsl9.gif&quot; alt=&quot;microwave shielding formula&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where where f is the frequency of the field and fc is the cut-off frequency of the opening. The cut-off frequency is approximately the frequency at which the maximum height or width, a, is equal to a half-wavelength. d is the depth of the opening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took this to mean that if all other characteristics about the shield are kept constant, decreasing the frequency will increase the attenuation -- perhaps an effective shield for 2.45 GHz really isn't an effective shield for lower frequencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I emailed the contact for the site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clemson.edu/ces/departments/ece/faculty_staff/faculty/thubing.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Todd Hubing&lt;/a&gt;, Michelin Chair and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and got the following response:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would be a little concerned if I was able to communicate with a cell phone in my microwave oven. Nevertheless, it could happen I suppose. Traps and seals that work well at 2.45 GHz might not work so well at lower frequencies. It is true that apertures below cutoff have a shielding effectiveness that improves as frequencies get lower. However, the absorption loss associated with shielding materials gets worse at lower frequencies. Since microwave ovens operate in a very narrow frequency band, their shielding can also be narrow band.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;T. Hubing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... not quite the definitive answer I hoped for, but reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also posted in a forum called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microwaves101.com/cgi-bin/messageboard/yabb.pl&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microwaves101&lt;/a&gt; under the Measurement and Testing sub-group. In response to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microwaves101.com/cgi-bin/messageboard/YaBB.pl?num=1310411889&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;my post&lt;/a&gt;, I got the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The door, specifically the surface around the cavity perimeter that it fits against, is tuned to 2.45 GHz. This surface is a 1/4 wavelength long (3 cm), so it acts as a choke specifically at that frequency. See section d of the below drawing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;See this wikipedia article on waveguide flanges:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waveguide_flange&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waveguide_flange&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XHsGa.png&quot; alt=&quot;seal picture&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I put my iPhone in the microwave and ran the WiFi sniffer app. WiFi signal (also at 2.45 GHz) was -60 dBm with the door open and -96 dBm with the door closed. 3G bars (4/5) did not change at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anyway, that's 36 dB of attenuation (a 1/4000 factor) Assuming a 700W microwave, the power leaking out is 175 mW. A 19&quot;x12&quot; door is 1470 cm^2, so roughly, the power leaking out is 0.1 mW/cm^2. Health limit is 1 mW/cm^2, so the leakage is 1/10th of that. This is a really rough experiment, but you can see the leakage is safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there's where I've gotten. The best I can say is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An expert seems to think that it's possible that a) the microwave seals are targeted only toward the microwave operating frequencies, and b) tha the attenuation formula indicates that seals would perform worse on lower frequencies (in other words, theory supports the idea that a cell phone might ring while indicating nothing about the efficacy of the seals)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An active microwave forum member conducted an experiment showing no loss in GSM bars and a reduction in microwave frequency with the door closed (practical experiment supports the theory, at least in one instance)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pastebin.com/ZGZx5YuH&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;My original email to Dr. Hubing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pastebin.com/2RrYbZsx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A followup to try to clarify, to which I have not received a reply&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-16T23:14:32.290" LastActivityDate="2014-11-16T23:14:32.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5413" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5429" CreationDate="2011-07-26T18:55:56.390" Score="12" ViewCount="709" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today around the watercooler, us active duty military, and civil service employees were discussing the possible effects of the US defaulting.  Since we are all paid by the government, this is a very intensely personal issue to all of us.  During the discussions, a claim was made that I found hard to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CLAIM:  If the US Government defaults, and must decide what bills and services to not pay, by law, Congressional pay is protected, and would be the last thing NOT paid (i.e. all other government bills would be cut before congressional pay gets cut).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this at all true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-10-19T07:26:00.440" LastActivityDate="2011-10-19T07:26:00.440" Title="Is Congress's pay protected even if the US defaults?" Tags="|united-states|politics|government|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5415" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5687" CreationDate="2011-07-26T20:31:02.790" Score="14" ViewCount="10476" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine, in a comment online, recently said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your body absorbs more minerals through your skin during a five minute shower than it does by drinking 64 oz (about 1.9 liter) of water over the span of a week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sounds like hogwash to me, but have there been any studies done regarding the absorption of minerals or chemicals (shampoos, soaps etc.) through your skin or by being inhaled when taking a shower?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sources of claims that the human body absorbs chemicals through the skin during showering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.discountjuicers.com/chlorineshower.html&quot;&gt;List at Discount Juicers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/list_7293678_types-shower-filters.html&quot;&gt;ehow.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.listen2yourgut.com/blog/how-do-shower-filters-protect-your-health/&quot;&gt;Listen To Your Gut&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1314" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-14T11:42:00.293" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T00:18:47.887" Title="Are minerals / chemicals absorbed through your skin during bathing?" Tags="|biology|chemistry|minerals|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5416" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5451" CreationDate="2011-07-26T21:28:50.997" Score="34" ViewCount="7437" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I enter the US, I need to fill out a little green form. The front page asks all sorts of reasonable questions: Name, passport number, date of birth, address I plan to be in the US etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The backside, however, asks questions such as whether I was involved in the crimes of Nazi Germany between '33 and '45, or whether I have ever been involved in crimes against humanity such as genocide etc:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NhlML.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;little green form&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This always gives me a chuckle and I ask myself: Even if I HAD been involved in genocide, why would I tick &quot;yes&quot; on that box?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, somewhere in the government someone must think this is important to ask, and this is what I am skeptical about. Is there any case in history that someone ticked &quot;yes&quot; on one of these forms and got caught that way? What is the purpose of these questions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="7286" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T02:34:06.503" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T02:34:06.503" Title="What is the use of the questions on the US Visa Waiver form?" Tags="|united-states|law|travel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5399" CreationDate="2011-07-26T21:43:12.643" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002050/&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002050/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(my  emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bacteria are normally present in the mouth. &lt;strong&gt;The bacteria convert all foods -- especially sugar and starch -- into acids&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The acids in plaque dissolve the enamel surface of the tooth&lt;/strong&gt; and create holes in the tooth (cavities). Cavities are usually painless until they grow very large and affect nerves or cause a tooth fracture. If left untreated, a tooth abscess can develop. Untreated tooth decay also destroys the internal structures of the tooth (pulp) and ultimately causes the loss of the tooth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Carbohydrates (sugars and starches) increase the risk of tooth decay&lt;/strong&gt;. Sticky foods are more harmful than nonsticky foods because they remain on the surface of the teeth. Frequent snacking increases the time that acids are in contact with the surface of the tooth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Virtually all food contains carbohydrates, so every type of food will contribute to tooth decay if dental hygiene is not applied properly. However, the more sugar the food contains, the more the bacteria flourish and damage your teeth, as explained on that website. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you apply proper dental hygiene, then eating sweets should not be a problem. The trouble is that sweets are usually consumed as snacks between meals and thus a long time passes until teeth are brushed, allowing more time for tooth decay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T21:43:12.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4778" CreationDate="2011-07-26T21:51:48.420" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question &quot;Do human pheromones exist&quot; the answer is most certainly &quot;yes&quot;. That's what body odour &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question should be &quot;Do human pheromones work the way the scam artists say they do&quot;. The answer is almost categorically &quot;no&quot;. It's already pretty apparent that &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; natural pheromones aren't attracting the opposite sex like sharks to blood. More than likely the reason for this is because human beings just don't operate (or mate) like dogs or moths. We all meet and mate through social mechanisms instead. I suspect that the effectiveness of your pheromones on other people is a highly subjective and individual thing and just as importantly, only part of the equation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3458" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-13T23:32:16.560" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T23:32:16.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4221" CreationDate="2011-07-26T23:44:06.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Cloyne_Rpt.pdf/Files/Cloyne_Rpt.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cloyne Report&lt;/a&gt; shows that these scandals were ongoing up to just a couple of years ago. (The investigation in Cloyne was not into rape by priests, but into the coverup of that rape. It didn't even ask whether the reported events even happened. It merely looked into how the Church hierarchy dealt with the allegations.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2974" LastActivityDate="2011-07-26T23:44:06.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5421" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5422" CreationDate="2011-07-27T03:21:47.760" Score="10" ViewCount="1248" Body="&lt;p&gt;We had a guest over for dinner who's step-mother had breast cancer some years ago. It was also mentioned that  this woman had never had children, and both our guest and my wife related that they had the understanding that women who have never had children have an increased likelihood of getting breast cancer compared with those who have had children (via pregnancy, not adoption).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was quite surprised at this and just had never heard such a thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there evidence to support or deny a correlation between having children and a decreased risk of breast cancer in women?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-27T06:38:16.603" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T06:38:16.603" Title="Are women who have had children less likely to get breast cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5421" CreationDate="2011-07-27T03:47:29.443" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/cancer/breastcancer/overviewguide/breast-cancer-overview-what-causes&quot;&gt;American Cancer Society&lt;/a&gt;, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not having children or having them later in life: Women who have had&#xA;  not had children, or who had their first child after age 30, have a&#xA;  slightly higher risk of breast cancer. Being pregnant many times and&#xA;  at an early age reduces breast cancer risk. Being pregnant lowers a&#xA;  woman's total number of lifetime menstrual cycles, which may be the&#xA;  reason for this effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, not having breast fed also appears to be a cause:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not breast-feeding: Some studies have shown that breast-feeding&#xA;  slightly lowers breast cancer risk, especially if the breast-feeding&#xA;  lasts 1½ to 2 years. This could be because breast-feeding lowers a&#xA;  woman's total number of menstrual periods, as does pregnancy. But this&#xA;  has been a hard area to study. In countries such as the United States,&#xA;  breast-feeding for this long is uncommon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They could be linked; I'm not sure if the studies could find women who had never breast fed but also had children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v303/n5920/abs/303767a0.html&quot;&gt;this study in 1983&lt;/a&gt;, the first birth is protective, but later first birth has a potential for higher risk.   A further &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2063201/&quot;&gt;study done in Danes&lt;/a&gt; found that if the first childbirth is done between the ages of 20 and 29, then that's the best for risk reduction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After adjusting for age and stage of disease (tumour size, axillary&#xA;  nodal status and histological grading), the number of full-term&#xA;  pregnancies was found without prognostic value. However, women with&#xA;  primary childbirth between 20 and 29 years experienced a significantly&#xA;  reduced risk of death compared with women with primary childbirth&#xA;  below the age of 20 years [20-24 years: relative risk (RR) = 0.88, 95%&#xA;  confidence interval (CI) 0.78-0.99; 25-29 years: RR = 0.80, 95% CI&#xA;  0.70-0.91].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably, the study did not contain any statistically significant sample of women older than 29 for their first childbirth to make relevant statistical comparisons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT 2&lt;/strong&gt; In response to @Hendy's comment, &lt;a href=&quot;http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/125/5/769.short&quot;&gt;here's some further research, done in 1986&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nulliparous women with a family history of breast cancer had a&#xA;  relative risk of 2.7 (95% Cl = 1.4–5.2). Women with a family history&#xA;  who first gave birth by age 20, between ages 21 and 29, and after age&#xA;  30 years had relative risks of 0.53, 2.1, and 4.0, respectively (95%&#xA;  Cl = 0.08–3.8, 1.1–3.9, and 1.8–9.6, respectively).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These risks are relative to the 1.0 risk from a study done in Connecticut.  Note the direct contradiction with the study Danish study; this later study was performed at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, and found that risk was less in younger women, while the opposite was apparently true in Denmark.  The difference in timing (the latter study done in 1986, the former in 2006) may also indicate that changes in breast cancer treatments are affecting population dynamics, but that's pure conjecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The causal risks to check for are carcinogens (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra050776&quot;&gt;such as increased estrogen that can be linked to obesity&lt;/a&gt;) followed by family history, or, in other words, genetic predisposition to the disease.  Mutations in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/BRCA&quot;&gt;BRCA1, BRCA2&lt;/a&gt; genes and other genetic markers (TP53, PTEN, STK11/LKB1, CDH1, CHEK2, ATM, MLH1, and MSH2, &lt;em&gt;ibid&lt;/em&gt;; BRCA1 and 2 are the most 'famous') are known causal genetic links to having the disease.  The effect of childbirth or lactation appears to be difficult to make anything other than a correlative rather than causal link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, the doctors I worked with all suggested that lactation was the real protection, because without it, the breasts have no real biological function.  Lactation made sure they got some use, the thinking went, and so the cells were put to work and weren't sitting idle, making cancer instead of milk.  They may have been just yanking my chain, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2158" LastEditorUserId="2158" LastEditDate="2011-07-27T05:03:38.970" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T05:03:38.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3411" CreationDate="2011-07-27T07:50:03.290" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're in an interview with an expert, it's better to read books on subjects they want you to know. If you're not talking to a expert, they'll be &lt;a href=&quot;http://excelle.monster.com/benefits/articles/4388-10-subtle-ways-to-sabotage-your-interview?page=7&quot;&gt;baffled by unfamiliar vocabulary and unable to determine what you're talking about&lt;/a&gt;. In either situation, especially with a expert, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.resumebear.com/featured-articles/top-50-ways-to-ruin-your-job-interview/&quot;&gt;mistakes in how you use advanced vocab will cost you&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.E., it's more important to use vocabulary that excites and motivates people (read: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Communicate-Effectively-in-a-Job-Interview&quot;&gt;stay positive&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.careerbuilder.com/Article/CB-430-Interview-Tips-Is-It-Better-to-Be-Yourself-or-Fake-It-in-an-Interview/&quot;&gt;than to fake knowledge and experience that you don't have&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only motivator I can think of to use big words would be to drive off competition, and only a small amount at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4046" LastEditorUserId="4046" LastEditDate="2011-07-27T09:47:27.783" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T09:47:27.783" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5157" CreationDate="2011-07-27T08:32:32.897" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Watermarks (specifically those embedded in digitally stored images, video, and audio) are more a concern of the photo/video/sound industries, and usually just an end-product of the concerned editing software. Anything that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.templatemonster.com/help/removing-watermarks-from-logo-templates.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adobe Photoshop&lt;/a&gt; outputs can be manipulated &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_2098518_remove-watermarks-from-pdf-files.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;to remove the&lt;/a&gt; watermark if you messed with it enough or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/hex-editor-technology-explained/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;found and manually removed the watermark&lt;/a&gt; (supposing there is one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Adobe software suite is so unique that it is unnecessary to watermark the software itself to determine whether it's been pirated. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsrl.nist.gov/itlbulletin.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Given just a list of files, or the results of a few file comparisons, someone could likely determine that you have Adobe's software&lt;/a&gt;. They could then go through their list of registered users and find whether you're allowed to use it. Watermarking would be more effectively used to track down the person who initially released the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adobe.com/support/registrationfaq.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adobe has systems other than watermarks that help prevent piracy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You probably won't get caught, but if you're very popular and produce high-quality photos that appear to have &lt;a href=&quot;http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&amp;amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;amp;p=1&amp;amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&amp;amp;r=9&amp;amp;f=G&amp;amp;l=50&amp;amp;co1=AND&amp;amp;d=PTXT&amp;amp;s1=adobe.ASNM.&amp;amp;OS=AN/adobe&amp;amp;RS=AN/adobe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;effects that only Adobe has&lt;/a&gt;, you might raise a few eyebrows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally recommend The GIMP for 99% of situations. Adobe's programs should be used almost exclusively by professionals who need pre-built advanced functionality. If you need Photoshop, you should be working for someone who can afford it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4046" LastEditorUserId="4046" LastEditDate="2011-07-28T03:52:57.603" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T03:52:57.603" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5426" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-27T11:31:00.303" Score="23" ViewCount="2948" Body="&lt;p&gt;I sometimes see claims that poor people become obese and develop &quot;lifestyle diseases&quot; (heart disease, diabetes, etc) because they cannot afford healthy food and are forced to eat fast food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Logically, this does not seem to make sense.  When you buy fast food, you are paying for labor, corporate overhead, restaurant space, etc.  How could that be cheaper than cooking for yourself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3278" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T10:14:13.040" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T13:04:00.577" Title="Is it cheaper to eat fast food?" Tags="|nutrition|economics|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="34" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5413" CreationDate="2011-07-27T13:00:25.677" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like they might be because the office of Congressman Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) has proposed a measure to prevent it from happening; although I don't think there are any hard rules on the books about this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/cooper-wants-congressional-pay-stopped-if-us-defaults-debt&quot;&gt;http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/cooper-wants-congressional-pay-stopped-if-us-defaults-debt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4129" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T13:00:25.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5431" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-27T13:28:43.633" Score="4" ViewCount="789" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldbulletin.net/?aType=haber&amp;amp;ArticleID=76705&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;St. Philip the Apostle Tomb's discovered in Turkey&lt;/a&gt;, I wondered about the claims of antiquity of similar &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;relics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;radiometric dating&lt;/a&gt; tests (i.e. like radiocarbon dating, but for 2000 year old items) typically performed on the sacred relics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3087" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-07-28T14:30:41.767" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T05:15:13.363" Title="Is radiometric dating performed on sacred relics?" Tags="|religion|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2591" CreationDate="2011-07-27T15:09:32.613" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears that most shampoos do not cause this.  However, shampoos with selenium sulfide will indeed increase oiliness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://journal.scconline.org/pdf/cc1997/cc048n02/p00117-p00121.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pierard-Franchimont, C. Arrese, J. E. Pierard, G. E., Sebum flow dynamics and antidandruff shampoos, JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF COSMETIC CHEMISTS, VOL 48; NUMBER 2, pages 117-122 (1997).&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been previously shown that excessive oiliness is a disturbing side effect following regular use of selenium sulfide shampoo to control dandruff (4,5)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;s. Many studies have shown that the early sebum flow after the skin is cleaned comes mainly from a reservoir  in the pilosebaceous  follicle, and not from any feedback stimulation of the sebaceous gland (13-15)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the present study, most of the antidandruff shampoos showed an absence of significant&#xA;SER change over time....Such a finding confirms the unreality of the so-called reactive seborrhea,  in which the sebaceous excretion increases with the frequency of most hair washes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4)  H. Goldschmidt and A.M.  Kligman, Increased sebum secretion  following selenium sulfide shampoos, Acta Dermatol. Venereol., 48,  488-491  (1968).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(5)  G. E. Piérard, C. Piérard-Franchimont,  and T.  Ben Mosbah, Les pityrosporoses.  Pityriasis versicolor, folliculite pityrosporique, dermatite séborrhéique et état pelliculaire, Rev. Med. LiPge, 44,  267-271 (1989).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(13)  A.M.  Kligman and W.  B. Shelley, An investigation into the biology of the sebaceous  gland,.]. Invest. Dermatol., 30,  99-125  (1958).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(14) J. S. Strauss, D. T.  Downing, and M. E. Stewart, Sebum secretion  rates in relation to age, J.  AppL CosmetoL, 3,  257-266  (1985).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(15)  C. Pirard-Franchimont, G. E. Pirard, and A. Kligman, Seasonal modulation of the sebum excretion, Dermatologica,  181, 21-22  (1990)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4143" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2022-03-09T15:45:21.083" LastActivityDate="2022-03-09T15:45:21.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5426" CreationDate="2011-07-27T15:29:04.483" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could that be cheaper than cooking for yourself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternative to fast-food is buying fresh ingredients and preparing food yourself. Problem is that fresh produce &lt;strong&gt;retail&lt;/strong&gt; price is constantly growing due to growing margins, rather than on par with underlying producer's price. This phenomenon is not local to any country, it has been observed in the US, throughout Europe, in Australia and New Zealand. It's attributed to super/hyper-market chains having too much influence over prices on both ends of the chain (producers and end-clients).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some papers and articles covering the subject:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ers.usda.gov/briefing/vegetables/vegpdf/FOBRetailPriceVeg.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thomas Worth &lt;em&gt;The F.o.b.-Retail Price Relationship&#xA;For Selected Fresh Vegetables&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (bit outdated)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The f.o.b. [Free-on-board shipping-point prices] and retail price trends are rising for all of the&#xA;selected commodities. Prices for the second time period,&#xA;1980-99, are presented in figure B-1. The solid lines in the&#xA;graphs represent a two-year moving average for retail and&#xA;for f.o.b. prices. Retail prices consistently rise during this&#xA;time period. Except for potatoes, f.o.b. prices rise consistently,&#xA;albeit modestly, as well. &lt;strong&gt;The retail-f.o.b. margin&#xA;increases for all of the commodities.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agecon.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty/roberta-cook/docs/Articles/PattersonRichERS03.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Timothy J. Richards and Paul M. Patterson, &lt;em&gt;Competition in Fresh Produce&#xA;Markets,&#xA;An Empirical Analysis of Marketing&#xA;Channel Performance&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fresh produce growers/shippers believe that consolidations in grocery retailing may&#xA;empower retailers to act less competitively. This study evaluates the extent to which&#xA;retailers exercise market power in buying from growers and selling to consumers. Sales&#xA;data for retail chains in six U.S. metropolitan markets are used along with data on&#xA;grower prices for an analysis on apples, grapes, oranges, and grapefruit. &lt;strong&gt;The evidence&#xA;varies by commodity, but does consistently point to the exercise of market power by&#xA;retailers in consumer sales;&lt;/strong&gt; less support is found on buying market power. Market power&#xA;varies over time and with produce volume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;News article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perthnow.com.au/money/rising-costs-force-fresh-fruit-and-vegetables-off-the-table/story-e6frg2uc-1226073894308&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Rising costs force fresh fruit and vegetables off the table&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The number of people who say they have been forced to skip fresh fruit and vegetables because of skyrocketing prices has jumped from 6 to 30 per cent in six years.&lt;/strong&gt; And retailers have been accused of profiteering from this year's flood and cyclone disasters, hitting shoppers with 300 per cent mark-ups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one case, a farmer found pineapples being sold at a small fruit shop for 14 times the price paid to growers for the same produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you buy fast food, you are paying for labor, corporate overhead, restaurant space, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same can be said about supermarkets. You are also paying for the produce that will go to the dumpster at closing time. Much less so in case of fast food establishments, which use mostly processed and/or refrigerated products and have limited variety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T23:06:22.180" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5436" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-27T16:35:53.130" Score="19" ViewCount="5233" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Kind of) &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/876/classical-music-in-public-places-does-it-affect-violence&quot;&gt;Classical music in public places: does it affect violence?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/598/do-violent-video-games-cause-violent-behavior&quot;&gt;Do violent video games cause violent behavior?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1729/can-music-incite-murder&quot;&gt;Can music incite murder?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard many people say that listening to rap, which may often contain messages of violence, drug use, and particular views toward women, will actually &lt;em&gt;lead&lt;/em&gt; to the adoption of such views and behavior. I'll leave out the latter two and just focus on the first claim (violence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example of this at large, take &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/03/us/03hiphop.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this NY Times article&lt;/a&gt; on a club that plays &amp;quot;gansta rap&amp;quot; in Colorado Springs, CO, USA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a spate of shootings, and with a rising murder rate, the police here are saying gangsta rap is contributing to the violence, luring gang members and criminal activity to nightclubs. The police publicly condemned the music in a news release after a killing in July and are warning nightclub owners that their places might not be safe if they play gangsta rap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“We don’t want to broad-brush hip-hop music altogether,” said Lt. Skip Arms, a police spokesman, “but we’re looking at a subcomponent that typically glorifies, promotes criminal behavior and demeans women.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One could take this two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first paragraph seems to imply that rap attracts individuals who are already violent, and such individuals would be [as] violent even if they'd listened to some other type of music&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The second paragraph connotes that rap actually leads to an increase in violent behavior, such that without having listened to rap, such an individual would not be [as] violent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For another example, see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/about_6124026_rap-music-violence.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;eHow article on rap music&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mainstream popularity of West Coast gangsta rap sent hip-hop into another realm, while at the same time pigeonholing the genre as entirely too aggressive. There is much debate to be had as to the merits of such lyricism and the effect it has on youths...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is being debated and discussed in forums like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frihost.com/forums/vt-18979.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/music-causes-violence-33125.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, which is another reason I think the question is pertinent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there available evidence to support or deny the claim that rap music leads to an increased tendency toward violent behavior?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a bonus question, I &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; be interested in anything along the way that discusses the perhaps related claims about drugs and attitudes toward/treatment of women, but maybe that should be a separate question or this one should be modified to cover all three potential negative impacts of rap music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T00:45:23.080" Title="Does listening to rap music increase violent behavior?" Tags="|psychology|music|behavior|violence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3316" CreationDate="2011-07-27T16:40:08.257" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some of the other answers here have been causing controversy for not addressing the question. In keeping with the StackExchange principles, this is an attempt to combine the best parts to make one full answer. I thank @jwenting, @manojlds, @joe and @Sklivvz for much of the preliminary research.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OP asks several different questions, which I will paraphrase as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there justification for the common saying?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are apples healthier than other fruit?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is eating a lot of apples risky?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at each one of those:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Q: Is there justification for the common saying?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: It depends whether you speak English or Old English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase is thought to come from Old English, where apple used to mean any round fruit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/an-apple-a-day.html&quot;&gt;Phrase Finder&lt;/a&gt; attribute the origins of the phrase to a Welsh book from 1866, and note: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apples may be good for us but it&#xA;  wasn't their precise medicinal&#xA;  properties that were being exalted&#xA;  when this phrase was coined. In Old&#xA;  English the word apple was used to&#xA;  describe any round fruit that grew on&#xA;  a tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=apple&quot;&gt;Etymonline&lt;/a&gt; has a similar view of the original meaning of apple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;O.E. æppel &quot;apple, any kind of fruit; fruit in general,&quot; from P.Gmc. *ap(a)laz (cf. O.S., O.Fris., Du. appel, O.N. eple, O.H.G. apful, Ger. Apfel), from PIE *ab(e)l &quot;apple&quot; (cf. Gaul. avallo &quot;fruit;&quot; O.Ir. ubull, Lith. obuolys, O.C.S. jabloko &quot;apple&quot;), but the exact relation and original sense of these is uncertain (cf. melon). In M.E. and as late as 17c., it was a generic term for all fruit other than berries but including nuts (e.g. O.E. fingeræppla “dates,” lit. “finger-apples;” M.E. appel of paradis &quot;banana,&quot; c.1400). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe this etymology (and the understanding that fruit, in general, is considered &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/78/3/517S.short&quot;&gt;healthful&lt;/a&gt;, you may decide you do not care whether the (modern) apple is special.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._T._Stinson&quot;&gt;other proposed etymologies&lt;/a&gt; for the saying,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the dates (M.E and late 17th versus 1866) don't exactly line up,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people still say the expression today,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there does seem to be some early belief that &lt;em&gt;apple&lt;/em&gt; apples (i.e. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple&quot;&gt;Malus domestica&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;) did have some health benefits (see below)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so let's continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Q: Are apples healthier than other fruit?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: It is impossible to make a blanket statement, but in some respects, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some features of the apples are special. No doubt, advocates of the other fruits could make alternative (and correct) health claims about their fruits as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/summary/45/1/18&quot;&gt;Raw apples have been used (years ago) to treat diarrhea in children.&lt;/a&gt; This 1933 paper states:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The efficacy of a diet of raw apples in the treatment of diarrheal conditions in children has long been known in many parts of Germany by the populace. Occasionally brief mention of the value of raw apple has been made by medical authorities. It was first used systematically in the Kindersanatorium at Koenigfield by Sister Frieda Klimsch. Within the last three years this form of therapy has been advocated a great deal in Germany by the physicians, and several articles have appeared in the literature. All have reported favorable results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Alas, I haven't read enough to know whether this report actually agrees with earlier ones!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In mice, it has been associated with staving off dementia. (Ref: &#xA;Chan A, Graves V, Shea TB, A (Aug 2006). &quot;Apple juice concentrate maintains acetylcholine levels following dietary compromise&quot;. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease 9 (3): 287–291. ISSN 1387-2877. PMID 16914839.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In rats, it may help with cholesterol. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814601002357&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2095316&quot;&gt;Apple juice is less harsh on tooth enamel than orange juice.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If you are thinking this evidence is pretty weak at putting apples on a pedestal above other fruit, I agree with you. Get some other fruit and veg into you, too.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Q: Is eating a lot of apples risky?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: Yes, it can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The same study that rates apple juice better than OJ &amp;amp; cola at not stripping enamel, rates diet cola even higher. (Water, having a higher pH, will rate even better, I suspect.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An apple is 10% sugar (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gofor2and5.com.au/Guide.aspx?c=1&amp;amp;a=6&amp;amp;s=11&amp;amp;l=12&amp;amp;n=42&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;), which should be considered on a calorie-controlled diet. (You are talking about eating &lt;em&gt;lots&lt;/em&gt; of them.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some people are &lt;a href=&quot;http://foodallergens.ifr.ac.uk/food.lasso?selected_food=2&quot;&gt;allergic to apples&lt;/a&gt;. (Presumably, this applies to small as well as large quantities.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also consider what other essential foods you will be missing out on if you &lt;a href=&quot;http://oregon.providence.org/patients/healthconditionscare/weight-problems/Pages/askanExpertlanding.aspx?TemplateName=Ask+an+Expert%3A+Can+a+person+eat+too+much+fruit%3F&amp;amp;TemplateType=AskAnExpert&quot;&gt;eat too much fruit, in general&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-28T16:59:40.203" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T16:59:40.203" CommentCount="7" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-10-12T05:15:23.960" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5441" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5446" CreationDate="2011-07-27T19:12:33.917" Score="9" ViewCount="709" Body="&lt;p&gt;A link on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drudgereport.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Drudge Report&lt;/a&gt; today claimed this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pronlinenews.com/?p=11018&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many have had the sneaking suspicion that our elected “leaders” in&#xA;  Congress are not going to Washington D.C. to represent us but for&#xA;  their own personal gain. This video may just validate that assessment!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using the net worth data compiled by the non-partisan Center for&#xA;  Responsive Politics we found a disturbing trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a case of selecting data to make it look bad?  Is there something else afoot? Or is congress really going to Washington and getting rich? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My hunch is maybe all 3 are true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T14:35:20.517" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T21:18:43.150" Title="Is Congressional net worth up nearly 3700% since 2004?" Tags="|economics|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5431" CreationDate="2011-07-27T23:03:03.680" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Radiocarbon dating is destructive testing, which means that some of the sample has to be destroyed in the process of testing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If an artifact is considered sacred, it is hard to convince the owners to give enough of a sample to do adequate testing.  It doesn't take a lot, but it does take something.  So, whether it is &quot;typically&quot; done probably depends on whether the relic is something small, or whether there is adequate extra material available that does not diminish the value of the relic itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the shroud of Turin, there was successful radiocarbon dating done, after a lot of convincing, and a small amount of the shroud was used.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_14_dating_of_the_Shroud_of_Turin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_14_dating_of_the_Shroud_of_Turin&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2464" LastEditorUserId="2464" LastEditDate="2011-07-28T16:58:58.343" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T16:58:58.343" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5431" CreationDate="2011-07-27T23:14:13.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The tomb of Philip was &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;layout=2&amp;amp;eotf=1&amp;amp;sl=it&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ilmessaggero.it%2Farticolo.php%3Fid%3D157662%26sez%3DHOME_SPETTACOLO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;not opened&lt;/a&gt;, it's therefore impossible that any carbon dating has been performed on the remains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, apparently the inscriptions on the tomb confirm the authenticity of the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2008, the Italian team had already identified the tomb of the apostle. &quot;For years we try to find the tomb of the saint,&quot; said D'Andria, a professor at the University of Lecce. The structure of the tomb and its inscriptions show that the tomb belonged to Saint Philip. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For now, the tomb was not opened. &quot;One day maybe I will,&quot; concluded D'Andria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(via Google translate)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More in general, though, relics of particular interest are certainly dated, see for example the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1052/shroud-of-turin-is-it-absolutely-and-definitively-debunked&quot;&gt;question on the Holy Shroud&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T10:13:11.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5441" CreationDate="2011-07-27T23:43:29.427" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Congressional net worth is not up nearly 3700%.  It is not claimed in the video you link to and it is not claimed by the Center for Responsive Politics.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/averages.php&quot;&gt;this chart from the CPR&lt;/a&gt; suggests that average net wealth in the Senate has been fairly stable and in the House has risen slightly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video suggests (around 1:15) 223 out of 535 members of Congress saw their net wealth increase, suggesting more than half did not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So where does the 3700% number come from?  It seems to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://governmentgonewild.org/thelist&quot;&gt;this list&lt;/a&gt; where one particular congressman saw his net worth increase from $47,503 to $1,790,508.  That is partly caused by his low starting point but he still has less than the average by some way. Some others saw their net worth go from positive to negative, but that is not so outrageous.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is that the video and your headline question are being selective.  Some members of Congress get richer, some get poorer.  Concentrate on the former and you get something to shout about.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A different issue is that on average members of Congress are much richer than the rest of the population.  For some, this might raise questions about how representative they are; for other that is irrelevant in a democracy where voters can choose. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-07-27T23:43:29.427" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5449" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5453" CreationDate="2011-07-28T10:05:29.457" Score="3" ViewCount="877" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has there ever been a real case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweeney_Todd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sweeney Todd&lt;/a&gt;'s (without the musical of course)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it seems a really non cost effective way of running a shop, similar stories pop up in few different cultures (as far as I have been able to verify), but with no actual real backing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1708" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-08-07T15:56:00.383" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T15:56:00.383" Title="Was there ever a cannibalistic butcher/meat pie/restaurant... shop?" Tags="|nutrition|economics|behavior|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5416" CreationDate="2011-07-28T10:15:25.813" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode08/usc_sec_08_00001227----000-.html#a_4&quot;&gt;The questions precisely lay out the legal objections to getting a United States visa.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As was said in the comments, it's most likely a method for refusing/deporting people if they have lied on their visa applications without having a major court case. In general, the punishment for &lt;em&gt;lying&lt;/em&gt; to a United States official about citizenship can be greater than the punishment for committing the offence (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00001015----000-.html&quot;&gt;relevant law&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,438234,00.html&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a case where the US government found it easier to deport a woman for lying on her visa application than to build a case for war crimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rinkel neglected to mention her SS job on a US visa application in&#xA;  1959, and the Justice Department caught up with her in late 2004&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another case where someone was immediately &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews/4192337/Woman-chained-up-on-arrival-at-JFK.html&quot;&gt;deported for lying on her form&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Marie Casafina, 26, said immigration officials cuffed her legs to a chair because she did not state on her visa-waiver form that she had previously been denied entry to the US. She was deported less than 24 hours later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is not conclusive evidence, but it seems reasonably straightforward to build up a simple case for deportation if someone lies on his or her visa application.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3606" LastEditorUserId="13972" LastEditDate="2013-05-29T01:17:47.143" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T01:17:47.143" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5426" CreationDate="2011-07-28T10:53:36.563" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The price of healthy and specially fresh products is always on the rise, but as of 2011 I still cook my -healthy- food myself for considerably less than a Mac Menu or equivalent costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are entire websites dedicated to the subject of budget healthy cooking, but in my opinion the most important and universally applicable tips regardless of the country are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buy bulk, like one per month and planning beforehand what you are going to buy (make a list)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eat everything. It's surprising how much food gets thrown away. Don't let that yoghurt expire, and if you make too much rice for luch, eat it for dinner. The point is to realize the exact quantity of everything you need, which in my experience is always far less than expected, so you can afford more money on your next shopping.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the countries where I lived (Ireland, France, Spain, Italy) I also saved &lt;strong&gt;a lot&lt;/strong&gt; of money by buying at local shops, where you usually get discounts for being a good client, and where you might get to know even the actual producers/fishers. I don't know if this applies elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also find the quality of frozen-at-sea fish excellent for a fraction of the price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATED: References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1905862156&quot;&gt;How to Feed Your Whole Family a Healthy Balanced Diet&lt;/a&gt; (Gil Holcombe): A very detailed guide including all the tips I comment here and many more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0805418350&quot;&gt;Once-a-month cooking&lt;/a&gt; (Mary Beth Lagerborg and Mimi Wilson): about the quality of frozen fish and food in general.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4199" LastEditorUserId="637" LastEditDate="2011-07-29T17:32:16.513" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T17:32:16.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5449" CreationDate="2011-07-28T11:01:01.157" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seem to have been several people rumoured to be serving human meat down the years, but some such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,654732-6,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fritz Haarman&lt;/a&gt;, never had the accusation proved (although the brutal murders were).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However theres a few items which seem pretty well established of human meat being provided to unknowing customers in a butcher shop&amp;mdash;for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first I found was Adloph Luetgert, which seems &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alchemyofbones.com/who/luetgertfamily/adolph.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;to be a well established story.&lt;/a&gt; This chap only did it once though as a way to dispose of his wife's body&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently the there was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/human-flesh-on-sale-in-moldova-680055.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this story&lt;/a&gt;, of human meat being sold in a shop in Moldova. Supposedly though - they got the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1256023.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;body parts from a local clinic.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last story indicates a little bit of the problem with the idea of a demon butcher who slaughters people for sale, as in that tale they were illegally using parts from a clinic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To provide a constant supply of meat for your shop by other methods would be clearly difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess you would not get more than 40-50kg or so meat from each person killed (a Hog tends to make about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.askthemeatman.com/yield_on_hog.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;70% of its body mass into meat apparently&lt;/a&gt;, and I would be surprised if your yield from a corpse was greater).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even a slowish shop would get through that in a week I guess (can't find average for this), so you would need to kill a person a week or two to keep your small shop adequately stocked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a murder spree would be unlikely to be sustainable long term, if you are in a country with a police force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3606" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-07-28T13:17:54.887" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T13:17:54.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5426" CreationDate="2011-07-28T13:07:03.480" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I want to elaborate a bit on the economics behind some of this.  As many people already mentioned, this is going to vary greatly from country to country.  Why?  Well, raw commodity prices are very volatile, due to varying government subsidies, differences in climate, extreme climatic events, supply chains, &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp;c.&lt;/em&gt;  The supermarket industry in the US is extremely competitive.  SuperValu, for example, is a giant corporation that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;owns many supermarket chains&lt;/a&gt;.  They are &lt;a href=&quot;http://ycharts.com/companies/SVU/profit_margin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;lucky to eek away a 1.5% profit margin&lt;/a&gt;.  (In other words, at most 1.5% of their gross income is a profit.)  That means they could lower their prices at most ~1.5% without taking a loss.  Bulk sellers like &lt;a href=&quot;http://ycharts.com/companies/COST/profit_margin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Costco&lt;/a&gt; and even the giant &lt;a href=&quot;http://ycharts.com/companies/WMT/profit_margin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wal-Mart&lt;/a&gt; are lucky to reach 3%.  Successful fast food restaurants like McDonalds, on the other hand, easily reach &lt;a href=&quot;http://ycharts.com/companies/MCD/profit_margin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a profit margin of 20%&lt;/a&gt;.  That means, in effect, McDonalds could reduce their prices by ~20% and still stay afloat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this?  One major reason is that companies like McDonalds can and do have complete &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_integration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;vertical integration&lt;/a&gt; of their supply chains: McDonalds raises their own cattle, grows their own potatoes, transports their own raw ingredients, and largely owns the real estate of their restaurants.  In fact, McDonalds even &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.howstuffworks.com/mcdonalds2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;makes a profit off of leasing their real estate to McDonalds franchises&lt;/a&gt;.  That flexibility is partially one reason why &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a Big Mac will be worth the equivalent of US$10 in Brazil while the same Big Mac will be worth US$1.50 in Croatia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  Supermarkets don't really have much opportunity for vertical integration unless they actually buy and operate their farms and suppliers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Now, to the question of whether eating fast food is cheaper.&lt;/strong&gt;  As &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4927/are-food-deserts-a-real-phenomenon/4931#4931&quot;&gt;I mentioned in my answer to the food deserts question&lt;/a&gt;, at least in the US there is a definitive link between poverty, obesity, and lack of proximity to a supermarket.  There was also &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2005.06.011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a study in the UK that discovered a correlation between the density of fast food restaurants and poverty&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Statistically significant positive associations were found between neighborhood deprivation [&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, poverty] and the mean number of McDonald’s outlets per 1000 people for Scotland (p&amp;lt;0.001), England (p&amp;lt;0.001), and both countries combined (p&amp;lt;0.001). These associations were broadly linear with greater mean numbers of outlets per 1000 people occurring as deprivation levels increased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: I re-wrote the following paragraph to include a rigorous argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's have some fun now and look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_price_index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Consumer Price Index&lt;/a&gt; (CPI), which estimates average expenditures for various goods over a month.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=USA%20consumer%20price%20index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The current CPI in the US for food and beverages is $227.5&lt;/a&gt; (meaning that the average consumer spends $227.5 per month on food and beverages).  Now let's assume that the cost of non-fast-food is cheaper than eating fast food and proceed with a proof by contradiction.  Under this assumption, the CPI of $227.5 is obviously a lower bound on the amount one would spend if one only ate fast food (since the CPI includes all types of food-related expenditures).  This equates to about $8 per day.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/11793125?story_id=11793125&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;In 2008, the average price of a Big Mac in the US was $3.57&lt;/a&gt;, and it is certainly possible for one to subsist off of two Big Macs per day.  That's especially true since a Big Mac is one of the more expensive items on the McDonalds menu.  A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food/full_menu/sandwiches/mcdouble.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;McDouble&lt;/a&gt;, for example, costs only $1.  This is a contradiction, &lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, we have shown that it is in fact possible to live off of less than $8 a day of fast food, thus breaking the lower bound and &lt;strong&gt;invalidating our assumption that eating non-fast-food is cheaper than eating fast food&lt;/strong&gt;.∎&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggests that it is at least plausible that eating fast food could be cheaper than grocery shopping in the US.  This is of course under some tenuous assumptions, but one can't really definitively answer your question without actually studying the average cost of groceries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T17:28:59.050" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5455" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-28T13:13:11.057" Score="6" ViewCount="321" Body="&lt;p&gt;IBM recently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-05.ibm.com/innovation/uk/leadership/meter/&quot;&gt;published&lt;/a&gt; a case study on &quot;smart&quot; power meters. Those power meters read consumption data many times a day and record that data so that it can be analyzed. IBM claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[cool stuff]Giving consumers more visibility into their energy consumption and utility companies a deeper understanding of how energy is being used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that these meters are household units - one installed on the consumer side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, consumers can analyze their usage patterns better - great. But what about utility companies? Don't they already have beefy measurement equipment installed on beefy wires going from their facilities? Will such meters really give something new to the utility companies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="666" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-07-28T13:21:14.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T17:25:43.950" Title="Is reading household power meters frequently helpful for utility companies?" Tags="|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5455" CreationDate="2011-07-28T13:36:31.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few parts to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many electricity companies have no way, without a smart meter, to monitor your usage. They will simply send someone to read your meter every 3 months or so and average out your consumption over a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At ScottishPower we’re always looking at ways to make it easier for you to manage your energy account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Having online access to your energy account allows you to be in control at all times.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  You’ll be able to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Input your own meter readings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;...  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scottishpower.co.uk/your-home/new-customer/online-energy.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly not having a huge number of meters to read is an economical advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Energy companies plan and buy in advance energy, fuel, coal, emissions, etc. on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_market&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Energy commodities markets&lt;/a&gt;. Being able to predict exactly how much energy or prime materials they need allows them to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.investopedia.com/articles/optioninvestor/07/energy_market.asp#axzz1TPHBnV1x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;speculate better&lt;/a&gt; on the markets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eon-energy-trading.com/cms/en/index.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.eon-energy-trading.com/cms/en/index.jsp&lt;/a&gt;, the trading branch of e-on. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surprisingly enough, these &quot;branches&quot; make energy companies more revenue than actually selling energy on the consumer market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T13:36:31.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5455" CreationDate="2011-07-28T13:56:32.450" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Smart meters would allow to better predict energy usage peaks. Energy companies have 3 ways of dealing with peak demand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_following_power_plant&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;increase output from load following power plant&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaking_power_plant&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;activate additional peaking power plant&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;buy energy from other suppliers in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the grid&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these options means considerable cost to the power company, so if they can do it only when as needed and when needed, they would save significant part of that cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smart meters are part of wider idea called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_grid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;smart grid&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T13:56:32.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5481" CreationDate="2011-07-28T15:02:03.747" Score="11" ViewCount="20050" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people claim that ear size and shape is related to intelligence. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helium.com/items/106530-exploring-the-possible-link-between-ear-size-and-intelligence&quot;&gt;this writer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has any real research been done on this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1419" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-28T17:15:44.573" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T21:57:48.137" Title="Are big ears a sign of intelligence?" Tags="|physiology|intelligence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5459" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5473" CreationDate="2011-07-28T18:02:09.953" Score="45" ViewCount="47561" Body="&lt;p&gt;My dad just bought a device that claims to reduce electricity consumption in the house. It is called a  &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120709233930/http://butterworth.olx.com.my/electricity-saving-spike-buster-free-shipping-iid-41087810&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spike Buster&lt;/a&gt;. It is just a small box with an LED that you connect to any socket in the house. It claims to stabilize the voltage of the electricity and as a result the consumption is reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This looks very suspicious to me. It doesn't makes sense to me. Is there any reliable info on these devices that I can show to my dad?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3213" LastEditorUserId="38403" LastEditDate="2021-10-27T14:18:40.470" LastActivityDate="2022-10-20T02:59:43.520" Title="Does the &quot;Spike Buster&quot; reduce electricity consumption?" Tags="|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5460" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-28T19:10:55.250" Score="21" ViewCount="567" Body="&lt;p&gt;This morning, our pediatrician cited &quot;a study&quot; where novice and seasoned pediatricians were tested for immunity to common communicable diseases (cold virus, strep bacteria, etc).  He said that the study indicated that novice pediatricians had the same or similar levels of immunity as &quot;the general population,&quot; but that seasoned pediatricians were shown to be immune to almost everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He did not say who conducted the study (and I didn't press, since we were there with sick kids), but I was not able to find any information publicly available suggesting that such a study had been done or that there was a proven link between years of pediatric experience and level of immunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a fun and plausible story, but are seasoned pediatricians really immune to most common communicable diseases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4218" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T15:45:23.773" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T20:20:10.193" Title="Are pediatricians immune to common communicable diseases?" Tags="|medical-science|immune-system|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5461" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-28T19:34:18.207" Score="9" ViewCount="14280" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our local Pediatrician's office and General Practitioner's office both have a policy of giving a disposable face mask to each patient or visitor who has a noticeable cough or runny nose, and insist that it be worn before proceeding with check-in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These surgical-style disposable face masks were also &quot;popular&quot; during outbreaks of respiratory illnesses over the past decade, including SARS, &quot;Swine Flu&quot; (H1N1), and &quot;Bird Flu&quot; (H3N8).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support or discount the effectiveness of disposable face masks in the spread of disease?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4218" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T05:18:54.980" Title="Do disposable face masks prevent or significantly reduce the spread of disease?" Tags="|medical-science|flu|common-cold|disease|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5459" CreationDate="2011-07-28T19:49:06.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The name suggests that this is some kind of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surge_protector&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;surge protector&lt;/a&gt; which is designed to protect electrical and electronic equipment from spikes in mains voltage; it may also protect against some lightning strikes.  Looking at the following commercial links &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/9792302336&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://trade.indiamart.com/details.mp?offer=1214982862&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, that is exactly what is being offered.  There is no claim of energy saving, just protection from spikes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are commercial claims of energy saving, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://butterworth.olx.com.my/electricity-saving-spike-buster-free-shipping-iid-41087810&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://isapower.yolasite.com/description.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, which seem to be more general voltage regulators. In theory, if there is persistent over-voltage in the supply, a voltage regulator will reduce consumption since power is voltage times current and for a fixed resistance both will rise.  In practice I suspect under-voltage is more common and so a voltage regulator will tend to increase energy consumption, though only to the level it would be if the supply was at specification plus any consumption by the regulator itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-07-28T19:49:06.023" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5461" CreationDate="2011-07-29T01:25:42.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best answer I can find is here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17828691&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17828691&lt;/a&gt; By clicking on the link, you should find several other supporting studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for those not inclined to click on the link above, I'll give a brief: 10 students out of 953 were found to be carrying S. aureus. All developed the common cold. The study looked at S. aureus dispersal for street clothes vs scrubs vs scrubs and gown vs scrubs, gown and mask. The study found that the mask had minimal effect on dispersal of S. aureus when compared to scrubs or scrubs and gown alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short(from the study), the mask itself doesn't do much. If the GP had been really concerned, they would have had sick patients dress in clean surgical scrubs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that the GP is looking for a &quot;halo&quot; effect. Boost the esteem of those waiting in queue with a common mark (mask) and get some reduction in aerosol germ spread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4226" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T01:25:42.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5465" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-29T02:50:32.257" Score="4" ViewCount="3150" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Australia, although it has changed significantly in the past 30 years due to migration, it is quite common for people of Anglo background to only speak one language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I learned my second language quite quickly due to hard work and regular practice, but I get told often I must have a &quot;gift for languages&quot; as other people state they tried learning a language before and can only remember one or two words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone usually chimes in about some guy they know from Europe who speaks 5 languages and then another person will then repeat the claim &quot;yep, he definitely has a gift for languages&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard this so many times and it is quite frustrating and insulting to those people who have gone to the length of learning several languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously learning one language as an adult will give you some helpful techniques which could be used when learning a third or fourth language, but is there any science to indicate that certain people have some super talent and can learn languages at a higher level than normal human beings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T01:03:23.387" Title="Can someone have a &quot;gift for languages&quot;?" Tags="|education|language|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5461" CreationDate="2011-07-29T03:06:05.580" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different kinds of face mask, which are more or less effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the SARS &quot;crisis,&quot; I remember people complaining that the masks being made available weren't the effective (sub-micron, well-fitting) kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.primed.ca/ClinicalResources/MaskStandardsandFAQ.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Medical Face Mask Standards and Regulations&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Surgical and procedure masks are effective against droplet transmission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="4218" LastEditDate="2011-07-29T21:51:00.393" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T21:51:00.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5467" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5474" CreationDate="2011-07-29T03:17:15.347" Score="17" ViewCount="3643" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has there been any reliable independent studies into the efficacy of chiropractic treatment and claims that it can either cure or provide significant relief from mechanical disorders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any reported data to suggest a greater number of people receive injury as a result of treatment by a chiropractor when compared to other medical professions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is chiropractic treatment high risk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a statement in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic&quot;&gt;this wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 2010 systematic review stated that there is no good evidence to&#xA;  assume that manipulation to the neck is an effective treatment for any&#xA;  condition and thus concluded, &quot;the risks of chiropractic neck&#xA;  manipulations by far outweigh their benefits.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 2009 review evaluating maintenance chiropractic care found that&#xA;  spinal manipulation is routinely associated with considerable harm and&#xA;  no compelling evidence exists to indicate that it adequately prevents&#xA;  symptoms or diseases, thus the risk-benefit is not evidently favorable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-07-29T03:39:37.583" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T12:07:17.647" Title="Is chiropractic treatment safe and effective?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-05-10T03:34:39.340" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5470" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5485" CreationDate="2011-07-29T03:49:13.390" Score="15" ViewCount="1437" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently seen some commotion online about &quot;smart meters,&quot; electronic power consumption meters that are replacing the mechanical meters in some areas. My understanding is that these meters have radio transmitters that broadcast each household's power consumption (I'm not sure where these transmissions are received) once or several times per day (the effectiveness of this is &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5455/is-reading-household-power-meters-frequently-helpful-for-utility-companies&quot;&gt;discussed in this question&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example of such commotion is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JNFr_j6kdI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this YouTube video&lt;/a&gt;, which claims that smart meters are an invasion of privacy, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They can see when you turn appliances on and off.&lt;/strong&gt; This seems to imply that smart meters transmit real-time data. I would think that they would transmit a running total at intervals, rather than the power consumption on a per-minute or per-hour basis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They can measure the power consumption of individual appliances.&lt;/strong&gt; I'm extremely skeptical of this. Electricity just doesn't work that way. If the point above is true, then at best they could guess at what kind of appliance is on &lt;em&gt;just after&lt;/em&gt; it was turned on, based on the increase of consumption. But that wouldn't be accurate at all.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They record your personal living patterns.&lt;/strong&gt; This follows from the other two, and is the ultimate conclusion that smart meters will be used as surveillance devices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the breadth of information visible to a smart meter anywhere near this level of accuracy? It defies my understanding of how electricity works in a home, but that understanding is far from complete. From what I've seen, the people spreading this warning are unusually calm and well spoken, and it's causing me to second guess myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T03:28:41.557" Title="Are electronic power consumption &quot;smart meters&quot; an invasion of privacy?" Tags="|electromagnetism|surveillance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5471" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5475" CreationDate="2011-07-29T03:59:15.510" Score="2" ViewCount="593" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that common cigarette brands add additives to the tobacco in cigarettes (not in the filter) and I've heard many people use this as an excuse that it is safer to grow and roll your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do most major tobacco companies add a bunch of extra ingredients to cigarettes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quitsmokingsupport.com/whatsinit.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are more than 4,000 ingredients in a cigarette other than&#xA;  tobacco. Common additives include yeast, wine, caffeine, beeswax and&#xA;  chocolate. Here are some other ingredients:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ammonia: Household cleaner&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Angelica root extract: Known to cause cancer in animals&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Arsenic: Used in rat poisons&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Benzene: Used in making dyes, synthetic rubber&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Butane: Gas; used in lighter fluid&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Carbon monoxide: Poisonous gas&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cadmium: Used in batteries&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cyanide: Deadly poison&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;DDT: A banned insecticide&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ethyl Furoate: Causes liver damage in animals&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lead: Poisonous in high doses&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Formaldehiyde: Used to preserve dead specimens&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Methoprene: Insecticide&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Megastigmatrienone: Chemical naturally found in grapefruit juice&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maltitol: Sweetener for diabetics&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Napthalene: Ingredient in mothballs&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Methyl isocyanate: Its accidental release killed 2000 people in&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Bhopal, India in 1984&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Polonium: Cancer-causing radioactive element&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-29T06:54:07.357" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T07:22:47.897" Title="Common additives to cigarettes" Tags="|smoking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5431" CreationDate="2011-07-29T04:24:36.260" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Radio carbon dating is sometimes performed on relics; but it isn't typical because, well, they're relics - and radio carbon dating destroys part of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, radio-carbon dating was performed on the Shroud of Turin, believed to be the burial cloth of Jesus Christ, several decades ago.  The testing done on the Shroud dated it to some time in the Middle Ages, which if correct would mean the cloth isn't the burial cloth of Jesus. But the results of the test are highly questionable and by no means conclusive, as Lagerbaer seems to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The procedure was basically invalid because all of the samples were taken from the same section of the Shroud when they should have been from different parts.  More importantly, that section of the Shroud had been repaired in modern times and the samples were very likely contaminated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Shroud has been damaged over the centuries by fires, etc. and has been repaired many times.  Many, but not all of these repairs have been documented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information about the carbon dating performed on the Shroud, see here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/chronology.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.shroud.com/pdfs/chronology.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shroud.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.shroud.com&lt;/a&gt; has a large collection of scientific articles about the Shroud, including high-resolution photos of it, for those who are interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4229" LastEditorUserId="4229" LastEditDate="2011-07-29T05:15:13.363" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T05:15:13.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5459" CreationDate="2011-07-29T05:05:31.310" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definite scam!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Save up to 50% on your electric bill?   Because of a device plugged into any outlet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Uh, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's PG&amp;amp;E with a warning about &amp;quot;black box&amp;quot; energy savers: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pge.com/includes/docs/pdfs/about/news/outagestatus/powerquality/black_box.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Before You Buy a Black Box&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last few years I've noticed a huge &amp;quot;surge&amp;quot; :) in scam &amp;quot;electricity saver&amp;quot; products.  Some are PFC capacitors, some are plans for &amp;quot;free energy&amp;quot; devices, some are ripoffs involving solar panels. Yours is just one of many, although this is the first time I've seen a claim that a surge protector can affect your KWH meter.  And if it's actually a voltage regulator, then it needs to be wired into your fusebox panel. A regulator needs a series connection and cannot work by being plugged into an outlet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar topic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The old standby scam is to sell capacitors to homeowners, claiming that the AC motors in their appliances need correct power-factor. The scammers can get away with this because PFC power-factor correcting does actually save energy. Unfortunately the saved energy was all in the utility company power lines, not inside the home. The electric company will love you if you spend hundreds of bucks on a PFC capacitor. Their power lines run slightly cooler, and their generators use slightly less fuel. The higher current all remains between the capacitor and your various motors, so electric company is happy. But the scam part relies on customer ignorance: your KWH meter cannot detect the change. That's part of its design. Power-factor correction has zero effect on your KWH meter, so it won't actually save you a dime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you buy a fake &amp;quot;Power Saver,&amp;quot; probably you'll see your electric bill actually go down. This is an interesting psychological effect: spending that much money makes you become waste-conscious about the electric utility. You'll start turning off lights, taking shorter showers, running dishwashers only when full. Doing all sorts of things to help reduce the bills. When it actually works, should we give credit to the magic scam box?  Send testimonials to the advertisers? Instead try installing the device in someone elses' home, then don't tell them about it. Will it still work?  Better yet, have a 3rd party do it without telling anyone which house has the device. To stop everyone from unconsciously helping it along, the only fair test is a double-blind experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, actually the fairest test is to use high-precision real-wattage recorder to measure home energy consumption with the device attached and with it removed. We all have one of these: the electric meter outside the house. Run your electric clothes dryer, hook up the &amp;quot;power saver&amp;quot; device, then count the rotations of the meter disk for exactly one minute. Then unplug the device and count them for another minute. Repeat a few times.  Can you see any difference? If so, is it large enough to justify the purchase price of the device?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &amp;quot;power saver&amp;quot; does actually work. These are the NASA &amp;quot;Nola&amp;quot; devices used to control induction motors (for example, refrigerator motor). They remain controversial because they're mostly used industrially, and the energy savings is probably too small for any homeowner to justify buying the expensive controller. If someone tries to sell you one, they're probably lying about the expected amount of energy savings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4231" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-10-20T02:56:17.497" LastActivityDate="2022-10-20T02:56:17.497" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5467" CreationDate="2011-07-29T07:15:20.030" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question &quot;is chiropractic treatment effective?&quot; is quite wide, as this type of treatment is proposed for several different illnesses, from neck or back pain to headache even to gastrointestinal problems.&#xA;Furthermore, as for many &lt;em&gt;alternative treatments&lt;/em&gt;, they are often proposed by a wide variety of persons, from people with medical degrees (more or less related to the field), to people who attended chiropractic colleges, to charlatans... and obviously the results (and the side effects) vary accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you cited two Wikipedia links that analyze negative effects of this type of treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2009 study is a bit misinterpreted in Wikipedia as it refers to spinal injuries in &lt;em&gt;students of a chiropractic college&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19243726&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prevalence of musculoskeletal injuries sustained by students while attending a chiropractic college.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although we cannot conclude much about the efficacy of the treatment from this study (as it was administered by students), it clearly proves the point that an uncompetent chiropracter can harm his/her patient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the conclusions of the paper (parts in italics are my additions)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study shows that some students who enroll in a chiropractic college with preexisting injuries can have these injuries exacerbated during training. A recognizable amount of new incidences are possible as a result of the adjustments they administer or receive from other students. The most prevalent injuries from receiving adjustments occur to N/S [&lt;em&gt;neck-shoulder&lt;/em&gt;], whereas those due to administering adjustment occur to H/W [&lt;em&gt;hand-wrist&lt;/em&gt;]. Only a few of the injuries sustained in college were severe to the extent of inhibiting the performances of normal daily work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other severe side effects of chiropractic treatments have also been reported&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21275361&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Acute spinal epidural haematoma causing cord compression after chiropractic neck manipulation: an under-recognised serious hazard?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20959946&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bilateral vertebral artery dissection after chiropractic maneuver.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12692699&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Simultaneous bilateral internal carotid and vertebral artery dissection following chiropractic manipulation: case report and review of the literature.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these are very serious side effects, which are clearly not acceptable in a risk-benefit balance for treating neck-ache or similar problems. &#xA;We should, however, also consider that -although very serious- these side effects are generally rare. As the first of these three papers concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Spinal manipulation is a treatment performed by chiropractors, some orthopaedic surgeons and general practitioners in the UK. It is clear that the rarity of traumatic spinal epidural haematoma makes it difficult to establish cause-and-effect connections though the potential serious risks of high-spinal manipulations, however small and including vertebral artery dissection, should be communicated and discussed during consenting of patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar conclusion was drawn by a 2003 literature meta-analysis, which was inconclusive regarding artery dissection:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12801430&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Association of internal carotid artery dissection and chiropractic manipulation.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The medical literature does not support a clear causal relationship between CMT and ICAD. Reported cases are exceedingly scarce, and none support clear cause and effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthremore, a 2005 literature meta-analysis states that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perceived causation of reported cases of cervical artery dissection is more frequently attributed to chiropractic manipulative therapy procedures than to motor vehicle collision related injuries, even though the comparative biomechanical evidence makes such causation unlikely. The direct evidence suggests that the healthy vertebral artery is not at risk from properly performed chiropractic manipulative procedures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15726036&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cervical artery dissection. A comparison of highly dynamic mechanisms: manipulation versus motor vehicle collision&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another recent (2011) study showed minimal effects on chest deformation using a dummy as a test subject&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21640252&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An experimental study of chest compression during chiropractic manipulation of the thoracic spine using an anthropomorphic test device.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, do these treatment have any efficacy that can justify the risk of these (albeit rare) side effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2013 clinical trial (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24026159&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Short-term usual chiropractic care for spinal pain: a randomized controlled trial.&lt;/a&gt;) reports that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Short-term chiropractic treatment was superior to sham; however, treatment effects were not clinically important. Awareness of treatment assignment and clinically important reductions in pain were associated with chiropractic treatment satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same authors report that (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23778372&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Outcomes of usual chiropractic. The OUCH randomized controlled trial of adverse events.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A substantial proportion of adverse events after chiropractic treatment may result from natural history variation and nonspecific effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15247576&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;A Cochrane review of manipulation and mobilization for mechanical neck disorders.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mobilization and/or manipulation when used with exercise are beneficial for persistent mechanical neck disorders with or without headache. Done alone, manipulation and/or mobilization were not beneficial; when compared to one another, neither was superior. There was insufficient evidence available to draw conclusions for neck disorder with radicular findings. Factorial design would help determine the active agent(s) within a treatment mix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding gastrointestinal problems the efficacy of chiropractic treatment could not be proven&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21258667&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chiropractic treatment for gastrointestinal problems: a systematic review of clinical trials.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only two trials were found--one was a pilot study, and the other had reached a positive conclusion; however, both had serious methodological flaws. There is no supportive evidence that chiropractic is an effective treatment for gastrointestinal disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the 2010 study linked by Wikipedia, which analyzes deaths after chiropractic treatment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20642715&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Deaths after chiropractic: a review of published cases.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the article&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Twenty six fatalities were published in the medical literature and many more might have remained unpublished. The alleged pathology usually was a vascular accident involving the dissection of a vertebral artery&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and (bold is mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In conclusion, numerous deaths have been associated with chiropractic neck manipulations. There are reasons to suspect that under-reporting is substantial and reliable incidence figures do not exist. &lt;strong&gt;The risks of chiropractic neck manipulations by far outweigh their benefits&lt;/strong&gt;. Healthcare professionals should advise the public accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2016-03-22T12:07:17.647" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T12:07:17.647" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5471" CreationDate="2011-07-29T07:17:06.553" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, tobacco companies add additives to cigarettes, and those additives have an effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pharmacological and Chemical Effects of Cigarette Additives&lt;/em&gt;, Michael Rabinoff, Nicholas Caskey,  Anthony Rissling, and Candice Park&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;American Journal of Public Health, November 2007, Vol 97, No. 11&#xA;DOI: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/reprint/AJPH.2005.078014v2&quot;&gt;10.2105/AJPH.2005.078014&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We investigated tobacco industry&#xA;  documents and other&#xA;  sources for evidence of possible&#xA;  pharmacological and chemical&#xA;  effects of tobacco additives.&#xA;  Our findings indicated that&#xA;  more than 100 of 599 documented&#xA;  cigarette additives have&#xA;  pharmacological actions that&#xA;  camouflage the odor of environmental&#xA;  tobacco smoke emitted&#xA;  from cigarettes, enhance or&#xA;  maintain nicotine delivery,&#xA;  could increase the addictiveness&#xA;  of cigarettes, and mask&#xA;  symptoms and illnesses associated&#xA;  with smoking behaviors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information, here is a &lt;strong&gt;non&lt;/strong&gt; peer-reviewed study, but the results of a in-depth literature review of the additives that might be found in cigarettes and the data about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tobacco-information.bhp.doh.gov.tw/toxicfolder/009.%E5%88%A9%E9%81%94%E8%A1%8C/012.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Effects of Ingredients on Cigarette Smoke Composition and Biological Activity: A Literature Overview&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, &#xA;Thilo Paschke, Gerhard Scherer and Wolf-Dieter Heller,  Beiträge zur Tabakforschung International/Contributions to Tobacco Research Volume 20, 3 August 2002&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The format of this work is&#xA;  that of an uncommented reference paper rather than a critical&#xA;  scientific review. Therefore, the mention of an ingredient&#xA;  in this survey does not imply that it is used by the&#xA;  tobacco industry or that it is covered by any existing national&#xA;  regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nowadays, different forms of regulations and disclosures&#xA;  exist in several countries of the European Union (e.g.,&#xA;  France, the United Kingdom and Germany) as well as in&#xA;  the United States (list of 599 ingredients [TR Staff Report,&#xA;  1994]), which control the use of ingredients for the manufacture&#xA;  of tobacco products&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;None of this proves that it is safer to roll your own.&lt;/strong&gt; Even if it is saf&lt;em&gt;er&lt;/em&gt;, it is not &lt;strong&gt;safe&lt;/strong&gt;. (It is 2011, not 1967, so I don't think I need to reference this claim!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-29T07:22:47.897" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T07:22:47.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5480" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5483" CreationDate="2011-07-29T14:06:17.647" Score="30" ViewCount="10006" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are stories like &lt;a href=&quot;http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/07/29/apple-now-has-more-cash-than-the-u-s-government/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; floating in the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apple is now more liquid than the United States government, the Financial Post reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the government struggles to resolve the debt ceiling debate, the operating balance in Washington is at US$73.768 billion and falling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, Apple has US$75.876 billion – and that number isn’t going anywhere but up as the company continues to break records and make its competitors look bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Apple really have more money than the U.S. government?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the story misleading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T11:48:55.547" Title="Does Apple have more cash reserves than the U.S. government?" Tags="|united-states|finance|apple-inc|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5458" CreationDate="2011-07-29T14:09:48.197" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't going to be a very satisfying answer because I don't think there have been any reuptable studies on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claims like this fall under the outdated (and &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/hop/2/4/251/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;largely debunked&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;) &quot;disciplines&quot; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiognomy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;physiognomy&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropometry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;anthropometry&lt;/a&gt; (also related to the more well-known pseudo-science of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;phrenology&lt;/a&gt;).  It seems that there hasn't been much recent study on this subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;* A free pre-print draft of this paper is available from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psych.lancs.ac.uk/people/alan-collins&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the author's website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check out the book (published in 1900) titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=QToZAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;ots=NjbKSg064u&amp;amp;dq=physiognomy%20ear%20intelligence&amp;amp;lr&amp;amp;pg=PR3#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=physiognomy%20ear%20intelligence&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Human Ear&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Miriam Anne Ellis.  This 200+ page tome of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eugenically&lt;/a&gt; inspired  silliness actually claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Auribus est longis aliquantum, stultus et amplis, est vafer est multæ garrulitatis homo.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if the author wrote this herself or if it is a quote, however, the translation the author provides is a bit off, so I am guessing that she is actually quoting an old adage.  I haven't been able to find any other mentions of this quote, though.  Here is my (hopefully more accurate) translation from the Latin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Men with moderately long ears are eminently foolish, sly, and very talkative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Chinese, on the other hand, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2350328/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;believe that long ears predict longevity and thick ears predict great wealth&lt;/a&gt;.  However, that may actually be a source of the claim, since it is generally accepted that wisdom increases with age (thereby, old people with larger ears are more wise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the only relevant recent study I could find is one that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2350328/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;positively correlates ear length with age in Japanese men&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/23/oddthinking&quot;&gt;Oddthinking&lt;/a&gt; also found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167494397000101&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a similar study&lt;/a&gt; in the comments above. Therefore, people's ears do continuously become longer/larger as one ages.  If we equate age with &quot;wisdom&quot;, then ear length/size should be a good predictor of that.  Older people are also more likely to be wealthy than young people (since they have had more time to amass a fortune).  I couldn't find any studies supporting the claim that wealthy people are perceived to be more intelligent by virtue of their financial success, however, I think that is a reasonable thing to assume.  Under that assumption, large ears should also be positively correlated to &lt;em&gt;perceived&lt;/em&gt; intelligence (although not necessarily &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; intelligence, since &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289607000219&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;there is actually no correlation between IQ and wealth&lt;/a&gt;).  There is, however, an actual correlation between IQ and income (&lt;em&gt;cf.&lt;/em&gt; the previous link).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for studies that actually compare an intelligence metric like IQ to ear size, I haven't been able to find any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T21:57:48.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5482" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5488" CreationDate="2011-07-29T14:36:12.927" Score="3" ViewCount="416" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibraltar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gilbraltar&lt;/a&gt; a few years ago, several locals of both Spain and Gibraltar commented on the fact that the peninsula has a weather system distinct from the areas around it, and that the peninsula had an effect on the weather patterns of the surrounding areas (i.e. Spain &amp;amp; north-west Africa).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RKsyw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Gibraltar in twilight&quot;&gt; (licensed under the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/es/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;licencia de Creative Commons (“attribution”)&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumer.es/web/es/medio_ambiente/fotografias/2006/07/14/153891.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.consumer.es/web/es/medio_ambiente/fotografias/2006/07/14/153891.php&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/J1fxM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; (licensed under the &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed.es_AR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Creative Commons non-commercial attribution, no derivatives&lt;/a&gt; source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.viajeros.com/fotos/gibraltar-puerta-de-europa/78590&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.viajeros.com/fotos/gibraltar-puerta-de-europa/78590&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the shape and size of Gibraltar the assertion by the locals seems plausible. Is there a meteorological phenomenon surrounding this mountain that affects the weather of Spain or North-west Africa?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this big 'ol rock, cast as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillars_of_Hercules&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pillar of Hercules&lt;/a&gt;, change the weather around it? It's a big rock, no doubt. But is it &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; big?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="1792" LastEditDate="2011-07-30T01:22:24.423" LastActivityDate="2011-07-30T01:22:24.423" Title="Does Gilbraltar affect the weather in its climatological/meteorological neighbourhood?" Tags="|weather|meteorology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5480" CreationDate="2011-07-29T14:47:59.697" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is just a case of total misunderstanding of terms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://business.financialpost.com/2011/07/28/u-s-balance-now-less-than-apple-cash/&quot;&gt;Original claim&lt;/a&gt; was that Apple has more cash, than &lt;strong&gt;operating balance&lt;/strong&gt; of US federal government. Operating balance means revenues minus liabilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course, the numbers aren’t directly comparable; the government’s number represents how much financial headroom it has before bumping up against an arbitrary debt ceiling, while Apple’s cash reserve represents the pile of money the Cupertino&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Operating balance is something completely different than reserves. As for reserves, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h41/current/h41.htm&quot;&gt;current assets of Federal Reserve are worth &lt;strong&gt;$2,907,837 million&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/a&gt; which is almost 40 times more than Apple's reserves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-07-29T14:56:30.070" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T14:56:30.070" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5484" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5489" CreationDate="2011-07-29T15:33:03.007" Score="41" ViewCount="12754" Body="&lt;p&gt;Claim:&#xA;Drinking distilled water can actually remove needed minerals from the body, due the lack of minerals in the water, and therefore do damage to the body. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a hard time accepting this due to amount of minerals that can be found in the body. However, I know that you can drown the body by drinking to much water and that body does use water to remove waste from it cells. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4245" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T20:38:56.923" LastActivityDate="2020-01-17T18:51:29.403" Title="Does drinking distilled water remove needed minerals from your body?" Tags="|nutrition|water|minerals|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5470" CreationDate="2011-07-29T16:05:04.637" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/privacy-on-the-smart-grid&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IEEE Spectrum magazine has discussed this issue in the past&lt;/a&gt;. Apparently it is clear from the data generated by these meters that certain appliances can be easily distinguished from others with reasonable accuracy and certainty. They reference a &lt;a href=&quot;http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/PubsNISTIRs.html#NIST-IR-7628&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study from the NIST&lt;/a&gt; which illustrates&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;frequent meter readings may provide a detailed timeline of activities occurring inside a metered location and could lead to  knowledge about specific equipment usage&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And they use this graph to demonstrate:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sSRml.png&quot; alt=&quot;NISTIR 7628 Volume 2 Figure 5-1: Power Usage to Personal Activity Mapping&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically because they sample the total energy flow at a fairly high frequency, they can estimate which devices are being used at which times based on the characteristics of those devices, which for a utility company should be easy to determine. It isn't perfect, but it's accurate enough especially if it can be correlated with smart meters for water, etc, because then they can map water usage to dishwashers, etc, and more accurately determine which electrical loads correspond to which major appliances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2443" LastEditorUserId="2443" LastEditDate="2011-07-31T02:03:42.753" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T02:03:42.753" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5482" CreationDate="2011-07-29T16:36:14.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Only a partial answer, that will hopefully be helpful to someone else:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://imedea.uib-csic.es/proyecto/sealevel/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Workshop on “Unresolved issues in Mediterranean Sea Level”&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Palma de Mallorca, 30th May – 1st June 2011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://imedea.uib-csic.es/proyecto/sealevel/session_3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Session 3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mass changes in the nearby Atlantic or winds around Gibraltar can&#xA;  induce sea level changes in the whole basin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not peer-reviewed, and it is about ocean currents, not atmospheric conditions, which I would have though would be closely related but, it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recent efforts have been devoted to couple ocean and atmospheric models. However, we&#xA;  feel that there is still a lack of clear conclusions about the improvements lead by coupled&#xA;  models in front of forced models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a strong wind weather pattern around Gibraltar called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viento_de_Levante&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Viento de Levante&lt;/a&gt;, which was researched in 1952, but I can't see the actual paper :-(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-29T16:59:07.580" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T16:59:07.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5484" CreationDate="2011-07-29T16:45:17.647" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did some digging: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purified_water#Health_effects_of_drinking_purified_water&quot;&gt;the Wikipedia article on water purification&lt;/a&gt; linked to a study by the WHO that discusses the risks of drinking demineralised water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been adequately demonstrated that consuming water of low mineral content has a&#xA;  negative effect on homeostasis mechanisms, compromising the mineral and water metabolism in&#xA;  the body&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that it interferes with the body's attempts to keep the pH and mineral composition of internal organs constant, which is a more exact way of saying that it removes minerals from your body. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It reports some of the effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results of experiments in human volunteers evaluated by researchers for the WHO report are in agreement with those in animal experiments and suggest the basic mechanism of the&#xA;  effects of water low in TDS (e.g. &amp;lt; 100 mg/L) on water and mineral homeostasis. Low-mineral&#xA;  water markedly: 1.) increased diuresis (almost by 20%, on average), body water volume, and&#xA;  serum sodium concentrations, 2.) decreased serum potassium concentration, and 3.) increased the&#xA;  elimination of sodium, potassium, chloride, calcium and magnesium ions from the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report warns of other indirect downsides of demineralised water, including corrosion of pipes, and reduction of minerals from food cooked with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/nutrientschap12.pdf&quot;&gt;Health Risks From Drinking Demineralised Water&lt;/a&gt;, Frantisek Kozisek, Water safety plan manual: Step-by-step risk management for drinking-water suppliers, 2009, Chapter 12.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4246" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-29T18:12:18.023" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T18:12:18.023" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5491" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5501" CreationDate="2011-07-29T19:02:26.410" Score="6" ViewCount="721" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/28/space-jupiter-idUSN1E76Q1T220110728&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a news article&lt;/a&gt; about a probe headed out to Jupiter. At the end of the article, it mentions a fear of &quot;contaminating&quot; the moons if it does not end it's life on Jupiter itself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Juno's electronic heart is protected in a vault of titanium, but it too will fall to the harsh Jovian radiation environment after about a year. Juno's last move will be to dive into the planet's atmosphere to avoid any chance of contaminating Jupiter's potentially life-bearing moons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really possible that life - at least as we have so far observed it - to exist in this solar system so far away from the sun?  Could a life-supporting atmosphere provide ample protection from solar radiation as well as temperature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1269" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:41:47.287" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:41:47.287" Title="Could the moons of Jupiter support life?" Tags="|biology|astronomy|planetology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5499" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5505" CreationDate="2011-07-29T22:13:39.070" Score="9" ViewCount="7234" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it several times as &quot;common wisdom&quot; that killing mosquitoes that bite you releases some chemicals that could be sensed by their kin from great distance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, slapping mosquitoes would attract more mosquitoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4262" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T20:10:41.543" LastActivityDate="2017-08-22T21:59:21.353" Title="Does slapping biting mosquitoes attract more mosquitoes?" Tags="|entomology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5499" CreationDate="2011-07-29T22:26:36.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Glancing at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allmosquitos.com/what-attracts-mosquitos/what-attracts-mosquitoes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.allmosquitos.com/what-attracts-mosquitos/what-attracts-mosquitoes.html&lt;/a&gt; I can find no evidence that anything released by a mosquito would attract others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However some people are substantially more attractive to mosquitoes than others.  They would be more likely to want to slap mosquitoes (because they are being attacked) and will then continue to be attacked.  That could lead to the observations behind your common wisdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally I personally am careful about slapping mosquitoes that have already started feeding because I'm afraid that I'll push more of their saliva &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4263" LastActivityDate="2011-07-29T22:26:36.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5491" CreationDate="2011-07-29T22:30:51.163" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible, and the prime candidate where it might have happened is Europa.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0323_050323_jupitereuropa.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0323_050323_jupitereuropa.html&lt;/a&gt; for more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rothschild studies the origins of life on Earth and other planets. She's intrigued by Europa because it appears to contain likely key ingredients for life—water, an energy source, organic compounds, and billions of years of development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken together, these ingredients are sufficient to support life, scientists say. To answer the question of whether life actually exists on Europa, however, requires further exploration with orbiters and landers like those currently exploring Mars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4263" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-30T04:25:52.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5049" CreationDate="2011-07-30T02:43:42.900" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it's true that the Warren Commission was run in a somewhat hasty manner, I see no reason to doubt its conclusion after reading through the research done since then. Both sides are absolutely obsessive about it, so there is a lot of confusing material to go through. Probably the clearest and most through is &lt;a href=&quot;http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/home.htm&quot;&gt;the JFK assassination website of John McAdams&lt;/a&gt;, a professor of political science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the doubts come from people finding it hard to believe that only one person fired the shot, based on the details of the crime scene. A rather infamous simulation of the assination, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JFK%3a_Reloaded&quot;&gt;JFK: Reloaded&lt;/a&gt;, shows that all of the known details, when put together, are absolutely possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument I find most convincing is to compare the kinds of motive ascribed to the shooters in each instance. Conspiracy theorists are all over the map when describing why JFK was killed, from getting killed by businessmen because he was working to take apart the Federal Reserve to some kind of Mob hit (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_conspiracy_theories&quot;&gt;Wikipedia goes over all of them&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;a href=&quot;http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/oswald.htm&quot;&gt;Lee Harvey Oswald's story is more clear&lt;/a&gt;. He was a communist who aspired to be a spy for either the Soviets or Cuba, but neither country wanted anything to do with him. Deeply depressed, he plans to assassinate the president, something that was essentially suicide. While there is hardly a large sample size, depression is a common trait when you look at other lone-nut assassins (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Byck&quot;&gt;Samuel Byck&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_White&quot;&gt;Dan White&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definitive answer here isn't &quot;I don't know&quot;, it's &quot;The Warren Commission was right&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4246" LastActivityDate="2011-07-30T02:43:42.900" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5532" CreationDate="2011-07-30T03:29:31.243" Score="7" ViewCount="18376" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if any research has been done on whether human beings tend to turn left or right more often (say when attempting to traverse a virtual maze.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a subquestion that need not necessarily be answered I am curious whether physiological or cultural factors (I was thinking handedness and whether the subjects first language was written right-to-left or left-to-right) might possibly have some influence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like I have heard something about this, and even seem to remember that people tended to turn right more often than not. My primary question is whether this is apocryphal or have there actually been scientific studies on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="187" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-03T17:50:13.967" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T12:42:05.033" Title="Do people intuitively turn a particular direction?" Tags="|psychology|marketing|behavior|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5499" CreationDate="2011-07-30T10:09:11.190" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As btilly noted, none of the references on how to not attract/repel mosquitos ever mentions &amp;quot;not slapping them&amp;quot; or any chemicals released from swatting one as attractant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mosquito myth might be a mutation of an actual true fact - slapping at &lt;strong&gt;bees&lt;/strong&gt; does, in fact, raise the risk of being attacked by the rest of the hive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5210/does-swatting-killing-a-bee-cause-the-hive-to-attack&quot;&gt;Does swatting/killing a bee cause the hive to attack?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An unrelated small but apparently non-zero risk about slapping at a mosquito is a possibility of infection (this conclusion seems to be somewhat disputed as per BBC article but the original article was published in New England Journal of Medicine so it is legit):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3906079.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3906079.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they concluded that the woman, who died in 2002, probably developed the infection after smearing the insect into a bite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The case has prompted doctors at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York to warn against swatting mosquitoes against the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I think if a mosquito was in mid-bite, it would be wiser to flick the mosquito off rather than squashing it,&amp;quot; said Christina Coyle, one of the authors of the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-30T10:27:06.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5506" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5638" CreationDate="2011-07-29T15:15:41.223" Score="17" ViewCount="4535" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep seeing these claims, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buybestairpurifiersaustralia.com.au/airqualityguide.html&quot;&gt;for example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The indoor air quality is worse than the outdoor air, even in the most industrialised cities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but I'd believe that air pollution levels are highly variable based on what type of building you're in&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is indoor air pollution really higher than outdoor air pollution? Are there ways to measure it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="727" OwnerDisplayName="InquilineKea" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-07-30T13:59:13.183" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T21:40:34.287" Title="Is indoor air pollution higher than outdoor air pollution?" Tags="|environment|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5510" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5513" CreationDate="2011-07-30T15:19:26.693" Score="21" ViewCount="3293" Body="&lt;p&gt;Or ten past ten. The usual answer is that it resembles a smile and increases sales but it sounds to me more like an urban myth that has got out of hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the truth? Is there really any &lt;strong&gt;evidence&lt;/strong&gt; that setting clocks and watches to this time encourages sales? Or is everyone doing this simply because everyone else is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm looking for evidence / proof, e.g. a scientific study or real marketing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="235" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2013-01-28T10:17:06.133" LastActivityDate="2023-08-28T05:54:06.863" Title="Why are watches in jewellery adverts set to ten to two?" Tags="|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5510" CreationDate="2011-07-30T16:47:04.200" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZXKB1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Watches&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Mens-Watches/b/ref=wa_leftnav_abb_v2_dept_mens?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;node=404124011&amp;amp;pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&amp;amp;pf_rd_s=left-4&amp;amp;pf_rd_r=1CXQDPQV28STY3PY6KGR&amp;amp;pf_rd_t=101&amp;amp;pf_rd_p=1310060522&amp;amp;pf_rd_i=377110011&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/business/media/28adco.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The New York Times&lt;/a&gt; (2008):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;the explanation turns out to be a simple matter of aesthetics.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a recent check of the 100 top-selling men’s dress watches on&#xA;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Amazon.com&lt;/em&gt; &amp;quot;, which included models from 20 brands, all but three&#xA;watches were set to 10:10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Because brand names generally are centered on the upper half of a&#xA;watch, hands positioned at 10 and 2 “&lt;em&gt;frame the brand and logo&lt;/em&gt;,”&lt;/strong&gt; said&#xA;Andrew Block, executive vice president at &lt;strong&gt;Tourneau&lt;/strong&gt;, the watch&#xA;retailer, which has 51 stores worldwide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“&lt;em&gt;It’s almost like an&#xA;unwritten rule that everyone understands to photograph a watch a&#xA;10:10&lt;/em&gt;.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It has the aesthetic of the smiley face to be 10 past 10, so we try&#xA;whenever possible to opt for that&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;,” Susanne Hurni, head of &lt;strong&gt;Ulysse&#xA;Nardin&lt;/strong&gt;’s advertising and marketing, said from the company headquarters&#xA;in Le Locle, Switzerland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Klaus Peter Mager, a spokesman for &lt;strong&gt;Swatch&lt;/strong&gt;, said his 25-year-old&#xA;company, based in Biel, Switzerland, has always photographed watches&#xA;primarily at 10:10, because “&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;they’re smiling instead of a sad man’s&#xA;face.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Timex&lt;/strong&gt; has an official time, 10:09:36, at which every watch — even digital models — is photographed for marketing purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At Rolex, watches are always photographed at 10:10:31&lt;/strong&gt;, and for models&#xA;that list the day of the week and calendar day, it is always Monday&#xA;the 28th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“&lt;em&gt;In advertising we would never expect someone to look at a watch and&#xA;say, ‘The watch is smiling,’ but it’s just a feeling you get,&lt;/em&gt; ” said&#xA;Ms. Kaplan Thaler, co-author, with Robin Koval, of “&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0385518927&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Power of&#xA;Nice&lt;/a&gt;,” which features a big smile on its cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The watch theme, she&#xA;added, is typical of “&lt;em&gt;subconscious cues that are used in print ads.&lt;/em&gt; ”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/business/market/clockhands.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; debunks the myth that the 10:10 position is a tribute to John F. Kennedy's death.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-30T16:54:26.660" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5514" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-30T21:14:53.800" Score="8" ViewCount="2123" Body="&lt;p&gt;Andrew Berwick (synonym for Anders Breivik, who committed the Oslo massacre in 2011) writes in his manifesto &quot;A European declaration of independence&quot; on page 39:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Barbary pirates ravaged the coast of&#xA;  England up till the 1830s carting off coastal villages into slavery and at even later dates&#xA;  on the west coast of Ireland and Iceland. And this was at the height of the British&#xA;  Empire. More than 1,5 million Europeans have been enslaved since the first Jihadi&#xA;  invasion of Andalusia, most of which were brought to North Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2016-09-29T20:44:18.317" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T20:44:18.317" Title="Did Muslim pirates take Englishmen as slaves in the 19th century?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5518" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5526" CreationDate="2011-07-31T00:07:13.780" Score="8" ViewCount="686" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teclabsinc.com/store/poison-oak-ivy/tecnu&quot;&gt;Tecnu&lt;/a&gt; is a treatment for poison oak. They claim it acts by removing urushiol, the oil that causes the irritation. I saw it recommended in numerous places, e.g., guidebooks, by people who seemed to know what they were talking about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tecnu&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; lists list  a whole bunch of ingredients that basically make it sound like a type of soap, and gives a reference to a nonrandomized study, which may or may not be junk science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when I went to buy some, it said on the label that it was homeopathic. My inclination is to assume that anything labeled homeopathic is basically a placebo. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the ingredients suggested by Wikipedia actually present? Is it common for products that actually contain active ingredients to be labeled as homeopathic? If so, what does &quot;homeopathic&quot; mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does one judge whether it makes sense to spend money on something like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4216" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T23:40:42.443" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T23:40:42.443" Title="Can products labelled &quot;homeopathic&quot; in actuality contain active ingredients?" Tags="|medical-science|homeopathy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5519" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5649" CreationDate="2011-07-31T00:36:11.173" Score="3" ViewCount="5084" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife was just at a grocery store and a checkout girl told her that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calamine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;calamine lotion&lt;/a&gt; (zinc oxide + ferric oxide) had been correlated to kidney failure. My wife was going to get it for my daughter who has some mosquito bites and this checkout girl's statement caused her to get some far more expensive clay stuff instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This just sounded absolutely absurd to me, so I thought I'd ask about it here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my searching, I can't find any references elsewhere to calamine (or caladryl, its other name) and kidney failure. About the only thing I can turn up is a connection between &lt;em&gt;cadmium&lt;/em&gt; and kidney failure, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/982.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this quote from Medicine Plus&lt;/a&gt;, a service of the US National Library of Medicine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note that many zinc products also contain another metal called cadmium. This is because zinc and cadmium are chemically similar and often occur together in nature. Exposure to high levels of cadmium over a long time can lead to kidney failure. The concentration of cadmium in zinc-containing supplements can vary as much as 37-fold. Look for zinc-gluconate products. Zinc gluconate consistently contains the lowest cadmium levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calamine, however, is zinc &lt;em&gt;oxide&lt;/em&gt;, not pure zinc. It's not clear whether or not zinc oxide containing products suffer from the same potential risk of cadmium contamination as those containing pure zinc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinc_toxicity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki on zinc toxicity&lt;/a&gt; stands out to me as supporting this, nor does &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002571.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this page from Medicine Plus&lt;/a&gt; on zinc oxide overdoses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any evidence that calamine lotion (aka caladryl) contains anything that might be positively correlated with kidney failure from moderate topical use?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to qualify &quot;moderate&quot;... I have used it less than 10 times in my entire life. The most was for chicken pox and perhaps some bug bites when I was a kid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's cap usage as topical application to the skin in approximately 2.5cm diameter blots applied to 10 spots on the body for three consecutive days and doing this once per month. Doing an insanely rough calculation, if the application coating thickness is 0.5mm (pretty darn thick, in my opinion), this would be (pi x 2.5cm^2 x 0.05cm) x 10 spots x 3 consecutive days x 12 months = 141.3 cm^3 / &lt;strong&gt;141.3 mL / year applied topically.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T06:42:10.323" Title="Calamine lotion connected with kidney failure?" Tags="|medical-science|zinc|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5514" CreationDate="2011-07-31T01:28:29.783" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure about 19th century, but there's a fairly well publicized accounts in 17th: for example the Sack of Baltimore (in Ireland) in 1631. One source: Des Ekin’s book &quot;The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates&quot;. See also more related 17th century info here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_slaves_01.shtml&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/white_slaves_01.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a feeling that &quot;up to 1830s&quot; was likely Berwick mistaking the last recorded attack on the English (or neighbouring) soil for the 1830s end of the Tripoli based piracy on the sea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One unattributed statement I was able to find was from &quot;The Coming Of The Corsairs&quot; article by David Stanton on Mudeford Sandbank News website (used to reside on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msbnews.co.uk/pirates06.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.msbnews.co.uk/pirates06.htm&lt;/a&gt; and can still be viewed on Wayback Machine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coast raids had become less common in the 18th century (&lt;strong&gt;the last recorded is in 1760&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wasn't able to find an authoritative source on the amount of slaves, the furthest I managed to dig to was the following quote from Joshua London, the author of &quot;Victory at Tripoli&quot; book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contemporary scholars estimate that over 1 million white Christians from France and Italy to Spain, Hol­land, Great Britain, the Americas, and even Iceland were captured between 1500 and 1800.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An independent mention (again without authoritrative sourcing) is from the same &quot;The Coming Of The Corsairs&quot; article by David Stanton mentioned above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The July 2000 Radio 4 documentary “Turks On The Coast” put the number of captives between 1600 and 1800 at over 100,000, &lt;strong&gt;but a more recent estimate by an American historian has put the number of Europeans enslaved 1530-1780 at 1.25 million.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-07-31T02:54:31.880" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T02:54:31.880" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5522" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5524" CreationDate="2011-07-31T06:18:11.227" Score="7" ViewCount="23456" Body="&lt;p&gt;A retailer claims that &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B003BXVZLQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bobble water bottles&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Filter your own bottled water with this unique and patented set of two Bobble Water Bottles. An active carbon filter eliminates toxins and harmful chemicals such as chlorine and other organic contaminants from the water as you sip. The filter itself lasts for about two months, or at least 300 fills&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;removes chlorine and other organic contaminants from your drinking water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;uses active carbon filter technology to remove unwanted contaminants from your drinking water so it meets the standards of NSF International Standard 42, the standard that governs the quality of public and private drinking water. How it works is simple, really: as you sip, the water passes over the carbon filter where the negative ions of the contaminants are drawn to, and captured by, carbon granules. The result? Filtered water free of chlorine and other common organic contaminants--with no resulting plastic water bottle waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="727" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T15:22:53.513" Title="Do the water filters in Bobble water bottles work?" Tags="|water|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5536" CreationDate="2011-07-31T08:39:36.027" Score="20" ViewCount="21354" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like to take showers and baths hot enough to leave my skin pink when I come out. One of my friends has a much lower tolerance to hot water and has said that that soaking in hot water can damage the nerves. What I consider to be warmish is hot to her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How hot does water need to be to damage the skin/nerves, temporarily or permanently? Does it vary significantly depending on the person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any real danger of accidentally having baths that are too hot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3733" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-07-31T14:44:02.120" LastActivityDate="2016-07-28T22:45:11.853" Title="Do hot baths damage skin or nerves?" Tags="|physiology|water|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5522" CreationDate="2011-07-31T08:45:49.950" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;From description sounds like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_filtering&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;standard activated carbon filter&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. No mystery there. There are thousands of these on the market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW. the standard they are referring to is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.org/business/drinking_water_treatment/standards.asp&quot;&gt;NSF/ANSI Standard 42&lt;/a&gt;: Drinking Water Treatment Units - Aesthetic&#xA;  Effects Overview: This standard covers point-of-use (POU) and&#xA;  point-of-entry (POE) systems designed to reduce specific &lt;strong&gt;aesthetic or&#xA;  non-health-related contaminants&lt;/strong&gt; (chlorine, taste and odor, and&#xA;  particulates) that may be present in public or private drinking water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it doesn't serve for actually filtering water, that is not potable in first place.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-07-31T14:53:46.060" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T14:53:46.060" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5518" CreationDate="2011-07-31T14:27:27.630" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The correct answer to this may vary based on country, as regulations differ. In the US it is common to see &quot;homeopathic&quot; applied very broadly to products that, yes, technically are not homeopathic. In my experience most contain at least one ingredient that is at homeopathic dilution, with other ingredients mixed in at non-homeopathic dilutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HOWEVER...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the regulatory environment, the answer to your question as worded (&quot;Can products labelled “homeopathic” actually contain active ingredients?&quot;) actually is YES.  Homeopathic dilutions vary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check the dilution chart at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathic_dilutions#Potency_scales&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on homeopathic dilutions&lt;/a&gt;  It is only when you get to 26X (aka 13C) dilution, that you are guaranteed that there will be NO active ingredient left in the homeopathic product.  Below that, there is still a tiny amount of active ingredient there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my forays into pharmacies looking at what homeopathic stuff is being sold, I see quite a number of products that have 2X or 10X remedies in them. Science tells us those actually do have active ingredients in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T14:27:27.630" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5527" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5542" CreationDate="2011-07-31T15:32:10.780" Score="9" ViewCount="1713" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dave Chase, CEO of Avado, made this claim in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/31/healthcare-disruption-healthcare-providers-repeating-newspaper-industry-mistakes-part-iii/&quot;&gt;TechCrunch article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prevention-focused countries such as Denmark have dramatically lowered the need for hospitals. Once at 155 hospitals, they are at less than a third of that today. I find this easily-known fact is news to healthcare providers I speak with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it quite astonishing, but unfortunately he provides no evidence for the claim in the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has Denmark reduced the number of its hospitals from 155 to less than 51?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, has the demand reduced by a similar amount? (I'm just trying to figure out if there are any catches, like each remaining hospital has grown by a factor of three, waiting lists have blown out, the definition of hospital has changed, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm not asking for proof of the cause of the reduction; even if it turns out the reduction is caused by measures such as banning Facebook on hospital firewalls, I would still be impressed with that health result.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2011-08-01T19:18:31.293" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T23:16:24.943" Title="Did Denmark reduce their need for hospitals by two-thirds?" Tags="|medical-science|denmark|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5530" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5531" CreationDate="2011-07-31T20:28:01.237" Score="31" ViewCount="5034" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read claims, e.g. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forteantimes.com/features/articles/5593/phantom_time.html&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;) and (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/volatile/Niemitz-1997.pdf&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;), that suggest that the early period of the Dark Ages/Middle ages did not exist and that (quoting from (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/volatile/Niemitz-1997.pdf&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;)): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Approximately 300 years has been inserted between 600 AD to 900 AD,&#xA;  either by accident, by misinterpretation of documents or by deliberate&#xA;  falsification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which, among other things, would imply that (quoting from (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/volatile/Niemitz-1997.pdf&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;)):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the Roman emperor Augustus really lived 1700 years ago instead of the&#xA;  conventionally assumed 2000 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has an article that covers this theory under the name of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Phantom Time Hypothesis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, but gives no quantitative measure of how much scientific or historical consensus there is in support or against it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="943" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2011-08-01T03:06:48.147" LastActivityDate="2021-07-27T18:36:48.707" Title="Did the early dark ages exist?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5530" CreationDate="2011-07-31T20:57:52.340" Score="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that the wikipedia page wouldn't really dedicate much to a very fringe belief.  Already they say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arguments against the hypothesis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several dating methods which contradict the theory. Observations in ancient astronomy agree with current observations with no 'phantom time' added; for example the end of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Persian_Wars&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Greco-Persian Wars&lt;/a&gt; was marked by two solar eclipses within a year and a half; the only possible dates are 2 October 480 BCE and 14 February 478 BCE. Dating methods such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrochronology&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dendrochronology&lt;/a&gt; show that the phantom time hypothesis is incorrect, as do records of sightings of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/Phantom%20Time.HTM&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Halley's Comet&lt;/a&gt;.  Furthermore, written records from China's Tang Dynasty, Korea's North South States Period, India's Chalukya and Chola Empires and the Rashidun Caliphate in Asia Minor coincide with the proposed missing years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the University of Wisconsin labels this particular belief under the heading of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pscindx.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science, Pseudoscience, and Irrationalism&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://conspiracytheories.lcc.gatech.edu/index.php/Phantom_Time_Hypothesis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Georgia Tech places this idea in their &amp;quot;Conspiracy Theory&amp;quot; wiki&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?num=100&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;newwindow=1&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;biw=1920&amp;amp;bih=920&amp;amp;q=phantom%20time%20hypothesis%20site:.edu&amp;amp;btnG=Search&amp;amp;oq=phantom%20time%20hypothesis%20site:.edu&amp;amp;aq=f&amp;amp;aqi=&amp;amp;aql=&amp;amp;gs_sm=s&amp;amp;gs_upl=11017l11017l0l13332l1l1l0l0l0l0l270l270l2-1l1l0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A google search for this idea limiting to .edu&lt;/a&gt; sites turns up very little, and quickly starts suggestion sites on phantom limbs (a medical phenomenon).  &lt;strong&gt;I think it would be safe to say that this hypothesis has very little, if any, support from actual historians.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, just because Europe was in a very bad place during those years, doesn't mean the rest of the world was.  This seems like an incredibly cultural-centric viewpoint that has no place in serious academic circles.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/chinaindiahistory.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;India and China were getting along just fine in that time period&lt;/a&gt;, and have the documents to back it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to give you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/Phantom%20Time.HTM&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reading from the University of Wisconsin site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignoring the problems of how somebody fudged the calendar, got everybody in Europe to go along, invented not just Charlemagne but entire royal lineages, and somehow got everyone to keep all their stories straight, one critic of the theory points out a fatal flaw. The theory is hopelessly Eurocentric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Mohammed either died in 614, a decade before he began dictating the Koran and 18 years before the history books say, or he lived until 929 A.D. I think we'd have spotted that already. The Phantom Time Interval completely encompasses the explosive growth of Islam. So one day it's 614 and Mohammed is an obscure visionary trader in Arabia, the next it's 911, and somehow Mohammed's ideas have spread from the Atlantic to Central Asia. And Arabs have suddenly occupied Persia and Egypt, as well as Spain, and they've been in Spain for 200 years. They've also built the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Phantom Time interval closely approximates the Tang Dynasty of China, a high point of Chinese culture and political power. So there's a neat conspiratorial interpretation. The Tang Dynasty is an invention, a classic &amp;quot;golden age&amp;quot; myth. The only thing lacking is some explanation of how someone from medieval Europe convinced the Chinese to create a fake dynasty complete with bogus archives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there are other lines of evidence. We have historical records of every appearance of Halley's Comet since 240 B.C., including Chinese records from 684, 760, and 837. The 837 approach was one of the closest and brightest ever. The Chinese were punctilious astronomical observers and modern orbital calculations match not only the dates but the positions in the sky recorded by the Chinese. 76 years x 4 = 304, not too different from the 297 years of the Phantom Time interval, except that nobody back then knew there was a comet reappearing every 76 years, so why would they have picked that interval?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Chinese also recorded eclipses, planetary conjunctions, and even occultations of planets by the moon. During the the Tang dynasty, total solar eclipses were recorded in 756, 761, 879, and 888 and partial eclipses in 702, 729, 754, and 822. Needless to say, these observations can be checked with modern astronomical software. They really happened. Velikovsky could blow off astronomical observations by appealing to calendrical uncertainties, but there's absolutely no way you can just drop 297 years from the calendar in the last 2000 years and not notice it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically it's a plain loony idea...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T20:57:52.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5504" CreationDate="2011-07-31T21:23:37.937" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only reference with sources I found is this cracked article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_18805_5-ways-stores-use-science-to-trick-you-into-buying-crap.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cracked.com/article_18805_5-ways-stores-use-science-to-trick-you-into-buying-crap.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Entry number 5. Supermarket definitely use it a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also from several years of video gaming experience and observation of playing habits of others the pattern while exploring mazes - turn right till there is no more right turns, then backtrack to last intersection and then take other roads is very common. Maybe it can be found in driving lanes explanation - in most of the world while driving the right turn is very cheap and efficient - so this may imprint patterns in movement.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T21:23:37.937" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-07-31T21:36:56.130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5527" CreationDate="2011-08-01T00:50:09.130" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought I might get someone questioning this data so I asked the source (an American MD who leads one of the major tech/software projects over there but is US-based) who is very knowledgeable of the Denmark success story. Here was his verbatim response... &quot;the average number of days went down, the number of beds went down in percent even more than hospital . This is happening today in Geisinger and Kaiser as well with PCMH [my note: PCMH = patient centered medical home] level care better upstream care, care coordination of chronic disease, lower downstream need for beds. In addition this is impacted by ambulatory surgery and a program like that tried by Advocate in Chicago of hospital at home with remote monitoring and video conference-ing. this is our future for sure much safer, less wasteful but the key is the hospital bed is seen as a failure and is a cost center not a profit center. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in the USA the average length of stay is 6.7 days -- Denmark 3.9. Cost per hospital stay in Denmark $6,700 in the USA $19,456. We have to use dialyze twice as often. but with higher mortality rates and lower life expectance for the disease that require dialyze for example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/Files/Publications/Issue%20Brief/2010/Mar/1379_Protti_widespread_adoption_IT_primary_care_Denmark_intl_ib.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Widespread Adoption of Information Technology in Primary Care Physician Offices in Denmark: A Case Study&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Denis Protti and Ib Johansen, Issues in International Health Policy, March 2010]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an interesting parallel with Deming's work with the auto industry. An American idea gets ignored by Americans so it's taken abroad and implemented with gusto. In Deming's case, Toyota et al embraced it and then it took Detroit 30+ years to catch up. Likewise, the PCMH concept originated in the US in 1967 and Denmark adopted it. 40+ years later, Denmark is spending far less and getting far more and we (Americans) are playing catchup. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Ben Franklin said, &quot;an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.&quot; It certainly applies to medicine. In the US, it's a shame to say that it's more lucrative for a MD to amputate a diabetics leg than it is to care for him in his chronic condition and avoid that from ever needing to happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4280" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-01T06:48:47.470" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T06:48:47.470" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5523" CreationDate="2011-08-01T04:57:19.790" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accuratebuilding.com/services/legal/charts/hot_water_burn_scalding_graph.pdf&quot;&gt;This graph (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; shows how long it takes to scald (burn) someone's skin with water with time on the X axis and temperature on the Y axis. At 100°C scalding is instant. At 60°C it takes closer to five seconds.  If you were being scalded you would know RIGHT AWAY. &lt;a href=&quot;http://uuhsc.utah.edu/burncenter/bypublic.html&quot;&gt;The University of Utah's burn center&lt;/a&gt; recommends that people with small children/elderly/people prone to seizures should turn down their water heaters to 50°C instead of the usual 70°C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nerve damage occurs with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chw.org/display/PPF/DocID/21911/router.asp&quot;&gt;third degree burn.&lt;/a&gt;  A third degree burn involves the destruction of the epidermis and the dermis.  The dermis contains hair follicles, nerves and other structures.  At this point, the burn may not heal unless it receives medical attention.  This type of burn also may requires &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002982.htm&quot;&gt;skin grafts&lt;/a&gt; to heal properly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can happen when someone bathes (especially with soap) in water that is quite hot is that their skin can dry out.  Hot water and soap &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uihealthcare.com/topics/skinhealth/winterskin.html&quot;&gt;can strip the skin of its natural protective oils.&lt;/a&gt;  Dry, cracking skin can also be an entry point for germs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, assuming you aren't actually scalding yourself, the water temperature comes down to preference.  Do just be aware, however, that you may need to use a moisturizer right after taking hot showers, especially in the winter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3926" LastEditorUserId="3926" LastEditDate="2011-08-03T02:30:56.497" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T02:30:56.497" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5537" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-01T05:10:51.217" Score="19" ViewCount="2103" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen in some sources that the Earth's inner temperature is because of nuclear decay, namely uranium and such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it hard to believe since volcanoes aren't know for spewing long half-life materials. I was wondering if this is true or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4290" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-01-28T06:57:27.160" LastActivityDate="2018-10-25T23:55:45.020" Title="Is radioactive decay the cause of the high temperature of the Earth's core?" Tags="|radiation|geology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5539" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5537" CreationDate="2011-08-01T05:54:15.017" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.0284&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Results published&lt;/a&gt; (the link is the the arXiv preprint, but the paper also appeared in Phys. Rev. B) by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://borex.lngs.infn.it/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Borexino collaboration&lt;/a&gt; in 2010 are highly consistent (at the three sigma level) with most of the geothermal power of the Earth being due to radiological decay. These results extend an earlier, lower precision &lt;a href=&quot;http://kamland.stanford.edu/GeoNeutrinos/geoNeutrinos.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;result by the KamLAND collaboration&lt;/a&gt; (the KamLAND geo-neutrino paper appeared in Nature).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Breaking news as of August 2011:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1205.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;KamLAND has published a new paper on Geo-neutrinos in Nature Geoscience&lt;/a&gt;, where they compute the radiothermal power from U-238 and Th-232 at 20 [+8.8/-8.6] TW (out of about 44&amp;nbsp;TW total). Heating due to K-40 is unmeasured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These measurements also put strict upper limits on the power of a theorized natural nuclear reactor deeper down, at the Earth's core (the data are now consistent with zero reactor power).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both Borexino and KamLAND are large anti-neutrino detectors and are directly sensitive to the anti-neutrino emissions of radioactive beta decays such as those found in the uranium and thorium chains (but not &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium-40&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;potassium-40&lt;/a&gt; due to limitation of the detector technology). From this data we can reconstruct the overall radioactive decay activity in the deep Earth, and compute the total power represented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is compared to estimates of the geothermal power obtained from temperature gradient measurements in deep bores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address the OP's concern about &lt;em&gt;&quot;volcanoes [...] spewing long half-life materials&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, the short answer is &quot;they do&quot;, just not concentrations that are a concern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could, for instance look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on radiometric dating&lt;/a&gt; for  survey of decay based dating. You'll note that many of the dating methods work on igneous rocks. Particularly &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium-argon_dating#Applications&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;potassium-argon dating of volcanic deposits has been used for dating hominid fossils and impressions in the Olduvai Gorge&lt;/a&gt; (Wikipedia credits Tattersall (1995), ISBN 0-19-506101-2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; I worked on KamLAND for three years, but I am not named as an author on either of the papers cited herein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="782" LastEditorUserId="46077" LastEditDate="2018-10-22T15:27:08.267" LastActivityDate="2018-10-22T15:27:08.267" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5527" CreationDate="2011-08-01T07:23:14.350" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once at 155 hospitals, they are at less than a third of that today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third of 155 is 51.67 - hence the statement implies that there are 51 or fewer hospitals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia provides &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hospitals_in_Denmark&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a list of hospitals in Denmark&lt;/a&gt;. By my count, there are 89 in the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;89 is more than 51. 89 is 57% of 155. If there really were 155 hospitals at some point (which I haven't confirmed) a more accurate statement would be &quot;they have reduced that by more than a third today.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potential sources of error in this analysis include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I relied somewhat on Wikipedia. I followed up a couple of its sources (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regionh.dk/NR/rdonlyres/16B2E22E-46A0-4F41-915C-D8B37A13751E/0/H%C3%98RINGSVERSION_ForslagtilHospitalsogPsykiatriplan2020_23marts.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;e.g.&lt;/a&gt;), and did some spot-checks to confirm the hospitals still existed, and found no errors. I may easily have missed some that, for example, have since closed down. &lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Thanks to the help of @Darwy (see comments), it seems the Wikipedia site over-estimates the number of hospitals by around 6. This weakens this argument significantly, but doesn't invalidate it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I relied on translation tools and some very rusty Swedish language skills to read the Danish hospital documents and web-sites. I may have misunderstood some details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It isn't clear that the original definition of hospital that got a count of 155 is the same definition used by the Wikipedia authors. It could be that the initial definition was stricter (e.g. not including psychiatric hospitals), and would exclude some of those 89.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-01T18:39:10.630" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T18:39:10.630" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5544" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-01T11:37:21.913" Score="4" ViewCount="3679" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this from almost every domain name registrar: your domain name &quot;needs to propagate through the DNS and may take 24-48 hours to do so.&quot; And yet, bar a few registrations (which might take half a day), they all are ready within 1-2 hours, in my experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, on a recent registration with DreamHost, emphasis mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have added [xxxx] to our registration queue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You will receive an email within 15 minutes when it has been&#xA;  registered. If you don't receive an email please contact our support&#xA;  team as this may indicate some kind of problem! &lt;strong&gt;Please note that the&#xA;  domain will not work for at least a day or two as DNS propagates.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Thank you for registering your domain with DreamHost!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This got me thinking: does this 24-48 hour period really exist, or is it just so they can cover themselves in case unforeseen problems occur?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:32:41.167" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:32:41.167" Title="Your domain name may take 24-48 hours to propagate" Tags="|networks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5544" CreationDate="2011-08-01T11:54:59.523" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_to_live#DNS_records&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TTL&lt;/strong&gt; (time-to-live) for DNS records&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TTLs also occur in the Domain Name System (DNS), where they are set by&#xA;an authoritative nameserver for a particular resource record. When a&#xA;caching (recursive) nameserver queries the authoritative nameserver&#xA;for a resource record, it will cache that record for the time (in&#xA;seconds) specified by the TTL. If a stub resolver queries the caching&#xA;nameserver for the same record before the TTL has expired, the caching&#xA;server will simply reply with the already cached resource record&#xA;rather than retrieve it from the authoritative nameserver again.&#xA;Nameservers may also have a TTL set for NXDOMAIN (acknowledgment that&#xA;a domain does not exist); but they are generally short in duration&#xA;(three hours at most).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shorter TTLs can cause heavier loads on an&#xA;authoritative nameserver, but can be useful when changing the address&#xA;of critical services like Web servers or MX records, and therefore are&#xA;often lowered by the DNS administrator prior to a service being moved,&#xA;in order to minimize disruptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The units used are seconds. &lt;strong&gt;An older&#xA;common TTL value for DNS was 86400 seconds, which is 24 hours. A TTL&#xA;value of 86400 would mean that, if a DNS record was changed, DNS&#xA;servers around the world could still be showing the old value from&#xA;their cache for up to 24 hours after the change.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newer DNS methods&#xA;that are part of a DR (Disaster Recovery) system may have some records&#xA;deliberately set extremely low on TTL. For example a 300 second TTL&#xA;would help key records expire in 5 minutes to help ensure these&#xA;records are flushed world wide quickly. This gives administrators the&#xA;ability to edit and update records in a timely manner. Remember, TTL&#xA;values are &amp;quot;per record&amp;quot; and setting this value on specific records is&#xA;normally honored automatically by all standard DNS systems world-wide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why that would be a problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System#Recursive_and_caching_name_server&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DNS caching servers:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recursive and caching name server In principle, authoritative name&#xA;servers are sufficient for the operation of the Internet. However,&#xA;with only authoritative name servers operating, every DNS query must&#xA;start with recursive queries at the root zone of the Domain Name&#xA;System and each user system must implement resolver software capable&#xA;of recursive operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To improve efficiency, reduce DNS traffic across the Internet, and&#xA;increase performance in end-user applications, the Domain Name System&#xA;supports &lt;strong&gt;DNS cache servers which store DNS query results for a&#xA;period of time determined in the configuration (time-to-live) of the&#xA;domain name record in question&lt;/strong&gt;. Typically, such caching DNS servers,&#xA;also called DNS caches, also implement the recursive algorithm&#xA;necessary to resolve a given name starting with the DNS root through&#xA;to the authoritative name servers of the queried domain. With this&#xA;function implemented in the name server, user applications gain&#xA;efficiency in design and operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The combination of DNS caching and recursive functions in a name&#xA;server is not mandatory; the functions can be implemented&#xA;independently in servers for special purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Internet service providers typically provide recursive and caching&#xA;name servers for their customers. In addition, many home networking&#xA;routers implement DNS caches and recursors to improve efficiency in&#xA;the local network.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In combination, this means that a domain name may take several TTL periods to propagate, and each TTL period used to commonly be 24-48 hours, meaning the overall time to propagate a domain name could easily take 24 hours. On the other hand, if there are fewer recursive steps and shorter TTL values on the caches, the period might be much faster - especially if the domain name is not requested for the first time until the original name server is configured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T21:18:07.673" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5553" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5569" CreationDate="2011-08-01T20:06:32.437" Score="18" ViewCount="1567" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet/8674678/Internet-Explorer-users-have-below-average-IQ.html&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PC World reports that a &quot;psychometric consulting&quot; firm called&#xA;  AptiQuant gave free online IQ tests to 100,000 people, and then&#xA;  plotted the scores against the browser on which the tests were taken. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It found that Internet Explorer users scored lower than average, while&#xA;  Chrome, Firefox and Safari users were very slightly above average.&#xA;  Camino, Opera and Internet Explorer with Chrome Frame were scored&#xA;  &quot;exceptionally&quot; high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a feeling that this is nothing more than a marketing gimmick but is there any validity in in the study?  Is there any independant data to back this up or refute?  Can a anyone who takes and online IQ test really be allowed to score Exceptional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:32:25.817" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:32:25.817" Title="Does your choice of browser relate to your IQ" Tags="|intelligence|software|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5459" CreationDate="2011-08-01T22:35:48.210" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120129034645/http://www.siliconchip.com.au/cms/A_109592/article.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Maurio Grassi at Silicon Chip&lt;/a&gt; took one of these apart&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RyLSm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;(Electricity savings box circuit diagram)&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @William Beaty guessed, it's basically just a big capacitor to correct the power-factor; since you are not billed on your power-factor, this will save you absolutely no money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/powerfactor.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Power Factor&amp;quot; and devices that claim to save energy by fixing it&lt;/a&gt; explains and debunks these power-factor scams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-10-20T02:59:43.520" LastActivityDate="2022-10-20T02:59:43.520" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4862" CreationDate="2011-08-02T05:55:57.030" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The confidence of the match depends on the quality of the source, and the algorithm, of course. With video there is more information to mine; multiple angles of the target, the gait, and so on. Farid is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hany_Farid#Selected_publications&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;published researcher&lt;/a&gt; on forensics so he is qualified to make statements on that, not so much on identification, which is what we are discussing. Moreover, when I hear a nice round number like 99.99% I think the person is not being literal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4324" LastEditorUserId="4324" LastEditDate="2011-08-02T07:07:17.750" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T07:07:17.750" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-02T11:23:18.240" Score="7" ViewCount="8386" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I bought a digital camera recently, the shopkeeper advised me &quot;to remove the batteries when the camera is not used for a long time&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard this kind of thing for other devices also (like torch).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does having these devices with batteries in it(with full charge), kept idle for a long time damage the device ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T14:15:56.203" Title="Should we remove batteries from electronic devices when not in use?" Tags="|battery|electronics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5559" CreationDate="2011-08-02T12:32:06.410" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many devices when turned off still use a bit of power (e.g. to detect when the on button is pushed when there is no real physical power cutoff) leading them to become dead sooner than when you had removed them when you don't need the device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As vartec mentioned battery leaking can be damaging to the electronics, depending on the design of the battery compartment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://knol.google.com/k/everything-you-need-to-know-about-primary-battery-leakage#&quot;&gt;Here's an Knol article about it.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When carbon or alkaline batteries have become discharged, the&#xA;  chemistry of the cells will degrade and some hydrogen gas will be&#xA;  generated.  This out-gassing will result in increasing pressure within&#xA;  the battery.  Eventually, the excess pressure will either rup- ture&#xA;  the insulating seals at the end of the battery, or bulge and rupture&#xA;  the outer metal canister, or both.  When this happens, an acidic (for&#xA;  carbon cells) or caustic (for alka- line cells) electrolyte gel will&#xA;  ooze from the battery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-snip-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The leaking electrolyte can corrode the metal housing and battery&#xA;  contacts of a simple flashlight, and it can damage or destroy the&#xA;  delicate circuitry of an expensive electronic flashlight.&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;  Furthermore, swelling of the battery canisters can render one or more&#xA;  of the batteries hopelessly jammed within the flashlight body.  One&#xA;  leaking battery can cause a chain failure, when its leaking goo&#xA;  corrodes the adjacent ones so that they then leak. A five dollar set&#xA;  of dead batteries can and will destroy a five hundred dollar&#xA;  instrument if you let them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3508" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-02T14:15:56.203" LastActivityDate="2011-08-02T14:15:56.203" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5561" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-02T16:11:25.577" Score="23" ViewCount="4656" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's been suggested that people who win the lottery are more likely to go bankrupt than if they had not. For example, an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smartmoney.com/invest/stocks/why-lottery-winners-go-bankrupt-1301002181742/&quot;&gt;article on Smartmoney&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More than 1,900 [lottery] winners went bankrupt within five years. That number implies that 1% of Florida lottery players (winners and losers) go bankrupt in any given year, about double the rate for the broader population during the study period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The explanation is speculative, being:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The researchers offer a few theories on why so many winners went bust. Prior research has shown that lottery players have below-average incomes and education; it's no great leap to assume they tend to have limited financial literacy (even compared with a general population that has been shown to sorely lack it). Winners might also engage in something behavioral economists call mental accounting by treating their winnings less cautiously than they would their earnings. Of course, winners might simply &quot;develop a taste for luxury goods that outlasts their money,&quot; the researchers write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are people who win lotteries are more likely to go bankrupt than the average population?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are people more likely to go bankrupt as a result of winning the lottery? Or are people who play the lottery, and therefore more likely to win, simply predisposed to financial decisions that would lead to bankruptcy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastActivityDate="2022-06-03T01:13:41.797" Title="Are people who win the lottery more likely to go bankrupt?" Tags="|psychology|sociology|gambling|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="487" CreationDate="2011-08-03T03:53:36.683" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m bothered with the ‘you smoke cigarettes and you smoke weed, if cigarettes cause cancer weed does’ anti-science here. There are studies suggest the opposite, that smoking weed can reduce some forms of cancer. I’m not aware of a single study demonstrating that pot smokers who don’t ALSO smoke tobacco have any increased cancer rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9328194?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marijuana use and cancer incidence (California, United States).&lt;/a&gt; Sidney&#xA;  S, Quesenberry CP Jr, Friedman GD, Tekawa IS. Source Division of&#xA;  Research, Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program, Oakland, California&#xA;  94611-5714, USA. Abstract The purpose of this retrospective cohort&#xA;  study was to examine the relationship of marijuana use to cancer&#xA;  incidence. The study population consisted of 64,855 examinees in the&#xA;  Kaiser Permanente multiphasic health checkup in San Francisco and&#xA;  Oakland (California, United States), between 1979-85, aged 15 to 49&#xA;  years, who completed self-administered questionnaires about smoking&#xA;  habits, including marijuana use. Follow-up for cancer incidence was&#xA;  conducted through 1993 (mean length 8.6 years). Compared with&#xA;  nonusers/experimenters (lifetime use of less than seven times), ever-&#xA;  and current use of marijuana were not associated with increased risk&#xA;  of cancer of all sites (relative risk [RR] = 0.9, 95 percent&#xA;  confidence interval [CI] = 0.7-12 for ever-use in men; RR = 1.0, CI =&#xA;  0.8-1.1 in women) in analyses adjusted for sociodemographic factors,&#xA;  cigarette smoking, and alcohol use. Marijuana use also was not&#xA;  associated with tobacco-related cancers or with cancer of the&#xA;  following sites: colorectal, lung, melanoma, prostate, breast, cervix.&#xA;  Among nonsmokers of tobacco cigarettes, ever having used marijuana was&#xA;  associated with increased risk of prostate cancer (RR = 3.1, CI =&#xA;  1.0-9.5) and nearly significantly increased risk of cervical cancer&#xA;  (RR = 1.4, CI = 1.0-2.1). We conclude that, in this relatively young&#xA;  study cohort, marijuana use and cancer were not associated in overall&#xA;  analyses, but that associations in nonsmokers of tobacco cigarettes&#xA;  suggested that marijuana use might affect certain site-specific cancer&#xA;  risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304383509002523&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cannabinoids in the treatment of cancer&lt;/a&gt;  Amy Alexandera, Paul F.&#xA;  Smitha and Rhonda J. Rosengren , a,   Abstract Cannabinoids, the&#xA;  active components of the hemp plant Cannabis sativa, along with their&#xA;  endogenous counterparts and synthetic derivatives, have elicited&#xA;  anti-cancer effects in many different in vitro and in vivo models of&#xA;  cancer. While the various cannabinoids have been examined in a variety&#xA;  of cancer models, recent studies have focused on the role of&#xA;  cannabinoid receptor agonists (both CB1 and CB2) in the treatment of&#xA;  estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer. This review will summarize&#xA;  the anti-cancer properties of the cannabinoids, discuss their&#xA;  potential mechanisms of action, as well as explore controversies&#xA;  surrounding the results. Keywords: Cannabinoids; JWH-133; CB1; CB2;&#xA;  MAPK&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12723496&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[The endocannabinoid system as a target for the development of new&#xA;  drugs for cancer therapy].&lt;/a&gt; [Article in Italian] Bifulco M, Di Marzo V.&#xA;  Source Dipartimento di Scienze Farmaceutiche, Università di Salerno,&#xA;  Istituto di Endocrinologia ed Oncologia Sperimentale del CNR,&#xA;  Dipartimento di Biologia e Patologia Cellulare e Molecolare,&#xA;  Università Federico II, Napoli. maubiful@unina.it Abstract Studies on&#xA;  the main bioactive components of Cannabis sativa, the cannabinoids,&#xA;  and particularly delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), led to the&#xA;  discovery of a new endogenous signalling system that controls several&#xA;  physiological and pathological conditions: the endocannabinoid system.&#xA;  This comprises the cannabinlid receptors, their endogenous&#xA;  agonists--the endocannabinoids--and proteins for endocannabinoid&#xA;  biosynthesis and inactivation. Recently, evidence has accumulated&#xA;  indicating that stimulation of cannabinoid receptors by either THC or&#xA;  the endocannabinoids influence the intracellular events controlling&#xA;  the proliferation and apoptosis of numerous types of cancer cells,&#xA;  thereby leading to anti-tumour effects both in vitro and in vivo. This&#xA;  evidence is reviewed here and suggests that future anti-cancer therapy&#xA;  might be developed from our knowledge of how the endocannabinoid&#xA;  system controls the growth and metastasis of malignant cells. PMID:&#xA;  12723496 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4281" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T03:53:36.683" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2010" CreationDate="2011-08-03T05:07:29.147" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like with pyramids, true believer never seems to answer well, “If aliens did this why did they need to practice on other sites first?” “Why did it take so long to build?” Stonehenge was built over thousands of years. Was there some alien redevelopment agency?  “Why is it that no stones ever come from vast differences away? Why isn’t Stonehenge built with stones from the four corners of the world?” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the timeline of dates given for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge#After_the_monument_.281600_BC_on.29&quot;&gt;building of Stonehenge.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While done with smaller stones, there is the start here, &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101210-stonehenge-balls-ball-bearings-science-rolled/&quot;&gt;Stonehenge Built With Balls?&lt;/a&gt; Keep in mind how often we had been told that no one could do these types of things without the wheel. Obviously, you don’t need a wheel if you have enough balls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better question might be, “Given we now know that the Egyptians built the pyramids, what rational reason is there to believe that other monuments were built by aliens?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4281" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T05:07:29.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5553" CreationDate="2011-08-03T11:55:29.113" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 'study' has apparently since been exposed as a hoax:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14389430&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC News: Internet Explorer story was bogus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A story which suggested that users of Internet Explorer have a lower IQ than people who chose other browsers appears to have been an elaborate hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of media organisations, including the BBC, reported on the research, put out by Canadian firm ApTiquant. (sic)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It later emerged that the company's website was only recently set up and staff images were copied from a legitimate business in Paris.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itnews.com.au/News/265695,analysis-is-the-internet-explorer-iq-test-a-fake.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IT News: Analysis: Is the Internet Explorer IQ test a fake?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But whois records - the database that lists who was responsible for a website such as its technical contacts and owner - and web content comparisons raised questions over the company behind the survey that was the subject of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So currently there is no evidence to support a link between IQ and browser choice&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sources:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/191615/20110803/internet-explorer-aptiquant-iq-study-hoax.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/191615/20110803/internet-explorer-aptiquant-iq-study-hoax.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4351" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T15:11:41.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5570" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-03T13:53:53.537" Score="9" ViewCount="1344" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read claims suggesting that the following remedies, among others, are effective against stinky shoes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sprinkle bicarbonate soda, baby powder or deodorant on your shoes &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Put tea bags in your shoes (some also suggest adding a few drops of essential oil to them). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References for these claims: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comfortablefoot.com/21-tips-for-preventing-stinky-shoes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(1)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.essentialdayspa.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=30901&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(2)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehackery.com/2009/09/21/10-unique-uses-for-used-tea-bags/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(3)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the &lt;strong&gt;action principle&lt;/strong&gt; behind them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="943" LastEditorUserId="943" LastEditDate="2017-02-03T05:21:35.120" LastActivityDate="2017-02-03T22:22:56.177" Title="Remedies against stinky shoes" Tags="|natural-remedies|smell|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5575" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5593" CreationDate="2011-08-03T16:28:44.010" Score="14" ViewCount="5773" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this claim several times from family members, and I was highly skeptical.  Supposedly the mere presence of a bar of soap underneath the mattress can ward off leg cramps during the night.  The brand of soap does not appear to matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assumed that this was just an urban legend, yet &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/oldwives/legcramp.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes.com&lt;/a&gt; indicates that this is &quot;undetermined&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been any studies on this phenomena?  My first thought is &quot;placebo effect&quot; (actually, that was my second thought; my first thought was far less polite).  Have any double-blind studies been performed to test this, or are there any theories that could explain why this might be effective (beyond the placebo effect)?  I find Snopes' speculation that &quot;perhaps soap releases something into the air that is beneficial&quot; not very credible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-16T23:55:30.707" LastActivityDate="2022-07-10T13:00:13.560" Title="Does putting a bar of soap under your mattress prevent leg cramps?" Tags="|sleep|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5576" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5578" CreationDate="2011-08-03T18:48:08.570" Score="17" ViewCount="3284" Body="&lt;p&gt;When considering the economic impact of the British royals on the economy/budget, a first thought might be that they cost the state money since they don't do any &quot;real&quot; work and yet live quite luxurious lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it is argued that they bring in quite a lot of money as a tourist magnet: People (apparently especially US americans) visit the UK, and one of the main reasons for that is, allegedly, to see the palace, and castles that are not uninhabited ruins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhyYgnhhKFw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhyYgnhhKFw&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there ever been a thorough investigation on whether the costs outweigh the benefits or vice versa?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2017-06-21T11:47:38.500" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T11:47:38.500" Title="Is the British monarchy economically beneficial?" Tags="|economics|politics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5576" CreationDate="2011-08-03T20:30:52.197" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Estate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Crown Estate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the past 250 years, &lt;strong&gt;Britain's method of funding the monarchy has&#xA;  been based on a delicate 18th-century trade-off in which King George&#xA;  III agreed to hand over the income from the &lt;em&gt;Crown Estate&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; – property&#xA;  and land acquired by the crown since William the Conqueror's day – &lt;strong&gt;in&#xA;  exchange for a fixed annual payment from the Treasury.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the time, it&#xA;  was a good deal for George: he had no money and the estate brought in&#xA;  very little. But these days it brings in far more than the state pays&#xA;  out on the royals: &lt;strong&gt;last year its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.royal.gov.uk/TheRoyalHousehold/Royalfinances/CrownEstatesxyz.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;£7.3bn portfolio&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; – from beef farms in&#xA;  the north of Scotland to swathes of Regent Street in London's West End&#xA;  – &lt;strong&gt;provided about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/news-media/news/2011/the-crown-estate-announces-a-record-gbp-2309-million-profit/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;£230m of income to the Treasury&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moneyweek.com/news-and-charts/people-in-the-news/what-the-royal-family-costs-53518&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15345351&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Royal funding changes:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/leg_sovereign_grant.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sovereign Grant Bill&lt;/a&gt; introduces &lt;strong&gt;a single payment given to the&#xA;  monarch based on 15% of the Crown Estate's revenue from two years&#xA;  previously&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Starting from 2013-14&lt;/strong&gt;, this funding arrangement will last seven years before it is reviewed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The grant is expected to be £34m in the first year&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tourism Revenue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-10794577&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The BBC reported&lt;/a&gt; in 2010 that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overseas tourists spent more than £500 million&lt;/strong&gt; visiting attractions&#xA;  associated with the history of the Royal family last year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That figure comes from a report by &lt;a href=&quot;http://media.visitbritain.com/News-Releases/Monarchy-brings-in-500-million-a-year-from-foreign-tourists-says-VisitBritain-research-5d2.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;VisitBritain&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cost of the Royal Family&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8124022.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt; (2009):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The total cost to the public of keeping the monarchy increased by&#xA;  £1.5m to &lt;strong&gt;£41.5 million in the 2008/9 financial year&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;But according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.republic.org.uk/royalfinances/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Republic&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The official figure excludes a number of costs&lt;/strong&gt;, including&#xA;  round-the-clock security, lavish royal visits and lost revenue from&#xA;  the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The estimated total annual cost of the monarchy to taxpayers is £202.4 million&lt;/strong&gt;, around five times the official figure published by the royal household.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taxpayertreasurehunt.com/index.php/The_Cost_of_the_British_Monarchy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Tax Payer Treasure Hunt&lt;/a&gt; agrees that the official &quot;£40 million&quot; figure does not include all costs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the &lt;strong&gt;added cost of royal security estimated at £50 million&lt;/strong&gt;, the &lt;strong&gt;total cost of the British monarchy is about £90 million&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-05-30T18:18:59.047" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T18:18:59.047" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4501" CreationDate="2011-08-03T20:42:39.870" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it does. VGA or keyboard cable has side effect of acting as antenna. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both eavesdropping and countermeasure techniques are widely knows as TEMPEST (which was codename used by NSA). It's described with details and numerous references &lt;a href=&quot;http://1010.co.uk/org/tempest_presn.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Example from above source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7Bxqb.png&quot; alt=&quot;TEMPEST in action&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is standard to use TEMPEST protected terminals in military (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sst.ws/tempest_standards.php?pab=1_1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NATO standard requirement&lt;/a&gt;), banks, embassies, government installations etc. The buildings themselves are usually also TEMPEST protected. TEMPEST protection of hardware is basically shielding equipment and cables with metal, which acts as Faraday cage. Which also has another side effect &amp;mdash; it gives &lt;a href=&quot;http://cryptome.org/emp09.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some protection against EMP attack&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW. the question gives away the answer. Van Eck's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016740488590046X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper was published&lt;/a&gt; and peer reviewed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-08-03T20:48:30.397" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T20:48:30.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5581" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5582" CreationDate="2011-08-03T21:40:12.620" Score="33" ViewCount="7036" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering the number of people that use it compared to other transports (cars, trains, boats), do you have less chances to die in a plane?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="417" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T18:12:35.240" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T00:33:24.893" Title="Are airplanes the safest mode of transportation?" Tags="|aviation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5581" CreationDate="2011-08-03T22:10:00.073" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question of airplane safety is a nice field to demonstrate the old quip that you shouldn't trust any statistic you haven't forged yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is crucial to define exactly what you mean by safe, and what you are comparing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are you interested in total deaths per year? Then the car is the most dangerous and, depending on the country you are looking at, trains are the least dangerous, with airplanes also quite safe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/Risk/trasnsportpop.html&quot;&gt;http://www.medicine.ox.ac.uk/bandolier/booth/Risk/trasnsportpop.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your annual odds to die in a passenger airline accident is 1 in 4,406,209 in the US, whereas the annaul odds to die in a car accident are 1 in 6,478. This seems to indicate that a plane is almost a thousand times safer than a car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is that the question one &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be asking? You could ask: What is the chance of death in a transport related accident &lt;em&gt;per hour of travel&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;per kilometer traveled&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this short statement in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://contemporarylit.about.com/od/socialsciences/fr/freakonomics.htm&quot;&gt;review on the book &quot;Freakonomics&quot;:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Levitt also debunks some of today's more relevant conventional wisdom: the notion of driving being a far more dangerous form of transportation than flying. While it's true that many more people die annually in car accidents than in plane crashes, it's often overlooked that the dramatic difference in number of deaths is largely due to the amount of time the average person spends in an automobile in comparison to the relatively small number of hours spent in flight. Levitt goes on to show the per hour death rate of driving to be about equal to that of flying. Have a nice trip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the conclusion we can draw? Well, you can convert the chance of death per hour into a chance of death per trip by multiplying with the duration of the trip. And even if both car and plane have the same hourly rate, a trip in a plane for the same destination is far shorter than a trip in the car. If the hourly death rates are the same, then a plane is safer on a &lt;em&gt;per trip&lt;/em&gt; basis by how much faster it is than a car. While this still means that a plane is safer than a car &lt;em&gt;per trip&lt;/em&gt;, the factor is far less than 1000. More on the order of ~10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastActivityDate="2011-08-03T22:10:00.073" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5584" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5613" CreationDate="2011-08-04T01:17:11.840" Score="18" ViewCount="1394" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/1283/suggestion-for-houseplants-that-can-clean-the-air&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; on the Gardening SO site suggests that plants can be used to clean the air within a home or office environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I know of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/1283/suggestion-for-houseplants-that-can-clean-the-air&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt; done by NASA on indoor plants which can clean/reduce certain pollutants in the air. [...] According to the above research, certain plants will filter 3 kinds of pollutants: Benzene, Trichloroethylene and Formaldehyde. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there been any solid research done into the effectiveness of plants to be able to process air within a minimal environment such as a house (or a bank vault)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest that a certain number of plants within a certain minimal sealed space could completely recycle the air so that it could continuously be breathed? or does this need to be done on a much larger scale?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a simple formula that could be used at home e.g. Six medium sized plants per individual in a house?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:42:28.573" LastActivityDate="2023-10-12T07:25:54.507" Title="Can indoor plants recycle the air we breathe?" Tags="|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5585" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5590" CreationDate="2011-08-04T01:50:40.320" Score="36" ViewCount="6466" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the recycling rules for my community, there is an instruction to thoroughly wash all glass, plastic, and metal containers before depositing them into the recycle bin for collection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this step really necessary for the recycling process to occur (or occur without delay)? I've heard that recycling facilities already wash all glass, plastic, and metal material using very effective methods anyhow; why then would the items need to be washed twice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4322" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-04T02:36:58.697" LastActivityDate="2022-09-06T16:31:30.120" Title="Do we need to wash our glass, plastic, and tin can recyclables?" Tags="|recycling|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2011-08-04T05:14:38.157" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A 2009 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/id/2210344/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Slate magazine article&lt;/a&gt; tackles this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once you put your recyclables on the curb, they aren't processed right away. &#xA;  [...]&#xA;  Now imagine your bottle of half-eaten, four-month-old tartar sauce, lounging about in a stuffy warehouse and getting riper by the day. Not pleasant, is it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author, Nina Shen Rastogi, goes on to quote an &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081010063128AAuNXDO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unreferenced anecdote about an anonymous person's mother-in-law&lt;/a&gt; from a competing Q&amp;amp;A site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This emphasizes to me that the Slate article, itself, isn't from a peer-reviewed journal, and is a pretty ordinary reference. Can anyone do better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T14:22:35.007" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T14:22:35.007" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5585" CreationDate="2011-08-04T05:19:43.067" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are comments from two of the major recyclers in Australia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coolmelbourne.org/articles/2011/07/the-cool-rules-of-recycling/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;From VISY&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To rinse or not?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ever feel like you are wasting a ton of water&#xA;while rinsing out your recyclables? According to VISY, it is not&#xA;necessary to rinse out containers, but you do need to make sure all&#xA;food scraps are removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wsn.com.au/dir138/wsn.nsf/Content/Education%20and%20Safety_Facts%20and%20Figures%20Glass&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;From SITA&lt;/a&gt; who recently took over WSN:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rinse the containers to make sure they are clean and won't attract&#xA;pests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://recyclingweek.planetark.org/recycling-info/how-clean.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;From Planet Ark&lt;/a&gt; (respected environmental group)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most&#xA;common questions about recycling is how clean do jars, cans and pizza&#xA;boxes need to be before they can go in the recycling bin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small amounts of food left don’t interfere with the glass and steel&#xA;recycling process. Scrape all the solid food scraps out of jars and&#xA;cans and then put them in the recycling bin. If you’re concerned about&#xA;having left over food in the bin you can lightly rinse out your jars&#xA;and cans. Using left over washing up or rinsing water is best as&#xA;there’s no point wasting good water just to wash recycling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the different methods of processing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wsn.com.au/dir138/wsn.nsf/Content/Education%20and%20Safety_Facts%20and%20Figures%20Aluminium&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aluminium&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heating the aluminium to a temperature of 700°C changes it into a&#xA;liquid state. It is then cast into ingots, ready for delivery to&#xA;rolling mills where they are milled and remade into new products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wsn.com.au/dir138/wsn.nsf/Content/Education%20and%20Safety_Facts%20and%20Figures%20Glass&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Glass&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The single-colour cullet is put onto a conveyor belt and goes through&#xA;a special process called beneficiation, which removes contamination&#xA;such as bottle tops, metals, ceramics and labels. The cullet is then&#xA;crushed and sent to a glass furnace where it is added to the mix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wsn.com.au/dir138/wsn.nsf/Content/Education%20and%20Safety_Facts%20and%20Figures%20Plastics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Plastics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plastics are either shredded, chopped or ground and then washed to&#xA;remove further contaminants. The plastic is melted and pushed through&#xA;an extruder, a bit like an old fashioned mincer or a spaghetti maker.&#xA;It is then cooled and pressed through a die and chopped or pelletised&#xA;into granules. It is then ready to be made into new products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would appear that neither bugs nor food scraps would put a spanner in the works. I assume there would also be some sort of prewash before it got to that stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that a thorough rinse would be a hygiene thing for your own garbage bin, but not going to affect the process. However it is necessary to remove solid food object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-04T05:19:43.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5576" CreationDate="2011-08-04T11:14:50.897" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it is argued that they bring in quite a lot of money as a tourist magnet: People (apparently especially US americans) visit the UK, and one of the main reasons for that is, allegedly, to see the palace, and castles that are not uninhabited ruins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-10794577&quot;&gt;BBC reported in 2010&lt;/a&gt; that in 2009:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;987,000 people visited Windsor Castle &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;402,000 tourists saw Buckingham Palace &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By comparison in the same report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About 2.37 million tourists visited the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich - part of which is housed in the Queen's House, &lt;strong&gt;a former royal residence.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most visited museum in UK is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_museum&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;British Museum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; in London, with &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=aB0KREQwXkQ0&amp;amp;pid=newsarchive&quot;&gt;5.93 million visits&lt;/strong&gt; in 2009&lt;/a&gt;. Which is far more popular than any royal heritage related site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus it's clear that being &lt;strong&gt;current&lt;/strong&gt; royal residence isn't that much of tourist magnet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;Now, if you would go international and compare it with the other side of the English Channel:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;France is republic since 1789. Yet &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palais_du_Louvre&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Louvre&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, former royal palace, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=aB0KREQwXkQ0&amp;amp;pid=newsarchive&quot;&gt;the most visited museum in the world&lt;/a&gt; with &lt;strong&gt;8.5 million visits&lt;/strong&gt; in 2009, which is 20 times more than Buckingham Palace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-05-30T11:56:18.447" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T11:56:18.447" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5575" CreationDate="2011-08-04T14:28:50.420" Score="12" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Is there evidence for soap helping with cramps?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched for treatments of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cramp#Nocturnal_leg_cramps&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;nocturnal leg cramps&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found lots of anecdotal claims about the soap remedy, confirming it is a notable claim, but &lt;strong&gt;no studies&lt;/strong&gt; despite there being literature reviews and meta-analyses out there..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the treatments were for stretching, or ingesting drugs such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1497008/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quinine&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jfponline.com/Pages.asp?AID=2707&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;magnesium&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.uptodate.com/contents/nocturnal-leg-cramps/abstract/20&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;vitamin B&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11910-009-0079-5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;vitamin E&lt;/a&gt; and other drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I note that Vitamin E is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20111022161107/http://www.aussiesoapsupplies.com.au:80/Vitamin-E-pr-310.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ingredient of some soaps&lt;/a&gt;, but I do not believe it is volatile (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/entities/chemicals/d-gamma-tocopherol/x7/kb/ut/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a relatively large molecule with a 205°C boiling point&lt;/a&gt;) and there is no way someone could inhale, through a mattress, the dosages tested (&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11910-009-0079-5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;400-800 IU&lt;/a&gt; is about 260-800mg, depending on the type of Vitamin E)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is it just Placebo Response?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I set out to see if there was any evidence that nocturnal leg cramps responded well to placebo treatments. If they &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt;, we could more easily dismiss the soap-user's anecdotes as the placebo effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found somewhat mixed results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I found some &lt;strong&gt;weak&lt;/strong&gt; evidence &lt;strong&gt;for&lt;/strong&gt; a strong placebo effect in:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Placebo-controlled trial of quinine therapy for nocturnal leg cramps.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;M C Fung and J H Holbrook, West J Med. 1989 July; 151(1): 42–44. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1026949/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMCID: PMC1026949&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although all patients claimed to have an average of at least two cramps per week before the trial, three patients had fewer than eight cramps during the four weeks when they were receiving a placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data shows a small number of participants had only small drops from the baseline (e.g. 5 or 6 instead of 8 expected) over a short period (4 weeks). Given the initial data was what the patients claimed, rather than measured, this seemed to be insignificant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I found some evidence &lt;strong&gt;against&lt;/strong&gt; a strong placebo effect in:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of the safety and efficacy of vitamin B complex in the treatment of nocturnal leg cramps in elderly patients with hypertension.&lt;/em&gt; Chan P, Huang TY, Chen YJ, Huang WP, Liu YC &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.uptodate.com/contents/nocturnal-leg-cramps/abstract/20&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOJ Clin Pharmacol. 1998;38(12):1151&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;those taking placebo had no significant difference from baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found some good evidence &lt;strong&gt;for&lt;/strong&gt; a strong placebo effect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Magnesium for the Treatment of Nocturnal Leg Cramps A Crossover Randomized Trial&lt;/em&gt;, Ricardo Frusso, Miguel Zárate, Federico Augustovski, Adolfo Rubinstein, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jfponline.com/Pages.asp?AID=2707&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Journal of Family Practice. November 1999 · Vol. 48, No. 11&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We observed a significant period-effect bias: All patients improved over time regardless of the treatment sequence they received. [...] The period-effect bias probably occurred because of a combination of the natural history of this condition, a regression to the mean, and a true placebo effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found more good evidence &lt;strong&gt;for&lt;/strong&gt; a strong placebo effect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Effectiveness of quinine in treating muscle cramps: a double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, multicentre trial.&lt;/em&gt; Diener HC, Dethlefsen U, Dethlefsen-Gruber S, Verbeek P.,  Int J Clin Pract. 2002 May;56(4):243-6. &lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12074203/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMID: 12074203&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;26 (53%) [of participants] in the placebo group had a reduction of at least 50% in the number of muscle cramps. [...] The improvement [due to treatment] was more evident according to physician assessment than patient assessment; this is corroborated by the high placebo response rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;TL;DR Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No soap studies, even in broad literature reviews and meta-analysis. Several drugs have real effects. Attributing the soap claims to placebo is plausible, as some (but not all) studies show a high placebo response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-07-10T13:00:13.560" LastActivityDate="2022-07-10T13:00:13.560" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5581" CreationDate="2011-08-04T16:14:24.323" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The chance per trip stats are more complex than suggested in other answers suggest. The normal car accident stats are for average car trips, so are the air stats. Thus the normal car stats are for short average trips to and from work and air for long average trips between countries and over seas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_safety#Statistics&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_safety#Statistics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is necessary to mention that first two statistics [&quot;Deaths per billion passenger-journeys and &quot;Deaths per billion passenger-hours&quot;] are computed for typical travels for respective forms of transport, so they cannot be used directly to compare risks related to different forms of transport in a particular travel &quot;from A to B&quot;. For example: according to statistics, a typical flight from Los Angeles to New York will carry a larger risk factor than a typical car travel from home to office. But a car travel from Los Angeles to New York would not be typical. It would be as large as several dozens of typical car travels, and associated risk will be larger as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flying from London to Beijing would be quite normal for a plane but highly unusual for a car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/28/automobiles/20000-miles-to-london-via-beijing.html&quot;&gt;Such a trip in a car&lt;/a&gt; would be fraught with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Way_Round#Accidents&quot;&gt;dangers&lt;/a&gt; not normally shown in the average car stats such as tiredness, extreme wear and tear on the car, and even highly unusual things such as car hijackers, thieves, bandits and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afganistan&quot;&gt;war&lt;/a&gt; zones. Travel by air avoids almost all of these hazards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, the most &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isr.umd.edu/NEXTOR/Conferences/200401_NAS_Performance/Nastaran_Coleman_04.pdf&quot;&gt;dangerous times when flying&lt;/a&gt; are in the approach/landing (9%/38%) and taking off (14%). Short, car like, trips would increase the amount of landing and taking off per mile travelled away from the average stats for the plane. Flying to work and to the shops, instead of driving, would probably be relatively dangerous compared to driving. This probably being of of the key reasons that flying cars have never and will never become popular even if technically possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="4367" LastEditDate="2011-08-05T01:54:18.307" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T01:54:18.307" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5575" CreationDate="2011-08-05T03:23:12.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2007.0819&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yon Doo Ough, Russell Albert, David D. Bhaskar, G. Thomas Jones and KeriLynn Loftus. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. July 2008, 14(6): 618-618. doi:10.1089/acm.2007.0819.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a brief trial on 11 patients with severe menstrual cramps aged 21 - 48 years using crushed soap with application via a patch and reported a positive result. The number of patients is quite limited and it was not a double blind study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yon Doo Ough went on to perform a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3004545/?tool=pubmed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;further study&lt;/a&gt; after these positive results on 83 patients with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibromyalgia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fibromyalgia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All patients reported initial pain relief within one hour of&#xA;  application, including one patient who reported nearly immediate&#xA;  relief within three minutes. Three patients reported nearly complete&#xA;  relief of pain (rated 0–3), and the remainder reported pain levels of&#xA;  4 or less. The pain relief lasted between 18 hours to 30 hours. Many&#xA;  patients also reported that nighttime application of the SSO skin&#xA;  patch gave the added benefit of more restful sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There also appears to be a related patent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boliven.com/patent/US20060182818&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.boliven.com/patent/US20060182818&lt;/a&gt;. Note: I know nothing about patents, this may not be a true patent, just something related I found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these studies are limited and are not double blind studies. The studies do indicate that patients personally indicated there was significant relief associated with these soap patches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wording in the studies is also a bit iffy, so I would take it more along the lines of strong anecdotal evidence than a conclusive study. It's a very interesting precursor for prompting a serious double blind study which appears to have not been done so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cause of the relief in both studies is put down to the scent having a relaxing effect. This leads to another skeptical question: how effective is aromatherapy outside of the placebo effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-08-05T03:37:35.317" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T03:37:35.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5602" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5609" CreationDate="2011-08-05T04:00:56.950" Score="18" ViewCount="1295" Body="&lt;p&gt;When answering &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5575/does-putting-a-bar-of-soap-under-your-mattress-prevent-leg-cramps&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; on the possibility of using soap to cure leg cramp I began looking around for double blind studies related to aromatherapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lead me to the following examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9828867&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Randomized trial of aromatherapy. Successful treatment for alopecia areata.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nineteen (44%) of 43 patients in the active group showed improvement&#xA;  compared with 6 (15%) of 41 patients in the control group (P = .008).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12143909&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aromatherapy as a safe and effective treatment for the management of agitation in severe dementia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sixty percent (21/35) of the active treatment group and 14% (5/36) of&#xA;  the placebo-treated group experienced a 30% reduction of CMAI score,&#xA;  with an overall improvement in agitation (mean reduction in CMAI&#xA;  score) of 35% in patients receiving Melissa balm essential oil and 11%&#xA;  in those treated with placebo (Mann-Whitney U test; Z = 4.1, p &amp;lt;&#xA;  .0001). Quality of life indices also improved significantly more in&#xA;  people receiving essential balm oil (Mann-Whitney U test; percentage&#xA;  of time spent socially withdrawn: Z = 2.6, p = .005; percentage of&#xA;  time engaged in constructive activities: Z = 3.5, p = .001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/21/12/2372.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Inhalation Aromatherapy During Radiotherapy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anxiety scores were significantly lower at treatment completion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These all claim to be randomized double-blind placebo controlled studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How valid are studies such as these? Do they indicate that aromatherapy does have some efficacy in treating certain conditions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2020-07-14T10:53:16.143" Title="Does aromatherapy have proven efficacy in certain cases?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5603" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5604" CreationDate="2011-08-05T05:02:03.153" Score="11" ViewCount="1313" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Reverend Fred Nile MLC is leader of the Christian Democratic Party in Australia. In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/ethics-lesson-two-tell-the-truth-20110804-1iddo.html#ixzz1U7v0YiVT&quot;&gt;letter to a major Australian newspaper&lt;/a&gt; on the subject of ethics classes as an alternative to Special Religious Instruction in Australia schools, he wrote of the opponents to his proposed bill:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They wrongly believe that when Sir Henry Parkes introduced free and ''secular'' state education, he meant ''non-Christian'' or ''non-religious''. That was never his intention. In the 1880s, ''secular'' was used to prohibit denominational teaching in NSW classrooms, not scripture classes, which Parkes decreed should fill one hour per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Parkes&quot;&gt;Parkes&lt;/a&gt; was an Australian statesman whose career spanned the last half of the 1800s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found it odd that the word &quot;secular&quot; could be used this way 150 years ago, and checked its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=secular&quot;&gt;etymology&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;secular &#xA;  late 13c., &quot;living in the world, not belonging to a religious order,&quot; also &quot;belonging to the state,&quot; from O.Fr. seculer, from L.L. saecularis &quot;worldly, secular,&quot; from L. saecularis &quot;of an age, occurring once in an age,&quot; from saeculum &quot;age, span of time, generation,&quot; probably originally cognate with words for &quot;seed,&quot; from PIE base *se(i)- &quot;to sow&quot; (cf. Goth. mana-seþs &quot;mankind, world,&quot; lit. &quot;seed of men&quot;). Used in ecclesiastical writing like Gk. aion &quot;of this world&quot; (see cosmos). It is source of Fr. siècle. Ancient Roman ludi saeculares was a three-day, day-and-night celebration coming once in an &quot;age&quot; (120 years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't seem to support the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What reason is there to believe that Parkes intended Australian education to be (a) Christian but non-denominational, as Nile claims, or (b) secular, in the modern (?) non-religious sense, as his opponents  claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2011-08-05T07:45:47.747" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T07:45:47.747" Title="Did &quot;secular&quot; mean &quot;non-denominational&quot;?" Tags="|history|education|etymology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5603" CreationDate="2011-08-05T05:28:09.997" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you are misinterpreting the quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They wrongly believe that when Sir Henry Parkes introduced free and&#xA;  ''secular'' state education, he meant ''non-Christian'' or&#xA;  ''non-religious''.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Rev. Nile is say is that people misunderstood the purpose of what Parkes was aiming to do. He was not trying to make school completely &quot;non-Christian&quot; or &quot;non-religious&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the 1880s, ''secular'' was used to prohibit denominational teaching&#xA;  in NSW classrooms, not scripture classes, which Parkes decreed should&#xA;  fill one hour per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Parkes was aiming to do (according to Rev. Nile) was to prohibit denominational teaching as being intermingled with the secular teaching and should be taught within a dedicated period of one hour per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think you are just misunderstanding the quote. What Nile is saying is that people are getting it wrong when they think that Parkes was aiming to eradicate religious studies from schools by separating secular education from religious studies. Rev. Nile is not claiming that Parkes wanted to make it Christian but non, denominational.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for those that care here is the original text being discussed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3azwu-UMyxFY4J%3awww.legislation.act.gov.au/a/1880-23/20020822-2616/rtf/1880-23.rtf%20the%20public%20instruction%20act%20of%201880&amp;amp;cd=3&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ct=clnk&amp;amp;gl=au&amp;amp;source=www.google.com.au&quot;&gt;Public Instruction Act 1880&lt;/a&gt; (excerpt):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;17. Hours for secular instruction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) In every school, 4 hours during each school day shall be devoted&#xA;  to secular instruction exclusively and a part of each day, not more&#xA;  than 1 hour, shall be set apart when the children of any one religious&#xA;  persuasion may be instructed by the clergyman or other religious&#xA;  teacher of a religious persuasion but, in all cases, the pupils&#xA;  receiving the religious instruction shall be separated from the other&#xA;  pupils of the school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) And the hour during which the religious instruction may be given&#xA;  shall be fixed by mutual agreement between the school board in&#xA;  consultation with the principal of the school and the clergy of the&#xA;  district or the other person that may be duly authorised to act in his&#xA;  or her place and any classroom of a school may be used for the&#xA;  religious instruction by like agreement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(a) provided that the religious instruction to be so given shall in&#xA;  every case be the religious instruction authorised by the church to&#xA;  which the clergy or other religious teacher may belong; and&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(b) provided further that in case of the nonattendance of any&#xA;  clergy or religious teacher during any part of the period agreed to be&#xA;  set apart for religious instruction the period shall be devoted to the&#xA;  ordinary secular instruction in the school.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T05:28:09.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5603" CreationDate="2011-08-05T07:06:05.573" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Secular&lt;/em&gt; came into English through the Catholic church, where &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_clergy&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;secular clergy&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; were those priests and deacons not subject to a monastic rule (&lt;em&gt;regulum&lt;/em&gt; in Latin, hence monks were &lt;em&gt;regular clergy&lt;/em&gt;). The secular clergy were those out in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In education in 19th century Britain and its colonies, most schools were attached to religious institutions such as the Anglican and Catholic churches, causing problems for non-conformist Protestants and their children, as well as raising issue about sectarianism.  When the State decided to make education compulsory and to provide schools where there were gaps, such as in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_Education_Act_1870&quot;&gt;Elementary Education Act 1870&lt;/a&gt; in England, the aim was to make schools which were not based on or controlled by a denomination and where there was no religious test for entry.  There was provision for religious instruction and services, but it was separate from the rest of the timetable and a relatively small part of the timetable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1880 New South Wales law looks very similar and probably had the same intent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T07:06:05.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5602" CreationDate="2011-08-05T07:45:38.550" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some nice finds! I was excited to think that my view of aromatherapy might be overturned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the time I finished researching, my excitement had worn off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Randomized trial of aromatherapy. Successful treatment for alopecia areata.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was a bit surprised by this study, as the treatment was rubbing oils into the affected areas (scalp), which seems to me to be less about the &quot;influence of aroma on the brain, especially the limbic system through the olfactory system&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromatherapy&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;) and more about topical application of drugs. This seems far less implausible, but apparently it still counts as aromatherapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study was examined in June 2000 in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1313734/pdf/10962794.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aromatherapy: a systematic review&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Brian Cooke and Edzard Ernst, &#xA;British Journal of General Practice, 2000, 50, 493-496.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In it, they classified it as one of six &quot;‘one-off’ trials of aromatherapy with no independent replication.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The studies were too heterogeneous and had no common&#xA;  denominator in terms of end-point evaluated for meta-analysis to&#xA;  be attempted. The highest &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadad_scale&quot;&gt;Jadad&lt;/a&gt; score achieved in any of these trials was 2 (out of a possible 5).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the implication about Jadad scores is unfortunate, asking for independent replication so soon after the study came out strikes me as a little unfair. I looked for some later reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aromatherapy with essential oils (thyme, rosemary, lavender, and cedarwood) massaged daily&#xA;  was compared with carrier oil in 86 people with alopecia areata and they were followed up after&#xA;  3 months and 7 months [Hay et al, 1998]. Independently assessed photographic evidence was&#xA;  collected throughout the trial and any degree of improvement was measured using a six-point scale&#xA;  and computerized analysis of affected areas. Nineteen people in the active treatment group (n = 43)&#xA;  showed improvement, compared with six people in the control group (n = 41), which was a highly&#xA;  significant difference. However, the study had several limitations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It was not clear how long the treatment was given for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Thirteen people dropped out of the control group, reducing the impact of the apparent&#xA;  benefit achieved with aromatherapy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Some people had other types of treatment before the study was discontinued but no more&#xA;  details were provided.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It is assumed that the treatment and intervention groups had similar baseline profiles in&#xA;  terms of extent and pattern of alopecia areata but details were not provided.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Note: manufacturers of aromatherapy products are not bound by statutory monitoring or&#xA;  good manufacturing requirements and there is no formal recognized standardization of&#xA;  active ingredients in aromatherapy products.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ftd/edm/2007/00000002/00000001/art00009&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Complementary and alternative medicines: use in skin diseases&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Magin, Parker; Adams, Jon, Expert Review of Dermatology, Volume 2, Number 1, February 2007 , pp. 41-49(9)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked for a Cochrane Review (see below for what they are) to see if, perhaps, one of the oils used is considered a conventional, topical treatment for alopecia areata. I found that there are no known good treatments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Treatments for alopecia areata, alopecia totalis and alopecia universalis&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no good trial evidence that any treatments provide long-term benefit to patients with alopecia areata, alopecia totalis and alopecia universalis.&#xA;  [...]&#xA;  We found 17 randomised controlled trials involving 540 participants. Only one study which compared two topical corticosteroids showed significant short-term benefits. No studies showed long-term beneficial hair growth. None of the included studies asked participants to report their opinion of hair growth or whether their quality of life had improved with the treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Delamere FM, Sladden MJ, Dobbins HM, Leonardi-Bee J, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab004413.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Interventions for alopecia areata&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2008, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD004413. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD004413.pub2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this study has been criticised for a number of reasons and dismissed. My conjecture that the oils themselves (and not their aromas) might have some effect is not supported by evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Aromatherapy as a safe and effective treatment for the management of agitation in severe dementia&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the study that got me excited, because I couldn't see any immediate flaws myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a small study, so I went to the Cochrane Collaboration to see how it fit in with other studies in the area. Cochrane are a highly respected organisation that do meta-analyses, examining all the published studies in an area to review their methods and to pool their data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2003, (and still up-to-date as of 2008), they published a short review on the topic of aromatherapy and dementia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The one small trial published is insufficient evidence for the efficacy of aroma therapy for dementia&#xA;  Aroma therapy is the use of pure essential oils from fragrant plants (such as Peppermint, Sweet Marjoram, and Rose) to help relieve health problems and improve the quality of life in general. The healing properties of aroma therapy are claimed to include promotion of relaxation and sleep, relief of pain, and reduction of depressive symptoms. Hence, aroma therapy has been used to reduce disturbed behaviour, to promote sleep and to stimulate motivational behaviour of people with dementia. Of the four randomized controlled trials found only one had useable data. The analysis of this one small trial showed a significant effect in favour of aroma therapy on measures of agitation and neuropsychiatric symptoms. More large-scale randomized controlled trials are needed before firm conclusions can be reached about the effectiveness of aroma therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Holt FE, Birks TPH, Thorgrimsen LM, Spector AE, Wiles A, Orrell M. Aroma therapy for dementia. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2003, Issue 3. Art. No.: CD003150. DOI: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.cochrane.org/reviews/en/ab003150.html&quot;&gt;10.1002/14651858.CD003150&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They go on to explain: They looked at four published papers, including Ballard 2002 (i.e. the one you cite), and found none of them could be used as is, but they went and requested the data from the authors of the Ballard study and re-did the statistics, and confirmed it did show a statistically significant treatment effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Inhalation Aromatherapy During Radiotherapy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we quote a little bit more of the abstract we get a very different result:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results:&lt;/strong&gt; There were no significant differences in HADS&#xA;  depression or SPHERE scores between the randomly assigned&#xA;  groups. However, HADS anxiety scores were significantly&#xA;  lower at treatment completion in the carrier oil only&#xA;  group compared with either of the fragrant arms (P = .04).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt; Aromatherapy, as administered in this&#xA;  study, is not beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This indicates, if anything, that aromatherapy is &lt;strong&gt;harmful&lt;/strong&gt; (causes anxiety), compared to the control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There appears to have been some unblinding due to the fragrance, so even that result isn't terribly convincing; see Table 1 and also the statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;None of the patients in the carrier&#xA;  oil–only arm requested dose reductions (achieved by using&#xA;  fewer drops); whereas, 35% of the patients in the fragrant arms&#xA;  requested this because of the initial strength of the olfactory&#xA;  sensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-15T08:40:04.333" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T08:40:04.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-05T10:33:38.740" Score="77" ViewCount="6293" Body="&lt;p&gt;My dad claims that even as toddlers, my sister and I &lt;strong&gt;knew&lt;/strong&gt; which toys to play with. For example, I would always pick up toy guns, Action Man, and other similar toys. She would always pick up Barbie. He also claims that this happened while we were very young, around 2 years old, before having been exposed to advertising and social biases. Is there &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; evidence that boys behave like stereotypical boys and girls behave like stereotypical girls absent social conditioning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="4082" LastEditDate="2011-10-30T21:36:07.170" LastActivityDate="2018-07-04T13:14:14.363" Title="Are girls and boys pre-programmed to behave... like girls and boys?" Tags="|education|gender|sociology|genetics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5611" CreationDate="2011-08-05T10:58:24.493" Score="70" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has been studied in 2002 and 2009 at Texas A&amp;amp;M on monkeys and toddlers respectively, and the findings were that boys &lt;strong&gt;are&lt;/strong&gt; genetically programmed to like trucks and girls to like dolls. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Findings from another study at Emory University, Atlanta in 2008 on monkeys also concluded the same. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technique in the 2002 study on vervet monkeys was criticized by the Emory team (2008) who chose a different approach on rhesus monkeys. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Texas team measured individual time spent with masculine and feminine toys shown to the subjects &lt;strong&gt;separately&lt;/strong&gt; while the Emory team showed them masculine and feminine toys &lt;strong&gt;together&lt;/strong&gt; and left the monkeys to choose between them&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some original references to the mentioned studies and some media reports so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kbtx.com/tamu/headlines/52910707.html&quot;&gt;2009 study on humans&lt;/a&gt; From: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alexander, G. M., Wilcox, T., &amp;amp; Woods, R.* (2009). Sex differences in infants’ visual interest in toys. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38, 427-433.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the research project funded by the National Science Foundation,&#xA;  psychology professor Gerianne Alexander used technology to track the&#xA;  eye movements of 30 infants ranging in age from 3 months to 8 months&#xA;  old. Alexander’s team set a doll and a truck in a puppet&#xA;  theater-styled box several feet in front of the babies, who were in&#xA;  car seats. The subjects couldn’t verbalize their preferences for the&#xA;  toys, but visual tracking monitors measured how long they fixated&#xA;  their attention on particular toys during two 10-second intervals. The&#xA;  girls favored the dolls, while the boys preferred the toy trucks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The existence of these innate preferences for object features coupled&#xA;  with well-documented social influences may explain why toy preferences&#xA;  are one of the earliest known manifestations of sex-linked social&#xA;  behavior,” Alexander explains in a paper titled “Sex Differences in&#xA;  Infants’ Visual Interest in Toys,” published in the journal &quot;Archives&#xA;  of Sexual Behavior.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2002 study on &lt;strong&gt;vervet monkeys&lt;/strong&gt; titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://ehbonline.org/article/PIIS1090513802001071/abstract&quot;&gt;Sex differences in response to children's toys in nonhuman primates (Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus) from Evolution and Human Behaviour Volume 23, Issue 6, Pages 467-479 (November 2002)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sex differences in children's toy preferences are thought by many to&#xA;  arise from gender socialization. However, evidence from patients with&#xA;  endocrine disorders suggests that biological factors during early&#xA;  development (e.g., levels of androgens) are influential. In this&#xA;  study, we found that vervet monkeys (Cercopithecus aethiops sabaeus)&#xA;  show sex differences in toy preferences similar to those documented&#xA;  previously in children. The percent of contact time with toys&#xA;  typically preferred by boys (a car and a ball) was greater in male&#xA;  vervets (n=33) than in female vervets (n=30) (P&amp;lt;.05), whereas the&#xA;  percent of contact time with toys typically preferred by girls (a doll&#xA;  and a pot) was greater in female vervets than in male vervets (P&amp;lt;.01).&#xA;  In contrast, contact time with toys preferred equally by boys and&#xA;  girls (a picture book and a stuffed dog) was comparable in male and&#xA;  female vervets. The results suggest that sexually differentiated&#xA;  object preferences arose early in human evolution, prior to the&#xA;  emergence of a distinct hominid lineage. This implies that sexually&#xA;  dimorphic preferences for features (e.g., color, shape, movement) may&#xA;  have evolved from differential selection pressures based on the&#xA;  different behavioral roles of males and females, and that evolved&#xA;  object feature preferences may contribute to present day sexually&#xA;  dimorphic toy preferences in children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amerika.org/darwinism/are-gender-differences-innate-or-learned/&quot;&gt;From the media report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2002, Gerianne M. Alexander of Texas A&amp;amp;M University and Melissa&#xA;  Hines of City University in London stunned the scientific world by&#xA;  showing that vervet monkeys showed the same sex-typical toy&#xA;  preferences as humans. In an incredibly ingenious study, published in&#xA;  Evolution and Human Behavior, Alexander and Hines gave two&#xA;  stereotypically masculine toys (a ball and a police car), two&#xA;  stereotypically feminine toys (a soft doll and a cooking pot), and two&#xA;  neutral toys (a picture book and a stuffed dog) to 44 male and 44&#xA;  female vervet monkeys. They then assessed the monkeys’ preference for&#xA;  each toy by measuring how much time they spent with each. Their data&#xA;  demonstrated that male vervet monkeys showed significantly greater&#xA;  interest in the masculine toys, and the female vervet monkeys showed&#xA;  significantly greater interest in the feminine toys. The two sexes did&#xA;  not differ in their preference for the neutral toys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original 2002 studies were tried on rhesus monkeys in 2008 by a different team which also concluded that &lt;em&gt;when given a choice between stereotypically male “wheeled toys” and stereotypically female “plush toys”, male rhesus monkeys show strong and significant preference for the masculine toys.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Horm Behav. 2008 August; 54(3): 359–364. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Janice M. Hassett, Erin R. Siebert, and Kim Wallen, of Emory University&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Socialization processes, parents, or peers encouraging play with&#xA;  gender specific toys are thought to be the primary force shaping sex&#xA;  differences in toy preference. A contrast in view is that toy&#xA;  preferences reflect biologically determined preferences for specific&#xA;  activities facilitated by specific toys&#xA;  We compared the interactions of 34 rhesus monkeys, living within a 135&#xA;  monkey troop, with human wheeled toys and plush toys. Male monkeys,&#xA;  like boys, showed consistent and strong preferences for wheeled toys,&#xA;  while female monkeys, like girls, showed greater variability in&#xA;  preferences. Thus, the magnitude of preference for wheeled over plush&#xA;  toys differed significantly between males and females&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We offer the hypothesis that toy preferences reflect hormonally&#xA;  influenced behavioral and cognitive biases which are sculpted by&#xA;  social processes into the sex differences seen in monkeys and humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/&quot;&gt;Criticism of the 2002 study by the Emory team (2008) and alternate approach as below&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The one previous study of nonhuman primates’ interactions with human&#xA;  toys &lt;strong&gt;did not make subjects choose between masculine and feminine toys&#xA;  simultaneously available&lt;/strong&gt; and thus could not directly measure&#xA;  preference. Instead they compared the relative proportion of&#xA;  interaction times with singly presented toys as a proxy for preference&#xA;  (Alexander and Hines, 2002). Comparisons between sexes found that the&#xA;  proportion of males’ toy interactions directed to masculine toys was&#xA;  greater than the proportion of females’ interactions directed to&#xA;  masculine toys.A similar, but opposite, difference was found for the&#xA;  proportion of interactions directed towards feminine toys, suggesting&#xA;  clear between-sex differences in preference for masculine and feminine&#xA;  toys similar to that seen in humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We investigated toy preferences in rhesus monkeys living in a 135&#xA;  member long-term stable outdoor group by presenting the group with&#xA;  multiple trials of simultaneous access to different two toy&#xA;  combinations of multiple toys: one putatively masculine and one&#xA;  putatively feminine. We present here striking evidence of a sex&#xA;  difference in rhesus monkey preference for human gender-stereotyped&#xA;  toys paralleling that reported in humans, suggesting that gender&#xA;  differences in toy choice may reflect evolved sex differences in&#xA;  activity preferences not primarily resulting from socialization&#xA;  processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastEditorUserId="2027" LastEditDate="2011-08-05T12:05:55.963" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T12:05:55.963" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5584" CreationDate="2011-08-05T14:39:37.343" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The EPA provides a guide for health professionals on controlling air pollution. At the end there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/hpguide.html#faq7&quot;&gt;a small section on plants&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While it is true that plants remove carbon dioxide from the air, and the ability of plants to remove certain other pollutants from water is the basis for some pollution control methods, the ability of plants to control indoor air pollution is less well established. Most research to date used small chambers without any air exchange which makes extrapolation to real world environments extremely uncertain. The only available study of the use of plants to control indoor air pollutants in an actual building could not determine any benefit from the use of plants. As a practical means of pollution control, the plant removal mechanisms appear to be inconsequential compared to common ventilation and air exchange rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are really looking to keep the air in a home or office clean, plants are clearly not the best way to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4246" LastActivityDate="2011-08-05T14:39:37.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5614" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-05T15:03:02.383" Score="32" ViewCount="1652" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a lot of friends who use cloth diapers, and I've heard some say that cloth diapers are actually &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; un-ecologically friendly than disposable diapers. I have a hard time buying that. I can find some sources going both ways online:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From the blog, &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegreenists.com/its-complicated/are-cloth-diapers-worse-than-disposables/3363&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Greenists&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You’d think this figure would clearly mean that cloth diapers are the way to go.  But when I looked up family cloth for yesterday’s post, I stumbled across an article from Times Online.  The article says a study done by The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in Britain didn’t deliver the expected answer.  The results were so surprising that there was even an attempt to sweep them under the carpet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report found that using washable nappies, hailed by councils throughout Britain as a key way of saving the planet, have a higher carbon footprint than their disposable equivalents unless parents adopt an extreme approach to laundering them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From the site Dummies.com, the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/diapers-cloth-versus-disposable.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diapers: Cloth versus disposable&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Washing cloth diapers uses fewer resources than you might think. It takes about the equivalent amount of water as flushing a toilet five times a day. And, cloth diapers have half the ecological footprint of disposables even when you throw in the energy your washing machine uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So... which is it? Are cloth or disposable diapers more &amp;quot;earth friendly&amp;quot;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm prophesying a lot of questions about what &amp;quot;more earth friendly&amp;quot; means... I'm open to suggestions. Here's some examples of at least some variables that I can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disposables: primarily composed of polypropylene nonwovens and filled with wood pulp and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superabsorbent_polymer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SAP&lt;/a&gt;, examine biodegredation time, risk of pollution, land fill space...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cloth: made from cotton, though they are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diapers.com/p/bumGenius-One-Size-Pocket-Diaper-40-Snap-Grasshopper-69973&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;far more complex&lt;/a&gt; than the diapers my parents used on me, require many loads of laundry per day, detergent, perhaps pre-treatment, and a general &amp;quot;work flow.&amp;quot; As an example, friends of ours dump any solids into the toilet, flush that and then put the diapers in a pail filled with water. When the pail is full, they dump it and flush that. The diapers are washed in cold water only once. Then washed again in warm with detergent, and then finally dried.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this is a ballpark example of some of the factors involved. I'm not even sure I'm aware of all the factors involved to make a comparison; thus, for any answering via research, feel free to list and comment on the metrics listed in those who have studied this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T12:02:46.990" Title="Which baby diaper is more Earth-friendly -- cloth or disposable?" Tags="|environment|energy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5617" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32231" CreationDate="2011-08-05T19:08:48.910" Score="18" ViewCount="1809" Body="&lt;p&gt;Imagine an electric car in a country where most energy come from coal (which i believe is the dirtiest). Add this to the pollution that disposing the batteries will create, or the carbon footprint generated during its production. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this car really beneficial in terms of carbon emission and pollution compared to a modern petrol or diesel engine car?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2543" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T00:57:42.520" Title="Are electric cars beneficial to the environment compared to low consumption modern cars?" Tags="|environment|road-vehicles|energy|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5617" CreationDate="2011-08-05T20:47:31.117" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, not really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An electric car uses around 250-300 Wh per mile (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.corbinstreehouse.com/blog/2011/05/electric-bug-driving-and-watt-hours-per-mile/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://privatenrg.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;) or 155-186 Wh/km. Let's be generous and assume 250 Wh per mile. Coal produces around 2.3 lb of Carbon Dioxide (CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;) per kWh (&lt;a href=&quot;http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;) or about 1 kg/kWh. That means your electric car produces 250 g/mile or 155 g/km on average. Even a good petrol engine will beat this; a VW Golf BlueMotion Diesel gets 99 g/mile (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.green-car-guide.com/volkswagen-golf-bluemotion-2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;) or 62 g/km.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, it's not all bleak for electric cars. As an example, in the UK only uses 33% coal (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/statistics/statistics.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;), so an electric car in the UK would only produce 83 g/mile or 52 g/km CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, although other fuels produce CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; as well, they produce it in smaller amounts. It will especially become more environmentally friendly as wind power and other renewable sources are used more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also have to take into account the distribution of the fuel; after all, it has to be transported to the fuel station for you to fill up your car, and you have to drive to the fuel station in question, compared to electricity which loses minimal energy in the transmission process, and charging can be done at home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-06T13:01:25.070" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T13:01:25.070" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5620" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5624" CreationDate="2011-08-06T01:29:16.880" Score="7" ViewCount="1217" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21521757&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Heavy&lt;/strong&gt; exercise temporarily depletes glycogen&lt;/a&gt;, a short term energy store, from the brain (after doing so from the muscles and liver). However, &lt;strong&gt;light&lt;/strong&gt; exercise has a positive effect on learning ability. For example, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/WN/exercise-school-leads-learning/story?id=10371315&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article about a school in Naperville&lt;/a&gt; it is&#xA;claimed that having gym class as the first class in the morning&#xA;improves the learning abilities of the pupils.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sound body, sound mind has long been the accepted wisdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But schools have traditionally promoted brains and brawn separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not so at Naperville Central High School west of Chicago. Here the&#xA;  kids who struggle with math and reading go to gym class first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What we're trying to do here is jump start their brain,&quot; says Paul&#xA;  Zientarski, chairman of the Physical Education Department at&#xA;  Naperville.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does &lt;strong&gt;moderate&lt;/strong&gt; exercise correlate with learning ability and memory retention?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3291" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-08-06T10:13:22.807" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T03:56:08.893" Title="Does moderate exercise improve learning ability?" Tags="|neurology|sport|learning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5620" CreationDate="2011-08-06T02:15:35.857" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/feb/02/matter-over-mind-physical-exercise-is-central-to/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yale Daily News&lt;/a&gt; indicates that exercise increases the expression of the BDNF protein which stimulates learning and increases plasticity of the brain. Apparently this is mostly relevant for short term memory but also has some clear positive effects on long term memory. Also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166223602021434&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Exercise: a behavioral intervention to enhance brain health and plasticity &lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ahttp://psy2.ucsd.edu/~mgorman/Exercise.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Exercise Improves Memory Acquisition and Retrieval in the Y-Maze Task (cached PDF)&lt;/a&gt;. Most articles I find about it refer to experiments on mice but the PDF's abstract indicates human experiments too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion is that some regular exercise increases long and short term memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4386" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2011-08-06T11:38:40.383" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T11:38:40.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5622" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5626" CreationDate="2011-08-06T02:42:35.283" Score="9" ViewCount="573" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworld.com/18744/black_hat_lethal_hack_and_wireless_attack_on_insulin_pumps_to_kill_people&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Black Hat: Lethal Hack and wireless attack on insulin pumps to kill&#xA;  people&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Like something straight out of science fiction, an&#xA;  attacker with a powerful antenna could be up to a half mile away from&#xA;  a victim yet launch a wireless hack to remotely control an insulin&#xA;  pump and potentially kill the victim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After conducting his research, Radcliffe told the Associated Press,&#xA;  &quot;My initial reaction was that this was really cool from a technical&#xA;  perspective. The second reaction was one of maybe sheer terror, to&#xA;  know that there's no security around the devices which are a very&#xA;  active part of keeping me alive.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems dubious that there is zero, nada, zilch security of any type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4281" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-07T09:19:57.717" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T10:13:10.427" Title="Can diabetics with pumps be killed from a half mile away?" Tags="|medical-science|safety|security|cryptography|hacking|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5620" CreationDate="2011-08-06T12:02:36.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2680508/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Exercise and the brain: something to chew on&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evidence is accumulating that exercise has profound benefits for brain&#xA;function.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;Physical activity improves learning and memory in humans and&#xA;animals. Moreover, an active lifestyle might prevent or delay loss of cognitive function with aging or neurodegenerative disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rU6Gp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Genes&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nutrition and exercise affect neuronal signaling pathways important for synaptic plasticity and cognitive function.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BDNF and glutamate act at receptors that regulate calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) and mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK)/extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flavanols might activate similar signaling pathways, raising the possibility that natural compounds have a selective neuronal receptor (&lt;em&gt;? indicates a hypothetical receptor&lt;/em&gt; ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BDNF also influences the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt and the FOXO subfamily of forkhead transcription factors, elevating expression of genes important for learning and memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18781504?ordinalpos=1&amp;amp;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&amp;amp;linkpos=4&amp;amp;log$=relatedreviews&amp;amp;logdbfrom=pubmed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Exercise is Brain Food&lt;/a&gt; [&lt;em&gt;Abstract only&lt;/em&gt; ]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In animal models, physical activity enhances memory and learning,&#xA;promotes neurogenesis and protects the nervous system from injury and&#xA;neurodegenerative disease&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neurotrophins, endogenous proteins that&#xA;support brain plasticity likely mediate the beneficial effects of&#xA;exercise on the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In clinical studies, exercise increases brain&#xA;volume in areas implicated in executive processing, improves cognition&#xA;in children with cerebral palsy and enhances phonemic skill in school&#xA;children with reading difficulty&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;In 2009 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/thenational/indepthanalysis/story/2009/10/06/national-braingains.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CBC News&lt;/a&gt; did a piece (&lt;em&gt;19 min video&lt;/em&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;about &lt;strong&gt;City Park High School in Saskatoon&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;this is an alternative school for those with learning difficulties&lt;/em&gt; ), &lt;strong&gt;that put treadmills and&#xA;exercise bikes into a math classroom&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, the cardio equipment went in the classroom in February, and by&#xA;June, &lt;strong&gt;pretty much all the kids had jumped a full grade in reading,&#xA;writing and math&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exercise causes the brain to create more nerve cells (neurogenesis), makes those nerves stronger, and helps them withstand stress, and improves neurotransmitter function, which helps the brain work better&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://johnratey.typepad.com/blog/2009/04/physically-active-play-and-cognition-an-academic-matter-jacob-sattelmair-and-john-j-ratey.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. John Ratey&lt;/a&gt;, one of the key researchers in this area, noted not only improvements in those with ADHD, but also in those with bipolar disorder and schitzophrenia as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[via &lt;a href=&quot;http://trusted.md/blog/vreni_gurd/2009/04/25/exercise_improves_learning#axzz1UFIeWAKT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trusted.MD&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parentingscience.com/exercise-for-children.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Parenting Science - The cognitive benefits of exercise for children&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fi.edu/learn/brain/exercise.html#physicalexercise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Franklin Institute - Physical Exercise for a Better Brain&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17185007&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;High impact running improves learning&lt;/a&gt; [Abstract]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18094706&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Be smart, exercise your heart: exercise effects on brain and cognition&lt;/a&gt; [Abstract]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16388860&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mild forced treadmill exercise enhances spatial learning in the aged rat&lt;/a&gt; [Abstract]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T12:26:18.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5625" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-06T14:13:57.430" Score="19" ViewCount="1149" Body="&lt;p&gt;People keep claiming that shorter lines are easier to read - &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/100940/reduce-the-empty-space-on-each-side-of-pages&quot;&gt;especially when discussing user interfaces and fixed width layouts&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recall a stack overflow question years ago where someone essentially debunked this and had studies to prove that long line lengths were not only not a problem, but actually resulted in faster reading and comprehension, thus supporting his assertion that wide screen monitors and wide editor windows were useful, and that limiting writing to a certain number of characters per line was a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I can't find it now, and perhaps there are studies or information that they missed, or has been released since then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there an &quot;optimal&quot; line length for reading?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it true that very short line lengths are faster and/or easier to comprehend than long lines (for instance, in newspaper columns)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="919" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T10:29:45.857" LastActivityDate="2012-06-10T00:08:56.787" Title="Are shorter lines easier to read?" Tags="|language|reading|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5622" CreationDate="2011-08-06T16:51:53.240" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you go to the source, it's clear that there is no proof that it can be done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract for &lt;a href=&quot;http://blackhat.com/html/bh-us-11/bh-us-11-briefings.html#Radcliffe&quot;&gt;Jerome Radcliffe's &lt;em&gt;&quot;Hacking Medical Devices for Fun and Insulin: Breaking the Human SCADA System&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; presentation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a diabetic, I have two devices attached to me at all times; an&#xA;  insulin pump and a continuous glucose monitor. This combination of&#xA;  devices turns me into a Human SCADA system; in fact, much of the&#xA;  hardware used in these devices are also used in Industrial SCADA&#xA;  equipment. I was inspired to attempt to hack these medical devices&#xA;  after a presentation on hardware hacking at DEF CON in 2009. Both of&#xA;  the systems have proprietary wireless communication methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Could their communication methods be reverse engineered? Could a&#xA;  device be created to perform injection attacks? Manipulation of a&#xA;  diabetic's insulin, directly or indirectly, could result in&#xA;  significant health risks and even death. My weapons in the battle:&#xA;  Arduino, Ham Radios, Bus Pirate, Oscilloscope, Soldering Iron, and a&#xA;  hacker's intuition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After investing months of spare time and an immense amount of&#xA;  caffeine, I have not accomplished my mission.&lt;/strong&gt; The journey, however,&#xA;  has been an immeasurable learning experience - from propriety&#xA;  protocols to hardware interfacing-and I will focus on the ups and&#xA;  downs of this project, including the technical issues, the lessons&#xA;  learned, and information discovered, in this presentation &quot;Breaking&#xA;  the Human SCADA System.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems to me that the quote in the article you're referring to must have been taken out of context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-08-06T17:09:16.050" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T17:09:16.050" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4761" CreationDate="2011-08-06T17:58:54.960" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is it is plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iran GDP stands at $330 billion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&amp;amp;met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&amp;amp;idim=country:IRN&amp;amp;dl=en&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;q=iran+gdp+in+usd&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&amp;amp;met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&amp;amp;idim=country:IRN&amp;amp;dl=en&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;q=iran+gdp+in+usd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Apollo program costs almost $110 billion in today's dollars&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1579/1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1579/1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the cost of the space programs is similar, Iran must invest roughly 2% of its GDP on average every year. Some things will be cheaper to produce now like software, but Iran lacks the huge pool of brains that US had at their disposal so if they want to move fast enough they will have to buy foreign talent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far so good. Not impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing is that Apollo program had a lot of gifted expertise from the previous space programs and the ballistic rocket projects of the Pentagon, and the US already had the whole industry and infrastructure in place. Iran barely launched their first leo rocket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think we could look to at least doubling of that cost. Now 4% of GDP is a bit of a drain.&#xA;Also there are political challenges both internal and external - nobody will be comfortable with Iran possessing such potent technologies, and with the extremely high unemployment such expenditures will cause internal unrest which may be the biggest problem. The 50s and 60s were unprecedented times of prosperity and growth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as bragging rights achievement - the only comment any US official will say - it surely took long enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastActivityDate="2011-08-06T17:58:54.960" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5629" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6815" CreationDate="2011-08-06T22:42:27.280" Score="20" ViewCount="1418" Body="&lt;p&gt;The process of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_fracturing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hydraulic fracturing&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;em&gt;fracking&lt;/em&gt; uses fluid pressure to extract hydrocarbons from rock.  There have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/small-earthquake-in-blackpool-major-shock-for-uks-energy-policy-2291597.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;media reports&lt;/a&gt; in the UK linking a fracking operation to some minor earthquakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The controversial new drilling operation for natural shale gas in Lancashire has been suspended following a second earthquake in the area that may have been triggered by the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The British Geological Survey is claiming there may be a link.  How established is the science behind this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earthquake experts from the British Geological Survey said that the 1.5 magnitude quake last week was similar to a 2.3 earthquake in April in the same area and that both may be linked to the experimental fracking for shale gas at Preese Hall on the Fylde coast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brian Baptie from the BGS:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We had a couple of instruments close to the site and they show that both events were close to the site and at a shallow depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The timing of these two events in conjunction with the ongoing fracking at the site suggests that they may be related.&amp;quot; He added: &amp;quot;It is well-established that drilling like this can trigger small earthquakes.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how well established is it?  And can it trigger larger earthquakes, perhaps not in the UK but in areas of greater geological sensitivity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2187" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T14:50:34.663" Title="Does &quot;fracking&quot; cause earthquakes?" Tags="|geology|fracking|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5631" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-08-07T03:43:31.170" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the strict sense, a miracle is an alleged event that defies the laws of nature. It is commonly attributed to one or multiple benign supernatural beings. Examples would be the transformation of water into wine or the resurrection from death. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People often call events miracles that are not strictly impossible but merely improbable. An example for this would be being the lone survivor of a plane crash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The distinction from a skeptical point of view is that the latter class of miracles describes events that can indeed occur, and where skepticism is directed at the alleged &lt;em&gt;cause&lt;/em&gt; for the event, whereas in the former class, skepticism is directed at the event itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="1183" LastEditDate="2011-08-07T03:43:31.170" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T03:43:31.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5632" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-08-07T03:43:31.170" Score="0" Body="In the strict sense, a miracle is an alleged event that defies the laws of nature. It is commonly attributed to one or multiple benign supernatural beings." OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="1183" LastEditDate="2011-08-07T03:43:31.170" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T03:43:31.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5373" CreationDate="2011-08-07T04:02:45.890" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lenon, Elvis, Zappa, Jackson - none of them died at an age of 27. And Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Paganini, Liszt, Caruso, ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Musician' is a wide field, but what's about rock stars? Caruso wasn't a rock star? Well - Amy Winehouse isn't exactly Rock, is she? It's Soul. Is Aretha Franklin still alive? Tina Turner? James Brown was or is older than 27. Why are so damned much musicians older than 27 still alive? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, back to the standards:&#xA;Here are &lt;a href=&quot;http://crispian-jago.blogspot.com/2011/07/is-27-club-statistically-significant.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some diagrams&lt;/a&gt;, showing 100 dead, most well known rock musicians (without explaining, how 'well known' was measured). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I link it, because of the skeptic questions raised in the text and in the comments: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does dying early make you more famous? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is there a high risk of drug usage in the early adult phase, which some musicians survive (Cliff Richard, Joe Cocker, ...), and after a critical age, not exactly the age of 27, but around that, their chances of getting old rise, because they learned how to handle the risk? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is the scope of musicians (rock, soul) adapted to dying stars with 27, after an initial group of musicians in the 70ies (Jones, Morrison, Hendrix, Joplin) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the age of rock music &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;94% did not die at the age of 27&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2011-08-07T04:31:40.527" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T04:31:40.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5625" CreationDate="2011-08-07T09:44:42.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been quite a few studies on this, and in my opinion none of them is conclusive, as they contradict each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A group of them suggests shorter line lengths, and another group suggests longer line lengths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research has shown that many aspects of physical layout of online text impact reading performance and satisfaction; Dyson (2004) gives an excellent review. One such factor that has been studied is line length, or the number of characters presented per line of text. &lt;strong&gt;Research investigating line length for online text has been inconclusive.&lt;/strong&gt; Several studies found that longer line lengths (80 – 100 cpl) were read faster than short line lengths (Duchnicky and Kolers, 1983; Dyson and Kipping, 1998). Contrary to these findings, other research suggests the use of shorter line lengths. Dyson and Haselgrove (2001) found that 55 characters per line were read faster than either 100 cpl or 25 cpl conditions. Similarly, a line length of 45-60 characters was recommended by Grabinger and Osman-Jouchoux (1996) based on user preferences. Bernard, Fernandez, Hull, and Chaparro (2003) found that adults preferred medium line length (76 cpl) and children preferred shorter line lengths (45 cpl) when compared to 132 characters per line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/72/LineLength.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Effects of Line Length on Reading Online News&lt;/em&gt; by A. Dawn Shaikh&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.surl.org/usabilitynews/42/text_length.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Effects of Line Length on Children and Adults' Online Reading Performance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/mxh/Papers/Dyson%20&amp;amp;%20Haselgrove%20%282001%29.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The influence of reading speed and line length on the effectiveness of reading from screen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also find interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajms.alameenmedical.org/article_Vol04-2-apr-jun-2011/AJMS.4.2.2011%20p%20131-143.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Readability, Subjective Preference and Mental Workload Studies on Young Indian Adults for Selection of Optimum Font Type and Size during Onscreen Reading&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-08-07T09:44:42.817" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5506" CreationDate="2011-08-07T13:49:22.493" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an environmental chemist, I can honestly tell you that most people don't realize just how bad their indoor air quality is, since they don't realize just how many items in their home are contributing to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to measuring indoor air quality, the US National Ambient Air Quality Standards can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/air/criteria.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and the EPA has a publication database on Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. There are a number of devices used to sample the indoor air periodically which calculate the total amount of chemical/PM present over a given amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The type of pollution you'll encounter is indeed influenced by where you live, with regards to mold, NOX, SOX and such (the EPA has a lovely &quot;Where you live&quot; resource link available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/iaq/whereyoulive.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regional differences aside, there are a few 'standard' pollutants found in pretty much all homes: particulate matter (PM), passive smoke, formaldehyde and other VOC's, air fresheners/cleaners (seriously).  It's also worth mentioning heating sources: fireplaces, wood burning stoves, gas stoves, furnaces and the like; if they're not functioning and/or used properly then they can emit pollutants indoors - notably NO2 and SO2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Home ventilation plays a key role in indoor air quality: if your home isn't well ventilated, then the pollutants are able to accumulate in the ambient air to levels which can trigger a response in the people living there - asthma, headaches, etc. Also, the quality of the materials used in the home can contribute to the quality of the indoor air, as well as its age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bernstein, et al (2008) published &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091674907022099&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The health effects of nonindustrial indoor air pollution&lt;/a&gt;&quot; in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (121:3) - it's a pay site, but I have access to it, and I'll give a brief overview of their findings below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ozone: Links like the one you've provided talk about the 'health benefits' of ozone.  They neglect to mention the health risks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acute exposure to O3 produces decrements in pulmonary function and&#xA;  exercise capacity and induces airways inflammation in both healthy&#xA;  individuals and those with pre-existing airways disease (ie, asthma,&#xA;  chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). &#xA;  Main sources of indoor O3 are from outdoor O3 resources as&#xA;  well as air purifiers (electrostatic precipitators, negative ion&#xA;  generators, and ozone generators), which are marketed to the public to&#xA;  provide relief from numerous respiratory ailments as well as to reduce&#xA;  odors and destroy microbes. These devices have been shown to increase&#xA;  indoor O3 concentrations in the range of 16 to 453 ppb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a sidenote, the 8 hour max ozone exposure is 750 ppb.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NO2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because more than half of all households in the United States use gas,&#xA;  the primary source of indoor NO2 is gas-fueled cooking and heating&#xA;  appliances. An extensive literature has examined the link between NO2&#xA;  exposure and duration causing adverse respiratory effects in&#xA;  susceptible populations, but results are inconclusive. There is recent&#xA;  good evidence suggesting that children with atopy or asthma, infants&#xA;  who are at risk of developing asthma, and female adults are more&#xA;  sensitive to the respiratory effects of NO2 exposure. &#xA;  Indoor NO2 exposure may also enhance asthmatic reactions to inhaled&#xA;  allergens. In the United States, elevated indoor NO2 levels are&#xA;  more prevalent in lower-income housing developments because of poor&#xA;  ventilation, small apartment size, and frequent use of gas stoves for&#xA;  supplemental heating. Nitrous acid, a product of primary&#xA;  combustion formed as a secondary product of NO2 and other nitrogen&#xA;  oxides and water, is also found on indoor surfaces. Nitrous oxides&#xA;  acidic nature makes it capable of causing respiratory damage leading&#xA;  to respiratory symptoms in patients with asthma at concentrations of&#xA;  650 ppb over 3 hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SO2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sulfur dioxide is a primary combustion product of fossil fuels that&#xA;  can be grouped together with acid aerosols and particles to form a&#xA;  complex group of distinct air pollutants associated with a wide array&#xA;  of adverse health effects, including short-term respiratory morbidity&#xA;  and mortality. Chamber studies have determined that kerosene heaters&#xA;  are the major source of sulfate aerosols and indoor SO2. Some early&#xA;  controlled chamber studies have demonstrated that SO2 can cause&#xA;  bronchoconstriction in healthy adults and adults with asthma, but a&#xA;  more recent study found that SO2 (200 ppb) and its reaction products&#xA;  (sulfuric acid 200 μg/m3 and ammonium bisulfate 2000 μg/m3) caused no&#xA;  significant change in spirometry or symptoms in healthy subjects and&#xA;  subjects with asthma. However, a recently published report examining&#xA;  the effect of indoor heating sources on respiratory symptoms in&#xA;  nonsmoking women reported that a 10-ppb increase in SO2 was associated&#xA;  with increased wheezing and chest tightness&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CO:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Carbon monoxide is a tasteless, odorless, colorless, and nonirritating&#xA;  gas produced by incomplete combustion of organic material and is the&#xA;  leading cause of poisoning in the United States. The main sources&#xA;  of indoor CO are gas appliances, unvented kerosene heaters, and&#xA;  environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). The main health effect of CO is a&#xA;  result of its ability to impair the oxygen binding capacity of&#xA;  hemoglobin, which can cause headaches, nausea, dizziness,&#xA;  breathlessness, and fatigue, and with high exposures can lead to coma&#xA;  and death. The severity of CO poisoning is dependent on&#xA;  concentration, length of exposure, and the general underlying health&#xA;  status of the exposed individual. Because carboxy-hemoglobin&#xA;  concentrations in blood are cumulative over time, prolonged exposure&#xA;  to low concentrations can result in considerable health effects.&#xA;  Burnett et al found that CO, compared with the other major indoor&#xA;  gaseous pollutants, NO2, SO2, and O3, was the strongest predictor of&#xA;  elderly patients being hospitalized for congestive heart failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention VOC being more of an office building problem, but that's actually not at all true.  There are PLENTY of sources for VOCs in a home - again, you just don't think of them as a 'source' of VOCs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091674907022099&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bernstein&lt;/a&gt;, 2008 includes a nifty table of sources for VOC indoor air pollution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2zt6J.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;VOCs and their sources&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above table lists what chemicals are emitted by indoor items, I've taken the time to give a small summary of where you'll find them in your home. Please note that my list is by no means exhaustive of the sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adhesives: furniture, wood floorings, moldings - anything that's been glued in your house. Particleboard also is smothered in adhesive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carpeting: it's treated to resist stains and smells - it's often glued and nailed down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cleaners: If you're using a cleaner that should be diluted - and don't dilute it properly - then you'll be left with a residue that contributes to the PM pollution in your home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linoleum - again, glued down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Millwork: all that lovely molding, window casings, baseboards and doors - yep.  It's contributing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Office furniture: again, particle board, glues and all. Most homes have at least 1 computer and a computer desk/hutch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paints: If your walls aren't painted, then they're most likely wallpapered. Either way - they both emit VOC's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others: any spray (air fresheners, deodorants), tobacco smoke, CO &amp;amp; benzene from your attached garage, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Textiles: ALL textiles are treated for shipping - do you wash your drapes before you hang them? What about the pillows on your sofa and the cushions?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to answer your question, &quot;is indoor air pollution really higher than outdoor air pollution?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is: it depends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The air inside your house comes from the outdoor environment (and the amount present in the outdoor air will vary daily) - therefore any pollutants that were present in the outdoor air are now present in your home. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231000003381&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Koponen, et al (2000)&lt;/a&gt; studied the effect of outdoor air pollution on indoor air and determined:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ventilation rate was also continuously monitored. Indoor particle&#xA;  concentrations were observed to vary from 500 to 104 cm−3 with a high&#xA;  dependence on the outdoor concentrations. This indicates that in this&#xA;  scenario, indoor particles are mainly of outdoor origin. Effects of&#xA;  ventilation rates on indoor air particle concentrations and several&#xA;  inorganic gases were studied. We found that ventilation had a strong&#xA;  influence on indoor particle and gas concentrations. I/O&#xA;  (indoor/outdoor) ratio in different in different particle size classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the outdoor pollution level (PM, smog, NOX, SOX, VOCs) along with the number of indoor source pollutants, it is very likely that the indoor pollution is higher than the outdoor. (This is &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; much the case in developing countries.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again - the ventilation of the home is the major mediator of pollution levels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastEditorUserId="1063" LastEditDate="2012-01-21T21:40:34.287" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T21:40:34.287" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-07T22:44:16.943" Score="14" ViewCount="754" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the past 18 months there have been several news articles pointing the finger at the Chinese government over hacks on U.S government and businesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most recently: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/McAfee-cyberattacks-china-government/2011/08/03/id/405955&quot;&gt;China Suspected of Hacking US Defense Firms, Others — Largest Theft 'In History'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence indicating that the Chinese government was directly involved in either financing or directing people or groups in cyber attacks on the U.S government or businesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The apparent smoking gun in plenty of these articles is &lt;a href=&quot;http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/28/wikileaked-cables-china-google/&quot;&gt;this excerpt&lt;/a&gt; from Wikileaks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A global computer hacking effort: China’s Politburo directed the&#xA;  intrusion into Google’s computer systems in that country, a Chinese&#xA;  contact told the American Embassy in Beijing in January, one cable&#xA;  reported. The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of&#xA;  computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private&#xA;  security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese&#xA;  government. They have broken into American government computers and&#xA;  those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since&#xA;  2002, cables said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally don't think this is strong enough evidence to implicate the Chinese govt., just because some guy told an embassy contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="1134" LastEditDate="2013-03-07T18:11:34.457" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T18:11:34.457" Title="Is the Chinese government responsible for hacking U.S businesses and government?" Tags="|government|china|hacking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5643" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5648" CreationDate="2011-08-08T00:48:31.093" Score="4" ViewCount="394" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.127sale.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;These&lt;/a&gt; folks claim to organize the &quot;World's Longest Yard Sale&quot; every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It claims to run from Hudson, Michigan to Gadsden, Alabama following US 127. I can attest that folks on Lookout Mountain, Georgia participate every year. I am wondering if this claim to the world's longest yard sale is valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4402" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-08T01:07:45.577" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T05:55:35.327" Title="Is the &quot;127 Corridor Sale&quot; the world's longest yard sale?" Tags="|geography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5644" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-08T03:38:20.727" Score="21" ViewCount="2422" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support the claim the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group&quot;&gt;Bilderberg Group&lt;/a&gt; have control of the world and its money supply?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to suggest they are planning on exterminating the majority of the earths population in order to control the world's resources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of these claims can be seen by searching &quot;bilderberg exterminating&quot; in Google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://etherzone.com/2006/stang112406.shtml&quot;&gt;however, their big plan is to exterminate 90% of the Earth's human&#xA;populace&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4403" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T20:06:10.727" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T16:09:28.693" Title="Does the Bilderberg Group have influence on world events?" Tags="|economics|politics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22" CreationDate="2011-08-08T03:55:52.603" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears that the combination of ephedrine and caffeine may have a positive effect on athletic performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/289/12/1537.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this AMA study on ephedrine&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Efficacy: Athletic Performance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We found 8 published controlled trials of the effects of synthetic ephedrine on athletic performance; most were crossover designs and all but 1 also included caffeine. One study assessed the effect of ephedrine and exercise training on basal metabolic rate, did not report athletic performance outcomes, and is not described below.​ The remaining 7 trials were not appropriate for pooled analysis because they involved different types of exercise (power and endurance) and different outcome measures, so they are discussed here individually. We found no trials assessing the effects of herbal ephedra on athletic performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Six trials by Bell and colleagues assessed the exercise capacity of small groups of healthy male participants (all trials included 24 participants or fewer) and are summarized in Table 2. &lt;strong&gt;These trials reported that neither caffeine nor ephedrine alone had significant effects on parameters of exercise performance&lt;/strong&gt; such as oxygen consumption, time to exhaustion, or carbon dioxide production, &lt;strong&gt;but the combination of ephedrine and caffeine consistently demonstrated a 20% to 30% increase in performance.&lt;/strong&gt; The single trial of strength training did show an improvement in muscle endurance but only on the first of 3 repetitions. In the only trial to test the effects of ephedrine and caffeine on thermal regulation, no increase in temperature was reported. Nausea and vomiting were reported in a third of the participants given ephedrine at a dose of 1 mg/kg with 5 mg/kg of caffeine, but not in any of those given a lower dose of 0.8 mg/kg of ephedrine and 4 mg/kg of caffeine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that these trials had very low numbers of participants, and the results should be deemed &lt;em&gt;plausible&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T03:55:52.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5646" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5647" CreationDate="2011-08-08T04:44:47.877" Score="9" ViewCount="2716" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some sunglasses I bought back in the 1990s containing lenses that were constructed from plastic materials that blocked blue light.  Although claims were made by some vendors that the lenses were made of a material called &quot;Malenium Polycarbonate&quot; along with claims that this material was resistent to damage that most sunglasses couldn't withstand (e.g., striking it with a hammer), when I asked around for more information about this material, every person I asked had never heard of &quot;Malenium.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I Google for the word &quot;Malenium&quot; or the phrase &quot;Malenium Polycarbonate,&quot; I get links to web sites selling sunglasses that block blue light, such as the following which makes the same claim.  (Just for fun I checked Wikipedia, and it also doesn't have any information about the word or phrase I typed into Google.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following paragraph is from the second-last paragraph of one of the web sites that Google found for me ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blublocker.biz/pp_information.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.blublocker.biz/pp_information.html&lt;/a&gt; ):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unlike many other polarized lenses, which are made of cheap plastic, BluBlocker high-resolution polarized sunglasses contain &lt;strong&gt;Malenium Polycarbonate&lt;/strong&gt;.  This is &lt;strong&gt;a powerful resin that makes our lenses so strong you can hit them with a hammer and they won’t shatter.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdote:  &lt;em&gt;Although I've never tried striking any of these lenses with a hammer, I do remember a pair getting stepped on and the lenses just getting scratched; only the frame broke.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not finding information about this material seems peculiar to me, and I wonder if this might just be a different name for some other form of durable plastic.  So, &lt;strong&gt;is Malenium Polycarbonate a real material?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3068" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T20:05:39.543" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T06:12:56.503" Title="Is &quot;Malenium Polycarbonate&quot; (from blue-blocking sunglasses) real?" Tags="|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5646" CreationDate="2011-08-08T05:37:59.357" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears Malenium is just a trademarked name based on the information &lt;a href=&quot;http://174.36.140.236/malenium-74470956.html&quot;&gt;provided here&lt;/a&gt; by the Blublocker corporation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A search for &quot;Malenium Polycarbonate&quot; on Google only provides around 29 results, some are garbage the rest just relate to the Blublocker corporation so there aren't other brands of sunglasses that are made from &quot;Malenium Polycarbonate&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Polycarbonate is just a synthetic resin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdreamin.com/sunglasses.php&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scratch-Resistant Coatings&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scratch-resistant coatings prolong the life of a pair of sunglasses.&#xA;  Many polycarbonate lenses have this coating to increase their level of&#xA;  scratch resistance to that of CR-39.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is Malenium is just a trademark and the superior strength is just a marketing claim, as there haven't been any studies comparing &quot;Malenium Polycarbonate&quot; to other sunglasses brands (based on Google search revealing only 29 results) unless one was published offline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T05:37:59.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5643" CreationDate="2011-08-08T05:48:57.330" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't find a reference on the Guiness World Records web site, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.albanyherald.com/home/headlines/92151264.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this news article&lt;/a&gt; from 2010 says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And if you were wondering, according to the Guinness Book of World&#xA;  Records, The World’s Longest Yard Sale” runs along a 630-mile stretch&#xA;  of U.S. Highway 127 from Gadsden, Ala. to Covington, Ky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Yard+sale+stretches+52+miles.-a0118908314&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;more evidence&lt;/a&gt; pointing to the Guiness World Record in 2004:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrary to the hopes of some participants, this sale won't even come&#xA;  close to breaking the Guinness World Record for longest yard sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No, no,&quot; Weiler said. &quot;There's a 450-mile yard sale on Highway 27&#xA;  that runs through four states in the South - that's where I got the&#xA;  idea for this one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-08-08T05:55:35.327" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T05:55:35.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5519" CreationDate="2011-08-08T06:42:10.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I could not find a single supporting claim on the internet for the claim you provided so I would argue it's not notable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that Calamine applied topically is not absorbed through the skin &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imb.ie/images/uploaded/swedocuments/LicenseSPC_PA0206-016-002_20112008222551.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Zinc oxide or calamine are unlikely to be absorbed through the skin.&#xA;  Zinc salts are poorly absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract. Only a&#xA;  small proportion of dietary zinc is absorbed. Zinc is widely&#xA;  distributed throughout the body and is excreted in the faeces with&#xA;  only traces appearing in the urine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible side effects if someone were stupid enough to drink calamine lotion (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/117978-side-effects-calamine-lotion/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Side Effects If Ingested&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although it is unlikely that calamine lotion will be ingested if it is&#xA;  kept out of the reach of children, the lotion contains zinc oxide,&#xA;  which can cause an allergic reaction if swallowed. According to the&#xA;  National Institutes of Health, zinc oxide poisoning can occur if&#xA;  calamine lotion is eaten. Symptoms of zinc oxide poisoning include&#xA;  upset stomach, diarrhea, chills and fever, a yellowing of the eyes or&#xA;  skin, and irritation of the mouth and throat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the above is not from a scientific article I think it is clear and logical that zinc poisoning is possible if you were to ingest a product that contains zinc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no indication of what levels of zinc poisoning or zinc ingestion needs to occur before there is damage to the kidneys, but zinc poisoning &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/amjforensicmedicine/Abstract/1997/06000/Zinc_Toxicity_Following_Massive_Coin_Ingestion.8.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;will damage your organs&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing to indicate that topical use will lead to kidney failure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence to suggest that someone silly enough could correlate kidney failure with calamine lotion purely because it contains zinc oxide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T06:42:10.323" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5650" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5655" CreationDate="2011-08-08T10:02:43.817" Score="5" ViewCount="859" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/05/world/asia/05korea.html?_r=4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recent article in the New York Times (limited paywall)&lt;/a&gt; claims that the North Korean nuclear program is funded in part by gold farming in South Korean Massive Multiplayer Online Games. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://kotaku.com/5828427/hans-brix-might-want-to-send-inspectors-to-kim-jong+ils-gold-farm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article in Kotaku&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cops in Seoul on Thursday arrested five persons who engaged a team of&#xA;  North Korean hackers to breach the servers for South Korean MMOs&#xA;  Lineage and Dungeon and Fighter, which allowed nonstop &quot;play&quot; by gold&#xA;  farming bots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The arrested persons are allegedly affiliated with Office 39:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Office 39 is believed to oversee a slush fund worth billions, which&#xA;  funds North Korea's nuclear program and keeps the elites in Rolexes&#xA;  and caviar while the rest of the country eats that crud they put on&#xA;  Bruce Wayne's plate in Batman Begins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't access the NY Times article directly, but from the other articles referencing it the connection to the nuclear program seems somewhat far fetched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there actually solid evidence linking the arrested group to the North Korean Government and nuclear program? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-08-08T10:12:20.447" LastActivityDate="2022-08-06T22:19:57.037" Title="Is the North Korean nuclear program in part funded by gold farming?" Tags="|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5629" CreationDate="2011-08-08T13:04:01.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be very surprised if it did &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; cause earthquakes. Back in 1993, the Dutch &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knmi.nl/cms/content/25198/relatie_tussen_gaswinning_en_aardbevingen&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;established&lt;/a&gt; that even conventional gas exploitation causes earthquakes up to a magnitude of 3.5. Since a 2.3 earthquake is 16 times weaker, it's quite believable that you could get such an earthquake even with experimental drilling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastActivityDate="2011-08-08T13:04:01.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26" CreationDate="2011-08-08T14:43:23.677" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, both placebo and nocebo effects are real phenomena&lt;/strong&gt; (although they are often exaggerated in popular media). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; shows a lot of scientific papers on those, some of them provide a very detailed insight into those mechanisms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The nocebo phenomenon, in which placebos produce adverse side effects, offers some insight into nonspecific side effect reporting. We performed a focused review of the literature, which identified several factors that appear to be associated with the nocebo phenomenon and/or reporting of nonspecific side effects while taking active medication: the patient's expectations of adverse effects at the outset of treatment; a process of conditioning in which the patient learns from prior experiences to associate medication-taking with somatic symptoms; certain psychological characteristics such as anxiety, depression, and the tendency to somatize; and situational and contextual factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/287/5/622.short&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nonspecific Medication Side Effects and the Nocebo Phenomenon&lt;/em&gt;, by Arthur J. Barsky, MD; Ralph Saintfort, MD; Malcolm P. Rogers, MD; Jonathan F. Borus, MD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The latest scientific evidence has demonstrated, however, that the placebo effect and the nocebo effect, the negative effects of placebo, stem from highly active processes in the brain that are mediated by psychological mechanisms such as expectation and conditioning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627308005850&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;New Insights into the Placebo and Nocebo Responses&lt;/em&gt;, by Paul Enck, Fabrizio Benedetti, Manfred Schedlowski, Neuron - 31 July 2008 (Vol. 59, Issue 2, pp. 195-206)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4347" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T15:58:58.187" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T15:58:58.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5650" CreationDate="2011-08-08T16:45:48.590" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A partial answer regarding whether Office 39 exists and finances the nuclear program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No doubt Office 39 does indeed exist. Following Executive Order 13551 &lt;a href=&quot;https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Treasury has frozen their funds&lt;/a&gt; a year ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The U.S. Department of the Treasury today designated Korea Daesong&#xA;Bank and Korea Daesong General Trading Corporation pursuant to&#xA;Executive Order (E.O.) 13551 for being owned or controlled by Office&#xA;39 of the Korean Workers' Party.  Office 39 is a secretive branch of&#xA;the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North&#xA;Korea) that provides critical support to North Korean leadership in&#xA;part through engaging in illicit economic activities and managing&#xA;slush funds and generating revenues for the leadership. Office 39 was&#xA;named in the Annex to E.O. 13551, issued by President Obama on August&#xA;30, 2010, in response to the U.S. government's longstanding concerns&#xA;regarding North Korea's involvement in a range of illicit activities,&#xA;many of which are conducted through government agencies and associated&#xA;front companies. Korea Daesong Bank is involved in facilitating North&#xA;Korea's illicit financing projects, and Korea Daesong General Trading&#xA;Corporation is used to facilitate foreign transactions on behalf of&#xA;Office 39.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I couldn't find any claim that Office 39 finances N. Korea's nuclear program. Most sources suggest that it manages leaders' private slush funds and imports embargoed luxuries for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120910100925/http://www.aolnews.com:80/2010/08/31/us-aims-to-shut-down-nkoreas-shady-office-39/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AOL News:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the State and Treasury Departments, Office 39 --&#xA;officially part of the Korean Workers Party -- manages the&#xA;&amp;quot;leadership's slush funds,&amp;quot; generating foreign currency and using&#xA;branches all over the country to distribute the luxury goods that&#xA;maintain the loyalty of top officials -- and that the U.N. Security&#xA;Council has tried to ban from North Korea for just that reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20141122021331/http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFTOE6AH08320101119&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reuters:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It has branches throughout the nation that raise and manage funds&#xA;and is responsible for earning foreign currency for senior party&#xA;leaders through illicit activities such as narcotics trafficking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Office 39 controls a number of entities inside North Korea and&#xA;abroad through which the Treasury says it is involved in the&#xA;production, smuggling and distribution of narcotics and it has also&#xA;been involved in the attempted procurement and transfer to North Korea&#xA;of luxury goods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It produced methamphetamine and was also involved in its supply to&#xA;small-scale North Korean smugglers for distribution through China and&#xA;South Korea. It also operates poppy farms and produces opium and&#xA;heroin, the Treasury says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 2009, Office 39 was involved in the failed attempt to purchase&#xA;and export to North Korea -- through China -- two Italian-made luxury&#xA;yachts worth more than $15 million and destined for North Korean&#xA;leader Kim Jong-il, the Treasury says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-08-06T22:19:57.037" LastActivityDate="2022-08-06T22:19:57.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5661" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5723" CreationDate="2011-08-09T01:23:44.703" Score="53" ViewCount="5080" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an age old debate that i have with a coterie of friends; without backing up with much scientific fact. It's all recently been based on arguments of experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible that utilizing the air conditioning in the car has a greater impact on fuel consumption/efficiency over having the window rolled down in a car?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4417" LastEditorDisplayName="user1770" LastEditDate="2011-08-13T16:23:34.697" LastActivityDate="2019-12-20T09:54:48.073" Title="Is using the A/C in a car less fuel efficient than having the windows down?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5661" CreationDate="2011-08-09T02:00:35.627" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/episode22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mythbusters episode 22&lt;/a&gt; tried this one, and they claimed it was busted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2612" LastActivityDate="2011-08-09T02:00:35.627" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5664" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5666" CreationDate="2011-08-09T06:53:05.613" Score="25" ViewCount="6877" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read a book in which someone hacked into a computer and used the speakers (not a microphone) to listen to what was happening in the room. Is this even remotely possible without gaining physical access to the computer, assuming you could completely take over the computer electronically?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4233" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-08-12T20:36:39.050" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T14:32:24.390" Title="Can a computer be hacked to use a connected speaker as a microphone?" Tags="|computers|technology|surveillance|hacking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5664" CreationDate="2011-08-09T08:21:02.297" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most speakers really can work as microphones; the signal is weak, but it is there. See, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zyra.org.uk/sp-mic.htm&quot;&gt;All speakers are microphones&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What happens is that in a speaker there's a magnet and coil, and a pair of wires connecting it up to something. What is supposed to happen when the device is used for outputting sound that electricity is converted to sound. Electrical output from an amplifier is put into the speaker and turned into sound. However, the process is reversible, so it's possible for the magnet and coil in a speaker to pick up sound in the air and turn it into electrical signals in the wires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some audio devices have configurable connections to the connectors (jacks) so that you can plug a speaker or microphone into any jack; this means that you can reconfigure them to record the signal coming from the speakers. See the manual for a common onboard audio chipset &lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.ts.fujitsu.com/rl/servicesupport/techsupport/Boards/Soundcards/RealTekHDA/hd_audio_driver_usermanualver1-00_0418-05%5B1%5D.pdf&quot;&gt;RealTek&lt;/a&gt;, Chapter 3 Audio I/O, page 11:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Realtek HD Audio Manager frees you from default speaker settings. Different from before, &#xA;  for each jack, they are not limited to perform certain functions. Instead, now each jack is able to be chosen to perform either output (i.e. playback) function or input (i.e. recording) function, we call this “Retasking”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one more step: between the jack and the speaker may be an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplifier&quot;&gt;amplifier&lt;/a&gt;. Amplifiers don't pass any signal from their outputs to their inputs, so if a speaker signal is to be read, the speaker must be connected directly, without an amplifier. This would require the speaker to be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_speakers#Passive_speakers&quot;&gt;passive speaker&lt;/a&gt; plugged directly into the jack:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...a passive speaker (or unpowered speaker) is a speaker which does not have its own power source and draws power from an amplifier located outside of the loudspeaker enclosure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you hacked the computer into a state where you can install and run your own device drivers, and if there are passive speakers connected in a &quot;retaskable&quot; jack, then it is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorDisplayName="user1770" LastEditDate="2011-08-09T21:22:21.403" LastActivityDate="2011-08-09T21:22:21.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3409" CreationDate="2011-08-10T00:40:57.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Note: sucrose (white table sugar) is 50% fructose, 50% glucose. Mean fructose content of popular U.S. sweetened beverages was reported at 59%, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20948525&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;with &quot;several major brands&quot; using 65% fructose HFCS&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glucose, when fed with fructose, dramatically increases fructose absorption:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eBEaw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Fructose Absorption&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;70). Here, 40 g of pure fructose was malabsorbed by 68%, but 40 g of fructose in HFCS caused 26% to malabsorb 71). Malabsorption occured in 84% fed pear juice, 41% fed apple juice, and 20% fed grape juice; pear juice has an excess of fructose and some sorbitol (another sugar), apple juice is similar to pear juice but with less sobitol, and grape juice has equal amounts fructose:glucose and no sobitol 72). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In animals, fasting glucose levels rose in a group fed fructose/glucose, but not in a group fed sucrose, and the sucrose group was more physically active 73). Liver fat accumulation and endotoxin levels were significantly higher in rats fed fructose, compared to those fed sucrose 74).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight [and metabolic syndrome] than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.&quot; 75)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have specific evidence whether the amount of malabsorbed fructose typical for HFCS is deleterious to health. I do believe there's ample evidence suggesting that intestinal microbes are a major factor in human disease, and pathogenic microbes would likely be enabled by a constant source of malabsorbed sugar. Evidence for this topic is too long to fit or be appropriate for this post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't post more than 2 links due to my account standing, so &lt;a href=&quot;http://flare8.net/health/doku.php/fructose#sucrose&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;please see my site&lt;/a&gt;, for references and relevant extracts of the referenced studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3286" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-05-11T14:34:49.593" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T14:34:49.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5644" CreationDate="2011-08-10T04:07:10.383" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I have seen there is no credible source for the claim of an official release coming from Bilderberg detailing an agenda of depopulation. It is claimed in many places on the internet but none of these provide reliable evidence that this is the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some interesting snippets from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilderberg_Group&quot;&gt;wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; worth noting in relation to your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Thompson, Bilderberg itself is not an executive agency.&#xA;  However, when Bilderberg participants reach a form of consensus about&#xA;  what is to be done, they have at their disposal powerful transnational&#xA;  and national instruments for bringing about what it is they want to&#xA;  come to pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this points to the fact that they do have significant power at their disposal, so yes they do have some influence on world events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2001, Denis Healey, a Bilderberg group founder and, for 30 years, a&#xA;  steering committee member, said: &quot;To say we were striving for a&#xA;  one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of&#xA;  us in Bilderberg felt we couldn't go on forever fighting one another&#xA;  for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless. So we&#xA;  felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good&#xA;  thing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is confirmation from someone in the group that they were looking to influence world politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think any further proof is necessary. It is obvious that they have significant power based upon who is invited and their positions and assets. It is also obvious based on the quote by Denis Healey that as part of their work they would be influencing world events in some way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence to suggest that they have agenda which requires exterminating large parts of the population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T04:07:10.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3568" CreationDate="2011-08-10T04:29:13.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scinexx.de/wissen-aktuell-13761-2011-08-09.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3a%20scinexx%20%28scinexx%20%7C%20Das%20Wissensmagazin%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is an article (LANG=DE)&lt;/a&gt;, talking about the dependency of fingerprints from a single gene, cited in the &lt;code&gt;American Journal of Human Genetics, 2011; DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2011.07.004&lt;/code&gt;. They don't talk about manipulation of fingerprints, but of the mutation, they observed in whole families (there are only 4 families known, with multiple people affected from the deviation), which they investigated further, to find out, that a single modification is responsible, to make the fingerprint vanish. (But from the beginning - not modifying a living person or adult). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fingerprints are available after 24 weeks of pregnancy, and don't change significantly later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it will be possible, to provoke this in near future, isn't discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T04:29:13.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1998" CreationDate="2011-08-10T05:11:14.157" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, we know that the mechanism exists for this to be achieved: dogs can already do this and can distinguish which and where human scents have been left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case with Feynman he is claiming a similar mechanism, getting people to touch books that haven't been touched in a while so there is no residual scent and being able to find which book has been touched by comparing a person's scent to a scent left on a particular book. He has a slightly easier job to a dog that is picking up the scent of a stranger running through the bush.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also have &lt;a href=&quot;http://physics.divinechildhighschool.org/Home/summer-reading/testing-bloodhounds&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;other anecdotes&lt;/a&gt; on the net where people have claimed Richard continued to do this as a party trick to non-believers, so it appears it was not a one-off which he refused to do again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Years later, when Feynman was first at Caltech, he went to a party at&#xA;  Professor Bacher's house. He was talking to a group of people from&#xA;  Caltech when the story of smelling the bottles came up. Nobody&#xA;  believed a word of it. So, Feynman decided to perform the experiment&#xA;  again. He left the room and had three people touch three different&#xA;  books to see if he could identify who touched which book. He came&#xA;  back, smelled everyone's hands, and then smelled the books. He found&#xA;  the three books correctly and got one person wrong. Yet, the people&#xA;  still did not believe him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is this research paper (extract only) which indicates smells can be picked up between humans, but there results were only better in chance between relatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The basis of olfactory signatures mediating human kin recognition was&#xA;  investigated in two experiments. The odors of mothers and offspring&#xA;  were correctly matched (by subjects unfamiliar with the stimulus&#xA;  individuals) at a greater than chance frequency. In contrast, subjects&#xA;  were not able reliably to match the odors of husbands and wives. These&#xA;  data support the hypotheses that characteristic individuals odors are&#xA;  genetically mediated and that kin recognition should be facilitated by&#xA;  the similarity of such familiar odors among close relatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other evidence I could find of it being possible is this passage from Darwin's &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=_X79kDtFCGcC&amp;amp;pg=PA567&amp;amp;lpg=PA567&amp;amp;dq=%22The%20account%20given%20by%20Humboldt%20of%20the%20power%20of%20smell%20possessed%20by%20the%20natives%20of%20South%20America%20is%20well%20known%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=VhR1Q_jVHV&amp;amp;sig=SkqwQscdcw9ziU8r_RMgiJjb7cY&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=WA9CTsHWA-Xa0QGssO33BQ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;ved=0CBgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22The%20account%20given%20by%20Humboldt%20of%20the%20power%20of%20smell%20possessed%20by%20the%20natives%20of%20South%20America%20is%20well%20known%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“(36. The account given by Humboldt of the power of smell possessed by&#xA;  the natives of South America is well known, and has been confirmed by&#xA;  others. M. Houzeau ('Etudes sur les Facultes Mentales,' etc., tom. i.&#xA;  1872, p. 91) asserts that he repeatedly made experiments, and proved&#xA;  that Negroes and Indians could recognise persons in the dark by their&#xA;  odour.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelogics.org/thelogicsolfactorysmell.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; seems to go into Olfactory Perception in excrutiating detail, if you want go through it in fine detail I suggest this would be the place to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T05:11:14.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3568" CreationDate="2011-08-10T06:05:56.533" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is largely anecdotal, but it is certainly possible to &lt;strong&gt;temporarily&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;obscure&lt;/em&gt; one's fingerprints by simply coating one's fingerprints using glue, or a similar liquid adhesive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had this happen to me while working with cyanoacrylate adhesives, more commonly known as superglue. Basically, the adhesive forms a film over the fingertip, and fills the grooves, then cures. The end result is a smooth surface on your fingertip. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanoacrylate&quot;&gt;Wikipedia says:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some rock climbers use cyanoacrylate to repair damage to the skin on their fingertips.[8][9] Similarly, stringed-instrument players can form protective finger caps (in addition to calluses) with cyanoacrylates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thin CA glue also has application in woodworking. It can be used as a fast drying, glossy finish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is exactly what happens if you get it on your skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on why you are trying to obscure your fingertips), getting CA glue on your skin is not permanent. It simply flakes off along with the outer layer of skin, as your epidermis naturally replaces itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="638" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T06:05:56.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5684" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-10T07:18:16.807" Score="27" ViewCount="6109" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just yesterday I read how Tyrion tries to figure out if he's sleeping by pinching himself. And this seems to be a commonly held truth which often comes back in tales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm not so certain. So can you tell if you're dreaming by pinching yourself? Are there any other tricks to figure out if you're dreaming or awake?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="649" LastActivityDate="2022-07-31T09:18:08.007" Title="Can you tell if you're dreaming by pinching yourself?" Tags="|sleep|pain|dreaming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5415" CreationDate="2011-08-10T11:47:04.207" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shortly put: There are PLENTY of studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three uptake routes for chemicals while showering/bathing: Dermal, Inhalation and Ingestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When water is cleaned (chlorinated) you've got byproducts from the process.  Some of the major byproducts are trihalomethanes (THMs), chloroform (CHCl3), bromodichlormethane (BDCM), dibromochloromethane (DBCM) and bromoform. Any/all of these can be present in the water after purification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since I could go on about this all day, I'll limit my study sampling to just THMs and Chloroform studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;THMs and showering/bathing:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's been considerable research performed here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Backer, LC, et al. (2000) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10981726&quot;&gt;Household exposures to drinking water disinfection byproducts whole blood trihalomethane levels&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;J. Expo Anal Environ Epidemol&lt;/em&gt; Jul-Aug;10(4):321-6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The highest levels of THMs were found in the blood samples from people&#xA;  who took 10 min showers, whereas the lowest levels were found in the&#xA;  blood samples from people who drank 1 l of water in 10 min. The&#xA;  results from this study indicate that household activities such as&#xA;  bathing and showering are important routes for human exposure to THMs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Miles, AM, et al. 2002. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11993865&quot;&gt;Comparison of trihalomethanes in tap water and blood.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Environ Sci Technol&lt;/em&gt; Apr 15;36(8):1692-8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results indicated that THMs in the blood rose significantly as a&#xA;  result of showering, that showering shifted the THM distribution in&#xA;  the blood toward that found in the corresponding tap water, and that&#xA;  THMs measured in the blood of women living in the two locations&#xA;  reflected species and concentration differences in their respective&#xA;  tap waters. In general, blood concentrations were not significantly&#xA;  correlated with tap water concentrations. This finding suggests that&#xA;  other factors, in addition to tap water concentrations, may be&#xA;  important in determining THM concentrations in the blood&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nuckols, John R., et al. 2005. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1257647/&quot;&gt;Influence of tap water quality and household water use activities on indoor air and internal dose levels of trihalomethanes.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Environ Health perspect.&lt;/em&gt; July;113(7):863-870.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All hot water use activities yielded a 2-fold increase in blood or&#xA;  breath THM concentrations for at least one individual. The greatest&#xA;  observed increase in blood and exhaled breath THM concentration in any&#xA;  participant was due to showering (direct and indirect), bathing, and&#xA;  hand dishwashing. Average increase in blood THM concentration ranged&#xA;  from 57 to 358 pg/mL due to these activities. More research is needed&#xA;  to determine whether acute and frequent exposures to THM at these&#xA;  concentrations have public health implications. Further research is&#xA;  also needed in designing epidemiologic studies that minimize data&#xA;  collection burden yet maximize accuracy in classification of dermal&#xA;  and inhalation THM exposure during hot water use activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lynberg, M., et al. 2001. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11445514&quot;&gt;Assessing exposure to disinfection by-products in women of reproductive age living in Corpus Christi Texas and Cobb county Georgia: descriptive results and methods&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Environ Health Perspect&lt;/em&gt;. Jun;109(6):597-604.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We assessed exposure by sampling blood and water and obtaining&#xA;  information about water use habits and tap water characteristics. Two&#xA;  10-mL whole blood samples were collected from each participant before&#xA;  and immediately after her shower. Levels of individual THM species&#xA;  (chloroform, bromodichloromethane, dibromochloromethane, and&#xA;  bromoform) were measured in whole blood [parts per trillion (pptr)]&#xA;  and in water samples (parts per billion). In the Corpus Christi water&#xA;  samples, brominated compounds accounted for 71% of the total THM&#xA;  concentration by weight; in Cobb County, chloroform accounted for 88%.&#xA;  Significant differences in blood THM levels were observed between&#xA;  study locations. For example, the median baseline blood level of&#xA;  bromoform was 0.3 pptr and 3.5 pptr for participants in Cobb County&#xA;  and Corpus Christi, respectively (p = 0.0001). Differences were most&#xA;  striking in blood obtained after showering. For bromoform, the median&#xA;  blood levels were 0.5 pptr and 17 pptr for participants in Cobb County&#xA;  and Corpus Christi, respectively (p = 0.0001). These results suggest&#xA;  that blood levels of THM species vary substantially across&#xA;  populations, depending on both water quality characteristics and water&#xA;  use activities. Such variation has important implications for&#xA;  epidemiologic studies of the potential health effects of disinfection&#xA;  by-products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;THMs and Assessed Risk&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chowdhury, Shakhawat and Pascale Champagne. 2009. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969708011480&quot;&gt;Risk from exposure to trihalomethanes during shower: Probabilistic assessment and control.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Science of the Total Environment&lt;/em&gt; Feb 407(5):1570-1578.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using THMs in warm water, cancer and non-cancer risks to human health&#xA;  were predicted for three major cities in Ontario (Canada). The&#xA;  parameters for risk assessments were characterized by statistical&#xA;  distributions. The total cancer risks from exposure to THMs during&#xA;  showering were predicted to be 7.6 × 10− 6, 6.3 × 10− 6 and 4.3 × 10−&#xA;  6 for Ottawa, Hamilton and Toronto respectively. The cancer risks&#xA;  exceedance probabilities were estimated to be highest in Ottawa at&#xA;  different risk levels. The risks through inhalation exposure were&#xA;  found to be comparable (2.1 × 10− 6–3.7 × 10− 6) to those of the&#xA;  dermal contact (2.2 × 10− 6–3.9 × 10− 6) for the cities. This study&#xA;  predicted 36 cancer incidents from exposure to THMs during showering&#xA;  for these three cities, while Toronto contributed the highest number&#xA;  of possible cancer incidents (22), followed by Ottawa (10) and&#xA;  Hamilton (4). The sensitivity analyses showed that health risks could&#xA;  be controlled by varying shower stall volume and/or shower duration&#xA;  following the power law relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Villaneuva, Christina M., et al. 2007. &lt;a href=&quot;http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/165/2/148.short&quot;&gt;Disinfection by-products through ingestion, bathing, showering and swimming in pools.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Am. J. Epidemiol.&lt;/em&gt; 165(2):148-156.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lifetime personal information on water consumption and water-related&#xA;  habits was collected for 1,219 cases and 1,271 controls in a 1998–2001&#xA;  case-control study in Spain and was linked with THM levels in&#xA;  geographic study areas. Long-term THM exposure was associated with a&#xA;  twofold bladder cancer risk, with an odds ratio of 2.10 (95%&#xA;  confidence interval: 1.09, 4.02) for average household THM levels of &gt;49&#xA;  versus ≤8 μg/liter. Compared with subjects not drinking&#xA;  chlorinated water, subjects with THM exposure of &gt;35 μg/day through&#xA;  ingestion had an odds ratio of 1.35 (95% confidence interval: 0.92,&#xA;  1.99). The odds ratio for duration of shower or bath weighted by&#xA;  residential THM level was 1.83 (95% confidence interval: 1.17, 2.87)&#xA;  for the highest compared with the lowest quartile. Swimming in pools&#xA;  was associated with an odds ratio of 1.57 (95% confidence interval:&#xA;  1.18, 2.09). Bladder cancer risk was associated with long-term&#xA;  exposure to THMs in chlorinated water at levels regularly occurring in&#xA;  industrialized countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chloroform&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weisel, C.P. and W.K. Jo 1996. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1469238/&quot;&gt;Ingestion, inhalation and dermal exposures to chloroform and trichloroethane from tap water.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Envron Health Perspect&lt;/em&gt; Jan;104(1):48-51.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Analysis of chloroform and trichloethene in expired breath, compounds&#xA;  regulated in water, was also used to determine uptake from tap water&#xA;  by each route (inhalation, ingestion, or absorption). Each route of&#xA;  exposure contributed to the total exposure of these compounds from&#xA;  daily water use. Further, the ingestion dose was completely&#xA;  metabolized before entering the bloodstream, whereas the dose from the&#xA;  other routes was dispersed throughout the body. Thus, differences in&#xA;  potential biologically effective doses depend on route, target organ,&#xA;  and whether the contaminant or metabolite is the biologically active&#xA;  agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jo. Wan K., Weisel, Clifford P. and Paul J. Lioy. 1990. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1990.tb00541.x/abstract&quot;&gt;Routes of chloroform exposure and body burden from showering with chlorinated tap water&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Risk Analysis&lt;/em&gt; Dec. 10(4):575-580.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The postexposure chloroform breath concentrations ranged from 6.0–21&#xA;  μg/m3 for normal showers and 2.4 to 10 μg/m3 for inhalation-only&#xA;  exposure, while the pre-exposure concentrations were all less than the&#xA;  minimum detection limit of 0.86 μg/m3. According to an F-test, the&#xA;  difference between the normal shower and the inhalation-only exposures&#xA;  was considered significant at a probability of p= 0.0001. Based on the&#xA;  difference, the mean internal dose due to dermal exposure was found to&#xA;  be approximately equal to that due to the inhalation exposure. The&#xA;  effect of the showering activities on the concentration of chloroform&#xA;  shower air was examined by comparing air concentrations during a&#xA;  normal shower with the air concentrations obtained when the shower was&#xA;  unoccupied. The F-test showed that there is no significant difference&#xA;  between the two sets of data&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chloroform and Cancer Risk&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;(Good news here!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lévesque, B. et, al. 2002. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11939707&quot;&gt;Cancer risk associated with household exposure to chloroform.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;J. Toxicol Environ Health A&lt;/em&gt; Apr 12;65(7):489-502.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exposure to CHCl3 was assessed for 18 men (age: mean 38 years; range&#xA;  23-51) following a 10-min shower in their respective residences&#xA;  located in the Quebec City region (Canada). CHCl3 concentration was&#xA;  measured in alveolar air samples collected before, immediately after,&#xA;  and 15 min and 30 min following the shower. Indoor air and water&#xA;  concentrations were determined concomitantly. Mean CHCl3&#xA;  concentrations in the air of the shower stall and in water were&#xA;  respectively 147 microg/m3 (SD = 56.2 microg/m3) and 20.1 microg/L (SD&#xA;  = 9.0 microg/L). Water concentrations were comparable to those&#xA;  documented in a large proportion of distribution networks in Canada.&#xA;  The mean increase in alveolar air CHCl3 concentration (deltaCHCIALV)&#xA;  at the end of the shower was 33 microg/m3 (SD = 14.7 microg/m3). A&#xA;  multiple-regression analysis revealed that deltaCHCl3ALV values were&#xA;  only associated with chloroform concentration in air of the shower&#xA;  stall. DeltaCHCl3ALV were described using a physiologically based&#xA;  pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model. This model was then used to estimate&#xA;  concentrations of CHCl3 metabolites bound to liver and kidney&#xA;  macromolecules following a shower, and also according to exposure&#xA;  scenarios that integrate drinking-water ingestion and air inhalation.&#xA;  The concentration predicted in the liver following a worst-case&#xA;  exposure scenario was 0.41 microg CHCl3 equivalents/kg of tissue, some&#xA;  6,000 times lower than the lowest concentration that did not increase&#xA;  the incidence of hepatic tumors in laboratory animals. Data indicate&#xA;  that for this range of exposure the safety margin appears therefore&#xA;  considerable with respect to the potential carcinogenic effect of&#xA;  household exposure to CHCl3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2011-08-15T11:15:39.080" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T11:15:39.080" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5691" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5729" CreationDate="2011-08-10T17:37:51.807" Score="6" ViewCount="4608" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that classical music is good for a pregnant woman and her baby. Actually my wife is pregnant, and this is our first baby. So my question is is it true that classical music is good for a pregnant woman and her baby? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, what kind of classical music is best for my wife and our baby?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2851" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:55:22.053" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T08:55:22.053" Title="Is classical music good for a pregnant woman and her baby" Tags="|psychology|music|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5691" CreationDate="2011-08-10T18:42:28.017" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you're thinking of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozart_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mozart effect&lt;/a&gt;.  The only study I'm familiar with (the Rauscher et. al. 1993 study) suggested that listening to Mozart affected short-term performance on spatial–temporal tasks involving mental imagery and temporal ordering.  The effect did not last beyond 15 minutes.  Other research is listed at the bottom of that article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4442" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T18:42:28.017" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5644" CreationDate="2011-08-10T21:06:03.210" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will just add a quick note that I don't want to be lost in comments - WikiLeaks published (before they went famous) a Bilderberg reports from 50s, 60s and 1980.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; a rather interesting read, but it also shows that they don't really control the world, more discussing the current politics. A lot of the context is lost with time, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category%3aSeries/Bilderberg_reports&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;All the reports are categorized here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4445" LastEditorUserId="3187" LastEditDate="2012-01-11T16:23:52.787" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T16:23:52.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5334" CreationDate="2011-08-10T23:33:51.293" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_power&quot;&gt;Environmental impact of wind power&lt;/a&gt; has a good section on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One study reports simulations that show detectable changes in global&#xA;  climate for very high wind farm usage, on the order of 10% of the&#xA;  world's land area. Wind power has a negligible effect on global mean&#xA;  surface temperature, and it would deliver &quot;enormous global benefits by&#xA;  reducing emissions of CO2 and air pollutants&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/101/46/16115.full&quot;&gt;Link to source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another study published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics suggested&#xA;  that using wind turbines to meet 10 percent of global energy demand in&#xA;  2100 could actually have a warming effect, causing temperatures to&#xA;  rise by one degree Celsius in the regions on land where the wind farms&#xA;  are installed, including a smaller increase in areas beyond those&#xA;  regions. This is due to the effect of wind turbines on both horizontal&#xA;  and vertical atmospheric circulation. Whilst turbines installed in&#xA;  water would have a cooling effect, the net impact on global surface&#xA;  temperatures would be an increase of 0.15 degrees Celsius. Author Ron&#xA;  Prinn cautioned against interpreting the study &quot;as an argument against&#xA;  wind power, urging that it be used to guide future research&quot;. &quot;We’re&#xA;  not pessimistic about wind,&quot; he said. &quot;We haven’t absolutely proven&#xA;  this effect, and we’d rather see that people do further research&quot;.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/climate-wind-0312.html&quot;&gt;Link to source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual linked source articles are well worth the read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From reading through them it appears the effect is a matter of scale and likely something that could be helped with advances in technology. It also talks about considering the benefit vs. impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-08-10T23:33:51.293" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5278" CreationDate="2011-08-11T00:30:50.083" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this is unfortunately a &quot;we don't know&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This thesis &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://independent.academia.edu/AnneliBeroniusHaake/Papers/422118/Music_listening_in_UK_offices_Balancing_internal_needs_and_external_considerations&quot;&gt;Music listening in UK offices&lt;/a&gt;&quot; which goes into fantastic detail and well worth the read on this subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conducted three studies and the conclusion was that music meant different things to different people and people had different reasons for listening to the music, but those people felt it important to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Across all three studies, the findings present a varied picture. Music&#xA;  could be distracting while working, but could also help to manage&#xA;  other distractions in the office environment. Music could be relaxing&#xA;  when employees chose to listen, but annoying when imposed. Even though&#xA;  music was subordinate to work activities, it was nevertheless&#xA;  important in many different situations, for many different reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study is quite thorough and detailed and I think the study itself and the conclusion is typical of the results you are likely to find: music means different things to different people and people relate to it in different ways - good luck in trying to put something so subjective down on paper!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://pom.sagepub.com/content/33/2/173.abstract&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; from 2005, which was only on approx. 50 software developers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results indicated that state positive affect and quality-of-work were&#xA;  lowest with no music, while time-on-task was longest when music was&#xA;  removed. Narrative responses revealed the value of music listening for&#xA;  positive mood change and enhanced perception on design while working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/computer-software-customer-relation/1155247-1.html&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; on 70 I.S students:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One-way ANOVA results indicated a statistically significant difference&#xA;  in anxiety level between control and music groups with the greatest&#xA;  difference following the initial music listening. Repeated measures&#xA;  analysis revealed the least amount of anxiety level across time for&#xA;  the periodic group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is also evident from the bits and pieces around there is no conclusive evidence to suggest a massive increase or decrease in productivity, however music does provide a level of personal comfort and enjoyment. So the benefit isn't weighable by the employer, but there is a perceived level of satisfaction by the employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T00:30:50.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5691" CreationDate="2011-08-11T03:56:20.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is known as &quot;The Mozart Effect,&quot; and its effects are only temporary...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CBC Radio interviewed Dr. Rauscher on 2010-Jul-01 on their show &quot;As it happens,&quot; where she talked about her study (&lt;em&gt;which elicited emotional responses, including a few death threats&lt;/em&gt;) and also explained how the effects were only temporary for specific spatial tasks.  You can listen to this interview by &lt;em&gt;tuning in&lt;/em&gt; to CBC Radio's web site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;strong&gt;CBC Radio - As it happens - July 1st, 2010 episode&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/asithappens/episode/2010/07/01/july-1-2010/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cbc.ca/asithappens/episode/2010/07/01/july-1-2010/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; (&lt;em&gt;Play part 1, and skip ahead to &quot;19 minutes&quot; for the interview&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More details about &quot;The Mozart Effect&quot; can also be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/lerch1/edpsy/mozart_effect.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/lerch1/edpsy/mozart_effect.html&lt;/a&gt; where, in particular, the following two paragraphs about the relevant studies seem to help to answer the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He later joined two other researchers, Frances Rauscher and Katherine Ky, in creating the study that coined the term &quot;Mozart Effect&quot;. In the October 14, 1993, issue of &quot;Nature&quot; they published a short summary of the findings from their experiment. They assigned thirty six Cal-Irvine students to one of three groups, and offered the same &quot;pretest&quot; to each of the students. One group then listened to a selection by Mozart (Sonata in D major for Two Pianos, K488). A second group listened to what was called a &quot;relaxation tape,&quot; and the third group was subjected to ten minutes of silence. All of the students were given the same test, which was designed to measure spatial IQ. This test is described as mentally unfolding a piece of paper is that has been folded over several times and then cut. The object is to correctly select the final unfolded paper shape from five examples. The students who listened to the Mozart sonata averaged an 8&amp;endash;9 point increase in their IQ as compared to the average of the students who had listened to the relaxation tape or who had experienced silence. The increase in IQ of the Mozart group was transitory, lasting only about the time it took to take the test-- from ten to fifteen minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This test stirred enough interest in the academic community to induce several other research teams to conduct similar experiments, with disparate results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the media played a big hand in the creation of the misinformation, according to the interview, when they used Dr. Rauscher's explanations out of context to the point of mis-quoting her as concluding that &lt;em&gt;rock music is bad&lt;/em&gt; when what she really said was that she hadn't conducted any studies on rock music (she did get a free T-Shirt from the famous rock group &lt;em&gt;Nirvana&lt;/em&gt; though, with all the band members' signatures on it as appreciation for the free publicity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3068" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-13T20:48:02.060" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T20:48:02.060" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5701" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-11T08:36:04.280" Score="102" ViewCount="61051" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read this webcomic today:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://karlkerschl.com/comic/average-life-expectancy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4fEuZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Web comic abominable. PORCUPINE: &amp;quot;Hey, hummingbird, don't you ever worry about your health? I heard that every living creature gets about a billion heartbeats per lifetime, no matter how big or small they are. And YOUR heart must beat REALLY fast.&amp;quot; (The hummingbird sweats., and then in the next panel both the porcupine and the hummingbird lean against a log, snoring, fast asleep.&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;From: &lt;a href=&quot;https://karlkerschl.com/comic/average-life-expectancy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;abominable.cc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea where the author got his factoid about the billion heartbeats. But it sounds interesting. The examples I can think of (rabbits, humans, elephants, said hummingbird) seem to support the theory that bigger creatures both have a slower heartbeat and live longer. Is there really such a trend, or am I missing the counterexamples? And if yes, how close does it come to the &amp;quot;one billion&amp;quot; number?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1694" LastEditorUserId="38113" LastEditDate="2023-04-21T12:21:52.113" LastActivityDate="2023-04-21T12:33:36.320" Title="Does every species get around a billion heartbeats on average?" Tags="|physiology|zoology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5701" CreationDate="2011-08-11T09:29:28.080" Score="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;YES, there is some truth behind the &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;1 billion heartbeats&lt;/em&gt; &amp;quot; claim.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;And when I say &amp;quot;some&amp;quot; I mean the creator of the comic didn't just make it up out of thin air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;While it's not literally true&lt;/strong&gt; that all animals get 1 billion heartbeats before they die, a relation between &lt;em&gt;metabolic rate&lt;/em&gt; (which is related to heart rate) and &lt;em&gt;life span&lt;/em&gt; has been observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/longevity.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;San José State University - Animal Longevity and Scale&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gEbwP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Table&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Heart rate and life expectancy in mammals and humans:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aSE6w.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Life span&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Life expectancy and total heart beats per lifetime in mammals&#xA;and humans:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZleN1.gif&quot; alt=&quot;heart beats&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a corollary, the basal energy consumption per heart beat and heart mass may be the same for all animals&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggests that the life span is predetermined by the basic energetics of the living cells, and that the apparent inverse relation between life span and heart rate reveals the heart rate to serve as a marker of the metabolic rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be exemplified by considering the vast range of physiological cardiac parameters between one of the smallest, the shrew weighing 2 g, and the largest extant mammalian, the blue whale of 100 000 kg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Despite a difference of many millions in body weight, heart weight, stroke volume, and total blood pumped per lifetime, the total oxygen consumption and ATP usage per unit mass and lifetime are almost identical together with the total number of the heart beats per lifetime.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/20/2387.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hep.ucsb.edu/courses/ph6b_99/0111299sci-scaling.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mice and Elephants: A Matter of Scale&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As animals get bigger&lt;/strong&gt;, from tiny shrew to huge blue whale, &lt;strong&gt;pulse rates&#xA;slow down and life spans stretch out longer, conspiring so that the&#xA;number of heartbeats during an average stay on Earth tends to be&#xA;&lt;em&gt;roughly&lt;/em&gt; the same, around a billion.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mysteriously, these and a large variety of other phenomena change with body size according to a precise &lt;strong&gt;mathematical principle called &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mathbench.umd.edu/modules/misc_scaling/page20.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quarter-power scaling&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might seem that because a cat is a hundred times more massive than a mouse, its metabolic rate, the intensity with which it burns energy, would be a hundred times greater. After all, the cat has a hundred times more cells to feed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if this were so, the animal would quickly be consumed by a fit of spontaneous feline combustion, or at least a very bad fever. The reason: &lt;strong&gt;the surface area a creature uses to dissipate the heat of the metabolic fires does not grow as fast as its body mass&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To see this, consider a mouse as an approximation of a small sphere. As the sphere grows larger, to cat size, &lt;strong&gt;the surface area increases along two dimensions but the volume increases along three dimensions. The size of the biological radiator cannot possibly keep up with the size of the metabolic engine.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RIPTg.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Scaling&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Things behave differently at different scales, but there are orderly ways -- scaling laws -- that connect one realm to another.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://universe-review.ca/R10-35-metabolic.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Metabolic Rate and Kleiber's Law&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first accurate measurements of &lt;strong&gt;body mass versus metabolic rate&lt;/strong&gt; in 1932 shows that &lt;strong&gt;the metabolic rate R for all organisms follows the 3/4 power-law of the body mass&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;R ~ M&lt;sup&gt;3/4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/igl1d.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Kleiber's Law&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleiber%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kleiber's Law&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The reasons behind the power law are not yet fully understood&lt;/strong&gt;, although there are of course theories. &lt;em&gt;But since the OP's question doesn't actually ask for an explanation I feel it's okay to leave it to the interested reader to click through the links above and below to learn more about the proposed theories (plus, I believe it would make my answer just unbearably long if I include them in my post)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/%7Ewilkins/writing/Assign/topics/life-size.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Biophysics - New Clues to Why Size Equals Destiny&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sciwrite.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/PhsicsTodayArticle.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Life's Universal Scaling Laws&lt;/a&gt; [&lt;em&gt;PDF&lt;/em&gt; ]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/anthropology/Capellini_et_al10Ecology_Phylogeny_metabolic_scaling_mammals.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Phylogeny and metabolic scaling in mammals&lt;/a&gt; [&lt;em&gt;PDF&lt;/em&gt; ]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9316546&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rest heart rate and life expectancy&lt;/a&gt; [&lt;em&gt;Abstract&lt;/em&gt; ]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/518447&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Similarity in the number of lifespan heartbeats among non-hibernating homeothermic animals&lt;/a&gt; [&lt;em&gt;Abstract&lt;/em&gt; ]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/publications/nonpwdpubs/young_naturalist/animals/animal_life_spans//&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Animal Life Spans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T14:26:22.453" CommentCount="32" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5622" CreationDate="2011-08-11T10:07:50.340" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This blog entry is relevant: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hanselman.com/blog/HackersCanKillDiabeticsWithInsulinPumpsFromAHalfMileAwayUmNoFactsVsJournalisticFearMongering.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Hackers can kill Diabetics with Insulin Pumps from a half mile away - Um, no. Facts vs. Journalistic Fear mongering&quot; (Scott Hanselman)&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and contains interesting email thread between the author (diabetic, computer programmer) and Radcliffe. The email thread has been added to the entry afterwards as a disclaimer (in red).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From: Jerome Radcliffe&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; I &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; hack an insulin pump. I can suspend it, change all the settings remotely. I did that on stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;he also wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Check CBS in las Vegas's web site. They have a video of the demo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So everybody's answer to the question seems to be: &quot;no&quot;, Radcliffe's is: &quot;yes&quot;, mine is: &quot;I'm confused&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4447" LastEditorUserId="4447" LastEditDate="2011-08-11T10:13:10.427" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T10:13:10.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5704" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5709" CreationDate="2011-08-11T15:42:51.410" Score="17" ViewCount="3583" Body="&lt;p&gt;A number of newspapers claim that the US federal government has never defaulted on its loans (though I noted that it did restructure them in 1930).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the Economist states in the article “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/01/americas_debt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Debt Ceiling and Default&lt;/a&gt;”, Jan 13th 2011, that the US has never defaulted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have yet to find a similar ranking for the federal government. This should not be surprising; &lt;strong&gt;the United States has never defaulted&lt;/strong&gt;. There is the fourteenth amendment to the constitution which says: “The validity of the public debt of the United States… shall not be questioned.” The purpose of this section was to forbid the United States from honouring Confederate debts. The Supreme Court has apparently ruled that it also bars Congress from voiding a government bond, although not from abrogating the gold clause as it did in 1934.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Rogoff&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kenneth Rogoff&lt;/a&gt; states that the USA &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Ken-Rogoff-US-Default/2010/03/05/id/351739&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;has defaulted before&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“We went off the gold standard,” he observes, and the price of gold, which used to be $20 an ounce, suddenly jumped to $35 an ounce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“&lt;strong&gt;That was a default on domestic debt&lt;/strong&gt;,” Rogoff observes. “You would be amazed at how many countries have amnesia with respect to their default(s).”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are references from eminent professionals, so I'm left wondering which is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why's there a disagreement between what Kenneth Rogoff states and what the Economist states – is it just a matter of semantics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there indisputable examples of where the US federal government has defaulted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T07:08:20.047" Title="Has the US federal government ever defaulted on a loan?" Tags="|history|united-states|economics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5704" CreationDate="2011-08-11T18:03:44.137" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The US is in a unique situation as the US dollar has been accepted as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/facts_7660536_dollar-exchange-standard.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;exchange standard&lt;/a&gt; and as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserve_currency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reserve Currency&lt;/a&gt;.  So when it needs to borrow money, it can borrow US dollars and repay with US dollars. In addition, the US Government is the only one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A1Sec8.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;allowed by law&lt;/a&gt; to print US dollars.  Because it is held as a reserve and used for exchange, the US can get away with financing its own debt with the costs being absorbed by everyone who holds the dollar (which is a far greater number than all other countries).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.federalreserveonline.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Federal Reserve&lt;/a&gt; is a govenment entity that is part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasury.gov/Pages/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Department of the Treasury&lt;/a&gt; that handles both the printing of money and issuing of Treasury Bonds.  Because of this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/08/07/greenspan_us_can_pay_any_debt_it_has_because_we_can_always_print_money.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the US can choose never to default&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said when you get a treasury bond for $1,000,000 you buy it for $999,500 with a 6 month maturity date you expect that in 6 months you will have a bond worth $1m.  But if the government decides during that 6 month period to &lt;a href=&quot;http://Qunatitive%20Easing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;create a signifigant quantity of dollars&lt;/a&gt;, such that the value of the dollar is diluted so $1,000,000 is only worth $999,450,  it is not default but it is also not what you expected when you purchaces your T-Bill 6 months earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the US had to buy, say, gold to back its T-bills, let's look at the two values: a 6 month T-bill bought Feb 1 for $1m versus a T-bill that promised an amount of gold worth $1m on Feb 1 with a July 1 Maturity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Format is Currency $1m Feb 1 2011 - Value of return on July 1 2011 in US$ vs had you kept your original currency&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fxstreet.com/rates-charts/usdollar-index/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US Dollar&lt;/a&gt; - $940253.16&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usagold.com/reference/prices/2011.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gold&lt;/a&gt; - $887230.95&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Euro - $952920.52&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Canadian Dollar - $967767.47&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.exchange-rates.org/HistoricalRates/A/USD/2-1-2011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Feb1 xch rates&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.exchange-rates.org/HistoricalRates/E/USD/7-1-2011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jul1 xch Rates&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So actual default? No.&lt;/strong&gt;  But If I took a $1,000 loan from the bank and when it came due I only paid them $940, they are not going to just accept that as paid in full.  But government effectively does just that.&#xA;This is changes in valuation not inflation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rateinflation.com/inflation-rate/usa-inflation-rate.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US Inflation rate&lt;/a&gt; - 3.5588% (Per year)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fxstreet.com/rates-charts/usdollar-index/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Devaluation rate&lt;/a&gt; - 11.94% (Feb1-Jul12011)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be fair QE is not the only downward pressure on the value of the dollar.  We are currently reaping the result of overspending and policies that encourage wealth exodus.  This is not the result of any one president, but goes back about 20 years, through several changes in leadership of all levels of government.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Updated gold to reflect the same metrics as other currencies)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-12/u-s-consumer-sentiment-falls-more-than-expected-to-54-9-in-michigan-index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CONSUMER CONFIDENCE CRASHES&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole point is of this is that while &lt;strong&gt;technically and legally, there is no default&lt;/strong&gt; the expectation is that the government will honor its debt.  If they allow their currency to devalue, allow hyper-inflation to set in, and print money to pay debt, then they are not doing that.  If it was just gold that was going up then it would not hold water.  But look at all of the currencies listed.  It shows consistent losses by the dollar.  Roughly around 6-8% almost across the board over 6 months.  That is effective default even if it is not technically default.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-12T16:18:13.653" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T16:18:13.653" CommentCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5710" CreationDate="2011-08-11T20:55:37.400" Score="9" ViewCount="3240" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard claims before that when riding a motorcycle, wind noise (especially on the highway) is loud enough that it will cause eventual hearing loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I ride a motorcycle, and I usually wear earplugs on longer rides, but I have no scientific reason to do so - I just prefer the decreased noise. Is there any reason to believe I'm actually protecting my hearing by doing so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some example claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freehearingtest.com/hia_motorcyclefacts.shtml&quot;&gt;Based on several research studies, the major contributor to hearing loss in the motorcycle industry remains the &quot;silent killer&quot; known as &quot;wind noise.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msgroup.org/forums/mtt/topic.asp?topic_id=90&quot;&gt;That threat is to the loss of your ability to hear. As you read further you will find that it has already happened to you, it will get worse, and that your helmet is an inadequate defense against it.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webbikeworld.com/motorcycle-helmets/helmet-noise.htm&quot;&gt;For the record, it's our opinion that riding a motorcycle is a very noisy endeavor.  The noise that is generated is always loud enough to be dangerous to human health and can easily cause permanent hearing damage.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4371" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T13:29:42.610" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T21:02:35.367" Title="Can riding a motorcycle without earplugs cause hearing damage?" Tags="|medical-science|road-vehicles|safety|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5704" CreationDate="2011-08-11T21:41:10.493" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is yes. The US has defaulted on their debt once. In 1979 it postponed sending some of the checks on time for technical reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/delayed-payments-in-1979-offer-glimpse-of-default-consequences/2011/07/10/gIQARRBj7H_story.html?hpid=z1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Delayed payments in 1979 offer glimpse of default consequences&lt;/a&gt; dated July 10, 2011 in the Washington Post, citing Terry Zivney and Richard Marcus, &amp;quot;The Day the United States Defaulted on Treasury Bills,&amp;quot; The Financial Review 24 (3). (1989): 475–489.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, there was one short-lived incident in the spring of 1979 that offers a glimpse of some of the problems and costs that might arise if the stalemate on Capitol Hill continues. Then, as now, Congress had been playing a game of chicken with the debt limit, raising it to $830 billion – compared with today’s $14.3 trillion – only after Treasury Secretary W. Michael Blumenthal warned that the country was hours away from the first default in its history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That last-minute approval, combined with a flood of investor demand for Treasury bills and a series of technical glitches in processing the backlog of paperwork, resulted in thousands of late payments to holders of Treasury bills that were maturing that April and May.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You hear lot of people say, ‘The government never defaulted.’ The truth is, yeah, they did . . . It might have been small, it might have been inadvertent, but it happened,” said Terry Zivney, a finance professor at Ball State University who co-authored a paper on the episode entitled “The Day the United States Defaulted on Treasury Bills.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T19:04:30.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5708" CreationDate="2011-08-11T22:38:33.067" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC539364/&quot;&gt;Hearing loss in motorcyclists: occupational and medicolegal aspects&#xA;Andrew W McCombe, MD FRCS(ORL) 2003&lt;/a&gt; to be most thorough, it also has links to six other studies which you could use as further reading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, over the past 10-15 years, as motorcycle development has led&#xA;  to quieter machines with radically improved performance, there has&#xA;  been increasing concern that riders are exposed to excessive noise&#xA;  through turbulent airflow around the helmet—so-called wind-noise. The&#xA;  seminal report on this topic (although not the first) was that of Van&#xA;  Moorhem et al. in 1981. Apart from the work of our group, there have&#xA;  since been only six published reports on the subject. (See article for&#xA;  linked references)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All groups have used essentially similar techniques: a miniature&#xA;  microphone is placed at the rider's ear under the helmet and sound&#xA;  levels are measured in various riding conditions. All these studies&#xA;  show excessive wind noise around the helmet—about 90 dB(A) at 60 km/h&#xA;  and increasing linearly when plotted against the log of speed, to&#xA;  reach 110 dB(A) at 160 km/h.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Modern helmets, we found, offered very poor low-frequency sound&#xA;  attenuation and we also demonstrated a phenomenon of resonance at 250&#xA;  Hz. The source proved to be a turbulent boundary layer, vibrating&#xA;  against the outside of the helmet shell, with its maximum sound energy&#xA;  focused between 250 and 500 Hz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When we used more suitable controls, we did confirm hearing loss in&#xA;  motorcyclists. We also identified a temporary threshold shift&#xA;  after only 1 hour of high-speed riding and a corresponding subjective&#xA;  complaint of tinnitus. After long periods at high speed, riders&#xA;  commonly report other non-specific complaints such as fatigue,&#xA;  headache and even disequilibrium. Similar symptoms have been described&#xA;  in industry and elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;60 km/h is common on urban streets, but if you are regularly traveling along highways or touring you can be sitting at 100 km/h for reasonable stretches which means above 90 dB for an extend period of time. According to several sources this is sufficient to cause hearing damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example sources for above claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure&quot;&gt;Hearing damage (over long-term exposure, need not be continuous) 85 dB&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/noise.asp&quot;&gt;Long or repeated exposure to sounds at or above 85 decibels can cause hearing loss.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-08-11T22:38:33.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5903" CreationDate="2011-08-11T23:32:22.310" Score="16" ViewCount="13720" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many countries it is illegal to deface or destroy money, but has this law ever been enforced? (note: I'm not asking about counterfeiting)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been any notable cases of people being charged or jailed in the past 50 years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that comes to mind was the KLF's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K_Foundation_Burn_a_Million_Quid&quot;&gt;Burn a Million Quid&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;K Foundation Burn a Million Quid was an action that took place on 23&#xA;  August 1994, in which the K Foundation (an art duo consisting of Bill&#xA;  Drummond and Jimmy Cauty) burned cash in the amount of one million&#xA;  pounds sterling on the Scottish island of Jura.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T12:41:24.423" Title="Has anyone been charged with defacing money?" Tags="|law|currency|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5701" CreationDate="2011-08-11T23:34:18.487" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, this is not true.&lt;/strong&gt;  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/2458539&quot;&gt;Daphniidae&lt;/a&gt; only live for about 18.2 &lt;strong&gt;million&lt;/strong&gt; heartbeats, which isn't even close to the (very loose) criteria of &quot;within an order of magnitude&quot;.  There are other species as well.  All animals just do not have &quot;around a billion&quot; heartbeats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good mammalian counter example is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1357880/Black-bears-slow-heart-beat-75-sleep-months-year-food-drink.html&quot;&gt;North American black bear&lt;/a&gt;.  Even when not hibernating they only have about 55 beats per minute and only live around 25 years. Even if it never hibernated, that's only 700 million beats per lifetime.  When they hibernate their heartrate slows to 14 beats per minute for up to seven months.  Even on a short hibernation season of only 5 months (every year for their entire lifespan) they'd get only 500 million beats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rumor you found hit the &quot;main stream&quot; with an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/aprilholladay/2005-09-15-animal-lives-ice_x.htm&quot;&gt;USA today story&lt;/a&gt; and is just one of those trendy things to say at a cocktail party to sound smart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't help that this whole thing gets mixed up with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate&quot;&gt;metabolic rate&lt;/a&gt;, which is not the same thing as heart rate.  Most of the actual research is about things like metabolic rate, production of free radicals, etc.  If you read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15855403?dopt=Abstract&quot;&gt;this abstract&lt;/a&gt; used by that story you'll see that it's talking about metabolic rate (usually lumped together as 'rate of living') and even that is strongly challenged because actual observations tend to conflict with the conclusions of the theory.  The abstract also makes it very clear that this isn't a matter where there is yet a clear answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more accurate statement may be &quot;All the animals a news reporter could think to look up were somewhere in the same vague vicinity of a billion heartbeats&quot;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/882/&quot;&gt;Or for a better explanation of how this became news...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-08-15T19:46:16.260" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T19:46:16.260" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5711" CreationDate="2011-08-12T00:51:14.813" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not in the USA for Coins, many places like Six Flags, Sea World have machines that will deface pennies to imprint their logo on them, it is only against the law if done to commit fraud, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00000331----000-.html&quot;&gt;Title 18, Part 1, chapter 17, 331&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whoever fraudulently alters, defaces, mutilates, impairs, diminishes, falsifies, scales, or lightens any of the coins coined at the mints of the United States, or any foreign coins which are by law made current or are in actual use or circulation as money within the United States; or&#xA;  Whoever fraudulently possesses, passes, utters, publishes, or sells, or attempts to pass, utter, publish, or sell, or brings into the United States, any such coin, knowing the same to be altered, defaced, mutilated, impaired, diminished, falsified, scaled, or lightened—&#xA;  Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar law for Debasement of Coins  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00000332----000-.html&quot;&gt;Title 18, Part 1, chapter17, 332&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If any of the gold or silver coins struck or coined at any of the mints of the United States shall be debased, or made worse as to the proportion of fine gold or fine silver therein contained, or shall be of less weight or value than the same ought to be, pursuant to law, or if any of the scales or weights used at any of the mints or assay offices of the United States shall be defaced, altered, increased, or diminished through the fault or connivance of any officer or person employed at the said mints or assay offices, with a fraudulent intent; or if any such officer or person shall embezzle any of the metals at any time committed to his charge for the purpose of being coined, or any of the coins struck or coined at the said mints, or any medals, coins, or other moneys of said mints or assay offices at any time committed to his charge, or of which he may have assumed the charge, every such officer or person who commits any of the said offenses shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paper notes on the other hand appear to be illegal to render them &quot;unfit to be reissued&quot;   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00000333----000-.html&quot;&gt;Title 18, Part 1, chapter 17, 333&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;It appears the Feds are the only ones allowed to destroy Notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whoever mutilates, cuts, defaces, disfigures, or perforates, or unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, or &lt;strong&gt;Federal Reserve bank, or the Federal Reserve System&lt;/strong&gt;, with intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4403" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T00:51:14.813" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5704" CreationDate="2011-08-12T02:50:10.100" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://spectator.org/archives/2009/01/21/was-there-ever-a-default-on-us/1&quot;&gt;this example&lt;/a&gt; from 1933:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The United States quite clearly and overtly defaulted on its debt as&#xA;  an expediency in 1933, the first year of Franklin Roosevelt​'s&#xA;  presidency. This was an intentional repudiation of its obligations,&#xA;  supported by a resolution of Congress and later upheld by the Supreme&#xA;  Court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In particular, U.S. bonds, including those issued to finance the&#xA;  American participation in the First World War​, provided the holders&#xA;  of the bonds with an unambiguous promise that the U.S. government&#xA;  would give them the option to be repaid in gold coin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately for the bondholders, when President Roosevelt and the&#xA;  Congress decided that it was a good idea to depreciate the currency in&#xA;  the economic crisis of the time, they also decided not to honor their&#xA;  unambiguous obligation to pay in gold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So five of the nine justices explicitly stated that the obligations of&#xA;  the United States had been repudiated. There can be no doubt that the&#xA;  candid conclusion of this highly interesting chapter of our national&#xA;  financial history is that, under sufficient threat, crisis and&#xA;  pressure, a clear default on Treasury bonds did occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T02:50:10.100" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5719" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-12T05:33:04.493" Score="6" ViewCount="3247" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite often you can see guys slaving away at the gym, slurping on protein shakes or pounding the pavement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also frequently seen ads around the net with a simple animation of a thin guy transforming into a muscle man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other example is the before and after of the overweight guy now turned into a well sculptured Adonis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this at all possible for your average guy on the street without the use of performance enhancing drugs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of my friends that have some bulky muscle seem to have the right frame for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A six pack from sit-ups seems reasonable to me, but not from skinny to muscle-man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-09T15:01:12.893" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T15:34:01.017" Title="Is it possible for thin weedy guys to look muscular like Arnold Schwarzenegger?" Tags="|physiology|physical-fitness|bodybuilding|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5721" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-12T09:38:09.460" Score="4" ViewCount="445" Body="&lt;p&gt;For people with high body odor, is it better to wear cotton or microfiber? It's a tough question as there is a good argument for both sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Argument in favor of cotton:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As it has lower breathability, it would better absorb the sweat letting less odor through to the atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Argument in favor of microfiber:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As it has higher breathability, it would decrease temperature and thus lower sweat production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which would most decrease others' perception of the smell?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4468" LastEditorUserId="255" LastEditDate="2011-08-12T15:55:44.173" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T15:55:44.173" Title="For people with high body odor, is it better to wear cotton or microfiber?" Tags="|physiology|clothing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5722" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5754" CreationDate="2011-08-12T09:47:47.497" Score="38" ViewCount="17468" Body="&lt;p&gt;Last year, I read on a newspaper that a research found that we do not need, or should not, clean our ears as the earwax comes out naturally and sticking in cotton swabs can damage our ears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is my information accurate? Can anyone provide a summary and reference to the actual research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4469" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T13:09:02.527" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T13:09:02.527" Title="Do we need to clean our ears (remove earwax)?" Tags="|medical-science|hygiene|ear|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5661" CreationDate="2011-08-12T12:02:43.037" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mythbusters visited this topic in both &lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/episode22&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;episode 22&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/episode38&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;episode 38&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Episide 22&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PARTLY CONFIRMED *&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tests were performed under varying conditions (55 mph versus 45 mph). The 55 mph test used a computer to estimate fuel efficiency based on air intake, not actual fuel consumption, and showed A/C was more efficient. The 45 mph test consisted of running the tank until it was empty, and showed open windows were more efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because the original tests were inconclusive, this &amp;quot;urban puzzle&amp;quot; was revisited in episode 38: It is more fuel efficient to use air conditioning when the car is traveling approximately 50mph or more. Otherwise, windows are more fuel efficient.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Episode 38&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PARTLY CONFIRMED&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fundamental flaw in the MythBusters’ test was that the point where the drag becomes powerful enough to inhibit a car’s performance with windows down was inside their 45 – 55mph margin at 50mph. Going less than 50mph it is more efficient to leave your windows down, but going greater than 50mph it is more efficient to use your A/C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In comments &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/1183/lagerbaer&quot;&gt;Lagerbaer&lt;/a&gt; suggested that this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Makes sense from a physical point of view: A/C fuel consumption impact should be independent of actual velocity, whereas the drag effect of an open window will grow with the velocity (friction forces in general scale at least linearly with velocity)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/7998/michael-edenfield&quot;&gt;Michael Edenfield&lt;/a&gt; suggested the excellent point that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the physics concepts involved are the same for all cars, I suspect that more rigorous experiments would produce a different &amp;quot;cut-off point&amp;quot; than 50mph, but the answer to the OP's question is still &amp;quot;AC is better over x mph, worse under x mph&amp;quot;. –&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/2047/nic&quot;&gt;nic&lt;/a&gt; noted that 50 mph is approximately 80 km/h for those who use sensible units for speed.&lt;sup&gt;†&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;† I'm from the U.K. where we use m &amp;amp; mph for road signs and odometers, but metric for pretty much everything else. *8')&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2772" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-12-20T09:54:48.073" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5727" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5880" CreationDate="2011-08-12T13:09:11.480" Score="3" ViewCount="734" Body="&lt;p&gt;Patients with incomplete spinal cord injuries experience quadriplegia and paraplegia. With therapy, some portion of the patients will recover the ability to walk, either aided or unaided. Yet some of the treatments date back to Hippocrates. (See this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/sci/detail_sci.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NIH page&lt;/a&gt;.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Patients are asked to keep a positive mental attitude, in order to increase both the speed and degree of their recovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there research that demonstrates the effectiveness of positive patient attitude, or would patients recover the same regardless? Or, put another way, is the &quot;Can Do&quot; attitude of sports movies real, or is this the stuff of legend?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1403" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T15:57:25.643" Title="Do patients with spinal cord injury recover faster with positive attitudes?" Tags="|psychology|physiology|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5722" CreationDate="2011-08-12T13:16:14.133" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of issues here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sticking anything into an ear, for the purpose of cleaning it or otherwise, is dangerous and can result in ruptured eardrums as well as other damage. My doctor said &quot;nothing should be inserted into an ear that is smaller than an elbow&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ear wax does indeed come out naturally. Mostly, but not always. If your earwax doesn't come out naturally, then the issues above still mean you shouldn't clean out your ears yourself (or get any unskilled person to do it). Your doctor will clean your ears using a syringe technique. You can help it out by putting mineral oil, or olive oil, in the ear, which softens the wax.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:my doctor. Had this done yesterday. Also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2333/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deafnessresearch.org.uk/Looking%20after%20your%20ears+1902.twl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;and this&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000979.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;and this&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.med.nyu.edu/content?ChunkIID=100686&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;and this&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/physical_health/conditions/ears1.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;and this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-08-15T16:02:50.390" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T16:02:50.390" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5691" CreationDate="2011-08-12T13:54:16.930" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm adding this answer to address some of the comments on the other answers that were asking for studies based on small children and/or pregnant women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, Dr. Rauscher's work on the Mozart Effect &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/27795839&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;has received a lot of bad press in the academic literature&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The successful performance of the Mozart group may be explained by the incomplete use of random assignment of subjects to groups and by experimenter effects in the construction of groups. The results of Rauscher et al. (1998) do not provide strong support for the existence of the Mozart effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/026151002166433/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;It doesn't look like the effect exists for young children&lt;/a&gt;, either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We investigated the Mozart effect, as documented by Rauscher, Shaw, and Ky (1993), with school-aged children. Experiment 1 contrasted the spatial IQ scores of children who had listened to a Mozart sonata (K.448) with the scores of children who had listened to a piece of popular dance music in a pretest-post-test design. &lt;strong&gt;There was no significant main effect of music and no significant difference between the pretest and post-test scores for both groups&lt;/strong&gt;. Owing to the non-significant findings, a second experiment was carried out. We used a methodology that had previously replicated the Mozart effect. Again, Expt. 2 did not support the claim that Mozart's music can enhance spatial performance. Groups performed similarly on the control test and the experimental test, irrespective of whether they listened to Mozart or to popular dance music. Since the two different designs produced similar findings, &lt;strong&gt;the data suggest that the Mozart effect is so ephemeral that it is questionable as to whether any practical application will come from it&lt;/strong&gt;. In the discussion, we suggest more fruitful avenues for future research on the relationship between music and spatial performance: arousal and transfer of learning.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;sub&gt;[Emphasis is mine.]&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that doesn't really answer the original question: &lt;i&gt;Is classical music good for a &lt;strong&gt;pregnant woman&lt;/strong&gt; and her &lt;strong&gt;baby&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To that end, I haven't been able to find any peer reviewed articles that have tested that specific claim.  It should be noted, though, that Rauscher—the original discoverer of this &quot;phenomena&quot;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.fmk.edu.rs/files/blogs/2009-10/I/Engleski/Extreme_Parenting.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;has since admitted that there is no scientific support for the fact that listening to classical music is good for infants&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To date, the Mozart Effect has failed to be replicated in scientific settings on at least a few dozen occasions. Even Rauscher, although she stands by her findings, has been amazed by the appropriation of her work for corporate ends. In a 1999 television debate, Rauscher &#xA;  agreed with Steele, saying, &lt;b&gt;“There’s no scientific data suggesting that playing Mozart to &#xA;  babies is going to make them ‘smarter.’&lt;/b&gt;”&lt;br /&gt;&lt;sub&gt;[Once again, emphasis is mine.]&lt;/sub&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will add that this all depends on one's definition of &quot;good&quot;.  If by &quot;good for a baby&quot; we mean &quot;will increase the baby's intelligence,&quot; then I think the answer is: No, listening to classical music probably won't permanently increase a baby's intelligence.  It might still be good, though, if it is soothing to the pregnant mother.  If the music reduces the mother's stress, this is definitely good since &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/2136301&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stressors are directly linked to complications in pregnancy&lt;/a&gt;.  That could be true of any style of music, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2011-08-12T13:59:31.460" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T13:59:31.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5727" CreationDate="2011-08-12T13:59:09.273" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-10-12-mind-body_x.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-10-12-mind-body_x.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ryff has shown that individuals with higher levels of well-being have lower cardiovascular risk, lower levels of stress hormones and lower levels of inflammation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It stands to reason that this would improve the outcome in a person with a spinal cord injury since inflammation and swelling of tissue are the main reasons these injuries are so damaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4415" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T13:59:09.273" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2934" CreationDate="2011-08-12T19:11:59.953" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;David Clark, an AES Fellow has this to say in a paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=7867&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Precision Measurement of Loudspeaker Parameters&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5.1 Break-In&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A break-in process is recommended. Drive-unit storage may cause the diaphragm suspension to drift away from its normal or in-use position. Break-in, with the drive-unit axis in the in-use orientation (usually horizontal), restores the normal diaphragm position. The recommended procedure pneumatically stretches the suspension to one excursion extreme, then the other and continues to alternate, decreasing the excursion each time until x is at zero. This process can be completed in less than 1 min.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a reference to this article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=20259485#post20259485&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on the AV Science forum&lt;/a&gt;, which goes on to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr Clark also indicated that drivers which had been stored face-up or face-down sometime need 1 minute of pink noise to restore the original center position. This could also be accomplished by a few strokes of the suspension which many manufacturers do routinely when the speaker is at the end of the assembly line. This suggests that most speakers, are in fact broken in when you get them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The poster then goes on to cite emails he received from speaker manufacturers which recommend a much longer break-in time of 20-50 hours and remarks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these emails, as in the replies and positions that many companies make to this day, we have two basic thoughts - physical attributes of drivers change and folks state they hear a difference over time. What hasn't been established is whether this is simply a correlation or a causation? The two are not the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely listening adaptation has a greater effect than speaker break-in?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="641" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-12T19:11:59.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5734" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5736" CreationDate="2011-08-12T22:50:49.467" Score="20" ViewCount="2715" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read years ago that 8% of all Asian men and thus 0.5% of all men would be &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_from_Genghis_Khan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;descendant of Genghis Khan&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this? Or was this some trick to get their paper published?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citation of the original paper: Zerjal, Tatiana et al. &amp;quot;The genetic legacy of the Mongols.&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;American journal of human genetics&lt;/em&gt; vol. 72,3 (2003): 717-21. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1086/367774&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1086/367774&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110716052302/http://web.unife.it/progetti/genetica/Giorgio/PDFfiles/ajhg2003.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="649" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-08-30T12:15:55.057" LastActivityDate="2022-08-30T12:15:55.057" Title="Is one in two hundred men a descendant of Genghis Khan?" Tags="|history|genetics|genghis-khan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5722" CreationDate="2011-08-12T23:48:28.207" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a good idea to remove earwax in order to protect your earphones or to not gross out other people. However, you only need to clean the ear for this, and not the ear canal, and you should certainly not use Q-tips. While excess earwax buildup can cause &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001974/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wax blockage&lt;/a&gt;, the more common cause of wax blockage is people pushing the wax deeper into the ear canal when cleaning their ears with Q-tips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words (from the &quot;prevention&quot; section from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nih.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NIH&lt;/a&gt; page linked above), when you clean your ears&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Never attempt to clean the ear by placing any object into the ear canal, such as a Q-tip. It is better to clean the outer ear canal by using a cloth or paper tissue wrapped around your finger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or said a bit differently: don't use anything smaller than your finger in your ears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you're really one of the people that build up so much ear wax that you get blockage even without abusing Q-tips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People who have frequent blockages may benefit from weekly irrigations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means that a trained person flows warm (body-warm, anything else is very uncomfortable) water into your ear with a syringe to wash out the earwax. Don't do this at home, because you may blow out (in) your eardrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastEditorUserId="1690" LastEditDate="2011-08-13T02:48:11.720" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T02:48:11.720" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5734" CreationDate="2011-08-13T01:16:50.540" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I love it when questions contain the research for their own answer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110716052302/http://web.unife.it/progetti/genetica/Giorgio/PDFfiles/ajhg2003.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; describes a particular set of genes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have identified a Y-chromosomal lineage with several unusual features. It was found in 16 populations throughout&#xA;a large region of Asia, stretching from the Pacific to the Caspian Sea, and was present at high frequency: ∼8% of&#xA;the men in this region carry it, and it thus makes up ∼0.5% of the world total&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It analyses it current populations statistically, using a couple of approaches to conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The origin was most likely&#xA;in Mongolia, where the largest number of different starcluster&#xA;haplotypes is found (fig. 1). Thus, a single male&#xA;line, probably originating in Mongolia, has spread in the&#xA;last ∼1,000 years to represent ∼8% of the males in a&#xA;region stretching from northeast China to Uzbekistan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It considers, and shows evidence to refute, a number of possible causes of this, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could biological selection be responsible? Although&#xA;this possibility cannot be entirely ruled out, the small&#xA;number of genes on the Y chromosome and their specialized&#xA;functions provide few opportunities for selection&#xA;(Jobling and Tyler-Smith 2000). It is therefore necessary&#xA;to look for alternative explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It searched for confirmatory evidence by looking at a population that are (putatively) direct male line descendents of Khan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking through Google Scholar, I can see no examples of refutation, but many others citing their results positively (&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.20159&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;e.g.&lt;/a&gt;). The paper was published in a reputable peer-reviewed journal, and contains a number of authors from prestigious institutions that are working within their areas of expertise, so the idea that it might be exaggerated for publication is unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears to have a robust result, that it seems reasonably to provisionally accept unless counter evidence is produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-08-29T01:43:33.673" LastActivityDate="2022-08-29T01:43:33.673" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5737" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5750" CreationDate="2011-08-13T01:34:17.450" Score="4" ViewCount="848" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I was reading Yahoo! News today, I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-politics/bc-democrat-affirmative-action-rules-mean-caucasian-males-175353665.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; which discussed British Columbia's New Democratic Party's affirmative-action rules:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the BC NDP's affirmative-action rules, [being &quot;a straight, old, able-bodied, white guy&quot;] makes him ineligible to run in the next election in his own riding.  The NDP's equity rule, mandates the next NDP candidate in Maple Ridge must be a woman, or a member of an under-represented group: &quot;Persons of colour, gay/lesbian/bi/transgender people, youth, aboriginal peoples and persons with disabilities.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was surprised that something like this could exist in this day and age, as one might think that selecting people for jobs based on colour, sex, religion, or creed would have gone to &lt;em&gt;the rubbish bin of history&lt;/em&gt; along with segregated bathrooms and Robert Borden's campaign slogans.  However, when discussing this with folks that are more politically inclined today, I've heard multiple times that this is not only allowed (and behind some closed doors, encouraged), but that there is an exception in the Charter that allows for such kind of hiring practices by the government and the parties that wish to run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, after surfing for confirmation of such ... bizarre information, and finding that, to quote Bones &quot;I'm a programmer, not a lawyer,&quot; I turn to here to clarify if I'm getting faulty information or if Canada has only added a &quot;No&quot; in front of Robert Borden's infamous campaign slogan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the NDP's hiring practice violate Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="485" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-01-14T01:30:17.267" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T01:30:17.267" Title="Does the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms not apply to government hiring practices?" Tags="|politics|law|canada|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5748" CreationDate="2011-08-13T03:26:32.733" Score="18" ViewCount="4033" Body="&lt;p&gt;We bought a new car and the smell reminded me of something I was curious about: I remember reading somewhere that the smell of new car is actually the &quot;smell of death&quot; - that is, the smell of formaldehyde.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://healthvsmedicine.blogspot.com/2005/10/new-car-smell.html&quot;&gt;Here's an example of the claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ahh, the &quot;new car smell.&quot; Nothing else smells like it. Nothing except a mixture of volatile organic compounds ( VOCs) you wouldn't want in your drinking water or food (like the carcinogens formaldehyde and styrene).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4417" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-08-13T05:20:14.373" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T20:29:33.997" Title="Is formaldehyde the source of the &quot;new car smell&quot;?" Tags="|road-vehicles|smell|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5739" CreationDate="2011-08-13T10:54:52.217" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is formaldehyde the sole source of the 'new car smell'? No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's more than likely the combined smell of the VOC's (of which formaldehyde is one) emitting from the interior, as there's over a dozen VOC's which are present. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brown, Stephen K and Min Cheng, 2007. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/New-Car-Interior-VOCs30nov00.htm&quot;&gt;Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in New Car Interiors&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found that the amount of VOCs present is dependent upon the 'delivery time' of the car from the manufacturer. Those cars which didn't have a 'shelf life' at a dealership had the highest amounts of VOCs present.  Those which had been on display outside had the lowest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chemicals they recorded were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;acetone + n-pentane&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;n-Hexane + MEK (Methyl ethyl ketone)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Benzene&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MIBK (methyl isobutyl ketone)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Toluene&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;m+p Xylene&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Styrene + o-xylene&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ethylene glycol butyl ether&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1,2,4 trimethylbenzene&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;n-undecane   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;n-decane&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2-propylheptanol&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;n-dodecane&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ethylbenzene&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cyclohexanone&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;n-heptane&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of these chemicals, they ranked them from most prevalent to least as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall, the more dominant VOCs found in the new cars (highest to&#xA;  lowest concentrations) were toluene, acetone/pentane,&#xA;  o-xylene/styrene, 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene, m,p-xylene, various C7–12&#xA;  alkanes, ethylbenzene, n-hexane and ethylene glycol butyl ether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They reported the following regarding the toxicity of the VOCs present:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Benzene is a category 1 IARC carcinogen (known human carcinogen) for&#xA;  which an annual exposure goal of 16 µg/m3 has been recommended (see&#xA;  Section 1.3). Since urban populations spend an average of one hour per&#xA;  day in car travel (Newton et al. 2000), these results indicate that&#xA;  car interiors can be contributors to total exposure to benzene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Few environmental exposure goals are established for other VOCs. The&#xA;  NHMRC goal of 250 µg/m3 for any compound was exceeded for many VOCs in&#xA;  Cars 2 and 3. Toxic effects of some of these VOCs and ambient air&#xA;  goals (µg/m3 at 0oC/101kPa) based on these effects (Calabrese &amp;amp; Kenyon&#xA;  1991) are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;acetone: mucosal irritation (8-hour goal, 39,000)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cyclohexanone: possible human carcinogen (annual goal, 180)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ethylbenzene: systemic    toxin (24-hour goal, 140); &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MIBK: systemic toxin (8-hour goal, 540)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;n-hexane: neurotoxin (24-hour goal, 540);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;styrene: probable human carcinogen (annual goal, 29)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;toluene: central nervous system dysfunction (8-hour goal, 1600); &#xA;xylene isomers: foetal development toxins (24-hour goals: o-xylene&#xA;310, m-xylene 3100, p-xylene 62).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is seen that several of these goals may have been exceeded in the&#xA;  cars for several weeks after manufacture TVOC concentrations also&#xA;  occurred at levels that may affect occupants (see Section 1.2) for&#xA;  weeks to months after car purchase, although not for years. The&#xA;  effects that could be caused by this TVOC exposure include eye&#xA;  irritation, and performance and memory factors, all of which may be&#xA;  important car safety issues, as well as occupant health and comfort&#xA;  issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note, however, that all of the above measurements were made in closed&#xA;  cars at low ambient temperatures. Lower concentrations may be expected&#xA;  with greater ventilation of the car interior, while higher&#xA;  concentrations may be expected under higher ambient temperatures. More&#xA;  detailed investigation of VOC concentrations under different operating&#xA;  conditions is needed to decide an appropriate test protocol for&#xA;  simulating occupant exposure to car interior pollutants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High concentrations of VOCs were found in new cars, especially those&#xA;  reaching the market soon after manufacture, i.e with minimum&#xA;  path-to-market. The total VOC (TVOC) levels found have been observed&#xA;  previously to cause sensory irritation and performance and memory&#xA;  impairment to human subjects, showing that the pollution of new car&#xA;  interiors may be a safety issue. Several of the VOCs observed have&#xA;  potential toxic effects, an aspect that should be explored in further&#xA;  study under simulated conditions of car usage. The decay of TVOC&#xA;  concentrations was found to be exponential, at approximately 20% per&#xA;  week, with the NHMRC indoor air goal being reached after approximately&#xA;  6 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, that lovely smell you smell in your new car is a bunch of chemicals you really don't want to be smelling.  And, if you live where it's warm - you'll smell more of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastEditorUserId="1063" LastEditDate="2011-08-13T11:03:45.063" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T11:03:45.063" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5701" CreationDate="2011-08-13T20:35:57.680" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's true within 50% error for mammals and the study that started this idea is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9316546?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rest heart rate and life expectancy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among mammals, there is an inverse semilogarithmic relation between heart rate and life expectancy. The product of these variables, namely, the number of heart beats/lifetime, should provide a mathematical expression that defines for each species a predetermined number of heart beats in a lifetime. Plots of the calculated number of heart beats/lifetime among mammals against life expectancy and body weight (allometric scale of 0.5 x 10(6)) are, within an order of magnitude, remarkably constant and average 7.3 +/- 5.6 x 10(8) heart beats/lifetime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, I did not find this article straight away, so I've created my own plot and data set. Guess what? &lt;strong&gt;I've found that the conclusions of the above article are actually quite wrong when extended to non-mammalian species&lt;/strong&gt;. I got most of my data from peer-reviewed literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results can be read on the following diagram:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zsRtx.png&quot; alt=&quot;lifespan vs heartbeat&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ds7Cz.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Full size&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How to read the chart&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The red line marks where the all the data points should be if this hypothesis were true&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The green and violet lines mark the ±50% lines. According to the study above all mammals fall within those two lines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anything outside the lines pretty much disproves the hypothesis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discussion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly reptilians, birds, insect and mammals do not share the same heart physiology. So expecting the same kind of mileage is unjustified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare for example the canary and the elk: both have the same life-expectancy of 22 years, but the former has a heartbeat of ~1000bpm, whereas the latter ~50bpm. Therefore it follows that a canary's heart will beat 20 times more than the heart of an elk. There are many examples like this in the data set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dataset&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dataset is available &lt;a href=&quot;https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmoPJ_3aTLMMdHYxNFo2bVdtMnlPZ1ZTOGgteE9MYUE&amp;amp;hl=en_GB&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (along with 32 references).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was no way of making it fit in here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T14:06:07.273" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5737" CreationDate="2011-08-13T23:09:10.820" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms &lt;strong&gt;does apply&lt;/strong&gt; to government hiring practices (as it applies to everyone).  What you discovered is &lt;strong&gt;not a violation&lt;/strong&gt; of the Charter as long as this activity of hiring has as its objective &quot;amelioration&quot; [as outlined in the Charter].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;strong&gt;Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/charter/FullText.html&quot;&gt;http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/charter/FullText.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; (&lt;em&gt;Note:  Any web site within the &lt;strong&gt;.gc.ca&lt;/strong&gt; internet domain is operated by the Government of Canada.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See section 15, subsection 2, which applies directly; for your convenience, I &lt;strong&gt;bolded&lt;/strong&gt; the most relevant text from that section (which was copied directly from the above source):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Equality Rights&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Equality before and under law and equal protection and benefit of law&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; 15.  (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Affirmative action programs&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; (2) &lt;strong&gt;Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups&lt;/strong&gt; including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, &lt;strong&gt;colour&lt;/strong&gt;, religion, &lt;strong&gt;sex&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;age&lt;/strong&gt;, or mental or &lt;strong&gt;physical disability&lt;/strong&gt;.(84)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;Similar text can also be found in section 6, subsection 4, with regard to Mobility Rights.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3068" LastEditorUserId="3068" LastEditDate="2011-08-13T23:26:29.770" LastActivityDate="2011-08-13T23:26:29.770" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2962" CreationDate="2011-08-14T04:52:20.800" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say that EV are rare because mainstream electric vehicles have been on the market for a very short time.(1) Car manufacturers have wanted to fully evaluate the risks they're taking in developing a new technology, but several of them are definitely moving forward aggressively (2). The technology can improve, but it's good enough now for a lot of early adopters to jump on board. The current limiting factor is mainly consumer awareness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Charging infrastructure is increasingly not an issue. There are several companies competing to build electric car charging networks: Ecotality, Coulomb, eVgo are major players (3). You can search for &quot;electric vehicle charging stations&quot; on Google Maps and get a pretty good idea of how rapidly they're all expanding. Furthermore, as an EV owner, you only really care about the charging network in your home city. You don't care about it anywhere else because your EV can only go 100 miles max (3), assuming you don't own a $100k Tesla (4). For the Volt, which is EV-gasoline (3), you can always switch to gasoline if you're low on battery, so having infrastructure is really only an added bonus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Home charging is also not a problem. It's easy to have a home EV charger installed, and it costs around $1,500 (5). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main drawback is the 100 mile range of an all-electric car, which is a limitation of battery technology. But rarely do people drive more than 100 miles a day, and an EV makes a lot of sense as a second car to have in the home (6). The gasoline one can be used for long car trips, and the EV can be used for everything else. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electricity is significantly cheaper than gasoline. Expect to spend $90/month on fuel max. eVgo has an unlimited refueling package for EV's for $89/month that includes a leased home charger. (7) (sorry, haven't done an ROI or break-even calculation yet). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two major mainstream electric vehicles, the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Volt, have both been sold out since their release, and their companies are marketing them hard (8). Other car manufacturers are coming out with competing models in the next year or so (2). Supply will outstrip demand soon. After that, it's a matter of more and more people hearing about EVs and being willing to give them a try. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclosure: eVgo is a subsidiary of the company I work for. I don't work directly on electric vehicles, and everything I've posted is publicly available industry data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Nissan Leaf roll-out plan: &lt;a href=&quot;http://theirearth.com/index.php/news/nissan-electric-car-2011-leaf&quot;&gt;http://theirearth.com/index.php/news/nissan-electric-car-2011-leaf&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Chevy Volt roll-out plan: &lt;a href=&quot;http://gm-volt.com/2011/01/27/gm-announces-nationwide-chevy-volt-rollout-plan/&quot;&gt;http://gm-volt.com/2011/01/27/gm-announces-nationwide-chevy-volt-rollout-plan/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both have been released in select cities this year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) EV Range Comparison Chart, 3rd column: &lt;a href=&quot;http://gigaom.com/cleantech/battle-of-the-batteries-comparing-electric-car-range-charge-times/&quot;&gt;http://gigaom.com/cleantech/battle-of-the-batteries-comparing-electric-car-range-charge-times/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) EV infrastructure market analysis by Pike Research: &lt;a href=&quot;http://gm-volt.com/2011/05/20/coulomb-technologies-and-ecotality-ranked-top-charging-equipment-suppliers/&quot;&gt;http://gm-volt.com/2011/05/20/coulomb-technologies-and-ecotality-ranked-top-charging-equipment-suppliers/&lt;/a&gt; Note: Aeroenvironment is the company that makes eVgo branded chargers (Aeroenvironment and eVgo are the same network). Elektromotive, the other top player listed in the report, is building infrastructure in the U.K. I'm going to focus my answer on just the U.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) &quot;The base price for the 2010 models, which began shipping to customers in July 2009, was US$109,000.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(5) Charger price quoted here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.autoobserver.com/2010/07/general-electric-says-its-home-ev-charger-will-cost-between-1000-and-1500.html&quot;&gt;http://www.autoobserver.com/2010/07/general-electric-says-its-home-ev-charger-will-cost-between-1000-and-1500.html&lt;/a&gt; as well as here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.solarcity.com/pressreleases/95/SolarCity-to-Make-Solar-Powered-Electric-Vehicle-Charging-Available-Across-its-Service-Territory-.aspx&quot;&gt;http://www.solarcity.com/pressreleases/95/SolarCity-to-Make-Solar-Powered-Electric-Vehicle-Charging-Available-Across-its-Service-Territory-.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(6) Bureau of Transportation Statistics &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bts.gov/programs/national_household_travel_survey/daily_travel.html&quot;&gt;http://www.bts.gov/programs/national_household_travel_survey/daily_travel.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(7) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evgo.com&quot;&gt;www.evgo.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(8) Volt is sold out: &lt;a href=&quot;http://green.autoblog.com/2011/08/02/electric-superiority-nissan-leaf-sales-hit-931-chevy-volt-at-1/&quot;&gt;http://green.autoblog.com/2011/08/02/electric-superiority-nissan-leaf-sales-hit-931-chevy-volt-at-1/&lt;/a&gt; Nissan leaf is sold out: &lt;a href=&quot;http://green.autoblog.com/2010/05/25/carlos-ghosn-2011-nissan-leaf-sold-out/&quot;&gt;http://green.autoblog.com/2010/05/25/carlos-ghosn-2011-nissan-leaf-sold-out/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4483" LastEditorUserId="4483" LastEditDate="2011-08-14T15:55:31.757" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T15:55:31.757" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5752" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5783" CreationDate="2011-08-14T09:44:36.847" Score="12" ViewCount="2470" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553256742&quot;&gt;Chuck Yeager's autobiography&lt;/a&gt; has a chapter on how he got severe face burns in an accident and how an unconventional treatment helped him avoid scars. He says that the scars were repeatedly scraped off in a very painful procedure until the skin heals without scars. The procedure must be applied very soon after the burn, before the skin has properly healed with scars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any references to such a procedure in the sources I searched. Does it really exist? What kind of a success rate does it have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T02:48:05.203" Title="Can burn scars be avoided by repeated scraping?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5722" CreationDate="2011-08-14T11:51:14.260" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all: is it true that earwax (or &lt;em&gt;cerumen&lt;/em&gt;) comes out naturally from the ear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes it is.&lt;/strong&gt; The purpose of ear wax is to trap particles that may enter the ear from the outside, and bring them out of the ear canal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From S. Gelfand - &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=SGdR8uCuRHUC&amp;amp;pg=PT321&amp;amp;dq=cerumen&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=9q5HTpTDBcyq8APFnKzRBg&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=5&amp;amp;ved=0CD8Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Essentials of audiology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cerumen is a waxy substance that is supposed to be in the ear canal, where it serves lubricating and cleansing functions and also helps to protect the ear from bacteria, fungi, and insects. The cerumen is produced by glands in the cartilagenous portion of the ear canal and migrates out over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[cut]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Impacted cerumen&lt;/strong&gt; is an accumulation of wax in the ear canal that interferes with the flow of sound in the eardrum. Impacted cerumen occurs naturally in many patients who produce excessive amount of cerumen, which builds up over time. It is also the fate of many Q-tip wielding patients who inadvertently pack cerumen farther back into the canal (and frequently against the eardrum) in an ironic attempt to clean their ears&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should earwax be removed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The American Academy of Otolaryngology says not to, unless it presents a medical risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.entnet.org/HealthInformation/earwax.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;their website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When should the ears be cleaned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under ideal circumstances, the ear canals should never have to be cleaned. However, that isn’t always the case. The ears should be cleaned when enough earwax accumulates to cause symptoms or to prevent a needed assessment of the ear by your doctor. This condition is all cerumen impaction, and may cause one or more of the following symptoms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earache, fullness in the ear, or a sensation the ear is plugged&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Partial hearing loss, which may be progressive&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Tinnitus, ringing, or noises in the ear&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Itching, odor, or discharge&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Coughing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Various methods exist to remove cerumen. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earwax#Treatment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; lists:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of softeners are effective; however, if this is not sufficient, the most common method of cerumen removal is syringing with warm water. A curette method is more likely to be used by otolaryngologists when the ear canal is partially occluded and the material is not adhering to the skin of the ear canal. Cotton swabs, on the other hand, push most of the earwax further into the ear canal and remove only a small portion of the top layer of wax that happens to adhere to the fibres of the swab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also quite a bit of literature on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper (bear in mind that it was written in 1990, so it may not be reflecting the current situation), surveys 289 practitioners about &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;the methods of removing ear wax [...] and the incidence of associated complications&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2271824&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ear wax removal: a survey of current practice&lt;/a&gt; - Sharp et al. 1990&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 289 replies received (92% of the study group) indicated that each doctor saw an average of nine patients (range five to 50 or more) requesting the removal of ear wax per month (table I). The initial medical assessment was made by 179 general practitioners&#xA;(62%). No medical assessment was made by 23 (8%); these patients were referred directly to the practice nurse. The remaining 87 (30%) offered examination by either the doctor or nurse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most used method of wax removal was syringing a &lt;em&gt;ceruminolytic&lt;/em&gt; agent (something that melts the wax, such as oil or bicarbonate or special formulations), either done directly by the doctor or by a nurse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper reports that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complications had been experienced by 105 practitioners (38%) and included perforation, canal lacerations, and failure of wax removal. The removal of occlusive wax improved hearing by a mean of 5 dB over the frequencies analysed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and concludes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About 44000 ears are syringed each year in the area and complications requiring specialist referral are estimated to occur in 1/1000 ears syringed. The incidence of complications could be reduced by a greater awareness of the potential hazards, increased instruction of personnel, and more careful selection of patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent systematic review of clinical trials can be found in&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20546687&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The safety and effectiveness of different methods of earwax removal: a systematic review and economic evaluation.&lt;/a&gt; - Clegg et al. 2010&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They analyzed 22 randomised controlled trials and 4 controlled clinical trials, using different types of softeners, with or without irrigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They report that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On measures of wax clearance Cerumol, sodium bicarbonate, olive oil and water are all more effective than no treatment; triethanolamine polypeptide (TP) is better than olive oil; wet irrigation is better than dry irrigation; sodium bicarbonate drops followed by irrigation by nurse is more effective than sodium bicarbonate drops followed by self-irrigation; softening with TP and self-irrigation is more effective than self-irrigation only; and endoscopic de-waxing is better than microscopic de-waxing. AEs (&lt;em&gt;adverse events&lt;/em&gt;) appeared to be minor and of limited extent. Results of the exploratory economic model found that softeners followed by self-irrigation were more likely to be cost-effective [24,433 pounds per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY)] than softeners followed by irrigation at primary care (32,130 pounds per QALY) when compared with no treatment. Comparison of the two active treatments showed that the additional gain associated with softeners followed by irrigation at primary care over softeners followed by self-irrigation was at a cost of 340,000 pounds per QALY. When compared over a lifetime horizon to the 'no treatment' option, the ICERs for softeners followed by self-irrigation and of softeners followed by irrigation at primary care were 24,450 pounds per QALY and 32,136 pounds per QALY, respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although softeners are effective, which specific softeners are most effective remains uncertain. Evidence on the effectiveness of methods of irrigation or mechanical removal was equivocal. Further research is required to improve the evidence base, such as a RCT incorporating an economic evaluation to assess the different ways of providing the service, the effectiveness of the different methods of removal and the acceptability of the different approaches to patients and practitioners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T19:26:34.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5756" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5767" CreationDate="2011-08-14T15:26:29.527" Score="6" ViewCount="11577" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suffer from occasional sinus pain and headaches.  Upon hearing this, a pharmacist friend of mine immediately recommended I take a &quot;drug&quot; that has proven to work wonders for her sinus problems.  It turns out that it is a homeopathic remedy.  While I am generally very skeptical of the claims of homeopathy, my pharmacist friend assured me that the ingredients can't possibly be bad for me.  Here are the ingredients along with their homeopathic purpose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Allium Cepa&lt;/strong&gt; (a.k.a. plain old onion) 6X &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathic_dilutions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HPUS&lt;/a&gt;: hay fever, watery eyes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Natrum Muraticum&lt;/strong&gt; (a.k.a. table salt) 6X HPUS: sneezing itchy eyes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Histaminum Hydrochloricum&lt;/strong&gt; (a low-dose form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceplene&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ceplene&lt;/a&gt;, which is used in modern medicine for leukemia patients) 12X HPUS: sinus pain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luffa_operculata&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Luffa Operculata&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; 12X HPUS: sinus pain, headache.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galphimia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Galphimia Glauca&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; 12X HPUS: sneezing, runny nose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strychnine_tree&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nux Vomica&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; 6X HPUS: itchy nose &amp;amp; throat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, I don't suffer from all of those symptoms (my sinus problems aren't caused by allergies).  If this is at best a placebo, though, I guess that shouldn't matter, should it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could there be any &lt;em&gt;harm&lt;/em&gt; in taking this remedy, even if I don't suffer from all of the symptoms?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lets assume that the ingredients have not been &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/75/how-do-sugar-pills-work-according-to-homeopaths&quot;&gt;diluted away&lt;/a&gt;; do any of those ingredients have known pharmaceutical properties that might help my sinus problems?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus points for any peer-reviewed studies on the effectiveness of such remedies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T18:39:23.790" Title="Homeopathic Sinus Pain/Allergy Relief" Tags="|natural-remedies|homeopathy|allergies|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5756" CreationDate="2011-08-14T16:49:12.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your &lt;strong&gt;first question&lt;/strong&gt;, probably not -- aside from a possible &lt;em&gt;placebo effect&lt;/em&gt;, those solutions will very likely be ineffective due to extreme dilution in water or alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your &lt;strong&gt;second question&lt;/strong&gt;, a diagnosis is needed to know exactly what your problem is (since pain can have a wide variety of different causes, including a physical injury, an abnormal growth putting pressure on something, a nervous system issue, a birth defect, a disease, etc.) before the results of any treatment can be estimated (and a qualified Doctor should probably be involved in the diagnosis as well as the prescription of any medicines).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, it appears that Homeopathy is &lt;em&gt;quackery&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;b&gt;QuackWatch - Homeopathy: The Ultimate Fake&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/homeo.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/homeo.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following text is a short quote from the above document (which contains 17 good references, all listed together near the end) in which I've highlighted a few items of particular interest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At Best, the &quot;Remedies&quot; Are Placebos&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Homeopathic products are made from minerals, botanical substances, and several other sources. If the original substance is soluble, one part is diluted with either nine or ninety-nine parts of distilled water and/or alcohol and shaken vigorously (succussed); if insoluble, it is finely ground and pulverized in similar proportions with powdered lactose (milk sugar). One part of the diluted medicine is then further diluted, and the process is repeated until the desired concentration is reached. Dilutions of 1 to 10 are designated by the Roman numeral X (1X = 1/10, 3X = 1/1,000, &lt;strong&gt;6X = 1/1,000,000&lt;/strong&gt;). Similarly, dilutions of 1 to 100 are designated by the Roman numeral C (1C = 1/100, 3C = 1/1,000,000, and so on). &lt;strong&gt;Most remedies today range from 6X to 30X&lt;/strong&gt;, but products of 30C or more are marketed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A 30X dilution&lt;/strong&gt; means that the original substance has been &lt;strong&gt;diluted 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times&lt;/strong&gt;. Assuming that a cubic centimeter of water contains 15 drops, this number is greater than the number of drops of water that would fill &lt;strong&gt;a container more than 50 times the size of the Earth.&lt;/strong&gt; Imagine placing a drop of red dye into such a container so that it disperses evenly. Homeopathy's &quot;law of infinitesimals&quot; is the equivalent of saying that any drop of water subsequently removed from that container will possess an essence of redness. Robert L. Park, Ph.D., a prominent physicist who is executive director of The American Physical Society, has noted that since the least amount of a substance in a solution is one molecule, &lt;strong&gt;a 30C solution&lt;/strong&gt; would have to have at least one molecule of the original substance &lt;strong&gt;dissolved in a minimum of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of water&lt;/strong&gt;. This would require &lt;strong&gt;a container more than 30,000,000,000 times the size of the Earth&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. Park has noted that &lt;strong&gt;to expect to get even one molecule of the &quot;medicinal&quot; substance allegedly present in 30X pills, it would be necessary to take some two billion of them&lt;/strong&gt;, which would total about a thousand tons of lactose plus whatever impurities the lactose contained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;  See @nico's Answer for the additional information that @Sklivvz ♦ suggested was needed.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3068" LastEditorUserId="3068" LastEditDate="2011-08-15T11:02:15.380" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T11:02:15.380" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5455" CreationDate="2011-08-14T17:25:43.950" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Smart meters are useful to utilities for two very specific, immediately practical reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They reduce labor needed for meter readings and home visits. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They give time of use data, which allows the utility to set prices for the customer that change based on time of day or the season, effectively discouraging electricity use when prices are really high. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smart meters actually don't have much of an effect on trading or hedging strategy. Utilities already have real-time customer demand data at aggregated levels. If they didn't, they wouldn't be able to constantly supply the right amount of power to their customers -- electricity can't be stored, so there's a constant balancing act between demand and supply. When demand goes up, the price of power goes up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Utilities don't want customers to use electricity when electricity prices on the wholesale market are really high because they end up with lower profit margins, or even end up paying more for the electricity than they're billing the customer. Smart meters help change that by giving the utility the means to charge more when price are usually higher. They also deter customers from using electricity during times there may be major price spikes incidents that utilities can't reasonably pass on to the customer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty short explanation, and I've purposefully left out mention of residential demand response because that involves more than just a smart meter. You may also take issue with a couple simplified concepts; for example, utilities aren't necessarily losing money when real-time prices are really high, because they might be able to cover demand just by running the plants they already own. However, they're losing the opportunity to sell their own electricity onto the market at very high prices. Essentially, it's still lost money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The facts in this answer (that smart meters send real-time or near-to-real-time data, that electricity can't be stored, that utilities didn't used to know what time of day customers were using electricity, that there can be a lot of volatility in wholesale electricity markets) are probably too basic to need a citation? I'm still trying to get a feel for what the standards are at the Stack Exchange community... I think this just building a framework around the facts that have already been established in this thread. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4483" LastActivityDate="2011-08-14T17:25:43.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5760" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5762" CreationDate="2011-08-14T22:00:48.590" Score="21" ViewCount="16196" Body="&lt;p&gt;By logic, a person with a higher quantity of fat would have more calories to burn in the absense of food but the human body can't be simplified to a math formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In extreme conditions, can a fat person survive longer than skinny ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3518" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T07:23:58.603" Title="Can fat people survive starvation longer than skinny ones?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5761" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-14T22:13:57.783" Score="5" ViewCount="16023" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does bathing in swimming-pools (e.g., at hotels or water parks), where chlorine is added to the water, brighten your skin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard from many different people that bathing in pools with chlorine water makes your tan go away, although my doctor friend undoubtedly says otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is also made in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.safetan.com.au/faq/product.html#11&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this fake tan company's FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes. Frequent swimming will enhance your body's natural exfoliation.&#xA;  Chlorinated water also tends to lighten the skin, therefore fading&#xA;  your tan quicker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freshlife.com/content/beautifully-clean-get-some-color&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this holistic supermarket's website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your tan will gradually fade in about a week to 10 days. Exfoliating,&#xA;  shaving, prolonged water exposure, (especially in chlorinated pools)&#xA;  and heavy sweating can lighten your tan, as all these things&#xA;  contribute to rapid dead skin-cell removal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4488" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-06-17T10:58:43.367" LastActivityDate="2023-05-13T18:40:11.277" Title="Does bathing in chlorinated water ruin your tan?" Tags="|physiology|sun|chlorine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5760" CreationDate="2011-08-14T22:23:04.640" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;When body begin to starve there are three main processes that begin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;General slowdown of metabolism&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Destruction of protein to provide glucose for the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Breakdown of triglycerides and using them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/food2/UID07E/UID07E0R.HTM#4&quot;&gt;http://archive.unu.edu/unupress/food2/UID07E/UID07E0R.HTM#4&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;4. Tissue mobilisation in the obese&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A closer examination of the pattern of tissue mobilization during&#xA;  starvation in 'obese' and 'normal' subjects reveals some interesting&#xA;  features. Figure 3 shows the pattern of urinary nitrogen loss during&#xA;  the 31-day fast in a normal weight subject (60.6 kg) studied by&#xA;  BENEDICT (1915) and compares it with an obese subject (154 kg) studied&#xA;  by GILDER et al. (1967) and starved for a comparable period. &lt;strong&gt;After the&#xA;  first week, the obese subject lost less fasting urinary nitrogen than&#xA;  the normal weight subject.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This difference in nitrogen loss is further highlighted if we compare&#xA;  the P ratio of normal subjects (Table 1) with that of obese subjects&#xA;  (Table 2). The obese have a lower P ratio and appear to mobilise about&#xA;  5% of their energy from protein breakdown, in contrast to normal&#xA;  weight subjects, who mobilised approximately 20% of their energy from&#xA;  protein breakdown. &lt;strong&gt;It therefore appears that normal weight and obese&#xA;  subjects respond differently during starvation, and that the adipose&#xA;  tissue exerts a profound influence on protein mobilisation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although there are no data on P ratio and direct body composition&#xA;  measures in humans, weight and height measured in subjects cited in&#xA;  Tables 1 and 2 were supplemented with single point measurements of BMR&#xA;  and nitrogen loss during fasting on seven more subjects. These values&#xA;  are shown in Figure 4. It can be seen that a close agreement exists&#xA;  between the P ratio and the BMI at the start of the fast. The Figure&#xA;  also shows GARROW's (1983) proposed relationship between BMI and body&#xA;  fat. It is clear from the graph that the P ratio declines in a&#xA;  curvilinear fashion with increasing adiposity. It therefore appears&#xA;  that the tendency to use protein as a fuel in starvation is much lower&#xA;  in the obese than the non-obese human, as has already been suggested&#xA;  by experiments on laboratory animals (HENRY, 1984).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So generally if you have more fat you are able to preserve your proteins for longer so the onset of the degradation of the internal organs is postponed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastEditorUserId="4278" LastEditDate="2011-08-15T07:23:58.603" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T07:23:58.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5764" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-15T01:25:53.653" Score="15" ViewCount="12172" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do celebrities have a higher divorce rate than the general population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is normally focused around Hollywood type celebrities, so for comparison sake:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the divorce rate amongst U.S celebrities in the past decade higher than in the general U.S population?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ndsmcobserver.com/2.2755/hollywood-infidelity-a-plague-on-populace-1.263441&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The divorce rate in the United States has reached 50 percent, and&#xA;  while an exact statistic is not available, the divorce rate in&#xA;  Hollywood is certainly higher. When celebrities marry, the question is&#xA;  always &quot;How long is it really going to last?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worth mentioning, is this wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_marriage&quot;&gt;Hollywood marriage&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Negative views of Hollywood marriages take the position that the&#xA;  divorce rates are indeed unusually high among celebrities and that&#xA;  this is caused by faults within Hollywood as a culture or by personal&#xA;  faults of the celebrities themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-08-15T01:31:19.937" LastActivityDate="2016-09-12T06:08:12.753" Title="Is there a higher divorce rate among celebrities?" Tags="|divorce|celebrities|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5764" CreationDate="2011-08-15T02:09:59.067" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;For as celebrity obsessed as our cultures tend to be, this was actually a pretty hard statistic to confirm or debunk.  It just seems that very few people kept track of it in actual numbers.  That may be due to the fact that how does one exactly classify someone as a &amp;quot;celebrity&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/77184/20101029/celebrity-divorces-rise-christina-aguilera-jordan-bratman-chalize-theron-stuart-townsend-sandra-bullock-jesse-james-cheryl-ashley-cole-tiger-woods-elle-nordegren-courtney-cox-david-arquette-al-gore-tipper-halle-berry-gabriel-aubry-george-lopez-and-wife-ann-jim-carrey-jenny-mccarthy-kelsey-grammar-and-wife.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I did find one article that seems to pop up in all my searches that said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The United States has the world's highest marriage rate of 9.8 per 1000 as well as the world's highest divorce rate of 4.95 per 1000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent study done on Golden Globe award winners revealed that of the celebrities who had been married, the average number of marriages was 1.4, while the average number of divorces was 0.65. The probability of a famous union surviving is only 35 percent, so the odds are 1.9 to 1 against the marriage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rightsandwrongs.co.uk/asia/other/8290-lifestyle-the-odds-are-not-good-on-the-marriage-lasting&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site (which I can't say much about) also repeats this study without actually linking to it or referencing it properly&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, because we thought you had a right to know, we conducted a comprehensive first-of-its-kind study of celebrity divorce. The study focused on Golden Globe award winners, who should fairly represent celebrities as a whole. (The Golden Globe categories include both television and motion pictures.) All 2001 and 2000 Golden Globe nominees and winners in the acting categories were included in the database, for a total of 151; due to multiple nominations and awards, the final yield was 127 unique celebrities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the 127 celebrities listed, 68 percent had been married at least once. Billy Bob Thornton takes the honors of having the most marriages with five (as well as the most divorces, also with five of course, by law it had to be at least four divorces, but you never know with Billy Bob).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the celebrities who had been married, the average number of marriages was 1.4, while the average number of divorces was 0.65. The probability of a celebrity marriage surviving is only 35 percent, so the odds are 1.9 to 1 against the marriage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, from this unverified &amp;quot;study&amp;quot;, it would seem that the rates for celebrities is indeed higher than the general population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reason I even decided to answer this was because of a blog post by a blog I am following that popped up today.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://atheism.about.com/od/atheistfamiliesmarriage/a/AtheistsDivorce.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In that post, they mention a group called the Barna group doing a study on US divorce rates,&lt;/a&gt; and they seem a bit lower than 50%, but that was from 1999.  Even so, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.divorcerate.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a website dedicated to divorce rates also seems to back up a rate at less than 50%&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/divorce.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The CDC tracks it a bit differently&lt;/a&gt;, by giving it a stat like: Marriage rate: 6.8 per 1,000 total population, and Divorce rate: 3.4 per 1,000 population.  In &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; case, it seems that the 50% number holds up.  (&lt;em&gt;Although the marriage and divorce rate is different than the rate claimed in the first article, so that would cause me to question that article a bit more.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BOTTOM LINE:&lt;/strong&gt;  Yes, it appears that celebrities do have a higher divorce rate than the average person (dependent on how you define celebrity of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T02:09:59.067" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5570" CreationDate="2011-08-15T05:06:22.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do these solutions work?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on how damp and stinky (how much odor producing bacteria there is) your shoes are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Are they reliable?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on how damp and stinky (how much odor producing bacteria there is) your shoes are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What is the principal?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soda - absorbs moisture and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2566/does-baking-soda-remove-odors&quot;&gt;is amphoteric&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Powder, deodorant, tea bags - absorbs moisture and have added or natural fragrance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T05:06:22.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5756" CreationDate="2011-08-15T07:39:56.297" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DISCLAIMER: I am not a doctor, anything written here should not be taken as medical advice&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To complete Randolf's answer, I will answer part 2 of your question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do any of those ingredients have known pharmaceutical properties that might help my sinus problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Allium Cepa&lt;/strong&gt; is onion: onions are traditionally used against sore throat, although I could not find any peer-reviewed study on their efficacy. They also contain antioxidants such as quercitin and there are several studies (not sure how conclusive, I have not read them) that show that eating onion and garlic could reduce the risk of cancer.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For your specific case: onion has also antibacteric properties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two papers on that:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9354029&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Anti-bacterial action of onion (Allium cepa L.) extracts against oral pathogenic bacteria.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19127724&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Antibacterial and antioxidant activities of quercetin oxidation products from yellow onion (Allium cepa) skin&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how much quercitine is there in a 6X HPUS solution (that means the original solution is diluted 1000000 times)? I'll do some rough calculation, but bare in mind that this is &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; approximative and could be off by a few orders of magnitude! Also, I will not repeat this calculation for all the other components, I'll leave it to you :) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The quercitin content in yellow onions is ~30-300mg/kg (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://pub.epsilon.slu.se/1246/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quercetin content in yellow onion (Allium cepa L.)&lt;/a&gt;), so let's set for an average of 100 mg/kg.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Now I don't have a clue how they extract the onion, but let's say 10% of it is lost during processing (may be more, may be less, I don't know), if we extract one 100g onion into 1l water we'll end up with ~9mg quercitine. (&lt;em&gt;This is the critical passage. I am assuming 1 100g onion in 1l of water. Anything else and the numbers will vary a lot&lt;/em&gt;. Anybody knows what a &quot;standard onion solution&quot; is?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The molecular weight of quercitine is 302.24 g/mol, so 9mg/l corresponds to 29.8μM (μM = micromolar, that is 10&lt;sup&gt;-6&lt;/sup&gt; moles in a liter), which is in the normal range of action of many drugs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We dilute that 1 million times and get to a 0.0000298μM solution, that is a 29.8yM (yM is called yoctomolar and corresponds to 10&lt;sup&gt;-24&lt;/sup&gt; moles in a liter). A mole is defined as the amount of matter containing one number of Avogadro (N&lt;sub&gt;A&lt;/sub&gt; = 6.0221418×10&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;) of molecules. So 29.8 yM contain approximately &lt;strong&gt;18 molecules of quercitine per liter&lt;/strong&gt;. Assuming you take a few drops of it, let's say 2ml, you will get approximately 0.04 molecules of it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Natrum Muraticum&lt;/strong&gt; is table salt. Already the fact of giving it a some sort of pig-latin name sounds very fishy. It's sodium chloride, NaCl, no need to call it &lt;em&gt;salis magicus&lt;/em&gt; or whatever. The solubility of NaCl in water is 359g/l. Supposing they start from a saturated solution, and dilute it 1 million times they'll get 359μg/l. When you cook pasta you put ~10g/l of salt in the water. &lt;a href=&quot;http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/minerals/sodium/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1 hot dog contains 1.3 mg of salt&lt;/a&gt;. I do not feel the need to go into further details on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Histaminum Hydrochloricum&lt;/strong&gt; (or histamine dihydrochloride, which is its proper chemical name) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/drugInfo.cfm?id=35912&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;marketed as an &quot;unapproved homeopathic&quot; product&lt;/a&gt; against cold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zicam&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page for Zicam&lt;/a&gt;, one formulation of Histaminum Hydrochloricum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only possibly biologically active ingredients present in Zicam Cold Remedy are slightly diluted zinc acetate (2X = 1/100 dilution) and zinc gluconate (1X = 1/10 dilution); &lt;strong&gt;the product's other originally active ingredients have been serially diluted to the point that Zicam should no longer contain any molecules of those ingredients, and are listed as &quot;inactive ingredients&quot; on the label.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Histamine dihydrochloride is a salt of histamine, a physiologically occurring compound that is involved in the triggering of inflammation (ever heard of anti-histaminic treatment for allergy? They counteract the effects of histamin). I cannot think of why it would have any positive effect on sinusitis, being a bronchoconstrictor, nor could I find literature at that regard.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As you noted, at biologically active concentrations, histamine dihydrochloride is used as a leukemia treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Luffa Operculata&lt;/strong&gt; or sponge cucumber is another &lt;a href=&quot;http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/drugInfo.cfm?id=36349&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;unapproved homeopathic&quot; product&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;In Brazil it is used as a folk remedy (known as &lt;em&gt;Buchinha&lt;/em&gt;), although they don't use it at 12X (remember that in certain cases phytotherapy is not equal to homeopathy, although there is much confusion about it).&#xA;At the doses used in traditional Brazilian medicine there is some evidence of toxic effects on the palate for it. At 12X I doubt you'd even had that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16446907&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Luffa operculata effects on the epithelium of frog palate: histological features&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this paper on a rather obscure journal which claims that &lt;em&gt;Luffa Operculata&lt;/em&gt; is efficacious against sinusitis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10539378&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Efficacy and safety of a fixed-combination homeopathic therapy for sinusitis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even just by reading the abstract, however, you can conclude that the article is seriously flawed. I do not have access to the full text, unfortunately, but I found this blog post which analyses the article quite well (I love the part where they show that the authors cite papers that show that homeopathy is not efficacious!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://xtaldave.posterous.com/blinded-by-pseudo-science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Blinded by pseudo-science?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Galphimia Glauca&lt;/strong&gt; or thryallis is a plant with nice yellow flowers, yet another FDA-unapproved homeopatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One study caught my attention&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18787330&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A homoeopathic proving of Galphimia glauca&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're not familiar with homeopathy, you should know that the idea is that if substance X causes headache you can dilute it a lot, whilst you do some magic dance, and it will cure headache. This is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://thethoughtstash.wordpress.com/2010/08/22/the-unscientific-method-of-homeopathic-proving/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a proving&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our results confirm the toxicological and clinical effects of Galphimia glauca compared to placebo, but the ICCH criteria for proving symptoms were not suitable to distinguish between specific and unspecific symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, essentially, even at doses that do have pharmacological effects, its effects cannot be distinguished from placebo... well, not very impressive, is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, last but not least &lt;strong&gt;Nux Vomica&lt;/strong&gt;, or the strychnine tree. The seeds and bark of this tree contain two potent alkaloids called strychnine and brucine, along with other poisonous substances. In the past strychnine was used for gastrointestinal problems, but has since been abandoned from medical practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find any proper medical trials for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in conclusion, &lt;strong&gt;don't waste money on it&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T18:39:23.790" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T18:39:23.790" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="830" CreationDate="2011-08-15T12:18:38.893" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.bren.ucsb.edu/~kotchen/links/DSTpaper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2008 there was a study published that showed DST wastes energy&lt;/a&gt; in Indiana. The authors took advantage of the fact that Indiana legislated state-wide DST in 2006, whereas prior to that they had per-county DST or non-DST. They used the individual home meter readings from the utility company to conclude that DST wasted energy overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Focusing on residential electricity demand,&#xA;  we conduct the first-ever study that uses micro-data on households to estimate an overall DST effect.&#xA;  The dataset consists of more than 7 million observations on monthly billing data for the vast majority&#xA;  of households in southern Indiana for three years. Our main finding is that—contrary to the policy's&#xA;  intent—DST increases residential electricity demand. Estimates of the overall increase are approximately&#xA;  1 percent, but we find that the effect is not constant throughout the DST period. DST causes the greatest&#xA;  increase in electricity consumption in the fall, when estimates range between 2 and 4 percent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2443" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T05:58:54.547" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T05:58:54.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5774" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-15T17:35:23.423" Score="8" ViewCount="895" Body="&lt;p&gt;Years ago a number of articles in the popular press indicated that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pap_test&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Papanicolaou test (aka pap smear)&lt;/a&gt; was obsolete, being replaced by vaccines and genetic tests. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ktre.com/story/10160387/new-advanced-dna-test-could-make-pap-smears-obsolete?nav=menu118_1&amp;amp;redirected=true&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New advanced DNA test could make pap smears obsolete&lt;/a&gt; (KTRE, Apr 09, 2009):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Women over 30 could drop the annual pap smear and instead get a DNA test every three, five or ten years. The women we talked to said the pap smear does not bother them. &quot;It's better to be safe than sorry, waiting three years is a long time, once a year is pretty accurate,&quot; said Becca Tatum, patient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://putinagoodword.com/?p=1090&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Making Pap Smear Obsolete&lt;/a&gt; (Put in a good word, March 23, 2009):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research shows that a DNA test is more accurate in finding cervical cancer.  if so, this would be a major advancement in cancer detection and could make the pap smear test obsolete.  Let’s hope that this research becomes a reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/life/broadsheet/2007/01/17/pap&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;No more Pap smears? The new HPV vaccine may relegate cervical swipes to the trash bin.&#xA;&lt;/a&gt; (Salon.com Jan 17, 2007):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that the recommended annual Pap test -- which screens for precancerous lesions and typically comes complete with a drafty gown and an icy speculum -- is likely to become less relevant as cervical cancer becomes less common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yet, it's apparent that in some places continue to perform the Pap smear, e.g. in this Globe and Mail article with a related question on health care in Canada &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/ask-a-health-expert/the-patient-navigator/is-it-okay-to-have-two-family-doctors/article2128283/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Is it okay to have two family doctors?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Is the Pap test really obsolete, as those 2007-2009 articles suggest?&lt;/b&gt; Are DNA tests and vaccines superior in every way to pap smear, or does it have other advantages of its own? Is it simply too soon to expect that the new replacement genetic test be prevalent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-21T16:27:05.540" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T15:42:34.260" Title="Are pap smears obsolete?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5778" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5779" CreationDate="2011-08-15T21:53:34.927" Score="18" ViewCount="2185" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this rumor a few times (&lt;a href=&quot;http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/07/03/20/1858204/Hummer-Greener-Than-Prius&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;).  The argument is that it takes energy to make the car, and when you take into account how long each car will last on the road, driving Prius's over a large number of miles will end up requiring &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; energy than if you had driven Hummers over that many miles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This argument sounds dubious to me.  Is there any validity to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T23:03:51.990" Title="Are Hummers more environmentally friendly than Prius?" Tags="|technology|road-vehicles|energy-efficiency|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5778" CreationDate="2011-08-15T22:58:27.190" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Straight Dope &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2759/are-electric-cars-really-more-energy-efficient&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; that while the full environmental impact is hard to measure, there is not much evidence to support the &quot;Hummers are better for the environment than the Prius&quot; claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cause of the controversy seems to be a report called &quot;Dust to&#xA;  Dust&quot; by Oregon-based CNW Marketing Research. The report claims a&#xA;  Prius has a higher lifetime energy cost than a Hummer, an assertion&#xA;  cited by George Will in 2007 in his syndicated newspaper column. But&#xA;  the report is ludicrous. It evidently was self-published, lists no&#xA;  authors, quotes no technical literature, never explains its&#xA;  methodology, and contains numerous unsupported and often bizarre&#xA;  assertions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slate's Green Lantern also has a go at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/id/2186786/&quot;&gt;answering&lt;/a&gt; this question, and comes to much the same conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1371" LastEditorUserId="1371" LastEditDate="2011-08-15T23:03:51.990" LastActivityDate="2011-08-15T23:03:51.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3254" CreationDate="2011-08-16T08:46:34.843" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2637263/?tool=pubmed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;linked article&lt;/a&gt; is rather clear: With up to 50 grams of HFCS consumed at .5 microgram, the daily intake would be 25 microgram. Mercury is a danger to unborn children [...] if they are exposed to low dose microgram exposures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is of course a worst-case scenario. The same chlor-alkali chemicals are increasingly produced without mercury at all, which would explain why some batches of HFCS had no detectable mercury at all (11 out of 20).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another relevant comparison might be to fish, where the limit is one microgram of mercury per gram of fish (1 ppm). The concentrations found in HFCS are significantly less than that, even in the worst case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there is a scientific basis for the claim, although the details (&lt;em&gt;often&lt;/em&gt; contains toxic levels of mercury) are still dubious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T08:46:34.843" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5752" CreationDate="2011-08-16T12:34:07.573" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=37867&quot;&gt;Researching this on the web seems to indicate that the process is called &quot;Daily dermal debridement&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that wound debridement is a treatment used to remove dead flesh to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.burn-injury-resource-center.com/2010/07/wound-debridement.html&quot;&gt;reduce infection specifically&lt;/a&gt;. This seems reasonable sensible. And it appears debridement has been used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10741585&quot;&gt;to treat burns for some time&lt;/a&gt;. Indeed - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nursingcenter.com/prodev/ce_article.asp?tid=853889&quot;&gt;apparently&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Manual debridement, often done by nurses or burn care technicians&#xA;  after wound cleansing, involves the scraping or pulling off of loose&#xA;  nonviable skin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other question is whether it could be used as an option to reduce scarring. Debridement does appear to reduce scarring &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19128248&quot;&gt;according to some papers&lt;/a&gt;. And some sites recommend it as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doctorsofusc.com/condition/document/14803&quot;&gt;treatment to reduce scarring&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the above is a &lt;em&gt;little&lt;/em&gt; vague as I am far from a medical expert, but I think it lays out what treatment appears to have been used, and that it is used to treat scarring. It appears Chuck was offered and took a form of regular manual debridement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3606" LastActivityDate="2011-08-16T12:34:07.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5561" CreationDate="2011-08-16T13:34:55.700" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just this month, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uky.edu/~swhank2/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hankins&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.econ.pitt.edu/people/facpage.php?uid=108&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hoekstra&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty/faculty-detail/index.aspx?faculty_id=221&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skiba&lt;/a&gt; published &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/REST_a_00114&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a journal article on this subject&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper examines whether giving large cash transfers to financially distressed people causes them to avoid bankruptcy. A comparison of Florida Lottery winners who randomly received $50,000 to $150,000 to small winners indicates that such transfers only postpone bankruptcy rather than prevent it, a result inconsistent with the negative shock model of bankruptcy. Furthermore, the large winners who subsequently filed for bankruptcy had similar net assets and unsecured debt as small winners. Thus, our findings suggest that skepticism regarding the long-term impact of cash transfers may be warranted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of interesting graphs and tables in the paper, but I don't think I can reproduce them here without violating copyright/fair use.  This one does a good job of summarizing the results, though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JKAvV.png&quot; alt=&quot;Probability of bankruptcy with respect to time of winning the lottery.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the bankruptcy rates of medium and large winners fall 0.87 (&lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt; = 0.023) and 1.63&#xA;  (&lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt; = 0.001) percentage points in the first two years, respectively, which represent relative declines of 27% and 50%.  These declines are offset, however, by increases of 0.5 (&lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt; = 0.287) and 1.21 (&lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt; = 0.049) percentage points three to five years after winning. The net result is that within five years after winning, medium and large winners are no more or less likely to file for bankruptcy than are small winners.  This is true despite the fact that the median large winner won a cash prize ($65,000) that was sufficient to pay all of&#xA;  the unsecured debt owed by the most financially distressed lottery players ($49,000) at the time of winning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors summarize their results by concluding that lump-sum payments (&lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt;, lottery winnings) statistically significantly reduce the probability of bankruptcy in the first two years after winning, however, this reduction is followed by a statistically significant &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; in the probability of bankruptcy of similar magnitude three to five years after winning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this study only considered lump-sum winnings up to $150,000; I have not found any studies that track bankruptcies of larger cash payouts.  I suspect this is due to the relatively small amount of data available on the large jackpot winners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read the abstracts of all of the articles cited by the Hankins/Hoekstra/Skiba paper, and none of them seem to specifically study bankruptcy frequency among lottery winners.  One interesting theory arose from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0895-3309%28199020%294:1%3C193:ASFAMA%3E2.0.CO;2-D&amp;amp;origin=bc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a paper by Thaler&lt;/a&gt;: He points out that one of the best predictors for one's level of consumption (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, spending) is one's income.  Therefore, if one's income suddenly spikes due to a lump-sum lottery windfall, one might be very likely to increase one's spending, possibly taking on significant liabilities.  The problem is: A lottery payout is only temporary, so once that money runs out one is unable to pay off one's debts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2011-08-22T14:40:20.823" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T14:40:20.823" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5786" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-16T15:36:12.620" Score="36" ViewCount="2704" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pewforum.org/U-S-Religious-Knowledge-Survey-Who-Knows-What-About-Religion.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Pew Survey from 2010&lt;/a&gt; seems to indicate that this could be the case, with the atheist/agnostic group outscoring all others on a 32-question quiz of religious knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UGk4W.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this lone survey hardly constitutes definitive evidence, and could be skewed by confining its sample to the United States. I've been trying to look deeper into this, but cannot find much more than anecdotes and conjecture.  Have there been other similar studies/surveys done worldwide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there is not likely ever to be a definitive yes/no answer to a question such as this, but&#xA;statistically, among the general public: have those who self-identify as atheists been shown to &lt;em&gt;consistently&lt;/em&gt; demonstrate a greater knowledge of religion than those who identify themselves as believers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="32459" LastEditDate="2017-02-01T15:19:19.453" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T15:19:19.453" Title="Do atheists have a better knowledge of religion than theists in the United States?" Tags="|religion|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="33" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2587" CreationDate="2011-08-16T18:27:26.663" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This speech completely dismisses the extreme importance of accurate timepieces, especially to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_chronometer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;navigation at sea&lt;/a&gt;. While it was an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Englishman&lt;/a&gt; who eventually won the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longitude_prize&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Longitude Prize&lt;/a&gt;, Swiss Made(tm)[1] watches and Chronometers (ie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.interwatches.com/ulysse-nardin-history&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ulysee Nardin&lt;/a&gt;) were the gold standard from the mid 19th century to about 1970.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's roughly tantamount to saying &quot;The Americans didn't produce anything of importance aside from the GPS network&quot;. Even if this statement were true (and it's obviously not), this invention is of such stunning usefulness and importance that if this were the case, they still deserve heaps of praise for this one accomplishment alone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Swiss Made(tm) is capitalized and trademarked &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fhs.ch/eng/certification.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;for a reason&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3458" LastEditorUserId="3458" LastEditDate="2015-09-21T18:58:23.077" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T18:58:23.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5752" CreationDate="2011-08-17T02:48:05.203" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not actually scraping, but bathing (Hydrotherapy) to soften the scabbing (Eschar) that occurs, then sponge off the softened Eschar, can be very painful depending on the type of burn. This procedure comes after the initial debridement which is much more invasive and painful, and done for different reasons than scaring minimization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hydrotherapy as a mode of treatment for burns has been advocated or criticized by several authors, and undoubtedly it is widely used. We can'scarcely imagine a Burn Unit without a properly equipped hydrotherapy room.&#xA;  We agree with Yang Chih (1982), Carvajal (1988) and Craig (1982) in considering the purposes of hydrotherapy to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;to enhance desloughing and to clean the wound surface;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;to drain pus and to help debride;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;to alter microbial flora;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;to enhance healthy tisue formation and healing;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;to facilitate physical therapy; and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;to comfort and psychologically uplift the patient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does not really prevent scarring but promotes proper healing giving it the best chance of less scarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May not be performed on all burn patients, depends on the severity of the burn and area covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medbc.com/annals/review/vol_5/num_2/text/vol5n2p88.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source of Information&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4403" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T02:48:05.203" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5796" CreationDate="2011-08-17T03:43:49.280" Score="4" ViewCount="830" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't find any information about long-term negative effects of &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucralose&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sucralose&lt;/a&gt; consumption other than a very high toxicity level claimed by several studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is lots of speculation online about how healthy Splenda is, but are there any good long-term studies of sucralose effects in humans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3643" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-02-20T22:07:50.460" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T22:07:50.460" Title="Long term effects of sucralose" Tags="|nutrition|chemistry|toxicology|sugar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="321" CreationDate="2011-08-17T08:42:30.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a quick Google search I found this study: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1868823/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1868823/&lt;/a&gt; J Appl Behav Anal. 2007 Spring; 40(1): 15–23. doi:  10.1901/jaba.2007.23-06&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and this one&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mybabycantalk.com/content/information/research/Impact%20of%20Symbolic%20Gesturing.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mybabycantalk.com/content/information/research/Impact%20of%20Symbolic%20Gesturing.pdf&lt;/a&gt; published in &#xA;Journal of Nonverbal Behavior Volume 24, Number 2, 81-103, DOI: 10.1023/A:1006653828895&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, there have been scientific studies done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there definitely is something to it, and there is more than just anecdotal evidence that there is.  Have a look on Google for Fireese. She's a little girl whose mother taught her sign from a very young age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Ilari Kajaste:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There's also not much point in using standardized language that's shared among many families, since a baby will most likely only communicate with her parents.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why teach a nonsense language when you can teach a baby a recognised language like ASL or BSL? Would you teach your child pidgin or a language like English, Chinese, or Spanish? Since you're going to be teaching the baby &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;, why not teach s/he something they can potentially use in general in life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;so there's also the question of what's the point of teaching the baby to sign&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is that you can communicate with your baby. If they are able to communicate that they are hungry in seconds, that is time saved for the parent trying to figure out what is wrong, and reduces the distress the baby is having by being hungry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4517" LastEditorUserId="78" LastEditDate="2011-08-17T11:58:55.620" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T11:58:55.620" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5793" CreationDate="2011-08-17T09:11:09.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;using your own source, it lists authorative sources like the FDA stating that Sucralose/Splenda is safe unless consumed in extreme amounts (at which level pretty much anything is harmful). The only &quot;study&quot; your source lists as &quot;proving&quot; harmful effects requires an intake of 10 times the recommended normal dose over prolonged periods, and even then the effect cannot be replicated in humans.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another study, published in the Journal of Mutation Research, linked large doses of sucralose equivalent to 11,450 packets (136 g) per day in a person to DNA damage in mice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is typical of the types of things that get mentioned (without the actual massive doses required of course) in popular press to &quot;show&quot; that things are dangerous. If you need to feed a mouse 11.500 teaspoons of Splenda a day to create a condition that might lead to cancer, the amount for humans would be millions of teaspoons a day. Even the worst sweettooth isn't going to eat that much of the stuff :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T09:11:09.673" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4037" CreationDate="2011-08-17T10:51:31.113" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is many studies done on the health effects of soy. I have not been able to find studies claiming soy is bad for you. Here is a sample of abstracts from recent review studies on the subject. Many more can be found on pubmed if you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20484551&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A brief historical overview of the past two decades of soy and isoflavone research. &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Messina M - 2010&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the past 20 years, a remarkable amount of research into the health effects of soy consumption has been conducted, which in large part can be attributed to the presence of isoflavones in the soybean. Isoflavones first came to the attention of the scientific community in the 1940s because of fertility problems observed in sheep grazing on a type of isoflavone-rich clover. In the 1950s, as a result of their estrogenic effects in rodents, isoflavones were studied as possible growth promoters for use by the animal feed industry, although shortly thereafter, it was shown that isoflavones could also function as antiestrogens. Despite this early work, it was not until the 1990s, largely because of research sponsored by the U.S. National Cancer Institute, that the role of soyfoods in disease prevention began to receive widespread attention. Subsequently, isoflavones and soyfoods were being studied for their ability to alleviate hot flashes and inhibit bone loss in postmenopausal women. In 1995, soy protein attracted worldwide attention for its ability to lower cholesterol. At this same time, isoflavones began to be widely discussed as potential alternatives to conventional hormone therapy. In 2002, it was hypothesized that individuals possessing the intestinal bacteria capable of converting the soybean isoflavone daidzein into the isoflavan equol were more likely to benefit from soy intake. More recently, in vitro and animal research has raised questions about the safety of isoflavone exposure for certain subsets of the population, although the human data are largely inconsistent with these concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11880593&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The health consequences of early soy consumption.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Badger TM, Ronis MJ, Hakkak R, Rowlands JC, Korourian S. - 2002&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Soy formula is made with soy protein isolate containing isoflavones (SPI+) and supports normal growth and development in term infants. Recent data suggest that there are no long-term adverse effects of early exposure to soy formula through young adulthood. It is as yet unknown whether soy formula consumption by infants will result in health problems or benefits upon aging, but multigenerational animal studies with diets made with SPI+ have not revealed any problems. Soy isoflavones can function as estrogen agonists, antagonists or selective estrogen receptor modulators, depending on the conditions, and much research has focused on health effects of purified isoflavones. Results from several studies suggest that the effects of diets made with SPI+ differ significantly from those of diets to which purified soy isoflavones are added. Furthermore, it seems that soy protein processed to contain lower levels of isoflavones also provides significant health benefits. Further research is needed to confirm the results of the few studies that have been conducted and new studies are needed to investigate the more subtle effects that could occur during development or that could surface later in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20980638&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Is soy consumption good or bad for the breast?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Hilakivi-Clarke L, Andrade JE, Helferich W. - 2010&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Genistein in soy activates estrogen receptor (ER)-α and ERβ and acts as an estradiol in multiple target tissues. Because estrogens increase breast cancer risk and genistein promotes the growth of ER-positive human breast cancer cells, it has remained unclear whether this isoflavone or soy is safe. Results reviewed here suggest that women consuming moderate amounts of soy throughout their life have lower breast cancer risk than women who do not consume soy; however, this protective effect may originate from soy intake early in life. We also review the literature regarding potential risks genistein poses for breast cancer survivors. Findings obtained in 2 recent human studies show that a moderate consumption of diet containing this isoflavone does not increase the risk of breast cancer recurrence in Western women, and Asian breast cancer survivors exhibit better prognosis if they continue consuming a soy diet. The mechanisms explaining the breast cancer risk-reducing effect of early soy intake or the protective effect in Asian breast cancer survivors remain to be established. We propose that the reduction in risk involves epigenetic changes that result in alterations in the expression of genes that regulate mammary epithelial cell fate, i.e. cell proliferation and differentiation. Lifetime soy consumption at a moderate level may prevent breast cancer recurrence through mechanisms that change the biology of tumors; e.g. women who consumed soy during childhood develop breast cancers that express significantly reduced Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 levels. More research is needed to understand why soy intake during early life may both reduce breast cancer risk and risk of recurrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4513" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T10:51:31.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5798" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-17T11:26:24.033" Score="24" ViewCount="10191" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is regularly stated that aluminum cooking pans are unhealthy, but I come accross them very often. I see people cooking both alkaline and acid foods in them, scrape them with metal, leave food overnight in them, wrap sandwiches in aluminum foil etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How bad is it really?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4513" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-05-15T22:31:18.190" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T22:33:10.563" Title="How unhealthy are aluminum cooking pans?" Tags="|safety|cooking|aluminum|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5798" CreationDate="2011-08-17T12:29:30.297" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is one reasonably reputable article on the subject: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/07/29/1163941.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aluminium &amp;amp; Alzheimer's, ABC Science&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer, as far as I can find out, it no, they aren't unhealthy. The article I've referenced gives some history as to where the belief originated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quotation of the most relevant part of the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aluminium has had bad press for a long time, mostly beginning around&#xA;  the 1920s. Rudolph Valentino's death in 1926 at the tender age of 31&#xA;  was blamed on aluminium poisoning from aluminium cookware - but he was&#xA;  actually killed by a perforating stomach ulcer. Howard J. Force, a&#xA;  self-proclaimed &quot;chemist&quot; added momentum to the anti-aluminium&#xA;  movement with pamphlets such as Poisons Formed by Aluminum Cooking&#xA;  Utensils. It was probably not a coincidence that he also sold cookware&#xA;  - stainless steel cookware.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first scientific &quot;evidence&quot; about aluminium's toxicity appeared in&#xA;  the mid-1970s. People with Alzheimer's Disease have typical changes in&#xA;  the brain that can be seen only with a microscope. They're called&#xA;  &quot;neuro-fibrillary tangles&quot;. Various studies found high concentrations&#xA;  of aluminium at autopsy in the brains of people suffering with&#xA;  Alzheimer's Disease - and almost always in the characteristic&#xA;  neuro-fibrillary tangles in the nerves. So, did the aluminium cause&#xA;  Alzheimer's Disease? No. It eventually turned out that the&#xA;  neuro-fibrillary tangles were very &quot;sticky&quot; - and absorbed the&#xA;  aluminium out of the water used to wash them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a further references &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1564520&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Aluminium accumulation in relation to senile plaque and neurofibrillary tangle formation in the brains of patients with renal failure'&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These data suggest that it is unlikely that aluminium plays any major&#xA;  role in neurofibrillary tangle formation and that its putative role in&#xA;  senile plaque formation is likely to be only part of a complex cascade&#xA;  of changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="654" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-05-15T22:33:10.563" LastActivityDate="2019-05-15T22:33:10.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5806" CreationDate="2011-08-17T15:13:31.187" Score="9" ViewCount="457" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently listen to a lecture by Professor Sohail Rashid from the Psychology Department at Ryerson University, on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Adler#On_birth_order&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alfred Adler&lt;/a&gt;'s theories on how birth order affects personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://podcasts.tvo.org/bi/audio/004686_48k.mp3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Audio of lecture&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vodpod.com/watch/3428380-sohail-rashid-on-birth-order-and-personality&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Video of lecture&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite this lecture being a finalist in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tvo.org/TVOsites/WebObjects/TvoMicrosite.woa?bestlecturer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TVO Best Lecturer 2010&lt;/a&gt; competition, he made a number of (what sounded, to my ears, like) highly dubious claims, with ad hoc explanations and  celebrity anecdotes with no supporting evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Adler#On_birth_order&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;explains that&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adler never produced any scientific support for his interpretations on birth order roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean that psychology hasn't found some scientific evidence to support some of the ideas in the meantime - and I would like to think they have, before they would be presented as true by a professor in a psych class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than ask an open question like &quot;Are Adler's theories true?&quot; I have decided to pick one particular claim and ask about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rashid claims that &lt;strong&gt;first born children (in a family of more than one child) are more likely as adults to purchase insurance&lt;/strong&gt;. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The given reasons provided are irrelevant if the claim is not true, but are based on the early experience of the loss of attention when the second child is born.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="29579" LastEditDate="2024-04-02T10:23:09.453" LastActivityDate="2024-04-02T11:10:51.053" Title="Do first-borns buy more insurance?" Tags="|psychology|insurance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5803" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-17T16:03:20.667" Score="12" ViewCount="5537" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently traces of cocaine were found on Egyptian mummies.  Given that the coca plant only grew in South America prior to Columbus, could this indicate the ancient Egyptians had contact with the New World, or is there a more rational explanation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The discovery of tobacco fragments in the mummified body of Ramses II&#xA;should have had a profound influence upon our whole understanding of&#xA;the relationship between ancient Egypt and America but this piece of&#xA;evidence was simply ignored. Then, sixteen years later, again quite by&#xA;accident, more evidence emerged. In 1992, toxicologist, Dr. Svetla&#xA;Balabanova of the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Ulm (Germany)&#xA;tested the ancient Egyptian mummified remains of Henut-Tawy, Lady of&#xA;the Two Lands. The results came as a &amp;quot;shock&amp;quot; to this scientist who&#xA;regularly used the identical testing methods to convict people of drug&#xA;consumption. She had not expected to find nicotine and cocaine in an&#xA;ancient Egyptian mummy.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180104110401/http://www.newdawnmagazine.com:80/Articles/Curse%20of%20the%20Cocaine%20Mummies.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;New Dawn Magazine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently Balabanova has published &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01140178&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;First Identification of Drugs in Egyptian Mummie&lt;/a&gt;s&amp;quot; available for a fee I can't justify paying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very similar story is echoed on other paranormal websites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such drugs come from the tobacco and coca plants respectively, plants&#xA;that existed only in the Americas and were unknown before Columbus&#xA;discovered America. To be sure, she requested that 3 other&#xA;laboratories repeated the test and all came up with the same results.&#xA;Even though these techniques are used in criminal lawsuits the world&#xA;over and are 100% accurate, the scientific world, headed by the Oxford&#xA;University, reacted furiously and denied the outcomes since it&#xA;implicates that there was contact between Egypt and the Americas&#xA;before Columbus, which is regarded as absolutely impossible. &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20100416052803/http://www.ancientmysteries.eu/data_bestanden/egypte%20cocaine%20mummies/MYSTERY%20UK.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story can also be found on an episode of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJKjb0-EhIg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;weird or what&lt;/a&gt; available on youtube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the fact that these claims circulate mainly on paranormalist websites is reason enough to be skeptical.  It seems more likely that these results could be due to contamination, error, or possibly hoax. But if not....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do these &amp;quot;cocaine mummies&amp;quot; indicate some pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact between continents?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2022-09-16T03:50:18.690" LastActivityDate="2022-09-16T03:50:18.690" Title="Were traces of cocaine found on ancient Egyptian mummies?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|geography|egypt|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5803" CreationDate="2011-08-17T16:29:13.380" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trace amounts of nicotine, hashish and cocaine has indeed been found in many mummies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A summary of possible reasons for why these mummies could show this can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/ethnic/mummy.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, also with arguments against most of these possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A remaining possibility is contamination. The substances could have contaminated the mummy in modern times. Nicotine has for example been used as an insecticide. One study (Nerlich, A.G. et. al. 1995.  Extensive pulmonary hemorrhage in an Egyptian mummy) did find different concentrations in different parts of the body, indicating that Cocain and Nicotine was ingested, while hashish had been smoked. But that is just one mummy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I find it hard to believe that almost every person who was mummified was also a  user of cocaine or tobacco. If these was imported from South America in pre-columbian trade they must have been enormously expensive and fit only for kings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastActivityDate="2011-08-17T16:29:13.380" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5802" CreationDate="2011-08-17T16:30:29.123" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2009/10/02/104224.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does Birth Order Determine Willingness to Take Economic Risks?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Melayne McInnes, an associate professor in economics, and her student, Erica Morgan, found that first-born siblings tend to be more risk-averse and more patient in making monetary decisions. Conversely, last-born siblings tend to be bigger risk takers, willing to gamble for a higher payoff and less willing to wait unless the rate of return was much higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To test the hypothesis, McInnes and Morgan devised different scenarios that offered participants the possibility of larger payoffs with higher risk, smaller payoffs with lower risk, larger payoffs with a longer time delay and smaller payoffs with a shorter time delay. The kicker: They used real money, provided through a National Science Foundation grant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“What we found is that &lt;strong&gt;older siblings were more averse to risk and more willing to wait to receive a higher payout,” Morgan said. “First-born siblings required more compensation if they were going to assume more risk,&lt;/strong&gt; and younger siblings had to be offered a higher rate of return for them to be willing to wait for a payout.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the above does not exactly measure the rate of insurance purchases but the fundamentals of insurance purchasing are well matched by &amp;quot;averse to risk and more willing to wait to receive a higher payout&amp;quot; characteristics. BUT, to make this a bit more scientific:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Journal of Risk and Insurance: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120519145912/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6645/is_n4_v60/ai_n28633293/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An international analysis of life insurance demand&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; by Mark J. Browne, Kihong Kim | Dec, 1993&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;|f*.sub.i~ = |(1/L).sup.1/|Delta~~ |C*.sub.i~. (2)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Equation (2) states that for any one child &lt;strong&gt;the optimal level of life insurance&lt;/strong&gt; on the wage earner is inversely related to the life insurance loading fee and &lt;strong&gt;directly related to the child's degree of risk aversion&lt;/strong&gt; and the present value of consumption of the child if the wage earner survives until the child is mature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lite insurance consumption also increases with the family's degree of risk aversion.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2024-04-02T11:10:51.053" LastActivityDate="2024-04-02T11:10:51.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5808" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-17T19:20:14.100" Score="3" ViewCount="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;With reference to a question &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/q/101747/22493&quot;&gt;Are there still any companies/academic centers that use mainframes from 60s-70s?&lt;/a&gt; on Programmers stack exchange, I &lt;a href=&quot;https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/101747/are-there-still-any-companies-academic-centers-that-use-mainframes-from-60s-70s/101782#101782&quot;&gt;answered&lt;/a&gt; mentioning the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was working at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Fylingdales&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RAF Filingdales&lt;/a&gt; in the mid 90's, on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_Missile_Early_Warning_System&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ballistic Missile Early Warning System&lt;/a&gt; there, we were told that they couldn't directly connect anything but the original mainframe to the radar array, as it would be considered a violation of a strategic arms treaty governing the use of the early warning radar system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not now convinced that this was true, given the current &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Fylingdales#National_Missile_Defence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Missile Defence&lt;/a&gt; upgrade, but the original &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_Cyber&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC-Cyber mainframe&lt;/a&gt; could still be in use if the NMD project has not yet been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My assertion was challenged by a commenter who suggested it was the &lt;em&gt;radar itself&lt;/em&gt; which was limited by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SALT_I&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SALT&lt;/a&gt;, so it seems that I'm not the only person who has been told that early warning systems are controlled by international treaty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A survey of the appropriate wikipedia pages doesn't appear to mention either radar warning systems or the computers connected to them in relation to any of these treaties. The closest thing I can find is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Ballistic_Missile_Treaty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty&lt;/a&gt; but this appears to be about the missiles used to shoot down Ballistic Missiles rather than the tracking systems used to locate incoming missiles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2772" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T20:04:51.977" Title="Are the computers connected to missile early warning systems limited by international treaty?" Tags="|weapons|nuclear-weapons|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5809" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-18T02:06:39.060" Score="12" ViewCount="392" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife is fussing at me because I've been wearing the same pair of 2 week contacts for probably 4 months now. My experience thus far is to only replace if they either tear or develop irritation. The eye doctor I got my prescription from said it can cause a rash on the underside of the lids. Then there's sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100625164344AAhvoEW&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. I obviously don't have a rash problem. What's the truth about these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T20:39:20.560" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T21:57:23.093" Title="Are disposable contacts unsafe beyond their recommended time limits?" Tags="|hygiene|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="460" CreationDate="2011-08-18T02:50:23.497" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only plausible mechanism by which nuclear war could cause the extinction of humanity is nuclear winter. The world's present nuclear arsenal is definitely large enough that it would cause a nuclear winter.[Robock 2009] However, climate science is not a high-precision field. All we have are rough estimates. And even if we knew the exact amount by which the world would cool down, we have no reliable way of figuring out what impact it would have on civilization and agriculture, or how many people would die. There is no scientific way of figuring out, for example, whether or not some lucky, powerful, or wealthy group would be able to hoard some large supply of canned food and survive until the nuclear winter was over. As another example, there is no reliable scientific way of figuring out whether some group of people might be able to carry on subsistence agriculture by obtaining appropriate seeds that might grow well enough in some specific area where there was enough light and high enough temperatures. Supposing that some population survived the nuclear winter, there is no scientific way of determining whether they would be able to carry on the human race; e.g., nobody really knows the exact dynamics by which Norse settlements in Greenland died out in the 15th century.[Diamond 2005]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robock, &lt;a href=&quot;http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/RegionalNuclearConsequences24.ppt&quot;&gt;http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/nuclear/RegionalNuclearConsequences24.ppt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4216" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T02:50:23.497" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5461" CreationDate="2011-08-18T05:18:54.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, it needs to be understood as per @Hendy's comment that disposable face masks can trap or allow airborne particles to pass through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several studies to back this up and indicates that up to 100% of the particles could pass through:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196655307007742&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Our experimental tests showed filter efficiencies ranging from 20% to&#xA;  99% in the latex sphere tests and from 10% to 90% in the sodium&#xA;  chloride tests&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0196655393900272&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The percentage of filter penetration ranged from 20% to nearly 100%&#xA;  for submicrometer-sized particles.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196655305801439&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A surgical mask consisting of filter material performed better than&#xA;  did a surgical mask consisting only of a shell with a coarse pore&#xA;  structure. The latter passed 80% of submicrometer-sized aerosols with&#xA;  little flow dependency, whereas the penetration of submicrometer-sized&#xA;  aerosols through the mask made of filter material ranged from 25% at a&#xA;  flow rate of 5 L/min to 70% at 100 L/min.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said there are studies that confirm the benefits of wearing a face mask and the maths speaks for itself, even a 10% improvement is better than no protection at all right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two studies worth mentioning &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20088690&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We observed significant reductions in ILI during weeks 4-6 in the mask&#xA;  and hand hygiene group, compared with the control group, ranging from&#xA;  35% (confidence interval [CI], 9%-53%) to 51% (CI, 13%-73%), after&#xA;  adjusting for vaccination and other covariates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Face mask use alone&#xA;  showed a similar reduction in ILI compared with the control group, but&#xA;  adjusted estimates were not statistically significant. Neither face&#xA;  mask use and hand hygiene nor face mask use alone was associated with&#xA;  a significant reduction in the rate of ILI cumulatively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21651736&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Influenza transmission was not reduced by interventions to promote&#xA;  hand washing and face mask use. This may be attributable to&#xA;  transmission that occurred before the intervention, poor facemask&#xA;  compliance, little difference in hand-washing frequency between study&#xA;  groups, and shared sleeping arrangements. A prospective study design&#xA;  and a careful analysis of sociocultural factors could improve future&#xA;  NPI studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20088690&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;number&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19652172&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt; which conclude there is a positive benefits to wearing a face mask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest from the information out there and from the above information that face masks could provide some benefit (reduced risk), however this would depend on the environment. A high amount of particles can be trapped or flow through the mask and if the wearer is in an environment where they are touching the same surfaces or breathing the same air for an extended period of time then the benefit could be negligible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T05:18:54.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="321" CreationDate="2011-08-18T08:56:06.343" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have to admit I only stumbled upon this question due to the activity on Jeff Blaine's post.  However, it did spark enough interest for me to do a little poking into the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Honestly, I can't say there's &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; to it, but it hasn't exactly knocked my socks off so to speak. &amp;quot;Plausible but not conclusive&amp;quot; really gets to the heart of it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on all I found, Baby Signs is based on some legitimate, if not terribly compelling research and seems to be another one of those &amp;quot;half-true&amp;quot; claims where a legitimate phenomena becomes exaggerated or misrepresented (either intentionally or unintentionally) in the process of marketing a product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First thing's first: What we don't yet know about human language acquisition could fill a warehouse.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that doesn't mean just anyone can fill it with nonsense.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The science behind what could make &amp;quot;Baby Signs&amp;quot; work (or not) crosses many disciplines, and as such can be hard to validate or refute.  A full analysis of their system would require a knowledge of neurology, biology, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurolinguistics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;neurolinguistics&lt;/a&gt;, and psychology among others. In short, if you haven't read at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Piaget&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chomsky&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Pinker&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pinker&lt;/a&gt; you should, otherwise the context of academic debate surrounding the research may be difficult to impart (as there is no way possible to cover it all at length).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7OZav.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;How do babies learn language?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be a chicken-and-egg problem. You can't learn the language until you know the words. But you can't distinguish the words until you know the language.&#xA;Working with Jenny Saffran at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and&#xA;Elissa Newport at the University of Rochester, Aslin has found one way&#xA;babies solve this dilemma: by using the pattern of sounds within words&#xA;to distinguish the ends of words. Babies &amp;quot;pay attention to sounds that&#xA;cohere within words, compared to the less predictive sounds that&#xA;change as they span a word boundary,&amp;quot; Aslin says. And when that&#xA;pattern breaks, the baby understands that a new word is about to&#xA;start. &lt;a href=&quot;http://whyfiles.org/058language/baby_talk.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I chose this example to illustrate the fact that some headway is being made, but much remains unknown, and while we may observe many correlations we have yet to fully understand the mechanisms at work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speech samples taken from seven firstborn children and their mothers&#xA;when the children were 1; 6 and 2; 3 were analysed within a number of&#xA;semantic and syntactic categories to determine correlations between&#xA;mothers' speech and subsequent language development. Several&#xA;characteristics of mothers' speech (e.g. utterance length, use of&#xA;pronouns) significantly predicted later child speech. The significant&#xA;correlations suggested that mothers' choice of simple constructions&#xA;facilitated language growth. Further, they showed that the motherese&#xA;code differed from adult-adult speech in ways which aided language&#xA;development. Differences between our study and previous investigations&#xA;of environmental effects on language development probably resulted&#xA;from the failure of earlier investigations to take into account&#xA;children's level of language competence at the time when environmental&#xA;effects were assessed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=B97C0981FB1B6506F35B51B4B10B0579.tomcat1?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=1767044&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;journals/cambridge.org&lt;/a&gt; shows that when it comes to hard and fast data on language acquisition, we're really still just mining correlations and seeing what pans out.  Science is if nothing else a gradual process, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The folks over at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/linguistics/learn.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Science Foundation&lt;/a&gt; voice the dilemma well...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do children accomplish this remarkable feat in such a short amount&#xA;of time? Which aspects of language acquisition are biologically&#xA;programmed into the human brain and which are based on experience? Do&#xA;adults learn language differently from children? Researchers have long&#xA;debated the answers to these questions, but there is one thing they&#xA;agree on: language acquisition is a complex process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, there is much we do not yet know about the psychological, biological, neurological, sociological elements of language, which is a large part of what makes it such a fascinating topic, as it cuts to the core of how we express ourselves and understand each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as we're reminded, we don't yet have a &lt;em&gt;solid understanding&lt;/em&gt; of how this works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stanford.edu/%7Ehakuta/www/research/publications/%281999%29%20-%20CONFOUNDED%20AGE%20LINGUISTIC%20AND%20COGNITIVE%20FACTORS%20IN%20.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confounded Age: Linguistic and Cognitive Factors in Age Differences for Second Language Acquisition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pZBPG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What does Baby Signs Claim?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AJJlW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when viewed skeptically, it seems harmless enough, though I'll look at the MLM aspect later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;History of the claim: Just how legitimate is the research (and researchers) Baby Signs is founded on?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the request for study on this topic, there is actually quite a lot.  More than previous answers would lead you to believe.  A list of publications from &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/faculty/Acredolo/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Linda Acredolo&lt;/a&gt; (The seemingly more predominant academic of the two) can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/labs/Acredolo/pubs/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. She has published extensively on spatial recognition and symbolic gesturing in children among other topics. To the best of what I can find as of now, her publications have all been fairly well received.  Two of her more notable works with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csustan.edu/psych/goodwyn/goodwyn.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Goodwyn&lt;/a&gt; would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acredolo, L. P., &amp;amp; Goodwyn, S. W. (1990).    &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.127.2011&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sign language among&#xA;hearing infants&lt;/a&gt;:  The spontaneous development of symbolic gestures.&#xA;In V. Volterra &amp;amp; C. Erting (Eds.), From gesture to language in hearing&#xA;and deaf children. New York:  Springer-Verlag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acredolo, L. P., &amp;amp;&#xA;Goodwyn, S. W. (1990).  Sign Language in Babies: The significance of&#xA;symbolic gesturing for understanding language development.  In R.&#xA;Vasta (Ed.), Annals of Child Development (vol 7, pp 1-42).  London:&#xA;Jessica Kingsley Publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which obviously laid the ground for the &amp;quot;Baby Signs&amp;quot; enterprise, and their findings &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; have some independent verification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UpE9r.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/%7Epetitto/img_upload/posters-for-media/027B-Cognition1987.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This idea seems to be validated by other sources including this from &lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/16/5/367.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Journal of the&#xA;Association for Psychological Science&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In development, children often use gesture to communicate before they&#xA;use words. The question is whether these gestures merely precede&#xA;language development or are fundamentally tied to it. We examined 10&#xA;children making the transition from single words to two-word&#xA;combinations and found that gesture had a tight relation to the&#xA;children's lexical and syntactic development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even though this lists &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulekman.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paul Ekman&lt;/a&gt; among its cited references, the paper seems sound:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study found that the facial action of moderately or widely&#xA;opening the mouth is accompanied by brow raising in infants, thus&#xA;producing &amp;quot;surprise&amp;quot; expressions in non-surprise situations. Infants&#xA;(age = 5 months and 7 months) were videotaped as they were presented&#xA;with toys that they often grasped and brought to their mouths.&#xA;Episodes of mouth opening were identified and accompanying brow, nose,&#xA;and eyelid movements were coded. Results indicated that mouth opening&#xA;is selectively associated with raised brows rather than to other brow&#xA;movements. Trace levels of eyelid raising also tended to accompany&#xA;this facial configuration. The findings are discussed in terms of a&#xA;dynamical systems theory of facial behavior and suggest that facial&#xA;expression cannot be used as investigators' sole measure of &amp;quot;surprise&amp;quot;&#xA;in infants. &lt;a href=&quot;http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/G_Michel_Infant_1996.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't let the fact that this product is marketed toward cute, healthy babies distract you from an understanding of just how important research into language acquisition actually is....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the idea of baby being able to wave a hand to alert mommy and daddy to the fact he's hungry or filled up the diaper again seems adorable, yet trivial....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just consider some of the studies done with regard to hearing-impaired children, children with autism-spectrum disorder and children who have received cochlear implants and you can see how vital and emotionally charged an understanding of the dynamics of communication between parent and child actually can be, &lt;em&gt;that's&lt;/em&gt; the real research this based on.  Here are just a few....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jslhr.highwire.org/cgi/content/abstract/50/4/1048&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Will They Catch Up? The Role of Age at Cochlear Implantation in the Spoken Language Development of Children With Severe to Profound Hearing Loss&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jslhr.highwire.org/cgi/content/abstract/52/3/643&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Defining Spoken Language Benchmarks and Selecting Measures of Expressive Language Development for Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/303/15/1498.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spoken Language Development in Children Following Cochlear Implantation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does a foundation in legitimate principles and valid research imply a claim to efficacy?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;No.  It doesn't.  But no one makes the claim that Baby Signs is either guaranteed or effective.  It only makes the claim that it is based on years of research, while leaving the reader to draw his/her own conclusions.  They do offer a money-back guarantee I'm told (their people were very nice on the phone).  After digging through the site, it seems most claims are made only by the slightest of implications and through videos of cute babies doing cute things.  Even clicking on the &amp;quot;research proven benefits&amp;quot; link yields only this group of claims anyone could argue with until the proverbial cows come home:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/255HJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why MLM?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The MLM aspect of the business is always worthy of skepticism, however I haven't found complaints lodged with the BBB in the US, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbb.org/greater-san-francisco/business-reviews/language-training-aids/baby-signs-in-vacaville-ca-289506&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;where the company is in fact highly rated and registered&lt;/a&gt;. Of course, that's only the parent company, and in a Multi-Level-Marketing Company the individual business &amp;quot;owners&amp;quot; shoulder the both the cost and liability, and a majority of those &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privateer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;privateers&lt;/a&gt; associated with Baby Signs &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; seem to be in good standing in their various states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;some examples from &lt;a href=&quot;http://egov.sos.state.or.us/br/pkg_web_name_srch_inq.do_name_srch?p_name=BABY%20SIGNS&amp;amp;p_regist_nbr=&amp;amp;p_srch=PHASE1&amp;amp;p_print=FALSE&amp;amp;p_entity_status=ACTINA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oregon&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sos.nh.gov/corporate/soskb/SearchResults.asp?FormName=CorpNameSearch&amp;amp;Words=Starting&amp;amp;SearchStr=Baby%20Signs&amp;amp;SearchType=Search&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New Hampshire&lt;/a&gt;, a random sampling of states I checked (although if anyone else can check the other 48, and the other countries worldwide, I'd be interested to see what comes back).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found it quite difficult to find complaints against the company (from either customers or disgruntled multi-level marketeers) as you can easily do online with most MLM companies. So it seems while the company appears eager to capitalize on the enthusiasm of new parents, it also seems to do little to victimize them based upon it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does it work?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, after all that, the answer is.....maybe?  Of the surprisingly few testimonials I was able to find regarding this product, one stood out to me, mostly because it read like the most beautiful, sweetly innocent version of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;confirmation bias&lt;/a&gt; I have ever come across, and I think while Baby Signs is based on research, &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; is what drives their sales and multi-level marketing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you have begun to sign with your baby, you may find that she is&#xA;making new and unusual gestures that you never noticed before. They&#xA;don’t quite look like the signs you have used with her, though you&#xA;must admit there may be a slight resemblance. You begin to experience&#xA;the first stirrings of hope and you think that maybe, just maybe, your&#xA;baby is signing. Just a Coincidence? As the parent of a baby, you&#xA;have likely witnessed your child as she tries out her new body,&#xA;checking to see what it can do. Younger infants, especially, will&#xA;sometimes test their range of motion by stretching, wiggling, and&#xA;flexing their limbs. It is for that reason that you may have trouble&#xA;believing that your child is actually signing. You may worry that you&#xA;will interpret her spontaneous movements as a deliberate sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is that your baby probably is signing. At the very&#xA;least, she is likely trying to imitate the gestures she has watched&#xA;you make, even if she has yet to comprehend their meanings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is better to give her the benefit of the doubt and react as if you&#xA;are sure she is deliberately communicating with you. Acknowledge the&#xA;sign, and then give her what you think she may be asking for. If she&#xA;is signing, then you will be showing her that signing is a form of&#xA;communication. If she is not signing, she may still associate the&#xA;gestures with getting something she wants. This will take her one step&#xA;closer to actually signing. And if it turns out that she didn’t want&#xA;the object you thought she was asking for, she will undoubtedly let&#xA;you know it! &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netplaces.com/baby-sign-language/troubleshooting-common-problems/is-baby-really-signing.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-18T08:56:06.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5815" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-18T13:15:16.140" Score="18" ViewCount="1147" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a talkshow this morning during a discussion of the validity of random drug tests a member of the Illinois State Police stated that 70% of admitted Marijuana users also admit to using while at work.  I am not finding any studies or statistics that back this up or refute it.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim was used to support the requirement that teachers be subject to random drug testing.  That claims of what is done at home stays home is most often not true.  I had not originally included this part as my skepticism is about the usage at work not about the effectiveness of drug testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-05T06:26:32.387" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T01:05:34.370" Title="Do 70% of Marijuana users also use while working?" Tags="|united-states|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5816" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5851" CreationDate="2011-08-18T13:46:04.147" Score="22" ViewCount="55404" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone once told me that reheating cold coffee releases poisonous chemicals in the coffee which makes it taste bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Browsing the internet I can't find any conclusive results. Some say it tastes bad, others that it causes high blood pressure and yet others that there is no harm in it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="649" LastEditorUserId="649" LastEditDate="2011-08-18T14:04:31.620" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T08:23:23.103" Title="Is drinking reheated coffee dangerous?" Tags="|coffee|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5818" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5824" CreationDate="2011-08-18T17:13:32.333" Score="27" ViewCount="4884" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have both heard and experienced (perhaps as a placebo effect) that writing things out by hand allows the text to be better remembered than typing it.  This particularly applies to taking notes during a lecture or seminar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would hazard to guess that with this effect there is more manual effort involved in handwriting, whereas typing is quicker and takes &quot;less thought&quot; (particularly when what is typed isn't completely thought of by the subject), but rather is based on someone else's spoken words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any basis to this at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3567" LastEditorUserId="3068" LastEditDate="2011-08-18T18:44:38.313" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T06:58:34.013" Title="Does handwriting assist memory retention more effectively than typing?" Tags="|computers|education|memory|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5821" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-19T03:56:37.647" Score="14" ViewCount="1448" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it mentioned regularly that India and China are going through diabetes epidemics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I am given is because of the raised standard of living means people are now eating large quantities of white rice and because of its apparent sugar content it is causing an increase in the number of people with diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any thorough research to indicate that the regular consumption of white rice causes a high risk of diabetes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T22:41:39.280" Title="Does eating white rice regularly increase the risk of diabetes?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-19T04:04:46.767" Score="15" ViewCount="3155" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many Hollywood movies and other media such as comic books you can see someone pull out a knife and carve an X into the end of their bullets to turn make them like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_bullet&quot;&gt;dum-dum bullet&lt;/a&gt;s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible in reality with a knife and will it have the intended effect that regular dum-dum bullets have of inflicting more sever pain? Or is this just something made up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T06:36:08.763" Title="Can you dum-dum bullets using a knife?" Tags="|weapons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5822" CreationDate="2011-08-19T06:36:08.763" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rather entertaining &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theboxotruth.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Box O' Truth&amp;quot; website&lt;/a&gt; did a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot32.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pretty thorough test of this.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lessons learned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cutting &amp;quot;x&amp;quot;s in bullets is harder than you might imagine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It might make them slightly more effective than Ball, but not&#xA;nearly as effective as modern Jacketed Hollow Points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The .45 ACP did not expand at all. This is probably the result of&#xA;a much thicker jacket than the 9mm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The lead .38 Special shed its petals, but didn't expand at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cutting the end off a &lt;strong&gt;rifle&lt;/strong&gt; Ball cartridge will definitely make the&#xA;bullet expand or break up. Would this make it more lethal? Probably.&#xA;But not as much as a modern JSP (Jacketed Soft Point) bullet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reversing a [&lt;strong&gt;rifle&lt;/strong&gt;] Ball bullet will cause it to expand and break up. Old&#xA;Elmer said that it killed game just fine. But Elmer didn't have access&#xA;to modern JSP ammo. If he had, I'm sure he would have preferred it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I added the bold (and the second rifle note), as it's a critical distinction (rifle vs handgun). The only times I have seen this in hollywood is on handgun ammunition, which behaves very different from rifle ammunition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not bulletproof (ha ha), but it is informative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="638" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T06:36:08.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5818" CreationDate="2011-08-19T06:58:34.013" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a brief look at the literature and found a few reasonably relevant papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, individual letters are more accurately recognised when written than when typed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recent data support the idea that movements play a crucial role in&#xA;  letter representation and suggest that handwriting knowledge&#xA;  contributes to visual recognition of letters. If so, using different&#xA;  motor activities while subjects are learning to write should affect&#xA;  their subsequent recognition performances. In order to test this&#xA;  hypothesis, &lt;strong&gt;we trained adult participants to write new characters&#xA;  either by copying them or by typing them on a keyboard&lt;/strong&gt;. After three&#xA;  weeks of training we ran a series of tests requiring visual processing&#xA;  of the characters’ orientation. Tests were ran immediately, one week&#xA;  after, and three weeks after the end of the training period. Results&#xA;  showed that &lt;strong&gt;when the characters had been learned by typing, they were&#xA;  more frequently confused with their mirror images than when they had&#xA;  been written by hand.&lt;/strong&gt; This handwriting advantage did not appear&#xA;  immediately, but mostly three weeks after the end of the training. Our&#xA;  results therefore suggest that the stability of the characters’&#xA;  representation in memory depends on the nature of the motor activity&#xA;  produced during learning. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.humov.2006.07.007&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Longcamp et al., 2006&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2008.20504&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;subsequent fMRI study&lt;/a&gt; found that when people were required to recognise letters they had learned before, participants' brains were more active in areas associated with execution and observation of &lt;strong&gt;actions&lt;/strong&gt;, suggesting that you're right, it seems the movement associated with handwriting does help with recognition.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, and more directly relevant, children's spelling is better when words are written when learning them, than when words are typed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Previous research has demonstrated the superiority of a Simultaneous&#xA;  Oral Spelling method for young children beginning to learn to spell&#xA;  words. In this technique, children learn words by repeating a word&#xA;  spoken and written for them, writing the word while pronouncing the&#xA;  name of each letter, and then repeating the whole word again. In two&#xA;  experiments, we manipulated the motoric element of this training and&#xA;  obtained results indicating that &lt;strong&gt;having first-grade children write&#xA;  words leads to better spelling performance than having the children&#xA;  type them on a computer&lt;/strong&gt; or manipulate letter tiles to spell them. The&#xA;  superiority of handwriting was maintained even under conditions where&#xA;  post-training spelling assessment was done on the computer and with&#xA;  tiles. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.82.1.159&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cunningham and Stanovich, 1990&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems rather unlikely that the handwriting advantage would exist at the letter and word levels, but &lt;em&gt;end&lt;/em&gt; there, so I strongly suspect text would be better remembered when written by hand compared to when typed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T06:58:34.013" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5821" CreationDate="2011-08-19T07:41:37.283" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;A US study (200000 participants) published in 2010 found a link between white rice and diabetes (actually between refined carbs and diabetes) :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/170/11/961&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;White Rice, Brown Rice, and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in US Men and Women&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results&lt;/strong&gt;  After multivariate adjustment for age and other lifestyle and dietary risk factors, higher intake of white rice (≥5 servings per week vs &amp;lt;1 per month) was associated with a higher risk of type 2 diabetes: pooled relative risk (95% confidence interval [CI]), 1.17 (1.02-1.36)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions&lt;/strong&gt;  Substitution of whole grains, including brown rice, for white rice may lower risk of type 2 diabetes. These data support the recommendation that most carbohydrate intake should come from whole grains rather than refined grains to help prevent type 2 diabetes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms I better understand, from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10307790&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt; based on the same study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After adjusting for age and other diabetes risk factors, those who ate five or more 150g servings of white rice per week had a 17% increased risk of diabetes compared with people who consumed less than one serving - about a cup of rice - per month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although few people - only 2% - in the study ate this much white rice, the finding was significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the real link is between foods with a high &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index#Disease_prevention&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Glycemic Index&lt;/a&gt; and diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/76/1/274S.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Glycemic index, glycemic load, and risk of type 2 diabetes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the past decade, several lines of evidence have collectively provided strong support for a relation between such diets and diabetes incidence. In animals and in short-term human studies, a high intake of carbohydrates with a high glycemic index (a relative measure of the incremental glucose response per gram of carbohydrate) produced greater insulin resistance than did the intake of low-glycemic-index carbohydrates. &lt;strong&gt;In large prospective epidemiologic studies, both the glycemic index and the glycemic load the glycemic index multiplied by the amount of carbohydrate) of the overall diet have been associated with a greater risk of type 2 diabetes in both men and women.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2820" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T07:50:16.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5826" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-19T11:49:48.050" Score="4" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2359/the-origin-of-99-cents&quot;&gt;The origin of &amp;quot;99 cents&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that there are disproportionately many price tags that say $3.95, $69.99, $198, etc. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;amazon.com&lt;/a&gt; for example. I suppose the sellers do this because they are hoping that it will attract disproportionately more buyers than tagging it $4, $70, or $200, while actually the prices are not much different. Has there been a study that confirm this assumption?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="954" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T11:49:48.050" Title="Are shoppers disproportionately more likely to buy an item if it costs $3.95 (compared to $4.00)?" Tags="|behavior|commerce|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2011-08-19T12:08:33.253" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="460" CreationDate="2011-08-19T12:39:04.443" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, the global population would be at very high risk.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequences would include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Direct thermal damage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Direct pressure damage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Direct fallout damage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indirect damage when countries stop working (lack of infrastructure/energy/clean water, collapse of civil society)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indirect radiation damage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indirect damage through nuclear winter, global cooling, ozone depletion, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indirect damage through an extended, 10+ years long famine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good reference for the above breakdown is &lt;strong&gt;The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Sagan, Carl et al.&lt;/em&gt;, Sidgwick &amp;amp; Jackson, 1985 which in turn is based on Sagan's peer-reviewed article &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.222.4630.1283&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at articles referencing the above, you will find dozens of peer reviewed studies on the subject. They all agree on how deadly this threat is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thebulletin.org/content/doomsday-clock/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Doomsday clock&lt;/a&gt; tracks how close humanity is to self-destruction. Nuclear warfare is the number one threat for our species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a good, well referenced article on the subject is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/ToonRobockTurcoPhysicsToday.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;following&lt;/a&gt;, from Physics today: &lt;strong&gt;Environmental consequences of nuclear war&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Owen B. Toon, Alan Robock, and Richard P. Turco&lt;/em&gt;, Physics Today December 2008, page 37-42&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A regional war involving 100 Hiroshima-sized weapons would pose a worldwide threat due to ozone destruction and climate change. A superpower confrontation with a few thousand weapons would be catastrophic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For any nuclear conflict, nuclear winter would seriously affect non-combatant countries. In a hypothetical SORT war, for example, we estimate that most of the world’s population, including that of the Southern Hemisphere, would be threatened by the indirect effects on global climate. Even a regional war between India and Pakistan, for instance, has the potential to dramatically damage Europe, the US, and other regions through global ozone loss and climate change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2023-06-02T15:14:30.913" LastActivityDate="2023-06-02T15:14:30.913" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5786" CreationDate="2011-08-19T12:47:44.827" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone pointed out that the answer was in your question. But do you really mean, &quot;Do atheists have a better knowledge of religion than believers, &lt;em&gt;all other factors being equal&lt;/em&gt;?&quot;. What if atheists have a better knowledge of &lt;em&gt;many things&lt;/em&gt; than beleivers, because they tend to be better educated. Your figures also showed Mormons and Jews to be exceptionally knowledgeable. Perhaps they too tend to be better educated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your source, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pewforum.org/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-who-knows-what-about-religion/&quot;&gt;The Pew Foundation, itself notes&lt;/a&gt; that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Data from the survey indicate that educational attainment – how much schooling an individual has completed – is the single best predictor of religious knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/Atheism,_class_and_education.aspx?ArticleID=3445&amp;amp;PageID=14&amp;amp;RefPageID=5&quot;&gt;some theists concede&lt;/a&gt; (404) that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;atheists have historically been drawn from upper social grades and higher education levels&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4122" LastEditorUserId="38240" LastEditDate="2017-01-26T13:33:01.750" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T13:33:01.750" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3507" CreationDate="2011-08-19T15:40:47.017" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work for one of Nielsen's competitors, doing TV ratings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;25,000 households. That sounds extremely small compared to the number of people that actually have TVs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At heart, this is a question about sampling. How can a small sample accurately reflect the entire population? And how accurate is &quot;accurate&quot;? Nobody is really interested in the precise number of viewers; they want a measurement that is accurate enough for practical purposes. So the sample can be much smaller than the total population, if the sample is large enough, and is representative of the whole population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We (and I assume Nielsen too) do not arbitrarily or entirely randomly select people to be panellists. We collect demographic data about the panellists and have the corresponding data for the whole population, found using an &quot;establishment survey&quot;. We recruit panellists so the demographics of the panellists reflect the demographics of the whole population. This can make recruitment difficult for some demographic groups. This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.barb.co.uk/about/faq?_s=4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;what BARB (the UK TV ratings organization) says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Panel homes are selected via a multi-stage, stratified and un-clustered sample design so that the panel is representative of all television households across the whole of the UK. A range of individual and household characteristics are deployed as panel controls to ensure that the panel remains representative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once we have some measurements for the panel, we do not simply scale the numbers up to the whole population. First, some &quot;weighting&quot; is done. This compensates for (usually short term) deviations of the demographics of the panel from the demographics of the population. So, for example, if it transpired one day that, due to technical problems, the raw measurements came from too few HD-TV households, those panellists that &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; from HD-cable housholds would be given more weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BARB &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.barb.co.uk/news/itemsubscriber/id/160/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;uses &quot;rim-weighting&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rim-weighting is applied to the panel data to incorporate numerous weighting and&#xA;  grossing variables&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4122" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-26T04:03:09.460" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T04:03:09.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5831" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-08-19T18:31:51.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Climate change&lt;/a&gt; is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. Climate change may be limited to a specific region or may occur across the whole Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term sometimes is used to refer specifically to climate change caused by human activity, as opposed to changes in climate that may have resulted as part of Earth's natural processes. In this latter sense, used especially in the context of environmental policy, the term climate change today is synonymous with anthropogenic global warming. Within scientific journals, however, global warming refers to surface temperature increases, while climate change includes global warming and everything else that increasing greenhouse gas amounts will affect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4541" LastEditorUserId="4541" LastEditDate="2011-08-19T18:42:27.733" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T18:42:27.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5832" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-08-19T18:31:51.540" Score="0" Body="	&#xD;&#xA;Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns. In public discourse, often used as a shorthand for the effects of anthropogenic global warming." OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2011-08-19T18:48:22.477" LastActivityDate="2011-08-19T18:48:22.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5833" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-19T19:38:53.143" Score="18" ViewCount="4188" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some 20 years ago, when I was 11 or 12 years old, I attended a weekend 4-H camp about electricity.  I recall one of the instructors there informing us that the cheapest way to protect our electronic equipment from lighting strikes was to tie 2 or 3 knots in the power cord, claiming (if I recall correctly) that in the case of a lightning strike, these knots would form an electromagnetic field that would prevent the lightning's current from passing through to the electronic equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any shred of truth to this claim?  I find it hard to believe that a couple simple knot-coils could protect against the tens of thousands of volts that come from a lightning strike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2015-10-04T11:30:59.833" Title="Does tying a knot in a power cord provide any protection against lightning?" Tags="|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5614" CreationDate="2011-08-20T05:13:25.673" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/060980281X&quot;&gt;The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices&lt;/a&gt; (published 1999) spends several pages on this topic in chapter 6, under the section heading &lt;strong&gt;Don't worry or feel guilty about unimportant decisions&lt;/strong&gt;. In summary, the conclusion was that the environmental impact of each was roughly the same, but in different ways.  Cloth diapers have a greater negative impact on water resources, while disposable diapers have a greater negative impact on landfills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the late 1980s, several studies have been done on the environmental impact of cloth and disposable diapers.  One funded by Procter &amp;amp; Gamble, the largest manufacturer of disposable diapers, found the &quot;production, washing and disposal of cloth diapers consumed over three times more energy than disposables.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most comprehensive analysis was done in 1993 by Franklin Associates. &quot;The authors factored in the differing rates at which babies go through cloth versus paper diapers, and the plastic pants and pins used with the cloth variety. They also clearly distinguished between home laundering of cloth diapers and diaper services.&quot;  Their findings include&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The differences between types of diapers were less dramatic than in the earlier studies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commercially laundered cloth diapers required 13% more energy than disposable diapers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Home washers and dryers used the most energy--27% more than disposables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diaper services used the most water, about 2.5x more than disposables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Home laundering required slightly more than 2x more water than disposables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disposables produced twice as much solid waste as either cloth alternative&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Air pollution emissions were roughly comparable for disposable and commercially laundered cloth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that as far as I am aware, these studies do not consider the newer generation of cloth diapers, which are smaller (therefore less bulk to launder and dispose of), and presumably more efficient and easier to clean, etc.  Whether these newer cloth diapers change the environmental impact of cloth diapers in any meaningful way, I don't know.  I suspect there have also been advances in disposable diaper manufacturing in the last 20 years which have also not been accounted for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing this, and other studies I have found, seems to ignore, is the potential for toxic substances in disposable diapers, or toxic cleaners used to wash cloth diapers. From a toxicological standpoint, I would venture a guess that disposable diapers release more toxins into the environment; especially if using earth-friendly cleaners for cloth diapers.  But this is only speculation, and may affect a person's individual choice on which to use (and how to clean cloth diapers), but fails to account for the average impact of a population using either type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, (not really related to this question) the book makes the point that neither has a very great impact, and there are much more important things we can worry about when it comes to reducing the environmental impact of our daily lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; David Stipp, &quot;Life-Cycle Analysis Measures Greenness, but Results May Not Be Black and White,&quot; &lt;em&gt;Wall Street Journal&lt;/em&gt;, February 28, 1991, B1: &quot;Reassessing Costs of Keeping Baby Dry,&quot; &lt;em&gt;Science News&lt;/em&gt;, December 1, 1990, 347.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Beverly J. Sauer et al., &quot;Resource and Environmental Profile Analysis of Children's Diaper Systems,&quot; &lt;em&gt;Environmental Toxicology and chemistry&lt;/em&gt; 13, no. 6 (9914): 1003-9.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-11-24T16:30:48.857" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T16:30:48.857" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="321" CreationDate="2011-08-20T07:19:54.670" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Children of Deaf adults (CODAs) learn to sign as babies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My son (20 Months) has a signed vocabulary of over 55 words in addition to his spoken vocabulary and we have used no purchased products and I am hearing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ASL is a language and just as toddlers can learn to speak Spanish and English if they are exposed to both on a regular basis, they can learn to use ASL and speak in their native tongue simultaneously.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are companies that sell products to help parents learn the signs to use with their babies but from the research I conducted a year ago in looking to team up with one, they are simply companies who hire instructors and sell products. I haven't seen any MLM in them. I have not, however, researched BabySigns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can gain access to many free resources online (including lifeprint.com, signingsavvy.com, aslpro.com and babysignlanguage.com) but the risk in this is that you do not know if you are correctly forming the sign and there is no one there to stop you and correct you if you are. Just as you have no way of knowing how well you are doing in spoken languages you are learning without anyone to hear you (even if it's an electronic someone). The same is true if you purchase the videos or check them out from your local library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So can they learn it:Yes and they have control of their hands before their vocal cords so they may well start to communicate earlier through signs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are signing companies MLM schemes: None that I have seen.&#xA;Can you use free resources to teach? Yes, but you have no feedback on your correctness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the above question about baby sign being a subset: ASL is a true language as categorized by linguists. It has grammar, structure, is dynamic, has rules, etc. &quot;Baby sign&quot;(..ugh I do hate that term because of the ambiguity) may be ASL or it may not. If the child is using ASL signs without the correct grammar they are using a real language but incorrectly or in more of a manual code on English (e.g. Signed Exact English) and can later learn the grammar (if exposed to it they will learn it as tots). If they are using gestures that were created for use by babies then it is not a language but is just a set of gestures understood by the parents of the children that are being taught those gestures but it will not be understood by those using ASL. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I can assure you that, although my son will technically count as an anecdote, he is understood by Deaf and other ASL users when we attend local Deaf events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much data on the use of ASL with hearing children can be found in the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marilyndaniels.com/books.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dancing with Words&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marilyndaniels.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marilyn Daniels&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4547" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-20T16:13:17.163" LastActivityDate="2011-08-20T16:13:17.163" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5842" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5855" CreationDate="2011-08-20T12:52:52.310" Score="18" ViewCount="7342" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read statements such as &quot;Fifteen pounds of wheatgrass is equivalent to 350 pounds of the choicest vegetables&quot;, of which I am obviously skeptical. Are there any independent studies from reputable sources about the benefits / risks of wheatgrass as part of a balanced diet? A standard google search reveals only a plethora of sites trying to sell wheatgrass and juicers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4549" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T04:16:23.127" Title="Are there any proven benefits to ingesting wheatgrass?" Tags="|nutrition|natural-remedies|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5465" CreationDate="2011-08-20T18:02:41.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbASOcqc1Ss&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Daniel Tammet&lt;/a&gt; is a good example of what you are asking.&#xA;He knows atleast 10 languages and is capable of learning a new language (on a conversational level) in just a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another savant that could do the same was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJjAbs-3kc8&amp;amp;playnext=1&amp;amp;list=PL9ADC83F326EF44B8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kim Peek&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4527" LastEditorUserId="4527" LastEditDate="2011-08-20T21:52:02.490" LastActivityDate="2011-08-20T21:52:02.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5727" CreationDate="2011-08-20T18:21:31.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One article that I found was &lt;em&gt;Spinal Cord&lt;/em&gt;, (21 June 2011), &quot;Predicting the long-term impact of acquired severe injuries on functional health status: the role of optimism, emotional distress and pain,&quot; by O Vassend, A J Quale, O Røise, and A-K Schanke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I found this by searching Google Scholar for &quot;patient attitude spinal cord injury,&quot; which led me to several articles on the journal &lt;em&gt;Spinal Cord&lt;/em&gt;. There seemed to be quite a few articles dealing with medical staff attitude, so I just searched &lt;em&gt;Spinal Cord&lt;/em&gt; archives for &quot;patient psychology.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study used a hierarchical regression analysis and a sample size of n=101, with a follow-up 4 years later with n=75. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't say whether patients who adopt an optimistic attitude do better, but instead, that patients who &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; an optimistic attitude fare better. The article concludes: &quot;high optimism should be regarded as a resilience characteristic, protecting the individual against long-term sequelae of severe physical injury.&quot; In contrast, &quot;patients characterized by low optimism, combined with presence of pain and depression/anxiety, may constitute a high-risk group for disability and reduced quality of life.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there may be something to be said for going in with a &quot;can do&quot; attitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1403" LastActivityDate="2011-08-20T18:21:31.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5848" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5866" CreationDate="2011-08-20T20:30:42.213" Score="42" ViewCount="14443" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just saw this picture in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.learnsomethingeveryday.co.uk/2011/08/20&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Learn Something Every Day&lt;/a&gt; and thought of you. Some of the sites I've found reason it with gravity but doesn't explain very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tfUTZ.jpg&quot; width=&quot;320&quot; height=&quot;208&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3518" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-08-24T09:38:50.607" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T03:30:22.637" Title="Can mountains on Earth grow higher than 49,000 feet (15,000 m)?" Tags="|physics|geology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5849" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5868" CreationDate="2011-08-20T22:27:19.910" Score="25" ViewCount="9198" Body="&lt;p&gt;As seen on Game of Thrones the TV series, some gold is melted in a regular campfire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J74JEloKC3M&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J74JEloKC3M&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this physically and chemically possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user288" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-27T20:36:48.663" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T06:38:39.977" Title="Can you melt gold in a regular campfire?" Tags="|physics|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5850" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-20T22:42:39.370" Score="15" ViewCount="3181" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia article on fertility and intelligence&lt;/a&gt; (citation missing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_and_intelligence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;from wiki article&lt;/a&gt; needed for proving this claim) indicates that intelligent people are less fertile.  Is this correlated to the number of children as well?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, could one infer that intelligent people, whom are quantitatively defined by IQ,  generally have fewer offspring? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4417" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2011-10-21T06:12:38.193" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T06:12:38.193" Title="Intelligence and number of children?" Tags="|biology|intelligence|fertility|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5816" CreationDate="2011-08-20T23:02:04.470" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I spent some more time searching and this is the best I came up with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q: I love real coffee and sometimes heat the remaining cold coffee in&#xA;  the microwave. My friend says this causes cancer. Is this just an old&#xA;  wives' tale?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A: I have searched medical data bases spanning the past 10 years, but&#xA;  I can find no suggestion that microwaving coffee is harmful. According&#xA;  to the Coffee News Information Service, the vast majority of studies&#xA;  do not demonstrate a link between coffee consumption and cancer, and&#xA;  they are also unaware of any suggestion that microwaving coffee may be&#xA;  harmful. In fact, antioxidants found in freshly brewed coffee may&#xA;  protect against certain cancers, although one researcher has suggested&#xA;  they should be consumed within 20 minutes after brewing for optimum&#xA;  effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/4703608/Is-reheated-coffee-a-recipe-for-cancer.html&quot;&gt;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/4703608/Is-reheated-coffee-a-recipe-for-cancer.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="649" LastActivityDate="2011-08-20T23:02:04.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5852" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5856" CreationDate="2011-08-21T00:08:27.117" Score="14" ViewCount="2878" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often heard the claim that homosexuality exists in non-human animals. Sheep and dolphins seem to be common examples. I find it easy to believe that homosexual &lt;strong&gt;activity&lt;/strong&gt; exists - some animals just get so horny that they will try and have sex with anything. But this is not really what we think of as homosexuality in human terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are there any documented examples or studies of exclusive homosexuality in non-human animals (preferably mammals) where&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are clear, well defined male and female genders,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The majority of sexual activity in the species occurs between opposite gendered individuals,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are examples of specific individuals that always prefer same-gendered sexual activity rather than opposite-gendered sexual activity, even when both are available.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1116" LastActivityDate="2011-08-21T02:50:25.160" Title="Are there examples of exclusive homosexuality in non-human animals?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5853" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5854" CreationDate="2011-08-21T01:10:14.720" Score="11" ViewCount="36195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was just wathing the Twins/Yankess game and two pitchers had these thick rope-looking necklaces on. I had to know what they were as it was too coincidental. Apparently they are some kind of titanium coated (or pure titanium?) necklaces made by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phiten&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Phiten&lt;/a&gt;. Wiki says this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phiten products use a proprietary technology to change various metals into ionic states. Through what the company calls the &amp;quot;Phild process&amp;quot;, titanium is supposedly turned into &amp;quot;aqua-titanium&amp;quot;. The company claims to be able to integrate small amounts[1] of this metal directly into the fabric.[2] The medical and performance-enhancing claims relating to Phiten's products are considered pseudoscience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others apparently have not caught on to the fact that this is psuedoscience. Some answers from this &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091102174252AAO3QBu&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yahoo answers question&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q:&lt;/strong&gt; Why do baseball pitchers wear a rope necklace?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A:&lt;/strong&gt; Typically they are titanium necklaces made by Phiten they are supposed to increase blood flow and reduce joint pain. I never had one of the necklaces but I did have one of their sleeves sets made out of the same aqua Titanium and it seemed to help a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A:&lt;/strong&gt; The &amp;quot;rope&amp;quot; is a necklace made by Phiten. These necklaces are coated with liquid titanium and are supposed to relieve pain and improve your overall performance as an athlete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there been any conclusive debunking or support of these claims about Phiten necklaces?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T21:31:03.727" Title="Do Phiten necklaces have any beneficial properties (titanium necklaces pitchers wear)" Tags="|medical-science|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5853" CreationDate="2011-08-21T01:24:32.210" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related questions:  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/716/do-those-hologram-bracelets-do-anything-at-all&quot;&gt;Do those hologram bracelets do anything at all?&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2859/do-ion-bracelets-work/2866&quot;&gt;Do ion bracelets work?&lt;/a&gt; and also  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/796/has-electromagnetic-therapy-been-proven-effective/&quot;&gt;Has electromagnetic therapy been proven effective?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the claim is regarding &quot;ions&quot;, let's see if that has any basis in the product or reality. (Keep in mind, this answer was initially about the ion/holographic bracelets, but it's the same claim, just different scam.)  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/ozonegen.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The only FDA approved study that has any claims for the benefits of ions is for the use of air filters&lt;/a&gt;.  Any other claims are beyond the scope of any studies, and rely on the gullibility of customers.  The fact that &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chemistry.anl.gov/oldweb/Science_and_Technology/batteries/challenges.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lithium Ion&lt;/a&gt;&quot; batteries exist may add confusion for the consumers, but is a totally different thing.  There are no credible studies on these bracelets or necklases, so you will not find any links backing up their claims.  And see the bolded quote below.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/negative-ions-create-positive-vibes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WebMD article that the company used as a &quot;reference&quot;&lt;/a&gt; again refers to machines that actually expend electricity to generate negative ions in the air.  And as the article itself sates, in relation to relieving depression, or having added benefits against allergies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's too early to tell for sure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again, keep in mind that machines are required for this process, not a plastic bracelet with a hologram on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an excellent opportunity to practice grass roots skepticism.  Ask yourself:  By what mechanism is this supposed to work?  How does the proposed mechanism align with what we know about science, biology, physics, etc.?  Also, you may be interested to know that in some countries, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.startribune.com/local/blogs/113017079.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUnciatkEP7DhUsl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Power Balance must state that they have no actual scientific backing for their claims&lt;/a&gt;.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepticbros.com/placebo-bands/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Placebo band&lt;/a&gt; is just as effective, and much cheaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sort of demo was done at the expo?  Was it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Piu75P8sxTo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Applied Kinesiology&lt;/a&gt; by any chance?  That is a well known bit of deliberate deception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quote from the first link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Power Balance bracelets promise to improve balance, strength and flexibility and feature some lofty endorsers: Shaquille O’Neal, Drew Brees and Nicole Branagh, an Olympian from the University of Minnesota. Yet the maker of the $30 bracelets admitted this week that there’s no scientific evidence that the things actually work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The producers of Power Balance bracelets have sold them by the millions around the globe. They adorn the celebrity wrists of Robert de Niro and Kate Middleton, among others. The hologram-embedded rubbery bracelets “work with your body’s natural energy field” in ways similar to “concepts behind many Eastern philosophies,” the Power Balance website explains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These claims got the attention of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which compelled Power Balance to issue a letter that was published in various media outlets Down Under.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims,” the company wrote. “Therefore we engaged in misleading conduct.”&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, while not a strict debunking of the &lt;em&gt;exact&lt;/em&gt; device you link to, I found this interesting write up at JREF.  I think the quackwatch link may provide you with additional information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/910-ow-to-debunk-biomagnet-therapy-in-less-than-a-minute.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Debunk Biomagnet Therapy in Less Than a Minute&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Written by Brandon Peterson&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Wednesday, 17 March 2010 10:32&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I recently had the opportunity to attend The Amaz!ng Adventure 5. While at Grand Turks, our final port, I was wandering through the duty-free shop looking for deals on liquor (Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel for $39!) when I happened upon a tableful of woo. Seeing as I was a medical student on a skeptical cruise, I had to stop and have my wife help make this video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my off-the-cuff video, I didn’t have the opportunity to mention the lack of scientific evidence for their claims. Even if the magnetic field did penetrate the skin, it still would not stimulate blood flow because the amount of iron in blood is far too small. If blood did have a strong magnetic attraction, your body would explode in an MRI (which would be cool, I admit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also didn’t have time to discuss the clinical trials that have been performed to evaluate efficacy. As usual with CAM research, earlier poor quality studies were weakly positive (1,2), while more recent high quality studies and meta-analyses are definitively negative (3,4,5).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also forgot to mention the numerous court rulings in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s against companies making false claims about these products. This issue is discussed extensively on Quackwatch for those interested (6). In a nutshell, companies that fraudulently claimed to treat specific illnesses (arthritis, diabetic neuropathy, migraines, etc.) were sued. Now, they use nebulous phrases such as “support the healing process” or “restore natural energy.” You know, phrases that have not been evaluated by the Federal Drug Administration and are not designed to diagnose, treat or blah blah blah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In short, magnet therapy is a great case study of CAM. The lack of scientific plausibility, the progression of the medical literature, and the FDA Miranda Rights statement are all characteristic of CAM. And if a lowly medical student can debunk it is less than a minute, how good can it really be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Harlow T, Greaves C, White A, et al. Randomised controlled trial of magnetic bracelets for relieving pain in osteoarthritis of the hip and knee.  BMJ 2004; 329:1450-1454&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vallbona C, Hazelwood CF, Jurida G. Response of pain to static magnetic fields in postpolio patients: A double-blind pilot study. Archives of Physical and Rehabilitative Medicine 1997; 78:1200-1203.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Winemiller MH and others. Effect of magnetic vs sham-magnetic insoles on plantar heel pain: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA2003; 290:1474-1478.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pittler MH. Static magnets for reducing pain: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials. CMAJ 2007; 177(7): 736-42.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cepeda MS, Carr DB, Sarquis T, et al.  Static magnetic therapy does not decrease pain or opioid requirements: a randomized double blind trial.   Anesth Analg 2007; 104. 290-294.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Barrett S.  Magnet therapy: a skeptical view.   Accessed March 15, 2010. Available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/QA/magnet.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/QA/magnet.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will note that there are things that electromagnetic fields &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; do to the human body.  In particular the neural effects if placed about the head (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;God Helmet&lt;/a&gt;).  However, the main thing to do when dealing with claims like this is to ask yourself:  By what mechanism is this device claiming to work?  How does this align with what we know about biology, chemistry, physics, etc.?  Does the claimant use language that would be high on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;crankpot index&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are starting to see a trend here, that is because there is one.  There is no known mechanism for these things to work, and their claims are well beyond what the science would indicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T11:41:39.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5842" CreationDate="2011-08-21T01:40:52.243" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.math.gatech.edu/%7Eberglund/wheatgrass.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;student at Georgia Tech did an experiment on this&lt;/a&gt;, and some things noted are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim&lt;/strong&gt;: The chlorophyll in wheatgrass rebuilds the bloodstream.     &lt;strong&gt;But in fact&lt;/strong&gt;:  Chlorophyll cannot affect the human body internally because it is not absorbed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim&lt;/strong&gt;:  Wheatgrass contains enzymes, which aid our body in digestion.  &lt;strong&gt;But in fact&lt;/strong&gt;:  Enzymes are produced by living organisms specifically for their own use. Plant enzymes are not the same as the enzymes produced by the human body. Furthermore, orally ingested enzymes are broken down in the stomach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim&lt;/strong&gt;:  A 2 oz shot of wheatgrass has the same amount of vitamins and minerals as 4 pounds of vegetables.    &lt;strong&gt;But in fact&lt;/strong&gt;:  Which vitamins and minerals? Which vegetables? This statement is too vague to be meaningful. For example, a 2 oz shot of wheatgrass juice only contains 15 mg of Calcium, as compared to 89 mg in a half cup of broccoli.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim&lt;/strong&gt;:  Wheatgrass cures cancer.   &lt;strong&gt;But in fact&lt;/strong&gt;:   No scientific study has ever confirmed this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information, I would recommend reading the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncahf.org/articles/s-z/wheatgrass.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Council Against Health Fraud's Statement on Wheatgrass Therapy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A television pilot for &amp;quot;Skeptologists&amp;quot; also covered wheatgrass.  It was never aired, however the scientists and skeptics that were part of the cast &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepticblog.org/?s=as_perform_advancedsearch&amp;amp;as_perform_advancedsearch=true&amp;amp;as_searchquery=wheatgrass&amp;amp;as_querytype=words&amp;amp;as_cat_450=on&amp;amp;as_cat_19=on&amp;amp;as_cat_85=on&amp;amp;as_cat_469=on&amp;amp;as_cat_21=on&amp;amp;as_cat_234=on&amp;amp;as_cat_13=on&amp;amp;as_cat_934=on&amp;amp;as_cat_410=on&amp;amp;as_cat_16=on&amp;amp;as_cat_20=on&amp;amp;as_cat_239=on&amp;amp;as_cat_966=on&amp;amp;as_cat_9=on&amp;amp;as_cat_161=on&amp;amp;as_cat_159=on&amp;amp;as_cat_35=on&amp;amp;as_cat_18=on&amp;amp;as_cat_6=on&amp;amp;as_cat_22=on&amp;amp;as_cat_192=on&amp;amp;as_cat_290=on&amp;amp;as_cat_17=on&amp;amp;as_cat_1=on&amp;amp;as_cat_257=on&amp;amp;as_author_andornot=and&amp;amp;as_author_3=on&amp;amp;as_author_4=on&amp;amp;as_author_5=on&amp;amp;as_author_6=on&amp;amp;as_author_7=on&amp;amp;as_author_8=on&amp;amp;as_author_9=on&amp;amp;as_author_10=on&amp;amp;as_author_13=on&amp;amp;as_author_15=on&amp;amp;as_month1=10&amp;amp;as_year1=2008&amp;amp;as_month2=08&amp;amp;as_year2=2011&amp;amp;as_resultsperpage=5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;maintain a blog, and several of them wrote about it&lt;/a&gt;.  One of the members of the cast was Michael Shermer, author of Skeptic magazine (and neurologist specializing in how the brain believes things).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.michaelshermer.com/2008/08/wheatgrass/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;He has written an article about wheatgrass as well&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to William T. Jarvis, a retired professor of public health at the Loma Linda University School of Medicine and founder of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncahf.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Council against Health Fraud&lt;/a&gt;, this is all baloney: “Enzymes are complex protein molecules produced by living organisms exclusively for their own use in promoting chemical reactions. Orally ingested enzymes are digested in the stomach and have no enzymatic activity in the eater.” Jarvis adds, “The fact that grass-eating animals are not spared from cancer, despite their large intake of fresh chlorophyll, seems to have been lost on Wigmore. In fact, chlorophyll cannot ‘detoxify the body’ because it is not absorbed.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say that this is BAD for you.  It is vegetable matter, and as long as there are no poisons in it (which as far as I can tell there are none), it won't harm you.  You will get benefits from this much like any other green leafy matter, depending on the actual contents of the wheatgrass (again, I point back that broccoli is healthier in terms of calcium for instance).  Then there is the taste...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it's an outlandish claim that preys on ignorance of nutrition and biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T00:58:30.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5852" CreationDate="2011-08-21T02:50:25.160" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like the answer is yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WP &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One species in which exclusive homosexual orientation occurs, however, is that of domesticated sheep (Ovis aries).[8][9] &quot;About 10% of rams (males) refuse to mate with ewes (females) but do readily mate with other rams.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The references are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Animal Homosexuality: A Biosocial Perspective By Aldo Poiani, A. F. Dixson, Aldo Poiani, A. F. Dixson, p. 179, 2010, Cambridge University Press&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Levay, Simon (2011). Gay, Straight, and The Reason Why The Science of Sexual Orientation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Oxford University Press. p. 70-71.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4216" LastActivityDate="2011-08-21T02:50:25.160" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5857" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5859" CreationDate="2011-08-21T04:27:38.700" Score="24" ViewCount="39164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received the following email today:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kids are putting Drano (a blocked drain substance) tin foil, and a&#xA;  little water in plastic drink bottles and capping it up - leaving it&#xA;  on lawns, in mail boxes, in gardens, on driveways etc. just waiting&#xA;  for you to pick it up intending to put it in the rubbish, but you'll&#xA;  never make it!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the bottle is picked up, and the bottle is&#xA;  shaken even just a little - in about 30 seconds or less it builds up&#xA;  enough gas which then explodes with enough force to remove some of&#xA;  your extremities. The liquid that comes out is boiling hot as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does Drano really do this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have any instances of these &quot;attacks&quot; ever occurred?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-04-15T22:52:11.407" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T09:30:14.197" Title="Can Drano in water bottles cause an explosion?" Tags="|explosives|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5850" CreationDate="2011-08-21T05:19:48.953" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You would not need to &quot;infer&quot; that people with high IQ generally have less offspring; this concept has long been known to be true, statistically. Just note that &quot;fertility&quot; as defined in this manner is simply a measure of the total number of offspring, not how &lt;em&gt;capable&lt;/em&gt; one is of conceiving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found these sources in 15m of searching. I'm sure you can find many more with concentrated effort. Open up any article and refer to their references for a start.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sources:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Campbell, C., &amp;amp; Preston, S. (1993). Differential fertility and the distribution of traits: the case of IQ. The American Journal of Sociology, 98(5), 997+.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gelade, G. A. (2008). The geography of IQ. Intelligence, 36, 495-501.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Harvey, J., &amp;amp; Lynn, R. (2008). The decline of the world's IQ. Intelligence, 36(2), 112+.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hondroyiannis, G., &amp;amp; Papapetrou, E. (2005). Fertility and output in Europe: new evidence from panel cointegration analysis. Journal of Policy Modeling, 27, 143-156.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Loehlin, J. C. (1997). Dysgenesis and IQ: What Evidence Is Relevant?. American Psychologist, 52(11), 1236-1239.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lynn, R., &amp;amp; Jarvey, J. (2008). The decline of the world's IQ. Intelligence, 36, 112-120.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lynn, R., &amp;amp; Van Court, M. (2004). New evidence of dysgenic fertility for intelligence in the United States. Intelligence, 32, 193-201.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meisenberg, G. (in press). National IQ and economic outcomes. Personality and Individual Differences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meisenberg, G. (2010). The reproduction of intelligence. Intelligence, 38(2), 220+.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preston, S. H., &amp;amp; Campbell, C. (1993). Differential fertility and the distribution of traits: the case of IQ. American Journal of Sociology, 98(5), 997-1019.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Redwood, A. L. (1983). An economic-demographic approach to forecasting national and subnational birth rates. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 17(5-6), 355-363.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reeve, C. L. (2009). Expanding the g-nexus: Further evidence regarding the relations among national IQ, religiosity and national health outcomes. Intelligence, 37(5), 495-505.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retherford, R. D., &amp;amp; Sewell, W. H. (1989). How intelligence affects fertility. Intelligence, 13(2), 169-185.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Retherford, R. D., &amp;amp; Sewell, W. H. (1988). Intelligence and family size reconsidered. Biodemography and Social Biology, 35(1-2), 1-40.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shatz, S. M. (2008). IQ and fertility: A cross-national study. Intelligence, 36(2), 109.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Van Court, M., &amp;amp; Bean, F. D. (1985). Intelligence and fertility in the United States: 1912–1982. Intelligence, 9(1), 23-32.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vining, D. R., Bygren, L., Hattori, K., Nystrom, S., &amp;amp; Tamura, S. (1988). IQ/fertility relationships in Japan and Sweden. Personality and Individual Differences, 9(5), 931-932.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vining, D. R. (1982). On the possibility of the reemergence of a dysgenic trend with respect to intelligence in American fertility differentials. Intelligence, 6(3), 241-264.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4557" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-22T02:35:41.163" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T02:35:41.163" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5857" CreationDate="2011-08-21T05:24:50.007" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hydroxide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sodium Hydroxide&lt;/a&gt; (which is the active ingredient in many &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drain_cleaner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;drain cleaners&lt;/a&gt;, including Drano (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scjohnson.com/Libraries/Download_Documents/350000004298_Drano_Clog_Remover_11-30-2009.sflb.ashx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Drano MSDS Here&lt;/a&gt;)) does indeed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.uni-siegen.de/~pci/versuche/english/v44-10.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;react fairly violently&lt;/a&gt; with aluminium to produce Hydrogen gas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 Al + 2 NaOH + 2 H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O → 2 NaAl(OH)&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt; + 3 H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sodium Hydroxide breaks down the passivation layer that naturally forms on the surface of aluminium due to it's reaction with atmospheric oxygen. It's my understanding that:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Sodium Hydroxide dissolves the passivation, which allows the NaOH and H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O to come in direct contact with the Aluminium metal.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Aluminium &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_aluminate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reacts&lt;/a&gt; to give NaAl(OH)&lt;sub&gt;4&lt;/sub&gt;, and hydrogen as a gas ultimately ending up with a lot of heat, hydrogen gas, and various aluminium hydroxide species.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know if it has been used maliciously as described, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, in the configuration used in the &quot;prank&quot; (vandalism?) described in the OP:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The aluminium and sodium hydroxide are not mixed initially inside the bottle.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, there is some sodium hydroxide solution in the bottom of the bottle, and the aluminium foil piece is hung/balanced above the solution in a manner where jostling/tipping the bottle will cause it to fall into the sodium hydroxide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the reaction is triggered by the bottle being moved, and it could (theoretically) sit for a significant amount of time before being triggered. It is probably quite hard to control the reaction speed with commercial drain cleaners but it is clear that it can sometimes be fast enough to be dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;My chemistry vocabulary is really rusty. Corrections welcome!&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="638" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-08-15T09:30:14.197" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T09:30:14.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5857" CreationDate="2011-08-21T05:35:20.023" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Michigan's Washtenaw County Sheriff there were two of these &quot;works&quot; bombs found in York Township yards in 2010.  Both bottle bombs detonated shortly after being moved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annarbor.com/news/police-warn-of-pop-bottle-bombs-left-in-yards-in-york-township/&quot;&gt;http://www.annarbor.com/news/police-warn-of-pop-bottle-bombs-left-in-yards-in-york-township/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Snopes also has some information about this incident and another that occurred in Methuen,  Massachusetts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/bottlebomb.asp&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/bottlebomb.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3575" LastActivityDate="2011-08-21T05:35:20.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5861" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5870" CreationDate="2011-08-21T10:04:00.770" Score="50" ViewCount="4049" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had an argument with a work colleague. He claims that me cycling to and from work is less environmentally friendly than driving because &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I will eat more as a result of expending more energy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have to take 2 showers a day (1 at work, 1 at home).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He claims that these are more wasteful than the fuel required to drive 25km every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone point me to any evidence for or against this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="6598" LastEditorDisplayName="user288" LastEditDate="2012-08-12T10:27:23.700" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T00:47:11.903" Title="Is cycling worse for the environment than driving to work if you need to take a shower?" Tags="|physiology|environment|road-vehicles|bicycles|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5865" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-21T18:30:14.303" Score="22" ViewCount="3363" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest that commercially available fruit/vegetable washes can effectively remove pesticides from produce?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some example claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.veggie-wash.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=faqs&quot;&gt;Veggie Wash uses natural cleaners from citrus, corn and coconut to&#xA;  break up the wax, soil and agricultural chemicals on fruits and&#xA;  vegetables so that it can be easily and safely rinsed away.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.veggiewash.com/faq.htm&quot;&gt;Mom’s Veggiewash is a mild surfactant which has been specially&#xA;  formulated to dissolve and remove pesticide residues from the skin of&#xA;  fruits and vegetables. Studies have shown it removes at least 94% of&#xA;  oil-based chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticide residue from produce.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there appears to be evidence contrary to the claims above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ct.gov/caes/cwp/view.asp?a=2815&amp;amp;q=376676&quot;&gt;The mechanical action of rubbing the produce under tap water is&#xA;  likely responsible for removing pesticide residues. Mild detergents or&#xA;  fruit and vegetable washes do not enhance the removal of pesticide&#xA;  residues from produce above that of rinsing with tap water alone.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are washes necessary to remove pesticides vs. using water alone?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do washes remove pesticides so that any remnant level of pesticides could be considered outside of a harmful range?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there any types of pesticides that washes are more effective at removing than others. For example, I'm not particularly concerned with neonicotinid-based pesticides, but I am more concerns with organophosphates&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="727" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-24T08:46:26.703" LastActivityDate="2018-11-17T09:42:17.823" Title="Do fruit/vegetable washes effectively remove pesticides?" Tags="|nutrition|consumer-products|water|pesticides|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5848" CreationDate="2011-08-21T18:31:30.907" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;How exactly the different intrinsic and extrinsic factors interplay to shape real mountains is an active field of research. Thus, it's not possible to say exactly how high a mountain could become on earth. However, there are several limits to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, there is the issue of rock stability itself. Rock has a limited compressive strength, but quite a bit of weight (relative rock density is on the order of 2.5), so if a mountain becomes too high, the rock at the base will simply crumble or melt from the pressure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/content/article/10.1680/geot.1962.12.4.251&quot;&gt;Terzagi (1962); Géotechnique, Volume 12, Issue 4, pages 251 –270&lt;/a&gt; calculated the theoretical height of the tallest vertical cliff as &lt;code&gt;H=strength/weight[N/m^3]&lt;/code&gt;, which comes out to about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granite&quot;&gt;7.5 km for granite&lt;/a&gt;. Of course, a mountain is not a vertical cliff, and when you double the Granite value, you get the about 15km in the OP (full disclaimer: I'm not 100% sure how exactly adding slopes on the side gets you a factor of 2, but I'm running out of time here). Note that the above formula takes into account the weight of the rock, which means that smaller planets can have higher mountains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, these numbers are not readily achievable on earth. There are numerous intrinsic factors that limit rock stability - cracks, folds, etc., as detailed in e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169555X03001430&quot;&gt;Cruden (2003). The shapes of cold, high mountains in sedimentary rocks. Geomorphology 55:249&lt;/a&gt;, or in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/270/5236/617.abstract&quot;&gt;Schmidt and Montgomery (1997). Limits to relief. Science, 270:617&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it has been argued in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/276/5312/571.abstract&quot;&gt;Brozovitch et al. (1997). Climatic Limits on Landscape Development in the Northwestern Himalaya. Science 276:571&lt;/a&gt; that it is really erosion through glaciation that ends up limiting mountain height.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The interaction between tectonism and erosion produces rugged landscapes in actively deforming regions. In the northwestern Himalaya, the form of the landscape was found to be largely independent of exhumation rates, but regional trends in mean and modal elevations, hypsometry (frequency distribution of altitude), and slope distributions were correlated with the extent of glaciation. These observations imply that in mountain belts that intersect the snowline, glacial and periglacial processes place an upper limit on altitude, relief, and the development of topography irrespective of the rate of tectonic processes operating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has recently been supported by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7257/full/nature08263.html&quot;&gt;Egholm et al. (2009). Glacial effects limiting mountain height. Nature 460:884&lt;/a&gt;, who do a more large-scale analysis. The abstract of this paper which summarizes the above much better than I do:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The height of mountain ranges reflects the balance between tectonic rock uplift, crustal strength and surface denudation. Tectonic deformation and surface denudation are interdependent, however, and feedback mechanisms—in particular, the potential link to climate—are subjects of intense debate(1, 2). Spatial variations in fluvial denudation rate caused by precipitation gradients are known to provide first-order controls on mountain range width, crustal deformation rates and rock uplift(3, 4). Moreover, limits to crustal strength(5) are thought to constrain the maximum elevation of large continental plateaus, such as those in Tibet and the central Andes. There are indications that the general height of mountain ranges is also directly influenced by the extent of glaciation through an efficient denudation mechanism known as the glacial buzzsaw(6, 7, 8, 9). Here we use a global analysis of topography and show that variations in maximum mountain height correlate closely with climate-controlled gradients in snowline altitude for many high mountain ranges across orogenic ages and tectonic styles. With the aid of a numerical model, we further demonstrate how a combination of erosional destruction of topography above the snowline by glacier-sliding and commensurate isostatic landscape uplift caused by erosional unloading can explain observations of maximum mountain height by driving elevations towards an altitude window just below the snowline. The model thereby self-consistently produces the hypsometric signature of the glacial buzzsaw, and suggests that differences in the height of mountain ranges mainly reflect variations in local climate rather than tectonic forces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2004/2003JB002809.shtml&quot;&gt;Here's the link to ref#5&lt;/a&gt;, which doesn't unfortunately, calculate the maximum theoretical height of a mountain. I guess geologists may mention these things in talks, but not in high-end journal publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: The 15km limit may be plausible, but it's unlikely to ever be attained by real-earth mountains, even the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauna_Kea&quot;&gt;10km ones&lt;/a&gt; that hide from most of erosion in the sea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastActivityDate="2011-08-21T18:31:30.907" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5861" CreationDate="2011-08-21T18:32:01.043" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This paper from the Stockholm University estimates the energy used for the production of a good hamburger is 20 MJ (the high estimate)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infra.kth.se/fms/pdf/energyuse.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.infra.kth.se/fms/pdf/energyuse.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A liter of gasoline contains 35MJ of energy. So two cheeseburgers more per day gives 1L gasoline consumption and a change. Which is usually enough to get 25km in a light car - think Toyota aygo. Add some energy for water heating and moving the water to/from your residence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So things look pretty close. If you replace the meat - things look much better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your biggest contribution to saving the environment comes not from the cycling itself, but from not owning a car. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastEditorUserId="4278" LastEditDate="2011-08-23T17:24:03.480" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T17:24:03.480" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5849" CreationDate="2011-08-21T20:00:38.420" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gold melts at 1064 °C, however, in jewellery, gold is often alloyed with copper (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold#Jewelry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wiki&lt;/a&gt;). Though copper melts at 1084 °C, the alloy has a lower melting point, as you can see from the phase diagram (note that the temperature is in Kelvin, which adds ~271):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HAn8d.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Au - Cu phase diagram&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the crown is 18k gold (¾ gold, ¼ copper), which makes an alloy that is harder than gold or copper alone, and gives a nice reddish hue to the gold, then the campfire only needs to be able to produce ~900 °C, which is achievable with the right fuel according to @ratchet freak's &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5849/can-you-melt-gold-in-a-regular-campfire/5868#comment21317_5849&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T06:38:39.977" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1915" CreationDate="2011-08-22T05:15:00.847" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently stumbled across a &lt;a href=&quot;http://chestjournal.chestpubs.org/content/127/3/936.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2005 paper in &lt;em&gt;Chest&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (Frass, M., Dielacher, C., Linkesch, M., Endler, C., Muchitsch, I., Schuster, E., &amp;amp; Kaye, A. (2005). Influence of Potassium Dichromate on Tracheal Secretions in Critically Ill Patients. In Chest (Vol. 127, Issue 3, pp. 936–941). Elsevier BV. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1378/chest.127.3.936&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.1378/chest.127.3.936&lt;/a&gt; ) that as far as I can see has not been previously discussed here on Skeptics, so I figured it might be worth resurrecting this question.  The methodology is quite a bit better than the ADD paper (but not perfect as I'll discuss below.)  In short, a C30 dilution of potassium dichromate significantly reduced secretions, intubation time, and time in the ICU in a sample of 25 COPD patients vs. 25 on a well-designed placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background: Stringy, tenacious tracheal secretions may prevent extubation in patients weaned from the respirator. This prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study with parallel assignment was performed to assess the influence of sublingually administered potassium dichromate C30 on the amount of tenacious, stringy tracheal secretions in critically ill patients with a history of tobacco use and COPD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Methods: In this study, 50 patients breathing spontaneously with continuous positive airway pressure were receiving either potassium dichromate C30 globules (group 1) [Deutsche Homöopathie-Union, Pharmaceutical Company; Karlsruhe, Germany] or placebo (group 2). Five globules were administered twice daily at intervals of 12 h. The amount of tracheal secretions on day 2 after the start of the study as well as the time for successful extubation and length of stay in the ICU were recorded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Results: The amount of tracheal secretions was reduced significantly in group 1 (p &amp;lt; 0.0001). Extubation could be performed significantly earlier in group 1 (p &amp;lt; 0.0001). Similarly, length of stay was significantly shorter in group 1 (4.20 ± 1.61 days vs 7.68 ± 3.60 days, p &amp;lt; 0.0001 [mean ± SD]).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: These data suggest that potentized (diluted and vigorously shaken) potassium dichromate may help to decrease the amount of stringy tracheal secretions in COPD patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Chest&lt;/em&gt;'s publication of a homeopathic study was understandably criticized, most notably in &lt;a href=&quot;http://chestjournal.chestpubs.org/content/131/2/635.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this letter to the editor by David Colquhoun&lt;/a&gt; in which he also neatly rips apart homeopathic theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It surprises me that CHEST would publish an article (March 2005)1 on the effect of a therapeutic agent when in fact the patients received none of the agent mentioned in the title of the article. ... It is one thing to tolerate homeopathy as a harmless 19th century eccentricity for its placebo effect in minor self-limiting conditions like colds. It is quite another to have it recommended for seriously ill patients. That is downright dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this response did not address the actual results of the study.  To answer that, we need to look at the distribution of the patients after randomization.  Although the study's assignment methods seem sound &lt;a href=&quot;http://chestjournal.chestpubs.org/content/127/3/936/T1.expansion.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this table&lt;/a&gt; shows that by several measures the placebo group may have been less healthy than the treatment group before intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;FEV1% (measure of severity of restrictive lung disease) p = 0.152&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stage of COPD p = 0.178&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PaCO2 (indicator of effective ventilation) p = 0.140&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;h1&gt;needing long-term oxygen therapy: 5 in the treatment group vs. 9 in the control, no p-value given.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, none of these differences are statistically significant, but taken together they are certainly very suggestive that the randomization was not well-distributed.  Additionally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://chestjournal.chestpubs.org/content/127/3/936/T2.expansion.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this table&lt;/a&gt; show greater variation in the placebo group among the significant outcomes, suggesting a few outliers could have skewed the results.  In a paper making extraordinary claims such as this one, such inconsistencies demand that the results be re-examined and reproduced.  Since I can find no more supporting studies on this topic since 2005, it seems unlikely that the treatment meets the reproducibility standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2465" LastEditorUserId="38335" LastEditDate="2022-08-19T17:11:37.110" LastActivityDate="2022-08-19T17:11:37.110" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5861" CreationDate="2011-08-22T08:58:59.733" Score="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;This calculation is pretty much worst-case for the bicycle. It doesn't take into account that food production has actually stored CO2 from the atmosphere which is now just released back, while fuel was originally underground and its CO2 is &lt;em&gt;added&lt;/em&gt; to the carbon cycle. Neither does it take into account mercury/other emissions, nor the wear-and-tear in cars and bicycles, nor the enormous benefits if the bicyclist doesn't even own a car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;A vegetarian bicyclist certainly wins,&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;for a meat-eater it depends.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is what the bicyclist eats to get the required energy. Estimated from calculations below and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/24163/CO2-Emissions-of-Foods-and-Diets&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this table&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WIN&lt;/strong&gt; (1): chicken, milk, eggs, herring, tuna, farmed salmon or (just about) any vegetables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WIN&lt;/strong&gt; (2): half vegetables, half some other fish or pork&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WIN&lt;/strong&gt; (3): 30% beef, 70% vegetables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LOSE&lt;/strong&gt;: a lot of lamb or shrimp; (2) or (3) with too little vegetables&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the fractions above are of energy, not weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ts2sE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;The cargo by Pulpolux !!! on Flickr&quot; /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/pulpolux/1569753673/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image by Pulpolux !!! on Flickr. CC-BY-NC 2.0&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here's the calculation. The initial assumption is that the choice between car and bicycle doesn't affect the amount of other exercise. In practice, it might be different, but this is the only way we can calculate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Car&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nextgreencar.com/news-item.php?Record-low-for-new-car-CO2-emissions&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CO2 emissions for the average new car in 2006 were 167.2 g/km&lt;/a&gt;, so let's assume this amount. For 25km the car pollutes 4.18 kg CO2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Bicycle&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The extra food may be significant&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_performance#Energy_efficiency&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Riding a bicycle uses up 1.62 kJ/(km∙kg)&lt;/a&gt;. Let's assume the rider weighs 80kg, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_weight#Average_weight_around_the_world&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;which is below or above average for a male depending on country&lt;/a&gt;. Allow 20kg for bike, clothes etc. and we have 100kg. Thus the 25km takes 4050kJ total -- that is 967 kcal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the food CO2 equivalent per kcal &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/24163/CO2-Emissions-of-Foods-and-Diets&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;depends a lot on the type of food&lt;/a&gt;. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;soy 0.07g/kcal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;chicken 1.67g/kcal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;beef 13.82g/kcal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the CO2 equivalent from the extra food needed for cycling would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0.068 kg for soy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.6 kg for chicken&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;13.4 kg for beef&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The extra shower doesn't really matter&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bicyclist also takes an extra shower. Let's use the same assumptions as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/bc/features/feelingtheheat/carbon-diet.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a CBC campaign&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assumes average shower time in Canada of 7.6 minutes (Source: Ipsos-Reid poll for GoBlue.org, 2008), average shower flow of 15 L per minute, and five showers per week. Also assumes 0.06 kWh electricity to heat one litre of water, and 22 g CO₂eq produced per kWh electricity used (Source: BC Hydro).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For 7.6 minutes the water usage is 114 liters, which requires 6.84kWh to heat. The CO2 equivalent from taking the shower is thus 0.15kg. This is just 3.6% of what the car is using so it's quite negligible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The total&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For most foods other than pork, beef or lamb, the total energy consumption is below what the car uses. For example, eating only chicken, the bicyclist's total would be 1.75kg, which is significantly less than the car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The limit where the bicycle pollutes more than the car is if the food creates more than 4.17 g/kcal CO2 equivalents. So the bicyclist can easily afford to eat some beef, if the main energy source is vegetables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-09-02T06:48:23.203" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5871" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-22T11:24:21.587" Score="17" ViewCount="27048" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_%28King_James%29/Deuteronomy#Chapter_9&quot;&gt;Deuteronomy 9:9&lt;/a&gt;, Moses did not eat or drink anything for 40 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When I was gone up into the mount to receive the tables of stone, even&#xA;  the tables of the covenant which the LORD made with you, then I abode&#xA;  in the mount forty days and forty nights, I neither did eat bread nor&#xA;  drink water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible from the scientific point of view? My guess is that no water for that long time must be impossible. How about no meals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1633" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T19:15:36.207" Title="Fasting for 40 days - is it possible?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|religion|fasting|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5871" CreationDate="2011-08-22T11:55:20.407" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Comment in passing&quot;—the biblical term &quot;40 days and 40 nights&quot; or similar &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; be used to mean &quot;a long time&quot;. Whether this is the case in any given passage would need to be understood, but is outside the scope of this question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any normal circumstance you'd be dead long before 40 days without water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But hunger strikers regularly live beyond 40 days and purposeful fasting for that period is not unknown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example of what this may do to the body, assume that a person fasting is largely immobile and can survive on a 500 kcal daily energy budget. Available calories from food are about 4 kcal/gram for carbohydrate, 5 kcal/g for protein and 9 kcal/g for fat. Start by assuming that body resources can return say 6 kcal/gram if &quot;living off your own body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;500 kcal per day requires 500/6 &amp;asymp; 85 grams of body mass. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;40 days requires 40 x 85 &amp;asymp; 3400 grams &amp;asymp; 3.4 kg of body mass. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even doubling that to 1000 kcal/d requires about 7 kg of body mass.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously there are many other factors to consider, and the above mass loss seems 'rather low' compared to expectations, but is an indication that energy availability is not the major factor involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This document&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.actioncontrelafaim.org/fileadmin/contribution/8_publications/pdf/Ouvrages_et_fascicules_techniques/Nutrition/Adult_Malnutrition_guidelines_GB0108-sept2006.pdf&quot;&gt;Adult Malnutrition in Emergencies&lt;/a&gt;&amp;mdash;advises that hunger strikers experience &quot;severe metabolic disturbance after 3 to 4 weeks&quot; (ie 21 to 28 days) and death in 6 to 10 weeks (42 to 70 days). ir 40 days would be &quot;pushing your luck&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4566" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2011-08-25T03:15:01.627" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T03:15:01.627" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5873" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5879" CreationDate="2011-08-22T13:20:27.337" Score="8" ViewCount="4081" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question has gotten thrown around a lot, and the only reason I think it's appropriate here is because her dress size and status as a sex symbol are used in arguments about body image, BMI, and health.  However, the prevalent &quot;common knowledge&quot; is that she was anywhere from a size 12 to a size 16 for most of her career, which is rather large by today's standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://marilynmonroepages.com/facts.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://marilynmonroepages.com/facts.html&lt;/a&gt; , under General Facts making the claim for size 12.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jezebel.com/5299793/for-the-last-time-what-size-was-marilyn-monroe&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://jezebel.com/5299793/for-the-last-time-what-size-was-marilyn-monroe&lt;/a&gt; , talking about the claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, by modern measuring standards, what dress size was Marilyn Monroe at the height of her career?  (Let's say 1953, when Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was released)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1617" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T20:35:24.090" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T20:35:24.090" Title="What was Marilyn Monroe's dress size?" Tags="|history|fashion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5874" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5878" CreationDate="2011-08-22T13:42:04.730" Score="28" ViewCount="4786" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of us have heard from one teacher or another that your first guess on a multiple choice questions is usually correct.  The implication being that we shouldn't double guess our instincts when taking tests.  However, I have often realized I got an answer incorrect earlier and gone back and changed it, only to feel mildly guilty or worried that I wasn't going with my &quot;usually correct&quot; first answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Question:  On multiple choice questions, is changing your answer to a question more likely to result in an incorrect answer than leaving it as you originally guessed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(P.S. - For comments, do people agree with my interpretation of the claim, or do other people feel a different interpretation is correct?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1617" LastEditorUserId="1617" LastEditDate="2011-08-25T15:40:27.123" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T19:24:09.517" Title="On multiple choice tests, is your first answer usually correct?" Tags="|education|memory|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5875" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-22T13:46:25.007" Score="11" ViewCount="714" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some stores sell &amp;quot;organic mattresses&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;non-chemical&amp;quot; mattresses (consisting of 'all-natural' latex, as if latex were not a chemical) for children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myessentia.com/lp-organic-mattress.php?gclid=CLzk9fyB46oCFaJdTAodXW428w&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thenaturalsleepstore.com/natural-latex-mattresses.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of them make health claims, with an implication is that non-organic mattresses are going to give your kid some kind of horrible disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myessentia.com/research/glues-toxic-components&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Components used for the production of polyurethane memory foams&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Components researched: isocynates; methylene chloride, 1,1,1-trichloroethane; acetone; benzene; ethylene oxide; formaldehyde&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Biological Monitoring - Is memory foam safe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clinical evaluations conducted by Duke University; Source ATSDR - Public health advisory Public Health Implications: The exact amount of TDI required to cause adverse health effects is unknown. People have become sensitized after being exposed to as little as 20 parts per billion (ppb). After sensitization there is no amount of TDI that one may be exposed to safely. Studies have shown that in sensitized individuals, asthmatic attacks can occur after exposed to TDI air concentrations as low as 0.1 ppb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing Results: Of 113 participants tested, 10 participant (9%) developed antibodies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thenaturalsleepstore.com/organic-baby.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this day and age of chemical living, it is so important to limit baby's exposure to toxic chemicals.  Non-organic cotton sheets are often treated with formaldehyde.  Non-organic crib mattresses and non- natural crib mattresses contain polyurethane foam as well as phosphorus, arsenic, and antimony compounds as preservatives and fire retardants.  Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is thought to be related to these chemicals in crib mattresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Click &lt;a href=&quot;http://thenaturalsleepstore.com/whybuyorganicfaq.html#whyforbaby1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HERE&lt;/a&gt; to read more about chemicals in baby products, how these chemicals are related to SIDS, and why you should choose an organic baby mattress, baby bedding, and sleepwear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the idea that organic mattresses are healthier than their non-organic counterparts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd accept almost any criterion for a definition of 'healthy'-- less earaches, less asthma, lower incidence of SIDS, less diseases in general, , etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if this is yet another product to separate the nervous parent from their money, or if there is any validity to the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2158" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T15:18:32.943" Title="Are organic mattresses healthier than the alternatives?" Tags="|environmental-health|sleep|memory-foam|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5815" CreationDate="2011-08-22T14:53:23.823" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this doesn't &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; that the hypothesis &quot;70% of marijuana users also use while working&quot; is false, it certainly makes it look unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/quicktables/quicksetoptions.do?reportKey=23782-0001_du%3A7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/quicktables/quicksetoptions.do?reportKey=23782-0001_du%3A7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using data from this site, I was able to come up with the following table.  This represents employed (both full-time and part time) people who say they have &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; used marijuana, and how frequently they have used over the last 12 months:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;77.2% have not used at all in the last 12 months&#xA;6.5% have used 1-5 days in the last 12 months&#xA;1.5% have used 6-10 days in the last 12 months&#xA;2.7% have used 11-25 days in the last 12 months&#xA;3.6% have used 26-100 days in the last 12 months&#xA;8.4% have used 100+ days in the last 12 months&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we only consider the &quot;recent&quot; users (excluding the 77.2% who have not used in the last 12 months), we are left with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;28.5% have used 1-5 days in the last 12 months&#xA;6.7% have used 6-10 days in the last 12 months&#xA;12.0% have used 11-25 days in the last 12 months&#xA;16.0% have used 26-100 days in the last 12 months&#xA;36.8% have used 100+ days in the last 12 months&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this data is accurate, for 70% of current marijuana users to smoke at work, then even a good portion of even the most casual users would have to smoke at work, and that just seems unlikely.  I suspect the most casual users are the least likely to smoke at work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would argue that for any &lt;em&gt;useful&lt;/em&gt; meaning of statistics, it is clear that 70% of pot users do not use while at work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, by massaging the numbers sufficiently, it may be possible to claim that 70% of people who have used at any time in their life, used at work at some time in their life--or more likely were high at work (used immediately before arriving to work, or over their lunch break, etc).  But using such a statistic for anything other than curiosity, I would consider unethical, considering that 77% of &quot;some time in their life&quot; users no longer use at all, according to this data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-10-11T01:05:34.370" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T01:05:34.370" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5874" CreationDate="2011-08-22T15:03:25.693" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;It turns out that someone studied exactly this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most people believe that they should avoid changing their answer when taking&#xA;  multiple-choice tests. Virtually all research on this topic, however, suggests that this&#xA;  strategy is ill-founded: &lt;strong&gt;most answer changes are from incorrect to correct, and people&#xA;  who change their answers usually improve their test scores.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An explanation is also offered&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why do people believe&#xA;  in this strategy if the data so strongly refute it? We argue that the belief is in part a&#xA;  product of counterfactual thinking. Changing an answer when one should have stuck&#xA;  with one’s original answer leads to more “if only…” self-recriminations than does&#xA;  sticking with one’s first instinct when one should have switched. As a consequence,&#xA;  instances of the former are more memorable than instances of the latter. This&#xA;  differential availability provides individuals with compelling (albeit illusory) personal&#xA;  evidence for the wisdom of always following their first instinct, with sub-optimal test&#xA;  scores the result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psych.colorado.edu/~vanboven/teaching/p7536_heurbias/p7536_readings/kuger_1stinstinct.pdf&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T15:03:25.693" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5873" CreationDate="2011-08-22T15:38:33.663" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is another one of the those terrific questions, where most of the research is already done in the question&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim I am addressing is: Was Marilyn Monroe was much larger a modern size 12, the same as a modern size 12, or smaller than a modern size 12?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Larger?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people claim she was large, including Roseanne Bar:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm more sexy than Pamela Lee or whoever else they've got out [in Hollywood] these days. Marilyn Monroe was a Size 16. That says it all.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Source: The Phoenix Gazette. &quot;Say What?&quot; 23 February 1996, via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/movies/actors/mmdress.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barr is not a reliable authority and I haven't found any real evidence of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Same size?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link you gave claims she was a size 12. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, dress sizes are poorly standardized and have changed over time (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/movies/actors/mmdress.asp&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;). A size 12 in the 1940-50s has become a size 6 now (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_standard_clothing_size#Conversion_from_catalog_sizes&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;). So this information isn't very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Smaller&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, in fact we have evidence that she was &lt;em&gt;smaller&lt;/em&gt; than a modern size 12.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_standard_clothing_size#Conversion_from_catalog_sizes&quot;&gt;US catalog sizes&lt;/a&gt; put modern day Size 12 as roughly: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Est. weight 155lb (70kg)&#xA;  Bust 38.5&quot;&#xA;  Waist 29.5&quot;&#xA;  Hip 40&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your own source, quoting from a biography, has two sources for Monroe's measurements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(studio's claim): 37-23-36 (inches)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(dressmaker's claim): 35-22-35 (inches)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of those are considerably smaller than a modern size 12. Those dimensions don't particular fit any of the US catalog sizes (and I am sure many women would attest that is also their experience.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also puts her weight at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;118 pounds 53.5 kilograms &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is under the Size 12 estimate. (I acknowledge that stating someone's general weight to within half-a-kilo is a overly precise.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, we have experimental evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a quote from a fashion writer, Sarah Buys&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrary to received wisdom, she was not a voluptuous size 16 &amp;mdash; quite the opposite. While she was undeniably voluptuous &amp;mdash; in possession of an ample bosom and a bottom that would look at home gyrating in a J-Lo video &amp;mdash; for most of the early part of her career, she was a size 8 and even in her plumper stages, was no more than a 10. I can tell you this from experience because a few weeks ago, I tried to try on her clothes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &quot;Was Marilyn Monroe a Size 16?&quot; The [London] Times, 11 April 2009, via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/movies/actors/mmdress.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marilyn Monroe was smaller than a modern size 12. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking what size she actually was makes too many assumptions to answer: i.e. that dress sizes are well-standardized, human dimensions can be fit into a single scale, and they are stable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-22T15:43:54.623" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T15:43:54.623" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5727" CreationDate="2011-08-22T15:57:25.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The data presented in this paper confirmed the findings of the&#xA;  literature that suggest a significant proportion of people with SCI&#xA;  are at risk of developing negative psychological states (Elliott &amp;amp;&#xA;  Kennedy, 2004; Middleton et al., 2007; North, 1999). The SCI group had&#xA;  significantly raised levels of self-reported depressive mood relative&#xA;  to the able-bodied controls. While differences between the SCI group&#xA;  and the controls did not reach significance for the other seven&#xA;  measures, the SCI group had consistently higher levels of negative&#xA;  psychological states for all measures, compared to the able-bodied&#xA;  controls. Furthermore, people with SCI had seven times the risk of&#xA;  having increased levels of negative psychological states typical of&#xA;  people with a psychiatric disorder compared to the able-bodied&#xA;  controls (20% of the SCI people had elevated levels of negative&#xA;  psychological states). It is possible that some questionnaires (such&#xA;  as the Beck Depression Inventory) inflate negative mood scores because&#xA;  they contain items biased towards medical complications associated&#xA;  with SCI (eg. items that focus on sleep, weight and physical&#xA;  performance). However, inspection of the items in the POMS suggests&#xA;  this is not a problem, as items require subjects to respond to 60&#xA;  adjectives about how they feel. Therefore, the elevated POMS scores&#xA;  associated with SCI more than likely reflect valid increases in&#xA;  self-reported negative psychological states. This finding is somewhat&#xA;  concerning given that the participants had been living in the&#xA;  community on average 11 years after their injury, and were people who&#xA;  were getting on with their lives. They were not psychologically upset&#xA;  people recruited from hospital wards due to complications or mental&#xA;  health problems. Clearly, the findings have implications for current&#xA;  psychosocial strategies being used during and after rehabilitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One limitation in this study was the use of only a self-report&#xA;  questionnaire to assess psychological states. Future research&#xA;  therefore needs to utlize a comprehensive range of assessment&#xA;  including diagnostic clinical interviews designed to detect&#xA;  psychopathology.  However, as stated above, the findings of this paper&#xA;  have revealed possible challenges for current rehabilitation&#xA;  strategies designed to counter negative psychological states. Further&#xA;  research should assess and gather best evidence regarding treatments&#xA;  that can reduce psychological states in SCI people during&#xA;  rehabilitation, as this may then reduce the prevalence of negative&#xA;  states in the long-term by assisting the person with SCI to maintain a&#xA;  healthy mental health and adjustment (Craig et al., 1998). Potential&#xA;  treatments include pharmacological therapies to counter&#xA;  psychopathology such as depression, as well as non-pharmacotherapies&#xA;  such as cognitive behavioral therapy or other psychosocial therapies&#xA;  known to be beneficial for improving psychological status. It is&#xA;  crucial however, that psychosocial and mental health be seen as&#xA;  important outcomes for rehabilitation following SCI (Middleton et al.,&#xA;  2007). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is also becoming clear that our knowledge about the association&#xA;  between negative psychological states and SCI needs clarification. Ten&#xA;  years ago rehabilitation researchers and clinicians were calling for&#xA;  comprehensive research that could clarify the nature of the&#xA;  psychological reaction of people to SCI (Elliott &amp;amp; Frank, 1996;&#xA;  Jacobs, Zachariah &amp;amp; Bhattacharji, 1995). Unfortunately, little has&#xA;  changed today. We need to determine the prevalence of people with SCI&#xA;  who develop despondency or mild depressive disorder (eg. elevated&#xA;  negative psychological states) as distinct to a major depressive&#xA;  disorder (MDD), dysthymia or possibly adjustment disorder. We also&#xA;  need to determine how many people with SCI develop depressive symptoms&#xA;  due to a primary anxiety disorder such as PTSD. The influence of&#xA;  pre-morbid psychopathological factors on psychopathology both during&#xA;  and after rehabilitation also needs clarification. Clearly,&#xA;  prospective research needs to be conducted to resolve the gaps in our&#xA;  knowledge about the association between SCI and negative psychological&#xA;  states. Such comprehensive data could well lead to an improvement  in&#xA;  rehabilitation strategies that address the psychosocial needs of&#xA;  people with SCI.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychosocial.com/IJPR_12/Spinal_Cord_Injury_Craig.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.psychosocial.com/IJPR_12/Spinal_Cord_Injury_Craig.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mental health affects the physical body in many ways. A positive attitude is crucial to prevent stress and depression which again leads to more medical issues and hence complicates the recovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Low levels of dopamine affects (one of the symptoms of depression or lack of motivation) the basal ganglia which is crucial for motor skills and learning. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20438237&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20438237&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4527" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T15:57:25.643" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5888" CreationDate="2011-08-22T15:58:43.677" Score="11" ViewCount="2035" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many times in movies we see a people doing scientific research secretly and have achieved some amazing technologies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence of any such scientific work done very secretly anytime (might get caught red handed). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:54:41.703" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T00:54:41.703" Title="Are there any secret scientific researches?" Tags="|government|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5882" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8266" CreationDate="2011-08-22T16:07:53.000" Score="11" ViewCount="4638" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conservative talk show host Glenn Beck recently talked about the &quot;Agenda 21 Conspiracy&quot;, which is a UN initiative that he says targets individual property rights, individual freedoms, and even seems to support radical global population controls:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reading through the pages [of Agenda 21], it becomes clear &quot;sustainable development&quot; is just a really nice way of saying &quot;centralized control over all of human life on planet Earth.&quot; &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 6/15/11]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the actual &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_07.shtml&quot;&gt;text of Agenda 21&lt;/a&gt; from the UN Division for Sustainable Development, and some links of the conspiracy for your perusal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mediamatters.org/research/201106170032&quot;&gt;Glenn Beck segment&lt;/a&gt; from 6/15/11 at MediaMatters.org&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infowars.com/al-gore-agenda-21-and-population-control/&quot;&gt;Al Gore, Agenda 21 And Population Control&lt;/a&gt;&quot; at Alex Jones' conspiracy site&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theblaze.com/stories/is-the-soros-sponsored-agenda-21-a-hidden-plan-for-world-government-yes-only-it-is-not-hidden/&quot;&gt;Is the Soros-Sponsored 'Agenda 21' a Hidden Plan for World Government?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; at The Blaze&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/15713&quot;&gt;Agenda 21: The Death Knell of Liberty&lt;/a&gt;&quot; at CanadaFreePress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Other than the standard objections we could make against any conspiracy theory&lt;/em&gt;, have there been any detailed review/debunking of these conspiracy claims? What does &quot;Agenda 21&quot; actually do or mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1049" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T08:56:33.287" LastActivityDate="2014-12-26T14:00:03.250" Title="Is the Agenda 21 Conspiracy true?" Tags="|united-nations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5881" CreationDate="2011-08-22T16:14:14.960" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.  For example, many &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.milcom.org/callpapers_classified.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;academic conferences that are sponsored by the US government have sessions for presenting classified (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, secret) research&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T16:14:14.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5881" CreationDate="2011-08-22T16:31:52.887" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of examples of research beeing kept from the public eye. Think for example new weapon systems. Another example: engineers will research and develop stuff secretly until a patent is filed (or they might choose to never publish the method for building for example a new Li-ion battery).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4570" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T16:31:52.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5881" CreationDate="2011-08-22T17:03:06.083" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Manhattan Project&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; was &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=eXuJIb-HxxEC&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;dq=Manhattan,%20the%20Army%20and%20the%20atomic%20bomb&amp;amp;pg=PA253#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;of utmost secrecy.&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T17:03:06.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5887" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="36748" CreationDate="2011-08-22T17:27:53.257" Score="13" ViewCount="1819" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thijs Zonneveld, a former cyclist, made a joke that a 2,000m high artificial mountain should be created in the Netherlands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the mass media are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.au/search?q=Thijs+Zonneveld+Mountain&quot;&gt;reporting&lt;/a&gt; that it is being seriously considered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gizy3Jf7rukwi8Z1MqxEKmQZ3drA?docId=CNG.421a0f4006328079f8ee28fe1438ee9e.141&quot;&gt;Example: Agence_France-Presse (AFP)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 2,000-metre-high mountain in the flatlands of the Netherlands is no longer just a pipe dream, the idea's main supporter, a newspaper columnist, said on Saturday.&#xA;  &quot;The idea is not new but it's the first time that it is taken seriously by so many people,&quot; Thijs Zonneveld, a former athlete and writer for free daily De Pers said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the original idea (burying the homes of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flevoland&quot;&gt;370,000 people&lt;/a&gt; to build an infeasible large structure, in order to ski and train for cycling) is ludicrous, but it was a joke. Ha ha. I like jokes. No problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the claim that this idea is being taken seriously is also ludicrous - and yet is being reported as news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if there has been any serious attempt to consider this proposal: e.g. a funded feasibility study or environmental impact study, the forming of a committee in a local government - basically anything more than a bunch of engineers and quantity surveyors drawing doodles and spreadsheets on napkins over a few beers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, have there been any retractions from AFP or evidence that Zonneveld likes to play practical jokes on the media?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I fear this is a bit of a silly question - but if I am right, I don't like it when nonsense like goes unchallenged in newspapers across the world. If I am wrong, this is an amazing story and I want to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T02:01:06.440" LastActivityDate="2022-03-23T16:52:11.470" Title="Is a proposal to build an artificial mountain being seriously considered?" Tags="|engineering|netherlands|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5881" CreationDate="2011-08-22T18:31:09.660" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers contain some examples of secret research and it’s well worth keeping in mind that secret research exists – notably for military projects, but often also in privately funded research, where premature publication would harm patentability and marketing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, you need to realise that &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; publicly funded research is, by its very nature, open. &lt;strong&gt;Public funding&lt;/strong&gt; almost always&lt;sup&gt;1)&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;strong&gt;entails that results be published&lt;/strong&gt; (in peer-reviewed journals). This is one of the fundamental rules of “good scientific practice”, as universally understood [1, 2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] One reference among many can be found in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/nihgps_2010/nihgps_ch8.htm#_Toc271264947&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NIH Grants Policy Statement&lt;/a&gt;, the NIH being the largest medical research body in the world[3]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is NIH policy that the results and accomplishments of the activities that it funds should be made available to the public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] The same is true in other countries, for instance in Germany, as shown by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dfg.de/foerderung/rechtliche_rahmenbedingungen/gwp/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;legal guidelines of the DFG&lt;/a&gt;, the biggest German public science funding organisation. The same guidelines are in place in most (all?) public funding organisations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nih.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;their website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NIH is the largest source of funding for medical research in the world …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1)&lt;/sup&gt; and the exceptions are usually military research&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2011-08-22T18:59:52.363" LastActivityDate="2011-08-22T18:59:52.363" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5865" CreationDate="2011-08-22T19:40:14.727" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zeit.de/2006/45/Stimmts-Pestizid&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;German web page&lt;/a&gt;, scientists from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CBsQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hs-albsig.de%2F&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=Albstadt-Sigmaringen&amp;amp;ei=8q5STu7oIYnItAbwifGUAw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNG6-IrQUzWMAYA3JFO-LTTlO53v4A&amp;amp;cad=rja&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hochschule Albstadt-Sigmaringen&lt;/a&gt; have investigated this in 2006. It is reported that they compared three cleaning methods: rubbing with a microfiber cloth, using some fruit wash, and using just cold water. All three apparently had about the same efficacy, and could only remove about 2/3 of the pesticides from sweet peppers, and a mere 1/3 from grapes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to actual research paper: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aid.de/data/pdf_eif/eif_2006_03_leitart2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.aid.de/data/pdf_eif/eif_2006_03_leitart2.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4573" LastEditorUserId="10622" LastEditDate="2013-11-29T04:27:11.797" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T04:27:11.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5892" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5894" CreationDate="2011-08-22T21:55:09.640" Score="15" ViewCount="2116" Body="&lt;p&gt;A 2009 regulation in the US specifies that street name signs &quot;shall be composed of a combination of lower-case letters with initial upper-case letters&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/htm/2009/part2/part2d.htm#section2D43&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;).  For example, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-10-21-road-signs-all-caps-lowercase_N.htm&quot;&gt;DOLLYWOOD&lt;/a&gt;&quot; would not be okay, but should instead be &quot;Dollywood&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose the argument is that lowercase is easier to read, while all-caps is easier to notice.  Although my common sense doesn't disagree, are there any studies backing this up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4575" LastActivityDate="2014-10-15T20:21:07.090" Title="Is ALL CAPS hard to read?" Tags="|reading|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2929" CreationDate="2011-08-23T01:09:44.533" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Allow me to suggest that you never accept quotes from creationist literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The COMPLETE quote from Dr. John Ross now of Stanford is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;SIR: I am referring to the article entitled 'Physical Chemistry,' C&amp;amp;EN, June 2, page 20.  Toward the end of the article is stated: 'Another area where physical chemistry likely has important biological applications is the study of the properties of steady states far from equilibrium.  These are stable systems that do not follow the second law of thermodynamics; instead they require a continual supply of energy from outside the system to maintain themselves.' &#xA;Please be advised that &lt;strong&gt;there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics.  Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems.&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;I recognize that it is very difficult to write an article on as broad a subject as physical chemistry in two pages, and ordinarily I would not bother to point out minor errors.  However, &lt;strong&gt;there is somehow associated with the field of far-from-equilibrium phenomena the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems.  It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bold represents the creationist quote mine. Note that Dr. Ross is simply stating that the systems described in the article DO FOLLOW THE 2nd LAW BY REQUIRING A CONTINUAL SUPPLY OF ENERGY FROM OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM. The same can be said of the earth's bioshere. The continual input of energy from the sun allows seeds to grow into plants, fetuses to grow into babies and babies to grow into adults without violating the second law. This continual input of energy also allows evolution to occur. Any decrease in entropy experienced in the bioshere is more than offset by the increase in entropy in the sun&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4577" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T01:09:44.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5892" CreationDate="2011-08-23T02:02:26.437" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mostly yes, but it depends. For fixed-message road signs, mixed-case outperforms upper-case, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://trid.trb.org/view.aspx?id=475144&quot;&gt;Garvey et al. (1997), Effects of font and capitalization on legibility of guide signs. Transportation Research Record 1605:73&lt;/a&gt;. In their introduction, they state that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Forbes et al. (2) conducted what are perhaps the definitive studies of&#xA;  the difference in legibility between text depicted in all uppercase letters&#xA;  and that depicted in lowercase with initial capital letters. When&#xA;  upper- and mixed-case words occupied the same sign area, Forbes and&#xA;  his colleagues found a significant improvement in reading distance&#xA;  with the mixed-case words. It must be understood, however, that these&#xA;  results were obtained with a recognition task. That is, the observers&#xA;  knew what words they were looking for. In instances in which the text&#xA;  is not known to the observer, improvements with mixed-case words&#xA;  are not evident (1,2). Although mixed-case superiority is fairly well&#xA;  accepted in the traffic engineering community [Markowitz et al. (4)&#xA;  provided specific information suggesting the use of mixed-case lettering&#xA;  for conventional road guide signs in 1968], conventional road&#xA;  guide signs still are being created with all uppercase letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the authors can summarize prior research, I didn't hunt down the Forbes reference; here's the info for those who want to look at the original source:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Forbes, T. W., K. Moscowitz, and G. Morgan. A Comparison of Lower&#xA;Case and Capital Letters for Highway Signs. Proc., 30th Annual Meeting&#xA;of the Highway Research Board, Washington, D.C., 1950.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After testing their new font, &quot;Clearview&quot; (which is, to me, indeed easy to read), Garvey et al. find again that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The mixed-case Clearview characters outperformed the all-uppercase&#xA;  Series D by as much as 14 percent in daytime and 16 percent at night,&#xA;  as long as the mixed-case font subtended an equivalent sign area. If&#xA;  the mixed-case font took up less sign space, as with the Clearview&#xA;  Condensed at 100 percent, there was no difference between mixedcase&#xA;  and all-uppercase characters. During daytime testing there was&#xA;  no difference between Series E(M) and any comparably sized&#xA;  Clearview font (i.e., Clearview and Clearview at 112 percent). At&#xA;  night, however, with both high-brightness materials, the Clearview&#xA;  font at 112 percent outperformed the Series E(M) by 16 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that things are different for the variable-message road signs (i.e. the ones you may see at road construction sites. There, all uppercase is better, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://lrt.sagepub.com/content/24/3/143.short&quot;&gt;Collins and Hall, (1992). Legibility and readability of light refecting matrix variable message road signs, Lighting Research and Technology 24:143&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general, letters with any regular shaped pixel, a width/height ratio approaching 1.0, an upper case font and a letter separation of two pixels were found to be most effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T02:02:26.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5881" CreationDate="2011-08-23T02:59:36.910" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.darpa.mil/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DARPA&lt;/a&gt; has a lot of very secret research.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.f117reunion.org/f117_history.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The F-117, and stealth technology, was developed in secrecy&lt;/a&gt; for recent history.  Generally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_military_technology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a lot of military technology is developed in secrecy&lt;/a&gt; due to the nature of the &quot;arms races&quot; we may be involved in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T02:59:36.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="907" CreationDate="2011-08-23T07:40:35.980" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the United States, this is a hotly debated and studied issue. After reviewing the evidence, I find no clear case either way from the point of view of deterrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you can find no less than 27 peer-reviewed papers plus a dozen working papers. You can find single papers &quot;proving&quot; the case or &quot;disproving&quot; it, but also meta-studies contradicting each other... In short, there's no clear answer. Criminology is not an exact science, as it's fundamentally a branch of sociology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/dpdeterrence.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/dpdeterrence.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Europe, this issue is less debated and the clear winner is that the death penalty was not working and it was fundamentally unethical. There have been no surging crime rates when it was abolished and no significant calls to reinstate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/U1cWm.png&quot; alt=&quot;Crime rate in Europe&quot;&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crimes recorded by the police, 1998&amp;ndash;2008&#xA;(1,000) &amp;mdash; Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Crime_statistics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eurostat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DQYIl.png&quot; alt=&quot;Crime rate in Europe&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Offences recorded by the police, EU-27, 2005&amp;ndash;2008&#xA;(2005=100) &amp;mdash; Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Crime_statistics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eurostat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ss75q.png&quot; alt=&quot;SUpport for/against Death Penalty&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Support for Death Penalty in Europe (2007) &amp;mdash; Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/163/Death-Penalty-International-Poll.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ipsos-Mori&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-05T23:33:00.260" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T23:33:00.260" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5871" CreationDate="2011-08-23T07:49:47.197" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has different articles in English and German about hunger strikes. The English version talks about people &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_strike#Medical_view&quot;&gt;dying after 52 to 74 days of strike&lt;/a&gt; and it looks as if it is the lower bound. One Person, Swami Nigamanand, is reported to have died after being on a hunger strike for 115 days. There are several other numbers in between, and not every incident ended in the death of the hunger strike performer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerstreik&quot;&gt;German Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; talks about 50 to 70 days strikes, which can be survived, but this sounds like an upper bound. The article is much shorter and concentrates on well known cases in Germany. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is a link to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerstoffwechsel&quot;&gt;medical aspects of hunger strike&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation_mode&quot;&gt;a english version too&lt;/a&gt;. To summarize them: In the beginning, a typical weight loss is about 1kg/day, later 0.5kg/day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, a person will die without water after 3-4 days, but depending on weather circumstances, this can be shorter (1d, hot, dry) or longer (10d, cold, wet). Without food, but with water, healthy persons should survive 30 to 200 days. A critical question is, whether you get minerals and vitamins, or not even that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One kg of body fat can be used like 30 MJoule or 7.000 kcal energie. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afaik, we don't know much about the kind of diet which Moses or Jesus would have performed, and in which physical condition they started. Did they drink, and if they did, just water, milk or juice? If I remember correctly, the Bible claims that John Baptist ate locusts, which have a lot of proteins; did Jesus too? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion from this information is, that - apart from being just a written story - a 40 day fastening is hard, but possible - not a miracle, but a stunt of discipline. But 40 days without water is impossible; that's a lie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2011-08-23T21:46:06.710" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T21:46:06.710" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2339" CreationDate="2011-08-23T08:07:16.607" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is plenty of circumstantial evidence that this is the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With respect to the Contra affair, the Kerry inquest reached the conclusion that there was some involvement, directly by CIA or by companies employed by CIA (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pinknoiz.com/covert/contracoke.html&quot;&gt;full text&lt;/a&gt;);&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The CIA itself does not deny many of the allegations (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/cocaine/contra-story/contents.html&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;);&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There have been many other examples of the CIA dealing drugs to generate covert funds or actually helping the drug trade to foster some higher purpose (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_drug_trafficking&quot;&gt;well sourced Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, people tend to infer a lot from little facts, and you are asking about a specific interpretation of the facts. &lt;em&gt;We can't really address the motivations and dietrology of those theories skeptically&lt;/em&gt;, and the general principle is that the burden of proof is on who makes the allegations (&quot;innocent until proven guilty!&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, I cannot find any direct proof that CIA used the profits to fight gangs, although there is clear proof that the CIA was involved multiple times in drug trafficking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-23T14:13:14.973" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T14:13:14.973" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5816" CreationDate="2011-08-23T13:01:45.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Yes, in some cases&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;-- depending on how carefully the coffee is reheated, and how sensitive the person is to tannins.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rule-of-thumb test: if it tastes (unusually) bitter, it's not necessarily good for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hwpy7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Bad Coffee at Mulholland Drive by Ricardo Infante, on Flickr&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/ricardoinfante/3904168960/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Image: Bad Coffee at Mulholland Drive by Ricardo Infante, on Flickr; CC-BY-NC 2.0&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecoffeefaq.com/1thebasics.html#coffeehot&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;common knowledge&lt;/a&gt; that actively heating brewed coffee causes a bitter taste. This is most commonly observed on a coffee brewer warming plate after some time (note that these plates are specifically designed to keep coffee warm and not spoil it). When reheating cold coffee, it should be quite easy to heat a bit too much. This would naturally cause a bitter, unpleasant taste. This is probably the origin of the belief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Direct heat—e.g., via a warming plate—should not be applied to brewed coffee, at least not for more than few minutes; continued heating will make the coffee bitter. This issue is primarily a concern for autodrip coffee makers; choose a model that dispenses into an insulated carafe over one that uses a warming plate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard it said that applying heat to coffee causes tannins to form, but can't find a good source. &lt;a href=&quot;http://microbrewology.snaploop.com/articles/on-steeping-and-tannin-extraction/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; confirms that a higher temperature causes more tannins to form. However, the focus is on &lt;em&gt;brewing&lt;/em&gt; causing tannin extraction. This &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; apply to heating afterwards, too: some coffee bean dust (or other small particles) are bound to end up in the coffee. Coffee brewers don't exactly have microfilters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's recommended to avoid large concentrations of tannins, as they have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tannins&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;many undesirable effects&lt;/a&gt; including liver damage in sensitive individuals. So drinking reheated coffee certainly can be dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastEditorUserId="881" LastEditDate="2015-01-12T08:23:23.103" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T08:23:23.103" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4692" CreationDate="2011-08-23T13:15:26.183" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it's obvious, as @Adam Davis points out, that complex products, like cars, are not manufactured in a single day, it may still be of interest when critical parts of the car, such as safety belts, were installed, if Mondays and Fridays are bad days for manufacturing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistics for manufacturing quality per weekday are hard to come by. However, if low quality manufacturing is assumed to be caused by overall lack of concentration (due to still-drunkenness on Monday, or due to thinking about drunkenness on Friday), then I would argue that manufacturing errors leading to workplace accidents should follow a similar pattern as manufacturing errors leading merely to low quality products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389406007485&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ruckart and Burgess (2003): Human error and time of occurrence in hazardous material events in mining and manufacturing. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 142:747&lt;/a&gt; who looked at the distribution of accidents reported to the &quot;Hazardous Substances Emergency Events Surveillance (HSEES) system maintained by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR)&quot;, found that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most events (2781 [84.7%]) occurred on a weekday, with the greatest number of events occurring during Tuesday through Thursday (619 [18.9%], 565 [17.2%], and 587 [17.9%], respectively).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means that on average 17.0% of accidents occur on Mondays or Fridays, respectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a very similar trend in construction, using data from the Occupational Health and Safety Agency (OHSA), as shown in the Master thesis by &lt;a href=&quot;http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi?ucin1147378056&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ashwini Bhide&lt;/a&gt; from Ohio State University (p. 33). Note that there is no normalization regarding hours worked, and the author states that &quot;It could be due to the obvious reason that the rate of construction activity decreases on the weekends. The high rates (20%) on Tuesdays and Thursdays could not be explained.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0NPKn.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, if we can use workplace accidents as indicators of overall concentration levels of workers and consequently manufacturing quality, the data suggest that there is overall little difference between weekdays, with Mondays and Fridays generally being best. How come? It may just turn out that most workers don't get totally wasted on the week-end, but actually relax, and that on Friday, the prospect of relaxing on the week-end makes people happier and thus more motivated to do a good job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastEditorUserId="1690" LastEditDate="2015-09-15T10:02:14.957" LastActivityDate="2015-09-15T10:02:14.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5711" CreationDate="2011-08-23T16:38:30.203" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. In Australia in 2005.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was reported in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/story/2005/03/23/scd-defacing-bank-notes-costs-500/&quot;&gt;Sunshine Coast Daily&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Defacing bank notes costs $500&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;23rd March 2005&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Damien John Lebret pleaded guilty to twice defacing 10 paper money notes with a black felt tip pen before depositing his rent money into an account at ANZ Bank at Kawana Waters last month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Crimes (Currency) Act 1981 provides for a maximum $5000 penalty or two years in jail for wilfully defacing coins or paper money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Magistrate Ken Taylor said he needed to issue a penalty reflecting the seriousness of Mr Lebrets conduct and fined him $500.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr Lebret opted to convert the fine to 34 hours community service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T16:38:30.203" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2173" CreationDate="2011-08-23T17:51:23.720" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that one of the most obvious disadvantages with irregular meals is the increase of insulin resistance which can lead to type 2 diabetes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/81/1/3.full#R19&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ajcn.org/content/81/1/3.full#R19&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The effect of the timing of food intake on metabolism has been the subject of active investigation for &gt;40 y. Indeed, whether it is &quot;better&quot; to eat many small meals a day is one of the questions most frequently posed by the lay public. Comparing the potential benefits of nibbling and of gorging has been the focus of much animal and human research, but no clear consensus has emerged (1-7). Simply put, the question of whether there is a health benefit from the consumption of multiple small meals will ultimately depend on how much energy is consumed, as opposed to how often or how regularly one eats. This possibility raises 2 questions. First, is it easier to overeat under a regimen of frequent, irregular meals? Second, how does the pattern of meal consumption affect metabolic health? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As shown by Farshchi et al, the regular eating frequency was associated with lower reported ad libitum energy intakes and lower fasting total and LDL-cholesterol concentrations. In addition, they concluded that the irregular eating frequency may have reduced insulin sensitivity because that pattern was associated with a lower thermic effect of food (TEF), a higher peak insulin concentration, and a larger 3-h area under the curve of postprandial insulin concentrations. One practical limitation of the work by Farshchi et al is that each dietary phase was only 14 d long and thus did not result in large effects (eg, an ≈9% greater peak postprandial insulin concentration and an 8% lower TEF). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two last issues raised by Farshchi et al (8) are whether the effects on metabolism of eating regularity are independent of or mediated by energy intake, and, if there are independent effects, what mechanisms contribute to these effects. &lt;strong&gt;With respect to insulin resistance, endocrinologists have long known that, when diabetics are hospitalized for observation, they have significant improvements in blood glucose and insulin concentrations—an effect partially caused by the consumption of regular balanced meals (19).&lt;/strong&gt; Yet the exact mechanism supporting improved insulin response is unknown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15085170&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15085170&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RESULTS:&#xA;  There were no significant differences in body weight and 3-day mean energy intake between the regular and irregular meal pattern. In the irregular period, the mean energy intake on the day when 9 meals were eaten was significantly greater than when 6 or 3 meals were consumed (P=0.0001). There was no significant difference between the 3 days of the regular meal pattern. Subjective appetite measurement showed no significant differences before and after the test meal in all visits. Fasting RMR showed no significant differences over the experiment. The overall thermic effect of food (TEF) over the 3 h after the test meal was significantly lower after the irregular meal pattern (P=0.003).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSION:&#xA;  Irregular meal frequency led to a lower postprandial energy expenditure compared with the regular meal frequency, while the mean energy intake was not significantly different between the two. The reduced TEF with the irregular meal frequency may lead to weight gain in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4527" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T17:51:23.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5815" CreationDate="2011-08-23T20:16:26.823" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the total user population, 70% cannot have used marijuana in the workplace.&#xA;I derived from &lt;a href=&quot;http://oas.samhsa.gov/NSDUH/2k9NSDUH/2k9Results.htm#2.13&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;table 2.11 on this paper&lt;/a&gt; to find that 33.6% of marijuana users aren't even employed.  So if 33.6% aren't employed it can't be true that 70% are using at work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;33.6% is reached by using the 2009 data on millions of users (&lt;em&gt;NOT&lt;/em&gt; the rate of use in past month chart) graph here. Unemployed + Other + Full Time + Part Time/ Unemployed + Other.   The other column is people who are not in the workforce, but not unemployed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(9.2+3.6+2.5+4.0)/(2.5+4.0) = .336&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xzIqf.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Table of users&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the actual claim in the show could still have been true.  The likelyhood is that the officer was just quoting a study.  Since the &lt;a href=&quot;http://oas.samhsa.gov/Highlights2k10.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;vast&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nida.nih.gov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;majority&lt;/a&gt; of studies use &quot;admission&quot; to mean admittance to a medical facility (which is the standard definition used in medical research) and &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; admitting to use, then 70% could easily be an accurate number.  People who are admitted to a medical facility for abuse are going to be centered towards the most severe and frequent users and would not represent the general population.  Indeed, &lt;a href=&quot;http://oas.samhsa.gov/2k10/304/304Marijuana2k10.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;almost 30% of admitted users were referred &lt;em&gt;by their employer&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, so the number of admitted users that use at work could realistically be within 70% (no this doesn't show it, but it does show that 70% isn't a wild crazy made up number).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-08-23T20:49:57.130" LastActivityDate="2011-08-23T20:49:57.130" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5907" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17917" CreationDate="2011-08-23T21:27:49.687" Score="14" ViewCount="1043" Body="&lt;p&gt;Various major US news outlets are echoing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/05/rick-perry-college-transcript_n_919357.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt; article titled &amp;quot;Rick Perry's College Transcript: A Lot Of Cs And Ds&amp;quot; including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/08/05/139027418/rick-perrys-college-transcript-a-warning-to-all-future-politicians&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NPR&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://nation.foxnews.com/rick-perry/2011/08/05/left-leaks-perrys-college-transcript-still-waiting-obamas&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fox&lt;/a&gt;, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/2011/08/05/college-transcripts-for-texas-rick-perry-reveal-some-poor-grades/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Des Moines Register&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because if you ever enter politics, you may one day think about running for president. And if you do decide to run, your college grades could become an issue, especially if they're mediocre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's what Texas Gov. Rick Perry is learning the hard way, now that what's reportedly his college transcript is on the Internet for the eyes of Texas and the world to gaze upon, courtesy of the Huffington Post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was well acquainted with Bs, Cs and Ds. A pre-veterinary student, he got an F in organic chemistry. While many people won't hold that against him, it may help explain why he's not a practicing veterinarian today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perry (a former candidate in the U.S. Republican presidential primary) seems to have neither confirmed nor denied the transcript's accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The governor’s office did not return a request for comment from The Huffington Post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do journalists test the provenance of leaked documents like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4082" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T01:59:45.017" Title="Is a photo of Rick Perry's college transcript authentic?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5909" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-08-24T00:21:29.890" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-08-24T00:21:29.890" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T00:21:29.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5910" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-08-24T00:21:29.890" Score="0" Body="Recommend this tag be deleted." OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-08-24T00:21:29.890" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T00:21:29.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5912" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5913" CreationDate="2011-08-24T02:28:27.313" Score="44" ViewCount="15344" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a commonly stated belief that no one can fold a piece of paper in half after doing so seven times. Even I have been unable to fold a piece of normal paper for an 8th time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this true for normal (A4/newspaper) sized-paper?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also be interested to know if this is this an absolute rule, or would a sufficiently large piece of paper be foldable more than seven times?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4102" LastEditorUserId="4102" LastEditDate="2012-02-28T18:53:38.020" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T13:53:06.423" Title="Is it impossible to fold a sheet of paper in half more than seven times?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5912" CreationDate="2011-08-24T02:52:46.997" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, it is not true for all scenarios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This idea was examined by Britney Gallivan, who came up with a mathematical model for the limits, and used this knowledge to fold a large piece of paper twelve times in January 2002.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She was a junior in high school at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://pomonahistorical.org/12times.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Historical Society of Pomona Valley&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the above reference, the upper-bound equation for &amp;quot;Alternate Direction Folding&amp;quot;, which I understand to be the normal style, is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GzO8G.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Formula&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without LaTeX, this looks like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;W = πt.2^(3(n-1)/2)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solve for n, we get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;n = 1 + 2/3.log&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; (W/πt)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plugging in the values for standard A4 80 g/m² office copy paper (W=&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;297mm&lt;/a&gt;, t=&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_density&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;0.105mm&lt;/a&gt;) we get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;n = 1 + 2/3.log&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;(297/(0.105π))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;n = 7.543&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The equation works with square paper, and I have used A4's longest side, perhaps overestimating the number of folds by a fraction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The thickness of 80 g/m² was interpolated from the chart on cited page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pi looks like this, in this font: π&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the original formula calculated by Gallivan is correct, this shows that a standard piece of copy paper, even if it is extended a little, cannot be folded 8 times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T06:07:19.397" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5937" CreationDate="2011-08-24T05:16:29.010" Score="17" ViewCount="5461" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicia_Day&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Felicia Day&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/110286587261352351537/posts/jBKhw9ZsG9p&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;asked this&lt;/a&gt; on Google+:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific basis for drinking extra water to &quot;flush out the toxins&quot; after a massage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and I am curious if someone here can answer this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4588" LastEditorUserId="5343" LastEditDate="2012-02-10T03:34:09.153" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T03:34:09.153" Title="Does drinking extra water &quot;flush out the toxins&quot; after a massage?" Tags="|medical-science|toxicology|massage|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5916" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6155" CreationDate="2011-08-24T09:32:52.487" Score="28" ViewCount="22942" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Josef Mengele&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, a.k.a. the “Angel of Death”, was an infamous physician and SS officer in the Auschwitz concentration camp, where &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation&quot;&gt;he performed inhumane experiments on inmates&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a taste,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He supervised an operation by which two Romani children were sewn together to create conjoined twins […]&#xA;  Mengele also sought out pregnant women, on whom he would perform vivisections before sending them to the gas chambers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cruelty and perversion of these experiments can hardly be overstated. Since similar experimentation on live humans is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Code&quot;&gt;fundamentally unethical&lt;/a&gt;, not much of his “research” can ever be repeated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ironically, this means that this situation &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; present a unique opportunity to perform potentially valuable experiments. For instance, he could unscrupulously perform dissections on intact dead bodies and did a lot of twin studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once Mengele’s assistant rounded up 14 pairs of Roma twins during the night. Mengele placed them on his polished marble dissection table and put them to sleep. He then injected chloroform into their hearts, killing them instantly. Mengele then began dissecting and meticulously noting each piece of the twins' bodies. [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We sometimes hear claims that the results from those experiments have fundamentally influenced our modern understanding of human physiology.&lt;/strong&gt; For instance, the data from the Nazi experiments on hypothermia are sometimes cited in medical literature [2, 3], although it’s been deemed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/17/us/nazi-data-on-hypothermia-termed-unscientific.html&quot;&gt;“unscientific”&lt;/a&gt; by others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A stronger claim is that in fact, &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; modern text books on physiology incorporate fundamental facts which were gained through these experiments. That is, &lt;strong&gt;modern physiology is, at least in some regards, fundamentally dependent on these experiments&lt;/strong&gt; (since they cannot be repeated). For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contemporary knowledge concerning the manner in which the human body reacts to freezing &lt;em&gt;is based almost exclusively&lt;/em&gt; on these Nazi experiments. [4] (emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know: is this claim true? Have these experiments any scientific value whatsoever (were they performed rigorously, did they test hypotheses, did they result in new insights?), and are they used in modern medicine. The second, stronger claim might not be falsifiable (too conspiracy-ey?) so feel free to disregard that in your answer, though if somebody &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have a definitive answer here, I’d appreciate that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.auschwitz.dk/Mengele.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.auschwitz.dk/Mengele.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[2] MacNeil-Lehrer Report. New York and Washington: PBS, August 1, 1988.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1889282/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Alan C. Burton, Otto G. Edholm&lt;/em&gt;. Man in a cold environment: physiological and pathological effects of exposure to low temperatures. London: Edward Arnold, 1955&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[4] Wikipedia on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation&quot;&gt;Nazi human experimentation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2018-10-08T19:13:24.013" Title="Have Josef Mengele’s unethical experiments contributed to modern medicine?" Tags="|medical-science|ethics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3337" CreationDate="2011-08-24T11:12:19.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously, clean nails are better than dirty toilets and vice versa, therefore to remove doubt and clarify the context, I will present studies of how easy it is to keep each clean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Toilet bowls&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the basis of the evidence presented above it is considered that &lt;strong&gt;toilet flushing is&#xA;sufficient to remove most of the microbial contamination from the toilet bowl, and the&#xA;surface of the bowl&lt;/strong&gt;, provided that an adequate amount of water (minimum 15-17&#xA;litres of water) is used for flushing. Since toilet flushing does not achieve&#xA;decontamination under the flushing rim of the toilet, the toilet requires &lt;strong&gt;regular&#xA;application of a hygiene procedure&lt;/strong&gt; which &lt;strong&gt;will maintain a low level of contamination in&#xA;the toilet bowl&lt;/strong&gt; and under the flushing rim to prevent build up of biofilms or scale&#xA;which could harbour pathogens.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neli.org.uk/IntegratedCRD.nsf/d3e7789969e4e7f280256fd4004b0877/c9bf235b5d76ad09802572970063c5d8/$FILE/hygprocevbasefinal2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;, page 55&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fingernails&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subungual region contains large numbers of bacteria which are largely inaccessible during hand hygiene practices and are therefore difficult to clean compared with the rest of the hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several reports linking fingernails with the transmission of nosocomial infection. One study linked an outbreak of postoperative Serratia marcescens infection with a nurse, suggesting that artificial fingernails may have facilitated the transfer of S. marcescens from home. In another study, an outbreak of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in a neonatal intensive care unit was associated with two nurses with long fingernails, one artificial and one natural.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971204001729#SECX16&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is therefore reasonable to conclude that &lt;strong&gt;nails are much more likely to contain pathogens than toilet seats&lt;/strong&gt;, provided that a reasonable amount of cleaning is performed: hands are washed normally, toilets are flushed and hygenised as normal practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T11:12:19.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5920" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5921" CreationDate="2011-08-24T13:31:27.277" Score="13" ViewCount="9517" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been told that eating food from a can that has been damaged (e.g. from falling) is dangerous, even if the damage is just a dent. Nobody is able to explain me why though so I am not convinced. My reasoning would be that as long as no air can get inside the can, the food is safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4603" LastActivityDate="2016-01-28T00:52:24.243" Title="Is it dangerous to eat the contents of a damaged can?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5920" CreationDate="2011-08-24T13:41:53.920" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Damage to a can, including dents, can be a sign of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsis.usda.gov/help/faqs_hotline_preparation/index.asp&quot;&gt;Botulism contamination&lt;/a&gt;.  Even a tiny amount of botulinum toxin can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/botulism/page2.htm#3howserious&quot;&gt;lethal&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NEVER USE food from containers that show possible &quot;botulism&quot; warnings: leaking, bulging, or badly dented cans; cracked jars or jars with loose or bulging lids; canned food with a foul odor; or any container that spurts liquid when opening. DON'T TASTE SUCH FOOD! Even a minuscule amount of botulinum toxin can be deadly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, dents by themselves are &lt;a href=&quot;http://eatrightli.org/documents/education/safety%20of%20canned%20goods%20handout.pdf&quot;&gt;not necessarily dangerous&lt;/a&gt;.  While they can make the can more susceptible to rust, which can allow in air, which can then result in bacterial contamination, so long as the can is still sealed a recent dent is not likely to be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-24T13:52:55.873" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T13:52:55.873" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5922" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5923" CreationDate="2011-08-24T21:24:01.060" Score="3" ViewCount="400" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've gotten a pretty popular (based on levels of forwarding) chain email in Russian recently discussing funny &quot;facts&quot; about literature. Most were either mildly amusing or obvious BS, but one claim struck me as &quot;too crazy to be false&quot; - namely, &lt;strong&gt;that Vladimir Nabokov's famous character &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lolita&lt;/a&gt;&quot; was named after a horse&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if it's true? The linked Wiki article has nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2801" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2011-08-24T23:38:54.257" LastActivityDate="2011-08-29T01:25:37.097" Title="Was Nabokov's Lolita named after a horse?" Tags="|literature|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5922" CreationDate="2011-08-24T21:52:50.893" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure it can be &lt;strong&gt;proven&lt;/strong&gt; beyond a shadow of a doubt, but it is at the very least, using Mythbusters' terminology &quot;PLAUSIBLE&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nq.oxfordjournals.org/content/56/3/427.1.extract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lolita: A Probable Source of Nabokov's Name for his Temptress&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (&lt;em&gt;James T. Bratcher&lt;/em&gt;, Notes &amp;amp; Queries, September 2009) posits that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For his novel by that name, Vladimir Nabokov probably took ‘Lolita’ from Mayne Reid's romance novel The War Trail; or, the Hunt of the Wild Horse (London, 1857). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I don't have access to the full article (behind a paywall), this rings true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nabokov notoriously was heavily influenced by Mayne Reid, as noted by him in &quot;Speak, memory&quot; autobiography  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=gjSSzkGWozAC&amp;amp;pg=PT190&amp;amp;lpg=PT190&amp;amp;dq=nabokov%20%22speak%20memory%22%20%22mayne%20reid%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=HO13Agb-lM&amp;amp;sig=yQJbos3Ef9Zz3MWH2sLouzSSmyY&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=5XBVTv3zLcvpgQeLsJhN&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=6&amp;amp;ved=0CEAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;chapter 10&lt;/a&gt; can be read on Google Books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Wild West fiction of Captain Mayne Reid, translated and simplified, was tremendously popular with Russian children at the beginning of this century, long after his American fame had faded. Knowing English, I could savor his Headless Horseman in the unabridged original. Two friends swap clothes, hats, mounts, and the wrong many gets murdered—this is the main whorl of the intricate plot.In the summer of 1909 or 1910, [a friend] enthusiastically initiated me into the dramatic possibilities of the Mayne Reid books. He had read them in Russian.and, when looking for a playable plot, was prone to combine them with Fenimore Cooper and his own fiery inventions. I viewed our games with greater detachment and tried to keep to the script.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very full discussion of the topic can be found in Don Barton Johnson's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/index.html?id=1303&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vladimir Nabokov and Captain Mayne Reid&lt;/a&gt;&quot; published in &quot;&lt;em&gt;Cycnos Magazine, Volume 10 n1: NABOKOV : Autobiography, Biography and Fiction&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The referenced story, indeed, contains Lolita as a horse name as can be confirmed on Google Books or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/stream/Captain_Mayne_Reid_The_War_Trail/Captain_Mayne_Reid_The_War_Trail_djvu.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;archive.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sadness, not sup&#xA;  plication, was the prevailing tone, which was further confirmed&#xA;  as she knelt to the ground, pressed her lips to the muzzle of the&#xA;  still breathing mustang, and exclaimed :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot; Ay-de mi ! poire yegua ! muerte ! muerte /&quot; (Alas me ! poor&#xA;  mare ! dead ! dead!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot; A woman ?&quot; said I, feigning astonishment. My interroga&#xA;  tory was unheeded ; she did not even look up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot; Ay-de-mi ! poire yegua! &lt;strong&gt;Lola, Lolita&lt;/strong&gt; !' she repeated, as&#xA;  coolly as if the dead mustang was the only object of her&#xA;  thoughts, and I, the armed assassin, fifty miles from the spot ! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot; Pohre Lolita '' she continued, &quot; I have good cause to &#xA;  grieve ; I had reason to love you well. More than once you &#xA;  saved me from the fierce Lipan and the brutal Comanche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-08-24T22:07:18.933" LastActivityDate="2011-08-24T22:07:18.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5927" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5929" CreationDate="2011-08-25T07:24:33.230" Score="27" ViewCount="2990" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one that I've heard on more than one occasion: &quot;Don't wash your hair every day. Wash it every two days as washing it too often will damage it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth in this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can frequent hair washing cause hair loss?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="649" LastEditorUserId="7597" LastEditDate="2012-06-20T02:32:16.180" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T15:18:52.417" Title="Is washing your hair too often bad?" Tags="|hygiene|hair|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="755" CreationDate="2011-08-25T08:37:15.957" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, breakfast is not the most important meal of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article analyses a few studies looking at the effects of different meal patterns: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leangains.com/2011/06/is-late-night-eating-better-for-fat.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Is Late Night Eating Better for Fat Loss and Health?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It suggests that skipping breakfast is beneficial for fat-loss, and other health indicators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True, this guy wrote a book about this subject, so clearly, he must have an agenda. But he still found 5 controlled studies done on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dietary epidemiology commonly find associations between certain meal patterns and higher BMI / body fatness. However, this association can solely be attributed to lifestyle-related factors and eating behaviors; snacking in front of the TV in the evening, making poor food choices in general, and so forth. People who eat more in the evening simply eat more calories, which explains why they weigh more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Calorie-controlled studies looking at the effects of distributing a fixed caloric load differently throughout the day are scarce; I have listed all of them above. These tell a much different story than the one found in dietary epidemiology. While short-term studies (15-18 days) do not find a statistically significant difference between early and late meal patterns, long-term studies (&gt;12 weeks) show that late eating patterns produce superior results on fat loss, body composition and/or diet adherence. This might be explained by more favorable nutrient partitioning after meals due to hormonal modulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if any other studies were conducted on the subject with contradicting results (that the author failed to find/list due to some sort of confirmation bias.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4611" LastEditorUserId="4611" LastEditDate="2011-08-25T16:06:41.867" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T16:06:41.867" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5927" CreationDate="2011-08-25T10:13:09.403" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only information I could find on &lt;em&gt;using shampoo too often being bad for your hair&lt;/em&gt; is the sebum (oil) produced by the sebaceous gland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thebeautybrains.com/2010/01/28/can-you-train-your-hair-to-be-less-oily/&quot;&gt;http://thebeautybrains.com/2010/01/28/can-you-train-your-hair-to-be-less-oily/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you ask if your hair can get used to not being washed you’re implying that leaving oil on your hair will somehow stop the production of more oil. The flip side of that implication is that stripping away the oil with a shampoo will make your glands produce more oil. Well guess what. That’s exactly what DOES happen. Sort of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Their* data indicates that the presence of oil on the skin’s surface sends a signal to the sebaceous glands to turn off. This signal is caused by either the pressure of the oil in the follicle or by the creation of a chemical signal that travels back down through the skin. So it turns out that, in theory, you can “train” your hair to be less oily.&#xA;  * &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/pv373302mt827067/&quot;&gt;http://www.springerlink.com/content/pv373302mt827067/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically washing your hair with shampoo to often can lead to more greasy hair and more frequent washing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4527" LastEditorUserId="3068" LastEditDate="2011-08-25T15:26:27.243" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T15:26:27.243" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5930" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5932" CreationDate="2011-08-25T10:53:21.817" Score="12" ViewCount="655" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source article Here&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/united-airlines-to-give-all-pilots-ipad-flight-manuals/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Briefly: United Airlines are giving their 11,000 pilots iPads in an effort to increase efficiency, etc. They're making manuals and other documents electronic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side-benefit, they claim, there will be a big reduction in greenhouse gas emissions: 3,208 metric tons per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, nowhere have I seen the emissions generated by the manafacture and distribution of 11,000 iPads taken into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What might the net increase or reduction in greenhouse gas emissions be?&#xA;I suggest assuming an iPad is good for 3 years, but I leave that up to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://images.apple.com/environment/reports/docs/iPad_2_Environmental_Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Apple's Own Information&lt;/a&gt; an iPad2 causes 105kg of greenhouse gases from start to finish. Multiply that by 11,000 and you have 1,155 metric tons. Being their own publicised information, it &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be highly idealised. Also, this doesn't include additional resources needed by the airline to roll out the devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1659" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T17:53:08.517" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T17:53:08.517" Title="How much are United Airlines reducing their carbon emissions by giving pilots iPads?" Tags="|environment|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5930" CreationDate="2011-08-25T12:48:28.667" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The iPad weighs about a kilo, and replaces &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.28a184296dda6208bfa99078cd9b334d.f1&amp;amp;show_article=1&quot;&gt;17 kilos&lt;/a&gt; of paper. Hauling around a kilo of payload takes about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A320_family&quot;&gt;half a kilo of fuel&lt;/a&gt; (mostly spent in achieving altitude). So with 1000 flights per year (this differs per airline, short hop planes fly more), each iPad will save about 8 tons of fuel annually, or about 20 tons of CO2. That's already two orders of magnitude better than the 105kg from production in the first year of use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional environmental benefits come from the fact that a lot of the paperwork changes over time: a large part is maps and regulations of all airports, and these do change over time. (e.g. warnings about buildings near the flightpath). Producing and distributing several kilos of updated books takes far more resources than a download.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[update]&#xA;United is actually a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digitalninjastl.com/blog/tag/jeppesen-mobile-flitedeck/&quot;&gt;lot less optimistic&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;Saving 326,000 gallons of jet fuel a year reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 3,208 metric tons.&quot; That's less than 1/3rd of a ton per iPad. And to a degree, that makes sense: I had silently assumed that each iPad flew a thousand flights a year, because every plane did. But United has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6722,52444,00.html&quot;&gt;~6200 pilots and ~460 planes&lt;/a&gt;. Clearly each pilot gets its own iPad, not each plane. And that probably also means there will be two iPads per plane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastEditorUserId="867" LastEditDate="2011-08-25T13:34:11.837" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T13:34:11.837" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5871" CreationDate="2011-08-25T15:55:21.197" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a single &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmj.bmj.com/content/49/569/203.abstract&quot;&gt;study published in 1973&lt;/a&gt; in which an obese man, under close medical supervision, fasted for over a year. He took water and some vitamin or mineral supplements but no food. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T15:55:21.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5935" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5938" CreationDate="2011-08-25T22:52:10.553" Score="41" ViewCount="31387" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite a common story that gets brought up around airports or business meetings when someone wants to provide a famous example of small change for massive savings is the olive story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently there was an airline that managed to save tens of thousands of dollars per year by removing a single olive from the salads in their meals, because it was hardly noticed by customers it was a massive win, tens of thousands of dollars without anyone noticing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How true is this story? Did this actually get implemented or was it something that someone brought up at a meeting and it was never actioned although it became famous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First place goes to American Airlines for the brilliant, yet simple&#xA;  cost cutting measure they implemented back in 1987. The airline was&#xA;  able to save $70,000 in 1987 by eliminating just one olive from each&#xA;  salad served in first class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most references I can find link it to AA, but there is nothing backing this up on either their website and its not referenced in the AA wikipedia article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any definitive proof that can confirm this (like a newspaper from 1987 with the story or a company flyer etc. that has this information)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-29T03:53:46.800" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T17:11:09.683" Title="Did removing one olive lead to an airline saving thousands of dollars?" Tags="|nutrition|history|aviation|commerce|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5920" CreationDate="2011-08-25T23:44:25.340" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point about sealed but distorted cans is that an anaerobic bacterium (such as &lt;em&gt;Clostridium botulinum&lt;/em&gt;) may have produced gases inside the can, and it may have been the pressure of these gases which have caused the distortion to the can.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the problem here is not the dent allowing contamination (you should in any case avoid cans where the seal has been broken) but the possibility that the contamination caused dents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence the advice in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://eatrightli.org/documents/education/safety%20of%20canned%20goods%20handout.pdf&quot;&gt;U.S. Department of Agriculture endorsed leaflet&lt;/a&gt; to check for bloating and bulges, to test cans to see if they &quot;pop&quot; back after applying pressure to the dent, and most importantly to avoid those which spray or explode on opening.   In other cases, it says &quot;eating from dented cans is not unsafe&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-08-25T23:44:25.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5914" CreationDate="2011-08-26T01:52:44.297" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, there is no scientific basis for this claim. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400502/Eliminating-Toxins-With-Massage.html&quot;&gt;Dr Andrew Weil has this to say&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Massage certainly can help address the build up of lactic acid in muscles, and promote the clearing of normal byproducts of muscle metabolism, but &lt;strong&gt;I know of no evidence suggesting that massage can remove toxins of any kind from the body&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.massagetoday.com/archives/2002/12/08.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Massage Today&lt;/em&gt; article&lt;/a&gt; written by Keith Eric Grant, PhD, NCTMB, elaborates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's a statement, seemingly pervasive throughout massage education&#xA;  and massage books, that unspecified toxins accumulate in the body, and&#xA;  that these toxins can be flushed out by massage. I believe this is yet&#xA;  another myth that continues to be passed on as misinformation to&#xA;  massage students. This is not to dispute that there are very real&#xA;  toxins that accumulate in the body, notably persistent organic&#xA;  pollutants (POPs) in fatty tissues and heavy metals in skeletal&#xA;  tissues. However, these &lt;strong&gt;toxins are too chemically bound to their&#xA;  target tissues to be significantly liberated by the mechanical motions&#xA;  of massage.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an NIH study showing that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&amp;amp;db=PubMed&amp;amp;list_uids=8833711&amp;amp;dopt=Abstract&quot;&gt;massage is not effective for removal of lactic acid buildup&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This investigation highlights the comparison of blood lactate removal&#xA;  during the period of recovery in which the subjects were required to&#xA;  sit down as a passive rest period, followed by active recovery at 30%&#xA;  VO(2)max, and short term body massage, as the three modes of recovery&#xA;  used.... Analysis of lactate values indicated &lt;strong&gt;no remarkable difference&#xA;  between massage and a passive type of sitting recovery period&lt;/strong&gt;. It was&#xA;  observed that in short term massage recovery, more oxygen was consumed&#xA;  as compared to a passive type of sitting recovery. It is concluded&#xA;  from the study that the &lt;strong&gt;short term body massage is ineffective in&#xA;  enhancing the lactate removal and that an active type of recovery is&#xA;  the best modality for enhancing lactate removal after exercise.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary issue with this claim is that it uses the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxin#Non-technical_usage&quot;&gt;&quot;alternative medicine&quot; definition of toxin&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the context of alternative medicine the term is often used to refer to any substance claimed to cause ill health, ranging anywhere from trace amounts of pesticides to common food items like refined sugar or additives such as monosodium glutamate (MSG).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will never get a clear definition of what &quot;toxins&quot; are in this sense, and so &quot;flushing toxins&quot; should be bundled in with fad &quot;detox diets&quot; whose claimed benefits are not supported by evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; toxins are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/detox-diets/AN01334&quot;&gt;naturally &quot;flushed&quot; from the body&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most ingested toxins are efficiently and effectively removed by the kidneys and liver and excreted in urine and stool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/detox.html&quot;&gt;Skepdic also mirrors my sentiments&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some claim juice fasting is the key to detoxification. Others claim a raw food or vegetarian diet is the best detox therapy. Some swear by enemas; others by ozone therapy, acupuncture, and massage. Others swear by mega-vitamins and antioxidants. Some swear you shouldn't eat anything but fruit until noon so the body can detox properly. Again, none of the proponents of these methods name a single toxin that is removed, in what quantity, or with what specific benefit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.senseaboutscience.org/data/files/resources/49/Detox-leaflet-Final-Embargoed-until-050109remargin.pdf&quot;&gt;Sense about Science&lt;/a&gt; (PDF) has something similar to say - and that, as with everything, the dose makes the poison:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim 1: Toxins have built up in the body and&#xA;  need to be flushed/cleansed from it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The terms ‘toxic’ or ‘toxins’ are used to imply that a&#xA;  chemical is causing you harm. In reality all chemicals&#xA;  can be toxic and it is the dose that is important e.g.&#xA;  one 400 g Vitamin A tablet may be beneficial but&#xA;  taking 20 of these at once could damage your liver.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Most chemicals do not accumulate in the body – they&#xA;  are removed by the liver and kidney.&lt;/strong&gt; Many of the&#xA;  detox products which claim to flush the body of&#xA;  chemicals contain diuretics, which increase the&#xA;  amount you urinate. This just removes water and&#xA;  some salt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2011-08-28T22:47:01.927" LastActivityDate="2011-08-28T22:47:01.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5935" CreationDate="2011-08-26T03:04:50.927" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is attributed to Bob Crandall, the American Airlines CEO of that timeframe.  He was indeed a very driven individual to reduce cost and make money.  This particular exploit is covered in a book called &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Corporate Creativity: how innovation and improvement actually happen&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;By Alan G. Robinson, Sam Stern&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=7E-c6ni5MfYC&amp;amp;pg=PA107&amp;amp;lpg=PA107&amp;amp;dq=Bob%20Crandall%20olive%20story&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=Say2jSbu--&amp;amp;sig=4xhyzJFpGt6fbW-ZenVJHRqM5_s&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=tgNXTpC6E4fC0AHQnISQDA&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=8&amp;amp;ved=0CFcQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;The story is detailed on page 107&lt;/a&gt;, although there it is claimed it saved $500,000 annually!  Which is significantly over most of the references I found claiming anywhere from $40,000 to $80,000 (more in line with your question).  Maybe that's accounting for inflation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is credible, but I can't find any original documentation yet.  Please stand by.  In the meantime, some additional discussion.&lt;/strong&gt;  (Still no reply from the museum.  Please stand by.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jefflewis.net/factoids4.html&quot;&gt;I found a site that also ran the calculation and attempted to debunk or confirm this&lt;/a&gt;.  This site mentions the more reasonable sum of $40,000 in savings, and says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Probably True- I can't find a single good source on this, but many, many news stories mention this tidbit when discussing Bob Crandall, the former chief of American Airlines who supposedly instituted this change. Granted, being repeated often doesn't make a claim true, but this one seems reasonable enough. consider just how many flights a major airline like American has per year, and how many salads they were serving back when they still served food. Now consider how small $40,000 is in the grand scheme of things for an airline that big. It's only the cost of a single employee, even less if you consider higher paid employees like pilots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3073562/#.TlcFQqhhfQM&quot;&gt;That site also references this article on MSNBC that starts off with&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s impossible to talk about cutting airline costs without mentioning Bob Crandall, the firebrand former chief of American Airlines. And so, let us revive the olive story. Most notorious among Crandall’s legendary cost-cutting was his idea to remove an olive from each salad served to passengers. A tiny garnish would never be missed, the reasoning went, and savings amounted to at least $40,000 a year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the age of this particular cost saving measure, I think microfiche may be the best way to find out for sure.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crsmithmuseum.org/ContactUs.aspx&quot;&gt;I do have a question in to the C.R. Smith Museum&lt;/a&gt; (American Airlines history museum), and will report back here if I get a reply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, let's do a little math.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aa.com/i18n/amrcorp/corporateInformation/facts/amr.jsp&quot;&gt;American Airlines flies over 3400 flights a day&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=olives&amp;amp;num=100&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;newwindow=1&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;tbm=shop&amp;amp;ei=gAtXTvfqDITX0QHZvti0DA&amp;amp;start=0&amp;amp;sa=N&amp;amp;biw=1920&amp;amp;bih=951&quot;&gt;A quick google search for olives yielded prices from $8 to $50 for olives&lt;/a&gt;.  Assuming American Airlines gets them in bulk, and at a discount (wholesale), let's say that an olive is only $0.01 (given what I know of olives, seems low).  That means that over 1,241,000 flights in a year, they need to eliminate 4,000,000 olives to save $40,000.  Let's say that less than half the flights (a nice even 500,000) have first class service that serves a meal.  And that there are a total of only 10 first class seats (which on many aircraft is very low).  That gets you almost 5,000,000 olives on salads.  Seems conceivable with those numbers which are probably very conservatives estimates on my part that a saving could be realized (and even a slight change in per olive pricing could have vast changes).  It's not the weight in this case, it's simply a material expense that Bob Crandall figured the passengers wouldn't miss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, if the American Airlines history museum gets back to me, I will revisit this with a more definitive answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-08-28T13:36:29.047" LastActivityDate="2011-08-28T13:36:29.047" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5914" CreationDate="2011-08-26T04:45:23.973" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If by &quot;toxins&quot; they mean myoglobin, then there is a at least some scientific basis, if not much evidence of real danger.  Muscle damage releases myoglobin into the bloodstream; this is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhabdomyolysis&quot;&gt;rhabdomyolysis&lt;/a&gt;.  Myoglobin is toxic to your kidneys at high concentrations, and dehydration makes attaining those toxic concentrations more likely.  The effects are well-documented in conditions causing muscle damage such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7625324&quot;&gt;excessive exercise&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9757925&quot;&gt;trauma&lt;/a&gt;, etc.  Massage isn't a recognized cause among healthy people, but I did find this &lt;a href=&quot;http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/1/233.long&quot;&gt;case study&lt;/a&gt; of an elderly diabetic man who experienced acute renal failure (ARF) after an unusually vigorous massage session and inadequate hydration.  The authors conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Senior and diabetic patients need to be warned that vigorous body massage may cause dangerous complications such as rhabdomyolysis. In addition, the people receiving body massage should drink adequate amount of water before and after the massage session so as to prevent unusual episodes of rhabdomyolysis-associated ARF , which is exacerbated by volume depletion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2465" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T04:45:23.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5063" CreationDate="2011-08-26T06:34:10.750" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;After viewing a debate about an issue, the distribution of audience opinions moves toward the middle of the two given sides.  To the extent that the Overton Window is influenced by televised debates and that &quot;publicly proposing&quot; ideas is similar to starting those ideas as a side of a debate, I see this as evidence for it being similarly manipulable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Sadly, even just to find my original sources, I see why you put this question here; the search terms &quot;audience&quot;, &quot;debate&quot; and &quot;opinion&quot; are as muddy as they come.  The best I could do is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/04/why-refuse-to-debate.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/04/why-refuse-to-debate.html&lt;/a&gt;  If anyone has better search-fu than I do in this domain, I would celebrate the inclusion of additional citations.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4617" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T06:34:10.750" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5941" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-26T06:49:06.593" Score="2" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/370/how-bitter-is-robert-lustigs-bitter-truth-about-sugar&quot;&gt;How bitter is Robert Lustig&amp;#39;s &amp;quot;Bitter Truth&amp;quot; about sugar?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be some conflicting information about High Fructose Corn Syrup on the internet. Is there conclusive evidence that links it to cancer?  on a side question, is it true that High Fructose Corn Syrup is not allowed in food products for humans in some European Countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4620" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T06:49:06.593" Title="is High Fructose Corn Syrup linked to Cancer?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2011-08-26T07:52:29.763" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5942" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7785" CreationDate="2011-08-26T06:51:46.923" Score="41" ViewCount="92992" Body="&lt;p&gt;Local legend has it that once Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal, the hands of the workers were cut off. I cannot find any historical reference to this but some examples which say so&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://library.thinkquest.org/27638/tajmahal.html&quot;&gt;http://library.thinkquest.org/27638/tajmahal.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shahjahan cut off the hands of the workers after the completion of the&#xA;  Taj so Mahal that no one would ever be able to build such a marvelous&#xA;  monument again&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Culture/Archit/TajM.html&quot;&gt;http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/southasia/Culture/Archit/TajM.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is alleged that on its completion, Shah Jahan ordered the right&#xA;  hand of the chief mason to be cut off so that the masterpiece could&#xA;  never be recreated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;and deny&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://agra-india.com/tajmahalhistoryandlegends.htm&quot;&gt;http://agra-india.com/tajmahalhistoryandlegends.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is &lt;strong&gt;no truth&lt;/strong&gt; in the familiar tale that Shahjahan had the hands of&#xA;  his chief architect chopped off to prevent building him another&#xA;  building of Taj's reputation. Before he met his fate, this architect,&#xA;  it is said, was allowed to take in the last look to ensure perfection.&#xA;  At this moment he hammered the dome at the point, which caused&#xA;  leakage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have proper historical references? The Mughal period (1500 - 1800) was documented and studied by several Indian and Western historians and books such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1900251086&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. But I do not know if this tale is covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastEditorUserId="5933" LastEditDate="2012-02-02T02:40:38.753" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T05:59:20.890" Title="Did the builder of the Taj Mahal have the workers' hands cut off?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2077" CreationDate="2011-08-26T12:45:19.783" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent study of individuals of Ashkenazi Jewish descent aged 95 and older compared against a database of information of those who did not live as long showed evidence that genetics may play a more significant role in longevity than lifestyle choices such as diet, smoking and drinking alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a recent news &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bupa.co.uk/individuals/health-information/health-news-index/05082011-longevity-genes-lifestyle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; on the study: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The researchers concluded that these findings suggest genetics play a&#xA;  role in lifespan and found that there was no difference in lifestyle&#xA;  factors, including BMI (an indicator of obesity), smoking and alcohol&#xA;  consumption, between the [longer vs shorter lifespan] groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The researchers were quick to point out that this isn't a license to behave in an unhealthy manner and it might be argued that 'quality of life' issues become a much bigger factor than longevity at these advanced ages. For example, a high BMI indicating obesity also puts you at risk for type 2 diabetes, which if improperly managed can lead to amputations, loss of vision and have other significant quality of life impacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4616" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T12:45:19.783" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5945" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5950" CreationDate="2011-08-26T14:32:21.790" Score="15" ViewCount="23935" Body="&lt;p&gt;Amazon sells roughly 355 different &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=pd_rhf_s_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;search-alias=garden&amp;amp;keywords=cat%20repellent%20outdoor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cat repellent products&lt;/a&gt; but judging by the consumer ratings, most of them don't actually work -- and even those that do, could be correlation rather than causation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do ultrasonic cat repellents work, or don't they?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's already a question about &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/5021/3467&quot;&gt;ultrasonic insect repellents&lt;/a&gt; but it doesn't mention cats, so I'm opening this question specifically for (against!) cats and similar animals; as opposed to insects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3467" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T07:03:55.763" Title="Do ultrasonic cat repellents work?" Tags="|biology|physics|consumer-products|electronics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5106" CreationDate="2011-08-26T17:40:57.567" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The larger the fishtank, the larger a fish will grow&quot; is certainly incorrect in general. The ocean is essentially unbounded as far as most species goes and fish have a characteristic size range. I would think that many large lakes would also amount to &quot;essentially unbounded&quot; as far as the large majority of species goes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2011-08-26T18:42:19.403" LastActivityDate="2011-08-26T18:42:19.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5948" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-27T05:35:04.777" Score="6" ViewCount="2773" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people have claimed that nickel is unsafe to use in flatware (i.e. cutlery) - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.finishing.com/208/58.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Example 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howtodothings.com/family-relationships/how-to-choose-a-flatware-set&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Example 2&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, nickel is a carcinogen (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lenntech.com/periodic/elements/ni.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/tx700198a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref 2&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it safe to use nickel-plated flatware?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3704" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-14T11:38:53.763" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T11:38:53.763" Title="Is it safe to use nickel-plated flatware?" Tags="|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2017-11-11T12:42:37.533" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="944" CreationDate="2011-08-27T09:55:37.123" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Christopher Newport is a proper historical example of a sea captain who lost an arm and replaced it with a hook. He was apparently the real life model (or one of them) for Barrie's Captain Hook. Newport was technically a privateer, not a pirate, but I think the difference is really just that a privateer was a thief who sometimes paid his taxes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.captainchristophernewport.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.captainchristophernewport.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is categorically not just a myth, although how widespread the practice was is hard to say. I imagine not that many pirates lost their hands, but it makes a good story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4633" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-27T11:10:49.597" LastActivityDate="2011-08-27T11:10:49.597" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5945" CreationDate="2011-08-27T12:07:49.367" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, they work... somewhat. They certainly affect behaviour, but it depends on the cat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;real-world&quot; experiment showed some deterrence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159105001383&quot;&gt;The efficacy of an ultrasonic cat deterrent&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, Sarah Helen Nelson, Andrew David Evans, and Richard Brian Bradbury, Applied Animal Behaviour Science&#xA;Volume 96, Issues 1-2, January 2006, Pages 83-91&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ultrasound deterrents for a variety of mammals, including cats, are widely available in the commercial market, but few have been independently tested for efficacy. This study tested the efficacy of an ultrasonic cat deterrent ‘Catwatch©’, using 63 and 96 volunteer observers in two long-running (18 and 33 weeks) blind experiments. Results indicated that the device did have a moderate deterrent effect, reducing the probability of a cat intrusion into a garden by approximately 32% in the first experiment, but not in the second. The average duration of intrusions was reduced by approximately 38 and 22% in the two experiments, respectively. The magnitude of the deterrent effect appeared to increase with time, since the device was deployed. It is likely that the size of the deterrent effect could be increased by positioning the device(s) more carefully with regard to entry points to the garden that are regularly used by cats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has also been a study of cats in more &quot;lab-like&quot; conditions, that also showed differences in behaviour - but perhaps not the ones desired (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://veterinaryrecord.bmj.com/content/147/24/678.abstract&quot;&gt;Evaluation of the welfare implications and efficacy of an ultrasonic ‘deterrent’ for cats&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, D. S. Mills, S. L. Bailey, R. E. Thurstans, Veterinary Record 2000;147:678-680 doi:10.1136/vr.147.24.678&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The effect of the ultrasonic output of a commercial cat ‘deterrent’ was assessed by measuring the behaviour responses of 10 cats in a standard test arena. The cats were introduced to the arena approximately nine metres outside the stated range of efficacy of the product and small food piles were placed at one metre intervals towards the device. When the cats were released from the basket, their behaviour and location were recorded continuously. The behaviour of the cats with the device on and off was compared by using a general linear model and chi-squared analysis. Differences between individual cats were a significant factor in explaining the variance associated with the amount of ‘relaxed behaviours’ (P&amp;lt;0.001), and the time spent within the range of the device (P=0.006). The only significant behaviour changes recorded when the device was on, were an increased likelihood of ear flicking (P&amp;lt;0.001), less time spent actively exploring (P=0.043), and &lt;strong&gt;an increase in the amount of time spent in the reported ultrasonic range of the device&lt;/strong&gt; (P=0.003).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-27T12:17:38.560" LastActivityDate="2011-08-27T12:17:38.560" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5951" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5955" CreationDate="2011-08-27T17:38:35.897" Score="16" ViewCount="1159" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cell phones are forbidden in a lot of hospitals because they interfere with the medical instruments. I've found studies that prove both that it's dangerous and both that it's not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gizmag.com/go/6979/&quot;&gt;No, it's not dangerous.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1659417,00.html&quot;&gt;Yes, it is&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These researches seem to contradict each other. So are there any known cases where people were hurt by someone using a cellphone in a hospital? And if there is, why are microwave ovens, radio/tv signals, wifi signals OK?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="649" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-08-28T01:07:30.593" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T15:22:51.283" Title="Is it risky to use a cell-phone in a hospital?" Tags="|radiation|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5953" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5954" CreationDate="2011-08-28T12:23:18.997" Score="11" ViewCount="4464" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://earthclinic.com/CURES/food_poisoning.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; website claims that apple cider vinegar is a strong bactericide and is useful in alleviating food-poisoning illness by killing any and all ingested food-borne bacteria which release abhorrent toxins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this claim have scientific merit? If so, does any type of vinegar work, and how much should be taken and at which time intervals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3291" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T17:45:02.120" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T17:45:02.120" Title="Does vinegar have bactericidal properties that help remedy food poisoning?" Tags="|nutrition|alternative-medicine|vinegar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5953" CreationDate="2011-08-28T13:50:36.320" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would be highly skeptical of this claim.  The mechanism that this is supposed to work by is as some sort of antibacterial agent.  Although, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinegar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the mild acid in vinegar&lt;/a&gt; really is nothing compared to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastric_acid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;acids that are already in your stomach&lt;/a&gt;.  The main reason that vinegar is associated as a food poisoning remedy could be because vinegar is often used as a method of preserving food for longer periods (i.e. pickling).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slic2.wsu.edu:82/hurlbert/micro101/pages/Chap18.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Or as is mentioned at the Washington State University site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ORGANIC ACIDS: As you recall, all microbes require an #optimum pH or acidity in their environment to grow. If there is too much acid or base, a microbe will not grow. As the by-products of many microbial fermentations include the production of chemicals like ACETIC ACID (vinegar), LACTIC ACID, and PROPIONIC ACID it is not too surprising to find that humans, and other life, can actually use these substances as nutrients. However, when they are added to foods in sufficient quantities to lower the pH below that which will support the growth of most food-spoilage microbes, they can serve as natural food preservatives. Again, our ancestors recognized that &quot;SPOILED&quot; foods such as milk and certain vegetables, retained their nutrition upon becoming acidic and remained eatable (preserved) for long periods. Thus was born choice food items like yogurt, sauerkraut, pickles, cheese and buttermilk. Artificial acids, like benzoic acid, inhibit the growth of some molds, thus it is added to breads and other bakery products that require long shelf live. In many foods, like the sauerkraut you made in lab, salt is combined with acids to preserve food. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This site from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/food-poisoning-000064.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Maryland Medical Center&lt;/a&gt; states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apple cider vinegar is a traditional remedy that, although it has &lt;strong&gt;not been studied scientifically&lt;/strong&gt;, may have some antimicrobial properties. Mix 2 tsp. in one cup warm water and drink several times a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BOTTOM LINE:&lt;/strong&gt;  No studies back it up, but there appears to be no harm in doing it as long as you dilute the vinegar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, if someone has ingested a non-food poison, &lt;a href=&quot;http://poisoncontrol.umc.edu/EmergencyInformation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Poison Control Centers specifically state&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not give salt, vinegar, citrus juice or induce vomiting unless instructed to do so by the Poison Control Center.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-08-02T23:03:24.743" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T23:03:24.743" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5951" CreationDate="2011-08-28T17:49:54.887" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The FDA in the USa says there are &quot;potential&quot; risks with Pacemakers and Defibrillators&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Interference with Pacemakers and Other Medical Devices&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Potential interference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Radiofrequency energy (RF) from cell phones can interact with some electronic devices. This type of interference is called electromagnetic interference (EMI). For this reason, FDA helped develop a detailed test method to measure EMI of implanted cardiac pacemakers and defibrillators from cell phones. This test method is now part of a standard sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI). This standard will allow manufacturers to ensure that cardiac pacemakers and defibrillators are safe from cell phone EMI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FDA continues to monitor the use of cell phones for possible interactions with other medical devices. Should harmful interference be found to occur, FDA will conduct testing to assess the interference and work to resolve the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Precautions for pacemaker wearers&#xA;  If EMI were to occur, it could affect a pacemaker in one of three ways:&#xA;  Stopping the pacemaker from delivering the stimulating pulses that regulate the heart's rhythm &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Causing the pacemaker to deliver the pulses irregularly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Causing the pacemaker to ignore the heart's own rhythm and deliver pulses at a fixed rate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But based on current research, cell phones would not seem to pose a significant health problem for the vast majority of pacemaker wearers. Still, people with pacemakers may want to take some simple precautions to be sure that their cell phones don't cause a problem.&#xA;  Hold the phone to the ear opposite the side of the body where the pacemaker is implanted to add some extra distance between the pacemaker and the phone&#xA;  Avoid placing a turned-on phone next to the pacemaker implant (e.g. don’t carry the phone in a shirt or jacket pocket directly over the pacemaker)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Related Links&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Radiation-EmittingProducts/RadiationSafety/ElectromagneticCompatibilityEMC/default.htm&quot;&gt;Electromagnetic Compatibility&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Radiation-EmittingProducts/RadiationEmittingProductsandProcedures/HomeBusinessandEntertainment/CellPhones/ucm116311.htm&quot;&gt;Source of Information&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4403" LastActivityDate="2011-08-28T17:49:54.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5959" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-29T03:19:49.900" Score="21" ViewCount="28210" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do cats and / or dogs have saliva that has antibacterial or antiseptic properties?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these any more effective at preventing infection than the saliva of humans or any other animal (is cat or dog saliva more special than any other animals saliva)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that dog/cat saliva is an effective antibacterial / antiseptic agent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caringforyourcat.info/healthcare/immediatetreatment.htm&quot;&gt;If a cat has been hurt, it will normally find a quiet place to lick&#xA;  it's wounds. This is your cats way of giving itself fist aid, as a&#xA;  cats saliva contains a natural antiseptic.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071001173307AAyiRUH&quot;&gt;Dogs actually have a natural antiseptic in their saliva, so even&#xA;  though both lick their butts, dog saliva kills germs while cat saliva&#xA;  harbors germs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chacha.com/question/is-cat-saliva-antibacterial&quot;&gt;Yes, there is an antibacterial substance in cat saliva. It helps keep&#xA;  their fur smelling good but cannot prevent infection.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-08-29T04:14:11.350" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T20:26:40.287" Title="Do cats and dogs have saliva that has antibacterial or antiseptic properties?" Tags="|medical-science|zoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="39511" CreationDate="2011-08-29T06:27:29.523" Score="15" ViewCount="17214" Body="&lt;p&gt;While searching for a remedy for sunburn pain last year, I ran across multiple references to vinegar as an effective method in treating sunburn pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research that validates or invalidates this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If founded, how might vinegar act as a sunburn pain reliever? (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin#Medical&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;capsaicin is thought to cause nerves to be unable to report pain for an extended period of time, due to neurotransmitter depletion.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4647" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T17:45:55.903" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T14:56:07.603" Title="Is vinegar a sunburn remedy?" Tags="|physiology|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|sun-exposure|vinegar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5962" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5972" CreationDate="2011-08-29T12:46:52.167" Score="17" ViewCount="100664" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a widespread belief among most of the people I know that all windows should be closed during a storm as having them open is supposed to attract lightning (or, according to some people, can allow the lightning to 'strike inside').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm highly sceptic about all this and Googling for those risks was unsuccessful. Does anyone have any light to shed on the matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4649" LastActivityDate="2016-10-17T19:50:44.543" Title="Do open windows increase the chance of lightning striking the house?" Tags="|physics|safety|lightning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5963" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5965" CreationDate="2011-08-29T14:13:36.383" Score="31" ViewCount="171611" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the weekend I heard an acquaintance mention something called &quot;monoatomic gold&quot;, followed by a bevy of fantastic and surprising claims about the substance, what it does, and how it was discovered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My subsequent Google searching has returned a lot of pages with mysticism and conspiracy theories, but not much by way of solid definition. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crucible.org/gem_elixir4.htm&quot;&gt;my top Google hit&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Monoatomic Gold allows subconsciously held beliefs and worries to surface and become understood... Monoatomic Gold acts upon the pituitary gland, inducing an increase in hormonal production, and is thus a rejuvenation agent. Monoatomic Gold strengthens the heart, improves the production of red blood cells in the bone marrow and increases the production of semen... It can be manufactured alchemically out of 24carat metallic gold... Monoatomic gold is not to be confused with colloidal gold either, which retains its metallic nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That &quot;not to be confused with colloidal gold&quot; rules out the one legitimate form that I figured it &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is &quot;monoatomic gold&quot;? What is it claimed to do? Is there any scientific validity or study behind those claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="489" LastEditorUserId="489" LastEditDate="2011-08-29T15:45:29.230" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T03:41:45.807" Title="What is monoatomic gold?" Tags="|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5963" CreationDate="2011-08-29T17:34:06.477" Score="61" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Basically there is very little real science on this topic because the whole premise seems to be based on magical thinking.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Not only is mono-atomic gold unstudied and unproven, not only is it lacking a plausible mechanism of action, but from what I seem to be finding it might not even exist anymore,(because it looks like the product, its &quot;discoverer&quot; and its proponents are likely responsible for at least one death).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an attempt to cut to the chase, I visited a number of sites touting the product and listing it as for sale, and while some of them appeared slightly disreputable, I was willing to purchase a little in the name of science.  However, nearly every link I clicked yielded: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cfxpp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or a similar screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research into monoatomic gold yields such scientifically rigorous gems such as this from &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_monoatomic_gold_real&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wiki answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quite by chance, the mysteries of this long-forgotten science were&#xA;  rediscovered quite recently. Not only did mfkzt re-emerge to find its&#xA;  place at the forefront of quantum physics research, but the stories of&#xA;  the Ark of the Covenant, the accounts of lightning, levitation and&#xA;  other godly attributes of the ancient texts, quite suddenly became&#xA;  modern scientific reality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1996, the story of this initial discovery was reported in NEXUS&#xA;  articles by the Phoenix, Arizona, crop farmer David Hudson ]. He&#xA;  explained that his soil suffered from a high sodium content, which&#xA;  caused the surface to be hard and impenetrable by water. To combat&#xA;  this (back in 1976), he was injecting sulphuric acid into the ground&#xA;  so as to break down the crust to a manageable consistency, but, on&#xA;  testing soil constituents that were not dissolved by the acid, he&#xA;  found that one particular material had a most unusual quality. When&#xA;  heat-dried in the Arizona sun, it would flare into a great blaze of&#xA;  white light and totally disappear. Under spectroscopic analysis,&#xA;  however, the substance registered as &quot;pure nothing&quot;! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Following unsuccessful tests at Cornell University, a sample was sent&#xA;  to Harwell Laboratories in Oxfordshire, England, for neutron&#xA;  activation analysis, but even they could not obtain a suitable&#xA;  reading. Eventually, with assistance from the Soviet Academy of&#xA;  Sciences, it was determined that the mysterious, glowing white&#xA;  substance was composed entirely of platinum group metals in a form&#xA;  hitherto unknown to science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the course of continued research, the material was regularly heated&#xA;  and cooled, with a resultant fluctuation in its gravitational weight.&#xA;  It was also discovered that, at a certain temperature, the white bead&#xA;  would fall apart to become a monatomic (single atom) powder--at which&#xA;  point its weight fell dramatically to 56% of its starting weight.&#xA;  Further heating at 1160º centigrade then transformed the precious&#xA;  substance into a wonderfully clear glass, at which point the material&#xA;  weight returned to its original 100%. It was seemingly impossible, but&#xA;  it happened time and time again! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Totally bewildered, the scientists continued their investigations.&#xA;  When they repeatedly heated and cooled the sample under inert gases,&#xA;  they found that the cooling processes took the sample to an amazing&#xA;  400% of its starting weight; but when they heated it again, they found&#xA;  it weighed less than nothing--way below zero. When they removed the&#xA;  sample from the pan, they discovered that the pan actually weighed&#xA;  more than it did with the material in it, and they perceived that the&#xA;  sample had the ability to transfer its weightlessness to its&#xA;  supporting host. In other words, even the pan was levitating! This was&#xA;  precisely in accordance with the old Alexandrian alchemical text which&#xA;  had discussed the golden Paradise Stone over 2,000 years before: that&#xA;  the material could outweigh its original quantity of gold, but, when&#xA;  transposed to powder, even a feather would tip the scales against it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The substance was also determined to be a natural superconductor with&#xA;  a null magnetic field, repelling both north and south magnetic poles,&#xA;  while having the ability to levitate and store any amount of light and&#xA;  energy within itself&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To say the least, skepticism is warranted, but much to my surprise, I did find some preprints on the topic from around 1998, however:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/9904181&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Electronic structure and dimerization of a single monatomic gold wire&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/9812369&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Puzzling Stability of Monatomic Gold Wires&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/9905225&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stiff monatomic gold wires with a spinning zigzag geometry&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously none of that has anything to do with medicinal uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole monoatomic gold thing seems to have its genesis with that Arizona farmer, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.halexandria.org/dward467.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;David Radius Hudson&lt;/a&gt; (take a look around his site for the typical &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/woowoo.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pseudoscientific woo&lt;/a&gt;), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/U9b0e.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;(Hudson)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and an excerpt from one of his lectures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Superconductivity and Modern Alchemy&quot; &quot;Has the Philosopher's Stone Been Found?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;White Powder Gold - A Lecture by David Hudson&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Okay, into to the alchemical substance. When I became interested in&#xA;  this alchemy, because the white powder of gold was the alchemical&#xA;  substance supposedly, I began to do all sorts of reading, and one of&#xA;  the things I came across immediately was the Melchizedek priesthood&#xA;  and the white powder of gold associated with the Melchizedek&#xA;  priesthood. So I went to Rabbi Plotkin at Temple Beth Israel in&#xA;  Phoenix, and I asked the Rabbi, who is one of the most knowledgeable&#xA;  rabbis in Arizona, I said, &quot;Rabbi, have you ever of the white powder&#xA;  of gold?&quot;, and he said, &quot;Oh yes Mr. Hudson, but to our knowledge no&#xA;  one's known how to make it since the destruction of the first temple&quot;.&#xA;  He said, &quot;The white powder of gold is the magic. It can be used for&#xA;  white magic or black magic&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And when you really find out what the white powder of gold is, you&#xA;  begin to really appreciate that statement. So, anyway, as I began to&#xA;  research this further, I found out about the history of it, I found&#xA;  out that it has been associated with the ancient peoples over in the&#xA;  Tigris-Euphrates valley. It was knowledge that was given to them by,&#xA;  they claimed, the gods. It is always depicted in the literature as a&#xA;  triangular shaped stone, but it's about twice as tall as it is wide,&#xA;  kind of an elongated pyramidal shape, like this. I think Zecharia&#xA;  Sitchin refers to it as the &quot;athinder? stone&quot;. Ah, but all of their&#xA;  sacred text always began with it. Curious enough, in the ancient&#xA;  Egyptian text it was always referred to as the &quot;What is it?&quot;, and if&#xA;  you read in the papyrus of Ani that was found in the tomb of Pepe the&#xA;  2nd in old kingdom Egypt, it says, &quot;I am purified of all&#xA;  imperfections, what is it, I ascend like the golden hawk of Horus,&#xA;  what is it, I come by the immortals without dying, what is it, I come&#xA;  before my father's throne, what is it, and she goes on and on, page&#xA;  after page, talking about all these attributes that you acquire as you&#xA;  ascend, but they always stop and ask the question, &quot;What is it&quot;? &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.karenlyster.com/hudson.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am almost hesitant to include the above quote, as it could be considered an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ad hominem attack&lt;/a&gt; on Hudson, but there is very little real science done on his findings, and I hope showing that his whole premise is based entirely on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_thinking&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;magical thinking&lt;/a&gt; will enlighten some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this article from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1996-09-19/news/deadly-panacea/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Phoenix New Times&lt;/a&gt; puts the whole thing in perspective...(pay special attention to the first paragraph and remember that Payne was the one who administered the compound to the desperate, dying patient)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wxuiq.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while I typically would go a little more in depth with an answer I have too much to do today and may edit later. But it seems that this product (and its proponents) have caused at least one verifiable death.  I'll leave you with a little more from the same article...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At least one desperate person bet her life on these claims.....and lost&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y1LRN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="6308" LastEditDate="2018-07-10T03:41:45.807" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T03:41:45.807" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5967" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5968" CreationDate="2011-08-30T03:44:56.087" Score="12" ViewCount="1400" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was looking into Lasik vision correction surgery and came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politicsdaily.com/2011/02/10/is-lasik-eye-surgery-safe-fda-scientist-regrets-saying-yes/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article by a former member of the FDA, Dr. Morris Waxler&lt;/a&gt; where he states that he wishes he had never approved Lasik surgery:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the months and years after LASIK became ubiquitous at 25-year class reunions, stories of eye damage and subsequent depression, even suicides, surfaced. The surgery can, it turns out, induce dry eyes, halos, light sensitivity, night blindness, ghost images, keratectasia (corneal thinning and bulging) and many other serious damaging effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About Waxler, who was in charge of approving it, the article says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the nearly 10 years since he left the agency, Waxler, (now a regulatory consultant who has stayed involved in FDA product approvals) has come to particularly regret the LASIK decision. Unusual for a former regulator, particularly for someone with business before the agency, in 2010 Waxler went public with criticism about FDA's approval standards. A year ago he went on &amp;quot;Good Morning America&amp;quot; and told correspondent Lisa Stark, &amp;quot;I did the best we could ... but in hindsight it wasn't good enough.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last May, Waxler became more persistent. He considered LASIK eye surgery complications &amp;quot;already a major public health problem&amp;quot; and he said so in a letter to the ophthalmic organization, American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons. He told the organization's president the group was presenting data for a safety study in an &amp;quot;unethical&amp;quot; manner...Finally last month, Waxler filed a formal citizen's petition to his former government employer requesting the FDA withdraw approval for all LASIK devices and to issue a public health advisory for recalling the equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can these statements be verified? Is Lasik eye surgery so unsafe that all devices should be recalled? How many patients have had adverse effects so as to justify such a measure and deem that the procedure, as a whole, is unsafe? Have any factors been identified that present an alternative explanation for side effects (e.g. pre-existing conditions) other than issues with the method itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, can it be confirmed or denied whether or not (from the same article):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A committee of well-regarded LASIK experts (R. Doyle Stulting, M.D., P.h.D.; George O Waring III, M.D.; James J. Salz, M.D.; James McCulley, M.D.; Douglas Koch, M.D.; Jayne Weiss, M.D.; and Marian Macsai, M.D.,) responded to Waxler's claim: &amp;quot;We believe he has no reputable basis for such a claim since he did not produce the scientific evidence.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in, does Waxler have any evidence or does he, and the supporters of Lasik are in denial?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T11:40:26.427" Title="Is Lasik corrective eye surgery unsafe?" Tags="|medical-science|ophthalmology|surgery|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5967" CreationDate="2011-08-30T06:18:38.680" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certainly during the initial years the rate of problems (leading to deterioration of the patient or at least lack of success) was high. But from what I've hear it's improved over time.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lasiksurgerynews.com/news/lasik-risks-complications-2008.shtml&quot;&gt;http://www.lasiksurgerynews.com/news/lasik-risks-complications-2008.shtml&lt;/a&gt; mentions similar problem rates for various complications of 10-20% (with references to printed studies).&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usaeyes.org/lasik/faq/lasik-risk.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.usaeyes.org/lasik/faq/lasik-risk.htm&lt;/a&gt; otoh mentions only half a percent failure rate, which is either far more recent, doesn't include all things the other article includes, or both.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lasiksurgeryrx.com/lasik_risks.php&quot;&gt;http://lasiksurgeryrx.com/lasik_risks.php&lt;/a&gt; lists, without sources or risk factors, the complications that can occur.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2001-06-28-lasik.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2001-06-28-lasik.htm&lt;/a&gt; mentions 41.5% of patients in one study had trouble driving after LASIK (but doesn't tell whether the respondents were competent drivers before :) ).&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Here's a surgeon performing the procedure talking about his own experience as a practitioner (on his website where he sells it): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.levinsoneyeclinic.com/complications.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.levinsoneyeclinic.com/complications.htm&lt;/a&gt; mentions the risks, but no percentages.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From these, it looks to me like risk factors exist indeed but the number of serious complications has dropped over the years and can be further reduced through careful screening of patients and the use of qualified staff (both of which may not always happen under economic pressure).&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;As the same factors are mentioned seemingly independently by many sources (including practioners) we can assume that they're at least viable risks (even if for each the risk may be very low).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T06:18:38.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5969" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-30T07:14:10.820" Score="5" ViewCount="1435" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realise this might seem like a stupid question on the surface, but bear with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the back of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asiaone.com/Health/News/Story/A1Story20110828-296596.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; about 5 transplant-patients mistakenly receiving HIV-infected organs in a highly regarded Taiwanese hospital, I was wondering how high the risk is of contracting HIV from organs like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the article they say that the patients would be at higher risk of contracting HIV. However, I spoke to a colleague about this article and he said that as far as he knew the HIV-virus can't last for very long outside the human body with fresh blood and living cells. I was also under the impression that the virus could last only a day or so outside the body and I would think that as they keep the organs on ice it would not survive very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But like I said according to the article the hospital spokespeople said that the risk would be higher, so I'm inclined to believe them. Is there any proof or statistics regarding this? All I can find on the web are lists of what puts you at risk of getting HIV&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2439" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T14:21:19.773" Title="How high is the risk of contracting HIV from receiving infected organs?" Tags="|medical-science|hiv-aids|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5969" CreationDate="2011-08-30T09:24:41.217" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is agreed that HIV can't survive long outside of human body. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;HIV in the Environment&#xA;&#xA;Scientists and medical authorities agree that HIV does not survive&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;well in the environment, making the possibility of environmental&#xA;  transmission remote. HIV is found in varying concentrations or amounts&#xA;  in blood, semen, vaginal fluid, breast milk, saliva, and tears. (See&#xA;  below, Saliva, Tears, and Sweat.) In order to obtain data on the&#xA;  survival of HIV, laboratory studies have required the use of&#xA;  artificially high concentrations of laboratory-grown virus. Although&#xA;  these unnatural concentrations of HIV can be kept alive under&#xA;  precisely controlled and limited laboratory conditions, CDC studies&#xA;  have showned that drying of even these high concentrations of HIV&#xA;  reduces the number of infectious viruses by 90 to 99 percent within&#xA;  several hours. Since the HIV concentrations used in laboratory studies&#xA;  are much higher than those actually found in blood or other specimens,&#xA;  drying of HIV- infected human blood or other body fluids reduces the&#xA;  theoretical risk of environmental transmission to that which has been&#xA;  observed--essentially zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Incorrect interpretation of conclusions drawn from laboratory&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;studies have alarmed people unnecessarily. Results from laboratory&#xA;  studies should not be used to determine specific personal risk of&#xA;  infection because 1) the amount of virus studied is not found in human&#xA;  specimens or anyplace else in nature, and 2) no one has been&#xA;  identified with HIV due to contact with an environmental surface;&#xA;  Additionally, since HIV is unable to reproduce outside its living host&#xA;  (unlike many bacteria or fungi, which may do so under suitable&#xA;  conditions), except under laboratory conditions, it does not spread or&#xA;  maintain infectiousness outside its host.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HIV is sensitive to fluctuations in temperature and the presence of&#xA;  oxygen. One place that HIV has been know to survive in is drug&#xA;  injection syringes since these are airtight and often contain blood&#xA;  from the injector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.hk/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CCIQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fhivinsite.ucsf.edu%2Finsite%3Fpage%3Dask-01-10-20&amp;amp;ei=ZKlcTp7HDc_SiALwsKyzBQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFsdcAGQGdcJYzXNFS9VFYnPJk0UQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com.hk/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CCIQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fhivinsite.ucsf.edu%2Finsite%3Fpage%3Dask-01-10-20&amp;amp;ei=ZKlcTp7HDc_SiALwsKyzBQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFsdcAGQGdcJYzXNFS9VFYnPJk0UQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we can't say they are &quot;outside&quot; of the human body in the case you've mentioned.&#xA;What we know is that the organs were kept in low temperature, and concerning the effect of low temperature, take a look here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does temperature effect the survival of HIV?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HIV is very fragile and does not survive well outside the human body.&#xA;  HIV is inactivated by heat and dies after 30 minutes at 56EC&#xA;  (132.8EF). It is also highly susceptible to physical and chemical&#xA;  agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If properly stored, HIV is very stable at low temperatures. It can&#xA;  last 7-10 days at 4EC (39.2EF) and months to years at -70EC (-94EF).&#xA;  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stores purified&#xA;  virus preparations in liquid nitrogen (-200EC or -328EF). In all&#xA;  cases, the stability of HIV depends on the presence of the proper&#xA;  concentration&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.internethealthlibrary.com/Health-problems/HIV.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.internethealthlibrary.com/Health-problems/HIV.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is the first chance for human to know the survival ability of HIV in corpse, as there are no report for such cases till now:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although there have been no specific studies of HIV survival in&#xA;  corpses before or after embalming, no instances of HIV transmission&#xA;  have been reported from an exposure incurred in performing mortuary&#xA;  services. The chemical germicides in embalming fluids have been tested&#xA;  and found to completely inactivate HIV. CDC has also published&#xA;  occupational infection control guidelines that apply to mortuary&#xA;  workers, including embalmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.internethealthlibrary.com/Health-problems/HIV.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.internethealthlibrary.com/Health-problems/HIV.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2242" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T09:24:41.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5962" CreationDate="2011-08-30T13:51:11.797" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, open windows do not increase the chance of lightning striking a house--however it DOES allow lightning to more easily strike an object inside the house. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://transcripts.usatoday.com/Chats/transcript.aspx?c=154&quot;&gt;USAToday chat transcript&lt;/a&gt; with John Jensenius, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service and expert on lightning safety:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Warren, Ohio:&lt;/strong&gt; They say don't stand near a window when it's lightning&#xA;  outside. Does it make a difference whether the window is open or&#xA;  closed? Can lightning go through the glass? Isn't glass an insulator? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;John Jensenius:&lt;/strong&gt; It's better to be a few feet away from windows and&#xA;  doors. Glass is an insulator, but so is air. You're probably a little&#xA;  better off with the window closed, but it's more important to put a&#xA;  couple feet of air between you and the window. Both windows and doors&#xA;  can be made of or contain metal, so the glass may not make much&#xA;  difference. I know of several incidents of people being struck with&#xA;  their hand on the doorknob while peering outside at the storm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there is always a chance that lightning travels through the closed window, with lightning strikes you are always playing in the realm of probabilities and the best thing you can do is keep your body out of the potential path of any nearby lightning strikes. You could be injured by shards of glass from a shattering window but it is preferable to being part of a closed circuit between a thundercloud and the earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4616" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T13:51:11.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5951" CreationDate="2011-08-30T15:10:30.933" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Publicationsandstatistics/Publications/PublicationsPolicyAndGuidance/DH_092811&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UK Department of Health guidance&lt;/a&gt; was changed a couple of years ago to discourage hospital-wide bans for which there was never really any justification. The major worries are not electromagnetic interference but privacy and basic electrical safety (or even: what happens if patients unplug essential equipment to charge their phones?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The working presumption should be that patients will be allowed the widest possible use of mobile phones in hospitals, including on wards, where the local risk assessment indicates that such use would not represent a threat to patients’ own safety or that of others, the operation of electrically sensitive medical devices in critical care situations and the levels of privacy and dignity that must be the hallmark of all NHS care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report does record a handful of example of possible interference with devices, but few can be attributed with certainty to a mobile phone and several probably require a faulty medical device for phone interference to be a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T15:22:51.283" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T15:22:51.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="297" CreationDate="2011-08-30T15:38:22.313" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Realistically there is little to worry about from the mercury in a broken CFL&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;same sources&lt;/a&gt; as Russell Steen's post above, I conclude there is little to worry about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First many CFLs have a lot less than 4mg of mercury. Then only about 10% of the mercury is released when a bulb breaks (the rest is adsorbed onto the surfaces in the bulb and will go away with the broken glass). AS the source says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most mercury vapor inside fluorescent light bulbs becomes bound to the inside of the light bulb as it is used. EPA estimates that the rest of the mercury within a CFL – about 11 percent – is released into air or water when it is sent to a landfill, assuming the light bulb is broken&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you need to take into account the circulation of air in the room. His original calculations assume no air turnover and that all the mercury is released. Under more realistic assumptions the peak concentration in a room will be 0.4mg/27 cubic meters or about 0.015 mg/m3 or substantially less than even the strict &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/hesis/Documents/merc.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Californian standards&lt;/a&gt; from occupational exposure (i.e. how much you could be exposed to every day). Even this small level will decline rapidly as fresh air circulates through the room. So the worst case seems to involve lower than occupation standard exposure for a limited period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to worries about accumulation, there shouldn't be any. It is mercury vapour and will be swept away with the circulation of air in the room/house. Breaking a mercury thermometer and releasing &lt;em&gt;liquid&lt;/em&gt; mercury is much worse (for a start there might be 500mg of mercury and it will stick around for a while releasing vapour which may well build up to a dangerous level if the ventilation is not good). UK &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/854.aspx?CategoryID=87&amp;amp;SubCategoryID=873&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt; suggest, though, that even this is not a worry as long as it is handled sensibly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you break a mercury thermometer or light bulb, some liquid mercury may spill out, but probably very little. Liquid mercury can separate into small beads, which can roll some distance away. You may also be exposed to mercury vapour.&#xA;  However, this small amount of mercury is extremely unlikely to cause problems for your health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1194947392820&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;health protection agency source&lt;/a&gt; also offers reassurance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exposure to airborne mercury vapour at concentrations near 0.05 milligrams per cubic metre (mg m-3) may result in an onset of mild to moderate symptoms...The concentrations described above of mercury in air are 1000 to 40000 times greater than that which could be produced from the quantities of mercury released from a broken domestic fever thermometer in a room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the amounts released from a CFL bulb are 500-1000 times smaller than this, the immediate risks are probably very small. Moreover &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the mercury in a CFL is vapour so there is no liquid mercury to hang around once the air has circulated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really high levels of mercury vapour have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/hac/pha/pha.asp?docid=599&amp;amp;pg=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;occasionally been observed&lt;/a&gt; in domestic premises but only because large volumes of &lt;em&gt;liquid&lt;/em&gt; mercury have been dealt with badly (like by trying to use a vacuum cleaner which splits the blobs into smaller blobs and disperses them over a wider and warmer area over which air is flowing quickly leading to a drastic increase in the evaporation rate). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chemists often work safely with large volumes of mercury, but are careful to clean up spills and to keep good ventilation to keep the vapour levels low. But there is so little mercury in CFLs that they don't count as a significant hazard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2011-11-14T14:58:05.013" LastActivityDate="2011-11-14T14:58:05.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5959" CreationDate="2011-08-30T17:56:37.180" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dog Saliva:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/003193849090332X&quot;&gt;one study on sciencedirect.com&lt;/a&gt; suggests that canine saliva is &quot;bactericidal against Escherichia coli and Streptococcus canis but only slightly&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Health/story?id=1213870&quot;&gt;An article on ABC's 20/20&lt;/a&gt; reports that a dog's mouth is not cleaner than a human's mouth and the rapid healing of wounds observed in dogs is due to the constant licking removing dead tissue and stimulating circulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) lists &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/animals/dogs.htm&quot;&gt;a variety of infections that can be passed from dogs to humans&lt;/a&gt;, including: Campylobacter, Dipylidium, Giardia, Leptospira, Rabies, and Ringworm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2010/Projects/J2105.pdf&quot;&gt;a project submitted to the 2010 California State Science Fair&lt;/a&gt; comparing the antibacterial properties of dog saliva with Neosporin concludes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dog saliva may perhaps help slow the growth of bacteria for a little while, but it also may be adding its own bacteria when applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cat Saliva:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://familydoctor.org/online/famdocen/home/healthy/firstaid/bites/024.html&quot;&gt;FamilyDoctor.org explains&lt;/a&gt; that &quot;Cat-scratch disease is an infection caused by a type of bacteria [...] called Bartonella henselae and can be passed from a cat to a human&quot; through scratches, bites, or even by rubbing your eyes after petting a cat that has the bacteria on its fur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/53/suppl_2/ii37.pdf&quot;&gt;A research paper available from The Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy&lt;/a&gt; (jac.oxfordjournals.org) finds that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;P. multocida and other Pasteurella species are Gram-negative coccobacilli found in the oral cavity of many animals.  Bites, scratches or licking of open wounds by cats or dogs may result in cellulitis within hours to a few days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, an article titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pediatricsconsultantlive.com/display/article/1803329/1834273&quot;&gt;Osteomyelitis Associated With Cat-Scratch Disease&lt;/a&gt;&quot; from PediatricsConsultantLive.com concludes with this helpful tip:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition, caregivers should advise patients with open wounds to avoid contact with domestic animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While dog saliva has been shown to be bactericidal against Escherichia coli and Streptococcus canis, it is only slightly so again two specific bacteria.  No research was found supporting the hypothesis that cat saliva has any similar qualities.  There is much more evidence that suggests that dog and cat saliva applied to an open wound can transmit more bacteria than it will  kill.  My advice: wash your hands thoroughly with soap after playing with your pets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="328" LastEditDate="2011-08-30T18:42:51.600" LastActivityDate="2011-08-30T18:42:51.600" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5982" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-30T22:37:19.670" Score="25" ViewCount="2804" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just seen a referee use a coin toss to decide who will start a match which got me thinking, coins aren't perfectly symmetric. Our euro coins have the value on one side, a country specific image on the other side so does this change the heads/tails chance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving the possibility that it lands on its side out, is there a side I should bet on to have more than 50% chance to win?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="649" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:47:34.477" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:47:34.477" Title="Is a coin toss fair?" Tags="|physics|gambling|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5983" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-08-31T00:59:19.190" Score="9" ViewCount="1340" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110825105132.htm&quot;&gt;Science Daily summary of a recent paper published in Nature&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v476/n7361/full/nature10343.html&quot;&gt;abstract at Nature&lt;/a&gt;, a recent result indicates that cosmic rays play a larger role in cloud formation than was previously credited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/08/26/lawrence-solomon-science-now-settled/&quot;&gt;has been claimed&lt;/a&gt; to &quot;convincingly validate the Danes’ groundbreaking theory [that cosmic rays and the sun hold the key to the global warming debate].&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it? (Or, more reasonably, how &quot;big a deal&quot; are these results? If the findings are duplicated, would they imply dramatic changes in the models that predict global warming?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: To be clear, the claim I am interested in is this studies' import, not the legitimacy of the study itself. The claim, as I see it, is that this study overturns an assumption that is known to be foundational in the field; if the study is, in fact, strictly incremental and whose import is only parseable by experts in the field, &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; would be an answer. ( I suppose I could change the question to &quot;... do results overturn foundational assumptions of ...&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2011-08-31T18:37:49.480" LastActivityDate="2019-02-05T08:23:06.467" Title="Do the recent CLOUD results have significant implications for global warming?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5982" CreationDate="2011-08-31T02:01:05.483" Score="27" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a side I should bet on to have more than 50% chance to win?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, the asymmetries do not affect the fairness of the coin, if it is caught in the hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I draw this conclusion from: &lt;strong&gt;You Can Load a Die, But You Can't Bias a Coin&lt;/strong&gt;, Andrew Gelman, Deborah Nolan. The American Statistician. November 1, 2002, 56(4): 308-311. doi:&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.amstat.org/doi/abs/10.1198/000313002605&quot;&gt;10.1198/000313002605.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/diceRev2.pdf&quot;&gt;Full Paper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dice can be loaded—that is, one can easily alter a die so that the probabilities of landing on the six sides are dramatically unequal. However, it is not possible to bias a coin flip—that is, one cannot, for example, weight a coin so that it is substantially more likely to land “heads” than “tails” when flipped and caught in the hand in the usual manner. Coin tosses can be biased only if the coin is allowed to bounce or be spun rather than simply flipped in the air.&#xA;  [...]&#xA;  We explain this phenomenon by summarizing a physical argument made in earlier literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well as repeated experiments with students, they use a simple physical model to show that - as  angular momentum is conserved - any coin will spend half of its time heads-up and half tails-up. If the coin is spun or allowed to bounce, this model falls apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Fake double-headed coins exist. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://koinpro.tripod.com/Articles/TwoHeadedCoins.htm&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;] Also, magicians exist: Sleight of hand can be used to make the original coin vanish or for the  result to be read before the coin is revealed. [Sorry, only anecdotal evidence: I can do that. I can't quite manage to force a result based on the call in the air - I can't think fast enough to make it look fluid - but I see it as feasible with practice.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-08-31T08:21:20.567" LastActivityDate="2011-08-31T08:21:20.567" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5982" CreationDate="2011-08-31T03:54:33.803" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am able to toss any ordinary coin so that it gives my chosen result with about a 90% success probability, and so that it looks like an ordinary toss to an observer. The technique is easy, based the physics of rotating objects, and you can learn it yourself in the late Ed Jaynes excellent book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bayes.wustl.edu/etj/prob/book.pdf&quot;&gt;Probability Theory: The Logic of Science&lt;/a&gt;&quot; in chapter 10 &quot;Physics of 'random experiments'&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Therefore in order to know which face will be uppermost in your hand&#xA;  you have only to carry out the following procedure Denote by k a unit&#xA;  vector passing through the coin along its axis with its point on the &#xA;  heads side Now toss the coin with a twist so that k and n make an&#xA;  acute angle then catch it with your palm held at in a plane normal&#xA;  to n On successive tosses you can let the direction of n the&#xA;  magnitude of the angular momentum and the angle between n and k vary&#xA;  widely the tumbling motion will then appear entirely different to the&#xA;  eye on different tosses and it would require almost superhuman powers&#xA;  of observation to discover your strategy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your question, you should bet on whichever side you think the referee desires to favour to win the toss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1305" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T00:56:03.173" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T00:56:03.173" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5986" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5990" CreationDate="2011-08-31T03:57:58.337" Score="33" ViewCount="5926" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQexzNg_e9A&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; a &quot;brim&quot; is placed around a wind turbine and the power generated doubles. A simple static mechanism that doubles the efficiency of a turbine seems too good to be true. Is this a legitimate breakthrough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional links (but they all seem to be to non-primary-source articles) can be found by searching for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;site=&amp;amp;source=hp&amp;amp;q=wind+lens&amp;amp;pbx=1&amp;amp;oq=wind+lens&amp;amp;aq=f&amp;amp;aqi=g2g-v3&amp;amp;aql=&amp;amp;gs_sm=e&amp;amp;gs_upl=3174l4648l0l5232l9l9l0l0l0l0l196l1277l2.7l9l0&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&amp;amp;fp=4dd718d412d1fc11&amp;amp;biw=1366&amp;amp;bih=643&quot;&gt;&quot;wind lens&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="5128" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T16:01:55.233" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T22:10:55.277" Title="Is the &quot;wind lens&quot; a breakthrough in wind energy?" Tags="|energy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5986" CreationDate="2011-08-31T18:04:40.857" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes,&lt;/strong&gt; it appears to be significant and valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; due to the questions below on scale, I have emailed the author of the paper, Dr. Yuji Ohya, to request his input on any potential issues with the increased size that will be required for industrial applications. &lt;a href=&quot;http://pastebin.com/371fgn4k&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is the email&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched google scholar for the named professor in the video, Dr. Yuji Ohya (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://hyoka.ofc.kyushu-u.ac.jp/search/details/K001823/english.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;his web page on the Kyushu University site&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;amp;q=Yuji+Ohya&amp;amp;btnG=Search&amp;amp;as_sdt=0%2C24&amp;amp;as_ylo=&amp;amp;as_vis=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Searching for him there&lt;/a&gt; reveals that he is quite well published in areas of fluid mechanics and modeling/simulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, searching &quot;Yuji Ohya lens&quot; brought me to what appears to be his published work on this concept:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/3/4/634/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ohya Y., Karasudani T. A Shrouded Wind Turbine Generating High Output Power with Wind-lens Technology. Energies. 2010; 3(4):634-649.&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full text is available for download at that link. Notable quotes from the text follow below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Abstract:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have developed a new wind turbine system that consists of a diffuser shroud with a broad-ring brim at the exit periphery and a wind turbine inside it. The shrouded wind&#xA;  turbine with a brimmed diffuser has demonstrated power augmentation by a factor of about 2–5 compared with a bare wind turbine, for a given turbine diameter and wind speed. This is because a low-pressure region, due to a strong vortex formation behind the broad brim, draws more mass flow to the wind turbine inside the diffuser shroud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They begin with an discussion of &quot;nozzles&quot; vs. &quot;diffusers&quot; (pg. 636):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kBisw.png&quot; alt=&quot;diffuser vs. nozzle&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They present the characteristics of their modified diffuser (pg. 638):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xkdqh.png&quot; alt=&quot;modified diffuser&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also provide power generation data for a wind turbine only vs. one fitted with their diffuser/&quot;lens&quot; device (pg. 639):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TYNBG.png&quot; alt=&quot;power data&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a description and picture of their experimental setup (pg. 641):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9KSnz.png&quot; alt=&quot;experimental setup&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some summary points about the design (pg. 638):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The important features of this wind turbine equipped with a brimmed diffuser shroud are as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) Four-fivefold increase in output power compared to conventional wind turbines due to&#xA;  concentration of the wind energy (“wind-lens” technology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) Brim-based yaw control: The brim at the exit of the diffuser makes wind turbines equipped with a brimmed diffuser rotate following the change in the wind direction, like a weathercock. As a result, the wind turbine automatically turns to face the wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(3) Significant reduction in wind turbine noise: Basically, an airfoil section of the turbine blade, which gives the best performance in a low-tip speed ratio range, is chosen. Since the vortices generated from the blade tips are considerably suppressed through the interference with the boundary layer within the diffuser shroud, the aerodynamic noise is reduced substantially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(4) Improved safety: The wind turbine, rotating at a high speed, is shrouded by a structure and is also safe against damage from broken blades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(5) As for demerits, wind load to a wind turbine and structural weight are increased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to conclude, it appears as though this &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt;, indeed, valid research with documented results from actual experimentation. Regarding rebuttals, one may need to see if any appear citing this down the road. Honestly, though, as long as someone can replicate the trial, I don't see much to argue with -- it's power collected with and without the device. It either works or it doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T14:19:47.747" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T14:19:47.747" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5157" CreationDate="2011-08-31T19:40:48.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are currently no known steganographic watermarks and you can assume that if they were discovered they would be cracked by the hacking community or their existence would be advertised so that illegitimate users could protect themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adobe Photoshop outputs files in a wide range of formats and the process of embedding hidden steganographic watermarks would need to be tailored to each file format or a subset of the most popular formats (.jpg, .gif, etc.) could be chosen by Adobe. Then you need to understand that the process of hiding a watermark within a lossy jpeg image is significantly different from hiding it within a raw or lossless image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a lossy image you have the option of introducing bitmap data which can interpreted by a jpeg viewer as normal artifacts of the compression/decompression process. The amount of information you can hide is then dependent upon the size of the image/file. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say you want to track images produced by your software based on the license key. We could easily introduce a hashcode for a 24 bit license key such as {1234-5678-1234-5678-1234-5678} into a 120 kilobyte JPEG image with a reduction in image quality of something like 0.02% versus an unaltered JPEG. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With lossless image formats it becomes especially difficult to hide steganographic data within an image without tipping off users somehow. A gradient image acting as a control could be created by a user and then saved in all lossless formats where the individual color values of every pixel could be compared to the control image. A difference of even one bit between expected and actual color values could indicate something fishy going on and if you get something like 32 bits you could be looking at a hash of a license key or other data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems more likely to me that the watermarks would be introduced within the various filters and effects supplied by Adobe and targeted at professional images upwards of 1024x768 pixels. Rather than trying to embed steganographic data at brush-stroke level for effects such as burn/dodge you could have subtle variations in full-image filters such as color-balance to hide data that would not be detectable by end users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4616" LastEditorUserId="164" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T15:49:08.053" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T15:49:08.053" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-12-12T20:09:33.037" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5993" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="5994" CreationDate="2011-08-31T21:41:29.290" Score="12" ViewCount="5122" Body="&lt;p&gt;One argument used to support the idea that the age of the earth is on the order of 10,000 years old (the 'young earth hypothesis') is that radiocarbon dating is confounded by the fact that the levels are not stable, and that the concentration of carbon-14 in the atmosphere is still increasing in our current atmosphere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This argument is presented by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Hovind&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Kent Hovind&lt;/a&gt; and his ministry of Christian Science Evangelism in two writings posted at his website, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drdino.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(www.drdino.com)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drdino.com/wrong-assumptions-in-c-14-dating-methods/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wrong assumptions in C-14 dating methods&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drdino.com/carbon-dating/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Does carbon dating prove the earth is millions of years old?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In [2], Dr. Hovind states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Present testing shows the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere has been&#xA;  increasing since it was first measured in the 1950s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No sources were provided of course, thus I'm interested in knowing: Are the current levels of carbon-14 on the rise? and how can one test for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4669" LastEditorUserId="4573" LastEditDate="2011-11-03T16:44:52.133" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T16:44:52.133" Title="Is carbon-14 still increasing in the atmosphere?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5993" CreationDate="2011-08-31T23:13:12.243" Score="24" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Background&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two major &lt;strong&gt;sources&lt;/strong&gt; of 14C in the atmosphere:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;solar radiation&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;affected by sun spots (small magnitude, decadal time scales) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;earth's magnetic field can deflect solar radiation (effect has a larger magnitude and occurs on millennial time scale) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;nuclear weapons tests (large magnitude effect, can change quickly, affected by technology and politics)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also sources of CO2 that is depleted in 14C relative to the atmosphere. Atmospheric 14C can be reduced by the release of low 14C carbon, because this input dilutes the atmospheric signature. Because 14C has a half life of 5000 years, only 0.5^(age_x/5000) times the initial 14C will remain at age_x. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CO2 that is depleted in 14C comes from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The burning of fossil fuels is the most important source of 14C depleted CO2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Historically, increased soil temperatures and reduced glacial coverage have released depleted CO2 from soils&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The circulation of the ocean brings 'old' CO2 from the deep ocean to the surface, where it exchanges with 'new' CO2 in the atmosphere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two major &lt;strong&gt;sinks&lt;/strong&gt; of CO2 from the atmosphere, these sinks remove 14C CO2 in proportion to its atmospheric concentration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;photosynthesis (plant and algae), some of which is buried or sink in the ocean&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;being dissolved in the ocean&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the average time that a molecule of CO2 remains in the atmosphere is between 5 and 200 years &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-10-2.html#table-2-14&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(IPCC 2007 table 2.14)&lt;/a&gt;, so after an anomalous change, the concentration of 14C in the atmosphere will return to equilibrium with sources and sinks over time. This can be seen in first figure below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the figures below, the y axis is &amp;#916;14C. &amp;#916;14C is the per-mil (parts per thousand) deviation in the 14C content of CO2 relative to the pre-weapons testing atmosphere (c. 1950).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.c14dating.com/k12.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Further introduction&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.c14dating.com/bib.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;technical references&lt;/a&gt; can be found at Dr. Fiona Petchy's website, references with a global change emphasis can be found at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://biology.ufl.edu/radiocarbon/readings.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Radiocarbon in Earth System Science Short Course website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Answer&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[14C&lt;sub&gt;atm&lt;/sub&gt;] has been declining since the bomb spike&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;14C increased sharply (first figure) from the 1940s through the early 1960's due to the peak in nuclear tests. Since the atomic weapons ban treaty, atmospheric 14C levels have been steadily declining, but the rate of this decline has been slowing as atmospheric 14C reaches equilibrium with other sources and sinks. This is primarily the result of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the uptake of CO2 by the biosphere (plants, plankton) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;exchange with older CO2 in the ocean and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the release of CO2 from fossil fuels into the atmosphere (radiocarbon depleted in fossil fuels).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iqXiz.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A classic paper on this is Nydal and Lövseth (1983), who report records of 14C in the atmosphere - observed at a range of sites from 78N to 21S between 1960 to 1981. They demonstrate that the shape of the 14C 'bomb spike' is consistent across latitudes as well as the expected effects of atmospheric mixing between hemispheres and between the free atmosphere and the ocean surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measurements at the ocean surface are relatively lower because this is where CO2 from the atmosphere is being exchanged with CO2 from the ocean, which much older and more depleted on average. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;[14C_atm] continues to decline&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plenty of recent studies demonstrate that the decline continues to present. For example, Levin and Kromer (2004) provide a more recent analysis demonstrating that this trend continued into the 2000s:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gXY90.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The &lt;em&gt;looooong&lt;/em&gt; (50ky) view&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;14C has been declining over longer time scales as well, as explained by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/303/5655/202.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hughen et al 2004&lt;/a&gt;, resulting from a combination of changes in the earth's magnetic field, the release of 14C depleted CO2 from the deep ocean, and the coupling of atmospheric 14C-CO2 uptake by plants and old C release from soils that occurred during glacial retreat from 12ky ago to present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For consistency with the above figures (keeping time from left to right), the direction of the x-axis in the figure below (years before present) is reversed. &lt;a href=&quot;http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/metadata/noaa-recon-6315.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Original data available from NOAA&lt;/a&gt;. You can see the decline in 14C_atm that has accompanied the melting of the ice sheets (the last glacial maximum occurred approximately 20-25kya). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dJ9iZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/303/5655/202.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hughen, K.; Lehman, S.J.; Southon, J.R.; Overpeck, J.T.; Marchal, O.; Herring, C.; Turnbull, J. 2004. 14C Activity and Global Carbon Cycle Changes over the Past 50,000 Years. Science 303(5655)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nydal, R., and K. Lövseth (1983), Tracing Bomb 14C in the Atmosphere 1962–1980, J. Geophys. Res., 88(C6), 3621–3642, doi:10.1029/JC088iC06p03621.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/cent-verm.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Levin, I., B. Kromer, H. Schoch-Fischer, M. Bruns, M. Münnich, D. Berdau, J.C. Vogel, and K.O. Münnich, 1994. δ14CO2 record from Vermunt. In Trends: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/volltexte/2006/6745/pdf/LevinRAD2004.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Levin, I., Kromer, B., 2004. The tropospheric and delta 14C level in mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere (1959–2003). Radiocarbon 46, 1261–1272&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="238" LastEditorUserId="238" LastEditDate="2011-11-03T15:04:14.937" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T15:04:14.937" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5993" CreationDate="2011-09-01T01:40:17.623" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the secondary question 'How do you test for this', the simple answer is 'you count the percentage of radiocarbon atoms in a sample of air. Because there is not a great record of air (the amount in ice cores is too small for radiometric analysis), researchers often use plant material that was produced in a known year, reflecting the level of radiocarbon in the atmosphere when it was fixed by the plant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;what is measured if air is not available?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wines (Burchuladze et al 1989; Schonhofer, 1992; Palstra et al 2008) and tree rings (Suess 1955) have been commonly used as proxies for atmospheric radiocarbon content at the time the plant material was produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a comparison of 14C in wines (solid) and atmospheric (dotted) samples from  Burchuladze et al (1989):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/he5yP.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;how is it measured&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The machine used to count the proportion of 14C is called an Accelerator Mass Spectrometer, an image from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ocregister.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Orange County Register&lt;/a&gt; is shown below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dsnh0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;references&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Burchuladze et al (1989). Anthropogenic 14C variations in Atmospheric CO2 and Wines. Radiocarbon 31(3) 771-776&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Palstra, S. W. L., U. Karstens, H.-J. Streurman, and H. A. J. Meijer (2008), Wine ethanol 14C as a tracer for fossil fuel CO2 emissions in Europe: Measurements and model comparison, J. Geophys. Res., 113, D21305&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schonhofer, Franze (1992) 14C in Austrian Wine and Vinegar. Radiocarbon 34(3) 768:771&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suess, H. E. (1955), Radiocarbon concentration modern wood, Science, 122, 415–417.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4671" LastEditorUserId="4671" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T01:51:51.093" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T01:51:51.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5983" CreationDate="2011-09-01T02:05:02.773" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Low-level clouds form around particles called &quot;cloud condensation nuclei&quot; (CCN). CCNs, themselves form around aerosols. According to the the CLOUD paper (Kirkby et. al), cosmic rays increase aerosol nucleation. If increasing aerosol nucleation increases CCN formation, and CCN formation increases cloud formation, then increasing cosmic rays would increase cloud cover, cooling the Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the media reporting around this story, such as the linked article in the Financial Post, claim that the paper says that cosmic rays are the causing of global warming. To get from this paper to this result, it would require:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That an increase in aerosol nucleation increases CCNs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That an increase in CCNs increases low-level cloud cover&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That there be a downwards trend in cosmic rays.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no such trend in cosmic rays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://neutronm.bartol.udel.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bartol Neutron Monitor, University of Delaware&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cosmicrays.oulu.fi/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Oulu Neutron Monitor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.mps.mpg.de/dokumente/publikationen/solanki/r47.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Krivova and Solanki, 2003&lt;/a&gt; [PDF]-  figure 8 (which also shows a lack of correlation between temperature and cosmic ray flux) (&lt;a href=&quot;http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2003ESASP.535..275K&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mirror&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/ray_surge.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA&lt;/a&gt; - which in fact says  that cosmic rays are increasing, the opposite of the trend required for cosmic ray flux to be a cause of warming.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6ZA2c.png&quot; alt=&quot;cosmic rays input&quot;&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also another hitch. It's not yet clear that aerosol nucleation is a limiting factor for the formation of CCNs. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/4001/2011/acp-11-4001-2011.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snow-Kropla et. al. (2011)&lt;/a&gt; found that the difference in concentration of CCNs between the solar minimum and maximum (which are the high and low points for cosmic rays, respectively) was less than 0.2%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Kirkby et. al. paper does provide part of the evidence you'd need for establishing a link between cosmic rays and global temperatures, but you'd also need evidence of a stronger link between nucleation and cloud condensation nuclei. So I'd definitely say it is relevant to climate research - but it's relevance is currently in the technical literature. Meanwhile, without a negative change in the rate of cosmic rays being received, they cannot be responsible for the observed change in temperatures. &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VfPM2.gif&quot; alt=&quot;observed temperature change&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="46077" LastEditDate="2019-02-05T08:23:06.467" LastActivityDate="2019-02-05T08:23:06.467" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="5997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5983" CreationDate="2011-09-01T02:33:10.497" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's premature to draw &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; conclusion (and i voted to close), as this research has just been released.  However if you must draw a conclusion, CERN is a reliable source, has confirmed the research, and as they generally support AGW theory can be said to be not biased against AGW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/downloads/CLOUD_SI_press-briefing_29JUL11.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CERN&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I]t is clear that the treatment of aerosol formation in climate models will need to be substantially revised, since all models assume that nucleation is caused by these vapours  and water alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's up to you to draw a conclusion, but I do not logically see how one can hold the position that climate models need to be substantially revised, but this will have no impact on the results .... unless the opinions, I mean results, are predetermined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also of note here is that CERN isn't saying that it will have a significant effect, or what direction (in regards of supporting AGW) that effect will take.  All they are saying is that things need to be substantially revised.  Substantial revision = significant implications.  What those implications are will not be known until more research is performed.  What was thought to be a &quot;known&quot; just became a very large &quot;unknown&quot; and that shakes things up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T12:23:42.310" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T12:23:42.310" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5998" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-01T06:33:04.537" Score="31" ViewCount="38945" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's this message spreading virally over the internet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Read This Message.....!!!! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to Detect Hidden Camera in Trial Room?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In front of the trial room take your mobile and make sure that mobile&#xA;  can make calls........ Then enter into the trail room, take your&#xA;  mobile and make a call..... If u can't make a call......!!!! There is&#xA;  a hidden camera...... This is due to the interference of fiber optic&#xA;  cable during the signal transfer......&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please forward this to your friends to educate this issue to the&#xA;  public......To prevent our innocent ladies from HIDDEN&#xA;  CAMERA...........&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pinhole Cameras in Changing Rooms of Big Bazaar, Shoppers Stop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few days ago, I received this text message: Please don't use Trial&#xA;  room of BIG BAZAAR there are pinhole cameras to make MMS of young&#xA;  girls. So, please forward to all girls. Also forward to all boys who&#xA;  have sisters and girlfriends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't be shy in forwarding this message. Because its about protecting&#xA;  the integrity of all girls &amp;amp; ladies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HOW TO DETECT A 2-WAY MIRROR?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When we visit toilets, bathrooms, hotel rooms, changing rooms, etc.,&#xA;  How many of you know for sure that the seemingly ordinary mirror&#xA;  hanging on the wall is a real mirror, or actually a 2-way mirror I.e.,&#xA;  they can see you, but you can't see them. There have been many cases&#xA;  of people installing 2-way mirrors in female changing rooms or&#xA;  bathroom or bedrooms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is very difficult to positively identify the surface by just&#xA;  looking at it. So, how do we determine with any amount of certainty&#xA;  what type of Mirror we are looking at?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONDUCT THIS SIMPLE TEST:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Place the tip of your fingernail against the reflective surface and if&#xA;  there is a GAP between your fingernail and the image of the nail, then&#xA;  it is a GENUINE mirror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, if your fingernail DIRECTLY TOUCHES the image of your nail,&#xA;  then BEWARE, IT IS A 2-WAY MIRROR! (There may be someone seeing you&#xA;  from the other side). So remember, every time you see a mirror, do the&#xA;  &quot;fingernail test.&quot; It doesn't cost you anything. It is simple to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a really good thing to do. The reason there is a gap on a real&#xA;  mirror, is because the silver is on the back of the mirror UNDER the&#xA;  glass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whereas with a two-way mirror, the silver is on the surface. Keep it&#xA;  in mind! Make sure and check every time you enter in hotel rooms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Share this with your sisters, wife, daughters, friends, colleagues,&#xA;  etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pass this message to all Ur friends in the Contacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of web-sites that have picked up and publish the claims include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.911oz.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=a3bd02ecabd388c3cdb5c64f14e1d864&amp;amp;t=10872&quot;&gt;911oz.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citehr.com/324032-how-detect-hidden-camera-trial-rooms-must-see.html#axzz1Wi5lKoK2&quot;&gt;citehr forum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The essence of the message is that, you can detect a hidden camera in trial rooms simply by attempting to make a call from inside the room. If the call fails, there probably is the camera in the room. They say this happens because of &quot;interference of fiber optic cable during signal transfer&quot;. I am unable to understand this phenomenon. Does this test actually work? If yes, how? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1866" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:48:28.197" LastActivityDate="2021-12-29T05:51:36.203" Title="Can you detect a hidden camera in a trial room/changing room with your phone?" Tags="|mobile-phones|photography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="5999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1101" CreationDate="2011-09-01T12:43:58.063" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Elephants have been known to &lt;a href=&quot;http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19941023&amp;amp;slug=1937416&quot;&gt;murder rhinoceroses&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rhino killings stopped, and the case appears closed. But&#xA;  scientists are left to figure out the most baffling question of all:&#xA;  What motivated these elephants to behave in such a savage and&#xA;  uncharacteristic fashion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The answers they are coming up with would not surprise criminology&#xA;  students in the United States. They also offer no real assurances that&#xA;  the rhinos are out of danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the late 1970s Pilanesberg became a pioneer in the restocking of&#xA;  animals. Baby elephants that would have been marked for slaughter in&#xA;  other parks (as part of the annual cull to keep elephant populations&#xA;  manageable) were moved instead to Pilanesberg along with two adult&#xA;  females to care for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mothers normally drive male elephants from the herd once they reach&#xA;  adulthood. Males start drifting away around age 15, eventually linking&#xA;  up with other groups of male elephants led by a patriarch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But now that Pilanesberg's elephants are reaching adolescence, there&#xA;  are no adult males for them to follow. Thus, they have become juvenile&#xA;  delinquents deprived of adult supervision or role models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There are no adult bulls around to keep them in check,&quot; Stuart-Hill&#xA;  said. &quot;So they're highly aggressive and are testing their strength on&#xA;  other animals.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He prefers a biological explanation: the sudden surge of hormones in&#xA;  adolescent elephants that produces aggressive behavior normally&#xA;  controlled by older males.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If he is right, the killings might have stopped only because the&#xA;  mating season ended. He conceded that three innocent elephants might&#xA;  have been killed and that the problem could resurface next year when&#xA;  the mating season resumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The white rhino, hunted to the brink of extinction earlier this&#xA;  century by humans, then would be facing a new threat to its existence&#xA;  from bands of unruly, juvenile-delinquent elephants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T12:43:58.063" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5969" CreationDate="2011-09-01T12:54:09.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6010a1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;can get HIV from transplants&lt;/a&gt;.  The US CDC recommends thorough screening of donors closer to the transplant date, due to this exact case where a donor contracted the virus between the time of initial screening and the transplant date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/prevention/reduce-your-risk/blood-transfusions-organ-donation/#organ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, there were four cases of transmission in 2007 from organ transplant.  Based on statistics from &lt;a href=&quot;http://donatelife.net/understanding-donation/statistics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, there were around 28,000 organ transplants in 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes it can happen, no it's not likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4674" LastEditorUserId="4674" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T14:21:19.773" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T14:21:19.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-01T13:05:43.443" Score="15" ViewCount="817" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot that goes into a statistic that can go wrong, between collection, data, etc.  This makes me rather skeptical of claims like the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/us-newborn-mortality-rate-higher-40-countries/story?id=14420009&quot;&gt;US Newborn Mortality Rate Higher than 40 Countries&lt;/a&gt; which cites this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001080&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the rate really higher, or are we just seeing an artifact of the wide disparity in the way the source data is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gfmer.ch/Medical_education_En/Live_birth_definition.htm&quot;&gt;initially defined and collected&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4674" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2011-09-02T22:19:22.170" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T12:04:53.207" Title="Is the US Newborn Mortality Rate higher than 40 Countries?" Tags="|medical-science|united-states|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6002" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6040" CreationDate="2011-09-01T13:09:14.887" Score="24" ViewCount="11565" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine insists that downing honey by the heaping tablespoon at the first sign of a cold will alleviate the symptoms, shorten the duration of the cold, or prevent it entirely - any and all of the above. I have found a few sites online (that are rinky-dinky to the point where they aren't worth linking to) that tout honey similarly as the magical cold cure. Is it really better than pharmaceutical remedies? If not, is it better than &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; using a remedy at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4254" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T11:32:51.630" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T09:06:23.483" Title="Does honey cure or alleviate the symptoms of a common cold?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|common-cold|honey|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5993" CreationDate="2011-09-01T13:41:18.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;C-14 has error margins of a few thousand ans is accurate only up to 50.000 years. There are a few cases where the results are inconsistent, and these are the only experiments that are mentioned by your source or creationists generally. For example the The (2300 year old) mollusk  incident is explained in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/141/3581/634.abstract?maxtoshow=&amp;amp;HITS=10&amp;amp;hits=10&amp;amp;RESULTFORMAT=&amp;amp;searchid=1&amp;amp;FIRSTINDEX=0&amp;amp;volume=141&amp;amp;firstpage=634&amp;amp;resourcetype=HWCIT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;full detail by Keith and Anderson (1963)&lt;/a&gt;, and has no impact on the general reliability of carbon dating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with the worst kind of error margin applied to some of the older datings, it's nowhere near the proposed 6000-10000 years, creationists talk about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to paleontologist Niles Eldredge (1982:103), there have been thousands of dating tests performed by independent laboratories and a wide variety of radioisotopes. Virtually all of the results correlate with evolutionary expectations. The comparatively few anomalies in radiometric dating tend to vanish when the samples are reanalyzed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using carbon-14 to find out the age of the world is unsuited, as the upper-age-limit is about 50.000 years. But there are other radioisotopes that allows &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating#Modern_dating_methods&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;more accurate dating for dating really old material&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists used &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-lead_dating&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Uranium-lead dating&lt;/a&gt; to specify the age of the earth. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Earth#Why_meteorites_were_used&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Meteorids&lt;/a&gt; have been tested undependently and the result is an age of about 4.54 Billion years. Of course, scientists can't pin the origin of earth down to a single year, as the error margins are about 1.2%, that means ±50 Million years. That sounds like a lot but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few million years sounds like a huge error, but a couple of million years one way or the other is a small error compared with the huge age calculated. Saying '380 million years plus or minus two million' is like thinking back to April from December and saying you can't remember whether something happened on the 19th, 20th, or 21st. (Eldredge 1982:103)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Berra TM. 1990. Evolution and the Myth of Creation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Keith MS and Anderson GM. 1963. Radiocarbon dating: fictitious results with mollusk shells. Science 141:634.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4673" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T13:41:18.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6004" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6006" CreationDate="2011-09-01T13:41:36.067" Score="7" ViewCount="1209" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard of the claim that Persian rugs (especially the pre-1950's, hand-woven kind) actually appreciate in value the more they are used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.internetrugs.com/blog/maintaining-oriental-rugs/&quot;&gt;For example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have seen that in the Middle East some new rugs are thrown into the streets for “aging,” where they are driven over by trucks and camels alike. They come through the ordeal looking much improved. Rugs are, as they say, forgiving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intuitively, I would think that the more people walk on a carpet, the more it becomes damaged, or at least would wear out over time, which would do just the opposite to its value. Indeed, &lt;a href=&quot;http://orientalrugmerchant.com/whatsmyrugworth.htm&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; estimates how much a rug is devalued based on wear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this simply sales puffery, or is there validity to the claim that walking on rugs increases their value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4677" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T14:01:32.067" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T07:08:40.840" Title="Do Persian rugs become more valuable the more they are walked on?" Tags="|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6004" CreationDate="2011-09-01T14:56:27.770" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Damaging the rugs does not increase their value per-se.  However &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rugs-oriental.net/antique-turkish-rugs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;antiques are worth more&lt;/a&gt;, and this is one of many techniques that could be used to forge up an &quot;antique&quot;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bonhams.com/cgi-bin/public.sh/pubweb/publicSite.r?sContinent=usa&amp;amp;Screen=carpets2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Old rugs are popular&lt;/a&gt;, so anything that can be done to make a rug look older is going to help increase it's sale price. Fake antiques of many kinds &lt;a href=&quot;http://property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/interiors/article4039918.ece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;often fool even the experts&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T14:56:27.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5983" CreationDate="2011-09-01T15:08:24.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bad Astronomer (Phil Plait) discusses this in a recent blog post of his.  In short, while cosmic rays do increase the amount of aerosol particles, it is not significant enough to cause cloud formation.  The post can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/08/31/no-a-new-study-does-not-show-cosmic-rays-are-connected-to-global-warming/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4178" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T15:08:24.803" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6008" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-09-01T15:44:31.783" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T15:44:31.783" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T15:44:31.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6009" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-09-01T15:44:31.783" Score="0" Body="this tag is for questions about scientific research, not for questions requesting scientific research. " OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T15:44:31.783" LastActivityDate="2011-09-01T15:44:31.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6010" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-07-31T21:41:41.450" Score="49" ViewCount="24363" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any consensus as to how many words are in the average adult's vocabulary? Over the years, I've come across various factoids and blurbs online and in magazine articles that have made statements like, &quot;The average adult has a vocabulary of 20,000 words.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if there is a consensus, how was such a number arrived at? Is the &quot;20,000 words&quot; claim (or whatever it happens to be) just a guesstimate or are these numbers arrived at in a more mechanical and, ideally, reproducible procedure? Have then been any formal studies in this vein?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" OwnerDisplayName="Scott Mitchell" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-09-01T16:33:32.410" LastActivityDate="2020-08-22T03:06:48.343" Title="Are there 20,000 English words in the average adult's vocabulary?" Tags="|language|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6010" CreationDate="2011-07-31T23:36:02.563" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I reckon this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.balancedreading.com/vocabulary.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;site&lt;/a&gt; states it pretty well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nagy and Anderson (1984) estimated that an average high school senior knows 45,000 words, but other researchers have estimated that the number is much closer to 17,000 words (D'Anna, Zechmeister, &amp;amp; Hall, 1991) or 5,000 words (Hirsh &amp;amp; Nation, 1992).  Surely these dramatically different estimates depend upon the three questions described above, namely, what does it mean to &quot;know&quot; a word, what counts as a &quot;word,&quot; and who counts as &quot;average?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can't really make a definite statement about this. The statistics provided in the magazines and stuff are only estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2382" OwnerDisplayName="Thursagen" LastActivityDate="2011-07-31T23:36:02.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6010" CreationDate="2011-08-01T01:21:49.460" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The folks at &lt;a href=&quot;http://testyourvocab.com/&quot;&gt;testyourvocab.com&lt;/a&gt; are trying to find out just that. You don't have to fill out their test. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://testyourvocab.com/faq.php&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://testyourvocab.com/details.php&quot;&gt;details&lt;/a&gt; page cover what you're looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4684" OwnerDisplayName="prash" LastActivityDate="2011-08-01T01:21:49.460" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6010" CreationDate="2011-08-30T07:29:33.253" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;NO&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Details:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few problems with &lt;strong&gt;using a dictionary to estimate vocabulary size&lt;/strong&gt; which Thorndike pointed out as early as 1924 in &lt;em&gt;The Vocabularies of School Pupils&lt;/em&gt;. In short, using a dictionary will always result in an overestimation, and using bigger dictionaries will lead to even larger overestimations. This phenomenon is known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=6_nlKlWmpv0C&amp;amp;pg=PA6&amp;amp;lpg=PA6&amp;amp;dq=big%20dictionary%20effect&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=Z0YTA-mrpr&amp;amp;sig=qc_OGQ4ZqGlqAmivTQ-8tqnZrmo&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=J3FdTtyjAc7xrQeE25yqDw&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;ved=0CBUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=big%20dictionary%20effect&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;the big dictionary effect&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;testyourvocab&lt;/strong&gt; site runs into related problems. Word selection is based on headwords, leading to the dictionary-based problems noted above. It also fails to use pseudowords to compensate for humans' uncanny ability to &lt;em&gt;overestimate their own ability&lt;/em&gt;, a.k.a. illusory superiority. The inclusion of pseudowords on a checklist (yes/no) test is generally considered (e.g. Eyckmans (2004) &lt;em&gt;Measuring receptive vocabulary size&lt;/em&gt;) to be the only way to make the test reasonably reliable because it ensures that a &lt;em&gt;minimum&lt;/em&gt; level of word knowledge is enforced when claiming knowledge (i.e. one can &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; identify the form of the word).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other problems. Which level of word knowledge do you set as the cut off point for accepting that a word is part of someone's mental lexicon? Simply form identification (I've seen it before, but I have no idea what it means)? Full productive use (I can use this word appropriately in any context without hesitation)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project at &lt;a href=&quot;http://my.vocabularysize.com&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;vocabularysize.com&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is attempting to refine measurement techniques as well as establish norms. One unique aspect of this project is that they are trying to measure different aspects of word knowledge separately and then later combine them to come up with a more accurate measure of vocabulary size. For example, when testing the word &lt;em&gt;nation&lt;/em&gt;, most people would assume that &lt;em&gt;national&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;nationalistic&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;antirenationalisation&lt;/em&gt;, etc are also known because of normal morphological processes involved in creating the related words. However, morphological awareness grows just as vocabulary size does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an unlikely example to illustrate: if two people know the same 5,000 base words, the one with the ability to recognise the most common 100 affixes in English is going to have a smaller vocabulary size than the one who knows the most common 200 affixes in English. This is an oversimplified example because it implies that measuring word types (unique forms) is more valid than word families (base word + inflections + derivations), which is not a particularly useful way of measuring, but you get the idea. One's mental lexicon can't be measured just in terms of '&lt;em&gt;how many words&lt;/em&gt;'. It must be measured by looking at a variety of aspects dealing with knowledge of form, meaning, collocation, register, syntactic roles &amp;amp; constraints, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your question directly, &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;. There are too many problems defining concepts such as &lt;em&gt;word&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; to confidently state something like &quot;&lt;em&gt;There are x number of words in your vocabulary&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. What is more likely is to rate someone's vocabulary abilities, in terms of recognising various aspects of word knowledge or using those aspects productively, against age-based norms. There's also interesting work in psycholinguistics with reaction times in lexical decision tasks which hint at the interconnectiveness of one's mental lexicon which could also be used to rank subjects. Both approaches, though, would be more akin to standardised test scores which serve to rank rather than measure absolutely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how was such a number arrived at? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a variety of methodologies, most centred on sampling from dictionaries which is unreliable. Despite early knowledge of this problem (Thorndike 1924), vocabulary size tests which have sprung up over the last 100 years have often tended to use this methodology. This is one reason why there are so many estimates which vary so widely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good overview of the issues involved in accurately measuring vocabulary size can be found in Nation, I.S.P. (1993) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/staff/Publications/paul-nation/1993-Vocab-size-dictionaries.pdf&quot;&gt;Using dictionaries to estimate vocabulary size: essential, but rarely followed, procedures&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Language Testing&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;10&lt;/em&gt;(1), 27-40. The most important points are that great pains must be taken to avoid oversampling from higher frequency words which tends to happen when using dictionaries as a source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the &quot;20,000 words&quot; claim (or whatever it happens to be) just a guesstimate or are these numbers arrived at in a more mechanical and, ideally, reproducible procedure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tests are more rigorous and valid than others. Measuring the vocabulary size of infants and very small children, for example, has seen very good gains in precision and accuracy, mostly because a fairly complete list of all words they could possibly know can be constructed. This becomes impossible as one learns more words. Most claims of adult vocabulary size are based on reproducible procedures, but the variance in estimates can usually be traced back to differences in defining the concept of &lt;em&gt;word&lt;/em&gt; and the level of word knowledge tested. Remember, early IQ tests were basically vocabulary size tests, so there are many attempts out there which have norms, validation studies, etc. Many of them are quite useful as a ranking or discriminating measure, but are less useful to answer the more academic question of absolute vocabulary size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Have then been any formal studies in this vein?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, lots. Some of the first were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Holden, E. S. (1875). &lt;a href=&quot;http://my.vocabularysize.com/assets/images/references/Holden_%281875%29_The_number_of_words_used_in_speaking_and_writing_English.jpg&quot;&gt;On the number of words used in speaking and writing&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Bulletin of the Philosophical Society of Washington&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;2&lt;/em&gt;, 16-21, 28.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kirkpatrick, E. A. (1891). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/1766135&quot;&gt;Number of Words in an Ordinary Vocabulary&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;18&lt;/em&gt;(446), 107–108.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other important studies include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;D’Anna, C. A., Zechmeister, E. B., &amp;amp; Hall, J. W. (1991). Toward a meaningful definition of vocabulary size. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Reading Behavior: A Journal of Literacy&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;23&lt;/em&gt;(1), 109-122.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dupuy, H. J. (1974). The rationale, development and standardization of a basic word vocabulary test. &lt;em&gt;US Govt Printing Office, Washington DC&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Schonell, F. J., Meddleton, I. G., &amp;amp; Shaw, B. A. (1956). &lt;em&gt;A study of the oral vocabulary of adults&lt;/em&gt;. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seashore, R. H. (1933). The measurement and analysis of extent of vocabulary. &lt;em&gt;Psychological Bulletin&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;30&lt;/em&gt;, 709-710.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seashore, R. H., &amp;amp; D., E. L. (1940). The measurement of individual differences in general English vocabularies. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Educational Psychology&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;31&lt;/em&gt;, 14-38.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've got a list of 30-40 studies, so I won't bore you with the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In closing, perhaps the reason why measuring vocabulary size and debates about it have persisted for so long is that early IQ tests were essentially vocabulary size tests and people still tend to equate knowledge of arcane or obscure words as a sign of intelligence or other socially desirable traits. Although there is some correlation between vocabulary size and other traits, the strength of that correlation is often not as strong as people would assume, and it also doesn't imply any sort of causality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Full disclosure: I'm part of the vocabularysize.com project&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4686" LastActivityDate="2011-08-31T01:26:04.873" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6016" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-01T16:39:52.827" Score="7" ViewCount="12227" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DLrVJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have seen this image on the web or in an email with the following description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientific research showed that children can’t recognise erotic scenes. Instead they see 9 dolphins. On the other hand, adult’s mind is rather “corrupted” so adult person may have problems spoting 9 dolphins at first eye glaze. If you have trouble spoting dolphins in the first 6 seconds, then your mind is heavily corrupted, and you are seriously obsessed with sex!&#xA;  …better go and practice with easier examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a pervert test? If it's not, what's the best way to refute the claim? The beauty of this test is that trying to refute it makes you look like a pervert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4682" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T10:49:13.350" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T16:12:42.077" Title="Is Sandro Del-Prete's &quot;Message d'Amour des Dauphins&quot; a pervert test?" Tags="|psychology|optical-illusions|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6017" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="37512" CreationDate="2011-09-01T17:12:10.577" Score="17" ViewCount="3777" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard radio car commercials and other sources state that a vehicle's windshield provides most of a car's structural integrity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that the company that owns the commercial is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marksmobileglass.com/&quot;&gt;Mark's Mobile Glass&lt;/a&gt;, but I'm not 100% sure.  I'm also not sure on where to look to find the commercial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their web-site gives a slightly different claim: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q: What can be as important to auto safety as seat belts, air bags and anti-lock brakes? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A: A windshield.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A windshield gives you protection from wind, rain and debris. But did you know that auto glass can save lives by preventing the driver and passengers from being thrown out of a vehicle in a collision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windshield&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; repeats the main claim with insufficient referencing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Modern, glued-in windshields contribute to the vehicle's rigidity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the adhesive bond fails at any point on the glass it can reduce the effectiveness of the air bag and substantially compromise the structural integrity of the roof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that proves or disproves that any conventional car uses the windshield for structural integrity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4683" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-09-02T04:01:06.747" LastActivityDate="2017-11-10T13:48:43.623" Title="Does a windshield provide most of a car's integrity?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6019" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6022" CreationDate="2011-09-01T20:22:18.763" Score="21" ViewCount="5960" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is often said that if one were to add surfactants to water ducks would not be able to float as their feathers would start soaking water instead of repelling it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone actually tried this experiment? What were the results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastActivityDate="2017-03-13T01:53:05.407" Title="Do ducks sink in soapy water?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6002" CreationDate="2011-09-01T21:07:41.170" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cough is certainly a symptom of a cold, and honey has been found to help with that: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/honey/AN01799&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/honey/AN01799&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/pharyngitis-000129.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/pharyngitis-000129.htm&lt;/a&gt; both cite a 2007 (peer reviewed and published) &lt;a href=&quot;http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/571638&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, in the study, honey appeared to be as effective as the cough suppressant dextromethorphan in typical over-the-counter doses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2017-08-15T09:06:23.483" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T09:06:23.483" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6019" CreationDate="2011-09-01T22:23:02.370" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;One &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/contaminants/documents/COWDFBirdMortality.pdf&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; (the only one I could find in support), does claim that surfactants will change the surface tension and result in drowning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a bird comes into contact with  water containing surfactants, the&#xA;  surfactant will reduce the surface  tension of the water; thus,&#xA;  allowing  water to penetrate through the feathers  and onto the skin. &#xA;  This compromises  the insulation properties of the feathers  and&#xA;  subjects the bird to hypothermia.   The loss of water repellency by&#xA;  the  feathers due to reductions in surface  tension will cause the&#xA;  bird to become  water logged and the loss of buoyancy  will cause the&#xA;  bird to drown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However all of my other readings indicate that soap alone will not drown a bird (although oil will).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relation of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/ON/v011n04/p0297-p0306.pdf&quot;&gt;uropygial gland and flotation is not definitive&lt;/a&gt; and there are also other mechanisms which make ducks float, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://animals.howstuffworks.com/birds/duck-float1.&quot;&gt;hollow bones, feather structure, and lung air retention&lt;/a&gt;.  It's very unlikely that a little soap on the water would make one sink. For instance, diving is accomplished by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isope.org/publications/proceedings/ISOPE/ISOPE%202011/data/papers/11TPC-1247Yang.pdf&quot;&gt;quick variations to plume density&lt;/a&gt; and exhalation from the lungs, not adjustment of the oil concentration on the feathers.  Indeed, oil is more likely to drown a duck than soap, as oil does not create the same plumed air pockets, thus &lt;a href=&quot;http://alaska.fws.gov/media/unalaska/Oil%20Spill%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf&quot;&gt;destroying bouyancy&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, while soap won't drown a bird, it is quite likely to cause hypothermia since more water will touch the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2011-09-02T02:13:04.027" LastActivityDate="2011-09-02T02:13:04.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5953" CreationDate="2011-09-02T01:41:31.407" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vinegar is a potent antimicrobial agent. It can kill many of the most bacteria most commonly associated with food poisoning, including Salmonella, E. Coli, and Staphyloccus (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.fm.2007.03.005&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chang and Fang 2007&lt;/a&gt;; &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/AEM.69.5.2959-2963.2003&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rhee et al, 2003&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9713753?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Entani et al 1998&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTOTAL-ZGXD201103013.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wang et al 2011&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most studies only address the direct effect of vinegar on pathogenic organisms, but do not address the effects of vinegar taken after infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="238" LastActivityDate="2011-09-02T01:41:31.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6025" CreationDate="2011-09-02T02:37:55.587" Score="22" ViewCount="3213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen several articles and read several blogs stating that the Salvation Army is &quot;homophobic&quot;, and that they &lt;a href=&quot;http://ilga.org/ilga/en/article/mYzIzFZ1QT&quot;&gt;actively discriminate against gay and lesbian people&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Salvation Army does not only discriminate against gay and lesbian people, it also works politically against LGBT rights all over the world. In Sweden, e g, the Army has protested against the law that makes same-sex marriages legal, and against the inclusion of homosexuals in a law criminalizing incitement to hatred. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I understand that the Salvation Army is a very large organisation and operates across many countries. What they do in one country may differ to another. Keeping this in mind, my question is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does the Salvation Army have a current, &lt;em&gt;global&lt;/em&gt; policy that discriminates against gay and lesbian people?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one cannot be found, I would accept a country-specific instance of the Salvation Army openly stating that they &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; discriminate based on sexual preference being a valid disproof by counterexample of there being an enforced global policy in place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References for notability:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ilga.org/ilga/en/article/mYzIzFZ1QT&quot;&gt;International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex&#xA;Association&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/biggayblog/2010/11/23/ban-salvation-army-and-other-gay-news&quot;&gt;The Vancouver Observer's Big Gay&#xA;Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://familyfirst.com/the-salvation-army.html&quot;&gt;Family First&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.change.org/stories/are-anti-gay-policies-hurting-the-salvation-armys-coffers&quot;&gt;Change.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2011-09-02T05:02:37.130" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T01:35:01.337" Title="Do the Salvation Army policies discriminate against homosexuals?" Tags="|religion|sexuality|charities|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6024" CreationDate="2011-09-02T04:57:16.340" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears that the organisation does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; have a global view of homosexuality, but each region may produce their own position statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked in detail my local region (Australian Territories), below. I also skimmed some of the other regions, see below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://salvos.org.au/about-us/overview/documents/Human-Sexuality.pdf&quot;&gt;Salvation Army &lt;strong&gt;Australian Territories&lt;/strong&gt; Positional Statement on Human Sexuality&lt;/a&gt; has some relevant sections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are against same-sex marriage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Salvation Army affirms its absolute conviction that the marriage of one man to one woman is a sacred institution ordained by God and that a traditional good-faith commitment to an indissoluble union is one of the most rewarding of life’s decisions for any man or woman, providing the optimal conditions for family life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But against discriminating against people for not being in a nuclear family:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Salvation Army acknowledges that many people today find themselves in situations outside the ideal stated above. Persons in such circumstances should always be encouraged to feel totally accepted within The Salvation Army.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They believe in celibacy outside of marriage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We believe in chastity before marriage and fidelity within the marriage relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: The position that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that sex should be restricted to married couples has implications for same-sex couples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They oppose homosexual practice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is The Salvation Army’s belief that whilst recognising the possibility of such orientation, (the origins of which are uncertain), the Bible expressly opposes homosexual practice, seeing such activity as rebellion against God’s plan for the created order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They oppose vilification or discrimination against &lt;strong&gt;non-practising&lt;/strong&gt; homosexuals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A disposition towards homosexuality is not in itself blameworthy nor is the disposition seen as rectifiable at will. The Army is sensitive to the complex social, emotional and spiritual needs of all people including those with homosexual inclinations. We oppose vilification of, or discrimination against anyone on the grounds of sexual orientation. No person is excluded from membership, fellowship or service in the Army solely on the basis of sexual disposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, practicing homosexuals are not permitted to become full members:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Homosexual practice, however, is, in the light of Scripture, clearly unacceptable. Such activity is chosen behaviour and is thus a matter of the will. It is therefore able to be directed or restrained in the same way heterosexual urges are controlled. Homosexual practice would render any person ineligible for full membership (soldiership) in the Army. However, practising homosexuals are welcome to worship with, and join in the fellowship of The Salvation Army.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;: The official position of the Australian Salvos is clearly not completely accepting of active gay and lesbian people. However, it is tempered with some attempts at tolerance, if not acceptance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other regions have similar positions, but must be read individually. A sample include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salvationarmy.org/ind%5Cwww_ind.nsf/vw-sublinks/80256E520050A2E280256CBA0028A203?openDocument&quot;&gt;India&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salvationarmyethics.org/position-statements/gay-and-lesbian-sexuality/&quot;&gt;Canada and Bermuda&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salvationarmyusa.org/usn/www_usn_2.nsf/vw-dynamic-arrays/B6F3F4DF3150F5B585257434004C177D?openDocument&amp;amp;charset=utf-8&quot;&gt;USA West&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.use.salvationarmy.org/use/www_use.nsf/vw-text-dynamic-arrays/583E56A3A9600224802572BA00711A0B?openDocument&quot;&gt;USA East&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usc.salvationarmy.org/usc/www_usc_genesee.nsf/vw-sublinks/AAA9BF3E66CB265D862578390072AA03?openDocument&quot;&gt;Genesee County&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uss.salvationarmy.org/uss/www_uss_leesburg.nsf/vw-dynamic-index/C3B9549837F9FBE18525777D00708EB0?Opendocument&quot;&gt;Leesburg, Florida&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are significant differences in the wording. For example, the Indian version has no explicit statement that practising homosexuals are welcomed to worship with the Salvation Army. The Canada/Bermuda statement is even less explicit about their policies. I was unable to find the UK version. I did not attempt to find anything for non-English speaking countries, sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This answer does not attempt to address any differences between the official policies of the organisation, the actual behaviour of their agents while representing the organisation or the behaviour of those same individuals when outside their role.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-09-02T10:47:25.430" LastActivityDate="2011-09-02T10:47:25.430" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6029" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6104" CreationDate="2011-09-02T14:34:30.903" Score="11" ViewCount="14641" Body="&lt;p&gt;I drink black coffee. In a coffee machine discussion long ago, someone said that he was also drinking it black, but he started adding milk to his coffee since his dentist told him that it's help prevent teeth stain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim seems to have been made a number of times, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071008063827AAHIeEt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yahoo Answers&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Does-adding-milk-in-coffee-reduce-the-effect-of-stained-teeth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quora&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mygreenteablog.com/542/will-adding-milk-to-tea-prevent-tea-staining-of-the-teeth/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;concerning tea&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/facts_7351814_coffee-stain-teeth_.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ehow&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://askville.amazon.com/coffee-cream-milk-stain-teeth-black/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=12535975&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;askville&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ezinearticles.com/?Tea-Stains-Teeth---Do-I-Have-to-Stop-Drinking-It?&amp;amp;id=1972996&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;among&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/1939000&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;others&lt;/a&gt;, but I'm dubious about whether it would really have an effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any proof of that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4584" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T20:35:13.747" LastActivityDate="2014-12-07T16:20:36.263" Title="Does adding milk or cream in the coffee help reduce teeth stain?" Tags="|nutrition|coffee|milk|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6002" CreationDate="2011-09-02T18:30:43.763" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea behind eating honey is kind of like gradually vaccinating the body against allergens, a process called immunotherapy. Honey contains a variety of the same pollen spores that give allergy sufferers so much trouble when flowers and grasses are in bloom. Introducing these spores into the body in small amounts by eating honey should make the body accustomed to their presence and decrease the chance an immune system response like the release of histamine will occur [source: AAFP]. Since the concentration of pollen spores found in honey is low -- compared to, say, sniffing a flower directly -- then the production of antibodies shouldn't trigger symptoms similar to an allergic reaction. Ideally, the honey-eater won't have any reaction at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/allergies/allergy-treatments/local-honey-for-allergies2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/allergies/allergy-treatments/local-honey-for-allergies2.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4685" LastActivityDate="2011-09-02T18:30:43.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6038" CreationDate="2011-09-03T01:07:31.357" Score="13" ViewCount="796" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember learning in school many years ago that each level of the food chain is only about 10% efficient. So when an herbivore eats a plant, they get 10% of the energy that the plant had, and a predator eating that animal gets 10% again, and so on. This is similar to the argument of why vegetarianism is much better for the environment, because it requires less energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is there any basis for the 10% figure? I understand that there has to be an energy loss, but how could we know exactly what it is numerically? I would think that with things like the physical activity of the animal, its total life span, its own digestive efficiency, etc. the actual value could be all over the place. Is there any science to support such a precise figure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="239" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-09-03T11:34:29.217" LastActivityDate="2011-09-03T16:05:01.467" Title="Is each step in the food chain 10% efficient?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|energy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6001" CreationDate="2011-09-03T01:43:11.773" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we look at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html&quot;&gt;CIA World Fact Book&lt;/a&gt; comparison, we see the countries in the reverse order, so the US is 176 out of 222.  Not all of these are sovereign countries, but there's definitely more than 40 between the US and the best place (Monaco).  The figures are listed as estimated for 2011.  This obviously isn't an authoritative source, but it's the CIA's best guess, and probably fairly accurate.  It does show that that one paper isn't the only source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="39" LastActivityDate="2011-09-03T01:43:11.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6035" CreationDate="2011-09-03T02:07:53.333" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is, &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;. This is called &quot;Linderman's law of trophic efficiency&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fcnym.unlp.edu.ar/catedras/ecocomunidades/Lindman_1942.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Linderman. 1942)&lt;/a&gt;, but it is far from a law - the reality is that there is a large variety of trophic efficiencies, and these depend on the type of animal and the food being consumed. Linderman's law is a heuristic tool - a concept useful for teaching not strictly based on fact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a more detailed explaination:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a simple system, trophic levels are, e.g. plants, herbivores, and carnivores. There are often more levels in the ocean than on land. For example, crustaceans eat algae, fish eat crustaceans, fish eat fish, sharks eat fish. Or cow eats grass, people eat cow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, of the available food at one level, how much is converted to growth (and can then become food) at the next level. This is the concept of 'trophic efficiency' accounts for both:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the efficiency at which available resource (food, light) is aquired&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the efficiency with which the light / food is converted to growth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, trophic efficiency =&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(consumed food / available food) x (food allocated to growth / total food consumed) =    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(food allocated to growth / available food)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a field produces 100 kg of grass each year, and a sheep living on that field gains 5 kg the sheep has a trophic efficiency of 5%. If a human ate 5kg of sheep, maybe they could gain 100 gm. If a human only ate the grass, they would loose weight and such a food web would not exist in nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even Linderman's original work reports a range of trophic efficienciens among the different trophic levels. In Table IV, efficiency. Note that productivity is the rate of growth (mass/time), not total biomass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Haas2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A broad syntheses &lt;a href=&quot;https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/dlebauer/www/humphreys1979.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Humphreys, 1979)&lt;/a&gt; demonstrates that indeed, trophic efficiency is related to the type of food eaten and the physiology of the animal consuming the food. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, non-social insects can have &gt; 50% efficiency whereas most mammals, birds, and reptiles have &amp;lt; 5% efficiency (Table 7, P/A% is the metric of interest, N is the sample size):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SOavY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="238" LastEditorUserId="238" LastEditDate="2011-09-03T16:05:01.467" LastActivityDate="2011-09-03T16:05:01.467" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6002" CreationDate="2011-09-04T01:12:12.383" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found no evidence for honey helping colds. Cochrane found limited evidence for honey helping in acute coughs in children, and no evidence for honey helping chronic coughs in children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cochrane Meta-Analyses&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cochrane Collaboration&lt;/a&gt; do meta-analyses of health studies - they gather all of the published scientific evidence on a topic, and use careful statistical techniques to try to work out which way the evidence points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they don't have a general purpose study on honey's affect on the common cold, there were two studies of honey's affect on children with coughs - one for acute and one for chronic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Oduwole O, Meremikwu MM, Oyo-Ita A, Udoh EE. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD007094.pub3/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Honey for acute cough in children&lt;/a&gt;. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2010, Issue 1. Art. No.: CD007094. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD007094.pub2&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mulholland S, Chang AB. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD007523.pub2/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Honey and lozenges for children with non-specific cough&lt;/a&gt;. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2009, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD007523. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD007523.pub2&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acute Coughs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first analysis, they could only find one small study with any good evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A review of one small randomised controlled trial showed that honey was significantly better than no treatment for the relief of cough, reducing bothersome cough, improving child's sleep; but no better than 'no treatment' in reducing the severity of cough and parent's sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the comparison here is to &quot;no treatment&quot; rather than placebo or regular cough medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The effects of honey on symptom relief and sleep quality did not differ from those of dextromethorphan, which is a common ingredient in cough medications. Parents of five children assigned to honey and two assigned to dextromethorphan reported their children suffered from insomnia, hyperactivity and nervousness. However, as with other medications, its benefit should be considered alongside the adverse effects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They emphasized: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This review has a limitation in that the results were obtained from a single study involving a relatively small number of children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chronic Cough&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the second analysis, they looked for the affect on chronic non-specific coughs, which were defined as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a dry, non-productive cough with no known cause lasting longer than four consecutive weeks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Four weeks is a long time - this is beyond your typical common cold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What they found was that there was &lt;strong&gt;no good evidence&lt;/strong&gt; either way for chronic coughs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No randomised controlled trials were found to be applicable to this review, primarily due to the participants in the studies not fulfilling the inclusion criteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-06-20T13:01:52.483" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T13:01:52.483" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6041" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6043" CreationDate="2011-09-04T03:49:38.207" Score="6" ViewCount="3013" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was listening to &lt;a href=&quot;http://5by5.tv/talkshow/57&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Episode 57 of the Talk Show&lt;/a&gt; (at 44:35), and one of the hosts mentioned that he'd heard that slot machines all play in the key of C. Ostensibly, this is because this frequency is especially pleasing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The show notes linked to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://ask.metafilter.com/59417/Is-there-a-slotmachine-ambient-tone%20%22Is%20there%20a%20slot-machine%20ambient%20tone?%20-%20casino%20ambientsound%20tone%20|%20Ask%20MetaFilter%22&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ask.metafilter page with worthless posts&lt;/a&gt; that provide none of the research that makes for a good answer here on Skeptics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that slot machines play in the same key?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If so, is some sort of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;path dependent&lt;/a&gt; artifact or is there a reason C was actively chosen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4055" LastActivityDate="2011-11-14T02:41:40.637" Title="Do slot machines play in the key of C?" Tags="|music|gambling|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5998" CreationDate="2011-09-04T04:27:45.647" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The trick for detecting a 2-way mirror is not 100% reliable, but is not entirely wrong either. Two-way mirrors intended for observation are made using dark (&quot;smoked&quot;) glass (/acrylic/whatever), with a partially-reflective coating on one side. Critically, the reflective side is installed toward the subject (i.e. the one being spied on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is that the dark glass makes the observer's side appear even darker than it really is -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirropane.com/pdf/mirropaneguidelines.pdf&quot;&gt;Pilkington's Mirropane Guidelines&lt;/a&gt; gives a recommended scenario where the subject's reflection is 50 times brighter than their view of the observer, and the observer's relection is 5.5 times dimmer than their view of the subject; this is a result of a combination of the lighting on the two sides (8x brighter on the subject side), reflectivity of the coating, and attenuation through the acrylic (compare R_f and R_g in the PDF).  It also says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where an 8 to 1 light ratio cannot be achieved, an additional light&#xA;  [layer? -GD] of grey glass can be added, to the glass side of the&#xA;  transparent mirror, by either multiple glazing or lamination, to&#xA;  obtain a satisfactory Masking Ratio. This will however, reduce the&#xA;  brightness of the observer’s image of the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that it's possible that someone could put another layer of glass in front of the reflective side, or use a partially-reflective mirror with normal glass (though I don't know if anyone makes this in large sizes -- it's normally small pieces used for optics work) and an even higher light ratio.  But those don't seem terribly likely...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normal mirrors, on the other hand, are generally second-surface mirrors -- that is, the reflective layer is behind the glass.  There are exceptions, for example I've seen mirrors in freeway rest stops with no glass at all, just polished metal.  But they're the exception, not the rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2209" LastActivityDate="2011-09-04T04:27:45.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6041" CreationDate="2011-09-04T04:33:21.397" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like the claim is no longer true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A writer at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vegaschatter.com/story/2011/6/1/114918/9696/vegas-travel/That_Sound_You_Hear_is_the_Key_of_C&quot;&gt;Vegas Chatter&lt;/a&gt; blog was skeptical of this claim, and so decided to contact &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.igt.com.au/&quot;&gt;IGT&lt;/a&gt;, a gaming machine manufacturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were quoted as saying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The original....sounds were centered in the key of C - Once we began creating theme specific content that went away, and pretty much all the key centers of western music I (sic) available on any given slot floor. The Key of C still makes appearances regularly, though, and lives on in a lot of legacy products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-09-04T04:33:21.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6045" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6054" CreationDate="2011-09-04T15:19:21.577" Score="5" ViewCount="2707" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always been told that when having a fever I shouldn't drink milk or consume dairy products as they would increase my temperature. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4160" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T20:34:55.493" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T20:34:55.493" Title="Should dairy products be consumed when having a fever?" Tags="|nutrition|milk|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6046" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-04T16:03:21.777" Score="22" ViewCount="2800" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several Wikipedia articles, (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe&quot;&gt;Bathyscaphe&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste&quot;&gt;Trieste&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenger_Deep&quot;&gt;Challenger Deep&lt;/a&gt;), about the &lt;strong&gt;1960 Bathyscaphe Trieste trip to Challenger Deep&lt;/strong&gt;, the deepest part of the Mariana trench, mention observations of lifeforms on the deep sea floor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The bathyscaphe was equipped with a powerful light, which illuminated &lt;strong&gt;a small flounder-like fish&lt;/strong&gt;,&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;some type of &lt;strong&gt;flatfish&lt;/strong&gt;, resembling a sole, about 1 foot long and 6 inches across&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;While on the bottom, Piccard and Walsh observed a number of &lt;strong&gt;small sole and flounder&lt;/strong&gt; swimming away,&quot; (uncited)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;These observations have been challenged&lt;/strong&gt; because these types of fish are not believed to be able to survive at the cited depth. The video footage from the more recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaik%C5%8D&quot;&gt;Kaikō ROV&lt;/a&gt; and the autonomous &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nereus_%28underwater_vehicle%29&quot;&gt;Nereus HROV&lt;/a&gt; did not see any fish. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to date humans have only been able to survey a tiny percentage of the trench, which means it might be premature to preclude the existence of fish at that depth. To date, the world's deepest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mKotQs93Dc&quot;&gt;video footage&lt;/a&gt; of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremescience.com/zoom/index.php/life-in-the-deep-ocean/44-deepest-fish&quot;&gt;fish&lt;/a&gt; was filmed at a depth of 7,703 meters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Non-scientific reference:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zyoLBU4SX8&amp;amp;NR=1&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt;, titled &quot;Megalodon sighted in Mariana Trench&quot;, does not link to any scientific publication, nor does it state the depth at which the video was taken.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second quote reinforces the accusation that the crew could not have plausibly seen the marine lifeforms (&lt;em&gt;emphasis added&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... Their early departure from the ocean floor was due to their concern&#xA;  over a crack in the window caused by the intense pressure of their&#xA;  descent, and also because their landing on the sea bed had &lt;strong&gt;stirred up&#xA;  a cloud of silt which reduced visibility to zero and showed no sign of&#xA;  settling.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EMyymnC93E&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; from Nereus HROV showing what &lt;em&gt;stirring&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;settling&lt;/em&gt; could mean at the floor of the Challenger Deep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the depth of the Challenger Deep had been measured to the same ballpark figure nearly a decade ago:&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(with the understanding of depth variations within the trench)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1951, ... the entire Mariana Trench was surveyed by a second Royal&#xA;  Navy vessel, ... also named HMS Challenger, after the original&#xA;  expedition ship. ... A depth of 10,900 m was measured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question is: Were those fish claims misattributed, or misquoted?&lt;/strong&gt; (Wikipedia included.) If so, can we trace it to the original words from the Trieste crew and the source of the mistake?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Explanation:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Misquote: the juxtaposition of several phrases that are taken out of context. &lt;br&gt;For example, (i) a flatfish seen during the descent and (ii) an observation of the cloud of silt at the sea floor could be taken out of context to mean (iii) a flatfish seen at the sea floor and (iv) a cloud of silt seen during the descent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Misattribution: the phrases were quoted from a person not part of the Trieste crew, and thus cannot be taken as eyewitness testimony.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To assist in the search for the original source, here is the citation. The reference URL  on the Wikipedia article has been broken. (Copied from a Google &lt;a href=&quot;http://dlaweb.whoi.edu/PHP/NDSF/tag_display.php?key=ID_list&amp;amp;keyvalue=950%20757%20815%201013%20429%2072%20633%20580%20378%20133&quot;&gt;search result&lt;/a&gt; - restrictions may apply.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ref Type: Journal Article&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Authors: Heppenheimer, TA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Year: 1992&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title: To the bottom of the sea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Journal: American Heritage of Invention &amp;amp; Technology&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Volume: 8&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Issue: 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pages: 28-38&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ISSN: 8756-7296&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2547" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T19:20:58.613" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T04:34:35.840" Title="Did humans see fish at the bottom of the world's deepest trench, the Mariana trench?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3794" CreationDate="2011-09-05T02:47:40.230" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer:&lt;/strong&gt; At least as far as glycogen is concerned, it probably doesn't matter for the vast majority of people who do moderate exercise once a day.  However, protein synthesis is also increased during the refueling window, and everybody can benefit from that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11897899&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;well&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21116024&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;established&lt;/a&gt; that calories get turned into glycogen more quickly if consumed shortly after a workout.  The American College of Sports Medicine's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19225360&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2009 Position on Nutrition and Athletic Performance&lt;/a&gt; has this to say (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Timing of postexercise carbohydrate intake affects glycogen synthesis over the short term (110). Consumption of carbohydrates within 30 min after exercise (1.0-1.5 g carbohydrate·kg-1 at 2-h intervals up to 6 h is often recommended) results in higher glycogen levels after exercise than when ingestion is delayed for 2 h. &lt;strong&gt;It is unnecessary for athletes who rest one or more days between intense training sessions to practice nutrient timing about glycogen replenishment provided sufficient carbohydrates are consumed during the 24-h period after the exercise bout&lt;/strong&gt;. Nevertheless, consuming a meal or snack near the end of exercise may be important for athletes to meet daily carbohydrate and energy goals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8669406&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The 1996 study they cite&lt;/a&gt; to back up that bolded section doesn't really make that claim, except for this bit in their discussion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...it is considered that the major benefit of consuming carbohydrate in the immediate recovery phase is to promote earlier recovery rather than exploit a period of increased glycogen storage rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, fair enough.  Anyone working out one hour a day will be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/exercise/SM00109&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;probably be burning 500-1000 calories&lt;/a&gt;.  The typical human has &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=L4aZIDbmV3oC&amp;amp;lpg=PA41&amp;amp;pg=PA41#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1500-2000 calories&lt;/a&gt; worth of glycogen stores.  Unless you're starving yourself the rest of the day, those stores will be replenished by your next workout no matter how slowly you're synthesizing it.  The &quot;glycogen restoration window&quot; is only really significant for athletes who want to turn around and do another workout a few hours after the first one.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;strong&gt;protein synthesis&lt;/strong&gt; also slows way down after the refueling window.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajpendo.physiology.org/content/280/6/E982.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This 2001 paper in AJP&lt;/a&gt; (titled &quot;&lt;em&gt;Postexercise nutrient intake timing in humans is critical to recovery of leg glucose and protein homeostasis&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, in the American journal of Physiology) has some nice charts of protein turnover in the leg when refueling early (right after exercise) or late (3 hours later).  This one shows that late refuelers actually have a net &lt;em&gt;loss&lt;/em&gt; of protein in the short-term once you account for protein lost during exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uMozw.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Net protein turnover&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly a net loss of protein is not optimal recovery.  I don't know where the &quot;60 minutes&quot; number came from (or 90 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever else the people on triathlon forums are throwing around these days).  But there is a definite benefit to recovery from having your meals sooner rather than later after your workout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2465" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2011-09-05T16:12:25.870" LastActivityDate="2011-09-05T16:12:25.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6050" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-05T12:13:22.333" Score="21" ViewCount="7249" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone, especially people who love washing and waxing their cars, has been telling me about the long-term benefits of regular waxing. They tell me that the layer of wax acts as a protective shell and will prevent contamination (such as UV radiation, bird droppings, tar, etc) from &quot;burning&quot; into the car's paint. As a consequence the car's paint would keep it's good looks longer, and ultimately the car would even have a higher resale value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that hard to believe. I don't know anything about chemistry so probably my thinking is not making sense at all, but the way I see it is that car waxes contain a number of natural and less natural ingredients but basically I think every car wax is in fact just grease. So you put a layer of grease on you car, which indeed makes it shine more and causes water to not stick as much to the paint. But I have a hard time believing that this thin layer of grease is going to cause any long-term beneficial effect. I bet if you wash the car regularly, that after 5 times the wax is simply gone and even if it does stay on the car, can this really have a significant protective effect? If yes, I would like to understand how. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I have is that everyone who is telling about the benefits only refers to personal experience. Is there any real scientific and independent test result that proves these claims? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4603" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-05T02:16:20.993" LastActivityDate="2021-11-09T09:22:51.017" Title="Does waxing your car have a long-term beneficial effect on the paint-work?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6050" CreationDate="2011-09-05T13:37:31.200" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Partial answer only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wax doesn't protect the car from acidic rain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://portail.itech.fr/pmb/opac_css/index.php?lvl=notice_display&amp;amp;id=11422&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does wax protect from acid precipitation: Waxed automotive finishes in the Acid Dew and Fog Test&lt;/a&gt;, SCHULZ U.; ZWICK W., European Coatings Journal 1997, no9, pp. 784-790&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tests with seven different wax recipes and two current types of coating showed that wax on coating surfaces is not a barrier against acid atmospheric precipitation. Waxing can both slightly inhibit and enormously increase the harmful effect of aggressive precipitation on the coating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T17:46:09.620" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T17:46:09.620" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-09-05T13:37:31.200" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3515" CreationDate="2011-09-05T14:18:49.963" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bait-and-switch is a common class of scam. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait-and-switch&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's &quot;Bait and switch&quot; article&lt;/a&gt; mentions vaporous on-sale merchandise that is gone when a buyer arrives at a store full of marked up merchandise.  While the behavior arising with Kiva is not identical, the allegations are similar in that an incautious donor can be lured into doing something other than his original intent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a donor to Kiva is baited into believing that they are donating money to fund interest-free loans to poor 3rd world entrepreneurs with active businesses, and instead they are switched into donating money to fund interest-free loans to 3rd world micro-bankers with lending businesses, then when the donor discovers this they may sense a bait and switch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it is reasonable for a donor to feel bait-and-switched when there is disclosure is either a subjective issue or a legal issue likely to vary in various jurisdictions, i.e. whether there is legally or ethically sufficient disclosure is not a hard fact independent of time or place and is not the kind of fact-based scientific or logical question best answered on Skeptics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kiva.org&quot;&gt;http://www.kiva.org&lt;/a&gt; front page, the full loan process is not completely disclosed on the front page but instead is simplified to a 4 step process involving a donor/lender and a borrower: &quot;How it works - choose a borrower, make a loan, get repaid, repeat&quot;. The donor may believe they are donating money or a loan of money, to the borrower.  This is in fact a sales pitch.  If you read the details, the full details are disclosed.  The disclosure attempts to retain the potential donor instead of pointing out the relative benefits of being the micro-banker (or &quot;field partner&quot;) vs the micro-borrower in this system. In taking this approach the explanation becomes more like marketing material (attempting to persuade) than disclosure material (attempting to educate).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other person to person lending exchanges which do not have &quot;field partnerships&quot; with exchange participants but rather simply match borrowers and lenders without favoring one side of the market or the other.  Furthermore, charitable loans are sometimes possible on these for-profit web-based loan exchanges.  This can be determined by looking closely at the rules to determine if this is possible.  Prosper, for instance, uses a matching algorithm that allows lenders to bid an interest rate for a particular loan, and sorts the interest rates from low to high to determine a match of multiple lenders to one loan while a clock ticks down to the final funding decision. A charitable lender, then, could decide to lend a borrower's entire loan amount at any rate below the matched rate and thereby determine the rate and funding of that loan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2011-09-07T01:33:10.320" LastActivityDate="2011-09-07T01:33:10.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6045" CreationDate="2011-09-05T14:44:31.540" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's not true. They won't increase your temperature. But for some people, it can cause extra mucus to be formed which can complicate your illness. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/flu-guide/what-to-eat-when-you-have-the-flu?page=2&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4686" LastActivityDate="2011-09-05T14:44:31.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6001" CreationDate="2011-09-05T16:27:18.887" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The USA is an outlier on many health-related statistics. A larger percentage of GDP goes on healthcare than almost anyone else yet outcomes are not as good as many other wealthy western countries. It is worth looking at a variety of different statistics to get a good feel for this (and for direct comparisons against the countries who do better). For example, this chart shows comparisons versus other wealth countires in spend versus overall life expectancy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Javnt.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;life expectancy versus per capita spend on health&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This chart shows the change over time (incidently demolishing several arguments about American exceptionalism):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6EHNk.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;life expectancy and spending over time&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both charts from &lt;a href=&quot;http://lanekenworthy.net/2011/07/10/americas-inefficient-health-care-system-another-look/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. And it is worth reading the discussion (and the further commentary &lt;a href=&quot;http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/2012/05/look-what-i-found-two-amazing-charts.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; on how good the charts are).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the general pattern in health statistics it should not be a surprise that US infant mortality is bettered by many other wealthy countries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you can check the statistics yourself interactively on Gapminder at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gapminder.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.gapminder.org&lt;/a&gt; and I would recommend looking at the plot of total health spending as % of GDP versus infant mortality (and look at the trends over time). But, don't take my word for this, go and look at the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-05-10T12:04:53.207" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T12:04:53.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6046" CreationDate="2011-09-06T01:08:33.107" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the articles on &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/tech/for-avatar-sequel-cameron-dives-to-deepest-point-in-ocean.html&quot;&gt;Discovery&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On January 23, 1960, explorers Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh dove via their sub, the Trieste, into the Pacific Ocean's Marianas Trench, a 1,600-mile-long, arc-shaped, undersea chasm east of the Philippines. With more than a mile to go, the outer layer of a porthole cracked under the pressure of six miles of sea water. As they told the UK's Daily Mail, &quot;It was a pretty hairy experience.&quot; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nonetheless, they reached 35,810 feet below sea level. To date, no one has broken the record.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This at least clarifies the main topic of the question - humans did reach at least 10k+ metres below sea-level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other references of exploration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://geology.com/press-release/deepest-part-of-the-ocean/&quot;&gt;Geology.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only two other vehicles have succeeded in reaching the Mariana Trench:&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;the U.S. Navy-built bathyscaphe Trieste, which carried Jacques Piccard&#xA;  and Don Walsh there in 1960&lt;/em&gt;, and the Japanese-built robot Kaiko, which&#xA;  made three unmanned expeditions to the trench between 1995 and 1998.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marianatrench.com/mariana_trench-exploration_001.htm&quot;&gt;Marianatrench.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The challenger deep is located near the southwestern extremity of the Mariana Trench and was &lt;em&gt;first explored in 1960 by Swiss scientist Jacques Piccard &amp;amp; US Navy&#xA;  Lt. Donald Walsh in bathyscaph &quot;Trieste&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, a US Navy owned submersible manned vessel (Designed by Jacques Piccard's father Auguste) which set a record by diving to a depth of 10, 900 meters (35,810 feet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4102" LastEditorUserId="4102" LastEditDate="2011-09-06T02:08:41.150" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T02:08:41.150" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6059" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-06T04:56:03.867" Score="1" ViewCount="168" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5818/does-handwriting-assist-memory-retention-more-effectively-than-typing&quot;&gt;Does handwriting assist memory retention more effectively than typing?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often I read about the tips to remember better is by writing them down. I don't have this habit as I can't take note while listening. So, I always focus more on understanding what the speakers are talking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I started working, I find out that I can't think without pen and paper. When I need to think about a solution or and idea, I need to plan them on a paper not a machine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'm wondering if there is any research done to test if using computers to take notes have the same effect with taking notes on paper and pen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1321" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T04:56:03.867" Title="Can We Replace Effect of Pen and Paper using Tablets or Typing?" Tags="|psychology|memory|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-09-06T05:52:22.777" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6060" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-06T06:31:47.923" Score="20" ViewCount="1230" Body="&lt;p&gt;A while ago the Vatican opened its archives and a report about the Inquisition was created that painted a different picture of the Inquisition than the one we're used to (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/15/world/main623253.shtml&quot;&gt;news article&lt;/a&gt;). The report shows a lower amount of torture and death sentences than previously believed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The recourse to torture and the death sentence weren't so frequent as&#xA;  it long has been believed,&quot; said Agostino Borromeo, a professor at&#xA;  Rome's Sapienza University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, about the Spanish Inquisition it states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Borromeo, who oversaw the volume, said that while there were some&#xA;  125,000 trials of suspected heretics in Spain, researchers found that&#xA;  about 1 percent of the defendants were executed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the results of this report fit with other research on the Inquisition? Was torture and burning people at the stake really an exception, and not the rule?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-09-10T00:49:48.247" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T03:17:36.670" Title="Was torture and execution commonly used by the Spanish Inqusition?" Tags="|history|spain|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2685" CreationDate="2011-09-06T10:49:09.200" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. Doesn't need to be monkey bars in particular, even lying in bed will do this. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/how-tall-are-you/&quot;&gt;intervertebral disks&lt;/a&gt; in your spine are compressible, and will sag under gravity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is a reversible effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T10:49:09.200" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1326" CreationDate="2011-09-06T18:03:33.143" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A 2008 university of London study showed that dogs can catch yawns from people who are strangers to them. &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7541633.stm&quot;&gt;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7541633.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, my cats often catch yawns from me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4729" LastActivityDate="2011-09-06T18:03:33.143" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6066" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6069" CreationDate="2011-09-06T20:30:18.703" Score="37" ViewCount="15497" Body="&lt;p&gt;I usually hear that plants should be placed in working areas to supplement the higher oxygen needs of working humans, or on the other hand, that should never be grown in bedrooms because they drain oxygen for their own respiration during night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I somewhat doubt this is significant in comparison to natural variation in oxygen flow from the outside...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-09-07T11:32:21.617" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T17:33:53.437" Title="Do houseplants have any impact on oxygen levels?" Tags="|biology|plants|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6066" CreationDate="2011-09-07T02:21:14.323" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are correct that the effect on oxygen levels are not significant. There is a much greater impact is on CO2 levels. Still, with respect to the effect on indoor air quality, the most important influence of plants is the removal of a class of pollutants known as volatile organic compounds (a.k.a. 'fumes') that include formaldehyde (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jjshs1/79/2/79_2_200/_pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kim et al, 2010&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inive.org/members_area/medias/pdf/Inive%5CIAQVEC2007%5CTarran.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tarran et al 2007&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1352231011002263&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aydogan et al 2011&lt;/a&gt;. Plants also substantially reduce CO (carbon monoxide) (Tarran et al 2007).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the effect of plant respiration on air composition, it is also important to note that plant respiration is primarily affected by temperature, and occurs all day and night. However, during the day, the CO2 released by respiration is much less than the CO2 taken up by photosynthesis - otherwise the plant would have a negative carbon balance and eventually die.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For each unit of CO2 a plant takes up, it releases one unit of O2. However, the baseline concentration of O2 in the atmosphere is 20.95%, whereas the baseline concentration of CO2 is about 0.04% (&lt;a href=&quot;https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/earthfact.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA Fact Sheet&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, even if the plant converted all of the CO2 in the room to O2, the change in the percent would be from 20.95% to 21%. This would be difficult to detect. (Thanks to Oddthinking for pointing this out). Plant respiration rate is much lower than photosynthesis rate (otherwise they would have a carbon deficit and die) so the effect on O2 at night would be less than this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, the presence of a person in the room would has a much larger effect on the O2 and CO2 in the room, and ventilation rate is the most important factor in maintaining a habitable atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most relevant citation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inive.org/members_area/medias/pdf/Inive%5CIAQVEC2007%5CTarran.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tarran, J., Torpy, F. &amp;amp; Burchett, M. (2007) Use of living pot-plants to cleanse indoor air - research review. Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality, Ventilation &amp;amp; Energy Conservation in Buildings, Sendai, Japan, 28-31 October 2007,, vol. III, pp. 249-256.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related reading not cited above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17100667&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shaughnessy et al 2006. A preliminary study on the association between ventilation rates in classrooms and student performance. Indoor Air. 2006 Dec;16(6):465-8.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://escholarship.org/content/qt2374990t/qt2374990t.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Seppanen et al 2006 “Ventilation and performance in office work”, Indoor Air, &#xA;Vol. 16, 28-36&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="238" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T17:33:53.437" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T17:33:53.437" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6076" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-07T14:18:19.783" Score="7" ViewCount="562" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is heard very commonly when someone sees an unwanted animal, especially near food. Flies, roaches, pigeons, rats, etc. are all claimed to be filthy and disease ridden, warranting their extermination from our homes. How realistic is this? Are these and other animals actually likely to transfer illnesses, or is their chance of being contaminated with harmful microbes just the same as your own body? I don't see any reason why a fly or rat's feet should have more or more harmful bacteria on them than my own hands. Are they inherently carriers of human-harmful illness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="239" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T20:34:37.177" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T20:34:37.177" Title="Are bugs and other pests &quot;crawling with disease&quot;?" Tags="|zoology|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6079" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6081" CreationDate="2011-09-07T16:47:31.560" Score="4" ViewCount="26094" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copper%28II%29_sulfate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cupric sulfate&lt;/a&gt; as an algaecide in my swimming pool for a while without problem. I was adding a very small quantity of it (one teaspoon when the season start and 1/4 teaspoon whenever I add water.) However, a &quot;swimming pool expert&quot; told me I should not, that it is dangerous, and various others claim (Obviously, he wanted to sell me his own algaecide).  I had many problem this year to keep my swimming pool clear of algae, So I'm considering returning back to cupric sulfate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I made my own search and this use copper sulfate seam quite controversial:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some say &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/copper-sulfate-swimming-pool.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it is ok&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some say &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.askalanaquestion.com/pool_algae_control_products.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dont use it&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some say &lt;a href=&quot;http://swimsuits.lovetoknow.com/Copper_Sulfate_Crystals_Use_in_Swimming_Pools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;maybe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Can_you_use_copper_sulfate_for_algae_in_your_pool&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;are even more confusing&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does someone has an objective notice for that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4584" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T20:33:53.840" LastActivityDate="2015-06-19T07:29:26.300" Title="Could I safely use copper sulfate in my swimming pools as an algaecide?" Tags="|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6080" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6152" CreationDate="2011-09-07T20:48:20.457" Score="6" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;A study Symantec claims that the global damages from cyber crime were&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A study by Symantec Corp, the maker of Norton computer security&#xA;  software, estimates the cost of global cybercrimes at $114 billion&#xA;  annually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/07/us-symantec-idUSTRE7861DP20110907&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/07/us-symantec-idUSTRE7861DP20110907&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These figures seem like way off to me. The fact that the source of the study is one of the biggest vendors of security software also does not improve its credibility, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4278" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-09-08T02:22:32.797" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T09:51:22.393" Title="Do cyber crimes cost $US114b annually?" Tags="|computers|criminology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6079" CreationDate="2011-09-08T00:21:25.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As with any chemical, it depends on the amount. Overdose and you'll &lt;a href=&quot;http://extoxnet.orst.edu/pips/coppersu.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;not be very well off&lt;/a&gt;. Check the volume of your pool and &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/carbaryl-dicrotophos/copper-sulfate-ext.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;keep it below 1ppm&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The EPA limit for copper sulfate in drinking water is 1 ppm. This limit has been set to prevent a disagreeable taste from copper in drinking water, as well as to provide adequate protection from toxicity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4686" LastEditorUserId="4584" LastEditDate="2011-09-08T13:58:44.780" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T13:58:44.780" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6085" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-08T03:01:06.117" Score="46" ViewCount="4695" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/u6j9B.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sample Voynich Manuscript pages.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A post on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cthulhutech.10.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=1283&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CthulhuTech forum&lt;/a&gt; makes the following claim about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Voynich Manuscript&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Actually doing abit of digging and the view is very spilt those who feel its a cipher of some kind have shown mathmaticly that its not gibberish. But it can be argued its possible (but would require masses of work esp. without calculaters ) to make something that would work (but there is no proof that the required knowledge existed at that point that it is belived to have been made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What analysis was done to &quot;prove&quot; the manuscript is a legitimate cipher script, and how can such an analysis discern between a real cipher and carefully crafted &quot;gibberish&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum--brief background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Voynich Manuscript is a handwritten book of about 240 pages believed to have been created in the early 15th century.  It has been generally assumed to be a cipher text, but the author and purpose of the book are completely unknown.  In 2009, researchers at the University of Arizona used carbon dating to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1516863.php/Mysterious-Voynich-manuscript-is-genuine-scientists-find&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;confirm that the vellum pages date between 1404 and 1438&lt;/a&gt;.  Additionally, the McCrone Research Institute in Chicago determined that the ink was &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1516863.php/Mysterious-Voynich-manuscript-is-genuine-scientists-find&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;not added in a later period.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;  This enforces the theory that the document is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; an anachronistic hoax, but does not prove that the script contains a decipherable message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isi.edu/natural-language/people/voynich.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF presentation by Kevin Knight&lt;/a&gt;, Information Science Institute, University of Southern California, provides additional historical background of the document and an overview of some cryptanalysis that has been done on the document in an attempt to decipher the script.  The analysis reviews patterns of individual symbols and patterns of whole words, which are inconclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more background refer to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_manuscript&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia entry&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isi.edu/natural-language/people/voynich.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kevin Knight presentation&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/The_Voynich_Manuscript&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WikiBooks entry&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://lmgtfy.com/?q=%22Voynich%20Manuscript%22&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;google &quot;Voynich Manuscript&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T06:26:30.657" LastActivityDate="2020-02-13T16:48:50.773" Title="Has it been mathematicaly determined that the Voynich Manuscript is not gibberish?" Tags="|books|cryptography|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6086" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-08T05:15:23.327" Score="9" ViewCount="1556" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buteyko_method&quot;&gt;Buteyko breathing method&lt;/a&gt; is based on the assumption that many health problems are caused by hyperventilation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By training people to breath less, it claims that (amongst other symptoms) asthma can be cured, or at least improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that supports this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3691" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T20:32:38.817" LastActivityDate="2020-02-09T07:54:00.407" Title="Does the Buteyko method improve asthma symptoms?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6085" CreationDate="2011-09-08T05:53:03.870" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather the opposite, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/jan/25/arts.highereducation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in 2004 a breakthrough was made in how such a manuscript could've been generated with such apparent linguistic regularity yet actually be gibberish by Dr. Gordon Rugg at Keele University:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'The manuscript exhibits so much linguistic structure that a hoax appears to require almost as much sophistication as an unbreakable code,' says Rugg in his paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now the computer expert and his team believe they have found the secret of the Voynich manuscript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have shown that its various word, which appear regularly throughout the script, could have been created using table and grille techniques. The different syllables that make up words are written in columns, and a grille - a piece of cardboard with three squares cut out in a diagonal pattern - is slid along the columns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three syllables exposed form a word. The grille is pushed along to expose three new syllables, and a new word is exposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rugg's conclusion is that Voynichese - the language of the Voynich manuscript - is utter gibberish, put together as random assemblies of different syllables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01611190601133539&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In 2007 Dr. Andreas Schinner at Johannes Kepler University did further analysis, published in the journal Cryptologia, reaffirming the possibility:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this article, I analyze the Voynich manuscript, using random walk mapping and token/syllable repetition statistics. The results significantly tighten the boundaries for possible interpretations; they suggest that the text has been generated by a stochastic process rather than by encoding or encryption of language&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing that will forever prove it is a hoax is to find documentation of the actual generating tools used - and if it was a hoax, these were very likely destroyed shortly after producing the book. Likewise, the only thing that will forever prove it is not a hoax is to find a translation that is not obviously contrived - whatever that may mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is definitely &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; known to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; be a hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T05:53:03.870" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6086" CreationDate="2011-09-08T06:27:30.580" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: The method may or may not completely cure asthma but &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;may be used to reduce dependency on an inhaler&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. It is not proven to work for all patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has wider acceptance in Australia and UK and more opposition in the USA from what I've found so far. See the last bit of my post on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proponents of the method may know that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brit-thoracic.org.uk/Portals/0/Clinical%20Information/Asthma/Guidelines/asthma_final2008.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;British Guideline on the Management of Asthma&lt;/a&gt; - A national clinical guideline from the &lt;strong&gt;NHS and British Thoracic Society&lt;/strong&gt; in 2008 (See PDF pg 35) gave it the following recommendation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Buteyko breathing technique specifi cally focuses on control of&#xA;  hyperventilation and any ensuing hypocapnia. Four clinical trials&#xA;  suggest benefi ts in terms of reduced symptoms and bronchodilator&#xA;  usage but no effect on lung function. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Category B &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Buteyko breathing technique&#xA;  may be considered to help patients to control the symptoms of asthma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In April 2009, a course to train nurses how to teach the Buteyko Breathing Technique to people with asthma &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nursingtimes.net/nurses-to-be-trained-to-teach-buteyko-breathing-technique-to-asthmatics/5000294.article&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;was launched by Coventry University and the Buteyko Breathing Association&lt;/a&gt;. This shows a &lt;em&gt;more mainstream acceptance of this technique in the UK&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://knol.google.com/k/asthma-research&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;8 clinical trials as listed on this page&lt;/a&gt;. Notably &lt;em&gt;none are in the USA&lt;/em&gt; and none are very large groups (none more than 69 subjects). This page also links to abstracts of each of the trials - I've summarized conclusions below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ENGLAND 2009 (32 subjects, 5 weeks)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By teaching patients to reduce hypernoea of breathing (the rate &amp;amp;&#xA;  depth), BBT &lt;strong&gt;may reduce asthma symptoms&lt;/strong&gt; and improve exercise tolerance&#xA;  and control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CANADA 2008 (56 subjects)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Six months after completion of the interventions, a large majority of&#xA;  subjects in each group displayed control of their asthma with the&#xA;  additional benefit of reduction in inhaled corticosteroid use in the&#xA;  Buteyko group&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NEW ZEALAND 2006 (8 subjects)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusions: children’s decreased use of reliever medication mirror&#xA;  adults and &lt;strong&gt;warrant further studies&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AUSTRALIA 2006 (23 subjects)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusion: breathing techniques useful in management of asthma. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The process of routine and as required exercises may reinforce a&#xA;  message of relaxation and self efficacy and provide a deferral&#xA;  strategy for reliever use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ENGLAND 2003 (23 subjects)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusion: Buteyko can reduce bronchodilator use and improve&#xA;  symptoms. Buteyko may be worth trying in patients who are sympathetic&#xA;  to the ethos and are willing to commit the time required. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Choice of control is difficult, maintaining blindness is a problem.&#xA;  Limited follow up visits to one for each group to remain comparable,&#xA;  but some subjects would have liked more. Success or failure relies&#xA;  heavily on patient/practitioner relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Paitents need to be motivated, so the success rate of a formal trial&#xA;  may be less than that seen in everyday practice, and since patients&#xA;  did not chose the Buteyko couse, and because they are not paying, they&#xA;  may be less committed to seeing it through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NEW ZEALAND 2003 (17 subjects)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At six months Buteyko Group (n=17) or control (n=17) asthma education&#xA;  and relaxation.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  • Reliever medication decreased by 85% in Buteyko&#xA;  group, by 37% in control group.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  • Inhaled corticosteroids decreased&#xA;  by 50% in Buteyko group, unchanged in control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AUSTRALIA 2000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusions: Buteyko may be effective in improving quality of life and&#xA;  reducing inhaled reliever medication in patients with asthma –warrants&#xA;  further investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AUSTRALIA  1998 (19 subjects)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At three months Buteyko Group achieved&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  • Reliever medication&#xA;  decreased by 90%. Significantly more than control (P=0.002)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  • Trend&#xA;  towards reduction of inhaled corticosteroids&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So now on to the opposition&lt;/strong&gt;, the Wikipedia article you've linked has the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/guidelines/asthma/asthgdln.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute asthma guideline&lt;/a&gt; concluding this summary&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Expert Panel concludes &lt;strong&gt;there is insufficient evidence&lt;/strong&gt; to suggest&#xA;  that breathing techniques provide clinical benefit to patients who&#xA;  have asthma. Controlled studies have been conducted with breathing&#xA;  exercises (Holloway and Ram 2004), inspiratory muscle training (Ram et&#xA;  al. 2003; Weiner et al. 2002), and &lt;strong&gt;Buteyko breathing (Cooper et al.&#xA;  2003)&lt;/strong&gt; (raising blood PCO2 through hypoventilation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12885982&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cooper's actual study&lt;/a&gt; was on Buteyko v Pranayam and notes &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Symptoms remained relatively stable in the PCLE (to mimic Pranayam) and placebo groups but&#xA;  were reduced in the Buteyko group&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and concludes that inhaler use may be reduced&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSION: The Buteyko breathing technique can improve symptoms and&#xA;  reduce bronchodilator use but does not appear to change bronchial&#xA;  responsiveness or lung function in patients with asthma. No benefit&#xA;  was shown for the Pink City Lung Exerciser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I've seen on some forums, the US opposition is a conspiracy angle, that this will reduce sales for large pharmaceuticals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sott.net/articles/show/224993-US-Breathing-Technique-Proven-Cure-for-Asthma&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some further reading&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastEditorUserId="2027" LastEditDate="2011-09-08T07:36:15.933" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T07:36:15.933" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6089" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6090" CreationDate="2011-09-08T09:42:02.637" Score="14" ViewCount="1130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in a conversation with a friend trying to convince her to switch to kindle, so she said that the cost and plastic material and eco footprint of kindle is higher then all the EBooks she could possibly read.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/mar/09/ecological-ebooks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;While others have made the case that eReaders are more ecofriendly&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, which one is true? What is the ecological cost of the kindle? How green is it? How many Ebooks do I need to read on it to justify the eco cost of buying it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to know how valid my friend's argument is? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks much for feedback :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4654" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2011-09-08T12:47:04.567" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T17:12:10.043" Title="Kindle vs Books and ecofriendliness" Tags="|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6089" CreationDate="2011-09-08T12:40:51.390" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just did an edit to your question, and realized that the link I put in there has the answers you were looking for.  They are not definitive, because people use books and ebook readers differently form individual to individual, and the technology is new so we haven't collected all the data yet.  However, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/mar/09/ecological-ebooks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a blog entry on The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; (so take it for what it's worth)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've only managed to find one report – on the Kindle (by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cleantech.com/news/4867/cleantech-group-finds-positive-envi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Cleantech Group&lt;/a&gt;) – but it backs up suggestions that so long as e-readers are used as book replacements rather than supplements, they soon start to pay back in carbon terms. The report states that a book uses up &amp;quot;approximately 7.46 kilograms of CO2 over its lifetime&amp;quot; and that the Kindle produces &amp;quot;roughly 168 kg&amp;quot; during its lifecycle, making it &amp;quot;a clear winner against the potential savings: 1,074 kg of CO2 if replacing three books a month for four years; and up to 26,098 kg of CO2 when used to the fullest capacity of the Kindle.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publicradio.org/columns/marketplace/sustainability-answers/The%20environmental%20impact%20of%20the%20Amazon%20Kindle.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;For a full report from The Cleantech Group, here is a link to a PDF document&lt;/a&gt;.  The author of the blog goes on to say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, I'm part-way convinced. There are clear advantages to using e-readers in schools and academe. At home, I'm less sure – especially when you factor in side-issues such as the toxicity of the heavy metals used in ebook readers and their batteries. I also hesitate because the devices are so new we still know little about how they're used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, I'm hoping an informal survey here might shed more light. So tell me: if you own an e-reader, how often do you use it? (Have you for instance topped off the 22.5 books The Cleantech Group require to break even with traditional books in carbon terms?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically, if you put 23 books on the Kindle, you are ahead of the game according to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some other things to consider too.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teleread.com/robert-nagle/apple-amazon-rated-at-bottom-of-climate-change-scorecard-and-what-about-ebooks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;For instance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current book ordering system encourages bookstores to order more books than they can reasonably sell. That increases the number of published copies and consequently the number of returns (and the amount of shipping costs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grist.org/article/in-a-bind&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Additionally&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A MS candidate named Greg Kozak &lt;a href=&quot;http://css.snre.umich.edu/css_doc/CSS03-04.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pitted textbooks against e-book devices&lt;/a&gt; [PDF] in 2003. He found that paper production, electricity of printing operations, and personal transportation were the main factors affecting the book footprint, while electricity was the main issue for e-readers; and that books were responsible for four times the greenhouse emissions as e-readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/blog/2009/02/11/ebooks-and-environmental-impact/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Self Publishing Review states&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Salon, there’s a highly technical summary of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/news/environment/ask_pablo/2008/09/08/printers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the amount of energy it takes to read on a computer vs. printing out an article to read it&lt;/a&gt;. The verdict: “The contrast is quite convincing, one-tenth of a pound of greenhouse gas emissions from reading the document on the computer, versus almost one-quarter of a pound of greenhouse gas emissions for printing it out!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or more specifically to the Kindle&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another article lays out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://fatknowledge.blogspot.com/2008/08/e-books-vs-newspapers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;environmental impact of reading a newspaper&lt;/a&gt; on a reader and reading the New York Times on an ebook. Their conclusion: “Reading the physical version of the NY Times for a year uses 7,300 MJ of energy and emits 700 kg of co2. Reading it on a Kindle uses 100 MJ of energy and emits 10 kg of co2.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T17:12:10.043" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6076" CreationDate="2011-09-08T12:54:35.503" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some &quot;pests&quot; are more likely to transfer disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uen.org/utahlink/activities/view_activity.cgi?activity_id=1026&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flies&lt;/a&gt; frequently breed in and around feces, and carry small amounts of it on their feet.  When they land on our food or eating/cooking surfaces, they can leave contaminants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Houseflies spread germs in other ways, too. The trouble is--&#xA;  houseflies breed in and around manure piles (manure is the big, wet,&#xA;  warm droppings of cows, sheep, horses, and other large mammals),&#xA;  garbage, and rotting flesh. All of these places provide a good source&#xA;  of food for the maggots when they hatch. Flies have sticky pads on&#xA;  their feet, and every time a fly lands on something in our home and&#xA;  walks around on it, it leaves behind little bits of manure, garbage,&#xA;  or rotting flesh. When they walk on our food or our countertops, they&#xA;  leave behind germs from the last place they visited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, they are vectors for other infectious diseases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Flies can spread typhoid fever. During the Spanish-American War in&#xA;  1898, typhoid was spread by flies and killed over 5,000 soldiers. The&#xA;  battles themselves in this war only killed 4,000 soldiers! Flies also&#xA;  spread malaria, yellow fever, sleeping sickness, and dysentery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mice are also carriers of some pretty nasty diseases.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002358/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hantavirus&lt;/a&gt; is carried by mice (primarily deer mice), but does not make the animal sick.  Humans can catch the virus by exposure to the dust of dried mouse droppings, and it can be fatal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/epi/epi-pigeon.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pigeons&lt;/a&gt; can cause some minor health problems.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three human diseases are known to be associated with pigeon droppings:&#xA;  histoplasmosis, cryptococcosis, and psittacosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Histoplasmosis Histoplasmosis is a disease caused by a fungus, which&#xA;  grows in pigeon droppings. It also grows in soils and is found&#xA;  throughout the world. When cleaning droppings a person may breathe in&#xA;  some of the fungus, which in cases of high exposure can cause&#xA;  infection. Common activities, such as cleaning off windowsills, will&#xA;  not result in high exposures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Symptoms of histoplasmosis begin to appear about 10 days after initial&#xA;  infection and include fatigue, fever, and chest pains. Most people,&#xA;  however, do not show any symptoms. Those with compromised immune&#xA;  systems such as cancer patients or people living with HIV/AIDS are&#xA;  generally more at risk of developing histoplasmosis. The disease&#xA;  cannot be transmitted from person to person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cryptococcosis Cryptococcosis is another fungal disease associated&#xA;  with pigeon droppings and also grows in soils throughout the world. It&#xA;  is very unlikely that healthy people will become infected even at high&#xA;  levels of exposure. A major risk factor for infection is a compromised&#xA;  immune system. According to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC),&#xA;  nearly 85 percent of cryptococcosis patients are HIV-positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Psittacosis Psittacosis (also known as ornithosis or parrot fever) is&#xA;  a rare infectious disease that mainly affects parrots and parrot-like&#xA;  birds such as cockatiels, and parakeets, but may also affect other&#xA;  birds, such as pigeons. When bird droppings dry and become airborne&#xA;  people may inhale them and get sick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In humans, this bacterial disease is characterized by: fatigue, fever,&#xA;  headache, rash, chills, and sometimes pneumonia. Symptoms develop&#xA;  about 10 days after exposure. Psittacosis can be treated with a common&#xA;  antibiotic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since 1996, fewer than 50 confirmed cases were reported in the United&#xA;  States annually. In New York City, psittacosis is very rare with less&#xA;  than one human case identified each year. According to the CDC, about&#xA;  70% of infected people had contact with infected pet birds. Those at&#xA;  greatest risk include bird owners, pet shop employees, veterinarians,&#xA;  and people with compromised immune systems. No person-to-person cases&#xA;  have ever been reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the Bubonic Plague Darwy mentioned, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081123222844.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rats can spread a number of diseases through the fleas that frequently infest them&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the early 1990s, more than 20 species of Bartonella bacteria&#xA;  have been discovered. They are considered to be emerging zoonotic&#xA;  pathogens, because they can cause serious illness in humans worldwide&#xA;  from heart disease to infection of the spleen and nervous system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientists have found that rodents carry several pathogenic species of&#xA;  Bartonella, such as B. elizabethae, which can cause endocarditis and&#xA;  B. grahamii, which was found to cause neuroretinitis in humans.&#xA;  Although scientists are unsure about the main route of transmission,&#xA;  these infections are most likely to be spread by fleas. Ctenophthalmus&#xA;  nobilis, a flea that lives on bank voles, was shown to transmit&#xA;  different species of Bartonella bacteria. These pathogens have also&#xA;  been found in fleas that live on gerbils, cotton rats and brown rats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rats can also spread diseases to humans through their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.northampton.gov.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=253&amp;amp;pageNumber=4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;urine&lt;/a&gt; which can be transmitted by contact with water or moist plants and soil.  The organisms in the urine can enter the human body through cuts or abrasions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Salmonellosis can also be spread by drinking contaminated food or drink that had come into contact with rat feces or urine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TLDR version: Yes, some pests are nasty, filthy disease carriers that can cause serious illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastActivityDate="2011-09-08T12:54:35.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6093" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-08T18:39:24.070" Score="8" ViewCount="1349" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all know that recycling of paper is the thing to do, and if you ask many people why they religiously separate their trash and ensure that paper is always put in the recycle bin, they (&lt;em&gt;at least many of the people I have asked&lt;/em&gt;) simply say that it's good for the environment.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;One of the things I would like to know is whether or not recycling of paper has actually reduced deforestation? Are there numbers to show this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2798" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T00:13:08.420" Title="Has recycling of paper reduced deforestation" Tags="|recycling|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6094" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7734" CreationDate="2011-09-08T22:50:42.007" Score="22" ViewCount="4664" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/croatia/7583971/Croatian-teenager-wakes-from-coma-speaking-fluent-German.html&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; about a Croatian teenager waking from coma, speaking fluent German. She started learning German before the coma. I know of savants and few people showing special mental improvements after accidents damaging their brain, but the end the article states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There are references to cases where people who have been seriously&#xA;  ill and perhaps in a coma have woken up being able to speak other&#xA;  languages – sometimes even the Biblical languages such as that spoken&#xA;  in old Babylon or Egypt&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's where I get really skeptical about this whole article. Is there any truth in this Croatian case? And if so, are there some hard scientific studies, not explaining, but at least referencing true cases concerning Biblical languages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I would appreciate a clear scientific paper/study referencing and describing exactly a similar case or at least a scientific reference what the most extreme case of linguistic improvement after waking from coma was described by clear criterions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4477" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-09-12T03:17:03.240" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T22:26:18.803" Title="Have coma patients ever gained the ability to speak a foreign language fluently?" Tags="|psychology|neurology|linguistics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6095" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-08T23:44:27.267" Score="10" ViewCount="9234" Body="&lt;p&gt;This video claims to show mercury giving off a steady stream of toxic vapor when viewed with a UV light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JABbofwD3MI&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JABbofwD3MI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/k97ul/this_is_why_you_dont_play_with_mercury/&quot;&gt;a Reddit discussion about this video&lt;/a&gt;. The visible vapor could easily be something else besides mercury. Does mercury really give off toxic vapor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2501" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-09-09T14:01:28.040" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T22:48:27.143" Title="Does elemental mercury give off toxic vapor?" Tags="|chemistry|mercury|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6096" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6099" CreationDate="2011-09-09T00:10:23.717" Score="11" ViewCount="1379" Body="&lt;p&gt;On Sep 8 2011 on CNN television, following President Obama's speech, a breaking news item was broadcast concerning a &quot;New Terror Threat for 9/11 Anniversary.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The news item claimed that &quot;Anniversaries are significant to Al Qaeda.&quot;  I have heard this claim repeated in the past.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is this true?  Have any previous attacks (worldwide) by Al Qaeda occurred on an anniversary -- either an 'obvious' date like 9/11 or an anniversary significant to the terrorists culture or goals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:18:54.687" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:18:54.687" Title="Is Al Qaeda more likely to attack on anniversaries?" Tags="|terrorism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6093" CreationDate="2011-09-09T00:13:08.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are not going to be able show such things, as there are many other reasons why forest area goes up or down apart from paper production.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want figures on changes in forestry in different countries, you could try FAO Statistics, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fao.org/forestry/fra/62219/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; which suggests forested area has risen in Europe and North &amp;amp; Central America but fallen in other continents since 1990, and fallen worldwide.  You can find a forestry products database &lt;a href=&quot;http://faostat.fao.org/site/626/default.aspx#ancor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; including recovered paper and fibre pulp.  Some of these statistics have been repackaged for individual countries &lt;a href=&quot;http://rainforests.mongabay.com/deforestation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what you will not be able to find is what would have happened without recycling.  Basic economics suggests non-commercial recycling of paper will probably reduce the price of paper below what it would otherwise be (so boosting demand), while discouraging the planting/replanting of forests for future paper production.  Whether the net effect on forest area is positive or negative is unclear. For example Finland is a significant paper producer with a tradition of replanting, but its &lt;a href=&quot;http://rainforests.mongabay.com/deforestation/2000/Finland.htm#03-forests&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;forest area&lt;/a&gt; declined from 2000 to 2010 after having risen in the previous decade. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T00:13:08.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6095" CreationDate="2011-09-09T00:39:31.483" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mercury is toxic in its elemental liquid and vapour forms and in its compounds, though to different degrees.  Hence the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/mercury/spills/index.htm&quot;&gt;advice from the US EPA&lt;/a&gt; on how to deal with spills.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like all liquids, mercury will continue to evaporate until it reaches its saturated vapour pressure or it is completely gaseous.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the liquid and vapour are toxic, elemental mercury poisoning is rarely fatal, though there was a reported case of a dental assistant who died after continued exposure. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/jhh/journal/v13/n10/pdf/1000896a.pdf&quot;&gt;this review&lt;/a&gt;, after a high acute exposure to mercury vapour, symptoms such as cough, dyspnoea, chest tightness, lethargy, restlessness, fever and signs of pneumonitis can develop.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with most toxins, the higher the dose, the more serious the response. Minor cases, such as a broken thermometer, are much less serious, but advice (such as that from the EPA) on to deal with the spill including opening a window, and what not to do including using a vacuum cleaner, should be followed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-09-09T00:39:31.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6096" CreationDate="2011-09-09T01:23:11.780" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, specific dates have special meanings to organizations such as Al Qaeda, Hezbullah, etc. (Basically anyone as noted by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/782/dmckee&quot;&gt;dmckee&lt;/a&gt; in the first comment to your question.)  &lt;a href=&quot;http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/156542.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Congressional Research Service has even written a document about this (PDF)&lt;/a&gt;.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nctc.gov/site/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Counterterrorism Center also has a great deal of information online&lt;/a&gt; (although I find that interactive timeline severely lacking).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123251648&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The United States Air Force considers the significance of dates to terrorists important enough to release something in an unclassified forum.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Terrorists often pick meaningful dates to schedule their attacks. The biggest terrorist anniversaries of the year, however, are April 19 and 20. These dates are extremely significant, especially to domestic terrorists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, a great deal also spoke about Domestic terrorists.  This behaviour is not restricted to Islamic terrorists, but pretty much any radical that has a specific message to convey through violence.  It &quot;heightens the impact&quot; as it were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/pa/pa_5557.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Department of State offers this&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the past, terrorist organizations have on occasion planned their attacks to coincide with significant dates on the calendar.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, most assessments and documentation for this sort of intelligence activity is classified either because the sensitivity of the source, or to keep those who would do harm guessing as to exactly what we do know.  Documentation will be difficult to find, and unless you restrict your search to specific veins, you may come up with some incredibly irrelevant, not to mention outright wrong, data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some additional reports that may aid you in learning more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army/guidterr/ch02.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Terrorist Motivations and Behaviour (PDF)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nctc.gov/docs/ct_calendar_2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Counterterrorism Calendar 2010 (PDF)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-09-10T16:45:27.227" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6250" CreationDate="2011-09-09T01:50:36.203" Score="11" ViewCount="1138" Body="&lt;p&gt;In light of today's Presidential Speech on jobs, I was reminded of something that I read in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/companies-are-hiring-just-not-you-08112011.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bloomberg Businessweek&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the jobless rate still above 9 percent, the untapped labor pool is deep. &lt;em&gt;Yet some companies struggle to find qualified applicants&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How accurate is it to say that some companies are having a great deal of difficulty finding applicants who are actually qualified for the jobs they have available?  Is there any sort of statistic that not only tracks unemployed, but the unemployable (due to lack of training/skill)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-07-07T03:29:01.883" LastActivityDate="2021-11-11T21:46:45.867" Title="How is structural unemployment measured?" Tags="|economics|united-states|politics|employment|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6095" CreationDate="2011-09-09T07:33:52.143" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd just like to point out that what you see in the video under UV is not the vapor itself but the shadow of the vapor under UV. The light is almost parallel with the plane of the dish and at some points in the video you can see the vapor coming off one of the sides of the dish but with a gap between the dish and the shadow of the dish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see in this image (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbu.edu/%7Ejvarrian/252/emspex.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), a mercury lamp does have several peaks around 400nm, which is UV spectrum. So pure mercury vapor would absorb UV and hence cast a shadow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mZJyG.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mZJyG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Mercury absorption spectrum&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbu.edu/%7Ejvarrian/252/emspex.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cbu.edu&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore I think that what you're seeing in the video is indeed mercury vapor, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element)#Occupational_exposure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;which is indeed toxic&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4689" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T22:48:27.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6095" CreationDate="2011-09-09T08:23:11.990" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As already mentioned by w00t, it is plausible that the video is actually showing mercury vapor. Mercury vapor is also used in specialized lamps (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-vapor_lamp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mercury-vapor lamp&lt;/a&gt;), the mercury spectra are well known. Likely the green background you see is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_layer_chromatography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TLC&lt;/a&gt;-plate coated with a fluorescent dye and you're seeing the shadow of the mercury vapor on that plate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether the rate of vapor you see is realistic I cannot say, it could easily be faked by increasing the temperature and thereby the evaporation rate. Also, judging the amount from the visual appearance of the vapor could be very deceptive, the far better way would be to measure the mass of the drop and calculate how much mercury evaporated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Luckily, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajp.aapt.org/resource/1/ajpias/v71/i8/p783_s1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;someone has performed experiments on the evaporation of mercury drops&lt;/a&gt;. The rates they measured for a small and a larger drop were 6 and 7 µg/h. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author also extrapolates how much mercury it would take to achieve vapor concentrations that reach the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/healthguidelines/mercuryvapor/recognition.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OSHA limit&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How much mercury would it take, under the assumptions of the present&#xA;  study, for the evaporative concentration to reach the OSHA limit? This&#xA;  amount would depend on the size of the drops, as well as the overall&#xA;  time period. Assuming drops of the smaller size studied, with&#xA;  approximate diameter 3 mm, it would take 2000 such drops, for a&#xA;  combined mass of 400 g over the full time period. If we assume drops&#xA;  of the larger size studied, with approximate diameter 7 mm, it would&#xA;  take 500 such drops for a combined mass of 1000 g. These are large&#xA;  amounts of mercury. These crude estimates are not inconsistent with&#xA;  direct observation of a large spill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elemental mercury is toxic, but the danger depends heavily on the amount of mercury in the atmosphere. The amount present in common household items are usually very small, so they usually don't represent an acute danger. You should still clean it up properly, but there is no need to panic over small amounts of mercury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2013-07-21T10:19:47.293" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T10:19:47.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6029" CreationDate="2011-09-09T14:03:31.587" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To start with we'll take a look at tannins. The compounds that are known in the dental profession to contribute to staining of the exterior surface of the tooth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Extrinsic stains tend to form in areas of the teeth that are less accessible to tooth brushing and the abrasive action of a toothpaste and is often promoted by smoking, dietary intake of tannin-rich foods (e.g. red wine) and the use of certain cationic agents such as chlorhexidine, or metal salts such as tin and iron. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saudident.com/album/data/media/17/The_bleaching_of_teeth-A_review_of_the_literature.pdf&quot;&gt;The bleaching of teeth-A review of the literature.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These tannin compounds have been scientifically confirmed in coffee at concentrations of about 1%, however this does not mean it is the ONLY staining component of coffee.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/030881469190102T&quot;&gt;The presence of soluble condensed tannins in Coffea arabica pulp was confirmed at approximately 1% db.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can also see that the tannin compounds react with the casein in milk by binding to them and tanning (staining) them. The milk taking up the tannin compounds directly reduces the number of free tannin compounds that can react with the enamel and other external surfaces of your teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just as the protein of untanned hide is combined with tannin to form chemically tough collagen/tannin complexes, so in the teacup, the milk's protein turns into tannin/casein complexes. But there is a difference: in leather every reactive point on the protein molecule is taken up by a tannin molecule, but this need not be so in tea. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1400,00.html&quot;&gt;Dan Lowy in letter to the Guardian Re:tannins in tea&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4616" LastEditorUserId="4584" LastEditDate="2011-09-12T17:02:34.820" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T17:02:34.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="377" CreationDate="2011-09-09T14:32:23.753" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;By people, who experimented to get robust designs and who sometimes made mistakes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The really compelling evidence that pyramids were built by &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt; with no advanced technology is that they sometimes fell down. Not only that, but in one case the design of a part-built pyramid was altered as a result of a failure in another (I think this is the Bent pyramid at Dahshur but I don't have the reference to hand so can't be sure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument above was made in the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0500050155&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Riddle of the Pyramids&lt;/a&gt;, Kurt Mendlesshon, Thames and Hudson 1974. This is a great source of debunking of strange theories about them and also a source of many interesting ideas about how and why they are built. I think he argued that they were a huge public works program that was instrumental in forging a coherent Egyptian state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the myths that ascribe mysterious powers to the people who built great ancient moments like the pyramids are better explained by survivorship bias. The people who built them (like the people who built Europe's great cathedrals) didn't just build great monuments: they also built dodgy ones. The dodgy ones fell down and today we only see the great ones that survived. The Mendlesshon theory elaborates on that process by showing that the builders learned in real time what worked and what didn't and altered their unsuccessful designs as they progressed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2016-09-26T23:05:59.390" LastActivityDate="2016-09-26T23:05:59.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6100" CreationDate="2011-09-09T16:35:21.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/qualified&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;qualified applicant&lt;/a&gt; you must meet all of the qualifications of the job.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Must be willing to work hard&#xA;Must be willing to show up on time and work a full shift&#xA;Job pays $10/hour.&#xA;Job is 25 hours a week, no benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not willing to work part time, for $10/hour with no benefits then you are not a qualified applicant even if you will work hard and show up on time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are bringing in 350 per week in Unemployment benefits. If you took this job your benefit &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170703145938/http://www.policyalmanac.org/social_welfare/archive/unemployment_compensation.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;would be reduced&lt;/a&gt; to $100.  You have additional costs from working. Plus you will lose about 24% to taxes including SSI and Unemployment.  So your total weekly bring home after taking this job is now $290.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Unemployment rate&lt;/a&gt; is basically the percentage of people who used to have a job, but lost it, and qualify for unemployment benefits, who are still seeking work, and are still receiving unemployment benefits.  So if you do not fit in this category, you are not qualified for being counted in the Unemployment rate.  So ~9% are counted but it was &lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.washingtonpost.com/economy-watch/2009/09/actual_unemployment_rate_hits.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported that ~16%&lt;/a&gt; is the actual number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The unofficial number starts with the official rate and then adds in&#xA;everyone else who should be working full time but is not, including&#xA;those whose hours have been reduced from full time to part time, those&#xA;who have become so discouraged they have given up looking for work and&#xA;others who are &amp;quot;marginally attached to the labor force.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2021-11-11T21:46:45.867" LastActivityDate="2021-11-11T21:46:45.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6080" CreationDate="2011-09-10T04:35:58.353" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Such numbers are based on surveys that extrapolate some sample set.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Remember the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/12/google-plus-growth_n_896330.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Plus user count study&lt;/a&gt; done &lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/117388252776312694644/posts/bGJPTALDkDe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recently&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itpro.co.uk/635980/norton-global-cyber-crime-costs-victims-71-billion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;another article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Norton determined the £71 billion figure by taking the number of victims over past 12 months for each country and multiplying it by the average financial cost of cyber crime per nation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many have debated the validity of such figures, as they only look at a snapshot of victims. In the case of the Norton research, 24 countries were covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2224" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-09-10T04:44:45.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6113" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-11T11:05:26.360" Score="21" ViewCount="8104" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just heard of it (a friend has to take it) and it seems obvious that it's a product marketed directly to business people.&#xA;I'd expect that the test isn't worth much because it was made in 1955 and personality theory has changed much since and because most research shows little incremental validity (above intelligence) even for the good and recent personality tests in job assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What impresses me, is that they don't even seem to care much about keeping up the appearance of a scientifically grounded test.&#xA;When I call up their research database, it doesn't &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.piworldwide.com/Research-Insights.aspx?type=Articles&amp;amp;fltTopic=%7BCF86D72E-954E-4CD3-8AE0-12AA8E1A2A8D%7D&amp;amp;fltIndustry=allInd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;return any articles&lt;/a&gt; about the PI.&#xA;They don't link to any peer-reviewed research from their main page, and the FAQ items about reliability and validity just serve to explain the concepts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I searched the company's name I found one recent study referencing their coefficients, which were apparently assessed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pi-mgmt.com/Other_Resources/files/page5_12.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Perry and Lavori&lt;/a&gt; back in 1983. The research was commissioned and not peer-reviewed, so it is not going to hold up very well against accusations of bias. They don't show criterion validity, but some other PDFs on this pi-mgmt site (which I didn't find via the main site). None of those show v. above intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they say:&#xA;&quot;The PI has been investigated in over 400 criterion-related validity studies since 1972, (16 of these studies were conducted in 2003 alone) for a variety of jobs and in a variety of industries, and has been shown to be job-related in all of these studies.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was job-related! Thank goodness. Can they refer to 400 studies if they were never published anywhere, not even online and be in accordance with standards of truth in advertising? With the MBTI the research is there, it &quot;just&quot; doesn't show that the instrument is good and most business executives don't find out. But the PI practices strike me as even more audacious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="2722" LastEditDate="2016-05-02T06:07:28.293" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T06:07:28.293" Title="Is the Predictive Index® personality inventory for hiring based on scientific research?" Tags="|psychology|sociology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6114" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6115" CreationDate="2011-09-11T12:29:49.320" Score="52" ViewCount="22816" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the athletics world championship, a commentator mentioned casually during the marathon discipline that humans are faster over long distances than all animals. &#xA;I'm unsure if this can be said generally. Obviously some individuals cannot run, so consider the speed of the fastest individuals of each species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were there any scientific experiments performed to compare humans and animal? Alternatively, are there medical/biomechanical reasons upon which one can base this statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional research turned up the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v432/n7015/full/nature03052.html&quot;&gt;Nature abstract&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here we assess how well humans perform at sustained long-distance&#xA;  running, and review the physiological and anatomical bases of&#xA;  endurance running capabilities in humans and other mammals. Judged by&#xA;  several criteria, humans perform remarkably well at endurance running,&#xA;  thanks to a diverse array of features, many of which leave traces in&#xA;  the skeleton. The fossil evidence of these features suggests that&#xA;  endurance running is a derived capability of the genus Homo,&#xA;  originating about 2 million years ago, and may have been instrumental&#xA;  in the evolution of the human body form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take this as proof that this question is trickier than it looks. The following articles also seem to support this theory: &lt;a href=&quot;http://naturalhistorymag.com/biomechanics/112078/born-to-run&quot;&gt;Born to Run&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/health/27well.html&quot;&gt;The Human Body Is Built for Distance&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;main factor seems to be temperature, which complicates an objective comparison of specific mammals&lt;/strong&gt;. Standard ambient temperature is from my knowledge around 25° C. It seems this a temperature where it gets tricky for horses and especially sled dogs to keep up with our best marathon runners. On even longer distances, likely even more. Probably a doubled marathon distance will already change the whole mammal endurance ranking. It would be interesting to see how desert/steppe animals like camel/antelope/cheetah do compared to dog/horse/human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4477" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T07:59:11.077" LastActivityDate="2020-06-17T18:17:42.390" Title="Can trained humans run faster than all other animals on a marathon distance?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|zoology|biophysics|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6114" CreationDate="2011-09-11T15:46:06.993" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;We just need to look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iditarod.com/learn/trivia.html&quot;&gt;sled dogs&lt;/a&gt; and do a little math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1986, Susan Butcher broke Rick Swenson’s record, set in 1981, by&#xA;  completing the 1049+ miles in 11 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1049/11 = 95 miles per day.  This dwarfs a marathon, and marathon runners don't pull sleds.  However, there are other races where we manage 71ish miles per day.  This is for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-Transcendence_3100_Mile_Race&quot;&gt;Self-Transcendence&lt;/a&gt;, which purports to be the longest foot race on the planet.  The Iditarod is in particularly cold climates.  There is a case of 100km being ran in 6:13.  100km is 62 miles, which starts to get into the Iditarod range.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whereskarl.com/&quot;&gt;Someone also ran the AT, 2000ish miles in 50+ days&lt;/a&gt;.  None of these accomplishments conquer the mile eating 95 miles per day that Iditarod champion dogs accomplish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most speculation I read is that the dogs outperform us only the in the cold.  However there's no comparable opportunity in warm climates (sledding requires snow, but if someone has an example, I'll include it.), so it is not clear that this is due to the dog being unable vs. humans not having a reason/method/desire to race dogs long distances in warmer climates.  Dogs can certainly handle warmer location in day to day living, for instance &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo&quot;&gt;Dingos&lt;/a&gt; exist across hot and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3aDingo-Distribution-Fleming.png&quot;&gt;inhospitable areas&lt;/a&gt;, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.outback-australia-travel-secrets.com/image-files/australian-deserts.jpg&quot;&gt;Simpson desert in Australia&lt;/a&gt;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason that this is significant, is that it's contrived.  Humans are the only species to create physical challenges where people train for a large portion of their lives just to accomplish this purely contrived challenge.  The only animal I've been able to find that beats us is an animal we have harnessed to compete to the same end.  The comparison breaks down with most other animals, not because they aren't fast, but because it's not accurate to compare an olympic marathon runner with the average (as opposed to the best) kangaroo.  But it's not really possible (within ethical contrants) to find the &quot;best&quot; kanagaroo.  Yet even in this contrived contest, we are not the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you compare the average human, we would fare less well, but that comparison is also harder to achieve, as we'd have to have numbers on what the average human can run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other animal that came to my mind is the ostrich.  Unfortunately all I have found so far is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrich&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.  Still looking for more on this, however the cites look good so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.capetowntocairo.com/travelogue/riding-and-racing-ostriches-in-oudtshoorn-south-africa.htm&quot;&gt;People race Ostriches in Africa O.o&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When being pursued by a predator, they have been known to reach speeds&#xA;  in excess of 70 kilometres per hour (43 mph), and can maintain a&#xA;  steady speed of 50 kilometres per hour (31 mph), which makes the&#xA;  Ostrich the world's fastest two-legged animal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These birds blow us away in both short and long distance running (we can't even come close to a sustained 31mph) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arubaostrichfarm.com/facts.html&quot;&gt;they handle a 104 degree F range of temperature.&lt;/a&gt;, which is not as great as ours, but is much above &quot;cold only&quot; climates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind of makes me want to see an ostrich marathon :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-02-06T14:58:20.917" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T14:58:20.917" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6118" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6123" CreationDate="2011-09-12T00:50:08.567" Score="34" ViewCount="44646" Body="&lt;p&gt;A video on Youtube, “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iB0QECqoaI&amp;amp;feature=share&quot;&gt;BBC Building 7 Collapse&lt;/a&gt;” is a televised news report from the BBC that states that WTC Tower 7 (aka the &quot;Salomon Bros. Building&quot;) had collapsed. An overlay on the video by the uploader to Youtube, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iB0QECqoaI&amp;amp;feature=player_detailpage#t=42s&quot;&gt;at around 0:42&lt;/a&gt; in the video, states &quot;WTC7 Collapsed? It's only 5:07pm&quot;. The video goes on to highlight the apparently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iB0QECqoaI&amp;amp;feature=player_detailpage#t=105s&quot;&gt;live footage – which shows Tower 7 in the background, still standing&lt;/a&gt;. There's a whole web-site &lt;a href=&quot;http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/bbc_wtc7_videos.html&quot;&gt;devoted to this rumour&lt;/a&gt; (which, I add, has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/02/part_of_the_conspiracy.html&quot;&gt;statement from Richard Porter&lt;/a&gt;, the head of news at BBC World).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_for_the_day_of_the_September_11_attacks&quot;&gt;timeline of the WTC fall on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, the first impact was at 8:46am (North Tower) and 9:03 am (South Tower), and WTC Tower 7 fell at just after 5:20pm. The anchor states that they are reporting “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iB0QECqoaI&amp;amp;feature=player_detailpage#t=195s&quot;&gt;some 8 hours&lt;/a&gt;” after the attack (i.e. around 5pm). I didn't spot any clocks in the video or more accurate measures of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video purports to be evidence that the BBC reported that WTC Tower 7 had fallen before the fall had taken place, and in particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the report is apparently made at 5:07pm (i.e. 13 minutes before the tower fell); and&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the apparently live image in the background showed Tower 7 still standing, while the BBC was reporting that it had fallen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video overlays state that the falling of Tower 7 was a controlled demolition, but gives no evidence supporting that conclusion. It seems to be implying that the BBC had clairvoyant reporting because a planned press release had been circulated, and that the BBC's mistake was in reading off the press release before they were supposed to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correspondent is cut off from the news feed, which on any other day might be considered unusual, but given the chaos of September 11, 2001, I don't draw any negative inference from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alas the correspondent, Jane Standley, who would seem the person most able to shed light on this conspiracy theory, seems to not be a public figure anymore. No useful results show up for her on google, &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.davidicke.com/showthread.php?t=125220&quot;&gt;as others seem to have tried&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, did the BBC report the falling of WTC Tower 7 &lt;em&gt;before the tower fell&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, if the BBC did report Tower 7's fall before the event, does that evidence support the conclusion of the existence of any nefarious conspiracy? (i.e. are there not more plausible explanations, e.g. an error by the BBC as Richard Porter has stated)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:18:32.163" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:18:32.163" Title="Was the BBC report of the WTC-7 falling before it happened a scripted event?" Tags="|media|9-11|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6119" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-12T01:56:29.987" Score="4" ViewCount="2244" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend was sitting near another's ringing mobile phone, stoically ignoring the noise. When I advised him to cover the dynamic with a finger, he replied that it may break it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really so? I think the energy should be dissipated in finger/casing and is too weak to break anything anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managed to find a reference with [remotely] similar opinion, although here the aperture is covered to make it louder as opposed to silencing it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.e-katalog.ru/opinion_ie.php?resolvedName_=NOKIA-1280&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.e-katalog.ru/opinion_ie.php?resolvedName_=NOKIA-1280&lt;/a&gt; &quot;И динамик не стоит на обратной стороне заклеивать или закрывать пальцем,на много проще перевернуть телефончик обратной стороной к уху и слышимость становится просто-супер!А заклеенный динамик со временем испортится.&quot; -&gt; &quot;And you should not block the dynamic on the reverse side with finger or with duct tape. Simply turn around the device and lean the back side your ear - audibility is superb. And glued (with a duct tape) dynamic will eventually spoil.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4776" LastEditorUserId="4776" LastEditDate="2011-09-12T09:09:56.800" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T07:19:09.127" Title="Can blocking the aperture of a mobile phone speaker cause damage?" Tags="|technology|mobile-phones|sound|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6121" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6122" CreationDate="2011-09-12T03:08:47.960" Score="11" ViewCount="922" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Smith_%28entrepreneur%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dick Smith&lt;/a&gt; in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/smith-threatens-to-out-rich-who-dont-help-others-20110909-1k1sy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recent rant&lt;/a&gt; about &quot;selfish&quot; rich Australians made a claim that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the United States, the rich donated an average of 15 per cent of&#xA;  their income, Smith said. But in Australia it was less than 1 per&#xA;  cent. ''In America, I'm told that if you are wealthy and you're not&#xA;  known as a philanthropist, you are a social pariah.''&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth in claim above that America's rich donate an average of 15 percent and rich Australians only donate less than 1 percent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article is suggesting rich means earning more than $1mil per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-09-22T10:00:12.910" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T10:00:12.910" Title="Do the rich in the US donate an average of 15 percent of their income?" Tags="|economics|taxes|finance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6121" CreationDate="2011-09-12T04:54:37.040" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tax stats are available here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=134951,00.html#_pt2&quot;&gt;http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=134951,00.html#_pt2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I downloaded 2009 data: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/09in21id.xls&quot;&gt;http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/09in21id.xls&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I calculated donations as total contributions/Total income&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 to 1.5 million = 2.9%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1.5 to 2 million = 2.9%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2 to 5 million = 3.1%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;5 to 10 million = 3.8%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;10 million+ = 5.8%  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 230,000+ people in these combined brackets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, according to the IRS, they do not.  &lt;strong&gt;However the &lt;em&gt;IRS restricts the number of donations that can be claimed&lt;/em&gt;, so this could be drastically under reporting.&lt;/strong&gt;  The brackets all give around the same amount, with the middle class generally giving the least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-09-12T15:29:11.467" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T15:29:11.467" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6118" CreationDate="2011-09-12T05:13:19.333" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the conspiracy, this page does a better job than I could: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What most likely, logically happened: While investigating and updating information on the collapse of the towers, someone at the BBC was given a report/press release that building 7 was going to collapse. [Edit: we now know they were monitoring the news from different outlets and that's where they learned of building 7.] According to the fire department, by 2:00PM they knew the building would soon collapse. Reporters KNEW this well before the collapse because there are videos of reporters talking about it before it happened. So we KNOW reporters were given information on WTC 7's imminent demise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone knew the building would collapse long before it did.  In fact they knew hours in advance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then we found out, I guess around 3:00 [o'clock], that they thought 7 was going to collapse. So, of course, [we've] got guys all in this pile over here and the main concern was get everybody out, and I guess it took us over an hour and a half, two hours to get everybody out of there. (Q. Initially when you were there, you had said you heard a few Maydays?) Oh, yes. We had Maydays like crazy.... The heat must have been tremendous. There was so much [expletive] fire there. This whole pile was burning like crazy. Just the heat and the smoke from all the other buildings on fire, you [couldn't] see anything. So it took us a while and we ended up backing everybody out, and [that's] when 7 collapsed.... Basically, we fell back for 7 to collapse, and then we waited a while and it got a lot more organized, I would guess.&quot; - Lieutenant William Ryan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, they reported it early.  Since when did a news crew screwup become evidence of a multi-national conspiracy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T05:13:19.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6114" CreationDate="2011-09-12T09:33:09.037" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the second part (and A.Rex's comment), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physorg.com/news95954919.html&quot;&gt;humans sweat a lot&lt;/a&gt;. In addition, we're hairless and breathe through the mouth. This all helps to dump heat, which is one of the most limiting factors. &lt;a href=&quot;http://discovermagazine.com/2006/may/tramps-like-us/article_view?b_start%3aint=1&amp;amp;-C=&quot;&gt;It's thought&lt;/a&gt; this helped in scavenging (run to a carcass if you sport vultures, before they eat it) and later hunting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you eliminate heat as a factor, e.g. by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon&quot;&gt;staging a run in Wales&lt;/a&gt;, horses generally do better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastEditorUserId="867" LastEditDate="2011-09-12T09:39:11.023" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T09:39:11.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6079" CreationDate="2011-09-12T17:13:47.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/cps-spc/pubs/pest/_fact-fiche/pool-spa-piscine/index-eng.php#a6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Health Canada&lt;/a&gt; said it's OK, but they don't say anything about the recommended concentrations except to refer to  the label directions :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Health Canada has found that using copper sulphate-based algicides in swimming pools presents no significant danger to bathers. When used according to the label directions, copper sulphate algicide should not cause skin irritation for bathers. However, label directions should be carefully followed when handling undiluted copper sulphate-based products to reduce the potential for skin irritation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4584" LastActivityDate="2011-09-12T17:13:47.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6114" CreationDate="2011-09-12T18:46:24.987" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Answer&lt;/strong&gt; As other have noted, it's not true under all conditions. For example, sled dogs can outrun people easily in cold weather (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mattmetzgar.com/matt_metzgar/files/persistence_hunting.pdf&quot;&gt;DARPA studies&lt;/a&gt;). However, it sounds like the commentator was referring to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_running_hypothesis&quot;&gt;endurance running hypothesis&lt;/a&gt;, which says ancient humans were able to hunt down nearly any animal by outrunning it. The context is key, because the hunter can start the chase in the mid-day heat of the African plains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that qualification, it's possible that humans can run down anything except dogs&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mattmetzgar.com/matt_metzgar/files/persistence_hunting.pdf&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; of tribesmen in Botswana concluded that this way of hunting, &quot;produces a higher meat yield than hunting with bow and arrow, clubs and spears, or springhare probes and about the same as snaring. Only hunting with dogs produces a significantly higher meat yield.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt; The limiting factors in long-distance running are primarily oxygen intake and heat dissipation, both of which people excel at. One explanation, proposed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/2742907&quot;&gt;this paper by David Carrier&lt;/a&gt; is that humans evolved to run long distances under the mid-day sun of the African savannah, hunting large game by chasing it to the point of heat stroke or exhaustion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Specialized Physiology&lt;/strong&gt; Our bodies are specialized to address the two limiting factors noted earlier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Oxygen: Both humans and dogs have very fine (and easily damaged) lung tissue. This maximizes oxygen intake to support sustained energy output. Although many animals can sprint faster than a person, their lungs cannot supply enough oxygen to sustain those speeds. After a minute or so, when the muscles cells have depleted their internal energy stores, their output is limited by the supply of oxygen.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Heat: Even with enough oxygen, there's still the issue of overheating. People have two advantages here: Sweat glands (rare in the animal kingdom) and an upright posture, which exposes a very small surface area to the sun.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sources&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3716644/Lieberman_Marathon.pdf?sequence=3&quot;&gt;Good overview, same the authors as Nature paper&lt;/a&gt; (Free, full paper) &quot;In short, for marathon-length distances, humans can outrun almost all other mammals and can sometimes outrun even horses, especially when  it  is hot.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/2742907&quot;&gt;Carrier paper&lt;/a&gt; (First page free) Probably the original source of the claim. &quot;In spite of this, humans are adept endurance runners, capable of running down, for example, zebra and kangaroo.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mattmetzgar.com/matt_metzgar/files/persistence_hunting.pdf&quot;&gt;Persistence Hunting by Modern Hunter-Gatherers&lt;/a&gt; &quot;Persistence hunting takes place during the hottest time of the day and involves chasing an animal until it is run to exhaustion.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/endurance-training/It-s-the-Dog-in-You.html&quot;&gt;Cite for Dogs beating humans&lt;/a&gt; Magazine article about studies on sled dogs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*By dogs, I mean Canidae, the family of animals including the domesticated dog, wolves, coyotes, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4780" LastEditorUserId="4780" LastEditDate="2011-09-14T00:20:10.070" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T00:20:10.070" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6132" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-12T22:07:16.257" Score="12" ViewCount="8557" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QNAjRm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first formalized calendar-based method was developed in 1930 by&#xA;John Smulders, a Roman Catholic physician from the Netherlands. It was&#xA;based on knowledge of the menstrual cycle. This method was&#xA;independently discovered by Hermann Knaus (Austria), and Kyusaku Ogino&#xA;(Japan). This system was a main form of birth control available to&#xA;Catholic couples for several decades, until the popularization of&#xA;symptoms-based fertility awareness methods. A new development in&#xA;calendar-based methods occurred in 1999, when Georgetown University&#xA;introduced the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.contracept.org/calendar.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Standard Days Method&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.contracept.org/calendar.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Standard Days Method&lt;/a&gt; is&#xA;promoted in conjunction with a product called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cyclebeads.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CycleBeads&lt;/a&gt;, a ring of&#xA;colored beads which are meant to help the user keep track of her&#xA;fertile and non-fertile days.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar-based_contraceptive_methods&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wiki&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rhythm method is the only form of birth control officially &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;accepted by the Catholic church&lt;/a&gt; (I am also including the updated version called &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americancatholic.org/Newsletters/CU/ac0685.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;natural family planning&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; under this umbrella) and one of the main reasons for it still being practiced (and apparently modestly increasing in popularity) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_23/sr23_029.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;listed as &amp;quot;morals&amp;quot; by the CDC&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About 17 percent of sexually experienced teen girls told researchers&#xA;for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that they had used&#xA;the rhythm method -- timing their sex to avoid fertile days to prevent&#xA;getting pregnant. That figure is up from 11 percent in a similar&#xA;survey in 2002. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/02/AR2010060204592.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Washington Post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method does not use any drugs or barrier devices to stop conception, and has a few variations, which can involve charting calendar dates of menstruation, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ovulation-calendar.net/fertility-indicators/basal-body-temperature.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;basal body temperature&lt;/a&gt; and/or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/birth-control/fam-cervical-mucus-method-22140.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cervical mucous method&lt;/a&gt;.  The basic idea is to regulate unprotected intercourse to the &amp;quot;infertile&amp;quot; days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;However, this method has its critics...&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conception can still occur after the fertile time but the embryo is&#xA;unable to implant in the uterine wall, this causes embryonic death.&#xA;Luc Bovens, of the London School of economics states, &amp;quot;millions of&#xA;rhythm method cycles per year globally depend for their success on&#xA;massive embryonic death.&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parentdish.com/2006/06/07/rhythm-method-more-likely-to-kill-embryos-than-condom-method/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;who seem to base their argument on a 2006 study published in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jme.bmj.com/content/32/6/355.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Journal of Medical Ethics&lt;/a&gt; stating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some proponents of the pro-life movement argue against&#xA;morning after pills, IUDs, and contraceptive pills on grounds of a&#xA;concern for causing embryonic death. What has gone unnoticed, however,&#xA;is that the pro-life line of argumentation can be extended to the&#xA;rhythm method of contraception as well. Given certain plausible&#xA;empirical assumptions, the rhythm method may well be responsible for a&#xA;much higher number of embryonic deaths than some other contraceptive&#xA;techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study seems to derive its philosophical position from data similar to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is estimated that up to half of all fertilized eggs die and are&#xA;lost (aborted) spontaneously, usually before the woman knows she is&#xA;pregnant. Among those women who know they are pregnant, the&#xA;miscarriage rate is about 15-20%. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001488.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I of course realize that one study is not definitive on this topic, but so far the 2006 publication is all I can find on it, which leaves me asking some questions....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have the results showing that the rhythm method is likely to cause more embryonic death (even if it is not likely to be noticed) than other birth control methods been repeated?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If a such a large majority of the miscarriages/spontaneous abortion are unknown or unnoticed, can these findings be considered accurate?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-02-03T22:00:48.387" Title="Do the &quot;rhythm&quot; or &quot;standard days&quot; methods of birth control eventually cause more embryonic death than other methods?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|menstrual-cycle|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6133" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-12T23:20:22.207" Score="9" ViewCount="618" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been dipping in and out of this one over the years....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Seems the hum was first brought to public attention in 1992 by Taos&#xA;  residents who claimed they'd been hearing it for more than a year.&#xA;  Nine of 12 locals contacted by the paper said they'd heard it. The hum&#xA;  was said to sound like the distant idling of a diesel truck (a low&#xA;  rumble, in other words), and was very annoying. Theories about its&#xA;  source included &quot;UFOs, spiritual rebirth, faulty sewage plants, secret&#xA;  underground mining, high-voltage power lines, and weapons&#xA;  testing.&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1297/whats-the-story-with-the-taos-hum&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 1990's the consistent low-frequency hum began to be reported by some, but not all residents of Taos, New Mexico.  A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGHe7rdq0Ds&quot;&gt;variety of theories&lt;/a&gt; continue to be put forward as to its origin, and of course, numerous unverified &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuRBM0i8mbI&quot;&gt;amateur recordings&lt;/a&gt; of widely varying quality exist, but as yet it remains unexplained (at least to my current googlings).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The essential element that defines the Hum is what is perceived as a&#xA;  persistent low-frequency sound, often described as being comparable to&#xA;  that of a distant diesel engine idling, or to some similar low-pitched&#xA;  sound for which obvious sources (e.g., household appliances, traffic&#xA;  noise, etc.) have been ruled out. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hum&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did however find an appropriately skeptical-ish viewpoint from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1297/whats-the-story-with-the-taos-hum&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A survey of 7,000 Taos-area residents found that only 2 percent had&#xA;  heard it. You're thinking: you could probably find 2 percent who think&#xA;  they've got microchips implanted in their brains! Hmm.&#xA;  Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Sorry, thought I heard something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anyway, UNM hearing researcher James Kelly tells me they've done&#xA;  enough investigation to know this is more than just wacky Taos&#xA;  residents eating funny mushrooms. For one thing, tests show all the&#xA;  hum hearers hear pretty much the same low-frequency tone, making it&#xA;  unlikely they're imagining it or suffering from ordinary tinnitus.&#xA;  Research continues. Sure, it's all in their heads. The question is,&#xA;  what's &quot;it&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- Is this a case of media hype, mass delusion, or is it a real,&#xA;   scientifically explainable phenomenon?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="486" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:36:59.880" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T11:45:03.737" Title="Is there a Taos hum?" Tags="|sound|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6137" CreationDate="2011-09-13T02:45:26.713" Score="12" ViewCount="1756" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0060556579&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Red Queen&lt;/a&gt; by Matt Ridley:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an astonishing study recently undertaken in Western Europe, the following facts emerged: Married females choose to have affairs with males who are dominant, older, more physically attractive, more symmetrical in appearance, and married; females are much more likely to have an affair if their mates are subordinate, younger, physically unattractive, or have asymmetrical features; cosmetic surgery to improve a male’s looks doubles his chances of having an adulterous affair; the more attractive a male, the less attentive he is as a father; roughly one in three of the babies born in Western Europe is the product of an adulterous affair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shocked? Wait... the quote goes on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find these facts disturbing or hard to believe, do not worry: The study was not done on human beings but on swallows, the innocent, twittering, fork-tailed birds that pirouette prettily around barns and fields in the summer months. Human beings are entirely different from swallows: Or are they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After some more paragraphs, one finally finds some data on humans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(…) [Baker and Bellis] have tried to measure the extent of cuckoldry in human beings. In a block of flats in Liverpool, they found by genetic tests that fewer than four in every five people were the sons of their ostensible fathers. In case this had something to do with Liverpool, the did the same tests in southern England and got the same result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I posted the first paragraph above because immediately after I had read it I was about to post it here... Then I read the next paragraph which explained that they were talking about swallows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are my questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the Baker &amp;amp; Bellis statistics credible? That is, are there other sources with similar results?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Baker &amp;amp; Bellis studies are from the 1980s. Given that they are credible, do the same statistics hold &lt;em&gt;today&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a website or something that keeps statistics of this sort, perhaps about other places besides Liverpool?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4524" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2021-11-29T05:47:14.937" LastActivityDate="2021-11-29T05:47:14.937" Title="What are the statistics of paternal discrepancy?" Tags="|biology|sexuality|birds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6134" CreationDate="2011-09-13T11:15:36.617" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the 1940's, numerous studies have been published regarding paternal discrepancy; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.childsupportanalysis.co.uk/analysis_and_opinion/choices_and_behaviours/misattributed_paternity.htm#surveys&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;'s a fairly comprehensive list. Also, four meta-studies ( literature surveys ) are listed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bellis is listed as both the co-author of some of the individual studies, and a 2005 &lt;a href=&quot;http://jech.bmj.com/content/59/9/749&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;meta-study&lt;/a&gt;. Quote from the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Paternal discrepancy (PD) occurs when a child is identified as being&#xA;  biologically fathered by someone other than the man who believes he is&#xA;  the father. This paper examines published evidence on levels of PD and&#xA;  its public health consequences. Rates vary between studies &lt;strong&gt;from 0.8%&#xA;  to 30% (median 3.7%, n = 17)&lt;/strong&gt;. Using information from genetic and&#xA;  behavioural studies, the article identifies those who conceive&#xA;  younger, live in deprivation, are in long term relationships (rather than marriages), or in certain cultural groups are at higher risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a similar &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.1086/504167&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;survey&lt;/a&gt; of 67 studies, published in 2006:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evolutionary theory predicts that males will provide less parental&#xA;  investment for putative offspring who are unlikely to be their actual&#xA;  offspring. Crossculturally, paternity confidence (a mans assessment of&#xA;  the likelihood that he is the father of a putative child) is&#xA;  positively associated with mens involvement with children and with&#xA;  investment or inheritance from paternal kin. A survey of 67 studies&#xA;  reporting nonpaternity suggests that for men with high paternity&#xA;  confidence rates of nonpaternity are (excluding studies of unknown&#xA;  methodology) &lt;strong&gt;typically 1.9%&lt;/strong&gt;, substantially less than the typical rates&#xA;  of 10% or higher cited by many researchers. Further crosscultural&#xA;  investigation of the relationship between paternity and paternity&#xA;  confidence is warranted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2730/whos-your-daddy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Straight Dope article on paternal discrepancy&lt;/a&gt; also mentions this study, and comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Seen this way, the numbers yield a pretty convincing pattern. The&#xA;  median nonpaternity rate for the high-confidence group was a&#xA;  not-too-scandalous &lt;strong&gt;1.7 percent&lt;/strong&gt;, whereas the low-confidence group&#xA;  showed an unsurprisingly high rate of &lt;strong&gt;29.8 percent&lt;/strong&gt; - about what one&#xA;  might gather from watching a few weeks of Maury Povich. If you combine&#xA;  the first group with the can't-conclude group, which showed a rate of&#xA;  16.7 percent, you get a rate around &lt;strong&gt;3.3 percent&lt;/strong&gt;, or a ninth of the&#xA;  low-confidence rate. While Anderson &lt;em&gt;cautions that there's currently no&#xA;  way to figure out what percentage of total births are low- or&#xA;  high-confidence&lt;/em&gt;, and thus what a societywide nonpaternity rate might&#xA;  be, he does use figures from a paternity confidence study he conducted&#xA;  in Albuquerque to guess that the rate for that city as a whole would&#xA;  be under 4 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastEditorUserId="1781" LastEditDate="2011-09-13T15:09:20.240" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T15:09:20.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6138" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6146" CreationDate="2011-09-13T12:51:02.000" Score="15" ViewCount="1392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see that there's another news report on CNN regarding &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009%E2%80%932011_detention_of_American_hikers_by_Iran&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;detained U.S. hikers in Iran&lt;/a&gt;.  It seems that all too frequently the media reports similar stories every time some random &quot;hiker&quot; is jailed in a country that is unfriendly to the U.S.  These hikers are typically jailed over espionage, spy charges, or illegal entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: are these people really hikers?  Or is that term coined by the media to mean something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I'm wondering why on earth any random U.S. citizen would be hiking through a country knowing that they would be arrested on sight.  Heck, I would ascertain that even if these same people were walking down the middle of Main Street Iran that they would be arrested for &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to add: All three people have since been released from prison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3989" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T01:59:36.260" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T01:59:36.260" Title="Were the arrested US citizens who walked into Iran merely &quot;hikers&quot;?" Tags="|iran|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6139" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-13T14:00:40.607" Score="18" ViewCount="1254" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/report-turkey-no-longer-averting-attacks-on-israeli-targets-1.384198&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the old U.S. system ... automatically identified all Israeli targets&#xA;  as a &quot;friend,&quot; preventing Turkish fighter jets from firing at them,&#xA;  even if Turkish pilots were ordered to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the Turks have to develop some kind of a hack &quot;technology&quot; in order to override it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also heard similar assertion for US fighters sold to Arab nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Is this true? I find it weird that those countries spent billions on aircraft that will be useless in a potential conflict against the most powerful air force and one of the most powerful military in the region, whom some of them have fought several wars against.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4785" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T20:47:42.530" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T20:47:42.530" Title="Are US-sold aircrafts not able to shoot on Israeli targets?" Tags="|military|war|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6141" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-13T14:46:33.680" Score="40" ViewCount="12726" Body="&lt;p&gt;At a friend's house the other day, some sort of contraption had appeared near the sink since the last time I had been there. It was a filtration-looking device with one input hose connected to the tap and two output hoses/spouts. She explained that our bodies are born more alkaline and that this device produces alkaline water to drink because it's more healthy. It also produces acidic water for cleaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tracked down the producer of the device: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enagic.com/&quot;&gt;Enagic&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kangenforall.com/&quot;&gt;One of their distributors&lt;/a&gt; claims: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Benefits of drinking Ionized Alkaline Water:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Antioxidant&lt;/strong&gt;, which helps to slow down aging.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reduce acidity&lt;/strong&gt; in the body, which aids in weight loss. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Works to detoxify&lt;/strong&gt; your colon by eliminating free radicals, which boosts your immunity to disease. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Creates a healthy alkaline body&lt;/strong&gt; which offsets changes in the acid alkaline balance in your body and makes you feel and look better. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Super-hydrates (microcluster)&lt;/strong&gt;, which leaves you feeling energized while simultaneously increasing your body's ability to absorb important vitamins and minerals.&#xA;  From the very first time you try Ionized Alkaline Water, you'll immediately experience the difference it makes. Please explore this website to learn more about how this miracle water generator machine can dramatically transform your life!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enagic.com/watertheory_watertypes.php&quot;&gt;Enagic's main claim about Kangen water&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With a pH of 8.5-9.5, this type of water is perfect for drinking and healthy cooking. It works to restore your body to a more alkaline state, which optimizes health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same link discusses claims regarding better tasting coffee, the water's enhanced ability to draw out flavors in soups/stews which reduces the need for condiments and salt, and &quot;giving freshness&quot; to plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a bunch more discussion about Kangen water at &lt;a href=&quot;http://kangen.net/&quot;&gt;kangen.net&lt;/a&gt;. Just to add some meat to the discussion, here was an interesting, specific claim mentioned there (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Micro-clusters: &lt;strong&gt;Ionization changes conventional water from an irregular, bulky shape to a hexagonal shape that saturates the body tissue much more efficiently.&lt;/strong&gt; It is sometimes referred to as micro-clustered water because of its small molecular grouping. &lt;strong&gt;These smaller six-sided clusters are much more hydrating and penetrating.&lt;/strong&gt; They are, therefore, more capable of pushing out the toxins from the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another claim about the specific method of changing the pH, from the same site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Process: When water passes through electrical energy, it causes the hydrogen within it (H2O) to assume one of two forms. One is hydrogen (H+) that has a positive electrical charge. This water is ‘acidic’. The other form is hydrogen that bonds with an oxygen atom and becomes negatively charged (OH-) and is sometimes referred to as active hydrogen. And this alkaline water is the building block of life itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions&lt;/strong&gt;: there could be quite a lot of things asked about this arena. I'm open to answers to any/all of these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First off, can it be confirmed/denied that these devices are actually outputting acidic/alkaline water at their specified pH levels? The machines claim to have a range from 2.7 - 11 for the output.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How are they accomplishing this pH change? The claim is that it just uses electricity, but I was under the understanding that this wouldn't affect pH. Water naturally dissociates, but I didn't think you could separate high H&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt; containing water from high OH&lt;sup&gt;-&lt;/sup&gt; containing water just like that. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any evidence that drinking water of a given pH affects anything at all about your overall pH? My gut reaction was that we eat and drink all kinds of different substances at different pH's, and they're broken down into smaller building blocks anyway. Does alkalinity increase in any notable amount overall? (As an aside, is there a method of measuring the pH of &quot;the body&quot; -- would it just be the pH of the blood or some extracted fluid?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Forgoing the technical details (how this makes alkaline water or whether it does), is there any confirmation of any claimed benefits from the first portion above (antioxidant, aiding in weight loss, eliminating free radicals, improved immunity, and/or the ability to absorb vitamins/minerals)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T07:57:00.620" LastActivityDate="2015-10-25T21:26:47.210" Title="Is it beneficial to drink alkaline water (aka Kangen water)?" Tags="|nutrition|water|alkaline-diet|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6138" CreationDate="2011-09-13T22:46:13.647" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, they are hikers.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/16/world/middleeast/16hikers.html&quot;&gt;their credentials&lt;/a&gt; don't exactly scream &quot;military&quot; or &quot;espionage&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shane Bauer is a freelance photojournalist and journalist who has worked for Pacifica News Service, Mother Jones, The Nation and other left-leaning media outlets, using his fluency in speaking Arabic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sarah Shourd worked in education and social justice in Damascus, Syria where she provided educational opportunities to refugees from the war in Iraq and taught English. Shourd was released by Iran on September 14, 2010 on $500,000 bail.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Joshua Fattal is an environmentalist and educator, and had been from January to May 2009 a teaching fellow for the International Honors Program (IHP)'s &quot;Health and Community&quot; study abroad program. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three were working and living in the middle east, and decided to take a holiday to Iraqi Kurdistan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“We knew a number of people in Damascus who’d traveled to Iraqi Kurdistan and had a really good time,” said Shon Meckfessel, a friend who accompanied the three on the trip. “We just figured it was a really cool place, and nearby. And it was safe.” They planned their route carefully, Mr. Meckfessel said, deciding to cross into Iraq through Turkey because it seemed safer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also highly likely that they were actually &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenation.com/article/36562/us-hikers-were-seized-iraq&quot;&gt;seized in Iraq&lt;/a&gt; by Iranian forces that had crossed the border.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/iraq-war-logs.html#report/D2430687-FCE7-C5BB-ED19F523FE225046&quot;&gt;leaked US military report about the event&lt;/a&gt; claims that their presence in that region may not have been purely recreational:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lack of coordination on the part of these hikers, particularly after being forewarned, indicates &lt;strong&gt;an intent to agitate and create publicity regarding international policies on Iran.&lt;/strong&gt; The leadership in Iran benefits as it focuses the Iranian population on a perceived external threat rather than internal dissension. Kurdish leaders remain concerned about international perceptions regarding security as they seek to increase investment in the KRG. Expect KRG leadership to intervene to return the 3 individuals and the Iranian government to accuse them of being spies. Additionally, KRG leadership may impose additional restrictions on private activities near the Iranian border.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(KRG = Kurdish Regional Government)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2011-09-13T22:51:28.133" LastActivityDate="2011-09-13T22:51:28.133" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6147" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6149" CreationDate="2011-09-14T00:56:45.517" Score="22" ViewCount="7666" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that the buildings were insured just before terrorist attacks. Is that true? If yes, wouldn't this be an argument for conspirationists ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2636" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-29T03:48:08.303" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T02:52:49.480" Title="Was WTC insured shortly before the attacks?" Tags="|history|9-11|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6147" CreationDate="2011-09-14T03:03:24.487" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's absolutely not true, and conspiracy adherents have no case what so ever.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, in the 1993 bombing, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,34211,00.html&quot;&gt;insurers paid out $510 million in that terrorist attack&lt;/a&gt;.  That was quite a few years before the 9/11/01 event, and would blow a hole in that nut-ball idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As if that isn't enough reality to dissuade these &quot;adherents&quot;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/risk/downloads/05-03-HK.pdf&quot;&gt;Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania states (PDF)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Even after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 and the&#xA;  Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, insurers in the United States did not view either&#xA;  international or domestic terrorism as a risk that should be explicitly considered&#xA;  when pricing their commercial insurance policy, principally because losses from&#xA;  terrorism had historically been small and, to a large degree, uncorrelated. Thus,&#xA;  prior to September 11, 2001, terrorism coverage in the United States was an&#xA;  unnamed peril covered in most standard all-risk commercial and homeowners’&#xA;  policies covering damage to property and contents.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anything, terrorism coverage is actually the norm, not an exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/nyregion/24insure.html?_r=2&amp;amp;hp&amp;amp;oref=slogin&amp;amp;oref=slogin&quot;&gt;As others have said, the hub-bub was more about who got paid what by whom.  Due to the way insurance policies work, in combination with real estate laws, all the leasing of the property, and switching carriers&lt;/a&gt;...  It's the sort of stuff that makes a person's head swim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for being so derisive in my answer, but the whole 9/11 &quot;truther&quot; conspiracy is one of the most insulting, if not downright stupid, ideas that seems to percolate on the internet.  They continually persist no matter what debunking is provided, and only proclaim that all debunking is part of the conspiracy.  As someone that served before, during, and after 9/11, and had my life personally affected by that horrible day, it just boggles the mind how disconnected from reality some people can be.  They are as deluded as holocaust deniers, moon hoax proponents, or whatever patently ridiculous nuttery people glom on to...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="1615" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T12:34:34.207" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T12:34:34.207" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6147" CreationDate="2011-09-14T03:18:07.360" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because the lease on the buildings had only be signed 6 weeks before the attacks, there was a legal dispute which wasn't resolved until 2007. As noted in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/nyregion/24insure.html?_r=2&amp;amp;hp&amp;amp;oref=slogin&amp;amp;oref=slogin&quot;&gt;this NY Times article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At that time, two dozen insurers had signed binders pledging to provide $3.5 billion in insurance coverage, but had not finished the documents. An ugly dispute developed over which insurance policy was in effect at the time of the attack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue was not that the buildings hadn't been insured, but which policy was in effect: the old one, or the new one which was still being finalized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4789" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2011-09-14T12:03:00.807" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T12:03:00.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6151" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6153" CreationDate="2011-09-14T08:36:43.203" Score="23" ViewCount="38424" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read the following quote in a paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you sneeze, all your body functions temporarily stop working. That also includes you heart beat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is of course no explanation, reason, source, or reference of any sort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really true? I don't have a heart rate monitor at my hands fast enough when the urge to sneeze comes up, so I can't test for myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is really true, I would also like to understand why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4603" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2017-02-27T20:49:42.953" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T20:49:42.953" Title="Does your heart stop beating when you sneeze?" Tags="|biology|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6080" CreationDate="2011-09-14T09:51:22.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cyber crime cost estimates in general are self serving and unreliable. I can't answer specifically for the cost to the US, but there is a great demolition of estimates released in the UK on the excellent UK site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightstatistics.org/article/more-eye-watering-figures-cybercrime&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Straight Statistics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a flavour of their analysis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For IP theft, the report admits there are no robust estimates for actual levels. It further admits that such thefts are not widely reported. So maybe there aren’t  any? At the other extreme, it posits that every bit of IP that is worth stealing is in fact stolen, and then concludes that the truth lies somewhere between the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So how much is stolen? The report remarks: “The proportion of IP actually stolen cannot at present be measured with any degree of confidence”. So the assumption is made that the amounts stolen are proportional to their value to the thieves. It then produces estimates, industry by industry, of the amounts stolen rather like a magician producing rabbits out of a hat. No actual examples are cited. We are expected to believe that the theft of IP costs £9.2 billion a year without a single case of such theft being advanced. This is closer to guesswork than analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When big estimates that serve the interests of the provider of the estimate are made, it is always worth looking at the detail and asking skeptical questions about it. The big numbers rarely stand up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T09:51:22.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6151" CreationDate="2011-09-14T10:51:16.910" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;No&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/sneeze.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Library of Congress&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Block said that what is called the Valsalva maneuver, the creation of positive pressure in the chest when sneezing or coughing, is a complex and fairly violent physiological process. It may change the rhythm of the heart beat, he said, but &lt;strong&gt;it does not stop the heart&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So where did the myth originate that your heart stops when you sneeze?  The changing pressure in your chest due to sneezing also changes your blood flow, which may change the rhythm of your heartbeat. Dr. Richard Conti, past president of the American College of Cardiology, speculates that &lt;strong&gt;the belief that the heart actually comes to a stop during a sneeze could result from the sensation of having the heart &amp;quot;skip a beat.&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt; When there is a prolonged delay before the heart's next beat, he said, that beat is then more forceful and more noticeable, perhaps as a funny sensation in the throat or upper chest (Ray, 1992).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/23/science/q-a-158692.html?ref=claiborneray&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;original article&lt;/a&gt; from the NY Times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2820" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T07:19:16.073" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5916" CreationDate="2011-09-14T14:03:59.657" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;They probably did provide some marginally  useful information, but in general they were not done scientifically. The Nazi regime's version of genetic research (which was the main focus of his research, hence the focus on identical twins) was more influenced by racial propaganda than actual scientific method, and in his specific case, many of the experiments seem to be devoid of any scientific purpose, many other could be easily done on animals, where using human subjects provide little scientific benefit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, most of his results were destroyed before the war ended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mengele sent all his findings to his mentor Dr Verschuer at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. It took two trucks to carry all of his 'findings'. Verschuer destroyed them - so the full extent of what Mengele did at Auschwitz will never be known. If Mengele himself kept any notes, they have never been found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/joseph_mengele.htm&quot;&gt;Source: Chris Trueman BA (Hons), History Learning Site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/history/mengele/research_5.html&quot;&gt;http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/history/mengele/research_5.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question seems to mix between Mengele's research and similar but separate research done by the Nazi regime, this answer only refers to the former. A reasonably comprehensive source regarding Nazi experimentation can be found in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%208152.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%208152.pdf&lt;/a&gt; (A hebrew PDF file). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4795" LastEditorUserId="4795" LastEditDate="2011-09-15T07:06:04.653" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T07:06:04.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6147" CreationDate="2011-09-14T17:04:52.323" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In January 2001, Silverstein, via Silverstein Properties and Westfield&#xA;  America, made a $3.2 billion bid for the lease to the World Trade&#xA;  Center. Silverstein was outbid by $50 million by Vornado Realty, with&#xA;  Boston Properties and Brookfield Properties also competing for the&#xA;  lease. However, Vornado withdrew and &lt;strong&gt;Silverstein's bid for the lease&#xA;  to the World Trade Center was accepted on July 24, 2001.&lt;/strong&gt;[14] This was&#xA;  the first time in the building's 31-year history that the complex had&#xA;  changed management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lease agreement applied to One, Two, Four, and Five World Trade&#xA;  Center, and about 425,000 square feet (39,500 m2) of retail space.&#xA;  Silverstein put up $14 million of his own money to secure the&#xA;  deal.[15] The terms of the lease gave Silverstein, as leaseholder, the&#xA;  right and the obligation to rebuild the structures if destroyed.[16]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Silverstein#World_Trade_Center&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Silverstein#World_Trade_Center&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Larry A. Silverstein, whose Silverstein Properties obtained a 99-year&#xA;  lease for the Twin Towers and other portions of the complex just weeks&#xA;  before the catastrophe, says he has both the right and the obligation&#xA;  to rebuild and he intends to do so. The money Silverstein needs, he&#xA;  says, will come from the proceeds of his insurance policy on the&#xA;  towers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/2003/09/11/cx_da_0911silverstein.html&quot;&gt;http://www.forbes.com/2003/09/11/cx_da_0911silverstein.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your question, yes, it seems quite clearly the case that, just six weeks prior to the attacks, the buildings were insured as part of the deal mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether it means anything, when coupled with the claim that the WTC towers were laden with asbestos and needed to be demolished and rebuilt, the conspiracy theorists present it as an argument in favour of the conspiracy theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4798" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T17:04:52.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="907" CreationDate="2011-09-14T19:42:57.123" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;tl;dr:&lt;/em&gt; There is no evidence supporting the conclusion that capital punishment is an effective deterrent for murder, and significant evidence to the contrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to arrive at an alternative conclusion would be to ignore or refute:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the results of multiple surveys done by the United Nations;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a systematic review and rebuttal of all significant papers that ostensibly demonstrated statistically significant deterrence from capital punishment, by a Professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth College;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a systematic review and rebuttal of all significant papers that ostensibly demonstrated statistically significant deterrence from capital punishment, by a Professor of Law &amp;amp; Public Health at Columbia University;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the uncontroverted opinion of Justice Marshall of the Supreme Court of the United States who reviewed a &amp;quot;massive amount of evidence&amp;quot;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the opinion of an overwhelming majority of leading criminologists in the USA; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the statistics in Canada that show a highly significant and consistent decrease in murder since the abolishment of capital punishment in 1976 (i.e. from a murder rate of 3.09 per 100,000 people in 1975, to 1.77 per 100,000 in 2009).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Amnesty International&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amnesty International, an organization with an incentive to corral information on this topic, provides an article, citing statistics from the United Nations, entitled “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ACT50/010/2007/en/f45ed09c-d3a2-11dd-a329-2f46302a8cc6/act500102007en.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THE DEATH PENALTY, QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS&lt;/a&gt;” which states (with my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you say to the argument that the death penalty is an important tool for a state to fight crime?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too many governments believe that they can solve urgent social or political problems by executing a few or even hundreds of their prisoners. Too many citizens in too many countries are still unaware that the death penalty offers society not further protection but further brutalization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scientific studies have consistently failed to find convincing evidence that the death penalty deters crime more effectively than other punishments.&lt;/strong&gt; The most recent survey of research findings on the relation between the death penalty and homicide rates, conducted for the United Nations in 1988 and updated in 1996 and 2002, concluded: &lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;...research has failed to provide scientific proof that executions have a greater deterrent effect than life imprisonment. Such proof is unlikely to be forthcoming. The evidence as a whole still gives no positive support to the deterrent hypothesis&amp;quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recent crime figures from abolitionist countries fail to show that abolition has harmful effects. In Canada, for example, the homicide rate per 100,000 population fell from a peak of 3.09 in 1975, the year before the abolition of the death penalty for murder, to 2.41 in 1980, and since then it has declined further. In 2003, 27 years after abolition, the homicide rate was 1.73 per 100,000 population, 44 per cent lower than in 1975 and the lowest rate in three decades. Although this increased to 2.0 in 2005, it remains over one-third lower than when the death penalty was abolished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is incorrect to assume that people who commit such serious crimes as murder do so after rationally calculating the consequences.&lt;/strong&gt; Often murders are committed in moments when emotion overcomes reason or under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Some people who commit violent crime are highly unstable or mentally ill. Amnesty International has found that at least one in 10 of the prisoners put to death in the USA since 1977 had suffered from serious mental disorders rendering them unable to rationally comprehend their death sentence, its reasons or its implications.In none of these cases can the fear of the death penalty be expected to deter. Moreover, those who do commit premeditated serious crimes may decide to proceed despite the risks in the belief that they will not be caught. The key to deterrence in such cases is to increase the likelihood of detection, arrest and conviction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that no clear evidence exists to show that the death penalty has a unique deterrent effect points to the futility and danger of relying on the deterrence hypothesis as a basis for public policy on the death penalty. &lt;strong&gt;The death penalty is a harsh punishment, but it is not harsh on crime.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and, as capital punishment relates to terrorism and political violence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Isn't the death penalty needed to stop acts of terrorism and political violence?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Officials responsible for fighting terrorism and political crimes have repeatedly pointed out that executions are as likely to increase such acts as they are to stop them. Executions can create martyrs whose memory becomes a rallying point for their organizations. For men and women prepared to sacrifice their lives for their beliefs -- for example suicide bombers -- &lt;strong&gt;the prospect of execution is unlikely to deter and may even act as an incentive&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;State use of the death penalty has also been used by armed opposition groups as a justification for reprisals, thereby continuing the cycle of violence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an organization that seeks to protect human rights and is philanthropically funded as such, Amnesty International has a perceived bias towards this conclusion. However, I would expect that any persuasive research to the contrary – i.e. that homicide rates decline in areas with capital punishment – would be referenced, by AI  as a matter of protocol and integrity. I have seen no such references, by AI or otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Statistics since Canada abolished capital punishment&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Canadian statistics referred to in the above can be found in a report by Amnesty International entitled “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amnesty.ca/deathpenalty/canada.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Death Penalty in Canada: Twenty Years of Abolition&lt;/a&gt;”, which provides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to predictions by death penalty supporters, the homicide rate in Canada did not increase after abolition in 1976. In fact, the Canadian murder rate declined slightly the following year (from 2.8 per 100,000 to 2.7). Over the next 20 years the homicide rate fluctuated (between 2.2 and 2.8 per 100,000), but the general trend was clearly downwards. It reached a 30-year low in 1995 (1.98) -- the fourth consecutive year-to-year decrease and a full one-third lower than in the year before abolition. In 1998, the homicide rate dipped below 1.9 per 100,000, the lowest rate since the 1960s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the research in Canada only shows a correlation (i.e. not a causation), it does provide the specific statistics on a jurisdiction that abolished capital punishment – which was posed as part of this question. It is noteworthy that while Canada has uniform criminal laws across the country, its social policies are diverse as between its provinces, and yet the abolition of capital punishment lowered murder rates across the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Professor Lamperti, professor of Mathematics at Dartmouth College&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another reference, from John Lamperti, a professor of mathematics at Darthmouth College, entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Echance/teaching_aids/books_articles/JLpaper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“Does Capital Punishment Deter Murder? A brief look at the evidence”&lt;/a&gt;, which seems to review most of the knowledge on the topic in the United States, and concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those who defend the deterrent value of the death penalty offer little&#xA;systematic research to support their view.  Instead, they rely on an intuitive&#xA;feeling that capital punishment should  be uniquely effective.  When the&#xA;available evidence doesn't support that conclusion, they argue that the&#xA;evidence is imperfect.  It is.  &lt;strong&gt;But if there were any substantial net deterrent&#xA;effect from capital punishment under modern U.S. conditions, the studies we&#xA;have surveyed should clearly reveal it.  They do not.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Professor Fagan, professor of Law &amp;amp; Public Health at Columbia University&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The view of Professor Lamperti is affirmed by the systematic review of Jeffrey A. Fagan, Professor of Law &amp;amp; Public Health at Columbia University in his article “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.columbia.edu/law_school/communications/reports/summer06/capitalpunish&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Capital Punishment: Deterrent Effects &amp;amp; Capital Costs&lt;/a&gt;”. In this article, Professor Fagan provides a thorough and highly critical analysis of the flaws in the statistical methods and conclusions of those who argue capital punishment is an effective deterrent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we apply contemporary social science standards, the new deterrence studies fall well short of this high scientific bar. Most of the studies fail to account for incarceration rates or life sentences, factors that may drive down crime rates via deterrence or incapacitation; one study that does so finds no effects of execution and a significant effect of prison conditions on crime rates. Another report shows incarceration effects that dwarf the deterrent effects of execution. Most fail to account for complex social factors such as drug epidemics that are reliable predictors of fluctuations in the murder rate over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The computations in the statistical models are often flawed. For example, simple corrections for large amounts of missing data produce estimates of the deterrent effect of execution that are no different from chance. Using alternate statistical models - models that account for the strong statistical correlation of murder rates from one year to the next - also produces results that show that changes in homicide rates are statistically unrelated to any measure of capital punishment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor Fagan also notes that the rarity of capital punishment limits the effectiveness of its deterrence – it is applied so infrequently that it is incoherent to believe it would enter into the state of mind of potential murderers. Professor Fagan goes on to comment that  &lt;strong&gt;no study has ever been put forward that provides &lt;em&gt;any evidence whatsoever&lt;/em&gt; that capital punishment ever enters into the state of mind of those who are about to commit murder&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. none of the studies even address causation):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... There is no evidence that if aware of the possibility of execution, a potential murderer would rationally decide to forego homicide and use less lethal forms of violence. Murder is a complex and multiply determined phenomenon, with cyclical patterns for distinct periods of more than 40 years of increase and decline that are not unlike epidemics of contagious diseases. There is nothing in the new deterrence studies that fits their story into this complex causal framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Furman v Georgia, 1972 (SCOTUS), opinion of Justice Marshall&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much discussion of this topic in the USA goes back to a decision, &lt;em&gt;Furman v. Georgia,&lt;/em&gt; 1972, of the Supreme Court of the United States. Professor Lamperti's paper opens with a quote from a decision of Justice Marshall, a Judge on that decision:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In light of the massive amount of evidence before us,  I see no alternative&#xA;but to conclude that capital punishment cannot be justified on the basis of its&#xA;deterrent effect.  — Justice Marshall,  U.S. Supreme Court, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oyez.org/cases/1970-1979/1971/1971_69_5003/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Furman v. Georgia&lt;/em&gt;, 1972&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor Lamperti's paper contrasts the quote of Justice Marshall with the views of President Richard Nixon, who expressed the opinion that “the death penalty can be an effective deterrent of specific crimes”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worthwhile to note that Justice Marshall's conclusion was uncontroverted. &lt;strong&gt;No Judge concluded that capital punishment was justifiable on the basis that there was evidence of it being effective.&lt;/strong&gt; Rather, the other position taken before the Court seemed to be that prohibiting states from employing capital punishment was a jurisdictional issue i.e. the power to prohibit capital punishment was outside the scope of the powers of the US federal government. As I read it, none of the Judges of the Supreme Court stated that there was any evidence before the Court that capital punishment was effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Almost all Criminologists&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor Lamperti notes that his view is consistently affirmed by leading criminologists:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marshall's view is today supported by an overwhelming majority among America's leading&#xA;criminologists, &lt;strong&gt;who believe that capital punishment does not contribute to&#xA;lower rates of homicide&lt;/strong&gt; [footnote: Michael Radelet and Ronald Akers, &amp;quot;Deterrence and the death penalty: the views of the experts,&amp;quot; Journal of Criminal Law &amp;amp; Criminology 87, no.1 (1996), pp. 1-16.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is affirmed in the more recent article “Do Executions Lower Homicide Rates? The Views of Leading Criminologists,” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 99 (2009): 489-508 (Michael L. Radelet and Traci L. Lacock). Few are as eminent in criminology as &lt;a href=&quot;http://sobek.colorado.edu/SOC/Vitae/radeletVITA-short.doc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Professor Radelet&lt;/a&gt;, from whom I select a choice quote &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2001/08/29/top-death-penalty-expert-joins-cu-boulder-faculty&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“The more people know about the death penalty the more likely they are to oppose it”&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The United Nations, Norval Morris and Marc Ancel&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Criminologist Norval Morris prepared for the United Nations (and, incidentally, cited by Justice Marshall in the Furman case), citation &lt;em&gt;Capital Punishment,&lt;/em&gt; UN Doc. ST/SOA/SD/9 UN Doc. ST/SOA/SD/10 (1968), Vol. II, p.123 states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is generally agreed between the retentionists and abolitionists, whatever their opinions about the validity of comparative studies of deterrence, that &lt;strong&gt;the data which now exist show no correlation between the existence of capital punishment the lower rates of capital crime.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was one of several reports prepared for the United Nations from 1959-1980. See e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0521893445&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Abolition of the Death Penalty in International Law, By William A. Schabas&lt;/a&gt; at pp.156ff. One notable report was by the eminent French jurist Marc Ancel, who concluded &amp;quot;all the information available appears to confirm that such a &lt;strong&gt;removal [of the death penalty] has, in fact, never been followed by a notable rise in the incidence of the crime no longer punishable with death&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that when these studies began in the 1950's the majority of UN state members were &amp;quot;retentionist&amp;quot; (i.e. they retained capital punishment, as opposed to abolitionist). In 1977, only 16 or so countries were considered abolitionist (not having a penalty of death), whereas by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amnesty.org/en/death-penalty/abolitionist-and-retentionist-countries&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2012 that number was around 97&lt;/a&gt;. In other words, the studies were commissioned and paid for by the United Nations at a time when the organization was predominantly composed of states that employed capital punishment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;State-sponsored killing of people in the name of capital punishment is ostensibly justified because it prevents further crimes. This deterrence falls into two categories, specific deterrence (i.e. recidivism by the convicted) and general deterrence (i.e. dissuasion of potential murderers other than the convicted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a specific deterrent capital punishment has no known benefits over life imprisonment. As a general deterrent, there has never been a study indicating that the state of mind of any murderer has ever been influenced by the possibility of capital punishment. Further, no jurisdiction has ever been mentioned for having a decrease in crime rates because it implemented capital punishment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A persuasive counter-argument by an advocate of capital punishment ought to explain the dramatic drop in murder rates after Canada abolished it, the opinion of the majority of US criminologists and Justice Marshall, and the comprehensive academic and UN reports indicating an absence of deterrence from capital punishment. No such counter-argument has been forthcoming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is all to say that capital punishment is not known to be an effective deterrent for murder. Please permit one final quote from Professor Lamperti:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If executions protected innocent lives through deterrence, that would weigh&#xA;in the balance against capital punishment's heavy social costs.  &lt;strong&gt;But despite&#xA;years of trying, this benefit has not been shown to exist; the only proven&#xA;effects of capital punishment are its liabilities.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T15:24:40.277" CommentCount="9" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-01-28T15:24:40.277" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6165" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6455" CreationDate="2011-09-14T19:51:58.110" Score="2" ViewCount="3359" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, governments in developed countries have been trying to reduce smoking. In Sweden, perhaps due to these efforts or because of the cold climate (because it's impossible to smoke outside in winter at -30 Celsius), it is difficult to find a smoker. Instead, many Swedes use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;snus&lt;/a&gt;. The most popular type is &quot;portion snus&quot; (moist tobacco in a small pouch held under the lip).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of them are harmful in different ways but I wonder, which one is more harmful? Is there any research about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Notes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The snus is illegal in European Union, except Norway and Sweden, which suggests it may be more harmful. In the EU countries, cigarettes are legal but they create smoke that affects the lungs and cause lung cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All the affects of snus are still not clear, but causes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17498797&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mouth, tongue&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucanquit2.org/facts/WhatIsSnus.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pancreatic cancer&lt;/a&gt;. It also allows  nicotine and other chemicals (e.g. salt crystals, E1520, E500) to flow directly to your salivary &amp;amp; your circulatory system.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Snus is consumed for a period of around an hour, but a cigarette lasts at most 5 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GBdRH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;snusing vs smoking&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4786" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T13:30:55.357" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T13:30:55.357" Title="Snus or smoking tobacco: Which one is more harmful" Tags="|medical-science|safety|tobacco|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-14T20:13:48.507" Score="23" ViewCount="4355" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a lot of conflation of osteopathic medicine with other alternative medicines, even questions about whether or not it is an alternative medicine or mainstream.  In the U.S. osteopathic physicians (D.O.) have all the rights and privileges of a standard physician (M.D.), but often incorporate physical manipulation into their therapy, which I've heard likened unto both physical therapy and chiropractic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This website describes osteopathic medicine as legitimate and at least equal to standard medical care.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.studentdoctor.net/osteopathic-premed-faq/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Osteopathic PreMed FAQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elsewhere I've seen osteopaths described as (to summarize) &quot;Just like a regular doctor, with the same training, only with some funny or different ideas about whole body health&quot;.  On the other hand, the term osteopath seems to used in many other countries as a cover for what is essentially just chiropractic and homeopathic nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Question: Aside from their standard medical training, do the osteopathic ideas of D.O.s in the United States, have significant evidence backing them, or are U.S. osteopathic physicians just regular doctors with some &quot;woo&quot; ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1617" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-08T12:43:46.153" LastActivityDate="2022-10-12T02:39:32.963" Title="Is osteopathic medicine evidence based?" Tags="|medical-science|united-states|alternative-medicine|healthcare|philosophy-of-ebm|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6167" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-14T21:39:41.223" Score="1" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2590/can-i-get-high-using-binaural-beats&quot;&gt;Can I get high using binaural beats?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I've stumbled upon several brainwave synchronization audio programs (&quot;Brainsync&quot; for example).&#xA;Generally those programs claim to help you to improve your physical / mental health by listening to this audio programs once a day for a certain period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific research or proof behind it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a person really quit smoking, lose weight, or beat ADHD using those audio programs to sync his brain waves?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-09-14T21:39:41.223" Title="Can brain waves be adjusted by music and affect phsical or mental health?" Tags="|neurology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-09-14T22:31:01.103" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6169" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6171" CreationDate="2011-09-15T04:13:09.977" Score="8" ViewCount="1641" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen and heard assorted conflicting advice as far as &quot;&lt;em&gt;don't order sushi on Monday&lt;/em&gt;&quot;/&quot;&lt;em&gt;Best sushi is on Tuesday&lt;/em&gt;&quot; etc...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the multiple opinions matched in the details but all of them seemed to agree that there's a non-uniform quality of fish in sushi depending on day of week. One random example of claim is &lt;a href=&quot;http://sushiday.com/archives/2007/05/05/monday-sushi/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Was there any sort of study/analysis done to confirm or debunk both the underlying &quot;not all days are the same&quot; claim as well as which of those claims is right?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If so, is this a NYC local phenomenon or generic to ALL sushi restaurants?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to clarify, I'm more interested in quality issue - e.g. &quot;yes the quality varies but NO it doesn't vary enough to cause safety concerns&quot; is an answer which - for my purposes - CONFIRMS the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T13:28:20.160" Title="Are there better or worse days for ordering sushi as far as safety/fish quality?" Tags="|nutrition|safety|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6169" CreationDate="2011-09-15T12:27:56.810" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe this claim may have originated from (or at a minimum was perpetuated by) the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Confidential&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kitchen Confidential&lt;/a&gt;.  Therein, then New York chef &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Bourdain&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anthony Bourdain&lt;/a&gt; admitted that most fish suppliers in NYC are closed on Mondays thereby forcing restaurants to use older fish.  If you accept Mr. Bourdain's word, then I think that confirms the claim.  That book was written a decade ago, so I am not sure if that is still universally the case in NYC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_Fish_Market&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fulton Fish Market&lt;/a&gt;, which is the largest in New York (if not the USA), is currently closed on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newfultonfishmarket.com/hours.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Saturdays and Sundays&lt;/a&gt;.  When they are open, however, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newfultonfishmarket.com/about.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the fish is very fresh&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fish is flown and trucked in from locations all over the united states, and flown in from points all around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find a citation supporting this, but I do know from some chef friends that fish from Tokyo's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsukiji_fish_market&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tsukiji fish market&lt;/a&gt; is flown in to Fulton on a regular basis.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daiichisuisan.co.jp/emain.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;It is well known that Tsukiji's fish are very fresh, too&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most of the fresh/live seafoods will be imported by the [sic] air freight to the Narita international airport or Kansai new international airport under the consignments sales agreement.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Customs clearance at the airport will be done within 2-3 hours after the cargo arrival and immediately to truck to the Tsukiji fish market to sell...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the other huge independent suppliers of high-end seafood to the mid-Atlantic region of the US is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samuelsandsonseafood.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Samuels &amp;amp; Son&lt;/a&gt;.  Based in Philadelphia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://zamarestaurant.com/blog/?p=280&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;they deliver to sushi restaurants&lt;/a&gt; from New York to Washington, DC, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samuelsandsonseafood.com/order/transportation-logisitics/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;are capable of delivering frozen, fresh, and even live seafood to almost anywhere in the mid-Atlantic within 24 hours&lt;/a&gt;, any day of the week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically related to &lt;em&gt;sushi&lt;/em&gt;, however, one should note that many of the popular fish served in sushi restaurants, &lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt;, large fish like tuna, are delivered frozen and will therefore not be as affected by delivery dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, it really depends on from where the sushi restaurant is procuring its fish.  But to answer your question, &lt;strong&gt;there are still suppliers who do not make deliveries on every day of the week.  However, there are some suppliers that make deliveries 24/7, so the claim is not by any means a hard and fast rule.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, my local fishmonger (who is not located in NYC) admittedly is only able to receive deliveries of fresh fish every day &lt;em&gt;except&lt;/em&gt; Wednesdays, so everything that is sold on Wednesdays is at least a day old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2011-09-15T13:28:20.160" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T13:28:20.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2903" CreationDate="2011-09-15T13:05:42.637" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-04/cfta-hpt040903.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Higher pain tolerance in males can't be bought : Media PR Release from the Centre for Advancing Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sex differences in pain perception have been noted in multiple studies, with women typically displaying lower pain tolerance than men, but it is unknown whether the mechanisms underlying these differences are hormonal, genetic or psychosocial in origin. For example, some researchers have suggested that men are more motivated to express a tolerance for pain because masculine stereotyping encourages it, while feminine stereotyping encourages pain expression and lower pain tolerance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4805" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2017-07-07T12:58:48.617" LastActivityDate="2017-07-07T12:58:48.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6174" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6175" CreationDate="2011-09-15T18:19:48.593" Score="19" ViewCount="10589" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the book &quot;The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless vs. the Rest of Us&quot; by Martha Stout Ph.D. (Broadway Books, New York, 2005, ISBN 0-7679-1581-X) the author claims that 1 in 25 people are sociopaths. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cix.co.uk/~klockstone/spath.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;It is referenced here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure I've heard that statistic before, but I've never heard it explained or elaborated.  How could anyone really know that?  Is there a way to prove a person is a sociopath unless they are willing to provide honest answers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are additional claims that sociopaths are disproportionately represented among the prison population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, how can anyone know that?  Isn't it possible that some may not answer questions of remorse honestly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, is there any objective test for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Antisocial Personality Disorder&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4810" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T08:45:18.603" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T17:38:49.723" Title="Are 1 in 25 people sociopaths?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6174" CreationDate="2011-09-15T21:15:41.243" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/1Antisocial.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The National Institute of Mental Health says it's 1 in 100&lt;/a&gt; and that it's more likely to find Antisocial Personality Disorder (the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DSM-IV&lt;/a&gt; term) in men.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lgBVk.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;For some reason, they stuck the information in an image&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link cites data from the National Comorbidity Survey, which you can find more about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/ncs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and specifics regarding how they make dianoses &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/ncs/diagnosis.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/wmh/publishedpaper_kessler_design.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a PDF talking about how they select interviewees and do their interviews. To sum it up, 300 trained professionals went out and personally interviewed around 10000 people in the continental US once and then did follow-up interviews with around half of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That does line up with what my professors were telling me in college, but I can't very well cite my old notes here.  They were probably just quoting me figures from the NCS, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainexplorer.org/factsheets/psychiatry%20diagnosis.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a PDF&lt;/a&gt; that talks about the five axis diagnosis process, since that's also relevant to part of your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Multiphasic_Personality_Inventory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MMPI&lt;/a&gt; is supposed to be pretty good at picking out different disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4415" LastEditorUserId="4415" LastEditDate="2011-09-16T13:48:48.000" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T13:48:48.000" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6176" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6178" CreationDate="2011-09-15T21:56:45.447" Score="2" ViewCount="586" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/work-in-progress/2011/09/15/when-age-and-gender-work-against-your-job-search/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt; claims that gender and age discrimination compound more for women as they age, to the point where it can be difficult for older women to get jobs. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_pay_gap&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gender gap&lt;/a&gt; is pretty well-known, but I have heard less about the gender gap as it relates to age. So I have these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the pay gap between women and men explained better by age discrimination compounded with gender discrimination than by other factors? (ie, older women being out of the workplace longer, or having less experience) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aside from a pay gap, is their an &quot;employment gap&quot; where older women are less likely to get jobs than their male or younger colleges?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2808" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T22:37:40.073" Title="Do age and gender discrimination compound in the workplace to reduce the odds of an older women being hired?" Tags="|gender|employment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6177" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6179" CreationDate="2011-09-15T22:34:01.330" Score="14" ViewCount="5966" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that keeping batteries in the refrigerator ensures long battery shelf-life. Is this true? If not, where did this information come from? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1836" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T13:26:45.733" Title="Does keeping batteries in the refrigerator ensure longer battery life?" Tags="|battery|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6176" CreationDate="2011-09-15T22:37:40.073" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Much of the pay gap is explained by motherhood, in that working mothers earn much less on average than working fathers, and the average gap is less between childless working men and women.  Because people are more likely to be parents as they get older, this has an effect on the relationship between pay, gender and age.  You can see some UK numbers on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ashe/annual-survey-of-hours-and-earnings/2010-results/stb-ashe-2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;page 8 here&lt;/a&gt;: women's median pay is 95% of men's for 22-29 year olds but 76% for 50-59 year olds. A harder question is how much of this involves a choice (with many mothers often choosing more flexible work which happens to be lower paid).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the UK, women are less likely to work than men at each age group, but unemployment rates (i.e. those looking for work who cannot find it) are similar at each age group up to about 50.  After 50, women are dramatically less likely to be looking for work than men of the same age.  Part of this may be due to lower formal retirement ages, though there may also be women who want to stop work at the same time as their (on average) older husbands. Some UK numbers can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/september-2011/table-a05.xls&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tab 2(2) here&lt;/a&gt; showing unemployment rates of 8.2% for men and 7.3% for 25-34 year olds, compared with 5.8% for men and 3.4% for women for 50-65 year olds.  Not working looks likely to be voluntary for many older women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-09-15T22:37:40.073" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6177" CreationDate="2011-09-15T23:04:25.350" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the batteries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For alkaline batteries, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/faqs/faq0077.shtml#q1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kodak&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ideally cells should be stored in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight, radiators, and other heat sources. Refrigeration is not necessary, nor is it recommended. If you do store batteries in the refrigerator, let them warm up to room temperature (takes about two hours) and wipe off all condensation before use. Freezing is not recommended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.duracell.com/en-US/battery-care-disposal.jspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Duracell&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not refrigerate Duracell batteries, this will not make them last longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://data.energizer.com/PDFs/non-rechargeable_FAQ.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Energizer&lt;/a&gt; (pdf):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No, storage in a refrigerator or freezer is not required or recommended for batteries produced today. Cold temperature storage can in fact harm batteries if condensation results in corroded contacts or label or seal damage due to extreme temperature storage. To maximize performance and shelf life, store batteries at normal room temperatures (68°F to 78°F or 20°C to 25°C) with moderated humidity levels (35 to 65% RH). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenbatteries.com/nibafa.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Green Batteries&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/info_8036035_do-batteries-keep-longer-refrigerator.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ehow&lt;/a&gt;, NiMH batteries do gain from being stored in a freezer (but keep them in a sealed bag and allow to warm up before using them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/energystorage/pdfs/aabc_lv.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;M/A-COM&lt;/a&gt;, who apparently make batteries rechargeable batteries for radios, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Keep battery packs in a cool, dry storage area (32 to 86°F (0 to 30°C)).  Refrigeration is &#xA;  recommended, but freezers should be avoided.  When refrigerated, the battery pack &#xA;  should be placed in a plastic bag to protect against condensation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-11T19:48:41.480" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T19:48:41.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6183" CreationDate="2011-09-16T04:14:03.687" Score="54" ViewCount="5265" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the only things that natural-food aficionados and food products mega-corporations agree on is that &amp;quot;probiotics&amp;quot; are good for you. I'm wondering if there is any reliable evidence to support the claims that consuming food or supplements with live cultures such as Lactobacillus will result in health benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example is this &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20101121131513/http://dannon.com/pdf/Probiotic.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claim made by Dannon/Danone:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consuming certain probiotics can&#xA;help strengthen the body's natural defenses by providing a&#xA;regular source of “friendly”bacteria to the intestinal tract,&#xA;helping to correct an imbalance of the intestinal microflora&#xA;and optimizing the functioning of the digestive tract’s&#xA;immune system and intestinal lining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The range of claims is quite wide — others have have made claims about improving digestion, clearing up acne, and even curing autism. I will keep this question focused on just the one claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any reliable scientific evidence that consuming probiotics can improve the immune system?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4739" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2022-10-12T18:46:04.603" Title="Do &quot;probiotics&quot; have health benefits?" Tags="|nutrition|immune-system|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6181" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-16T05:28:10.860" Score="5" ViewCount="933" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw a mini-documentary today from a German show in English called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tvs.org.au/programs/in-focus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;In Focus&lt;/a&gt;, it was an expose on asbestos contained in Chinese produced thermoses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The documentary and as an example &lt;a href=&quot;http://united-docs.de/dokumentationen/2011/asbestos-connection.phtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt; claim that asbestos is quite prevalent in Chinese produced thermoses and can easily get through undetected and onto the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;China, the world's factory, is still using the deadly mineral in&#xA;  products such as thermos flasks and sealing rings for the&#xA;  international market. And the estimated number of unreported uses is&#xA;  high because there are hardly any controls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.totalrecallinfo.com/freerecalls.php?id=6135&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an example&lt;/a&gt; of a German recall of a flask that was discovered to contain asbestos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How prevalent is asbestos in Chinese manufactured goods (outside of China) and does the use of asbestos in products pose a serious health risk? Is it a non-issue and something that is being detected on the off-chance that it happens or is it a common material that is being &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asbestos.net/news/2008/01/28/more-asbestos-toys-from-china-arrive-down-under&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;included in toys&lt;/a&gt; and other products?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-12T17:01:55.260" LastActivityDate="2018-09-03T12:42:44.327" Title="Asbestos in Chinese manufactured goods" Tags="|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6256" CreationDate="2011-09-16T08:26:21.880" Score="12" ViewCount="2297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have discovered a claim going around that says everything is surrounded by &quot;Orgone Energy&quot; which is a universal life force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Products have arisen from this theory such as a &quot;Cloudbuster&quot;, a device intended to influence weather by altering levels of &quot;atmospheric orgone&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence for to support this claim? (I have done much research on this but cannot find this answer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100308204727AAzC2WI&quot;&gt;also been claimed&lt;/a&gt; that the discoverer, Wilhelm Reich, had all of his books were burned by the FDA and he died in jail. Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="970" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T20:03:35.113" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T15:50:25.223" Title="Does Orgone Energy exist?" Tags="|history|physics|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2011-09-16T09:00:09.837" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you define as probiotics. If you are referring to the &quot;food products mega-corporations&quot; as you call them, the answer is most likely &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, and arguments are given below. This does not mean that there are no real probiotics which have an actual effect on specific health issues. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/6285/37236&quot;&gt;answer of mmr&lt;/a&gt; gives a few examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But again to the claims of these mega-corporations: the European Food Safety authority has researched 800 health claims of such companies, and they could not find relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you prefer easy reading you may like the article&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/8074182/Probiotic-drinks-do-not-aid-health-Europe-says.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Probiotic drinks do not aid health, Europe says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Products such as Yakult, which are sold at a premium over standard&#xA;  yogurts, cannot be proved to either boost the immune system or aid&#xA;  digestive health, it has been ruled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has examined more than 800&#xA;  health claims from food companies, including those submitted by the&#xA;  multi-billion pound probiotic industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EFSA's independent panel of scientists found that the claims that&#xA;  these products could strengthen the body's defences, improve immune&#xA;  function and reduce gut problems were either so general as to be&#xA;  inadmissible, or could not be shown to have the claimed effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a separate ruling, the panel examined a dossier of 12 studies&#xA;  submitted by Yakult for its own strain of probiotic bacteria,&#xA;  Lactobacillus casei shirota. It found that all were inadequate to&#xA;  support the company's claim that its products maintained immune&#xA;  defences against the common cold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EFSA's ruling is being challenged by the industry, but if these&#xA;  appeals fail the companies will no longer be allowed to market the&#xA;  foods as aiding digestion or helping the immune system in future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More info on &lt;a href=&quot;https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa.2010.1767&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the EFSA's own site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpts from the conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim: “Healthy and balanced digestive system” (ID 1371, 4228)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The claimed effects are “intestinal flora”, “digestive health” and “ingestion of cheese&#xA;containing probiotic culture Lb. paracasei NFBC 338 positively influences the healthy balance&#xA;of the gut microflora”. The target population is assumed to be the general population. In the&#xA;context of the proposed wording, it is assumed that the claimed effects refer to maintenance or&#xA;contribution to a healthy and balanced digestive system.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The claimed effects are general and non-specific and do not refer to any specific health claim&#xA;as required by Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim: Increasing numbers of gastro-intestinal microorganisms (ID 864, 1371, 3073, 4228)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The claimed effects are “gut health”, “intestinal flora”, “digestive health” and “ingestion of&#xA;cheese containing probiotic culture Lb. paracasei NFBC 338 positively influences the healthy&#xA;balance of the gut microflora”. The target population is assumed to be the general population.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The evidence provided does not establish that increasing numbers of gastro-intestinal&#xA;microorganisms is a beneficial physiological effect. A cause and effect relationship has not been established between the consumption of the food(s)/food constituent(s) evaluated in this opinion and a beneficial physiological effect related to increasing numbers of gastro-intestinal microorganisms.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim: Decreasing potentially pathogenic gastro-intestinal microorganisms (ID 864, 1371, 3073, 4228)&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The claimed effects are “gut health”, “intestinal flora”, “digestive health” and “ingestion of&#xA;cheese containing probiotic culture Lb. paracasei NFBC 338 positively influences the healthy&#xA;balance of the gut microflora”. The target population is assumed to be the general population.&#xA;Decreasing potentially pathogenic gastro-intestinal microorganisms might be a beneficial&#xA;physiological effect.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A cause and effect relationship has not been established between the consumption of the&#xA;food(s)/food constituent(s) evaluated in this opinion and decreasing potentially pathogenic&#xA;gastro-intestinal microorganisms.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T17:09:23.310" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T17:09:23.310" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6184" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6236" CreationDate="2011-09-16T14:04:18.677" Score="15" ViewCount="1663" Body="&lt;p&gt;I stumbled upon this (off-topic) question on electronics.SE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/14783/are-products-designed-to-fail&quot;&gt;Are products designed to fail?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard that some companies trick consumers into buying and replacing printers &amp;amp; cartridges more frequently by manipulating parts. For example, when I shake the cartridge of my printer model after a &quot;Empty&quot; message, I can print a lot more pages. I also found articles about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inkandstuff.co.uk/articles/news/hp-to-settle-smart-chip-lawsuit-within-the-month/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;lawsuits&lt;/a&gt; concerning this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_19022_5-ways-hi-tech-retailers-are-secretly-screwing-you.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another source says:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes, it turns out that many of the ink cartridges made by HP and&#xA;  Lexmark have switches in them that make the cartridges fail after a&#xA;  certain period of time, whether they're empty or not. &lt;strong&gt;This isn't just&#xA;  some crazy conspiracy theory, either. HP's senior &quot;ink scientist&quot;&#xA;  (yes, that's actually his real title), Nils Miller, admitted to this&#xA;  during an interview.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, companies are allowed to produce low-quality products from a legal point of view, but alerting that the &quot;cartridge is empty&quot; when its consistently still half-full doesn't merelyindicate a low-quality measurement, but a obvious case of fraud. It's like a car tank having a built-in hole. But maybe it's just a legal loop-hole companies can rely on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there some objective and independent studies/surveys investigating and esp. comparing models of different companies (e.g. companies selling printers)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4477" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:33:07.107" LastActivityDate="2019-12-10T17:15:28.893" Title="Are printers/cartridges designed to fail?" Tags="|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6193" CreationDate="2011-09-16T18:04:04.800" Score="27" ViewCount="26076" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible that a plane hit the side of the pentagon, but did not even scuff up the grass?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some claims of other anomalies that don't quite match the idea of a plane hitting there; like a lack of broken plane parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tradenewswire.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/misile.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Grass http://www.tradenewswire.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/misile.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_ni8cv2nB9KU/TG19zCoefII/AAAAAAAAACg/wzgWBnhk7gw/s1600/PentagonAirView14th.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Lack of plane parts&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other plane crashes (are alleged to) look like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/P96aW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;a&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://farm1.static.flickr.com/183/396843362_461b453b67.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;b&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2168" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-01-03T22:03:13.357" LastActivityDate="2020-04-23T23:34:35.927" Title="Did a plane hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001?" Tags="|history|united-states|aviation|9-11|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6191" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6195" CreationDate="2011-09-16T19:12:31.217" Score="13" ViewCount="2697" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've often heard and read that soda causes tooth decay; most often the reason involves the sugars present in the soda being converted into acids which wear out the enamel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious if there is anything in a soda that doesn't contain sugar, such as one that uses aspartame as a sweetener, that would cause tooth decay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of the claim cited in the first paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MILLIONS of weight-conscious consumers believe it is a healthy choice: low in kilojoules and sugar-free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But diet cola can make you fat and rot your teeth, according to new research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthy.net/scr/news.aspx?Id=9070&amp;amp;CatId=7&amp;amp;Page=2&amp;amp;Search=&quot;&gt;Diet cola can 'make you fat and rot your teeth'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="252" LastEditorUserId="252" LastEditDate="2012-05-09T19:39:15.180" LastActivityDate="2021-08-29T00:54:33.293" Title="Does (diet) soda cause tooth decay?" Tags="|nutrition|dentistry|sugar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6192" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-16T21:00:40.150" Score="8" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/552/can-microwave-ovens-give-you-cancer&quot;&gt;Can microwave ovens give you cancer?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was handed a leaflet today by a man in a bumble-bee costume. Here's an excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cook with Love. but without a Microwave Oven&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ln cellular telecommunication microwave radiation causes irreversible damages in man and nature. The effects of microwave radiation are even more severe when it comes to the microwave oven. You and your family are not only exposed to the leakage radiation, which penetrates concrete walls and can extend far into other rooms and flats, you also take in food with a completely destroyed molecular structure. Our immune system identifies such molecular structures as foreign bodies and reacts in the same way as it does in the early stages of a cancerous process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do microwave ovens leak harmful radiation? Does eating microwaved food increase my risk of developing cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-09-16T21:00:40.150" Title="Are Microwave Ovens Harmful?" Tags="|nutrition|microwaves|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2011-09-17T05:51:54.337" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6187" CreationDate="2011-09-16T22:33:38.423" Score="117" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, absolutely a plane crashed into the Pentagon on September 11th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address the claims specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but did not even scuff up the grass&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know what airplanes do?  They &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;FLY&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  That this is even a claim is absolutely ludicrous and seems to be grasping at straws...  &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170416213925/http://www.mikejwilson.com/911/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike J. Wilson does a nice reconstruction of the crash that shows this gravity defying feat quite clearly&lt;/a&gt;.  Not only that, it has actual photographs and video from the Pentagon that not only show the effects, but even show airplane debris.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case 9/11 truthers are attempting to draw a comparison between a crash into a structure at high speed and these &quot;examples&quot; of crashes, they are being deliberately deceptive.  The &quot;crashes&quot; they are using as examples happened under much, much different conditions than the 9/11 crash.  I would suggest maybe the Payne Stewart crash site would be more indicative of a crash at high speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hNimW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Payne Stewart Crash Site&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Image source, South Dakota Community News)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or Maybe another crater like this Tupelov crater in Iran:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/czCu1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Tupelov Crash Crater&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Image Source, USA Today)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the general nature of most pilots is to NOT crash!  So if they are able to do anything when they realize things have gone into a total &quot;furball&quot;, they will do everything to preserve their lives (like attempting to get to an appropriate speed, attitude, orientation, configuration, etc.).  The extremists on-board the aircraft were not taking any of those actions, and were trying to do as much damage as possible.  Thus they had throttles up, and were going at very high speed in a clean configuration when they crashed into the Pentagon (and the WTC for that matter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pictures shown in the question are from crashes near the landing or take off phase, which has totally different parameters (and even a movie set which isn't even a real crash...).  Again, highly disingenuous of the truthers...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;like a lack of broken plane parts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there is the claim there are no parts.  The video by Mike Wilson shows photographs of numerous parts, so that is plainly an outright lie of omission.  The photograph that truthers display as an &quot;example&quot; is from a long distance, and does not show the entire site either.  Here are four pictures that DO show aircraft debris:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uObYC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Airplane parts at Pentagon&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WTCHn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Airplane Parts at Pentagon&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VIDCr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Airplane Parts at Pentagon&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XqqzA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Airplane parts inside the Pentagon&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Image Sources, James Randi Educational Foundation, from other sources)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, truthers seem to be wholly unfamiliar with materials science, physics, and structures.  They do not seem to know what happens when an aircraft is driven into a wall at high speed?  Here is a wonderful example of a test conducted by the government many years ago with an F-4  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM8E-CogkYE&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;YouTube Video taken from a Sandia Test&lt;/a&gt; as referenced in Sugano, T., Tsubota, H., Kasai, Y., Koshika, N., Orui, S., W.A. von Riesemann, D.C. Bickel, M. B. Parks, (1993a), “Full-scale aircraft impact test for evaluation of impact force”, Nuclear Engineering and Design, Vol. 140, p373-385.).  As one can plainly see in that video nearly a decade before 9/11, the plane is quite effectively obliterated, only leaving very small parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if anyone sincerely wishes to find out more about what actually happened, and wants to stay with actual facts (as opposed to manufactured ones, or plain old delusions), I suggest they visit the &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.randi.org/forumdisplay.php?f=64&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;James Randi Educational Foundation&lt;/a&gt;.  Not only are there plenty of discussions that debunk these same tired old arguments, but one can ask the same questions again and again.  And you'll get the same answer, because people demand &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;EVIDENCE&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, not cherry picked half-truths.  Much like here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And just for giggles, &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/966/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I think this comic by XKCD touches on why I have such disdain for these nutty conspiracy theories&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1TNuT.png&quot; alt=&quot;XKCD Comic&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Source:  XKCD [as if you couldn't tell])&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2020-04-23T23:34:35.927" LastActivityDate="2020-04-23T23:34:35.927" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6191" CreationDate="2011-09-17T08:02:58.090" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary: Diet drinks are less acidic, but still a problem for dental erosion.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acids can cause erosion of teeth. Saliva acts as a buffer to prevent it. Saliva is more effective against milder acids. [Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erosion_%28dental%29&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bubbles in fizzy drinks (a.k.a. soda, pop, soda water, etc.) is carbon dioxide (CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;) When carbon dioxide is dissolved in water, it spontaneously interconverts with carbonic acid, H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;CO&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt;. [Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, without any additives, plain carbonated water is acidic, with a pH between 3 and 4. [Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonated_water&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Diet sodas contain phosphoric acid as well, but remain milder acids than the full-sugar  versions. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.21stcenturydental.com/smith/pH_drinks.htm&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt; which puts Diet Coke at  ph 3.39 versus Coke Classic at 2.53.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I have stooped to Wikipedia for my references, because it is just confirming high school science, rather than addressing any controversial topic.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-09-17T08:02:58.090" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6174" CreationDate="2011-09-17T12:02:47.150" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dtander's answer is quite alright, but because you kept asking about the problem with self-report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First: There is hardly any incentive to pretend that you don't feel empathy, so an estimate that we get from self-report would be lower-bound (if the criteria are proper).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, sociopath, psychopath, dissocial and antisocial personality disorder are not exactly the same &lt;a href=&quot;https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder#Diagnosis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;concepts&lt;/a&gt; depending on who you ask. For example Hervey Cleckley has asserted that psychopaths are &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&amp;amp;uid=2001-07673-011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;immune to suicide&lt;/a&gt; but there is differential evidence for two factors that Hare's &lt;a href=&quot;https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/PCL-R&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PCL-R&lt;/a&gt; comprises.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So some argue that the deviancy/delinquency without lack of empathy/remorse is antisocial personality disorder, and the afflicted will sometimes seek help. I'm not on top of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=16#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the debate&lt;/a&gt;, but I'd say it's likely that it will not come to an inherent endorsement of the term &quot;psychopath&quot; because it has a quite &quot;evil&quot; connotation (the Stout book sounds quite scaremongering as well) and the people Hare means wouldn't seek help anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, not all of the criteria in antisocial/dissocial personality disorder and even fewer in the PCL-R need to be based on self-reports. There are case files about activities like (juvenile) delinquency, many short-term marital relationships, promiscuity, etc.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And not all think they have something to hide. A quote from Geoffrey Miller's Mating Mind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Very few psychopaths flaunt their lack of sympathy like Hannibal&#xA;  Lecter, because very few of them are glamorous, urbane geniuses.&#xA;  Mostly, they are just ordinary creeps who beat their girlfriends, stab&#xA;  guys in bars for no reason, get caught, and then apply for parole four&#xA;  times as often as non-psychopaths because they don't think they've&#xA;  done anything wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, I'd say the MMPI isn't good, it's just widespread. The SKID and the DIPS are supposed to be better. Many prefer the MMPI though for reasons such as sunk cost and the ability to fax your answer sheets in to get a score.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Can't dig up an English reference now, sorry.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Hank, P.,&amp;amp; Schwenkmezger, P. (2003). Das Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI). Testbesprechung im Auftrag des Testkuratoriums. Report Psychologie, 28(5), 294-303.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="2722" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T13:07:51.113" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T13:07:51.113" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6197" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-17T14:15:26.990" Score="10" ViewCount="828" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that television (any program, including those designed for small children (Dora, recent Mickey Mouse, Bubble Guppies) is bad for the development of children, as it damages their ability to learn and retain concepts being taught to them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They say that children need time to learn things and that television 'overwrites' what they've learned, and damage their imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are there studies backing this up? And as a followup, how exactly are programs designed for children damaging?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4822" LastEditorUserId="4822" LastEditDate="2011-09-17T14:30:45.087" LastActivityDate="2018-10-10T18:39:00.010" Title="Are television programs designed for small children detrimental to their development?" Tags="|children|television|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6198" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6202" CreationDate="2011-09-17T16:14:53.547" Score="5" ViewCount="755" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several news media (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/09/15/fda-vs-dr-oz-is-apple-juice-poisonous/&quot;&gt;Fox News&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2011/09/15/fda-disputes-dr-oz-show-apple-juice-arsenic_n_964243.html&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/dr-richard-besser-dr-mehmet-oz-debate-arsenic/story?id=14526426&quot;&gt;ABC News&lt;/a&gt;) reported about an episode of &quot;The Dr. Oz Show&quot; in which Dr. Oz stated that many apple juices contain dangerously high levels of arsenic. The FDA had advance knowledge of this episode and disputed this claim, arguing that the measured amounts were for total arsenic, while only inorganic arsenic is dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is organic arsenic harmless as the FDA claims? Are the arsenic levels present in apple juice dangerous or harmless?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-07-12T19:20:49.507" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T19:20:49.507" Title="Does some apple juice contain dangerous amounts of arsenic?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|mehmet-oz|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1304" CreationDate="2011-09-17T16:47:45.133" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to have to do with childhood nutrition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_%28book%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Generations,&quot; &lt;/a&gt;(Pp.175-176, 267),&#xA; William Strauss and Neil Howe pointed out that one reason that Americans won the American Revolution was that their better nutrition made them two inches taller (5' 7'' vs. 5'5'') on average than the Redcoats, who were nearly two CENTURIES behind them in height. They also pointed out that the so-called World War II generation (born after 1900) was more than an inch taller, on average, than the generation born immediately before them (pre-1900). Two generations later, their children had grown another 3/4 inch, on average. Basically, the closer you get to &quot;modern&quot; (second half, 20th century) U.S. standards, the taller people get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are now seeing Asian children in ASIA, with 20th century U.S. nutritional standards catch up in height to American children, while their parents' nutritional standards and sizes were more like (U.S.) 19th century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastEditorUserId="4823" LastEditDate="2016-01-20T14:09:30.350" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T14:09:30.350" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6198" CreationDate="2011-09-18T02:20:46.983" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, apple juice does not contain dangerous levels of arsenic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been monitoring both the arsenic levels in apple juice, and the claims by Dr. Oz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have suggested it would be &quot;irresponsible and misleading to suggest that apple juice contains unsafe amounts of arsenic based on tests for total arsenic&quot;. This is exactly what Dr. Oz has done, despite being warned earlier in a letter from the FDA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm271746.htm&quot;&gt;FDA Letter to Dr Oz&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They explain that they have: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;every confidence in the safety of apple juice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and that there is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;no evidence of any public health risk from drinking these juices [...] FDA has been testing them for years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm271394.htm&quot;&gt;FDA Consumer Update: FDA: Apple Juice is Safe To Drink&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FDA resources go onto explain that organic arsenic has a far different toxicity to inorganic arsenic, and that measuring, as Dr Oz does, for &lt;em&gt;total&lt;/em&gt; arsenic is misleading. It also explains the reasons for the difference between acceptable levels in water and apple juice: basically, water (including added to food) contributes to a far greater percentage of daily intake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the FDA right about that? Well, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR, part of the US's CDC) agrees that inorganic arsenic is toxic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/PHS/PHS.asp?id=18&amp;amp;tid=3&quot;&gt;ATSDR's Public Heath Statement for Arsenic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Inorganic arsenic has been recognized as a human poison since ancient times, and large oral doses (above 60,000 ppb in water which is 10,000 times higher than 80% of U.S. drinking water arsenic levels) can result in death. If you swallow lower levels of inorganic arsenic (ranging from about 300 to 30,000 ppb in water; 100–10,000 times higher than most U.S. drinking water levels), you may experience irritation of your stomach and intestines, with symptoms such as stomachache, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(They goes on to describe much more nastiness involved with ingestion and inhalation of inorganic arsenic.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to organic arsenic, they are more vague:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Almost no information is available on the effects of organic arsenic compounds in humans. Studies in animals show that most simple organic arsenic compounds (such as methyl and dimethyl compounds) are less toxic than the inorganic forms. In animals, ingestion of methyl compounds can result in diarrhea, and lifetime exposure can damage the kidneys. Lifetime exposure to dimethyl compounds can damage the urinary bladder and the kidneys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They contrast the length of time the two types of arsenic stay in the body:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both inorganic and organic forms leave your body in your urine. Most of the inorganic arsenic will be gone within several days, although some will remain in your body for several months or even longer. If you are exposed to organic arsenic, most of it will leave your body within several days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-09-19T01:48:17.240" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T01:48:17.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6208" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-18T16:22:31.317" Score="14" ViewCount="14158" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always been told not to let dogs eat cooked chicken bones since they can easily splinter/fracture and cause problems for the dog but I've never seen any satisfactory evidence of this and I am afraid that I am denying my dog some tasty snacks based only on superstition and hearsay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a German Shepherd myself and, besides all the feathers, I can't imagine her having much trouble eating a raw chicken in the wild if she were hungry and managed to catch one. She also regularly splinters beef/pork rib bones and other similar prepared treats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best answer I can find on the internet among anecdotal evidence, arguments from authority and other noise is that the difference between raw and cooked chicken bones is what presents the major problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am certain there are stories of dogs choking on cooked chicken bones just like there are stories of dogs choking on other bones, tennis balls and treats they commonly chew on. What I am really interested in knowing is if the rumors of digestive problems such as intestinal perforation have any evidence behind them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4616" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-12T17:00:35.963" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T01:36:04.607" Title="Is it safe for dogs to eat cooked chicken bones?" Tags="|zoology|dogs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6198" CreationDate="2011-09-18T19:44:44.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a complement to the answer given by oddthinking: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the Dr. Oz Show gave the FDA information suggesting that apple&#xA;  juice samples it had tested showed results as high as 36 parts per&#xA;  billion (ppb) of total arsenic, the FDA obtained its own samples of&#xA;  apple juice—including a sample of the same lot of apple juice&#xA;  purportedly containing 36 ppb—for analysis. The FDA’s test results do&#xA;  not support the findings of the Dr. Oz Show, and, in fact, are&#xA;  significantly less (2 to 6 ppb) than the levels found by the&#xA;  television program’s analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm271746.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm271746.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world health organisation has a lengthy report on arsenic in food: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://whqlibdoc.who.int/ehc/WHO_EHC_224.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://whqlibdoc.who.int/ehc/WHO_EHC_224.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://whqlibdoc.who.int/ehc/WHO_EHC_224_(part2).pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://whqlibdoc.who.int/ehc/WHO_EHC_224_(part2).pdf&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;On page 100 of that document (part 2) you find a table with different total arsenic values in food. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8IILR.png&quot; alt=&quot;table arsenic in food&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From these data it seems that the 2-6 ppb (microg/kg) in apple juice will not lead to a much higher total intake of total arsenic. You should rather start worrying about eating fish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastEditorUserId="1735" LastEditDate="2011-09-18T20:10:59.200" LastActivityDate="2011-09-18T20:10:59.200" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4338" CreationDate="2011-09-18T22:36:31.830" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is yes, it can happen after death, but only SHORTLY after death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is due to the contracting and expanding of the related muscles, which do not necessarily &quot;shut down&quot; immediately after death. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatulence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatulence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two or three hours after death, rigor mortis sets in. This is a chemical stiffening of the muscles that prevents the kind of activity described above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigor_mortis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rigor_mortis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the &quot;window&quot; doesn't last very long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2011-09-18T22:36:31.830" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6215" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-19T00:16:20.610" Score="9" ViewCount="1259" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Nancy Padian's 10 year study, none of the over 100 HIV- monogamous partners of HIV+ subjects seroconverted to HIV+ during the study. They were counseled to use condoms, but it is believed that they often did not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/146/4/350.full.pdf&quot;&gt;Padian NS, Shiboski SC, Glass SO, Vittinghoff E. 1997. Heterosexual transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in Northern California: results from a ten-year study&lt;/a&gt;. Am J Epidemiol 146, 350-357]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aidstruth.org/denialism/misuse/padian&quot;&gt;Aids Truth&lt;/a&gt; says the study was misinterpreted by denialists. It says that the rate for male to female transmission was 0.01 to 0.32 % in the developed world. That is once per 300 to 1000 sexual contacts. It's vastly too low to account for the &quot;spread by infection&quot; presumed to have occurred before it was noticed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4829" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T03:44:52.960" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T21:01:01.900" Title="Is HIV a sexually transmitted infection?" Tags="|hiv-aids|infection|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6217" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-19T08:31:27.823" Score="14" ViewCount="5283" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many car enthusiasts claim the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take 2 identical cars (equal horse power, torque etc).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give one car to an old person who only drives it slowly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;give the other car to the car enthusiast making this claim&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you put both cars on a test bench you will see that car 1 has less power/torque than car 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim goes further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Give car 1 to the car enthusiast, and by driving it &quot;in a sportive way&quot; the engine will improve again.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really true? If so, how come?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4603" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-10-18T18:23:05.017" LastActivityDate="2016-11-19T22:32:29.927" Title="Can you improve a car's engine by driving the car fast?" Tags="|road-vehicles|engineering|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6218" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-19T09:41:37.997" Score="26" ViewCount="2069" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good friend of mine made the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If we would have a time machine and use it to gather newborns from different eras of human history and would put them in normal and nurturing families they would have the same chances to succeed in today's world as normally born children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would really like that to be true. I think it would be a very humbling fact and would make an astounding argument in favor of education and free access to information. At the same time it's the first time I heard that argument and it seems hard to proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research done on this subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1869" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2013-01-17T16:58:13.653" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T16:58:13.653" Title="Were our recent ancestors as intelligent as we are?" Tags="|history|intelligence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6219" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6540" CreationDate="2011-09-19T12:54:07.410" Score="36" ViewCount="7586" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this claim stated in many places, for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA111.html&quot;&gt;talk.origins FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of the scientists and engineers in the United States, only about 5% are creationists, according to a 1991 Gallup poll (Robinson 1995, Witham 1997). However, this number includes those working in fields not related to life origins (such as computer scientists, mechanical engineers, etc.). Taking into account only those working in the relevant fields of earth and life sciences, &lt;strong&gt;there are about 480,000 scientists, but only about 700 believe in &quot;creation-science&quot; or consider it a valid theory&lt;/strong&gt; (Robinson 1995). This means that less than 0.15 percent of relevant scientists believe in creationism. And that is just in the United States, which has more creationists than any other industrialized country. In other countries, the number of relevant scientists who accept creationism drops to less than one tenth of 1 percent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Original source: Newsweek?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, with some source-hopping I found the source of the claim to be a magazine article:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;code&gt;Larry Martz &amp;amp; Ann McDaniel, &quot;Keeping God Out of Class (Washington and bureau reports)&quot;. Newsweek (Newsweek Inc.) 1987-JUN-29, Pages 22 &amp;amp; 23. ISSN 0028-9604&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this is the original source, or if it refers to a scientific study. I'd like to know that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Quote from the Newsweek article&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution#Scientific_support&quot;&gt;Wikipedia also makes a reference&lt;/a&gt; to the Newsweek article in question. They have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution#cite_note-Newsweek_1987_Martz_McDaniel-26&quot;&gt;footnote quoting Newsweek&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;By one count&lt;/strong&gt; there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) who give credence to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve but appeared 'abruptly'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I can't get my hands on the Newsweek article in question. However, it sounds to me that there's one magazine article from 1987 that talks about &lt;em&gt;&quot;one count&quot;&lt;/em&gt; without references. And this gets &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=life%20scientists%20700%20480,000&quot;&gt;cited all around the web&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The questions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the Newsweek article say any more about this count? Is there some proper research behind the claim, and if so, what are the methods for counting? Is the fraction of creationists in life scientists in the US really only 0.15%?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;I say &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; because using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publia.htm&quot;&gt;a source talk.origins used, too&lt;/a&gt;, in 1997 a full 44% of American adults believed in creationism. Of all scientists, the amount was 5%. I'm used to seeing figures like these, so 0.15% for a specific group of scientists seems &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; little. However, if &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; is offensive to some and removed again, I'm not going to argue.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:54:10.143" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T10:01:04.547" Title="Are only 700 out of 480,000 life scientists creationists?" Tags="|united-states|young-earth-creationism|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6222" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6263" CreationDate="2011-09-19T14:17:43.473" Score="26" ViewCount="7947" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/feb/16/20040216-113955-2061r/?page=all&quot;&gt;Most Americans take Bible stories literally&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An ABC News poll released Sunday found that... ...Sixty percent believe in the story of Noah’s ark and a global flood&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is often repeated, including in a number of lists such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://coedmagazine.com/2010/01/24/the-10-most-ridiculous-things-people-believe/&quot;&gt;The 10 Most Ridiculous Things People Believe&lt;/a&gt;, and I recall this or similar statistics being noted in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0815241/&quot;&gt;Bill Maher's Religulous&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible, in spite of the current scientific knowledge, that 60% of the 307 million Americans – some 184.2 million people – actually believe the Biblical account of Noah's ark to be literally true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:13:46.573" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:13:46.573" Title="Do the majority of Americans take the Noah's ark story from the Bible literally?" Tags="|united-states|religion|bible|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="27" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6208" CreationDate="2011-09-19T14:35:49.990" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Partial Answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a study in 2010 which was one of several that looked at techniques for removing foreign bodies from the oesophagus (throats) of dogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Oesophageal foreign bodies in dogs: factors affecting success of endoscopic retrieval&lt;/em&gt;, Florence Juvet, Manuel Pinilla, Robert E Shiel, and Carmel T Mooney, Ir Vet J. 2010; 63(3): 163–168. doi:&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3113842/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1186/2046-0481-63-3-163&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thirty nine (86.6%) foreign bodies were bones, including 23 chops/vertebrae (12 lamb, 6 pork and 5 unidentified species), 2 chicken bones, 1 turkey bone, 1 beef bone and 12 other bone types for which species was not reported. There was one each of the following: commercial dried pig ear, piece of cooked chicken breast, potato, piece of silicone, and stick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This shows that having bones of various types, including (but not limited to) chicken, is common enough to be able to try different methods of removal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it doesn't give a good answer to the question &quot;how likely is a dog to get injured, each time it eats a chicken with bones?&quot; It doesn't address the risk factors of cooked versus raw. It doesn't address other injuries. It also suggests that innocuous foods are also a risk (a potato? a cooked chicken breast? a stick!) making it difficult to guarantee a dog's safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="164" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T15:48:36.600" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T15:48:36.600" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-09-19T14:35:49.990" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6224" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6225" CreationDate="2011-09-19T15:43:55.780" Score="29" ViewCount="3316" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3131/have-any-cures-been-invented-since-the-1950s-or-so&quot;&gt;Have any “cures” been invented since the 1950's or so?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ran across the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://cutpoisonburn.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cut Poison Burn&lt;/a&gt;, who's abstract is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cut Poison Burn is a controversial, eye opening, and sometimes heartbreaking documentary that puts the business of cancer treatment under the microscope. Follow the frustrating journeys of critically ill cancer patients as they try to navigate the confusing and dangerous maze of treatment and encounter formidable obstacles in the “cancer industrial complex.”  A compelling critique of the influence of medical monopolies, the power of pharmaceutical companies and government agencies, Cut Poison Burn is essential viewing for anyone and everyone touched by cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The movie may advocate (haven't watched the whole thing) some kind of new, pennies-per-session treatment a la &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4611/does-burzynski-have-a-miracle-cancer-cure-being-suppressed-by-the-fda&quot;&gt;Burzynski&lt;/a&gt;, or at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/09/19/cut-poison-burn.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Mercola is using it to do so&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a myriad of claims in the movie, I'm sure (I only watched the first 10min), but I'd like to address one in particular that struck me (&lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/26874089&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;occurs starting at the 7min mark&lt;/a&gt;). It is made by Charles B. Simone, M.MS, M.D., founder of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drsimone.com/center.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Simone Protective Cancer Center&lt;/a&gt; (transcripted by me; may contain small errors):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From 1920 to the present time, we have made little or no progress in the treatment of adult cancers. So a person who gets prostate cancer or breast cancer today will live as long as a person who got it in 1920. No big change. With all the radiation therapy that began in the 10's and 20's, combination chemotherapy in the 60's, immunotherapy that began in the 70's, PET scans, MRI scans, you name it, billions and billions and billions of research dollar that we've thrown into this whole area of cancer research and treatment... little or no significant progress in the treatment of adult cancers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the case? Has no treatment since 1920 done anything to increase the chance of [long-term] survival of adults who have cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T16:15:53.603" Title="Are cancer recovery rates the same as they were in 1920?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6224" CreationDate="2011-09-19T16:53:33.350" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Women patients with metastatic breast cancer (for example) lived much longer after diagnosis in 1995 compared to 1920.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This 1983 study describes an interesting aspect to this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6668509?dopt=AbstractPlus&amp;amp;holding=f1000,f1000m,isrctn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Survival of women with metastatic breast cancer at Yale from 1920 to 1980.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Todd M, Shoag M, Cadman E., J Clin Oncol. 1983 Jun;1(6):406-8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The survival of metastatic breast cancer patients initially increased dramatically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The median survival of these patients increased steadily from 21 months in 1920 to 41 months in the decade from 1970 to 1980. The percentage of women actually surviving 5 years increased from 5% in the 1920s to approximately 25% in the 1960s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, over the next twenty years, improvements were more limited:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite the use of combination drug programs in the 1970s, the percentage of these patients remaining alive at 5 years remained near 25%. Firm conclusions cannot be made from a retrospective study spanning 60 years, although the trends depicted and lack of continued improvement indicate that our current therapeutic approach to metastatic breast cancer may not result in dramatic improvement in overall survival.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking over from there was another study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Survival of patients with metastatic breast cancer: twenty-year data from two SEER registries&lt;/em&gt;, &#xA;Patricia Tai , Edward Yu, Vincent Vinh-Hung, Gábor Cserni and Georges Vlastos. BMC Cancer 2004, 4:60 doi:&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/4/60&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1186/1471-2407-4-60&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It compared cause-specific survival from metastatic breast cancer for two periods: 1981-1985 and 1991-1995. It looked at the results from two areas: Connecticut and San Francisco-Oakland. It found that back in 1981-1985, both regions has similar results, but there was an improvement in survival for the San Francisco-Oakland registry patients a decade later and no improvement in Connecticut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To summarise&lt;/strong&gt;: Improvements from 1920-1960, static from 1960-1980, and then mixed results from 1981-1995.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Beware of the confounding effects of earlier/better detection of disease.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Addendum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Noted skeptic PZ Myers addressed a similar issue on his &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/support_cancer_research_now.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pharyngula&lt;/a&gt; blog. He shows how the survival rates for childhood cancers have increased dramatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't directly answer the question, because it deals with childhood cancers (the original quote was about cancer in adults), and because it is poorly referenced. However, the graphs are quite dramatic, and one could expect to see similar results in adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sxgUO.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Survival Rates in Children&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2017-03-03T16:15:53.603" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T16:15:53.603" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6228" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6231" CreationDate="2011-09-19T18:21:43.537" Score="15" ViewCount="3844" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that apes are our ancestors (ranging from chimpanzee to bonobo to gorilla).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Can we live side-by-side with our ancestors? I always thought we used to have a common ancestor with them. In which group would our ancestors be? Homini, Hominidae, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4836" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:56:31.690" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:56:31.690" Title="Are apes our ancestors?" Tags="|evolution|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6228" CreationDate="2011-09-19T18:51:09.600" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this diagram a while back that helps visualize how this all works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are not descended from apes. We are descended from an ape-like ancestor. As David say, people simplify by saying we &quot;descended from apes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://whozoo.org/mammals/Primates/primatephylogeny.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://whozoo.org/mammals/Primates/primatephylogeny.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iAsph.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Primate Phylogeny&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4746" LastActivityDate="2011-09-19T18:51:09.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6228" CreationDate="2011-09-19T18:51:23.360" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary: Technically, we &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; apes. Colloquially, we didn't evolve from modern apes: we shared a recent common ancestor with them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8jqCm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Ancestors&quot; /&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v16/n2/full/scientificamerican0606-4sp.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpg.de/19230/Comparative_genomics#1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Comparative genomics of higher primates&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpg.de/en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Max Planck Society&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The common chimpanzee and the bonobo or pygmy chimpanzee are our&#xA;closest living relatives, with whom we share a common ancestor that&#xA;lived 5–7 million years ago.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Humans and chimpanzees share a common&#xA;ancestor with gorillas&lt;/strong&gt; — the other major species of African apes —&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;that lived 6–8 million years ago&lt;/strong&gt;, whereas &lt;strong&gt;the common ancestor shared&#xA;with the Asian orangutans lived 12–16 million years ago&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many species that were more closely-related to humans have lived and&#xA;become extinct since the time of the chimpanzee- human ancestor.&#xA;They&#xA;are collectively called hominins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One hominin is the &lt;em&gt;Neandertal&lt;/em&gt;, whose&#xA;lineage diverged from ours 300,000–500,000 years ago. Neandertals&#xA;lived in western Eurasia, sometimes alongside our ancestors, until&#xA;they became extinct around 30,000 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2796.2002.00907.x/abstract;jsessionid=EC6053649E308781C6DB03AEFA2B6160.d02t01&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The genetical history of humans and the great apes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T17:42:03.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6232" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6243" CreationDate="2011-09-19T19:00:12.677" Score="19" ViewCount="5722" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teflon&quot;&gt;Teflon (PTFE)&lt;/a&gt; will release &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer_fume_fever&quot;&gt;toxic fumes&lt;/a&gt; when overheated. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ewg.org/healthyhometips/dangersofteflon&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; for a lot of claims without references. You can also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=15+1829&amp;amp;aid=2874&quot;&gt;kill birds with it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that heating Teflon over &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.dupont.com/Teflon_Industrial/en_US/tech_info/techinfo_compare.html&quot;&gt;its melting point of 500 Fahrenheit (260 °C)&lt;/a&gt; will release the fumes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is 500F/260C an achievable temperature on a stove while cooking?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will those fumes stay in the food you're preparing, and are they toxic when ingested?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there other chemicals being released?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is using non-stick cookware really dangerous? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4689" LastEditorUserId="4689" LastEditDate="2011-09-20T20:19:41.130" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T09:13:08.527" Title="Is non-stick cookware bad for your health?" Tags="|toxicology|cooking|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6184" CreationDate="2011-09-19T20:09:40.823" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Directly from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hp.com/pageyield/en-019/articles/inkExpiration.html?cCode=us&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HP's website&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some of HP’s inkjet systems are sensitive to air ingestion and water evaporation, which can cause ink to change over time, adversely impacting the printhead and the ink delivery components within the printer. To protect the printing system and ensure print quality, &lt;strong&gt;certain HP printers are designed to stop ink cartridges from working when they reach a built-in date, calculated from when each ink cartridge is installed&lt;/strong&gt;. Some of these systems allow users to override the stoppage and continue printing at their own risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A subset of their Inkjet cartridges are designed to stop printing after an arbitrary date as determined by them.  For most of the cartridges which have this &quot;feature&quot; the user can override it.  For other cartridges, namely HP 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14, they will fail without recourse after the predetermined date.  Each cartridge  comes with a &quot;Warranty Ends&quot; date.  The HP 10-13 will expire 24 months after the &quot;Warranty Ends&quot; date, or 30 months after you install it in the printer, whichever comes first.  The HP 14 will expire 12 months after the &quot;Warranty Ends&quot; date, or 18 months after you install it in the printer, whichever comes first.  See the link for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3211" LastEditorUserId="6523" LastEditDate="2019-12-10T17:15:28.893" LastActivityDate="2019-12-10T17:15:28.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6237" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6242" CreationDate="2011-09-20T01:06:04.283" Score="10" ViewCount="2728" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember being told that there is one and only one endurance sport in which the women's world record exceeds the men's world record, and that the sport is Long Distance Endurance Swimming. Reason being that fattier tissue on a woman's body make it easier for women to float for a sustained period of time (and also endure cold/discomfort?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that women can consistently and at a world class level outperform men physically in at least one sport is appealing ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is any of the above true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2306" LastActivityDate="2019-02-18T15:47:53.053" Title="Is there one (and only one) endurance sport in which women outperform men?" Tags="|gender|sport|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5756" CreationDate="2011-09-20T07:43:44.430" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not an authority on this matter but have explored the validity, or lack thereof, of homeopathy for about 10 years; the answers already provided are excellent, and here is my answer (from the USA):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Paraphrasing question #1: Can this product be harmful?&lt;/strong&gt;  In short, potentially yes. In the US, and similarly in other countries, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fdalawblog.net/fda_law_blog_hyman_phelps/2011/08/california-court-allows-case-against-homeopathic-drug-manufacturer-to-proceed-.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;homeopathy is exempt&lt;/a&gt; from the FDA's standard safety (and efficacy) requirements for medications, even as many of the active ingredients used in homeopathic remedies are purposely derived from dangerous if not deadly substances. In the remedy under discussion, for example, Nux Vomica contains high levels of strychnine (AKA &quot;poison nut&quot;), a dangerous neurotoxin. True, the active ingredients in this and most homeopathic products are so diluted that they are very unlikely to (and often cannot plausibly) cause either harm (or benefits), but that is only if the listed dilutions are accurate and if the product is not contaminated or adulterated.  To illustrate my point, note that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm230761.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hyland's teething tablets&lt;/a&gt; were recalled after a number of consumers' reported babies suffering symptoms consistent with Belladonna poisoning; the FDA issued a consumer alert and recall after finding inconsistent amounts of the poison in samples of the product and no child proof safety caps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not pertaining to the product under question, but the public should be aware that some OTC products labeled as &quot;homeopathic&quot; use relatively high concentrations of active ingredients, thus they can conceivably have a physiological effect -- including side-effects.  E.g. Zicam's cold remedies used just a 1x dilution of zinc (one part zinc to 10 parts water) in their cold remedies, resulting in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm166931.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hundreds of reports&lt;/a&gt; of permanent loss of smell.  Products are exempt from many FDA safety regulations if they are claimed as &quot;homeopathic.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Paraphrasing question #2:  Assuming there are sufficient quantities to have a clinical effect after dilution, can any of these particular ingredients help with sinus problems?&lt;/strong&gt;  In short, very highly doubtful, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vithoulkas.com/en/homeopathy/homeopathy-diseases.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;given the dubious premises of homeopathy&lt;/a&gt;.  Aside from believing that the heavy dilutions make remedies MORE potent as they are &quot;succussed&quot; (shaken) more times, homeopathy makes another irrational assumption that &quot;like cures like&quot; (or law of similars). First, they use a highly subjective and unscientific process ironically called &quot;provings&quot; (more like testimonials) to fill a pharmacopeia of physical and mental symptoms that are assumed to be universal reactions to particular substances.  Then, they use these substances, many of which are toxic-- after diluting them to render them harmless (let's hope!) -- as &quot;active ingredients&quot; to treat the listed symptoms.  Underlying causes for the person's symptoms are regarded as irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Homeopathic &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homeowatch.org/basic/similars.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;law of similars&quot;&lt;/a&gt; can't be farther from what scientists regard as &quot;laws&quot; of nature, as it is implausible to believe that all substances that cause certain symptoms will reduce those symptoms if heavily diluted and shaken between dilutions.  Ironically, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-11277990&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many homeopaths reject vaccines&lt;/a&gt;, an actual example of a substance that causes illness being used to treat it (actually to prevent it), while favoring instead, for example, ground duck liver and heart - giving it a sciency name, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/ososillyococcinum-and-other-flu-bits/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oscillococcinum&lt;/a&gt; - diluted to non-existence to purportedly treat influenza symptoms.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on homeopathic premises, I will guess that the manufacturer of the product in question added diluted onion because eating onions caused a prover's eyes to tear and nose to run, and perhaps histamines were added because histamines in the body can lead to upper respiratory allergy symptoms.  Even if not diluted, I couldn't find any scientific evidence online that any of the listed ingredients can effectively treat sinus problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4842" LastEditorUserId="4842" LastEditDate="2011-09-27T07:33:28.203" LastActivityDate="2011-09-27T07:33:28.203" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6241" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6244" CreationDate="2011-09-20T09:20:00.263" Score="14" ViewCount="3346" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2011/09/19/140533195/lucretius-man-of-modern-mystery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Robert Krulwich of NPR&lt;/a&gt; claims that Professor Stephen Greenblatt claims that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucretius&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lucretius&lt;/a&gt; (around 99-55BC) said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... moving randomly through space, like dust motes in a sunbeam, colliding, hooking together, forming complex structures, breaking apart again, in a ceaseless process of creation and destruction. There is no escape from this process. ... There is no master plan, no divine architect, no intelligent design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All things, including the species to which you belong, have evolved over vast stretches of time. The evolution is random, though in the case of living organisms, it involves a principle of natural selection. That is, species that are suited to survive and to reproduce successfully, endure, at least for a time; those that are not so well suited, die off quickly. But nothing — from our own species, to the planet on which we live, to the sun that lights our day — lasts forever. Only the atoms are immortal ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not a complete theory of evolution (e.g. there is no inheritance with mutation mentioned) but it is a rather surprisingly detailed version of a modern theory - particularly the choice of words (&amp;quot;intelligent design&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;evolution&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;principle of natural selection&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course, the translation may be modern, allowing the translator the option of picking modern terminology.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the interview, Greenblatt makes no such claim (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=140533195&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;transcript&lt;/a&gt;). A very quick search revealed no sources that don't also come via Krulwich.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Lucretius have a passage that can be translated to the above in his works, with provenance prior to Charles Darwin's publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;p.s. Lucretius also describes atoms, but that is less apparently anachronistic, so it isn't part of this question.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T06:25:36.363" Title="Did Lucretius write about evolution and natural selection?" Tags="|quotes|evolution|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6237" CreationDate="2011-09-20T10:51:38.920" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scribd.com/document/51545495/World-Marathon-Swimming-Records&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The marathon swimming records&lt;/a&gt; show that men are consistently outperforming women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same goes for many other endurance sports: the records are still held by men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you can find however is that women are comparatively better in endurance than men: the relative difference between the times decreases. See for example the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.washington.edu/crowther/Misc/RBC/gender.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gender and endurance performance&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The information presented in the previous two paragraphs leads to the&#xA;  prediction that women might compete against men most successfully in&#xA;  events lasting several hours, where overheating and glycogen depletion&#xA;  are particularly common. The limited data we have so far provide&#xA;  preliminary support for this idea. It has been shown that women can&#xA;  sometimes finish ultramarathons in times similar to those of men who&#xA;  can beat them in &quot;short&quot; (26.2-mile) marathons (Bam et al., Medicine&#xA;  and Science in Sports and Exercise 29: 244-7, 1997). And when men and&#xA;  women with equivalent marathon times are pitted against each other in&#xA;  ultras, the women tend to win (Speechly et al., Medicine and Science&#xA;  in Sports and Exercise 28: 359-65, 1996).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-02-17T23:08:39.293" LastActivityDate="2019-02-17T23:08:39.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6232" CreationDate="2011-09-20T11:58:38.907" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;260 degrees is &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt; unreachable. Water of course boils at 100 degrees, keeping the temperature down. When cooking with fats and oils, you always keep the temperature below the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point&quot;&gt;smoke point&lt;/a&gt;. Those are generally below 260 degrees, except for some rare oils. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even then, you rarely heat oil just for the sake of it: there's usually something in the oil, and that will burn. This will produce &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caring4cancer.com/go/cancer/nutrition/questions/fried-foods-acrylamide-and-cancer.htm&quot;&gt;acrylamide&lt;/a&gt; (a cancer-causing chemical) at temperatures well below 260 degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real risk is an empty pan. Heating that will cause a quick rise in temperature, as there's nothing to keep the inside cool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For toxicity, I'll assume human toxicity. I don't think the danger to birds is disputed. As is usual with toxicity, the important part is the dose. Here we see a bit of a problem with the EWG site linked in the quqestion: they're using scare tactics. Their standard for doses is &quot;have been detected&quot;. Not medical risk. The FDA continues to list Teflon as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.dupont.com/Teflon_Industrial/en_US/assets/downloads/h22779.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;safe for cooking&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &quot;other chemicals being released&quot;, it's hard to measure this. &lt;em&gt;Cooking&lt;/em&gt; releases hundreds, if not thousands of different chemicals. Many of them you can smell; you'd call them &quot;flavors&quot; or &quot;aroma's&quot;. Non-stick pans are hardly unique in this respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="867" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T11:58:38.907" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6241" CreationDate="2011-09-20T12:17:45.607" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qKvJe.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The passage is a paraphrase of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/7/8/785/785-h/785-h.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;De Rerum Natura&quot; by Lucretius&lt;/a&gt;. Note that, while he does propose natural selection and puts forth a non-creationist view of nature, he doesn't really propose a theory which is similar to evolution. He suggests that novel creatures are literally born out of Earth (in womb-like cavities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Earth was colonized by subsequent geni and races&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the beginning, earth gave forth, around&#xA;       The hills and over all the length of plains,&#xA;       The race of grasses and the shining green;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As feathers and hairs and bristles are begot&#xA;       The first on members of the four-foot breeds&#xA;       And on the bodies of the strong-y-winged,&#xA;       Thus then the new Earth first of all put forth&#xA;       Grasses and shrubs, and afterward begat&#xA;       The mortal generations, there upsprung—&#xA;       Innumerable in modes innumerable—&#xA;       After diverging fashions. &lt;strong&gt;For from sky&#xA;       These breathing-creatures never can have dropped,&#xA;       Nor the land-dwellers ever have come up&#xA;       Out of sea-pools of salt.&lt;/strong&gt; How true remains,&#xA;       How merited is that adopted name&#xA;       Of earth—&quot;The Mother!&quot;—since from out the earth&#xA;       Are all begotten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First of all, the race&#xA;       Of the winged ones&lt;/strong&gt; and parti-coloured birds,&#xA;       Hatched out in spring-time, left their eggs behind;&#xA;       As now-a-days in summer tree-crickets&#xA;       Do leave their shiny husks of own accord,&#xA;       Seeking their food and living.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Earth creates all races&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then it was&#xA;       This earth of thine first gave unto the day&#xA;       The mortal generations; for prevailed&#xA;       Among the fields abounding hot and wet.&#xA;       And hence, where any fitting spot was given,&#xA;       &lt;strong&gt;There 'gan to grow womb-cavities, by roots&#xA;       Affixed to earth.&lt;/strong&gt; And when in ripened time&#xA;       The age of the young within (that sought the air&#xA;       And fled earth's damps) had burst these wombs, O then&#xA;       Would Nature thither turn the pores of earth&#xA;       And make her spurt from open veins a juice&#xA;       Like unto milk; even as a woman now&#xA;       Is filled, at child-bearing, with the sweet milk,&#xA;       Because all that swift stream of aliment&#xA;       Is thither turned unto the mother-breasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Natural selection&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In those days also the telluric world&#xA;       Strove to beget the monsters that upsprung&#xA;       With their astounding visages and limbs—&#xA;       The Man-woman—a thing betwixt the twain,&#xA;       Yet neither, and from either sex remote—&#xA;       Some gruesome Boggles orphaned of the feet,&#xA;       Some widowed of the hands, dumb Horrors too&#xA;       Without a mouth, or blind Ones of no eye,&#xA;       Or Bulks all shackled by their legs and arms&#xA;       Cleaving unto the body fore and aft,&#xA;       Thuswise, that never could they do or go,&#xA;       Nor shun disaster, nor take the good they would.&#xA;       And other prodigies and monsters earth&#xA;       Was then begetting of this sort—in vain,&#xA;       Since Nature banned with horror their increase,&#xA;       And powerless were they to reach unto&#xA;       The coveted flower of fair maturity,&#xA;       Or to find aliment, or to intertwine&#xA;       In works of Venus. &lt;strong&gt;For we see there must&#xA;       Concur in life conditions manifold,&#xA;       If life is ever by begetting life&#xA;       To forge the generations one by one:&#xA;       First, foods must be; and, next, a path whereby&#xA;       The seeds of impregnation in the frame&#xA;       May ooze, released from the members all;&#xA;       Last, the possession of those instruments&#xA;       Whereby the male with female can unite,&#xA;       The one with other in mutual ravishments.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/lucretius.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;original Latin version&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_rerum_natura&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;De Rerum Natura&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-09-20T14:05:32.510" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T14:05:32.510" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6245" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6247" CreationDate="2011-09-20T12:38:11.607" Score="3" ViewCount="485" Body="&lt;p&gt;The eggs from my own chickens are different to the ones they sell in the stores. They are much smaller, have a whiter shell, have less egg white, and the yolk is lighter yellow. They also taste different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People from the chicken egg industry argue this is due to the fact that because of the battery they use their chicken can't eat each others droppings. Furthermore they claim that eggs from industrial origin contain less dioxin than the ones that 'privately held' chicken produce. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really true? Is it unhealthy to eat non-industrial eggs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4603" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-09T11:36:45.310" LastActivityDate="2011-10-09T12:45:08.610" Title="A question about chicken eggs, which ones are best?" Tags="|nutrition|zoology|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6246" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-20T13:30:38.620" Score="6" ViewCount="3041" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently told that twisting off the bottle cap off a soda bottle slowly will make the soda stay carbonated longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, if I opened the cap off in one quick motion, it would get flat quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/g6wRd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2629" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T13:30:38.620" Title="Opening soda cap slowly" Tags="|soda|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6245" CreationDate="2011-09-20T13:32:47.160" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This post currently has several different claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The OP claims the taste, size and appearance of the eggs are different. I'm not addressing that claim.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;People from the chicken industry&quot; claim that this is because of chickens eating eat others droppings. I'm not addressing that claim because even if it is true (i.e. caged chickens eat less droppings and also that that leads to changes in the egg), I don't see any claim that this makes the eggs dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is the main claim: free-range chickens have higher dioxin contamination, which is a safety issue. This is the claim I am addressing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dioxin claim is reproduced in this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Contamination of free-range chicken eggs with dioxins and dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls&lt;/em&gt;, Greet Schoeters, Ron Hoogenboom,  Molecular Nutrition &amp;amp; Food Research (Special Issue: Dioxins), Volume 50, Issue 10, pages 908–914, October 2006 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16676378&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DOI: 10.1002/mnfr.200500201&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their abstract, first they argue the need for care:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dioxins and dioxin-like (DL) polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) are persistent organic pollutants that enter the body mainly by food intake. A small margin exists between current exposure levels in the human population and the levels causing biological effects. Therefore, stringent control of concentrations of these contaminants in food and feed is needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then they claim that free-range chickens are a concern:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eggs from free-range chicken are increasingly becoming an important part of the diet. These eggs have a higher risk of being contaminated with increased levels of dioxins and DL-PCB than barn or cage eggs. Ingestion of soil particles from environmentally contaminated areas may contribute to elevated dioxin levels in free-range chicken eggs. Available data show that current soil levels of dioxins and DL-PCB in residential and agricultural areas in Europe often appear to be too high to produce free-range eggs with dioxin levels below the current limit values in the EU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then they admit that it might not be a concern for the eggs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins/polychlorinated dibenzofurans concentrations in eggs from free-range chicken are not necessarily above the limit values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally they urge caution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contamination levels in soil should be kept low and should be controlled in areas with free foraging chicken although all modifying factors that influence uptake of dioxins and PCB from the environment and transfer into eggs are yet not well understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article is behind a firewall, and the abstract provides no way of seeing how they reached their conclusions. How do we know they are not egg-industry shills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, this paper supports their claims about eggs picking up contaminants from the soil:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;F. Schuler, P. Schmid, Ch. Schlatter, The transfer of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans from soil into eggs of foraging chicken, Chemosphere, Volume 34, Issue 4, February 1997, Pages 711-718, ISSN 0045-6535, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653597004633&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1016/S0045-6535(97)00463-3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2011-10-09T12:45:08.610" LastActivityDate="2011-10-09T12:45:08.610" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6215" CreationDate="2011-09-20T13:55:37.733" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes HIV is a sexually transmitted infection. The page you mentioned [*] gives plenty of proof for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's just have a brief look to the population of the study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Specifically, discordant couples were strongly counseled to use&#xA;  condoms and practice safe sex (1,12). That we witnessed no HIV&#xA;  transmissions after the intervention documents the success of the&#xA;  interventions in preventing the sexual transmission of HIV.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study records monogame couples, who &lt;em&gt;knew&lt;/em&gt; that they carried a disease which their partners did not carry. This also implies that they know about the danger of the disease and methods to circumvent infections. At least for me it does not come to a surprise that no infections happened and that precautions were taken. Your question states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They were counseled to use condoms, but it is believed that they often&#xA;  did not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if some of they did not do so, the group is still not representative at all for a population of people which usually don't know that they have HIV (or don't know that their partner has HIV).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from that, there is a lot of ongoing research on what is called 'superinfection': infection with a different HIV type once you carry HIV, and at least some studies indicate that chances for infections become lower: see eg: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15238769&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15238769&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[*] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aidstruth.org/denialism/misuse/padian&quot;&gt;http://www.aidstruth.org/denialism/misuse/padian&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T13:55:37.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6249" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6257" CreationDate="2011-09-20T14:03:54.947" Score="8" ViewCount="308" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in Ireland where a few papers have recently parrotted an independent body's assertion that we're heading for low solar activity and, accordingly, a very cold winter. The statement has been presented without criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that one of the main reference points, the Maunder minimum was about 300 years ago, is there anything to back up the claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irishweatheronline.com/news/environment/climate-news/severe-weather-warning-issued-for-winter-2011-12/20748.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An independent irish weather site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2011/0617/1224299071819.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A national paper reporting on the topic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1659" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-09-22T10:01:34.610" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T10:01:34.610" Title="Does low solar activity cause cold weather?" Tags="|weather|astronomy|climatology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6100" CreationDate="2011-09-20T14:14:04.777" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://folk.uio.no/sholden/sje02.pdf&quot;&gt;this paper from 2002&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisation_for_Economic_Co-operation_and_Development&quot;&gt;OECD&lt;/a&gt; measures structural unemployment using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=3134&quot;&gt;NAWRU&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In recent years, the OECD has measured the structural rate of unemployment&#xA;  using a specific indicator, the non-accelerating wage rate of unemployment&#xA;  (NAWRU) indicator, first suggested by Elmeskov and MacFarland (1993)&#xA;  and Elmeskov (1994). Crudely, this indicator measures the structural rate of&#xA;  unemployment as the rate of unemployment at which wage growth is stable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the paper also concludes that the NAWRU is not stable and does not accurately reflect real-world unemployment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is evident from its poor&#xA;  predictive power; as shown in Section II, the NAWRU indicator has virtually&#xA;  no explanatory power even within sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/rsrch/papers/CILN/cilnwp34.pdf&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; from the Canadian International Labor Network talks about differing definitions of 'unemployed'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, Australia and the United States require “active job search” for&#xA;  classification as unemployed, while Canada and most other OECD countries include both&#xA;  “active” and “passive” searchers among the unemployed. The difficulties are also&#xA;  illustrated by the fact that within the same country there have been changes over time in&#xA;  key procedures. For example, “discouraged workers” were classified as unemployed&#xA;  prior to 1975 in Canada and prior to 1967 in the United States, but are now treated as&#xA;  being out-of-the-labour force in both countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper isn't long (conclusions are on page 9) but they do conclude the US and Australia should include passive seekers in unemployment numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To try to give you a more satisfying answer than 'structural unemployment is measured badly,' I'm going to mention something I heard on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/08/01/138818388/the-friday-podcast-planet-money-live&quot;&gt;this podcast&lt;/a&gt; by NPR's Planet Money team.  Basically, they said that the unemployment rate among &lt;em&gt;skilled, college-educated professionals&lt;/em&gt; is so low at around 2.2% it's not theoretically supposed to be possible.  This could account for the lack of &quot;qualified applicants&quot; in many jobs that require a good deal of investment in education and training.  Hopefully it's OK to cite a recording with no transcript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4415" LastActivityDate="2011-09-20T14:14:04.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6219" CreationDate="2011-09-20T14:34:54.173" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;700 scientists is quite likely an over-estimation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.discovery.org/csc/aboutCSC.php&quot;&gt;Discovery Institute&lt;/a&gt; can only be described as a pro-creation, anti-Evolution think-tank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Started in 1996, the Center for Science and Culture is a Discovery Institute program which: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;supports research by scientists and other scholars challenging various aspects of neo-Darwinian theory; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;supports research by scientists and other scholars developing the scientific theory known as intelligent design; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;supports research by scientists and scholars in the social sciences and humanities exploring the impact of scientific materialism on culture. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;encourages schools to improve science education by teaching students more fully about the theory of evolution, including the theory's scientific weaknesses as well is its strengths.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They run a petition for scientists to publicly express their doubts against evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Institute is farily well known among creationists;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Institute is openly biased towards creationism (it has interest in showing a number of scientists which is as large as possible);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The petition is open to scientists from all over the world (not only the US);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The petition is open to any kind of scientist (not only from related fields)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So one would expect that the numbers of these petition are certain to be much larger than the life-scientists who support creationism in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many signatories do they have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.discovery.org/a/2732&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;700&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, is it sustainable that there are thousands or tens of thousands of creationist scientists, and yet their most notable institute can only muster 700 signatures? It seems completely unrealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while this doesn't &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; the point, it is strong &lt;em&gt;evidence&lt;/em&gt;. Nothing &lt;em&gt;proves&lt;/em&gt; the point because that would be actually debating what people believe and we can't do that skeptically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we can say &lt;em&gt;for certain&lt;/em&gt; is that only at most 700 scientist bothered signing this notable petition. You'll be the judge if their overall number can be far off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the possible reasons for this number being so low?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/&quot;&gt;overwhelming scientific support for evolution&lt;/a&gt;. The empirical proof is super-solid and extensive. People in the sector will be exposed to it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a strict correlation between level of literacy and disbelief in creationism. E.g. see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gallup.com/poll/145286/Four-Americans-Believe-Strict-Creationism.aspx&quot;&gt;2010 Gallup poll&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Americans' views on human origins vary significantly by level of education and religiosity. Those who are less educated are more likely to hold a creationist view. Those with college degrees and postgraduate education are more likely to hold one of the two viewpoints involving evolution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-02-06T10:01:04.547" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T10:01:04.547" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6254" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6403" CreationDate="2011-09-20T22:33:09.433" Score="14" ViewCount="1373" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave&quot;&gt;Kondratiev waves&lt;/a&gt; are a model of long-term economic growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Averaging fifty and ranging from approximately forty to sixty years in length, the cycles consist of alternating periods between high sectoral growth and periods of relatively slow growth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you predict economic cycles on such a long term as 60 year phases? Is there sufficient data after three cycles to claim to have found a model as Kontratiev himself did?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="828" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-09-21T08:12:17.607" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T18:57:20.703" Title="Do Kondratiev waves predict long-term economic trends?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6182" CreationDate="2011-09-21T07:54:42.277" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please find all you need to know on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Does Orgone energy exist?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Mr. Reich even had one of his experiments checked out by Dr. Einstein. Result? &lt;strong&gt;Busted&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reich supplied Einstein with a small accumulator during their second meeting, and Einstein performed the experiment in his basement, which involved taking the temperature atop, inside, and near the device. He also stripped the device down to its Faraday cage to compare temperatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his attempt to replicate Reich's findings, Einstein observed a rise in temperature, which Reich argued was caused by the orgone energy that had accumulated inside the Faraday cage. However, one of Einstein's assistants pointed out that the temperature was lower on the floor than on the ceiling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following that remark, Einstein modified the experiment and, as a result, concluded that the effect was simply due to the temperature gradient inside the room. He wrote back to Reich, describing his experiments and expressing the hope that Reich would develop a more skeptical approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Did the US government burn his books and jailed him?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. It's a undisputed historical fact. The burning came out of an FDA order that orgone accumulators were an illegal medical device. They ruled that any publications that explained how to make one or use one, or the use of the mythical &amp;quot;orgone energy&amp;quot; in healing disease, had to be withheld or amended, and any existing copies were to be destroyed in a fire. The order explicitly says Reich could re-issue the books with the offending passages removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T15:50:25.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6249" CreationDate="2011-09-21T08:14:59.373" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a case of bad press reporting. Dr. Hill specifically said his research applies to solar activity and not climate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/06/15/science-us-climate-sunspots-idUKTRE75E5L620110615&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/06/15/science-us-climate-sunspots-idUKTRE75E5L620110615&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We have not predicted a Little Ice Age,&amp;quot; Hill said, speaking from an astronomical meeting in New Mexico. &amp;quot;We have predicted something going on with the Sun.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How strong a connection is there between a Little Ice Age and a Maunder Minimum? &amp;quot;Not as strong a connection as people would like to believe,&amp;quot; Hill said by phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The Little Ice Age actually lasted for hundreds of years, of which the Maunder Minimum was only a small segment ... My personal opinion is that there is only an anecdotal connection without a whole lot of scientific background behind it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In my opinion, it is a huge leap ... to an abrupt global cooling, since the connections between solar activity and climate are still very poorly understood,&amp;quot; he said in an e-mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T08:32:48.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6254" CreationDate="2011-09-21T13:30:08.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A peer-reviewed paper by Andrey Korotayev and Sergey Tsirel &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/9jv108xp.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(PDF)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/9jv108xp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(permalink)&lt;/a&gt; claims that spectral analysis of the available data supports Kondratiev's hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to Kondratiev's original three cycles (1790-1844, 1844-1890, 1890-?) Korotoyev and Tsiral complete the date for the end of the third cycle and add two more cycles (1890-1939, 1939-1984, 1984-?), providing about 4 1/2 complete cycles for analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Korotoyev and Tsiral also found other shorter-term cycles within the data; Juglar cycles with a period of 7-9 years and Kitchin cycles with a period of 3-4 years.  Their analysis also indicates that the Kuznet cycles, with a period of about 17 years, should be considered a third-wave harmonic of the Kondratiev wave (K-wave) and not as a separate, independent cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper admits that before 1870 there was no detectable K-wave in the global economy, but that K-waves are discernable in &quot;Western&quot; economics.  [My own hypothesis of this is that global capitalism and logistics was not mature enough to allow K-waves to exist at that level.  Additionally, independent economies could theoretically experience cycles that were out-of-phase with each other, thereby reducing or negating the global scale K-wave cycle.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While an analysis like this does not &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; conclusively that Kondratiev was exactly correct, it does provide strong statistical support that the phenomenon exists.  This analysis also cannot predict if the lengths of the various cycles will remain relatively constant or if some unforeseen events could cause them to change significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T13:30:08.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4984" CreationDate="2011-09-21T13:53:29.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The math in the title of the question apears to be incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This chance should be 1 in &lt;strong&gt;25,000,&lt;/strong&gt; assuming a life expectancy of 68.5 years. That is, the &quot;average&quot; person with such an expectancy will live 25,000 days. It also assumes that a person will have an equal chance of dying on the first day or the 25000th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as early as the 19th century, Benjamin Gompertz worked out that mortality increases (exponentially) with age. That is, you are MUCH more likely to die on the 25000th day than on the first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science-of-aging.healthaliciousness.com/timelines/gompertz-aging-human-mortality.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://science-of-aging.healthaliciousness.com/timelines/gompertz-aging-human-mortality.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your ACTUAL chances of dying on a given day depends on how old you are. If your are 60, your chances of dying today are greater than  1 in 25,000. And if you are 20, less. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastEditorUserId="4823" LastEditDate="2013-09-27T16:32:52.053" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T16:32:52.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6232" CreationDate="2011-09-21T15:30:42.597" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/flame-temperatures-gases-d_422.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Natural gas burns at ~2770 C&lt;/a&gt;  so if you are heating a skillet coated in teflon over a natural gas burner you have the potential to achieve spot temps over 260 C.  So It would appear the the answer to your first question is yes 260C is achievable on a common household stove.  Even DuPont the maker of teflon agrees that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.dupont.com/Teflon/en_US/products/safety/cookware_safety.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it is possible and should be avoided&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ewg.org/node/21726?gclid=CIfzqdDTrqsCFUnptgodKArDHw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a link to reproductive problems&lt;/a&gt; with gases released by Teflon pans&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for birds &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.dupont.com/Teflon/en_US/keyword/birds.html?src=search_us_teflon_birds&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DuPont&lt;/a&gt; recognizes that the gases pose a danger to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are nonstick pans that are &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B001NIZ7C4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;non-PTFE&lt;/a&gt; that would not have these problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-07-19T16:45:05.447" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T16:45:05.447" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6222" CreationDate="2011-09-21T17:12:52.763" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it is possible that the ABC poll mentioned may have had flaws, ABC is an experienced polling organization. It is unlikely that it has made an error of tens of percents in the estimates. The given percentage is 61, with a margin of error of about 3%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in line with other polls. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newspolls.org/articles/19597&quot;&gt;This one&lt;/a&gt; gives 54% as the number who believe in a six-day creation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_public.htm&quot;&gt;This one&lt;/a&gt; gives 55%. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gallup.com/poll/145286/four-americans-believe-strict-creationism.aspx&quot;&gt;This one&lt;/a&gt; says 40%. &lt;a href=&quot;http://large.stanford.edu/publications/coal/references/lawrence/&quot;&gt;This one&lt;/a&gt; says 66%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while the precise figure is hard to determine, and probably depends on the question, is is clearly true that something in the region of half of Americans believe in the literal truth of Genesis. And by implication Noah's Ark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T17:12:52.763" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6264" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6265" CreationDate="2011-09-21T09:31:38.803" Score="109" ViewCount="16350" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question which is highly discussed on the Internet but I've been researching for a long time and I've never found any scientific proof backing this up.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's known (or at least spoken of) that intense light creates an effect called &quot;photo-degradation,&quot; which makes colors like red fade away and turns white into yellow or brown, as can be seen on many items from our daily life.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every museum containing ancient art forbids the use of flash when taking photographs or even forbids photographs at all but some people claim this is just a rumour or an habit that has been passed down from generation to generation of museum keepers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it true that flash hurts art or is it only a myth? Scientific backup is much appreciated in this discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4853" OwnerDisplayName="Hallaghan" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T12:24:00.997" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T12:24:00.997" Title="Does camera flash destroy art?" Tags="|art|photography|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6264" CreationDate="2011-09-21T10:02:43.417" Score="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is true. Xenon arc lamps (flash tubes) are a common light source used in accelerated aging tests, and will cause the breakdown of light-reactive (or &quot;fugitive&quot;) pigments, as well as speed up the physical deterioration of paper, canvas and similar grounds. You can do a web search on the terms &quot;accelerated aging pigment xenon&quot; (without the quotes) to retrieve a number of scholarly papers on the subject, among them &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cmu.edu/acrc/Publications/LightSensitivity.pdf&quot;&gt;Pursuing the fugitive: direct measurement of light sensitivity with micro-fading tests&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (Whitmore) and &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014139101000025X&quot;&gt;Poly (vinyl acetate) paints in works of art: A photochemical approach. Part 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (Ferreira et al).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Most of the very recent work, admittedly, has involved pigments and binders for use in prosthetic devices -- nobody wants reverse tan lines on a very expensive artificial limb, or worse, on a facial prosthesis. The results still hold, but you'll have to page through results to find specifically art-related papers; archival testing of artists' materials is old science. See &lt;em&gt;The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques&lt;/em&gt; (Mayer, 1940; 5th edition 1991) for an extensive discussion of pigment, binder and ground lightfastness.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; flash probably isn't going to do a whole lot of damage when you take a single picture. But think for a moment what you're doing when you take a flash picture: you're essentially throwing a substantial fraction of a second worth of sunlight (the quality of light -- that is, the distribution of the light's amplitude across the visible and near-visible spectrum -- is very similar) at your subject in the space of a millisecond. Now multiply that effect by hundreds or thousands of museum visitors every day for years on end. The museum might as well put the painting outside under the noonday sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply filtering out some frequencies, like UV and IR, won't help with the pigment destruction; those pigments tend to break down under the influence of visible light (it's what gives the pigments their colour and brilliance), though it does help to prevent damage to the support/ground and pigment binders (oils, resins and gums are more sensitive to UV and IR damage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4859" OwnerDisplayName="Stan Rogers" LastEditorUserId="4859" LastEditDate="2011-09-21T23:44:07.087" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T23:44:07.087" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6264" CreationDate="2011-09-21T10:12:09.353" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;The risk of photo-degradation depends on materials and dyes used. Many related studies on different materials have been gathered into book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=i-A0902c0zcC&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;source=gbs_navlinks_s&quot;&gt;Effects of Light on Materials in Collections: Data on Photoflash and Related Sources&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Terry Trosper Schaffer. According to studies presented in that book, there are certainly some materials which are sensitive to visible light, e.g.  anthraquinone dyes or natural dyes in watercolor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that determining how light-sensitive are the materials used in a piece of art might require more knowledge and tests than practically achievable in museum settings, so it's much easier to ban all flash photography instead of selective permission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4855" OwnerDisplayName="Imre" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T10:12:09.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6264" CreationDate="2011-09-21T20:44:05.853" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Photo Degradation&quot; refers mainly to the effects caused by prolonged exposure to UV light (light in the range of 10 nm to 400 nm). This is the same radiation that causes a sunburn on a hot summer day. Many pigments and organic fibers in historical artifacts and artworks are susceptible to high intensity UV. If you leave a newspaper in the window you will see it turn yellow faster than one kept in the shade. This is due to the combined action of UV exposure and the acid content of commercial newsprint. The UV radiation breaks chemical bonds in materials causing them to deteriorate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most modern xenon or krypton camera flash tubes produce only a small amount of light in the harmful UV range. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/mhe1000/musphoto/flashphoto.htm&quot;&gt;study cited&lt;/a&gt; at the University of Cambridge claims that the existing ambient light in a typical museum gallery is roughly equivalent to 30,000 consumer-grade camera flashes per day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In most cases camera flashes wouldn't contribute substantially to a material's degradation short term, but remember that UV exposure is cumulative. Museums wouldn't show anything at all if they merely wanted to preserve things. It's an archival compromise and in the long term lessening exposure, however little, is beneficial for future museum patrons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4857" LastEditorUserId="4857" LastEditDate="2011-09-21T23:22:03.437" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T23:22:03.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6274" CreationDate="2011-09-21T21:11:56.063" Score="11" ViewCount="4080" Body="&lt;p&gt;Arguing with colleagues about common gender beliefs, someone said that women can multi-task better but men can mentally rotate images better. I sent them the following in response to the first statement:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4150/do-women-statistically-have-better-multitasking-ability-than-men&quot;&gt;Do women statistically have better multitasking ability than men?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I suggested the second statement was probably equally false. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The response I received contained the following link:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/articles/spatial_tests.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/articles/spatial_tests.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this......&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies show that, on average, men are better than women at mentally&#xA;  rotating pictures of three dimensional objects (the 3D shapes task) or&#xA;  judging the slope of a line (the angles task).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However these &quot;studies&quot; are not referenced just mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there truth behind this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4356" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T07:47:17.990" Title="Can men mentally rotate images better than women?" Tags="|physiology|gender|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6272" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-21T21:43:35.780" Score="9" ViewCount="1219" Body="&lt;p&gt;A number of self help authors teach some kind of variation of visualization techniques to help with focus and/or goal achievement. David Allen's &quot;Getting Things Done&quot; dedicates part of the book to using visualization to achieve goals. Tony Robbins also dedicates part of &quot;Awaken the Giant Within&quot; to visualization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read about claims and experiments with athletes where one group spent more time doing physical practice while another group used visualization and had better results. However, I can never seem to find the referenced study. Does anyone know of well tested evidence regarding the effectiveness of visualization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Update -&lt;/b&gt; Some additional background on visualization in self help books:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;My hesitation with self help books is that they end up referring to an older self help book which will do likewise. A good example is &lt;em&gt;Getting Things Done&lt;/em&gt;. The visualization section refers to a book from 1960 by Dr. Maxwell Maltz called: &lt;em&gt;Psycho-cybernetics&lt;/em&gt;. The book consists mostly of the author's experience as a plastic surgeon teaching his patients how to use visualization to improve their self image. The book mentions a number of cases however does not provide a bibliography of references to any of these works. That and the fact the preface begins with: &quot;The Secret of Using This Book to Change Your Life.&quot; made me a little weary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4858" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-07-04T20:22:01.247" LastActivityDate="2016-07-04T20:22:01.247" Title="Does visualization improve focus and goal achievement?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|positive-thinking|goal-setting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6271" CreationDate="2011-09-21T22:45:03.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are not &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; at it, but they use different parts of the brain to do it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our behavioural results did not confirm a better performance of males in mental rotation and mathematics.  Moreover, the accuracy levels were equal for all conditions between women and men, however, the reaction times of men were faster in the arithmetic tasks.  Women and men seem to use an identical activation network in the magnitude comparison task as revealed by fMRI.  Our results support the assumption of a central semantic representation of numerical quantity that relies on a common bilateral parietal (intraparietal sulcus) and right-hemispheric prefrontal network as shown by various studies (Chochon, Cohen, van de Moortele, &amp;amp; Dehaene, 1999; Pinel, Dehaene, Riviere, &amp;amp; LeBihan, 2001; Rickard et al., 2000).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In contrast to magnitude comparison, those tasks that demand more complex problem solving strategies (mental rotation, approximate and exact calculation) revealed gender differences in brain activation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gender differences in brain activation patterns during mental rotation and number related cognitive tasks&#xA;  K KUCIAN, T LOENNEKER, T DIETRICH… - Psychology Science, 2005&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="3068" LastEditDate="2011-09-22T00:23:48.097" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T00:23:48.097" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6271" CreationDate="2011-09-21T23:51:18.950" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.carboocean.org/upload/images/RJoseph2000ArchSexBehav29no35p35-66-The_evolution_of_sex_differences_in_language.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Evolution of Sex Difference in Language, Sexuality, and Visual-Spatial Skills&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (PDF), R. Joseph, Ph.D. explores the differences between males and females in a variety of primates, with emphasis on humans.  Some selected quotes from the paper as it appeared in &lt;em&gt;Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2000&lt;/em&gt; are provided that indicate that females have better language skills than males and males tend to have better visual-spatial skills than females.  This difference is also seen in nonhuman primates as well as other animals but appears to be more pronounced in humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, female primates produce more social and emotional vocalizations and engage in more tool use and gathering activities, whereas males tend to hunt and kill. Similar labor divisions are evident over the course of human evolution. “Woman’s work” such as child rearing, gathering, and domestic tool construction and manipulation contributed to the functional evolution of Broca’s speech area and the angular gyrus—which injects temporal sequences and complex concepts into the stream of language and thought. These activities gave rise, therefore, to a female superiority in grammatical (temporal sequential) vocabulary-rich language. Hunting as a way of life does not require speech but requires excellent visual–spatial skills and, thus, contributed to a male visual–spatial superiority and sex difference in the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...Conversely, it is well established that human males excel over females across a variety of visual–spatial problem-solving and perceptual tasks.  Visual–spatial superiorities, however, are also demonstrated by other species including male rats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is apparent that these same cross-species sex differences have become more pronounced in humans. However, rather than purely a product of societal, political, or parental pressures, the amplification of these sex differences, like other cognitive capabilities such as math, are also neurologically based and a product of our evolutionary heritage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, given 500,000 years of multigenerational male experience in hunting, which usually required days or even weeks of wandering hundreds of miles from the home base, present-day males therefore demonstrate superior visual–spatial skills including superior maze learning, tracking, aiming, and related nonverbal abilities, compared to females.  This includes a &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;male superiority in&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; the recall of geometric shapes, detecting figures that are hidden and embedded within a complex array, constructing three-dimensional figures from two-dimensional patterns, &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;visually rotating and detecting the number of objects in a three-dimensional array&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, and playing and winning at chess (which requires superior spatial abilities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not quoted, but presented in the paper, is a discussion on the physical differences in male and female brains.  Language ability in male brains appears to be restricted mostly to the left hemisphere but is more developed in the right hemisphere in female brains.  The author seems to imply that this allows males to use more of the right hemisphere for the visual-spatial skills that are required for hunting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom-line:  Yes, men tend to have better visual-spatial skills than women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-09-21T23:51:18.950" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6275" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6276" CreationDate="2011-09-22T02:07:08.243" Score="29" ViewCount="34662" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard the claim that &amp;quot;Margarine is only one molecule away from being plastic&amp;quot; several times.  Usually from friends who think they've heard it from some reliable source.  I've also read a couple books that mention this concept, without really addressing its validity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;EDIT&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Updating with this claim, as found recently on facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here's the most disturbing fact... HERE IS THE PART THAT IS VERY INTERESTING!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Margarine is but ONE MOLECULE away from being PLASTIC... and shares 27 ingredients with PAINT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-12-28T01:59:13.397" Title="Is margarine &quot;one molecule away from plastic&quot;?" Tags="|nutrition|chemistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6275" CreationDate="2011-09-22T02:52:02.197" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a bit of a confused claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, what is a &quot;molecule&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A molecule is an electrically neutral group of at least two atoms held together by covalent chemical bonds. Molecules are distinguished from ions by their electrical charge. However, in quantum physics, organic chemistry, and biochemistry, the term molecule is often used less strictly and applied to polyatomic ions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: We are talking organic chemistry here. Basically, a group of atoms bonded together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what is &quot;plastic&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A plastic material is any of a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic organic solids used in the manufacture of industrial products. Plastics are typically polymers of high molecular mass, and may contain other substances to improve performance and/or reduce production costs. Monomers of plastic are either natural or synthetic organic compounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there isn't one single type of plastic - and typically they are made of huge molecules. My high school chemistry teacher claimed a plastic ice-cream container was in fact a single molecule, due to all the cross-linked bonds between the long chains of atoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;: This claim has been challenged. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6425/is-an-ice-cream-tub-made-of-a-single-molecule&quot;&gt;related question&lt;/a&gt;. This undermines the forcefulness of the following argument, but doesn't affect its validity.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we can say &quot;Water is one molecule away from being a plastic ice-cream container.&quot; or &quot;A vacuum is one molecule away from being a plastic ice-cream container.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that, &quot;Margarine is only one molecule away from being plastic&quot; is a confused claim that is both true and does not tell us anything about margarine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-10-02T02:08:57.867" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6277" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6279" CreationDate="2011-09-22T05:17:56.850" Score="8" ViewCount="1731" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0615228380&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deep Nutrition&lt;/a&gt; makes the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... your &amp;quot;100 percent orange juice&amp;quot; is doped with corn syrup. (Some FDA officials suspect that many fruit juices claiming to be 100 percent natural juice are in fact sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Chapter 9, don't know page number as I'm reading it on kindle)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author cites the paper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/jlofdr/27319.html#related&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Observations on Economic Adulteration of High-Value Food Products&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;.  There are a couple related mentions of orange juice in the paper &lt;em&gt;(emphasis mine)&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Orange juice&lt;/strong&gt; and olive oil are food products often targeted for economic adulteration... (p. 1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Food scientists and chemists have developed a number of tests to detect the presence of illegal ingredients in honey... Similar tests have been developed to detect adulteration in &lt;strong&gt;orange juice&lt;/strong&gt;. However, tests for non-labeled ingredients often are not able to accurately detect very small amounts of such ingredients... (p. 3)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the basis for the first claim is uncertain to me.  And the second only seems to cast doubt on the claim, regardless of where it came from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that orange (or other fruit) juice marketed in the U.S. as &amp;quot;100% pure&amp;quot; may contain corn syrup, or other impurities?  Or is there at least evidence that &amp;quot;FDA officials&amp;quot; suspect this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;The book's bibliography cites &amp;quot;Observations on the Economic Adulteration of High Value Food Products. Fairchild GF. Journal of Food Distribution Research Vol 32 No. 2. July 2003. 38-45&amp;quot;, however it appears that 'Vol 32' was a misprint, and 'Vol 34' is correct, as the dates match up.  If I'm actually reading the wrong paper, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T21:35:39.690" Title="Does any U.S.-sold brand of &quot;100% pure&quot; fruit juice contain added HFCS?" Tags="|nutrition|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6277" CreationDate="2011-09-22T08:31:38.983" Score="10" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If this would be a common practice someone would be able to&#xA;prove it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If somebody would find a proof it would most likely lead to a legal&#xA;case. Such cases exist: see eg (1) cited in the paper you provided yourself. It is a criminal offense. It will likely happen sometimes, but that does not convince me that it happens by default&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some additional thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pure fruit juice already contains plenty of sugars,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hookedonjuice.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in similar amounts to&#xA;most soft drinks&lt;/a&gt;, why would more sugars be added (unless also water is added)? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Regarding health, it does not matter whether this sugars come from oranges or from corn. Fruit juice is full of sugars - and should therefore not be consumed in large quantities.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;WHETHER FRUIT JUICE is “100 percent juice” or not is almost beside the&#xA;  point — both kinds are loaded with sugar and calories. If it’s “100&#xA;  percent juice” the sugar is from the fructose that’s naturally present&#xA;  in fruit; if it’s “10 percent juice” (or 20 percent, or whatever),&#xA;  most of the sugar is in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. Snacking&#xA;  on sugary beverages all day long, whether they’re soft drinks or fruit&#xA;  juice, is not a good thing, for kids or adults. Over-consumption of&#xA;  sugar contributes to obesity and diabetes. Some common-sense&#xA;  alternatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the same site: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hookedonjuice.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.hookedonjuice.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a bonus a study proving that fruit juice causes obesity:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deakin.edu.au/news/upload/HBSFruitdrinks19032007_final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.deakin.edu.au/news/upload/HBSFruitdrinks19032007_final.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Fairchild, G. F. 1993. Unpublished Expert Witness&#xA;Testimony presented at the request of the United&#xA;States Food and Drug Administration, Plain-&#xA;tiff, in an Economic Adulteration of Orange&#xA;Juice Case (No. 1:93-CR-19) in the United&#xA;States District Court for the Western District&#xA;of Michigan, Southern Division.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastEditorUserId="1735" LastEditDate="2011-09-22T10:35:40.983" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T10:35:40.983" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6272" CreationDate="2011-09-22T10:18:35.013" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have the direct reference handy, but a study is mentioned in the book &quot;59 seconds,&quot; which is basically a (the only?) science-based self help book. Incidentally, Jeff Atwood (or was it Joel Spolsky), co-founder of Stack Exchange, named it as the only self-help book worth reading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result is that &quot;visualizing&quot; results is extremely counter productive. Students who were asked to visualize themselves acing their exams were more likely to fail them that those who didn't. However those who visualized themselves &lt;em&gt;studying&lt;/em&gt; did significantly better!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you think about it, this result is not surprising. When you convince yourself you're going to succeed, you simply discard the efforts necessary to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: the study referenced in 59 seconds is Pham, L. B., &amp;amp; Taylor S. E. (1999). &lt;em&gt;From thought to action: Effects of process- versus outcome-based mental simulations on performance.&lt;/em&gt; &quot;Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 250—260&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References (for review)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Libby, L. K., Shaeffer, E. M., Eibach, R. P., &amp;amp; Slemmer, J. A.&lt;/strong&gt; (2007). &lt;em&gt;Picture yourself at the polls: Visual perspective in mental imagery affects self-perception and behavior.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&quot;Psychological Science&quot;, 18, 199-203.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Oettingen, G., Pak, H., &amp;amp; Schnetter, K.&lt;/strong&gt; (2001).&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Self-regulation of goal setting: Turning free fantasies about the future into binding goals.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&quot;Journal of Personality and Social Psychology&quot;, 80, 736-753.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4873" LastEditorUserId="4873" LastEditDate="2011-09-22T14:52:32.260" LastActivityDate="2011-09-22T14:52:32.260" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2011-09-22T17:43:09.860" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might help your mood. Recent mouse research showed an effect: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pnas.org/content/108/38/16050&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ingestion of &lt;em&gt;Lactobacillus&lt;/em&gt; strain regulates emotional behavior and central GABA receptor expression in a mouse via the vagus nerve&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4877" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T17:05:04.167" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T17:05:04.167" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6283" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6291" CreationDate="2011-09-22T18:44:45.057" Score="14" ViewCount="3262" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any foods that are harmless when eaten alone yet are dangerous or toxic when eaten together with another otherwise innocuous food?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There can obviously be problems if you combine acidic foods with basic foods.  I'm looking more for pairings that cause some sort of chemical reaction that produces a toxin and/or some pharmacological &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_%28chemistry%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;product&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is motivated by &lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/14249/is-this-a-true-you-should-use-garlic-with-pork-and-ginger-with-beef-and-never-vi/17822#17822&quot;&gt;some claims that have been made&lt;/a&gt; over on &lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Cooking.SX&lt;/a&gt;.  For example, it is claimed that the combination of crab and persimmon is toxic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could have sworn that I had seen a similar question asked either here or on Cooking.SX, however, I couldn't seem to find it after doing a search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:33:29.713" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T21:39:07.860" Title="Are there any toxic or dangerous food pairings?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|safety|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6284" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6288" CreationDate="2011-09-22T21:20:51.690" Score="39" ViewCount="9548" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have frequently heard (even from diabetics) that diets high in sugar can cause (or at least contribute to) diabetes. Others have said it's a common misunderstanding, and there's no demonstrated causal connection between the two, but only correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can eating sugar-rich foods put you at a higher risk of getting diabetes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4876" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-31T11:12:31.797" LastActivityDate="2018-01-03T05:21:44.917" Title="Can eating too much sugar cause diabetes?" Tags="|nutrition|sugar|diabetes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2011-09-22T21:26:30.213" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, all respect to the EFSA, but there are several claims about probiotics that can be found in about five minutes on scholar.google.com that show clear health benefits, not least of which appear to be increased resistance to salmonella infections and improved skin condition in children with dermatitis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Namely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/130/2/396S/4686430&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The role of probiotic cultures in the control of gastrointestinal health&lt;/a&gt;, the Journal of Nutrition, 2000.  Choice quote from the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a relatively large volume of literature that supports the use of probiotics to prevent or treat intestinal disorders. However, the scientific basis of probiotic use has been firmly established only recently...Probiotics represent an exciting prophylactic and therapeutic advance, although additional investigations must be undertaken before their role in intestinal health can be delineated clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016508501903269&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Probiotic Bacteria Enhance Murine and Human Intestinal Epithelial Barrier Function&lt;/a&gt;, Gastroenterology, 2001.  Choice quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In vitro studies showed that epithelial barrier function and resistance to Salmonella invasion could be enhanced by exposure to a proteinaceous soluble factor secreted by the bacteria found in the VSL#3 compound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0091674902913734&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effect of probiotic Lactobacillus strains in children with atopic dermatitis&lt;/a&gt;, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 2003.  Choice quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A combination of L rhamnosus 19070-2 and L reuteri DSM 122460 was beneficial in the management of AD. The effect was more pronounced in patients with a positive skin prick test response and increased IgE levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, here's the rub: Do Dannon, Yakult, or any of these other companies provide these bacteria?  That I don't know, but the idea that probiotics themselves do nothing has been shown to be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2158" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T17:03:10.583" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T17:03:10.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6284" CreationDate="2011-09-23T01:11:41.577" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Type 2 diabetes is caused by an inactive lifestyle, a diet high in calories, and being overweight also contributes to the chances of getting it. (Type 1 is caused by genetics). This does not mean you can eat as much sugar as you like, because sugar is high in calories, but this is the only link between diabetes and sugar intake. So, in short, yes, excessive sugar intake can contribute to the chances of getting type 2 diabetes, but sugar itself is not the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Myth:&lt;/strong&gt; Eating too much sugar causes diabetes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fact:&lt;/strong&gt; No, it does not.  Type 1 diabetes is caused by genetics and unknown factors that trigger the onset of the disease; type 2 diabetes is caused by genetics and lifestyle factors.  Being overweight does increase your risk for developing type 2 diabetes, and a diet high in calories, whether from sugar or from fat, can contribute to weight gain.  If you have a history of diabetes in your family, eating a healthy meal plan and regular exercise are recommended to manage your weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/diabetes-myths/&quot;&gt;American Diabetes Association&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4882" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-31T13:39:57.407" LastActivityDate="2012-03-31T13:39:57.407" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6283" CreationDate="2011-09-23T04:35:49.490" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example that springs to mind is the combination of certain species of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disulfiram#Similarly_acting_substances&quot;&gt;mushrooms and alcoholic beverages&lt;/a&gt;. The mushrooms contain metabolites which inhibit one of the enzymes involved in breaking down ethanol, leading to a buildup of the aldehyde ethanal, which is unpleasant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ink cap--Coprinus atramentarius (Bulliard ex Fries) Fries--is responsible for poisoning when ingested with alcohol&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1344910&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4060" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T09:14:38.950" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T09:14:38.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6293" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6294" CreationDate="2011-09-23T06:08:42.553" Score="30" ViewCount="22179" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've all seen it in movies. A villian suffocates one of his/her victims with a pillow while they sleep, killing them in a matter if a minute or so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I've pushed my head into a pillow as far as it will go, I can still breathe. I even asked one of my friends to pretend to smother me (very realistically) and I could still breathe through the pillow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this form of suffocation a myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4723" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-09-25T12:47:59.563" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T03:45:38.027" Title="Can you be suffocated from being smothered by a pillow?" Tags="|mortality|suffocation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6293" CreationDate="2011-09-23T07:42:26.697" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Belgium there is a well known and documented case (I think it even included video footage) of an asylum seeker which died this way during her expulsion, so I guess there is at least some truth to it. Definitely also depend on other factors as the type of pillow and the force applied.&#xA;Read about the case here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semira_Adamu&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semira_Adamu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastEditorUserId="1735" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T08:05:23.427" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T08:05:23.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6293" CreationDate="2011-09-23T09:28:07.693" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-452275/Mother-arrested-boy-smothered-death.html&quot;&gt;Source 1&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A young mother has been arrested after her four-year-old son was&#xA;  suffocated to death with a pillow in a domestic tragedy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.floridacapitalcases.state.fl.us/case_updates/Htm/755994.htm&quot;&gt;Source 2&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reeves died as a result of asphyxia from being smothered with a&#xA;  pillow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="4403" LastEditDate="2011-09-25T07:42:34.467" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T07:42:34.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6283" CreationDate="2011-09-23T09:50:06.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One common claim I was told as a child is that it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.masenka.be/2008/02/15/be-careful-with-combining-fish-and-spinach/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unhealthy to eat fish and leafy vegetables (like spinach)&lt;/a&gt;, due to the formation of nitrosamines. This seems to be more of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.food-info.net/uk/qa/qa-fp6.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;theoretical risk than an actual cause&lt;/a&gt; of illness, although I did find one paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/eating-vegetables-with-fish-increases-cancer-risk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;linking fish and high-nitrate vegetables to liver cancer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3727" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T09:50:06.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6297" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6880" CreationDate="2011-09-23T12:25:42.737" Score="9" ViewCount="5163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was investigating installing powerline networking in my home in order that I can switch off my wifi installation (partly for performance reasons, partly because the layout of the house means that my 16 month old son is sleeping a few metres from the hotspot), when I was told by a colleague that the emissions from powerline networking (Homeplug style) is actually worse than WiFi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Is there any evidence to support this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2581" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T12:10:32.820" Title="Is the electomagnetic radiation from HomePlug style networking 'worse' than from Wifi?" Tags="|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6297" CreationDate="2011-09-23T13:18:58.287" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the World Health Organisation there is no risk from low-level, long term exposure to wi-fi networks. (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6677051.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this BBC article&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs296/en/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the WHO itself&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of any similar information about powerline networking, but it seems unlikely that your home wiring will emit more EM energy that the wi-fi stations antennas. After all, those are specifically designed to emit that EM, and your wiring is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4889" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T13:18:58.287" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6302" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-23T15:13:17.787" Score="23" ViewCount="1263" Body="&lt;p&gt;Climate change seems to polarise comment into denialists and believers. But good skeptics should be able to address specific issues with the data without falling into the anti-science denialist camp. Hence this question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is good historic evidence that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today (Greenland and much of Europe clearly were as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=de&amp;amp;sl=de&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http://www.science-skeptical.de/blog/beispiellose-erwarmung-oder-beispiellose-datenmanipulation/001195/&quot;&gt;evidence&lt;/a&gt; from agriculture shows). But leading climate change scientists don't always agree (see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period&quot;&gt;Wikipedia entry&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say the world is getting warmer, but is it yet warmer than it ever has been in human history? What is the real evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-09-25T12:47:38.003" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T17:14:31.637" Title="Is the world warmer now than during the Medieval Warm Period?" Tags="|history|climate-change|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2934" CreationDate="2011-09-23T16:17:56.777" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One additional effect that might add to the plausible effects described above is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://business.ezinemark.com/uses-for-ferro-fluid-17bd567c1c4.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;widespread use of ferroluids&lt;/a&gt; in loudspeakers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrofluid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ferrofluids&lt;/a&gt; are used between the voice coils and the magnets to provide better thermal conduction for the coil (allowing higher power) and also to mechanically damp vibration. It is at least plausible that the distribution and physical properties change slightly with repeated use. Also, the magnetic properties are temperature dependent so will change in use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not obvious whether anyone has tried to objectively quantify the effects discussed here, but they are a lot more physically plausible that some &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.linn.co.uk/bb/archive/index.php/thread-4379.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;audiophile esoteric beliefs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T16:17:56.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6308" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-23T20:58:29.270" Score="10" ViewCount="738" Body="&lt;p&gt;The phenomenon of ghost lights, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o%27-the-wisp&quot;&gt;Will-o'-the-Wisp&lt;/a&gt;, occurs all over the world with each region having its own local name and folklore about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The folklore causes of the lights include fairies, ghosts, a mythical snake, wandering souls of dead people, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many scientific hypotheses are given for the lights, such as spontaneously combusting swamp gasses (possibly &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will-o%27-the-wisp#Scientific_explanation&quot;&gt;oxidation of phosphine and methane&lt;/a&gt;), piezo electric effect caused by tectonic strain, bioluminescence, mirages of more distant lights caused by local temperature inversions, or moon light reflection from larger, light-colored, flying fauna, such as owls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One aspect of the phenomenon that is reported in most places is that the lights recede when approached by humans and will return when humans back away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have any scientific inquiries determined the real cause of these lights?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any credible photos or videos of the phenomenon?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T23:00:39.440" LastActivityDate="2015-12-21T13:42:33.007" Title="What is the nature of ghost lights like Naga Fireballs, Will-o'-the-Wisp, Min Min Light, Hessdalen lights, Chir Batti, et. al" Tags="|ghosts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6309" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-09-23T21:13:08.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag should accompany questions about old documents that contain writing or graphical information.  This includes items such as the Dead Sea scrolls, Mayan and Aztec codices, old maps, and rune stones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="328" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T21:32:15.150" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T21:32:15.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6310" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-09-23T21:13:08.820" Score="0" Body="Scrolls, manuscripts, books, codices, rock carvings, or similar methods of writing that are generally believed to have been created before the modern era." OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="328" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T21:32:16.057" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T21:32:16.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6311" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-09-23T22:16:45.083" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T22:16:45.083" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T22:16:45.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6312" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-09-23T22:16:45.083" Score="0" Body="Any substance that, when absorbed into the body of a living organism, alters normal bodily function." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:30:02.593" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:30:02.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6313" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-09-23T22:24:49.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hallucinations can be experienced by any of the five senses, sight, touch, taste, hearing, or smell, but are typically associated with sight and hearing.  Hallucinations, which are almost always experienced in a wakened state, should be differentiated from &lt;em&gt;dreaming&lt;/em&gt;, which is a normal phenomenon experienced while in a sleeping state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hallucinations can be experienced by a single person or, reportedly, by a group of people.  Although similar, hallucinations should also be distinguished from mirages, which can usually be explained by physical disturbances in the atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="328" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T22:59:02.360" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T22:59:02.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6314" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-09-23T22:24:49.510" Score="0" Body="A hallucination is a sensory perception of something that does not exist." OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="328" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T22:59:05.357" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T22:59:05.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6315" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-09-23T22:32:54.447" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Viking era began in 793 when a group attacked and plundered the abbey on Lindisfarne, an island off the eastern coast of modern-day Great Britain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="328" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T22:59:08.303" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T22:59:08.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6316" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-09-23T22:32:54.447" Score="0" Body="Vikings are a group of people who lived in Northern Europe between ~800 CE to ~1450 CE.  They are associated with the current countries of Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (including Greenland.)" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="328" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T22:59:10.660" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T22:59:10.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6317" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-09-23T22:37:04.287" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T22:37:04.287" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T22:37:04.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6318" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-09-23T22:37:04.287" Score="0" Body="Education is a process of imparting knowledge.  It is typically associated with the formal, systematic process that includes schools and trained teachers, but also includes the informal &quot;word-of-mouth&quot; method where knowledge is imparted through the telling of stories and folk-tales." OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="328" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T22:59:14.560" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T22:59:14.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6319" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-09-23T22:41:44.440" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T22:41:44.440" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T22:41:44.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6320" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-09-23T22:41:44.440" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T22:41:44.440" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T22:41:44.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6321" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-09-23T22:44:34.203" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T22:44:34.203" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T22:44:34.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6322" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-09-23T22:44:34.203" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T22:44:34.203" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T22:44:34.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6323" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-09-23T22:48:21.937" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T22:48:21.937" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T22:48:21.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6324" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-09-23T22:48:21.937" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-09-23T22:48:21.937" LastActivityDate="2011-09-23T22:48:21.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6325" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6333" CreationDate="2011-09-24T14:56:41.700" Score="12" ViewCount="2224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been living in China now for nearly 5 years. One of the first books I bought when I first came was a copy of Marco Polo's &lt;em&gt;Il Milione&lt;/em&gt;. It made interesting reading on one long train journey I took to Inner Mongolia. On the return journey I subsequently lost the book. Today, I happened across an audio version of the book which I yet again enjoyed. I remember hearing and reading many debates about whither he really did make the journey to China or whether it was in fact a collection of other travelers stories, hearsay and myth. This is an old debate starting with the title of &lt;em&gt;Il Milione&lt;/em&gt;, in reference to the many supposed lies in his book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the arguments against are based on misinterpretations of history, such as why did Marco Polo not mention the Great Wall &amp;mdash; simply because much of it hadn't been built yet and the old parts would have been 1300 years old and not recognizable as a wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any decent evidence that Marco Polo didn't go to China or proof that he definitely did go?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T10:37:34.390" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T10:37:34.390" Title="Did Marco Polo travel to China?" Tags="|history|china|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3044" CreationDate="2011-09-24T18:21:08.950" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, there are no recorded events of tectonic shifts of that magnitude.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An extensive search of reliable educational institutions and peer reviewed scientific literature did not turn up any favor for this manufactured mechanism (not a one!).  This is generally only supported as a fringe creationist canard, 2012 hysterics, or plain old Hollywood fantasy stories that bears no relation to reality.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did come across a few interesting sites on the &lt;em&gt;history&lt;/em&gt; of the theory.  For instance, a &lt;em&gt;History&lt;/em&gt; Professor was one that seemed to really kick this off in popular media based off poorly drawn medieval maps...  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/08/ajb/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Charles_Hapgood.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Charles Hapgood was his name&lt;/a&gt;.  Overall it seems an idea that is so patently ridiculous that any scientific rebuttal is not considered worth the paper (or electrons) wasted in that effort.  The entire body of work of geology stands on its own merit without even needing to address this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the tropical vegetation in the mammoth stomachs, &lt;a href=&quot;http://newsdesk.si.edu/node/3386&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;that is simply not true&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Analysis of the mammoth’s stomach contents revealed the animal’s diet to include a variety of grasses, such as foxtail, crested wheatgrass and barley grass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(None of those species are &quot;tropical&quot; in any way.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, be careful in your question, you are conflating the crust expansion with magnetic shifts.  Two entirely separate things.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/2012/2012_sp2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This slideshow from Southern Methodist University pretty much discounts all these Earth Crust Displacement (a.k.a. Pole Shift Hypothesis) theories as plain old loony&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psc.edu/science/glatzmaier.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center&lt;/a&gt; addresses the Einstein claim, which had nothing to do with the Pole Shift crackpot hypothesis, but rather why there is a magnetic dynamo that is still functioning after 4 billion years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For that matter, why is it that instead of quietly fading away, as magnetic fields do when left to their own devices, Earth's magnetic field is still going strong after billions of years? &lt;em&gt;Einstein is said to have considered it one of the most important unsolved problems in physics&lt;/em&gt;. With a year of computing on Pittsburgh's CRAY C90, 2,000 hours of processing, Glatzmaier and collaborator Paul Roberts of UCLA took a big step toward some answers. Their numerical model of the electromagnetic, fluid dynamical processes of Earth's interior reproduced key features of the magnetic field over more than 40,000 years of simulated time. To top it off, the computer-generated field reversed itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-10-07T16:44:21.990" LastActivityDate="2011-10-07T16:44:21.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6302" CreationDate="2011-09-25T03:33:01.330" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is highly unlikely that the medieval warm period was, globally, warmer than current.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IPCC 4th Assessment Report graphed a dozen different replications of the &quot;hockey stick&quot; graph, along with the instrumental record. This is for the Northern Hemisphere, which has both the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/ipcc2007/fig611.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;best paleoclimate record&lt;/a&gt; and that's also where the various forms of historical evidence (such as the agricultural evidence and Viking settlements) are located. &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NEN7q.png&quot; alt=&quot;IPCC AR4 Figure 6-10&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can see from this that there are a few short patches in the 10th and 12th century which &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; possibly be warmer than today - it's just not very likely that they are. While most reconstructions do include a MWP that was slightly warmer than the temperatures around that period, it was probably not higher than the present-day average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/105/36/13252.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mann et. al. (2008)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reconstructed amplitude of change over past centuries is greater than hitherto reported, with somewhat greater Medieval warmth in the Northern Hemisphere, albeit still not reaching recent levels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8dyOI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Mann et. al. (2008)&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11676&amp;amp;page=18&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years&lt;/a&gt;, a book written by the National Research Council:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Presently available proxy evidence indicates that temperatures at many, but not all, individual locations were higher during the past 25 years than during any period of comparable length since A.D. 900. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For interest, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agbjarn.blog.is/users/fa/agbjarn/files/ljungquist_temperature_reconstructions_2009.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ljungqvist (2009)&lt;/a&gt; plotted a number of paleoclimate proxies for a number of different regions. Remember, many of these will only include data up to about 1950 or so. In many of these records, current temperatures are lower than during their medieval warm peak. However, the exact time of that peak varies - which probably helps to explain why many locations contain a MWP and yet it is less pronounced in larger scale hemispheral or global records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="143" LastEditDate="2011-09-25T21:54:43.887" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T21:54:43.887" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3044" CreationDate="2011-09-25T07:38:27.903" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is nonsense.  The claim is made in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csicop.org/sb/show/nbcs_origins_show/&quot;&gt;The Mysterious Origins of Man&lt;/a&gt;, broadcast by NBC in 1996, which aimed at showing science had suppressed evidence of a wide variety of strange statements, including that humans had existed for millions of years as part of a peculiar form of creationist theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been attacked both from an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mom/atlantis.html&quot;&gt;orthodox scientific standpoint&lt;/a&gt; but also from a more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icr.org/article/did-frozen-mammoths-die-flood-or-ice-age/&quot;&gt;mainstream creationist standpoint&lt;/a&gt;.  On the mammoth claim, there is no evidence that the the vegetation in their stomachs was tropical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over far longer timescales there have been more dramatic changes, including plate tectonics and at times higher polar temperatures. But you do not seem interested in these.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T07:38:27.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6325" CreationDate="2011-09-25T07:59:59.033" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no convincing evidence he did not go, and such hypotheses are currently considered historical revisionism.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hypothesis was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Did_Marco_Polo_go_to_China%3F&quot;&gt;entertained&lt;/a&gt;, at an academic level, by Frances Wood in the book  &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0813389992&quot;&gt;Did Marco Polo go to China?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the evidence presented is far from convincing and there's a pretty good rebuttal from Igor de Rachewiltz in an article ('&lt;strong&gt;Marco Polo Went to China&lt;/strong&gt;' in &lt;em&gt;Zentralasiatische Studien 27 (1997)&lt;/em&gt;, pp. 34-92) as summarised &lt;a href=&quot;https://digitalcollections.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/41883/1/Marcopolo.html&quot;&gt;on this site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In conclusion, an examination of F.W.'s book reveals once more the fundamental weakness of the argumentum e silentio. Marco's book, with its immense wealth of information, speaks for itself. Had Marco, as F.W. claims, obtained so much varied and detailed intelligence about most of 13th-century Asia (including, beside China, Iraq, Persia, Central Asia, Mongolia, continental Southeast Asia, Java, Sumatra, Malacca, the Nicobar Islands, Ceylon, Southern India and the coasts and islands of the Indian Sea) - not to speak of his insider's description of the Mongol court - without actually going there, this in itself would have been an even greater feat than that of compiling a genuine eyewitness account of the magnitude of The Description of the World. But, as we have seen, this was not the case: Marco was there all right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T07:59:59.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3044" CreationDate="2011-09-25T17:52:58.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one where you need to be very careful about your terminology. Magnetic poles can shift very quickly (indeed the changing strength and orientation of the Earth's magnetic field is extraordinarily fast by geological standards having decayed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10% in about 100 years&lt;/a&gt;). So I wouldn't call the real question &quot;pole shift hypothesis&quot; to avoid confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question is does the crust move, that is different. It clearly moves: plate tectonics is the current conventional wisdom in geology and this has continents wandering all over the place but over hundreds of millions of years (which is centimetres per year as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; or any geology text would tell you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question is can it move really fast (say even kilometres per year) then few would agree. But there has been at least one serious discussion of the idea by a geologist written in the early days of the modern consensus on plate tectonics. The book is &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books/about/Prehistory_and_earth_models.html?id=8JAKAQAAIAAJ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prehistory and Earth Models&lt;/a&gt;. The author argued for rapid tectonic shifts triggered by the weight of peak ice during the last ice age causing a sudden breakup of the continental crust. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt anyone else ever agreed with his argument (outside creationist circles) but I thought it worth recording as it was at least a serious attempt to make a case and he did say some interesting things about exactly how the continents should fit together before they broke up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T01:57:18.610" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T01:57:18.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2241" CreationDate="2011-09-25T18:33:45.583" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Forecasting isn't reliable enough to trust any prediction of Peak Oil&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peak oil is an interesting idea but one that suffers from a big statistical problem in addition to the obvious one (described in the first answer) that its predictions ignore shale oil. The problem is the utter unreliability of projections given the input data going into them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best exposition of this is that I know of is by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/&quot;&gt;Edward Tufte&lt;/a&gt; (better known for his work on visualisation of data). Before he became famous for his other work he was asked (alongside 3 others working independently) to review forecasts of oil reserves in the USA. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/forecasting&quot;&gt;He concluded:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...projections of oil resources have never been sufficiently precise to provide any useful guidance in determining long run policies with respect to energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think things have changed much since he wrote this. There will be some year when we reach peak oil (when the price of oil exceeds the costs of alternatives) but predicting when that will be based on past patterns is about as reliable as reading tea-leaves to predict the future. The trouble is it isn't forecasters with good track records (usually involving humility about how precise any forecast can be) who get attention, it is the ones who make bold predictions. They continue to get attention even when they are repeatedly wrong (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Future-Babble-Expert-Predictions-Believe/dp/0753522365&quot;&gt;Futurebabble&lt;/a&gt; for a thorough examination).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-01-22T23:59:18.543" LastActivityDate="2012-01-22T23:59:18.543" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4270" CreationDate="2011-09-25T19:59:44.367" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No. Carefully blinded trials don't reproduce the effects claimed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be extremely surprising if MSG was dangerous to people as glutamic acid the amino acid exists in all our proteins and we will all therefore contain some glutamate (the salt of the free acid). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is possible that some people could be particularly sensitive to large amounts of it if added to food. The problem is that studies done with good scientific controls (double blinded) have never consistently shown that even those people who claim such sensitivity suffer the adverse effects when actually given MSG (and don't suffer them when even something other than MSG). As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3525357&quot;&gt;one review put it&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Work over the past 17 years has consistently failed to reveal any objective sign accompanying the transient sensations that some individuals experience after the experimental ingestion of monosodium glutamate and it is questionable whether the term 'Chinese Restaurant Syndrome' has any validity. When some common food materials are used in the same experimental setting, similar symptoms can be produced in a limited number of people. Double-blind testing of individuals who identify themselves as suffering the 'syndrome' has failed to confirm the role of monosodium glutamate as the provocative agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that is pretty solid evidence that it isn't bad for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T00:04:58.883" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T00:04:58.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3812" CreationDate="2011-09-25T21:00:03.030" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key source for analysis of risk-adjusting behaviour is the work of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.john-adams.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;John Adams&lt;/a&gt; who has long argued that people have a certain tolerance for risk and tend to adjust their behaviour to (partially) compensate for safety devices. In the case of cycle helmets both car drivers and cyclists themselves might take more risks because the cyclist is wearing a helmet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adams is an academic at University College London who has published some &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1857280687&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;seminal works&lt;/a&gt; on this topic. He has made strong criticism of the way governments have used evidence to exaggerate the benefit from safety rules such as compulsory seat belts in cars. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His basic idea is summarised well on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.john-adams.co.uk/2008/03/05/seat-belts-%E2%80%93-blood-on-my-hands/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;his blog&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because seat belts are undeniably effective at reducing death and injury in crashes there is, or was, a mystery. Why in country after country that mandated seat belts was it impossible to see the promised reduction in road accident fatalities? The most plausible explanation is “risk compensation”. It appears that measures that protect drivers from the consequences of bad driving encourage bad driving. The principal effect of seat belt legislation has been a shift in the burden of risk from those already best protected in cars, to the most vulnerable, pedestrians and cyclists, outside cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I quote this because exactly the same argument is relevant to the debate about cycle helmets. While it is obvious that a cyclist who &lt;em&gt;has an accident&lt;/em&gt; will be less likely to suffer injury if they wear a helmet we also have to take into account whether they are more likely to have an accident if they wear a helmet. So the many studies and anecdotes that look at the population of injured cyclists with and without helmets are statistically irrelevant as they look at the wrong sample to actually answer the important question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevance here is that riskier behaviour for both cyclists and  drivers is perfectly plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2011-09-25T21:08:25.670" LastActivityDate="2011-09-25T21:08:25.670" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6343" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6350" CreationDate="2011-09-25T21:42:24.927" Score="9" ViewCount="3106" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading and contributing to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3812/do-cars-pass-with-less-space-for-bicyclists-who-wear-helmets&quot;&gt;skeptics debate&lt;/a&gt; about the effects of cycle helmets reminded me of the much more significant debate on seat belts in cars. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most countries seem to have accepted that they should be compulsory. The UK government &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Nl1/Newsroom/DG_072333&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claimed&lt;/a&gt; they have saved more than 60,000 lives on the 25th anniversary of the law. But there have always been skeptics. John Adams (one of the originators of the idea of &lt;em&gt;risk compensation&lt;/em&gt;) has made &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.significancemagazine.org/details/magazine/868981/Seat-Belt-Laws--Repeal-them.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;strong statistical arguments&lt;/a&gt; (full content &lt;a href=&quot;http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/Seat%20belts%20for%20significance.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) that the benefit cannot be clearly seen in any country's accident statistics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, as with many safety issues, the consensus is against him. And it seems obvious to many that seat belts must be good. But his argument on risk compensation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because seat belts are undeniably effective at reducing death and injury in crashes there is, or was, a mystery. Why in country after country that mandated seat belts was it impossible to see the promised reduction in road accident fatalities? The most plausible explanation is “risk compensation”. It appears that measures that protect drivers from the consequences of bad driving encourage bad driving. The principal effect of seat belt legislation has been a shift in the burden of risk from those already best protected in cars, to the most vulnerable, pedestrians and cyclists, outside cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;suggests we need to be really careful which statistics we use. If one effect of seat belts is to increase risky driving we might see more accidents and a shift of the deaths to other road users. These effects may not be based on conscious or rational decisions. The question is can we see them in the statistics? The logic of seat belt compulsion is fine, but is that logic backed by experimental evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what do other skeptics think? What other evidence can we bring to the debate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2016-10-02T02:43:32.570" Title="Seat belts in cars save the lives of occupants in cars, but do they lead to lower deaths for all road users?" Tags="|road-vehicles|safety|causality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6345" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-26T05:41:56.153" Score="5" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/788/is-there-any-scientific-evidence-at-all-that-suggests-ghosts-exist&quot;&gt;Is there any scientific evidence at all that suggests ghosts exist?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My wife often watches Ghost Hunters on SyFy.  What explanations are there for some of the shows where the 'investigators' claim a property may have 'spirits' of some kind occupying the area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4917" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T05:41:56.153" Title="Validity of GhostHunters and other ghost shows on cable" Tags="|ghosts|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2011-09-26T07:02:22.113" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="415" CreationDate="2011-09-26T11:08:06.240" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the other answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does this mean that it is best not to use any salt at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly not. Salt is necessary. If you don't eat enough salt you may end up with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyponatremia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hyponatremia&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hyponatremia is the most common electrolyte disorder. Its frequency is&#xA;  higher in females, the elderly, and in patients who are hospitalized.&#xA;  The incidence of hyponatremia depends largely on the patient&#xA;  population. A hospital incidence of 15–20% is common, while only 3–5%&#xA;  of patients who are hospitalized have a serum sodium level of less&#xA;  than 130 mEq/L. Hyponatremia has been reported in up to 30% of elderly&#xA;  patients in nursing homes and is also present in approximately 30% of&#xA;  depressed patients on selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors.[2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from them it is a condition which is quite common in people who are running a marathon and loose a lot of salt through sweating, while drinking too much water&#xA;See eg: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa043901&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa043901&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also true for less intensive sports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sodium depletion is a recurrent theme in heat cramping, and is&#xA;  reported to be one of the factors contributing to cause, treatment,&#xA;  and prevention of exercise-associated muscle cramps .&#xA;  Stone, M.B., J.E. Edwards, C.L. Stemmans, C.D. Ingersoll, R.M. Palmieri, and B.A.&#xA;  Krause. Certified athletic trainersʼ perceptions of exercise-associated muscle cramps.&#xA;  J. Sports Rehab. 12:333-342, 2003. cited in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csun.edu/~lisagor/2009%20Fall/608-09Fall/608-1.Sweat%20and%20Sodium%20Losses%20in%20NCAA%20Football%20Players.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.csun.edu/~lisagor/2009%20Fall/608-09Fall/608-1.Sweat%20and%20Sodium%20Losses%20in%20NCAA%20Football%20Players.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that paper you will also notice that some people lose a lot of salt through sweating, and for those people salt intake has to be higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally since this site is about skepticism: some groups are clearly vulnerable to hyponatremia. For those people it is perhaps a bad advice to limit salt intake. The major reason why salt is seen as 'bad' is the fact that it causes high blood pressure. But it only influences high blood pressure in a relatively small group of people. &#xA;See eg: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dietary sodium restriction for older hypertensive individuals&#xA;  might be considered, but the evidence in the normotensive population&#xA;  does not support current recommendations for universal dietary sodium&#xA;  restriction. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/275/20/1590&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/275/20/1590&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One segment of the public health community—funded by the the Na-&#xA;  tional Heart Lung and Blood Institute and endorsed by many journals in&#xA;  the field—has decided that salt is a public health menace. Therefore,&#xA;  salt consumption must be drastically curtailed. The force with which&#xA;  this conclusion is presented to the public is not in any reasonable&#xA;  balance with the strength of the evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~census/573.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~census/573.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastEditorUserId="1735" LastEditDate="2011-09-26T14:02:34.857" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T14:02:34.857" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6343" CreationDate="2011-09-26T14:06:47.697" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Overall fatalities have been steadily decreasing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CyrmB.png&quot; alt=&quot;US fatalities&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Source: Image from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_motor_vehicle_collisions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; based on data from US NTSB&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This clearly contradicts &quot;risk compensation&quot; theory, with which you'd expect a flat line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as for the quoted article, there quite a few problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;causality&lt;/strong&gt;: article suggests that in case of Denmark introduction of belt laws &lt;strong&gt;caused&lt;/strong&gt; increase in fatalities. If you look at plot he provides to illustrate that, seems that belt laws were introduced &lt;strong&gt;after&lt;/strong&gt; the sharp increase started:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qiqJs.png&quot; alt=&quot;seat belts in Denmark&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Image source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/Seat%20belts%20for%20significance.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jonh Adams &quot;Britain’s Seat Belt Law should be Repealed&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;detection rate vs actual rate&lt;/strong&gt;: article suggest, that huge increase in number of drunk drivers in UK is consequence of belt laws. But the fact is, that increase coincides with the dates when &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drinkdriving.org/drink_driving_information_uklawhistory.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;evidential breath testing was introduced in UK&lt;/a&gt;, thus it's more than likely that detection rate went up. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;doesn't consider increasing number of cars&lt;/strong&gt;: the statistics above deal only with absolute numbers, failing to provide comparison with increasing number of cars and growing population. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;it's based on idea that has already been debunked&lt;/strong&gt;: namely &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smeed%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Smeed's law&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-09-27T12:45:00.737" LastActivityDate="2011-09-27T12:45:00.737" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6343" CreationDate="2011-09-26T15:09:22.290" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The evidence with respect to seat belts suggests that the law had no&#xA;  effect on total fatalities but was associated with a redistribution of&#xA;  danger from car occupants to pedestrians and cyclists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In Britain, as in Australia, and as in the eight European countries&#xA;  examined by Isles, in the year that the wearing of seat belts became&#xA;  compulsory the numbers of pedestrians and cyclists killed increased,&#xA;  by 8% and 15% respectively. The numbers of pedestrians and cyclists&#xA;  killed by heavy goods vehicles and public service vehicles (categories&#xA;  not covered by the law) decreased following the law.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which Isles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Isles, J.E. 1981. Seat belt savings: implications of European&#xA;  Statistics. London, UK Department of Transport. This report was&#xA;  suppressed, i.e. not published, and not available to Parliament when&#xA;  it debated the seat belt law. A leaked copy was reported four years&#xA;  later in New Scientist (7 February 1985). The contents of the report&#xA;  and its conclusions have never been denied.&#xA;  The study is available here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/isles%20report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://john-adams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/isles%20report.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This actually already contains some interesting comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the variation in trend between countries is greater than a 'seat belt&#xA;  law effect' ... Any beneficial effect could be concealed by rejecting&#xA;  certain countries&#xA;  So basically, by choosing the right countries, any effect could be proven, and the discussion which countries have to be chosen is not very strict: what if a law is not enforced? Or partially enforced (only some users, eg with recent cars, only some areas, eg outside the city centre).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This comment should also apply to Isles own study. Here is the graph that should support the fact that there is a jump in pedestrians killed the year the legislation is passed:&#xA; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aB7W1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It shows the number of pedestrian casualties, scaled to 100 3 years prior to the law. This means that there is no confidence interval that year (everything scaled to 100). Interestingly enough, one country (Belgium) was excluded in the rest of the analysis of Isles, because their model did not fit well (!)*, this already means that all other confidence intervals are underestimations of the true uncertainty. &#xA;But even disregarding these facts, it is clear from the remaining confidence intervals that their width is a lot bigger in the 'law year'. which makes the above comments more relevant again: if one county is included/excluded, the effect prior to the law would be small, but after the law would be big. The reason that the interval suddenly gets large is due to 2 things: the fact that scaling was done 3 years before (and autocorrelation is becoming less important), but also the fact that car usage was seriously changed in some in the same years due to the oil crisis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also don't think the presented model fits the data nicely after the law year. The large jump in the 'exponential with jump' line seems too large in the law year, but it is that effect which is used to prove that there is a 8% increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(* Being Belgian, I can imagine that they somehow changed the way that statistics were gathered and that that caused the strange numbers. If however no reason is found it would be plainly wrong to exclude the data because they don't fit an exponential trend seen in other countries.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from that, and that is the core of his message:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The claims made for seat belt laws in all these other jurisdictions&#xA;  rested on a deduction which assumed no risk compensation effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that this assumption was not proved. But the reverse, that the risk compensation effect is not negligible is also not proven. &lt;strong&gt;Even if a correlation would be present proving that more fatalities occur after introduction of the law, it still does not prove a causal link.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's look at articles that cite him:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A study of driver behavior before and after a mandatory seat belt use&#xA;  law in Newfoundland found that the &lt;strong&gt;benefits of such legislation are&#xA;  not reduced by riskier driving&lt;/strong&gt;, as has been suggested by some&#xA;  theorists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1984.tb00130.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1539-6924.1984.tb00130.x/abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A time-series analysis of Japanese data for the period 1966-85&#xA;  estimates the effectiveness of seat belt usage and government safety&#xA;  policies on various types of traffic-related fatalities. &lt;strong&gt;The results&#xA;  indicate that these policies reduce the risk of death for both motor&#xA;  vehicle occupants and non-occupants.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The efficacy of government safety policies on traffic-related fatalities: Empirical estimates from Japan&#xA;McCornac, DC&#xA;Applied Economics [APPL. ECON.]. Vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 409-412. 1993.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastEditorUserId="1735" LastEditDate="2011-09-27T11:46:45.173" LastActivityDate="2011-09-27T11:46:45.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1796" CreationDate="2011-09-26T17:23:08.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Omega-3 has been associated with various benefits but many of the studies to measure them have been poor, hence the controversy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic theory that they are important for proper brain function (a much broader idea than just concentration and cognitive ability) was, I think, best articulated in the book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0593046498&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Madness of Adam and Eve&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by David Horrobin as part of a theory about how the modern human brain developed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most interesting study I know of supporting this was conducted as a randomised controlled trial on prison inmates reported &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fabresearch.org/419&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (see also the news comment from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandprobation.ukcrime&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Guardian&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2764165.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt; where the prison service seem to express some doubts). But replication trials from other countries are due to report this year. So we might safely say there is some evidence that omega-3s can reduce disfunction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there have been badly constructed trials as well, intended to show improvements in children in school. Ben Goldacre demolishes the design of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badscience.net/2008/09/dave-ford-from-durham-council-plays-at-being-a-scientist-again/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Durham Experiment&lt;/a&gt; thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I pointed out, along with several academics, that their experiment was incompetently designed, for no good reason, and so would only produce false positive results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not found a similar demolition of the results on reducing bad behaviour in prisoners. This might be because a lack of omega-3s cause anti-social effects but, when you have an adequate diet, further omega-3s make little difference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2011-09-26T17:23:08.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6353" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-27T00:30:46.270" Score="3" ViewCount="752" Body="&lt;p&gt;This happened today in Argentina:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QxFSY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;something is damaged&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QGVlD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;something is damaged, and a car and persons in between&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VL7I4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;something is damaged&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people said they saw a bright light coming from the sky, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clarin.com/ciudades/vivienda-exploto-Esteban-Echeverria_0_561543993.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one big newspaper&lt;/a&gt; published the following photo, allegedly taken just before the explosion:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6bwUp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;red lights&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the photo seems somehow strange to me. Is there a way test whether it is fake?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The photograph &quot;was taken&quot; with a cell phone:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Aygg.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;red lights on a cell phone&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of local media coverage:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1409604-celestial-o-terrestre-el-fenomeno-altero-el-barrio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diario La Nación&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/sociedad/3-177660-2011-09-27.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diario Página12&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clarin.com/ciudades/vivienda-exploto-Esteban-Echeverria_0_561543993.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diario Clarín&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1765" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2011-09-28T20:46:25.047" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T20:46:25.047" Title="Did a meteorite strike cause an explosion and major damage in Argentina in September 2011?" Tags="|natural-disasters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6355" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-27T07:48:20.077" Score="6" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen statements like this in various places: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Such and such accounts for X percent of so and so&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. But it's not always clear what this means, how it is calculated or proven. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will see this a lot, in particular, on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.23andme.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;23andme.com&lt;/a&gt;, in your genetic report. If I'm 5' 11&quot;, and my genetics &quot;accounts for 4%&quot; of that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can one's genetics account for x% of their weight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4327" LastEditorUserId="3068" LastEditDate="2011-09-27T17:38:57.297" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T09:51:46.220" Title="Can one's genetics account for x% of their weight?" Tags="|genetics|weight-loss|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2241" CreationDate="2011-09-27T08:58:07.163" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this TED talk by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/speakers/richard_sears.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Richard Sears&lt;/a&gt; - an ex-Shell employee so there may be some bias - there has been one Peak Oil in the 1980s. Oil use - as a percentage of total energy consumption - is and has been in decline according to the speaker, representing just 35% of energy use in the world (where it was 50% in the 1980s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here's a little snapshot of 150 years of oil. And it's been a dominant part of our energy system for most of those 150 years. Now, here's another little secret I'm going to tell you about. For the last 25 years, oil has been playing less and less of a role in global energy systems. &lt;strong&gt;There was one kind of peak oil in 1985, when oil represented 50 percent of global energy supply. Now, it's about 35 percent.&lt;/strong&gt; It's been declining, and I believe it will continue to decline. Gasoline consumption in the U.S. probably peaked in 2007 and is declining. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a quite nice (albeit blindly optimistic) summary quote from the speech:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The stone age didn't finish because we ran out of stones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_sears_planning_for_the_end_of_oil.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_sears_planning_for_the_end_of_oil.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a useful oil production graph &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sh62s.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sh62s.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorUserId="8943" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T14:12:16.917" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T14:12:16.917" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6359" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6360" CreationDate="2011-09-27T10:19:47.280" Score="20" ViewCount="9541" Body="&lt;p&gt;On UK roads, I frequently see cars driving very closely behind larger vehicles, attempting to stay in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slipstream&quot;&gt;slipstream&lt;/a&gt;, reduce drag and thus increase fuel efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the dangers of driving so close, are there any studies which demonstrate that the fuel efficiency savings are real and significant? If so, do they also study the road safety aspects of slipstreaming?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2772" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-09-27T14:05:55.247" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T01:03:44.997" Title="Does driving a car in a lorry's slipstream increase fuel economy?" Tags="|road-vehicles|energy-efficiency|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6359" CreationDate="2011-09-27T12:33:40.337" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;mythbusters found out it can increase fuel efficiency with 40% at 10 feet behind the truck &lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/episode80&quot;&gt;http://mythbustersresults.com/episode80&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Drafting behind a big rig will improve your car’s fuel efficiency.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;confirmed&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To test this myth, the build team procured a car, a big rig, and a&#xA;  device that could measure a car’s fuel efficiency. They then drove the&#xA;  car behind a moving big rig at various distances ranging from 100 to 2&#xA;  feet and measured the amount of fuel the car consumed. The Build Team&#xA;  discovered that the closer the car was to the big rig, the less drag&#xA;  is produced, thus the more fuel saved. At just ten feet, the car&#xA;  managed to increase its fuel efficiency by 40%. Drafting at two feet&#xA;  was slightly lower than the ten foot distance, mainly because Grant&#xA;  had to keep working the car pedal to maintain distance from the truck.&#xA;  However, that did not dispute the fact that drafting actually can&#xA;  increase your car’s fuel efficiency. However, the Build Team has&#xA;  warned that drafting is incredibly dangerous because the truck driver&#xA;  may not able to see you and you may not be able to react in time if&#xA;  the truck were to make a sudden stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the only video I was able to find was a 240p here you can see the full table &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lttgT1XZVvE&amp;amp;feature=player_detailpage#t=534s&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lttgT1XZVvE&amp;amp;feature=player_detailpage#t=534s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you can see that the economy starts at 100 feet with 11% saving over the control than as you get closer the economy increases up to 40% at 10 feet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3508" LastActivityDate="2011-09-27T12:33:40.337" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6353" CreationDate="2011-09-27T13:37:46.707" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The media coverage you link has clear answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1409604-celestial-o-terrestre-el-fenomeno-altero-el-barrio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;La Nación&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Un chico del barrio que afirmaba haber retratado el fenómeno desde el&#xA;  patio de su casa. &lt;strong&gt;Todo era falso. Por la tarde, el joven fue detenido&#xA;  por falso testimonio.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which translates to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A neighborhood boy who claimed to have photographed the phenomenon&#xA;  from the backyard. &lt;strong&gt;Everything was fake. This afternoon, the young&#xA;  man was arrested for perjury.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clarin.com/ciudades/vivienda-exploto-Esteban-Echeverria_0_561543993.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clarín&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lo primero que encontraron es un horno pizzero y garrafas, por lo que&#xA;  están siguiendo la hipótesis de que &lt;strong&gt;la explosión posiblemente fue&#xA;  por escape de gas&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which translates to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first thing found was a pizza oven and gas tanks, so they are&#xA;  following hypothesis that &lt;strong&gt;the explosion was probably due to gas&#xA;  leak&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yet another one, by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/ultimas_noticias/2011/09/110927_ulnot_argentina_explosion_fuego_horno_pizza.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Según las autoridades de la municipalidad bonaerense, habría sido una&#xA;  fuga de gas en un horno de pizzas lo que inició la explosión, que&#xA;  también destruyó varias viviendas. El intendente de la municipalidad,&#xA;  Fernando Gray, dijo que se estaban precisando aún varias hipótesis,&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;pero descartó que se tratase de la caída de un meteorito&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the Buenos Aires municipal authorities would have been a&#xA;  gas leak in a pizza oven that initiated the explosion, which also&#xA;  destroyed several houses. The mayor of the municipality, Fernando&#xA;  Gray, said they were still considering several hypotheses, &lt;strong&gt;but ruled&#xA;  out falling meteorite&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-09-27T14:07:12.257" LastActivityDate="2011-09-27T14:07:12.257" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6363" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6370" CreationDate="2011-09-27T14:23:55.430" Score="15" ViewCount="1682" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/men-want-more-testosterone-the-world-needs-less/article2180804/&quot;&gt;Men want more testosterone, the world needs less&lt;/a&gt; in the Globe and Mail on Sep. 27, 2011,  Margaret Wente states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perhaps you’ve noticed that not a single woman was involved with the reckless speculation that led to the debacle of 2008, and to the European banking crisis of today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think, to be clear, that &quot;involved&quot; ought to be limited to those who were making decisions that could have contributed to – or averted – the 2008 financial crisis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some time ago I read &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Devils_Are_Here&quot;&gt;All the Devils are Here&lt;/a&gt;, which I thought was an excellent piece on the topic, and though I recall women being involved in the crisis I cannot recall who it was or to what extent they may have been involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that not a single woman was involved in the speculation leading to the 2008 financial crisis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:17:38.077" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:17:38.077" Title="Were any women involved in the 2008 financial crisis?" Tags="|history|gender|commerce|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6355" CreationDate="2011-09-27T14:26:41.970" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If I understand the question correctly, you are not asking for what the percentage heritability is, but whether it is valid to assign a percentage at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In situations like height, there is clearly a genetic factor (tall parents tend to have tall children) and an environmental factor (well-nourished generations tend to be taller than poorly-nourished generations). Weight has an even stronger environmental factor (as short-term weight-loss due to diets clearly shows).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cases such as weight and height, while it may not be possible to predict the exact measure from genes alone, it is possible to account for a large part of the &lt;em&gt;variability&lt;/em&gt;. So, &lt;strong&gt;yes, there are valid statistical techniques to establish what percentage of the variability can be accounted for by a single factor&lt;/strong&gt; (or group of factors) like genetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I provide as evidence for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2184093&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Estimation of Individual Genetic and&#xA;Environmental Factor Scores&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Boomsma DI, Molenaar PC, Orlebeke JF., Genet Epidemiol. 1990;7(1):83-91 [&lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.74.4485&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;] - a paper discussing the statistical techniques used.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://physiolgenomics.physiology.org/content/36/2/114.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Genetic factors contributing to obesity and body weight can act through mechanisms affecting muscle weight, fat weight, or both&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Gudrun A. Brockmann, Shirng-Wern Tsaih, Christina Neuschl, Gary A. Churchill, and Renhua Li, Physiol. Genomics January 2009 vol. 36 no. 2 114-126, doi: 10.​1152/​physiolgenomics.​90277.​2008 - An example of a paper using such techniques.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-09-27T14:26:41.970" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4740" CreationDate="2011-09-27T14:44:14.233" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm just adding one more source to the mix:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.delijn.be/over/milieu/co2_uitstoot_verkeer.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.delijn.be/over/milieu/co2_uitstoot_verkeer.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is in dutch, but some highlights:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;avg traffic: 118 g/km &#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bus (14 persons): 85 g/km &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tram (23 persons): 23 g/km (nuclear power)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;train :28g/km&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But do these numbers mean that adding new trams and trains will lower CO2 usage? Not necessarily:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;new lines may be less occupied&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people do change their behaviour when more transportation possibilities are present. Eg people start taking jobs further away if good train lines are there. See eg people moving to Lille which work in London: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.standard.co.uk/news/la-grande-commute-6842603.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.standard.co.uk/news/la-grande-commute-6842603.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastEditorUserId="1735" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T08:08:42.907" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T08:08:42.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6366" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6363" CreationDate="2011-09-27T17:14:46.297" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsha_J._Evans&quot;&gt;Marsha Evans&lt;/a&gt; was &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.forbes.com/profile/marsha-j-evans/42090&quot;&gt;on the board of directors&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehman_Brothers&quot;&gt;Lehman Brothers&lt;/a&gt; from 2006 until &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_of_Lehman_Brothers&quot;&gt;its bankruptcy in 2008&lt;/a&gt; at the start of the financial crisis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastActivityDate="2011-09-27T17:14:46.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6368" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-27T19:07:01.833" Score="4" ViewCount="204" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/569/do-mobile-phones-have-anything-to-do-with-brain-cancer&quot;&gt;Do mobile phones have anything to do with brain cancer?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today we had a seminar about wireless technologies and were told that mobile towers pose serious health hazards. I found this related article on web: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merinews.com/article/mobile-towers-pose-serious-health-hazards/15853828.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.merinews.com/article/mobile-towers-pose-serious-health-hazards/15853828.shtml&lt;/a&gt;. Is there any truth in this claim? Has it been scientifically proven?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4929" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T01:30:02.353" Title="Mobile towers pose serious hazards?" Tags="|environmental-health|mobile-phones|microwaves|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2011-09-27T21:18:49.480" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6363" CreationDate="2011-09-27T19:36:03.623" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-09-12/former-lehman-cfo-erin-callans-never-going-back&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Erin Callan&lt;/a&gt; was the Chief Financial Officer of Lehman Bros. until July 2008, when she moved to Credit Suisse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4930" LastEditorUserId="4930" LastEditDate="2016-02-10T05:32:25.570" LastActivityDate="2016-02-10T05:32:25.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6372" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6373" CreationDate="2011-09-27T23:00:29.363" Score="15" ViewCount="2187" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has there ever been a software program that has been shown to have an in-bad-faith &quot;backdoor&quot; allowing privileged access? When I say &quot;in bad faith&quot; I mean, &quot;that cannot be credibly explained by incompetence.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sdtimes.com&quot;&gt;SD Times&lt;/a&gt;, we received a letter today that included the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many developers and organizations include flaws quite consciously to allow government intelligence and law enforcement as well as other purported stakeholders (usually copyright and software-patent vigilantes) multiple layers of to access end-user systems. In a community propagandized to believe it is incapable in standard cases of producing functional products without potentially catastrophic defects, &quot;bugs&quot; provide ready deniability and misdirection on the uncomfortable subject of backdoors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not talking about extra admin accounts or developer-known-but-uncorrected SQL injection or buffer overflow vulnerabilities or logfiles that record sensitive data (all of which are certainly problems and &lt;strong&gt;might&lt;/strong&gt; be maliciously placed); I'm talking about an obscure codepath that is triggered by up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-b-a-start or somesuch (and which, unlike a videogame cheat code, is unknown to the application's producer). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I am certain that bad actors &lt;strong&gt;exploit&lt;/strong&gt; vulnerabilities, are there cases where it's certain that the vulnerability was intentionally introduced? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2018-08-23T11:28:31.290" Title="Have &quot;backdoors&quot; in software programs been seen in the real world?" Tags="|computers|security|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6372" CreationDate="2011-09-28T01:12:58.753" Score="21" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Are Lawful Interception Features considered &quot;flaws&quot; or &quot;backdoors&quot;?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many developers and organizations include flaws quite consciously to allow government intelligence and law enforcement as well as other purported stakeholders (usually copyright and software-patent vigilantes) multiple layers of to access end-user systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a misclassification here. To describe deliberate law-enforcement features, openly developed to meet legally-imposed requirements, as &quot;flaws&quot; does a disservice to the developers involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United States, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act_of_1994&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994&lt;/a&gt; legally requires  telecommunication carriers, manufacturers of telecommunications transmission or switching equipment and providers of telecommunications support services to co-operate with lawful interception of communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any such requirements can only increase the &quot;surface area&quot; involved for vulnerabilities, but it is cynical to assume that they are necessarily exploited in all cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Have there been any deliberate backdoors?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there have been plenty of instances of deliberate backdoors discovered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.veracode.com/images/stories/static-detection-of-backdoors-1.0.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Static Detection of Application Backdoors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, Chris Wysopal, Chris Eng, Veracode, Inc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Borland Interbase 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 was discovered to have a special credential backdoor in 2001 shortly after the software was open sourced. The special credentials, username “politically” and password “correct”, were inserted into the credential table at program startup. The support for user defined functions in the software equated this backdoor access with system access. The backdoor went undetected for seven years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.securityfocus.com/news/7388&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Attempted backdoor into Linux discovered&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.somethinkodd.com/oddthinking/2008/12/09/hal-bbs-backdoors/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Backdoor(s) in HAL BBS for the Commodore 64&lt;/a&gt; (Caution: self-citing.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;GSM Network encryption  deliberately easy to break [Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;https://lwn.net/Articles/368861/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cs.technion.ac.il/users/wwwb/cgi-bin/tr-info.cgi?2003/CS/CS-2003-05&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;] All of this is apart from the fact that, once out of air, most telephony networks even work without encryption. See, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.crypto.com/blog/wiretap2010/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this report on wiretapping&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since 2002, the annual wiretap report has included a curious statistic: the number of times law enforcement encountered encryption on an authorized tap, along with the number of times that this prevented them from getting the evidence they were seeking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But not so fast: the latest wiretap report identifies a total of just six (out of 3194) cases in which encryption was encountered, and that prevented recovery of evidence a grand total of ... (drumroll) ... zero times. Not once. Previous wiretap reports have indicated similarly minuscule numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Routers seem to have lots of them, both &lt;a href=&quot;https://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/20941/hacking/netgear-linkys-routers-backdoor.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;home routers&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cisco-backdoor-hardcoded-accounts-software,37480.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;enterprise routers&lt;/a&gt;. They appear to be a favourite amongst intelligence agencies because a compromised router is a gateway into the traffic on an internal trusted network, which is often not encrypted. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2016/04/details_about_j.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Juniper Firewall back door&lt;/a&gt; was particularly sinister because it involved the choice of &quot;Q&quot; value in an encryption scheme promoted by the NSA. In effect Q is a secret key for the entire encryption scheme, so to exploit it you would also need the ability to intercept the encrypted traffic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Please add any additional examples here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If your answer is merely another example of a backdoor, please add it to this answer rather than hiding other approaches in the noise. This answer has been marked Community Wiki; I am not getting any reputation for it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="30819" LastEditDate="2018-08-23T11:28:31.290" LastActivityDate="2018-08-23T11:28:31.290" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-09-29T01:54:27.927" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6375" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6397" CreationDate="2011-09-28T06:28:22.440" Score="7" ViewCount="4513" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every time a doctor gives you antibiotics, they ask you to finish all of them, even if you might feel fine after taking only part of the package. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most searches on Google says that if I don't finish them, the bacteria will become immune to the antibiotic. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1321" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-09-29T05:35:21.573" LastActivityDate="2011-09-29T16:52:32.627" Title="Do bacteria become immune to antibiotics if you don't complete your course of them?" Tags="|evolution|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6377" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6384" CreationDate="2011-09-28T09:16:03.583" Score="25" ViewCount="3273" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.viewzone.com/expandox.html&quot;&gt;This article on Viewzone&lt;/a&gt; proposes that the Earth used to be smaller, and the existing continents fitted neatly together, covering the entire globe with land. As the Earth expanded, the oceans formed, pushing the continents apart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shortly after Wegener's continental drift theory was introduced, many people tried to piece together the continents. Some pieces (like South America and Africa) were an obvious fit, but others did not fit together because of the belief that a vast ocean had to be accommodated in the models. Sam Carey, an Australian, dared to solve the puzzle without an ocean and found that the continents fit together perfectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is also presented as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kL7qDeI05U&amp;amp;feature=player_embedded&quot;&gt;neat animation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article goes on to claim that the center of the Earth is formed of plasma, and that gravity has increased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this idea supported by the evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4936" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-07T13:42:14.513" LastActivityDate="2018-10-12T13:23:11.247" Title="Was the Earth originally smaller and ocean-free?" Tags="|geology|earth|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6372" CreationDate="2011-09-28T09:24:19.093" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most infamous case was &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/12/fbi-accused-of-planting-backdoor-in-openbsd-ipsec-stack.ars&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;alleged FBI's backdoor in OpenBSD's IPSEC stack.&lt;/a&gt; However, it was never proven beyond doubt, that it actually existed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-09-28T12:51:35.493" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T12:51:35.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6355" CreationDate="2011-09-28T09:51:46.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;“&lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; is a gene for &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;” is a shortcut used by scientists when they actually mean to say “gene &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; modifies the expression of &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;all other things being equal&lt;/em&gt;.” [1]&#xA;In particular, it means that an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allele&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;allele&lt;/a&gt; of gene &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; influences &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; compared to another allele of the same gene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that if you hear “gene &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; accounts for x% of trait &lt;em&gt;T&lt;/em&gt;” then what is really meant is that “gene &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; accounts for x% of the &lt;em&gt;difference&lt;/em&gt; in expression of trait &lt;em&gt;T&lt;/em&gt;, all other things being equal”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip side, this means that if x% of some trait are determined by genes then the rest of the variability comes from outside factors, such as nutrition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1]: see for example Richard Dawkins, &lt;em&gt;The Selfish Gene&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T09:51:46.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6381" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6383" CreationDate="2011-09-28T13:03:35.587" Score="3" ViewCount="2612" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been looking for some concrete study about the performance changes during sports when drinking water or a sports drink &lt;strong&gt;while&lt;/strong&gt; doing the sport. Not after, not before. &lt;strong&gt;While&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;during&lt;/strong&gt;, if you prefer the wording. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found some studies that can be influenced by large sports drinks conglomerates such as Gatorade or Powerade. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vanderbilt.edu/ans/psychology/health_psychology/gatorade.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is an example of one such studies that makes too many references to the &quot;scientific&quot; division of Gatorade, which I have difficulties accepting since it is not an independent study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gssiweb.com/Article_Detail.aspx?articleID=701&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is the link for the Gatorade research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please keep in mind that the question is about performance improvement not about hydration requirements and recovery. It is evident we need proper levels of hydration and that sports depletes them in a measure that needs to be restored afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4747" LastEditorDisplayName="user4882" LastEditDate="2011-09-28T23:37:14.883" LastActivityDate="2022-07-23T19:10:26.310" Title="Does drinking water (or Sports Drink) improve performance during sports activities?" Tags="|physiology|water|sport|drink|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="315" CreationDate="2011-09-28T13:39:29.003" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of good answers here already but nobody seems to have mentioned the interesting case of &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780080450469003132&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Transcranial Magnetic Simulation (TMS)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; which provides a direct answer to the original questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since nerve signals are partially transmitted by electrical currents, they both create and can be manipulated by the right electromagnetic fields. As the summary of the Encyclopedia of Neuroscience entry says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TMS represents a noninvasive method to induce electrical currents within the brain that in turn can be used to transiently disrupt the function of a targeted brain area, functionally map cortical areas, assess cortical excitability, and modulate cortical activity. TMS is being widely used to investigate complex facets of the human brain, including sensory and motor function as well as cognition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to the question is yes organisms do have EM fields and, yes, they can be influenced by external fields (though it takes a very focussed and specific field to cause anything of note). The idea that crystal healing might make a difference is not rendered more plausible by this observation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2011-09-28T13:39:29.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6381" CreationDate="2011-09-28T13:44:02.773" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not drinking sufficient water will lead to dehydration, especially in endurance sports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you search for dehydration and sports you will find a lot of references, I just give one example which also describes why dehydration is a problem in endurance sports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MURRAY, R. Nutrition for the marathon and other endurance sports: environmental stress and dehydration. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 24, No. 9 Supplement, pp. S319-S323, 1992.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key Points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;During exercise, the body's ability to safely regulate internal&#xA;temperature is influenced by the environment, exercise intensity,&#xA;clothing, and the athlete's level of fitness and acclimation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Effective thermoregulation during exercise in the heat requires&#xA;the evaporation of sweat. The onset of sweating during exercise is&#xA;triggered by an increase in core body temperature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dehydration compromises cardiovascular and thermoregulatory&#xA;function, limits physical work capacity, and increases the risk of&#xA;heat-related health problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Physiological and behavioral adaptations help the body cope with&#xA;the combined demands imposed by exercise and environment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ad libitum fluid intake is insufficient to protect against&#xA;dehydration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/abstract/1992/09001/nutrition_for_the_marathon_and_other_endurance.3.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/abstract/1992/09001/nutrition_for_the_marathon_and_other_endurance.3.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is clear that dehydration leads to worse prestations. See eg this synthetic test:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Abstract/1985/08000/Influence_of_diuretic_induced_dehydration_on.9.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Abstract/1985/08000/Influence_of_diuretic_induced_dehydration_on.9.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, it appears that competitive performance in trials of long&#xA;duration (5,000 and 10,000 m) was affected to a greater extent by D&#xA;than the shorter 1,500-m event, even though submaximal and maximal&#xA;oxygen uptake was not altered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drinking water during an exercise can make sure that you remain hydrated [1] or get rehydrated [2] both improving the performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899900704001029&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]: Science Direct&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For intense prolonged exercise lasting longer than 1 h, athletes should consume between 30 and 60 g/h and drink between 600 and 1200 mL/h of a solution containing carbohydrate and Na+ (0.5 to 0.7 g/L of fluid). Maintaining proper hydration before, during, and after training and&#xA;competition will help reduce fluid loss, maintain performance, lower&#xA;submaximal exercise heart rate, maintain plasma volume, and reduce&#xA;heat stress, heat exhaustion, and possibly heat stroke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00571443&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2] Springer Link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our results demonstrated that the swift replacement of the fluid loss&#xA;in the dehydrated subjects was beneficial to exercise performance by&#xA;rapidly correcting the disturbances in body fluid balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1735" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-07-23T19:10:26.310" LastActivityDate="2022-07-23T19:10:26.310" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6377" CreationDate="2011-09-28T13:56:02.920" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most consequences of this theory are consistent with those predicted by the plate model -- the remaining ones are gravity acceleration on the surface (&lt;em&gt;g&lt;/em&gt;) changes and actual measurements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is hard to judge since the expanding Earth community cannot decide on one version -- some postulate that the matter is in some magical way created inside the planet and thus &lt;em&gt;g&lt;/em&gt; increases with time (which is consistent with giraffes being smaller than dinosaurs, but is a total nonsense from a view of physics), some try to rescue physics saying that Earth just used to be much more dense -- yet this makes &lt;em&gt;g&lt;/em&gt; actually decrease, what invalidates this &amp;quot;biological proof&amp;quot;. Finally some claim that the gravitational constant increases with time to counteract this, but this is even less probable than a spontaneous mass creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About measurements, there were some works in which authors were summing up some current and archival measurements around some contour placed on Earth to imply that it is growing -- however this was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL047450.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;verified using state-of-art measuring techniques and was invalidated&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are obviously many more proofs that this idea is wrong, as listed by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_Earth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page for 'Expanding Earth'&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theory had never developed a plausible and verifiable mechanism of action, but neither had any of its competing theories.[&lt;a href=&quot;http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20091122x2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;] By the late 1970s the theory of plate tectonics made all other theories obsolete following the discovery of subduction, which was found to be an important part of a mechanism of action.[&lt;a href=&quot;http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fl20091122x2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, the scientific community finds that there is &lt;strong&gt;no evidence in support&lt;/strong&gt; of the Expanding Earth theory, and there is &lt;strong&gt;evidence against it&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Measurements with modern high-precision geodetic techniques show that &lt;strong&gt;the Earth is not currently increasing in size&lt;/strong&gt; to within a measurement accuracy of 0.2 mm per year.[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2011/2011GL047450.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;14&lt;/a&gt;] The lead author of the study stated &amp;quot;Our study provides an independent confirmation that the solid Earth is not getting larger at present, within current measurement uncertainties&amp;quot;.[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110817120527.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;15&lt;/a&gt;] The motions of tectonic plates and subduction zones measured by a large range of geological, geodetic and geophysical techniques supports plate tectonics.[&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanding_Earth#cite_note-15&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;16&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.2138%2Fam.2005.1718&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;17&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1038%2F386266a0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;18&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mass accretion on a scale required to change the Earth's radius is contradicted&lt;/strong&gt; by the current accretion rate of the Earth, and by the Earth's average internal temperature: any accretion releases a lot of energy, which would warm the planet's interior. Expanding Earth models based on thermal expansion contradict most modern principles from rheology, and fail to provide an acceptable explanation for the proposed melting and phase transitions. The value of &lt;em&gt;g&lt;/em&gt; (the Earth's gravitational attraction) is known and would change considerably with any such gains in the Earth's mass or volume, along with the Earths orbit around the Sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Paleomagnetic data has been used to calculate that the &lt;strong&gt;radius of the Earth 400 million years ago was 102 ± 2.8% of today's radius&lt;/strong&gt;.[&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1038%2F271316a0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;19&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1365-246X.1980.tb04306.x&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;20&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Examinations of data from the Paleozoic and Earth's moment of inertia suggest that there has been &lt;strong&gt;no significant change of earth's radius in the last 620 million years&lt;/strong&gt;.[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eos.ubc.ca/%7Emjelline/453website/eosc453/E_prints/1999RG900016.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;21&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-06T13:54:12.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6386" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6399" CreationDate="2011-09-28T14:49:20.857" Score="23" ViewCount="2735" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a followup to the comments in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6372/have-backdoors-in-software-programs-been-seen-in-the-real-world&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;. Thanks to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/23/oddthinking&quot;&gt;Oddthinking&lt;/a&gt; for bringing up the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ken Thompson&lt;/a&gt; gave a famous speech upon receiving an award titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Reflections on Trusting Trust&quot;&lt;/a&gt; In the speech, he described inserting an almost impossible to detect trojan horse in the C compiler and the login command.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the paper is written as if the whole thing was a &lt;em&gt;gedanken experiment&lt;/em&gt;, there is little doubt (I think) that Ken really implemented the artifact. In his own words n that paper: &quot;I would like to present to you the cutest program I ever wrote&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, there are a lot of sources and folklore in the Internet suggesting that the thing was not only written, but also distributed. Is there any statement made by the author explicitly denying (or accepting!) that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1765" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-11-24T19:05:53.443" Title="Was the C compiler trojan horse written by Ken Thompson ever distributed?" Tags="|computers|security|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6389" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-28T21:17:37.537" Score="9" ViewCount="428" Body="&lt;p&gt;Medical professionals are one of the most trusted groups in society. So we tend to trust them to do a good job without asking too many questions. So when a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0810119&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; showed that the simple application of surgical checklists could lead to a 36% reduction in complications and a 47% reduction in mortality not &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c915.full?sid=722ddad8-cb0c-4454-949e-b5b806cd7613&quot;&gt;everyone believed the results&lt;/a&gt; (original BMJ report &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.b220.full?sid=722ddad8-cb0c-4454-949e-b5b806cd7613#responses&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) with one critic commenting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Little evidence exists for Gawande’s proposal that the WHO checklist is appropriate for modern Western surgical practice. The original article, which showed small overall improvements in outcomes, included Third World hospitals where safety parameters improved from levels unthinkable in European or American practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the original work was led by respected writer and medic Atul Gawande and later expanded into a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Checklist-Manifesto-How-Things-Right/dp/1846683149/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1317244435&amp;amp;sr=8-1&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; which also tried to explain why checklists work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question which deserves some applied skepticism is: given how professional we expect medics to be, do we believe something so simple as a pre-surgery checklist could lead to a significant improvement in outcomes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2011-10-01T15:28:54.843" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T03:58:18.660" Title="Do simple checklists applied in operating theatres significantly reduce the rates of complication and death from surgery?" Tags="|medical-science|surgery|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6390" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7861" CreationDate="2011-09-28T21:41:57.280" Score="20" ViewCount="16803" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/2044/what-type-of-mosquito-repellent-is-most-effective/2490#2490&quot;&gt;a question on Travel.SE&lt;/a&gt;, a user claimed that Vitamin B12, taken regularly, can be an effective mosquito repellent. Is there any evidence behind this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4876" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:01.993" LastActivityDate="2019-08-02T10:14:33.387" Title="Is Vitamin B12 an effective mosquito repellent?" Tags="|entomology|vitamins|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6392" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-28T23:28:23.140" Score="3" ViewCount="766" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often listen people saying that this battery's first charge has to be in 24 hours, others says at least 8 hours...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have some doubts...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it true that the first charge has to last 24 hours?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it need to be charged continuously? (Can I charge for 2 hours, use 3 and charge again?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4943" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T22:59:08.273" Title="Charging Lithium-Ion batteries" Tags="|battery|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6394" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-29T09:13:47.573" Score="2" ViewCount="195" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2829/is-refilling-water-bottles-bad-for-you&quot;&gt;Is refilling water bottles bad for you?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true that we should reuse plastic bottle too long (refilling it as a gourde at the office for instance), because the plastic will free some chemical stuff into the water ? It's preferable to use glass bottle ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="873" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-09-29T09:13:47.573" Title="Don't use plastic bottle too often or too long?" Tags="|drinks|recycling|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2011-09-29T09:48:32.327" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6217" CreationDate="2011-09-29T09:35:13.513" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some cases (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.product-reviews.net/2010/09/28/dpf-filter-problems-jaguar-audi-ford-vw-and-more/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=dpf+issues&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.removemydpf.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;) it's true for cars with diesel engines with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_particulate_filter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;diesel particulate filter (DPF)&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/fuels-and-environment/diesel-particulate-filters.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DPF has to be regenerated (cleaned) now and then&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;How do they work?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Diesel Particulate filters (DPF) or 'traps' do just that, they&#xA;  catch bits of soot in the exhaust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As with any filter (think of the bag in your vacuum cleaner) they have&#xA;  to be emptied regularly to maintain performance. For a DPF this&#xA;  process is called 'regeneration' – the collected soot is burnt off at&#xA;  high temperature to leave only a tiny ash residue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regeneration may be either passive or active.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Passive regeneration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Passive regeneration takes place automatically on&#xA;  motorway-type runs when the exhaust temperature is high. Because many&#xA;  cars don't get this sort of use car manufacturers have to design-in&#xA;  'active' regeneration where the engine management computer (ECU) takes&#xA;  control of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Active regeneration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the soot loading in the filter reaches a set&#xA;  limit (about 45%) the ECU can make small adjustments to the fuel&#xA;  injection timing to increase the exhaust temperature and initiate&#xA;  regeneration. If the journey is a bit stop/start the regeneration may&#xA;  not complete and the warning light will come on to show that the&#xA;  filter is partially blocked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It should be possible to start a complete regeneration and clear the&#xA;  warning light by driving for 10 minutes or so at speeds greater than&#xA;  40mph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;So, &quot;old-person-driving&quot; such a car (short distances, low speed) can cause &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.product-reviews.net/2010/09/28/dpf-filter-problems-jaguar-audi-ford-vw-and-more/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;serious problems&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;people using their vehicle for short stop start journeys are suffering with fault lights appearing, and in some cases the vehicle going into what is called “limp home mode” &lt;strong&gt;restricting the performance dramatically&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/fuels-and-environment/diesel-particulate-filters.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Automobile Association advises:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Occasional harder driving&lt;/strong&gt; in lower gears should be sufficient to burn off the soot in such cases.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you're buying a new car and plan to use it mainly for town-based, stop/start driving it would be wise to avoid a diesel car fitted with a Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4447" LastEditorUserId="4447" LastEditDate="2011-09-29T09:51:05.903" LastActivityDate="2011-09-29T09:51:05.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="398" CreationDate="2011-09-29T12:26:13.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Paul Jaminet of &lt;a href=&quot;http://perfecthealthdiet.com/?p=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Perfect Health Diet&lt;/a&gt; did a good review of some current science in &lt;a href=&quot;http://perfecthealthdiet.com/?p=636&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fighting Viral Infections by Vitamin C at Bowel Tolerance&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting bit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recall that in animals, vitamin C synthesis rises as much as 100-fold under disease. In humans, the limit of bowel tolerance rises up to 20-fold during illness. This suggests that bowel tolerance limit is an indicator of need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on Cathcart’s testimony, thousands of patients with infectious diseases have benefited from high-dose vitamin C. Although mechanisms are not well understood, vitamin C probably helps along multiple pathways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A well-tested therapeutic strategy would be to take 4 g vitamin C every hour with water until bowel intolerance is reached. The therapy is extremely safe, and its effectiveness is usually apparent within days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given its safety and the ease of testing its effectiveness, why shouldn’t every seriously ill person try this therapeutic strategy? Is there any good reason NOT to try it for at least a few days to see if it has an effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only recent studies he references are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[9] Furuya A et al. Antiviral effects of ascorbic and dehydroascorbic acids in vitro. Int J Mol Med. 2008 Oct;22(4):541-5. &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmid.us/18813862&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://pmid.us/18813862&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[10] Riordan HD et al. A pilot clinical study of continuous intravenous ascorbate in terminal cancer patients. P R Health Sci J. 2005 Dec;24(4):269-76. &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmid.us/16570523&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://pmid.us/16570523&lt;/a&gt;. Hoffer LJ et al. Phase I clinical trial of i.v. ascorbic acid in advanced malignancy. Ann Oncol. 2008 Nov;19(11):1969-74. &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmid.us/18544557&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://pmid.us/18544557&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on to say in the comments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on Cathcart’s work I rather like the idea of bowel intolerance telling me when I might be taking too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of C, our advice is more precautionary. Deficiency is tremendously harmful, but excess is virtually harmless. In trials, the benefit may be non-existent for 95%, but 5% may see big benefits and 0% harm. In trials the 95% dilute the benefits to the 5% out of statistical significance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4689" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-09-29T12:26:13.597" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6375" CreationDate="2011-09-29T13:30:26.653" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doctors do always tell you to finish your course of antibiotics, even if you feel better. The reason for this is that you feel better before all the bacteria are killed within you body. If you stop the treatment early, the bacteria will start to grow again and the infection will recur. It is also likely that the second attack will consist of bacteria with more immunity to the antibiotic (the ones without any resistance were killed, right?) and so will be worse. However there are other reasons apart from the immunity issue. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ivillage.com/it-really-important-finish-antibiotics/6-n-146421&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a good article on the subject. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neli.org.uk/arfaqs.nsf/all/538166F256EC45B980257169004FFE8C?OpenDocument&quot;&gt;And another&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/background_briefings/antibiotics/163910.stm&quot;&gt;And another&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/drugs/resourcesforyou/consumers/ucm143568.htm&quot;&gt;And another&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other factors also contribute to the rise of antibiotic-immune bacteria, including the overuse of antibiotics for minor illnesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You edited to ask if bacteria &quot;become immune&quot; to the antibiotics. Its not clear what you mean by &quot;become immune&quot; but the answer is still probably &quot;yes&quot;. The second wave attack by resistant bacteria is due to two effect.  Selection is the primary one. Some of the bacteria in the infection are more resistant to your prescribed antibiotic than others. A partial course removes the bacteria that have low resistance and leaves those with high resistance, which form the 'second wave' infection that results from stopping the course early. In that case those bacteria are not &quot;becoming resistant&quot;, it's just that the resistant ones predominate. However it is also true that mutations can and do occur, and this can result in bacteria that previously had low resistance becoming highly resistant. In that sense bacteria sometimes are &quot;becoming resistant&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://aac.asm.org/cgi/content/full/44/7/1771&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; gives more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-09-29T16:52:32.627" LastActivityDate="2011-09-29T16:52:32.627" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6389" CreationDate="2011-09-29T14:06:26.780" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is hard to determine what the percentages quoted in your question are referring to without a cite, but a quick search yields this: ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa021721&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa021721&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Risk Factors for Retained Instruments and Sponges after Surgery&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Patients with retained foreign bodies were more likely than controls to have had emergency surgery (33 percent vs. 7 percent, P&amp;lt;0.001) or an unexpected change in surgical procedure (34 percent vs. 9 percent, P&amp;lt;0.001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is certainly one area where a checklist procedure can have a large effect. I do not have any information regarding what proportion of complications are related to this particular type of incident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="482" LastActivityDate="2011-09-29T14:06:26.780" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6386" CreationDate="2011-09-29T17:26:00.653" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Ken Thompson, he built the compiler that did this, and never distributed it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;From: Ken Thompson &amp;lt;ken@google.com&amp;gt;&#xA;Date: Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 6:27 PM&#xA;Subject: Re: Was compiler from &quot;Reflections&quot; ever built or distributed?&#xA;To: Ezra Lalonde &amp;lt;ezra@usefuliftrue.com&amp;gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;build and not distributed.&#xA;&#xA;On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 11:35 AM, Ezra Lalonde &amp;lt;ezra@usefuliftrue.com&amp;gt; wrote:&#xA;&amp;gt; Hi Ken,&#xA;&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;gt; I've seen various sources on the internet claiming that the &quot;trojan horse&quot;&#xA;&amp;gt; compiler you mentioned in your talk &quot;Reflections on Trusting Trust&quot; was&#xA;&amp;gt; actually built, and some further claiming that it was distributed.&#xA;&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;gt; I'd like to know if these claims are valid.&#xA;&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;gt; Thanks for your time.&#xA;&amp;gt;&#xA;&amp;gt; Cheers,&#xA;&amp;gt; Ezra Lalonde&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="279" LastActivityDate="2011-09-29T17:26:00.653" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6402" CreationDate="2011-09-29T20:59:16.513" Score="20" ViewCount="4645" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://dirtyspendingsecrets.com/&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;Washington is spending $2.6 million training Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly on the job.&quot; Is this true, and, if so, what program are they referencing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4876" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-01-12T12:44:06.160" LastActivityDate="2012-01-12T12:44:06.160" Title="Did the US government spend millions of dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly?" Tags="|united-states|government|alcohol|china|prostitution|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6401" CreationDate="2011-09-29T21:46:53.753" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;[T]raining...to drink more responsibly,&quot; is not an accurate summary of the grant's use, as the summary does not include the central topic of the grant, which was the study of and mitigation of AIDS transmission. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. Li’s project will develop, implement and evaluate a venue-based alcohol and HIV risk reduction intervention center for establishment-based female sex workers in Guangxi, China. &quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://prognosis.med.wayne.edu/article/grant-allows-research-to-study-link-between-alcohol-abuse-and-spread-of-hiv&quot;&gt;http://prognosis.med.wayne.edu/article/grant-allows-research-to-study-link-between-alcohol-abuse-and-spread-of-hiv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2011-10-03T19:02:39.673" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T19:02:39.673" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6254" CreationDate="2011-09-29T23:01:56.063" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is easy to see patterns in noisy data, but there is no evidence that such patterns make useful predictions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Business cycles exist and that seems to be a fundamental property of complex systems like the world economy (as argued by Paul Ormerod in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Butterfly-Economics-General-Economic-Behaviour/dp/0571197264/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1317335029&amp;amp;sr=1-3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Butterfly Economics&lt;/a&gt;). But the cycles are not regular enough to be useful for predictions as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/BusinessCycles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this review&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many ways, the term “business cycle” is misleading. “Cycle” seems to imply that there is some regularity in the timing and duration of upswings and downswings in economic activity. Most economists, however, do not think there is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this is the fundamental problem with most of the supposed evidence about K-waves: the analyses are all about fitting historic data to the supposed pattern not about making reliable and bold predictions about the future. We have had plenty of time for those predictions to be made and for the predictions to be tested and yet the believers are still adjusting the theory to make it fit history rather than making useful predictions about the future. Spectral analysis as reported in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/9jv108xp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/9jv108xp&lt;/a&gt; (mentioned in another answer) isn't much use for predicting and will tend to find more patterns than exist in noisy data. Even that analysis doesn't think k-waves explain more than 5% of the variation, which isn't much help in a forecast especially when you also take into account the vagueness of the actual cycle length (which visually looks anything between perhaps 45 and 60 years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commenting on some of the original predictions by Kondratiev himself one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard44.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;critic&lt;/a&gt; notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kondratieff postulated a &amp;quot;long wave&amp;quot; of business that began somewhere in the late 1780s – it is all very murky since there are almost no statistical data for that period – and continues periodically roughly every 54 years. Well, what about the trough points? No question that the late 1930s – a &amp;quot;Kondratieff trough&amp;quot; – was a pretty miserable period. But what about the other three trough periods? What was wrong about the 1780s, for example? No particular depression there. And if we want to be generous and dismiss that &amp;quot;first trough&amp;quot; for lack of data or as only starting the whole thing, what about the alleged second trough? Fifty-four years from 1789 brings us to the &amp;quot;expected&amp;quot; trough year of 1843, a year in which everything was smooth sailing. Let us be generous and bend over backward for the Kondratieffites, and give them their admitted 1849 as the trough year. Even so, 1849 was a perfectly fine economic year, and in no sense whatever comparable to the late 1930s! In 1849, we were in the middle of continuing prosperity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third alleged Kondratieff horror point, or trough year, was 1896. But, again, there was nothing terribly wrong with that year either. Of all the trough years, or even trough zones, the only one that we can really say was bad and depressed was the late 1930s: One out of four!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and later talking about more recent predictions (he wrote in 1984):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the Kondratieffites' problems have only begun. Their real difficulties come after the alleged Kondratieff trough of 1940 – the last trough so far. The entire boom-bust &amp;quot;long&amp;quot; cycle is approximately 54 years in length. Allow a few years here and there. But still: It has already been 44 years since the Kondratieff trough. A 44-year boom! So where's the peak? The peak is getting long overdue. Most of the Kondratieffites confidently predicted that the peak would arrive in 1974, just 54 years after the previous peak. Previous peak-to-peak stretches had been 52 (from 1814 to 1866), and 54 (1866 to 1920). So where indeed is the peak? It is now 1984 and counting. We are ten years past the confident prediction and we still have inflation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a sound reason in human psychology why we keep believing the predictions of these theories: we remember predictions that seem to work and forget the other predictions of the same experts that don't work. So an expert can attract a body of evidence of successful prediction by making a number of alternative forecasts and then, after the event, erase the forecasts that were wrong. This problem is extensively discussed by dan Gardner in his recent book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Future-Babble-Expert-Predictions-Believe/dp/0753522365/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1317337030&amp;amp;sr=1-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Future Babble&lt;/a&gt;, also by William Sherden in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fortune-Sellers-Business-Selling-Predictions/dp/0471181781/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1317336889&amp;amp;sr=1-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Fortune Sellers&lt;/a&gt; and by Nicholas Taleb in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance-Markets/dp/0141031484/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1317337059&amp;amp;sr=1-3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fooled By Randomness&lt;/a&gt; (all of which should be compulsory reading for all skeptics). Their key message is that it is really easy to be fooled by apparent patterns in noisy historic data, but they are rarely if ever true and even more rarely valuable when trying to make decisions about the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short Kondratiev cycles predict nothing useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-12T23:49:05.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6412" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-09-30T16:03:38.573" Score="3" ViewCount="384" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1678/claimed-similarities-between-jesus-christ-and-horus-and-other-gods&quot;&gt;Claimed similarities between Jesus Christ and Horus and other Gods&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen and read a lot of information about this. Take this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread290806/pg1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; for example, and this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=8&amp;amp;sqi=2&amp;amp;ved=0CHAQtwIwBw&amp;amp;url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-17BNU7L6g&amp;amp;ei=0eaFTpzZKMT30gHL1LT-Dw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNENjxNwyI-X8GGJPFgp7FwHB2PS1A&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the video excerpt is from Zeitgeist (the movie). The Wikipedia article on the movie suggests that Part I (the religious part) is only &quot;half&quot; true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Skeptic magazine's Tim Callahan criticizing the first part of the film&#xA;  (on the origins of Christianity) wrote that &quot;some of what it asserts&#xA;  is true. Unfortunately, this material is liberally — and sloppily —&#xA;  mixed with material that is only partially true and much that is&#xA;  plainly and simply bogus. […] Zeitgeist is The Da Vinci Code on&#xA;  steroids.&quot;[26] Acharya S (aka D.M. Murdock), a source and last-minute&#xA;  consultant on the official version of the film, responded to&#xA;  Callahan's critique in an article on her publishing company's website.&#xA;  She writes that &quot;it is a curious fact that writers who toss around the&#xA;  words 'sloppy', 'garbled' and 'nonsense' are often guilty of these&#xA;  very things themselves&quot; and that Callahan's &quot;declaration that much of&#xA;  the material in ZG is 'plainly and simply bogus' is false.&quot;[27]&#xA;  Callahan responded to Acharya's rebuttal with a counter-rebuttal&#xA;  published in his website's forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How &quot;true&quot; is this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1783" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-09-30T20:52:59.590" Title="Is &quot;Jesus&quot; based on the Egyptian sun god Horus?" Tags="|religion|jesus-christ|egypt|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2011-09-30T19:42:58.953" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="315" CreationDate="2011-09-30T18:09:34.710" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, humans and other organisms do have electromagnetic fields.  Current western medicine often uses machines to measure the electromagnetic waves of various parts of the body in order to determine the health of a patient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocardiography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Electrocardiograms (EKG)&lt;/a&gt; are used to measure a patient's heart.  The animation shows how the ECG wave in the heart is plotted on a strip chart.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/ECG_principle_slow.gif/220px-ECG_principle_slow.gif&quot; alt=&quot;beating heart and strip chart animation&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalogram&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;electroencephalogram (EEG)&lt;/a&gt; is used to measure the electromagnetic fields produced by the neurons in your brain.  Epileptic seizures, for instance, can be measured and plotted.  A sample is provided:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/26/Spike-waves.png/220px-Spike-waves.png&quot; alt=&quot;EEG plot of a patient experiencing an epileptic seizure&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromyogram&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;electromyogram (EMG)&lt;/a&gt; measures the electrical impulses in skeletal muscles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Follow the three links to see a whole host of other similar instruments/procedures used in verified scientific ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:38.473" LastActivityDate="2011-09-30T18:09:34.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6392" CreationDate="2011-09-30T22:48:59.067" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;All sources I found says that the battery is charged when it reaches about V4.0, it does not present memory effects (&amp;quot;memory effect&amp;quot; refers to the phenomenon where the apparent discharge capacity of a battery is reduced when it is repetitivly discharged incompletely and then recharged [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rathboneenergy.com/batteries/battery_cells_by_mfg/panasonic/Pan_LiON_pdfs/Panasonic_LiIon_Overview.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;]).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sources also says that this battery's chemistry allows up to 500 charge cycles, but may reduce as the charge cycles increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also recommended that the temperature when changing/using stays between 0°C ~ 40°C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keeping the battery half charged causes less stress to the battery.[&lt;a href=&quot;http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Battery University: Charging Lithium-Ion Batteries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Battery University: How to prolong Lithium-Ion Based Batteries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.all-battery.com/%5Cdatasheet%5Clipo25AhDatasheet.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;All Battery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.batteryspace.com/prod-specs/3.7V_40Ah_hi_polymer.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Batteryspace&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mobile.datalogic.com/upload/pages/pdf/differentiators/dlm_battery_care_best_practices.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mobile Datalogic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://batteries.sanyo-component.com/fileadmin/EDITORS/ENELOOP/PICTURES/CONSUMER_BATTERIES/NIMH/DATA_sheets/HR-3U_2700_.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Batteries Sanyo-component&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rathboneenergy.com/batteries/battery_cells_by_mfg/panasonic/Pan_LiON_pdfs/Panasonic_LiIon_Overview.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rathbone Energy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-09-30T22:48:59.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6415" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6421" CreationDate="2011-09-30T23:15:16.260" Score="4" ViewCount="11849" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read an e-mail about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;aspartame&lt;/a&gt; in diet soda and how it poisons your system, resulting in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_sclerosis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Multiple Sclerosis&lt;/a&gt; (MS) like symptoms. They claim hundreds have been mis-diagnosed as having MS when really they consumed too much aspartame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there research supporting this? Also, I am curious to know if Diet Coke or other sugar-free drinks have other bad side effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a computer programmer that sits all day, I'm trying to eat and drink fewer calories by drinking sugar-free drinks. If the drawbacks are more than the benefits then we need to stop drinking those drinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: someone replied an answer that had &lt;a href=&quot;http://aspartame.mercola.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-2384105525501310962&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; link in it and then removed the answer. Honestly, I don't trust this kind of sources. They are trying to scare people and sell books. I need scientific resources like studies that printed in a known journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4962" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-05T02:14:29.030" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T09:30:09.740" Title="Can diet drinks cause multiple sclerosis-like symptoms?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|biology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6420" CreationDate="2011-09-30T23:41:14.960" Score="31" ViewCount="3147" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are quite a few studies that confirm this, the most recent one:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onefuriousllama.com/2011/09/11/another-study-links-intelligence-to-lack-of-religiosity/&quot;&gt;http://onefuriousllama.com/2011/09/11/another-study-links-intelligence-to-lack-of-religiosity/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are non-religious people smarter than religious people? If yes, is this a correlation or is there a causal relationship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2636" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T04:12:57.790" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T15:06:37.370" Title="Are non-religious people smarter than religious people?" Tags="|religion|intelligence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2268" CreationDate="2011-09-30T23:59:26.893" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary: decriminalisation clearly doesn't lead to catastrophe, seems to reduce harm and might reduce consumption in some cases&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before attempting a proper answer to the question as asked it is worth making a clarification: the expected benefits of decriminalisation are much broader than just a reduction in &lt;strong&gt;use&lt;/strong&gt; (lower crime and lower policing costs could happen even if consumption increased). Asking whether consumption decreases is a very narrow question compared to asking whether &lt;strong&gt;harm&lt;/strong&gt; as a whole is reduced. I'm sticking with the narrow question here and assuming the broader question might get asked later so other evidence can be brought to bear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth defining what we mean by decriminalisation. I think there is evidence about 3 different models (there are probably others but these cover a broad range). I'm going to call them the &lt;strong&gt;Swiss&lt;/strong&gt; model, the &lt;strong&gt;Dutch&lt;/strong&gt; model and the &lt;strong&gt;Portugese&lt;/strong&gt; model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;Swiss&lt;/strong&gt; model (which applied to injected opiates) the point is to medicalise the problem of addiction by providing medical grade opiates and clean needles to addicts in a supervised environment. The intent is to reduce the harm from criminality (i.e. stealing to pay for the drugs), medical complications (impure drugs of uncertain concentration, dirty needles etc.). Addicts also have access to the services they need for withdrawal. The model has been so successful in Switzerland that even the relatively prohibitionist UK is piloting it (Lancet report &lt;a href=&quot;http://download.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140673608602536.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).  But assessments have been done on the number of regular addicts. And the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2806%2968804-1/fulltext#article_upsell&quot;&gt;results&lt;/a&gt; suggest that the numbers of long term addicts drop albeit slowly (broader measures of harm reduce by large amounts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Dutch&lt;/strong&gt; model represents a sort of supervised tolerance of soft drugs (mainly cannabinoids) from licensed premises. The detailed rules have been tweaked several times in the last 40 years. But there is little clear evidence on the relationship between the specific rules and consumption. One expert argues in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/335/7627/967/reply#bmj_el_179583?sid=21c1bd0a-d828-4f03-8389-00f77706c1af&quot;&gt;this debate thread&lt;/a&gt; in the BMJ (see the contribution by Rolles) that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It should also be noted that cannabis use has risen across the Western world since 1976, but has risen slower in Netherlands than many other countries. Young people's cannabis use in the Netherlands is substantially lower than either the UK or the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tlupress.com/files/arts/9117/Semind04285ff846b9e4048da727e6231a4d5.pdf&quot;&gt;more thorough study&lt;/a&gt; in 2002 concluded that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although changes in cannabis policy went along with changes in availability of cannabis and prevalence of cannabis use, it is questionable whether changes in cannabis policy were causally related to trends in cannabis use. Cannabis use also developed in waves in other European countries that did not decriminalize cannabis, as well as in the US. Consequently, trends in cannabis use seem to develop rather independently of cannabis policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while it is clear that the jeremiads of anti prohibitionists who forecast an explosion of use on decriminalisation have not occurred, we can't say that, in this case, consumption actually declined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third model is &lt;strong&gt;Portugal.&lt;/strong&gt; Here possession of up to ten days supply was decriminalised and addicts referred to treatment if caught. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c4554.full&quot;&gt;This summary&lt;/a&gt; of the results claimed a significant reduction in use of injectable drugs after the policy had been in action for some time. It should be pointed out that these results are controversial (see the comments on the report &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c4554.full/reply#bmj_el_246202&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My summary of the evidence above is that it clearly shows that decriminalisation is not a catastrophe leading to big increases in the consumption of dangerous substances, and &lt;em&gt;there is some evidence that consumption might fall&lt;/em&gt;. In all cases &lt;em&gt;it is likely that harm was substantially reduced&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is plenty of other debate on this topic (thought the quality often leaves something to be desired as many of the participants seem unable to separate logic end evidence from their emotional and intuitive starting positions). A good place to start is the BMJ debate &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c4554.full/reply#bmj_el_246202&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; but the follow up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/335/7627/967.full/reply#bmj_el_180276&quot;&gt;online debate&lt;/a&gt; is also worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very recent publication from an international group, the Global Commision on Drugs is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/Report&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; but it is only fair to report that some of their numbers have been criticised (see the analysis by StraightStatistics &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightstatistics.org/article/blue-ribbon-panel-misrepresented-illicit-drug-trends&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT. A recent summary of the Portugese case appears in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d6881.full.pdf&quot;&gt;BMJ in october 2011&lt;/a&gt; and reinforces the above conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-11-10T17:43:49.060" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T17:43:49.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6419" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-01T01:35:44.157" Score="17" ViewCount="6664" Body="&lt;p&gt;After a few speeding incidents in a residential neighborhood, some residents will clamor for speed bumps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case your municipality does not have one, here is a picture of a speed bump (also AE &lt;em&gt;sleeping policeman&lt;/em&gt;, BE &lt;em&gt;road hump, road bump&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CipBv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;From a Washington Post article&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cga.ct.gov/2006/rpt/2006-r-0567.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Connecticut&lt;/a&gt; government site has considered damage to vehicles, and this anti-speed bump &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.co.tillamook.or.us/gov/pw/Documents/speed-bump-flyer.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;flyer&lt;/a&gt; cites the difficulties with emergency vehicles navigating speed bumps, replete with pull quotes from unnamed emergency personnel. It also cites &quot;well researched reports,&quot; but alas, the link is dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the speed bump detractors have any merit? Or are they off track / up in the air / (insert appropriate pun here)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1403" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-09-01T03:13:56.407" LastActivityDate="2021-01-10T13:15:03.577" Title="Do speed bumps cause more deaths than they save?" Tags="|road-vehicles|driving-speed|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6417" CreationDate="2011-10-01T06:23:27.100" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can read the answer right off the study: no, lack of intelligence is not the &lt;em&gt;main&lt;/em&gt; reason because the correlation coefficient between IQ and various measures of religiosity are not that large (e.g. -0.25 for fundamentalism).  It &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; an important reason, as is education (as the study explains, the correlation persists when level of education is accounted for).  A combination of extreme education and IQ does &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html&quot;&gt;seem to be enough to virtually eliminate strong religious belief&lt;/a&gt;.  (This is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://kspark.kaist.ac.kr/Jesus/Intelligence%20&amp;amp;%20religion.htm&quot;&gt;broadly supported&lt;/a&gt; conclusion, though causation is not determined.)  The inverse correlation with IQ holds, at least roughly, with &lt;a href=&quot;http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2320/is_n1_v62/ai_21227887/&quot;&gt;belief in the paranormal&lt;/a&gt; also--the effect is frequently seen but is not so strong as to appear to be the only important factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other factors are hard to pin down.  Some studies indicate that religiosity of children (once adult) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rsc.byu.edu/archived/religion-and-family-connection-social-science-perspectives/chapter-13-familial-influence-re&quot;&gt;not strongly correlated&lt;/a&gt; to that of their parents; others find cases where the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/30234069&quot;&gt;transmission is more reliable&lt;/a&gt;.  Religious beliefs of friends and spouse are strongly correlated (see first link), but it is unclear to what extent this is cause vs. a consequence of having the beliefs.  There is very likely &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; strong societal or parental component given that, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gallup.com/poll/12091/tracking-religious-affiliation-state-state.aspx&quot;&gt;2/3 of the residents of Utah identify as Mormon&lt;/a&gt;, and the &quot;natural increase&quot; of the population is considerably larger than the &quot;net migration&quot; (as found in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://governor.utah.gov/dea/demographics.html&quot;&gt;table of Utah demographics linked here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="1039" LastEditDate="2011-10-01T08:02:45.293" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T08:02:45.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6415" CreationDate="2011-10-01T08:34:31.033" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aspartame toxicity has been well studied by several groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here you can find an interesting literature review, which covers also other sweeteners, such as saccharin and cyclamate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15367404&quot;&gt;Artificial sweeteners--do they bear a carcinogenic risk?&lt;/a&gt; - Weihrauch and Diehl, Ann Oncol. 2004 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Owing to the existing studies, the following statements can be made about the carcinogenic potential of artificial sweeteners.&#xA;  Saccharin induces bladder cancer in rats, when fed in high doses. However, rodents react to most sodium salts, such as sodium ascorbate, with urothel proliferation and neoplasia of the bladder.&#xA;  Heavy artificial sweetener use (&gt;1680 mg per day) leads to an increased relative risk of 1.3 for bladder cancer in humans. A more precise determination of the exact agents is not possible, because many artificial sweeteners are combined in current food products.&#xA;  Despite unscientific articles in the mass media and scientific press, there is no evidence that the artificial sweetener aspartame bears a carcinogenic risk.&#xA;  The approvals of new generation sweeteners (acesulfame-K, sucralose, alitame and neotame) are too recent to establish any epidemiological evidence about possible carcinogenic risks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent article indicates that DNA damage is increased by acesulfame-K and saccharin (more than aspartame), although none of those was mutagenic. Unfortunately I do not have access to the full-text, so I cannot really comment on the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18850355&quot;&gt;Genotoxicity testing of low-calorie sweeteners: aspartame, acesulfame-K, and saccharin.&lt;/a&gt; - Bandyopadhyay et al., Drug Chem Toxicol. 2008&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The comet parameters of DNA were increased in the bone marrow cells due to the sweetener-induced DNA strand breaks, as revealed by increased comet-tail extent and percent DNA in the tail. ASK and saccharin were found to induce greater DNA damage than ASP. However, none could act as a potential mutagen in the Ames/Salmonella /microsome test. These findings are important, since they represent a potential health risk associated with the exposure to these agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several other studies and plenty of reviews and the general consensus is that there is no scientific proof that aspartame is carcinogenic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for multiple sclerosis I could not find one single paper linking MS to aspartame or sweeteners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aspartame has been said to cause pretty much any of the diseases &lt;em&gt;à la mode&lt;/em&gt; of our time (cancer, MS, autism, depression, even death). This is mostly due to the preaching of some anti-aspartame groups that, alas, do not have any scientific proof to back up their beliefs. I bet the email you received did not have any references in it, did it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/educational/teaching_backgrounders/internet/decon_web_pages.cfm&quot;&gt;This page on the Media Awareness Network&lt;/a&gt; is pretty enlightning on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T08:34:31.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="398" CreationDate="2011-10-01T11:31:27.607" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pauling believed that large doses of vitamin C could achieve many health benefits and he was powerful and persuasive advocate of his theories. But his persuasiveness didn't sway the scientific consensus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One early (1976) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/1/6010/606.full.pdf?sid=16b375ee-8548-4fa8-af2a-b52d9580ba7a&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;review&lt;/a&gt; of the idea that the vitamin protects against the common cold reported this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent American study of adult employees of the National Institutes of Health reported in 1975 found no significant prophylactic or therapeutic benefit from ascorbic acid. The same conclusion was also reached in another British double-blind trial against placebo in 295 persons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What practical recommendations emerge from this new evidence? Major advances in treatment are usually apparent after a few well-conducted studies, and at present no strong evidence can be found to support the routine prophylactic use of ascorbic acid in well-nourished people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recent systematic reviews support this early conclusion. More revealing is this comment in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/315/7109/672.full?sid=996970d3-981d-497d-9556-a268b72a24ba&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ article&lt;/a&gt; about how to do proper systematic reviews (my italics):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor Paul Knipschild has described how Nobel prize winning biochemist Linus Pauling used selective quotes from the medical literature to “prove” his theory that vitamin C helps you live longer and feel better. When Knipschild and his colleagues &lt;em&gt;searched the literature systematically&lt;/em&gt; for evidence for and against this hypothesis they found that, although one or two trials did strongly suggest that vitamin C could prevent the onset of the common cold, there were far more studies which did not show any beneficial effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This selective advocacy should make skeptics careful when looking at the evidence base as it will, most likely, be easy to find some studies showing benefits when the full weight of evidence is strongly negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent (2002) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/325/7357/173.full.pdf?sid=80a81608-d16e-46b2-842c-4c2213788b0b&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ editorial&lt;/a&gt; summarising reviews of the supposed benefits of supplementary vitamins says this of vitamin C:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vitamin C is an antioxidant, and it also inhibits the formation of carcinogenic nitrosamines from dietary amines and nitrites. It might therefore be expected to have protective action against the development of cancer and cardiovascular disease. The evidence with respect to cardiovascular disease is unconvincing. The epidemiological evidence linking a high intake of vitamin C with reduced cancer incidence is confounded by the fact that the fruits and vegetables that are sources of vitamin C are also rich in a variety of other compounds that may be protective. There is a long held belief that vitamin C (perhaps in very large amounts) is protective against the common cold. A systematic review did not support this but did find some evidence of a modest benefit in reducing the duration of symptoms of colds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is safe to say that the consensus is that megadoses of the vitamin don't have clear benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T11:31:27.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6424" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-01T13:20:56.627" Score="13" ViewCount="1319" Body="&lt;p&gt;The UK government has recently started a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15116064&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;consultation&lt;/a&gt; on increasing the speed limits on motorways (roughly the equivalent of highways in the USA) in England.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems appropriate to pose the question about whether this is a good idea. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15123169&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;early debate&lt;/a&gt; has highlighted the typical concerns of safety and worse fuel economy. So the usual suspects have already chimed into the debate with these sorts of arguments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the Green Party said the plan would increase carbon emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen Joseph, from the Campaign for Better Transport, said it would lead to more accidents and casualties.&#xA;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Road safety charity Brake's chief executive Mary Williams said: &amp;quot;This is a selfish move that will achieve nothing other than carnage and is pandering to an uninformed few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;What is far more legitimate is the grief of families bereaved on Britain's motorways in horrendous pile-ups at high speed, and the rights of all UK citizens to have slower, not faster, speeds on roads to enable drivers to avoid collisions.&amp;quot;&#xA;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Green Party spokesperson Jenny Jones said: &amp;quot;This is a mad idea just at the time we should be worrying about fuel economy and emissions. Putting the speed limit up will be worse for both. So much for the 'greenest government ever'.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The department of transport counter some of these arguments with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;advances in technology have made cars much safer, contributing to a drop of more than 75% in the number of people killed on British roads since the 70mph limit was introduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is are any of the concerns significant in the light of real evidence? I deliberately use the word significant because small effects don't seem to me to make a compelling argument against the policy. Another factor that good answers should address is the relationship between the policy and &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; behaviour on the roads (only about half of all drivers in the UK stick to the current limit). I've also deliberately kept the question narrowly focussed on motorways which are by far the safest roads in most countries. What happens on other road types is not my concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T12:13:19.540" Title="Will increased speed limits on motorways (or highways) cause significant harm?" Tags="|environment|safety|traffic|driving-speed|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6425" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6427" CreationDate="2011-10-01T16:10:33.553" Score="22" ViewCount="2165" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6275/is-margarine-one-molecule-away-from-plastic/6276#6276&quot;&gt;my answer to another question&lt;/a&gt;, I repeated a claim made to my class by my high school chemistry teacher. I didn't reference it, because the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5/faq-must-all-answers-be-referenced/522#522&quot;&gt;relevant FAQ&lt;/a&gt; suggests high school science can generally be assumed. However, the claim was, to my surprise, pooh-poohed. This is a follow-up question to allow it to be properly scrutinised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Claims&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Plastic ice-cream tubs are typically made of low-density polyethylene (LPDE). [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howtoaustralia.com.au/go_green/recycling_plastics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Polyethylene has a lot of cross-branching between the chains. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polythene&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As with any polymer, the structure of the resulting substance defies molecular description due to cross branching of the chains&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The key claim: There is so much cross-branching, that a typical ice-cream tub (excluding the separate lid) consists of one single molecule of plastic. [Reference: My Year 11 Chemistry Teacher, whose name I have shamefully forgotten.]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never had any reason to doubt these claims until recently. Are they true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T15:45:05.013" Title="Is an ice-cream tub made of a single molecule?" Tags="|chemistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6424" CreationDate="2011-10-01T17:42:22.227" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Safety&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to answer with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;basic physics&lt;/a&gt; here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;K = ½ m × v&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 1200 Kg car moving at 30 m/s (~70 mph), has a kinetic energy of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;K = ½ 1200 Kg × (30 m/s)&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; ≅ 500 KJ&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 1200 Kg car moving at 35 m/s (~80 mph), has a kinetic energy of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;K = ½ 1200 Kg × (35 m/s)&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; ≅ 750 KJ&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, increasing the limit from 70 mph to 80 mph (by ~15%) will increase the energy carried by cars going at the limit by 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;50% more energy is a significant difference, if you have an accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, this also means that the &lt;em&gt;driver&lt;/em&gt; has 50% more energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you have an accident, the kinetic energy of the car is used to do work--in practice to deform the vehicle, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the kinetic energy of the driver is used to do work--in practice deform the body of the driver, breaking bones, organs... ouch!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter how advanced the security systems are, the government is still increasing the potential for harm by 50% by increasing the speed limit to 80 mph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: if the newer cars are safer than old models, &lt;em&gt;they are even safer at 70 than 80!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you prefer to compare videos:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJHpUO-S0i8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;70 mph&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1sM5I7HeCQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;80 mph&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Environmental impact&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emissions (per Km) are a function of surface area and weight of the car, which would not change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There would be a major change, if this law increased the demand for more powerful cars, which are less efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, cars going faster experience more &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_equation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;drag&lt;/a&gt;, in quadratic proportion to velocity. If we measure emissions per km, there is still a linear increase left. In other words, increasing speed by 15% will result in 15% more emissions, all other factors being equal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thepep.org/ClearingHouse/docfiles/New.Car.CO2.Emissions.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.thepep.org/ClearingHouse/docfiles/New.Car.CO2.Emissions.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.greens-efa.eu/cms/default/dokbin/187/187462.how_to_reduce_car_emissions_by_a_friedri@en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://archive.greens-efa.eu/cms/default/dokbin/187/187462.how_to_reduce_car_emissions_by_a_friedri@en.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T19:24:38.490" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6425" CreationDate="2011-10-01T18:02:48.787" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very good question but one where it isn't the principle that's wrong just the detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Polymerization reactions typically produce very large molecules but not so large that a single molecule would make up as much material as a whole ice cream tub. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icis.com/V2/chemicals/9076155/polyethylene-low-density.html&quot;&gt;One data sheet&lt;/a&gt; on LDPE tells us that the typical molecular weight of the industrial product is 90,000 (some polymers are much bigger than this). (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://nzic.org.nz/ChemProcesses/polymers/10J.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for an illuminating description relevant to LDPE).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-chemists molecular weights are (simplifying slightly) the weight relative to a single hydrogen atom. Carbon is 12 on this scale and ethylene (the monomer from which the plastic is made which consists of 2 carbons and 4 hydrogens) is 32. This mean that a typical molecule of the plastic is (crudely) made from a little under 3,000 ethylene molecules. The other fact you need to know is that there are about 6 x 10^23 hydrogen atoms in a gramme of hydrogen (see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avogadro_constant&quot;&gt;wikipedia definition&lt;/a&gt; of Avogadro's number). Simple mathematics tells us that a gramme of LDPE will contain roughly 6.7 x 10^18 molecules so that is the order of the number in a tub for ice cream which, I expect, weighs a few grammes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2011-10-01T18:02:48.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6419" CreationDate="2011-10-02T09:10:12.873" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160904211714/http://www.portlandonline.com/shared/cfm/image.cfm?id=84926&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160904211714/http://www.portlandonline.com/shared/cfm/image.cfm?id=84926&quot; alt=&quot;Speed bumps in Portland&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.portlandonline.com/transportation/index.cfm?c=35930&amp;amp;a=84925&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me oppose science to political propaganda and flyers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Objectives.&lt;/em&gt; We evaluated the protective effectiveness of speed humps in reducing child pedestrian injuries in residential neighborhoods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Methods.&lt;/em&gt; We conducted a matched case–control study over a 5-year period among children seen in a pediatric emergency department after being struck by an automobile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Results.&lt;/em&gt; A multivariate conditional logistic regression analysis showed that speed humps were associated with lower odds of children being injured within their neighborhood (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 0.47) and being struck in front of their home (adjusted OR = 0.40). Ethnicity (but not socioeconomic status) was independently associated with child pedestrian injuries and was adjusted for in the regression model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Conclusions.&lt;/em&gt; Our findings suggest that speed humps make children’s living environments safer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.94.4.646&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 20 mph zones have successfully reduced accidents by about 60 per cent and vehicle speeds by over 9 mph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140527044705/http://www.trl.co.uk:80/online_store/reports_publications/trl_reports/cat_traffic_engineering/report_review_of_traffic_calming_schemes_in_20_mph_zones.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; — the study includes speed bumps specifically&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to wikipedia there is &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; retracted statement by a London ambulance driver that speed bumps &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; affect the effectiveness of emergency services—I cannot verify that source because the link is dead—however, skeptically speaking this is a no-brainer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggesting that it is better to have &lt;em&gt;more injuries&lt;/em&gt; and the emergency services arrive faster is... not smart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Speed kills, speed bumps save lives&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2021-01-10T13:15:03.577" LastActivityDate="2021-01-10T13:15:03.577" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6419" CreationDate="2011-10-02T13:35:37.680" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Partial Answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't answer the question. I offer it as partially-digested research that may be useful to others generating a full answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In August 1997, the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Commission produced a report called &quot;The Effects of Speed Humps and Traffic Circules on Responding Fire-Rescue Apparatus in Mongomery County, Maryland.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conducted an experiment to see how much effect speed-bumps had on their response times. The results are complex:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The amount of delay was found to be dependent upon three factors - vehicle type/size, type of&#xA;  traffic calming device, and driver discretion regarding speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some situations, the  delay &quot;is equivalent to responding from a station .05 mile per speed hump further away from the incident location along an unimpeded route.&quot; (For the civilised world, that corresponds to about 80 metres.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: 80 metres at 50 km/h (which is compatible with humps) is less than 6 seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, there are — as we might expect — real delays. But the real question is &quot;how many lives are lost due to this delay?&quot; so we can compare it with the figures in Sklivvz's answer. Neither Sklivvz nor I have found an answer to that question. Is it out there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hard to prove there has been no research on a topic — especially as an amateur in the field. One way to address this is to show some experts have looked and not found any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One report in a 2008 Road Safety seminar hosted by the UK Deportment for Transport, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roadsafety/research/rsrr/theme2/researchreport/pdf/annual-seminar18.pdf#page=228&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Behavioural Research in&#xA;Road Safety 2008&#xA;Eighteenth Seminar&lt;/a&gt; was a prelimary study (including surveys of drivers) called &quot;Risk and the driving of emergency vehicles&quot; by Tomás Walsh, Barbara Hannigan and Ray Fuller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Road humps&#xA;  Speed humps and other road features designed to restrain speed, such as speed tables&#xA;  and cushions, are recognised to cause delay, but the trade-off in reductions in road&#xA;  accidents is also admitted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They do make a claim that there is no evidence to help us answer this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It might be noted that there does not appear to have been any analysis published&#xA;  which attempts to estimate the size of this possible trade-off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consistent with that understanding that the data has not been collected is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bromleytransport.org.uk/LAS_Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2003 letter&lt;/a&gt; from Peter Bradley, Chief Executive of the London Ambulance Service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tone of the letter is generally warning of the risks of speed bumps in slowing response times:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This Service believes that it could probably save more lives if the overall traffic flow were to be improved. Just among the 5000 cardiac care victims that we try to resuscitate this could possibly save about 500 lives. In addition a minute gained in reaching other life threatening cases could potentially save hundreds of lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it also admits that there is a dearth of relevant information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We believe there have been a number of studies relating to ‘speed humps’ but at this time the LAS is not aware of any significant UK-based report that has made any scientific study into the overall effects of speed humps, including their impact on ambulance response times; the potential consequences of delayed responses by emergency vehicles to ‘life threatening’ situations; and their effect on the comfort of patients being conveyed to hospital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We would welcome the opportunity to be involved in any such research if it were to be commissioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently there is less correlation than one would think between the EMS times and survival rate. Why? Because it matters only in particular cases like cardiac arrest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Study objective&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The first hour after the onset of out-of-hospital traumatic injury is referred to as the “golden hour,” yet the relationship between time and outcome remains unclear. We evaluate the association between emergency medical services (EMS) intervals and mortality among trauma patients with field-based physiologic abnormality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Methods&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  This was a secondary analysis of an out-of-hospital, prospective cohort registry of adult (aged ≥15 years) trauma patients transported by 146 EMS agencies to 51 Level I and II trauma hospitals in 10 sites across North America from December 1, 2005, through March 31, 2007. Inclusion criteria were systolic blood pressure less than or equal to 90 mm Hg, respiratory rate less than 10 or greater than 29 breaths/min, Glasgow Coma Scale score less than or equal to 12, or advanced airway intervention. The outcome was inhospital mortality. We evaluated EMS intervals (activation, response, on-scene, transport, and total time) with logistic regression and 2-step instrumental variable models, adjusted for field-based confounders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  There were 3,656 trauma patients available for analysis, of whom 806 (22.0%) died. In multivariable analyses, there was no significant association between time and mortality for any EMS interval: activation (odds ratio [OR] 1.00; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.95 to 1.05), response (OR 1.00; 95% CI 9.97 to 1.04), on-scene (OR 1.00; 95% CI 0.99 to 1.01), transport (OR 1.00; 95% CI 0.98 to 1.01), or total EMS time (OR 1.00; 95% CI 0.99 to 1.01). Subgroup and instrumental variable analyses did not qualitatively change these findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In this North American sample, &lt;strong&gt;there was no association between EMS intervals and mortality among injured patients with physiologic abnormality in the field.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="164" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T15:50:05.043" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T15:50:05.043" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-10-02T13:35:37.680" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6433" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6436" CreationDate="2011-10-02T18:30:48.897" Score="11" ViewCount="846" Body="&lt;p&gt;One often hears anecdotes about how successful CEOs / founders / entrepreneurs are college or university dropouts, usually bringing up the same set of examples with one or two CEOs du jour. Most commonly Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, lately also Mark Zuckerberg. When I was in university everyone was using Shawn Fanning as an example (today I'd be surprised if most people knew who he was without looking him up).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://caterina.net/archive/001234.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Want to be an entrepreneur? Drop out of college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fred Wilson and I, on the way back from an Etsy board meeting, were talking about how many entrepreneurs had dropped out of college. Rob Kalin, Etsy's founder, never finished college. Evan Williams, Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey -- the founders of Twitter -- are not college graduates. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder, is another dropout. And of course Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. As an angel investor, I've invested in two college dropout founders this month. What gives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/05/08/why-venture-capitalists-dont-want-you-to-have-a-sex-life/tab/article/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Investor John Doerr claimed the same thing (along with a bunch of other stereotypes that don't bear out in real analysis).&lt;/a&gt; Particularly suspicious is the claim Sergey Brin and Larry Page &amp;quot;dropped out&amp;quot; of a university, ignoring the degrees they both received before abandoning their Ph.D. program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this sounds like the normal &amp;quot;rooting for the underdog&amp;quot; story, the same sort that keeps the story of Einstein's (non-existent) mathematical failures alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here's my questions. I think they're all closely related. I am most interested in the IT and science sectors, but if there's more general evidence that's great too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Among founders, have a significant percentage (more than the general population) not achieved a B.A., B.Sc., or equivalent degree prior to starting a company?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are founders without post-secondary degrees more financially successful, on average, than founders with them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are companies founded by such people more financially successful than the average company?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T12:14:12.003" Title="Are many successful entrepreneurs post-secondary education dropouts?" Tags="|education|finance|corporate-finance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6434" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6435" CreationDate="2011-10-02T19:18:27.363" Score="35" ViewCount="4987" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that components from older cars (like the ones before '92-93) are more resistant than the ones from new cars. New ones are made from cheap elements, so if you push them to the limit they will almost certainly fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: my question is probably related to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/light-bulb-conspiracy/&quot;&gt;light bulb&lt;/a&gt; conspiracy theory that's been floating around, which essentially says that newer products are produced in such a way that they fail after a certain period of time, so the consumer buys them again :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me sounds a little ridiculous that a bunch of companies agree together to make inferior products, but the fact that they are stuffing cheap things inside their products, sounds plausible, because they all want to sell them at the lowest price possible&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2636" LastEditorUserId="2636" LastEditDate="2015-05-10T14:57:52.040" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T14:57:52.040" Title="Are old car models more reliable than new ones?" Tags="|road-vehicles|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6434" CreationDate="2011-10-02T20:21:19.260" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It looks like modern cars really are better when you adjust for survival bias&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My subjective impression is that modern cars are much more reliable than older cars. But I can see one reason why fans of classic cars might disagree with this impression and it is one of those factors that can seriously bias someone's' perception. It is simply that any old car that is &lt;em&gt;still on the road today&lt;/em&gt; is, by a process of natural selection alone, likely to have been on the reliable end of the reliability spectrum when new. The owner of a classic car doesn't see an unbiased sample of all the cars that were produced: she just sees her own car which has survived well (or perhaps the other cars owned by other enthusiasts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way to make a sound judgement is to ask the question in a way that eliminates that survival bias. For example, &quot;how many breakdowns occurred in the first 3 years&quot;. With this question you could compare, for example, the original Mini to the current Mini in an unbiased way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There don't seem to be very obvious places where this history is accessible (but let's see what car-loving skeptics can find: perhaps someone can find the J D Power raw stats on reliability from 10 or 20 years ago). But there is some accessible evidence that points to the conclusion that modern cars are more reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://auto.howstuffworks.com/under-the-hood/diagnosing-car-problems/mechanical/cars-less-problematic.htm&quot;&gt;How Stuff Works&lt;/a&gt; has a summary which concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the general consensus seems to be that modern cars don't break down as often as older ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/britain-driven-on-to-roads-by-falling-cost-of-motoring-1681052.html&quot;&gt;evidence&lt;/a&gt; comes from maintenance costs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cost of maintenance has also fallen sharply as cars have become more reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supported by &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/archives/2009/03/jd-power-and-associates-announces-2009-vehicle-dependability-study-results-ratings-rankings.html&quot;&gt;evidence&lt;/a&gt; about how long users keep cars before replacing them (which depends partially on their reliability):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A new vehicle-dependability study, from J.D. Power &amp;amp; Associates, agrees, claiming that the average age of a vehicle at trade-in has increased to 73 months in 2009 from 65 months in 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;J D Power themselves confirm the importance of this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Automakers have improved long-term dependability by an average of 10 percent each year since the inception of the study, which is a testament to the industry's commitment to continuously improve and sustain quality, especially long-term quality,&quot; David Sargent, vice president of automotive research at J.D. Power and Associates, said in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://businesscenter.jdpower.com/news/pressrelease.aspx?ID=2009043&quot;&gt;statement&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to see longer term data on a consistent metric, but it looks as though the evidence says modern is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-01-10T00:50:56.950" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T00:50:56.950" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6433" CreationDate="2011-10-03T01:30:58.680" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, it seems the opposite is true.&lt;/strong&gt; Higher education is correlated with entrepreneurship success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the examples you give are of entrepreneurs in the tech industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a relevant report from the Kauffman Foundation, called &lt;a href=&quot;http://sites.kauffman.org/pdf/Education_Tech_Ent_042908.pdf&quot;&gt;Education and Tech Entrepreneurship&lt;/a&gt;, May 2008, Vivek Wadhwa, Richard Freeman, Ben Rissing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This report was limited to U.S.-born tech entrepreneurs, building on a previous report of U.S. immigrants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We observed that, like immigrant tech founders,&#xA;  U.S.-born engineering and technology company&#xA;  founders tend to be well-educated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The vast majority (92 percent) of U.S.-born tech&#xA;  founders held bachelor’s degrees. Additionally,&#xA;  31 percent held master’s degrees, and 10 percent&#xA;  had completed PhDs. Nearly half of all these&#xA;  degrees were in science-, technology-, engineering-,&#xA;  and mathematics- (STEM) related disciplines. One third&#xA;  were in business, accounting, and finance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strictly, I should also present a control group and check for statistical significance, but I think you will agree that 92% of them holding bachelor's degrees (with a sample size of 652 surveyed) is grossly more than the background population of the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people being interviewed were &quot;chief executive officers and heads of product&#xA;development in 502 engineering and technology&#xA;companies established from 1995 through 2005.&#xA;These companies [...] have more than $1 million in sales,&#xA;twenty or more employees, and company branches&#xA;with fifty or more employees.&quot; I believe that to be a reasonable proxy for &quot;more financially successful than the average company&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stay in school, kids!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-03T03:42:11.703" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T03:42:11.703" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6438" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6439" CreationDate="2011-10-03T02:26:50.223" Score="15" ViewCount="2884" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone told me recently about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Fogle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jared Fogle story&lt;/a&gt; and his self-created “Subway Diet.” I didn't know about it since there were no Subway shops in my country at that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is/was this “Subway Diet” healthy? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="258" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2020-01-18T02:12:38.927" LastActivityDate="2020-01-18T02:12:38.927" Title="Is Jared Fogle's “Subway Diet” healthy?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6438" CreationDate="2011-10-03T04:51:36.490" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is kind of vague - what is “healthy?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The “Subway Diet” is unquestionably &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;healthier&lt;/em&gt; than&lt;/strong&gt; Jared Fogle’s previous “high-fat junk food” diet, &lt;strong&gt;especially coupled with increased physical exercise&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is not considered to be dietitionally/nutritionally perfect by any stretch of imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only there is &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; research supporting the diet as perfect, here’s a direct quote &lt;strong&gt;from Subway's corporate dietitian&lt;/strong&gt; accompanying the news release about the promotion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Both Jared Fogle and a Subway Corporate dietitian acknowledged that some elements were missing from the weight-loss plan designed by the Indiana college student. &lt;strong&gt;“It’s great that it worked for him, but I would rather he had eaten a balanced breakfast and more fruits and vegetables,” dietitian Lanette Roulier said in a December 2000 news release.&lt;/strong&gt;”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“She pointed out that people’s dietary needs varied, and advised the public to consult with a physician and/or dietitian before starting a weight-loss program.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“A restrictive diet of only two sandwiches a day is not nutritionally sound. Jared Fogle eliminated fruit and dairy products from his diet. He missed out on the fiber in fruit and nutrients like vitamins A and C. The diet also lacked the calcium found in dairy products.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“However, the sandwiches provided fiber and vitamins. Poultry like turkey was among the lean proteins recommended in the USDA guidelines. &lt;strong&gt;The federal guide also advised people to limit fat and to participate in regular physical activity. Fogle did both.&lt;/strong&gt;”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More details/discussion can be found at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20111122095653/http://ask.yahoo.com/20011012.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ask Yahoo!&lt;/em&gt;: “How effective is the ‘Subway Diet?’”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answers.com/topic/what-research-is-there-on-the-subway-diet-and-is-it-generally-accepted&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Answers.com&lt;/a&gt; (dead link/unreferenced)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-01-16T20:49:30.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="510" CreationDate="2011-10-03T05:35:35.063" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a very interesting question, that has been extensively studied and has received great attention. As such, it has often been &lt;em&gt;vandalized&lt;/em&gt; by generic press, leaving people quite confused on the matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That antioxidants have physiological effects I would say needs no proof: our body utilises antioxidants such as ascorbate (vitamin C) to keep down the amount of free radicals, as can be confirmed by any basic physiology textbook (I can provide references if you need).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get to the actual point of your question: do antioxidants have the &quot;ability to prevent strokes&quot;? I don't know if the article you read specifically used those words, but this is the type of bad &quot;generic press talk&quot; I was referring to...&#xA;Antioxidants do not &lt;strong&gt;prevent&lt;/strong&gt; stroke. You can live a super-healthy life, take tons of antioxidants, exercise every day and still have a stroke. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What certain antioxidants can do is to &lt;strong&gt;reduce&lt;/strong&gt; the possibility of having a stroke, which is a very different thing. This is mostly due to the fact that oxidative stress is a risk factor for different cardiovascular diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same line of thought, certain antioxidants, in certain regimes and certain situations can help fighting cancer. They &lt;strong&gt;DO NOT CURE&lt;/strong&gt; cancer by themselves, I cannot stress this enough. Again, the idea is that free radicals can damage DNA increasing &lt;strong&gt;the risk&lt;/strong&gt; of cancer. Free radical do not provoke cancer, but they can be a risk factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same for neurodegenerative diseases and many other illnesses where antioxidants can help in certain cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to generalize because stroke, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases are very broad category of illnesses, that can have the most disparate etiologies. So free radicals are not always the issue and antioxidants are not always the solution. Also, free radicals are actively used by our bodies (e.g. during immune responses) so excess antioxidants is not necessarily good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scientific literature at this regard is simply huge and it would be difficult to have a complete bibliography here. Here's a sample of papers and reviews at this regard, if someone who is more in the field knows better papers/reviews please feel free to update my answer (sorry most of these are limited access papers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19716187&quot;&gt;Air pollution: mechanisms of neuroinflammation and CNS disease.&lt;/a&gt; - Block and Calderón-Garcidueñas, &lt;em&gt;Trends Neurosci.&lt;/em&gt;, 2009&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21196259&quot;&gt;Oxidative stress and endothelial dysfunction in cerebrovascular disease.&lt;/a&gt; - Chrissobolis et al, &lt;em&gt;Front Biosci.&lt;/em&gt;, 2011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17947327&quot;&gt;Oxidative DNA damage in mild cognitive impairment and late-stage Alzheimer's disease.&lt;/a&gt; - Lovell and Markesbery, &lt;em&gt;Nucleic Acids Res.&lt;/em&gt;, 2007&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9054359&quot;&gt;Mitogenic signaling mediated by oxidants in Ras-transformed fibroblasts.&lt;/a&gt; - Irani et al, &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; 1997  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12049739&quot;&gt;c-Myc can induce DNA damage, increase reactive oxygen species, and mitigate p53 function: a mechanism for oncogene-induced genetic instability.&lt;/a&gt; - Vafa et al, &lt;em&gt;Mol Cell&lt;/em&gt; 2002&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and there is many many more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all antioxidants are good, however. For instance, this paper talks about the role of the transcription factor &lt;em&gt;Nrf2&lt;/em&gt;, a factor which is involved in the physiological control of free radicals (so we can, by extension, call it an antioxidant inducing factor). The authors show that excess activation of &lt;em&gt;Nrf2&lt;/em&gt; does actually induce tumorigenesis rather then prevent it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21734707&quot;&gt;Oncogene-induced Nrf2 transcription promotes ROS detoxification and tumorigenesis.&lt;/a&gt; - DeNicola et al., &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; 2011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T05:35:35.063" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6441" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-10-03T09:02:31.590" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Macroeconomics concerns itself with behaviors, trends and efficiency at an economy-wide level.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microeconomics focuses on firm-level and specific industry-scale behavior, e.g. individual transactions, forces of supply and demand, competitive markets participants versus those who wield pricing power.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Economic concepts are applicable to business enterprises in the private sector, as well as in government. Economic systems vary, from &lt;em&gt;laissez-faire&lt;/em&gt; to central planning. The scope of economic thought is broad, influencing social welfare programs, foreign trade, monetary policy, and much more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="4301" LastEditDate="2018-01-30T14:24:30.437" LastActivityDate="2018-01-30T14:24:30.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6442" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-10-03T09:02:31.590" Score="0" Body="Economics is the analytical study of the costs and benefits of producing, distributing, and consuming goods and services. This tag should not be used for personal finance questions, nor for most questions about expensive items, e.g. exorbitantly priced houses, autos, jewelry. It can be used for current events, and in historical contexts. " OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="4301" LastEditDate="2018-01-30T15:37:33.787" LastActivityDate="2018-01-30T15:37:33.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3246" CreationDate="2011-10-03T10:47:56.060" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would also add to France's victories the American Revolutionary War. France did not fight on its own for this war, but without the help of France, America would not be independent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, France officially directly supported the war (Simms American Revolutionary war history book):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Franco-American alliance refers to the 1778 alliance between Louis XVI's France and the United States, during the American Revolutionary War. It was a military pact in which France provided arms and money, and engaged in full-scale war with Britain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, many French colonels and military personnel left France to free the &lt;em&gt;new world&lt;/em&gt; from the English and France sent over most of the arsenal for the US migrants to defend themselves (O.W. Stepenson, &lt;em&gt;The supply of Gunpowder in 1776&lt;/em&gt;, published in 1925).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, there were at least nine infantry regiments and one dragoon legion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2086" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T10:47:56.060" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6444" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-03T11:38:41.693" Score="10" ViewCount="371" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://tbrnews.org/wordpress/?p=381&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt; post (I agree, this is not a very valid source of information), Julian Assange had ties with US government workers, especially in the CIA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sender is talking about John Young who runs Cryptome, an alleged “leak” site. The IPTO mentioned in the text is The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) of DARPA, an adjunct of the Army! There are more references to Assange’s DoD employment that are explosive in that they clearly reveal a major, clandestine, war going on between the U.S. Army, its intelligence sources and the CIA. The Army saw, and sees, the CIA (aka ‘the Company’) as destabilizing foreign areas that eventually lead to situations that the Army has to become involved in i.e. Afghanistan, Iraq, etc so their program has been, and is, to offset the CIA’s disruptive campaigns (like the so-called ‘Orange Revolution’ in the Ukraine) by disrupting their plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, after the first US diplomatic cables leaks back in November 2010, several individuals pointed out that the leaked information were of no great importance, and did not disclose any sensitive information. In fact, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2010/12/03/wikileaks-le-mythe-de-la-transparence_1448207_3232.html&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lcp.fr/emissions/docs-ad-hoc/vod/11088-wikileaks-enquete-sur-un-contre-pouvoir&quot;&gt;french journalists&lt;/a&gt; working at Le Monde, the information disclosed by the Cable gates is mostly information which was already known by journalists or highly probable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, any conspiracy theorist could suppose that Wikileaks is operated under the hood by US governmental organizations, maybe in hopes of limiting whistle blowing information providers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any additional information which could link Wikileaks to US government agencies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2086" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-09-08T18:54:16.477" LastActivityDate="2016-09-08T18:54:16.477" Title="Does Wikileaks have direct ties with US governmental organizations?" Tags="|politics|government|wikileaks|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6445" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-03T13:43:09.267" Score="18" ViewCount="1838" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Islands&quot;&gt;Marshall Island&lt;/a&gt; have been the site for many nuclear tests by the United States. While it has a small population of around 69,000, they have benefitted by receiving around $759 million dollars in compensation over the years for those nuclear tests by the United States. The basis for that compensation would seem to be for health effects of the nuclear tests: cancer and birth defects.†&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article states that there has been an increase in cancer and birth defects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nuclear tests at Enewatak have left islanders there suffering from Cancer and birth defects.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spc.int/prism/country/mh/stats/Social/Health/Diseases.htm&quot;&gt;[27]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The citation points to a website for health statistics on the Marshall Islands, but does not mention cancer or birth defects, or direct one to more information about anyone &quot;suffering from cancer and birth defects&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of this claim because it seems unsupported by fact and it's overly vague. This is a notable claim because it's not just believed that cancer and birth defects would arise from the nuclear tests, but I understand these health effects underly the basis for the huge payments to the people of the Marshall Islands as compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As regards cancer rates, an article by the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health entitled “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20622547&quot;&gt;Radiation doses and cancer risks in the Marshall Islands associated with exposure to radioactive fallout from Bikini and Enewetak nuclear weapons tests&lt;/a&gt;” states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About 170 excess cancers (radiation-related cases) are projected to occur among more than 25,000 Marshallese, half of whom were born before 1948. All but about 65 of those cancers are estimated to have already been expressed. The 170 excess cancers are in comparison to about 10,600 cancers that would spontaneously arise, unrelated to radioactive fallout, among the same cohort of Marshallese people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I read that correctly, the increase in cancer on the Marshall Islands is less than 1% (i.e. 170 more cancer diagnoses than the background rate of around 10,600). I would not call that particularly significant, speaking in absolute terms or relative ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this study incorrect or have I misunderstood it, and there was a significant increase in cancer arising out of the Marshall Islands nuclear tests? Was there any significant increase in birth defects? Am I incorrect about the basis for compensation being for the health effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not skeptical as to whether radiation can increase cancer and birth defects; only whether there has been a significant increase in the Marshall Islands since the US tested nuclear weapons there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;† I have not verified the basis for compensation to the islands being health effects; clarification would change the notability of this claim somewhat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-01-28T06:59:04.040" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T23:09:16.880" Title="Did nuclear tests on the Marshall Islands cause increased cancer rates?" Tags="|cancer|radiation|environmental-health|nuclear-weapons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6448" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6449" CreationDate="2011-10-03T17:56:46.493" Score="34" ViewCount="22223" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been told to take the Band-Aid off a small cut every once in a while in order for it to heal faster.  Is this good advice, or should I try to keep it covered as much as possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3809" LastEditorUserId="3809" LastEditDate="2012-07-10T19:02:09.640" LastActivityDate="2017-06-11T05:58:57.327" Title="Will a small cut heal faster when &quot;aired&quot; periodically, or should it always be bandaged?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6448" CreationDate="2011-10-03T19:09:39.037" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Presumably, you've been told to take the Band-Aid off periodically in order to give it air. In fact, this slows healing, so if you wish to have your cut heal as quickly as possible, &lt;strong&gt;keep it bandaged&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary benefit of a bandage is to help seal the wound and stop or slow bleeding and prevent re-injury and infection. Where people start to differ in opinion is once the wound has been cleaned and placed in a sterile environment. At this point, the primary benefit of bandages are to keep the wound moist, which your well-meaning friend might not realize provides optimal conditions for healing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[dressings] are designed to create a moist wound healing environment which allows the wound fluids and growth factors to remain in contact with wound, thus promoting autolytic debridement and accelerating wound healing. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://bath.pubget.com/paper/21033498&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this, airing out the wound is counterproductive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exposing a wound to the air so it can breathe is a [mistake], because it creates a dry environment that promotes cell death. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/01/health/01real.html&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moist environment has the bonus of sustaining a provisional extra-cellular matrix throughout the healing process, facilitating cell migration and ultimately, epithelialization. This results in less visible scarring once the wound is healed. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1127868-overview&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1]  &lt;a href=&quot;http://bath.pubget.com/paper/21033498&quot;&gt;Update on wound dressings: Indications and best use&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2]  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/01/health/01real.html&quot;&gt;NYT Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3]  &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1127868-overview&quot;&gt;Medscape - Surgical Dressings&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T19:09:39.037" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6445" CreationDate="2011-10-03T20:29:31.637" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The paper you link to (Health Phys. 2010 Aug;99(2):105-23.) is a projection using estimates of radiation doses and estimates from other sources to find additional cancers. The doses come from a paper published simultaneously &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20622550&quot;&gt;(Health Phys. 2010 Aug;99(2):157-200.)&lt;/a&gt; with similar authors.  Such studies may be the best you can do when the effect is relatively small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link in Wikipedia may not give what you were expecting but it is a single click to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spc.int/prism/country/mh/stats/Social/Health/Death_Causes.htm&quot;&gt;causes of death&lt;/a&gt; which says in 2004 there were 23 deaths from cancer (8.7% of total) and in 2005 15 (5.0%).  Another click will take you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spc.int/prism/country/mh/stats/Social/Health/Deaths.htm&quot;&gt;deaths by age&lt;/a&gt; including under 1 and 1-4 years old.  There will be more cancers than this (people with cancer can die for other reasons) and child birth defects which do not cause death, and anyway you would want data back to the 1950s. Even then you would find it hard to untangle other effects such as varying economic growth and health services.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-10-03T20:29:31.637" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6451" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-03T21:28:15.960" Score="16" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different countries choose radically different ways to regulate peoples' access to alcohol. Some countries and some US states impose a state monopoly on alcohol sale ; others restrict the hours or days when alcohol is available for sale (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholic_beverage&quot;&gt;see Wikipedia for summary&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relatively recently (well 2005 if that counts as recent) England choose to relax licensing hours making it much easier for pubs or shops to serve alcohol after the traditional closing time of 11pm (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_licensing_laws_of_the_United_Kingdom&quot;&gt;wikipedia summary&lt;/a&gt;). At the time there were widespread criticisms from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-333807/A-drink-sodden-law-wants.html&quot;&gt;conservative press&lt;/a&gt; that this would be a disaster (also see summary on the moral panic that resulted &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.socresonline.org.uk/14/2/6.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). Some &quot;experts&quot; are still claiming that it is obvious that restrictions on supply are the most effective way to curb consumption (eg Ian Gilmore's comment &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b3646.full?sid=25d3922d-b057-45cd-a79e-c430301452a3&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). But, contrary to that expectation, consumption in England has fallen significantly since the relaxation (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11170814&quot;&gt;BBC report&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is what does the worldwide evidence look like? Is there significant evidence that what seems obvious is true: government restrictions limit consumption or harm? &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition&quot;&gt;Some countries&lt;/a&gt; have tried complete prohibition (the USA isn't the only non-islamic state to try this). What was the balance of consumption and harm that led to prohibition being abandoned? Is prohibiting alcohol by age effective? Does restriction by time or supplier work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB. I know what seems &lt;em&gt;obvious&lt;/em&gt;, but I want to know what the &lt;em&gt;evidence&lt;/em&gt; actually says. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T11:05:38.630" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T16:27:21.990" Title="Are restrictions on the supply of alcohol effective at limiting the harm caused by or even the amount of alcohol consumed?" Tags="|medical-science|law|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6165" CreationDate="2011-10-04T10:15:51.137" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, smoking statistics in Sweden has followed a trend very similar to that of the rest of the world. I do not think that there is reason to assume that climate is a factor here, and I wouldn't even say that there's much of a difference to be explained in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tobacco consumption&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/W1ns2.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;*&lt;a href=&quot;http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_STAT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OECD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, as Hendy points out in comments, the legalization of different substances has little relation to their relative health effects. That is rather a question of policy, and a general trend is often that you seek to criminalize harmful substances if possible, but make exceptions where it is shown or assumed that the implications of smuggling etc would be worse than the direct health effect. However, there are other ways to approach the problem as well, and this is not the forum for political discourse, so I shan't dwell on that beyond having pointed out that this is not a good indication of the health effect of a product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as far as the actual health implications of snus are concerned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unlike smoking, snus isn't fire-cured, and as such, doesn't have the cancerogenic effect that you otherwise see due to anaerobic combustion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unlike smoking, snus isn't inhaled, and as such, does not affect the lungs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research has shown that snus consumption increases your risk of pancreatic cancer (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dn.se/nyheter/vetenskap/snus-okar-risken-for-cancer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article in Swedish&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Excessive consumption appears to negatively affect cholesterol levels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ailments are different, and it is hard to compare different ills across the board. The relative harm is still being debated, but official Swedish government health recommendations currently cite the health implications of snus as less than those of smoking, while still pointing out that both are detrimental to your health (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.1177.se/Vastra-Gotaland/Fakta-och-rad/Sjukdomar/Rokning-och-snusning/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source in Swedish, again&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="100" LastEditorUserId="100" LastEditDate="2011-10-04T19:39:50.173" LastActivityDate="2011-10-04T19:39:50.173" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6456" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-10-04T14:32:21.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Statistics is the science of interpreting data, including the techniques for how best to design experiments and how to interpret their results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of questions where this tag is used appropriately:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5982/is-a-coin-toss-fair&quot;&gt;Is a coin toss fair?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4984/are-the-chances-of-dying-each-day-1-250-000&quot;&gt;Are the chances of dying each day 1 : 250 000?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4293/is-there-a-statistical-advantage-in-playing-keno-for-a-long-period-of-time&quot;&gt;Is there a statistical advantage in playing KENO for a long period of time?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3531/can-we-determine-the-percentage-of-statistics-made-up-out-of-thin-air&quot;&gt;Can we determine the percentage of statistics made up out of thin air?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions that include the &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; of statistics (either in the original claim, or expected as part of a good answer) need not use this tag, otherwise almost every question about medical interventions could be tagged &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/statistics&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;statistics&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;statistics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T23:50:34.887" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T23:50:34.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6457" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-10-04T14:32:21.097" Score="0" Body="Please save use of this tag for questions that are fundamentally *about* statistics" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T23:50:34.887" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T23:50:34.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6459" CreationDate="2011-10-04T19:00:55.900" Score="16" ViewCount="2855" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this claim many times, mostly from anti-Islamic sources such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblebelievers.org.au/islam.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, they attempt to refute the way Islam views itself as an &quot;Abrahamic&quot; faith that is basically a newer version of the previous ones (Christianity and Judaism), and claim instead that Islam is based on an ancient, pagan, moon worshiping cult that was widespread in Arabia at the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has such a moon worshiping cult ever existed? And if so, is there any credible link between it and Islam? How significant is that link?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1301" LastEditorUserId="7286" LastEditDate="2015-12-10T15:20:15.780" LastActivityDate="2015-12-10T15:20:15.780" Title="Is Islam based on a moon worshiping cult?" Tags="|history|religion|islam|moon|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6458" CreationDate="2011-10-05T14:47:38.700" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt; Influenced by? Yes. Mainly/truly/only based on? Nope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Islam did not miraculously pop into existence (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sln.org.uk/storyboard/stories/i5.htm&quot;&gt;ok, to some extent it may have&lt;/a&gt;), but it was heavily influenced by pre-existing religions. This includes the name of Allah (Muhammad's Father's name includes &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abd_Allah_ibn_Abd_al_Muttalib#Name&quot;&gt;Abd Allah&lt;/a&gt;, servant of god), which was the name of one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabian_mythology#Gods_in_Arabian_mythology&quot;&gt;deities worshipped in Mecca&lt;/a&gt;, and which is etymologically related to Elohim (one of the names of the old testament god) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&amp;amp;search=allah&amp;amp;searchmode=none&quot;&gt;according to the OED&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moon symbol also predates Islam, though its use on flags has only been traced back to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent#In_the_Islamic_World&quot;&gt;12th century&lt;/a&gt;, and it was also associated with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_and_star#Iran.2C_Mithra_and_Mithradates&quot;&gt;Mithras cult&lt;/a&gt;, a variant of which is also known for its similarities to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithraic_mysteries#Mithraism_and_Christianity&quot;&gt;Christianity&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://jdstone.org/cr/files/mithraschristianity.html&quot;&gt;link to a site that suggests Christianity is basically Mithraidism with a new name&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Importantly, the moon was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbols_of_Islam#Star_and_Crescent&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a symbol of early Islam&lt;/a&gt;. Thus, the claim that Islam is based mainly on a moon worshipping cult becomes difficult to defend, unless one would assume that the most holy symbol of the religion was somehow kept secret from everybody else for several hundred years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it will be difficult to deny that Islam was influenced by the prevailing thoughts and religions of the time, it is wrong to claim that &quot;in reality&quot;, Islam is a pagan religion. The reality of religions are based the beliefs of the adherents, and if Muslims believe that  theirs is fundamentally an Abrahamic religion, then that's their reality. Using the history of religion to make claims about the &quot;validity&quot; is just trolling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two more links for your reading pleasure (ok, only the second is a pleasant read):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Sources/Allah/moongod.html&quot;&gt;A heavily referenced and probably somewhat biased site discussing archeological evidence for Allah=Moon God&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.litjournal.com/docs/fea_pagan.html&quot;&gt;A view on pagan influences in Christianity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T14:47:38.700" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6460" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-05T15:22:20.740" Score="6" ViewCount="1603" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read all the Carlos Castaneda's books, I practiced some of their exercises, some have been helpful but I've always been in doubt about whether Don Juan ever existed, or if the events in the books from Carlos Castaneda never happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the author from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Starting with The Teachings of Don Juan in 1968, Castaneda wrote a&#xA;  series of books that describe his training in shamanism. The books,&#xA;  narrated in the first person, relate his experiences under the&#xA;  tutelage of a Yaqui &quot;Man of Knowledge&quot; named don Juan Matus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4983" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-05T16:01:47.017" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T20:19:01.793" Title="Are the books from Carlos Castaneda real or fiction?" Tags="|anthropology|literature|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6424" CreationDate="2011-10-05T17:18:57.960" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several separate concepts to be addressed: fuel-efficiency, accident rate, fatality rate and experience in other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does vehicle speed affect the fuel-efficiency?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fuel efficiency is measured in mpg or Litres/100 km - i.e. factoring out the speed travelled, and just looking at the distance you can get per volume of fuel. I am assuming that fuel-efficiency is a reasonable proxy for g(CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;). This ignores tire-wear, vehicle and road damage, change in transport consumption due to faster times, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fuel efficiency is generally &lt;strong&gt;reduced&lt;/strong&gt; for high speeds e.g. higher than 55 mph (88 km/h). [Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1090496&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Consumer Reports test&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: The &lt;a href=&quot;http://cta.ornl.gov/data/tedb34/Edition34_Full_Doc.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oak Ridge National Laboratory claims&lt;/a&gt; [Figure 4.2] that some modern cars have better fuel efficiency at 65 mph than 45 mph, but that (with occasional exceptions) 55 mph is still better - the slope points downwards for higher speeds. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_automobiles#Speed_and_fuel_economy_studies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; has a nice graph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems reasonable to conclude that if the typical speed of cars is increased above 55 mph, average fuel efficiencies will drop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does vehicle speed affect the risk of accidents?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/publications/road_traffic/world_report/chapter3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WHO's World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention&lt;/a&gt; states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a large amount of evidence of a significant relationship between mean speed and crash risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Empirical evidence from speed studies in various&#xA;  countries has shown that an increase of&#xA;  1 km/h in mean traffic speed typically results&#xA;  in a 3% increase in the incidence of injury&#xA;  crashes (or an increase of 4–5% for fatal&#xA;  crashes), and a decrease of 1 km/h in mean&#xA;  traffic speed will result in a 3% decrease in&#xA;  the incidence of injury crashes (or a decrease&#xA;  of 4–5% for fatal crashes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A meta-analysis of 36 studies on speed limit&#xA;  changes showed, at levels above 50 km/h, a&#xA;  decrease of 2% in the number of crashes for&#xA;  every 1 km/h reduction in the average speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These claims are all referenced to the appropriate studies in the report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For comparison, they also map excess speed to the equivalent Blood Alcohol Level equivalent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does vehicle speed affect the risk of accidents involving serious injuries and fatalities?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/publications/road_traffic/world_report/chapter3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WHO's World Report on Road Traffic Injury Prevention&lt;/a&gt; states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The probability of a crash involving an injury&#xA;  is proportional to the square of the speed. The&#xA;  probability of a serious crash is proportional&#xA;  to the cube of the speed. The probability of&#xA;  a fatal crash is related to the fourth power of&#xA;  the speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For car occupants, the severity of crash injury&#xA;  depends on the change of speed during the&#xA;  impact, usually denoted as &amp;Delta;v. As &amp;Delta;v increases&#xA;  from about 20 km/h to 100 km/h, the probability&#xA;  of fatal injuries increases from close to&#xA;  zero to almost 100%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They go on to discuss pedestrian survival rates when hit at high-speeds. Pedestrian accidents are, perhaps, unlikely on motorways, but the figures are quite appalling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the German experience?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Germany, famously, has &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_autobahns&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;autobahns&lt;/a&gt; with areas where &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=German_autobahns&amp;amp;action=edit&amp;amp;section=6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;speed-limits are not enforced on some vehicles&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people have claimed that Germany does not have an increased accident-rate in areas with no blanket speed-limit. For example, Wikipedia's page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_autobahns&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;autobahns&lt;/a&gt;  states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The overall road traffic safety of German autobahns is comparable to and in some cases better than that of other European highways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moreover, international accident statistics demonstrate that limited access grade separated roads such as Autobahns and motorways have much greater road traffic safety regardless of speed limit, suggesting that high speed alone isn't a deciding factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't found such evidence, yet. I hope someone can add to this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The International Transport Forum's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/irtad/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;International Traffic Safety Data and Analysis Group&lt;/a&gt; (IRTAD?) has a database of figures by country. Looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.internationaltransportforum.org/irtad/pdf/risk.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IRTAD figures&lt;/a&gt;, Germany has a relatively low death rate by population and by vehicle km travelled. (Compare it to neighbours with similar terrain and climate.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, these figures don't separate out autobahn travel from other roads, and the unlimited sections of the Autobahn only account for a small percentage of the total travel. (Wikipedia claims &quot;only two percent of the traffic in Germany runs on unlimited sections&quot; without an explicit reference to support that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: A fact sheet (non-peer-reviewed?) from the European Transport Safety Council (ETSC) sheds some light on this. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.etsc.eu/documents/Speed_Fact_Sheet_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Speed Fact Sheet #1&lt;/a&gt;, Feb 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It points out that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One argument used in favour of the status quo is that a similar proportion of deaths on the motorways in Germany occur on sections without speed limits as on sections with limits. According to the German Statistics Agency, of the 645 road deaths that occurred on motorways in 2006, 441 or 67% occurred on motorway sections without limits. This is consistent with the figures from the previous year, 2005, when 662 deaths occurred on motorways, 462 (70%) of them on unlimited sections (fig. 3):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But this similarity of percentages takes no account of traffic volumes on the different sections. Traffic volumes on sections without speed limits are likely to differ appreciably on average from those on sections with speed limits. This should be investigated to cast more light on the numbers of deaths on the two kinds of section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some graphs are provided that show, with limited statistical rigour, that a disproportionately high number of lethal accidents occur, per km of road, in unlimited areas. (To my eye, they seem to undermine the original claim of similar death rates for speed-limited and unlimited areas.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is clear from the evidence that, all else being equal, high-speeds significantly decrease fuel-efficiency, significantly increase the risk of accidents, and dramatically increase the risk of fatal accidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this environment cost and cost in lives is worth it is not a scientific question. It is an environmental, economic, ethical and political one. If you wish to be allowed to speed anyway, fine, but don't expect the science to say it is without any cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-09-02T12:13:19.540" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T12:13:19.540" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6114" CreationDate="2011-10-05T20:24:30.293" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, horses run faster and longer.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When comparing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;marathon&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_riding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;endurance riding&lt;/a&gt; we get the following numbers :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Human : 42.195km in 2:03:38, average speed of 20.5km/h (world record at 2011 Berlin Marathon)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Human : 160km in 11:28:03, average speed of 14km/h (100miles ultramarathon &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iau-ultramarathon.org/images/file/World_Best_Performances_Ocober_2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;world record&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Horse : 160km in 6:21:12, average speed of 25.2 km/h (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.endurance.net/international/UAE/2010PresidentsCup/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;world record&lt;/a&gt; at 2010 President's Cup in Abu Dhabi, source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://search.fei.org/Search_Centre/Result/Pages/ResultList.aspx?p=858AEC8108C3B1F6322107237DB6800792985A264624613FEACE645A73BEF9B9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FEI&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not to mention the horse carries a 75kg weight on his back. UAE are well known for their endurance rides. I don't see the time when we'll be able to run a marathon 25% faster than the current WR four times in a row...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI, we also learn that :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Camels competed against horses in this 40-km pioneering event in the dunes of Dubai and the first 15 places were taken by horses. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uaeequafed.ae/endhistory.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4985" LastEditorUserId="6932" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T18:17:42.390" LastActivityDate="2020-06-17T18:17:42.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6471" CreationDate="2011-10-05T22:15:05.213" Score="8" ViewCount="985" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that people in Germany spend billions on pets and didn't believe it. But actually Germans spend around 3.3 billion Euro a year. &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http://www.wirtschaftswetter.de/ausgabe91/wirtschaftsmachthaustier.html&quot;&gt;The source seems serious.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only hint I found for US is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sandyrobinsonline.com/sandyhtml/Home.html&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;, speaking of a whopping 49 billion US dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This looks exorbitantly high to me when comparing the US population to Germany's, and when considering that Germany is a very pet friendly country. Can someone show a serious source listing e.g. ratio of absolute number and type of animals in US (vs. Germany)? I would really like to know how one can explain this high difference between the two countries and in which fields it arises. Do animals used in US farming contribute to the 49 billion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;on comments:&lt;/strong&gt; Im not trying to moralize. This anyway depends on your subjective valueing of 4$/day. I was more suprised by the absolute amount (the &lt;strong&gt;german overall government budget is around 300 billion a year!&lt;/strong&gt;) and the relative difference to Germany compared with population ratio (311:80) Most of pet food is very cheap meat waste from production of human food. So (to me) already the 3.3 billion Euro (1% of german government budget) is pretty much. A lot of jobless people in Germany (roughly 1 of 10) would be glad to have additionally $120/month ($1440/year). I don't have to mention people in 3rd world. It would be interesting to know where this &lt;strong&gt;overhead of costs comes from:&lt;/strong&gt; too expensive food (profiteering), contributing of animals in farming (I dont think they belong to pet industry) or very expensive vets. There seems also to exist very expensive dogsitting/dog disco (rofl) trends in New York. People having a dog, but paying other to care about (?) :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4477" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-06T12:18:29.520" LastActivityDate="2023-10-16T06:38:16.520" Title="Do Americans spend 49 billion dollars a year on pets?" Tags="|economics|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6460" CreationDate="2011-10-05T23:21:39.600" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Richard De Mille's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0595145086&quot;&gt;Castaneda's Journey&lt;/a&gt;&quot; does a good job establishing factual discrepancies in Castaneda's accounts. Because Castaneda purported to be passing on a secret shamanic tradition, defenders can explain such discrepancies by appealing to either the need for secrecy or service to a higher truth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A skeptical reader might note that the books are inconsistent in terms of character and content: Don Juan is a frightening figure at first but then later books portray him as more sly and jocular. The experiences reported get more and more fantastic until Castaneda is jumping off cliffs, and then they calm down in subsequent books. Members of Don Juan's circle come and go as if in response to narrative demands. Over time, the &quot;tradition&quot; described becomes less drug-influenced and more feminist, as if they were being tailored for the then-contemporary tastes.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2011-10-05T23:21:39.600" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6466" CreationDate="2011-10-06T07:23:15.003" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;, apparently that number is in the correct ballpark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accoring to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanpetproducts.org/press_industrytrends.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Pet Products Association&lt;/a&gt; the &lt;strong&gt;estimated number for 2011 is $50.84 billion&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fk4ff.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Statistics 1&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Breakdown of estimated 2011 Sales within the U.S. Market:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6u8kb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Statistics 2&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Actual Sales within the U.S. Market in 2010:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yfc9B.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Statistics 3&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;BR&gt;For more statistics click the link above.&#xA;&lt;BR&gt;(I don't know if &lt;em&gt;farm animals&lt;/em&gt; are included in these numbers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_32/b4045001.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Businessweek - The Pet Economy&lt;/a&gt; (2007):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;People are no longer satisfied to reward their pet in pet terms&lt;/em&gt;,&quot;&#xA;  argues Bob Vetere, president of the American Pet Products&#xA;  Manufacturers Assn. (APPMA). &quot;&lt;em&gt;They want to reward their pet in human&#xA;  terms&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That means hotels instead of kennels, braces to fix crooked&#xA;  teeth, and frilly canine ball gowns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pet owners are becoming&#xA;  increasingly demanding consumers who won't put up with substandard&#xA;  products, unstimulating environments, or shoddy service for their&#xA;  animals&lt;/strong&gt;. But the escalating volume and cost of services, especially in&#xA;  the realm of animal medicine, raises ethical issues about how far all&#xA;  this loving should go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Comparison with Germany:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;BR&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;United States&lt;/strong&gt; (from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanpetproducts.org/pubs_survey.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2011-2012 APPA National Pet Owners Survey&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Cats: 86.4 millions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Dogs: 78.2 millions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Birds: 16.2 millions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;In &lt;strong&gt;Germany&lt;/strong&gt; (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ivh-online.de/de/home/der-verband/daten-fakten.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Industrieverband Heimtierbedarf - Heimtiermarkt 2010&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Cats: 8.2 millions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Dogs: 5.3 millions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Birds: 3.5 millions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with a &lt;strong&gt;total sales volume of 3.7 billion Euros for 2010&lt;/strong&gt; (at the current exchange rate that would be &lt;strong&gt;$4.95 billion&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-10-06T09:09:02.047" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T09:09:02.047" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6473" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-06T16:52:24.217" Score="17" ViewCount="2037" Body="&lt;p&gt;Relatively recently, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Preventive_Services_Task_Force&quot;&gt;United States Preventive Services Task Force&lt;/a&gt; made a small change in what its recommendations for routine mammograms, suggesting that they should not be performed on asymptotic women younger than 50:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the government panel of doctors and scientists concluded that getting screened for breast cancer so early and so often is harmful, causing too many false alarms and unneeded biopsies without substantially improving women's odds of surviving the disease.&#xA;  &quot;The benefits are less and the harms are greater when screening starts in the 40s,&quot; said Dr. Diana Petitti, vice chair of the panel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The political and public response was not positive (see New York Times report &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/health/19cancer.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;The American Cancer Society didn't agree saying (reported &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33973665/ns/health-cancer/t/new-mammogram-guidelines-raise-questions/#.To3L_7LlYao&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is one screening test I recommend unequivocally, and would recommend to any woman 40 and over &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advice to patients in the UK has also proved controversial (eg this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d4592.full?sid=361b9ca8-2ad2-461c-8f84-4e5594f42ecc&quot;&gt;personal view&lt;/a&gt; published in the BMJ). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people's intuition would (wrongly) suggest that screening is all upside. Some experts seem to think differently having looked at the evidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what does the evidence say? Does screening help save lives? If so, for which groups? Is breast cancer screening worthwhile for any group not known to be at elevated risk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T22:40:05.443" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T20:38:33.070" Title="Is routine screening for breast cancer for asymptomatic women worthwhile?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6474" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6475" CreationDate="2011-10-06T18:10:28.703" Score="22" ViewCount="1507" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is often claimed that goldfishes have a very short memory, usually of two or three seconds. Like most claims in the real world, I have yet to see a source provided for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, do goldfishes have a short memory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T18:48:16.910" Title="Do goldfishes have a two or three seconds memory?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6475" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6474" CreationDate="2011-10-06T18:32:53.747" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/mythbusters/706/forgetful_fish.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fortean Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ichthyologists have known for a long time that this isn't true, and in&#xA;2003 Dr Phil Gee, of the School of Psychology at the University of&#xA;Plymouth, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1334363/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;published research&lt;/a&gt; which blew it out of the water&lt;/strong&gt;. Goldfish&#xA;have a memory span of at least three months, and can distinguish&#xA;between different shapes, colours and sounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Plymouth experiments, goldfish were trained to press a lever to&#xA;gain a food reward; when the lever was fixed to work only for an hour&#xA;a day, the fish soon learned to activate it at the correct time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;MythBusters&lt;/strong&gt; have tested this also (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-goldfish-memory-minimyth.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;watch the video&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jamie trained his goldfish to recognize color patterns and complete an&#xA;obstacle course&lt;/strong&gt; under water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They &lt;strong&gt;remembered what Jamie had taught&#xA;them over a month later&lt;/strong&gt; and easily completed the same course without&#xA;Jamie’s prompting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(from &lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/episode11&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MythBusters Results&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-02-19/goldfish-three-second-memory-myth-busted/1046710&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ABC News&lt;/a&gt; (2008):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;a 15-year-old schoolboy from Adelaide has just debunked the theory&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rory Stokes (a student at the Australian Science and Mathematics School) conducted a school experiment to prove his theory, using a small&#xA;tank of goldfish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;I decided to get a bit of red Lego and just feed them next to that.&#xA;Every day I'd put it in and sprinkle food around it&lt;/em&gt;,&amp;quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;At first they were a bit scared of it, a bit wary, but by the end of&#xA;the three weeks, they were actually almost coming before I put the&#xA;food in&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After leaving the fish alone for a week, Rory placed the red Lego&#xA;block in the tank again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;They remembered perfectly well&lt;/em&gt;,&amp;quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-06T18:48:16.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6473" CreationDate="2011-10-06T18:49:51.493" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, they absolutely save lives.  Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asco.org/ascov2/Meetings/Abstracts?&amp;amp;vmview=abst_detail_view&amp;amp;confID=70&amp;amp;abstractID=40559&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one study&lt;/a&gt;, relevant quote (apart from the title, &quot;Death from breast cancer occurs predominantly in women not participating in mammographic screening&quot;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Therefore, 75% of breast cancer deaths occurred in the 20% of women not regularly screened, while 25% of deaths occurred in the 80% regularly screened. If the 13 year mortality rate is 15% in the 192,740 women diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009, regularly screened women will have a 13 year breast cancer mortality rate of 5%, while unscreened women will have 56% mortality rate, similar to years prior to introduction of mammography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the age addition and the discussion of the Taskforce, here's another interesting facet of the argument that the taskforce didn't take into consideration: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9709283&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;younger women who get cancer progress through the stages of the disease much more quickly&lt;/a&gt;.  In fact, I've covered a lot of my misgivings about the taskforce's recommendations in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3111/is-there-evidence-that-evidence-based-medicine-outperforms-other-approaches/3155#3155&quot;&gt;the question about Evidence-Based Medicine&lt;/a&gt;, but here's a less anecdotal approach to the report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, again, it's a question about weighing the value of false positives vs false negatives (or no test at all).  A false negative almost certainly means that the disease will be further progressed when (and if) it's caught, while a false positive means, physically, the harm of the mammogram (radiation), ultrasound if performed (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasound&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;negligible physical harm&lt;/a&gt; as the energies are diagnostic and not therapeutic), and the biopsy itself.  Minimally invasive biopsies are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/guide/minimally-invasive-biopsy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;drastically less physically damaging&lt;/a&gt; than previous techniques (and I can post slides showing the difference if that previous link isn't considered sufficient).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throw into that calculus that the disease will progress faster in younger women, and while the taskforce is right that it's up to the patient to decide to get treated (and it always is), as a general rule, the more who are screened, the more who can be treated when the disease is in its early stages.  The author of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clinicalcorrelations.org/?p=2591&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; makes a much more compelling argument than I can, so I'll quote him directly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Considering that the main harms of screening are the necessary follow-up steps, the main question is whether the benefits of screening women aged 40-49 are really worth the effort. The USPSTF determined that they are not. In doing so however, they do not really explain how they came to this decision. [...] However, treatments for younger women are often more successful than for older women and thus a more appropriate focus would be detection of invasive cancer – for which the difference between the age groups is not as impressively significant.[...] The harms are not greater for 40-49 year old woman than for their older counterparts, they are simply more prevalent, but coupled with the benefit of saving a life with a longer potential life expectancy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We care about women in this group precisely because they are so young and the disease progresses through them more quickly.  (more on this later)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A word about the task force's statistics as well.  First, 1 in 8 women will &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/detection/probability-breast-cancer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;develop breast cancer throughout the course of their lifetimes&lt;/a&gt;, and 1 in 233 from ages 30 to 39 and 1 in 69 from ages 40 to 49 (numbers quoted by the task force in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf09/breastcancer/brcanup.htm#introduction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;their introduction&lt;/a&gt;).  So there is a discrepancy between the task force's numbers and the numbers reported by SEER for diagnosis rates, and I believe that that discrepancy comes from the task force's selection criteria.  Further examination of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf09/breastcancer/brcanupapp.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the code that the task force used&lt;/a&gt; is pretty illustrative:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have narrowed the number of studies down to 8 from all the other evidence that exists, using internally-defined criteria of 'goodness.'  I don't see a mention of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/noteworthy-trials/dmist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DMIST trial&lt;/a&gt;, which shows the effectiveness of digital mammography as compared to film mammography and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/newscenter/pressreleases/2005/dmistrelease&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;showed that younger women benefit from the advances of digital technology&lt;/a&gt;.  This study is important because it shows how the field of medical imaging is advancing to the point that many of the conclusions of the task force may be obviated by people switching to digital.  I believe that they didn't include DMIST because it didn't match their criteria for 'goodness' (acquired by consensus, it seems), or because it wasn't in the MEDLINE database.  Which begs the question-- are there other studies that aren't in MEDLINE or that they chose to remove because of this criterion but may be considered valid by the medical community? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have a set of non-justified magic numbers, such as 4 Markov chains, 1000 samples, etc.  Perhaps they have a justification for these numbers (ie, they considered them to be sufficiently large to not require any further examination), but I see no particular criteria that suggest that they did that.  Not saying the results will change, but that I'd like more justification for why they chose the magic numbers that they did.  They used &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openbugs.info/w/FrontPage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OpenBUGS&lt;/a&gt;, which has a prominent warning in the help file &lt;code&gt;Beware: MCMC sampling can be dangerous!&lt;/code&gt;  Might be good to have used more than just one approach to arrive at their conclusions, or to justify why they chose the particular numbers that they did in their models.  Why not a million samples?  Why not 500?  Why 4 chains and not 8 or 2?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One of the studies lists &quot;NA&quot; for the py.int and py.cntl parameters.  Why was this study included if one of the parameters that's considered necessary for the analysis isn't there?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll have to dig around in the code to find anything else, and if I find something, I'll post as an edit to this question.  In my mind, however, I shouldn't be doing their homework and validating their statistical methodology; I think that they should have had more justification up front for this approach, especially when the consequences can be so dire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, to be fair, the study I used to show that breast cancer progression was faster in younger patients was done using MCMC analysis as well.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1535610807003728&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Other studies&lt;/a&gt; have begun to find cellular explanations for the phenomenon, including the suggestion that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Interestingly, in the BALB-NeuT model, activation of the proteolytic system in breast epithelia was associated with young age and ADH [...] The activation of a specific genetic program early after sex-hormone-induced expression of the transforming oncogene HER-2 may, thus, initiate microinvasion, which can be detected by transmission electron microscopy in breast lesions as early as in the stage of ADH. [...]  Evidence for their malignant origin was provided by comparative genomic hybridization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Boiling that study down-- in rats, at least, younger age and expression of sex hormones induced the spread of malignant cancer.  If that finding were to hold true in humans, it would help to explain how younger women would progress through the disease more rapidly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In response&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/health/study-adds-new-doubts-about-value-of-mammograms.html?ref=science&amp;amp;_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the recent Canadian study&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sbi-online.org/Portals/0/Position%20Statements/ACR%20SBI%20Response%20to%20BMJ%20Article%202-11-13.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ACR has published a rebuttal&lt;/a&gt; that basically states that the Canadian study was deeply, deeply flawed.  One quotation in particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this latest BMJ paper, only 32 percent of cancers were detected by mammography alone. This extremely low number is consistent with poor quality mammography. At least two-thirds of the cancers should be detected by mammography alone (4). In an accompanying BMJ editorial, Kalager and Adami admit that &quot;The lack of mortality benefit is also biologically plausible because the mean tumour size was 19mm in the screening group and 21mm in the control group... a 2mm difference.&quot; The documented poor quality of the NBSS mammography screening alone explains these results and should disqualify the CNBSS as a valid scientific study of modern mammography screening. Yet, the CNBSS trial was even more troubled (5).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, if you take terrible images, you get nothing clinically relevant.  Diagnostic quality mammograms do save lives, as shown in the Massachusetts study previously referenced, but if the people taking the images don't know what they're doing, then the screening isn't useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2158" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T20:38:33.070" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6473" CreationDate="2011-10-07T05:16:44.703" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a group in the USA who have the job of assessing all of the scientific evidence for breast screening programs, and producing recommendations based on the best available evidence. That group is called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US Preventative Services Task Force&lt;/a&gt; which you may remember as the original group mentioned in the question who made the original claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their recommendations, I understand, are not binding on individual doctors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How they assess evidence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have a difficult job, and they do it very openly. They have to assess the evidence for the &quot;net benefit&quot; of a treatment - and they publish details about how they do that. My summary: It is difficult to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, they have insufficient evidence to make a recommendation, but they still get a lot of pressure to make one anyway. They openly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf09/methods/inevidup.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;describe the dilemma and their procedures to avoid making bad recommendations on poor evidence&lt;/a&gt;. My summary: It is difficult to do. They grade the evidence behind their recommendations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Breast Cancer Screening Recommendations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They make a number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspsbrca.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;number of recommendations about screening for breast cancer&lt;/a&gt; including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The USPSTF recommends biennial screening mammography for women aged 50 to 74 years. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The decision to start regular, biennial screening mammography before the age of 50 years should be an individual one and take patient context into account, including the patient's values regarding specific benefits and harms.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They support this with a report that does a review of the evidence: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf09/breastcancer/brcanup.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Screening for Breast Cancer, An Update for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Heidi D. Nelson, Kari Tyne, Arpana Naik, Christina Bougatsos,  Benjamin K. Chan, and Linda Humphrey, November 2009&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, they work out the number needed to treat (or they have called it NNI; number needed to invite) in order to save one life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extracting from their Table 1, which pools data from 16 trials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Age   NNI to Prevent 1 Breast Cancer Death&#xA;39-49 1904&#xA;50-59 1339&#xA;60-69 377&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it is worth screening 1904 people to get the opportunity to treat enough people to save one life is an economic and ethical decision - presumably it should be compared to other competing services that could be offered to save more lives for the same price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/12/health/study-adds-new-doubts-about-value-of-mammograms.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recent study&lt;/a&gt; published in the British Medical Journal apparently updates the results to make mammograms seem even less helpful for 40-60 year old Canadian women, and expect recommendations will eventually be updated based on all recent evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T06:31:34.447" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T06:31:34.447" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6478" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6481" CreationDate="2011-10-07T12:01:37.273" Score="13" ViewCount="4763" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm buying a new car, and I've heard that black cars appear more menacing and receive a proportionally higher amount of stops from police, with white receiving the least. Is there any truth to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5001" LastEditorUserId="37099" LastEditDate="2017-10-27T08:00:45.507" LastActivityDate="2022-12-14T21:06:15.207" Title="Are black cars more likely to be stopped by police than white cars?" Tags="|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2017-10-27T08:05:53.837" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6479" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-07T12:15:10.350" Score="12" ViewCount="7706" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are various claims about how long a tooth brushing session should last for proper dental hygiene. I have heard that 3 minutes is the time and that my tooth brushing sessions should be consecrated to that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colgate.com/app/CP/US/EN/OC/Information/Articles/Oral-and-Dental-Health-Basics/Oral-Hygiene/Brushing-and-Flossing/article/How-to-Brush.cvsp&quot;&gt;Colgate&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Proper brushing takes at least two minutes — that's right, 120 seconds! Most adults do not come close to brushing that long. To get a feel for the time involved, try using a stopwatch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spinbrush.com/AskUs_Using.html&quot;&gt;Arm and Hammer&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For best results, we recommend brushing your teeth for 2 minutes. Using a battery-powered toothbrush doesn't mean you can brush for less time, but it can make those 2 minutes more effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B000TWV1S4&quot;&gt;These&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swansonvitamins.com/RAD002/ItemDetail?SourceCode=INTL406&quot;&gt;products&lt;/a&gt; designed to time tooth brushing contain a two minute timer but &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0013M4PIW&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; contains a three minute timer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umm.edu/oralhealth/brushing.htm&quot;&gt;University of Maryland&lt;/a&gt; recommends a longer session:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Generally, brushing is recommended twice a day for at least three to four minutes each time. Patients generally think they are brushing long enough, when, in fact, most people spend less than one minute brushing. In addition, it is generally better to brush 3 to 4 minutes twice a day instead of brushing quickly five or more times throughout the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where do these numbers come from and why are they recommended? Can I brush more intensely for less time than is recommended or more softly for more time than is recommended? I always do it in less than 2 minutes and hard enough (of course not to the point of damaging my gums!!) so I feel a thorough hygiene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to get as much benefit from a brushing session lasting less than 2 minutes that I need for acceptable dental health?  Does exceeding the recommended time significantly cause problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4747" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2011-11-18T03:07:21.083" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T08:27:46.447" Title="Do I have to brush my teeth at least 3 minutes each time?" Tags="|hygiene|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6478" CreationDate="2011-10-07T14:36:53.970" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;An article on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.insurancequotes.com/auto/auto-insurance-car-color&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Insurance Quotes&lt;/a&gt; cites an article in the St. Petersburg Times, which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;White cars, which accounted for 25 percent of the cars on the road, were issued 19 percent of speeding tickets. By contrast, red cars made up 14 percent of those on the road but represented 16 percent of speeding tickets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article in the St. Petersburg Times, is also cited by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/red-handed/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gray cars were the ones that gained a greater share of the speeding tickets than they statistically should have: while they accounted for only 6 percent of cars on the road, they pulled down 10 percent of the tickets issued. On the flip side, silver cars got only 5 percent of the tickets, yet they represented 10 percent of the car population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, that article never seems to have made it onto the internet, so we don't know what it found about black cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a study at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160523151128/http://www.monash.edu.au:80/news/releases/show/1110&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Monash University&lt;/a&gt; in Australia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compared to white vehicles, black cars had a 12 per cent higher crash risk, closely followed by grey cars with 11 per cent higher risk. Silver vehicles were next, with 10 per cent, then blue and red at 7 per cent. While other car colours such as cream, yellow and beige ranked closely to white, no other colour ranked safer than white.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, they suggest that the reason is that dark cars have a less contrast against the road, meaning that other drivers don't see them well. So that increase in accident cause wouldn't necessarily translate into more tickets, whether because of increased visibility to police, poor driving, or risk taking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study published in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1455.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;British Medical Journal&lt;/a&gt; found that brown cars were most likely to be involved in an accident, followed by black and green. Silver, brown and red were the least likely. They also consider the lack of contrast to be the reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1993.tb01005.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bright Cars and Speeding Tickets&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The percentage of speed over the limit was not related to the characteristics of the cars or the drivers. It was found, however, that red, grey, and brown cars were more likely to receive speeding tickets than cars of other colors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find anything more than the abstract on this side of a paywall. However, black is a very common car colour, so it should have shown up here (second most common according to that Insurance Quotes article).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.appstate.edu/%7Echerrytl/papers/project1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bright Cars and Outsiders: Evidence of Asymmetric Estimates in Vehicular Speeds&lt;/a&gt;, published in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2001.tb00189.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;same journal&lt;/a&gt; found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An analysis of speeding records indicates that brightly colored vehicles systematically receive citations for relatively lower speeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That preprint, unfortunately, excludes the data tables, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Results provide compelling evidence that bright colors, such as red, yellow and white, receive citations for relatively lower speeds – implying that judgements or attitudes may differ across colors by authorities.  Conversely, the dark colors remain insignificant across both models—indicating that black, blue and green vehicles receive citations for statistically equivalent speeds than brown vehicles and statistically higher than red, yellow and white.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt; There may be variations in ticket frequency between colours - but the results are rather contradictory. None, however, have shown that black cars are anything but average in terms of tickets. However, you would be more likely to get hit by somebody, so watch out for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-12-14T21:06:15.207" LastActivityDate="2022-12-14T21:06:15.207" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6483" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-07T15:33:08.003" Score="7" ViewCount="718" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been forwarded this by a colleague:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There’s a great story of a manager of a Coca-cola plant who’s numbers were far better than his peers. When asked what his “secret” was, he said simply that rather than take a best practice and modify it to meet what the plant did, he instead modified the plant to match the best practice. His secret was not trying to be too clever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20121017105658/http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2011/05/24/bamboo-reminds-me-of-a-time-when&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Object Mentor blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this something which really happened, or just some made-up example? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="31029" LastEditDate="2017-01-14T09:58:11.857" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T09:58:11.857" Title="Is this anecdote about the adoption of best practices true?" Tags="|history|programming-productivity|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="528" CreationDate="2011-10-07T16:27:17.263" Score="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/updates/Microwave-cooking-and-nutrition.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harvard Medical School&lt;/a&gt;, the effect on the nutrients in food by a microwave may actually be lower than standard stove-top heating (the microwaves primarily heat up the water in the food, so the other nutrients are more-or-less un-affected).  I have copied the discussion they have, with some emphasis to particular things added by me to highlight the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding how microwaves work can help clarify the answer to this common question. Microwave ovens cook food with waves of oscillating electromagnetic energy that are similar to radio waves but move back and forth at a much faster rate. These quicker waves are remarkably selective, primarily affecting molecules that are electrically asymmetrical — one end positively charged and the other negatively so. Chemists refer to that as a polarity. Water is a polar molecule, so when a microwave oven cooks or heats up food, it does so mainly by energizing — which is to say, heating up — water molecules, and the water energizes its molecular neighbors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to being more selective, microwave-oven energy is also more penetrating than heat that emanates from an oven or stovetop. &lt;em&gt;It immediately reaches molecules about an inch or so below the surface. In contrast, regular cooking heat goes through food rather slowly, moving inward from the outside by process of conduction&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some nutrients do break down when they’re exposed to heat, whether it is from a microwave or a regular oven. Vitamin C is perhaps the clearest example. So, as a general proposition, cooking with a microwave probably does a better job of preserving the nutrient content of foods because the cooking times are shorter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as vegetables go, it’s cooking them in water that robs them of some of their nutritional value because the nutrients leach out into the cooking water. For example, boiled broccoli loses glucosinolate, the sulfur-containing compound that may give the vegetable its cancer-fighting properties as well as the taste that many find distinctive and some, disgusting. The nutrient-rich water from boiled vegetables can be salvaged and incorporated into sauces or soups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is steaming vegetables better? In some respects, yes. For example, steamed broccoli holds on to more glucosinolate than boiled or fried broccoli.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is nutrition, and &lt;em&gt;nothing in nutrition is simple&lt;/em&gt;. Italian researchers published results in 2008 of an experiment comparing three cooking methods — boiling, steaming, and frying — and the effect they had on the nutritional content of broccoli, carrots, and zucchini. Boiling carrots actually increased their carotenoid content, while steaming and frying reduced it. Carotenoids are compounds like lutein, which may be good for the eyes, and beta carotene. One possible explanation is that it takes longer for vegetables to get tender when they’re steamed, so the extra cooking time results in more degradation of some nutrients and longer exposure to oxygen and light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But let’s not get too lost in the details. Vegetables, pretty much any way you prepare them, are good for you, and most of us don’t eat enough of them. And the microwave oven? A marvel of engineering, a miracle of convenience — &lt;em&gt;and sometimes nutritionally advantageous to boot&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/HEALTHbeat_081606.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Harvard Medical School&lt;/a&gt; also has a question answer section that discusses what (if any) real dangers are associated with microwaves.  Although that article is more about the containers used in microwaves.  I was unable to track down any .edu sites that discuss any particular &amp;quot;changes&amp;quot; to food that aren't identical to changes brought on by normal convective heat.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://class.ee.iastate.edu/mmina/ee185/HW/HealthMy-PRO-CONS-MICROWAVE.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;There are some dangers associated with uneven heating or super-heating though, which this paper from the University of Iowa addresses&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An unrelated, but often conflated question is about food irradiation.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170903042818/http://www.physics.isu.edu:80/radinf/food.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Idaho State University provides this 10 question FAQ for those interested&lt;/a&gt;.  By definition, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;non-ionizing radiation&lt;/a&gt; does not get left behind like ionizing radiation.  If it did, then the entire universe would basically be uninhabitable from ionization.  Microwaves are far down the EM spectrum compared to ionizing radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2022-05-03T11:11:50.943" LastActivityDate="2022-05-03T11:11:50.943" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6485" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6490" CreationDate="2011-10-07T17:14:39.997" Score="5" ViewCount="662" Body="&lt;p&gt;As someone who works with children, I frequently hear people say that giving children food with artificial colouring (or, sometimes, artificial sweeteners) causes them to be hyperactive, louder, or otherwise more difficult to handle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal experience doesn't tally with this. What does science say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: to clarify, I'm specifically talking about sugar-free foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5006" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-10-07T19:43:04.027" LastActivityDate="2011-10-08T08:08:36.090" Title="Do artificial colours in food cause hyperactivity in children?" Tags="|nutrition|behavior|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6492" CreationDate="2011-10-08T07:17:15.940" Score="2" ViewCount="505" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this all over the internet, but it never got picked up by larger news websites. There is an article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-25/markets/29978854_1_debt-ceiling-full-report-money&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;business insider&lt;/a&gt; but I'm rather unsure about the reliability of that site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically the federal reserved is supposed to have issued 16 trillion dollars in loans all over the world to &quot;support&quot; the failing 2008-2009 economy. Is there any solid proof of that ever happening? If so, why wasn't it picked up by any serious news agency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4781" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-08T08:32:46.543" LastActivityDate="2011-10-08T11:22:49.647" Title="Has the federal reserve issued 16 trillion dollars in bailouts?" Tags="|economics|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6485" CreationDate="2011-10-08T08:08:36.090" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I first read the question I told myself: OK, here's another of those stupid &quot;natural&quot;=&quot;good&quot; &quot;artificial&quot;=&quot;bad&quot; claims... however, it seems this is not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are indeed several studies on the matter, although they generally do not look only at food colouring, but also at other additives such as the preservative sodium benzoate or various sweeteners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial was published a few years ago on Lancet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17825405&quot;&gt;Food additives and hyperactive behaviour in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children in the community: a randomised, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial.&lt;/a&gt; - McCann, &lt;em&gt;Lancet&lt;/em&gt; 2007&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jumping straight to the conclusions, they say that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have found an adverse effect of food additives on the hyperactive behaviour of 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children. Although the use of artificial colouring in food manufacture might seem superfluous, the same cannot be said for sodium benzoate, which has an important preservative function. The implications of these results for the regulation of food additive use could be substantial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what exactly did they do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They recruited groups of 3 and 8/9 years old children from Southampton, UK. In particular they had 137 3 years old and 130 8/9 years old completing the study (the paper explains the recruitment in more detail). They then tested the effect (vs. placebo) of 2 mixes, called A and B, containing different amount of various food colouring (sunset yellow, carmoisine, tartrazine, ponceau 4R, quinoline yellow, allura red AC, plus sodium benzoate. 8/9-year-old children had 1.25 times bigger doses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I don't have kids myself, but reading this sentence I would say this is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than I would give my kid to eat... anyways&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doses for mixes A and B for 3-year-old children were roughly the same as the amount of food colouring in two 56-g bags of sweets. For 8/9-year-old children, the dose for mix A was equal to about two bags of sweets a day and for mix B about four bags of sweets a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protocol they followed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After a week on their typical diet (week 0: baseline diet), the artificial colours to be used in the challenges and sodium benzoate were withdrawn from their diet for 6 weeks. Over this period when challenge with active or placebo drinks were given, additive withdrawal continued (week 1: withdrawal period but receiving placebo; weeks 2, 4, and 6: challenge with randomisation to two active periods and one placebo period; weeks 3 and 5: washout continuing on placebo). During this period, 3-year-old children received the challenge and washout-placebo drinks on a weekly basis and consumed mixed fruit juices (placebo or active) at home (300 mL/day for 3-year-old children, 625 mL/day for 8/9-year-old children), provided in identical sealed bottles. At the beginning of the study, children were assigned by the study administrator by a random-number generator to receive one of six possible sequences of placebo, active mix A, or active mix B challenges across weeks 2, 4, and 6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the various mixes were tested so that they could not be discriminated by look and/or taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Behaviour was then assessed with different methods (essentially questionnaire given to the parents, assessment of behaviour in classrooms and, for the older children, a visual test). I am not an expert on these matters, so I cannot really comment on these tests, but I assume they're quite standard ways to measure hyperactivity (and I'm sure Lancet recruits competent reviewers...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll skip you all the stats, but the conclusion was that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our complete case data has indicated that the effect sizes, in terms of the difference between the GHA under active mix and placebo challenges, were very similar for mix B in 3-year-old and 8/9-year-old children. For mix A, the effect for 3-year-old children was greater than for 8/9-year-old children. The effects for mix B were not significant for 3-year-old children because there was greater variability in the response to the active challenges than placebo in this age group. Thus, we recorded substantial individual differences in the response of children to the additives. For both age groups, no significant effect of social and demographic factors was seen on the initial level of GHA or in the moderation of the challenge effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They continue saying that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The specific deleterious compounds in the mix cannot be determined for the present study and need to be examined in subsequent studies. The effect of artificial colours needs to be differentiated from the effects of preservatives in a 2×2 design. Further investigation would also need to establish whether the age-related difference seen in the present study can be replicated—ie, the effects of mix A being greater for 3-year-old children than for 8/9-year-old children. We examined the effects of additives on changes in behaviour during an extended period in a community-based, double-blinded, placebo-controlled food challenge. A weakness in this approach is the lack of control over when the challenges are ingested in relation to the timing of measures of hyperactivity. This study design also needs extensive resources to obtain multisource and multicontext measures of hyperactivity. We have completed a pilot study showing that changes in hyperactivity in response to food additives can be produced within about 1 h. Therefore, future studies could use more feasible acute double-blinded challenges undertaken in more controlled settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a big amount of literature on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will only link to a couple of reviews, you can go through their references if you want more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15613992&quot;&gt;Do artificial food colors promote hyperactivity in children with hyperactive syndromes? A meta-analysis of double-blind placebo-controlled trials.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite indications of publication bias and other limitations, this study is consistent with accumulating evidence that neurobehavioral toxicity may characterize a variety of widely distributed chemicals. Improvement in the identification of responders is required before strong clinical recommendations can be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21127082&quot;&gt;Dietary sensitivities and ADHD symptoms: thirty-five years of research.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Artificial food colors (AFCs) have not been established as the main cause of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but accumulated evidence suggests that a subgroup shows significant symptom improvement when consuming an AFC-free diet and reacts with ADHD-type symptoms on challenge with AFCs. Of children with suspected sensitivities, 65% to 89% reacted when challenged with at least 100 mg of AFC. Oligoantigenic diet studies suggested that some children in addition to being sensitive to AFCs are also sensitive to common nonsalicylate foods (milk, chocolate, soy, eggs, wheat, corn, legumes) as well as salicylate-containing grapes, tomatoes, and orange. Some studies found &quot;cosensitivity&quot; to be more the rule than the exception. Recently, 2 large studies demonstrated behavioral sensitivity to AFCs and benzoate in children both with and without ADHD. A trial elimination diet is appropriate for children who have not responded satisfactorily to conventional treatment or whose parents wish to pursue a dietary investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... essentially there is not a crystal clear answer, but there may be effects of specific food colouring, possibly depending on the sensitivity and the age of the children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastActivityDate="2011-10-08T08:08:36.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1803" CreationDate="2011-10-08T10:24:55.413" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's Dr. Steven Novella's take on this issue at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/do-cold-drinks-alter-digestion/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Neurologica blog&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To summarize all of this – the various studies that directly look at&#xA;  this question found variable responses to warm or cold liquid or solid&#xA;  meals, but with a tendency to find delayed gastric emptying in&#xA;  response to food at other than body temperature. This effect, if real,&#xA;  may be a nonspecific vagal response, which can either be due to&#xA;  temperature or any pain or trauma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What not a single study found, however, was accelerated gastric&#xA;  emptying in response to cold water or food. The actual scientific&#xA;  results, if anything, are the exact opposite of what many of the&#xA;  nutrition sites are claiming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the scientific data indicates that water, of any tolerable&#xA;  temperature, does not have an adverse effect on digestion. Water, in&#xA;  fact, is critical for digestion. So, drink as much as you want (within&#xA;  reason, of course) during meals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="59" LastActivityDate="2011-10-08T10:24:55.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6489" CreationDate="2011-10-08T11:22:49.647" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This looks like selective statistics.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://sanders.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/GAO%20Fed%20Investigation.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GAO report can be read&lt;/a&gt; by anyone.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The $16 trillion can be found in Table 8 (page 131 of report, 144 of pdf).  This falls to $1.1 trillion in Table 9 (page 132/3 of report, 145/6 of pdf) if you adjust for term length (e.g. borrowing $1 twelve times for a month is treated the same as borrowing $1 for a year rather than as borrowing $12).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those two tables are only part of the story. A better table is the summary (page 4 of the pdf) which covers more types of transactions and their peak amounts but is still way below $16 trillion.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That too is only part of the story: for example FRB-NY agreed to lend to Citigroup against losses between $56.2 billion and $300 billion, but in the event never did.  How would this potential liability that was never called be treated?  In the end you need to read the report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-10-08T11:22:49.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6493" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6541" CreationDate="2011-10-08T15:17:50.867" Score="12" ViewCount="1403" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are friend told me about oil fumes contamination he experienced during a flight. This seems to be no isolated case. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aerotoxic.org/news-and-articles/fume-event-incident-reports#IHB-IXN-19-04-2005&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This list shows several incidents of similar type over years&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Upon initial descent there suddenly was a very strong oil smell in&#xA;the cabin.” “Both pilots had red irritated eyes and gave me the&#xA;impression that they were quite fatigued.” &lt;strong&gt;“…the pilots did confirm&#xA;that there is something and that this is very likely a strong oil&#xA;smell.”&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Shortly after initiating a descent, an oily smell was noticed on the flight deck, almost immediately followed by a smoke build-up in the flight deck and cabin.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;during the 36 months examined (by IATA), there occurred an average of two and a half smoke events each day.&amp;quot; &lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Smoke protection for passengers is not a requirement on public transport aircraft&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20080521220913/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/759562/Is-cabin-air-making-us-sick.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here it gets really interesting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When commercial flights began in 1958 passengers breathed in air supplied directly from the atmosphere using compressors. But this was deemed to be &lt;strong&gt;too expensive, so in 1962 a system was installed to draw the air from the heart of the engines — known today as “bleed” air.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Air is drawn out of the compression section of the engine and cooled. It then enters the cabin, where it mixes with recirculated air that has passed through filters designed to remove bacteria and viruses. &lt;strong&gt;These “recirculated air” filters do not remove any fumes or vapours from the engine. So if engine oil or hydraulic fuel leaks, because of poorly designed or faulty seals, or even over-filled tanks, toxic chemicals can contaminate the air supply.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On medical consequences the article states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least this can cause drowsiness, headaches, flu-like symptoms and nausea — the kind of symptoms that Dr Nicola Hembry, a specialist in environmental medicine, says passengers may wrongly assume have been picked up from another passenger. &lt;strong&gt;At worst, air can be laced with a chemical, tricresyl phosphate (TCP), an organophosphate, or other toxic mixtures of chemicals that have been linked to serious respiratory problems, memory loss, neurological illnesses and even brain damage.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems the coming Boeing 787 is the first airplane regarding (suddenly?) this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 50 of years of commercial flights, aviation has changed beyond recognition. But for all the advances in design, safety and comfort, &lt;strong&gt;until the launch of Boeing’s new Dreamliner (787) next year (on which air will be compressed electronically), little has been done about the fact that both passengers and crew are breathing in air that comes straight from the engines.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aerotoxic.org/faqs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;aerotoxic.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q. How often do fume events happen? A. As there are no fume detectors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;even on the most modern jets, it is impossible to give a figure but the UK Government works on 1 in 100 or 1 in 2000. Many aircrew say&#xA;that each flight is affected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are those fume events a frequent occurrence and a significant health hazard?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Airplane companies know that their constructed environmental system for cabin air is flawed and seriously hazardous to pilot and passenger health, but try to play sanitary consequences and frequency of such incidents down to save costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.injuredonflight.com/?cat=6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Despite losing lawsuits concerning oil fumes companies state:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aircraft manufacturer Boeing concedes there is a chance of fume events, but the company says the air on board its aircraft is “safe and healthy.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there serious third-party studies from independent medical doctors who treated such passengers, studies how often these incidents happen in airliners? There seem to be quite a number of notifications and lawsuits about oil fume events (see links above). Even some pilots and flight attendants are involved in lawsuits with their companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody seems to disagree that those fume events happen, but the airlines argue that they only happen seldomly under exceptional circumstances. Some groups though claim that those events are frequent and a significant health hazard to frequent flyers. How often do those fume events happen and are they a significant health hazard to crew and passengers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4477" LastEditorUserId="31500" LastEditDate="2022-11-10T22:59:46.440" LastActivityDate="2022-11-10T22:59:46.440" Title="Are fume events a frequent health hazard to airplane passengers?" Tags="|aviation|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6496" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-10-08T21:53:54.567" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-08T21:53:54.567" LastActivityDate="2011-10-08T21:53:54.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6497" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-10-08T21:53:54.567" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions regarding physical, chemical and biological factors that may affect human health. " OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:11:51.993" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:11:51.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6498" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6499" CreationDate="2011-10-09T03:04:04.377" Score="20" ViewCount="3689" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150470524419815&amp;amp;set=a.367652879814.203867.518234814&amp;amp;type=3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mW4JN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Alleged aerial image of Occupy Wall Street&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This photo is actually getting pulled off Facebook...so, the photographer added a lil text and renamed the file. Pass it on. I'm SURE the media doesn't want this one out there. Share it as much as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside the claim that the image is being pulled from Facebook, or that &quot;the media&quot; denies the protest is happening, &lt;strong&gt;is this an accurate photograph of the Occupy Wall Street protest?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't ring true to me: It seems far more populated than other photos of the event would suggest, and I would have thought more flags and placards would be visible, but I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-29T03:52:57.643" LastActivityDate="2020-05-05T16:47:33.743" Title="Is this photo of Occupy Wall Street authentic?" Tags="|history|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6498" CreationDate="2011-10-09T05:17:25.363" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.timparkinson.net/2011/09/30/lies-damn-lies-and-photoshop/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This blog post that did some investigation on that photograph quite clearly shows that it is a photoshop job&lt;/a&gt;.  Furthermore, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.timparkinson.net/2011/10/07/lies-damn-lies-and-photoshop-update/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the originator of the photoshop job has as much admitted to it being photoshop&lt;/a&gt;, and he did it to bring attention to the movement, even though he is not involved in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“yes its photoshopped I was hyping the event lol you do know the news is lying to us all day long. So they have CNN and Fox the 99% have me lol&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sincerely,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jason Wettstein”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you peruse the two blog posts (I know, not the most reliable sources), they do a lot of research for us.  They link to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://maps.google.com.au/maps?q=city%20hall&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ll=40.712487,-74.00751&amp;amp;spn=0.000435,0.001032&amp;amp;sll=40.712487,-74.00751&amp;amp;sspn=0.000435,0.001032&amp;amp;vpsrc=6&amp;amp;t=h&amp;amp;radius=0.03&amp;amp;hq=city%20hall&amp;amp;z=21&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;original photographs from google&lt;/a&gt; and highlight how the photoshop was done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-05-05T16:47:33.743" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6500" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6502" CreationDate="2011-10-09T07:55:46.733" Score="50" ViewCount="22249" Body="&lt;p&gt;Spy movies and novels have popularized the idea that CIA agents, or other spies, will carry cyanide pills, or other &quot;quick and painless&quot; suicide devices with them on covert missions, to use as a last resort to avoid torture in case of enemy capture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone actually do this?  If so, have such measures ever actually been taken (that we know of)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T05:08:30.277" Title="Do spies use cyanide or other suicide agents as a last resort?" Tags="|suicide|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6509" CreationDate="2011-10-09T08:08:11.980" Score="14" ViewCount="3067" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time in 2009, California passed new regulations, banning black cars (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.autoblog.com/2009/03/25/california-to-reduce-carbon-emissions-by-banning-black-cars/&quot;&gt;here's one source&lt;/a&gt;) on the grounds that black cars have higher emissions than other colors of cars.  The theory is that black cars absorb more heat from the sun, so their A/C must work harder.  Is there any truth to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if there is, wouldn't it be beneficial in winter months to have black cars?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-10T01:30:09.487" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T03:42:25.717" Title="Do black cars consume more fuel?" Tags="|environment|fossil-fuel|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6500" CreationDate="2011-10-09T10:38:51.607" Score="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/soe_training_01.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC History- Training SOE Saboteurs in World War II&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;the 'L' tablet&lt;/strong&gt;, which came in a little rubber cover, &lt;strong&gt;was a suicide&#xA;pill&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the agent bit down on it, he would be dead in 15 seconds&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.howstuffworks.com/11-terms-used-by-spies.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HowStuffWorks&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An L-pill is a lethal pill carried by spies to prevent them from&#xA;revealing secrets&lt;/strong&gt; if captured and tortured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;During World War II, some&#xA;L-pills contained a lethal dose of cyanide&lt;/strong&gt; encased in a glass capsule&#xA;that could be concealed in a fake tooth and released by the agent's&#xA;tongue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he bit into the capsule and broke the glass, he would die&#xA;almost immediately.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;But if the pill came loose and was swallowed&#xA;accidentally while the agent was sleeping or chewing gum, it would&#xA;pass through his system without causing any harm, as long as it didn't&#xA;break and release the poison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5fB4fan-bk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Penn &amp;amp; Teller's bit about the L-Pill&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;strong&gt;BBC documentary&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0eHCytkcHg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hiroshima: Dropping the bomb&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The mission was so secret, Tibbets&lt;/strong&gt; [the pilot of the &lt;em&gt;Enola Gay&lt;/em&gt; ] &lt;strong&gt;was given suicide pills, in case&#xA;they fell into Japanese hands&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;That evening, when I came out the mess&#xA;hall, the Flight Surgeon gave me the pills. He told me what they were.&#xA;I hope you don't need them, but, he said, if you do, they're cyanide.&#xA;&lt;br&gt; He&#xA;said, here, if you need them, one for each man of the crew. He said,&#xA;you'll never know anything, within six minutes, you're gone. You never&#xA;feel anything different, you never feel a thing.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;And I told the guys&#xA;outside the airplane, before we climbed up, I'll give any one of you&#xA;the pill, if you want the pill. And no one said anything, but Captain&#xA;Parsons, he said, I'd like to have one. And I understood his position,&#xA;because he knew more technical stuff about that bomb than anybody&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amworld.info/the-hiroshima-bomb/the-hiroshima-bomb&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazing World - The Hiroshima Bomb&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/1995-07-30/news/mn-29374_1_atom-bomb/2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Los Angeles Times - The Dropping of Little Boy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/02/world/suspects-in-crash-take-suicide-pills.html?src=pm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times (1987)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A man and woman&lt;/strong&gt; who had been passengers aboard a South Korean jetliner&#xA;before it left the Middle East and disappeared over Burma &lt;strong&gt;took suicide&#xA;pills today as they waited for the police to question them&lt;/strong&gt;, the&#xA;authorities said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The man died, but the woman was expected to live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plane, with 115 people aboard, vanished near the Burma-Thailand&#xA;border, before a scheduled refueling stop in Bangkok. Officials in&#xA;Seoul have said there are strong suspicions that a bomb destroyed the&#xA;aircraft. Boarded at Baghdad&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The man [...] &lt;strong&gt;died four hours after biting into a suicide pill concealed in a cigarette&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/11/world/suicide-victim-in-jet-inquiry-termed-north-korea-envoy.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Suicide Victim in Jet Inquiry Termed North Korea Envoy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;There is a belief that NASA gives out suicide pills to astronauts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote &lt;strong&gt;Apollo 13's &lt;a href=&quot;http://history.nasa.gov/SP-350/ch-13-1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jim Lovell&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Apollo 13 many people have asked me, &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Did you have suicide pills&#xA;on board&lt;/em&gt;?&amp;quot; We didn't, and I never heard of such a thing in the eleven&#xA;years I spent as an astronaut and NASA executive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T19:27:37.097" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6503" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-09T12:27:11.923" Score="11" ViewCount="990" Body="&lt;p&gt;Susan Greenfield, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pharm.ox.ac.uk/research/greenfield&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an English pharmacologist&lt;/a&gt;, is quoted by the New York times as saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My fear is that these technologies are infantilizing the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/the-health-effects-of-social-networking/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will also cite the newspaper as saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is social networking killing you? Well, no, probably not. Or at least, not literally. But two British scientists have recently suggested that &lt;strong&gt;spending all day, and — admit it — much of the night networking on a computer might in fact be bad for your body and your brain.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, I would simply roll my eyes, but, given the origin I'd like to see some studies: Is this health threat supported by peer-reviewed studies or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:32:11.660" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:32:11.660" Title="Is Social Networking harmful to mind or body?" Tags="|medical-science|social-media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10285" CreationDate="2011-10-09T12:30:43.340" Score="40" ViewCount="2788" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I haven't watched TV since 1969. I worked in it for decades, and knew enough not to watch it. It makes you stupid, and my colleagues in the networks agree! Some of them would point out what a verbal beating they'd get from friends who actually saw what got broadcast. When you work in most aspects of TV, you rarely have time to watch what's going out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kenrockwell.com/hdtv/makes-you-stupid.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any peer reviewed studies supporting this myth? Surely documentaries don't, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to see both correlation and causation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-10-09T14:47:00.207" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T19:13:45.223" Title="Does watching TV make you stupid?" Tags="|television|intelligence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6505" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8141" CreationDate="2011-10-09T12:40:41.173" Score="24" ViewCount="1230" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Others are against using calculator in lower level math teaching, saying that it makes children not to learn their basic facts, prevents students from discovering and understanding underlying mathematical concepts and instead encourages them to randomly try different operations without understanding what they're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homeschoolmath.net/teaching/calculator-use-math-teaching.php&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am 100% skeptic here: I've always used a calculator and while it's easier than doing long division by hand, I've always found that manual calculations made me like math less than I should. The really interesting stuff is elsewhere...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does science say? Is there a proven impact on learning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T01:13:03.053" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T01:29:41.550" Title="If children use calculators in primary school, is their learning impacted?" Tags="|education|intelligence|mathematics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6501" CreationDate="2011-10-09T23:18:01.363" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;heater&quot; in your car does not actually generate heat itself. It actually takes the &lt;a href=&quot;http://auto.howstuffworks.com/cooling-system10.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;heat generated by the engine&lt;/a&gt; and passes that back through your cabin rather than venting it outside. So neither heaters nor winter will increase CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Californians use approximately 1.8 billion liters (472 million gallons) of fuel each year &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/ancillary_loads/pdfs/2002_01_1957.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;running car air conditioners&lt;/a&gt; (do note that this is of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/07/amazing-stat-ca/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;76 billion liters, or 20 billion gallons&lt;/a&gt; total statewide - so air conditioners account for about 2.5% of fuel consumption).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason that lighter car colours could be used to reduce air conditioning use is that they &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy00/phy00156.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reflect more incoming light&lt;/a&gt; rather than absorbing it and heating up. A black car can heat up by almost &lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/episode38&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;6°C&lt;/a&gt; more than a white car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, a lighter coloured car would reduce the need for air conditioning, lowering CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T16:29:07.173" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T16:29:07.173" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3562" CreationDate="2011-10-10T00:02:02.080" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Despite the consensus, there are good quality studies that don't find a strong link&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the scientific consensus is clear: almost everyone thinks secondhand smoke is bad. But skeptics should carefully consider, especially in areas where emotions run as high as this, the alternative views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a large scale study of the long term effects of secondhand smoke that finds little impact on all cause mortality. The BMJ paper is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/326/7398/1057.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusions. The results do not support a causal&#xA;  relation between environmental tobacco smoke and&#xA;  tobacco related mortality, although they do not rule&#xA;  out a small effect. The association between exposure&#xA;  to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart&#xA;  disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker&#xA;  than generally believed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of balance it is worth reading the follow-up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/326/7398/1057.abstract/reply#bmj_el_228499&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;debate&lt;/a&gt;. My reading is that there are few direct criticisms of the science but many attacks on the scientists (who have some relationship with the &quot;evil&quot; tobacco industry). The intemperate nature of many responses suggest that it is becoming hard to conduct and publish any research on the topic that does not agree with the consensus. I'd recommend any skeptic to read the paper and then the responses and make their own mind up while trying to consider only criticism of the results and not their funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both poor quality studies agreeing with the consensus and entirely unreferenced claims are widely repeated to justify legislation. One example is the (entirely unreferenced) claim that secondhand smoke kills 600,000 people a year. The claim comes from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WHO factsheet&lt;/a&gt; which does not reference any sources. Yet this is repeated as an accurate assessment even by people who should know better such as David Nutt (it is in his, mostly sensible, book *&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Drugs-Without-Minimising-Harms-Illegal/dp/1906860165&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drugs-without the hot air&lt;/a&gt;&quot;). This is not a small number of deaths and, if the claim were true, we would expect strong epidemiological evidence. This is not obviously there in the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The best and most recent studies cast doubt on any relationship between passive smoking and lung cancer. But there may be a small affect on heart-attack rates though this could be an overestimate because it is hard to distinguish the effect on non-smokers from the effect of smoking who quit smoking as a result of the bans.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB There are several skeptics.SE questions on passive smoking and this section summarises some results explored in more depth on other, more specific, questions. Specifically:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8245/does-second-hand-smoke-cause-cancer&quot;&gt;Does second hand smoke cause cancer?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14110/do-workplace-smoking-bans-reduce-the-number-of-heart-attacks&quot;&gt;Do workplace smoking bans reduce the number of heart attacks?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be some duplication until I get through a few more edit cycles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Passive smoking and cancer&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;There has been some new debate on the subject since the original answer was written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the subject of Lung cancer and second hand smoke, a new study using rather better methods than many previous studies occluded that no relationship could be shown a significant levels. The [referenced study][6] is from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Its key conclusions are (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A large prospective cohort study of more than 76,000 women confirmed a strong association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer &lt;strong&gt;but found no link between the disease and secondhand smoke.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Passive smoking and cardiovascular disease.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the early days of workplace smoking bans a number of studies reported large reductions in the number of heart attacks (the quote if from the BMJ paper referenced below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The largest impacts have been reported in smaller studies in the United States, with reported reductions in the range of 27-40%, while larger studies have reported more modest reductions: 8% in the state of New York, 13% in four Italian regions, and 17% in Scotland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But many of these were fairly slipshod in statistical terms (often small, often ignoring long term trends, often ignoring the possibility of random fluctuations in numbers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/326/7398/1057&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;high quality study&lt;/a&gt; has appeared in the BMJ which overcomes some of the issues with previous studies partially because comprehensive population-wide data is accessible from the English NHS hospital activity statistics which are collected centrally. They conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After adjustment for secular and seasonal trends and variation in population size, there was a small but significant reduction in the number of emergency admissions for myocardial infarction after the implementation of smoke-free legislation (−2.4%, 95%&#xA;  confidence interval −4.06% to −0.66%, P=0.007). This equates to 1200 fewer emergency admissions for myocardial infarction (1600 including readmissions) in&#xA;  the first year after legislation. The reduction in admissions was significant in men (3.1%, P=0.001) and women (3.8%, P=0.007) aged 60 and over, and men (3.5%, P&amp;lt;0.01) but not women (2.5% P=0.38) aged under 60.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BMJ paper tried to address as many of the defects of previous studies as possible by careful design and analysis. The biggest remaining confounding factor is the effect derived from smoking quitters which is hard to separate as English hospital records don't include smoking status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion seems to be that careful statistical analysis shows a real effect on the heart attack rate (AMI (acute myocardial infarction) admissions down by a few percent), but nothing like the large gains claimed by public health activists in the early days of legislation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T17:28:55.017" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3557" CreationDate="2011-10-10T10:34:48.877" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;An interesting question! While researching, I found it is a common (and perhaps controversial) belief amongst hypnotherapy discussion forums that it is inappropriate to hypnotise epileptics, but no evidence to support that view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the issues were related to professional hypnotists, and the risks involved if the patient was to (perhaps coincidentally) have a fit while under their care. Another concern was the use of flashing lights to induce hypnosis might also trigger an episode for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosensitive_epilepsy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;photosensitive epilepsy&lt;/a&gt; sufferers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For every warning against hypnotising epileptics, there was another case study of someone doing so with no problems. I found no case studies where it actually caused a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uncommonforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=4898&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An unedifying example of such a discussion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://training-hypnotherapy.co.uk/downloads/working-with-epilepsy.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hypnosis Training Site&lt;/a&gt; tried to get to the bottom of this by interviewing a number of experts, including William Broom from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.general-hypnotherapy-register.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;General Hypnotherapy Register&lt;/a&gt; (GHR) who explained:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although there are those both within orthodox medicine and outside of it who suggest that hypnotherapy (or rather any relaxation techniques and procedures that hypnotherapy may include) could well trigger a seizure, the GHR has not seen any compelling evidence to support this view. Whiles we continue to advise that some manifestations of epilepsy could contra-indicate hypnotherapy in certain circumstances [...], as a general rule we confirm that it is perfectly acceptable to proceed with therapy provided that the therapist concerned is entirely comfortable in doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I am reluctant to use the Membership Secretary of a Industry Body as an expert to evaluate scientific evidence (especially in an area some consider to be pseudo-scientific), I am nonetheless citing him to support my claim of the absense of evidence - it isn't just my poor searching skills that failed to find anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back in 1950, psychiatrists were happy to hypnotise epileptics to help with diagnosis: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/107/6/428&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Role of hypnosis in differentiation of epileptic from convulsive-like seizures&lt;/a&gt;. It isn't clear to me whether they were trying to trigger seizures, or just relax the patients into remembering more about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off on an aside: In 2008, researchers went further. They hypnotised 9 children who had had seizures, and then via hypnotic suggestion tried to trigger the seizures. (Note: It wasn't the hypnosis itself that was triggering the seizures, but a deliberate suggestion.) They succeeded with 8 of the 9, and used measurements taken during the seizure to confirm that they &lt;em&gt;did not&lt;/em&gt; have epilepsy. The fact that they eventually diagnosed the children as NOT having epilepsy makes this less relevant. Obviously there weren't overly concerned about an epileptic being triggered by hypnotherapy as that was the intention of the session. (I would like to see a control here, where 9 healthy children also underwent hypnotic suggestion, to ensure that the seizures were truly representative of the patient's normal condition and not an artifact of suggestability. Is that unethical?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1525505007004489&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hypnosis-provoked nonepileptic events in children&lt;/a&gt;, Donald M. Olson, Neva Howard, Richard J. Shaw, Epilepsy &amp;amp; Behavior, Volume 12, Issue 3, April 2008, Pages 456-459&#xA;doi:10.1016/j.yebeh.2007.12.003&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may notice there isn't a lot in the way of peer-reviewed research. Searching Cochrane Reviews and Google Scholar failed to come up with any relevant papers. This is either (limited) evidence of absence or a sign that hypnotherapy and its risks are not being researched/accepted scientifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;: Unsurprisingly for an area with a poor history of quality research, I found no evidence of novel dangers to epilepsy sufferers from hypnotherapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-10-10T10:34:48.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6514" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6515" CreationDate="2011-10-10T10:35:25.120" Score="2" ViewCount="1716" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard multiple times the story that while being a first year undergraduate student, mathematician &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Grothendieck&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alexander Grothendieck&lt;/a&gt; rediscovered the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebesgue_integration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lebesgue integration&lt;/a&gt;, which was not so known at this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3357" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-10T10:40:52.190" LastActivityDate="2011-10-10T10:48:30.480" Title="Did Grothendieck reinvent the Lebesgue integral?" Tags="|mathematics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6514" CreationDate="2011-10-10T10:48:30.480" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Biographer and fellow mathematician Winfried Scharlau wrote an article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/14090232/Who-is-Alexander-Grothendieck-Winfried-Scharlau-This-Article-Is&quot;&gt;&quot;Who is Alexander Grothendiek&quot;&lt;/a&gt; [Originally published in German as “Wer ist Alexander Grothendieck?” in the Annual Report 2006 of the Mathematics Research Institute.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While describing Grothendiek's early studies, he says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the time he was in school, he had planned to find out what concepts like length and volume really mean, and according to his own reports, he basically developed the theory of the Lebesgue integral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no direct citation for this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here we have a biographer claiming the subject claimed it directly. This, I suspect, is as close as we are likely to get to confirmation of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-10-10T10:48:30.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6516" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-10T11:49:39.627" Score="4" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4639/is-drinking-hot-water-more-beneficial-during-hot-weather&quot;&gt;Is drinking hot water more beneficial during hot weather?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the years I've heard from various people that drinking hot beverages on a hot day will make you feel cooler.  For instance, in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=k6GTZrcoWEM&amp;amp;vq=medium&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;clip from the TV series &lt;em&gt;Cheers&lt;/em&gt; Cliff Clavin explains the theory to Diane Chambers&lt;/a&gt; when she asks about drinking cold beverages on a cold day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few related questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does drinking hot beverages on a hot day cool a body faster?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does drinking hot beverages on a hot day make a person &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; cooler?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does drinking cold beverages on a cold day heat a body faster?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does drinking cold beverages on a cold day make a person &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; warmer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4639/is-drinking-hot-water-more-beneficial-during-hot-weather&quot;&gt;A related question on Skeptics.SE&lt;/a&gt; addresses drinking cold beverages on a cold day as a method of weight loss, but does not address the question of making a person &lt;em&gt;feeling&lt;/em&gt; warmer or colder.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-10-10T11:49:39.627" Title="Does drinking hot beverages on a hot day make a person feel cooler?" Tags="|psychology|weather|drink|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-06-06T15:46:14.800" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6517" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6531" CreationDate="2011-10-10T12:20:38.527" Score="17" ViewCount="44291" Body="&lt;p&gt;I smoked my head off and can't feel anything. And my friends can get high just by breathing all the smoke in the room :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone told me that I need to try more and get used to it, and it will happen at some point. On Yahoo Answers I read that there's a small percentage of people who are immune to THC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which one is it? Will I ever be able to get high?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to show notability: Here are some of the places the question is being asked (and often answered without the rigour we expect here):&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=22711&quot;&gt;A&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.cannabis.com/medicinal-cannabis-health/127811-possible-immune-thc.html&quot;&gt;B&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/6738477&quot;&gt;C&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chacha.com/question/is-it-possible-for-a-human-to-be-immune-to-the-effects-of-thc%26%2347%3Bmarijuana&quot;&gt;D&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2636" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-11T14:47:10.867" LastActivityDate="2021-03-13T21:58:04.127" Title="Are there people who can't get high on marijuana?" Tags="|physiology|recreational-drugs|marijuana|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6518" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6528" CreationDate="2011-10-10T12:48:09.907" Score="10" ViewCount="1642" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/09/us-california-tanning-idUSTRE7982DJ20111009&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to a Reuters article&lt;/a&gt; California state senator Ted Lieu said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If everyone knew the true dangers of tanning beds, they'd be shocked.&#xA;  Skin cancer is a rising epidemic and the leading cause of cancer death&#xA;  for women between 25 and 29.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I read it wrong... It is just Cancer deaths.  I still have difficulty believing that skin cancer is greater danger than leukemia, breast, or colon cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-10-11T00:36:35.970" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T21:42:37.790" Title="Is skin cancer the leading cause of cancer death of young adult women?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3364" CreationDate="2011-10-10T14:01:26.207" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Maurice&quot;&gt;Emil Maurice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maurice was a long-time friend of Hitler and was a member of the Nazi party before that party gained control of the German government.  After being named the first supreme commander of the SA and after signing on as SS member number 2 (Hitler was member number 1) he was accused by Himmler of having Jewish ancestry.  A law within the SS stated that all officers had to be able to prove racial purity back to 1750 and Maurice's great-grandfather, Charles Maurice Schwartzenberger (1805–1896), was Jewish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Himmler recommended that Maurice and all his brothers be expelled from the SS, but Hitler compelled Himmler to make an exception and allow them to stay as &quot;Honorary Aryans.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the SS was reorganized and began to expand in 1932, Maurice became a senior SS officer and would eventually be promoted to the rank SS-Oberführer. While Maurice never became a top commander of the SS his status as SS Member #2 effectively credited him as the actual founder of the organization. Heinrich Himmler, who ultimately would become the most recognized leader of the SS, held SS Member #168.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="328" LastActivityDate="2011-10-10T14:01:26.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6219" CreationDate="2011-10-10T14:07:42.350" Score="10" Body="&lt;h3&gt;We don't know. The claim made by Newsweek is unreliable.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is only a partial answer. It only addresses the specific claim made in Newsweek on June 29, 1987, cited by some others. It doesn't address the actual number of creationism-supporting life scientists.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After showing this question to some friends, I got access to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&amp;amp;risb=21_T12933138571&amp;amp;format=GNBFI&amp;amp;sort=BOOLEAN&amp;amp;startDocNo=1&amp;amp;resultsUrlKey=29_T12933138575&amp;amp;cisb=22_T12933138574&amp;amp;treeMax=true&amp;amp;treeWidth=0&amp;amp;csi=5774&amp;amp;docNo=13&quot;&gt;the Newsweek article&lt;/a&gt; (behind a paywall). The article is about the debate on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_and_evolution_in_public_education&quot;&gt;creation &quot;science&quot; in public education&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The electronic version makes no reference to outside sources*. The full paragraph including the 700/480,000 figure is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Changing strategy: In the Louisiana case, the fundamentalist forces had seemed on the best legal ground since the famous &quot;monkey trial&quot; of 1925, when biology teacher John Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution in Tennessee. That outcome was overturned on a technicality, but Clarence Darrow's humiliating grilling of the fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan effectively beat back the anti-evolution cause for years. In the 1970s, however, the fundamentalists devloped a new strategy; to establish the Biblical account of creation as a respectable scientific theory and demand equal time for its teaching. By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientist) who give credence to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve but appeared &quot;abruptly.&quot; The first state law demanding equal time for this notion, in Arkansas, was struck down by a federal court as a transparent promotion of religion. But in Louisiana Keith's bill was carefully tailored to omit religious overtones, and it had a specific secular purpose: to promote academic freedom by ensuring that all sides are taught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As there's no mention on who did the counting and how, the specific claim made by Newsweek has no known scientific basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;* &lt;sub&gt;It's conceivable but improbable that the physical magazine has content the online (text-only) version doesn't.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2011-10-14T20:38:06.040" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T20:38:06.040" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3692" CreationDate="2011-10-10T20:11:38.057" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Many of the frequently quoted statistics don't convincingly show a protective affect from helmets&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cycling is an inherently safe activity where serious accidents are rare. This makes it harder to judge the effectiveness of safety interventions. Small behavioural changes can add significantly to the rate of accidents and confounding factors can easily sway the results. Care is required when drawing conclusions form the reported statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, in principle, several ways for the reported statistics to go astray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we compare accidents (eg by hospital admissions) for helmet wearing and non-wearing groups we need to be sure the groups are comparable. If helmet wearers are significantly different (eg very safety conscious) some of the apparent protective effects may come from their (unrelated) risk aversion and not actually from helmets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If helmets are worn by most people (usually because they are mandatory) then we no longer have a (useful) control group of non-wearers. And we have the possibility of risk compensation (where behaviour becomes riskier because the users feel safer). The extent of risk compensation is impossible to judge reliably in either sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we bear these observations in mind we can assess the value of published studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some studies are very weak. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/321/7268/1055.full.pdf?sid=6886cbc9-76c5-4c78-b409-54235a630687&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ report&lt;/a&gt; from 2000 argued that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of serious head injuries among cyclists fell&#xA;markedly during a period of increasing helmet use,&#xA;suggesting that helmets offer protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No proper comparisons for different groups and correlation=causation assumed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This much better study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/308/6943/1537.full?sid=582aa1ea-4fad-480e-bdb0-1b24c0f853c6&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;published in the BMJ in 1994&lt;/a&gt; is typical of case control studies in that it compares injuries in those wearing helmets to those not wearing them, concluding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were no significant differences between the two groups with respect to type of accident or nature and distribution of injuries other than those to the head. Head injury was sustained by 4/114 (4%) of helmet wearers compared with 100/928 (11%) of non-wearers (P=0.023).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a much more robust result. But statistically suffers from the problem of confounding. We just can't know whether the people &lt;em&gt;choosing&lt;/em&gt; to wear helmets behave like those who don't. The very choice to wear might suggest not, though some of the more detailed statistics in the paper might draw the opposite conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One critic &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/305/6858/881.full.pdf?sid=6886cbc9-76c5-4c78-b409-54235a630687&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;writing in the BMJ&lt;/a&gt; summed up the problem with one study thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the study's serious flaw was that it did not&#xA;discount the possibility that the cyclists with head&#xA;injuries were very different from those with other&#xA;injuries. An observational study in the same city&#xA;showed that children wearing helmets were much more&#xA;often white than black, riding in parks and on bicycle&#xA;paths than on city streets, and riding with adults rather&#xA;than riding alone.' Without proper matching for risk&#xA;taking behaviour, the hospital study is useless as policy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thought his point was specific, the problems he highlights may ocurr in all case-control studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the protective effect of helmets that is derived from the case-control studies is right, we would expect to see big changes in head injuries when helmet use becomes very common or compulsory. This is where it gets controversial. Those population studies have been done and frequently don't show the expected gains in injury prevention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/332/7543/722.2.full?ijkey=4ab3593b8de01f138a3ce3bbd2876da6e2913db7&amp;amp;keytype2=tf_ipsecsha&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ review&lt;/a&gt; in 2006 summarised much of the evidence like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I reviewed data from all jurisdictions that have introduced legislation and increased use of helmets by at least 40 percentage points within a few months: New Zealand, Nova Scotia (Canada), and the Australian states of Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia, and Western Australia. To avoid confusing reductions in injuries (from safer roads or less cycling) with benefits of helmets, I have focused on percentages of cyclists with head injuries. Head injuries were most commonly classified as admissions to hospital with head wounds, skull or facial fracture, concussion, or other intracranial injury. The data include 10 504 head injuries, and in most cases were available as percentages of all cyclist injuries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and concluded (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast to the fall in all road injuries in South Australia coinciding with helmet legislation, percentages of cyclists with concussion and other head or face injuries show generally declining trends, especially for concussion, &lt;strong&gt;but no clear response when helmet wearing increased substantially&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the chart of the data from Western Australia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RUjVu.gif&quot; alt=&quot;from bmj review: head injury rates before and after helmet law in w austraila&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar evidence from South Australia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tPEtu.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and New Zealand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/S4rGo.gif&quot; alt=&quot;new zealand chart&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case-control studies suggest cyclists who choose to wear helmets generally have fewer head injuries than non-wearers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before and after data show enforced helmet laws discourage cycling but produce no obvious response in percentage of head injuries&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This contradiction may be due to risk compensation, incorrect helmet wearing, reduced safety in numbers, or incorrect adjustment for confounders in case-control studies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is only fair to note this is a highly controversial conclusion (see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/332/7543/722.2.full?ijkey=4ab3593b8de01f138a3ce3bbd2876da6e2913db7&amp;amp;keytype2=tf_ipsecsha#responses&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ discussion&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why the studies about what happens when most people wear helmets is relevant to the question of whether helmets protect the individual helmet wearer is simply that they represent the only studies where the sample avoids confounding errors and takes into account any risk adjustment. We know there is some degree of risk adjustment (see this Skeptics question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3812/do-cars-pass-with-less-space-for-bicyclists-who-wear-helmets&quot;&gt;Do cars pass with less space for bicyclists who wear helmets?&lt;/a&gt;) but we can only know the significance of that adjustment from a population study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say that, despite their intuitive benefits helmets provide, the population studies cast enough doubt on the theory advocated by the case-control studies that &lt;strong&gt;we cannot be certain helmets give a significant benefit to the user&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent (feb 2013) study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w18773.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pdf here&lt;/a&gt;) looked at the effect of laws on childrens' cycling accidents and behavior. The study showed a significant reduction in injuries associated with the laws but tried to examine some of the effects of confounding. They conclude (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cycling is popular among children, but results in thousands of injuries annually.  In recent years, many&#xA;states and localities have enacted bicycle helmet laws.  We examine direct and indirect effects of these&#xA;laws on injuries...  ...we find helmet laws&#xA;are associated with reductions in bicycle-related head injuries among children.  However, laws also&#xA;are associated with decreases in non-head cycling injuries, as well as increases in head injuries from&#xA;other wheeled sports.  Thus, &lt;em&gt;the observed reduction in bicycle-related head injuries may be due to&#xA;reductions in bicycle riding induced by the laws.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The findings from this paper indicate that while bicycle helmet laws are widespread and&#xA;thought to be effective, &lt;em&gt;the net effect of these laws on health outcomes is actually not straightforward.&lt;/em&gt;  It is clear that &lt;em&gt;there are offsetting behaviors and unintended consequences of these laws&lt;/em&gt;, and these effects need to be considered by policymakers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the apparent success of compulsory helmet laws may not result from the protective effects of helmets from from the (unintended) effect of discouraging cycling. It isn't that helmets protect the cyclist. Public health may well, therefore, not benefit from such laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent study of the effect of the range of different Canadian helmet laws on head injuries was recently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f2674&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;published in the British Medical Journal&lt;/a&gt; (BMJ). this paper took into account injury trends pre and post legislation and used the variety of different rules or the lack of them across different canadian provinces to provide useful comparisons. While the study doesn't assess all the possible confounding factors, the results are fairly clear: legislation doesn't seem to have a significant effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth quoting the results and conclusions in their entirely for context (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results&lt;/strong&gt; Between 1994 and 2008, 66 716 hospital admissions were for cycling related injuries in Canada. Between 1994 and 2003, the rate of head injuries among young people decreased by 54.0% (95% confidence interval 48.2% to 59.8%) in provinces with helmet legislation compared with 33.1% (23.3% to 42.9%) in provinces and territories without legislation. Among adults, the rate of head injuries decreased by 26.0% (16.0% to 36.3%) in provinces with legislation but remained constant in provinces and territories without legislation. &lt;strong&gt;After taking baseline trends into consideration, however, we were unable to detect an independent effect of legislation on the rate of hospital admissions for cycling related head injuries.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions&lt;/strong&gt; Reductions in the rates of admissions to hospital for cycling related head injuries were greater in provinces with helmet legislation, &lt;em&gt;but injury rates were already decreasing before the implementation of legislation and &lt;strong&gt;the rate of decline was not appreciably altered on introduction of legislation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt; While helmets reduce the risk of head injuries and we encourage their use, in the Canadian context of existing safety campaigns, improvements to the cycling infrastructure, and the passive uptake of helmets, &lt;strong&gt;the incremental contribution of provincial helmet legislation to reduce hospital admissions for head injuries seems to have been minimal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the core data is summarised in the charts below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GTrsK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;BMJ article charts&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Annual rate of hospital admissions for cycling related head injuries, 1994 to 2008, in Canadian provinces and territories, and in Canadian provinces and territories grouped by bicycle helmet legislation status. Rates are connected by a LOESS regression line. Vertical bars indicate year legislation was enacted. Legislation in Ontario and Alberta targeted only cyclists aged less than 18 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: cycling injuries are reducing but detailed analysis of the statistics doesn't show that legislation independently contributes to that improvement. While the study is addressing the effect of &lt;em&gt;legislation&lt;/em&gt; not helmet wearing it also notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laws that mandate the use of helmets increase the chance that cyclists will wear a helmet, especially when they apply to all cyclists...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...helmet use rose dramatically in provinces immediately after the enactment of legislation...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, though indirectly, it lends support to the idea that increased helmet &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; is much less helpful than expected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-05-09T12:36:03.433" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6518" CreationDate="2011-10-10T22:14:30.150" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; allows you to explore some statistics (statistics provided are US specific) about different kinds of cancer. If we think about overall cancer death rates for a moment we find the following death rates (all are US deaths per 100,000 people per year, and I'm just quoting women, since that what was asked about).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Skin (exclusing basal and squamous) 2.1&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leukemia 5.4&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Breast 24&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Colon 14.9&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So skin looks like its a long way down he list. But now let's look at age, and finding the percentage of deaths at age 20-34 (that's the category the figures give us).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Skin 2.2% (0.046 deaths)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leukemia 3.1% (0.16 deaths)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Breast 0.9% (0.22 deaths)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Colon 0.6% (0.09 deaths)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it looks as if the stats don't back this up. However there's a few things. First the site I used didn't break deaths down by age and sex. If the deaths by age figures are biased towards women in the 20-34 age range, that might make a difference. Second, the age categories don't correspond exactly with the ones the original quote uses. Third, this is US wide and the figures for California might be very different (easy to imagine there being more skin cancer in California than Minnesota). Fourth we are dealing with very small numbers. There might well be a perfectly sound study that gives the result that Mr Lieu stated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2011-10-10T22:36:31.813" LastActivityDate="2011-10-10T22:36:31.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6518" CreationDate="2011-10-10T22:59:50.327" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/DCPC_INCA/DCPC_INCA.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Cancer Statistics: An interactive atlas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rate of skin cancer deaths for CA is 1.5 and the US national rate is 1.7:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4aAyQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't even rate &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/uscs/statevsnational.aspx#text&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;compared to other cancers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7RuBx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What also worth noting and can be accessed from information in the same link; for the same period the rate of incidence (incidence per 100,000 skin cancer in CA) for men is much larger than women:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rate for men: 26.6&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rate for women: 15.8&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2011-10-10T22:59:50.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6518" CreationDate="2011-10-11T00:28:30.350" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The CDC provides &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/npcr/uscs/2007/download_data.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;data files&lt;/a&gt; containing cancer statistics for the US that you can break down a number of ways. I downloaded the 1999-2007 file, took the BYAGE.txt file within it, replaced the tildes with zeroes (which is what they represent), and imported it into Excel (note, if you import into Excel 2003 or lower, you will hit the limit for maximum number of rows, so you'll need to remove some of the rows which are irrelevant for our purposes here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting it into a data table, I applied the following filters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AGE = 25-29&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;EVENT_TYPE = Mortality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RACE = All Races&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SEX = Female&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And sorted by rate. You can &lt;a href=&quot;http://users.on.net/~jiv/BYAGE.zip&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;download my spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. Having done so, I find that &quot;Melanomas of the Skin&quot; is well down the list. It varies year-by-year, but 9th is most common and the highest it gets it 7th in 2005 and 2007.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1ku1N.png&quot; alt=&quot;Data taken from CDC&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the results &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be different if you're just looking at California, but xiaohouzi79's data suggest otherwise. Another factor is that there are a couple of other types of skin cancer - such as basal cell carcinomas and squamous cell cancer - but those are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org.au/aboutcancer/FAQ.htm#573&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;much less fatal&lt;/a&gt; than melanomas. Basically, it looks as though Lieu's statement was incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="143" LastEditDate="2011-10-11T21:42:37.790" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T21:42:37.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6530" CreationDate="2011-10-11T00:47:56.197" Score="46" ViewCount="25839" Body="&lt;p&gt;My one year old daughter picked up a typical plastic supermarket grocery bag and I watched her with it briefly before taking it away, as it's common knowledge that kids aren't supposed to have plastic bags due to a risk of suffocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After actually seeing a child with a bag, however, I wondered how much of a risk this actually is. I had a very hard time imagining my daughter being able to get her head &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; of the bag to such a degree that she would actually suffocate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm [hopefully obviously] not advocating for any controlled experiments here! &lt;strong&gt;I just wondered where this common, ingrained warning comes from. How real of a danger is it when children play with plastic bags?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T15:45:13.937" Title="Do children accidentally suffocate themselves with plastic bags?" Tags="|mortality|children|suffocation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6529" CreationDate="2011-10-11T02:26:12.277" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/5064.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Consumer Product Safety Commission&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has received an average of about 25 reports a year describing deaths to children who suffocated due to plastic bags. Almost 90 percent of them were under one year of age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/births.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4 million children&lt;/a&gt; are born each year in the USA, with an infant mortality rate of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2091rank.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;6.06/1000 live births&lt;/a&gt;. That's about 25000 dead infants each year, so about 0.1% of US infant mortality is due to suffocation in plastic bags. It's not a big number, obviously, but it's there (note: it may be higher if there are incidents which aren't reported to the CPSC).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An older paper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02116314&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Polson &amp;amp; Gee (1972)&lt;/a&gt; gives a number of case studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="14582" LastEditDate="2015-04-30T15:45:13.937" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T15:45:13.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6517" CreationDate="2011-10-11T06:35:20.547" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is evidence that cannabis sensitivity &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21041608&quot;&gt;varies considerably&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSIONS: Genetic variation in AKT1 may mediate both short-term as well as longer-term effects on psychosis expression associated with use of cannabis, possibly through a mechanism of cannabinoid-regulated AKT1/GSK-3 signaling downstream of the dopamine D(2) receptor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether one can sensitize oneself has not, as far as I can tell, been studied, but generally repeated exposure to a substance will &lt;i&gt;de&lt;/i&gt;sensitizes you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, cannabis is thought to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20921112&quot;&gt;correlated with psychosis risk&lt;/a&gt; and other mild but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21920674&quot;&gt;measurable cognitive deficits&lt;/a&gt; (even when not high):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compared to controls, cannabis users showed significant impairments on quality of decision-making (Cambridge Gamble task), and executive planning (One Touch Stockings of Cambridge task).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the absence of evidence that all negative side-effects depend on the ability to get high (psychosis: yes; executive planning: I don't know), and in the absence of evidence that one could gain sensitivity, it might be prudent to avoid taking large doses for long periods of time in an attempt to achieve an enjoyable psychoactive effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T06:35:20.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6529" CreationDate="2011-10-11T08:31:20.787" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only is it a real danger, but it is now common knowledge because the printed warning notices on plastic bags do actually work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Death rates per million children &lt;a href=&quot;http://depts.washington.edu/hiprc/practices/topic/suffocation/legislation.html&quot;&gt;decreased significantly following California statute requiring all plastic bags with thickness less than 0.001 inch to have printed warning on bag&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T08:31:20.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6537" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-10-11T10:58:32.373" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-10-11T10:58:32.373" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T10:58:32.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6538" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-10-11T10:58:32.373" Score="0" Body="Mathematics is the science of numbers and shapes. Mathematics may also be considered a formal language to describe physics." OwnerUserId="2086" LastEditorUserId="2086" LastEditDate="2011-10-11T12:33:22.883" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T12:33:22.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6539" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-11T13:39:34.433" Score="16" ViewCount="14402" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently saw a demonstration of a water filtration and purification system. In one of the demos two glasses were filled with tap water and then someone put three fingers into one of the glasses and made a scissor kick motion for about a minute or so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterward, the chlorine content of both glasses was measured using standard pool maintenance equipment, and the glass that had not been touched had a noticeably higher reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zTZLD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;chlorine measurement kit&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supposedly this demonstrates how rapidly chlorine is absorbed into the skin (which ostensibly makes a system that removes chlorine beneficial from a public health as well as a water taste standpoint).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this the only plausible explanation for the test? For example, is it possible that the agitation increases chlorine evaporation or that oils on the hand react with and neutralize the chlorine? Is chlorine absorbed that quickly through the skin?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4055" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-06-17T10:51:45.427" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T10:51:45.427" Title="Is chlorine in water absorbed quickly through the skin?" Tags="|chemistry|water|chlorine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6219" CreationDate="2011-10-11T15:04:32.710" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lexisnexis.com/lnacui2api/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&amp;amp;risb=21_T12933138571&amp;amp;format=GNBFI&amp;amp;sort=BOOLEAN&amp;amp;startDocNo=1&amp;amp;resultsUrlKey=29_T12933138575&amp;amp;cisb=22_T12933138574&amp;amp;treeMax=true&amp;amp;treeWidth=0&amp;amp;csi=5774&amp;amp;docNo=13&quot;&gt;The Newsweek article&lt;/a&gt; which appears to be the ultimate source of this quote does not seem to give any explanation of where the figure comes from.  Here's the whole paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Changing strategy: In the Louisiana case, the fundamentalist forces had seemed on the best legal ground since the famous &quot;monkey trial&quot; of 1925, when biology teacher John Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution in Tennessee. That outcome was overturned on a technicality, but Clarence Darrow's humiliating grilling of the fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan effectively beat back the anti-evolution cause for years. In the 1970s, however, the fundamentalists devloped a new strategy; to establish the Biblical account of creation as a respectable scientific theory and demand equal time for its teaching. By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientist) who give credence to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve but appeared &quot;abruptly.&quot; The first state law demanding equal time for this notion, in Arkansas, was struck down by a federal court as a transparent promotion of religion. But in Louisiana Keith's bill was carefully tailored to omit religious overtones, and it had a specific secular purpose: to promote academic freedom by ensuring that all sides are taught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;By one count&quot; is one of those phrases articles use when they really aren't very sure about the provenance and accuracy of the figure. That's not to say the figure has no value at all. But it shouldn't be taken as an accurate figure, and certainly not be as frequently quoted on the web as it appears to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote is certainly &lt;strong&gt;nothing to do with the 700 signatories on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.discovery.org/csc/aboutCSC.php&quot;&gt;Discovery Institute's&lt;/a&gt; widely criticised &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org/about.php&quot;&gt;Dissent from Darwin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; list. The quote is from 1987 and the Dissent from Darwin list started in 2001.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T15:04:32.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6493" CreationDate="2011-10-11T15:13:20.953" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;smoke/fumes in cabin/cockpits is still a serious problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They explain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reports to air traffic, submission of Service Difficulty Reports (SDR), and several focused surveys reveal that approximately 900 smoke or fumes in the cockpit or cabin events occur annually in transport category airplanes. Many of these incidents prompted the flightcrew to declare an emergency and either divert, turn back or request priority handling to their destination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The air carriers and operators that have experienced these situations are required to submit a report to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for smoke/fumes in the aircraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.faa.gov/other_visit/aviation_industry/airline_operators/airline_safety/info/all_infos/media/2011/InFO11002.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That number 900 should be compared to the total number of flights managed by the FAA. I couldn't get that number exactly (closest I got from the FAA was &amp;quot;740 million enplanements on U.S. carriers each year&amp;quot; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.faa.gov/about/plans_reports/media/fpp_flight%20plan%202008-2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;] - but that counts once per passenger, not once per flight).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I did get the number of flights departing US airports: a smidgin under 10 million in 2010. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.transtats.bts.gov/Data_Elements.aspx?Data=2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you have a 0.009% chance (about 1 in 11,000) per flight of being subjected to smoke or other fumes - and a smaller chance that it will cause you any harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the vagaries of what &amp;quot;safe&amp;quot; means, I think this is consistent with &lt;strong&gt;both&lt;/strong&gt; the versions of events being portrayed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is a serious problem for aircraft manufacturers to consider.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The air in aircraft is safe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-12T01:14:59.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6539" CreationDate="2011-10-11T15:17:54.707" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Chlorine_factsheet_82357_7.pdf&quot;&gt;this paper from the government of Michigan&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The skin does not absorb chlorine well, but small amounts can pass through &#xA;  the skin when people are exposed to chlorine gas, bleach, or come into contact with water &#xA;  or soil containing high levels of chlorine.  Although small amounts of chlorine can pass &#xA;  through the skin, it is eliminated from the body rapidly.  Chlorine may irritate or burn the &#xA;  skin, especially moist areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the paper is discussing Chlorine gas and bleach-strength solutions, as well as drinking water, which explains the reference to burning the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T15:17:54.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6544" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-10-11T16:21:23.470" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-10-11T16:21:23.470" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T16:21:23.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6545" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-10-11T16:21:23.470" Score="0" Body="Geometry is a branch of mathematics which deals with objects in space, its representations, measurements and relations to other objects." OwnerUserId="2086" LastEditorUserId="2086" LastEditDate="2011-10-11T16:48:05.620" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T16:48:05.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6546" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-10-11T16:21:33.717" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-10-11T16:21:33.717" LastActivityDate="2011-10-11T16:21:33.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6547" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-10-11T16:21:33.717" Score="0" Body="Intelligence has been defined in many different ways such as in terms of one's capacity for logic, abstract thought, understanding, self-awareness, communication, learning, emotional knowledge, memory, planning, creativity and problem solving." OwnerUserId="11881" LastEditorUserId="11881" LastEditDate="2015-01-28T02:25:23.890" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T02:25:23.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6548" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9412" CreationDate="2011-10-11T23:37:10.597" Score="12" ViewCount="2985" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently asked over on Judaism.SE about &lt;a href=&quot;https://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/10644/128&quot;&gt;how to keep bees away from a Sukkah&lt;/a&gt;. I got &lt;a href=&quot;https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/10644/how-to-keep-bees-out-of-the-sukkah/10649#10649&quot;&gt;a reply&lt;/a&gt; that suggested that by hanging dryer sheets around, bees would stay away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked around online and seem to be getting conflicting reports with some attributing it to coincidence, while others swear by it for repelling mosquitoes and other insects as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, do dryer sheets actually repel insects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3097" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:42:07.960" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T08:50:03.373" Title="Do dryer sheets repel insects?" Tags="|entomology|pesticides|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6549" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-12T05:11:34.560" Score="5" ViewCount="653" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6548/do-dryer-sheets-repel-insects&quot;&gt;another recent question about dryer sheets&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the retailers of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.staticeliminator.ca&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;purecosheet&lt;/a&gt;, these reusable dryer sheets can make your fabrics &amp;quot;soft and static free&amp;quot; for hundreds of loads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim their fabrics are &amp;quot;chemical free&amp;quot;, which is, of course, absurd to anyone who paid attention in high school science, but the word &amp;quot;chemical&amp;quot; has long meant something else to marketers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim the way it works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a static charge builds up when two dissimilar materials are rubbed together, and a typical household dryer load is made up of a lot of different kinds of fabrics. the friction between these fabrics causes electrons to be transferred from one material to the other. with this transference, some surfaces get positively charged and others get negatively charged, and they attract one another. that attraction is static cling. the more rubbing, the more the electrons move, and the larger the static charge that builds up - sometimes as much as 12,000 volts worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;disposable dryer sheets are impregnated with a waxy, chemical mixture. The heat from the dryer melts this deposit and leaves a residue all over your clothes and your dryer.  this residue &amp;quot;lubricates&amp;quot; your clothing so that cling can't build up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;instead of leaving a chemical residue all over your clothing and your machine, purecosheets act like antennas -  conducting, equalizing and removing any potential static charge in your dryer load. we get rid of the static and keep your family's fabrics clean, fresh and natural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll find these claims (with the same capitalisation) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.staticeliminator.ca/about_the_product.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds to me like someone has worked out how to apply the placebo effect in the laundry. Is there any plausible mechanism that would allow these sheets to work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T10:51:02.643" Title="Do &quot;reusable chemical-free dryer sheets&quot; reduce static cling?" Tags="|physics|household|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6553" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6554" CreationDate="2011-10-12T16:37:30.663" Score="40" ViewCount="1578" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often see the scarecrows in private fields and gardens, with crows sitting on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they just a tribute to tradition or they really work in some way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastActivityDate="2019-10-19T02:04:14.557" Title="Do scarecrows scare crows?" Tags="|agriculture|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6554" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6553" CreationDate="2011-10-12T16:57:42.497" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-environment-food-rural-affairs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs&lt;/a&gt; has a 2003 report titled &lt;a href=&quot;https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/52d1/7a806a7156c45b3f50bf7ea8eb7b918ac4ab.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Review of international research literature regarding the effectiveness of auditory bird scaring techniques and potential alternatives&lt;/a&gt; by J. Bishop, H. McKay, D. Parrott and J. Allan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It reviews the evidence from a number of reports about bird-scaring and concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Visual techniques (lasers, dogs, human disturbance, scarecrows, raptor models,&#xA;  corpses, balloons, kites, falconry, radio-controlled aircraft, lights, mirrors/reflectors,&#xA;  tapes, flags/rags and streamers and dyes/colourants) are thought to be of varied&#xA;  effectiveness ranging from extremely effective (human disturbance) to &lt;strong&gt;ineffective&#xA;  (most scarecrows)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Emphasis mine]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bird_scarer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; suggests, without a relevant reference, that the scaring effect is species-dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-19T02:04:14.557" LastActivityDate="2019-10-19T02:04:14.557" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6555" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6556" CreationDate="2011-10-12T22:27:35.527" Score="14" ViewCount="13968" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today while discussing cleaning cars with a co-worker, he mentioned how much he hated driving in Florida because of &quot;Love Bugs&quot; and stated that the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfnews13.com/article/news/2011/may/238931/Lovebug-season-is-here&quot;&gt;University of Florida researchers genetically engineered lovebugs&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is a common claim, and one that I also often heard while I lived there.  But is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T02:06:28.723" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T14:45:59.453" Title="Were Love Bugs &quot;Engineered&quot; at the University of Florida?" Tags="|biology|united-states|entomology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6555" CreationDate="2011-10-12T22:37:44.423" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to answer my own question here, because I want to preserve the links for my co-worker.  He will get a facebook mention and everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/critters/lurkers/lovebugs.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes has this to say&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;False&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Love bugs are not the result of a genetic cloning experiment gone wrong, nor were they unwittingly loosed from a research facility charged with studying exotic insects. They also weren't bio-engineered as a natural solution to the mosquito problem. (Love bugs do not eat mosquitos: the adults do not eat at all, and larvae feed on decaying plant material.) These overly amorous critters are native to Central America; the best guess as to how they came to these United States places them as undiscovered stowaways who arrived by ship in Galveston or New Orleans around 1920. They migrated into Florida in 1947 from Louisiana, looked around, liked what they saw, and decided to stay.  Their natural capacity for reproduction took care of the rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfnews13.com/article/news/2011/may/238931/Lovebug-season-is-here&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The page I cited for the notoriety of this claim also has a whole section dedicated to Common Misconceptions&lt;/a&gt;.  Specifically quoting the two that my co-worker repeated, but the page has a few more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lovebugs escaped after University of Florida researchers brought them into Florida.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lovebugs are not native to most of the southern United States. According to one study, since 1940 the lovebug has extended its range from Louisiana and Mississippi across the Gulf States, reaching Florida in 1949. In the late 1960s, it became established entirely across north Florida. During the 1970s explosive populations occurred progressively southward nearly to the end of peninsular Florida and northward into South Carolina&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;University of Florida researchers genetically engineered lovebugs to kill mosquitoes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lovebugs are small, slow herbivorous insects that feed on the pollen and nectar found in flowers. Thus, they lack the mandibles (jaws), grasping legs, speed and other characteristics of predaceous insects, such as dragonflies. Lovebugs are active during the day, whereas most mosquitoes are crepuscular (active at twilight) or nocturnal, and they are only adults for a few weeks each year. For these and many other reasons, the lovebug would be a poor candidate to genetically engineer as a mosquito predator, even if it were possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in694&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;If you can trust the University of Florida itself to report honestly on this&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Many think it was Florida State that started the rumor anyway&lt;/em&gt;), they also give a history like the news paper and Snopes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lovebugs escaped after University of Florida researchers brought them into Florida.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lovebugs are not native to most of the southern United States (Hardy 1945). According to Buschman (1976), since 1940 P. nearctica has extended its range from Louisiana and Mississippi across the Gulf States, reaching Florida in 1949. In the late 1960s, it became established entirely across north Florida. During the 1970s explosive populations occurred progressively southward nearly to the end of peninsular Florida and northward into South Carolina (Figure 4). Its movement may have been accelerated by prevailing winds, vehicle traffic, sod transport, increased habitat along highways and expansion of pastures but not by UF researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;University of Florida researchers genetically engineered lovebugs to kill mosquitoes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lovebugs are small, slow herbivorous insects that feed on the pollen and nectar found in flowers. Thus, they lack the mandibles (jaws), grasping legs, speed and other characteristics of predaceous insects, such as dragonflies. Lovebugs are active during the day, whereas most mosquitoes are crepuscular (active at twilight) or nocturnal, and they are only adults for a few weeks each year. For these and many other reasons, the lovebug would be a poor candidate to genetically engineer as a mosquito predator, even if it were possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, a football rival of UFL, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ag.auburn.edu/enpl/schoolipm/documents/2008_march-arthropodtrivia.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Auburn University repeats the same information in this newsletter&lt;/a&gt; (PDF).  So if enemies like Auburn won't blame UFL, then it may have truth to the fact that lovebugs are just a nuisance that migrated up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T13:27:41.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6473" CreationDate="2011-10-12T23:36:08.017" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, screening does not save lives even for the higher risk older groups never mind the lower risk 40-50s.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence I'm going to quote below addresses the broader question of whether screening works for any age group (which was my original question). But, since the evidence clearly shows that the risk of having breast cancer grows with age (older women have higher risk) I hope that simple logic will show that this answer will be even more relevant to the younger group the question now addresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also need to make a statistical clarification before quoting what thorough reviews say, as careless language is one of the reason that the stats are often misunderstood. One key problem is the casual confusion of all-cause mortality with breast-cancer mortality. It is easy to assume that mammography (which is designed to screen for breast cancer) must reduce all cause mortality because it catches some cases of breast cancer. But many studies show a reduction in &lt;em&gt;breast-cancer&lt;/em&gt; mortality but no reduction in &lt;em&gt;overall mortality&lt;/em&gt;. Guess which number is used by advocates of screening?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latest Cochrane review (published in 2011) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD001877.pub4/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The review was designed to assess:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To assess the effect of screening for breast cancer with mammography on mortality and morbidity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is one part of the conclusion relevant to the statistical clarification i made above (I've highlighted the important bits and I quote at length to show the different results from different trials):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Three trials with adequate randomisation did not show a significant reduction in breast cancer mortality&lt;/strong&gt; at 13 years (relative risk (RR) 0.90, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.79 to 1.02); &lt;strong&gt;four trials with suboptimal randomisation showed a significant reduction in breast cancer mortality&lt;/strong&gt; with an RR of 0.75 (95% CI 0.67 to 0.83). &#xA;  We found that breast cancer mortality was an unreliable outcome that was biased in favour of screening, mainly because of differential misclassification of cause of death. &lt;strong&gt;The trials with adequate randomisation did not find an effect of screening on cancer mortality, including breast cancer&lt;/strong&gt;, after 10 years (RR 1.02, 95% CI 0.95 to 1.10) &lt;strong&gt;or on all-cause mortality&lt;/strong&gt; after 13 years (RR 0.99, 95% CI 0.95 to 1.03).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The overall conclusion was (my emphasis again):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Screening is likely to reduce breast cancer mortality. As the effect was lowest in the adequately randomised trials, a reasonable estimate is a 15% reduction corresponding to an absolute risk reduction of 0.05%. Screening led to 30% overdiagnosis and overtreatment, or an absolute risk increase of 0.5%. This means that for every 2000 women invited for screening throughout 10 years, one will have her life prolonged and 10 healthy women, who would not have been diagnosed if there had not been screening, will be treated unnecessarily. Furthermore, more than 200 women will experience important psychological distress for many months because of false positive findings. &lt;strong&gt;It is thus not clear whether screening does more good than harm&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Note that more recent large scale studies are now questioning whether the apparent reduction in cancer mortality is real, weakening even further the argument that screening is useful (see latest update for references).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review recognizes that it is not up to the medical community to recommend blanket screening as only the informed patient can weigh up the cost against the benefit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two key points are worth repeating. Screening isn't costless and the cost of false positives and unnecessary treatment are high. And there is no good evidence that &lt;em&gt;overall&lt;/em&gt; mortality is reduced by screening. The intuition expressed by many (especially those lobbyists and politicians who backed away from the original recommendations of the Preventative Services Task Force) is not backed by the hard evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answers both my original question &quot;does screening reduce mortality&quot; and the more specific question now asked about screening in the low risk 40-50 year olds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some additional information to clarify some misunderstandings raised in comments&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is a Cochrane review?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thread of comment on the original answer accused me of selectively quoting a result to bolster my preferred point of view. But what I had quoted was not a single result but a &lt;em&gt;Cochrane Review&lt;/em&gt;. It appears that not everyone knows what that is and why it is the opposite of a single literature result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cochrane Reviews are systematic reviews of the complete literature of studies relevant to a particular claim. They review the known results for quality, bias and the strength of their results and produce a systematic analysis of the weight of evidence designed to summarise as best as possible the known literature. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochrane_collaboration&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Collaboration [The Cochrane Collaboration is the independent organisation that conducts Cochrane reviews] aims to provide compiled scientific evidence to aid well informed health care decisions. It conducts Systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials of health care interventions and tries to disseminate the results and conclusions derived from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reviews are described on the organisation's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/cochrane-reviews&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;web site&lt;/a&gt; as (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cochrane Reviews are systematic reviews of primary research in human health care and health policy, and are internationally recognised as the &lt;strong&gt;highest standard in evidence-based health care&lt;/strong&gt;. They investigate the effects of interventions for prevention, treatment and rehabilitation. They also assess the accuracy of a diagnostic test for a given condition in a specific patient group and setting. They are published online in The Cochrane Library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when I quote results from the Cochrane Library I am not being selective, I am trying to reference the best possible analysis of the whole literature. Moreover, the Cochrane reviews should be less subject to bias than the reviews by government bodies who face political pressure and embarrassment when they change their mind on anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why is this a controversial issue?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easy to misunderstand the risk-reward pattern of medical screening. Popular understanding tends to assume (in the absence of epidemiological evidence) that screening is cost-free. It's not exactly surgery, is it? This view has been reinforced by the advice produced by governments to encourage patients to participate in screening programmes. This advice has often been criticised for not being honest about the harms of screening (the controversy in the NHS about patient advice is summarised in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.b86&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ here&lt;/a&gt;). The article argues that even the revised NHS leaflet fails in its duty because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No mention is made of the major harm of screening—that is, unnecessary treatment of harmless lesions that would not have been identified without screening. This harm is well known and acknowledged, even among screening enthusiasts. It is in violation of guidelines and laws for informed consent not to mention this common harm, especially when screening is aimed at healthy people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/332/7540/538?ijkey=63de24d100642ba6964dd37ed815ce5456718667&amp;amp;keytype2=tf_ipsecsha&amp;amp;linkType=FULL&amp;amp;journalCode=bmj&amp;amp;resid=332/7540/538&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;previous analysis&lt;/a&gt; of advice to patients from other health systems argued:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The major harm of screening, which is overdiagnosis and subsequent overtreatment of healthy women, was not mentioned in any of 31 invitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The early days of screening also happened to coincide with significant improvement in breast cancer mortality which was ascribed to the benefits of screening. In principle, however, mortality can be improved by better treatments which would have been implemented even in the absence of screening. Recent evidence has tipped the balance away from screening (see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d4411&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ review&lt;/a&gt; comparing different European countries).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are several reasons why many people will overstate the net benefits of screening. as better evidence emerges it is likely that that evidence will provoke controversy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update February 2014&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another large long term and properly randomised study (in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/348/bmj.g366&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ&lt;/a&gt;) has concluded that screening doesn't even reduce mortality from breast cancer (at least when good therapies are available). In their words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Annual mammography in women aged 40-59 does not reduce mortality from breast cancer beyond that of physical examination or usual care when adjuvant therapy for breast cancer is freely available. Overall, 22% (106/484) of screen detected invasive breast cancers were over-diagnosed, representing one over-diagnosed breast cancer for every 424 women who received mammography screening in the trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So screening does no good but comes at the cost of significant over treatment (women suffer surgery and other clinical interventions that do harm but create no benefit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T20:50:52.610" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T20:50:52.610" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6563" CreationDate="2011-10-13T11:27:01.210" Score="18" ViewCount="9337" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NXQU8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Stephen Fry - QI&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Fry&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stephen Fry&lt;/a&gt; said in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;QI&lt;/a&gt; episode &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comedy.co.uk/guide/tv/qi/episodes/9/1/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I-Spy&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;You can't tell the age of a lobster&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7ci8GB0nEM#t=1162s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;watch video&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parl.ns.ca/lobster/faq.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Lobster FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no foolproof way to determine a lobster’s age&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;  One can only make an educated guess by&#xA;  looking at the lobster’s size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.visitmaine.net/lobsters.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Visit Maine&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No one has yet found a way to determine the exact age of a lobster&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  because it sheds its shell so often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A lobster's age is approximately his weight [&lt;em&gt;in pounds&lt;/em&gt; ] multiplied by 4, plus 3 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;(add to that, Lobsters might be able to &lt;a href=&quot;http://clubs.calvin.edu/chimes/article.php?id=6006&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;live forever&lt;/a&gt;, as mentioned by Sandi Toksvig in the QI episode)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is body&#xA;size/weight the only biological indicator we can use to make an&#xA;&quot;&lt;em&gt;educated guess&lt;/em&gt; &quot; about a lobster's age?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="1072" LastEditDate="2012-03-21T18:00:27.103" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T18:00:27.103" Title="Is it impossible to tell a lobster's age?" Tags="|biology|zoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6562" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6569" CreationDate="2011-10-13T12:26:41.763" Score="20" ViewCount="20036" Body="&lt;p&gt;The manual for my dishwasher as well as the warning sign on a box of dishwasher salt says that you should never load food salt into the water softener because it will damage the ion exchanger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that table crystal salt (with no iodine and/or ferrocyanides added) costs 20 times less than dishwasher salt and it says &quot;99.9% NaCl + traces of other minerals&quot; on both packs, I wondered if it is true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there proven cases of a dishwasher broken through usage of table salt in the water softener?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-23T05:59:32.527" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T15:41:41.753" Title="Can table salt damage a dishwasher?" Tags="|chemistry|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6561" CreationDate="2011-10-13T13:02:09.940" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many species, small granules of waste material - called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wwwchem.csustan.edu/chem4400/SJBR/lipofus.htm&quot;&gt;lipofuscin&lt;/a&gt;&quot; - build up in the body over time. As it turns out, this can be used to measure the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quickmedical.com/health_information/weight_management/metabolic_age.html&quot;&gt;metabolic age&lt;/a&gt; of lobsters, and to give a good estimate of their chronological age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v138/p117-123/&quot;&gt;Wahle, Tully &amp;amp; O'Donovan (1996)&lt;/a&gt; found a strong correlation between lipofuscin area (corrected for carapace size) and lobster age in American lobsters (&lt;em&gt;Homarus americanus&lt;/em&gt;). Metabolic age is not a precise measure of chronological age - it is affected by several other factors, including temperature, and this study controlled temperature, so they caution about using it to measure age in natural populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v143/p99-111/&quot;&gt;Sheehy et. al. (1996)&lt;/a&gt; released 3-month old European lobsters (&lt;em&gt;Homarus gammarus&lt;/em&gt;) (after tagging them) into the wild and then recaptured them 5.4-9.6 years later. Extrapolating from their results led them to suggest that lipofuscin concentration could age 43% of lobsters to within 1yr and 95% to within 3.5yrs - not brilliant but better than carapace length, which other studies have found only age 3% to within 1yr and 95% to within 82(!) years (&lt;em&gt;what was that about lobster immortality, again?&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biolbull.org/content/213/1/55.full&quot;&gt;Maxwell et. al. (2007)&lt;/a&gt; conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We show that neurolipofuscin concentration, measured histologically in the central nervous system of laboratory-reared Caribbean spiny lobsters, &lt;em&gt;Panulirus argus&lt;/em&gt;, is correlated with the chronological age of both males and females. These results suggest that the neurolipofuscin technique holds great promise for use in estimating age of wild-caught spiny lobsters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/f98-016&quot;&gt;Sheehy et. al. (2011)&lt;/a&gt; described lipofuscin accumulation as &quot;remarkably constant&quot; at 0.31% (by volume) per year in wild western rock lobsters (&lt;em&gt;Panulirus cygnus&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, using a fluorescence microscope to measure the concentration of micrometre-sized granules in a lobster's eyestalk is a bit of effort to go to to find out how long it took your dinner to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="143" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T13:09:39.090" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T13:09:39.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6561" CreationDate="2011-10-13T13:08:06.217" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;For any creature, there is only one way to know how old it is: record its time of birth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are plenty of proxy measurements that are strongly correlated to age - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_teeth#Estimating_age_using_the_teeth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the wear of the teeth of a horse&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://insects.about.com/od/forensicentomology/a/CSItimeofdeath.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;whether an insect is still a larvae&lt;/a&gt;, etc. They may not give perfect values, but provide a reasonable estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For many animals, size is a reasonable proxy for age (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_8411301_determine-corn-snakes-age-length.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;corn snake length&lt;/a&gt;). In such cases, maybe further research could develop other techniques - blood chemistry, bone density, etc., but why bother searching hard for it when you already have a reasonable technique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, why should we find it odd that - given you can get a reasonable age estimate for a lobster age by size - no-one has developed another technique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it the only technique? Marine biologist and lobster expert &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bu.edu/research/spotlight/magazine/06/adapt/atema.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jell Atema&lt;/a&gt; is quoted as confirming this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;KRULWICH: [...] with lobsters, the bigger you are, the older you are. That's how you age a lobster, by size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prof. ATEMA: That's right. Yeah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prof. ATEMA: There's absolutely no indication that this lobster is showing signs of old age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;KRULWICH: In fact, lobsters in general show no discernable signs of aging. They don't lose appetite, sex drive, energy, no change in metabolism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prof. ATEMA: Something we could all be jealous of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16349118&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NPR&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Having seen Jivlain's answer, posted while I wrote this, I am not so sure Atem is correct here.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-10-13T13:08:06.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6566" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6755" CreationDate="2011-10-13T18:28:40.480" Score="17" ViewCount="1163" Body="&lt;p&gt;It an ugly, long standing story in Italy: Vatican radio has huge antennas, not subject to Italian law, and the people living in the surroundings lament severe ailments such as leukaemia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Santa Maria di Galeria transmitter site is the subject of a dispute between the station and some local residents who claim the non-ionising radiation from the site has affected their health. However these claims are not accepted by the station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This situation causes much disturbance to the lives of the people living in this area: the most common complaints are that one can hear the transmissions breaking through on telephones, and many other electronic devices (due in many cases to the devices having poor electromagnetic immunity to the strong signals). &lt;strong&gt;The Region of Lazio has also found that the people in the area around the emitters are much more likely to have leukemia&lt;/strong&gt;: the closer those in the examined sample lived to the radio station, the more likely they were to have leukemia, up to six times the Italian national average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Radio_lawsuit&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am quite skeptical that this is possible because non-ionising radiation is not supposed to cause significant harm. On the other hand, the lawsuit is based on a state sponsored research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this phenomenon been studied by a reliable third-party?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-13T20:32:05.450" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T06:26:06.753" Title="Is Vatican Radio causing childhood leukaemia?" Tags="|electromagnetism|catholic-church|radio|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4559" CreationDate="2011-10-13T23:10:20.977" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The evidence is quite overwhelming.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See, for example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.vt.edu/Ekirch/sleepcommentary.html&quot;&gt;Sleep Research&lt;/a&gt; section on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.vt.edu/Ekirch&quot;&gt;my website&lt;/a&gt;.  There, among other items, you will find a direct link to my article, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academicroom.com/article/sleep-we-have-lost-pre-industrial-slumber-british-isles&quot;&gt;Sleep We Have Lost&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; in which I first published this discovery.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there is every reason to believe that segmented sleep, such as many wild animals still exhibit, had long been the natural pattern of our slumber before the modern age, with a provenance as old as humankind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the term &quot;first sleep,&quot; I have discovered sixty-three references within a total of fifty-eight different sources from the period 1300–1800.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have also found references to segmented sleep in twelve works of American fiction published during the first half of the nineteenth century.&#xA;  (Full reference: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18680884&quot;&gt;Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-industrial Slumber in the British Isles&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; American Historical Review, CV, no.2 (April 2001), 343-387.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fuller version of this research can be found in the 2005 book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books/about/At_day_s_close.html?id=mIaB7l0TYoAC&quot;&gt;At Day's Close: Night in Times Past&lt;/a&gt; (N.Y., W.W. Norton).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope shortly to publish a fresh article that charts in considerable detail the transformation, which occurred in western cultures during the Industrial Revolution, from segmented slumber, the dominant pattern of sleep since time immemorial, to the pattern of consolidated sleep to which we currently aspire if don't always enjoy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5046" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-19T17:52:20.660" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T17:52:20.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6568" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6791" CreationDate="2011-10-13T23:27:54.143" Score="21" ViewCount="1252" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostate-specific_antigen&quot;&gt;Prostate-Specific Antigen&lt;/a&gt; (PSA) Test is used by doctors in many regions of the world to test for prostate cancer and other prostate disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people recommend its use for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostate_cancer_screening&quot;&gt;screening&lt;/a&gt; - i.e. detecting cancers in the broad (asymptomatic) population. One proponent is prostate-cancer-sufferer and former-mayor-of-New-York Rudy Guiliani, who &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7003286.stm&quot;&gt;claimed&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I had prostate cancer seven years . My chance of survival in the US is 82%; my chance of survival if I was here in England [where screening is not done] is below 50%.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those figures have been questioned (There is a good summary near the end of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.causeweb.org/wiki/chance/index.php/Chance_News_62&quot;&gt;this edition of Chance News&lt;/a&gt;, an excellent source for corrections of misued statistics.) which leads me to pose a specific question for skeptical analysis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does routine screening for prostate cancer save lives, cost-effectively?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-14T08:03:15.170" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T12:02:50.457" Title="Does screening for prostate cancer save lives?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6562" CreationDate="2011-10-13T23:29:59.570" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main reason that you should not use table salt is because the .1% that isn't NaCl is usually some sort of drying agent to keep the salt from &lt;a href=&quot;http://extension.missouri.edu/harrison/documents/allsaltsarenotcreatedequal.pdf&quot;&gt;clumping&lt;/a&gt; and caking.  Furthermore, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dishwasher-care.org.uk/best.html&quot;&gt;table salts tend to clog up when wet&lt;/a&gt;.  Additionally, the size and shape of the salt crystals will play into how the water softener works.  Table salt is generally very fine, and comes in much more regularly shaped crystals, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/h2oqual/watsys/ae1031w.htm#exchange&quot;&gt;whereas the type of salts used in water softeners are sized and shaped so as not to clump and stick together when wet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By using table salts, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fixya.com/SSL/askdetails.aspx&quot;&gt;there appears to be some customers that have broken their dishwashers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I see you mention that it is a &quot;community&quot; washer in the comments.  This may have a different effect on what type of salt is used.  Generally, industrial strength washers may have upgraded components to handle &quot;abuse&quot; but numerous users.  it may be that your community's washer has an extra powerful pump or something to deal with the anticipated abuses.  It's impossible to tell without knowing the make and model though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-10-14T01:30:10.200" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T01:30:10.200" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4559" CreationDate="2011-10-14T00:35:26.707" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jeff Warren's book &quot;The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness&quot; devotes an entire chapter to Ekirch's claim, which he also links to a researcher named Thomas Wehr, of NIMH. The book cites historical references that it claims support the idea, including Robert Louis Stevenson:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is one stirring hour, unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere and all the outdoor world are on their feet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &quot;the moralist Francis Quarles&quot; : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let the end of thy first sleep raise thee from thy repose: then hath the body the best temper; then hath thy soul the least encumbrance.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He quotes anthropologist Carol Worthman, of the Lab for Comparative Human Biology at Emory University, as saying of the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Yes, this is fully consistent with what I see in non-Western peoples.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warren, Jeff (2007). The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness Random House. Kindle Edition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T00:35:26.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6572" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-14T04:47:58.520" Score="24" ViewCount="6719" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always assumed slick (tread-less) tires were more prone to loss of traction in the wet. That is until I read &lt;a href=&quot;https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/6444/what-is-the-recommended-type-of-tire-for-riding-on-wet-pavement/6459#6459&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; on the bicycles SE which claims that bicycle tires are too thin, round and firm to experience hydroplaning. Is there any research to back these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3596" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:40.750" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T10:12:14.967" Title="Are slick bicycle tires more slippery in the wet?" Tags="|physics|water|safety|weather|bicycles|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6573" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6579" CreationDate="2011-10-14T05:38:33.710" Score="22" ViewCount="3012" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arkdiscovery.com/noah%27s_ark.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt; claiming that noah's ark has been found. Is there any archaeological or historical evidence to support or deny this claim? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related Question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1266/could-a-great-flood-have-happened&quot;&gt;Could a Great Flood have happened?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1101" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:19:01.267" Title="Has Noah's ark been discovered in Turkey?" Tags="|history|bible|religious-texts|archeology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6655" CreationDate="2011-10-14T06:41:15.683" Score="43" ViewCount="5298" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Australia &quot;raw milk&quot;, more commonly known as un-pasteurised milk, is mostly illegal for human consumption, except in one state, I do believe. The consensus appears to be that pasteurising the milk makes it safer to drink, but many argue (mostly farmers and a few scientists) that raw milk is safe to consume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many arguments and claims, but from what I've read pasteurised milk has caused more bacteria poisoning scares than un-pasteurised milk. People that grew up on a farm or still live on a farm have been drinking un-pasturised milk for decades and seem to have remained in good health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is drinking raw milk really more dangerous than drinking pasteurised milk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5048" LastEditorUserId="57" LastEditDate="2011-10-18T10:09:58.683" LastActivityDate="2018-07-07T16:56:47.180" Title="Is drinking raw milk more dangerous than drinking pasteurized milk?" Tags="|nutrition|safety|milk|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6574" CreationDate="2011-10-14T11:35:29.413" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been a similar debate in the UK (for an argument in favor see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seedsofhealth.co.uk/articles/case_for_untreated_milk.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). Moreover few doubt that unpasteurised milk tastes much more pleasant and it may even be more nutritious (for the nutrition argument see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/in-the-raw-question-marks-over-milk-399212.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). Beware, though, of some of the positive health claims made by the &quot;raw milk&quot; movement as they smack of the lack of skeptical analysis common in many &quot;natural is best&quot; arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the reason why some government restrict supply isn't because raw milk is bad. The problem is the small risk of serious food poisoning that is easy to reduce to nearly zero with pasteurisation. So most people who consume raw milk will get taste and possibly (marginal) health benefits, but, occasionally, people will die from an avoidable cause of food poisoning. The evidence is presented in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/291/6493/463.full.pdf?sid=0f930deb-b8ba-460d-a2d7-ebf0d6b72529&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this BMJ article&lt;/a&gt;. And here are some selected quotes from it. First from the summary (my highlights):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Infections carried in milk, particularly salmonellosis and campylobacter&#xA;  enteritis, have continued to feature in Great Britain in&#xA;  recent years. Less commonly reported infections included an&#xA;  outbreak in 1984 in England due to Streptococcus zooepidemicus,&#xA;  in which 12 people, eight of whom died, were admitted to&#xA;  hospital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The implementation of legislation in 1983 requiring heat&#xA;  treatment of cows' milk for sale to the public &lt;em&gt;reduced the&#xA;  incidence of milkborne infection in Scotland&lt;/em&gt; compared with&#xA;  previous years and compared with England and Wales, where,&#xA;  without legislative control, outbreaks continue to occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some snippets of evidence from the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Twenty outbreaks of milkborne salmonellosis affecting at least 518 people&#xA;  were reported [in scotland] during 1983-4; in 19 raw milk was implicated...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Twelve of the outbreaks in 1983-4 affected consumers in&#xA;  the general community who had purchased untreated milk from local&#xA;  producer-retailer dairy farms; the two largest outbreaks affected 182 and 106&#xA;  people respectively. The remainder affected people living in dairy farming&#xA;  communities who had been drinking raw milk from their own herds...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most notable event attributed to consumption of raw milk during the&#xA;  past two years was an outbreak of Streptococcus zooepidemicus; of 12 people&#xA;  admitted to hospital, eight died...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are risks which are not common, but are serious when they occur. Most people who drink raw milk will never experience them, but if you are going to choose to drink it you probably should do so knowing the small probability of danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Summary of more recent USA experience from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/fpd.2010.0687&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eighty-three fluid milkborne outbreaks were reported between 1990 and 2006, resulting in 3621 illnesses. The mean number of illnesses per outbreak was 43.6 (illness range: 2-1644). Consumption of &lt;strong&gt;unpasteurized milk was associated with 55.4% of reported outbreaks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Give that other estimates of milk consumption suggest that raw mile is &amp;lt;1% of total volume, this suggests it is between 50 and 100 times riskier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit april 2014&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://visual.ly/raw-truth-about-raw-milk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Visual.ly&lt;/a&gt; has compiled a useful infographic on the statistics on raw milk. It is big but useful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CNLaE.png&quot; alt=&quot;raw milk and disease&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that it also addresses some of the spurious positive claims for raw vs pasteurised milk (such as the ridiculous claim that pasteurisation causes lactose intolerance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T19:20:57.920" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T19:20:57.920" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6577" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-14T12:16:43.083" Score="21" ViewCount="808" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_method&quot;&gt;Suzuki method&lt;/a&gt; is influenced by the violinist Suzuki's observations of how children learn to speak their mother tongue. Some of the characteristics of the method are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;learning music by ear is emphasized over reading musical notation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;increasing the difficulty in small steps&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;regular playing in groups&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;retaining and reviewing every piece of music ever learned on a regular basis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;frequent public performance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;discouraging competitive attitudes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;emphasis on baroque music&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The motivations behind the techniques seem plausible, and it's easy to find supporting anecdotes. However, are there any studies that actually confirm the efficiency of these techniques compared to other techniques?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the Suzuki method &quot;better&quot; than other methods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; For any plausible definition of &quot;better&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T13:14:23.150" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T13:14:23.150" Title="Does the Suzuki method outperform other music teaching methods?" Tags="|education|music|hearing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1624" CreationDate="2011-10-14T17:11:52.530" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://hpd.de/node/12044&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;interview (LANG=DE)&lt;/a&gt; with the German Theologian Hermann Detering, who wrote the book „Falsche Zeugen. Außerchristliche Jesuszeugnisse auf dem Prüfstand“ (False witnesses, exochristian Jesus witnesses on trial).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;My abstract:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't take the bible for granted, because it isn't a historic book, but a statement of faith.&#xA;It's hard to tell, when it was written and by whom. Most author names, mentioned, are wrong.&#xA;Some parts of it are first mentioned in the beginning of the 2nd century, but from witnesses, who are themselves faked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 6 main witnesses outside of Christianity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the Jewish historian Josephus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the Roman historian an authors&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tacitus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plinius&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sueton&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a purported mail from a father to his son&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;another document from 3rd hand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The central statements of these witnesses about Jesus would fit on a postcard. These witnesses have been massively overestimated in the past. They where treated as if they were independent source. However, in reality, they where redacted by Christians, which is of little surprise, since copying at that time took place by handwriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In younger times, there were 3 new texts discovered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the Judasgospel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the post 1945 discovered handwritings in&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Qumran and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nag Hammadi&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They didn't help much in the finding, whether Jesus was a historic person. In the Qumran text, he doesn't take place at all, and in the gnostic literature of Nag Hammadi, he is mostly  a mythologic figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole question of historic Jesus isn't new, and was debated before WWII in Germany, but abandoned afterwards. But today, there are new methods to analyse scriptures. With modern databases, it is possible to find favourite words for different authors. So were words and phrases found in texts, which weren't used in the time, the document supposedly origins. This shows, that the texts were redacted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example is the „Testimonium Flavianum“ from Josephus. He mentions Jesus as a wise man. But early, Christian literature from that time doesn't mention that witness, as one would expect. The christian historian Eusebius is the first to mention the witness of Josephus. Unfortunately, his wording and phrases are very similar to the wording and phrases of Josesphus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The roman historian Sueton mentions a man called 'Chrestos', who shall, under imperator Claudius (reg.: 41-54) , agitated the Jews of Rome to furor. Then Claudius displaced the Jews from Rome. But Jesus is said to died under imperator Tiberius (reg.: 14-37), and Christus is not Chrestos, which was a common name for slaves in Rome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is the Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote about the burning of Rome under Nero, as filmed in Hollywood. Isn't this a witness of early prosecution of Christs? Well - early Christian scriptures don't talk about this important event. Only later writings from about 300-400 BC talk about it, and again, the words and phrases of the reporting Tacitus, and his 'source', Sulpicius Severus are very similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, historians doubt, that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero#Great_Fire_of_Rome_.2864_AD.29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nero burned Rome&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the conclusion is not only, that the existence of Jesus is questionable, but the existence of an early Christianity in the first century too. First witnesses are from the mid of the second century, namely imperator Marc Aurel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More to be read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hermann Detering: Falsche Zeugen. Außerchristliche Jesuszeugnisse auf&#xA;dem Prüfstand. Aschaffenburg: Alibri 2011. 243 Seiten, kartoniert,&#xA;Euro 19.-, ISBN 978-3-86569-070-8&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T00:49:06.357" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6573" CreationDate="2011-10-14T19:55:34.330" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short Answer:  No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csun.edu/%7Evcgeo005/bogus.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site from California State University Northridge throughly debunks that particular geologic formation&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A natural rock structure near Dogubayazit, Turkey, has been misidentified as Noah's Ark&lt;/strong&gt;. Microscopic studies of a supposed iron bracket show that it is derived from weathered volcanic minerals. Supposed metal-braced walls are natural concentrations of limonite and magnetite in steeply inclined sedimentary layers in the limbs of a doubly plunging syncline. Supposed fossilized gopherwood bark is crinkled metamorphosed peridotite. Fossiliferous limestone, interpreted as cross cutting the syncline, preclude the structure from being Noah's Ark because these supposed &amp;quot;Flood&amp;quot; deposits are younger than the &amp;quot;Ark.&amp;quot; Anchor stones at Kazan (Arzap) are derived from local andesite and not from Mesopotamia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Introduction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirty-five years ago, Life magazine carried a story of an expedition sent to investigate the outline of a ship in a mud-flow near Dogubayazit in eastern Turkey (Life, 1960); see p. 112). An aerial photo in this story was captioned: &amp;quot;Noah's Ark?&amp;quot; Upon reaching the site (Figure 1) at 7,000 feet elevation, investigators found the boat-like appearance (Figure 2) to be only superficial. One scientist in the group ventured that nothing in nature could produce such symmetry, although nothing man-made was discovered. But after two days of looking for a cause of the phenomenon, the site was temporarily abandoned for lack of evidence. Other searches for the Ark continued, however, and placed Noah's barge on Mount Ararat farther to the north, much closer to where various creationists placed the Ark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aKCNV.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Map, Figure 1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jj4Nh.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Geologic formation, Figure 2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the search still underway twenty-five years later, another explorer reclaimed the mound near Dogubayazit as Noah's Ark, which according to him contained &amp;quot;trainloads&amp;quot; of gopherwood (Wyatt, 1994). On the basis of this renewed interest in the area, representatives of the Turkish Ministry of Cultural Affairs and the High Commission on Ancient Monuments moved quickly to protect the site from exploitation, declaring the area a national park. However, skeptics and those who believed that the Ark was on Mt. Ararat remained unconvinced the Dogubayazit phenomenon is the Ark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Fasold, co-author of this paper, also began studies of the site in 1985, making nine trips in the following years to look for evidence. Today, the area is a military forbidden zone and is off limits to all researchers, except for Fasold who officially remains the only non-Turk having access. Placed directly on the project by the Rector of the Ataturk University at Erzurum, Fasold worked closely with project leader, Associate Professor Salih Bayraktutan, with on-site investigations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ark-hoax.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Talk Origins also debunks this as well, with two separate analysis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On February 20, 1993, CBS aired &amp;quot;The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark,&amp;quot; Sun International Pictures' rehash of its 1976 film &amp;quot;In Search of Noah's Ark.&amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csun.edu/%7Evcgeo005/bogus.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; At the end of June, Skeptics Society advisor Gerald Larue publicly revealed (via Associated Press and Time magazine) that George Jammal, one of the alleged eyewitnesses of Noah's Ark on Mt. Ararat, &lt;strong&gt;was a hoaxer, and that Larue himself had played a role in the hoax.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aKCNV.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; The purpose: to demonstrate the shoddy research of Sun International Pictures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the past year, CBS has shown several specials produced by Sun International Pictures, Inc. These shows have all dealt with the Bible in one way or another and have been heavily biased towards the pro-literalism, pro- creationism side. Skeptics are included for short segments that believers then seemingly tear apart, along with acting clips supporting the stories as they appear in the Bible. There have been a number of reports questioning the veracity of these previous shows, but new information warrants another, much closer, look at Sun and their methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As reported in earlier articles, Time magazine and the Associated Press (AP) ran stories claiming that George Jammal, one of the claimants who appeared on Sun's The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark, actually &lt;strong&gt;fabricated the entire story&lt;/strong&gt; to expose Sun's shoddy research. This he did with the help of Dr. Gerald Larue, a professor emeritus of biblical history and archaeology at the University of Southern California and Skeptics Society advisor, who had appeared in an earlier Sun production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/Hoaxes/jammal/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Southern Methodist University also lists this as a hoax, with three links to detailed stories about it&lt;/a&gt; (one of the links being the TalkOrigins site).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.andrews.edu/archaeology/archive/merling/newpage21.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Even this admittedly evangelical and religious site doubts these claims&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of those who make claims of discovery seem sincere, so sincere that they are willing to break laws or endanger the safety of their friends or families. Wyatt sees the laws of Saudi Arabia are of little importance compared to his mission. He just breaks their laws (p. 44). What he considers badges of honor (&amp;quot;jailed as a spy, shot at by terrorists, beaten, robbed and persecuted&amp;quot;--see the back cover of his book), appear to be evidences of poor judgment. When you are analyzing a report, remind yourself that sincerity can never replace reliable evidence. Someone can be sincerely wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?ID=21016&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This baptist news site also is doubtful, and severely critique one of the discoverers.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, it is one of the same types of things that is always on the verge of discovery, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2010/0428/Noah-s-Ark-discovered.-Again.&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;yet never actually turns up&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-15T14:33:58.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1959" CreationDate="2011-10-14T20:51:22.020" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2010485/&quot;&gt;one study from 1981&lt;/a&gt; that suggests that there is a positive correlation between early abortion and breast cancer in patients younger than 32:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A first-trimester abortion before FFTP, whether spontaneous or induced, was associated with a 2.4-fold increase in breast-cancer risk (P &amp;lt; 0.005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two responses can be found to this study.  First, Vessey et al fielded &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2010930/&quot;&gt;a direct response  in 1982&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A recent publication from California in this journal has suggested that both prolonged oral contraceptive use and abortion before first term pregnancy increases the risk of breast cancer in young women. Data are presented on 1176 women aged 16-50 years with breast cancer, interviewed in London or in Oxford, together with a like number of matches control subjects. The results are entirely reassuring, being, in fact, more compatible with protective effects than the reverse. Possible reasons for the differences between the 2 sets of data are discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199701093360201&quot;&gt;Melbye et al in 1997&lt;/a&gt; agreed with this second study.  Using a much larger pool than the 1981 study, and with much sounder statistical methodology (not to mention a larger N), they found no relative increase of risk as a result of abortion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how can the results of the 1981 study be explained? 1981 was prior to any genetic screenings, so their abstract text of &quot;This increased risk could not be explained by other risk factors&quot; might have to be changed, as several more genetic risk factors have been found since then.  Notably, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRCA1&quot;&gt;BRCA1&lt;/a&gt; was first described in 1991 and cloned in 1994; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929707638488&quot;&gt;Ford et al found in 1998&lt;/a&gt; that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The estimated cumulative risk of breast cancer reached 28% (95% CI 9%–44%) by age 50 years and 84% (95% CI 43%–95%) by age 70 years&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or roughly 1 in 4 by age 50.  Women in the general population of the United States, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/detection/probability-breast-cancer&quot;&gt;according to SEER&lt;/a&gt;, have a 1 in 233 chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer from ages 30-39, and 1 in 69 from ages 40-49.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that the 1981 study limited their cohort to patients who were exceptionally young (below 32 years of age) smacks of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias&quot;&gt;selection bias&lt;/a&gt; to me, meaning that those patients were carrying some genetic marker like BRCA1 in order to even be included in the study in the first place.  Beyond that, it's hard to say whether or not the observed increases were due to noise in the data or not, since they didn't perform genetic testing on the patients.  However, if those patients were all carrying those risk factors, those factors would certainly explain how they got cancer so young, in light of other studies finding that abortion is not a correlated factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2158" LastActivityDate="2011-10-14T20:51:22.020" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6584" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6797" CreationDate="2011-10-14T21:40:59.753" Score="9" ViewCount="5734" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several sources claim that left-handed people have shorter life-spans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A left-handed academic from North Dakota has revealed that left-handers tend to die younger than right-handers. The &quot;generally&quot; right-handed population, he asserts, lasts on average to 68.7 years old. The generally left-handed live to just 65. Perplexingly, though, &quot;extremely&quot; left-handed people have an average death age of 67.4. And the ambidextrous fare best of all: their average age of death is just short of 70.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2001/feb/05/guardianleaders&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other examples: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1099/do-left-handers-die-young&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1616090/pg1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Godlike Productions&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.funfacts.com.au/left-handed-people-die-earlier/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fun Facts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't seem to understand why handedness would be a factor. There may be more mental friction in having to use right-handed items, but having any impact on your lifespan seems odd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3863" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-15T02:15:57.810" LastActivityDate="2012-02-06T21:52:39.960" Title="Are left-handed people more likely to die younger than right-handed people?" Tags="|physiology|life-expectancy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6587" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-10-15T08:30:24.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Medical science is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T14:52:54.310" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:52:54.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6588" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-10-15T08:30:24.813" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about the science of medicine and its practices. Use [medications] for questions about the actual cures that people take, and use [alternative-medicine] for claims about cures and practices which are claimed to be alternative to official medical science" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:16:55.830" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:16:55.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6589" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-10-15T08:40:07.813" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't use this tag, use the more specific medical-science, nutrition or environmental-health instead.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T13:31:29.257" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T13:31:29.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6590" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-10-15T08:40:07.813" Score="0" Body="Don't use this tag, use the more specific medical-science, nutrition or environmental-health instead." OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-15T08:40:07.813" LastActivityDate="2011-10-15T08:40:07.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6591" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6800" CreationDate="2011-10-15T09:24:34.137" Score="20" ViewCount="2002" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oh, Lisa, you and your stories. &quot;Bart is a vampire.&quot; &quot;Beer kills brain cells.&quot; Now let's go back to that...building...thingy, where our beds and TV...is. &lt;sub&gt;-&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snpp.com/episodes/1F04.html&quot;&gt;The Simpsons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't just Lisa Simpson, though, that claim that excessive and/or long-term alcohol use can &lt;a href=&quot;http://4mind4life.com/blog/2008/02/22/50-things-that-kill-brain-cells/&quot;&gt;kill brain cells&lt;/a&gt;. The usual suspects, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111011183507AA83wa9&quot;&gt;Yahoo&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070816080848AAYBeWr&quot;&gt;Answers&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Does_beer_kill_brain_cells&quot;&gt;Answers.com&lt;/a&gt; seem to think so. Others claim that it doesn't, such as articles in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/01/good-news-alcohol-doesnt-actually-kill-brain-cells/70082/&quot;&gt;The Atlantic&lt;/a&gt; and in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2010/10/beer-doesn-t-kill-your-brain-cells/18748/&quot;&gt;The Atlantic Wire&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, none of these cited a primary source. So, will prolonged and/or excessive alcohol consumption kill off brain cells?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorDisplayName="user288" LastEditDate="2011-10-15T17:57:20.480" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T04:47:32.880" Title="Does beer kill brain cells?" Tags="|neurology|alcohol|beer|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6594" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6597" CreationDate="2011-10-15T19:58:23.297" Score="50" ViewCount="9525" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quasi-related&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3219/are-there-any-perceptible-differences-between-the-sound-quality-of-192-versus-32&quot;&gt;Are there any perceptible differences between the sound quality of 192 versus 320 kbps MP3 files?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2849/do-expensive-premium-speaker-cables-actually-make-a-difference&quot;&gt;Do expensive, “premium” speaker cables actually make a difference?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard this here and there in various casual conversations (hopefully others will also qualify this in the &quot;commonly heard&quot; bucket of claims), but one can also find references online:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they're right about one thing: &lt;strong&gt;Records can sound better than CDs.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although CDs have a wider dynamic range, mastering houses are often encouraged to compress the audio on CDs to make it as loud as possible: It's the so-called loudness war. Since the audio on vinyl can't be compressed to such extremes, &lt;strong&gt;records generally offer a more nuanced sound.&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/commentary/listeningpost/2007/10/listeningpost_1029&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wired Magazine - Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question:&lt;/strong&gt; It is generally agreed among the serious listeners of classical music&#xA;  that the best of the now obsolete vinyl LP records had a superior&#xA;  tonal quality and better fidelity than any CD. Is this true, and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer:&lt;/strong&gt; For a CD&#xA;  recording they take 44,100 snapshots in a minute. These snapshots are&#xA;  then converted to digital information with a certain precision... You can probably see where I am going: &lt;strong&gt;by definition a digital recording doesn't include all the sound information... A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform... Therefore vinyl recording sound richer than CD recordings&lt;/strong&gt;... (&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=375592&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Answers: Vinyl LP  sound versus CD sound&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The last three years have each set successive records for vinyl sales in the CD era. In 2010, 2.8 million LPs were sold, up 14% from 2009...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vinyl’s lasting appeal stems from a heady stew of nostalgia, tangibility and, perhaps most important of all, &lt;strong&gt;sound quality that musicians and fans often prefer to any other medium.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Digital is zeroes and ones, man, anyway you look at it,” says Chuck Leavell, keyboardist for the Rolling Stones. “Whether it’s a CD or a download, there’s a certain jaggedness to it. &lt;strong&gt;Vinyl wins every time. It’s warmer, more soothing, easier on the ears”&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2011/07/13/vinyl-vs-cd-the-tables-are-turning-rolling-stones-dom-lyor-cohen/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forbes Magazine - Vinyl vs. CDs: The Tables are Turning&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason I'm skeptical of the quality comparison has to do with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDmBx4R-Gas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;how records are made&lt;/a&gt;. In that video, around 1:25 the interviewee states that a master is made from pre-recorded, mixed music. This implies that it is &lt;em&gt;already digitized.&lt;/em&gt; Around 3:10, he states that the music signal is amplified and made to vibrate the stylus cutting the record master. Thus, I see two paths from media to one's ear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Live music -&gt; conversion from electrical signal to digital recording (file of some sort) -&gt; conversion to amplified electrical signal to vibrate a cutting stylus -&gt; engraved record -&gt; turntable -&gt; conversion back to electrical signal to vibrate speakers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Live music -&gt; conversion of electrical signal to digital recording (file of some sort) -&gt; conversion back to electrical signal to vibrate speakers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could be wrong in this interpretation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, this question might have been tackled in a manner similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3219/are-there-any-perceptible-differences-between-the-sound-quality-of-192-versus-32&quot;&gt;this question on bitrate and noticeable quality&lt;/a&gt; -- essentially, with a Pepsi challenge between vinyl and CDs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarizing, &lt;strong&gt;Is there evidence that the sound produced by vinyl records is either a) of better quality (via some declared standard of measurement) or b) more pleasing to humans compared to the sound produced by CDs?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T13:14:04.413" Title="Is the sound from records (vinyl) superior to digital formats (CDs, music files, etc.)?" Tags="|music|sound|perception|hearing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6600" CreationDate="2011-10-15T21:35:35.417" Score="15" ViewCount="2737" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be portrayed in movies and TV quite often: we find a group of travelers desperately stranded on a small boat or raft. For one reason or another someone becomes injured and blood is spilled into the seawater. Without fail (sometimes even &lt;em&gt;minutes&lt;/em&gt; later) we find our hapless individuals surrounded by one or more hungry sharks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question -- Is a shark's ability to &quot;smell&quot; blood, or their numbers and vicinity, exaggerated here (and as such just a convenient plot device)? Or should I really expect at least one shark to arrive nearly every time, if ever in that situation myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="858" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:31:52.900" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:31:52.900" Title="Do sharks quickly respond to blood in the water?" Tags="|biology|safety|sharks|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6594" CreationDate="2011-10-15T22:42:44.923" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is certainly a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference should not be looked for in sampling rates or performance, etcetera. The difference is in the production process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Example&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please compare these two examples to have a specific idea of what the difference is. To easily see the difference, do listen to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_consonant&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;plosives&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibilant&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sibilants&lt;/a&gt; like the letters &amp;quot;p&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;s&amp;quot; in the singing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWWzx_uvlyo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Iron Maiden—The Number of the Beast (1982)—Vinyl&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyPxhRtWECg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Iron Maiden—The Number of the Beast (1982)—Digital&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Introduction&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humans are not capable of distinguishing &amp;quot;digital&amp;quot; from &amp;quot;analog&amp;quot;. See for example the following conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, then, no evidence was provided by Tiefenbrun during this series of tests that indicates ability to identify reliably:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a)  the presence of an undriven transducer in the room,&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;(b)  the presence of the Sony PCM-F1 digital processor in the audio chain, or&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;(c)  the presence of the relay contacts of the A/B/X switchbox in the circuit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tests were conducted in an amicable rather than confrontational atmosphere, and the parties departed feeling that the day's work had been worthwhile. Further carefully-conducted blind tests will be necessary if these conclusions are felt to be in error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/abx_testing2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_mastering&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;production process&lt;/a&gt; of vinyls and CDs changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Vinyl&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds are etched on the surface of an LP. There are therefore physical limitations to how much dynamic range can be stored. In practice, too much range would result in having the needle skip the groove.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the engineers I spoke with noted that a wider frequency and dynamic range can be cut into a vinyl master than can be reproduced in playback. For example, extreme transients and high frequencies will distort because the stylus cannot properly track them in the disc's grooves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the other end of the spectrum, there are things to consider when working with bass and low-midrange content destined for vinyl. “Low frequencies use up the most space, especially if they're heavy and constant,” Golden remarks. “Care must be taken to control excessive low end. The lathe can cut it just fine, but if the volume exceeds a certain level, the record could skip when played back.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20100727174542/http://emusician.com/tutorials/mastering_vinyl/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is a lot of difference in the frequency response in the external part of the disc from the inner part. In practice, inner songs will sound darker than outer songs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, the inner tracks will sound duller than the outer tracks. The high frequencies “simply can't be reproduced the same as if they were cut on the outside of the disc,” Golden adds. “And no, it can't be fixed by adding extra high end. That would add more distortion to the inside cuts.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20100727174542/http://emusician.com/tutorials/mastering_vinyl/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Albums are therefore mastered in a particular way to make the wide-dynamic-range masters &amp;quot;fit&amp;quot; on the media. This modifies the overall sound - a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore the media itself tends to saturate musically (in the way that a valve amp has a &amp;quot;musical&amp;quot; distortion). This is put to good use during mastering as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;CD&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds are digitised on a CD. There are many advantages to this, like a much better dynamic range, higher frequency response and so on. However, this completely changes the mastering process, resulting in a different overall sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I couldn't find a citable source, however the fact that CD mastering is very different from vinyl mastering is quite obvious from &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20120119231345/http://sterling-sound.com/?page_id=276&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sterling Sound&lt;/a&gt;'s web page (wayback machine copy). Sterling Sound is widely regarded as one of the top 5 mastering studios in the world.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now--which one is better? It depends what you are looking for: vinyls have a characteristic sound which is probably a better fit for some kinds of music. Alternatively, other kinds of music, e.g. classical, do benefit a lot from the increased dynamic range of the CD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the first and largest supporters of digital audio was the classical conductor Herbert von Karajan, who said that digital recording was &amp;quot;definitely superior to any other form of recording we know&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_analog_and_digital_recording&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T16:37:08.320" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6595" CreationDate="2011-10-16T01:10:34.303" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it exaggerated? Sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it happen? Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is recognized that most if not all species &#xA;  of sharks possess a keen sense of smell which is &#xA;  used in detecting dead and wounded prey or &#xA;  other edible material during their well-known &#xA;  scavenging operations. [...]  This tracking ability is &#xA;  well recognized by skin divers and fishermen &#xA;  who have involuntarily attracted sharks by retaining &#xA;  speared fish or by discarding trash fish &#xA;  and offal from their boats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Tester AL. 1963. &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/handle/10125/4935&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The role of olfaction in shark predation.&lt;/a&gt; Pac Sci 17(2): 145-170.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's been plenty of &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jmor.10208/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cne.901610110/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0300962972903696&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;shark&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982210005919&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;olfaction&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a technique used in shark-fishing of dragging a &quot;burley bag&quot; or &quot;burley bucket&quot; of bait behind the boat to attract sharks. (I found lots of mentions on the web, but nothing particularly citable.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-10-16T01:10:34.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6604" CreationDate="2011-10-16T09:38:06.730" Score="16" ViewCount="1921" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr. Ramzi Amri makes a stern case on &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Steve-Jobs/Why-did-Steve-Jobs-choose-not-to-effectively-treat-his-cancer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the other Q/A site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me cut to the chase: Mr. Jobs allegedly chose to undergo all sorts of alternative treatment options before opting for conventional medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was, of course, a freedom he had all the rights to take, but given the circumstances it seems sound to assume that Mr. Jobs' choice for alternative medicine could have led to an unnecessarily early death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Dr. David Gorski &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-death-of-steve-jobs/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;argues the opposite&lt;/a&gt;, that he was a pretty much average case of that particular tumour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;based on this curve alone Jobs had a little better a 50-50 chance of living as long as he did (almost two and a half years). Unfortunately, he fell out on the wrong side of those odds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is right? Was Jobs' premature death fruit of his foolishness, or of a very hard diagnosis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T11:38:31.167" Title="Did Steve Jobs fall prey to alternative medicine?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|cancer|steve-jobs|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6595" CreationDate="2011-10-16T11:26:41.483" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bIxdT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Shark Senses&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1996186_1996786_1996788,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To detect blood the smell first has to reach the shark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/latest-questions/question/2110/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Naked Scientist&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Water molecules in general are carried to the shark by water currents&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;If there are no water currents then it is molecular diffusion, the&#xA;random movement of molecules that disperses the odour away from the&#xA;source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In general the travel time of odour depends entirely on the local&#xA;water velocity&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Near the water surface &lt;strong&gt;water velocities in the ocean&#xA;can range between a few centimetres per second on a very calm day and&#xA;several metres per second in a strong current&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://elasmo-research.org/education/white_shark/smell.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ReefQuest Center for Shark Research&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A shark's lateral line system enables it to detect subtle water&#xA;movements&lt;/strong&gt;. Therefore, when a shark's acute olfactory system detects an&#xA;attractive chemical, all it needs to do is turn into the current.&#xA;Sooner or later, this will bring a shark to the source of the odor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/kqed/oceanadventures/episodes/sharks/indepth-senses.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PBS - Jean-Michel Costeau Ocean Adventures&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notion that the mighty great white can smell blood from a great&#xA;distance has been central to modern shark mythology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They can detect some scents at concentrations as low as&#xA;1 part per 25 million&lt;/strong&gt;, which translates to about a third of a mile&#xA;away in the open ocean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sharks/masters/myths.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Interview&lt;/a&gt; with shark expert &lt;a href=&quot;http://www6.miami.edu/sharklab/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Samuel Gruber&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It comes down to the concentration of the stimulating chemical&lt;/strong&gt; at the&#xA;nose's receptor cell that determines if an animal will detect a smell.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;That level is parts per million in sharks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amnh.org/learn/pd/sharks_rays/rfl_myth/myth_page5.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Museum of Natural History&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The lemon shark can detect tuna oil at one part per 25 million&lt;/strong&gt;--that's&#xA;equivalent to about 10 drops in an average-sized home swimming pool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other types of sharks can detect their prey at one part per 10&#xA;billion; that's one drop in an Olympic-sized swimming pool!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some&#xA;sharks can detect these low concentrations of chemicals at prodigious&#xA;distances--up to several hundred meters (the length of several&#xA;football fields)—depending on a number of factors, particularly the&#xA;speed and direction of the water current.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://atlanticsharks.org/biology_senses.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sharks of the Atlantic Research and Conservation Coalition (ShARCC)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some species are able to detect as little as one part per million of&#xA;blood in seawater&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... however, it is suggested that sharks are not stimulated by mammal blood (e.g. from humans) in the same way as they are by fish blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/shark-week-drop-of-blood.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mythbusters - Shark Week: Drop of Blood&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2781/shark-youre-whats-for-dinner&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope - How quickly can sharks detect blood in the water?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1996186_1996786_1996788,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Time - Summer of the Shark&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-16T11:26:41.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6601" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-16T12:22:58.457" Score="23" ViewCount="23959" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a popular belief in Russia that mixing boiled and unboiled water (say, adding cold unboiled water to a cup of tea to cool it) can be dangerous for one's health, &lt;strong&gt;even if it is safe to drink both liquids apart&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goroskop.ru/publish/open_article/9195/&quot;&gt;Example of the claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original, in Russian:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Не смешивай сырую и кипяченую воду!&#xA;  Бабушка была права.&#xA;  Почему смешивание кипяченой и сырой воды приводит к стремительному опорожнению кишечника - науке пока не очень ясно. Но факт налицо.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English Translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do not mix raw and boiled water!&lt;/strong&gt; Grandma was right. Just why mixing of boiled and raw water leads to a rapid emptying of the bowel, the science cannot explain yet. But the fact is obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some evidence for that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastEditorUserId="106" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T10:18:38.330" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T08:50:10.707" Title="Is it dangerous to mix boiled and unboiled water?" Tags="|nutrition|water|hygiene|russia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2884" CreationDate="2011-10-16T16:47:03.793" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No. Calcification of water is (slightly) good for you.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ignore the effects of limescale on your pipes, boilers, taste (hard water makes worse tea) and any indirect effects these may have on your health there is evidence that hard water leads to slightly lower rates of cardiovascular disease. The  result comes from a BMJ paper in 1980 which sought explanatory factors for the different rates of heart disease in different parts of the UK. The paper is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/280/6226/1243.full.pdf?sid=90202da5-0c99-4721-b805-5a891dfa91fa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The summary conclusion relevant to this question states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After adjustment&#xA;  for other factors cardiovascular mortality in areas with&#xA;  very soft water, around 0 25 mmol/l (calcium carbonate&#xA;  equivalent 25 mg/l), was estimated to be 10-15% higher&#xA;  than that in areas with medium-hard water, around&#xA;  1-7 mmol/l (170 mg/l), while any further increase in&#xA;  hardness beyond 1-7 mmol/l did not additionally lower&#xA;  cardiovascular mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it might be more accurate to say the &lt;em&gt;absence&lt;/em&gt; of hardness has a small influence on stroke and heart disease rates. And the effect isn't large, especially when compared to other known influences on these diseases. As the authors say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the potential risks from smoking, hypertension, hypercholesterolaemia,&#xA;  and physical inactivity are far greater than the&#xA;  apparent risk from drinking soft water;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another effect of water hardness that is almost certainly no longer relevant is that hard water prevents the accumulation of lead in water compared to soft water which tends to be acidic and leaches small amounts of lead from lead piping (which was relatively common in some countries until the 1960s). An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/2/5857/21.full.pdf?sid=90202da5-0c99-4721-b805-5a891dfa91fa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;older BMJ paper&lt;/a&gt; from 1973 summarizes this evidence like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The present findings suggest that people living in soft water areas&#xA;  have higher concentrations of lead in their bones than those living&#xA;  in hard water areas...&#xA;  the present findings indicate&#xA;  a more generally distributed cause; the ingestion of small doses&#xA;  of lead from drinking water over a long period of time is a&#xA;  possible explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And they further elaborate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... a concentration of lead which may be&#xA;  harmless in a hard water may not be so in a soft water; in fact,&#xA;  hard water is protective against both the pick-up of lead from&#xA;  pipes and its absorption by the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since lead piping has mostly been eliminated, this effects is no longer likley to have any significance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the direct evidence seems to suggest that hard water is (very slightly) good for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not yet found more recent research results on the topic so it would be interesting to see whether similar studies from other countries or more recent studies show the same effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2017-10-22T14:46:15.800" LastActivityDate="2017-10-22T14:46:15.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6599" CreationDate="2011-10-16T18:34:30.320" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main source of the meme seems to be Brian Dunning's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticblog.org/2011/10/06/steve-jobs-succumbs-to-alternative-medicine/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;skepticblog bost&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a more thorough analysis posted later basically cautioned to abstain from as categorical a statement as Dunning's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The analysis is &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/10/steve_jobs_neuroendocrine_tumors_and_alt.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Steve Jobs, neuroendocrine tumors, and alternative medicine&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;(NOTE: Upon further review, it appears to be a very close clone to Dr. David Gorsky's article OP linked, so it may have been an earlier rough draft of the same author, OR just extensive quoting by Dr. Gorsky since that article is bigger and appeared 3 days later).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will provide his full closing paragraph (emphasis mine), but TL;DR is &amp;quot;We just don't know. it may have contributed BUT there is no proof at the moment&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's one thing we're learning increasingly about cancer, it's that biology is king and queen, and that our ability to fight biology is depressingly limited. In retrospect, we can now tell that Jobs clearly had a tumor that was unusually aggressive for an insulinoma. Such tumors are usually pretty indolent and progress only slowly. Indeed, I've seen patients and known a friend of a friend who survived many years with metastatic neuroendocrine tumors with reasonable quality of life. Jobs was unfortunate in that he appears to have had an unusually aggressive form of the disease that &lt;strong&gt;probably would have killed him no matter what&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say that we shouldn't take into account his delay in treatment and wonder if it contributed to his ultimate demise. It very well might have, &lt;strong&gt;the key word being &amp;quot;might.&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We don't know that it did, which is one reason why we have to be very, very careful not to overstate the case and attribute his death as being definitely due to the delay in therapy due to his wanting to &amp;quot;go alternative.&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt; It's also important to remember that, as much of a brilliant visionary Jobs was, even brilliant visionaries can make bad decisions when it comes to health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A pretty important logical step is shown earlier in the post. Though it's not a proof, it is pretty convincing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That the surgeon opted to do a Whipple also tells us that there probably wasn't any evidence of metastatic spread of the tumor at the time. Otherwise, I doubt the surgeon would have recommended as huge of an operation as a Whipple just for palliation. Indeed, Whipple operations are generally done with curative intent and only very rarely done for palliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The morbidity is too high to justify doing such an operation when it can't save the patient's life. In fact, it's not unreasonable to infer from the willingness of the surgeon to do a Whipple operation that, as far as could be determined, Jobs' tumor was still restricted to the head of the pancreas and thus still potentially curable, even after nine months' delay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meaning, that it's likely that the cancer did NOT indeed spread as much as had been asserted during the 9-month &amp;quot;alternative treatment&amp;quot; delays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-25T19:15:44.527" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6605" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-16T22:04:56.297" Score="33" ViewCount="8235" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed this book, &quot;Grey Wolf: The Escape Of Adolf Hitler&quot;, mentioned (without real criticism) in a major Icelandic newspaper. According to the article, the book claims Hitler did not kill himself, and the authors claim to have proof that he lived in Argentina until he died from natural causes in 1962.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1402781393&quot;&gt;Amazon&lt;/a&gt; describes the book thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did Hitler (code name Grey Wolf) really die in 1945? The evidence says no. Heres the gripping story of what might have happened... When Truman asked Stalin in 1945 whether Hitler was dead, Stalin replied bluntly, No. As late as 1952, Eisenhower declared: We have been unable to unearth one bit of tangible evidence of Hitler's death. What really happened? Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams have compiled extensive evidence, some recently declassified, that Hitler actually fled Berlin and took refuge in a remote Nazi enclave in Argentina. The recent discovery that the famous Hitler's skull in Moscow is female, as well as newly uncovered documents, provide powerful proof for their case. Dunstan and Williams cite people, places and dates in over 500 detailed notes that identify the plan's escape route, vehicles, aircraft, U-boats and hideouts. Among the details: the CIA's possible involvement and Hitler's life in Patagonia, including his two daughters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone here read the book? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any proof of these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any proof of his death in 1945?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="510" LastEditorUserId="510" LastEditDate="2011-10-17T16:40:15.967" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T13:51:02.983" Title="Did Hitler survive until 1962?" Tags="|history|adolf-hitler|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6584" CreationDate="2011-10-16T23:00:32.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first result in a google search found the following article &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/102354.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/102354.stm&lt;/a&gt; claiming the contrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article is from 1998 and it cites &quot;new&quot; academic research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="510" LastActivityDate="2011-10-16T23:00:32.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3082" CreationDate="2011-10-16T23:14:50.087" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A large study from the UK published in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c927.full?sid=88ad1e3e-4da5-41ef-83cf-51ca24fe1fa2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ in 2010&lt;/a&gt; suggests that pill users are not at extra risk compared to non-users. This study was designed to explore mortality from many causes not just cancer and its scale and longevity would tend to suggest it is a robust analysis. the design:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prospective cohort study started in 1968 with mortality data supplied by participating general practitioners, National Health Service central registries, or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results (my highlights for cancer related mortality):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compared with never users, ever users of oral contraception had a significantly lower rate of death from any cause (adjusted relative risk 0.88, 95% confidence interval 0.82 to 0.93). They also had &lt;strong&gt;significantly lower rates of death from all cancers; large bowel/rectum, uterine body, and ovarian cancer; main gynaecological cancers combined&lt;/strong&gt;; all circulatory disease; ischaemic heart disease; and all other diseases. They had higher rates of violent deaths. No association between overall mortality and duration of oral contraceptive use was observed, although some disease specific relations were apparent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oral contraception was not associated with an increased long term risk of death in this UK cohort and may even produce a net benefit (absolute risk reduction among ever users 52 per 100 000 woman years)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The balance of risks and benefits, however, may vary around the world, depending on patterns of oral contraception usage and the prevalence of different diseases&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The caveat at the end is partially a result of the cohort being relatively healthy which leaves the possibility that certain pre-existing risks might interact with the pill in ways that increase mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, though, it doesn't look like the pill increases cancer rates in a healthy population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-17T18:08:00.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1444" CreationDate="2011-10-17T10:05:50.703" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_26/b4234039356718.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Businessweek - Ron Paul's Fort Knox Fever&lt;/a&gt; (June 2011)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[US congressman and three-time Presidential candidate Ron] Paul, who has said he thinks it's possible there is no gold at&#xA;Fort Knox, told &lt;em&gt;Bloomberg Businessweek&lt;/em&gt; the government is asking the&#xA;American people to trust that all the gold is there, while not&#xA;allowing site visits and not publishing all the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Thorson&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eric M. Thorson&lt;/a&gt;, the inspector general of the Treasury&lt;/strong&gt;, is responsible&#xA;for keeping track of the U.S. Mint's deep storage gold and silver&#xA;reserves. Last September, he &lt;strong&gt;became the first outsider in 37 years to&#xA;be granted full access to the U.S. Bullion Depository, as Fort Knox is&#xA;formally known&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thorson tried to reassure Paul that the loot is all there.&#xA;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I can tell you unequivocally that the gold reserves do exist&lt;/strong&gt; in the amounts reported, and the controls over it ensure absolute security&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;he wrote Paul in a letter&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Thorson didn't do a full audit though, because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Treasury estimates, testing all that gold [&lt;em&gt;for it's authenticity&lt;/em&gt; ] would take 400&#xA;people working full time for six months to complete and cost at least&#xA;$15 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnbc.com/id/43391588/Is_Gold_in_Fort_Knox_Real_Ron_Paul_Wants_to_Know&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNBC - Is Gold in Fort Knox Real? Ron Paul Wants to Know&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/24/news/economy/ron_paul_gold_audit/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN - Ron Paul worries Fort Knox gold is gone&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-17T10:05:50.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6611" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7038" CreationDate="2011-10-17T14:30:44.290" Score="47" ViewCount="257041" Body="&lt;p&gt;A widely circulated internet meme (see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://theoatmeal.com/comics/pigs&quot;&gt;the oatmeal&lt;/a&gt;) states that pig orgasms can last up to 30 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been trying to find any source or reference to back up (or refute) this claim, but haven't been able to find anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2011-12-04T00:46:33.493" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T13:29:24.747" Title="Do pigs have 30 minute orgasms?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6612" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-17T16:55:54.240" Score="28" ViewCount="18756" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RqhPk.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Ship Wedding&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://travelcruisesjournal.com/wedding-on-a-cruise-a-wonderful-idea&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarriedAtSea&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TV Tropes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Since the days of the first wooden vessels, all ship masters have&#xA;  had one happy privilege: that of uniting two people in the bonds of&#xA;  matrimony&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  — Captain James T. Kirk (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708420/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;*&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Due to numerous examples on TV and and in movies I have never doubted the veracity of this, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Well... wrong&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Captains can perform marriages, but they need a license to do so, just like anyone else would. &lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are no laws that &quot;automatically&quot; grant captains this right.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt; Unfortunately &quot;TV Tropes&quot; cites no sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does a ship's captain have the power to perform marriages?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2016-11-11T21:51:05.537" Title="Can a ship's captain legally marry people?" Tags="|marriage|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6612" CreationDate="2011-10-17T17:36:19.590" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;StraightDope has this one dissected pretty thoroughly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/546/are-ships-captains-allowed-to-marry-people-at-sea&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/546/are-ships-captains-allowed-to-marry-people-at-sea&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: No, there's &lt;strong&gt;nothing special&lt;/strong&gt; about ship's captain job that lets them officiate a marriage, at least in the US Law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, a ship's Captain can officiate a marriage only in the same circumstances that anyone else on the ship can - e.g. the couple would either have to be under jurisdiction of a state that recognizes common-law marriage, or the person doing the marrying (captain or not) has to be a clergy member or JD or other qualification recognized by the state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relevant legal docs cited by StraightDope are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the US Navy: &lt;em&gt;Code of Federal Regulations, Title 32, Subtitle A, Chapter VI, Subchapter A, Part 700, Subpart G, Rule 716, also known as 32 CFR 700.716:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The commanding officer shall not perform a marriage ceremony on board his ship or aircraft. He shall not permit a marriage ceremony to be performed on board when the ship or aircraft is outside the territory of the United States, except: (a) In accordance with local laws … and (b) In the presence of a diplomatic or consular official of the United States.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, the official logbook supplied to ships' captains by the British Mercantile Marine Office warns that shipboard marriages performed by the captain are not legal. If the ship is registered in New York state, the captain can be fined or imprisoned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also further discuss &lt;em&gt;Fisher vs. Fisher.&lt;/em&gt; court decision and why it doesn't mean that this myth is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that what may cause the confusion are 2 facts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The captains are allowed - actually required - to be &lt;strong&gt;the registrar&lt;/strong&gt; of any marriages (along with other important events on the ship) via the ship's log. So as long as someone legal (captain or not) performed the ceremony, the captain will register the fact in an official document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Captains are likely to be licensed to perform the marriage (especially on cruise ships) aside from their captain status; as all it takes is a mail-in certificate from some religion (Universal Life seems to be popular). I wouldn't be surprised if cruise line companies encourage this to increase the value proposition of their ships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T10:28:24.127" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="37708" CreationDate="2011-10-17T18:33:12.797" Score="20" ViewCount="8151" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two types of mechanical grinders for coffee: blade and burr. Blade grinders spin at high speed, chopping the beans into grounds, while burr grinders move the beans between burrs, which crush them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that burr grinders produce a superior cup of coffee. &quot;Blind&quot; cuppings are common in the world of coffee: have these established that the taste of coffee is affected by the grinding mechanism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is made at, for instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://howstuffcompares.com/doc/b/burr-vs-blade-coffee-grinder.htm&quot;&gt;How Stuff Compare&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many coffee aficionados consider coffee made from a burr grinder to be superior to that made from a blade grinder because the essential aromas and oils of the coffee are preserved since the grounds are not overheated. The superior consistency of the grounds also makes for a better flavored, less bitter brew because the flavor is more evenly extracted from the grounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T14:24:00.987" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T13:52:38.427" Title="Does burr-ground coffee taste different than blade-ground coffee?" Tags="|coffee|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6574" CreationDate="2011-10-17T20:14:10.397" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;(as pointed out by @David in the comments above) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to clarify the comparison. On one hand, it appears that store bought pasteurized milk is safer than farm bought raw milk. However, this may be due to the fact that farm bought milk is not subjected to the same regulations as store bought milk. Indeed, in many states, raw milk is sold as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2011/10/13/141249172/a-legal-loophole-for-raw-milk-lovers-call-it-pet-food&quot;&gt;'pet food'&lt;/a&gt; to circumvent regulations intended to protect public health. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the consumer, it is important to understand the risks associated with milk processing and distribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/rawmilk/raw-milk-questions-and-answers.html#sanitary&quot;&gt;Centers for Disease Control&lt;/a&gt; provide an extensive warning against raw milk, in which they also state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pasteurized milk products have occasionally caused illnesses and&#xA;  outbreaks. Usually, this has happened because of germs introduced in&#xA;  the dairy after the pasteurization process. Pasteurized milk that is&#xA;  correctly handled in the dairy, bottled, sealed, and refrigerated&#xA;  after pasteurization, and that is properly handled by the consumer, is&#xA;  very unlikely to contain illness-causing bacteria. Considering the&#xA;  amount of pasteurized milk consumed in the United States, illness from&#xA;  it is exceedingly rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is a notable lack of evidence available to compare the danger of pasteurized vs unpasteurized milk that have passed similar regulatory testing prior to sale. One of the largest producers and commercial sellers of raw milk &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.organicpastures.com/labTests.html&quot;&gt;presents the (apparently unpublished) results&lt;/a&gt; of tests for pathogens that indicate they have never found dangerous levels of pathogens in their milk (one exception being outsourced milk that they used for cheese, but in this case they did not used the contaminated milk).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4671" LastActivityDate="2011-10-17T20:14:10.397" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6618" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-17T21:17:31.917" Score="6" ViewCount="756" Body="&lt;p&gt;My city provides safe, clean water that is frequently tested. But I keep hearing that it's not actually safe to drink from the tap, because many houses have old or badly constructed pipes that contain heavy metals or dirt, or are a breeding ground for bacteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this something I actually need to be worried about? Are there studies on the percentage of households where the water is polluted because of issues with the pipes or similar problems despite a safe common water supply? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be especially interested in the answer for my own country, Germany, but also in more general statistics or studies in other countries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5069" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-10-18T06:08:55.593" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T10:24:14.820" Title="Is tap water unsafe to drink even when it comes from a clean water supply?" Tags="|water|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6618" CreationDate="2011-10-17T22:26:59.947" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Unless it's &lt;strong&gt;continously&lt;/strong&gt; tested, &quot;frequently&quot; doesn't cut it. Safe, clean water can get contaminated, from either accidents, sabotage, or engineering failures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most spectacular example is British town of Camelford in 1988 (the story is very harrowingly detailed here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_19157_the-5-biggest-backfires-in-history-disaster-relief_p2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cracked.com/article_19157_the-5-biggest-backfires-in-history-disaster-relief_p2.html&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Testing only happens for what the regulations require to test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://environment.about.com/od/healthenvironment/a/tap_water_safe.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://environment.about.com/od/healthenvironment/a/tap_water_safe.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tap water is not without its problems. In 2005, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) tested municipal water in 42 states and detected some 260 contaminants in public water supplies. Of those, 141 were unregulated chemicals for which public health officials have no safety standards, much less methods for removing them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-10-drugs-tap-water_N.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AP: Drugs found in drinking water&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-10-17T22:44:54.800" LastActivityDate="2011-10-17T22:44:54.800" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6620" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6630" CreationDate="2011-10-17T23:50:08.283" Score="21" ViewCount="45936" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a popular belief in Russia that electric heaters with an open nichrome heating element (red hot) &quot;burn up oxygen&quot; and &quot;dry the air&quot;, unlike oil-filled ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that a Joule heater with an open heating element would reduce &lt;strong&gt;absolute&lt;/strong&gt; humidity (i. e. total amount of water) or amount of oxygen in a room?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastEditorUserId="5039" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T10:55:46.547" LastActivityDate="2018-11-27T19:22:14.693" Title="Do electric heaters with open heating elements &quot;dry the air&quot; or &quot;burn up oxygen&quot;?" Tags="|physics|environment|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6618" CreationDate="2011-10-18T10:24:14.820" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.water.org.uk/home/resources-and-links/waterfacts/looking-after-water/lookingafterwater.pdf&quot;&gt;Water UK Consumer's Guide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lead Contamination of Drinking Water&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no lead in water when it leaves the water treatment works. However lead can be picked&#xA;  up by the water if the service pipe (the pipe connecting your property to the main in the street),&#xA;  is made of lead. Lead can also be picked up from any internal lead pipework and lead-based&#xA;  soldered pipe joints inside your home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If your home was built before 1970 it may have lead pipes. If it was built after 1970 it is unlikely to&#xA;  have lead pipes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other Issues Affecting Drinking Water&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is important that taps that are used for drinking water are kept clean. Whilst the water coming&#xA;  to your tap is safe, many bacteria can live in the kitchen and some can grow both on the outside&#xA;  of the tap and inside the lip of the spout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Water Storage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ideally you should only use a mains fed tap for drinking water. However if your drinking water, or water for brushing your teeth, comes from a storage tank, you should check the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is your tank in good condition?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nowadays, tanks are constructed of plastic (polyethylene) and are unlikely to cause problems&#xA;  provided that they are designed for drinking water purposes and have a closely fitting cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the tank covered?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ensure your tank has a close-fitting lid of a suitable material that will not deteriorate or allow&#xA;  mould or bacteria to grow on it and drip into the water. The lid must prevent debris falling in and&#xA;  polluting the water supply. It is not uncommon for birds, rodents or insects to find their way into&#xA;  tanks that are uncovered or only partially covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T10:24:14.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6574" CreationDate="2011-10-18T12:04:24.580" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;When discussing raw milk and pasteurization it is important to remember that one of the reasons to introduce pasteurization was to combat disease, especially TBC:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The bacillus causing tuberculosis, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, was&#xA;  identified and described on March 24, 1882 by Robert Koch. He received&#xA;  the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine in 1905 for this discovery.&#xA;  Koch did not believe that bovine (cattle) and human tuberculosis were&#xA;  similar, which delayed the recognition of infected milk as a source of&#xA;  infection. Later, this source was eliminated by the pasteurization&#xA;  process. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculosis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this is still a valid reason to pasteurize milk, but it seems like a small price to pay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I know Wikipedia is a bit frowned upon here, but the article seems well referenced. The link between milk and TBC used to be common knowledge, but since we no longer have to worry about infected milk people have forgotten.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3727" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2011-10-21T09:48:24.517" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T09:48:24.517" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6620" CreationDate="2011-10-18T17:36:54.920" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR;&lt;/strong&gt; -&#xA; Oxygen is consumed during the initial burn that creates the Oxide &quot;Shell&quot;. Once the coating is there the chromium is protected from further oxidation so the answer becomes no. Though the amount of oxygen that it consumes will be negligible under normal circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most heating elements use Nichrome 80/20 (80% nickel, 20% chromium)&#xA;  wire, ribbon, or strip. Nichrome 80/20 is an ideal material, because&#xA;  it has relatively high resistance and forms an adherent layer of&#xA;  chromium oxide when it is heated for the first time. Material beneath&#xA;  the wire will not oxidize, preventing the wire from breaking or&#xA;  burning out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heating_element&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the first time when it creates the oxide coating yes it ill consume oxygen to create the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9923471&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chromium Oxide&lt;/a&gt;.  After the initial coating the metal resists oxidation so it should consume little if any oxygen unless the oxide coating is removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oxidation resistance can be attributed to the formation of a highly&#xA;  adherent protective scale. The adherence and coherence of the scale&#xA;  can be improved by the addition of small amounts of other reactive&#xA;  elements such as zirconium, silicon, cerium, calcium or similar. The&#xA;  scale thus formed is a mixture of nickel and chrome oxides (NiO and&#xA;  Cr2O3). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nickel-alloys.net/nickel_chrome_alloys.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source above has confirms the Wikipedia site description of the Oxide process&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the humidity, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tis-gdv.de/tis_e/misc/klima.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the chart here&lt;/a&gt; shows how relative humidity changes by temperature.  The fixed measurement is &quot;absolute humidity&quot; and is measured in grams per cubic meter.  As temperature increases the absolute humidity will stay the same but the relative humidity, how it feels, goes down.  So the effect is it feels like the air is dryer but there is the same amount of moisture in the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T18:34:48.170" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T18:34:48.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6629" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-18T18:24:48.033" Score="1" ViewCount="595" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/487/is-smoking-weed-bad-for-your-health&quot;&gt;Is smoking weed bad for your health?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this image I found on Facebook, the claim is made that &quot;Marijuana is safer than peanuts.&quot;  Presumably this is referring strictly to the consumption (and not trafficking-related) deaths of these substances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Never mind the incredibly fuzzy facts, and likely overlapping categories of the other death statistics (I suspect tobacco-related deaths and poor diet/exercise related deaths are often related to each other, for instance).  Lets only focus on peanut-related deaths versus marijuana-related deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also assuming that this image refers to U.S. deaths, but I'm interested in any relevant answer, citing U.S. statistics, or world-wide statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the two specific, but related questions I have are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there zero marijuana-related deaths per year?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not, are there fewer marijuana-related deaths than peanut-related deaths each year?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/310872_254644027915337_100001092265103_745036_1205832753_n.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Annual Deaths by various drugs/substances http://a3.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/310872_254644027915337_100001092265103_745036_1205832753_n.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T21:03:46.020" Title="Is marijuana consumption safer than peanut consumption?" Tags="|marijuana|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2011-10-18T18:37:30.700" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6620" CreationDate="2011-10-18T20:20:18.017" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Heating&lt;/em&gt; will have no effect on the oxygen level in the air unless something burns, which will use up oxygen. This is basic chemistry. An electrical heater heats because electrical current passes through it, not because anything burns, so oxygen levels cannot be directly affected. Most burning reactions in the normal atmosphere involve things burning &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; oxygen: it isn't obvious that the phrase &quot;burn oxygen&quot; means anything at all. This is all basic school level chemistry (so deserves a wikipedia reference). Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combustion&quot;&gt;Wikipedia definition of combustion&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Combustion (English pronunciation: /kəmˈbʌs.tʃən /) or burning is the sequence of exothermic chemical reactions between a fuel and an oxidant accompanied by the production of heat and conversion of chemical species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other part of the claim that electric heaters dry the air is partially true depending on the definition of humidity. The humidity you experience is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humidity&quot;&gt;relative humidity defined by Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Relative humidity is defined as the ratio of the partial pressure of water vapor (in a gaseous mixture of air and water vapor) to the saturated vapor pressure of water at a given temperature. In other words, relative humidity is the amount of water vapor in the air at a specific temperature compared to the maximum water vapor that the air is able to hold without it condensing, at that given temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If air is warmed in a closed room the amount of water won't change but the relative humidity will since warm air holds more water than cold air. So the air will &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; dryer. Unfortunately the question specifies absolute humidity (or the total amount of water) and just heating does nothing to the amount so the answer is &lt;strong&gt;no, heaters don't dry the air&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But i'm prepared to be generous and allow that &lt;strong&gt;electrical heaters will make air &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; dryer&lt;/strong&gt;. This is in contrast to oil or gas heaters which deplete oxygen and give off water and carbon dioxide (and some monoxide if not well maintained). In a sealed room you will eventually suffocate from lack of oxygen and presence of carbon dioxide. In a ventilated room an oil or gas heater will leave higher humidity than an electrical heater because they do release water but the electrical heater does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2011-10-18T20:20:18.017" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6631" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6639" CreationDate="2011-10-18T20:55:27.830" Score="12" ViewCount="1940" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across the claim that sir Arthur Conan Doyle didn't write the Sherlock Holmes stories and probably just, at most, edited them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally such a claim would not be taken seriously. But the person who made the suggestion was Martin Gardner, an hero to many skeptics and a debunker of many ideas in pseudoscience and the paranormal. For those who are too young to remember him, he was the author of the Mathematical Games column in Scientific American for several decades and a leading skeptic and science writer (see bio &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gardner&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an essay included in his book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0879755733&quot;&gt;Science Good, Bad and Bogus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; published in 1981 he argues that the rational and scientific character of Holmes could not have been produced by a character like Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle was a credulous believer in spriritualism and fairies and a careless observer of psychic demonstrations. He was such a believer that he refused to believe that Houdini was performing tricks and not real magic even after Houdini denied being a psychic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt Gardner's argument as it seems to be based purely on what someone is capable of imagining. So my question is &lt;em&gt;is there any other reason to doubt that he wrote the stories and invented the character?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-10-19T11:25:23.320" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T02:09:33.670" Title="Did Conan Doyle write Sherlock Holmes?" Tags="|history|literature|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6632" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8464" CreationDate="2011-10-18T21:15:45.933" Score="17" ViewCount="11829" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://whatscookingamerica.net/Information/WineTasting.htm&quot;&gt;this article on wine tasting&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did you know that 80% of our sense of taste is actually in our nose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't seem to cite any source, although I've heard similar claims before.  I've also experienced first-hand anecdotal evidence that holding my nose reduces the sensation of taste when eating.  But I've also heard (I can't find sources now) that these claims are largely exaggerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do &lt;em&gt;actual studies&lt;/em&gt; say the relationship is between a human's sense of smell and taste?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T19:36:00.137" Title="Is 80% of a human's sense of taste in their nose?" Tags="|nutrition|smell|taste|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6633" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-18T23:03:48.920" Score="4" ViewCount="659" Body="&lt;p&gt;When people talk about the iPad they often mention that Windows-based tablet computers &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; took off (never had significant sales). Is this true? Did any company ever make make money building/selling Windows-based tablet computers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4894" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-19T00:27:07.100" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T19:04:50.450" Title="Have Microsoft Windows tablet computer sales been significant?" Tags="|computers|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6633" CreationDate="2011-10-19T00:02:26.007" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/07/21/windows-tablet-sales-finally-being-tracked-not-in-last-place/&quot;&gt;Windows Tablet Sales Finally Being Tracked, Not in Last Place&lt;/a&gt; (sourced from some company named &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.strategyanalytics.com/default.aspx?mod=reportabstractviewer&amp;amp;a0=6603&quot;&gt;Strategy Analytics&lt;/a&gt;&quot; with the full report costing $6K), data for Q2/2011:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Millions of units shipped, Q2/2011:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;iOS:     9.3 Million&#xA;Android: 4.6 Million&#xA;Windows: 0.8 Million&#xA;QNX:     0.6 Million&#xA;Others:  0.1 Million&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;% Global Market Share, Q2/2011:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;iOS:     61.3%&#xA;Android: 30.1%&#xA;Windows: 4.6%&#xA;QNX:     3.3%&#xA;Others:  0.3%&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastActivityDate="2011-10-19T00:02:26.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6636" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6637" CreationDate="2011-10-19T01:25:53.703" Score="21" ViewCount="2048" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5pM1fW6hNs&quot;&gt;Miss Representation Extended Trailer&lt;/a&gt; makes the claim, at 6:03:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The U.S. is the 90th in the world in terms of women in national legislatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The voice-over adds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If people knew that Cuba, China, Iraq and Afghanistan have more women in government than the United States of America, that would get some people upset. -- Gavin Newsom, Lt. Gov, California&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The on-screen stat and the voice over at minimum don't seem to really correlate to each other, as &quot;in-government&quot; could potentially mean anything including the cleaning staff at a government-owned gas station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim that the U.S. is ranked 90th in the world in terms of women in national legislatures true? And if so, what does it actually mean--what metric is it measuring?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-10-19T07:28:17.893" LastActivityDate="2011-10-19T16:25:24.820" Title="Is the U.S. 90th in the world in terms of women in national legislatures?" Tags="|united-states|sexism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6636" CreationDate="2011-10-19T01:55:22.937" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;: The claim is &lt;strong&gt;true&lt;/strong&gt; within reasonable rounding margin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipu.org/english/whatipu.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Inter-Parliamentary Union&lt;/a&gt;, the US House of Representatives has the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;69th-most women among all lower houses&lt;/a&gt;. In terms of ranking among nations, &lt;strong&gt;the US is ranked 89th in terms of female members of (lower) houses out of 188 countries&lt;/strong&gt;. The US is also &lt;strong&gt;ranked behind    Cuba (5th), China (51th), Iraq (35th) and Afghanistan (30th)&lt;/strong&gt;. Thus, the claim appears to be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Shouldn't we compare members in both houses, rather than just compare lower houses?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well,  &lt;strong&gt;if both houses were counted together, where applicable, the US would actually &lt;em&gt;lose&lt;/em&gt; 8 ranks&lt;/strong&gt;: Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Lucia, Bahamas, Grenada, Swaziland, Ireland, and Zimbabwe all would get more than 17% representation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Shouldn't we compare the US to something more relevant than, say, Bhutan, or to places were parliaments have any relevance, unlike e.g. Belarus?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Compared to its direct neighbours, the US comes in third out of three.&lt;/strong&gt; Mexico is #35 and Canada #41, when ties are counted as ranks (I didn't correct for combined houses).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Compared to the EU, the US comes in 21th out of 27+1&lt;/strong&gt;. The US beats 6 out of the 27 member states if women in both houses are counted: Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Malta, Hungary, and Cyprus.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just for fun: &lt;strong&gt;Compared to the Arab League, the US comes in 8th out of 21+1&lt;/strong&gt;. Almost top third! Note that I didn't count Palestine, so there are 21 instead of 22 members. Honestly, I expected the US to do better here. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parl.gc.ca/content/lop/researchpublications/prb0562-e.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this report compiled for the parliament of Canada&lt;/a&gt; mentions how election procedures can help or hurt women (and other underrepresented groups):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Canada’s electoral system is a “single-member plurality” or “first-past-the-post” system. In every federal electoral district, the candidate with the most votes wins a seat in the House of Commons and represents that riding as its Member of Parliament. It has been argued that this system tends to discourage the election of women and other under-represented groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BONUS TIME&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the distribution of everybody, and the EU:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3TEM2.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we split the EU into three groups (low, medium, high percentage of women in legislatures), then they're topping the bottom half of the low group. Really, &lt;strong&gt;in whichever way you turn this, the US looks bad&lt;/strong&gt; - unless the US strives to be totally average (i.e on the level of Venezuela and Turkmenistan; also, I mean median here) in terms of representation of women in legislatures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastEditorUserId="1690" LastEditDate="2011-10-19T16:25:24.820" LastActivityDate="2011-10-19T16:25:24.820" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6631" CreationDate="2011-10-19T08:05:50.063" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Gardner's argument doesn't make much sense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A. Conan Doyle did not invent detective stories or the super-rational detective character, see Dupin in Murders in the Rue Morgue by E. A. Poe. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/holmes/predecessors.shtml&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have Doyle's handwritten manuscripts, letters, biographies. There is no real contempt that he is the author. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bestofsherlock.com/conan-doyle-manuscripts.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The whole argument is preposterous. Carl Sagan wrote a successful fiction book about aliens, being a skeptic. Why can't a non-skeptic write a book about a rationalist? &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_%28novel%29&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-10-19T08:05:50.063" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3665" CreationDate="2011-10-19T13:19:44.827" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Whatever theory says, it does happen.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern safety systems &lt;em&gt;ought&lt;/em&gt; to prevent it but it can and does still happen. The example below was reported this year in the UK. The report if from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23933334-boy-electrocuted-with-mother-may-have-knocked-heater-into-bath.do&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;London Evening Standard&lt;/a&gt; in march 2011:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A PLAYFUL boy of three may have knocked an electric heater into the bath he was sharing with his mother, killing them both, an inquest heard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Filip and Liliana Arsene were electrocuted during January’s cold snap. Filip, the youngest of three children, could not be saved and was pronounced dead at the scene. His mother was taken to hospital but died the next day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The boy’s father Vasilica, 37, told how elder son Marco, seven, went upstairs to find his mother and banged on the bathroom door, shouting for her...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a written statement Mr Arsene, who has since left Britain, said daughter Dana shouted down to him: “Daddy, the door is locked and mummy isn’t answering.” He said he raced upstairs and, when his wife did not reply, forced the door open and found her and Filip lying in the bath with their heads partially submerged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After taking the heater from the water, which gave him an electric shock, Mr Arsene pulled his son and wife out and tried to resuscitate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paramedic Yvonne Cook, of the London Ambulance Service, said she found the upstairs of the house “in turmoil” with the family crying in the living room. She said other paramedics described the heater as “dripping wet and buzzing” when they first saw it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An environmental health investigation found that the landlord’s safety certificates and the house’s electrical systems were all up to standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it wasn't a TV but the question asked about electrical devices in general so I think it still counts as a &lt;strong&gt;yes it is possible&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T19:15:12.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6642" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20235" CreationDate="2011-10-19T15:53:14.780" Score="16" ViewCount="3292" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of different and sometimes contradictory claims that changing your diet (especially with regard to avoid meat) can have an affect on your sleeping pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few related claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Juice fast reduces need for sleep&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;- Source: Someone that Steve Pavlina, a self-development blogger, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/11/polyphasic-sleep-log-days-23-24/&quot;&gt;met at a party&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;if you're eating mostly raw food, you only need like 4 hours of sleep&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;- Source: Someone on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.veggieboards.com/newvb/archive/index.php/t-94312.html&quot;&gt;VeggieBoards&lt;/a&gt; forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vegetarianism can make you wake up faster and stay more alert, but not reduce sleep needs&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;- Source: Someone on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=3994347&quot;&gt;Let's Run&lt;/a&gt; forum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vegetarianism can help you sleep &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;- Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://vegetarianspotlight.com/2011/vegetarianism-and-sleep/&quot;&gt;Vegetarian Spotlight&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vegetarianism can help you sleep... umm... WHAT?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;- Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100324091703AAfkt9O&quot;&gt;Yahoo! Answers&lt;/a&gt; in its element.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vegetarianism helped one guy sleep less&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;- Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://veganza.com/2008/03/21/plant-vs-animal/&quot;&gt;Veganza blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another couple of anecdotes about needing less sleep&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;- Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vegfamily.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1644&quot;&gt;VegFamily&lt;/a&gt; forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not in the top ten reasons bandied about to become veg*n (vegetarian or vegan), but it's definitely out there in veg*n circles. Generally, the belief is that becoming a veg*n gives you more energy with less sleep than eating meat, potentially because digestion of meat is difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5027" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T11:36:21.147" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T11:36:21.147" Title="Is there a connection between sleep patterns and meat-eating?" Tags="|sleep|vegetarianism|meat|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6643" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6649" CreationDate="2011-10-19T16:20:21.243" Score="20" ViewCount="5204" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There's no question that marijuana, today, is more potent than the&#xA;  marijuana in the 1960s. However, if you were to look at the average&#xA;  marijuana potency which is about 3.5 percent, it's been relatively&#xA;  stable for the last 20 years. Having said that, it's very important&#xA;  that what we have now is a wider range of potencies available than we&#xA;  had in the 1970s, in particular,&quot; Director of the National Institute&#xA;  on Drug Abuse Alan Leshner said in 1999 while testifying in front of&#xA;  the U.S. House Subcommittee on Crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/marijuana5.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How stuff Works&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard this claim again today that the marijuana today is 10x more &#xA;potent than it was in the 60's.  The claim was from an unnamed law enforcement union official (presumably from California) about why marijuana should not be legalized.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How stuff works came to the conclusion that it would be difficult to tell if it was more potent today.  But with a claim of 10x that should be more refutable or verifiable.  Is there any hard data anywhere to support or refute this or is this just a made up number?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-11T14:46:47.377" LastActivityDate="2022-02-13T10:12:26.467" Title="Is marijuana stronger now than it was in the 60s?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|marijuana|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3665" CreationDate="2011-10-19T17:01:31.143" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Defining the configuration&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of different configurations of the combination of water, electrodes, and victim which should be considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The victim could be floating in one part a large body of water (perhaps in one end a pool twice as long as it is wide) with an electrical impulse at the other end which travels out of the water through its interface with the ground. Assume for this case that the volume occupied by the victim is insignificant in comparison to the total amount of water.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The victim could be lying in a bathtub in which the volume occupied by the victim's body is perhaps half of the volume of water.  The placement of the impulse and return path are important here.  Two possible (and importantly different) locations are with the electrodes close together, (such as at the termination of the supply cord, across a heater element, or across two legs of a high-voltage capacitor in a CRT) and with the electrodes separated across the tub such that the victim's body lies in parallel with some of the water between the two.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3665/can-a-television-thrown-in-a-bathtub-kill-someone/3670#3670&quot;&gt;ThomasO's answer&lt;/a&gt; referenced the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diyfixit.co.uk/electrics/earthing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;earthing requirements of the tub&lt;/a&gt;.  In fact, this specification &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_(electricity)#AC_power_wiring_installations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(now largely obsolete)&lt;/a&gt; applied only to the supply pipes, which are now &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_water_system#Pipe_materials&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;frequently made of other materials&lt;/a&gt;.  Most drain pipes are made of PVC, which is not conductive, and contain traps such that most of their volume is occupied by air unless the tub is draining.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The victim could have one appendage in one tub which is grounded and one appendage in another tub which is not grounded.  If the impulse is applied to the un-grounded tub, the entire electrical current is conducted through the body in such a way as to pass through the heart or brain.  This could occur when holding an insufficiently insulated appliance while wet and standing in a tub or on a conductive surface.  In an &quot;evil mad scientist&quot;, this could occur by placing the victim's hands in jars of saltwater, as is done in sensitive EKGs to provide a good contact.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Brief Review of Electricity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a current to flow, you must have a complete circuit.  Consider this most basic of circuits: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/L1UgE.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By Ohm's law (which needs no citation),&lt;code&gt;V = I * R&lt;/code&gt;, a current of &lt;code&gt;I = V / R&lt;/code&gt; will flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, consider the effect of parallel resistors: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7PIAJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The resistance of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_and_parallel_circuits#Resistors_2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;parallel combination of resistors&lt;/a&gt; is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;             1            R1 * R2 &#xA;R_net = _-----------  =  --------- &#xA;          1       1       R1 + R2&#xA;        ----  +  ----&#xA;         R1       R2&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The net current through the entire system (that which will trip the circuit breaker) is &lt;code&gt;I = V / R_net&lt;/code&gt;.  This current is divided through both resistors based on the ratio of their resistances so that Ohm's Law remains satisfied; the potential &lt;code&gt;V = I * R&lt;/code&gt; must be the same for both resistors.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These schematics show resistors as individual components, in our scenario, we must use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conductivity#Scalar_form&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;scalar definition of resistivity&lt;/a&gt;, that is, ohm-meters, where:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    (rho * length)&#xA;R = --------------&#xA;        area&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Modeling the components&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found no statistics for the conductivity of bathwater.  I assume that it varies widely depending on dissolved soap or bath salts and impurities from the body, and, more usefully, that bathwater has a resistivity somewhere between &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivity_and_conductivity#Resistivity_of_various_materials&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;that of seawater (2x10&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;) and drinking water (2x10&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;)&lt;/a&gt;. That is, I estimate that a cube of bathwater with conductive plates at opposite ends would have a resistance of about 1 ohm between these plates (for any size cube).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The body has a dry resistance between the hands with large contact areas of as much as 100,000 ohms.  When wet, this value drops to as little as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_shock#Body_resistance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;500 ohms&lt;/a&gt;.  A current of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_shock#Ventricular_fibrillation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;60 mA&lt;/a&gt; through the heart will cause ventricular fibrillation, so we require that the voltage across the body stays below 30 V when wet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Solution for Configuration #3:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This last observation allows us to determine the answer for configuration #3. If the victim's hands are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Electrical current in a volume&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a moderately difficult problem: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/356/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KaLeg.png&quot; alt=&quot;problem + &quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/356/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OKDZI.png&quot; alt=&quot;physicist = fooom&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is related to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheet_resistance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sheet resistance&lt;/a&gt; problem, but we need to apply it to a volume.  Picture a network of tubes between two electrodes (like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2006/06/your_own_person/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;internet&lt;/a&gt;).  A very small tube of water could be used to connect two electrodes in a straight line. Other tubes emanate from the same electrode, but because the first tube occupies the straight line path, they must take a slightly longer path to get there.  In the end, there are also tubes which leave the electrodes in precisely the opposite direction of the other electrode, and curl around the massive bulk of tubes to return to the opposite side of the other electrode.  These have high resistance, but are extremely numerous.  Additionally, if you place the electrodes closer together, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fourpointprobes.com/qa.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;it doesn't matter&lt;/a&gt; how far apart the electrodes are, the resistance measurement will always be the same for a semiinfinite homogeneous substance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the circuit shown below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nPHXJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;schematic of tubes&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the victim in the third branch.  This victim is not only bypassed by the low resistance of R1 and the low resistance combination of R2 and R3, as well as the higher resistances of other paths, but is also insulated by the water between the victim and the voltage source.  Therefore, the victim is not at risk from low voltages in the dangerous range of 30V, but may (again, depending on the configuration) be vulnerable to large voltages such as those produced by lightning and &lt;a href=&quot;http://hypertextbook.com/facts/BarryLajnwand.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;electric eels&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Solution for Configuration #1:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Configuration 1 can be considered a semiinifite homogenous substance because the victim occupies an insignificant amount of the volume.  The victim is in parallel with a great many low impedance paths, and will not be harmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Solution for Configuration #2, Case victim between electrodes:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the victim is in parallel with the water, perhaps lying in two 1-meter cubes of water, the resistance through the water is 2 ohms and the resistance through the victim is 500 ohms. The current through this 2 meter bulk of water at a supply voltage of 120 V is 60A, far more than the circuit is designed to provide.  The resistance at each electrode and in the home wiring and device will (probably, it depends on the situation) cause the voltage across the victim to drop below the lethal level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Solution for Configuration #3, Case electrodes near each other:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the electrodes are close together with respect to the volume of water, we can again treat the mass as a semiinfinite volume, which would have a very low resistance to the current flow between two electrodes close together.  Even more so than the previous case, the victim is out of the current path, and out of danger for household voltages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actual numbers would require a more precisely defined situation and an actual experiment or &#xA;simulation with HyperLynx or some such software package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Configuration #3 is the most deadly variety.  If you attempt to lift the appliance out of the tub, you complete the circuit and place yourself at risk.  Configurations #1 and #2 are  not usually dangerous.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xA;(Mostly unrelated:)&#xA;In researching some sources for this post, I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=K5oYAQAAIAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA26&amp;amp;lpg=PA26&amp;amp;dq=resistance+of+bathwater+electrical&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=wZwHshdJxS&amp;amp;sig=NIWukq2aeJBUFjKZqIQazLtVQs8&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=sdeeTtP4N6ylsQLl-4SMCg&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this old book&lt;/a&gt;, wherein the patients to be cleansed of gold, silver, or mercury are immersed  in a dilute hydrochloric (or hydrosulfuric, for lead of course) bath which is then connected to a battery for some electrochemistry for 20-30 minutes. &quot;Occasional interruptions of the current so as to produce muscular contractions prove serviceable during the bath.&quot; Eeek.  Bathing in acid?  For medicinal purposes?&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1007" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-10-19T17:19:36.180" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6645" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-19T22:00:58.727" Score="16" ViewCount="1615" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the sources of the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blogicus.com/archives/babies_feel_pain_during_abortions.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.blogicus.com/archives/babies_feel_pain_during_abortions.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks. This is probably a conservatively late estimate, but it is scientifically solid. &lt;strong&gt;Elements of the pain-conveying system (spino-thalamic system) begin to be assembled at 7 weeks; enough development has occurred by 12-14 weeks that some pain perception is likely, and continues to build through the second trimester. By 20 weeks, the spino- thalamic system is fully established and connected.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bolded text indicates that the pain may be felt between weeks 12-18.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the claims in the bolded statement accurate according to research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI here is a copy of the statement by a neurologist (and one-time expert witness), on which the above claim is based but which is 404 in the above article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kfl.org/siteresources/data/files/FetalPain-DrRanalli-brainexpert.pdf.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Paul J. Ranalli Statement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Converging scientific evidence suggests that pain perception is present,&#xA;  at the very latest, by 20 weeks gestation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5081" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-06-26T15:56:49.323" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T09:37:20.470" Title="Does a fetus feel pain during abortion in gestation week 12-18?" Tags="|pregnancy|abortion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6633" CreationDate="2011-10-19T22:27:28.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;20 years of trying has only created niche markets for Windows Tablets&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth reviewing a little history before attempting an answer to this question. The question asks whether Windows tablet PCs have ever been successful. I think this refers to Microsoft's Windows XP tablet edition in 2001. But Microsoft had launched a tablet OS in 1991. And even that wasn't the first (see potted history &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/22739/A_Short_History_of_the_Tablet_Computer/page2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). The fact that much of this history is forgotten is a product of the lack of success of these products. Here is part of the story as told by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informationweek.com/news/security/encryption/222300080?pgno=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;informationweek&lt;/a&gt; in january 2010:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between 1992 and 1994, a number of companies introduced hardware to run Windows for Pen Computing or PenPoint. Among them were EO, NCR, Samsung ... Dauphin, Fujitsu, TelePad, Compaq, Toshiba, and IBM. Few people remember that the original IBM ThinkPad was, as the name implies, a slate computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The computer press was first enthusiastic, then very critical when pen computers did not sell. They measured pen computers against desktop PCs with Windows software and most of them found pen tablets difficult to use. They also criticized handwriting recognition and said it did not work. After that, pen computer companies failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Momenta closed in 1992. They had used up US$40 million in venture capital. Samsung and NCR did not introduce new products. Pen pioneer GRiD was bought by AST for its manufacturing capacity. AST stopped all pen projects. Dauphin, which was started by a Korean businessman named Alan Yong, went bankrupt, owing IBM over $40 million. GO was taken over by AT&amp;amp;T, and AT&amp;amp;T closed the company in August 1994 (after the memorable &amp;quot;fax on the beach&amp;quot; TV commercials). GO had lost almost US$70 million in venture capital. Compaq, IBM, NEC, and Toshiba all stopped making consumer market pen products in 1994 and 1995.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the first wave didn't make anyone any money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second wave could be argued to start in 2001 with this (from a 2005 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itworld.com/050627gatestablet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; looking back on developments):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gates showed prototype Tablet PCs at the Comdex show in Las Vegas in 2001 -- a year ahead of their 2002 launch -- and at the show said in a company news release, &amp;quot;It's a PC that is virtually without limits and within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article further comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's now a little over three and a half years into the time period he set and to-date Tablet PC has managed to do only marginally better than the now defunct trade show. A handful of vendors market Tablet PCs, but specialist markets like health care account for a large percentage of sales. Other users and those in business have yet to take to the form-factor in a big way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also suggests that just over half a million tablets shipped in 2004. This number sounds optiistic compred to the one hard number I've found so far which unfortunately only covers European sales. Canalys estimate that they were only about 33,000 in 2004.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, few research reports or forecasts from the 2001-2009 period are easy to find (perhaps because nobody likes to see old but failed forecasts). But this quote from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/technology/05tablet.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times in 2009&lt;/a&gt; (so pre iPad) and commenting on the Bill gates forecast quoted above sums up what seems to be the accepted wisdom:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tablets running Windows sell only a few hundred thousand units a year, mostly in business fields like health care and financial services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggests that they have never accounted for more that a fraction of 1% of PC sales (which were &amp;gt;300m in 2010).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T19:04:50.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6647" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6949" CreationDate="2011-10-19T22:37:16.490" Score="39" ViewCount="1777" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a recent judgement Europe's highest court ruled that Stem Cells derived from human embryos cannot be patented (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15350723&quot;&gt;BBC story here&lt;/a&gt;). This provoked many scientists to argue that both research and the european economy would suffer as a result. The BBC report sums up the view of scientists like this (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientists were concerned that the ruling would threaten the future of medical research, saying companies in Europe would be &lt;strong&gt;less likely to invest in research&lt;/strong&gt; to develop therapies using embryonic stem cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic claim here is that an inability to protect the results of their research will discourage investment in that research and harm the development of useful treatments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard idea behind patents is that governments agree a tradeoff with inventors: the inventors disclose how their invention works (so others can build on it for future social benefit) and, in return, they get a temporary monopoly on the invention so it is worth their while investing in it. The alternative view (often articulated by the open software movement (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_and_free_software&quot;&gt;good summary on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;) is that  patents inhibit innovation and are therefore a net economic loss to society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What research is there to analyse the overall economic cost vs. benefit of the patent system in the modern day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific claim that I hear is that patents are economically beneficial, that is, that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/BenefitCostAnalysis.html&quot;&gt;benefits by and large outweigh the costs&lt;/a&gt; to the world's economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastEditorUserId="21712" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T13:37:05.370" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T10:40:19.203" Title="Do patents boost innovation?" Tags="|economics|technology|patents|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6648" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-19T23:56:57.613" Score="4" ViewCount="639" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess if &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6591/does-beer-kill-brain-cells&quot;&gt;The Simpsons&lt;/a&gt; are a sufficient source for a claim, then this should be as well...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The purse girl hits everything on my checklist: creamy skin, straight teeth, curly hair, amazing breasts. Not for me... for my children. The Schrutes produce very thirsty babies. - Dwight Schrute (From the episode &quot;Hot Girl&quot; of The Office)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The implication here is that Dwight (and possibly other human men) can judge the quantity of milk produced by a human woman by the appearance of her breasts while clothed.  While Mr. Shrute seems to be only concerned by the quantity of milk produced, I'm also interested in quality of milk--if such a thing can be measured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that the quantity and/or quality of breast milk produced by a human female is in any way correlated to the natural appearance of her breasts?  (And specifically, while fully clothed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-06-18T07:13:11.023" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T09:10:30.463" Title="Is the quantity and/or quality of milk produced in a female human related to the appearance of her breasts?" Tags="|milk|anatomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6643" CreationDate="2011-10-20T00:15:34.503" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;: I don't have evidence for a 10x increase since the 1960s. I do for an increase from 1.5% THC to 8.8% THC (i.e. fivefold) from 1980-2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The University of Mississippi have a long-running &amp;quot;Potency Monitoring Project&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10641915&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Potency trends of delta9-THC and other cannabinoids in confiscated marijuana from 1980-1997&lt;/a&gt;, ElSohly MA, Ross SA, Mehmedic Z, Arafat R, Yi B, Banahan BF 3rd., J Forensic Sci. 2000 Jan;45(1):24-30.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They analysed over 35,000 confiscated &amp;quot;cannabis preparations&amp;quot; over a period of 18 years, and found a rise in potency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The potency (concentration of delta9-THC) of marijuana samples rose &lt;strong&gt;from less than 1.5% in 1980&lt;/strong&gt; to approximately 3.3% in 1983 and 1984, then fluctuated around 3% till 1992. Since 1992, the potency of confiscated marijuana samples has continuously risen, going from 3.1% in 1992 to &lt;strong&gt;4.2% in 1997&lt;/strong&gt;. The average concentration of delta9-THC in all cannabis samples showed a gradual rise from 3% in 1991 to 4.47% in 1997. Hashish and hash oil, on the other hand, showed no specific potency trends. Other major cannabinoids [cannabidiol (CBD), cannabinol (CBN), and cannabichromene (CBC)] showed no significant change in their concentration over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently, they updated this to show (now over 46,000 samples):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data showed an upward trend in the mean D9-tetrahydrocannabinol (D9-THC) content of all confiscated cannabis&#xA;preparations, which increased from 3.4% in 1993 to &lt;strong&gt;8.8% in 2008&lt;/strong&gt;. Hashish potencies did not increase consistently during this period; however, the mean&#xA;yearly potency varied from 2.5–9.2% (1993–2003) to 12.0–29.3% (2004–2008). Hash oil potencies also varied considerably during this period&#xA;(16.8 ± 16.3%). The increase in cannabis preparation potency is mainly due to the increase in the potency of nondomestic versus domestic samples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://home.olemiss.edu/%7Esuman/potancy%20paper%202010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Potency Trends of delta9 THC and Other&#xA;Cannabinoids in Confiscated Cannabis&#xA;Preparations from 1993 to 2008&lt;/a&gt;, Zlatko Mehmedic; Suman Chandra; Desmond Slade;&#xA;Heather Denham; Susan Foster Amit S. Patel; Samir A. Ross;&#xA;Ikhlas A. Khan; and Mahmoud A. ElSohly. J Forensic Sci, September 2010, Vol. 55, No. 5,&#xA;doi: 10.1111/j.1556-4029.2010.01441.x&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="26673" LastEditDate="2022-02-13T10:12:26.467" LastActivityDate="2022-02-13T10:12:26.467" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6650" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-20T00:42:16.933" Score="12" ViewCount="1472" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have just been at a company conference and several fans of Steve Jobs quoted more than once how we should innovate like Apple because they &quot;don't do market research&quot; so we don't need to do market research. This made me highly skeptical: how true is it that Apple doesn't do market research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netpaths.net/blog/steve-jobs-apple-doesn%E2%80%99t-do-market-research/&quot;&gt;original quote&lt;/a&gt; that gets chopped down to 'We do no market research&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. The only&#xA;  consultants I’ve ever hired in my 10 years is one firm to analyze&#xA;  Gateway’s retail strategy so I would not make some of the same&#xA;  mistakes they made [when launching Apple's retail stores]. But we&#xA;  never hire consultants, per se. We just want to make great products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How accurate is the quote: &quot;We do no market research?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this to make sense please make answers relevant to Jobs second tenure at the helm of Apple (post 1996).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="15980" LastEditDate="2013-11-27T17:28:41.757" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T17:28:41.757" Title="Does Apple do no market research?" Tags="|technology|apple-inc|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6650" CreationDate="2011-10-20T00:50:23.533" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It probably depends on what he means by &quot;market research.&quot;  Almost any research a company does is related to the market they're in, in one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://9to5mac.com/2011/05/05/who-said-apple-doesnt-do-market-research-introducing-apple-customer-pulse/&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; examines Apple's recent &lt;em&gt;Customer Pulse&lt;/em&gt; initiative, and talks about how this is clearly market research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like Jobs' quote is using a very narrow (and effectively completely incorrect) definition of &quot;market research&quot;, to mean &quot;market research done by a third party firm.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the past, Bruce &quot;TOG&quot; Tognazzini, in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0201608421&quot;&gt;TOG on Interface&lt;/a&gt;, discusses quite a bit of research done in the early stages of designing MacOS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From page 133 of the book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our market research has always shown that people taper off their software buying...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So from Tog's perspective, Apple does (or at least as of 1992, when the book was published, &quot;had always done&quot;) market research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2011-10-20T12:57:04.903" LastActivityDate="2011-10-20T12:57:04.903" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6653" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-20T01:46:52.217" Score="14" ViewCount="980" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard (no pun intended) some claims that some storefronts in shopping malls play a noise that sounds like a mosquito, which apparently can't be heard by adults yet drives teenagers nuts.  The purpose of this noise is to keep teenagers from loitering at the storefront's entrance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard a few of these noises on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mosquito+noise&amp;amp;aq=0&amp;amp;oq=mosquito+no&quot;&gt;YouTube&lt;/a&gt;.  However, every single one of these sound clips are perfectly audible to me.  Better still, they don't really bother me at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I'm skeptical because the majority of these stores have employees who would be painfully affected by his noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it true that stores have used such a noise and is it effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3989" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-20T02:14:14.933" LastActivityDate="2011-10-20T10:35:04.493" Title="Do any stores play &quot;Mosquito&quot; noises that annoy teenagers but cannot be heard by adults?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6574" CreationDate="2011-10-20T04:28:56.703" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT 2013/05/21&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CDC recently released statistics for the first time on raw milk consumption, and raw milk-related illnesses.  They also released their own conclusions, which, ironically, don't match their own data.  However, an article released a couple weeks ago, &lt;a href=&quot;http://chriskresser.com/raw-milk-reality-is-raw-milk-dangerous&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Raw Milk Reality: Is Raw Milk Dangerous?&lt;/a&gt; attempts to examine the best numbers available from the CDC and other sources, and does its own analysis of the relative safety of raw milk compared to other foods, and specifically, pasteurized milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among its findings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dairy products, categorically, are the safest of all food types, in terms of food-borne illness outbreaks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2000 - 2007, there were 37 food-borne illness outbreaks related to raw liquid milk, affecting 800 people.  &lt;strong&gt;Average outbreak size: 22 people&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2000 - 2007, there were 8 food-borne illness outbreaks related to pasteurized liquid milk, affecting 2214 people.  &lt;strong&gt;Average outbreak size: 277 people&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2000 - 2007, raw liquid milk was responsible for an average of 100 reported illnesses per year among an estimated 9.4 million consumers of raw liquid milk, for a &lt;strong&gt;1 in 94,000 chance&lt;/strong&gt; of becoming ill&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2000 - 2007, pasteurized liquid milk was responsible for an average of 277 reported illnesses per year among an estimated 246.1 million consumers of pasteurized liquid milk, for a &lt;strong&gt;1 in 888,000 chance&lt;/strong&gt; of becoming ill&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2000 - 2007, raw liquid milk was responsible for 12 hospitalizations, or &lt;strong&gt;1 in 6 million chance&lt;/strong&gt; of being hospitalized due to raw liquid milk consumption&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also pulls in data from other sources to compare the relative risk of raw milk consumption with other common activities, and concludes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drivers are &lt;strong&gt;779 times more likely&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;em&gt;die&lt;/em&gt; in a motor vehicle accident than raw milk drinkers are to be &lt;em&gt;hospitalized&lt;/em&gt; for consuming raw liquid milk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Air passengers are &lt;strong&gt;3 times more likely&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;em&gt;die&lt;/em&gt; in an aircraft accident than raw milk drinkers are to be &lt;em&gt;hospitalized&lt;/em&gt; for consuming raw liquid milk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another recent article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realrawmilkfacts.com/raw-milk-news/story/outbreaks-and-illnesses-from-raw-and-pasteurized-milk-and-dairy-products-19/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Outbreaks and Illnesses from Raw and Pasteurized Milk And Dairy Products, 1998-Present&lt;/a&gt; looking at data over a longer time period, but for which absolute number of raw-milk consumers is not available.  It shows that, for liquid milk consumption:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1998 - 2009, there were 85 food-borne illness outbreaks related to raw liquid milk, affecting 1,495 people, including no deaths. &lt;strong&gt;Average outbreak size: 18 people&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1998 - 2009, there were 9 foud-borne illness outbreaks related to pasteurized liquid milk, affecting 2,200 people, including 3 deaths.  &lt;strong&gt;Average outbreak size: 244 people&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data from these two articles don't completely agree with each other. It's not clear where the discrepancy lies.  What seems clear from my research, though, is that there has not been a single confirmed raw-milk releated &lt;em&gt;death&lt;/em&gt; in the U.S. since the 1980s, despite CDC claims to the contrary on their web site.  The CDC has even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/034169_CDC_raw_milk.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;admitted&lt;/a&gt; their propaganda is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR; / Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the best data currently available, strictly from a food-borne illness standpoint, &lt;strong&gt;consuming raw milk carries roughly 9.4 times higher relative risk than consuming pasteurized milk&lt;/strong&gt;. But in absolute terms, both risks are incredibly small, with raw milk carrying a 1/94,000 (0.001064%) chance of illness, and pasteurized milk carrying a 1/888,000 (0.000113%) chance of illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For many, the touted benefits of raw milk (more on that in my old answer below) are worth the added &lt;strong&gt;0.000951% chance of food-borne illness&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But food-borne illness is not the only risk associated with liquid milk consumption. Some other possible risks which may favor raw milk, but which are much harder to quantify, are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pasteurized milk may contribute to many ailments, including lactose intolerance, allergies, asthma, frequent ear infections, gastro-Intestinal problems, diabetes, auto-Immune disease, attention deficit disorder and constipation (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realmilk.com/rawmilkoverview.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Traditional dairies in the U.S. use rBGH (which is illegal in many other countries). Consuming milk from rBGH-treated cows may increase the risk of certain cancers in humans, particularly breast and prostate cancer. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12223429&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Traditional dairies, and in particular those which also use rBGH, often administer large amounts of antibiotics to their cows, which typically gets into the milk, exposing the human consumers to unnecessary antibiotics.  The risks of over-exposure to antibiotics is well documented.  The main concern is in making antibiotic-resistent &quot;superbug&quot; strains. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/food/fs/sc/scv/out19_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the last two (rBGH and antibiotics) can also be avoided by purchasing organic pasteurized milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MY OLD ANSWER; left for reference&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;strong&gt;No. In fact, pasteurized milk is often more dangerous than raw milk.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer: Of course, &lt;strong&gt;it depends.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Raw milk is not &lt;em&gt;inherently&lt;/em&gt; dangerous at all.  The reason for pasteurization is not because milk is, by nature, a dangerous product to consume.  Pasteurization is done for two basic reasons: 1) To kill any living contaminants, and 2) to extend shelf life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because pasteurization kills most bacteria (good and bad) contained in the milk, it won't go bad as quickly.  The down side to this is, when it does begin to sour, it goes rancid, and is no longer fit for human consumption.  On the other hand, when raw milk begins to sour, it isn't actually &quot;bad&quot; immediately, because the live cultures in milk prevent it from going rancid so quickly.  Many foods we take for granted are various forms of &quot;sour&quot; milk--Yogurt, Cheese, sour cream, etc.  And if you consume raw milk, and it begins to sour, you can still use it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2009/04/dont-cry-over-sour-milk-using-your-raw-milk-gone-bad.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;to make many of these milk products&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fermentation starts digesting the milk protein casein, and digests some of the lactose. Souring of [raw] milk does not destroy any of milks beneficial properties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Treat a sample of pasteurized milk in the same way as above and putrefaction will make the milk unfit for human consumption. This is due to disease producing bacteria surviving the pasteurization process.&lt;/em&gt; (Emphasis in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.modern-diets-and-nutritional-diseases.com/raw-milk.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;original&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And paraphrasing an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mothering.com/community/t/709659/when-raw-milk-goes-sour&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anonymous dairy farmer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pasteurized milk gone bad will kill you - raw milk won't.....pasteurized milk rots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the reason for pasteurizing milk is to kill harmful living organisms.  However, it also kills most of the &lt;em&gt;beneficial&lt;/em&gt; living organisms in the milk as well.  This can, in some cases, actually lead pasteurized milk to be &lt;strong&gt;more dangerous than raw milk&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pasteurized milk is harder to digest, especially for those who are lactose intolerant or with digestive disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today, milk is made even more indigestible by the universal practice of pasteurization, which destroys its natural enzymes and alters its delicate proteins. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hps-online.com/troph9.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pasteurized milk has less nutritional value. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realmilk.com/abstractsmilk.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pasteurized milk is less beneficial in boosting immune system function (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realmilk.com/rawmilkoverview.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pasteurized milk is more susceptible to contamination:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to high-volume distribution and its comparative lack of anti-microbial components, pasteurized milk when contaminated has caused numerous widespread and serious outbreaks of illness, including a 1984-5 outbreak afflicting almost 200,000 people.  In 2007, three people died in Massachusetts from illness caused by contaminated pasteurized milk (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realmilk.com/ppt/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Real Milk PowerPoint&lt;/a&gt;, slide 30).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Raw milk is useful in fighting infection, diarrhea, rickets, tooth decay, TB, asthma, allergies (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realmilk.com/rawmilkoverview.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;), diabetes&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, Bright's disease, gastric disturbances, obesity, urinary problems, and kidney stones&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pasteurized milk contributes to many ailments (ironcially, many of them are also found in the list that raw milk helps treat): lactose intolerance,  allergies, asthma, frequent ear infections, gastro-Intestinal problems, diabetes, auto-Immune disease, attention deficit disorder and constipation (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realmilk.com/rawmilkoverview.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason pasteurization ever caught on as a practice, was to reduce the possibility for contamination in milk.  This may well have been (and may continue to be!) a valid concern, in some cases.  Although the evidence is shaky, at best.  The two possible sources of contamination are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contamination passed from cow to milk&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Paula pointed out, there has been a concern that TB may pass from bovine to human.  This was considered a legitimate threat in 1882, when &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuberculosis#History&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Robert Koch&lt;/a&gt; discovered that bovine and human varieties of TB were deemed similar. However, Koch later changed his opinion, saying that bovine TB could not spread to humans. The professional opinion has further been adjusted since then, and the current state of affairs on bovine/human TB contamination is essentially that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I]t appears obvious that we have arrived at a point in [the United States] when the dissemination of bovine tuberculosis is no longer a matter of serious concern. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://chestjournal.chestpubs.org/content/13/4/368.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ironically, raw milk is actually beneficial in fighting TB in humans. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realmilk.com/ppt/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Real Milk PowerPoint&lt;/a&gt;, slides 54-56, 58.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Contamination from processing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time pasteurization was initiated, many (if not most) of the dairies in the U.S. (and much of Europe) were filthy, and sanitation was abysmal, leading to much contamination of milk during milking and bottling.  Since the invention of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milking_machine#Milking_machines&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;closed-system milking machines&lt;/a&gt; in the 1940s, it is possible to eliminate the most serious exposure to external contamination.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other factors affect the relative safety of raw vs. pasteurized milk as well.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/raw_milk_safety.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; describes how a cow's diet has a strong impact on the pathogen-fighting ability of the milk produced, and as such, milk from cows fed diets heavy in heavy in grain, soybeans and cottonseed meal (common in many commercial dairy operations) must be pasteurized to be safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the measured safety of raw milk:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realmilk.com/rawmilkoverview.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on data in a 2003 USDA/FDA report: Compared to raw milk there are 515 times more illnesses from L-mono due to deli meats and 29 times more illness from L-mono due to pasteurized milk. &lt;strong&gt;On a PER-SERVING BASIS, deli meats were TEN times more likely than raw milk to cause illness&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Intrepretive Summary – Listeria Monocytogenes Risk Assessment&lt;/em&gt;, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Sept. 2003, page 17). (Emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realmilk.com/documents/ResponsetoMarlerListofStudies.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This 132-page report&lt;/a&gt; examines the various scientific studies that supposedly cast a shadow over raw milk, and tries to interpret them with less (supposed) bias.  The following table is taken from page 6, and shows the results of examining 70 studies purported to show the dangers of raw milk, and the various flaws in many of the reports. The paper goes on to address each of the 70 studies point-by-point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XrPoU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Flaws found in anti-raw milk studies&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among the findings of this report are that much of the evidence cited in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/291/6493/463.full.pdf?sid=0f930deb-b8ba-460d-a2d7-ebf0d6b72529&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BJM article&lt;/a&gt; mentioned in @matt_black's answer, was flawed. Specifically, those that are mentioned in both papers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BJM Ref 1, Review p.80 - Milk-bourne illness outbreak in Scottland likely would not have been averted by pasteurization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BJM ref 8, Review p.43 - Testing found no contamination in the raw milk supply&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BJM ref 10, Review p.41 - Contaminated raw milk was discovered, but not in milk intended for sale as raw milk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BJM ref 12,18, Review p.42 - &quot;This is a review rather than a primary reference.&quot; and &quot;There are no outbreaks mentioned in this review that could be said to be&#xA;conclusively linked to unpasteurized milk, and in most cases the suspected milk was&#xA;intended for pasteurization.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;100% of the studies cited by the FDA to implicate raw milk were fatally flawed, and failed to show raw milk is dangerous. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realmilk.com/documents/SheehanPowerPointResponse2009Oct.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Response to the FDA&lt;/a&gt;, p. ii)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Between 1980 and 2005, the CDC attributed 19,531 illness cases to pasteurized milk and milk products, 10.7 times more than to raw milk. From this we cannot determine if raw milk is safer than pasteurized, in part because there are no accurate estimates of raw milk consumers. ([&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realmilk.com/documents/SheehanPowerPointResponse2009Oct.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Response to the FDA&lt;/a&gt;, p. ii)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Between 1998 and 2005, raw milk was associated with 0.4% of CDC-documented food-borne illnesses, including 831 illnesses, 66 hospitalizations, and a single death. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realmilk.com/documents/SheehanPowerPointResponse2009Oct.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Response to the FDA&lt;/a&gt;, p. iii,5) Clearly raw milk is not &quot;perfectly safe,&quot; but neither is any other food.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, if you can find a clean source of raw milk from healthy, well-fed cows, it is probably safer than the pasteurized milk you can find at the supermarket.  On the other hand, if your raw milk is unsafely handled, or comes from unhealthy cows, it may be harmful.  But that's really just common sense--we all want to eat clean food, right?  And as many others have pointed out, enforcing proper quality control on raw milk can be very difficult--although it has been done in many large-scale commercial operations, but usually along with a higher price tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;1 Porter, Charles Sanford. &lt;em&gt;Milk Diet as a Remedy for Chronic Disease&lt;/em&gt;. Long Beach, California, 1905&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2 Professor Tyson, James. &lt;em&gt;Journal of the American Medical Association&lt;/em&gt;. June, 1884.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2015-01-15T05:10:18.837" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T05:10:18.837" CommentCount="28" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6656" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-20T06:18:32.267" Score="41" ViewCount="6266" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2005to2009/2009-pornography-acceptance-crime.html&quot;&gt;early studies&lt;/a&gt; show that the availability of pornography does not &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; the rate of sex crimes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research on pornography has generally been of various types (Tovar, Elias, &amp;amp; Chang, 1999). Probably most common are studies that involve exposing experimental conditions of varying media to students or other subjects and measuring some variable such as changes in attitude or predicted hypothetical behaviors. Another type of research involves interviewing sex offenders and asking them of their experiences with sexually explicit material. And a third type involves interviewing victims of sex abuse in trying to evaluate if pornography was involved in the assault (Tovar et al., 1999). &lt;strong&gt;Surprisingly few studies have linked the availability of porn in any society with actual associated antisocial behaviors or sex crimes in particular. None have found a causal relationship and very few have even found one of positive correlation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What sorts of actual behavior research data had the Commission and Surgeon General been reviewing? Findings from national studies were available from federal surveys and reports such as those of Kupperstein &amp;amp; Wilson (1970) drawing from U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reports. There were as well many other localized and more narrowly focused studies. &lt;strong&gt;Considering the interval from 1960 to 1969, Kupperstein and Wilson found, with some exceptions, while pornography became increasingly available, there was an overall decrease in sexual offenses.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, many studies show the availability of pornography appears to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101130111326.htm&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;reduce&lt;/em&gt; the rate of sex crimes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Diamond and team looked at what actually happened to sex-related crimes in the Czech Republic as it transitioned from having a strict ban on sexually explicit materials to a situation where the material was decriminalized. Pornography was strictly prohibited between 1948 and 1989. The ban was lifted with the country's transition to democracy and, by 1990, the availability and ownership of sexually explicit materials rose dramatically. Even the possession of child pornography was not a criminal offense.&#xA;  The researchers monitored the number of sex-related crimes from Ministry of Interior records -- rape, attempted rape, sexual assault, and child sex abuse in particular -- for 15 years during the ban and 18 years after it was lifted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most significantly, they found that the number of reported cases of child sex abuse dropped markedly immediately after the ban on sexually explicit materials was lifted in 1989. In both Denmark and Japan, the situation is similar: Child sex abuse was much lower than it was when availability of child pornography was restricted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other results showed that, overall, there was no increase in reported sex-related crimes generally since the legalization of pornography. &lt;strong&gt;Interestingly, whereas the number of sex-related crimes fell significantly after 1989, the number of other societal crimes -- murder, assault, and robbery -- rose significantly.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the basic availability of pornography, in any form, reduces the rate of sex crimes then I think it is logical to assume that &lt;em&gt;easily available pornography from any home computer in the world&lt;/em&gt; should show an even more pronounced reduction in sex crime rates. Consider the current explosion of internet video content (YouTube was founded in 2005) and the prevalence of high speed internet versus the slow dialup modem connections that were common in 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'm specifically interested in &lt;em&gt;recent&lt;/em&gt; studies of &lt;em&gt;high speed internet&lt;/em&gt; pornography&lt;/strong&gt;. What citations and studies are out there to support (or disprove) this theory? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29" LastEditorUserId="29" LastEditDate="2011-10-20T06:27:18.320" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T12:32:46.950" Title="Is the increasing availability of high speed internet pornography reducing sex crime rates?" Tags="|internet|criminology|pornography|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6653" CreationDate="2011-10-20T06:58:37.027" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mosquito&quot;&gt;product&lt;/a&gt; developed for that purpose. It was installed in at least one shop in South Wales where &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/4839346.stm&quot;&gt;it was banned by community officials for violation human rights&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In France, a local court &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lefigaro.fr/actualites/2008/04/30/01001-20080430ARTFIG00369-la-justice-interdit-le-boitier-anti-jeunes.php&quot;&gt;banned the device&lt;/a&gt;, but there don't seem to be any nationwide bans of the device, at least not in Europe. According to civil rights groups, such a device probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/24/24893/1.html&quot;&gt;violates the European Convention on Human Rights&lt;/a&gt; or national laws, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irishexaminer.com/archives/2007/0530/ireland/using-mosquito-devices-on-children-could-constitute-assault-says-ombudsman-33884.html&quot;&gt;like the Non-fatal Offences against the Person Act in Ireland&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="334" LastEditDate="2011-10-20T10:35:04.493" LastActivityDate="2011-10-20T10:35:04.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6656" CreationDate="2011-10-20T07:11:08.023" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a classic case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;correlation does not imply causation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2006/10/how_the_web_prevents_rape.html&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; found that high speed internet access reduced rape. But they couldn't find evidence that &lt;em&gt;porn&lt;/em&gt; on the internet was the cause, just high speed internet access. So this is just a correlation between 2 data points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/08/10/more-on-rape-and-porn-does-internet-access-increase-sex-crimes/&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; suggests that access to high speed internet &lt;strong&gt;increases&lt;/strong&gt; the numbers of sex crime reports. Not the number of crimes, but the number of reports. This suggests that victims are more likely to report the crime if they have high speed internet. But again this is simply a correlation between data with no obvious or direct cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a link there's no direct evidence for it yet. Part of the reason why might have something to do with the fact that &lt;strong&gt;porn&lt;/strong&gt; does not always equal &lt;strong&gt;sex crime&lt;/strong&gt; and that often &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_sexual_violence&quot;&gt;sex crimes have very little to do with sex&lt;/a&gt; (see also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inside-the-criminal-mind/201106/sex-crimes-are-not-about-sex&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDITED&lt;/strong&gt; To include citations about sex crime motivations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5085" LastEditorUserId="5085" LastEditDate="2011-10-21T00:28:37.857" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T00:28:37.857" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6662" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-20T11:25:27.627" Score="23" ViewCount="950" Body="&lt;p&gt;Organizations like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kiva.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kiva&lt;/a&gt; (also discussed &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/3515/4020&quot;&gt;in a mostly unrelated question&lt;/a&gt;) offer small loans to low-income people in under-developed countries.  From their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kiva.org/about/microfinance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;web site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Microfinance is also the idea that low-income individuals are capable of lifting themselves out of poverty if given access to financial services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most, if not all, of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kiva.org/about/microfinance#aboutMFOutcomes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;evidence that microfinance works&lt;/a&gt; provide by Kiva, is anecdotal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site also adds the qualification to its claims that &lt;code&gt;it is also recognized that is not always the appropriate method&lt;/code&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kiva.org/about/microfinance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll accept as granted that there are cases where micro finance has helped certain individuals get out of poverty.  But is there any evidence that providing these sorts of loans actually has any measurable (positive or negative) impact on community poverty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T14:45:18.457" Title="Does &quot;Micro Finance&quot; reduce poverty?" Tags="|finance|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6664" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6693" CreationDate="2011-10-20T12:18:12.580" Score="13" ViewCount="13221" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0972732845&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Can We Live 150 Years?&lt;/a&gt;, author Mikhail Tombak, Ph.D. makes the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Casein is a protein needed by the calf for building its hoofs and horns. ... Human beings do not have hoofs or horns. Why would they need so much casein? (p.22)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Casein contained in milk is broken down in the stomach by rennet. Children one to two years old ... do not need casein. Their digestive system does not produce rennet anymore, and casein becomes indigestible, even poisonous. (p.23)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No source for this claim is cited. (In fact, the book is mysteriously missing a bibliography entirely!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that casein &amp;quot;becomes even poisonous&amp;quot; to humans, specifically after the age of one or two years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T13:27:27.107" Title="Is casein from cow's milk harmful to humans over one year of age?" Tags="|nutrition|milk|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6665" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-20T12:34:54.833" Score="33" ViewCount="1822" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3498/is-sleep-training-a-form-of-neglect-or-harmful&quot;&gt;Is sleep training a form of neglect or harmful?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most popular schools of thought regarding modern parenting is that not immediately responding to an infant's (typically age 6 months to 1 year) crying will result in long-term emotional damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This argument is usually brought up in response to the suggestion of employing one of the various methods of sleep training that involve allowing the baby to cry for varying periods of time in order to help train them to sleep through the night (e.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferber_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ferber Method&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that allowing a child to cry is harmful is widely espoused, particularly by notable Parenting author and Associate Clinical Professor of Pediatrics &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.askdrsears.com/content/dr-bill&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. William Sears&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He lists a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.askdrsears.com/topics/fussy-baby/letting-baby-cry-it-out-yes-no&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;variety of reasons&lt;/a&gt; why children crying should immediately be responded to, every time.  Among these reasons are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since the cry is a baby's language, a communication tool, a baby has two choices if no one listens. Either he can cry louder, harder, and produce a more disturbing signal or he can clam up and become a &quot;good baby&quot; (meaning &quot;quiet&quot;). If no one listens, he will become a very discouraged baby. He'll learn the one thing you don't want him to: that he can't communicate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Baby loses trust in the signal value of his cry – and perhaps baby also loses trust in the responsiveness of his caregivers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you go against your basic biology, you desensitize yourself to your baby's signals and your instinctive responses. Eventually, the cry doesn't bother you. You lose trust in your baby's signals, and you lose trust in your ability to understand baby's primitive language.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Baby loses trust in caregivers and caregivers lose trust in their own sensitivity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard these arguments repeated from a variety of sources.  However, I have yet to see any evidence that these are anything but speculation on the part of someone who has, by his own account, written over 30 books on the subject, and therefore has a vested interest in exaggerating risk in order to sell more copies of his books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; reputable scientific evidence to back up the claims of long term communication problems resulting from delays between a child crying and their parents responding?  Let's exclude newborns from this, as no one seems to advocate for allowing newborns to cry as a means of sleep training, so we'll define our target population as anywhere from age 6 months to 2 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T23:52:06.060" Title="Is allowing an infant to cry harmful to its development?" Tags="|psychology|children|parenting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ClosedDate="2012-01-30T16:29:26.450" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6664" CreationDate="2011-10-20T12:35:48.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/51/1/37.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;there is casein in human milk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Total casein in human milk, as determined by the Kjeldahl method, varies during lactation; the casein content is approximately 20% of the total protein content in early lactation and 45% in late lactation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's probably not poisonous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2443" LastActivityDate="2011-10-20T12:35:48.603" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6662" CreationDate="2011-10-20T13:59:26.733" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfinance#Evidence_for_reducing_poverty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microfinance Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; gives a good summary of the state of research here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research on the effectiveness of microfinance as a tool for economic development remains mixed, in part owing to the difficulty in monitoring and measuring this impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.givewell.org/files/Cause1-2/Independent%20research%20on%20microfinance/GFUSA-MicrofinanceImpactWhitepaper-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a paper specifically commissioned by the Grameen Bank to look at the evidence, much of which is not anecdotal. It analyses the many studies that have been done, both by microfinance organizations themselves and independently. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This review of the literature provides a wide range  of evidence that microfinance programs can increase incomes and lift families out of poverty.  Access to microfinance can improve children’s nutrition and increase their school enrollment rates,  among many other outcomes. Yet it would be imprudent to issue a blanket  statement that “microfinance works,” for the simple reason that there is no one “microfinance” to test. The MFIs examined in this paper serve different  types of clients with a variety of &#xA;  services, and they operate in extremely heterogeneous regions.  None, no matter&#xA;  how effective, can be said to definitely answer the question of whether microfinance works as a poverty reduction strategy on a global basis&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have also been criticisms, some of which has taken the form of &quot;microfinance isn't the panacea it is thought to be&quot;, which doesn't mean it's bad, just that it doesn't work miracles. As Kiva themselves put it &quot;Microfinance is not a silver bullet&quot;. There are acknowledged cases where it hasn't worked, and there are certainly problems that it hasn't addressed. No single approach is ever going to entirely cure a complex problem like poverty.  But if the question is &quot;can microfinance help cure poverty&quot;, the answer is a qualified &quot;yes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-05-14T14:45:18.457" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T14:45:18.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6671" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11026" CreationDate="2011-10-20T19:14:35.043" Score="14" ViewCount="1853" Body="&lt;p&gt;A claim was made today by an equipment manufacturing industry representative that in the last 10 years Non-Union labor had far out paced Union labor in productivity gains and that Non-Union Shops where now significantly more productive than Union Shops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any statistics that can confirm or refute this?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-10-20T23:36:30.627" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T13:47:44.733" Title="Is non-union labor more productive than union labor?" Tags="|economics|united-states|productivity|labor|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6673" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-20T21:25:52.273" Score="5" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do placebos have a measureable impact on healing gastric ulcers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/ben_goldacre_battling_bad_science.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TED.com&lt;/a&gt; Ben Goldacre makes the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We know for example that two sugar pills a day are a more effective treatment for getting rid of gastric ulcers than one sugar pill a day. Two sugar pills a day beats one pill a day. And that's an outrageous and ridiculous finding, but it's true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But do we really know that placebos have healing effects on gastric ulcers?&#xA;On his blog Nick Barrowman makes &lt;a href=&quot;http://logbase2.blogspot.com/2011/09/too-much-of-nothing.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the case&lt;/a&gt; that we don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="949" LastEditDate="2011-10-20T22:26:51.537" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T23:29:41.833" Title="Do placebos have an effect on ulcers" Tags="|medical-science|placebo|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2199" CreationDate="2011-10-21T09:23:52.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Disclosure: I work for Harvey Water Softeners in the UK)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent paper published by the UK Water Trade Association gives a good overview of the evidence. We've linked to it from our site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harveywatersofteners.co.uk/blog/the-science-behind-the-benefits&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;harvey.co.uk/blog/the-science-behind-the-benefits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A particularly strong source is a study by the Battelle group in the US. That's another one we've highlighted on the site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harveywatersofteners.co.uk/blog/batelle-study-proves-water-softener-benefits&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;harvey.co.uk/blog/batelle-study-proves-water-softener-benefits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, we're fairly positive about the studies in the blog posts I'm linking to, but they link to the original documents so you can check them out for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more lifestyle-related benefits, such as softer skin and eczema relief are well-supported anecdotally, but less well in terms of hard science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most well-supported benefits are related to limescale removal: energy savings, reductions in washing powder/detergent, and longer-lived appliances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5099" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T09:23:52.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6656" CreationDate="2011-10-21T14:14:54.497" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://anthonydamato.law.northwestern.edu/Adobefiles/porn.pdf&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; by Anthony D’Amato from 2006 deals specifically with the correlation of increased internet access and decreasing rape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably the most relevant part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Four states with lowest internet access Increase in rape of 53%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Four states with highest internet access Decrease in rape of 27%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also correlational and he admits as much in the paper, but I thought it deserved to be mentioned as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4415" LastEditorUserId="4415" LastEditDate="2011-10-24T13:43:44.557" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T13:43:44.557" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2199" CreationDate="2011-10-21T14:51:31.817" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK there was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eczema.org/water_softeners.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;randomised controlled trial&lt;/a&gt; to see if water softeners improve eczema symptoms in children. The conclusion was that it didn't:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The average eczema score reduction in the water softener group was 20% (5 points improvement on SASSAD) compared with a 22% reduction in the control group (5.7 points improvement on SASSAD). We also compared the number of children who responded particularly well during the trial (i.e. those who had a good or excellent response), but again there was no difference between the water softener group and the normal care group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T14:51:31.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6599" CreationDate="2011-10-21T16:22:36.623" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Jobs-questioned-authority-all-apf-1873950574.html?x=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A summary of the new (currently unpublished) Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson on Yahoo Finance elaborates:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book delves into Jobs' decision to delay surgery for nine months after learning in October 2003 that he had a neuroendocrine tumor -- a relatively rare type of pancreatic cancer that normally grows more slowly and is therefore more treatable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic. He also was influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, the book says, before finally having surgery in July 2004.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isaacson, quoting Jobs, writes in the book: &amp;quot;`I really didn't want them to open up my body, so I tried to see if a few other things would work,' he told me years later with a hint of regret.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Jobs die because he delayed treatment? Well, like Orac says, it's really hard to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did he &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;fall prey to alternative medicine&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; as the question title suggests? Absolutely. This was way more than &amp;quot;I'm gonna try this diet, oh it's not working, I'll get the real medicine.&amp;quot; At the point where you're consulting a psychic, you've thrown rationality to the wind and you're being taken emotional and financial advantage of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T16:22:36.623" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6647" CreationDate="2011-10-21T16:28:58.723" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general the evidence that we have isn't good enough to come to a clear conclusion about whether patents are benefitial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still there's are interesting observations about the real world effects of patents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a few real world examples of different industries that operate without patent protection.&#xA;Those industries come in two kinds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Industries were there are no laws for patent protection&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Black market industries that operate outside the rule of law.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The European clothing industry is &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.ted.com/2010/05/25/lessons_from_fa/&quot;&gt;a case&lt;/a&gt; of an industry that operates without patent protection. It still produces enough innovation to have a new line of fashion every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Iraqi IED industry is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2010/08/journal-open-source-warfare-and-ied-design-innovation.html&quot;&gt;good example&lt;/a&gt; for an industry that's capable of fast innovation without patents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand there are existing industries that have patents. One of them is the UK's electronics industry.&#xA;Christopher Thomas el al wrote a paper titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=Krw8AAAAIAAJ&amp;amp;lpg=PR9&amp;amp;ots=RH114YaxKI&amp;amp;dq=The%20economic%20impact%20of%20the%20patent%20system%3a%20a%20study%20of%20the%20British%20experience%20By%20Christopher%20Thomas%20el%20al&amp;amp;lr&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;pg=PR9#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;The economic impact of the patent system: a study of the British experience&lt;/a&gt;&quot; where he found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The electronics companies that responded to our industrial inquiry were uniformly of the opinion that the size and direction of their R&amp;amp;D is not affected in any significant way by the existence of patents and that in general patents nowadays have very little impact on competition between major firm in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2011-10-21T16:28:58.723" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6685" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-21T17:45:55.610" Score="1" ViewCount="1155" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In February, the White House released its “Annual Report on the Middle&#xA;  Class” containing new regulations favored by Big Labor including a&#xA;  bailout of critically underfunded union pension plans through&#xA;  “retirement security” options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The radical solution most favored by Big Labor is the seizure of&#xA;  private 401(k) plans for government disbursement -- which lets them&#xA;  off the hook for their collapsing retirement scheme.  And, of course,&#xA;  the Obama administration is eager to accommodate their buddies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=36823&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39336&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt;( &lt;a href=&quot;http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2010/10/14/proposed-government-401k-grab/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;and here&lt;/a&gt;) that Tom Harkin tried to introduce this during the lame duck session but it was defeated.  The link to the source document is now broken and I can find nothing about this on the library of Congress site.  So I am wondering if it was fear mongering? Potentially an Overton Window moving report with no real attempt? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was there really was an attempt to introduce the legislation that would automatically convert 401k Accounts into GSA's?  There were reports that they were trying this to leverage the 4T+ in 401k accounts to deal with the debt problem.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2016-05-20T14:23:20.887" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T14:23:20.887" Title="Are there members of Congress who have tried to seize 401k plans?" Tags="|economics|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6686" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-22T00:08:24.480" Score="4" ViewCount="2324" Body="&lt;p&gt;On an episode of a popular television show, a man is showing off his new truck. While bragging about the interior, he accidentally hits the stick with his arm, and puts it in gear. Then, when he starts it remotely a little while afterwards, it roars forward and kills him. Is this possible? Could a vehicle actually behave in this manner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4882" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T15:49:39.070" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T21:22:03.003" Title="Can remote starters make a car move unattended?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6685" CreationDate="2011-10-22T02:20:42.583" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two distinct items mentioned in the claim, both of which are correct individually but which are incorrect taken together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there was a bill (actually a couple) to grant taxpayer-backed guarantee to PBGC. The last one I found was Casey's &quot;Create Jobs &amp;amp; Save Benefits Act of 2010&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the bill didn't explicitly use the &quot;bail out unions&quot; language, it is quite obviously disproportionately beneficial to unions considering that one of the main things union provides is extremely generous defined benefits (DB) plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bill was introduced by Casey, not Harkin, and is &lt;a href=&quot;http://nlpc.org/stories/2010/08/27/casey-pomeroy-bill-would-bail-out-pbgc-union-pensions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dissected in detail by the National Legal and Policy Center&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rather than raise employer premiums on sponsor participants, which Congress did four years ago as part of the Pension Protection Act, the new legislation would stick taxpayers with risk in two ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First, it would create a &quot;fifth fund&quot; within PBGC. The language of the bill is clear: &quot;(O)bligations of the corporation that are financed by the [fifth fund] shall be obligations of the United States.&quot; In other words, the bill would shift the burden of paying orphan fund claims from the sponsor to the general public. And benefit levels would be guaranteed to be no lower than before. The proposed per-retiree ceiling hike from $12,870 to $21,000 would create an additional incentive for individual sponsors to terminate their pensions and hand the ball over to PBGC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Second, the legislation would allow trustees of union-sponsored multi-employer pension funds to form alliances with trustees of plans in unrelated industries. Currently, multiemployer plans must be in the same industry group. The purpose behind allowing a broader pooling of resources is to enable unions to avoid more easily the &quot;last man standing&quot; rule. This regulation, based on 1980 legislation to amend ERISA, stipulates that if a sponsor pulls out of a multiemployer plan, all remaining firms must cover that employer's liabilities or pay a large exit fee. Unions and union-friendly employers like the arrangement because it gives workers an opportunity to keep their pensions if they change jobs within the same industry. Unfortunately, the rule unwittingly has encouraged plan terminations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, they quote the lead author of the Hudson Institute report, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, who several months ago explained the role of organized labor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why the persistent underfunding? Some union leaders like to achieve wage increases and new benefits when they renew collective contracts, in order to make their reelection more likely. Ensuring that pension plans are kept well-funded takes more work for little visible effect - and may well work against winning more benefits by underscoring their cost to the employer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In other words, union officials and employers under union contract prefer to paint an overly rosy picture to members than jeopardize their confidence. Accentuating the positive keeps members in the fold and contributions coming in. In the meantime, employers continue to scrap their plans because they can't afford to keep them over the long run, especially in the automobile, steel, airline and other union-dominated industries. Given that the Pension Protection Act requires participating employers to be solvent within seven years starting in 2008, more than ever they are facing the choice of going broke or handing over operations to PBGC. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an additional angle of how this would &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2010/04/08/decrying_the_union_pension_bailout_bill_98411.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FURTHER benefit unions indirectly&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Last fall Moody's estimated that multiemployer plans were underfunded by at least &lt;strong&gt;$165 billion&lt;/strong&gt;, and concluded that &quot;The ballooning of the under funded status of these funds has substantially increased the implied liability for contributing companies in the industries affected.&quot; Some companies risk having their ratings downgraded, especially if weaker companies become bankrupt and leave the pension plans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in additional to generally helping the pension side, this bill would also provide benefits to heavily unionized companies by letting them avoid credit downgrade risk.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-03-01T14:00:44.193" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T14:00:44.193" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6686" CreationDate="2011-10-22T14:34:10.540" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not if installed correctly. You could defeat the safety features and have this happen. I would be unlikely to &quot;roar&quot; forward, without depressing the accelerator pedal the engine would be at idle, some automobiles don't move at all at idle, some move but not quickly in my experience.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regulations/administration/fmcsr/fmcsrruletext.aspx?reg=571.102&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/rules-regulations/administration/fmcsr/fmcsrruletext.aspx?reg=571.102&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5108" LastEditorUserId="5108" LastEditDate="2011-10-22T15:18:58.830" LastActivityDate="2011-10-22T15:18:58.830" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6664" CreationDate="2011-10-23T10:36:19.657" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no reason to believe that casein cannot be digested by children or adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8599318&quot;&gt;&quot;Gastrojejunal kinetics and the digestion of [15N]beta-lactoglobulin and casein in humans: the influence of the nature and quantity of the protein&quot; (page 550)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;casein was slowly recovered in the jejunum mainly in the form of&#xA;  degraded peptides efficiently absorbed in the upper part of the&#xA;  intestine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper is about different aspects of casein digestion, but the quoted passage shows that casein is degraded into peptides and absorbed in adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a study on the toxicity of casein to rats &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jn.nutrition.org/content/93/4/429.full.pdf&quot;&gt;Lethal Amounts of Casein, Casein Salts and Hydrolyzed Casein Given Orally to Albino Rats&quot;&lt;/a&gt; which states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lethal dose of casein given as an aqueous suspension&#xA;  intragastrically to albino rats was estimated to be well over 1000&#xA;  g/kg administered over a period of 2 weeks but could not be definitely&#xA;  established because deaths were due in part to distilled water in the&#xA;  suspension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So they had to feed the rats more than their own weight in casein to achieve toxic effects. In such extremely high doses pretty much anything can become toxic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part about casein being needed for hoofs and horns is either misleading or flat out invented by the author. The main purpose of milk is to provide nutrition. Casein is a family of proteins that can bind calcium and that are phosphorylated (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casein&quot;&gt;see Wikipedia for more information&lt;/a&gt;). Proteins are a source of amino acids after digestion, and the caseins additionally provide calcium and phosphate. All of this is useful to humans, contrary to what the author writes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take a look at the low-rated Amazon reviews you'll find that the author makes other extremely unlikely claims like the influence of zodiac signs on health. I wouldn't take anything serious that this author writes about health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-10-23T10:36:19.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6664" CreationDate="2011-10-23T10:42:41.987" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of the most ridiculous claims I have ever seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, there is not just one casein, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casein&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;caseins are a family of proteins&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caseins are found in mammals milk in different proportion, generally quite high (that is why they are called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caseins&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;caseins, from the Latin &lt;em&gt;caseus&lt;/em&gt;, meaning cheese&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the other answer points out, almost 50% of the protein content of human milk is made up of caseins during late lactation (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/51/1/37.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Human-milk proteins: analysis of casein and casein subunits by anion- exchange chromatography, gel electrophoresis, and specific staining methods.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for cow's milk:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Casein is the most important protein in bovine milk under both quantitative and nutritional aspects, as it represent &lt;strong&gt;approximately 80% of the total protein content&lt;/strong&gt; (corresponding to 2.5–3%, w/v) and is rich in essential amino acids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19062022&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quantification of bovine casein fractions by direct chromatographic analysis of milk. Approaching the application to a real production context.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, essentially Dr. Tombak claims that all the people around the world who drink milk and eat cheese are very lucky and have not be killed by it so far...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, to the specific claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Casein is a protein needed by the calf for building its hoofs and horns. ... Human beings do not have hoofs or horns. Why would they need so much casein?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not really make sense. Proteins are digested and broken up into aminoacids, which are always &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteinogenic_amino_acid&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the same 21&lt;/a&gt;, no matter the source of the protein. The fact that casein is found in hoofs and horns is absolutely irrelevant: calfs synthesise it, they don't use it directly from the proteins found in their mother's milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 23.1.1 of Biochemistry. (5th ed.) by Berg et al. explains this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Protein digestion begins in the stomach, where the acidic environment favors protein denaturation. Denatured proteins are more accessible as substrates for proteolysis than are native proteins. The primary proteolytic enzyme of the stomach is pepsin, a nonspecific protease that, remarkably, is maximally active at pH 2. Thus, pepsin can be active in the highly acidic environment of the stomach, even though other proteins undergo denaturation there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Protein degradation continues in the lumen of the intestine owing to the activity of proteolytic enzymes secreted by the pancreas. These proteins, introduced in Chapters 9 and 10 (Sections 9.1 and 10.5), are secreted as inactive zymogens and then converted into active enzymes. The battery of enzymes displays a wide array of specificity, and so the substrates are degraded into free amino acids as well as di- and tripeptides. Digestion is further enhanced by proteases, such as aminopeptidase N, that are located in the plasma membrane of the intestinal cells. Aminopeptidases digest proteins from the amino-terminal end. Single amino acids, as well as di- and tripeptides, are transported into the intestinal cells from the lumen and subsequently released into the blood for absorption by other tissues&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22600/#A3196&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Digestion and Absorption of Dietary Proteins&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, a remark on the author of the book, Mikhail Tombak, Ph.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering what subject his PhD was in, but couldn't really find much about it.&#xA;Now, of course I may just need to search some more, but the best I could find was a copied-and-pasted-across-multiple-sites (including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.starthealthylife.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Start Healthy Life&lt;/a&gt;) biography stating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mikhail Tombak, Ph.D. graduated from the faculty of biology and chemistry of the Russian University.  For many years he was the head of Center for Health Sciences in Moscow;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say there is no &amp;quot;Russian University&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.4icu.org/ru/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;e.g.&lt;/a&gt;)... and I could not find any evidence of a Center for Health Sciences in Moscow either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, if you Google for &amp;quot;Center for Health Sciences, Moscow Mikhail Tombak&amp;quot;, you will only fall onto reviews of his books... so, well probably I would not really trust the source of the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T05:31:21.313" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6697" CreationDate="2011-10-23T19:04:32.967" Score="30" ViewCount="7005" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard this claim many times&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You use 14 muscles to smile and 43 to frown&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I have never seen any actual proof of this and always assumed it was just one of those midwest folksy sayings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth too it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-23T08:19:29.763" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T08:19:29.763" Title="Do you use only 14 muscles to smile but 43 to frown?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6696" CreationDate="2011-10-23T19:35:34.177" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0aLQN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Muscles&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chart above is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frown#Muscles_used&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is difficult to determine exactly how many muscles are involved in&#xA;  smiling or frowning as there is a wide range of facial expressions&#xA;  that might be considered a frown or a smile&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which sources &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2489/does-it-take-fewer-muscles-to-smile-than-it-does-to-frown&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deciding which of the 53 facial muscles are important in smiling or&#xA;  frowning is a bit arbitrary&lt;/strong&gt;--many make only minor contributions, and&#xA;  depending on the intensity of the expression may not be involved at&#xA;  all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;who got it from &lt;strong&gt;plastic surgeon and professor at the University of Chicago Hospitals &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uchospitals.edu/physicians/david-song.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;David H. Song&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Grand total for smiling: 12&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Grand total for frowning: 11&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/science/smile.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes - Happiness Is Only Grin Deep&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/happiness/muscles-smile.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Discovery Health - How&#xA;many muscles does it take to smile?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2011-10-23T19:35:34.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6698" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-23T21:50:16.847" Score="24" ViewCount="8195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've long observed that many drivers in the UK choose SUVs (which are often disparagingly called &lt;em&gt;Chelsea Tractors&lt;/em&gt;) do so at least partially because they believe such cars to be safer. I doubt this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, the debate about safety has become a significant component of the US debate about fuel economy standards with some arguing against the government standards on safety grounds. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncpa.org/pdfs/ba388.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; argues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To improve fuel economy, auto makers primarily reduce the size and power of vehicles. Unfortunately, this downsizing has tragic consequences. As far back as 1989, consumer advocate Ralph Nader admitted that larger cars are safer as there is more bulk to protect the occupant. Numerous studies have proved this point. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Researchers at Harvard University and the Brookings Institution found that, on average, for every 100 pounds shaved off new cars to meet CAFE standards, between 440 and 780 additional people were killed in auto accidents or a total of 2,200 to 3,900 lives lost per model year.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) data indicate that 322 additional deaths per year occur as a direct result of reducing just 100 pounds from already downsized small cars, with half of the deaths attributed to small car collisions with light trucks/sport utility vehicles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using data from the NHTSA and the Insurance Institute for Traffic Safety, USA Today calculated that size and weight reductions of passenger vehicles undertaken to meet current CAFE standards had resulted in more than 46,000 deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course these claims have been questioned. &lt;a href=&quot;http://cta.ornl.gov/cta/Publications/Reports/Effect_of_Fuel_Economy.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is an academic analysis&lt;/a&gt; that argues against the above interpretation of US data: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are other factors to consider. Big vehicles are probably worse for other road users. And the ones with higher centres of gravity may be more likely to roll over than normal cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what does the worldwide evidence say? &lt;strong&gt;Do big vehicles decrease injuries to their passengers? And, even if they do, do they make the roads safer overall?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2018-10-31T16:46:45.280" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T00:59:38.740" Title="Are big cars and SUVs safer than small cars or do they just *feel* safer?" Tags="|road-vehicles|safety|road|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6698" CreationDate="2011-10-23T23:43:48.880" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not exactly an answer, but there are two physical points that are more-or-less inescapable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a vehicle--vehicle collision the more massive body is subjected to smaller accelerations than the lighter one. Mass is favored here. Some readers may remembers those &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bESXIHhTC90&amp;amp;feature=relmfu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;crash test films from the 1970s&lt;/a&gt; that show this effect all too well (but see the link on &quot;quality of engineering&quot; below).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In vehicle--fixed, solid object collisions (and vehicle--vehicle impacts with roughly equal masses) the expected accelerations experienced by the passengers go roughly by the inverse of the &lt;em&gt;length&lt;/em&gt; of the crumble zone available to absorb the energy. Size is favored here. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not going to provide citations for these fact as anyone who has passed freshman physics should be able to work a Back-of-the-Envelope problem to demonstrate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu95gB04VC4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IIHS video on these issues&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note however, that these are only two of many factors which apply. I haven't discussed collision avoidance, handling, tendency to roll (a problem with some trucks, SUVs and vans), the impact of choice of materials, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quality of engineering (youtube link)&lt;/a&gt;, compensatory behavior, what types of collisions are most prevalent (i.e. if many accidents involve sliding sideways into a tree having a long car isn't going to help you), etc, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will note that improved materials science may (indeed to some extent &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt;) allowed cars to get lighter without getting smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="782" LastEditorUserId="782" LastEditDate="2011-10-24T17:08:15.607" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T17:08:15.607" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6701" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-24T02:27:15.087" Score="9" ViewCount="421" Body="&lt;p&gt;A report from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/blackberry-cuts-made-roads-safer-police-say&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The National&lt;/a&gt; has been widely cited on the Internet recently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A dramatic fall in traffic accidents this week has been directly linked to the three-day disruption in BlackBerry services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Dubai, traffic accidents fell 20 per cent from average rates on the days BlackBerry users were unable to use its messaging service. In Abu Dhabi, the number of accidents this week fell 40 per cent and there were no fatal accidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On average there is a traffic accident every three minutes in Dubai, while in Abu Dhabi there is a fatal accident every two days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim, the chief of Dubai Police, and Brig Gen Hussein Al Harethi, the director of the Abu Dhabi Police traffic department, linked the drop in accidents to the disruption of BlackBerry services between Tuesday and Thursday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The precise statistics for traffic accidents in the two emirates this week were not revealed to The National.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick examination will reveal that no fatal accidents in three days, when there is an average of &amp;quot;only&amp;quot; one fatal accident every two days is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; statistically significant. (I used a back-of-the-envelope calculation to get a 22% chance of this happening if the Blackberry outage had no effect, using a Poisson distribution and without checking my work.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: Have any evidence been published to suggest that this Blackberry effect is real? Alternatively, has any evidence been published to suggest that this Blackberry effect was NOT real (i.e. we have the figures and the differences in a 2-3 day sample are not statistically significant)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My gut feel is the whole claim was made up based on anecdote - not that I am claiming for a second that texting while driving is safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-11-11T14:00:21.100" Title="Did a Blackberry service outage reduce traffic accident rates in Dubai and Abu Dhabi?" Tags="|road-vehicles|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6702" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-24T10:07:25.347" Score="2" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;The World Health Organisation publish the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Statistical_Classification_of_Diseases_and_Related_Health_Problems&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems&lt;/a&gt; (ICD). A new version, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICD-10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ICD-10&lt;/a&gt; was published in 1992.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work in health care IT. Recently there has been quite a few advertisments and news articles that claim the ICD-9 to ICD-10 migration to be done in October 2013 is a Y2K-like opportunity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote one below&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As stated in an article titled, Issues Surrounding the Proposed &#xA;    Implementation of ICD-10, “In effect, this will be the most significant &#xA;    overhaul of the medical coding system since the advent of computers &#xA;    ... even more costly and involved than Y2K or HIPAA preparedness efforts”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asco.org/ASCO/ArticleASCO/Cancer%20Policy%20and%20Clinical%20Affairs/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20ICD_9_CM_to_ICD_10_CM_Coding_Transition.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it conversion step really big that it is comparable to Y2K? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-24T10:45:04.133" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T19:39:45.703" Title="Is ICD-9 to ICD-10 migration in health care industry another Y2K-like opportunity?" Tags="|healthcare|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6703" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-24T12:50:24.527" Score="8" ViewCount="1083" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr. Mercola has released the following article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/10/24/vitamin-d-may-be-better-than-fluoride.aspx?e_cid=20111024_DNL_art_1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Vitamin that is Better than Fluoride in Reducing Cavities&lt;/a&gt;. He quotes the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.vitamindcouncil.org/2011/09/27/ultraviolet-b-and-vitamin-d-reduce-risk-of-dental-caries/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;VitaminD Council&lt;/a&gt; as his source for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There were also several studies reported on vitamin D and dental caries in the 1920s and 1930s. May Mellanby and coworkers in Sheffield, England, did studies on the role of vitamin D on teeth in the 1920s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first experiments were with dogs, where it was found that vitamin D stimulated the calcification of teeth. Subsequently, they studied the effect of vitamin D on dental caries in children, finding a beneficial effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional studies were conducted on children in New York regarding dental caries with respect to season, artificial ultraviolet-B (UVB) irradiance, and oral intake of vitamin D with the finding that it took 800 IU/day to prevent caries effectively.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite being alluded to, no specific sources are provided (like links to the papers or actual journals/titles for the 1920s and 30's studies). I found the claim surprising and so I thought I'd bring it here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have studies with an acceptable methodology shown that vitamin D produces a reduction in tooth decay (cavities, caries, etc.)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has vitamin D been shown to be better at fluoride (and which delivery method) for producing such beneficial effects?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T04:29:02.597" Title="Does vitamin D prevent cavities better than fluoride?" Tags="|dentistry|vitamins|fluoride|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6704" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6726" CreationDate="2011-10-24T13:05:16.487" Score="4" ViewCount="580" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard many people say that speaking on cell phone while it is lightning may damage the ears. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A week before my room mate was speaking on the phone during lightning, and suddenly threw the phone away and said he experienced &quot;a shock.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cans speaking on phone during a lightning storm damage the ears?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="4747" LastEditDate="2011-10-27T12:38:41.287" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T12:38:41.287" Title="Is speaking on phone during lightning harmful?" Tags="|mobile-phones|lightning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6706" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-24T18:02:20.457" Score="0" ViewCount="288" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6708/question-about-the-kabbah-and-the-center-of-the-earth&quot;&gt;Question about the Kabbah and the center of the earth&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the following video it is claimed that Kabbah is the center of the earth. What is the scientific proof of this claim. Furthermore what is the proof behind the mathematical number 1.618 that appears in the video. Is it true that the frecuency of the appearance of this number can´t be deemed to coincidence? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your answers. Please give enough scientifical references to your answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQJib4FL4qA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kabbah the center of the earth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nota Bene: It is the Surface Center not the planetary center of the earth. That means that it into account the poles as being the most southwest and northern points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4747" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T19:11:17.573" Title="Is kabbah the center of the earth" Tags="|geography|islam|mathematics|earth|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2011-10-25T00:55:55.040" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6718" CreationDate="2011-10-24T19:58:40.530" Score="5" ViewCount="2056" Body="&lt;p&gt;On their German &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenpeace.de/themen/gentechnik/lebensmittel/artikel/das_futter_machts_milch_ist_nicht_gleich_milch/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;, Greenpeace makes the claim that organic (“Bio”) butter has more Omega-3 fat than conventional butter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the website is German I don't cite directly. Their main claim seems to be that cows who get feed green foods produce better milks than cows who are fed corn. That milk then leads to butter with more Omega-3 fat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As evidence Greenpeace provides data of twelve different butter brands that they tested. In their test the two organic brands supposedly had the highest Omega3 content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this result been replicated in peer-reviewed literature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2011-10-30T12:20:41.630" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T12:20:41.630" Title="Does organic butter have more Omega-3 fat than conventional butter?" Tags="|nutrition|cows|organic-food|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6709" CreationDate="2011-10-24T20:26:14.223" Score="22" ViewCount="30657" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mecca&quot;&gt;Mecca&lt;/a&gt; considered by Muslims to be the holiest city of Islam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQJib4FL4qA&quot;&gt;video about the Mecca&lt;/a&gt; makes the following claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mecca is at a special point on the Earth's surface in the sense that its proportion in distance to the South and North pole, and also the proportion of eastern and western elongation,  are equal to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio&quot;&gt;Golden Mean&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/9436715/THE-WORLDS-GOLDEN-RATIO-POINT&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these claims true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4747" LastEditorUserId="4747" LastEditDate="2011-10-25T15:58:07.957" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T12:12:18.043" Title="Is Mecca at a special place on the earth's surface, dictated by the Golden Mean?" Tags="|geography|islam|mathematics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6708" CreationDate="2011-10-24T22:29:34.003" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the following definitions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;S&lt;/code&gt; = distance from Mecca to South Pole&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;N&lt;/code&gt; = distance from Mecca to North Pole&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;L&lt;/code&gt; = distance from left side of rectangular map to Mecca&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;R&lt;/code&gt; = distance from Mecca to right side of rectangular map&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will make the following statements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The fact that &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; &lt;code&gt;S/N&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;(N+S)/S&lt;/code&gt; are the golden ratio is not a surprise.  That is one of the well-known features of the golden ratio and works for any two numbers&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GoldenRatio.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.  Try it.  This is in fact the reason why the ratios of successive numbers in the Fibonacci series converges to the golden ratio&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/FibonacciNumber.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The same can be said regarding &lt;code&gt;L/R&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;(L+R)/L&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The fact that &lt;code&gt;L/R&lt;/code&gt; is the golden ratio is a function of the arbitrary selection of the starting point of the map projection.  With the appropriate starting point of the left side of the map, any point along the same latitude line as Mecca will have the same &lt;code&gt;L/R&lt;/code&gt; golden ratio.  The video mentions the projection starting at the solstice line, which makes no sense because a solstice is a time of the year, not a geographic location&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solstice&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.  The convention of world maps centered around Greenwich Meridian as the 0° longitude line is itself an arbitrary convention established in 1884 to standardize locations&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wwp.millennium-dome.com/info/conference.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, long after the city of Mecca was established, and therefore the &lt;code&gt;L/R&lt;/code&gt; golden mean location is an accident of history.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Similarly, the final point about the distance from bottom-left corner to upper-right is just as uninteresting because the ratios of hypotenuses of triangles will be the same as the ratios of the legs - an elementary Geometry fact&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Triangle.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Note that we could also reverse south/north to get another latitude line on an arbitrary world map that have all the properties discussed in the video (except that it would be the ratio from north pole distance to south pole distance instead).  Given that the actual location of Mecca is roughly &lt;code&gt;21.423-21.247=0.176°&lt;/code&gt; off from the actual location of the golden mean (according to answer by &lt;code&gt;@userknown&lt;/code&gt;), which is an error of &lt;code&gt;0.176°/360°*40,075.16 km ~ 20 km&lt;/code&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqzcircumference.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, if we thus allow an error tolerance of 20 km we get a total surface area of &lt;code&gt;569,000*2/510,000,000=0.00224&lt;/code&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.universetoday.com/25756/surface-area-of-the-earth/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, or 0.22%, of the world map that fulfills the requirements in the video.  This region would include such major cities as Honolulu, Hawaii and Cancún, Mexico on the north side and Francistown, Botswana on the south side&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_latitude&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;9&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; interesting concept in the entire video is the very first one, that the ratio of the distance from the South Pole to Mecca has a golden ratio proportion to the North Pole from Mecca (which itself is in significant error).  Every other point is arbitrary or a simple mathematical deriviation.  That there should be a relationship between an arbitrary number and the significance of a geographical place is a total non-sequitur (and also not unique to Mecca).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GoldenRatio.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GoldenRatio.html&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;code&gt;Euclid ca. 300 BC gave an equivalent definition of  by defining it in terms of the so-called &quot;extreme and mean ratios&quot; on a line segment, i.e., such that Φ = AC/CB = AB/AC&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/FibonacciNumber.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/FibonacciNumber.html&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;code&gt;The ratios of successive Fibonacci numbers  approaches the golden ratio  as  approaches infinity, as first proved by Scottish mathematician Robert Simson in 1753 (Wells 1986, p. 62).&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solstice&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solstice&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;code&gt;A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice each year when the Sun's apparent position in the sky, as viewed from Earth, reaches its northernmost or southernmost extremes.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://wwp.millennium-dome.com/info/conference.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://wwp.millennium-dome.com/info/conference.htm&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;code&gt;Why does the Prime Meridian (Zero Longitude) pass through Greenwich?  It dates back to October 1884. At the behest of the President of the United States of America 41 delegates from 25 nations met in Washington, DC, USA for the International Meridian Conference...&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Triangle.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Triangle.html&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;code&gt;If a line is drawn parallel to one side of a triangle so that it intersects the other two sides, it divides them proportionally, i.e., AX/XC = BY/YC&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqzcircumference.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://geography.about.com/library/faq/blqzcircumference.htm&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;code&gt;The circumference of the earth at the equator is 24,901.55 miles (40,075.16 kilometers).&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sphere&lt;/a&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/o4OhK.png&quot; alt=&quot;Sphere Surface Area Formula&quot;&gt; - I used this formula to integrate the area of the band from &lt;code&gt;21.071°&lt;/code&gt; to &lt;code&gt;21.423°&lt;/code&gt; on a sphere to estimate the size of the region of tolerance that would satisfy the requirements presented in the video for Mecca.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.universetoday.com/25756/surface-area-of-the-earth/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.universetoday.com/25756/surface-area-of-the-earth/&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;code&gt;The surface area of the Earth is 510 million square kilometers or 5.1×10^8 km^2.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_latitude&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_latitude&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1643" LastEditorUserId="1643" LastEditDate="2011-10-25T21:55:32.407" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T21:55:32.407" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6662" CreationDate="2011-10-24T22:35:59.490" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think the answer is clear yet, but people are finally applying a little scientific method to the problem (especially properly randomised trials). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of recent studies are referenced on &lt;a href=&quot;http://financialaccess.org/node/3716&quot;&gt;this review site&lt;/a&gt; (my emphasis).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One review study by the grameen foundation in 2010 (seemingly a fair summary and updating the summary quoted in another answer) reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two of these studies (“The miracle of microfinance? Evidence from a randomized evaluation,” [2009] by Abhijit Banerjee et al. and “Savings Constraints and Microenterprise Development: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Kenya,” [2009]&#xA;  by Pascaline Dupas and Jonathan Robinson), when examined closely, report evidence of a &lt;em&gt;number of positive impacts of microfinance on the lives of poor clients&lt;/em&gt;. Banerjee et al., find that the introduction of microcredit&#xA;  in Hyderabad, India, &lt;em&gt;supports household borrowing and investment and supports the creation and expansion of small businesses&lt;/em&gt;. Dupas and Robinson study the effect of the introduction of savings accounts on business investment in Kenya, and find that formal savings accounts &lt;em&gt;increase business investment and expenditure for women&lt;/em&gt;. The third study (“Expanding Microenterprise Credit Access: Using Randomized Supply Decisions&#xA;  to Estimate the Impacts in Manila” [2010b] by Dean Karlan and Jonathan Zinman) finds that the expansion of microlending to a new population in Manila, Philippines, leads to an &lt;em&gt;increase in business profits for male borrowers only but has no overall effects on income or poverty&lt;/em&gt;. Banerjee et al. and Karlan and Zinman &lt;em&gt;both&#xA;  test for, but &lt;strong&gt;do not find&lt;/strong&gt;, evidence of social impacts of microcredit&lt;/em&gt; (such as women’s empowerment, increases in children’s school enrollment, or improvements in overall health and well-being). Collectively, these&#xA;  three studies suggest that over relatively short time periods, &lt;em&gt;microfinance had positive impacts on business investment and outcomes but did not have impacts (positive or negative) on broader measures of poverty and social well-being&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So thats a fairly muted positive for micro finance. It isn't a miracle, but it seems to be better than nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The topic is a lot bigger than can easily be summarised. It is worth reading Banerjee and Duflo's book on the subject, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1610390938&quot;&gt;Poor Economics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; to get a broader overview.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2011-10-24T22:35:59.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6708" CreationDate="2011-10-25T02:17:27.257" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=21.247&amp;amp;lon=39.8&amp;amp;zoom=11&amp;amp;layers=M&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OpenStreetMap&lt;/a&gt; I derived the Kabbah to be at 21.423° north. Here is an schematic image, how the formula is derived:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qJqto.png&quot; alt=&quot;21° between north and south pole&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;echo &quot;scale=8;a=21.423;180/(90+a);(90+a)/(90-a)&quot; | bc &#xA;1.61546538&#xA;1.62478673&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A value of 1.618 is reached for 21.247°, which is even in the south of the slightly more south city 'Al Taif'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you pan with the mouse over the map of OpenStreetMap, you can read the position in the lower right corner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2011-10-28T00:28:10.260" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T00:28:10.260" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6713" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-10-25T05:51:51.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An abnormal condition of a part, organ, or system of an organism&#xA;resulting from various causes, such as infection, inflammation,&#xA;environmental factors, or genetic defect, and characterized by an&#xA;identifiable group of signs, symptoms, or both.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A condition or tendency, as of society, regarded as abnormal and&#xA;harmful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21433" LastEditorUserId="21433" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T01:21:29.520" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T01:21:29.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6714" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-10-25T05:51:51.263" Score="0" Body="Questions about pathology; impairments of health or a condition of abnormal bodily functions." OwnerUserId="21433" LastEditorUserId="21433" LastEditDate="2015-10-07T01:21:32.880" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T01:21:32.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6715" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-10-25T05:54:46.750" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-10-25T05:54:46.750" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T05:54:46.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6716" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-10-25T05:54:46.750" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2011-10-25T05:54:46.750" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T05:54:46.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6707" CreationDate="2011-10-25T10:53:56.137" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer seems to be &lt;strong&gt;grass-fed cows produce both meat and dairy with more omega-3 and less omega-6, but bio-butter is no guarantee you're getting grass-fed cows&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remembered Michael Pollan's &lt;em&gt;The Omnivore's Dilemma&lt;/em&gt; making a similar claim regarding meat on pages 75 and 267. I followed its citation chain through &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eatwild.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.eatwild.com&lt;/a&gt; to an actual paper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://jas.fass.org/content/80/5/1202.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rule, D. C., K. S. Brought on, S. M. Shellito, and G. Maiorano. &lt;em&gt;Comparison of Muscle Fatty Acid Profiles and Cholesterol Concentrations of Bison, Beef Cattle, Elk, and Chicken.&lt;/em&gt; J Anim Sci 80, no. 5 (2002): 1202-11&lt;/a&gt; which analyzes composition &lt;em&gt;of the meat of these animals&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The objective of this study was to compare fatty acid weight percentages and cholesterol concentrations of longissimus dorsi (LD), semitendinosus (ST), and supraspinatus (SS) muscles (n = 10 for each) of range bison (31 mo of age), feedlot-finished bison (18 mo of age), range beef cows (4 to 7 yr of age), feedlot steers (18 mo of age), free-ranging cow elk (3 to 5 yr of age), and chicken breast...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Range-fed animals had higher (P &amp;lt; 0.01) n-3 fatty acids than feedlot-fed animals or chicken breast.&lt;/strong&gt; Chicken breast n-6 fatty acids were greater (P &amp;lt; 0.01) than for muscles from bison, beef, or elk. Elk had higher (P &amp;lt; 0.01) n-6 fatty acids than bison or beef cattle; however, range-fed animals had higher (P &amp;lt; 0.01) n-6 fatty acids than feedlot-fed animals in [semitendinosus muscles].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is a good link between &lt;em&gt;diet&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;meat composition&lt;/em&gt;, and from what I can see there have been several studies confirming the results. Can we find a similar link for dairy products? I dug some more, and according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16702259&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Couvreur S, Hurtaud C, Lopez C, Delaby L, Peyraud JL. &lt;em&gt;The linear relationship between the proportion of fresh grass in the cow diet, milk fatty acid composition, and butter properties&lt;/em&gt;. J Dairy Sci. 2006 Jun;89(6):1956-69&lt;/a&gt;, yes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Milk yield linearly increased with the proportion of fresh grass in the diet (+0.21 kg/d per 10% of grass). Fat yield remained unchanged. Thus, by effect of dilution, increasing the proportion of fresh grass in the diet induced a linear decrease in fat content. Milk fat globule size decreased by 0.29 mum when the proportion of grass reached 30% in the diet. Increasing the proportion of fresh grass in the diet induced a linear increase in unsaturated fatty acids percentages at the expense of saturated fatty acids...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between G0 and G100 [no grass / all corn and all grass / no corn], &lt;strong&gt;polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) percentages increased linearly&lt;/strong&gt; because of the increase in C18:2 n-6 trans trans from 0.25 to 0.61%, C18:2 cis-9,trans-11 from 0.48 to 1.65%, and &lt;strong&gt;C18:3n-3 from 0.22 to 0.70%.&lt;/strong&gt; On the other hand, &lt;strong&gt;C18:2 n-6 cis cis tended to decrease linearly&lt;/strong&gt;. Very long&#xA;chain PUFA (C20 and C22) were not modified by treatments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bio-siegel.de/infos-fuer-verbraucher/das-staatliche-bio-siegel/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Germany's Bio-Siegel requirements say nothing about whether you must feed your cows grass.&lt;/a&gt; It bans genetically modified food, irradiation, synthetic fertilizers, and requires certain sustainable practices. But as long as you're growing bio-corn on your farm, you can feed it to your cows and still get bio-butter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A generous interpretation of Greenpeace's results would be that bio-butter manufacturers do some other processing / selection of their products beyond the Bio-Siegel requirements (such as sourcing primarily from grass-fed cows) to increase omega-3 acids, and that's why they got the results they did. More likely their results are just not statistically significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T03:45:46.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6719" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-25T15:50:41.013" Score="15" ViewCount="285030" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard from several people that drinking milk or dairy products while eating fish  can lead towards a special skin pigmentation disorders such as different skin color or bright spots on skin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked a dermatologist about it and she said it is preferred not to do so, as there are some cases reported. I would like to know is there scientific evidence behind this claim as I am really skeptical about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5119" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T10:16:23.593" LastActivityDate="2018-12-29T20:12:47.373" Title="Is eating fish  and drinking milk at the same time linked with skin disease?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|milk|disease|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6708" CreationDate="2011-10-25T16:16:05.267" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;A user on YouTube, called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/user/TheRationalizer&quot;&gt;TheRationalizer&lt;/a&gt; has examined the claim that Kaaba, in Mecca, lies upon (one of) the Golden Ratio points between the North and South pole, and between Greenwich Meridian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His three minute &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrzGT6YV5XM&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt; reproduces the calculations, using the freely available tools of &lt;a href=&quot;http://earth.google.com&quot;&gt;Google Earth&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/&quot;&gt;Wolfram Alpha&lt;/a&gt;. He shows each of his calculations on-screen, with justifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His conclusion is that the geographical point that has the properties claimed (approximately &lt;a href=&quot;http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&amp;amp;source=s_q&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;geocode=&amp;amp;q=21.24611,+42.49223&amp;amp;aq=&amp;amp;sll=21.245862,42.492371&amp;amp;sspn=1.709965,2.617493&amp;amp;vpsrc=0&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;t=h&amp;amp;z=9&quot;&gt;21.24611°N, 42.49223°E&lt;/a&gt;) is &lt;strong&gt;276.92km&lt;/strong&gt; (about 172 miles) from &lt;a href=&quot;http://maps.google.com/maps?q=kaaba&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ll=21.42252,39.826201&amp;amp;spn=0.001608,0.003578&amp;amp;sll=21.343107,40.501099&amp;amp;sspn=1.708834,2.617493&amp;amp;vpsrc=6&amp;amp;hq=kaaba&amp;amp;t=h&amp;amp;z=19&quot;&gt;Kaaba, in Mecca&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, even if you accept:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Golden Ratio is spiritually significant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The location of the arbitrary East/West divide of the Greenwich Meridian is spiritually significant, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The inherently North-centric and East-centric view implicitly assumed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;there is still a large error in the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a peer-reviewed source. I can see no errors in his approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-07-08T09:52:11.463" LastActivityDate="2012-07-08T09:52:11.463" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6721" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-25T16:29:02.923" Score="16" ViewCount="728" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support the common conception that one is more likely to be physically injured when dating someone met online as opposed to someone met &quot;offline&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3278" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2015-11-30T07:04:33.867" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T07:04:33.867" Title="Is online dating unsafe?" Tags="|safety|internet|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6723" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-25T18:30:25.837" Score="16" ViewCount="861" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the standard “things are worse now than ever before” polemic, it's claimed that rates of mental illness are higher now than ever – usually without any proof, and usually alongside known-false claims such as people now being more violent or less healthy (compared to, say, the 1400s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems clear that rates of &lt;em&gt;diagnosis&lt;/em&gt; are on the rise, as are disability claims. But can't this just be due to lowered thresholds for diagnosis, and more people seeking treatment? Are there studies that show incidence actually increasing, or an upward trend in psychiatric assessment scores?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I've heard this most often amid a laundry list of unsourced (mostly known-false) claims, here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cchr.org/sites/default/files/Anatomy_of_an_Epidemic_Psychiatric_Drugs_Rise_of_Mental_Illness.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; in Spring 2005's &lt;em&gt;Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry&lt;/em&gt; which was later expanded into &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomy_of_an_Epidemic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the book&lt;/a&gt; discussed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/04/28/the-astonishing-rise-of-mental-illness-in-america/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. It claims that mental illness per 1000 went from 0.2 in 1850 to 20 in 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm looking for in an answer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Historic prevalences of a few mental disorders with &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; well-defined symptoms,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A good proxy for mental health (e.g., attempted suicide) over at least 50 years, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Repeated applications of a psychiatric assessment scale to groups of people “picked up off the street” at intervals over a total of 25 years or more (&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a cohort study; a different group every time).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5120" LastEditorUserId="5120" LastEditDate="2012-04-07T09:37:30.263" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T09:37:30.263" Title="Has mental health deteriorated 1000-fold since 1850?" Tags="|psychiatry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6729" CreationDate="2011-10-25T20:56:23.360" Score="12" ViewCount="3778" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone in the North-East of England knows that during the Napoleonic wars the good burghers of Hartlepool, having found a shipwrecked monkey washed up on the beach, thought it was a French spy, and (after a fair trial) hanged it (from a convenient yard-arm).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I heard this called into question in a public house this evening (since the public house is in Darlington, a town by no means well-disposed to Hartlepool, this is a serious matter). The Wikipedia entry &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_hanger&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is ambivalent on the subject (apart from the preposterous suggestion the deed was done in Darlington), and Hartlepool's own site &lt;a href=&quot;http://thisishartlepool.co.uk/history/thehartlepoolmonkey.asp&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; isn't conclusive one way or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Was a monkey really hanged in Hartlepool for being a French spy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1639" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-26T07:41:28.547" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T15:37:58.373" Title="Was a monkey hanged as a French spy in Hartlepool?" Tags="|history|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6704" CreationDate="2011-10-25T21:38:18.503" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lightning strikes can cause brief but strong voltage differentials, which will travel through wires and can destroy electric equipment, start fires, or even kill people in close contact with electrical equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Snopes cites a number of examples of the latter: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/phone.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lightning Telephone Deaths&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This only applies to corded phones and other equipment connected by wire of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, standing outside in a thunderstorm while talking on a cellphone (or even just carrying one) can be bad for your health too. Like eletrical wiring, electronic devices too can act as &quot;hot spots&quot; for the sudden surge of electricity caused by lightning strikes. Snopes again: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/ipod.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iFried&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5121" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T21:38:18.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6727" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-25T22:54:49.030" Score="4" ViewCount="554" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7152/does-eating-greasy-foods-help-soak-up-alcohol&quot;&gt;Does eating greasy foods &amp;#39;help soak up alcohol&amp;#39;?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been told to always take a buttered sandwich prior to going out drinking because it would prevent me from getting &quot;vomiting all over the place&quot; drunk and from having a terrible hangover the next day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've stopped drinking, so I can't really test it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5122" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T23:48:33.063" Title="Does butter before drinking alcohol help with hangovers and getting too drunk?" Tags="|alcohol|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2011-12-03T09:27:58.760" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6673" CreationDate="2011-10-25T23:21:10.753" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't want to preempt a reply from Ben Goldacre but this is the reference from his discussion of placebos on his bad science blog (blog discussion &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badscience.net/2008/03/all-bow-before-the-might-of-the-placebo-effect-it-is-the-coolest-strangest-thing-in-medicine/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, academic reference &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1537589705000091&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately for us mortals the academic reference is behind an expensive paywall. But other trials of placebos are accessible (at least to me). One from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/336/7651/999.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BMJ in 2008&lt;/a&gt; which sought to test the components of the placebo effect in irritable bowel syndrome concluded (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Factors contributing to the placebo effect can be progressively combined in a manner resembling a graded dose escalation of component parts. Non-specific effects &lt;strong&gt;can produce statistically and clinically significant outcomes&lt;/strong&gt; and the patient-practitioner relationship is the most robust component.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An earlier paper by the same team in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/332/7538/391.full.pdf?sid=c46335de-02e1-44b5-9038-0cbe880d74ab&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BMJ in 2006&lt;/a&gt; found that some placebos were better than others in treating pain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sham device had greater effects than the placebo pill on self reported pain and severity of symptoms over the entire course of treatment...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm aware I'm not &lt;em&gt;quite&lt;/em&gt; answering the claim about ulcers (unless the detail is in the paywalled paper) but I think the general idea that placebos can have significant effects is clear and also the idea that some placebos are better than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT&#xA;The Nick Barrowman blog uses a different &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2014313/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reference&lt;/a&gt; to the one I assumed Goldacre was referring to. The reference shows an effect but Barrowman criticises the study for not doing a proper randomised trial between two different placebos. Fair comment, but while specifically correct for ulcers and placebos, proper trials on alternative placebos have been done and still show effects (see my examples). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2011-10-25T23:29:41.833" LastActivityDate="2011-10-25T23:29:41.833" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6724" CreationDate="2011-10-26T01:49:55.453" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; There exists no evidence that this actually happened, and there only exists thin circumstantial evidence that it did NOT happen (in the form of plausible alternate origin of the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.communigate.co.uk/ne/eatingoutinthenorth/page27.phtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.communigate.co.uk/ne/eatingoutinthenorth/page27.phtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence of any truth in the legend, or that it is very old. &lt;strong&gt;The first mention of the Monkey is in the mid 19th Century, when Ned Corvan, a famous Geordie comic singer and songwriter, first performed the 'Monkey Song'.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corvan toured from North Yorkshire to the Scottish lowlands. About this time he may have come into contact with the song 'And the Boddamers hung the Monkey O', a song about the villagers of the seaside village of Boddam near Peterhead in Scotland, who hanged a monkey because it was the only survivor from a local shipwreck and the salvage rights could only be claimed if there were no survivors from a wreck. &lt;strong&gt;The similarity between the choruses of the two songs is very striking.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the lyrics to the monkey song for :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thisishartlepool.co.uk/history/thehartlepoolmonkey.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.thisishartlepool.co.uk/history/thehartlepoolmonkey.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;In former times, when war and strife&#xA;The French invasion threaten'd life&#xA;An' all was armed to the knife&#xA;The Fisherman hung the monkey O ! &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here's the lyrics to the Boddamer song:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ascottishstoryteller.blogspot.com/2004/09/and-boddamers-hung-monkey-o.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ascottishstoryteller.blogspot.com/2004/09/and-boddamers-hung-monkey-o.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Eence a ship sailed round the coast&#xA;And a' the men in her was lost&#xA;Burrin' a monkey up a post&#xA;So the Boddamers hanged the monkey-O&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second proposed explanation (from snopes discussion thread) was that it was indeed a young frenchman sailor, and &amp;quot;monkey&amp;quot; part came from him serving in a &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powder_monkey&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;powder monkey&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-26T14:59:14.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6730" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9913" CreationDate="2011-10-26T08:05:04.683" Score="28" ViewCount="2137" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hear about workplaces banning sites like Facebook, or Twitter, all in the name of productivity gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there been any studies showing any evidence that having full access to browse the web at work a potential productivity killer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="686" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T17:47:40.233" Title="Is an open internet access a productivity killer at the workplace?" Tags="|productivity|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6708" CreationDate="2011-10-26T10:08:59.897" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;also the proportion of eastern and western elongation, are equal to&#xA;  the Golden Mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, Al-Masjid al-Ḥarām (The Grand Mosque) was established in Mecca in 638. That's thousand years before Greenwich observatory was established. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly initial meridian is completely arbitrary. Historically there have been dozens of them. Greenwich has been established as initial meridian only in 1851 and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17759&quot;&gt;internationally accepted in 1884&lt;/a&gt;. And that still wasn't universal adoption. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's sounds ridiculous to affirm that location of The Grand Mosque is based on coordinate system that didn't exist until 1250 years later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-10-26T15:25:45.357" LastActivityDate="2011-10-26T15:25:45.357" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6732" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6733" CreationDate="2011-10-26T13:33:12.183" Score="65" ViewCount="137103" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to&#xA;  climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is&#xA;  stupid.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm just not confident that this is something Einstein would say.  I Googled it and was unable to find the quote from a source that I feel is reliable.  I was hoping someone could confirm or deny this attribution. Wikiquotes does not list it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5352/can-any-fish-climb-trees&quot;&gt;Can any fish climb trees?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5124" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2023-04-07T16:57:13.440" Title="Did Einstein say the &quot;if you judge a fish&quot; quote that many are attributing to him?" Tags="|quotes|albert-einstein|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6732" CreationDate="2011-10-26T14:00:45.137" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;This one is disputed, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein&quot;&gt;wikiquote&lt;/a&gt; states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching through &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=%22But%20if%20you%20judge%20a%20fish%20by%20its%20ability%20to%20climb%20a%20tree%22&amp;amp;btnG=Search%20Books&amp;amp;tbm=bks&amp;amp;tbo=1#sclient=psy-ab&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;tbo=1&amp;amp;tbm=bks&amp;amp;source=hp&amp;amp;q=%22if%20you%20judge%20a%20fish%20by%20its%20ability%20to%20climb%20a%20tree%22&amp;amp;pbx=1&amp;amp;oq=%22if%20you%20judge%20a%20fish%20by%20its%20ability%20to%20climb%20a%20tree%22&amp;amp;aq=f&amp;amp;aqi=&amp;amp;aql=&amp;amp;gs_sm=e&amp;amp;gs_upl=14215l14366l0l14526l2l2l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&amp;amp;fp=711d2dd8fab9cdf8&amp;amp;biw=1315&amp;amp;bih=786&quot;&gt;books&lt;/a&gt; you will find only four instances and it sounds possible that these might have been triggered by the first one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The search for the specific phrase &quot;if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree&quot; did not found any suggestion of other sources in the whole corpus of google books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you check other, verified quotes you find more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=%22The%20true%20value%20of%20a%20human%20being%20is%20determined%20primarily%20by%20the%20measure%20and%20the%20sense%20in%20which%20he%20has%20attained%20to%20liberation%20from%20the%20self.%22&amp;amp;btnG=Search%20Books&amp;amp;tbm=bks&amp;amp;tbo=1&quot;&gt;occurrences&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained to liberation from the self.&quot; appears in 39 titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2899" LastActivityDate="2011-10-26T14:00:45.137" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6734" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-26T16:20:37.597" Score="6" ViewCount="549" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quoting the Population Research Institute (PRI)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In our research, we’ve looked at the UN’s predictions and how they have compared with real life--and in every case the “low variant” has been the most accurate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://overpopulationisamyth.com/content/episode-5-7-billion-people-will-everyone-please-relax#header-2&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took a look at the stats on the UN's site and they show the actual population for historical figures, not their old projections.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems to be no use to verify whether the low variant is historically the figure which lines up more accurately with population growth.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastActivityDate="2011-11-30T18:49:12.140" Title="Has the UN low variant for population growth been the historically correct figure?" Tags="|united-nations|population|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6719" CreationDate="2011-10-26T19:15:28.460" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;strong&gt;myth&lt;/strong&gt; appears to stem from The Talmud - a vast collection of Jewish laws and traditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although modern-day medicine and science may beg to differ, the sages of the Talmud were under the impression that eating fish and meat together is extremely dangerous to one’s health. In fact, in those days, there was actually a dermatological condition which was believed to be caused by eating fish and meat together. As such, the rabbis prohibited the consumption of such mixtures, a practice which continues to this day. This ban applies to fowl as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clearly, however, today this is not the case. Some try to reconcile this medical contradiction, claiming that what was unhealthy in those days may not be in ours. In fact, in talmudic times it was believed that rotten fish was good for you!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is important to note that this prohibition is unlike the one forbidding mixing milk and meat. Here, it is merely forbidden to eat fish and meat at the exact same time, or in immediate succession. A waiting period, however, is not necessary. The dishes used for eating them may be interchanged, and hence no need for special “fish dishes” in one’s kitchen. (Explained by Rabbi Ari Enkin &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110928124437/http://judaism.about.com/od/orthodoxfaqenkin/f/fish.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The skin disease particulars you mention above seems to be an elaboration from Hindu religion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Pakistan, it is widely believed that if one drinks milk after eating fish (or other way around), you get skin disease. However this is not true. The skin disease (in which people's skin become white overtime) is a tropical skin disease and has nothing to do with simultaneous consumption of fish and milk. In fact, this is a Hindu religion inspired idea and that is why it has become such a powerful belief in Pakistan (due to our pre-independence days) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mapi.com/en/newsletters/ayurveda_&amp;amp;_milk.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 1996 published African article titled &lt;code&gt;« After Fish, Milk Do not Wish ». Recurring Ideas in a Global Culture&lt;/code&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.persee.fr/doc/cea_0008-0055_1996_num_36_144_1859&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt;, did a thorough investigation of the origin and evolution of this, and related myths, as well as referencing a handful of scientists that performed more scientifically thorough investigations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A widespread belief in Mali associates certain forms of fish diets with leprosy (Hansen's disease). Very similar aversions to fish&#xA;  diets have existed in ancient Egypt, the Islamic Middle East, northern Nigeria, medieval Europe, and colonial America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The beliefs documented by Robinson were listed as Hausa 'superstitions and customs' in 1913 monograph Seven years earlier however respected and well-known British leprosy&#xA;  specialist Dr Jonathan Hutchinson promoted virtually the same beliefs as&#xA;  scientific hypothesis in 407-page book, &lt;em&gt;On Leprosy and Fish-Eating&#xA;  Statement of Facts and Explanations&lt;/em&gt; (1906) Synthesizing data collected&#xA;  from around the world by himself and by others Hutchinson argued&#xA;  vehemently against the then prevailing contagion theories He suggested&#xA;  instead that the 'cause of the disease is some ingredient or parasite&#xA;  generated by or introduced into fish which has been either not cured at all&#xA;  or cured badly.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As late as the mid-1960s handful of doctors trained in scientific&#xA;  medicine were still earnestly investigating the fish hypothesis Meny&#xA;  Bergel director of the Leprosy Research Laboratory in Rosario Argentina&#xA;  published several articles in 1958, 1959, 1960, and 1966 attempting to explain the&#xA;  well established correlation between the occurrence of leprosy and the&#xA;  ingestion of diets high in decomposing fish In short he found that the&#xA;  consumption of rancid fats and unsaturated fatty acids favored the growth&#xA;  of the Hansen bacillus in laboratory rats Though never harboring the&#xA;  actual disease fish nonetheless facilitated its development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their references only reach as far back as 1995. I am doubtful that any scientist would have more recently dignified this claim with an investigation. Any individual doctor or nutritionist, when consulted, is able to debunk these fears with basic facts of medicine and chemistry. Over time, the nature of the claim has changed (from causing death, to Leprosy, to Vitiligo, to generic skin disease, to generic bad health - but mostly Leprosy). There's zero evidence for these claims in modern times. The cause for Leprosy is now well known and has nothing to do with fish or milk or any combination of the two. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprosy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[4]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="30273" LastEditDate="2018-12-29T20:12:47.373" LastActivityDate="2018-12-29T20:12:47.373" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6737" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-26T06:13:10.167" Score="2" ViewCount="186" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2590/can-i-get-high-using-binaural-beats&quot;&gt;Can I get high using binaural beats?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had days when I have a difficult time thinking and getting creative, and then I have other days where I have no problem at all being really really productive and creative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I heard something the other night on 60 minutes about brainwave syncronization and how people who have autism have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7385686n&amp;amp;tag=contentBody;storyMediaBox&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;difficult time getting the two hemispheres of their brain to sync-up&lt;/a&gt;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few years ago I started using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainwave_entrainment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brainwave Entrainment&lt;/a&gt; software to help me fall asleep at night, and the software has other settings that are for other things like making you more productive, more creative etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was just wondering how much of this was for real and how much of it was bunk...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5137" OwnerDisplayName="leeand00" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-10-26T20:29:58.820" Title="Is Brainwave Entrainment for real?" Tags="|productivity|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2011-10-26T20:48:27.520" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6738" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-26T20:42:22.510" Score="10" ViewCount="2373" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Does_colors_make_you_hungry&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;something&lt;/a&gt; I found by googling &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?gcx=c&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;q=red%20hungry&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;red hungry&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A variety of colors can trigger hunger. The most influential colors in terms of food are: red, orange, yellow. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A color psychologist would tell you that this is no surprise: red is the color that makes people hungry. Red instantly attracts attention and it also makes people excited, energetic, and increases the heart rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard this a lot, but I have never noticed it working on myself.  If it does work, it would have to be a subconscious process.  Has anyone ever verified this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The claims I have heard and can see out there usually have to do with the advertising and decor surrounding food, as in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.famouslogos.org/the-psychology-of-fast-food-logos&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, which I found in &lt;a href=&quot;https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/14242&quot;&gt;this UX.SE answer&lt;/a&gt; to the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://ux.stackexchange.com/q/14239&quot;&gt;Which colors make you hungry&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in my above quote, color psychology is mentioned. Are there research papers not only hypothesizing associations between color and behavior, but demonstrating experimental data? In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_psychology&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Color Psychology&lt;/a&gt; wikipedia page, many references to research papers are made, but many of them (the ones I clicked to and read the abstracts of) don't describe empirical proof, sometimes instead using such associations as a given and a platform on which other theories are established (I don't want to pay $35.95 to be sure though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3809" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T18:27:16.630" Title="Does the color red make you hungrier?" Tags="|psychology|consciousness|colors|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2103" CreationDate="2011-10-26T20:45:48.733" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jamie Oliver badly misrepresented the issue.  We&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; made &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.meatmythcrushers.com/myths/myth-ordinary-household-ammonia-is-used-to-make-some-hamburgers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Meat MythCrusher video&lt;/a&gt; featuring an expert, &lt;a href=&quot;http://animalscience.tamu.edu/facultystaff/faculty/acuff.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr Gary Acuff&lt;/a&gt;, to help explain what's really going on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Remember these facts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ammonia and ammonium hydroxide exist naturally in our bodies and in meat.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ammonium hydroxide is approved in most countries for food processing by agencies like the FDA.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When it is used in beef processing in the U.S., it is done under government inspection, through the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). It is used to make beef safer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; The American Meat Institute with review by the members of the American Meat Science Association and other experts in the field. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.meatmythcrushers.com/about.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5129" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-27T03:52:07.530" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T03:52:07.530" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6730" CreationDate="2011-10-26T22:36:54.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not that obvious. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realwire.com/release_detail.asp?ReleaseID=8778&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;PopCap Break&quot; 2008 report&lt;/a&gt; (original site doesn't exist anymore) suggests that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(... personal internet use in the workplace ...) is far from&#xA;  distracting employees from their work, taking a 10-minute online break&#xA;  during the course of the working day serves to reduce stress while&#xA;  sharpening and refocusing the mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gold.ac.uk/psychology/staff/premuzic/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr Chamorro-Premuzic&lt;/a&gt; comments: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The report proves that a ten minute e-break a&#xA;  day can have significant benefits but, despite this, many bosses are&#xA;  banning them in the fear that they distract employees. By factoring in&#xA;  a dedicated slot for an e-break bosses are fostering a more trusting&#xA;  working environment, boosting productivity and ultimately increasing&#xA;  their profit which surely makes good business sense.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-10-28T08:36:53.397" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T08:36:53.397" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6742" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6750" CreationDate="2011-10-27T11:11:46.220" Score="9" ViewCount="1706" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Christian claimed to me that: the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Y-chromosomal Adam&lt;/a&gt; is way younger than the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mitochondrial Eve&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He argued that this was consistent with the biblical account: that Noah is Y-Chromosomal Adam and Eve is Mitochondrial Eve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this result really consistent with that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These Christian sites repeat the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mhrc.net/mitochondriaEveModel.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Molecular History Research Center&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.evidenceforchristianity.org/index.php?option=com_custom_content&amp;amp;task=view&amp;amp;id=4507&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evidence for Christianity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I read somewhere that the most recent universal human ancestor might be less than 5,000 years old. That's younger than Chinese civilization. But, hey, could it be true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some said I am missing the point that Y-Adam is not the partner of m-Eve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually that's the point. Sons of Noah had wives and those wives are decendant of Eve, not Noah. Hence, mitocondrial eve is older than than y chromosome Adam. The m-eve is Eve, and the Y-adam is Noah. Y chromosome adam is actually Noah. That seems to be what the Christians are trying to point out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am a half-way atheist; I don't know which one is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="4082" LastEditDate="2011-10-30T21:55:47.237" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T13:27:50.837" Title="Is Y-chromosomal Adam younger than Mitochondrial Eve?" Tags="|genetics|bible|young-earth-creationism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6744" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-27T12:09:20.747" Score="3" ViewCount="820" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joseph Davidovits &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidovits.info/496/error-or-forgery-on-the-stele-of-merneptah-known-as-israel-stele&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that the word &quot;iisii-r-iar&quot;, &quot;ysrỉar&quot; or however you want to transcribe it, that appears on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merneptah_Stele&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Merneptah Stele&lt;/a&gt; is an Egyptian phrase meaning &quot;those who are exiled for their sins&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this word is usually assumed mean &quot;Israel&quot;, and since the pharao says that the Israelites are exiled for their sins &lt;a href=&quot;http://bible.cc/ezekiel/39-23.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in the bible&lt;/a&gt;, this sounds just a little bit to good to be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the basis for his claims? Does he have anything real to base this on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="80" LastEditDate="2011-10-27T18:17:20.440" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T01:49:30.507" Title="Does &quot;Israel&quot; mean &quot;Exiled for their sins&quot;?" Tags="|egypt|israel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6749" CreationDate="2011-10-27T13:12:52.253" Score="3" ViewCount="563" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/apple-and-samsungs-symbiotic-relationship&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; it is alleged that the iPhone 4 has a large mark-up from manufacturing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these figures true? What is the evidence behind this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB: I mean the manufacturing costs. Not including marketing-development-distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4747" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-10-27T13:41:33.767" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T16:50:00.520" Title="Are the iPhone 4's manufacturing costs $178?" Tags="|marketing|mobile-phones|price|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6746" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-27T13:21:08.053" Score="22" ViewCount="2132" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a movie and police-procedural TV-show cliche that we all know: The police captain (or insert-your-favourite-law-enforcement-officer) realises he (I can't recall it ever being a she.) has a &quot;situation&quot; involving bad guys inside a building that he needs to get out. He shouts: &quot;Somebody get me the plans to this building!&quot;. Minutes later the cops are spreading out the blueprints on the bonnet of the car to find the best entry point.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0440963/quotes&quot;&gt;The Bourne Ultimatum&lt;/a&gt; is a random example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;VOSEN: Get an elevation and a floor plan, tic-tac-toe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that film, the blueprints were immediately sent to an agent's phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it is all exaggerated in the movies, but my question is &quot;Is there a morsel of truth to this?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it a legitimate and common police tactic to obtain copies of floor plans before embarking on planned raids?&lt;/strong&gt; Or is this another item that cops roll their eyes at when they see it on television?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd accept it as a &quot;Yes&quot; if it was true in any major city in the world. In the absense of that, I'd (provisionally) accept it as a &quot;No&quot; if there were any official denials from major jurisdictions. Open to other evidence too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:31:40.373" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T16:49:11.167" Title="Do police have easy access to building plans?" Tags="|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6747" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-27T15:07:12.880" Score="20" ViewCount="9527" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the context of the &quot;occupy&quot; protests, I've head a couple of times that you should carry a bandana or cloth soaked in vinegar with you, and in case the police uses tear gas/irritants, you should breath through it, or cover your face with it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/5853582/how-to-be-a-citizen-journalist-without-getting-killed&quot;&gt;Here is one recent source&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Setting aside legal and moral aspects of preparing for such a situation, say you have a good reason... (and also the fact that is stinks...):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does it work? If so, how?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd actually expect the contrary. The vinegar vapors would open up your airways and you would be incapacitated even faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5136" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T17:44:54.747" LastActivityDate="2017-04-17T15:00:15.470" Title="Does a vinegar bandana help against tear gas?" Tags="|physiology|vinegar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6745" CreationDate="2011-10-27T16:50:00.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is circumstantial evidence, but perhaps it is enough to persuade you that the figures are plausible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apple make a number of products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at Apple's latest (at time of writing) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2011/10/18Apple-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-Results.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quarterly results&lt;/a&gt;, we can see their figures in the three months ended 24 September 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They received $28,270,000,000 in Net sales, and had a Cost of Sales of $16,890,000,000. That is, their &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_goods_sold&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cost of Goods Sold&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;for all of their products&lt;/em&gt; accounted for around 60% of their sale price.  Presumably (non-Apple Store) retailers add their own margin on top of that, so the real figure by the time you buy it will be lower still.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the sources of error here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All products, not just iPhone 4.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doesn't include retailer margin.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doesn't include other major costs, such as marketing, R&amp;amp;D, administrative.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a personal note, these figures fill me with yawn. The Cost of Goods Sold is only part of a company's costs. The fact that a successful hardware manufacturer would have significant mark-ups isn't surprising or noteworthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T16:50:00.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6742" CreationDate="2011-10-27T16:58:41.367" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is true to the extent that we can date accurately (see the Wikipedia links you provided, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://genomebiology.com/2011/12/6/118&quot;&gt;this summary article&lt;/a&gt;).  The best estimates right now are that Mitochondrial Eve lived 200+-13 kya, while Y-chromosomal Adam lived 142+-15 kya.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also true that Genesis describes Noah and his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%206:10&amp;amp;version=ESV&quot;&gt;three sons&lt;/a&gt; (one Y chromosome) and his wife and sons' wives (4 different mitochondria) as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%206:18&amp;amp;version=ESV&quot;&gt;the human passengers&lt;/a&gt; on Ark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is just about exactly meaningless.  The genetic data doesn't agree very well with this sort of arrangement, especially since there would need to be a massive population expansion after the ark, which means that many male lineages would trace back to a common choke-point; the lineage would look more like a comb than a tree.  Instead, the branching pattern seems like a typical tree expected from a more stable population size (see picture on Wikipedia, for example).  But so much other genetic data profoundly disagrees with this (e.g. the genetic age of pretty much &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; allelic variation in humans should be no more than the mitochondrial age of Eve, more or less, and this is absolutely not what is found) that Biblical literalists can only rationally accept such drastically different processes than we observe now that one can draw no conclusions about what happened back then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="1039" LastEditDate="2011-10-27T22:34:40.337" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T22:34:40.337" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="564" CreationDate="2011-10-27T17:40:24.810" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be clear, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samesexattraction.org/biological-causes-homosexuality.htm&quot;&gt;science&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychology.org.au/publications/tip_sheets/orientation/#s2&quot;&gt;has&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/157/11/1843&quot;&gt;thus&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology&quot;&gt;far&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aap.org/publiced/BR_GayTeen.htm&quot;&gt;failed&lt;/a&gt; to produce reproducible experimental evidence demonstrating a statistically significant genetic predisposition to any sexuality &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; a lack of one. &lt;strong&gt;There are only theories, no consensus.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is part of a much larger problem dubbed &quot;Nature vs. Nurture&quot; that makes it extremely difficult to tell whether a great number of human characteristics (especially psychological) have a genetic predisposition or a purely a result of environmental parameters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some scientists have searched for a direct genetic cause of same-sex attraction—a gene or chromosome that actually determines sexual orientation. (Friedman and Downey, p. 149) Some studies hint at a biological component, but have not proven that same-sex attraction is an inborn or biologically-determined characteristic. If you read the reports published by the researchers, you find that they admit their current findings are not conclusive and simply hint at what some of the causes may be. Furthermore, these studies have not been able to be replicated. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samesexattraction.org/biological-causes-homosexuality.htm&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samesexattraction.org/biological-causes-homosexuality.htm&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt; Biological Causes of Same-sex Attraction, - A compilation of published Twin Studies, Brain Studies, Chromosome studies, Hormone Studies, and Psychiatric dissertations on Psychiatry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How a particular sexual orientation develops in any individual is not well understood by scientists. Various theories provide different explanations for what determines a person's sexual orientation, including genetic and biological factors and life experiences during early childhood. Despite much research there is no proven explanation of how sexual orientation is determined. However, many scientists share the view that for most people sexual orientation is shaped during the first few years of life through complex interactions of genetic, biological, psychological and social factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite what some people claim, there is no evidence that society's greater acceptance of homosexuality results in more people having a homosexual sexual orientation. The greater numbers of people identifying as homosexual are a result of fewer people fighting their homosexual feelings while attempting to live heterosexual lives. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychology.org.au/publications/tip_sheets/orientation/#s2&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychology.org.au/publications/tip_sheets/orientation/#s2&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt; Australian Psychological Society, Psychology and Behavioural Sciences Collection database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although previous studies have suggested that sexual orientation is influenced by familial factors, which may be partly genetic, these studies have relied on unrepresentative and potentially biased samples. The authors attempted to estimate the role of genetic and environmental factors in the determination of sexual orientation in a more representative sample. [This study suggests that] familial factors, which are at least partly genetic, influence sexual orientation. The results of these analyses should be interpreted in the context of &lt;em&gt;low statistical power&lt;/em&gt; and the use of a single item to assess the complex phenotype of sexual orientation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/157/11/1843&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/157/11/1843&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt; Kenneth S. Kendler, M.D. et al. Sexual Orientation in a U.S. National Sample of Twin and Nontwin Sibling Pairs. Am J Psychiatry 157:1843-1846, November 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T17:40:24.810" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6754" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6778" CreationDate="2011-10-27T19:04:37.403" Score="10" ViewCount="14273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once heard that it is allowed to kill a scotsman in York, if you do it with a bow and arrow. Apparently there is no danger in this law, since the bow and arrow needed to be made by a no longer existing factory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is it really true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5141" LastActivityDate="2015-04-19T07:57:36.140" Title="Is it legal to kill a scotsman in York?" Tags="|law|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6566" CreationDate="2011-10-27T21:03:43.883" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is that, although there seems to be an association there is no clear scientific proof for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12048223&quot;&gt;Adult and childhood leukemia near a high-power radio station in Rome, Italy.&lt;/a&gt; - Michelozzi, &lt;em&gt;Am J Epidemiol&lt;/em&gt;, 2002 (bold is mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the 10-km area around the station, with 49,656 residents (in 1991),&#xA;  leukemia mortality among adults (aged &gt;14 years; 40 cases) in&#xA;  1987-1998 and childhood leukemia incidence (eight cases) in 1987-1999&#xA;  were evaluated. &lt;strong&gt;The risk of childhood leukemia was higher than&#xA;  expected for the distance up to 6 km from the radio station&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  (standardized incidence rate = 2.2, 95% confidence interval: 1.0,&#xA;  4.1), and there was a &lt;strong&gt;significant decline in risk with increasing distance&lt;/strong&gt; both for male mortality (p = 0.03) and for childhood leukemia&#xA;  (p = 0.036). The study has limitations because of the &lt;strong&gt;small number of&#xA;  cases and the lack of exposure data&lt;/strong&gt;. Although the study adds evidence&#xA;  of an excess of leukemia in a population living near high-power radio&#xA;  transmitters, &lt;strong&gt;no causal implication can be drawn&lt;/strong&gt;. There is still&#xA;  insufficient scientific knowledge, and new epidemiologic studies are&#xA;  needed to clarify a possible leukemogenic effect of residential&#xA;  exposure to radio frequency radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the specific Radio Vaticana's case, there are other studies that analyze similar issues. The problems, however, are always the same: low power studies, with a huge amount of counfounding variables (problems that are generally noted in the studies themselves).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7823291&quot;&gt;Investigation of increased incidence in childhood leukemia near radio towers in Hawaii: preliminary observations&lt;/a&gt; - Maskarinek et al., &lt;em&gt;J Environ Pathol Toxicol Oncol&lt;/em&gt;, 1994&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The clustering may have been a chance event, but because of its peculiar characteristics, we feel it should be noted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8985435&quot;&gt;Cancer incidence and mortality and proximity to TV towers.&lt;/a&gt; - Hocking et al, &lt;em&gt;Med J Aust&lt;/em&gt;, 1996 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The calculated levels of RFR in the areas with increased childhood leukaemia incidence and mortality are substantially below the current Australian public safety standard. More detailed studies (e.g., relating cases to power density contours) are required to replicate any association and to look for dose-response relationships before any conclusions can be drawn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8982016&quot;&gt;Cancer Incidence near Radio and Television Transmitters in Great Britain I. Sutton Coldfield Transmitter&lt;/a&gt; - Dolk et al., &lt;em&gt;Am J Epidemiol&lt;/em&gt;, 1997&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A small area study of cancer incidence in 1974-1986 was carried out to investigate an unconfirmed report of a &quot;cluster&quot; of leukemias and lymphomas near the Sutton Coldfield television (TV) and frequency modulation (FM) radio transmitter in the West Midlands, England&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In conclusion, the results of this study confirm that there was an excess of adult leukemia within the vicinity of the Sutton Coldfield TV/FM transmitter in the period 1974-1986, accompanied by a decline in risk with distance from the transmitter. Further monitoring of cancer statistics in the area appears warranted. &lt;strong&gt;No causal implications regarding radio and TV transmitters can be drawn from this finding, based as it is on a single &quot;cluster&quot; investigation.&lt;/strong&gt; Results of a study of cancer incidence around all other high power radio and TV transmitters in Great Britain are given in the accompanying paper in order to put the present results in wider context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The accompanying paper is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8982017&quot;&gt;Cancer Incidence near Radio and Television Transmitters in Great Britain II. All High Power Transmitters&lt;/a&gt; - Dolk et al., &lt;em&gt;Am J Epidemiol&lt;/em&gt;, 1997&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We report here findings for adult leukemias, skin melanoma, and bladder cancer near the other 20 high power radio and TV transmitters in Great Britain. Eight of these transmit FM radio frequencies and three transmit TV frequencies at power equivalent to Sutton Coldfield but none transmit at exactly the same combination of frequencies and power as Sutton Coldfield&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For childhood leukemia and brain cancer, and adult skin melanoma and bladder cancer, results were not indicative of a decline in risk with distance from transmitters.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;The magnitude and pattern of risk found in the Sutton Coldfield study did not appear to be replicated. The authors conclude that the results at most give no more than very weak support to the Sutton Coldfield findings.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastActivityDate="2011-10-27T21:03:43.883" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6756" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-28T01:29:19.547" Score="28" ViewCount="4381" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are elephants capable of jumping?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Internet has no clear answer: Some say yes, some say no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/dotphysics/2009/07/elephants-cant-jump-really.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dot Physics&lt;/a&gt;: No&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elephants are one of the few animals that can't jump. Not even a little bit. They don't like to have more than 1 foot off the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080606014106AANawEM&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yahoo.Answers&lt;/a&gt;: Only baby elephants&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;baby elephants have been known to do so, if provoked [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;an elephant cannot jump or even run in the accepted sense since it must keep one foot on the ground at all times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1461/followup-african-elephants-can-jump&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1462/can-elephants-jump&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;No&lt;/a&gt;, err.. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1461/followup-african-elephants-can-jump&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yes?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say this because it is generally well known that African elephants can jump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact the &amp;quot;Elephant Jumping Festival&amp;quot; will be held next month in Nairobi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I need someone who can get to the bottom of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5131" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T00:24:52.353" Title="Can elephants jump?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6757" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6804" CreationDate="2011-10-28T02:56:24.993" Score="28" ViewCount="11788" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over a work happy hour tonight, two employees were talking about their different lifestyles -- one likes riding four wheelers, which the other considers to be recreational pollution. Somehow the fact that the four wheel rider plants trees got brought up and another employee chimed in with this (paraphrased, but pretty close):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You know what? It's a common myth that we need trees. If all the trees were chopped down in the whole world, grass alone would produce three times the oxygen that humans need to breathe to survive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never heard anything like this and wanted to ask here. One can at least find references that &lt;a href=&quot;http://forestry.about.com/od/treephysiology/tp/tree_value.htm&quot;&gt;trees are important&lt;/a&gt; for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://wabstalk.com/2011/05/importance-of-trees-in-our-life/&quot;&gt;production of oxygen&lt;/a&gt;. I'm wondering, now, &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; important they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If all of the trees were chopped down, would there be sufficient CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; -&gt; oxygen conversion taking place with grass alone?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry for the lack of any other sources; I tried to find ones, but just couldn't. Hopefully that isn't sufficient justification for not asking the question. His use of &quot;three times&quot; seemed to indicate that he'd heard it elsewhere, otherwise I don't understand the reason for using a specific quantity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my searching, I did find a different article that suggests he might have been confused and instead of grass, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecology.com/2011/09/12/important-organism/&quot;&gt;it's algae that provides the most oxygen&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-10-28T07:40:42.063" LastActivityDate="2020-11-06T15:53:53.500" Title="Does grass alone produce enough oxygen for life?" Tags="|environment|environmental-health|plants|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6747" CreationDate="2011-10-28T09:46:54.840" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tear Gas is acidic, so is vinegar, so vinegar won't neutralize tear gas (if that's the thinking behind using vinegar).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Greek protesters use the indigestion remedy &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/medicines/100001559.html&quot;&gt;Maalox&lt;/a&gt; as an antidote to tear gas, indigestion remedies neutralize acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/9528003.stm&quot;&gt;BBC News Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemspider.com/Chemical-Structure.16644.html&quot;&gt;Properties of CS Gas - Royal Society of Chemistry's ChemSpider Database&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemspider.com/Chemical-Structure.171.html&quot;&gt;Properties of acetic acid (vinegar) - Royal Society of Chemistry's ChemSpider Database&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemspider.com/Chemical-Structure.14107.html&quot;&gt;Properties of Magnesium hydroxide (the principal ingredient of Maalox) - Royal Society of Chemistry's ChemSpider Database&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="2603" LastEditDate="2011-10-28T15:17:22.503" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T15:17:22.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6760" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6762" CreationDate="2011-10-28T10:44:06.080" Score="2" ViewCount="1246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard a professor say it was the other way around. Can I believe it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also heard that when asked, DEA didn't deny that ecstasy is safer than alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB: I know the question is vague. However, the justification that government use to ban ecstasy is that it's dangerous. And yes it's hard to quantify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a good way to quantify is to use number of life years lost under &quot;typical&quot; usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorDisplayName="user4951" LastEditDate="2011-10-29T12:40:59.717" LastActivityDate="2011-10-29T12:40:59.717" Title="Is ecstasy more dangerous than cigarettes?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6760" CreationDate="2011-10-28T12:29:29.270" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very hard to be objective on such claims due to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is hard to quantify 'danger to health'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;objectivity of research (or lack of, due to funding that favors certain results by certain groups)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you examine wikipedia's article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA#After-effects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MDMA&lt;/a&gt; (ecstasy) you will find this image that comes from The Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed medical journal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xSIPX.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Physical harm vs Dependence graph&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original paper from which the image is taken is: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17382831&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Development of a rational scale to assess the harm of drugs of potential misuse.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It supports the claim that MDMA is less dangerous (with much lower dependence and slightly lower physical harm).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, do not generalize, you should examine the test in details, for example:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- does test take into account problems with purity (uncontrolled substances can be mixed with scary &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Para-Methoxyamphetamine#Dangers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;things&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- does it measure problems with dosage (very high, difference can be two &lt;em&gt;orders of magnitude&lt;/em&gt;, which easily leads to accidental overdose)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- how were long term effects taken into account&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- comparability of data quality    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the danger is also subjective, here is a quote&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It found that the likelihood of a newspaper reporting a death from paracetamol (unclassified) was one in 250 deaths. For diazepam (Class C), it was one in 50. For amphetamine (Class B), it was one in three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For ecstasy (Class A), every associated death was reported. And I very rarely read reports in the national press about those deaths from horse-riding accidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend reading the whole &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2009/02/equivalence_in_death.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2899" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2011-10-28T16:58:06.920" LastActivityDate="2011-10-28T16:58:06.920" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6187" CreationDate="2011-10-28T12:53:37.177" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sorry this is essentially a repeat of Larian's answer, but I wanted to highlight the relevant parts of the video.  Assuming that you aren't swayed by thinking the &quot;liberal media&quot; or the Pentagon itself is involved in some grand conspiracy that makes no real sense....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12818225/ns/us_news-security/t/video-plane-hitting-pentagon-released/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Pentagon officially released a video that shows the plane&lt;/a&gt;.  Sadly it's not the best quality (fisheye lens on a low resolution security camera).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AUKth.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Pentagon Video&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plane is highlighted here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TUqgy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;More pentagon video&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="5272" LastEditDate="2011-12-03T05:38:35.817" LastActivityDate="2011-12-03T05:38:35.817" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6757" CreationDate="2011-10-28T15:28:51.957" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/energyflow/energyflow.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a great article from the University of Michigan that covers some of the topics relevant to your question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article deals with the &lt;em&gt;Net Primary Production&lt;/em&gt; (NPP) of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; in the world related to human consumption. NPP is the amount of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; that is &quot;fixed&quot; (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, processed) by plants through photosynthesis minus the amount of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; that is produced by organisms through respiration.  Therefore, to simplify things, the higher the NPP the lower the amount of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; in the atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article cites the following table from Atjay &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 1979 and De Vooys 1979 which breaks down NPP by the type of ecosystem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The numbers in the table are amount of surface area on Earth in km&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; x 10&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; and the second number is the NPP in petagrams.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Forest&lt;/strong&gt;: 31 / 48.7&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Woodland, grassland, and savanna&lt;/strong&gt;: 37 / 52.1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deserts&lt;/strong&gt;: 30 / 3.1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Arctic-alpine&lt;/strong&gt;: 25 / 2.1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cultivated land&lt;/strong&gt;: 16 / 15.0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Human area&lt;/strong&gt;: 2 / 0.4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other terrestrial (chapparral, bogs, swamps, marshes)&lt;/strong&gt;: 6 / 10.7&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lakes and streams&lt;/strong&gt;: 2 / 0.8&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Marine&lt;/strong&gt;: 361 / 91.6&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article uses these figures to calculate the amount of NPP that is currently co-opted for human consumption.  For example, they assume that all of the NPP associated with cultivated land goes toward human consumption.  They conclude that 30.7% of the terrestrial NPP and only 2.2% of the aquatic NPP is co-opted by humans.  These numbers are of course based off of ~30 year old studies, but I think it's still safe to conclude that there's still room for more human-based CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; production before NPP goes to zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://moab.colorado.edu/Publications_files/randerson-j.t.002c-f.s.-chapin-iii002c-j.w.-harden-002c-j.c.-neff-002c-and-m.e.-harmon-002820020029..pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this 2002 study by Randerson, &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, terrestrial heterotrophs (&lt;em&gt;i.e.&lt;/em&gt;, organisms that need to breathe oxygen, like humans) produce 82–95% of the CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; represented by the NPP.  Let's be conservative and assume the higher amount: 95% NPP.  That means that as long as the forests account for fewer than 5% of the total NPP then we should be fine.  The forests produce 48.7 Pg, however, which is a little under 22% of the total NPP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But wait!  13.6 Pg of NPP associated with forests is co-opted for human consumption (&lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt;, getting wood for building houses, &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp;c.&lt;/em&gt;).  If we were to get rid of all of the forests we'd also get rid of that percentage that has already been co-opted.  Therefore, if we were to get rid of all of the forests there would be a net loss of 48.7 Pg - 13.6 Pg = 35.1 Pg, which is about 16% of total NPP.  That's &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; low enough to meet the lower bound of 82% CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Therefore, there is a small chance that there will be enough NPP after getting rid of all of the trees for human consumption, but it is likely not the case.&lt;/strong&gt;  Furthermore, if we were to get rid of all NPP producers other than grass there would certainly not be enough NPP for human survival.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also important to note that, by far, the most productive producers of NPP are the open ocean, tropical rainforest, and temperate forest (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/energyflow/typeecob2.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Figure 5&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/kling/energyflow/energyflow.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the University of Michigan reference&lt;/a&gt;), so by deforesting as opposed to de-grassing we would be greatly reducing the efficiency of the global ecosystem.  Also, as I mentioned in a comment above, there is also the matter of carbon storage. Trees store a good amount of the carbon from the CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; they process in their trunks where it stays for a long time. Grass, on the other hand, releases its carbon back into the system shortly after it dies and rots away. Therefore, even if grass does produce enough oxygen for life, it probably wouldn't have the same greenhouse gas reducing capabilities as trees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2011-11-01T14:21:42.723" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T14:21:42.723" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6768" CreationDate="2011-10-28T19:10:22.867" Score="4" ViewCount="3663" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chocolate.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt;, as well as many others, says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like other palatable sweet foods, &lt;strong&gt;consumption of chocolate triggers the release of endorphins&lt;/strong&gt;, the body's endogenous opiates. Enhanced endorphin-release reduces the chocolate-eater's sensitivity to pain. Endorphins probably contribute to the warm inner glow induced in susceptible chocoholics. This sensation explains why chocolate gifts are a great way to bring joy to a loved one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've experienced runner's high, but nothing like that ever happened to me after eating chocolate (or anything sweet at all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the emphased statement about chocolate true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-10-29T02:15:40.157" LastActivityDate="2011-10-29T03:31:14.150" Title="Does eating chocolate make you high?" Tags="|nutrition|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6766" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-28T20:58:35.180" Score="11" ViewCount="44261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deeptrancenow.com/exc2_multiplepersonality.htm&quot;&gt;sketchy reference&lt;/a&gt; that people with Multiple Personality Disorder, or other mental disorders, have different physical features when having different personalities. For example, their eye color will change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that people's eye colour can change this way? What is the source for this belief?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5131" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-31T03:27:59.870" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T02:09:40.620" Title="Can mental state affect eye-color?" Tags="|medical-science|psychiatry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6787" CreationDate="2011-10-29T00:04:36.080" Score="13" ViewCount="953" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amalgam_%28dentistry%29&quot;&gt;silver tooth fillings&lt;/a&gt; safe for a person's health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My dentist says they are safe for my health. My general practitioner has no opinion on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some countries have banned or restricted their use; others have not. The controversy is referenced in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1030417/Mercury-fillings-ARE-dangerous-say-regulators--British-health-bosses-refuse-action.html&quot;&gt;Daily Mail article&lt;/a&gt; (though it is the Daily Mail whose frequent sensationalist headlines deserve a special &quot;please be skeptical of this&quot; tag there is a real controversy here that does deserve analysis).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5146" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2018-09-01T23:15:32.177" LastActivityDate="2018-09-01T23:15:32.177" Title="Are silver dental fillings safe?" Tags="|medical-science|chemistry|dentistry|mercury|silver|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6765" CreationDate="2011-10-29T03:23:53.507" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This CNN article quotes several researchers though doesn't actually provide much details of studies: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/indepth.food/sweets/chocolate.cravings/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/indepth.food/sweets/chocolate.cravings/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We are talking about something much, much, much, much milder than a high,&amp;quot; said Piomelli, a researcher at the Neurosciences Institute of San Diego. He reported the work with colleagues in the journal Nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a researcher who studies the brain chemistry of marijuana said chocolate contains such low levels of the ingredients Piomelli identified that he doubts they have any effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Piomelli found that chocolate contains anandamide, which is also produced naturally in the brain and which activates the same target that marijuana does.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also found two chocolate ingredients that inhibit the natural breakdown of anandamide, which could lead to heightened levels of anandamide in the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A slightly more scientific description of that research is here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arch/10_12_96/food.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arch/10_12_96/food.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find a link to the Nature article itself (nor any peer reviewed research from them) so far, but the above-mentioned Nature article is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8751435&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8751435&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;pre&gt;&#xA;Nature. 1996 Aug 22;382(6593):677-8.&#xA;Brain cannabinoids in chocolate.&#xA;di Tomaso E, Beltramo M, Piomelli D.&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In summary,&lt;/strong&gt; Yes, chocolate can produce effects similar to marijuana, but the magnitude is significantly lower which is why OP (or the answerer for that matter) don't notice any effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-29T03:31:14.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6769" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6771" CreationDate="2011-10-29T03:48:14.487" Score="10" ViewCount="976" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are different strains and each person has a different immune system, but often I hear phrases like &quot;Oh well, we already kissed, so I'm probably already sick&quot;. How faulty (if at all) is this belief? Is there a general guideline on how much of an interaction you can have with an infected person before you are probably sick?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5122" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T02:23:09.573" Title="If a healthy person passionately kisses (i.e. makes out with) a person with the flu, can it be assumed that they're sick?" Tags="|flu|infection|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6769" CreationDate="2011-10-29T13:13:14.913" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, it can't be assumed.&lt;/strong&gt; You should continue with prophylaxis methods to prevent the spread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found two secondary sources that point to primary sources that, alas, I don't have access to. This puts me in the dangerous position of summarising someone else's summary. Sorry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First up we have Donald A Goldmann, &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/pidj/Fulltext/2000/10001/Transmission_of_viral_respiratory_infections_in.2.aspx&quot;&gt;Transmission of viral respiratory infections in the home&lt;/a&gt;, Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal: October 2000 - Volume 19 - Issue 10 - pp S97-S102.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goldmann claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Interestingly subsequent work demonstrated that it was exceedingly difficult to transmit the virus orally or by kissing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He attributes that work to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hendley JO, Wenzel RP, Gwaltney JM Jr. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4350527&quot;&gt;Transmission of rhinovirus colds by self-inoculation&lt;/a&gt;. N Engl J Med 1973; 288: 1361-4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been unable to confirm that this paper says this. Has anyone access?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.au/patents?id=JO6ZAAAAEBAJ&amp;amp;zoom=4&amp;amp;pg=PA1#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;patent for a Door Handle Cover&lt;/a&gt; cites J. Owen Hendley and Jack M. Gwaltney, Jr., &lt;a href=&quot;http://epirev.oxfordjournals.org/content/10/1/242.extract&quot;&gt;Mechanisms of transmission of rhinovirus infections.&lt;/a&gt; Epidemiologic Reviews, Vol 10, 1988 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The patent authors claim that the paper authors claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Colds are not caught by kissing as cold viruses do not infect the mouth and saliva contains very little virus. When volunteers infected with common cold virus kissed 'cold-free' volunteers for up to 1.5 minutes, only one case of cross infection occurred in 16 trials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, good news! You can relax, you probably haven't obtained the cold after kissing someone. (Or should this be &quot;Don't relax! Stay vigilant.&quot;?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I found plenty of other diseases that could be passed through kissing, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/mdd/v04/i11/html/11diseases.html&quot;&gt;meningitis&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001617/&quot;&gt;mononucleiosis&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ahmf.com.au/kissing-and-herpes&quot;&gt;Herpes simplex virus&lt;/a&gt; (HSV), etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-30T02:23:09.573" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T02:23:09.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6776" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6777" CreationDate="2011-10-29T22:22:34.397" Score="17" ViewCount="6245" Body="&lt;p&gt;An animal rights activist friend of mine recently went on a rant about how fur should be illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of her main arguments was that &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; animals suffered greatly during the &lt;em&gt;fur removing process&lt;/em&gt; as they were not killed before this process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some animal right activist websites do show some (shocking) videos on live animals whose skin is being removed. At the same time, the Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fur_clothing#Processing_of_fur&quot;&gt;fur clothing&lt;/a&gt; and its processing mentions the use of chemicals, which I suppose cannot be done on live animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are &lt;strong&gt;most&lt;/strong&gt; animals being skinned alive or dead during the process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2086" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-04-29T02:34:02.640" LastActivityDate="2018-04-29T02:34:02.640" Title="Are animals skinned alive or dead for their pelt?" Tags="|zoology|clothing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6776" CreationDate="2011-10-29T23:29:08.183" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems a strange thing to do - if concious, the animal might move, and even if unconscious there is likely to be a lot of blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.china.org.cn/english/GS-e/159563.htm&quot;&gt;Chinese press notice from 2006&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A probe into the skinning of raccoons alive found that the practice&#xA;  was not widespread. Zhuo acknowledged, &quot;Initial investigations found&#xA;  (skinning a live animal) is bad for fur quality and also decreases&#xA;  production efficiency, so it is by no means the commonly accepted&#xA;  practice.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me that suggests (for raccoons at least) that it was uncommon but not unknown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-10-29T23:29:08.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6754" CreationDate="2011-10-29T23:44:37.243" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is often repeated, but sometimes in reverse: for example this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2007/nov/07/uk.queensspeech20072&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guardian article from 2007&lt;/a&gt; states the Scotsman must be holding the bow and arrow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3188/was-it-legal-to-hang-any-welshman-found-in-chester-after-sunset&quot;&gt;Welshman in Chester&lt;/a&gt; question, I can't see any acknowledgement by York City Council that there is any historical record of this.  But such instructions have often been given during wars and there were many Anglo-Scottish wars, so it is not impossible; such instructions cease to apply once peace is concluded.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2011-10-29T23:44:37.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6780" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6861" CreationDate="2011-10-30T03:36:38.620" Score="8" ViewCount="1091" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read that in &quot;The Red Queen&quot; by Matt Ridley. Racism and xenophobes are samples of these behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? And if it's true, how does that work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example. Evolutionary psychology predict that humans tend to be altruistic to relatives. A gene that motivate me to sacrifice my life for 2 of my children, 2 brothers or 8 cousins will propagate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the 1930s J.B.S. Haldane had full grasp of the basic quantities and&#xA;  considerations that play a role in kin selection. He famously said&#xA;  that, &quot;I would lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins&quot;.[8]&#xA;  Kin altruism is the term for altruistic behaviour whose evolution is&#xA;  supposed to have been driven by kin selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way Haldane is half joking. For those who want to know the Math, genetic similarity between 2 relatives can be measured 1/2^(distance among relatives) multiplied by common ancestors. Your brothers have 1/2 genetic similarity with you and your cousins have 1/8 genetic similarity with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Curiously the way it works is not by humans actively want to max out their relative genetic success. The gene it self selfishly try to max out his reproductive success by main controlling the host (humans) to &quot;lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins&quot;. Okay I may be wrong here so please correct me on this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the main idea of Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. The gene itself, not you, is selfish. The reason why you are selfish is because genes that promote selfishness selfishly reproduce. So individuals are not purely selfish and are often altruistic to friends (reciprocal altruism) and to familes (kin altruism). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about non relatives that are similar? I do not see similar mechanism show up? Can anyone explain how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This is indeed a notable claim. I read that in the Red Queen. I just couldn't find a reference on that yet. We can sort of guess it's notable though because xenophobia is real and evolutionary psychology is sort of &quot;comprehensive&quot; in figuring out humans' nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2019-02-03T03:19:59.127" LastActivityDate="2019-02-03T03:19:59.127" Title="Does evolutionary psychology predict that humans will be more altruistic to those who are similar?" Tags="|psychology|evolution|ethics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6780" CreationDate="2011-10-30T04:37:30.837" Score="3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Appearance is governed by relatively few genes compared to the total number (better studied in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100810203503.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dogs than humans&lt;/a&gt;), so appearance alone isn't a good indication that you share genes with others.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Humans have a strong tendency to be altruistic towards an in-group and hostile towards an out-group (Wikipedia has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-group%E2%80%93out-group_bias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;good summary&lt;/a&gt;).  Part of the evolutionary advantage of this may come from factors you describe (i.e. those genes that promote that behavior tend to be found in reproductively successful tribes; and people within a tribe look a bit more similar than those outside, so it's something to run the in/out distinction off of).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T04:37:30.837" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6783" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-30T04:40:46.367" Score="5" ViewCount="888" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has it ever been proven, or is there a consensus among any body of legitimate scientist (e.g. APA, NIHM, or another) that multiple personality disorder actually exists what are each sides points? And those that believe it to be true, what is the standard treatment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dissociative identity disorder&lt;/strong&gt; is a psychiatric diagnosis and describes a condition in which a person displays multiple distinct&#xA;  identities (known as alters or parts), each with its own pattern of&#xA;  perceiving and interacting with the environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the International&#xA;  Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems the&#xA;  name for this diagnosis is &lt;strong&gt;multiple personality disorder&lt;/strong&gt;. In both&#xA;  systems of terminology, the diagnosis requires that at least two&#xA;  personalities (one may be the host) routinely take control of the&#xA;  individual's behavior with an associated memory loss that goes beyond&#xA;  normal forgetfulness; in addition, symptoms cannot be the temporary&#xA;  effects of drug use or a general medical condition&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5131" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditorDisplayName="user288" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T23:39:24.923" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T23:39:24.923" Title="Multiple personalities: Do they exist?" Tags="|psychiatry|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6766" CreationDate="2011-10-30T05:24:06.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several sources claim that a person's apparent eye color can change (primarily and perhaps only in lightness or darkness) as the result of mood changes, illness, or stress level.  Your quoted article doesn't give any details about the reported eye color changes in patients diagnosed with MPD, so it's hard to know if they may be referring only to such a phenomenon, or making some loftier claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people have noted that when they are ill or under stress that their eye color becomes darker or lighter. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eyecarecontacts.com/eyecolor.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eye color does not actually change with mood. What does change is the way light reflects off the iris, creating the impression that the color of the eye has changed. . . . While light affects the retina, mood also affects retinal contraction. Under stress, the retina contracts, making the pupil smaller and revealing more of the iris to light. In lighter eyes, or eyes that reflect more light, this can cause the eyes to appear to change color. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5016471_determines-change-eye-color.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easy to find anecdotal evidence of people who's eye colors seem to change, allegedly according to their mood.  Typically in those with hazel eyes, their eyes may appear blue (particularly when happy) or brown (particularly when upset or sad).  Although it's unclear to me how much of this is truly related to mood, and how much may be environmental factors that affect the light reflecting off of the eyes.  I can say that as a person with hazel eyes myself, I frequently have friends comment on my changed eye color.  But I've never paid close enough attention to notice if my mood, the environment, or perhaps the sunglasses my friends were wearing were a common theme. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/psychiatric_disorders/dissociative_disorders/dissociative_identity_disorder.html?qt=&amp;amp;sc=&amp;amp;alt=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Merck Manual&lt;/a&gt;, Dissociative Identity Disorder (aka Multiple Personality Disorder) is &amp;quot;attributed to the interaction of ... overwhelming stress,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;patients often have a remarkable array of symptoms that can resemble those of anxiety disorders, mood disorders, posttraumatic stress disorder.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems plausible that eye color can change, at least in terms of shade, by mood and stress changes brought on by DID/MPD.  However, the closest I have found to a credible source &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt; linking eye color change to DID/MPD is in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/36533449@N02/3550534660/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this review&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0962916404&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt; on the topic of DID/MPD. The book itself appears to be well-received, based on the reviews on Amazon, including at least one by the spouse of a diagnosed &amp;quot;multiple&amp;quot; (DID patient). I'm not sure how much this all says about the credibility of the book, but at least it's not obvious poppy-cock, eh?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems the answer is &lt;strong&gt;Yes, DID/MPD can cause temporary changes in eye color&lt;/strong&gt;, at least if you accept that a change in the eye's shade counts as a change in color.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T05:24:06.610" CommentCount="36" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6767" CreationDate="2011-10-30T13:13:12.780" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This Wikipedia page contains all you ever wanted to know on the controversy and has 99 citations, a lot of which are to peer-reviewed material and meta-studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the section &quot;Clinical Trials&quot;, says clearly that &lt;strong&gt;the safety of silver fillings is disputed&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Clinical trials&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Conducted trials and their conclusions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The proper interpretation of the data on hand is, to date, controversial.&lt;/strong&gt; The vast majority of past studies have concluded, not without controversy, that amalgams are safe. However, although the vast majority of patients with amalgam fillings are exposed to levels too low to pose a risk to health, many pateints (i.e. those in the upper 99.9 percentile) exhibit urine test results which are comparable to the maximum allowable legal limits for long-term work place (occupational) safety. Two recent randomized clinical trials in children discovered no statistically significant differences in adverse neuropsychological or renal effects observed over the five-year period in children whose caries were restored using dental amalgam or composite materials. In contrast, one study showed a trend of higher dental treatment need later in children with composite dental fillings, and thus, claimed that amalgam fillings are more durable. However, the other study (published in JAMA) cites increased mercury blood levels in children with amalgam fillings. The study states, &quot;during follow-up [blood mercury levels were] 1.0 to 1.5 μg higher in the amalgam group than in the composite group.&quot; EPA considers high blood mercury levels to be harmful to the fetus, and also states that &quot;exposure at high levels can harm the brain, heart, kidneys, lungs, and immune system of people of all ages.&quot; Currently, EPA has set the &quot;safe&quot; mercury exposure level to be at 5.8 μg (micrograms) of mercury per one liter of blood. While mercury fillings themselves do not increase mercury levels above &quot;safe&quot; levels, they have been shown to contribute to such increase. However, such studies were unable to find any negative neurobehavioral effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the FDA's December 13–14, 2010 CDHR panel review of the International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology's request for reconsideration to the classification of amalgam, neurologists questioned the type of neurobehavorial tests and the unethical nature of a prospective trial looking for brain damage in children. Furthermore, evidence was presented by the Geier's that further analysis of the data found that an unusual porphyrin called Coproporphyrinogen indicative of pathophysiology (harm) was found in a dose response relationship to the number and size of amalgams placed, thus calling into question the claim that no injury had occurred.&#xA;  As a result of a lawsuit, a fund was developed to research amalgam-related illness, and a clinical trial evaluating the effect of removing amalgam was published in 2008. The trial found that all groups had improved symptoms, including a group where the participants were treated with a &quot;biological detoxification&quot; therapy and dental amalgam was not removed.Follow-up of a clinical trial was published in 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me show some studies here (both from the Wikipedia article and from looking around), as you can see, they do not seem to agree very much on the actual effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No effect&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oem.bmj.com/content/62/6/368.abstract&quot;&gt;Urinary mercury concentrations associated with dental restorations in adult women aged 16–49 years: United States, 1999–2000&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is estimated that an increase of 1.8 μg/l in the log transformed values for mercury in urine would occur for each 10 dental surfaces restored with amalgam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jada.ada.org/content/139/11/1496.abstract&quot;&gt;Immune Function Effects of Dental Amalgam in Children&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These findings suggest that immunotoxic effects of amalgam restorations are minimal and transient in children and most likely do not need to be of concern to practitioners considering the use of this restorative dental material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/295/15/1775.abstract&quot;&gt;Neuropsychological and Renal Effects of Dental Amalgam in Children&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this study, there were no statistically significant differences in adverse neuropsychological or renal effects observed over the 5-year period in children whose caries were restored using dental amalgam or composite materials. Although it is possible that very small IQ effects cannot be ruled out, these findings suggest that the health effects of amalgam restorations in children need not be the basis of treatment decisions when choosing restorative dental materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16622140&quot;&gt;Neurobehavioral effects of dental amalgam in children: a randomized clinical trial.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this study, children who received dental restorative treatment with amalgam did not, on average, have statistically significant differences in neurobehavioral assessments or in nerve conduction velocity when compared with children who received resin composite materials without amalgam. These findings, combined with the trend of higher treatment need later among those receiving composite, suggest that amalgam should remain a viable dental restorative option for children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some effect&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1741026/pdf/v062p00352.pdf&quot;&gt;Mercury from dental amalgam: looking beyond the average&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In summary, the average mercury dose from amalgam fillings is in most cases below 5 mg per day on average, but the issue of the right tail of the distribution is more important. A substantial number of persons have a mercury uptake from dental amalgam that is higher than should be accepted.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Many of these cases are likely to be found among people with intense chewing gum use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fasebj.org/content/12/11/971.full&quot;&gt;Neurobehavioral effects from exposure to dental amalgam Hgo: new distinctions between recent exposure and Hg body burden&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In conclusion, by using an approach that distinguishes recent Hg exposure from Hg body burden, we have observed subtle associations between Hg and symptoms, mood, motor function, and nonspecific cognitive alterations in task performance in an occupationally exposed group with HgU levels comparable to the general U.S. population. Application of this approach may be particularly useful in defining thresholds of Hgo toxicity and for establishing safe limits of exposure to mercury from dental amalgam material, the restoration itself, diet, and other sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Inconclusive&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20074291&quot;&gt;Predictors of treatment outcomes after removal of amalgam fillings: associations between subjective symptoms, psychometric variables and mercury levels.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results contribute some new aspects to the inconsistent findings in the literature with respect to associations between symptoms and subtoxic mercury levels. More emphasis should be placed on exploring individual vulnerability for amalgam sensitivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18362317&quot;&gt;Treatment of health complaints attributed to amalgam&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The aim of the present study was to compare the reduction of subjective complaints by 3 treatment strategies in 90 &quot;amalgam patients&quot; whose complaints could not be explained by a medical or psychological disorder. The individuals were randomly assigned either to removal of dental amalgam only (removal group), or removal in combination with a &quot;biological detoxification&quot; therapy with high doses of vitamins and trace elements (removal-plus group), or participation in a health promotion program without removal of dental amalgam (no-removal group). Between baseline and month 12, the sum score of main complaints decreased by 3.5 (SD=2.2) points on average in the removal group as well as in the removal-plus group, and by 2.5 (SD=2.4) points in the no-removal group (p=0.152). Both removal groups showed a significant decrease in steady-state levels of inorganic mercury compared with the no-removal group. Thus, all 3 interventions were associated with clinically relevant improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-10-30T13:13:12.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18984" CreationDate="2011-10-30T17:32:50.000" Score="18" ViewCount="61872" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a lot of references on the Internet stating that vinegar mixed with baking soda is an effective way to disinfect mold, bacteria, etc. I'm skeptical that it has a significant effect because vinegar (and the result of mixing baking soda: sodium acetate) is not a particularly strong acid, and I expect that the acidity is the only disinfectant activity in this mixture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, many people tout the magic of vinegar and baking soda as a household cleaner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a sample quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinegar&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vinegar, historically, has been reputed to have strong antibacterial properties. One test by Good Housekeeping's microbiologist found that 5% vinegar is 90% effective against mold and 99.9% effective against bacteria,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/12/26/48hours/main259812.shtml&quot;&gt;[45]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vinegartips.com/scripts/pageViewSec.asp?id=7&quot;&gt;And another&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;White distilled vinegar is a popular household cleanser, effective for killing most mold, bacteria, and germs, due to its level of acidity. Cleaning with white distilled vinegar is a smart way to avoid using harsh chemicals. You’ll also be glad to know that it is environmentally friendly and very economical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://presscore.ca/nbg/index.php?entry=entry100824-114627&quot;&gt;And another&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Baking soda and vinegar kills all food germs and bacteria including E-coli and salmonella, naturally and safely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tersanoprofessional.com/pdf/FLA_FoodSurfaceReport.pdf&quot;&gt;A report from the University of Florida&lt;/a&gt; suggests that a mixture vinegar + lemon juice + baking soda results in a statistically significant reduction in tested bacteria, though it appears to be significantly less effective than the other cleaners tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How effective is vinegar &amp;amp; baking soda as a disinfectant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T17:44:47.273" LastActivityDate="2017-11-14T04:59:55.180" Title="Is vinegar &amp; baking soda an effective agent for disinfecting bacteria and mold?" Tags="|medical-science|hygiene|vinegar|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6789" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6792" CreationDate="2011-10-30T19:29:21.150" Score="12" ViewCount="3283" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mephedrone is an amphetamine-like designer drug that was, until recently, not strictly illegal in the UK. &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/anJeZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;For chemists, here is Nature's comparison with the structure of methamphetamine&quot; /&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100330/full/news.2010.159.html#B2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;See Nature news story here which also covers the controversy around the original ban in the UK&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently the head of the government's Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), Les Iverson said (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mephedrone-users-told-they-are-playing-russian-roulette-2376003.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;newspaper report here&lt;/a&gt;) commenting on recently released numbers about the safety of mephedrone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Users are playing Russian roulette. They are buying substances marked as research chemicals. The implication is that you should do the research on yourself to find out whether they're safe or not. This is a totally uncontrolled, unregulated market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in the past two years mephedrone had been confirmed as a factor in 42 deaths and had not been ruled out as contributing to another 56.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that looks like a clear case that the drug is dangerous (if not at russian roulette levels of danger). But we have reasons to be suspicious. The ACMD suffered serious political interference when its previous chair was sacked for pointing out that the actual hard evidence was not consistent with government policy on a variety of illegal drugs (see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/nov/01/david-nutt-alan-johnstone-drugs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;guardian report here&lt;/a&gt;). The original ban of mephedrone was driven more by a media campaign than by hard science (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d1138.full?sid=009edc97-da77-4345-9b25-8e485ba01306&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ new report here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if we can't fully trust what advice government gives, &lt;strong&gt;is there evidence that mephedrone is dangerous and, if so, how dangerous?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS don't confuse &lt;em&gt;mephedrone&lt;/em&gt; with the other similarly spelt compounds like &lt;em&gt;methadone&lt;/em&gt; (I spelt it wrong about half the times I used it here and I had to teach my spell checker not to change it to ephedrine or methadone).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;David Nutt, the sacked chair of the ACMD, wrote a book on the harms of drugs, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Drugs-Without-Minimising-Harms-Illegal/dp/1906860165/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1356973309&amp;amp;sr=8-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drugs Without the Hot Air&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, in an attempt to present clearheaded evidence about harms and strategies to minimize them. His comments on mephedrone are worth adding (p117 in the UK paperback):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the dozens of deaths in 2009 that the media attributed to mephedrone, only two have been confided as being directly and solely caused by the drug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...because many people switched to using mephedrone from cocaine, which is a much more harmful drug, it may actually have saved lives overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T17:06:33.607" Title="Is Mephedrone as dangerous as UK government advice claims?" Tags="|safety|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6568" CreationDate="2011-10-30T20:37:51.750" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short summary&lt;/strong&gt; (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f325&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent review in the BMJ&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Major evidence based guidelines recommend against the prostate specific antigen (PSA) blood test for prostate cancer screening because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The test is unlikely to prevent you from dying of prostate cancer&#xA;  over 10-15 years or help you live longer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Elevated PSA values are common and lead to additional tests that have&#xA;  harms &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;PSA testing finds many cancers that will not cause health problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Once we find cancer it is hard not to treat it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Treatments have harms that occur early, can be serious, and may&#xA;  persist, but have very little, if any, benefit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;By choosing not to have the PSA test you can live a similar length of&#xA;  life, have little to no difference in your risk of dying from&#xA;  prostate cancer, and avoid the harms associated with tests,&#xA;  procedures, and treatments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mass screening for prostate cancer doesn't save lives and probably causes more harm than good.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This conclusion defies popular intuition about the benefits of screening in general and the typical practice in the USA. Before examining the evidence it is worth a quick summary of why the popular intuition is wrong here and in many other areas of medical screening. Gerd Gigerenzer and his team reviewed what is known in depth in their paper: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/pspi_8_2_article.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Helping Doctors and Patients Make Sense of Health Statistics&lt;/a&gt;. The paper should be compulsory reading for anyone discussing medical statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One key conclusion (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We show that information pamphlets, Web sites, leaflets distributed to doctors by the pharmaceutical industry, and even medical journals often report evidence in nontransparent forms that suggest &lt;em&gt;big benefits of featured interventions and small harms&lt;/em&gt;. Without understanding the numbers involved, the public is susceptible to political and commercial manipulation of their anxieties and hopes, which undermines the goals of informed consent and shared decision making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This goes some way to explaining the difference between evidence and perception about screening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More relevant to this answer, the article quotes Sir Muir Gray (Chief Knowledge Officer of the NHS):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All screening programmes do harm; some do good as well, and, of these, some do more good than harm at reasonable cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what does the clinical evidence say about the balance of good and had and the number of lives saved by screening?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expert recommendations have recently been turning strongly against screening. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d6479.extract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;news story in a recent BMJ reports&lt;/a&gt; that the US expert group has found against screening (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The prostate specific antigen (PSA) test should not be used to screen men for prostate cancer because it is &lt;strong&gt;unlikely to save lives and can cause harm&lt;/strong&gt;, says an independent panel of experts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The US Preventive Services Task Force, an independent body of 16 experts that evaluates evidence to grade devices and rank preventive services, announced its recommendation against prostate cancer screening of all US men on 7 October. In a statement it said that there was “moderate certainty that PSA-based screening for prostate cancer has no net benefit.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of this conclusion derives from new long term studies recently published (this one from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d1539.full.pdf?sid=c0c3b9bb-682b-4e4b-bc16-a9b2f1a0c30f&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ in 2011&lt;/a&gt; which concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After 20 years of follow-up the rate of death from prostate cancer did not differ significantly between men in the screening group and those in the control group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have also been recent meta-anlyses of many of the earlier studies. Here is the conclusion from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c4543.full.pdf?sid=c0c3b9bb-682b-4e4b-bc16-a9b2f1a0c30f&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ review in 2010&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Six randomised controlled trials with a total of 387 286 participants that met inclusion criteria were analysed. Screening was associated with an increased probability of receiving a diagnosis of prostate cancer (relative risk 1.46, 95% confidence interval 1.21 to 1.77; P&amp;lt;0.001) and stage I prostate cancer (1.95, 1.22 to 3.13; P=0.005). There was no significant effect of screening on death from prostate cancer (0.88, 0.71 to 1.09; P=0.25) or overall mortality (0.99, 0.97 to 1.01; P=0.44). All trials had one or more substantial methodological limitations. &lt;em&gt;None provided data on the effects of screening on participants’ quality of life.&lt;/em&gt; Little information was provided about potential harms associated with screening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  The existing evidence from randomised controlled trials does not support the routine use of screening for prostate cancer with prostate specific antigen with or without digital rectal examination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004720.pub2/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cochrane review in 2009&lt;/a&gt; comes to similar conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note one of the problems in many studies (see italicised text in the above quote) is that potential side effects of over treatment are likely to be missed. This is significant as they are serious (see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostate_cancer_screening&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;) and understating them is likely to understate the harm of screening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the best summary is given by the man who invented the test in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/opinion/10Ablin.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times article in 2010&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I never dreamed that my discovery four decades ago would lead to such a profit-driven public health disaster. The medical community must confront reality and stop the inappropriate use of P.S.A. screening. Doing so would save billions of dollars and rescue millions of men from unnecessary, debilitating treatments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems safe to conclude that &lt;strong&gt;Prostate cancer Screening doesn't save lives and may cause significant harm.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f325&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent review in the BMJ&lt;/a&gt; in early 2013 adds to the consensus evidence above. The abstract concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prostate cancer screening with the PSA blood test results in at most a small reduction in prostate cancer mortality and leads to considerable diagnostic and treatment related harms&#xA;  Physicians should recommend against PSA screening for prostate cancer&#xA;  Most men with prostate cancer detected by PSA testing have tumours that will not cause health problems (overdiagnosed), but almost all undergo early treatment (overtreated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also suggests a useful guide for physicians who want to be honest with their patients about the issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prostate cancer screening messages for men&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Major evidence based guidelines recommend against the prostate specific antigen (PSA) blood test for prostate cancer screening because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The test is unlikely to prevent you from dying of prostate cancer&#xA;  over 10-15 years or help you live longer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Elevated PSA values are common and lead to additional tests that have&#xA;  harms &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;PSA testing finds many cancers that will not cause health problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Once we find cancer it is hard not to treat it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Treatments have harms that occur early, can be serious, and may&#xA;  persist, but have very little, if any, benefit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;By choosing not to have the PSA test you can live a similar length of&#xA;  life, have little to no difference in your risk of dying from&#xA;  prostate cancer, and avoid the harms associated with tests,&#xA;  procedures, and treatments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to summarise the situation well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2018-03-08T12:02:50.457" LastActivityDate="2018-03-08T12:02:50.457" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6789" CreationDate="2011-10-31T01:41:03.277" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: nobody knows, because the research simply hasn't been done yet. It's a safe bet that the more hysterical responses are utter nonsense, but the safety of mephedrone (particularly in the long term) is still an unanswered question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note the weasel-wording in the ACMD report: &quot;confirmed as a factor in&quot;. One of the notable &quot;mephedrone was a factor in this death&quot; cases I know of was a man who died of multiple stab wounds while carrying some mephedrone in his pocket; another was a person who died of pneumonia but had mephedrone in his system; another was a car crash with mephedrone detected; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, from the abstract of Maskell PD, De Paoli G, Seneviratne C, Pounder DJ (2011) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21439157&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mephedrone (4-Methylmethcathinone)-Related Deaths.&lt;/a&gt; J Anal Toxicol 35:188-191:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Four deaths related to the drug 4-methylmethcathinone (mephedrone) are reported. [...] Of the four deaths, one was attributed to the adverse effects of mephedrone, with cardiac fibrosis and atherosclerotic coronary artery disease as a contributing factor. [...] The second death was attributed solely to mephedrone. A 19-year-old male took mephedrone as well as alcohol and “ecstasy”; analysis disclosed mephedrone (2.24 mg/L femoral venous blood) and 3-trifluoromethylphenylpiperazine (3-TFMPP). In the third fatality, a 55-year-old female was found dead in bed; the death was attributed to the combined effects of mephedrone and methadone. Analysis of femoral venous blood revealed the prescribed drugs diazepam, nordiazepam, olazepine, and chlorpromazine metabolites together with methadone (0.3 mg/L) and mephedrone (0.13 mg/L). In the fourth case, a 17-year-old male car driver was involved in a vehicular collision and died of multiple blunt force injuries. Analysis revealed mephedrone in femoral venous blood (0.24 mg/L).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However: there have been a handful of deaths where mephedrone is unambiguously implicated. Mephedrone is not a perfectly safe drug; if you are sufficiently foolish or unlucky, it &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; kill you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the numbers are very low. Given the large-scale use of mephedrone in the UK and Europe over the last few years, the rates of acute fatality from mephedrone have actually been remarkably slight. For more detailed discussion, I'd recommend reading the series of &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?as_q=mephedrone&amp;amp;num=50&amp;amp;btnG=Search+Scholar&amp;amp;as_epq=&amp;amp;as_oq=&amp;amp;as_eq=&amp;amp;as_occt=any&amp;amp;as_sauthors=winstock&amp;amp;as_publication=&amp;amp;as_ylo=&amp;amp;as_yhi=&amp;amp;as_sdt=1.&amp;amp;as_sdtp=on&amp;amp;as_sdtf=&amp;amp;as_sdts=5&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;review articles that have been produced in the last year by Winstock et al.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the clinical evidence, mephedrone appears to be relatively safe in relation to many other drugs of abuse, at least from the point of view of acute toxicity. The typical pattern of mephedrone ER presentations would appear to be a patient with sympathomimetic symptoms (ie: racing heart, headache, anxiety) which is then resolved through simple bedrest, observation and sometimes the use of anxiolytic drugs (ie: tranquilisers). See a &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?as_q=mephedrone+clinical&amp;amp;num=50&amp;amp;btnG=Search+Scholar&amp;amp;as_epq=&amp;amp;as_oq=&amp;amp;as_eq=&amp;amp;as_occt=any&amp;amp;as_sauthors=&amp;amp;as_publication=&amp;amp;as_ylo=&amp;amp;as_yhi=&amp;amp;as_sdt=1.&amp;amp;as_sdtp=on&amp;amp;as_sdtf=&amp;amp;as_sdts=5&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;series of case reports&lt;/a&gt; on this. There is some clinical suggestion that mephedrone may interact in a nasty way with SSRI antidepressants (see Garrett G, Sweeney M (2011) &lt;a href=&quot;http://casereports.bmj.com/content/2010/bcr.04.2010.2925&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The serotonin syndrome as a result of mephedrone toxicity&lt;/a&gt;. BMJ Case Reports.), but that is very speculative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mephedrone appears to be particularly dangerous for injecting users. Mephedrone solutions are somewhat acidic, and users routinely report that snorting or injecting mephedrone is intensely painful. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395912000096&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study of Irish mephedrone injectors&lt;/a&gt; found truly gruesome consequences were common amongst their participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract of that paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Although participants were aware of risks and safe injecting practises, compulsive re injecting with excessive binge use over long periods of time was common. Nasal to injection route transitions, intense paranoia, violent behaviour and aggression, emergence of Parkinson type symptomatologies (in the form of spasms and ‘wobbling’), and permanent numbness in lower extremities were reported. Multi and serial drug injecting with heroin was used in efforts to manage the intense rush and avoid unpleasant comedown. Participants reported limb abscesses, vein clotting, damage and recession resulting from product toxicity, crystallisation of the products when diluted and flushing practises. Seven participants were homeless, with groin and street injecting common.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the body of the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;All participants reported an intense burning sensation on injection. Continued attempts to inject resulted in vein blockages, with development of skin erosion, localised infections, blisters, spots, cold sores, abscesses, scabs, lumps, gangrenous tissue, blood clots and large holes at overused injecting sites.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From one of their participants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;it clots up your veins twice as fast as anything else...that’s one thing I did learn fast from it, say you used one vein on it and got two hits out of it, you wouldn’t get the vein again, you’d have to move onto a different vein to get another hit out of it, that’s why everyone started using their groin&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acute toxicity is not the only way in which a drug can be harmful. There is good evidence from both anecdotal user reports and ongoing neuroscientific research (not yet published, unfortunately, so I can't provide a reference...) that mephedrone is &lt;em&gt;intensely&lt;/em&gt; addictive. There is also some evidence that regular mephedrone use may cause lasting memory impairment: see Freeman TP, Morgan CJA, Vaughn-Jones J, Hussain N, Karimi K, Curran HV (2012) &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2011.03719.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cognitive and subjective effects of mephedrone and factors influencing use of a 'new legal high'.&lt;/a&gt; Addiction 107: 792-800.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would also be unsurprising to find that heavy mephedrone use causes long-term undesirable alterations in neurotransmitter systems, with possible lasting psychiatric consequences (clinical depression, most likely). But it's just too early to say: the research hasn't been done yet, and it will take several years of work before we have a reasonably accurate picture of the risks and harms of mephedrone consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the basic science perspective, very little has been done. The existing experimental neuroscience literature is limited to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One study looked at dopamine and serotonin release in the nucleus accumbens (a key addiction-related area, part of the mesolimbic dopamine pathway) following low doses of mephedrone in rats, and found that it is a potent releaser of neurotransmitters in this area, with effects comparable to methamphetamine with dopamine and MDMA with serotonin: see Kehr J, Ichinose F, Yoshitake S, Goiny M, Sievertsson T, Nyberg F, Yoshitake T (2011) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21615721&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mephedrone, compared to MDMA (ecstasy) and amphetamine, rapidly increases both dopamine and serotonin levels in nucleus accumbens of awake rats&lt;/a&gt;. Br J Pharmacol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One study looked at the effect of mephedrone on dopamine and serotonin receptors in synaptosomal tissue cultures from rats, suggesting that mephedrone inhibits dopamine and serotonin transporters (DAT and SERT, structures that pull neurotransmitters back out of the synapse after they've done their thing) primarily by &quot;clogging&quot; the transporters rather than actually removing them from the synaptic membrane (as methamphetamine does): see Martinez-Clemente J, Escubedo E, Pubill D, Camarasa J (2011) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21824752&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Interaction of mephedrone with dopamine and serotonin targets in rats&lt;/a&gt;. Eur Neuropsychopharmacol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One study gave mice a fairly hefty binge-style treatment with mephedrone before examining their striatums (a part of the brain that is related to both movement and addiction, and is very strongly activated by mephedrone) for signs of toxicity, inflammation or adaption. They found no significant differences between the brains of their drug-treated and control animals. See Angoa-Pérez M, Kane MJ, Francescutti DM, Sykes KE, Shah MM, Mohammed AM, Thomas DM, Kuhn DM (2012) &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-4159.2011.07632.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mephedrone, an abused psychoactive component of ‘bath salts’ and methamphetamine congener, does not cause neurotoxicity to dopamine nerve endings of the striatum.&lt;/a&gt; Journal of Neurochemistry 120: 1097-1107.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One study did find persistent alterations in neurotransmitter systems in rats that were dosed under a &quot;binge&quot; paradigm. However, this study utilised fairly high dosages and elevated ambient temperatures; as mephedrone (like many other stimulants) exacerbates hyperthermia in such conditions, it's unclear whether the findings were purely due to the mephedrone or instead represent a combination of the effects of mephedrone and sustained hyperthermia. See Hadlock GC, Webb KM, McFadden LM, Chu PW, Ellis JD, Allen SC, Andrenyak DM, Vieira-Brock PL, German CL, Conrad KM, Hoonakker AJ, Gibb JW, Wilkins DG, Hanson GR, Fleckenstein AE (2011) &lt;a href=&quot;http://jpet.aspetjournals.org/content/early/2011/08/02/jpet.111.184119.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4-Methylmethcathinone(mephedrone): neuropharmacological effects of a designer stimulant of abuse&lt;/a&gt;. J Pharmacol Exp Ther.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One study examined the effect of mephedrone on heartrate and cardiac function. It found that mephedrone did cause substantial cardiac excitation, but did not find direct evidence of cardiac toxicity. See Meng H, Cao J, Kang J, Ying X, Ji J, Reynolds W, Rampe D (2011) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378427411015773&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mephedrone, a new designer drug of abuse, produces acute hemodynamic effects in the rat&lt;/a&gt;. Toxicology Letters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One study looked at the pattern of brain activation induced by mephedrone, finding that it closely resembled a combination of the patterns seen with MDMA and methamphetamine. See Motbey CP, Hunt GE, Bowen MT, Artiss S, McGregor IS (2011) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21995495&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mephedrone (4-methylmethcathinone, ‘meow’): acute behavioural effects and distribution of Fos expression in adolescent rats&lt;/a&gt;. Addiction Biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: I am one of the authors of that last paper.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5160" LastEditorUserId="5160" LastEditDate="2012-03-15T00:44:58.087" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T00:44:58.087" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-10-31T03:20:08.100" Score="5" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deeptrancenow.com/exc2_multiplepersonality.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sketchy reference&lt;/a&gt; that people with Multiple Personality Disorder, or other mental disorders, have different physical features when having different personalities. For example, their allergies will change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that people's senstivity to allergens can change this way? What is the source for this belief?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5131" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-10-31T03:29:55.343" LastActivityDate="2011-10-31T03:29:55.343" Title="Can mental state affect allergies?" Tags="|psychiatry|immune-system|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="57" CreationDate="2011-10-31T09:00:34.970" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although there are still some Freudian loyalists about (few clinicians, even fewer researchers), the influence of psychodynamic theories is not large in modern psychology, and it is continuing to decline. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=ppsy.018.0003a&quot;&gt;Bornstein RF (2001) The impending death of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Psychology 18:3.&lt;/a&gt; for a discussion of the issues from within the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is very little high-quality research into the efficacy of psychoanalysis, and what does exist is largely negative. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD001360/abstract&quot;&gt;The Cochrane Library&lt;/a&gt; (which, incidentally, should be your #1 reference for just about any question to do with evidence-based medicine; Cochrane are the gold standard on such matters) for an example of a meta-analysis reviewing the impact of psychoanalytic treatment on severe mental illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5160" LastActivityDate="2011-10-31T09:00:34.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6796" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6801" CreationDate="2011-11-01T00:57:54.410" Score="8" ViewCount="1570" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://uri-geller.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Uri Geller&lt;/a&gt; has often performed in front of audiences where he claims he can sense the contents of an envelope without seeing inside (i.e. remote viewing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of witness reports are published &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20120717020904/http://www.zem.demon.co.uk/ugtd.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Before I left home, I had drawn a valentine with an arrow through it, placed the drawing in an envelope which I sealed, and placed that envelope in a Manila envelope, which I also sealed. I asked Geller to draw whatever it was I had drawn. He asked me to concentrate on what it was, to see it in my mind, and to try to project it to him. After five minutes of this, he showed me a drawing of a heart with an arrow through it. When we opened the envelopes and he saw he had been right, he was very excited.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Uri Geller claims to use paranormal means to perform these acts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can say with absolute certainty I do not cheat. I am not a magician.&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2000/nov/08/guardianletters1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can Uri Geller use paranormal means to read envelopes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside: Geller has a history of &lt;a href=&quot;http://site.uri-geller.com/to_all_skeptics_-_a_big_thank_you&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dismissing skepticism&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uri-geller.com/courts.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;using the legal system&lt;/a&gt; to address criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-01-20T23:05:02.647" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T23:05:02.647" Title="Can Uri Geller perform remote viewing?" Tags="|esp|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6584" CreationDate="2011-11-01T01:08:56.220" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cross-sectional lifespan studies do show decreasing numbers of left-handers as the population ages, which does suggest that the sinister types are dying off at a faster rate than their dexterous companions. Assorted speculations exist as to why: the subtle effects on accident rates of living in a world structured on the assumption of right-handedness, the possible connection between perinatal stress and left-handedness, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is one significant confound with this finding: some cultures have a recently-abandoned prejudice against left-handedness. Due to this historical bias, many older individuals were raised in circumstances that actively encouraged left-handed individuals to adapt to right-handedness. The gradual dissipation of this trend (see Barsley M (1970) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getcited.org/pub/101839475&quot;&gt;Left-handed man in a right-handed world.&lt;/a&gt; Pitman London. &amp;amp; Corballis MC (1993) &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1991-98134-000&quot;&gt;The lopsided ape: Evolution of the generative mind.&lt;/a&gt; Oxford University Press, USA. p89. for discussion of the decline in handedness-related prejudice) could produce an increase in the number of detectable left-handers as time progresses without any need for differences in mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See Coren S, Halpern DF (1991) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2006231&quot;&gt;Left-handedness: A marker for decreased survival fitness.&lt;/a&gt; Psychological bulletin 109:90-106 and Harris LJ (1993) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8416031&quot;&gt;Do left-handers die sooner than right-handers? Commentary on Coren and Halpern's (1991) &quot;Left-handedness: A marker for decreased survival fitness&quot;.&lt;/a&gt; Psychological Bulletin 114:203-234 for arguments supporting both sides of this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a lengthy (and entertaining) discussion on the nature of handedness (and its possible connections to lateralization of brain function and the evolution of language) which includes a review of the evidence relating to left-handed survival rates, see Michael Corballis’ books “The Lopsided Ape” and “From Hand to Mouth”. Corballis MC (1980) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7377654&quot;&gt;Laterality and myth.&lt;/a&gt; American Psychologist 35:284 is worth a look as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5160" LastEditorUserId="5160" LastEditDate="2011-11-01T12:09:47.610" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T12:09:47.610" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6798" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-01T02:01:57.353" Score="10" ViewCount="6673" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard in various places - chief among them, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv84t6TlndU&quot;&gt;Will Ferrell's 'You're Welcome America'&lt;/a&gt; - that Morocco contributed monkeys for bomb or land mine detonation in the 2003 Iraq War. Did this deal actually go through? If so, what role did these monkeys play in the war effort?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="4573" LastEditDate="2011-11-02T18:17:52.720" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T22:31:01.060" Title="Did Morocco provide 2,000 monkeys to the American-led effort in the Iraq War?" Tags="|zoology|war|iraq|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6798" CreationDate="2011-11-01T05:01:43.883" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears that this claim originally appeared in al Usbu' al-Siyassi. e.g. Washington Post &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21268-2003Mar24?language=printer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;attributes&lt;/a&gt; it to them, but many others repeat the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/030329/2003032917.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arabic News&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Morocco's Communication ministry denied on Monday that Morocco sold monkeys to the US army to be used for mine clearance in Iraq, as was reported by French satellite TV channel LCI and UPI news agency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a clarification sent to the two media, the Communication department termed this information as &amp;quot;whimsical and unfounded.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are still stuck with the question of who to believe: Can you believe the Arabic News over al Usbu' al-Siyassi? How about the Communication department of Morocco over LCI and UPI? Why did they need to issue a &amp;quot;clarification&amp;quot; rather than a &amp;quot;denial&amp;quot;, or am I reading too much into the wording?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it seems unlikely that an &lt;em&gt;actual deployment&lt;/em&gt; of 2,000 monkeys could go unnoticed by the press photographers, so I am inclined to believe the denials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T05:01:43.883" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6591" CreationDate="2011-11-01T07:25:22.203" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, excessive alcohol is neurotoxic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt; there is a substantial body of research in the field going back for quite some time. Evidence for this comes from a wide range of animal based research (for examples, see Crews FT, Nixon K (2009) &lt;a href=&quot;http://alcalc.oxfordjournals.org/content/44/2/115.short&quot;&gt;Mechanisms of neurodegeneration and regeneration in alcoholism.&lt;/a&gt; Alcohol and Alcoholism 44:115. &amp;amp; Obernier JA, Bouldin TW, Crews FT (2002) &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2002.tb02573.x/abstract&quot;&gt;Binge Ethanol Exposure in Adult Rats Causes Necrotic Cell Death.&lt;/a&gt; Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 26:547-557.) as well as clinical studies in human populations (eg: Harper C (2007) &lt;a href=&quot;http://het.sagepub.com/content/26/3/251.short&quot;&gt;The neurotoxicity of alcohol.&lt;/a&gt; Human &amp;amp; Experimental Toxicology 26:251.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is also some evidence that low-to-moderate alcohol consumption may have neuroprotective effects: see Ruitenberg A, van Swieten JC, Witteman J, Mehta KM, van Duijn CM, Hofman A, Breteler M (2002) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0140-6736%2802%2907493-7&quot;&gt;Alcohol consumption and risk of dementia: the Rotterdam Study.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA; The Lancet 359:281-286.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is still considerable dispute within the research community about the exact mechanisms of alcohol-induced neurotoxicity. Likely candidates include oxidative stress, inflammation-related cerebral overpressure and glutamatergic excitotoxicity. See Crews FT, Collins MA, Dlugos C, Littleton J, Wilkins L, Neafsey EJ, Pentney R, Snell LD, Tabakoff B, Zou J (2004) &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1097/01.ALC.0000113416.65546.01/abstract&quot;&gt;Alcohol-induced neurodegeneration: when, where and why?&lt;/a&gt; Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 28:350-364. for an overview of these possibilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5160" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T07:25:22.203" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6796" CreationDate="2011-11-01T07:37:18.443" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; Geller's skills could be performed by a competent magician. There is no good evidence that he uses paranormal means, and evidence that at least some of the time he cheats, so the simplest explanation is that he is a competent magician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim that Uri Geller can read an envelope through paranormal means is unfalsifiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure, we can show:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;that his skills can be reproduced by competent magicians.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;that his skills are never reproduced under conditions which would preclude normal stage-magic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;that &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of his claims are false.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, I'll do all three below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that doesn't rule out that he &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; still be a psychic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, psychic abilities are an extraordinary claim, and we should expect extraordinary evidence, before we provisionally accept them as true. That evidence has not been presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I use the term &quot;magician&quot; here in the modern sense - i.e. a prestidigitator or illusionist who uses sleight-of-hand and other skillful but non-supernatural techniques to fool people with the impression of supernatural abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to support my three claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) We can see many of his tricks can be reproduced with by a competent magician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reproducing a Drawing in a Sealed Envelope&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the years, magicians have developed many different techniques for divining the contents of a sealed envelope. Some of these techniques (such as gimmicked notepads on which the drawing or message is made) are available on the market; others are still used by professional magicians. The methods can be as simple as peeking through one’s fingers to see the drawing being made, holding the envelope up to the light, or even opening the envelope when the viewer’s attention is distracted. A confederate may also be able to assist by conveying information about the drawing. Skeptics allege that Geller’s manager and brother-in-law, Shipi Shtrang, has acted as a confederate, and Shtrang has been present at many of Geller’s successful demonstrations. Observers often forget the presence of an accomplice, particularly if that person appears to have no active role in the proceedings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://simon-jones.org.uk/how-does-uri-geller-do-it/&quot;&gt;Wordsmith&lt;/a&gt; that describes many other of his tricks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I wish this question had been about the spoon-bending. I have better references for the spoon-bending: Banacek. I also have a stash of cheap spoons for practice. It is a physically challenging skill! Or I wish it had been about his ability to move compass needles; I saw him do that of TV and the gimmick was obvious, despite his misdirection. I've never watched him attempt the envelope trick.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Under conditions which would preclude stage-magic, Geller's skills disappear. For example, when host Johnny Carson was coached on what to look for by magician James Randi, &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/M9w7jHYriFo?t=5m37s&quot;&gt;Geller could no longer demonstrate his skills&lt;/a&gt;. (That same video reinforces the earlier point, with Randi demonstrating spoon-binding and remote-viewing secrets.) He has never accepted the JREF Million Dollar Challenge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) There has been proof that some of his skills are performed by trickery. For example, he was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indian-skeptic.org/html/uritape.htm&quot;&gt;caught on tape&lt;/a&gt; moving the hands of a watch. He was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticreport.com/sr/?p=521&quot;&gt;caught on tape&lt;/a&gt; bending a spoon with his hands during a piece of misdirection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-01T13:08:57.203" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T13:08:57.203" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6754" CreationDate="2011-11-01T08:46:12.460" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &quot;law&quot; ranked 10th in the search for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1568475/Ten-stupidest-laws-are-named.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UK's 10 stupidest laws&lt;/a&gt; widely reported as the result of a 2007 survey&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;10) In the city of York it is legal to murder a Scotsman within the ancient city walls, but only if he is carrying a bow and arrow (2%)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source for most of the laws listed on the survey for 10 stupidest laws is this book:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/reader/0749950366?_encoding=UTF8&amp;amp;query=york&amp;amp;new_account=1#reader_0749950366&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Strange Laws of Old England [Hardcover] by Nigel Cawthorne&lt;/a&gt;  as stated in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7081038.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On page 197 the search results (only preview) show as below&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And in York, it is said, it is perfectly legal to shoot a Scotsman with a bow and arrow ..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vbIvQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whats interesting is that a subsequent amended BBC article of the same 'most ludicrous laws' &lt;strong&gt;listed 7 of these and left out this one&lt;/strong&gt; with the comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;This is an amended version of an earlier story which included several examples of laws from the survey which we have been unable to&#xA;  verify, and these have been removed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, this may or may not have been there once upon a time, but &lt;strong&gt;now seems to be a local legend rather than a stated law&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It definitely does not appear in the search results of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UK Statute Law database&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastEditorUserId="2027" LastEditDate="2011-11-01T11:26:18.437" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T11:26:18.437" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6756" CreationDate="2011-11-01T14:45:34.497" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, and I consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://zootorah.com/assets/media/essays/jumpingelephant.pdf&quot;&gt;this 11 page publication&lt;/a&gt; to be the most authoritative assessment of the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It covers all the topics you've raised, as well as assessing whether it was possible that elephants were once capable of jumping (they weren't).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to your mention of the &quot;Elephant Jumping Festival&quot; - that is false, and discussed at the end of page 6. Page 7 covers the origin of the mythical anecdotes that baby elephants have been observed jumping. Furthermore experiments conducted to test this explicitly (by dangling food out of reach) have never produced this behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://zootorah.com/assets/media/essays/jumpingelephant.pdf&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt; Natan Slifkin. The case of the jumping elephant. 2008. www.zootorah.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2013-06-03T00:24:52.353" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T00:24:52.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6757" CreationDate="2011-11-01T16:23:11.693" Score="14" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Plants are oxygen neutral&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question wording is a bit misleading, as – surprise – plants do not produce oxygen, when you consider their whole life cycle, including their decomposition. They produce oxygen only as long as they are growing, binding carbon in its mass. In long term all plants are oxygen neutral, as all oxygen which is created by them is again consumed when they dissolve, burn or are eaten, as carbon stored in them reacts with oxygen back to CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;. The more correct view how to describe this is not that plants produce oxygen, but that they store carbon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is described in detail for tropic rainforests in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-2.1/broecker.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Et tu, O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the Earth's forests do not play a dominant role in maintaining O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; reserves, because they consume just as much of this gas as they produce. In the tropics, ants, termites, bacteria, and fungi eat nearly the entire photosynthetic O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; product. Only a tiny fraction of the organic matter they produce accumulates in swamps and soils or is carried down the rivers for burial on the sea floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As forest has a lot larger mass than a meadow on the same area, it is quite likely the trees bind a lot more carbon than a grass, but how would this impact Earth O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels is something which would require further computation - the impact is one time only, however, there is no &amp;quot;out of balance, producing less O2 then consumed&amp;quot; caused by this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Plants we eat produce O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; in the same numbers as C&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is obvious (as Christian tries to show in his answer) that any O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; you will consume by breathing can produce CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; only when it reacts with C. The C comes (directly or indirectly) from the same &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;photosynthesis&lt;/a&gt; as O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, and in the same amount, therefore the balance is maintained by definition, and any O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; we breath was produced when the stuff we eat was grown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2020-11-06T15:53:53.500" LastActivityDate="2020-11-06T15:53:53.500" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6805" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6809" CreationDate="2011-11-01T20:13:48.370" Score="10" ViewCount="3184" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cknS8.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cknS8.png&quot; alt=&quot;I hear in some places, you need one form of ID to buy a gun, but two to pay for it by check. It&amp;#39;s interesting who has what incentives to care about what mistakes.&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/970/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;XKCD comic&lt;/a&gt; strip has the following alt text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I hear in some places, you need one form of ID to buy a gun, but two to pay for it by check. It's interesting who has what incentives to care about what mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there really any place like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4584" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-01-14T01:21:34.673" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T01:21:34.673" Title="Is there any place where you need one form of ID to buy a gun, but two to pay for it by check?" Tags="|united-states|law|guns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="100" CreationDate="2011-11-01T22:05:53.643" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It &lt;em&gt;IS&lt;/em&gt; possible to overdose on homeopathic pills!  Really!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are no active ingredients in a homeopathic pills, there are inactive ingredients.  The biggest one is Lactose.  For those who don't know, Lactose is a form of sugar derived from milk.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am one of the many that is Lactose intolerant.  If I took enough of these pills then I will get very sick.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nutrimart.com/homeopathy_FAQ.htm#I_am_lactose_intolerant.%C2%A0_Can_I_take_these_products&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's a link to a seller of homeopathic medicine and what they have to say about the lactose&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we believe what they say on their web site, then the average person would overdose at about 78 pills.  While 78 pills sounds like a lot, this is less than what skeptics take for their homeopathic awareness events, like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.1023.org.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10-23 campaign&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3938" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T22:05:53.643" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6392" CreationDate="2011-11-01T22:59:08.273" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Funny, this was just asked the other day on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/21335/breaking-in-lithium-polymer-batteriesis-there-any-research-on-that&quot;&gt;electronics stackexchange&lt;/a&gt;.  This was the response from one of the experts there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is normal for a new Lithium (or any advanced type of rechargeable) batteries to require one or two full charge/discharge cycles. The main reason for this is because there are chips inside that control and monitor the status of the battery, and these chips do go through a sort of learning process. Once you do a couple of charge/discharge cycles the chip will learn the details about the battery and be able to give you a more reliable charge level indicator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see this a lot with cellphones, ipods, and other devices where the battery is integrated into the device. Most people charge their iPhones every night, even if it still has a 50% charge on it. Over time the battery controller chip will loose track of what a full discharge is (since it never sees a full discharge) and so the battery indicator will get progressively more inaccurate. Doing a couple of full charge/discharge cycles will force the chip to relearn how the battery behaves and the status indicator will be accurate again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know of no reason, other than what's stated above, for a battery pack to require a breaking in period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-11-01T22:59:08.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6805" CreationDate="2011-11-02T03:05:19.237" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be laborious, but the only way to &lt;em&gt;disprove&lt;/em&gt; this is to list the 50 states (I assumed this is limited in scope to the USA.) and show that in none of them is it true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Help me out. Pick one, research and edit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, during this exercise, we may find that there is a place where it IS true. Either way, question answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;States marked with a * are full participants in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/general-information/fact-sheet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NICS&lt;/a&gt;, and require FBI approval for purchases. The official form &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atf.gov/forms/download/atf-f-4473-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Firearms Transaction Record Part I Over-the-Counter&lt;/a&gt; requires a &quot;valid government-issued photo identification&quot; (such as driver's licences) with the current address OR a &quot;valid government-issued photo identification&quot; with a second piece of identification showing the current address.  The relevant sections of the form are 20a and 20b. If cheques require more than that in any of those states, we have a winner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alabama *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alaska *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arizona *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arkansas *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;California - No. &lt;a href=&quot;http://privacyrights.org/fs/fs15-mt.htm#2c&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Can only demand one id for check&lt;/a&gt; - via @DVK&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Colorado&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Connecticut&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Delaware *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Florida&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Georgia *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hawaii&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Idaho&lt;/strong&gt; - May fit the criteria. Need to find a merchant that sells firearms and requires two ID's to pay by check.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;There is no state permit required for the purchase of any rifle, shotgun, or handgun.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.idaho.gov/laws_rules/firearm.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;idaho.gov&lt;/a&gt; The number of ID required to purchase a gun is dependent on other sources' requirements (e.g. ATF). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The issue of paying by check seems left entirely to the merchant accepting the check as payment. Idaho law seems to not address the issue. Laws regarding merchant acceptance of checks revolve only around what information is stored, not shows of ID.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Illinois - Requires a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isp.state.il.us/foid/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Firearm Owner's ID&lt;/a&gt; to purchase a firearm, and application for this apparently only requires a single ID (driver's license OR state-issued ID)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indiana *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iowa&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kansas * - Appears to have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.mx/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=kansas%2Bgun%2Blaws&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=3&amp;amp;ved=0CCgQFjAC&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nraila.org%2Fstatelawpdfs%2FKSSL.pdf&amp;amp;ei=eQyxTsDkAeGosQLWm8nDAQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNEj0fbkQtk8yu91m1Rz09T-Zf-9lQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;no specific requirements for ID for gun purchase&lt;/a&gt;. The only restriction is against selling guns to minors, so presumably a gun store clerk may check an ID to verify age, but there is no requirement to check 2 IDs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kentucky *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Louisiana *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maine *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maryland * &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Massachusetts - No. &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/781085.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Can only demand one id for check&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Michigan&lt;/strong&gt; - This might fit the criteria of the claim; additional research necessary&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requires &lt;em&gt;at most&lt;/em&gt; a single &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/publications/firearms.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;state-issued ID&lt;/a&gt; to obtain a firearm license (p. 9 of PDF--28.422(3)(c)), and a firearm license isn't even necessary for certain types of firearms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is unclear whether a gun store clerk may request the firearm license in addition to another form of ID at time of purchase.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seems to have no law limiting the number of IDs used for check acceptance, only &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.retailers.com/mra/security/258-what-id-can-i-require-when-accepting-a-check.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;which information can be recorded from the IDs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Minnesota *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mississippi *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Missouri *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Montana *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nebraska&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nevada&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New Hampshire&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New Jersey&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New Mexico *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New York *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;North Carolina&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;North Dakota *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ohio *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oklahoma *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oregon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pennsylvania&lt;/strong&gt; - Only one form of ID is required to purchase a handgun.  For &quot;long guns&quot; (rifles, shotguns, &lt;em&gt;etc&lt;/em&gt;.) sold in a private transaction, &lt;em&gt;neither ID nor a license is required&lt;/em&gt;.  It is still unclear whether the seller can require two forms of ID for a check. Via &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/1337/esultanik&quot;&gt;@ESultanik&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rhode Island *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;South Carolina *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;South Dakota *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tennessee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Texas *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Utah&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vermont *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Virginia - No. &lt;a href=&quot;http://thenationsgunshow.com/GunLaws/tabid/55/Default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Two IDs required for gun&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Washington&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;West Virginia *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wisconsin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wyoming *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Washington DC *&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T12:22:42.853" CommentCount="16" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-11-02T03:25:22.193" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6810" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6811" CreationDate="2011-11-02T03:39:48.820" Score="11" ViewCount="20385" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that you can die from eating too hot or too many chili peppers (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popsci.com/node/7781&quot;&gt;see here&lt;/a&gt;). Is this even theoretically possible? How much peppers would you have to eat to be in any danger?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-11-02T07:23:34.497" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T00:22:36.700" Title="Can you die from eating chili peppers?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6810" CreationDate="2011-11-02T04:19:25.530" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Theoretically, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popsci.com/node/7781&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;apparently yes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But is there a deadly dose of spicy peppers? Researchers at Niigata University School of Medicine in Japan ran tests on mice to find out. After several hefty doses of pure capsaicin, most of the mice died of lung failure. Don't worry, though—you'd have to eat hundreds of thousands of jalapeños in one sitting to get the equivalent dose...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tracked down &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8887888&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the actual paper mentioned&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/spicy-food-fatal-chili-peppers-2093/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another article&lt;/a&gt; cites Paul Bosland, professor of horticulture at New Mexico State University and director of the Chile Pepper Institute on the matter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Theoretically, one could eat enough really hot chiles to kill you,&quot; he says. &quot;A research study in 1980 calculated that three pounds of extreme chilies in powder form — of something like the Bhut Jolokia — eaten all at once could kill a 150-pound person.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three pounds of powder doesn't really seem like &quot;eating peppers&quot; to me -- this seems like a modification of the ingredients to cause the actives to be absorbed faster and take effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, let's take the hottest pepper, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhut_Jolokia_chili_pepper&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bhut Jolokia&lt;/a&gt; mentioned above, and try to figure out how much one would have to eat of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's our data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9923296&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LD50 for capsaicin&lt;/a&gt; (active spicy ingredient in peppers) is 47.2 mg/kg in mice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://notulaebotanicae.ro/nbha/article/viewFile/345/346&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bhut Jolokia peppers have 2.06% weight/weight&lt;/a&gt; capsaicin content&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_weight#Average_weight_around_the_world&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Average human body weight:&lt;/a&gt; 86.6kg (using heaviest male average from US)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we need to solve:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;47.2mg/kg × 86.6kg = LD50 dosage = 0.0206 × mass of peppers to ingest&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives us 198,423.3mg ≈ 0.2kg (≈ 1/2 lb) of these peppers one would have to eat. I say that's doable. The open question is whether the LD50 in mice is transferable to humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per @wjl's comment, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhut_Jolokia_chili_pepper#Characteristics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; lists Bhut Jolokia weight at 7-9g per pepper, so we're talking 22-28 peppers to reach the 0.2kg (200g) value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2011-12-01T17:00:05.280" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T17:00:05.280" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6810" CreationDate="2011-11-02T10:03:46.130" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The World's Hottest Chilli eating contest in Edinburgh this year did end with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/8808120/Worlds-hottest-chilli-contest-leaves-two-in-hospital.html&quot;&gt;two of the contestants being rushed to hospital&lt;/a&gt; by ambulance - vomiting, agony - not good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't evidence, however it is a good indicator that you can seriously upset the body even with just a few spoonfuls of hot chilli, so it isn't a great leap of faith...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T10:03:46.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5629" CreationDate="2011-11-02T13:48:18.720" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cuadrilla Resources was the company responsible for the fracking operation. They have now released a report, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cuadrillaresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Geomechanical-Study-of-Bowland-Shale-Seismicity_02-11-11.pdf&quot;&gt;Geomechanical Study of Bowland Shale Seismicity&lt;/a&gt;, 2 Nov 2011, confirming that it caused the earthquakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the report there are a number of factors that were said to have contributed to the seismic events, including the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was a pre-existing critically stressed fault.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The fault was &quot;transmissible&quot; so accepted large quantities of fluid.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The seismic events were induced after repeated injection of fluid into the same fault zone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report states that repeat occurrences are unlikely at future well sites and gives magnitude 3 as a worst-case scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2187" LastEditorUserId="2187" LastEditDate="2013-09-05T14:54:38.403" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T14:54:38.403" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6820" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-02T16:42:12.403" Score="2" ViewCount="1220" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that the fish antibiotic &lt;strong&gt;FishMox&lt;/strong&gt; can be used as an antibiotic by humans?  The advantages would be that it does not require a prescription and is cheaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3278" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T23:44:07.610" Title="Can FishMox be used for humans as an antibiotic?" Tags="|medications|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6821" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-02T16:42:38.580" Score="2" ViewCount="252" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/325/6-meals-a-day-strategy&quot;&gt;6-meals-a-day strategy&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often I hear claims that not eating enough calories will put your body in &quot;starvation mode&quot; and actually make you gain weight. Simply from an energy perspective, this seems impossible and there is a ton of anecdotal evidence to suggest otherwise. Is there any actual proof of such a claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1892" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T16:42:38.580" Title="Is there a such thing as &quot;starvation mode&quot;?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2011-11-02T16:46:51.180" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-02T19:38:53.480" Score="5" ViewCount="1615" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not referring to determining personality from handwriting, I'm talking about whether a document was forged or created by a certain person by comparing handwriting on a document to a sample source of handwriting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5174" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T01:10:18.580" Title="Is handwriting analysis considered a legitimate source of evidence in forensic science?" Tags="|forensics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6824" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-02T20:15:18.513" Score="10" ViewCount="1198" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-magazine/the-solution-to-income-disparity-consumption-taxes/article2222861/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The solution to income disparity? Consumption taxes&lt;/a&gt;, Timothy Taylor claims the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why are VATs and sales taxes so unpopular? One common critique is that they are regressive. ... But if you measure a VAT or sales tax relative to total spending by individuals—the rich generally spend a lot more than the poor—those taxes actually look progressive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument that higher value-added taxes is a great solution to income inequality, because it can fund cash transfers to the less fortunate, is hardly new to me. However, it is the first time I read that VATs may naturally be progressive, even without any cash transfer to the poor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any literature backing his claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T15:43:24.653" Title="Are value-added taxes naturally progressive?" Tags="|economics|taxes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4864" CreationDate="2011-11-02T21:31:21.997" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/5474247/the-science-of-sleep-tracking-gadgets-and-the-decision-tree&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; may be enlightening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most accurate method of measuring someone's sleep cycle is to use a bunch of electrodes attached to a person's head - I did this once. It's difficult to sleep this way because the gunk gets in your hair and restricts your movement in the night. However, measuring a person's movement during sleep - which is what all of these devices are doing is also very accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/0967-3334/28/2/002&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt;, claims to be able to accurately detect REM sleep from actigraphy and pulse monitoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waking at the right cycle during sleep reduces sleep inertia - the feeling of grogginess. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1087079200900984&quot;&gt;Here's a source&lt;/a&gt; explaining sleep inertia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to fairly accurately monitor sleep cycles using activity, and waking up in the certain sleep cycles reduces grogginess, so their claims are plausible &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5174" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-04T16:32:30.820" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T16:32:30.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6824" CreationDate="2011-11-02T21:52:39.630" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The very wealthy tend not to spend all that much of their money on things that are typically subject to consumption tax.  According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/2006/07/19/spending-income-level_cx_lh_de_0719spending.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt; (in 2006; much clicking needed to find the data), the only category where Americans with incomes in the top 20% vastly outspend those in the bottom 20% (fractionally) is in insurance and pensions, neither of which is normally taxed.  (Forbes doesn't mention investment, but this also follows similar trends.)  Even if you avoid taxing food, this really shifts the relative burden not &quot;progressively&quot; more to higher income earners, but centrally to middle-income earners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you added a VAT to second residences and to investments not covered by FDIC, then maybe there would be a case for progressivity.  As it is, the article says (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;VATs and sales taxes tend to be more efficient and &lt;strong&gt;harder to avoid&lt;/strong&gt; than income taxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which I would interpret as arguing that the best that can be said now is that there would likely be fewer loopholes in practice--but this is true of almost any changed system, since loopholes can take time to install.  (That loopholes are the primary source of avoiding income taxes, at least for corporate taxes, is described &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/business/economy/02leonhardt.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="1039" LastEditDate="2011-11-02T23:29:28.257" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T23:29:28.257" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6820" CreationDate="2011-11-02T22:14:30.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The active incredient in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markspetfish.com/fish-mox-medicine-antibiotics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fish mox is amoxicillin&lt;/a&gt; - which is an antibiotic often prescribed for humans. However, the amoxicillin sold in pet stores &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.everydayhealth.com/health-questions/amoxicillin/is-fish-mox-the-same-as-amoxicillin-and-can-it-be-harmful-to-humans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;has not been approved for human consumption by the FDA&lt;/a&gt;, and there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugs.com/amoxicillin.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;adverse effects associated with amoxicillin&lt;/a&gt;. It's best to get a prescription from the Dr. any time you take antibiotics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5174" LastEditorUserId="5174" LastEditDate="2011-11-02T23:44:07.610" LastActivityDate="2011-11-02T23:44:07.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6828" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6859" CreationDate="2011-11-02T22:42:33.973" Score="484" ViewCount="320175" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found the following picture online. It is about the moral/paradigm behind consistent behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://i.snag.gy/kdu77.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MyQki.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image shows text and cartoon illustrations. Transcribed below.&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://i.snag.gy/kdu77.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Click to enlarge.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image text says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A group of scientists placed 5 monkeys in a cage and in the middle, a ladder with bananas on the top. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Every time a monkey went up the ladder, the scientists soaked the rest of the monkeys with cold water.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;After a while, every time a monkey went up the ladder, the others beat up the one on the ladder.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;After some time, no monkey dare[d] to go up the ladder regardless of the temptation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scientists then decided to substitute one of the monkeys. The 1&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt; thing this new monkey did was to go up the ladder. Immediately the other monkeys beat him up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;After several beatings, the new member learned not to climb the ladder even though he never knew why.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A 2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt; monkey was substituted and the same occurred. The 1&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt; monkey participated on [&lt;em&gt;sic&lt;/em&gt;] the beating for [&lt;em&gt;sic&lt;/em&gt;] the 2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt; monkey. A 3&lt;sup&gt;rd&lt;/sup&gt; monkey was changed and the same was repeated (beating). The 4&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; was substituted and the beating was repeated and finally the 5&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; monkey was replaced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;What was left was a group of 5 monkeys that even though never received a cold shower, continued to beat up any monkey who attempted to climb the ladder. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If it was possible to ask the monkeys why they would beat up all those who attempted to go up the ladder ... I bet you the answer would be ... &lt;strong&gt;&quot;I don't know &amp;mdash; that's how things are done around here&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Does it sound familiar?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Don't miss the opportunity to share this with others as they might be asking themselves why we continue to do what we are doing if there is a different way out there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems like an experiment, but now I'm wondering... &lt;strong&gt;Was this experiment ever conducted? If not, was any similar experiment conducted that shows the same effect?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="669" LastEditorUserId="2974" LastEditDate="2013-08-02T20:05:20.273" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T12:58:33.353" Title="Was the experiment with five monkeys, a ladder, a banana and a water spray conducted?" Tags="|psychology|behavior|memory|morality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6828" CreationDate="2011-11-02T23:39:44.340" Score="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; It sounds like a similar monkey experiment did take place, and the results were similar to that presented in the picture, but if this is the same experiment, most of the details are wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Did_the_monkey_banana_and_water_spray_experiment_ever_take_place&quot;&gt;first google result&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.mx/#hl=en&amp;amp;source=hp&amp;amp;q=monkeys+ladder+experiment&quot;&gt;monkeys ladder experiment&lt;/a&gt; contains to the following information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stephenson (1967) trained adult male and female rhesus monkeys to avoid manipulating an object and then placed individual naïve animals in a cage with a trained individual of the same age and sex and the object in question. In one case, a trained male actually pulled his naïve partner away from the previously punished manipulandum during their period of interaction, whereas the other two trained males exhibited what were described as &quot;threat facial expressions while in a fear posture&quot; when a naïve animal approached the manipulandum. When placed alone in the cage with the novel object, naïve males that had been paired with trained males showed greatly reduced manipulation of the training object in comparison with controls. Unfortunately, training and testing were not carried out using a discrimination procedure so the nature of the transmitted information cannot be determined, but the data are of considerable interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: &#xA;Stephenson, G. R. (1967). Cultural acquisition of a specific learned response among rhesus monkeys. In: Starek, D., Schneider, R., and Kuhn, H. J. (eds.), Progress in Primatology, Stuttgart: Fischer, pp. 279-288. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mentioned in: Galef, B. G., Jr. (1976). Social Transmission of Acquired Behavior: A Discussion of Tradition and Social Learning in Vertebrates. In: Rosenblatt, J.S., Hinde, R.A., Shaw, E. and Beer, C. (eds.), Advances in the study of behavior, Vol. 6, New York: Academic Press, pp. 87-88.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above quote is found on page 88 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.za/books?id=x_hfmoOaHpoC&amp;amp;lpg=PA77&amp;amp;ots=IqFtSYj5di&amp;amp;dq=Social%20Transmission%20of%20Acquired%20Behavior%3A%20A%20Discussion%20of%20Tradition%20and%20Social%20Learning&amp;amp;lr&amp;amp;pg=PA88#v=onepage&quot;&gt;the 1976 document quoted above&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible the claim is referring to this experiment, with diverging details, or that another experiment took place that was closer to the details in the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T12:58:33.353" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T12:58:33.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6831" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6832" CreationDate="2011-11-03T00:00:55.237" Score="15" ViewCount="2021" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this CBC &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VS5ogZxoZ2Y&quot;&gt;Be Green&lt;/a&gt; report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'CFLs [Compact Fluorescent Lamps] produce what is called &quot;dirty electricity&quot;.'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In an environment with dirty electricity, diabetics blood sugar will climb. It will drop again in a clean electricity environment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In an environment with dirty electricity, multiple sclerosis patients will have worse neurological symptoms.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A school found that after cleaning their electricity, students with asthma stopped using their inhalers at school.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CFLs increase the EMF field (which apparently measures dirty electricity levels.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Graham-Stetzer Filters will clean the dirty electricity on your circuit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They interviewed experts to support these claims, although the credentials of the experts were not made clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are any of these claims true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T05:39:41.057" Title="Do Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFL) create dirty electricity which can impact health?" Tags="|compact-fluorescent-lamps|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6831" CreationDate="2011-11-03T00:55:43.703" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;An interesting claim which starts with a plausible idea: that CFLs produce transient high-frequency noise in your electrical system. This answer is partial and incomplete but I though some observations were worth reporting in the hope that further investigation by me or others can flesh out the detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The website of the firm selling the filters that supposedly fix the problem is the primary place to look for links and references it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dirtyelectricity.ca/stetzer_filters.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. I'm suspicious already as someone is trying to sell something. The key academic references converge on a single academic (Magda Havas) who has a variety of publications on related topics (but who disavows any interest in their commercial success despite having an apparently close relationship with their inventors as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dirtyelectricity.ca/images/08_Havas_diabetes_EBM1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one paper states&lt;/a&gt;, for example):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Conflict of Interest&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  Please note that the author has no vested interest, financial or otherwise, in the commercial devices mentioned in this article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Acknowledgments&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  The author thanks the people who participated in this study; Dave Stetzer and Martin Graham for information about power quality; and reviewers for their critical comments and suggestions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB Stetzler and Graham are the designers of the filter sold on the dirty electricity website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magda Havas studies are superficially plausible and seem, at least some of the time, to observe proper experimental procedure (though details are often a little light). But the diabetes claim is based on this study &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15368370802072075&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dirty Electricity Elevates Blood Sugar Among Electrically Sensitive Diabetics and May Explain Brittle Diabetes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; This paper claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In an electromagnetically clean environment, Type 1 diabetics require less insulin and Type 2 diabetics have lower levels of plasma glucose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which appears a clear-cut piece of evidence. But the claim is based on precisely &lt;strong&gt;four&lt;/strong&gt; subjects which casts some doubt on the statistical validity. In fact I'd go as far as saying that to publish a study with this little evidence is a major sign that you don't want to (or can't) produce real evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm making a superficial judgement about the body of work without (yet) having time to examine or validate it all, but I'd say this is poor quality science based on the work of a very small number of researchers who don't adopt stringent statistical standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no plausible mechanism for the effects observed and the observations are not the result of rigorous trials .These claims demand high quality repeatable evidence and that is not what you find on tracing the references here. In fact the site is a cornucopia of references to other emf sensitivity theories many of which have already been dealt with on skeptics.se e.g. here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1178/are-wifi-waves-harmful&quot;&gt;Are WiFi waves harmful?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm saying the answer is no, CFL's don't harm you via &quot;dirty electricity&quot; unless someone can point me to some serious research that says they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T00:55:43.703" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6822" CreationDate="2011-11-03T01:10:18.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is yes.  The paper titled &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=146638&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PROFICIENCY OF PROFESSIONAL DOCUMENT EXAMINERS IN WRITER IDENTIFICATION&lt;/a&gt; deals with this subject directly.  It was written in the lab I worked in as an undergrad and did research in a related paper that may or may not end up being published (I hope it does, but these things take a lot of time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote some of the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A comprehensive writer identification test was designed and&#xA;  administered to a group of professional document examiners and a&#xA;  control group of nonprofessionals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Professional document examiners from the FBI performed significantly&#xA;  better than control group members, indicating that handwriting&#xA;  identification expertise exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above paper I can only find an abstract for, but you have to pay to read the full thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent paper (by the same leading author) of which I can find the full paper available, written in 1997 is titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.52.6428&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writer Identification by Professional Document Examiners&lt;/a&gt;.  This paper tried a similar approach, but instead of testing between &quot;experts&quot; and &quot;laypeople&quot; they tested between experts and &quot;trainees&quot; and showed how different the results turned out (the experts scored a great deal better).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We report on a comprehensive test administered to more than 100&#xA;  professional document examiners, intended to close this data gap in&#xA;  the area of writer identification. Each examiner made 144 pair-wise&#xA;  comparisons of freely-created original handwritten documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Examination of the data and statistical tests show that the answers&#xA;  collected from the professional and nonprofessional groups came from&#xA;  different populations. The trainees’ data were shown to have come from&#xA;  a population that is distinct from both professional and&#xA;  nonprofessional groups. Unlike the professional examiners, the&#xA;  nonprofessionals tended to grossly over-associate. They erroneously&#xA;  “matched” many documents that were created by different writers,&#xA;  mismatching almost six times as many unknown documents to database&#xA;  documents as the professionals did (38.3% vs. 6.5% of the documents).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results of our test lay to rest the debate over whether or not&#xA;  professional document examiners possess writer-identification skills&#xA;  absent in the general population. They do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Asaf&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4794" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T01:10:18.580" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6834" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6904" CreationDate="2011-11-03T04:56:46.333" Score="16" ViewCount="2110" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is of course widely known: LSD &quot;broadens your thinking&quot; and makes you &quot;more creative&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last incarnation was Steve Jobs' biography taking a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/10/steve-jobvs-on-gates-unimaginative.html&quot;&gt;swipe at Bill Gates&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger”. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most famous example ever being cited is probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.miqel.com/entheogens/francis_crick_dna_lsd.html&quot;&gt;DNA double-helix structure discovery&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, none of those examples seem to me to be a reliable proof (e.g. correlation at best and random coincidence at worst).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was there any study ever done that actually &lt;strong&gt;proved&lt;/strong&gt; that LSD had measurably beneficial effect on any mental activity/creativity? (specific definition of creativity left blank since I would rather not exclude some useful study simply because my unimaginative non-LSD-fueled brain didn't think of that precise effect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Am I the only one who would LOVE to see this one covered by Mythbusters? :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:45:08.860" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:45:08.860" Title="Does LSD provide a creativity boost?" Tags="|psychology|intelligence|recreational-drugs|celebrities|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6835" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6907" CreationDate="2011-11-03T05:09:48.300" Score="11" ViewCount="21004" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.miqel.com/entheogens/francis_crick_dna_lsd.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nobel Prize genius Crick was high on LSD&#xA;when he discovered the secret of life&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FRANCIS CRICK, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, was under the influence of LSD when he first deduced thedouble-helix structure of DNA nearly 50 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the story is (in)famous, is there any proof that it actually happened?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:44:55.423" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:44:55.423" Title="Was Francis Crick high on LSD when he discovered the structure of DNA?" Tags="|history|biology|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6824" CreationDate="2011-11-03T13:37:06.437" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;A 'progressive' tax does not mean that the rich pay more than the poor. A 'progressive' tax means that the rich pay &lt;em&gt;proportionately&lt;/em&gt; more than the poor. A 'regressive' tax is one where the rich pay &lt;em&gt;proportionately&lt;/em&gt; less than the poor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Value added taxes are generally &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2011/01/04/why-vat-is-regressive/&quot;&gt;considered regressive&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The message from this data is unambiguous: the poorest 20% of households in the UK have both the highest overall tax burden of any quintile and the highest VAT burden. That VAT burden at 12.1% of their income is more than double that paid by the top quintile, where the VAT burden is 5.9% of income. VAT is, therefore, regressive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However many countries make adjustments to make them more progressive, such as the UK which exempts basic necessities like food. With those adjustments VAT may be considered progressive &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12111507&quot;&gt;according to a study examining the UK version specifically&lt;/a&gt;. Or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jun/18/vat-tax-rise&quot;&gt;it may not&lt;/a&gt;. Flat rate sales taxes with no exemptions are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irs.gov/app/understandingTaxes/student/whys_thm03_les02.jsp&quot;&gt;more likely to be regressive&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-11-03T20:55:13.767" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T20:55:13.767" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6837" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-03T13:38:51.573" Score="14" ViewCount="1255" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a comment in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3567/is-eating-oranges-during-a-bout-of-flu-bad-for-you&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; saying that he was dubious of claims of the Vitamin C benefits of eating an orange.  My gut reaction was to respond that Vitamins taken in food &lt;strong&gt;are metabolized better&lt;/strong&gt; than those from a supplement.  But I realized I had never seen any real proof of that.  I believe this is a fairly common belief, at least among those of us who believe in natural living.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scenerio I am asking about is this.  If I were to take in the vitamin needs for my body through:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) Naturally occurring (not necessarily organic) foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) Vitamin Supplements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research to support or refute the belief that the body makes more effective use of the the vitamins from Scenario A than Scenario B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T14:19:01.883" Title="Are Vitamins ingested in natural food more effective than those ingested in supplements?" Tags="|nutrition|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6838" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6848" CreationDate="2011-11-03T15:49:59.030" Score="41" ViewCount="4597" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/meat-and-environment.aspx&quot;&gt;On their website&lt;/a&gt;, PETA claimed the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A recent United Nations report concluded that a global shift toward a vegan diet is necessary to combat the worst effects of climate change. And the U.N. is not alone in its analysis. Researchers at the University of Chicago concluded that switching from a standard American diet to a vegan diet is more effective in the fight against climate change than switching from a standard American car to a hybrid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there was any scientific basis for their claims, or if there are scientific proofs about the contrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4747" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2011-11-03T20:53:44.157" LastActivityDate="2020-12-16T10:35:45.193" Title="Is being a vegan more environmentally friendly than otherwise?" Tags="|environment|vegetarianism|meat|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6839" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8328" CreationDate="2011-11-03T15:53:35.033" Score="13" ViewCount="1575" Body="&lt;p&gt;I stumbled upon an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_deadhand?currentPage=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article on wired.com&lt;/a&gt; which told details about an automatic nuclear retaliation system build by the soviets in the mid-eighties. This system is supposed to ensure destruction of the US even if the Russian chain of command is wiped out or broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the article seems credible at first glance, there are some suspicious things about it: Single (named) members of the construction/design crew are supposed to have leaked information, while the US government denies knowledge thereof while Russian authorities don't even bother to comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a well known internet hoax, or is there evidence to the actual existence of a ex-soviet doomsday device?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3720" LastEditorUserId="34347" LastEditDate="2020-07-29T14:39:38.623" LastActivityDate="2020-07-29T14:39:38.623" Title="Is there a Soviet doomsday device called &quot;Perimeter&quot; or &quot;Dead Hand&quot;?" Tags="|history|nuclear-weapons|soviet-union|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5611" CreationDate="2011-11-03T16:41:50.477" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scientists from Cambridge University found that boys and girls are different (sexual dimorphism) even from day one. They exposed infants one day old to a thing and a face, and measured differences in interest (looking time). Neither the test person nor the timer knew which sex each infant was. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract from the 2000 study, &quot;Sex differences in human neonatal social perception&quot;, reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sexual dimorphism in sociability has been documented in humans. The present study aimed to ascertain whether the sexual dimorphism is a result of biological or sociocultural differences between the two sexes. 102 human neonates, who by definition have not yet been influenced by social and cultural factors, were tested to see if there was a difference in looking time at a face (social object) and a mobile (physical-mechanical object). Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the physical-mechanical mobile while the female infants showed a stronger interest in the face. The results of this research clearly demonstrate that sex differences are in part biological in origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638300000321&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638300000321&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5182" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2018-07-02T04:04:51.003" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T04:04:51.003" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6734" CreationDate="2011-11-03T20:55:08.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a table on the error in the UN's population rate forecasting from 1950-1970, from a paper published in 1981 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/1972799&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Limits of Population Forecasting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the author of the paper is doing is comparing the UN population projections for 1100 different regions to their actual population increases starting from the &quot;jumping-off year&quot;. This table represents the root-mean-square of the error in population increase in percent, for example, if the US was predicted to grow by 50% in one year and actually grew by 54%, that would be an error of 4% or 0.04 in this table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least for 1950-1970, the slowest prediction has the least error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vm2Zs.png&quot; alt=&quot;UN forecasts&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5174" LastEditorUserId="5174" LastEditDate="2011-11-03T21:41:05.470" LastActivityDate="2011-11-03T21:41:05.470" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6838" CreationDate="2011-11-03T21:56:15.607" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/EI167.1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This is the Chicago paper PETA is referring to.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The energy consumption of animal- and plant-based diets and, more broadly, the range of energetic planetary footprints spanned by reasonable dietary choices are compared. It is demonstrated that the greenhouse gas emissions of various diets vary by as much as the difference between owning an average sedan versus a sport-utility vehicle under typical driving conditions. The authors conclude with a brief review of the safety of plant-based diets, and find no reasons for concern&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an amusing graph from the paper:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NG7DZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;animal protein sources&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should add that the values in this graph are normalized by the carbon footprint of a vegan diet, so a vegan diet does not produce no CO2 emissions as you might believe from the y-intercept of this graph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5174" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-04T00:31:39.540" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T00:31:39.540" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6847" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-03T23:01:11.483" Score="-5" ViewCount="5967" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of videos posted by mellowb1rd user on youtube about poltergeist activity in his home. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMfX0K1uGE8&amp;amp;feature=feedwll&amp;amp;list=WL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This is one of them&lt;/a&gt;. He has good good rating on almost all of his videos? Are his videos real, if fake, how are they fake?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T05:02:50.167" Title="Is this ghost video fake?" Tags="|ghosts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6838" CreationDate="2011-11-03T23:31:51.290" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: &lt;strong&gt;A lacto-ovo vegetarian diet does use less resources than a meat-based diet. However, neither diet is currently sustainable.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a0701e/a0701e.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this is the (very long) &amp;quot;recent United Nations report&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; PETA is referencing on their website and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?newsID=20772&amp;amp;CR1=warning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this is the press release for it&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The press release: (emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars, UN report warns&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cattle-rearing generates more global warming greenhouse gases, as measured in CO2 equivalent, than transportation&lt;/strong&gt;, and smarter production methods, including improved animal diets to reduce enteric fermentation and consequent methane emissions, are urgently needed, according to a new United Nations report released today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“&lt;strong&gt;Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems&lt;/strong&gt;,” senior UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) official Henning Steinfeld said. “Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cattle-rearing is also a major source of land and water degradation&lt;/strong&gt;, according to the FAO report, Livestock’s Long Shadow–Environmental Issues and Options, of which Mr. Steinfeld is the senior author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level,” it warns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 per cent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 per cent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it accounts for respectively 37 per cent of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants, and 64 per cent of ammonia, which contributes significantly to acid rain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;With increased prosperity, people are consuming more meat and dairy products every year&lt;/strong&gt;, the report notes. &lt;strong&gt;Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The global livestock sector is growing faster than any other agricultural sub-sector.&lt;/strong&gt; It provides livelihoods to about 1.3 billion people and contributes about 40 per cent to global agricultural output. For many poor farmers in developing countries livestock are also a source of renewable energy for draft and an essential source of organic fertilizer for their crops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Livestock now use 30 per cent of the earth’s entire land surface&lt;/strong&gt;, mostly permanent pasture but also including 33 per cent of the global arable land used to producing feed for livestock, the report notes. As forests are cleared to create new pastures, it is a major driver of deforestation, especially in Latin America where, for example, &lt;strong&gt;some 70 per cent of former forests in the Amazon have been turned over to grazing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time &lt;strong&gt;herds cause wide-scale land degradation&lt;/strong&gt;, with about 20 per cent of pastures considered degraded through overgrazing, compaction and erosion. This figure is even higher in the drylands where inappropriate policies and inadequate livestock management contribute to advancing desertification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The livestock business is among the most damaging sectors to the earth’s increasingly scarce water resources&lt;/strong&gt;, contributing among other things to water pollution from animal wastes, antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond improving animal diets, proposed remedies to the multiple problems include soil conservation methods together with controlled livestock exclusion from sensitive areas; setting up biogas plant initiatives to recycle manure; improving efficiency of irrigation systems; and introducing full-cost pricing for water together with taxes to discourage large-scale livestock concentration close to cities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a study at Cornell, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/78/3/660S.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition&lt;/a&gt;, that looked specifically at the sustainability of meat based diets vs plant based diets. They studied lacto-ovo vegetarians (who also include eggs and milk products in their diets) not vegans though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lactoovovegetarian diet was selected for this analysis because most vegetarians are on this or some modified version of this diet. In addition, the American Heart Association reported that the lactoovovegetarian diet enables individuals to meet basic nutrient needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study concluded the lacto-ovo vegetarian diet used less land, water and energy than its meat counterpart. Here is the abstract: (emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worldwide, an estimated 2 billion people live primarily on a meat-based diet, while an estimated 4 billion live primarily on a plant-based diet. The US food production system uses about 50% of the total US land area, 80% of the fresh water, and 17% of the fossil energy used in the country. &lt;strong&gt;The heavy dependence on fossil energy suggests that the US food system, whether meat-based or plant-based, is not sustainable.&lt;/strong&gt; The use of land and energy resources devoted to an average meat-based diet compared with a lactoovovegetarian (plant-based) diet is analyzed in this report. In both diets, the daily quantity of calories consumed are kept constant at about 3533 kcal per person. &lt;strong&gt;The meat-based food system requires more energy, land, and water resources than the lactoovovegetarian diet. In this limited sense, the lactoovovegetarian diet is more sustainable than the average American meat-based diet.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/89/5/1699S.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;also published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition&lt;/a&gt; studied the environmental effects of lacto-ovo vegetarians vs meat eaters in California. It came to the same conclusion with some interesting numbers. Here is the abstract: (emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Food demand influences agricultural production. &lt;strong&gt;Modern agricultural practices have resulted in polluted soil, air, and water; eroded soil; dependence on imported oil; and loss of biodiversity&lt;/strong&gt;. The goal of this research was to compare the environmental effect of a vegetarian and nonvegetarian diet in California in terms of agricultural production inputs, including pesticides and fertilizers, water, and energy used to produce commodities. The working assumption was that a greater number and amount of inputs were associated with a greater environmental effect. The literature supported this notion. To accomplish this goal, dietary preferences were quantified with the Adventist Health Study, and California state agricultural data were collected and applied to state commodity production statistics. These data were used to calculate different dietary consumption patterns and indexes to compare the environmental effect associated with dietary preference. Results show that, for the combined differential production of 11 food items for which consumption differs among vegetarians and nonvegetarians, &lt;strong&gt;the nonvegetarian diet required 2.9 times more water, 2.5 times more primary energy, 13 times more fertilizer, and 1.4 times more pesticides than did the vegetarian diet&lt;/strong&gt;. The greatest contribution to the differences came from the consumption of beef in the diet. We found that &lt;strong&gt;a nonvegetarian diet exacts a higher cost on the environment relative to a vegetarian diet. From an environmental perspective, what a person chooses to eat makes a difference.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="15144" LastEditDate="2020-12-16T10:35:45.193" LastActivityDate="2020-12-16T10:35:45.193" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2779" CreationDate="2011-11-04T01:44:13.647" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several obvious examples from the most popular American sports. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;Baseball&lt;/strong&gt; the home team bats last in each inning, which means at the end of the game they know how many runs they need to win, and that they don't have to play the bottom of the ninth inning if they have the lead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;Football&lt;/strong&gt; (American, sorry, unlike soccer it has no other name) the home crowd tends to cheer loudly when their team is on defense, which benefits the defense because it makes it hard for the offense to hear the snap count and audibles. This leads to poorer execution of plays, false start, delay of game, and illegal procedure penalties, which affect field position and can change the outcome of games. For example, the Seattle Seahawks play in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Seahawks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one of the loudest stadiums in the NFL&lt;/a&gt; and have records for the most false start and delay of game penalties. Commentary during Seahawks home broadcasts the announcers will often describe how the visiting team had to change their practice routine to incorporate loud noises to help acclimate players to the high level of noise.&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Inside CenturyLink Field the noise level can reach as high as 137 decibels, or the equivalent of a jet engine. Indeed, this has caused problems for opposing teams, making them have numerous false starts and penalties. From 2005 through the beginning of the 2010 season, fans have caused a league-high 107 false start penalties.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Basketball&lt;/strong&gt; crowds can rock the floor causing the basket to move, which can effect the ability to make free throws. It is also common for people sitting behind the opposing teams basket to wave objects while the visiting team is making free throws to create a visually chaotic and distracting background. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, regardless of sport, travel takes a toll on the visiting team, especially when game times are fixed in the home fields local time zone. Peter King has often written about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/peter_king/10/16/Week6/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;disadvantage West Coast football teams have&lt;/a&gt; when they have to fly to the Eastern time zone (+3 hours) and play a game at what would be 10 am local time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4055" LastEditorUserId="4055" LastEditDate="2011-11-04T13:03:36.697" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T13:03:36.697" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6852" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6866" CreationDate="2011-11-04T08:37:25.517" Score="30" ViewCount="4039" Body="&lt;p&gt;A SE &lt;a href=&quot;https://area51.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2775/disclaimer-to-make-it-clear-that-the-site-isnt-offering-professional-advice/2777#2777&quot;&gt;moderator said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I]n the US, at least, legal professionals are not permitted to answer questions on a site like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems odd that a law would prohibit someone who has passed a Bar exam from answering questions in a public forum. It also seems odd that someone who is employed as a &quot;legal professional&quot; (practicing attorney, judge, etc) could not answer questions in this way. The most I can imagine is that some employers may prohibit such behavior as a condition of employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also heard attorneys on call-in radio programs offering legal advice (but usually/always with the disclaimer &quot;You should speak to a local attorney about your specific situation!&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in what cases, if any, is it &lt;em&gt;illegal&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; for a legal professional to answer legal questions in a public forum, specifically on the Internet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;The claim is that it is &quot;not permitted in the U.S.&quot; This may not be a claim that it's explicitly illegal, but I'm not sure how else to interpret this, since I don't know how any other form of &quot;not permitted&quot; would encompass the entire U.S. But if there is some other form of U.S.-wide &quot;not permitted&quot;, please enlighten me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T08:41:06.517" LastActivityDate="2011-11-05T06:38:47.567" Title="Is it illegal in the U.S. for legal professionals to answer legal questions on public Internet forums?" Tags="|united-states|law|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6847" CreationDate="2011-11-04T09:03:59.753" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;: This is poor evidence of poltergeists. It is (almost certainly) a fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We need to consider which of the following two conjectures to believe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The user MellowB1rd is completely honest. He is showing an accurate recording of poltergeist activity.  That poltergeist recording demonstrates direct contraventions of our best understanding of the universe - including straight-forward physical laws like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum#Conservation_of_linear_momentum&quot;&gt;Conservation of Linear Momentum&lt;/a&gt;. The poltergeist theory also directly contravenes our understanding of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalists&quot;&gt;Physicalism of the Mind&lt;/a&gt;. Despite these results overturning so much of what we know about the universe, they can only be observed through an anonymous person's kitchen, via their camera on YouTube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) That user MellowB1rd is a top-grade troll. He uses any of a number of plausible special-effect techniques which have been proposed by his critics on YouTube (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.disclose.tv/forum/mellowb1rd-s-fake-poltergeist-videos-t22436.html&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; as some. MellowB1rd himself &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQLmQZLQ5Ic&quot;&gt;summarises a few&lt;/a&gt;), from as sophisticated as CGI or compressed air lines, to invisible wires and kicking over chairs from behind the camera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I couldn't say which techniques he uses, but I notice that his own rendered logo on YouTube implies he has more experience with CGI than his claimed occupation might suggest.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As skeptics, we can see that there has been a lot of high-quality evidence gained over the years for the physical laws. Anyone claiming they are wrong is making an extraordinary claim and &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2008/01/extraordinary-c.html&quot;&gt;needs to provide extraordinary evidence&lt;/a&gt; to the point that believing that there is no such things as poltergeists would be more obtuse than believing there is no such thing as Conservation of Momentum. Easily faked YouTube videos does not constitute such evidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We should provisionally accept that MellowB1rd's videos are fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T09:03:59.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6837" CreationDate="2011-11-04T11:24:29.500" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I can find where Vitamin C is concerned, the controlling factor in how fast it's absorbed is not whether the food is a tablet or an orange, but how much Vitamin C has already been consumed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nearest I could find on the subject directly comparing the two is this article saying Orange juice and supplements are equally effective at Reducing Plasma Lipid Peroxidation in Healthy Adult Women &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jacn.org/content/22/6/519.full&quot;&gt;http://www.jacn.org/content/22/6/519.full&lt;/a&gt; If you look they note that concentrations of Vitamin C in blood remained mostly the same amongst the 2 groups&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Objective: To directly examine the contribution of vitamin C to the&#xA;  antioxidant potential of fruits and vegetables, the antioxidant effect&#xA;  of orange juice consumption (8 and 16 fl. oz.) was compared to the&#xA;  antioxidant effect of supplemental vitamin C (dosage equivalent to&#xA;  that supplied by 8 fl. oz. of orange juice).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Methods: Subjects (n = 11; 28.6 ± 2.1 years) received each treatment&#xA;  in a 3 × 3 randomized crossover design, and each two-week treatment&#xA;  was preceded by a two-week washout. During the entire trial, subjects&#xA;  restricted fruit and vegetable consumption to ≤3 servings per day&#xA;  except the vitamin C-rich foods (items containing &gt;20 mg/serving),&#xA;  which were restricted to ≤3 servings per week. A fasting blood sample&#xA;  was collected at the end of each washout and each treatment period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results: Following washouts, plasma vitamin C and lipid peroxidation&#xA;  (plasma TBARS) were similar by treatment group and averaged 25.4 ± 3.6&#xA;  μmol/L and 3.82 ± 0.10 nmol/mL respectively. Plasma vitamin C&#xA;  concentrations were similar following each treatment period, 37.9 ±&#xA;  8.1, 45.8 ± 9.4, and 38.3 ± 12.4 μmol/L for the 8 and 16 fl. oz. orange juice treatments and the supplement treatment, respectively.&#xA;  All intervention treatments reduced plasma TBARS as compared to&#xA;  pretreatment values: −47% (p = 0.013), −40% (p = 0.083), and −46% (p =&#xA;  0.015) for the 8 and 16 fl. oz. orange juice treatments and supplement treatment respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusions:These data indicate that the regular consumption of 8 fl.&#xA;  oz. orange juice or supplemental vitamin C (∼70 mg/day) effectively&#xA;  reduced a marker of lipid peroxidation in plasma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ofcourse this now relies upon how dependable the study conducted at the Department of Nutrition, Arizona State University East headed by Carol Johnston Phd is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a choice between a pill and food on a plate, I would advise the food however, as food gives other benefits, the actual act of digestion and satisfaction has other health benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5191" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T11:24:29.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6852" CreationDate="2011-11-04T15:51:44.073" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.lawinfo.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;legal advice site exists&lt;/a&gt;  I do not see any statute that would prevent an attorney from exercising their free speech rights on a site like this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=legal%20discussion%20board&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google search&lt;/a&gt; reveals literally hundreds of similar sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html#Am1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Constitution&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or&#xA;  prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of&#xA;  speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to&#xA;  assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will provide protection from prosecution for posting an opinion on the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That does not mean there is no risk of being sued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastActivityDate="2011-11-04T15:51:44.073" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6828" CreationDate="2011-11-04T17:56:52.670" Score="403" Body="&lt;p&gt;The earliest mention I could find of this experiment was in the popular business/self-help book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0875847161&quot;&gt;Competing for the future&lt;/a&gt; by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad (1996).  Here is the quote from the book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4 monkeys in a room. In the center of the room is a tall pole with a bunch of bananas&#xA;  suspended from the top. One of the four monkeys scampers up the pole and grabs the&#xA;  bananas. Just as he does, he is hit with a torrent of cold water from an overhead shower.&#xA;  He runs like hell back down the pole without the bananas. Eventually, the other three try&#xA;  it with the same outcome. Finally, they just sit and don’t even try again. To hell with the&#xA;  damn bananas. But then, they remove one of the four monkeys and replace him with a&#xA;  new one. The new monkey enters the room, spots the bananas and decides to go for it.&#xA;  Just as he is about to scamper up the pole, the other three reach out and drag him back&#xA;  down. After a while, he gets the message. There is something wrong, bad or evil that&#xA;  happens if you go after those bananas. So, they kept replacing an existing monkey with a&#xA;  new one and each time, none of the new monkeys ever made it to the top. They each got&#xA;  the same message. Don’t climb that pole. None of them knew exactly why they&#xA;  shouldn’t climb the pole, they just knew not to. They all respected the well established&#xA;  precedent. EVEN AFTER THE SHOWER WAS REMOVED! (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.altfeldinc.com/pdfs/Competing%20for%20the%20Future.pdf&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors did not provide a source for this claim.  This story was later repeated in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0767911903&quot;&gt;various&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0785288570&quot;&gt;other&lt;/a&gt; popular business/self-help books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every source online I could find erroneously attributed the experiment to one of the above authors.  No one, &lt;em&gt;anywhere&lt;/em&gt;, seems to have a reference to the actual experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C. K. Prahalad is deceased, but Gary Hamel is still alive.  I tried contacting him several times, but unfortunately both he and his secretary were very evasive.  The best I could get was&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our apologies, but Professor Hamel does not have the original source information at hand in terms of your request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that there seems to be no evidence &lt;strong&gt;anywhere&lt;/strong&gt; of this experiment ever actually taking place, that all trails of references eventually lead to the claim in this book, and that this is the earliest available mention of the experiment, until further evidence becomes available the most reasonable conclusion is that &lt;strong&gt;C. K. Prahalad or Gary Hamel made up the experiment for their book.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the above authors were not the creators of the myth, there is still reason to believe that, as @Chad puts it (comments above), this claim is an &lt;em&gt;&quot;extrapolation of predicted results combined with humanized responses.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/10/cdu10.html&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a quote from an &lt;em&gt;&quot;anthropology professor who's worked with hundreds of monkeys over the last 30 years.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  When asked what he thought of the experiment, he responded succinctly with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you have bananas on a pole, you'll lose your bananas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastEditorUserId="249" LastEditDate="2011-11-28T18:43:03.717" LastActivityDate="2011-11-28T18:43:03.717" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6860" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-04T18:26:01.643" Score="45" ViewCount="4654" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was surprised by the following claim from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/031210_Luc_Montagnier_Homeopathy.html&quot;&gt;NaturalNews&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most clinical research conducted on homeopathic medicines that has been published in peer-review journals have shown positive clinical results&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This goes against what I heard &quot;It's always been found equivalent to placebo&quot;, so what's going on here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5194" LastEditorUserId="16419" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T12:59:46.473" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T12:45:33.280" Title="Has most peer-reviewed research on homeopathy given positive results?" Tags="|medical-science|homeopathy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6780" CreationDate="2011-11-04T18:49:56.780" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cooperation is far more common than any theory based on &quot;cooperate with people like you&quot; would predict&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble with this question is that is is a very big one which others have written whole books about so any summary will be incomplete and perhaps overly simple. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important conclusion is that &lt;strong&gt;cooperation between people goes far beyond what Haldane's numbers would predict&lt;/strong&gt; and that reciprocal altruism base on consanguinity is not a good explanation for actual cooperation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three key books that describe these ideas well: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0465005640&quot;&gt;The Evolution of Cooperation&lt;/a&gt; by Robert Axelrod; &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0199291152&quot;&gt;The selfish Gene&lt;/a&gt; by Richard Dawkins; &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0140264450&quot;&gt;the Origins of Virtue&lt;/a&gt; by Matt Ridley (all links to latest editions on Amazon).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Haldane's numbers describe the mathematics of rational cooperation from the point of view of genetic success. It makes sense to display some degree of self sacrifice of an individual if their genes are preserved in the other relatives saved by the sacrifice. The theme of Dawkins' book is working out the implications of that view for biological behaviour. But rather too many people read the title and not the book and somehow never get to the penultimate chapter which (in my edition at least) is called &lt;em&gt;Nice Guys Finish First&lt;/em&gt;. The chapter gives a summary of the work of Axelrod. Matt Ridley's book explores this theme in more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Axelrod did provides a powerful illustration that cooperation can be very effective for the individual and the group in ways that are far more significant for real behaviour than preferential behaviour to relatives. His basic idea was to create a computer model of individuals who would compete against each other in interactions with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma&quot;&gt;Prisoner's Dilemma&lt;/a&gt; style payoff. The prisoner's dilemma is just about the simplest description of a two player game where the results are not trivial and where something like a real-world tradeoff between short and long term payoffs matters (the rational strategy in a single game is selfish, but if you know you will play repeatedly, you can do much better if you are not selfish). The beauty of the very simple game is how it captures the essence of some real interactions between people where the result is not zero-sum (i.e. the size of the pie can get bigger or smaller depending on how you play so there is more at stake than just what share you get).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Axelrod ran a simulation of many competing strategies for playing the game and ran competitions to see if experts in computer science, game theory and biology could develop effective strategies. The successful algorithms were allowed to grow in number; the less successful killed off in a long game  with many rounds (in modern language he created a simulated ecosystem where individual bots with a particular strategy could recognise other bots they had interacted with before). The critical finding is what sort of strategy is successful in the long term: a selfish one, a greedy one, an altruistic one, a complex one and so on. Naively &quot;nice&quot; algorithms get exploited by nasty ones but if the population is all nasty, nasty ones don't do well either. Amazingly one of the simplest algorithms possible often comes out on top: tit-for-tat. It has the characteristics (as described by Dawkins) of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tit for tat... is 'nice' meaning never the first to defect, and 'forgiving' meaning it has a short memory for past misdeeds. Tit for tat is also 'not envious' ...[which is] to be quite happy if the other player wins just as much money as you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot more detail which I highly recommend people to read, but the key point relevant to this question is just this: Axelrod's simulation demonstrates that &lt;em&gt;cooperative behaviour can emerge from interacting individuals with no concept at all of kin selection (at least if you are playing a non zero-sum game).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many creatures have the capability to cooperate for mutual benefit with their own species and with entirely different species (e.g. those small birds or fish that clean carnivores' teeth and never get eaten). Many species exhibit self-sacrificial behaviour with non-related individuals. Dawkins ends the description of this by describing mutualistic behaviour in Vampire bats where individuals who have had a good feed will regurgitate blood for unrelated bats who have not had a good feed. he ends the chapter with these words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vampires could form the vanguard of a comfortable new myth,a myth of sharing, mutualistic cooperation. They could herald the benignant idea that, even with selfish genes at the helm, nice guys can finish first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key point of all this is &lt;em&gt;you don't need to be related to engage in and benefit from cooperative behaviour&lt;/em&gt; and that many of the actual examples of cooperation are not derived from the rules about how related we are, but from this, more powerful, drive for mutual benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, perhaps even more importantly for the original question, &lt;strong&gt;cooperation doesn't depend on whether the cooperating parties are similar.&lt;/strong&gt; Otherwise different species couldn't develop symbiotic relationships. The critical issue driving cooperation is &lt;em&gt;repeated interaction&lt;/em&gt; between people who recognise each other. This suggests that the correct prediction is that &lt;strong&gt;people will be more altruistic to other people they repeatedly interact with&lt;/strong&gt; and those others may be completely unrelated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-02-23T17:46:22.680" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T17:46:22.680" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6860" CreationDate="2011-11-04T19:11:51.557" Score="61" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer, &lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explanation of why you hear different best summed up by Ben Goldacre &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badscience.net/2007/11/a-kind-of-magic/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how come you keep hearing homeopaths saying that there are trials where homeopathy does do better than placebo? This is where it gets properly interesting. This is where we start to see homeopaths, and indeed all alternative therapists more than ever, playing the same sophisticated tricks that big pharma still sometimes uses to pull the wool over the eyes of doctors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are some individual trials where homeopathy does better, first because there are a lot of trials that are simply not “fair tests”. For example – and I’m giving you the most basic examples here – there are many trials in alternative therapy journals where the patients were not “blinded”: that is, the patients knew whether they were getting the real treatment or the placebo. These are much more likely to be positive in favour of your therapy, for obvious reasons. There is no point in doing a trial if it is not a fair test: it ceases to be a trial, and simply becomes a marketing ritual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also trials where it seems patients were not randomly allocated to the “homeopathy” or “sugar pill” groups: these are even sneakier. You should randomise patients by sealed envelopes with random numbers in them, opened only after the patient is fully registered into the trial. Let’s say that you are “randomly allocating” patients by, um, well, the first patient gets homeopathy, then the next patient gets the sugar pills, and so on. If you do that, then you already know, as the person seeing the patient, which treatment they are going to get, before you decide whether or not they are suitable to be recruited into your trial. So a homeopath sitting in a clinic would be able – let’s say unconsciously – to put more sick patients into the sugar pill group, and healthier patients into the homeopathy group, thus massaging the results. This, again, is not a fair test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actual summaries to the proper reviews in the medical literature referenced here (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673607617061/fulltext#&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;original lancet article&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badscience.net/2007/11/the-lancet-benefits-and-risks-of-homoeopathy/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;full text on ben Goldacre's blog&lt;/a&gt;) with this conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Five large meta-analyses of homoeopathy trials have been done. All have had the same result: after excluding methodologically inadequate trials and accounting for publication bias, &lt;strong&gt;homoeopathy produced no statistically significant benefit over placebo.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eduard Ernst &lt;a href=&quot;http://edzardernst.com/2014/04/the-most-thorough-and-independent-assessment-of-homeopathy-ever/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;summarises&lt;/a&gt; a recent (april 2014), and fairly comprehensive, &lt;a href=&quot;http://consultations.nhmrc.gov.au/files/consultations/drafts/nhmrcdrafthomeopathyinformationpaper140408.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Australian review (pdf)&lt;/a&gt; of the subject thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not for a single health conditions was there reliable evidence that homeopathy was effective. No rigorous studies reported either that homeopathy caused greater health improvements than a placebo, or that homeopathy caused health improvements equal to those of another treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T19:27:19.207" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6852" CreationDate="2011-11-05T03:19:45.867" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, I am not a lawyer, and I do not play one on the 'net. This isn't anything remotely like legal advice, assuming I could even provide such a thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, although I am an employee of Stack Exchange, I'm not writing this on their behalf (i.e., I didn't ask Robert to pre-approve this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, given that…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The important issues here are&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unauthorized_practice_of_law#Unauthorized_practice_of_law&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unauthorized Practice of Law&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attorney-client_privilege&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Attorney-client privilege&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/163988/a_quagmire_of_internet_ethics_law_and_the_aba_guidelines/index.html&quot;&gt;A Quagmire of Internet Ethics Law and the ABA Guidelines for Legal Website Providers&lt;/a&gt;, by Margaret Hensler Nicholls, says (section III.C, D):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;UNAUTHORIZED PRACTICE OF LAW&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The unauthorized practice of law consists of providing legal advice in a jurisdiction where a person is not admitted to practice law; lawyers must not violate states’ rules on unauthorized practice. The Internet raises the threat of unauthorized practice of law occurrences because lawyers communicate more frequently and easily (often unknowingly) with people outside their licensed jurisdictions. Because an attorney may not be aware of the potential client’s domicile, the attorney may provide incorrect advice based on the wrong jurisdiction’s law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The threat of lay people giving legal advice without any license is even more concerning. As mentioned above, many non-lawyers create and maintain legal websites. These providers believe they offer legal services for less, and consumers either ignore their lack of pedigree or prefer the lower cost. Non-lawyers have been found to have engaged in the unauthorized practice of law with legal websites. In an Ohio Board of Commissioners on the Unauthorized Practice of Law decision, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ccarch/2002/02/01/sinrod.htm&quot;&gt;the court found an unauthorized practice&lt;/a&gt; when Palmer, a non-lawyer, offered legal advice through his website “amoralethics.com,” which boasted “Free Legal Advice” and elicited questions on legal matters. Online legal forms and software hosted by non-lawyers also pose difficulty; online wills, divorces, and contractual agreements exude an “air of reliability about the documents, which increases the likelihood that an individual user will be misled into relying on them.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Attorneys may trigger attorney-client relationships and potential conflicts more easily based on website interaction. The anonymity of the Internet contributes to this increased likelihood of attorney-client relationship problems. An attorney-client relationship develops when a lawyer gives specific legal advice to a person, consents to providing legal advice, or fails to decline a person’s request, knowing the person reasonably relies on the lawyer. E-mail communication and online referrals can attach a duty as “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/ethics/aba/current/ABA_CODE.HTM#Rule_1.18&quot;&gt;Model Rule 1.18&lt;/a&gt; gives prospective clients protection where the attorney-client privilege has not yet descended, but the information the prospective client has provided to the lawyer should nonetheless be considered confidential.” Yet, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/ethics/aba/&quot;&gt;Model Rules&lt;/a&gt; do not specifically address the existence of attorney-client relationships over the Internet. Again, lawyers face uncertainty in ethics regulation. In turn, this problem impacts the consumer who may rely on a lawyer in an ambiguous situation, given the anonymous nature of the Internet and its lack of spatial and temporal boundaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhbar.org/publications/archives/display-journal-issue.asp?id=152&quot;&gt;The Ethics of Practicing Law in Cyberspace&lt;/a&gt; by Jennifer P. Hopkins (Section III):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can a Disclaimer Prevent a Lawyer-Client Relationship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many legal web sites use a disclaimer to attempt to prevent a lawyer-client relationship. &quot;Indeed, much of the legal advice-giving activity online seems to hinge on the belief that blanket use of disclaimers will protect lawyers against all risks associated with their conduct.&quot; But online disclaimers may not provide the protection that many lawyers would hope. … &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even if a lawyer did create a disclaimer that potential clients read and to which they signaled their consent, the question remains whether such a disclaimer would be permissible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Indeed, if disclaimers could be so easily utilized, a lawyer could avoid the prospect of malpractice liability, or even the reach of most ethics rules, simply by expressly disclaiming the intent to create an attorney-client relationship with anyone… At some point the conduct of the lawyer would be so inconsistent with the disclaimer of a professional relationship that the disclaimer would be treated as ineffective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three states have already ruled that disclaimers will not avoid lawyer-client relationships in the context of 900-number telephone services to provide legal advice. &quot;A lawyer operating a '900' pay-for-information telephone number by which callers are given legal information ... enters into a lawyer-client relationship with the caller and may not avoid it by disclaimer.&quot; The validity of a disclaimer is likely to be measured against the lawyer's conduct, depending &quot;in part on the extensiveness of the advice sought and the fact-intensiveness of the answer given by the attorney.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Summary&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;(aka the &quot;TL;DR&quot; section)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're a lawyer: the American Bar Association has &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bar_Association_Model_Rules_of_Professional_Conduct&quot;&gt;Model Rules of Professional Conduct&lt;/a&gt; that define attorney-client relationships. These &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/cpr/model-def/model_def_statutes.authcheckdam.pdf&quot;&gt;have been adopted by 49 states&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether you're a lawyer or not: You can get in trouble for Unauthorized Practice of Law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these can be criminal and/or felony offenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Further reading&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://legalethics.com&quot;&gt;Legalethics.com&lt;/a&gt; blog&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Focusing on the ethical issues associated with the use of technology by legal professionals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/2011_build/ethics_2020/feb_hearing_speakers_submissions.authcheckdam.pdf&quot;&gt;Online Legal Services: The Future of the Legal Profession&lt;/a&gt; by Richard S. Granat (PDF, pages 4-52)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/migrated/2011_build/ethics_2020/feb_hearing_speakers_submissions.authcheckdam.pdf&quot;&gt;Virtual Law Practice: Taking All or a Portion of Your Practice Online&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;by Stephanie L. Kimbro (PDF, pages 53-78)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.americanbar.org/buslaw/committees/CL983500pub/newsletter/201101/flack.pdf&quot;&gt;Cutting‐Edge Legal Ethics Issues for Transactional Lawyers in a Changing, Challenging Economy&lt;/a&gt; by Joseph H. Flack (PDF)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elawyering.org/tool/practices.shtml&quot;&gt;Best Practice Guidelines for Legal Information Web Site Providers&lt;/a&gt; by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.americanbar.org/dch/committee.cfm?com=EP024500&quot;&gt;Elawyering Task Force&lt;/a&gt; (part of the ABA Law Practice Management Section)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanbar.org/publications/law_practice_magazine/2011/september_october/watch_where_you_set_your_virtual_foot.html&quot;&gt;Watch Where You Set Your Virtual Foot – Advice on Dealing with Varying State Rules&lt;/a&gt; by Daniel J. Siegel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3aYVLYri8T1OAJ%3awww.ncbex.org/uploads/user_docrepos/730204_Gillers.pdf&quot;&gt;Multi-jurisdictional Practice Of Law: Merging Theory With Practice&lt;/a&gt; by Stephen Gillers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The State Bar Of California Standing Committee on Professional Responsibility and Conduct &lt;a href=&quot;http://ethics.calbar.ca.gov/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=tdI0awT-KcE%3d&amp;amp;tabid=838&quot;&gt;Formal Opinion No. 2003-164&lt;/a&gt; (PDF)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="127" LastActivityDate="2011-11-05T03:19:45.867" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6867" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22999" CreationDate="2011-11-05T13:00:40.717" Score="11" ViewCount="5624" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quote is attributed to him in many many animal rights banners. Is this attribution accepted by historians or philosophers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1090" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-25T14:29:22.890" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T02:59:34.160" Title="Did Hippocrates say &quot;The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different&quot;?" Tags="|history|quotes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6870" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-06T04:50:54.703" Score="5" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5021/ultrasound-pest-control-devices&quot;&gt;Ultrasound pest control devices&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do electric insect repellers&lt;sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0030T0RJC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For context, I live in a rented house that has several of these installed. My personal observation is that they do &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; to repel bugs, but actually are effective at killing the bugs that enter the home &amp;mdash; it just might take a day or two for the bug to die first. However, my personal observation may not be a typical result, hence the question: do these devices work? If it's a case of, &quot;Yes... &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, what do you need to look for to get an effective system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5202" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-11-06T14:41:36.917" Title="Do electronic bug repellers work?" Tags="|zoology|technology|electromagnetism|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2011-11-06T18:04:35.573" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6837" CreationDate="2011-11-06T16:27:08.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the problems with the question is that it subtly presupposes that vitamin supplementation is good for us. But the evidence that vitamins or other nutritional supplements do anything much at all is weak to non-existent in people who consume a balanced diet and don't suffer specific deficiency diseases. For a good summary with links to the research sources see the Information is Beautiful site's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/snakeoil-scientific-evidence-for-health-supplements/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;visualisation&lt;/a&gt; (indeed one of their more effective ones) of the evidence and internet popularity of a range of vitamins and supplements (and note the lack of relationship between popularity and evidence). Or the existing answer: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/299/should-a-healthy-adult-take-a-daily-multi-vitamin&quot;&gt;Should a healthy adult take a daily multi-vitamin?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is asking us to judge the effectiveness of two forms of something with no demonstrable effectiveness either way (above the baseline nutritional needs). However, there is still a residual claim which I read as relating to &lt;em&gt;bioavailability.&lt;/em&gt; So, assuming you choose to think there is a benefit in taking extra vitamins, which way is best for bioavailability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is solid science behind the idea that bioavailability or drugs and vitamins are altered by food and by each other. For example, see the BMJ reviews in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/289/6452/1093.full.pdf?sid=7e3f5a19-f1d8-4ca2-88ff-7c2d81194c46&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1984&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/282/6262/462.full.pdf?sid=0cefedfb-9ba2-44ae-b12d-00ee48fa6cbe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1981&lt;/a&gt;. The first summarises (he counts vitamins as drugs):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When drugs are taken by mouth their bioavailability is determinedly factors in the drug-which include the nature of the molecule, its stability, and the formulation administered- and in the patient-such as a reduced intestinal surface area as a result of coeliac disease or intestinal resection and whether or not the drug is taken with a meal. In addition, drugs may undergo &quot;pre systemic&quot; metabolism in either the intestine, the liver, or, less commonly, the lungs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is perfectly scientifically reasonable to believe that vitamins in foods are &lt;em&gt;differently&lt;/em&gt; bioavailable from the same vitamin in pill form. But you could always take the pill with an appropriate meal and get the same effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my summary answer is a &lt;strong&gt;qualified maybe.&lt;/strong&gt; Since few supplements have demonstrable effects, it doesn't much matter how you take them. If that evidence doesn't matter to you and you still want to maximise bioavailability, take your pills with food and there is no good reason to expect a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2011-11-06T16:27:08.033" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5484" CreationDate="2011-11-06T20:11:55.930" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; true, not in any meaningful sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, non-distilled water has extremely widely varying levels of various minerals; for example among U.S. cities &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mgwater.com/mgrank.shtml&quot;&gt;magnesium concentration varies by 300-fold&lt;/a&gt; (and other minerals also vary widely).  Since leeching is proportional to concentration difference, the difference between zero and a tiny trace is much less chemically significant than the difference between a tiny trace and a 300-fold larger trace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second of all, the minerals in drinking water are, for a balanced diet, overwhelmed by the minerals present in food.  For example, in the U.S. cities list, if you drink 2L of water of the highest mineral concentration, you would get 120, 180, 220, and 30 mg of magnesium, calcium, sodium, and potassium, respectively.  The daily recommended intake (&lt;a href=&quot;http://fnic.nal.usda.gov/nal_display/index.php?info_center=4&amp;amp;tax_level=3&amp;amp;tax_subject=256&amp;amp;topic_id=1342&amp;amp;level3_id=5140&quot;&gt;linked from here&lt;/a&gt;) for 19-30 year old males is 400, 1000, 1500, and 4700 mg.  These differences are vast, and are similarly large for the other minerals I've checked.  Certainly, since water has no memory, drinking distilled water wouldn't take &lt;em&gt;away&lt;/em&gt; more than 120 mg of magnesium beyond what drinking the highest magnesium concentration tap water in the U.S., and this is a negligible amount compared to the daily intake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if one has poor nutrition to begin with, water &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; provide (no guarantees, given the large variations!) enough of some mineral to alleviate negative impacts on health.  Still, that distilled water is &quot;removing minerals&quot; is not a useful way to think about it.  Yes, of course when we excrete waste products, some minerals go along; if you're short of some mineral, you'll then be even shorter.  If you're lucky enough to have the deficiency covered by the water you drink, then you'll of course do better if you don't change water supplies.  But the mineralization of water is widely variable, and it is not the distinction between distilled and undistilled but the particular concentration of particular minerals in particular water that is important.  For example, if you're desperately short of calcium, 180 mg/day from water is going to be a lot better for you than 0 mg/day!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short version: mineral content in water has a minimal to negligible impact in the context of good nutrition; it is possible for there to be enough of a mineral in a water supply to make a difference in the context of poor nutrition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2011-11-06T20:11:55.930" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6874" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6876" CreationDate="2011-11-05T13:22:50.463" Score="8" ViewCount="1810" Body="&lt;p&gt;On page 62 of David Deutsch's excellent &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/books/review/the-beginning-of-infinity-by-david-deutsch-book-review.html?_r=1&amp;amp;pagewanted=all&quot;&gt;The Beginning of Infinity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; he writes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a typical child born in the United States today is more likely to die&#xA;  as a result of an astronomical event than a car accident&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the National Safety Council the lifetime probability of dying in a motor vehicle accident is huge: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsc.org/NSC%20Picture%20Library/News/web_graphics/Injury_Facts_37.pdf&quot;&gt;over 1%&lt;/a&gt;, and by far the largest of the non-intentional non health related causes. Is the lifetime chance of dying from an astronomical event greater than that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5206" OwnerDisplayName="raxacoricofallapatorius" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-11-07T07:55:47.470" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T17:36:08.920" Title="Is the chance of dying from a car accident less than dying from an astronomical event?" Tags="|astronomy|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6874" CreationDate="2011-11-05T14:39:55.383" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/10/13/death-by-meteorite/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bad Astronomy&lt;/a&gt;, astronomer Alan Harris estimates that the probability of dying due to an asteroid is about 1 in 700,000. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for other forms of astronomical events, one could hypothesize that non-Earth based radiation could cause deaths in the form of cancer, but that would likely be quite difficult to deduce, unless that person was an astronaut, which is pretty low. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line is, I think it's pretty unlikely to occur, much lower than the probability of dying in a car accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="987" OwnerDisplayName="Pearsonartphoto" LastActivityDate="2011-11-05T14:39:55.383" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6874" CreationDate="2011-11-05T22:26:22.673" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's what the &lt;a href=&quot;http://beginningofinfinity.com/errata&quot;&gt;book's website&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Correction: That should read &quot;an aeroplane accident&quot;. A true&#xA;  comparison with airplane accidents appears on p207, using slightly&#xA;  different statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note: The probability of dying in a car accident is at least 12 times&#xA;  and perhaps as much as 100 times as great as that of dying from an&#xA;  astronomical event. As road safety improves, this will presumably&#xA;  continue to fall rapidly during the lifetimes of children born today&#xA;  -- but then, so will the probability of dying from an astronomical event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is, in fact, an error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5206" OwnerDisplayName="raxacoricofallapatorius" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-07T00:37:07.137" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T00:37:07.137" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6874" CreationDate="2011-11-06T07:47:10.317" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To give an answer to this question we must first ask ourselves what we are comparing to what. If we are comparing events occurred in the last 50 years then you might be right to say that the chance is quite low for us to dye from an astronomical event than say a car accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All depends on the statistical sample you are considering. The statement that you are trying to understand is based on much bigger statistical sample going back to the history of all earth. If you estimate the amount of fatal car accidents or calculate the fatal accidents involving a passenger jet and compare this with the number of catastrophic astronomical events occurred during the existence of earth you will reach to the same conclusion that you are questioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For proper explanation I suggest you visit &lt;a href=&quot;http://star.arm.ac.uk/impact-hazard/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://star.arm.ac.uk/impact-hazard/&lt;/a&gt; address and follow the links to the specific presentations and documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5208" OwnerDisplayName="Tigran Khanzadyan" LastActivityDate="2011-11-06T07:47:10.317" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6297" CreationDate="2011-11-07T12:10:32.820" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends what you mean by worse. I think there is no safety or health issue (and the right place for evidence is in this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1178/are-wifi-waves-harmful&quot;&gt;Are WiFi waves harmful?&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;strong&gt;But if the question is wide enough to include RF interference, then the answer is yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interference is caused because domestic power lines do broadcast the high frequency signals used to transmit data. In some circumstances these cause much more interference than Wifi (which is more tightly regulated and sits in reserved frequency bands where it won't interfere). This is something that is likely to vary from country to country but the UK story is told in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/04/05/ofcom_plt_response/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Register article&lt;/a&gt; (also a good source of primary links to the regulator and the key evidence.) The key section reports :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PLT [power line telecommunications] involves sending radio signals over mains electrical wiring for home networking, but given the lack of shielding on electrical wiring those signals tend to leak out and can interfere with anyone else trying to use the same frequency. Currently that only hits radio amateurs and those listening to shortwave radio, but faster PLT kit goes higher up the dial and has attracted concern from the Civil Aviation Authority as well as taking out DAB broadcasts and MW transmissions too...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UK regulator, OFCOM, has, so far, not been persuaded to act despite some power line kit clearly breaching the interference regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-11-07T12:10:32.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6883" CreationDate="2011-11-07T12:16:08.423" Score="28" ViewCount="5774" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following claim has been attributed to economist Professor Herakles Polemarchakis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A couple of years ago, there were more &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_Cayenne&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cayennes&lt;/a&gt; circulating in Greece&#xA;  than individuals who declared and paid taxes on an annual income of&#xA;  more than €50,000, a figure only slightly above the vehicle’s list&#xA;  price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote seems to come from the &lt;strong&gt;Bulletin of the Economics Research Institute&lt;/strong&gt;, and is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/knowledge/themes/02/credit_crocodile_hearts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has since been picked up by many news organisations, such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ianmcowie/100012894/fast-cars-and-loose-fiscal-morals-there-are-more-porsches-in-greece-than-taxpayers-declaring-50000-euro-incomes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Daily Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; (a mainstream UK newspaper).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15600594&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The BBC&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the figures behind this claim do not seem to be referenced, and seem to be disputed (again, without references). Indeed, in the &quot;comments&quot; section to the linked article, the following is argued:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Greece there are 160000 taxpayers who have income over 50000 euros&#xA;  per year. This means that according to this article there must be over&#xA;  160000 Cayennes in Greece. But based on the local Porsche&#xA;  representative in Greece , from 2000 to 2009 only 1560 Cayennes have&#xA;  been sold in Greece! Where are the rest 159000; The numbers on this&#xA;  article are preposterous. Why mr Polemarchakis is telling lies and why&#xA;  now;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone followed up on the figures behind this claim? Is it true, or is this a slander on Greek society?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3882" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-12-24T14:56:08.803" LastActivityDate="2017-12-24T14:56:08.803" Title="Are there more Greeks driving Porsche Cayennes than paying high-rate tax?" Tags="|economics|greece|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6881" CreationDate="2011-11-07T17:41:52.080" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is incorrect by more than an order of magnitude.  These are the numbers according to database queries we ran at the General Secreteriat for Information Systems at the Greek Ministry of Finance.  In 2010 there were 130,385 taxpayers individually declaring more than €50,000 taxable income.  Adding up the numbers of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gsis.gr/statistiko_deltio/statistiko_deltio_2009/statdeltio2009.xls&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;published 2009 data&lt;/a&gt; (tables Π6Α.09 and Π6Β.09) gives a similar figure (138,060 taxpayers).  The registry used for issuing the road tax contains 5808 cars with a vehicle identification number corresponding to Porsche (WP0 or WP1). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5212" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2017-12-24T12:22:19.597" LastActivityDate="2017-12-24T12:22:19.597" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6886" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6887" CreationDate="2011-11-08T01:20:00.700" Score="6" ViewCount="1133" Body="&lt;p&gt;The news about Hira Raten Manek who seems to be able to survive on sunlight and liquids (including only water in some studies) had been in the local dailies some years back. There were reports that he had been studied by NASA too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is this a verified claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacedaily.com/news/food-03d.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Space Daily&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/28-08-2006/84110-sunlight-0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pravda&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3781" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-10T00:53:27.323" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T00:53:27.323" Title="Has Hira Raten Manek's claim of surviving for long periods on sunlight and water been verified?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6886" CreationDate="2011-11-08T01:59:47.883" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/jr/071103.html&quot;&gt;July 2003&lt;/a&gt;, noted skeptic, James Randi, investigated the claim that Hira Raten Manek was being tested by NASA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well, the official NASA spokesperson, Dolores Beasley, has now said she has no idea why press reports had claimed that NASA had invited Manek. NASA has no record of him being involved with them, in any way whatsoever. So, it's all a lie. What else is new?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't much of a reference - one guy saying a spokesperson denied it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, really, for claims of this calibre (i.e. living without food, a claim that has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inedia&quot;&gt;repeated made but never demonstrated in a reasonable test&lt;/a&gt;) how good does the counter-evidence have to be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(That last link discusses other 'tests' that Hira Raten Manek submitted to. Note the lack of reports of independent tests where they don't somehow neglect to ensure he isn't eating.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T01:59:47.883" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6888" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6893" CreationDate="2011-11-08T06:42:00.603" Score="10" ViewCount="777" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/magazine/job-creation-campaign-promises.html?_r=1&amp;amp;scp=1&amp;amp;sq=can%20goverment%20create%20jobs&amp;amp;st=cse&quot;&gt;Can Anyone Really Create Jobs?&lt;/a&gt; from the New York Times. In the article, it is argued that, though more spending on the part of consumers is needed to improve the economy, a $400 billion jobs package may not be able to trigger spending patterns that existed before the economic crisis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With no new theories, Democrats dusted off the big idea from the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes’s view that government can create jobs by spending a lot of money. The stimulus, however, has to be borrowed, and it has to be really, truly huge — probably something like $1.5 or $2 trillion — to fill the gap between where the economy is and where it would be if everyone was spending at pre-recession levels. The goal is to goad consumers into spending again. And President Obama’s jettisoned $400 billion jobs package, hard-core Keynesians argue, is nowhere near what it would take to persuade them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a government stimulus cause a sustained improvement in the economy when that stimulus money will have to be borrowed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2011-11-09T22:04:46.147" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T05:36:42.693" Title="Can a government stimulus cause a sustained improvement in the economy?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6824" CreationDate="2011-11-08T15:43:24.653" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;VAT is sales tax. It is &lt;strong&gt;not an income tax&lt;/strong&gt;. Thus subject to taxation are personal and corporate expenditures. And as far as expenditure goes, VAT is in &lt;strong&gt;clearly and evidently progressive&lt;/strong&gt; (dark green columns on figure below). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Agpgz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;VAT vs expenditure&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;i&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Documents/VATRegressive.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Documents/VATRegressive.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the argument is that poor spend more than they earn, while rich make savings, thus the first spend higher percentage of their income on VAT. There are however two flaws with this argument. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it is typical apples to oranges argument. &lt;strong&gt;VAT is sales tax, not income tax&lt;/strong&gt;, so it makes absolute no sense at all to calculate VAT as percentage of income. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, as you can clearly see, &lt;strong&gt;even if you just look at income (light green on the figure), it's still progressive&lt;/strong&gt;. Ironically, these facts don't prevent author of the referenced article from arguing, that VAT is regressive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T15:43:24.653" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6888" CreationDate="2011-11-08T16:34:16.317" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The truth is that this is a complicated question, and one on which economists disagree. A Google search will find learned papers in support of both sides. No amount of debate by a few guys on a Q&amp;amp;A site is going to produce a definitive answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources saying Yes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303635604576392023187860688.html&quot;&gt;Former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve in the Wall Street Journal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/08/stimulus-thinking&quot;&gt;A blogger at The Economist&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/spin-meter-gop-says-government-money-doesnt-create-jobs-_-except-millions-of-defense-jobs/2011/11/04/gIQABOI0kM_story.html&quot;&gt;Anonymous article in the Washington Post Business&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/09/yes_we_can.html&quot;&gt;Briefing from the Center for American Progress&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&amp;amp;_&amp;amp;ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED235568&amp;amp;ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&amp;amp;accno=ED235568&quot;&gt;Information Analyses, Stanford Univ., CA. Inst. for Research on Educational Finance and Governance (1983)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources saying No:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/governments-cant-spend-people-back-to-work/article2160066/&quot;&gt;A columnist, The Globe and Mail&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/charleskadlec/2011/03/07/to-increase-job-creation-reduce-government-spending/&quot;&gt;A columnist, Forbes Magazine&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2010/03/23/fraser-institute-report.html&quot;&gt;CBC report quoting the Fraser institute&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources saying Don't Know: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://econ.ucsd.edu/~vramey/research/JEL_Fiscal_14June2011.pdf&quot;&gt;Article for the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Economic Literature&lt;/em&gt; forum&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ww.fpif.org/reports/071001-jobcreation.pdf&quot;&gt;2007 Report from the Department of Economics and Political Economy Research Institute (PERI)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/economy/11view.html&quot;&gt;2009 Article in the New York Times by a Harvard Professor of Economics and former President Bush adviser&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielfisher/2011/08/01/economists-agree-nobody-knows-real-effect-of-government-spending-cut/&quot;&gt;Senior editor of Forbes magazine, including multiple links to economic studies.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That last NY Times link is worth reading, as it goes some of the way towards explaining why this simplistic question is not helpful, and not even the one we should be asking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also available many highly technical economics papers seeking to answer this very question, but I am not competent to recommend any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-11-09T21:13:29.657" LastActivityDate="2011-11-09T21:13:29.657" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6894" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-08T19:25:02.500" Score="11" ViewCount="1451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this story a few times, and it seems to originate from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq87-3a.htm&quot;&gt;this story&lt;/a&gt;. But has an appendectomy ever been a requirement for submariners of a specific nation? Or is it just a legend and an encouragement for young people (&quot;Your belly hurts, but well, you'll be able to work in a submarine once the doctors are done!&quot;) ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3991" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T03:00:18.680" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T12:26:47.337" Title="Has an appendectomy ever been required for submariners?" Tags="|medical-science|army|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="299" CreationDate="2011-11-08T22:05:32.553" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vitamin supplements are not demonstrably useful for healthy people taking a healthy diet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worthwhile referring directly to some of the primary literature for this question (especially so since I was heavily criticised for selectively quoting the @david-hedlund answer above in another question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6837/are-vitamins-ingested-in-natural-food-more-effective-than-those-ingested-in-supp&quot;&gt;Are Vitamins ingested in natural food more effective than those ingested in supplements?&lt;/a&gt; ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite hard to give a proper comprehensive review because of the volume of studies that have been done. But the tone of other reviews is well summed up in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/highwire/filestream/306594/field_highwire_article_pdf/0/135.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1990 BMJ article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Healthy people eating a healthy diet do not need them...&#xA;So is any benefit to be expected for ordinary people from vitamin supplements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expert committees do not think so-at least for the populations of affluent countries. The American Institute of Nutrition and Society for Clinical Nutrition recommends that &amp;quot;healthy children and adults should obtain adequate nutrient intakes from dietary sources. Meeting nutrient needs by choosing a variety of foods in moderation, rather than by supplementation, reduces the potential risk for both nutrient deficiencies and nutrient excesses. Individual recommendations regarding supplements and diets should come from physicians and registered dietitians.&amp;quot;'&amp;quot; The United States National Research Council could find &amp;quot;no documented reports that daily multiple vitamin-mineral supplements, equaling no more than the recommended dietary allowances . . . are either beneficial or harmful for the general population.&amp;quot; Dismissive recommendations like this are incomplete unless they give guidance on the outlines of an adequate diet-for example, &amp;quot;people eating a good diet that includes bread and cereals, vegetables and fruit, meat or meat substitutes and dairy products do not require vitamin and mineral supplements.&amp;quot; The consensus is clear: &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;healthy adult men and healthy non-pregnant, non-lactating women consuming a normal varied diet do not need vitamin supplements.&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there have been plenty of proposed advantages to certain supplements since then. Here are a few summaries of more recent work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study about the effects on cancer and heart disease was summed up by a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/327/7406/70.2?tab=full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;news story in the BMJ&lt;/a&gt; like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence that vitamin supplements are useful in preventing cancer or heart disease is not conclusive, the US Preventive Services Task Force, an influential US government advisory panel, has said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, β carotene supplementation may do more harm than good in patients with lung cancer, the panel found (Annals of Internal Medicine 2003;139:51-5)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...The literature review failed to find any good quality studies that showed any beneficial effect of taking vitamins A or C on cardiovascular health or in reducing the risk of cancer. Some observational studies did show a reduction in the risk of breast and colon cancer in women taking vitamin A, but the researchers could not control for confounding factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(original source &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annals.org/content/139/1/56.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Annals of Internal Medicine&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the conclusion of a more recent study from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6273&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ on 2010&lt;/a&gt; on cardiovascular protection from some supplements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt; This study does not support the routine use of dietary supplements containing B vitamins or omega 3 fatty acids for prevention of cardiovascular disease in people with a history of ischaemic heart disease or ischaemic stroke...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent Cochrane review on the effect of vitamins with antioxidant properties on mortality concluded (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We found no evidence to support antioxidant supplements for primary or secondary prevention. &lt;em&gt;Vitamin A, beta-carotene, and vitamin E may increase mortality&lt;/em&gt;. Future randomised trials could evaluate the potential effects of vitamin C and selenium for primary and secondary prevention. Such trials should be closely monitored for potential harmful effects. Antioxidant supplements need to be considered medicinal products and should undergo sufficient evaluation before marketing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not a comprehensive survey, I hope this gives a general flavour of the key results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that there are trials which show big and significant results from supplements, but the relevant to the general population is questionable. The most significant is the use of Folic Acid in pregnancy which significantly reduced the incidence of Neural Tube Defects (&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD007950.pub2/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cochrane review here&lt;/a&gt;). But this effect is largest when there are clear dietary deficiencies. There are also some recent studies showing some correlation with vitamin D levels and mortality especially from cancer (but not the converse that taking extra vitamin D will reduce the incidence see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.b5500&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;research in the BMJ in 2010 here&lt;/a&gt;). And, in any case, the best way to get Vitamin D is to go outdoors in bright light not to take pills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, I'm not trying to claim vitamins are never useful. But their use in the general population is not demonstrably beneficial. Some people (e.g. computer programmers who never see natural light) might benefit from supplements like vitamin D and pregnant women (especially those with dodgy diets) should take folic acid. There is a big industry out there trying to persuade us all to take their supplements; we should ignore them until they provide us with better evidence the supplements are worth taking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-11-08T22:05:32.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6902" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6908" CreationDate="2011-11-09T09:35:54.880" Score="28" ViewCount="7452" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his latest blog post, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.codinghorror.com/bias-lighting/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jeff Atwood&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We computer geeks like it dark. Really dark. Ideally, we'd be in a cave. A cave … with an internet connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing that we can't abide is direct overhead lighting. Every time the overhead light gets turned on in this room, I feel like a Gremlin shrieking Bright light! Bright light! Oh, how it burns!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is a rational basis for preferring a darkened room. The light setup in a lot of common computing environments causes glare on the screen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a darkened room is better for viewing most types of computer displays, it has risks of its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is inconsistent with my personal experience: overhead lighting is good, and if positioned so that it doesn't create glare (not that hard, really), is way superior to a dark room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any documented advantages* to working in a &amp;quot;cave&amp;quot; with some monitor backlighing (&amp;quot;bias lighting&amp;quot;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Advantages such as: better health, better productivity, more happiness. The article is to be read in terms of increasing productivity and looking for the perfect programming environment. I am not interested in environmental or cost savings of any kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-01-31T17:52:56.030" Title="Is it preferable to use a computer in a darkened room?" Tags="|work|programming-productivity|light|ergonomics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6903" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6914" CreationDate="2011-11-09T11:29:04.460" Score="12" ViewCount="14352" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm told that young children (like, 1.5 years old) must not be allowed to eat mushrooms, even if they are sourced from a supermarket and properly cooked. The alleged reason is that they can't be digested at this age. When I questioned the source, I was told &quot;I hear it on TV all the time&quot;, which sounds a bit dodgy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried finding any advice on this in English and there doesn't seem to be anything, but if I search in Russian I get lots and lots of online articles stating that they are too hard to digest and therefore dangerous. None quote any sources, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, can children older than 12 months eat properly sourced and cooked mushrooms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-09T12:26:25.897" LastActivityDate="2019-06-07T22:18:32.483" Title="Can young children safely eat cooked mushrooms?" Tags="|nutrition|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6834" CreationDate="2011-11-09T12:56:00.150" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Harman WW, McKim RH, Mogar RE, Fadiman J, Stolaroff MJ. &#xA;“Psychedelic agents in creative problem-solving: A pilot study”. &#xA;Psychological Reports. 1966 Aug;19(1):211-2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract&#xA;Based on the frequently reported similarities between creative and psychedelic (drug-induced, consciousness-expansion) experiences, a preliminary study was conducted to explore the effects of psychedelic agents (LSD-25, mescaline) on creative problem-solving ability. Twenty-seven professionally employed males were given a single psychedelic experience in 1 of 7 small groups (ns = 3 or 4) following extensive selection and preparatory procedures. This drug-induced problem-solving session was carefully structured with particular focus on establishing Ss expectancies and a psychological milieu conducive to creative activity. Tentative findings based on tests of creativity, on subjective reports and self ratings, and on the utility of problem solutions suggested that, if given according to this carefully structured regimen, psychedelic agents seem to facilitate creative problem-solving, particularly in the &quot;illumination phase.&quot; The results also suggest that various degrees of increased creative ability may continue for at least some weeks subsequent to a psychedelic problem-solving session. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5240" LastActivityDate="2011-11-09T12:56:00.150" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6905" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-09T13:31:05.223" Score="0" ViewCount="432" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4739/has-a-meat-substitute-from-human-feces-been-developed-in-japan&quot;&gt;Has a meat substitute from human feces been developed in Japan?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please look at &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1N6QfuIh0g&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  Is there any evidence that this is real or &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyRZdMBwojU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fake&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="938" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T00:53:47.010" Title="Are some burgers in Japan made from human excrement?" Tags="|nutrition|japan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2011-11-09T21:19:07.183" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6905" CreationDate="2011-11-09T13:43:52.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here an article about &lt;a href=&quot;http://sanfrancisco.ibtimes.com/articles/164958/20110617/japanese-scientist-makes-poop-burger-mitsuyuki-ikeda.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;meat made from human excrement&lt;/a&gt;.  This was picked up by the mainstream press.  However, here's another article from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/nadiaarumugam/2011/07/08/meat-made-from-human-feces-hoax-or-japans-best-new-invention/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt; by someone who actually tried to research and find out if it was true.  Seems that mainstream press picked up everything from the existence of the youtube video, and that there wasn't actually any official press release from the supposed scientist.  The author of the second article states that after trying to find any real evidence of this, seems to turn up nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3211" LastEditorUserId="3211" LastEditDate="2011-11-09T14:31:09.547" LastActivityDate="2011-11-09T14:31:09.547" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6835" CreationDate="2011-11-09T14:16:21.530" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Biographer, Matt Ridley, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/science/11book.html&quot;&gt;reported in the New York Times&lt;/a&gt; that Crick experimented with marijuana and LSD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the book &quot;Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code&quot;, Ridley wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am frequently asked for my opinion on the speculation that Francis Crick was on LSD when he discovered the double helix; or that he was involved with a man named Dick Kemp in the manufacture of LSD. These assertions were reported second hand in an article in the Mail on Sunday by Alun Rees following Crick's death and they have since gained a certain amount of traction on the internet. Both stories are wrong. The true story, which I was told directly by Crick's widow and by the man who (as his widow confirms) first supplied the Cricks with LSD, is much less sensational. Crick was given (not sold) LSD on several occasions from 1967 onwards by Henry Todd, who met the Cricks through his girlfriend. Todd did know Kemp, with whom he was eventually prosecuted, but the Cricks did not. As for the implausible idea that the then impoverished and conventional Crick would have had access to LSD when it was newly invented in the early 1950s, there is simply no evidence for it at all. Those who wish to argue that LSD helped Crick make discoveries should note that all his major breakthroughs in molecular biology were made before 1967.&#xA;  -&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rationaloptimist.com/books/francis-crick-discoverer-genetic-code&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5240" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-09T21:48:47.737" LastActivityDate="2011-11-09T21:48:47.737" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6902" CreationDate="2011-11-09T15:36:12.573" Score="23" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to the OSHA manual on preventing strain from working with video display terminals, three elements are of concern when it comes to lighting: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;quantity (lower lighting is better, OSHA recommends “28-50 foot candles”)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contrast (lower produces less strain)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;glare (again, lower or more diffuse light is better)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osha.gov/Publications/videoDisplay/videoDisplay.html&quot;&gt;http://www.osha.gov/Publications/videoDisplay/videoDisplay.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The American Optometry Association has similar recommendations on their website:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aoa.org/x5380.xml&quot;&gt;http://www.aoa.org/x5380.xml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The AOA makes the point that if any of your work requires accessing other materials within your workspace, you will require a bit more light. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While too much lighting can have negative effects, primarily due to glare as noted in Atwood’s quote, this does not mean that it’s best to work in complete darkness. Several studies have found that there is a lower level at which eyesight begins to be affected while using a computer. See Aaras, et al., 1998, Sugimoto, Ikeda, &amp;amp; Noguchi, 1999, and Wolska &amp;amp; Switula, 1999 for examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question was answered by an information science student as part of the monthly &lt;a href=&quot;http://answerboards.wetpaint.com/page/Slam+the+Boards!&quot;&gt;Slam the Boards!&lt;/a&gt; event:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aaras, Arne, Gunnar Horgen, Hans-Henrik Bjørset, Ola Ro, and Magne Thoresen. &#xA;     &quot;Musculoskeletal, visual and psychosocial stress in VDU operators before &#xA;     and after multidisciplinary ergonomic interventions.&quot; Applied Ergonomics &#xA;     29, no. 5 (October 1998): 335-3554. Accessed November 9, 2011. &#xA;     &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003687097000793&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003687097000793&lt;/a&gt; . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;American Optometry Association. &quot;The Effects of Video Display Terminal Use on &#xA;     Eye Health and Vision.&quot; American Optometry Association. Accessed November &#xA;     9, 2011. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aoa.org/x5380.xml&quot;&gt;http://www.aoa.org/x5380.xml&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occupational Safety and Health Administration. &quot;Working Safely with Video &#xA;     Display Terminals.&quot; Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Accessed &#xA;     November 9, 2011. Last modified 1997.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osha.gov/Publications/videoDisplay/videoDisplay.html&quot;&gt;http://www.osha.gov/Publications/videoDisplay/videoDisplay.html&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sugimoto, S, I. Ikeda, and Y. Noguchi. &quot;Estimation of physiological effects of &#xA;     lighting by analysis of heart rate variability.&quot; Paper presented at the &#xA;     24th Session of the CIE, Warsaw, June 24-30, 1999. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wolska, A., and Switula, M. &quot;Luminance distribution on VDT work stands and &#xA;     visual fatigue.&quot; Paper presented at the 24th Session of the CIE, Warsaw, &#xA;     June 24-30, 1999. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4651" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-11-09T17:21:58.823" LastActivityDate="2011-11-09T17:21:58.823" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6909" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6912" CreationDate="2011-11-09T18:44:07.553" Score="10" ViewCount="1030" Body="&lt;p&gt;A comment on a &lt;a href=&quot;https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/1597/is-it-immoral-to-download-music-illegally&quot;&gt;Philosophy SE Question&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/users/921/mgzero&quot;&gt;MGZero&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You'll probably find this interesting. Mozart created the first&#xA;  illegal copy of Misere, which was heavily guarded by the Vatican. How&#xA;  did he do it? He listened to it once in person and wrote the sheet&#xA;  music for it from memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://wweek.com/portland/article-8766-the_tudor_choir.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; backs up this claim but any research into this is not cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this story true or just a fantasy? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:42:18.433" LastActivityDate="2011-11-09T21:57:50.103" Title="Was Mozart a music pirate?" Tags="|history|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6888" CreationDate="2011-11-09T19:18:13.703" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is known as the great debate in economics, and it started back in the early 20th century between two leading economists, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Maynard_Keynes&quot;&gt;John Maynard Keynes&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek&quot;&gt;Friedrich Hayek&lt;/a&gt;. The debate was over how best to spur a sluggish economy. Keynes proposed that the government could directly spur a stalled economy through direct investment and stimulus while Hayek countered that such moves might provide a temporary boost, but were not healthy, had unexpected consequences, and simply delayed the day of reckoning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more background on the Keynes-Hayek debate (albeit with a bit of bias toward Hayek), read Cochran and Glahe's, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mellenpress.com/mellenpress.cfm?bookid=4020&amp;amp;pc=9&quot;&gt;The Hayek-Keynes Debate – Lessons for Current Business Cycle Research&lt;/a&gt;. For a more human-interest look at the lives of these two men and how their  theories shaped modern economics, see Wapshott's &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.wwnorton.com/books/Keynes-Hayek/&quot;&gt;Keynes-Hayek: The Clash That Defined Modern Economics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, when discussing world-wide macro-economics the system is so large, interconnected, and complex that it is impossible to come up with a definitive answer to these types of questions, which is why this Keynes-Hayek debate rages on. There's not a simple positive or negative test that can be applied. For insight on this complexity and the hopelessness of making conclusive statements from such uncertainty, refer to Nassim Taleb's book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Swan_%28Taleb_book%29&quot;&gt;The Black Swan&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question, &quot;Can a government end a recession through job creation?&quot; the honest answer is, &quot;It depends who you ask.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="64" LastEditDate="2011-11-10T17:43:26.583" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T17:43:26.583" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6911" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6974" CreationDate="2011-11-09T20:24:32.290" Score="30" ViewCount="7325" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I watched the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uoM5kfZIQ0&quot;&gt;1 minute long Youtube clip from  CSI New York&lt;/a&gt;.  In the clip, using what seems to be the recording from a standard bank camera, they zoom in at least 100, and see the image of the culprit in the reflection of the eye of the girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I thought this was completely ridiculous, so much so that I thought it was actually really funny.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, my friend argued that there are very good tricks for image enhancement, such as &quot;super resolution&quot; a procedure where multiple frames of a video to produce a much higher single resolution image.   He did think the show bends the truth quite a bit, but how much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I don't actually know anything about these things, so my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How good is modern image resolution enhancement?  Also, how far off are the CSI television programs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3260" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-12-26T00:29:46.013" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T15:56:06.543" Title="CSI image resolution enhance: How real is it?" Tags="|television|video|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6909" CreationDate="2011-11-09T21:34:25.620" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This story is supported by a contemporaneous letter written by Mozart's family in 1770, and the biographical notes written by Mozart's sister a couple of decades after the event in 1792.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20060218171220/http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Documents_describing_Mozart%27s_transcription_of_the_Allegri_Miserere&quot;&gt;WikiSource&lt;/a&gt; provides&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; excerpts from two translated documents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And as according to tradition it was forbidden under ban of excommunication to make a copy of it from the papal music, the son undertook to hear it and then copy it out. And so it came about that when he came home, he wrote it out, the next day he went back again, holding his copy in his hat, to see whether he had got it right or not. But a different Miserere was sung. However, on Good Friday the first was repeated again. After he had returned home he made a correction here and there, then it was ready. It soon became known in Rome, [and] he had to sing it at the clavier at a concert. The castrato Christofori, who sang it in the chapel, was present.&#xA;  --from Otto Erich Deutsch, Mozart: A Documentary Biography, translated by Eric Blom, Peter Branscombe, and Jeremy Noble. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: It slightly contradicts the claim made - he needed to hear it more than once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;WikiSource have deleted this page due to copyright concerns. I believe this counts as &quot;fair  use&quot;/&quot;fair dealings&quot;, and have no such concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-11-09T21:34:25.620" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6503" CreationDate="2011-11-09T21:40:24.863" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, this health threat is not supported by peer-review studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Noted skeptic, journalist, GP and researcher, Dr Ben Goldacre &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badscience.net/2011/11/why-wont-professor-greenfield-publish-this-theory-in-a-scientific-journal/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;has complained in The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; that Prof Greenfield's claims have not been published anywhere in a way where they can  receive proper scientific scrutiny. [Emphasis mine.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This week Baroness Susan Greenfield, Professor of pharmacology at Oxford, apparently announced that computer games are causing dementia in children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two months ago the same professor linked internet use with the rise in autism diagnoses (not for the first time), then pulled back when autism charities and an Oxford professor of psychology raised concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I have one, humble question: why, in over 5 years of appearing in the media raising these grave worries, has Professor Greenfield of Oxford University never simply published the claims in an academic paper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I think these serious scientific concerns belong, at least once, in a clear scientific paper.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I offer Goldacre's column as evidence that it isn't just me who has failed to find evidence, but that someone with proven research skills has published that there is no such evidence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T12:34:15.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6903" CreationDate="2011-11-09T22:32:21.217" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;As stated in the OP, English-language food guides do not mention mushrooms as foods to avoid (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/foods-to-avoid-giving-babies-and-young-children/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;example from the UK's NHS&lt;/a&gt;). This doesn't necessarily mean that mushrooms are good, since mushrooms may not constitute an important enough food source in the UK, though if they were very dangerous, I would expect to find them listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not quite clear to me what &quot;difficult to digest&quot; really means — if the fear is that the mushrooms pass mostly undigested, then mushrooms are not a big problem. Quite a few foods seem to pass through the system hardly digested, for example peas, when the kids cannot chew very well yet, and when their digestive system is still maturing. The only possible concern is that if mushrooms make up an important fraction of the diet, children do not get enough calories (in fact, mushrooms are supposed to &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120201230824/http://www.mushrooms.ca/good/health-wellness.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;help you lose weight&lt;/a&gt;, something you're usually trying to avoid in small children).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you understand &quot;difficult to digest&quot; as leading to &quot;feelings of being unwell&quot;, the difficult-to-digest mushrooms may actually be slightly toxic. Toxicity is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;measured in terms of amount per body mass&lt;/a&gt;, so the same amount of mushrooms that leads to a slight indigestion (or not even) in an adult could have more severe consequences in a small child. Thus, if you know that specific kinds of mushrooms make you unwell, you shouldn't be giving them to a kid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sum, as long as you get properly sourced properly cooked (and reasonably radiation-free) mushrooms that don't make you feel unwell, and as long as these mushrooms aren't making up a large portion of the kids diet, all should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-06-07T22:18:32.483" LastActivityDate="2019-06-07T22:18:32.483" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6911" CreationDate="2011-11-10T11:44:15.117" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple algorithms to improve image quality. Of course none of them are as spectacular, as in CSI and movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As already mentioned, for video &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-resolution&quot;&gt;multi-frame super-resolution&lt;/a&gt; algorithms might be applied. But for generic case it provides very limited improvement. Basically you might expect 2x improvement, but not 100x zoom as in CSI. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, you might achieve spectacular results if some assumptions about the image being enhanced are made. For example if you know that an image fragment is a face, then &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.face-rec.org/algorithms/#TD_face&quot;&gt;specialized algorithm takes in account typical shape of human face&lt;/a&gt;. If you assume it's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cvc.uab.es/icdar2009/papers/3725a191.pdf&quot;&gt;printed text, other specialized algorithm matches to particular alphabet&lt;/a&gt;. These algorithms use stochastic methods. Thus basically it's no longer 100% certain information, it's a guess with certain degree of probability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, with these specialized algorithms most typically you don't actually get spectacularly enhanced image, but rather match against database of known faces (for facial recognition) or recognized text (for text/license plates).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: given very low resolution image fragment it might be possible to tell if it's the suspect's face. But there is absolutely no way to do it in cool visual way they show it on CSI. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-11-11T09:51:08.013" LastActivityDate="2011-11-11T09:51:08.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6919" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6920" CreationDate="2011-11-10T13:02:18.793" Score="12" ViewCount="2997" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started eating a few chilis a day to man up when it came to spicy foods. Someone saw this and said that I'm probably going to get an ulcer or another stomach problem from it. Is there any truth to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5122" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2011-11-10T19:38:48.893" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T21:53:53.400" Title="Can chili peppers give you an ulcer?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6919" CreationDate="2011-11-10T16:19:13.303" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most ulcers are caused by bacterial infections (in particular, &quot;Helicobacter pylori&quot; infections are known to lead to ulcers, &lt;em&gt;for which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0012348&quot;&gt;antibiotics&lt;/a&gt; are available&lt;/em&gt;), some others by aspirin and similar drugs and the rest by smoking or without clear cause. Spicy food does not cause ulcers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peptic ulcers were formerly thought to be caused by stress, coffee consumption, or spicy foods. Now it is clear that about 60% of peptic ulcers are caused by a bacterial infection that can usually be cured. Another 20% are caused by nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as aspirin and ibuprofen (Advil, Nuprin, etc.), and another 20% have miscellaneous causes such as cigarettes or no clear cause. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=43451&quot;&gt;medicinenet.com&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/181753-overview#aw2aab6b2b3&quot;&gt;medscape.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the contrary, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7895548&quot;&gt;1995 study&lt;/a&gt; by the National University of Singapore even suggests chili actually protects against ulcers, at least if you're Chinese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The odds ratio of having peptic ulcer disease, adjusted for age, sex, analgesic use, and smoking by multiple logistic regression, was 0.47 (95% confidence intervals: 0.25-0.89) for subjects who had a higher intake of chili both in terms of frequency as well as amount used compared to those who took less chili. Our data support the hypothesis that chili use has a protective effect against peptic ulcer disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="3068" LastEditDate="2011-11-10T21:53:53.400" LastActivityDate="2011-11-10T21:53:53.400" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6921" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-10T17:15:21.613" Score="29" ViewCount="1393" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a messy desk sort of person (even the desktops on my computers are messy). But there are loads of personal productivity evangelists telling me that a tidy desk would make me more productive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thinkproductive.co.uk/b4/tag/a-tidy-desk-is-a-tidy-mind/&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;, for example, is one such site which says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the simple act of a weekly review or a de-cluttering session clears the decks mentally as well as physically, leaving us amazed at the heighten levels of focus we’re actually able to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://aimtobe.co.uk/personal/how-to-keep-your-desk-tidy/&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; even thinks a messy desk makes you sick:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did you know that a messy desk can actually make you sick? In a survey carried out years ago, researchers at NEC-Mitsubishi questioned 2000 workers and found that many suffered from “Irritable Desk Syndrome” (IDS). IDS is caused by working for long periods of time at a messy desk, often with poor posture, the combination of which can have physical and mental symptoms such as chronic pain and a decrease in productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have an apparently very productive friend who, when challenged by his boss in his annual review about his messy desk, claimed to have searched and found evidence that messy was better. He didn't tell me where. So my question is: &lt;strong&gt;is there any hard evidence that tidy desks are better than messy desks for personal productivity (or is it the other way round)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-11-11T00:09:41.027" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T18:18:54.130" Title="Does a tidy desk make you more productive than a messy one?" Tags="|productivity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6923" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10197" CreationDate="2011-11-11T07:56:18.250" Score="34" ViewCount="6974" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is that we should be drinking water routinely to the point that we never feel thirsty, and that to not be doing so is &lt;strong&gt;to our detriment&lt;/strong&gt;, at least enough for the notion to be popular amongst hikers, gym teachers, athletes and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I understand that from a medical point of view at the onset of thirst we are &quot;mildly dehydrated&quot; (thirst wouldn't make much sense if nothing was going on), the claim is that the sensation is indicative of an already-made mistake in behavior, and that drinking water now will be of significantly less benefit than if we had beforehand, preempting thirst.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fitnessbyliz.com/dehydration-hydration-drink-before-you-get-thirsty/&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt; of one side of the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you wait until you are thirsty, your body is already dehydrated. It takes about TWO HOURS for anything you drink to have an effect on your body’s hydration level. By the time you feel thirsty, you are two hours behind! Drinking something even the second you realize you are thirsty means that you will still be dehydrated for at least two more hours. You should be drinking enough liquids throughout the day so that you rarely (or never) feel thirsty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lightandmatter.com/article/hiking_water.html&quot;&gt;other side&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Medically, dehydration is defined as a 5% increase in the concentration of solutes in your blood. (Often this can be more conveniently detected based on short-term weight loss.) Thirst sets in at about 2%, so you'll always feel strong thirst setting in long before you're dehydrated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1447" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-07-22T12:33:58.387" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T08:53:22.113" Title="Should we drink water before we feel thirsty?" Tags="|nutrition|water|physiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6925" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28908" CreationDate="2011-11-11T10:35:05.460" Score="86" ViewCount="14817" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is somewhat general scientific agreement that in general case for reading, dark text on light background is more readable than light on dark. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, most studies have shown that dark characters on a light&#xA;  background are superior to light characters on a dark background (when&#xA;  the refresh rate is fairly high). For example, Bauer and Cavonius&#xA;  (1980) found that participants were 26% more accurate in reading text&#xA;  when they read it with dark characters on a light background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reference: Bauer, D., &amp;amp; Cavonius, C., R. (1980). Improving the&#xA;  legibility of visual display units through contrast reversal. In E.&#xA;  Grandjean, E. Vigliani (Eds.), Ergonomic Aspects of Visual Display&#xA;  Terminals (pp. 137-142). London: Taylor &amp;amp; Francis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People with astigmatism (aproximately 50% of the population) find it&#xA;  harder to read white text on black than black text on white. Part of&#xA;  this has to do with light levels: with a bright display (white&#xA;  background) the iris closes a bit more, decreasing the effect of the&#xA;  &quot;deformed&quot; lens; with a dark display (black background) the iris opens&#xA;  to receive more light and the deformation of the lens creates a much&#xA;  fuzzier focus at the eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jason Harrison – Post Doctoral Fellow, Imager Lab Manager – Sensory&#xA;  Perception and Interaction Research Group, University of British&#xA;  Columbia  (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.tatham.oddie.com.au/2008/10/13/why-light-text-on-dark-background-is-a-bad-idea/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tatham Oddie &quot;Why light text on dark background is a bad idea&quot;&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above is however generic, not computer screens in particular. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most modern study I've found regarding computer screens is the studies I've found &lt;a href=&quot;http://tecfa.unige.ch/tecfa/maltt/cosys-2/textes/hall04.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(&quot;The impact of web page text-background colour&#xA;combinations on readability, retention, aesthetics&#xA;and behavioural intention&quot; by Hall &amp;amp; Hanna, 2004)&lt;/a&gt; did not measure prolonged exposure.  Also these test were performed on random people, not professionals who spend long&#xA;hours with text (code).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand I see, that all kinds of dark themes are quite popular, and even default in various IDEs. It seems as contradiction if so many programmers would willingly choose less ergonomic color schemes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are there any studies of the subject that take in account modern screen technology and type of work typical ITC professional is doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;Loosely related to: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6902/is-it-preferable-to-use-a-computer-in-a-darkened-room&quot;&gt;Is it preferable to use a computer in a darkened room?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T08:43:14.630" Title="Are light-on-dark colour schemes for computer screens better for programmers?" Tags="|work|programming-productivity|ergonomics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="34" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-11T12:57:21.007" Score="41" ViewCount="3840" Body="&lt;p&gt;Graphic artist, Toby Ng, asserts that 10% of the world is homosexual in his work &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toby-ng.com/graphic-design/the-world-of-100/&quot;&gt;&quot;The World of 100&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. I can't see where he claims this data to be from. This seems high to me and low to my sister-in-law, so I guess that more or less reflects personal experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this be true? Does it depend on how inclusively you define it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5256" LastEditorUserId="1835" LastEditDate="2012-01-11T03:34:55.267" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T01:41:12.263" Title="Is 10% of the world's population homosexual?" Tags="|sexuality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6932" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6933" CreationDate="2011-11-12T04:03:16.937" Score="28" ViewCount="3117" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr. Gerald Schroeder published an article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48951136.html&quot;&gt;Aish.com&lt;/a&gt; about the age of the Universe and the Jewish bible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So the only data I use as far as Biblical commentary goes is ancient&#xA;  commentary. That means the text of the Bible itself (3300 years ago),&#xA;  the translation of the Torah into Aramaic by Onkelos (100 CE), the&#xA;  Talmud (redacted about the year 500 CE), and the three major Torah&#xA;  commentators. There are many, many commentators, but at the top of the&#xA;  mountain there are three, accepted by all: Rashi (11th century&#xA;  France), who brings the straight understanding of the text, Maimonides&#xA;  (12th century Egypt), who handles the philosophical concepts, and then&#xA;  Nachmanides (13th century Spain), the earliest of the Kabbalists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then he make this claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The calculations come out to be as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• The first of the Biblical days lasted 24 hours, viewed from the&#xA;  &quot;beginning of time perspective.&quot; But the duration from our perspective&#xA;  was 8 billion years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• The second day, from the Bible's perspective lasted 24 hours. From&#xA;  our perspective it lasted half of the previous day, 4 billion years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• The third 24 hour day also included half of the previous day, 2&#xA;  billion years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• The fourth 24 hour day ― one billion years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• The fifth 24 hour day ― one-half billion years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• The sixth 24 hour day ― one-quarter billion years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you add up the Six Days, you get the age of the universe at 15&#xA;  and 3/4 billion years. The same as modern cosmology. Is it by chance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But there's more. The Bible goes out on a limb and tells you what&#xA;  happened on each of those days. Now you can take cosmology,&#xA;  paleontology, archaeology, and look at the history of the world, and&#xA;  see whether or not they match up day-by-day. And I'll give you a hint.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;They match up close enough to send chills up your spine.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many Jewish websites make similar claims - that their scholars made biblical predictions in advance of modern science long ago. Is this true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T11:17:15.650" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T11:17:15.650" Title="Does the Torah-encoded age of the universe match science?" Tags="|physics|religion|religious-texts|bible|judaism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6932" CreationDate="2011-11-12T04:42:21.617" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To knock the argument down quickly: the generally accepted age of the universe, according to modern cosmology (using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_CDM_model&quot;&gt;ΛCDM model&lt;/a&gt;) is &lt;strong&gt;13.75 +/- 0.11 billion years&lt;/strong&gt;. This doesn't match the 15.75 billion years claimed. (Not sure what happened to the 7th day? Presumably that is another 125 million years that has been forgotten about?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further reading: The ordering of the events described in Genesis do not match the ordering of events described by science - certainly not enough to send chills down my spine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Genesis 1 creation account conflicts with the order of events that are known to science. In Genesis, the earth is created before light and stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants before any animals. The order of events known from science is just the opposite&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/science/long.html&quot;&gt;Skeptics Annotated Bible&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-11-12T04:42:21.617" CommentCount="28" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6932" CreationDate="2011-11-12T18:25:33.650" Score="16" Body="&lt;h3&gt;The argument is ad hoc.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core of the argument seems to be along the lines that the &quot;speed&quot; of time has changed. Dr. Schroeder claims that after the Big Bang, time went about a trillion times faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What's exciting about the last few years in cosmology is we now have quantified the data to know the relationship of the &quot;view of time&quot; from the beginning, relative to the &quot;view of time&quot; today. It's not science fiction any longer. Any one of a dozen physics text books all bring the same number. The general relationship between time near the beginning when stable matter formed from the light (the energy, the electromagnetic radiation) of the creation) and time today is a million million, that is a trillion fold extension.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aish.com/ci/sam/48951136.html&quot;&gt;Schroeder, G. Age of the Universe.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, this is how I understand the argument:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time is relative, and hasn't always &quot;felt&quot; the same speed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For a time unit &lt;em&gt;t&lt;/em&gt;, we know that it felt like a trillion times longer just after Big Bang than it does now. So, 1 &lt;em&gt;t&lt;sub&gt;big bang&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/em&gt; = &lt;em&gt;x t&lt;sub&gt;current&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and we have an approximation that &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt; ≈ 10&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Genesis 1, the length of time is 6 &lt;em&gt;d&lt;sub&gt;big bang&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/em&gt; ≈ 6 * 10&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;em&gt;d&lt;sub&gt;current&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/em&gt; which is about 16.4 billion (current) years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't really understand how the author jumps from 16.4 billion to 15.75 billion years. I don't have any idea what these &quot;dozen physics text books&quot; are either. The article cites no sources. Altogether, the argument seems ad hoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the right way to knock the argument down isn't to note that it's off by 20%. Not unless we are certain the ratio &lt;em&gt;t&lt;sub&gt;big bang&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/em&gt; / &lt;em&gt;t&lt;sub&gt;current&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/em&gt; isn't also off by the same amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real reason why the argument is invalid is that there does not exist any scientific consensus around the concept &quot;how the 'speed'&quot; of time has changed&quot;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/find/all/1/all%3a+EXACT+change_in_the_speed_of_time/0/1/0/all/0/1&quot;&gt;arxiv&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;, so it is up to the author to explain this. Despite that &lt;strong&gt;we are not given a description of how the &quot;speed&quot; of time has changed&lt;/strong&gt;. Further, in general the argument is just ad hoc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T15:03:12.453" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T15:03:12.453" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6940" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-13T02:29:52.537" Score="22" ViewCount="14217" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the past few months a number of people (who don't know each other) have been telling me that I should try a &lt;em&gt;&quot;power of thoughts&quot;&lt;/em&gt; experiment that's also known as &quot;the rice experiment.&quot;  They're confident, that through this experiment, I'll &quot;see the light&quot; of how thought can affect our physical world despite my skepticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In searching YouTube, I found a number of videos about this by searching for &quot;rice experiment,&quot; such as this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgWrNKKX0Pc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rice Hado Experiment Masaru Emoto&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The experiment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to set up two jars containing some cooked rice, and then, every day, say only nice and encouraging things to one jar of rice, and insulting and hateful things to the other jar of rice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qku8h.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a certain period of time (which seems to vary from months to years), the jar with the &quot;hated&quot; rice should be the only one that goes bad and rots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;strong&gt;Positive Thinking Power - The Rice Experiment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.positive-thinking-principles.com/positive-thinking-power.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;More Evidence From Dr Masaru Emoto On The Power Of Thoughts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Slightly more recent experiment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAI7L1pboqI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Day 30&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZtFif4BqXM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Day 55&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sbzCaEsHfw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Day 147&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there credible studies that prove or disprove this?  Any explanation of what might actually be going on here (e.g., why the &quot;hated&quot; jar of rice goes bad earlier) would also be interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3068" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-10-26T00:58:25.993" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T00:58:25.993" Title="Experiments about the &quot;power of thoughts&quot; on cooked rice" Tags="|experiments|positive-thinking|masuru-emoto|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6942" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6944" CreationDate="2011-11-13T15:06:18.490" Score="25" ViewCount="1896" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evilbible.com/Synthetic_Life.htm&quot;&gt;Evil Bible&lt;/a&gt; quotes a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2002/07/11/science.1072266/suppl/DC1&quot;&gt;2002 Science paper&lt;/a&gt; detailing the artificial synthesis of a virus from its DNA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was in school, I heard that the most humans can do is to create a bunch of amino acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one is right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-01-14T01:28:05.367" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T01:28:05.367" Title="Can scientists create a life-form yet?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6942" CreationDate="2011-11-13T15:54:39.193" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, your data (and the website you quote) is a bit out of date, we can do much more now.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-synthetic-life-form&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In 2010, Dr. Craig Venter actually used a bacterial shell and wrote DNA for it&lt;/a&gt;.  Thus we have gone beyond the viruses mentioned in the 2002 paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists have created the world's first synthetic life form in a landmark experiment that paves the way for designer organisms that are built rather than evolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Snip)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new organism is based on an existing bacterium that causes mastitis in goats, but at its core is an entirely synthetic genome that was constructed from chemicals in the laboratory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2010-05-21/health/venter.qa_1_synthetic-chromosome-genetic-code-synthetic-life?_s=PM:HEALTH&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Keep in mind, this is only a synthetic genome, not a truly unique organism created from scratch&lt;/a&gt;.  Although I am confident that the technology will become available in the future.  As has been pointed out, the entire genome wasn't built &lt;em&gt;de novo&lt;/em&gt;, but rather most of it was copied from a baseline which was built up from the base chemicals with no biological processes, and then the watermarks were added &lt;strong&gt;(still damn impressive since they took inorganic matter and made a living cell function with it)&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bu.edu/abl/files/nature_synthetic_genome.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;But they are working at building a totally unique genome from scratch&lt;/a&gt; (PDF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/artl&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This is actually quite an emerging field, so much so that the MIT press has set up an entire series of journals for this&lt;/a&gt;.  As far as to the purpose of these artificial organisms, &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/27/news/newsmakers/venter_artificial_life.fortune/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;most research funded by companies are meant to be for specific purposes that biology hasn't solved yet&lt;/a&gt; (such as a bacteria that eats a toxic waste or something).  Although, a lot of people are concerned about scientists venturing into the domain of theology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of abiogenesis, there are many resources to learn more about this.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factsnotfantasy.com/abiogenesis.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a list of 88 papers that discuss the natural mechanisms of abiogenesis&lt;/a&gt; (this list is a little old, so I am sure that there are many, many more papers at this time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alcyone.com/max/links/alife.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I also found this list of links and resources for artificial life&lt;/a&gt;.  I cannot verify the usefulness of this since the field is a bit outside my area of expertise.  However, it does seem quite extensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT TO ADD&lt;/strong&gt;:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/04/synthetic-dna-substitute-gets-its-own-enzymes-undergoes-evolution.ars?clicked=related_right&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Now we have &amp;quot;XNA&amp;quot; (a totally synthetic genome) on the way.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T19:29:22.120" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6647" CreationDate="2011-11-14T00:20:31.113" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Patents are bad for innovation and the economy, more often being a substitute for innovation than an incentive for it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Free-market economists don't normally believe that monopolies are good for society - except where intellectual property (IP) is involved, where they argue that some temporary monopolies are worth permitting to provide an incentive for innovation, which is good for all as it it is a major source of improved productivity. This makes some logical sense: If you were powerless to prevent copying of your ideas, you might not have much incentive to invest in creating those ideas. I would certainly have bought that idea before doing some research into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Logic, however, isn't enough in the real world and it would be good to see some empirical evidence. I was surprised to find that there is significant evidence that patents and other forms of IP are counterproductive from society's point of view. That is, they inhibit innovation rather than promoting it. The full case end evidence is laid out in the book &lt;em&gt;Against Intellectual Monopoly&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm&quot;&gt;Free PDF&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0521127262&quot;&gt;Hard Cover&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their book summarises the case they make thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is common to argue that intellectual property in the form of copyright and patent is necessary for the innovation and creation of ideas and inventions such as machines, drugs, computer software, books, music, literature and movies. In fact intellectual property is a government grant of a costly and dangerous private monopoly over ideas. We show through theory and example that intellectual monopoly is not necessary for innovation and as a practical matter is damaging to growth, prosperity and liberty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their work has influenced the work of Terence Kealey (see chapter 16 of his book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0045JKEQ2&quot;&gt;Sex, Science and Profits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;), an iconoclastic British scientist who is well known for arguing against government funding of science. He argues that most patents are bad outside the pharmaceutical industry, where government restrictions on what can be sold create an enormous barrier to innovation that only patents can fairly compensate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While no answer here can adequately cover the breadth of evidence in either of the references, some specific stories can give a flavour of the key issues. Several examples come from how major modern industries were initially held back because of patent disputes and only started to bring rapid innovation and general social benefits when the initial patents were broken or subverted: this is true for aircraft, cars, movies and steam engines (all the examples are summarised from much more detailed accounts in the Boldrin and Levine reference and all quotes are form their book).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Henry Ford had to fight a monopolistic patent on the car before he could bring mass production to motor vehicles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Wright Brothers were granted a broad patent on flying machines and, instead of inventing anything new, devoted many years of effort and investment to preventing anyone else in the USA from making aircraft. (The issue was aggravated because the government had invested about 70 times more than the Wright brothers in design without producing a working craft). US aviation only really took off as an industry when the government effectively revoked their patent rights in 1917 as a war measure, forcing all firms in the industry to pool their IP). The key message, though, was that there was a lack of further innovation by the original inventors once they had a patent.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Movies didn't become successful in California because of the sunlight (they were mostly shot indoors!) They moved because the key firms wanted to escape Edison's very restrictive patents on cinema technology (which is particularly ironic given the way the industry lobbies for IP protection now). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even the industrial revolution might have happened faster if the patents awarded to Watt and Boulton in 1769 (expired 1800) had not been awarded. Watt's monopoly relieved him of the need to innovate further and the power and design of engines changed little until the patents ran out at which point there was a steep change in the rate of improvement of engine efficiency as the patent no longer inhibited the use of other's innovations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other comparisons that strongly suggest that patents are not required involve either natural experiments where the rules are changed or comparisons among countries with different rules. Both Switzerland and the Netherlands spent a large part of the 19th century not enforcing patent laws: neither notably lacked innovation or industrial success compared to their European neighbours with strict laws.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The USA has changed the rules on the patenting of biologicals and software relatively recently. Both provide a sort of natural experiment for the logic of patents. Yet studies on the economic benefits of patents on plants show:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...private sector investment in wheat breeding does not appear to have increased. Moreover, econometric analyses indicate that the PVPA (the Plant Variety Protection Act which, ultimately led to the patentability of plants) has not cause any increase in experimental or commercial wheat yields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On software patents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... the increase in the number of patents in the US economy was not accompanied or followed by any visible increase in TFP [total factor productivity] or in any other measure of effective innovation or productivity. ...patenting if found to be a substitute for R&amp;amp;D, leading to a reduction of innovation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short we have evidence and examples that show that patents may actually deliver the opposite of their intent: they lower the incentive to innovate and increase the cost of competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors quoted above have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.27.1.3&quot;&gt;recently published paper&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;em&gt;The Journal Of Economic Perspectives&lt;/em&gt; which provides a good summary of their argument:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The case against patents can be summarized brielfy: there is no empirical evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity, unless productivity is identified with the number of patents awarded—which, as evidence shows, has no correlation with measured productivity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/21660559?zid=317&amp;amp;ah=8a47fc455a44945580198768fad0fa41&quot;&gt;recent edition of the Economist&lt;/a&gt; has summarised the debate well. In their words (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The public-good position on patents is simple enough: in return for registering and publishing your idea, which must be new, useful and non-obvious, you get a temporary monopoly—nowadays usually 20 years—on using it. This provides an incentive to innovate because it assures the innovator of some material gain if the innovation finds favour. It also provides the tools whereby others can innovate, because the publication of good ideas increases the speed of technological advance as one innovation builds upon another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This sounds plausible. But is it true? &lt;em&gt;There is much room for doubt. The evidence that the current system encourages companies to invest in research in a way that leads to innovation, increased productivity and general prosperity is surprisingly weak.&lt;/em&gt; A growing amount of research in recent years, including a 2004 study by America’s National Academy of Sciences, suggests that, with a few exceptions such as medicines, &lt;em&gt;society as a whole might even be better off with no patents than with the mess that is today’s system.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2015-08-15T10:40:19.203" LastActivityDate="2015-08-15T10:40:19.203" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3409" CreationDate="2011-11-14T05:18:55.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not an expert, but you might like this article from the Times,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?pagewanted=all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html?pagewanted=all&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refined sugar (that is, sucrose) is made up of a molecule of the carbohydrate glucose, bonded to a molecule of the carbohydrate fructose — a 50-50 mixture of the two. The fructose, which is almost twice as sweet as glucose, is what distinguishes sugar from other carbohydrate-rich foods like bread or potatoes that break down upon digestion to glucose alone. The more fructose in a substance, the sweeter it will be. High-fructose corn syrup, as it is most commonly consumed, is 55 percent fructose, and the remaining 45 percent is nearly all glucose. It was first marketed in the late 1970s and was created to be indistinguishable from refined sugar when used in soft drinks. Because each of these sugars ends up as glucose and fructose in our guts, our bodies react the same way to both, and the physiological effects are identical. In a 2010 review of the relevant science, Luc Tappy, a researcher at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland who is considered by biochemists who study fructose to be the world’s foremost authority on the subject, said there was “not the single hint” that H.F.C.S. was more deleterious than other sources of sugar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question, then, isn’t whether high-fructose corn syrup is worse than sugar; it’s what do they do to us, and how do they do it? The conventional wisdom has long been that the worst that can be said about sugars of any kind is that they cause tooth decay and represent “empty calories” that we eat in excess because they taste so good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this logic, sugar-sweetened beverages (or H.F.C.S.-sweetened beverages, as the Sugar Association prefers they are called) are bad for us not because there’s anything particularly toxic about the sugar they contain but just because people consume too many of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;upshot: HFSC can be good if you use less of it to achieve the same sweetness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion is that cane sugar tastes a little better. (e.g. the Sidral Mexican apple soda vs. most soft drinks.) My intuition is that limiting habitual consumption is more important than occasional special event / enjoyment consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3833" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-11-14T05:18:55.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6952" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6954" CreationDate="2011-11-14T06:52:33.793" Score="5" ViewCount="1300" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2004-01/05/content_295833.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; in the China Daily makes the claim that several Asian countries topped a survey of intelligence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asians dominated the survey compiled by Austrian researchers who drew on a variety of sources to produce average IQs for the population of each country, Sunday Star-Times reported in Wellington Sunday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The survey comparing the intelligence of people from 50 countries and regions was conducted by the University of Vienna Medical School, according to the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The survey said the people of Hong Kong topped the table, followed by South Korea, Japan and Singapore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there such a survey of the smartest countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T10:06:41.740" Title="Did Asian countries top an IQ survey of 50 countries?" Tags="|intelligence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6953" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-14T07:08:06.600" Score="10" ViewCount="7117" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;v=WDNyozgky4s#t=6m30s&quot;&gt;segment&lt;/a&gt; of the television show &quot;Human Body: Pushing The Limits - Episode 1 - Strength&quot; claims a person was sucked up by a tornado, and when he fell out of it he broke no bones because he was unconscious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One final twist saves Matt's life&#xA;  something that allows his bones to use their natural strength to the maximum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the storm hits, it hurls a lamp across the room, knocking Matt out cold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Matt's body goes completely limp. All his muscles are totally relaxed. This allows his bones to evenly absorb the shock of landing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;They said that if I was conscious then it would have hurt me more than it did. They said I was so relaxed, that's why I didn't get hurt as bad.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If  it is true where else is this phenomenon documented and how does it work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastEditorUserId="5162" LastEditDate="2011-11-15T07:04:01.573" LastActivityDate="2016-12-11T19:30:56.863" Title="Did a man survive a 30mph fall from a tornado without breaking a bone because he was unconscious?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6952" CreationDate="2011-11-14T09:11:54.937" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The study appears to be this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Martin Voracek, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.china-sds.org/kcxfzbg/addinfomanage/lwwk/data/kcx657.pdf&quot;&gt;National intelligence and suicide rate: an ecological study of 85 countries&lt;/a&gt;, Personality and Individual Differences 37 (2004) 543–553.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr Voracek was from the University of Vienna Medical School, Austria, and this article was available online from 19 November 2003, which is a few weeks before the article, so the dates line up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it isn't the main focus of the paper (which was trying to explain suicide rates), it does include a table (Table 1) with a list of 85 countries and their &quot;National IQ&quot;. Of those 85 countries, 35 only have &quot;estimated&quot; National IQs, so the number of directly measured countries is 50, which matches the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea do have the highest values in the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;source&lt;/em&gt; of the National IQs are not derived in this document however. Dr Voracek references another study for the data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lynn, R., &amp;amp; Vanhanen, T. (2002). &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=KQ4rLiAbHQQC&amp;amp;lpg=PR7&amp;amp;ots=IsqRuv83lX&amp;amp;dq=Lynn%2C%20R.%2C%20%26%20Vanhanen%2C%20T.%20%282002%29.%20IQ%20and%20the%20wealth%20of%20nations.%20Westport%2C%20CT%3A%20Praeger&amp;amp;lr&amp;amp;pg=PR7#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;IQ and the wealth of nations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Westport, CT: Praeger&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Google book preview, I can confirm that this book does have the National IQ chart for 81 countries. Apparently is calibrated to have the UK at 100. However, I cannot see the methods used (Appendix I), so I cannot comment on its validity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-14T09:22:32.200" LastActivityDate="2011-11-14T09:22:32.200" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6957" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-14T11:57:13.010" Score="4" ViewCount="1075" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen advertisements for headsets such as the OCZ Neural Impulse Actuator, and recently there is a NeuroSky MindWave. Are these devices really capable of beating a keyboard and mouse for either high throughput or low latency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: For a simple example, just check the selling page for the OCZ NIA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hone Your Reflexes&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    Where others have to practice reaction times, you&#xA;  can use reflex-based game play to get the better of your opponents by&#xA;  cutting your reaction time by 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4061" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T23:58:34.430" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T23:58:34.430" Title="Are consumer brain-wave devices faster than keyboard/mouse?" Tags="|neurology|computers|keyboard|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6960" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-14T22:08:07.170" Score="7" ViewCount="3981" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand that carbonation might not last forever, and diet beverages don't taste good after a period of time, but I've always believed that the expiry date on the can doesn't matter, provided it's sealed and still carbonated when you open it, it should be safe to drink. I think a lot of people feel that non-obvious expiry dates (ex. dairy and meat obviously do expire) are a ploy to sell more products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard claims (see comments for some links) that the can or lining on the inside of the can will be eaten away over time causing carcinogens to be released into the liquid. I'm skeptical that the liquid itself would expire, but what about the aluminum can, does it expire?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5279" LastEditorUserId="5279" LastEditDate="2011-11-15T17:40:50.763" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T13:09:47.830" Title="Is it safe to drink 'expired' cola/pop/soda in an aluminum can?" Tags="|safety|drinks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6966" CreationDate="2011-11-14T23:53:25.943" Score="14" ViewCount="80659" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of Android apps to detect EMF (for ghost hunting and for hazard-protection). I tried a free one which did not work. Some I can't seem to download. Has anyone tested them (against a fan, microwave or magnet, etc.) and see if it really works and is accurate at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the ones that claim to be work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://market.android.com/details?id=com.gregorypothier.AIOGhostHunter&amp;amp;feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5ncmVnb3J5cG90aGllci5BSU9HaG9zdEh1bnRlciJd&quot;&gt;Ghost Hunter (EMF, EVP, SCAN) $0.99&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://market.android.com/details?id=com.krugism.EntitySensorPro&amp;amp;feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwxLDEsImNvbS5rcnVnaXNtLkVudGl0eVNlbnNvclBybyJd&quot;&gt;Entity Sensor Pro $9.99&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it might be dependent on phones, too, but it is acceptable if it works on any phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit: Please do not be distracted by the mention of ghosts in this question. The question is about EMF only, not ghosts. Since these apps are mostly used for ghost-hunting, I have listed them. My question is these apps can detect EMF and, if so, how accurately?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-18T22:07:44.090" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T09:55:47.180" Title="Can smartphone Apps detect EMF?" Tags="|mobile-phones|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6961" CreationDate="2011-11-15T11:17:41.770" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, but not in a way that is likely to detect Ghosts if they exist&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mobile phones are, by definition, devices that can detect EMF (which is electro magnetic field see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_field&quot;&gt;wikpedia&lt;/a&gt;) since their ability to communicate depends on radiofrequency fluctuations in EMFs. So apps on a smartphone can, at least in a trivial sense, detect EMF and alter it when they send a signal. Unfortunately, mobile phones are designed to detect only specific frequencies from about 800 to 2.2 GHz which are the frequencies of 2G and 3G cellular phone systems (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_network&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; again). It seems unlikely that software can turn them into devices that can detect &lt;em&gt;general&lt;/em&gt; fluctuation in EMFs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some apps claim to use the magenetometers to detect EMF. And stand alone EMF detectors seem to be calibrated in units like milliGauss (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tomsgadgets.com/emf-ghost-meter/p/CELL2&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for an example) which is a measure of magnetic field strength (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss_%28unit%29&quot;&gt;wiki definition&lt;/a&gt;). This suggests that the sort of EMFs sought are low frequency changes in magnetic fields. So perhaps this is more likely to work as that is just what magnetometers can do. However, there are many many sources of interference that alter the background magnetic field of the earth (which is what magnetometers detect) as anyone who walks around a built up area while using the compass app on their phone will know. Large steel-framed buildings, cars, iron lamp-posts all cause major field changes that overwhelm the background field. As one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sensorplatforms.com/understanding-smart-phone-sensor-performance-magnetometer-2&quot;&gt;useful site&lt;/a&gt; on sensors reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The magnetometer is commonly found on mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets, but it is one of the most difficult sensors to interpret.  It is commonly called a compass since it measures the strength of the magnetic field in three dimensions, but does not necessarily point north.  In fact magnetic interference can cause it to behave unpredictably, as often seen in augmented reality apps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the believers don't seem to take the idea of detecting ghosts via phones seriously. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.androidzoom.com/android_games/arcade_and_action/ghost-detector_fvuf.html&quot;&gt;This app&lt;/a&gt; claims it is is &quot;just for fun&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ghost-mysteries.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=3137&quot;&gt;This discussion&lt;/a&gt; (I think fairly characterised as taking place on a believer site) dismisses the idea that phones can be reliable ghost detectors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes phones can detect EMF. But ghost detection apps are likely just reporting random background noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2011-11-15T11:17:41.770" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6967" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6976" CreationDate="2011-11-15T13:44:54.950" Score="14" ViewCount="3430" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bestfunfacts.com/bible.html&quot;&gt;Many believe because of the placement of specific words in Psalm 46 that William Shakespeare helped in the translation of the King James bible to English&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1610, the year of the final editing stages, Shakespeare would have been 46 years old (born April 1564). Psalms 46 (approximately the middle of the Bible) has a unique subliminal message, or does it?? Counting from the beginning of Psalm 46, the 46th word is shake. Counting from the end of Psalm 46, the 46th word is spear. Is it possible for these words to be a mere coincident? Or is it true that on Shakespeare’s 46th birthday, while editing the King James Version of the Bible, he chose Psalm 46, and made sure that combining the 46th word from the beginning and the 46th word from the end will read “Shake spear”? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I am inclined to accept that this is just a bit of misplaced pattern recognition, I am interested in what the scholarly evidence actually supports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:12:18.340" LastActivityDate="2021-04-04T21:24:22.967" Title="Did William Shakespeare help make the KJV bible?" Tags="|history|bible|literature|william-shakespeare|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7112" CreationDate="2011-11-15T23:33:30.267" Score="26" ViewCount="4437" Body="&lt;p&gt;Last night I watched the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1227378&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead&lt;/a&gt;. The movie followed two unhealthy people who suffered from a chronic disease on their juice fasts and subsequent lifestyle changes. Their health improved dramatically, their disease was cured, and they both lost tons of weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the goal of the movie seems to be to encourage the movie's viewers to go on a juice fast which they called a Reboot. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fatsickandnearlydead.com/about-the-film/learn-more/faq/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reboot Juice Fast FAQ&lt;/a&gt; on the movie's website makes a bunch of vague claims about cleansing and toxins, but the claim I'm most interested in is stated in the first question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I live with no protein for the duration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we cleanse, the main goal is to unravel and release as much toxic burden from the body as possible. In fact, &lt;b&gt;most of us have undigested proteins stuck in our tissues and cells from years of ingesting certain foods. &lt;/b&gt;In terms of protein, what we are really looking for are the amino acids, or building blocks of protein which reside in everything: green leafy vegetables, fruit, sprouts, other vegetables, nuts, seeds, coconut, avocado, whole grains, beans, legumes. So even when you are not cleansing, it is virtually impossible to become protein deficient. However, while on the cleanse, we do not need to concern ourselves with this aspect, as again &lt;b&gt;we really want to unload the undigested proteins which are sitting in the system.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having undigested protein from &amp;quot;certain foods&amp;quot; (which foods?) doesn't seem to fit what I know about human biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, do most (or at least some) humans have undigested protein in their bodies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-08-15T11:04:42.263" Title="Does a typical human on a western diet have undigested protein stuck in their body from years of eating certain foods?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|physiology|fasting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6911" CreationDate="2011-11-16T12:31:20.607" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; you can obtain some very good results, but only under certain conditions and absolutely not even close to what is shown in the linked video clip. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My company, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ampedsoftware.com&quot;&gt;Amped Software&lt;/a&gt;, develops image and video processing software for forensic and intelligence applications, so basically we are the real world counterpart of the CSI software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With reference to the general problem of quality enhancement, I can tell you that for our market it is a huge problem to live up to the expectations created by TV series and Hollywood movies. You can see on our &lt;a href=&quot;http://ampedsoftware.com/samples&quot;&gt;samples page&lt;/a&gt; that sometimes the results we are able to get are really amazing, but it is important to understand that we can obtain them only under some conditions: if there is information that is covered by disturbs, but &lt;em&gt;it is there&lt;/em&gt;, we are able to recover it. If there is no information, &lt;em&gt;we can't and we must not&lt;/em&gt; recreate it. In this particular application is essential not only getting the results from a visual point of view, but also &lt;strong&gt;following a scientific workflow that must be accepted by the court&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2010 I presented a &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.ampedsoftware.com/overview-forensic-image-processing-issues-and-results.pdf&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt; describing issues and results on almost 200 cases I've worked on and the final result was the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in more than 50% of the cases there is nothing to do (for example recovering a license plate that is 5x2 pixels is completely impossible with any software on the world);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in about 30% of the cases we can get some little result (for example restoring some letter of a license plate or improve the overall appearance of a face);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in 10% of the cases you get good results (you get most of the license plate, for example).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that all these cases had severe quality issues. If their quality was good, we weren't asked to work on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what regards specifically &lt;strong&gt;resolution enhancement&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;when you zoom on an image you are interpolating missing pixels: from a single image you can improve visually the appearance of the image but you will &lt;em&gt;not add any real detail&lt;/em&gt;;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;super resolution techniques may yield good results under certain conditions: you should have enough frames, shifted by a non integer amount of pixels and preferably with few compression artifacts. In the best case you can expect good results within 2x and 3x zoom.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is shown in the video clip can be possible only if the original video has been shoot at several megapixels and then you will have the resolution to zoom very close (more or less like you do on Google Maps). Of course, at that point there still would be other problems, like the right focus, low light condition, the fact that the perspective of the eye is different from that of the whole subject in the video, just to mention a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit 2015-01-01: you can read a more in depth explanation of this on our blog here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.ampedsoftware.com/2014/12/15/the-untold-secrets-of-forensic-video-enhancement-myth-versus-science/&quot;&gt;http://blog.ampedsoftware.com/2014/12/15/the-untold-secrets-of-forensic-video-enhancement-myth-versus-science/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5290" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-01-07T15:56:06.543" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T15:56:06.543" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6967" CreationDate="2011-11-16T14:45:29.900" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR: The claim has dubious origins and no solid proof&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen this claim repeated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.light-of-truth.com/666/KJV.html&quot;&gt;numerologists&lt;/a&gt;, but not by literature experts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, from a literature standpoint, it is a pretty ludicrous claim, since &lt;a href=&quot;http://shakespeareauthorship.com/&quot;&gt;we are not even sure that Shakespeare wrote the text that is actually attributed to him&lt;/a&gt;, let alone the King James version of the Bible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim in itself is not supported by any facts. So what if Shakespeare was 46 at the time? Why would he use his age to secretly sign a translation&amp;mdash;and, by the way, why would he do the translation at all? Are the words shake and spear actually a literal transaltion of the original words? Does it mean that he was also the original &lt;em&gt;hebrew&lt;/em&gt; author of the Bible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is well known who the authors were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The translators were scholarly men who were experts in the biblical languages, and they were convinced of the inerrancy and authority of Scripture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allabouttruth.org/king-james-bible.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the translation process &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.av1611.org/kjv/kjvhist.html&quot;&gt;was tightly regulated, and the translation was peer-reviewed&lt;/a&gt; for accuracy. This alone is a good indicator that a single author would not be able to insert terms at will in the translation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fifteen general rules were advanced for the guidance of the translators:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;8 . Every particular Man of each Company, to take the same Chapter or Chapters, and having translated or amended them severally by himself, where he thinketh good, all to meet together, confer what they have done, and agree for their Parts what shall stand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-11-16T15:10:59.957" LastActivityDate="2011-11-16T15:10:59.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6978" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-16T20:58:59.047" Score="27" ViewCount="3156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read claims stating that exercising in hot weather burns more calories than the same exercise in cold weather would. I've also read claims stating the opposite. Which is correct? How does caloric consumption vary with ambient temperature, assuming the same exercise is performed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fitsugar.com/DrSugar-Answers-Do-I-Burn-More-Calories-Running-Cold-Weather-3151164&quot;&gt;DrSugar: Do I Burn More Calories Running in Cold Weather?&lt;/a&gt; - Claim: Extreme cold (shivering) and warmth (sauna) causes small increase in calories.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thatsfit.com/2010/06/15/fit-or-fiction-does-exercising-in-hot-weather-burn-more-calorie/&quot;&gt;Fit or Fiction&lt;/a&gt; - Claim: About the same unless shivering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cardiocorefitness.blogspot.com/2010/07/does-exercising-in-hot-weather-really.html&quot;&gt;Cardio Core Fitness&lt;/a&gt; - Claim: Slightly more in warm weather, or shivering.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/forums/weight-loss/burn-more-calories-hot&quot;&gt;About.com&lt;/a&gt; - Claims: All over the place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="8319" LastEditDate="2012-08-24T18:33:20.163" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T23:20:56.563" Title="Does exercising  in hot weather burn more calories?" Tags="|medical-science|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3686" CreationDate="2011-11-16T22:45:38.460" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Audible car alarms do not have a significant effect on car theft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The insurance data are unequivocal. In 1997, the non-profit Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI) surveyed insurance-claims data from 73 million vehicles, to see which devices could prevent theft. Looking at cars from many different model years, across the country, the study concludes that cars with alarms &quot;show no overall reduction in theft losses&quot; compared to cars without alarms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.transalt.org/files/newsroom/reports/caralarms/08ineffective.html&quot;&gt;Paper:&lt;/a&gt; &quot;Alarmingly Useless, The Case for Banning Car Alarms, in New York City&quot;, by Aaron Friedman, Aaron Naparstek &amp;amp; Mateo Taussig-Rubbo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are a variety of antitheft and tracking systems on the market with costs ranging&#xA;  from basic audible alarms costing $50 to sophisticated tracking systems with $30&#xA;  monthly fees. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of many of these devices is questionable.&#xA;  The sensitivity of audible alarms to touch or movement, for example, provokes a “boy&#xA;  who cried wolf” reaction. When a car alarm goes off, people tend not to react because the&#xA;  alarms activate so frequently for reasons other than actual theft. HLDI studies show no&#xA;  overall reduction in theft losses for vehicles with such alarms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.silentmajorityny.org/links/hldi-article.pdf&quot;&gt;Article:&lt;/a&gt; Highway Loss Data Institute, &quot;Insurance industry analyses and the prevention of motor vehicle theft,&quot; Business and Crime Prevention (Marcus Felson and Ronald V. Clarke, eds.), pp. 283-93, Monsey, NY: Willow Tree Press, Inc.: 1997&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5298" LastEditorUserId="5298" LastEditDate="2011-11-18T15:51:57.150" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T15:51:57.150" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="74" CreationDate="2011-11-17T00:28:49.380" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ap Dijksterhuis has done experiments on effects of new code games on the problem solving skills. The results showed that such games greately increase the performance in problem solving and finding a right choice- tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dijksterhuis  A., Bos  M., Nordgren  L., Baaren  R. van. On making the right choice: the deliberation-without-attention effect. 2006. Science. Vol. 311. &#xA;P. 1005-1007.&#xA;** Dijksterhuis  A., Olden  Z. van. On the benefits of thinking unconsciously: Unconscious thought can increase post-choice satisfaction. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. 2006. &#xA;In press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I think I found a working link here &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unconsciouslab.com/publications/Dijksterhuis%20Meurs%20-%20The%20generative%20power%20of%20Unconscious%20Thought.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.unconsciouslab.com/publications/Dijksterhuis%20Meurs%20-%20The%20generative%20power%20of%20Unconscious%20Thought.pdf&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, that website has a number of publications on this theme:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unconsciouslab.com/index.php?page=Publications&amp;amp;subpage=By%20year&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.unconsciouslab.com/index.php?page=Publications&amp;amp;subpage=By%20year&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman experiment about how framing may affect perception and decision making: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/1685855&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.jstor.org/pss/1685855&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1460" LastEditorUserId="1460" LastEditDate="2011-11-17T00:39:13.740" LastActivityDate="2011-11-17T00:39:13.740" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6982" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6989" CreationDate="2011-11-17T04:48:50.223" Score="25" ViewCount="16351" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dylan de Castro wrote on Livestrong in the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/323325-meat-diet-for-testosterone/&quot;&gt;Meat Diet for Testosterone&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eating meat, which is high in protein, helps build muscle and stimulates the secretion of the hormone glucagon, both of which contribute to raising testosterone levels. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true, and does eating meat help a person increase their testosterone levels?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T12:18:21.900" LastActivityDate="2017-03-26T23:05:58.793" Title="Does eating meat increase testosterone levels?" Tags="|nutrition|meat|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6986" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-17T17:17:47.393" Score="10" ViewCount="3247" Body="&lt;p&gt;It was a common claim when I grew up that eating a lot of sunflower seeds (most versions of the claim were specific to unhulled seeds) increase appendicitis risk or assuredly cause appendicitis (in more extreme versions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sordes.ru/clauses/show3/&quot;&gt;http://sordes.ru/clauses/show3/&lt;/a&gt; (in Russian)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081105114123AAP6ohg&quot;&gt;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081105114123AAP6ohg&lt;/a&gt; (in English)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does consuming sunflower seeds (especially unhulled) increase appendicitis risk?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T16:46:23.997" Title="Do sunflower seeds (especially unhulled) increase appendicitis risk?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6987" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="6993" CreationDate="2011-11-17T17:33:51.770" Score="24" ViewCount="5319" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common trope in movies that certain people, either spies or mercenaries, specialize in assassination. (An apparently well-paying but wearing specialty, since generally the assassins are freshly retired before being dragged back in for one last job...) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that such a role has existed in modern times (say, since the end of WW2)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there's a common-sense distinction between a movie-style assassin and a military sniper, a Mafia hit man, or a criminal thug:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-uniformed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Killing is primary job description, not a by-product&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does not decide on victim; is ordered / paid to perform assassination&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is not directly involved with the victim (is &quot;brought in to handle the job&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Target is individual (different than a bomb-maker)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reason to believe they've assassinated more than once&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last point is to weed out either one-off intelligence assassinations or a willing-but-idiotic psycho who takes out a classified ad in &quot;Soldier of Fortune.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:31:29.990" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:31:29.990" Title="Do professional assassins exist?" Tags="|criminology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5056" CreationDate="2011-11-17T19:09:56.403" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not very much anymore, in the scenarios that you see in the movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It used to be the standard technique for &amp;quot;infernal machines&amp;quot; in civil disorder situations or criminal bombings, in order to preserve the pieces for forensics. Military ordnance (such as in the famous TV series &amp;quot;Danger UXB&amp;quot;) doesn't tend to have exposed wires to cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the 1970's the Irish Republican Army (IRA) started to develop bombs that were packed with improvised anti-handling devices (see for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Styles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Styles&lt;/a&gt;) and it simply became too dangerous: luckily the British invented something called a &lt;em&gt;pigstick&lt;/em&gt; that allowed the components of the bomb to be separated without the need for cutting them open (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_disposal#Projected_water_disruptors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_disposal#Projected_water_disruptors&lt;/a&gt;). The noise it made as it went off was referred to for many years as a &amp;quot;controlled explosion&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the pigstick (and its many imitators) arrived cutting the wires became a very rare option which was relegated to a &amp;quot;when all else fails&amp;quot; option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there are exceptions. Booby trap clearance in tactical situations may require wires to be cut silently, and increasingly in Afghanistan for example operators may sometimes have to use &amp;quot;manual entry&amp;quot; because it is simply too difficult to carry the amount of equipment that would be needed to fire off repeated pigstick charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW the wires aren't necessarily colour coded – there is no international electrical wiring colour code for terrorists. The colour issue was probably invented by hollywood to introduce drama (I think the first time the red/blue dilemma comes up was in the movie &amp;quot;Juggernaut&amp;quot; in the 70s.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example of hollywood fiction is the mine that only goes click when you stand on it (no such mine exists – see the definitive text &amp;quot;Jane's Landmines&amp;quot;) and don't even get me started on &amp;quot;the Hurt Locker&amp;quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW The suits referred to above are quite useless when actually at a bomb (the explosive force will turn you into pink mist when you are close up to a big bomb regardless of the suit) but is intended to protect the operator if approaching a device that is fitted with a timer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend  entering &lt;em&gt;Bomb disposal&lt;/em&gt; in wikipedia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5308" LastEditorUserId="55944" LastEditDate="2021-06-16T21:54:03.920" LastActivityDate="2021-06-16T21:54:03.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="6989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6982" CreationDate="2011-11-18T06:51:19.137" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been a few studies conducted on this. The summary is that &lt;strong&gt;meat protein contributes more to Total Testosterone than a vegetarian diet&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fitnessforoneandall.com/nutrition/article/hormones/part_two.htm&quot;&gt;This link&lt;/a&gt; quotes from a book by Lou Schuler - &quot;The Testosterone Advantage Plan&quot;&#xA;Rodale: USA, 2002.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1985 study found when it looked at a large cross-section of omnivores&#xA;  and vegetarians ... The meat-eaters actually had 36 percent more T&#xA;  than the guys who stuck to rabbit food&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 1989 study found pretty much the same thing: The meat-eaters ate&#xA;  more fat, more cholesterol, more saturated fat, and less fiber than&#xA;  the vegetarians and had 31 percent more testosterone (Schuler, p.86).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Dutch study published in 1992 looked at changes in T levels on these&#xA;  two diets. A group of young male endurance athletes ate and trained on&#xA;  each diet for 6 weeks. (Half started on the meat-rich diet, half on&#xA;  the vegetarian diet; then they switched.) Total testosterone declined&#xA;  35 percent when the athletes used the vegetarian diet (Schuler, p.76).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the same link&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Men's Health magazine declared, &quot;Perhaps the ideal diet to drop your&#xA;  testosterone is high fiber and vegetarian-and the ideal way to raise&#xA;  it is the red-meat approach&quot; (Jim Thorton, p.154). &quot; Maximum&#xA;  Testosterone.&quot; Men's Health. April, 2005, pp. 146-155,182&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An abstract of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1435181&quot;&gt;1992 Dutch study&lt;/a&gt; is available here &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sample size of 8 male endurance athletes, in summary the &lt;strong&gt;Total Testosterone is less on a Vegetarian diet compared to Meat diet&lt;/strong&gt;, but Free Testosterone does not differ significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Serum sex hormones and endurance performance after a lacto-ovo&#xA;  vegetarian and a mixed diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Raben A, Kiens B, Richter EA, Rasmussen LB, Svenstrup B, Micic S,&#xA;  Bennett P. SourceAugust Krogh Institute, University of Copenhagen,&#xA;  Denmark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The V diet resulted in a &lt;strong&gt;lower total T level&lt;/strong&gt; (13.7, 9.8-32.4 nmol.l-1)&#xA;  (median and range) compared with the M diet (17.4, 11.8-33.5&#xA;  nmol.l-1). During exercise after 6 wk on the diets total T was also&#xA;  significantly lower on the V than on the M diet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that most of the advice on this concentrates on eating red meat, your mileage may vary with other meats and fish protein. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T06:51:19.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="803" CreationDate="2011-11-18T11:07:45.570" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Urban Legend web-site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/celery.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; argues that this legend is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the bodily energy devoted to the digestion of the green stalks that exhausts calories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also emphasize that it works as a displacement too:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;those who are eating it aren't eating something else&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their references seem to be largely based on newspaper articles, which isn't reassuring. (They also cite &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodreference.com/html/fcelery.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Food Reference&lt;/a&gt; but they aren't terribly wedded to the claim, prefixing it with &amp;quot;supposedly&amp;quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2507/does-chewing-celery-consume-more-calories-than-it-provides&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; tried an ad hoc experiment, showing that even ignoring the cost of digestion, over a period of an hour eating celery, the total calories consumed were outweighed by the base rate of calorie-burning by a person eating (or even resting)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After an hour I'd eaten eight stalks. (I was interrupted a couple times, thankfully.) All things considered, I think I packed away as much of the stringy stuff as could reasonably be expected. Total consumption: 514 grams. Total calories ingested: 72.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bear in mind that you burn roughly 60 calories per hour while asleep, 85 while eating [...] According to one calorie calculator I found, I need 78 calories per hour just to support my body weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So both sites, with limited rigour, suggest that &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, eating celery burns more calories than it provides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T09:55:31.983" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6992" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7869" CreationDate="2011-11-18T11:13:21.183" Score="18" ViewCount="1942" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why are men, taken on average and as a whole, funnier than women?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This line is from this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/01/hitchens200701&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vanity Fair article&lt;/a&gt; by Christopher Hitchens, and is based, in part, on this &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/november9/med-humor-110905.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stanford Uni study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the study basically showed is that in an experiment measuring men and women's responses to various cartoons, men seemed to &quot;expect&quot; a cartoon to be funny from the start, while women were more cautious, waiting until the punchline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hitchens then supposes that in society, men have learned to be funny as a way to impress women. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this plausible, or even likely? Would anyone be able to provide further information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is the case, that men tend to &quot;learn&quot; to be funny would it then stand to reason that a greater number of men will be considered funny than women, because they have an incentive for being so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related Question&lt;/strong&gt;:  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3332/do-women-prefer-men-with-a-sense-of-humor&quot;&gt;Do women prefer men with a sense of humor?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-05-29T09:46:49.960" LastActivityDate="2018-05-29T09:46:49.960" Title="Do men tend to be funnier than women?" Tags="|psychology|gender|society|humor|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6987" CreationDate="2011-11-18T11:17:06.870" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_killer&quot;&gt;article about contract killers&lt;/a&gt; where some of them are listed. The ones that look the most like what you're searching for are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Dale_Flannery&quot;&gt;Christopher Dale Flannery (&quot;Mr Rent-A-Kill&quot;)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kuklinski&quot;&gt;Richard Kuklinski&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Solonik&quot;&gt;Alexander Solonik&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: Yes, contract killers exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-18T11:38:53.183" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T11:38:53.183" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6987" CreationDate="2011-11-18T13:24:03.980" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.warsawvoice.pl/WVpage/pages/article.php/1571/article&quot;&gt;Another example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;35-year-old Igor Pikus, holder of a Belarusian passport, former&#xA;  soldier in the Soviet Union's elite Spetsnaz troops and later a KGB&#xA;  officer in Germany, who offered his services to criminal groups in&#xA;  Poland &lt;strong&gt;as a contract killer&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T13:24:03.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6911" CreationDate="2011-11-18T17:01:16.727" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is actually related to another field of my expertise, astrophotography. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly limitations in what can be digitally enhanced from blurry photographs. It's not uncommon for amateur astronomers to &quot;over-enhance&quot; an image they've taken such that the &quot;sharpen&quot; tool in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astro.shoregalaxy.com/webcam_astro.htm&quot;&gt;image processing software&lt;/a&gt; creates details that were not in the original. For example, you can sharpen an image of Saturn enough to make it appear as if you've observed the Encke gap with equipment less than the 24&quot; Ritchie-Cretien-on-top-of-a-mountain-in-perfect-conditions that would be required to &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; record the image. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is software (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astronomie.be/registax/&quot;&gt;Registax&lt;/a&gt;) that can create a clearer image by selecting the clearest frames of a movie captured by a video camera and adding them together. But the fact of the matter is that the best professional telescopes in the world were not able to get the kind of detail that the tiny telescopes of the Voyager probes got. Which is why the enormous amount of money was spent on such endeavours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If photographs &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be enhanced to anywhere near the detail that TV crime dramas suggest (and produce evidence that could be used in court), then two things would be true: blurry security camera footage would never be shown on TV to catch criminals, and the billions-of-dollars Hubble Space Telescope (and by extension, the much larger James Webb telescope in the works) would be completely unnecessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3458" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T17:01:16.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6996" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7027" CreationDate="2011-11-18T17:42:31.433" Score="34" ViewCount="5243" Body="&lt;p&gt;The top 10 worst foods listed at &lt;a href=&quot;http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/top-10-worst-foods.html&quot;&gt;planetgreen.com&lt;/a&gt; elects diet soda as the number one worst food/beverage, even worse than regular soda. However, I find it a little hard to believe, since the number of calories is much lower and the sugar content is null. Is it preferable to drink regular soda?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Diet soda is my choice for the Worst Food of All Time. Not only does diet soda contain most of the problems of regular soda, it contains aspartame, now called AminoSweet. According to research by Lynne Melcombe, author of Health Hazards of White Sugar, aspartame is linked to the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://planetgreen.discovery.com/home-garden/30-ways-to-detox-your-home-and-body.html&quot;&gt;health conditions&lt;/a&gt;: anxiety attacks; binge-eating and sugar cravings; birth defects; blindness; brain tumors; chest pain; depression; dizziness; epilepsy; fatigue; headaches and migraines; hearing loss; heart palpitations; hyperactivity; insomnia; joint pain; learning disabilities; PMS; muscle cramps; reproductive problems; and even death. Aspartame’s effects can be mistaken for Alzheimer’s disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, epilepsy, Epstein-Barr virus, Huntington’s chorea, hypothyroidism, Lou Gehrig’s disease; Lyme disease, Ménière’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and postpolio syndrome. That’s why I give Diet Soda the Worst Food of All Time award.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4395" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-12-01T18:28:14.573" LastActivityDate="2021-01-02T23:36:13.540" Title="Is diet soda less healthy than regular soda?" Tags="|nutrition|sugar|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6998" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-18T19:26:53.513" Score="7" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2064/organic-food-is-worse-for-the-environment-because-it-requires-more-land-than-non&quot;&gt;Organic food is worse for the environment because it requires more land than non-organic food&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most meat in developed nations is produced by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_agriculture_%28animals%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Industrial agriculture&lt;/a&gt; methods, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_farm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;factory farming&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-range&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Free-range&lt;/a&gt; meat is an example of an alternative practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the comments for the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6838/is-being-a-vegan-more-environmentally-friendly-than-otherwise&quot;&gt;Is being a vegan more environmentally friendly than otherwise&lt;/a&gt; Flimzy said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think it is easier to have an environmentally-friendly diet if you're a vegan, but there are environmentally friendly ways of consuming meat, too. They're just harder to do. If you raise your own free-range chickens or beef (or buy from someone locally who does), it's pretty environmentally friendly, for instance. But this is much harder than having your own local veggie garden, or buying veggies from a local farmer's market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also suspect that these numbers are only taking into account &quot;traditional production&quot; means. A graph showing free-range (or other alternative methods) and local poultry, beef, pork, and dairy, would be very interesting as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oddthinking makes a good counterpoint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You are making some claims there! How about some evidence? My first impression is that free-range is less environmentally-friendly, as more land must be cleared. Morally right is a separate question. And then there is the question of how much land is dedicated to feeding the animals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My gut feeling tends to agree with Oddthinking, The UN reports &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?newsID=20772&amp;amp;CR1=warning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, as more people are becoming more prosperous, their meat consumption increases. These methods would have to scale to fit the increased demand for more meat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John C weighs in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;antibiotics and hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to spray feed crops.&quot; Personally, I consider that more an indictment of the &lt;em&gt;industrial livestock industry&lt;/em&gt; - cattle that are grass-fed, and not given rBGH and antibiotics, would have none of those problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems to be a common belief that there are alternative methods of meat production (possibly free-range meat) that are better than the environment than factory farming. So what is the evidence that free-range, or other alternative methods of meat production &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; are better than industrial, factory farmed methods? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard there is some research going on to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15402552&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;grow meat in a lab&lt;/a&gt; but this method isn't here yet, but it looks very promising from both an environmental as well as ethical prospective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-11-18T19:26:53.513" Title="Are there alternative methods of meat production (such as free-range meat) that are better for the environment than factory farmed meat?" Tags="|environment|climate-change|meat|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-10-23T05:10:57.670" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="6999" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8301" CreationDate="2011-11-18T20:37:08.363" Score="30" ViewCount="41618" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the attribution of this quote to Marcus Aurelius correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples against the attribution: &lt;a href=&quot;http://threeshoutsonahilltop.blogspot.com/2011/06/marcus-aurelius-and-source-checking.html&quot;&gt;Three shouts on a hill top blog post&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius&quot;&gt;Wikiquote&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples in favour of the attribution: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/63966&quot;&gt;GoodReads&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://richarddawkins.net/quotes/114&quot;&gt;Richard Dawkins.net&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4673" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-22T02:16:09.607" LastActivityDate="2017-03-07T13:39:34.563" Title="Did Marcus Aurelius say &quot;Live a good life&quot;?" Tags="|history|quotes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7004" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-19T02:55:18.790" Score="6" ViewCount="760" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there any ingredients in processed foods (prepared meals, as opposed to freshly made meals, for example) approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration of the USA) that are known to be directly harmful to humans? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have met a lot of people who claim &quot;X ingredient will cause diabetes, or cancer, or some other health problem...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I understand, the FDA only approves things after ensuring they are not harmful, although there may be cases where some things may be potentially harmful in rare situations or if excess amounts are consumed.  I would have thought however for the most-part though, what they approve has shown to be safe for public consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are people who claim that certain ingredients are simply dangerous and should not be ingested, at all, ever seemingly regardless of amount. Often there seems to be little support for such claims other than belief, still I am curious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wereyouwondering.com/possible-and-suspected-carcinogens-found-in-food/&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; links to many substances approved by the FDA yet apparently have been shown to cause harm in studies. I have not looked at each study as I lack the prerequisite knowledge to make sense of them. Surely if the FDA is approving a substance known to be harmful it is only in dosages considered not harmful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example might be BHA which the US dept of health considered a carcinogen, yet the FDA continues to allow its use. Or Acesulfame-K which failed to meet FDA standards (according to the above site).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that any preservatives/additives/etc approved by the FDA are harmful to humans for the dose they are approved for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T10:20:45.690" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T12:57:57.607" Title="Are there any FDA approved ingredients that are known to be directly harmful when taken at an approved dosage?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7008" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7010" CreationDate="2011-11-19T20:14:03.723" Score="14" ViewCount="1595" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20090625/study-overweight-people-live-longer?page=2&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;, overweight people actually live longer than people with normal/below normal weight. Is it really true? What about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinawa_diet&quot;&gt;Okinawa people&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;for example&lt;/em&gt;? What about underweight people because of their high metabolism? They are slim and they live very long. I'm confused a little. So what is better for a longer life? Is there any causation between BMI and life expectancy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5321" LastEditorUserId="5321" LastEditDate="2011-11-21T15:10:49.037" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T22:53:46.113" Title="Do overweight people live longer?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7008" CreationDate="2011-11-20T01:06:43.587" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It rather depends on what you mean by &lt;em&gt;normal&lt;/em&gt; weight.  The standard definition is to use Body Mass Index (weight in kg divided by square of height in metres) and describe &lt;em&gt;normal&lt;/em&gt; as something like 20-25, &lt;em&gt;overweight&lt;/em&gt; as 25-30 and &lt;em&gt;obese&lt;/em&gt; as 30+.  There are issues about this simple rule of thumb, since it ignores body type, and there seems to be no reason to believe that the power of two in the denominator is the correct number (it certainly is not for children and may not be for tall people).  But ignoring those questions and just looking at epidemiological evidence, &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/293/15/1861&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; from the Journal of the American Medical Association says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Underweight and obesity, particularly higher levels of obesity, were&#xA;  associated with increased mortality relative to the normal weight&#xA;  category. The impact of obesity on mortality may have decreased over&#xA;  time, perhaps because of improvements in public health and medical&#xA;  care&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;while &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2806%2969251-9/fulltext&quot;&gt;this meta-study&lt;/a&gt; from the Lancet says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Patients with a low body-mass index had an increased relative risk for&#xA;  total mortality and cardiovascular mortality, overweight had the&#xA;  lowest risk for total mortality and cardiovascular mortality compared&#xA;  with those for people with a normal BMI. Obese patients had no&#xA;  increased risk for total mortality or cardiovascular mortality.&#xA;  Patients with severe obesity did not have increased total mortality&#xA;  but they had the highest risk for cardiovascular mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;suggesting that being moderately overweight is not in itself unhealthy, but being underweight may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-11-20T01:06:43.587" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7011" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-20T07:59:11.583" Score="14" ViewCount="2222" Body="&lt;p&gt;A variety of anti-aging products are advertised as solution to reverse [the perceived problem of] the appearance of aging.  Many claims are made about these products, often showing &quot;before vs. after&quot; photographs and sometimes also flaunting testimonials (unverified anecdotes), but I've not encountered references for credible studies that back up the claims (even though the phrases &quot;clinically proven&quot; or &quot;clinical trials&quot; are sometimes used).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few examples (the third one is an anecdote/sales-pitch that recommends combining the first two products for best results; &lt;em&gt;I also omitted tracking codes from all links to help maintain privacy&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;JUVENEU - Instant Wrinkle Reducer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.juveneu.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.juveneu.com/&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;this web site includes audio of a woman speaking&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Juveneu's advanced formula, contains some of the most effective anti-aging ingredients such as Resveratrol, DMAE, Matryxil 3000 and an exclusive blend of peptides that are clinically proven to turn back the natural effects of the aging process at the cellular level, Producing Astounding Results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PureCollagenX.com | Anti-Aging Facial Serum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.purecollagenx.com/t2-can/&quot;&gt;http://www.purecollagenx.com/t2-can/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[&lt;em&gt;Heading:  Collagen and Wrinkles&lt;/em&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Collagen is a long, fibrous structural protein that is wound together in a tight helix. This helix is what gives collagen, and your skin, such great strength and elasticity. Numerous helixes bind together to form collagen fibers, which are woven together in our bodies like threads in fabric to form a framework for new cells to grow. Without these fibers, the skin just cannot hold its shape, making it look saggy and wrinkled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't Break the Bank: A Mom's Trick to a Wrinkle FREE Face&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailyconsumeralerts.com/skin/&quot;&gt;http://www.dailyconsumeralerts.com/skin/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[&lt;em&gt;&quot;Before (wrinkly face)&quot; and &quot;After (smooth face)&quot; pictures are included on the web page.&lt;/em&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Emily started to notice several changes within weeks. The picture on the left was taken around the third week after she started using Juveneu and Pure Collagen regularly. She used both Juveneu and Pure Collagen only once a day in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her wrinkles are smoothed out, her eye lines are gone and her skin glows. Her skin continues to get firmer and firmer. In addition to her renewed radiant skin, Emily experienced a significant increase in energy because of the added benefits of the antioxidant Argan Oil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm suspicious about these claims because there don't appear to be references to credible scientific studies, and seemingly mysterious/peculiar/unusual phrases like &quot;exclusive blend of peptides&quot; and &quot;tight helix&quot; are used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the claims about how these products work accurate, and are these products effective for significantly reducing or eliminating wrinkles in human skin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3068" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T09:46:56.720" Title="Are anti-aging/wrinkle-treatment solutions effective on human skin?" Tags="|aging|dermatology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7013" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-20T18:26:02.007" Score="12" ViewCount="16683" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm curious if tests have been conducted to evaluate the energy efficiency gains and resultant savings produced by insulating window films like these &lt;a href=&quot;http://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal/3M/en_US/WindowInsulatorKits/Products/&quot;&gt;3M Window Insulator Kits&lt;/a&gt;. (There are also films that are adhered directly to window glass that block UV and such; I'm specifically talking about the kind you tape on to the window frame to seal leaks and create an extra pocket of air.) The bottom of that page states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using a 3M window insulator kit can save up to $18 per window this heating season. Values based on averages from the northern half of the United States. Actual energy savings are subject to change and will vary depending on furnace and window type, average indoor/outdoor temperature, length of heating season and other factors. Savings based on energy costs as of August 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious if tests have been conducted to verify these claims. Perhaps the best and most practical/useful way to go about the question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For the average house (# of windows, type, size, heating costs, etc.) in the northern US, is the cost of the window film (ideally more) regained in energy savings?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00002NCJI&quot;&gt;the kit costs $15&lt;/a&gt; and insulates 5 windows (but 8 windows should be treated like two kits ($30), not $15 kit/5 windows per kit x 8 windows = $24).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-11-21T15:44:09.260" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T15:44:09.260" Title="Are insulating window films worth it?" Tags="|united-states|energy-efficiency|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7017" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7338" CreationDate="2011-11-21T07:59:39.920" Score="15" ViewCount="3206" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had thought that Lamarckian evolution had been essentially dismissed in favour of Darwinian evolution. Lamarckian evolution as I understand it is essentially the idea that the traits an organism develops in it's lifetime can then be passed to its offspring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism#Current_views&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; states that it is still being considered and investigated and so has apparently not been completely dismissed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interest in Lamarckism has recently increased, as several studies in&#xA;the field of epigenetics have highlighted the possible inheritance of&#xA;behavioral traits acquired by the previous generation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am getting out of my depth here, however I thought epigenetics was genes being suppressed or influenced by the environment which is similar but separate from learned traits being passed on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Lamarckian evolution disproven and being conflated with epigenetics here, or is there still credence being given to the theory that traits acquired in a lifetime can be passed on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T11:37:39.600" Title="Is Lamarckian evolution still considered credible?" Tags="|biology|evolution|genetics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7018" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7019" CreationDate="2011-11-21T08:09:47.720" Score="7" ViewCount="1461" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is legislation in place in a number of Westernised countries such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enforcement_Act_of_2006&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;U.S.&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Gambling_Act&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Australia&lt;/a&gt; that makes certain aspects of gambling over the Internet illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the major justifications for these laws is the assertion that online gambling increases the risk of problem gambling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/xenophon-urges-police-to-act-on-online-betting-20110530-1fd0a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sydney Morning Herald&lt;/a&gt; reports on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Xenophon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;well-known Australian anti-gambling campaigner&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Senator Xenophon does not support liberalising gambling laws, saying the more accessible online gambling is the greater the risk of gambling problems developing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there sufficient evidence to support the assertion that gambling over the Internet increases the risk of problem gambling in comparison to gambling in a regular casino?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1440" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-21T10:26:34.030" LastActivityDate="2022-07-28T23:06:04.823" Title="Is Internet gambling more harmful than regular gambling?" Tags="|internet|gambling|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7018" CreationDate="2011-11-21T08:32:30.527" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is my opinion that these governments are restricting online gambling until they can figure out a way to tax such services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your question, I am not aware of any studies showing that online gambling is more harmful than offline gambling although many predict it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study from 2010 did not find any correlation between length of time playing online and scores for the DSM-IV criteria for problem gambling: Mark Griffiths, Jonathan Parke, Richard Wood and Jane Rigbye, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-009-9203-7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Online Poker Gambling in University Students: Further Findings from an Online Survey&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction&#xA;Volume 8, Number 1, 82-89, DOI: 10.1007/s11469-009-9203-7&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study comprised 422 online poker players (362 males and 60 females) and investigated some of the predicting factors of online poker success and problem gambling using an online questionnaire. Results showed that length of time as a player was positively correlated with the number of days playing per year, length of poker sessions, and financial success. However, length of time playing did not correlate with either score on DSM-IV problem gambling criteria or perceived skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An earlier &lt;a href=&quot;http://jgi.camh.net/doi/ref/10.4309/jgi.2001.5.8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study from 2001&lt;/a&gt; states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Internet gambling could be argued to be more psychologically enticing&#xA;than previous non-technological incarnations of gambling because of&#xA;anonymity, accessibility and interactivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been a lot of study put into the idea of internet addiction, which seems to be well supported. Some interesting studies are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.1998.1.237&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi.ajp.2007.07101556&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; as well as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_addiction_disorder&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2005.8.110&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; study purports that online gaming can become an addiction because of the potential for overuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short it seems there is insufficient data, although internet addiction may be a significant contributing factor to online gambling being more harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-07-28T23:06:04.823" LastActivityDate="2022-07-28T23:06:04.823" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7021" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-21T14:42:31.700" Score="12" ViewCount="3180" Body="&lt;p&gt;My girlfriend insisted that I should sit down in the future after reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frag-mutti.de/tipp/p/show/category_id/2/article_id/23517/Putzaufwand-im-WC-um-50-reduzieren-und-dabei-noch-punkten-in-der-Beziehung.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this tip&lt;/a&gt; (German) for easier cleaning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When standing, the stream sprays up to 3.50 m far, as measured from a drop height of about 77 cm. This means, even toothbrushes are in danger!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this be possible? Our toothbrushes are in front of the toilet and I can't imagine that happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4673" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T11:12:21.710" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T13:42:43.377" Title="Can urine aerosols reach my toothbrush if I pee standing up?" Tags="|hygiene|toilets|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7023" CreationDate="2011-11-21T15:31:54.110" Score="10" ViewCount="5686" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was watching a documentary about the Oxy pipeline from Florida to Kentucky this weekend where a sheriff made the claim that Oxycontin was pharmaceutical-grade heroin.  This is not the first time I had heard this claim but I assumed they were just using hyperbole.  This sheriff claimed that the narcotic ingredient of both drugs was the same.    A search reveals &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=oxycontin%20is%20heroin&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&quot;&gt;several sites&lt;/a&gt; that equate the drugs and say that the dependence is interchangeable.  But are they the same narcotic or do they simply bind to the same receptors due to their opiate source?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="5326" LastEditDate="2011-11-22T05:29:38.290" LastActivityDate="2017-07-12T17:54:04.053" Title="Is Oxycontin pharmaceutical-grade heroin?" Tags="|medications|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7022" CreationDate="2011-11-21T16:18:59.053" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxycodone&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oxycontin (oxycodone)&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;heroin&lt;/a&gt; are both &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opioid&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;opioids&lt;/a&gt;, but not exactly the same substance. So, no, Oxycontin is not &quot;pharmaceutical grade heroin&quot; — thats an oversimplification to say they're both opioids (so they work in a similar way).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just take a look at their molecular structures to see that they're similar, but different:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Heroin:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jyyGu.png&quot; alt=&quot;Heroin&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Oxycodone:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3jYP5.png&quot; alt=&quot;Oxycodone&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-06-22T10:05:59.820" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T10:05:59.820" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7017" CreationDate="2011-11-21T18:13:01.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the years I've heard explanations from a variety of sources, including a television documentary, that elephants have &quot;generational memory&quot; where the off-spring inherit certain memories of their mothers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following two paragraphs below (&lt;em&gt;relevant text emphasized to save your time&lt;/em&gt;) address this as well as the idea that new traits, such as specifically switching to a nocturnal lifestyle (in this case, to avoid a hunter), can be passed on to the next generation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/2/2192/1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/2/2192/1.html&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;strong&gt;Mammals and the Further Rise of Mind&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (&lt;em&gt;4th and 5th paragraphs from the final section entitled &quot;Learning Machines&quot;&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pre-human mammals not only network their informational breakthroughs across substantial distances, they also spread the tendrils of what they've learned into the future, thus penetrating both space and time. &lt;strong&gt;Elephants, for example, pass behavioral memes from one generation to the next.&lt;/strong&gt; In 1919, the citrus farmers of South Africa's Addo Park wanted to get rid of a herd of 140 elephants who'd been wreaking havoc with their crops. They called in &lt;strong&gt;a hunter who shot the elephants painfully, one by one, while their family members watched the dying agonies&lt;/strong&gt;. After a year, only sixteen to 20 elephants still remained. But &lt;strong&gt;they had adapted their lives to the hunter's presence&lt;/strong&gt;. In a most un-elephant-like manner, &lt;strong&gt;they had become nocturnal, hiding in the bush until night fell&lt;/strong&gt;, and stealing out to feed in utter darkness. The adaptation worked. The hunter eventually gave up. Then, in 1930, the elephants were granted permanent sanctuary. &lt;strong&gt;There were no more gunshots, no more attacks by murderous human beings. Yet 45 years later, the elephants retained their reclusive, night-time way of life.&lt;/strong&gt; The veterans of 1919 had died off, but the group held on to patterns designed to cope with a danger that had long since past. &lt;strong&gt;Those patterns leaped the boundary from generation to generation and mind to mind. Implicit memes had shaped communal sensibility&lt;/strong&gt; as surely as genes sculpt the rippling canyons of the brain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advanced brains were, in fact one key to the elephants' multi-generational memory.&lt;/strong&gt; The other was the bond of motherhood and matriarchy. Elephants, like the humans who would not appear for over 20 million years, possessed a cerebral cortex of substantial size. This is less unusual than it seems. Biological anthropologist Robin Dunbar has shown that the larger the size of a social unit, the larger the cortex of each member. This is even true within a single species. Bats were one of the earliest mammals to evolve. So ancient is their pedigree that many scientists have referred to them as &quot;living fossils.&quot; Like elephants, these flying mammals live long lives (one tagged wild bat in New England survived well over 31 years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading on this subject of genes carrying memory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Ghost in Your Genes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/ghostgenes.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/ghostgenes.shtml&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br&gt;The scientists who believe your genes are shaped in part by your ancestors' life experiences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this at least helps to answer your question about acquired traits being passed on to offspring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3068" LastEditorUserId="3068" LastEditDate="2011-11-21T18:31:17.393" LastActivityDate="2011-11-21T18:31:17.393" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7004" CreationDate="2011-11-21T21:29:54.443" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question changes with how strictly you ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, there are no FDA approved food or color additives &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; to be harmful.  But yes, it is possible that an FDA approved additive can cause harm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To start the use of a additive, a sponsor must submit a petition to show that the proposed use of the additive is safe. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/ucm056809.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This even is true for animal food&lt;/a&gt;)  The FDA reviews the petition to make the call on if the additive is as safe as the sponsor says it is.  If the petition passes, the additive gets to be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodIngredientsPackaging/ucm094211.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;However:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because of inherent limitations of science, FDA can never be &lt;em&gt;absolutely&lt;/em&gt; certain of the absence of any risk from the use of any substance. Therefore, FDA must determine - based on the best science available - if there is a &lt;em&gt;reasonable certainty of no harm&lt;/em&gt; to consumers when an additive is used as proposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the FDA looks into their research and determines if the additive is safe given the current data. Yet just because the FDA has reached this conclusion does not necessarily imply that the additive is safe. When further studies come out, the FDA analyzes the data and once again makes the best call they can on if the additive is safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take, for example, Aspartame; common low-calorie artificial sweetener.  Studies by the European Ramazzini Foundation &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17119233&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(ERF)&lt;/a&gt; have concluded that the sweetener is carcinogenic.  But whenever such conclusions are made, the FDA analyzes the new data and reevaluates the safety of the additive.  The FDA issued &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/food/ingredientspackaginglabeling/foodadditivesingredients/ucm208580.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this statement&lt;/a&gt; stating that they have analyzed what data from the study they could, and determined that the ERF's study does not support the conclusion that aspartame is carcinogenic.  (Incidentally, the European Food Safety Authority &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/356.htm?wtrl=01&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;agrees with the FDA on this&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, when the FDA approves an additive, they can only do so by making their best guess.  If someone says they've made the wrong call, they do their best to investigate the new data.  This is, of course, in general.  Any further analysis would be best done on a single additive that you're skeptical the FDA has made the right call about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5307" LastEditorUserId="23118" LastEditDate="2016-05-16T12:57:57.607" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T12:57:57.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6996" CreationDate="2011-11-22T00:53:30.283" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hysteria around the aspartame in diet drinks is not justified by the evidence&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite hard to prove a negative but the simple observation that hundreds of millions of people take aspartame containing drinks every day without apparently causing any notable &lt;em&gt;epidemiological&lt;/em&gt; evidence of all the effects should be of some significance. As far as I can tell no such evidence has ever been presented and most of the &amp;quot;evidence&amp;quot; is merely anecdotal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what a 2004 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bmj.com/content/329/7469/755&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ editorial&lt;/a&gt; said about the evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidence does not support links between aspartame and cancer, hair loss, depression, dementia, behavioural disturbances, or any of the other conditions appearing in websites. Agencies such as the Food Standards Agency, European Food Standards Authority, and the Food and Drug Administration have a duty to monitor relations between foodstuffs and health and to commission research when reasonable doubt emerges. Aspartame's safety was convincing to the European Scientific Committee on Food in 1988, but proving negatives is difficult, and it is even harder to persuade vocal sectors of the public whose opinions are fuelled more by anecdote than by evidence. The Food Standards Agency takes public concerns very seriously and thus pressed the European Scientific Committee on Food to conduct a further review, encompassing over 500 reports, in 2002. It concluded from biochemical, clinical, and behavioural research that the acceptable daily intake of 40 mg/kg/day of aspartame remained entirely safe—except for people with phenylketonuria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who argue that aspartame releases toxic substances in the body when metabolised (though it is hard to see how natural amino acids are toxic) it is worth bearing in mind the doses involved in typical diet drinks. This lucid explanation and summary of actual evidence &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bmj.com/content/330/7486/310.2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;appeared in the BMJ&lt;/a&gt; in response to some of the more hysterical critics of aspartame who criticised the editorial quoted above (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mercola talks about “flooding the brain” with amino acids, presupposing that aspartame causes excessive rises in plasma concentrations of phenylalanine that then cross the blood-brain barrier. Plasma phenylalanine rises to 80-120 mmol/l after a protein meal such as a glass of the “natural substance” milk, about the same as after a dose of 34 mg aspartame per kg body weight (&lt;strong&gt;about 28 canned drinks sweetened with aspartame consumed at once&lt;/strong&gt;); current consumption data show that average daily intake is less than 1% of this and maximum intake less than 10%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Briffa thinks that aspartame metabolism produces methanol toxicity. According to the US Food and Drug Administration, to cause toxicity in humans, 200-500 mg methanol per kg body weight is needed to produce sufficient amounts of its metabolite, formate (federal register 1984). &lt;strong&gt;This corresponds to drinking 600-1700 cans of diet soft drink at once&lt;/strong&gt;, an amount not achieved after a dose of 200 mg aspartame per kg body weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2800%2904041-1/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;studies in children&lt;/a&gt; show that sugary drinks make them fatter than artificially sweetened drinks, though the evidence in adults is mixed (perhaps because of confounding as people already concerned about weight may tend to drink lower calorie drinks confusing the direction of cause and effect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, overall, there is no convincing reason to suppose that diet drinks sweetened with aspartame are bad for you, especially when compared to the empty calories of sugary drinks which have plenty of bad effects, especially in children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;There have been several low quality studies suggesting that aspartame containing drinks don't have the expected effects on obesity (they don't have any calories, so you might think they ought to help compared to sugary drinks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a &lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23620057/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;better quality recent study&lt;/a&gt; (“Consumption of sweet beverages and type 2 diabetes incidence in European adults: results from EPIC-InterAct”) has looked at some of the implications of sugary drinks on long term health and has found a significant association with Type 2 diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The summary of the paper claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Results&lt;/em&gt; In adjusted models, one 336 g (12 oz) daily increment&#xA;in sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened soft drink&#xA;consumption was associated with HRs for type 2 diabetes of&#xA;1.22 (95% CI 1.09, 1.38) and 1.52 (95% CI 1.26, 1.83),&#xA;respectively. After further adjustment for energy intake and&#xA;BMI, the association of sugar-sweetened soft drinks with type&#xA;2 diabetes persisted (HR 1.18, 95% CI 1.06, 1.32), but the&#xA;association of artificially sweetened soft drinks became&#xA;statistically not significant (HR 1.11, 95% CI 0.95, 1.31).&#xA;Juice and nectar consumption was not associated with type 2&#xA;diabetes incidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Conclusions/interpretation&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;This study corroborates the&#xA;association between increased incidence of type 2 diabetes&#xA;and high consumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks in&#xA;European adults.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lack of significance of the effect in artificially sweetened drinks after adjustment is noteworthy as it suggests that one reason why other studies have not seen the effect on weight is that they did suffer from confounding caused, probably, because the already fat are more likely to take diet drinks. This study concludes that, for a given group, taking too much sugary drink is clearly bad for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-01-02T14:29:35.897" LastActivityDate="2021-01-02T14:29:35.897" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7028" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2011-11-22T02:10:51.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Attribution questions address whether the correct author or creator has been acknowledged and credited for their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-22T02:10:51.263" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T02:10:51.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7029" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2011-11-22T02:10:51.263" Score="0" Body="the acknowledgement of an author or other creator for their work." OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-22T02:10:51.263" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T02:10:51.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7030" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-22T14:28:24.233" Score="1" ViewCount="171" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2153/is-there-any-scientific-evidence-regarding-measurable-adverse-effects-if-any-o&quot;&gt;Is there any scientific evidence regarding measurable adverse effects (if any) of child rearing by homosexual human couples?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time someone brings up same sex couples and adoption, someone has to mention &quot;but children need a dad and a mom&quot;. Are there any studies that proof or disproof this statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5335" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T14:28:24.233" Title="Does a child need a father and a mother?" Tags="|children|sexuality|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2011-11-22T14:42:31.793" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="68" CreationDate="2011-11-22T16:02:23.390" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The argument has long been made that the gmo that are put in the plants to protect them will not be able to withstand the human digestive system. A study done at the University of Sherbrooke found that not only did they survive and circulate in the body, they also passed to the fetuses of pregnant women. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://somloquesembrem.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/arisleblanc2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://somloquesembrem.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/arisleblanc2011.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5336" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T16:02:23.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7032" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7037" CreationDate="2011-11-22T16:18:18.507" Score="13" ViewCount="18594" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was prescribed ivy leaf extract for my (quite heavy) cough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.evitamins.com/encyclopedia/assets/nutritional-supplement/ivy-leaf/how-it-works&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;More info about ivy leaf extract&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it work, or is it just a placebo? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="31" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T17:42:28.377" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T17:42:28.377" Title="Does ivy leaf extract help treat coughs?" Tags="|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7033" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17571" CreationDate="2011-11-22T16:27:56.357" Score="18" ViewCount="3693" Body="&lt;p&gt;In several places, I have seen reference to the story that in the past in Russia, travelers by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troika_(driving)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;troika&lt;/a&gt; might throw one of the travelers before chasing wolves in order to save the other travelers (wolves will be busy for a little while eating one of the children, troika races on to safety). I like the story, but I'm sceptical still, since wolves don't really tend to chase people. Or did they in the past?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen several references, but none reliable. I know it from the Dutch song &lt;a href=&quot;http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodenrit&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Dodenrit&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; (original in Dutch, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;js=n&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;layout=2&amp;amp;eotf=1&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fnl.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FDodenrit&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;translated to English via Google Translate&lt;/a&gt;), as well as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arabnews.com/opinion/columns/article469719.ece&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;arabnews.com&lt;/a&gt;, to mention a couple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any historical account of this occuring?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If yes, is there any indication as to how common this was?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not, where is the story originating from? Is there any core of truth?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd love to read some article digging into the background of this :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: source from the article, that is mirrored at several places&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The troika hurtles across the frozen plain. The wolves are close behind, and from time to time a peasant is hurled from the sleigh in the hope of letting the more important people escape. But nothing distracts the pack for long, not even when the occupants of the sleigh move up the pecking order and throw a couple of minor aristocrats to the wolves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wait! What’s this? They have thrown a newspaper to the wolves? An entire newspaper, with two hundred full-time employees and hundreds more freelance contributors? How do they think that that will help them to get away?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The troika is called News International, the newspaper wing of Rupert Murdoch’s globe-spanning media empire. The paper that has just been sacrificed is the News of the World, a Sunday tabloid that claims to have more readers than any other paper in the English-speaking world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NoW makes a tidy profit, but this Sunday’s edition will be its last. After 168 years, the institution that pioneered the art of persuading the emerging class of semi-literate English people to buy newspapers has been shut down by its owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-02-11T02:27:35.983" Title="Did travelers by troika throw passengers before the wolves, to save others?" Tags="|history|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7062" CreationDate="2011-11-22T19:53:40.847" Score="27" ViewCount="9722" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems like such an obviously false claim, but I keep running into the claim that men are &amp;quot;Wired differently&amp;quot; than women and therefore can't control their lust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim in conversation was &amp;quot;However, at the end of the day, men's brains are wired a certain way, and the only thing they can do is avert their gaze if they're really trying hard to respect a woman that they're talking to but are getting distracted by her looks.&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://nanowrimo.org/en/forums/reference-desk/threads/30775&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This forum thread&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to refute the idea that men are innately &amp;quot;distracted by [women's] looks&amp;quot; because they are &amp;quot;wired [that] way&amp;quot; and therefore incapable of respecting a woman's opinion or having a proper conversation unless she's covered from head to toe. However, I'd like to do it properly, citing actual studies, since this is a widely-held claim and tied in ultimately with religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=gJJ9Eu06JmEC&amp;amp;pg=PA161&amp;amp;lpg=PA161&amp;amp;dq=men%20can%27t%20control%20themselves%20hijab&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=xqJ80gDPXl&amp;amp;sig=fHBtD4LcsaxKmVGzGgJPQ6CjIJE&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=DfrLTraQFu3o2gX6o4CeDw&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=2&amp;amp;ved=0CCkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=men%20can%27t%20control%20themselves%20hijab&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Anthropology Matters!&quot;&gt;Anthropology Matters&lt;/a&gt; cites a 2000 study on muslim women's opinions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Men can't control themselves' [...] Women who wear hajib [...] believe it is men's sexual desires that are being controlled&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Men are also responsible to control their eyes and minds. However, I think many women are unaware of how difficult this is for men [...] Men and women are wired differently and we women may never understand what men go through.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefalcononline.com/article.php?id=7071&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article on The Falcon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funny thing is I have taken classes on modesty and have discovered that men are wired different than women. It is a scientific fact that a mans optical nerve is directly linked to his penial nerve and that is why he gets hard when he sees a womans skin&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://community.babycenter.com/post/a30187011/question_for_men_and_women_about_modesty?cpg=3&amp;amp;csi=2363971201&amp;amp;pd=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a forum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because men and women are “wired” differently when it comes to the human body. The fact is, it doesn’t take much visual stimulus at all for guys to become sexually aroused. The sight of the female body, even just a little bit and even if it’s a complete stranger, can trigger sexual thoughts instantly. This might be difficult for women to understand, but it’s absolutely true. [...] Remember, the sight of a woman’s body is so powerful for men, that unless they’re well-trained and highly disciplined, they’ll have a difficult time refraining from sexual thoughts. [...] Whether it’s conscious or unconscious, if you present yourself in a way that is sexually revealing, even in the slightest of ways, many men will want your body for pleasure without regard for you as a person. Many men will see you as sexually loose. Other men will be constantly distracted with sexual temptations and find it hard to get to know you as a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from an article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lovematters.com/sexyfashions.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Love Matters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women must learn that men are “wired” differently and the way a woman dresses can have a definite impact on how a man reacts to her. As an example, if a man is watching a TV talk show or interview, and sees a modestly dressed woman sitting on a chair or couch and she is wearing a dress or skirt that extends several inches below the knees, she is viewed as a total woman and the mans concentration is on her, as a complete person, and on what she is saying or whatever her purpose is for being on that particular show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you take the same woman and shorten her skirt so that it is two or three inches above the knees, then the man perceives her in a different manner, more as a sexual object. He no longer views her as a whole person worthy of respect. Instead, he sees her as a collection of parts, with some parts drawing more attention than others. This sexual “evaluation” all takes place in split second in the brain, but has the effect of distracting the man from what she is saying, because her appearance is sending a different message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if they are full length and not tight fitting, a pair of slacks on a woman has the same psychological effect of dividing her up into parts”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(from &lt;a href=&quot;http://theratzingerforum.yuku.com/topic/2165#.Tsv8zlbFKuI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a forum&lt;/a&gt; seemingly quoting Dr. Anne Marie McDonnell).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5027" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T14:18:43.007" Title="Are men &quot;wired differently&quot; so that they &quot;can't control themselves&quot;?" Tags="|religion|gender|sexuality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7035" CreationDate="2011-11-22T20:06:39.593" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Very timely question. There was an &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthland.time.com/2011/11/14/mind-reading-what-we-can-learn-from-the-dutch-about-teen-sex/&quot;&gt;interview in Time&lt;/a&gt; on this very question, with Amy Schalet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amy Schalet is a researcher of sexuality and culture (comparative sexuality), currently assistant professor of sociology at UMass. She has her Ph.D in sociology from UC Berkeley. Schalet's book is &lt;em&gt;Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens and the Culture of Sex&lt;/em&gt;. For more information about her credentials, see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.umass.edu/schalet/&quot;&gt;Amy Schalet: Bio at UMass&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schalet disagrees with this idea that boys and men are uncontrollably in rut and that women simply have to be protected. She says the facts tend to bear out that boys and men are very romantic and normally conceive of sex as a part of a relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the chilling part. Schalet concludes that societies which fear and suppress sexual behavior tend to create more men who are sexual bullies. So the cultures which put in place these protective (i.e. fear-driven) strategies are actually creating the very problem they say they are trying to solve. It's a vicious cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="349" LastEditorUserId="349" LastEditDate="2011-11-22T22:09:24.447" LastActivityDate="2011-11-22T22:09:24.447" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7032" CreationDate="2011-11-22T23:21:27.837" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;: While there have been individual studies, mostly of low quality, the systematic reviews suggest the evidence is poor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first port of call for medical claims, Cochrane Reviews, has nothing on ivy, which is a shame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I notice in the studies I did find, a strong bias towards being produced in Germany, which raises my eyebrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Cough&amp;quot; is a broad term. I found studies looking at &lt;em&gt;bronchitis&lt;/em&gt; and studies looking at &lt;em&gt;asthma&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bronchitis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: I found a total of four studies supporting the use of Ivy leaf extract: one poor, two very poor and one that seemed reasonable. Finally, I found a recent systematic review of the evidence that suggested that there is still reasonable doubt about its effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first positive study I looked at was &lt;a href=&quot;https://abrilaroriginal.cl/wp-content/files_mf/1401368009Ivyversusambroxolinchronicbronchitis.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ivy versus Ambroxol in chronic bronchitis&lt;/a&gt;, J. Meyer-Wegener, K. Liebscher and M. Hettich. Allgemeinmedizin, Vol. 3, p. 61-66 31 January 1993. It was a randomised, controlled, double-blind test comparing a commercial treatment based on Ivy leaf extract to a control of another drug, Ambroxol, and found they were equivalent. &lt;strong&gt;This is only useful if Ambroxol is, indeed, the best-in-class alternative treatment.&lt;/strong&gt;  If Ambroxol is ineffective as a treatment, then this trial proves the ivy-based pill is equally ineffective. The paper does include references to older papers which, it claims, provide a mechanism to explain Ivy leaf's actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next trial I found was a joke: &lt;a href=&quot;http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowAbstractBuch&amp;amp;ArtikelNr=88934&amp;amp;ProduktNr=231521&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Open Trial to Assess Aspects of Safety and Efficacy of a Combined Herbal Cough Syrup with Ivy and Thyme&lt;/a&gt;, Büechi S, Vögelin R, von Eiff MM, Ramos M, Melzer J, Forsch Komplementärmed Klass Naturheilkd 2005;12:328-332 (DOI: 10.1159/000088934) The control used was just the baseline symptoms at the start of the trial. Surprise, surprise, people didn't cough as much twelve days (on average) later. The fact that the journal published this tripe reflects poorly upon it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh dear, I have just noticed the third study was published in the same journal, three years earlier. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12006725&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Treatment of chronic bronchitis with ivy leaf special extract--multicenter post-marketing surveillance study in 1,350 patients&lt;/a&gt; Hecker M, Runkel F, Voelp A. Forsch Komplementärmed Klass Naturheilkd. 2002 Apr;9(2):77-84. It suffers from exactly the same problem - the control was the baseline, four weeks earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bronchitis is often self-limiting. If you wait four weeks, most patients will report their symptoms have improved, even if the drugs do nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fourth study had a defensible positive result! :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9cf0/928cbdba5ed4cca5e0fe3d296f92646a8a5e.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Efficacy and tolerability of a fluid extract combination of thyme herb and ivy leaves and matched placebo in adults suffering from acute bronchitis with productive cough: A prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial&lt;/a&gt; Kemmerich B, Eberhardt R, Stammer H:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Study objective: To assess the efficacy and tolerability of a fixed fluid extract combination of thyme and ivy leaves (thyme-ivy combination) and matched placebo in patients suffering from acute bronchitis with productive cough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Results: The mean reduction in coughing fits on days 7 to 9 relative to baseline was 68.7 % under thyme-ivy combination compared to 47.6 % under placebo (p &amp;lt; 0.0001). In the thyme-ivy combination group, a 50 % reduction in coughing fits from baseline was reached 2 days earlier compared to the placebo group. The symptoms of acute bronchitis (BSS) improved rapidly in both groups, but regression of symptoms was faster and the responder rates (p &amp;lt; 0.0001) compared to placebo were higher at Visit 2 (83.0 % vs 53.9 %) and Visit 3 (96.2 % vs 74.7 %) under the treatment of thyme-ivy combination. Treatment was well tolerated with no difference in the frequency or severity of AEs between thyme-ivy combination and placebo groups. Severe or serious AEs were not reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: Oral treatment of acute bronchitis with thyme-ivy combination for about 11 days was superior to placebo in terms of efficacy. The treatment was safe and well tolerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I perused the abstract, and I couldn't see anything obviously wrong with this approach. They include Thyme in the mix which may or may not be relevant. The journal in which it is published is fairly low impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I discovered &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2011/382789/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Systematic Review of Clinical Trials Assessing the Effectiveness of Ivy Leaf (Hedera Helix) for Acute Upper Respiratory Tract Infections&lt;/a&gt;, Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Volume 2011 (2011), Article ID 382789, doi:10.1155/2011/382789&#xA;Review Article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They reached a similar conclusion to me (with far more rigour!):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although many studies conclude that ivy extracts are effective to reduce symptoms of acute URTIs, their effectiveness is not established beyond reasonable doubt. The studies reviewed show serious methodological flaws and lack placebo controls. Therefore their findings must be interpreted with due caution. For a combination of ivy and thyme, effectiveness has been demonstrated in one RCT, however these findings need to be confirmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They do go on to suggest that the other popular cough medicines are also not evidence-based, and the alternative of prescribing antibiotics for uncomplicated Upper Respiratory Tract Infections (URTI) is undesirable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That raises an interesting ethical point: if you have a culture amongst patients that demands from doctors that medicines be prescribed, is it ethically acceptable for a busy doctor to prescribe a possibly ineffective treatment that is well-tolerated, rather than to prescribe antibiotics or to spend the time educating them on self-limiting ailments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Asthma&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We seem to have some real science here!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, a general review in 2000 of herbal medicines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://thorax.bmj.com/content/55/11/925.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Herbal medicines for asthma: a systematic review&lt;/a&gt;, A Huntley, E Ernst,Thorax 2000;55:925-929 doi:10.1136/thorax.55.11.925&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RESULTS: Seventeen randomised clinical trials were found, six of which concerned the use of traditional Chinese herbal medicine and eight described traditional Indian medicine, of which five investigated Tylophora indica. Three other randomised trials tested a Japanese Kampo medicine, marihuana, and &lt;strong&gt;dried ivy leaf extract&lt;/strong&gt;. Nine of the 17 trials reported a clinically relevant improvement in lung function and/or symptom scores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CONCLUSIONS: No definitive evidence for any of the herbal preparations emerged. Considering the popularity of herbal medicine with asthma patients, there is urgent need for stringently designed clinically relevant randomised clinical trials for herbal preparations in the treatment of asthma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then a review of ivy leaves in particular for children:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0944711304702196&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Efficacy of dry extract of ivy leaves in children with bronchial asthma – a review of randomized controlled trials&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;D. Hofmanna, M. Heckerb, A. Völpc. Phytomedicine Volume 10, Issues 2-3, 2003, Pages 213-220&#xA;doi:10.1078/094471103321659979.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trials included in this review indicate that ivy leaf extract preparations have effects with respect to an improvement of respiratory functions of children with chronic bronchial asthma, but more far-reaching conclusions can hardly be drawn because of a meagre database, including the fact that only one primary trial included a placebo control. Further research, particularly into the long-term efficacy of the herbal extract, is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you are coughing due to asthma, might be time to ask your doctor where he or she gets her information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T17:41:23.940" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6611" CreationDate="2011-11-23T00:50:56.603" Score="55" Body="&lt;h3&gt;It seems possible but unlikely&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pig ejaculation certainly does last a long time relative to human ejaculation, and pig ejaculation is measured in minutes, not seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Boar semen is collected to artificially inseminate sows. I found various guides on collecting boar semen which contain estimates for how long one should expect ejaculation to last.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is one estimate from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ansc.purdue.edu/swine/porkpage/repro/pubs/basic2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Department of Animal Sciences Purdue University&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Always allow the boar to complete his ejaculation (&lt;strong&gt;5-8 minutes&lt;/strong&gt;). If you let loose too soon, be prepared for a challenge. He will not want to leave the dummy. You will make this mistake only once or maybe twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swinegenetics.com/ai_catalog/ai_training.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Swine Genetics International&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The boar will generally go through two to three cycles during ejaculation, taking &lt;strong&gt;five to fifteen minutes&lt;/strong&gt; to complete the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/27_14242.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Queensland Government Primary Industries and Fisheries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the penis is 'locked' in the hand and the boar relaxes, a four-phase ejaculation follows in a few seconds, taking &lt;strong&gt;5 to 10 minutes&lt;/strong&gt; to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Large amounts of gel signal the end of ejaculation. When it is clear the boar's erection is fading, a second ejaculation can be stimulated with brief, firm, pulsating hand pressure applied to his penis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the largest estimate is 15 minutes, then add a possible second ejaculation of 15 minutes, that might be where the 30 minute number came from. Of course it depends on the pig! There does seem to be a large variation. More likely, the slightly more conservative estimates given here are the length of an &lt;em&gt;average&lt;/em&gt; pig orgasm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-08-26T17:12:18.743" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7039" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-23T12:02:37.437" Score="16" ViewCount="1216" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few weeks ago my wife told me to drink only black tea with no milk, because she saw somewhere that milk cancels out the benefits of the tea.  I did some googling and found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howtolivealongerlife.com/2009/08/why-black-tea-and-milk-dont-mix.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Black tea significantly improves the ability of the arteries to relax and expand. But when we added milk, we found the biological effect of tea was completely abolished... If you want to drink tea for its health effects, don't drink it with milk.&quot; -- Dr. Verena Stangl &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is based on the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2007/01/09/eurheartj.ehl442.abstract&quot;&gt;Addition of milk prevents vascular protective effects of tea&lt;/a&gt; Mario Lorenz, Nicoline Jochmann, Amélie von Krosigk, Peter Martus, Gert Baumann, Karl Stangl and Verena Stangl. Eur Heart J (2007) doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehl442 Jan 2007&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Black tea significantly improved FMD in humans compared with water, whereas addition of milk completely blunted the effects of tea. To support these findings, similar experiments were performed in isolated rat aortic rings and endothelial cells. Tea induced vasorelaxation in rat aortic rings and increased the activity of endothelial nitric oxide synthase by phosphorylation of the enzyme in endothelial cells. All effects were completely inhibited by the addition of milk to tea. Of the various kinds of milk proteins, the caseins accounted for these inhibiting effects of milk, probably by formation of complexes with tea catechins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do all of the benefits get cancelled, or are they only talking about benefits to the heart/cardiovascular system?  Are they going to far by saying that the effects were &quot;completely abolished&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4979" LastEditorUserId="7654" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T06:50:47.940" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T06:50:47.940" Title="Does Milk in Black tea &quot;completely abolish&quot; all positive effects of the tea?" Tags="|nutrition|milk|tea|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7040" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-23T12:13:21.933" Score="11" ViewCount="5712" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/mutual-dreaming.html&quot;&gt;Mutual dreaming&lt;/a&gt; or shared dreaming is the claim that two or more people can share the same dream environment. I have experienced a numerous lucid dreams but I've never met a known person in such dreams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is this phenomenon possible and if it is what would be the explanation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5344" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-22T23:56:54.237" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T11:38:34.373" Title="Is shared dreaming possible?" Tags="|sleep|dreaming|lucid-dreaming|esp|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7041" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7048" CreationDate="2011-11-23T13:23:02.273" Score="9" ViewCount="708" Body="&lt;p&gt;An unsourced claim on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-handed_sailing#Requirements&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; is that single-handed sailors only sleep one hour at a time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most single-handers use the technique of napping for 15 to 20 minutes at a time, using a timer to wake them up for periodic look-arounds;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/999/&quot;&gt;clearly possible&lt;/a&gt;, is it really that common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3855" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2011-11-24T15:30:43.257" Title="Do lone sailors alternate between short period of sleep and awareness?" Tags="|biology|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7042" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-23T13:31:42.453" Score="3" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4714/does-burning-your-food-increase-your-risk-of-getting-cancer&quot;&gt;Does burning your food increase your risk of getting cancer?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been told that I shouldn't eat charred meat (and at least sweep the charring off of a barbequeued sausage), because it can cause cancer.  I've had a look at what I can find on the subject, and it seems a little open to interpretation to me (one study I looked at could equally have been interpreted that a genetic predisposition to enjoying well-cooked meat increases the probability of cancer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any hard science on the subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5139" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T11:33:59.193" Title="Does eating charred meat cause cancer?" Tags="|nutrition|cancer|meat|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2011-11-23T13:34:33.180" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7044" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-23T19:09:43.657" Score="31" ViewCount="44851" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife firmly believes coffee grounds must not be disposed of down the sink drain because they will cause a blockage in the waste pipes. She has it from family and from accounts on the world-wide web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am suspicious that this is an urban myth. Ground coffee beans might be no different from any other ground food waste which is disposed of down the sink drain, such as food waste which is ground in the under-sink garbage disposal. As with any food waste, surely they should be rinsed down with water so as not to choke the pipe, but I suspect coffee grounds pose no unique problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that at my place of employment, we rinse 1–2 cups of coffee grounds down the sink drain at least once daily, have done so five days a week for the eight years I have been employed there, and have not had a blockage caused by coffee grounds during that time. But this is only an anecdote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Homeowners with septic tanks have to be careful what they can dispose of in the drains, and I have read opinions that coffee grounds can be incompatible with septic tanks, but never accompanied by supporting evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having performed a Google search for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=coffee%20grounds%20plug%20drain&quot;&gt;[ coffee grounds plug drain ]&lt;/a&gt; I see this is a widely held belief that generates much speculation and many anecdotes, and also that there are widely held counter-beliefs and counter-anecdotes e.g., coffee grounds help scour built-up fats out of the pipes or help eliminate odors (other than coffee odors, presumably). I conclude that factual answers to this question would be widely useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="349" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-11-24T09:18:02.290" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T19:33:10.947" Title="Will disposing of coffee grounds in the sink cause drain blockage?" Tags="|coffee|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7040" CreationDate="2011-11-24T01:04:08.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: This site shows no evidence for the paranormal, and indeed is careful not to explicitly claim it exists. What is described could be largely explained by known psychological theories and coincidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we examine the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/mutual-dreaming.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;World of Lucid Dreaming&lt;/a&gt; web-site which is the source of the claims, we find that its claims have no strength. It doesn't assert that paranormal dreaming exists, but merely one may find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First there is a definition, claiming that sharing a dream environment is paranormal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mutual dreaming (also known as shared or group dreaming) is the paranormal claim that two or more people can share the same dream environment. The concept was popularized in the 2010 movie, Inception, where lucid dreamers could link up via a device and roam around the subconscious of a single dreamer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the vaguaries of &quot;share the same dream environment&quot;. If both dreams were identical, I would concede this would be evidence for the paramormal. But if all this means is both dreams involve a house, it can be explained by more prosaic reasons. They elaborate further on this point themselves, later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They then introduce the concept (the main subject of the site) of &quot;lucid dreamer&quot; who can deliberately modify the outcome of their dreams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That's why we are poised to prove the existence of mutual dreaming - if such a phenomenon truly exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the qualifier here - they aren't asserting a claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then they define &quot;meshing dream&quot;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They happen when you share certain dream elements with someone else. For instance, you and your partner may both watch LOST on TV and then dream about being stranded on a deserted island. Understandably, your shared waking experience leads to similar dreams. Even Freudian dream analysis offers an explanation for this kind of coincidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So meshing dreams aren't paranormal. Note that Freudian dream analysis is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; required to explain this. A psychological phenomena known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia#Tetris_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tetris Effect&lt;/a&gt; (which has been popularised by researcher &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stickgold&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr Robert Stickgold&lt;/a&gt;) explains common elements of dreams held by people who have had common experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, they get to the paranormal claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The less likely experiences are called meeting dreams. This is the true meaning of mutual dreaming, where two or more people meet up and communicate in the dream world. As yet there is no firm evidence for the existence of such shared dreams, although it is arguably a difficult concept to prove.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that they themselves admit there is no firm evidence for this claim. As for a difficult concept to prove, it strikes me that the experiment would be as simple as having one person fall asleep, while observed in a lab, after being given a large random number or a random image, and have another person in another lab wake up and report what the message was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They delve into paranormal theories explanations for as yet non-existent phenomena. Without evidence, they have no merit. You don't need a scientific model to explain away non-existent unexpected data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next they describe two experiments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first, if it was to succeed, could be explained by the Tetris Effect and coincidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second, if it succeeded, and the dream-conversation conveyed truly novel information (as opposed to being primed by experience or by prior agreement), would be challenging new evidence for telepathy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are no reports here that the experiment has been successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact the site warns people to remain skeptical:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you're exploring a paranormal phenomenon such as group dreaming, remember to record as much data as you can and be objective. This means trying to rationalize events as much as you can before jumping to conclusions - and not getting carried away by things that could easily be due to coincidence. It's all too easy to trick ourselves into false beliefs that skew our entire outlook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, there is no claim here to address - just a description of some wishful thinking. On the other hand, it could be seen as good news for all the people who have studied their respective parts of all of the physics, psychology and biology knowledge that we have assembled over the past few hundred years of painstaking experiments. They can breathe a sigh of relief. No need to throw it all out and start again over this particular web-site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I acknowledge I don't provide a lot of references here: My key reference is the original web-site itself. The Tetris Effect is just background for people who are skeptical about the validity of Freudian dream analysis; I could find published papers, but it seems overkill. I am looking for claim I make that needs more evidentiary support, but I can't see any. Have I missed anything?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-11-24T01:04:08.317" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7041" CreationDate="2011-11-24T03:48:09.347" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT DUE TO QUESTION EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt;  Well, how &quot;common&quot; are solo sailors on marathon journeys?  I did a quick search, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category%3aSingle-handed_sailors&quot;&gt;wikipedia gave me a list of 49 names&lt;/a&gt;.  Assuming that this list is most likely incomplete, we still have a very small sample size.  Again, I think there are more Navy SEALS than there are solo sailors.  The SEALS display this as a common technique because they are forced to do it.  For the solo sailor, this would equally likely be the case since there are many things they  need to do while navigating a boat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a community of single handed sailors that discuss sleeping, and the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f108/singlehanding-sleeping-good-idea-10373.html&quot;&gt;not being in control&quot; part seems to be a frightening thing for them&lt;/a&gt;.  Another consideration is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sailnet.com/forums/learning-sail/68349-sleeping-sea.html&quot;&gt;there are no navigation light signals that indicate a sailor is getting sleep&lt;/a&gt;.  While the big ocean theory may hold for most, it would be a bad thing to get hit by another boat if you are sleeping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor to consider is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cruiserlog.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=13131&quot;&gt;as technology changes, the sailors may be able to get more sleep and only get woken up if a condition warrants their attention&lt;/a&gt;.  Many folks (myself included) don't consider things like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluemoment.com/selfsteering.html&quot;&gt;auto-pilots for boats&lt;/a&gt;, and a proximity warning system.  So while the sleep deprivation may have been a normal technique to deal with the requirement for attention, that requirement may be getting solved by technology, thus reducing the need to take this drastic sleep measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This 2002 trans-Pacific race features the plans some of the sailors were going to use, and they say things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The plan is sleeping during the morning and sailing all night with naps interspersed here and there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would say that it &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; absolutely common from the tales of those sailors, however is falling out of favour due to technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ORIGINAL ANSWER:&lt;/strong&gt;  Asking &quot;Is that possible?&quot; may not be the best way to phrase this question for the format of this site.  That said, there are well documented cases of Navy SEALS during &quot;Hell Week&quot; training (Or BUD/S as they call it), where they gather only a total of about 4 hours worth of sleep during 5.5 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&amp;amp;doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&amp;amp;AD=ADA430780&quot;&gt;Here is a document (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; where they talk about the sleep deprivation in a study on the effectiveness of caffeine as a stimulant and its effects on marksmanship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there, it's &quot;possible&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2011-11-24T15:30:43.257" LastActivityDate="2011-11-24T15:30:43.257" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7050" CreationDate="2011-11-24T08:10:09.517" Score="5" ViewCount="911" Body="&lt;p&gt;The UK newspaper the Daily Telegraph has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8897662/EU-bans-claim-that-water-can-prevent-dehydration.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; that the European Union won't permit claims that drinking water will prevent dehydration, saying that there's no evidence supporting the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there scientific evidence supporting the benefit of dihydrogen monoxide for this purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2011-11-24T09:27:43.583" LastActivityDate="2011-11-24T09:27:43.583" Title="Does drinking water prevent dehydration?" Tags="|nutrition|water|drinks|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7049" CreationDate="2011-11-24T08:42:50.653" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;My interpretation on this story is that it is simply a confusion of meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not drink any water for a long period, you will get dehydrated.[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/dehydration/article.htm&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;] Drinking water will help remedy that. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/dehydration/page4.htm&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are many causes of dehydration, including especially diarrhea, but also other causes such as vomiting, diabetes and burns. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/dehydration/article.htm&quot;&gt;Ref.&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is false to state that drinking water will &lt;strong&gt;prevent&lt;/strong&gt; ongoing dehydration due to these causes. In fact, it may be appropriate to take other &quot;clear fluids&quot; orally to address the dehydration, e.g. containing electrolytes or even IV drips may be required. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/dehydration/page4.htm&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My interpretation is that this claim - that water can &lt;strong&gt;prevent&lt;/strong&gt; dehydration - is what the EU declined to approve. Dehydration may occur even when normal levels of water have been consumed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-11-24T08:42:50.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7049" CreationDate="2011-11-24T08:59:03.117" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) which evaluates those claims has published a report on their decision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/2075.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific Opinion on the substantiation of health claims related to water and maintenance of normal physical and cognitive functions (ID 1102, 1209, 1294, 1331), maintenance of normal thermoregulation (ID 1208) and “basic requirement of all living things” (ID 1207) pursuant to Article 13(1) of Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude for the first claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The claimed effects are “hydration, e.g. body function, physical and&#xA;  cognitive performance”, “adds to  fluid  intake and supports&#xA;  hydration”, and “hydration”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A cause and effect relationship has been established between the&#xA;  dietary intake of water and  maintenance of normal physical and&#xA;  cognitive functions. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The following wording reflects the scientific&#xA;  evidence: “Water contributes to the maintenance  of normal physical&#xA;  and cognitive functions”.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that you can advertise the mentioned claim on water bottles you're selling. In the appendix they list for claim 1331 the wording &quot;water keeps you hydrated&quot;, which is pretty much what was mentioned in the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the third claim, that water is a basic requirement for all living things, they concluded&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The claimed effect is general and non-specific, and does not refer to&#xA;  any specific health claim  as required by Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if that means you cannot advertise that or that it isn't a medical claim and it doesn't fall under the regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There probably is more history to the whole thing, I could imagine that there were some disputes about the exact terminology. The document is published in April 2011, so it was available when the article in your question was published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-11-24T09:06:34.417" LastActivityDate="2011-11-24T09:06:34.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7053" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7058" CreationDate="2011-11-24T11:51:11.507" Score="16" ViewCount="1385" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://drugabuse.gov/ResearchReports/Marijuana/marijuana4.html#addictive&quot;&gt;drugabuse.gov&lt;/a&gt; website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Long-term marijuana use can lead to addiction; that is, people have&#xA;  difficulty controlling their drug use and cannot stop even though it&#xA;  interferes with many aspects of their lives. It is estimated that 9&#xA;  percent of people who use marijuana will become dependent on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything firm to support this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:42:48.920" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:42:48.920" Title="Can Marijuana use result in addiction?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|marijuana|addiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7054" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-24T16:05:10.237" Score="20" ViewCount="11734" Body="&lt;p&gt;In these videos:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug6pVj0Lq9w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug6pVj0Lq9w&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzj95jHuPiw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzj95jHuPiw&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqphVlp2VJI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqphVlp2VJI&lt;/a&gt; (shows what I think is the brain)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soy sauce is poured onto a squid and its tentacles start waving around. Lots of the comments on YouTube as well as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/iycew/til_that_soy_sauce_activates_the_neurons_of_a/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reddit&lt;/a&gt; state that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The squid is already dead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reason the tentacles move is because of salt, i.e. similar to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YZJt_Bw3eo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;frogs legs&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2zDvz5Y6p8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sannakji&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the mantle has been removed, but if you look at squid anatomy it is possible the brain is still intact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the squid dead or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5194" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-09-03T07:07:00.297" LastActivityDate="2017-09-03T07:07:00.297" Title="Is the &quot;dancing squid&quot; odori-don dead?" Tags="|zoology|pain|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7055" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7056" CreationDate="2011-11-24T16:43:53.893" Score="24" ViewCount="6649" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in a supermarket yesterday and saw the following on a toothbrush:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D3l21l.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&amp;quot;Got a cold? Change your toothbrush.&amp;quot; sticker on toothbrush package&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found the advice repeated on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colgate.co.uk/app/Colgate/UK/OralCare/OralHealthCenter/OralHygieneBasics/HowtoBrush.cvsp?Article=HowToBrush#anchor4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Colgate website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is also very important to change toothbrushes after you've had a cold, since the bristles can collect germs that can lead to reinfection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can you be reinfected by your own toothbrush if you've had a cold?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="666" LastEditDate="2012-01-18T07:03:27.513" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T07:03:27.513" Title="Can your toothbrush reinfect you if you have a cold?" Tags="|common-cold|infection|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7055" CreationDate="2011-11-24T17:26:21.283" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on what you were sick with, and how long the toothbrush was not used since you last had the sickness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You CAN get reinfected with a bacterial infection (e.g. strep throat) from a toothbrush&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000639.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000639.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most people with strep are contagious until they have been on antibiotics 24 - 48 hours. They should stay home from school, daycare, or work until they have been on antibiotics for at least a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Get a new toothbrush after you are no longer contagious, but before finishing the antibiotics.&lt;/strong&gt; Otherwise the bacteria can live in the toothbrush and re-infect you when the antibiotics are done. Also, keep your family's toothbrushes and utensils separate, unless they have been washed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Viruses can also be retained on toothbrushes, with research showing minutes to 24 hours to 48 hours depending on the virus. Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7931767&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7931767&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;The effectiveness of a u-v toothbrush sanitizing device in reducing the number of bacteria, yeasts and viruses on toothbrushes.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Glass RT, Jensen HG.- Department of Oral Pathology, University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Seventy-two sterile toothbrushes were exposed to Herpes Simplex Virus, Type I and seventy-two sterile toothbrushes were exposed to Parainfluenza Virus, Type III. The Pollenex DS60 Daily Dental Sanitizer consistently killed both viruses on all of the toothbrushes treated. &lt;strong&gt;Both viruses were consistently retained on non-treated toothbrushes for at least 24 hours.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in case of common cold virus, the reinfection risk is presumably reduced by the fact that you have already developed immunity to the strain you had.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-11-24T17:33:59.563" LastActivityDate="2011-11-24T17:33:59.563" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7053" CreationDate="2011-11-24T20:35:51.290" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are unsurprisingly plenty of studies in this area. The article you quote is one. However note it says &quot;Long-term marijuana use can lead to addiction&quot; not &quot;Long-term marijuana use leads to addiction&quot;. The results very from person to person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uhs.wisc.edu/health-topics/alcohol-and-drugs/marijuana-addiction-and-other-issues.shtml&quot;&gt;Here is another article:&lt;/a&gt; from the University of Wisconsin-Madison:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The majority of marijuana users do not develop addiction: they do not experience loss of control; they use when they choose to, in the amounts they choose to, getting the results—in general—that they intend to get. [...] But just because addiction doesn’t occur in all users, or even most users, doesn’t mean that addiction doesn’t happen to any user. [...]After an initial period of stable substance use, the user will begin to lose control. Others will comment that there is a change in the user—and the user will at first deny or rebut such concerns. Use will continue despite the problems it has caused. Larger and larger amounts of the substance are used, consuming money that could go to other purposes, and the person may spend more and more of the day or the week either using, thinking about using, or arranging to get more supplies of the drug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Mental_Health_Letter/2010/April/medical-marijuana-and-the-mind&quot;&gt;Harvard Mental Health Letter&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Observational studies suggest that one in nine people who smokes marijuana regularly becomes dependent on it. Research both in animals and in people provides evidence that marijuana is an addictive substance, especially when used for prolonged periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-teenage-mind/201012/is-marijuana-addictive&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; from Psychology Today has a quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Science of Marijuana is written by Leslie L. Iverson, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Cambridge in England. In the book, he reviews decades of international research on marijuana, both laboratory research and survey research. Based on his review of the scientific literature, between 10 to 30% of regular users will develop dependency. Only about 9% will have a serious addiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://brown.edu/Student_Services/Health_Services/Health_Education/alcohol,_tobacco,_&amp;amp;_other_drugs/marijuana.php&quot;&gt;Here is another&lt;/a&gt; from Brown University:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No one would argue that marijuana is as addictive as alcohol or cocaine. However, it's wrong to say that it is not at all addictive. More and more studies are finding that marijuana has addictive properties. Both animal and human studies show physical and psychological withdrawal symptoms from marijuana, including irritability, restlessness, insomnia, nausea and intense dreams. Tolerance to marijuana also builds up rapidly. Heavy users need 8 times higher doses to get the same effects as infrequent users. For a small percentage of people who use it, marijuana can be highly addictive. It is estimated that 10% to 14% of users will become heavily dependent. In 2006 marijuana was responsible for 16% of all admissions to treatment facilities in the U.S. Because the consequences of marijuana use can be subtle and insidious, it is more difficult to recognize signs of addiction. Cultural and societal beliefs that marijuana cannot be addictive make it less likely for people to seek help or to get support for quitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consensus is that many people can regularly use Marijuana without becoming addicted. However there appear to be some people who can become psychologically and physically dependent on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-11-24T20:42:47.377" LastActivityDate="2011-11-24T20:42:47.377" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7060" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-25T02:51:49.563" Score="15" ViewCount="9830" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://answering-islam.org/Silas/mo-death.htm&quot;&gt;answering-islam&lt;/a&gt; (an anti-Islam site), it is claimed the prophet of Islam, Muhammad died because of poison given to him 3 years ago by a Jewish woman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Immediately following the conquest of Khaibar, a Jewish woman prepared&#xA;  a dinner for Muhammad and some of his men.  Unknown to the Muslims was&#xA;  that she had put a poison into the lamb (some say goat) that was&#xA;  served at dinner.  Muhammad ate some of the poisoned lamb and died as&#xA;  a result three years later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible someone can die because of poison given to them 3 year or even 1 year before his death?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="4813" LastEditDate="2023-03-29T01:59:42.553" LastActivityDate="2023-03-29T01:59:42.553" Title="Can someone die of poison given to him years before?" Tags="|mortality|toxicology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7061" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7078" CreationDate="2011-11-25T03:05:35.147" Score="31" ViewCount="17375" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a belief among a lot of people that you should start your car and leave it on for 5 minutes before moving it in the morning. Is this practice good for the car in any significant way, or it is just a myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="3068" LastEditDate="2011-11-25T08:59:39.187" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T00:03:14.020" Title="Is running the engine for five minutes before driving beneficial for the car?" Tags="|road-vehicles|vehicle|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7035" CreationDate="2011-11-25T03:24:06.137" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'm torn whether this addresses the question. That's because I'm not sure if the question, as it stands, is answerable.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been a very recent set of experiments published exploring this area:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpm.umd.edu/Gray,%20Knobe,%20Sheskin,%20Bloom%20&amp;amp;%20Barrett.%20%28in%20press%29.%20Objectification.pdf&quot;&gt;More Than a Body: Mind Perception and the Nature of Objectification&lt;/a&gt;. Kurt Gray, Joshua Knobe, Mark Sheskin, Paul Bloom, Lisa Feldman Barrett. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Nov 2011. DOI: 10.1037/a0025883.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The experiments looked a number of aspects of how people (both men and women) perceived others differently based on their state of dress, sexualised pose, attractiveness, or emphasis on their bodies, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a complex paper, and difficult to summarise all the experiments here. (Actually, I take that back: their own abstract does a reasonable job, which I have cribbed from.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They concluded people (men and women) &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; perceive the minds of others differently based on these factors. However, they found that it didn't fall into a simple definition of &quot;objectifying&quot; (in their words &quot;viewing someone as a body induces de-mentalization, stripping away their psychological traits&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found that people changed their perceptions to reduce inferences of &quot;agency (self-control and action)&quot;, but increase inferences of &quot;experience (emotion and sensation)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The effect of a body focus on mind&#xA;  perception also influenced moral intuitions, with those represented as a body seen to be less morally&#xA;  responsible (i.e., lesser moral agents) but more sensitive to harm (i.e., greater moral patients; [...] These effects suggest that a body focus does not cause objectification per se but, instead, leads to a redistribution of perceived mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It suggests that men (nor women) do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;, as the question's quotes suggests, treat &quot;immodestly dressed&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; women (or men) as merely &quot;as a collection of parts&quot;, while supporting the view that men (and women) may treat immodestly dressed women (and men) differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Limitations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't completely address the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't see anything in the paper that suggested women and men reacted differently (except where there was symmetrical differences between the perceptions of photos of the same and opposite genders), but I also couldn't see that they were looking for such a pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there's no evidence here of being &quot;wired&quot; differently, but I don't see how that could be proven in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subjects were not asked to overcome these feelings, so it is impossible to say whether it would be &quot;easy&quot; for them to compensate for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; I am not a big fan of the term &quot;immodestly dressed&quot;, because people's definitions of &quot;modestly dressed&quot; vary so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T03:24:06.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7063" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-25T03:32:27.403" Score="1" ViewCount="2398" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2937/does-drinking-milk-and-orange-juice-together-cause-digestion-problems&quot;&gt;Does drinking milk and orange juice together cause digestion problems?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone told me not to drinking milk tea after drinking lemon tea, or the reverse. He told me the milk and the lemon juice will conglomerate together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I heard one of my friend was sick several month ago and she thought it was probably the milk tea and the lemon juice she drinked. And last on she visited a doctor, and the doctor told her that was probably the reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2242" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-06-18T07:14:20.717" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T07:14:20.717" Title="Does drinking milk tea after drinking lemon tea make you sick?" Tags="|nutrition|milk|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2011-11-25T07:18:35.507" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7060" CreationDate="2011-11-25T06:39:24.307" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, a person can die because of poison given them several years earlier. In cases I am aware of, this is due to the poison remaining in, and reacting with, the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko#Deaths_from_ingesting_radioactive_materials&quot;&gt;death from ingesting a single dose of a radioactive material&lt;/a&gt; can take many years. I am not aware of any evidence that the danger of ingesting a radioactive material, such as natural oxides of uranium, was known at the time of Muhammad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lead poisoning would have been understood, but lead would have had to remain in the person to cause a delayed death. To illustrate, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/3436165&quot;&gt;a woman who unwittingly ate a lead pellet which lodged in her colon&lt;/a&gt; declined in health over a period of ten years, but when the pellet was dislodged and expelled in a bout of diarrhea, the decline was halted, and she did not die of lead poisoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, slow poisoning involves not the administration of a single dose but the regular administration of small doses which have a cumulative effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="349" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T06:39:24.307" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7054" CreationDate="2011-11-25T08:19:42.320" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to source these claims scientifically, but let me try anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the following picture, the brain is below the tentacles and the eyes:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FmB1x.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;A Squid&quot; /&gt;&#xA;(Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cephalop.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cephalop.jpg&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all of the mentioned movies that part is gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The brain is gone in all of the videos, so the squid is definitely dead. So why does it move its legs? Just recently, Dan Lewis from &amp;quot;Know I Know&amp;quot; described why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] The squid’s cells still contain some unused adenosine triphosphate (or ATP), which powers muscular contraction and expansion and, therefore, movement. But ATP can’t simply act on its own accord — it needs something to make it go. Typically, that’s provided by the central nervous system, which, through electrical impulses, causes the ATP to do its thing. With no brain involved, the ATP just sits dormant, and, over time, dissipates, as the now-dying cell fails to create new ATP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the soy sauce makes the typical atypical. Soy sauce contains sodium and potassium. The sodium and potassium ions together work as a trigger of sorts, causing the ATP to contract and expand the muscles.  The result: a dead, dancing squid headlining (and, perhaps, ruining) your meal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dlewis.net/nik-archives/dead-squid-dancing/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://dlewis.net/nik-archives/dead-squid-dancing/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5335" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T12:50:02.233" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7069" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7071" CreationDate="2011-11-25T09:25:59.237" Score="15" ViewCount="8803" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some websites claim that you can know which country printed an euro banknote, by looking at the serial number. Is that technique fool-proof ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3855" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2015-11-02T14:02:37.450" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T22:01:45.870" Title="Is it possible to identify where Euro banknotes are from?" Tags="|economics|currency|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7069" CreationDate="2011-11-25T09:54:24.387" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can determine which &lt;strong&gt;country it was printed for&lt;/strong&gt;, but not necessarily which &lt;strong&gt;country it was printed in&lt;/strong&gt;.  By examining one of its more important design elements, you can identify the &quot;central bank that commissioned the printing of a banknote (but not necessarily the country of printing)&quot; according to this web site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; &lt;strong&gt;ECB: Banknotes - Design elements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecb.int/euro/banknotes/html/index.en.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ecb.int/euro/banknotes/html/index.en.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp; (&lt;em&gt;see the section entitled &quot;Country codes&quot; in the last quarter of the page&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eWzTc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the above pictured partial sample banknote, the letter code &quot;&lt;strong&gt;S&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; means that &lt;strong&gt;Banca d'Italia&lt;/strong&gt; (Italy's central bank) commissioned the printing; for &lt;strong&gt;Greece&lt;/strong&gt;, there would be a letter &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Y&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; instead.  I've included the complete list of country codes (&lt;em&gt;which shouldn't be confused with the ISO's list of official international country codes&lt;/em&gt;), which is also included on that web page, here for your convenience:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Z: Belgium&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  X: Germany&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  D: Estonia&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  T: Ireland&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Y: Greece&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  V: Spain&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  U: France&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  S: Italy&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  G: Cyprus&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ?: Luxembourg (1)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  F: Malta&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  P: Netherlands&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  N: Austria&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  M: Portugal&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  H: Slovenia&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  E: Slovakia&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  L: Finland&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) &lt;em&gt;Uncirculated euro banknotes issued by the Banque centrale du Luxembourg bear the code of the central banks of the countries where the banknotes for Luxembourg are produced.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3068" LastEditorUserId="3068" LastEditDate="2011-11-25T10:29:06.607" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T10:29:06.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7069" CreationDate="2011-11-25T10:22:25.183" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;This really depends what you mean by where Euro banknotes are from. It can either mean by which country they are issued (which would be most logical) or where they were physically printed (note, that physically printing is not done by all Eurozone countries, and some non-Euro countries do the printing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In either case you can find information in the numbers printed on banknotes, but only in the first case it's the serial number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;euro notes do not have a national side indicating &lt;strong&gt;which country&#xA;  issued them (which is not necessarily where they were printed)&lt;/strong&gt;. This&#xA;  information is instead encoded within the first character of each&#xA;  note's serial number. (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_banknotes#Serial_number&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently in use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Z&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   Belgium &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Y&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   Greece  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   Germany&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;V&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   Spain   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;U&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   France &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;T&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   Ireland &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;S&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   Italy &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   Netherlands &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;N&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   Austria &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;M&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   Portugal &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;L&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   Finland &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;H&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   Slovenia &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;G&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   Cyprus &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;F&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   Malta &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;E&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   Slovakia &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;D&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash;   Estonia &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, where the banknotes have been physically printed can be determined by another number:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On each of the seven denominations of the banknote, there is &lt;strong&gt;a small&#xA;  six-character printing code which uniquely identifies the printing&#xA;  information of each banknote&lt;/strong&gt;. These printing codes have an initial&#xA;  letter, followed by three digits, followed by a single letter, and&#xA;  ending in a digit, for example, &quot;G013B6&quot;. The initial letter&#xA;  identifies the printing facility, as described below. (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_banknotes#Printing_works&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;D&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; Setec Oy, Vantaa, Finland&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;E&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; F. C. Oberthur, Chantepie, France &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;F&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; Österreichische Banknoten und Sicherheitsdruck, Vienna, Austria   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;G&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; Koninklijke Joh. Enschedé,    Haarlem,    Netherlands &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;H&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; De La Rue,    Gateshead,  United Kingdom  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;J&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; Bank of Italy,    Rome,   Italy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;K&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; Central Bank of Ireland,  Dublin, Ireland&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;L&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; Banque de France, Chamalières,    France&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;M&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre,  Madrid, Spain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;N&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; Bank of Greece,   Athens, Greece&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; Giesecke &amp;amp; Devrient,  Munich &amp;amp; Leipzig,   Germany &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;R&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; Bundesdruckerei,  Berlin, Germany &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;T&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; National Bank of Belgium, Brussels,   Belgium &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;U&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; Valora—Banco de Portugal, Carregado,  Portugal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Printing code is bit harder to see than the serial number:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MNF1h.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;5euro printing code&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of the banknotes &lt;strong&gt;issued&lt;/strong&gt; by Greece, they may have been physically printed in 5 different locations:&#xA;Austria, Netherlands, Germany (both locations) and the Greece itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-11-25T11:41:43.713" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T11:41:43.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7072" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7077" CreationDate="2011-11-25T11:09:03.570" Score="4" ViewCount="417" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Leo Laporte (on the podcast &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grc.com/sn/sn-303.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Security Now&lt;/a&gt;), Mac users are now targeted by malware because most of the larger base of Windows users use security software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the exact quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LEO:  No.  And the numbers game is that, as Windows users get more&#xA;  sophisticated, and 80 percent of Windows users now run security&#xA;  software, that 20 percent remaining is roughly equal to the&#xA;  penetration of the Mac in the marketplace.  So now the Mac is at&#xA;  parity in terms of insecured users, unsecured users, so of course it's&#xA;  going to attack.  I mean, it's actually, you could just watch that&#xA;  number as it went up to 70 percent, which is now roughly equal to 20&#xA;  percent unsecured Windows users.  Okay, I guess it's worth the effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3855" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-11-25T13:59:39.247" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T14:56:08.197" Title="Is the number of Windows users without security software now equivalent to the total number of Apple users?" Tags="|computers|security|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7060" CreationDate="2011-11-25T11:09:21.573" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes: Asbestos Poisoning&lt;/strong&gt;. A single fibre can get lodged in your lungs, and not cause problems until years later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asbestos poisoning has a &lt;strong&gt;median latency of 44.6 years&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asbestosnews.com/asbestos/poisoning/&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T11:09:21.573" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7074" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-25T14:07:26.680" Score="10" ViewCount="741" Body="&lt;p&gt;The british MP John Redwood recently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2025810/Dump-Greek-euro-notes-MP-warns-tourists-amid-fears-leave-eurozone.html#ixzz1ej3lFpIV&quot;&gt;claimed in the Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s unlikely, but what you could have is a situation whereby Greece&#xA;  had to leave the eurozone and their euros were compulsorily converted&#xA;  to drachmas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;‘If they decided even Greek-issued euros held overseas&#xA;  had the same value, it could mean that the euros carried home by UK&#xA;  holidaymakers were suddenly worth a lot less than when they acquired&#xA;  them.’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having serious trouble that this would even be legally possible, my understanding was that all Euro notes are equivalent, no matter which country issued them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be even possible under the current EU laws and regulation to forcibly convert Euro notes isssued by Greece to drachmas? Are any plans to do something like that known?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T15:29:44.103" Title="Could greek euro notes become forcibly converted to drachmas?" Tags="|politics|greece|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7075" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7080" CreationDate="2011-11-25T14:13:53.263" Score="20" ViewCount="3031" Body="&lt;p&gt;The website Thinkgeek sells &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/games/eb26/?srp=4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;High precision dice&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, citing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR2fxoNHIuU#t=78s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video as the explanation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No, you're not being superstitious when you stand at the counter at your Friendly Local Gaming Store test-rolling all the d20s. There ARE in fact &quot;unlucky&quot; dice that always roll poorly. When you have a spare 20 minutes, check out the video on YouTube of Lou Zocchi of GameScience explaining why these High Precision Gaming Dice are the most accurate ones you'll find anywhere. It's fascinating stuff and you'll never see dice the same way again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the claims made by this man and Thinkgeek, or is it just a marketing gimmick?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Related question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5982/is-a-coin-toss-fair&quot;&gt;Is a coin toss fair?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3855" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T02:45:14.367" Title="How accurate are the d20 dice used in role playing games?" Tags="|games|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7074" CreationDate="2011-11-25T14:18:54.197" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Greece could not print new drachma discretely, so they may use at first a different technique, like putting a stamp on banknotes, identifying them as &quot;Greek&quot; and no longer valid in the rest of the Eurozone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A stamp was used to differentiate banknotes when &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Hungarian_krone#After_WWI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Austro-Hungarian krone broke into individual currencies&lt;/a&gt;. Although at that time, government were worried about money flooding in the country, whereas Greece is worried that money will run to Germany/France.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Converting banknotes issued by Greece as &quot;Greek&quot; would be a weird solution, and likely to get a lot of Europeans mad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'As for people such as shopkeepers rejecting Greek euro notes&#xA;  elsewhere in Europe, there seems little point in doing this for as&#xA;  long as the banks across the eurozone are obliged to take them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'I suspect that the rules would be made up as we went along.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Andrew Smith, chief economist at accountant KPMG (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/article-2008065/Best-try-swap-Greek-euros-German-notes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3855" LastEditorUserId="3855" LastEditDate="2011-11-28T14:22:31.483" LastActivityDate="2011-11-28T14:22:31.483" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7072" CreationDate="2011-11-25T14:40:34.557" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming percentage of &quot;unsecured&quot; users from the quote are correct, Leo Laporte is basically saying that 50% of OS X users = 20% of Windows users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://gcn.com/Articles/2011/08/10/ECG-Windows-7-Top-Selling-OS-by-End-of-2011.aspx&quot;&gt;Gartner's data&lt;/a&gt;, current global market share &lt;strong&gt;Windows is 94%&lt;/strong&gt;, while that of &lt;strong&gt;OS X is 4.5%&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking Leo Laporte's &quot;unsecured&quot; percentages, &quot;unsecured&quot; OS X users are 2.25% of total, while &quot;unsecured&quot; Windows users are 19% of total. Claim that these numbers are equal is beyond ridiculous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is based on market share, which are new sales, while one would be more interested in installed user base. In which case you'd have to take two things in account: firstly OS X market share used to be lower, thus installed base is likely to be also lower than current market share. Secondly there is significant piracy in case of Windows, non-existent in case of OS X, as later only runs on Apple computers. Thus real life difference would probably be even bigger. However, there aren't ways to measure installed base which would be reliable enough.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-11-25T14:56:08.197" LastActivityDate="2011-11-25T14:56:08.197" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7061" CreationDate="2011-11-25T15:19:36.693" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once upon a time on old car engines this was required, and piston engined aircraft warm up because they stress their engines to the maximum as the first thing they do. But this is no longer necessary for modern cars. The recommended warmup time vary between 15 seconds and three minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oee.nrcan.gc.ca/transportation/idling/warm-up.cfm?attr=8&quot;&gt;Canadian Department of Natural Resources&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrary to popular belief, excessive idling is not an effective way to warm up your vehicle, even in cold weather. The best way to warm it up is to drive it. In fact, with today's computer-controlled engines, even on cold winter days, usually no more than two to three minutes of idling is enough warm-up time needed for the average vehicle before starting to drive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/car-life/auto-therapy/should-you-warm-up-your-car-first-or-start-it-and-go/article1939752/&quot;&gt;The Globe and Mail&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;get into your car, start the engine, and while putting on your seat belt, getting comfortable, checking your mirrors and turning on your radio, 30-45 seconds have passed, so put it in gear and off you go&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Toyota Canada, [...] representative said it’s not necessary to warm your vehicle, nor will doing so cause any harm. The rep adds that there are pros and cons: the motor and oil will warm, and the coolant will flow – but idling for long is harder on the environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2007/09/27/2044311.htm&quot;&gt;Australian Broadcasting Corp&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Canadian Office of Energy Efficiency agrees that the best way to warm up your engine is to drive it. Even if the outside temperature is -20°C, they recommend that you idle the engine for only 15-30 seconds before you pull out onto the road. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-11-28T20:46:21.850" LastActivityDate="2011-11-28T20:46:21.850" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2785" CreationDate="2011-11-25T15:40:19.530" Score="22" Body="&lt;h2&gt;USB 1.x introduction&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Market share&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OS market shares of that time (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pctimeline.info/windows/win1997.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Windows 95/98 69.4%&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Windows NT Workstation 9.2%, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Windows 3.x (with DOS) 7.7%, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mac OS 4.6%&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Linux 2.4%, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DOS (IBM, Digital Research, Microsoft) 2.3%,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unix 1.0%, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OS/2 Warp 0.8%, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;other 2.7% &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Editions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Windows 95 OSR2 released on &lt;strong&gt;27 August 1997&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;included USB support&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_98#USB&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Windows 98&lt;/a&gt; introduced further improvements in USB handling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus Windows users were &lt;strong&gt;15 times more&lt;/strong&gt; than Mac users, and have had USB support &lt;strong&gt;one year before&lt;/strong&gt; it was introduced in Apple products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USB creators&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;USB 1.1 was joint effort of Compaq, Intel, Microsoft and NEC. Note, that Apple is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; mentioned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qlHrs.png&quot; alt=&quot;USB 1.1 specification cover page&quot;&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://esd.cs.ucr.edu/webres/usb11.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;USB 1.1 specification cover page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;USB 2.0&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main driving factor behind introduction of USB 2.0 &lt;a href=&quot;http://firewireexpert.blogspot.com/2009/05/dollar-deal-that-almost-killed-firewire.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;was Apple planning to over-charge for Firewire licenses&lt;/a&gt;. So yes, in that way Apple &quot;contributed&quot; to its proliferation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;USB 3.0&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/21/first-usb-3-0-product-gets-certified-floodgates-get-closer-to-b/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;First USB 3.0 product was introduced in mid-2009&lt;/a&gt;, first laptops with USB 3.0 appeared in Q1 2010, and currently pretty much standard in all mainstream PCs. &lt;s&gt;As of now (Q1 2012) it's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anandtech.com/show/5113/apple-15inch-macbook-pro-late-2011-review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;not yet introduced in Apple products&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/s&gt; History repeats itself. This time it's not USB 2.0 vs Firewire, but USB 3.0 vs Thunderbolt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Apple has introduced USB 3.0 in some of it products in late 2012 while introducing Retina MacBooks. This happened when USB 3.0 was already on the market for more than 3 years, while Thunderbolt failed to gain any significant traction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T15:58:11.440" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T15:58:11.440" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7075" CreationDate="2011-11-25T16:19:58.753" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;For all the claims of Lou Zocchi, there's only one way to be sure - science! i.e. Do the experiment and check if his dice are truly more random than his competitors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you do the experiment? &lt;a href=&quot;http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2009/02/testing-balanced-die.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Delta's D&amp;amp;D HotSpot&lt;/a&gt; is a blog written by a math teacher, and he wrote an &lt;a href=&quot;http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2009/02/testing-balanced-die.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; about how to apply Pearson's chi-squared hypothesis testing to this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He then &lt;a href=&quot;http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2009/02/follow-up-testing-balanced-dice.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;followed it up with an informal experiment&lt;/a&gt;, where he applied the testing method to a number of d20 (20 sided = icosahedral) dice he owned. Coincidentally he owned an old d20 die which he believes is one of Lou Zocchi's. Sure enough, it gave the lowest figure of error, informally supporting Zocchi's claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now at the end, I tested what I presumed would be the weakest die in my collection: an older translucent red d20, with sharp edges, that I had to color in myself with a crayon. The other dice in this set still show the tab from where it was snapped off the molding sprue (although I can't see it on the d20 itself; these dice are probably from Gamescience). Well, unexpectedly to me, this d20 had the lowest error of the bunch: SSE = 80, &lt;strike&gt;significantly&lt;/strike&gt; lower than anything else I had in the house, &lt;strike&gt;and clearly the fairest-rolling die of anything I tested (P-value = 0.66).&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my theory now would be that a die that has sharp edges is more likely to roll fairly than one that has rounded edges, even though I've been avoiding this &amp;quot;sharp-edged&amp;quot; set for years now because to my eye it looked less professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Strike-outs added by me&lt;/strong&gt;, where the author overstepped what could be safely concluded. See below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Limitations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As explained in the comments by @Konrad Rudolph, it is not a valid conclusion from these results to rank the dice by their SSE. The author's calculation of a very large p-value is also in keeping with this statement not being reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All we can conclude is that none of the dice behaved inconsistently with being completely balanced. That's a lot of double-negatives: All the dice appeared fine for the limited results available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The author didn't test for long enough to conclude any of the dice were actually balanced. In a follow up, &lt;a href=&quot;http://deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2011/10/testing-balanced-dice-power.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;he calculates a much longer test&lt;/a&gt; would be required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He didn't test a wide range of brands to confirm all of Zocchi's competitors suffer the same problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He didn't test a large sample of dice within the brands to confirm that the quality of the dice were consistent within the batch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He didn't test each dice over a range of ages to confirm that different dice don't change in quality over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It wasn't peer-reviewed and I haven't seen it reproduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a small but significant risk of Type I errors (i.e. true dice being classified as untrue.) which is one of the reasons to want to see it reproduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the result is better than anecdotal-with-confirmation-bias, but still very limited in its power. I'd like to see someone find a more comprehensive answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-11-27T12:35:55.650" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7081" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-25T17:58:26.830" Score="11" ViewCount="2772" Body="&lt;p&gt;The New Straits Times &lt;a href=&quot;http://findarticles.com/p/news-articles/new-straits-times/mi_8016/is_20100131/12-steps-damage-brain/ai_n48859421/&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Working unduly hard or studying while sick may lead to a decrease in effectiveness of the brain as well as damaging it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://phealth-care.blogspot.com/2010/07/top-ten-brain-damaging-habits.html&quot;&gt;P-Healthcare blog&lt;/a&gt; reports one of the &quot;Top ten brain-damaging habits&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you know that working hard or studying while sick leads to a decrease of brain effctiveness (sic) and also brings brain damage? Well, now you know  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weeklyshack.com/habits.html&quot;&gt;WeeklyShack&lt;/a&gt; web-site reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Working your brain during illness: Working hard or studying while sick may lead to a decrease in&#xA;  sharpness of the brain as well as damage the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that studying while sick causing any form of brain-damage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3704" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T14:03:03.680" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T22:33:26.657" Title="Is studying while sick bad for your brain?" Tags="|environmental-health|learning|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7082" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7086" CreationDate="2011-11-25T18:14:45.077" Score="57" ViewCount="57054" Body="&lt;p&gt;My mother claimed the other day that it is a &quot;state law&quot; that any restaurant must serve customers tap water upon request, therefore not requiring customers to buy a (flavored) drink or (overpriced) bottled water. I asked her how she knows that, she said her dad told her, and it must be true because her dad would never lie to her and &quot;if they could get away with making you buy a drink they would, but they can't, because it is illegal.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is (by far) not the first time I heard someone make this claim, however it is the first time I heard it being claimed a (US) state law. I live in a different US state than my mom, and I heard it in the state I live in as well as the state my mom lives in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So where is the proof? What locations exactly can legally refuse a customer a glass of tap water? What specific laws are on the books in the US, Europe, Australia, etc. about legally requiring restaurants to serve tap water to customers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="25415" LastEditDate="2017-07-19T07:00:32.230" LastActivityDate="2021-03-15T11:54:02.267" Title="Do laws exist that say restaurants must serve customers who request tap water?" Tags="|water|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7083" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11251" CreationDate="2011-11-26T01:31:58.040" Score="24" ViewCount="3503" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read now several times as a &quot;secret tip&quot; that learning directly before going to sleep significantly increases the effectiveness of learning, probably the long-term memory when, for example, learning the vocabulary of a new language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.costadevalencia.com/en/13-valencia-spain-spanish/13-valencia-spain-spanish-1.asp?s=26&quot;&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Costa de Valencia&lt;/em&gt; Spanish language web site states:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before going to sleep, you should repeat the new material again for 10-15 minutes, that brings success while sleeping. At night your subconsciousness especially deals with the final experience of the day. Thus the new knowledge will be strengthened without your influence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The psychological explanation sounds a bit like amateur Freudian psychology (&quot;subconsciousness&quot;) to me, but I don't find it convincing or consider it to be common knowledge (at least I'm not aware of a psychological law/study strengthening this method).  Also, one could understand the statement as:  It only works when you learned the words already once during the day and then repeat them again briefly before going to sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it the repetition in conjunction with sleeping, or generally learning briefly before going to sleep, that causes this increased effectiveness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What evidence exists proving the effect of this learning method?  And what is the exact rule/framework to use this method/law correctly, repetition, and duration (e.g., min/max. 10-15 min.)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4477" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T14:02:28.793" LastActivityDate="2019-03-19T17:29:59.657" Title="Does learning immediately before going to sleep increase the effect?" Tags="|psychology|sleep|neurology|learning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7084" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-26T01:42:00.583" Score="47" ViewCount="9393" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of our favourite StackExchange Overlords, Jeff Atwood, wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state-drive-scale.html&quot;&gt;Coding Horror blog article&lt;/a&gt; in May 2011, decrying the unreliability of SSD drives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solid state hard drives fail. A lot.&lt;/strong&gt; And not just any fail. I'm talking about &lt;em&gt;catastrophic, oh-my-God-what-just-happened-to-all-my-data instant gigafail&lt;/em&gt;. It's not pretty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Emphasis his.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He then gave anecdotes about 11 out of 12 SSDs failing within 18 months (average lifetime: around 227 days, according to one commenter). The commenters added more anecdotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dire predictions indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, the manufacturers are painting a far rosier picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gskill.com/products.php?index=286&quot;&gt;MTBF: &gt;2,000,000 Hours&lt;/a&gt; - two of the failing devices.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.supertalent.com/products/ssd_category_detail.php?type=UltraDrive&quot;&gt;Super Talent Ultra Drive: MTBF &gt;1 million hrs&lt;/a&gt;  - one of the failing devices.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ocztechnology.com/ocz-vertex-series-sata-ii-2-5-ssd.html&quot;&gt;OCZ Vertex 1: MTBF 1.5 million hours&lt;/a&gt; - one of the failing devices.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.storagereview.com/ocz_vertex_3_review_240gb&quot;&gt;OCZ Vertex 3: MTBF 2.0 million hours&lt;/a&gt; - one of the drives Atwood bought to replace a failed one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I have haven't chased down all of the device he mentioned - enough to show a discrepancy between the claim. I have tried to match the tech specs to the devices that Atwood describes, but that can be tricky sometimes - feel free to double-check.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is: &lt;strong&gt;Who should I believe?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Possible approaches include: Are there any independent tests? Are there formal, audited procedures that manufacturers must follow before making an MTBF claim? Is MTBF a misleading measurement? Have Atwood and his cronies just been unlucky?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T13:02:27.480" Title="What is the failure rate of Solid-State Drives (SSD)?" Tags="|technology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7082" CreationDate="2011-11-26T10:04:56.757" Score="83" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Europe&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Belgium&lt;/strong&gt; has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nieuwsblad.be/article/detail.aspx?articleid=MM1T8JMH&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;no law regulating it&lt;/a&gt; (Dutch link).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;Finland&lt;/strong&gt; there is no law regulating it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;France&lt;/strong&gt; has a law to provide free tap water when serving a meal at a restaurant. (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sedlex.fr/cas-pratiques/le-pain-et-leau-carafe-sont-ils-gratuits-dans-les-restaurants/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). Almost all restaurants in France accept to server free water (and free bread).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Germany&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.test.de/Leitungswasser-Kein-Rechtsanspruch-im-Restaurant-4543511-0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;does not legally mandate&lt;/a&gt; free tap water. Restaurant owners &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zeit.de/2013/24/stimmts-restaurant-leitungswasser&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;are free to decide&lt;/a&gt; what drinks to serve and what to charge for them. (German links.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;Iceland&lt;/strong&gt; there is no law regulating it, but restaurants provide free water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;strong&gt;Netherlands&lt;/strong&gt;, a 2011 campaign &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.horecaentree.nl/home/3392-%27Horeca_moet_gratis_kraanwater_schenken%27.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;demanded free tap water in restaurants&lt;/a&gt;. Those that provide it can be recognized by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wetapwater.com/in-de-horeca/voor-ondernemers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a sticker&lt;/a&gt; on the window. (Dutch links.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;Russia&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.restoclub.ru/spb/review/experts/pjat-mifov-o-pravah-potrebitelja&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;there is no law&lt;/a&gt; requiring restaurants to serve free tap water. (Russian link)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spain&lt;/strong&gt; does not mandate it, though restaurants &lt;a href=&quot;http://wikitravel.org/en/Spain#Restaurants&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;generally provide free water&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Water is frequently served without a specific request, and is normally&#xA;charged for--unless it's included in your menu del dia. If you would&#xA;like free tap water instead of bottled water, request &amp;quot;agua del grifo&amp;quot;&#xA;(water from the tap). &lt;em&gt;However, not all restaurants will offer this and&#xA;you may be forced to order bottled water.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;Italy&lt;/strong&gt; there is no law about it, but the majority of restaurants will serve bottled water by default. Few of them will deny tap water to customers, and few of them only serve tap or filtered water free of charge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;United Kingdom&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;England&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Wales&lt;/strong&gt;, it is mandatory &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/drugs/alcohol/alcohol-licensing-conditions/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;if you sell alcohol&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Condition 3. Free Tap Water for Customers&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many premises already offer free tap water. This condition means that all premises have to give customers tap water for free if they ask for it. This helps people to space out their drinks and not become intoxicated quickly, which reduces the risk of crime and disorder occurring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tap water you provide should be suitable for drinking and must be provided where reasonably available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is meant by “reasonably available” is a question of fact; for example, it would not be reasonable to expect free tap water to be available in premises for which the water supply had temporarily been lost because of a broken mains supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The same goes for &lt;strong&gt;Scotland&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.uk/asp/2005/16/schedule/3/crossheading/provision-of-nonalcoholic-drinks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The 2005 Licensing Act mandates&lt;/a&gt; requires:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Tap water fit for drinking must be provided free of charge on request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Middle East&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;Israel&lt;/strong&gt;, by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nevo.co.il/law_html/Law01/046_001.htm#Seif2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;law&lt;/a&gt; (in Hebrew), restaurants are required to serve customers chilled water:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whoever manages or hold a restaurant, whether as an owner or in other way, a restaurant, a food establishment, a coffee house or such a place where food is served, will make it so each customer is presented with a pitcher of chilled water, without payment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(My translation)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Australia&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;New South Wales&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.olgr.nsw.gov.au/legislation_amended_free_water.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;since 2004&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is mandatory to have free drinking water available to patrons at all times liquor is sold or supplied in licensed venues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;Victoria&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://members.speedweb.com.au/tec/Liquor%20Licensing%20Fact%20Sheet%20-%20Mandatory%20Water.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;since 2010&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;licensed venues that supply alcohol for&#xA;consumption on-site are required to provide free drinking water to their&#xA;patrons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exemptions may be granted upon request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;South Australia&lt;/strong&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.sa.gov.au/LZ/C/A/LIQUOR%20LICENSING%20ACT%201997/CURRENT/1997.65.UN.PDF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Liquor Licensing Act 1997&lt;/a&gt; does not require it, but in the City of Adelaide there is a goodwill (voluntary) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.olgc.sa.gov.au/general/latest_news/ALA.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Adelaide Liquor Licensing Accord&lt;/a&gt; which covers it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Licensed premises in &lt;strong&gt;Queensland&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.olgr.qld.gov.au/industry/liquorCompliance/drinkingWater/index.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;are required by law&lt;/a&gt; &amp;quot;to provide drinking water to their patrons for free or &lt;em&gt;at a reasonable cost&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Liquor Regulation 2002 has been amended to include a requirement for licensees to make drinking water available to patrons free of charge or at a reasonable cost. For example, a glass of tap water should not cost more than a glass of soft drink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://notes.nt.gov.au/dcm/legislat/legislat.nsf/d989974724db65b1482561cf0017cbd2/c0b35e328a582770692578fd007bda0a?OpenDocument&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Northern Territory&lt;/strong&gt;'s Liquor Act&lt;/a&gt; does not specify water must be provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;Western Australia&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rgl.wa.gov.au/resourcefiles/policies/drinking_water.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;since 2007&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 115A of the Liquor Control Act 1988 (“the Act”) requires that the licensee must ensure that&#xA;water suitable for drinking is provided, free of charge, at all times when liquor is sold and supplied&#xA;for consumption on the licensed premises.  The penalty for non-compliance: in the case of a&#xA;licensee - $10 000; and in the case of a manager - $4 000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;North America&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;United States&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wherever prices of drinking water are unregulated, it is still rare to be charged for tap water at restaurants and bars, though it's common at self-service beverage fountains (e.g. convenience stores).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;States requiring free water at all restaurants:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;States only requiring free water where alcohol is served:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;States with no known regulations:&lt;/strong&gt; Alabama, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jacksonwhitelaw.com/criminal-defense-law/arizona-water-law-strange-illegal/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arizona&lt;/a&gt;, California, Colorado&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2021-03-15T11:54:02.267" LastActivityDate="2021-03-15T11:54:02.267" CommentCount="9" CommunityOwnedDate="2011-11-26T10:17:47.937" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7087" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7088" CreationDate="2011-11-26T15:05:01.010" Score="10" ViewCount="31699" Body="&lt;p&gt;You often hear people saying Red Bull contains a lot more energy than an ordinary coffee. Specifically I heard mention a few times that Red Bull contains 10 times the amount of energy than an ordinary coffee. Although I couldn't find this statement specifically there are plenty of other relevant statements around the internet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.studentdoctor.net/archive/index.php/t-274476.html&quot;&gt;I did a lab where I analyzed the amount of caffeine in different&#xA;  drinks, and Red Bull had an insane amount.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110418051132AAEvYxQ&quot;&gt;1 can is additional to 3 cups or more of coffee&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Highly doubting this claim, I started looking around and already found it definitely doesn't contain 10 times as much caffeine. However, it also contains several other energetic ingredients like taurine and sugar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drinking 10 coffees and comparing this with drinking one Red Bull is easy, and quickly shows (at least for me personally) it has an entirely different effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much energy does Red Bull give you, compared to a typical cup of coffee? Most likely people refer to alertness energy, which allows them to stay awake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5370" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2011-11-26T20:49:11.613" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T12:09:38.007" Title="Does Red Bull contain as much energy as 10 coffees?" Tags="|nutrition|drinks|caffeine|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7087" CreationDate="2011-11-26T17:52:35.067" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Energy content&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coffee contains in the range of &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/beverages/3898/2&quot;&gt;0.25 calorie per ounce&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-coffee-i72912&quot;&gt;0.5 calorie per ounce&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 250g (8.8oz) serving of Red Bull contains &lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-red-bull-i77235&quot;&gt;110 calories&lt;/a&gt; for about 12.5 calories per ounce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: &lt;em&gt;Red Bull contains 25x to 50x more energy per ounce than coffee.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caffeine Content&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not energy, caffeine has an &quot;energetic&quot; affect on people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coffee contains anywhere from &lt;a href=&quot;http://coffeetea.about.com/od/caffeinehealth/a/How-Much-Caffeine-Is-In-Coffee-Tea-Cola-And-Other-Drinks.htm&quot;&gt;80-130mg per 6 oz&lt;/a&gt; for 13.3mg/oz to 21.6mg/oz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Red Bull contains &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.energyfiend.com/caffeine-content/red-bull&quot;&gt;80mg of caffeine per 8.46oz can&lt;/a&gt; for about 9.5mg per ounce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: &lt;em&gt;Red Bull contains 30% to 56% &lt;strong&gt;less&lt;/strong&gt; caffeine per ounce than coffee&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Other notes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How strongly you brew your coffee will change the energy content, but even a &quot;double-strong&quot; batch of coffee would only contain 1 calorie per ounce, giving Red Bull 12.5x more energy per ounce than coffee. And if you add cream or sugar to your coffee, then the energy content of the coffee will change, drastically altering the ratio against Red Bull.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Red Bull contains other &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chronicfatiguetreatments.com/wordpress/energy-boosters/how-does-redbull-give-you-energy/&quot;&gt;active ingredients&lt;/a&gt;&quot; that exist in different quantities and in some case don't exist at all in coffee, and have the purported effect of altering the mood/energetic feeling of those who consume it.  Because Red Bull and Coffee are such different substances, &lt;em&gt;it is impossible to make a direct, objective comparison.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Glucose&lt;/strong&gt; -- Sugar; this does get counted in the calorie count, but different types of calories affect the body differently. So while we can measure the actual energy content of the glucose, it's not the same as saying 25 cups of coffee would have the exact same effect on the human body.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Taurine&lt;/strong&gt; -- 1000mg per can of Red Bull, improves nerve impulses. Not in coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Niacin&lt;/strong&gt; -- A B vitamin that aids in metabolism. &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/beverages/3898/2&quot;&gt;Small amounts&lt;/a&gt; in coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;D-Pantothenol&lt;/strong&gt; -- Vitamin B5, improves mood and &quot;boosts energy&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/beverages/3898/2&quot;&gt;Small amounts&lt;/a&gt; in coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pyridoxine HCL&lt;/strong&gt; -- Vitamin B6, aides in oxygen utilization. Not in coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vitamin B12&lt;/strong&gt; -- Better oxygen utilization. Not in coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caffeine&lt;/strong&gt; -- This is found in coffee, and discussed above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2011-11-28T18:52:42.163" LastActivityDate="2011-11-28T18:52:42.163" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7089" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7090" CreationDate="2011-11-26T19:18:20.090" Score="7" ViewCount="7220" Body="&lt;p&gt;Information from &lt;a href=&quot;http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/carbcounts/a/mushrooms.htm&quot;&gt;the first website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;(...)  They also have been found to have high levels of some antioxidant compounds that may help prevent some cancers. (...)&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Information from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mykoweb.com/articles/EatingRawMushrooms.html&quot;&gt;the second website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;(...) The list of edible mushrooms considered safe for raw consumption is quite short. Even species commonly eaten raw, especially the ubiquitous button mushroom, Agaricus bisporus, have their drawbacks. Buttons, and many other edible mushrooms contain various hydrazines, a group of chemical compounds generally considered carcinogenic. (...)&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is eating raw white mushrooms dangerous for health? The second website claims that it's quite dangerous. Are there any scientific papers which confirm that?               &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5321" LastEditorUserId="238" LastEditDate="2011-11-27T05:25:48.817" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T05:48:16.103" Title="Are raw button mushrooms unhealthy (especially carcinogenic)?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7089" CreationDate="2011-11-27T04:22:39.053" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although raw button mushrooms (&lt;em&gt;Agaricus bisporus&lt;/em&gt;) do contain a carcinogenic hydrazine, agaritine, a recent review by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1756464610000241---&quot;&gt;Roupas et al (2010)&lt;/a&gt; concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The available evidence to date suggests that agaritine from consumption of cultivated A. bisporus mushrooms poses no known toxicological risk to healthy humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peter Roupas, Jennifer Keogh, Manny Noakes, Christine Margetts, Pennie Taylor, Mushrooms and agaritine: A mini-review, Journal of Functional Foods, Volume 2, Issue 2, April 2010, Pages 91-98&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="238" LastActivityDate="2011-11-27T04:22:39.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7092" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-27T10:16:57.973" Score="11" ViewCount="3627" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/26/justice/california-sirhan-rfk/?hpt=hp_t3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Convicted RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan seeks prison release&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sirhan &amp;quot;was an involuntary participant in the crimes being committed because he was subjected to sophisticated hypno programming and memory implantation techniques which rendered him unable to consciously control his thoughts and actions at the time the crimes were being committed,&amp;quot; court papers said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The California Attorney General's office declined to comment Saturday on Sirhan's court filings, said spokeswoman Lynda Gledhill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Court papers filed by Sirhan's attorneys say the state &amp;quot;refuses to acknowledge that hypno programming/mind control is not fiction but reality and has been used for years by the U.S. military, Central Intelligence Agency and other covert organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Though the practices of hypno programming/mind control is hardly new, the public has been shielded from the darker side of the practice. The average person is unaware that hypnosis can and is used to induct antisocial conduct in humans,&amp;quot; Sirhan's court filings say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware of the research into hypnosis that suggests it may be helpful to control various semi-conscious behaviors like an urge to smoke or eat, as well as some potential benefits for pain management. However this seems a world away from convincing someone to shoot someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible, using only standard hypnotic techniques (I have no doubt you could convince someone to kill through enough psychological torture), to create a desire to assassinate someone else strong enough to act upon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user792" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T09:20:26.003" Title="Can &quot;hypno programming&quot; force someone to kill someone else?" Tags="|hypnotism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7093" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7108" CreationDate="2011-11-27T10:44:00.177" Score="27" ViewCount="9994" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is frequently claimed that men show greater variance in the distribution of their &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_intelligence_factor&quot;&gt;general intelligence factor (g)&lt;/a&gt; (&quot;IQ&quot;) than women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that claim accepted by the scientific community?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5374" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T21:44:28.367" Title="Do men show greater variance in the distribution of their IQ than women?" Tags="|psychology|gender|intelligence|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7095" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-27T18:34:42.143" Score="12" ViewCount="766" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whatever your position on climate change the most significant results about the scientific consensus are supposed to emerge from the International Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC). It is an international UN overseen body with the intent, at least, of bringing together the best scientific opinion about a topic of major significance to world governments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent article by Ross McKitrick (one of the better known &quot;climate agnostics&quot; in his own words) analyses and criticises the way the IPCC works. For example, he argues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IPCC report-writing teams are cherry-picked in an opaque process by a secretive bureau in Geneva, with no effective requirements to ensure representation of diverse viewpoints. Environmentalist campaign groups are heavily overrepresented in the resulting author lists. Conflicts of interest abound throughout the report-writing process, whereby select authors are asked to review their own work and that of their critics, inevitably concluding in their own favour. The expert review process has become little more than elegant stagecraft, creating an illusion of adversarial cross-examination while concealing the reality of unchecked author bias. Unlike in regular academic peer review procedures, IPCC authors are allowed to overrule reviewers, and even to rewrite the text after the close of the peer review process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These seem like significant criticisms of a supposedly objective process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His report is called: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/mckitrick-ipcc_reforms.pdf&quot;&gt;What is Wrong With the IPCC? Proposals for a Radical Reform&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and he has written an editorial summarising it in a Canada's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/11/22/fix-it-or-fold-it/&quot;&gt;Financial Post.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So My question here is: are his criticisms an &lt;em&gt;accurate description&lt;/em&gt; of the IPCC process? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB This question is not about climate change or the historic reliability of the IPCC's reports. It is about whether a critic is honest in identifying flaws in a supposedly objective critical process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:53:30.133" LastActivityDate="2022-09-22T20:08:04.813" Title="Do McKitrick's criticisms of the IPCC accurately represent their processes?" Tags="|climate-change|climatology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7097" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-27T21:40:25.983" Score="1" ViewCount="216" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2694/are-anti-smoking-advertisements-actually-promoting-smoking-through-use-of-revers&quot;&gt;Are anti-smoking advertisements actually promoting smoking through use of reverse psychology?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people agree that tobacco is harmful to health, but many people still smoke (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/11/22/fix-it-or-fold-it/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia statistics&lt;/a&gt;). Many drugs such as heroin are illegal but still taken by a significant number of users (see a recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/23/british-crime-survey-drugs-young-people&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guardian story&lt;/a&gt; on UK consumption).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Governments seem to believe that &lt;em&gt;scaring&lt;/em&gt; people about the degree of harm they will experience is an effective technique to reduce consumption of substances harmful to health (legal or illegal). For some recent advertising see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq5P5vW49e4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and an interesting collection &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businesspundit.com/13-most-disturbing-anti-drugs-ads/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems &quot;obvious&quot; that scaring people should be an effective technique here. But the effectiveness has been questioned (see US story reported by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-08-28-anti-drug-ads_x.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;USA Today&lt;/a&gt; or the UK story reported by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/nov/16/anti-drug-adverts-campaigns&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guardian&lt;/a&gt;). And skeptics don't just accept the obvious, we want to see evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is simple: &lt;em&gt;do scare tactics work to discourage use of harmful things in today's world?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB I think it will be important to be clear about the context. I suspect that scare tactics do work on some people, so, when we didn't have a clear idea of how bad tobacco is for health I suspect many people would have stopped smoking when the evidence of harm arrived. The question is about &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt;: it is hard to imagine that any smoker (or drug user) is delusional enough to deny the harms of their habit. So is there any evidence that their consumption will be reduced further by scare tactics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-11-27T21:40:25.983" Title="Do scare tactics in advertising succeed in reducing the number of people who smoke or take illegal drugs?" Tags="|advertising|smoking|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2011-11-27T22:35:49.197" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7101" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-28T03:40:19.750" Score="8" ViewCount="3847" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jaycar.com.au&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jaycar&lt;/a&gt; are a reasonably reputable retailer of electronic components. They have recently been pushing antifouling devices to help prevent marine life from attaching to the bottom of boats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=KC5498&amp;amp;keywords=YS-5600&amp;amp;form=KEYWORD&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;project kit&lt;/a&gt; that references &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siliconchip.com.au/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Silicon Chip Magazine September/October 2010&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a branded product: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=YS5600&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOANAR Ultrasonic Antifouling System&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims on that page include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In ideal conditions the SOANAR Ultrasonic Antifouling System will work without any antifouling paint. Marine growth activity can be very aggressive is some areas however. In such cases the SOANAR Ultrasonic Antifouling System works best when installed after a fresh hull clean and new antifouling paint job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be assured, however, that the SOANAR Ultrasonic Antifouling System will add years to an antifouling paint job no matter how hostile your marine environment!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HOW THE SOANAR ULTRASONIC ANTIFOULING SYSTEM WORKS&#xA;Inside the main control box is a specially programmed microprocessor which centrally controls the system, sending out a range of ultrasonic pulses with varying frequencies to the external transducer units. These transducers are attached with epoxy to the inside of the vessel’s hull, transferring the ultrasonic pulses directly into the hull. The hull then vibrates in tune with the ultrasonic wave pulse, making for a rather hostile and unpleasant environment for the marine growth. Indeed, it would be like trying to go to bed in the front row of a heavy metal concert!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strangely, I have been unable to find mention of the product on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.soanar.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Soanar web-site&lt;/a&gt; - the domain name matches the email address given in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jaycar.com.au/products_uploaded/YS5602_Manual_111115.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;installation manual&lt;/a&gt; so I assume it is the right place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope my question is obvious: Is there any evidence that ultrasonic devices like the Soanar device or the kit described in the magazine have any effect on reducing the fouling on boats?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T20:46:34.457" Title="Do ultrasonic antifouling devices work for boats?" Tags="|pesticides|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4108" CreationDate="2011-11-28T17:07:05.417" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, the first point has merit: the BMJ does state that it's funded by pharmaceutical manufacturers, with display advertising listed on its revenue page: &lt;a href=&quot;http://group.bmj.com/group/about/revenue-sources&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://group.bmj.com/group/about/revenue-sources&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also sponsored by pharmaceutical companies: &quot;Only reputable pharmaceutical companies licensed to operate in the territory in question or other ethical sponsors can be considered for sponsorship of subscriptions.&quot; Link: group.bmj.com/group/advertising/policy/sponsored-subscriptions (I can only post two hyperlinks, so that one is partial)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the page where they list the policy for acceptance of advertisements ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://group.bmj.com/group/advertising/policy/acceptance-of-adverts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://group.bmj.com/group/advertising/policy/acceptance-of-adverts&lt;/a&gt; ) you will see that they have fairly low requirements for advertising alcohol sales, tobacco company recruitment, patent slimming products, and even escort agencies, provided that they conform to the guidelines of the British Code of Advertising and Sales Promotion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does however demand peer reviewed research papers be submitted before a manufacturer of vitamins or mineral supplements may place an ad. I mention this because it goes to whether the BMJ is biased towards &quot;big pharma&quot; and other big industries, even where they may arguably cause serious harm to some consumers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not a stretch to think that the BMJ would not like to lose its advertising revenue and sponsorships: if I find anything verifiable regarding £ amounts, I'll post it. (Reason for posting here - family member becoming visibly brain damaged after her MMR shot, still undecided about it all personally, so just trying to keep up with the whole thing. I didn't know any of this about the BMJ until your post made me want to check.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5388" LastActivityDate="2011-11-28T17:07:05.417" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4105" CreationDate="2011-11-28T17:14:18.463" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The BMJ does state that it's funded by pharmaceutical manufacturers, with display advertising listed on its revenue page: &lt;a href=&quot;http://group.bmj.com/group/about/revenue-sources&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://group.bmj.com/group/about/revenue-sources&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also sponsored by pharmaceutical companies: &quot;Only reputable pharmaceutical companies licensed to operate in the territory in question or other ethical sponsors can be considered for sponsorship of subscriptions.&quot; Link: group.bmj.com/group/advertising/policy/sponsored-subscriptions (I can only post two hyperlinks, so that one is partial)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the page where they list the policy for acceptance of advertisements ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://group.bmj.com/group/advertising/policy/acceptance-of-adverts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://group.bmj.com/group/advertising/policy/acceptance-of-adverts&lt;/a&gt; ) you will see that they have fairly low requirements for advertising alcohol sales, tobacco company recruitment, patent slimming products, and even escort agencies, provided that they conform to the guidelines of the British Code of Advertising and Sales Promotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does however demand peer reviewed research papers be submitted before a manufacturer of vitamins or mineral supplements may place an ad. I mention this because it goes to whether the BMJ is biased towards &quot;big pharma&quot; and other big industries, even where they may arguably cause serious harm to some consumers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I get the opportunity to find verifiable (and linkable) amounts of these revenues from pharmaceutical companies, I will post them, for people to draw their own conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5388" LastActivityDate="2011-11-28T17:14:18.463" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7093" CreationDate="2011-11-28T18:01:17.997" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's frequently quoted, this seems to be the main research used:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7604277&quot;&gt;Sex differences in mental test scores, variability, and numbers of high-scoring individuals.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Hedges LV, Nowell A. Science. 1995 Jul 7;269(5220).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract: &quot;...the test scores of males consistently have larger variance&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5388" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2011-12-01T15:18:54.930" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T15:18:54.930" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7083" CreationDate="2011-11-28T19:58:34.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This paper (PDF) seems to indicate a &quot;post-training&quot; nap has beneficial effects on adults learning a new skill - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saramednick.com/htmls/pdfs/Mednick-NN03%5B8%5D.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sleep Dependent Learning: A Nap is as Good as a Night&lt;/a&gt;, Mednick, S., Nakayama, K., Stickgold, R.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5388" LastActivityDate="2011-11-28T19:58:34.687" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6970" CreationDate="2011-11-29T01:39:33.420" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &quot;undigested protein stuck in our tissues and cells&quot; implies that somehow untouched proteins (polymer chains made of amino acids linked together by peptide bonds) get through the process of digestion unscathed and are absorbed into the bloodstream. This doesn't happen, and someone would have to have some very serious problems with their entire digestive tract if it did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://library.thinkquest.org/11226/main/c14txt.htm&quot;&gt;This thinkquest article&lt;/a&gt; outlines the process of protein digestion in quite a straightforward manner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The process of digestion breaks down complex food molecules (such as the protein in steak) that the body cannot readily use into simpler, smaller molecules (amino acids) which the body can absorb and use to fuel other life processes. The digestive tract performs this mission like a machine. Each organ has a specific job and depends on the others to perform properly. In the mouth, initial physical break-down of protein begins. The stomach continues physical break-down and begins chemical break-down by secreting a substance called pepsinogen. It then converts pepsinogen into an enzyme called pepsin. This enzyme starts to break apart the protein into amino acids. Muscles in the stomach walls then move the food into the duodenum, the first part of the small intestine. The duodenum and pancreas work together to complete the chemical break-down of protein into single amino acid molecules with the help of another enzyme known as trypsin. Finally, the small intestine absorbs the amino acid molecules, allowing them to pass into the bloodstream. The blood then carries the amino acids to the rest of the body to rearrange into human proteins and use in building its structure. Each part of the &quot;machine&quot; of digestion must work properly in order for protein to be broken down into useful amino acids. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for someone to have undigested protein in their tissues and cells, their stomach, pancreas and small intestine would all have to be functioning very, very abnormally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T01:39:33.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7120" CreationDate="2011-11-29T09:35:42.723" Score="38" ViewCount="19382" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen quite a few of these &quot;tongue maps&quot;, showing discrete borders between taste zones and often conflicting setups, like these two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O1XDh.jpg&quot; width=&quot;195&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hdceH.gif&quot; width=&quot;250&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I can feel all tastes all over the tongue, more or less equally well, so I don't really understand what these map are supposed to indicate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the tongue have different taste zones as shown?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="1134" LastEditDate="2014-07-05T20:33:57.510" LastActivityDate="2019-02-28T08:33:44.803" Title="Does the tongue have different taste zones?" Tags="|physiology|taste|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7119" CreationDate="2011-11-29T09:59:36.493" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember learning the tongue map in school, but &lt;strong&gt;it's a myth&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/11/health/11real.html?adxnnl=1&amp;amp;adxnnlx=1322560082-r3w4RQJeJWCdfsbNMMhkYQ&quot;&gt;The New York Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16929298&quot;&gt;study published in the journal &lt;strong&gt;Nature&lt;/strong&gt; in 2006&lt;/a&gt;, a team of&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;scientists reported that receptors for the basic tastes are found in&#xA;  distinct cells, and that these cells are not localized but spread&#xA;  throughout the tongue&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That said, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12132625?ordinalpos=1&amp;amp;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&quot;&gt;other studies&lt;/a&gt; suggest that some&#xA;  parts may be more sensitive to certain flavors, and that there may be&#xA;  differences in the way men and women detect sour, salty and bitter&#xA;  flavors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.sciencegeekgirl.com/2008/05/15/myth-6-your-tongue-has-a-taste-map/&quot;&gt;Origin of the myth&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The original myth stems back to the early 1900′s when a German&#xA;  reseacher named Hanig published data on taste sensitivity of different&#xA;  areas of the tongue&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The differences in sensitivity he reported were&#xA;  real — but they were so slight as to be of no practical significance.&#xA;  Nobody bothered to check or refute it until many years later, when the&#xA;  idea was already firmly rooted in our popular consciousness, and&#xA;  textbooks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Bartoshuk, L. M. 1993. The biological basis of food perception and acceptance. Food Qual. Pref. 4:21-32&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/7113-tongue-map-tasteless-myth-debunked.html&quot;&gt;Live Science - The Tongue Map: Tasteless Myth Debunked&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/human-biology/taste3.htm&quot;&gt;How Stuff Works - How Taste Works&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/tasty.html&quot;&gt;University of Washington - That's Tasty&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aromadictionary.com/articles/tonguemap_article.html&quot;&gt;Aroma Dictionary - Challenging the Tongue Taste Map&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FDZnhGpRI8&quot;&gt;Stephen Fry - QI: Tongue Map&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2011-11-29T10:22:49.933" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T10:22:49.933" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7121" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7125" CreationDate="2011-11-29T10:09:03.840" Score="3" ViewCount="3748" Body="&lt;p&gt;This one is making the rounds on the Internet currently and I'm having trouble finding any reliable source. Most people seem to be citing the following &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20181116065604/http://early-onset-of-night.tumblr.com/post/13348728615/tattoo-artist-ryan-fitzgerald-from-dayton-oh-was&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;unsourced tumblr post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tattoo artist Ryan Fitzgerald from Dayton, OH was hit with a $100,000 lawsuit last week by his ex-girlfriend Rossie Brovent.  She claims that her boyfriend was supposed to tattoo a scene from Narnia on her back but instead tattooed an image of a pile of excrement with flies buzzing around it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20091220155654/http://titam.hautetfort.com:80/archive/2009/12/17/le-tatouage-odorant-du-jour.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one post&lt;/a&gt; that uses that image from as early as 2009-12-16 (not that it shows much of anything, but might be helpful), the image is also all over image blogspam since that date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorDisplayName="user23510" LastEditDate="2019-01-28T03:43:03.023" LastActivityDate="2019-03-09T23:55:25.410" Title="Is this story about someone taking revenge on his cheating ex-girlfriend by tattooing excrement on her back true?" Tags="|social-media|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7121" CreationDate="2011-11-29T17:09:30.587" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This story seem to be false as it states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tattoo artist Ryan Fitzgerald from Dayton, OH was hit with a $100,000 lawsuit last week by his ex-girlfriend Rossie Brovent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which would make it the week prior to November 26, 2011 where as the image in the article that is turning up on a tineye search as early as 2009 (http://www.tineye.com/search/a24ae0108904d0902882c9fab058219ce005df4c/).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastActivityDate="2011-11-29T17:09:30.587" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1508" CreationDate="2011-11-29T17:41:13.643" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finally, someone has done a study that will provide an answer. The study, run by &lt;a href=&quot;http://psych.mansfield.ohio-state.edu/fisher.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr Terri Fisher&lt;/a&gt;, asked 163 students to carry a tally counter, and note when they had thoughts about sex:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It won't be published until January 2012 so I have had to rely on early press reports, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-debunks-stereotype-men-sex-day.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one  in MedicalXpress&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the research discredits the persistent stereotype that men think about sex every seven seconds&lt;/strong&gt;, which would amount to more than 8,000 thoughts about sex in 16 waking hours. In the study, the median number of young men's thought about sex stood at almost 19 times per day. Young women in the study reported a median of nearly 10 thoughts about sex per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correcting this stereotype about men's sexual thoughts is important, Fisher noted.&#xA;&amp;quot;It's amazing the way people will spout off these fake statistics that men think about sex nearly constantly and so much more often than women do,&amp;quot; she said. &amp;quot;When a man hears a statement like that, he might think there's something wrong with him because he's not spending that much time thinking about sexuality, and when women hear about this, if they spend significant time thinking about sex they might think there's something wrong with them.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to properly evaluate the methodology and results before seeing it published; press reports are often inaccurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One aspect that concerns me is that it required student to notice that they were having these thoughts. Perhaps a better methodology would be a buzzer that rang randomly, and had the students record whether they were thinking about sex at the time, would have gotten better results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, self-reporting about a taboo topic is another issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article was published:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fisher TD, Moore ZT, Pittenger MJ., &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21512948&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sex on the brain?: an examination of frequency of sexual cognitions as a function of gender, erotophilia, and social desirability.&lt;/a&gt; J Sex Res. 2012;49(1):69-77. doi: 10.1080/00224499.2011.565429. Also &lt;a href=&quot;https://sci-hub.ru/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2011.565429?needAccess=true&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;available on Sci-hub&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see nothing in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21512948&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;abstract&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-278880602.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;first couple of pages&lt;/a&gt; which undermines any of the above analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23144" LastEditDate="2023-04-07T19:18:12.830" LastActivityDate="2023-04-07T19:18:12.830" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7121" CreationDate="2011-11-29T18:05:29.787" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this story had happened in the past five years, it is reasonable to expect the story would have made the local papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major daily in Dayton, Ohio is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dayton_Daily_News&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dayton Daily News&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The searchable archive of the Dayton Daily News goes back &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/election/entries/2005/11/08/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;at least five years&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching the site for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daytondailynews.com/yahoo-search/?searchType=site&amp;amp;searchType=unified_search&amp;amp;firstResult=0&amp;amp;numResults=10&amp;amp;searchString=tattoo+fitzgerald&amp;amp;Submit.x=0&amp;amp;Submit.y=0&amp;amp;Submit=Submit&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tattoo fitzgerald&lt;/a&gt; returns a number of unrelated results, but, crucially, demonstrates the archive search function works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching the site for [tattoo Brovent] reveals nothing (&quot;Brovent&quot; being the unusual surname of the woman involved.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absence of evidence - where evidence is &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; - is evidence of absence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I conclude this story did not occur in the last five years, with the names given, in the location given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to Add:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/photos/bodymods/poo.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2067810/Is-Rossie-Brovent-suing-ex-boyfriend-inking-flies-buzzing-excrement-back.html?ITO=1490&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt; reports there are no corroborating court documents, while the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/poop-tattoo-story-is-crap-8764319&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Smoking Gun&lt;/a&gt; adds there are no people with those  names in the Nexis database, and no registered tattoo artists by that name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-12-01T01:46:55.407" LastActivityDate="2011-12-01T01:46:55.407" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7121" CreationDate="2011-11-29T21:14:58.123" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/poop-tattoo-story-is-crap-8764319&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Smoking Gun&lt;/a&gt; suggests that this is a piece of fake news which originates with the following image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As seen above, the photo appears legitimate. In fact, it first surfaced online about 18 months ago as part of a “Worst Tattoo of the Day” post on the blog I Am Bored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A review of court indices, of course, shows no such civil complaint has ever been filed (either in federal or state court) by “Brovent.” James Druber, administrator of the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court (where Dayton residents file their six-figure complaints), said that he had heard nothing about the purported tattoo lawsuit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, a review of the Nexis database turns up no “Rossie Brovent,” or, in fact, anyone with that surname. And a search for “Ryan Fitzjerald” (with or without the middle initial “L”) turns up nobody with that name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZFUz6.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZFUz6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;poop-tattoo&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://i.cdn.turner.com/dr/teg/tsg/release/sites/default/files/assets/tattoophoto1.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;turner.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20100114104135/http://ugliesttattoos.com/2009/12/16/funny-tattoos-shitty-tattoo/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is the original post&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://regex.info/exif.cgi?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn-www.i-am-bored.com%2Fmedia%2Fpootattooback.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EXIF data&lt;/a&gt; you can see the image has been manipulated in Photoshop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Creator Tool  Adobe Photoshop CS4 Windows&#xA;Create Date   2010:06:19 09:17:31-07:00&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;client=safari&amp;amp;rls=en&amp;amp;biw=1588&amp;amp;bih=890&amp;amp;prmd=imvns&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=2kjVTv3JNOr74QT2sJTXDw&amp;amp;ved=0CBQQpwUoBjgK&amp;amp;source=lnt&amp;amp;tbs=sbi% %2Ccdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A%2Ccd_max%3A31%2F12%2F2008&amp;amp;tbm=&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;power of Google&lt;/a&gt; I was lead to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://titam.hautetfort.com/archive/2009/12/17/le-tatouage-odorant-du-jour.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;French blog post&lt;/a&gt; that pointed me to UgliestTattoos.com:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Via Ugliest Tattoos, le 16 décembre 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the page was down, but I was able to retrieve a copy via the &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20100114104135/http://ugliesttattoos.com/2009/12/16/funny-tattoos-shitty-tattoo/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;magnificient Wayback Machine&lt;/a&gt;. The page was cached on January 14&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; 2010, thus pretty much timestamping the image to the end of 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is the (presumably) original image. Note the ugly writings at the bottom, which have been removed in later copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fIdFA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;original poop tattoo&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UgliestTattoos.com says it was uploaded directly to the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Submitted by: nasza-klasa via Submission Page&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-03-09T23:55:25.410" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6734" CreationDate="2011-11-30T17:55:15.450" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer: No the accuracy of past forecasts is mixed with no clear variant being usually better&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most recent detailed analysis of how good the various projections have been was published in 2000: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9828&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beyond Six Billion: Forecasting the world's Population&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This table summarises the accuracy of past forecasts for population in the year 2000:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Awot8.png&quot; alt=&quot;errors in UN population forecasts for the year 2000 from ref 1&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These errors are mostly quite modest, given that even the starting&#xA;  population for each projection was not known with exactitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite this apparent accuracy, the fact that all these past projections&#xA;  of the 2000 world population are too high is somewhat surprising. A&#xA;  major reason is that fertility in several countries has declined more rapidly&#xA;  than expected, and more rapidly than previous trends suggested,&#xA;  over the past decade&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The table and comments refer to the UN mid forecasts so don't completely answer the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The older UN forecasts are not readily available online, but the British Library keeps hard copies (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&amp;amp;vl%28174399379UI0%29=any&amp;amp;frbg=&amp;amp;scp.scps=scope:%28BLCONTENT%29&amp;amp;tab=local_tab&amp;amp;dstmp=1322673843725&amp;amp;srt=rank&amp;amp;ct=search&amp;amp;mode=Basic&amp;amp;dum=true&amp;amp;tb=t&amp;amp;indx=1&amp;amp;vl%28freeText0%29=world%20population%20prospects&amp;amp;vid=BLVU1&amp;amp;fn=search&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). The numbers I report below are from a selection of those books. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First a chart comparing the current best estimates of world population to older UN forecasts:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VJkVH.png&quot; alt=&quot;Actual versus forecast chart by matt_black&quot;&gt;&#xA;It can be seen that many of the mid estimates actually underestimate the population until relatively recently where the overestimates get bigger (though the errors are not large and the forecasts overlap on the chart).&#xA;Here is a table of the underlying data:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LV9Bq.png&quot; alt=&quot;matt_black table of data copied from UN forecasts&quot;&gt;&#xA;The closest estimates to each actual are highlighted in red. It is only recently that the low forecasts seem to be the more accurate ones an mid forecasts seem to slightly overstate the actual population as the 2000 review suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth bearing in mind that population forecasting, despite being on of the most reliable sorts of forecast, doesn't have a good track record at the hard stuff. It is easy to project the number of 40 year-olds 20 years in the future (hint: count today's 20-year olds). The key things that are hard to predict are death rates (though they are a lot easier than they used to be) and birth rates (which have varied unpredictably for some time). A quick search of the archives of &lt;em&gt;The Economist&lt;/em&gt; shows speculation about UK population &lt;em&gt;collapse&lt;/em&gt; in the 1930s, population boom in the 1960s (with scary total population in the 70 millions), flat population in the 1980s and, most recently scary populations in the &gt;70m area again (though driven as much by migration as birthrate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2011-11-30T18:49:12.140" LastActivityDate="2011-11-30T18:49:12.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7135" CreationDate="2011-11-30T18:05:22.740" Score="24" ViewCount="2271" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wakethefuckup.wordpress.com/2007/11/06/the-government-created-aids-to-kill-black-people/&quot;&gt;There&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1715994/pg1&quot;&gt;are&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://killtown.911review.org/aids.html&quot;&gt;lots&lt;/a&gt; of places that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2008/03/the_aids_conspiracy_handbook.html&quot;&gt;claim this&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any good evidence for or against this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="21437" LastEditDate="2016-02-02T14:03:12.350" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T09:17:12.700" Title="Is HIV/AIDS a man-made disease?" Tags="|hiv-aids|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7134" CreationDate="2011-11-30T19:27:24.940" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two HIV variants which stem from two different SIVs (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simian_immunodeficiency_virus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Simian Immunodeficiency Virus&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only species naturally infected with viruses closely related to HIV-2 is the sooty mangabey (Cercocebus atys) from western Africa, the region where HIV-2 is known to be endemic. Similarly, the only viruses very closely related to HIV-1 have been isolated from chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), and in particular those from western equatorial Africa, again coinciding with the region that appears to be the hearth of the HIV-1 pandemic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref: P M Sharp, E Bailes, R R Chaudhuri, C M Rodenburg, M O Santiago, and B H Hahn. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1088480/?tool=pmcentrez&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The origins of acquired immune deficiency syndrome viruses: where and when?&lt;/a&gt;, Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2001 June 29; 356(1410): 867–876.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract goes on to explain that several instances of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zoonosis&lt;/a&gt; have been observed in the genetic record of the virus going back before the 1940s when it was certainly not technologically possible to engineer a virus and mass vaccination of humans was not practiced in any case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/313/5786/523.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; is where the team that found the (chimpanzee) source of HIV-1 published their findings, but does not include the full source.  However, you can get it from the NIH &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2442710/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  And a summary from The Guardian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/may/26/aids.topstories3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; which mentions origins of HIV-1 dating back before the 1930s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more modern transmission events are addressed &lt;a href=&quot;http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/356/1410/911&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our research indicates that serial passage of partially adapted SIV between humans could produce the series of cumulative mutations sufficient for the emergence of epidemic HIV strains. We examined the rapid growth of unsterile injections in Africa beginning in the 1950s as a biologically plausible event capable of greatly increasing serial human passage of SIV and generating HIV by a series of multiple genetic transitions. We conclude that increased unsterile injecting in Africa during the period 1950–1970 provided the agent for SIV human infections to emerge as epidemic HIV in the modern era.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full text is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1088484/pdf/TB010911.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;from the NIH&lt;/a&gt;.  By &quot;increasing unsterile injections&quot; they mean&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;80% of African households had experienced needle use in a two-week period by the 1960s (Birungi et al. 1994)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4415" LastEditorUserId="4415" LastEditDate="2016-02-02T22:30:09.757" LastActivityDate="2016-02-02T22:30:09.757" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7136" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-11-30T19:40:16.730" Score="4" ViewCount="848" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sources such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130307223430/http://thebabybond.com/EarlyPuberty.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Baby Bond&lt;/a&gt; say that early puberty in girls may be caused by what they eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two factors proven responsible for precocious puberty are detached parenting and consumption of cow's milk. As a whole, Hispanic parents tend to protect their young from both of these debilitating influences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When resources are scarce - namely, when parents and nutrition are less available, children become more aggressive (to be able to compete for limited food resources), and they mature more quickly (providing for survival of the species as opposed to quality of life). 20th-century parenting often signals scarcity responses in an infant, including practices such as leaving children alone to &amp;quot;cry it out,&amp;quot; feeding on schedules rather than in response to hunger cries, and providing less nutritious feed (infant formula).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence of that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3855" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-09-19T21:39:53.453" LastActivityDate="2022-09-19T21:39:53.453" Title="Does nutrition explain why puberty starts earlier than it used to?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7136" CreationDate="2011-12-01T01:21:35.817" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;: This article has poorly constructed arguments. However, it does serve to provide references to support some association (not causation) between diet and early puberty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, let me summarise the key arguments in the linked article, &lt;em&gt;just with regards to diet and precocious puberty&lt;/em&gt;, which is what the OP is asking about. (That is, I am ignoring claims about cancer, breastfeeding, mental health, etc.):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of two mentioned factors in precocious puberty is  consumption of cow's milk (no reference provided).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cow's milk has a high fat content, and other bad things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;These are all linked to early puberty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hispanic child are less likely to consume cow's milk. (no reference provided). This argument peters out there. I see no actual claim that Hispanic children have later puberty as a result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we can ignore statement 4. There is no reference for Statement 1 (or 4). I'm not going to argue Statement 2. The critical statement is statement number 3, and three references are provided. (Ref numbers #13, #14, and #15 in the article.) Let's look at those to see if they support the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;13: Stoll BA. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1006003110909&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Western diet, early puberty and breast cancer risk&lt;/a&gt;. Breast Cancer Res Treat (England) Jun 1998;49(3):187-93.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper is primarily about the increased breast cancer risk associated with early puberty. However, it does briefly summarise the purported causes of early puberty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Improving nutrition is generally assumed to be responsible for the secular trend to ever-earlier onset of menarche in Western industrialised countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nutritional factors are likely to be responsible and current option is that menarche is provoked by a critical accumulation of adipose tissue rather than through the effects of specific macronutrients [17]. Studies in the USA and Canada have found that earlier onset of menarche is associated with a greater height and weight for age and that after allowing for these variables, there was no association with energy-adjusted intake of fat, protein or carbohydrate in the diet [23, 24]. Nevertheless one prospective study in Germany concluded that a higher energy-adjusted fat intake was associated with accelerated menarche and might be responsible for earlier body fatness [25].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;14: Outwater JL, et al. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1016/S0306-9877(97)90110-9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dairy products and breast cancer: the IGF-I, estrogen and bGH hypothesis&lt;/a&gt;. Med Hypotheses Jun 1997;48(6):453-61.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is not one but &lt;em&gt;three&lt;/em&gt; problems with this paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it looks at breast cancer, not early puberty. It is off-topic for our discussion, but on-topic for the general article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, it doesn't conclude anything useful for the article&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, despite several intriguing hypotheses linking dairy product consumption and breast cancer, the available epidemiologic evidence does not support a strong association between the consumption of milk or other dairy products and breast cancer risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, it is published in Med Hypotheses, which is a great place to get ideas for future experiments, but not a great place to link to to show that the evidence supports your argument. [&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.elsevier.com/journals/medical-hypotheses/0306-9877/guide-for-authors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;More info&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;15: Kato I, et al. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1349-7006.1988.tb01573.x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Factors related to late menopause and early menarche as risk factors for breast cancer&lt;/a&gt;. Jpn J Cancer Res (Japan) Feb 1998;79(2):165-72.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper was focussed on breast cancer, but relied on surveys of 17,000 Japanese women older than 40 to gauge some of the factors involved in both puberty and menopause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the weakness is asking someone about what happened thirty years earlier, and a dubious assumption that eating habits varied in strength but not in character over the subjects lives. I've not reported the borderline associations (e.g. p&amp;gt;0.05).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Positively correlated factors for early menarche included:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Residence in a metropolitan area&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Height, weight and Body-Mass Index (BMI)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Daily intakes of bread, meat, fish, shellfish, egg, green-yellow vegetables, other vegetables, fruits, &lt;strong&gt;milk&lt;/strong&gt; and black tea.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inversely correlated were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Large rice intake, daily miso soup, pickles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smoking (as an adult?!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Adipose fat levels are believed to be a trigger for menarche, although none of the cited articles show that directly, and there is some mixed evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A survey (of moderately weak power) suggests &lt;em&gt;correlations&lt;/em&gt; (not &lt;em&gt;causation&lt;/em&gt;) between a number of dietary elements and early menarche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The linked article makes some dubious claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-19T16:09:37.170" LastActivityDate="2022-09-19T16:09:37.170" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7148" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7289" CreationDate="2011-12-01T15:49:50.240" Score="9" ViewCount="734" Body="&lt;p&gt;Beyond any doubt Thailand floods have affected HDD market. However, some analysts say that the effect on the market should be a 10-30% price increase. Meanwhile in the consumer market the increase is 150-300%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5T2tr.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;em&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.idealo.co.uk/news/12407/idealo-thai-floods-cause-hard-disk-drive-prices-in-europe-to-rise-by-150.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Idealo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are claims that this is in fact caused more by big distributors creating false shortage by excessive stockpiling, rather than only the effect of the floods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;js=n&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;layout=2&amp;amp;eotf=1&amp;amp;u=http://tweakers.net/nieuws/78101/samsung-en-winkels-wijzen-schuld-van-gestegen-hdd-prijzen-af.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;such claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Sander van Veen, storage product manager at Samsung,&#xA;  this increased production cost of Samsung HDDs by 7 to 8 percent.&#xA;  Samsung could not pass that up, because there were already agreements&#xA;  with distributors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite this, the retail prices of Samsung HDDs, as well as those of&#xA;  other manufacturers such as Seagate and Western Digital, increased enormously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to prove or deny that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: yet another claim, few months later. &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.softpedia.com/news/HDD-Crisis-Was-Fake-Seagate-and-Western-Digital-Post-Big-Profits-266676.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;HDD Crisis Was Fake: Seagate and Western Digital Post Big Profits&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-06-11T15:53:29.337" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T15:53:29.337" Title="Is the 2-3-fold rise in HDD price an effect of false shortage?" Tags="|economics|computers|price|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7095" CreationDate="2011-12-02T16:32:48.103" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;McKitrick's report gives a number of case studies which, he claims, describe issues in the IPCC processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent case is Sven Teske, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace who was&#xA;selected by the IPCC as a Lead Author for its recent report on renewable&#xA;energy (SRREN), which led to the controversies noted above, when a non&#xA;peer-reviewed Greenpeace report he coauthored became the basis for&#xA;central claims in the report highlighted in the press release announcing its&#xA;publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teske was indeed, one of the nine lead authors listed chapter 10 of the report. This chapter cites two articles by Teske, one &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-010-9098-y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;peer reviewed&lt;/a&gt; and one &lt;a href=&quot;https://wayback.archive-it.org/9650/20200508165117/http://p3-raw.greenpeace.org/international/Global/international/planet-2/report/2008/9/solar-generation-v-2008.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;not&lt;/a&gt;. However, the scenario mentioned in the IPCC's press release is attributed to the peer-reviewed paper, not the non-peer reviewed one: McKitrick's description here is inaccurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another particularly notable case is Sari Kovats, who, far from being at the&#xA;“top of her profession,”, was selected to serve as an IPCC Contributing&#xA;Author in 1994 when she was 25 years old, had no Ph.D. and no academic&#xA;publications, and was just starting a job as a research assistant at the London&#xA;School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She began a part-time Ph.D.&#xA;program in 2001, at which time she was promoted to a term as an IPCC Lead&#xA;Author. The IPCC Bureau appointed her a third time as Lead or Contributing&#xA;Author for a total of four chapters of the AR4, as well as expert reviewer. Her&#xA;Ph.D. thesis wasn’t completed until three years after the AR4 was published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contributing authors are at the low-end of the IPCC spectrum. At the time, Kovats was working on editing a review of the topic for the World Health Organisation - this would have meant that she would be reasonable position to be familiar with the literature on the subject. By the time she was selected as a Lead Author, she had authored &lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?hl=en&amp;amp;q=author:%22Sari%20Kovats%22&amp;amp;btnG=Search&amp;amp;as_sdt=0,5&amp;amp;as_ylo=1990&amp;amp;as_yhi=2000&amp;amp;as_vis=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;quite a number&lt;/a&gt; of peer-reviewed articles, a fact that McKitrick curiously neglects to mention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;McKitrick quotes from &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20210309131331/http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/Comments.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;comments&lt;/a&gt; submitted to the InterAcademcy Council's review. Some of these comments do suggest real concerns about the IPCC process - but McKitrick's contribution is limited to some quotemining. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing of the chapter of which I was a part was dominated by the leading authors – as might be expected. The team members from the developing countries (including myself) were made to feel welcome and accepted as part of the team. In reality we were out of our intellectual depth as meaningful contributors to the process.) &lt;em&gt;Despite this, I am not suggesting that the process of including developing country scientists should be changed – from a point of view of strengthening scientific community, the learning experience of participating in high level science, and from the point of view of political legitimacy, the process of inclusiveness has great value to the IPCC.&lt;/em&gt; [the part in italics was excluded by McKitrick]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next issue McKitrick has is with the number of authors who were also associated with the World Wildlife Fund's &amp;quot;Climate Witness campaign&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It strains credulity to suppose that this overlap is mere coincidence. A more&#xA;credible explanation is that scientists who openly ally themselves with&#xA;environmentalist organizations like Greenpeace and the WWF thereby&#xA;increase their likelihood of being recruited to serve as IPCC Lead Authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;McKitrick here simply confuses correlation with causation: he immediately leaps to a conclusion that being associated with the WWF causes IPCC authorships, completely ignoring the possibility that, for example, being a top expert in the field would increase your chances of being an attractive recruit to both the IPCC and WWF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next section concerns the various stages of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20181102154650/http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IPCC review process&lt;/a&gt;. First, the lead authors and coordinating lead authors write a first draft. This draft is sent out for expert review, and the comments are used to prepare the second draft. The second draft is reviewed by governments and experts, and the comments used to prepare a final draft. This final draft is now subject to &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20181105092611/http://www.ipcc.ch:80/pdf/ipcc-principles/ipcc-principles-appendix-a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;acceptance&lt;/a&gt; by the appropriate working group. The authors must also work with the review editors; they play a role similar to that of peer reviewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;McKitrick ignores the existence of the working group sessions and the role of the review editors at this stage; his next few examples (3.1-3.5) are based on the assertion that the final draft goes unreviewed. This is false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, McKitrick discusses figure 2.21 from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170109022631/http://www.grida.no:80/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/pdf/TAR-02.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Third Assessment Report&lt;/a&gt;. In this, he claims that post-1960 data was deleted from Briffa's reconstruction (see below) in order to mask the &amp;quot;divergence problem&amp;quot; known to affect tree ring temperature proxies in the latter half of the 20th century. McKitrick cites a number of climategate emails, claiming that they relate to the divergence problem.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/S3l30.gif&quot; alt=&quot;IPCC TAR WG1 Figure 2.21, final*&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as was revealed on &lt;a href=&quot;https://deepclimate.org/2009/12/11/mcintyre-provides-fodder-for-skeptics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deep Climate&lt;/a&gt;, this is not correct. The emails were very selectively quoted to imply that the discussion was about the divergence problem, when actually they concerned discrepancies between the reconstructions during the 17th and 19th centuries. Removing the late-20th century data would not have &amp;quot;fixed&amp;quot; that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, McIntyre (in the post referenced by McKitrick) quotes Climategate email &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.motheyes.com/uploads/mckitrick/0938018124.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;0938018124.txt&lt;/a&gt;, sent by Michael Mann to Keith Briffa, Chris Folland, and Phil Jones. The relevant paragraphs are below, with the parts that McIntyre choose to include in italics. I have also added bold for emphasis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I am perfectly amenable to keeping Keith's series in the plot&lt;/strong&gt;, and can ask Ian Macadam (Chris?) to add it to the plot he has been  preparing (nobody liked my own color/plotting conventions so I've given up doing this myself). The key thing is making sure the series are vertically aligned in a reasonable way. I had been using the entire 20th century, but in the case of Keith's, we need to align the first half of the 20th century w/ the corresponding mean&#xA;values of the other series, due to the late 20th century decline. [&lt;strong&gt;Jivlain: This email was sent before Briffa's 2000 paper was published. Here, Mann explicitly wants to keep Briffa's 1999 data in the IPCC report, including the part that diverges from the instrumental record&lt;/strong&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if Chris and Tom (?) are ok with this, &lt;strong&gt;I would be happy to add Keith's series&lt;/strong&gt;. That having been said, it does raise a conundrum: We demonstrate (through comparining an exatropical averaging of our nothern hemisphere patterns with Phil's more extratropical series) that the major discrepancies between Phil's and our series can be explained in terms of spatial sampling/latitudinal emphasis (seasonality seems to be secondary here, but probably explains much of the residual differences). But that explanation certainly can't rectify why &lt;em&gt;Keith's series&lt;/em&gt;, which has similar seasonality and latitudinal emphasis to Phil's series, &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;differs in large part in exactly the opposite direction that Phil's does from ours&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; [&lt;strong&gt;Jivlain: You can see the original draft of the graph (using Briffa 1999) below. You can see that both Briffa's and Phil Jones' data differ from Mann's data, during the 17th and 19th centuries, in the opposite direction. In the late 20th century, Jones' data is consistent with Mann's.&lt;/strong&gt;] &lt;em&gt;This is the problem we all problem we all picked up on (everyone in the room at IPCC was in agreement that this was a problem and a potential distraction/detraction from the reasonably concensus viewpoint we'd like to show w/ the Jones et al and Mann et al series.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So, if we show Keith's series in this plot, we have to comment that &amp;quot;something else&amp;quot; is responsible for the discrepancies in this case. Perhaps Keith can help us out a bit by explaining the processing that went into the series and the &lt;strong&gt;potential factors that might lead to it being &amp;quot;warmer&amp;quot; than the Jones et al and Mann et al series??&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; [&lt;strong&gt;Jivlain: Briffa's series is warmer in the 17th and 19th centuries, and colder in the late 20th century. Again, it's clear that they are discussing the 17th and 19th centuries here&lt;/strong&gt;] &lt;em&gt;We would need to put in a few words in this regard. Otherwise, the skeptics have an  field day casting doubt on our ability to understand the factors that influence these estimates and, thus, can undermine faith in the paleoestimates. &lt;strong&gt;I don't think that doubt is scientifically justified&lt;/strong&gt;, and I'd hate to be the one to have to give it fodder!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LXnK3.png&quot; alt=&quot;IPCC TAR WG1 Figure 2.21, first draft&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather, between the first draft and final draft, they updated the graph from using the Briffa 1999 reconstruction to using the Briffa's 2000 reconstruction, which superseded his 1999 reconstruction. Briffa's 2000 reconstruction used the &lt;a href=&quot;https://hol.sagepub.com/content/12/6/737.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;more relevant&lt;/a&gt; measurement of ring density rather than width (ring widths are more affected by precipitation as well than density is). The more accurate data in Briffa's 2000 reconstruction brings it more in line with the other reconstructions, which resolved the issues being discussed in the emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However - and here's the catch - Briffa's 2000 reconstruction only ran from 1402-1960. You can get the data &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/treering/reconstructions/n_hem_temp/briffa2001jgr3.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, it's the fourth column. The IPCC report used all of the data in Briffa's 2000 reconstruction, contrary to McKitrick's claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;McKitrick's report is plagued with factual errors, misunderstandings of the IPCC process, and misunderstandings of the data. Of course, that certainly doesn't mean that the IPCC process as it stands is perfect - for example, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20220119143431/http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;InterAcademy Council&lt;/a&gt; review highlighted a number of issues with the IPCC process. I have generally not considered here the points on which McKitrick merely echoed the IAC's review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-09-22T20:08:04.813" LastActivityDate="2022-09-22T20:08:04.813" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7152" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-03T01:07:01.613" Score="20" ViewCount="18382" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that eating greasy foods while drinking or while hungover is good because it helps 'soak up the alcohol'. This is common advice it seems while drinking. Is there any truth to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1892" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2011-12-03T18:11:20.810" LastActivityDate="2017-05-07T16:39:31.493" Title="Does eating greasy foods 'help soak up alcohol'?" Tags="|nutrition|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7154" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-03T15:34:33.083" Score="16" ViewCount="2301" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3805/is-fluoride-in-water-an-industry-waste-product&quot;&gt;Is fluoride in water an industry waste product?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7542/is-water-fluoridation-harmful&quot;&gt;Is water fluoridation harmful?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Mercola is at it again with a new article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/12/03/paul-connett-fluoride.aspx?e_cid=20111203_DNL_art_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;25 Studies Prove This Reduces Your IQ&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Fluoride Action Network is also urging communities to pressure their local water departments to place a warning on the water bill, stating that parents should not use fluoridated water to mix baby formula. In November 2006, the American Dental Association has issued this warning to its members—the dentists—but has failed miserably when it comes to actually warning parents...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;… We now have 25 &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;studies that indicate that fluoride is associated with the lowering of IQ&lt;/a&gt;. A recent study from Ding et.al… [published] in the Journal of Hazardous Materials… found a lowering of IQ at low levels – not moderate, not high levels, (but) low levels...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;They were able to correlate the level of fluoride in the urine, which is a measure of individual exposure to fluoride… there was a very strong linear correlation with lowering of IQ and fluoride concentrations in the urine; very strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;… What parent in their right mind would put the interest of their children's teeth, even if it worked (to swallow fluoride), above the interest of their brains? It's literally a no-brainer isn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;… What Ding et.al showed was that for each one part per million of fluoride in the urine, there was a lowering of IQ by 0.59 IQ points. That doesn't sound much, but when you shift the IQ of the whole population… you will reduce the number of geniuses in your society, and you will increase the number of mentally handicapped. Believe me, in a competitive world, you want all the geniuses that you can get, and you want to minimize the number of children who have to be treated for mental development problems.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link in the quote leads to another Mercola article which claims to amass 24 studies showing reduced IQ correlated with fluoridated water consumption. &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/12/fluoride-and-the-brain-no-margin-of-safety.aspx#_edn12&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;He says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This brings the total to 24 IQ studies that have found exposure to fluoride associated with lowered IQ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a footnote on that quote which leads to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fluoridealert.org/iq-studies.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IQ Studies page on the Fluoride Action Network website&lt;/a&gt;. There are two links there to  &quot;See the 24 published studies reporting an association of reduced IQ with high fluoride exposure.&quot; Both of those links go to the same page as the links themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an example of a study, here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fluoridealert.org/scher/xiang-2003a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a study by Xiang et al.&lt;/a&gt; in which fluoride urinary content was found to correlate with ingested fluoridated water quantities, and then fluoride urinary content was correlated to IQ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any concern to be had with drinking fluoridated water, especially the claim that it leads to reduced IQ in children? Furthermore, the claim is broadcast by Mercola as more or less universal (not just limited to children); is there credibility to fluoride's effects on IQ &lt;em&gt;at any age&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T04:27:58.577" Title="Does consuming fluoridated water reduce IQ?" Tags="|environmental-health|intelligence|fluoride|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7154" CreationDate="2011-12-03T16:50:18.510" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an important point about the concentration of fluoride that Mercola doesn't address. The concentration of fluoride intentionally added to water in the US is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/fact_sheets/engineering/wfadditives.htm&quot;&gt;according to the EPA&lt;/a&gt; between 0.7 - 1.2mg/L:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Optimally fluoridated community water systems add fluoride to a level&#xA;  between 0.7 – 1.2mg/L. Fluoride is sometimes naturally present in&#xA;  water at much higher levels, so the EPA established a Maximum&#xA;  Contaminant Level for fluoride of 4.0 mg/L (parts per million).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the study you picked as example the fluoride levels in the high fluoride group were 2.47±0.79 mg/L and the control levels were 0.36±0.15 mg/L. The amount of fluoride that is added in the US is closer to the control group than the high fluoride group of this study. So you can't just transfer the conclusions of the study to the drinking water in the US, the amount of fluoride is different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I found surprising is that the study didn't spend much effort on eliminating other confounding factors, such as other toxic substances in the drinking water. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalacademies.org/nrc/&quot;&gt;National Research Council&lt;/a&gt; examined those studies in their report &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11571&amp;amp;page=208&quot;&gt;&quot;Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA's Standards&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The significance of these Chinese studies is uncertain. Most of the&#xA;  papers were brief reports and omitted important procedural details.&#xA;  For example, some studies used a modification of the Raven Progressive&#xA;  Matrix test but did not specify what the modifications were or&#xA;  describe how the test was administered. Most of the studies did not&#xA;  indicate whether the IQ tests were administered in a blinded manner.&#xA;  Some of the effects noted in the studies could have been due to stress&#xA;  induced by the testing conditions. Without detailed information about&#xA;  the testing conditions and the tests themselves, the committee was&#xA;  unable to assess the strength of the studies. Despite this, the&#xA;  consistency of the collective results warrants additional research on&#xA;  the effects of fluoride on intelligence in populations that share&#xA;  similar languages, backgrounds, socioeconomic levels, and other&#xA;  commonalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the existing studies don't seem to be good enough to come to a conclusion yet. And the level of fluoride they examined is significantly higher than the level that is added to drinking water in the US. Those studies don't provide sufficient evidence to conclude that the fluoridated drinking water would have an effect on the IQ of children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-12-03T16:50:18.510" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7159" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-04T16:34:18.580" Score="31" ViewCount="3616" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3167/do-condoms-have-large-enough-holes-for-hiv-to-pass-through&quot;&gt;Do condoms have large enough holes for HIV to pass through?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back in Mar 2009, Pope Benedict XVI visited Africa and stated that condom use was not the answer to Africa's HIV/AIDS problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29734328/ns/world_news-africa/t/pope-condoms-not-answer-aids-fight/#.TtuYq3NSlZM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MSNBC: Pope: Condoms not the answer in AIDS fight&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/17/pope-africa-condoms-aids&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian: Pope claims condoms could make African Aids crisis worse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For quotes, this is from the MSNBC article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms,&quot; the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane heading to Yaounde. &quot;On the contrary, it increases the problem.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this from the Guardian:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The pontiff, speaking to journalists on his flight, said the condition was &quot;a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I get that the Catholic stance of monogamy and non-premarital sex &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; certainly reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS; what I'm skeptical about is that distribution of condoms would &lt;em&gt;aggravate&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; the problem. Some claim that the pope was right -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702825.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Washington Post: Condoms, HIV-AIDS and Africa - The Pope Was Right&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2003, Norman Hearst and Sanny Chen of the University of California conducted a condom effectiveness study for the United Nations' AIDS program and found no evidence of condoms working as a primary HIV-prevention measure in Africa... Since then, major articles in other peer-reviewed journals such as the Lancet, Science and BMJ have confirmed that condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has increased condom distribution led to an increase in the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, some sub-questions might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has condom use been shown definitively to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS (compared to non-condom use situations)? (This seems obvious, but it might still be helpful)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the cause of the rise or plateau of infection rates to do with condoms themselves or usage rates that are too low?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put one last way, if condoms were universally available and used at a very high rate, would we see a decrease in HIV/AIDS transmission rates?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to circulate around quite a bit (that the pope was right and that making condoms available has actually increased the problem, perhaps because condoms themselves don't work), especially amongst Catholics; I thought it might be helpful to disambiguate what's actually going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T16:14:14.087" Title="Has condom distribution increased the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa?" Tags="|catholic-church|hiv-aids|condoms|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7160" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7201" CreationDate="2011-12-04T23:53:10.333" Score="17" ViewCount="1602" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is widely believed that sperm counts in men are suffering a significant decline over the last century (e.g. see this article in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/out-for-the-count-why-levels-of-sperm-in-men-are-falling-1954149.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Independent&lt;/a&gt; which assumes the decline is happening and the only issue is the cause; or see this paper with a similar theme from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ispub.com/journal/the-internet-journal-of-urology/volume-2-number-1/the-sperm-count-has-been-decreasing-steadily-for-many-years-in-western-industrialised-countries-is-there-an-endocrine-basis-for-this-decrease.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Internet Journal of Urology&lt;/a&gt;). Not everyone believes (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthland.time.com/2011/06/07/no-decline-in-sperm-counts-after-all-danish-data-show/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). Other questions on skeptics.SE have discussed the possible causes (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4847/does-riding-a-bicycle-reduce-sperm-count-male-fertility&quot;&gt;Does riding a bicycle reduce sperm count/male fertility?&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3703/does-frequent-cell-phone-use-reduce-the-sperm-count-of-men&quot;&gt;Does frequent cell phone use reduce the sperm count of men?&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1167/does-using-a-laptop-on-your-lap-lower-your-sperm-count&quot;&gt;Does using a laptop on your lap lower your sperm count?&lt;/a&gt; ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But sperm counts are known to be very very variable among different people and even in across time in individuals (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenewjerseymaleinfertilitycenter.com/d_sperm_count.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2068613/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;old BMJ article&lt;/a&gt;). Given this variability can we be sure that declines are statistically meaningful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is: &lt;strong&gt;given the known variability, can we be confident that sperm counts are really declining?&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2021-06-06T17:02:07.723" Title="Are sperm counts in men decreasing significantly?" Tags="|medical-science|human-reproduction|fertility|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7164" CreationDate="2011-12-05T01:31:22.750" Score="5" ViewCount="5171" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some people who take &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_thistle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;milk thistle&lt;/a&gt; to offset or repair the liver damage caused by chronic alcoholism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/389640-milk-thistle-alcoholism/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Milk thistle and silymarin are commonly used in the United States and Europe to treat liver disease caused by chronic alcoholism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How It Works&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The silymarin in milk thistle contains a group of flavonoids, which includes silibinin, silidianin and silicristin. These compounds are believed to repair liver cells that have been damaged by chronic exposure to alcohol. The silymarin may also protect new liver cells from damage caused by the toxins in alcohol. The anti-inflammatory properties of milk thistle can also reduce liver inflammation caused by alcohol abuse, referred to as alcoholic hepatitis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But also&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many studies show evidence that milk thistle may improve the liver function and increase survival rate in those with cirrhosis caused by alcoholism. MayoClinic.com notes that most of these studies are poorly designed and more research is necessary before definitive statements about the use of milk thistle for cirrhosis treatment can be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we have any definite evidence/studies either way yet about the effects of milk thistle on the progression of alcohol induced liver disease?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-12-05T16:46:11.567" Title="Does milk thistle prevent liver damage in alcoholics?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|alcohol|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7152" CreationDate="2011-12-05T14:32:50.737" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found the following paper on PubMed - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1705129/&quot;&gt;Observations on the relation between alcohol absorption and the rate of gastric emptying&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alcohol (ethanol) is absorbed slowly from the stomach and rapidly from the small intestine, and the rate of its absorption depends on the rate of gastric emptying. When gastric emptying is fast, the absorption of alcohol is fast. When gastric emptying is slow the absorption of alcohol is delayed and peak blood alcohol concentrations are reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A delay in alcohol absorption is&#xA;  noted when alcohol is ingested&#xA;  along with most foods, especially&#xA;  fatty or heavy, solid, proteinaceous&#xA;  meals, which are known to retard&#xA;  the gastric emptying rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So most food and fatty food in particular will slow down alcohol absorption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2011-12-05T14:32:50.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7161" CreationDate="2011-12-05T14:41:54.487" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The scientific evidence for benefits of milk thistle for liver damage is non-existent or poor.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the evidence seem contradictory from multiple studies, a good way of resolving it is with a meta-study. Fortunately, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (a fantastic resource!) has a meta-study on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rambaldi A, Jacobs BP, Gluud C. &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD003620/no-evidence-supporting-or-refuting-milk-thistle-for-alcoholic-andor-hepatitis-b-or-c-virus-liver-diseases&quot;&gt;Milk thistle for alcoholic and/or hepatitis B or C virus liver diseases&lt;/a&gt;. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2007, Issue 4. Art. No.: CD003620. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD003620.pub3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aside: The dates of this study are confusing: It was published on-line in 2009 from a 2007 Journal.  Assessed as still up to date on January 14, 2005. It was originally based on literature search in December 2003. It is hard to see if this is actually up-to-date research. I did a very perfunctory search for newer articles, and didn't see anything that looked relevant.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They looked at research on liver damage from both alcohol and hepatotoxic viruses (such as Hepatitis B &amp;amp; C).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, they found a lot of the trials were of poor quality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The methodological quality was low: only 23% of the trials reported adequate allocation concealment and only 46% were considered adequately double-blinded&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found &lt;strong&gt;no significant effect on mortality, complications of liver disease nor liver histology&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They did find that :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Liver-related mortality was significantly reduced by milk thistle in all trials (RR 0.50, 95% CI 0.29 to 0.88), but not in high-quality trials (RR 0.57, 95% CI 0.28 to 1.19).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They concluded more &lt;em&gt;high-quality&lt;/em&gt; research is needed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our results question the beneficial effects of milk thistle for patients with alcoholic and/or hepatitis B or C virus liver diseases and highlight the lack of high-quality evidence to support this intervention. Adequately conducted and reported randomised clinical trials on milk thistle versus placebo are needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-12-05T16:46:11.567" LastActivityDate="2011-12-05T16:46:11.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7165" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-05T19:22:24.420" Score="22" ViewCount="1406" Body="&lt;p&gt;A claim I heard last night from a &quot;chastity expert&quot; was that about 50% of teens who self reported as homosexual ceased self reporting as homosexual sometime in their twenties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Standing and saying &quot;citation needed&quot; to her would have been satisfying, but socially inappropriate. Does anyone recognize this as an actual study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4342" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2011-12-05T23:34:43.447" LastActivityDate="2022-09-20T20:26:50.860" Title="Do 50% of self reported homosexual teens no longer self report as homosexual by their twenties?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7165" CreationDate="2011-12-06T01:11:24.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Partial answer only, to help others give a better answer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One question that is raised here is whether teens give accurate answers in surveys. One possible measure of inaccuracy is &amp;quot;test/retest&amp;quot; inconsistency. That is, if you ask the same person the same question again, do you get the same answer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-005-9006-2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Test–Retest Reliability of Self-Reported Sexual Behavior, Sexual Orientation, and Psychosexual Milestones Among Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Youths&lt;/a&gt; Eric W. Schrimshaw, Margaret Rosario, Heino F. L. Meyer-Bahlburg and Alice A. Scharf-Matlick, ARCHIVES OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOR, Volume 35, Number 2, 220-229, 2006. DOI: 10.1007/s10508-005-9006-2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They asked 64 youths (aged 14-21) recruited from GLB-focussed organisations about their sexual identity  twice, two weeks apart, and compared the answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found sexual identity had &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohen%27s_kappa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cohen's Kappa&lt;/a&gt; value of 0.89, which is a strong indication that they got very similar results - but not identical ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-20T20:26:50.860" LastActivityDate="2022-09-20T20:26:50.860" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8332" CreationDate="2011-12-06T03:37:35.243" Score="34" ViewCount="8380" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found the following statement on an &lt;a href=&quot;http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2011/03/feminism-101-helpful-hints-for-dudes.html&quot;&gt;article of feminism&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you know who think all men are rapists? Rapists do. They really do. In psychological study, the profiling, the studies, it comes out again and again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do studies support that a significantly higher percentage of convicted or self-reported rapists think it is common to practice rape, in comparison to non-rapists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-12-11T09:23:33.277" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T20:59:07.900" Title="Do rapists think rape is normal?" Tags="|psychology|criminology|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="598" CreationDate="2011-12-06T08:53:54.510" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statensmedierad.se/Om-Statens-medierad/In-English/&quot;&gt;The Swedish Media Council&lt;/a&gt; released &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statensmedierad.se/Publikationer/Produkter/Valdsamma-datorspel-och-aggression/&quot;&gt;a report reviewing the state of the research&lt;/a&gt; in Swedish, I've summarized and translated below. There is also an article published in English over on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelocal.se/37756/20111206/&quot;&gt;the local&lt;/a&gt;. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statensmedierad.se/upload/_pdf/Statens_medierad_Sammanfattning_Valdsamma_datorspel.pdf&quot;&gt;the summarized version&lt;/a&gt; of the report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Swedish Media Council&lt;/em&gt; has gone through research databases and gathered studies on violent videogames effects on aggression that has been published in international research journals in the period 2000-2011. Literature searches resulted in 161 papers that contained 106 unique empirical studies. The remaining 55 studies contained of metastusdies, research overviews, scientifical debate [not sure what the correct translation of &lt;em&gt;vetenskapliga debattartiklar&lt;/em&gt; is], methodological critiques or comments to other papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some key findings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;67% of the studies are done in the lab and do report increased aggression, but only 7% measured aggression before and after. The measured effect remains for 4-30 minutes, and it's unknown if there's long term effects.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;22% are done via questionnaires where it's a 50/50 split if there's an increase or not, with the ones showing no effect being more thorough.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;11% are longitudinal (usually questionares) with 11 of 12 reporting on increased aggression, but only 3 of them gathered backgrounds data like family conditions and general psychological well being.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report raises 3 main issues with the research showing that agression is linked to violent video games:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The studies measure agression by judging it on a persons agressive feelings, thoughts, associations and attitudes. But the report stat that the link between those things and a manifestation of agression is lacking empirical support.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's not clear from the research if the people would react in the same way when they are outside of a laboratory setting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The research fails to take in relevant background information and the studies show that the inclination to play violent video games and agressive behavior both depend on things like a bad family situation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does say that there is a statistical correlation between violent video games and agression, but that it's not a causal one explaining, in reviewing the conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's more common for the research to show that violent video games cause agression, but there are severe methodological problems with this research, and therefore it has not been proven.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That violent video games would cause agression in people that have this tendency already hasn't been explored deep enough to be conclusive in any way. The studies that show this can be interpreted this way as well as 3, 4.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The inverted causality that agressive people play violent video games has been shown thoroughly in the research.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other factors like family conditions cause both agression and playing violent video games has been shown in the research that explores this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion they comment that 8 other meta studies has been published by (non-Swedish) government agencies and independent research organizations in the 21th-century and that this one is in line with the previous ones. They also state that while the research doesn't show that this effect is not proof that it's not there at all. However if there is an effect then it would be a really small one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-12-06T15:16:57.047" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T15:16:57.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7171" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7179" CreationDate="2011-12-06T16:47:29.837" Score="9" ViewCount="2931" Body="&lt;p&gt;Watching CBS morning news on December 6, 2011, it was claimed a way to reduce heavy metal consumption (especially inorganic arsenic) was to buy organic food. the CBS website has the clip &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7390757n&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, the claim is made at 2:30.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any proof organic farming methods produce food with fewer heavy metals than conventional farming methods? Additionally, any information on the requirements for a farm to be classified as organic would be helpful. Does prior soil contamination matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5339" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2011-12-12T11:14:14.660" LastActivityDate="2014-03-14T01:47:53.503" Title="Does organic food have less heavy metal contamination than non-organic food?" Tags="|environmental-health|agriculture|organic-food|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7175" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-06T19:42:18.033" Score="3" ViewCount="327" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question was spawned as the result of a comment on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7167/do-rapists-widely-believe-that-it-is-common-for-men-to-be-rapists&quot;&gt;another question&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am sure there are a number of jokes {about rape}! I am not so sure&#xA;  that they are told so commonly to make any difference to the rapists&#xA;  though. Also, there are a number of Jew jokes--possibly many more than&#xA;  rape jokes. Does this make anti-Semites feel that it is socially&#xA;  accepted to be racist or even that &quot;everybody is a racist&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that these sorts of displays of at least quasi-acceptance of anti-social behaviors leads perpetrators to believe that their acts are acceptable and common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T00:05:28.610" Title="Does perceived peer acceptance have any significant influence on adult anti-social behavior?" Tags="|psychology|sociology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7176" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-06T20:26:35.963" Score="1" ViewCount="703" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Layoffs too often became permanent, not part of the business cycle. And these changes didn't just affect blue collar workers. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs and the internet,&quot; President Obama said at a campaign event in Kansas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/12/06/obama_now_blames_the_internet_for_job_losses.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Real Clear Politics&lt;/a&gt;, December 6, 2011]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there were some industries (travel agents) that were virtually destroyed by their failure to adapt and compete with internet sites.  But that was 10 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been a significant number of jobs lost as a result of automation and Internet availability in the last 3-4 years? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-12-07T02:21:35.030" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T02:21:35.030" Title="Has the internet caused significant job losses since 2008?" Tags="|united-states|politics|employment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7176" CreationDate="2011-12-06T21:32:27.043" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/5554&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://htttp://www.americanprogress.org&quot;&gt;Center for American Progress&lt;/a&gt; comes to approximately that conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although the U.S. labor market will almost surely rebound&#xA;  from the Great Recession, this paper presents a somewhat&#xA;  disheartening picture of its longer-term evolution. Rising&#xA;  demand for highly educated workers, combined with lagging&#xA;  supply, is contributing to higher levels of earnings inequality.&#xA;  Demand for middle-skill jobs is declining, and consequently,&#xA;  workers that do not obtain postsecondary education face a&#xA;  contracting set of job opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/16990700&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; from The Economist summarizes the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if it counts for much, but you can see that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=united%20states%20gdp%20last%205%20years&quot;&gt;GDP has recovered in the last 5 years&lt;/a&gt; while (clearly) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=united%20states%20unemployment%20from%202007%20to%202011&quot;&gt;unemployment has not&lt;/a&gt; and the logical conclusion to draw is that companies have found ways to make the smaller workforce generate even more product.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Warning: some opinion ahead) The trend over the last ~150 years has been to do this via automation, but I would also expect there's some real or implied threats to the existing labor force in many industries to work harder or else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4415" LastActivityDate="2011-12-06T21:32:27.043" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7171" CreationDate="2011-12-07T04:56:59.690" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first question was to define what organic farming means. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/agriculture/torg.html&quot;&gt;definition&lt;/a&gt; given by the United States Environmental Protection Agency is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Organically grown&quot; food is food grown and processed using no synthetic fertilizers or pesticides. Pesticides derived from natural sources (such as biological pesticides) may be used in producing organically grown food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most places organic food is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic_certification&quot;&gt;certified&lt;/a&gt;, the rules varying by region. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your second question was does organic farming produce food with less heavy metals? The answer is no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408690490911846&quot;&gt;Organic Food: Buying More Safety or Just Peace of Mind? A Critical Review of the Literature&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Faidon Magkos, Fotini Arvaniti, Antonis Zampelas&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Vol. 46, Iss. 1, 2007&#xA;&lt;br&gt;[Emphasis mine]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chemical contaminants in food that result from general environmental pollution [cadmium (Cd), mercury, copper, arsenic, zinc, lead, dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), radioactive nuclides, OCPs] are also potent and may pose serious acute and/or chronic health risks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is generally accepted that persistent pollutants in the soil such as chlorinated hydrocarbons and certain heavy metals cannot be avoided through organic farming practices.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;most studies indicate similar levels of contamination by these pollutants in a variety of both organic and conventional food products; where differences have shown up, they don't consistently give the edge to either type of food (Lecerf, 1995; Woese et al., 1997; Worthington, 2001; Slanina, 1995; Kumpulainen, 2001; Jorhem and Slanina, 2000; Malmauret et al., 2002). It may be that the variability within a given crop is greater than the variability between one cultivation system and another (Jorhem and Slanina, 2000).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02652030210123878&quot;&gt;Contaminants in organic and conventional foodstuffs in France&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;L. Malmauret, D. Parent-Massin, J.-L. Hardy, P. Verger&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Food Additives and Contaminants&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Vol. 19, Iss. 6, 2010&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The aim was to compare the levels of contamination in organic and conventional raw materials. To this end, the level of contamination by heavy metals (lead, cadmium, arsenic, mercury), nitrates and nitrites, and some mycotoxins were monitored. Fifteen products were tested in their organic and conventional forms, including meat, milk, eggs, vegetables and cereals. The median levels of contamination were calculated and compared with the recommended or regulated maximum levels. The maximum levels were exceeded for lead in organic carrots and buckwheat, and in conventional wheat; for cadmium, in both organic and conventional buckwheat; for nitrates, in organic spinach; and for patulin in organic apples. Moreover, contamination of both conventional and organic wheat by deoxynivalenol was observed with a higher level in organic products. However, the health risk for consumers might be real only for the contamination by mycotoxins as the contaminated foods (apples, wheat) are the main contributors to total exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2011-12-07T05:03:25.750" LastActivityDate="2011-12-07T05:03:25.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12399" CreationDate="2011-12-07T15:32:00.887" Score="30" ViewCount="5765" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim was made on &lt;a href=&quot;https://parenting.stackexchange.com/a/3594/420&quot;&gt;parenting.se&lt;/a&gt; that &quot;not so long ago, babies were operated on without anaesthetic &lt;strong&gt;because they weren't considered 'conscious' enough to feel pain&quot;.*&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Google search revealed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/019930.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://ask.metafilter.com/148494/Babies-surgery-and-no-aenthesia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;other&lt;/a&gt; references to this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard of circumcisions being done without anesthesia, but was it common practice (say, &gt; 25% of the time) to perform other types of surgical procedures on babies without using an anesthesia, and was the rationale really that children that age weren't &quot;conscious enough&quot; to understand pain?  For a target time period, let's say anytime since anesthesia became widely available (for argument's sake, about 10 years after the introduction of medical anesthetic, or 1860 on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-09-30T23:00:23.937" LastActivityDate="2017-09-30T23:00:23.937" Title="Was it common to perform surgeries on babies without anesthesia because doctors felt they weren't &quot;conscious enough to feel pain&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|history|perception|consciousness|circumcision|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7183" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7197" CreationDate="2011-12-07T16:37:47.803" Score="13" ViewCount="1994" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently on Dec. 1st a video camera on board a NASA satelite captured &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/6X96xI1gLdQ?hd=1&quot;&gt;a &quot;UFO&quot; during a solar flare, near Mercury&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;skip ahead to 33 seconds for the relevant footage&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it an alien spaceship?  The shape is kind of odd looking, similar to the Enterprise of popular fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2636" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:40:57.407" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:40:57.407" Title="Did NASA's STEREO spacecraft capture an image of a cloaked UFO near Mercury?" Tags="|astronomy|ufo|nasa|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7184" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-07T17:02:16.853" Score="6" ViewCount="1031" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently come across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-parenting/post/drinking-and-parenting-a-good-time-or-a-problem/2011/12/06/gIQA62abaO_blog.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; that implies that the popularity of wine in conjunction with parenting is resulting in more mothers developing alcohol problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“So many women I know started drinking more after they have kids,” said Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, the blogger and author who has admitted publicly to an alcohol addiction. She was the unofficial keynote of the event, hosted by The Century Council to discuss their new report on women and drunken-driving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wine, preferably white, sometimes sparkling, is something of a given when mothers get together these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s the ‘mommy culture’ now. It’s dropping the kids off at ballet to go across the street to meet a friend for a few glasses of wine… It reconnects us to our fun old selves and it’s how we deal with the stress&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The focus of the article is about the role of alcohol in modern mothering, and its negative influences in particular.  Much of the material revolves around one &lt;a href=&quot;http://stefaniewildertaylor.com/category/dont-get-drunk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;specific blogger/author&lt;/a&gt; who discovered that she had developed an alcohol problem due to her reliance upon it as a coping mechanism for the stress of being a parent, and her feeling that this was a growing trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, a review of &quot;mommy blogs&quot; does turn up some notable examples of the prominence of alcohol, particularly wine: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.divinesecretsofadomesticdiva.com/about/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.morningsidemom.com/2009/07/01/mommys-juice-box/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amothershood.com/2010/09/mommys-juice-box/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an attempt to provide supporting evidence, the article also makes the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study found that the number of women arrested for impaired driving jumped 36 percent in the last decade. Women now account for almost a quarter of drunken driving arrests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Followed by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The report does not delve much into the current climate of drinking while parenting beyond noting that the profile of the “average” female arrestee is in her 30s, better educated and more likely than male drunken drivers (or the general population) to suffer from anxiety and/or depression. &lt;em&gt;In other words, she looks like many mothers&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been any studies showing a growing trend in an increase of the rate of alcohol abuse in mothers?  As I expect this to vary considerably due to culture, any study showing a general increase of alcohol abuse in mothers regardless of geographic area would be acceptable (although one covering North America would be preferred, as it is the area relevant to the article).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="3451" LastEditDate="2011-12-08T15:14:06.720" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T04:10:30.053" Title="Can the current trends in 'mommy social culture' be tied to an increase in alcohol abuse?" Tags="|alcohol|parenting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7188" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-08T09:37:23.717" Score="26" ViewCount="2351" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/0,1518,802310,00.html&quot;&gt;article in the german magazine &quot;Der Spiegel&quot; about a recent study claiming that  40% of all cancers are preventable&lt;/a&gt;. The article states specifically that one of the factors is the consumption of red meat:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Der Mangel an Früchten und Gemüse sowie der übermäßige Verzehr von&#xA;  Fleisch und Salz sollen für mehr als neun Prozent aller Krebsfälle&#xA;  verantwortlich sein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translated to english this passage reads as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lack of fruit and vegetables as well as the excessive consumption of meat and salt are claimed to be responsible for more than nine percent of cancer cases&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I knew that meat consumption is said to contribute to some health conditions, but I haven't heard about the association with cancer yet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there solid scientific evidence to link the consumption of meat with a higher risk for developing cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T11:35:54.460" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T11:35:54.460" Title="Does eating meat increase your risk for cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|cancer|epidemiology|meat|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7188" CreationDate="2011-12-08T12:00:59.243" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;To briefly answer your question: meat consumption is correlated with some cancers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Medical studies involving statistics look at &lt;em&gt;correlation&lt;/em&gt;, not &lt;em&gt;causation&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the answer to the question &lt;em&gt;Is a vegetarian (vegan) diet more healthy?&lt;/em&gt;, I cited an epidemiological study that may be found in Am J Clin Nutr September 1988 vol. 48 no. 3 739-748 (which you may &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/48/3/739.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;read in full&lt;/a&gt;. It compares a large number (n=27,529) of Seventh-Day Adventists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Within this population, meat&#xA;  consumption was positively associated&#xA;  with mortality because of all causes&#xA;  of death combined (in males), coronary&#xA;  heart disease (in males and females),&#xA;  and diabetes (in males). Egg&#xA;  consumption was positively associated&#xA;  with mortality because of all causes&#xA;  combined (in females), and cancers of&#xA;  the colon (in males and females&#xA;  combined) and ovary. Milk consumption&#xA;  was positively associated only with&#xA;  prostate cancer mortality, and cheese&#xA;  consumption did not have a clear&#xA;  relationship with any cause of death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please look at my answer at &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/2058/1403&quot;&gt;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/2058/1403&lt;/a&gt;, where I deal with the math (a little) and describe the differences between correlation and causation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1403" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-12-08T13:56:12.120" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7188" CreationDate="2011-12-08T13:50:18.503" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article in Der Spiegel (and this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16031149&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;very similar article&lt;/a&gt; on the BBC website) are based on this study in the British Journal of Cancer - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v105/n2s/full/bjc2011489a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The fraction of cancer attributable to lifestyle and environmental factors in the UK in 2010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the study eating meat is a risk factor, although other factors (e.g. smoking) are more significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7KKHa.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Number and percentage of cancer cases in the UK attributable to different exposures.&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2011-12-08T13:50:18.503" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7194" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-08T21:21:04.380" Score="9" ViewCount="736" Body="&lt;p&gt;A female friend recently commented that women should never self diagnose yeast infections because if they don't actually have one and proceed with some kind of treatment, some kind of resistance will be built up which will reduce effective treatment in the event of a real future infection. I was a little surprised by this and went searching. Here's a similar sentiment on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.msu.edu/user/eisthen/yeast/&quot;&gt;this Michagan State page (unofficial looking blogish thing)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many wimmin (&lt;em&gt;sic&lt;/em&gt;, women) assume that every vulvar or vaginal itch they have is due to a yeast infection, and run out to fill their crotches full of powerful antifungal creams. But sometimes it isn't really a yeast infection. The problem is that when you expose your naturally-occuring vaginal yeast to these drugs, some of the yeast may be resistant. Only the resistant ones thrive and multiply and then next time you get a yeast infection, you've got a crotch full of drug-resistant yeast, and you can't just run to the pharmacy and shell out $20 for a cure; you have to go to a doctor and get something much stronger. As much as 25-30% of yeast infections may now be resistant to over-the-counter treatments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This variant of the claim seems to segregate &quot;naturally-occurring&quot; yeast and... only-during-infection-occurring yeast. I was skeptical that this differentiation should matter. Yeast are yeast. The article goes on to draw parallels with people not finishing penicillin prescriptions and thus creating resistance, however we're not talking about taking a partial treatment and then stopping -- that introduces another potential cause to this phenomenon. I want to know if a fully followed treatment during lack of an actual yeast infection would build some type of resistance to future treatment during a real infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the claim speaks for itself, but to reiterate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Will using yeast infection treatment in the absence of an actual yeast infection lead to increased resistance of some sort in the event of a future yeast infection?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If so, approximately how many &quot;false treatments&quot; are needed to produce this effect?&lt;/strong&gt; (My female friend seemed to think it was only once. I had a hard time imagining this.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T23:47:21.573" LastActivityDate="2016-03-15T02:27:00.977" Title="Will taking yeast infection medication build resistance if one doesn't have a yeast infection?" Tags="|physiology|infection|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7184" CreationDate="2011-12-08T22:27:52.003" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-parenting/post/drinking-and-parenting-a-good-time-or-a-problem/2011/12/06/gIQA62abaO_blog.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the article&lt;/a&gt; carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First let's note that the article is in the Lifestyle section. Such articles are not expected to be up to the journalistic standards of the news section of a newspaper. They are essentially entertainment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article states several things as 'fact' without backing them up in any way. Phrases like &quot;modern parents’ embrace of wine-accompanied playdates&quot; are stated without backup, except for abstract references to Facebook and Twitter postings (the links behind those words just go to the homepage of the service - don't bother following them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bulk of the article deals exclusively with the writings of &lt;a href=&quot;http://stefaniewildertaylor.com/category/dont-get-drunk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stefanie Wilder-Taylor&lt;/a&gt;. Wilder-Taylor describes herself as &quot;writer and comedian&quot;, and her only publications are books of humour (ironically humour related to parenting). She appears in this article because of her decision to come out as an alcoholic parent, and because she collects stores from other alcoholic parents on her blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point here is that everything we have seen is anecdotal. Wilder-Taylor appears to be an intelligent, honest, responsible person doing a great job in recounting the dangers of alcoholism, especially while parenting. But nothing she has written in any way indicates that alcoholism (or even drinking) among parents is rising. To her, and plenty of others, it is a significant problem, and she is entirely right to talk about it. But we can't assume that the issue is on the rise just because of that. Wilder-Taylor certainly implies that her alcoholic intake was increased by the 'mommy' events she attended, and that may well be true in her case. Other people may find that work, or sporting events, or loneliness, are their trigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final point, the one scientific study quoted looks at the rise of drink-driving convictions among women, but says nothing whatsoever about the parental status of those women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-12-09T04:10:30.053" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T04:10:30.053" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7196" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-09T03:14:46.513" Score="16" ViewCount="9804" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a fairly common movie trope that when someone is being chased by dogs they will run through water to &quot;lose their scent&quot; and the dogs will no longer be able to follow the trail of the one pursued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is true to a degree, a sub question would be if it's possible to &quot;re-pickup the scent&quot; by tracing the perimeter of the body of water. In other words, is it just the connectivity of the trail that's broken, or is the scent lost for good during this particular pursuit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:31:20.213" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:31:20.213" Title="Will running through water &quot;lose one's scent&quot; when being tracked by dogs?" Tags="|dogs|forensics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7183" CreationDate="2011-12-09T14:50:10.490" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's not an alien spaceship. It's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=23471&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ghost image of where Mercury was positioned the previous day&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to NRL's Russ Howard, head scientist, and Nathan Rich, lead ground systems engineer, the mystery UFO is actually Mercury itself. It is simply a ghost of where Mercury was positioned the previous day, and was visible due to the way raw HI-1 telescope data is processed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Howard and Rich explained that NRL scientists typically remove background light when processing such data in order to make the glow of a coronal mass ejection apparent against the bright glare from space. They identify what light is background light by calculating the average amount of light that entered individual camera pixels the day of the event as well as the day before. Light found in the pixels on both days is background light, and is then eliminated from the footage while the rest of the light is enhanced. This process is relatively easy for bodies like stars, but for those that are closer and move, such as planets, the process is a bit more challenging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;When [this averaging process] is done between the previous day and the current day and there is a feature like a planet, this introduces dark (negative) artifacts in the background where the planet was on the previous day, when then show up as bright areas in the enhanced image,&amp;quot; said Rich.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When this footage is reprocessed from a different day, the bright spot disappears due to different pixel values and removed light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-12-09T14:50:10.490" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7200" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-10T01:24:31.590" Score="10" ViewCount="837" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard anecdotes time and time again from people with allergies that their parent ate a lot of the food they're allergic too while pregnant. Is there any known correlation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alright, let's jazz up this question with some sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can Pregnant Moms Give Their Babies a Peanut Allergy? Maybe&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to a new study led by Dr. Scott Sicherer at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, that's a strong possibility. Sicherer found that among 503 infants who showed signs of milk and egg allergies aged three to 15 months, those whose mothers ate peanuts more than twice a week while they were pregnant had higher levels of antibodies to peanuts than those whose mothers ate peanuts less often... Sicherer points out that higher levels of the antibody do not necessarily mean that the babies will definitely become allergic to peanuts, but that it's a strong sign that they might be at greater risk of developing the food allergy. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://healthland.time.com/2010/11/01/can-pregnant-moms-give-their-babies-a-peanut-allergy-maybe/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funny enough, another article had its own twist on this exact same study that made it sound like a sure thing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eating Peanuts During Pregnancy Linked to Peanut Allergies&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This new research study suggests that eating peanuts during pregnancy increases your baby’s risk of developing peanut allergies later in life. In fact, the more peanuts that a pregnant woman eats in her third trimester, the higher her baby’s risk of being sensitive and possibly allergic to peanuts. To conduct the study, researchers looked at 503 infants, between the ages of 3 and 15 months... [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mypregnancybaby.com/eating-peanuts-during-pregnancy-linked/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funny enough, almost every article finishes with &quot;But the research is mixed, so don't let this news affect your diet while pregnant.&quot; Why the mixed signals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2011-12-12T13:33:14.753" LastActivityDate="2018-01-30T00:03:40.447" Title="Can women give their children certain allergies by eating certain foods while pregnant?" Tags="|pregnancy|allergies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7160" CreationDate="2011-12-10T03:28:25.677" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/12/2635.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; meta-analyis examines 50 years of sperm count data and finds that time is a weak predictor of sperm count. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/toi5n.png&quot; alt=&quot;No Fit&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They fitted a linear (straight) and quadratic (curved) line to the data. Note that in the scatterplots each data point is a study, not an individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our assessment of sperm quality over time leads to the conclusion that neither the linear nor the quadratic model is adequate in describing the data. The linear model suggests a continuous decline (Figure 1) only when more recent reports (Auger et al., 1995; Irvine et al., 1996; Bujan et al., 1996) were excluded in the analysis. The quadratic model, on the other hand, indicates an initial decline followed by a slight increase in sperm count (Figure 2) and more so with the inclusion of the additional European reports (Figure 3). It is therefore possible that additional factors are present in reducing the true effectiveness of these models. An immediate candidate for consideration is demography where political, cultural and industrial influences may have significant implications on sperm quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So they are not ruling out that factors such as stress and industrial pollution that have increased over time &lt;strong&gt;in some regions&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. big cities) are a factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also looked at whether global warming and an increase in a fast food diet might be a factor and found that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The non-uniform nature of the global sperm count change suggested that local variations in pollution, diet but not global warming were important determinants of reproductive health&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5462" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2011-12-12T13:51:54.273" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T13:51:54.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7202" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-10T04:50:31.500" Score="21" ViewCount="2623" Body="&lt;p&gt;Was, &lt;em&gt;Does eating Oily food really has no effect on Acne [breakout]?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been to a lot of doctors for acne problems. None have ever told me to avoid oily food. When I asked, I was repeatedly reassured that oily food has no effect on acne. They say no study has ever found oily food to have an effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are books written on the subject, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1581825749&quot;&gt;The Clear Skin Diet&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0312630778&quot;&gt;Feed Your Face&lt;/a&gt;.  Here is part of a book description of the latter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... even most doctors — will swear that food doesn't affect the skin.  But&#xA;  celebrity dermatologist &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drjessicawu.com/about-dr-wu/&quot;&gt;Dr. Jessica Wu&lt;/a&gt; knows that's just not true ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does eating bad food, cause breakouts?  In other words, will eating right cure your from pimples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="9015" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T20:47:58.297" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T02:58:14.223" Title="Do oily foods have any effect on acne?" Tags="|nutrition|acne|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7183" CreationDate="2011-12-10T05:49:11.647" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is not a cloaked UFO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;em&gt;computer generated&lt;/em&gt; image that was produced in computer software rather unwanted but that is how the software was &lt;em&gt;programmed&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a normal night shot like this, the telescopes will see millions of stars. In fact there will be so many stars that you will not be able to see coronal mass ejection. In order to overcome that Nasa produces two images of the same spot (perhaps a day apart). The two images are overlapped on each other. If the white spots (stars) are exactly on the same place, the software &lt;em&gt;blacks them out&lt;/em&gt;, if no such overlap exists, it leaves it as it is. This is again done to reinforce what we want to see, not what we know is already there. So all the &lt;strong&gt;stars are essentially blacked out&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the two images are overlapped, the mercury has moved from its previous spot so it does not cancel any of its old image. There is some overlap with other stars though perhaps and some of it is blacked out. This is the reason there is this white spaceship which otherwise we could not see but we could see because special effects were used in the software and it is product of the software itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More explanation here, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_t2#/video/bestoftv/2011/12/09/tsr-mysterious-object-near-mercury-mpg.cnn&quot;&gt;CNN Chad Mayer has explained it pretty well&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="4813" LastEditDate="2011-12-10T06:19:43.457" LastActivityDate="2011-12-10T06:19:43.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7183" CreationDate="2011-12-10T07:27:45.937" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, it's not a &quot;video camera&quot; - like most (all?) scientific spacecraft, STEREO can only take still images that can be stitched in a time-lapse movie in post-processing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image is indeed caused by the computer algorithm used for post-processing the images. The SECCHI team published the following explanation on &lt;a href=&quot;http://secchi.nrl.navy.mil/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.FAQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;their website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In these HI-1 images, a daily median is used as the best near-real-time method to get CME enhancement. This results in dark spots from planets such as Mercury. When we derive the background, we do an interpolation between two daily median images. Since we make these images the day we receive them, we do not have a daily median for the next day, just the previous day. When the interpolation is done between the previous day and the current day and there is a feature like a planet, this introduces dark (negative) artifacts in the background where the planet was on the previous day, which then show up as bright areas in the enhanced image. Therefore, if (when) we re-generate these images, the bright artifact will go away because we have a daily median from the next day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please visit the link - the original text contains links that I haven't included here, and the page has an illustration of the effect and the code that produces it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SECCHI also have &lt;a href=&quot;http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/data/ins_data/secchi/L0/a/img/hi_1/20111201/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a page with the unprocessed FITS images&lt;/a&gt; from that day. No UFO there.&#xA;(You can easily find a FITS image viewer on the Internet. I think that the GIMP can open FITS files.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some additional reading, with a more layman-accessible explanation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/space/is-that-a-cloaked-alien-spaceship-orbiting-mercury-111208.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Cloaked Alien Spaceship Orbiting Mercury?&lt;/a&gt; by Ian O'Neil on the Discovery News website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5463" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2011-12-10T10:09:34.413" LastActivityDate="2011-12-10T10:09:34.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7205" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-10T13:54:28.633" Score="14" ViewCount="2591" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/186197647X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Intriguing Scientific Mysteries of Our Time&lt;/a&gt; (2010) and Chapter 10 concentrates on the subject of Sex. The author argues that we do not know why humans, or animals, have evolved to reproduce sexually rather than asexually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asexual reproduction is far more efficient according to the author, who backs his claims up by citing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_tc_2_0?rh=i%3astripbooks,k%3aRichard%20Dawkins&amp;amp;keywords=Richard%20Dawkins&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1323524855&amp;amp;sr=1-2-ent&amp;amp;field-contributor_id=B000AQ3RBI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Richard Dawkins&lt;/a&gt; amongst others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He hasn’t done it yet. In his 2004 book The Ancestor’s Tale, he again admits defeat over the origin of sex. “To do justice to all the theories would take a book—it has already taken several . . . Yet no definitive verdict has emerged.” In the end, he settles for discussing a consequence of sexual reproduction, rather than explaining its origin. The question of what is so good about sex is one that “betters scientists than I have spent book after book failing to answer,” Dawkins admits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He suggests we have Ptolemaic view of sexual reproduction, which has been shaped over the centuries (&lt;em&gt;quote needed&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has any progress been made to explain why animals reproduce sexually? Or is it an incorrect assertion in the first place, and we've known for a while?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1033" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2019-02-03T03:22:24.737" LastActivityDate="2019-02-03T03:47:11.260" Title="Do we know why animals have evolved to have sex for reproduction?" Tags="|biology|zoology|evolution|ethology|reproduction|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7205" CreationDate="2011-12-10T15:09:07.493" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;: Sexual reproduction, by providing avenue for recombination of genes, assists in mitigating harmful mutations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Neiman, Gery Hehman, Joseph T. Miller, John M. Logsdon, Jr., and Douglas R. Taylor. &amp;quot;Accelerated Mutation Accumulation in Asexual Lineages of a Freshwater Snail&amp;quot;. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 2009; DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msp300&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sexual reproduction is both extremely costly and widespread relative to asexual reproduction, meaning that it must also confer profound advantages in order to persist. &lt;strong&gt;One theorized benefit of sex is that it facilitates the clearance of harmful mutations, which would accumulate more rapidly in the absence of recombination.&lt;/strong&gt; The extent to which ineffective purifying selection and mutation accumulation are direct consequences of asexuality and whether the accelerated buildup of harmful mutations in asexuals can occur rapidly enough to maintain sex within natural populations, however, remain as open questions. We addressed key components of these questions by estimating the rate of mutation accumulation in the mitochondrial genomes of multiple sexual and asexual representatives of Potamopyrgus antipodarum, a New Zealand snail characterized by mixed sexual/asexual populations. &lt;strong&gt;We found that increased mutation accumulation is associated with asexuality and occurs rapidly enough to be detected in recently derived asexual lineages of P. antipodarum. Our results demonstrate that increased mutation accumulation in asexuals can differentially affect coexisting and ecologically similar sexual and asexual lineages.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The accelerated rate of mutation accumulation observed in asexual P. antipodarum provides some of the most direct evidence to date for a link between asexuality and mutation accumulation and implies that mutational buildup could be rapid enough to contribute to the short-term evolutionary mechanisms that favor sexual reproduction.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-12-10T15:09:07.493" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7207" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-10T16:10:52.950" Score="5" ViewCount="210" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Law College is proposing to raise the required grade average from 5/10 to 7/10 to graduate, claiming that it's going to improve the students overall performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies to support this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How grading works in this case&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along with the changes of grading standards, the Law College is also going to enforce the in-class activities. Professors would then be obligated to apply middle and final tests (only finals were mandatory) along with in-class activities representing 30% of the final grade (completely optional untill then). However, professors are still going to be very autonomous when it comes to making and grading the tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3518" LastEditorUserId="3518" LastEditDate="2011-12-11T16:39:38.213" LastActivityDate="2011-12-11T16:39:38.213" Title="Does raising grading standards improve learning?" Tags="|education|learning|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7208" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-10T18:53:52.163" Score="14" ViewCount="6690" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've received this email before, and tracked down &lt;a href=&quot;https://able2know.org/topic/119791-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a requote online&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Annually you will shake hands with 11 women who have recently masturbated and failed to wash their hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Annually you will shake hands with 6 men who have recently masturbated and failed to wash their hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if there's any evidence to support this. At the very least, I'm surprised by the ratio, given the fact that men &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masturbation#Frequency.2C_age.2C_and_sex&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;seem to masturbate with higher frequency than women&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar results have been found in a 2007 British national probability survey. It was found that, between individuals aged 16 to 44, 95% of men and 71% of women masturbated at some point in their lives. 73% of men and 37% of women reported masturbating in the four weeks before their interview, while 53% of men and 18% of women reported masturbating in the previous seven days. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs10508-006-9123-6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cited source in Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="7606" LastEditDate="2022-04-23T15:26:49.537" LastActivityDate="2022-04-23T15:26:49.537" Title="Does one shake hands with 6 men/11 women per year who have recently masturbated and not washed their hands?" Tags="|sexuality|masturbation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7209" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-10T20:47:50.053" Score="41" ViewCount="5399" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2564/which-is-more-effective-at-removing-germs-washing-with-soap-and-water-or-using&quot;&gt;Which is more effective at removing germs, washing with soap and water or using hand sanitizers?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3234/does-regular-handwashing-with-antibacterial-soap-prevent-disease&quot;&gt;Does regular handwashing with antibacterial soap prevent disease?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've run across some claims stating that the regular use of hand sanitizers by healthy people is not only ineffective, but that a &quot;germ free&quot; approach to life, in actuality, is potentially harmful to the human immune system. Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, the body’s best defense against disease agents is its own immune system. You keep the immune system primed by ALLOWING it access to disease agents. People who live in plastic bubbles never have a chance to develop immunities, so when disease agents inevitably get through the plastic wrap, the body has little defense. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geardiary.com/2010/09/14/things-that-are-bad-for-you-hand-sanitizer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other studies suggest that ultra-clean environments and the persistent use of antibacterial soaps and hand sanitizers may inhibit proper immune system development in children. This is because inflammatory systems require greater exposure to common germs for proper development. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://biology.about.com/od/microbiology/a/handsanitizers.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Killing off the friendly bacteria can damage our natural defenses against other infections.  We definitely don’t want to kill off that bacteria.  In regards to the bad bacteria, or the ones that can cause sicknesses, it’s not certain that its in our best interest to kill them either.  There is considerable evidence that some exposure to bacteria in the environment is actually beneficial because it helps the immune system develop. Some studies have shown an increase in allergies and asthma in people who were raised in an overly sterile environment. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://theholisticmama.com/?p=1136&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some summary questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does hand sanitizer use hamper immune system development/effectiveness compared to using soap (non anti-bacterial/microbial) and water (assume same frequency of use)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is frequent hand sanitizer use correlated with a &quot;hyperactive&quot; immune system (allergy/asthma prone)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there evidence that germs/microbes/etc. on the hands have a significant part to play in a person's likelihood of getting sick when some larger future exposure occurs?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T22:38:39.430" Title="Do hand sanitizers have a negative impact on the human immune system?" Tags="|medical-science|immune-system|hygiene|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2456" CreationDate="2011-12-11T11:03:06.287" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/region8/superfund/wy/pavillion/&quot;&gt;draft of an EPA investigation of fracking in Pavillion, Wyoming&lt;/a&gt; has just been released. It's not yet peer-reviewed, this will happen after the draft has been available for 45 days for public comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They measured an unusually alkaline pH level, which could be caused by strong base used during fracking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The high pH measured in the deep monitoring wells  was unusual and&#xA;  unexpected.&#xA;  [...]&#xA;  Presence of hydroxide alkalinity  suggests strong base addition as the&#xA;  causative factor  for elevated pH in the deep monitoring wells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also found high concentrations of methane, which they determined to be of thermogenic origin. Thermogenic means it was produced under conditions of high heat and pressure, as opposed to biogenic methane produced directly by bacteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The monitoring wells produce  ground water near-saturated in methane&#xA;  at ambient  pressure, with concentrations up to 19.0 mg/L.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Similarity of δ 13 C values for methane, ethane,  propane, isobutane,&#xA;  and butane between gas  production and monitoring wells and plots of δ&#xA;  13 C-CH4 versus δD -CH4 (Figure 18b) and δ 13 C-CH4 versus C1/(C2&#xA;  + C3) (Figure 18a) indicate that light hydrocarbons in  casing and dissolved gas in deep monitoring wells are  similar to produced gas&#xA;  and have undergone little  oxidation or biodegradation.  These&#xA;  observations  combined with radiocarbon analysis of CH4 (&amp;lt; 0.2% &#xA;  percent modern carbon) obtained from gas in casing  of both MW01 and&#xA;  MW02 indicate that methane in  deep monitoring wells is of thermogenic&#xA;  origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are only two points of evidence in the report, there is more in the full report. Based on these observation they state in their conclusion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While each individual data set or  observation represents an important&#xA;  line of reasoning,  taken as a whole, consistent data sets and &#xA;  observations provide compelling evidence to support  an explanation of&#xA;  data. Using this approach, &lt;strong&gt;the  explanation best fitting the data for&#xA;  the deep  monitoring wells is that constituents associated with &#xA;  hydraulic fracturing have been released into the Wind  River drinking&#xA;  water aquifer&lt;/strong&gt; at depths above the  current production zone&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report presents some convincing evidence that components of the fracking fluids are released, though the authors state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, further  investigation would be needed to determine if&#xA;  organic  compounds associated with hydraulic fracturing have  migrated&#xA;  to domestic wells in the area of  investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The contents of this report are also nicely summarized in the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/12/how-the-epa-linked-fracking-to-contaminated-well-water.ars/&quot;&gt;&quot;How the EPA linked &quot;fracking&quot; to contaminated well water&quot; from Scott K. Johnson at Ars Technica&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-12-11T11:03:06.287" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7212" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7214" CreationDate="2011-12-11T12:12:38.203" Score="17" ViewCount="1206" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent meta review (mentioned in some articles in the media, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8734378/Abortion-increases-risk-of-mental-health-problems-new-research-finds.html&quot;&gt;The Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20100587-10391704.html&quot;&gt;CBS News&lt;/a&gt;) examining the association between abortion and mental health problems &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/199/3/180&quot;&gt;&quot;Abortion and mental health: quantitative synthesis and analysis of research published 1995–2009&quot;&lt;/a&gt; by Priscilla K. Coleman in the British Journal of Psychiatry claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Women who had undergone an abortion experienced an 81% increased risk&#xA;  of mental health problems, and nearly 10% of the incidence of mental&#xA;  health problems was shown to be attributable to abortion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard previously about a possible correlation between mental health problems and abortion, but I had the impression that no reliable studies could substantiate that. The claim in this meta review, that 10% of mental health problems are attributable to abortion seems to me extraordinary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any additional evidence that this claim is true? Does this meta review actually support this claim adequately?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T14:46:00.757" Title="Are 10% of mental health problems caused by abortion?" Tags="|medical-science|psychiatry|abortion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7212" CreationDate="2011-12-11T15:11:31.310" Score="27" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any additional evidence that this claim is true? Does this&#xA;  meta review actually support this claim adequately?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently the answers are &quot;No&quot; and &quot;No&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-skeptical-sleuth/201111/is-having-abortion-likely-damage-womans-mental-health&quot;&gt;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-skeptical-sleuth/201111/is-having-abortion-likely-damage-womans-mental-health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-skeptical-sleuth/201111/more-review-claiming-abortion-hurts-womens-mental-health&quot;&gt;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-skeptical-sleuth/201111/more-review-claiming-abortion-hurts-womens-mental-health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although there is a vast literature concerning mental health effects of abortion, Coleman selects only 22 studies, 11 of them her own. She indicated that she has excluded other studies as being too poorly designed, but she fails to identify which studies were excluded and specifically why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Royal College of Psychiatrists... considered all of the Coleman studies that they reviewed to be methodologically poor. A number of her papers were rejected because they had inappropriate control/comparison groups and still other papers were rejected because they used inappropriate measures of mental health after the abortion. In addition to its other limitations, still another Coleman paper was rejected because of a lack of statistical control for mental health prior to the abortion. The Royal College of Psychiatrists report did include one of Coleman's papers, but with serious criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Coleman] relied heavily on comparisons between women that [sic] received an abortion for unwanted pregnancy and women who had completed a pregnancy that was planned or wanted. Of course, this strategy cannot get at the effects of abortion because presumably the circumstances of having an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy are different from the circumstances of completing a wanted pregnancy. It is not surprising that women having a wanted pregnancy have better mental health than women who did not want to be pregnant. Do you think the Coleman knew what she was doing and proceeded anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another criticism of Coleman's review is that she often did not control for prior mental health. So, if a woman smoked marijuana or consumed alcohol after an abortion, she was compared to women who dealing with a newborn child, and any differences were attributed to the first group of women having had an abortion, even in situations where ascertainment of drug or alcohol use occurred before the abortion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Coleman] states that the population attributable risk (PAR) associated with abortion is 10% of all mental health problems and 34.9% of all suicides in women of reproductive age. PAR is intended to represent the proportion of such problems that can be causally attributed to abortion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Near the end of her article, Coleman reveals her intention to affect public policy by burdening women interested in terminating an unwanted pregnancy with the necessity of first being warned about the dangers of abortion: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Until sound evidence documenting mental health benefits of abortion is available, clinicians should convey the current state of uncertainty related to benefits of abortion in addition to sharing the most accurate information pertaining to statistically validated risks.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further evidence that the article was politically motivated (evidence my own):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anti-choice websites, apparently alerted &lt;strong&gt;in advance&lt;/strong&gt; of the article's publication, created an immediate buzz about it across the US. The article was quickly sent to the Florida state legislature in support of a bill restricting abortion and the article was introduced as evidence in the appeal of a Wisconsin court decision ruling against necessity of warning women seeking abortion of the risk of suicide they face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also the published responses to the article itself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/199/3/180.short#responses&quot;&gt;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/199/3/180.short#responses&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5463" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2011-12-12T14:46:00.757" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T14:46:00.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7215" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-11T17:47:25.447" Score="17" ViewCount="1350" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the book Sperm Wars, by Robin Baker:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Very few (less than 1 per cent) of the sperm in a human ejaculate are the elite, fertile 'egg-getters'. The remainder are infertile 'kamikaze' sperm whose function has nothing to do with fertilisation as such but everything to do with preventing sperm from another man fertilising the egg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read elsewhere (can't remember exactly where, but I don't think it was a creditable source) that Baker's 'kamikaze' sperm hypothesis has been found experimentally to be false. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4524" LastEditorUserId="1690" LastEditDate="2012-02-23T09:23:53.987" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T09:23:53.987" Title="Are 99% of sperm 'kamikaze', as described by Robin Baker?" Tags="|biology|sexuality|human-reproduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7212" CreationDate="2011-12-11T22:54:31.523" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question &lt;em&gt;Are 10% of mental health problems caused by abortion&lt;/em&gt; might be addressed in a number of ways. First, in considering whether &lt;em&gt;there is any evidence to support the claim&lt;/em&gt;, one could simply go to the source studies that were included in the meta-analysis. (You may find the referenced studies for free at &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/suppl/2011/08/11/199.3.180.DC1/bjp_199_ds180.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/suppl/2011/08/11/199.3.180.DC1/bjp_199_ds180.pdf&lt;/a&gt; . The full PDF costs $15.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the source studies (Cougle 2008 (US), Pergrusson 2008 (Australia), Gilchrist 1995 (UK) and others) report the increase in mental health problems. All of the articles were published in refereed journals, which means that skepticism is built in, as many experts in that field will try to pick apart a submission. By the way, the nature of a meta-study is not to make new claims, but to summarize existing claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Canadian authors Mota, Burnett, and Sareen published a study entitled “Associations Between Abortion, Mental Disorders, and Suicidal Behaviour in a Nationally Representative Sample” in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, Vol 55, No 4, Aprtil 2010. This article was not cited in the Coleman’s meta-analysis, and yet confirms the same results. &#xA;When compared to women without a history of abortion, those who had an abortion had a 61% increased risk for Mood Disorders. Social Phobia was linked with a 61% increased risk and suicide ideation with a 59% increased risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, there is evidence to support the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let us examine the detractors of the article. &#xA;One of the strongest, most cogent critiques of Coleman’s meta-analysis may be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/199/3/180/reply#bjrcpsych_el_33923&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/199/3/180/reply#bjrcpsych_el_33923&lt;/a&gt; . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an outline of objections from Louise M Howard, Hind Khalifeh, Melissa Rowe, Kylee Trevillion, and Trine Munk-Olsen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did not follow robust methodologies for systematic reviews&#xA;1a. No details on search terms&#xA;1b. Only two databases included&#xA;1c. Lacks citation tracking&#xA;1d. Non-standardized measure of mental disorders&#xA;1e. Lack of adjustment for pre-existing mental illness&#xA;1f. No adjustment for key confounders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Munk-Olsen, the last author of the critique, published in the NEJM that “reported no difference between the incidence of first psychiatric contact before and after abortion.” (7. Munk-Olsen, T., et al., Induced first-trimester abortion and risk of mental disorder. N Engl J Med, 2011. 364(4): p. 332-9)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eleven of the twenty-two papers were authored by Coleman.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Synthesis of the data and summary statistics are flawed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Erroneous conclusions drawn regarding the Population Attributable Risk (PAR). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would respond to the Howard, et. al. critique:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The lack of citations doesn’t invalidate the meta-study. Lack of key confounders means the critique suggests that Coleman did not account for problems such as social deprivation or rape. On the other hand, it also means that Coleman did not “cherry pick” patients just to prove her point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Munk-Olsen has a single study that contradicts a much larger meta-study. Unfortunately, their study &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; cherry pick the more healthy ones, for example, excluding women with previous psychiatric history. (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaplog.org/get-involved/letters-to-members/danish-nejm-study/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.aaplog.org/get-involved/letters-to-members/danish-nejm-study/&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While Coleman had written half of the papers in the meta-study, there are many other studies in many different countries that corroborate the meta-study. (Data table for original meta-analysis article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/suppl/2011/08/11/199.3.180.DC1/bjp_199_ds180.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/suppl/2011/08/11/199.3.180.DC1/bjp_199_ds180.pdf&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The fact that there multiple effects reported in 13 of the 22 studies does not diminish the importance that there are 9 with single factors. (same site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/suppl/2011/08/11/199.3.180.DC1/bjp_199_ds180.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/suppl/2011/08/11/199.3.180.DC1/bjp_199_ds180.pdf&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think the critique is implying that Coleman uses circular reasoning: assuming that the risk factor (abortion) causes the disease (mental health problems) while trying to prove the same. I am not familiar with this particular branch of statistics and cannot confirm or dismiss the critique on this point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the second part of your question, &lt;em&gt;Does this meta review actually support this claim adequately?&lt;/em&gt;, I would say “yes,” mostly because the critique does not make a compelling case. While the Howard, et. al. critique implies that Coleman is in self-interest, there may be an element of self-interest in Munk-Olsen detracting from Coleman while promoting the NEJM article (which is in the minority). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking a parallel line of reasoning, it is interesting to note that abortion is correlated with not only mental but physical outcomes, such as breast cancer. (See “Induced abortion as an independent risk factor for breast cancer: a comprehensive review and meta-analysis” at &lt;a href=&quot;http://jech.bmj.com/content/50/5/481.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jech.bmj.com/content/50/5/481.short&lt;/a&gt;, for example.) The window for reproductive problems arising from abortion is limited to the time when the woman can reproduce, say twenty years. In contrast, mental problems can have a much longer delay in onset from the provocative event. For example, PTSD may occur more than twenty years after the provocative event. So the 10% estimate may be underestimating the effect. And if there are physical repercussions to abortion, it is not unreasonable to assume that there may be some mental repercussions as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a different line of reasoning: there was a point when there were scientific studies that contradicted the notion that using tobacco products were correlated with lung cancer. (Of course, the tobacco companies vigorously held on to this notion.) With enough studies (and meta-studies), it became better understood that there was a strong correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in conclusion, yes and yes to your questions. The science supports the meta-study’s conclusions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1403" LastEditorUserId="1403" LastEditDate="2011-12-12T00:32:49.170" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T00:32:49.170" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7218" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-12T01:14:22.433" Score="7" ViewCount="897" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Fulltext/2001/11000/Sinistrality_a_side_effect_of_prenatal_sonography_.7.aspx&quot;&gt;Sinistrality-a side-effect of prenatal sonography: A comparative study of young men&lt;/a&gt; - paper from 2001&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although ultrasound during pregnancy is used extensively, there is&#xA;  little published on adverse fetal effects. We undertook a cohort study&#xA;  including men born in Sweden from 1973 to 1978 who enrolled for&#xA;  military service. We estimated relative risks for being born&#xA;  left-handed according to ultrasound exposure in fetal life using&#xA;  logistic regression analysis. Eligible for the study were 6,858 men&#xA;  born at a hospital that included ultrasound scanning in standard&#xA;  antenatal care (exposed) and 172,537 men born in hospitals without&#xA;  ultrasound scanning programs (unexposed). During the introduction&#xA;  phase (1973 to 1975) there was no difference in left-handedness&#xA;  between ultrasound exposed and unexposed (odds ratio = 1.03, 95%&#xA;  confidence interval (CI) = 0.91 to 1.17). When ultrasonography was&#xA;  offered more widely (1976 to 1978), the risk of left-handedness was&#xA;  higher among those exposed to ultrasound compared with those unexposed&#xA;  (odds ratio = 1.32, 95% CI = 1.16 to 1.51). We conclude that&#xA;  ultrasound exposure in fetal life increases the risk of&#xA;  left-handedness in men, &lt;strong&gt;suggesting that prenatal ultrasound affects&#xA;  the fetal brain.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Fulltext/2001/11000/Sinistrality_a_side_effect_of_prenatal_sonography_.7.aspx&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this article may have proven that left handedness may be affected by prenatal ultrasound screening, is there any evidence suggesting that prenatal ultrasound screening may negatively impact the fetus? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5081" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-08T13:50:02.677" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T09:56:47.743" Title="Does prenatal ultrasound screening affect the fetus' brain negatively?" Tags="|medical-science|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7219" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7230" CreationDate="2011-12-12T09:09:54.513" Score="19" ViewCount="4125" Body="&lt;p&gt;A doctor from my girlfriend's family was talking to her over the weekend. She explained to me that he was talking about how there is proof that cellphones decrease sperm count when being stored in a pant pocket. In addition if the cellphone is being held in the shirt pocket it can affect heart rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He then went on to do a demonstration where he made her hold out her arm, and push up on his extended arm. When nothing happened he place a cellphone against her heart and asked her to try it again, where then she had less strength (?) and could not push up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard that there are still conflicting studies on how cell phones may cause brain cancer, but if there is still no definitive proof either way, how can this doctor be so sure of other bodily functions that are impaired by cell phones. It sounds to me that he may have been misinformed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies out there that show otherwise, that cellphones do in fact affect either sperm count or your heart / strength?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5473" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2015-11-01T13:06:11.427" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T13:06:11.427" Title="Does the presence of a cellphone affect sperm count or heart rate?" Tags="|medical-science|sexuality|mobile-phones|cardiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="908" CreationDate="2011-12-12T11:56:35.923" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article in Time magazine&lt;/a&gt;, unmarried, childless women under 30 who live in cities earn more money than men in the same position. They postulate the cause is a greater number of women earning college degrees. Doesn't directly answer the question, but interesting, nonetheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="21543" LastEditDate="2016-01-25T22:55:05.420" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T22:55:05.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7221" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-12T14:26:25.453" Score="2" ViewCount="606" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reviewmylife.co.uk/blog/2011/06/29/how-to-get-rid-of-clothes-moths/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Some sites&lt;/a&gt; suggest that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webanswers.com/for-fun/do-you-sleep-with-your-closet-doors-open-or-closed-ba3380&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;closed doors&lt;/a&gt; can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tangerineboutique.com/content/ICK_The_dreaded_clothes_Moth/1011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;keep moths out&lt;/a&gt;. Others &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t17510.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; that keeping the closet doors closed does not help with moth control. So, does it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5439" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2011-12-12T20:40:07.327" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T20:40:07.327" Title="Do closed closet doors keep moths out?" Tags="|environmental-health|entomology|clothing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7222" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7228" CreationDate="2011-12-12T15:25:56.050" Score="19" ViewCount="112201" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was linked a website about the effect &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soursop&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;soursop&lt;/a&gt; has in fighting cancer. &lt;a href=&quot;http://soursopgraviola.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The website&lt;/a&gt; heavily implies that soursop is an effective cancer treatment similar to chemo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/08U6vm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;soursop&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Annona_muricata_1.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chemotherapy is a widely known form of cancer treatment and is effective at destroying cancer cells however, as commonly known it may come with numerous side effects. One of those side effects that is more than likely inevitable is that of hair loss. This is because while chemo is destroying those harmful cancer cells in the body it is also causing harm to the normal healthy cells. As prior mentioned, this does not occur with soursop. The soursop kills damaged cells, and ONLY the damaged cells leaving the body immune to most of the side effects associated with chemotherapy. Some may also go as far as saying that soursop is &quot;10,000 times stronger than chemo&quot;, but there are no cold hard facts behind this claim. What is factual and proven through scientific study is that the soursop, with its annonaceous acetogenins is more effective in targeting the cells that cancer patients want to target ie the cancer cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Major claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Soursop is an effective cancer treatment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Soursop prevents cancer from occuring in the first place.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Soursop targets cancer cells leaving regular cells unharmed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the research show that these are credible claims, since the page is saying there's been much research published on this, since the 70's?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-23T21:28:23.537" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T07:02:57.323" Title="Does soursop cure cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|natural-remedies|medications|herbalism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7223" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-12T15:55:15.807" Score="22" ViewCount="5261" Body="&lt;p&gt;While watching a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTlmho_RovY#t=2m15s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;trailer to a video on advertisement's image of women&lt;/a&gt; the following statement is made:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It creates a climate where there is wide spread violence against women. I am not at all saying that an add like this directly causes violence, it's not that simple, but turning a human being into a thing is almost always the first step against justifying violence against that person. We see this with racism, we see this with homophobia, we see it with terrorism, it's always the same process. &lt;strong&gt;The person is dehumanized and violence then becomes inevitable.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there support in psychology that this is actually happening? That people being depicted as objects would cause others to commit violence against them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Vuhg.png&quot; alt=&quot;An example from the video&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2011-12-13T15:41:07.897" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T17:59:31.880" Title="Does objectifying women in advertisement cause violence against their gender?" Tags="|psychology|advertising|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7222" CreationDate="2011-12-12T19:54:49.400" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Straight from the wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soursop&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis my own):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research carried out in the Caribbean has suggested a connection between consumption of soursop and atypical forms of Parkinson's disease due to the very high concentration of annonacin.[3][4][5][6]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Cancer Research UK, Annona muricata is an active principle in an unlicensed herbal remedy marketed under the brand name Triamazon.[7] &lt;strong&gt;Triamazon is not licensed for medicinal use and the sale of the product resulted in a conviction on four counts of selling unlicensed medical products&lt;/strong&gt;, and other charges, for a vendor in the United Kingdom.[8]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So not only is it the main ingredient in an unapproved cancer treatment, it's been linked to Parkinson's disease. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10440304&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[Ref]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean it doesn't have potential. Research is just incomplete. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.briefingwire.com/pr/cancer-research-uk-confirm-an-element-of-graviola-in-triamazon-kills-cancer-cells&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.briefingwire.com/pr/cancer-research-uk-confirm-an-element-of-graviola-in-triamazon-kills-cancer-cells&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In laboratory studies, graviola [a.k.a. Soursop] extracts can kill some types of liver and breast cancer cells that are resistant to particular chemotherapy drugs. But there haven’t been any large scale studies in humans. So we don't know yet whether it can work as a cancer treatment or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T19:54:49.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7205" CreationDate="2011-12-12T21:12:27.617" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's another theory that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC53943/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sexual reproduction is an adaptation to resist parasites&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Darwinian theory has yet to explain adequately the fact of sex. If&#xA;  males provide little or no aid to offspring, a high (up to 2-fold)&#xA;  extra average fitness has to emerge as a property of a sexual&#xA;  parentage if sex is to be stable. The advantage must presumably come&#xA;  from recombination but has been hard to identify. It may well lie in&#xA;  the necessity to recombine defenses to defeat numerous parasites. A&#xA;  model demonstrating this works best for contesting hosts whose defense&#xA;  polymorphisms are constrained to low mutation rates. A review of the&#xA;  literature shows that the predictions of parasite coevolution fit well&#xA;  with the known ecology of sex. Moreover, parasite coevolution is&#xA;  superior to previous models of the evolution of sex by supporting the&#xA;  stability of sex under the following challenging conditions: very low&#xA;  fecundity, realistic patterns of genotype fitness and changing&#xA;  environment, and frequent mutation to parthenogenesis, even while sex&#xA;  pays the full 2-fold cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_Hypothesis#The_paradox_of_sex:_The_.22cost.22_of_males&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Red Queen's Hypothesis&lt;/a&gt; explains further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By contrast, a Red-Queen-type theory that organisms are running cyclic&#xA;  arms races with their parasites can explain the utility of sexual&#xA;  reproduction at the level of the gene by positing that the role of sex&#xA;  is to preserve genes that are currently disadvantageous, but that will&#xA;  become advantageous against the background of a likely future&#xA;  population of parasites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1434" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-02-03T03:47:11.260" LastActivityDate="2019-02-03T03:47:11.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7205" CreationDate="2011-12-12T21:34:13.583" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;John Holland's &quot;Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems&quot; discusses in great deal the algorithmic basis of evolution. Apropos the question, he says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One key to understanding [...] lies in observing what happens to a small set of alleles under [a reproductive strategy]'s action. In particular, what happens if an adjacent set of alleles appears in several different chromosomes of above-average fitness and not elsewhere? Because each of the chromosomes will be duplicated an above-average number of times, the given alleles will occupy an increased proportion of the population after the duplication phase. This increased proportion will of course result whether or not the alleles have anything to do with the above-average fitness. The appearance of the alleles in the extra-fit chromosomes might be happenstance, but it is equally true that any correlation between the given selection of alleles and above-average fitness will be exploited by this action. &lt;strong&gt;Moreover, the more varied the chromosomes containing the alleles, the less likely it is that the alleles and above-average fitness are uncorrelated&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Holland, 1992, pg. 15) &lt;strong&gt;emphasis added&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, recombination plays a larger role than is generally understood. Most people &lt;strong&gt;think&lt;/strong&gt; in terms of small mutations leading to specific changes because that fits with how an intentional design is improved. But in fact its recombination, acting across the entire genome and in the context of a large population, that improves the average fitness of the next generation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sexual reproduction, although expensive and not the only conceivable route to massive recombination, provides far more recombination than what gets from asexual reproduction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2011-12-12T21:34:13.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7222" CreationDate="2011-12-12T22:22:29.517" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=soursop%20cancer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A search in the Pubmed database for &quot;soursop cancer&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (which is automatically expanded to &lt;code&gt;(&quot;annona&quot;[MeSH Terms] OR &quot;annona&quot;[All Fields] OR &quot;soursop&quot;[All Fields]) AND (&quot;neoplasms&quot;[MeSH Terms] OR &quot;neoplasms&quot;[All Fields] OR &quot;cancer&quot;[All Fields])&lt;/code&gt;, so it will not only show exact matches) shows 43 results, though none of those are trials in humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of those results is an article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18935929&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Complementary therapies, herbs, and other OTC agents.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, in the abstract it states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Graviola demonstrated anticancer effects in vitro, but has not been&#xA;  studied in humans. Despite the lack of human data, many websites&#xA;  promote graviola to cancer patients based on traditional use and on&#xA;  the in vitro studies. Caution is required as there is no evidence of&#xA;  safety or efficacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several &lt;em&gt;in vitro&lt;/em&gt; studies, but no human studies seem to have been performed. The result of such studies can't just be transferred to humans, you have to actually perform some clinical studies. The &lt;em&gt;in vitro&lt;/em&gt; studies show that it has some potential as an anti-cancer drug, but that is a far shot from being proven effective in actually being safe and effective against cancer in humans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also some data that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annonacin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;annonacin&lt;/a&gt; in graviola &lt;strong&gt;can cause an atypical Parkinson disease&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14675150&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20032889&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16078200&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14521988&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/130/3/816.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the possible danger of causing atypical Parkinson and no evidence that soursop is actually effective against cancer in humans, I would strongly recommend to avoid it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T07:02:57.323" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T07:02:57.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7229" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-13T03:09:36.360" Score="3" ViewCount="777" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr. Stephen Barrett &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/PhonyAds/silverad.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;writes&lt;/a&gt; that colloidal silver should not be taken to treat any illness.  He says that there have not been any studies done that show that colloidal silver treats illness in vivo.  However, he does give a few examples of where colloidal silver was shown to kill germs in vitro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-skeptic9-2009feb09,0,2063918.story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article in the LA Times&lt;/a&gt;, a doctor is quoted saying that colloidal silver has been shown to kill germs in vitro, but has not been shown to effectively cure illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen Barrett calls colloidal silver &quot;Risk Without Benefit&quot;. Stating that it is very well possible that colloidal silver may be entirely ineffective in treating illness even though it has been shown to kill germs in vitro in some tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course, the fact that a product inhibits bacteria in a laboratory culture doesn't mean it is effective (or safe) in the human body. In fact, products that kill bacteria in the laboratory would be more likely to cause argyria because they contain more silver ions that are free to deposit in the user's skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical that further tests are needed to confirm that the substance is effective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was ever a substance shown to kill germs in vitro, then tested and shown not to be effective in curing illness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3988" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-12-13T10:43:56.657" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T14:53:08.867" Title="Is there any substance that is shown to kill germs in vitro and shown not to cure illness?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7219" CreationDate="2011-12-13T04:03:28.867" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;On that related question, there was a &lt;em&gt;deleted answer&lt;/em&gt; that stated the following (All that follows is a direct copy/paste from that deleted answer):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study they appear to be referencing for their statement is &lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;Effects of Electromagnetic Radiation from a Cellular Phone on Human Sperm Motility: An In Vitro Study&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt; (Erogul, Oztas, et, 2006, &lt;a href=&quot;http://drwdowin.com/CellPhonesAndSpermMotility.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, they took several sperm samples, let them rest for 20 minutes, separated them into two groups and exposed one group to an active GSM phone 10cm (~4&amp;quot;)from the samples for 5 minutes.  Immediately all sperm samples were sanalyzed for motility, and those samples exposed to the GSM phone radiation had a greater number of lower motility sperm than those that remained unexposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They did not analyze the sperm later to see if the effects were temporary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They did refer to another study, &lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;Impact of radio frequency electromagnetic radiation on DNA integrity in the male germline.&amp;quot; Aitken RJ, Bennetts LE, Sawyer D, Wiklendt AM, King BV.  Int J Androl 2005;28:171e179&lt;/code&gt; which suggested that rats who were exposed to active GSM radiation for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week showed some change in the reproduction system of male rats, but not enough to change the resulting sperm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The takeaway of this study, as with so many cellular radiation studies appears to be that more study is needed to determine long term effects.  Most of these studies merely point to the fact that RF radiation does have immediate effects on all kinds of organic tissues, but so far few have shown damaging effects that last long after the radiation has ceased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think it's a fair bet that if you want to make sure that your sperm are at their most motile, you should avoid placing a 5 minute long or longer phone call while holding the phone within 4 inches of an open dish of sperm immediately prior to needing the sperm at their most motile state.  Note that your &lt;a href=&quot;http://shreis.com/ssscyto/research%20papers/Understanding%20RF%20Depth%20of%20Penentration.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;skin blocks most of the radiation at and above 800MHz&lt;/a&gt; from penetrating more than several mm into the body, so sperm you are carrying are unlikely to be affected unless you embed the transmitting antenna in your vas deferens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, try to avoid making 12 hour long calls while holding your phone within 5cm of your testes every day.  Even &lt;em&gt;your&lt;/em&gt; reproductive organs don't have &lt;em&gt;that much&lt;/em&gt; to talk about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure why they deleted it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T04:03:28.867" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-06-02T03:19:08.313" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7231" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-13T05:43:20.773" Score="12" ViewCount="1765" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all know Santa Claus is a big jolly guy, but is it true that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/slim--sad-fat--happy-519034.html&quot;&gt;fat people are happier than slim people&lt;/a&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They teamed up with colleagues across Europe to study the lifestyles of thousands of people and the results were stark: thin people were far less happy than rotund ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim also appears on &lt;a href=&quot;http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/36202611/ns/today-today_health/t/rather-be-fat-happy-or-thin-sad/&quot;&gt;MSN&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side point I have noticed that when someone loses a significant amount of weight, their jolliness seems to go away. &#xA;Is this true scientifically? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5162" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T10:14:18.630" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T10:14:18.630" Title="Are fat people happier?" Tags="|psychology|weight-loss|depression|happiness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7229" CreationDate="2011-12-13T11:18:34.503" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia is your friend! we have 3 classes of substances that kill bacteria:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Disinfectants&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinfectant&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Disinfectants&lt;/a&gt; are substances that are applied to non-living objects to destroy microorganisms that are living on the objects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most disinfectants are also antiseptics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Antiseptics&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiseptic&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Antiseptics&lt;/a&gt; (from Greek ἀντί - anti, '&amp;quot;against&amp;quot; + σηπτικός - sēptikos, &amp;quot;putrefactive&amp;quot;) are antimicrobial substances that are applied to living tissue/skin to reduce the possibility of infection, sepsis, or putrefaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some common antiseptics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following are all examples of substances that should be used only externally (e.g. on skin but not ingested!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alcohols&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quaternary ammonium compounds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Boric acid&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brilliant Green&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chlorhexidine Gluconate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hydrogen peroxide&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iodine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mercurochrome&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manuka Honey&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Octenidine dihydrochloride&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phenol (carbolic acid) compounds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4-hydroxybenzenesulfonate (Dibromol).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sodium chloride&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sodium hypochlorite&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calcium hypochlorite&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Terpenes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microcyn&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Antibacterials&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;antibacterial&lt;/a&gt; is a compound or substance that kills or slows down the growth of bacteria.&#xA;The term is often used synonymously with the term antibiotic(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order for a substance to be called an antibiotic, in-vivo experimentation must be performed, to determine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Safety (drinking hydrogen peroxide is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a good idea)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Efficacy (drinking alcohol will not make you healthier)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Minimum effective dosage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The successful outcome of antimicrobial therapy with antibacterial compounds depends on several factors. These include host defense mechanisms, the location of infection, and the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of the antibacterial. A bactericidal activity of antibacterials may depend on the bacterial growth phase, and it often requires ongoing metabolic activity and division of bacterial cells. These findings are based on laboratory studies, and in clinical settings have also been shown to eliminate bacterial infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the activity of antibacterials depends frequently on its concentration, in vitro characterization of antibacterial activity commonly includes the determination of the minimum inhibitory concentration and minimum bactericidal concentration of an antibacterial. To predict clinical outcome, the antimicrobial activity of an antibacterial is usually combined with its pharmacokinetic profile, and several pharmacological parameters are used as markers of drug efficacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Silver&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Silver is not even known to be an effective antiseptic, let alone an antibiotic. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/about-us&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Cochrane Collaboration&lt;/a&gt;, which is the most trusted agent that reviews, collates and meta-analyses medical experiments, has tackled the existing experimental evidence regarding silver, finding no proof that it works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wound dressings and creams containing silver are widely used. It is thought that silver may help wounds to heal faster and prevent infection, but we did not know if this was true. This review identified 26 trials (involving 2066 participants) comparing silver-containing dressings or creams against dressings or creams that did not contain silver. Twenty of the trials were on burn wounds, while the other trials were on a mixture of wound types. Most studies were small and of poor quality. After examining them all, &lt;strong&gt;the authors concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the use of silver-containing dressings or creams, as generally these treatments did not promote wound healing or prevent wound infections.&lt;/strong&gt; Some evidence from a number of small, poor-quality studies suggested that one silver-containing compound (silver sulphadiazine) has no effect on infection, and actually slows down healing in patients with partial-thickness burns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD006478/probable-that-silver-containing-dressings-and-creams-do-not-prevent-wound-infection-or-promote-healing_&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T11:49:28.233" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7238" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7425" CreationDate="2011-12-13T13:57:44.770" Score="15" ViewCount="1113" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/after-brussels-cameron-takes-refuge-in-his-country-retreat-6275522.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;newspaper article&lt;/a&gt; David Cameron has used this technique:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a source revealed that the Prime Minister was “desperate for a pee” during the marathon dinner summit in the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is understood that Mr Cameron used his full bladder as a device to keep him focused for the nine-hour session. It’s not the first time the PM has used this rather unorthodox method. He did the same thing when he delivered his “no-notes” make-or-break speech to his party conference in 2007, which stopped Gordon Brown from calling a snap election and saved his own leadership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is having a full bladder an effective technique for staying focused?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T01:06:39.130" Title="Does a full bladder help maintain mental focus?" Tags="|psychology|urine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7239" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-13T15:18:53.500" Score="10" ViewCount="4896" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of people in USSR used to place silver spoons into containers with water. The exact benefit/mechanism was generally not defined other than &quot;avoid contamination&quot;, but was frequently implied to be antibacterial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any references at the moment (can google if community requests) but it was an extremely common practice (every family I knew who owned a silver spoon did that, which was probably 80%+ people) so I'd consider the notion to be notable enough even without web links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is, &lt;strong&gt;are there any studies supporting or refuting ANY health benefit (probably antibacterial but not restricted to that) from placing a silver object into water container where water for drinking is stored for a long period (say, 6 to 144 hours).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to a somewhat vague nature of the claim, I'm specifying the following restriction: The claim being investigated must somehow be a plausible scenario that a random family would expect to affect the water being stored. E.g. antibacterial/antiviral are in-scope. Decreasing radioactive exposure isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="3451" LastEditDate="2011-12-13T18:09:27.973" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T15:23:23.507" Title="Is there any benefit to placing a silver spoon in a water carafe?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1955" CreationDate="2011-12-13T15:39:40.873" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;King Hezekiah, who ruled Judah around 700 BC, survived a siege by King Sennacherib of Assyria. This story is told in 2 Kings 18-19 and Isaiah 36-37.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/701sennach.asp&quot;&gt;Assyrian records have been found&lt;/a&gt; giving Sennacherib's point of view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As to Hezekiah, the Jew, he did not submit to my yoke, I laid siege to his strong cities, walled forts, and countless small villages, and conquered them by means of well-stamped earth-ramps and battering-rams brought near the walls with an attack by foot soldiers, using mines, breeches as well as trenches. I drove out 200,150 people, young and old, male and female, horses, mules, donkeys, camels, big and small cattle beyond counting, and considered them slaves. Himself I made a prisoner in Jerusalem, his royal residence, like a bird in a cage. I surrounded him with earthwork in order to molest those who were his city's gate. Thus I reduced his country, but I still increased the tribute and the presents to me as overlord which I imposed upon him beyond the former tribute, to be delivered annually. Hezekiah himself, did send me, later, to Nineveh, my lordly city, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, precious stones, antimony, large cuts of red stone, couches inlaid with ivory, nimedu-chairs inlaid with ivory, elephant-hides, ebony-wood, boxwood and all kinds of valuable treasures, his own daughters and concubines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4835" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T15:39:40.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7241" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7242" CreationDate="2011-12-13T16:47:12.397" Score="17" ViewCount="1547" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doctors seem to always say a woman shouldn't drink at all during pregnancy. But then I have heard a midwife say &quot;it would take a lot of constant drinking to cause fetal alcohol syndrome; you'd be fine with a glass of wine once in a while.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would seem that scores of generations drank while pregnant, as nobody knew otherwise, and FHS doesn't seem to have collapsed society. So, is there a safe amount of alcohol you can drink during pregnancy or is any amount harmful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5221" LastEditorUserId="5221" LastEditDate="2011-12-15T21:04:34.087" LastActivityDate="2011-12-15T21:04:34.087" Title="Is any amount of alcohol during pregnancy safe?" Tags="|medical-science|alcohol|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7241" CreationDate="2011-12-13T17:42:33.130" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may be a &quot;safe&quot; amount, but research has &lt;a href=&quot;http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;106/2/358&quot;&gt;not been able to identify what amount that might be&lt;/a&gt;.  According to The American Academy of Pediatrics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mills et al14 prospectively studied approximately 31 000 pregnancies in an attempt to determine how much alcohol pregnant women can consume safely. The consumption of 1 or more drinks (a drink is defined as 1.5 oz distilled spirits, 5 oz of wine, or 12 oz of beer) per day was associated with increased risk of giving birth to an infant with growth retardation. Although maternal age, parity, and health as well as specific fetal susceptibility may contribute to the infant's outcome, the potential for harm to the fetus is much stronger with large amounts of maternal alcohol consumption than with smaller amounts.15 Nevertheless, current data do not support the concept of a &quot;safe level&quot; of alcohol consumption by pregnant women below which no damage to a fetus will occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The AAP's official recommendation states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because there is no known safe amount of alcohol consumption during pregnancy, the Academy recommends abstinence from alcohol for women who are pregnant or who are planning a pregnancy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marchofdimes.com/pregnancy/alcohol_indepth.html&quot;&gt;From the March of Dimes website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No level of drinking alcohol has been proven safe during pregnancy. According to the U.S. Surgeon General, the patterns of drinking that place a baby at greatest risk for FASDs are binge drinking and drinking seven or more drinks per week (7). However, FASDs can occur in babies of women who drink less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers are taking a closer look at the more subtle effects of moderate and light drinking during pregnancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A 2002 study found that 14-year-old children whose mothers drank as little as one drink a week were significantly shorter and leaner and had a smaller head circumference (a possible indicator of brain size) than children of women who did not drink at all (8).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A 2001 study found that 6- and 7-year-old children of mothers who had as little as one drink a week during pregnancy were more likely than children of non-drinkers to have behavior problems, such as aggressive and delinquent behaviors. These researchers found that children whose mothers drank any alcohol during pregnancy were more than three times as likely as unexposed children to demonstrate delinquent behaviors (9).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A 2007 study suggested that female children of women who drank less than one drink a week were more likely to have behavioral and emotional problems at 4 and 8 years of age. The study also suggested similar effects in boys, but at higher levels of drinking (10).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other studies report behavioral and learning problems in children exposed to moderate drinking during pregnancy, including attention and memory problems, hyperactivity, impulsivity, poor social and communication skills, psychiatric problems (including mood disorders) and alcohol and drug use (2).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, while there's no evidence of causation between light drinking during pregnancy and problems, there are studies that suggest a correlation between even light drinking and various problems.  The correlation with serious health risks increases as the amount consumed increases, but there has not been a &quot;safe&quot; amount consistently identified, likely due to variations in individual metabolisms and how the alcohol is processed by the mothers' bodies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="3451" LastEditDate="2011-12-13T17:58:25.283" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T17:58:25.283" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7239" CreationDate="2011-12-13T18:03:58.810" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Silver has been known to have antimicrobial properties for since at least Hippocrates (300 BC) used it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/574126_3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;for dressing wounds&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is still seen as significant &lt;a href=&quot;http://jmm.sgmjournals.org/content/55/1/59.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;anti-bacterial agent&lt;/a&gt; as well as having &lt;a href=&quot;http://apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/abs/10.1094/PDIS-93-10-1037&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;antifungal&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jnanobiotechnology.com/content/8/1/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;antiviral&lt;/a&gt; effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Medical usage is typically with microparticles or as silver salts.  I don't know how much impact a solid spoon would have.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2011-12-13T18:03:58.810" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7252" CreationDate="2011-12-13T18:36:35.433" Score="75" ViewCount="22536" Body="&lt;p&gt;A known disposable razor company is claiming on their web site that their current product is superior to their old one because it has 5 blades instead of three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see the claim on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gillette.com/en/us/products/gillette-science.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;science&quot;&lt;/a&gt; page here, watching the &quot;Why Fusion is better than MACH3&quot; videoclip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do five blades provide &lt;em&gt;any proven advantage&lt;/em&gt; in comparison to three blades? For example, less cutting, or a deeper shave? The company only claims it's better, however I don't trust them, as they show only pseudo-scientific crap instead of real facts on their site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does any science back their claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/5624861&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Economist&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vwvTH.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-12-15T09:26:09.827" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T11:19:28.430" Title="Do razors with more blades work better?" Tags="|safety|advertising|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7247" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7251" CreationDate="2011-12-14T00:03:35.697" Score="45" ViewCount="22374" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciensational.com/blog/2007/10/100-pure-honey-facts.html&quot;&gt;honey never spoils&lt;/a&gt;. Is this claim true? If so, what is it about honey that can cause it to remain edible for thousands of years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4876" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T11:32:29.363" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T13:35:13.413" Title="Does honey ever go bad?" Tags="|nutrition|time|honey|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7248" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7268" CreationDate="2011-12-14T03:07:02.017" Score="15" ViewCount="1987" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was sent an article by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Austin_Fitts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Catherine Austin Fitts&lt;/a&gt;, the author of the Solari Report, entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://solari.com/articles/student_loans/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;William M. Diefenderfer: The Financial Hit Man of Student Loans&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. It contained some rather striking claims that I wanted to reproduce here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She writes this as background information on William Diefenderfer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lawyer by training, he had served in a number of Congressional staff roles, including chief of staff and counsel to the Senate Finance Committee and as the Deputy Director of [White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB)].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She goes on to say that Bill joined the Sallie Mae board, and then makes these claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As described in the review, certain bankruptcy and debt collection regulation issues were added to the law after Bill joined the Sallie Mae board, presumably as the result of student loan industry lobbying of Congress. &lt;strong&gt;These provisions legally and operationally created a situation in which Sallie Mae could earn more money from students’ defaulting on their educational loans than from the loans being paid off according to their terms.&lt;/strong&gt; The changes included tightening the provisions that ensure that student loans cannot be extinguished in a bankruptcy filing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What has happened is that portions of the financial sector and academia have teamed up to target children with predatory lending.&lt;/strong&gt; Rather than provide them with the knowledge and tools necessary for them to be successful in a rapidly changing world, they have loaded them up with expensive education that often is not economic or relevant and that, for all but the wealthiest among us, is being funded with debt. This is debt that many cannot afford.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the argument seems to imply that &lt;strong&gt;various parties actually &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; students to default on their loans because the new system enables Sallie Mae to profit more from failure than success, in terms of loan repayment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to support this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps one way to go about this question is simply to pick an arbitrary loan amount of $xx,xxx and an interest rate of x.x%, then calculate the following and compare:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much money does Sallie Mae earn if repaid under normal circumstances?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much money does Sallie Mae earn from the same loan if defaulted upon?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-11-26T12:41:44.183" Title="Does Sallie Mae earn more from defaulted education loans than properly repaid ones?" Tags="|united-states|education|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2853" CreationDate="2011-12-14T05:15:33.963" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me pose another process by which the anecdotal &amp;quot;scorching&amp;quot; might occur when watering during sunlight hours that sounds plausible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say the water has a significant amount of some compound (e.g. salt or some other chloride) dissolved in it and some of the water sits on the leaf under the blazing sun so evaporates in place on the leaf it leaving behind a residue of undissolved salt. Just like adding salt to other moist things it dehydrates and ultimately kills the cells, leaving a burn mark (and thus weaker plant) behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Horticulturist Linda Chalker-Scott takes on the &amp;quot;don't water in the day&amp;quot; myth in an &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20210130061815/https://s3.wp.wsu.edu/uploads/sites/403/2015/03/leaf-scorch.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article published on her WSU page&lt;/a&gt; and explains that the salt problem is not due to the water being on the leaf, but by it being absorbed normally (i.e. via roots) and by becoming too concentrated inside the plant because it has a deficiency that hampers its ability to deal with the salt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from this, the article is a good debunker for the whole idea that watering during the day causes leaf scorch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3107" LastEditorUserId="59668" LastEditDate="2021-06-14T13:46:12.007" LastActivityDate="2021-06-14T13:46:12.007" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7247" CreationDate="2011-12-14T07:43:36.663" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is common knowledge that sugar will help microorganism growth (that's why, for instance, when you rehydrate freeze-dried yeast you add a pinch of sugar to help it restart its activity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too much sugar (or any other solute, really), however, is not good for microbial growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One parameter that is usually taken into account is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/FoodborneIllness/FoodborneIllnessFoodbornePathogensNaturalToxins/BadBugBook/ucm071351.htm&quot;&gt;water activity&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_activity&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[&lt;em&gt;Water activity&lt;/em&gt;] is defined as the vapor pressure of a liquid divided by that of pure water at the same temperature; therefore, pure distilled water has a water activity of exactly one.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  As the temperature increases, aw typically increases, except in some products with crystalline salt or sugar.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Higher aw substances tend to support more microorganisms. Bacteria usually require at least 0.91, and fungi at least 0.7.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honey generally has a water activity between 0.5 and 0.6. (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.honey.com/images/downloads/refguide.pdf&quot;&gt;this PDF&lt;/a&gt;), too low to support microbial growth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honey is in fact a well known antimicrobial, although &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22095907&quot;&gt;the high sugar content is not the only factor contributing to this&lt;/a&gt; (low pH and presence of several antibacterial compounds play a role there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question: does honey ever go bad?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the US &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.honey.com/nhb/about-honey/frequently-asked-questions/category/honey-properties/&quot;&gt;National Honey Board website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Honey stored in sealed containers can remain stable for decades and even centuries! However, honey is susceptible to physical and chemical changes during storage; it tends to darken and lose its aroma and flavor or crystallize. These are temperature-dependent processes, making the shelf life of honey difficult to define. For practical purposes, a shelf life of two years is often stated. Properly processed, packaged and stored honey retains its quality for a long time. If in doubt, throw it out, and purchase a new jar of honey!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, essentially, if you stored it properly you will not have any issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2011-12-14T20:44:25.013" LastActivityDate="2011-12-14T20:44:25.013" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7244" CreationDate="2011-12-14T12:15:11.657" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Studies that have ever been published or scrutinised outside razor companies seem to be rather difficult to come by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best I could find was &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-2494.1990.tb00538.x/abstract&quot;&gt;Measurement of beard hair removal efficacy using image analysis&lt;/a&gt;, a study conducted by researchers at Gillette (kudos to Solveig_A on Reddit for fetching the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/Scholar/comments/nbwz8/measurement_of_beard_hair_removal_efficacy_using/&quot;&gt;full-text&lt;/a&gt; for me). Now, a warning: this study's primary focus was not actually about comparing two razors, but on techniques for finding statistically significant results even for marginal effects were to conduct such a study. That can make reading it a bit obtuse (I shall not get into why they might be motivated to conduct such a study...). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two experiments compare different types of shaving foam using a  twin blade and a single-blade razor, respectively. They do not include results in such a way as to make direct comparison possible. However, the third experiment compared a single-blade and a twin-blade razor (Gillette's Trac I and Trac II razors, respectively) with the same type of shaving foam. According to their data, the twin-bladed razor was 1.6% more effective than the single-bladed razor, but that they could not reject the null hypothesis (that they were equally effective) at the α=0.05 significance level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, this does not represent compelling evidence that a razor with two blades is more effective than a razor with one blade, which does not bode well for the claim that five blades are more effective than three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cecil Adams, writing for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/174/are-twin-blade-razors-better-than-single-blade-ones&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;, cites studies by Consumers' Research magazine which consistently failed to find a benefit for twin blades, whilst noting that the single-bladed razors tended to last for more shaves than twin-bladed razors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastActivityDate="2011-12-14T12:15:11.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7253" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7269" CreationDate="2011-12-14T16:19:25.900" Score="35" ViewCount="4733" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most of us will have been taught the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-second_rule&quot;&gt;two-second rule&lt;/a&gt; when learning to drive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The two-second rule is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_thumb&quot;&gt;rule of thumb&lt;/a&gt; by which a driver may maintain a safe following distance at any speed. The rule is that a driver should ideally stay at least two seconds behind any vehicle that is directly in front of the driver's vehicle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what research is there to lend weight to this rule of thumb?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always liked to think that giving a 2 second gap between you and the vehicle in front was clearly a sensible idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, increasingly on British roads I see people driving just a few meters behind the vehicle in front. At 70 miles per hour, 3m puts you just one tenth of a second behind that vehicle. To put that into context, the Stanford press release &lt;a href=&quot;http://med.stanford.edu/news_releases/1999/sepreleases/reaction.html&quot;&gt;Sleep deprivation shown to have as much impact on reaction time as alcohol&lt;/a&gt;, talks about reaction times in excess of 2 tenths of a second (200ms) for Navy Fighter Pilots, while the wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_chronometry&quot;&gt;mental chronometry&lt;/a&gt; page suggests a mean reaction time to a visual stimulus of around 190ms for college-age individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been studies looking at the relationship between following distance and accident rates? Between following distance and accident severity? What about between following distance and the number of accidents that would have been near misses if the following distance had been greater?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had a look, but it's not my field so don't have much of a clue as to where to start looking for such data or which journals would publish such studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2772" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T09:37:51.797" LastActivityDate="2020-01-17T23:08:10.797" Title="Does the 'two-second rule' provide a valid minimum gap for safe driving?" Tags="|road-vehicles|safety|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7247" CreationDate="2011-12-14T21:06:22.330" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Honey can go bad&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Osmophilic organisms are microorganisms adapted to environments with high osmotic pressures, such as high sugar concentrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Osmophile yeasts&lt;/strong&gt; are important because they &lt;strong&gt;cause spoilage in&lt;/strong&gt; the sugar and sweet goods industry, with products such as fruit juices, fruit juice concentrates, liquid sugars (such as golden syrup), &lt;strong&gt;honey&lt;/strong&gt; and in some cases marzipan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmophile&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Honey can be fermented&lt;/strong&gt; into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oldwestbrew.com/basic_meadmaking.htm&quot;&gt;mead&lt;/a&gt; by adding water and yeast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mead is a honey-based fermented beverage that has been produced and enjoyed since before the dawn of recorded history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Honey can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atsu.edu/faculty/chamberlain/Website/tritzid/foodpoi.htm&quot;&gt;contain spores of botulinum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;C. botulinum spores in honey used to sweeten infants milk or water, when ingested, geminate in the infants intestinal tract, colonize it and produce toxin in vivo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in short, assuming that honey does not go bad is completely wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-12-14T21:06:22.330" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7259" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7262" CreationDate="2011-12-14T23:47:54.780" Score="14" ViewCount="1121" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is nearly 50 years since Rachel Carson's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring&quot;&gt;Silent Spring&lt;/a&gt; was published where she popularised a belief that we are all being poisoned by artificial chemicals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She popularised the idea that we are suffering an epidemic of cancer. The idea has not gone away. Some randomly selected modern comment illustrates the currency of the idea. A 2008 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/opinion/19iht-edservan.1.16308287.html&quot;&gt;opinion article&lt;/a&gt; in the New York Times proposed that &quot;we can stop this epidemic of cancer&quot;. The London Evening Standard &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23407652-modern-living-to-blame-for-cancer-epidemic.do&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; &quot;Modern living to blame for cancer epidemic&quot;. A quick Google search will reveal the ubiquity of the assumption that we are faced with an epidemic (though there is some disagreement on the cause).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But not everyone agrees. &lt;a href=&quot;http://reason.com/archives/2001/03/07/what-cancer-epidemic&quot;&gt;This piece&lt;/a&gt; from Reason.com asks &quot;what cancer epidemic?&quot; and quotes an ACS report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall cancer incidence and death rates have continued to decrease in men and women since the early 1990s, and the decline in overall cancer mortality has been greater in recent years...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the common assumption is that there is an epidemic. But some solid figures don't seem to support the idea. One reason might be confusion around the statistics (for example failing to adjust for age or smoking). Who is right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to be clear about the question and to avoid some possible distractions, the question is not about causes of cancer, just rates. Further, &lt;strong&gt;the specific question is whether cancer rates adjusted to exclude smoking (a major contributor) and to correct for age are growing significantly.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T20:41:25.660" Title="Is there an epidemic of cancer?" Tags="|cancer|epidemiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7259" CreationDate="2011-12-15T14:30:09.940" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there is not currently an epidemic of cancer. Cancer incidence rates for the last 10 years have been fairly flat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/cancerstats/incidence/all-cancers-combined/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UK cancer incidence data&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;All Malignant Neoplasms Excluding Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer (C00-C97 excl. C44), European Age-Standardised Incidence Rates, Great Britain, 1975-2008&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RfGhO.png&quot; alt=&quot;All Malignant Neoplasms Excluding Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer (C00-C97 excl. C44), European Age-Standardised Incidence Rates, Great Britain, 1975-2008&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The European age-standardised incidences rate for all cancers in Great Britain increased by 16% in males and 34% in females during the period 1977-1979 and 2006-2008, &lt;strong&gt;with almost this entire rise occurring before the late 1990s&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="2603" LastEditDate="2011-12-15T15:31:18.320" LastActivityDate="2011-12-15T15:31:18.320" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5537" CreationDate="2011-12-16T05:52:55.990" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When calculations are done, the Earth's temperature seems hotter than current mechanisms can  be explained. &#xA;One theory for the high temperature is that the Earth has gravitationally captured dark matter. This is a main theory for what is at the core of the gas giants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-dark-matter-encircle-earth/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-dark-matter-encircle-earth/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5499" LastEditorUserId="5499" LastEditDate="2018-10-21T18:22:41.363" LastActivityDate="2018-10-21T18:22:41.363" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7267" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7595" CreationDate="2011-12-16T13:58:32.140" Score="27" ViewCount="6931" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/6638/1361&quot;&gt;&quot;In people who have been long-term vegetarians, studies have found that they actually lose the ability to digest meat&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Is this true, at a &lt;em&gt;biological&lt;/em&gt; level? (As opposed to any possible psychological effect.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Yes, the link is from the SciFi SE, but I'm sure there are plenty of vegetarian sites that would make the exact same claim.) I actually came to &lt;em&gt;skeptics&lt;/em&gt; expecting to find a counter-response already, that I could link in to the SciFi post - I can't believe someone hasn't already asked this. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another claim: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sharecare.com/question/vegetarians-and-meat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why do long-term vegetarians find it difficult to digest meat?&lt;/a&gt; - by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sharecare.com/user/dr-mehmet-oz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Mehmet Oz&lt;/a&gt;, who is Professor of Surgery at Columbia University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4910" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:43:37.340" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T14:38:14.183" Title="Do long-time vegetarians lose the ability to digest meat?" Tags="|vegetarianism|meat|mehmet-oz|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7248" CreationDate="2011-12-16T18:29:49.907" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How much money does Sallie Mae earn if repaid under normal circumstances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They would make the interest plus any fees that are associated with the student loan.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/banking/bank4.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;These will vary by loan&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How much money does Sallie Mae earn from the same loan if defaulted upon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They would earn much greater interest, and probably much greater amount in fees.  These are all defined and spelled out when the student loan is signed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GKEB2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Recovery Rates Charted&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Family_Education_Loan_Program&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FFELP (Federal Family Education Loan Program) Loans&lt;/a&gt; are where student loans are reported in government statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes Sally Mae will collect &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20170430183320/http://studentloanjustice.org:80/defaults-making-money.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;much more money from a student loan&lt;/a&gt; that is defaulted on early and then paid off over time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;various parties actually want students to default on their loans&#xA;  because the new system enables Sallie Mae to profit more from failure&#xA;  than success, in terms of loan repayment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that part of their business model?  Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would anyone make most these loans if they were not guaranteed? Probably not, because the student loan default rate is more than double the regular bank loan default rate (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/default-rates-rise-federal-student-loans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;8.8%&lt;/a&gt; vs &lt;a href=&quot;http://nreionline.com/news/CRE_bank_default_rates/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;~4%&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to get a non secured loan and use that money to pay for college? &lt;strike&gt;Yes.&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20111202025442/http://www.wolterskluwerfs.com/banking/info/regulationZ/priv_ed_loans.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Looks like no since 2009&lt;/a&gt; - Fortunately the government has seen to protect you by limiting your choices in how you pay for your college expenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you work until you have saved enough money to pay for tuition, and/or work while in school to pay for your tuition up front?  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/education/edlife/18strategy-t.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yes you can lots of people do it&lt;/a&gt;, and there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/CollegeAndFamily/SavingForCollege/should-kids-pay-own-college-costs.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;other options&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said there is no evidence that they want &lt;strong&gt;YOU&lt;/strong&gt; to default.  And even though student loans &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20120621034141/http://studentaid.ed.gov:80/PORTALSWebApp/students/english/discharges.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;are not able to be discharged&lt;/a&gt; the default rate is very high.  So imagine what it would be like if you could discharge them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="19086" LastEditDate="2018-11-26T12:41:44.183" LastActivityDate="2018-11-26T12:41:44.183" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7253" CreationDate="2011-12-17T01:53:43.260" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a good discussion of the issue of driver reaction time and the factors affecting it (with a couple of references) here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/reactiontime.html&quot;&gt;http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/reactiontime.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The best estimate is 1.5 seconds for side incursions and perhaps a few tenths of a second faster for straight-ahead obstacles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on that article, I would say that the two second rule should be considered a minimum distance at which to follow and the following distance should be increased as factors dictate. For example, if you're tired, your reaction time will be longer. Allow yourself more distance. If it's dark or rainy or the road is slick, your ability to see an obstacle and stop will be degraded. Allow yourself more distance. If you have a talkative companion in the car distracting you, your cognitive load will be higher and your reaction time will be longer. Allow more distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it probably doesn't have much relation to one's ability as a driver, a fun way to test one's raw reaction time is here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/&quot;&gt;http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5510" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-12-17T09:10:01.663" LastActivityDate="2011-12-17T09:10:01.663" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7272" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7279" CreationDate="2011-12-18T01:04:41.193" Score="20" ViewCount="3732" Body="&lt;p&gt;Popular consensus seems to be that ergonomic keyboards (with the middle split or curve) are better for your physical health than standard keyboards, and reduce the likelihood of carpel tunnel syndrome or other medical issues. If this is the case, I am surprised that there continue to be many more models of standard keyboards available for sale than ergonomic keyboards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there definitive data on the health benefits (or lack thereof) associated with using an ergonomic keyboard versus a traditional keyboard?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="858" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T23:58:10.160" LastActivityDate="2022-09-28T13:31:26.310" Title="Are ergonomic keyboards better for your health?" Tags="|physiology|computers|ergonomics|keyboard|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7274" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7275" CreationDate="2011-12-18T11:00:11.037" Score="18" ViewCount="6138" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is American Wrestling staged? Do the wrestlers really beat each other to blood and break bones? Have they already decided the winner and all is the mess created during a match just a staged performance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2011-12-20T12:00:09.463" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T01:28:41.077" Title="Is WWE (Wrestling) Fake or Real?" Tags="|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7274" CreationDate="2011-12-18T11:25:33.013" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's clearly a representation of a script and not a real fight at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what a WWE event is, &lt;a href=&quot;http://corporate.wwe.com/company/events.jsp&quot;&gt;according to WWE&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Live events and television programming are our principal creative content and production activities. &lt;strong&gt;Our creative team develops compelling and complex characters and weaves them into dynamic storylines that combine physical and emotional elements. Storylines are usually played out in the ring&lt;/strong&gt; and unfold on our weekly television shows, and culminate in our monthly pay-per-view events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, a creative team scripts a storyline (including how the fight develops) which is then &lt;em&gt;played out&lt;/em&gt; on the ring by &quot;Superstars&quot; and &quot;Divas&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-12-18T11:25:33.013" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7276" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7281" CreationDate="2011-12-18T11:41:25.567" Score="30" ViewCount="1914" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read in a book that NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter was lost on September 23, 1999, at a cost of $125 million, because one engineering team used metric units, while another one used inches for a key spacecraft operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it really a conversion problem in software or were reports oversimplified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="717" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:39:35.690" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:39:35.690" Title="Was NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter lost because engineering teams used different measuring units?" Tags="|software|engineering|space-flight|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5332" CreationDate="2011-12-18T11:51:14.203" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/heldref/access/51554916.html?dids=51554916:51554916:51554916:51554916&amp;amp;FMT=ABS&amp;amp;FMTS=ABS%3aFT%3aTG%3aPAGE&amp;amp;date=Jan%2FFeb+2000&amp;amp;author=Rosalind+C+Anderson&amp;amp;pub=Archives+of+Environmental+Health&amp;amp;edition=&amp;amp;startpage=38&amp;amp;desc=Respiratory+toxicity+of+mattress+emissions+in+mice&quot;&gt;potentially yes&lt;/a&gt;, at least in mice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The authors used gas chromatography/mass spectrometry to identify respiratory irritants (e.g., styrene, isopropylbenzene, limonene) in the emissions of one of the polyurethane foam mattresses. Some mattresses emitted mixtures of volatile chemicals that had the potential to cause respiratory-tract irritation and decrease airflow velocity in mice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/318/5848/194.2.full?maxtoshow=&amp;amp;HITS=10&amp;amp;hits=10&amp;amp;RESULTFORMAT=&amp;amp;fulltext=fire+retardant+dilemma&amp;amp;searchid=1&amp;amp;FIRSTINDEX=0&amp;amp;resourcetype=HWCIT&quot;&gt;old memory foam mattresses may contain pentaBDE&lt;/a&gt; as flame retardant. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17426733&quot;&gt;pentaBDE may be hazardous to health&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;studies show that pentaBDE is bioaccumulating and has the potential to adversely affect health&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://memoryfoamreviews.com/private/memory-foam-material-safety-data-sheet-msds/&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; (which I am not confident of, but looks legit), clearly states that foam mattresses are &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; irritant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Route of entry:       Inhalation - Foam dust&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Health hazards: Coarse dust can cause mechanical irritation of lungs and eyes. Airborne dust is evaluated as a nuisance dust. If ignited, foam may decompose and emit toxic gases and respiratory irritants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Route of entry:   Eye - Foam dust&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Health hazards: Coarse dust can cause mechanical irritation to the eyes. If exposed, avoid rubbing eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2011-12-18T11:51:14.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7278" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-18T12:07:55.300" Score="11" ViewCount="927" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard from many people that physical exercise controls or prevents diabetes. Is there any studies that confirm or deny this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does physical exercise control diabetes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5518" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2011-12-18T18:35:54.070" LastActivityDate="2022-08-06T22:16:35.487" Title="Does physical exercise control diabetes?" Tags="|medical-science|diabetes|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7272" CreationDate="2011-12-18T12:17:58.673" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, there are many documented advantages.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copied from &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20100924130238/http://goldtouch.com/Resources/Studies/ErgonomicKeyboardStudyResults.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and then adapted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...the adjustable keyboard was more comfortable...in comparison with the conventional keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10386355/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tittiranonda, Rempel, et al. (1999) “Workplace use of an adjustable keyboard: adjustment preferences and effect on wrist posture”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...split keyboards place the wrist closer to a neutral posture in the radial/ulnar plane substantially reduc[ing] one occupational risk factor... ulnar deviation of the wrist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1518/001872099779656770&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marklin, et al. (1999) “Wrist and forearm posture from typing on split and vertically inclined computer keyboards”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is increasing evidence that alternative geometry keyboards may prevent or reduce arm pain or disorders, and presumably the mechanism is by reducing awkward arm postures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16806042/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rempel, Barr, et al. (2007) “The effect of six keyboard designs on wrist and forearm postures”&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternate keyboard designs can significantly affect tendon travel and may address reduced repetitiveness in typing by reducing the amount of tendon travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10831808/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nelson, Treaster, et al. (2000) “Finger motion, wrist motion and tendon travel as a function of keyboard angles”&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...[the tested] split keyboard [configurations] are beneficial in promoting a neutral wrist position, which theoretically would decrease exposure to WMSDs such as tenosynovitis in the wrist and carpal tunnel syndrome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1093/ptj/81.4.1038&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marklin, Simoneau (2001) “Effect of setup configurations of split computer keyboards on wrist angle”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...[study results] identified a reduction of symptoms, an improvement in functional status, preference for and increased satisfaction with the [alternative] keyboards, and maintenance of typing speed and accuracy for both groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s10926-006-9054-z&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ripat, Scatliff, et al. (2006) “The effect of alternate style keyboards on severity of symptoms and functional status of individuals with work related upper extremity disorders”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...[split] keyboards with a slant [open] angle of 10 degrees to 12.5 degrees...are effective in placing the wrist in near neutral ulnar/radial deviation when typing...[and] tilting the keyboard halves 20 to 30 degrees is effective in reducing forearm pronation to approximately 45 degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15552709/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Design features of alternative computer keyboards: a review of experimental data.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analyses of...six studies indicated that the [Adjustable Open-tented keyboard] had a large effect on pronation and ulnar deviation...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.5014/ajot.60.1.40&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The effect of three alternative keyboard designs on forearm pronation, wrist extension, and ulnar deviation: a meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there are also advantages in using a &lt;em&gt;soft-touch&lt;/em&gt; keyboard and a keyboard without a keypad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-28T13:31:26.310" LastActivityDate="2022-09-28T13:31:26.310" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7278" CreationDate="2011-12-18T12:34:04.280" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes it does&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few sources :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00400196&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prevention of Type 2 (non-insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus by diet and physical exercise The 6-year Malmö feasibility study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;long-term intervention in the form of diet and physical exercise is feasible even on a large scale, and that substantial metabolic improvement can be achieved which may contribute to prevent or postpone manifest diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20211218102923/https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/consumer/prevent.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Center for Disease Control&lt;/a&gt; also confirms that exercise is related to diabetes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the risk factors which increase the likelihood of developing diabetes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being physically inactive—exercising fewer than three times a week.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-08-06T22:16:35.487" LastActivityDate="2022-08-06T22:16:35.487" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7276" CreationDate="2011-12-18T14:11:22.343" Score="24" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The MCO MIB has determined that the root cause for the loss of the MCO&#xA;  spacecraft was the failure to use metric units in the coding of a&#xA;  ground software file, “Small Forces,” used in trajectory models. &#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Specifically, thruster performance data in English units instead of&#xA;  metric units was used in the software application code titled&#xA;  SM_FORCES (small forces).&lt;/strong&gt;  A file called Angular Momentum Desaturation&#xA;  (AMD) contained the output data from the SM_FORCES software. &lt;strong&gt;The data&#xA;  in the AMD file was required to be in metric units per existing&#xA;  software interface documentation, and the trajectory modelers assumed&#xA;  the data was provided in metric units per the requirements.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/pao/reports/1999/MCO_report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board Phase I Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Project Cost:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;$327.6 million total for both orbiter and lander (not including Deep&#xA;  Space 2). $193.1 million for spacecraft development, $91.7 million for&#xA;  launch, and $42.8 million for mission operations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/orbiter/fact.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mission Logo:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OJ4Ti.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Mission Logo&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="204" LastEditorUserId="204" LastEditDate="2011-12-18T14:55:41.933" LastActivityDate="2011-12-18T14:55:41.933" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7282" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8193" CreationDate="2011-12-18T16:07:34.710" Score="51" ViewCount="14289" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Backstory&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of my relatives were subjected by their parents to a &quot;training process&quot; to &quot;prevent&quot; left-hand-dominance.  This method started at a very young age and basically consisted of politely instructing the child to switch hands whenever they reached for an object with the left hand.  Now, as adults, everyone that went through this process—most of whom admit that they are genetically left-handed—uses their right hand for almost all tasks.  Some have even developed ambidextrousness, which I guess is an added benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as my young daughter is reaching the age where this &quot;process&quot; should start, I wonder if I  should resist my family members' suggestions to do the same for her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Skepticism:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;All&lt;/em&gt; of the parenting advice I've found on the Internet (&lt;em&gt;e.g.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://wasioabbasi.wordpress.com/2011/08/08/never-force-left-handed-child-to-be-right-handed/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pages like this&lt;/a&gt;) claim that forcing genetically left-handed children to use their right hand is bad.  Most of their arguments, however, take the form of, &quot;It isn't so bad to be left-handed, so why resist?&quot;  Or pseudo-medical claims that forcing right-handedness will conflict with the child's &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/58/left-brain-right-brain&quot;&gt;left-&lt;em&gt;vs.&lt;/em&gt;-right brain dominance&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there medical/psychological/scientific evidence on whether forcing or re-teaching handedness is harmful &lt;em&gt;vs.&lt;/em&gt; beneficial to a child's development?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;I am not looking for opinions on whether it is a good idea to do this to one's child; that's why I'm asking this here as opposed to &lt;a href=&quot;https://parenting.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Parenting.SE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T13:54:00.083" Title="Is there any harm in forcing/re-educating a left-handed child to use their right hand?" Tags="|psychology|neurology|children|genetics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7278" CreationDate="2011-12-18T18:59:59.807" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, physical activity both prevents and treats Type 2 diabetes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eriksson, K.; Lindgärde, F.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00400196&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prevention of Type 2 (non-insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus by diet and physical exercise The 6-year Malmö feasibility study&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Diabetologia Volume: 34; Issue: 12; 1991-12-01&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Doi: 10.1007/BF00400196&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We conclude that long-term intervention in the form of diet and physical exercise is feasible even on a large scale, and that substantial metabolic improvement can be achieved which may contribute to prevent or postpone manifest diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Helmrich, Susan P.; Ragland, David R.; Leung, Rita W.; Paffenbarger, Ralph S.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJM199107183250302&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Physical Activity and Reduced Occurrence of Non-Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;New England Journal of Medicine; 1991/07/18&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;DOI: 10.1056/NEJM199107183250302&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Increased physical activity is effective in preventing NIDDM, and the protective benefit is especially pronounced in persons at the highest risk for the disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ronald J. Sigal; Glen P. Kenny; David H. Wasserman; Carmen Castaneda-Sceppa; Russell D. White&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/29/6/1433.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Physical Activity/Exercise and Type 2 Diabetes A consensus statement from the American Diabetes Association&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Diabetes Care June 2006 vol. 29 no. 6 1433-1438&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;DOI: 10.2337/dc06-9910&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, there is firm and consistent evidence that programs of increased physical activity and modest weight loss reduce the incidence of type 2 diabetes in individuals with [impaired glucose tolerance].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, structured exercise programs had a statistically and clinically significant beneficial effect on glycemic control, and this effect was not primarily mediated by weight loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T05:29:45.810" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7276" CreationDate="2011-12-18T19:41:13.697" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked &lt;a href=&quot;http://norvig.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peter Norvig&lt;/a&gt;, who was on the review board, and he gave me the following more nuanced answer (the question was asked in the context of type-safety in programming language choice):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem involved reading data from a file and a miscommunication about what the numbers in the file were.  I don't know of any language, no matter how type-strict, that forces you to tag the string &amp;quot;123.45&amp;quot; in a file with the units of force (newtons vs foot-pounds), nor do I know of any language, no matter how type-loose, in which you could not impose such a convention if you wanted to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond the initial error, the reasons why the error proved fatal were more around organizational structure than around language choice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) An anomaly was detected early on, but was not entered into an official issue-tracking database.  Better practices would force all such things to be tracked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) The team was separated between JPL in California and Lockheed-Martin in Colorado, so there were no lunch-time discussions about &amp;quot;hey, did you get that anomaly straighten out?  No?  Well, let's look into it more carefully...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) The faulty code was not carefully code-reviewed, because of improper code re-use.  On the previous mission, this file was just a log file, not used during flight operations, and so was not subject to careful scrutiny.  In MCO, the file and surrounding code was re-used, but then at some point they promoted it to be a part of actual navigation, and unfortunately nobody went back and subjected the relevant code to careful review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) Bad onboarding process of new engineers: The faulty code was written by a new engineer -- first week (or maybe first month or so -- on the job. This was deemed ok because originally it was &amp;quot;just a log file&amp;quot;, not mission-critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Personal communication 2011-06-14)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-12-18T19:41:13.697" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7285" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-19T00:47:43.400" Score="3" ViewCount="445" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ecomistsolutions.com/index.php?option=com_zoo&amp;amp;task=item&amp;amp;item_id=21&amp;amp;category_id=12&amp;amp;Itemid=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This product&lt;/a&gt; claims to be an effective calcium and lime remover. Is this going to be any more effective than a spray bottle with water and some elbow grease? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim it uses a thing called &lt;a href=&quot;http://ecomistsolutions.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=75&amp;amp;Itemid=152#colloidal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;colloidal science&lt;/a&gt;. Is there any research to back up their claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5174" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T10:42:58.790" Title="Can processed coconut extract, corn, tree sap, potatoes and grass be combined to be used as a calcium and lime remover?" Tags="|chemistry|cleaning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7287" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7288" CreationDate="2011-12-19T14:53:23.357" Score="59" ViewCount="108028" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously, I am talking about simple charger without any indicator lights etc. If yes, why does it use energy when the circuit is not closed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treehugger.com/culture/treehugger-homework-unplug-your-cellphone-charger.html&quot;&gt;http://www.treehugger.com/culture/treehugger-homework-unplug-your-cellphone-charger.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/Your-cell-phone-is-charged--please-unplug/2100-1041_3-6118116.html&quot;&gt;http://news.cnet.com/Your-cell-phone-is-charged--please-unplug/2100-1041_3-6118116.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://practicallygreen.com/unplug-cell-phone-chargers-and-other-appliances-when-not-in-use&quot;&gt;http://practicallygreen.com/unplug-cell-phone-chargers-and-other-appliances-when-not-in-use&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5525" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-12-22T16:31:43.580" LastActivityDate="2016-05-18T06:08:33.587" Title="Does a mobile phone charger that is plugged in but has no phone attached to it use energy?" Tags="|mobile-phones|energy-efficiency|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7287" CreationDate="2011-12-19T18:00:07.703" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inside virtually every phone charger is a transformer. Transformers have a finite resistance, and hence there will always be current flowing through them if they are plugged in, even if there is no load (i.e. nothing charging). That's basic physics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the obvious follow-up question is: how much energy does it use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates vary, but its certainly not much. &lt;a href=&quot;http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/everyday-tech/plug-in-transformer.htm&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; claims (without reference) that its 1-5 watts. &lt;a href=&quot;http://physicsworld.com/blog/2009/04/is_your_phone_charger_plugged.html&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; claims that it's less than half of a watt. And further claims that this represents &lt;em&gt;one hundredth of a percent&lt;/em&gt; of a typical person's usage. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/apr/12/energy.environment&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; gives more figures for different standbys, and gives that for a phone charger at about 0.4W. You can consume that power for 380 days to get the same amount of energy as a hot bath. Of course with very many people using phone chargers, that can add up to a very large amount of electricity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2011-12-22T16:40:14.317" LastActivityDate="2011-12-22T16:40:14.317" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7148" CreationDate="2011-12-19T18:31:47.080" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It turns out that the spike may be because warranties lengths are to be reduced by two major manufacturers in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current (i.e. expensive) drives have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9222760/Hard_drive_manufacturers_slash_warranty_periods&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a significantly longer warranty period&lt;/a&gt; than future ones from the beginning of 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Seagate's warranties on certain drives will be reduced as of Dec. 31,&#xA;  and WD will follow beginning Jan. 2. All drives shipped prior to those&#xA;  dates will continue to carry the current warranty term associated with&#xA;  the products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the OP may be right: These drives will likely command a premium over those with the 1 year warranty after first of the year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;When we moved to a three-year warranty, the expense of doing that was&#xA;  phone calls, repair rates, return rates, refurbishments. None of that&#xA;  has really changed,&quot; Rutledge says. &quot;What has changed is the average&#xA;  selling price. Back then, the average price was $175. Today, our&#xA;  average selling price is $65 to $75.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/105491/hard_drive_vendors_shrink_warranties.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while this does not actually answer the question of why it definitely gives motive to horde hard drives with longer warranties that can be expected to command premium prices as over time people will expect that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/135459&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;shorter warranty period will imply low quality product.&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718797000027&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Second source(pay walled) that backs up the claim of warranty inferring quality&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-12-19T21:58:38.407" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T21:58:38.407" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7285" CreationDate="2011-12-19T22:26:10.257" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Colloidal chemistry&lt;/em&gt; – as they are using it – means &lt;em&gt;detergent&lt;/em&gt;. As you surmised, Their cleaning system is a spray bottle, an unremarkable detergent mixture consisting largely of water, and elbow grease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This product is an excellent example of how detergent manufacturers put lipstick on a pig. More generally, it's a lesson about how experts in marketing and public relations take advantage of the way we think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer is based on my own professional experience as a manager of a business that manufactures cleaning compounds. As you read this, note that I am not criticizing the manufacture of an unremarkable detergent product that contains chemicals, i.e., my own livelihood. I am using my insider knowledge to show where the marketing material is misleading, and, more generally, how the public's basic honest and cooperative nature becomes the tool of the P.R. expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In normal social situations, most people will assume automatically that what you say is: (1) &lt;strong&gt;provable&lt;/strong&gt;, (2) &lt;strong&gt;complete&lt;/strong&gt;, (3) &lt;strong&gt;relevant&lt;/strong&gt;, and (4) &lt;strong&gt;unambiguous&lt;/strong&gt;. This is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cooperative principle&lt;/a&gt;. The cooperative principle is well known to experts in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_articles_related_to_public_relations&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;marketing and public relations&lt;/a&gt;. They violate it deliberately in ways they do not intend you to notice, so that you will not become skeptical when you are evaluating what they say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, let's unpack the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most obvious clue to the nature of this product is this quotation from their FAQ:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q - I found I needed to scrub very hard the first time I used ECO MIST PROFESSIONAL CALCIUM &amp;amp; LIME. Why is this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A - Initially, tough calcium and lime jobs may require vigorous scrubbing with a good scrub pad to remove previous chemical build-up prior to removing the calcium and lime deposits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you vigorously scrub away the &amp;quot;previous chemical build-up&amp;quot;, note that the term violates &lt;strong&gt;unambiguous&lt;/strong&gt;. The cooperative person is intended to think it refers to &amp;quot;toxic&amp;quot; cleaners used in the past, but it means &amp;quot;soap scum&amp;quot;. That's actually the manufacturer admitting that you are cleaning the surface by scrubbing it with a pad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The terms &amp;quot;agricultural ingredients&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;colloidal&amp;quot;, and the images of coconuts, grain, an ear of corn, a tree, a potato, a soybean pod, sugar cane, and grass, violate &lt;strong&gt;complete&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;unambiguous&lt;/strong&gt;. The manufacture has not simply ground up bits of plants, suspended them in water, and by some scientific miracle created a &amp;quot;powerful, industrial-strength cleaner&amp;quot;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://ecomistsolutions.com/images/stories/datasheets/MSDCalciumLime.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;safety data sheet&lt;/a&gt; identifies the pH as 10.4, which is highly alkaline. It is alkaline enough to dissolve organic matter: comparable in pH to the wash water in your laundry machine. This is not a property of ground-up vegetables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is, however, a property of chemicals commonly used in detergents: synthetic surfactants and alkali metal salts that they can include in the product while simultaneously implying that their product is free of them. Note that they warn you to rinse the product away after cleaning the surface. This is so that you or your food do not come in contact with these chemicals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you notice that the picture of the coconut actually represents processed coconut extract (not coconuts) or that the picture of the soybean pod actually represents soy (not soybeans)? The cooperative person isn't supposed to notice. Processed extracts of agricultural products include some dangerous chemicals. Processed coconut extract in the form of coconut oil reacted with diethanolamine is called &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocamide_DEA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cocamide diethanolamine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, a highly alkaline surfactant. Similarly, soy oil reacted with diethanolamine is called &lt;em&gt;soyamide diethanolamine&lt;/em&gt;, and soy oil reacted with methanol is called &lt;em&gt;soy methyl ester&lt;/em&gt;, or &lt;em&gt;soy biodiesel&lt;/em&gt;. These chemicals are commonly used as solvents in household and industrial cleaning products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims &amp;quot;without harmful ingredients&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;non-toxic and/or food surface safe&amp;quot; violate &lt;strong&gt;complete&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;unambiguous&lt;/strong&gt; because these are technical and legal terms, and few people know what the manufacturer is actually claiming when they are stated without an explanation. Many detergent ingredients, including harmful or toxic ingredients, can be legally treated as &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; harmful and &lt;em&gt;non&lt;/em&gt;-toxic depending on the amount found in the product. An ounce of a harmful ingredient may not have to be disclosed as an ingredient at all, when it is mixed with more than three quarts of other substances, such as water. It depends on the ingredient, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osha.gov/dsg/hazcom/ghd053107.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;many common detergent ingredients fall into this category&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The manufacturer identifies water as an ingredient, but fails to identify the quantity, and so violates &lt;strong&gt;complete&lt;/strong&gt;. Water is plainly a big part of this product. The safety data sheet gives several properties of the contents which identify it as mostly water: specific gravity 1.001, freezes at 28 °F, boils at 214.40 °F, flashpoint &amp;gt;200.0 °F. So we know that much of the price of this product is the freight cost to move the manufacturer's local water supply across the country to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim that USDA certifies at least 25% of their ingredients to be &lt;em&gt;renewable biologicals&lt;/em&gt;. Then they claim that 75% of their ingredients are &lt;em&gt;biological&lt;/em&gt;. This violates &lt;strong&gt;unambiguous&lt;/strong&gt;. First, the cooperative person assumes they mean 75% of their ingredients are &lt;em&gt;renewable&lt;/em&gt; biologicals, but that's not what they said. Petrochemicals are &lt;em&gt;non-renewable&lt;/em&gt; biologicals and they are used a lot in cleaning compounds. &lt;em&gt;50% of their ingredients could be petrochemical without making their statements false.&lt;/em&gt; Second, the cooperative person takes away the message these big percentages imply, that there are a lot of biological ingredients in the product, i.e., it contains a lot of active ingredients. But we know that most of the product is water, and this is either not being counted as an ingredient or it's being counted as a &amp;quot;biological ingredient&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Colloidal chemistry&amp;quot; suggests there are suspended bits of grass, potato, and so on in the product. While that may be true, their description of it violates &lt;strong&gt;complete&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;relevant&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;unambiguous&lt;/strong&gt;. &amp;quot;The ability to create billions &amp;amp; billions of charged particles from agricultural ingredients that can penetrate surfaces to a depth of a nano-meter (1 billionth of a meter) and lift, suspend and emulsify oils making them 'readily' biodegradable&amp;quot; is nothing more than a description of a chemical surfactant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A surfactant has a charge on one side that attracts a particle of oil, and a charge on the other side that attracts water. The bit of oil gets picked up by the surfactant and suspended in the water as a colloid. That &amp;quot;colloidal chemistry&amp;quot; is common to any unremarkable detergent on the planet, and has nothing to do with the bits of potato they might put in their mix tank to create their so-called colloidal product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the quotation is misleading by irrelevance. &amp;quot;Billions &amp;amp; billions&amp;quot; is an irrelevant number. &amp;quot;1 billionth of a meter&amp;quot; is an irrelevant number. Penetrating to a depth of a nanometer means it doesn't penetrate an oil stain: it operates on the surface. Don't those big numbers sound impressive, though?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the manufacturer's claims leave the cooperative person with a very misleading impression. Instead of being chock-full of potatoes and corn and tree sap (which I wouldn't want to spread on my bathtub, thank you very much), the product is a dilute detergent, most likely featuring cocamide diethanolamine and other ingredients such as alkali metal salts, with maybe a little potato and corn starch thrown in to let the marketing department go to town.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="349" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2011-12-19T22:26:10.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7253" CreationDate="2011-12-20T16:44:08.540" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Iowa Driving Simulator studied reaction times in &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webcitation.org/644i74GGU&quot;&gt;Driver Reaction Time In Crash Avoidance Research: Validation Of a Driving Simulator Study On a Test Track&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. This study found that when a sudden threat appears, the timeline for driver reaction was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;t=0.00, threat appears&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;t=0.96, driver begins to release accelerator&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;t=1.64, driver begins to steer to avoid the threat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;t=3.16, driver reaches maximum braking (0.96 + 2.2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So suppose the driver in front of you suddenly slams on the brakes. If the reaction times found by this study are typical, you will reach maximum braking around 3.16 seconds later. Other things being equal, you will collide with the vehicle in front of you if you are less than 3.16 seconds behind it. The study cites other studies of collision avoidance behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;National Highway Traffic Safety Administration looked at the relationship between following distances and accident rates, which you specifically asked about, in &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webcitation.org/644luBzKR&quot;&gt;A Front-End Analysis of Rear-End Crashes&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. This study identified &quot;following too closely&quot; as a principal causal factor in 1 out of 5 rear-end crashes but did not say what their criterion of &quot;too closely&quot; was. If the data provided in this study are reliable, about 162,000 people are injured annually by insufficient following distance, and 600 people are killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="349" LastActivityDate="2011-12-20T16:44:08.540" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7301" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-21T17:58:50.003" Score="7" ViewCount="1498" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not hard to find websites claiming carob is better for you than chocolate/cocoa. Many others that say there isn't a difference other than taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons I've heard against cocoa is that it's fermented which can cause carcinogens. It's left out to dry in the sun where it can be contaminated by animals. Also that the caffeine and theobromine in cocoa are bad for you and addicting. And that carob has more vitamins and is &quot;alkalising&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing I've seen is that carob is naturally sweeter than cocoa so requires less sugar to sweeten. This sounds reasonable, but if you don't plan to add sugar then doesn't that make unsweetened carob worse than unsweetened cocoa?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gilead.net/health/carob.html&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; claims quite a lot of bad things about cocoa, though the way it's written and lack of sources make me think it's bollocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kholistic.com/cacao-vs-carob/&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; mentions a few things the other article doesn't, also without sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth behind carob being healthier than cocoa? To me it seems that cocoa should be healthier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3733" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-12-22T17:31:42.637" LastActivityDate="2012-09-29T03:17:26.767" Title="Is carob healthier than chocolate?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7313" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-22T20:47:50.240" Score="7" ViewCount="2106" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/19863/are-fungal-toxins-a-significant-problem-in-coffee-and-if-so-can-they-be-avoide&quot;&gt;question on Cooking SE&lt;/a&gt; brought up the fact that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One study showed that 91.7% of green coffee beans were contaminated&#xA;  with mold. This is before they were processed, which allows even more&#xA;  mold to grow. Another study showed 52% of green coffee beans and&#xA;  almost 50 percent of brewed coffees are moldy.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bulletproofexec.com/why-bad-coffee-makes-you-weak/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies quoted by the answer indicated that there might be some toxins that make it to the ground used in brewing coffee but did not address if there were any problems with toxins actually in the coffee.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought the question may be better addressed by our learned folks that share their knowledge and research here at Skeptics :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:33:29.713" LastActivityDate="2011-12-27T19:54:28.753" Title="Are fungal toxins prevalent in brewed coffee?" Tags="|coffee|toxicology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7318" CreationDate="2011-12-23T09:40:19.490" Score="9" ViewCount="5598" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the song &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9TGj2jrJk8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stairway to Heaven&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; contain Satanic messages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh here's to my sweet Satan.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The one whose little path would make me sad, whose power is Satan.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;He will give those with him 666.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;There was a little tool shed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jeffmilner.com/backmasking.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I couldn't really discern any of those words until I listened a few times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The band, however, denies this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Led Zeppelin audio engineer Eddie Kramer called the allegations &amp;quot;totally and utterly ridiculous. Why would they want to spend so much studio time doing something so dumb?&amp;quot; [Davis, Stephen. The Hammer of the Gods (1985) p. 335]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robert Plant expressed frustration with the accusations in a 1983 interview in Musician magazine: &amp;quot;To me it's very sad, because 'Stairway to Heaven' was written with every best intention, and as far as reversing tapes and putting messages on the end, that's not my idea of making music.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.led-zeppelin.org/reference/int18.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="223" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T13:04:33.767" Title="Is there a reverse message in Stairway to Heaven?" Tags="|music|backmasking|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7313" CreationDate="2011-12-23T10:27:27.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14726276&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the original study is behind a paywall&lt;/a&gt;, however from the abstract we can easily deduce that the incidence of &lt;em&gt;toxins&lt;/em&gt; is only 33% and in those cases, it's within the EU safety limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, there's nothing to worry about: you need a certain &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycotoxin#Human_health_effects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;minimum concentration of mycotoxins&lt;/a&gt; before you can experience any effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Twenty samples (33.3%) of 60 were contaminated with the toxin at levels ranging from 0.2 to 7.3microg kg(-1). The average concentration was 2.38 microg kg(-1). &lt;strong&gt;All positive samples showed OTA levels below the limit suggested by the European Union (8 microg kg(-1)).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/food/food/chemicalsafety/contaminants/aflatoxins_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EU legislation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.food.gov.uk/safereating/chemsafe/mycotoxins/legislation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FSA legislation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC164220/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Major literature review on mycotoxins&lt;/a&gt; which specifies that chronic effects of aflatoxins (the mycotoxins specified in the claim) are associated with cancer, immunodepression and liver disease, but makes no mention of other effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The data on aflatoxin as a human carcinogen are far more damning than the data implicating it in acute human toxicities. Exposure to aflatoxins in the diet is considered an important risk factor for the development of primary hepatocellular carcinoma, particularly in individuals already exposed to hepatitis B.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also mentions that, in industrialised countries, aflatoxin ingestion is &quot;insignificant&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In developed countries, sufficient amounts of food combined with regulations that monitor aflatoxin levels in these foods protect human populations from significant aflatoxin ingestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-12-27T19:54:28.753" LastActivityDate="2011-12-27T19:54:28.753" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7315" CreationDate="2011-12-23T14:16:45.770" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I strongly suspect they didn't add a message on purpose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They say so clearly in your quote. Why would they lie? There are many bands who play Satanic rock with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.darklyrics.com/v/venom.html&quot;&gt;Satanic lyrics&lt;/a&gt;, all in the open. &lt;em&gt;There is no reason for Led Zeppelin to lie!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pareidolia need to be accounted for. A serious study of back masking and pareidolia was performed in the early 80's and thoroughly debunked it&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=b39Udl6qY30C&amp;amp;lpg=PA78&amp;amp;vq=backmasking&amp;amp;dq=isbn%3A0805805087&amp;amp;pg=PA78#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even the proposed lyrics don't really mean much: &quot;whose power is Satan&quot;? &quot;He will give those with him 666&quot;? I would expect a Satanic message to at least mean something and to be grammatically correct...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When Led Zeppelin wanted to speak about a controversial subject, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/ledzeppelin/thelemonsong.html&quot;&gt;they did so by using metaphor and double meaning&lt;/a&gt;, not by using back masking.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-12-23T14:21:56.223" LastActivityDate="2011-12-23T14:21:56.223" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7320" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-23T18:34:41.970" Score="6" ViewCount="17395" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a generic store-brand two-inch-wide by three-inch-tall box of Raisins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the box is the label 'REFRIGERATE AFTER OPENING'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The odd thing is that the box is just an average raisin box.  It's not airtight, it has no seal or wax coating, and is made of cardboard.  The lid for the box is a flap that folds into the box itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could be wrong, but this isn't airtight to begin with, is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do raisins require refrigeration?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uHm2t.jpg&quot; width=&quot;300&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4320" LastActivityDate="2011-12-24T04:09:15.380" Title="Do raisins need to be refrigerated?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7320" CreationDate="2011-12-23T22:58:21.200" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalraisin.com/raisins/trivia.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Raisin Company&lt;/a&gt; site, it's just to extend the shelf life or freshness of the product and prevent them from becoming dried out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the best way to store raisins?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cool storage is the best way to keep raisins. After the package has been opened they should be put in a sealed container and refrigerated. Raisins will retain their flavor, color, and nutritive value if stored in the refrigerator. They can be kept even longer if frozen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5581" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-12-24T04:09:15.380" LastActivityDate="2011-12-24T04:09:15.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7322" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7326" CreationDate="2011-12-24T06:32:50.327" Score="32" ViewCount="2935" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the arguments I've seen levied against nuclear power is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20141001041515/http://www.motherearth.org/energy/nuclear5.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;it's not economically viable&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 1970s nuclear power cost half as much as electricity from coal burning: by 1990 nuclear power cost twice as much as electricity from coal burning (Slingerland et al, 2004 &lt;em&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:35070874&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;possible ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Today the costs of nuclear power are estimated to be, on average, between 2 and 4 times more expensive than electricity generated by burning fossil fuels, about $0.05-0.07/kWh.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;[emph. in original]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compared with some modern renewable energy sources, nuclear power has mixed fortunes: for example it is more expensive than wind, about the same price as hydroelectric power and cogeneration with gasified wood, and cheaper than solar energy using photovoltaic (PV) cells (Öko Institute, 1997 &lt;em&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rachel.org/lib/nuke_ghg_emissions.060224.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;possible ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, it isn't a reasonable replacement for coal over wind, co-gen, etc.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;For example, US nuclear power generation is federally subsidized, but how does that stack up against the extra burden imposed by complying with additional regulation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-09-29T19:41:20.510" Title="Is nuclear power economically untenable?" Tags="|economics|nuclear-energy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7324" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-25T00:17:07.207" Score="10" ViewCount="864" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard on an Internet forum that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Mormon&quot;&gt;Book of Mormon&lt;/a&gt;'s claims about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatl#Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-Day_Saints&quot;&gt;Jesus Christ preaching to a section of natives&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerica&quot;&gt;Mesoamerica&lt;/a&gt; was based on the myths of a white god, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quetzalcoatl&quot;&gt;Quetzcoatl&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, reading online, it seems that the white god myth was not native to the culture and may have, instead, been spread by Cortez afterwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Did the Quetzalcoatl myth (specifically involving a white skinned god who promised to return) exist in Mesoamerican cutlture &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; Cortez?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5585" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-12-27T12:04:36.233" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T23:13:58.753" Title="Was the &quot;Quetzcoatl, the White God&quot; myth traditional to Mesoamerica?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7322" CreationDate="2011-12-25T11:05:25.013" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The lower-end of the linked claim by the Friends of the Earth is supported by the US Government figures.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key claim in the linked article is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today the costs of nuclear power are estimated to be, on average, between 2 and 4 times more expensive than electricity generated by burning fossil fuels, about $0.05-0.07/kWh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US Energy Information Administration (part of the US Department of Energy) published the &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150924050454/http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/electricity_generation.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Levelized Cost of New Generation Resources in the Annual Energy Outlook 2011&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; in November 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translated into English (&amp;quot;levelized&amp;quot;?!), that means &amp;quot;What cost would energy have in 2016, if we started building a new power-plant with today's technology, without any taxation subsidies?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qed5N.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qed5N.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Table of costs&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150924050454im_/http://www.eia.gov/oiaf/aeo/images/elcngr_tbl1.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;eia.gov&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As can be seen, some variants of fossil fuel are in the upper end of that $0.05-0.07/kWh range. (Slightly confusingly, but appropriately for this question, the prices are in 2009 dollars.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advanced Nuclear prices are indeed just a smidgin under double that, at around $0.11/kWh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, these government figures don't support &amp;quot;4 times more expensive&amp;quot;, but they are within a stone's throw of double - i.e. the lower end of the original claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the raw price isn't the only factor, as extrinsic costs must be considered including greenhouse gases, radioactivity, waste disposal, human safety, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-05-21T19:05:29.227" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7327" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7328" CreationDate="2011-12-26T01:19:31.990" Score="8" ViewCount="3048" Body="&lt;p&gt;A website called Hispanically Speaking News &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/notitas-de-noticias/details/mcdonalds-closes-all-their-restaurants-in-bolivia/12787/&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that McDonald's is closing its restaurants in Bolivia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A search of Google News has only a handful of mentions of this story, whereas I would have expected it to make major news, if only in the finance sections of newspapers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article mentions a documentary called &quot;Why did McDonald’s Bolivia go Bankrupt&quot;, supposedly made by McDonalds - I'm wondering if this is fake news being pushed in order to promote the documentary, made by someone other than McDonald's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, however, reports from relatively mainstream news sites about it leaving in 2002, for example the BBC posted the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2545361.stm&quot;&gt;Burger King cheers Big Mac retreat&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T17:32:59.713" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T17:32:59.713" Title="Is McDonald's closing its restaurants in Bolivia?" Tags="|mcdonalds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7327" CreationDate="2011-12-26T02:38:41.617" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems clear that &quot;Hispanically Speaking News&quot; has misunderstood, and that McDonalds's closed in Bolivia in 2002.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2011 film's title &lt;em&gt;¿Por que quebró McDonald’s en Bolivia?&lt;/em&gt; is clearly in the past tense, and a note of the film from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/que-pasa/mcdonald%E2%80%99s-failure-bolivia-fail&quot;&gt;November 2011 in GlobalPost&lt;/a&gt; states clearly &quot;after five years, McDonald's closed its eight branches and left the country in 2002&quot;.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/mundo/noticias/2011/11/111031_bolivia_fracaso_mc_donalds_lav.shtml&quot;&gt;BBC Mundo review in Spanish&lt;/a&gt; mentions the date, but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iea.org.uk/blog/mcdonald%E2%80%99s-withdrawal-from-bolivia-capitalism-in-action&quot;&gt;Institute for Economic Affairs comment&lt;/a&gt; on the BBC (in English) does not and this may have confused Hispanically Speaking News.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The clearest evidence that this story is about 2002 comes when &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hispanicallyspeakingnews.com/notitas-de-noticias/details/mcdonalds-closes-all-their-restaurants-in-bolivia/12787/&quot;&gt;Hispanically Speaking News said on December 22, 2011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After 14 years in the nation and despite many campaigns and promos McDonald’s was forced to close its 8 Bolivian restaurants in the major cities of La Paz, Cochabamba and Santa Cruz de la Sierra. McDonald’s served its last hamburgers in Bolivia Saturday at midnight, after announcing a global restructuring plan in which it would close its doors in seven countries with poor profit margins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;rather similar to this from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2002-12-01-bolivia-mcdonalds_x.htm&quot;&gt;USA Today on 12/1/2002&lt;/a&gt; taken from Associated Press  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Thousands of Bolivians crammed into McDonald's Saturday to order their final Big Macs before the fast food restaurant leaves the country for good. McDonald's served its last hamburgers in Bolivia Saturday at midnight, after announcing a global restructuring plan in which it would close its doors in seven countries with poor profit margins. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be no evidence that the film was made by &quot;the company’s Creative and Marketing staff&quot;, but rather by Bolivians with an anti-globalisation message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="949" LastEditDate="2011-12-26T02:49:07.360" LastActivityDate="2011-12-26T02:49:07.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7329" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-26T08:03:51.017" Score="18" ViewCount="1174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had an intense quarter at school where I was studying and working pretty much all the time.  Over winter break, I had many grand intentions of studying on my own and learning what I wanted to learn.  However, I found that I had trouble focusing and had some other &#xA;&quot;burnout&quot; like symptoms.  Several people suggested that I &quot;rest my brain&quot;, or rather, rest all break and don't do anything too mentally demanding so that I was ready to go next quarter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a good idea?  Is there scientific support behind the idea of &quot;resting one's brain&quot; for a significant period of time (like a few weeks)?  Or could it actually be harmful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3145" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2015-11-20T20:48:14.343" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T20:48:14.343" Title="Is there a benefit to &quot;resting your brain&quot; for a significant period of time?" Tags="|neurology|productivity|willpower|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7332" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-26T23:21:46.030" Score="8" ViewCount="3465" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was pitched a multi-level marketing scheme a couple years ago and have been fascinated ever since (as in, the mathematics and how to protect others, not as in a participant). This particular one is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fhtm.net&quot;&gt;Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing&lt;/a&gt; (FHTM). In business presentations (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://thereelfhtm.net/v121.aspx&quot;&gt;this one around 2:30&lt;/a&gt;) and online material, I've heard that FHTM's founder, Paul Orberson, was involved in a network marketing company previously in his life, and that this is what inspired him to create FHTM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company was called Excel Communications, and Orberson is said to have shattered sales records left and right and earned more money in less time than anyone in the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, &lt;a href=&quot;http://donttripoveryourbrain.blogspot.com/2009/03/paul-orberson-and-excel.html&quot;&gt;claims are made&lt;/a&gt; that he made over $1,000,000 USD per month for 44 months straight before leaving the company. (USA Today has him saying $100,000/month &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/2010-10-15-multilevelmarketing15_ST2_N.htm&quot;&gt;in one of their articles&lt;/a&gt;, though there's no stipulation that this was the maximum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any verification for Paul Orberson's sales record with Excel Communication?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:52:23.397" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:52:23.397" Title="Did Paul Orberson make $1,000,000/month for 44 months?" Tags="|personal-finance|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7334" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-27T01:08:39.147" Score="5" ViewCount="1436" Body="&lt;p&gt;My Asian parents think that this &amp;quot;musk bone-building analgesic plaster&amp;quot; thing works for treating pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://62940822.en.ec21.com/Musk_Bone_building_Analgesic_Plaster--2935250_2935263.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Musk Bone-Building Analgesics Plaster&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ingredients: Musk ambrette, Radix Aconiti Kusnezoffii, Radix Aconiti, Olibanum, Myrrha, Borneolum Syntheticum,Camphora, Mentholum, Extractum Cymbopogonis, Extractum Belladonnae Liquidum, Methyl Salicylate, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Action and indication: To relieve rheumatic conditions, promote blood circulation and alleviate pain. For rheumatic arthralgia and myalgia,painful swelling of joints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any of those ingredients work as an analgesic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="727" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T03:04:01.807" Title="Does &quot;Musk Bone-Building Analgesics Plaster&quot; relieve rheumatic pain?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7017" CreationDate="2011-12-27T14:21:42.283" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’m sorry, this is a long one. Unfortunately, the topic &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; complicated and I try to make it as understandable as possible. I’ll omit most of the technical details since they are hard to explain and don’t add a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Executive Summary (“tl;dr”)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epigenetic modifications do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; constitute, nor enable, Lamarckian inheritance.&lt;/strong&gt; Papers and reviews that claim this use a convoluted and ultimately useless definition of Lamarckism and inheritance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, a paper from December 2011 does actually demonstrate a very specific case where Lamarckian inheritace does occur (without epigenetic involvement). It bears repeating that this does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; in the least violate Darwinism. In fact, the results, though surprising, are entirely in line and predicted by Darwinism – the mechanism actually &lt;em&gt;relies&lt;/em&gt; on Darwinism. Contrary to popular belief, Darwinism and Lamarckism are not actually in opposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Preliminary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem, as so often, is the unclear definition of terms: what, exactly, &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lamarckian inheritance&lt;/a&gt;? Ask five scientists today and you will get six answers. And Lamarck himself would have disagreed with all of them. This is simply due to the fact that Lamarck wasn’t aware of a lot of mechanistic concepts that were developed long after his death – such as the distinction between somatic cells and germline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This distinction leads to the concept of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weismann_barrier&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Weismann barrier&lt;/a&gt; and it’s of eminent importance for our modern understanding of inheritance (and hence Darwinism): simply put, the Weismann barrier postulates that in order for traits to be inheritable, they need to be carried in the germline. As a consequence, modifications in the soma (non-germline cells) are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; inherited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most scientists today see this as a direct opposition to Lamarckism.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are of course plenty of organisms (most, in fact) that &lt;em&gt;do not have&lt;/em&gt; a distinction between soma and germline: notably, all unicellular life. For those life-forms, all genetically acquired traits (be it through mutation or through the integration of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmid&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;plasmids&lt;/a&gt;) are heritable. This is trivially true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Enter Epigenetics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once again, there are different definitions, but the generally agreed-on definition of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;epigenetics&lt;/a&gt; today runs something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in cell behaviour that are not due to changes in the genetic sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that here, “heritable” does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; refer to heritability of organisms, just of cells: the daughter cells of a dividing mother cell inherit its epigenetic traits (and once again, this isn’t Lamarckism, it’s not even Darwinism, it’s on a much lower level).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several known mechanism of epigenetics, notable among them &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_methylation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;methylation&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histone_modification&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;histone modification&lt;/a&gt;. How exactly they work isn’t terribly relevant; what’s important is that they modify the &lt;em&gt;accessibility&lt;/em&gt; of genes on the genome: they control whether a cell can actually &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt; a section of the genome and use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cells use this to determine their specificity: how do muscle cells and brain cells know which job to do? Epigenetic modifications are (part of) the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How Heritable Are Epigenetics?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epigenetics are not generally heritable (due to the Weismann barrier). There have been several papers that, using similar lines of reasoning, have tried to argue that epigenetics &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; lead to the inheritance of acquired traits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will showcase the argument using one well-known paper, &lt;em&gt;Epigenetic programming by maternal behavior&lt;/em&gt; [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper examined two different groups of mice which were raised by two phenotypically different mothers. Group 1 had been licked and groomed by their mother in the first six days after their birth. Group 2 hadn’t.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Female group 1 mice predominantly developed into mothers which would themselves lick and groom their offspring (“high LG/ABN”). Group 2 females developed into mothers which neglected their offspring (“low LG/ABN”), as shown in the following schematic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qckv4.png&quot; alt=&quot;LG/ABN schematic&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was shown that the mechanism behind this is epigenetic: pups of a high LG/ABN mother had increased serotonin levels which in turn led to decreased methylation of some genetic regions which modified their behaviour. And since the behaviour is self-perpetuating, the authors argued that it’s a form of inheritance (“&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_inheritance&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;soft inheritance&lt;/a&gt;”).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is in fact not entirely true: the “inheritance chain” could be broken simply by raising the pups away from their mother for the first six days after birth. “True” inheritance would’t be broken by that. In fact, the whole argument is similar to saying that nationality is passed on by Lamarckian inheritance because children raised by, say, French parents are themselves predominantly French, and raise French kids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other papers (such as [2]) fall prey to similar flaws. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Coyne&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jerry Coyne&lt;/a&gt; has &lt;a href=&quot;http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/worst-science-journalism-of-the-year-darwin-completely-wrong-again/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;aptly summarised&lt;/a&gt; the whole field as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In nearly all of these examples, the changes disappear after one or two generations, so they couldn’t effect permanent evolutionary change. […] I am not aware of a single case in which an adaptive change in an organism – or any change that has been fixed in a species – rests on inheritance that is not based on changes in the DNA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is pretty damning: &lt;strong&gt;none of these papers demonstrate what could reasonably be termed Lamarckism.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Real Lamarckism&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In December 2011, there has finally been a paper which convincingly demonstrated a real case of Lamarckian inheritance: &lt;em&gt;Transgenerational Inheritance of an Acquired Small RNA-Based Antiviral Response in C. elegans&lt;/em&gt; [3].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper examines &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caenorhabditis_elegans&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;C. elegans&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (a nematode or roundworm which serves as a model organism in biology). Normally, those nematodes don’t get infected by viruses because they have developed a highly sophisticated defence mechanism called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_interference&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;RNA interference&lt;/a&gt; (RNAi). This mechanism relies on so-called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_interfering_RNA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;small-interfering RNAs&lt;/a&gt; (siRNAs) produced by the cell which recognise and pair up with viral RNA that has entered the cell. Those complexes are then in turn destroyed by the cell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Adult_Caenorhabditis_elegans.jpg/300px-Adult_Caenorhabditis_elegans.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;C. elegans&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper looked at nematodes where the RNAi mechanism had been knocked out (removed): the cells could no longer generate siRNAs, and hence had no defence against the virus invaders. Now, if you artificially put siRNAs into the cells, those cells &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; once again defend against a specific virus. The authors could show that under very specific circumstances, putting siRNAs into the cells was enough to trigger an &lt;em&gt;inheritable&lt;/em&gt; virus resistance, even though the siRNA-generating mechanism was still knocked out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The nematodes had inherited an acquired, non-genetic trait (virus resistance)&lt;/strong&gt;, and this inheritance was sustained over many generations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I’ve explicitly mentioned the Weismann barrier before, I should note that this experiment does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; invalidate the Weismann barrier: this heritability only occurred in very specific circumstances, namely, when &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the cells in the nematode were provided with siRNAs. This notably includes the germline cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite frequent claims to the contrary, no connection between epigenetics and Lamarckism has ever been demonstrated. Inheritance of acquired traits from epigenetic modifications is transient at best, and it’s contested whether it constitutes inheritance at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a clear example of Lamarckism &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; now been observed, albeit under very constrained, artificial circumstances. And while this is a very interesting result, it is not surprising: any competent biologist would have predicted the paper’s result, given the paper’s premises, and ignoring potential ways in which the experiment could go wrong, because its outcome is entirely predicted by modern biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Final Remark&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of misconceptions flying around. Articles with titles like &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/mar/19/evolution-darwin-natural-selection-genes-wrong&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why everything you've been told about evolution is wrong&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; abound. There is no nice way to put it – these pronouncements are untrue. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nothing&lt;/em&gt; found in the papers cited here, nor in similar papers, either directly or implicitly contradicts “conventional evolution”&lt;/strong&gt; – Darwinism. In fact, all of these studies heavily rely on predictions made by modern evolutionary theory. It’s just blatant misreporting by the media, due to two unfortunate facts: most science journalists don’t understand the science, even rudimentarily; and most scientists can’t even explain their research clearly to their colleagues, let alone lay people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nn1276&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ian C. G. Weaver, Nadia Cervoni &amp;amp; &lt;em&gt;al.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Epigenetic programming by maternal behavior&lt;/em&gt;, Nature Neuroscience 7, 847–854 (2004)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature09491&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sheau-Fang Ng, Ruby C. Y. Lin &amp;amp; &lt;em&gt;al.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Chronic high-fat diet in fathers programs β-cell dysfunction in female rat offspring&lt;/em&gt;, Nature 467, 963–966 (2010)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2011.10.042&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oded Rechavi, Gregory Minevich &amp;amp; Oliver Hober, &lt;em&gt;Transgenerational Inheritance of an Acquired Small RNA-Based Antiviral Response in C. elegans&lt;/em&gt;, Cell 147 &lt;strong&gt;(6)&lt;/strong&gt;, 1248–1256 (2011)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T11:37:39.600" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7340" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7348" CreationDate="2011-12-27T18:26:16.563" Score="22" ViewCount="2295" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Penn &amp;amp; Teller's Bullshit, Season 7, there is an episode about the Vatican. I just watched it via &lt;a href=&quot;http://arizonaatheist.blogspot.com/2011/12/vatican-is-bullshit.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; on the blog, Arizona Atheist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In it, around the 8m:10s mark, a statement is made that around 20-50% of Catholic priests may be homosexual. I'm transcribing the episode here for the pertinent quote. It opens with Keith Wood, the executive director of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.secularism.org.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The National Secular Society&lt;/a&gt;, making a comment about the Catholic Church's opposition of homosexuality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Keith Wood:&lt;/strong&gt; And the almost ultimate irony is that I do not know of an organization anywhere that has such a high proportion of gay people in its employ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Penn Jillette:&lt;/strong&gt; Well, the Bullshit staff, but he doesn't know that. According to some studies, somewhere between twenty (20) and fifty (50) percent of all priests may be gay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What studies/data support this estimate, and is it accurate?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-11-30T14:20:11.960" Title="Are between 20-50% of Catholic priests homosexual?" Tags="|catholic-church|sexuality|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7341" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-27T19:04:07.000" Score="14" ViewCount="705" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've run across several claims about oral contraceptives (&amp;quot;the pill&amp;quot;) and how the residuals that enter municipal water supplies via urination cannot be filtered out and may have detrimental effects on animal and human health. One particular claim is that the ingestion of these trace amounts of chemical in drinking water may contribute to male infertility:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If synthetic estrogen can affect the &amp;quot;maleness&amp;quot; of fish, it such a stretch to think that the rise in male infertility might be caused by the Pill?  That synthetic estrogen in our water supply is making human males less male?  That a pill that takes a normal female cycle and turns it upside down would also affect male fertility in unexpected ways? Why is that NOT one of the many possible reasons cited by this article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder how infertile men everywhere would feel if they found out that it was synthetic estrogen in their water supply that might be the cause of their problems.  I wonder if that is why &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=24681&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;scientists and others are dumbfounded by the utter silence on this issue&lt;/a&gt;.  Could it be that the Pill is, like abortion, a sacred cow that no matter the devastation it wreaks, we would not dare speak a word against it? (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marymeetsdolly.com/blog/index.php?/archives/968-Male-infertility-and-the-Pill.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has the excretion of residual amounts of oral contraceptive compounds into public water supplies and subsequent ingestion by males led to an increase in male infertility?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T04:53:38.847" Title="Do excreted oral contraceptive compounds in drinking water contribute to male infertility?" Tags="|water|fertility|contraception|human-reproduction|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7344" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-28T01:16:28.053" Score="20" ViewCount="4111" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2593140&amp;amp;cid=38506156&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;post on Slashdot&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every single elected president - INCLUDING Barack Obama, has a&#xA;  genealogy related to President George Washington.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note I did say Elected President. Gerald Ford is (as of yet), not&#xA;  known to be related to George Washington.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Barck Obama is George Washington's 9th cousin, 6 times removed. Yes,&#xA;  this is through his white mother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From what I can tell, the least connected elected President was Martin&#xA;  Van Buren - 17th cousin thrice removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, President William Henry Harrison was related by marraige, not by&#xA;  blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geni.com/blog/look-whos-related-george-washington-and-all-the-presidents-325451.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;my source&lt;/a&gt; [geni.com]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a rather extraordinary claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of whether this is in fact an extraordinary event. If it is indeed extraordinary I am skeptical of the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim may not be particularly extraordinary if many or most of American descent are related to George Washington. Are American presidents more related to George Washington than Americans in general? What about the American population as a whole?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, does the source adequately support the conclusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-07-25T13:17:00.910" LastActivityDate="2019-10-30T13:02:07.910" Title="Is every elected US president related to George Washington?" Tags="|history|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7340" CreationDate="2011-12-28T22:32:15.590" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finally found what looks like a reliable scientific study on the subject. It isn't itself a study of the orientation of priests, but it quotes several others that also look reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11089-006-0051-0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Homosexual Applicants to the Priesthood: How Many&#xA;and Are They Psychologically Healthy?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While there are no ofﬁcial estimates of the number of homosexual men in the priesthood,&#xA;  best current estimates range from 10% to 60% [...] with most experts and&#xA;  authorities who have access to this information more closely estimating between 25% and&#xA;  40%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is for homosexual orientation, not practicing homosexuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="29579" LastEditDate="2017-11-30T14:20:11.960" LastActivityDate="2017-11-30T14:20:11.960" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7349" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-28T23:06:07.813" Score="5" ViewCount="12823" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the song &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_%28A_La_La_La_La_Long%29&quot;&gt;Sweat (A La La La La Long)&lt;/a&gt; by Inner Circle really about rape? Does anyone have an interview or something confirming this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was younger it was a hit and we all listened to it without really groking the lyrics... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0M4J849dmA&amp;amp;feature=related&quot;&gt;YouTube version&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3345" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-12-23T01:25:55.277" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T01:25:55.277" Title="Is the Inner Circle hit song &quot;Sweat&quot; about rape?" Tags="|music|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7350" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-29T01:02:24.580" Score="6" ViewCount="1219" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read a article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_2060109_repel-mosquitoes.html&quot;&gt;eHow&lt;/a&gt; which claims that that yellow light-bulbs attract fewer bugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Replace outdoor lights with &quot;yellow&quot; bulbs which attract fewer bugs than standard outdoor bulbs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5613" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-12-29T02:26:45.830" LastActivityDate="2011-12-29T02:26:45.830" Title="Do &quot;yellow&quot;-light bulbs attract fewer bugs than standard bulbs?" Tags="|entomology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7351" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-29T01:08:10.850" Score="4" ViewCount="136" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6390/is-vitamin-b12-an-effective-mosquito-repellent&quot;&gt;Is Vitamin B12 an effective mosquito repellent?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.denverpost.com/extremes/ci_12668273&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Denver Post article&lt;/a&gt; suggests that mosquitoes dislike biting people who have excess vitamin B1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The notion behind the Don't Bite Me! patch is that mosquitoes don't eat vitamin B-1. So slap one of these clear transdermal skin patches on a hairless spot two hours before going out to play with the bloodsuckers, and the excess of B-1 it builds up in your body supposedly will keep them at bay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5614" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T02:19:58.520" Title="Do Vitamin B1 patches prevent mosquito bites?" Tags="|physiology|zoology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-02-05T05:07:03.160" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7353" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-29T06:33:30.347" Score="15" ViewCount="6448" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pirates commonly portrayed as people wearing eye-patches, was it common for pirates to have one? Is it to signify the amount of physical fighting they were involved in? Or is it just a Hollywood thing?&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8ijws.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Pirate with eye-patch&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Public domain image courtesy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3APiratey.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikimedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2016" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-12-29T15:40:08.960" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T15:22:54.977" Title="Did pirates commonly wear eye patches?" Tags="|history|pirates|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7357" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7361" CreationDate="2011-12-29T07:40:20.893" Score="2" ViewCount="361" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that during the telecast of the G.I. Joe TV series, advertisements pertaining to the G.I. Joe action figures were disallowed because it was assumed that viewers were too stupid to differentiate between the series and the figures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any proof for this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2016" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2011-12-29T10:21:02.720" LastActivityDate="2011-12-29T19:34:35.883" Title="Were G.I. Joe action figure ads not allowed during the telecast of the series?" Tags="|television|marketing|advertising|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7353" CreationDate="2011-12-29T18:48:34.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a definitive answer but &lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/episode71&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mythbusters episode 71&lt;/a&gt; highlighted the night vision (or ranther sub-deck vision) that can be achieved by having an eye patch, even coming straight out of day light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the entire ship captured must be controlled&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an eye patch confers far greater vision under deck&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a pirate wants to stay alive [to become rich (presumably)]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be reasonably confident that lots of pirates would have worn them. At least in the day time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for my previous &quot;understanding&quot; that it was from injury, it doesn't really make much sense statistically. If an eye was often struck with a sword or knife, then the brain would likely be too. Most pirates eligible for eye patches would be dead IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5617" LastActivityDate="2011-12-29T18:48:34.290" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7357" CreationDate="2011-12-29T19:34:35.883" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not during the 80s and G.I. Joe but the show and others like it were part of the reason that broadcast rules were changed. &#xA;In 1990 the government passed the Children's Television Act. The entirety of it can be read here:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d101:HR01677:@@@L&amp;amp;summ2=m&amp;amp;&quot;&gt;http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d101:HR01677:@@@L&amp;amp;summ2=m&amp;amp;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides setting rules for local TV stations on how many hours of Educational children's programming they must show each week, the act also limits the amount of commercials on children's TV and the type of commercials that can be shown. &#xA;Much of this was done in response to studies such as this one&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1991.tb01811.x/abstract&quot;&gt;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1991.tb01811.x/abstract&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;According to the abstract the study shows that young children, under ages 7-8, are not able to differentiate between the commercials persuasive intent to sell them something and the show they are watching.  This is especially true in cases where the TV show is based on a toy line such as G.I. Joe, Thundercats, Rainbow Brite, etc. which had advertisements for the toy product during the show.&#xA;The FCC still enforces this rule as seen here where they fined a TV station for showing an Eggo commercial during Pokemon because the Eggos in question featured an image of Pikachu.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/03/fcc-fends-off-fleeting-pokemon-attack.ars&quot;&gt;http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2008/03/fcc-fends-off-fleeting-pokemon-attack.ars&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also explains the Children's Television Act in plain language.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3575" LastActivityDate="2011-12-29T19:34:35.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7362" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-27T00:18:52.973" Score="15" ViewCount="4167" Body="&lt;p&gt;German New Medicine is a medical treatment developed by Ryke Geerd Hamer. Hamer claims &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newmedicine.ca/overview.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;that the cause for every cancer is a &amp;quot;biological-conflict shock&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The German New Medicine is a set of findings and principles that solidly bases the nature of disease on universal biological principles and on the interaction between the three levels that make up the organism: the psyche, the brain and the organ. In German New Medicine, diseases have a biological meaning and are not mistakes of nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After twenty years of research and therapy with over 31,000 patients, Dr. Hamer finally established firmly, logically and empirically how biological conflict-shock results in a cold cancerous or necrotic phase and how, if the conflict is resolved, the cancerous or necrotic process is reversed to repair the damage and return the individual to health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies about this German New Medicine? Is there any evidence for the biological mechanisms Hamer claims are the cause of cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5600" OwnerDisplayName="Bart" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-03-28T22:15:42.307" Title="Does German New Medicine work?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|cancer|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7363" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-30T00:57:37.300" Score="4" ViewCount="1730" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cat-world.com.au/all-about-catnip&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cat-world&lt;/a&gt; claims that catnip can repel rats, mice and cockroaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was also discovered that catnip repels cockroaches too!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rats &amp;amp; mice are also believed to have a strong dislike of catnip &amp;amp; will avoid places where it grows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5406" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-12-30T01:05:53.180" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T05:30:18.550" Title="Does catnip repel rats, mice and cockroaches?" Tags="|plants|pesticides|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7366" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-30T01:28:13.783" Score="6" ViewCount="1010" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cat-world.com.au/keeping-cats-out-of-gardens&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; mentions that chicken manure can keep cats away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chicken manure around established plants can also deter cats as they don't like the smell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5406" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-12T22:01:17.333" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T13:41:28.070" Title="Does chicken manure keep cats away from garden areas?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7367" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-30T01:34:36.220" Score="5" ViewCount="742" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this article - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cat-world.com.au/all-about-catnip&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cat-world.com.au/all-about-catnip&lt;/a&gt;, it was mentioned that catnip can be used to treat headache, cough and insomnia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is also useful for settling an upset stomach. It has also been used to treat headaches, scarlet fever, coughing, insomnia &amp;amp; smallpox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5406" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-02T21:04:13.037" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T21:04:13.037" Title="Does catnip treat headache and coughs and insomnia?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7368" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-30T01:43:03.680" Score="4" ViewCount="922" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allourpets.com/feline/stop-scratching.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.allourpets.com/feline/stop-scratching.shtml&lt;/a&gt; - mentions that bitter apple or actual orange peels prevent cats from scratching?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If your cat still scratches in appropriate places, use some sprays like bitter apple or actual orange peels, which are good deterrents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5406" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T07:04:02.970" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T20:43:12.897" Title="Do bitter apple or actual orange peels prevent cats from scratching?" Tags="|natural-remedies|ethology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7362" CreationDate="2011-12-30T02:04:54.040" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryke_Geerd_Hamer&quot;&gt;wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;no case of a cancer cure by Hamer has been published in the medical literature, nor any studies in specialised journals. Reports in his books &quot;lack the additional data that are essential for medical assessment&quot; and the presentations, of his investigations, at medical conferences &quot;are scientifically unconvincing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hamer is charged and convicted in several European countries and is responsible for numerous deaths among his patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His explanation of the GNM contains antisemitic ideology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T02:04:54.040" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7362" CreationDate="2011-12-30T02:19:35.587" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this report from the Swiss Study Group for Complementary and Alternative Methods in Cancer which can be read here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://assets.krebsliga.ch/downloads/01_02_hamer_e_neu.pdf&quot;&gt;http://assets.krebsliga.ch/downloads/01_02_hamer_e_neu.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After careful study of the literature and other available information, the Study Group for Complementary &#xA;  and Alternative Methods in Cancer (SCAC) and the Swiss Cancer League (SCL) have found no evidence that &#xA;  the assertions of Ryke Geerd Hamer are correct, or that the method of cancer treatment which he &#xA;  propagates is effective. They therefore advise against their use in the treatment of cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer appears to be no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3575" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T02:19:35.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7372" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-30T02:32:31.930" Score="6" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/390832-how-was-cinnamon-used-as-a-folk-medicine-for-the-flu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; mentions that cinnamon is used to treat flu symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there scientific evidence it would be an effective method to treat the flu symptoms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5406" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2011-12-30T19:13:11.850" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T19:13:11.850" Title="Is cinnamon an effective method to relieve the symptoms of the flu?" Tags="|natural-remedies|flu|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7353" CreationDate="2011-12-30T02:48:24.623" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a theory, which claims, that eye damage in former times often resulted from using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob%27s_staff&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jacob's staff&lt;/a&gt; for navigation on sea, but not from injuries during fights. Search for &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piraterie&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Augenklappe&lt;/a&gt; in the german wikipedia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, pirates are much older than this instrument, and nowadays pirates surely don't use it any more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it could have evolved as a cliché for pirates, while it is common to all seafaring of a certain time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastActivityDate="2011-12-30T02:48:24.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7377" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-30T03:04:39.383" Score="2" ViewCount="329" Body="&lt;p&gt;Min Publications has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindpub.com/altern03.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;alternative therapy article&lt;/a&gt; that mentions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Around AD 1000, the Persian herbalist Avicenna recommended lemon balm &quot;to make the heart merry.&quot; In Europe, this herb was sipped in cordials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a more modern source, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/lemon-balm-000261.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Maryland Medical Center&lt;/a&gt; explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis), a member of the mint family, is considered a calming herb&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5406" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2011-12-31T02:27:49.467" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T02:27:49.467" Title="Does Lemon Balm calm the nervous system?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7379" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7392" CreationDate="2011-12-30T15:08:28.160" Score="-1" ViewCount="6069" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the middle of the desert in Egypt, the statue of Amenhotep III is estimated to weigh approximately 700 metric tonnes and was moved over 700 km. The pieces that were carved from the mountain that made the sphinx weigh approximately 200 metric tonnes. These were later neatly stacked into a temple in front of the sphinx.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lwsxe_rUfsw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a video of some guys moving a 200 metric tonne ship&lt;/a&gt;, just for reference :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5625" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-05T01:05:00.760" LastActivityDate="2012-12-05T01:05:00.760" Title="How did the ancient Egyptians lift 700 tonne stones?" Tags="|physics|egypt|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7383" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7386" CreationDate="2011-12-30T22:37:42.063" Score="6" ViewCount="445" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can an animal develop an affinity for manflesh? Would a tiger like human meat so strongly that it goes after humans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="223" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T00:08:18.163" Title="Do maneaters exist?" Tags="|nutrition|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7384" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7387" CreationDate="2011-12-30T22:49:19.867" Score="-6" ViewCount="1544" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the veracity of the Christian bible in general, could the technology behind the microchips (RFID tags) implanted into pets--used to re-unite lost pets with their owners--be used to track people's movements or restrict commerce to those who have them implanted, as foretold in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+13%3A16-17&amp;amp;version=KJV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Revelation 13:16–17&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt;And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was hit with this after casually mentioning my intention to &amp;quot;chip&amp;quot; my cat to someone who not only has a strong opinion on the matter, but is rather religious. Some of their points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The chip cannot be removed without killing the pet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The chip can be used to track the location of its wearer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A chip planted in a pet can be used to track the location of its owner&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The chip can cause cancer in the pet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Governments are using pet chips as a proving ground for a technology that will be later forced on humans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All legal transactions will be made conditional upon having a chip implanted in the human body&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:21:13.517" Title="Are pet RFID chips (eg: &quot;HomeAgain&quot;) capable of fulfilling Revelations 13:16-17?" Tags="|zoology|religion|technology|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7384" CreationDate="2011-12-31T00:08:18.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Limiting this to only answering the question of whether RFID tags could fulfill Revelation 13: 16-17 and not the six points the answer would be yes.&#xA;From the KJV here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+13&amp;amp;version=KJV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+13&amp;amp;version=KJV&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Revelation 13:16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and&#xA;  poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in&#xA;  their foreheads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or&#xA;  the name of the beast, or the number of his name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case the RFID tags would be considered the Mark of the Beast.  To buy something your chip would be scanned.  Much like in this Barcelona nightclub where implanted RFIDs allow customers to pay their tab and give them access to VIP areas.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3697940.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3697940.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the first thing that would have to happen would be a government trying to get its citizenry to go for the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3575" LastEditorUserId="3508" LastEditDate="2011-12-31T00:59:30.097" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T00:59:30.097" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7383" CreationDate="2011-12-31T00:08:18.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3810&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Man-Eaters of Tsavo&lt;/a&gt; by Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson tells the (amazing) story of two lions that may have killed and (at least partially) eaten as many as 135 (!!! But perhaps &quot;just&quot; 35) railroad workers in Kenya at the turn of the 20th century. Whether they had developed an &quot;affinity for manflesh&quot; or were driven to hunting humans due to a lack of other prey is, apparently, still a matter of debate. You can see the hides of the original Tsavo lions in the Field Museum in Chicago.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T00:08:18.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7384" CreationDate="2011-12-31T00:28:46.997" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several claims of quite different grades here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Microchips can be removed without death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1098612X06001069&quot;&gt;case study&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.act.gov.au/di/2008-73/current/pdf/2008-73.pdf&quot;&gt;legislation&lt;/a&gt; describing who is permitted to do so and what administrative action is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Based on stories I found on the net, it is difficult to find an vet who is willing to perform unnecessary surgery on an animal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The chip can't be used to track the location of its wearer over long distances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RFId tags have limited ranges. (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://simplyrfid.typepad.com/simplyrfid1/2008/07/read-range-how-far-can-we-track-you-with-passive-rfid.html&quot;&gt;around 40'&lt;/a&gt; or 12m, depending on the conditions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't like the movies where it can be picked up by satellite. You need to have a sensor very near the device to read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That still means it is plausible to have a sensor near, say, a cat-flap to detect whether a cat is in a particular area. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pet-Porte-Microchip-Cat-Flap/dp/B001BN4OTI&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) You can't meaningfully track the owner from the pet's chip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless the animal is a guidedog, the owner is generally not with the animal at all times. [Reference: Common knowledge about pets being left home while owners go out, and cats going out while owners stay home.]  Even if you could track the pet, this would be of limited value in tracking the person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) If microchips cause cancer in cats and dogs, it is a very rare occurrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The World Small Animal Veterinary Association &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wsava.org/Chip999.htm&quot;&gt;responded to these claims&lt;/a&gt;, which were based on suspicions in lab-rats bred to be susceptible for cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no evidence to suggest that companion animals implanted with a microchip are at a higher risk for developing a tumor. The mice used in the studies where an association between a microchip and development of a tumor occurred were genetically predisposed to cancer and do not represent the genetic diversity we see in our dogs and cats. In the United Kingdom where over half of the dog population has a microchip, the British Small Animal Veterinary Association has established a formal system for the reporting of adverse events related to microchips, including tumors. In ten years of collecting data, only 2 tumors were reported to their adverse event registry. When you weigh this extremely rare event against the thousands of pets that are reunited worldwide each year from a microchip, it seems obvious that the benefits from microchipping far outweigh any small risk from a tumor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5 and 6) Asserting that future governments are conspiring against us is unfalsifiable and off-topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that future governments (of which nations?), who presumably aren't in power yet, are conspiring against us in this way is ludicrous. It is also unfalsifiable - no evidence can be produced that would satisfy the conspiracy theorists that make these sorts of claims - so it is out-of-scope of what can be dealt with with scientific evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside: If you ignore the blackmarket that would presumably spring up immediately, and the difficulty in policing online transactions, I see no technical reason why many transactions couldn't have an identification requirement, which might include the presentation of an implanted microchip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T00:28:46.997" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7388" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2011-12-29T19:30:16.453" Score="10" ViewCount="225" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2339/did-the-cia-sell-drugs-in-the-us&quot;&gt;Did the CIA sell drugs in the US?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard this many times from various sources.  I've heard it referenced to the crack epidemic in the 80s. I've heard it mentioned in connection with a news story that got buried about it happening again in the 90s (from a Pulitzer winning reporter).  I've heard that there was a trial in which it all came out, but that it got ignored.  Does the historical record support this?  Did it happen?  Or is this just a conspiracy theory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5618" OwnerDisplayName="Daniel Bingham" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:42:32.777" Title="Did the CIA sell illegal drugs in the US in order to fund anti-communist Dictators in South America?" Tags="|united-states|recreational-drugs|cia|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-01-01T12:42:26.950" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7389" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8405" CreationDate="2011-12-31T08:42:41.860" Score="10" ViewCount="606" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2011/12/canadian-medical-association-journal-japanese-response-to-fukushima-even-worse-than-communist-russian-response-to-chernobyl-the-japanese-government-was-lying-through-its-teeth.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Canadian Medical Association Journal: Japanese Response to Fukushima Even Worse than Communist Russian Response to Chernobyl … “The Japanese Government Was Lying Through Its Teeth”&lt;/a&gt;, there are a lot of claims that the Fukushima dai-ichi incident is worse than the government claims, possibly too many to examine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there's one claim that goes directly against what I'd heard and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/2072/104&quot;&gt;stated&lt;/a&gt;. It says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ruff similarly charges that the government has mismanaged the file and&#xA;  provided the public with misinformation. As an example, he cites early&#xA;  reports that stable iodine had been distributed to children and had&#xA;  worked effectively, when, “in fact, iodine wasn’t given to anyone.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was stable iodine distributed to citizens of Japan likely to be affected by Fukushima dai-ichi?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T13:56:52.383" Title="Was stable iodine distributed post-Fukushima by the Japanese government?" Tags="|radiation|fukushima-daiichi|japan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7391" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7399" CreationDate="2011-12-31T14:28:10.433" Score="10" ViewCount="1019" Body="&lt;p&gt;Venezuela's entertaining president, Hugo Chavez, was recently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-16349845&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; to have speculated that the USA has developed a secret technology to give cancer to left-wing leaders in Latin America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this claim is a little too crazy to merit skeptical analysis. However, according to the BBC report &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he said the instances of cancer among Latin American leaders were &quot;difficult to explain using the law of probabilities&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that constitutes a simple claim that does merit some skepticism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reworded the question is this: is the incidence of cancer in South American political leaders unusually high? Is the answer different for the subgroup who are left wing in their politics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-01-03T22:40:44.500" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T06:10:29.713" Title="Are political leaders from Latin America unusually prone to cancer?" Tags="|politics|cancer|epidemiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7379" CreationDate="2011-12-31T17:05:30.373" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to copy &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/377/how-were-the-pyramids-built&quot;&gt;my answer from the linked question&lt;/a&gt; here, and highlight the relevant part in &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt; for you.  With &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/constructiontechniques.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; being the most pertinent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080328104302.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ScienceDaily&lt;/a&gt; has a nice article on this, as well as many related articles.  In the cited article, they state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the process of building pyramids, while complicated, was not as colossal an undertaking as many of us believe, Redford says. Estimates suggest that between 20,000 and 30,000 laborers were needed to build the Great Pyramid at Giza in less than 23 years. By comparison, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris took almost 200 years to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think what gets people so confused is they mistake old cultures for being unintelligent.  Humans have had the same level of intelligence for nearly 200,000 years, just not the full benefit of technology.  (Citation:  Hominid Brain Evolution Testing Climatic, Ecological, and Social Competition Models, Drew H. Bailey &amp;amp; David C. Geary, Hum Nat (2009) 20:67-79, DOI 10.1007/s12110-008-9054-0)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, in the article, it states &quot;laborers&quot;.  A common misconception is that slaves built the pyramids, which is not the case.  Archaeological evidence shows the builders were skilled and paid for their efforts.  From the same article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the image most people have of slaves being forced to build the pyramids against their will is incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional collection of articles can be found at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/01/11/egypt-finds-tombs-of-pyramid-builders-and-more-evidence-they-were-free-men/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Discover Magazine Blog&lt;/a&gt; post by Andrew Moseman.  It starts out saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Forget the myths about massive numbers of slaves or Jews building the great pyramids, Egypt‘s chief archaeologist argues this week. He says Egyptian researchers have found the tombs of more pyramid builders, and in those tombs more evidence that free men erected these monumental tributes to the ancient pharaohs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And continues with numerous links to even more articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As to the assertion that it was impossible to do many of the things that the builders of the pyramids did, that is a common misconception people seem to have.  Most people don't consider ancient humans to have been as intelligent as we are, when in fact they possessed the exact same intellect as we do today, just not the technology.  And since we rely so much on advanced technology, many people make an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;argument of incredulity&lt;/a&gt; because we just don't do things the old fashioned way.   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/constructiontechniques.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some people have started to collect reconstructions of those methods on the web&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same argument regarding the mathematical precision could be made.  Also, in ancient times, without our calendars and clocks, astronomical observations played a much more important role than today (i.e. when to plant, when to expect rains, etc.).  Again, ancient humans were not stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2011-12-31T17:05:30.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7395" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-01T02:33:10.903" Score="3" ViewCount="694" Body="&lt;p&gt;Motherboard and PSU manufacturer's marketing department typically like to highlight the fact that they use Japanese capacitors, and there are even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAiK6FF6vr0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;videos on Youtube&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/How-to-Identify-Japanese-Electrolytic-Capacitors/595&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some articles&lt;/a&gt; about how to identify if a capacitor is Japanese. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any conclusive evidence to suggest that Japanese capacitors are more reliable than, let's say, American capacitors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1697" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-01-01T09:34:03.623" LastActivityDate="2012-01-01T09:34:03.623" Title="Are Japanese capacitors more reliable in general?" Tags="|consumer-products|electronics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7395" CreationDate="2012-01-01T03:38:24.043" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You picked the wrong country for comparison.&#xA;It is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague&quot;&gt;Chinese/Taiwanese Capacitor plague&lt;/a&gt; that's relevant here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theeestory.com/topics/6139&quot;&gt;Epidemic of Faulty Capacitors from China&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;--- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dellsony.info/capacitor-plague-dell-laptops/&quot;&gt;“capacitor plague” – Dell laptops&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Supposedly the manufacturers have cleaned up their act, but trust comes hard to engineers after events like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastActivityDate="2012-01-01T03:38:24.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5279" CreationDate="2012-01-01T03:41:02.287" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cecil Adams of the Straight Dope is a noted skeptic and debunker of myths, and was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2613/how-do-martial-artists-break-boards-and-bricks-using-only-their-bare-hands&quot;&gt;asked about this one&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He read a paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The Physics of Karate Strikes&quot; by Jon Chananie at the University of Virginia.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that in turn cited physicist &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jearl_Walker&quot;&gt;Jearl Walker&lt;/a&gt; - probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flyingcircusofphysics.com/News/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=37&quot;&gt;section 1.45&lt;/a&gt; of his book &lt;em&gt;The Flying Circle of Physics&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He then anecdotally describes using this knowledge (and other research) to give it a go, and in his first session was splitting 5 boards. A younger assistant could split 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Cecil Adams is not a martial artist, it seems that the skill is more about knowing how than concentration or special strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-01-01T03:41:02.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7391" CreationDate="2012-01-01T18:12:28.010" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are 20 countries in Latin America&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, of which 5 have had cases of leaders with cancer (one country, Brasil, had two cases). This equates to 6 in 20 cases, or ~33% incidence of the disease. Note that the original article does not include Fidel Castro in the list of cancer victims, I did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this figure &quot;difficult to explain using the law of probabilities&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The average incidence of cancer&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; is ~41% (counting both genders). So, no, it's not really surprising. Actually, it's even a bit low according to statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that Chavez is actually an unintentional victim of the fallacy of cherry picking&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of which is the confirmation bias. Cherry picking may be committed unintentionally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_America&quot;&gt;&quot;Latin America&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/CancerBasics/lifetime-probability-of-developing-or-dying-from-cancer&quot;&gt;&quot;Lifetime Risk of Developing or Dying From Cancer&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking_%28fallacy%29&quot;&gt;&quot;Cherry picking (fallacy)&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-03T00:39:28.380" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T00:39:28.380" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7400" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7409" CreationDate="2012-01-01T19:42:46.010" Score="14" ViewCount="748" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is said (among those that I know) that allowing a minor to consume some alcohol actually encourages responsible behavior when older. The explanations vary, but most have concluded that the removal of the stigma removes the mysticism from the product and therefore decreases the desirability. This is followed by the argument that this will encourage the child to learn to drink responsibly in the home as opposed to in a less controlled environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware of a relationship to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2268/does-decriminalizing-drug-use-lead-to-less-drug-use&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, but that has to do with legality over illegality. I am more interested in stigma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5105" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T01:54:20.593" Title="Does de-stigmatization of alcohol lead to less drunkenness?" Tags="|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7384" CreationDate="2012-01-02T05:08:15.557" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_numerals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;characters of the hebrew alphabet&lt;/a&gt; are meanwhile the ciphers of their numbers, so the &lt;code&gt;number of the beast&lt;/code&gt; is just name of the devil, interpreted as a number - the same phenomena is the source of ideas like &lt;code&gt;bible code&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is a constant value, which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_%281913%29/Use_of_Numbers_in_the_Church&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;said to be 666, by the way&lt;/a&gt; while the RFIDs transmit &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-frequency_identification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unique numbers&lt;/a&gt; - each number represents an individual cat, so the numbers can't be identical, and so they can't identify the same &lt;code&gt;beast&lt;/code&gt;. And they are, of course, much bigger, than the name of the beast. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'right hand' and 'in their foreheads' doesn't match&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cats aren't mentioned in the bible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;we don't see some selling or buying going on here&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so nearly nothing matches - just a small detail: Something about numbers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2012-01-02T05:16:06.400" LastActivityDate="2012-01-02T05:16:06.400" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6631" CreationDate="2012-01-02T18:16:55.190" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This exact question, of Martin Gardner's article about Conan Doyle, is addressed (definitively!) by Raymond Smullyan in his piece &lt;a href=&quot;http://g4gardner.pbworks.com/f/mm-smullyan.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Ambrose, Gardner and Doyle&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, which is part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.g4g4.com/g4g9/dowboo1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;proceedings&quot;&lt;/a&gt; of the recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.g4g4.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gathering For Gardner&lt;/a&gt; (G4G9, 2010). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a very short and amusing &quot;play&quot; which is worth reading in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://g4gardner.pbworks.com/f/mm-smullyan.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;original&lt;/a&gt;, but anyone who is impatient can skip to the section on the last page, called &quot;Discussion&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spoiler:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; It's a hoax by Gardner, and he said so himself to Smullyan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="584" LastEditorUserId="584" LastEditDate="2012-01-03T02:09:33.670" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T02:09:33.670" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7379" CreationDate="2012-01-02T19:55:11.543" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Egyptians at the time were known to use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_machine&quot;&gt;six simple machines&lt;/a&gt;, known to humankind since almost the dawn of time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/architecture/levers.html&quot;&gt;Lever&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://library.thinkquest.org/C004203/science/science02.htm&quot;&gt;Wheel and axle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pulley (need to find a decent reference, but it was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/trades/carpenters.htm&quot;&gt;used by Babylonians before the Egyptians&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/pyramids/ramps.html&quot;&gt;Inclined plane&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/stone/working.html&quot;&gt;Wedge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/trades/carpenters.htm&quot;&gt;Screw&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bookbuilder.cast.org/view_print.php?book=21173&quot;&gt;http://bookbuilder.cast.org/view_print.php?book=21173&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of resources about the technology of ancient Egyptians, how they built their monuments and so on, are also here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/&quot;&gt;http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-01-02T19:55:11.543" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7407" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-02T23:32:37.560" Score="8" ViewCount="1498" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am allergic to House dust mites. There are some air purifiers on the market that suppose to &quot;clean&quot; the air and reduce allergens. I have been really skeptical concerning these devices. Recently I received an offer from my health insurer to buy items that might prevent allergies. Most items were bed linen, but they also offer a wide variety of these air purifiers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming from a health insurer, I started to wonder if there might be some validity in the claims that air purifiers like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airfree.com/index_other.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sharpmea.com/cps/rde/xchg/ae/hs.xsl/-/html/product-details.htm?product=KC930EUW&amp;amp;cat=217&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does using an air purifier objectively relieve allergy patients?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5141" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-06-30T01:24:52.873" LastActivityDate="2016-06-30T01:24:52.873" Title="Do air purifiers remove allergens?" Tags="|allergies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7368" CreationDate="2012-01-03T00:32:45.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it isn't: bitter apple is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cpsc.gov/LIBRARY/FOIA/foia99/os/aversive.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bitterant&lt;/a&gt; (due to the presence of &lt;a href=&quot;http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrullus_colocynthis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;colocynthin&lt;/a&gt; - sorry for the Italian source) which is used to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.uk/patents?id=ObwHAAAAEBAJ&amp;amp;zoom=4&amp;amp;dq=bitter%20apple%20pet&amp;amp;pg=PA1#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=bitter%20apple%20pet&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;prevent licking&lt;/a&gt;/eating/swallowing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrullus_colocynthis#Uses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;strong laxative&lt;/a&gt; but not a lenitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/a/apple046.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;More information&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T00:32:45.223" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7400" CreationDate="2012-01-03T01:54:20.593" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this study, it's a poor strategy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adult-supervised settings for alcohol use resulted in higher levels of harmful alcohol consequences, contrary to predictions derived from harm-minimization policy. Findings challenge the harm-minimization position that supervised alcohol use or early-age alcohol use will reduce the development of adolescent alcohol problems. (J. Stud. Alcohol Drugs, 72, 418–428, 2011)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/files/2011/04/418-McMorris.pdf&quot;&gt;Influence of Family Factors and Supervised Alcohol Use on Adolescent Alcohol Use and Harms: Similarities Between Youth in Different Alcohol Policy Contexts&lt;/a&gt;. McMorris et al. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3096757/Children-allowed-to-drink-at-home-more-likely-to-develop-alcohol-problems-study-suggests.html&quot;&gt;this 2008 newspaper article&lt;/a&gt; that's clearly referring to a different study and which also warns against it. But I could not track down that study via the NIAA Website. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T01:54:20.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7410" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7420" CreationDate="2012-01-03T09:45:29.930" Score="15" ViewCount="12219" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ap%C3%A9ritif_and_digestif&quot;&gt;alcoholic digestives&lt;/a&gt; (e.g. grappa, limoncello, sambuca) really help digestion after a heavy meal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5648" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-01-30T09:05:26.030" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T07:55:20.530" Title="Do alcoholic &quot;digestives&quot; help digestion?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7315" CreationDate="2012-01-03T10:32:31.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Researching this a few years back I came across a site which demonstrated that in most cases like this, you can only &lt;em&gt;hear&lt;/em&gt; these lyrics if prompted with them in advance. Otherwise you just hear gibberish or some other 'my brain trying to make sense of this' words. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jeffmilner.com/backmasking/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jeffmilner.com/backmasking/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2192" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T10:32:31.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7413" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7419" CreationDate="2012-01-03T15:01:33.937" Score="13" ViewCount="965" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim is very widespread, but I haven't seen it in any sources I'd consider trustworthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-03T17:27:17.063" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T17:34:00.937" Title="Does stress weaken one's immune system?" Tags="|medical-science|immune-system|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7413" CreationDate="2012-01-03T17:34:00.937" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, stress reduces the immune function. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are numerous peer-reviewed papers on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/000632239090016U&quot;&gt;Reduction of immune function in life stress and depression&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reduced cell-mediated immune function has been found in depressed patients and in distressed persons undergoing threatening life events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/108/3/363/&quot;&gt;Stress, emotion, and human immune function.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chronic stress has been associated with suppression of immune function, and there is evidence that the immune system may not adapt over time. Effects of stress accompanying social disruption and psychological depression, when demonstrated, have been consistently adverse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main.doiLanding&amp;amp;doi=10.1037/0022-006X.70.3.537&quot;&gt;Psychoneuroimmunology: Psychological influences on immune function and health.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This review focuses on human psychoneuroimmunology studies published in the past decade. Issues discussed include the routes through which psychological factors influence immune function, how a stressor's duration may influence the changes observed, individual difference variables, the ability of interventions to modulate immune function, and the health consequences of psychosocially mediated immune dysregulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoneuroimmunology&quot;&gt;Psychoneuroimmunology&lt;/a&gt; is actually a fully fledged field of study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) is the study of the interaction between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems of the human body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T17:34:00.937" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7410" CreationDate="2012-01-03T17:58:09.333" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe, maybe not...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6731&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effect on gastric function and symptoms of drinking wine, black tea, or schnapps with a Swiss cheese fondue: randomised controlled crossover trial&lt;/a&gt; (BMJ)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alcohol during or immediately after a heavy meal causes the stomach to empty more slowly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/brD1a.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not clear whether this effect is beneficial or not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alcohol promotes gastric relaxation but delays gastric emptying. As a consequence, drinking white wine and schnapps with a Swiss cheese fondue may provide short term relief of postprandial dyspepsia; this may, however, come at the cost of more prolonged fullness (the feared “cheese baby” syndrome) and reflux.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-01-03T17:58:09.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7424" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-03T20:22:22.037" Score="8" ViewCount="4300" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WIGEYm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Rorschach blot&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rorschach test&lt;/a&gt; a reliable diagnostic tool for psychologists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia says (at the top of the page):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been employed to detect underlying thought disorder, especially in cases where patients are reluctant to describe their thinking processes openly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at the bottom:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some skeptics consider the Rorschach inkblot test pseudoscience, as several studies suggested that conclusions reached by test administrators since the 1950s were akin to cold reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both sentences are apparently referenced! Which is which? Is it pseudo science or real science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T12:29:58.657" Title="Is the Rorschach test a reliable diagnostic tool for psychologists?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7238" CreationDate="2012-01-04T01:06:39.130" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR: People make better decisions about some kinds of things — but worse decisions about other kinds of things‚ when they have a strong urge to urinate.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two pieces of research, one confirming, and the other denying benefits to cognition in relation to bladder control. The effect is known as the (I kid you not!) &lt;em&gt;spillover effect&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theory is that the impulse control exertion to avoid peeing can &quot;spill over&quot; to other domains and make people less prone to emotional decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &lt;em&gt;landmark&lt;/em&gt; paper is &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1720956&amp;amp;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1720956&quot;&gt;&quot;Inhibitory Spillover: Increased Urination Urgency Facilitates Impulse Control in Unrelated Domains&quot;&lt;/a&gt; which apparently found benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Visceral states are known to have a (detrimental) impact on our ability to exert self-control. In the current research, we investigate the impact of a visceral factor associated with inhibition, rather than with approach: bladder control. We argue that inhibitory signals are not domain specific, but can spill over to unrelated domains, resulting in increased impulse control in the behavioral domain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other &lt;em&gt;masterpiece&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/nau.20963/full&quot;&gt;&quot;The effect of acute increase in urge to void on cognitive function in healthy adults&quot;&lt;/a&gt; which instead found negative effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The magnitude of decline in cognitive function associated with an extreme urge to void was as large and equivalent or greater than the cognitive deterioration observed for conditions known to be associated with increased accident risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: both papers won the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ignobel.com/ig/2011/&quot;&gt;2011 IgNobel awards for Medicine&lt;/a&gt; :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MEDICINE PRIZE: Mirjam Tuk (of THE NETHERLANDS and the UK), Debra Trampe (of THE NETHERLANDS) and Luk Warlop (of BELGIUM). and jointly to Matthew Lewis, Peter Snyder and Robert Feldman (of the USA), Robert Pietrzak, David Darby, and Paul Maruff (of AUSTRALIA) for demonstrating that people make better decisions about some kinds of things — but worse decisions about other kinds of things‚ when they have a strong urge to urinate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T01:06:39.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6016" CreationDate="2012-01-04T01:20:28.173" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The picture is an optical illusion created by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandro_del_Prete&quot;&gt;Sandro Del Prete&lt;/a&gt;. He is an artist specialising in this kind of endeavours. In his own words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Everything we see can be seen in another way. Therefore, I ask myself; isn't everything an illusion anyway? Reality is but a question of perception, and perception inevitably varies according to one’s viewpoint. Different viewpoints lead to different dimensions.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sandrodelprete.com/index.php/biography/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look up the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sandrodelprete.com/index.php/dolphins.html&quot;&gt;image on his web site&lt;/a&gt;, you will see that he confirms this, and that the image is certainly not a &quot;pervert&quot; test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He does state that probably kids will be more likely to see dolphins and adults the sensual embrace, however he does not say this is backed up by any scientific research, so I am going to take that statement as artistic speculation and not hard fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This illustration incorporates a figure/ground perceptual reversal, and is an excellent example of one’s viewpoint being primed through experience. If one is young and innocent, they will most likely perceive a group of dolphins. Adults, on the other hand, will probably see a couple in a suggestive embrace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T01:20:28.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7429" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7431" CreationDate="2012-01-04T03:30:48.993" Score="10" ViewCount="1850" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJV5PSpYPL0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; on Youtube, with the description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A thin superconductor layer (~1µm thick) is coated on a sapphire&#xA;  wafer. Quantum physics tells us that the magnetic field penetrates&#xA;  into the superconductor in the form of discrete flux tubes. The&#xA;  superconductor strongly pins these tubes, causing it to float in&#xA;  midair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks real, but people can do some pretty impressive magic tricks (especially if they control the camera and can post-process the footage). Unfortunately, I don't know enough about quantum physics to know if this is Star Trek talk or real science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/16054/how-is-stable-levitation-possible&quot;&gt;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/16054/how-is-stable-levitation-possible&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1434" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:12.727" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T13:58:53.430" Title="Is this &quot;quantum levitation&quot; video real?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7429" CreationDate="2012-01-04T04:38:59.497" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sure, the phenomena is real. It's a nice demonstration of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meissner_effect&quot;&gt;Meissner effect&lt;/a&gt; in which a superconductor resists penetration by a magnetic field. It's become a popular lab demonstration since the discovery of high temperature* superconductors in the mid 80's.&#xA;At one point, you could even buy &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.futurescience.com/sc.html&quot;&gt;home levitation kits.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resistance to penetration of magnetic field occurs via generation of opposing electromagnetic field, an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddy_current&quot;&gt;eddy current&lt;/a&gt;: (&lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/farlaw.html&quot;&gt;video demonstration&lt;/a&gt;). Eddy current generates a magnetic field to oppose the external field: (&lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/farlaw.html&quot;&gt;Faraday and Lenz's law&lt;/a&gt;). Since the object is a supeconductor, the currents, and mag field, don't damp out; hence permanent repulsion between magnet and superconductor. For more, Hyperphysics offers an explanation &lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/solids/maglev.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*High temperature meaning 'near the boiling point of liquid nitrogen', 77°Kelvin (-196 °C; -321 °F).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastEditorDisplayName="user951" LastEditDate="2012-01-04T13:58:53.430" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T13:58:53.430" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7407" CreationDate="2012-01-04T14:56:16.663" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/iaq/pubs/residair.html&quot;&gt;an article from the EPA about residential air purifiers&lt;/a&gt;. They advise as first steps to avoid/remove sources of indoor air pollution and to improve ventilation with clean outdoor air. Once the limits of these techniques are reached, they advise that air purifiers &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be useful, in certain circumstances. A telling quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How effectively air-cleaning devices alleviate allergic and other health symptoms remains uncertain. Strong data linking air-cleaning devices to reduced health symptoms do not exist. Many studies have associated air-cleaning devices with reductions in airborne indoor pollutant concentrations, but more clinical studies are needed to determine whether air cleaners significantly affect health outcomes. A literature review documented only a limited number of studies that attempted to evaluate the clinical outcomes of air cleaner use. These studies focused on more sensitive groups, such as asthmatic and allergic individuals, children, and the elderly. A number of the studies had important limitations, such as small study size, short duration, and lack of blinding (i.e., subjects and scientists were aware of air cleaner operation), which may result in a placebo effect. The results were also more suggestive than conclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1305" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T14:56:16.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5467" CreationDate="2012-01-04T19:35:31.483" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, to completely counter the currently accepted result (as of 4 Jan 2012, anyway), a new study from the Annals Of Internal Medicine shows &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annals.org/content/156/1_Part_1/1.abstract&quot;&gt;that chiropractic and neck exercises is a more effective treatment for neck pain than drugs&lt;/a&gt; (NSAIDs or narcotics).  For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For pain, SMT [Spinal Manipulation Therapy] had a statistically significant advantage over medication after 8, 12, 26, and 52 weeks (P ≤ 0.010), and HEA [Home Exercise With Advice] was superior to medication at 26 weeks (P = 0.02). No important differences in pain were found between SMT and HEA at any time point. Results for most of the secondary outcomes were similar to those of the primary outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the abstract further states, the patients couldn't be blinded (ie, no placebo chiropractic or home exercise treatments could be done), so it's tricky in the sense of traditional blinding to produce accepted results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it's important to try to determine which kind of chiropractic therapy will be done.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chirobase.org/01General/risk.html&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; discusses the chiropractic theory of subluxation, and proceeds to debunk it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chiropractors have been adjusting vertebral subluxations since 1895 when D. D. Palmer, a magnetic healer, declared that &quot;95% of diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae; the remainder by luxations of other joints.&quot; [10] ... Although some chiropractors no longer support the vertebral subluxation theory [13], the theory is still being taught in chiropractic colleges and still forms the basis for the average chiropractor's practice. There is no scientific evidence to indicate that vertebral misalignment or any dysfunction in structures of the spinal column is a cause of disease [14].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article continues, with the ultimate conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As long as the chiropractic profession continues to base chiropractic treatment on the unproven vertebral subluxation theory, there will continue to be opposition from medical scientists as well as criticism by consumer advocates...  Failure of chiropractors to criticize the pseudoscience in chiropractic (concentrating more on public relations than on promoting public health) perpetuates chiropractic dogma and fails to challenge chiropractors who exploit spinal manipulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, so long as the chiropractor isn't using subluxation, it may have more health benefits than @nico's answer would lead me to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2158" LastActivityDate="2012-01-04T19:35:31.483" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7438" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7453" CreationDate="2012-01-05T00:07:35.297" Score="14" ViewCount="7252" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the TV show Ancient Aliens (clip &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ndvGrqscuY&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), humans could not have designed or built the pyramids at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumapunku&quot;&gt;Puma Punku&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific claims in the video are that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The blocks used in construction were too large and heavy to be moved from quarries&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Advanced tools were used for precise leveling of blocks, drilling and for gouging straight narrow channels in blocks, and that these tools and techniques are unusually advanced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These tools could not have been &quot;stone age&quot; tools as they were used to carve delicate channels and bore narrow holes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The blocks are a mix of granite and diorite, and diorite is so hard that diamond-tipped tools would be required.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think jumping to aliens as an explanation is a bit extreme and have no problems accepting that humans built those pyramids. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, what evidence do we have that humans did build the pyramids at Puma Punku?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2012-01-05T04:41:42.327" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T19:55:11.147" Title="Were the pyramids at Puma Punku built by humans?" Tags="|history|aliens|art|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7440" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7441" CreationDate="2012-01-05T02:31:06.273" Score="26" ViewCount="8151" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone who &quot;believes branches of the U.S government planned 9/11&quot; said that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The passport of one of the terrorists was &quot;found&quot;. How is it that this&#xA;  passport survived the crash, while nothing else of the planes' content&#xA;  was recovered from it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regarding this specific claim&lt;/strong&gt; : was the passport of one of the terrorists recovered? Were other objects from the plane? If the passport survived by most other objects did not, what's the explanation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="868" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T21:12:52.723" Title="Was the passport of one of the 9/11 terrorists found, while &quot;nothing else&quot; from the airplane was recovered?" Tags="|united-states|9-11|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7440" CreationDate="2012-01-05T04:07:44.607" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;The passport of Satam al Suqami who was on American Airlines flight 11 was recovered.  From the 9-11 Commission report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The passport was recovered by NYPD Detective Yuk H. Chin from a male passerby in a business suit, about 30 years old. The passerby left before being identified, while debris was falling from WTC 2. The tower collapsed shortly afterwards. The detective then gave the passport to the FBI on 9/11.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is found in endnote 109 on page 40 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/911_TerrTrav_Ch2.pdf&quot;&gt;this document&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would suggest that the passport was blown out of the building and was found on the street.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the claim that nothing else of the planes content was recovered:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20041027045357/http://www.pbase.com/peteburke73/image/1459719/original&quot;&gt;Photographic evidence&lt;/a&gt; of two men examining a seat cushion from flight 11.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To counter the argument that papers from the plane couldn't have survived here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/20/national/20LETT.html&quot;&gt;a story from the NY Times about a letter that survived&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt that will settle it with your friend but it might be a good place to start.  For more debunking check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/06-09-11/&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3575" LastEditorUserId="3575" LastEditDate="2015-10-21T21:12:52.723" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T21:12:52.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7443" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7444" CreationDate="2012-01-05T11:20:06.890" Score="30" ViewCount="3663" Body="&lt;p&gt;A long time ago I had this discussion with some people if throwing a coin of a building is dangerous (potentially deadly) if it hits someone. The height of the building should be skyscraper-like so the coin could reach 'terminal velocity'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the material most coins are made up it is pretty obvious that it should be dangerous, but from its shape I assumed that it might not fall straight down but to start gliding somewhat like paper, but not as wobbly of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any info available on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5638" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T14:25:48.360" Title="Is it dangerous to throw a coin off a building?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7443" CreationDate="2012-01-05T13:44:51.277" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;These guys measured a penny's terminal velocity: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gantless.com/paper.html&quot;&gt;A Penny in Free Fall&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;There are several ways a penny can fall, so they report terminal velocities in the range of 20-45 mph (9-20 m/s). That's fast enough to put an eye out. Copper pennies, pre 1982, fall faster than post 1982, zinc pennies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] a penny falling at terminal velocity will not kill a person. After reviewing the table of terminal velocities, a penny may fall faster than a Ping-Pong ball, but certainly not any faster than a basketball. These terminal velocities convert to about 20-45 mph (32-72 km/h). This may cause a bit of a sting, but it is not going to kill a person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastEditorUserId="24" LastEditDate="2012-01-05T14:25:48.360" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T14:25:48.360" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7445" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-05T13:58:24.913" Score="8" ViewCount="533" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that a great debate rages about whether we all need to eat our &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/5aday/Pages/5ADAYhome.aspx&quot;&gt;5 a day&lt;/a&gt; in order to maintain our health or whether it is conceivably cheaper, faster and easier to obtain necessary vitamins and minerals from supplements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thrust of my question is... what is the evidence? Are we more inclined to lean on the crutch of saying real foods &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be healthier, or this just a symptom humankind's psychological tendency to mistrust manufactured supplements in favour of wholesome foods? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5060" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-05T14:34:48.240" LastActivityDate="2012-01-07T23:54:06.360" Title="Is it better to obtain vitamins and minerals from food rather than by taking supplements?" Tags="|nutrition|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7391" CreationDate="2012-01-05T14:17:18.607" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The point made by Hugo Chávez is not that a disproportionate number of current Latin American heads of government have developed cancer in their lifetime. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What he actually meant is that the number of prominent Latin American leaders who have been in political conflict with the governments of the United States in the latest years have developed cancer in the latest years unusually often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alleged cancer &quot;epidemic&quot; has apparently started with Fidel Castro in 2006. The time interval to take into account is 2006 to 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's list the Latin American countries with a left-leaning anti-US government that took part in the ALBA alliance promoted by Chávez and Castro:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Venezuela, led by Hugo Chávez.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cuba, led by Fidel Castro, then Raúl Castro.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ecuador, led by Rafael Correa.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nicaragua, led by Daniel Ortega.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bolivia, led by Evo Morales.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Honduras, led by Manuel Zelaya, then overthrown by a pro-US coup.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dominica, led by Roosevelt Skerrit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;San Vicente and the Granadines, led by Ralph Gonsalves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Antigua and Barbuda, led by Baldwin Spencer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beside the ALBA countries, it makes sense to add the following South American governments who are unanimously regarded as friendly towards the ALBA and somewhat conflictual with the United States:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brazil, led by Lula Da Silva, then Dilma Rousseff.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Argentina, led by Nestor Kirchner, then Cristina Kirchner.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paraguay, led by Fernando Lugo.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uruguay, led by José Mujica.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have 16 candidates for the &quot;cancer attack&quot;. 6 of them (Chávez, Fidel Castro, Lula, Roussef, Cristina Kirchner, Lugo) were diagnosed with cancer in the time interval. One of them died of heart failure, another one was removed with a coup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Birth year of the people mentioned above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fidel Castro 1926.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Raúl Castro 1931.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mujica 1935.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ortega 1945.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lula 1945.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gonsalves 1946.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rousseff 1947.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spencer 1948.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nestor Kirchner 1950.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lugo 1951.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zelaya 1952.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Christina Kirchner 1953.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chávez 1954.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Morales 1959.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Correa 1963.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Skerrit 1972.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The males had an average age of 58 in 2006, the two women of 56. We can find out the incidence rate of cancer for US residents that age and sex at &lt;a href=&quot;http://seer.cancer.gov/faststats/selections.php&quot;&gt;http://seer.cancer.gov/faststats/selections.php&lt;/a&gt;, which should give a hint at the typical values. The latest data (2008) give an yearly incidence rate lower than 1% for males, lower than 0.8% for females. Since we are talking about 6 years (2006 to 2011), this means that less than 6% of men that age and less than 5% of women that age are expected to be diagnosed with cancer. In this sample, it happened to 29% of males and 100% of females. The sample is very small but the mismatch with the usual values is very high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like Chávez's suspicion is not entirely lacking grounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5666" LastEditorUserId="5666" LastEditDate="2012-01-05T16:04:35.373" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T16:04:35.373" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7074" CreationDate="2012-01-05T15:29:44.103" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Euros are not property of national central banks, they belong to the European Central Bank, but they are &lt;em&gt;issued&lt;/em&gt; by individual banks (and &lt;em&gt;printed&lt;/em&gt; in several places, not necessarily in the same country where they are issued).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each euro note has a serial number. Its first character is a letter identifying the issuing state (Greek euro notes have &quot;Y&quot;). See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_banknotes#Serial_number&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_banknotes#Serial_number&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, it is &lt;em&gt;technically&lt;/em&gt; feasible to recognise the &quot;Greek&quot; euros (Greek coins are even easier to single out because one of the faces is always nation-specific). Those euros do not only circulate in Greece, therefore anybody physically owning euros, and not just foreign tourists coming back from a holiday in Greece, would be affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, this is not the way it works when a country opts out from a currency union: in those cases a new currency is created (or revived, like the drachma) and an initial official exchange rate is established by the government. Bank deposits denominated in euros in Greek banks may or may not be forcibly converted according to this exchange rate. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_economic_crisis_%281999%E2%80%932002%29#End_of_convertibility&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentine_economic_crisis_%281999%E2%80%932002%29#End_of_convertibility&lt;/a&gt; for a recent example of a similar process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assigning a special value to the Greek notes would be a breach of the European treaties and the other countries would have no reason to accept nor implement such a decision. Those treaties do not comprise any mechanism to get out of the Eurozone, so the conditions would have to be negotiated or imposed unilaterally. Exit strategies implying distinct values for euro notes issued by distinct Eurozone countries are extremely unlikely because they would raise countless legal, diplomatic and practical problems; creating a new drachma and replacing euros with it is much more straightforward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: this British MP does not seem to have a very clear understanding of how the Euro works (which, BTW, is pretty typical of most British politicians).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5666" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T15:29:44.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7449" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-05T16:36:03.760" Score="7" ViewCount="1135" Body="&lt;p&gt;Simple question, would those costly silicon and plastic covers protect my phone from damages if it were to fall to the ground?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to commenters request - let's limit the question to iPhone covers and the damage to &quot;serious physical damage&quot; due to a fall, such as the glass breaking or the phone not working. In other words, I don't consider scratches on the back as serious damage. I don't want to name a specific cover model, because (at least were I come from) covers in general are considered as a good protection gear to have, even cheap chinese ones were the manufacturer makes no claim other than calling it &quot;protective cover&quot;. I want to challenge that conception.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5673" LastEditorUserId="619" LastEditDate="2012-01-06T11:44:42.383" LastActivityDate="2023-05-13T18:40:28.037" Title="Do protective covers for mobile phones offer significant protection from serious physical damage?" Tags="|consumer-products|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7450" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-05T18:46:35.137" Score="21" ViewCount="2680" Body="&lt;p&gt;Burt Rutan (the aviator) has put out a critique of climate change:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rps3.com/Files/AGW/EngrCritique.AGW-Science.v4.3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An Engineer's Critique of Global Warming &amp;quot;Science&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On page 7, this caught my eye:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern Human-Extinction Scares&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;• Hole in the Ozone layer, caused by CFCs, 1970s &amp;amp; 1980s&#xA;(We now know that the Ozone changes were not caused by human CFCs)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seem to have missed that memo.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; still mentions CFCs as a cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The details of polar ozone hole formation differ from that of mid-latitude thinning, but the most important process in both is catalytic destruction of ozone by atomic halogens. The main source of these halogen atoms in the stratosphere is photodissociation of man-made halocarbon refrigerants (CFCs, freons, halons). These compounds are transported into the stratosphere after being emitted at the surface. Both types of ozone depletion were observed to increase as emissions of halo-carbons increased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any credible backing for Mr. Rutan's offhand claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4342" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-03-18T19:11:49.040" Title="Was the &quot;hole in the ozone&quot; caused by CFCs?" Tags="|environment|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7445" CreationDate="2012-01-05T20:48:38.777" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The recommendation comes from &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/4841/1/4841.pdf&quot;&gt;Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, And The Prevention Of Cancer: A Global Perspective&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PERSONAL RECOMMENDATIONS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Eat at least five portions/servings (at least 400 g or 14 oz) of a variety of non-starchy vegetables and of fruits every day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Eat relatively unprocessed cereals (grains) and/or pulses (legumes) with every meal3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Limit refined starchy foods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;People who consume starchy roots or tubers as staples also to ensure intake of sufficient non-starchy vegetables, fruits, and pulses (legumes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper also contains a quick summary of the justification, plus two chapters dedicated to the specific findings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Justification&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An integrated approach to the evidence shows that most diets that are protective against cancer are mainly made up from foods of plant origin.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Higher consumption of several plant foods probably protects against cancers of various sites. What is meant by ‘plant- based’ is diets that give more emphasis to those plant foods that are high in nutrients, high in dietary fibre (and so in non- starch polysaccharides), and low in energy density. Non- starchy vegetables, and fruits, probably protect against some cancers. Being typically low in energy density, they probably also protect against weight gain. Further details of evidence and judgements can be found in Chapters 4 and 8.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Non-starchy vegetables include green, leafy vegetables, broccoli, okra, aubergine (eggplant), and bok choy, but not, for instance, potato, yam, sweet potato, or cassava. Non- starchy roots and tubers include carrots, Jerusalem arti- chokes, celeriac (celery root), swede (rutabaga), and turnips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically the recommendation is to eat plants, not to eat vitamins. Vitamins are not a good substitute for eating a lot of veggies in this sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-01-05T20:48:38.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7456" CreationDate="2012-01-05T22:31:42.087" Score="24" ViewCount="1353" Body="&lt;p&gt;Musicians who play string instruments often believe that some of the early examples of the modern form of their instruments produce better sound than recently-made examples with similar designs. This is one contributing reason why a typical Stradivarius violin, for example, is worth several million dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such is the strength of this belief that many scientists have tried to find the &quot;secret&quot; behind the sound. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090122141228.htm&quot;&gt;Some think&lt;/a&gt; it is the way the wood was treated; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/30/stradivarius-violin-recreated-from-cat-scan-sounds-amazingly-s/&quot;&gt;others argue&lt;/a&gt; that it is the physical shape and density of the wood; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1878425,00.html&quot;&gt;some have speculated&lt;/a&gt; that unique properties of the varnish make a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But do we know that they really sound &quot;better&quot; in blind trials? Or could it be like the situation with wine where wine thought to be expensive is reported to taste better than wine thought to be cheap (&lt;a href=&quot;http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13091&quot;&gt;see here&lt;/a&gt;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:39:00.763" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T21:09:09.673" Title="Do old master musical instruments sound better than their modern equivalents in blind trials?" Tags="|music|experiments|musicians|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7438" CreationDate="2012-01-06T00:56:08.557" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; This is a partial answer, as I don't have access to any of the sources I'm summarizing summarizations of. Feel free to edit or change to community wiki. Most of the summaries used are made by wikipedia user &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3aPaul_H.&quot;&gt;Paul H&lt;/a&gt;, who is by the looks an experienced geologist and woo fighter (Just look at the talk page for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumapunku&quot;&gt;Pumapunku&lt;/a&gt;). I've no reason to doubt the correctness of the sources he cites nor his summary of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, Pumapunku was not built by aliens.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pumapunku is the site of a large temple complex dating from around 500 AD. Many objects have been identified pointing to human construction, including stone tools. There is abundant evidence that this site was part of the thriving Tiwanaku civilization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The blocks were too big to be moved&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;False. The largest block on the site weighed around 130 tons, and was determined to have been mined 10km away from the site. There are multiple means by which the builders may have moved these blocks, including ramps, sleds and ropes made of llama skin. The precise means by which these blocks were positioned is unknown, mostly because the Tiwanaku civilization did not have a written record. There were many civilizations that independently developed the tools and techniques required to build megalithic stone structures. The Tiwanaku were an advanced civilization and were adept at stone and metalwork, being able to cold forge metals and produce alloys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Advanced tools were used&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advanced tools likely were used - this was an advanced civilization. There's little reason to doubt that they were able to craft hardened metals for drilling, gouging and hammering stone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;These tools could not have been &quot;stone age&quot; tools&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Tiwanaku were not a stone age civilization. They were adept metalworkers. However, many of the tools used &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; have been &quot;stone age&quot; tools, where metallic tools were not required. Rock hammers were found on site, for example. Looting of the sites over the years has meant that many or all of the original tools used were likely removed from the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The blocks are a mix of granite and diorite, and diorite is so hard that diamond-tipped tools would be required.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;False. Not only is diorite not that hard, but Pumapunku is comprised of andesite and sandstone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anybody can help track these down so we can source some quotes and confirm the answers, it would be very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Vranich, A., 2006, The Construction and Reconstruction of Ritual Space at Tiwanaku, Bolivia: A.D. 500-1000. Journal of Field Archaeology 31(2)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Protzen, J.-P., and S.E.. Nair, 2000, On Reconstructing Tiwanaku Architecture: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. vol. 59, no. 3&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Protzen, Jean-Pierre; Stella Nair, 1997, Who Taught the Inca Stonemasons Their Skills? A Comparison of Tiahuanaco and Inca Cut-Stone Masonry: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. vol. 56, no. 2&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Kolata, A. L., 1993, The Tiwanaku: Portrait of an Andean Civilization. Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge, United Kingdom&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Kolata, Alan L., 2003, Tiwanaku and Its Hinterland: Archaeology and Paleoecology of an Andean Civilization, Vol. 2. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ponce Sanginés, C. and G. M. Terrazas, 1970, Acerca De La Procedencia Del Material Lítico De Los Monumentos De Tiwanaku. Publication no. 21. Academia Nacional de Ciencias de Bolivia&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Protzen, Jean-Pierre; Stella Nair, 1997, Who Taught the Inca Stonemasons Their Skills? A Comparison of Tiahuanaco and Inca Cut-Stone Masonry: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. vol. 56, no. 2 is available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2009/07/stone-masonry-and-engineering-at-machu-picchu-no-aliens-needed/&quot;&gt;http://michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/2009/07/stone-masonry-and-engineering-at-machu-picchu-no-aliens-needed/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-10-11T19:55:11.147" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T19:55:11.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7454" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-06T04:53:41.980" Score="11" ViewCount="1179" Body="&lt;p&gt;A soft-drink company argued in a &quot;dead mouse in a can of soda&quot; case that an intact body of a dead mouse is unlikely to be found inside a can of soda because the dead mouse would have been dissolved by the acid in the soda can in that timeframe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legalnewsline.com/news/227856-mt.-dew-mouse-would-be-jelly-like-pepsi-argues&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.legalnewsline.com/news/227856-mt.-dew-mouse-would-be-jelly-like-pepsi-argues&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The soda can was sealed in August 2008&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The soda can was purchased and consumed in November 2009, according to plaintiff&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Direction #1: bacterial decomposition of the mouse&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The types of bacteria (anaerobic?) that can survive the packaging process - see &quot;common question #1&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Direction #2: hydrolysis of collagen&lt;br&gt;&lt;i&gt;(originally my focus, but now turns out to be the unimportant point)&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the article does not include all of the details of that claim, we try to analyze it in several steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By &quot;jelly-like substance&quot;, was the veterinary pathologist referring to gelatin (hydrolyzed collagen)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was the veterinary pathologist implying the complete dissolution of the dead mouse, leaving non-collagenous substances such as bones in the can?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the contrary, was the veterinary pathologist referring to partial dissolution of the dead mouse, which cause some tissues to disappear while the body still maintains its original shape?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or, was the veterinary pathologist expecting that some level of collagen / gelatin should have been detectable in the soda liquid?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The typical conditions for gelatin production varies, but it is notable that neither high pressure nor high temperature are necessary. However, this depends on the level of crosslinking in the collagen in the source material (the animal and the body part).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/9866/6924&quot;&gt;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/9866/6924&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelatin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelatin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tjhtsm.com/PDF/zhuantilunwen_y10.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.tjhtsm.com/PDF/zhuantilunwen_y10.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize the conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Normal boiling in a kitchen pot, without needing acid or alkali (just soup), for 10-24 hours, at atmospheric pressure (100 kPa)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cooking in a pressure cooker, which typically rises to twice atmospheric pressure and 121°C (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_cooking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_cooking&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commercial production often uses very high pressures (100MPa - 400MPa), but at much lower temperatures (from 10°C to 45°C)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Common questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was the can subject to boiling temperature and higher-than-normal pressure during the packaging process?&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This question will determine which direction is more likely. A sufficiently long boiling will kill most bacteria, although it is still possible for a very small amount of bacteria to remain. The boiling would have made the gelatin path more likely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user2547" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user2547" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:33:29.713" LastActivityDate="2012-01-06T19:01:00.950" Title="Can a dead mouse sealed in a can of soda dissolve into a jelly-like substance in one year?" Tags="|nutrition|chemistry|forensics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7454" CreationDate="2012-01-06T07:15:07.333" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mountain Dew, the soda in question, is widely attested to contain phosphoric acid and have an acidity of pH=3.2 to 3.3.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=mountain%20dew%20ph&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Google Search [ mountain dew ph ]&quot;&gt;¹&lt;/a&gt; A pH of 3.3 is a fairly strong acidity. The acidity of a liquid is a good predictor of its corrosivity (specifically, its ability to destroy body tissue). Even teeth can be dissolved; demineralization of teeth begins at pH 5.5.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.21stcenturydental.com/smith/pH_drinks.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;&amp;quot;Drinks That Eat Teeth&amp;quot;. 21st Century Dental.&quot;&gt;²&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barring actual tests of the effect of a pH 3.2 to 3.3 bath upon the flesh of a mouse, we must look for something similar. The safety data sheet for Mountain Dew is also not available, although presumably the bottling plants would have to make one available to employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Draise skin test of a similarly acidic solution of 30% hydrogen peroxide in water (pH 3.3) gives a Severe result.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nanotech.wisc.edu/CNT_LABS/MSDS/Bases/MSDS%20Hydrogen%20peroxide.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;hydrogen peroxide 30% pH 3.3 safety data sheet&quot;&gt;³&lt;/a&gt; The solution must be marked as Corrosive, Packing Group II for the purpose of transportation, meaning  the liquid is known to cause full thickness destruction of intact skin tissue in less than 60 minutes.&lt;a href=&quot;http://setonresourcecenter.com/49CFR/Docs/wcd00009/wcd0095c.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;U.S. transportation regulations, 49 CFR § 173.137 Class 8 -- Assignment of packing group.&quot;&gt;⁴&lt;/a&gt; Similarly, a solution of phosphoric and hydrofluoric acid diluted to pH 3.3 is known to do the same.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemtexcorp.com/docarchive/secure/MSDS/emi/Ancillary/E-CCXPS%20msds.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;acid coil cleaner pH 3.3 safety data sheet&quot;&gt;⁵&lt;/a&gt; What will happen to the rest of the mouse over a &gt; 1 year period I leave to your imagination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the effect we are looking for according to the pathologist's claim is not about the body tissue. It is demineralization of the mouse over a 15 month period: bones and teeth being dissolved, leaving behind a rather gelatinous, soft mass. For this purpose, we can look at a study published by the Academy of General Dentistry, which showed that tooth enamel (the hardest mineral tissue of the body) bathed in Mountain Dew dissolves at a rate of about 4.2% per 2 days.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agd.org/support/articles/?ArtID=923&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Commercial soft drinks: pH and in vitro dissolution of enamel&quot;&gt;⁶&lt;/a&gt; At that rate, the halflife of tooth enamel would be about one month. 99% of tooth enamel would be dissolved in 6 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, and this is an important point, the acid in the can is a fixed quantity, and would be neutralized over time by the dissolved minerals, so the demineralization of the mouse would not be as rapid as predicted. The equilibrium point depends on several unknowns, but we can make a start on it. The mass of the acids in Mountain Dew is probably similar to the mass of the acids in many soft drinks. We know that Coca-Cola has about 0.055% phosphoric acid.&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0465054684&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Pendergrast, Mark. &amp;quot;For God, Country, and Coca-Cola.&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;⁷&lt;/a&gt; Although there will also be citric acid in the product, we can use it as a conservative lower bound and assume that Mountain Dew has &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; 0.2 grams of acids. If a skeleton is 10 to 20% of the weight of a 10 to 20 gram mouse, then you have 1 to 4 grams of bone to dissolve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="349" LastEditorUserId="349" LastEditDate="2012-01-06T17:12:23.517" LastActivityDate="2012-01-06T17:12:23.517" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7452" CreationDate="2012-01-06T13:02:21.880" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/02/1114999109&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;double-blind study&lt;/a&gt; that was conducted in 2010 in wich &lt;strong&gt;21 experienced violinists were asked to compare violins by Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu with high-quality new instruments.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/02/1114999109&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Abstract of the study&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The resulting preferences were based on the violinists’ individual&#xA;experiences of playing the instruments under double-blind conditions&#xA;in a room with relatively dry acoustics.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We found that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(1) the&#xA;most-preferred violin was new;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(2) the least-preferred was by&#xA;Stradivari;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(3) there was scant correlation between an instrument's&#xA;age and monetary value and its perceived quality;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(4) most&#xA;players seemed unable to tell whether their most-preferred instrument&#xA;was new or old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;These results present a striking challenge to conventional wisdom.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Differences in taste among individual players, along with differences&#xA;in playing qualities among individual instruments, appear more&#xA;important than any general differences between new and old violins&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/01/02/violinists-can%E2%80%99t-tell-the-difference-between-stradivarius-violins-and-new-ones/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Discover Magazine&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.violin.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eighth International Violin Competition of Indianapolis&lt;/a&gt; –&#xA;one of the world’s most important competitions – &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lam.jussieu.fr/Membres/Fritz/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Claudia Fritz&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.josephcurtinstudios.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joseph Curtin&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;persuaded six violinists to part with their instruments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three of the&#xA;violins were new; one was made a few days before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other three had&#xA;illustrious, centuries-long histories.&#xA;Two were made by Stradivari and&#xA;the other by Guarneri.&#xA;Their combined value is around 10 million US&#xA;dollars, a hundred times more than the three new ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The test was a true “ double-blind” one, as neither the players nor&#xA;the people who gave them the violins had any way of knowing which&#xA;instrument was which&lt;/strong&gt;. T&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The room was dimly lit. The players were wearing&#xA;goggles so they couldn’t see properly. The instruments had dabs of&#xA;perfume on the chinrests that blocked out any distinctive smells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Criticism of the study:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/01/02/violinists-can%E2%80%99t-tell-the-difference-between-stradivarius-violins-and-new-ones/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Discover Magazine&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some issues with the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Curtin, being a maker of new&#xA;violins, has an obvious bias, but the double-blind design should have&#xA;prevented that from affecting the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The sample size, six&#xA;violins and 21 players, is fairly small, but as large as can be&#xA;expected when dealing with rare and incredibly expensive objects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There might also be other variables that could affect the players’&#xA;perceptions – perhaps, for example, they might feel differently in&#xA;rooms with different acoustics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;Cellist &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/jan/03/stradivarius-v-modern-violins-study?newsfeed=true&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Steven Isserlis&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it is not widely known just how important the set-up of a violin is to the sound and feel of that instrument. A tiny movement of the sound-post – the little stick inside a string instrument that lies close to the bridge – can alter the tone completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can say quite categorically that it is impossible for a performer to&#xA;judge with any certainty how their sound is carrying in a large hall,&#xA;unless they know the instrument intimately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A performer is married to his or her instrument; and instruments&#xA;choose their partners as carefully as vice versa. We players&#xA;have to learn to relate to these magnificent works of art, to bring&#xA;out the deep layers of sound that distinguish a great instrument from&#xA;a good one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12003/1200913-115-2.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Earl Carlyss&lt;/a&gt; (a longtime Juilliard String Quartet member):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a&#xA;totally inappropriate way of finding out the quality of these&#xA;instruments.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;The auditions took place in a hotel&#xA;room, but violinists always need to assess how an instrument will&#xA;project in a concert hall.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/01/02/violinists-can%E2%80%99t-tell-the-difference-between-stradivarius-violins-and-new-ones/comment-page-1/#comment-69743&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Soloninka&lt;/a&gt; (one of the violinists who took part in the study) however speaks positively about the study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was fascinating. I too, expected to be able to tell the difference, but could not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, after this, you cling to picayune critiques and dismiss the study, then I think you are in denial. If 21 of us could not tell in controlled circumstances and 1500 people could not tell any differences in a hall, and this is consistent with past studies…then it is time to put the myths out to pasture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/milliondollar-stradivarius-loses-out-in-playoff-with-modern-violin-20120103-1pjjd.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Sydney Morning Herald&lt;/a&gt; mentions another blind test, broadcast on BBC radio in 1977:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The great violinists Isaac Stern and Pinchas Zukerman, along with&#xA;expert violin dealer Charles Beare, listened to instruments&lt;/strong&gt; including&#xA;a Stradivarius, a del Gesu and a 1976 British violin &lt;strong&gt;being played&#xA;behind a screen by a concert soloist.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They were unable to reliably&#xA;determine which instrument was which, and two identified the modern&#xA;violin as the Strad.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A shortcoming of both studies was that only a&#xA;few violins were tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as the researchers of the contemporary&#xA;experiment note, this latter was perhaps unavoidable. ''&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Numbers of&#xA;subjects and instruments were small because it is difficult to&#xA;persuade the owners of fragile, enormously valuable old violins to&#xA;release them for extended periods into the hands of blindfolded&#xA;strangers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.''&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abcviolins.com/fidfad.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Audio copy of the BBC radio program from 1977&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abcviolins.com/blindlistening.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blind Faith&lt;/a&gt; (2007) &lt;br&gt;What's in a label? Would a Strad sound as sweet by any other name?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-06T13:02:21.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6424" CreationDate="2012-01-06T18:35:10.540" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, faster speeds will increase accidents, but not by much if they are restricted to motorways&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.d7790&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BMJ editorial&lt;/a&gt; has now joined this debate with arguments similar to those described in the first two answers given above. It concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any potential economic benefit is likely to be outweighed by the adverse effects on health&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key evidence it uses is based on natural experiments when other countries altered their speed limits. The article argues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The example that is arguably the most comparable to the UK proposal was the increase in speed limits in many US states after 1995 when the national maximum speed limit, introduced in response to the 1974 oil crisis, was repealed—limits on interstate highways and freeways were increased, typically from 65 mph to 70-75 mph or from 55 mph to 60-65 mph. This was associated with a 16.6% increase in deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that sounds like a compelling public health case. But you should always be suspicious about percentages as it is easy to exaggerate when using them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The piece of information not given is the number of deaths expected in the context of all road deaths. When I posed the question I asked whether there would be a significant increase and I expected the context for significant to be &lt;em&gt;all road deaths.&lt;/em&gt; 16.6% sounds significant. But motorway deaths don't account for many road deaths in the UK (it is likely that something similar applies in most countries, though UK motorways are particularly safe). Conveniently the BBC recently produced an interactive visualisation of UK road deaths with a variety of useful classifications (&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/uk/2009/crash/8414354.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;see the interactive pages here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key statistic is this: out of more than 3,000 annual deaths they report fewer than 150 on motorways. That is less than 5% of the total. Even if these increase by the amount seen in the USA on increased speeds, the total extra deaths would be about 30 a year (&amp;lt;1%) or so small as to be in the noise from natural variation from year to year. Neither the editorial or the previous answers provided this context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I draw from this two conclusions: what happens on motorways isn't significant in the context of road safety as a whole; if we are going to do anything the focus should be elsewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We could make roads perfectly safe by making a man walk in front of all cars waving a warning flag. But we accept some degree of risk because of the major benefits of driving. Changing the speed on motorways is not a significant issue in this context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2012-01-06T18:35:10.540" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7461" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7492" CreationDate="2012-01-06T23:33:05.443" Score="8" ViewCount="183092" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &quot;random fact&quot; has been going on for a few days and no one seems to know it's source or if it's supported by any reliable research. If the research does exist I'd be much interested in checking what's the criteria to measure beauty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8V68R.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&amp;quot;Did you know that our brain makes us see ourselves 5x more beautiful than we really are?&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Did you know that our brain makes us see ourselves 5x more beautiful than we really are?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3518" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-01-09T15:56:22.427" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T15:56:22.427" Title="Does our brain make ourselves look five times more beautiful than we really are?" Tags="|psychology|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7450" CreationDate="2012-01-07T02:07:02.587" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is indeed. The ozone hole is still there, and will not recover for another 40 years. Meanwhile, CFCs and other ozone depletion substances (ODS) are banned by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Montreal Protocol&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2011 study on the implementation of the Montreal protocol and the effectiveness of the ban is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atsummit50.org/media/book-17.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science and Diplomacy: Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer seeks worldwide phaseout of the production and consumption of ODS. Scientists confirmed that the protocol is working and that the ozone layer is on its way to recovery around the year 2050.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theozonehole.com/2011.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Ozone Hole&lt;/a&gt; web site provides reporting on the ozone layer hole, and as you can see, it's still there in 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BXxWlm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Ozone Hole 2011&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, there is the UN-backed &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unep.org/ozonaction/Events/OzoneDay/2011/OzoneDay2011CountryActivities/tabid/56221/Default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Day for the Presevation of the Ozone Layer&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, to keep the attention up. In reality, HCFCs are hundreds of different substances that need to be phased out. We are gradually getting there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-01-07T02:07:02.587" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7463" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-06T13:39:51.087" Score="13" ViewCount="46153" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone here in the office reckons that if you put liver and milk in a fridge overnight, the liver somehow 'crawls' towards the milk. I am inclined to think this is rubbish but a &lt;a href=&quot;http://freakytrigger.co.uk/science/2005/05/liver-milkbottle-magnetism/&quot;&gt;casual trawl of the internet&lt;/a&gt; suggests there may be a very small movement due to some kind of 'Effect'. I would love to hear the experts' opinions of this (spurious?) 'fact'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm not sure (I'm not a scientist) whether the comments here are intended to be funny or  genuine: &lt;a href=&quot;http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/F19585?thread=33170&quot;&gt;http://h2g2.com/dna/h2g2/F19585?thread=33170&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2577" OwnerDisplayName="5arx" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-07T02:39:54.873" LastActivityDate="2016-09-25T20:57:37.027" Title="Will liver move towards milk?" Tags="|biology|physics|milk|biophysics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7463" CreationDate="2012-01-07T03:27:34.593" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The origin of this story seems to be a letter sent to the &lt;em&gt;weird news&lt;/em&gt; journal &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortean_Times&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fortean Times&lt;/a&gt; in 1999:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FT129: I’ve just learned a truly horrifying thing, and one which I didn’t believe until I tried it for myself. It was told to me by a work colleague, a keen cook, who wasn’t at all amazed when he discovered it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the best way of experiencing the amazement I felt is to try it yourself, in the following manner: take a good-sized piece of fresh liver and place it on your kitchen work-surface. Place a glass of milk 10-20cm (4-8in) away from the liver, on the same surface. Go away and do something else for 45 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon your return you will observe that the liver has crept a good distance towards the milk, leaving a trail of blood! It’s like something out of a horror movie. How, in the name of all that’s decent, does this happen? Fair enough, it may have (in scientific terms) &amp;quot;something to do with enzymes/diffusion/osmosis/whatever&amp;quot;, but this is simply avoiding the issue of how the liver &amp;quot;creeps&amp;quot; (something which I am at present far too disturbed to even contemplate observing). I now have an uneasy sense about my internal organs (although perhaps it’s my nervous system, mounting a coup). Ugh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We’re all colonies of micro-organisms, but it had never occurred to me that some parts might be well nigh autonomous sub-colonies (if that’s the explanation – and it’s the only one I can think of) – my liver, behaving like a slime mould? It’s upset my perceptions of the Universe! If one put beer in place of milk, would the liver crawl away, to avoid liver damage? If placed near a glass of sour milk, would a stomach turn over? What would attract/repel a kidney? Or is this unique to livers? Is this, in fact, the reason they are called livers?!?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My work colleague shrugged off my amazement by saying, simply, &amp;quot;liver likes milk&amp;quot; which is admirably assimilatory of him, but I am as intrigued and bamboozled as I am dumbfounded and appalled. I want an answer, and I want it now. Any answers? In the meantime: milkmen! Do not park your floats outside butchers’ shops…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Garrick Alder, London.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/200012071120/http://keelynet.com/interact/archive/00002177.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;origin source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.angelfire.com/weird/junkyard/other.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quote source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(via &lt;a href=&quot;http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=108;t=000268;p=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;snopes&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author appears to be one of the authors of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;QI&lt;/a&gt;, as you can see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ducknet.co.uk/general/title.php?titleissue_id=367&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. He specialises in quite interesting stuff (apparently, not necessarily scientifically correct, though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://groups.google.com/group/alt.paranormal/browse_thread/thread/ba9b24e29e855f7e/11b896afc1f4eaf4?pli=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1999 alt.paranormal thread&lt;/a&gt; featuring a (quite hilarious) set of puns (including some by noted skeptic P. Z. Meyer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/History/Question27093.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This thread&lt;/a&gt; mentions someone that asserts having heard the myth in 1972.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a practical standpoint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are no studies that I could find describing this effect&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;every single mention I found of this myth was always related to disbelief (&amp;quot;someone told me that...&amp;quot;). Only in one case there was someone reporting the effect happening to them, but they  were the proponents of the myth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;from a physical/biological standpoint I see no easy/possible explanation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, while I cannot provide strong evidence that it's completely false, I also see no evidence of it being true at all, so I shall go with my &lt;em&gt;gut&lt;/em&gt; feeling and refuse to believe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-07T03:27:34.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3274" CreationDate="2012-01-07T05:23:31.960" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;You raise several interesting questions. The questions will undergo a modest redirection, but I hope that I will not lose the intent of the OP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does absolute pitch have a heritable component?  Yes,&lt;/strong&gt; according to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120118203606/http://perfectpitch.ucsf.edu/study/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of California Genetics of Absolute Pitch Study&lt;/a&gt;. Both European families and East Asian families had a “linkage peak” at 7q22.3. In an important sense, Yes, perfect pitch is something you are literally born with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is tone deafness something you are born with? Yes,&lt;/strong&gt; according to the article &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn497-tone-deaf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tone Deaf&lt;/a&gt; by Hazel Muir in the &lt;em&gt;New Scientist&lt;/em&gt;, which compared identical twins (who share 100% of their genes) and fraternal twins (who share 50% of their genes). The study suggested that “your genetic make-up largely determines your ability to perceive pitch. Spector's team concludes that this skill is roughly 80 percent hereditary.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study would suggest that if you (or your identical twin) were tone deaf, then there would be very little chance that you could learn AP, no matter how hard you tried. Life has dealt you a weak hand; stay away from the musical arts. This would be similar to a comment made by a color-blind person. This sex-linked genetic trait will prevent him from a career in interior design. (While I am guessing that user unknown is male, the odds are in my favor.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What if you’re not tone deaf but desperately want to impress that dazzling violinist? &lt;strong&gt;Can you learn how to fake AP&lt;/strong&gt; as well as a Chinese concert pianist who started at the age of four? &lt;strong&gt;Maybe,&lt;/strong&gt; according to &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03206733&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Absolute memory for musical pitch: Evidence from the production of learned melodies&lt;/a&gt; by Daniel Levitin. You could work on your &lt;em&gt;pitch memory,&lt;/em&gt; which is more common. Maybe you could conceal a hit tuning fork, hit it in the bathroom, and hum the issuing note &lt;em&gt;sub rosa&lt;/em&gt; before you come to the piano. Maybe you could have a mirror or confederate help you figure out what note is being played. Or, barring that, maybe you could memorize the answers for this &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120312190814/http://www.aip.org/148th/Test_for_Absolute_Pitch.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AP test&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1403" LastEditorUserId="1403" LastEditDate="2022-08-09T11:51:38.600" LastActivityDate="2022-08-09T11:51:38.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7473" CreationDate="2012-01-07T15:06:35.960" Score="3" ViewCount="422" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard this story, where they celebrated the birthday of the now defunct North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung in the 1970s and as a birthday present they created through some very complex artillery maneuvers an artificial total solar eclipse over Pyongyang. At that very moment, the dictator stepped out of his palace, in front of the crowd in a suit covered with reflecting material and had giant reflectors directed at him, so he practically 'outshone' the sun... While this seems plausible in view of the megalomania and extreme personality cult we all know about, I still wonder whether this actually happened? Is it technically feasible at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5415" LastActivityDate="2012-01-07T23:09:44.837" Title="Kim Il-Sung's birthday present: a solar eclipse?" Tags="|history|physics|astronomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7467" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-07T16:16:20.877" Score="6" ViewCount="14162" Body="&lt;p&gt;While waiting for a friend to show up for coffee, I ran into an ad in a local newspaper. I was thrilled to find the &lt;a href=&quot;http://shopping.augusta.com/pdf/052811/1000167905_1001082915.PDF&quot;&gt;exact ad online&lt;/a&gt;! It's for a medication that claims to target and eliminate belly fat, supposedly developed by the well-known cosmetic surgeon, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Ryan_%28doctor%29&quot;&gt;Frank Ryan&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally, I just disregard these things, but this one included references to trials and even had footnotes! My curiosity was piqued... Some claims in the ad include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abdominal fat is the most stubborn fat to reduce and it is also the most hazardous fat to&#xA;  health. Abdominal fat produces destructive hormones that spread throughout the body. &lt;strong&gt;A clinical study has shown that Dr. Frank Ryan’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shopsecurenow.com/eyl/dr-ryan-s-abdominal-fat-reducer.html&quot;&gt;Abdominal Fat Reducer&lt;/a&gt; can reduce your pot belly without changing your diet or physical activity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, the mechanism by which this works is suggested:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does Dr. Frank Ryan’s Abdominal Fat Reducer work? Paul Klingaman, Executive Director of Endless Youth and Life explained. Klingaman revealed, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;It was found in a number of research studies on laboratory animals and later confirmed in human studies, that a substance called Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) decreases abdominal fat in three ways:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[... three ways are listed ...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... Dr. Frank Ryan's Abdominal Fat Reducer contains the effective dose of CLA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuing on, we have this quote which ends by citing three footnotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies have shown that Dr. Frank Ryan's Abdominal Fat Reducer ingredients increase the rate of metabolism, which reduces both surface and intestinal abdominal fat and helps inhibit future formation of these abdominal fats. &lt;sup&gt;3, 4, 5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AMJ Clin Nuff. 1989 Jan; 49(1):44-50&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AMJ Physol. 1995 Oct: (4pt1):E671-8&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metabolismjournal.com/article/S0026-0495%2800%2990888-6/abstract&quot;&gt;Metabolism 2000 Jan: 49:101-7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my high school health class (which, admittedly, was about 10 years ago), I recall being taught that one couldn't &quot;target&quot; specific fat in the body to burn with exercise. This is using medication, however reading about a method to specifically remove &lt;em&gt;abdominal fat&lt;/em&gt; has me skeptical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there evidence to support that the use of CLA in Frank Ryan's Abdominal Fat Reducer (or any of the other ingredients -- they cite Green Tea extract as well) will target and reduce specifically abdominal fat without one changing diet or exercise habits?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Notes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In searching for &quot;AMJ,&quot; I was able to find&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Academy of Management Journal (not likely)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amj.net.au/index.php?journal=AMJ&quot;&gt;Australasian Medical Journal&lt;/a&gt; (I was hopeful, but their archives only go back to 2009, so I'm thinking they aren't the AMJ responsible for a 1989 publication).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oddly enough, in continuing to search for this, I ran across &lt;a href=&quot;http://drlorrainesharonrothmd.wordpress.com/&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt;, supposedly written by a doctor, who was also examining this full page advertisement! Her conclusion was not very hopeful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Metabolism&lt;/em&gt; article has to do with caffeine responses in women... I'm not sure if this implies that caffeine is one of the ingredients in this product, or if they cite the study for some other reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T05:27:10.613" Title="Does Frank Ryan's abdominal fat reducer pill work?" Tags="|nutritional-supplements|weight-loss|medications|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3125" CreationDate="2012-01-07T19:17:41.160" Score="12" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no historical evidence that this ever happened, however it is a true Chinese anecdote on the game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I could find no evidence of this anecdote in scholarly articles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I did find a reference in the first English Go book, and it was mentioned as an anecdote&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Historical evidence&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/essay/goancientchina.html&quot;&gt;scholarly article&lt;/a&gt;, which encompasses all major mentions of Go in history and provides a good number of reputable sources, the answer is no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will have to read the whole article to verify there is no trace of that story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, there is a little bit which may be interesting: the theory that Go was used originally for divination purposes. In this particular sense, it is plausible, but by no means confirmed or supported by known history, that Go may have been used as a divination tool in the context of a war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Shang were displaced by the Zhou, who shifted the emphasis of the oracles to predicting the influences of the heavenly bodies. This was the period when the enduring yin-yang theory took shape. Their view of the cosmos was widely admired and quoted even by later go writers. For example, in the &quot;Yi Zhi&quot; [The Essence of Go] the famous historian Ban Gu (32-92 AD) said: &quot; The board must be square and represents the laws of the earth. The lines must be straight like the divine virtues. There are black and white stones, divided like yin and yang. Their arrangement on the board is like a model of the heavens.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly though, there is no record of having a game of Go decide the outcome of a war as you mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Mention as anecdote&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such an example is mentioned as an &lt;em&gt;anecdote&lt;/em&gt; in &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/stream/gameofgonational00smitrich/gameofgonational00smitrich_djvu.txt&quot;&gt;The Game Of Go: The National Game Of Japan&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Arthur Smith &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anecdotes have come down to us from the old Chinese &#xA;  times in regard to the game, of which we will mention only &#xA;  one, which shows how highly it was esteemed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sha An, a man who lived in the time of the Tsin Dynasty (265&amp;ndash;419 a.d.), carried on a war with his nephew Sha Gen. Growing tired of taking life, they left the victory to be decided by a game of Go, which they played against each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, you can find no reference to a prince called Sha An on wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-01-07T19:17:41.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7466" CreationDate="2012-01-07T23:09:44.837" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that I have finally found the answer to my question courtesy of another SE site: &lt;a href=&quot;https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/1692/is-there-a-way-to-create-an-artificial-solar-eclipse&quot;&gt;Is there a way to create an artificial solar eclipse?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems it is technically not feasible, for one thing because of the scattering of sunlight in the atmosphere, which would presume the necessity to create &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; the terrestrial atmosphere an object that covers the sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's more interesting, is that in the Simpsons Montgomery Burns has a &lt;a href=&quot;https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/a/1695/871&quot;&gt;device to create solar eclipses&lt;/a&gt;. This could be really the source of this legend, especially since the idea of the eclipse is absolutely in unison with what is (still) going on there in North Korea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5415" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:59:07.190" LastActivityDate="2012-01-07T23:09:44.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7467" CreationDate="2012-01-07T23:27:12.373" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17490954&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Am J Clin Nutr. 2007 May;85(5):1203-11.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Efficacy of conjugated linoleic acid for reducing fat mass: a meta-analysis in humans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After adjustment to the median dose of 3.2 g CLA/d, CLA was effective and produced a reduction in fat mass for the CLA group alone (0.05 +/- 0.05 kg/wk; P&amp;lt;0.001) and for the CLA group compared with placebo (0.09 +/- 0.08 kg/wk; P&amp;lt;0.001)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CONCLUSION:&#xA;Given at a dose of 3.2 g/d, CLA produces a modest loss in body fat in humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With numbers like that, I can easily see how the copywriters missed including that more recent study in their ad. Nine weeks per pound, five months per kilogram is indeed a &lt;em&gt;modest&lt;/em&gt; rate of weight loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-02T19:56:41.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7476" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-08T00:01:08.843" Score="1" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/564/is-homosexuality-innate&quot;&gt;Is homosexuality innate?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suppose I was trying to be tad too PC earlier. I've seen quite a few anti-gay person saying that homosexuality is something that is learned and can be unlearned so to speak. To my understanding some people even offer courses or camps for the very act. Is there any research base for this or is unlearning homosexuality just about suppressing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/564/is-homosexuality-innate&quot;&gt;Actually this question seems to answer my question.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5686" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-01-08T10:52:56.443" Title="Is homosexuality genetic or can it be unlearned in one of those (christian) camps" Tags="|psychology|physiology|gender|sexuality|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-01-08T11:02:23.187" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7477" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23267" CreationDate="2012-01-08T00:07:18.440" Score="12" ViewCount="3738" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lonely Planet's &quot;Discover Japan&quot; claims that Matsuo Bashō wrote a haiku where he was at a loss to describe Matsushima Bay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia says the supposed haiku is roughly translated as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Matsushima ah!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      A-ah, Matsushima, ah!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      Matsushima, ah!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but describes it as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsushima&quot;&gt;apocryphal&lt;/a&gt;. However, it doesn't cite any sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did he write such a haiku?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-08T13:00:47.253" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T23:26:14.990" Title="Did Matsuo Bashō compose a haiku about Matsushima where he was at a loss for words?" Tags="|history|quotes|japan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7480" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-01-08T10:25:22.233" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please use this tag to identify questions which are of the &quot;male vs. female&quot; type, e.g. &quot;Are men more aggressive than women?&quot;, for the psychological and social aspects of sex and sexual activities in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/652/96&quot;&gt;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/652/96&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-08T10:35:53.480" LastActivityDate="2012-01-08T10:35:53.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7481" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-01-08T10:25:22.233" Score="0" Body="Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-08T10:25:22.233" LastActivityDate="2012-01-08T10:25:22.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7482" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-01-08T10:35:44.463" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Human sexual activities or human sexual practices or human sexual behavior refers to the manner in which humans experience and express their sexuality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human sexual activity has psychological, biological, physical and emotional aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/652&quot;&gt;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/652&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:19:20.813" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:19:20.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7483" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-01-08T10:35:44.463" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for the psychological and social aspects of sex and sexual activities in general. Use [gender] for gender differences and gender issues (male/female/lgbt...); use [reproduction] for the reproductive process, which may or may not include sex or even gender.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:19:20.813" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:19:20.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1231" CreationDate="2012-01-08T11:46:23.633" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2950931/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Saturated Fat and Cardiometabolic Risk Factors, Coronary Heart Disease, Stroke, and Diabetes: a Fresh Look at the Evidence&lt;/a&gt; (Micha &amp;amp; Mozaffarian, 2010):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on consistent evidence from human studies, replacing SFA with polyunsaturated fat modestly lowers coronary heart disease risk, with ~10% risk reduction for a 5% energy substitution; whereas replacing SFA with carbohydrate has no benefit and replacing SFA with monounsaturated fat has uncertain effects. Evidence for the effects of SFA consumption on vascular function, insulin resistance, diabetes, and stroke is mixed, with many studies showing no clear effects, highlighting a need for further investigation of these endpoints. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very recent Cochrane systematic review (&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD002137.pub2/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hooper et al., 2011&lt;/a&gt;) is going along the same lines &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This review suggests that modified fat intake, or modified and reduced fat intake combined (but not reduced fat intake alone) are protective against combined cardiovascular events. No clear effects of these interventions on total or cardiovascular mortality were seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, despite the clear effect on mortality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This review suggested that dietary saturated fat reduction (through&#xA;  reduction and/or modification of dietary fat) may be protective of&#xA;  cardiovascular events overall, reducing them by 14%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to these sources saturated fats are harmful, and it would be good to replace some saturated fats in the diet with polyunsaturated fats. I think especially notable point is that replacing saturated fats with carbohydrates offers no benefits re CHD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5686" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T21:26:55.130" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T21:26:55.130" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7485" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-08T12:44:02.153" Score="22" ViewCount="7778" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of autumns back, I frequently went wild mushroom forraging, initially with my Basque father-in-law, who I think had been mushrooming pretty much all his life.  He explained and showed how mushrooms would appear with the full moon.  They would be plentiful and fresh for a few days, then gradually diminish.  By the following waxing moon, any mushrooms found would be old and/or weak.  There would be virtually none to find until the next full moon, when they'd suddenly be everywhere again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a scientific explanation for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To show that my father-in-law is not keeping a pet theory, there's plenty of talk associating mushrooms and mushroom harvesting with the full moon. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While mushrooms are no doubt influenced by the Moon I'm willing to bet that individual species respond in different ways some flushing at the Full Moon others at the New and some contrarian species appearing in favored Quarters. A quick perusal of my notes and an Almanac hasn't revealed any particular pattern ... yet. But I'll keep looking. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturealmanac.com/archive/morels/mushrooms_moon.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though here, mushroom picking must only happen at the time of the full moon, just as everybody also knows that root crops do best when planted in the waning half of the moon’s cycle.  I raise a quizzical eyebrow.  But no, I am assured: the gravitational pull of the moon brings more moisture to the surface of the soil and creates perfect conditions for plump porcini, in much the same way as the moon affects the tides. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://thefactorhouse.com/mushrooms-and-the-moon/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moon phase and sign actually do contribute markedly to environmental growing conditions. This refers mostly to gardening when starting vegetable/herb seeds in soil, but the moons positions does regulate available moisture and density within a medium. When the moon is waxing soil is expansive, and more moisture is available. [&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.shroomery.org/forums/showflat.php/Number/5518190&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pseudo-scientific explanations abound, some involving gravity/moisture, others involving moonlight, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5695" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2020-07-20T18:49:05.367" LastActivityDate="2020-07-21T22:46:17.627" Title="Are there more mushrooms during full moon?" Tags="|biology|moon|agriculture|mycology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7486" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7511" CreationDate="2012-01-08T18:07:48.190" Score="10" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jillstein.org/bio&quot;&gt;From the campaign biography of Dr. Jill Stein&lt;/a&gt;, U.S. 2012 presidential candidate for the Green Party:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Jill] played a key role in the effort to get the Massachusetts fish advisories updated to better protect women and children from mercury contamination, which can contribute to learning disabilities and attention deficits in children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I appreciate less mercury in my food, but this is the first time I've heard the claim that it can lead to &quot;attention deficits.&quot; Is this link supported by scientific studies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user792" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T14:23:20.820" Title="Is there a link between mercury poisoning and attention deficits in children?" Tags="|children|environmental-health|mercury|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7493" CreationDate="2012-01-08T18:24:57.510" Score="27" ViewCount="2689" Body="&lt;p&gt;My dad could tolerate long periods of time outside during the winter while wearing shorts and a t-shirt. He told me he started wearing warmer-weather clothing during the winter, and eventually his body simply adapted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible, and if so, what is the mechanism behind it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5122" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-04-29T02:36:34.927" LastActivityDate="2020-09-20T16:29:35.913" Title="Does wearing summer clothing during the winter increase your tolerance to the cold?" Tags="|physiology|weather|clothing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7450" CreationDate="2012-01-08T19:13:07.393" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;While the consensus is that CFCs cause the ozone hole, there is recent evidence that we don't understand it as well as we thought&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I first read the Rutan comments I though he had simply gone nuts in his general skeptical approach to scares (on Skeptics.se we should applaud his skeptical approach unless his evidence is nonsense), but then I uncovered some recent science that might give &lt;em&gt;some grounds&lt;/em&gt; for his claim (though not the degree of certainty he expresses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell the original source is from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070924/full/449382a.html&quot;&gt;Nature news story&lt;/a&gt; in 2007 which points out that some recent reevaluations of the reaction kinetics of some of the key reactions involved in ozone depletion had given radically different results to those used in the original models of ozone depletion. As one of the scientists reviewing the results said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the measurements are correct we can basically no longer say we understand how ozone holes come into being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This view had widespread coverage in the press and blogs. But perhaps the most significant comment on a related topic was by James Lovelock and reported on &lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/08/new-rate-of-stratospheric-photolysis-questions-ozone-hole/&quot;&gt;this blog&lt;/a&gt;. Lovelock (intimately involved in the science as he invented the key method for detecting small amounts of things like CFCs) is commenting on the recently revealed Climategate emails and their implication of disreputable behaviour by some climate scientists:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science in that was so bad that something like 80% of the measurements being made during that time were either faked, or incompetently done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His comments are interesting as they suggest we reached consensus on the ozone hole a little quickly and, once the bandwagon was established a lot of poor science was done (which, despite being a believer in the consensus of global warming he also thinks is happening there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More significantly his comments have been widely reported in climate-related blogs and might be read as arguing that CFCs didn't cause the hole. A more careful reading would be that though most experts think they did, &lt;em&gt;we are no longer clear how.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-03-01T14:47:39.397" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T14:47:39.397" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7516" CreationDate="2012-01-08T20:11:50.050" Score="4" ViewCount="597" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=16422&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CommonSenseAtheism post&lt;/a&gt; featured a picture in which St. Bernard of Corleone was named. Curious about the reference to &quot;kill a few guys,&quot; I &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_of_Corleone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;looked him upon on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;. Among the fact that he might have killed someone in a duel prior to entering a Capuchin monestary, something else caught my attention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bernard had a strong devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and encouraged others in this devotion. His biographers claim that Mary appeared to him and placed Jesus, as an infant, in his arms. &lt;strong&gt;It is also claimed that she gave him knowledge of the day of his death four months in advance.&lt;/strong&gt; He died at Palermo on 12 January 1667, a few weeks short of his 62nd birthday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is reproduced elsewhere, but also without any source for the origin of the claim. For example, see his entry at the site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.roman-catholic-saints.com/st-bernard-of-corleone.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Roman-Catholic-Saints.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moreover, she gave him knowledge of the day of his death four months in advance. He died at Palermo on January 12, 1667.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there evidence for the claim that Bernard knew or claimed to know the date of his death in advance?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2012-01-10T22:47:09.100" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T14:31:43.500" Title="Is there evidence that Saint Bernard of Corleone knew the day of his death in advance?" Tags="|history|catholic-church|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7491" CreationDate="2012-01-08T20:49:29.610" Score="10" ViewCount="4485" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himalayan_salt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Himalayan crystal salt&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (a.k.a. rock salt from Pakistan) reduce stress? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;[Himalayan crystal salt] has a beneficial effect on the body of healthy people - significantly reduces stress, deepens and slows breathing, increases ability to concentrate, slows the aging of the skin, smooth wrinkles and accelerates fat loss by helping the fight against obesity.&quot; [Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.himalayan-saltcave.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Himalayan Salt Cave&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard some odd claims in my time. Surely, salt of any description is more likely to increase blood pressure. So, I find it difficult to take claims like the above with any seriousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1972" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T14:48:31.860" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T14:48:31.860" Title="Can a Himalayan crystal salt cave reduce stress?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|himalayan-salt|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7490" CreationDate="2012-01-08T23:32:34.290" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been very little or no research done on whether a salt cave can reduce stress levels (or many of the other supposed benefits you list). But, given that they generally make you recline in a darkened room and listen to relaxing music, I would say it's plausible that you would be more relaxed afterwards - but that says nothing about the efficacy of the salt itself. They don't describe the mechanism by which the salt works, so it's not really possible to study it. There are, however, people (including the site you linked to) that claim that salt aerosols and/or going into a salt cave can help with respiratory problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using salt as an aerosol in a cave is known as either halotherapy (salt therapy) or speleotherapy (actually going into a (salt) cave). These are relatively new treatments in the west but have been practiced in Eastern Europe and Russia for several years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Cochrane review was conducted on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11406004&quot;&gt;Speleotherapy for the treatment of asthma&lt;/a&gt;, and of all of the (3) available trials meeting their criteria they found only one which did not have a flaw serious enough to warrant its exclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MAIN RESULTS:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Three trials including a total of 124 asthmatic children met the inclusion criteria, but only one trial had reasonable methodological quality. Two trials reported that speleotherapy had a beneficial short-term effect on lung function. Other outcomes could not be assessed in a reliable manner. A further search was conducted in July 2000. One further paper was excluded (see excluded studies)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;REVIEWER'S CONCLUSIONS:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  The available evidence does not permit a reliable conclusion as to whether speleo-therapeutic interventions are effective for the treatment of chronic asthma. Randomized controlled trials with long-term follow-up are necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asthma Australia &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/asthma-sufferers-warned-against-using-salt-rooms/2411600.aspx&quot;&gt;has warned against salt therapy&lt;/a&gt;, stating that it may actually trigger asthma attacks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A respiratory physician and chair of the Asthma Australia medical advisory committee, Simon Bowler, said he would advise asthma sufferers against undergoing salt treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;''If somebody inhaled significant concentrations of a salt solution it could actually bring on an asthma attack,'' Dr Bowler said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Salt inhalation may have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa043891&quot;&gt;modest short term positive effects on respiration and mucus clearance rates for those with cystic fibrosis&lt;/a&gt;, but I would expect the amount of inhaled salt in this study (5ml of 7% NaCl solution, 4 times daily) is much, much greater than one would receive from lounging around in a salt cave for an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have searched for other studies on halotherapy and speleotherapy, but many of them have obvious conflict of interest issues that are not addressed, for example one study was authored by the employee of a salt aerosol manufacturing company. Similarly, I don't know how reputable the Russian &quot;Journal of Aerosol Medicine&quot; is. There be dragons here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2012-01-08T23:57:10.303" LastActivityDate="2012-01-08T23:57:10.303" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7461" CreationDate="2012-01-09T00:41:27.837" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;As has been pointed out in the comment above, the specific claim that we see ourselves as exactly five times more attractive is a little absurd. There are no units measuring beauty, that I am aware of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In social sciences, when the attractiveness of an individual has to be rated, it is rated on a scale where, for example, one would mean low attractiveness and five high attractiveness. Under such scales, everyone in the study would literally have to be of a 5/5 attractiveness and yet rate themselves as a 1/5 attractiveness. That's highly unlikely, to say the least. Thus, I'm inclined to dismiss the notion that we see ourselves five times more attractive than we are as bogus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving at that, however, is leaving much unanswered. There is, I think, a vaguer but still quite interesting claim to investigate: &lt;strong&gt;Do we overestimate our own attractiveness?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That question has an answer, and the answer is yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the authors of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0307459659&quot;&gt;The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us&lt;/a&gt;, relating the findings of &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1994.tb00798.x/abstract&quot;&gt;Narcissistic Illusions in Self-Evaluations of Intelligence and Attractiveness&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence about self-judged attractiveness comes from a study of college students in which men judged themselves to be about 15 percent more attractive than they actually were. Women viewed themselves as slightly less attractive than they actually were, although both men and women viewed themselves as above average in attractiveness (the women in the study were judged to be a little more above average in attractiveness).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study itself is unfortunately locked behind a paywall, but the abstract does support this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both males and females overestimated their own intelligence, with males, but not females, also overestimating their attractiveness. ... Males showed greater positive illusions than females, with this effect at least partly attributable to observed gender differences in narcissism&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theory that we overestimate our own beauty is supported by another study: &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/nicholas.epley/EpleyWhitchurch.pdf&quot;&gt;Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Enhancement in Self-Recognition&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers took photos of undergraduate students and then invited those students back to the laboratory two to four weeks later to identify their face out of an assortment of eleven images. Out of those eleven pictures, five were altered to make the subject less attractive than the original and five were altered to make the subject more attractive. The eleventh one was the original, unaltered picture&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result? The majority of participants picked one of the pictures that was altered to be more attractive than the original picture, overestimating the attractiveness by six to twelve percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The researchers then did a similar experiment, but this time they asked the participants to evaluate friends and strangers, in order to see if we also overestimate other people's attractiveness or only our own. In the end, subjects overestimated their friend's attractiveness but not the stranger's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: We do overestimate our own beauty, but not by anything close to a magnitude of five times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-01-09T13:24:18.053" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T13:24:18.053" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7487" CreationDate="2012-01-09T02:53:12.730" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your dad has the right of it. Unfortunately, the literature on human cold adaptation is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; very lay-person friendly. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=human%20%22cold%20adaptation%22%20site:.mil&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;num=20&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;ft=i&amp;amp;cr=&amp;amp;safe=off&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US military publications seem to provide&lt;/a&gt; the most accessible information on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Habituation, the most common pattern observed in both acclimatization and acclimation studies, is characterized by a blunted shivering and vasoconstrictor response to cold exposure. Habituation appears to require only brief, intermittent cold exposures to he induced, and can develop when only small body regions are exposed unprotected to cold. It allows extremity skin temperatures to be maintained higher during cold exposure. The higher skin temperatures coupled with the absence of shivering are advantageous in that manual dexterity and comfort are enhanced. In one acclimation study in which subjects were exposed to moderate cold conditions for a prolonged period, a metabolic form of cold acclimation appeared to develop. This adaptation was characterized by an enhanced shivering thermogenesis during cold exposure. When individuals acclimatize or acclimate to cold conditions severe enough to repeatedly cause a significantly body temperature fall, an insulative pattern of adaptation develops, characterized by enhanced mechanisms for body heat conservation. The mechanisms determining the pattern of adaptation to chronic cold exposure appear related to type of cold exposure conditions, the amount of body heat lost and the degree to which shivering thermogenesis compensates for heat loss and defends body temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&amp;amp;metadataPrefix=html&amp;amp;identifier=ADA320836&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Above is from this abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humans get significantly better at handling heat or cold by repeated exposure to the extreme, and working in those extreme conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T02:53:12.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7494" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7497" CreationDate="2012-01-09T14:55:29.610" Score="13" ViewCount="2102" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to be an often-repeated saying that &quot;there are no camels in the Koran&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I just repeated this factoid in the presence of a guy from Syria who insisted it's not true and that there is a sura about camels in the holy book of Islam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I googled a bit and there were lots of inconclusive hits, the best being a quote from Jorge Luis Borges, but I still don't know the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So are camels ever mentioned in the Qur'an or not? Is there a whole sura about them?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1253" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:22:49.797" LastActivityDate="2018-05-23T21:46:30.360" Title="Are there no camels in the Qur'an?" Tags="|zoology|religion|islam|religious-texts|quran|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7486" CreationDate="2012-01-09T15:40:03.967" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There doesn't seem to be connection at least not in Korean children:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The blood lead level showed a significant positive association with the Conners’ ADHD score (beta = 0.50, p &amp;lt; 0.0001). &lt;strong&gt;However, the blood mercury levels were not found to be significantly associated with ADHD symptoms in children&lt;/strong&gt;. The geometric mean mercury concentration in the blood was 2.4 μg/l. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161813X08002283&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ha et al, 2009&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found another study done with Chinese children(Cheuk &amp;amp; Wang, 2006) that found an association, however it appears to have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17177150&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;retracted&lt;/a&gt;. &quot;for reasons of mistakes in the methodology and the presentation of study cohorts.&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5686" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T15:40:03.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7494" CreationDate="2012-01-09T16:33:24.807" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few mentions (although a bit less than one would expect):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;91:13 And the messenger of Allah said: It is the she-camel of Allah, so let her drink!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;7:73 And to (the tribe of) Thamud (We sent) their brother Salih. He said: O my people! Serve Allah. Ye have no other God save Him. A wonder from your Lord hath come unto you. Lo! this is the camel of Allah, a token unto you; so let her feed in Allah's earth, and touch her not with hurt lest painful torment seize you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;11:64 O my people! This is the camel of Allah, a token unto you, so suffer her to feed in Allah's earth, and touch her not with harm lest a near torment seize you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etcetera&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3ahttp%3A%2F%2Fsacred-texts.com%2Fisl%2Fpick%2F+camel&quot;&gt;google search&lt;/a&gt; for more examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T16:33:24.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7489" CreationDate="2012-01-09T16:51:19.363" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/saints/ns_lit_doc_20010610_ber-da-corleone_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;official biography on the Vatican site&lt;/a&gt; makes no mention of it. Keep in mind that if this was a &quot;confirmed&quot; miracle (i.e. accepted as possible by the Church) it would be definitely mentioned in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The (Italian-only) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sanbernardodacorleone.org/home.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;official site&lt;/a&gt; also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Awww.sanbernardodacorleone.org%2F%20morte&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;has no mention of it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-11T14:31:43.500" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T14:31:43.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7499" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-09T17:14:16.020" Score="18" ViewCount="1473" Body="&lt;p&gt;A paper from &lt;em&gt;Nature Geoscience&lt;/em&gt; (reported by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16439807&quot;&gt;BBC here&lt;/a&gt;) claims that the carbon dioxide humanity has pumped into the atmosphere is holding off a new Ice Age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has revived an old idea best described by Hoyle and Wickramasinghe in 1999 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/ce120799.html&quot;&gt;full text&lt;/a&gt;) that we are more at risk from cold than heat. As they argue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The renewal of ice-age conditions would render a &#xA;        large fraction of the world's major food-growing &#xA;        areas inoperable, and so would inevitably lead to the &#xA;        extinction of most of the present human population&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the earth has mostly had more carbon dioxide in its atmosphere and has been significantly warmer than today (&lt;a href=&quot;http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1.shtml&quot;&gt;see here&lt;/a&gt;), could warming be a net positive in the long term? An alternative and perhaps more vivid way to phrase this question in a way that highlights the issue could be: &lt;strong&gt;is the current world climate optimal for humanity or biodiversity?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N.B. It might be worth distinguishing gains to &lt;em&gt;life in general&lt;/em&gt; from gains to &lt;em&gt;humanity&lt;/em&gt; as we emerged in a cold climate and tend to live near coastlines which might change as warming happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Recent statistical palaeontology studies have resulted in a change of mind about biodiversity over geological history. Mayhew's group had previously argued that warm periods had low biodiversity (despite the opposite being the norm across today's world where the tropics teem with biodiversity). A reanalysis has reversed the original result (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/species-multiply-as-earth-heats-up-1.11350&quot;&gt;nature news story&lt;/a&gt;). It is also worth noting that one author of the work doesn't think this is relevant to current warming (though this is opinion is not derived from his current results).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-09-09T20:02:41.673" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T14:56:03.777" Title="Could Global Warming be good for life?" Tags="|environment|climate-change|climatology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7512" CreationDate="2012-01-09T20:16:10.143" Score="10" ViewCount="13567" Body="&lt;p&gt;Common fashion advice states that black is a slimming color, when one wears it, they appear slimmer looking. Is there any evidence this effect exists? What would cause it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T12:02:48.220" Title="Does wearing black make you appear thinner?" Tags="|fashion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7502" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-09T20:18:37.483" Score="8" ViewCount="429" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember reading about a study that had measured GDP per capita (or a similar parameter) and average (self-reported?) happiness in a lot of countries. It was hypothesized that there's a limit where GDP per capita can't make you any happier, but it was found that the relation is logarithmic, as opposed to asymptotic. Unfortunately, I can't find any such study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard both arguments (asymptotic/logarithmic relation) in arguments in political discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a limit where GDP per capita (or a similar parameter) can not make a country happier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5702" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T10:19:01.477" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T10:19:01.477" Title="Is there a plateau in happiness vs. GDP per capita?" Tags="|economics|happiness|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="16" ClosedDate="2013-06-08T03:21:52.727" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7505" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-09T21:08:02.627" Score="9" ViewCount="802" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tYr0Hs.png&quot; alt=&quot;yellow&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A commonly held belief in visual arts and graphic design is that colours communicate specific moods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's concentrate on the colour yellow, for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onextrapixel.com/2010/02/16/anatomy-of-colors-in-web-design-yellow-and-the-sunshine-feel/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The color yellow gives one a warm and cosy effect. It also arouses cheerfulness, stimulates mental activity, and generates muscle energy. Yellow is also often associated with food. Pure yellow is very bright and often attracts one’s attention. This is probably one of the reasons why taxi cabs are often painted bright yellow. However, when over used, yellow can create a disturbing effect; in fact, those of you planning to paint your baby’s nursery room yellow because it’s a gender neutral color, think twice because babies cry more in yellow colored rooms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are any of these claims supported by science? Are there studies demonstrating real, repeatable mood/physical effects of yellow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Note: I don't have a particular interest in the colour yellow. Claims like this are common for any colour. I've chosen a single colour/page to restrict the scope of the question a little bit.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-01-10T00:39:01.387" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T09:05:05.610" Title="Is there a relationship between yellow and moods?" Tags="|psychology|ophthalmology|art|colors|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7499" CreationDate="2012-01-09T22:11:43.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes; it is valid to say that it could be &quot;good for life&quot; since extinction opens niches for new species:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the theory of natural selection, the extinction of old forms and the production of new and improved forms are intimately connected together....[T]he appearance of new forms and the disappearance of old forms, both those naturally and artificially produced, are bound together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.classicreader.com/book/107/76/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Origin of Species,&quot;On Extinction&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is likely that global climate change will be very bad in human timescales for biodiversity: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[W]e predict, on&#xA;  the basis of mid-range climate-warming scenarios for 2050, that&#xA;  15–37% of species in our sample of regions and taxa will be&#xA;  ‘committed to extinction’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/83/1/thomascd1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Extinction Risk from Climate Change&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of whether biodiversity or total biomass is a better measure of what is &quot;good for life&quot; is subjective, although I suspect most would say a coral reef is &quot;better&quot; than a mat of algae.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-01-09T22:11:43.020" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7507" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7521" CreationDate="2012-01-09T23:11:28.253" Score="14" ViewCount="1241" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some sports people wear &quot;eye black&quot; (black strips on the upper cheek) under glare conditions (sun or stadium lights) to reduce glare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eyeblack.com/&quot;&gt;one brand&lt;/a&gt; claims it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;used on the field to help reduce the glare of the sun. The material is safe and tested, we have a full line of products that will improve the performance on the field or [provide branding].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does eye-black make any difference to the ability of players to see?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T03:29:29.013" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T02:36:59.577" Title="Does &quot;eye black&quot; improve vision under glare conditions?" Tags="|ophthalmology|sport|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1806" CreationDate="2012-01-10T00:14:37.480" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, if the car is designed that way&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm cheating slightly as I'm answering the &lt;em&gt;headline&lt;/em&gt; not the detail of the claim. But there are devices that allow phones to unlock a vehicle. They involve fitting the car with a black box that connects to the mobile phone network and allows location and unlocking functions controlled from the phone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I first saw this in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23751154-unlock-your-car-with-a-phone.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;London Evening Standard&lt;/a&gt; who reported that the system was developed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipcar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zipcar&lt;/a&gt; for the convenience of customers using their rent-by-the-hour cars. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is likely to become a lot more common as smartphones become ubiquitous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-29T10:13:46.880" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T10:13:46.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7510" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7550" CreationDate="2012-01-10T14:03:30.367" Score="16" ViewCount="7936" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that fluorescent lights are generally bad for you.  The explanations range from the light being in the blue area of the spectrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The signature &quot;glow&quot; of fluorescent lighting is created by sending an electrical charge through a special gas enclosed within the fluorescent light tube. This glow, which is &quot;cold&quot; compared to the rather &quot;hot&quot; burn of an incandescent bulb, gives off light that often falls into the blue-green end of the spectrum. It is a color that is very different from the spectrum color of natural sunlight or incandescent lamps. The problem with this blue spectrum light is that it is so completely unnatural and may likely affect mood in human beings. Exposure to fluorescent lighting over long periods of time has been known to cause depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... to the &quot;flicker effect&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because of their construction, fluorescent light fixtures flicker on and off very rapidly during normal operation. While this flickering is not obvious to most workers it is a modulation that is noted by the brain on a subconscious level. This flickering effect is believed to cause &quot;fluorescent light headaches,&quot; tension and even hostility in workers in the same way flickering lights often cause bad reactions in people suffering from epilepsy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/way_5767851_problems-fluorescent-lighting-office.html&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone's favorite purveyor of &quot;alternative medicine&quot; (i.e. &quot;quack&quot;), &lt;a href=&quot;http://products.mercola.com/light-bulbs/&quot;&gt;Dr. Mercola&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even back in 1980, scientists reported that cool-white fluorescent lighting produced increased levels of the stress-producing hormones ACTH and cortisol. They noted that their findings explained the agitated mental and physical behavior of children sitting all day under artificial lights, and recommended a change to illumination similar to that of natural light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The eHow.com article references a study that indicates that exposure to sunlight is beneficial:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Wilkins-Nimmo study showed that employees exposed to natural sunlight suffered far less depression than employees exposed to fluorescent lights during the work day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't believe that can be extrapolated to &quot;fluorescents cause depression&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does exposure to fluorescent lighting have a real risk to mental or physical health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2017-03-02T04:27:45.807" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T04:27:45.807" Title="Do fluorescent lights cause stress?" Tags="|environmental-health|light|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7486" CreationDate="2012-01-10T14:23:20.820" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are studies which show a correlation between methylmercury exposure and attention deficits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the 'cornerstone' mercury studies was performed in the Faroe Islands by Grandjean, et al 1999, (&lt;a href=&quot;http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/150/3/301.full.pdf&quot;&gt;Methylmercury exposure biomarkers as indicators of neurotoxicity in children aged 7 years&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;) where they followed a cohort of 917 Faroese children from birth until the age of 7, which reported&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Outcome variables were the results of neuropsychologic examination earned out in 1993-1994 at age 7 years. After adjustment for covariates, the cord-blood concentration showed the clearest associations with deficits in language, attention, and memory.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They further suggest that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the greatest susceptibility to methylmercury neurotoxicity occurs during late gestation, while early postnatal vulnerability is less, and they suggest that the time-dependent susceptibility may vary for different brain functions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a comparative note to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161813X08002283&quot;&gt;Ha, et al, 2009&lt;/a&gt; study given above, it is interesting to note that the Faroese children had at birth a geometric mean Hg cord blood concentration of 22.9 μg/l, and at aged 7 years 8.82 μg/l, notably higher than the Korean children studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T14:23:20.820" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7501" CreationDate="2012-01-10T14:54:11.503" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, to some extent&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way our eyes detect bulges on a body is largely due to lighting effects. We can see that someone has a bulging belly because lighting cues give away the contours. The same is true of wrinkes - we see them because of lighting patterns. Wearing black reduces those lighting cues, and the bulging belly isn't as obvious to the eye; nor are the wrinkles. It works for other bulges too - I've read stories from actresses saying costume designers made them pad their breasts in scenes where they were going to be wearing black or in dim lighting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point is that our eyes really do see dark objects as (slightly) smaller. It's an optical illusion; that's exactly what 'looking thinner' is all about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This effect is obviously limited. If you are looking at someone in silhouette, side on, wearing black will make no difference to how fat they look. And black &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.demotivation.us/black-makes-you-look-thinner-1246263.html&quot;&gt;can't work miracles&lt;/a&gt;. And black won't fool someone making a careful examination of you. But yes, black can make you seem a little thinner under some circumstances to the casual observer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References for this are hard to come by (since scientific journals don't usually include a fashion column). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ionpsych.com/2011/02/19/elements-of-style-how-science-informs-fashion-design/&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a really good one looking at the science behind fashion in general. It includes a reference to the optical illusion that underlies all this.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://wardrobeadvice.com/why-does-black-make-you-look-skinnier/&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is another more explanatory article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-01-10T16:05:50.447" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T16:05:50.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7514" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-01-10T16:35:39.283" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-01-10T16:35:39.283" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T16:35:39.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7515" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-01-10T16:35:39.283" Score="0" Body="The sciences of statistics and systematic analysis applied to the causes of health and disease." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-01-10T16:40:21.630" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T16:40:21.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7489" CreationDate="2012-01-10T18:57:14.763" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It appears that there is no readily available source for this claim.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than claims beginning with the words &quot;It is thought that...&quot; or &quot;It is believed that,&quot; I could not find any reputable source for this belief (actually, I couldn't find &lt;em&gt;any source&lt;/em&gt; at all except for the hearsay-sounding examples above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; I searched Google Books and Amazon for instances of &quot;Bernard Corleone&quot; and &quot;Philip Latini&quot; (pre-monk name) and didn't find any instance of the claim. Below are screen shots of my findings and the summary at the very end lists my interpretation of this lack of mention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sklivvz has already pointed out in his answer that the official Vatican biography does not include the claim. Here are some others which fail to reference it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0814618375&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paul Burns: &lt;em&gt;Butler's Lives of the Saints, Supplement of New Saints and Blesseds&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book features a &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=0qXseG51XO0C&amp;amp;pg=PA14&amp;amp;dq=bernard+corleone&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=hnwMT7uIF8rLtgelk7WlBQ&amp;amp;ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=bernard%20corleone&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;preview on Google Books&lt;/a&gt; allowing the full read of Bernard of Corleone. The entry is on Page 14 (the book is organized by feast date; his entry is January 12th). Here is the screenshot of the end of the entry, which makes no note of this claim (or even the apparition of Mary placing the baby Jesus in his arms; the only apparition mentioned is from Jesus himself):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.imgur.com/CMwoz.png&quot; alt=&quot;Lives of Saints&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0385135947&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Delaney: &lt;em&gt;A Dictionary of Saints&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=mTqKrLX8GVwC&amp;amp;pg=PA92&amp;amp;dq=bernard+corleone&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=5oAMT8G-Ms6Dtgfn4sHSBQ&amp;amp;ved=0CE4Q6AEwBQ#v=snippet&amp;amp;q=corleone&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;preview on Google Books&lt;/a&gt; contains no mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.imgur.com/3QQEb.png&quot; alt=&quot;Dictionary&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;keywords=Michael%20Walsh%20New%20Dictionary%20of%20Saints%20%3A%20east%20and%20west&amp;amp;rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3AMichael%20Walsh%20New%20Dictionary%20of%20Saints%20%3A%20east%20and%20west&amp;amp;page=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michael Walsh: &lt;em&gt;A New Dictionary of Saints: East and West&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=8mUJ58SMMhEC&amp;amp;pg=PA97&amp;amp;dq=bernard+corleone&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=5oAMT8G-Ms6Dtgfn4sHSBQ&amp;amp;ved=0CDwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=bernard%20corleone&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Books preview&lt;/a&gt; contains no mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.imgur.com/VuVUc.png&quot; alt=&quot;New Dictionary&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The massive 12 volume &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0814623778&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Butler's Lives of the Saints&lt;/a&gt; January Volume only mentions him as a footnote (from Amazon preview):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.imgur.com/iddsP.png&quot; alt=&quot;Lives of saints january&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1557254222&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bernard Bangley, *Butler's Lives of the Saints, Concise and Modernized Edition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Features this entry extracted from the Amazon preview, and makes no mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.imgur.com/a4qxO.png&quot; alt=&quot;concise lives of saints&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; While it's impossible to prove the statement, &quot;Bernard of Corleone did not know the date of his death&quot; or &quot;No evidence exists that Bernard of Corleone knew the date of his death,&quot; I find the above compelling enough to think that there is probably not readily available and reliable evidence to support the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that the first book recounts a vision of Jesus gives me reason to think that &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; there was also evidence to support the foreknowledge of his death, it would have been included. I can't know this for sure. All I know is that five comprehensive books aimed at presenting the lives of the Saints in an inspirational manner did not list this would-be-inspiring tidbit for its intended audience (probably Catholics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for my method, I searched Google Books and Amazon for &quot;Bernard Corleone&quot; and &quot;Philip Latini&quot; (his pre-Capuchin monk name) and looked at pretty much all the books I could find. There were some older versions of Butler's Lives of the Saints that mentioned the name, but Google didn't have the full entry available. Current versions of Butler's Lives of the Saints, as shown above, either don't mention it or don't list him except as a footnote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T18:57:14.763" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7517" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-10T20:47:41.353" Score="19" ViewCount="1110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was watching an interview with Spolsky and he mentioned some study that showed listening to music with headphones caused a drop in having &quot;deep thoughts&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF8ZVB-v3IM#t=23m17s&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF8ZVB-v3IM#t=23m17s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find this anywhere; what was the study and where can I find it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" OwnerDisplayName="Nick T" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-10T21:37:28.683" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T04:04:27.440" Title="What study showed that using headphones to drown out office noise is detrimental?" Tags="|music|productivity|work|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7518" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7523" CreationDate="2012-01-10T22:30:26.703" Score="5" ViewCount="2375" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a long time I've heard that tanning beds cause cancer. Here a quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32187497/ns/health-cancer/t/study-tanning-beds-can-be-deadly-arsenic/#.Twy4dmNWqgQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article on MSNBC in 2009&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;International cancer experts have moved tanning beds and other sources of ultraviolet radiation into the top cancer risk category, deeming them as deadly as arsenic and mustard gas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For years, scientists have described tanning beds and ultraviolet radiation as &amp;quot;probable carcinogens.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new analysis of about 20 studies concludes the risk of skin cancer jumps by 75 percent when people start using tanning beds before age 30. Experts also found that all types of ultraviolet radiation caused worrying mutations in mice, proof the radiation is carcinogenic. Previously, only one type of ultraviolet radiation was thought to be lethal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had a couple physicians tell me that in Canada and other northern countries there's a greater risk of harm from vitamin D deficiency. This would suggest that even though tanning beds are harmful, the risks of tanning beds may be weighted against their health benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quote from an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/health/vitamin-d-winter.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article on CBC in 2007&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A tanning bed with medium-pressure lamps that generate UVB rays is one way to help the body make vitamin D during months when the sunshine is weak&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also notes that rates of cancer increase significantly when one is deficient in vitamin D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do tanning beds cause cancer? This has long been touted and is widely cited in the media, so I expect there's scientific evidence to back it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More difficult to answer is whether the risk of cancer arising from the use of tanning beds is greater than the risk of vitamin D deficiency. Is there scientific evidence illuminating this theory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T02:48:30.263" Title="Do tanning beds cause cancer? Does their risk outweigh the risks of vitamin D deficiency in northern countries?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7188" CreationDate="2012-01-10T23:10:17.667" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are bunch of recent meta-analyses about red meat consumption and various cancers done by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=%22Alexander%20DD%22%5BAuthor%5D&quot;&gt;Alexander et al&lt;/a&gt;. Pretty much every one says the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21540747&quot;&gt;Colorectal cancer and red meat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The available epidemiologic data are not sufficient to support an independent and unequivocal positive association between red meat intake and CRC. This conclusion is based on summary associations that are weak in magnitude, heterogeneity across studies, inconsistent patterns of associations across the subgroup analyses, and the likely influence of confounding by other dietary and lifestyle factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20495462&quot;&gt;Colorectal cancer and processed meat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall, summary associations were weak in magnitude (i.e. most less than 1.20), processed meat definitions and analytical comparisons were highly variable across studies, and isolating the independent effects of processed meat intake is difficult, given the likely influence of confounding by other dietary and lifestyle factors. Therefore, the currently available epidemiologic evidence is not sufficient to support a clear and unequivocal independent positive association between processed meat consumption and CRC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21110906&quot;&gt;Breast cancer and red &amp;amp; processed meat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall, weak positive summary associations were observed across all meta-analysis models, with the majority being non-statistically significant. Heterogeneity was evident in most analyses, summary associations were sensitive to the choice of analytical model (fixed v. random effects), and publication bias appeared to have produced slightly elevated summary associations. On the basis of this quantitative assessment, red meat and processed meat intake does not appear to be independently associated with increasing the risk of breast cancer, although further investigations of potential effect modifiers, such as analyses by hormone receptor status, may provide valuable insight to potential patterns of associations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21044319&quot;&gt;Prostate cancer and red &amp;amp; processed meat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Similarly, no association with red meat was observed for advanced prostate cancer (SRRE = 1.01, 95% CI: 0.94-1.09). A weakly elevated summary association between processed meat and total prostate cancer was found (SRRE = 1.05, 95% CI: 0.99-1.12), although heterogeneity was present, the association was attenuated in a sub-group analysis of studies that adjusted for multiple potential confounding factors, and publication bias likely affected the summary effect. In conclusion, the results of this meta-analysis are not supportive of an independent positive association between red or processed meat intake and prostate cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To reiterate all these papers have at least one researcher in common, so there is possible bias. Also I currently don't have access to full texts so I do not know the funding of these studies and I do not have the expertise to analyze the statistical side much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earlier study, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16991129&quot;&gt;Meat consumption and risk of colorectal cancer: a meta-analysis of prospective studies&lt;/a&gt;, by different researcher found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consumption of red meat and processed meat was positively associated with risk of both colon and rectal cancer, although the association with red meat appeared to be stronger for rectal cancer. In 3 studies that reported results for subsites in the colon, high consumption of processed meat was associated with an increased risk of distal colon cancer but not of proximal colon cancer. The results of this meta-analysis of prospective studies support the hypothesis that high consumption of red meat and of processed meat is associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The possible cancer effects seem fairly small considering that the evidence is epidemiologic. The last paper I mentioned offers risk ratio of 1.28, so somewhat small increase. To put this into perspective &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/basic_info/risk_factors.htm&quot;&gt;CDC claims that smokers are 15-30 times more likely to get lung cancer compared to non-smokers.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5686" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T23:10:17.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7507" CreationDate="2012-01-10T23:48:02.633" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archopht.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/121/7/997&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Archives of Opthamology Vol. 121 No. 7, July 2003&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eye black grease reduces glare and improves contrast sensitivity in conditions of sunlight exposure compared with the control and antiglare stickers in binocular testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/db/sports/baseball-eye-black-cuts-out-glare.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MythBusters: Viewer Special II &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turns out, indirect light does more than make players blink. It creates &amp;quot;veiling glare,&amp;quot; which reduces their ability to see clearly. Wearing eye black won't keep this optical phenomenon from happening, but it can tone it down. The stripes improve the eye's ability to differentiate between light and dark, and that increased contrast means you can see in greater detail. The better you can see the minutia around you, the better you can track an object as its speed increases — which is obviously important to outfielders following a pop fly's sunward trajectory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't follow Opthamology literature, or know much about it, but see no reason to doubt the results of the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-10T23:48:02.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1973" CreationDate="2012-01-11T00:07:40.933" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;most epidemiology studies are wrong&quot;, perhaps best advanced by John P. A. Ioannidis in &lt;em&gt;Why Most Published Research Findings Are False&lt;/em&gt; both extremely common and somewhat flawed, though there are absolutely some worthwhile points in his article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the one that amuses me the most is how readily it's been embraced conceptually, even though its argument is that...perhaps it shouldn't be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goodman and Greenland outline some problems with the paper here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0040168&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0040168&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mainly, the flaw is in how Ioannidis structures his argument, such that the odds are stacked against certain types of studies, and the evidentiary value of effect measures and actual p-values, rather than just a binary &quot;Is/is not &gt;0.05&quot;, are discounted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other examples of supposedly &quot;wrong&quot; findings later disproved (this usually goes in the form of an observational epidemiology study finding one thing, and a subsequent RCT finding something different) that can be traced back to the studies &lt;em&gt;asking different things&lt;/em&gt;. An examplar paper might be: Hernán MA, Alonso A, Logan R, Grodstein F, Michels KB, Willett WC, Manson JE, Robins JM. &lt;em&gt;Observational studies analyzed like randomized experiments: an application to postmenopausal hormone therapy and coronary heart disease (with discussion)&lt;/em&gt;. Epidemiology 2008; 19:766-779.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I take from all this is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Significance testing in and of itself is not proof. There's far more value in providing the p-value, and even more value in providing an actual estimate of effect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No study can provide singular, definitive proof of something. Not an observational study, and not an RCT (which are far from free of bias). Nor should any study claim to.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The question of &quot;wrong&quot; is an odd one in science. A more useful question would be &quot;are most published results likely to advance their field?&quot;. Because a wrong study that provides fodder for further analysis, new methods and more thoughtful science is still profoundly useful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT.&#xA;There is an additional way to directly estimate the scale of the problem: try to reproduce reported research results. Though there are more reasons than the nature of statistical fluctuations to explain failure to reproduce results, the answers give an order of magnitude for the reliability of published research and Ioannidis' estimate. The botom line of such studies is that something like 2 out of 3 attempts to reproduce previous research fail to do so. For a more detailed summary see the answers here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/12520/can-up-to-70-of-scientific-studies-not-be-reproduced&quot;&gt;Can up to 70% of scientific studies not be reproduced?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4504" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T16:55:01.670" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7518" CreationDate="2012-01-11T00:19:35.707" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, using tanning beds to fight against vitamin D deficiency is in my opinion ridiculous as supplement pills are cheap and to my knowledge have no cancer risk associated to them. At least a couple of researchers agree with me on this (&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1529-8019.2009.01291.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Woo &amp;amp; Eide, 2010&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tanning bed proponents cite the health benefits of vitamin D to support indoor tanning, including concerns that reduced vitamin D levels or certain vitamin D receptor polymorphisms may be associated with increased incidence of various cancers, including cutaneous melanoma. However, most tanning devices primarily emit ultraviolet A, which is relatively ineffective in stimulating vitamin D synthesis. &lt;strong&gt;Health benefits can be fully dissociated from the ultraviolet exposure risks with vitamin D supplementation, although optimal levels remain to be established.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;strong&gt;Indoor tanning represents an avoidable risk factor for skin cancer&lt;/strong&gt;, and education of the general public as well as the enactment and stricter enforcement of indoor tanning legislation are a public health imperative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Riker et al. (2010) gathered the results of several papers on the skin cancer risk :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The increase in indoor tanning is alarming when viewed relative to strong evidence that links indoor UV radiation exposure via tanning bed usage to skin cancer. A recent study analyzing patients diagnosed with basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and 540 controls showed that those who have used a tanning device previously were at a 50% higher risk for developing basal cell carcinoma (odds ratio [OR] 1.5; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.1-2.1) and more than double the risk for squamous cell carcinoma (OR, 2.5; 95% CI: 1.7-3.8).53 Ting et al40 found that use of a tanning bed by 1,518 dermatologic patients showed a 64% increase in the risk of developing melanoma (OR, 1.64; 95% CI: 1.01-2.67), with a stronger risk in women &amp;lt;39 years old (OR, 3.22; 95% CI: 1.01-11.46).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2007 study by the IARC revealed that the first exposure to indoor tanning prior to the age of 35 was associated with a 75% increased risk of developing melanoma (RR, 1.75; 95% CI: 1.35-2.26).54 A Swedish study showed that people who regularly use tanning beds have a relative risk for developing melanoma of 1.8, with a much higher risk for those &amp;lt;36 years old of 8.1, adjusting for hair color, raised nevi, skin type, and number of sunburns.55 A Norwegian and Swedish study of 106,379 women demonstrated that regular (at least once per month) solarium use at any age had a 55% increased risk of developing melanoma, with the greatest association in the 20- to 29-year-old age group.56&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence indoor tanning is quite likely a risk factor for skin cancer. Basically it boils down to whether getting a tan is worth the cancer risk increase. Vitamin D is easier and cheaper to get in pill form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5686" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T19:50:18.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6926" CreationDate="2012-01-11T03:17:15.530" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 10% figure comes from (*drumroll*) &lt;strong&gt;Alfred Kinsey&lt;/strong&gt;... Or rather, it originated in his book, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0253334128&quot;&gt;Sexual Behavior in the Human Male&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean that 10% of the population is homosexual? No, it means that, of the 5300 white males polled by Kinsey and his peers, 10% answered that they were predominately homosexual. That's all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different polls and different sources have their own figures. For example, a 1993 &lt;em&gt;Janus Report&lt;/em&gt; estimated that 9% of men, and 5% of women, had more than &quot;occasional&quot; homosexual relationships. While &lt;em&gt;The Family Research Report&lt;/em&gt; says &quot;around 2-3% of men, and 2% of women, are homosexual or bisexual.&quot; And &lt;em&gt;The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force&lt;/em&gt; estimates 3-8% of both sexes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest issues comes from agreeing on a definition. As someone pointed out in the comments, it's hard to establish exactly what &quot;homosexual&quot; actually means. For example, if a man lives and dies, and had &lt;strong&gt;one&lt;/strong&gt; homosexual experienced during his lifetime: Was he gay, bisexual or straight? Whatever category you'd place that man into, Kinsey's reports indicate that roughly &lt;strong&gt;37%&lt;/strong&gt; of men would fall into it. So it all depends how you classify sexuality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to make matters even more confusing, some (like the Canadia based &lt;em&gt;Centre for Addiction and Mental Health&lt;/em&gt;) suggest &quot;sexual orientation may be fluid and change over time&quot;. So even if someone identifies with being straight at one point in their lives, at another point they may naturally find themselves identifying with homosexuality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: There's no definite, conclusive answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gallup.com/poll/6961/what-percentage-population-gay.aspx&quot;&gt;http://www.gallup.com/poll/6961/what-percentage-population-gay.aspx&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/research/ak-data.html&quot;&gt;http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/research/ak-data.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.camhx.ca/Publications/Resources_for_Professionals/ARQ2/arq2_question_a2.html&quot;&gt;http://www.camhx.ca/Publications/Resources_for_Professionals/ARQ2/arq2_question_a2.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1835" LastEditorUserId="1835" LastEditDate="2013-12-15T16:38:06.313" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T16:38:06.313" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7527" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7568" CreationDate="2012-01-11T07:03:23.857" Score="54" ViewCount="36795" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard once that when two Chess Grandmasters play a five hour game of chess, the intense concentration and focus they have causes their bodies to burn as many calories as someone playing a sport during that time, such as running.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Dr. Robert Sapolsky &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrCVu25wQ5s#t=10m04s&quot;&gt;claimed that&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;… [with] chess masters in the middle of a tournament, they are going through six to seven thousand calories a day thinking. [They are] turning on a massive physiological stress response simply with thought and doing the same thing with their bodies as if they were some baboon that’s just ripped open the stomach of their worst rival — it’s all with thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth behind this?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Running for that long would be the same as running a marathon, and I just don't believe that sitting playing chess can use as much energy.  However I do believe that it must burn more calories then usual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3260" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-26T20:54:32.737" LastActivityDate="2015-11-29T07:05:17.383" Title="Does playing chess burn as many calories as running?  " Tags="|physiology|sport|chess|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7527" CreationDate="2012-01-11T13:16:35.593" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mental effort does not significantly increase the amount of energy used by the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/99/16/10237.long&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the brain accounts for about 20% of the oxygen and, hence, calories consumed by the body. This high rate of metabolism is &lt;strong&gt;remarkably constant&lt;/strong&gt; despite widely varying mental and motoric activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Average base metabolic rate for men is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1091498/?tool=pmcentrez&quot;&gt;1632 kcal per day&lt;/a&gt;, so the brain uses around 320 kcal per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Running uses around &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20613650&quot;&gt;100 kcal per mile&lt;/a&gt;, so running a few miles will use more energy than your brain does during an entire day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-01-11T13:16:35.593" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7531" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10355" CreationDate="2012-01-11T16:04:42.817" Score="10" ViewCount="4534" Body="&lt;p&gt;My girlfriend tends to listen to music that express how she feels at a given moment. For example, if she's feeling frustrated then the lyrics of the songs she listens will be of frustration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this external agent (music) expressing her feelings actually help her deal with negative emotions (depression, frustration, anger, sadness, etc.) or does it cause more harm than good?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there better or worse kinds of music for helping with negative emotions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3578" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-19T15:08:17.607" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T22:21:19.173" Title="Does listening to negative emotive music help dealing with negative emotions?" Tags="|psychology|music|depression|emotions|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7532" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7574" CreationDate="2012-01-11T21:34:55.360" Score="9" ViewCount="2443" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inspired by two recent questions about colour ( &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7505/is-there-a-relationship-between-yellow-and-moods&quot;&gt;Is there a relationship between yellow and moods?&lt;/a&gt;) and sport ( &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2779/is-playing-sport-at-your-home-ground-a-benefit&quot;&gt;Is playing sport at your &amp;#39;home ground&amp;#39; a benefit?&lt;/a&gt; ) I thought the following question should be addressed on skeptics.SE: &lt;em&gt;does wearing red give a team a sporting advantage&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea seems plausible for English football, for example, where two out of the 4 teams who have shared the Premiership football title since the league's founding in 1993 usually wear red (the most successful, Manchester United, are sometimes know as the Red devils). Some actual analysis is claimed here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/276-red-outfits-give-athletes-advantage.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.livescience.com/276-red-outfits-give-athletes-advantage.html&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it true? If so, how big is the advantage? And, perhaps most important, how can the effect be studied reliably in a way that distinguished the direction of causality (eg maybe successful clubs are more likely to choose red and bias the results)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-01-15T19:53:06.497" Title="Does wearing red give an advantage in competitive sport?" Tags="|sport|causality|colors|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7533" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7534" CreationDate="2012-01-12T01:23:32.353" Score="63" ViewCount="8505" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ran into this common belief today, and was surprised that it has not been addressed here before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this belief is common enough that most anyone has heard it.  Especially if they are touring a medieval villa in Europe, or other &lt;em&gt;ancient&lt;/em&gt; structure with glass windows.  Invariably someone will state that the panes are thicker on the bottom than the top because the glass is slowly flowing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is even an idea spread in Ed Greenwood's description of the &quot;Elves of Myth Drannor&quot; where he imagines an art form where the long lived elves would leave glass out for centuries to flow and attain specific shapes (sorry, I sold my print version of that Forgotten Realms source-book and can't find it on-line).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-11-10T14:23:34.970" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T06:24:53.327" Title="Are old glass panes thicker on the bottom due to &quot;flow&quot;?" Tags="|history|physics|chemistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7533" CreationDate="2012-01-12T01:28:02.043" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of people hear that glass is a liquid when they hear about this particular misconception. Actually it is probably better to describe glass as an amorphous solid. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.londoncrownglass.co.uk/London_Crown_Glass/Manufacturing.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Any variation in thickness comes strictly from manufacturing processes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Molten glass is gathered on a blowpipe, and blown to an elongated balloon shape . The ends are cut off and the resulting cylinder is split with shears while still hot, then flattened on an iron plate. This is the forerunner of the Cylinder process. The quality of the glass was not good, with many imperfections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(By the way, finding original source documents on actual manufacturing of glass is bloody difficult...  Many reference pages are dead, and most other pages are referring to this particular &amp;quot;flow&amp;quot; question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit of history on glass.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://artgallery.yale.edu/pdf/perspect/ancient_glass.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Humans have known how to make glass starting as early as 3000 BCE (Yale PDF)&lt;/a&gt;.  And the idea of making windows dates back to the height of the ancient Egyptians (though none survive that I am aware of).  However, many other glass objects are available for measurement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/Glass/glass.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The University of California Riverside has a much more in-depth description on their web page concerning the structure of glass, and explaining why it doesn't flow&lt;/a&gt;.  It concludes with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no clear answer to the question “Is glass solid or liquid?”. In terms of molecular dynamics and thermodynamics it is possible to justify various different views that it is a highly viscous liquid, an amorphous solid, or simply that glass is another state of matter that is neither liquid nor solid. The difference is semantic. In terms of its material properties we can do little better. There is no clear definition of the distinction between solids and highly viscous liquids. All such phases or states of matter are idealisations of real material properties. Nevertheless, from a more common sense point of view, glass should be considered a solid since it is rigid according to everyday experience. The use of the term “supercooled liquid” to describe glass still persists, but is considered by many to be an unfortunate misnomer that should be avoided. &lt;strong&gt;In any case, claims that glass panes in old windows have deformed due to glass flow have never been substantiated. Examples of Roman glassware and calculations based on measurements of glass visco-properties indicate that these claims cannot be true. The observed features are more easily explained as a result of the imperfect methods used to make glass window panes before the float glass process was invented.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.glasslinks.com/newsinfo/physics.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Glasslinks has some additional information about the properties of glass itself&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The idea that glass is a fluid is a very widespread myth,” says Yvonne Stokes, a mathematician and spoilsport at the University of Adelaide in Australia. “I was told it as a fact by my adviser. And once, a class of schoolchildren came into the lab, and one of them told me the very same thing. If you want to talk microscopically, then you can call glass a fluid. But people understandably tend to think that if it’s a fluid, it flows. It’s that notion that’s false.”Stokes has recently proved with detailed calculations that old windows could not have flowed perceptibly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the myth survives, it will be because it contains a kernel of truth – and because glass is a confusing kind of matter, quite unlike the three ordinary kinds. A gas is an anarchy of molecules going every which way; a liquid is a tighter but still disorderly society in which molecules constantly dissolve and reestablish weak bonds; a solid is a molecular army in rigid formation.But glass is … none of the above. It is rigid like a solid, but its molecules are not arranged in repeating crystals. It is amorphous like a liquid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, structurally there is no sharp line between a liquid and a glass. You form glass by ‘super cooling” a liquid below its freezing point, then cooling it some more. If you cool it fast enough, the molecules can’t organize themselves into crystals. As the temperature drops, the liquid becomes more viscous and the molecules more sluggish. It’s like a game of molecular musical chairs in which the music never stops and the players never sit down; instead they seem to move through honey, then tar, until they are all but motionless, like bugs in amber.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-13T02:12:55.913" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7533" CreationDate="2012-01-12T07:49:12.063" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Old glass window-panes are thicker at the bottom because the techniques to create glass with an even thickness are a rather recent innovation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, Prior to the invention of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Float_glass&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;float-glass&lt;/a&gt; process, glass was made by either pouring molten glass into a flat-bottomed mold, running molten glass between rollers, or spun to produce a disc shape through centripetal force.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;This produced a sheet of glass with varying thickness.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Then, when the glazier went to cut and mount the glass into window panes, the thicker end of each pane was almost invariably mounted at the bottom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are occasional instances of antique windows being found with the thicker end of the pane mounted at the top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass#Behavior_of_antique_glass&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;From Wikipedia:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The observation that old windows are sometimes found to be thicker at the bottom than at the top is often offered as supporting evidence for the view that glass flows over a timescale of centuries. The assumption being that the glass was once uniform, but has flowed to its new shape, which is a property of liquid.[40] However, this assumption is incorrect; once solidified, glass does not flow anymore. The reason for the observation is that in the past, when panes of glass were commonly made by glassblowers, the technique used was to spin molten glass so as to create a round, mostly flat and even plate (the crown glass process, described above). This plate was then cut to fit a window. The pieces were not, however, absolutely flat; the edges of the disk became thinner as the glass spun. When installed in a window frame, the glass would be placed thicker side down both for the sake of stability and to prevent water accumulating in the lead cames at the bottom of the window.[41] Occasionally such glass has been found thinner side down or thicker on either side of the window's edge, the result of carelessness during installation.[42]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mass production of glass window panes in the early twentieth century caused a similar effect. In glass factories, molten glass was poured onto a large cooling table and allowed to spread. The resulting glass is thicker at the location of the pour, located at the center of the large sheet. These sheets were cut into smaller window panes with nonuniform thickness, typically with the location of the pour centred in one of the panes (known as &amp;quot;bull's-eyes&amp;quot;) for decorative effect. Modern glass intended for windows is produced as float glass and is very uniform in thickness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="638" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-12T07:49:12.063" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7536" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7548" CreationDate="2012-01-12T12:27:55.427" Score="37" ViewCount="20381" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/N0sTo.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/N0sTo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Boiled Lobster&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lobsterqueen.com/boiled-lobster.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Image Source&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have just read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cracked.com&lt;/a&gt;'s &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_19628_9-ridiculous-cooking-myths-you-probably-believe.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;9 Ridiculous Cooking Myths You Probably Believe&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, that claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] because &lt;strong&gt;[the lobster's] nervous system isn't very complex, so it's feeling little to no pain.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;Emphasis added&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It references an &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/PainManagement/story?id=722163&amp;amp;page=1#.Tw3VLPIVTKc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ABC News article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But &lt;strong&gt;animals with simple nervous systems, like lobsters,&lt;/strong&gt; snails and worms, do not have the ability to process emotional information and therefore &lt;strong&gt;do not experience suffering,&lt;/strong&gt; say most researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;Emphases added&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lobster.um.maine.edu/index.php?page=22&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lobster Institute&lt;/a&gt; agrees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;The nervous system of a lobster is very simple&lt;/strong&gt; – not unlike that of an insect. Neither insects nor lobsters have brains. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For an organism to perceive pain it must have a more complex nervous system. Neurophysiologists tell us &lt;strong&gt;that lobsters, like insects, do not process pain.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;Emphases added&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/lobsters-crabs.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PETA&lt;/a&gt; disagrees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contrary to claims made by seafood sellers, scientists have determined that lobsters, like all animals, can feel pain.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;As an invertebrate zoologist who has studied crustaceans for a number of years, I can tell you the lobster has a rather sophisticated nervous system that, among other things, allows it to sense actions that will cause it harm. … [Lobsters] can, I am sure, sense pain.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  —Jaren G. Horsley, Ph.D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the neurosphysiology of a lobster complex enough to allow it to feel pain?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'm consciously not giving a specific *definition* of pain here, because neither of the above do. But I'm aware that the answer may differ depending on how pain is defined.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2018-03-03T12:17:47.617" LastActivityDate="2018-03-03T12:17:47.617" Title="Does a lobster feel little/no pain when boiled alive?" Tags="|biology|physiology|zoology|cooking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7537" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-01-12T13:05:17.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag is &lt;strong&gt;deprecated&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;Please use &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/tags/gender/info&quot;&gt;gender&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/tags/sexuality/info&quot;&gt;sexuality&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/tags/reproduction/info&quot;&gt;reproduction&lt;/a&gt; as appropriate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please do not use this tag&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/651/purpose-of-tagsex&quot;&gt;More info on meta.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-12T13:05:17.003" LastActivityDate="2012-01-12T13:05:17.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7538" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-01-12T13:05:17.003" Score="0" Body="This tag is deprecated." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-12T13:05:17.003" LastActivityDate="2012-01-12T13:05:17.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7587" CreationDate="2012-01-12T14:55:51.910" Score="33" ViewCount="9899" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's quite a common experience that there are fewer women and African (-American) people in programming as warranted by the natural proportions. It is not so obvious whether this is due to discrimination or cultural differences (the difference being in whether the minorities are uninterested or the majority discriminatory).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Martin Fowler &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/DiversityImbalance.html&quot;&gt;seems to think there is proof of discrimination in his latest blog post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One point of view I hear fairly regularly is that these diversity imbalances are natural - because women don't have the aptitude or inclination for programming. This point of view upsets a lot of people but I think it's important to treat it seriously. I think of it as a hypothesis, which I'll call the natural balance hypothesis. It needs to be treated seriously because there's plenty of people who feel it explains the current situation - but I argue that it has two serious flaws, which mean that I must vigorously reject it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't agree he is presenting any valuable proof, mostly pseudo logic based on mere speculation, but this doesn't mean he is wrong. Are &lt;em&gt;serious&lt;/em&gt; studies supporting or contradicting his claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2018-02-05T17:23:21.203" LastActivityDate="2018-02-05T17:23:21.203" Title="Is professional software development discriminatory?" Tags="|gender|productivity|work|discrimination|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7542" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8220" CreationDate="2012-01-12T16:07:40.873" Score="37" ViewCount="4217" Body="&lt;p&gt;There’s a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_controversy&quot;&gt;controversy&lt;/a&gt; going around whether the benefits of water fluoridation outweigh the potential harms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the evidence for the harm this may cause and what evidence supports the health benefits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5725" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T14:22:54.727" LastActivityDate="2017-12-27T02:18:21.607" Title="Is water fluoridation harmful?" Tags="|medical-science|water|environmental-health|fluoride|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="815" CreationDate="2012-01-12T19:57:06.610" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: In the short to mid term, poor and middle class in the outsourcing country do poorly. Ultimately, there may be a sufficient gain for the overall economy that everybody wins, but if demand for low-skilled labor is limited, it may take a long time till &quot;ultimately&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On an individual level, the question is, unfortunately, very difficult to answer. You would need to have access to the employment history of a large number of people in order to make any significant statement. Such data simply do not exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One recent study (&lt;a href=&quot;http://econ-www.mit.edu/files/6613&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Autor, Dorn, Hanson: &quot;The China Syndrome: Local Labor Market Effects of Import Competition in the United States&quot; (pdf)&lt;/a&gt;; see also the &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204010604576595002230403020.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article about it in WSJ&lt;/a&gt;) has looked at the effect of imports from China on local US labor markets: What happens to a local labor market when the country is importing lots of products that were traditionally produced by the local labor market (commuting zone, CZ)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our results suggest that the predominant focus of the previous&#xA;  literature on wages misses important aspects of labor market&#xA;  adjustments to trade. We find that increased exposure to&#xA;  low-incomecountry imports is associated with rising unemployment,&#xA;  decreased labor-force participation, and increased use of disability&#xA;  and other transfer benefits, as well as with lower wages, in affected&#xA;  local labor markets. Comparing two CZs over the period of 2000 through&#xA;  2007, one at the 25th percentile and the other at the 75th percentile&#xA;  of exposure to Chinese import growth, the CZ at the 75th percentile&#xA;  would be expected to experience a differential 4.5 percent fall in the&#xA;  number of manufacturing employees, a 0.8 percentage point fall in the&#xA;  employment to population rate, a 0.8 percent fall in mean log weekly&#xA;  earnings, and increases in per capita unemployment, disability, and&#xA;  income assistance transfer benefits on the order of 2 to 3.5 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, they find that while wages in the directly affected industries are stable, wages of other low-income jobs decrease, because companies lay off the less critical workers first, who then have to find something else in a different sector. Thus, at least in the short to medium term, life gets worse for the majority of low-income workers when people are laid off, even those who weren't working in the affected industries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study cannot differentiate whether the job losses are due to companies shifting manufacturing overseas, or whether they are due to Chinese companies simply outcompeting US companies, but for the purpose of the article in the OP, the US should be benefitting in both cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along with the increase in unemployment, there is a rise in disability benefits, since people who may otherwise prefer to hold a job fall back onto whatever is available to keep them afloat. Since these benefits ultimately have to be paid via taxes, the authors of the study can estimate roughly how much the US is spending vs gaining from imports from China, and they come to the surprising conclusion that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The deadweight loss of financing these transfers is one to&#xA;  two-thirds as large as U.S. gains from trade with China.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the long run, the US either finds a way to generate jobs for these people, or it will lose importance as an economic superpower. However, in the short run, the effect on low-income workers are not that great, and the gains for the overall economy, which may or may not trickle down to the low-income workers, aren't quite as amazing, either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastEditorUserId="1690" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T17:39:41.087" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T17:39:41.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7536" CreationDate="2012-01-12T21:41:34.230" Score="61" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, &lt;strong&gt;we can assume that they do&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two layers to this problem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether crustaceans experience stimuli which could correspond to pain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if those stimuli are effectively pain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second question is really hard to answer, and I would say, fundamentally philosophical. When does rubbing become scratching?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So please bear in mind that I would find &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; surprising that a good answer can be given to the second question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first question is quite easy to answer and the latest studies confirm  (convincingly) that crustaceans do feel stimuli corresponding to noxious actions and that they take action to avoid the stimuli.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first study I will mention is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347207004332&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nociception or pain in a decapod crustacean?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2IuJN.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Shrimp (Penaeus monodon)&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://penbase.immunaqua.com/images/Shrimp_Penaeus_monodon.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this experiment prawns were subjected to negative stimuli (sodium hydroxide on their antennae) to see if they affected short- and long- term behaviour. They did. The scientists also used benzocaine (a painkiller) to test if it pain-killers were effective. They were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These results indicate an awareness of the location of the noxious stimuli, and the prolonged complex responses indicate a central involvement in their organization. The inhibition by a local anaesthetic is similar to observations on vertebrates and is consistent with the idea that these crustaceans can experience pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second study that I present is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hermes.mbl.edu/research/services/iacuc/pdf/pain_hermit_crabs.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pain experience in hermit crabs?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dw7afm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Hermit Crab (Pagurus armatus)&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this experiment, electric shocks were given to hermit crabs inside their shells and observe that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only crabs given shocks evacuated their shells indicating the aversive nature of the stimulus, but fewer crabs evacuated from a preferred species of shell indicating a motivational trade-off. Some crabs that evacuated attacked the shell in the manner seen in a shell fight. Most crabs, however, did not evacuate at the stimulus level we used, but when these were subsequently offered a new shell, shocked crabs were more likely to approach and enter the new shell. Furthermore, they approached that shell more quickly, investigated it for a shorter time and used fewer cheliped probes within the aperture prior to moving in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus the experience of the shock altered future behaviour in a manner consistent with a marked shift in motivation to get a new shell to replace the one occupied. The results are consistent with the idea of pain in these animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-14T22:12:20.997" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T22:12:20.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7510" CreationDate="2012-01-13T06:42:51.153" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not an exhaustive answer, but some pointers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The HESE (Human Ecological Social Economical) Project's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hese-project.org/hese-uk/en/issues/cfl.php&quot;&gt;Artificial Light in the Environment: Human Health Effects page&lt;/a&gt; states &quot;more study is needed&quot;.  (In other words, &quot;give us more of your money&quot;). It does however cite an exploratory animal study (S.L. Gabby (1961), &lt;em&gt;Observations on the effects of artificial light on the health and development of mice&lt;/em&gt;) that showed reduced lifespan and increased cancer rates among lab mice exposed solely to fluorescent rather than incandescent light. In my opinion, the study mentioned is flawed because of the very small sample size (just 30 pairs of mice in either group).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fullspectrumlight.org/&quot;&gt;CRS Light&lt;/a&gt; sells &quot;full spectrum fluorescents&quot; that are supposedly &quot;much easier on the eyes&quot;. This is hardly authorative, of course. (I wonder what &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icann.org/&quot;&gt;ICANN&lt;/a&gt; would say about their  .org domain being used for a commercial venture, but I digress).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medhelp.org/posts/Eye-Care/Light-sensitivity-to-fluorescent-lights/show/761234&quot;&gt;MedHelp&lt;/a&gt; has an eye doctor respond to a question claiming that &quot;If one out of four people were sensitive to florescent lighting it would have been abandoned decades ago. &quot;. Not sourced of course, but common sense (ADA, OSHA, etc. would come down like a ton of bricks on fluorescents if there were a far smaller number of people than claimed who have medical problems because of them).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/122360-health-effects-fluorescent-lighting/&quot;&gt;http://www.livestrong.com/article/122360-health-effects-fluorescent-lighting/&lt;/a&gt; mentions a study (apparently by Mayo clinic) claiming fluorescents can help cure certain skin conditions, and a newspaper article claiming increased stress levels because of them (of course the Daily Mail is hardly a scientific publication).&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fehrmanbooks.com/health-effects-of-fluorescent-lighting&quot;&gt;http://www.fehrmanbooks.com/health-effects-of-fluorescent-lighting&lt;/a&gt; mentions a number of studies claiming all kind of medical problems because of fluorescents, ranging from agoraphobia to cancer from just being exposed to the light. I've my doubts about this, as it seems to be a site set up to push people into buying some product.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise: seems there are some studies showing negative effects, some showing positive effects, some showing nothing at all. Guess is all (as so often) depends on how you set up the experiment and interpret the results afterwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-01-13T15:26:10.917" LastActivityDate="2012-01-13T15:26:10.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7552" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-13T15:39:48.643" Score="5" ViewCount="191" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/528/is-food-cooked-in-a-microwave-oven-considered-harmful-for-the-health&quot;&gt;Is food cooked in a microwave oven considered harmful for the health?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am well aware that there are concerns about &amp;quot;hot spots&amp;quot; (small areas which are hotter than others that are produced in the microwave) when heating something by microwave, but until I read &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/528/is-food-cooked-in-a-microwave-oven-considered-harmful-for-the-health&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, I was under the impression that heating food (or formula/milk) in a microwave had adverse nutritional effects. It seems that heating it until it is lukewarm and then using hot water for the remainder would actually be more effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aside from the &amp;quot;hot spots&amp;quot; issue, is there any detriment to microwaving a bottle?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5105" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T08:57:19.960" Title="Is the microwave bad for heating baby food?" Tags="|nutrition|environmental-health|children|microwaves|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="16" ClosedDate="2012-02-01T07:25:42.657" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7554" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7558" CreationDate="2012-01-13T18:02:55.283" Score="16" ViewCount="2160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was watching University Challenge last night (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b019hby4/University_Challenge_2011_2012_Episode_27/&quot;&gt;episode 27 2011/2012 series - UK only&lt;/a&gt;), there were 3 questions on people who supposedly died from laughter - Chrysippus, Martin the Humanist and Thomas Urquhart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these examples recognised as real historical events, and is it medically accepted that you can be killed by laughter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-13T20:42:09.293" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T22:39:47.977" Title="Is it possible to die from laughter?" Tags="|medical-science|history|mortality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3246" CreationDate="2012-01-13T19:14:45.213" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well the OP Cited 700 AD as the starting point so that bring &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chronique.com/Library/MedHistory/charlemagne.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Charlemagne&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03610c.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The name given by later generations to Charles, King of the Franks&lt;/a&gt;), into contention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Returning to his capital at Aachen, he began a series of fifty-three&#xA;  campaigns- nearly all led in person- designed to round out his empire&#xA;  by conquering and Christianizing Bavaria and Saxony, destroying the&#xA;  troublesome Avars, shielding Italy from the raiding Saracens, and&#xA;  strengthening the defenses of Francia against the expanding Moors of&#xA;  Spain. The Saxons on his eastern frontier were pagans; they had burned&#xA;  down a Christian church, and made occasional incursions into Gaul;&#xA;  these reasons sufficed Charlemagne for eighteen campaigns (772-804),&#xA;  waged with untiring ferocity on both sides. Charles gave the conquered&#xA;  Saxons a choice between baptism and death, and had 4500 Saxon rebels&#xA;  beheaded in one day; after which he proceeded to Thionville to&#xA;  celebrate the nativity of Christ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.militaryfactory.com/battles/french_military_victories.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; chronicles French battles from almost 400BC&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="2086" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T16:51:26.937" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T16:51:26.937" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7556" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7774" CreationDate="2012-01-14T06:15:19.717" Score="14" ViewCount="2659" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, this was originally a part of this question, but from the comments it seems like it might be beneficial to branch it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been told that the microwave left &quot;hot spots&quot; &amp;mdash; areas in a fluid which were substantially(?) warmer than the surroundings. It did not seem to me that they would exist in any non-trivial sense. So, my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are hot-spots real?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If I were to chug a large amount of freshly microwaved &amp;lt;liquid&amp;gt;, assuming the average temperature is something which would not burn my tongue, would I need to worry about being burned?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5105" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-01T08:59:05.023" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T09:34:11.190" Title="Are microwave hot-spots real?" Tags="|physics|electromagnetism|microwaves|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7557" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-14T08:08:45.897" Score="6" ViewCount="407" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.divinecosmos.com/start-here/davids-blog/995-lawsuit-end-tyranny&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this long post&lt;/a&gt; (via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/oghok/85_percent_of_gold_in_the_world_is_hidden_off_the/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bitcoin Reddit&lt;/a&gt;, that might contain a TL;DR).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The post is extremely long and rife with conspiracy theories. I'll try to summarize the main claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;134 billion dollar&lt;/strong&gt; worth of U.S treasury bonds were recently (2009) confiscated on the Italian border. Only four countries (China, UK, Japan, Russia) even have that kind of money. This represents either a massive, ultra high quality forgery (such that only a country is capable of), or a huge secret dumping of U.S bonds &lt;strong&gt;by a major super power&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="868" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:53:15.927" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:53:15.927" Title="Have $134 billion in U.S bonds been faked or secretly sold or &quot;lost&quot; by a superpower?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7554" CreationDate="2012-01-14T10:38:53.577" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The historical accounts are anecdotal (&quot;is said to...&quot;), but there are 2 or 3 recent cases according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_from_laughter&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/laughing.asp&quot;&gt;snopes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On 24 March 1975, Alex Mitchell, a 50-year-old bricklayer from King's Lynn, England, died laughing while watching the &quot;Kung Fu Kapers&quot; episode of The Goodies, featuring a kilt-clad Scotsman with his bagpipes battling a master of Lancastrian martial art &quot;Ecky Thump&quot;, who was armed with a black pudding . After twenty-five minutes of continuous laughter, Mitchell finally slumped on the sofa and died from heart failure. His widow later sent The Goodies a letter thanking them for making Mitchell's final moments of life so pleasant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2003, Damnoen Saen-um, a Thai ice cream salesman, is reported to have died while laughing in his sleep at the age of 52. His wife was unable to wake him, and he stopped breathing after two minutes of continuous laughter. He is believed to have died of either heart failure or asphyxiation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found no compelling evidence regarding the historical claims, probably because such accounts are a bit... ridiculous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysippus#Life&quot;&gt;2 known accounts&lt;/a&gt; of the death of Chrysippus, only one involving laughter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Diogenes Laërtius gives two different accounts of his death. In the first account, Chrysippus was seized with dizziness having drunk undiluted wine at a feast, and died soon after. In the second account, he was watching a donkey eat some figs and cried out: &quot;Now give the donkey a drink of pure wine to wash down the figs&quot;, whereupon he died in a fit of laughter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;King Martin of Arragon &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20060304124353/http://www.cc.jyu.fi/mirator/pdf/Morris.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;apparently&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; died of laughter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1410, when Martin died, apparently of a lethal combination of serious indigestion and uncontrollable laughter, no successor had been properly designated, initiating a crisis of succession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The death of Urquhart by laughter of is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Urquhart&quot;&gt;merely a legend&lt;/a&gt; according to Wikipedia (unreferenced).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a legend that Urquhart died in a fit of laughter on receiving news of the Restoration of Charles II.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, death and damage from laughter is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_from_laughter#Pathophysiology&quot;&gt;recognised medically&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We present a case of a 29-year-old previously healthy man who had witnessed a coworker trip and hit his head on the sink at approximately 10 a.m. He subsequently went into a severe fit of uncontrollable laughter that involved leaning forward and crouching down, at which point he began to feel lightheaded and dizzy. He collapsed for 3 seconds with definite loss of consciousness and nonspecific arm twitching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343%2806%2900898-9/fulltext&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 65 year old man developed uncontrollable and unemotional laughter for almost an hour followed by transient right facial-brachial paresis. He had fluctuation of laughter, right facial brachial paresis, and occasional crying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1737630/pdf/v071p00802.pdf&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gelastic seizures are often associated with hypothalamic hamartomas. However, focal cortical dysplasias can also cause “laughing seizures”, and such cases can be difficult to localize with EEG. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jle.com/en/revues/medecine/epd/e-docs/00/04/37/CC/article.phtml&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cataplexy is observed in a subset of patients with narcolepsy and affects approximately 1 in 2,000 persons. Cataplexy is most often triggered by strong emotions such as laughter, which can result in transient, yet debilitating, muscle atonia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.pone.0002225&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We report the case of a 56-year-old, moderately obese (body mass index of 35) man with a past medical history of sleep apnea, hypertension and hyperlipidemia who suffered from syncope secondary to intense laughter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jmedicalcasereports.com/content/2/1/197&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Laughter is a complex human behavior that has an emotional and a physical component. We present a patient who suffered syncope as a result of intense laughter, and hypothesize that this is analogous to other types of Valsalva-induced syncope. We emphasize the clinical characteristics that differentiate gelastic syncope from cataplexy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sleep-journal.com/article/S1389-9457%2801%2900113-7/abstract&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="249" LastEditDate="2013-11-26T22:39:47.977" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T22:39:47.977" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7559" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7585" CreationDate="2012-01-14T14:22:22.650" Score="28" ViewCount="3560" Body="&lt;p&gt;There exists a widely held (and frequently asserted) belief that there is a very big (relatively to other professions) discrepancy between the top tier software developers and the non-top-tier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples from extremely reputable people include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_%28computer_programmer%29&quot;&gt;Paul Graham&lt;/a&gt; (in a bunch of his writings: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt; , &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Joel Spolsky: ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HighNotes.html&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt; , &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/BionicOffice.html&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... of superstars that produce ten times as much as the merely brilliant software developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any studies supporting this?&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. that a &quot;superstar&quot; programmer would be 10x more productive than merely good programmer or 30-100x than average programmer respectively)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just to clarify&lt;/strong&gt; - I'm not asking if Joel was correct in naming 100x more productive developers &quot;superstars&quot; - that's his definition. I'm asking if there are enough such 100x more productive developers (100x on average) to warrant a separate class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2012-01-17T14:44:06.100" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T07:44:46.493" Title="Are there studies clearly illustrating the great discrepancies in programmer productivity?" Tags="|productivity|programming-productivity|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7560" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-01-14T15:30:31.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag is here because many questions refer to cause and effect misconceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In common usage Causality is also the relationship between a set of factors (causes) and a phenomenon (the effect). Anything that affects an effect is a factor of that effect. A direct factor is a factor that affects an effect directly, that is, without any intervening factors. (Intervening factors are sometimes called &quot;intermediate factors.&quot;) The connection between a cause(s) and effect in this way can also be referred to as a causal nexus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though the causes and effects are typically related to changes or events, candidates include objects, processes, properties, variables, facts, and states of affairs; characterizing the causal relationship can be the subject of much debate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The philosophical treatment of causality extends over millennia. In the Western philosophical tradition, discussion stretches back at least to Aristotle, and the topic remains a staple in contemporary philosophy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Causality contrasted with conditionals&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conditional statements are not statements of causality. An important distinction is that statements of causality require the antecedent to precede or coincide with the consequent in time, whereas conditional statements do not require this temporal order. Confusion commonly arises since many different statements in English may be presented using &quot;If ..., then ...&quot; form (and, arguably, because this form is far more commonly used to make a statement of causality). The two types of statements are distinct, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, all of the following statements are true when interpreting &quot;If ..., then ...&quot; as the material conditional:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;If Barack Obama is president of the United States in 2011, then Germany is in Europe.&#xA;If George Washington is president of the United States in 2011, then &amp;lt;arbitrary statement&amp;gt;.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is true since both the antecedent and the consequent are true. The second is true in sentential logic and indeterminate in natural language, regardless of the consequent statement that follows, because the antecedent is false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ordinary indicative conditional has somewhat more structure than the material conditional. For instance, although the first is the closest, neither of the preceding two statements seems true as an ordinary indicative reading. But the sentence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;If Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon did not write Macbeth, then someone else did.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;intuitively seems to be true, even though there is no straightforward causal relation in this hypothetical situation between Shakespeare's not writing Macbeth and someone else's actually writing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another sort of conditional, the counterfactual conditional, has a stronger connection with causality, yet even counterfactual statements are not all examples of causality. Consider the following two statements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;If A were a triangle, then A would have three sides.&#xA;If switch S were thrown, then bulb B would light.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first case, it would not be correct to say that A's being a triangle caused it to have three sides, since the relationship between triangularity and three-sidedness is that of definition. The property of having three sides actually determines A's state as a triangle. Nonetheless, even when interpreted counterfactually, the first statement is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A full grasp of the concept of conditionals is important to understanding the literature on causality. A crucial stumbling block is that conditionals in everyday English are usually loosely used to describe a general situation. For example, &quot;If I drop my coffee, then my shoe gets wet&quot; relates an infinite number of possible events. It is shorthand for &quot;For any fact that would count as 'dropping my coffee', some fact that counts as 'my shoe gets wet' will be true&quot;. This general statement will be strictly false if there is any circumstance where I drop my coffee and my shoe doesn't get wet. However, an &quot;If..., then...&quot; statement in logic typically relates two specific events or facts—a specific coffee-dropping did or did not occur, and a specific shoe-wetting did or did not follow. Thus, with explicit events in mind, if I drop my coffee and wet my shoe, then it is true that &quot;If I dropped my coffee, then I wet my shoe&quot;, regardless of the fact that yesterday I dropped a coffee in the trash for the opposite effect—the conditional relates to specific facts. More counterintuitively, if I didn't drop my coffee at all, then it is also true that &quot;If I drop my coffee then I wet my shoe&quot;, or &quot;Dropping my coffee implies I wet my shoe&quot;, regardless of whether I wet my shoe or not by any means. This usage would not be counterintuitive if it were not for the everyday usage. Briefly, &quot;If X then Y&quot; is equivalent to the first-order logic statement &quot;A implies B&quot; or &quot;not A-and-not-B&quot;, where A and B are predicates, but the more familiar usage of an &quot;if A then B&quot; statement would need to be written symbolically using a higher order logic using quantifiers (&quot;for all&quot; and &quot;there exists&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questionable Cause&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fallacies of questionable cause, also known as causal fallacies, non causa pro causa (&quot;non-cause for cause&quot; in Latin) or false cause, are informal fallacies where a cause is incorrectly identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:30:31.473" LastActivityDate="2012-01-14T15:30:31.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7561" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-01-14T15:30:31.473" Score="0" Body="Causality (also referred to as causation) is the relationship between an event (the cause) and a second event (the effect), where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first." OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T15:30:31.473" LastActivityDate="2012-01-14T15:30:31.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7556" CreationDate="2012-01-14T17:45:55.087" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not only do they exist, but they make a really easy experiment that can illustrate the speed of light&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microwaves ovens really do create hotspots and it is an issue if it matters to have evenly cooked food. That's why many have turntables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the really cool thing about hotspots is that they can be used in a simple science experiment to get a good approximation of the speed of light. The experiment involves measuring the distance between the hotspots which are caused by standing waves in the microwave field that occur a half-wavelength apart. So knowing the frequency of the microwave (usually something like 2450MHz) allows a simple calculation of the speed of light since c=wavelength*frequency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Links to the description of this experiment can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physics.umd.edu/icpe/newsletters/n34/marshmal.htm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.null-hypothesis.co.uk/science/item/measure_speed_light_microwave_chocolate&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/kitchenscience/exp/measuring-the-speed-of-light/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and even illustrated on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH9uHjJuANI&quot;&gt;youtube&lt;/a&gt; (a google search for &quot;speed of light microwave&quot; with throw up a load more.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-01-14T17:57:45.350" LastActivityDate="2012-01-14T17:57:45.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7570" CreationDate="2012-01-14T22:52:48.417" Score="16" ViewCount="4503" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend showed me the following video a few minutes ago. He says that it's real, but I can't believe that actually. What do you think?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z4h4Mxq_ys&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7z4h4Mxq_ys&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video show some guy hammering a nail into his nose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5541" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:31:10.550" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:31:10.550" Title="Is it possible to stick a nail into your nose?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7527" CreationDate="2012-01-14T23:15:22.480" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;People have used chess as a model for studying stress responses and therefore have done a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18987876&quot;&gt;detailed metabolic analysis&lt;/a&gt;.  The key data is in table 1 (p. 347); here it is, reformatted and converted to Calories/hr:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Energy expended (Cal/hr) Before      Beginning   Middle      End&#xA;------------------------ ----------- ----------- ----------- -----------&#xA;Mean                      91.8       100.2        91.8        93.0&#xA;Minimum                   68.4        70.8        70.2        68.4&#xA;Maximum                  120.0       132.0       120.6       122.4&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_equivalent&quot;&gt;comparable to light physical activity&lt;/a&gt; (desk work, etc.), and not even close to jogging (400-500 Calories/hr for someone weighing ~70 kg).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no, &lt;strong&gt;chess grandmasters do not come anywhere close to runners when it comes to caloric expenditure&lt;/strong&gt;. Extremely stressful games could perhaps exceed even the maximum bounds here (the participants were competitive chess players, but not at the master/grandmaster level).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, note that if chess grandmasters did burn that many calories, they would get at least as hot as runners do, and although you may seen top chess players mop their brow, you generally don't see them in light clothes sweating profusely even in cold weather.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="1039" LastEditDate="2012-01-24T05:10:09.697" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T05:10:09.697" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7567" CreationDate="2012-01-14T23:35:26.553" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is quite likely true. It is a common circus/freak-show stunt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The skill is called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Blockhead&quot;&gt;Human Blockhead&lt;/a&gt;. (&quot;Skill&quot;, not &quot;trick&quot;, because the nail is real and does go into the head.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://recordsetter.com/world-record/nail-fully-inserted-into-nostril/6547&quot;&gt;Here's a video&lt;/a&gt; of another guy inserting a 4-inch nail into his nose in a similar way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It involves inserting the nail into the nasal cavity, and relies of people not understanding the anatomy of the skull for its impressiveness. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/circus-arts/human-blockhead.htm&quot;&gt;How Stuff Works article&lt;/a&gt; goes in detail about where to stick the nail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3508" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-01-15T00:30:35.350" LastActivityDate="2012-01-15T00:30:35.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7567" CreationDate="2012-01-15T00:31:32.983" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/circus-arts/human-blockhead1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Howstuffworks&lt;/a&gt; has a pretty good explanation of this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The external portion of the nose is a little deceptive. Two nostrils&#xA;  appear to lead almost straight up into the nasal passageway. In&#xA;  reality, the nasal cavity, which connects the nose to the throat,&#xA;  leads almost straight back. Its ceiling is approximately even with the&#xA;  top of the nose, just below the eyes. Its floor tends to be almost&#xA;  level with the alar cartilage, which forms the openings for the&#xA;  nostrils.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://training.seer.cancer.gov/images/head-neck/head_neck.jpg&quot; height=&quot;300&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see in this image, there's plenty of space, but there might be some need to &quot;wiggle&quot; the spike in and then push up the nostrils a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:38.533" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T10:00:15.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7571" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7572" CreationDate="2012-01-15T04:32:04.077" Score="8" ViewCount="12544" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that skimmed milk has more added chemicals than whole milk. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4932" LastEditorUserId="1072" LastEditDate="2012-04-11T10:03:50.330" LastActivityDate="2018-08-03T14:37:38.840" Title="Does skimmed milk have more added chemicals than whole milk?" Tags="|nutrition|milk|chemistry|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7571" CreationDate="2012-01-15T12:29:04.677" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The prescriptionist scientist in me rejects the question as meaningless! The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_linguistics&quot;&gt;descriptivist&lt;/a&gt; in me compels me to try to answer the question you meant to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both whole milk and skim milk (in the USA) may be fortified with vitamins A and/or D. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sharon Gerdes wrote in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innovatewithdairy.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/Fortification%20for%20Milk%20and%20Beverages.pdf&quot;&gt;Dairy Foods (Feb 2009)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The dairy industry has been adding vitamin D3 to milk since 1932. In the 1940s, the dairy industry also began fortifying with vitamin A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can also be fortified with other nutrients such as Calcium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the milk must be labeled if they are fortified. There are limits to what can be added to milk and still call it &quot;milk&quot;. (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2006/aprqtr/pdf/21cfr131.110.pdf&quot;&gt;Section 131.110&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.milkfacts.info/Milk%20Processing/Standards%20of%20Identity.htm&quot;&gt;Standards of Identity&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fortification is optional, so it depends on the source. So, &lt;strong&gt;to see what additives are in your preferred brands of milk, check the labels&lt;/strong&gt;. Before you discard the ones with more Vitamin A and D, ask if you are really concerned that the risks of extra vitamins outweigh the benefits - ditto with the fat content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However,  Cornell University's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.milkfacts.info/Milk%20Processing/Fluid%20Milk%20Production.htm&quot;&gt;Milk Facts&lt;/a&gt; suggests a motivation for additional Vitamin A fortification in skim milk: because it is naturally lower in vitamin A, it needs more added to bring it to the same levels as whole milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whole milk is considered a good source of vitamin A. Vitamin A is a fat soluble vitamin that is found in the fat phase of milk. The vitamin A content that occurs naturally in 2%, 1% and skim milk is less than in whole milk because of the lower fat levels. Nutritional concerns about consumption of lower fat milk in the late 1970s led to the required fortification of vitamin A in lower fat milks. To achieve the nutritional equivalence of whole milk, lower fat milks should be fortified to 300 IU vitamin A per 8 oz serving. The FDA encourages fortification to a level of 500 IU of vitamin A per 8 oz serving, which is 10 % of the recommended daily allowance (RDA).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Letting my inner prescriptionist off his leash for a moment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In science, the word &quot;chemical&quot; means the same as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_substance&quot;&gt;chemical substance&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Ref: High school chemistry, plus the above Wikipedia article that states: 'the term chemical substance is a precise technical term that is synonymous with &quot;chemical&quot; for professional chemists'.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under this definition, &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; is either a chemical substance or a mixture of chemical substances. (Okay, not everything. Not light or heat or love or skepticism, but everything made of solids, liquids, gasses or plasma. Everything you can touch, taste or smell.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, 1kg of whole milk is 100% chemicals, and 1kg of skim-milk is 100% chemicals. No difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-01-15T12:29:04.677" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7571" CreationDate="2012-01-15T14:34:48.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Skim milk is usually made by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Milk.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;centrifugation of whole milk&lt;/a&gt;. Otherwise the fatty cream is allowed to rise naturally, and skimmed off. Neither process involves adding new chemicals to the milk, or anything other than separation based on physical properties. If you're counting &lt;em&gt;types&lt;/em&gt; of chemicals in your milk, whole milk will be slightly higher, as it still contains all those fats and fat soluble materials that make up cream. As Oddthinking states, both whole and skim milk may be fortified by vitamins A and/or D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastActivityDate="2012-01-15T14:34:48.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7532" CreationDate="2012-01-15T18:43:32.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Red seems to have some effect on performance in well constructed experiments and in sport, though we could do with further studies&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble with many studies on the relationship between colour and performance is that they are based on speculative theories and rely on poorly controlled experiments. This is summed up by the authors of this paper in the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psych.rochester.edu/faculty/elliot/documents/2007_ElliotMaierMollerFriedmanMeinhardt_Color.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal of Experimental Psychology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...in the literature at present, there is no clear evidence for a color effect on performance attainment. It is possible that this summary statement reflects the fact that color effects on perfor- mance attainment do not actually exist. However, it is also possible that color–performance relationships do exist but that weaknesses in the existing research have made them difficult to detect. Several important weaknesses may be noted...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This papers report the results of carefully controlled experiments in a variety of environments on whether the perception of red alters performance in intellectual tests such as IQ tests or solving anagrams. And they find a significant effect. As the summary says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Four experiments demonstrate that the brief perception of red prior to an important test (e.g., an IQ test) &lt;strong&gt;impairs performance&lt;/strong&gt;, and this effect appears to take place outside of participants’ conscious awareness. Two further experiments establish the link between red and avoidance motivation...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in simple terms, red reduces performance but not in a way people are conscious of. And one of the mechanisms is an unconscious avoidance of harder tasks when given a choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This clarifies part of the possible mechanisms behind the observations in sporting contests: it isn't that wearing red makes &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; perform better, it makes &lt;em&gt;your opponent&lt;/em&gt; perform worse. The classic paper on this is a paper in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7040/abs/435293a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nature&lt;/a&gt; (abstract only online, but, for readers in the UK the British Library is your friend) from 2005 (though it assumes that red makes the wearer perform better). The paper uses the fact that some sports randomise colours so removing most of the possible confounding factors from the statistics. Speculating that red may have some residual effect as a primate dominance signal they report significant differences between player performance when players wear red in 4 olympic sports from 2004 (boxing, tae kwon do, greco-roman wrestling, freestyle wrestling). As they report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we found that for all four competitions, there is a consistent and statistically significant pattern in which contestants wearing red win more fights&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They find an excess percentage of wins of between 2% and 5% over the 50% expected if colour had no effect. This effect was &gt;10% with evenly matched opponents but not significant at all for opponents of significantly different abilities (which is what you would expect for a small effect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But does this apply to sports like football (that's soccer for americans)? In 2008 a paper appeared in the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02640410701736244&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal of Sports Sciences&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (again abstract only online) that used a large dataset of football results from football in England from 1947 to 2003. They used several approaches to attempt to disentangle confounding factors. For example, one proxy for teams support base (which might independently relate to capability) is city size. They report that in most cities with more than one team consistently in the top leagues it is the one in red that does better. Another factor that matters is the observations that teams often don't wear their home colours in away games. They report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Across all league divisions, red teams had the best home record, with significant differences in both percentages of maximum points achieved and mean position in the home league table...No significant differences were found for performance in matches away from home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The obvious weakness in their analysis is that they don't analyse &lt;em&gt;away&lt;/em&gt; matches by what colours were actually worn (teams will only swap from their home colours when there is a clash). This might significantly improve the statistical quality of the analysis as would updating it to cover the last 8 years. Also, there are now large statistical databases of team performance which have some value in predicting results (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dectech.org/football/help_upcoming.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). Combining these with accurate colour information in both home and away games might improve the statistics for recent games and highlight the size of the effect. I'd love to see other international leagues analysed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So, in summary, wearing red seems to reduce, by a small amount, the performance of your opponents in sport and the effect of seeing red also seems to operate to lower performance in non-sporting activities.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2012-01-15T18:43:32.117" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7531" CreationDate="2012-01-16T00:25:52.803" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Music can make you feel better. There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://pesquisa.bvsalud.org/regional/?q=music%20emotions&amp;amp;where=ALL&amp;amp;index=&amp;amp;lang=pt&amp;amp;_charset_=iso-8859-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some trials&lt;/a&gt; showing this, I would highlight two of then:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pesquisa.bvsalud.org/regional/resources/mdl-19253088&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pleasurable emotional response to music: a case of neurodegenerative generalized auditory agnosia&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pesquisa.bvsalud.org/regional/resources/mdl-20614449&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Music therapy for acquired brain injury&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5761" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T00:25:52.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3574" CreationDate="2012-01-16T02:18:26.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15144765/ns/health-health_care/t/dont-breathe-your-bourbon-ky-officials-warn/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alcohol vaporizer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So far, 17 states have banned them, including California, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and several others are considering doing so, said Sherry Green, executive director of the National Alliance for Model State Drug Laws. Tennessee, the home of Jack Daniels, already prohibits the vaporizers.&#xA;  “When you inhale alcohol right into the lung tissue, that gets drawn right into the blood supply immediately, so it’s a very rapid onset of the intoxicating effect, and so has obviously very high abuse potential,” said Robert Walker, an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky Center on Drug and Alcohol Research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_without_liquid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alcohol without liquid at Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alcohol is a liquid solvent, like chloroform or ethyl ether. If you get it into the vapor phase, there's nothing to prevent it from going in through the lungs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than nebulizing a quart of Jack in a small small room, the commercial units (see link for picture) work more like one of those bongs people smoke tobacco in. I don't have figures, but that set up delivers far higher concentrations of ethanol than calculated above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T02:18:26.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7581" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-01-16T10:00:48.530" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the act of competitive racing. As opposed to ethnicity, which is covered by the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/race&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'race'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;race&lt;/a&gt; tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-01-16T10:38:08.223" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T10:38:08.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7582" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-01-16T10:00:48.530" Score="0" Body="For the act of competitive racing. As opposed to ethnicity, which is covered by the race tag." OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-01-16T10:38:13.183" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T10:38:13.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7583" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-01-16T10:01:29.217" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;For questions about ethnicity. For questions about competitive racing, use the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/racing&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged 'racing'&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;racing&lt;/a&gt; tag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-01-16T10:37:53.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T10:37:53.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7584" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-01-16T10:01:29.217" Score="0" Body="For questions about ethnicity. For questions about competitive racing, use the racing tag." OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-01-16T10:38:02.653" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T10:38:02.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7559" CreationDate="2012-01-16T12:18:12.203" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Common source for these claims is &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0932633439&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peopleware&lt;/a&gt;. The authors claim that while conducting programming competitions called Coding War Games during the 1980s they found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three  rules  of thumb seem to apply whenever you measure variations in performance over a sample of individuals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Count on the best people outperforming the worst by about 10:1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Count on the best performer being about 2.5 times better than the median performer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Count on the half that are better-than-median performers outdoing the other half by more than 2:1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More modern source is Steve McConnell's article in &amp;quot;What Does 10x Mean? Measuring Variations in Programmer Productivity&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0596808321&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Making Software&lt;/a&gt; where the author refers to several other sources that are mostly from the 1980s. If someone wants to hunt these studies down, the sources are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Boehm et al. 2000] Boehm, Barry, et al. 2000. Software Cost Estimation with Cocomo II. Boston: Addison-Wesley.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Boehm and Papaccio 1988] Boehm, Barry W., and Philip N. Papaccio. 1988. Understanding&#xA;and Controlling Software Costs. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 14(10): 1462–1477.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Curtis 1981] Curtis, Bill. 1981. Substantiating Programmer Variability. Proceedings of the IEEE 69(7): 846.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[DeMarco and Lister 1985] DeMarco, Tom, and Timothy Lister. 1985. Programmer&#xA;Performance and the Effects of the Workplace. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Software Engineering: 268–272.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Mills 1983] Mills, Harlan D. 1983. Software Productivity. Boston: Little, Brown.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Card 1987] Card, David N. 1987. A Software Technology Evaluation Program. Information and Software Technology 29(6): 291–300.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Curtis et al. 1986] Curtis, Bill, et al. 1986. Software Psychology: The Need for an&#xA;Interdisciplinary Program. Proceedings of the IEEE 74(8): 1092–1106.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Valett and McGarry 1989] Valett, J., and F.E. McGarry. 1989. A Summary of Software&#xA;Measurement Experiences in the Software Engineering Laboratory. Journal of Systems and&#xA;Software 9(2): 137–148.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/12/podcast-77/&quot;&gt;interesting discussion on programming ability related to salary check Stackoverflow podcast #77&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5686" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-16T12:18:12.203" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7540" CreationDate="2012-01-16T15:34:06.883" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aauw.org/learn/research/upload/whysofew.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why So Few?: Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics&lt;/a&gt; by Catherine Hill, Ph. D., Christianne Corbett, and Andresse St. Rose, Ed.D., 2010:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Number of students who took advanced placement test in Computer Science AB:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;girls &amp;mdash; 632  (13%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;boys &amp;mdash; 4,268 (87%) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fGrP4.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Number of graduates with B.Sc. in computer science:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;women &amp;mdash; 7,944 (18.6%); including mathematics 14,771 (25%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;men &amp;mdash; 34,652 (81.4%); including mathematics 43,376 (75%)&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/B57SS.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, &quot;natural proportion&quot; for newly hired software developers in US would based on available graduates be 82% male, 18% female. However, if you look at actual occupation statistics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/867vb.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has mathematics in same category as IT, but 30% is still lot more that 25% you'd expect from proportions of B.Sc. graduates. So &lt;strong&gt;if there is any bias in the IT industry, it's positive one&lt;/strong&gt;, rather then negative one. Same goes for alleged bias in colleges, as you can see that percentage of women among graduates with B.Sc. in Computer Science (18%) is way higher, than percentage of girls among students taking Advanced Placement Test in Computer Science (13%). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, that the question is about discriminatory bias in IT industry hiring, not about society as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-01-17T17:50:11.617" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T17:50:11.617" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7591" CreationDate="2012-01-17T00:57:03.103" Score="13" ViewCount="2085" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxeKeuh_2Bw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt; was hosted on a &lt;em&gt;nasa.gov&lt;/em&gt; domain name. It talks about Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR), also known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cold Fusion&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://kb.e-catworld.com/index.php?title=NASA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; it is claimed that this is proof that LENR works and that there has been a previous &lt;em&gt;cover up&lt;/em&gt; by e.g. Big Physics and Big Energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am super skeptical that if NASA had found a way of generating almost free energy it would announce it with a strange video like this!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the real background of the video?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: many of the sites have been moved around since the question was asked. I've now pointed to different domains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-02T12:51:55.053" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T12:51:55.053" Title="Is this video from NASA proof that LENR is a real effect?" Tags="|physics|nasa|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7589" CreationDate="2012-01-17T02:57:49.000" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/markgibbs/2012/01/16/cold-fusion-nasa-says-nothing-useful/&quot;&gt;As the link stated&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Every attempted demonstration of a LENR device that I am aware of has failed to meet one or more of these criteria.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there is something hard to pin down going on, the &quot;cold fusion&quot; mechanisms proposed are not it.  They were at least viable theories, in that they were falsifiable.  Also, this isn't &lt;em&gt;cold&lt;/em&gt; fusion, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pages.csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/cf/261etiC.html&quot;&gt;but rather colder than the sun fusion, but still plasma&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Excess heat generated in the glow discharge &lt;strong&gt;plasma&lt;/strong&gt; electrolysis, first reported by Mizuno and Ohmori (1), has been studied by several researchers, both in Japan (2, 3, 4) and in other countries (5, 6, 7, 8). Most reports, but not all, confirmed generation of excess heat. Facing this situation we decided to replicate the most recent experiment in which excess heat was found to &lt;em&gt;increase with voltage&lt;/em&gt; (8). The planning for the design of this project was described in (9). Considerable progress has been made toward the building and testing of a cell able to operate at high power levels. This work, still in progress, should either confirm or contradict the results reported in (8).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, LENR is not actually cold fusion anyway, just a bad job by the media.  The scientist, Dr. Zawodny, whose words are being mangled by the press states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While I personally find sufficient demonstration that LENR effects warrant further investigation, I remain skeptical. Furthermore, I am unaware of any clear and convincing demonstrations of any viable commercial device producing useful amounts of net energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too many people are attempting to equate this to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/cold_fusion_12&quot;&gt;Pons/Fleischmann experiment, which was thoroughly debunked&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is still legitimate research to do, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physics.purdue.edu/people/faculty/koltick.shtml&quot;&gt;Dr. David Koltick at Purdue&lt;/a&gt;.  However, the claims are vastly different than the Pons/Fleischmann claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2012-01-17T02:57:49.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="525" CreationDate="2012-01-17T09:47:58.490" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is a very contentious one as it relies upon a lot of variables that are largely poorly understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The first part is arable land mass.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Currently animal production is focussed on either high value grazing areas or low value extensive areas. Extensive grazing areas cannot be cropped. That area of production would have to be made up by increased crop production in other areas. 56% of Australia is extensive agriculture, worldwide it is ~5,000,000,000 hectares. That is a large amount of low production land to make up for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v478/n7369/full/nature10452.html&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v478/n7369/full/nature10452.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&quot;Simply put, we can increase food availability (in terms of calories, protein and critical nutrients) by shifting crop production away from livestock feed, bioenergy crops and other non-food applications..... But even small changes in diet (for example, shifting grain-fed beef consumption to poultry, pork or pasture-fed beef) and bioenergy policy (for example, not using food crops as biofuel feedstocks) could enhance food availability and reduce the environmental impacts of agriculture.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the areas quoted vary so much, because the figures are not fully understood. Cropping land is rarely cropped every year, instead rotated or rested at intervals, dependant upon crop type, soil type and amount of water/rainfall. Some countries just don't have accurate records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The second part is feed conversion.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;There are methods, such as mixed enterprise systems (crops plus grazing) and of course feedlotting that use grain feeding. The feedlotting is what people refer to the most, not understanding that cattle have a much higher energy conversion rate for vegetable matter than humans (being ruminants) and are not regularly fed for their entire lives. Thus grazing remains a large part of production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humans also preferentially eat higher protein foods like meat (see rise in meat demands from Asia with increasing wealth). This is because it is more calorically and nutritionally dense as a food, which is linked to satiety. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The third part is grain types.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Most grains that are fed to animals are what is referred to in the grains industry as &quot;feed grains&quot;. These are generally lower quality grains that are unsuitable for human food production. Some of the grains used cannot be eaten by humans (e.g. lupins have high alkaloid levels that give both a bitter taste and become toxic when consumed regularly). Obviously the category of feed grain varies from &quot;could be used&quot; through to &quot;cannot be used&quot; for humans. This is once again a shorfall in the production required to replace meat in the diet. Remembering that feed crops are often grown where human crops cannot be grown, or not grown regularly (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agric.wa.gov.au/content/fcp/cer/wh/bulletin4443.pdf&quot;&gt;see wheat classes and agronomy&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These factors combine to create quite a different picture than what is normally presented in the &quot;can we grow enough crops to replace meat eating&quot; discussion. There would be less land available for cropping than is available for producing a mixed diet. There would be crops produced that would not be suitable for human consumption. We would also need slightly higher production or quality of crops to make up the energy conversion gap. This all makes for a large hole in the argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Info on ME and DE for humans: &lt;a href=&quot;http://fao.org/DOCREP/006/Y5022E/y5022e04.htm&quot;&gt;http://fao.org/DOCREP/006/Y5022E/y5022e04.htm&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper covers come of the conversion ratios for different animals that are grain fed (Cattle 7:1, Pigs 4:1, Chicken 2:1): &lt;a href=&quot;http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1240832&quot;&gt;http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1240832&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reference for the protein claims: &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301622699000196&quot;&gt;http://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301622699000196&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5775" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-18T02:44:09.977" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T02:44:09.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7267" CreationDate="2012-01-17T10:16:46.183" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Becoming vegetarian does &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=8476751&quot;&gt;change your digestive&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/43/1/37.short&quot;&gt;hormone production&lt;/a&gt; in the body. If you don't eat meat there is less demand upon the pancreas to produce the enzymes necessary to digest the meat. Given our digestive tract is suited to a omnivorous diet our body is likely to adapt to the decreased requirement for the digestive enzymes (i.e. stop producing them in significant quantities) and gut flora will change to the new dietry regime. For more see &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10620-006-9589-z?LI=true&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing back to a meat diet would then mean there is a shortfall in pancreatic secretions required to digest the meat in the short term. The changed flora in the gut would also be impacted. The &quot;sick&quot; feeling is likely linked to one or both of these factors and possibly something related to the hormonal changes the meat re/introduction could cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5775" LastEditorUserId="5775" LastEditDate="2013-02-05T14:38:14.183" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T14:38:14.183" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="525" CreationDate="2012-01-17T14:42:45.527" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is invalid, as we already produce &lt;strong&gt;way more than enough&lt;/strong&gt; food. There is no more &quot;world hunger&quot; problem due insufficient food production. Currently much greater problem is an epidemic of obesity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5ERyt.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lowest calorie intake is in sub-Saharan Africa, where on average people eat 2,176 calories per person per day. &#xA;Highest in US with a average of 3,654 calories. World average is 2800 calories. (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthtrends.wri.org/searchable_db/index.php?theme=8&amp;amp;variable_ID=212&amp;amp;action=select_countries&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;EarthTrends: Nutrition: Calorie supply per capita&quot;. World Resources Institute.&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Healthy calorie intakes is defined as between 2000 and 2500, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/document/html/chapter5.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;USDA recommends 2000 calories&lt;/a&gt;. Thus  even in most &quot;hunger stricken&quot; zones of the world, people eat on average more than USDA recommendation. World average is way above upper limit of healthy diet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course these are averages, the problem isn't production, it's distribution of goods. In the most obese nation of the world, where food industry produces about 4,000 calories per person per day, there are 30 mln people experiencing hunger and few thousands who die annually of malnutrition (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/487412-malnutrition-in-america/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LiveStrong&lt;/a&gt;). Clearly, no one in right mind would argue, that there isn't enough food in US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also have to take in account, that significant progress has been made in last decades. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/gbd/research/project/global-burden-diseases-injuries-and-risk-factors-study-2010&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study&lt;/a&gt;, in metric of increased risk of death, child malnutrition has dropped from 6th position in 1990 to 16th in 2010, with a overall risk drop of -62%, on the other hand obesity went up from 10th position up to 6th (+60% risk increase). Currently &lt;strong&gt;obesity kills 3 times more people than malnutrition&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2017-05-30T17:31:03.613" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T17:31:03.613" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7597" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7606" CreationDate="2012-01-17T14:57:18.090" Score="11" ViewCount="2097" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to animal rights activists, U.S. Navy's usage of dolphins to locate naval mines is questionable, as they may cause mine to explode:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ethics behind using these mammals during war is still in question&#xA;  though, as they are reportedly large enough to set off an active mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/317885#ixzz1jjA7O5rE&quot;&gt;Digital Journal &quot;U.S. Navy to use dolphins against Iran&quot;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it hard to believe, as naval mines are specifically designed to explode under big targets, often of very specific signature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth in animal rights activists' claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-17T17:20:41.943" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T15:41:12.587" Title="Can dolphins accidentally detonate naval mines?" Tags="|zoology|military|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7589" CreationDate="2012-01-18T06:01:22.980" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;this research is direct result of Pons/Fleischmann experiment but with a lot of improvement &#xA;in  experiment you can search  Lattice-Assisted Nuclear Reactions in google for more information. Pons/Fleischmann used palladium (lattice metal) with deuterium (heavy hydrogen) for  experiment .but after  a lot of improvement in experiment now scientist use nickel powder( lattice metal) + potassium carbonate as catalyst + hydrogen gas +RFG AND HEAT for experiment.this pdf file is nasa official opinion about Pons/Fleischmann and cold fusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/docs/LENR_at_GRC_2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/sensors/PhySen/docs/LENR_at_GRC_2011.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5780" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T06:01:22.980" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7602" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8408" CreationDate="2012-01-18T06:45:31.053" Score="12" ViewCount="7956" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://insects.about.com/od/antsbeeswasps/a/10-cool-facts-about-ants.htm&quot;&gt;About.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The total biomass of all the ants on Earth is roughly equal to the total biomass of all the people on Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the above statement just a myth or its in fact real?&#xA;Are there any hard facts to prove this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5781" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-18T09:29:22.737" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T12:38:04.923" Title="Is the total biomass of ants roughly equal to the total biomass of humans?" Tags="|zoology|entomology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7603" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-18T12:20:56.310" Score="4" ViewCount="1028" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just been followed on twitter by @Jergon_Sacha who claims that the plant jergon sacha (which appears to be from the genus &lt;a href=&quot;http://eol.org/search?q=Jergon+Sacha&amp;amp;show_all=true&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dracontium&lt;/a&gt;) is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Traditionally used for viral infections HIV, AIDS, hepatitis and other&#xA;  virus problems etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this plant been traditionally used this way, and is there any evidence for or against its use against viruses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried pubmedding for Dracontium, and the only relevant article appears to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15894143&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, where the abstract talks about anti-bacterial properties, not anti-viral ones. I also googled, but mainly came up with alternative medicine sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Declaration of conflicts: I do research on how HIV mutates. I also used to be associated with the Encyclopedia of Life, which I linked to above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T04:24:01.147" Title="Is jergon sacha any use against viral infections such as HIV?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|hiv-aids|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7605" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9182" CreationDate="2012-01-18T13:51:53.560" Score="6" ViewCount="6461" Body="&lt;p&gt;BMW drivers are widely thought to be poor drivers. For example, in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/editors-choice/2008/07/16/every-motorist-s-worst-nightmare-an-old-woman-driving-bmw-on-a-sunday-86908-20645099/&quot;&gt;poll for Auto Trader&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Around 21,000 motorists were quizzed, and 45 per cent said BMW drivers were the worst on the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this perception accurate? Are BMW owners more likely than owners of other cars to be involved in accidents or more likely to have convictions for driving offenses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="2603" LastEditDate="2012-01-20T13:43:27.163" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T14:44:03.263" Title="Are BMW Owners the worst drivers?" Tags="|road-vehicles|safety|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7597" CreationDate="2012-01-18T15:41:12.587" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Vietnam it the rivers were mined to prevent the safe passage of forces opposed to Ho Chi Minh.   There were &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.palletmastersworkshop.com/patrol.html&quot;&gt;forces&lt;/a&gt; with the primary duty to clear these mines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mine clearance forces also were essential to the security of Vietnam's&#xA;  waterways. Nowhere was this more crucial than on the rivers near&#xA;  Saigon, the country's most vital port. Viet Cong mining of the main&#xA;  shipping channel, the Long Tau River, which wound its way through the&#xA;  Rung Sat Special Zone south of the capital, could have had a&#xA;  devastating effect on the war effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/vietnam/minenorviet.htm&quot;&gt;US used mine&lt;/a&gt;s to prevent the VC from using the waterways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://maic.jmu.edu/journal/supplemental/munitions/munitions.asp&quot;&gt;site has a listing of different munitions&lt;/a&gt;  and &lt;a href=&quot;http://64.78.11.86/uxofiles/enclosures/Iraq_NAVEOD_Guide_NavalMine.pdf&quot;&gt;this PDF has better specs on weapons deployed in Iraq&lt;/a&gt;.  A contact mine does not care what contacts it but generally requires the contact have enough force to prevent accidental detonation from wave action or debris.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.public.navy.mil/spawar/Pacific/71500/Pages/default.aspx&quot;&gt;US Navy Marine Mammal site&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sea mines are made so that they cannot be set off easily by wave&#xA;  action or marine animals growing on or bumping into them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2011/10/naval-mine-countermeasures/&quot;&gt;UK Naval Mine Countermeasures site&lt;/a&gt; indicates that WWI Era Mines were more volatile.  It also indicates that devices similar to the WWI designs have been used as recently as 1980 during the Iran-Iraq war, and that its forces are still called to deal with legacy WWI and WWII devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the devices being deployed today are designed not to detonate due to contact with sea life.  Their are older devices still found (though rarely now) that are not discriminant.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastActivityDate="2012-01-18T15:41:12.587" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7608" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-19T03:54:50.403" Score="7" ViewCount="1362" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just ran into this video from the Today Show about 12 girls from the same high school in New York who supposedly contracted something producing involuntary &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tics&lt;/a&gt; and vocal outbursts similar to Tourette syndrome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original defunct &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdsWEiarCag&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;video on YouTube&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything known that is contagious and could produce symptoms like this? Honestly, watching the video just smacks of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URHhyP4lmQ4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit (2017-06-17):&lt;/strong&gt; I was notified of an edit, which updated the video link above to &quot;defunct.&quot; I don't recall what the original showed, but &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9RPs_ysYgE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this non-defunct video on YouTube&lt;/a&gt; is likely sufficient to explain the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2017-06-17T18:03:38.483" LastActivityDate="2017-06-17T18:03:38.483" Title="Did 12 girls from the same high school contract a Tourette-syndrome like illness?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-19T11:25:48.263" Score="15" ViewCount="1825" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many psychics claim to be able to see auras. Many healing methods like reiki are based on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Psychics claim that if you look at someone with soft eyes, you can see a hazy field around them, white at first, which with practice becomes colourful and more detailed. They claim this is the aura.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any proof of auras? If not, is there a way you could explain why some people would see an 'aura'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An aura is claimed to be a physical field: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Main Entry: au·ra&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Pronunciation: \ˈȯr-ə\&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Function: noun&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Etymology: Middle English, from Latin, puff of air, breeze, from Greek; probably akin to Greek aēr air&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Date: 1694&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  4 : an energy field that is held to emanate from a living being&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://i.word.com/idictionary/aura&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5795" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-01-20T22:42:59.400" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T14:39:34.667" Title="Is there such a thing as an aura?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|psychics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7615" CreationDate="2012-01-19T15:03:28.613" Score="8" ViewCount="906" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maddox_%28writer%29&quot;&gt;Maddox&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://maddox.xmission.com/&quot;&gt;his anti-SOPA statement&lt;/a&gt; makes following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[people think that...] Painstakingly recycling every single shred of garbage in your home&#xA;  makes a difference. It doesn't. Even if you, your neighbors, and&#xA;  everyone you've ever met recycled everything and reduced your waste&#xA;  output to zero, it &lt;strong&gt;wouldn't even make an observable impact on overall&#xA;  waste production in the world&lt;/strong&gt;. Household waste and garden residue&#xA;  account for less than 3% of all waste produced in the US. That's less&#xA;  than the average statistical margin of error, and most people don't&#xA;  even come close to producing zero waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these factual numbers? 3% seems quite low. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-01-19T15:49:35.450" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T17:07:53.123" Title="Does individual recycling have no observable global impact?" Tags="|environment|recycling|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7614" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-19T15:55:04.847" Score="40" ViewCount="4189" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a question on &lt;a href=&quot;https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/4872/what-to-do-if-drugs-a-bomb-are-planted-in-your-travel-bag&quot;&gt;travel.SE&lt;/a&gt; asking what to do if some culprit planted contraband in your luggage. There are some links provided to cases where this is suspected to have happened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being able to &lt;a href=&quot;https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/3220/why-would-you-wrap-your-luggage-in-plastic&quot;&gt;wrap&lt;/a&gt; your luggage at many airports suggests that there is some risk that this could indeed happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there documented cases where it has been proven that innocent people were arrested for possessing contraband that was planted in their luggage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5141" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:01.993" LastActivityDate="2024-01-04T01:59:19.407" Title="Has anyone innocent ever been arrested because of contraband that was planted in their luggage?" Tags="|criminology|law-enforcement|airport-security|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7613" CreationDate="2012-01-19T17:07:53.123" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Europe, the data show larger numbers than the claim.&#xA;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://scp.eionet.europa.eu/themes/waste&quot;&gt;European Topic Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Municipal waste represents approximately 14% of all waste generated.... [T]he largest fraction is paper and cardboard at 35% of the waste stream, followed by organic material at 25%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The overall low percentage seems to arise from a definition of waste that includes many categories. Mining waste is the largest component:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mining and quarrying activities give rise to the single biggest waste stream at 29% of the total quantity of waste generated in EEA countries. It has been shown that approximately 50% of the material extracted during extraction and mining activities in Europe becomes waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next-largest component is Construction and Demolition waste. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T17:07:53.123" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7616" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7730" CreationDate="2012-01-19T17:54:48.237" Score="12" ViewCount="752" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across this claim on a currently selling &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/Versatile_Performance/N51Vf/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Asus laptop&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MTlKF.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My gut reaction is that this is just a marketing gimmick.  Is there any way to validate Asus's claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5797" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T16:43:00.973" Title="Air Ionizers built in to laptops - Marketing gimmick?" Tags="|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7614" CreationDate="2012-01-19T18:20:44.000" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is explosives rather than contraband and assuming you take a court verdict as proof, then &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindawi_affair&quot;&gt;the Hindawi Affair&lt;/a&gt; is certainly one incident - in that case, a man planted explosives in his fiancee's luggage. Might not be exactly what you are looking for, since the planter was known to the victim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2008025469_webairportdrugs30.html&quot;&gt;story from Narita International Airport in Tokyo&lt;/a&gt;, drugs were planted and then removed by customs officials to check their sniffer dogs' effectiveness - it became a story when they missed removing one. It is another case that isn't quite what you are looking for, as the planting was for 'training purposes'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-01-19T23:24:34.433" LastActivityDate="2012-01-19T23:24:34.433" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7614" CreationDate="2012-01-20T01:24:50.753" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Slovak citizen (without his knowledge) had a detonation device planted in his luggage by security personnel as part of airport security test. The device was not found at the airport and the person was arrested later in Dublin after the Irish police were informed about the device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://zpravy.idnes.cz/irove-zatkli-slovaka-kteremu-policie-podstrcila-vybusninu-p4y-/zahranicni.aspx?c=A100105_213702_zahranicni_lf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IDnes news article Jan 5 2010&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Irská policie zatkla Slováka, který nevědomky dopravil do Irska 90 gramů výbušniny, krátce poté ho ale propustila. Výbušninu mu totiž v rámci nepodařeného bezpečnostního experimentu do zavazadla dali slovenští bezpečnostní agenti.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Irish police has arrested a Slovak citizen who unknowingly transported 90 grams of explosives into the Ireland, but released him shortly after. It showed up the explosives were given into the luggage by a Slovak security agents in an experiment which went awry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person was released shortly, there was no offence brought against him, but as the question is about arrest, it seems to qualify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Together with &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/7617/79&quot;&gt;DJClayworth's answer&lt;/a&gt; it seems that the risk of being planted a contraband from police / security personel might be comparable or higher to that from a smuggler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2024-01-04T01:59:19.407" LastActivityDate="2024-01-04T01:59:19.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7608" CreationDate="2012-01-20T04:47:01.460" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my eyes, this is a stock-standard media beat-up story. Everybody is playing their respective roles to the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The television news are promoting the dramatic angle of a threat to our innocent and a citizen standing up for his children, all the while milking* a story that has an opportunity to show teenage girls, which rates well. (* They are revisiting an earlier story, because there is a new report, which they largely ignore for all but a few seconds, to focus on the teenagers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The M.D., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dentinstitute.com/directory/people/show/laszlo-l-mechtler&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Laszlo Mechtler&lt;/a&gt; from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dentinstitute.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dent Neurologic Institute&lt;/a&gt;, calmly (I would say &quot;patiently&quot;, but a hint of impatience seems to be coming through!) explains that there is no mystery. His patients have been diagnosed with cases of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Conversion Disorder&lt;/a&gt;, (formerly known as &quot;hysteria&quot;). It rarely appears as &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mass hysteria&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, but it is a known condition, especially amongst impressionable females.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Brook Dupont's father (perhaps because of the stigma associated with mental illness or perhaps because he doesn't understand that the diagnosis is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; suggesting that they are faking it, is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; suggesting are not suffering and is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; suggesting that they all got sick together &quot;by coincidence&quot;,) hasn't accepted that answer, and seems to be criticising the school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The girls, perhaps coached, are demanding answers, &quot;straight answers&quot;. A strange request that seems to assume that illness is something that is assigned to people by elected officials who have to respond to their public for their decisions. It also ignores that their doctor has given the press a straight answer, and presumably them too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The school, being an innocent party coming under fire, have retreated, and paid for independent inspectors, in what appears to be an attempt to defend against criticism and cover their backs. The inspectors conclude, exactly as the doctor's diagnosis would have predicted, there is no environmental issues at the school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The school's statement, excerpted by the reporter, says they consider &quot;that the symptoms are real.&quot; This is perfectly in keeping with the school accepting the psychogenic diagnosis, and them trying establish that they don't consider such symptoms as being &quot;made up&quot; or any less debilitating for being a mental, rather than a physical, issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;em&gt;just by watching the report, and listening to the actual experts quoted&lt;/em&gt;, we see that it &lt;em&gt;is not&lt;/em&gt; an school-based environmental issue, and that it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a diagnosed &lt;strong&gt;case of a rare, but known mental disorder,  Mass Hysteria&lt;/strong&gt; (or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_Psychogenic_Illness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mass Psychogenic Illness&lt;/a&gt;, if you prefer). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@KonradRudolph has identified a recent article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/mystery-us-outbreak-prompts-further-tests-1.10052&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nature News&lt;/a&gt; that claims the outbreak &quot;confounds experts&quot;. Unfortunately, it fails to name who those experts are. It claims &quot;the LeRoy situation doesn’t fit the diagnosis very well, say sceptics&quot;, without explaining who those skeptics are or how they sourced their information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, an earlier article in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buffalonews.com/city/communities/batavia-genesee-county/article716955.ece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Buffalo News&lt;/a&gt; actually interviews many of the experts involved in the case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the many physicians who have consulted, examined, tested and diagnosed these students -- rendering first, second and third opinions -- don't think the disease is a mystery at all. And they aren't baffled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They've come to the same conclusion: These students suffer from a real physical condition that has an underlying psychological cause. Individually, they suffer from conversion disorder, and collectively, they suffer from mass psychogenic illness, also commonly referred to as mass hysteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to explain how the matter was escalated, with different levels of the health system being consulted, and extensive tests run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be fair, there is one doctor who disagrees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A number of them are having their children evaluated this weekend by Dr. Rosario Trifiletti, a New Jersey-based child neurologist in private practice, and the only physician to have publicly disputed the conversion disorder diagnosis as &quot;garbage&quot; on WGRZ-TV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr Trifiletti is an expert in a controversial maybe-disease &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PANDAS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PANDAS&lt;/a&gt;, and suspects that this is the cause. The legitimacy of PANDAS as a diagnosis would probably make an excellent separate Skeptics.SE question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leroycsd.org/district.cfm?subpage=1458956&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;school continues to be under fire&lt;/a&gt;, trying to manage the levels of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leroycsd.org/files/1458956/leroy%20statement%20jan%2027.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;speculation, misinformation&lt;/a&gt; and even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leroycsd.org/files/1458956/press%20release,%20jan.%2018,%202012%20le%20roy%20csd.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;trespassing&lt;/a&gt; of the local and national media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2012/02/29/whats-causing-cheerleader-hysteria-hypnosis-holds-a-clue/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Discover Magazine has an article&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iop.kcl.ac.uk/staff/profile/default.aspx?go=10947&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr Vaughan Bell&lt;/a&gt; that elaborates further about the disease that has been diagnosed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="26361" LastEditDate="2017-06-16T21:32:07.290" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T21:32:07.290" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7622" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8295" CreationDate="2012-01-20T07:09:49.387" Score="32" ViewCount="3439" Body="&lt;p&gt;The National Post article &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/12/29/zombie-cheeseburger-mcdonalds-patty-bun-cheese-unchanged-after-one-year-sitting-on-kitchen-counter/&quot;&gt;Zombie cheeseburger? McDonald’s patty, bun, cheese unchanged after one year sitting on kitchen counter&lt;/a&gt; features a cheeseburger that hasn't changed one year after being left on a table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professional nutritionist Melanie Hesketh uses this cheeseburger &quot;to educate our patients that what they’re putting into their bodies may not be healthy,&quot; and chiropractor Michelle Prince is quoted as saying that &quot;People forget what real food is.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this experiment indicate that there's anything abnormal or unhealthy about its food?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further evidence of this claim being in the wild, check out &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=404141046345557&amp;amp;set=a.311893465570316.70744.311329758960020&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot;&gt;this Facebook post by Nutrition-Nurse.com.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our fast &quot;food&quot; display is now 2 years old. The word food is questionable, since the bread-like and meat-like substances have not molded or spoiled in any way. Bugs won't even bother with it. Please think twice about giving this to your kids. You have a choice, but they don't. We truly are what we eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T17:25:34.923" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T17:25:34.923" Title="Do McDonald's burgers have an unnaturally long lifespan?" Tags="|nutrition|mcdonalds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7624" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-20T12:44:39.597" Score="8" ViewCount="2934" Body="&lt;p&gt;By warm oils I mean &quot;pepper seed oil&quot;, and &quot;sesame oil&quot;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;These oils are said to have inherent warmth due to which they increase blood circulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The secret of essential oils' effectiveness lies in the speed at which they are absorbed through our skin. They can reach the blood stream in 20 minutes to half an hour maximum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pureinsideout.com/essential-oils.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Triphala Guggulu&lt;/strong&gt; contains the detoxfying action of triphala with the &lt;strong&gt;penetrating action of guggulu&lt;/strong&gt;.It is said to promote normal cholesterol levels, support proper weight management and remove deep seated toxins from joints and tissues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.holheal.com/ayurved4.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ayurvediccure.com/guggul.htm&quot;&gt;Guggulu's English name&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I warm a normal oil manually &lt;em&gt;(assuming it is absorbent)&lt;/em&gt;, will it penetrate the same way as those warm oils?&#xA;In India normally we apply &lt;em&gt;&quot;coconut oil&quot;&lt;/em&gt; to our hair. Also, sometimes the oil of &lt;em&gt;&quot;Indian gooseberry&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT 1:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailyglow.com/hair-care-treatments/hot-oil-treatment.html&quot;&gt;dailyglow.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DIY Hot-Oil Treatments&#xA;  It’s easy to whip up a hot-oil treatment at home if you prefer, and you likely already have everything you need in your kitchen and bathroom. To start, blend together equal parts of olive and canola oil — three tablespoons or so of each should do it — and warm them in the microwave. You want the oil to be warm but comfortable to handle, not hot. Use your hands to apply the warm oil to damp hair, working it over every strand. Follow up with a wide-toothed comb for even coverage, if necessary. Wrap your hair with a warm towel or a shower cap and leave the oil on for 30 minutes, then rinse and follow up with a gentle shampoo. If you like, you can experiment with adding other oils to the mix. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5341" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T13:27:23.253" LastActivityDate="2022-09-03T11:09:23.763" Title="Do the warm oils penetrate the skin the same way as a normal oil would after manual warming?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|cosmetics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7626" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7627" CreationDate="2012-01-20T13:00:24.467" Score="18" ViewCount="2155" Body="&lt;p&gt;Until recently, I have only heard about studies proving electrosensitivity being entirely a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo&quot;&gt;nocebo&lt;/a&gt; effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I just found out about a study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/15368379109031410&quot;&gt;Electromagnetic Field Sensitivity, William J. Real et al., 1991&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not myself read the study, but it claims it was a double blind test containing 16 subjects. 100% of the ones that were allergic responded to the electricity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any attempts to repeat the same study? Does it have any known critisism?&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5625" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T12:44:03.893" LastActivityDate="2019-12-28T16:46:44.740" Title="Is the &quot;Electromagnetic Field Sensitivity&quot; study reliable?" Tags="|medical-science|allergies|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7626" CreationDate="2012-01-20T14:44:26.373" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Where you have a number of studies with conflicting results, it is time for a meta-analysis, which carefully combines a number of studies, to get a more statistically powerful sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study was cited by a meta-analysis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;G. James Rubin, Jayati Das Munshi and Simon Wessely, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/content/67/2/224.short&quot;&gt;Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity: A Systematic Review of Provocation Studies&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Psychosomatic Medicine 67:224-232 (2005), doi: 10.1097/​01.psy.0000155664.13300.64&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their abstract covers the territory very well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Objectives: The objectives of this study were to assess whether people who report hypersensitivity to weak electromagnetic fields (EMFs) are better at detecting EMF under blind or double-blind conditions than nonhypersensitive individuals, and to test whether they respond to the presence of EMF with increased symptom reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perfect - that seems to be directly aimed at your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results: Thirty-one experiments testing 725 &quot;electromagnetically hypersensitive&quot; participants were identified. Twenty-four of these found no evidence to support the existence of a biophysical hypersensitivity, whereas 7 reported some supporting evidence. For 2 of these 7, the same research groups subsequently tried and failed to replicate their findings. In 3 more, the positive results appear to be statistical artefacts. The final 2 studies gave mutually incompatible results. Our metaanalyses found no evidence of an improved ability to detect EMF in &quot;hypersensitive&quot; participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure where the &lt;em&gt;Real et al&lt;/em&gt; study fit in here, but if it gave a positive result, it was in the minority. (Although, it should also be considered by its sample size and methodological strength, which aren't covered by the numbers here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusions: The symptoms described by &quot;electromagnetic hypersensitivity&quot; sufferers can be severe and are sometimes disabling. However, it has proved difficult to show under blind conditions that exposure to EMF can trigger these symptoms. This suggests that &quot;electromagnetic hypersensitivity&quot; is unrelated to the presence of EMF, although more research into this phenomenon is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, nocebo appears to be a plausible explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T14:44:26.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7624" CreationDate="2012-01-20T15:28:43.320" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason these oils seem to penetrate more is due to the irritation caused by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/tc/capsaicin-topic-overview&quot;&gt;Capsaicin&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/tc/capsaicin-topic-overview&quot;&gt;Web MD&lt;/a&gt; Says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a capsaicin cream or ointment is used on the skin (topical use),&#xA;  capsaicin helps relieve pain. Capsaicin works by first stimulating and&#xA;  then decreasing the intensity of pain signals in the body. Although&#xA;  pain may at first increase, it usually decreases after the first use.&#xA;  Capsaicin stimulates the release of a compound believed to be involved&#xA;  in communicating pain between the nerves in the spinal cord and other&#xA;  parts of the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while the oils feel like they are penetrating more I find no claims that it is actually absorbed by the skin at a greater rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T15:28:43.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7567" CreationDate="2012-01-20T17:55:32.970" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scam School also &lt;a href=&quot;http://revision3.com/scamschool/humanblockhead&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;demonstrated how to do this&lt;/a&gt; a while back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2888" LastActivityDate="2012-01-20T17:55:32.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7633" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7686" CreationDate="2012-01-20T18:13:48.647" Score="21" ViewCount="1553" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the years I've heard many claims of the ability to have very little sleep every day, sometimes including weekends and vacation, and be highly functional at work. Most recently these claims showed up on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://productivity.stackexchange.com/questions/2268/at-what-time-do-early-risers-go-to-sleep-at-night&quot;&gt;Personal Productivity SE&lt;/a&gt; both in answers and comments. My intuition tells me that at least some claims like this will be boasting, but I don't think that it's sufficient to reject the possibility just because I don't work this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the article for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_debt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sleep debt&lt;/a&gt; seems to point to controversy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are some people really just wired to sleep very little and work very hard without penalty? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5811" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:18.737" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T21:49:52.297" Title="Are there people who can naturally and sustainably function with much less sleep than average?" Tags="|medical-science|sleep|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7611" CreationDate="2012-01-21T03:32:57.227" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I am aware there have been no empirical studies that give even the slightest indication that auras exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pyshcics who claims to be able to detect auras have been tested somewhat informally, never doing better than chance and sometimes doing worse. One notable example may be when James Randi &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZeQGld5QBU&quot;&gt;tested a person&lt;/a&gt; claiming to read auras and that person did only slightly better than what would be expected by chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another more indepth scientific &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/research/an-experiment-with-the-alleged-human-aura-1/&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; took place with four screens as well as a control group. Ten people claiming to see auras and 9 people making no such claim were selected, with all 19 having to guess behind which of the four screens the test subject was placed. At almost 1500 trials the control group did slightly better than the group claiming to see auras.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It stands to reason that anything visible to certain humans should be observable objectively with various tools and equipment. To date there has been no successful detection of anything aura like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a more likely explanation is the condition Synaesthesia in which people can see colors in response to various stimuli. Of interest however is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810011002868&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; that seems to show that the claims of aura-seers and the experiences of people afflicted with Synaesthesia differ significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T03:32:57.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7531" CreationDate="2012-01-21T08:24:27.010" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is perhaps a type of sublimation. To quote from the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=V6t3csvinK4C&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PT68&amp;amp;dq=music%20express%20emotion%20sublimation&amp;amp;ots=uuY9x3xeCs&amp;amp;sig=u_n4_aG2Qvs1SFnhth_g5JYwBS0&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Music therapy in the treatment of adults with mental disorders&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;according to Noy (1967) uses of music within psychoanalytic therapy&#xA;  included (1)music as a means of sublimation for channeling instinctual&#xA;  drives in a socially acceptable manner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublimation_%28psychology%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;sublimation is a mature type of defence mechanism where socially&#xA;  unacceptable impulses or idealizations are consciously transformed&#xA;  into socially acceptable actions or behaviour, possibly converting the&#xA;  initial impulse in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be evidence that music can influence the emotion of the listener. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://pom.sagepub.com/content/37/1/61.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; found that emotion induced in the listener was the same as the emotion expressed in the music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, to quote from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/music/#3.2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Philosophy of Music&lt;/a&gt; from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shifting focus from benefits located in the expressive work to those&#xA;  located in the emotional listener, the oldest suggestion is&#xA;  Aristotle's theory of catharsis, according which our negative&#xA;  emotional response to negatively expressive art results in a&#xA;  (positive) psychological purgation of the negative emotions (Aristotle&#xA;  1987, 36-9 (ch. 6)). A less therapeutic approach is the suggestion&#xA;  that, since these emotions are without ‘life implications’ (that is,&#xA;  as discussed above, we are not sad about anything), we are able to&#xA;  take advantage of our responses to savor these emotions, gain an&#xA;  understanding of them, and be reassured that we have the capacity to&#xA;  feel them (Levinson 1982).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any studies examining specifically if listening to depressing music while depressed can be beneficial.There is an abundance of literature showing however that music in general can be beneficial for helping people with depression. It would then not surprise me if some people such as your girlfriend do find it beneficial, perhaps as a form of catharsis as proposed by Aristotle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-01-21T12:22:39.010" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T12:22:39.010" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7605" CreationDate="2012-01-21T11:43:19.557" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find these types of issues interesting, although it can be hard to answer the question as many different answers are possible depending on how you look at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, how is driving ability to be measured? Speeding tickets? Accident rate? Surveys of the general driving population?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps car accidents are a decent indicator given that it is widely accepted that human error is the cause of most accidents. This study states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to research done in Germany, human error is the major cause&#xA;  in more than 90 percent of the accidents, and in almost 75 percent of&#xA;  the cases human error is the only cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 1985 report based on British and American crash data found driver&#xA;  error, intoxication and other human factors contribute wholly or&#xA;  partly to about 93% of crashes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had a lot of trouble finding reliable statistics on car accidents per manufacturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moneyexpert.com/financial-news/car-insurance/800568061/arehondadriversthemostaccidentprone/article.aspx&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; (which doesn't show the source of its data) which states that for data collected over 12 months from 2011 to 2011, the top 3 most accident prone cars according to this data were the Honda FR-V, the Volvo XC90 and in third place the Lexus RX.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to note that this in no way indicates that BMW are not the worst drivers (using accidents as a metric) due to the limited amount of data I was able to find. However I could find nothing to support the claim that BMW drivers are the worst, or even any worse than drivers of cars from other manufacturers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T11:43:19.557" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7641" CreationDate="2012-01-21T17:16:27.803" Score="48" ViewCount="33953" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Batman movies, Batman is called when a powerful yellow spotlight with the bat drawing is projected in Gotham City's clouds. The unique drawing then become very clearly visible in the clouds on the entire city. Is this actually possible or at least plausible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5762" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:30:24.250" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:30:24.250" Title="Is a spotlight like the Bat-Signal possible?" Tags="|light|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7605" CreationDate="2012-01-21T20:40:00.703" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently a Dutch tv channel &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rtl.nl/components/financien/rtlz/nieuws/2012/03/profiel-hardrijder-mercedes-almere.xml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; on speeding on Dutch roads.The conclusions were based on the number of camera tickets issued between October 2010 and October 2011. They linked speeding to car make. Interestingly, the most speeding drivers are in the age frame &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rtl.nl/actueel/rtlnieuws/home/flitspalen.xml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;50-59&lt;/a&gt;.  So if you consider speeding bad driving, there is some &quot;data&quot; (see side node below). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to their report the drivers of grey mercedes' are the worst followed by Audi and then the BMW. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some side notes remain. First  the journalists who conducted this study only mention absolute numbers without correcting for the distribution of the car models on the Dutch highways. They also only &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rtl.nl/actueel/rtlnieuws/home/flitspalen.xml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; on their findings without releasing the actual data.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5141" LastEditorUserId="5141" LastEditDate="2012-01-21T20:45:08.120" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T20:45:08.120" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7639" CreationDate="2012-01-21T21:24:27.280" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;, it is possible to project images onto clouds, and it has been for quite some time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;Sky Projector from &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/11/04/sky-projector-uses-clouds-as-night-advertising-medium/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1931&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CB0hn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sky Projector&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forteantimes.com/features/profiles/193/grindell_death_ray_matthews.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fortean Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the late 1920s, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harrygrindellmatthews.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harry Grindell Matthews&lt;/a&gt; was back in Britain with a series of new,&#xA;bold inventions which actually worked. &lt;strong&gt;His piece de resistance was a&#xA;device to project advertisements on clouds&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On Christmas Eve 1930 he stunned London by projecting the image of an&#xA;angel onto clouds above Hampstead Heath.&lt;/strong&gt; The apparition was so&#xA;realistic that people miles away apparently fell to their knees in&#xA;worship, believing the Second Coming was at hand!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He followed this&#xA;with demonstrations in New York, where he projected the Stars and&#xA;Stripes 10,000ft (3,000m) above the city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/X6ugo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Improved Sky Projector&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harrygrindellmatthews.com/MountainLab.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Matthew's improved Sky Projector&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A more recent example:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/arts/03iht-jessop.1.16636428.html?scp=1&amp;amp;sq=singapore%20biennale&amp;amp;st=cse&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The New York Times&lt;/a&gt; (2008)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Like the giant Batman sign projected into the night skies of Gotham&#xA;City, the text &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Beware of the God&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; suddenly appeared in the&#xA;Singaporean sky mid-September&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 30-minute projection, repeated over&#xA;several nights, was the work of Deborah Kelly, part of the opening&#xA;week of the Singapore Biennale 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Photos from Sydney (projected from the roof of the &lt;em&gt;Museum of Contemporary Art&lt;/em&gt; ) can be seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bewareofthegod.com/?cat=9&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ex8JZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Beware Of The God&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-21T21:24:27.280" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-22T07:03:52.220" Score="14" ViewCount="880" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ninjas are alleged to have determined the depth of moats by taking a reed that's attached to the bottom of the moat, and measuring the height of the reed above water, and how far forward they had to push the reed until it was submerged, and using Pythagoras' theorem. Is this the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some characters in the Japanese drama series &quot;Nihonjin No Shiranai Nihongo&quot; debate this claim, starting from around &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/xMTDxxcdnXg?t=2m&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; in this YouTube clip. As background, while most of the students in the class are fairly silly, the character who speaks at 2:48 saying that Pythagoras' theorem was mentioned in Edo period documents is a very serious and studious individual, and therefore unlikely to support bogus claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is also mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol9no2/html/v09i2a06p_0001.htm&quot;&gt;this CIA document&lt;/a&gt; posted in 2007. Apart from the paragraph about ninjas turning into a stone, most of the content in the document is at least plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="15980" LastEditDate="2014-10-21T19:41:59.437" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T19:41:59.437" Title="Did ninjas use Pythagoras' theorem to determine the depth of moats?" Tags="|history|japan|mathematics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7633" CreationDate="2012-01-22T10:50:17.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A meta-analysis of sleep studies suggest both &amp;quot;too little&amp;quot; sleep is associated with stroke risk, while &amp;quot;too much&amp;quot; sleep is associated with heart disease and stroke risks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Francesco P. Cappuccio, Daniel Cooper, Lanfranco D'Elia, Pasquale Strazzullo and Michelle A. Miller, &lt;a href=&quot;http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/32/12/1484.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sleep duration predicts cardiovascular outcomes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies&lt;/a&gt; Eur Heart J (2011) 32 (12): 1484-1492.doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehr007&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their conclusion, they state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, there is no evidence that sleeping habitually between 6 and 8 h per day in an adult is associated with harm and long-term health consequences. However, sleeping 9 h or more per night may represent a useful diagnostic tool for detecting subclinical or undiagnosed co-morbidity. &lt;strong&gt;People reporting consistently sleeping 5 h or less per night should be regarded as a higher risk group for cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the results they explain a little more of the robustness of these results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the pooled analysis, short duration of sleep was associated with a greater risk of developing or dying of stroke (RR 1.15, 1.00–1.31, P = 0.047) with no evidence of publication bias (P = 0.30) and no heterogeneity between studies (I2= 0%, Q = 4.34, P = 0.50) (Figure 2A).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the pooled analysis, short duration of sleep was weakly and not significantly associated with a greater risk of developing or dying of total CVD (RR 1.03, 0.93–1.15, P = 0.52) with no evidence of publication bias (P = 0.46) and no heterogeneity between studies (I2= 0%, Q = 3.42, P = 0.97) (Figure 3A).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is evidence of correlation, not causation. Some confounding factor might affect both sleep and stroke risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not attempted to demonstrate personal productivity effects or over all mortality risk. I have just to shown that the short sleepers don't get by completely &amp;quot;without penalty&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-22T10:50:17.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3028" CreationDate="2012-01-22T12:18:27.290" Score="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a touchy issue. I think it is important to note that the question of &quot;Is a woman who dresses sexually suggestively more likely to get raped, at least in some instances&quot; which is the question being asked from &quot;Is a woman who dresses sexually suggestively at all to blame if she suffers from rape&quot; which is often the question people &lt;em&gt;respond&lt;/em&gt; to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many studies showing that people will be more likely to attribute blame to women who are provocatively dressed without saying anything about whether or not the chances of rape are increased in some situations. Those studies are linked in the other answers to this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some studies have shown that provocative dress can have an affect on the likelihood of sexual assault, at least in some instances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Antecedents of sexual victimization: factors discriminating victims from nonvictims.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Synovitz LB, Byrne TJ., J Am Coll Health. Jan;46(4):151-8. (1998)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Partial abstract:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The variables found to be related to women's being sexually victimized&#xA;  were (a) number of different lifetime sexual partners, (b) provocative&#xA;  dress, and (c) alcohol use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An Examination of Date Rape, Victim Dress, and Perceiver Variables Within the Context of Attribution Theory&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Workman JE, Freeburg EW., Sex Roles, Volume 41, Numbers 3-4, 261-277 (1995)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study found in part that the way a woman choose to dress is sometimes taken as a statement about her character including vulnerability, desire and/or willingness to have sex and provocation of males which consequently affects the likelihood of rape, including date rape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The effects of clothing and dyad sex composition on perceptions of sexual intent: Do women and men evaluate these cues differently.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abbey, A., Cozzarelli, C., McLaughlin, K., &amp;amp; Harnish, R. J. (1987) Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 17, 108–126. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Partial abstract:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A laboratory study was conducted in which subjects viewed a photograph&#xA;  of two students in a classroom. As predicted, male subjects rated&#xA;  female targets as more sexy and seductive than did female subjects.&#xA;  Also as predicted, female targets who wore revealing clothing were&#xA;  rated as more sexy and seductive than those wearing nonrevealing&#xA;  clothing. Female targets were rated higher on sexual traits regardless&#xA;  of the gender of their partner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study went on to infer that provocative dress can lead to an increased chance of date or spousal rape in some situations (primarily spousal and/or date rape).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is an unpopular view, I think it is safe to say that provocative dress &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; increase the chance of rape &lt;em&gt;in some situations&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment it is hard to say anything for sure, as there are too many variable factors. Rape statistics are often misreported or not reported at all. We don't know enough about how people interpret or respond to clothing. There also seems to be a lack of studies focusing on this area, which is understandable given the problems in obtaining data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorDisplayName="user6327" LastEditDate="2012-01-23T11:21:39.890" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T11:21:39.890" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7646" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-22T14:07:11.120" Score="16" ViewCount="27019" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in Nicaragua recently and noted many restaurants and convenience stores had small sandwich sized bags filled with water hanging at their entrances. When I asked why, they said it was to repel mosquitoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seemed to be a widely held belief even extending to other countries in Central America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not found a reliable source claiming that bags filled with water can repel mosquitoes, but I hope that these sites can help to corroborate what I personally noted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=21747&quot;&gt;Plastic bags of water as mosquito repellent - JREF Forum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diylife.com/2007/07/03/banish-mosquitoes-naturally-on-the-cheap/&quot;&gt;Banish mosquitoes naturally on the cheap - DIY Life&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://community.discovery.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/9701967776/m/41119434201&quot;&gt;That hanging plastic bags filled with water will repel Mosquitoes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware that the more common claim seems to be about flies and that this was busted on an episode of MythBusters. It is the claim that bags of water can repel mosquitoes which interests me however, given how common it was in some parts of Central America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2012-02-06T23:25:08.853" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T14:46:33.633" Title="Can small bags of water repel mosquitoes?" Tags="|biology|zoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7648" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-22T16:39:15.980" Score="9" ViewCount="2212" Body="&lt;p&gt;Similar Questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/138/is-the-bates-method-for-improving-eyesight-efficacious&quot;&gt;Is the Bates Method for improving eyesight efficacious?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2482/strange-way-of-improving-eyesight-could-it-work&quot;&gt;Strange way of improving eyesight — Could it work?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do raster glasses, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.numeno.si/en/models.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;these&lt;/a&gt;, work for improving eyesight (if you are for example short-sighted)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VISION FIX trains the muscles of the eye by forcing the eye to jump from hole to hole to see a complete picture. As a result of this ocular muscles are working and thus becoming stronger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vision Fix eyetrainers stimulate ocular muscles and the blood supply of the eyes. They improve visual acuity and stop the exhaustion of the eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Raster glasses developement is based on researches and discoveries of famous oftalmologists (Bates, Koplak, Schneider) who find out that we can fix eyesight with special techniques and exercises but very few people have the time and patience to practise exercises. That is why the raster glasses are perfect solution and alternative because they provide ocular muscle training that can be done during daily activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on researches made by institut of science and technology from Russian ministry of health was given positive opinion about the effects of wearing the raster glasses by prof. doc. N.P. Pashtaeva.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in the long-term improvement: correcting your eye sight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5825" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T00:46:19.003" Title="Do raster glasses work for improving eyesight?" Tags="|physiology|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7651" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7658" CreationDate="2012-01-23T01:05:22.663" Score="7" ViewCount="670" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gerson therapy is a hypothesis that diseases can be caused by various toxins and attempts to heal a subject by a strict all natural diet in addition to attempting to clean the body with things such as coffee, castor oil or ozone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://gerson.org/GersonTherapy/gersontherapy.htm&quot;&gt;gerson.org website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With its whole-body approach to healing, the Gerson Therapy naturally&#xA;  reactivates your body's magnificent ability to heal itself - with no&#xA;  damaging side-effects. Over 200 articles in respected medical&#xA;  literature, and thousands of people cured of their &quot;incurable&quot;&#xA;  diseases document the Gerson Therapy's effectiveness. The Gerson&#xA;  Therapy is one of the few treatments to have a 60 year history of&#xA;  success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have many studies been done on this subject? If so, what do they show?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T20:48:13.337" Title="Is there any scientific evidence to support the theory behind Gerson Therapy?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7652" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-23T03:55:48.047" Score="6" ViewCount="589" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife has been abstaining from dying her hair during pregnancy. Now the baby is born, I suggested she could use the dye again. She said no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A search online was inconclusive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A pregnant woman at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babycenter.com/400_hair-dye_2520707_349.bc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BabyCenter.com&lt;/a&gt; claims her doctor warned against in the first trimester of pregnancy only.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smellybrain.com/can-i-dye-my-hair-while-breastfeeding/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SmellyBrain&lt;/a&gt; claims doctors think it is safe during nursing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A third page (Note: link missing) simply says there are no reports. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these cite any research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone clear up this muddle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5831" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-23T17:50:06.450" LastActivityDate="2016-12-20T09:50:07.280" Title="Is it safe for nursing mothers to dye their hair?" Tags="|consumer-products|pregnancy|reproduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7653" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7655" CreationDate="2012-01-23T04:18:33.370" Score="17" ViewCount="2564" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am curious on if the prohibition or persuasion of something increases the odds of someone wanting to do the opposite of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_psychology&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is the definition of reverse psychology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Reverse psychology&lt;/em&gt; is a technique involving the advocacy of a belief or behavior that is opposite to the one desired, with the expectation&#xA;  that this approach will encourage the subject of the persuasion to do&#xA;  what actually is desired: the opposite of what is suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5832" LastEditorUserId="5832" LastEditDate="2012-02-13T04:39:51.737" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T04:39:51.737" Title="Does &quot;reverse psychology&quot; work?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7653" CreationDate="2012-01-23T07:29:07.513" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In psychology, there is a concept of Paradoxical Intervention. It is mentioned on the same the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_psychology#The_paradoxical_intervention&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; you cited, but is perhaps more clearly &lt;a href=&quot;http://williamhaywriter.blogspot.com/2010/08/paradoxical-intervention.html&quot;&gt;defined by writer, William Hay&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a paradoxical intervention the therapist tells a person to do something with the intention of achieving the exact opposite result. The most extreme example is the therapist telling a suicidal patient to kill themselves with the result that the patient becomes non suicidal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is clearly one form of &quot;reverse psychology&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it work? This was examined in a meta-analysis of twelve studies in 1987:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shoham-Salomon, Varda;Rosenthal, Robert &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/ccp/55/1/22/&quot;&gt;Paradoxical interventions: A meta-analysis.&lt;/a&gt;, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol 55(1), Feb 1987, 22-28. doi: 10.1037/0022-006X.55.1.22&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The effectiveness of paradoxical interventions in psychotherapy was evaluated in a meta-analysis of 12 data sets. &lt;strong&gt;Overall, paradoxical interventions were as effective as (but not more effective than) the typical treatment mode.&lt;/strong&gt; However, paradoxical interventions showed relatively greater effectiveness than other interventions (a) 1 month after treatment termination and (b) with more severe cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, reverse psychology can work in a clinical setting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I am ignoring the more typical setting of dealing with recalcitrant children, because I think that has been shown to be somewhat effective in the short-term by virtually every parent.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T07:29:07.513" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7657" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7673" CreationDate="2012-01-23T12:04:25.130" Score="13" ViewCount="1303" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many copyright owners claim that every time someone pirates content (e.g. a song, a film, software) that they have lost money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some make a stronger claim: that every pirated download is hurting their revenues by the full current price of the content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RIAA and Lionsgate Entertainment had both submitted requests for&#xA;  restitution—they had argued that each individual copy of content&#xA;  downloaded through Elite Torrents was the equivalent of a lost sale.&#xA;  For example, the RIAA said that 183 albums were transferred through Dove's &#xA;  server 17,281 times, then multiplied that by the wholesale price of a digital album &#xA;  in 2005 ($7.22) to conclude that its member companies were owed almost $124,769 in&#xA;  restitution,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/01/judge-17000-illegal-downloads-dont-equal-17000-lost-sales.ars&quot;&gt;Judge: 17,000 illegal downloads don't equal 17,000 lost sales&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Sometimes, there is a dispute about whether such controversial claims are strawmen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A representative from the BSA [...] claims they have never argued that every pirated copy is a lost sale. The lead conclusion of their piracy study suggests otherwise [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2004/07/4008.ars&quot;&gt;IDC says piracy loss figure is misleading&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence-based economic reason to support or dismiss this strong version of the claim: that every pirated download costs the copyright-owner the equivalent of (or close to)  the sales price in lost revenues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hint: This has triggered a discussion amongst the moderators (and others) about how such a question could be meaningfully answered. As a result, answers are likely to be subjected to a fair amount of scrutiny. Please ensure your answers are &lt;em&gt;evidence-based&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorDisplayName="user6327" LastEditDate="2012-01-25T00:01:33.713" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T00:01:33.713" Title="Does every act of piracy impact revenue by the current content price?" Tags="|economics|copyright|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7651" CreationDate="2012-01-23T14:36:31.167" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without getting into the blatant commercialism on the site, I'll concentrate on the 'detoxification' recommendation of: Coffee Enemas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are most often touted as being either detoxifying (as in the Gerson Therapy), a preventative for cancer or a treatment for cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence that coffee enemas are beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ernst, E. M.D., Ph.d., F.R.C.P. (Edin). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9252839?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Colonic Irrigation and the Theory of Autointoxication: A Triumph of Ignorance over Science.&lt;/a&gt; Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology. 24(4):196-198, June 1997. (Make sure to follow the references to the primary sources).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Green, S. &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/268/22/3224.extract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A critique of the rationale for cancer treatment with coffee enemas and diet&lt;/a&gt;. JAMA. 1992,Dec 9; 269(13),1635-6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alison Reed, Nicholas James and Karol Sikora.Mexico: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/014067369092162B&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Juices, coffee enemas, and cancer. The Lancet&lt;/a&gt;. Volume 336, Issue 8716, 15 September 1990, Pages 677-678.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cassileth, B. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20361473&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gerson Regime&lt;/a&gt;. Oncology, Volume 24, Issue 2, 2010 Page 201.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence that coffee enemas can cause harm:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keum, B. et al. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20054322&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Proctocolitis caused by coffee enemas&lt;/a&gt; Am J Gastroenterol. 2010 Jan;105(1):229-30.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to go pick up my son from daycare, but I'll discuss the ozone portion shortly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...shortly is about a week later! Sorry guys! Life intruded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing on the Gerson page specifically mentions ozone therapy, at least not that I've seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone suggesting you inhale ozone is, quite simply, an idiot.  They're also putting your health at risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ozone is a pollutant in the atmosphere. (It's vital in the stratosphere, but tropospheric and atmospheric O3 is a pollutant and detrimental to human health.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ozone exposure has been long known to exacerbate asthma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2802%2907597-9/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;McConnell, et al Asthma in exercising children exposed to ozone: a cohort study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ozone in your indoor air will also react with any VVOC, VOC or SVOC - very volatile organic compound (formaldehyde, methanol, methane), volatile organic compound (benzene, limonene), or semi volatile organic compound (PAHs) - the same as it does when it creates photochemical smog outdoors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastEditorUserId="1063" LastEditDate="2012-01-27T20:48:13.337" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T20:48:13.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7659" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7661" CreationDate="2012-01-23T15:18:16.043" Score="11" ViewCount="2403" Body="&lt;p&gt;One man who believes that nuclear energy is bad for nature told me that living near to a nuclear power plant causes cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I visited one nuclear power plant and they confirmed the words of our physics teacher that the atomic energy is good for nature in comparison to car gases and other types of power plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'd like to see some article that supports or denies the hypothesis that living near to a nuclear power plant can cause cancer and if so, how high the risk is in comparison with other environmental factors causing cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe, there is higher risk of cancer when living near to thermal power station and the energy gain is much smaller in opposite to nuclear power station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2103" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-02-19T20:24:53.587" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T20:24:53.587" Title="Does living near a nuclear power plant cause cancer?" Tags="|cancer|environmental-health|nuclear-energy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7648" CreationDate="2012-01-23T16:11:38.357" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the immediate effect of increasing focus at the expense of &quot;lightness&quot; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_camera&quot;&gt;well established&lt;/a&gt;, there seem to be no studies supporting long-term vision improvement. In fact, companies selling this product in the United States are not allowed to  claim any long-term effect due to the lack of formal clinical studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.casewatch.org/ftc/news/1993/natural-vision.shtml&quot;&gt;Casewatch&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In four separate cases, three companies and five individuals have agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that they made numerous false and unsubstantiated claims about the vision-improvement benefits of their &quot;pinhole eyeglasses,&quot; which are opaque plastic &quot;lenses&quot; with multiple pinholes. The FTC maintained that, among other things, the defendants represented that the pinhole glasses could correct vision disorders and permanently cure a wide range of vision deficiencies, including farsightedness, nearsightedness and astigmatism. The proposed settlements would prohibit the defendants in the future from making the alleged false claims or engaging in the practices challenged by the FTC. In addition, two of the companies have agreed to provide refunds to all consumers who purchased the pinhole eyeglasses from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, the FTC states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;the use of pinhole eyeglasses does not result in long-term vision improvement in these vision problems; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;pinhole eyeglasses do not cure, correct or ameliorate specific vision problems; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;they are not an adequate substitute for prescription lenses or contact lenses; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;the defendants' eye-exercise programs do not strengthen muscles or improve vision; nor do they reduce or eliminate the need for prescription lenses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize: &lt;strong&gt;Probably not&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="1134" LastEditDate="2012-01-24T11:47:51.483" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T11:47:51.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7659" CreationDate="2012-01-23T16:47:31.433" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;When it comes to childhood cancers, the answer is &lt;strong&gt;No, nuclear power plants are not related.&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Swiss did a major study looking for the risks of childhood cancers and leukaemia amongst children who lived near nuclear power plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/07/11/ije.dyr115.full&quot;&gt;Childhood cancer and nuclear power plants in Switzerland: a census-based cohort study&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;Ben D Spycher, Martin Feller, Marcel Zwahlen, Martin Röösli, Nicolas X von der Weid, Heinz Hengartner, Matthias Egger, Claudia E Kuehni&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We used a cohort approach to examine whether residence near nuclear power plants (NPPs) was associated with leukaemia or any childhood cancer in Switzerland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They followed 2,925 children over a period exceeding two decades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They divided them up into &amp;lt;5 km, 5–10 km and 10–15 km and &gt;15km from the nearest NPP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This nationwide cohort study found little evidence of an association between residence near NPPs and the risk of leukaemia or any childhood cancer.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also written up by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS-Childhood_cancer_not_linked_to_reactors_study_finds-1307115.html&quot;&gt;World Nuclear News&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the report, they discuss some of the previous studies that &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; find a link, starting with an English report in 1984.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They address some of the issues with those reports - particularly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Correlation doesn't equal causation. There may be &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; reasons why cancers might be found to cluster around NPPs. (An example not in the study: Major factories (including NPPs) tend to be built in cheap areas which may be correlated to poor health.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper does highlight (with references) that some studies &quot;found an increased risk also at places where NPPs &lt;em&gt;were planned but not built&lt;/em&gt;, concluding that factors other than radiation might be responsible.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poor methodologies and sample sizes were used in other studies, e.g. from Germany and Finland.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there have been mixed results from studies, but the Swiss study seems to be more statistically sound than the earlier attempts, and despite its large size, it found no evidence for nuclear power plants causing childhood cancers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T16:47:31.433" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7662" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-23T17:19:37.970" Score="15" ViewCount="1321" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I found on the Internet, a brief shower is more water efficient than a bath.  I was wondering if there is any research about water use with more than one person using a shower?  My gut feeling is that two people showering uses around 150% of a one person shower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notoriety is established with the the following catch phrase &lt;em&gt;Have a shower with your fella, Stella&lt;/em&gt; which was part of Australian government TV campaign during water restrictions a few years back.  The implication is that two-person showering saves water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nicole05.wordpress.com/2008/08/26/water-neutrality-death/&quot;&gt;Australian campaign cited here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Everyday we are encouraged to stop wasting water, from the catchy&#xA;  jingle produced by the campaign group Waterwise with the memorable&#xA;  line ‘Have a shower with your fella stella,’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/blog/view/108&quot;&gt;And here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Humorous advice on water saving strategies, such as in the Australian&#xA;  advertisement with the tagline &quot;Take a shower with your fella,&#xA;  Stella,&quot; may soon become legal directives.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gogreenzine.com/shower-timer/&quot;&gt;From another page not based on the australian campaign&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;share a shower with your partner, since it will usually use less water than two separate showers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5838" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-27T10:43:14.203" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T21:01:17.183" Title="Does sharing a shower use less water?" Tags="|water|environment|australia|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7663" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8309" CreationDate="2012-01-23T21:57:42.427" Score="24" ViewCount="6058" Body="&lt;p&gt;The standard treatment for burns seems to be to put the burn in cool water for 10 to 20 minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems sensible to me that some burns can gain a benefit from this action when the skin/flesh is still extremely hot and is essentially still cooking from the residual heat. For example, if a hand was dipped in a deep fryer, putting it immediately into cool water would be a great idea as it will immediately start to cool the the flesh. The burnt flesh for such a case may initially as high as 180 degrees C and clearly needs to be cooled as soon as possible to prevent deeper flesh getting burned. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd guess that the temperature at which cells in your body are damaged is probably in the range of 45 to 55 degrees. Once the temperature of flesh drops below that point (whatever it may be), perhaps there is no further benefit in cooling the burn, except perhaps for comfort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A less severe burn caused by hot water (lets say 75 degrees C) would cool much more quickly by itself (in dry air anyway) thanks to the evaporation of the water (unlike a burn caused by hot oil), and if submerged in cool water would cool to an acceptable temperature within just a few seconds. &lt;strong&gt;Is there really any benefit to leaving it in cool water for 10 minutes or more?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If my understanding is correct, there is also a reduction in pain when a burn is not exposed to air. Presumably this is the reason why wrapping with plastic cling wrap (after applying cool water) is recommended by some for reducing the pain from a burn. I think this effect would also intuitively cause people to think that submerging the burn is giving benefit, when perhaps it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5343" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-05T02:12:10.717" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T14:07:51.267" Title="Once a burn has cooled (with water or not), does further submersion in cool water help?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-23T23:41:53.717" Score="0" ViewCount="49" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6503/is-social-networking-harmful-to-mind-or-body&quot;&gt;Is Social Networking harmful to mind or body?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many claims are being made on social media affecting everything from attentionspan to ability to comperhend complex ideas. Are there any conclusive evidences for such claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5625" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T23:41:53.717" Title="Does social media have measurable impacts on our brain?" Tags="|neurology|social-media|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-01-24T01:04:41.483" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2742" CreationDate="2012-01-23T23:50:28.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not exactly in the spirit of this question, but it  depends on what you mean by interface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to multiple articles and mainstream media, for example&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20052249-281.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20052249-281.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The justice-department has demanded the private messages of three wikileaks associates twitter-accounts. The demand has been appealed against, so we'll have to see where it goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5625" LastActivityDate="2012-01-23T23:50:28.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7666" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-24T00:09:08.293" Score="6" ViewCount="301" Body="&lt;p&gt;The petition &lt;a href=&quot;https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/investigate-chris-dodd-and-mpaa-bribery-after-he-publicly-admited-bribing-politicans-pass/DffX0YQv&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Investigate Chris Dodd and the MPAA for bribery after he publicly admitted to bribing politicans to pass legislation&lt;/a&gt; implies that there is something illegal about this threat to withdraw campaign contributions to politicians:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,&quot; This is an open admission of bribery and a threat designed to provoke a specific policy goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely lobbying is intended to promote one's goals; are there specific legal limitations to tying a campaign contribution to a political goal (&quot;designed to provoke a specific policy goal&quot;)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-24T01:02:30.553" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T03:49:07.377" Title="Is it illegal to tie campaign contributions to a specific policy goal?" Tags="|united-states|politics|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7667" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8101" CreationDate="2012-01-24T04:17:03.410" Score="8" ViewCount="4055" Body="&lt;p&gt;Polycontrast Interference Photography supposedly creates images of a body's &quot;organizing template of energy&quot; by detecting interference patterns in 'ordinary' photographs using special software filters. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.item-bioenergy.com/pip/index.html&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;][&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bi-aura.com/about/index.php?article_id=138#Q1&quot;&gt;Source2&lt;/a&gt;][&lt;a href=&quot;http://huenergytechscience.blogspot.in/2008/10/electro-scanning-polycontrast.html&quot;&gt;Source3&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been used to prove that other devices work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vedicradiationsolutions.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=82%3aabout-us&amp;amp;catid=37%3avedicrad&amp;amp;Itemid=218&quot;&gt;talks&lt;/a&gt; about using PIP and a &quot;Universal Scanner&quot; to prove that an  anti-radiation chip works:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cell phone emits Microwave radiations and their affect of thermal expansions had all ready proved by many web sites. The popcorn test is amazing. These can be arrested by our ANTI RAD CHIP which can be affixed at the back of the cell phones, The convincing results are only be produced either by PIP photography or Universal Scanner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sites also seem to sell stuff using PIP images as &quot;proof&quot;, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.banyanretreat.com/pip.html&quot;&gt;Banyan Retreat&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there been any evidence that PIP actually works, and that it photographs energy fields not visible through conventional methods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5311" LastEditorUserId="5311" LastEditDate="2012-02-18T14:58:20.460" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T04:11:51.910" Title="Is Polycontrast Interference Photography (PIP) legit?" Tags="|radiation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7668" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8585" CreationDate="2012-01-24T05:31:26.027" Score="18" ViewCount="9403" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yesterday a friend of mine told me that &lt;strong&gt;most of the money which is made in the internet is going to the porn industry&lt;/strong&gt;. First I didn't believe any word and I was like &lt;em&gt;&quot;Hey, shut up! There is still Google and Amazon to count in. This must be some hoax!&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My friend told me of some source he found on the internet and, when I went home, I just fired up my favorite browser and googled for the words &lt;em&gt;&quot;statistics income erotic internet&quot;&lt;/em&gt; to see the truth for myself. Eventually, I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and I was &lt;strong&gt;astonished&lt;/strong&gt;! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The pornography industry has larger revenues than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix combined. 2006 Worldwide Pornography Revenues ballooned to $97.06 billion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a joke? That website even has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TopTenReviews&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; entry!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3014" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-24T07:53:27.250" LastActivityDate="2018-06-27T16:26:00.853" Title="Is the income of the porn industry 50% of the revenues made on the Internet?" Tags="|internet|pornography|economics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7670" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7672" CreationDate="2012-01-24T10:16:07.260" Score="15" ViewCount="798" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/034745_Monsanto_GM_foods_safety_testing.html&quot;&gt;Naturalnews.com claims&lt;/a&gt; that in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/food-safety.aspx#q2&quot;&gt;explaining why Monsanto doesn't run human clinical trials on GM crops on its own website&lt;/a&gt;, the company uses 'absurd logic' to justify its stance and makes 'pseudoscientific' claims that &quot;everything can be considered non-toxic and safe because it is all made of atoms, just like our bodies!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/food-safety.aspx#q2&quot;&gt;Monsanto claims that&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no need for, or value in testing the safety of GM foods in&#xA;  humans. So long as the introduced protein is determined safe, food&#xA;  from GM crops determined to be substantially equivalent is not&#xA;  expected to pose any health risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the page would probably be aimed at the non-scientific reader trying to understand more about genetic modification, are the claims correct and if so, are such claims justified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3189" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-01-24T11:01:19.510" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T16:06:51.657" Title="Are human trials not necessary to determine the safety of genetically modified food?" Tags="|medical-science|gmo|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7671" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7950" CreationDate="2012-01-24T12:55:49.140" Score="14" ViewCount="2522" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the decibel level is the same with and without headphones in, does headphone use damage my hearing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/3348-teens-crank-ipod-volume-risk-hearing-damage.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;found&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/20/electric_earbuds/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4162028.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; that talk about this, but they don't cite scientific studies. A lot of claims are made such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people are born with &amp;quot;tougher ears&amp;quot; that allow them to listen to music relatively safely for longer periods. [Live Science]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The audiologist claims that he has known students to listen to music at 110 to 120 decibels. &amp;quot;That's a sound level that's equivalent to the measures that are made at rock concerts,&amp;quot; said Garstecki, &amp;quot;and it's enough to cause hearing loss after only about an hour and 15 minutes.&amp;quot; [The Register]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are MP3 players capable of these volumes, and if so, is an MP3 player at 120dB more dangerous than a rock concert at 120dB? Do ears have different levels of 'toughness'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T13:13:25.177" Title="Can listening to music through headphones damage my hearing?" Tags="|medical-science|ear|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7670" CreationDate="2012-01-24T13:04:01.777" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FDA requires toxicology and allergy tests for GM foods for human consumption before the product can be sold in the US (similar mechanisms are in place in the EU as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some of these tests have already been made in a different context, the FDA does not require repeating the animal trials, since that would be pointless killing of lab rats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clinical trials are for medication, not for food, though new food additives (as well as other substances, such as pesticides) may be tested on humans for potential allergic reactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Details on the original claim&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/info/understand&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clinical trials&lt;/a&gt; are performed for new medication in order to test whether they provide a significant benefit compared to placebo and/or to existing medication. GM food is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; medication. Therefore, Monsanto is not required to run clinical trials on GM food. However, they cannot claim GM food cures cancer, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/GuidanceDocuments/FoodIngredientsandPackaging/ucm081825.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Toxicity tests&lt;/a&gt; are performed for food and medication, and are performed on animals, usually rats. A toxicity test aims to determine &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LD50&lt;/a&gt;, the dose (relative to the specimen's weight) at which 50% of the animals die (which is why you don't perform this on humans). The safe dose for humans is then determined as &amp;quot;much less than LD50&amp;quot;. Once an LD50 is known, it is possible to test the substance at realistic dosage in humans to see whether they may have an allergic reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/24d-captan/bt-ext.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Toxicology studies on BT&lt;/a&gt; have been done, and the protein has even been tested in humans, when the product was being tested as a pesticide for organic farming. BT turns out to be harmless in humans. Since the BT protein is indeed the same between what is produced by bacteria as organic pesticide, or by GM crops, Monsanto may indeed not have had to do any toxicology testing on GM food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;everything can be considered non-toxic and safe because it is all made of atoms, just like our bodies!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a misrepresentation of the issue. What naturalnews.com asks is more similar to requiring that if Kellogg comes out with a new formulation of cereal, they need to test whether wheat flour is fit for human consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What needs to be tested by the FDA?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm047470.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The FDA tests new food additives&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FDA field investigators inspect food companies, examine food shipments from abroad, and collect samples. Laboratory scientists analyze samples. Compliance officers recommend legal action and follow through on enforcement issues. What undergoes premarket approval? New food additives and color additives must be approved before they can be used in foods. These additives are considered food under the law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New food additives, including substances added intentionally to food and substances that may migrate to food because they contact food (e.g., food packaging) must be shown to be safe to FDA's satisfaction before companies can market them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Companies that want to add new additives to food bear the responsibility of providing FDA with information demonstrating that the additives are safe. FDA experts review the results of appropriate tests done by companies to ensure that the additive is safe for its intended use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An approved food additive must be used in compliance with its approved uses, specifications, and restrictions. Certain food ingredients, such as those with a long history of safe use in food, do not require premarket approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/GuidanceDocuments/FoodIngredientsandPackaging/ucm081825.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;As part of the approval process, food additives have to be tested for toxic effects.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HIGHLIGHTS OF TOXICOLOGY RECOMMENDATIONS IN THE 2002 GUIDANCE&#xA;Safety&#xA;Summary and Comprehensive Toxicological Profile (CTP). The safety&#xA;information for a food contact notification (FCN) should contain both&#xA;a safety summary and a comprehensive toxicological profile (CTP) of&#xA;the food contact substance (FCS) that is the subject of the&#xA;notification. The safety summary is Part III of FDA Form 3480 and&#xA;should provide the basis for the notifier's determination that the&#xA;intended use of the FCS is safe. The CTP should provide summaries of&#xA;all the available toxicological information pertinent to the safety&#xA;evaluation of the FCS. In some cases, a notification may need to&#xA;include a CTP for a toxicologically relevant constituent of the FCS.&#xA;If a constituent of an FCS is carcinogenic, the CTP in the&#xA;notification should include a quantitative risk assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Safety&#xA;Testing Recommendations for Food Contact Substances (FCSs) and Their&#xA;Constituents. This document recommends safety testing of FCSs and&#xA;their constituents, primarily based on a series of genetic toxicity&#xA;tests and, when justified by the exposure level, subchronic toxicity&#xA;studies. The recommendations describe the minimum level of safety&#xA;testing generally considered appropriate at various exposures. For an&#xA;initial or incremental exposure of an FCS at or less than 0.5 parts&#xA;per billion (ppb), no safety tests are recommended. For a cumulative&#xA;exposure between 0.5 ppb and 1 part per million (ppm), genetic&#xA;toxicity tests and/or subchronic tests are recommended. At a&#xA;cumulative exposure at or greater than 1 ppm, FDA normally requires,&#xA;under the authority of Section 409 (h)(3)(B) of the Federal Food, Drug&#xA;and Cosmetic Act, that a food additive petition be submitted for the&#xA;use of an FCS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evaluation of Structural Similarities to Known&#xA;Toxicants. To the extent feasible, knowledge in predicting potential&#xA;toxicity based on structure/activity relationships may be incorporated&#xA;into the safety assessment of an FCS. Such information may be used as&#xA;part of an overall strategy for assessing the safety of an FCS or to&#xA;help interpret safety test results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/newsevents/testimony/ucm115032.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Specifically in the case of GM foods, the FDA states&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In formulating FDA policy, we reviewed new foods under development&#xA;through biotechnology, and found they shared certain common&#xA;characteristics: (1) Recombinant DNA techniques are being used to&#xA;introduce copies of one or a limited number of well-characterized&#xA;genes into a desired food crop. The introduced gene or genes then&#xA;become integrated in the plant and are passed to successive&#xA;generations of plants by the natural laws of genetics; (2) In most&#xA;cases, these genes produce proteins, or proteins that modify fatty&#xA;acids or carbohydrates in the plant, in other words, common food&#xA;substances; and (3) The proteins, fatty acids, and carbohydrates&#xA;introduced into food crops are well- characterized and not known to be&#xA;toxic and they would be digested to normal metabolites in the same&#xA;manner that the body handles the thousands of different proteins, fat&#xA;and carbohydrates that make up our diet today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since newly introduced substances in foods derived using recombinant&#xA;DNA techniques would be proteins, fats or carbohydrates, we then&#xA;examined the safety questions that should be addressed before products&#xA;reach the market. We identified four broad safety issues that should&#xA;be evaluated: (consumption; (2) the need to ensure that the changes in&#xA;the food, such as the level of natural toxins in the food, if any,&#xA;stay within normal safe levels; (3) the need to ensure that&#xA;significant nutrients stay within normal range; and (4) the need to&#xA;analyze the potential for introduced proteins to cause allergic&#xA;reactions. We incorporated these and other issues into a comprehensive&#xA;guidance to industry that is central to our policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T16:36:16.207" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7657" CreationDate="2012-01-24T13:44:17.167" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, every act of piracy does not impact revenue by the current content price&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to look at why this claim even exists and who makes it.  Firstly, it certainly isn't a strawman. While not every content rights holder who criticizes piracy or talks about lost revenue equates every download with a lost sale, several do currently or have done so..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claims of copyright infringing downloads equating to a lost sale&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim that every download is a lost sale seems most commonly attributed to the RIAA. I could not find anyone from the RIAA making such a claim, however I found a judge stating that seemed to be the RIAA's assumption at least at one point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RIAA’s request&#xA;  problematically assumes that every illegal download resulted in a lost&#xA;  sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vawd.uscourts.gov/OPINIONS/JONES/207CR15REST.PDF&quot;&gt;http://www.vawd.uscourts.gov/OPINIONS/JONES/207CR15REST.PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evidence against such claims&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several reasons why it would seem flawed to consider every download a lost sale:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People downloading who already paid for the content&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People who would lack funds to purchase the content&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, in the case of software, the pirating of Windows&#xA;  oeprating system software and Microsoft office products has halped&#xA;  cement Microsoft's domiance in the PC software inddustry in developing&#xA;  countries in Asia and Latin America, bringing customers into the fold&#xA;  that could not afford legal versions of the products. In a recent&#xA;  example, Microsoft declared amnesty to software pirates in Russian&#xA;  cyber cafes because it has recognized that (1) under the present&#xA;  economic conditions in Russia, these businesses could not afford to&#xA;  pay the “legal” price for the software,...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latienda.ie.edu/working_papers_economia/WP04-08.pdf&quot;&gt;Piracy as Strategy?: A Reexamination of Product Piracy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People downloading to sample who then go on to pay for the content or wouldn't anyway&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People downloading who do not have the option to legally purchase the content&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It started from small groups of enthusiasts, who had no options for&#xA;  watching anime other than distributing it illegally. They were even&#xA;  encouraged to do so, though never officially. Many anime creators were&#xA;  fully aware of the fan activities in the United States, and although&#xA;  they could not recognize them as legal, they condoned them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://lib.tkk.fi/Dipl/2010/urn100297.pdf&quot;&gt;Piracy or productivity: unlawful practices in&#xA;anime fansubbing&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People who download because they won't purchase a product with DRM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most often used estimate for the rate of downloads which can be equated to a lost sale seems to be 20%:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A number of academic studies have attempted to estimate the impact&#xA;  that file sharing has had on sound recording sales. The specific&#xA;  estimate of 20% is taken from Pietz, M. and Waelbroeck, P., The Effect&#xA;  of Internet Piracy on Music Sales: Cross Section Evidence , Review of&#xA;  Economic Research on Copyright Issues, 2004, vol. 1(2), pp 78.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ipi.org/IPI%5CIPIPublications.nsf/PublicationLookupFullText/5C2EE3D2107A4C228625733E0053A1F4&quot;&gt;The True Cost of Sound Recording Piracy to the U.S. Economy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The actual impact of piracy on content revenue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the reasons and studies showing that not every download should be considered a lost sale, there have been studies showing that piracy impacts the content industries to a far less extent than is generally claimed and that in some instance can be beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A report from the IFPI in 2009 estimates that 95% of music downloads are illegal, and that only 10% of that 95% can be considered a lost sale.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifpi.org/content/library/DMR2009.pdf&quot;&gt;DIGITAL MUSIC REPORT 2009&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A report showing that the music industry lost substantially less than estimated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, the impact of piracy on CD sales was considerably smaller&#xA;  than industry estimates. Further, we estimated that, accounting for&#xA;  both demand losses and price adjustments, the industry lost no more&#xA;  than 6.6% of revenue to piracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=262651&quot;&gt;Piracy and the Legitimate Demand for Recorded Music&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A study of French college students found that piracy had a positive effect&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Surprisingly, approximately one third of the pirates declared that&#xA;  watching pirated movies increased their demand for films (for&#xA;  instance, it led them to rent or purchase videos that they would not&#xA;  have rented or purchased otherwise). Using regressions analysis, we&#xA;  find no impact of piracy on theater attendance, and a strong impact on&#xA;  video rentals and purchases. However, movie piracy has no impact on&#xA;  video rentals for respondents who use pre-paid pricing schemes at&#xA;  video-stores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1144313&quot;&gt;Piracy and the Demand for Films: Analysis of Piracy Behavior in French Universities&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, there does not seem to be sufficient evidence to support the claim that each copyright infringing download hurts profit by the same margin as the price of that content. The studies above show that while copyright infringement can have an effect on revenue it is far less than generally claimed and certainly less than a 1:1 ratio of downloads to lost sales. The affect of piracy on revenue may be different for different industries (music, film etc) but in no case is the impact on revenue anywhere near a 1:1 ratio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that piracy can be shown to be beneficial in some cases that would also disprove the titular idea. The only people or organizations who seem to continue to make the claim are those with an agenda who rely on distorted  figures (e.g. the BSA report referenced above) or those who argue from an emotional or moral standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have more than enough data to conclusively say, &lt;strong&gt;no, every act of piracy does not impact revenue by the current content price&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-01-24T23:56:49.457" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T23:56:49.457" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7674" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-24T14:11:55.517" Score="9" ViewCount="527" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everybody has heard about training while wearing weights in different parts of your body: ankles, arms, torso, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many references in cartoons that treat about Martial arts like the episode where &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dT3h3Qw_ek&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rock Lee battles Gaara (Naruto)&lt;/a&gt; (1:45) showing a considerable improvement in speed, or when &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8SfpOj6vmU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Goku trains with them while flying (Dragon Ball)&lt;/a&gt; (1:40).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other references, summarized in the Wikipedia article for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weighted_clothing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Weighted clothing&lt;/a&gt;, see the sub-article &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weighted_clothing#Cultural_references&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cultural references&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously removing the &quot;superhuman&quot; factor that those cartoons show, I'm strictly referring to the real world. I know I wouldn't be able to move at superhuman speed, but does training with weights actually improve my body's performance? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All I find are articles, blog posts, but nothing actually reliable, like medical studies or similar research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4727" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T01:59:15.363" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T01:59:15.363" Title="Does training while wearing weights improve body performance?" Tags="|physiology|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5204" CreationDate="2012-01-24T22:15:32.523" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;While Christianity didn't invent most of the methods of science, there is a plausible case that it nurtured the emergence of modern science (rather than opposing it), and helped it achieve a sustainable impact on the world&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that religion, in general, and Christianity, in particular, has always been in opposition to science is very easy to believe, especially in a world full of fundamentalists. But it is not a true reflection of the history of either religion or science; it clouds our ability to understand why modern science arose and became strong in a particular place and time. We will not get a good answer to the question if we allow current prejudices to cloud the analysis of what actually happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That the story is more complex than that should be obvious even from the much repeated story of how the Church tried to suppress Galileo's ideas. For a start, the ideas the church was supposed to be defending (Aristotle's philosophy and Ptolemy's astronomy) were not &lt;em&gt;Christian&lt;/em&gt; ideas at all). And it is a little rich to credit Aristotle as a pioneer of science in this context, when his failure to give primacy to observing what actually happens was one of the key problems holding back the development of Greek science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spreading the credit for many new scientific ideas to other cultures is a fair reaction to Eurocentric thinking in the past. But it triggers a very important question: why did science and technology &lt;em&gt;stall&lt;/em&gt; in those other places? We should give credit where credit is due, but in every other culture where new scientific ideas were developed, the progress of science stopped and failed to achieve constant improvement and a major impact on the world. There is something unusual about what happened in Europe where science eventually emerged in a form where progress has not yet stopped and where its impact on the world has transformed the world. This is where it is worth looking at actual history to see if there might be some useful insights about why this only happened there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, it is very important to note that this is a question about what happened historically. It isn't going to get a good answer if we apply current prejudices. Treating the church of 16th century Europe like a bunch of modern fundamentalists opposing evolution isn't a good way to do history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some observations leading to an alternative answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;First, the idea that Christianity has consistently opposed science is historically false.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell the idea of religion and science in perpetual conflict goes back to Huxley and his defence of Darwinism. The traditional skeptics story is that god was dethroned by Darwin and opposed by the leadership of the church. But it is worth looking at the real history. For example, in his book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zcXOdWRo9EgC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;source=gbs_ge_summary_r&amp;amp;cad=0#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Darwin's Forgotten Defenders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, David Livingstone argued that many religious leaders – even the evangelical protestants – embraced Darwin. As he argues in the introduction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...we ought also to revise the notion that science and religion are inevitably at odds...The findings I present challenge that assumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The historic evidence is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; consistent with the idea that something inherent in Christianity opposes scientific progress even around evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Secondly, there is something in the Christian tradition that actually fostered modern science.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This case was argued in the short but dense book by R Hooykaas, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Religion_and_the_Rise_of_Modern_Science.html?id=c6TEDHvAbXAC&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot;&gt;Religion and the Rise of Modern Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, where a very detailed analysis of history shows that many of the philosophical ideas the led to modern science, especially the primacy of observation and practical uses of science originated in Christian thinking. In the very elements that, when added to Greek thinking, make a combination somewhat like modern science with &quot;getting your hands dirty&quot; experiments (which the Greeks would have rejected). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote in part from a much more recent summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Second, religious considerations might provide some of the presuppositions for scientific investigation. Here I have in mind theologically-grounded ideas about the intelligibility of nature, manifested in the early modern period as the notion that there were divinely authored laws of nature. Third, and related to this, is the way in which theological positions may, and indeed have underpinned specific methods of investigation. Fourth, religious convictions may provide the motivations for some individuals to pursue the formal study of nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Hooykaas is hard to summarise, part of his argument is that the environment and philosophy of many of great church leaders around the time of the Reformation was entirely sympathetic to observational, experimental and practical science. They believed that you could understand God via understanding Nature so making science &lt;em&gt;respectable&lt;/em&gt; and approved of in a culture where that was by no means a foregone conclusion. Even Calvin didn't reject observations of the world even if they appeared to contradict the bible (in contrast to many modern fundamentalists). Many skeptics and opponents of religion have bought the idea that modern fundamentalism is typical of all religious belief in history. In actuality the philosophy of fundamentalism (and its creationist children) is a very modern idea (see James Barr's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Fundamentalism.html?id=aLEKQQAACAAJ&quot;&gt;Fundamentalism&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; for a summary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there is something about the nature of the Christian (and Jewish) bible that leads to diversity. Unlike the Koran, for example, the bible is a work of many authors and does not have monolithic style. The reformation is arguably the result of people looking back at their core sources and seeing things that contradict the authority of the church leadership. Hence the core source for the religion is actually a little subversive and fosters a questioning attitude and not absolute authority for an organisation. That fragmentation of the religious power base was probably important for the development of science and certainly for preventing any single authority stamping out ideas it didn't like (which is arguably why Arab and Chinese science faltered).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thirdly, history shows that religion nurtured and protected the development of modern science before it became robust and sustainable on its own&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This argument has been well summarised recently by Peter Harrison in his lecture &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b06f322b-2249-4bc1-ac37-ffb6ac74cde6/datastreams/ATTACHMENT01&quot;&gt;Religion, The Royal Society, and the Rise of Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. He expresses his conclusions from the study of the actual interaction of science and religion in England thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we can conclude that while there may have been scientific ideas and practices without religion, there would not have been a longstanding and evolving scientific &lt;em&gt;culture&lt;/em&gt; of the kind that emerged in the West without the support of religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He bases this on the way religion protected emerging ideas in science from outside attacks that might well have had the effect of stifling the emergence of &quot;modern science&quot;. In particular, there were many groups in society opposed to the activity and practice of science but religious leaders and organisations often protected and nurtured the activities of scientists until they were strong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth reading the paper for the detail as it is not just a fascinating source of interesting history but is also a good read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In summary&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a big topic that I don't think I have yet done a good service to. But the key issue is that there is something peculiar about the runaway success of science and its emergence in western Europe and that this is not a consequence of a eurocentric perspective. The Chinese, the Indians, the Arabs and the Greeks all had important ideas that contributed to science, but progress stalled in all those cultures. Christianity is at least one factor that made a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not require a willingness to defend religion to make this case: it just needs a little skepticism about what happened in history. Skeptics shouldn't buy &lt;em&gt;myths&lt;/em&gt; about what actually happened just because they sound good: thats what the religious are supposed to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recently published &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Science-Was-Born-Christianity-Teaching-ebook/dp/B00H3T59XE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1407700031&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=trasancos&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; offers a better summary of the above arguments culled from several historians and philosophers of science but especially &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Jaki&quot;&gt;Fr Stanley Jaki&lt;/a&gt;, a Jesuit scientist, theologian and philosopher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary the argument outlined there is (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Modern science was born in a particular culture, a Christian culture, and we can trace its antecedents backward all the way into the early Middle Ages. &lt;strong&gt;No other culture—Greek, Roman, Indian, Chinese, Egyptian, Babylonian, Islamic, African, Mayan—ever gave us anything like modern science.&lt;/strong&gt; Therefore, the cause of modern science’s success must lie, ultimately, in Christianity, and the more we dig into the Christian origins of modern science, the farther back we find positive evidence for the sustained, sophisticated developments that underlay modern science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic argument, backed by extensive and detailed historical evidence, is that a certain particular philosophical mindset is required for science to develop and grow. For example the very idea that the universe is comprehensible and there are things in it that are worth discovering by experiment. The core of the argument is outline in the quote below (my emphasis again):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do not think, however, that I have even yet brought out the greatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement. I mean the inexpugnable belief that every detailed occurrence can be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly definite manner, exemplifying general principles. &lt;em&gt;Without this belief the incredible labours of scientists would be without hope.&lt;/em&gt; It is this instinctive conviction, vividly poised before the imagination, which is the motive power of research: that there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled. How has this conviction been so vividly implanted on the European mind?   &lt;em&gt;When we compare this tone of thought in Europe with the attitude of other civilisations when left to themselves, there seems but one source for its origin. It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher.&lt;/em&gt; Every detail was supervised and ordered: the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith in rationality. Remember that I am not talking of the explicit beliefs of a few individuals. What I mean is the impress on the European mind arising from the unquestioned faith of centuries. By this I mean the instinctive tone of thought and not a mere creed of words.   &lt;em&gt;In Asia, the conceptions of God were of a being who was either too arbitrary or too impersonal for such ideas to have much effect on instinctive habits of mind. Any definite occurrence might be due to the fiat of an irrational despot, or might issue from some impersonal, inscrutable origin of things.&lt;/em&gt; There was not the same confidence as in the intelligible rationality of a personal being. I am not arguing that the European trust in the scrutability of nature was logically justified even by its own theology. My only point is to understand how it arose. &lt;strong&gt;My explanation is that the faith in the possibility to science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These overall arguments are based on detailed comparisons of how scientific ideas developed in many other societies, cultures and religions. The dominant fact is the failure of science to develop and expand to its modern form in any of those societies despite many of them having an apparently large lead on medieval Europe in some key technologies and scientific discoveries. Those who argue that Chinese, Arab or Greek ideas were the real origin of modern science need to find convincing explanations for why the development of science &lt;em&gt;stopped&lt;/em&gt; in those cultures and failed to produce what we know as modern science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The historic details are significant. One key development was made by the 14th century French Priest &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Buridan&quot;&gt;Buridan&lt;/a&gt; who was instrumental in breaking the Aristololean orthodoxy about the motion of objects and of being the first person to express the modern concept of inertia. Buridan opposed the theological implications of Aristotle's philosophy. But overthrowing that orthodoxy (for example the belief that heavy objects fell faster than light objects) was essential for allowing modern empirical physics to develop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't include more details in this already long answer, but the significant point to emphasise is simple: the modern belief that christianity is implacably opposed to knowledge and progress in science is simply untrue given what we know about history. And a reasonable case can be made that science as we know it is dependent on the philosophical underpinnings that came, almost uniquely, with christianity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-08-10T20:27:23.143" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T20:27:23.143" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7676" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-24T22:25:15.900" Score="15" ViewCount="8028" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone recently insisted that filling a washing machine to the top doesn't get clothes as clean. My washing machine has water fill levels from &quot;Small&quot; all the way to &quot;Extra Large,&quot; but no corresponding lines inside the machine to indicate how high one is supposed to fill the clothes. When I have a lot of clothes, I set it to &quot;Extra Large&quot; and then loosely drop clothes in all the way to the top of the basin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are other examples of the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lifestyleclotheslines-blog.com/laundry/dont-overfill-your-washing-machine/&quot;&gt;Lifestyles Clothesline Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whilst it is a good idea to fully fill your washing machine with dirty laundry before using it to save power and water,  you should not cram it to overflowing. The clothes will not get clean...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080705072925AAKM6mf&quot;&gt;UK Yahoo Answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3 / 4 full is best to leave room for clothes to get washed correctly sometimes u will have to do it agin if its too full happy washing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mamaslaundrytalk.com/2010/10/29/laundry-basics-size-of-loads-and-starting-the-washer/&quot;&gt;Mama's Laundry Talk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An overcrowded load will absolutely &lt;strong&gt;not come clean&lt;/strong&gt; (I proved this to myself again just last weekend).  Clothes need a certain amount of room in the washer to move around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in knowing whether any experiments have been conducted to evaluate whether some similarly-soiled articles come cleaner in one load size vs. a more filled load size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm explicitly &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; talking about &lt;em&gt;packing&lt;/em&gt; clothes in the washer. I'm simply talking about loosely dropping clothes into a top loading washer until they reach the height of the basin, then closing the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T21:55:43.287" Title="Does filling a clothing washing machine to the top reduce cleaning effectiveness?" Tags="|clothing|household|cleaning|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7657" CreationDate="2012-01-24T22:28:51.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.riaa.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RIAA&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifpi.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IFPI&lt;/a&gt;, which is the world wide recording industry association, do not claim a dollar for a dollar losses directly due to piracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This it what the IFPI claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Piracy rigs the market&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;28 per cent of internet users globally access unauthorised services on a monthly basis, according to IFPI. Around half of these are using peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. The other half are using other non-P2P unauthorised channels which are a fast-growing problem&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Illegal “free” has a negative impact on sales. Research by The NPD Group in the US in 2010 found that just 35 per cent of P2P users also pay for music downloads. P2P users spent US$42 per year on music on average, compared with US$76 among those that pay to download and US$126 among those that pay to subscribe to a music service&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;60 per cent of e-book downloads in Germany are illegal, according to Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, the organisation representing German publishers and booksellers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://ifpi.com/content/library/DMR2012_key_facts_and_figures.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These statements may or may not be numerically accurate but they do represent reasonable claims compatible with the existing literature. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifo.de/portal/pls/portal/docs/1/1189386.PDF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Effect Of Internet Piracy On Cd Sales: Cross-Section Evidence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have analyzed the RIAA’s claim that music downloads are causing a substantial decrease in CD sales. &lt;strong&gt;Our cross-section regression confirms their fear:&lt;/strong&gt; we find that music downloading could have caused a 10% reduction in CD sales worldwide in 2001.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Caveat: the situation in 2002 was not readily explainable according to this paper&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ipi.org/IPI%5CIPIPublications.nsf/PublicationLookupFullText/5C2EE3D2107A4C228625733E0053A1F4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The True Cost of Sound Recording Piracy to the U.S. Economy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this analysis, we have reviewed results of several surveys of consumers of both pirated and legitimate CDs in different markets. We have also reviewed surveys of home video consumers in markets around the world. These surveys generally conclude that if counterfeit channels were not available, many buyers of counterfeit CDs would purchase CDs legally. While the degree to which these legitimate purchases would occur differs by market, it appears nevertheless, that such purchases would comprise a very significant fraction of the total number of pirated CDs now purchased. &lt;strong&gt;Indeed, the “substitution” rates cited by survey respondents range from approximately 40% to 70%.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while it may be interesting to entertain such a hypothesis (that 1 pirated copy is 1 lost sale), &lt;strong&gt;it is not something that the music/movie industry is claiming&lt;/strong&gt;. While the RIAA website is momentarily down, I've accessed the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpaa.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MPAA&lt;/a&gt; web site, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://mpaa.org/policy/industry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;they link to&lt;/a&gt; &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dpeaflcio.org/pdf/DPE-fs_2010_intellectual_prop.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Intellectual Property Theft:&#xA;A Threat To U.S. Workers, Industries, And Our Economy&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; which references the &lt;em&gt;same academic sources I've found&lt;/em&gt; - and produces the same figures. No 1:1 claims -- on a document clearly blowing their trumpet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-24T23:02:26.597" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7679" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7719" CreationDate="2012-01-25T05:20:45.330" Score="9" ViewCount="11965" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, to define what a Simian Line is, I will quote from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transverse_palmar_crease&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In humans, a single transverse palmar crease is a single crease that&#xA;  extends across the palm of the hand, formed by the fusion of the two&#xA;  palmar creases (the heart line and the head line) that people&#xA;  typically have. Because it resembles the usual condition of non-human&#xA;  simians, it is also known as a simian crease or simian line, although&#xA;  these terms have widely fallen out of favor due to their pejorative&#xA;  connotation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am using the term simian line in the question because that is all I have ever heard it called.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various claims (mostly from palm readers) that simian lines tend to have certain personality characteristics attributed to them. There have also been some studies showing a potential correlation between simian lines and criminal behaviour, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Various studies have indicated that the simian crease (or a 'single&#xA;  radial base crease') is more often seen in the hands of criminals,&#xA;  juvenile deliquents, and even murderers. In the same year a very&#xA;  interesting pioneering study was presented by Ramesh Chaube (in:&#xA;  &quot;Application and Methodological Perspectives in Dermatoglyphics&quot;,&#xA;  1971), which revealed that the 'single radial transverse crease'&#xA;  (which includes the 'complete' simian line + some of it's related&#xA;  variants) is much more often seen in the hands of various types of&#xA;  criminals (29.25% vs. 11.81% in controls).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.handresearch.com/diagnostics/simian-line-psychology.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything to support a correlation between personality types/characteristics and simian lines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="5105" LastEditDate="2012-02-01T07:17:26.260" LastActivityDate="2015-10-04T13:55:19.603" Title="Are simian lines and personality correlated?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7680" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7749" CreationDate="2012-01-25T09:39:28.943" Score="37" ViewCount="2545" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several claims that piracy of Intellectual Property (IP) can help sales more than it hurts them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Edmund McMillan of Team Meat states in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://pc.ign.com/articles/118/1184546p1.html&quot;&gt;interview&lt;/a&gt; at IGN:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;McMillen believes that the more people who steal his games, the more&#xA;  will eventually buy them. He sees piracy as nothing more than a huge&#xA;  sampling exercise. &quot;If the game gets pirated heavily, if it's a good&#xA;  game that people really like, they're going to either buy it&#xA;  eventually or they're going to tell other people about it. Either way&#xA;  it's just going to come back to a sale.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tim O'Reilly &lt;a href=&quot;http://openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2002/12/11/piracy.html&quot;&gt;argues&lt;/a&gt; that piracy's benefits outweigh the lost sales:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Piracy is a kind of progressive taxation, which may shave a few&#xA;  percentage points off the sales of well-known artists (and I say &quot;may&quot;&#xA;  because even that point is not proven), in exchange for massive&#xA;  benefits to the far greater number for whom exposure may lead to&#xA;  increased revenues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brazilian bestselling author Paulo Coelho believes piracy only &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.p2p-blog.com/item-466.html&quot;&gt;helped&lt;/a&gt; his sales&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We put up a link on the blog, like I was very surprised. (...) The&#xA;  link is on the main page of my blog. I have to play a little bit&#xA;  naive, that I don't know. But people go there, they download the book,&#xA;  and, believe it or not: The sales of the book increased a lot.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;At the end of the day people are going to buy it because it&#xA;  stimulates people to read and it simulates people to buy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What studies or evidence is there to support or contradict the idea that piracy may ultimately be beneficial to profits rather than harmful? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T11:00:23.040" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T11:00:23.040" Title="Can acts of IP piracy be more beneficial than harmful?" Tags="|economics|criminology|software|copyright|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7680" CreationDate="2012-01-25T12:05:09.697" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Correlation is a fact, widely known and denied only by IP industry. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Those who download illegal copies of music over P2P networks are the&#xA;  biggest consumers of legal music options, according to a new &lt;strong&gt;study by&#xA;  the BI Norwegian School of Management&lt;/strong&gt;. Researchers examined the music&#xA;  downloading habits of more than 1,900 Internet users over the age of&#xA;  15, and found that illegal music connoisseurs are significantly more&#xA;  likely to purchase music than the average, non-P2P-loving user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/04/study-pirates-buy-tons-more-music-than-average-folks.ars&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ArsTechnica &quot;Study: pirates biggest music buyers. Labels: yeah, right&quot;&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Poland scientific report about digital culture has been recently prepared . &#xA;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://obiegikultury.centrumcyfrowe.pl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Obiegi Kultury&quot; [&quot;Culture circulation&quot;]&lt;/a&gt;, currently Polish only, English highlights coming in February 2012). Some highlights of the report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Report authors don't make clear distinction between &quot;honest buyers&quot; and &quot;pirates&quot; as they have found that distinction is not clear cut. The don't talk about legal status either, as that's also not clear cut. They rather talk about &quot;official&quot; and &quot;unofficial&quot; circulation. Unofficial circulation, besides downloads, also includes physical actions, such as lending/exchanging books/DVDs/CDs with friends. Report finds that official circulation in case of purchasing books/movies/music has reach of &lt;strong&gt;13%&lt;/strong&gt;, while unofficial one has &lt;strong&gt;39%&lt;/strong&gt; (33% downloads, 6% physical).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Report is based on poll of 1300 representative group of internet users (and generally available statistics for overall averages). Of these polled &lt;strong&gt;72%&lt;/strong&gt; do downloads, &lt;strong&gt;92%&lt;/strong&gt; if you include directly sharing with friends, and &lt;strong&gt;98%&lt;/strong&gt; if you also include physical sharing.   (Interesting find, that even physical sharing is also mostly done by internet users).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On average only &lt;strong&gt;29.8%&lt;/strong&gt; of people go to see movie in cinema at least once a year, yet among these polled that percentage is &lt;strong&gt;82%&lt;/strong&gt; and there is &lt;strong&gt;high correlation between downloading more movies and going to cinema more often&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only &lt;strong&gt;5%&lt;/strong&gt; of people who don't use internet have bought a book last year, versus &lt;strong&gt;68%&lt;/strong&gt; among these polled.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only &lt;strong&gt;1%&lt;/strong&gt; of people who don't use internet have bought a music CD last year, versus &lt;strong&gt;29%&lt;/strong&gt; in just last 3 months among polled.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only &lt;strong&gt;2%&lt;/strong&gt; of people who don't use internet have bought or rented a DVD/Blu-ray movie last year, versus &lt;strong&gt;25%&lt;/strong&gt; in just last 3 months among polled.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion is that exactly same people that by some are called &quot;pirates&quot;, are the people who also are the best consumers of the cultural products  (books, music, movies etc), and far more engaged in cultural activities than average.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correlation is not causality, but the authors of the report suggest it's a case of a positive feedback loop (more downloading leads to greater interest in culture, greater interest in culture leads to more downloads and purchases).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="164" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T15:52:45.100" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T15:52:45.100" CommentCount="12" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-01-27T15:45:43.813" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7159" CreationDate="2012-01-25T20:25:01.500" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. it has done the opposite. Condoms are given away for free in South Africa. (Consider me the source. I am South African.) Since the introduction of condoms, there is a reduction in new HIV infections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/01/11/rsif.2011.0826.full&quot;&gt;The effect of changes in condom usage and antiretroviral treatment coverage on human immunodeficiency virus incidence in South Africa: a model-based analysis&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite significant structural differences, both of the models&#xA;  considered in this analysis suggest that adult HIV incidence in South&#xA;  Africa has declined significantly since the year 2000. In addition,&#xA;  both models suggest that most of this decline can be attributed to the&#xA;  effect of increased condom usage, and that some of the decline may be&#xA;  attributable to the impact of [antiretroviral treatment] on the infectiousness of individuals&#xA;  with advanced HIV disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-01-25T21:53:34.307" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T21:53:34.307" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6665" CreationDate="2012-01-25T20:43:56.727" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;After further research I have found NO references to any actual paper, and no direct assessment of the phantom paper. I was under the false impression that the harvard gazette would be more responsible with information. A link to someone claiming the hypothesis to be bogus: &lt;a href=&quot;http://mainstreamparenting.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/when-proof-is-not-proof-apnp-research/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://mainstreamparenting.wordpress.com/2008/01/23/when-proof-is-not-proof-apnp-research/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Babies should not be left to cry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From most of the sites I have found there are no references to studies. One study that seems to stand out is a study by Michael L. Commons and Patrice M. Miller. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quote from an article mentioning the study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The pair examined childrearing practices here and in other cultures&#xA;  and say the widespread American practice of putting babies in separate&#xA;  beds -- even separate rooms -- and not responding quickly to their&#xA;  cries may lead to incidents of post-traumatic stress and panic&#xA;  disorders when these children reach adulthood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a comment by a traumatoligist about said study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Harvard researchers' work is unique because it takes a&#xA;  cross-disciplinary approach, examining brain function, emotional&#xA;  learning in infants, and cultural differences, according to Charles R.&#xA;  Figley, director of the Traumatology Institute at Florida State&#xA;  University and editor of The Journal of Traumatology.&#xA;  &quot;It is very unusual but extremely important to find this kind of&#xA;  interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research report,&quot; Figley said.&#xA;  &quot;It accounts for cross-cultural differences in children's emotional&#xA;  response and their ability to cope with stress, including traumatic&#xA;  stress.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/04.09/ChildrenNeedTou.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/04.09/ChildrenNeedTou.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastEditorUserId="2383" LastEditDate="2012-01-25T23:52:06.060" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T23:52:06.060" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7633" CreationDate="2012-01-25T21:49:52.297" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, they are called short sleepers and they are the subject of ongoing research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2884988/&quot;&gt;The Transcriptional Repressor DEC2 Regulates Sleep Length in Mammals&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We have identified a mutation in a transcriptional repressor (hDEC2-P385R) that is associated with a human short sleep phenotype.&quot; -Ying-Hui Fu et al.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people really are just wired to run on much less sleep. The researchers identified a gene related to short sleep in two humans and exported it to mice for study. The paper makes no mention of ill health effects, which leaves open the possibility that cardiovascular effects mentioned by Oddthinking apply to genetically short sleepers. Assessing performance differences quantitatively would be difficult because of the gene's rarity. The content of the study and various news reports, however, show that the scientists view these individuals as normal to above average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some news coverage of the discovery:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/12/short.sleepers.daylight/index.html&quot;&gt;CNN article&lt;/a&gt; from March 12, 2011. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703712504576242701752957910.html&quot;&gt;Wall Street Journal article&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2011/04/16/135450214/eight-is-too-much-for-short-sleepers&quot;&gt;NPR article&lt;/a&gt; came a little later. More short articles are easily found on this subject about this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://neugenes.org/circadian.htm#familial_natural_short_sleepers&quot;&gt;summary&lt;/a&gt; of efforts underway at UCSF:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Familial Natural Short Sleepers have a behavioral trait in which they have a lifelong tendency to sleep only 4 – 6 hours per night. These individuals awaken refreshed and energetic and experience this short sleep pattern even when they are on vacation and relatively free of obligations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have identified a mutation in a transcriptional repressor (hDEC2-P384R) that is associated with a human short sleep phenotype. Activity profiles and sleep recordings of transgenic mice carrying this mutation showed increased vigilance time and less sleep time than control mice in a zeitgeber time and sleep deprivation-dependent manner. These mice represent a model of human sleep homeostasis that provides an opportunity to probe the effect of sleep on human physical and mental health.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5811" LastActivityDate="2012-01-25T21:49:52.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7687" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7692" CreationDate="2012-01-25T23:23:26.177" Score="17" ViewCount="1723" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems obvious to many people that if the consequences of an activity are sufficiently scary people will naturally avoid the activity. If the consequences of criminal activity are frequent death, injury or incarceration then that will be deterrent. Making children &lt;strong&gt;aware&lt;/strong&gt; of those consequences and scaring them about the likely outcome of criminal behaviour will, surely, add the their motivation to avoid criminality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So several community activists have put this into practice by designing programmes for local children that show them just how bad the consequences are with the explicit intention of &amp;quot;scaring them straight&amp;quot;. One intervention is described like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Walker, 45, a coach with the Berkeley Cougars Youth Football and Cheerleading Association, part of a national league, put together a program “to scare kids straight” by showing them what happens to victims after the fatal gunshots or stab wounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Working with an Oakland funeral home, he takes youngsters to local graveyards and mortuaries, offering them an intimate look at how bullet-ridden corpses are taken from crime scenes to cold storage, then patched together for viewing before cremation or burial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is from a story in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/26/education/26coach.html?scp=1&amp;amp;sq=coach%27s%20toughest%20drill&amp;amp;st=nyt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times.&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_5160476?IADID=Search-www.insidebayarea.com-www.insidebayarea.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Oakland Tribune.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original &amp;quot;scared straight&amp;quot; idea seems to have come from a programme run by inmates of Rahway State Prison in New Jersey. This programme has been the subject of two TV documentaries. The producer is quoted (&lt;a href=&quot;http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=DP&amp;amp;p_theme=dp&amp;amp;p_action=search&amp;amp;p_maxdocs=200&amp;amp;s_dispstring=stark%20prison%20documentary%20AND%20date%2801/01/1999%20to%2012/31/1999%29&amp;amp;p_field_date-0=YMD_date&amp;amp;p_params_date-0=date:B,E&amp;amp;p_text_date-0=01/01/1999%20to%2012/31/1999%29&amp;amp;p_field_advanced-0=&amp;amp;p_text_advanced-0=%28%22stark%20prison%20documentary%22%29&amp;amp;p_perpage=10&amp;amp;p_sort=YMD_date:D&amp;amp;xcal_useweights=no&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but paywalled):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't tell you how many people have come up to me and said: 'I was a juvenile delinquent and when I saw this, I stopped, and changed.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this seems like an obvious idea that works: deliberately scare people by showing them the possible consequences of their actions and deter them from crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the simple question is: &lt;strong&gt;do these schemes work?&lt;/strong&gt; That is, can we show that the people exposed to them are less likely to commit crimes than those who are not exposed to the schemes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS I do have a view on the evidence, but I want to hold back for now to see whether broader evidence emerges from other's research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7097/do-scare-tactics-in-advertising-succeed-in-reducing-the-number-of-people-who-smo&quot;&gt;Do scare tactics in advertising succeed in reducing the number of people who smoke or take illegal drugs?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T20:55:28.477" Title="Do &quot;scare kids straight&quot; programmes reduce criminal activity?" Tags="|psychology|children|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7688" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7689" CreationDate="2012-01-26T01:22:39.793" Score="12" ViewCount="1339" Body="&lt;p&gt;Einstein's brain has been the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_brain&quot;&gt;subject of much debate and speculation&lt;/a&gt;, because of his notable and exceptional contributions to our understanding of the universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim exists that his brain may have been unusual in some way, which could correlate with his genius. For example, quoting from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein%27s_brain&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The brain has attracted attention because of Einstein's reputation for&#xA;  being one of the foremost geniuses of the 20th century, and apparent&#xA;  regularities or irregularities in the brain have been used to support&#xA;  various ideas about correlations in neuroanatomy with general or&#xA;  mathematical intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious as to whether this is due to a physiological phenomenon, or if it must be explained by something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was the brain of Albert Einstein physiologically different than that of most other humans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-01-26T14:41:14.557" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T14:41:14.557" Title="Was Einstein's brain physiologically different?" Tags="|physiology|intelligence|albert-einstein|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7688" CreationDate="2012-01-26T11:40:42.077" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/ein.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eric H. Chudler&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/ehc.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Washington&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are 3 published scientific studies that have examined&#xA;  Einstein's brain&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;strong&gt;1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3979509?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;On the brain of a scientist: Albert Einstein&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (1985)&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The scientists counted the number of neurons (nerve cells) and glial cells in four areas of Einstein's brain&lt;/strong&gt;: area 9 of the cerebral cortex on the right and left hemisphere and area 39 of the cerebral cortex on the right and left hemisphere. &#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VtrcM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Brain&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;... &#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;The ratios of neurons to glial cells in Einstein's brain were compared to those from the brains of 11 men who died at the average age of 64&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;there were more glial cells for every neuron in Einstein's brain.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problems:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The &quot;normal&quot; brains that were compared to Einstein's may not have&#xA;  been the best group for comparison.&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;The average age of these brains&#xA;  was 12 years younger than Einstein's brain. In fact, the youngest&#xA;  brain in this group was only 47 years old. It is possible that the&#xA;  neuron to glial ratio seen in Einstein's brain was quite normal for&#xA;  his age and that the younger comparison group just did not show these&#xA;  changes yet. &lt;br&gt;Also, the paper did not describe the background of the&#xA;  comparison group. What was their intelligence and cause of death?&#xA;  Would these factors have anything to do with the observed brain&#xA;  differences?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The &quot;experimental group&quot; had only one subject...Einstein!&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br&gt;Additional studies are needed to see if these anatomical differences are found in other people with conceptual and mathematical skills like Einstein.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It appears that only a very small portion of the four areas of each brain was studied.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt; The paper states that &quot;&lt;em&gt;Four to six sections were cut from each block, Einstein's and the controls&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; However, after staining, only ONE section from each block was studied! There is no indication that this single thin section was obtained from similar regions of area 39 and area 9 from the different brains. It is even unclear how much of each section was counted. Moreover, only the ratio of neurons to glial cells was published. The total number of cells that were counted is not given in the paper. This is important to get an idea of how the experimenters came to their conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;It is important to remember that the areas 9 and 39 make important connections with many other areas of the brain. &lt;strong&gt;To assign a particular behavior or personality to a single brain area is too simple. Parts of the brain do not act by themselves. Rather, complex behavior is the result of many areas acting together.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8805120?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alterations in cortical thickness and neuronal density in the frontal cortex of Albert Einstein.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (1996)&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Einstein's brain weighed only 1,230 grams, which is less than the average adult male brain (about 1,400 grams)&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The authors also reported that &lt;strong&gt;the thickness of Einstein's cerebral cortex (area 9) was thinner than that of five control brains. However, the DENSITY of neurons in Einstein's brain was greater.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In other words, &lt;strong&gt;Einstein was able to pack more neurons in a given area of cortex.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673698103276/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The exceptional brain of Albert Einstein&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (1999)&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In this paper, the external surface characteristics of Einstein's brain were compared to those from the brains of 35 men (average age, 57 years old).&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unlike the brain of these 35 men, Einstein's brain had an unusual pattern of grooves (called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulcus_%28neuroanatomy%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sulci&lt;/a&gt;) on both right and left parietal lobes.&lt;/strong&gt; This particular area of the parietal lobe is thought to be important for mathematical abilities and spatial reasoning. &#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Einstein's brain had a much shorter &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_sulcus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lateral sulcus&lt;/a&gt; (**Sylvian fissure&lt;/strong&gt;) that was partially missing**. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;His brain was also 15% wider than the other brains&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The researchers think that these unique brain characteristics may have allowed better connections between neurons important for math and spatial reasoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Although these results are interesting, it must be remembered that this study had only ONE brain in the experimental group...Albert Einstein's brain.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It remains to be seen if other mathematical geniuses also show these distinguishing brain characteristics. Moreover, the study did not investigate the brain at a microscopic level. In other words, the study says nothing about how neurons in these brains were connected and of course, could not tell if there were differences in the way the neurons functioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.columbia.edu/cu/psychology/courses/1010/mangels/Einstein.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The exceptional brain of Albert Einstein - Full Paper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/famous-scientists/physicists/einsteins-brain.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Stuff Works - Einstein's Brain&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=3032&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Einstein’s Brain and the Search for the Neural Basis of Intellect&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T11:40:42.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7680" CreationDate="2012-01-26T17:39:47.657" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/a/3551975/910201&quot;&gt;this contradictory &quot;answer&quot;&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/users/67386/dana-holt&quot;&gt;Dana Holt&lt;/a&gt;, showing that &lt;strong&gt;piracy does have a negative effect&lt;/strong&gt;. So my answer is not really an answer at all, but just pointing out that context matters. Personally, we are not going to copy protect our video games in our indie game studio, as we believe it will interfere with legitimate purchasers. However, if there was a way to tell if a copy of our game was illegitimate and have the option to show a message, as Dana's post speak of, we would love to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5850" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:24.653" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T07:10:40.717" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7687" CreationDate="2012-01-26T20:49:12.293" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;em&gt;meta review&lt;/em&gt; the answer is a big, resounding &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Actually &amp;ndash; it &lt;em&gt;increases&lt;/em&gt; criminality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Petrosino and colleagues conducted a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ann.sagepub.com/content/589/1/41.short&quot;&gt;meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt; review of Scared Straight programs with the most rigorous methodological standards to date.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Meta-analysis results show the scared straight-type intervention &lt;em&gt;increases&lt;/em&gt; the odds of offending by between 1.6 and 1.7 to 1 compared to a no-treatment control group. These findings lead the researchers to conclude that participating in the Scared Straight program actually correlates with an increase in re- offending compared to a control group of youth who received no intervention at all.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Other reviews of the research find deterrence-oriented programs ineffective in preventing crime (Lipsey, 1992; Sherman et al., 1997).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.djj.state.fl.us/Research/Scared_Straight_Booklet_Version.pdf&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citation from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ann.sagepub.com/content/589/1/41.short&quot;&gt;meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; A meta-analysis of prevalence rates indicates that the intervention on average is more harmful to juveniles than doing nothing. The authors conclude that governments should institute rigorous programs of research to ensure that well-intentioned treatments do not cause harm to the citizens they pledge to protect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also the &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD002796/juvenile-awareness-programs-for-preventing-juvenile-delinquency&quot;&gt;Cochrane Review&lt;/a&gt; page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-01-26T20:49:12.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7694" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-26T23:00:27.490" Score="7" ViewCount="1875" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my high school 10 years ago, and at least 10 years prior and to this day, the staff has been using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pops.com/&quot;&gt;Power of Positive Students (POPS) program&lt;/a&gt; to motivate students to do better and stuff.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They made the claim that people who write down their goals are more likely to achieve them than those who just think about them.  So they made us write down our goals every week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been curious about where all this came from and it appears to be based on some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el_198302_mitchell.pdf&quot;&gt;70's program&lt;/a&gt; so the question is.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do people who write down their goals achieve them with any measurable success over those who merely think them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="3256" LastEditDate="2012-01-26T23:05:28.437" LastActivityDate="2023-03-03T18:22:23.180" Title="Do people who write down their goals achieve them?" Tags="|education|behavior|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7694" CreationDate="2012-01-26T23:15:21.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an interesting &lt;a href=&quot;http://sidsavara.com/personal-productivity/why-3-of-harvard-mbas-make-ten-times-as-much-as-the-other-97-combined&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; from a Harvard MBA class suggesting that writing down clear goals does indeed increase the chance of success. A couple summarizing statistics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84 percent who had no goals at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more staggering – the three percent who had clear, written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97 percent put together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, there is also a similar Yale study that was a myth, but the above one cites actual statistics from Harvard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another experimental &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dominican.edu/dominicannews/study-backs-up-strategies-for-achieving-goals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; (at the bottom of the page, the beginning discusses the Yale myth), suggests a fairly strong causality between writing down goals and achieving them. The professor in charge commented:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;My study provides empirical evidence for the effectiveness of three coaching tools: accountability, commitment, and writing down one’s goals.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5772" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T01:18:22.853" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7666" CreationDate="2012-01-27T00:55:13.830" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is illegal to tie a contribution to a demand or to accept such a deal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobbs_Act&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hobbs Act&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/131mcrm.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(DOJ summary)&lt;/a&gt;, further clarified in &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=18431912148263938753&amp;amp;q=Evans+v.+United+States&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=2,37&amp;amp;as_vis=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evans v. United States&lt;/a&gt;, an elected official cannot obtain a payment, solicited or not, in exchange for an official act. The payer must make it clear to the payee that the payment is in exchange for the official act. Subsequent actions don't bear on the legality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the other perspective it is illegal if it qualifies as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/201.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bribing a Public Official&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recent legal trouble of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0606.birnbaum.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jack Abramoff&lt;/a&gt; is extremely relevant and points out the gap between the law and its enforcement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I was pretty focused on the title question and forgot that in the text of your question you focus on a petition making a specific claim. I'm not trying to answer if that specific claim is legal or illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5811" LastEditorUserId="5811" LastEditDate="2012-01-27T03:49:07.377" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T03:49:07.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7698" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7699" CreationDate="2012-01-27T07:17:38.960" Score="9" ViewCount="537" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read claims that sitting in a balance ball chair (aka exercise ball chair) will improve your posture. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Balance Ball Chair is designed to keep your posture properly aligned to help prevent slumping, back pain, shoulder pain and other problems related to desk work. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://life.gaiam.com/guides/balance-ball-and-ball-chair-faqs-reviews-tips&quot;&gt;life.gaiam.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3719" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T07:23:23.317" Title="Do exercise/balance ball chairs improve posture?" Tags="|ergonomics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7698" CreationDate="2012-01-27T07:23:23.317" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently it isn't true, and some studies suggest that it may have a negative effect on your posture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a 2009 British study found that prolonged sitting on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2793460/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;therapy ball led to just as much slumping&lt;/a&gt; and “poor sitting position” as a desk chair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The balls produced more muscle activity and 33 percent more “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18508028&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;trunk motion&lt;/a&gt;.” But they also produced more spinal shrinkage... “It is concluded that the advantages with respect to physical loading of sitting on an exercise ball may not outweigh the disadvantages,” the researchers wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16696264&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Other studies have had similar results.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;THE BOTTOM LINE Sitting on an exercise ball burns more energy than sitting on an office chair, but the evidence that it improves posture is lacking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: The New York Times &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/health/21really.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Claim: Replacing Your Desk Chair With an Exercise Ball can Improve Your Posture.&lt;/a&gt; By Anahad O'Connor Published: September 20, 2010&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3719" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T07:23:23.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7700" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7784" CreationDate="2012-01-27T09:57:08.907" Score="11" ViewCount="893" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the Shake Weight &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tryshakeweightclassic.com/#order&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;, they claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shake Weight® Utilizes New Workout Technology Called Dynamic Inertia,&#xA;  which can increase Muscle Activity to nearly 300% compared to a&#xA;  Standard Dumbbell.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The asterisk points to this text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;*Study compared Shake Weight® to similar weight dumbbells performing standard dumbbell exercises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that indicates this might be true, or is it just marketing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-10T19:13:16.807" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T19:13:16.807" Title="Is the Shake Weight more effective than just using dumbbells?" Tags="|medical-science|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7701" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7702" CreationDate="2012-01-27T12:36:02.160" Score="88" ViewCount="70417" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hear this claim every now and then. That US currency is legal tender and that it is illegal to not accept it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most recent example of this was on an old episode of 30 Rock: The head and the hair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was not able to find a clip online, however I did find this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.30rockquotes.net/seasons/season_1/30rockquotes_the_head_and_the_hair.cfm&quot;&gt;transcript&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cashier: No $100s, Small bills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Liz: Oh, I knew this was gonna happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cashier: Store policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Liz: Yeah, Well, That's an illegal policy. You have to take this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cashier: No, I don't&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gray: Yeah sir you do, it says &quot;legal tender for all debts, public and&#xA;  private.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cashier: Does it say anything about $100 for a bottle of water?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gray: You can't decide what money you'll accept. That's illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6336" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="6336" LastEditorDisplayName="user6327" LastEditDate="2012-01-27T12:51:57.953" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T02:08:27.183" Title="Is it illegal to refuse US currency for a purchase?" Tags="|united-states|law|currency|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7701" CreationDate="2012-01-27T12:50:09.827" Score="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of the more irritating claims I hear repeated. It's not specific to the US either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The answer is no, merchants have no obligation to accept money for a purchase.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple reason is that US currency is only legal tender for debts. It is illegal to refuse legal tender for a debt. When you make a purchase at a store, there is no debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather, you and the merchant are agreeing to enter into a (very brief) contract. If the merchant doesn't agree to the terms of that contract, i.e. the currency denominations someone wants to pay with, he has no obligation to enter into that contract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is based on Federal law which states that legal tender must be accepted for all debts. There is no law stating that legal tender must be accepted for other purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx&quot;&gt;The U.S. Treasury states quite clearly:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private&#xA;  business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as&#xA;  for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are free to&#xA;  develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash unless&#xA;  there is a State law which says otherwise. For example, a bus line may&#xA;  prohibit payment of fares in pennies or dollar bills. In addition,&#xA;  movie theaters, convenience stores and gas stations may refuse to&#xA;  accept large denomination currency (usually notes above $20) as a&#xA;  matter of policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/31/5103.html&quot;&gt;Coinage Act of 1965, Section 31 U.S.C. 5103&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;United States coins and currency (including Federal reserve notes and&#xA;  circulating notes of Federal reserve banks and national banks) are&#xA;  legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues. Foreign&#xA;  gold or silver coins are not legal tender for debts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-01-27T13:03:13.770" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T13:03:13.770" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7705" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-27T20:04:03.373" Score="38" ViewCount="62832" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard many times that Albert Einstein needed a lot of sleep. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/health-15999489&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this BBC article&lt;/a&gt; claims that he typically needed eleven hours of sleep:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People's sleep needs can differ significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the extreme, Margaret Thatcher managed on four hours of sleep a night while Albert Einstein needed 11.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any reliable reference supporting this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2078" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-08T17:19:58.970" Title="Did Albert Einstein sleep 10-11 hours daily?" Tags="|sleep|albert-einstein|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5318" CreationDate="2012-01-27T22:00:11.157" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No software application has yet been devised which can take all possible variations of system configuration into account and make appropriate decisions to optimize a randomly selected computer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, there are a number of things a user can do which will (generally) improve the responsiveness of their system, the majority of which can be done without any software other than the built-in system tools (defragmenting, etc.)&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/athome/setup/optimize.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &quot;optimization&quot; which is almost never justified, or entirely safe&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724871%28v=vs.85%29.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, is messing with the Windows Registry. The Windows Registry is not rigidly formatted&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724946%28v=vs.85%29.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; and applications may store data in it in any manner they wish (within the restrictions of the application's security context, of course&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724878.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.) This free-form construction means that &lt;em&gt;it is all but impossible to definitively tell whether a key is &quot;useless&quot; or &quot;useful&quot;&lt;/em&gt; without being intimately familiar with the application that owns it&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/bb985037.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly, applications which &quot;walk&quot; the Registry (that is, proceed from key to subkey in a linear manner looking for a particular key) will suffer speed penalties, and those penalties will become greater in direct proportion to the number of keys the application has to look at in order to find the particular key its looking for &lt;em&gt;(I have no citation for this, but to me it's common sense that looking at each key in turn is slower that just going right to the key you want.)&lt;/em&gt; However most applications don't do that, or at least not often, so the penalty doesn't apply to them. This fact, when taken into consideration with the fact the &quot;pruning&quot; the registry can have disastrous results if an error is made&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256986&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, leaves only the conclusion that whatever gains are to be had by running a registry cleaner/optimizer/defragger/etc. are outweighed by the risks. And this is not even considering that &quot;registry cleaning&quot; has no official definition other than what the Registry cleaner's vendor makes it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, registry optimizers are the modern day snake oil wonder tonic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice for keeping your computer running at peak efficiency is the same advice as for everything else: take care of it. Don't install every free app you find, run a reputable and up-to-date security application, keep your software and the operating system up-to-date, periodically defrag and chkdsk your hard drives (note that SSD drives require somewhat different care and feeding than mechanical drives,) uninstall an application if you don't use it, and judiciously curtail the number of applications and services which are set to load at start.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/athome/setup/optimize.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/athome/setup/optimize.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.microsoft.com/athome/setup/optimize.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724871%28v=vs.85%29.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724871%28v=vs.85%29.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724946%28v=vs.85%29.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724946%28v=vs.85%29.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724878.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms724878.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/bb985037.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/bb985037.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256986&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256986&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5896" LastEditorUserId="5896" LastEditDate="2012-01-28T01:52:10.120" LastActivityDate="2012-01-28T01:52:10.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7707" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-01-27T22:08:07.707" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-01-27T22:08:07.707" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T22:08:07.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7708" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-01-27T22:08:07.707" Score="0" Body="Software is the term applied to any set of instructions carried out automatically by a computer. The most familiar type of software is a software application, which is a set of instructions, or a number of instructions sets used together, designed to meet a particular need or related set of needs (e.g. a document editor, a movie player, a website browser, etc.)" OwnerUserId="5896" LastEditorUserId="5896" LastEditDate="2012-01-27T22:48:13.070" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T22:48:13.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7159" CreationDate="2012-01-27T22:08:53.180" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You quoted Norman Hearst, so I'll start there. According to Hearst,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, condoms are 85-90% effective for preventing HIV transmission when used consistently.  We then looked at whether condom promotion has been successful as a public health strategy – something very different from individual effectiveness.  Here we found good evidence for effectiveness in concentrated epidemics.  For example, condoms made an important contribution to controlling HIV among gay men in places like San Francisco and epidemics driven by commercial sex in places like Thailand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We then looked for evidence of a public health impact for condoms in generalized epidemics.  To our surprise, we couldn’t find any.  No generalized HIV epidemic has ever been rolled back by a prevention strategy based primarily on condoms.  Instead, the few successes in turning around generalized HIV epidemics, such as in Uganda, were achieved not through condoms but by getting people to change their sexual behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies I found closely match Hearst statement above that &amp;quot;condoms are 85-90% effective for preventing HIV transmission&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ad-teaching.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/zbmed/LWW/gv023/00007435/00007435-200201000-00007.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reducing the risk of sexual HIV transmission: quantifying the per-act risk for HIV on the basis of choice of partner, sex act, and condom use.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A pooled analysis of studies suggested that condoms are &lt;strong&gt;90–95%&lt;/strong&gt; effective in preventing HIV transmission, if used consistently. Model-based estimation also indicated that condoms decrease the per-act probability of male-to-female transmission by about &lt;strong&gt;85–95%&lt;/strong&gt;. Another study reported that condoms broke or slipped off in approximately 4% of coital acts. For our model we assumed the per-act probability of condom failure due to incorrect use, slippage, and breakage to be 5%. Hence, using a condom provides a 20-fold decrease in risk of acquiring HIV infection, per act.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another interesting &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199408113310601&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; from the New England Journal of Medicine found couples with an HIV positive partners, that used condoms for every sexual episode, showed no transmission of HIV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With those studies, I think it is safe to say that condoms are effective at preventing HIV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But knowing this, Hearst still argues &amp;quot;condoms are not effective at rolling back HIV epidemics&amp;quot;. So, if condoms can stop HIV transmission almost 95% of the time, why aren't condoms effective at stopping HIV epidemics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is, I couldn't find a good answer to this question. I think it is likely Hearst is wrong. Just because HIV rates increased in some countries, when condom distribution increased, does not mean that they are linked. Correlation doesn't imply causation. Condoms can be distributed, but cannot stop epidemics if they aren't used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I could also easily argue the other side. A HIV prevention based primarily on condoms ignores the real problem: sexual promiscuity. Condoms are not an effective prevention because their simply not used. The best HIV prevention programs concentrate on behavourial changes like being abstinate or having only one sexual partner. The problem is behavour, not use of condoms. Condoms promote the idea of sexual promiscuity. People think they can be sexually promiscuous and just use a condom for protection -- I'll use a condom and I'll be safe. When it comes down to the sexual act though, condoms are just forgotten, hence increasing the spread of HIV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is only speculation on my part. Hopefully others will take the torch from here and provide more evidence based facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to your question is, I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5882" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T22:51:23.747" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7668" CreationDate="2012-01-27T22:15:29.247" Score="-2" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google 2011 revenue&lt;/a&gt;: $37.9 billion &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amazon 2011 revenue&lt;/a&gt;:$34.2 billion &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microsoft 2011 revenue&lt;/a&gt;: $69.94 billion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have 2006 numbers, but I would say that it's &lt;strong&gt;possible&lt;/strong&gt; in 2006 the revenue of the entire pornography industry was the size of half of the revenues of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix.  But the comparison is apples to oranges, and given some quick duck-duck-going on these 3 companies, I doubt that the revenue of the porn industry is equal to half of the revenue from the above companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is even more doubtful that your friends claim (which is different from the question's title) is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5898" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T22:15:29.247" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7701" CreationDate="2012-01-27T22:19:44.253" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just want to point out that while Sonny Ordell said that it is not specific to the U.S... here in Canada, we have a law regarding what has legal tender or not and in what context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under the Canadian Currency Act (R.S.C., 1985, c. C-52), there is a limit to the value of a transaction for which one can use only coins to pay for a product or service:  A payment in coins referred to in subsection (1) is a legal tender for no more than the following amounts for the following denominations of coins:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;forty dollars if the denomination is two dollars or greater but does not exceed ten dollars; (20  two dollar coins (toonies))&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;twenty-five dollars if the denomination is one dollar; (25  one dollar coins (loonies))&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ten dollars if the denomination is ten cents or greater but less than one dollar; (100 dimes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;five dollars if the denomination is five cents; and (100 nickels)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;twenty-five cents if the denomination is one cent. (25 pennies)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-52/page-1.html&quot;&gt;http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-52/page-1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5899" LastActivityDate="2012-01-27T22:19:44.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7712" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7772" CreationDate="2012-01-27T22:45:00.890" Score="11" ViewCount="5095" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some news story now circulating states that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A BOY has stunned medics with his ability to see in pitch black with his cat's eyes that glow in the dark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doctors have studied Nong Youhui's amazing eyesight since his dad took him to hospital in Dahua, southern China, concerned over his bright blue eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dad Ling said: &quot;They told me he would grow out of it and that his eyes would stop glowing and turn black like most Chinese people but they never did.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Medical tests conducted in complete darkness show Youhui can read perfectly without any light and sees as clearly as most people do during the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/mutant-boy-with-cats-eyes-can-see-in-dark/story-e6freuy9-1226254934451&quot;&gt;The Daily Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story seems plausible, but I can't find much information other than this short blurbs reproduced elsewhere by not very reputable media outlets; always giving the same story quite short of details. So, is there any truth to the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added: A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xfs0R-7cS_s&amp;amp;feature=player_embedded&quot;&gt;CCTV9&lt;/a&gt; report makes it clearer that the tests were done in &quot;near darkness&quot; and the boy's eyes aren't claimed to &quot;glow&quot;, but to reflect light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="86" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:16:10.520" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:16:10.520" Title="Is there a Chinese boy who can read in almost-perfect darkness?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7715" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7721" CreationDate="2012-01-28T14:49:34.237" Score="13" ViewCount="7257" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common cliche that red heads are more likely to have a fiery personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair#Beliefs_about_temperament&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A common belief about redheads is that they have fiery tempers and&#xA;  sharp tongues. In Anne of Green Gables, a character says of Anne&#xA;  Shirley, the redheaded heroine, that &quot;her temper matches her hair&quot;,&#xA;  while in The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield remarks that &quot;People&#xA;  with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie [his dead&#xA;  brother] never did, and he had very red hair.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any reason to consider this might be true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-01-29T03:59:35.717" LastActivityDate="2017-06-25T02:40:53.753" Title="Are red heads more likely to be hot headed?" Tags="|psychology|biology|genetics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7716" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-01-28T15:33:53.917" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-01-28T15:33:53.917" LastActivityDate="2012-01-28T15:33:53.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7717" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-01-28T15:33:53.917" Score="0" Body="Ophthalmology is the branch of medicine that deals with the anatomy, physiology and diseases of the eye." OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="1134" LastEditDate="2012-01-28T15:52:11.630" LastActivityDate="2012-01-28T15:52:11.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7718" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-28T16:16:13.550" Score="7" ViewCount="4609" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, probably everybody knows and hates this. Detangling the headset cable when putting it out of your pocket. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ericsson-LiveSound-Premium-Headset-schwarz/dp/B005GDVBAE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1327517627&amp;amp;sr=8-1&quot;&gt;This headset product&lt;/a&gt; claims to prevent the cable from tangling up by the &quot;flat cable technology&quot;. One of the product commenters on the site says, this &quot;technology&quot; doesn't work, cables are still tangling up, it's a constructional defect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hear your music as it was meant to be heard. Discover LiveSound hi-fi headset.&#xA;  Experience genuine Sony Ericsson sound. Deep, punchy bass. Balanced, clean and dynamic audio reproduction. LiveSound hi-fi headset. Premium design. &lt;strong&gt;Flat tangle-free cables.&lt;/strong&gt; LiveKey app control. And remote on-cable music and call-handling. LiveSound. Engineered for music lovers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What sounds intuitive to me is that by flat cables you reduce probably a bit/lot the friction between the cables. But is this a necessary/sufficient factor for cables getting tangled? Or more a matter of sufficient time and a tight enough pocket. It's unclear where this technology can work, if it works at all. Does friction play such a huge role?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4477" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T11:08:26.990" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T20:51:42.110" Title="Are flat cables tangle-free?" Tags="|physics|technology|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7679" CreationDate="2012-01-28T17:45:38.550" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some physiological conditions that may be tied to overall structure of one's hands, however these are not very reliable correlations.  For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.psych.ualberta.ca/~phurd/papers/Bailey_andH05.pdf&quot;&gt;there may be a correlation between finger length and exposure to pre-natal testosterone, which in turn may be correlated to aggression and masculinity&lt;/a&gt; (PDF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hand-grip strength also showed a correlation to male behaviour in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.albany.edu/news/pdf_files/Gripstrength.pdf&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; (PDF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Handgrip strength (HGS) is a noninvasive measure of physical health that is negatively correlated with disability, morbidity, and mortality&#xA;  rates in adults. Highly heritable, HGS is indicative of blood testosterone levels and levels of fat-free body mass. In this study, we investigated&#xA;  whether HGS was related to measures of body morphology [shoulder-to-hip ratio (SHR), waist-to-hip ratio, and second-digit-to-fourth-digit&#xA;  ratio (2D:4D)], aggressive behavior, and sexual history in 82 male and 61 female college students. Results showed that HGS was correlated&#xA;  with SHRs, aggressive behavior, age at first sexual intercourse, and promiscuity in males but not in females. HGS appears to be an honest&#xA;  signal for genetic quality in males.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically regarding your question on palm lines. A student at the University of Texas is making a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/wcpoon/palm/dna.html&quot;&gt;study of the simian line and palm creases&lt;/a&gt;, however I have not found the results.  In particular, they are looking for (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The palm lines do not have a direct implication on the success rate of mating and reproduction, nor on development and health, hence palm line pattern is not actively sought for by Natural Selection. &lt;em&gt;Any mutation that causes change in palm line pattern is not specifically selected or rejected because of the palm line pattern, but because of their other effects on other parts of the body or other stage of development.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The student goes on to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Statistically significant correlation between the palm line pattern and the disease is looked for using methods from data mining including, but not limited to, artificial neural networks. Our hypothesis of the correlation so obtained is then tested on another large set of people not known to have this disease or not. Those identified with the disease are then verified using traditional methods of DNA testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zano mentioned a Swedish study, and I found this report that does say that &lt;a href=&quot;http://anthro.palomar.edu/abnormal/abnormal_4.htm&quot;&gt;there may be some correlation with the &lt;strong&gt;simian&lt;/strong&gt; line&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People with Down syndrome typically have short, stocky bodies with thick hands and feet.  Their hands also commonly have a &quot;simian crease&quot;, which is a crease in the palm that runs completely from one side of the hand to the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it doesn't seem to make clear the correlation, and specific genetic cause of that line in this article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04102006-145843/unrestricted/jenkinse_etd2006.pdf&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; (PDF) mentions the simian line once in 106 pages, however it doesn't offer any useful conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/bag-of-tricks/chap10.pdf&quot;&gt;Columbia University&lt;/a&gt; statistics warn against attributing too much in terms of correlation, since it is easy to lie with statistics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BOTTOM LINE&lt;/strong&gt;: There &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be some correlation; however, the mechanisms and studies are &lt;em&gt;still ongoing&lt;/em&gt;.  Beware of anyone saying that because of &quot;X&quot; therefore &quot;Y&quot; in this case.  As is all too often the case, these things are much more complicated than simple correlations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="5105" LastEditDate="2012-02-01T07:17:52.513" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T07:17:52.513" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7720" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-28T18:13:57.260" Score="10" ViewCount="4660" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;q=drinking+tea+kidney+stones&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quick Google search&lt;/a&gt; provides several pages that suggest drinking tea can lead to kidney stones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid drinking too much tea or coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/kidney_stones?open&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Victorian Government's Better Health site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consensus theory seems to be that oxalate and other minerals in tea form salts crystals in the urinary system (stones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the Mayo Clinic reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drinking a cup of black tea or green tea each day could reduce the risk of kidney stones. One study in women found those that drank the most black tea had a slightly lower risk of kidney stones. The study was not rigorous and only involved women, so it doesn't provide strong evidence that drinking tea is helpful for all kidney stones. If you enjoy drinking tea, there may be a chance that continuing to drink tea can help reduce your risk of kidney stones. However, tea contains high oxalate levels. So if your urine has a high oxalate level, your doctor may advise against drinking tea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/kidney-stones/ds00282/dsection=alternative-medicine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does drinking too much tea cause kidney stones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4055" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T10:47:14.907" Title="Does drinking too much tea cause kidney stones?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|tea|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7715" CreationDate="2012-01-28T21:24:53.150" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would tend to think this is more a case of confirmation bias than anything else when trying to correlate red hair to temper (even your question cites a counter case with &quot;Allie&quot;).  Numerous studies have been made between hair colour and various other traits, and they all pretty much come up with poor correlations in terms of actual personality.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://independent.academia.edu/AnthonyFallone/Papers/304065/BLONDE_BIMBOS_FIRECATS_AND_DARK_LADIES_FEMALE_PERSONALITY_AND_HAIR_COLOUR&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The abstract on this paper states&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A collection of studies beginning with one that looked at correlations with descriptive terms chosen by young males for blondes, brunettes and red heads and by the females themselves for Eysenck's EPQ-R personality measures. The descriptives were chosen in an absolutely &lt;strong&gt;stereotypical&lt;/strong&gt; way. There was an apparent association between extraversion and blondeness, lie scale (social conformity) with dark hair and psychoticism (social non-conformity) with having red hair. The follow-up looked at &lt;strong&gt;stereotypes&lt;/strong&gt; of women about women, which largely confirmed those of the men in the earlier study. &lt;em&gt;The next study looked at how much or if at all &lt;strong&gt;dying&lt;/strong&gt; hair to a different colour changes personality.&lt;/em&gt; Using the EPQ-R again, only those women who dyed blonde showed a significant change in personality; however, with reference to the first study they did not become extravert or more extravert but became significantly more psychotic (socially non-conformist). Theirs was a banner of rebellion! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reading this paper, and a few others, it generally appears more the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;EXPECTATION&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of how one behaves that drives the actual behaviour based on the hair colour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amongst males in the UK (CEO level), &lt;a href=&quot;http://carmine.se.edu/cvonbergen/Hair%20Colour%20Stereotyping%20and%20CEO%20Selection%20in%20the%20United%20Kingdom.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;it was again concluded that people's perceptions had a greater corollary than actual personality&lt;/a&gt; (PDF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/whathap/ubnrp/intelligence05/Rnature.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Numerous &quot;twin studies&quot; do give credence to the &quot;nature&quot; hypothesis of how people tend to develop&lt;/a&gt;, however, there seems to be very little actual study on if there are actual correlations between the personality of the person and their hair colour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, most of these studies are Euro-centric.  For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chinatownconnection.com/chinese-superstitions.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in Chinese culture, red is considered a bright and happy colour&lt;/a&gt;.  So anyone in china that is fortunate to have red hair (very rare mind you), is considered a fortunate and happy person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with external traits, and personality, there is no single catch all.  We still do not understand how genetics play into developing a person's overall behaviour.  What switches are involved that, for instance makes a person aggressive, temperamental, etc. and how they are tied to other genes.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions&quot;&gt;Maybe you would have better luck at getting a deeper understanding at the Biology StackExchange&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:10.240" LastActivityDate="2012-01-28T21:31:18.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7722" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7725" CreationDate="2012-01-29T01:27:27.353" Score="21" ViewCount="5735" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty specific question – in the Wall Street Journal article dated January 27, 2012 entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;No Need to Panic About Global Warming. There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; The article claims that 16 scientists argue against a need to react to climate change, including agreeing in writing to statements such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue is not about whether their statements are true, but rather whether these 16 people are what could be considered &quot;scientists&quot;, i.e. &quot;one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would these 16 people qualify as what one would ordinarily call scientists? If so, is their expertise in a relevant field?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask because I would like to know whether the qualifications and reputability of these individuals lends any credence to their claims. e.g. are these the forerunners of scientific thought, or are they somewhat peripheral ideologues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:11:23.187" LastActivityDate="2019-02-15T18:39:06.427" Title="Are the 16 scientists who claim that climate change is not something to worry about climate scientists?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7722" CreationDate="2012-01-29T03:13:15.337" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Just an up-front statement for folks who may be new here.) &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/41/is-there-any-solid-causal-evidence-for-human-activities-contributing-to-climate&quot;&gt;First of all, the entire question of climate change has been addressed here quite throughly&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1065/has-global-mean-temperature-at-sea-level-increased-since-1900&quot;&gt;Several times in fact&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5057/did-global-cooling-have-as-much-scientific-consensus-as-global-warming-has-n&quot;&gt;With several of the canards addressed as well&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2667/did-we-have-a-global-cooling-40-years-ago&quot;&gt;Those repeatedly as well&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term scientist can be applied to anyone with a Bachelor of Science degree (a fact that has been abused before, see below).  The article states that these scientists are (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris&lt;/em&gt;; &lt;em&gt;J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting&lt;/em&gt;; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; &lt;em&gt;William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology&lt;/em&gt;; &lt;em&gt;Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT&lt;/em&gt;; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; &lt;em&gt;Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service&lt;/em&gt;; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In looking at that list, of those 16, I would say 5 are in a relevant field of study as Flimsy asked (this is my opinion only based on their stated titles, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/5973/tacroy&quot;&gt;a slashdot post by [Tacroy]&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/5973/tacroy&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; did a better analysis&lt;/a&gt;, I was &lt;em&gt;trying&lt;/em&gt; to be generous for their sake).  And again, just because an incredibly small number of scientists disagree on a subject and have the capital and clout to publish in a major newspaper does not lend any particular veracity to their claim.  And since there are indeed a large number of climate scientists (by some estimates, 30,000 in the US alone), and that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/How-many-climate-scientists-are-climate-skeptics.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;worldwide 97-98% agree with humans causing global climate change&lt;/a&gt;, I am surprised that the Wall Street Journal went with such a weak list.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/OISM-Petition-Project.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This seems to be an extension of the previous dissent list that was debunked&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, OISM signatories represent a tiny fraction (~0.3%) of all US science graduates (petition cards were only sent to individuals within the U.S)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to figures from the US Department of Education Digest of Education Statistics: 2008, 10.6 million science graduates have gained qualifications consistent with the OISM polling criteria since the 1970-71 school year. 32,000 out of 10 million is not a very compelling figure, but a tiny minority - approximately 0.3 per cent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anything, this article, along with all the dissent seems to be just the same as &lt;a href=&quot;http://ncse.com/taking-action/project-steve&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project Steve&lt;/a&gt; instead of true scientific dissent.  This is more sophistry to muddy an issue that has firm evidence supporting it, and people are attempting to play politics with science.  The United States seems to be the worst nation on the earth for this type of &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceprogress.org/2008/04/manufactroversy/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;manufactroversy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change#Scientific_consensus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I know it's a wikipedia link&lt;/a&gt;, however they are reporting just statements that are in the public record.  The important thing to note is that these are statements of consensus from these organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A question that frequently arises in popular discussion of climate change is whether there is a scientific consensus on climate change. Several scientific organizations have explicitly used the term &quot;consensus&quot; in their statements&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2006: &quot;The conclusions in this statement reflect the scientific consensus represented by, for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the Joint National Academies' statement.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;US National Academy of Sciences: &quot;In the judgment of most climate scientists, Earth’s warming in recent decades has been caused primarily by human activities that have increased the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. ... On climate change, [the National Academies’ reports] have assessed consensus findings on the science...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joint Science Academies' statement, 2005: &quot;We recognise the international scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Joint Science Academies' statement, 2001: &quot;The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the consensus of the international scientific community on climate change science. We recognise IPCC as the world’s most reliable source of information on climate change and its causes, and we endorse its method of achieving this consensus.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;American Meteorological Society, 2003: &quot;The nature of science is such that there is rarely total agreement among scientists. Individual scientific statements and papers—the validity of some of which has yet to be assessed adequately—can be exploited in the policy debate and can leave the impression that the scientific community is sharply divided on issues where there is, in reality, a strong scientific consensus.... IPCC assessment reports are prepared at approximately five-year intervals by a large international group of experts who represent the broad range of expertise and perspectives relevant to the issues. The reports strive to reflect a consensus evaluation of the results of the full body of peer-reviewed research.... They provide an analysis of what is known and not known, the degree of consensus, and some indication of the degree of confidence that can be placed on the various statements and conclusions.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Network of African Science Academies: “A consensus, based on current evidence, now exists within the global scientific community that human activities are the main source of climate change and that the burning of fossil fuels is largely responsible for driving this change.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;International Union for Quaternary Research, 2008: &quot;INQUA recognizes the international scientific consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Australian Coral Reef Society, 2006: &quot;There is almost total consensus among experts that the earth’s climate is changing as a result of the build-up of greenhouse gases.... There is broad scientific consensus that coral reefs are heavily affected by the activities of man and there are significant global influences that can make reefs more vulnerable such as global warming....&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing to take away is that just because a few people have a loud platform for their appeals does not lend any greater credibility to their agendas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2012-02-02T23:04:37.587" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7726" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-29T11:59:31.987" Score="9" ViewCount="550" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PMEBk.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Santa Mail&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.macys.com/believe&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;I was listening to the &lt;em&gt;2008 Christmas Special&lt;/em&gt; of the BBC radio programme &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007mf4f&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Unbelievable Truth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, where the following was said to be true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Santa has more mail than any other fictional or divine entity.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt; God and&#xA;Sherlock Holmes come next.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;I couldn't find a list that confirms/debunks this (too much &amp;quot;noise&amp;quot;), but I did stumble upon a number for letters to Santa Claus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More than 6 million letters every year are addressed to Santa Claus&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;North Pole, or some variation of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unmultimedia.org/radio/english/2009/12/postal-services-answer-letters-to-santa/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;United Nations Radio&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;My Question:&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does anyone know a source that confirms (or debunks) the claim?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T20:08:36.383" Title="Does Santa Claus get more mail than any other fictional or divine entity?" Tags="|religion|sociology|christmas|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7726" CreationDate="2012-01-29T14:56:42.613" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is hard to answer due to the lack of readily available mail statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I did find was several pages talking about the volume of mail for Santa and some pages talking about the volume of mail addressed to god.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Canada Post &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Post#Letters_to_Santa_Claus&quot;&gt;receives millions&lt;/a&gt; of letters to Santa each year. Letters to God and the easter bunny are also mentioned but do not seem to be as common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Letters to god are forwarded on to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, although sometimes only if sufficient postage was paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/20/israel-jerusalem-letters-to-god&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; from the Guardian states that each year more than 1000 letters to God are received, while this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/12/stories/2008121256752000.htm&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; from The Hindu states that in 2008 around 2000 letters to God were received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to note that many post offices have programs for dealing with letters addressed to Santa such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://about.usps.com/news/electronic-press-kits/holidaynews/2011/santa.htm&quot;&gt;Letters to Santa program&lt;/a&gt; in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find any official statistics so it's hard to say for sure, however given what we do know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That there are at least 1,000,000 letters to Santa are handled in Canada per year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That special programs exist at post offices around the world to deal with the volume of mail addressed to santa&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That only ~2000 letters to God are forwarded to the Israeli postal service. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would seem reasonable to consider the claim likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we assume that the letters to God that get forwarded on to Jerusalem  are only 1% of the total letters addressed to God, then that would still only be 1/5th of all the letters addressed to Santa in Canada. An arbitrary assumption, but something interesting to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any statistics for letters addressed to Sherlock Holmes &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this I think it is safe to assume that the claim is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-01-29T16:43:18.687" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T16:43:18.687" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7722" CreationDate="2012-01-29T15:21:18.853" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is copied from a post &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2643553&amp;amp;cid=38852469&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on Slashdot&lt;/a&gt;. The poster clearly put a great deal of effort into this answer, but it is exactly on point and has supporting references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, let's look at the sixteen climate scientists who signed this, shall we?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claude Allegre&lt;/strong&gt;, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris: Sounds reasonable, though it looks like the proper name for the &amp;quot;University of Paris&amp;quot; is the &amp;quot;Paris VI University&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;Pierre and Marie Curie University&amp;quot;. Unfortunately, it looks like the man &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Allegre&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;is kind of a crank&lt;/a&gt;, and he hasn't been the director of that Institute since 1986, which makes it weird that it's the one thing they list about him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;J. Scott Armstrong&lt;/strong&gt;, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting: That's pretty reasonable, but forecasting and climate science aren't exactly the same thing; forecasting is the study of what's going to happen tomorrow or next week in any topic, while climate science is trying to figure out what will happen in the next year or the the next ten years with the weather. Also, Armstrong's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Scott_Armstrong&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;professional background&lt;/a&gt; seems to be primarily in advertising, not forecasting, and he hasn't actually published any papers on climatology that I can see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jan Breslow&lt;/strong&gt;, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University: I'm not exactly sure what he's doing on this list, since presumably it's a list of climate scientists? I mean, just because he's a researcher in one field doesn't automatically qualify him in others; it's like taking your car to ten mechanics and ignoring what they say, then asking your doctor about it and following his advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Roger Cohen&lt;/strong&gt;, fellow, American Physical Society: This dude &lt;a href=&quot;http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/columns/rogercohen/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;seems to be a writer&lt;/a&gt; for the NY Times, and I can't seem to find anyone by that name on the list of Fellows of the American Physical Society [aps.org]. Maybe he received his fellowship before 1990? In any case, it doesn't signify much in terms of his ability to evaluate any kind of science; those fellowships are kinda prestigious, but they're handed out for all sorts of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edward David&lt;/strong&gt;, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences: What can I say? He's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_E._David_Jr.&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an electrical engineer&lt;/a&gt;. Would you trust him to diagnose a heart condition? An expert in one subject is not automatically an expert in all subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;William Happer&lt;/strong&gt;, professor of physics, Princeton: What can I say? Damnit Jim, he's a physicist, not a climatologist! Sure, they're related - but would you trust this guy if he was talking on the way that chemists all over the world are trying to fool us about the mind control properties of fluorine? (as a side note, he's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Happer#Honours&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;also&lt;/a&gt; a Fellow of the American Physical Society - why didn't they mention that?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Michael Kelly&lt;/strong&gt;, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.: This dude is kinda hard to Google because he shares a name with a fairly famous guitar company and a well-respected journalist (who died in 2003); however, it looks like he's done &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csap.cam.ac.uk/network/michael-kelly/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some pretty awesome work&lt;/a&gt; on semi-conductors. Unfortunately, that doesn't have anything to do with climate research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;William Kininmonth&lt;/strong&gt;, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology: Well, for one thing, he hasn't been the head of the ABM since 1998 (this seems to be a theme, you know?); for another, he's trained as a meteorologist, not a climate scientist. Just because they both deal with the weather doesn't necessarily mean that his word carries extra weight, but I do have to admit that he's one of the better signatories of this list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Richard Lindzen&lt;/strong&gt;, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT: Lindzen is the most impressive name on this list, which makes me really wonder why he's in the middle. He's long been an outspoken skeptic of climate change, and is one of the few who really has a background in the stuff. He really should have been at the top, not the weird French dude who said that asbestos is harmless (even though it killed 22 of his students).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;James McGrath&lt;/strong&gt;, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University: Well, he's a chemist. That's not climate science. We've been over this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rodney Nichols&lt;/strong&gt;, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences: Stopped being the president and CEO of the NYAS in 2001. Is that really the best they can do? The administrator of scientific academy that doesn't even focus on climate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Burt Rutan&lt;/strong&gt;, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne: Look, Burt, you're great and all, but you're an engineer, you're not even a scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Harrison H. Schmitt&lt;/strong&gt;, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator: With a background in geology. That's not climate. It's close, and a lot of geology departments are transitioning over to Earth Systems Science departments that do include things like climate, but Schmitt has a hardcore rocks-and-fossils kind of background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nir Shaviv&lt;/strong&gt;, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem: Hey, astrophysics! That's closer than a lot of these other guys. Unfortunately, he's the dude who's been really pushing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Shaviv#Solar_variation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;solar variation&lt;/a&gt; theory of climate change, which has been shot down repeatedly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Henk Tennekes&lt;/strong&gt;, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service: Well, he hasn't been the director of the RDMS for a long time, but I can't find out when he left. He also rejected the use of computers in medium-range weather forecasting, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henk_Tennekes#Controversy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;supported this decision by referring to the Bible&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonino_Zichichi&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Antonio Zichichi&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva: He's a nuclear physicist! Awesome! But not climate!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: There are “scientists” in here but not with the qualifications that would indicate a peculiar knowledge of climatology.  On the spectrum from forerunners of climate science through peripheral ideologues, these individuals would seem to all fall decidedly towards the latter end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T16:51:01.477" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-01-29T15:21:18.853" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7084" CreationDate="2012-01-29T15:59:47.137" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ul.com/global/eng/pages/corporate/aboutul/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Underwriters Labs&lt;/a&gt; is supposed to be an independent source of information about electronics products, although they test mainly for consumer safety.  However, they have &amp;quot;quality&amp;quot; standards they certify such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neca-neis.org/newsletter/report.cfm?articleID=1395&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ISO/IEC 11801, and NEMA WC66&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adtron.com/pdf/Industrial%20Grade%20SSD%20%28ver%202.0A%29.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This paper (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; mentions that there are basically three grades of SSDs (Consumer, Commercial, and Industrial), and that some testing standards are not applied across each type, resulting in claims that may not all match up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good organization to go to is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumerreports.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Consumer Reports&lt;/a&gt;.  They have not done a review of any SSDs in comparison to each other, however they have done some reviews on computers with an SSD and were impressed by the speed of applications that access drive memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All other information on MTBF of these drives sadly comes from the manufacturers themselves, so I would take that with a grain of salt.  As SSDs become more commonplace in the marketplace, perhaps there will be more information from independent testing sources.  For now, understand that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adtron.com/pdf/Industrial%20Grade%20SSD%20%28ver%202.0A%29.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;standards are not being advertised consistently, and may be leading to confusion&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comparing product attributes alone is not enough to distinguish between the three emerging SSD categories: Consumer, Commercial or Industrial Grade. While Consumer Grade SSDs are more recognizable since they are optimized for the lowest cost per gigabyte, the distinction between Commercial and Industrial Grade SSD is less obvious. Comparing product specifications doesn’t adequately uncover this distinction, and an in-depth review of the vendor’s design, testing and manufacturing procedures is needed to assess the category into which the drive falls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A vendor that sells Commercial Grade SSDs will most likely not include many of these practices. Typically, environmental testing is done on non-operational drives, burn-in testing is limited or non-existent, the design phase does not include HALT testing and margin testing, and manufacturing testing is done on lot samples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T15:59:47.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7730" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7616" CreationDate="2012-01-29T16:12:20.220" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.bsu.edu/IEN/archives/2001/031501.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Air Ionizers are commonly used to clean particulates out of the air&lt;/a&gt;.  However, in looking at this laptop and the language used in the advertising, I think there is a conflagration  of two separate goals.  The language used in the picture does indeed correspond to what an air ionizer &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt;, however, the size limitations of the laptop may impact its ability to do so.  Instead, the more likely scenario is for this part to help protect the laptop itself from particulates, and the language preys on the gullibility of the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://mospace.umsystem.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10355/3595/AreAlternativeTherapiesEffective.pdf?sequence=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; states in it's fast track summary regarding asthma (emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No evidence supports use of room &lt;strong&gt;air ionizers&lt;/strong&gt;, homeopathy, or mind-body therapy for the treatment of asthma&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even though an air ionizer will trap electrostatically charged particles, it really has no benefit to people.  And that brings up the possibility of uncontrolled &lt;a href=&quot;http://snebulos.mit.edu/projects/reference/NASA-Generic/NASA-STD-8739-7.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ESD&lt;/a&gt; in the laptop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-01-29T16:43:00.973" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T16:43:00.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6139" CreationDate="2012-01-29T16:27:24.567" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Avionics do not allow a total override of a weapon system as these articles claim. As someone who not only designs aircraft avionics, but also flew military aircraft, I can state this with certainty. It's a silly claim.  It is purely propaganda and headline generation, nothing more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If such technology existed, don't you think that it would have been used to prevent the numerous instances of friendly fire deaths that the US has experienced?  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_fire#1991_Gulf_War&quot;&gt;Wikipedia has a nice list of such events (I'll start it at 1991 to keep it with recent history), and you'll see that many are aircraft related&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one incident that really stands out in this list is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the 1994 Black Hawk shootdown incident, two U.S. Air Force F-15Cs involved with Operation Provide Comfort shot down two U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawks over northern Iraq, killing 29 military and civilian personnel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another instance is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;US Patriot missile batteries fired two missiles on a US Navy F/A-18C Hornet 50 mi (80 km) from Karbala, Iraq. One missile hit the aircraft of pilot Lieutenant Nathan Dennis White of VFA-195, Carrier Air Wing Five, killing him. This was the result of the missile design flaw in identifying hostile aircraft&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To further put this insane conspiracy to rest, keep in mind that whenever a nation buys sophisticated equipment, they perform &lt;a href=&quot;http://armed-services.senate.gov/statemnt/2011/05%20May/Gilmore%2005-19-11.pdf&quot;&gt;operational tests&lt;/a&gt; on it.  Any inherent flaws would be quickly discovered in a thorough test program.  And many of the scientists, engineers, and military officers of these nations are taught and trained in the US, so they are not exactly what you would call incompetent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T16:27:24.567" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7624" CreationDate="2012-01-29T20:41:41.623" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I understand the rate of skin penetration by oils is determined by their viscosity, rather than anything to do with their temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find any studies testing the effect of temperature on skin penetration, nor anything to show why the practice of warming oils exists is common in some places. My guess is that applying warm oil may be considered to have other benefits such as helping the subject to relax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find some studies that seemed to show a trend that the higher the viscosity of an oil the lower the absorption rate. However the only one I was able to access was this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results indicate that as viscosity increased in the range ca. 30&#xA;to 5000 cSt (base oil to residual aromatic extract) the uptake of the&#xA;radiolabelled benzo(a)pyrene into blood was reduced by ca. fivefold.&#xA;Further increases in viscosity from ca. 5000 to 69 × 106 cSt (i.e.&#xA;residual aromatic extract to bitumen) resulted in a further but&#xA;smaller (ca. twofold) reduction in uptake. The relationship between&#xA;the amounts of free benzo(a)pyrene measured in blood and viscosity&#xA;showed the same trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s002040050597&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Studies on the dermal and systemic bioavailability of polycyclic aromatic compounds in high viscosity oil products&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was also interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The negative influence of liquid viscosity on penetration power through the skin has since long has been noted by many authors. : Brown &amp;amp; Scott 1934-Valette, Cavier &amp;amp; Savelle 1954- Hadgraft 1961.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, some of our results meet their assertions: it is according to&#xA;their very low viscosity that MINK OIL, Linseed Oil Carthame Oil are&#xA;showing their penetration power, It is according to their heavy&#xA;viscosity that Rice germs Oil and Celzaseed Oil have a very poor&#xA;penetration power. Between these two extremes, we can establish a&#xA;satisfying correlative between speed of penetration power and&#xA;viscosity. Exceptions to these rules are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Soya Oil: low viscosity but still slow penetration -Avocado Oil: Higher viscosity but strong penetration&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pureminkoil.com/?p=39&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;COMPARISON STUDY BETWEEN DIFFERENT OILS ON BEHALF THEIR PENETRATION POWER INTO HUMAN SKIN&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that page quite questionable however and am unable to find any other reference or copy of the study they claim is done in collaboration with the Laboratory Services of Chemistry and Bacteriology - City of Gent and the Belgium Ministry of Health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the rate of absorption is dependent on the viscosity of the oil, then warming an oil may make it less viscous but that may also remove or damage elements of the oil that you were hoping would be absorbed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-03T11:09:23.763" LastActivityDate="2022-09-03T11:09:23.763" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6094" CreationDate="2012-01-29T20:57:13.440" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;What a case of sneaky reporting!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's dissect the sequence of events in detail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Croatian girl learns German (enough to read books and watch movies).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Her parents don't think she is very good. They are not German experts though.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She goes in a coma, wakes up and speaks German but not Croatian.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The hospital director makes a very generic declaration, e.g. &amp;quot;You never know when recovering from such a trauma how the brain will react.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A psychiatric &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osudstarigrad.t-com.hr/vjestaci.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;court expert&lt;/a&gt; is asked on his opinion and gives it freely, implying glossolalia and people speaking in tongues after coma.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A new-found fluency in German is implied or claimed in the various articles -- of course though we will never possibly know whether she actually improved or not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all of this, the only one semi-claiming something supernatural is Dr. Mijo Milas at point five, speaking about a patient he's not reported as visiting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that there is a well known syndrome that makes &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_accent_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;people speak with a different accent&lt;/a&gt;, or another that makes people &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphasia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;not able to speak properly in a variety of ways&lt;/a&gt;, I do not find the events particularly surprising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/teen-wakes-coma-speaking-fluent-german/story?id=10395859#.TyWxMJiRl0M&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A much more balanced account has been given by ABC news&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though doctors say it's unlikely that the girl's German actually improved because of the coma, instances of lost language and bizarre changes in speech are more common than one may think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ABC News asked neurologists and language experts to weigh in on these kinds of remarkable language phenomena.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One such rare but well-documented speech condition is known as Foreign Accent Syndrome. Those with this disorder will often be unable to speak after suffering a stroke or other brain trauma and when their voices return, they will sound as if they have a foreign accent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the more general question of whether someone has ever been reported as learning a Biblical language after a coma - I haven't been able to find references. However, people do &amp;quot;speak in tongues&amp;quot; during religious activities. While they have claimed to be people speaking in Biblical languages, it has been proven to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossolalia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;glossolalia&lt;/a&gt;, a well studied (medical, non spiritual) phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Newspaper articles to reconstruct the sequence above&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/croatia/7583971/Croatian-teenager-wakes-from-coma-speaking-fluent-German.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/croatia/7583971/Croatian-teenager-wakes-from-coma-speaking-fluent-German.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.croatiantimes.com/news/General_News/2010-04-12/10240/Croat_girl_turns_to_German_language_only_after_waking_up_from_coma&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.croatiantimes.com/news/General_News/2010-04-12/10240/Croat_girl_turns_to_German_language_only_after_waking_up_from_coma&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/teen-wakes-coma-speaking-fluent-german/story?id=10395859#.TyWxMJiRl0M&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/teen-wakes-coma-speaking-fluent-german/story?id=10395859#.TyWxMJiRl0M&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-29T20:57:13.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7701" CreationDate="2012-01-30T00:54:23.147" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the accepted answer is accurate for US currency, different laws exist in different countries. In Norway, cash is considered legal tender and a merchant is therefore required to always accept it. The only limitations are that the merchant can deny more than 25 coins of a single unit, and can deny damaged or torn money. This is regulated by the §14 of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lovdata.no/all/hl-19850524-028.html#14&quot;&gt;central banking law&lt;/a&gt; and §38 of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lovdata.no/all/tl-19990625-046-008.html#38&quot;&gt;financial agreement law&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;§ 14&lt;/strong&gt; states that the coins and bills of the Norwegian Bank are legal tender in Norway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;§ 38&lt;/strong&gt; states that a consumer always has the right to perform a payment using legal tender with the payment receiver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5919" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T00:54:23.147" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7738" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7747" CreationDate="2012-01-30T10:10:20.867" Score="14" ViewCount="1727" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.migrationwatchuk.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MigrationWatch UK&lt;/a&gt; is a think-tank that argues for lower immigration levels into the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefingPaper/document/247&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2012 Briefing Paper&lt;/a&gt; they claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Youth unemployment in the UK increased by almost 450,000 in the&#xA;  period from 2004 Q1 to 2011 Q3, from 575,000 to 1,016,000. Over the&#xA;  same period, numbers of workers from the A8 countries grew by 600,000.&#xA;  Correlation is not, of course, proof of causation but, given the&#xA;  positive employability characteristics and relative youth of migrants&#xA;  from these countries, it is implausible and counter-intuitive to&#xA;  conclude – as the previous Government and some economists have done -&#xA;  that A8 migration has had virtually no impact on UK youth unemployment&#xA;  in this period. Accurate estimation of the size of the impact is beset&#xA;  with problems of statistical ‘noise’ and more research needs to be&#xA;  done to assess the true scale of the impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A8_countries&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A8&lt;/a&gt; migration had a significant impact on UK youth unemployment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5766" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2019-09-08T11:38:21.727" LastActivityDate="2019-09-08T11:38:21.727" Title="Has immigration from Eastern Europe impacted UK youth unemployment?" Tags="|economics|united-kingdom|immigration|europe|labor|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7742" CreationDate="2012-01-30T12:04:11.817" Score="20" ViewCount="5606" Body="&lt;p&gt;Drinking with a friend, he told me how his lecturer had revealed to his class that the US can turn off the Internet for the whole world if it wants to, because all of the DNS root servers are there. I wasn't convinced, because that would go against the decentralised nature of the Internet, and generally it sounds like a poor idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I've seen TV programmes where some lad stands in a DNS server room saying &quot;without this the Internet would break&quot;, but that sounds exaggerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_name_server&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Root Name Server&lt;/a&gt; explains that there were once 10 DNS servers in the US, and that was it, but now they're distributed using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anycast&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anycast&lt;/a&gt; - which is a distributed system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.root-servers.org/map/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;interactive map&lt;/a&gt; which shows dozens of  root servers around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eKewl.png&quot; alt=&quot;Map showing root servers&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what's the story? Have the worlds internet folk built a distributed DNS system which no one country can disable for the rest of the world? Does my friend's lecturer need to go back to school?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is this whole system, which looks remarkably robust, still relying on the USA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1659" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2021-09-06T13:20:42.507" LastActivityDate="2021-09-06T20:40:41.030" Title="Can the USA turn off the whole internet by deactivating root DNS servers based there?" Tags="|internet|security|networks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7739" CreationDate="2012-01-30T13:13:11.950" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without name servers the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_Name_System&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DNS&lt;/a&gt; would not exist. But that's not the end of the internet, it's just the end of easy communication without having to remember sequences of numbers as addresses rather than words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course the US can't (as you all but pointed out) shut down the DNS as they don't control all the DNS servers in the world (heck, any ISP and most larger companies run their own, you can run one in your own home if you want to). At most they can make things more inconvenient, slowing down traffic as routing tables need to adjust to make up for the servers that are no longer online in the network (that's easily deduced from the entry you list).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to relying on the US or not, that depends on what you mean by the word. The internet as a whole can survive the destruction of its entire US component (including all the cables and other transmission hardware), but some places might be cut off from the rest of the world and be unable to access sites elsewhere (with the rest of the world being unable to access sites in the cut off areas. That's however got nothing to do with the DNS system but relies on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_backbone&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;backbones&lt;/a&gt;, the individual data pipelines (usually underseas cables and/or high speed satellite connections) between major data hubs. This system was designed to be redundant, so that any part of it failing would have minimal long term impact on the rest. I've not been able to find a picture of the entire infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-09-06T20:40:41.030" LastActivityDate="2021-09-06T20:40:41.030" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7744" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-30T14:07:01.190" Score="5" ViewCount="4664" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dragons have been common to many cultures and mythologies. Some famous are St. George slaying a dragon and Chinese dragons, such as the symbol used for the Emperor of China.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creationists and Bible literalists do assert that dragons existed and that they are basically special dinosaurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dragons are reptillian or snake-like creatures that share many characteristics with dinosaurs and may well be the same creatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://conservapedia.com/Dragons&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://conservapedia.com/Dragons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consider the many dragon legends. Most ancient cultures have stories or artwork of dragons that strongly resemble dinosaurs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The simplest and most obvious explanation for so many common descriptions of dragons from around the world is that man once knew the dinosaurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ27.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ27.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has physical evidence ever been found that a dragon existed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-05T00:43:09.333" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T21:37:29.270" Title="Did dragons exist?" Tags="|zoology|cryptozoology|paleontology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7744" CreationDate="2012-01-30T17:00:38.353" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, according to this lady, it was dinosaur bones:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0691150133&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is to say; ancient civilisations are believed to have come into contact with dinosaur fossils, and their discovery can be deduced from historical records. As such, myths of fantastical creatures may have been inspired by these fossil finds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if that constitutes an answer, but it looks like an interesting read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a more modern equivalent, you could consider the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, which were commissioned in the 1850s and differ significantly from modern interpretations of the same animals they represent. A tourist has their Flickr stream showing them here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/ilike/2743161862/in/photostream/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.flickr.com/photos/ilike/2743161862/in/photostream/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the story of these sculptures: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.victorianweb.org/sculpture/misc/hawkins1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.victorianweb.org/sculpture/misc/hawkins1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1659" LastEditorUserId="1659" LastEditDate="2012-02-01T10:40:01.190" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T10:40:01.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7639" CreationDate="2012-01-30T21:18:19.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The key word is definitely &quot;clouds&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In theatres, we do what is similar to the bat signal all of the time, with something called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobo_%28lighting%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gobos&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Of course, gobos are typically pointed at something solid, which makes them work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pointed a gobo at a cloud would work, altough not as well, as clouds are not solid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if the bat signal needed to be used on a clear night... I am guessing that wouldn't work as well (or at all), since it wouldn't have anything to reflect back on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, having any flood light, using a special color would still probably grab the attention of the Dark Knight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5926" LastActivityDate="2012-01-30T21:18:19.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7738" CreationDate="2012-01-30T22:40:23.560" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, &lt;strong&gt;there is probably no link between youth unemployment and immigration&lt;/strong&gt; but, if there is, MigrationWatch will need to produce a better study to demonstrate the existence of such a link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble with proving anything in economics, which is what this is really about, is that the theory is imperfect and there are many alternative views and theories with too few good experiments to differentiate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The popular view about why immigration will cause unemployment is based on what most economists agree is a fallacy called the &quot;lump of labour&quot; fallacy. (See the definition on the website of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/economics-a-to-z/l&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Economist&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/07/opinion/lumps-of-labor.html?src=pm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this NYT article&lt;/a&gt; by Paul Krugman). The basic idea is that there is a fixed pool of work to be done. Therefore, if there are more people, there will be higher unemployment as there won't be enough work to go around. The idea probably goes back to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Luddites&lt;/a&gt; who smashed the machines that made factories more efficient apparently threatening their jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most economists think this is nonsense. Observationally, it hasn't happened that way. Since the industrial revolution, the economies of most countries have become immensely more productive as we have replaced people by more productive machines. Yet, most people are not unemployed and most countries are far wealthier than they were in 1850. Higher productivity makes societies wealthier; wealthier societies can afford more goods so there are more jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, modern mainstream economics does not agree with the public's intuition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, theory is rarely enough to settle an argument in economics, where the complications of the real world often lead to observations that are hard to explain in theory. So what do the empirical studies suggest about the UK?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ones that produced the study, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.migrationwatchuk.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MigrationWatch&lt;/a&gt;, is a broadly anti-immigration pressure group with the ear of some members of the current government (and this is the study referred to in the question). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their argument is basically this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the transition period since their accession in May 2004, an estimated 1.6 million workers came to the UK from the new EU Member States. Between the first quarter of 2004 and the third quarter of 2011, employment of workers born in the A8 increased by 600,000. Over the same period the number of unemployed young people in the UK almost doubled, from 575,000 to just over a million. Figure 1 plots the two variables. Is there a causal linkage between the two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ueFrn.png&quot; alt=&quot;Source: migration watch chart based on public ONS data&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They acknowledge that more sophisticated economic analysis has not found the detailed statistically significant evidence that the correlation might lead one to expect but argue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;concerns were expressed by Professor Rowthorn, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Cambridge University, in evidence to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee Inquiry (in 2007/08) into the economic impact of immigration into the UK. He argued that finding effects that are statistically insignificant “does not mean that they are small, it simply means that there is too much noise in the system to estimate them accurately”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Migration Watch also claim that findings of no significant effect &quot;defy intuition&quot;. In their exact words (paragraph 5, my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These results have been criticised on the grounds that they are &lt;em&gt;counter-intuitive&lt;/em&gt;, given the scale of A8 migration into the UK and the characteristics of the migrants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lump of labour fallacy is very &lt;em&gt;intuitive&lt;/em&gt; but few experts would defend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what do those other studies say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good recent one was published around the same time as the MigrationWatch study by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.niesr.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Institute for Economic and Social Research&lt;/a&gt; (NIESR, an independent think tank sometimes describes as left-leaning but not convincingly). The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.niesr.ac.uk/pdf/090112_163827.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;full text pdf is here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, their approach to the issue involved rather more statistical analysis than MigrationWatch and they made a serious attempt to separate out confounding factors. They achieved this by looking at the unemployment and migration statistics in local authority regions. They also used National Insurance Number (NINo) registrations to measure migrant arrivals which is thought to be a much more reliable metric than the survey-based data used to estimate the gross numbers. This allowed them to compare local changes in immigration to local changes in unemployment giving a lot more insight than a gross country-wide number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results show a very small negative and generally insignificant correlation between the migrant inflow rate and the change in the claimant count rate. ... Perhaps surprisingly, the interaction between migrant inflows and GDP emerges as positive and significant, albeit very small, indicating that during periods of lower growth, migrant inflows are associated with a lower claimant rates relative to the counterfactual - in other words, slower claimant growth than would otherwise have occurred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims of MigrationWatch are attractive given the public's naive view of economics but they rely on a simple correlation with little statistical support for any causality and little detailed analysis to verify the claim. The more detailed results from NIESR are both more consistent with the consensus of economic thinking and have much more plausible statistics to support them. They still don't prove causality, but they look much more convincing than the MigrationWatch numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it is likely that there is no relationship of significance between immigration and youth unemployment in the UK in the last decade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-01-31T00:29:24.523" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T00:29:24.523" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7748" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7756" CreationDate="2012-01-30T23:36:12.470" Score="41" ViewCount="65129" Body="&lt;p&gt;This picture is currently being spread virally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gx3oV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Two bodies of water joining&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some Muslims were saying that this is mentioned in the Quran where it is said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He has set free the two seas meeting together.  There is a barrier&#xA;  between them.  They do not transgress.  (Quran, 55:19-20)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He is the one who has set free the two kinds of water, one sweet and&#xA;  palatable, and the other salty and bitter.  And He has made between&#xA;  them a barrier and a forbidding partition.  (Quran, 25:53)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, is this claim true? Is the phenomena real? If so, is it common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:27:26.690" LastActivityDate="2017-09-05T14:04:22.107" Title="Is there a place in the world where two oceans meet and they don't mix?" Tags="|religion|water|religious-texts|geography|quran|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7680" CreationDate="2012-01-31T00:23:32.853" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most recent review on this that I know of is File-Sharing and Copyright, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/09-132.pdf&quot;&gt;2009 paper (pdf)&lt;/a&gt;. The results are unclear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because the theoretical results are inconclusive, the effect of file&#xA;  sharing on industry profitability is largely an empirical question. We&#xA;  summarize the findings of some of the major studies in table 5. As the&#xA;  list shows, the results are decidedly mixed. There are two studies&#xA;  that document a positive effect of file-sharing on sales: Andersen and&#xA;  Franz (2008) for a representative sample of Canadian consumers and,&#xA;  more narrowly, Gopal et al. (2006) for the effect of sampling on CD&#xA;  sales.17 The majority of studies finds that file sharing reduces&#xA;  sales, with estimated displacement rates ranging 3.5% for movies (Rob&#xA;  and Waldfogel, 2007) to rates as high as 30% for music (Zentner,&#xA;  2006).18 A typical estimate is a displacement rate of about 20%. One&#xA;  implication of these results is that developments other than file&#xA;  sharing must have had a profound impact on sales. For music, the&#xA;  popularity of new types of (internet-based) entertainment and the end&#xA;  of the transition from LPs to CDs are leading explanations for the&#xA;  overall decline in sales (Hong, 2004; Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf,&#xA;  2007). While many studies find some displacement, an important group&#xA;  of papers reports that file-sharing does not hurt sales at all&#xA;  (Tanaka, 2004; Bhattacharjee et al., 2007; Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf,&#xA;  2007; Smith and Telang, 2008). And even among the studies that show&#xA;  some displacement, there tend to be important subsamples that were not&#xA;  affected. For example, Rob and Waldfogel (2006) find an average&#xA;  displacement effect of 20% but report that file sharing had no impact&#xA;  on hit albums.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also notes that many of the studies rely on questionable methodology. For instance, many rely on self-reporting (quite unreliable when surveying illegal activity), or use internet penetration as a proxy for piracy. It's worth noting that in the studies where researchers have actually collected data on file-sharing networks and measured file-sharing activity, the results have been &quot;no effect&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We emphasize these issues because the results in table 5 seem to&#xA;  suggest that measurement choices have a systematic impact on results.&#xA;  While the majority of papers reports some sales displacement, the four&#xA;  studies using actual measures of file sharing (Tanaka, 2004;&#xA;  Bhattacharjee et al., 2007; Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf, 2007; Smith&#xA;  and Telang, 2008) find that file sharing is unrelated to changes in&#xA;  sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some fields, there may be complement effects. For instance, for music performers, a possible loss of sales may be offset by increased concert attendance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As Table 6 shows, concerts and merchandising have become an important&#xA;  source of income for major artists (Connolly and Krueger, 2006).&#xA;  Concerts and new recordings are complements. A recording becomes more&#xA;  enjoyable if one can reminisce about the time at the concert, and&#xA;  knowing the songs in advance might make the concert more enjoyable. In&#xA;  the presence of complementary goods, file sharing will have two&#xA;  opposing effects (for a formal model, see Mortimer and Sorenson,&#xA;  2005). As the effective price of music falls close to zero, a larger&#xA;  number of consumers will be familiar with an album, driving up the&#xA;  demand for concerts. At the same time, artists have weaker incentives&#xA;  to tour because concerts are a less effective way to increase revenues&#xA;  from a new recording if a large fraction of the audience shares files.&#xA;  Which of these effects is more important? Figure 6 shows that concert&#xA;  prices rose much more quickly than the CPI, and the difference appears&#xA;  to have widened since the advent of file sharing (Krueger, 2005). More&#xA;  detailed evidence on the link between file sharing and concerts comes&#xA;  from Mortimer and Sorenson (2005). Studying 2,135 artists over a&#xA;  ten-year period, they also conclude that the demand for concerts&#xA;  increased due to file sharing. One way to see this is to ask how many&#xA;  CDs an artist needs to sell to produce $20 of concert revenue. This&#xA;  number fell from 8.47 in the pre-Napster era to 6.36 in the 1999 to&#xA;  2002 period. Not surprisingly, artists responded to these incentives&#xA;  by touring more frequently. Overall, the shift in relative prices and&#xA;  activities led to a sharp increase in income for the typical artist&#xA;  included in the authors’ dataset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tidbit from the paper might also be of interest, though it does not answer the question directly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall production figures for the creative industries appear to be&#xA;  consistent with this view that file sharing has not discouraged&#xA;  artists and publishers. While album sales have generally fallen since&#xA;  2000, the number of albums being created has exploded. In 2000, 35,516&#xA;  albums were released. Seven years later, 79,695 albums (including&#xA;  25,159 digital albums) were published (Nielsen SoundScan, 2008). Even&#xA;  if file sharing were the reason that sales have fallen, the new&#xA;  technology does not appear to have exacted a toll on the quantity of&#xA;  music produced.25 Obviously, it would be nice to adjust output for&#xA;  differences in quality, but we are not aware of any research that has&#xA;  tackled this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Similar trends can be seen in other creative industries. For example,&#xA;  the worldwide number of feature films produced each year has increased&#xA;  from 3,807 in 2003 to 4,989 in 2007 (Screen Digest, 2004 and 2008).&#xA;  Countries where film piracy is rampant have typically increased&#xA;  production. This is true in South Korea (80 to 124), India (877 to&#xA;  1164), and China (140 to 402). During this period, U.S. feature film&#xA;  production has increased from 459 feature films in 2003 to 590 in 2007&#xA;  (MPAA, 2007).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5927" LastEditorUserId="5105" LastEditDate="2012-02-01T07:09:34.557" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T07:09:34.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7750" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-31T01:09:11.317" Score="21" ViewCount="812" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Robinson_%28British_author%29&quot;&gt;Sir Kenneth Robinson&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&quot;&gt;in one of his speeches&lt;/a&gt; raised doubts about educating children according to their age group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A summation of the claim, that starts at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;amp;v=zDZFcDGpL4U#t=390s&quot;&gt;06:34 of the video&lt;/a&gt;, is that our current system of education is modelled on the interests and image of industrialization. Schools resemble a factory production line, where children are educated in batches, put through the system by age group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sir Kenneth argues that the assumption that the most common thing kids have is their age, their &quot;date of manufacture&quot;, is incorrect and hurtful to creativity and the learning process and the model of education should shift away from standardization and towards divergent thinking, starting by organizing students into classes based on their skills and interests.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing how most education systems divide students by age, it appears that there is a common belief that, even if it's not the best way to learn, it's an acceptable and not counter-productive model. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research or any other evidence to dispute or confirm that claim? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5928" LastEditorUserId="5142" LastEditDate="2012-01-31T20:04:43.253" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T04:31:33.350" Title="Are classrooms with students of the same age a counter-productive way to learn?" Tags="|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7752" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-31T01:43:51.793" Score="2" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1231/are-saturated-fats-unhealthy&quot;&gt;Are saturated fats unhealthy?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the answers posted on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/1231/2016&quot;&gt;this earlier question&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/v8WA5wcaHp4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the recent video&lt;/a&gt; that I saw on youtube that claims that Fat does &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; cause heart diseases (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1333994/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IMDB link&lt;/a&gt; to the  documentary called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fathead-movie.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FatHead&lt;/a&gt;), I do not know what to believe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt; Moreover, this website is based on trusting peer-reviewed papers. If the credibility of such a widely-accept &lt;s&gt;fact&lt;/s&gt; thing gets refuted, what should a person believe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2016" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T01:43:51.793" Title="Do saturated fats cause heart diseases?" Tags="|nutrition|disease|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-01-31T02:35:14.050" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7755" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-01-31T04:57:49.127" Score="7" ViewCount="38392" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aftercare suggested for healing a new body piercing almost always includes a sea salt soak. Wikibook's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Body_Piercing/Piercing_Aftercare&quot;&gt;Body Piercing Aftercare&lt;/a&gt; explains the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'SSS (Sea Salt Soaks)' – With this method you soak your piercing in a warm salt mixture. The appropriate ratio for the mixture is ¼ a teaspoon of non-iodized salt in 8oz or 1 cup of water. For this method you would do one to two soaks a day for five to ten minutes. During the soak the piercing needs to be completely submerged in the sea salt mixture. After the soak simply rinse your piercing with warm water and pat dry. &lt;strong&gt;This method works with your body’s natural salinity to push out any bacteria inside your piercing.&lt;/strong&gt; For this reason it’s very important to mix the solution in the right proportions. This is also the recommended aftercare method presented by APP. The APP also recommends the use of anti-microbial soap. Satin and Provon are good, gentle soaps to use in conjunction with sea salt soaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason given this it is beneficial is it is somehow pushing out bacteria from the body. A similar claim comes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.bmezine.com/index.php/Sea_salt_solution&quot;&gt;BME&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Salt soaks are one of the best things you can do for an angry or new piercing. Many use saltwater as their only cleanser. Hot, it's a natural astringent and can be helpful in drawing out infection and pus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skin-artists.com/infected-piercing-sea-salt.htm&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; says sea salt soaks can clear up already infected piercings &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Take the time to treat it with a sea salt soak and you can clear up any piercing infection quickly. It's strange that most piercing enthusiasts make their own &quot;sea salt soak&quot;, and most of them get it wrong and seriously slow down the healing process.&#xA;  The Normal Saline Solutions are isotonic. Isotonic solutions have equal osmotic pressure to the interior of your body cells, and that is hugely important for healing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is routinely soaking a new piercing in a sea salt and water solution beneficial at all for healing? For prevention of infections? For getting rid of existing infections? What is the mechanism of action? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2012-01-31T22:33:13.283" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T13:43:55.303" Title="Are sea salt soaks beneficial for healing a body piercing?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|body-modification|body-piercing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7748" CreationDate="2012-01-31T04:58:00.187" Score="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kent Smith, a.k.a Flickr user &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/kentsmith9/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;kentsmith9&lt;/a&gt; claims to be the original photographer of this image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/kentsmith9/4955772693/in/photostream/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;writes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought this was the most unusual thing I saw on the Alaskan cruise in the water. These two bodies of water were merging in the middle of the Alaskan gulf and there was a foam developing only at their junction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought this was an example of a Halocline described on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halocline&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;. A few people have commented that a Halocline is more of a horizontal phenomenon and this is more vertically oriented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am pretty confident that what you are seeing is a result of the melting glaciers being composed of fresh water and the ocean has a higher percentage of salt causing the two bodies of water to have different densities and therefore makes it more difficult to mix. I'm told they will eventually mix given enough time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People have asked me if I just happened to look out over the edge of the ship deck and see this. Actually I had been on the deck for quite some time when I noticed what appeared to be a shadow cast by clouds over the ocean about 5 miles in front of the ship. As we approached the shadow I realized it was something different. I took many shots up to the point I shot this one, but never posted them until a year after this image went viral. I really posted them to convince people I did not Photoshop this image. See the other shots &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/kentsmith9/6602530369/in/photostream/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on to describe the recent viral spread of this image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Kent Smith is apparently not an expert in oceanography, he proffers a plausible explanation, and doesn't claim that the two kinds of sea-water will never mix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question asks &amp;quot;is it common or can it be counted a miracle?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;false dilemma&lt;/a&gt;. Phenomena can be &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; uncommon and have natural, rather than supernatural, explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T04:58:00.187" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7757" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7762" CreationDate="2012-01-31T11:48:37.987" Score="14" ViewCount="2678" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a common (almost clichéd) claim that you can only hear some distant sound &quot;depending on the wind direction&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some random examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The local population does not have to expect any noise emissions because the test pile is situated about 2.3 km from the coast. Depending on the wind direction, dull thuds at the most may be heard on the cliff coast. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://subseaworldnews.com/2011/08/08/germany-offshore-wind-noise-reduction-test-for-marine-mammals-off-travemunde/&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;depending on the wind’s direction you began to smell the smoke of the wood fire or hear the sounds of Ethan’s delicately constructed music. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://molodesign.com/news/happy-holiday-season-from-molo-101222/&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Depending on the wind direction i'll probably be able to hear most of the arctic monkeys gig from my back garden... [&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/#!/remixcreative/status/79605262507454465&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;you can hear cows or horses and, depending on the wind direction the milk machine in the morning (5.30) and afternoon (5.30).[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.countryandlake.nl/country&amp;amp;lakeE.htm&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My intuition (which I naturally don't trust) suggests that the amount of distance that the sound is advanced by a small wind in the time it takes to travel to the ear is irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using my first example, travelling at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound&quot;&gt;343 metres per second&lt;/a&gt;, the sound is going to take about 6.7 seconds to reach the coast, 2.3km away. If the air is moving at, say, 3 metres per second (which is enough to cause leaves to rustle, but not enough to cause waves to break [&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;], it means the sound could, at most, be heard an additional 20 metres further (compared to still air), or 40 metres further (compared to the same wind heading away from you). Over a distance of 2300 metres, the difference in loudness caused by an additional 40 metres seems like it should be imperceptible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the wind might be faster, but again my intuition suggests this would break-up and/or cover the sound more than it would assist the sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this expression have a basis in truth? Is it ascribing the fact that one can only sometimes notice the sound to the wrong cause?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-28T08:08:05.350" LastActivityDate="2018-07-09T22:04:44.313" Title="Does the wind direction affect the audibility of distant sounds?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7759" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7760" CreationDate="2012-01-31T11:54:55.283" Score="8" ViewCount="745" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have there been any studies on whether tourists are affected by the Lake Woebegon effect (also known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;illusory superiority&lt;/a&gt;) in terms of their level of sophistication? Do a significant majority of tourists regard themselves as more sophisticated than average? (&lt;a href=&quot;http://matadornetwork.com/bnt/the-last-article-on-the-travelertourist-distinction-youll-ever-read/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Claim made by this article&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've noticed a lot of tourists complain about tourist traps. I suspect, though I'm not 100% sure, that part of their train of thought is that tourist traps is ok for the &quot;average&quot; tourist, but not for them. This makes me suspect that the Lake Woebegon effect may be happening, and if it is the case, I want to be aware that I might be suffering from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" OwnerDisplayName="Andrew Grimm" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2012-02-01T22:57:02.057" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T22:57:02.057" Title="Do a large majority of tourists think they're more sophisticated than the average?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7759" CreationDate="2012-01-31T13:05:09.530" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's a great question. I travel a lot, having almost traveled on-stop for the last several years. Often when discussing the issue of &quot;travel sophistication&quot; with other tourists I often hear people make the distinction that they are &quot;travelers&quot; as opposed to &quot;tourists&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hobotraveler.com/travelervstourist.shtml&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; has many interesting points that I think show that people who consider themselves &quot;travelers&quot; in some cases consider themselves superior (in travel skills) to &quot;tourists&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That isn't terribly useful without seeing how many people who travel consider themselves travelers as opposed to tourists, although it is interesting to note.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find some evidence to indicate that most tourists &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; consider themselves superior in travel ability relative to their peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study focusing on German tourists in Norway:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;German tourists were divided into two groups: those who perceived&#xA;  themselves as typical German tourists and those who did not. These two&#xA;  groups were compared with regard to their views on the characteristics&#xA;  of a typical German tourist, the activities of the two groups during&#xA;  their stay, and their self-reported motives for coming. Results&#xA;  indicate that while 89.5% of the respondents viewed themselves as&#xA;  nontypical tourists, the two groups' views of what constituted a&#xA;  typical German tourist did not differ significantly. Interestingly, the data showed no differences between the two groups with respect to their activities during their journeys or their motives for traveling to Norway.&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://jtr.sagepub.com/content/41/4/416.short&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also of note is that a tourists self-image can be linked to and/or influenced by their choice of destination. A study looking at tourist self-image and destination brand personality found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results indicate that where tourists can make an association&#xA;  between a destination and a destination brand personality, and where&#xA;  this association is consistent with their desired holiday experience,&#xA;  a high level of congruity will exist between the tourists' self-image&#xA;  and their perceptions of the destination. In turn this self-congruity&#xA;  was related to satisfaction with a visit to the destination but not to&#xA;  intention to travel to the destination.&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J073v22n02_04&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I would not say that &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; tourists consider themselves more sophisticated in travel ability. In my experience that attitude seems restricted to people backpacking or taking extended (months to years) long trips, while most tourists tend to take very short trips:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the ten years between 2000 and 2010 spurred a rapid increase in travel&#xA;  frequency, with the growth in short breaks not surprisingly outpacing&#xA;  that of longer leisure trips. Not only did this boost domestic travel&#xA;  but, at the market’s peak in 2008-2009, a significant share of&#xA;  Europeans – especially those suffering time constraints – were taking&#xA;  upwards of four to five foreign short breaks a year, often at the&#xA;  expense of longer annual holidays.&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wttc.org/site_media/uploads/downloads/traveltourism2011.pdf&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;, (p12)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-01-31T14:12:20.900" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T14:12:20.900" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7757" CreationDate="2012-01-31T14:10:16.827" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, and together with temperature it is studied to gauge the effects of large noise hubs such as airports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The presence of wind causes a two-fold effect. The first effect is refraction due to wind gradients, dw/dz, and the second is convection due to a constant wind. Wind gradients refract the rays as shown in figure 4. The rays are refracted upward when flow with a positive dw/dz is approaching the acoustic source and downward when the same flow is moving away from the acoustic source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EaJ0E.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Convection results in an increased effective sound speed in the direction of the flow. This effect is usually small with respect to the refractive effect of the wind gradient, and thus, is difficult to see on the resulting ground contours. The convective effects are represented by a slight horizontal shift of the ground contour from the source center and will be discussed further in the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wind gradient effects shown in figure 4 are angularly dependant. The maximum upward refraction occurs in the direction toward the oncoming flow and diminishes until there is zero refraction perpendicular to the flow. Similarly, the downstream downward refraction also diminishes as it approaches a line that is perpendicular to the flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20060004780_2006004485.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T14:10:16.827" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7768" CreationDate="2012-01-31T14:12:29.040" Score="19" ViewCount="3486" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_19641_5-seemingly-innocent-ways-youve-screwed-world-today.html&quot;&gt;5 Seemingly Innocent Ways You've Screwed The World Today&lt;/a&gt;&quot; on cracked.com contains the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Delicate American bottoms prefer plush, bleached white, multi-ply paper with all the toppings. We also use three times as much paper per person as, say, Europeans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that Americans use three times as much toilet paper as Europeans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T05:21:41.870" Title="Do Americans use three times as much toilet paper as Europeans?" Tags="|environment|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7767" CreationDate="2012-01-31T15:31:49.380" Score="3" ViewCount="720" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QuLZ1FSnzc&amp;amp;feature=related&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;clip&lt;/a&gt; from The Daily Show show, John Stewart puts forward the argument that Ron Paul is being ignored by the media, showcasing some convincing clips to that effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the clips referenced in The Daily Show an accurate representation of Ron Paul's media coverage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-01-31T17:57:52.833" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T17:42:00.510" Title="Does Ron Paul get less media coverage than other similarly prominent candidates?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7755" CreationDate="2012-01-31T15:36:08.093" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this review in The Cochrane Library - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecochranelibrary.com/userfiles/ccoch/file/CD003861.pdf&quot;&gt;Water for wound cleansing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the Plain Language Summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Water is frequently used for cleaning wounds to prevent infection. This can be tap water, distilled water, cooled boiled water or saline&#xA;  (salty water). Using tap water to cleanse acute wounds in adults does not increase the infection rate, however, there is no strong evidence&#xA;  that cleansing per se is better than not cleansing. The reviewers concluded that where tap water is high quality (drinkable), it may be&#xA;  as good as other methods such as sterile water or saline (salty) water (and more cost-effective), but more research is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-01-31T15:36:08.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7765" CreationDate="2012-01-31T15:52:09.933" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.yahoo.com/ron-paul-media-blackout-back-192331267.html&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on Yahoo news (hardly a republican friendly news site)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After a brief spike in interest, the mainstream media coverage of GOP&#xA;  candidate Ron Paul is back to nearly nothing, according to the Pew&#xA;  Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. This week,&#xA;  less than 5 percent of all campaign stories focused on Paul, the&#xA;  lowest point since Dec. 11. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A search of &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/search?searchtext=ron%20paul&quot;&gt;ABC's news site&lt;/a&gt; shows no links to actual news stories since Jan. 26 and that is only a single story.  There are mentions on various blogs, though those are not really news... they aren't even journalists according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/09/usa-blogger-ruling-idUSN1E7B70UA20111209&quot;&gt;a federal court ruling&lt;/a&gt;.  I get similar results for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=NBC%20news%20ron%20paul&quot;&gt;NBC&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=CBS%20news%20ron%20paul&quot;&gt;CBS&lt;/a&gt; (Google search)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while &quot;ignore&quot; may be a bit strong a case could be made that they are at least indirectly marginalizing his campaign.  Though, it could be that Paul is just not making the newsworthy quotes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="5105" LastEditDate="2012-02-01T07:09:05.023" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T07:09:05.023" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7763" CreationDate="2012-01-31T16:39:03.323" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The following is data for &quot;&lt;em&gt;tissue paper products&lt;/em&gt; &quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, which include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;toilet paper&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;handkerchiefs &amp;amp; facials&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;napkins&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;paper towels&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.risiinfo.com/magazines/pulp-paper/magazine/october/2008/PPMagOctober-Tissue-market-continues-to-grow.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RISI&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Per capita consumption of tissue (2007)&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rjwEz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Per Capita&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Approximately two-thirds of US tissue consumption is in the consumer&#xA;  sector, or &lt;strong&gt;At-Home&lt;/strong&gt;, while the rest (32%) is in the AfH (&lt;strong&gt;Away-from-Home&lt;/strong&gt;) sector. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AfH tissue can be found&#xA;  in commercial and industrial settings such as office and government&#xA;  buildings, hotels, schools, airports, hospitals and highway rest stops&#xA;  -- anywhere restroom and kitchen facilities are not in a private home. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, the popularity and availability of club stores, hypermarkets&#xA;  and some office supply chains have made it increasingly difficult to&#xA;  classify tissue sales as At-Home or AfH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The North American tissue market is comprised of:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DhOjp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Breakdown&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;The US remains the largest single market because of its continued&#xA;  growth in the per capita consumption. It takes the worldwide lead at&#xA;  close to 24 kg, followed by Canada at 22 kg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It should be noted that &lt;strong&gt;US per capita consumption of tissue continues&#xA;  to be much higher than western European consumption&lt;/strong&gt; (slightly less&#xA;  than 16 kg), as it has for at least the last 20 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both cultural and market differences between the US and western&#xA;  Europe contribute to this trend, including: the more advanced away&#xA;  from home (AfH) tissue sector in the US; the generally positive&#xA;  attitude towards consuming and shopping; the wider variety of tissue&#xA;  goods available; strong promotion of brands; and demographic/housing&#xA;  differences benefiting US tissue consumption over that of western&#xA;  Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.europeantissue.com/facts-studies/fact-and-figures/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;European Tissue Symposium&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (they credit RISI for the data):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UXxeX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Top 30&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bl4C0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Eastern Europe&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;I could not find a breakdown of the European tissue market, so I cannot say how much of that is toilet paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neatorama.com/2011/05/19/toilet-paper-how-america-convinced-the-world-to-wipe/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Toilet Paper: How America Convinced the World to Wipe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-02-01T20:52:37.863" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T20:52:37.863" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7712" CreationDate="2012-02-01T01:39:56.743" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim that the boy may have unusually good night vision is possible. The other claims associated with the story seem to have been exaggerated or misinterpreted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to quoting excerpts from this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/18209-china-cat-eyed-boy-night-vision.html&quot;&gt;LiveScience article from January 31st, 2012&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Night vision is made possible by a layer of cells, called the tapetum&#xA;  lucidum, in the eyes of cats and other nocturnal animals. This thin&#xA;  layer is a &quot;retroreflector&quot; — when a beam of light hits it, it&#xA;  reflects the light directly back along its incoming path. The&#xA;  reflected beam constructively interferes with the incoming light beam,&#xA;  amplifying the overall signal that hits the retina and enabling the&#xA;  animal to see in very low-light conditions. Retroreflection also&#xA;  causes cat eyes to flash when they are lit upon at night, and experts&#xA;  say Nong's eyes, if they are truly catlike, should do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the footage, Nong's teacher claims the boy's eyes flash when shined&#xA;  with a flashlight in the dark, but the reporters don't seem to be able&#xA;  to catch the effect on camera. When Nong's eyes are illuminated in the&#xA;  dark, they appear normal. James Reynolds, a pediatric ophthalmologist&#xA;  at State University of New York in Buffalo, noted, &quot;A video could&#xA;  capture [eyeshine] easily, just like in nature films of leopards at&#xA;  night.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in the footage, the reporters gave Nong a questionnaire to fill out&#xA;  while sitting in a dark room, and they acted surprised by his ability&#xA;  to see and complete the fill-in-the-blank form. Even if he doesn't&#xA;  have cat eyes, he may nevertheless have unusually good night vision,&#xA;  Reynolds said. He could have a rod-rich retina, for example — a retina&#xA;  that contains a higher than usual number of cells involved in light&#xA;  detection. Or the video could be a total hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best answer seems to be that at the moment, we don't know. The claims about the boy having cat's eyes, his eyes glowing or other similar claims are unlikely for the reasons explained by the experts in the LiveScience article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the boy has unusually good night vision remains to be seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T01:39:56.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7556" CreationDate="2012-02-01T09:34:11.190" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, they are very real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a really great visualization of the microwave hot-spots  from a bunch of different microwaves &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/microappalam&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, using extremely heat-sensitive raw &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papadum&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Appalams&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/microappalam&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/242VX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side, note, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evilmadscientist.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EMSL is awesome&lt;/a&gt;. They did the experiment, and posted the picures. I just borrowed them (they're &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CC BY&lt;/a&gt; licensed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="638" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T09:34:11.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1931" CreationDate="2012-02-01T14:04:53.980" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regarding Tomeo et al. 2001, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 30(5), 535-541:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DOI: &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1010243318426&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1023/A:1010243318426&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The following shows what their criteria for &amp;quot;molestation&amp;quot; were (direct quote from the study):&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;These criteria require that the victim be under the age of 16 at the time of molestation, the perpetrator being at least 16 years of age and at least 5 years older than the victim.&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So it doesn't really appear to be molestation and could easily include many homosexual's first sexual experiences, which would likely often be modified by the decreased availability of same-age partners, relative to heterosexuals who have the privilege of assuming that everybody is heterosexual.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Table 2 of Tomeo et al. 2001 shows that about 65% of the &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;victims&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; reported that they were homosexual prior to the &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;molestation&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; even occuring.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The other 35% may well have been unsure of their sexual orientation prior to the &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;molestation&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; and their first sexual encounter simply clarified it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some people express the (imo idiotic) notion that you can't really know your sexual orientation until you have had a sexual encounter.  I suspect that may have been a factor among those 35%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The heterosexual and homosexual participants were also recruited from different places (homosexual at a gay-pride march and hetero were college students).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The respondents were self-selecting, especially at the gay pride parade, where a booth was used, and the response rate was not known or documented by the researchers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refuting one study is enough for me anyway.  The others aren't properly referenced anyway and the first doesn't actually look like a study but mere anecdotal opinion, while the second one doesn't even specify &lt;strong&gt;sexual&lt;/strong&gt; abuse etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As previously detailed, a direct causal relationship would necessitate that all victims of molestation were homosexual.  The studies cited (Tomeo et al. 2001) themselves instantly disprove this suggestion because they include heterosexuals who were molested...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5948" LastEditorUserId="7606" LastEditDate="2020-08-17T20:14:57.890" LastActivityDate="2020-08-17T20:14:57.890" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7780" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-01T17:19:13.527" Score="8" ViewCount="3935" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/07/14/2003263457&quot;&gt;Taipei Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper reports that a girl in Myanmar spontaneously changed from female to male. Is that even possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T14:58:55.920" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T19:41:41.767" Title="Did a 21 year old girl spontaneously change sex?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7782" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-01T18:21:47.087" Score="21" ViewCount="18255" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://relfe.com/doctors_kill.html&quot;&gt;actual claim&lt;/a&gt; is something like this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The top five causes of death in the United States, in order, are&#xA;  tobacco, alcohol, medical malpractice, traffic and firearms. According&#xA;  to JAMA, doctors kill more people than auto accidents and guns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/021206.html&quot;&gt;Another website&lt;/a&gt; looks at the above claim and finds that they are comparing oranges to apples and with out any solid data. But then they do their own math and finds it could be true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are 700,000 physicians in the United States.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are 120,000 accidental deaths in the United States caused by physicians every year, and the accidental death percentage per physician is 17.1%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are 80 million gun owners in the United States.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are 1,500 accidental deaths from guns every year, regardless of age group, and the accidental death percentage per gun owner is&#xA;0.001875%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means, the letter points out, that doctors are 9,000 times more deadly than gun owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the actual statistics. Lets talk about current years. If data is not available, older data is acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T04:35:51.467" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T10:35:02.930" Title="Are more people accidentally killed by doctors than accidentally killed by guns and traffic combined?" Tags="|united-states|road-vehicles|mortality|guns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7783" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-01T19:31:09.310" Score="13" ViewCount="1920" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an economist in training, it is my understanding that the idea that there is a fixed amount of work is considered a fallacy by most economists. For example, when Paul Krugman &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/07/opinion/lumps-of-labor.html?src=pm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;discusses it&lt;/a&gt;, he merely states &quot;Economists call it the 'lump of labor fallacy.'&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I looked &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lump_of_labour_fallacy&amp;amp;oldid=469824370&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, it confirmed my belief but with a caveat:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In economics, the lump of labour fallacy (or lump of jobs fallacy) is the contention that the amount of work available to labourers is fixed. It is considered a fallacy by most economists,&lt;sup&gt;[citation needed]&lt;/sup&gt; who hold that the amount of work is not static.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can we help our Wikipedia brothers on this one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-02-02T22:05:59.883" LastActivityDate="2017-10-11T03:33:42.047" Title="Do most economists consider lump of labor to be a fallacy?" Tags="|economics|labor|unemployment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7700" CreationDate="2012-02-01T21:03:37.067" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer seems to be no. I don't know if Consumer Reports is an OK reference for this site but they found it was not as effective as a typical workout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any resistance exercise can build strength. Yes, the routines on the DVDs that came with our&#xA;Shake Weights can tire individual muscles.&#xA;But for the chest, shoulder, and triceps, the Shake Weight's exercises&#xA;were inferior to our conventional exercises targeting those muscles,&#xA;and for the biceps, they were about the same. The Shake Weight&#xA;routines burned fewer calories than our simple&#xA;calisthenics-and-elastic-band routine—and fewer calories than walking&#xA;at 3 mph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2011/july/home-garden/shake-weight/overview/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2011/july/home-garden/shake-weight/overview/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T22:04:43.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5942" CreationDate="2012-02-01T22:06:15.220" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no proof that this is the case&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I found extensive citations that this legend exists (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taj_Mahal#Myths&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia calls it a myth&lt;/a&gt;), it is clearly not possible to prove a negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article cites a book which I cannot check myself: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Complete-Taj-Mahal-Riverfront-Gardens/dp/0500342091/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;s=textbooks-tradein&amp;amp;qid=1328133714&amp;amp;sr=1-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Koch, Ebba. (2006) &lt;em&gt;The Complete Taj Mahal: and the Riverfront Gardens of Agra&lt;/em&gt;. Thames &amp;amp; Hudson&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tajmahal.gov.in/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;official web site of the Taj Mahal&lt;/a&gt; has a fairly complete historical section and a legends section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tajmahal.gov.in/creation.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;historical section&lt;/a&gt;, it mentions the names of the actual workers without mentioning that their hands were supposedly cut off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A labour force of about twenty thousand workers was recruited from across the Northern India. Sculptors from Bukhara, calligraphers from Syria and Persia, inlayers from southern India, stone cutters from Baluchistan, a specialist in building turrets, another who carved only marble flowers were part of the thirty-seven men who formed the creative unit. Some of the builders involved in construction of Taj Mahal under the master supervision of the Emperor Shah Jahan himself are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ismail Afandi (a.ka. Ismail Khan) of the Ottoman Empire — Designer of the main dome.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ustad Isa and Isa Muhammad Effendi of Persia — Credited with a key role in the architectural design.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'Puru' from Benarus, Persia — Mentioned as a Supervising Architect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Qazim Khan, a native of Lahore — Cast the solid Gold Finial.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chiranjilal, a lapidary from Delhi — The Chief Sculptor and Mosaicist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amanat Khan from Shiraz, Iran — The Chief Calligrapher&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides the above, Muhammad Hanif, a supervisor of masons and Mir Abdul Karim with Mukkarimat Khan of Shiraz handled finances and management of daily production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tajmahal.gov.in/taj_story.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;legends section&lt;/a&gt; it warns us that there are many made up legends surrounding the Taj Mahal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The saga of The Taj would be half told if the myths related to it are not mentioned. Like many a great buildings the Taj Mahal has its myths and legends. It seems that there is more fiction on the Taj than serious scholarly research. Several of the stories belong solely to oral tradition and are told by the guides, some are so established that they form a popular history of the monument and have made their way into guidebooks, and some have been taken up by scholars, or even created by them, and thus become part of the scholarly debate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-01T22:06:15.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7782" CreationDate="2012-02-01T23:24:26.120" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Doctors do kill a disturbing number of patients from avoidable mistakes, but the comparative statistics in the claim are mostly meaningless&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before looking at the actual statistics on medical errors it is important to dispose of some of the meaningless statistics in the claim. &quot;doctors are 9,000 times as deadly than gun owners&quot; is a meaningless comparison, for example, as there is nothing comparable between owning a gun and being a doctor. Most doctors interact with hundred or thousands of patients a year; most gun owners won't use their gun at all. And what does the percentage of deaths per physician mean? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if we avoid silly percentages we can look at the number of avoidable deaths. The classic US study of this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nap.edu/catalog/9728.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; from the year 2000. Their headline number (which is the source of many press reports) is described in context thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• Sizable numbers of Americans are harmed as a result of medical errors.&#xA;  Two studies of large samples of hospital admissions, one in New York&#xA;  using 1984 data and another in Colorado and Utah using 1992 data, found&#xA;  that the proportion of hospital admissions experiencing an adverse event,&#xA;  defined as injuries caused by medical management, were 2.9 and 3.7 percent,&#xA;  respectively. The proportion of adverse events attributable to errors&#xA;  (i.e., preventable adverse events) was 58 percent in New York, and 53 percent&#xA;  in Colorado and Utah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• Preventable adverse events are a leading cause of death in the United&#xA;  States. When extrapolated to the over 33.6 million admissions to U.S. hospitals&#xA;  in 1997, the results of these two studies imply that at least 44,000 and&#xA;  perhaps as many as 98,000 Americans die in hospitals each year as a result of&#xA;  medical errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the method: detailed studies in local hospitals extrapolated to the whole USA. This might justify putting even bigger error bounds on those totals, but the numbers are disturbing even if they have big error bars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that many studies or reported statistics might &lt;em&gt;underestimate&lt;/em&gt; the real avoidable deaths as any admission of error might lead to legal liability (medicine seems to adopt the opposite approach to aviation where reporting of near misses and mistakes in encouraged so procedures can be tightened to avoid future errors). So we have to be wary of many of the numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ballpark figures from the USA don't appear out of line with other studies. An analysis done for the NHS was reported in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/329/7462/369&quot;&gt;this BMJ paper&lt;/a&gt; in 2004 (NB the links to the references were broken when I checked the article). It uses several sources and comes up with estimates of up to 40,000 deaths (from about 30% of the number of admissions as the US system) from one source to only about 4,000 from another (but excluding infections which are a major killer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/highwire/filestream/384334/field_highwire_article_pdf/0.pdf&quot;&gt;BMJ paper&lt;/a&gt; suggests the UK is again broadly similar the the USA but doesn't give overall estimates. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nao.org.uk/idoc.ashx?docId=4046C7EA-FB71-4059-8ED5-BD4606CE2229&amp;amp;version=-1&quot;&gt;2005 survey&lt;/a&gt; by the UK's National Audit Office provides several useful numbers for judging the scale of the problem and conveniently summarises both the estimates and some of the problems with them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A retrospective study of patient records in two English&#xA;  hospitals found 10.8 per cent of patients experienced an&#xA;  adverse incident; of which around half (5.2 per cent) were&#xA;  judged to have been preventable. These adverse incidents&#xA;  caused permanent impairment in six per cent and contributed&#xA;  to death in eight per cent of cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our analysis of trust surveys found that 169 trusts were able&#xA;  to provide data on the number of deaths as a result of patient&#xA;  safety incidents. This showed that in 2004-05 there were some&#xA;  2,181 deaths recorded but it is acknowledged that there is&#xA;  significant under reporting of deaths and serious incidents.&#xA;  Other published estimates of death as a result of patient safety&#xA;  incidents range from 840 to 34,000 but in reality the NHS&#xA;  simply does not know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These estimates are broadly consistent with the estimates from the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another perspective is the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ihi.org/knowledge/Pages/Publications/100000LivesCampaignSettingaGoalandaDeadline.aspx&quot;&gt;100,000 lives campaign&lt;/a&gt; which set a target of (crudely) avoiding 100,000 deaths in hospitals over a two year period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet another perspective that provides some quantification of how many deaths are avoidable comes from the use of aviation-style checklists in surgery (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0810119&quot;&gt;NEJM article from 2009&lt;/a&gt;) where the rates of death from complications were reduced from 1.5% to 0.8%. This study doesn't extrapolate directly to all hospital admissions, but the size of the gain suggests a large number of avoidable deaths in the current system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It wouldn't be outrageous to say that the rates of accidental death across several health systems seem to be between 0.1% and 0.4% of hospital admissions (compared to the numbers used in the original question in the USA, this is equivalent to a range of about 30,000- greater than 120,000 deaths).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, &lt;strong&gt;it is hard to estimate the number of avoidable deaths in hospitals exactly, but it is likely to be large and is probably one of the top ten causes of death&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-02-06T23:51:14.483" LastActivityDate="2012-02-06T23:51:14.483" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7789" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-01T23:46:13.730" Score="12" ViewCount="1087" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wall Street Journal letter&lt;/a&gt; by 16 &quot;prominent scientists&quot; has already provoked a question here ( &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7722/are-the-16-scientists-who-claim-that-climate-change-is-not-something-to-worry-ab&quot;&gt;Are the 16 scientists who claim that climate change is not something to worry about climate scientists?&lt;/a&gt; ). This question focussed on the credibility of the people writing the letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about their actual arguments? Which of these three claims from their letter is or isn't a credible statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 &quot;Climategate&quot; email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: &quot;The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't.&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2019-02-12T18:36:30.847" Title="Are the specific claims from the &quot;WSJ 16&quot; climate skeptics true?" Tags="|economics|climate-change|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7793" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-02T01:46:23.607" Score="4" ViewCount="413" Body="&lt;p&gt;So a colleague has shown me this story: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=104&amp;amp;contentid=4034&amp;amp;page=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fake Saddam Sentenced to Death&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, in which it is claimed that the man who was said to be Saddam Hussein in his court-case was an impostor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone shed some light on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5933" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-02T08:20:15.487" LastActivityDate="2012-02-02T08:20:15.487" Title="Was a Mossad impostor hanged instead of Saddam Hussein?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7795" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-02T04:38:14.993" Score="17" ViewCount="1693" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a way, this is related to the question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5927/is-washing-your-hair-too-often-bad&quot;&gt;Is washing your hair too often bad?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg6aowG8aKM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TEDxDraper talk by Kerry Bishop, &quot;Toothpaste&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, repeated a statement I remember from my marketing lectures when I was at university. Namely that the word &quot;repeat&quot; as added to the instructions on shampoo bottles, not because it is required, but because it sells more shampoo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally do not repeat. I find that doing so causes my scalp to dry and I get dandruff. However this is only my personal experience. Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://womenshair.about.com/od/shampoo/a/how2shampoo.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;about.com page&lt;/a&gt; suggests that a third repetition be considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to show that the repeated wash and rinse is required for most people? And if the repeat is not required, is there any evidence that it was added just for marketing purposes? Can the addition of the &quot;repeat&quot; be attributed to anyone company or person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T15:48:47.677" Title="Do you need to &quot;wash, rinse and repeat&quot;?" Tags="|marketing|hair|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7796" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-02T05:04:05.417" Score="16" ViewCount="9361" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is been claimed that the way you keep an elephant leashed is with a chain pegged to the ground which they can easily break, just since they have learned when they where younger they could not escape and they continue to believe so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.careers360.com/news/4336-Motivational-story-Prakash-Iyer-success-mantras&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Careers360.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DO you know what they do to keep a circus elephant from running away? They tie a metal chain onto a collar around the mighty elephant’s leg – and tie it to a small wooden peg that’s hammered into the ground. The 10-foot tall, 5,000 kilo hulk could easily snap the chain, uproot the wooden peg, and escape to freedom. But it does not do that. In fact it does not even try. The world’s most powerful animal, which can uproot a tree as easily as you and I can break a toothpick, remains tied down by a small peg and a flimsy chain. How come?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s because when the elephant was a baby, its trainers used exactly the same methods. A chain was tied around its leg and the other end of the chain was tied to a metal stake on the ground. The chain and peg were strong enough for the baby elephant. When it tried to break away, the metal chain would pull it back. Sometimes, tempted by the world it could see in the distance, the elephant would pull harder. But the chain would cut into the skin on the elephant’s leg, making it bleed, creating a wound that would hurt the baby elephant even more. Soon, the baby elephant realised it was futile trying to escape. It stopped trying !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now when the big circus elephant is tied by a chain around its leg, it remembers the pain it felt as a baby. And it does not try to break away. So even though it’s just a chain and a little wooden peg, the elephant stands still. It remembers its limitations, and knows that it can only move as much as the chain will allow. It does not matter that the metal stake has been replaced by a wooden peg. It does not matter that the 100 kilo baby is now a 5,000 kilo powerhouse. However, the elephant’s belief prevails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this technique used and does it work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5131" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-04-19T16:13:10.013" Title="Can an elephant be trained to be lightly leashed?" Tags="|ethology|elephants|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7797" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7838" CreationDate="2012-02-02T05:08:12.163" Score="8" ViewCount="1372" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/recycled/2010/02/is_my_super_bowl_party_illegal.html&quot;&gt;Slate&lt;/a&gt; claims: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Baptist congregation in Indiana plans to cancel its Super Bowl party this weekend, after receiving a threatening letter from the National Football League. NFL officials say the church would have broken the law by charging an admission fee and by screening the game on a TV that exceeds 55 inches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is showing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Bowl&quot;&gt;Super Bowl&lt;/a&gt; on a television screen over a certain size, to a group, illegal without permission? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has the NFL, or other relevant authority, ever pursued someone for projecting the Super Bowl on a large screen (in particular, a religious group)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5131" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-02T09:34:11.480" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T13:01:45.607" Title="Is there a legal video size limit for Super Bowl parties?" Tags="|united-states|law|television|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7798" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-02T05:15:56.443" Score="22" ViewCount="2914" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=monkey%20trap&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;famous claim&lt;/a&gt; that says the way to trap monkeys is by placing a staked container with a hole cut into it just wide enough for a monkey to stick its empty hand into. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The container is baited with a banana or something attractive to the monkey. The monkey reaches for bait and then, since it will not release the bait, it cannot pull its hand out of the trap. It is then captured. I&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it effective to trap animals this way? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important note (-; (there is a Simpsons episode where Homer exhibits this behavior. Homer tries to get a free soda by reaching up into the soda machine and gets his hand on the can and it gets stuck until they realize the reason he is stuck is because he wont let go of the can.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5131" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T04:17:46.397" LastActivityDate="2020-12-15T16:42:27.930" Title="Are &quot;banana traps&quot; effective at catching monkeys?" Tags="|ethology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7801" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7803" CreationDate="2012-02-02T16:01:06.413" Score="122" ViewCount="25270" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of examples of people doubting (&lt;a href=&quot;http://education.jlab.org/qa/history_03.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080919132622AA8qVwx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=282832&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Do_atoms_exist&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[4]&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.articlesbase.com/college-and-university-articles/do-atoms-really-exist-665117.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[5]&lt;/a&gt;) or denying (&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080428192814AAdycUE&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[6]&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20140227121330/http://peaceandloveism.com:80/blog/2009/01/matter-does-not-exist/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[7]&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/groups/2425706052/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[8]&lt;/a&gt;) the existence of atoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any compelling evidence for the existence of atoms?  Has anyone ever actually seen one? Are there any pictures of atoms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical that atoms are anything more than a useful mathematical model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5968" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-10-23T02:24:56.460" LastActivityDate="2019-02-04T14:33:04.070" Title="Do atoms exist?" Tags="|physics|chemistry|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7789" CreationDate="2012-02-02T16:32:42.973" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Skeptical Science has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/examining-the-latest-climate-denialist-plea-for-inaction.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;excellent point-by-point response&lt;/a&gt; to the WSJ letter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would really like to highlight Skeptical Science's wonderful &quot;escalator&quot; graphic illustrating the difference between the long-term trend and short-term variation:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UftVv.gif&quot; alt=&quot;&amp;quot;Skeptics&amp;quot; vs Realists&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we can see, looking at the whole data set rather than a carefully selected subset, the upwards trend continues unabated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read Trenberth's &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.motheyes.com/uploads/climate/emails/1255352257.txt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;email&lt;/a&gt;, you'll see that he was, at the point that they quoted from, was discussing his paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/Trenberth/trenberth.papers/EnergyDiagnostics09final2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An imperative for climate change planning: tracking Earth’s&#xA;global energy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Energy can be neither created nor destroyed. Satellites observe more energy coming into the Earth's atmosphere than is leaving. And yet, despite a relatively constant buildup in energy in the Earth system, the temperature rise isn't constant, there's a lot of natural variability. Trenberth isn't happy with just categorising this as &quot;natural variability&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is not a sufficient explanation to say that a cool year is due to natural variability. Similarly, common arguments of skeptics that the late 20th century warming is a recovery from the Little Ice Age or has other natural origins are inadequate, as they do not provide the physical mechanisms involved. There must be a physical explanation, whether natural or anthropogenic. If surface warming occurs while the deep ocean becomes cooler, then we should be able to see the evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trenberth then goes about documenting the movement of energy amongst the parts of the Earth's various systems. However, current observation networks, in particular a shortage of deep ocean buoy coverage, mean that there is not sufficient data available for Trenberth to document where all the heat is going. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many components of the Earth system play some role, and their monitoring is improving but falls short of what is required... Hence observations need to be taken in ways that satisfy&#xA;  the Global Climate Observing System climate monitoring principles and ensure long-term continuity and that have the ability to discern small but persistent signals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subsequent papers, incidentally, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/2009/publication-6802.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;von Schuckmann et. al. 2009&lt;/a&gt;, indeed, support this suggestion, showing that deeper waters are, in fact, sequestering more heat than previous expected. Even without that - Trenberth wants to collect data that would allow a potential falsification test and to allow medium-term variability to be better understood. Good things to aim for in my view - and certainly not a basis for claims that global warming has stopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that plants and animals did originally evolve at a time when CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels were much higher. However, at the time the temperature of the Earth was also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/archive/14/3/pdf/i1052-5173-14-3-4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;much higher&lt;/a&gt;. And under such a high-temperature regime, giant reptiles were able to wander the Earth eating everything. It's a long way to go from saying &quot;plants and animals evolved when CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; concentrations were about 10 times larger&quot; to saying &quot;it would be neat idea to recreate those conditions&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More testably, this is wrapped up in an argument that increased CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels would be good for crop production - that plants can be grown in greenhouses under increased levels of carbon dioxide. This is true as far as it goes, but is a vast oversimplification. Some crops may do well, but there are limiting factors other than carbon dioxide. Climate change can negatively affect the availability of nutrients and moisture, as well as inducing heat stress - which will cause reductions in crop growth [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/319/5863/607.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;] [&lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/5/3/034012/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;] [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/329/5994/940.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, scientists have studied the effects of increased CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; availability on open-air plants - a much more realistic test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/content/60/10/2859.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Leakey et. al. (2009)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FACE on the other hand, which allows treatment of plants under field conditions at a realistic scale, has provided an important reality check. It has both shown where hypotheses developed in controlled environments do or do not apply, as well as insights into the mechanisms that may cause the difference. Overwhelmingly, this has shown that data from laboratory and chamber experiments systematically overestimate the yields of the major food crops, yet may underestimate the biomass production of trees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/312/5782/1918.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Long et. al. (2006)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; fertilization factors used in models to project future yields were derived from enclosure studies conducted approximately 20 years ago. Free-air concentration enrichment (FACE) technology has now facilitated large-scale trials of the major grain crops at elevated [CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;] under fully open-air field conditions. In those trials, elevated [CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;] enhanced yield by ∼50% less than in enclosure studies. This casts serious doubt on projections that rising [CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;] will fully offset losses due to climate change. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final claim in the question was the claim that aggressive controls are not economically justified, for which they cite research by economist William Nordhaus. However, when journalist Andy Revkin &lt;em&gt;actually contacted&lt;/em&gt; Nordhaus to see what he thought of the conclusions being attributed him, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/scientists-challenging-climate-science-appear-to-flunk-climate-economics/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here's what Nordhaus had to say&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The piece completely misrepresented my work. My work has long taken the view that policies to slow global warming would have net economic benefits, in the trillion of dollars of present value. This is true going back to work in the early 1990s (MIT Press, Yale Press, Science, PNAS, among others). I have advocated a carbon tax for many years as the best way to attack the issue. I can only assume they either completely ignorant of the economics on the issue or are willfully misstating my findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="46077" LastEditDate="2019-02-12T15:05:21.433" LastActivityDate="2019-02-12T15:05:21.433" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7801" CreationDate="2012-02-02T16:57:54.770" Score="230" Body="&lt;p&gt;Atoms are too small to see with microscopes that rely on light (also due to problems such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffraction-limited_system#The_Abbe_diffraction_limit_for_a_microscope&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Abbe diffraction limit&lt;/a&gt;). Essentially, with a conventional microscope you cannot distinguish points that are too close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the recently introduced &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_resolution_microscopy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;superresolution microscopes&lt;/a&gt;, which can surpass this limit, are still not able to image single atoms (they can, however distinguish single molecules, with a distance of &amp;lt;20nm).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is mostly due to the fact that these microscopes rely on light, which has a wavelength that is too long to &quot;catch atoms&quot; (pardon the non-scientific wording of this sentence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, several other techniques exist that allow us to &quot;see&quot; atoms. I would like to stress that the very nature of atoms prevents us to actually have a photo of them like we take a photo of a macroscopic object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Various techniques exist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;High resolution electron microscopy&lt;/strong&gt; (HRTEM), which uses the phase-shift of a wave of electrons thrown at the sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an example of an indium nanoparticle imaged with HRTEM:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/x4DMh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Indium nanoparticle imaged with HRTEM&quot;&gt;&#xA;(From: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pinna.info/nano/research-new.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Current Research&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, &lt;em&gt;Prof. Dr. Nicola Pinna&lt;/em&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are HRTEM images of a superconductor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mWY9R.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;superconductor HRTEM&quot;&gt;&#xA;(From: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nims.go.jp/AEMG/recent/recent-nagai/nagai-e/nagai-Co/nagai-Co.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Structural order and disorder in Co-based layered cuprates CoSr&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;(Y,Ce)&lt;sub&gt;s&lt;/sub&gt;Cu&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O&lt;sub&gt;5+2s&lt;/sub&gt; (s = 1-3)&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, &lt;em&gt;National Institute of Material Science&lt;/em&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another technique is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_crystallography&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;X-ray crystallography&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;I am not going to explain the mathematics and physics beyond it, as they are quite complex but essentially you take a crystal of the molecule you like, shine an X-ray beam on it and look at how the X-rays are scattered by the atoms in the crystal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The diffraction pattern does not &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt; show the single atoms, but mathematical analysis of the diffraction spots allows for reconstruction of an electron density map and subsequently of the structure of the molecule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably one of the most famous X-ray diffraction patterns is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_51&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Photo 51&lt;/a&gt; made by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rosalind Franklin&lt;/a&gt; of DNA, which was then used by the Nobel prize winners James D. Watson and Francis Crick. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PaLet.png&quot; alt=&quot;Photo 51 - X-ray diffraction of DNA&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/dna50/archive.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;published papers&lt;/a&gt; at this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally another technique is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_force_microscopy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atomic force microscope&lt;/a&gt;. The principle is to have a very small cantilever that can pass over the sample and gets pushed up and down due to interaction with the electron fields of atoms.&#xA;An enhanced version of AFM was developed in 2009, which allows to see atoms and bonds in a molecule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/325/5944/1110.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Chemical Structure of a Molecule Resolved by Atomic Force Microscopy&lt;/a&gt; - Gross et al. - Science 2009&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://pubs.acs.org/cen/_img/87/i35/8735notw1_fig1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;SFM of a pentacene molecule&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pentacene molecule. Top: ball and stick model, middle: classical SFM, bottom: enhanced SFM. Scale bar 5 angstrom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Scientests have now &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/07/120710-first-picture-atom-shadow-photograph-science-nature-smallest/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;taken a photograph&lt;/a&gt; of a single ytterbium atom, showing the shadow created by a laser hitting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oww1v.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Ytterbium Atom&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2019-01-04T22:18:42.247" LastActivityDate="2019-01-04T22:18:42.247" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7801" CreationDate="2012-02-02T17:07:03.140" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Would an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2010/09/27/light-trap-for-single-atom-devised/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;actual picture&lt;/a&gt; of a single captured atom convince you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/L3eYol.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3906" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T12:01:23.510" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T12:01:23.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7801" CreationDate="2012-02-02T18:13:17.957" Score="104" Body="&lt;p&gt;No discussion of atoms would be complete without mentioning &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_motion&quot;&gt;Brownian motion&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brownian motion is the strange, seemingly random movement of small particles (like dust) when suspended in a fluid.  This phenomenon went unexplained for almost 80 years, until Einstein published a paper in 1905 &lt;em&gt;(the same year he published his paper on the special theory of relativity)&lt;/em&gt; showing that, if we assume atoms exist and that Brownian motion is due to atoms bombarding the particle, the movement will behave in a very &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk&quot;&gt;particular way&lt;/a&gt;.  He even gave equations for estimating the size of the atoms!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first the paper was ignored, as it didn't agree with the observed particle movement; however, it turns out earlier experiments were flawed, and through a series of &lt;strong&gt;very careful&lt;/strong&gt; experiments in 1908-09, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Perrin#Research&quot;&gt;Jean Perrin&lt;/a&gt; verified that the particles did indeed move in exactly the way Einstein predicted.  For this work, Jean Perrin won the Nobel Prize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is usually considered the turning point of atomic theory - before this work, the scientific world was divided about the existence of atoms, but after this their existence became very hard to deny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastEditorUserId="249" LastEditDate="2012-02-02T20:38:21.710" LastActivityDate="2012-02-02T20:38:21.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7809" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-02T19:43:07.860" Score="17" ViewCount="61816" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people I know would never eat anything cold during tonsillitis, because they think ice cream can worsen it (some others are afraid ice cream could cause it, when ice cream is eaten with a cold outside temperature, and some others - &lt;a href=&quot;http://doma.nova.cz/clanek/zdravi/letni-angina-pryc-s-ni.html&quot;&gt;Get Rid of Summer Tonsillitis&lt;/a&gt; - are afraid ice cream could cause it when eaten during a very warm weather, but both of this is probably out of the scope of this question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other claim eating cold food like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medindia.net/patients/patientinfo/tonsillitis_treatment.htm&quot;&gt;ice cream can relieve symptoms&lt;/a&gt; and some other claim it can even help curing the tonsillitis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does ice cream help relieving tonsillitis symptoms or even help curing the tonsillitis (reducing the tonsillitis duration)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-05-14T10:59:11.530" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T03:07:12.800" Title="Eating ice cream during tonsillitis?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7812" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-02T20:08:39.673" Score="1" ViewCount="159" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6961/can-smartphone-apps-detect-emf&quot;&gt;Can smartphone Apps detect EMF?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hard to find anything scientific regarding this app on the interwebs...  Almost seems like search results have been manipulated to lower the rank of any sort of skeptical analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ghost Radar® is a portable application designed to detect paranormal activity for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPads. Ghost Radar® attempts to detect paranormal activity by using various sensors on the device on which it is running. Like traditional paranormal detecting equipment Ghost Radar® employs sensors that measure electromagnetic fields, vibrations, and sounds. However, traditional paranormal equipment can be easily fooled when simple mundane bursts of normal electromagnetic fields, vibrations and sounds occur. Ghost Radar® sets itself apart by analyzing the readings from sensors giving indications only when interesting patterns in the readings have been made. Ghost Radar® also includes a voice to let you know when interesting words have been detected. Please note we offer no guarantees of accuracy or any warranties, therefore, since results from this application cannot be verified scientifically the app should be used for entertainment purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ghost-radar/id314696635?mt=8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know if anyone has done a writeup or reverse engineered the code to find out what the app is doing programmatcially.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5979" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-02-02T20:15:11.317" Title="Has anyone done a scientific analysis of the &quot;Ghost Radar&quot; app for ios/android?" Tags="|software|ghosts|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-02-02T20:16:34.107" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7801" CreationDate="2012-02-02T21:35:57.863" Score="61" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes atoms undoubtedly exist.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also had the doubt a few years back - are they real-real or just abstractions? - until the following, interesting and very convincing &lt;em&gt;peer-reviewed&lt;/em&gt; literature on the topic came out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v344/n6266/abs/344524a0.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;D.M. Eigler, E.K. Schweizer. &lt;strong&gt;Positioning single atoms with a scanning tunneling microscope.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Nature 344, 524-526 (1990).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here we report the use of the STM at low temperatures (4 K) &lt;strong&gt;to position individual xenon atoms on a single-crystal nickel surface with atomic precision.&lt;/strong&gt; This capacity has allowed us to fabricate rudimentary structures of our own design, atom by atom. The processes we describe are in principle applicable to molecules also. In view of the device-like characteristics reported for single atoms on surfaces, the possibilities for perhaps the ultimate in device miniaturization are evident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following image is given. Yes, it's a digital image because that's how scanning-tunnelling microscopes work. All the data represented is &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; (just like a digital picture).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ug8Dj.png&quot; alt=&quot;Atoms writing IBM&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the landmark IBM paper of 1990 many other groups have reproduced the results. IBM Research maintains a &lt;em&gt;whole site&lt;/em&gt; dedicated to STM pictures here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;s&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/gallery.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/gallery.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/s&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170308161636/http://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/view_group.php?id=4245&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/gallery.html&lt;/a&gt; (NOTE: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/gallery.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wayback machine&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, a single strontium atom has been photographed &lt;em&gt;using an ordinary camera&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www2.physics.ox.ac.uk/research/ion-trap-quantum-computing-group&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a group at Oxford university&lt;/a&gt;, here's the picture -- click to zoom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nhCKG.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nhCKGl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Photo credit - David Nadlinger&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Photo credit - David Nadlinger&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2018-02-13T10:46:57.993" LastActivityDate="2018-02-13T10:46:57.993" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7816" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7835" CreationDate="2012-02-02T21:46:42.370" Score="28" ViewCount="18238" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been taught for a long time (and appears to be mainstream &quot;knowledge&quot;, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RICE_%28medicine%29&quot;&gt;documented here in Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;) that applying an ice pack to an injury reduces the severity of swelling, and it also seems to be taught (by implication, at least) that reducing swelling is a good thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does cooling an injury really prevent swelling? (slowing it doesn't count - I think we can accept that much is true)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is preventing swelling a good thing? (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1324096/Ice-injury-prevent-healing-Swelling-turned-head.html&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; appears to say &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; swelling is good: &quot;For wounds to heal we need controlled inflammation, not too much, and not too little&quot;, but maybe that just means one shouldn't use &lt;em&gt;too much&lt;/em&gt; ice?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5343" LastEditorUserId="5343" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T04:13:24.577" LastActivityDate="2016-11-10T23:09:01.060" Title="Does putting an ice pack on an injury reduce swelling?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7817" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7830" CreationDate="2012-02-02T21:55:58.033" Score="9" ViewCount="3618" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people believe that FEMA has secret concentration camps as part of a wider strategy to impose martial law. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomfiles.org/war/fema.htm&quot;&gt;This is an example&lt;/a&gt; of a site promoting such a view and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infowars.com/exclusive-government-activating-fema-camps-across-u-s/&quot;&gt;Infowars has an article claiming the same&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.squidoo.com/usaconcetrationcamps&quot;&gt;An example of a specific claim:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I never thought the day would come where I would write about such a&#xA;  horrible subject but the fact is our government, under a program&#xA;  called REX 84 (Readiness Exercise 84) runs over 800 detention camps&#xA;  nationwide. They are all fully operational and ready to receive&#xA;  prisoners should the US government institute martial law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this supported by any factual study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-02T22:24:56.723" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T15:14:36.243" Title="Is FEMA forming concentration camps in preparation for martial law?" Tags="|united-states|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7817" CreationDate="2012-02-03T00:01:08.857" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The RFP at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infowars.com/exclusive-government-activating-fema-camps-across-u-s/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Infowars link&lt;/a&gt; you provide states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;....lead times will be short...due to the nature of emergency responses....Personnel onsite...will depend on the size and scope of the recovery effort, but for estimating purposes the camp will range in size from 301 to 2001 persons for up to 30 days in length. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Emergency responses,&quot; &quot;recovery effort,&quot; and duration all support the thesis that such camps are intended for emergency support after a disaster and are not intended to be concentration camps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T00:01:08.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7829" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-03T03:08:20.040" Score="8" ViewCount="4723" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read a few places online where people say that the TV show &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aetv.com/storage-wars/&quot;&gt;Storage Wars&lt;/a&gt; is staged and that the producers place items in the lockers.  Does anyone know if that is true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4917" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T03:14:21.810" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T03:37:56.673" Title="Is the TV show &quot;Storage Wars&quot; staged?" Tags="|television|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7817" CreationDate="2012-02-03T03:50:51.233" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, there is no evidence to support this ridiculous claim&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is more evidence of a conspiracy to make people think that the claim is true then there is evidence of the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pictures and videos that claimants rely on are for the most part deliberate lies. Train repair centers, North Korean labor camps and National Guard training centers are just some of the centers claimed as FEMA concentration camps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been no studies done to debunk this claim and it is unlikely there will be, simply because of how ridiculous it is. Perhaps the next best thing is a detailed debunking from a reliable source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-meigs&quot;&gt;James Meigs&lt;/a&gt;, editor-in-chief of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popularmechanics.com/&quot;&gt;Popular Mechanics&lt;/a&gt; appeared on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.glennbeck.com/&quot;&gt;Glenn Beck&lt;/a&gt;’s Fox News program to debunk this claim. Transcripts are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,513024,00.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,513257,00.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Selected excerpts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BECK: OK. There is no sound? How come I'm hearing the sound here,&#xA;  Frank. OK. This is something where they're showing a so-called&#xA;  concentration camp. These are turnstiles. This is in a secure area,&#xA;  behind the fence. I don't know how they got this video when it was&#xA;  behind the fence, but they went in and got this video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You recognized this or you searched for it, right? And what did you&#xA;  find?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MEIGS: Well, it is not very hard to find, like many of these things.&#xA;  The truth is actually fairly evident. This is an Amtrak repair&#xA;  facility in Beach Grove, Indiana. The woman who made this video&#xA;  initially claimed that it's some kind of American Auschwitz. And they&#xA;  have outfitted buildings with gas and they've got these strange&#xA;  turnstiles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voice-over): In yet another fenced area, we see a&#xA;  large warehouse building at the end with the electronic turnstiles in&#xA;  front of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(END VIDEO CLIP)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BECK: OK. That they were putting gas heaters of some sort in there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MEIGS: Right. And what we found out is — first of all, one of those&#xA;  buildings has been knocked down. The other ones were upgraded. Their&#xA;  heating system was obsolete. And more than 15 years ago, they upgraded&#xA;  them to gas heat so they could work on the trains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MEIGS: Well, there is one detail that the conspiracy theorists leave&#xA;  out. Those are satellite images of a concentration camp in North&#xA;  Korea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a more thorough debunking on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/4312850&quot;&gt;Popular Mechanics web page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course all of that is meaningless since James Meigs is clearly a government shill. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even ignoring:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The evidence used by people making the claim is demonstrably false,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not all of the ~800 alleged camps have been debunked,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If this &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; happening it &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; be covered up,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The difficulty of orchestrating something of this magnitude &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; keeping it secret,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;no decent motive has been proposed and arguably there is a lack of means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim should be given less credibility than reports of leprechauns until a reason exists to consider it seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6387" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T06:37:01.260" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T06:37:01.260" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7816" CreationDate="2012-02-03T10:50:11.197" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of studies which show that applying ice (cryotherapy) helps reduce swelling. &lt;a href=&quot;https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/1811/6552/Honors_Thesis.pdf?sequence=1&quot;&gt;This link deals specifically with applying ICE (Ice, Compression, Elevation) to ankle sprains&lt;/a&gt;. Evidence-based first aid courses such as those taught by the Red Cross all agree that using ice should be the first action taken when dealing with certain injuries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the previous document:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The therapeutic use of cold produces many physiological effects.  Cryotherapy is &#xA;  commonly accepted as the standard treatment in the management of acute injuries in order to &#xA;  inhibit inflammation.&#xA;   However, inflammation is a complex set of events that only becomes &#xA;  more complex when looking at the specific effects of cold on inflammation.&#xA;    Inflammation can &#xA;  be described by its vascular events, chemical events, and cellular events since acute cryotherapy &#xA;  affects all three of these.&#xA;    Vasoconstriction due to cold therapy counteracts the vascular &#xA;  events of inflammation, specifically vasodilation.  Cryotherapy also affects the release of over &#xA;  100 chemicals that mediate the inflammatory process through the chemical events of &#xA;  inflammation.  Despite the effects of cold not being researched for most of these inflammatory &#xA;  chemicals, the release or activity of several of the key inflammatory chemicals is known to be &#xA;  inhibited as a result of cryotherapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my own experience as a paramedic and training as a paramedic and first-aid teacher: Vasodilation (the expansion of blood vessels) is a common effect in injuries such as sprains and can even occur to such an extent that the patient briefly faints due to a blood pressure drop. Ice causes vasoconstriction (the tightening of blood vessels) which reduces the effect vasodilation has. Vasoconstriction reduces the amount of blood lost internally by limiting blood flow and inhibits the forming of edema, reducing overall pressure on the affected area. Ice also has the obvious advantage of numbing the affected area, reducing the pain initially felt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that ICE (Ice, Compression, Elevation) is typical for first-aid scenario's. If a patient has ICE applied and it does not help after the first 20 minutes of cooling down a physician should be consulted. This is also the reason for the 'controversy' surrounding ICE: certain types of injury and mechanisms of injury do not respond well to ICE and should be treated differently. A fracture or ligament tear for example will respond to ICE by reducing pain and swelling but - for obvious reasons - cannot be treated by ICE alone. ICE is not a magic bullet, it's a guideline to provide first aid and the outcome of ICE will determine if a patient might need to see a physician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6033" LastEditorUserId="6033" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T10:56:17.973" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T10:56:17.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7837" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-03T12:42:05.660" Score="24" ViewCount="18073" Body="&lt;p&gt;It have heard several times that, every seven to ten years, all the cells that our body are made of have all been replaced. Example in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/science/02cell.html?pagewanted=all&quot;&gt;this NY Times Article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This heartening truth, which arises from the fact that most of the body's tissues are under constant renewal, has been underlined by a novel method of estimating the age of human cells. Its inventor, Jonas Frisen, believes the average age of all the cells in an adult's body may turn out to be as young as 7 to 10 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim accurate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="873" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T01:19:45.727" LastActivityDate="2015-04-05T19:29:54.597" Title="Are all cells of the human body completely replaced every seven to ten years?" Tags="|biology|physiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7797" CreationDate="2012-02-03T12:54:02.027" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode17/usc_sec_17_00000110----000-.html&quot;&gt;US Code Title 17, Chapter 1, § 110. LIMITATIONS ON EXCLUSIVE RIGHTS: EXEMPTION OF CERTAIN PERFORMANCES AND DISPLAYS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(4) performance of a nondramatic literary or musical work otherwise&#xA;  than in a transmission to the public, without any purpose of direct or&#xA;  indirect commercial advantage and without payment of any fee or other&#xA;  compensation for the performance to any of its performers, promoters,&#xA;  or organizers, if—&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...&lt;em&gt;lots of other rules&lt;/em&gt;...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if the performance or display is by audiovisual means, any visual&#xA;  portion of the performance or display is communicated by means of a&#xA;  total of not more than 4 audiovisual devices, of which not more than 1&#xA;  audiovisual device is located in any 1 room, and &lt;strong&gt;no such audiovisual&#xA;  device has a diagonal screen size greater than 55 inches&lt;/strong&gt;, and any&#xA;  audio portion of the performance or display is communicated by means&#xA;  of a total of not more than 6 loudspeakers, of which not more than 4&#xA;  loudspeakers are located in any 1 room or adjoining outdoor space;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, private viewing in private house is exempt from these rules, so at home you can have as big TV as you'd like. This includes having a private Super Bowl party at home.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read more in &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/will-your-big-screen-super-bowl-party-violate-copyright-law.ars&quot;&gt;ArsTechnica: &quot;Will your big-screen Super Bowl party violate copyright law?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T13:01:45.607" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T13:01:45.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7589" CreationDate="2012-02-03T14:19:53.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote an &lt;a href=&quot;http://e-catsite.com/2012/01/27/nasa-and-lenr/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; that gives links to a good number of NASA documents on LENR.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of them do mention Rossi and Pons and Fleishmann by name. I really don't think there can be any doubt, based on this volume of information, that LENR is related to the Pons and Flesihmann effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, support for Rossi seems to be somewhat more equivocal. For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://e-catsite.com/dennis-m-bushnell-nasa-grc-09222011/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bushnell GRC 2011 slides&lt;/a&gt; states that the:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rossi device possibly producing useful energy but wholly &quot;Edisonian.&quot; not &quot;scaleable,&quot; not &quot;optimized.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is neither a ringing endorsement or an outright dismissal of Rossi's claims.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6042" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T01:08:00.813" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T01:08:00.813" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7837" CreationDate="2012-02-03T14:52:15.840" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, it isn't true that all the cells in our body are replaced every 3/7/10 years.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some cells are never replaced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this article about the eye:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;R.G.A. Faragher,&#xA;B. Mulholland, S.J. Tuft,&#xA;S. Sandeman, P.T. Khaw, &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjo.bmj.com/content/81/10/814.full#ref-3&quot;&gt;Brief review on aspects of aging and the eye: Aging and the cornea&lt;/a&gt; Br J Ophthalmol 1997;81:814-817 doi:10.1136/bjo.81.10.814&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;they explain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Non-dividing cells are those from static cell populations (exemplified by cerebral neurons) which never divide during adult life.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To support this, they cite an earlier article (which I haven't read):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leblond CP(1964) Classification of cell populations on the basis of their proliferative behaviour. Natl Cancer Inst Monogr 14:119–149.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T14:52:15.840" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7837" CreationDate="2012-02-03T15:05:49.827" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Different types of cells have different lifespans&lt;/strong&gt;, e.g.:&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://askabiologist.asu.edu/content/cells-divide&quot;&gt;we shed our &lt;strong&gt;skin cells about every 35 days&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/bloodandblooddisorders.html&quot;&gt;red &lt;strong&gt;blood cells live about 120 days&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;platelets 6 days&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;white cells less than a day&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK45504/&quot;&gt;most of the adult &lt;strong&gt;skeleton is replaced about every 10 years&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7192/full/453169a.html&quot;&gt;the average age of a &lt;strong&gt;fat cell&lt;/strong&gt; seems to be about &lt;strong&gt;10 years&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nih.gov/researchmatters/april2009/04132009heartcells.htm&quot;&gt;a &lt;strong&gt;25-year-old heart replaces about 1% of all its cardiomyocytes&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;heart muscle cells&lt;/em&gt; ) &lt;strong&gt;over the course of a&#xA;  year&lt;/strong&gt;, while a 75-year-old heart replaces about half a percent&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/103/33/12219.full&quot;&gt;our &lt;strong&gt;neocortical neurons&lt;/strong&gt;, the cell type that mediates much of our cognition, &lt;strong&gt;are produced prenatally and retained for our entire&#xA;  lifespan&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;I want to throw in a philosophical side note and quote computer scientist &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Grand&quot;&gt;Steve Grand&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;Think of an experience from your childhood. Something you remember&#xA;  clearly, something you can see, feel, maybe even smell, as if you were&#xA;  really there. After all, you really were there at the time, weren’t&#xA;  you? How else would you remember it?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But here is the bombshell: you weren’t there.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not a single atom that is in your body today was there when that event took place … Matter&#xA;  flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Whatever you are, therefore, you are not the stuff of which you are&#xA;  made.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If that doesn’t make the hair stand up on the back of your neck,&#xA;  read it again until it does, because it is important.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;[Richard Dawkins uses this quote in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_our_queer_universe.html&quot;&gt;TED Talk&lt;/a&gt; (around 10:20)]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=198208&amp;amp;sectioncode=26&quot;&gt;Times Higher Education: most cells are younger than the individual&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/11/18/2422506.htm&quot;&gt;ABC Science: Regrowth mystery reborn&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-02-03T16:50:30.450" LastActivityDate="2012-02-03T16:50:30.450" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="831" CreationDate="2012-02-03T19:00:51.343" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;As to the question of &quot;why&quot; someone would sell a real, kinda-working treatment as a homeopathic remedy, it has to do with a loophole in the law. The 1938 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Food,_Drug,_and_Cosmetic_Act&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act&lt;/a&gt;, which gave the FDA much of its current power, makes an exception for homeopathic preparations created according to the guidelines of the Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia of the United States; such preparations do not need to meet the same standards the FDA requires for other products that claim to treat symptoms. &lt;a href=&quot;http://nccam.nih.gov/health/homeopathy/#treatments&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to the NCCAM:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;Homeopathic remedies are regulated in the same manner as nonprescription, over-the-counter (OTC) drugs. However, because homeopathic products contain little or no active ingredients, they do not have to undergo the same safety and efficacy testing as prescription and new OTC drugs.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;... The labels on the remedies must include at least one major indication (i.e., medical problem to be treated), a list of ingredients, the dilution, and safety instructions. In addition, if a homeopathic remedy claims to treat a serious disease such as cancer, it needs to be sold by prescription. Only products for self-limiting conditions (minor health problems like a cold or headache that go away on their own) can be sold without a prescription.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the loophole in the first sentence of the NCCAM quote - although &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; homeopathic remedies are chemically equivalent to their dilutant, homeopathic remedies at 1X or 2X &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathic_dilution#Potency_scales&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;still contain a substantial amount of the active ingredient&lt;/a&gt; despite being labeled as &quot;homeopathic remedies&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, by selling Zicam as a homeopathic remedy, the manufacturer can claim to directly treat some symptoms, without having to go through the expensive process of proving that it actually works to the FDA; further, they can also sell you something that has actual, measurable, active amounts of Zinc in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a wonderful thing for advertising, as normally they can only make vague claims about &quot;supporting the immune system&quot; (e.g Emergen-C) - and since there's a real amount of Zinc in the medicine, you'll actually feel something happening (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zicam#FDA_warning_and_product_recall&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;your sense of smell disappearing&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastEditorUserId="5973" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T16:10:13.833" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T16:10:13.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7852" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-02-04T01:48:13.667" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T01:48:13.667" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T01:48:13.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7853" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-02-04T01:48:13.667" Score="0" Body="Vegetarianism encompasses the practice of following plant-based diets (fruits, vegetables, etc.), with or without the inclusion of dairy products or eggs, and with the exclusion of meat (red meat, poultry, and seafood)." OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T02:04:40.903" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T02:04:40.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7854" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7875" CreationDate="2012-02-04T05:10:03.853" Score="30" ViewCount="14391" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a common advice, perpetuated by many parents, and even some doctors, that if you have a cold, you should avoid dairy products, because they cause phlegm to build up or thicken. See e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/341823-foods-that-cause-mucus-buildup/&quot;&gt;Foods that cause mucus buildup&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do they (and if they do, how/why)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-05T09:48:31.137" LastActivityDate="2016-05-27T05:57:21.273" Title="Do dairy products cause phlegm to build or thicken?" Tags="|medical-science|common-cold|milk|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7855" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-04T09:29:08.193" Score="23" ViewCount="1855" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chineseorjapanese.com/asians-good-at-math/&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; said that Asians are good at math because Asian languages have less-confusing number systems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;So if it’s not the schools, what accounts for Asians succeeding in math across different education systems? As English speakers, we may be unaware, but the English language is perhaps the most odd and irrational language around. Particularly with numbers, in English, after ten the teens each have an unique name and each tenth following that gets their own name. In fact, one would need to learn 28 unique words to count up to 100 in English while in any Chinese dialect, Japanese, or Korean, one only needs to learn 11 – one through ten and one hundred.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In Asian languages like Chinese, numbers after ten follow a precise logic. Eleven in Mandarin is shi yi or ten-one, twelve is ten-two, thirteen is ten-three, and so forth. When we get to fifty-nine, the logic continues, five-ten-nine. Five tens and a nine, 59. The internal logic in counting numbers with Asian languages results in kids who speak Asian languages are able to count beyond a hundred before English speakers can even count to 40. But the Asian language advantage doesn’t stop in counting. Remember those dreaded fractions? In English we would read 3/4 as three-fourths. But for languages like Chinese, 3/4 is literally translated, “out of 4 parts, take 3″.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and I also found &lt;a href=&quot;http://imahd.ca/2009/11/16/why-jews-excel-at-math/&quot;&gt;&quot;Why Jews are good at math&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which also mentioned the decimal system in Hebrew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This problem further raised my attention after I saw some articles about why many adults are confused over English grammar, due to the &quot;its&quot; vs. &quot;it's&quot; and &quot;their&quot; vs. &quot;they're&quot; distinctions, plus articles about how language reforms affect literacy rates so I am thinking that less confusing language rules leads to better learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do simpler, less-confusing number systems confer advantages in learning math?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1935" LastEditorUserId="3122" LastEditDate="2016-05-16T18:42:08.850" LastActivityDate="2016-05-16T18:42:08.850" Title="Do number systems in native languages affect math performance?" Tags="|education|language|mathematics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7856" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13598" CreationDate="2012-02-04T11:56:20.263" Score="15" ViewCount="13635" Body="&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peta.org/issues/Animals-Used-for-Clothing/down-and-silk-birds-and-insects-exploited-for-fabric.aspx&quot;&gt;http://www.peta.org/issues/Animals-Used-for-Clothing/down-and-silk-birds-and-insects-exploited-for-fabric.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Plucking birds causes them considerable pain and distress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth in the claim that birds (live and concious) do feel severe pain when feathers are being plucked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5341" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T18:15:44.707" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T15:20:41.603" Title="Does plucking the feathers from live and conscious birds cause them pain?" Tags="|biology|zoology|pain|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7857" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7874" CreationDate="2012-02-04T12:19:26.233" Score="15" ViewCount="6575" Body="&lt;p&gt;People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peta.org&quot;&gt;PETA&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-clothing/fur-farms.aspx&quot;&gt;claim that fur-farms use genital electrocution techniques&lt;/a&gt; to kill animals without damaging the fur:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Animals have clamps attached to or rods forced into their mouths and&#xA;  anuses, and they are painfully electrocuted. Genital&#xA;  electrocution—deemed &quot;unacceptable&quot; by the American Veterinary Medical&#xA;  Association in its &quot;2000 Report of the AVMA Panel on&#xA;  Euthanasia&quot;—causes animals to suffer from cardiac arrest while they&#xA;  are still conscious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does genital-electrocution of an animal cause &quot;immediate&quot; death?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5341" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-04-29T02:34:40.967" LastActivityDate="2018-04-29T02:34:40.967" Title="Does genital-electrocution of animals cause immediate death?" Tags="|biology|zoology|mortality|clothing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7782" CreationDate="2012-02-04T13:41:40.153" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/7788/23&quot;&gt;Matt's answer&lt;/a&gt; addresses the accuracy of the risks of health care given in the original quote, and also whether the comparison is fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I plan to address the other side of the equation: the real &quot;danger&quot; of gun owners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For US firearm deaths, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; points to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;EG Krug, KE Powell and LL Dahlberg. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/27/2/214.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Firearm-related deaths in the United States and 35 other high- and upper-middle-income countries.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; International Journal of Epidemiology 1998:27:214-221.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data is from 1993 - that is dated, and should be taken with a grain of salt, but I am going with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The accidental death rate is quoted as 0.59 per 100,000 population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&amp;amp;met_y=population&amp;amp;tdim=true&amp;amp;dl=en&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;q=population+of+the+usa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google&lt;/a&gt; estimates the population of the US as 307 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That gives an estimate of 1535 deaths per annum, so the quoted 1500 is right on the money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many gun-owners are there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the estimates I found eventually pointed back the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nraila.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NRA&lt;/a&gt;'s estimate of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/fact-sheets/2012/nra-ila-firearms-fact-card-2012.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;70-80 million&lt;/a&gt; gun-owners. The source of this estimate isn't clear. It was consistent with other figures I saw, such as the estimate that 25% of US adults live in a household with a gun, or the estimated number of guns in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the quoted figure of 80 million gun owners is within the error range of the best estimate I could find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the numbers given are supported by other sources. But the analysis suggests that the only danger of gun owners is accidental shooting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It ignores:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;there are 12 times as many deaths (7.35/100,000) due to firearm-related suicide. Arguably, suicides are not &quot;dangerous&quot;. (Also, a fair proportion of those suicides would presumably have still been carried out with other means, if the firearms were not available.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;there are 12 times as many homicide deaths (7.07/100,000) as accidental deaths. When evaluating the danger of a gun-owner, the risk that they shoot you deliberately must surely be considered.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the non-fatal gun-shot injuries: a rate of 27/100,000 in 2000 (Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Uniform Crime Reports for the United States: Crime in the United States 2000: Uniform Crime Reports&lt;/a&gt;.  Washington, D.C: U.S. Department of Justice; 2001.) To be fair, this should be weighed against accidental injuries in the medical field.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;violent crimes, including robberies and rape, that are facilitated through threatening with firearms.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statistics about gun-ownership and accidental fatalities seem to be supported by reasonable estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the decision to only consider accidental fatalities underplays the dangers associated with gun-ownership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T13:41:40.153" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6390" CreationDate="2012-02-04T16:18:32.560" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was unable to find many studies dealing with vitamin B12 specifically as most studies deal with B vitamins in general. The studies I found indicate that B vitamins are not effective mosquito repellents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2002 study in the New England Journal of Medicine comparing the efficiency of different mosquito repellents reported that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No ingested compound, including garlic and thiamine (vitamin B1), has&#xA;  been found to be capable of repelling biting arthropods.&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa011699&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2005 study in the Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results of a small number of published studies suggested that&#xA;  vitamin B complex supplements are not effective as repellents, &lt;strong&gt;but&#xA;  these studies were limited by the use of very few human subjects and&#xA;  only 1 species of mosquito, Aedes aegypti&lt;/strong&gt;. We extended this work with&#xA;  the use of larger samples of human subjects and with Anopheles&#xA;  stephensi as the test organism. We tested whether ingestion of vitamin&#xA;  B supplements under various regimens affected the attractiveness of&#xA;  volatile skin components transferred to glass vials. Although there&#xA;  was substantial and consistent individual variation in attractiveness,&#xA;  we found no effect of vitamin B supplementation.&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.2987/8756-971X%282005%2921%5B213%3aTVBAAH%5D2.0.CO;2&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 1995 Brazilian study (full text in Portuguese) found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One untested but widely held opinion in Brazil is that oral use of&#xA;  vitamin B complex is useful as a mosquito repellent. We exposed Balb-C&#xA;  mice to a large number of Culex quinquefasciatus females, after giving&#xA;  vitamin B complex to mice (drops by mouth). There was no difference&#xA;  between mice attractiveness to mosquitoes in the vitamin B group&#xA;  compared to normal, but very few of the females bite mice in both&#xA;  groups, so the experiment was inconclusive. We suggest further&#xA;  experiments in this subject, using other models were the animals are&#xA;  more attractive to mosquitoes.&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7481457&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Little to no study has been done on vitamin B12 specifically. Studies done on on B vitamins as a mosquito repellent have not been shown to be effective. Given the many factors involved in this type of study further study is needed, as some of the researchers note.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be something to the idea that B vitamins can aid in repelling mosquito but at the moment there is no evidence to support the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-06-03T11:44:25.633" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T11:44:25.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7855" CreationDate="2012-02-04T16:57:11.643" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a partial case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sapir–Whorf hypothesis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is one example that is usually cited the math site of it is on the Wiki article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other research of importance to the study of linguistic relativity has been Daniel Everett's studies of the Pirahã people of the Brazilian Amazon. Everett observed several peculiarities in Pirahã culture that corresponded with linguistically rare features. The Pirahã for example have neither numbers nor color terms in the way those are normally defined, and correspondingly they don't count or classify colors in the way other cultures do. Furthermore when Everett tried to instruct them in basic mathematics they proved unresponsive. Everett did not draw the conclusion that it was the lack of numbers in their language that prevented them from grasping mathematics, but instead concluded that the Pirahã had a cultural ideology that made them extremely reluctant to adopt new cultural traits, and that this cultural ideology was also the reason that certain linguistic features that were otherwise believed to be universal did not exist in their language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't prove causation in any way, but is a curious piece of evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T16:57:11.643" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7864" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-04T17:36:38.143" Score="2" ViewCount="163" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/570/does-staring-at-the-sun-cause-significant-permanent-harm&quot;&gt;Does staring at the sun cause significant, permanent harm?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a child I was told to never look directly at the sun because it can make you blind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have never heard of cases where somebody got blind &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Often enough I have looked into the sun myself directly without noticeable consequences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware that an injury of blindness does not hurt and that blindness will only start in a little spot of the eye as the light is focuses on the retina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My thoughts: Unlike a laser beam, the light of the sun which reaches the eye is not coherent and not as powerful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6072" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T23:33:04.890" Title="Will looking at the sun make you blind?" Tags="|ophthalmology|sun|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2012-02-04T17:56:01.990" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7865" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-02-04T20:50:31.047" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Government is the system by which a nation, state, or community is governed. Use this for question discussing how to govern a country or a community, not for any particular government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular use the country name as a tag if the question applies to the government of a particular country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T20:50:31.047" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T20:50:31.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7866" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-02-04T20:50:31.047" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions regarding &quot;government&quot; as a concept. DO NOT USE in lieu of &quot;United States&quot;." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-04T20:50:31.047" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T20:50:31.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6992" CreationDate="2012-02-04T22:50:08.313" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The linked question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3332/do-women-prefer-men-with-a-sense-of-humor&quot;&gt;Do women prefer men with a sense of humor?&lt;/a&gt; along with the Stanford university study linked in the question show evidence of differences in how humor is processed and that humor likely evolved as a sexual selection trait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is the case it would make sense that men would tend to be funnier than women. Men would be actively competing to be funnier than each other, which would not be as true for women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether or not men are objectively funnier than women, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/fashion/seriously-men-only-think-theyre-funnier-studied.html?_r=3&amp;amp;src=recg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this New York Times article&lt;/a&gt; about a study at the University of California, San Diego which measured the perceived of how funny each gender was in a blind test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A selected excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How to determine something so subjective as what makes one person&#xA;  giggle and another give a dismissive shrug? To create a blind test, 32&#xA;  undergraduate men and women were asked to perform a variation on the&#xA;  New Yorker cartoon caption contest. Each was instructed to be as funny&#xA;  as possible coming up with 20 captions for 20 cartoons in — think fast&#xA;  — 45 minutes. The researchers then asked 34 undergraduate men and 47&#xA;  undergraduate women to rate the funnier captions in pairs, without&#xA;  knowing the sex of the authors, assigning scores to the writers&#xA;  depending on how they fared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While men were deemed ever so slightly funnier (0.11 points out of a&#xA;  theoretical possible score of 5.0), they were mostly considered&#xA;  funnier by other men. There goes the peacock theory. Other&#xA;  differences? Men tended to use profanity and sexual humor slightly&#xA;  more often than women (only slightly, thank you, Melissa McCarthy),&#xA;  though neither sex necessarily considered those types of jokes&#xA;  funnier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A link to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://psy2.ucsd.edu/~nchristenfeld/Publications_files/Humor%20&amp;amp;%20Gender.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it odd that blind as opposed to double-blind tests were performed, as this is a subject area rife with bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even so, the findings of at least one study show that men perceive themselves and other men to be funnier than they are and that men are considered funnier than women, although only marginally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to say anything for sure at this stage beyond speculation, as only a single study has been performed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6387" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-02-04T22:50:08.313" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7873" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7877" CreationDate="2012-02-05T03:38:21.607" Score="14" ViewCount="12857" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this most commonly in that you're either a shower or a grower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=125381891&amp;amp;page=1&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; talks about the claim accepting it as true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any proof that a smaller flaccid penis (&amp;lt;10cm) can result in a larger penis when erect, than a penis which is large when flaccid (&gt;12.5cm)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-05T09:42:58.913" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T12:09:26.560" Title="Is the size of a penis when erect proportional to its size when flaccid?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7857" CreationDate="2012-02-05T06:03:25.893" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The report referenced by PETA was updated in June 2007 by the American Veterinary Medical Association, and is now called: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avma.org/issues/animal_welfare/euthanasia.pdf&quot;&gt;AVMA Guidelines on Euthanasia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They do discuss electrocution techniques, with references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ELECTROCUTION&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Electrocution,  using  alternating  current,  has  been &#xA;  used as a method of euthanasia for species such as dogs, &#xA;  cattle,  sheep,  swine,  foxes,  and  mink.&#xA;  Electrocution  induces  death  by  cardiac  fibrillation, &#xA;  which  causes  cerebral  hypoxia.&#xA;  However,  &lt;strong&gt;ani­mals do  not lose  consciousness for 10 to 30 seconds&lt;/strong&gt; or &#xA;  more  after  onset  of  cardiac fibrillation. &lt;strong&gt;It  is imperative &#xA;  that  animals  be  unconscious  before  being  electrocuted.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, electrocution takes time - it doesn't cause immediate death - but there are techniques (including &quot;electrical stunning&quot;) which avoid the animal suffering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Electrocution  is  humane  if  the &#xA;  animal  is  first  rendered  unconscious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the PETA depiction is correct, this requirement is not being met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AVMA warn it is not suitable for all animals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It may not result in death in small animals &#xA;  (&amp;lt; 5 kg) because  ventricular fibrillation  and circulatory &#xA;  collapse do not always persist after cessation of  current &#xA;  flow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AVMA do not explicitly mention genital or anal electrocution, but they do say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Techniques that apply electric current from &#xA;  head  to  tail,  head  to foot,  or  head  to  moistened  metal &#xA;  plates on which the animal is standing are unacceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably, &quot;head to tail&quot; covers the scenario described by PETA, and is therefore considered unacceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, PETA are correct that electrocution without first being rendered unconscious does lead to a slow death. They are correct in saying such techniques are considered unacceptable by the AVMA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not attempted to address any of the other claims that PETA makes - e.g. that fur farms are actually using such techniques and are doing so without first rendering the animal unconscious, and that no laws about the humane treatment of animals protect them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T06:03:25.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7854" CreationDate="2012-02-05T07:03:59.947" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions&quot;&gt;List of common misconceptions&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drinking milk or consuming other dairy products does not increase mucus production. As a result, they do not need to be avoided by those suffering from flu or cold congestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They back it up with this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pinnock CB, Graham NM, Mylvaganam A, Douglas RM.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2154152&quot;&gt;Relationship between milk intake and mucus production in adult volunteers challenged with rhinovirus-2.&lt;/a&gt; Am Rev Respir Dis. 1990 Feb;141(2):352-6.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Milk and dairy product intake was not associated with an increase in upper or lower respiratory tract symptoms of congestion or nasal secretion weight. [...] We conclude that no statistically significant overall association can be detected between milk and dairy product intake and symptoms of mucus production in healthy adults, either asymptomatic or symptomatic, with rhinovirus infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6080" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-05T07:53:27.923" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T07:53:27.923" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7873" CreationDate="2012-02-05T08:02:57.190" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Kinsey Institute's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/resources/bib-penis.html&quot;&gt;Penis Size FAQ&lt;/a&gt; explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a much wider range of size in men's penises when flaccid, with the average ranging from 2.5cm to 10cm (1 to 4 inches). In general, smaller flaccid penises lengthen at erection by a greater percentage than do larger flaccid penises, with most men reaching an average size of 12.5cm to 17.5cm (5 to 7 inches), so the &lt;strong&gt;flaccid size of a penis is not a good predictor of erect size&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They do not link to a particular study, but provide general references, including to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jamison, P.L., and Gebhard, P.G. (1988). Penis size increase between flaccid and erect states: An analysis of the Kinsey data. Journal of Sex Research, 24, 177-183.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-05T09:44:01.703" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T09:44:01.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7873" CreationDate="2012-02-05T11:15:33.473" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8709382&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Penile length in the flaccid and erect states&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (1996):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;METHOD&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We prospectively &lt;strong&gt;measured flaccid and erect penile dimensions in 80&#xA;physically normal men before and after pharmacological erection&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RESULTS&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mean flaccid length was 8.8 cm., stretched length 12.4 cm. and erect&#xA;length 12.9 cm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Neither patient age nor size of the flaccid penis&#xA;accurately predicted erectile length&lt;/strong&gt;. Stretched length most closely&#xA;correlated with erect length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.at/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=penis%20erect%20flaccid%20study%2080&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=11&amp;amp;ved=0CCQQFjAAOAo&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.medscape.com%2Fviewarticle%2F584195_2&amp;amp;ei=fmUuT43yOIGMswb42-GIDQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGhfq8nofnlhiU1c9ZMHJfMbPaKJw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Summaries of several studies regarding &amp;quot;Penile Size&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T11:15:33.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7878" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7879" CreationDate="2012-02-05T12:12:28.980" Score="50" ViewCount="55198" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Katana needs to be made of steel folded 1000 times, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_5075311_forge-katana.html&quot;&gt;eHow&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pound the tamahagane into two separate blades. These need to be heated, pounded by hand, and folded 1,000 times each to remove the impurities. Pound one of them another 1,000 times to make it harder than the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, according to simple mathematics and physics, this would mean that a Katana is made of 2&lt;sup&gt;1000&lt;/sup&gt; layers, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%5E1000&quot;&gt;10 followed by 300 zeros&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this doesn't really mean it was not done, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - were Katanas really made of folded steel? How many times was it typically folded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-02-05T19:39:36.073" LastActivityDate="2017-04-03T20:08:46.173" Title="Are Katanas made of steel folded 1000 times?" Tags="|physics|weapons|japan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7878" CreationDate="2012-02-05T14:26:37.123" Score="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samuraisword.com/REFERENCE/making/japanse_swordmaking_process.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to SamuraiSwords.com&lt;/a&gt;, there are two folding steps, in first traverse and longitudinal folding is repeated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The difference between these two folding procedures lies on that the&#xA;  small hammer is used to fold in transverse folding while the big&#xA;  hammer is used in longitudinal folding. Generally, &lt;strong&gt;about 12-15 folings&#xA;  are repeated&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In second (optional one):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;another forging step can be added (Age-kitae). Tamahagane is forged&#xA;  again as a shape of stick once more and cut uniformly about 7.5cm&#xA;  long. This age-kitae is an optional step and sometimes omitted. A&#xA;  tight microstrucutre and hada (grain pattern) can be expected after&#xA;  this step and the uniformity of the carbon content is improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Likewise the shita-kitae, tamahagane is &lt;strong&gt;heated and folded 7 to 8&#xA;  times.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this is just process of creating 2 or 3 grades of steel (hard, soft and optionally medium). Then they are combined, making greater total number of layers, how many depends on the style:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bJUap.png&quot; alt=&quot;katana fabrication&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &quot;1000 folds&quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;shita-kitae, is repeated &lt;strong&gt;from 8 to as many as 16 times&lt;/strong&gt;. After 20&#xA;  foldings, (2&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt;, or about a million individual layers), there is too&#xA;  much diffusion in the carbon content, the steel becomes almost&#xA;  homogenous in this respect, and the act of folding no longer gives any&#xA;  benefit to the steel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_swordsmithing#Forging&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, referencing &lt;em&gt;A History of Metallography&lt;/em&gt; by Cyril Smith - The MIT Press 1960 Page 53-54)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, anything above 25-26 folds would make no sense at all, as by then the layers' thickness would have to be less than radius of iron atoms, which is 126 picometers (= 1.26 × 10&lt;sup&gt;-10&lt;/sup&gt; meters)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-02-05T23:56:20.390" LastActivityDate="2012-02-05T23:56:20.390" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8169" CreationDate="2012-02-05T15:27:14.843" Score="18" ViewCount="10350" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many movies, especially from the 80's when Ninjas were involved they would use their &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuriken&quot;&gt;ninja stars&lt;/a&gt; as a deadly weapon. An example clip is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EvPvfVOUV8&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this realistic? Can a ninja star penetrate and be accurate enough to kill a person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:29:37.513" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:29:37.513" Title="Can a ninja star (hira shuriken) used as a thrown weapon kill?" Tags="|japan|weapons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7882" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7884" CreationDate="2012-02-05T15:43:26.283" Score="35" ViewCount="2425" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sword-swallowers, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Aw7EkIsYK0&quot;&gt;Dan Meyer&lt;/a&gt; claim to be putting a real metal sword down their throats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they really pushing a piece of metal down their throats, or are they some sort of magic trick with fake swords?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-02-05T19:39:24.017" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T05:32:18.400" Title="Do &quot;sword-swallowers&quot; swallow swords?" Tags="|weapons|stage-magic|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7883" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7970" CreationDate="2012-02-05T16:04:09.777" Score="20" ViewCount="6709" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend is a smoker. His dad is a doctor. Both claim there is no firm proof that cigarettes cause lung cancer. &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120310211008/http://www.journaloftheoretics.com/editorials/vol-1/e1-4.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; makes a similar claim -- in particular that smoking cigarettes is not proven to cause cancer, but that it is linked to an increased risk of dying from lung cancer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, a US white male (USWM) cigarette smoker has an 8% lifetime chance of dying from lung cancer but the USWM nonsmoker also has a 1% chance of dying from lung cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any firm science behind the argument that smoking does or does not &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;cause&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; lung cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="31988" LastEditDate="2022-06-01T07:30:13.760" LastActivityDate="2022-06-01T07:30:13.760" Title="Does smoking cigarettes cause lung cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|cigarettes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7882" CreationDate="2012-02-05T16:30:59.193" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sword swallowers are indeed placing a real metal sword down their throats and into their stomachs. It is (obviously) extremely dangerous and risky, which is part of what makes it so captivating to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swordswallow.com&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; which is affiliated with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swordswallow.org/about.php&quot;&gt;Sword Swallowing International&lt;/a&gt; has some good information and photos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swordswallow.com/faq.php#gimmick&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q:  &quot;Don't you use a gimmick, a fake sword that curls or folds up?&quot;&#xA;  &quot;Don't you swallow a sheath first, or use a plastic tip on your&#xA;  sword?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A:   No. Many people think that sword swallowers use a fake sword&#xA;  (known as a &quot;gaff&quot; in the business) that curls or folds up into the&#xA;  handle, but this is simply not the case for real sword swallowers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swordswallow.com/xrays.php&quot;&gt;Photos&lt;/a&gt; from the same site shows an X-ray of a swallowed sword:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D9qcFBFmlk&amp;amp;feature=player_embedded&quot;&gt;clip&lt;/a&gt; from Discovery Health shows Dan Meyer swallowing a sword and being X-rayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HowStuffWorks also has a nice &lt;a href=&quot;http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/arts/circus-arts/sword-swallowing.htm&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; explaining that it is real and how it works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a trick to real sword swallowing, but it doesn't involve&#xA;  illusions or preemptively-swallowed metal tubes. Instead, it involves&#xA;  lots of physical and psychological preparation. For some performers,&#xA;  learning to swallow a sword can take years. In this article, we'll&#xA;  examine what it takes to swallow a sword and why sword swallowing is&#xA;  an extremely dangerous practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a 2006 study from the British Medical Journal which acknowledges that sword swallowers swallow real metal swords and looks at the side effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sword swallowers know their occupation is dangerous. The Sword&#xA;  Swallowers' Association International (SSAI, www.swordswallow.org)&#xA;  recognises those who can swallow a non-retractable, solid steel blade&#xA;  at least two centimetres wide and 38 centimetres long. As we found&#xA;  only two English language case reports of injury resulting from sword&#xA;  swallowing,1 2 we explored the technique and side effects of this&#xA;  unusual practice.&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/333/7582/1285.full?ijkey=ME07xoblLL2bTXV&amp;amp;keytype=ref&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, sword swallowers swallow real swords.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-02-12T05:32:18.400" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T05:32:18.400" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7887" CreationDate="2012-02-05T20:32:47.657" Score="22" ViewCount="63883" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen several times people posting on Facebook about the history of wearing very low trousers.&#xA;They claim that it was invented in U.S prisons. Apparently by showing a little bit of their butts inmates were letting know other inmates that they were sexually available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to me like a hoax made to convince people to dress 'properly'. Is there any truth behind this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DXbbm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Here is an example of one of these posts&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3213" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-02-07T00:51:19.420" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T05:32:59.203" Title="Was wearing trousers very low (sagging) invented in prison to show sexual availability?" Tags="|sexuality|clothing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7886" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-05T23:00:39.137" Score="3" ViewCount="698" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been told that I shouldn't just take clothes out of the washing machine and put them directly in the drier without first snapping them to get them to become uncrumpled. I have tried both ways and anectodally don't see any difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there's actually any sound truth behind what people keep telling me (three separate people on different occasions have told me this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6084" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-02-07T00:15:17.777" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T08:20:24.723" Title="Does snapping clothes before placing them in the dryer improve their drying?" Tags="|clothing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7885" CreationDate="2012-02-05T23:05:51.940" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://today.duke.edu/2007/11/saggin.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mark Anthony Neal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, professor of African and African-American Studies at &lt;a href=&quot;http://newsoffice.duke.edu/resources-media/faculty-experts/arts-and-culture&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Duke University&lt;/a&gt; (2007):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, saggin' is nothing new. Long-time observers of urban youth&#xA;  culture can recall seeing examples of saggin' at least 20 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In those days, &lt;strong&gt;saggin' was linked to prison culture and the fact that&#xA;  prisoners were not allowed to wear belts&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For many of those first&#xA;  generation of saggers, the style was an emblem of their hardcore&#xA;  status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but he also mentions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Within gay subcultures, saggin' can be read as a sign of availability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/07/in_pictures_sagging_pants/html/1.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The practice of wearing low-slung, baggy or &lt;strong&gt;sagging trousers is&#xA;  thought to have begun in US prisons&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Inmates were issued with&#xA;  ill-fitting clothes and denied belts due to fears over use as weapons&#xA;  or suicide aids.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/fashion/30baggy.html?adxnnl=1&amp;amp;adxnnlx=1328527326-V5y%205tT3SsuaNGz0Qhvblw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The New York Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sagging began in prison, where oversized uniforms were issued without&#xA;  belts to prevent suicide and their use as weapons&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/risque/homosex/sagging.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NPpOf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Snopes&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;It seems that the origin of &quot;&lt;em&gt;Sagging&lt;/em&gt; &quot; is not known for sure, but the prevailing opinion seems to be that it began in prison, due to inmates not being allowed to wear belts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-02-06T11:31:38.440" LastActivityDate="2012-02-06T11:31:38.440" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7886" CreationDate="2012-02-06T02:15:54.177" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I figure it is unlikely that there have been any formal peer-reviewed, rigorously controlled and blinded studies on this important issue, so I went to see what the manufacturers recommend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I randomly sampled some manufacturers (with perhaps some skew towards major manufacturers having manuals available online), and chose one manual each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the five I sampled (e.g. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://laundry.manualsonline.com/manuals/mfg/whirlpool/dryer_1_2_3_4.html?idRes=508729&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;], [&lt;a href=&quot;http://laundry.manualsonline.com/manuals/mfg/hotpoint/ctd00.html?idRes=600773&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;]), four had lots of advice, such as turning pockets inside out and being careful of zippers, but no mention of snapping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haierlife.com.au/admin/pdfs//pdf_usecares/HDY60M_UM.pdf&quot;&gt;One&lt;/a&gt; came close when it suggested:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To achieve a better drying result, loosen up heavy loads before&#xA;  loading it into the dryer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that is referring to large sheets and blankets and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, any effect of snapping out the clothes is too small for the manufacturers to recommend in manuals that are otherwise filled with minutiae on improving the dryers' effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-06T03:38:08.253" LastActivityDate="2012-02-06T03:38:08.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7891" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-06T13:24:21.623" Score="14" ViewCount="1324" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helium.com/items/2129161-what-is-a-nunchaku&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, nunchuka (sometimes misspelt as &quot;nunchucks&quot;) originated as peasant weapons, based on the design of a rice flail - as the peasants were forbidden from possessing edged weapons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely, however, the peasants would need edged tools for farming, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunchaku&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; dismisses the suggestion, throwing out several other possible theories without much in the way of citations (broken links aside).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did nunchuka originate as peasant weapons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastActivityDate="2018-08-26T18:22:56.280" Title="Were nunchuka used by peasants because they weren't allowed edged weapons?" Tags="|weapons|martial-arts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7892" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-06T13:43:48.270" Score="9" ViewCount="401" Body="&lt;p&gt;When diving, you can use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thescubaguide.com/mailbag/qa019.aspx&quot;&gt;saliva&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcnett.com/Sea-Gold-Anti-Fog-Gel-for-Dive-Masks-P231.aspx&quot;&gt;commercial defog&lt;/a&gt; to prevent your mask from fogging. However, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Defog-a-Diving-Mask&quot;&gt;WikiHow&lt;/a&gt;, bacteria in saliva are potentially harmful to your eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beware of using spit - there are a lot of bugs in saliva that you don't want in your eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any substantive risk of getting a bacterial infection in your eyes in this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-06T18:35:54.570" LastActivityDate="2012-02-06T18:35:54.570" Title="Is using saliva as a dive mask defogger dangerous?" Tags="|medical-science|hygiene|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7894" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7898" CreationDate="2012-02-06T18:48:47.580" Score="1" ViewCount="517" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molyneux%27s_Problem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Molyneux's Problem&lt;/a&gt; was published in Locke's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_Concerning_Human_Understanding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An Essay Concerning Human Understanding&lt;/a&gt; in 1690.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was a thought experiment which essentially asked whether a person who was born blind, and could feel the difference between shapes and sizes, would be able to recognise them by sight if they were made to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Locke and Molyneux thought the answer was no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the intervening 300 years, has there been any empirical evidence to support their belief?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5832" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-06T23:17:46.600" LastActivityDate="2012-02-06T23:20:55.147" Title="Would born-blind people be able to make sense of shapes if they were healed?" Tags="|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7646" CreationDate="2012-02-06T19:19:55.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1956/whats-the-purpose-of-bags-of-water-hanging-in-restaurants&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's an article from the Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; (assuming they can be considered a valid resource), They say it's for deterring flies, not mosquitoes. Here's their explanation on how it works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The water bag acts a bit like a lens--try it some time--in which the movements of people in the area are reflected. Even if the fly is too far from the action to see it directly, it can see a shifting of light and dark in the water bag, which it interprets as nearby movement, and it will fly away from the bag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note, the article itself doesn't quote sources.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5839" LastActivityDate="2012-02-06T19:19:55.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7896" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7900" CreationDate="2012-02-06T19:46:40.580" Score="22" ViewCount="1685" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is commonly shown in movies that pirate ships would flank their target, and then shoot huge salvos of cannonballs at it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that it doesn't really make any sense: if they wanted to steal a ship or its contents, shooting 10-20 cannonballs at it from close range would certainly sink the ship or spoil its cargo!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did pirates commonly shoot salvos of cannonballs at their targets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/HIDBE5d0TYY?hd=1&amp;amp;t=1m50s&quot;&gt;Example on youtube&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:29:24.483" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:29:24.483" Title="Did pirates shoot massive cannonball salvos?" Tags="|history|weapons|pirates|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7894" CreationDate="2012-02-06T21:19:08.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The statement is correct: they would have difficulty making out shapes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel did a series of experiments in the sixties in which they showed that there is a critical period shortly after birth during which the brain needs input from the eye in order to become organized in such a manner that a person can see. They got the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for this in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1981/presentation-speech.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1981&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Nobel Prize website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hubel and Wiesel in their investigations were also able to show that&#xA;  the ability of the cortical cells to interpret the code of the impulse&#xA;  message from the retina develops early during a period directly after&#xA;  birth. A prerequisite for this development to take place is that the&#xA;  eye is subjected to visual experiences. &lt;strong&gt;If during this period one eye&#xA;  is sutured even for a few days, this can result in permanently&#xA;  impaired vision&lt;/strong&gt; because the capacity of the brain to interpret the&#xA;  picture has not developed normally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more detailed description of these experiments can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://jn.physiology.org/content/early/2008/01/23/jn.00061.2008.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to what kind of sensations a previously blind person would have, if their eyes suddenly began to work, I don't know. The cells that Hubel and Wiesel describe, encode information about orientation. Perhaps it is true that seeing color would be possible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5696" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-06T23:20:55.147" LastActivityDate="2012-02-06T23:20:55.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7896" CreationDate="2012-02-07T00:13:51.587" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short: &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Yes, they did, but it was not their preferred tactic&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quotes in this post from &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books/about/Under_the_Black_Flag.html?id=ibNFPgAACAAJ&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by David Cordingly the former curator and head of exhibitions at the British National Maritime Museum. The book has a extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and was good read. I recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the main purposes of pirate tactics was to scare their targets into surrender. They preferred to accomplish that without doing major damage, but they were willing if it seemed necessary&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Equally frightening but more devastating in its effects [than bombardment with hand thrown explosives] was the broadside. This was rarely used by pirates because they did not want to damage a potential prize,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(from chapter 6) which supports the position taken in the question, but the book continues&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;but they had no hesitation in firing a broadside if they needed to blast a victim into submission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and they &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt;, at times, employ tactics like overloading the guns. We continue&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Captain John Frost was chased for twelve hours by a pirate ship in July 1717. It was nine o'clock in the evening when the pirates drew along side. The pirate ship, which was commanded by Frenchman Captain La Bouse, had twenty guns and a crew of 170. She fired a broadside of &quot;double rounds and partridges, and a volley of small shot,&quot;&#xA;  which means that each of the ten guns on one side of the ship was loaded with two round cannon balls and a bag of partridge shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note however that they made non-resistance pay:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pirates did not appreciate a brave resistance from a merchant ship, but expected and demanded instant surrender. [...] If a merchant ship surrendered without a fight, the pirates usually refrained from inflicting violence on the crew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A second major tactic was to carry an unusually heavy crew to allow for overwhelming boarding actions. Notice the 170 men on a twenty gun vessel in the proceeding bullet point. That was a &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; crew, exceeding that used by the navies of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pirates often did not want to capture the vessel: they wanted to loot it. As long as it wasn't sinking too fast, they were happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One scenario documented in the book (chapter six) ends&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Having striped the &lt;em&gt;Princess Galley&lt;/em&gt; of everything of value, the pirates who were led by George Lowther, sailed away. Captain Wicksted was left to make his way to Barbados with the remains of his crew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and another&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When they had finished looting the &lt;em&gt;Samuel&lt;/em&gt;, the pirates turn their attention to the crew. All except one Irishman and the Captain were forced at pistol point to leave the ship and join the pirates. [...] Captain Cary was left with one seaman and three passengers. With their assistance he sailed the ship to Boston and reported the attack [...].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wooden ships tend to sink slowly (or at least more slowly that steel ones) and could often be saved if the crew could concentrate on the problem (i.e. were not busy fighting a boarding action). A well manned ship had at least one carpenter on board plus tools and stock for him to use. I'll give one indicative quote (chapter 6):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The pirates had no difficulty in recruiting ordinary seamen to their ranks, but they also needed men with specialist skills. Of these the most in demand were carpenters and coopers. In a naval warship the carpenter was one of the most valued men on board. [...] He was responsible for the maintenance of all the wooden parts on the ship, which included most of the structure from the keel to the masts and spars. [...] [He] really came into his own during and after a battle, when he and his mate would be called upon to patch up holes in the hull, repair damaged gear, and replace broken spars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mangling the rigging of the opposing ship was a standard tactic of the day. Warships would have carried consider quantities of extra lumber, line and canvas and so the crews would be able to effect at least partial repairs at sea. [Citation needed, I'll have to take a little time to scan the book again to find a decent quote.] Merchant vessels may have been less well equipped.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="782" LastEditorUserId="782" LastEditDate="2012-02-07T00:44:31.223" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T00:44:31.223" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7809" CreationDate="2012-02-07T05:25:00.377" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You asked at just the right time. New research has just been published to help settle this age-old question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sylvester DC, Rafferty A, Bew S, Knight LC. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22070741&quot;&gt;The use of ice-lollies for pain relief post-paediatric tonsillectomy. A single-blinded, randomised, controlled trial.&lt;/a&gt; Clin Otolaryngol. 2011 Dec;36(6):566-70. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-4486.2011.02410.x.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion they reach is clear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Our data suggest that ice-lollies are a cheap, effective and safe method of reducing postoperative pain up to one hour following paediatric tonsillectomy.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They based this conclusion on a sample of 92 patients, aged 2-12, about half of which were randomly given ice-lollies as treatment, and having nurses do several pain assessments over a period of 4 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The pain score at every time interval was lower in the group that had received the ice-lolly compared with the group that had not. This was statistically significant at 30 (P = 0.008) and 60 min (P = 0.049).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two factors I would love to learn more about with this prospective study. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Were the &quot;blinded&quot; nurses taking the pain scores the same nurses responsible for cleaning up the ice-cream off the faces of the smaller children? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Were the children who did NOT receive ice-lollies familiar with the standard protocol (i.e. tonsillitis = lots of ice-cream)? Was there a nocebo effect, where the control group were upset about the lack of expected ice-cream?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T05:25:00.377" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7902" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7910" CreationDate="2012-02-07T10:56:20.887" Score="10" ViewCount="3602" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to know whether exclusive breastfeeding is shown to be better than a combination of breast milk and formula, in developed countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current advice of the World Health Organization (WHO) is that six months of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/exclusive_breastfeeding/en/&quot;&gt;exclusive breastfeeding&lt;/a&gt; leads to best health outcomes for the child. This means that the child is fed on demand, only with breast milk, for a full six months. Solid foods and liquids other than milk are not recommended. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen this same recommendation on all the baby websites I've looked at (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babycentre.co.uk/baby/breastfeeding/howlong/&quot;&gt;here is one example&lt;/a&gt;), and it has been repeated to me by a pediatrician, different nurses, and a lactation specialist, all in The Netherlands. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formula-feeding (with no breast milk alongside it) leads to &lt;a href=&quot;http://adc.bmj.com/content/94/2/148.full&quot;&gt;more hospitalizations&lt;/a&gt; for gastric and breathing problems. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are two ways to &lt;em&gt;non-exclusively&lt;/em&gt; breastfeed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Introduce solid food before an infant is a full six months old. Evidence from the UK suggests that introducing solids earlier than six months has &lt;a href=&quot;http://adc.bmj.com/content/94/2/148.full&quot;&gt;no adverse health outcomes&lt;/a&gt;. In fact, children who are exclusively breastfed are at a higher risk for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.c5955&quot;&gt;iron deficiency&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Introduce formula alongside breast milk. This is the topic I am interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for evidence that compares &lt;em&gt;exclusive&lt;/em&gt; breastfeeding to &lt;em&gt;half-breast milk, half-formula&lt;/em&gt;, in developed countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The WHO has to give recommendations that are not only simple and clear, but that pertain to the whole world. I am skeptical about how well this recommendation for exclusive breastfeeding translates into the wellbeing of children in developed countries. Is there evidence to support the WHO's recommendations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5696" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-06-18T07:15:18.157" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T07:15:18.157" Title="Is exclusive breastfeeding better than breast milk+formula, in developed countries?" Tags="|nutrition|milk|parenting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7904" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7908" CreationDate="2012-02-07T11:42:55.750" Score="20" ViewCount="11741" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In movies there seems to be an easy method to find out if a diamond is real or fake&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a diamond is able to scratch/cut glass, then it's the real deal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;But does that simple test work in real life? &#xA;&lt;br&gt;Are fake diamonds generally not able to scratch glass?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;My Questions:&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What materials are commonly used for &lt;em&gt;faux diamonds&lt;/em&gt; ?&#xA;&lt;br&gt;And are they hard enough to scratch glass?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:29:06.283" LastActivityDate="2015-12-16T02:15:10.173" Title="Can only real diamonds scratch glass?" Tags="|materials|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7904" CreationDate="2012-02-07T12:21:03.730" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond&lt;/a&gt; says no, and I've no reason to doubt them.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Diamonds cut glass, but this does not positively identify a diamond&#xA;  because other materials, such as quartz, also lie above glass on the&#xA;  Mohs scale and can also cut it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this doesn't cover artificial diamonds per se, which I think you're referring to. Those can indeed have different properties from &quot;real&quot; diamonds &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The properties of synthetic diamond depend on the details of the&#xA;  manufacturing processes, and can be inferior or superior to those of&#xA;  natural diamond; the hardness, thermal conductivity and electron&#xA;  mobility are superior in some synthetic diamonds (either HPHT or CVD)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The method used to identify synthetics from natural is apparently quite different:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The appearance of synthetic gems on the market created major concerns&#xA;  in the diamond trading business, as a result of which special&#xA;  spectroscopic devices and techniques have been developed to&#xA;  distinguish synthetic and natural diamonds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Synthetic diamond is the hardest material known,[53] where hardness is&#xA;  defined as resistance to scratching and is graded between 1 (softest)&#xA;  and 10 (hardest) using the Mohs scale of mineral hardness&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;references &lt;a href=&quot;http://nanoscan.info/wp-content/publications/article_03.pdf&quot;&gt;http://nanoscan.info/wp-content/publications/article_03.pdf&lt;/a&gt; which compares hardness of fullerite (synthetic diamond) to natural diamond, concluding indeed that&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hardness and wear of ultra- and superhard fullerites and diamond were&#xA;  measured in the present study. The diamond surface (111) was deformed&#xA;  as a plastic material under the scratching with the ultrahard&#xA;  fullerite C60 indenter. This indicates that the hardness of ultra-hard&#xA;  fullerite is sufficient to create a high pressure in the contact point&#xA;  for the plastic flow of diamond at room temperature and it exceeds the&#xA;  hardness of diamond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, a simple test of scratching glass won't identify a synthetic diamond from a natural one. In fact the synthetic may well scratch things the natural one can't scratch!&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Of course other materials may be used to try to fool people into believing they're holding a diamond. Wikipedia mentions that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A diamond simulant is a non-diamond material that is used to simulate&#xA;  the appearance of a diamond, and may be referred to as diamante. Cubic&#xA;  zirconia is the most common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;materials that may well be less hard than diamond (and maybe giving rise to the myth, as hinted at in the same article).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Early diamond identification tests included a scratch test relying on&#xA;  the superior hardness of diamond. This test is destructive, as a&#xA;  diamond can scratch diamond, and is rarely used nowadays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article on diamond is surprisingly well referenced and worth reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T12:21:03.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7904" CreationDate="2012-02-07T12:41:31.927" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting question. A quick search reveals lots of people claiming that only diamonds cut glass, and a lot of people claiming that many other stones will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to scratchability, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohs_scale_of_mineral_hardness&quot;&gt;Moh's Scale&lt;/a&gt; is a good measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Mohs scale of mineral hardness is based on the ability of one natural sample of matter to scratch another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under this scale, Diamond (and variants) sit at the top at 10 while glass is at 5.5. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gemcutters.org/LDA/hardness.htm&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_zirconia&quot;&gt;Cubic Zirconia&lt;/a&gt; is a common faux diamond, which is still fairly new (probably ante-dating this test for diamonds).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;economically important competitor for diamonds since commercial production began in 1976.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cubic Zirconia sits in between at around 7.5-8.5 on the Mohs scale (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moissanite.net/diamond-substitutes.html&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;, Wikipedia puts it at 8, but the source refers to (generic) Zirconia, and I don't know if Cubic Zirconia has the same hardness.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Mohs Scale is based on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/387714/Mohs-hardness&quot;&gt;ability to scratch lower numbered minerals&lt;/a&gt;, it seems cubic zirconia can scratch glass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be nice to get experimental confirmation of this theory, but I was unable to find any evidence (e.g. videos) of people actually trying it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other faux diamonds, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moissanite.net/diamond-substitutes.html&quot;&gt;some descriptions here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-07T15:04:18.857" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T15:04:18.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4670" CreationDate="2012-02-07T14:07:45.687" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wasn't happy with the lack of peer-reviewed data in the [previously accepted, now deleted] answer, so I did a literature search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears the topic has been examined several times over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weihong, Veitch and Craig, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nzes.org.nz/nzje/free_issues/NZJEcol23_1_45.pdf&quot;&gt;An evaluation of the efficiency of rodent trapping methods: The effect of trap arrangement, cover type and bait.&lt;/a&gt; New Zealand Journal of Ecology (1999) 23(1): 45-51&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found mice and Norway Rats on New Zealand islands prefer chocolate over cheese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of five different bait types tested for monitoring rodent presence, the preferred order was chocolate, cheese, soap, wax and oiled wood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of other studies are relevant, but hidden behind paywalls, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168159199000969&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; which compared:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;cheese, chicken, tuna fish, peanut butter, canary seed, Cat stars, wheat, PCD (MOD) pellets and Non-tox)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, their results are hidden behind a paywall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/WR97109&quot;&gt;This one&lt;/a&gt;, on the other hand published their results in the abstract, but not their methods. They concluded that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;soft wheat, canary seed and rice were the most preferred foods, particularly when fish meal was added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although Google says the word &quot;cheese&quot; appears inside the article, it isn't clear whether cheese was tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that, while mice will go for cheese, it isn't the irresistable delicacy it is traditionally thought to be, with many other baits preferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-07T20:33:04.263" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T20:33:04.263" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7902" CreationDate="2012-02-07T14:59:48.753" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This prospective study  in the UK found a serious risk of neonatal necrotising enterocolitis amongst formula-users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A. Lucas, T.J. Cole. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0140673690933048&quot;&gt;Breast milk and neonatal necrotising enterocolitis&lt;/a&gt;, The Lancet,&#xA;Volume 336, Issues 8730–8731, 22 December 1990, Pages 1519–1523&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a prospective multicentre study on 926 preterm infants formally assigned to their early diet, necrotising enterocolitis developed in 51 (5·5%). Mortality was 26% in stringently confirmed cases. In exclusively formula-fed babies confirmed disease was 6-10 times more common than in those fed breast milk alone and &lt;strong&gt;3 times more common than in those who received formula plus breast milk&lt;/strong&gt;. Pasteurised donor milk seemed to be as protective as raw maternal milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to read this report which looked at meta-analyses on breastfeeding research, which seemed very relevant, but was unable to confirm from it whether this stood up to further review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ahrq.gov/downloads/pub/evidence/pdf/brfout/brfout.pdf&quot;&gt;Breastfeeding and Maternal and Infant Health Outcomes in Developed Countries&lt;/a&gt;, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, April 2007.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This only looks at one type of problem, and is not a measure of overall health outcomes of the child and mother. It also doesn't show causality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T14:59:48.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1896" CreationDate="2012-02-07T15:47:03.240" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I find the above answer accurate, I think it needs further clarification because it answers a question that is different from the one that was asked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question was: &quot;Is IQ (mainly) a genetically inherited trait?&quot; The answer related not to how heritable IQ is, but to how heritable &lt;em&gt;individual differences&lt;/em&gt; in IQ are. The point of confusion is that '&lt;a href=&quot;http://psych.colorado.edu/~carey/hgss/hgssapplets/heritability/heritability.intro.html&quot;&gt;heritability&lt;/a&gt;' has a very special meaning in the literature, as it relates not to how strongly a trait is expressed, but to how much differences in a trait are carried over from generation to generation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The concept of &lt;em&gt;heritability&lt;/em&gt; plays a central role in the &lt;strong&gt;psychology of&#xA;  individual differences&lt;/strong&gt;. Heritability has two definitions. The first is&#xA;  a statistical definition, and it defines heritability as the&#xA;  proportion of phenotypic &lt;strong&gt;variance&lt;/strong&gt; attributable to genetic &lt;strong&gt;variance&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  The second definition is more common &quot;sensical&quot;. It defines&#xA;  heritability as the extent to which genetic &lt;strong&gt;individual differences&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  contribute to &lt;strong&gt;individual differences&lt;/strong&gt; in observed behavior (or&#xA;  phenotypic individual differences). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original question actually can't be answered based on current research, because the research revolves around individual differences. I want to offer some further explanation on the the answer that was given, which tells us how heritable individual differences in IQ are. I don't have many references to back me up because it is just a discussion of the meaning of correlation, but in the context of intelligence, it has been briefly discussed &lt;a href=&quot;http://mrhinkley.com/blag/IntUnknown.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a trait is heritable, there is a correlation between how much it is expressed in parents and their children. This means, if we were to take all the parents and rank them based on IQ, and then take all the children and rank them, the 'parental rankings' and the 'child rankings' would be similar: the parents with the highest IQs are most likely to have children with the highest IQs, and so on. The important thing here is that both these rankings are made &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; one age group only. This means, in theory, that all children could have an IQ vastly above or below their parents, and yet the correlation would persist. The size of the correlation won't change if parents and children have different IQ scores on average, as long as the rankings don't change within each group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/bul/95/1/29/&quot;&gt;Flynn effect&lt;/a&gt; is a known instance of children consistently getting better IQ scores than their parents in each successive generation, with no effect (I believe) on how heritable IQ is. It is similar with height: height is a highly heritable trait, but kids nowadays are taller than their parents more often than not. Or, to give an example adapted from the paper I linked above, imagine you are looking at differences between the length of stalks of wheat in a field. Then add fertilizer, observe that the stalks have all grown by 1/3 of their original height, then look at the differences in their lengths again. They are likely to be preserved, i.e. their rankings won't change. In the context of IQ, as long as an environmental effect persistenly affects a whole generation, IQ can remain highly heritable, while the scores of parents and their children can differ significantly. This is true of adopted kids (also mentioned in the first link), whose IQ correlates with that of their biological parents and not with their adoptive parents, but is still closer to adoptive parents'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The take-home message is that the size of a trait, and how correlated that trait is to something, are two independent measures. So, even if individual differences in IQ are highly hereditary, this does not tell us how similar IQs of two related people are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5696" LastEditorUserId="5696" LastEditDate="2012-02-08T09:59:25.150" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T09:59:25.150" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7912" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7915" CreationDate="2012-02-07T21:16:11.697" Score="37" ViewCount="3836" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am sure most people will have heard this claim in some form or another:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cockroaches are so resilient that they will survive the nuclear holocaust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ukUXZm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Cockroaches and Raid&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://memegenerator.net/instance/9298780&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T18:39:38.990" Title="Can cockroaches survive a nuclear war?" Tags="|weapons|nuclear-weapons|entomology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7912" CreationDate="2012-02-07T22:00:00.223" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;While Oliver_C's (excellent) answer look at the effects of radiation on cockroaches as an indication of whether or not they would survive a nuclear explosion, the question is about surviving a nuclear holocaust which means factors other than radiation are also an important determinant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The National Geographic documentary &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath%3a_Population_Zero&quot;&gt;Aftermath: Population Zero&lt;/a&gt; states that no, cockroaches would not survive without humans. The documentary states that cockroaches are imports from the tropics and only flourished due to central heating provided by humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that it is unlikely there would be central heating up and running if a nuclear holocaust were to occur, it is unlikely that cockroaches would survive outside of the tropics and even that is questionable if a nuclear winter is in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/zoology/insects-arachnids/cockroach3.htm&quot;&gt;HowStuffWorks&lt;/a&gt; supports that idea, although without a reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One common perception is that cockroaches will outlive humans, even in&#xA;  the event of a full-scale nuclear war. Opinions differ about whether&#xA;  this is the case. Some studies have shown that cockroaches, while&#xA;  hardier than humans, are more susceptible to radiation than other&#xA;  insects. However, others believe that since roaches'&#xA;  cells do not constantly divide the way people's cells do, they will be&#xA;  more likely to survive. &lt;strong&gt;Regardless of whether roaches&#xA;  could survive the initial blast, their need for warmth and moisture&#xA;  makes it unlikely that they could survive nuclear winter&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A nuclear winter could vary in intensity depending on how much remaining material was in the atmosphere. Given that the question uses the term nuclear holocaust, I will assume the a worst case scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In which case it is not likely that most species of cockroaches would survive because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most cockroaches &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=6&amp;amp;ved=0CFYQFjAF&amp;amp;url=http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-lifespan-of-a-cockroach.htm&amp;amp;ei=2sMxT5WzGoaGrAe8ucSYBA&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFRNg1WWuyH6H-U3gkrzCb0Sr54kw&amp;amp;sig2=8spSXGBWGy9Gqa7sL43rUg&quot;&gt;only live up to 1 year&lt;/a&gt;, with the cold temperatures from a nuclear holocaust lasting much longer than that.&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/life/zoology/insects-arachnids/cockroach2.htm&quot;&gt;Most cockroaches are oviparous&lt;/a&gt;, so the young would not survive in a cold climates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most cockroaches cannot &lt;a href=&quot;http://www4.ncsu.edu/~coby/schal/2011Schal_Mallis_Fact_or_Fiction.pdf&quot;&gt;survive long without water&lt;/a&gt; and as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~ackerman/Articles/Turco_Nuclear_Winter_90.pdf&quot;&gt;most water supplies would be contaminated&lt;/a&gt; it is unlikely cockroaches would survive for long&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such I don't think it's fair to say cockroaches would not survive a &lt;em&gt;nuclear holocaust&lt;/em&gt;, although they would survive a &lt;em&gt;nuclear explosion&lt;/em&gt;. Then again, I don't think most life would survive a nuclear holocaust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;1 - Not a great reference, although it supports what I found for the various different species, with the longest seeming to be 4 years.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-02-10T00:54:14.580" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T00:54:14.580" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1901" CreationDate="2012-02-07T22:39:15.360" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this discussion paper,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lazear, Edward P., [The Peter Principle: A Theory of Decline (April 2003)]. IZA Discussion Paper No. 759. Available at SSRN&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the author argues that the effects of the Peter Principle can be explained by a regression-to-the-mean rather than poor promotion practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, for this question, he summarises some of the evidence (with references):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is substantial evidence of the Peter Principle. In addition to papers from the&#xA;  marketing and organizational behavior literature, there are a number of findings in empirical labor&#xA;  economics that support the claim. In an early paper that used subjective performance evaluation,&#xA;  Abraham and Medoff (1980) reported that workers’ subjective evaluation scores fell, the longer they&#xA;  were on the job. In Lazear (1992), it was found that the coefficient of job tenure in a wage&#xA;  regression was actually negative. The longer a worker was in a particular job, given his tenure in&#xA;  the firm, the lower his wage. The reason presumably is that the better workers are promoted out of&#xA;  the job so those with a given number of years of firm experience who have fewer years in a job are&#xA;  less likely to have gotten stuck in that job. Baker, Gibbs and Holmstrom (1994) replicate this&#xA;  finding in their data and Gibbs and Hendricks (2001) find that raises and bonuses fall with tenure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;yes, there is empirical evidence that the Peter Principle holds&lt;/strong&gt;, even if there is controversy about &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; it holds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-02-07T22:39:15.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7912" CreationDate="2012-02-07T22:48:13.827" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8H5sZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zazzle.at/menschliches_schaben_entwicklungs_diagramm_plakat_poster-228980436545496950&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Berenbaum&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;May Berenbaum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, entomologist at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.life.illinois.edu/entomology/faculty/berenbaum.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Illinois&lt;/a&gt; (a &lt;a href=&quot;http://x-files.wikia.com/wiki/Bambi_Berenbaum&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;character in &lt;strong&gt;The X-Files&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; was named after her):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stg-entsoc.bivings.com/PDF/Pubs/Periodicals/AE/AE-2001/fall/busswords.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rad Roaches&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (2001)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a study (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/3570814&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wharton&#xA;  and Wharton 1959&lt;/a&gt;), the authors conclusively&#xA;  demonstrated that the American&#xA;  cockroach was, compared with the rest of the&#xA;  known irradiated insect world, a wimp; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cockroach&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Periplaneta&#xA;  americana&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; died at doses of 20,000 rads.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In comparison&lt;/strong&gt;, it was noted that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drosophila_melanogaster&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drosophila&#xA;  melanogaster&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (Fruit fly) had an LD&lt;sub&gt;100&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;100% probability of causing death&lt;/em&gt; ) &lt;strong&gt;of 64,000 rads&#xA;  and the parasitoid wasp &lt;em&gt;Habrobracon&lt;/em&gt; an&#xA;  LD&lt;sub&gt;100&lt;/sub&gt; of 180,000 rads.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In retrospect, it could be argued that Periplaneta americana might&#xA;  have been atypically sensitive to radiation as far as cockroaches go,&#xA;  but it’s hard to find any subsequent studies that might have created the&#xA;  reputation of roaches as tops among the&#xA;  ranks of the radiation-resistant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/esa/aesa/1963/00000056/00000003/art00002&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ross and Cochran (1963)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;examined the effects of ionizing radiation on&#xA;  the German cockroach, &lt;em&gt;Blattella germanica&lt;/em&gt;, and found that doses as low&#xA;  as 6,400 rads killed 93% of nymphs after 35 days&lt;/strong&gt;, and effects on&#xA;  reproductive capacity could be detected at doses as low as 400 rads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Granted, &lt;strong&gt;German cockroaches proved capable of surviving 10 times the&#xA;  dosages over the same time period that would be lethal to humans&lt;/strong&gt;, but,&#xA;  in point of fact, they ultimately succumbed to dosages that don’t even&#xA;  disturb many other insect species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deinococcus radiodurans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (is without doubt the&#xA;  most radiation-resistant organism known on the planet.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A pinkish&#xA;  bacterium that smells vaguely of rotten cabbage, it was isolated&#xA;  originally from canned meat that had spoiled despite being irradiated&#xA;  (it has turned up in irradiated fish and duck meat, as well as in the&#xA;  dung of elephants and llamas and in granite from Antarctica) (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc98/12_12_98/bob1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Travis&#xA;  1998&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It grows happily in radioactive waste sites in the presence of&#xA;  levels as high as 1.5 million rads&lt;/strong&gt; (keep in mind that’s over 1,000&#xA;  times the 1,000 rads that kill humans and sterilizes American&#xA;  cockroaches). In a frozen state it may even be able to withstand 3&#xA;  million rads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MythBusters:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/db/animals/cockroaches-survive-nuclear-explosion.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;COULD ROACHES REALLY SURVIVE A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To test whether this doomsday scenario has any legs, &lt;strong&gt;the MythBusters&#xA;  subjected German cockroaches to three levels of radioactive metal&#xA;  cobalt 60.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They started with a baseline exposure of 1,000 radon units&#xA;  (rads) of cobalt 60,&lt;/strong&gt; capable of killing a person in 10 minutes, &lt;strong&gt;and&#xA;  followed it up with 10,000 and 100,000 rad exposures&lt;/strong&gt; on separate&#xA;  guinea pig — er, roach — groups. &#xA;  &lt;br&gt;(&lt;em&gt;As a comparison, the bomb on&#xA;  Hiroshima emitted radioactive gamma rays at a strength of around&#xA;  10,000 rads&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Since radiation gradually destroys organisms on the cellular level, &lt;strong&gt;the MythBusters monitored the radiated roaches for 30 days&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After a month, half the roaches exposed to 1,000 rads were still kicking, and a remarkable 10 percent of the 10,000 rad group was alive.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results confirmed that cockroaches can survive a nuclear explosion — but only to a point, as none of the critters in the 100,000 rad group made it through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-6cIy_s8pQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Watch video clip on YouTube&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Taken from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2008/01/plane_on_a_conveyor_belt.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Annotated MythBusters&lt;/a&gt; website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To evaluate the longer term affects of the test on the insects, &lt;strong&gt;the MythBusters took them home along with a control group that hadn't been exposed&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They monitored the insects over the next 30 days and counted how many died.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bEshS.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Test Results&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;They exposed the three different sets of bugs at 1000 rads, 10,000 rads, and 100,000 rads. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The bugs in the 1000 rads and 10,000 rads tests appeared fine but 90% of the cockroaches in the 100,000 rads group immediately died&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on these results, the cockroaches clearly weren't the best survivors of a nuclear blast. They are quite hardy, able to survive radiation doses at 10,000 rads, which is 10x the lethal dose for humans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;the flour beetles did much better&lt;/strong&gt; and the fruit flies might have done better if their normal lifespan wasn't 30 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Survivalists?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Cockroaches have been around for at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/bigroach.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;300 million years&lt;/a&gt;, and there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://kids.discovery.com/tell-me/animals/bug-world/roach-world/amazing-roach-facts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5000 species worldwide&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... most people (including many biologists who do not study cockroaches)&#xA;  are generally familiar with &lt;strong&gt;just a handful of “pest” cockroach species&#xA;  that have become associated with human habitation&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Few people realize&#xA;  the extent of cockroach diversity in life history, habitat, behavior,&#xA;  and morphology.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cockroaches occupy a wide variety of habitats including&#xA;  tropical and temperate forests, deserts, grasslands, and salt marshes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Similarly, they have a wide vertical distribution &lt;strong&gt;ranging from&#xA;  tropical rain forest canopies to deep in the soil&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The broad habitat&#xA;  is reflected in a number of features such as diet and foraging&#xA;  , morphology, physiology, reproduction, diet, circadian&#xA;  rhythms, and seasonal activity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/content/48/4/541.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most species of roaches live in the tropics. But roaches live all over the world&lt;/strong&gt;, including the North and South Poles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pest cockroaches can withstand temperatures as cold as 32°F (0°C)&lt;/strong&gt;, but will die if the temperature goes much below that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In extremely cold places, however, they survive by moving in with humans&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://kids.discovery.com/tell-me/animals/bug-world/roach-world/amazing-roach-facts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do they eat?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They feed on just about anything of vegetable&#xA;  origin. But cockroaches also like meat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While they prefer starch, &lt;strong&gt;they thrive on grease, sweets,&#xA;  paper, soap, cardboard, book bindings, ink, shoe polish, and even dirty clothes&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They’ve been known&#xA;  to gnaw on a fingernail while people sleep and on infants’ eyelashes. &#xA;  &lt;br&gt; They are especially fond of&#xA;  beer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cockroaches can live for 3 months without food and for 30 days without water&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  &lt;br&gt; Since they taste&#xA;  their food before eating it, they learn to avoid chemically-treated products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unce.unr.edu/publications/files/nr/2000/SP0007.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the large variety of species it's hard to make a general statement about how well &quot;a cockroach&quot; would fare in the aftermath of a nuclear war. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it seems they have a better chance at surviving the radiation and they are less picky eaters than we humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2006/02/23/1567313.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ABC Science - Cockroaches and radiation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2008/07/will_cockroaches_inherit_the_earth.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slate - Will Cockroaches Inherit the Earth?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-02-09T23:06:29.890" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T23:06:29.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7916" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7978" CreationDate="2012-02-08T00:25:16.947" Score="23" ViewCount="9949" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some notable stories and movies show characters being buried alive, and then digging themselves out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has apparently happened in reality, such as this story: &lt;a href=&quot;http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/71391/girl-digs-self-out-of-grave-points-to-rapist&quot;&gt;Girl digs self out of grave, points to rapist&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is such a feat possible for what one would normally consider a grave (i.e. more than one foot (30cm) of dirt)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think it would not take much dirt before one would suffocate and the dirt would become too heavy to move.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If a grave is defined as being dirt cover over a body of at least 1 foot (30cm) deep, could one dig oneself out of a grave, and if so how much deeper could one be buried and still realistically dig oneself out?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:15:08.017" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:15:08.017" Title="Could someone dig themselves out of a grave?" Tags="|physiology|mortality|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7918" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-08T01:21:51.353" Score="8" ViewCount="697" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine sent me an article (from the AP, which has since pulled the article) claiming that walking around in the house with shoes on will expose everyone to dangerous levels of lead, especially if the house was made before lead paint was banned.  The EPA &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/426.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;makes similar claims&lt;/a&gt;, among them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wipe soil off shoes before entering house&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/horticulture/DG2543.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the University of Minnesota&lt;/a&gt; claims that there's lots of lead in the air, and so forth, with this graphic:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ywKnb.gif&quot; alt=&quot;UNM Graphic&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there's also this trend that running (and walking) barefoot is good for you, which seems like it would be exposing me to all this lead that's around us, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://societyforbarefootliving.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This defunct blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://barefootprof.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This not defunct blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.primalfootalliance.org/blog/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Primal Foot Alliance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I run/walk around without shoes on without fear of lead contamination?  What about wearing shoes from outside and then not taking them off when inside-- will I also be bringing lead around?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical that I need to worry about lead in the air or soil if I have no lead paint on or near the property, but maybe I'm not paranoid enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2158" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-08T00:16:46.600" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T22:37:47.280" Title="Can I run barefoot without worry about exposure to lead, or tracking it in the house?" Tags="|environmental-health|lead|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7919" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-08T04:11:46.157" Score="11" ViewCount="3202" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Pathan people (also known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pashtun_people&quot;&gt;Pasthun&lt;/a&gt;) is an ethnic group of around 50 million living scattered across the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and also Iran and India. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are many conflicting theories about the origin of Pashtuns, some modern and others archaic, both among historians and the Pashtuns themselves. According to most historians and experts, the true origin of the Pashtuns is some what unclear.[&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is also a claim that they could be one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Lost_Tribes&quot;&gt;lost tribes of Israel&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Experts at Mumbai's National Institute of Immunohaematology believe Pashtuns could be one of the ten &quot;Lost Tribes of Israel&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6967224/Taliban-may-be-descended-from-Jews.html&quot;&gt;Daily Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Until now the supposed link between Pathans and Jews has only been discussed on the fringes of the academic and anthropological worlds. But now Shahnaz Ali, an Indian researcher from the National Institute of Immunohaematology in Mumbai has received a grant from Israel to test the theory with DNA samples she collected from Pathans in India. She will conduct her research at the prestigious Technion Institute in Haifa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/taliban-jewish-roots/story?id=9535559#.TzOMmtT9P-x&quot;&gt;ABC News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The purported Jewish origins of the Afridis is well documented in&#xA;  medieval texts. &quot;The tribe was driven into exile and eventually into&#xA;  oblivion by the Assyrians in 721 BC. Great Jewish writers like the&#xA;  10th century Saadia Ga'on and the 11th century Moses ibn Ezra mention&#xA;  Afghanistan and the Pathan territories in Pakistan as the home of Jews&#xA;  descending from the Lost Tribes,&quot; Aafreedi says. &quot;And the second&#xA;  President of Israel, Itzhak Ben-Zvi, a Lost Tribes enthusiast, wrote&#xA;  in great detail about the Israelite descent of the Afridi Pathans in&#xA;  his book The Exiled and the Redeemed in 1957.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://navrasaafreedi.blogspot.com/2007/05/when-pathan-called-jew.html&quot;&gt;Blog about Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi research&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Afridi is a tribe among pathans and they are linked to Ephraim tribe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ_oMp8I-k8&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt; also claims that Pathan are actually Jews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some claim that Pathans are the lost tribes of Israelites, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dangoor.com/74069.html&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt; and  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ_oMp8I-k8&amp;amp;feature=related&quot;&gt;this documentary&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some claim that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dangoor.com/74069.html&quot;&gt;Pathans have similar customs to Jews&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-09T09:25:27.153" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T15:22:40.783" Title="Are Pathans the lost tribe of the Israel?" Tags="|history|race|israel|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7920" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7954" CreationDate="2012-02-08T04:59:37.280" Score="15" ViewCount="12450" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common myth that if you're born on an airplane, or mid-flight, you get free flights for life from whatever company is running the flight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gadling.com/2009/10/23/want-a-lifetime-of-free-flights-give-birth-on-board/&quot;&gt;Example of a claim&lt;/a&gt; - just pertaining to one company, but the article makes it seem common place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true, in general?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="868" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-08T07:47:43.500" LastActivityDate="2013-04-28T19:22:14.380" Title="If you're born on an airplane, do you get free flights for life?" Tags="|aviation|marketing|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7921" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-08T06:20:18.987" Score="17" ViewCount="26959" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure the origin of this &quot;water therapy&quot;, but I've seen various websites that claim that drinking 1.5 liters of water right when you wake up is great for your body/mind, heals all diseases, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fitnesstipsforlife.com/drinking-water-first-thing-in-the-morning.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.fitnesstipsforlife.com/drinking-water-first-thing-in-the-morning.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanityandlove.com/health_corner/Amazing_Water_Therapy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.humanityandlove.com/health_corner/Amazing_Water_Therapy.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.knowledgepublisher.com/article/113/water-therapy-information-benefits-of-water-therapy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.knowledgepublisher.com/article/113/water-therapy-information-benefits-of-water-therapy.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;therapy&quot; is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drink a liter and a half of water right when you wake up&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't eat anything for an hour after doing this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't eat anything before doing this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don't brush your teeth before doing this&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these websites claim ridiculous things like curing cancer and other diseases.  Other websites claim that it improves your skin.  I feel like with all this support behind the idea, there must be &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; actual benefit.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any benefits to this kind of &quot;water therapy&quot;?  If so, what are they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3145" LastEditorUserId="53549" LastEditDate="2020-02-21T18:56:16.057" LastActivityDate="2020-02-21T18:56:16.057" Title="Are there any benefits to drinking 1.5 liters of water first thing in the morning (water therapy)?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7926" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7929" CreationDate="2012-02-08T09:37:41.647" Score="17" ViewCount="124158" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the attribution of this quote to William Shakespeare correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I always feel happy. You know why? Because I don’t expect anything from anyone. Expectations always hurt… Life is short… So love your life… Be happy… And keep smiling… Just live for yourself and…&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Before you speak? Listen..&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Before you write? Think..&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Before you spend? Earn..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This quote is widely used as a status line in social networks. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Examples: &lt;a href=&quot;http://topquotescollection.com/authors/william-shakespeare/&quot;&gt;top quotes collection&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/william-shakespeare?before=1316520767&quot;&gt;tumblr&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ultimatepotentialblog.com/2010/10/shakespeare-said.html&quot;&gt;blog entry&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;I failed to find the source of this quote in the works of Shakespeare. Can someone prove or disprove this attribution? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4790" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T13:00:19.400" LastActivityDate="2016-07-10T09:47:31.247" Title="Did William Shakespeare say &quot;I always feel happy...&quot;?" Tags="|history|quotes|literature|william-shakespeare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7927" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7995" CreationDate="2012-02-08T09:39:36.787" Score="8" ViewCount="1262" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read that standing on your head (called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirsasana&quot;&gt;sirsasana&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatha_yoga&quot;&gt;hatha yoga&lt;/a&gt; practicioners) does something to the blood flow to the brain and hence increase your health or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Partial claims were made here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/023880.html&quot;&gt;http://www.naturalnews.com/023880.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following claim can be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirsasana&quot;&gt;Sirsasana wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Practitioners of yoga believe that, like most inverted positions, the practice of sirsasana may increase the flow of blood to the brain, improve memory and other functions of the cerebrum. Included in the physiological benefits are the drainage of blood and lymph which are held in reserve in the legs. Any inversion, when the legs are held over the heart, helps to move stored fluids into the core for oxygenation, filtration and elimination of metabolic/cellular wastes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true? if yes - how many minutes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6108" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T11:04:53.653" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T11:04:53.653" Title="If I stand on my head for a while will I get healthier?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|yoga|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7921" CreationDate="2012-02-08T11:16:54.820" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is unlikely that there are benefits for healthy individuals. On the one hand, the amount of water one should supposedly drink each morning in this therapy, would lead a person to nearly exceed their recommended daily intake, all in one go. On the other hand, the magical claims posited are already mostly shown to be myths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/22/had-our-fill-of-water?INTCMP=SRCH&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article from The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; explored popular claims about how much water people should drink. The article contains a neat summary of references from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d4280&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;review article&lt;/a&gt; in the British Medical Journal as well as interviews with kidney specialists and general practitioners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the amount of water needed per day:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the European Food Safety Authority, &lt;strong&gt;healthy adult women&#xA;need two litres a day, and men around 2.5litres. We get around 20% of&#xA;our water from food.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above quote implies that as a woman, I get about 400 ml from food (men get about 500 ml), and drinking 1.5 litres would mean that I should take only 100 ml of water or other liquids apart from this morning dose. As kidneys work around the clock, it is likely that a woman would either have to be thirsty most of the day, or to exceed the recommended daily dose of water, if she were to drink 1.5l in the morning. Neither of these options are likely to be healthy. (Men would need an extra 0.5l during the day - so perhaps the 1.5l in the morning is less of an issue for them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the magical outcomes of drinking more water than your body tells you to, some of which are present in your first link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(...) Stanley Goldfarb, professor of medicine and a kidney&#xA;specialist at the University of Pennsylvania (...)&#xA;reviewed the&#xA;scientific literature on the health benefits of drinking a lot of&#xA;water, identifying the four recurrent themes that were put about by&#xA;those who advocated it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;One was that water improves your skin,&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; he says. &amp;quot;We showed there was&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;no scientific basis for that&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second myth is that drinking water&#xA;is an aid to diets and would &lt;em&gt;reduce your appetite&lt;/em&gt;. That has been&#xA;carefully studied and &lt;strong&gt;it doesn't&lt;/strong&gt;. If you flavour the water, that will&#xA;suppress your calorific intake during the subsequent meal, but nobody&#xA;has shown that it suppresses it over 24 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third myth he looked at is that drinking water &lt;em&gt;flushes more toxins&#xA;out&lt;/em&gt; of your body. &amp;quot;All it does is increase the volume of your urine,&#xA;but &lt;strong&gt;it doesn't&lt;/strong&gt; change the material in the urine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last issue that&#xA;people have advocated is that water &lt;em&gt;can control headaches&lt;/em&gt;. It was &lt;strong&gt;not&#xA;substantiated&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In sum, drinking lots of water has not been shown to lead to the health benefits that water therapy claims it should have. This research does not cover specifically drinking water in the morning, but since water therapy relies on ideas that are wrong to begin with, it is most likely not beneficial to people's health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5696" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T11:16:54.820" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7926" CreationDate="2012-02-08T12:32:35.263" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can see that part of the text in the post is taken from another set of quotes by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Arthur_Ward&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;William Arthur Ward&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Before You By William Arthur Ward&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before you speak, listen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before you write, think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before you spend, earn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before you invest, investigate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before you criticize, wait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before you pray, forgive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before you quit, try. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before you retire, save. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before you die, give.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also run keyword searches on two Shakespeare search engines &lt;a href=&quot;http://sydney.edu.au/engineering/it/~matty/Shakespeare/nsearch.cgi&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/search/search-advanced.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; and cannot find phrases such as &quot;Expectations always hurt&quot; and &quot;Keep smiling&quot; at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm going to say the passage you've posted is NOT by Shakespeare - at least, not all of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a sidenote - one phrase which did exist is &quot;Life is short&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Henry IV, Part I [V, 2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I cannot read them now.  O gentlemen, the time of life is short!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shakespeare, however, did say something similar to &quot;Expectations always hurt&quot; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/shakesp/allswell.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;All's Well That Ends Well&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oft expectation fails and most oft there&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2016-07-10T09:47:31.247" LastActivityDate="2016-07-10T09:47:31.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7916" CreationDate="2012-02-08T13:09:15.443" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a case in the UK recently of a woman being buried alive and subsequently escaping:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-16549350&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC News&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Miss Lewandowska, 27, was attacked with a Taser, bound and gagged and buried under soil, leaves and an 88lb tree branch in woodland near the home she shared with Kasprzak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She escaped from the box after about an hour by using her engagement ring to cut herself free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8941293/First-images-of-shallow-grave-where-Michelina-Lewandowska-was-buried-alive.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Daily Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; has a picture of the grave:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pictures show the site where Miss Lewandowska, 27, was buried at least four inches deep along with the three-stone ring she used to cut herself out of the box.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leeds Crown Court heard on Wednesday that she had been in the box for an hour in total and had been entombed underground for around half-an-hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For someone buried under 30 cm of dirt (in a coffin as in Kill Bill):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;coffin lid approximately 200cm tall and 50cm wide (estimated from viewing film and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000235/bio&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;height of the actress&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;total volume of dirt approximately 200 x 50 x 30 = 300,000 cm^3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;density of soil approximately 1.2 g/cm^3 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.ead.anl.gov/resrad/datacoll/soildens.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That gives roughly 360 kg of soil. That's almost twice the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Olympic_records_in_weightlifting&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;world record for weight lifting&lt;/a&gt; for women, so escape seems unrealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T17:28:07.183" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7931" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7934" CreationDate="2012-02-08T13:26:58.870" Score="19" ViewCount="28954" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the film Die Hard 2 one of the bad guys has a porcelain gun (&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/yf8sC_1deyM&quot;&gt;clip&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That punk pulled a Glock 7 on me. You know what that is? It's a porcelain gun made in Germany. Doesn't show up on your airport X-ray machines, and it cost more than you make in a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glock&quot;&gt;Wikipedia entry for Glock&lt;/a&gt; it looks like there's no such thing as a Glock 7 and that Glock pistols contain substantial amounts of metal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it possible to make a gun from porcelain?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does any gun manufacturer make a porcelain gun?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:28:29.377" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:28:29.377" Title="Can a gun be made from ceramic?" Tags="|guns|weapons|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7931" CreationDate="2012-02-08T13:38:47.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1202/is-it-possible-to-make-an-undetectable-nonmetal-gun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;, nobody makes a gun for sale that doesn't have a high percentage of metal in it. Also according to that article, the CIA may or may not have its own ceramic or plastic handguns, but who knows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5885" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T13:38:47.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7933" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-08T13:48:00.887" Score="12" ViewCount="2723" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I've read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-fireplace-delusion&quot;&gt;that blog post&lt;/a&gt; by Sam Harris and I was quite shocked. I don't have a fireplace or any habit related to a systematic wood-burning. But is wood smoke really that bad as it is described in the text? Is there a general medical/scientific consensus about it? Can I have some more references on the topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally -- should I, say, conclude that it would be better for my health to avoid  hanging around campfires and/or barbecues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="108" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-29T23:29:40.837" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T03:08:05.430" Title="Is wood smoke that bad?" Tags="|environment|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7931" CreationDate="2012-02-08T14:03:23.520" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are quite a lot of errors in just one sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, &quot;Glock 7&quot; doesn't exist, Glock never had a model with that number. First Glock pistol was Glock 17 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.nl/books?id=CVfH8nI2IuUC&quot;&gt;&quot;The Gun Digest Book of the Glock&quot;&#xA; By Patrick Sweeney&lt;/a&gt;, chapter 9). Glock is Austrian, not German company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of non-metallic gun would be to not be detected via metal detectors, rather than X-ray machines, which can detect any dense object, regardless if it's metallic or not. ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fbi/weapons.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;FBI Guide to concealable weapons&quot;&lt;/a&gt; features quite a few examples of non-metallic knifes undetectable by magnetometer, clearly visible on X-ray). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Movie gun is most likely inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.glock.com/english/glock17.htm&quot;&gt;Glock 17&lt;/a&gt;, which was one of the first guns to have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.remtek.com/arms/glock/model/9/17/index.htm&quot;&gt;polymer (i.e. plastic) body&lt;/a&gt;. However, barrel, chamber, spring and all the rest of firing mechanism is metal. And of course standard pistol ammo is metallic (both bullet and jacket). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Porcelain gun is just ridiculous. I'd assume someone wanted to say ceramic. Porcelain is a ceramic made of kaolin clay, however there are quite &lt;a href=&quot;http://engineershandbook.com/Materials/ceramics.htm&quot;&gt;a lot other ceramics&lt;/a&gt;, which would be apt for making weapons parts. Especially when combined with other materials creating ceramic composites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are companies specializing in customizing weapons, which offer carbon-fiber/ceramic barrels (&lt;a href=&quot;http://proofresearch.com/barrels/&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;), but even these internally have steel lining. However, currently there is not a single company, which would have non-metal firing mechanism on the market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are rumors of secret research to develop all-ceramic gun, however there isn't even a shred of hard evidence that it was actually done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for hypothetical possibility, making fully functional ceramic gun most likely wouldn't be economically feasible. Perhaps given enough resources I imagine that very crude improvised gun such as &quot;pen gun&quot;, could be made w/o metal. However &quot;pen gun&quot; isn't what one would call fully functional firearm. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/sons-of-guns-alligator-kill-stick-videos/&quot;&gt;Discovery's &quot;Son of Guns&quot; &quot;Alligator Kill Stick&quot; episode&lt;/a&gt; to see how such a &quot;pen gun&quot; works. However, they of course use metal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-09-10T15:17:31.167" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T15:17:31.167" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7935" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-08T14:41:41.673" Score="16" ViewCount="4681" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092675/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bloodsport&lt;/a&gt;, which claims to be based on a true story, the lead character is challenged to break one brick at the bottom of a stack, using only his hands. He successfully causes the bottom brick to disintegrate by striking the top brick with his palm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZzLJV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Jean Claude breaking a brick&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.empireonline.com/features/jean-claude-van-damme/2.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to consistently break only the bottom brick in a stack with just your hands, in the manner portrayed in the film?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related Question&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5279/is-breaking-bricks-wood-karate-style-an-impressive-feat&quot;&gt;Is breaking bricks/wood &amp;quot;karate style&amp;quot; an impressive feat?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2016-06-04T03:16:37.860" Title="Breaking the bottom brick with your hands" Tags="|physics|weapons|martial-arts|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7936" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7937" CreationDate="2012-02-08T15:25:25.587" Score="6" ViewCount="14915" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://johnmorganseminars.com/seminars.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Morgan Seminars&lt;/a&gt; claim to be able to do two things via hypnosis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cause someone to quit smoking forever (the radio commercial indicates usefulness for those smoking 3+ packs a day)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cause someone to lose weight and keep it off permanently (the radio commercial indicates significant weight loss, 20+ lbs, kept off for several years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He makes similar claims about his DVD products, though the commercial I'm referring to was for a seminar series coming to my area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have these claims been examined?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5027" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T15:58:35.753" Title="Can John Morgan use hypnosis to cause people to quit smoking or lose weight?" Tags="|hypnotism|weight-loss|tobacco|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7936" CreationDate="2012-02-08T16:10:00.337" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I love the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/&quot;&gt;Cochrane Collaboration&lt;/a&gt;. They provide meta-analyses of health-related studies. This involves critically examining all of the relevant studies on a topic, and grouping the data together to give more statistical power, and making the results freely available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have looked into hypnotherapy, and found the evidence to be rather limited when it comes to smoking and obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at smoking first:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Barnes J, Dong CY, McRobbie H, Walker N, Mehta M, Stead LF. &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001008/does-hypnotherapy-help-people-who-are-trying-to-stop-smoking&quot;&gt;Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation&lt;/a&gt;. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2010, Issue 10. Art. No.: CD001008. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD001008.pub2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Main results: &#xA;  Eleven studies compared hypnotherapy with 18 different control interventions. There was significant heterogeneity between the results of the individual studies, with &lt;strong&gt;conflicting results for the effectiveness of hypnotherapy&lt;/strong&gt; compared to no treatment, or to advice, or psychological treatment. &lt;strong&gt;We did not attempt to calculate pooled risk ratios for the overall effect of hypnotherapy.&lt;/strong&gt; There was no evidence of a greater effect of hypnotherapy when compared to rapid smoking or psychological treatment. Direct comparisons of hypnotherapy with cessation treatments considered to be effective had confidence intervals that were too wide to infer equivalence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authors' conclusions: &#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;We have not shown that hypnotherapy has a greater effect on six-month quit rates than other interventions or no treatment.&lt;/strong&gt; There is not enough evidence to show whether hypnotherapy could be as effective as counselling treatment. The effects of hypnotherapy on smoking cessation claimed by uncontrolled studies were not confirmed by analysis of randomized controlled trials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, despite looking at 11 different studies, they were unable to show that hypnotherapy worked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, they were unable to pool all the data together to figure out if there was a statistical difference. (The full article explains that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies were very diverse so could not be combined in a single meta-analysis. Pooling small groups of relatively comparable studies did not provide any additional evidence for a specific effect of hypnotherapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this is strong enough to say &quot;hypnotherapy doesn't work&quot; or &quot;hypnotherapy is worse than [whichever control treatment is chosen]&quot;, but it is suggestive that there's not enough difference to be worth spending your money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;A different study looks at weightloss (for the overweight and obese, who, presumably are the target audience of the adverts.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shaw KA, O'Rourke P, Del Mar C, Kenardy J. &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD003818/psychological-interventions-for-overweight-or-obesity&quot;&gt;Psychological interventions for overweight or obesity.&lt;/a&gt; Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2005, Issue 3. Art. No.: CD003818. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD003818.pub2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They looked at a number of different techniques psychological intervention techniques, some of which were significantly improved outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it came to hypnotherapy, however, the evidence was not clear. They only found one suitable study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this study of 54 participants in the hypnotherapy group lost 7.9 kg compared with participants in the placebo group who lost 0.2 kg by six months follow-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That wasn't enough to convince them, although it was suggestive (especially in the context of the other techniques):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was &lt;strong&gt;not enough evidence to reach a conclusion&lt;/strong&gt; about other psychological forms of therapy, such as relaxation therapy and hypnotherapy, however the evidence that is available suggests that these therapies &lt;strong&gt;may also be successful&lt;/strong&gt; in improving weight loss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hypnotherapy &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be helpful for smokers and obesity. There isn't enough quality evidence for obesity, and there isn't enough consistency between different studies for smoking, to be entirely sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, there are more trustworthy intervention techniques for obesity, and plenty of competing techniques for stopping smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is little reason to trust adverts from hypnotherapists promising good results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-09T02:14:38.650" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T02:14:38.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2016" CreationDate="2012-02-08T16:20:59.427" Score="17" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/xinjiang-procedure_610145.html?nopager=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article in The Weekly Standard&lt;/a&gt;, Chinese prisoners are or were routinely killed for their organs.  These organs are then used for medical procedures on other, presumably 'more important', people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article is chilling reading, and its sources appear to include Chinese doctors, officials and prisoners.  According to the article, sometimes organs were harvested from living prisoners without anaesthetic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caveats:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weekly_Standard&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia lists the Weekly Standard&lt;/a&gt; as a &amp;quot;neoconservative opinion magazine&amp;quot; owned by News Corp which &amp;quot;has never been profitable&amp;quot;, and quotes others describing it as &amp;quot;redoubt of neoconservatism&amp;quot; and as &amp;quot;the neo-con bible&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any personal knowledge of the magazine's journalistic reliability; I think this article is the first and so far only one of theirs I've read.  That said, I hope political bias affects opinions, not facts, even those upon which opinions are based, and the article presents its content as researched fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This BBC article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23722796&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;China announces end date for taking prisoners' organs&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A senior Chinese official has said the country will phase out the practice of taking organs from executed prisoners from November.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first few years of the century, officials were still refusing to confirm reports that they used organs taken from convicted criminals for transplant operations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in 2006, an undercover BBC team revealed that prisoners' organs were being sold to wealthy foreign patients. China then began admitting it was, after all, using the organs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6113" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T13:33:43.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7499" CreationDate="2012-02-08T16:31:08.773" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're referring to human life, there are recent studies from the Europe and Australia regarding the effects of temperature changes on humans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://climatecommission.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/111129_FINAL-FOR-WEB.pdf&quot;&gt;The Critical Decade: Climate change and health by Lesley Hughes and Tony McMichael &#xA;(Climate Commission) - Australia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climate/government/risk-assessment/#report&quot;&gt;UK Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs' Climate Change Risk Assessment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/postpn232.pdf&quot;&gt;UK Parliamentary office of Science and Technology Postnote: &#xA;UK Health Impacts of Climate Change&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/&quot;&gt;World Health Organisation's Health and Environment Linkages Initiative - Climate Change page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They figure that initially warming will actually reduce deaths due to cold (i.e. fewer people will succumb to hypothermia during cold spells) but in future decades the number of deaths due to more frequent and more extreme heat waves will far outweigh the reduction in hypothermia cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Logically speaking, any time weather events become more extreme, some life forms are going to be adversely affected and some will find new niches. Better or worse? Hard to say with certainty. Life will definitely be different. If you're one of the species who finds new/expanded habitat, then climate change may be good for you. If you're one of the species that loses habitat, well, now would be the time to buy a nice helmet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You mention previous climate change but that sort of comparison isn't really relevant. The nature of the changes due to AGW are unprecedented. We simply don't have any detailed knowledge of any natural precedent where massive quantities of sequestered CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; where released into the atmosphere in the geological equivalent of a microsecond. That's one of the reasons AGW is so problematic, there isn't any &quot;Opt Out&quot; check box that a species can tick to be left alone, every living species (including humans) are lab rats in this global experiment. The correct answer to your question can only be determined by evaluating the experiment when it's over. (casts a wary eye on Venus...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6112" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-08T16:44:34.103" LastActivityDate="2012-02-08T16:44:34.103" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7941" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8209" CreationDate="2012-02-08T19:19:38.127" Score="16" ViewCount="19470" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have come across this quote (in French), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2516552718382&amp;amp;set=a.1209358639347.31735.1390146058&amp;amp;type=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on Facebook&lt;/a&gt;, attributed to the Brazilian oncologist Drauzio Varella, winner of a Nobel Prize in Medicine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In today's world we are investing five times more money in research for drugs for the virility of the males, and silicone breasts implants for women, than for the cure for the Alzheimer's disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a few years we will have old women with big tits, and old men with hard winkies, but none of them will remember what they are for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since stuff that tends to go viral on Facebook tends to be false, I decided to check if there was a reliable source to this qutoe. I couldn't find one. Though, looking on the Internet, I could find several instances of it dating back to mostly September 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did he really say that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T18:48:11.553" Title="Did Drauzio Varella say this quote?" Tags="|medical-science|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7942" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-08T19:32:22.877" Score="22" ViewCount="2039" Body="&lt;p&gt;The documentary &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rawfor30days.com/index5.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Simply Raw: Reversing diabetes in 30 days&quot;&lt;/a&gt; claims that you can cure diabetes by following a diet of raw food, avoiding any processed &quot;junk&quot; food:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days is an independent&#xA;  documentary film that chronicles six Americans with 'incurable'&#xA;  diabetes switching their diet and getting off insulin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The program seems to be mostly targeted towards type II diabetes patients, but they claim in the fineprint on their site that it can also be somewhat effective for type I diabetes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The program featured in the film at the Tree of Life Rejuvination&#xA;  Center is most effective with diabetes type 2 but is also very&#xA;  effective at increasing quality of life and reducing insulin levels&#xA;  for diabetes type 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to cure diabetes by switching to a raw diet, curing meaning to remove the need for insulin injection and other diabetes medication? And if it is possible to achieve this by changing your diet, is there anything specific to raw food as opposed to just cutting the amount of sugar and calories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related Question&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4978/can-a-600-calorie-diet-can-cure-type-2-diabetes&quot;&gt;Can a 600-calorie diet cure Type 2 diabetes?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T20:11:54.140" Title="Simply Raw: Can you reverse diabetes in 30 days by eating raw food?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|diabetes|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7329" CreationDate="2012-02-09T01:57:16.003" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer seems to be in some cases that taking a break can help. Various studies have shown increases in productivity and focus after doing something that requires very little concentration after spending a lot of time on a a task that required a lot of concentration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other studies have shown that taking a break can have little effect while other studies show differences in results based on what you do during the break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study done at the University of Illinois showed that breaks were effective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.illinois.edu/WebsandThumbs/Lleras,Alejandro/Lleras_sdarticle-17.pdf&quot;&gt;Brief and rare mental ‘‘breaks’’ keep you focused: Deactivation and reactivation of task goals preempt vigilance decrements&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We asked observers to perform a visual vigilance task while&#xA;  maintaining digits in-memory. When observers retrieved the digits at&#xA;  the end of the vigilance task, their vigilance performance steeply&#xA;  declined over time. However, when observers were asked to sporadically&#xA;  recollect the digits during the vigilance task, the vigilance&#xA;  decrement was averted. Our results present a direct challenge to the&#xA;  pervasive view that vigilance decrements are due to a depletion of&#xA;  attentional resources and provide a tractable mechanism to prevent&#xA;  this insidious phenomenon in everyday life&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21211793&quot;&gt;Link to study on Pubmed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2005 study drew a distinction between goal driven tasks and stimulus driven tasks. Since mental fatigue had little effect on stimulus orientated tasks then the effect from fatigue could be largely related to perception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boksem.nl/pdf/boksem2005cbr.pdf&quot;&gt;Effects of mental fatigue on attention: An ERP study&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In summary, the effects of mental fatigue on behavior seem to a large&#xA;  extent to be caused by an inability of fatigued subjects to allocate&#xA;  their attention efficiently. However, a distinction must be made&#xA;  between the effects of mental fatigue on goal-directed and&#xA;  stimulus-driven attention. Goaldirected attention is shown to be&#xA;  negatively affected by mental fatigue, while stimulus-driven attention&#xA;  was largely unaffected. These results account for both the increased&#xA;  distractibility as well as the decrease in flexibility that is&#xA;  characteristic of fatigued people. When behavior becomes 114 M.A.S.&#xA;  Boksem et al. / Cognitive Brain Research 25 (2005) 107– 116&#xA;  increasingly stimulus-driven, salient stimuli in the environment will&#xA;  have a greater influence on behavior. At the same time, goal-directed&#xA;  control over behavior will decrease, causing behavior to be guided&#xA;  more by automatic stimulus response couplings, resulting in a reduced&#xA;  behavioral flexibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study done at Stanford seemed to indicate that perception and/or emotional state could be more of a factor in mental efficieny than any potential benefit from a rest. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/09/28/0956797610384745.abstract&quot;&gt;Ego Depletion—Is It All in Your Head? Implicit Theories About Willpower Affect Self-Regulation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Much recent research suggests that willpower—the capacity to exert&#xA;  self-control—is a limited resource that is depleted after exertion. We&#xA;  propose that whether depletion takes place or not depends on a&#xA;  person’s belief about whether willpower is a limited resource. Study 1&#xA;  found that individual differences in lay theories about willpower&#xA;  moderate ego-depletion effects: People who viewed the capacity for&#xA;  self-control as not limited did not show diminished self-control after&#xA;  a depleting experience. Study 2 replicated the effect, manipulating&#xA;  lay theories about willpower. Study 3 addressed questions about the&#xA;  mechanism underlying the effect. Study 4, a longitudinal field study,&#xA;  found that theories about willpower predict change in eating behavior,&#xA;  procrastination, and self-regulated goal striving in depleting&#xA;  circumstances. Taken together, the findings suggest that reduced&#xA;  self-control after a depleting task or during demanding periods may&#xA;  reflect people’s beliefs about the availability of willpower rather&#xA;  than true resource depletion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study in 2008 seemed to show an improvement in attention depending on what was done on the break time. Students who walked through an Arboretum, improved their short-term memory by 20 percent, but showed no improvements after walking down city streets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umich.edu/~jlabpsyc/pdf/2008_2.pdf&quot;&gt;The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting With Nature&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We compare the restorative effects on cognitive functioning of&#xA;  interactions with natural versus urban environments. Attention&#xA;  restoration theory (ART) provides an analysis of the kinds of&#xA;  environments that lead to improvements in directed-attention&#xA;  abilities. Nature, which is filled with intriguing stimuli, modestly&#xA;  grabs attention in a bottom-up fashion, allowing top-down&#xA;  directed-attention abilities a chance to replenish. Unlike natural&#xA;  environments, urban environments are filled with stimulation that&#xA;  captures attention dramatically and additionally requires directed&#xA;  attention (e.g., to avoid being hit by a car), making them less&#xA;  restorative.We present two experiments that show that walking in&#xA;  nature or viewing pictures of nature can improve directed-attention&#xA;  abilities as measured with a backwards digit-span task and the&#xA;  Attention Network Task, thus validating attention restoration theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies indicate that in some cases taking a break was shown to have beneficial effects leading to increases in attention and short memory. Other studies indicated that perception and attitude can play an important role as well as what was done on the break. It's also important to keep in mind that the studies were limited to student populations which may not be a good representation of the wider population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's safe to say that for some people, taking a break can have benefits although it isn't possible to say that as a general rule taking a break will have benefits given the important role perception and attitude seems to play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T01:57:16.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7946" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7952" CreationDate="2012-02-09T02:52:41.787" Score="17" ViewCount="2159" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever movies portray laser weapons, they do so with a very visible beam hitting the target and then incapacitating and/or killing them. Laser weapons exist in real life, although only at the prototype stage. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/04/plasma_pulse_la/&quot;&gt;this Wired story&lt;/a&gt; for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to laser weapons having a visible beam when fired? Or is it just for entertainment purposes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastActivityDate="2013-03-03T21:35:30.023" Title="Would a laser weapon visibly fire?" Tags="|weapons|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7671" CreationDate="2012-02-09T05:44:05.207" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Garstecki notes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://shure.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2991/~/understanding-earphone-/-headphone-specifications&quot;&gt;most headphones are capable of outputting up to  125dB&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sub&gt;1&lt;/sub&gt; of which prolonged exposure can result in hearing loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get an idea, look at this sound comparison chart:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sound level comparison:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;City Traffic (inside car)               85dB&#xA;Train whistle at 500'                   90dB&#xA;Truck Traffic                           90dB&#xA;Subway train at 200'                    95dB&#xA;hearing loss from sustained exposure    90 - 95dB&#xA;Power mower at 3'                       107dB&#xA;Snowmobile, Motorcycle                  100dB&#xA;Power saw at 3'                         110dB&#xA;Sandblasting, Loud Rock Concert         115dB&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/loudness.html&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Garstecki's claim is based of studies on this very topic, many of which he was directly involved in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://asadl.org/jasa/resource/1/jasman/v125/i6/p3733_s1?isAuthorized=no&quot;&gt;Comparing two methods to measure preferred listening levels of personal listening devices&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Preferred listening levels for self-selected music were determined in&#xA;  quiet and background noise using a probe microphone, as well as in the&#xA;  DB-100 ear simulator mounted in KEMAR. The ear-canal measurements were&#xA;  compensated for diffuse-field. &lt;strong&gt;Only one of the subjects was found to&#xA;  be listening at hazardous levels once their reported daily usage was&#xA;  accounted for using industrial workplace standards&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/ear-hearing/Abstract/2007/06000/The_Effects_of_Listening_Environment_and_Earphone.2.aspx&quot;&gt;The Effects of Listening Environment and Earphone Style on Preferred Listening Levels of Normal Hearing Adults Using an MP3 Player&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The majority of MP3 players are sold with the earbud style of&#xA;  headphones. Preferred listening levels are higher with this style of&#xA;  headphone compared to the over-the-ear style. &lt;strong&gt;Moreover, as the noise&#xA;  level in the environment increases, earbud users are even more&#xA;  susceptible to background noise and consequently increase the level of&#xA;  the music to overcome this&lt;/strong&gt;. The result is an increased sound pressure&#xA;  level at the eardrum. However, the levels chosen by our subjects&#xA;  suggest that MP3 listening levels may not be as significant a concern&#xA;  as has been reported recently in the mainstream media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Garstecki also notes in the passage quoted in your question, some people are more susceptible than others. The risk varies per individual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 1993 study acknowledges the wide variance in susceptibility to hearing loss. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/8344472/reload=0;jsessionid=4ofXU48OXh632XtqLEZd.23&quot;&gt;Individual susceptibility to noise-induced hearing loss: an old topic revisited&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The wide range in susceptibility to noise-induced hearing loss has&#xA;  intrigued researchers and hearing conservationists alike. Some of&#xA;  these differences in variability have been attributed to various&#xA;  intrinsic factors such as eye color, gender, age, etc. However, a&#xA;  review of controlled research shows that the influence of these&#xA;  intrinsic variables is relatively small and cannot explain the wide&#xA;  range of hearing loss observed in demographic studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies above found that most people don't listen to music through headphones at a hazardous volume. There is little doubt that it is possible to listen to music through headphones at a hazardous volume, which could damage hearing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;1 - Not the most reliable reference, although it supports what I have found when looking up the average output of headphones.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-02-09T18:06:59.553" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T18:06:59.553" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7946" CreationDate="2012-02-09T11:29:10.720" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently researched high-energy laser weaponry (the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIRACL&quot;&gt;MIRACL laser&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulsed_Energy_Projectile&quot;&gt;the Pulsed Energy Projectile&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_High_Energy_Laser&quot;&gt;the Tactical High Energy Lasers&lt;/a&gt;) use deuterium fluoride lasers, which operate at the &lt;strong&gt;wavelength of 3800 nm&lt;/strong&gt;.  Visible light has wavelength range of 390 to 750 nm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the laser would use visible light, the beam would only be visible in medium that would partially reflect the light. As for example water particles (clouds, rain, fog) or smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US Navy testing their THEL (note how the beam is not visible):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyTRhw8qmHE&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyTRhw8qmHE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, from usefulness point of view, especially for man portable weapon, you don't want visible beam, as that would put shooter in tactical disadvantage. And indeed, the article you refer to talks about goals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a lethal system, a laser sniper rifle would be a formidable weapon:&#xA;  perfect accuracy at any a range measured in miles, with no windage, no&#xA;  drop, and no need to allow for target movement. And it would not give&#xA;  the firer’s position away with a report, smoke or muzzle flash – &lt;strong&gt;all&#xA;  the enemy would see would be the effect when it hits the target&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-02-09T12:49:26.223" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T12:49:26.223" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7953" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7959" CreationDate="2012-02-09T13:47:40.840" Score="10" ViewCount="3032" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shadowstats.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shadow Government Statistics&lt;/a&gt;, inflation in the USA is around 11%, not 3% as the official statistics claim, as shown in this chart:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RDeaU.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Alternative Inflation Chart&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, they suggest that the US government is manipulating the data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you ever wondered why the CPI, GDP and employment numbers run counter to your personal and business experiences? The problem lies in biased and often-manipulated government reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The caption associated with the chart claims the following (with my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CPI chart on the home page reflects our estimate of inflation for today as if it were calculated the same way it was in 1990. The CPI on the Alternate Data Series tab here reflects the CPI as if it were calculated using the methodologies in place in 1980. &lt;strong&gt;In general terms, methodological shifts in government reporting have depressed reported inflation, moving the concept of the CPI away from being a measure of the cost of living needed to maintain a constant standard of living.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CPI-U (consumer price index) is the broadest measure of consumer price inflation for goods and services published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the headline number usually is the seasonally-adjusted month-to-month change, the formal CPI is reported on a not-seasonally-adjusted basis, with annual inflation measured in terms of year-to-year percent change in the price index.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the charts to the right we show two SGS-Alternate CPI estimates: One based on the pre-1990 official methodology for computing the CPI-U, and the other based on the methodology which was employed prior to 1980.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The implication of Shadow Government Statistics is that the USA has changed the method they perform calculations of inflation to deceive the US people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why did the US change how it calculates and reports inflation? Is the new method more useful than the old (e.g. is a 2% inflationary target for monetary policy at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.federalreserve.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Fed&lt;/a&gt; more effective under this new calculation), or does the new method merely mask underlying economic problems that the government wishes to hide from its population for political reasons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-25T12:01:06.087" Title="Does the US government voluntarily underreport inflation?" Tags="|economics|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7920" CreationDate="2012-02-09T14:22:12.297" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/pregnant/airbaby.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; the answer is &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jPrvz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Snopes&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barbara Mikkelson (who has contacted several airlines to get to the bottom of this) speculates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... the origin of the &amp;quot;lifetime pass&amp;quot; legend came about as a fanciful explanation for why some airlines refuse passage to expectant women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;And there are indeed special regulations for pregnant women, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britishairways.com/health/docs/before/airtravel_guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;British Airways&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst pregnancy is not a “medical condition”, flying whilst pregnant&#xA;is a frequently raised topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally pregnancy is a happy event for&#xA;all concerned but &lt;strong&gt;delivery in flight it is not without risks to the&#xA;mother and baby. For this reason British Airways, along with many&#xA;airlines, refuses to carry women in the latter stages of pregnancy,&#xA;typically after 36 weeks for single pregnancies, 32 weeks for&#xA;multiple.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/923/Fitness_To_Fly_-_Dec_2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Civil Aviation Authority&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Delivery in flight, or diversion in flight to a location that may not&#xA;have high quality obstetric services, is undesirable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason,&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;most airlines do not allow travel after 36 weeks for a single&#xA;pregnancy and after 32 weeks for a multiple pregnancy.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.koreanair.com/local/kr/gd/eng/cs/sn/eng_cs_sn_pg.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Korean Airlines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LZkR4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Pregnancy&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iata.org/Pages/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IATA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Air_Transport_Association&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Air Transport Association&lt;/a&gt;), which represents some 240 airlines, has a 398 pages thick &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iata.org/ps/certification/iosa/Documents/IOSAStandardsManualEd4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Standard's Manual&lt;/a&gt; (from December 2011), but there is no mention of free flights for new-borns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/safety_security/safety/health/Documents/medical-manual-jan2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IATA Medical Guidelines&lt;/a&gt; for pregnancy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/297kU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Pregnancy&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;I also browsed through several airline's webpages and while they all do mention special rules for pregnant women, neither says anything about a &amp;quot;bonus&amp;quot; when you deliver in-flight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;On the contrary some airlines even refuse to carry &amp;quot;highly&amp;quot; pregnant women (see above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;But, as the link in the question shows, reported cases do exist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A baby boy who made a surprise arrival on board an AirAsia flight this&#xA;week will be given free flights for life with the budget carrier, as&#xA;will his mother.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To celebrate this momentous occasion, we&#xA;decided to present both mother and child with free flights for life&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;,&amp;quot;&#xA;said AirAsia's director of operations Moses Devanayagam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/lifestyle/10/23/09/lifetime-free-flights-baby-born-plane&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T14:31:04.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7953" CreationDate="2012-02-09T19:43:09.350" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;One should be skeptical of Shadow Government Statistics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In researching &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3179/is-inflation-in-the-us-higher-than-government-statistics-suggest&quot;&gt;Is inflation in the US higher than government statistics suggest?&lt;/a&gt; I could not find any record of Shadow Government Statistics releasing its methodology, despite &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shadowstats.com/article/aa871&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;promising to do so as long ago as 2006&lt;/a&gt; . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MIT's &quot;Billion Prices Project&quot; is a more transparent project to track inflation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://bpp.mit.edu/usa/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;It seems to track slightly higher than the CPI&lt;/a&gt; but considerably lower than the Shadow Government model.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BLS &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; allow shifting of goods within a category, i.e., &quot;Apples in Boston&quot; can switch from one type of apple to another. The justification is that within these categories, consumers will likely shift from a particular type to a generally-comparable type in the face of a relative shift in prices (&quot;Wow, Red Delicious have gone up. Gee, a Goldrush is cheaper, that's good.&quot;) The criticism is that change is change and they ought to trace the exact same basket of goods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A broader criticism is that these changes amount to &quot;switching hamburger for steak&quot;. The  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpiqa.htm#Question_3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BLS response at&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Substitution is only assumed to occur within basic CPI index categories, such as among types of ground beef in Chicago. Hamburger and steak are in different CPI item categories, so no substitution between them is built into the CPI-U or CPI-W. .... In using the geometric mean the BLS is following a recognized best practice for statistical agencies. The formula is widely used by statistical agencies around the world and is recommended by, for example, the International Monetary Fund and the Statistical Office of the European Communities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T19:43:09.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7946" CreationDate="2012-02-09T20:12:46.507" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @Vartec answered, laser weapons are probably not likely to use the visible spectrum. &lt;em&gt;But&lt;/em&gt; lasers of the appropriate wavelength are visible to the naked eye even without fog due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rayleigh Scattering&lt;/a&gt;. This is an image of a laser guide star (used to correct for atmospheric distortion) propagating from the Gemini North facility in Hawaii. It is (easily) naked-eye visible : &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/onGfu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;laser guide star beam propagated from Gemini North facility&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lasers don't have to be particularly powerful to be naked-eye visible. Consumer-grade green lasers are visible and are commonly used by amateur astronomers to point out particular locations in the sky. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-02-09T20:12:46.507" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7953" CreationDate="2012-02-10T01:28:33.770" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, let's imagine that Shadow Government Statistics is correct and that the inflation was around 10% in 2006. It would mean that the real interest rate on Treasure Bills would have been of approximately -6%, which is insane. No one would have bought them, if that was the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia defines &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_interest_rate&quot;&gt;real interest rates&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &quot;real interest rate&quot; is the rate of interest an investor expects to receive after allowing for inflation. ... If, for example, an investor were able to lock in a 5% interest rate for the coming year and anticipated a 2% rise in prices, he would expect to earn a real interest rate of 3%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, as Shadow Stats claims, the inflation in the United States was up to 10% and the interest rate on Treasure Bills was of about 4% (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/Pages/Historic-LongTerm-Rate-Data-Visualization.aspx&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;), then the real interest rate would be negative (4%-10% = -6%). Under a negative real interest rate, people lending money to the government would be losing money whereas the US government would be earning money by borrowing. It would make no sense to lend money at such a low rate, yet demand for Treasure Bills remained relatively stable during 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a situation would be unsustainable. Eventually, lenders would wise up and stop lending until the real interest rates go back up. It makes no sense for people to invest at a negative rate of return. If inflation was that high, then interest rate would increase as well for to at least positive returns on investment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the most obvious reason Shadow Government Statistics is wrong: &lt;strong&gt;if they were right, Treasure Bills would be ways to give money to the US government rather than an investment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what did Shadow Stats did do to arrive to such values and how is it superior to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' methodology? I can't say. While they have promised to that their methodology will be &quot;published in next month’s 'Reporting Focus'&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shadowstats.com/article/cpi-measures&quot;&gt;back in October 2005&lt;/a&gt;, I can't find that month's &quot;Reporting Focus&quot; - or any detailed methodology - anywhere on their site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on their criticism of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we can make a few educated guesses though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back in August 2008, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published an article called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpiqa.htm&quot;&gt;Common Misconceptions about the Consumer Price Index: Questions and Answers&lt;/a&gt; to which Shadow Government Statistics felt need to reply to in &lt;a href=&quot;http://%20ShadowStats.com%20Response%20to%20BLS%20Article%20on%20CPI%20Misconceptions&quot;&gt;ShadowStats.com Response to BLS Article on CPI Misconceptions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the response SGS goes into details into why he believes the BLS is biased and underestimates inflation. He blames three factors, which are well summarized in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2010/12/16/government-inflation-numbers-are-bogus/&quot;&gt;this Forbes article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Substitution.&lt;/strong&gt; If steak becomes more expensive, and you buy hamburger instead, then the Bureau of Labor Statistics reasons your cost of beef has stayed the same – no inflation!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hedonics.&lt;/strong&gt; If the 2011 model of a car costs more than the 2010 model, but it also comes with more standard equipment, the BLS reasons you’re still getting the same value for your money – no inflation!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Geometric weighting.&lt;/strong&gt; Nothing fancy here: If the price of something goes up, the BLS simply makes it count for less in the CPI relative to everything else. If the price comes down, it counts for more. Voila!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that the CPI is biased is hardly new or controversial. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, such is taught in economic textbooks (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/2761332393&quot;&gt;Introduction à la macroéconomie moderne&lt;/a&gt;, p. 148-149) and the Bank of Canada even has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bankofcanada.ca/about/backgrounders/measurement-bias-in-the-canadian-cpi/&quot;&gt;a section of its website&lt;/a&gt; dedicated to explaining its shortcomings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Commodity-substitution bias&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One reason is that the change in the CPI measures the cost to the consumer of buying a fixed basket of goods and services, the contents of which are updated only once every four years. In reality, consumers can and do substitute cheaper items for those that become more expensive when the relative prices of different products change between basket updates. For example, if the price of beef rises sharply, consumers may buy pork or chicken instead, if they are cheaper. Because of this shift in spending patterns, the actual increase in the overall cost of living is less than the increase in the cost of buying the original fixed basket. So, the true cost of living can be overstated if there is a commodity-substitution bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;New-goods bias&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;New products (e.g., high-definition TVs, digital cameras) that come onto the market between updates of the consumer basket can also be a source of measurement bias. Typically, the relative prices of some of these new products (notably home electronics) drop considerably following their introduction. If those price decreases happen before the basket is updated to include the new goods, the overall CPI will overstate the true cost of living (by an amount that depends on the share of the new goods in total spending).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Quality-change bias&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The CPI aims to measure the pure price change of a basket of consumer goods and services of constant quality by comparing their prices at two points in time. In fact, quality improvements may decrease the prices of certain items. For example, rapid technological advances have resulted in lower prices for personal computers, as well as an increase in computing capacity. Although Statistics Canada uses various methods to correct prices for quality changes, such adjustments may not fully remove the bias, leaving the overall CPI overstated if quality improvements occur faster than they are measured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Outlet-substitution bias&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The entry into Canada of new discount retailers and large warehouse stores has resulted in shifts in market shares from high- to low-price retailers. If the effect of these shifts on the prices paid by consumers is not fully captured, the true cost of living will be overstated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the notion that the CPI imperfect or biased is in line with mainstream economics. The critique by SGS overlaps with the admission of bias by the Bank of Canada but this is where the agreement stops. When we go into discussing the size of the bias or its possible solutions, mainstream economics and Shadow Government Statistics disagrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, when economists try to measure the bias of the CPI, they arrive at under 1%, which is obviously quite far from the seven or eight percentage point bias that SGS's figures entail. For example, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=295634&quot;&gt;Measurement Error in the Consumer Price Index: Where Do We Stand?&lt;/a&gt;, the authors conclude that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In total, we estimate that the CPI overstates the change in the cost of living by about 0.6 percentage point per year, with a confidence interval that ranges from 0.1 to 1.2 percentage points. Roughly half of this bias is accounted for by the CPI's inability to fully capture the welfare improvement from quality change and the introduction of new items. Our bias estimate is smaller than that found in several earlier studies, in part because the BLS has recently made a variety of improvements to its procedures; our study highlights several potential areas for further improvement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, many times on its website, Shadow Government Statistics says its inflation estimates are &quot;based on methodologies in place as of 1980 and as of 1990.&quot; If that's the case, previous studies into the measurement error of the CPI during that time period will be enough to validate or debunk the SGS's numbers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w4505.pdf&quot;&gt;The Consumer Price Index as a Measure of Inflation&lt;/a&gt; which analyzes the bias of the CPI between 1967 and 1992, the bias is in the order of 0.5% at the highest. That's within the margin of error of the previous results. (Note: If we look into the bias prior to 1982, however, the bias is greater.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;In Conclusion:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim that the Bureau of Labor Statistics underestimate inflation by seven or eight percentage points is extraordinary, as it would imply that most investors are losing money by lending at a negative real interest rate. As their methodology is not published on their website, as their critique of the current way CPI is calculated is mostly congruent with mainstream economics and as economic analysis only measure a bias of 1%, it is unlikely that Shadow Government Statistics is correct in its belief that inflation is still around 10%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-02-10T02:43:19.127" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T02:43:19.127" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7960" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-10T03:00:10.977" Score="10" ViewCount="9016" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7616/air-ionizers-built-in-to-laptops-marketing-gimmick&quot;&gt;This question regarding an ionizer in an Asus laptop&lt;/a&gt; has a little bit of information about air ionizers (air ionisers for those using UK English), but not a lot at the time of writing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various claims around the place about the benefits of using an air ionizers, such has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peakpureair.com/effects-negative-ions#sleep&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;helping people sleep better&lt;/a&gt;, being &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.negativeionsinformation.org/ions_vitamins.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;vitamins of the air&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, and cleaning particulates from the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found a claim that ionizers will &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.air-zone.com/ionsvsozone.html#blackwall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;turn your walls black&lt;/a&gt;, and a warning that &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazing1.com/negative_ion.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;spark discharges may cause dangerous ignitions&lt;/a&gt;&quot; in some circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any substantial benefits or risks to using an air ionizer, supported with good evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5343" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T18:57:59.620" Title="Do air ionizers have any substantial benefits or risks?" Tags="|consumer-products|environmental-health|air|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7962" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-10T04:37:18.517" Score="13" ViewCount="495" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been various &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-02-10/sunscreen-doubts-prompt-push/3822426&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;stories in the news&lt;/a&gt; in the past couple of weeks in Australia about peoples perception of nanoparticles in sunscreen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote from the linked story above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This week, the Federal Department of Innovation released the results&#xA;  of an online survey which found that one in four people who have heard&#xA;  about nanoparticle sunscreen have decided to avoid using sunscreen&#xA;  altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This statement from the same story is not exactly reassuring:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a theory in the laboratory that they could cause harm but&#xA;  these nanoparticles have been in some sunscreens for years and there&#xA;  is no documented harm&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So does there exist enough study or research to confirm or deny the health risks associated with the inclusion of nanoparticles in sunscreen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If research is limited should people be worried enough that they should stop using these types of sunscreens or is this unwarranted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T03:24:17.987" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T12:55:00.960" Title="Is there a health risk from nanoparticles in sunscreens?" Tags="|environmental-health|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="810" CreationDate="2012-02-10T05:20:27.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;BMJ. 1998 October 17; 317(7165): 1063–1066.&#xA;PMCID: PMC1114067&#xA;Copyright © 1998, British Medical Journal&#xA;ABC of oxygen&#xA;Oxygen at high altitude&#xA;Andrew J Peacock&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Atmospheric pressure and inspired oxygen pressure fall roughly linearly with altitude to be 50% of the sea level value at 5500m and only 30% of the sea level value at 8900m (the height of the summit of Everest). A fall in inspired oxygen pressure reduces the driving pressure for gas exchange in the lungs and in turn produces a cascade of effects right down to the level of the mitochondria, the final destination of the oxygen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As explained in this article, the changes in breathing at altitude are due to atmospheric pressure changes, not by the volume of air in each breathe. How can a mask change atmospheric pressure? The mask cannot reduce the partial pressure of oxygen. With or without a mask each breathe will contain 21% oxygen with a constant partial pressure for the given altitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From trainingmask.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ElevationTraining Mask is great because it regulates how much air you can breathe in, making it so that you breath less oxygen, in turn making the air thinner (due to the low oxygen intake it's similar to altitude training) . With reduced oxygen consumption the human body changes in several ways. The production of red blood cells and new capillaries (small blood vessels) increase the transfer of oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the mask can decrease the partial pressure of oxygen then their claims can be possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trainingmask.com makes many claims that I find disturbing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal take on the mask is that it doesn't change the partial pressure of O2, it provides resistance to airflow. I think to train breathing patterns, the mask may have some use but at a light to moderate exercise level. Which really can be accomplished by breathing through a straw, or swimming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6133" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T05:20:27.903" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7942" CreationDate="2012-02-10T07:32:12.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr. Atkins in chapter 24 of his &quot;new diet revolution, revised edition&quot;, notes that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Type II diabetes is caused by a genetic predisposition to the disease and/or a diet filled with refined carbohydrates combined with an overall decrease in physical activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on to mention &quot;Saccharine Disease: The Master Disease of Our Time&quot;, by Surgeon Captain T. L. Cleave, MD, a bok that found &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;almost a dozen cultures in which diabetes (and coronary heart disease as well) simply never occurred until 20 years after the people in that culture began to consume significant amounts of refined carbohydrates&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later he mentions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The simple fact is that the earliest diagnosable state of Type II diabetes is associates with the production of excessive amounts of insulin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In such a condition, the body does not allow insulin to do its job&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He continues to conclude that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The primary cause is eating too much of the wrong kind of carbohydrates. To a lesser degree eating excessive amounts of protein can affect blood sugar levels; however, when protein is used for its primary function of building muscle mass, insulin is not produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After which he states his clinical experience working with diabetics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my clinical experience - reading food diaries kept by patients - I have seen time and again that a diabetic following a high-carbohydrate, low-calorie diet with the emphasis on fat reduction will usually find that a meal raises his or her blood-sugar levels an average of 100 points.....&#xA;  The same person will not that a steak or ... plus a tosses green salad ... will raise the blood sugar level no more than 20 points, if at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He does go on to mention that he could find no independent research confirming his own clinical experience, which to me indicates none was performed or published. Other reading I've done on the topic (will try to find references, don't have them here) confirms that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the question of whether diabetes can be reversed he writes (again, based on his personal clinical experience with diabetic patients):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you want to know why I am so certain that the comparison testing will prove Atkins to be so effective, it is because in our clinical experience we have treated over &lt;strong&gt;five thousand&lt;/strong&gt; (emphasis mine) Type II diabetics. Of those taking insulin-stimulating drugs (sulfonylurea) we were able to get the majority off those drugs. And the Type II diabetics taking insulin, more than half were able to cease their injections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this is one source of course, but one who has done his own clinical research and concludes that Type II diabetes can indeed, at least in some patients, be reversed or controlled through a &quot;raw&quot; diet (meaning here a diet low in processed carbohydrates).&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Quotes from the Kindle edition of &quot;Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution, Revised Edition&quot;, Robert C. Atkins MD, ISBN 978-1-59077-002-3, 2002&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;---------------------------------------------------&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diabetesdaily.com/edelman/2010/03/interview-dr-bernstein-on-low-carb-diets-treatments-politics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.diabetesdaily.com/edelman/2010/03/interview-dr-bernstein-on-low-carb-diets-treatments-politics/&lt;/a&gt; here's another link I found which says much the same thing in other words, by another physician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastEditorUserId="263" LastEditDate="2012-02-12T07:41:34.013" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T07:41:34.013" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7916" CreationDate="2012-02-10T08:30:47.740" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini#Buried_Alive_stunt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, Harry Houdini did, but it was a near thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Houdini was buried, without a casket, in a pit of earth six feet deep. He became exhausted and panicky trying to dig his way to the surface and called for help. When his hand finally broke the surface, he fell unconscious and had to be pulled from the grave by his assistants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that would have been in a 'grave' that was specifically designed to be escaped from...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2192" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T08:30:47.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7968" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-10T08:35:50.327" Score="11" ViewCount="1815" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that introducing liquids (tea, boiled water) to infants earlier than 6-months' old damages their health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.circleofmoms.com/after-pregnancy-babies-and-infants/feeding-an-infant-water-and-or-tea-446165&quot;&gt;Circle of Moms&lt;/a&gt;, I read an answer to a question about feeding a 1-month old boiled water and herbal tea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is extremely dangerous. A breastfed baby under 6 months should not be given any water, tea, juice, etc. because it will fill them up and prevent them from taking in adequate calories. And this mom is giving 5 oz of water at least 4 times a day!! This baby is being deprived of calories and will begin to exhibit signs of failure to thrive very soon, if s/he has not already. Very scary. Please intervene and if necessary call the authorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paediatrician, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/medicalschool/departments/pediatrics/people/bios/Pages/danielsbio.aspx&quot;&gt;Dr. Stephen R. Daniels&lt;/a&gt; also warns against it, at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babycenter.com/408_when-can-my-baby-drink-water_1368488.bc&quot;&gt;BabyCenter&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In rare cases, a baby who drinks too much water can develop a condition known as water intoxication, which can cause seizures and even a coma. Water intoxication happens when too much water dilutes the concentration of sodium in the body, upsetting the electrolyte balance and causing tissues to swell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people say that giving them water is good for them, some say it's bad... What is the scientific truth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6135" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:55:15.740" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T08:55:15.740" Title="Is water or tea dangerous for young infants?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7883" CreationDate="2012-02-10T11:44:35.583" Score="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have much to say here, because Cancer Research UK have already written a winning answer. (Sometimes the giants are tall enough that there's no need to stand on their shoulders.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you visit &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/smoking-and-cancer/smoking-facts-and-evidence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tobacco, smoking and cancer: the evidence&lt;/a&gt; you will find explanations of all these facts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Smoking is the single biggest cause of cancer in the world&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Smoking greatly increases the risk of lung cancer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The people with the highest lung cancer risks are those who:&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;smoke the most cigarettes per day&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;smoke over long periods of time, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;start smoking young&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Smoking is a major cause of several types of cancer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stopping smoking can reduce your risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Tobacco smoke contains many dangerous chemicals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Tobacco smoke contains significant amounts of dangerous chemicals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Chemicals in tobacco smoke can build up to harmful amounts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The chemicals in smoke are more dangerous in combination than individually&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The poisons in cigarettes can affect almost every organ in the body&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Nicotine is a very addictive drug&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Smokers are still exposed to dangerous chemicals if they smoke filtered or ‘low-tar’ cigarettes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Alcohol and other substances worsen the effect of smoking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Second-hand smoking also causes cancer and kills thousands of people every year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Children are especially at risk from second-hand smoking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Smoking while pregnant can harm your baby&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Smokeless tobacco can also cause cancer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They explain it all clearer than I could hope to, and include references to 93 different journal articles. You've got to admit they've certainly done their research on cancer, those guys at err.. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cancer Research UK&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Oh look, a donate button. Maybe you can persuade your mistaken friend and his father to donate to make up for all the people they have misled with their ignorance and semantic word games?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="45882" LastEditDate="2018-08-02T19:45:19.677" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T19:45:19.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="7971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7974" CreationDate="2012-02-10T13:06:23.903" Score="18" ViewCount="1271" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/09/at-war-over-geoengineering&quot;&gt;letter in The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; makes the following claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While seemingly fantastical, weather has been weaponised. At least four countries – the US, Russia, China and Israel – possess the technology and organisation to regularly alter weather and geologic events for various military and black operations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;warfare now includes the technological ability to induce, enhance or direct cyclonic events, earthquakes, draught and flooding&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does this technology exist?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T09:23:41.743" Title="Has weather been weaponised?" Tags="|weather|weapons|war|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7973" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7980" CreationDate="2012-02-10T14:01:26.437" Score="45" ViewCount="121272" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have widely &lt;a href=&quot;http://thinkexist.com/quotation/i_like_your_christ-i_do_not_like_your_christians/215104.html&quot;&gt;heard&lt;/a&gt; that Gandhi has said, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence of this? Where is this recorded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5499" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T19:47:59.257" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T19:47:59.257" Title="Did Mahatma Gandhi say “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.&quot;?" Tags="|religion|quotes|jesus-christ|mahatma-gandhi|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7971" CreationDate="2012-02-10T15:20:30.307" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;To some extent yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well know technique is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_seeding&quot;&gt;cloud seeding&lt;/a&gt; to induce rain. It was used during the Vietnam War, operation Popeye was carried out to induce heavy rains over Ho Chi Ming Trail.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Few aviation writers and historians seem to be aware that there were&#xA;  three WC-130As. These three were originally trash-haulers, borrowed&#xA;  from TAC in late 1966 for use in Operation &quot;Popeye&quot;, the rain-making&#xA;  mission in Southeast Asia, set to begin the following year. The intent&#xA;  of the mission was to create enough year-round rain to keep the Ho Chi&#xA;  Minh trails impassable with mud. Tests were conducted over Laos in&#xA;  1966, and the operational missions began in March of 1967 from Udorn&#xA;  RTAFB, Thailand. They were flown by crews of the 54th WRS, rotated on&#xA;  a regular basis from Guam. In addition, 54th crews were sometimes&#xA;  called upon to conduct synoptic weather reconnaissance from Udorn over&#xA;  various areas of Southeast Asia, out to and including the Bay of&#xA;  Bengal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The A-models were modified for weather reconnaissance, probably at&#xA;  WRAMA, with the AN/AMR-1 system. They were not configured for&#xA;  atmospheric sampling. Two were kept at Udorn, with the third rotating&#xA;  to and from Guam for maintenance, repair, and crew changes, from June&#xA;  1967 through late 1970. When the third one was not enroute to/from&#xA;  Thailand, it was used for normal weather reconnaissance activities&#xA;  from Guam. In late 1970 the A's were replaced with three 1958&#xA;  B-models, and the rain-making mission continued through mid-1972 with&#xA;  whichever B- or E-models were available from the 54th. After&#xA;  re-conversion to transport, the A's were transferred to Air Force&#xA;  Reserve units. During their brief stint as rain-makers, they flew a&#xA;  total of 1435 &quot;combat&quot; sorties, and it is reported that at least one&#xA;  of them received battle damage. All three A-models wore the standard&#xA;  Southeast Asia camouflage colors and markings, but with no unit&#xA;  designations of any kind. In 1973, 56-0519 was given or loaned to the&#xA;  South Vietnamese Air Force, and it became one of the spoils of war on&#xA;  April 30, 1975. The last reliable sighting was in April of 1999, which&#xA;  reported her corroded and derelict at Tan Son Nhut Airport, Ho Chi&#xA;  Minh City.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awra.us/gallery-jan05.htm&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;(source)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another military attempt at weather control was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hrd_sub/sfury.html&quot;&gt;Project Stormfury&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Project STORMFURY was an ambitious experimental program of research on&#xA;  hurricane modification carried out between 1962 and 1983. The proposed&#xA;  modification technique involved artificial stimulation of convection&#xA;  outside the eyewall through seeding with silver iodide. The&#xA;  invigorated convection, it was argued, would compete with the original&#xA;  eyewall, lead to reformation of the eyewall at larger radius, and&#xA;  thus, through partial conservation of angular momentum, produce a&#xA;  decrease in the strongest winds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it not weaponizing, as it's was mainly aimed at preventing/reducing  naturally occurring hurricanes, rather than inducing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-02-10T15:35:39.050" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T15:35:39.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7968" CreationDate="2012-02-10T16:15:07.207" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Water's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LD&lt;sub&gt;50&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/a&gt; toxicity is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927321&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;90 mL/kg&lt;/a&gt;. For average adult weighting 75kg, that would mean 6.75L. However, for an infant with 4kg body weight, that would mean just 360ml, with is about two small glasses of water. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-drinking-too-much-water-can-kill&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;healthy &lt;strong&gt;adult&lt;/strong&gt; kidneys at rest can excrete 0.8L to 1L of water per hour&lt;/a&gt;. Obviously it's much less for infant.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T16:15:07.207" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7971" CreationDate="2012-02-10T16:23:47.373" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The US Project HAARP (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program&lt;/a&gt;) powers many of the current crop of secret weather control stories: (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=haarp%20weather%20control&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;haarp weather control&lt;/a&gt;). Haarp &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/124-artificial-neon-sky-show-created.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;can produce artificial&lt;/a&gt; aurora by heating limited parts of the ionosphere, but it's only a minor effect produced by a megawatt scale device, and the ionosphere is far removed from surface weather.&#xA;Some claim that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=haarp%20grunt&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HAARP was used to knock out the Russian's latest mars probe&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1112441373/russia-blames-haarp-transmitter-for-phobos-grunt-failure/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;however:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even if HAARP was turned on, a full-power blast would have hit the Russian probe with no more than 1.03 milliwatts of radio energy per square centimeter — about the same as pointing a 60-watt light bulb at it from 69 feet away&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's just not enough energy for HAARP to be a plausible weather control agent.&#xA;Directly back to the subject at hand: If weather's been weaponized, it's not been done through HAARP scale projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related Question:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/979/can-haarp-affect-weather-or-earthquakes&quot;&gt;Can HAARP affect weather or earthquakes?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-02-11T00:46:49.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7916" CreationDate="2012-02-10T18:25:55.617" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;This feat is only feasible if the victim can apply more pressure to the soil than the soil can apply back. Otherwise, they are helpless to move the soil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we take the density of soil to be uniformly 1 g cm^-3 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulk_density&quot;&gt;a conservative estimate&lt;/a&gt;), then the pressure from the mass of soil would be 98 Pa / cm (using 9.8 as acceleration due to gravity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under 4 inches of soil (10cm), that amounts to 980 Pa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NASA studies showed that a person can exert 818 N of force &lt;a href=&quot;http://msis.jsc.nasa.gov/sections/section04.htm&quot;&gt;Figure 4.9.3-6&lt;/a&gt;. This force is spread over both hands, which are - on average - 18.9cm x 8.4cm &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ispub.com/journal/the-internet-journal-of-forensic-science/volume-1-number-2/determination-of-sex-by-hand-dimensions.html&quot;&gt;Tables 1 and 2&lt;/a&gt;, for a total area of 0.032 m^2. This gives a pressure exerted of 25.8 kPa - easily enough to dig away from 4 inches of soil. (Solving this actually would allow someone - under ideal conditions, to push through 2.6m of soil!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately in most cases conditions won't be ideal for pushing, so the force exerted is somewhat smaller. Furthermore, to push further than an arm's span you need to clear space to sit up. Time taken to escape before asphyxiating would become a limiting factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I want to mention that Mythbuster's tried it, and found that they could escape from two feet with effort. At six feet, there was no chance. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtoESNtZtD8&quot;&gt;Mythbuster's tried it.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5961" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-02-11T17:12:25.770" LastActivityDate="2012-02-11T17:12:25.770" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7329" CreationDate="2012-02-10T19:41:21.673" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman&lt;/a&gt; says that &lt;em&gt;short-term&lt;/em&gt; fatigue effects are real in his book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0374275637&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thinking, Fast and Slow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A]n effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around. The phenomenon has been named ego depletion. ... [T]he idea of mental energy is more than a mere metaphor. The nervous system consumes more glucose than most other parts of the body, and effortful mental activity appears to be especially expensive in the currency of glucose. ... [Describing an experiment on this:] On the other hand, the glucose drinkers were not depleted. Restoring the level of available sugar in the brain had prevented the deterioration of performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another chapter, he argues that effort-ful mental activity (what he calls &quot;System 2&quot; thinking) draws from a single-bank of energy and establishes that when you've depleted that resource doing one activity, you have a hard time doing another effort-ful mental activity. (In other words, if you do math, and then you write something, and then you go back to math, your &quot;math battery&quot; won't have recharged.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether these effects are relevant at the level of days or weeks is not addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-02-10T22:03:26.000" LastActivityDate="2012-02-10T22:03:26.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7973" CreationDate="2012-02-10T23:16:28.067" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't find any source for him stating the quote as such. I did find a book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=0Pd0VAfZGEIC&amp;amp;pg=PA162&amp;amp;dq=stanley%20jones%20%22reject%20christ%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=JqM1T_PIAcGbiQfL0oCSAg&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=stanley%20jones%20%22reject%20christ%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;The Knights Templar &amp;amp; the Protestant Reformation&lt;/a&gt;, which states that when Stanley Jones, a missionary, met with Mahatma Gandhi he asked him:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. Gandhi, though you quote the words of Christ often, why is that&#xA;  you appear to so adamantly reject becoming his follower?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gandhi replied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oh, I don't reject Christ. I love Christ. It's just that so many of&#xA;  you Christians are so unlike Christ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book seems to have a reference, although I can't check what it is as the references page is not on Google Books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote &lt;em&gt;seems&lt;/em&gt; to be from the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=byLSygAACAAJ&amp;amp;dq=gandhi%20the%20man%20polak&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=9KM1T4DQMqPv0gH89omzAg&amp;amp;ved=0CDgQ6AEwAQ&quot;&gt;Mr. Gandhi, the man&lt;/a&gt; by Millie Graham Polak although the book is not viewable online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching the book for the first part of the passage quoted in the knights templar book, &quot;Is Mr. Gandhi a Christian?&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=nghHAAAAIAAJ&amp;amp;q=%22Is%20Mr.%20Gandhi%20a%20Christian?%22&amp;amp;dq=%22Is%20Mr.%20Gandhi%20a%20Christian?%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=YaQ1T5awC-7r0QGDzZSnAg&amp;amp;ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ&quot;&gt;returns a hit&lt;/a&gt;, although searching for &quot;stanley jones&quot; or &quot;reject christ&quot; does not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=3h9JAAAACAAJ&amp;amp;dq=The%20Christ%20of%20the%20Indian%20Road&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=Gag1T-33CIL30gH99q3HAg&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot;&gt;The Christ of the Indian Road&lt;/a&gt; by E. Stanley Jones, Stanley Jones asked Gandhi how to naturalize Christianity into India. Gandhi replied in part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would suggest first of all that all of you Christians, missionaries&#xA;  and all begin to live more like Jesus Christ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be in part where the quote came from, if it was never said directly by Gandhi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the amount of consistent references to the quote being said in reply to a question from Stanley Jones, I think it is likely something very similar to the oft quoted passage was said. I can't find anything online that shows this for certain and don't have access to the books where the quote may appear to check, so it's hard to say for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2012-09-08T19:51:14.910" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T19:51:14.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7984" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-11T10:47:51.050" Score="14" ViewCount="18320" Body="&lt;p&gt;Think of the number six. Now - name a vegetable!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is claimed that people, when asked for a random vegetable, will typically pick the same one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Spoiler below. Once you have guessed, click or hover over the box below.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; carrot&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claim examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://six.pen.io/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This online exercise&lt;/a&gt; claims 98% do, when primed with the word &quot;six&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Someone-Say-Carrot&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WikiHow&lt;/a&gt; claims 90% carrot, 2% broccoli as second choice, and then, confusingly, 8% lettuce as third - again when primed with &quot;six&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/73l6m/dont_think_name_a_vegetable_as_fast_as_you_can/c05l1yt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This redditor&lt;/a&gt; says, anecdotally, 90%, when prepared with random arithmetic questions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bluematter.blogspot.com.au/2007/05/how-much-is-6-times-8-now-name.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This blogger&lt;/a&gt; got 7 out of 7 carrots, after using an arithmetic question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencechatforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=124&amp;amp;t=14446&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This contributor to ScienceChatForum&lt;/a&gt; did a controlled experiment to show neither the &quot;six&quot; priming nor arithmetic questions were necessary, with a 92% of 60 runs answering carrot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodtricks.net/mind-reading-learn-to-read-mind.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;magic trick instructions&lt;/a&gt; claim people normally choose carrot, and don't use arithmetic nor make a claim about frequency.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this phenomenon true? If so, what is the scientific explanation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclosure: It worked for me. I'm among the 98% majority according to the first site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4196" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-06-23T04:03:15.617" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T00:40:59.483" Title="Do people always think of the same vegetable?" Tags="|psychology|vegetables|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7985" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-11T11:57:17.160" Score="13" ViewCount="1780" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Meme:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://habitforge.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;It takes at least 21 days to form a habit.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pf-CKB6f3V8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Personal Development It Takes 21 Days To Form A Habit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stevenaitchison.co.uk/blog/a-new-habit/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Research shows that it takes 21 days to develop a habit.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getorganizednow.com/art-21.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Get Things Done - It Takes 21 Days to Form a Habit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mydietingsite.com/?p=1080&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;It Takes 21 Days To Form A Habit.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theminimalists.com/21days/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why 21 days? Well, there are a few reasons: First, it takes 21 days to form a habit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A counter view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ihatedoingthisalot.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/21-days-to-form-habit-absolute-lie.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;21 Days To Form a Habit, (Absolute Lie)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This idea seems largely meaningless to me. I don't know if Pavlovian conditioning to a stimulus counts as a habit, but if so, it can be done in minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is where is this meme from? Is there, at its base, any research (as at least one of them claimed)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T03:59:08.637" Title="Does it take 21 days to form a habit?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7882" CreationDate="2012-02-11T17:29:14.120" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite real. Brian Witcombe and Dan Meyer are authors of a BMJ paper &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/333/7582/1285.full&quot;&gt;Sword swallowing and its side effects&lt;/a&gt;&quot; where they asked 110 sword swallowers about medical conditions related to sword swallowing of whom 46 responded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sore throats seem to be a common problem, but more serious problems such as intestinal bleeding are in there too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thirteen respondents did not volunteer any medical information, but 19&#xA;  described sore throats, usually when they were learning to swallow,&#xA;  after performing too frequently, or when they were swallowing multiple&#xA;  or odd shaped swords. Lower chest pain, often lasting days, followed&#xA;  some performances and was usually treated by abstaining from practice.&#xA;  They rarely sought medical advice. Six suffered perforation of the&#xA;  pharynx or oesophagus. Three of these had surgery to the neck, one&#xA;  having a 1.5 cm laceration at the level of D2 and a pneumothorax, one&#xA;  a pinhole laceration at C6 and surgical emphysema, and the other&#xA;  having a pharyngeal tear. The perforations were treated conservatively&#xA;  in three patients, one of whom had a second perforation with&#xA;  aspiration of a neck abscess after further injury. Three others also&#xA;  had probable perforations, one of whom was told that a sword had&#xA;  “brushed” the heart, and one had pleurisy and another pericarditis&#xA;  after injury, suggesting extraoesophageal trauma. No one underwent&#xA;  thoracotomy, although one had a breadknife removed transabdominally.&#xA;  Sixteen mentioned intestinal bleeding, varying in quantity from&#xA;  melaena or finding some blood on a withdrawn sword to large&#xA;  haematemases necessitating transfusion. No members of the association&#xA;  had died from sword swallowing, but the cost of medical care was a&#xA;  concern with three members receiving medical bills around&#xA;  $23 000-$70 000 (£12 000-£37 000, €18 000-€55 000).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5422" LastEditorUserId="5373" LastEditDate="2012-02-11T17:50:21.247" LastActivityDate="2012-02-11T17:50:21.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7987" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="7990" CreationDate="2012-02-11T21:36:11.233" Score="14" ViewCount="1097" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe this is somewhat of an ignorant question of me, and in all honesty I haven't tried very hard to find what I'm looking for&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, but I keep hearing the argument that &quot;information&quot; can never be added to genetic code, from creationists / intelligent design proponents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I believe this to be nonsense, I don't actually know of any scientific papers that talk about directly observed naturally occurring genetic insertion in the offspring of some organism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: is there any scientific study whereby they have extracted the DNA of, for instance, some bacterium, let that bacterium reproduce and extracted the DNA of this direct offspring, and then, when they compared the DNA they have indisputably concluded that genetic insertion has taken place in this reproduction?&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some references to these types of claims (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answersingenesis.org/cec/docs/CvE_report.asp&quot;&gt;answersingenesis.org&lt;/a&gt; (retrieved Sunday February 12th 2012 UTC):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It would be better to say: &quot;Mutations have been observed to destroy,&#xA;  delete or corrupt genetic information or to be neutral, &lt;strong&gt;but have not&#xA;  been observed to add information.&lt;/strong&gt; [...]&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evanwiggs.com/articles/reasons.html#Reason1&quot;&gt;evanwiggs.com&lt;/a&gt; (retrieved Sunday February 12th 2012 UTC):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We don’t really know much about why the genes do this as we are still&#xA;  very weak in our knowledge of how our genome works. &lt;strong&gt;But none of these&#xA;  processes can add any data to the genome&lt;/strong&gt;, they just move data around.&#xA;  I must add another point here: some evolutionists place recombination&#xA;  in this list, but recombination is sexual mixing and once again cannot&#xA;  add any data to the genome. Recombination just takes the genome and&#xA;  mixes what is there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forandagainst.com/DNA_And_Evolution#fcmt17003&quot;&gt;comment by &quot;codeman&quot; on forandagainst.com&lt;/a&gt; (retrieved Sunday February 12th 2012 UTC):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You make it sound like DNA can choose what it wants to do. Mutations&#xA;  are caused by damage being done to the DNA by ultra violet light,&#xA;  radiation, etc. &lt;strong&gt;You can't find one example of information being added&#xA;  to DNA.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://conservapedia.com/Evolution&quot;&gt;conservapedia.com quoting Dr. Grady S. McMurtry&lt;/a&gt; (retrieved Sunday February 12th 2012 UTC):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mutations do not build one upon another beneficially. Mutations do not&#xA;  create new organs; they only modify existing organs and structures.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Mutations overwhelmingly lose information; they do not gain it;&lt;/strong&gt; [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1) And I thought it would be nice to have this on this site for visitors / future reference.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2) But perhaps this doesn't even make sense and is just a display of my ignorance about the complex mechanisms of genetics, reproduction, etc.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1170" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-02-12T05:35:22.233" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T16:12:15.900" Title="Has natural occuring genetic insertion ever been observed in direct offspring of some organism?" Tags="|biology|evolution|genetics|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7987" CreationDate="2012-02-11T22:24:19.840" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Precise study type you're looking for would be tougher to root out, but evidence of gene transfer between species is rampant.&#xA;Commonplace gene insertions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3307932&quot;&gt;Retroviral DNA content of the mouse genome.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer&quot;&gt;Horizontal gene transfer&lt;/a&gt; (Wikipedia, so generally readable)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crome.org/wp/2008/11/green-sea-slug-is-a-plant-animal-hybrid/&quot;&gt;Green sea slug is a plant-animal hybrid!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The slug steals chloroplasts from the algae it eats, but it does not incorporate the entire algae cells.  Chloroplasts can’t perform the whole photosynthesis chemical reaction all by themselves, but rather need some genes/proteins from the host algal cell.  This sea slug has incorporated the actual genes from the algae into its own cells&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google provides many more examples through:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=%20%22cross%20species%20gene%20transfer%22&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla%3aen-US%3aofficial&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&quot;&gt;&quot;cross species gene transfer&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastEditorDisplayName="user951" LastEditDate="2012-02-11T22:39:49.907" LastActivityDate="2012-02-11T22:39:49.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7987" CreationDate="2012-02-11T23:59:44.267" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;: There is evidence for not just mutations that allow organisms to do new things (which could be construed as microevolution), but for the appearance of completely new genes. Consequently, the claim &quot;no new information can be added to DNA&quot; is false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common &quot;gene insertions&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;horizontal gene transfer&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroviral_integration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gene insertion by retroviruses&lt;/a&gt;, have already been mentioned by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/7989/1690&quot;&gt;@Wayfaring Stranger&lt;/a&gt;. Note that there are mitochondrial genes that have found their way into our DNA, but again, these are existing genes that have been moved around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have recently come across &lt;a href=&quot;http://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?dbfrom=pubmed&amp;amp;id=20488894&amp;amp;retmode=ref&amp;amp;cmd=prlinks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; where they presented evidence that in maize &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize#Naming_conventions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(i.e. corn)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transposable_element&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;transposable elements&lt;/a&gt; (DNA elements that can copy and insert themselves into other parts of the DNA, sometimes carrying additional stuff with them)  had assembled a new, functional gene (functional being the important word here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an excerpt of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?dbfrom=pubmed&amp;amp;id=20488894&amp;amp;retmode=ref&amp;amp;cmd=prlinks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;abstract&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Transposons are major components of all eukaryotic genomes. Although traditionally regarded as causes of detrimental mutations, recent evidence suggests that transposons may play a role in host gene diversification and evolution. For example, host gene transduction by retroelements has been suggested to be both common and to have the potential to create new chimeric genes by the shuffling of existing sequences. &lt;strong&gt;We have previously shown that the maize (Zea mays subsp. mays) retrotransposon Bs1 has transduced sequences from three different host genes. Here, we provide evidence that these transduction events led to the generation of a chimeric new gene that is both transcribed and translated.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, parts of existing genes have been shuffled around by transposons, and have resulted in a functional, new gene that is being transcribed and seems to have acquired a functional role in the plant. This isn't just a mutation. This is the assembly of a novel gene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T02:45:25.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7987" CreationDate="2012-02-12T00:38:41.977" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps one of the most famous papers related to this is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zachary D. Blount, Christina Z. Borland, and Richard E. Lenski, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7899.abstract&quot;&gt;Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli&lt;/a&gt;. PNAS June 10, 2008 vol. 105 no. 23 7899-7906,  doi: 10.1073/pnas.0803151105&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As part of a two decade experiment, carefully watching the strains of a bacteria deal with a somewhat hostile (citrate-rich) environment, they found it had mutated the ability to thrive on citrate - something that that none of its ancestors could do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No population evolved the capacity to exploit citrate for &gt;30,000 generations, although each population tested billions of mutations. A citrate-using (Cit+) variant finally evolved in one population by 31,500 generations, causing an increase in population size and diversity. The long-delayed and unique evolution of this function might indicate the involvement of some extremely rare mutation. Alternately, it may involve an ordinary mutation, but one whose physical occurrence or phenotypic expression is contingent on prior mutations in that population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, they showed evolution (not merely natural selection) occurring right there in the lab. A series of mutations occurred that gave the bacteria abilities its ancestors did not have. And because they had frozen specimens of previous generations, they could repeat it, and prove the original strain did not have these mutations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper was greatly publicised when it was clumsily attacked by a creationist in what is now known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lenski_affair&quot;&gt;Lenski Affair&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T00:38:41.977" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7992" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-12T04:12:04.543" Score="7" ViewCount="871" Body="&lt;p&gt;Often in movies and comics characters wear a simple mask around the eyes, which seems successful at hiding their identities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples would be Zorro, Green Lantern, Robin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2MEx2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/green-celebrity-in-national/green-celebrity-news-first-photos-leak-of-green-lantern-art-poster-featuring-ryan-reynolds&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest that a face being obscured in this way would prevent most people from recognizing the face? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus question: What would be the minimum extent to which you could obscure a face and prevent positive identification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T04:12:04.543" Title="Would an eyemask obscure a persons identity?" Tags="|psychology|physiology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7927" CreationDate="2012-02-12T08:47:16.797" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many practitioners of yoga advise against the practice, according to a recent NY Times article (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/how-yoga-can-wreck-your-body.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;How yoga can wreck your body&quot;&lt;/a&gt;) discusses risks of this sport, with frequent mention of injuries caused by headstands. Most of the problems seem related to excessive pressure on the cervical vertebrae. Other problems mentioned are retinal tearing (due to pressure on/around the eyeballs?), blood flow disruption and nerve damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article makes no mention of any effects of increased blood flow to the brain or whether inversion can cause this, nor does it address any claims of unfiltered or unoxygenated fluids stored in the legs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3233" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-12T11:19:12.130" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T11:19:12.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7987" CreationDate="2012-02-12T14:29:44.507" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other answers have given a pretty exhaustive overview but let me add just &lt;strong&gt;some examples that can be observed in humans&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Up front: what you are asking for is a so-called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy-number_variation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;copy-number variation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (CNV), that is, a variation in the number of copies of a DNA segment from one individual to the next. CNVs actually encompass &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; variation in number – this includes deletion and insertion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CNVs are heavily studied since they are the main source of genetic variation, and there are some monogenetic diseases known to be caused by a simple CNV, and there are interesting CNVs responsible for quantitative traits. I’ll give an example for each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The elephant in the room: trisomy, as in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001992/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;trisomy 21&lt;/a&gt;, where a whole chromosome, or large parts of it, occur redundantly. This example is particularly interesting because first of all it’s a variation you can actually see under the microscope (by looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karyotype&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;karyptype&lt;/a&gt;) and second of all, because it arises from one generation to the next in offsprings, so the copy number can be directly compared.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Higher copy number of segments of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/307/5714/1434&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CCL3L1 gene&lt;/a&gt; cause lower susceptibility to HIV.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There’s a correspondence between populations’ diets and their copy &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v39/n10/abs/ng2123.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;number of amylase genes&lt;/a&gt;. Amylase is an enzyme necessary for the break-down of long carbohydrate chains (starch) into sugars which can be metabolised by the body. Individuals from populations with high-starch diet (Europeans and Japanese who eat corn and rice) have more copies of the AMY1 gene (coding for amylase) than individuals from hunter-gatherer or fishing populations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to conclude by saying that all this is well-known and not particularly new (although the amylase study is). Creationists who claim this hasn’t been observed and in particular &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Answers in Genesis&lt;/em&gt; are lying&lt;/strong&gt;. They are not only ignorant, they are intentionally dishonest and deceptive. It’s as simple as that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T14:29:44.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7998" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8003" CreationDate="2012-02-12T14:29:58.160" Score="33" ViewCount="3230" Body="&lt;p&gt;So-called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pox_party&quot;&gt;pox parties&lt;/a&gt; have been around in various forms in varying degrees of popularity since the 1980's, and are described on Wikipedia as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A pox party, or flu party or flu fling, is a social activity where children are deliberately exposed to a virus to promote immunity. Such parties are typically organized by parents on the premise of building the immune systems of their children against diseases such as chickenpox and measles (which can be more dangerous to adults than to children) or flu. Such practices are highly controversial and are discouraged by public health officials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any immunological advantage to having pox-parties for children, which advantage would not be gained in a safer way by taking the vaccine &lt;a href=&quot;http://archives.who.int/vaccines/en/varicella.shtml&quot;&gt;suggested by the WHO&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varicella_vaccine&quot;&gt;varicella vaccine&lt;/a&gt;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T15:24:22.777" Title="Are &quot;pox parties&quot; safer than vaccines for children?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|vaccines|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="7999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-12T14:30:20.237" Score="11" ViewCount="2636" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some &quot;sex magic&quot; practitioners assert that it is possible to achieve a higher state of consciousness, &quot;eroto-comatose lucidity&quot;, through basically making one fall asleep through too much sex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eroto-comatose_lucidity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eroto-comatose lucidity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eroto-comatose lucidity is a technique of sex magic known best by its formulation by English author and occultist Aleister Crowley, but which has several variations and is used in a number of ways by different spiritual communities. A common form of the ritual uses repeated sexual stimulation (but not to orgasm) to place the individual in a state between full sleep and full wakefulness as well as exhaustion, allowing the practitioner to commune with their god.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I do believe that this practice is adopted, I am fairly skeptical of the following claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that this is a reliable method for achieving a particular mind state (in comparison to e.g. meditation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that the state achieved is anything different from other mind states achieved via deprivation or extreme exhaustion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that sex is even necessary at all&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any studies been performed on the matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-23T09:13:01.117" LastActivityDate="2017-01-20T18:57:32.133" Title="Is eroto-comatose lucidity a state only achievable via sexual means?" Tags="|sexuality|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8000" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-12T15:12:45.317" Score="3" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;The old adage is “it's not what you know, but who you know”, being a short statement of the premise that ability is less important than knowing the right person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At one end of the spectrum is nepotism, as illustrated in this comic: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VuwIb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/i/it_s_not_what_you_know_but_who_you_know.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am more curious about the generic case – are abilities less influential than contacts for those seeking employment. I would expect this may vary by industry, but I am wondering if anyone has illuminated a generic trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies that indicate that having the right contacts is significantly more influential than skills and experience in determining whether someone seeking work successfully finds a job they want?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T15:12:45.317" Title="Is networking the most effective way to get employment?" Tags="|employment|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8001" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8005" CreationDate="2012-02-12T15:39:40.550" Score="14" ViewCount="48109" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is that human sperm has different physical characteristics (i.e. phenotype) depending on whether it is carrying an X or Y chromosome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One theory is that sperm that carry the male chromosome are tiny and fragile but very quick, whereas the female sperm are larger and hardier, but rather sluggish.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ivillage.com/gender-selection-how-to-influence/6-n-145504#ixzz1mBL0bLWs&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The male sperm are FAST... but die faster also. The female sperm are slow and steady and have a longer life span.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://community.babycenter.com/post/a1655455/male_sperm_vs_female_sperm_os&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The X sperm (which are the sperm that make females) live longer than the Y sperm (which are the sperm that make males). However, the Y sperm swim faster, so the chances are equally good that you will get a girl or a boy. &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Do_sperm_for_girls_live_longer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these sources provide references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do &quot;male&quot; sperm swim faster than &quot;female&quot; sperm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T16:34:11.680" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T20:14:27.257" Title="Do sperm that carry male chromosomes swim faster?" Tags="|biology|human-reproduction|gender-selection|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7998" CreationDate="2012-02-12T15:42:16.747" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;: Chickenpox as a disease results in 2 deaths per 100,000 cases, and about 2,000 per 100,000 cases of complications. Chickenpox vaccine results in ~0.15 deaths per 100,000 cases (most of which turn out to be due to natural varicella, so the true death rate is lower), and about 67.5 per 100,000 cases of complications. &lt;strong&gt;Thus, for children, vaccination is safer than pox parties.&lt;/strong&gt; However, dormant chickenpox virus from both vaccination or natural infection can cause shingles later in life if the immunity fades, and chickenpox re-exposure helps boost immunity. Thus, for adults who have had chickenpox or chickenpox vaccination, pox parties may have some benefit (though they would get a similar benefit from re-vaccination).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002559/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chickenpox&lt;/a&gt; is a usually mild infection, and children between 1 and 14 who get it, and who don't have troubles with the immune system, have cancer, or are taking steroids, have an excellent prognosis (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/969773-overview#aw2aab6b2b5aa&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Medscape&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise healthy children with varicella have excellent prognoses. In otherwise healthy children aged 1-14 years, the mortality rate is estimated at 2 deaths per 100,000 cases. The case-fatality rate in the general population is 6.7 cases per 100,000 population. Children with immunocompromised states, however, are at risk for severe disease and death. The mortality rate in children who are immunocompromised is much higher than that in otherwise healthy children. Among children with leukemia, the mortality rate of varicella is 7%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One study suggested that nearly 1:50 varicella cases are associated with complications.&#xA;Among the most serious complications are varicella pneumonia and&#xA;encephalitis; both are associated with a high mortality rate. Before&#xA;universal vaccination, most varicella-related deaths in the United&#xA;States were from associated encephalitis, pneumonia, secondary&#xA;bacterial infection, and Reye syndrome. (See Complications.) In&#xA;addition, significant concerns have been raised about the association&#xA;of varicella with severe invasive group A streptococcal disease.[15]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The disease can be serious in neonates, depending on the timing of&#xA;infection in the mother. Varicella during pregnancy can cause various&#xA;adverse outcomes for mother and infant, depending on the stage of&#xA;pregnancy. Neonatal varicella mortality rates can reach 30%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been deaths following chickenpox vaccination, though the rate of death is 10-fold smaller than for chickenpox itself (0.15 in 100,000 vaccinations), and whenever an autopsy has been performed, it was found that the cause of death was from wild-type chickenpox virus, rather than from the vaccine, and that the patient had undiagnosed cancer or other complications (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/284/10/1271.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wise RP, Salive ME, Braun MM, et al. (2000). &amp;quot;Postlicensure safety surveillance for varicella vaccine&amp;quot;. JAMA 284 (10): 1271–9.&lt;/a&gt;; make sure to read the reports in Box 1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[The US Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS)] received 6574 case reports of adverse events in recipients of varicella vaccine, a rate of 67.5 reports per 100,000 doses sold. Approximately 4% of reports described serious adverse events, including 14 deaths. The most frequently reported adverse events were rashes, possible vaccine failures, and injection site reactions. Misinterpretation of varicella serology after vaccination appeared to account for 17% of reports of possible vaccine failures. Among 251 patients with herpes zoster, 14 had the vaccine strain of varicella zoster virus (VZV), while 12 had the wild-type virus. None of 30 anaphylaxis cases was fatal. An immunodeficient patient with pneumonia had the vaccine strain of VZV in a lung biopsy. Pregnant women occasionally received varicella vaccine through confusion with varicella zoster immunoglobulin. Although the role of varicella vaccine remained unproven in most serious adverse event reports, there were a few positive rechallenge reports and consistency of many cases with syndromes recognized as complications of natural varicella.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both chickenpox and the chickenpox vaccine can lead to shingles, a neurological disease that occurs when dormant virus re-emerges as immunity fades. To reduce the risk of shingles, immune people need to be re-exposed to the virus or be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varicella_vaccine#Dangers_of_chickenpox&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;re-vaccinated in their 50s&lt;/a&gt;. Re-exposure used to happen automatically before vaccination, however, since vaccination has lead to a ~80% decrease in the number of varicella cases, natural re-exposure has become more difficult (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/969773-overview#aw2aab6b2b5aa&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;medscape reference &lt;/a&gt; below). Thus, there has been an increase in the incidence of shingles. Pox parties can be one way of getting re-exposed to varicella.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before varicella vaccine use became widespread, 4 million cases of chickenpox were reported annually. National seroprevalence data for 1988-1994 indicated that 95.5% of adults aged 20-29 years, 98.9% of adults aged 30-39 years, and more than 99.6% of adults older than 40 years were immune to varicella.[4] The disease was responsible for 11,000 hospitalizations each year and approximately 50-100 deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The adoption of universal vaccination against varicella in 1995 reduced the incidence of varicella, as well as the associated&#xA;morbidity and mortality rates.[5, 6, 7, 8] By 2000, vaccination&#xA;coverage among children 19-35 months in 3 communities in Texas,&#xA;California, and Pennsylvania had reached 74-84%, and reported total&#xA;varicella cases had declined 71-84%. Most of the decline occurred&#xA;among children aged 12 months to 4 years; however, incidence declined&#xA;in all age groups, including infants and adults.[9]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, fewer than 10 deaths occur per year, most of them in unimmunized people. Although vaccination coverage has exceeded 80%&#xA;over the past few years, outbreaks of breakthrough varicella still&#xA;occur in schools and daycare centers.[10, 11, 12]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1690" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T15:42:16.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7998" CreationDate="2012-02-12T15:50:50.093" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer:  No, pox parties are NOT safer than vaccines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/1513/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-a-chicken-pox-party-vs-immunization/&quot;&gt;This was asked at the Parenting StackExchange&lt;/a&gt;.  Here is my answer from that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/vaccination.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PROS of VACCINES&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The vaccine is administered in a doctor's office.  Understand that NOTHING is 100% safe (even breathing), so should there be any reactions, you will be with a doctor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The patient that gets the vaccine will most likely not suffer from the disease, and the numerous possible side effects (scarring, pneumonia, liver damage, brain damage, death).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A vaccinated individual contributes to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Herd Immunity&lt;/a&gt; without going through a contagious stage, thereby offering protection to individuals who are immune-compromised, or may be unable to get the vaccine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The rate of SERIOUS complications with a vaccine are about 1 in 1,000,000 (and keep in mind, the majority of these complications are non-permanent treatable reactions such as anaphalaxis if in the presence of a doctor).  Other complications appear at about a rate of 1 in 100,000.  The complications from the disease itself are about 1 in 10,000 for chicken pox (and depending on the classification, as high as 1 in 50).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The economic impact is lessened by a vaccine (a good counter argument to the &quot;Big Pharma&quot; lie...  In general, a vaccine nets any company much, much LESS than treating someone with the same disease).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CONS of VACCINES&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;None beyond those listed above that have any scientific merit (i.e. the 1 in a million chance of a severe negative reaction).  Or the minor issue of the vaccine not totally providing immunity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PROS of POX-PARTY&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A very high likelihood that immunity will be gained through exposure (although it should be noted that the level of immunity is the same as for a vaccine...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CONS of POX-PARTY&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/about/complications.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The much higher possibility of side effects&lt;/a&gt; (1 in 10,000 versus 1 in a million) such as brain damage, liver damage, death&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The possibility of spreading the disease to immune-compromised or those who may not know their immunity is somehow compromised.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not being in the presence of a doctor during administration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The economic impact of having to care for a sick child (staying home from work, the child missing school, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/about/prevention-treatment.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the cost of additional medicines to deal with symptoms&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You get sick!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some good educational sites for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chop.edu/service/vaccine-education-center/a-look-at-each-vaccine/varicella-chickenpox-vaccine.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2011/07/vaccination-could-eliminate-chicken-pox-related-deaths-in-the-u-s/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stanford (and I) think it's a good idea to &lt;em&gt;eliminate deaths&lt;/em&gt; from this preventable disease&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure if this link will work in this format, but here is an interesting video about opting out of vaccines in general (and the consequences):  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newsy.com/embed-video/9802/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.newsy.com/embed-video/9802/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole idea of these parties are based on the false premise that somehow natural immunity is better than a vaccine, or that vaccines are dangerous.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://factsnotfantasy.com/vaccines.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Both of these ideas are outright false, and quite often deliberate lies spread by anti-vax pro-disease individuals&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:41:15.657" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T12:45:21.507" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7987" CreationDate="2012-02-12T16:12:15.900" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a particularly insidious canard by creationists, because it has the sound of plausibility to a layperson.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://factsnotfantasy.com/creationists.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I have my Facts Not Fantasy page set up where this canard is addressed head on as far as &quot;information&quot; and how it applies to genetics.  As item 22 on this page says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this is a particularly insidious brand of canard, because it relies upon the fact that the topic of information, and its rigorous analysis, is replete with misunderstanding. However, instead of seeking to clarify the misconceptions, creationist canards about information perpetuate those misconceptions for duplicitous apologetic purposes. A classic one being the misuse of the extant rigorous treatments of information, and the misapplication of different information treatments to different situations, either through ignorance, or wilful mendacity. For example, Claude Shannon provided a rigorous treatment of information, but a treatment that was &lt;strong&gt;strictly applicable to information transmission&lt;/strong&gt;, and NOT applicable to information storage. Therefore, application of Shannon information to information storage in the genome is a &lt;strong&gt;misuse&lt;/strong&gt; of Shannon's work. The &lt;strong&gt;correct&lt;/strong&gt; information analysis to apply to storage is Kolmogorov's analysis, which erects an entirely different measure of information content that is intended strictly to be applicable to &lt;strong&gt;storage&lt;/strong&gt;. Mixing and matching the two is a familiar bait-and-switch operation that propagandists for creationist doctrine are fond of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the ultimate reason why creationist canards about information &lt;strong&gt;are&lt;/strong&gt; canards, is simply this. Information is NOT a magic entity. It doesn't require magic to produce it. Ultimately, &quot;information&quot; is nothing more than &lt;strong&gt;the observational data that is extant about the current state of a system&lt;/strong&gt;. That is IT. No magic needed. All that happens, in real world physical systems, is that different system states lead to different outcomes when the interactions within the system take place. Turing alighted upon this notion when he wrote his landmark paper on computable numbers, and used the resulting theory to establish that Hilbert's conjecture upon decidability in formal axiomatic systems was false. Of course, it's far easier to visualise the process at work, when one has an entity such as a Turing machine to analyse this - a Turing machine has precise, well-defined states, and precise, well-defined interactions that take place when the machine occupies a given state. But this is precisely what we have with DNA - a system that can exist in a number of well-defined states, whose states determine the nature of the interactions that occur during translation, and which result in different outcomes for different states. indeed, the DNA molecule plays a passive role in this: its function is simply to store the sequence of states that will result, ultimately, in the synthesis of a given protein, and is akin to the tape running through a Turing machine. The real hard work is actually performed by the ribosomes, which take that state data and use it to bolt together amino acids into chains to form proteins, which can be thought of as individual biological 'Turing machines' whose job is to perform, mechanically and mindlessly in accordance with the electrostatic and chemical interactions permitting this, the construction of a protein using the information arising from DNA as the template. Anyone who thinks magic is needed in all of this, once again, is in need of an education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the canard that &quot;mutations cannot produce new information&quot;, this is manifestly false. Not only does the above analysis explicitly permit this, the production of new information (in the form of new states occupied by DNA molecules) &lt;strong&gt;has been observed taking place in the real world and documented in the relevant scientific literature&lt;/strong&gt;. If you can't be bothered reading any of this voluminous array of scientific papers, and understanding the contents thereof, before erecting this particularly moronic canard, then don't bother erecting the canard in the first place, because it will simply demonstrate that you are scientifically ignorant. Indeed, the extant literature not only covers scientific papers explicitly dealing with information content in the genome, such as Thomas D. Schneider's paper handily entitled Evolution And Biological Information to make your life that bit easier, but also papers on de novo gene origination, of which there are a good number, several of which I have presented here in the past in previous threads. The mere existence of these scientific papers, and the data that they document, blows tiresome canards about &quot;information&quot; out of the water with a nuclear depth charge. Post information canards at your peril after reading this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst dwelling on information, another creationist canard also needs to be dealt with here, namely the false conflation of information with ascribed meaning. Which can be demonstrated to be entirely false by reference to the following sequence of hexadecimal bytes in a computer's memory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;81 16 00 2A FF 00&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To a computer with an 8086 processor, those bytes correspond to the following single machine language instruction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ADC [2A00H], 00FFH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To a computer with a 6502 processor, those bytes correspond to the following machine language instruction sequence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CLC ASL ($00,X) LDX #$FF BRK&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To a computer with a 6809 processor, those bytes correspond to the following machine language instruction sequence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CMPA #$16 NEG $2AFF NEG ??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the ?? denoting the fact that for this processor, the byte sequence is incomplete, and two more bytes are needed to supply the address operand for the NEG instruction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, we have three different ascribed meanings to one stream of bytes. Yet, none of these ascribed meanings influences either the Shannon information content, when that stream is transmitted from one computer to another, or the Kolmogorov information content when those bytes are stored in memory. Ascribed meaning is irrelevant to both rigorous information measures. As is to be expected, when one regards information content simply as observational data about the state of the system (in this case, the values of the stored bytes in memory). Indeed, it is entirely possible to regard ascribed meaning as nothing other than the particular interactions driven by the underlying data, once that data is being processed, which of course will differ from processor to processor. Which means that under such an analysis, even ascribed meaning, which creationists fallaciously conflate with information content, also requires no magical input. All that is required is the existence of a set of interactions that will produce different outcomes from the different observed states of the system (with the term 'observation' being used here sensu lato to mean any interaction that is capable of differentiating between the states of the system of interest).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T16:12:15.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8001" CreationDate="2012-02-12T17:05:39.980" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GCRzJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;XY&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pc.maricopa.edu/Biology/pfinkenstadt/BIO202/202LessonBuilder/Reproductive/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A famous method for gender selection is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shettles_Method&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shettles Method&lt;/a&gt;, which makes use of the&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;male (Y) sperm are faster than female (X) sperm&lt;/em&gt; &amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;But according to &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1440662/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Entrenched misinformation about X and Y sperm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (2006):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The widely held idea that spermatozoa bearing the Y chromosome (Y&#xA;sperm) swim faster than those bearing the X chromosome (X sperm) seems&#xA;to have originated from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14445926&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shettles's work in 1960&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, using phase-contrast&#xA;microscopy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading Shettles's reports in &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; and other peer reviewed journals,&#xA;many researchers thereafter believed that Y sperm swim faster than X&#xA;sperm. The finding particularly influenced research on sperm&#xA;separation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although several attempts have been made to correct this impression,&#xA;it was not until the development of computer assisted sperm analysis&#xA;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3384107&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CASA&lt;/a&gt;) that reliable observations could be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, researchers&#xA;have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11191075&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;found no morphological differences between human X sperm and Y&#xA;sperm&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Neither mature sperm nor their precursors possess significant&#xA;morphological differences between X and Y genotypes&lt;/strong&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9621308&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Y bull sperm do not swim faster than X sperm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16412741&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dimensional assessment of X-bearing and Y-bearing haploid and disomic human sperm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-12T17:12:51.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8007" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13955" CreationDate="2012-02-12T21:28:24.563" Score="17" ViewCount="17093" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=tCAffMSWSzY&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt;, makes the following claim, as aired on Fox News:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Obama] did bow to the Muslim King, while he did not do it to the British Queen of England, and by bowing he showed the world that &quot;I am subservient, I do bow down to you as a Muslim King.&quot; Something that no other president has done with Saudi Arabia. [5:26]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... it made an American president, for the first time in history, bow to a Muslim King. [6:29]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video makes many other claims, most of which are far too subjective to be worthy of consideration, let alone on-topic here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in only the following claim:  &lt;strong&gt;Obama is the first U.S. president to bow to a Muslim King.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I see two areas of easy contention.  The first being the definition of a bow. Does the gesture shown in the video carry the significance of a &quot;bow&quot; in Muslim cultures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if what Obama did &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; considered a bow in the relevant culture, is he indeed the first president to have done it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For bonus points, have other U.S. presidents bowed to other Muslim world leaders who did not carry the title of King?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-13T09:30:05.370" LastActivityDate="2019-09-27T11:33:24.487" Title="Is Obama the first U.S. president to &quot;bow to a Muslim King&quot;?" Tags="|history|united-states|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8011" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8012" CreationDate="2012-02-13T01:26:25.397" Score="10" ViewCount="736" Body="&lt;p&gt;In comments on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7946/would-a-laser-weapon-visibly-fire&quot;&gt;Would a laser weapon visibly fire?&lt;/a&gt;, it is claimed that the majority of devices sold to consumers as lasers are, in fact, LED-based. I think that (at least in the US), laser devices up to a few milliwatts power are legal and inexpensive. For instance, I own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.meade.com/laserpointer/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this device&lt;/a&gt;, which I believe to be a laser. Is it? More generally, are &lt;em&gt;real&lt;/em&gt; lasers available for purchase to consumers for less than, let us say, $100US?   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T23:33:48.837" Title="Are consumer-grade laser pointers sold in the US lasers?" Tags="|united-states|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8011" CreationDate="2012-02-13T01:59:51.990" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;All the laser pointers I have seen, are in fact lasers.  It's easy to tell,  If you point one at a wall about 20 feet away,  it will create a very small point of light,  a few mm across.  If you do that with a LED light, the beam,  if it's powerful enough will be anywhere from half a meter to a meter in diameter.  Only a laser can keep a beam that tight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The device you link to is a real Laser&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_diode&quot;&gt; laser Diodes&lt;/a&gt;, which might be the source of the LED comment. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lasermate.com/GRImodule.htm&quot;&gt;Here are some commercially available laser diode modules&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small, inefficient lasers are cheap. They're used in DVD players, CD players, bar code readers, and in the mouse I'm using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="412" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2012-02-13T18:14:11.507" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T18:14:11.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8017" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8023" CreationDate="2012-02-13T13:50:44.433" Score="19" ViewCount="22533" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qi.com/&quot;&gt;QI&lt;/a&gt; Fact of the Day on 10th November 2011:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sir Isaac Newton was a cold, austere and difficult man. The slightest criticism of his work drove him into a furious rage, and his life was blighted by vicious feuds with other eminent mathematicians. A hypochondriac, obsessive, neurotic homosexual, he had no friends to speak of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What evidence is there to support the claim that Newton was a homosexual?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T08:58:25.347" Title="Was Sir Isaac Newton a homosexual?" Tags="|history|physics|sexuality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7783" CreationDate="2012-02-13T14:32:17.987" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I could not find any polls of economists verifying whether they considered the theory that the amount of labor is fixed to actually be a fallacy, I was able to find the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/1199-econgen.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy&lt;/a&gt; which randomly surveyed 1,510 members of the American population and 250 people with PhDs in economics, back in 1996. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The survey does not ask specifically about the lump of labor fallacy, but it asks enough questions about other topics go give us an informed guess as to what their opinion about it might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When asked &quot;Generally speaking, do you think each of the following is good or bad for the nation's economy, or don't you think it makes much difference?&quot;, few economists spoke negatively about: more women entering the workforce (2%), increased use of technology in the workplace (0%), trade agreements between the U.S. and other countries (3%), nor the recent downsizing of large corporations (16%). That's not consistent with a group of people who believes labor is zero-sum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Luddites&lt;/a&gt; opposed the increased use of technology in the workplace because they feared it would leave them without a job. Yet, none of the polled economists (i.e., 0%) oppose increased use of technology in the workplace. In fact, when asked if technology displacing workers was a reason the economy is not doing better than it is, only 2% would call it a major reason, with 24% calling a minor reason, and 74% saying it was not a reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, while the majority of Americans (54%) believe that trade agreements cost jobs to United States, economists overwhelmingly disagree. When asked &quot;Do you think that trade agreements between the United States and other countries have helped create more jobs in the U.S., or have they cost the U.S. jobs, or haven't they made much of a difference?&quot;, 50% of economists respond that trade agreements have helped create jobs and 42% respond that they have not made much of a difference. In fact, only 5% of polled economists believe trade agreements have cost the United States jobs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, when asked if companies sending jobs overseas and downsizing were part of the reason the economy is not doing as well as it might otherwise be doing, the majority (57% and 58%) claimed it was not a reason. Only a small minority (5% and 6%), claimed it was a major reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another case where the idea that labor is fixed can be a factor is immigration, as @matt_black mentions in his answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7738/is-there-a-link-between-rising-uk-youth-unemployment-and-immigration-from-easter&quot;&gt;Is there a link between rising UK youth unemployment and immigration from Eastern Europe?&lt;/a&gt; According to the survey, 47% of surveyed Americans think that &quot;There are too many immigrants&quot; is a major reason why the economy is not doing better than it is. To that 47%, you have to add another 32% who believe that it is a minor reason for why the economy is not doing better than it is. By comparison, only 1% of economist will list it as a major reason and 19% will list it as a minor reason, which puts the number of economist who think it is not a reason at 80%. Furthermore, when pressed on what was the primary factor that is holding back the economy, the percentage drops to 0% for economists (versus 7% for the general public).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, when asked &quot;Some people say that these are economically unsettled times because of new technology, competition from foreign countries, and downsizing. Looking ahead 20 years, do you think these changes will eventually be good or bad for the country or don't you think these changes will make much difference?&quot;, 93% of economists believe these changes will be good for the economy in the long term while only 2% think it will be bad for the economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;In Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I could find no poll asking specifically about the lump of labor fallacy, the result of the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy are not congruent with a group of people who believe there a fixed amount of labor. Generally speaking, economists favor free-trade, replacing workers by technology, and the participation of women and immigrants in the workforce. Moreover, they don't view either companies downsizing or sending jobs overseas if it's more profitable, as detrimental to the economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, in the long term, practically all economists think these things will be beneficial to the economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I will conclude it's extremely likely that the majority of economists believe the claim that the amount of work available to labourers is fixed to be fallacious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2017-10-11T03:33:42.047" LastActivityDate="2017-10-11T03:33:42.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8020" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8021" CreationDate="2012-02-13T15:25:04.910" Score="21" ViewCount="1683" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20111129/NEWS07/311299974/1067/NEWS07&quot;&gt;A northern Indiana hospital that erected billboards with the message “Obesity is a Disease. Not a Decision” is facing a backlash from people offended by the signs’ suggestion that obesity isn’t a lifestyle choice.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sceptical of the notion that obesity is a disease in the classic sense. Is there any medical evidence to support the notion that it is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5885" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-02-19T20:24:41.837" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T22:30:13.933" Title="Is obesity a disease?" Tags="|medical-science|obesity|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8020" CreationDate="2012-02-13T15:32:23.430" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;No doubt it is a disease in medical sense of the word. It has a code on WHO's ICD-10 (&lt;em&gt;The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.who.int/classifications/icd10/browse/2010/en#/E66&quot;&gt;ICD-10 E66.0 Obesity due to excess calories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Common definitions of disease:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an&#xA;  organism.&quot; &lt;em&gt;(Dorland's Medical Dictionary)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;disease:&lt;/strong&gt; a condition of the living animal or plant body or of one of its parts&#xA;  that impairs normal functioning and is typically manifested by&#xA;  distinguishing signs and symptoms &lt;em&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/disease&quot;&gt;Merriam-Webster&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is little doubt that obesity is a disease according to both of above definitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, complete misunderstanding comes from interpreting &lt;em&gt;&quot;obesity is a disease&quot;&lt;/em&gt; as &lt;em&gt;&quot;obesity is caused by a disease&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. However, in reality diet and lack of exercise are the leading causes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cause of obesity is complex and multifactorial. Within the context&#xA;  of environmental, social and genetic factors, at the simplest level&#xA;  obesity results from long-term positive energy balance — the&#xA;  interaction of energy intake and energy expenditure. The rapid&#xA;  increase in the prevalence of obesity over the past 20 years is &lt;strong&gt;a&#xA;  result of environmental and cultural influences rather than genetic&#xA;  factors.&lt;/strong&gt; With progressive improvements in the standard of living in&#xA;  developed and developing countries, overnutrition and sedentary&#xA;  lifestyle have supplanted physical labour and regular physical&#xA;  activity, which has resulted in positive energy balance and&#xA;  overweight.  &lt;em&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1839777/&quot;&gt;2006 Canadian clinical practice guidelines on the management and prevention of obesity in adults and children&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is absolutely no contradiction between obesity being a disease, and the fact that it's caused by peoples' bad habits. There are numerous diseases, which are caused by bad habits. For example alcohol abuse if considered disease (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.who.int/classifications/icd10/browse/2010/en#/F10&quot;&gt;ICD-10 F10&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;), so is cocaine addiction (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.who.int/classifications/icd10/browse/2010/en#/F14&quot;&gt;ICD-10 F14&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;). However this does not mean that you can just use &quot;it's a disease&quot; as excuse, they are results of one's decisions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/gbd/visualizations/gbd-2010-change-leading-causes-and-risks-between-1990-and-2010&quot;&gt;Global Burden of Disease&lt;/a&gt; metrics, &lt;em&gt;high body-mass index&lt;/em&gt; ranks as the &lt;strong&gt;6th highest death risk factor&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2015-06-11T22:30:13.933" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T22:30:13.933" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8011" CreationDate="2012-02-13T17:43:42.727" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The device you have is a real laser pointer, with a wavelength of 532nm and an output power &amp;lt;5mW - and I can pick one up for $70 or £50. &#xA;You can also get ones with a power output of up to 1W for personal usage - as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wickedlasers.com/lasers/Spyder_III_Pro_Arctic_Series-96-37.html?gclid=CK6UrJm_m64CFVRItAodL11dHw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one proudly states&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are widely available in the US and the rest of the world, so &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_pointer#United_States&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;relevant legislation for you in the US is as follows (from Wikipedia)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Laser pointers are Class II or Class IIIa devices, with output beam power less than 5 milliwatts (&amp;lt;5 mW). According to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, more powerful lasers may not be sold or promoted as laser pointers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, any laser with class higher than IIIa (more than 5 milliwatts) requires a key-switch interlock and other safety features.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shining a laser pointer of any class at an aircraft is illegal and punishable by a fine of up to $11,000.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All laser products offered in commerce in the US must be registered with the FDA, regardless of output power.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T17:43:42.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8017" CreationDate="2012-02-13T19:58:49.617" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the book &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.at/books?id=k-GjZ7gnWoQC&amp;amp;lpg=PA83&amp;amp;ots=fUSFMnu2xg&amp;amp;dq=isaac%20newton%20homosexual&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;pg=PA83#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=homosexual&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Sir Isaac Newton: Brilliant Mathematician and Scientist&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;&lt;br&gt;(by &lt;strong&gt;Natalie M. Rosinsky&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Isaac Newton] spent almost all of 1689 in London [...] At that time, Newton began what was possibly the strongest personal relationship of his life. It was with a young Swiss mathematician named &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Fatio_de_Duillier&quot;&gt;Nicolas Fatio de Duillier&lt;/a&gt; [...] &lt;strong&gt;While there is no proof that either man was homosexual, their letters suggest that their affection for one another was romantic.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/prism.php?id=40&quot;&gt;The Newton Project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It has also been suggested - though this is purely conjectural and much disputed - that he was a repressed homosexual&lt;/strong&gt; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=156180&quot;&gt;Times Higher Education - Core blimey! Was apple man gay?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/jan/18/schools.uk2&quot;&gt;The Guardian - Gay history month to 'out' Newton and Nightingale&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2012-02-13T19:58:49.617" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8026" CreationDate="2012-02-13T22:24:40.563" Score="9" ViewCount="1428" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that taking an a pill of acetylsalicylic acid (ASA aka Aspirin) a day can help &lt;a href=&quot;http://men.webmd.com/features/aspirin-day-not&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reduce the risk of heart disease, strokes, cancer and now Alzheimer's&lt;/a&gt;. From the linked article to WebMD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've long known that aspirin reduces the risk of heart attacks and strokes while increasing your chances of surviving them. But now this household drug may protect you in other ways, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newer evidence indicates that aspirin can also reduce the risk of cancer of the colon, esophagus, stomach, rectum, and prostate. And most recently, the humble aspirin has offered the tantalizing possibility that it may help protect against Alzheimer's disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has ASA been shown in peer-reviewed journals to significantly reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and Alzheimer's?&lt;/strong&gt; Are there no associated risks that offset these benefits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside: &lt;em&gt;If ASA has been shown to be so effective, I wonder why do we not put it in eg table salt.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T18:46:26.723" Title="Does an aspirin a day have health benefits?" Tags="|medical-science|pharmaceutical|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8025" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8066" CreationDate="2012-02-14T01:27:13.847" Score="25" ViewCount="45204" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://whitenoisemp3s.com&quot;&gt;http://whitenoisemp3s.com&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simplynoise.com&quot;&gt;http://www.simplynoise.com&lt;/a&gt;, as well as a multitude of &quot;concentration apps&quot; on Android Market and iPhone App Store propose the idea that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_noise&quot;&gt;white noise&lt;/a&gt; improves your ability to focus and concentrate. I've seen similar claims for pink and brown noise as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there seems to be some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ask-the-brains-background-noise&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt; suggesting that it actually has a negative effect on learning and memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which is it? Is it a good idea or not to listen to [insert color] noise when trying to focus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T13:26:56.433" Title="Does white noise improve concentration?" Tags="|psychology|concentration|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8024" CreationDate="2012-02-14T04:34:34.120" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whew, lots of questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Does aspirin reduce risk of heart-disease or stroke?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctsu.ox.ac.uk/projects/att&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Antithrombotic Trialists' Collaboration&lt;/a&gt; published &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/324/7329/71&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Collaborative meta-analysis of randomised trials of antiplatelet therapy for prevention of death, myocardial infarction, and stroke in high risk patients.&lt;/a&gt; BMJ. 2002 Jan 12;324(7329):71-86.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aspirin (or another oral antiplatelet drug) is protective in most types of patient at increased risk of occlusive vascular events, including those with an acute myocardial infarction or ischaemic stroke, unstable or stable angina, previous myocardial infarction, stroke or cerebral ischaemia, peripheral arterial disease, or atrial fibrillation. Low dose aspirin (75-150 mg daily) is an effective antiplatelet regimen for long term use, but in acute settings an initial loading dose of at least 150 mg aspirin may be required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They recommend aspirin (or equivalent) for known high risk people. They don't know if it is possible to generally detect high risk people from the healthy population. They don't recommend aspirin for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These results reinforce the value of ensuring that antiplatelet therapy with 75-150 mg aspirin daily (or some other effective antiplatelet regimen) is considered routinely for all such patients at high or intermediate risk of occlusive vascular events (more than about 2% a year), irrespective of whether they have already had a major vascular event. An unanswered question, however, is whether it is possible to identify particular groups of apparently healthy people who may be at increased risk of myocardial infarction or stroke and for whom the benefits of daily aspirin outweigh the hazards. This is currently being investigated in an analysis of primary prevention trials. &lt;strong&gt;For most healthy individuals, however, for whom the risk of a vascular event is likely to be substantially less than 1% a year, daily aspirin may well be inappropriate.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: An errata has been applied to this section.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Does aspirin reduce risk of cancers?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kind of. Maybe. No. Cancer is a big area; it isn't a single disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aspirin reduces the chance of some cancers from &lt;em&gt;recurring&lt;/em&gt;. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Asano TK., McLeod RS. &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004079/colorectal-bowel-cancer-is-common-worldwide-but-is-especially-prevalent-in-industrialised-countries.-genes-diet-and-lifestyle-all-seem-to-be-important-in-the-development-of-bowel-cancer.&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Non steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) and aspirin for preventing colorectal adenomas and carcinomas.&lt;/a&gt; Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2004, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD004079. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD004079.pub2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was evidence from three pooled [Randomly Controlled Trials] that [Aspirin] significantly reduces the recurrence of sporadic adenomatous polyps after one to three years. There is evidence from short-term studies to support regression, but not elimination or prevention of [colorectal adenomas] in [familial adenomatous polyposis].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirin#Experimental&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reasonable discussion&lt;/a&gt; on some of the still-too-early-to-tell results, which includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not helpful for prostate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mixed results for pancreatic.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some evidence for colon, and lung.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inconclusive for upper GI tract.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Does aspirin reduce risk of Alzheimer's disease?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The jury is still out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper found that aspirin may help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archneur.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/57/11/1586&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anti-inflammatory Drugs Protect Against Alzheimer Disease at Low Doses&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;G. Anthony Broe, FRACP; David A. Grayson, PhD; Helen M. Creasey, FRACP; Louise M. Waite, FRACP; Barney J. Casey, MPsych; Hayley P. Bennett, MSc; William S. Brooks, MBBS, MPH; Glenda M. Halliday, PhD Arch Neurol. 2000;57:1586-1591.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As expected, there was an inverse association between nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and aspirin (and unexpectedly angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors) and AD. This association was not observed with vascular dementia or any other diagnoses. Analysis showed no evidence for a dosage effect, ie, responses were equivalent for low and high doses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas this one suggests it may harm:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurology.org/content/48/3/626.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Risk of Alzheimer's disease and duration of NSAID use&lt;/a&gt; Walter F. Stewart, PhD, MPH, Claudia Kawas, MD, Maria Corrada, ScM and E. Jeffrey Metter, MD. Neurology March 1, 1997 vol. 48 no. 3 626-632&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper concluded it didn't help existing Alzheimer's patients:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AD2000 Collaborative Group, Bentham P, Gray R, Sellwood E, Hills R, Crome P, Raftery J. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18068522&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aspirin in Alzheimer's disease (AD2000): a randomised open-label trial.&lt;/a&gt; Lancet Neurol. 2008 Jan;7(1):41-9.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although aspirin is commonly used in dementia, in patients with typical [Alzheimer's Disease] 2 years of treatment with low-dose aspirin has no worthwhile benefit and increases the risk of serious bleeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conflicting studies? Time to look for a meta-analysis. The Cochrane Collaboration don't know yet, but they &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD006378/aspirin-and-anti-inflammatory-drugs-for-alzheimers-disease&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;plan to find out&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Does aspirin have any adverse side-effects?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Many, many side-effects - generally mild or rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This (unreferenced, but likely reliable) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugs.com/sfx/aspirin-side-effects.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pharmaceuticals site&lt;/a&gt; lists many of them. Here are some reduced highlights:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gastrointestinal, including gastric mucosal lesions (very common), epigastric distress (very common), gastrointestinal bleeding (common in the elderly),  hemorrhage, peptic ulcers, perforation, small bowel enteropathy, and esophageal ulcerations and maybe appendicitis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Renal, including decreases in renal blood flow. High doses of NSAIDs in some high risk groups has (rarely) produced acute renal failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hematologic, such as increased blood fibrinolytic activity. Rare cases of hypoprothrombinemia, thrombocytopenia, thrombocyturia, megaloblastic anemia, and pancytopenia. I have no idea what any of those mean, but they don't sound fun at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hypersensitivity, including bronchospasm, rhinitis, conjunctivitis, urticaria, angioedema, and anaphylaxis. Commonly a problem amongst asthmatics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dermatologic, including  Stevens-Johnson syndrome and a lichenoid eruption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hepatic, including hepatotoxicity and cholestatic hepatitis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Oncologic, maybe pancreatic cancer, which is a particularly horrible cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Metabolic, including dehydration and hyperkalemia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cardiovascular, including salicylate-induced variant angina, ventricular ectopy, conduction abnormalities, and hypotension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nervous system, including agitation, cerebral edema, coma, confusion, dizziness, headache, cranial hemorrhage, lethargy and seizures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reye's syndrome&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Musculoskeletal, including rhabdomyolysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Respiratory, including hyperpnea, pulmonary edema, and tachypnea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Endocrine, including hypoglycemia  and hyperglycemia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ocular, including localized periorbital edema.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspirin#Adverse_effects&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; does a reasonable job here too, explaining more of the background.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that you are totally scared off from aspirin, please try to remember that these are generally either low risk or minor. The benefits of aspirin for occasional use, or where the stroke/heart risks are heavy, is probably warranted. However, these are serious considerations before popping them every day just for their prophylactic effects on Alzheimer's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T02:41:01.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8027" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-14T06:00:08.037" Score="14" ViewCount="23545" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine was talking about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vincelewis.net/iceman.html&quot;&gt;The Iceman&lt;/a&gt;, a killer that supposedly used cyanide absorbed through the skin as his murder weapon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kuklinski favored the use of cyanide as it was quick kill poison, quicker than either strychnine or arsenic and he would administer it in various ways, he may spray it out of an atomiser type aerosol, or he would accidentally spill it over someone where it would eventually absorb through the skin.  Another simple method was just put the cyanide straight onto his victims food, he once took one of his victims out to lunch and put cyanide on his burger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it actually possible to die from absorbing cyanide through the skin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-02-14T06:13:48.963" LastActivityDate="2017-09-30T11:29:19.367" Title="Can you die by absorbing cyanide through the skin?" Tags="|toxicology|chemistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8027" CreationDate="2012-02-14T06:38:51.827" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The World Health Organization report in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inchem.org/documents/cicads/cicads/cicad61.htm&quot;&gt;Concise International Chemical Assessment Document 61: &#xA;HYDROGEN CYANIDE AND CYANIDES: HUMAN HEALTH ASPECTS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Following application of cyanides in aqueous solution to the intact skin of New Zealand rabbits, the dermal LD50s of hydrogen cyanide, sodium cyanide, and potassium cyanide were 0.260, 0.298, and 0.343 mmol/kg body weight, respectively (corresponding to 6.8, 7.7, and 8.9 mg cyanide/kg body weight) (Ballantyne, 1983a). The dermal toxicity of cyanide, especially of hydrogen cyanide, is markedly greater following application on abraded skin, which enhances the penetration of cyanide (LD50s of 0.087, 0.220, and 0.30 mmol/kg for hydrogen cyanide, sodium cyanide, and potassium cyanide, respectively) (Ballantyne, 1987).5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if we assume humans are just like 80kg rabbits, that means that unbroken skin would require 540mg of Hydrogen cyanide or 616 mg of Sodium cyanide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hydrogen cyanide is a gas at 26&amp;deg;C, [&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_cyanide&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;] so it might be hard to deal with. Let's go with Sodium cyanide, which is a solid that dissolves well into water. At 26&amp;deg;C, Sodium cyanide can be dissolved into water at 52g/100Ml. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_cyanide&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;], so that corresponds to 1-2 mL of concentrated solution - less than half a teaspoon, for a 50% chance of death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you scratch up your victim first, you could reduce it to a 50th of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, for governments, Hydrogren Cyanide has plenty of evidence of being a grisly and effective poison:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zyklon_B&quot;&gt;Germany&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_chamber#United_States&quot;&gt;United States&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Hat-tip to @Fabian who shot down my earlier answer.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-14T11:22:21.597" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T11:22:21.597" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7971" CreationDate="2012-02-14T09:23:41.743" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;People have attempted to weaponize lightning in some form or another at various points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/02/great-balls-of/&quot;&gt;Scientist Looks to Weaponize Ball Lightning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the mid-’60s, the U.S. military started exploring ways that the&#xA;  phenomenon might be weaponized. Take this 1965 Defense Technical&#xA;  Information Center report on Survey of Kugelblitz Theories For&#xA;  Electromagnetic Incendiaries, (Kugelblitz is German for ball&#xA;  lighting). The document summarizes and evaluates the ball lightning&#xA;  theories then prevalent, and recommends &quot;a theoretical and&#xA;  experimental Kugelblitz program… as a means of developing the theory&#xA;  into a weapons application.&quot; This led to an Air Force program called Harness Cavalier, which seems to have ended without producing anything conclusive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia also states that an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolaser&quot;&gt;Electrolaser&lt;/a&gt; could be used as a weapon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a weapon, to make a thunderhead deliver a precise lightning strike&#xA;  onto a target from an aircraft; in this case, the aircraft and laser&#xA;  can be compared to a triggered spark gap, in that the relatively minor&#xA;  amount of initial input from the laser allows a large amount of energy&#xA;  to flow between the cloud and the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I don't know how likely that is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T09:23:41.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8032" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8035" CreationDate="2012-02-14T13:08:04.803" Score="7" ViewCount="782" Body="&lt;p&gt;On adverts for payday loan deals (UK), the representative APR is always displayed in small print, by law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always feel as though these loans, with their x-thousand % interest rates are ripping off those most in need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have stumbled across this claim on Wonga.com;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't actually charge thousands of percent in interest&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact we don't charge anything like the large Representative APR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wonga charges the equivalent of just under 1% interest per day and that rate is&#xA;applied to the loan amount and transmission fee for the period of the&#xA;short term loan - usually between one and 31 days. The annual rate of&#xA;interest is 360%. We know this may be hard to believe, because of the&#xA;much larger Representative APR we are obliged to display. But that's&#xA;because the calculation required by law means that, where a loan is&#xA;not taken out for a year, the interest rate must be compounded the&#xA;same number of times the actual loan period would fit into a year.&#xA;Because an annualised measure is distorting over short periods of&#xA;time, we always show the total cost of repayment very clearly too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The current Wonga representative APR is 4214%, so how can they claim it is in fact 360% ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5766" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-02T10:03:40.300" Title="Payday loan interest rates - not representative?" Tags="|personal-finance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2015-11-02T10:31:28.907" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8033" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9469" CreationDate="2012-02-14T13:43:39.283" Score="119" ViewCount="16107" Body="&lt;p&gt;Edited, as every site I found in my search last night gave me sites that all say the same thing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The perception is that the world is a really dangerous place for children these days&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the statistics I seem to find online seem to imply that despite the media hype around kidnapping, serial killers, child trafficking rings etc, relative to the population, children are safer than ever before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netmums.com/coffeehouse/general-coffeehouse-chat-514/news-current-affairs-topical-discussion-12/653101-letting-children-out-play-were-good-old-days-better.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;netmums example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/televangelism-pop-christianity-in-national/what-ever-happend-to-the-good-old-days&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;examiner example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8399749.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why is this? Are kids safer, or are the media just making up scare stories to sell newspapers etc (surely not)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="619" LastEditDate="2019-01-14T21:58:12.193" LastActivityDate="2019-01-22T17:35:25.063" Title="Were children safer in the good old days?" Tags="|safety|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8034" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-14T13:59:01.307" Score="5" ViewCount="1922" Body="&lt;p&gt;I happened upon &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.therapygloves.com/store/product.php?productid=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prolotex™ OPEN FINGERTIP Far Infrared Therapy Gloves&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3/4 or Open Fingertip Far Infrared bio-ceramic gloves are helping reduce hand pain in all kinds of people: people, like you and me, who suffer from finger joint pain that sometimes keeps us awake at night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you suffer from Trigger Thumb or Trigger Finger, these gloves are for you. Why? Because the natural FIR energy actually reduces the inflammation of the tendon sheath that is causing the your fingers to snap, crackle and pop!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an evidence backing these claims? Do these gloves provide any benefit that basic application of heat would not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.therapygloves.com/farinfrared.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;More information (theirs) on FIR&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T08:51:21.560" Title="Does Infrared Therapy relieve the symptoms of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8032" CreationDate="2012-02-14T14:07:48.923" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's see if I can get my high school maths right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest#Simple_interest&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;simple interest&lt;/a&gt;, the formula is simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you borrow $100, at 6% per annum simple interest for half of a year, you must pay back:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;$100 * (6/100 * 1/2 year) = $3 interest, plus the original $100 principal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if you borrow with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_interest&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;compound interest&lt;/a&gt;, then you have to pay interest on the unpaid interest. The rate of compounding (how often you calculate the interest) makes a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it compounds every 6 months, it is still the same amount: $3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it compounds ever 3 months - i.e. twice - it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;$100 * ((1 + (6/100 * 1/2 year)/2)&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; - 1) = $3.022 interest, plus the original $100 principal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it compounds every day - i.e. 183 times - it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;$100 * ((1 + (6/100 * 1/2)/183)&lt;sup&gt;183&lt;/sup&gt; - 1) = $3.045 interest, plus the original $100 principal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the frequency of the compounding is important, even though the nominal interest rate (6% per annum) didn't change. The nominal rate is also known as the Nominal &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annual_percentage_rate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Annual Percentage Rate&lt;/a&gt; (APR).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Governments (and most legitimate businesses) understand that the nominal APR is misleading, and they insist that people publish the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_APR&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Representative APR&lt;/a&gt; (a.k.a. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annual_percentage_rate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effective APR&lt;/a&gt;, EAR, Annualised APR, or AAPR) which is standardised as being the interest rate you'd pay if you borrowed for one year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, lets use Wonga's figures, to see how the representative figures look:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you borrow $100 for 1 year at a nominal rate of interest of 360% per annum compounding every day (non-leap year), you actually pay:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;$100 * ((1 + (360/100)/365)&lt;sup&gt;365&lt;/sup&gt; - 1) = $3495.84 interest, plus the original $100.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This corresponds to an Representative APR of 3495%, but there may be other charges that make the real figure even higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, Wonga is right that, because the loan is much shorter than a year, your total bill will not come to that figure. However, it is a representative figure because it allows you to compare their interest rates to other lenders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wonga can honestly quote 360% (or 1% per day) as the &lt;em&gt;Nominal APR&lt;/em&gt;, but (as they admit) the regulations require them to also state the Representative APR which is much higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that they charge simple interest over the short period of the loan (plus a fee), which I assume means the Representative APR represents the worst case of a 1 day loan. If you borrow for 30 days, the annualised APR would be lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://jaw.iinet.net.au/stuff/interest.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one online tool&lt;/a&gt; to try this stuff out for yourself. It computes the last figure as $3522.43 - I am hoping the difference is taking into account leap years and rounding errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-14T15:22:30.907" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T15:22:30.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8036" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8037" CreationDate="2012-02-14T14:24:47.927" Score="22" ViewCount="4261" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3234/does-regular-handwashing-with-antibacterial-soap-prevent-disease/3239#3239&quot;&gt;In this answer to &quot;Does regular handwashing with antibacterial soap prevent disease?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, the responder claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Daycares (children) are a slightly unusual situation: children put their hands in their mouths (and eyes and noses, and on the ground, and everywhere else) more than adults do, &lt;strong&gt;they have immature immune systems,&lt;/strong&gt; and they're in a (crowded) institutional setting (not entirely unlike a hospital), e.g. they're sharing toys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is also often cited by the anti-vax movement as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babycenter.com/404_can-getting-more-than-one-vaccination-at-once-overload-my-ch_11452.bc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reason children's immune systems shouldn't be overwhelmed with vaccines&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do children have immature immune systems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T19:28:15.927" Title="Do children have &quot;immature Immune Systems&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|children|immune-system|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8036" CreationDate="2012-02-14T15:12:05.370" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, a child's immune system develops and improves over time.  However, the idea that the immune system can be &quot;overwhelmed&quot; by vaccinations is &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/109/1/124.full&quot;&gt;specious&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An infant has both passively acquired and adaptive immune responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our immune system helps protect us from pathogens with its multiple layers of varying purpose and specificity. The immune system becomes “educated” as we are gradually exposed to the environment. One branch of the immune system, which is highly adaptive, involves antibodies called “immunoglobulins”. Immunoglobulins are divided into five classes – IgM, IgG, IgA, IgE and IgD – each of which has evolved to deal with different antigens. The capacity of the body to produce each of these varies with age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Passive immunity refers to antibodies present in breastmilk that provide the infant with temporary immunity to diseases to which the mother has been exposed.  This can help protect the infant against infection during the early months of childhood.  Maternal IgG gradually disappears during the &lt;strong&gt;first 6 to 8 months of life, as the rate of the infant's IgG synthesis increases.  Adult concentrations of total IgG are reached by about 7 to 8 years of age.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adaptive immunity develops throughout life as the result of exposure to pathogens and through immune response to vaccinations.  Newborns begin to synthesize IgM antibodies very soon after birth in response to their environment.  The premature infant appears to be as capable of doing this as the full-term infant.  &lt;strong&gt;At about 6 days after birth, the serum concentration of IgM rises sharply and continues to rise until adult levels are reached by approximately 1 year of age.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exposure to common infectious pathogens thus has an important function in building the child’s healthy immune system via adaptive immunity.&lt;/strong&gt; A variety of infectious agents, both viral and bacterial, are commonly encountered by children in daycare, resulting in a range of illnesses including upper and lower respiratory tract infections, acute otitis media, gastrointestinal illness, and certain skin ailments. The young child first entering daycare – especially a child with no older siblings – essentially encounters an assault on the immune system that is a direct result of increased environmental exposure. &lt;strong&gt;Children under 1 year of age may be particularly hard hit as they are still in the early stages of immune system development.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://medical.gerber.com/clinicaltopics/articles.aspx?articleId=909DDD16-34AD-44C1-B663-656C6AE32E5C&amp;amp;sec=articles&amp;amp;topicId=28bf6385-728a-4a60-b67c-f69baed67add&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The AAP article linked at the top of this answer expands on that, indicating that Maternal IgG is transported across the placenta before birth, and maternal secretory IgA is present in breast milk and colostrum.  It also offers the qualification that maternal antibodies offer limited immunologic protection when compared with protection afforded by an infant's active immune response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another key difference between adult and infant immune responses lies in B-cell responses.  Infant B-cell responses are deficient when compared with older children and adults.  Until they are about 2 years old, infants have a B-cell response to T-cell-independent antigens (such as polysaccharides) that is considerably less than that found in adults (Rijkers GT, Dollekamp EG, Zegers BJM. The in vitro B-cell response to pneumococcal polysaccharides in adults and neonates. &lt;em&gt;Scand J Immunol.&lt;/em&gt; 1987; 25 :447-452).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Infants can, however, generate all functional T-cells, and respond well to antigens (such as proteins) that require T-cell help for development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the claims that too many vaccines can overwhelm an immature immune system, that simply &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/109/1/124.full&quot;&gt;does not appear to be true&lt;/a&gt;.  Infants are capable of protective immune response to vaccines within hours of birth, and are fully capable of generating protective immune responses to multiple vaccines simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approximately 90% of infants develop active protective immune responses to the primary series of diptheria-tetanus-acellular-pertussis, hepatitis B, pneumococcus, Hib, and inactivated polio vaccines given between 2 months and 6 months of age (Plotkin SA, Orenstein WA. &lt;em&gt;Vaccines.&lt;/em&gt; 3rd ed. Philadelphia, PA: WB Saunders Co; 1999)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A more practical way to determine the diversity of the immune response would be to estimate the number of vaccines to which a child could respond at one time. If we assume that 1) approximately 10 ng/mL of antibody is likely to be an effective concentration of antibody per epitope (an immunologically distinct region of a protein or polysaccharide),39 2) generation of 10 ng/mL requires approximately 103 B-cells per mL,39 3) a single B-cell clone takes about 1 week to reach the 103 progeny B-cells required to secrete 10 ng/mL of antibody39 (therefore, vaccine-epitope-specific immune responses found about 1 week after immunization can be generated initially from a single B-cell clone per mL), 4) each vaccine contains approximately 100 antigens and 10 epitopes per antigen (ie, 103 epitopes), and 5) approximately 107 B cells are present per mL of circulating blood,39 then each infant would have the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10 000 vaccines at any one time (obtained by dividing 107 B cells per mL by 103 epitopes per vaccine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, because naive B- and T-cells are constantly replenished, a vaccine never really “uses up” a fraction of the immune system. For example, studies of T-cell population dynamics in HIV-infected patients indicate that the human T-cell compartment is highly productive. Specifically, the immune system has the ability to replenish about 2 billion CD4+ T lymphocytes each day. Although this replacement activity is most likely much higher than needed for the normal (and as yet unknown) CD4+ T-cell turnover rate, it illustrates the enormous capacity of the immune system to generate lymphocytes as needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="3451" LastEditDate="2012-02-14T16:47:45.333" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T16:47:45.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8017" CreationDate="2012-02-14T21:26:13.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The evidence for this is in fact remarkably sparse. The only reputable work that claims Newton as a homosexual is the book &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.at/books?id=k-GjZ7gnWoQC&amp;amp;lpg=PA83&amp;amp;ots=fUSFMnu2xg&amp;amp;dq=isaac%20newton%20homosexual&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;pg=PA83#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=homosexual&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Sir Isaac Newton: Brilliant Mathematician and Scientist&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;&lt;br&gt;(by &lt;strong&gt;Natalie M. Rosinsky&lt;/strong&gt;) Even this book admits that there is no hard evidence - it simply says &quot;their letters suggest that their affection for one another was romantic.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of newspaper reports that cite the claim, but all of them are essentially quoting this one book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=156180&quot;&gt;Times Higher Education - Core blimey! Was apple man gay?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2005/jan/18/schools.uk2&quot;&gt;The Guardian - Gay history month to 'out' Newton and Nightingale&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there have been many, many biographies of Sir Isaac, even modern ones, which never mentioned this allegation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia had &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3aIsaac_Newton#Is_Newton.27s_sexual_orientation_irrelevant.2C_bad-sourced.2C_speculative.2C_or_derogatory.3F&quot;&gt;a brief debate about whether to include the allegation&lt;/a&gt; and decided not to. You can track the argument for yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2012-02-14T21:26:13.480" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8041" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8043" CreationDate="2012-02-14T23:41:21.043" Score="24" ViewCount="2086" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/blog-12743-7090-sure-stick-your-head-in-the-sand-utah-legislat.html&quot;&gt;USA&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jan/20/mps-debate-sexual-abstinence-bill&quot;&gt;UK&lt;/a&gt; are still advocating abstinence-only sex education that avoids giving advice to schoolchildren about topics such as contraception. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advocates of the abstinence approach argue that giving children advice about sexual behaviour and contraception just encourages them to experiment at an earlier age and this has too many dangerous consequences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what does the evidence say? Does pro-abstenance education achieve more abstinence? Does broader sex education lead to less &quot;responsible&quot; behaviour and earlier sexual activity? Which approach leads to fewer sexual diseases and lower rates of teenage pregnancy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2021-11-25T06:45:01.547" Title="Does abstinence-only sex education reduce the frequency of teenage sex or the rate of teenage pregnancy?" Tags="|sexuality|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8042" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8077" CreationDate="2012-02-15T01:06:15.383" Score="14" ViewCount="1722" Body="&lt;p&gt;When discussing political campaigns where voting is optional, it is often advocated that everyone (who can legally do so) should vote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/new/Ndtv-Show-Special.aspx?ID=70&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2009/10/obama-urges-virginians-to-bring-out-the-vote-for-democratic-gubernatorial-candidate-deeds/&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aiga.org/get-out-the-vote/&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's reasonable to conclude that the people pushing such campaigns must believe that there is a significant difference between the voting preferences of those who already intend voters and those who intend not to vote. Otherwise, such a campaign will have no effect on the result, and hence be a waste of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I firmly believe that voters and non-voters do not have an identical distribution of voting preferences; the opposite is statistically very unlikely. But, I'm not sure whether the discrepancy is significant to ever affect the outcome of an election, since I had never seen any scientific evidence of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Has it been shown that reluctant voters tend to vote differently that keen voters?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Given such voter-encouragement campaigns can be targeted at certain demographics (age groups, races, certain cities and neighbourhoods, etc.), showing that there is a difference in  reluctant voters/keen voter preferences in defined subgroups should also suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6176" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-04-30T05:59:02.773" LastActivityDate="2019-04-30T05:59:02.773" Title="Is there a significant difference between voters' and non-voters' preferences in political elections?" Tags="|united-states|politics|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8041" CreationDate="2012-02-15T01:39:47.057" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;The exact opposite is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short version:&lt;/strong&gt;  Abstinence only does not delay sexual activity in teens, and when they do have sex, they are &lt;em&gt;unaware of protection&lt;/em&gt;, thus leading to higher incidence of pregnancy and STDs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cregs.sfsu.edu/article/abstinence_only&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Center for Research and Education on Gender and Sexuality&lt;/a&gt; mention that advocating a position of abstinence doesn't significantly alter the behaviour, and is highly detrimental because the behaviour is not modified by any relevant knowledge of safe practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;70% percent of youth are still sexually active by the time they are 19, what can we expect to happen to them when they've been denied access to accurate sexual health information? Is slightly delaying the onset of youth sexuality a better outcome than providing youth with accurate health information to protect themselves and their peers? This question is even more pressing when the vast majority of research shows that abstinence-only sex education programs don't even delay teen sexuality as well as programs that provide youth with accurate health information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lawreview.wustl.edu/inprint/86/5/kuehnel.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study calls abstinence only education (or lack thereof) a failure for America&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies consistently reveal that approximately half of all adolescents&#xA;engage in sexual intercourse before graduating high school,1 and many&#xA;legal scholars have analyzed the correlation between youths’ sexual&#xA;activity and abstinence-only sex education.2 Studies also consistently&#xA;reveal that the percentage of Black American3 adolescents engaging in&#xA;sexual intercourse substantially exceeds that of their White American4&#xA;counterparts,5 but few legal scholars have analyzed the relationship between Black youths’ sexual activity and abstinence-only sex education.6&#xA;Legal scholars have addressed the dangers that abstinence-only programs&#xA;cause for gay and lesbian youth,7 and for girls,8 but have all but failed to&#xA;address the social ramifications such programs have on racial minorities.9&#xA;Several scholars argue that the right to information10 or freedom of&#xA;religion guaranteed by the First Amendment11 precludes federal&#xA;endorsement of abstinence-only sex education. Others base legal&#xA;justification for comprehensive sex education, as opposed to abstinence only&#xA;education, in international human rights law.12&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/390/news.aspx?id=155469&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;there is some contrary data out there&lt;/a&gt;.  However, it seems to have very limited applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstinence-only classes recently found to deter sex might work for &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; youngsters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is still this cautionary quote&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bill Albert, chief program officer of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “It’s noteworthy, because to date we have had no evidence to suggest these abstinence-only programs are successful.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The limitation being that the teens should have no sexual experience at all (to what degree is not defined clearly in the article).  This study is only one out of many, so many parameters are still unknown at this time.  It may have been a fluke, a good report, or even a fraud.  Only time will tell in this politically motivated and charged climate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openeducation.net/2009/01/05/abstinence-only-sex-education-statistics-final-nail-in-the-coffin/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The prevailing evidence though indicates that it is highly ineffective in all ways&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Previously, when discussing abstinence-only education, most people would reference a recent summary by the Cochrane Collaboration. The Cochrane folks studied 13 abstinence-only education programs – they could not find one that showed an “enduring effect” on teen’s sexual behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the Cochrane study, another federally funded study of four abstinence-only programs by the Mathematica Policy Research Inc., published in April of 2007, revealed similar results. The research group found that “participants had just as many sexual partners as nonparticipants and had sex at the same median age as nonparticipants.” In other words, abstinence education programs did nothing favorable – the result was the same as if there were no program being offered at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now a third study, this by Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, revealed some of the most troubling data of all. A national longitudinal study of adolescents, specifically 934 high school students, examined one of the factors used as a measurement of success for abstinence-only education programs, the virginity pledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the most recent study, researchers compared teens who had taken the virginity pledge to those who had not taken a pledge. The researchers found results similar to the aforementioned studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the rate of the teens taking part in sex was the same. Those taking the virginity pledge were just as likely to have intercourse. The only positive, statistically small, was that those taking the pledge had 0.1 fewer sex partners over the five year study than did those who did not take such a pledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, two other findings were most damning. First, those taking the virginity pledge were less likely to protect themselves. Pledge takers were found to be less frequent users of condoms and other forms of birth control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, those youngsters who took the virginity pledge were not only just as likely to have intercourse, they ultimately were more likely to take part in sex in an unsafe manner. This has led experts to conclude that the lessons students take from their abstinence-only education programs is a negative and/or faulty view of contraception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://caps.ucsf.edu/factsheets/abstinence/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article also lays out some interesting information with some great links to follow up on.&lt;/a&gt;  Again, the data indicates that abstinence only is a bad idea all around, and actually contributes to the problems of unwanted pregnancies and STDs which both programs state they are trying to prevent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I mentioned earlier, most of the abstinence only education programs are not motivated by evidence, but rather by ideology.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;As The Journal of Religion and Society reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies (Figures 1-9). The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T01:48:02.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8048" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-15T12:36:42.130" Score="5" ViewCount="986" Body="&lt;p&gt;Smart Stork claim to be able to help couples select the gender of their future child:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our success rate in gender selection? Is still over 95%!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their technique relies of biorhythms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smart Storks unique gender selection program, is based primarily on a womans biorhythm  cycle and the alternating pH of acidic and alkaline fractions within her reproductive  tract, these fluctuations directly affect the gender baby that can be conceived at the time of ovulation. The biorhythm theory is a theory based on the fact that every person, from the &#xA;  moment of birth, is ruled by their biorhythms or circadian rhythms. It rules the balance of our &#xA;  sleep/awake body clock and is the basis of our hormone secretions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our research focused on the impact of the women’s biorhythm cycles and her hormone production, the alternating pH within the follicular fluid and how that was a major factor in determining the baby’s gender at the time of ovulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that a baby's gender is determined at ovulation, rather than conception, is a new one to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their claims are (allegedly) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smartstork.com/page23.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;supported by dozens of references&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can techniques such as these be used with 95% reliability to select the gender of a yet-to-be-conceived child?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T16:32:58.640" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T09:21:56.543" Title="Can biorhythms and pH fluctuations be used to select the gender of a child?" Tags="|human-reproduction|gender-selection|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8053" CreationDate="2012-02-15T12:38:52.343" Score="8" ViewCount="4241" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cynical-c.com/2008/10/01/brain-piercing/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this 2008 article&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;brain piercing&quot; is described, with a photo:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They drill small holes in your scull, then pass a metal (gold or silver) ring through them. The trick is that the ring presses the brain tissue and invokes euphoria. The whole procedure is carried under an anesthesia and after the ring is passed, it does not cause any pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6181" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T12:57:42.080" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T22:50:03.020" Title="Is brain piercing real?" Tags="|neurology|body-piercing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7998" CreationDate="2012-02-15T13:09:48.530" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Also reposting my answer from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/1513/what-are-the-pros-and-cons-of-a-chicken-pox-party-vs-immunization&quot;&gt;parenting.se version of the question&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people believe that obtaining the virus naturally provides better levels of immunization than you would get from the vaccine, as evidenced by the requirement for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://children.webmd.com/vaccines/chickenpox-varicella-vaccine?page=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;second&lt;/a&gt; &quot;booster&quot; shot if you opt for the vaccine, or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.immunizationinfo.org/vaccines/varicella-chickenpox#effectiveness-of-the-vaccine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;possibility of still catching the disease even after receiving the vaccine&lt;/a&gt; (it is worth noting that infection after immunization is nearly always mild).  Although I have not been able to find conclusive evidence, there are researchers who believe that natural exposure provides higher levels of antibodies.  There is also concern that the vaccine may not provide life-long immunity, which, if true, would result in more adults catching active chicken pox infections, opening them to generally more serious and dangerous symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In past years, a fairly common reason cited for chicken-pox parties is because people are concerned with the possible link between autism and immunization vaccines.  This concern was due to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/06/autism.vaccines/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; which has since been thoroughly discredited, and retracted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the possible benefit of deliberate exposure is speculative, whereas the risks are concrete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deliberate exposure carries the risk of serious, or even life-threatening, &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/ColdandFluQuestions/story?id=6426686&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;complications&lt;/a&gt;.  These complications are much more likely in high-risk patients (pregnant women, immune-compromised, infants), but can effect even health children rarely.  Possible complications include encephalitis, pneumonia, and bacterial infection (including &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=6772216&amp;amp;page=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;flesh-eating bacteria&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are admittedly rare scenarios.  However, there is one additional advantage of the vaccine over &quot;natural&quot; immunization: immunization from exposure to the active virus makes the individual susceptible to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=13750&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;shingles&lt;/a&gt;.  The vaccine may not, although I found conflicting information on this.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I updated the part above to indicate conflicting data on whether you can get shingles after receiving the vaccine.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.immunizationinfo.org/issues/exposure-parties/chickenpox-parties&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; is a good reference for the risks of each option, but it mentions that the vaccine can still expose the person to shingles (although cases may be less frequent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found an article on mothering.com, which has since been removed, that includes a fair amount of research and citations in favor of deliberate exposure over vaccines.  However, most of what I saw in there was still what I would call speculative: the vaccine may not be as effective as claimed due to corresponding removal of reporting requirements; &quot;there are too many questions about the adverse effects and efficacy&quot;; &quot;allegedly, [the wild version of the virus] produces much higher levels of antibodies than the vaccine&quot;; questions about the the possible short-term nature of the immunity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The strongest argument I saw in that article was that, if the reports suggesting that the immunity provided by the vaccine is measured in decades or less are accurate, it might result in more cases of adult chicken pox, and symptoms are generally much more severe in adults than in children.  However, the evidence supporting that argument is peppered with terms like &quot;unknown,&quot; &quot;theorized,&quot; and &quot;might.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:41:15.657" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T13:17:18.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8049" CreationDate="2012-02-15T14:51:37.870" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claims about euphoria are certainly nonsense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, for a neuron to do anything, it needs to be stimulated appropriately. None of the neurons that are sensitive to touch and pressure are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biologymad.com/nervoussystem/nerveimpulses.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in the brain&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Light touch&lt;/em&gt; is detected by receptors &lt;strong&gt;in the skin&lt;/strong&gt;. These are often&#xA;  found close to a hair follicle... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pacinian corpuscles are &lt;em&gt;pressure&#xA;  receptors&lt;/em&gt;. They are located &lt;strong&gt;in the skin and also in various internal&#xA;  organs&lt;/strong&gt;. (...) Pacinian corpuscles are also located in &lt;strong&gt;joints and&#xA;  tendons and in tissue that lines organs and blood vessels&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that pressing on the brain will not produce a reaction that is typically associated with activity in the pressed area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, the brain areas under the &quot;brain piercings&quot; are nowhere near a center that could lead to pleasure. Emotional regulation is located in the limbic system (the labeled bits of the picture below, mostly blue and purple):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ugFZh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;(the colored areas in the picture are the limbic system)&quot;&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest thing to euphoria (a putative 'reward' center) has been attributed to the septum (labeled in the picture above as '(pleasure, reproduction)'. Also, note that stimulation &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wadsworth.com/psychology_d/templates/student_resources/0155060678_rathus/ps/ps02.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in this study about the septum as a reward center,&lt;/a&gt; was done by way of applying electric current to the brain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is clear that electrical stimulation in certain parts of the brain,&#xA;  particularly the septal area, produces acquisition and extinction&#xA;  curves which compare favorably with those produced by a conventional&#xA;  primary reward. &lt;strong&gt;With other electrode placements, the stimulation&#xA;  appears to be neutral or punishing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The punctured locations are not deep enough and they are not even located above the septum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text you linked says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The foramens will be done on your &lt;strong&gt;nucha&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  - there is &lt;strong&gt;an especially sensitive range of a brain&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being an aspiring neuroscientist, I found it disturbing that I'd never heard of this especially sensitive 'range' of the brain. But it turns out the nucha is actually &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/en_invertebrate_zoology/8613/nuchal&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the neck&lt;/a&gt;! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nucha , nucha meaning , definition of nucha:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The back or upper part of the neck&lt;/strong&gt;; the nape .  The nape of the neck .&#xA;  n . [ML . nucha , neck] The upper surface of the neck connecting the&#xA;  head and thorax;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, anecdotal data from the neuroscience institute where I spend my days, says that the closer the species to ours, the more easily the brain inflames when the skull is left open. Monkeys are very sensitive, rats can heal well. I would guess that a human would quickly get terribly sick from a brain piercing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5696" LastEditorUserId="5696" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T22:50:03.020" LastActivityDate="2012-02-15T22:50:03.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8054" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8075" CreationDate="2012-02-15T15:34:40.340" Score="9" ViewCount="423" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/02/15/breaking-news-a-look-behind-the-curtain-of-the-heartland-institutes-climate-change-spin/&quot;&gt;Dr. Phil Plait just posted this regarding the leak of some documents from a group called the Heartland Institute&lt;/a&gt;.  There is some skepticism as to the authenticity of these documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these legitimate documents produced by the Heartland Institute?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-15T16:09:05.777" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T16:28:24.837" Title="Are the leaked Heartland Institute documents legitimate?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8055" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-15T16:44:33.600" Score="8" ViewCount="2153" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VXlcE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above mentioned picture made it to my Facebook feed. While it doesn't sound unreasonable that there can be a psychological effect of some colors, I got a bit skeptical regarding the claim that yellow would increase your metabolism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick Googling showed that this is apparently a wide spread belief that goes by the term Chromotherapy, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoplease.com/spot/colors1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;example regarding yellow&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cheerful sunny yellow is an attention getter. While it is considered an optimistic color, people lose their tempers more often in yellow rooms, and babies will cry more. It is the most difficult color for the eye to take in, so it can be overpowering if overused. Yellow enhances concentration, hence its use for legal pads. It also speeds metabolism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this field have scientific backing or is it comparable to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2/does-water-have-a-memory-as-claimed-in-homeopathy&quot;&gt;homeopathy&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T13:12:22.887" Title="Do the effects of Chromotherapy have support in scientific literature?" Tags="|psychology|alternative-medicine|colors|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8056" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8058" CreationDate="2012-02-15T18:00:47.917" Score="17" ViewCount="1385" Body="&lt;p&gt;An NPR article on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2012/02/10/146674362/catholics-split-over-obama-contraceptive-order&quot;&gt;debate about contraceptive coverage&lt;/a&gt; makes the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, 98 percent of Catholic women use birth control at some point in their lifetimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="2722" LastEditDate="2012-06-08T09:53:30.940" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T09:53:30.940" Title="Have 98% of Catholic women used birth control?" Tags="|united-states|religion|sexuality|contraception|healthcare|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8057" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8216" CreationDate="2012-02-15T18:41:31.550" Score="11" ViewCount="3181" Body="&lt;p&gt;There many websites selling biotin suplements claiming that they will make hair grow stronger and faster. Here are two examples:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hairgrowthvitaminsdirect.com/biotin-hair-growth/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hair Growth Vitamin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bio-info Hair Growth&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Biotin deficency is shown to cause some problems &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/313.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;including hair loss&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a deficiency must be extremely rare: recommended doses vary up to 25mcg, which is easily gotten from an egg white. Supplements are generally sold with 3000-5000mcg per capsule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do biotin supplements increase hair growth and strength?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2584" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T06:49:23.397" LastActivityDate="2018-03-19T18:53:14.270" Title="Do biotin supplements increase hair growth and strength?" Tags="|medical-science|hair|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8056" CreationDate="2012-02-15T18:47:20.167" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/have-98-percent-of-catholic-women-used-contraceptives-not-quite/2012/02/14/gIQAZszTDR_blog.html&quot;&gt;Ezra Klein at The Washington Post comments &quot;Not Quite&quot; in his article&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jones’s study does not find that 98 percent of all Catholic women have used contraceptives. What it does, however, bear out is the claim that many have made with this statistic: that sexually-active, Catholic women do tend to use contraceptives at the same rate as their non-Catholic counterparts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chart that is displayed there shows closer to an 89% rate amongst catholic women.  The data claiming the 98% rate came from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/Religion-and-Contraceptive-Use.pdf&quot;&gt;Guttmacher Institute study&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only 2% of Catholic women rely on natural family planning; even among Catholic women who attend church once a month or more, only 2% rely on this method (not shown). Sixty-eight percent of Catholic women use highly effective methods: sterilization (32%, including 24% using female sterilization,) the pill or another hormonal method (31%) and the IUD (5%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main difference between the two studies is that one is focused on sexually active women who do not want to get pregnant (that CAN get pregnant) versus all women who may or may not be sexually active, or may actually want to get pregnant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T01:11:59.707" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T01:11:59.707" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8059" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-15T19:22:11.933" Score="3" ViewCount="686" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/the-benefits-of-apple-cider-vinegar/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; makes the claim that raw organic apple cider vinegar (ACV) is better for the health than &quot;clear&quot; ACV.  I've heard this claim made before in the realm of animal husbandry. Has anyone actually studied organic ACV to determine if there is really any difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6186" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T17:45:19.370" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T17:45:19.370" Title="Is there any benefit to organic apple cider vinegar over processed apple cider vinegar?" Tags="|nutrition|vinegar|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8061" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-15T20:23:37.740" Score="10" ViewCount="973" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen the claim that some sexual positions are better for getting pregnant than others. For example this article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.askamum.co.uk/Trying-to-conceive/Search-Results/Sex/How-to-have-baby-making-sex-continued/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;how to have baby-making sex&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Be a missionary&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It might seem like the boring way to get intimate, but the missionary position, with all that deep penetration close to your cervix, is going to give your partner’s sperm a little extra help in their swim for the egg!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Staying behind&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doing it doggy-style is guaranteed to get your partner’s sperm close to that all-important baby-making organ – the cervix.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these sexual positions increase the probability of conceiving? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-05-04T23:56:00.020" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T23:56:00.020" Title="Does sexual position affect the chances of conception?" Tags="|sexuality|pregnancy|human-reproduction|sperm|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8063" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8099" CreationDate="2012-02-15T21:09:08.057" Score="4" ViewCount="1891" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/9053339/Keira-Knightley-only-Brits-like-sadomasochistic-sex-scenes-in-A-Dangerous-Method.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;interview&lt;/a&gt; Keira Knightley talks about her film A Dangerous Method which features sadomasochistic scenes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did think about turning it down because of the two scenes of a sadomasochistic nature and I thought it's all going to come out and all of a sudden it's all going to all be about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And weirdly, apart from this country, it hasn't been, so that's been really great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In England it's got mentioned all the time. I don't know what that says about us! &lt;strong&gt;We obviously like spanking&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are English people more interested in spanking and similar sadomasochistic practises than those in other countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T12:31:46.143" Title="Is sadomasochism more prevalent in England than in other countries?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6996" CreationDate="2012-02-15T23:30:13.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a 2012 article (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3514985/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diet Soft Drink Consumption is Associated with an Increased Risk of Vascular Events in the Northern Manhattan Study&lt;/a&gt;), diet soda consumption was linked with greater incidence of vascular events:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Controlling for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, smoking, physical activity, alcohol consumption, BMI, daily calories, consumption of protein, carbohydrates, total fat, saturated fat, and sodium, those who drank diet soft drinks daily (vs. none) had an increased risk of vascular events, and this persisted after controlling further for the metabolic syndrome, peripheral vascular disease, diabetes, cardiac disease, hypertension, and hypercholesterolemia (HR = 1.43, 95% CI = 1.06–1.94). There was no increased risk of vascular events associated with regular soft drinks or light diet soft drink consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6185" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-01-02T14:34:35.730" LastActivityDate="2021-01-02T14:34:35.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8055" CreationDate="2012-02-16T00:19:59.737" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chromotherapy is basically bunk.  It's major tenets involve &lt;em&gt;aligning chakras with various wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation (e.g., different colored lights)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, there is a reasonable amount of evidence indicating that colors do effect mood in various ways and can be used to prime people.  There have been a lot of studies regarding consumer behavior in order to try and influence individuals.  I don't remember the exact colors off hand, but certain colors have been found to increase appetite while others will tend to make people more complacent.  The studies I know of were done in specific contexts, though (e.g., restaurants, waiting rooms, etc.). So, the provided excerpt appears to be reasonably accurate, though assuming a more powerful relationship than what likely exists. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_psychology&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; explains it pretty well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for articles, I recommend starting with the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hakonswensonstiftelsen.se/publikationer/CFR102%20Butiksformat/Obligatoriska%20artiklar/F%C3%B6rel.%207/Bellizzi%20&amp;amp;%20Hite%201992.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Environmental Color, Consumer Feelings, and Purchase Likelihood. Bellizzi, Joseph A; Hite, Robert E. Psychology &amp;amp; Marketing (1992).&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study tested the effects of red and blue in a shopping-related context. Red and blue were selected because of their opposite color properties. Prior color research has shown that red is perceived as negative and tense as well as physically arousing. Blue, on the other hand, has been identified as calm, cool, and positive. Two laboratory experiments were conducted. In both experiments, retail environments were simulated using predominately red or blue colors. Both experiments corroborate the differential effects of red and blue that prior research suggested. &lt;strong&gt;Specifically, more positive retail outcomes occurred in blue rather than red environments.&lt;/strong&gt; More simulated purchases, fewer purchase postponements, and a stronger inclination to shop and browse were found in blue retail environments. The second experiment helps to identify a plausible explanation to color effects. The results indicate that the affective perception of color rather than the arousal dimension of color may be responsible for the outcome. The positive effects of blue and the negative perception of red may have influenced the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/002243599490037X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Store atmosphere and purchasing behavior. Journal of Retailing Volume 70, Issue 3, Autumn 1994, Pages 283–294&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effects of the emotional factors of pleasure and arousal were shown to be additional to cognitive factors such as variety and quality of merchandise, price specialing and value for money. The practical significance for retailers is that emotional responses induced by the store environment can affect the time and money that consumers spend in the store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6190" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T00:55:18.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8025" CreationDate="2012-02-16T00:34:11.303" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind the way they're defining &quot;white noise&quot; in the scientific american article you provided is different from what you link to on wikipedia.  The SA definition is more in terms of ambient noise (e.g., traffic, low-level talking, a/c running, etc.) while white noise proper is a signal with a VERY specific acoustical pattern.  It seems that the SA article is relating to deterioration in performance due to the stress caused by the increased attentional resources required to &quot;tune-out&quot; the ambient noise.  If white noise proper completely eliminates all other ambient noise (without being too loud of course), this eliminates the allocation of these additional resources.  Because white noise proper is essentially featureless, one will habituate to it unlike common ambient noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainmusic.org/EducationalActivitiesFolder/Carlson_monkeys1997.pdf&quot;&gt;Carlson, Rama, Artchakov, &amp;amp; Linnankoski (1997)&lt;/a&gt; found a significant decrease in memory when exposed to music during a memory task and a significant increase in performance when exposed to white noise in comparison to a control which had only low level ambient noise.  Though it was not the main purpose of the study, the authors conclude that music drew attention away and thus interfered while white noise likely drowned out the ambient noise without drawing attention and thus improved performance.  Please keep in mind the sample of this study was on monkeys, but the processes are expected to be generalizable to humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=f0eedb2f-8037-4614-afc1-2c03f293e885%40sessionmgr12&amp;amp;vid=1&amp;amp;hid=25&amp;amp;bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=mnh&amp;amp;AN=890220&quot;&gt;Daee &amp;amp; Wilding (1977)&lt;/a&gt; found that the likelihood of forgetting during a free recall task is related to the level of noise to which one is exposed during rehearsal such that recall is best in a quiet environment and degrades at 75 and 85 dB.  Though this study was not on concentration directly, these results can be seen to have applicable implications regarding attentional resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along these same lines, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140138708966007&quot;&gt;Salame &amp;amp; Baddeley (1987)&lt;/a&gt; found significant differences in recall between unattended speech versus white noise such that unattended speech interferes with performance while no statistical difference was found in the white noise condition (in comparison to a quiet control).  The authors conclude &quot;...that noise does not interfere with short-term memory but that unattended speech does impair performance...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies I cite above are related to memory recall tasks which, though involving similar processes to long-term concentration are not perfectly comparable.  However, there is a pretty comprehensive literature showing the effects of noise exposure having negative effects on long-term tasks such as learning (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8460382&quot;&gt;Hygge, 1993&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://eab.sagepub.com/content/35/6/725.abstract&quot;&gt;Lercher, Evans, &amp;amp; Meis, 2003&lt;/a&gt;).  Additionally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=e165696a-8648-4b33-b0e8-d29094d3c0b9%40sessionmgr15&amp;amp;vid=1&amp;amp;hid=25&amp;amp;bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=pdh&amp;amp;AN=psp-32-4-571&quot;&gt;Mathews &amp;amp; Canon, 1975&lt;/a&gt; state &quot;data [suggests] that arousal leads to a state of restricted attention or cue utilization in which attention is concentrated on salient features of the setting at the expense of its other aspects&quot; which does not hinder attention to &quot;central or salient events.&quot;  This idea is related to the theory that noise facilitates functioning through the stimulation of processing such that increased arousal yields better performance until over-arousal occurs which then decreases performance (Hockey, 1983 from &lt;a href=&quot;http://human-factors.arc.nasa.gov/flightcognition/Publications/IH_054_Staal.pdf&quot;&gt;Staal, 2004&lt;/a&gt;).  Stall (2004) also discusses the possibility of continuous v. intermittent noises having differential impact such that continuous may be beneficial while intermittent is harmful, though there is no current agreement in the literature (see pages 88-91).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the literature seems to support the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;White noise will improve performance to the extent to which it masks noises that may cause over-arousal or attention shifts away from the task without causing over-arousal itself.  Practically speaking, if you're in a quiet environment, white noise is unlikely to have a positive effect on your concentration.  If you are in a somewhat noisy environment, white noise will likely have a positive effect.  However, in a very noisy environment it will likely have either no or a negative effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6190" LastEditorUserId="6190" LastEditDate="2012-02-17T02:15:29.533" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T02:15:29.533" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8067" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8069" CreationDate="2012-02-16T03:56:50.407" Score="21" ViewCount="8844" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw a while back &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rb_rDkwGnU&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a YouTube video that appears to show a news report of a man who patented technology to turn water into &quot;HHO&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video makes some big claims &amp;mdash; 161 km (100 mi.) on 0.1 L (4 oz.) of gas, developing water-powered Hummers, something &quot;as hot as the surface of the sun&quot;, etc. but I haven't seen anything to officially refute it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an official verdict on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6192" LastEditorUserId="37939" LastEditDate="2017-04-29T00:17:20.897" LastActivityDate="2022-06-02T16:23:19.470" Title="Man using &quot;water as fuel&quot; for a welding machine? (H₂O → &quot;HHO&quot;)?" Tags="|physics|chemistry|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8067" CreationDate="2012-02-16T05:22:37.223" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;The technology he demonstrates for welding is well known and understood (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio;jsessionid=123CCFDE4E60EDCB418F6D2C9A4C63CB.espacenet_levelx_prod_2?FT=D&amp;amp;date=19660726&amp;amp;DB=&amp;amp;locale=en_EP&amp;amp;CC=US&amp;amp;NR=3262872A&amp;amp;KC=A&amp;amp;ND=1&quot;&gt;this patent from 1962&lt;/a&gt;), and is generally called an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyhydrogen&quot;&gt;oxyhydrogen&lt;/a&gt; electrolytic torch or water torch. Water is decomposed into Oxygen and Hydrogen on demand. This has some benefits in difficult environments (e.g. underwater) and others where you wouldn't want to have cylinders of compressed flammable gas, as well as for some other niche applications. It's not commonly used today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core problem with his &quot;100ml of water for 160km&quot; claim (not that that's impressive, he just re-captures the water after the combustion) and similar efficiency claims is that the splitting of H2O into &quot;HHO&quot; (actually 2H₂O → 2H₂+O₂) requires energy. The combustion of &quot;HHO&quot; produces energy, but there is always a net loss - heat, friction (as in a car engine), and losses in the original splitting. His claim is that he has refined this process to get &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; energy out than is put in, which puts his claims in the realms of perpetual motion machines, and breaks a lot of very well understood laws of physics. Without making a more specific claim - a special catalyst he uses or some new technology, this is not even a claim worth investigating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The electrolysis of water is well understood, as it is widely performed on a commercial scale. Most plants have &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070207080325/http://www.hyweb.de/Knowledge/w-i-energiew-eng3.html&quot;&gt;overall efficiency of less than 70%.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2012-05-07T23:33:27.117" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T23:33:27.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8070" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8074" CreationDate="2012-02-16T05:30:13.967" Score="10" ViewCount="6984" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is typically believed that pre-ejaculate contains sperm, for example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Guys leak a bit of sperm out of the penis before ejaculation. This is called pre-ejaculate.&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kidshealth.org/teen/expert/sex_health/ejaculate.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does a man's pre-ejaculate fluid contain sperm typically?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T09:12:32.180" LastActivityDate="2015-12-23T08:32:40.110" Title="Does pre-ejaculate typically contain sperm?" Tags="|physiology|human-reproduction|sperm|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8067" CreationDate="2012-02-16T13:38:28.450" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The whole report is mixing a lot of stuff up, making it very confusing to understand what is actually claimed. I'll go ahead with the claim that they developed a car that can run on water as a fuel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make it short, basic thermodynamics tell us that water cannot be a fuel in the way described in that report. If you pay attention to the video, he says that he uses &quot;&lt;strong&gt;water and electricity&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis_water&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;electrolysis&lt;/a&gt; to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen gas, and then &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen#Combustion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;burning this gas mixture which results in water again&lt;/a&gt;. So you start from water and end up with water again. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Energy is conserved, you can neither create it nor destroy it&lt;/a&gt;, so going from water back to water cannot provide you with any energy out of the water. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the energy that actually drives the car from is the electricity used to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen. A hydrogen/oxygen gas mixture contains a lot more energy than water, and this energy is released when you burn the mixture, the end result is water. But to get from water to hydrogen/oxygen gas you have to put more energy into it than you'll get out in the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T13:38:28.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8073" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-16T13:47:51.630" Score="18" ViewCount="1736" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is claimed on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_19151_5-bad-ideas-humanity-sticking-with-out-habit_p2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cracked.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also some evidence that our jalopy measurement system &lt;em&gt;[imperial, ndr]&lt;/em&gt; is part of what's making U.S. students bad at math. In Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, he suggests that Asian students may have a built-in advantage in the subject because Eastern languages are structured in a way that makes numbers intuitive. Conversely, having a language -- or a measurement system -- that makes numbers clunkier and difficult to convert would have an adverse effect on young children picking them up from the world around them. Foundation and early confidence are everything in math.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combined, of course, with proper punishment for not learning.&#xA;For this to be true, of course, U.S. students would have to be worse internationally at math than they are at other subjects ... and in fact, they are. Two recent studies show U.S. students to be right around average (12th and 15th) of 30-some industrialized nations in reading scores but among the worst (25th and 30th) in math. There are no doubt other factors involved, but a nonintuitive measurement system can't be helping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article links one study and one website, however none of them seem to be about Imperial units at all!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies on the effect the choice of units has on mathematical skills? Is the Metric system advantageous, from the point of view of cognition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-05-02T14:12:23.790" Title="Do Imperial units make United States children worse at maths?" Tags="|united-states|cognitive-fitness|mathematics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8070" CreationDate="2012-02-16T14:28:21.207" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is debated. I found 3 studies relating to this, in temporal order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12286905&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Contracept Technol Update. 1993 Oct;14(10):154-6.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Researchers find no sperm in pre-ejaculate fluid.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more significant finding, however, was that most pre ejaculate samples did not contain any sperm and those that did had only small clumps of a very small amount of sperm which seemed to be immobile. A larger study is needed to verify these results. If these results are confirmed, they may dispel the myth that pre ejaculate fluid contains sperm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12762415&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;J Assist Reprod Genet. 2003 Apr;20(4):157-9.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Does preejaculatory penile secretion originating from Cowper's gland contain sperm?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Zukerman Z, Weiss DB, Orvieto R.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Preejaculatory fluid secreted at the tip of the urethra from Cowper's gland during sexual stimulation did not contain sperm and therefore cannot be responsible for pregnancies during coitus interruptus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21155689&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hum Fertil (Camb). 2011 Mar;14(1):48-52. Epub 2010 Dec 15.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Sperm content of pre-ejaculatory fluid.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Killick SR, Leary C, Trussell J, Guthrie KA.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eleven of the 27 subjects (41%) produced pre-ejaculatory samples that contained spermatozoa and in 10 of these cases (37%), a reasonable proportion of the sperm was motile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these studies is conclusive (the biggest study was on 27 patients). Given that in some cases, spermatozoa were found in pre-ejaculate fluid, the only conclusion we can reach, pending better studies, is that in some common cases it does indeed contain sperm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, it is not advisable to ever assume that coitus interruptus would be effective in preventing pregnancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T14:28:21.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8054" CreationDate="2012-02-16T14:42:46.643" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Heartland has issued a &lt;a href=&quot;http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/15/heartland-institute-responds-stolen-and-fake-documents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;press release&lt;/a&gt; confirming that a number of documents had been emailed to a third party. They claim that one of them (the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/2012%20Climate%20Strategy%20%283%29.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2012 Climate Strategy&lt;/a&gt; [PDF]) is faked (though obviously they're very involved in the topic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several companies which are listed as donors in the documents - specifically, Microsoft, General Motors, GlaxoSmithKline and Diageo - have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/feb/15/heartland-institute-microsoft-gm-money&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;confirmed&lt;/a&gt; that they gave money to Heartland for non-climate related activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/%281-15-2012%29%202012%20Fundraising%20Plan_0.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fundraising Plan&lt;/a&gt; [PDF]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Heartland has agreed to help Anthony raise $88,000 for the project in 2011. The Anonymous&#xA;  Donor has already pledged $44,000. We’ll seek to raise the balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/%281-15-2012%29%202012%20Heartland%20Budget.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2012 Budget&lt;/a&gt; [PDF]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Payments to ItWorks/IntelliWeather to create web site featuring data from NOAA’s new&#xA;  network of surface stations. First payment of $44,000 in January, second of same amount&#xA;  contingent on fundraising around mid-year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anthony Watts, writing about the releases, has &lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/15/some-notes-on-the-heartland-leak&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;confirmed&lt;/a&gt; that he has received $44,000 for the project mentioned, and that there is a second amount planned, contingent on funding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Heartland simply helped me find a donor for funding a special project having to do with presenting some new NOAA surface data in a public friendly graphical form, something NOAA themselves is not doing, but should be. I approached them in the fall of 2011 asking for help, on this project not the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;REPLY: Actually it is $44K, and the phase 2 to keep it running may/may not be funded. Try hiring a good programmer for a year and purchasing the relevant equipment for $44K – Anthony&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also in the Fundraising Plan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wojick would produce modules for Grades 7-9 on environmental impact (“environmental impact&#xA;  is often difficult to determine. For example there is a major controversy over whether or not&#xA;  humans are changing the weather”), for Grade 6 on water resources and weather systems, and so&#xA;  on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We tentatively plan to pay Dr. Wojick $5,000 per module, about $25,000 a quarter, starting in&#xA;  the second quarter of 2012, for this work. The Anonymous Donor has pledged the first $100,000&#xA;  for this project, and we will circulate a proposal to match and then expand upon that investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heartland has &lt;a href=&quot;http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/02/14/425354/internal-documents-climate-denier-heartland-institute-plans-global-warming-curriculum-for-k-12-schools/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;confirmed this project&lt;/a&gt;, though not the details or the level of funding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are concerned that schools are teaching climate change issues in a manner that is not consistent with sound science and that is designed to lead students to the erroneous belief that humans are causing a global warming crisis. We hope that our efforts will restore sound science to climate change education and discourage the political propaganda that too often passes as “education”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the details in the Climate Strategy (which was, according to Heartland, faked) also appear in the other documents. The drop in funding from the Anonymous Donor from 2010 to 2011 is documented in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Binder1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fourth Quarter Financial Statement&lt;/a&gt; [PDF], and the expected increase in the Budget. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Climate Strategy states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We will also pursue additional support from the Charles G. Koch Foundation. They returned as a Heartland donor in 2011 with a contribution of $200,000. We expect to push up&#xA;  their level of support in 2012 and gain access to their network of philanthropists, if our focus&#xA;  continues to align with their interests&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, according to the Fundraising Plan, Koch gave $25000 in 2011, with $200,000 projected in 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The funding to Dr Wojick is also listed in the Fundraising Plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We tentatively plan to pay Dr. Wojick $5,000 per module, about $25,000 a quarter, starting in&#xA;  the second quarter of 2012, for this work. The Anonymous Donor has pledged the first $100,000&#xA;  for this project, and we will circulate a proposal to match and then expand upon that investment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Climate Strategy lists $388,000 in 2011 funding for the NIPCC, along with monthly payments to Craig Idso, Fred Singer, and Robert Carter. These amounts can all be found in the budget. I could not find any particular mentions of plans to focus more on publishing in Forbes, or of cultivating relationships with Revkin or Curry in the other documents (which are mostly financial in nature, so this is not particularly surprising). Finally, the funding for Anthony Watt's project has, as I mentioned earlier, already been confirmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The details in the document that is, according to Heartland, faked, contain one detail (the amount of funding from the Koch foundation) which is inconsistent with the other documents, and one (increased focus on Forbes magazine, Andy Revkin and Judith Curry) not found elsewhere. The rest of the details in that document, however, are matched in at least one of the others. Many of these (for example, the funding to Watts) had not previously been publicly available, which is strong reason to believe that whoever authored the Climate Strategy memo had access to the other documents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several days after the releases, Peter Gleick, a climate scientist at the Pacific Institute, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-gleick/heartland-institute-documents_b_1289669.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;came forward&lt;/a&gt; as the person responsible for releasing the documents. According to Gleick, he received the Climate Strategy memo anonymously in the mail and then assumed the identity of a Heartland staffer to solicit documents that could confirm the details. This is consistent with Heartland's statements about how the documents were leaked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the details revealed in the documents. Seth Borenstein conducted an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wral.com/news/science/story/10741778/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;investigation&lt;/a&gt; and confirmed a number of additional details. Again, the results were all in one direction: everyone mentioned in the leaked documents that Borenstein contacted confirmed the information in the documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because Heartland was not specific about what was fake and what was real, The Associated Press attempted to verify independently key parts of separate budget and fundraising documents that were leaked. The federal consultant working on the classroom curriculum, the former TV weatherman, a Chicago elected official who campaigns against hidden local debt and two corporate donors all confirmed to the AP that the sections in the document that pertained to them were accurate. No one the AP contacted said the budget or fundraising documents mentioning them were incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this stage, it seems highly unlikely that any of the other documents were altered - Heartland hasn't made any attempt to refute any of the revelations, and they have passed every attempt at verification to date. The Climate Strategy memo, meanwhile, must have been written by someone with access to the other documents - i.e. either Gleick or Heartland. Right now, there isn't enough evidence to say one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="143" LastEditDate="2012-02-24T14:02:59.750" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T14:02:59.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2592" CreationDate="2012-02-16T15:20:29.470" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, staring at a flame will not slow brain activity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, let's define brain activity, and see what 'slow' would mean in this context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a lot of trouble finding a source that's neither completely technical nor completely nonsensical. In the end I opted for a combination of the two. Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainandhealth.com/Brain-Waves.html&quot;&gt;semi-nonsensical one&lt;/a&gt; from which I am quoting the good parts: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neurons communicate with each other by electrical changes. &lt;strong&gt;We can actually see these electrical changes in the form of brain waves&lt;/strong&gt; as shown in an EEG&#xA;  (electroencephalogram). &lt;strong&gt;Brain waves are measured in cycles per second&#xA;  (Hertz;&lt;/strong&gt; Hz is the short form). We also talk about the &quot;frequency&quot; of&#xA;  brain wave activity. &lt;strong&gt;The lower the number of Hz, the slower the brain activity&lt;/strong&gt; or the&#xA;  slower the frequency of the activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, neurons discharge at a certain rate, and we can measure this discharge rate (notably, a lot of neurons have to discharge simultaneously for us to pick it up). This happens pretty quickly, and is expressed in how many times per second a group of neurons discharges. When measured by EEG, it comes out as a wavy line on the screen; hence the concept of &lt;em&gt;brain waves&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On to slow and fast brain waves:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers in the 1930's and 40's identified several different types&#xA;  of brain waves. Traditionally, these fall into 4 types:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Delta waves (below 4 hz) occur during sleep&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Theta waves (4-7 hz) are associated with sleep, deep relaxation (like hypnotic relaxation), and visualization&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alpha waves&lt;/strong&gt; (8-12 hz) occur when we are relaxed and calm&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Beta waves (13-38 hz) occur when we are actively thinking, problem-solving, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since these original studies, other types of brainwaves have been&#xA;  identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Sensory motor rhythm (or SMR; around 14 hz) was originally discovered to prevent seizure activity in cats. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gamma brain waves&lt;/strong&gt; (40-100 hz) are involved in higher mental activity and consolidation of information. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, neurons discharge at different rates, and these rates are associated to different brain states. The ones of interest to us right now are the alpha and the gamma waves, because they are typically connected to activity in the visual system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relative to each other, alpha waves are slow (they happen when neurons discharge about 10 times per second), and gamma waves are fast (they happen when neurons discharge about 40-70 times per second, though even faster ones have been described). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to redefine your question a bit, when staring at a flame, one could say that we are in a slow brain state if we can find evidence of alpha waves, and a fast brain state if we can find evidence of gamma waves. The question is, which state are we going to find?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is: gamma. Fast waves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v439/n7077/abs/nature04258.html&quot;&gt;Nature paper&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In visual areas, &lt;strong&gt;attended stimuli induce enhanced responses and an&#xA;  improved synchronization of rhythmic neuronal activity in the gamma&#xA;  frequency band&lt;/strong&gt; (40–70 Hz)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17284203&quot;&gt;European Journal of Neuroscience&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During voluntary orienting of attention, we found&#xA;  alpha-synchronization to dominate over desynchronization, to be&#xA;  topographically specific for each of eight attention positions, and to&#xA;  occur over areas processing unattended space in a retinotopically&#xA;  organized pattern. This indicates that &lt;strong&gt;alpha-synchronization is an&#xA;  important component of selective attention, serving active suppression&#xA;  of unattended positions&lt;/strong&gt; during visual spatial orienting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put together, these two quotes mean the following: an attended visual stimulus is connected to increased fast/gamma activity, while pulling attention away from a visual stimulus is connected to increased slow/alpha activity. Pulling attention away is typically done my making people stare at a spot where nothing is happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you look at a fire, your visual brain will be displaying fast activity. If you look away from the fire at a place where nothing much is happening, your visual brain will go into a slower state. Looking at a fire does not slow brain activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5696" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T15:20:29.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8042" CreationDate="2012-02-16T16:04:46.490" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I'm just going to say that there are several of studies on this topic from J.E. Leighley and J. Nagler that breaks down differences in voting turnout on several different factors (as well as dozens more by other authors).  I'm providing this information for comprehensiveness, rather than to answer this specific question directly, because the issue is certainly multifaceted.  Below is a small selection of these articles for the interested reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=8D9DEF30AF7BE600489198D150750C53.journals?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=6276568&quot;&gt;Individual and systemic influences on turnout: Who votes?&#xA;Leighley &amp;amp; Nagler, 1992&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/1964134&quot;&gt;Socioeconomic class bias in turnout, 1964-1988: The voters remain the same.&#xA;Leighley &amp;amp; Nagler, 1992&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2007.00541.x/full&quot;&gt;Unions, voter turnout, and class bias in the US electorate, 1964–2004.&#xA;Leighley &amp;amp; Nagler, 2007&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific to your question though, the best resource I can find is this:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/politics/faculty/nagler/leighley_nagler_midwest2007.pdf&quot;&gt;Who Votes Now? And Does It Matter?&#xA;Leighley &amp;amp; Nagler, 1007&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors analyzed the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/ProjectDetails.aspx?myId=1&quot;&gt;NAES&lt;/a&gt; data from 1972 and 2004 to detect changes in voter turnout.  They do not provide data on statistical significance, but does display mean differences for various beliefs, attitudes, and associations between voters and non-voters.  Given the sample size of most of the analyses (N &gt;= 1000 for most analyses), we can assume that most mathematical differences greater than 3-5% are also statistically significant in the population (if one feels this assumption is inappropriate, I would be happy to run some analyses when I have a bit more time).  This assumes, of course, that the NAES sample is representative of the population which I cannot verify conclusively (but its longevity supports this assumption).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the findings provided, there does appear to be differences and they can be seen in their entirety in the tables from page 24 through 28 in the linked pdf.  To summarize these tables indicate a difference between political affiliation and voting behaviors such that voters tended to have strong republican or democratic affiliations (e.g., 20% of voters were strong republican v. 4% of non-voters, 6.5% of voters were independent v. 21% of non-voters).  As far as attitudes on specific issues, there do appear to be some systematic differences but the directions are varied.  Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;51% of non-voters v. 44% of voters prefer government run health insurance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;32% v. 19% of non-voters believe that abortion should always v. never be legal, while the distribution for voters is 39% v. 12%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;73% of non-voters v. 60% of voters favor unions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;68% of non-voters v. 50% of voters favor recalling troops from Iraq.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question in the most general sense.  No, non-voters and voters do not have identical distributions of viewpoints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6190" LastEditorUserId="6190" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T16:37:59.760" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T16:37:59.760" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8079" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-16T22:27:03.010" Score="12" ViewCount="711" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is widely claimed (mostly by religious people) that there was a miracle in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C3%A1tima,_Portugal&quot;&gt;Fátima&lt;/a&gt; where the sun &quot;danced&quot;. It is known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_the_Sun&quot;&gt;miracle of the sun&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific consensus that anything scientifically relevant happened, and if so, what is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5093" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-16T22:41:15.923" LastActivityDate="2012-02-16T22:41:15.923" Title="What happened at Fatima on 13 October 1917?" Tags="|catholic-church|miracle|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8080" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-17T00:33:45.097" Score="42" ViewCount="3320" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hear it claimed very often that there is a higher incidence of people with Asperger's Syndrome who work in IT or study computer science (far more so than other fields).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html&quot;&gt;This wired article&lt;/a&gt; touches on the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's a familiar joke in the industry that many of the hardcore&#xA;  programmers in IT strongholds like Intel, Adobe, and Silicon Graphics&#xA;  - coming to work early, leaving late, sucking down Big Gulps in their cubicles while they code for hours - are residing somewhere in&#xA;  Asperger's domain. Kathryn Stewart, director of the Orion Academy, a&#xA;  high school for high-functioning kids in Moraga, California, calls&#xA;  Asperger's syndrome &quot;the engineers' disorder.&quot; Bill Gates is regularly&#xA;  diagnosed in the press: His single-minded focus on technical minutiae,&#xA;  rocking motions, and flat tone of voice are all suggestive of an adult&#xA;  with some trace of the disorder. Dov's father told me that his friends&#xA;  in the Valley say many of their coworkers &quot;could be diagnosed with ODD&#xA;  - they're odd.&quot; In Microserfs, novelist Douglas Coupland observes, &quot;I think all tech people are slightly autistic.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever I have heard this it sets off alarm bells in my mind. Partly because I think people drawn to computers often tend to be introverted and as a result quite possibly diagnose themselves with Asperger's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that shows a higher incidence of people with Asperger's Syndrome who work in IT or computer science? If so, is there anything that shows that it is more than a novel correlation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="8600" LastEditorDisplayName="user6327" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T14:55:23.440" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T00:42:26.710" Title="Are there an unusually large number of people with Asperger's who work in or study IT or Computer Science?" Tags="|psychology|neurology|computers|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8082" CreationDate="2012-02-17T04:27:38.367" Score="20" ViewCount="4628" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this quote floating around all over the place. It's often used in popular Christian-lite reading (see the first page of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=+%E2%80%9CThe+science+to+which+I+pinned+my+faith+is+bankrupt.+It%E2%80%99s+counsels+which+should+have+established+the+millennium%2C+led%2C+instead%2C+directly+to+the+suicide+of+Europe.+I+believed+them+once.+In+their+name+I+helped+to+destroy+the+faith+of+millions+of+worshippers+&amp;amp;btnG=Search+Books&amp;amp;tbm=bks&amp;amp;tbo=1#hl=en&amp;amp;tbo=1&amp;amp;tbm=bks&amp;amp;sclient=psy-ab&amp;amp;q=The+science+to+which+I+pinned+my+faith+is+bankrupt.+It%E2%80%99s+counsels+which+should+have+established+the+millennium%22&amp;amp;pbx=1&amp;amp;oq=The+science+to+which+I+pinned+my+faith+is+bankrupt.+It%E2%80%99s+counsels+which+should+have+established+the+millennium%22&amp;amp;aq=f&amp;amp;aqi=&amp;amp;aql=&amp;amp;gs_sm=3&amp;amp;gs_upl=4450l4450l2l5975l1l0l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&amp;amp;fp=c509dc845c0f9012&amp;amp;biw=1280&amp;amp;bih=939&quot;&gt;Google Books search for the quote&lt;/a&gt;), but is it true? I have never seen a worthwhile publication linked as a source, nor a date and I don't believe it's in keeping with Mr Shaw's personality or beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The science to which I pinned my faith is bankrupt. It’s (sic) counsels which should have established the millennium, led, instead, directly to the suicide of Europe. I believed them once. In their name I helped to destroy the faith of millions of worshippers in the temples of a thousand creeds. And now they look at me and witness the great tragedy of an atheist who has lost his faith.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-- Supposedly George Bernard Shaw on his deathbed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did George Bernard Shaw really convert on his deathbed, or is this quote mis-attributed? Or does it come from somewhere else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-18T01:39:33.087" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T03:13:58.727" Title="Did George Bernard Shaw convert on his death bed?" Tags="|religion|mortality|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8081" CreationDate="2012-02-17T05:09:18.963" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is false.  That quote was derived from a line of dialogue by a character in his 1932 play &quot;Too True to be Good.&quot;  The full text of which can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300591h.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  If you search &quot;bankrupt&quot; it is the only result that comes up and you can instantly see the striking similarity between the quotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;THE ELDER [rising impulsively] Determinism is gone, shattered, buried with a thousand dead religions, evaporated with the clouds of a million forgotten winters. The science I pinned my faith to is bankrupt: its tales were more foolish than all the miracles of the priests, its cruelties more horrible than all the atrocities of the Inquisition. Its spread of enlightenment has been a spread of cancer: its counsels that were to have established the millennium have led straight to European suicide. And I--I who believed in it as no religious fanatic has ever believed in his superstition! For its sake I helped to destroy the faith of millions of worshippers in the temples of a thousand creeds. And now look at me and behold the supreme tragedy of the atheist who has lost his faith--his faith in atheism, for which more martyrs have perished than for all the creeds put together. Here I stand, dumb before my scoundrel of a son; for that is what you are, boy, a common scoundrel and nothing else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence that Shaw summarized this line of dialogue at any time near his death and contrary to &lt;a href=&quot;http://creationoutreach.com/id44.html&quot;&gt;some claims&lt;/a&gt; this was written more than 18 years and no less than 8 major works before his death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6190" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T05:09:18.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2333" CreationDate="2012-02-17T16:24:18.080" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a well known fact that religious experiences and olfactory hallucinations are related to epilepsy or seizure of the temporal lobe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4022738&quot;&gt;Temporal lobe signs and reports of subjective paranormal experiences in a normal population: a replication.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;7 [&lt;em&gt;cases, n.d.r.&lt;/em&gt;] were direct temporal lobe signs that implied deepened affect, auditory-vestibular experiences (vibrations, hearing one's name called), olfactory auras, perseveration (&quot;forced&quot; thinking), depersonalization, and sense of the personal. Five items involved beliefs about exotic phenomena or philosophical ideas. Only one item was from a control cluster. These results support the hypothesis that mystical or paranormal experiences are associated with transient electrical foci within the temporal lobe of the human brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=DigRJI-MyY4C&amp;amp;lpg=PA195&amp;amp;ots=aieDeyR2g6&amp;amp;dq=olfactory%20religious%20experience&amp;amp;lr&amp;amp;pg=PA195#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;The neuropsychiatry of limbic and subcortical disorders&#xA;By Stephen Salloway, Paul Malloy, Jeffrey L. Cummings, p. 198&lt;/a&gt; lists a series of saints/prophets and their possible diagnosis. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/0591-2385.00343/abstract&quot;&gt;The Limbic System and the Soul: Evolution and the Neuroanatomy of Religious Experience, R. Joseph&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These behaviors and beliefs are related to activation of the amygdala, hippocampus, and temporal lobe, which are responsible for religious, spiritual, and mystical trancelike states, dreaming, astral projection, near-death and out-of-body experiences, and the hallucination of ghosts, demons, angels, and gods. Abraham, Moses, Muhammad, and Jesus Christ, and others who have communed with angels or gods display limbic system hyperactivity, whereas patients report religious hallucinations or out-of-body experiences when limbic structures are stimulated or excessively activated. It is postulated that limbic and temporal lobe structures account for the sexual and violent aspects of religious behavior and also serve as a “transmitter to God,” and that the evolution of these structures made spiritual experience possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another well known cause of olfactory hallucinations is schizophrenia, which is sometimes related to strange or extreme religious behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.movementdisorders.org/UserFiles/file/Long_SAPS_2000_publish%281%29.pdf&quot;&gt;Scale for the assessment of positive symptoms (SAPS) by Nancy C. Andreasen, M.D., Ph.D., p. 4 and 8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Olfactory Hallucinations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The subject experiences unusual smells which are typically quite unpleasant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Religious Delusions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The subject is preoccupied with false beliefs of a religious nature. Sometimes these exist within the context of a conventional religious system, such as beliefs about the Second Coming, the Antichrist, or possession by the Devil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T16:24:18.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8086" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8165" CreationDate="2012-02-17T21:52:30.120" Score="23" ViewCount="4556" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lepoint.fr/societe/exclusif-le-fils-francais-cache-d-adolf-hitler-17-02-2012-1432303_23.php&quot;&gt;report published by LePoint&lt;/a&gt; claims that a Frenchman named Jean-Marie Loret is Hitler's son. The evidence in favor of this claim cited by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/17/jean-marie-loret-adolf-hitler-son_n_1284845.html&quot;&gt;the Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt; includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hitler and Loret have the same blood group. Another study showed that their handwritings are similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, in 2009 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1213589/Hitlers-secret-family-How-researchers-tracked-39-living-descendants-dictator.html&quot;&gt;the Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt; reported on a study that supposedly collected Hitler's DNA from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...forgotten cigarette butts in a small village in Lower Austria, a used paper napkin in a New York fast food restaurant and the seals of letters sent over 30 years ago from northern France.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there really no more credible sources of Adolf Hitler's DNA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="4070" LastEditDate="2012-02-23T15:29:21.417" LastActivityDate="2018-10-15T18:57:49.380" Title="Are Adolf Hitler's DNA samples available?" Tags="|history|genetics|adolf-hitler|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2459" CreationDate="2012-02-17T22:30:17.373" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jenny Craig's program does not provide you with a special diet, a-la Atkins. It's a simple &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorie_restriction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;calorie restriction diet&lt;/a&gt;, joined with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Support_group#Benefits_and_pitfalls&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;support group&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_exercise#Health_effects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;physical exercise&lt;/a&gt;, etc.. All of these tools are very effective when used appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jennycraig.com/how-it-works/help#one&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What are the goals of the Jenny Craig Program?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Weight is often related to lifestyle. That's why the goal of the Jenny Craig Program is to help clients acquire:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Healthy Relationship with Food&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Along with balanced, low-calorie density food choices and portion control, the program emphasizes the importance of tuning into physical/emotional eating cues and the pleasure of eating via our menus and online journal. Teaching clients to be mindful about what they eat, is the first step in making healthier, more satisfying choices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An Active Lifestyle&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The activity component of the program was developed in consultation with the world-renowned Cooper Institute and encourages clients to gradually increase activity through a combination of natural, planned and &quot;playful&quot; physical activities. Jenny Craig offers a walking audiocassettes, and fitness video series, and other tools that encourage clients to engage in a variety of cardiorespiratory, resistance and stretching activities. Maintenance materials also address important variables such as lack of time, ongoing motivation and changing body image.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Balanced Approach to Living&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  As weight issues are, in part, a reflection of thoughts and emotions clients bring to their weight loss efforts, the program emphasizes cognitive strategies to help clients develop a more balanced, positive mindset.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T22:30:17.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2612" CreationDate="2012-02-17T22:39:31.540" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was about to close your question as too broad, but then I found this &lt;em&gt;peer-reviewed article&lt;/em&gt; which answers your question... by saying that it's too broad and vague :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short version:&lt;/strong&gt; there are too many pathologies clumped together in the RSI definition, and not enough studies have been done because of the vagueness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Repetitive strain injury remains a controversial topic. The term repetitive strain injury includes specific disorders such as carpal tunnel syndrome, cubital tunnel syndrome, Guyon canal syndrome, lateral epicondylitis, and tendonitis of the wrist or hand. The diagnosis is usually made on the basis of history and clinical examination. Large high-quality studies using newer imaging techniques, such as MRI and ultrasonography are few. Consequently, the role of such imaging in diagnosis of upper limb disorders remains unclear. In many cases, no specific diagnosis can be established and complaints are labelled as non-specific. Little is known about the effectiveness of treatment options for upper limb disorders. Strong evidence for any intervention is scarce and the effect, if any, is mainly short-term pain relief. Exercise is beneficial for non-specific upper limb disorders. Immobilising hand braces and open carpal tunnel surgery release are beneficial for carpal tunnel syndrome, and topical and oral non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, and corticosteroid injections are helpful for lateral epicondylitis. Exercise is probably beneficial for neck pain, as are corticosteroid injections and exercise for shoulder pain. Although upper limb disorders occur frequently in the working population, most trials have not exclusively included a working population or assessed effects on work-related outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673607608204&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T22:39:31.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2629" CreationDate="2012-02-17T22:57:11.667" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, he is the son of Prince Charles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this news source, this was confirmed by a blood test:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Diana, who publicly admitted to her affair with Hewitt in a 1995 television interview, insisted that the dates of her affair with the officer meant he could not possibly be Harry's father, Simmons said.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;However, she was pressured to carry out DNA tests on both Harry and his elder brother, Prince William, to prove their paternity, the Sun said in its Wednesday edition.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The tests showed that both princes had been fathered by Charles, the heir to the British throne&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1432660/posts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to James Hewitt it is impossible because he started his relationship with Princess Diana &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; Harry was born:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There really is no possibility whatsoever that I am Harry's father.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Although I was with Diana for a long time I must state once and for all that I'm not Harry's father&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;quot;I can absolutely assure you that I am not.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Prince Harry was &amp;quot;already walking&amp;quot; by the time his relationship with Diana began&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2273498.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was also confirmed by Diana's body guard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a book by Diana's former police bodyguard Ken Wharfe, the rumours are also quashed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr Wharfe said the gossip used to upset the Princess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He said in his book: &amp;quot;The malicious rumours that still persist about the paternity of Prince Harry used to anger Diana greatly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The nonsense should be scotched here and now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Harry was born on 15 September, 1984.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Diana did not meet James until the summer of 1986, and the red hair, gossips so love to cite as proof is, of course, a Spencer trait.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2273498.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-18T01:12:31.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2966" CreationDate="2012-02-17T23:19:03.893" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Osama bin Laden has been killed on May 2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt;, 2011. This fact is undisputed by any relevant party:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Osama bin Laden, then head of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on Monday, May 2, 2011, shortly after 1 a.m. local time by DEVGRU/SEAL Team 6, a United States special operations military unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Al-Qaeda confirmed the death on May 6 with posts made on militant websites, vowing to avenge the killing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Osama_bin_Laden&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-02-17T23:19:03.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4423" CreationDate="2012-02-18T11:29:40.643" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a letter sent to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine from 1974 that addresses this. The letter's author, Dr. Alsop, uses a recording of water to simulate the sound of water. The participants were &quot;postoperative patients demonstrating failure with routine methods&quot; to induce urination. They found that &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;results in 80 patients revealed a satisfactory response in 60, many of whom required 20 to 30 minutes of auditory stimulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is promising, but a letter to the editor is not quite peer-reviewed work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM197404042901420&quot;&gt;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM197404042901420&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar study was carried out in 2015 that found an average increase in mean peak flow rate among 18 adult males with lower urinary tract symptoms when they were exposed to the sound of running water (SRW). This does not imply that it causes an urge to urinate, but implies a possible connection between the two. The authors hypothesize that the results may be because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SRW might enhance the parasympathetic tone, which powers the detrusor muscle, and relax the resistant tone of the urethral sphincter, thus resulting in the increased PFR. Second, SRW might lead to increased physical and emotional relaxation. Additionally, feeling the urge to urinate with SRW appears&#xA;  to be in line with a conditioned response in Pavlovian conditioning&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0126798&quot;&gt;http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0126798&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="29741" LastEditDate="2015-11-04T20:44:33.257" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T20:44:33.257" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-02-18T11:29:40.643" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8094" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-18T17:34:28.257" Score="4" ViewCount="2079" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read this from friends and is mostly around in subcontinent that in order to get healthier babies (with no defects and good health), one should avoid ejaculation for a couple of days before trying for pregnancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T15:22:06.297" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T11:04:11.030" Title="Does avoiding ejaculation before conceiving help in healthier and stronger children?" Tags="|human-reproduction|sperm|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8095" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-18T20:37:55.977" Score="22" ViewCount="1908" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to some NPO's such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/05/16/bottled-water-sometimes-has-contamination-on-tap/&quot;&gt;Australian Centre for Independent Journalism&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ewg.org/bottled-water-2011-home&quot;&gt;Environmental Working Group&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bottled water is constantly promoted as pure and natural, but research&#xA;  by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism shows it undergoes&#xA;  an industrial bottling process that actually increases risks of&#xA;  contamination compared to tap water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article suggests that the fact bottled water companies are more business oriented than government-regulated water corporations may blur away the truth from consumers: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It’s suggested that if the company finds any problems that they&#xA;  report the problems, but of course, if you are in business to make&#xA;  money, then you will try to alleviate the problem before you tell&#xA;  anybody about it”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://naturalbias.com/the-deadly-dangers-of-water/&quot;&gt;And this health site claims:&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bottled water is not the healthy option many people think it is. In&#xA;  fact, some bottled water is no less contaminated than ordinary tap&#xA;  water. The plastic bottle it comes in makes matters worse by leaching&#xA;  chemicals into the water, especially if it’s been exposed to heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see no use to cite bottled water companies as they would say anything to sell more bottles. On the other hand, even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/co/maho/wawa/wawa_004.cfm&quot;&gt;filtered water&lt;/a&gt; is far from being risk-free:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general, water filters remove only specific types of substances and&#xA;  are labelled for what they will remove, such as chlorine or lead.&#xA;  Water filters do not remove microorganisms; and, are intended for use&#xA;  with water that is known to be microbiologically safe. No single water&#xA;  filter can be used to remove all types of substances from water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATED:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being more specific, in order to clarify the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Given the points above, where does the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/14/water-cities-drinking-forbeslife-cx_avd_0414health.html&quot;&gt;best treated tap water&lt;/a&gt; ranked among&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nativesunjax.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/ewgs-2011-bottled-water-scorecard/&quot;&gt;EWG's bottled water scorecard&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assuming you live in a city where tap water being properly treated, would it makes sense to consume any kind of bottled water, including mineral*? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*but excluding the fancy flavored\vitamin-enhanced ones&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bottled water companies will never admit if your own house tap water is superior, but will pounce on it when it inferior.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5725" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-06-17T11:05:20.203" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T11:05:20.203" Title="Is bottled water more contaminated than tap water?" Tags="|nutrition|water|chlorine|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5332" CreationDate="2012-02-19T02:08:45.197" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Sklivvz's answer, polyurethane foam (memory foam) may emit formaldehyde:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[0002] It is known from the state of the art that polyurethane foams&#xA;  may emit formaldehyde, this emission of formaldehyde being generally&#xA;  undesirable. These emissions are detected, for example, in the course&#xA;  of measurements in accordance with VDA 275 (bottle method, 3 h&#xA;  60.degree. C.) or even in accordance with VDA 276 (emission-chamber test, 65.degree. C.). These formaldehyde emissions may arise already&#xA;  in freshly produced foams and may be intensified by ageing processes,&#xA;  especially photo-oxidation. --&lt;a href=&quot;http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&amp;amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;amp;d=PG01&amp;amp;p=1&amp;amp;u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.html&amp;amp;r=1&amp;amp;f=G&amp;amp;l=50&amp;amp;s1=20090326089&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PROCESS FOR LOWERING EMISSIONS OF A POLYURETHANE FOAM (patent)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the acute short term &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/f/formaldehyde_poisoning/symptoms.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;effects of formaldehyde poisoning&lt;/a&gt;, formaldehyde is considered &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/formaldehyde&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;carcinogenic to humans&lt;/a&gt; and may have negative effects after long term exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6185" LastEditorUserId="6185" LastEditDate="2012-02-25T19:42:16.193" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T19:42:16.193" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8063" CreationDate="2012-02-19T12:31:46.143" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.data360.org/pdf/20070416064139.Global%20Sex%20Survey.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2005 Durex Global Sex Survey&lt;/a&gt; asked people in 41 different countries various questions about sexual activities. These are the results for the question &quot;Sexual experiences you’ve had&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Zr4am.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5% of people in the UK reported having had a sadomasochist experience, this is the same as the Global %.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T12:31:46.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8100" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-19T13:10:56.340" Score="13" ViewCount="5153" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tjyFx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;David Hasselhoff&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.exploresteamboat.com/news/2006/dec/15/tribute_hasselhoff/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/3465301.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;David Hasselhoff&lt;/strong&gt;, star of the hit 80s TV series Knight Rider, &lt;strong&gt;is&#xA;  renowned in celebrity-obsessed circles for being Big In Germany&lt;/strong&gt;; not&#xA;  only as an actor, but as a purveyor of soft rock anthems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;common trope&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Germans love David Hasselhof&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; , e.g. in the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364725/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dodgeball&lt;/a&gt; he &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgRJjLkYApI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;plays the coach of the German Dodgeball team&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;But is this trope based on truth or was it born out of Norm MacDonald's running gag&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... &lt;em&gt;which once again proves my old theory: Germans love David Hasselhoff&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;on &lt;em&gt;Saturday Night Live&lt;/em&gt; ? [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.movieline.com/2010/06/09/5-guaranteed-topics-at-david-hasselhoffs-comedy-central-roast/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;], [&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm_Macdonald#Saturday_Night_Live&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;], [&lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/10-years-resolutions-david-hasselhoff-123411.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;], [&lt;a href=&quot;http://sabine.tumblr.com/post/561252081&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;].  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;My question:&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does (or did) David Hasselhoff have more fans in Germany than in other countries?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T19:02:48.430" Title="Do Germans love David Hasselhoff?" Tags="|history|music|television|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7667" CreationDate="2012-02-19T14:11:51.393" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://apothdrawer.blogspot.in/2005/01/pseudocolour-gives-you-pip.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;, PIP strongly resembles &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_color&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;false-color&lt;/a&gt; images:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;None of the sites promoting PIP offer peer-reviewed studies, show any&#xA;  consideration of the possibility of such artifacts, or show evidence&#xA;  of consistency of multiple scans taken with the client (after stepping&#xA;  briefly away and back to the apparatus) in the same condition.&#xA;  Whatever is different in the 'after' scan is invariably interpreted as&#xA;  an improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The simplest hypothesis: &lt;strong&gt;PIP is wishful interpretation of the brightness levels in a picture due to ordinary optics&lt;/strong&gt;. I think its&#xA;  appeal, like that of the Kirlian photography that preceded it, lies in&#xA;  its gloss of objective science and its ability to produce an&#xA;  attractive image that matches believers' expectations of what an aura&#xA;  or energy field might look like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepdic.com/comments/ttcom.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;another&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://jonn.co.uk/badhomeopathy/modules/news/article.php?storyid=46&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; debunking PIP:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As usual with this type of pseudo-science, the proponents&#xA;  unquestioningly accept the traditional physics, chemistry and medicine&#xA;  that suits them, and reject the bits that don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I examined the photographs of Chakras ... and I noticed that the walls&#xA;  of the room and the chair seem to have their own energy fields, very&#xA;  similar to those of humans. This raises some questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;o Does that mean that these inanimate objects are alive? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;o Was the red congestion of the patient in picture one transferred to the back of the chair in picture three?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;o Does the chair feel congested? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;o Should we form a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Chairs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If I didn't know better I'd think they were measuring minute&#xA;  differences in temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PIP only gives you a psychedelic false-color image from an ordinary photograph which is unlikely to show anything in the microwave range where cell-phones &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_health&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;operate&lt;/a&gt;, so it would be unwise to rely on PIP as proof of the radiation-reducing properties of their chip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if it did work, it would probably make things worse as &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7667/is-polycontrast-interference-photography-pip-legit#comment30414_7667&quot;&gt;@vartec commented&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5311" LastEditorUserId="5311" LastEditDate="2014-12-17T04:11:51.910" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T04:11:51.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8102" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-19T15:47:26.970" Score="14" ViewCount="22836" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been severe arguments over the safety of mycoprotein:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quorn is considered a healthy food in UK and Europe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some parties in the US have cried havoc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's quite discussed in Canada&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quorn.co.uk/range/&quot;&gt;Quorn claims&lt;/a&gt; it's safe and healthy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main ingredient in Quorn is mycoprotein, a high quality meat-free protein, which is naturally low in fat, saturated fat and calories. For example, Quorn mince is 75% lower in fat and saturated fat that even lean beef mince. It also has all the essential amino acids you’d find in other proteins like beef or chicken, so is an ideal alternative for healthy eaters and vegetarians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cspinet.org/quorn/quornpr_022802.html&quot;&gt;Center for Science in the Public Interest&lt;/a&gt;, a US organization, is asking for Quorn to be almost banned from consumption:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CSPI [...] insists that it be [...] studied more thoroughly before Quorn’s mycoprotein can be considered “Generally Recognized As Safe.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorn#Controversy&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; on the controversy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CSPI also claimed that Quorn could cause allergic reactions and should be removed from stores. Others argued that milk, peanuts, soy, eggs and many other foods are common allergens, sometimes fatally so, and removing Quorn from stores would set an unreasonable precedent. Calling the product &quot;fungus food&quot;, CSPI claimed in 2003 that it &quot;sickens 4.5% of eaters&quot;. The manufacturer disputes the figure, claiming that only 0.0007% (1 in 146,000) suffer adverse reactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a clearly falsifiable hypothesis: what percentage of mycoprotein eaters has an adverse reaction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T15:30:06.780" Title="Is mycoprotein (Quorn) safe for human consumption?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|biology|consumer-products|vegetarianism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8106" CreationDate="2012-02-19T17:01:51.860" Score="6" ViewCount="846" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Indonesian &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kopi luwak&lt;/a&gt; AKA civet coffee is the world's most expensive coffee at $160 per pound.&#xA;Are there any testimonials, considering its premium price, that its taste even distinguishable compared to other premium beans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5725" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-20T00:34:16.677" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T00:34:16.677" Title="Does Indonesian Kopi Luwak coffee have a distinctive taste?" Tags="|coffee|perception|taste|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8104" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-19T17:53:47.420" Score="4" ViewCount="760" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a general conception in Pakistan that late &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Zia-ul-Haq&quot;&gt;General Zia&lt;/a&gt; was eliminated by Americans in a mysterious plane crash in August 17, 1988:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The plane went down and then up and  eventually hit the ground at about 60-70 deg and exploding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No black box was recovered. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was no MayDay Signal before crash.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two other planes who were on the same frequency, did not hear anything from the plane, except one word &quot;Mahmood&quot; (name of one pilot). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No sign of struggle (as if the pilots were already dead). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No autopsies were made on the dead. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There were two American diplomats on board. US and FBI was kept out of investigation even though two US diplomats were involved. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is, it wasn't a typical case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One theory that is popular in Pakistan the pilots were paralyzed almost instantly with a lethal gas that only a few countries could have obtained. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Zia-ul-Haq&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; explains (citing &lt;em&gt;The History and Culture of Pakistan&lt;/em&gt; by Nigel Kelly):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A board of inquiry was set up to investigate the crash. It concluded &lt;em&gt;the most probable cause of the crash was a criminal act of sabotage perpetrated in the aircraft&lt;/em&gt;. It also suggested that poisonous gases were released which incapacitated the passengers and crew, which would explain why no Mayday signal was given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insaf.pk/Forum/tabid/53/forumid/1/tpage/1/view/topic/postid/40355/Default.aspx&quot;&gt;Barbara Crossett wrote an article about it&lt;/a&gt; that suggests this poison gas theory is true. Also American Ambassador to India, John Gunther Dean, suggested there could be an Israeli connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All I know is I had people from Congress coming to me and saying,&#xA;  John, a man of your background, you have to go and help on the Israeli&#xA;  issue. I said, What are you talking about? I'm the American ambassador&#xA;  [in India]. Whatever my religious views are, are between myself and my&#xA;  maker. I resent this. Go and talk to Arnie Raphel and Arnie Raphel by&#xA;  the way was Jewish, and he got along great with Zia. Why did these&#xA;  Congress people come to me and say, John, you gotta help curb the&#xA;  Pakistani ambitions for a bomb? Why did they come to me to ask the&#xA;  Indians to be more forthcoming with Israel?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sources &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/zia_print.htm&quot;&gt;Edward Jay Epstein - 1989&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to support the poison gas theory (or any other assassination theory)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T01:51:10.747" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T01:51:10.747" Title="Was Pakistani President, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, assassinated?" Tags="|united-states|mortality|pakistan|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8105" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19093" CreationDate="2012-02-19T23:03:10.823" Score="8" ViewCount="1171" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dioxins are implicated in The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1986457_1986501_1986449,00.html&quot;&gt;Seveso disaster&lt;/a&gt; in Italy and the lingering disputes about deformities and birth defects caused by the use of the Agent Orange defoliant in the Vietnam war (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_Orange&quot;&gt;Wikipedia summary&lt;/a&gt;). They are often described as the most toxic chemicals known to man (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ejnet.org/dioxin/&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/dioxin/dioxin-hp.htm&quot;&gt;another example&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not everyone agrees (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=11688&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;). And prominent people have survived poisoning with them such as former Ukrainian president &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4088345.stm&quot;&gt;Viktor Yushchenko&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do dioxins deserve their public image as one of the worst toxins? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-14T11:34:54.760" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T11:34:54.760" Title="Are dioxins the most toxic chemicals known to science?" Tags="|chemistry|safety|toxicology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8103" CreationDate="2012-02-19T23:24:25.003" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are testimonials that Kopi Luwak has a distinct flavor, at least to the trained palette of coffee enthusiasts. However, there seems little consensus that it's a particularly good coffee. &lt;a href=&quot;http://caferationalecompanion.blogspot.com/2011/10/comparative-cupping-kopi-luwak-in.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;One cupper says:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The kopi luwak was again smooth and silky with deep chocolate notes and a pleasant earthiness to it.  The Honduran was vibrant and citrusy, popping out with tart berry flavors as it cooled a little bit.  As both cups cooled down, the differences were night and day to everyone at the table; the difference in acidity alone was enough to readily distinguish the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://victrolacoffeeroasters.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/cupping-kopi-luwak/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another says:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;just exceedingly mild with little sign of regionally distinctive flavors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bestcafes.com.au/forum/beans-or-blends-you-like-and-how-they-taste/kopi-luwak-coffee/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A third says:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I picked the taste straight away as Kopi Luwak from my previous but recent cupping experience....I don't dislike the taste of Kopi Luwak however I have found that at least for my pallet, that I have had lot of nicer coffees and blends&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-02-19T23:24:25.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8107" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-19T23:26:41.240" Score="7" ViewCount="1399" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since &lt;em&gt;everything&lt;/em&gt; is made from chemicals the often made claim that we should avoid food that doesn't contain chemicals doesn't make any sense. But the underlying idea that &lt;em&gt;synthetic&lt;/em&gt; chemicals are somehow particularly dangerous seems to persist and is very common on environmental and food faddist sites. For example, thenaturalguide.com claims this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the greatest threats to the human race is the all-pervasive, ongoing, deliberate manipulation of our food supply... Without a doubt, the contamination of our food with synthetic chemicals ... combined with production techniques that utterly decimate the intrinsic nutritional value of raw food (e.g., genetic engineering, irradiation, high-temperature processing, hydrogenation, etc.), is the primary root cause disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Artificial chemicals are widely assumed to be behind epidemics of many modern diseases such as cancer or male infertility (not that the evidence is clear that such epidemics exist: see questions &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7160/are-sperm-counts-in-men-decreasing-significantly&quot;&gt;Are sperm counts in men decreasing significantly?&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7259/is-there-an-epidemic-of-cancer&quot;&gt;Is there an epidemic of cancer?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But most compounds natural or artificial have not been fully tested for their safety or even their carcinogenicity (often the biggest fear). Common natural compounds are deadly (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulinum_toxin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;botulinum toxin&lt;/a&gt; or the carcinogenic compounds in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracken&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bracken&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do we have any reason to think that synthetic chemicals are more likely to be toxic in general or carcinogenic in particular when compared to naturally occurring ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T13:37:58.937" Title="Are synthetically produced chemicals not found in nature more likely to be harmful than naturally occurring ones?" Tags="|safety|cancer|chemistry|toxicology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8020" CreationDate="2012-02-20T07:42:45.073" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As stated by Vartec, obesity technically classes as a disease no matter what causes it. It CAN (doesn't have to) also be caused (thus be a symptom of) other diseases like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothyroidism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hypothyroidism&lt;/a&gt;, possibly in combination with other factors.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Another one that can have obesity as a symptom is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cushing%27s_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cushing's&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Certain medicines can also slow down the metabolism, or lead to excessive water retention, resulting in weight gain unless countered.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And that doesn't even go into the genetic disorders that can lead to obesity. Wikipedia lists &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prader-Willi_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prader-Willi syndrome&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardet-Biedl_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bardet-Biedl syndrome&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohen_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cohen syndrome&lt;/a&gt; as some examples in their obesity article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies are currently being conducted into the potential of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infectobesity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;infections causing obesity&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia page on &lt;em&gt;infectobesity&lt;/em&gt; states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An association between viruses and obesity has been found in humans as well as a number of different animal species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;quoting this review: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1473309906705230&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Obesity and infection&lt;/a&gt; - Falagas and Kompoti - &lt;em&gt;The Lancet&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;2006&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, obesity can be a symptom of various diseases, and doesn't have to be (in fact may well not be in a good port of the population) caused exclusively or mainly by lifestyle choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T12:54:28.617" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T12:54:28.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8110" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8122" CreationDate="2012-02-20T08:39:11.763" Score="9" ViewCount="1744" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently, some decaffeination processes (the &quot;direct method&quot;, for example) use solvents or other chemicals that don't sound very healthy (dichloromethane &quot;is the least toxic of the simple chlorohydrocarbons, but it is not without health risks&quot;, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article on Wikipedia doesn't talk about the effect of those chemicals used for decaffeination and whether they still can be detected in the final product:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaffeination#Health_effects_of_decaffeinated_coffee&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decaffeination#Health_effects_of_decaffeinated_coffee&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some mentions that decaffeinated coffee might be bad are marked with &quot;citation needed&quot; in &quot;Health effects of coffee&quot; on Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_coffee&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_coffee&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people still assured me that it was definitely bad for my health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6067" LastEditorUserId="6067" LastEditDate="2012-02-20T08:56:32.850" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T23:35:39.743" Title="Is decaffeinated coffee bad for health?" Tags="|nutrition|caffeine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8111" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8113" CreationDate="2012-02-20T08:43:03.550" Score="5" ViewCount="1497" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bed sheets often state the thread count as an indication of quality. Is the thread count really a good measure of quality? If not, what other things can be checked to determine the quality of the sheets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Qualities people might be looking for in sheets are durability (&amp;amp; resistance to pilling), softness, resistance to fading, resistance to wrinkling. My experience is that most sheets are cotton, but I know some are a polyester/cotton blend, and there are other fabrics used such as silk. Obviously a thread count of silk is not comparable with cotton, but the same questions might apply when comparing silk with silk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I can't afford silk sheets, so I'm primarily interested in cotton or similar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently the thread count is important enough to put in bold print with the item name:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/89JLd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5343" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-02-20T10:08:03.073" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T11:28:58.967" Title="Is a high thread count for bed sheets directly linked to how good the quality is?" Tags="|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8112" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8124" CreationDate="2012-02-20T10:51:02.637" Score="18" ViewCount="9228" Body="&lt;p&gt;In conversation with my housemate last night he said that if a cycle helmet is dropped, even from a height of a meter or so, onto a hard surface then it needs to be replaced. He said the internal structure of the helmet could be damaged, even if there is no visible dent. I've done a but can only find &lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090201140840AATTBYZ&quot;&gt;others&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-549736.html&quot;&gt;asking the&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bikeforums.net/archive/index.php/t-730271.html&quot;&gt;same question&lt;/a&gt;, with unsatisfactory and variable answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I drop my cycle helmet onto a hard surface, from a height of a meter or so, under what circumstances do I need to replace it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="408" LastEditDate="2012-07-26T06:03:34.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T06:03:34.730" Title="If I drop my cycle helmet, do I need to buy a new one?" Tags="|safety|bicycles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8111" CreationDate="2012-02-20T11:28:58.967" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.choice.com.au/&quot;&gt;Choice&lt;/a&gt; is an Australian consumer watchdog and review magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a 2009 article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.choice.com.au/reviews-and-tests/household/living-and-bedroom/bedding/twisting-the-truth-on-thread-count.aspx&quot;&gt;Thread count is marketing spin&lt;/a&gt;, they warn that the published thread-counts may be misleading. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is a slightly different argument to &quot;Thread counts are unimportant.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, they highlight that there is no standard for how thread-counts are measured:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since there is no legal requirement for manufacturers to state how they counted the threads, the term is almost meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They go one to warn that two-ply threads may effectively double the thread-count without necessarily being less coarse, and the coarseness of the threads may make similar thread-counts feel different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linen Place is a retailer (and therefore might have a conflict of interest) but in their explanation &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linenplace.com/product_guide/truth_about_thread_count.html&quot;&gt;The Truth about Thread Count&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, they explain the (US) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ftc.gov/&quot;&gt;FTC&lt;/a&gt; have made rulings about the definition of thread-count (and how the manufacturers have responded), so the situation may be different by country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T11:28:58.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8114" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-20T13:40:54.530" Score="1" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/303/can-microwaved-water-explode&quot;&gt;Can microwaved water explode?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to heat water beyond its boiling point using a microwave? Furthermore, is there  any truth to stories that such overheated water could explode?. Have any people been burnt while trying to heat up water in a microwave?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1708" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T13:50:05.800" Title="Is it possible to heat water beyond the boiling point using a microwave?" Tags="|physics|microwaves|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-02-20T13:48:08.297" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6010" CreationDate="2012-02-20T16:56:21.973" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others have said, much depends on your definition of &quot;a word&quot;. The 250,000+ &quot;words&quot; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/News_and_Events/News/Pages/Collins-Official-Scrabble-Words.aspx&quot;&gt;Collins Official Scrabble Words&lt;/a&gt;, probably represent a little over 100,000 &quot;base words&quot;, with the rest accounted for by a small set of standard &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/21322759/Cambridge-Dictionary-Regular-inflections&quot;&gt;regular inflections&lt;/a&gt;. OSW doesn't include &quot;uninflected&quot; words of 10 letters or more - but although English includes a lot of these, they're mostly &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/compound&quot;&gt;compound words&lt;/a&gt; that can be understood by deconstruction into meaningful sub-components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sticking to &quot;base words&quot;, my understanding is you only need about 3000 to get by in terms of being able to express yourself without great difficulty, but even relatively illiterate people probably have more than twice that number at their disposal, so you'd often have difficulty understanding others' speech or writing with such a poor vocabulary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the &lt;em&gt;average&lt;/em&gt; person probably has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.education.com/definition/productive-vocabulary/&quot;&gt;productive/expressive vocabulary&lt;/a&gt; (words they're likely to actually &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt;) of 15-20,000 words, with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.education.com/definition/receptive-vocabulary/&quot;&gt;receptive/listening vocabulary&lt;/a&gt; (words they would understand, but not normally say/write) at least half as big again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't resist adding that about 20 years ago I was commissioned by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Roger-Prebble/e/B0034Q31NK&quot;&gt;Roger Prebble&lt;/a&gt; (then managing editor of a major UK puzzle publishing company) to write crossword-generating software. He'd previously compiled a number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.librarything.com/author/prebbleroger&quot;&gt;&quot;word list&quot; books&lt;/a&gt; published by Chambers, and as a goodwill gesture they'd allowed him free use of an electronic copy of Official Scrabble Words (UK rights to which they owned at the time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roger initially thought that being able to incorporate the OSW list into my program would be a major help. In the event, we soon realised that most of the words were so obscure they could never be used. He and a few others with exceptionally wide vocabularies had to spend many, many hours leafing through the list deleting anything they'd never heard of. Even of the 80,000 that remained after this savage cull, more than half were flagged as &lt;em&gt;&quot;very difficult&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, and not to be used by my program for &quot;ordinary&quot; puzzles. As far as I recall, we only marked about 10,000 as &lt;em&gt;&quot;well-known enough to be used in &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; crossword puzzle&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to put some context on that, bear in mind that most people who do crosswords at &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; level probably tend to have at least an &quot;average&quot; vocabulary, or they'd soon get frustrated and give up the pastime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="942" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T16:56:21.973" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8118" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8776" CreationDate="2012-02-20T19:28:43.517" Score="7" ViewCount="1403" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/iaq/voc.html&quot;&gt;Volatile Organic Compounds&lt;/a&gt; seems to be a catch-all phrase describing a variety of organic chemicals that have a high vapor pressure at room temperature.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many sources for parenting, expectant parents, and sites about baby health warn about the dangers of &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.about.com/od/hiddendangers/a/0108_env_chmcls.htm&quot;&gt;using VOC paints&lt;/a&gt;, and some make some seemingly extraordinary claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it seems plausible that exposure to VOCs while pregnant &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babycenter.com/404_is-it-safe-to-paint-or-be-around-paint-fumes-during-pregnanc_9484.bc&quot;&gt;could increase the chances of birth defect&lt;/a&gt;, I have trouble with the following claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ecochildsplay.com/2008/07/09/paint-for-people-you-love/&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What most of us didn’t know until recently was that we’re inhaling our paint for years to come. We know to get the lead out, we know that you should use a low VOC paint formula but there’s a lot you don’t know. Paints traditionally have been made into two parts, one part (microscopic) plastic balls and the other is a solvent that makes those plastic balls malleable so they stick to the walls. The solvents are chock full of VOCs and they become a part of your indoor air quality for a good six years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ababysworld.com/site/620910/page/915877&quot;&gt;This one&lt;/a&gt; goes so far as to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That new paint or freshly laid carpet smell is actually toxic. The fumes are part of a wide range of chemicals known as volatile organic compounds, commonly called VOCs. These chemicals, present in products such as building materials and furniture, slowly enter the air in a process known as outgassing. As the product ages, outgassing decreases, though temperature and humidity affects the rate. Other products, such as carpets, collect VOCs and re-release them into the air. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Infants are highly susceptible to VOCs because they breathe more rapidly than adults to compensate for their smaller lungs. Consequently, they breathe in more air. With their nervous and respiratory systems not yet fully developed, babies cannot filter out airborne toxins as well as adults. Infants spend over 90 percent of their time indoors, and according to the Environmental Protection Agency,  indoor air pollution  is two to five times higher than air pollutants outdoors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also blame carpets as a major source of VOC risk:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Carpets are one of the worst culprits in harboring chemicals. Off gassing is highest in the first few months after installation, and release trace amounts of VOCs up to five years later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well as crib mattresses: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Many of these chemicals, associated with asthma, hyperactivity and cancer, easily leech into the air and into baby's lungs. If your only option is a standard mattress, air it out for a few weeks in a well-ventilated room. Simply smelling the mattress will give you a good indication of the level of outgassing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: Is there any evidence to support significant health risk to infants from exposure to the levels of VOCs that you would expect to find from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paint that has thoroughly dried before the baby is introduced to the environment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Crib mattresses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carpet, either from its own VOC content or from VOC absorbed from other sources (e.g. paint)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:56:39.583" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T08:56:39.583" Title="Do volatile organic compounds from common household fixtures pose a threat to infants?" Tags="|environmental-health|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8136" CreationDate="2012-02-20T22:35:57.633" Score="7" ViewCount="1851" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is widely claimed that meat-curing agents containing nitrates or nitrites are dangerous food additives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time-to-run.com/nutrition/worstfoods.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; puts them in a top ten list of bad food and recommends avoiding cured meats, explaining:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many foods, especially cured meats such as bacon and hot dogs, use nitrates to preserve color and maintain microbial safety. Nitrate is harmless, but it can convert to nitrite, which can form nitrosamines, a powerful cancer-causing chemical, in your body. Whenever possible, look for nitrate-free preserved meats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hyscience.com/archives/2006/06/fight_cancer_av.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; also recommends avoiding them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teaching your children the importance of eating healthy and staying away from preserved meats may save them from cancer later on in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nitrates do have useful anti-microbial quantities as even critics recognise. But are added nitrates and nitrites a net harm to people who eat food containing them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2018 update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story has become topical again (in the UK at least) because a report has called for the elimination of added nitrates and nitrites in cured meat. This &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/dec/29/nitrites-used-in-bacon-cured-meats-linked-to-cancer-experts-warn&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guardian story reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reputation of the meat industry will sink to that of big tobacco unless it removes cancer-causing chemicals from processed products such as bacon and ham, a coalition of experts and politicians warn today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...the coalition claims there is a “consensus of scientific opinion” that the nitrites used to cure meats produce carcinogens called nitrosamines when ingested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there doesn't seem to be any significant new evidence about nitrosamines in the story which repeats worries first raised in the 1970s which petered out as no direct epidemiological link was found. And the recent claims also seem to ignore &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6240834/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;scientific evidence&lt;/a&gt; that cured meat is a small contributor to dietary nitrate/nitrite load in diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has the scientific evidence changed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-01-02T17:22:32.243" Title="Are added nitrates and nitrites in our diet harmful?" Tags="|nutrition|safety|chemistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8120" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-20T22:42:39.310" Score="4" ViewCount="742" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard the claim that psychopaths are constantly, or at least most of the time acting in order to manipulate people, most recently on an episode of Supernatural, episode 15 of season 7.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dialogue was as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sam: So, Jeffrey was just pretending to be the victim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sam: Way back in that farmhouse during the exorcism, h-he was&#xA;  just...acting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dean: He was a psychopath, Sam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dean: That's what they do all the time, is act. Act like they're&#xA;  normal, act like they're not balls-to-the-wall crazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another, perhaps more well known instance of this claim is the titular character on the TV shows Dexter, a self-proclaimed psychopath. It is mentioned throughout the show that Dexter has to act &quot;normal&quot; to fit in and avoid arousing suspicion. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dexter_%28TV_series%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quotes from Dexter&lt;/a&gt; demonstrate that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dexter: [voiceover] I like to pretend I'm alone. Completely alone.&#xA;  Maybe post-apocalypse or plague … whatever. No one left to act normal&#xA;  for. No need to hide who I really am. It would be … freeing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Harry Morgan: But most normal people don't, and it's important that&#xA;  you seem normal. Teenage Dexter: Even though I'm not. Harry Morgan:&#xA;  Because you're not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A major characteristic is that they don't feel empathy or remorse, so I take the claim as above to mean that they are acting to give the impression that they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any validity to the claim that people diagnosed as psychopaths are acting a substantial amount of the time, significantly more than most people as implied?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would guess any surveys or long-term observations could provide a starting point to answering this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T04:13:47.257" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T04:13:47.257" Title="Do Psychopaths act all (or most) of the time?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8121" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-20T22:57:17.627" Score="19" ViewCount="8293" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is often claimed that psychopaths lack a conscience. There was even a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Without-Conscience-Disturbing-World-Psychopaths/dp/1572304510&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; named after the claim. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beyondsatire.us/?q=node/173&quot;&gt;review&lt;/a&gt; of that book states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the title suggests, psychopaths are qualitatively different from&#xA;  other people, literally having no conscience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/psychopath.htm&quot;&gt;This website&lt;/a&gt; which seems to be an information resource for psychopathy states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Imagine - if you can - not having a conscience, none at all, no&#xA;  feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense&#xA;  of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family&#xA;  members. Imagine no struggles with shame, not a single one in your&#xA;  whole life, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral&#xA;  action you had taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is well established that psychopaths lack empathy, which has been shown with differences in brain structure and/or activity, although I don't think it is necessarily valid to conclude that psychopaths have no conscience from that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conscience&quot;&gt;definition&lt;/a&gt; for conscience is not dependent on empathy, bur rather knowing or having a sense of what is right or wrong. Even with a complete lack of empathy or remorse, why could there be no sense of right and wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any validity to the claim that psychopaths lack a conscience? Why would they be unable to have the same values of wrong and right instilled as other people, or to sense how people will morally view their actions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-09T00:25:15.837" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T05:37:49.187" Title="Do psychopaths lack a conscience?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8122" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8110" CreationDate="2012-02-20T23:35:39.743" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone asked &lt;a href=&quot;http://goaskalice.columbia.edu/about-us&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alice&lt;/a&gt; this, on the Columbia University health page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The the &lt;a href=&quot;http://goaskalice.columbia.edu/decaffeinated-coffee-safe-drink&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order for coffee to qualify as decaffeinated, it must have at least&#xA;97 percent of its caffeine removed. What does that chock up to? An&#xA;eight-ounce cup of decaf coffee would have no more than 5 or fewer&#xA;milligrams of caffeine (compared to the range of 40 - 180 mg.&#xA;typically found in one eight-ounce cup of brewed, dripped, or&#xA;percolated java).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Today, most processors use safe methods to remove&#xA;caffeine.&lt;/strong&gt; A few different techniques are available, and understanding&#xA;them may help allay your concerns about coffee contaminants. Coffee&#xA;beans are decaffeinated by softening the beans with water and using a&#xA;substance to extract the caffeine. Water alone cannot be used because&#xA;it strips away too much of the flavor. The goal is to extract the&#xA;caffeine with minimal loss of flavor. Substances used to remove the&#xA;caffeine may directly or indirectly come in contact with the beans,&#xA;and so the processes are referred to as direct or indirect&#xA;decaffeination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one process, coffee beans are soaked in water to&#xA;soften them and dissolve the caffeine. The water containing the&#xA;caffeine (and the flavor from the beans) is treated with a solvent,&#xA;heated to remove the solvent and caffeine, and then returned to the&#xA;beans. The flavors in the water are reabsorbed by the beans, which are&#xA;then dried. This process is referred to as &amp;quot;indirect decaffeination,&amp;quot;&#xA;because the beans never touch the solvent themselves. The most widely&#xA;used solvent today is ethyl acetate, a substance found in many fruits.&#xA;When your coffee label states that the beans are &amp;quot;naturally&#xA;decaffeinated,&amp;quot; it is referring to this process, specifically using&#xA;ethyl acetate. Although it doesn't sound like a natural process, it&#xA;can be labeled as such because the solvent occurs in nature. Other&#xA;solvents have been used, some of which have been shown to be harmful.&#xA;One, methylene chloride, has been alleged to cause cancer in humans&#xA;and therefore is not often used. Back in the 1970s, another solvent,&#xA;trichloroethylene, was found to be carcinogenic and is no longer used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another indirect method soaks the beans in water to soften them and&#xA;remove the caffeine, and then runs the liquid through activated&#xA;charcoal or carbon filters to decaffeinate it. The flavor containing&#xA;fluid is then returned to the beans to be dried. This charcoal or&#xA;carbon process is often called &amp;quot;Swiss water process&amp;quot; (developed by a&#xA;Swiss company).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your concern over the safety of decaffeinated coffee&#xA;probably stems from solvents used in the past. &lt;strong&gt;If your coffee is&#xA;labeled naturally decaffeinated or Swiss water processed, you can be&#xA;assured that no harmful chemicals are used.&lt;/strong&gt; If you are uncertain, you&#xA;can ask or call your coffee processor to learn about the method used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is safe to say that any decaffeinated coffee purchased in a country that competently regulates food safety is safe to consume&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-20T23:35:39.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8121" CreationDate="2012-02-21T01:06:07.817" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Psychopathy is measured through a scale known as &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statisticssolutions.com/resources/directory-of-survey-instruments/hare-psychopathy-checklist-revised-pcl-r&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hare Psychopathy Check List, Revised (PCL-R)&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;. It is not simply a paper but a &lt;em&gt;whole book&lt;/em&gt; on psychopathy. It is very, very well tested experimentally, and hugely cited - Google Scholar reports 3000+ citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the book is not freely available, but, since this is a non-controversial subject, I'll simply use Wikipedia. See the voice for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCL-R&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PCL-R&lt;/a&gt;. There are 2 main factors identified in psychopaths:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Factor 1: Personality &amp;quot;Aggressive narcissism&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Glibness/superficial charm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grandiose sense of self-worth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pathological lying&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cunning/manipulative&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of remorse or guilt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shallow affect (genuine emotion is short-lived and egocentric)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Callousness; lack of empathy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Failure to accept responsibility for own actions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Factor 2: Case history &amp;quot;Socially deviant lifestyle&amp;quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Parasitic lifestyle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poor behavioral control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lack of realistic long-term goals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Impulsivity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Irresponsibility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Juvenile delinquency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Early behavior problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revocation of conditional release&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is clear from this that lack of conscience (or remorse, guilt) and lack of empathy are part of the same factor and thus they are strongly correlated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - to answer your question in full - lack of a conscience is a common trait of psychopaths, but it's not, strictly speaking, necessary, for a psychopathy diagnosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T00:24:53.840" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8112" CreationDate="2012-02-21T01:58:21.173" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is somewhat dependent on manufacturer and the quality of the helmet sold, which can vary a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the USA, there is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helmets.org/index.htm&quot;&gt;Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute&lt;/a&gt; which does various tests and gives information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For bike helmets to be legal in the US, they are required to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helmets.org/standard.htm&quot;&gt;pass a test&lt;/a&gt; of being dropped between one and two meters on an anvil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All of the standards discussed here require the helmet to pass a lab&#xA;  test where it is placed on an instrumented headform, turned upside&#xA;  down and dropped for a measured distance onto an anvil. The anvil can&#xA;  be flat, round (hemispheric) or another shape like a curbstone, a&#xA;  skate blade or a horse's hoof. Drop distances vary but are generally&#xA;  between one and two meters (3.3 to 6.6 feet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bhsi.org/replace.htm&quot;&gt;Their guidelines&lt;/a&gt; about when to replace a helmet mention say little about a short drop on a floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can also crack the helmet foam or damage it by dropping the helmet&#xA;  on a hard surface. The cracks may be small and hard to see, so you&#xA;  need to look carefully. Cracks in the foam always require replacement&#xA;  of the helmet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, look for visible cracks very carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did you crash it? Replace!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did you drop it hard enough to crack the foam? Replace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it from the 1970's? Replace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is the outside just foam or cloth instead of plastic? Replace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does it lack a CPSC, ASTM or Snell sticker? Replace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can you not adjust it to fit correctly? Replace!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you hate it? Replace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't think that a short drop would have enough force to render the helmet ineffective as a protection device. Going by the BHSI guidelines, unless there is visible damage or it was dropped from a great height, the helmet should not need to be replaced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-21T06:27:55.627" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T06:27:55.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-21T03:34:57.547" Score="1" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4574/does-one-remain-conscious-after-decapitation&quot;&gt;Does one remain conscious after decapitation?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that after you are beheaded, you are still concious for a few seconds, and you can see everything around?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6222" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T01:39:15.013" Title="Are people still concious after beheading?" Tags="|physiology|mortality|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-02-21T07:59:18.450" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8130" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-21T05:53:40.227" Score="25" ViewCount="7002" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is sometimes claimed that racism could be the result of a natural instinct, something we overcame due to civilization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Charles Miller made that claim in 1999 in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anomalist.com/afiles/instincts.html&quot;&gt;Anomalist&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But my contention that &quot;racism&quot; may also be a human instinct is the one  that usually draws a storm of criticism from all corners--probably because we in  20th Century Western Culture prefer to believe that racism is a bad habit or something  that we can extinguish with a little social discipline. If we were to accept that  racism is a survival instinct--left over, perhaps, from hundreds of thousands of  years ago when several different species of human were competing against one another  for survival--then we would also have to accept that racism as an instinct may defy  the social engineering of one or two generations (thus lending to the angst of many  civil rights activists, I can imagine).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Taken from the comments)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Richard Dawkins seems to propose the theory that racism could be the result of an evolutionary adaptation. From The God Delusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[racism] could be interpreted as an irrational generalization of a&#xA;  kin-selected tendency to identify with individuals physically&#xA;  resembling oneself, and to be nasty to individuals different in&#xA;  appearance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence for racism being a human instinct, as opposed to a learned behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-06-14T14:09:35.473" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T19:41:17.713" Title="Is racism a natural instinct?" Tags="|psychology|racism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8132" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-21T11:28:03.710" Score="15" ViewCount="1908" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rick Santorum, one of the current GOP presidential candidates for the 2012 presidential election recently claimed that 10% of deaths in the Netherlands are due to euthanasia and that half of those euthanasia cases are involuntarily. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/19/1066333/-Santorum-on-euthanasia-in-the-Netherlands&quot;&gt;DailyKOS has a video of the American Heartland Forum where this claim was made&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these numbers in any way accurate? Is there any hard data on the number of euthanasia cases in the Netherlands?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T12:56:00.527" Title="Are 10% of deaths in the Netherlands due to euthanasia?" Tags="|mortality|netherlands|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8132" CreationDate="2012-02-21T12:48:54.497" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/publication/?DM=SLEN&amp;amp;PA=37943eng&amp;amp;D1=0-9,23&amp;amp;D2=271-287&amp;amp;LA=EN&amp;amp;HDR=T&amp;amp;STB=G1&amp;amp;VW=T&quot;&gt;Statistics Netherlands&lt;/a&gt; a total of 136,058 people died in the Netherlands in 2010.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_url?doit=done&amp;amp;tt=url&amp;amp;intl=1&amp;amp;fr=bf-home&amp;amp;trurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nu.nl%2Fbinnenland%2F2605623%2Faantal-euthanasiegevallen-weer-gestegen.html&amp;amp;lp=nl_en&amp;amp;btnTrUrl=Translate&quot;&gt;3136&lt;/a&gt; of those were euthanasia - that's about 2.3%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa071143#t=article&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; found that in 2005, euthanasia accounted for 1.7% of all deaths in the Netherlands (also notable from their numbers, I think, are a decrease in the frequency of &quot;withholding or withdrawing of life-prolonging treatment&quot; from 20.2% before legislation passed to 15.6% in 2005). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That study found that &quot;Ending of life without explicit request by the patient&quot; accounted for 0.4% of deaths, and that in 85.5% of these cases, it was estimated to shorten life by less than one week. This was less than before the legislation allowing euthanasia passed - though not by a statistically significant amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="143" LastEditDate="2012-02-21T12:56:00.527" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T12:56:00.527" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7942" CreationDate="2012-02-21T12:58:37.377" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://cochrane.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cochrane Collaboration&lt;/a&gt; are my heroes. I quote from their meta-studies (where they group together a number of smaller studies and carefully scrutinise the protocols to ensure that they are statistically valid) so often, I should really sit down and write a standard paragraph of introduction to their work - and what a meta-study is - to re-use each time.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Cochrane Collaboration have a number of meta-studies looking a diet and the treatment of Type II Diabetes (and prevention too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One looked at &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD009128/sweet-potato-for-type-2-diabetes-mellitus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;consumption of Sweet Potato&lt;/a&gt; of all things! Conclusion: The studies were poor quality, but there was an effect! The benefits were too small to be of any clinical use though, especially as some of the patients reported pain (!) - they don't recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD006763/does-altering-dietary-salt-intake-aid-in-the-prevention-and-treatment-of-diabetic-kidney-disease&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reducing salt&lt;/a&gt; was found by Cochrane to have a positive effect in reducing the progression of diabetic kidney disease. The recommendations aren't aggressive - just to follow the normal recommended daily allowances for salt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Public health guidelines recommend reducing dietary salt intake to less than 5-6 g/day and people with diabetes would benefit from reducing salt in their diet to at least this level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD002181/protein-restriction-for-diabetic-renal-disease&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reducing protein&lt;/a&gt; helped some people with (Type I &amp;amp; II) diabetic kidney disease a bit:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;restricted protein intake appeared to slow progression of diabetic kidney disease, but not by much on average. However, individual variation existed, therefore a low-protein diet may benefit some individuals. A low-protein diet can be difficult to adhere to, especially over the long term. Reducing the amount of animal protein is the usual method but some evidence suggests that a shift from red meat to white meat and fish or vegetables may give similar results. We found no data on the effects of low-protein diet on health-related quality of life and costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD006296/low-glycaemic-index-or-low-glycaemic-load-diets-for-diabetes-mellitus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Low GI foods&lt;/a&gt;, such as legumes, (may?) allow better glycaemic control for all kinds of diabetes (a.k.a. &lt;em&gt;diabetes mellitus&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nutritional factors affect blood glucose levels, however there is currently no universal approach to the optimal dietary strategy for diabetes. Different carbohydrate foods have different effects on blood glucose and can be ranked by the overall effect on the blood glucose levels using the so-called glycaemic index. By contributing a gradual supply of glucose to the bloodstream and hence stimulating lower insulin release, low glycaemic index foods, such as lentils, beans and oats, may contribute to improved glycaemic control, compared to high glycaemic index foods, such as white bread. The so-called glycaemic load represents the overall glycaemic effect of the diet and is calculated by multiplying the glycaemic index by the grammes of carbohydrates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We identified eleven relevant randomised controlled trials, lasting 1 to 12 months, involving 402 participants. Metabolic control (measured by glycated haemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), a long-term measure of blood glucose levels) decreased by 0.5% HbA1c with low glycaemic index diet, which is both statistically and clinically significant. Hypoglycaemic episodes significantly decreased with low glycaemic index diet compared to high glycaemic index diet. No study reported on mortality, morbidity or costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite these small measures, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004097/dietary-advice-for-treatment-of-type-2-diabetes-mellitus-in-adults&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;overall effect of diets&lt;/a&gt; on Type II diabetes remains unclear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No high quality data on the efficacy of diet alone exists for treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus. This systematic review assesses the effects of studies that examined dietary advice with or without the addition of exercise or behavioural approaches. Eighteen studies were included. No data were found on micro- or macrovascular diabetic complications, mortality or quality of life. It is difficult to draw reliable conclusions from the limited data that are presented in this review, however, the addition of exercise to dietary advice showed improvement of metabolic control after six- and twelve-month follow-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dietary approaches assessed in this review were low-fat/high-carbohydrate diets, high-fat/low-carbohydrate diets, low-calorie (1000 kcal per day) and very-low-calorie (500 kcal per day) diets and modified fat diets. Two trials compared the American Diabetes Association exchange diet with a standard reduced fat diet and five studies assessed low-fat diets versus moderate fat or low-carbohydrate diets. Two studies assessed the effect of a very-low-calorie diet versus a low-calorie diet. Six studies compared dietary advice with dietary advice plus exercise and three other studies assessed dietary advice versus dietary advice plus behavioural approaches. The studies all measured weight and measures of glycaemic control although not all studies reported these in the articles published. Other outcomes which were measured in these studies included mortality, blood pressure, serum cholesterol (including LDL and HDL cholesterol), serum triglycerides, maximal exercise capacity and compliance. The results suggest that adoption of regular exercise is a good way to promote better glycaemic control in type 2 diabetic patients, however all of these studies were at high risk of bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, a raw food (or any balanced) diet that included moderate salt intake, low-protein, and low-GI foods (and maybe a sweet potato or two, for taste) would have some evidence for helping with the treatment of Type II diabetes. However, the effect would be likely small and variable and not reliably reproduced. Adding exercise to the mix would help. Allowing white meat and fish may make it more easy to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claiming it as a cure, claiming it has the ability to control the glycaemic episodes or even that it reliably slows the progression of the disease would be overstating the evidence here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T12:58:37.377" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8135" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-21T13:34:25.923" Score="21" ViewCount="1305" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it said very often: Using a computer/smartphone can make you nearsighted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true? Is there good research on the topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6225" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T00:54:24.743" LastActivityDate="2015-03-08T15:25:03.303" Title="Does using a computer affect your eyesight?" Tags="|computers|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8119" CreationDate="2012-02-21T13:46:23.030" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, Nitrate and nitrite are considered hazardous, and there are legal limits to their concentration in food and drinking water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/90/1/11.long&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;From the Institute of Health Sciences, VU University, Amsterdam, Netherlands:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The World Health Organization (WHO) first set an upper limit for&#xA;  nitrate in food in 1962 (4). It was based on a brief report from the&#xA;  US Food and Drug Administration (5), which stated the following:&#xA;  “sodium nitrate has been fed to rats at levels up to 10% in the diet&#xA;  for their lifetime. Other than some depression on growth at levels&#xA;  above 1% of nitrate, no adverse effects were noted in these animals.&#xA;  Two dogs were fed 2% sodium nitrate in their diet for a period of 105&#xA;  and 125 days, respectively. No adverse effects were noted” (p 136).&#xA;  The WHO calculated from this that daily intakes of ≤500 mg of sodium&#xA;  nitrate/kg body weight were harmless to rats and dogs. This figure was&#xA;  divided by 100 to yield an Acceptable Daily Intake for humans of 5 mg&#xA;  sodium nitrate or 3.7 mg nitrate per kg body weight, which equals 222&#xA;  mg for a 60-kg adult. That figure has stood ever since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting a limit on that indicates a form of danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further there's a mention of what can result when consuming nitrates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is undisputed that nitrate ingestion widens arteries. Bacteria in&#xA;  the mouth and gut reduce nitrate to nitrite, which is then converted&#xA;  by nitric oxide synthase into the endothelium-derived relaxing factor&#xA;  nitric oxide (2). That is why sublingual nitrate can resolve an&#xA;  episode of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angina_pectoris&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;angina pectoris&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some minor other things discussed in that article, but none are supported very well, but nevertheless good to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bad-rap-for-nitrate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt;, the intake of nitrate has positive results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The story of nitrate's positive side began in 1994, when Jon Lundberg&#xA;  of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and Nigel Benjamin of&#xA;  Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, England, independently observed&#xA;  that the human stomach harbors large amounts of the gas nitric oxide&#xA;  (NO). Lundberg and Benjamin immediately suspected that the gas might&#xA;  be killing germs in the stomach, because nitric oxide, when presented&#xA;  to microbes by white blood cells, weakens them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The question was where the gas was coming from. Nitric oxide performs&#xA;  several vital functions in the body, including dilating blood vessels,&#xA;  and for these activities, a cellular enzyme called nitric oxide&#xA;  synthase extracts the gas molecule from arginine, an amino acid.&#xA;  Chemists have long known another mechanism: at low pH, nitrite (NO2)&#xA;  forms a stew of nitrogen-oxygen compounds, including nitric oxide.&#xA;  Bacteria in the mouth convert nitrate to nitrite, which gets&#xA;  swallowed, so the stomach can naturally produce nitric oxide. If&#xA;  nitric oxide were truly beneficial to the stomach, harmless bacteria&#xA;  feeding on nitrate-rich saliva might have a symbiotic relationship&#xA;  with humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Benjamin's group confirmed the antimicrobial effect right away by&#xA;  exposing bacteria responsible for stomach infections to stomach acid&#xA;  both alone and mixed with nitrite. Although acid is often thought to&#xA;  be the stomach's main line of defense against invading bugs, the&#xA;  researchers found that E. coli, Salmonella and other bacteria could&#xA;  survive for hours in it, whereas high normal concentrations of nitrite&#xA;  plus acid killed the bacteria in less than an hour. Next, Lundberg and&#xA;  his co-workers placed saliva from people who had ingested nitrate&#xA;  tablets onto the inside surface of the stomachs of rats. The mucous&#xA;  membranes lining their stomachs thickened and received more blood,&#xA;  both of which are important barriers to infection and ulcers. Rats&#xA;  that received nitrate-poor saliva showed no change. Benjamin has also&#xA;  observed that cavity-causing bacteria self-destruct in a high- nitrite&#xA;  environment, suggesting an experiment to see if a high-nitrate diet&#xA;  prevents cavities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1102&amp;amp;context=agronomyfacpub&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; of the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, They also talk about nitrate danger for infants and cancer related problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the methaemoglobine with infants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In every one of the instances in which cyanosis (the clinical symptom&#xA;  of methaemoglobinaemia) developed in infants, the wells were situated&#xA;  near barnyards and pit privies.” There was an absence of&#xA;  methaemoglobinaemia when formula milk replacements  were made with tap&#xA;  water. Re-evaluation of these original studies indicate that cases of&#xA;  methaemoglobinaemia always occurred when wells were contaminated with&#xA;  human or animal excrement and that the well water contained&#xA;  appreciable numbers of bacteria and high concentrations of nitrate&#xA;  (Avery, 1999). This strongly suggests that Methaemoglobinaemia,&#xA;  induced by well water, resulted from the presence of bacteria in the&#xA;  water rather than nitrate per se. A recent interpretation of these early studies is that &#xA;  gastroenteritis resulting from bacteria in the well water stimulated&#xA;  nitric oxide production in the gut and that this reacted with&#xA;  oxyhaemoglobin in blood, converting it into methaemoglobine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And secondly, about cancer risks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About 50 epidemiological studies have been made since 1973 testing the&#xA;  link between nitrate and stomach cancer incidence and mortality in&#xA;  humans, including Forman et al. (1985) and National Academy of&#xA;  Sciences (1981). The Chief Medical Ofﬁcer in Britain (Acheson, 1985),&#xA;  the Scientiﬁc Committee for Food in Europe (European Union, 1995), and&#xA;  the Subcommittee on Nitrate and Nitrite in Drinking Water in the USA&#xA;  (NRC, 1995) all concluded that no convincing link between nitrate and&#xA;  stomach cancer incidence and mortality had been established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A study reported by Al-Dabbagh et al. (1986) compared incidence of&#xA;  cancers between workers in a factory manufacturing nitrate fertilizer&#xA;  (and exposed to a high intake of nitrate through dust) and workers in&#xA;  the locality with comparable  jobs but without the exposure to&#xA;  nitrate. There was no signiﬁcant difference in cancer incidence&#xA;  between the two groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on the above ﬁndings showing no clear association between&#xA;  nitrate in drinking water and the two main health issues  with which&#xA;  it has been linked, some scientists suggest that there is now&#xA;  sufficient evidence for increasing the permitted concentration of&#xA;  nitrate in drinking water without increasing risks to human health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1762" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T13:46:23.030" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8138" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-21T14:50:42.323" Score="11" ViewCount="794" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the claims in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperFreakonomics&quot;&gt;&quot;SuperFreakonomics&quot;&lt;/a&gt; is, that reducing CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emissions produced by cars have very little practical impact on global warming. &#xA;Their arguments are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;human activity is responsible for only 2% of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emissions, with the reminder generated by natural processes;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;greenhouse effect of methane is 70 times more than of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; (per molecule);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ruminants (mainly cows) are responsible for greenhouse gases affecting 50 times more than entire transport sector;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;even if humanity would reduce CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; to zero, it wouldn't significantly affect global warming within next few hundred years;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emitted by cars have significant impact on global warming?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T15:34:06.967" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T13:02:04.633" Title="Is reducing carbon emission from cars futile?" Tags="|road-vehicles|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8139" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-21T16:27:13.180" Score="5" ViewCount="351" Body="&lt;p&gt;A meme about eating fruit did the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=If%20you%20drink%20the%20juice%2C%20drink%20it%20mouthful%20by%20mouthful%20slowly%2C%20because%20you%20must%20let%20it%20mix%20with%20your%20saliva%20before%20swallowing%20it.&quot;&gt;rounds of the Internet&lt;/a&gt; in 2009-2010. It included this claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you drink the juice, drink it mouthful by mouthful slowly, because you must let it mix with your saliva before swallowing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While chewing is good for starchy foodstuffs, is it any good for liquid, sugary juices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T15:42:38.400" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T15:42:38.400" Title="Should juice be drunk slowly, to allow it to mix with  saliva?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8135" CreationDate="2012-02-21T17:33:01.353" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it can, just as much as reading or any other activity where you're looking at something close to your eyes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aoa.org/documents/CPG-15.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;Optometric Clinical Practice Guidline: Care Of The Patient With Myopia&quot;:&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doing a substantial amount of near work on a regular basis can&#xA;  increase  the risk for myopia.  Myopia is associated with greater time&#xA;  spent  reading and doing near work, better reading test scores, more&#xA;  years of  education, occupations that require a great deal of near&#xA;  work, and greater  academic ability&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2012-02-21T17:33:01.353" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6505" CreationDate="2012-02-22T01:12:16.440" Score="8" Body="&lt;h1&gt;No, calculators have no negative impact on learning.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The studies done thus far show that calculators only have a positive impact on learning. Only one exception was the grade 4 class from a 1986 study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Calculators on Students Achievement and Attitude Levels in Precollege Mathematics Classes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The findings of 54 research studies were integrated through&#xA;  meta-analysis to determine the effects of calculators on student&#xA;  achievement and attitude levels. Effect sizes were generated through&#xA;  Glassian techniques of meta-analysis, and Hedges and Olkin's (1985)&#xA;  inferential statistical methods were used to test the significance of&#xA;  effect size data. Results revealed that students' operational skills&#xA;  and problem-solving skills improved when calculators were an integral&#xA;  part of testing and instruction. The results for both skill types were&#xA;  mixed when calculators were not part of assessment, &lt;strong&gt;but in all cases,&#xA;  calculator use did not hinder the development of mathematical skills&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  Students using calculators had better attitudes toward mathematics&#xA;  than their noncalculator counterparts. Further research is needed in&#xA;  the retention of mathematics skills after instruction and transfer of&#xA;  skills to other mathematics-related subjects.&#xA;  -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://Achievment%20and%20attitude%20levels%20in%20precollege%20mathematics%20classes&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Effects of hand-held calculators in precollege mathematics education: A meta-analysis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The findings of 79 research reports were integrated by meta-analysis&#xA;  to assess the effects of calculators on student achievement and&#xA;  attitude. Effect sizes were derived by the method invented by Glass&#xA;  and tested for consistency and significance with inferential&#xA;  statistics provided by Hedges. &lt;strong&gt;At all grades but Grade 4, a use of&#xA;  calculators in concert with traditional mathematics instruction&#xA;  apparently improves the average student's basic skills with paper and&#xA;  pencil, both in working exercises and in problem solving&lt;/strong&gt;. Sustained&#xA;  calculator use in Grade 4 appears to hinder the development of basic&#xA;  skills in average students. Across all grade and ability levels,&#xA;  students using calculators possess a better attitude toward&#xA;  mathematics and an especially better self-concept in mathematics than&#xA;  students not using calculators&#xA;  -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/749255&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Effects of Non-CAS Graphing Calculators on Student Achievement and Attitude Levels in Mathematics: A Meta-Analysis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Forty-two studies comparing students with access to graphing&#xA;  calculators during instruction to students who did not have access to&#xA;  graphing calculators during instruction are the subject of this&#xA;  meta-analysis. The results on the achievement and attitude levels of&#xA;  students are presented. The studies evaluated cover middle and high&#xA;  school mathematics courses, as well as college courses through first&#xA;  semester calculus. &lt;strong&gt;When calculators were part of instruction but not&#xA;  testing, students' benefited from using calculators while developing&#xA;  the skills necessary to understand mathematics concepts. When&#xA;  calculators were included in testing and instruction, the procedural,&#xA;  conceptual, and overall achievement skills of students improved&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1949-8594.2006.tb18067.x/full&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T01:29:41.550" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T01:29:41.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8102" CreationDate="2012-02-22T02:09:40.163" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is considered safe in Australia according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodprocessing.com.au/news/45843-Mycoprotein-safe-for-average-consumer&quot;&gt;foodprocessing.com.au&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting the first 2 paragraphs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mycoprotein is used in a limited range of meat-free foods marketed&#xA;  under the brand name Quorn. Although Quorn products have been&#xA;  available in Australia only since 2010, they have been consumed in the&#xA;  United Kingdom since 1986 and in the United States since 2001. Because&#xA;  of this history of use, the mycoprotein in Quorn products is not a&#xA;  novel food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some consumers have reported adverse reactions after eating&#xA;  mycoprotein-based products. Research in Europe suggests that while&#xA;  most consumers can eat these products safely, about 1 in 100,000 to&#xA;  200,000 people may react to them. Because it's made from a fungus,&#xA;  it's possible that some people who react to other fungi or moulds may&#xA;  also react to mycoprotein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the CSPI page you link to, &lt;a href=&quot;http://cspinet.org/new/pdf/quorn-letter-to-fda-nov-15-2011.pdf&quot;&gt;they claim&lt;/a&gt; to have evidence of over 1700 adverse reactions to Quorn&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CSPI has now received about 500 reports of adverse reactions from&#xA;  Americans, as well as about 1,200 more from the United Kingdom, other&#xA;  European countries, Scandinavia, and Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CSPI also has a page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cspinet.org/quorn/medical_research.html&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt;, some of which is peer reviewed and published in notable journals, that show it can be unsafe in some cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Van Durme P, Ceuppens JL, Cadot P. (J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2003&#xA;  Aug;112(2): 452-454)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Belgian researchers identified a young woman who suffered a severe anaphylactic-type allergic reaction after her first ingestion of&#xA;  Quorn. Skin prick tests were highly positive with Quorn extracts. The&#xA;  researchers deduced that Quorn can be cross-reactive with inhaled mold&#xA;  spores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hoff et al. (J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2003 May;111(5):1106-1110)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These European researchers proved that Quorn caused an asthmatic reaction in a patient. They identified the particular protein that&#xA;  caused the allergic reaction. This paper is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering how many people have been consuming it in the UK since 1986 it seems it is safe for most people to consume, while some people may be more suspect to adverse reactions. Further study is needed to determine the scale and extent of such reactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T02:09:40.163" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8146" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8177" CreationDate="2012-02-22T12:22:05.577" Score="58" ViewCount="28995" Body="&lt;p&gt;A statement that I've heard over and over, is that U.S. companies are legally obligated to maximize profits for shareholders, and that this explains why companies act socially unresponsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/sen-al-franken-netroots-nation&quot;&gt;this speech at Netroots Nation&lt;/a&gt;, Al Franken says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it is literally malfeasance for a corporation not to do everything it legally can to maximize its profits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think I may have read somewhere that this is a myth, and unfortunately pervasive in many companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus question: do Western companies have any different obligations in this matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="230" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-24T20:41:25.163" LastActivityDate="2023-02-18T00:19:39.630" Title="Are U.S companies legally obligated to maximize profits for shareholders?" Tags="|united-states|law|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3639" CreationDate="2012-02-22T17:29:36.413" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mountain Gorillas were cryptids back in the 1800's, before being a cryptid was cool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://listverse.com/2010/08/13/top-10-cryptids-that-turned-out-to-be-real/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;List of former cryptids&lt;/a&gt;, including gorilla.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bCAww.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Gorilla combat&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevelewalready/1251648477/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Page 686&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevelewalready/sets/72157600541886427/detail/?page=7&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sea and Land by J. W. Buel, 1889&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;The chapter is called &quot;The Gorilla- does he exist?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustave_Dor%C3%A9&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gustave Doré&lt;/a&gt; did most of the etchings for the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user951" LastEditorDisplayName="user951" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T22:54:06.737" LastActivityDate="2012-02-22T22:54:06.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8146" CreationDate="2012-02-22T20:56:48.230" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer is &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt; corporations enjoy the same &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_College_v._Woodward&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;freedoms and rights as any natural person&lt;/a&gt;.  The idea is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;corporate personhood&lt;/a&gt; (Wikipedia has a great write up of this already)  While this idea is unpopular it has been upheld several times and is considered the current law of the land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a company is publicly traded then the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sec.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SEC&lt;/a&gt; does have some requirements mostly that require accurate reporting but none that require the company actually attempt to make a profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most shareholders want a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/returnoninvestment.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Return on Investment&lt;/a&gt; however you do not need to maximize profit to make a return on investment.  A shareholder can vote to remove the board or any officers so generally they work to keep an acceptable ROI though &lt;a href=&quot;http://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-corporate-goals-10125.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stated goals&lt;/a&gt;.  Though no law actually enforces that the company persue those goals nor does the law penalize those companies for not attempting to persue them so long as they do not attempt to represent that they are(commit fraud).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A perfect example of this would be the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redcross.org/portal/site/en/menuitem.d8aaecf214c576bf971e4cfe43181aa0/?vgnextoid=d18859f392ce8110VgnVCM10000030f3870aRCRD&amp;amp;vgnextfmt=default&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Red Cross&lt;/a&gt; it is a business lead by a CEO but operates as a non profit entity.  While there are some specific things that the Red Cross has been chartered to do by law it operates independently and manages its finances as a business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-02-24T16:37:03.913" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T16:37:03.913" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8154" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8164" CreationDate="2012-02-22T21:07:22.227" Score="9" ViewCount="4274" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once seen on TV, a woman interviewed on why she avoids having a biopsy for her suspected cancer, claiming that a biopsy will only accelerate it, thus more dangerous than beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching for a source of such a claim, I've found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whale.to/v/early_detection_myth.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sadly many have been led to believe that early cancer screening will&#xA;  save their lives, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact&#xA;  biopsies often are instrumental in seeding the cancer elsewhere in&#xA;  the body. Thus accelerating cancer growth (metastasis) that was once&#xA;  contained by body and may have been slow progressing as is often the&#xA;  case. Clearly this is very dangerous yet most will subject themselves&#xA;  vily nily to this procedure in the misguided faith in the early&#xA;  detection myth... Any advantage one gets from early detection has now&#xA;  become a liability as cancer growth rate has accelerated often to the&#xA;  point that the patient has now become an emergency case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which also references &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whale.to/a/biopsy.html&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even though cancer is considered abnormal and rapid growth of cells,&#xA;  the entire mass of a cancer is normally rather slow growing -- because&#xA;  it is &quot;encased.&quot; It grows inside a wall, or shell. The body is trying&#xA;  to protect itself from the cancer -- because cancer would otherwise&#xA;  spread throughout the body. So, the body tries to protect itself by&#xA;  building a wall around the cancer to keep any of its cells from&#xA;  &quot;leaking out.&quot; (Actually, some cancers are very slow-growing [breast&#xA;  and prostate] while others are very fast [liver cancer].)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However these claims seem to be controversial, as doctors still doing biopsies routinely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5725" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-22T21:26:45.410" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T13:15:31.737" Title="Do biopsies accelerate cancers?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8154" CreationDate="2012-02-22T21:49:40.080" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Sites-Types/metastatic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; perfectly addresses cancer metastatis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Metastatic cancer is cancer that has spread from the place where it&#xA;  first started to another place in the body. A tumor formed by&#xA;  metastatic cancer cells is called a metastatic tumor or a metastasis.&#xA;  The process by which cancer cells spread to other parts of the body is&#xA;  also called metastasis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not all cancer cells, by themselves, have the ability to&#xA;  metastasize. In addition, the noncancerous cells at the original&#xA;  location may be able to block cancer cell metastasis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But basically some cells can relocate.  Almost all cancer types can spread.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biopsy is used because it is a way to extract the cells from the body &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/detection/pathology-reports&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;to study them&lt;/a&gt;.  There is not enough known about all cancers that research is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the biopsy may cause cells to enter the bloodstream and allow them to form a Metastatic tumor elsewhere in the body.  But sometimes the value of the biopsy results are worth the risk when it will provide a proper treatment program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also note that biopsy is just one of many &lt;a href=&quot;http://medicalcenter.osu.edu/patientcare/healthcare_services/gynecological_health/diagnostic_procedures_for_cancer/Pages/index.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;diagnostic procedures&lt;/a&gt; that can be performed.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-02-23T14:26:23.473" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T14:26:23.473" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8158" CreationDate="2012-02-22T23:14:02.793" Score="8" ViewCount="2078" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;v=mCMWRu_fL44&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; video shows a news report of a woman in China who has apparently grown a horn at her old age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a deformity, or some sort of video trick? Is this a scientifically sound phenomenon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5131" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-23T21:21:00.883" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T21:21:00.883" Title="Did an elderly Chinese woman grow horns?" Tags="|physiology|china|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8157" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-23T01:29:35.000" Score="25" ViewCount="11241" Body="&lt;p&gt;This topics seem to be widely debated (on unreliable sites):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;As you might imagine, some of these links are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_safe_for_work&quot;&gt;NSFW (Not Safe For Work)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lpsg.org/28411-is-oral-sex-instinctive.html&quot;&gt;LPSG&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tantraecstasy.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/top-10-cunnilingus-tips-for-pleasuring.html&quot;&gt;Tantra Ecstasy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What evidence is available to support that oral sex is or is not instinctive behaviour in humans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6235" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-23T21:12:55.917" LastActivityDate="2017-08-20T08:06:07.620" Title="Is oral sex (fellatio and cunnilingus) instinctive human behaviour?" Tags="|sexuality|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8156" CreationDate="2012-02-23T03:04:16.703" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tl;dr:&lt;/strong&gt; Are horns like this known to grow on human heads? &lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt; Is &lt;em&gt;this woman's&lt;/em&gt; horn in the category known to grow? &lt;strong&gt;No idea.&lt;/strong&gt; Below is documentation demonstrating that these horns do, indeed, grow on people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can view &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=cutaneous+horn&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;prmd=imvns&amp;amp;source=lnms&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;ei=i6tFT5XIHYbW0QHdt6DqAw&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=mode_link&amp;amp;ct=mode&amp;amp;cd=2&amp;amp;ved=0CA4Q_AUoAQ&amp;amp;biw=1280&amp;amp;bih=699&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google image results&lt;/a&gt; for &amp;quot;cutaneous horn&amp;quot; and see similar formations  on humans (though this one &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; on the larger side).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I found below was enough to deflate this (for me personally) from the &amp;quot;I've never seen that! This is wild, is it real?&amp;quot; category to the level of &amp;quot;Oh. It seems like this is not that strange at all and apparently scientists have known about this for a long time.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt we'll find a resolution to this particular case. It seems like it hit the news in March 2010 and I don't see any updates. The hits that are out there appear to be regurgitations of one another, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256398/Chinese-grandmother-grows-devil-horns.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/100-year-old-chinese-woman-grows-horn-in-her-forehead.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ninemsn.com.au/glanceview/125966/womans-6cm-horn-baffles-village.glance&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I can do with an answer is state that cutaneous horns are a real phenomenon. Thus, it very well might be that this woman has sprouted an animal-like horn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutaneous_horn&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article on cutaneous horns&lt;/a&gt; which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cutaneous horns, also known by the Latin name cornu cutaneum, are unusual keratinous skin tumors with the appearance of horns, or sometimes of wood or coral. Formally, this is a clinical diagnosis for a &amp;quot;conical projection above the surface of the skin.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=cutaneous+horns&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;btnG=Search&amp;amp;as_sdt=1%2C24&amp;amp;as_sdtp=on&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;google scholar&lt;/a&gt; I was able to find some other journal articles discussing cutaneous horns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2133.1991.tb00624.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A histopathological study of 643 cutaneous horns&lt;/a&gt;, British Journal of Dermatology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper looks at characteristics that indicate whether the horn was derived from malignant epidermal lesions. It doesn't say much about the horns' characteristics; I'm listing it only to show that documentation exists for at least 643 (what I consider a lot) of these cutaneous horns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/smajournalonline/Abstract/1979/09000/Cutaneous_Horns__A_Histopathologic_Study.14.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cutaneous Horns: A Histopathologic Study&lt;/a&gt;, Southern Medical Journal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We report a series of 230 cutaneous horns...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also quite a few horns, though they could be repeats of the above study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/ajsp/Abstract/2002/06000/Gigantic_Cutaneous_Horns_of_the_Scalp__Lesions.14.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gigantic Cutaneous Horns of the Scalp: Lesions With a Gross Similarity to the Horns of Animals: A Report of Four Cases&lt;/a&gt;, American Journal of Surgical Pathology (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gigantic cutaneous horns, &lt;strong&gt;grossly similar to the horns seen in animals&lt;/strong&gt;, are exceedingly rare in humans. After finding one case in practice, we searched our departmental files for similar cases and examined them grossly and microscopically. Four cases were identified. All occurred as solitary lesions in older women on the parietal–occipital region of the scalp. They had a growth history of up to 30 years; the women hid these horns in their hair. Grossly, &lt;strong&gt;the horns were yellow–grey, and there were shallow furrows running along the length of the horns. The length ranged from 17 to 25 cm&lt;/strong&gt;, and the width was up to 2.5 cm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the parietal and occipital lobes are in the back of the head. Let's keep digging...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1477-7819/2/18&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cutaneous horns: are these lesions as innocent as they seem to be?&lt;/a&gt;, World Journal of Surgical Oncology (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cutaneous horns (cornu cutaneum) are uncommon lesions consisting of keratotic material resembling that of an animal horn...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were 8 male and 3 female patients with a median age of 57 years. Most of the lesions were located on the ear, hand and &lt;strong&gt;scalp...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cutaneous horn is a clinical diagnosis that refers to a conical projection above the surface of the skin. The lesions typically occurs in &lt;strong&gt;sun exposed areas&lt;/strong&gt;, particularly the &lt;strong&gt;face&lt;/strong&gt;, ear, nose, forearms, and dorsum of hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/annalsplasticsurgery/abstract/1997/12000/giant_cutaneous_horn__a_patient_report.19.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Giant Cutaneous Horn: A Patient Report&lt;/a&gt;, Annals of Plastic Surgery:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A large cutaneous horn was excised from the left side of the nose and cheek of a 68-year-old woman...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1752-1947-1-170.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Giant cutaneous horn in an African woman: a case report&lt;/a&gt;, Journal of Medical Case Reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A cutaneous horn, or cornu cutaneum, is a dense hyperkeratotic conical projection of skin arising from an unusual cohesiveness of keratinized material. It resembles an animal horn grossly, but lacks a bony core, histologically consisting of concentric layers of cornified epithelial cells. Most have a yellow-white color, and may be straight or curved and twisted, and vary from a few millimeters to several centimeters in length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T03:04:16.703" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="68" CreationDate="2012-02-23T03:28:48.153" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, round 2 at answering this question. &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/7672/188&quot;&gt;Jonas's answer&lt;/a&gt; on a related question, quotes a highly relevant section of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/newsevents/testimony/ucm115032.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FDA article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since newly introduced substances in foods derived using recombinant&#xA;  DNA techniques would be proteins, fats or carbohydrates, we then&#xA;  examined the safety questions that should be addressed before products&#xA;  reach the market. We identified four broad safety issues that should&#xA;  be evaluated: (consumption; (2) the need to ensure that the changes in&#xA;  the food, such as the level of natural toxins in the food, if any,&#xA;  stay within normal safe levels; (3) the need to ensure that&#xA;  significant nutrients stay within normal range; and (4) the need to&#xA;  analyze the potential for introduced proteins to cause allergic&#xA;  reactions. We incorporated these and other issues into a comprehensive&#xA;  guidance to industry that is central to our policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there are real risks and I don't doubt that GM will eventually cause some issues. Biological systems are inherently complex and things interact in all kinds of strange ways. People have all kinds of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquagenic_pruritus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;strange allergies&lt;/a&gt;. Even though the FDA has given this matter careful consideration, it isn't perfect and organisations in other countries may be less stringent. However, the same could be said about various chemicals and medicine. Things have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_effect#Examples_of_adverse_effects_associated_with_specific_medications&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gone wrong a number of times&lt;/a&gt;, but I believe that they have been beneficial to society as a whole. I think it will be the same with GM, except the risks are much less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What worries me though is how many people reject offhand the possibility of there being risks. Sure there is a lot of alarmism, but we can't reject legitimate concerns based purely on contempt for anti-GM activists. I think GM can be used responsibly, but only if we respect the power that we hold and the limits of our knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T08:53:56.113" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5086" CreationDate="2012-02-23T03:29:05.750" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, the claims about Theta Healing have been thoroughly debunked&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims that it can &lt;em&gt;instantly&lt;/em&gt; cure cancer or facilitate the growing back of lost limbs should be an indication of its validity. If &lt;strong&gt;anyone&lt;/strong&gt; was able to grow back a lost limb, this would have been widely noted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you consider the above claims to be plausible, perhaps her claim that god speaks to and guides her (Vianna Stibal, creator of Theta healing) directly are an indication that her methods are not based on science, nor on any proven method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com&quot;&gt;Skeptoid&lt;/a&gt; has a good &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4119&quot;&gt;explanation&lt;/a&gt; on Theta healing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Theta healing is just another random &quot;roll-the-dice and invent a New&#xA;  Age healing technique&quot; based on some imaginary energy field. This one&#xA;  was invented in 1995 by a self-described &quot;intuitive reader&quot; who&#xA;  believed that she could project theta waves from her brain which would&#xA;  instantly heal the patient. Theta healing claims to immediately and&#xA;  completely cure cancer, severe injuries, and even psychological and&#xA;  financial problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, a theta wave is not an energy field or a type of energy at&#xA;  all. It's simply the name of one type of waveform on an&#xA;  electroencephalogram. When an EEG shows a sine wave with a period of&#xA;  between 4 and 8 Hertz, neurologists designate that as a theta pattern.&#xA;  This waveform is observed when the subject is asleep or at rest, and&#xA;  in some types of learning involving short term memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Probably what happened is that this &quot;intuitive reader&quot; heard the term&#xA;  &quot;theta wave&quot;, misinterpreted it to mean a type of mystical energy&#xA;  field generated by the brain; and then erroneously put two and two&#xA;  together when one of her customers reported some kind of positive&#xA;  experience. If you look at any web page about theta healing, you'll&#xA;  see all kinds of vaguely scientific sounding words thrown out there in&#xA;  meaningless disarray. There's nothing plausible about it and no&#xA;  description specific enough to test, but unfortunately, unscientific&#xA;  laypeople are all too often ill-equipped to recognize that such&#xA;  technobabble on a web page is baseless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BBC, certainly a reputable organization, did a comprehensive &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/9519657.stm&quot;&gt;debunking&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Professor Ernst says such claims are &quot;irresponsible, even criminal&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He believes that the ThetaHealing group try to distinguish themselves&#xA;  from the other 20,000 faith healers in the UK by applying a &quot;veneer of&#xA;  science&quot;, but says &quot;it's still nonsense&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, a columnist on the ABC Australia website has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/31816.html&quot;&gt;good summary&lt;/a&gt; of why it is all a crock:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I did some more digging on Theta Healing: apparently it involves&#xA;  putting the patient's brain into a theta-state, operating at four to&#xA;  seven cycles per second. The practitioner then uses a highly dubious&#xA;  and often-debunked practice of applied kinesiology, where muscle&#xA;  response is tested to determine the patient's problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moving on: Once the Theta healer has ascertained the medical issue,&#xA;  the big guns come out - DNA Activation. According to the website, the&#xA;  &quot;master cell&quot; of the &quot;pinel (sic) gland&quot; is activated, which&#xA;  apparently switches on bits and pieces of junk DNA, allowing the&#xA;  healer to treat disease, make you rich and get rid of wrinkles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="8600" LastEditDate="2013-04-13T00:05:58.007" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T00:05:58.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7215" CreationDate="2012-02-23T04:33:11.963" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One study argues that it is unlikely based on the evidence available:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/2409666&quot;&gt;http://www.jstor.org/pss/2409666&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting part of the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More specifically, their &quot;kamikaze&quot; sperm hypothesis proposes that&#xA;  deformed mammalian sperm are adapted to facilitate the formation and&#xA;  functioning of copulatory plugs (Baker and Bellis, 1988). Here I argue&#xA;  that most, maybe all, mammals are unlikely to produce nonfertilizing&#xA;  sperm. First, mammals might not be able to afford to evolve&#xA;  nonfertilizing sperm, given that a) fertilization is often unlikely&#xA;  despite the huge numbers of sperm produced; b) production of larger&#xA;  numbers of sperm is constrained, presumably because of metabolic&#xA;  costs, evidence for which includes the fact that in species in which&#xA;  sperm morphology and anatomy of the female reproductive tract increase&#xA;  the probability of fertilization, the numbers of sperm produced is&#xA;  lower than in others; and c) selection appears to act against the&#xA;  production of deformed sperm. Second, some of the evidence advanced&#xA;  for the existence of nonfertilizing sperm does not in fact support the&#xA;  idea. Third, accessory gland secretions are sufficient on their own to&#xA;  coagulate semen and produce fully functioning plugs; thus the male&#xA;  that used accessory gland secretions would be at a clear advantage&#xA;  over the male that diluted his fertilizing sperm with &quot;kamikaze&quot;&#xA;  sperm; and indeed, current evidence indicates selection on accessory&#xA;  glands, not sperm morphology, to enhance coagulation of semen. Fourth,&#xA;  predictions made on the basis of the &quot;kamikaze&quot; sperm hypothesis are&#xA;  not supported by quantitative comparisons of data from polyandrous and&#xA;  monandrous primates (i.e., those in which several males mate with a&#xA;  fertile female, and therefore in which sperm competition should be&#xA;  operating, and those in which only one male mates).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T04:33:11.963" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8138" CreationDate="2012-02-23T12:12:25.070" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;tl;dr&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, reducing carbon emissions from cars is not futile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/351&quot;&gt;Does a car with a hybrid engine and Lithium batteries pollute more than a car with conventional technology?&lt;/a&gt; which directly relates to the global-warming potential of fossil-fuel powered cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To determine the question of whether reducing carbon emissions from cars is futile or not, we can investigate three linked questions, each of which gets answered in whole volumes of text, and at the very least each could be a separate question here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are cars a significant source of anthropogenic greenhouse gases?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would reducing anthropogenic emissions reduce global warming?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer to all those is yes, then it is not futile to reduce carbon emissions from cars. Let's look at each in turn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Are anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Previous questions have covered some of the science; see: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/3435&quot;&gt;Is CO₂ the cause for Global Warming?&lt;/a&gt; , the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/3440/6236&quot;&gt;accepted answer&lt;/a&gt; to which &lt;strong&gt;explicitly&lt;/strong&gt; addresses the issue of &lt;strong&gt;anthropogenic&lt;/strong&gt; greenhouse gases; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/41/6236&quot;&gt;Do human activities contribute to climate change?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that basis, we know that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are major contributors to global warming, and that cars are one source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Are cars a significant source of anthropogenic greenhouse gases?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cait.wri.org/figures.php?page=World-FlowChart&amp;amp;view=100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;World Resources Institute&lt;/a&gt;, road transport accounts for 10% of global emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the UK, using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theccc.org.uk/sectors/surface-transport&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;figures from the Government's advisory body, the Committee on Climate Change&lt;/a&gt; (CCC), surface transport accounts for 22% of national emissions, and of that, 60% is from cars: hence 13% (60% x 22%) of national emissions are from cars.  The CCC identifies surface transport as a significant area for attention for two reasons: firstly, its non-negligible 22% contribution to the total; and secondly, that it is a sector where some rapid decarbonisation is possible. In their words, from the source linked at the start of this paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a 26% reduction in surface transport emissions from 2008 levels is possible by 2020, with a reduction of 44% by 2030&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The figures for greenhouse gas emissions include different weightings to reflect the different global warming potential of, for example, methane relative to carbon dioxide. They also include the emissions from livestock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Would reducing anthropogenic emissions reduce global warming?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many different emissions scenarios available in the peer-reviewed literature. The IPCC4 summary in 2007 brought together the best available research at the time, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-10-4.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one summary of their different scenarios is available here&lt;/a&gt;. The gist reflects that basic underlying physics: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-10-26.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;higher anthropogenic emissions&lt;/a&gt; (scenario A2) means higher temperatures; measures that reduce anthropogenic emissions (scenario B1) will mitigate that, leading to lower temperatures than would otherwise be the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T13:02:04.633" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8130" CreationDate="2012-02-23T14:21:46.303" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A preference for one's own ethnic group is not present at birth, but &lt;strong&gt;learned&lt;/strong&gt; during the first few months of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2566511/&quot;&gt;Three-month-olds, but not newborns, prefer own-race faces&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newborn and 3-month old babies were shown pairs of photos of faces to see if they preferred faces of people from their own ethnic group or faces of people not from their own ethnic group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While newborn infants demonstrated no spontaneous preference for faces from either their own- or other-ethnic groups, 3-month-old infants demonstrated a significant preference for faces from their own-ethnic group. These results suggest that preferential selectivity based on ethnic differences is not present in the first days of life, but is learned within the first 3 months of life. The findings imply that adults' perceptions of ethnic differences are learned and derived from differences in exposure to own- versus other-race faces during early development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T14:21:46.303" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8154" CreationDate="2012-02-23T16:29:54.513" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible for a biopsy to spread cancer, however this is rare and it would not be accurate to describe a biopsy as &quot;very dangerous&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PubMed articles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3209672/?tool=pubmed&quot;&gt;Rare potential complications of thyroid fine needle biopsy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;needle track seeding (or tumor dissemination) is very rare in vivo. Tumor cells released into the surrounding tissues or circulation after FNB are probably destroyed by the host immune response or other mechanisms before giving rise to clinically apparent metastases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3135134/?tool=pubmed&quot;&gt;Fine-Needle Aspiration Biopsy of Hepatocellular Carcinoma and Related Hepatocellular Nodular Lesions in Cirrhosis: Controversies, Challenges, and Expectations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most contentious complication cited by detractors of the technique is the risk of needle-tract seeding turning a potentially operable case of HCC to a metastatic state. Risk of implantation metastases after biopsy for malignancy in general is considered rare (0.003–0.009%);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-02-23T16:29:54.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8086" CreationDate="2012-02-23T18:07:23.870" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to an article in &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120219235638/http://www.marianne2.fr/Le-fils-francais-cache-d-Hitler-n-est-pas-le-fils-cache-d-Hitler-sauf-dans-lepoint-fr_a215578.html?com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marianne2&lt;/a&gt; [French source], Loret's DNA was compared to that of Hitler's known male relatives, who must share a Y chromosome with Hitler. The results were that Loret cannot be Hitler's son.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those Y chromosomes can be considered partial, indirect samples of Hitler's DNA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6238" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-10-15T18:57:49.380" LastActivityDate="2018-10-15T18:57:49.380" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7881" CreationDate="2012-02-24T02:32:46.180" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question has been recently clarified to be whether shuriken &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; kill, rather than whether they were historically used to kill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This issue was looked at in a German study that was looking for evidence on whether to support a ban on modern variants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kettner M, Gade G, Ramsthaler F, Shah S, Pape A, Theisen A, Schmidt P., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20642255&quot;&gt;Experimental studies on the wounding capacity of recently developed shuriken/throwing stars and their legal categorization--an interdisciplinary view&lt;/a&gt; Arch Kriminol. 2010 May-Jun;225(5-6):167-80.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the focus was on plastic and &quot;cyclone&quot; shuriken, they also looked at three &quot;traditional metal shuriken with blunt edges and peaks produced for decorative purposes.&quot; I think it is safe to assume that traditional combat shuriken would be at least as effective than traditional decorative ones, so the results can be extrapolated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract explains that the experiment was done on &quot;human skin&quot; (presumably a cadaver), and compared it against modern shuriken that were tested against pig carcasses. The traditional shuriken were thrown from a distance of 2m by an experienced thrower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditional shuriken were less effective at penetrating human skin than modern variants were at penetrating pig skin. However, the damage inflicted wasn't trivial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[traditional] shuriken yielded maximal penetration depths between 0.9 and 2.3 cm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope it is clear that a 2cm deep stab wound could be insignificant or fatal, depending on what part of the body is hit. The study authors seem to agree:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study indicates that &lt;strong&gt;all three types of shuriken may inflict lethal wounds upon opponents in close combat.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;While it is irrelevant to this discussion, this study struck me as poorly controlled. Why are they comparing damage done by a cyclone shuriken to pig skin from 4 metres, to damage done by a traditional shuriken to a human skin from 2 metres? Why not do both experiments against pig carcasses from the same distance?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T02:32:46.180" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8171" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8379" CreationDate="2012-02-24T07:58:09.267" Score="-3" ViewCount="639" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wazzub.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wazzub&lt;/a&gt; is a yet to be launched (at time of writing) web homepage, with advertising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to recruit new members, they are offering a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MLM&lt;/a&gt;-style payout to early adopters who recruit other users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From their site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/791Fe.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://heywazzub.blogspot.com.au/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;defending itself&lt;/a&gt; against claims that it is a business with very little chance of meeting its goals, or even a scam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that this company is legitimately able to offer the levels of profit to beginner users (for no money invested) that it claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the owner really launch the website on April 9, 2012?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6235" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:10:09.870" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:10:09.870" Title="Is Wazzub a legitimate business opportunity?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7040" CreationDate="2012-02-24T09:38:38.890" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is theoretically possible, in one narrow, specific sense:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1440-1819.2001.00854.x&quot;&gt;Some people talk in their REM sleep&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/109/463/722.short&quot;&gt;Some dream content is influenced by auditory stimuli&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take two people sleeping within earshot of each other: if one starts talking in their sleep about their dream content, while the other is dreaming, then that may influence the other's dream.  (If they were then to start talking about their dream content too, that could influence the first person's dream content.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that is only a &quot;shared dream&quot; in a very narrow sense: information is passed from one person's dream to another's by the ordinary medium of speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T09:38:38.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8146" CreationDate="2012-02-24T18:31:47.347" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No. Because the idea itself is too poorly defined and naive interpretations are often bad for shareholders in practice&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the legal obligation to maximize profit for shareholders existed, we would have to develop a good definition of how it is to be measured. Alas, there isn't even a unique way to summarize a stream of known cash payments over time into a single current value (the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_present_value&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;net present value&lt;/a&gt; calculation yields different results for different discount rates). The standard way of thinking about quoted company values, which claims to resolve the problem of which discount rate to choose (the capital asset pricing model), has serious problems despite its wide acceptance (well &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_asset_pricing_model&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;summarized by Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the issues come down to a judgement call about making a costly investment now for higher profits in the future or just giving the cash to shareholders instead. This is a hard matter of judgement and coping with uncertainty in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Shareholder Value movement has been influential in promoting the idea that cashflow to shareholders should be the focus of senior management in quoted companies. The movement has led to some beneficial changes in business practice, but has also led many leaders to become overly obsessed with their share prices. As John Kay (a British economist and commentator) &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.johnkay.com/2005/06/07/a-misleading-obsession-with-share-prices&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;has pointed out&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Managers who focus closely on the stock price, whether by inclination or because they have incentives to do so, will often fail to serve the best interests even of their stockholders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another of his &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.johnkay.com/2010/03/20/decision-making-john-kays-way&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;regular columns&lt;/a&gt; in the Financial Times he describes his own journey with the idea of shareholder value:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my academic life, I taught the standard concepts of modern economic theory, based on efficient markets populated by maximising agents. Yet, as I saw more of successful businesses, I understood that they didn’t maximise anything. Such businesses were complex political organisms: they contained and were influenced by diverse individuals and groups with diverse goals, and the effective manager was someone who could mediate between these conflicting forces. If these companies talked about shareholder value – and increasingly they did – it was an instance of Franklin’s Gambit, a legitimising rhetoric rather than a real guide to action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the more shareholder value became a guide to action, the worse the outcome. On the board of the Halifax Building Society, I voted in 1995 for its conversion to a “plc”. We would allow the company to pursue the goal of maximising its value untrammelled by outmoded concepts of mutuality: in barely a decade, almost every last penny of that value was destroyed. In 1996, as my thoughts on this began to form, I went to the CBI annual conference and described how ICI, for decades Britain’s leading industrial company, had recently transformed its mission statement from “the responsible application of chemistry” to “creating value for shareholders”. The company’s share price peaked a few months later, to begin a remorseless decline that would lead to its disappearance as an independent company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...These unanticipated results reflected the profit-seeking paradox, well described in James Collins and Jerry Porras’s fine book Built to Last: the most profitable companies were not the most profit-oriented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As he summarizes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the idea that good decisions are the product of orderly processes – is more alive than ever in public affairs.&#xA;...There is not, and never will be, such a science. Our objectives are typically imprecise, multifaceted and change as we progress towards them – and properly so. Our decisions depend on the responses of others, and on what we anticipate these responses will be. The world is complex and imperfectly known, and this will remain true however much we analyse it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this summary explains why the idea of &amp;quot;maximizing&amp;quot; profit is not a sensible objective in itself: the world is too complex and no formula can reduce it to a meaningful value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/09/how-the-cult-of-shareholder-value-wrecked-american-business/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein&amp;amp;clsrd=&amp;amp;utm_source=dlvr.it&amp;amp;utm_medium=twitter&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Washington Post blog&lt;/a&gt; includes some useful references and commentary. For example, the blog argues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this supposed imperative to “maximize” a company’s share price has no foundation in history or in law. Nor is there any empirical evidence that it makes the economy or the society better off. What began in the 1970s and ’80s as a useful corrective to self-satisfied managerial mediocrity has become a corrupting, self-interested dogma peddled by finance professors, money managers and over-compensated corporate executives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no statutes that put the shareholder at the top of the corporate priority list. In most states, corporations can be formed for any lawful purpose. Cornell University law professor Lynn Stout has been looking for years for a corporate charter that even mentions maximizing profits or share price. She hasn’t found one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nor does the law require, as many believe, that executives and directors owe a special fiduciary duty to shareholders. The fiduciary duty, in fact, is owed simply to the corporation, which is owned by no one, just as you and I are owned by no one — we are all “persons” in the eyes of the law. Shareholders, however, have a contractual claim to the “residual value” of the corporation once all its other obligations have been satisfied — and even then directors are given wide latitude to make whatever use of that residual value they choose, as long they’re not stealing it for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This provides a relatively concise summary of the case in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://evonomics.com/the-myth-of-maximizing-shareholder-value/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent article&lt;/a&gt; by the previously mentioned Lynn Stout has summarised the case in more depth (and has written a whole book, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amazon.co.uk/Shareholder-Value-Myth-Shareholders-Corporations-ebook/dp/B007PIZ8IO?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;btkr=1&amp;amp;ref_=dp-kindle-redirect&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Shareholder Value Myth&lt;/a&gt;, on the topic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarising some of the previously discussed analysis she argues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shareholder primacy theory is suffering a crisis of confidence. This is happening in large part because it is becoming clear that &lt;em&gt;shareholder value thinking doesn’t seem to work, even for most shareholders.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the core idea that shareholders &amp;quot;own&amp;quot; the firm:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although laymen sometimes have difficulty understanding the point, corporations are &lt;em&gt;legal entities that own themselves&lt;/em&gt;, just as human entities own themselves. What shareholders own are shares, a type of contact between the shareholder and the legal entity that gives shareholders limited legal rights. In this regard, shareholders stand on equal footing with the corporation’s bondholders, suppliers, and employees, all of whom also enter contracts with the firm that give them limited legal rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the idea that shareholders are the residual claimants of the corporation's wealth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more sophisticated but equally mistaken claim is the residual claimants argument. ... But the residual claimants argument is also legally erroneous. Shareholders are residual claimants only when failed companies are being liquidated in bankruptcy. The law applies different rules to healthy companies, where the legal entity is &lt;em&gt;its own&lt;/em&gt; residual claimant, meaning the entity is entitled to keep its profits and to use them as its board of directors sees fit. The board may choose to distribute some profits as dividends to shareholders. But it can also choose instead to raise employee salaries; invest in marketing or research and development; or make charitable contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the legal duties of directors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Provided directors don’t use their corporate powers to enrich themselves, a key legal doctrine called the “business judgment rule” otherwise protects them from liability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The business judgment rule ensures that, contrary to popular belief, the managers of public companies have no enforceable legal duty to maximize shareholder value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She further argues that the idea of shareholder value is itself incoherent and there is little or no evidence that firms who have pursued it have performed well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, shareholder value is a bad theory of how to manage the firm; a legal fiction; and a stick used by anti-business activists to demonise capitalist activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="58413" LastEditDate="2023-02-17T18:12:42.113" LastActivityDate="2023-02-17T18:12:42.113" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7485" CreationDate="2012-02-24T19:26:35.243" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chris, I too would go mushroom picking with my father in Sweden, and heard the same claim from him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, this is more than likely a case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;confirmation bias&lt;/a&gt;.  Numerous questions have been asked here about the moon and its effect on things (I'll get to those afterwards).  The biggest argument against this is would be to look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bio.brandeis.edu/fieldbio/mgoldin/tutorial.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;biology of mushrooms&lt;/a&gt;.  Since they are fungi, mushrooms do not need light for their lifecycle, since they don't contain chlorophyll.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fungi are distinct from plants because they do not possess chlorophyll, the green pigment that allows plants to manufacture sugar from the sun's energy; they need to absorb their food from the environment in which they live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a matter of fact, &lt;a href=&quot;http://sfp.ucdavis.edu/events/11conference/delafuente.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;there is a listing of mushroom species for cultivation in this PDF slideshow&lt;/a&gt;.  In many cases, they explicitly state that no light is needed at all.  Although, they may take &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phototropism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;phototropic&lt;/a&gt; cues to help in directionality of growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the thing that will allow confirmation bias to creep into when you see mushrooms is that they have very rapid and cyclical life cycles.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://etd.uasd.edu/ft/th8795.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This paper for a specific white mushroom shows a 50-55 day cycle&lt;/a&gt;.  Other mushrooms, &lt;a href=&quot;http://sfp.ucdavis.edu/events/11conference/delafuente.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;such as the ones listed in the cultivation slideshow&lt;/a&gt;, show numerous time frames from 10 to 60 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reading more about mushrooms, the key takeaway that I found in numerous pages is that biologists report (For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://botit.botany.wisc.edu/toms_fungi/morel.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Wisconsin&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Very specific conditions of nutrition, humidity, carbon dioxide levels and temperature must be met for primordia to form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RrSvV.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Mushroom Life Cycle&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image from University of Northern Illinois Biology Department&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another trend in confirmation bias is that people may pick specific times to pick mushrooms based on those conditions of nutrition, humidity, carbon dioxide levels and temperature, such as after a rainy period, during specific months, etc.  Add to those time phased events the natural human condition of being very susceptible to any type of confirmation bias, and there you have the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, there are oodles, and oodles of things people try to tie to moon phases, and in each case, there seems to be no actual correlation, only a perceived one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/948/are-more-crimes-committed-during-a-full-moon&quot;&gt;Are more crimes committed during a full moon?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5323/do-people-with-mental-illnesses-feel-the-effect-more-during-the-full-moon&quot;&gt;Do people with mental illnesses feel the effect more during the full moon?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/275/are-more-babies-born-during-full-moons&quot;&gt;Are more babies born during full moons?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2056/is-the-human-menstrual-cycle-related-to-the-lunar-cycle&quot;&gt;Is the human menstrual cycle related to the lunar cycle?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, there really doesn't seem to be a lot associated with a new or full moon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T02:53:21.810" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8179" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-24T20:01:52.393" Score="16" ViewCount="7237" Body="&lt;p&gt;At lunch today I heard the claim again that the practice of eating fish on Fridays during Lent was started by the church to help save a floundering Italian economy at a time when fishing was its primary industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/52049&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;many times&lt;/a&gt; and a quick search shows this is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ewtn.com/vexperts/showmessage.asp?number=433122&amp;amp;Pg=Forum3&amp;amp;Pgnu=1&amp;amp;recnu=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;common claim&lt;/a&gt;.  It was even the subject of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsutorch.com/2010/03/03/news/the-history-of-lenten-abstinence/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article in the Ferris State Torch&lt;/a&gt; in 2010&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support either side of this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2018-02-22T12:20:36.303" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T19:18:58.150" Title="Was the practice of eating fish during Lent started by the church to spur the economy of Italy?" Tags="|nutrition|history|catholic-church|italy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8179" CreationDate="2012-02-24T20:18:58.083" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is quite incorrect. The Catholic practice is tied to the concept of Penance (i.e. give up something, make a sacrifice). In particular, on Fridays and during lent, Catholics are expected to give up meat. Since fish is &lt;em&gt;not considered meat&lt;/em&gt;, then Catholics eat that on Fridays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Days of Penance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can.  1249 The divine law binds all the Christian faithful to do penance each in his or her own way. In order for all to be united among themselves by some common observance of penance, however, penitential days are prescribed on which the Christian faithful devote themselves in a special way to prayer, perform works of piety and charity, and deny themselves by fulfilling their own obligations more faithfully and especially by observing fast and abstinence, according to the norm of the following canons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can.  1250 The penitential days and times in the universal Church are every Friday of the whole year and the season of Lent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can.  1251 Abstinence from meat, or from some other food as determined by the Episcopal Conference, is to be observed on all Fridays, unless a solemnity should fall on a Friday. Abstinence and fasting are to be observed on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can.  1252 The law of abstinence binds those who have completed their fourteenth year. The law of fasting binds those who have attained their majority, until the beginning of their sixtieth year. Pastors of souls and parents are to ensure that even those who by reason of their age are not bound by the law of fasting and abstinence, are taught the true meaning of penance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can.  1253 The conference of bishops can determine more precisely the observance of fast and abstinence as well as substitute other forms of penance, especially works of charity and exercises of piety, in whole or in part, for abstinence and fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG1104/__P4O.HTM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, there is &lt;em&gt;no requirement by the Catholic Church to eat fish on Fridays and Lent&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T20:27:33.470" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8181" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-02-24T20:25:14.533" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Modern Italy is a democratic republic. It has been ranked as the world's 24th most-developed country and its Quality-of-life index has been ranked in the world's top ten. Italy enjoys a very high standard of living, and has a high nominal GDP per capita. It is a founding member of what is now the European Union and part of the Eurozone. Italy is also a member of the G8, G20 and NATO. It has the world's third-largest gold reserves, eighth-largest nominal GDP, tenth highest GDP (PPP) and the sixth highest government budget in the world. It is also a member state of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, the Council of Europe, the Western European Union and the United Nations. Italy has the world's ninth-largest defence budget and shares NATO's nuclear weapons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Italy plays a prominent role in European and global military, cultural and diplomatic affairs. The country's European political, social and economic influence make it a major regional power. The country has a high public education level and is a highly globalised nation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-24T20:25:14.533" LastActivityDate="2012-02-24T20:25:14.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8182" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-02-24T20:25:14.533" Score="0" Body="for questions about claims based in Italy, or limited in Italy. The Italian Republic (Repubblica Italiana) is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-07-24T16:47:51.173" LastActivityDate="2019-07-24T16:47:51.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6132" CreationDate="2012-02-24T21:11:25.177" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR Answer:&lt;/strong&gt;  No firm studies have been done that I could find, however:  Given the general ineffectiveness of the rhythm method, and the rate of spontaneous abortions, it follows that more fertilized eggs &quot;die&quot; as a result than if an egg was not ever allowed to become fertilized through other barrier or pharmacological methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long Answer with citations:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001488.htm&quot;&gt;National Institute of Health&lt;/a&gt; (same citation you had now that I look at the link in your question.  Other citations:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umm.edu/ency/article/001488.htm&quot;&gt;University of Maryland&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10015/&quot;&gt;University of Pittsburgh&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10015/&quot;&gt;Standford University&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/smd/gme/prospective/obgyn/program_details/2.06SAB.htm&quot;&gt;University of Rochester with WHO data&lt;/a&gt; I'll come back to some of these), amongst women &lt;em&gt;who know they are pregnant&lt;/em&gt;, the rate is 15-20%.  That's the most reliable information we can get, because of the &lt;em&gt;knowledge&lt;/em&gt; factor.  Otherwise the NIH estimates a 50% spontaneous abortion rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most miscarriages are caused by chromosome problems that make it impossible for the baby to develop. Usually, these problems are unrelated to the mother or father's genes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other possible causes for miscarriage include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Drug and alcohol abuse&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exposure to environmental toxins&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hormone problems&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Infection&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Obesity&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Physical problems with the mother's reproductive organs&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Problem with the body's immune response&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Serious body-wide ( systemic) diseases in the mother (such as uncontrolled diabetes)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Smoking&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is estimated that up to half of all fertilized eggs die and are lost (aborted) spontaneously, usually before the woman knows she is pregnant. Among those women who know they are pregnant, the miscarriage rate is about 15-20%.&lt;/strong&gt; Most miscarriages occur during the first 7 weeks of pregnancy. The rate of miscarriage drops after the baby's heart beat is detected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the rate is 15-20% for those who &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt;, then it can be logically concluded that some women will never know they are pregnant (or have a fertilized egg) and will have a spontaneous abortion (miscarriage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, back to the links I provided earlier that were not NIH:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/smd/gme/prospective/obgyn/program_details/2.06SAB.htm&quot;&gt;University of Rochester&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Approximately 10 to 20 percent of clinically recognized pregnancies under 20 weeks of gestation will undergo spontaneous abortion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://statistics.stanford.edu/~ckirby/techreports/BIO/BIO%2006.pdf&quot;&gt;Stanford University&lt;/a&gt;:  A paper from 1975 entitled Estimation of Spontaneous Abortion Rates, shows a rate of about 12-26%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/10015/&quot;&gt;University of Pittsburgh says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Approximately one in four pregnant women experience one or more miscarriages, making spontaneous abortion the most common pregnancy complication, and of public health importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the biggest weakness in all these studies is that they only account for the number of women who knew they were pregnant.  The only study I found was from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.experts.umich.edu/pubDetail.asp?t=pm&amp;amp;id=8378454&amp;amp;n=Barbara%20Sue%20Apgar&amp;amp;u_id=195&quot;&gt;University of Michigan Medical School that said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The incidence of clinically unrecognized loss is approximately 20%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find &lt;a href=&quot;http://miscarriage.about.com/od/pregnancyafterloss/qt/miscarriage-rates.htm&quot;&gt;some sites that claimed&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;some research has indicated that 70% of fertilized eggs may never go on to become a full-term pregnancy&quot; however, none of them were referenced to a medical study.  With the understanding that it's hard to collect data when someone doesn't even know that they are indeed technically pregnant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, with all this lead in material about how many actual pregnancies  actually end in a miscarriage, we need to look at the effectivity of the Rhythm Method.  First of all, the better term for this method is &quot;Fertility Awareness&quot; and here the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mckinley.illinois.edu/handouts/birth_control.html&quot;&gt;University of Illinois gives some data&lt;/a&gt; (note the highlighted portion by me).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Method: Fertility Awareness&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Effectiveness: 75 - 97%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;STD Protection: No&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Additional Information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Utilizes daily body temperature charts, sometimes combined with daily cervical mucus checks to predict ovulation which indicates risk of pregnancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Requires instruction, high motivation and diligent record-keeping of fertility indicators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Increases awareness of changes in menstrual cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Requires use of back-up method or abstinence from intercourse during fertile part of cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can be an &quot;all natural&quot; method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stress, illness or vaginal infection can affect fertility indicators, which can result in pregnancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not the same as &quot;Rhythm Method&quot; which is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a reliable method of birth control.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://library.med.utah.edu/kw/human_reprod/lectures/contra_sexdiff/&quot;&gt;University of Utah medical library&lt;/a&gt;, they have information about using fertility awareness.  Again, not the highlight I made:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is also known as &quot;natural family planning&quot; or periodic abstinence. These include (1) the rhythm or calendar method, (2) the basal body temperatures (BBT) method, (3) the mucus method, ovulation or Billings method, and (4) the symptothermal method. They all require couple education and motivation. It is key to remember here that ovulation occurs 14 days +/- two days before menstruation. The follicular phase of the menstrual cycle is the one that varies in length, not the luteal phase. Therefore, a woman can look back and say when she ovulated, but not as easily ahead to predict the time of the next ovulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rhythm method can only be used effectively in a woman with regular cycles. It is based on three assumptions: (1) The ovum can be fertilized for about 24 hours after ovulation. (Often states as up to 72 hours, but this would be a very rare exception.) (2) Spermatozoa retain their fertilizing ability for only about 48 hours. (3) Ovulation occurs 12 to 16 days prior to the onset of menses. After charting cycles for several months, a woman can establish her fertile period by subtracting 18 days from the length of her shortest cycle and 11 days from the longest cycle. The couple must then abstain from intercourse during this time. Another option for some couples is to use a barrier method during the fertile period. An example is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;      A woman's menses start every 26 to 30 days.&#xA;       26 - 18 = 8. 30 - 11 = 19.&#xA;       The fertile interval is from day 8 to day 19 of the cycle.&#xA;       (Day #1 is always the first day of bleeding.)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Newer developments which have improved the effectiveness and acceptability of fertility awareness family planning involve using a basal body temperature daily to determine the end of the fertile period, checking cervical mucus for clear copious, slippery status (Spinnbarkeit) to establish the onset and end of fertility, and using a combination of all of the above (symptothermal method).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Failure rates of fertility awareness depend on the motivation and understanding of the participants. They vary from 11% to 47%&lt;/strong&gt; and are most commonly a result of conscious deviation from the rules of the method. Most accidental (method-failure) pregnancies occur as a result of intercourse prior to ovulation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottom Line:&lt;/strong&gt;  Again, the hard and fast research that has done a strict comparison on spontaneous abortions, pregnancy rates, and the method of birth control have not been fully correlated, or studied in depth.  However, given the much higher probability of an egg getting fertilized using the rhythm method, and the fact that 50% or more of all fertilized eggs do not lead to a pregnancy, it follows that more fertilized eggs &quot;die&quot; as a result than if an egg was not ever allowed to become fertilized through other barrier or pharmacological methods.  (i.e. No sperm are allowed to contact an egg with barrier methods, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://womenshealth.about.com/od/thepill/f/howpillworks.htm&quot;&gt;no ova are released with pharmacological methods&lt;/a&gt;, totally preventing any type of spontaneous abortion.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-02-25T11:00:50.260" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T11:00:50.260" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8188" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8189" CreationDate="2012-02-25T04:52:19.040" Score="35" ViewCount="30007" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been seeing this claim on Facebook a lot recently, somewhat virally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Debt added by the previous 43 U.S. presidents combined $6.3 trillion dollars (sic)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Debt added by the president Obama $6.5 trillion dollars (sic)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim valid? I tend to think something is being misrepresented, although I can't say what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T01:44:59.693" Title="Has President Obama accepted  more debt than all previous US presidents combined?" Tags="|united-states|politics|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8188" CreationDate="2012-02-25T05:51:28.880" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, this is a false claim&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In debunking this it is important to clarify that there are two types of debt the claim could be referring to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt&quot;&gt;public debt&lt;/a&gt;, which refers to all money borrowed by the US government through the issue of securities by the Treasury and other federal government agencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other is gross federal debt which is the total of all public debt as well as any debt held by the government, such as social security or medicare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't specify which type of debt in the claim, although in both cases the claim is false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very easy to prove this claim false, by using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/NPGateway&quot;&gt;Debt to the Penny calculator&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasurydirect.gov/tdhome.htm&quot;&gt;TreasuryDirect website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of February 23, 2012:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Debt Held by the Public: &lt;strong&gt;$10.6 trillion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Intragovernmental Holdings: &lt;strong&gt;$4.8 trillion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Total Public Debt Outstanding: &lt;strong&gt;$15.4 trillion&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;President Obama was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, using the penny debt calculator to look at the timeframe from the date of President Obama's inauguration to now, we can get the figures needed to validate the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the date of President Obama's inauguration, rounded debt figures for debt accumulated by all previous presidents are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Debt Held by the Public: &lt;strong&gt;$6.3 trillion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Intragovernmental Holdings: &lt;strong&gt;$4.3 trillion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Total Public Debt Outstanding: &lt;strong&gt;$10.6 trillion&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if we subtract these (unrounded) figures from the (unrounded) current figures above, we are left with the accumulate debt that can be attributed to President Obama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Debt Held by the Public: $10.6 trillion - $6.3 trillion = &lt;strong&gt;$4.37 trillion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Intragovernmental Holdings: $4.8 trillion - $4.3 trillion = &lt;strong&gt;$0.44 trillion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Total Public Debt Outstanding: $15.4 trillion - $10.6 trillion = &lt;strong&gt;$4.8 trillion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all cases, the debt attributed to President Obama is less than the total debt accumulate by the past 43 presidents for both types of debt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6387" OwnerDisplayName="user6327" LastEditorUserId="6254" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T14:06:40.727" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T14:06:40.727" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8188" CreationDate="2012-02-25T15:19:22.633" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a preposterous comparison to begin with, for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In good economic times, presidents have paid down the national debt. In 1834 Jackson paid it off entirely. In fact, most presidents in the 1800s paid it down, as did Harding and Coolidge in the 1920s. And from 1946 to 1981 the debt was consistently reduced in real terms, though not in nominal terms. It's&amp;nbsp;unfair to add together all those positive &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; negative contributions, then compare them to a president who inherited two wars, hemorrhagic tax&amp;nbsp;cuts, and a massive recession.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From 1800 to today, the dollar has inflated by 1270%. Comparing nominal dollar values makes past debt increases look insignificant, &lt;em&gt;even if&lt;/em&gt; you isolate them from debt reductions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet &lt;strong&gt;even on those incredibly skewed grounds the comparison is false.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://factcheck.org/2012/02/dueling-debt-deceptions/&quot;&gt;FactCheck.org&lt;/a&gt; has a detailed analysis, based on the same source Rachel McGilray used (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.savingsbonds.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np&quot;&gt;Debt to the Penny&lt;/a&gt;). Here's an excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And it’s also untrue — as claimed in a graphic widely circulated by&#xA;  email and in social media postings — that the debt has increased more&#xA;  under Obama than under all previous 43 presidents combined. In fact,&#xA;  as of Jan. 31, 2012, the rise under Obama had yet to surpass the rise&#xA;  under his predecessor, George W. Bush.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The figures in that graphic are pure fabrications, as anyone can&#xA;  easily confirm by plugging Obama’s inauguration date — Jan. 20, 2009 —&#xA;  in the Treasury Department’s handy “debt to the penny” website. That&#xA;  shows the nation’s total debt stood at $10.6 trillion on the day Obama&#xA;  took office (not $6.3 trillion), and it had increased to nearly $15.4&#xA;  trillion by the end of January 2012 — a rise of more than $4.7&#xA;  trillion in just over three years (not $6.5 trillion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That’s a huge increase to be sure — 44.5 percent. And the&#xA;  Congressional Budget Office now projects that it will grow to more&#xA;  than $16 trillion by the end of the current fiscal year on Sept. 30.&#xA;  At that point, the debt will have increased by more dollars in Obama’s&#xA;  first four years than it did in George W. Bush’s entire eight-year&#xA;  tenure, when it rose by $4.9 trillion. The rise under Obama would then&#xA;  be the biggest dollar increase for any [single] president in U.S. history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's still nominal dollars. Let's compare the total debt increases of the last five presidents in present dollars:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obama: $4.89 T&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bush II: $5.73 T ($2.40 T in first term, $3.33 T in second)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clinton: $2.21 T&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bush I: $2.54 T&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reagan: $3.82 T&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To adjust for inflation, I used the &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt&quot;&gt;average CPI values&lt;/a&gt; from the presidents' terms. Notably, under Obama the total public debt has increased by 38% in real terms, versus 54% under Bush II and 108% under Reagan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So&amp;thinsp;&amp;mdash;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obama has not &amp;ldquo;accepted more debt than all previous U.S. presidents combined,&amp;rdquo; or even half that. Nor has he raised the total debt more than the previous four presidents, or even half &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;. But during his tenure, the total debt &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; risen faster than at any other point in U.S. history.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bush II holds the record for raising the debt more than any other single president. Obama will break this record in nominal terms at the end of the fiscal year and in real terms at the end of his term.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reagan is the only president out of the past five to have &amp;ldquo;accepted more debt than all previous U.S. presidents combined.&amp;rdquo; In real terms, he doubled the total debt. In nominal terms, he almost tripled it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before that, FDR raised the total debt in real terms almost sixfold and in nominal terms eightfold. Lincoln&amp;nbsp;raised it in real terms 20-fold and in nominal terms &lt;em&gt;30-fold.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5120" LastEditorUserId="5120" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T20:46:04.717" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T20:46:04.717" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7282" CreationDate="2012-02-25T20:40:50.600" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reasons for switching?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally today, in the western world, left-handed people are equally accepted as right-handed people and should not experience any major drawbacks. Today, a child can easily work with the left hand. Thanks to some tools such as scissors, writing pads and pens for left-handed no problems are expected. If a child does have bad deal, because it has, for example, an unfavorable position when writing, there are recognized and specially-trained occupational therapists who can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What does switching accomplish?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So like you can read in the article &quot;Can Left-Handedness be Switched? Insights from an Early Switch of Handwriting&quot; from The Journal of Neuroscience, 18 July 2007:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These results suggest two distinct neuronal correlates of handedness&#xA;  in human sensorimotor cortex. Although those in executive sensorimotor&#xA;  cortex (i.e., SM1 and adjacent PMd) depend on the hand used throughout&#xA;  life, those in higher-order sensorimotor areas (i.e., inferior&#xA;  parietal cortex and rostrolateral PMd) are invariant and thus cannot&#xA;  be switched to the nondominant hemisphere by educational training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which says that the areas that are directly involved in movement control will move increasingly to the left in the brain, which is the dominant half in right-handers. But the larger regions that participate in the planning and control of movement remain all life in the same place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paradoxly those planning and control areas were even more stressed in retrained persons than in normal left-handers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problems of switching?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even as early as 1918 [&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=EikDAAAAMBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA22&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;] observations were made, were&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[retraining]... may result in speech-hesitation. [...] Taking it all in all, this investigation seems proof conclusive that left-handed children should not be forced to use the right hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a lot more studies from that time period (1930s) were linking stuttering to forced left-hand retrainment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But since then no more professional studies have been made to investigate eventual problems with retrainment[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22332811&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;]. One of the reason for that is that left-handedness was long seen as a deviation from the norm and medical treatment or research was conducted purely from this perspective. &#xA;Also many studies provide statements that refer to very different groups of people: generally assessed left-handed people, learned left handed and the subgroup of trauma-induced left-handed were all mixed together and no reasonable conclusions can be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while it is not proven at this point that retraining is leading to serious problems (apart from the increased brain load) there are is also no point in doing it. All studies and logical reasoning hint for an exclusion of such practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6257" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T20:40:50.600" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8157" CreationDate="2012-02-25T21:54:58.500" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In really short, I think that &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; it is instinctive in animals. I don't usually use &lt;code&gt;cracked.com&lt;/code&gt; as a reference, but they have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_19665_the-6-sleaziest-ways-animals-are-mimicking-human-sexuality.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; really nice articles on animals sexuality (which is by itself quite well referenced). The most important part for you question will be section 3) of the article, where they discuss a species of dolphin that practices oral sex (and some even stranger things). You have also the canonical exemple of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ansci.wisc.edu/jjp1/ansci_repro/misc/project_websites_07/thur07/bonobo%20reproduction/behavior.html&quot;&gt;Bonobos&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As @Dave Hillier commented, the fruit bats also practice oral sex. There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.pone.0007595&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; PLoS ONE article on how they use it to prolong copulation time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="800" LastEditorUserId="800" LastEditDate="2012-02-25T22:03:42.530" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T22:03:42.530" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8197" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8229" CreationDate="2012-02-25T22:23:39.587" Score="20" ViewCount="3221" Body="&lt;p&gt;From an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/853.aspx?CategoryID=87&amp;amp;SubCategoryID=871&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NHS website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To lower your risk of health problems, the NHS recommends that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;men should not regularly drink more than 3-4 units of alcohol a day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;women should not regularly drink more than 2-3 units of alcohol a day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Regularly' means drinking these amounts every day or on most days of&#xA;the week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these figures have any scientific basis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5005" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T10:56:06.967" Title="Recommended alcohol drinking quantity: are they just making it up?" Tags="|medical-science|alcohol|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8247" CreationDate="2012-02-25T23:10:43.637" Score="8" ViewCount="931" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lunar farmers' almanacs are calendars which give advice on agriculture based on the phase of the moon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One such example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.farmersalmanac.com/calendar/gardening/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Farmers Almanac Gardening by the Moon Calendar is determined by our age-old formula and applies generally to regions where the climate is favourable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frateindovino.eu/Images/Almanacco/feb12.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Italian example&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more serious site (with &amp;quot;scientific&amp;quot; explanations) is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ianslunarpages.org/Lunar_gardening.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I approached this subject initially as a benign sceptic, experimented a little, compared some folklore traditions, chased journalists for scientific references and sifted some hard science out of a morass of junk science, rumour and hokum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am now fairly sure from my own experience gardening that the cycles of the moon are significant factor in plant growth (and I am 100% sure after many moonlit winter nights spent parting my donkey from her swain that the cycles of the moon significantly affects animal behaviour!) &amp;quot;Significant&amp;quot; here means statistically significant, it doesn't mean &amp;quot;big&amp;quot; and it doesn't mean &amp;quot;most important&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that the phase of the moon has any statistically significant effect on plant growth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T07:59:58.993" Title="Are farmers' lunar almanacs effective?" Tags="|moon|agriculture|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8197" CreationDate="2012-02-25T23:19:38.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the interesting aspects of the recommendations for Alcohol limits is the contrast between different countries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recommended_maximum_intake_of_alcoholic_beverages&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia*&lt;/a&gt; shows a list of different recommendations, and the different is stark: 24g per day in the Czech Republic, and 40g per day in Italy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this doesn't mean that there is no scientific basis, it does suggest that the interpretation of that evidence varies so widely as to render it fairly insignificant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I think that the limits are set more for Political reasons (being seen to be pro-health or anti binge-drinking).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*I wouldn't normally quote Wikipedia as a source, but this is fairly impirical so I feel more safe in doing so than usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6261" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T23:19:38.250" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8200" CreationDate="2012-02-25T23:51:40.020" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many plants are photosensitive and the phases of the moon marginally affect light (though by an extremely minor amount compared with solar seasonal effects, cloud cover or shading), so you might expect a very small effect in some plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A principle of statistical sampling is that with a large enough sample size it is possible to find statistically significant results which are robust to repeat testing (as opposed to the 5% of experiments which produce apparently statistically significant results simply by chance) even if the effect is not substantial enough to affect behaviour in the real world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a study &quot;Effects of Moonlight on Flower Induction in &lt;em&gt;Pharbitis nil&lt;/em&gt;, Using a Single Dark Period&quot; by Kadman-Zahavi and Peiper in 1987.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/60/6/621.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The abstract&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Flowering of &lt;em&gt;Pharbitis nil&lt;/em&gt; plants was slightly inhibited by exposure to the light of the full moon for 8 or more hours with a single dark period of 16, 14 or 13 h. It is suggested that in the natural environment moonlight may have at most only a slight delaying effect on the time of flower induction in short-day plants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-02-25T23:51:40.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8205" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8208" CreationDate="2012-02-26T13:30:23.510" Score="15" ViewCount="14547" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Saint Januarius is famous for the reputed miracle of the annual liquefaction of his blood, which, according to legend, was saved by a woman called Eusebia just after the saint's death. Thousands of people assemble to witness this event in Naples Cathedral three times a year: on September 19 (Saint Januarius day, to commemorate his martyrdom), on December 16 (to celebrate his patronage of both Naples and of the archdiocese), and on the Saturday before the first Sunday of May (to commemorate the reunification of his relics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Gennaro#The_Blood_Miracle&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I've seen this happen on Italian TV numerous times, it seems a completely ludicrous fake phenomenon. Has it ever been studied by scientists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the Italians, this is the &quot;Miracolo di San Gennaro&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the video of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/0MTrKHXvfCs?t=2m55s&quot;&gt;2011 event&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-02-26T22:03:36.410" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T19:33:04.373" Title="Does St. Januarius' &quot;blood&quot; congeal and liquefy?" Tags="|history|catholic-church|blood|miracle|italy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8197" CreationDate="2012-02-26T19:13:30.617" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes and No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acording to &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8172982.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; there is sound science underlying the original weekly alcohol consumption recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The weekly limits were based on robust studies and were set at a level at which alcohol harms outweigh any putative benefit.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However unfortunately the popular interpretation of the weekly limits was that people could drink the entire weekly allowance in one night, and this was leading to the 'binge drinking' phenomenon, which is definitely not good for you and leads other problems related to drunkenness. The daily limits were introduced in order to counteract this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However again unfortunately this has led to people believing that they could drink every day with no ill-effects (the original recommendations included having two or three alcohol-free days per week). Again there can be problems with drinking every day, even in moderation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In short:&lt;/strong&gt; the original weekly recommendations were based on science. The recommendations were modified to a daily amount fix a specific problem. Since the daily limits were based on the old weekly limits there is still something of a scientific basis, but it is less certain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:There are good arguments that the guidelines are very much simplified from what an accurate 'safe' limit would be for each person. I also have sympathy with the people who claim there is not such thing as a 'safe limit' (just as there is no such thing as a 'safe speed' at which to drive). However there was certainly a science component to the guidelines, even if politics and communicability also played a part in their formulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T22:24:32.860" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T22:24:32.860" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8205" CreationDate="2012-02-26T22:03:02.683" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt;  There is a liquid that does the congeal and liquefy trick, but it's probably not blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long answer:&lt;/strong&gt;  First of all, the Catholic Church has not made an official stance on this event.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Januarius#Catholic_Church.27s_position&quot;&gt;wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; on this says so, as well as an investigation by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mail-archive.com/brin-l@mccmedia.com/msg47189.html&quot;&gt;The Italian Committee for the Investigation of the Paranormal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While the Catholic Church has always supported the celebrations, it has never formulated an official statement on the phenomenon, and maintains a neutral stance about scientific investigations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AND&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Church, as usual, has sidestepped the issue. It has never claimed that the San Gennaro event is a miracle but it has not allowed independent tests on the phials containing the blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major difficulty in actually examining this substance is that no one will allow a vial to be opened to perform an exam, so only observations through the glass can be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2005, the Italian Committee for the Investigation of the Paranormal has gone on to look into the issues more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the red-coloured contents are a thixotropic substance, based on iron chloride. This means that it liquefies when stirred or vibrated and returns to solid form when left to stand. According to Cicap, the substance was probably stumbled upon by an alchemist or a painter in medieval times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This interest may have been sparked by a 2000 airing on the History Channel about this same phenomenon.  Skeptical inquirer made a point to also talk about this.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070206214843/http://www.csicop.org/list/listarchive/msg00107.html&quot;&gt;A web archive link is reproduced below (to prevent link rot)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't miss &quot;This Week in History&quot; tonight at 9:00 pm (Eastern time US) on&#xA;  the History Channel. CSICOP's Joe Nickell will appear in a segment on the&#xA;  Shroud of Turin.  Fri, 22 Sep 2000 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Miracle Blood of San Gennaro&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Amherst, NY (September 22, 2000)--On Tuesday, September 19, 2000, in Naples,&#xA;  Italy, an expected &quot;miracle&quot; occurred: a congealed substance many believe is&#xA;  the blood of a martyred saint liquefied in its vial. San Gennaro (in English&#xA;  Saint Januarius) is Naples' patron saint, and the superstitious believe that&#xA;  if the &quot;blood&quot; does not liquefy disaster may strike. In 1980 a massive&#xA;  earthquake struck southern Italy after one failed liquefaction, yet in 1631,&#xA;  after the &quot;miracle&quot; had taken place, Vesuvius erupted, killing 18,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The glass vial containing the bloody substance is housed in a monstrance (a&#xA;  shrine in the form of a stand) which is brought out of its vault twice&#xA;  yearly: on the Saturday preceding the first Sunday in May, and on September&#xA;  19, the saint's feast day. The latter is the anniversary of San Gennaro's&#xA;  legendary death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Catholic Church has never been able to document Gennaro's existence as&#xA;  an actual historical personage&lt;/strong&gt;, and in the 1960s his importance was greatly&#xA;  diminished, along with the other folkloric figures like Saint George the&#xA;  legendary dragon slayer. T*&lt;em&gt;here is no historical record for the alleged&#xA;  martyr's &quot;blood&quot; until the late fourteenth century, more than a millennium&#xA;  after his reputed beheading&lt;/em&gt;*.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The congealed substance itself has never been reliably tested, despite the&#xA;  local church's claims based on dubious spectral analyses. In fact, the&#xA;  substance has qualities that differentiate it from genuine blood. &lt;strong&gt;Adding to&#xA;  skeptic's suspicions, there are some twenty other saints' bloods that&#xA;  liquefy, virtually every one of them from the Naples area--suggestive of some&#xA;  local secret.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two skeptical hypotheses have been offered to explain the Januarian&#xA;  phenomenon by natural means--both suggesting that it is a pious fraud. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.luigigarlaschelli.it/Other%20Pubbl/SProd.Ch.Ind.html&quot;&gt;In&#xA;  1991 a group of Italian scientists--Luigi Garlaschelli and two colleagues,&#xA;  Franco Ramaccini and Sergio Della Sala--demonstrated that they could simulate&#xA;  the effect with a thixotropic gel, a substance that liquefies when agitated&#xA;  and resolidifies when allowed to stand.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About the same time two American researchers--forensic analyst John F.&#xA;  Fischer and paranormal investigator Joe Nickell--showed they could reproduce&#xA;  a liquefying and recongealing miracle blood using a colored oil-and-wax&#xA;  mixture. When slightly warmed by heat sources such as nearby candles and body&#xA;  heat, the bogus blood can suddenly liquefy. Nickell and Fischer jokingly&#xA;  attribute their phenomenon to &quot;Saint Februarius.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although suitable tests of San Gennaro's alleged blood are still not&#xA;  permitted, the Italian scientists were allowed to test one of the other&#xA;  Naples-area vials without breaking it open or damaging its contents. It did&#xA;  not respond to being shaken, but it did liquefy when warmed gently by a hair&#xA;  dryer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For a discussion see Joe Nickell with John F. Fischer, &quot;Mysterious Realms:&#xA;  Probing Paranormal, Historical, and Forensic Enigmas&quot;, Amherst, NY:&#xA;  Prometheus Books, 1992, pp. 145-164.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in this write up, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.luigigarlaschelli.it/Other%20Pubbl/SProd.Ch.Ind.html&quot;&gt;there is an Italian Scientist that has discussed the thixotropic hypothesis in great detail&lt;/a&gt;.  Sadly, I don't read Italian that well, so I am trusting that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cicap.org/new/articolo.php?id=101014&quot;&gt;this is a faithful translation to English&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Introduction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A sealed glass vial containing a dark unknown substance, allegedly the clotted blood of San Gennaro (St Januarius), is shown several times a year to a packed crowd in the Cathedral of Napoli (Naples). Whilst the container is being handled during a solemn ceremony, the solid mass suddenly liquefies before everybody's eyes. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mail-archive.com/brin-l@mccmedia.com/msg47189.html&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  This well-documented phenomenon is still regarded as unexplained &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070206214843/http://www.csicop.org/list/listarchive/msg00107.html&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; by believers and sceptics alike. Noted parapsychologist Hans Bender defined it the paranormal phenomenon with the best and historical documentation; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.luigigarlaschelli.it/Other%20Pubbl/SProd.Ch.Ind.html&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt; physicist Enrico Fermi seems to have expressed interest as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is also one of the few recurrent non-medical, physical &quot;miracles&quot; that might be studied scientifically. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cicap.org/new/articolo.php?id=101014&quot;&gt;whole paper&lt;/a&gt;, but the conclusion says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Further tests to investigate the real nature of the holy &quot;blood&quot; without opening the ampoule come readily to mind: for example, molecular absorptions and fluorescence spectroscopy, and Raman scattering measurements, made with modern electronic instruments by qualified spectroscopists. Controlled temperature increments and shock tests also represent non-destructive analytical methods by which our or alternative hypotheses might be verified or disproved. Whether these simple tests will be allowed to go ahead wholly depends upon the Catholic Church. At present however, &lt;strong&gt;given that the phenomenon has been replicated&lt;/strong&gt;, it would be rather too naive to consider it irreproducible or unexplainable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the paper, they go into a great deal of detail on not only the thixotropic hypothesis, but also to talk about other rational approaches to the problem.  Not only focusing on the thixotropic hypothesis but other possible hoaxes, frauds, or mistakes.  The prevailing idea is that this is indeed a fake though, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cicap.org/new/images/a/e/spettri.gif&quot;&gt;since the chemistry has been known since about the time that this &quot;relic&quot; appeared.  This PDF is an extended version of the paper cited above&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T01:19:57.407" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T01:19:57.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7941" CreationDate="2012-02-26T22:04:49.780" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He very, very likely never did.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've traced that citation back to 2009 where it first appeared on the internet according to Google, in particular &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.englishforum.ch/772120-post75.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sorry, I couldn't help to post this here. This is something that the current Medicine Nobel Prize winner (brazilian oncologist Drauzio Varella) said:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;Nowadays five times more money is being spent in medicines for male virility and silicon for women than in a cure for Alzheimer. In some years we will have old ladies with big tits and old men with a hard penis, but none of them will remember what they are for.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before then, it appears in a different form, and as a joke. The earliest mention I can find (but I may have missed some possible mutations of the text) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://danwebb.com/humor/&quot;&gt;on this joke site&lt;/a&gt; in 1999:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thought for the day: There is more money being spent on breast implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer's research. This means that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drauzio_Varella&quot;&gt;Drauzio Varella&lt;/a&gt; exists and is indeed a Brazilian oncologist, but he's never won a Nobel prize according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://drauziovarella.com.br/biografia/&quot;&gt;his official bio&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2009/press.html&quot;&gt;2009 Nobel&lt;/a&gt; was assigned to someone else entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2009 jointly [goes] to Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider and Jack W. Szostak for the discovery of &quot;how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-02-26T22:04:49.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8210" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-26T22:18:35.590" Score="12" ViewCount="6074" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Lord James of Blackheath &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201212/ldhansrd/text/120216-0002.htm#12021643000172&quot;&gt;speech&lt;/a&gt; in the UK House of Lords there's evidence that a $15 trillon conspiracy/fraud is going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular he says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Today, I have this quite frightening piece of paper [...] It is from&#xA;  the general audit office of the Federal Reserve in Washington-the real&#xA;  Federal Reserve-and its audit review to the end of July 2010 on the&#xA;  Federal Reserve Bank of New York. It has on it some 20 banks listed to&#xA;  which $16.115 trillion is outstanding in loans. That is the sore thumb&#xA;  that was being looked for by my noble friend Lord Sassoon. [...] most extraordinarily, not a penny of interest does the Federal Bank of New York want paid on that vast amount, $16 trillion. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the apparent existence of those $16.115 trillion in outstanding loans suggest that something fishy in the way that Blackheath suggests goes on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus points:&#xA;It would be nice to understand what Blackheath means with his argument about &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;you put [the money] through an MTN-trading bank, which is then able&#xA;  to use the funds on the overnight European MTN trading market where&#xA;  they can earn between 1 per cent and 2.5 per cent profit per night. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(MTN=medium-term notes)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T07:47:15.677" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T16:53:05.693" Title="Is there a $15 trillion fraud involving Yohannes Riyadi and the HSBC?" Tags="|banking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6867" CreationDate="2012-02-26T22:24:30.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably not, but I can't say this conclusively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appeared without attribution on the internet in 1997 on an anti-veal-consumption web site [beware: gross images are displayed with the intent to disgust. The quote is in a 1997-style &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;MARQUEE&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;. The font is all centred and with a black background. You have been warned.] _http://www.tonglen.oceandrop.org/Truth_Behind_Veal.htm&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Animals are not ours to eat, wear, &#xA;  experiment on or use for entertainment.' ................ Ingrid E Newkirk &#xA;  [PETA]...................&quot;We have enslaved the rest of animal creation and have &#xA;  treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if &#xA;  they were to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.&quot; &#xA;  ................William Ralph Inge......................&quot;Look Deep Into The Eyes &#xA;  Of Any Animal, &amp;amp; Then For A moment, Trade Places, Their Life Becomes As &#xA;  Precious As Yours &amp;amp; You Become As Vulnerable As They. Now Smile If You &#xA;  Believe All Animals Deserve Our Respect &amp;amp; Our Protection, For In Alot Of &#xA;  Ways, THEY ARE US, &amp;amp; WE ARE THEM.&quot; '.' &lt;strong&gt;&quot;The Soul Is The Same In All Living &#xA;  Creatures, Although The Body Of Each Is &#xA;  Different.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;............................May all beings be free of &#xA;  suffering...................The best way to help these animals is to stop &#xA;  supporting industries that regard animals as food machines instead of as living &#xA;  beings with feelings, wants, and needs................I am in favour of animal &#xA;  rights as well as human rights, that is the way of a whole human &#xA;  being.............Lincoln.................The greatness of a nation and it's &#xA;  moral progress can be judged by the way it treats it's animals......... M &#xA;  Gandhi........... Animals of the world exist for their own reason. They were not &#xA;  made for humans, anymore than black people were made for whites or women for &#xA;  men..................Alice Walker...... .s&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there it bounced off in a couple of places, without attribution, and it was finally attributed to Hippocrates in 1999 on &lt;a href=&quot;http://home.comcast.net/~maxcpoo/remembering.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt; [beware: 1999-style embedded music player will fire upon load):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The soul is the same in all living creatures, although the body of each is different.&quot; &#xA;  ~ Hippocrates ~&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in conclusion, it seems to be a PETA-style slogan that was misattributed to Hippocrates. But I might be wrong here. In any case there's no trace of support from philosophers or historians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Addendum&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ChrisW found something very similar in &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/stream/hippocrates04hippuoft#page/262/mode/2up/search/animal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Regimen, XXIV&lt;/a&gt;. So he clearly said something alike, good job! I'm leaving this answer as it explains the overall internet history of the quote. As a side note, Hippocrates was talking about aging, probably not what the current use of the quote is meant to exemplify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-08-25T20:02:03.647" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T20:02:03.647" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8157" CreationDate="2012-02-27T02:12:38.353" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;If oral sex is done first, followed by penetration, the saliva could help prevent STDs (like bats) - which may or may not have been enough allow selection of such behavior in our own species; or it could be an evolutionary left-over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't think we have enough evidence for our own species to answer that question with any confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Oral Sex Confer An Evolutionary Advantage? Evidence From Bats:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/thoughtfulanimal/2010/05/does_oral_sex_confer_an_evolut.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://scienceblogs.com/thoughtfulanimal/2010/05/does_oral_sex_confer_an_evolut.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T15:12:22.017" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T15:12:22.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8057" CreationDate="2012-02-27T02:48:43.863" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Biotin deficiency &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biotin_deficiency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;seems indeed to be rare&lt;/a&gt;. As with almost all vitamin supplementation, it's probably better to not take any unless you know you have a specific deficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As expected, the sites you provide are full in anecdotal evidence and short on hard evidence, so stick with the Null Hypothesis until proven otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Very&lt;/strong&gt; much &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/another-negative-study-of-vitamins/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recommended reading on the vitamin supplementation issue&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6268" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T06:50:33.683" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T06:50:33.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8217" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8219" CreationDate="2012-02-27T05:10:22.927" Score="29" ViewCount="5258" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/commentary/data/000107&quot;&gt;Does Legalizing Prostitution Work?&lt;/a&gt;, the author says that even after prostitution is legal, a lot of women are still forced into prostitution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These women are Amsterdam's leading tourist attraction (followed by the coffee shops that sell marijuana). But an estimated 50 to 90 percent of them are actually sex slaves, raped on a daily basis with police idly standing by. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe all this time I was wrong. Maybe most prostitution are indeed forced. I thought otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, can anyone verify?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the issue is on the definition of consent, sex slavery, and rape. If you want to give percentage based on various definition of consent, it would be ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T03:49:02.593" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T18:31:54.577" Title="Are 50% to 90% of prostitutes in the Netherlands sex slaves?" Tags="|prostitution|netherlands|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8217" CreationDate="2012-02-27T06:00:27.863" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;So far, I have been unable to find any estimates that reach the 50-90% figure quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.bnrm.nl/reports/eighth/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eighth report of the Dutch National Rapporteur on Trafficking in Human Beings&lt;/a&gt; (2010) explains the difficulty:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are conflicting estimates of the scale of human trafficking from different organisations and countries. It is therefore very difficult to be certain about the scale of the problem, which underlines the need for the systematic and coordinated collection and management of data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since human trafficking is often hidden and victims are often unwilling or afraid to speak out (or do not&#xA;  realise that they are victims), there are probably a large number of unknown cases of human trafficking&#xA;  (a large ‘dark number’). Consequently, statistical trends based on the number of known cases of human trafficking&#xA;  usually do not directly reflect developments in the total number of cases of human trafficking.&#xA;  The number of known situations of human trafficking depends to a large extent on factors such as the public&#xA;  attention for human trafficking, the priorities of the investigative services and the public prosecution&#xA;  service, the method of registration employed by victim support organisations, and changes in the law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they do have a detailed analysis of the reported cases of Human Trafficking in the Netherlands, and the numbers are disturbing, with over 900 victims reported in 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ejgx9.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of these, at least 45% were being exploited in the sex industry (likely a lot higher, given the significant &quot;unknown&quot; figure):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/u9f4P.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the unreported crime figures are likely to be much higher. These numbers should be compared with the number of prostitutes in the Netherlands - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_the_Netherlands#Extent_of_prostitution&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia cites a number of different studies&lt;/a&gt; that range from 15,000 to 30,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for consent, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.bnrm.nl/Images/Rapportage%204%20(Eng)_tcm64-83608.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2004 version&lt;/a&gt; of the report includes figures on how the traffickers gained compliance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NwfbS.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T12:12:17.190" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T12:12:17.190" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7542" CreationDate="2012-02-27T06:16:21.997" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Typically No, but it depends on the dose.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The World Health Organisation released a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/fluoride_drinking_water_full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fairly comprehensive report&lt;/a&gt; (PDF Warning) called &amp;quot;Fluoride in Drinking-water&amp;quot; that covers this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I apologise for quoting so extensively from this report, but, well, it's excellent. I'd suggest anyone that is skeptical, have a look at the report and the (many) papers it cites to justify its findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, fluoride is naturally occuring in all types of water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seawater typically&#xA;contains about 1 mg/l while rivers and lakes generally exhibit concentrations of less than 0.5 mg/l. In groundwaters, however, low or high concentrations of fluoride can occur, depending on the nature of the rocks and the occurrence of fluoride-bearing minerals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major risk cited by fluoride-in-water-skeptics is the risk of fluorosis. Unfortunately for them, this only occurs after excessive ingestion of fluoride. This typically occurs in regions that do not control the levels of fluoride in their drinking water and the levels are naturally high. Typically the effects are worse in hotter regions where people require more water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fluoride has beneficial effects on teeth at low concentrations in drinking-water, but excessive exposure to fluoride in drinking-water, or in combination with exposure to fluoride from other sources, can give rise to a number of adverse effects. These range from mild dental fluorosis to crippling skeletal fluorosis as the level and period of exposure increases. Crippling skeletal fluorosis is a significant cause of morbidity in a number of regions of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beneficial and the detrimental effects of fluoride naturally present in water were well established by the early 1940s. High levels of fluoride present in concentrations up to 10 mg/l were associated with dental fluorosis (yellowish or brownish striations or mottling of the enamel) while low levels of fluoride, less than 0.1 mg/l, were associated with high levels of dental decay (Edmunds and Smedley, 1996), although poor nutritional status is also an important contributory factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What most of the governments in fluoridated-water countries do is attempt to find a middle ground between too much fluoride (causing fluorosis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in China some 38 million people are reported to suffer from dental fluorosis and 1.7 million from the more severe skeletal fluorosis (WRI, 1990). In India, Susheela and Das (1988) suggested that around one million people suffer from serious and incapacitating&#xA;skeletal fluorosis. Using the Chinese dental:skeletal fluorosis ratio, India could&#xA;therefore have up to 20 million dental fluorosis sufferers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and too little (contributing to high levels of dental decay):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The level of dental caries (measured as the mean number of Decayed,&#xA;Missing or Filled teeth) falls from seven at a fluoride concentration of 0.1 mg/l&#xA;to around 3.5 at a fluoride concentration of 1.0 mg/l. As fluoride concentration&#xA;increased further (up to 2.6 mg/l) dental decay continues to fall, but only&#xA;slightly (Dean, 1942; USPHS, 1991).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a government, based purely on cost I would expect it's worth controlling the fluoride levels in drinking water. The cost of treating the water is lower than treating severe fluorosis or unnecessary dental caries, particularly if millions of people are likely to be affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The WHO therefore recommends that a moderate level of fluoride be maintained in drinking water:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1984, WHO conducted an extensive review and found that there were insufficient data to conclude that fluoride produces cancer or birth defects. In addition, WHO noted that mottling of teeth (i.e. dental fluorosis) is sometimes associated with fluoride levels in drinking-water above 1.5 mg/l and crippling skeletal fluorosis can ensue when fluoride levels exceed 10 mg/l. A guideline value of 1.5 mg/l was therefore recommended by WHO as a level at which dental fluorosis should be minimal (WHO, 1984).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1.5 mg/l fluoride guideline value that was set in 1984 was subsequently&#xA;re-evaluated by WHO and it was concluded that there was no evidence to suggest&#xA;that it should be revized (WHO, 1996, 2004). The 1.5 mg/l guideline value of&#xA;WHO is not a “fixed” value but is intended to be adapted to take account of local&#xA;conditions (e.g. diet, water consumption, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same report actually covers the (pretty ridiculous) claims of birth defects, cancer, etc. and debunks them. As they're not specifically claimed in the question, I'll leave it to people to read the report if they're interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest people also read @Oliver_C's &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/3813/2280&quot;&gt;post on a similar question&lt;/a&gt; for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-12-27T02:18:21.607" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8210" CreationDate="2012-02-27T07:52:08.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The documents that Blackheath cites are examples of forged documents being used in a scam known to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ny.frb.org/banking/frscams.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US Federal Reserve Bank&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scam Involving Yohannes Riyadi and/or Wilfredo Saurin&lt;/strong&gt;, &#xA;  November 2007&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Federal Reserve is aware of a fraudulent scam involving individuals using the names Yohannes Riyadi and/or Wilfredo Saurin, or persons claiming to be representatives of these two men. In a typical version of this scam, Mr. Riyadi and/or his delegates falsely claim that they have on deposit with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York several U.S. Treasury Checks issued to Mr. Riyadi amounting to billions of dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has been contacted by several brokers and financial institutions worldwide inquiring about the validity of this fraudulent account documentation, which is being offered as collateral for lines of credit or other types of asset based financing. The fraudulent scheme includes multiple documents which purport to have the signatures of various Federal Reserve officials, including Chairman Ben Bernanke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In some instances, individuals involved in this fraudulent scheme claim to have met with Federal Reserve officials and claim to have verified that the alleged account is in order. We have also learned that the fraud may include the purchase of certain documents by the introducing brokers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Community Wiki, because the link was supplied by @EnergyNumbers, and I just added a sentence to the beginning.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T07:52:08.387" CommentCount="9" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-02-27T07:52:08.387" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8224" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-27T12:24:38.810" Score="9" ViewCount="585" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/09/ff_chickensaurus/all/1&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; is one of many articles talking about re-enabling some dinosaur features in chicken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know a lot about genetics or paleontology. Most articles I've found about the subject use some form of &lt;em&gt;argument from authority&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People have told Jack Horner he’s crazy before, but he has always turned out to be right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this something that's actually possible (not only theoretically possible)? &#xA;Is the reporting accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit: thanks to commenters making my question more specific.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it realistic to expect chickens with some useful dinosaur features (e.g. if they have dinosaur tail they can use it to balance - it's not just meat) in the next 20 years?&lt;/strong&gt; Are there any premises suggesting that those chickens will be able to breed and pass on the dinosaur characteristics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6271" LastEditorUserId="6271" LastEditDate="2012-02-28T08:14:41.670" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T08:14:41.670" Title="Is it possible to hatch dinosaurs from chicken eggs?" Tags="|genetics|paleontology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8225" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8226" CreationDate="2012-02-27T13:50:14.053" Score="26" ViewCount="41639" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a common belief that cacti absorb radiation; consequently, a lot of people put potted cacti by their computer as a safety means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do cacti actually absorb radiation? Even if so, will a small cactus (or several of them) by one's computer make any difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sources to prove this is a popular belief: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_4995339_prevent-computer-radiation.html&quot;&gt;http://www.ehow.com/how_4995339_prevent-computer-radiation.html&lt;/a&gt; See item 7&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://healthmad.com/health/nine-effective-tips-to-prevent-computer-radiation/&quot;&gt;http://healthmad.com/health/nine-effective-tips-to-prevent-computer-radiation/&lt;/a&gt; See item 1&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080326182833AAlgyR7&quot;&gt;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080326182833AAlgyR7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-10T19:13:58.257" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T18:40:13.510" Title="Do cacti absorb harmful radiation emitted by computers?" Tags="|biology|environmental-health|radiation|plants|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8225" CreationDate="2012-02-27T15:27:37.937" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 'cactus absorb radiation' meme is very widespread, but seems very short on detailed analysis. So let's start with some basic facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;None of the articles are explicit about what radiation they are talking about. However the only significant radiation emitted by computer monitors is electromagnetic radiation, which is all around us all the time, and in general one of the least harmful kinds. &lt;a href=&quot;http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q3750.html&quot;&gt;Studies have shown again and again that radiation emitted from monitors is not a health problem&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jlab.org/div_dept/train/rad_guide/fund.html&quot;&gt;Almost everything blocks electromagnetic radiation to some extent&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_water&quot;&gt;Water and living tissue are good at it&lt;/a&gt;. Cacti do, but so do other plants; metal; plastic; clothes and water. Some of these are much better absorbers than plant tissue. There appears to be no evidence that cacti are better than other plants, for a given plant size. However thicker barriers absorb more than thinner; so cacti, being unusually thick plants, are probably slightly better than other plants (but worse than many other things). However even if this is true it is irrelevant because...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ndt-ed.org/EducationResources/CommunityCollege/RadiationSafety/theory/nature.htm&quot;&gt;Electromagnetic radiation travels only in straight lines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. So any kind of radiation shield works only if it is sitting between you and the source of radiation. So even if it were good at absorbing radiation, &lt;strong&gt;for a cactus to be effective as a radiation shield it has to be large enough to fill the space between you and the monitor&lt;/strong&gt;, an approach which would obviously make the monitor unusable. Having a small cactus sitting beside the monitor will do nothing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: &lt;strong&gt;this is a complete fabrication, supported by a few misleading half-truths.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only way a cactus will shield you from radiation is if you have a giant one between you and your monitor. Even then its effectiveness is doubtful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2015-06-20T19:15:55.587" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T19:15:55.587" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7084" CreationDate="2012-02-27T16:50:16.483" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The big question is what exactly the manufacturers mean by &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_Time_Between_Failures&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MTBF&lt;/a&gt;, and if the MTBF really matters for SSDs. As far as I understand it, the lifetime of an SSD depends &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; on how you use it, namely how many writes you perform. Each flash cell will survive only a limited number of erase cycles (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_leveling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a few thousand&lt;/a&gt;). So in a desktop computer you probably won't run into trouble, but if you use the SSD in a server, it'll fail a lot earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heise.de/ct/inhalt/2012/03/66/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a test in the German computer magazine c't&lt;/a&gt; that you can buy for 1,50&amp;euro;. I read it a few weeks ago, and the main thing I remember is that they didn't manage to produce &lt;em&gt;failures&lt;/em&gt;, but to reduce the speed of some of the SSDs &lt;em&gt;substantially&lt;/em&gt;. (The method was to continually write random data and to fill the SSD to the limit in order to avoid clever wear leveling algorithms.) Much more extended tests can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?271063-SSD-Write-Endurance-25nm-Vs-34nm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;xtremesystems.org&lt;/a&gt;; there they actually managed to produce failures, but I didn't read the details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4573" LastEditorUserId="4573" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T13:02:27.480" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T13:02:27.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8197" CreationDate="2012-02-27T17:59:21.093" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They made it up. Moreover, a single limit for all doesn't make sense given what we know about alcohol metabolism.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Richard Smith, a former editor of the BMJ, was on the panel that set the UK advisory limits for alcohol consumption in 1987 and he was reported to have said the limits were made up. One currently accessible (I think the original was in the Times, currently paywalled) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metro.co.uk/news/71872-government-guessed-alcohol-limits&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; tells the story like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Richard Smith, a member of the Royal College of Physicians working party that produced the recommendations, told the paper the limits were prompted by &quot;a feeling that you had to say something&quot;.&#xA;  He said: &quot;Those limits were really plucked out of the air. They were not based on any firm evidence at all. It was a sort of intelligent guess by a committee.&quot;&#xA;  The committee's epidemiologist had confessed that &quot;it's impossible to say what's safe and what isn't&quot; because &quot;we don't really have any data whatsoever&quot;, Mr Smith said.&#xA;  The former editor of the British Medical Journal said members of the working party felt obliged to produce the guidelines because of concerns over growing evidence of the chronic damage caused by heavy, long-term drinking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read more: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metro.co.uk/news/71872-government-guessed-alcohol-limits#ixzz1nbWGAoMV&quot;&gt;http://www.metro.co.uk/news/71872-government-guessed-alcohol-limits#ixzz1nbWGAoMV&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, there are good reasons to doubt the wisdom of any simplistic, population-wide advice. Anecdotally the human response to alcohol varies widely. Some people get ill, some get violent, some get mellow, some seem to drink with impunity from harm. And, at least for many western populations, we know that some alcohol is good for you so recommending abstinence isn't good advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The human ability to metabolise alcohol depends on alcohol and aldehyde dehydrogenase enzymes which vary a lot across populations (one theory being that agriculture and the ability to make alcohol, alongside large cities where the water supply is bacteriologically suspect generates selective pressure to cope with alcohol as booze+dirty water = clean water) and within populations. Some academic reviews of this heterogeneity are &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=/PNS/PNS63_01/S0029665104000072a.pdf&amp;amp;code=2d6e3b44d30f45c0533e435a6523a1b7&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0741832985900990&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Richard Smith sums it all up in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2011/11/14/richard-smith-battling-over-safe-alcohol-limits/&quot;&gt;recent BMJ blog&lt;/a&gt; reporting a debate on the topic he had recently participated in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I agreed that it’s difficult to set safe limits. I remember the debate at the working party nearly 30 years ago when the epidemiologist said it was impossible to set limits because the evidence was poor. Then there are the problems that the possible consequences of alcohol are hugely varied, including both social and medical problems, people are all different in size, body composition, and responses to alcohol, and the amount of alcohol even within the same category of drinks (beer, wine, or spirits) varies considerably. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best advice might be to find your personal tolerance and not consume beyond it, but governments sometimes don't like to trust individuals with responsibility like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-02-27T23:19:45.333" LastActivityDate="2012-02-27T23:19:45.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8230" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8240" CreationDate="2012-02-27T19:15:46.357" Score="9" ViewCount="17112" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend uses moisturizing lotions/creams daily. No fancy purported anti-aging creams, just run-of-the-mill, relatively low-cost moisturizer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She has the impression that regular use of moisturizer is supposed to have positive effects on how your skin will age, and also that the earlier you start to use it regularly, the better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't dispute the short-term effects of less dry skin while you use it, but I'm automatically skeptical at the claims of positive long-term effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To play the devil's advocate, I could see that keeping your skin in constant short-term good shape would mean fewer opportunities for lasting damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I googled and could not find clear support or refutation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6273" LastActivityDate="2018-11-27T13:43:51.627" Title="Does using moisturizer regularly have long-term positive effects? And is it better to start sooner?" Tags="|dermatology|cosmetics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8233" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9112" CreationDate="2012-02-28T04:41:03.857" Score="12" ViewCount="4897" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://au.askmen.com/sports/health_500/575_wow-and-your-brain.html?utm_campaign=Argyle%2BSocial-2012-02&amp;amp;utm_medium=Argyle%2BSocial&amp;amp;utm_source=facebook&amp;amp;utm_term=2012-02-27-23-00-00#ixzz1neKDHRGA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; claims a study shows that the cognitive abilities of 60-77 year olds can be helped by playing two weeks of World of Warcraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://kotaku.com/5457590/us-navy-video-games-improve-brains-fluid-intelligence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; quotes a navy researcher as saying adults generally can get similar benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We have discovered that video game players perform 10 to 20 percent higher in terms of perceptual and cognitive ability than normal people that are non-game players,&amp;quot; s&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We know that video games can increase perceptual abilities and short-term memory,&amp;quot; he said. They allow the player to focus longer and expand the player's field of vision compared to people who don't play video games, he added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this article claims &lt;a href=&quot;http://kotaku.com/5457590/us-navy-video-games-improve-brains-fluid-intelligence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;similar results for children&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Psychologists have discovered that the specially designed games act like a workout for the mind and after just eight weeks can lead to dramatic increases in IQ and test results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists studied 600 children who played an online game called Junglememory&#xA;Children in the study have seen dramatic improvements in their ability to solve mathematical and verbal problems and have seen IQ scores jump by 10 after the course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will video games improve children's IQ (or other measurements of intelligence)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T16:42:40.037" Title="Does playing popular video games improve a child's IQ?" Tags="|intelligence|parenting|videogames|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8234" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-28T05:26:19.543" Score="8" ViewCount="913" Body="&lt;p&gt;The latest fad weight loss pill is 7-Keto DHEA. It's been featured and recommended on the show &quot;Dr. Oz&quot;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/best-belly-blasting-supplements&quot;&gt;their website claims&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;7-Keto works to counter this [dropping DHEA levels] by stimulating the thyroid to permanently raise your metabolism’s set point, or your resting metabolic rate, which is based on your body’s amount of fat and muscle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence supporting the claim that 7-Keto DHEA can permanently raise the metabolic rate in humans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-04T02:32:50.037" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T02:32:50.037" Title="Can 7-Keto DHEA permanently increase the resting metabolic rate in humans?" Tags="|medical-science|medications|mehmet-oz|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8235" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8252" CreationDate="2012-02-28T05:47:59.573" Score="15" ViewCount="864" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the movie &lt;em&gt;28 Days Later&lt;/em&gt; (and, to a lesser extent, the graphic novels/TV series &lt;em&gt;The Walking Dead&lt;/em&gt;), there is a character who, because of some unfortunate circumstance, found himself in a coma. When he woke, he found that the world was quite different and had no knowledge of the events which happened in the preceding four weeks. To me, this implies that the hero was in the coma for at least three weeks. When he woke, he was clearly well enough to outrun some of the infected for at least a little while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that even possible? Can a coma patient survive several days unattended?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5105" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:28:20.400" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:28:20.400" Title="Can a coma patient survive several days unattended?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8237" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-28T07:00:20.253" Score="5" ViewCount="280" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the book &lt;em&gt;Robinson Crusoe&lt;/em&gt; (and to a lesser extent the movie &lt;em&gt;Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves&lt;/em&gt;), there is a character who, when his life is saved by the protagonist, swears allegiance (and, basically, servitude) until death or the favor is returned. It is implied that this is something which is a part of the culture of the person who's life is saved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I am aware that such things are possible, they most certainly were not a part of Native American culture, but I was curious if any such culture exists or existed past?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5105" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T10:37:06.560" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T10:37:06.560" Title="Are there cultures who swear oaths of servitude for saving of a life?" Tags="|sociology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8230" CreationDate="2012-02-28T11:05:11.497" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the article by (Lodén, 2005) suggested by @Wayfaring Stranger, the answer seems to be &lt;strong&gt;Partly&lt;/strong&gt;, but not too conclusive (emphasis mine everywhere):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moisturizers are recommended for use in normal skin to&#xA;  prevent the appearance of dryness.131,132 Despite their widespread&#xA;  use, only a few studies have focused on their influence on&#xA;  the permeability barrier. Treatment with moisturizers may well&#xA;  influence the barrier properties of normal skin. &lt;strong&gt;Treatments usually increase skin hydration, but no increase in TEWL [trans-epidermal water loss] tends&#xA;  to follow&lt;/strong&gt;. However, &lt;strong&gt;changes in skin reactivity have been&#xA;  noted&lt;/strong&gt;. A lipid-rich cream without any humectant had no&#xA;  influence on TEWL, but skin susceptibility to SLS [sodium lauryl sulphate] irritation was&#xA;  increased compared to untreated skin. Increased skin&#xA;  reactivity was also found in a long-term study using benzyl&#xA;  nicotinate as a marker for permeability, where the time to&#xA;  maximum response was shorter for the cream-treated area&#xA;  compared to the untreated. In addition, the time to induce&#xA;  vasodilatation was shorter for the lipid-rich cream than for&#xA;  a moisturizer containing 5% urea. Increased sensitivity to&#xA;  nickel was also found when nickel-sensitive humans treated&#xA;  their skin with moisturizers without humectant, compared to&#xA;  treatment with moisturizer with humectant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, areas treated with the glycerol-containing&#xA;  cream showed less reactivity to nickel than those treated with a&#xA;  cream without any humectant. Furthermore, repeated applications&#xA;  of urea-containing moisturizers have been found to&#xA;  reduce TEWL and make skin less susceptible to SLS-induced&#xA;  irritation. An increased resistance to SLS-induced&#xA;  irritation and xerosis has also been found after treatment with&#xA;  AHA. [...] Moreover, another humectant,&#xA;  dexpanthenol, has been reported to decrease TEWL after 7 days&#xA;  treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, long-term side effects range from non-existent to altered sensitivity to certain chemical compounds, which is not necessarily a negative effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for adverse effects, the author has this to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compared to traditional drugs used by dermatologists,&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;moisturizers are rarely associated with health hazards&lt;/strong&gt;, although&#xA;  they may be used on large body areas over a large part of the&#xA;  human life span [...] &lt;strong&gt;However, intoxication has occurred&lt;/strong&gt;. For example, topical&#xA;  treatment with salicylic acid in children with lamellar ichthyosis&#xA;  and treatment with high concentrations of propylene glycol in&#xA;  burn patients have resulted in poisoning. Moreover, &lt;strong&gt;some&#xA;  products&lt;/strong&gt;, particularly Chinese herbal creams have been shown&#xA;  repeatedly to be adulterated with corticosteroids, which &lt;strong&gt;may&#xA;  cause serious side effects&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article concludes with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clear evidence exists that moisturizers are important in the treatment of different dry skin conditions. Furthermore, moisturizers prevent the appearance of dryness, and some formulations may also improve skin barrier function and make skin less prone to eczema. The key to future moisturizer therapy will be to tailor the treatment to the distinct abnormalities that manifest themselves with the generally recognized symptoms of dryness. Ranking the efficacy will be facilitated by an increased knowledge of their interaction with the skin. So far, the links between the abnormality and the composition of the moisturizer remain largely unexplored. &lt;strong&gt;Therefore, it may be a matter of trial and error to find the most suitable formulation for an individual.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All said, the article claims that the long-term effects are largely dependent on the actual skin condition and the chemical content of the applied product. Short-term effects are evident and undeniable. Prolonged use is not commonly associated with adverse effects. Consultations with specialist dermatologists are recommended to determine which products have the most beneficial effect on the patients, as well as dosage and application. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source&lt;/strong&gt; (and references therein):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lodén, M. (2005) &lt;em&gt;The clinical benefit of moisturizers&lt;/em&gt;, Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, &lt;strong&gt;19-6&lt;/strong&gt;, p. 672–-688. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-3083.2005.01326.x&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6278" LastActivityDate="2012-02-28T11:05:11.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8242" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-28T21:23:47.510" Score="28" ViewCount="2248" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this is true I have been doing it wrong the whole time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17177251&quot;&gt;BBC Article&lt;/a&gt;, a genetic trait in some people can allow them to do &quot;high intensity training&quot; (basically: stressing your body to the limit on an exercise, in this example, cycling) for mere minutes a week, and gain many of the benefits of hours of traditional cardio. The idea is doing 20 seconds of &quot;to the limit&quot; cycling, then after a short recovery, another burst, another recovery, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exact headline is that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few relatively short bursts of intense exercise, amounting to only a few minutes a week, can deliver many of the health and fitness benefits of hours of conventional exercise, according to new research, says Dr Michael Mosley. But how much benefit you get from either may well depend on your genes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you are one of the lucky ones, this seems too good to be true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4054" LastActivityDate="2012-07-29T13:48:56.637" Title="Can 3 minutes of &quot;high intensity training&quot; per week have just as much of a positive health effect as several hours of traditional fitness?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8243" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-28T15:44:11.377" Score="4" ViewCount="438" Body="&lt;p&gt;W3C &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.w3.org/standards/xml/core&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claims that&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;XML is one of the most widely-used formats for sharing structured information today&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know if there is any corroborating evidence (studies, reviews, etc.) for this statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6283" OwnerDisplayName="thad" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-02-28T23:44:50.717" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T00:03:40.473" Title="Is XML one of the most widely-used formats for sharing structured information?" Tags="|programming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8243" CreationDate="2012-02-29T00:03:40.473" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RSS, Atom, SOAP, and XHTML are all XML. XML-based formats have become&#xA;  the default for many office-productivity tools, including Microsoft&#xA;  Office (Office Open XML), OpenOffice.org (OpenDocument), and Apple's&#xA;  iWork. XML has also been employed as the base language for&#xA;  communication protocols, such as XMPP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;XBRL is now the global standard for exchanging business information - used for tax filing, regulators, stock exchanges etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DocBook, ePUB, GraphML and MathML, OpenDocument, SAML and many others are all XML formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer the &quot;is it one of the most widely used formats&quot; - absolutely. From the evidence I have available it appears to be &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; most widely used, but I don't have enough information to categorically state that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T00:03:40.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8245" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8246" CreationDate="2012-02-29T04:36:55.733" Score="21" ViewCount="5224" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nycclash.com/triplerisk.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does smoking cigarettes cause lung cancer?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine related today, as shocked as I was to hear it, that he heard that every single study that had ever been conducted on second hand smoke effects was flawed. While I was fairly shocked to hear this (if cigarette smoke causes cancer, why would &lt;em&gt;second hand&lt;/em&gt; cigarette smoke not cause cancer?), apparently there's others who think this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example the site: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nycclash.com/triplerisk.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Second hand smoke studies: the hype and deceit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Secondhand smoke kills, according to a new study!,&amp;quot; is frantically shouted from the bold type headlines of newspapers and magazine articles. Mostly it is uneducated and/or issue biased newspaper reporters who add the hype to the already deceitful study. Either they don't bother to read the study for themselves (or they do and don't understand the scientific implications), relying on misleading statements from the researchers themselves, or they are far more interested in the fear mongering factor that makes for good reading and do not bother to check with anyone how accurate or reliable a study is. Not to mention it is more politically correct to nod their head yes and insert their own views and conclusions based on the scary sounding research title and bits of information that they have heard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it is a reporter with no concept of what it is they are actually reporting, simply relaying the study du jour, or a health organization or researcher submitting a report, none of what they say can be taken at face value.  News reports are manipulated and then hyped, as are practically all of the studies on secondhand smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site appears to go through about 10 various studies on second hand smoke, proceeding to illustrate why they don't show what they intend to show: that second hand smoke, does, indeed, cause cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For once and for all: Is there current good, non-flawed evidence from studies showing that second-hand smoke does cause cancer?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T20:12:00.263" Title="Does second hand smoke cause cancer?" Tags="|cancer|smoking|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8245" CreationDate="2012-02-29T05:17:36.170" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;When there is doubt about individual studies, the place to go is a meta-study - one that looks at many different experiments, evaluates the quality according to a strict methodology, and pools the results to get stronger statistical findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one from 2007:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17690135&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Meta-analysis of studies of passive smoking and lung cancer: effects of study type and continent.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Taylor R, Najafi F, Dobson A. Int J Epidemiol. 2007 Oct;36(5):1048-59. Epub 2007 Aug 9.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It extracted 55 high quality studies from a pool of 101 that looked at never-smoking women with smoking spouses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found an increased risk of lung cancer, across each continent, with no evidence of publication bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abundance of evidence, consistency of finding across continent and study type, dose-response relationship and biological plausibility, &lt;strong&gt;overwhelmingly support the existence of a causal relationship between passive smoking and lung cancer&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But wait, that's only in the &lt;em&gt;home&lt;/em&gt;. Why would we ban tobacco in the work-place? Oh, because there is another meta-analysis that shows the effect can be even stronger there!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stayner L, Bena J, Sasco AJ, Smith R, Steenland K, Kreuzer M, Straif K. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17267733&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lung cancer risk and workplace exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.&lt;/a&gt; Am J Public Health. 2007 Mar;97(3):545-51. Epub 2007 Jan 31.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They looked at 22 studies from around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A strong relationship was observed between lung cancer and duration of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The findings from this investigation provide the strongest evidence to date that &lt;strong&gt;exposure to environmental tobacco smoke in the workplace is associated with an increased risk of lung cancer.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extra Reading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/healthyliving/smokingandtobacco/passivesmoking/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cancer Research UK&lt;/a&gt; give an easier-to-read explanation of the science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imbi.uni-freiburg.de/OJS/cca/index.php?journal=cca&amp;amp;page=article&amp;amp;op=view&amp;amp;path%5B%5D=9454&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; reflects the claims of bias straight back. It shows  that the bias, in this &lt;em&gt;not-really-but-presented-as&lt;/em&gt; controversy, comes from the tobacco companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T05:27:48.543" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8200" CreationDate="2012-02-29T07:49:55.040" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR;&lt;/strong&gt; There are studies that do show at least some correlation between lunar cycles and germination and plant life cycles.  However, the correlation is rather complex, and apparently species-dependent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick google search for this finds many references to university studies on the topic, allegedly done by Wichita State University and Tulane University.  The oft-quoted paragraph reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other experiments have been conducted at Wichita State University and at Tulane University. All have achieved the same results. Experimentation indicates that seeds sown just before or around the full moon have a higher rate and speed of germination than those sown at the new moon because seeds are able to absorb more water at the full moon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have yet to find any specific reference to the Wichita State study, however the Tulane study is easier to come by, although I have yet to find an online copy. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldcat.org/title/lunar-correlated-variations-in-water-uptake-and-germination-in-3-species-of-seeds/oclc/002865834&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few other referenced (but unconfirmed) claims include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Metabolism, water absorption, fertility and germination all are reported to respond to this synodic cycle (Graviou, E.. 'Analogies between Rhythm, in Plant Material in Atmospheric Pressure and Solar-Lunar Periodicities'. International   Journal of Biometeorology, 1978. Vol. 22, No.2.). North-western University in Illinois demonstrated 35% higher water absorption in beans just before full Moon compared to new Moon. (Brown, F., &amp;amp; Chow, C., 'Lunar-correlated Variations in water uptake by Bean seeds', Biological Bulletin, Oct., 1973, 145, 265-278. ) Confirmation of this was attested by Dr Jane Panzer of Tulane University. (Panzer. J. J., 'Lunar Correlated Variations in Water Uptake and Germination in 3 Species of Seeds', PhD. U. of Tulane. 1976) Interestingly these remained in a diminished form if the pinto beans were sterilised, and further diminished by pasteurisation. Germination also showed this monthly rhythm in her studies (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.considera.org/help/helpsynodic.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have thus far found only one original study on this topic, entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bioculturaldiversity.net/Downloads/Papers%20participants/Zuercher.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chronobiology of trees: Synthesis of traditional phytopractices and scientific research as tools of future forestry&lt;/a&gt;, and it details experiments with germination of seeds at various times of the lunar calendar.  The study was conducted in 1990 and 1991 (with a brief preliminary study in 1989). A few relevant excerpts (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The speed of germination or beginning of emergence already shows a significant&#xA;  difference between the [full moon] and [new moon] sowings for all the sowings&lt;/strong&gt; and especially for those corresponding to the dry season, which took place in the middle of the trial. In mean values for the whole trial, the FM seeds germinated after 47.5 days, 19 per cent faster than the NM seeds, which appeared after 58.5 days. Experiments on the radish (Raphanus sativus) by Fritz (1994) show the same tendency: faster germination for&#xA;  sowings shortly before FM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These studies seem to agree with the hypothesis that &lt;strong&gt;the cytokinine content of&#xA;  plants is linked to the synodic lunar rhythm, with a maximum at full moon&lt;/strong&gt; (this had&#xA;  been shown by Hofman, Featonby-Smith and Van Staden on algae in 1986 – cited in&#xA;  Fritz, 1994). Cytokinine also plays a role in the model proposed by Rossignol et al&#xA;  (1990) to explain the variations in the relative frequency of three forms of DNA&#xA;  according to lunar phases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These differences in the speed of germination are probably &lt;strong&gt;also partly linked to&#xA;  cyclic variations in the absorption of water by seeds&lt;/strong&gt;, as shown by Brown and Chow&#xA;  (1973) working on a large scale: 7,931 series of 20 beans. One of the absorption&#xA;  maxima coincides with the FM or shortly before (see Figure 1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/X35Qp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Water absorption by bean seeds and lunar phases&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Water absorption by bean seeds (Phaseolus vulgaris) and lunar phases.&#xA;  Note: A, B and C are the three different periods in 1972 and 1973. 3-day mobile means.&#xA;  Source: Brown and Chow, 1973&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from the report's &lt;strong&gt;Conclusion and outlook&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These trials make clear, for the first time in trees or shrubs, the existence of &lt;strong&gt;a real&#xA;  phenomenon&lt;/strong&gt;, often mentioned in traditions or issuing from empirical experience,&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;consisting of a link between the lunar phases&lt;/strong&gt; (synodic rhythm) and &lt;strong&gt;behaviour at&#xA;  germination and during initial growth&lt;/strong&gt;. They demonstrate that &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;the phenomenon is not&#xA;  as simple as it might seem at the outset&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, going beyond the general ‘cause and effect’&#xA;  model and calling on predispositions or types of reaction specific to plants themselves.&#xA;  These trials in turn raise questions about the exact nature of this phenomenon and of&#xA;  the physiological processes involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-02-29T07:59:58.993" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T07:59:58.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8248" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10142" CreationDate="2012-02-29T08:18:08.160" Score="2" ViewCount="1823" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedrinkingwater.com/water-education/quality-water-mineral.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; about if we even get our minerals from water, it ends with a feeling that drinking mineral water is actually unhealthy for you because it contains &lt;code&gt;inorganic&lt;/code&gt; minerals that the body cannot process and can be deposited for quite some time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that water contains only inorganic minerals which can&#xA;  actually be detrimental to human health. Our bodies have a hard time&#xA;  processing inorganic minerals and what we cannot absorb may be stored&#xA;  in our tissues and organs and eventually become toxic to the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, it claims that things like arthritis (from calcium) and cancer (from radioactive or 'opposite spinning' electrons) can happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to show that inorganic materials in mineral water can be harmful to humans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6282" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-02-29T23:23:22.267" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T19:18:50.460" Title="Are inorganic materials in mineral water harmful?" Tags="|nutrition|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8249" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8255" CreationDate="2012-02-29T09:31:19.130" Score="8" ViewCount="3591" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been a number of attempts to replicate Jacques Benveniste's results relating to the &amp;quot;water memory&amp;quot;. Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Benveniste#Attempts_to_replicate_Benveniste.27s_results&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;lists many of them&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of those attempts is the &amp;quot;Belfast study&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;P. Belon, J. Cumps, M. Ennis, P. F. Mannaioni, M. Roberfroid, J. Sainte-Laudy, F. A. C. Wiegant, &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s00011-003-1242-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Histamine dilutions modulate basophil activation&lt;/a&gt;, Inflammation Research,&#xA;April 2004, Volume 53, Issue 5, pp 181-188&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to indicate that there is, indeed, something going on even with high dilutions (10&lt;sup&gt;–30&lt;/sup&gt; – 10E&lt;sup&gt;–38&lt;/sup&gt; M):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 3 different types of experiment, it has been shown that high dilutions of histamine may indeed exert an effect on basophil activity. This activity observed by staining basophils with alcian blue was confirmed by flow cytometry. Inhibition by histamine was reversed by anti-H2 and was not observed with histidine these results being in favour of the specificity of this effect We are however unable to explain our findings and are reporting them to encourage others to investigate this phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2010, six years later, Ennis' point of view is still that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(...) there appears to be some evidence for an effect – albeit small in some cases – with the high dilutions (...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source:  Ennis, Madeleine, &amp;quot;Basophil models of homeopathy: a sceptical view&amp;quot;. Homeopathy (Elsevier Ltd) 99 (1): 51–56. doi:10.1016/j.homp.2009.11.005. PMID 20129176, via &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Benveniste&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm specifically referring to the Belfast study and Madeleine Ennis, because she describes herself as a skeptic and I rarely see that study mentioned on skeptic's websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, doesn't that mean we might have missed something - that water memory might exist (maybe only under some circumstances) and, thus, that homeopathy might really work (again, under some specific circumstances)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6067" LastEditorUserId="38403" LastEditDate="2022-03-24T18:11:48.873" LastActivityDate="2022-03-24T18:11:48.873" Title="Does the &quot;Belfast&quot; study by Madeleine Ennis prove that water memory exists and homeopathy might work?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|homeopathy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8567" CreationDate="2012-02-29T10:05:47.837" Score="18" ViewCount="4847" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone recently told me that windows act as a kind of &quot;magnifying glass&quot;. That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Here's an example of someone with that belief (in the comments):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.themedicalquestions.com/ge/111AY302010.html&quot;&gt;Can a baby get sunburned while laying in the sun through a window&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another example (about car windows):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111128205925AA1H369&quot;&gt;Do glass car windows increase the strength of uv rays?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it seems to me that regular (flat) windows shouldn't behave this way. So that leaves us with regular UVA/UVB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet#Natural_sources_of_UV&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Ordinary glass is partially transparent to UVA but is opaque to shorter wavelengths, whereas silica or quartz glass, depending on quality, can be transparent eVen to vacuum UV wavelengths. Ordinary window glass passes about 90% of the light above 350 nm, but blocks over 90% of the light below 300 nm.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, UVB are more dangerous than UVA, but what if you have a very sensitive skin and stay several hours behind a glass window? Can you still get a sunburn?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6067" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T03:30:37.857" LastActivityDate="2015-10-07T06:55:15.347" Title="Is it possible to get a sunburn if you're behind a (glass) window?" Tags="|physics|environmental-health|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8245" CreationDate="2012-02-29T10:56:33.687" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the meta-analyses Oddthinking reported on, there’s also the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/news/speeches/06272006a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Surgeon General’s report&lt;/a&gt; from 2006:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;… the debate is over. The science is clear: &lt;strong&gt;secondhand smoke is … a serious health hazard that causes premature death and disease&lt;/strong&gt; in children and nonsmoking adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[…]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since [the 1986 Surgeon General’s Report] was published, hundreds of peer-reviewed studies and several additional major reports on the health effects of secondhand smoke have been published, and the evidence on these health effects has become even stronger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Secondhand smoke exposure causes heart disease and lung cancer in adults and sudden infant death syndrome and respiratory problems in children.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is NO risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure, with even brief exposure adversely affecting the cardiovascular and respiratory system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s worth pointing out that the report is uncharacteristically clear and drastic. No allowance is made for reasonable doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s also worth noting that the source cited in the question disqualifies itself with its name-calling, scientific ignorance (such as reference to “the mysterious SIDS” – there’s nothing at all mysterious about it) and by its routine use of Godwin’s law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T10:56:33.687" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8235" CreationDate="2012-02-29T10:57:35.010" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Survival of three weeks is definitely not possible. The longest time you can survive under ideal conditions without drinking (or being administered) any water is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.survivaltopics.com/survival/how-long-can-you-survive-without-water&quot;&gt;projected at 10 days&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that (depending on whether the depth of the coma interferes with your breathing regulation), a few days should be survivable. But I doubt you'd be in a good enough condition to outrun a zombie afterwards. Hard to find references on that, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T10:57:35.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8146" CreationDate="2012-02-29T12:58:25.350" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not directly, but often conditions surrounding corporations lead to this obligation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been searching for the answer to this question some time ago, and I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/answers/law-legal/corporate-law/corporate-law/LAW_COR_CRL/834796-1078684&quot;&gt;wonderful LinkedIn thread&lt;/a&gt; on the exactly the same issue. So while I'm no lawyer, let me try to explain my findings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation in the US is like this. First, there is a business judgement rule, which says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;directors of a corporation . . . are clothed with [the] presumption,&#xA;  which the law accords to them, of being [motivated] in their conduct&#xA;  by a bona fide regard for the interests of the corporation whose&#xA;  affairs the stockholders have committed to their charge&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This implies that directors must do the best for the corporation. Corporations, in turn, seek to maximize the value for the shareholders because if they don’t, the shareholders will exercise their right to replace management. In 99% of the cases, all what the shareholders want is profit (especially in listed companies, where most shareholders don't really say anything at all). So in the end, you get the legal obligation from directors to maximize profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if shareholders agreed that it's not only profit that matters, you get a different picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find further arguments in the thread linked above, yet most of it will be opinions without references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6285" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T12:58:25.350" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8249" CreationDate="2012-02-29T14:06:04.870" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence to suggest that water does have a memory, at least not anywhere near the length of time proponents of homeopathy claim that it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study by Ennis was interesting only because it was published in Nature. A main problem with both Ennis' and Benveniste's studies is that their starting premise is that water does have a memory. Not to mention the unfounded conclusions they draw from their observations. The results have so far been unable to be replicated.  It would seem likely that if water did have a memory such a thing would be easily testable and reproducible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BBC took a team of which James Randi was a member and tried to replicate the results reported by Ennis. They failed. Quoting from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/homeopathytrans.shtml&quot;&gt;transcript&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PROF. MARTIN BLAND (St. George's Hospital Medical School): There's&#xA;  absolutely no evidence at all to say that there is any difference&#xA;  between the solution that started off as pure water and the solution&#xA;  that started off with the histamine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;JOHN ENDERBY: What this has convinced me is that water does not have a&#xA;  memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NARRATOR: So Horizon hasn't won the million dollars. It's another&#xA;  triumph for James Randi. His reputation and his money are safe, but&#xA;  even he admits this may not be the final word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;JAMES RANDI: Further investigation needs to be done. This may sound a&#xA;  little strange coming from me, but if there is any possibility that&#xA;  there's a reality here I want to know about it, all of humanity wants&#xA;  to know about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NARRATOR: Homeopathy is back where it started without any credible&#xA;  scientific explanation. That won't stop millions of people putting&#xA;  their faith in it, but science is confident. Homeopathy is impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two isolated experiments in 24 years, both of which have been unable to have their results replicated is not compelling evidence. It is more likely that something interfered with the previous results, or that the data was fudged in both cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is safe to say that based on the evidence we have, water does not have a memory as claimed by homeopaths. Not to mention that whoever was able to conclusively show that water did have a memory would probably win a Nobel Prize, as it would violate our understanding of thermodynamics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-02-29T14:16:43.623" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T14:16:43.623" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7933" CreationDate="2012-02-29T16:45:04.383" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;You need to look no further than the (single) reference this blogger gives at the bottom of his post.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17127644&quot;&gt;His link&lt;/a&gt; is behind a pay-wall, but a google search leads you to a pre-print draft &lt;a href=&quot;http://ehs.sph.berkeley.edu/krsmith/?p=109&quot;&gt;posted by one of the reference's original authors&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article is a review of scores of other studies, and perhaps the original authors said it best (in the Conclusion):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...we conclude that although there is a large and growing body of&#xA;  evidence linking exposure to wood/biomass smoke itself with both acute&#xA;  and chronic illness, there is insufficient evidence at present to&#xA;  support regulating it separately from its individual components,&#xA;  especially fine particulate matter. In addition, there is insufficient&#xA;  evidence at present to conclude that woodsmoke particles are&#xA;  significantly less or more damaging to health than general ambient&#xA;  fine particles. &#xA;  Nevertheless, given the importance of woodsmoke as a&#xA;  contributor to particle concentrations in many locations, strategies&#xA;  to reduce woodsmoke emissions may be an effective means of lowering&#xA;  particle exposures. In addition, given the weight of toxicologic&#xA;  evidence, additional epidemiologic studies are needed to confirm our&#xA;  conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the above in mind, it would seem that the original blogger overstated his case a bit, in a provocative manner, when he said things like: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Wood smoke] is at least as bad for you as cigarette smoke, and probably much worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The case against burning wood is every bit as clear as the case&#xA;  against smoking  cigarettes. Indeed, it is even clearer, because when&#xA;  you light a fire, you needlessly poison the air that everyone around&#xA;  you for miles must breathe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be no surprise that breathing wood smoke is bad for you.  The question would seem to be &quot;how bad is it?&quot;, and while the blogger paints a picture of global disaster/catastrophe, the scientific research is far more tentative (right now, at least).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4722" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T16:45:04.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8259" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8262" CreationDate="2012-02-29T18:24:14.273" Score="23" ViewCount="8059" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/IQ/1950-2050/&quot;&gt;Global IQ: 1950–2050&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially the idea is that while smart people are getting wealthier, their birth-rate tends to drop. On the other hand poor countries, which are generally populated by less intelligent people, have constant birth rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So theoretically this would lead in drops of the global IQ, as the global population is rising. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2636" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-07T12:31:08.060" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T00:34:42.690" Title="Is global IQ dropping over time?" Tags="|intelligence|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8259" CreationDate="2012-02-29T20:14:02.367" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/flynneffect.shtml&quot;&gt;Flynn Effect&lt;/a&gt; observes that global IQ scores are actually &lt;em&gt;increasing&lt;/em&gt; over time at a pretty good clip. The true extent and cause of the effect are a matter of debate (but the effect is more pronounced at the low end of the spectrum, so the theory that increased nutrition  and healthcare are a &quot;rising tide that floats all boats&quot; is appealing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-02-29T20:14:02.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8259" CreationDate="2012-02-29T20:30:19.780" Score="38" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;N.B. IQ scores are standardized for a given population at a given&#xA;  time. The average IQ is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; 100, and its standard deviation is&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; 15. To compare between times or populations, we must use &amp;ldquo;raw&amp;nbsp;IQ,&amp;rdquo; by which I mean the raw scores of a few tests,&#xA;  especially:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raven&amp;#39;s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Raven's Matrices&lt;/a&gt;, a test of pattern recognition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Digit span, a test of short-term memory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/2758/5120&quot;&gt;It's been discussed&#xA;  before&lt;/a&gt; whether such&#xA;  tests measure intelligence, and whether intelligence even exists. But&#xA;  if intelligence does exist, and it increases generation-by-generation as children receive&#xA;  better care and nutrition, then Raven's and digit span are&#xA;  particularly good tests for showing that increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/flynneffect.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flynn effect&lt;/a&gt; is a very well-known phenomenon by which the raw IQ of a population &lt;em&gt;increases&lt;/em&gt; over time. It's&amp;nbsp;been &lt;a href=&quot;http://glcrsp.ucdavis.edu/publications/cnp/CNPBrief3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;specifically studied&lt;/a&gt; in rural Kenya, where the paper's authors found that – mainly due to smaller families, better nutrition, and an increased literacy rate among parents – the raw IQ of Kenyan children is increasing, at a rate comparable to that in industrialized nations. As the birth rate decreases and nutrition and literacy improve, that rate will increase. As it rises above the rate in industrialized nations, the &quot;IQ gap&quot; will disappear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site you link to ignores the Flynn effect entirely. It takes average raw IQ scores from a few dozen nations, estimates the rest based on &amp;ldquo;demographic mix,&amp;rdquo; and then assumes that each nation won't change in intelligence, even for 100 years (despite Flynn's studies having proved an increase). The site hand-waves this, saying that the Flynn effect is &amp;ldquo;undisputed yet enigmatic&amp;rdquo; and then arguing that it &lt;em&gt;doesn't exist&lt;/em&gt;, since:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It would imply that people in the past were far less intelligent than the current standard, yet &amp;ldquo;the literature and music of a century or more ago is clearly not the work of marginally retarded minds.&amp;rdquo;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most parents think their children are dumber than they are.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second isn't worth responding to. The first fundamentally misunderstands the Flynn effect. Let's compare the increase in intelligence to the (better documented) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Human_life_expectancy_patterns&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;rise in life expectancy&lt;/a&gt;. Life expectancy at birth remained at about 30 years for 50&amp;thinsp;000 years of human history, then skyrocketed at industrialization. The overall trend isn't &lt;em&gt;people have lived progressively longer throughout history,&lt;/em&gt; but rather &lt;em&gt;there has been a dramatic increase in life expectancy tied to industrialization.&lt;/em&gt; It's also worth noting that as the average life expectancy rose, &lt;em&gt;the distribution changed as well,&lt;/em&gt; since most of the change is due to lower infant mortality. Just as today, some people in medieval and ancient times lived to be 90. Similarly, the Flynn effect doesn't imply that &lt;em&gt;people have gotten more intelligent throughout history,&lt;/em&gt; nor that there weren't any geniuses in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, intelligence in industrializing nations is growing along with that of industrialized nations. As their HDI increases, the rate of intelligence growth will increase as well. So not only is the world getting &lt;em&gt;smarter,&lt;/em&gt; but also currently industrializing nations will produce the greatest future gains in aggregate intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5120" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T15:57:29.277" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8263" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-02-29T22:01:54.237" Score="10" ViewCount="1087" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0706.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vendomois et al, 2009&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;these data highlight signs of hepatorenal toxicity, possibly due to the new pesticides specific to each GM corn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monsanto, the manufacturer of two of the studied strains of GM corn, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Documents/SpirouxdeVendimois.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;responded&lt;/a&gt;, dismissing the article, particularly by criticizing the statistical methods used. Is Monsanto's criticism valid? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been additional studies done that either support or refute the claim that genetically-modified corn has toxic effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-24T08:47:55.043" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T08:47:55.043" Title="Is GM corn toxic?" Tags="|medical-science|gmo|pesticides|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-09-17T01:52:47.713" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5882" CreationDate="2012-03-01T05:39:47.587" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Media Matters link you provide actually speaks to the Agenda 21 document. The other links are notable in that they don't make any refutable claims about the Agenda 21 plan itself, they just take &quot;Agenda 21&quot; as a jumping-off point for their contentions that conspiracies exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/res_agenda21_07.shtml&quot;&gt;Agenda 21 document&lt;/a&gt; contains the word &quot;population&quot; 11 times, none of which relate to population control or reduction. Most uses of the word are in the context of, e.g., &quot;rural populations.&quot; The only time that the word is used in reference to magnitude is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;7.8 The objective is to achieve adequate shelter for rapidly growing populations and for the currently deprived urban and rural poor through an enabling approach to shelter development and improvement that is environmentally sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which does not support a reading of population control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://mediamatters.org/research/201106170032&quot;&gt;Media Matters link&lt;/a&gt; quotes Beck as saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BECK: Reading through the pages [of Agenda 21], it becomes clear &quot;sustainable development&quot; is just a really nice way of saying &quot;centralized control over all of human life on planet Earth.&quot; [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 6/15/11]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not true. The Agenda 21 document is rife with the phrase &quot;All countries should, as appropriate, ...&quot; a phrase that explicitly recognizes sovereign control. The word &quot;should&quot; is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative&quot;&gt;normative&lt;/a&gt; and supports the contention of Tariq Banuri, also quoted at the Media Matters site, that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Agenda 21 is not a binding treaty. It sets out a sort of common vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(A better criticism of the Agenda 21 document would be to claim that it is a non-binding collection of platitudes that achieves nothing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-12-26T14:00:03.250" LastActivityDate="2014-12-26T14:00:03.250" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="564" CreationDate="2012-03-01T05:44:16.240" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is strong evidence to indicate that in some (many?) cases, the cause can be developmental, i.e. a result of various effects while in the womb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Prenatal_hormones_and_sexual_orientation&amp;amp;oldid=415602319&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; to summarize the theory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hormonal theory of sexuality holds that, just as exposure to&#xA;certain hormones plays a role in fetal sex differentiation, such&#xA;exposure also influences the sexual orientation that emerges later in&#xA;the adult. Fetal hormones may be seen as the primary determiner of&#xA;adult sexual orientation, or a co-factor with genes and/or&#xA;environmental and social conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5120004.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC Article from 2006&lt;/a&gt; reports on a &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0511152103&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; published in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;These results support a prenatal origin to sexual orientation&#xA;development in men.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He suggests the effect is probably the result of a &amp;quot;maternal memory&amp;quot;&#xA;in the womb for male births.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A woman's body may see a male foetus as &amp;quot;foreign&amp;quot;, he says, prompting&#xA;an immune reaction which may grow progressively stronger with each&#xA;male child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The antibodies created may affect the developing male brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1159/000262525&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2010 paper&lt;/a&gt; by Dutch researchers seems to advocate that homosexuality is developmental rather than environmental or genetic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fetal brain develops during the intrauterine period in the male&#xA;direction through a direct action of testosterone on the developing&#xA;nerve cells, or in the female direction through the absence of this&#xA;hormone surge. In this way, our gender identity (the conviction of&#xA;belonging to the male or female gender) and sexual orientation are&#xA;programmed or organized into our brain structures when we are still in&#xA;the womb. However, since sexual differentiation of the genitals takes&#xA;place in the first two months of pregnancy and sexual differentiation&#xA;of the brain starts in the second half of pregnancy, these two&#xA;processes can be influenced independently, which may result in extreme&#xA;cases in trans-sexuality. This also means that in the event of&#xA;ambiguous sex at birth, the degree of masculinization of the genitals&#xA;may not reflect the degree of masculinization of the brain. There is&#xA;no indication that social environment after birth has an effect on&#xA;gender identity or sexual orientation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't access the full text of the paper so I don't know from what basis they draw their conclusions. However the paper is cited by a few reputable sources and was peer reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence of a very strong correlation between finger lengths and sexual orientations. To quote from a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/sex/articles/results/fingerratio.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC article&lt;/a&gt; paraphrasing a &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-007-9171-6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2007 study&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can be pretty sure from a large number of human and animal studies&#xA;that digit ratios are affected by prenatal testosterone exposure. So&#xA;this result suggests a link between the hormones a baby is exposed to&#xA;in the womb and their sexual orientation in adulthood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While we don't know the full range of factors that can cause or contribute to determining a persons sexual orientation, there is certainly good evidence to indicate that prenatal development and foetal hormones play a key part in many or perhaps even most cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is homosexuality (meaning an instructive same-sex sexual attraction) always or generally innate? We don't know. Can homosexuality be innate? Almost definitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other related studies and areas of research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.131.1.82&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1974 study&lt;/a&gt; which has been widely cited since found that homosexual men tend to have higher levels of testosterone than heterosexual men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Homosexuality in males is often linked to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraternal_birth_order_and_male_sexual_orientation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fraternal birth order&lt;/a&gt;, with the theory supposing that there is a maternal memory of sorts which builds up an immunity to a male foetus and the response can lead to homosexuality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_hormones_and_sexual_orientation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page on Prenatal hormones&lt;/a&gt; and sexual orientation has a good summary (although poorly formatted) with links to many relevant studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-28T13:31:19.283" LastActivityDate="2022-09-28T13:31:19.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8100" CreationDate="2012-03-01T07:08:10.533" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There does not seem to be any evidence that the Hoff is more popular in Germany than other countries. While living in Berlin for a few years I certainly never saw any exposure to him than what might be considered average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea may have come from the fact that he was popular at the tail-end of the 80's more so than other countries and had hit , Looking for Freedom, that was at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.musicline.de/de/chartverfolgung_summary/artist/Hasselhoff,David/single&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;number 1 for about six months&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could also be that he performed this song during celebrations for the wall coming down, when his popularity had already peaked in most western countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not to mention Germans being enthusiastic fans of Hasselhoff is a good example of a self-propagating meme, which was no doubt helped along by Norm McDonald incorporating the trope into his skits on SNL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's interesting to observe that doing a Google date range search for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.ca/search?q=hasselhoff%20germans&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;rlz=1C1CHMO_en-gbCA472CA472&amp;amp;biw=1098&amp;amp;bih=902&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=bSBPT6-dDubW0QGl86S6DQ&amp;amp;ved=0CAwQpwUoBg&amp;amp;source=lnt&amp;amp;tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1980-01-01,cd_max:1993-01-01&amp;amp;tbm=#q=hasselhoff%20germans%20love&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;rlz=1C1CHMO_en-gbCA472CA472&amp;amp;prmd=imvns&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=uSBPT7-sDcXv0gHHlIXxDQ&amp;amp;ved=0CBIQpwUoBg&amp;amp;source=lnt&amp;amp;tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1980-1-1,cd_max:1993-1-1&amp;amp;tbm=&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&amp;amp;fp=788d61eb2c767316&amp;amp;biw=1098&amp;amp;bih=902&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;hasselhoff germans love&quot;&lt;/a&gt; and similar phrases for 1980-01-01 to 1993-01-01 returns nothing, while a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.ca/search?q=hasselhoff%20germans&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;rlz=1C1CHMO_en-gbCA472CA472&amp;amp;biw=1098&amp;amp;bih=902&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=bSBPT6-dDubW0QGl86S6DQ&amp;amp;ved=0CAwQpwUoBg&amp;amp;source=lnt&amp;amp;tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1980-01-01,cd_max:1993-01-01&amp;amp;tbm=#q=hasselhoff%20germans%20love&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;rlz=1C1CHMO_en-gbCA472CA472&amp;amp;prmd=imvns&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=ziBPT-_RB-T50gGAs7TdDQ&amp;amp;ved=0CBIQpwUoBg&amp;amp;source=lnt&amp;amp;tbs=cdr:1,cd_min:1993-1-1,cd_max:2000-1-1&amp;amp;tbm=&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&amp;amp;fp=788d61eb2c767316&amp;amp;biw=1098&amp;amp;bih=902&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;similar search&lt;/a&gt; for 1993-01-01 to 2000-01-01 returns many results. This is of note because Norm McDonald started at SNL in 1993, with &quot;Germans love David Hasselhoff&quot; being incorporated into his skits since at least 1994.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hasselhoff#Studioalben&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This chart&lt;/a&gt; on the German Wikipedia shows the chart positions for Hasselhoff's different albulms. Chart positions in Germany generally trail behind Austria and seem to average out to be similar to Switzerland. Chart positions are not the only indicator of an artists popularity ion a country, but they help in giving an indication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't look like any study has been done on this topic. Given the evidence we do have, there is nothing to indicate The Hoff is more popular in Germany than other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T07:17:49.803" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T07:17:49.803" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7084" CreationDate="2012-03-01T08:19:00.133" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jeff's findings are anecdotal and by no means a good representation. If SSDs did have a ~90% failure rate as Jeff's numbers would indicate, then various trade commisions would have stepped in by now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some informal studies indicate that SSDs have a lower failure rate than traditional hard-drives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.behardware.com/articles/831-7/components-returns-rates.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;investigation&lt;/a&gt; by website BeHardware found the following figures for return (not failure) rates for SSDs by manufacturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Intel 0.3% (against 0.6%)&#xA;  - Kingston 1.2% (against 2.4%)&#xA;  - Crucial 1.9% (against 2.2%)&#xA;  - Corsair 2.7% (against 2.2%)&#xA;  - OCZ 3.5% (against 2.9%)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/it-management/intel-it/intel-it-validating-reliability-of-intel-solid-state-drives-brief.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; by Intel put the failure rate of solid state drives at 0.61% with traditional hard-drives being at 4.85%. Intel is a biased source but their methodology seems quite sound and transparent here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tom's Hardware, a reputable source reporting on computer hardware did an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;investigation&lt;/a&gt; in which they basically say that more data is needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They did have this nice chart however:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7Js8u.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;-&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tomshardware.com/gallery/ssdfailurerates_1024,0101-302141-0-2-3-1-png-.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from their conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Giving credit where it is due, many of the IT managers we interviewed&#xA;  reiterated that Intel's SLC-based SSDs are the shining standard by&#xA;  which others are measured. But according to Dr. Hughes, there's&#xA;  nothing to suggest that its products are significantly more reliable&#xA;  than the best hard drive solutions. We don’t have failure rates beyond&#xA;  two years of use for SSDs, so it’s possible that this story will&#xA;  change. Should you be deterred from adopting a solid-state solution?&#xA;  So long as you protect your data through regular backups, which is&#xA;  imperative regardless of your preferred storage technology, then we&#xA;  don't see any reason to shy away from SSDs. To the contrary, we're&#xA;  running them in all of our test beds and most of our personal&#xA;  workstations. Rather, our purpose here is to call into question the&#xA;  idea that SSDs are definitely more reliable than hard drives, based on&#xA;  today's limited backup for such a claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim being investigated is that SSDs are more reliable than HDDs. The claim that SSDs have an over 90% failure rate as per your question seems limited to anecdotes and should not be taken seriously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence that would indicate that failure rates are as extreme as the ones claimed in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T08:19:00.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8272" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8275" CreationDate="2012-03-01T17:50:54.113" Score="22" ViewCount="3708" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/TjqJ6GlfHVc&quot;&gt;this interview with RT News&lt;/a&gt;, Sean Stone -- the son of Oliver Stone and outspoken critic of US anti-Iran sentiment -- claims that President Barack Obama has &quot;assassinated American citizens&quot; (~4:20 mark). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true? Is there any proof that President Obama has taken actions to authorize targeted killing of US citizens?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T19:13:21.970" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T05:36:20.577" Title="Has Obama or any other US President authorized the assassination of US citizens?" Tags="|united-states|politics|war|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8273" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-01T18:12:52.907" Score="18" ViewCount="2775" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergamy&quot;&gt;Hypergamy&lt;/a&gt; is the act or practice of seeking a spouse of higher socioeconomic status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some evolutionary psychologists believe that women exhibit mate-selective preferences for spouses who are greater than them in terms of attained physical attractiveness, educational level, job status, social standing, and capital accumulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research to support the belief that women are more disposed to hypergamous behavior than men?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For purposes of narrowing the scope of the claim, let's focus on women living in any first-world nation, although any of the categories of preferences listed above (physical attractiveness, educational level, job status, social standing, and/or capital accumulation) would be acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="3451" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T23:25:31.910" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T21:46:40.643" Title="Are modern women disposed to hypergamy more than men?" Tags="|gender|marriage|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8272" CreationDate="2012-03-01T18:25:45.187" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. Anwar al-Awlaki was a United States citizen targeted and killed by a missile strike. &lt;a href=&quot;http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/a/anwar_al_awlaki/index.html&quot;&gt;The NY Times writes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2010, the Obama administration had taken the rare step of authorizing the targeted killing of Mr. Awlaki, even though he was an American citizen — a step that had provoked lawsuits and criticism from human rights groups. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although technically a covert operation, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/middleeast/secret-us-memo-made-legal-case-to-kill-a-citizen.html?_r=1&amp;amp;sq=anwar%20al%20awlaki&amp;amp;st=cse&amp;amp;scp=3&amp;amp;pagewanted=print&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; discusses the authorizing memo, saying,:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The secret document provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis. The memo, however, was narrowly drawn to the specifics of Mr. Awlaki’s case and did not establish a broad new legal doctrine to permit the targeted killing of any Americans believed to pose a terrorist threat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-03-01T18:25:45.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8277" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-01T19:10:37.880" Score="10" ViewCount="2815" Body="&lt;p&gt;Men's urinals can either be mounted on a wall, or can extend all the way to the floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.keidel.com/select/urinal.htm&quot;&gt;page&lt;/a&gt;, floor mounted urinals are less desirable because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Floor Mount&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;These units are tall (36&quot; - 40&quot;) and have the bowl and drain on the floor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Harder for men to use than standard height wall mount. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Spots and splashes on the floor are common place.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along these lines I have also often heard the charge they are &quot;less sanitary&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, however, it seems like there is always a puddle beneath the wall mounted unit. Along these lines, a floor mounted unit should be more sanitary, because more of the drips that would otherwise go on the floor would still end up within the porcelain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, with this argument in mind, why is it so rare in the United States to see a floor mounted unit, and why are wall-mounted units considered to be more sanitary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5707" LastEditorUserId="143" LastEditDate="2012-03-01T21:19:33.733" LastActivityDate="2016-11-02T00:54:07.463" Title="Are wall-mounted urinals more sanitary than floor mounted units?" Tags="|technology|toilets|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8279" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8322" CreationDate="2012-03-01T23:05:48.077" Score="4" ViewCount="902" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does global warming make for milder winters?  What about specifically North America?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You often hear people extol global warming for giving us mild winters.  Is there evidence of a causal link?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two examples claims of global warming causing mild winters in New York, and Tibet are linked in the comments.  However, my question is whether this is a global phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="957" LastEditorUserId="957" LastEditDate="2012-03-05T18:44:38.947" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T20:21:22.860" Title="Global warming and mild winters" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8279" CreationDate="2012-03-02T08:59:27.180" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Global warming, by definition, means higher temperatures on average.  Since warmer winters are described as &quot;milder&quot; the answer is yes, on average winters are milder in a warmer world.  That does not preclude cold winters in many years or in many places.  But the changes year to year are volatile compared with the overall rise in temperatures, even when averaged over half the globe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See these charts from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3nh/from:1850/to:2011/every:12/plot/hadcrut3nh/from:1850.5/to:2010.5/every:12&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wood for Trees&lt;/a&gt; for northern hemisphere temperature anomalies, taken from the Hadley Centre/Climatic Research Unit data series.  The red line is for (I think) January anomalies and the green line for July anomalies.  The trend from the 1970s to the 1990s is fairly clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ulA53.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-03-02T08:59:27.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8283" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8290" CreationDate="2012-03-02T14:08:02.727" Score="12" ViewCount="16146" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1381270/Christopher-Bookers-Notebook.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; in The Daily Telegraph it is claimed that large amounts of money are being spent to deal with white asbestos despite this substance posing no risk to human health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was in the 1950s that scientists including Professor Richard Doll, who first linked cancer with tobacco-smoking, discovered that &amp;quot;blue&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;brown&amp;quot; asbestos, with its sharp, metallic fibres of iron silicate, is a killer, causing a range of lung diseases and cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But by one of the most unfortunate sleights of hand in scientific history, this demonisation was extended to include &amp;quot;white&amp;quot; or chrysotile asbestos, magnesium silicate, just because it shares the same name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He claims that white asbestos is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a product that poses no risk to human health and is chemically identical to talcum powder&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it true that white asbestos poses no significant risk to human health?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2024-03-13T03:07:13.980" Title="Is white asbestos dangerous?" Tags="|cancer|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8259" CreationDate="2012-03-02T23:43:35.720" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Changes in relative numbers of high-intelligent and low-intelligent people in the world should &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; lead to a change in global IQ. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IQ is not a measure of amount of intelligence, it is a measure of amount of intelligence &lt;em&gt;relative to peers&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iqtestexperts.com/iq-definition.php&quot;&gt;see this source:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And it is very important for people not to confuse between&#xA;  intelligence and relative intelligence. Intelligence can never be&#xA;  measured and &lt;strong&gt;IQ is not the measure of intelligence. IQ is simply the&#xA;  measure of relative intelligence&lt;/strong&gt; derived by a single or set of&#xA;  standardized tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a young child can have a higher IQ than an adult, even though the adult has plenty more intellectual capacity, because, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologicaltesting.com/iqtest.htm&quot;&gt;the peers of a child&lt;/a&gt; are not the same as the peers of an adult:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Modern IQ tests use a &quot;deviation IQ&quot; rather than a ratio IQ.  With&#xA;  this method, &lt;strong&gt;test takers are referenced to other people of their own&#xA;  age&lt;/strong&gt;.  The average IQ is still 100, but deviations from the average are&#xA;  assigned &lt;strong&gt;a number which corresponds to a percentile rank&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Esentially, &lt;em&gt;IQ is a measure of ranking&lt;/em&gt;, not of amount of ability. The rankings are expressed in IQ points, which are usually equal to 1/15th of a standard deviation of all possible test-takers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are standards for assigning IQs to people who get a certain number of questions correctly. These standards &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/flynneffect.shtml#why&quot;&gt;change over time&lt;/a&gt;, so that the average is always 100: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because populations experience IQ gains over time, &lt;strong&gt;IQ tests must be&#xA;  constantly restandardized&lt;/strong&gt; so that subjects are not scored against&#xA;  inaccurate norms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, the standards are not updated all the time, and certainly not in all countries. What Lynn and Vanhanen do, in the study that inspired your question, is to give a test that has been standardized &lt;a href=&quot;http://cps.nova.edu/~cpphelp/RSPM.html&quot;&gt;in the Western world&lt;/a&gt;, to nationals of many countries across the globe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Norms: Norm groups included in the manual are: &lt;strong&gt;British&lt;/strong&gt; children&#xA;  between the ages of 6 and 16; &lt;strong&gt;Irish&lt;/strong&gt; children between the ages of 6 and&#xA;  12; military and civilian subjects between the ages of 20 and 65. A&#xA;  supplement includes norms &lt;strong&gt;from Canada&lt;/strong&gt;, the &lt;strong&gt;United States&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;Germany&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the standard that all other people are compared to, when assessing their ranking on the IQ scale. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the tests were always standardized correctly, that is to (a representative sample of) all potential test-takers, the average global IQ would be 100 every time it is measured. So, no, global IQ should never drop. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But perhaps it does drop? It is, after all, a highly imperfect set of numbers. If global IQ were to drop, we could speculate on the reasons. One of the reasons could be that a putative gap in intelligence between more and less developed countries is widening. This means that the Western standards for assigning IQ points get tougher and tougher for poor, more populous countries. Note that this still doesn't need to mean that global levels of intelligence are dropping! All countries could do better nowadays, but the gap might still widen. Following the pattern of IQ scores over time simply doesn't tell us what is happening with the actual level of intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5696" LastEditorUserId="5696" LastEditDate="2012-03-03T09:42:06.027" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T09:42:06.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8286" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-03T01:13:54.350" Score="19" ViewCount="11666" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often heard that only recently slim women were considered as more attractive in western society. It is referenced a few time in this Slashdot thread: &lt;a href=&quot;http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/03/02/2349216/government-should-ban-skinny-models-to-curb-anorexia-say-researchers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Government Should Ban Skinny Models To Curb Anorexia, Say Researchers&lt;/a&gt;.  There is also this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peelregion.ca/health/commhlth/bodyimg/media.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;webpage&lt;/a&gt; by the some municipality that wants to show that the new trend started in the 1900's while in the 1890's:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Actress &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Russell&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lillian Russell&lt;/a&gt; at 200 lbs. or 91 kg. is the most celebrated beauty of the time.&#xA;  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PR11Rm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Wikipedia Image of Lillian Russel&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They of course don't have any reliable source and I don't consider 90kg as 'that' fat (she may be 6'6&quot;). So anyway, is there any evidence that before the 1900's, or for some specific time, fat was considered as the norm of beauty? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="800" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T18:36:04.463" LastActivityDate="2015-10-19T11:50:32.697" Title="Were fat women considered as the norm of beauty in the past?" Tags="|history|beauty|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8286" CreationDate="2012-03-03T01:55:15.623" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Examples from the past&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's plenty of examples, but I think the most famous ones are the sculptures of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_goddess&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mother goddesses&lt;/a&gt; from our distant past:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jz2F5m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Mother Goddess&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/50/Venus_von_Willendorf_01.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Closer to home, you need to look no further than &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Venus_(Botticelli)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Botticelli&lt;/a&gt;. His Venus is way plumper than today's top models:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4wZKj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Venere Botticelli&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Venus_(Botticelli)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why is it so?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One known factor correlating male mating preferences with female body size is &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/000712605X80713/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hunger&lt;/a&gt;, as hungrier man prefer plumper women. This is likely an evolutionary adaptation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using this revised methodology, we found that operationalized intra-individual resource scarcity affects preferences for body weight: 30 hungry male participants preferred figures with a higher body weight and rated as more attractive heavier figures than 31 satiated male participants. Hungrier men were also less likely to be influenced by cues for body shape, supporting extant cross-cultural studies on female physical attractiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T01:55:15.623" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8283" CreationDate="2012-03-03T05:49:01.170" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my best understanding -- &quot;&lt;em&gt;white asbestos poses no significant risk to human health&lt;/em&gt;&quot; is incorrect.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Specifically on &lt;strong&gt;chrysotile&lt;/strong&gt; commonly referred as &lt;code&gt;white asbestos&lt;/code&gt;...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I'll first raise up one relatively recent counter article by &lt;code&gt;George Monbiot&lt;/code&gt; -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/oct/13/christopher-booker&quot;&gt;The superhuman cock-ups of Christopher Booker&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From BMJ article&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oem.bmj.com/content/early/2012/01/20/oemed-2011-100229.abstract&quot;&gt;Lung cancer mortality in North Carolina and South Carolina chrysotile asbestos textile workers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Accepted 9 December 2011; Published Online First 20 January 2012&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions&lt;/strong&gt; Increased rates of lung cancer were significantly associated with cumulative fibre exposure overall and in both the Carolina asbestos-textile cohorts. Previously reported differences in exposure-response between the cohorts do not appear to be related to inclusion criteria or analytical methods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a reference from the Australian NHMRC on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/your-health/asbestos-related-diseases&quot;&gt;Asbestos related diseases&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;These are just extracts, the article has more notes and references.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Asbestos is a group of naturally-occurring silicate minerals that are made up of fine, fibrous crystals. Three of these are crocidolite (blue asbestos), amosite (brown or grey asbestos) and chrysotile (white asbestos).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Asbestos becomes a hazard when microscopic fibre fragments become airborne and are inhaled. Due to their size and shape they can remain airborne for some time, and enter even the smallest air passages in the lungs where they embed in lung tissue. The fibres are highly resistant to removal by the lungs’ natural cleaning processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lung cancer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Exposure to asbestos fibres greatly increases a person’s risk of developing lung cancer, particularly if they are also a smoker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mesothelioma&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Mesothelioma is a cancer of the pleura. It typically grows quickly and spreads widely before symptoms appear, making its early diagnosis and effective treatment very difficult. The average survival time after diagnosis is only 6-18 months. A very small exposure to asbestos can be enough to trigger the cancer, however only a small percentage of people exposed to asbestos develop mesothelioma. There may be a lag of 20 to 40 years after asbestos exposure before mesothelioma results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who is at risk of asbestos-induced cancers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Those who are particularly at risk of asbestos-induced cancers, as noted by the Asbestos Diseases Society of Australia Inc,are people exposed to the loose fibres of asbestos in mining, manufacturing, building and construction or at work, school or in the home; as well as those exposed through asbestos removal, and the consequences of uncontrolled, unsafe removal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UK Health and Safety Executive &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hse.gov.uk/press/2002/e02010.htm&quot;&gt;&quot;confirmed that white asbestos (chrysotile) is a major health hazard&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in 2002.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it would help to note that the Daily Telegraph article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1381270/Christopher-Bookers-Notebook.html&quot;&gt;Billions to be spent on nonexistent risk&lt;/a&gt; under &lt;code&gt;Christopher Booker's Notebook&lt;/code&gt; is dated &lt;code&gt;13 Jan 2002&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going a little sideways here, it is interesting to see what &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Booker#Views_on_science&quot;&gt;&lt;code&gt;Christopher Booker&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/a&gt; writes these days: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/greenpolitics/9105330/The-Gleick-affair-is-further-proof-of-the-warmists-endless-credulity.html&quot;&gt;The Gleick affair is further proof of the warmists' endless credulity&lt;/a&gt; dated &lt;code&gt;25 Feb 2012&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am specifically not attaching any extracts to avoid distracting from the asbestos subject here. But, you'll find the wikipedia reference from his name above aptly gives &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/oct/13/christopher-booker&quot;&gt;views&lt;/a&gt; from his peers and scientific community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone is entitled to their opinions and judgements; this equally includes readers as well as writers of these articles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2224" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-18T00:02:03.040" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T00:02:03.040" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8292" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-03T12:09:10.120" Score="14" ViewCount="5708" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/prostitution&quot;&gt;Oxford Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; describes &quot;Prostitution&quot; as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the practice or occupation of engaging in sexual activity with someone&#xA;  for payment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;It is often referred to as &quot;&lt;strong&gt;the oldest profession&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;when you &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Oldest_profession&amp;amp;redirect=no&quot;&gt;search for &quot;&lt;em&gt;Oldest Profession&lt;/em&gt; &quot; on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; it redirects to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution&quot;&gt;Prostitution&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;My Question:&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the &quot;oldest profession&quot; claim just a meme or is it based on truth?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T11:58:05.737" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T20:23:50.777" Title="Is prostitution the oldest profession?" Tags="|history|sexuality|sociology|anthropology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8292" CreationDate="2012-03-03T13:54:52.760" Score="9" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on the meaning you give to the word &quot;prostitution&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's clear historical evidence that &quot;sacred prostitution&quot; was practiced from the beginning of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you consider those acts &lt;em&gt;true prostitution&amp;trade;&lt;/em&gt;, then there's evidence that prostitution is the oldest profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not consider those acts &lt;em&gt;true prostitution&amp;trade;&lt;/em&gt;, then they still serve as an explanation to where such a saying comes from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Exposition&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A known example of a temple prostitute is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamhat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Šamhat&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/50lJB.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Šamhat&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jewishchristianlit.com/Texts/ANEmyths/gilgamesh01.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The epic of Gilgameš is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;an epic poem from Mesopotamia, is amongst the earliest surviving works of literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;. In particular the&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Old Babylonian&quot; version of the epic dates to the 18th century BC and is titled Shūtur eli sharrī (&quot;Surpassing All Other Kings&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the slightly later &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/tab1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Akkadian version&lt;/a&gt; you can find, in Tablet I:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The trapper's father spoke to him saying:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;        &quot;My son, there lives in Uruk a certain Gilgamesh.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;        There is no one stronger than he,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;        he is as strong as the meteorite(?) of Anu.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;        Go, set off to Uruk,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;        tell Gilgamesh of this Man of Might.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;        &lt;strong&gt;He will give you the harlot Shamhat, take her with you.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;        The woman will overcome the fellow (?) as if she were strong.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;        When the animals are drinking at the watering place&lt;br&gt;&#xA;        have her take off her robe and expose her sex.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;        When he sees her he will draw near to her,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;        and his animals, who grew up in his wilderness, will be alien to him.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems that it's certainly an ancient profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More in general, it is clear that in multiple cultures there was a huge overlap among the concepts of fertility cults and rites and prostitution. The above is just an example of a &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_prostitution&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;temple prostitute&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sacred prostitution, temple prostitution, or religious prostitution is a practice of worship that includes hieros gamos or sacred marriage performed as a fertility rite and part of sacred sexual ritual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the same source it was practiced in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ancient Mesopotamia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Old Buddhism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Biblical times&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, according to the well-referenced article on Wikipedia, there is some controversy on whether this was &lt;em&gt;true prostitution&amp;trade;&lt;/em&gt; or simple devotional sex. In any case, the traditional view is to call these acts prostitution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether they were prostitutes or not, is a meaningless game of semantics and definitions. It is up to the reader to decide! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Further reading:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZLiAJxMIHvYC&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;pg=PA10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Love for sale: a world history of prostitution&lt;/strong&gt; By Nils Johan Ringda&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9kVNAAAAcAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA35&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;History of prostitution: its extent, causes, and effects throughout the world&lt;/strong&gt; By William W. Sanger&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-03-03T13:54:52.760" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7622" CreationDate="2012-03-03T16:11:10.807" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;An important part of conducting an experiment is to have a control to compare it against. We can see that this particular burger doesn't seem to be rotting, but is that unusual or unexpected?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Morgan Spurlock, in the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521/&quot;&gt;Super Size me&lt;/a&gt; conducted an experiment with a number of McDonald's burgers and burgers from other sources, placing them in glass jars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udnYdSy0tMQ&quot;&gt;results were&lt;/a&gt; that all of the burgers were rotting after a few weeks. (Yes, they were at different rates, but larger samples sizes would be required to see if that was was significant, as well as controlling for more variables, like burger size.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another experiment was started &lt;a href=&quot;http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2010/10/the-burger-lab-the-myth-of-the-12-year-old-mcdonalds-hamburger.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; by Serious Eats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looked at a number of different questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Whether it's something in the beef that's keeping the burgers from rotting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Whether it's something in the bun that's keeping the burgers from rotting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Whether it's some sort of magical alchemic reaction that keeps the burgers from rotting only when a  McDonald's patty is in contact with a McDonald's bun.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Whether it's the size of the patties that are preventing the burger from rotting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Whether it's the storage environment that is preventing the burgers from rotting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cheese-burger.net/stories/blogger-debunks-mcdonalds-no-rot-burger-myth.html&quot;&gt;conclusion&lt;/a&gt;, it found that burgers (McDonalds or home-made) stored in the open air, where they could dry out, had little or no mould. Burgers (McDonalds or home-made) stored in plastic bags that held in the moisture (like Spurlock's glass jars) got mouldy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pretty strong evidence in favor of Theory 3: the burger doesn't rot because it's small size and relatively large surface area help it to lose moisture very fast. Without moisture, there's no mold or bacterial growth. Of course, that the meat is pretty much sterile to begin with due to the high cooking temperature helps things along as well. It's not really surprising. Humans have known about this phenomenon for thousands of years. After all, how do you think beef jerky is made?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;no, McDonald's burgers do not have an unnaturally long lifespan.&lt;/strong&gt; They have a similar lifespan to other commercial and homemade burgers. Whether they are abnormal or unhealthy is an unrelated question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Neither experiment was documented in a peer-reviewed journal; I think it will be hard to find a journal that would publish such an experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-27T10:18:33.767" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T10:18:33.767" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8296" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-03T20:29:43.293" Score="16" ViewCount="2971" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is often said that the United States is the fattest country in the world. Is it? Does it depend on how one measures fatness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T04:34:52.753" Title="Is the United States the fattest country in the world?" Tags="|united-states|obesity|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8296" CreationDate="2012-03-03T21:05:14.027" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, the dubious privilege goes to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;small island of Nauru&lt;/a&gt; where around 80% of the population are obese (as of 1994).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obesity in Nauru is a major health concern for the nation. According to Forbes, Nauru is the world's fattest country with 94.5 % of the inhabitants at an unhealthy weight. The obesity rate is roughly 80%. Due to little arable land, much of local diet is processed food imported from elsewhere. Cultural and social ideologies contribute to this as well, obesity is seen as sign of wealth and power. The nation's children are also known to lead more sedentary lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_Nauru&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;References&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/nutrans/publications/obes%20epidemic-NR.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Obesity Epidemic Is a Worldwide Phenomenon&lt;/strong&gt; by Barry M. Popkin Ph.D., Colleen M. Doak M.A.&lt;/a&gt;, p. 110&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wpro.who.int/NR/rdonlyres/B924BFA6-A061-43AE-8DCA-0AE82A8F66D2/0/obesityinthepacific.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Obesity in the Pacific: too big to ignore.&lt;/strong&gt; 2002. Secretariat of the Pacific Community&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T01:06:36.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8298" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8305" CreationDate="2012-03-03T21:44:57.070" Score="6" ViewCount="311" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a claim (or, rather, an hypothesis) made by Scott Adams in a recent blog post, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/parenting_that_makes_a_difference/&quot;&gt;&quot;Parenting that Makes a Difference&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My hypothesis is that the month you conceive is the most important&#xA;  factor in a child's success. And no, I don't mean horoscopes are&#xA;  important. What matters most is how old a kid is for the class he is&#xA;  placed in. Macolm Gladwell described in his book Outliers how the&#xA;  older kids in a class are identified as gifted athletes, when in fact&#xA;  they are simply older. Coaches give more attention, training and&#xA;  resources to develop the perceived talents of older kids, thus&#xA;  widening the gap over their younger classmates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, Adams claims that it's &quot;the most important factor&quot; , not just an important factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the article mentioned in Adams' post, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/outliers-the-story-of-success-by-malcolm-gladwell/&quot;&gt;&quot;Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A close look at the rosters of top Canadian hockey teams reveals an&#xA;  oddly disproportionate number of players born in the first three&#xA;  months of the year. The reason is relative age. Canadian youth hockey&#xA;  leagues base a player’s eligibility on the calendar year, so skaters&#xA;  born on January 1 play with boys with December birthdays. At nine or&#xA;  ten years of age, several months can make a noticeable difference in a&#xA;  child’s size and coordination. The coaches then tend to label the&#xA;  bigger, more focused players the better ones, when in fact what they&#xA;  are is older. Those kids go on to get extra practice and playing time,&#xA;  and eventually do end up being better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6067" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T04:29:18.603" Title="Is the month of conception an important factor in a child's success?" Tags="|education|parenting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8299" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-03T21:45:58.360" Score="19" ViewCount="107882" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took 4 flights last week, and my chocolate was scanned 4 times in the baggage scanner. Is it safe to eat that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6213" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T01:29:31.710" LastActivityDate="2016-10-09T04:49:17.187" Title="Is it okay to eat food that has been through airport x-ray scanners" Tags="|nutrition|radiation|aviation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8299" CreationDate="2012-03-03T22:15:16.227" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, it is perfectly safe.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Radiation-EmittingProducts/RadiationEmittingProductsandProcedures/SecuritySystems/ucm116421.htm&quot;&gt;United States FDA&lt;/a&gt; provides the following information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q8: Is it safe to eat food, drink beverages, use medicine, or apply cosmetics if any of these products have gone through a cabinet x-ray system?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A8: There are no known adverse effects from eating food, drinking beverages, using medicine, or applying cosmetics that have been irradiated by a cabinet x ray system used for security screening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The radiation dose typically received by objects scanned by a cabinet x-ray system is 1 millirad or less. The average dose rate from background radiation is 360 millirad per year. The minimum dose used in food irradiation for food preservation or destruction of parasites or pathogens is 30,000 rad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For more detailed information on radiation used for food inspection or food treatment, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?CFRPart=179&amp;amp;showFR=1&quot;&gt;Title 21 CFR 179&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/linkwarning/linkwarning.cfm?link=http://www.FoodSafety.gov&quot;&gt;www.FoodSafety.gov&lt;/a&gt;, contact FDA’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/default.htm&quot;&gt;Center for Food Safety and Nutrition&lt;/a&gt;, or contact the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/linkwarning/linkwarning.cfm?link=http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usdahome&quot;&gt;United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety Inspection Service&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.food.gov.uk/safereating/rad_in_food/irradfoodqa/&quot;&gt;UK Food Standards Agency&lt;/a&gt; agrees with the FDA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it safe to eat food that has been through a X-ray scanner, for example at airports?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes, it is. X-ray scanners used at airports for baggage control operate at very much lower energy and give rise to radiation levels very much lower than radiation sources used in food irradiation facilities. The radiation doses used to process food can be as high as 10,000 gray, whilst X-ray scanners operate at less than 0.5 gray. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to detect changes to food once it has been through an X-ray scanner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Food Irradiation Regulations 2009 specifically excludes X-ray surveillance devices which impart a radiation dose of less than 0.5 gray and operate at less than a maximum energy of 10 MeV (for example the ones used in ports and airports, which would include those used for commercial cargo). If the devices operate above these levels, they fall within the scope of food irradiation legislation, but the FSA is not aware of any devices currently in use which do exceed these limits. In fact many of these X-ray machines (at airports for example) operate at such a low dose that they don't affect photographic film.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Journal of the American Medical Association published an article&lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt; on the subject of x-ray machines for airport security that contains the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Will the x-ray examination of medicines inactivate them?&lt;/strong&gt; No, nor will&#xA;  these levels of radiation affect food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q6115.html&quot;&gt;Health Physics Society&lt;/a&gt; addressed the issue in one of their &quot;Ask the Experts&quot; columns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer to Question #6115 Submitted to &quot;Ask the Experts&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Category: Security Screening&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following question was answered by an expert in the appropriate field:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If I place my breakfast, lunch, snacks, and water into the x-ray screening machine at work, is this safe when I will need to do this five times a week, times 52 weeks a year, for the next 25 years? What long-term effects could this have?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Thank you for your question. Sending food items through a screening machine, whether at the airport or in your workplace, will not do anything to the food and the food will not contain radioactivity after it passes through the x rays. There are no short-term or long-term effects on the food or for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kelly Classic&#xA;  Certified Medical Health Physicist &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt; Holder Lawrence E. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.1975.03260130051025&quot;&gt;X-ray Machines for Airport Security&lt;/a&gt;. JAMA. 1975;233(13):1393-1394. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-06-27T15:44:36.930" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T15:44:36.930" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6999" CreationDate="2012-03-03T23:07:08.460" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main body of writings from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Aurelius&quot;&gt;Marcus Aurelius&lt;/a&gt; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://classics.mit.edu/Antoninus/meditations.html&quot;&gt;The Meditations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read The Meditations very carefully when preparing to write my 2005 book, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0856832367&quot;&gt;Marcus Aurelius:  The Dialogues&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (Shepheard-Walwyn). I certainly cannot recall having read this particular quote by Aurelius.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[Mod note: Having answered the question above, the following is speculation by an expert in the field, which may cast more light on the origins of the misquote.]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did however have MA in my book engage in a fictional debate re the classic question: &lt;em&gt;If evil falls upon the innocent, how can the gods be just?&lt;/em&gt; In my book, MA considers each of the standard logical answers to the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are not just; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are unaware of the evils that befall upon the innocent; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are aware but powerless to intervene; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The gods don't exist.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;BTW: I have MA dismiss each of the above answers.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all due modesty on my part, I wonder if the above quote may possibly have been triggered by this particular section of my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could I imagine MA making such a quote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, in part, I could. Certainly, he was doubtful whether the after-life existed but was convinced that whether it did or not was irrelevant to how we should choose to behave in this life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, he disdained the concept of living with the object of achieving honour in the minds of posterity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, I am dubious he would have said &quot;If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that MA's key message for himself (and now, as it happened accidentally, for us) was that to achieve peace of mind (the spirit at rest with itself) then we should engage with life in a virtous, charitable and kindly manner:  That the peace of mind we thereby earn is sufficient reward in itself; we neither need - nor deserve more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6310" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-04T17:13:22.950" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T17:13:22.950" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8302" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-04T00:26:44.410" Score="8" ViewCount="441" Body="&lt;p&gt;Blind listening tests are strongly critiqued by Robert Harley in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avguide.com/forums/blind-listening-tests-are-flawed-editorial&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this editorial&lt;/a&gt;, published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theabsolutesound.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Absolute Sound&lt;/a&gt;. Harley seems to think the tests prove nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every few years, the results of some blind listening test are announced that purportedly “prove” an absurd conclusion. These tests, ironically, say more about the flaws inherent in blind listening tests than about the phenomena in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article goes on to describe research done by the Swedish Radio. Apparently an artifact inherent to a codec that hadn't been noticed in 20,000 blind listening evaluations, was noticed almost instantly in non-blind circumstances. This gives Harley grounds to claim the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The answer is that blind listening tests fundamentally distort the listening process and are worthless in determining the audibility of a certain phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Do blind listening tests significantly inhibit the listeners' ability to notice certain audible phenomena?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;This article was mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/3221/881&quot;&gt;a comment thread&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/1447/christopher-galpin&quot;&gt;Christopher Galpin&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/23/oddthinking&quot;&gt;Oddthinking&lt;/a&gt; suggested making a question about it. Since nothing has happened in almost a year and the question is interesting, I'm bringing it up.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:37:37.697" Title="Are blind listening tests flawed?" Tags="|psychology|sound|experiments|perception|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8296" CreationDate="2012-03-04T02:11:44.987" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/contributor_copyright.html&quot;&gt;World Factbook&lt;/a&gt; is a reference publication by the United State's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/&quot;&gt;Central Intelligence Agency&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The World Factbook is prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency for the use of US Government officials, and the style, format, coverage, and content are designed to meet their specific requirements. Information is provided by Antarctic Information Program (National Science Foundation), Armed Forces Medical Intelligence Center (Department of Defense), Bureau of the Census (Department of Commerce), Bureau of Labor Statistics (Department of Labor), Central Intelligence Agency, Council of Managers of National Antarctic Programs, Defense Intelligence Agency (Department of Defense), Department of Energy, Department of State, Fish and Wildlife Service (Department of the Interior), Maritime Administration (Department of Transportation), National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (Department of Defense), Naval Facilities Engineering Command (Department of Defense), Office of Insular Affairs (Department of the Interior), Office of Naval Intelligence (Department of Defense), US Board on Geographic Names (Department of the Interior), US Transportation Command (Department of Defense), Oil &amp;amp; Gas Journal, and other public and private sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The World Factbook defines &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2228rank.html&quot;&gt;Obesity - adult prevalence rate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This entry gives the percent of a country's population considered to be obese. Obesity is defined as an adult having a Body Mass Index (BMI) greater to or equal to 30.0. BMI is calculated by taking a person's weight in kg and dividing it by the person's squared height in meters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For countries where this information is published in the World Factbook, The United States of America is ranked #18 in the world with 33% of the population obese. Notably, some Middle Eastern and small island counties have higher obesity rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;Rank  Country                     Percentage   Date of Info&#xA;1   American Samoa*                 74.60         2007&#xA;2   Nauru                           71.10         2008&#xA;3   Cook Islands                    63.70         2008&#xA;4   Tokelau                         63.40         2007&#xA;5   Tonga                           57.60         2008&#xA;6   Samoa                           54.10         2008&#xA;7   Palau                           48.90         2008&#xA;8   Kiribati                        46.00         2008&#xA;9   Marshall Islands                45.40         2008&#xA;10  Kuwait                          42.00         2008&#xA;11  Saint Kitts and Nevis           40.70         2008&#xA;12  Federated States of Micronesia  40.60         2008&#xA;13  The Bahamas                     34.70         2008&#xA;14  Barbados                        34.70         2008&#xA;15  Belize                          33.70         2008&#xA;16  Qatar                           33.20         2008&#xA;17  Egypt                           33.10         2008&#xA;18  United States                   33.00         2008&#xA;19  Saudi Arabia                    33.00         2008&#xA;20  Bahrain                         32.90         2008&#xA;21  Czech Republic                  32.70         2008&#xA;22  United Arab Emirates            32.70         2008&#xA;23  Mexico                          32.10         2008&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/aq.html&quot;&gt;American Samoa&lt;/a&gt; is an unincorporated and unorganized territory of the US; administered by the Office of Insular Affairs, US Department of the Interior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2015-07-07T04:34:52.753" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T04:34:52.753" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8298" CreationDate="2012-03-04T04:29:18.603" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is a factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The degree results of nearly 300,000 British graduates were tabulated by the month of their birth. The number of graduates varied as a function of month of birth. So too, but in a different way, did the quality of their degree results. A number of possible predictors of the results are examined. These analyses suggest that, &lt;strong&gt;among those who stay at school until the age of 18, the oldest in their year group are at an advantage but, by the time they graduate from university, the youngest perform best&lt;/strong&gt;. It is concluded that some intellectually relevant quality peaks between 18 and 21 yr of age and then declines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ref: R.J.H. Russell, M.J. Startup, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0191886986900826&quot;&gt;Month of birth and academic achievement&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 7, Issue 6, 1986, Pages 839–846&#xA;doi: 10.1016/0191-8869(86)90082-6&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether it is the most important factor is a rather meaningless designation. Not dying in child-birth is a more important factor, as a facetious example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T04:29:18.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8306" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-04T05:18:48.870" Score="9" ViewCount="1050" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nutrition.about.com/od/ahealthykitchen/a/washveggies.htm&quot;&gt;People&lt;/a&gt; tend to recommend washing (even just with water) fruits/vegetables before eating them for health reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we have evidence that washing fruits/vegetables with water reduce potential health risks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6176" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T09:08:02.140" Title="Is washing fruits/vegetables with water useful?" Tags="|nutrition|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8306" CreationDate="2012-03-04T06:11:16.183" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I expect it depends on how dirty the food is to begin with, and on what type of dirt (just as the answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/3253/2703&quot;&gt;this other question&lt;/a&gt; depends on how dirty the floor is), and also on whether the food is subsequently cooked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/food/resourcesforyou/consumers/ucm114299&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This FDA page&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/iyh-vsv/food-aliment/handling-manipulation-eng.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Health Canada page&lt;/a&gt; both recommend washing (using identical text).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the FDA site says that that's not effective for sprouts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rinsing sprouts first will not remove bacteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem (i.e. the reason why washing doesn't always work) is that pathogens can sometimes get inside the produce: for example, see item 3 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/kitchen-cuisine/safety-salubrite/research-recherche_microb-eng.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this web page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the evidence of internalization of pathogens into produce and how significant is this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it a problem with crops other than tomatoes, apples and potatoes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the best prevention methods?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once pathogens infiltrate the product, how long will they survive/grow?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can epidemiologically relevant numbers of pathogenic microorganisms infect a field crop via this route?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same page lists &amp;quot;What is the efficacy of produce washing at home? (Does water remove pathogens from product?)&amp;quot; as a low-priority research area for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page 43 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/micro/MRA_14_JEMRA.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this 2008 WHO document&lt;/a&gt; (on which that previously-mentioned Canadian page was based) says various things including,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Washing in potable or sanitized water typically results in TVC/ACC reductions of 1–2 logs&#xA;(CCFRA, 1999, 2002). However, the degree of risk reduction that can be expected from these&#xA;current washing disinfection technologies is difficult to quantify in reality (i.e. under non-inoculated conditions) given the sporadic nature of contamination by pathogens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This quote from the same WHO document implies that washing is more effective for fresh-harvested produce (e.g. from your garden), and less so for older produce:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Owing to practicalities, most industry trials of process water sanitizing agents use naturally&#xA;colonized vegetable tissue, which is at the mature biofilm stage and therefore very resistant to&#xA;the effects of washing, even in sanitized water. Commercial washing processes in relation to&#xA;surfaces for fresh-cut produce are typically within a few minutes of chopping, shredding or&#xA;dicing. Such washing occurs before the establishment of the protective extracellular&#xA;polysaccharide, yet the washing process does not remove all of the bacteria (Liao and Cook,&#xA;2001; Zhang and Farber, 1996; Brocklehurst, 1994; Baranyi, Roberts and McLure, 1993) since&#xA;it fails to address the substantial biofilm element of the attached population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of data is about food safety protocols on farms (how should they manage their manure/fertilizer, for example), and in the commercial processing which follows, before it's delivered to the consumer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T06:11:16.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1963" CreationDate="2012-03-04T06:27:15.853" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned &lt;strong&gt;stretching is clearly a very controversial subject&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Instead, use of stretching as a prevention tool against sports injury has been based on intuition and unsystematic observation rather than scientific evidence. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gytk.sote.hu/gyki/Oktatok/Horpet/Bozot_suggested_article.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A second major reason that many coaches and athletes still view static stretching as an important preactivity ritual is the belief that it reduces the likelihood of subsequent&#xA;  injury. This belief is based on the idea that a &quot;tight&quot; muscle-tendon unit is less extensible without stretching, which means that its tolerance for elongation&#xA;  is lower, This intuitive concept has resulted in a widespread belief that stretching will prevent muscle and tendon strain (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirallas.org/Esport/AgainstStretching.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like many sports physicians, Dr. Bartoli tells her patients that rather than stretching before physical activity, they should do the sporting activity at 50 percent of the target intensity. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://tca.d4sportsclub.com/object.aspx?id=516&amp;amp;o=486&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before I continue I should note that I have found no study that focused on stretching after working out. But based on the results from other literature reviews, I don't think the effect after a workout is much different. Also the lack of scientific interest in the topic should make one highly skeptical as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/medicine/bmj/sportsmedicine/pdfs/ch3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shrier points out several&lt;/a&gt; important points to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Both the muscle-tendon unit and the joint capsule may limit ROM [range of motion]. Flexibility is usually considered the ROM limited by muscle-tendon, and mobility is usually considered the ROM limited by capsule/ligament.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stretching must be differentiated from ROM. There are many individuals who have excellent ROM but never stretch, and many individuals who stretch but continue to have limited ROM.&#xA;  Therefore, different injury rates in people with different ROMs may not be related to the effect of stretching, but rather to the underlying interindividual variation in tissue properties, anatomy, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stretching immediately before exercise may have different effects than stretching at other times and should be considered as a separate intervention. Whereas there is considerable amount of clinical&#xA;  data on stretching immediately before exercise, there is much less data on stretching at other times.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Some people claim that negative results in some studies are due to improper stretching technique. Because the effect of stretching are believed to occur through changes in stiffness and ROM,&#xA;  an &quot;improper&quot; technique implies that the ROM is not increased. If ROM is increased without causing an immediate injury, then by definition the stretches were done properly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Warm-up is not synonymous with stretching. In the colloquial sense, warm-up means any activity performed before participating in sport. Used in this sense, stretching is only one component of&#xA;  warm-up, and if stretching is included in the pre-exercise activity, I explicitily state that stretching was used. The other component of warm-up is participating in an activity that requires active muscle contractions.&#xA;  This type of warm-up can be divided into general or sport-specific warm-up. In a general warm-up, the objective is to increase body temperature. ... In sport-specific warmp-up, the acitvity is the same&#xA;  but performed at a lower intensity. Be aware that the mechanism of action will dictacte whether one type of warm-up is superior to another.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The term &quot;dynamic stretching&quot; is currently used differently by different people, but in essense it refers to stretching of a muscle by contracting and relaxing the antagonist muscle. &#xA;  One should note that dynamic stretching includes both classical stretching and warm-up at the same time. Because dynamic stretching includes both classical stretching and warm-up at the same time.&#xA;  Because dynamic stretching requires the muscles to contract, other possible mechansms include central programming of muscle contraction/coordiantion and decreased fatigue through increased warm-up activity.&#xA;  Those who promote dynamic stretching as a method to prevent injury should provide some evidence that supports their claim.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After discussing many articles he concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A review of the clinical evidence strongly suggests that pre-exercise stretching does not prevent injury, and that the evidence on stretching at other times suggests that it may be&#xA;  beneficial but is too limited to make definitive recommendations at this time. Considering that these results are contrary to many people’s beliefs, it seems prudent to review why&#xA;  some people ever believed stretching before exercise was so beneficial. There appear to be six general arguments that have been proposed in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;First, paraphrasing an old Chinese saying, “that which does not bend, breaks.” However, when a tree bends, the force (i.e., the wind) changes from a perpendicular force to a&#xA;  longitudinal force; it is much easier to break a stick by applying a perpendicular force to the middle in comparison with longitudinal forces at the end. In stretching a muscle prior&#xA;  to activity, we do not alter the direction of force at the time of injury, and the analogy is inappropriate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Second, compliance refers to the length change that occurs when a force is applied, but is not necessarily related to a tissue’s resistance to injury. For example, even though a&#xA;  balloon will stretch before it bursts (high compliance), a sphere made of metal with the same thickness as the balloon might never stretch (low compliance) and still withstand&#xA;  extremely high pressures.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Third, if muscle compliance is increased with warming from 25 °C to 40 °C, the muscle ruptures at a longer length but absorbs less energy. Which is more important, length or&#xA;  energy absorbed? Although muscles are sometimes injured when stretched beyond their normal length of motion, most authors believe that the majority of injuries occur within&#xA;  the normal ROM during eccentric activity, and that the most important variable with respect to muscle injury is the energy absorbed by the muscle&#xA;  Finally, the reader must remember that the damage occurs at the level of the sarcomere and not the whole muscle. Therefore, if there is excessive sarcomere lengthening so that&#xA;  the actin and myosin filaments no longer overlap, the force is transmitted to the cytoskeleton of the muscle fiber, and damage occurs. This occurs within the normal ROM, because&#xA;  sarcomere length within the muscle is heterogeneous; some sarcomeres lengthen during a contraction at the same time as others are shortening. Therefore, it appears that it is&#xA;  the sarcomere length that is related to most exercise-related muscle strains, rather than the total muscle length. Under this hypothesis, an increase in total muscle compliance is&#xA;  irrelevant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Fourth, overstretching a muscle can certainly produce damage. However, even strains as little as 20% beyond resting fiber length, as one would expect with “correct” stretching&#xA;  techniques, can produce damage in isolated muscle preparations. Therefore, the basic science evidence suggests that “correct” stretching techniques may be more difficult to&#xA;  define than previously thought.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Fifth, we have seen that the increased ROM with stretching is partly due to an analgesic effect. This may explain some preliminary findings that muscle aches and pains are&#xA;  reduced in pre–post testing, but does not mean that the risk of injury is decreased.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sixth, some argue that stretching may prevent tendon or other injuries, even though there is no effect on total injuries. Finally, even if stretching does prevent one specific type of injury, because overall injury&#xA;  rates among stretchers and non-stretchers are not different, any protection against one type of injury would mean an increased risk of other types of injuries in order to balance the equation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on his results, on can conclude that there are some conflicting results. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.futevolei.com.br/fisio2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Witvrouw et al&lt;/a&gt; point out that this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;can be explained by considering the type of sports activity in which an individual participates. Sports involving 'explosive' type skills, with many and maximal SSC (stretch-shortening cycles) movements require a muscle-tendon unit which is compliant enough to store and release the high amount of elastic energy. Recently, it has been shown that stretching is able to increase the compliance of human tendons, and as a result increase the capacity of the tendon to absorb energy. Consequently, in these sports we suggest that stretching is important as a prophylactic measure for injury prevention.&#xA;  When an individual's muscle-tendon unit is less flexible in these types of sports activities, there exists a predisposing factor for exercise-related injuries since the tendon is unable to absorb enough energy, which may lead to tendon and/or muscle damage. When the sports activity contains no, or only low SSC movements (cycling, jogging), all or most of the work is directly converted to external work.&#xA;  In these cases, there is no need for a compliant tendon since the amount of energy absorption remains low. Hence, additional stretching exercises to improve the compliance of the tendon may have no beneficial effect on injury prevention. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It must be acknowledged that the aetiology of injuries can be multifactorial. Taking out only one aspect (e.g. stretching) and examining its effect on the incidence of injuries is a rather narrow outlook on this problem. For example, fatigue is  widely believed to be predisposing factor in muscle injury. In addition, other problems remain. Even within the same sport,the demands on different players may be different. However, we believe that far greater attention should be given to an examination of the type of activity in which the athlete participates when one considers the merits of stretching to reduce injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I can see you wonder: &lt;strong&gt;what if my workout require a large ROM?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help you decide, &lt;a href=&quot;http://tca.d4sportsclub.com/object.aspx?id=516&amp;amp;o=486&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here's a small anecdote from a professional dance trainer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She is often shocked when she walks into dance studios to teach for the first time and sees dancers stretching on a cold floor.&#xA;  &quot;I say, 'Please don't do that!' and explain that we'll stretch in the middle and at the end of class,&quot; she said.&#xA;  According to Solomon, stretching must be an integral part of the warm-up process.&#xA;  &quot;As long as the blood is coursing through the body, the oxygen is flowing through the muscles, and the muscles are warm-then you can stretch,&quot; she said. &quot;But not before. &#xA;  If you don't stretch and strengthen together, you'll have a weak muscle. The strength must balance the stretch if you want to control your movements.&quot;&#xA;  Solomon explained that dancers are at risk for injury partly because dance demands such extended ranges of motion. Moreover, ballet dancers typically do exercises such as &#xA;  developpes and grand battements that develop their quadriceps, but may neglect the hamstrings. The resulting strength imbalance puts extra stress on the knee joint.&#xA;  &quot;If the muscles are really stretched out, the ligaments may not be able to protect the joints,&quot; she said. &quot;So you get unstable joints, particularly knees, and you may get &#xA;  hyperextension and ligament tears.&quot; Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation stretches are now favored in the dance community because they both strengthen and lengthen muscles, Solomon said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So what should you do?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well the studies I reviewed concluded injuries occured in subjects with too much flexibility (lack of balance/strength) or a lack of flexibility (limited ROM). The latter group might consider increasing their ROM by stretching regularly (but not prior to exercising), however I would rather recommend you to perform workouts that let you make the desired motion naturally. You see, your body adapts itself to its needs, so instead of stretching to become more flexible stop working out so rigidly! Even worse, if you would stop stretching, you would loose all the gained flexibility because the body&#xA;adapts itself to the lack of stretch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To understand this, one must understand the way your muscles are built up. Your muscle consist of actin and myosin, which glide into one another during a contraction. &#xA;These two parts optimize their length and overlap to get the highest force output. So if you start stretching your muscle, you require your muscle to adapt to retain an optimal overlap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xBczD.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect you want to stretch after a workout because your muscles are still feeling contracted and by 'stretching' them, they'll be more relaxed. You know, yoga-style!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PoZlE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if I show you this image and tell you that the mysion 'arms' require ATP (energy!) to release the actin, else they'd be holding on like rigor mortis. &#xA;Furthermore, we just saw that your muscles probably have a lot of overlap and crossbridges, but you just depleted your energy resources, because you had an intensive workout.&#xA;Do you think you're muscle will respond well to stretching?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, &lt;strong&gt;I'd recommend you do a proper cooling-down&lt;/strong&gt;, give your muscles time to get rid of lactate (which is a great resource of energy, when you burn it aerobically) and more importantly give it time to relax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a counterpoint, &lt;a href=&quot;https://fitness.stackexchange.com/a/515/8&quot;&gt;have a look at Kronos his answer at this question on Fitness.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.futevolei.com.br/fisio2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stretching and injury prevention, An obscure relationship&lt;/a&gt;. Witvrouw, E; Mahieu, N; Danneels, L; McNair, P. Sports Med 2004; 34(7): 443-449&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thiagovilelalemos.com.br/downloads/esportiva/Does%20Stretching%20Improve%20Performance%20-%20sys%20review.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does stretching improve performance?&lt;/a&gt; A systematic and critical review of the literature. Shrier, I; Clin J Sport Med 2004; 14:267-273&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/medicine/bmj/sportsmedicine/pdfs/ch3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does stretching help prevent injuries? Shrier, I.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="209" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:51.697" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T14:14:16.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7663" CreationDate="2012-03-04T08:45:16.133" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The recommendations in this area vary, and the science they are based upon seems to be not entire resolved, but there's enough evidence to give practical recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Australasian Cochrane Centre published an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alfred.org.au/Assets/Files/Burns%20Cooling%20Summary.pdf&quot;&gt;Evidence Summary for the Early Cooling of Burns&lt;/a&gt; where they looked at a number of studies in 2009, including a systematic review that looked at 42 more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They concluded (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Immediate cooling of burns is effective and safe at reducing the severity of tissue damage and &#xA;  relieving pain. &lt;strong&gt;Optimal duration and temperature of cooling is unclear&lt;/strong&gt;, although animal studies &#xA;  have suggested that burns should be cooled immediately in running tap water &lt;strong&gt;for at least 20 minutes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile in 2010, another study looked at the existing research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cuttle L &amp;amp; Kimble R, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awma.com.au/journal/library/1801_01.pdf&quot;&gt;First aid treatment of burn injuries&lt;/a&gt;, Wound Practice and Research 6 Volume 18 Number 1 – February 2010&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They discuss the evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Previously there has been a lot of conflicting information in &#xA;  the literature regarding the optimal duration and delay of &#xA;  first aid treatment. As first aid treatment is often applied only &#xA;  to relieve pain, the preferred duration of the treatment may &#xA;  be until no pain is felt on removal of the cold – which &#xA;  can be for up to several days! However, researchers have &#xA;  recommended durations of 30 minutes, 2 hours, or 30 &#xA;  minutes – 3 hours. Recently, Bartlett et al found that tap water &#xA;  treatment of porcine burns for 20 minutes showed statistically &#xA;  less histological damage 9 days post-burn compared to 5, 10 &#xA;  and 30 minutes duration. This is in agreement with our &#xA;  own studies which showed that wound re-epithelialisation &#xA;  was faster (p=0.05) after 20 minutes of first aid treatment &#xA;  compared to untreated controls. Interestingly, for both &#xA;  studies, longer durations of first aid treatment (30 minutes &#xA;  or 1 hour) did not provide any further benefit, perhaps &#xA;  indicating that first aid should only be applied for 20 minutes &#xA;  and if pain persists after this time, other analgesics such as &#xA;  paracetamol should be administered&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, they conclude with an updated set of recommendations for the public, which include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Treatment:&lt;/em&gt; Cold running water&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Temperature:&lt;/em&gt; Tap water (2-15°C)&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Duration:&lt;/em&gt; 20 minutes is best, 10 minutes - 1 hour is acceptable&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Delay:&lt;/em&gt; Immediate is best, 1-3 hours is acceptable&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is a summary, there is also important advice provided about when to seek emergency treatment.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-03-04T08:45:16.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8094" CreationDate="2012-03-04T11:04:17.100" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You mentioned in your comment that the sperm is healthier. If anything, ejaculation prior to sex will get rid of the old sperm and give the newer, healthier sperm more of a chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, the health of a sperm cell really doesn't matter. First thing, all the sperm does is transfer the DNA to the egg, nothing else. DNA doesn't change for a single cell over time. Atleast, not with any significant probability--mutations are possible but rare--if there was a mutation it is far more likely to have come from a faulty meiosis than 'aging' of a sperm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only difference that waiting does make is that it increases the chance of conception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refs: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2054949&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2054949&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6035" LastEditorUserId="6035" LastEditDate="2012-03-05T01:14:43.373" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T01:14:43.373" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8315" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-04T19:16:06.273" Score="6" ViewCount="1567" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1051963/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Season 1, Episode 3 of the television series &quot;True Blood&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://allbyourselves.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/true-blood-s1e3-script/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;following conversation&lt;/a&gt; takes place:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sookie: Marthaville’s gettin’ a Starbucks.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Gran: I cannot for the life of me see why anybody would spend $3 on a cup of coffee with too much milk.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Sookie: Arlene told me, that people are less calcium-deficient than they used to be because of all the fancy coffee they drink nowadays.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Gran: You know, I never thought of that, but it does make sense.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess, this claim is part based on the fact that a Grande Latte has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/espresso/caffe-latte&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;40% of your RDA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that the change in diet to milky coffee has reduced calcium deficiency in americans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5005" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T13:26:07.093" LastActivityDate="2019-12-22T18:03:25.483" Title="Is Starbucks (et al) responsible for reduced calcium deficiencies" Tags="|nutrition|coffee|milk|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8316" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-05T02:18:25.227" Score="12" ViewCount="3135" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4650/natural-family-planning-and-divorce-rates&quot;&gt;Natural family planning and divorce rates&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine attended Catholic Mass today and shared that the homily was entirely about contraception. From her summary, the gist was that the priest suggested that artificial contraception has directly contributed to increases in divorce and infidelity among married couples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To back this up, here's some other similar statements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0002.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Janet Smith, Catholic Education Resource Center&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why did the divorce rate double between the 1960s and the 1970s? ... &lt;strong&gt;If 80 percent of women are using some form of contraception, that makes a lot of women and a lot of men think that there is no problem with having sex with someone who is married to someone else.&lt;/strong&gt; Many people had multiple sexual partners before they married. They don't see any particular reason to stop after they get married. Because, you see, sex was no big deal before they got married. There's no particular reason to think that it's a big deal after marriage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catholic-pages.com/morality/contraception.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Catholic-Pages&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The widespread problem of divorce in modern society can be laid fairly and squarely at the feet of the contraceptive mentality&lt;/strong&gt; and the warped view of self, sexuality and married love that it entails. Proof of this can be seen in the extremely low divorce rates among couples who do not use contraception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catholicsource.net/abcbible.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Catholic Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the evidence is clear that this is not the case. Even as early as four years after contraceptives were first tested, researchers found that marriages in which contraceptives were used were twice as likely to end in divorce than marriages in which there was no contraceptive use. (Grant MD, Ellen Sexual Chemistry: Understanding Our Hormones, The Pill, and HRT. Mandarin Paperbacks, London, 1994.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Artificial birth control also opened the door for an increase in pre-marital sex and adulterous relations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some great responses and issues addressed at the related question about NFP divorce rates above, however I'd like to focus specifically on the historical divorce and infidelity rates and ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have any studies focused on/attempted to specifically isolate whether or not contraceptives alone have &lt;em&gt;caused&lt;/em&gt; (in part or whole) these rate increases?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, has some study been able to conclude that, on average, some Persons A and B will divorce or be unfaithful in marriage in the presence of readily available contraceptives, but otherwise wouldn't have done so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-10-06T14:06:31.690" Title="Does contraception cause infidelity and/or divorce?" Tags="|catholic-church|contraception|marriage|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8317" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8319" CreationDate="2012-03-05T07:00:54.513" Score="8" ViewCount="10483" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-09-22/health/29953427_1_air-pollution-coil-chest-research-foundation&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; article makes the following assertion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smoke emitted from one mosquito repellant coil is equivalent to those of 100 cigarettes, thus causing harm to a large number of people in India...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth in the claims made by the above article ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2012-03-05T07:58:06.333" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T18:23:26.270" Title="Is the smoke from one mosquito coil equal to that of 100 cigarettes?" Tags="|entomology|toxicology|cigarettes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8318" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-04T14:55:23.893" Score="1" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5982/is-a-coin-toss-fair&quot;&gt;Is a coin toss fair?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We see countless probability problems dealing with 'biased coins'. I've also seen mentions that a biased coin is impossible (for coin flipping).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it impossible if weighting and small modifications in shape are allowed? The coin is being flipped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6035" OwnerDisplayName="Manishearth" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:25:45.223" Title="Biasing a coin: is it possible?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2012-03-05T08:06:23.840" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8317" CreationDate="2012-03-05T08:02:39.150" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, kind of.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The researcher quoted in that page is Sandeep Salvi, director of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crfindia.com&quot;&gt;Chest Research Foundation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was one of the authors of a paper that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crfindia.com/index.php?q=node/13&quot;&gt;was presented&lt;/a&gt; at the National Pulmonary Congress, 2004, Ahmedabad. (Note: I assume that means it was not peer-reviewed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brashier B, Jantikar A, Sewlikar S, Maganji M, Bal T, Salvi SS, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crfindia.com/index.php?q=node/15&quot;&gt;Effects of mosquito coil smoke inhalation in healthy and mild to moderate asthmatic subjects&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Burning mosquito coil (MC) releases various aromatic compounds like benzo pyrenes, benzo-fluoroethane and particulate matters. These chemicals have the potential to produce harmful effects on airways as demonstrated by histopathological changes in the airways of various animal models. &lt;strong&gt;It has been estimated that burning one MC over 8 hours produces particulate matter smoke (as measured as PM2.5) equivalent to around 100 cigarettes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, so there is an estimate that someone has made. Unfortunately, the page I have found has no references, so I can't be sure who made the estimate, but let me come back to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, anyway, 12 asthmatics and 12 healthy subjects were exposed to an hour of mosquito coils (twice each) and various lung functions were measured to see if there was any short-term effect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There conclusion was... not significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One-hour exposure to mosquito coil did not cause decrements in lung function parameters. There was [an apparent effect] but this did not reach statistical significance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They go on to say they will be trying with larger samples and longer exposure, but eight years later, there doesn't seem to be any results published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there's no significant evidence there of short-term effect on humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most likely source of the estimate would appear to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Liu W, Zhang J, Hashim JH, Jalaludin J, Hashim Z, Goldstein BD 2003. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/info%3adoi/10.1289/ehp.6286&quot;&gt;Mosquito Coil Emissions and Health Implications&lt;/a&gt;. Environ Health Perspect 111:1454-1460. doi:10.1289/ehp.6286&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their paper, they first talk about the known toxic effects of mosquito coils, including &quot;long-term exposure to mosquito coil smoke can induce asthma and persistent wheeze in children&quot;, as well as various symptoms in rat models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They went on study the smoke of six different brands of mosquito coils from two different countries (Malaysia and China). They looked for troublesome components, such as particulate&#xA;matter &amp;lt; 2.5 μm in diameter (PM2.5), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, aldehydes,&#xA;and ketones in &quot;realistic room conditions&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They generally found the levels of pollutant to be concerning, and the Malaysian brands were generally more polluting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The findings from the present study suggest that exposure to the smoke of mosquito coils similar to the tested ones can pose significant acute and chronic health risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They compared some of the elements to cigarette smoke:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;strong&gt;burning one mosquito coil would release the same&#xA;  amount of PM2.5 mass as burning 75–137 cigarettes. The emission of formaldehyde from burning&#xA;  one coil can be as high as that released from burning 51 cigarettes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without trying to diminish the risks, it is important to note that this is saying that &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of the components (PM2.5 and formaldehyde) in the mosquito coil smoke (inhaled over an 8 hour period) were as bad as &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of the components in a large number of cigarettes. There may be other compounds in cigarette smoke that also cause damage which are not found in mosquito coils.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-05T13:45:25.043" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T13:45:25.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8279" CreationDate="2012-03-05T09:38:01.547" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tricky question to answer because weather, what you experience at your house right now, is not really that same thing as climate, the patterns of global air and sea movements that bring weather.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So milder winters can be a possibility in certain locations, as they will be exposed to an overall warming of the entire atmosphere. But colder winters can be experienced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-cold-weather-intermediate.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-cold-weather-intermediate.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the mid 1970s, global temperatures have been warming at around 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade. However, weather imposes its own dramatic ups and downs over the long term trend. We expect to see record cold temperatures even during global warming. Nevertheless over the last decade, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows. This tendency towards hotter days is expected to increase as global warming continues into the 21st Century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/Global-Warming-Cold-Winters.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.skepticalscience.com/Global-Warming-Cold-Winters.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vladimir Petoukhov, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, has recently completed a study on the effect of climate change on winter. According to Petoukhov,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These anomalies could triple the probability of cold winter extremes in Europe and northern Asia. Recent severe winters like last year's or the one of 2005-06 do not conflict with the global warming picture, but rather supplement it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weather being a local response to climatic conditions means that you have to understand what has changed in the climatic patterns in your region. What are your local weather drivers? How have they changed since the 1970s?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, you could end up with some areas experiencing colder winters; due to greater moisture levels in the air, more precipitation of snow, greater heat loss at night due to clear skies, etc. Or you could have an area that will experience milder temps in winter due to warmer air currents, warmer oceans, localised heat island impacts, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further information you should investigate the weather and climate agencies publications for your area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5775" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T20:21:22.860" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8263" CreationDate="2012-03-05T10:07:51.477" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GM corn has the BT gene that allows lower use of pesticides due to increased or the RR gene that allows the use of glyphosate for weed control. Neither of these alterations have any impacts upon the production of sugars or proteins in the plant.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_maize&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_maize&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef130.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ca.uky.edu/entomology/entfacts/ef130.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem that can arise is from the pesticides that are now used on the crops and the timing of their application. These pesticides are known to harm mammals and if the dose is high enough can cause problems.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2793308/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2793308/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally though, because you are removing pests and weeds the plants tend to be healthier so they are less impacted by pathogens, thus better for consumption.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.962/news_detail.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.962/news_detail.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an issue with using corn as a feed supplement in animals though. Corn is not a complete food source and is generally low in protein, especially tryptophan. This means that a feed mix is required, not just straight corn meal. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/ansci/beef/as1238w.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/ansci/beef/as1238w.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue is that corn can cause Pellagra. This is due to the niacin and B12 being bound in the corn starches and not being released in normal digestion. Tryptophan is also low in corn and can cause Pellagra.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize#Pellagra&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize#Pellagra&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the problems often cited with GM corn are actually just problems with corn itself. Neither are harmful, if used correctly in a balanced diet, but pesticide residues are of concern. For more see this:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.0960-7412.2002.001607.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.0960-7412.2002.001607.x/full&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5775" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2013-08-23T10:28:48.600" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T10:28:48.600" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8292" CreationDate="2012-03-05T14:10:37.430" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that prostitution is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_among_animals&quot;&gt;also observed in animals&lt;/a&gt; - including some very closely related to humans - it seems likely that proto-humans were willing to exchange sexual favours for valuables. Whether this counts as prostitution is a matter of definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it might be possible to say that prostitution is the oldest &lt;em&gt;living&lt;/em&gt; profession in the Western World, but a full analysis of that proposition is hard, as it depends on 1) What counts as a profession (early hunters?) and did they pre-date prostitution (who knows?!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5961" LastActivityDate="2012-03-05T14:10:37.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8333" CreationDate="2012-03-05T21:38:21.330" Score="13" ViewCount="1422" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apple recently posted the results of an external analysis that suggested their business was responsible for supporting more than 500,000 jobs in the USA (though they only directly employ of the order of 50,000). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apple.com/about/job-creation/&quot;&gt;Apple Page here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The headline claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Throughout our history, Apple has created entirely new products — and entirely new industries — by focusing on innovation. As a result, we’ve created or supported more than 500,000 jobs for U.S. workers: from the engineer who helped invent the iPad to the delivery person who brings it to your door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the claim reasonable or are they exaggerating?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="15980" LastEditDate="2013-11-27T17:28:44.193" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T17:28:44.193" Title="Does Apple support half a million American jobs?" Tags="|economics|employment|apple-inc|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8316" CreationDate="2012-03-06T02:35:50.967" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The premise of this question is incorrect; there has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-19/living/divorce.rates.drop_1_divorce-rate-divorce-laws-marriage?_s=PM%3aLIVING&quot;&gt;no increase in divorce rates&lt;/a&gt; in recent years, and in fact they have been decreasing since 1996. (raw data &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/mardiv.htm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; if you want to look through it - but it's really raw, pdf table ew). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: oh right and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/08/31/amid-downturn-divorce-and-infidelity-decrease/&quot;&gt;infidelity has been basically flat.&lt;/a&gt; (that article is trying to say it's gone down, but honestly their numbers look like noise)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the other half of this question is sort of correct - there &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; been an increase in the usage of contraceptives over the last decade, as can be seen in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_23/sr23_029.pdf&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; document from the CDC (pdf page 26, internal numbering page 18).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, I doubt there's been any actual study done on whether or not divorce rates correlate positively with contraceptive use - the numbers just aren't there to even begin doing that. If anything, you would be looking for a study on whether or not contraceptive rates correlate &lt;em&gt;negatively&lt;/em&gt; with divorce rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastEditorUserId="5973" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T02:53:17.810" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T02:53:17.810" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6839" CreationDate="2012-03-06T03:48:22.393" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The system mentioned in article &lt;a href=&quot;http://warfare.ru/?linkid=2573&amp;amp;catid=329&quot;&gt;had existed in reality&lt;/a&gt; although there is no information on its real automatization level. The missile provides emergency command link and the command center is probably situated 3000ft under &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.viewzone.com/yamantau.html&quot;&gt;Yamantau mountain&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Current state of the Perimeter system is unknown. 15A11 missiles were decommissioned in 1995 under START-I treaty but strategic missile catalog published in 1998 (ISBN:5866560798) mentioned another command missile based on RT-2PM design. If the information is true then these may still be operational as of 2012. No other credible information on the system was published since then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6321" LastEditorUserId="6321" LastEditDate="2012-03-06T05:27:23.947" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T05:27:23.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8329" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8331" CreationDate="2012-03-06T12:14:21.520" Score="13" ViewCount="73780" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;At the beginning of the 2012, I predicted that we would see a number of false debunkings of the Mayan Calendar Apocalypse, which would depend on their own misunderstandings of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_Long_Count_calendar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar&lt;/a&gt;. I believe my prediction has already come true!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have now seen several viral claims that the cycling of the Mayan calendar has already happened, and that those who think it will be happening in December have forgotten to take into account leap days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: Facebook&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, the world's going to end December 21st, 2012, huh....?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since Ceasar introduced leap years in 45BC, there have been 515 leap years including this year(so im told). Without those extra days, the date would be the 2nd of September, 2013. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the Mayan Calendar didn't use leap years, and today's date (without leap years) is the 2nd of the 9th 2013, the apocalypse (21st of the 12th 2012) was 9 months ago... So congratulations on surviving &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;^_^&#xA;  God I love maths&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: Via facebook.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3NXFW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://presscore.ca/2011/?p=4984&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PressCore blog&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leap Year has resulted in a miscalculation wherein the Mayan calendar’s December 21, 2012 end date actually ends this year, in 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have the people who have calculated the mapping of the end of the Long Count cycle to occur on December 21st, 2012 failed to take into account leap days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T03:55:25.797" Title="Have leap days confused the calculated date for the &quot;end of the Mayan calendar&quot;?" Tags="|extinction-event|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8329" CreationDate="2012-03-06T15:09:54.200" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mayan long count calendar is &lt;strong&gt;based on days, not solar cycles.&lt;/strong&gt;.  Because of that, leap days are irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Mayan calendar basics&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The long count calendar is based on a series of 5 numbers each representing a number of the previous period — usually 20, except for the &lt;em&gt;tun&lt;/em&gt; period:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8nNrV.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesoamerican_Long_Count_calendar#Long_Count_periods&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;image from Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2012&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2012 Phenomenon&lt;/a&gt; is based on the idea that Mayans believed their current world (the fourth world) ended after 13 &lt;em&gt;b'ak'tuns&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Popol Vuh describes the gods first creating three failed worlds, followed by a successful fourth world in which humanity was placed. In the Maya Long Count, the previous world ended after 13 b'ak'tuns, or roughly 5,125 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;0.0.0.0.0 is the beginning of the first b'ak'tun and 12.19.19.17.19 is the last day of the thirteenth b'ak'tun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full size of 13 b'ak'tuns — thirteen multiplied by 144,000 days — is 1,872,000. (This is 5128.8 periods of 365 days, so you can already see that the information cited by Wikipedia for a rough translation of solar years has taken leap days into account.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To use this number of days to figure out the &amp;quot;end date&amp;quot;, in other words, the day that corresponds to 12.19.19.17.19, all we need to know is what &lt;em&gt;equivalent&lt;/em&gt; Gregorian calendar date corresponds to the Mayan date 0.0.0.0.0.  And to know if December 21, 2012 is that date, all we need to do is figure out 1,872,000 days from the start date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that, we turn to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.levity.com/eschaton/Why2012.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this well-sourced article by John Major Jenkins&lt;/a&gt;, a student of Mayan time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how are we to relate this to a time frame we can understand? How does this Long Count relate to our Gregorian calendar? This problem of correlating Mayan time with &amp;quot;western&amp;quot; time has occupied Mayan scholars since the beginning. The standard question to answer became: what does 0.0.0.0.0 (the Long Count &amp;quot;beginning&amp;quot; point) equal in the Gregorian calendar? When this question is answered, archeological inscriptions can be put into their proper historical context and the end date of the 13-baktun cycle can be calculated. After years of considering data from varied fields such as astronomy, ethnography, archeology and iconography, &lt;strong&gt;J. Eric S. Thompson determined that 0.0.0.0.0 correponded to the Julian date 584283, which equals August 11th, 3114 B.C. in our Gregorian calendar.&lt;/strong&gt; This means that the end date of 13.0.0.0.0, some 5125 years later, is December 21st, 2012 A.D.1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis added).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This same start date was also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon#Aveni2009&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cited in Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming, of course, that the start date is correct, there is no way a lack of leap days in the Mayan calendar could confuse this at all.  Leap days must be taken into consideration in the conversion, but historians have known to do that since the leap day was invented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1,872,000 days since August 11, 3114 B.C. is a calculation that can be made safely with the calendar information we have.  The best calculator I could find was &lt;a href=&quot;http://keisan.casio.com/has10/SpecExec.cgi&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, in which you can enter the dates and come up with a close (too close for leap days to affect it) but not exact result of 1,872,026.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csgnetwork.com/juliandaydate.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this calculator&lt;/a&gt; which comes up with the same calculation using August 11, 3114 B.C., but if you enter the Julian date 584283, you get the exact period of 1,872,000 days until December 21, 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there you have it — yes, the Mayan calendar did not include leap days.  But, it didn't need to, since they didn't have anything to do with solar years.  In fact, as you can see, the closest equivalent Mayan period to a solar year, a &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tun&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, is only 360 days — already five days off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1073" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T16:45:20.773" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7167" CreationDate="2012-03-06T15:48:45.087" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I've been trying to answer some of the old, highly-voted unanswered questions recently - which brings me to this attempt to answer one of my own. This has been one of the less fun topics to research; some of the concepts below are distasteful (but not explicit.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Depends What 'Normal' Means&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It turns out I accidentally hit on a key issue in the question title &quot;Do rapists think rape is normal?&quot;; I need to elaborate on a subtle distinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One issue is whether or not someone sees rape as a common or typical action for men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue is whether or not someone sees rapists as &quot;normal&quot; - e.g. agrees more with the statement that `Rapists are &quot;normal&quot; men.' than the statement `All rapists are mentally sick.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though I do not show whether or not rapists see rape as more &lt;em&gt;common&lt;/em&gt; than &quot;regular&quot; people, I will show below that they do NOT see rape as more &lt;em&gt;normal&lt;/em&gt; than &quot;regular&quot; people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that it is a reasonable leap to think if they don't see rape as any more normal, they won't think that typical men are rapists, and thus this is counter-evidence for the claim made in the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Evidence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Feild: Survey of 20 rapists and 1174 non-rapists&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key study in this area is by Feild:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hubert S. Feild, &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/36/2/156/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Attitudes Toward Rape: A Comparative Analysis of Police, Rapists, Crisis Counselors, and Citizens&lt;/a&gt; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 36(2), Feb 1978, 156-179. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.36.2.156&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feild conducted surveys of many men (n=528), many women (n=528), many police officers (n=258), many female counsellors from a rape crisis centre (n=118) and a small number convicted rapists in a mental hospital (n=20).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This was back in 1978. Society's opinions about women and rape have changed a lot in the past 30-odd years [Ref: Segal and Stermac (1985), that I will introduce further below]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The surveys asked a number of questions about their attitude to rape, and they were processed to give each person a score along a number of axes. That is, each person was given a rating according to a number of factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Woman's Responsibility in Rape Prevention;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sex as Motivation for Rape&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Severe Punishment for Rape&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Victim Precipitation of Rape&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Normality of Rapists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Power as Motivation for Rape&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Favorable Perception of a Woman After Rape&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Resistance as Woman's Role During Rape&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Factor 5 is the relevant factor for this discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the variability in Factor 5 was partially accounted for by a number of determinants: Race (classified as Black or White), Marital Status, Knowledge about Rape all had a correlated with opinions on Factor 5. For some of the subgroups, some other variables were correlated: For regular Men and Women, their attitude toward women also played a part on their opinion on Factor 5. For police officers, their years of education played a part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the critical question of whether the grouping of the respondents into Citizens, Rapists, Police officers and Counsellors, it turns out Factor 5 is only statistically significantly different for the counsellors. That is, &lt;strong&gt;there was not a significant difference between citizens, rapists and police officers when it came to their attitudes about the normality of rape.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z7Gy1.png&quot; alt=&quot;Table from the Feild study&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is the key table from the study. It is tricky to understand. The important point to notice is that the numbers against &quot;Normality of Rapists&quot; under Citizens and under Rapists both have the same &lt;sup&gt;a&lt;/sup&gt; super&amp;shy;script, indicating they are&lt;/em&gt; not &lt;em&gt;significantly different (at p &amp;lt; 0.05).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarising the weaknesses of this evidence: it's about &quot;normality&quot; not frequency, it is from 1978, the sample size of rapists isn't huge and all the rapists were drawn from a mental hospital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, it shows the attitudes of regular people and rapists were not significantly different when it came to the normality of rapists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Segal and Stermac: Survey of 40 rapists, 40 other offenders and 40 non-rapists&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'm veering a little off-topic here, but I think this addresses some of the questions about the above study.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a response to the Feild study, in 1984 Segal and Stermac attempted to address some of its shortcomings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zindel V. Segal and Lana Stermac, &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1986-24801-001&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Measure of Rapists’ Attitudes Towards Women&lt;/a&gt; International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, Vol 7(3-4), 1984, 437-440. doi: 10.1016/0160-2527(84)90023-2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They increased the sample size to 40 rapists - importantly, they sampled 20 from a mental institution and 20 from a regular prison. They also only took respondents with an above average IQ (the reason for this is unclear).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To control for institutionalisation, they compared them against 40 non-sex offenders who had been imprisoned. They also compared to 40 citizens, but they were careful to match against equivalent men at the same low socio-economic status and intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They used a standard &quot;Attitudes to Women&quot; questionnaire. As an aside, they noticed that the community standards for the attitudes for women had changed a lot (become more liberal) since the questionnaire had been first measured, a decade earlier in 1973.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were surprised by the results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrary to predictions made, rapists at both centres did not differ from other offenders or from community based males, in their perceptions of women’s roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The findings reported are also consistent with research indicating little difference between rapists and&#xA;  other low SES men on measures of social competence (Segal &amp;amp; Marshall, 1985; Stermac &amp;amp; Quinsey, in press). In fact, in the Segal and Marshall study, only high SES men differed significantly from rapists and low SES controls in their attitudes&#xA;  towards women and on other indices of heterosexual social skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this study has strayed even further from the original question. It is asking about attitudes to women, not if rape is normal or if rape is common. However, it is important because it supports the view that rapists do not have a vastly different attitudes to their non-sex-offending peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Feelgood et al: Survey of 25 rapists, 36 child molesters and 25 violent offenders&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another survey looking at the attitudes, coping skills and cognitive distortions of rapists was examined as part of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://researchoutput.csu.edu.au/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&amp;amp;object_id=5404&amp;amp;local_base=GEN01-CSU01&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Masters dissertation&lt;/a&gt; by Steven Feelgood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steven Feelgood, Franca Cortoni, Anthony Thompson, Sexual coping, general coping and cognitive distortions in incarcerated rapists and child molesters,Journal of Sexual Aggression, Vol. 11, Iss. 2, 2007, DOI:10.1080/13552600500073657&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rapists did not report more support for rape-supportive distortions than the violent offender comparison group. [...]&#xA;  Evaluation of these comparisons was aided by effect sizes. The effect sizes reveal that there may indeed be differences between rapists and the comparison group with respect to cognitive distortions and sexual coping. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, rapists did not have strongly different views to their non-sex-offender peers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this isn't a knock-down argument, it is strong evidence against the claim. In study after study, rapists do not have attitudes to rape that differ from similar control groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence certainly isn't as clear cut in the other direction (&quot;it comes out again and again&quot;) as the original claimant would suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-14T13:16:58.100" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T13:16:58.100" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8326" CreationDate="2012-03-06T15:58:19.630" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short version:&lt;/strong&gt; Apple appears to have used estimates of economic benefits that favour itself, but which aren't outside the plausible range. Taken with its &quot;created or supported&quot; claim that makes it not too inaccurate, as marketing releases go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of articles analyzing this statement by Apple. Three good ones are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57389608-17/are-apple-products-really-fueling-the-u.s-job-market-eh-maybe/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cnet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/technology/apple-study-on-job-creation-spurs-an-economic-debate.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/apple-job-creation_n_1322068.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consensus from the articles is that Apple isn't entirely responsible for 500,000 jobs. It's an economic calculation, with some standard, but disputable, factors thrown in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A number of companies, including Microsoft, have commissioned similar research aiming to tally up such indirect employment by suppliers and other partners. The use of “job multipliers” has become common practice, sometimes by businesses lobbying for tax breaks from local and state governments.But the calculations of such multipliers are often fiercely debated both in economic and political terms. For instance, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbo.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Congressional Budget Office&lt;/a&gt;, which calculated the impact of the 2009 federal stimulus on jobs, has set estimates that vary between as few as 1.6 million jobs and as many as 8.4 million jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Apple isn't actually claiming that all those jobs would vanish without it. It specifically says &quot;created or supported&quot; that many jobs. &quot;Supported&quot; means the job wouldn't go away of Apple were to vanish tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-07-23T15:48:57.233" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T15:48:57.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8335" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8336" CreationDate="2012-03-06T22:05:37.770" Score="9" ViewCount="1201" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo_biloba#In_memory_enhancement&quot;&gt;Ginkgo Biloba&lt;/a&gt; improves your memory, is this true?  If it is true, what kind of memory does it improve?  Long term or short term?  Auditory, Visual or Spacial memory? Does it effect the Hippocampus in some way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5137" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T00:36:17.917" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T00:36:17.917" Title="Does Ginkgo Biloba improve your memory?" Tags="|nutritional-supplements|memory|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8335" CreationDate="2012-03-06T23:40:27.877" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In short,&lt;/strong&gt; no, Ginkgo bilboa has no particular effect on memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo_biloba&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ginkgo biloba&lt;/a&gt; is a&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;unique species of tree with no close living relatives. The tree is widely cultivated and introduced, since an early period in human history, and has various uses as a food and traditional medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LOVLg.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Ginkgo biloba&quot; /&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/smohundro/2948036805/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The U.S. based &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nih.gov/about/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Institute of Health&lt;/a&gt; conducted a &lt;a href=&quot;http://nccam.nih.gov/research/results/gems&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;vast randomised, double-blind study on the efficacy and effects of Ginkgo biloba&lt;/a&gt; over various conditions, including its effect on memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://nccam.nih.gov/research/results/spotlight/20091229.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;results on cognitive decline&lt;/a&gt; are quite clear cut (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the herb Ginkgo biloba is widely marketed and used to improve cognitive health in aging, adequate scientific evidence of its effect on long-term cognitive functioning has been lacking. In a recent study, NCCAM-funded researchers analyzed data from the Ginkgo Evaluation of Memory (GEM) study to determine ginkgo’s effect on cognitive health in older adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The GEM study—the largest of its kind to date—was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial of 3,069 community-dwelling adults aged 72 to 96, conducted in multiple academic medical centers in the United States between 2000 and 2008. The median followup time was 6.1 years. Participants, who had normal cognition or mild cognitive impairment when they entered the study, received 120 mg of ginkgo or an identical-appearing placebo twice daily, and underwent a variety of cognitive tests over the course of the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Compared with placebo, ginkgo did not lessen cognitive decline. Researchers found no evidence of an effect on cognitive decline in general, or on memory, attention, visual-spatial construction, language, or executive functions.&lt;/strong&gt; There were no differences by age, sex, race, education, or baseline cognitive status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ginkgo_biloba#In_memory_enhancement&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to the Ginkgo bilboa Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;, there has been some controversy. However, &lt;em&gt;when two experiments have the same methodology (randomised, double blind), then size tends to be a good predictor of correctness&lt;/em&gt;, and this leaves the NIH experiment as the most valuable on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/about-us&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cochrane Collaboration&lt;/a&gt; also &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD003120/there-is-no-convincing-evidence-that-ginkgo-biloba-is-efficacious-for-dementia-and-cognitive-impairment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reviewed prior experiments and found no effects&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results from the more recent trials showed inconsistent results for cognition, activities of daily living, mood, depression and carer burden. Of the four most recent trials to report results three found no difference between Ginkgo biloba and placebo, and one reported very large treatment effects in favour of Ginkgo biloba.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no significant differences between Ginkgo biloba and placebo in the proportion of participants experiencing adverse events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A subgroup analysis including only patients diagnosed with Alzhiemer's disease (925 patients from nine trials) also showed no consistent pattern of any benefit associated with Ginkgo biloba.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-06T23:40:27.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8338" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8345" CreationDate="2012-03-07T00:37:45.683" Score="15" ViewCount="3555" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conventional wisdom and tips in magazines often state that you shouldn't buy cheap sunglasses because they don't protect well against UV rays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two claims in one here, I am skeptical about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do cheap sunglasses (with UV protection notice on them) really offer significantly worse protection?&lt;/strong&gt; I am skeptical because UV coating or just some materials that do not pass UV light through aren't necessarily expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How harmful is the UV light that reaches the eyes?&lt;/strong&gt; It is always suggested that the answer is 'very harmful', but that does not need to be the case. Reasons to be skeptical: people don't wear clear glasses with UV protection in the winter, so the significance here is the difference of amount of UV light being received with sunglasses on and off (due to wider open irises). Another point is, how long do you need to wear sunglasses on in the sun, for this difference to have real measurable impact on your eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1366" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-28T03:30:16.267" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T08:33:57.127" Title="Are cheap sunglasses bad for your eyes?" Tags="|environmental-health|ophthalmology|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17671" CreationDate="2012-03-07T00:54:22.063" Score="3" ViewCount="780" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the video &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;v=Iim9tfy0CtY#!&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PETA: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals&lt;/a&gt;, at approximately 06:12, the woman says that there is/was a dog that was trained to have memorized 1400 names of toys. Its master would call out the name of the toy, and the dog would bring the toy from the adjacent room. Is this true/possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T00:43:13.083" Title="Can a dog remember 1400 names of toys?" Tags="|zoology|memory|dogs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8338" CreationDate="2012-03-07T03:06:03.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hl-vs/iyh-vsv/prod/glasses-lunettes-eng.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This Health Canada page&lt;/a&gt; says, &quot;For most people, an inexpensive pair of sunglasses will do the job&quot; and &quot;Look for a label that lists the type and amount of protection&quot; (with details on how much protection to expect).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It also says, &quot;Sensitivity to ultraviolet radiation varies from one person to the next&quot;, and &quot;Some scientists believe that routine exposure to blue light over many years may age the retina and increase the risk of blindness in some people over the age of sixty&quot;, and more.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T04:32:43.023" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T04:32:43.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8338" CreationDate="2012-03-07T08:15:34.643" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Australia, there is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.productsafety.gov.au/products/clothing-accessories/fashion-accessories/sunglasses-fashion-spectacles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mandatory standard for  the labelling of sunglasses&lt;/a&gt; to help the consumer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2003, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), a consumer watchdog issued a Regulation Impact Statement about the standard. Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.productsafety.gov.au/system/files/Supplier%20guide%20-%20Sunglasses%20and%20fashion%20spectacles_0.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;historical copy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the document, they discuss the risks of poor-quality sunglasses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some are irrelevant to your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Coloured sunglasses can reduce the ability to see traffic light signals&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Sunglasses that are too dark are unsafe for driving&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Sunglasses should not be made of flammable materials&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Sunglasses should be robust enough to minimise the risk of eye injury&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some are related:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solar ultraviolet light causes cataracts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long term exposure to solar ultra violet radiation is a risk factor for cataracts, a very common eye disorder that results in loss of vision. The prevalence of significant cataracts is 25 per cent in people aged 65-74 and over 40 per cent in those aged more than 75 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cataract surgery imposes a very significant annual cost on the community. Over 120 000 cataract operations are performed in Australia each year. Australia’s cataract surgery rate is 6 300 per million, which is higher than the USA and the UK. About 0.3 per cent of the population suffers from blindness due to cataracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visible light poses little hazard to the eyes at the levels commonly encountered, although long term exposure to short wavelength (blue) light has been implicated in the development of age related macular degeneration. Sunglasses are principally used to reduce glare, which is caused by high levels of visible light or by light in inappropriate places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Infra-red radiation has wavelengths longer than visible light, and poses little hazard to the eye, as the amount reaching the eye under normal conditions is low. Protection against infra-red radiation is mainly required by people working in industries in which they receive a high exposure, such as people working with molten metals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultraviolet radiation has wavelengths shorter than visible light. Exposure to high levels of environmental ultraviolet radiation is common in Australia. In addition to the well known association between ultraviolet exposure and melanoma, chronic exposure to ultraviolet radiation has been implicated in serious eye disorders including cataract, pterygium and age related macular degeneration. Acute exposure to intense ultraviolet radiation can produce photokeratoconjunctivitis (sometimes known as snow blindness).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also talks about &amp;quot;Hazards associated with dimension and strength of frames&amp;quot; - i.e. that if the lenses are too small, the protection will be insufficient no matter what the filtering it performs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it also discusses price, and shows expensive sunglasses may be poor, and cheap sunglasses may be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Price is not an assurance of safety&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consumers cannot rely on price as an indicator of quality. Past enforcement experience shows that some very high priced sunglasses do not necessarily conform to the Australian Standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Price is not really an indication of compliance and it has been found that many cheaper priced sunglasses do comply with the standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-04-19T08:33:57.127" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8346" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8354" CreationDate="2012-03-07T12:27:10.383" Score="11" ViewCount="1847" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ECHELON is a name used in global media and in popular culture to describe a signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis network operated on behalf of the five signatory states to the UK–USA Security Agreement (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, known as AUSCANNZUKUS or Five Eyes). It has also been described as the only software system which controls the download and dissemination of the intercept of commercial satellite trunk communications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_%28signals_intelligence%29&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence of Echelon existence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3518" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-21T21:46:26.943" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T14:38:24.620" Title="Does Echelon exist?" Tags="|united-states|politics|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8346" CreationDate="2012-03-07T20:54:28.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the Wikipedia link you gave:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a report published in 2001, the European Parliament stated that the&#xA;  term ECHELON is used in a number of contexts, but that the evidence&#xA;  presented indicates that it was the name for a signals intelligence&#xA;  collection system. The report concludes that, on the basis of&#xA;  information presented, ECHELON was capable of interception and content&#xA;  inspection of telephone calls, fax, e-mail and other data traffic&#xA;  globally through the interception of communication bearers including&#xA;  satellite transmission, public switched telephone networks (which once&#xA;  carried most Internet traffic) and microwave links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, NSA Watch has collated a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nsawatch.org/echelonfaq.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wide range of Echelon evidence&lt;/a&gt;, however you'd need to decide for yourself whether or not you trust NSA Watch more than Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/it-strategy/2000/06/29/echelon-the-evidence-2079850/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ZDNet provided an article on Echelon&lt;/a&gt;, but it is more speculative than evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cyber-rights.org/interception/echelon/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cyber-rights.org&lt;/a&gt; has probably the best link to Echelon data I can find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be pretty confident that a lot of the evidence will not make it to the public eye, as it is likely to be quite sensitive around intel sources, so we may need to take the European Parliament's word that the evidence does suggest it exists (or existed)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="619" LastEditDate="2012-03-07T21:25:42.997" LastActivityDate="2012-03-07T21:25:42.997" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8351" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-08T02:46:50.857" Score="13" ViewCount="6373" Body="&lt;p&gt;A rare earth processing plant's waste could contain the element Thorium, which is radioactive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've pored through plenty of articles and Thorium by virtue of its long half-life has a very low amount of radioactivity. Proponents of rare earth processing cite this as a reason for the safety of rare earth processing. However, opponents claim that Thorium's decay products (in particular, Radium) are very radioactive and thus pose a major health hazard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://rareearthinvestingnews.com/3121/thorium-rare-earth-liability-or-asset/&quot;&gt;example of this type of quote&lt;/a&gt; from Rare Earth Investing News:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The production of rare earth oxides comes attached with a major problem: radioactive waste. The mining of the rare earths and the processing of the various elements produces large amounts of thorium as a byproduct. &lt;strong&gt;This material is radioactive and dangerous to human health.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Dangers_and_biological_roles&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on Thorium&lt;/a&gt;, it was stated that the alpha radiation that natural Thorium (Th-232) emits cannot penetrate skin, or even a few inches of air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Natural thorium decays very slowly compared to many other radioactive materials, and the alpha radiation emitted cannot penetrate human skin meaning owning and handling small amounts of thorium, such as a gas mantle, is considered safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/pdf/lynas-report2011.pdf&quot;&gt;Page 35 of a report from the IAEA&lt;/a&gt; commissioned for a rare earth processing plant in Malaysia indicated that predicted levels of radiation exposure to the public is around 0.002 mSv/year. Contrasting this figure with other &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert#Yearly_dose_examples&quot;&gt;examples of yearly dose figures&lt;/a&gt; it appears to be very insignificant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, the 0.002 mSv/year figure appears to be the dosage from radiation emitted by the plant rather than the waste products. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/pdf/lynas-report2011.pdf&quot;&gt;Page 17 of the IAEA report&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The radionuclide concentrations in the flue gas desulphurization and neutralization underflow residues are expected to be very low -- similar to the average values in normal rocks and soil worldwide (and in Malaysia)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The main solid byproducts of this plant are flue gas desulphurization residue, neutralization underflow residue, and water leach purification residue.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In light of the conflicting claims, how dangerous would the radiation from a buried cache of waste product be to the surrounding community?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6343" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-05T09:18:32.327" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T19:03:43.710" Title="How dangerous are rare earth processing by-products?" Tags="|radiation|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8346" CreationDate="2012-03-08T07:25:54.980" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a official report from Europe parliament about the existence of echelon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.europarl.europa.eu/comparl/tempcom/echelon/pdf/rapport_echelon_en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.europarl.europa.eu/comparl/tempcom/echelon/pdf/rapport_echelon_en.pdf&lt;/a&gt; (11 July 2001)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;'Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes.' &#xA;  Juvenal (ca. 60 to 130 AD), Sat. 6, 347&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are also a lot of articles in German newspapers about this. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,133187,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,133187,00.html&lt;/a&gt; (05/11/2001)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For a long time the U.S. had denied the existence of Echelon. Officially, the issue is being debated only been just over a year. Former CIA Director James Woolsey, had at that time the existence of economic espionage system confirmed. Compared to Europe economic espionage will operate to protect the competitive chances of the U.S. economy over European competitors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20081231152057/http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/special/ech.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Spezial Echolon from Telepolis / heise&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Ed: &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20090103002355/http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/11/11586/1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;is this a better link?&lt;/a&gt;  It is for me.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cited article (dated 16/01/2002) says that Echelon became topical again post-9/11.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20100420072230/http://www.zeit.de/1999/40/199940.nsa_2_.xml?page=all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zeit-Online: Verrat unter Freunden&lt;/a&gt; (c) DIE ZEIT 1999&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Says that the NSA uses Echelon to get information used by spies to steal industrial secrets from Germany, etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An article in the guardian about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/01/menwith-hill-eavesdropping-base-expansion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;massive expansion of so called echelon system&lt;/a&gt; (01/03/2012).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6345" LastEditorUserId="6345" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T14:38:24.620" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T14:38:24.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8358" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8381" CreationDate="2012-03-08T14:54:15.527" Score="10" ViewCount="2127" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0087.html&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; article in the Catholic Education Resource Center claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the United States, the media and opinion makers have finally come to recognize that unwed pregnancy is a major source of social chaos in our culture. Every few weeks, some columnist in the newspaper or news journal writes an editorial bemoaning the problem of unwed parenthood. The evidence is overwhelming that children raised in households headed by a single parent are much more prone to sexual abuse, drug abuse, crime, and divorce, for instance. Their health is poorer; their academic achievement is poorer; their economic well-being is less than that of children who are raised in two-parent households. In every way, children raised in single parent households seem to have a few strikes against them as they forge their way through life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are children who grow up in single parent households more likely to be sexually abused than children who grew up in two-parent households? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-09T22:19:14.953" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T06:46:06.147" Title="Are children raised in single parent households more prone to sexual abuse?" Tags="|children|parenting|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8360" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-08T21:10:29.550" Score="8" ViewCount="1970" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it claimed that Coke helps prevent infections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/kerianne-payne-paynes-the-name-of-the-game-in-the-open-water-2331237.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Independent&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some open-water swimmers drink Coke after racing, both for the sugar&#xA;  rush and because it is said to neutralise harmful bacteria taken in&#xA;  with the water that has inevitably been swallowed over the 10km. Coke&#xA;  contains phosphoric acid, which works in the same way as the&#xA;  hydrochloric acid produced by the stomach to reduce risk of infection&#xA;  – though acid-resistant organisms such as cryptosporidium will not be&#xA;  killed by it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the phosphoric acid in Coke help with reducing risk of infection?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5005" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2013-05-17T08:14:35.593" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T08:14:35.593" Title="Coca-cola and open water swimming" Tags="|medical-science|biology|hygiene|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8365" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13590" CreationDate="2012-03-09T04:48:44.580" Score="6" ViewCount="636" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is claimed that CFL bulbs will last many times longer than incandescents; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_fluorescent_lamp#Lifespan&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; gives a figure from 8x to 15x. My own experience is that I'm replacing CFLs far more often than those figures would lead me to expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there factors that would shorten the life of the bulb significantly? Are there reasons to believe the manufacturers are being overly optimistic in their lifetime estimates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2424" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-09T10:39:29.027" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T21:43:30.220" Title="Do CFL light bulbs last &gt;8 times as long as incandescents?" Tags="|consumer-products|compact-fluorescent-lamps|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8367" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27209" CreationDate="2012-03-09T07:56:40.683" Score="11" ViewCount="4415" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read recently that magnetic storms cause: &quot;heart failure, heart attack, strokes and insomnia&quot;. This comes from major newspaper in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuania&quot;&gt;Lithuania&lt;/a&gt; (EU country), here is the link to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lrytas.lt/?data=20120309&amp;amp;id=akt09_a1120309&amp;amp;sk_id=99&amp;amp;view=2&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; (in Lithuanian). The evidence presented is increase in patients in hospitals. Naturally I'm skeptic about these claims, because this is the first time it became an issue and the solar flares and geomagnetic storms happen all the time. I've googled around, but did not find anything credible looking. So is there any scientific evidence, or collected data which either proves or disproves the hypothesis in the title?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2652" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T19:54:22.890" Title="Do solar flares and/or geomagnetic storms affect human health?" Tags="|medical-science|environmental-health|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5402" CreationDate="2012-03-09T09:34:21.997" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/12/07/3085614.htm&quot;&gt;Dr Karl&lt;/a&gt; commented on the original German experiments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or perhaps the story began with E.M. Scripture in 1897, who wrote the&#xA;  book, The New Psychology. He cited earlier German research: &quot;…a live&#xA;  frog can actually be boiled without a movement if the water is heated&#xA;  slowly enough; in one experiment the temperature was raised at the&#xA;  rate of 0.002°C per second, and the frog was found dead at the end of&#xA;  two hours without having moved.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well, the time of two hours works out to a temperature rise of 18°C.&#xA;  And, the numbers don't seem right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, while the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3041/if-you-turn-up-the-heat-on-a-frog-in-water-so-slowly-it-doesn-t-notice-will-it-eventually-boil-alive&quot;&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; is doubtful, it believes that the evidence could be better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Getting back to boiling, modern commentators agree the results claimed&#xA;  by the German researchers are preposterous. However, no one to my&#xA;  knowledge has attempted to precisely replicate the earlier work,&#xA;  possibly because they haven’t read the studies, which are written in&#xA;  (duh) German. In the experiments I’ve come across, researchers have&#xA;  placed frogs in water and heated it relatively quickly till the frogs&#xA;  jumped out, failing to recognize that the point of the exercise was to&#xA;  heat the water gradually. (Typically the gas gets turned up at a rate&#xA;  of two degrees per minute, about six times faster than Heinzmann did&#xA;  it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also claim that a similar experiment was done with crushing the feet of a frog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On a related subject, psychologist Edward Scripture in 1897 noted a&#xA;  grisly experiment where a frog’s foot was clamped in a screw press&#xA;  that was tightened at about a thousandth of an inch per minute.&#xA;  Result: the foot was completely crushed without the frog showing any&#xA;  distress. Somewhat worryingly, the author wondered what could be&#xA;  accomplished using humans rather than frogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2012-03-09T09:34:21.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8370" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8391" CreationDate="2012-03-09T13:30:38.580" Score="14" ViewCount="10993" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is old news in Finland by now, but I don't know if these products are well known elsewhere yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PcPlC.png&quot; alt=&quot;A white Valkee headset.&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.valkee.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Valkee&lt;/a&gt; headsets is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_light_therapy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;bright light therapy&lt;/a&gt; with a twist—the light is channeled through the ear canal, directly to the brain. It should come as no surprise that the products have been greeted with great skepticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is a bit surprising is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.valkee.com/uk/science.html#navigation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a nontrivial amount of scientific evidence&lt;/a&gt; is given to support the headsets' efficacy. The major claims made are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Valkee’s scientific program has discovered the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Human brain is sensitive to light, not just our eyes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Valkee is effective for seasonal affective disorder&lt;/strong&gt; (&amp;quot;winter blues&amp;quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Valkee affects body’s circadian rhythm, and therefore can be an effective tool for sleep problems and circadian rhythm disturbances such as jetlag&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm specifically targeting the second claim in this question. The evidence for the photosensitivity of the brain doesn't imply that pointing LEDs in your ear canal is beneficial in any way. And it seems the evidence for the benefits is significantly thinner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the evidence Valkee produce good enough, or is the methodology and the connections between the industry and the researchers problematic? Have the results been verified independently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="881" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T16:59:36.733" Title="Do Valkee bright light headsets reduce SAD symptoms?" Tags="|medical-science|neurology|light|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8373" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-09T15:31:55.727" Score="11" ViewCount="4259" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia summarises a view of some anti-pornography feminists:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[They] say that consumption of pornography is a cause of rape and other forms of violence against women. Robin Morgan summarizes this idea with her often-quoted statement, &amp;quot;Pornography is the theory, and rape is the practice.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anti-pornography feminists charge that pornography eroticizes the domination, humiliation, and coercion of women, and reinforces sexual and cultural attitudes that are complicit in rape and sexual harassment. MacKinnon argued that pornography leads to an increase in sexual violence against women through fostering rape myths. Such rape myths include the belief that women really want to be raped and that they mean yes when they say no. Additionally, according to MacKinnon, pornography desensitizes viewers to violence against women, and this leads to a progressive need to see more violence in order to become sexually aroused, an effect she claims is well documented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, blogger and essayist &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hamzatzortzis.com/?page_id=612&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hamza Andreas Tzortis&lt;/a&gt; argues that there is evidence that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pornography, both violent and non-violent, is a major causal factor for the occurrence of rape in modern society. Although there are multi-causal theories established for the crime of rape, empirical and social research evidence is overwhelming in affirming that pornography is a major facilitating and causal factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;56% of rapists implicated pornography in the commission of their offences,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;66% of rapists claimed they were incited by pornography,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/200904/does-pornography-cause-social-harm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article by Michael Castleman in Psychology Today&lt;/a&gt; refutes similar claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the evidence clearly shows that from a social welfare perspective, porn causes no measurable harm. In fact, as porn viewing has soared, rates of syphilis, gonorrhea, teen sex, teen births, divorce, and rape have all substantially declined. If Internet porn affects society, oddly enough, it looks beneficial. Perhaps mental health professionals should &lt;em&gt;encourage&lt;/em&gt; men to view it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a scientific consensus to the evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T19:41:13.287" Title="Does pornography &quot;entice sexual violence against women&quot;?" Tags="|pornography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2012-03-09T18:26:20.293" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Race is not &lt;em&gt;meaningless.&lt;/em&gt;  But it is not a very effective way of dividing people's genetic identity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that race has been shown to be a biologically meaningless concept was popularized by Richard Lewontin.  From the Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_genetics#Lewontin.27s_argument_and_criticism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Race and Genetics&lt;/a&gt; (which you may find more helpful than the general one on Race):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1972 Richard Lewontin performed a FST statistical analysis using 17 markers including blood group proteins. His results were that the majority of genetic differences between humans, 85.4%, were found within a population, 8.3% of genetic differences were found between populations within a race... Lewontin's argument led a number of authors publishing in the 1990s and 2000s to follow Lewontin's verdict that race is biologically a meaningless concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This analysis is sound, but the verdict that race is &quot;meaningless&quot; has since been shown to break down when more than one genetic variable is taken into account at once.  Simply put, if you plot traits in one-dimension, you can't find &quot;clusters&quot; that correspond to race.  However, if you plot it in two dimensions, racial differences are readily distinguishable.  Here's an illustration (lifted from Wikipedia):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r6cWd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Illustration of Lewontin&amp;#39;s Fallacy&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lewontin's argument is now frequently referred to as &quot;Lewontin's fallacy,&quot; following a famous &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewontin%27s_Fallacy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; by A.W.F. Edwards: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12879450&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Human genetic diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy&quot;, &lt;em&gt;Bioessays&lt;/em&gt; 25(8), Aug 2003, pp. 798-801&lt;/a&gt;, the abstract of which states in whole:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In popular articles that play down the genetical differences among human populations, it is often stated that about 85% of the total genetical variation is due to individual differences within populations and only 15% to differences between populations or ethnic groups. It has therefore been proposed that the division of Homo sapiens into these groups is not justified by the genetic data. This conclusion, due to R.C. Lewontin in 1972, is unwarranted because the argument ignores the fact that most of the information that distinguishes populations is hidden in the correlation structure of the data and not simply in the variation of the individual factors. The underlying logic, which was discussed in the early years of the last century, is here discussed using a simple genetical example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So race is not meaningless biologically.  Clear genetic distinctions exist.  For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1196372/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (freely available) study was able to use genetics identify some race groups such as Hispanics with almost perfect accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this does not imply that race is not meaningless for most practical/political purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: It is important to note that none of this detracts from the importance of Lewontin's original discovery: There really &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; more variation within populations than between populations.  &lt;strong&gt;Race really &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; not a very significant way of dividing people.  Considering people as individuals is much more effective,&lt;/strong&gt; and that's the direction medicine is moving as personalized sequencing costs plummet.  And all the other answers which highlight the continuum between races are spot-on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6272" LastEditorUserId="6272" LastEditDate="2013-03-01T15:57:15.983" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T15:57:15.983" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3085" CreationDate="2012-03-09T21:01:07.263" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You Should not Expect a Just-So Story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my eyes, the question reeks of &lt;em&gt;adaptationism&lt;/em&gt;: the attempt to explain what we see (cats and dogs, or otherwise) exclusively in terms of evolutionary adaptation, as if all creatures were evolutionary &quot;perfect.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humoring that, an adaptationist response would read as follows: Domestic pet warfare was emphatically &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the problem cat and dog brains evolved to solve.  They evolved in the wild: all dogs used to be wolves, and cats had every reason to fear them, and no reason to evolve a method of distinguishing good and bad dogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even that involves some speculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Darwin was the first to highlight the difficulty of understanding why a specific trait did or did not evolve (&lt;em&gt;Origin&lt;/em&gt;, ch. VII):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why, in other quarters of the world, various animals belonging to this same order have not acquired either an elongated neck or a proboscis, cannot be distinctly answered; but it is as unreasonable to expect a distinct answer to such a question, as why some event in the history of mankind did not occur in one country, whilst it did in another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The over-eager application of adaptationism -- making up evolutionary &quot;just so&quot; stories -- has been out of favor among evolutionary biologists since Stephen J. Gould famously criticized it in &lt;a href=&quot;http://bacteria.fciencias.unam.mx/Evolucion/Gouldlewontin.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme&quot;, &lt;em&gt;Proc. of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences,&lt;/em&gt; 205, 1979&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evolutionary psychology (which the question involves) has a bad reputation among biologists for being (in many cases) too adaptationist in its assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evolution is not guaranteed to produce optimal or general solutions to problems -- i.e. a cat that knows what it should and should not trust.  It cobbles together half-assed solutions to very specific problems -- a heuristic like &quot;be afraid of anything snake-like,&quot; perhaps -- and it can only use existing material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, organisms easily get stuck in myriad &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_optimum&quot;&gt;sub-optimal solutions&lt;/a&gt; along the way.  What might appear to us as an obvious way around a problem (&quot;Don't waste resources fighting friendly animals&quot;) may not at all be obvious to mutation and natural selection!  Ergo the famous caricature of evolution as a limited &quot;tinker&quot; rather than a brilliant &quot;engineer&quot; by François Jacob (Cf. &lt;a href=&quot;http://sws1.bu.edu/cschneid/BI309/Readings/Jacob.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;Evolution and Tinkering,&quot; &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;, vol. 196,  1977&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I should not that how often local optimums inhibit ideal adaptation is a very controversial topic in biology.  Adaptationism has a strong following today, due in part to the success of evolutionary game theory at using adaptationist assumptions to model animal behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6272" LastEditorUserId="6272" LastEditDate="2012-10-24T17:34:07.570" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T17:34:07.570" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-09T21:17:51.790" Score="13" ViewCount="962" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does installing an alarm system in your home have an effect on the number or results of burglaries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am about to buy a house with an alarm system installed, with a siren/flash light on the front wall. I hate it when I have to enter a house like that, because I fear forgetting or mistyping the code, or arming the system when I want to disarm it, or just being too late because my hands were full.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I would leave the system permanently disarmed, should I expect an increase in the number or effect of burglaries? I think the number will probably stay the same: thieves can't know the system is not armed (or even fake). Once they get in they might have more time to steal stuff, but I think the psychological effect of a burglary is the fact that they entered your house, not how long they stayed there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read that &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3686/do-car-alarms-provide-a-significant-reduction-in-automobile-theft&quot;&gt;car alarms don't make much of a difference&lt;/a&gt;, but what about house alarms? One indicator is the fact that insurance premiums here in Belgium don't seem to depend on an alarm being installed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1548" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T10:04:06.063" Title="Do home alarm systems reduce burglaries?" Tags="|criminology|security|household|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8377" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16337" CreationDate="2012-03-09T23:07:53.780" Score="16" ViewCount="24684" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a somewhat common belief that playing a tone at 528Hz can help to facilitate DNA repair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The frequency of 528 Hz supposedly has healing effects on DNA. The&#xA;  frequency seems to influence the water molecules that surround the DNA&#xA;  helix&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=XASgbACJaeEC&amp;amp;pg=PA171&amp;amp;dq=528hz%20dna&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=qUVhT77CIOPV0QHeleXWBw&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=528hz%20dna&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Souls of Distortion Awakening&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These six frequencies, and their related effects, are as follows: Do&#xA;  396 Hz Liberating guilt and fear Re 417 Hz Undoing situations and&#xA;  facilitating change Mi 528 Hz Transformation and miracles (DNA repair)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=aTW13vNNLKMC&amp;amp;pg=PA142&amp;amp;dq=528hz%20dna&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=qUVhT77CIOPV0QHeleXWBw&amp;amp;ved=0CDoQ6AEwAQ&quot;&gt;The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And then last night , in studying the DNA and its correlation to the&#xA;  Jacob's ladder of Genesis 28:12 , I learn that the sound frequency of&#xA;  528 hz is currently being used in the repair of damaged DNA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=N1rXY5JVXiAC&amp;amp;pg=PA80&amp;amp;dq=528hz%20dna&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=qUVhT77CIOPV0QHeleXWBw&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=528hz%20dna&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Identity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgMQOAWeVs0&quot;&gt;Youtube video&lt;/a&gt; also covers the claim in more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence for or against this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6362" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-17T12:37:44.750" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T01:27:58.013" Title="Does 528 Hz &quot;facilitate DNA repair&quot;?" Tags="|environmental-health|dna|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8171" CreationDate="2012-03-10T08:57:38.623" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a fairly standard MLM scam; though it uses recruiting an audience for advertisers to target, rather than application fees, to build the ponzi part of the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It proposes to be a new web portal. It has no evidence of any revenues. It's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alexa.com/topsites&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;competing&lt;/a&gt; against &lt;a href=&quot;http://palatnikfactor.com/2010/02/16/facebook-becomes-the-largest-portal-on-the-web/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;large incumbents&lt;/a&gt; in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is demonstrably not the first profit-sharing site on the internet: indeed, there's a whole top-level domain dedicated to profit sharing sites: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site:.coop&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;.coop&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposal is that this site will earn revenue. That needs a lot of people to use the portal as their home page. Let's look at the design skills of the site owner, by looking at his blog. This is the man who's going to out-compete Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL and a slew of other ISPs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is this the web page of a successful web portal designer?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WV7PL.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No. No it isn't.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T08:57:38.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8380" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8382" CreationDate="2012-03-10T10:15:28.183" Score="21" ViewCount="98232" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some westerners think that people from pre-modern cultures considered photography &quot;stealing somebody's soul&quot;. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/5912/in-which-cultural-regions-is-taking-pictures-of-people-considered-offensive#comment7541_5912&quot;&gt;Comment on Travel.SE&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thesunmagazine.org/archives/2472&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article by a photographer&lt;/a&gt;). Was this the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:01.993" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T17:59:50.950" Title="Did some cultures believe that photography can steal your soul?" Tags="|anthropology|photography|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8358" CreationDate="2012-03-10T10:50:08.427" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;After looking at a number of statistics that don't tackle your question directly, my impression is that being in a single-parent household might be correlated with an important factor of childhood sexual abuse, but that it is not a contributor on its own. Namely, a strong correlate of childhood sexual abuse is involvement of the biological father in raising the child. In families where the parents have a bad relationship (whether they are divorced or not), the most common perpetrators of sexual abuse - male relatives and and acquaintances - have a greater chance of committing sexual abuse. Very often the perpetrator is the mother's partner (whether he is living with them or not), who is not the biological father of the child. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(A few sources on the most common perpetrators: &lt;a href=&quot;http://meganslaw.ca.gov/facts.htm&quot;&gt;first bullet on the page&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unh.edu/ccrc/factsheet/pdf/CSA-FS20.pdf&quot;&gt;bottom of page 8&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.secasa.com.au/infosheet/infosheet_0005.pdf&quot;&gt;Finkelhor study mentioned in last bullet&lt;/a&gt;.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some relevant stastics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A pediatrics source &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.about.com/od/childabuse/a/05_abuse_stats.htm&quot;&gt;on general abuse and neglect&lt;/a&gt;, that shows that a child living with either a single mother or a mother and her live-in partner, is at greater risk of abuse and neglect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;living with their married biological parents places kids at the lowest&#xA;  risk for child abuse and neglect, while &lt;strong&gt;living with a single parent&#xA;  and a live-in partner increased the risk of abuse and neglect to more&#xA;  than eight times&lt;/strong&gt; that of other children&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.photius.com/feminocracy/facts_on_fatherless_kids.html&quot;&gt;A source on fatherless kids&lt;/a&gt; (which summarizes information from another source which I haven't read myself), that again shows that many victims of childhood sexual abuse are living with the mother's boyfriend or a stepfather:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sexual abuse. A study of 156 victims of child sexual abuse found that&#xA;  the majority of the children came from disrupted or single-parent&#xA;  homes; only 31 percent of the children lived with both biological&#xA;  parents. &lt;strong&gt;Although stepfamilies make up only about 10 percent of all&#xA;  families, 27 percent of the abused children lived with either a&#xA;  stepfather or the mother's boyfriend&lt;/strong&gt;. Source: Beverly Gomes-Schwartz,&#xA;  Jonathan Horowitz, and Albert P. Cardarelli, &quot;Child Sexual Abuse&#xA;  Victims and Their Treatment,&quot; U.S. Department of Justice, Office of&#xA;  Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A source that describes how pedophiles work, showing that they need to have ample &lt;a href=&quot;http://crime.about.com/od/sex/p/pedophile.htm&quot;&gt;time alone with the child&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Many times pedophiles will develop a close relationship with a single&#xA;  parent in order to get close to their children&lt;/strong&gt;. Once inside the home,&#xA;  they have many opportunities to manipulate the children -- using&#xA;  guilt, fear, and love to confuse the child. If the child's parent&#xA;  works, it offers the pedophile the private time needed to abuse the&#xA;  child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this source does mention single-parent families as likely targets, but if the pedophile becomes the live-in boyfriend in order to be closer to the child, I'm guessing it wouldn't count as a single-parent household anymore? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer whether children from single-parent households are more likely victims than children living with both parents, the numbers would need to be broken down differently from what they are in the sources I've found. It seems to me that this information isn't widely available because single-parenting on its own is not an important factor. But obviously, more data is needed to answer that question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5696" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T10:50:08.427" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8380" CreationDate="2012-03-10T11:58:08.560" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/pacific/thinking3.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;American Indians of the Pacific Northwest&lt;/strong&gt; - Library Of Congress&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/aipn:@field%28NUMBER%20@band%28wauaipn%20text%201541%29%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carolyn J. Marr&lt;/a&gt;] illustrates a &lt;strong&gt;change in Native Americans' attitudes towards photography from the late 19th to the early 20th century&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At first, many Native Americans were wary of having their photographs&#xA;taken and often refused. They believed that the process could steal a&#xA;person's soul and disrespected the spiritual world.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over time,&#xA;however, some Native Americans came to cherish photographs as links to&#xA;ancestors and even integrated them into important ceremonies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.riic.ca/the-guide/in-the-field/aboriginal-customs-and-protocols/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;RIIC - Aboriginal Customs and Protocols&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T11:58:08.560" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8383" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-10T13:39:59.917" Score="5" ViewCount="1442" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time ago I've been told that push-ups on your fingers (instead on fists) can affect eye-sight. The explanation was not clear (something about a lot of nerves in fingertips and pressure on them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to some teachers of Chinese systems, the fingertips should not be trained at all, as in Chinese medicine over-stimulation of the fingertips can affect one's eyesight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/95614-Push-ups-on-your-fingertips-Can-they-damage-you&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Blade forum - thread about doing push-ups on fingertips&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doing push-ups on tips of fingers stresses and damages meridian pathways (this is oriental medicine) and may damage health and generally speaking,eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.martialtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?3455-finger-pushups-and-knife-hand&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Martial Talk - thread about finger push-ups&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it at least partly true ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6181" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-08T13:50:19.350" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T14:01:25.657" Title="Does push-ups on finger tips affect eyesight negatively?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|ophthalmology|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7891" CreationDate="2012-03-10T17:23:32.290" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the &lt;em&gt;nunchaku&lt;/em&gt; (and not &lt;em&gt;nunchakua&lt;/em&gt;) (ヌンチャク) originated as a grain &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flail&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;flail&lt;/a&gt; (or in that case - a rice flail).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cn.bing.com/images/search?q=Threshing%20%20flails&amp;amp;qs=n&amp;amp;form=QBIR&amp;amp;pq=threshing%20flails&amp;amp;sc=0-12&amp;amp;sp=-1&amp;amp;sk=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Threshing  flails&lt;/a&gt; were used all over the world as farming tools for - well - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harvestofhistory.org/primary_source_detail.html?ps_id=144&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;threshing grain&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/k8ZuS.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, more or less at the same period there was some kind &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satsuma_Rebellion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;rebellion&lt;/a&gt;  under the Satsuma Daimyo that resulted both in a moratorium on edged weapons AND a campaign to confiscate arms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those campaigns were not so rare - and actually the peasants - and sometimes whole areas were forbidden from having weapons and / or military training. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the Asian martial arts evolved exactly for that reason - it was the only way for the people to have some kind of military - defense and training without provoking problems.&#xA;This is also the reason why many of the martial arts have parts masked like sorts of dancing OR religious praying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said - it seems that no one can pin-point the exact location or period of when the nunchaku was originated. The Japanese claim Okinawa, and the Chinese of course say it is from China (they also had flails like the rest of the world) - but the majority of historians do not debate about the flail but about the adaptation of the flail as a weapon for military training - and in that respect - the answer seems to be Okinawa and yes - the origin was an adaptation of the flail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6367" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2018-08-26T18:22:56.280" LastActivityDate="2018-08-26T18:22:56.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8387" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-03-10T18:59:00.717" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-03-10T18:59:00.717" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T18:59:00.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8388" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-03-10T18:59:00.717" Score="0" Body="Electricity is the science, engineering, technology and physical phenomena associated with the presence and flow of electric charges." OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-10T20:17:30.020" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T20:17:30.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8389" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-03-10T19:01:56.670" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-03-10T19:01:56.670" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T19:01:56.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8390" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-03-10T19:01:56.670" Score="0" Body="A computer is a programmable machine designed to automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations." OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-10T20:17:29.257" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T20:17:29.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8370" CreationDate="2012-03-10T19:31:41.553" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The evidence given at that link is not strong, for any of the claims you mention, but especially for SAD treatment. Refs 1 to 6 are about other forms of light therapy, not shining through the ears. Refs 7, 8 &amp;amp; 10 are posters, not from peer-reviewed journals. Refs 11 through 18 are about chemical (not light) treatments for Generalized Anxiety Disorder (not SAD). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leaves ref 9. It seems to be from a peer-reviewed journal (no idea how much weight experts assign to articles in Front Syst Neurosci, but it does seem to have a nonstandard review process described &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frontiersin.org/about/reviewsystem&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, making me suspicious) but it doesn't say what the citation would have you believe &quot;....suggesting that the brain tissue is inherently light-sensitive [9].&quot; It's actually an article about analysis techniques for fMRI scans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the posters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ref 7 is about ear-light and SAD, but: part 1 has no control group and only 13 patients, so the effect&#xA;could be completely placebo; part 2 splits the patients into 3&#xA;groups getting 3 different doses of light (varying 10-fold), but sees&#xA;no difference in efficacy between the doses, suggesting again placebo&#xA;effects (there is no zero-dose control);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ref 8 shows the distribution of a particular protein in the brain,&#xA;which is a long way from showing that the brain is light-sensitive,&#xA;let alone that this sensitivity is useful for treating SAD;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ref 10 claims only to show that there is a observable (via fMRI) effect on the brain from the light administration, not that this has any effect (positive or negative) on SAD. I don't know anything about fMRI or their analysis methods to know how convincing this data is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not mentioned on the Valkee page: The same authors have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877%2812%2900030-8/abstract&quot;&gt;another recent article&lt;/a&gt; in the journal Medical Hypotheses. It seems to be based on the same study as ref 7 part 1, with the same criticisms. Also note that Medical Hypotheses has a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_Hypotheses&quot;&gt;very colourful history&lt;/a&gt;, although Elsevier claims this has changed in the last couple of years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Timonen and Nissilä are shareholder/CEO of Valkee, and are authors of refs 7 through 10, and various of their co-authors have financial ties to Valkee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1305" LastActivityDate="2012-03-10T19:31:41.553" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8392" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8393" CreationDate="2012-03-10T20:36:41.980" Score="6" ViewCount="6484" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across this image on Facebook from the website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.learnsomethingeveryday.co.uk/2010/03/06&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Learn Something Every Day&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gNcmf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I searched for a reliable source, I came across several sites of the same kind (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omg-facts.com/view/Facts/1885&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;OMG Facts&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://realfacts.snapple.com/comebacklater/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snapple Real Facts&lt;/a&gt;,etc.) but never anything quite authoritative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-11T00:11:46.053" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T09:47:26.890" Title="Do koalas sleep 22 hours a day?" Tags="|sleep|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8392" CreationDate="2012-03-10T21:34:22.877" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, but they sleep a lot&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/E7z40m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Koala dozing&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Koala_dozing_nov08.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Koalas have an extremely slow metabolism because they are herbivores that eat eucalyptus exclusively. Eucalyptus is a poor nutrient (high fibre, low protein).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this, they tend to sleep or rest a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Koalas spent about 4.7 h eating, 4 min travelling, 4.8 h resting while awake and 14.5 h sleeping in a 24-h period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publish.csiro.au/paper/ZO9850655&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's a lot, it isn't even close to the 22 hours in the question. Also, note that they spend &lt;em&gt;almost 5h eating&lt;/em&gt;. This is again because of their diet and slow metabolism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nagy &amp;amp; Martin (1985) found that free-ranging koalas spend c. 80% of the time resting or sleeping. Such large periods of inactivity are believed to enable koalas to maintain relatively low energy requirements, and thus to use a poor quality diet (Cork &amp;amp; Sanson, 1990).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://users.monash.edu.au/~murray/includes/papers/Logan_Sanson2002a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-11T09:47:26.890" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T09:47:26.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8394" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-03-11T01:21:26.513" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the corporate, academic, and religious segments of society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:06:00.953" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:06:00.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8395" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-03-11T01:21:26.513" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions that regard statements made by politicians. Do not use [politician name] tags unless the claim is *about* that politician." OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2020-08-25T21:30:19.103" LastActivityDate="2020-08-25T21:30:19.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7856" CreationDate="2012-03-11T08:07:36.867" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most likely &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, plucking feathers from a live bird causes the bird pain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a problem of existence of 'animal pain', and if we agree that animal pain exists, of whether the action of plucking feathers causes pain.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does animal pain exist? It is obviously difficult to know first hand what an animal is thinking or feeling -- or even if it does think or feel -- in comparison to a human, because a human can communicate verbally.  However, humans normally avoid painful stimuli and this is a response that can be observed in animals.  That animals feel pain is part of the current scientific and legal consensus.  It is well known that many governments have created laws that, in particular circumstances, can incarcerate or fine humans for causing unnecessary pain to some animals. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_cruelty&quot;&gt;animal cruelty&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since existence of animal pain seems to be part of current consensus, what is animal pain?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;How is it defined?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_animals&quot;&gt;Pain in Animals&lt;/a&gt; cites Zimmerman  for a definition of pain in animals as &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;an aversive sensory experience caused by actual or potential injury that elicits protective motor and vegetative reactions, results in learned avoidance and may modify species-specific behaviour, including social behaviour.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zimmerman M., (1986). Physiological mechanisms of pain and its treatment. Klinische Anaesthesiol Intensivether, 32:1–19&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that this definition can be linked to elements observable by humans:  actual or potential injury, protective reaction, learned avoidance... The definition is also symmetric with respect to humans in the sense that it characterizes the usual human response to a painful stimulus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we can try to answer &quot;Does removing feathers from a live bird cause pain?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Noting the Zimmerman definition, removing feathers from a live bird is an &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;actual injury&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, especially for birds that fly. Even for flightless birds one would expect bleeding from pulling feathers.  &lt;em&gt;If the bird tried to &lt;strong&gt;avoid&lt;/strong&gt; being plucked further&lt;/em&gt;, this would indicate pain according to the Zimmerman definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, I have witnessed a live sheep being sheared on a farm in New Zealand.  The sheep did not try to avoid the process to the degree one would expect if pain were involved.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Similarly, humans do not avoid normal hair or fingernail grooming.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the question 'Do animals feel pain as we do?' knowable?  Clearly there is an existence hypothesis that is involved. The scientific method thrives on replication and experiment, and the Zimmerman definition provides a characterization of pain that is not wholly subjective but relies on elements that can be replicated or observed in an experiment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T08:07:36.867" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4165" CreationDate="2012-03-11T11:49:39.087" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are vastly many more 40-move chess games than atoms in the visible universe, which we will prove below.  But first, some clarification:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Earlier posts mention the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number&quot;&gt;Shannon number&lt;/a&gt;, which is his estimate for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game-tree_complexity&quot;&gt;game-tree complexity&lt;/a&gt; of chess (i.e., the number of possible &lt;em&gt;games&lt;/em&gt;).  Shannon gave the estimate 10&lt;sup&gt;120&lt;/sup&gt; as a remark in &quot;Programming a Computer for Playing Chess&quot;.  Another estimate by Victor Allis was 10&lt;sup&gt;123&lt;/sup&gt; (this is mentioned in his PhD thesis linked from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;).  He writes:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The game-tree complexity of chess, 10&lt;sup&gt;123&lt;/sup&gt; is based on an average branching factor of 35 and an average game length of 80&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In fact, there are an infinite number of possible games of chess, provided no player claims a draw through repetition nor the 50 move rule.  The above estimates are based on more practical numbers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The above seems to be confused with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_complexity&quot;&gt;state space complexity&lt;/a&gt;, i.e., the number of possible legal and reachable &lt;em&gt;positions&lt;/em&gt; on a chess board (which is a drastically different number than asked for in the question).  In fact, a strict upper bound for this was derived by Allis (op. cit.) as 5 * 10&lt;sup&gt;52&lt;/sup&gt; , which is greatly less than the number of atoms in the visible universe (estimated at 10&lt;sup&gt;80&lt;/sup&gt;; cf. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#Matter_content&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Notation&lt;/em&gt;:  A move in chess consists of two &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ply_%28chess%29&quot;&gt;ply&lt;/a&gt;, one ply by white and one ply by black.  Thus we have the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fool%27s_mate&quot;&gt;two move mate&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (1. f3 e5 2. g4 Qh4#).  The notation used here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_notation_%28chess%29&quot;&gt;algebraic notation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We will give a constructive proof that there are more 40-move chess games than atoms in the visible universe.  Consider the following set of possible 40-move chess games starting with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;e4 e5&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;d4 d5&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;c3 c6&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for the remainder of the game white can make one of the following moves:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The white white-squared bishop can move to any square on the f1-a6 diagonal (6 squares =&gt; 5 possible moves).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The white black-squared bishop can move to any square on the c1-h6 diagonal (6 squares =&gt; 5 possible moves).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The white queen can move to any square on the d1-a4 diagonal (4 squares =&gt; 3 possible moves).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The white knight on g1 can move to any square in the set {g1,f3} (2 squares =&gt; 1 possible move).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The black pieces are restricted symmetrically.  Continue this for the next 74 ply.  Then the  white player resigns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We observe that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The pieces never obstruct one another.  Captures are never made.   Check never occurs.  Hence, for each ply, there are 14 legal moves.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We have used very few of the actual possible moves available to us.  There will be vastly many more possible 40-move games than in this class.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;These games last &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; 40 moves.  (If you count resigning as a ply, then you can have black resign on the previous ply.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence we have constructed a set of 14&lt;sup&gt;74&lt;/sup&gt; distinct 40-move games of chess.  Moreover, 14&lt;sup&gt;74&lt;/sup&gt; &gt; 10&lt;sup&gt;84&lt;/sup&gt;, while 10&lt;sup&gt;80&lt;/sup&gt; is an estimate of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe#Matter_content&quot;&gt;number of atoms in the observable universe&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In chess, players may claim a draw through the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threefold_repetition&quot;&gt;three move rule&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, although are not obliged to claim.  (This leads to cases where players play on indefinitely, sometimes caused by chess coaches insisting that their students do not accept nor offer a draw, sometimes caused by players unaware of the rules.)  Also, typically, the three move rule is ignored in theoretical studies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;These positions end with a player resigning, but they could probably be modified to end in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helpmate&quot;&gt;helpmate&lt;/a&gt; if required.  However, this would reduce the overall number (and you'll probably need to use a more clever argument).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are probably better constructions around than what I give here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="273" LastEditorUserId="273" LastEditDate="2012-03-11T11:56:34.507" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T11:56:34.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8402" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-11T12:35:09.543" Score="20" ViewCount="3430" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1371/topic-of-the-week-conspiracy-theories&quot;&gt;topic of the week&lt;/a&gt; is conspiracy theories, here's one that I've had re-iterated at me a few times. Supposedly these white stripes after airplanes is created by airplanes releasing biological or chemical agents on a global scale for various purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/V5ZnH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;http://truehealthfacts.com/images/chemtrails2.jpg&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rense.com/general53/yourlifeasahuman.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;One site&lt;/a&gt; claims that this is causing many forms of radiation to rain down in some areas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ionization of these sprayed particles also causes many forms of&#xA;radiation to rain down upon the as yet unsuspecting populace of the&#xA;world, as well as lensing programs to dehydrate land and dry up water&#xA;sources. The first lie of the NWO animals is that a shield is needed&#xA;because the atmosphere has been depleted -- it is too bad that THEY&#xA;themselves can now deplete the atmosphere at any time and thus CREATE&#xA;THAT NEED.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/chemtrailsindex.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This whole chemtrail issue is related to the plan for decreasing the world population to around 450-500 million -- and starting with the US first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another one gives out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemtrailcentral.com/chemfaq.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;three hypotheses:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weather Modification&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humans have had the ability to physically affect the weather since&#xA;learning how to seed clouds in 1946, or possibly 1880. The popular&#xA;conception of weather manipulation is limited to cloud seeding, but&#xA;the possibility that the extents of our abilities may have progressed&#xA;in the meantime is definitely plausible. The fact that the military is&#xA;very interested in weather control is no secret and many propose that&#xA;the Chemtrail Phenomena is a part of this. If true, what is the goal&#xA;of the weather modification and what negative effects could it have on&#xA;the environment? NASA is currently conducting several programs that&#xA;are studying the effects of contrails on weather and the effects do&#xA;not appear to be beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Population Control&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of chemical and biological agents by a government against it's&#xA;own people is, unfortunately, a historical fact. Even unintentional&#xA;accidents can occur. But, some people suggest that Chemtrails could&#xA;actually be part of a program to reduce the population and many feel&#xA;Chemtrails have caused them to become ill and perhaps they are right.&#xA;If the Chemtrails contain biological agents then people already&#xA;weakened by other factors may have even died as a result of the&#xA;additional strain on their systems, but could such a diabolical&#xA;purpose be the ultimate goal? History has taught that even the most&#xA;unconscionable schemes can be made into reality by men filled with&#xA;fear and hate, and with such weapons in the hands of government we&#xA;must remain vigilant until answers are forthcoming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inoculation Program&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chemical and biological weapons have been used for centuries but have&#xA;recently entered the world stage as a primary threat. Biological&#xA;agents have the ability to spread and multiply in casualties. These&#xA;bioweapons are easy to produce and difficult, but possible, to defend&#xA;against. The recent actions of the military to require anthrax&#xA;vaccines for all service personnel show that this matter is of high&#xA;importance. Some propose that the government may be quietly releasing&#xA;bioagents to vaccinate citizens via the air. This could account for&#xA;reported illnesses since a vaccine sometimes makes a person sick.&#xA;Municipal water supplies might not be universal enough and could be&#xA;easily sampled and tested, but everyone breathes the air. And the&#xA;federal government rules the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any verifiable evidence that there is an ongoing effort to spread chemical or biological agents in the sky for any reason (good or bad) which produce these chemtrails?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related Question&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/191/do-contrails-last-long-enough-to-explain-chemtrails&quot;&gt;Do contrails last long enough to explain chemtrails?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T13:40:36.157" Title="Do airplanes release biological or chemical agents, forming trails?" Tags="|aviation|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7389" CreationDate="2012-03-11T13:56:52.383" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/kan/topics/201106/iaea_houkokusho_e.html&quot;&gt;Report of Japanese Government to the IAEA Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety - The Accident at TEPCO's Fukushima Nuclear Power Stations -&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;on March 16, the Director-General of the Nuclear Emergency Response Local Headquarters instructed the Governor of Fukushima Prefecture and others to have residents take stable iodine when evacuating from within the 20 km radius of the nuclear power plant&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But as a matter of fact &lt;strong&gt;no residents took stable iodine based on this instruction&lt;/strong&gt; because the evacuation had already been completed at the time the instruction was issued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-03-11T13:56:52.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8407" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-11T21:24:24.227" Score="7" ViewCount="682" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;what silly people call Maize&quot;&gt;the Wikipedia article on corn&lt;/a&gt; today, and I noticed this interesting quote in the second paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While natural maize varieties grow to 12 metres (39 ft) tall, most commercially grown maize has been bred for a standardized height of 2.5 metres (8.2 ft). Sweet corn is usually shorter than field corn varieties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Living on a farm myself and never having heard this, I did some Googling and checked the source. The source seemed to be a dead end that required a password, and from what I could find, the record is either 31 or 34 feet tall. Does &quot;natural&quot; corn grow really tall, or is Wikipedia wrong here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="930" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-04-12T04:33:35.573" LastActivityDate="2019-04-12T04:39:08.327" Title="Does natural corn grow giant?" Tags="|biology|plants|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7602" CreationDate="2012-03-12T00:36:40.803" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ants drastically outweigh us&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's good enough for you, the first sentence of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/97/26/14028.full&quot;&gt;Ted Shultz, &quot;In Search of Ant Ancestors,&quot; &lt;em&gt;PNAS&lt;/em&gt;, December 19, 2000 vol. 97 no. 26, 14028-14029&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ants are arguably the greatest success story in the history of terrestrial metazoa. On average, ants monopolize 15–20% of the terrestrial animal biomass, and in tropical regions where ants are especially abundant, they monopolize 25% or more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He gives no reference to a primary source, and that's the closest I can find to a solid reference via the Internet.  &lt;em&gt;PNAS&lt;/em&gt; is one of the most prestigious journals in the United States, so I think we can trust peer review not to let the opening sentence of a paper be boloney (knock on wood!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most likely book I can think of to contain an authoritative discussion is Wilson's &lt;em&gt;The Ants&lt;/em&gt; (1990). I don't have it on hand, but it won a Pulitzer, so it's available at many libraries.  One part field guide, one part textbook -- if you're interested in ants you should definitely check it out sometime :).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomass_%28ecology%29#Global_biomass&quot;&gt;table on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; if you want to pursue more details on human biomass vs. other species.  Hard numbers are of course hard to pin down, but the gist is that &lt;strong&gt;ants probably outweigh us by an order of magnitude,&lt;/strong&gt; and termites and krill compete with them for first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6272" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T00:36:40.803" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6957" CreationDate="2012-03-12T01:20:28.907" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plausible reflex rates for limited functions.  But won't replace keyboard and mouse.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A real answer could only come if someone tests the product in a laboratory and writes a solid review.  But here's my educated guess:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many non-invasive brain-computer interfacing (BCI) systems are based on measuring &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P300_%28neuroscience%29&quot;&gt;P300&lt;/a&gt; signals with EEG, which take about 200-600ms.  So even &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; that amount of time gave you enough information, and you had efficient enough feature processing algorithms, you're not going to get much better than sub-second categorization of brainwaves -- so, a command rate of a dozen words per minute.  With current state of the art, looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tanja/BCI/P300Speed_2000.pdf&quot;&gt;these&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://content.imamu.edu.sa/Scholars/it/VisualBasic/Serby-H%202005%20IEEETransNeuroSysRehabEng.pdf&quot;&gt;three&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/101093/files/manuscript.pdf&quot;&gt;papers&lt;/a&gt;, subjects can only select about 4 or 5 characters per minute with P300-based BCI, or about 25 bits per minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, the rates they are claiming for &quot;reflexes&quot; are plausible, because the OCZ NIA is &lt;strong&gt;not a brainwave reader&lt;/strong&gt;: it's primarily based not on electroencephalography (EEG), but &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromyography&quot;&gt;electromyography&lt;/a&gt; (EMG), which measures slight muscle movements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EMG is frequently used in prosthetic limbs, and the signal is trivial to process compared to brainwaves.  For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1455479/&quot;&gt;this review&lt;/a&gt; describes how to use wavelet transforms to preprocess data (read: efficient) and classify motor commands with neural networks.  I've also seen talks that describe doing the classification with Linear Discriminant Analysis (read: easy peasy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So they could be spot-on with their claim, if we assume that twitching a face muscle takes less time than moving a mouse.  But it's more like strapping an extra button to your forhead and saying &quot;do this when I twitch my eyebrow&quot; than having it read your brainwaves and predict what you're trying to do -- so the romance is all but gone:  With those limitations, we're not eliminating the keyboard and mouse any time soon!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6272" LastEditorUserId="6272" LastEditDate="2012-03-12T15:52:31.910" LastActivityDate="2012-03-12T15:52:31.910" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8413" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8414" CreationDate="2012-03-12T05:32:03.507" Score="18" ViewCount="1297" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read about this in an app on my android phone which gives out random interesting facts. This particular fact sounded kind of stupid, but I can't find any information about it on the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6376" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-12T07:09:51.013" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T12:04:07.230" Title="Do ducks' quacks echo?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8413" CreationDate="2012-03-12T05:48:41.910" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, they echo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/birds/p/Ducks-Quack-Echo.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;There's&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemadesimple.co.uk/page29g.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;plenty&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_(phenomenon)#Duck.27s_quack&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;of&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/09/08/duck.quack/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;information&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.norcalblogs.com/birds/2009/12/do-ducks-quacks-echo.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;about&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://listverse.com/2007/12/01/top-10-common-misconceptions/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;it&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=14&amp;amp;cts=1331530968416&amp;amp;ved=0CDwQFjADOAo&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.unexplained-mysteries.com%2Fforum%2Findex.php%3Fshowtopic%3D6154&amp;amp;ei=yIxdT6vcHYeRiQeT3aW9DQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGk24cpKCDTXr7TxStAdsgr26k9mw&amp;amp;sig2=VZLKmw82VyS_rsQ-ojQeIA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/2006/11/debunking_the_myth_of_the_none.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tetherdcow.com/?p=74&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Internet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of a sound that doesn't echo is theoretically dubious, but more importantly, several people have shown this through experiment. Both the following links explain not only that there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a echo, but also why it is hard to perceive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acoustics.salford.ac.uk/acoustics_info/duck/?content=index&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Salford's Acoustics department&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the echo can clearly be heard when compared to the duck with no reflections, it might be hard to say there was an echo present if you hadn't first heard the anechoic recording. Consequently, a duck's quack does echo, but in many circumstances will be hard to hear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2003_season)#Does_a_Duck.27s_Quack_Echo.3F&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MythBusters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When examined by an audio expert, it was found that the echo was &amp;quot;swallowed&amp;quot; by the original quack, due to the very similar acoustic structure between the quack and the echo. Because of this, it may be difficult to tell where the quack ends and the echo begins, both having similar waveforms on an oscilloscope and blending together in a way that makes them difficult to distinguish. In the same way, human hearing may not perceive the difference between a duck's quack and its echo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T12:04:07.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8415" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-12T07:33:17.163" Score="9" ViewCount="1149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had a variety of singing teachers, all of whom assured me that eating chocolate prior to singing was bad for my voice. This is assumed fact amongst almost all other singers I have known. I've never come across the original research though, so is this claim based on scientific evidence or not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-12T08:03:51.023" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T17:14:08.687" Title="Is chocolate bad for your voice?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|music|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8419" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-12T12:57:32.607" Score="11" ViewCount="3032" Body="&lt;p&gt;..for some commonly agreed-upon, objective, quantitative, non-discriminatory intelligence criterion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you rush to close this as a duplicate, &lt;strong&gt;yes, I am aware of &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5274/are-blondes-dumb-or-is-it-just-a-sarcastic-saying&quot;&gt;this other question&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; that treats this problem. However, the accepted answer fails to take into account other factors such as education level and cultural background, to name a few. I'm not interested in lumped &quot;statistics&quot; that compares apples to oranges, I'd rather see a scientific study that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Uses a sufficiently large sample size to compensate for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Law of Large Numbers&lt;/a&gt;. The sample may or may not be a representative of the population in any given country/region, it could be biased towards certain society groups (e.g. university students or kids) or genders, but that is fine, as long as it is able to demonstrate a strong correlation (or lack thereof) between the factors for that specific sample. If and how these findings can be projected to a larger population group is another question entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Performs the study on a group with similar cultural and educational backgrounds, for example among students in an university, or even a whole country. Country-to-country comparison is mostly useless to draw any sort of meaningful conclusions due to the lack of a common objective performance criterion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uses a quantitative performance criteria. Standard IQ tests qualify, but any other sufficiently objective criterion is okay, for example grade(s) received on a course or the overall grade achieved in an educational programme, results from standard tests or state maturity exams, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It probably goes without saying, but &quot;blondes&quot; are defined here as &quot;natural blondes&quot; as opposed to dyed blond wannabes. It's another question entirely whether dying one's hair blond (or dark, for that matter) has any effect on intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus points for studies performed on a single-gender group which avoids gender bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6278" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T03:15:57.840" Title="Is hair colour correlated with intelligence?" Tags="|intelligence|hair|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2016-09-25T07:44:03.653" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8420" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-12T13:39:52.970" Score="20" ViewCount="26806" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been trying to track down the source of a claim that research has shown giraffe exhibiting a really high rate of male homosexual relations. Going through the blog spam leads me to &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceray.com/biology/zoology/homosexual-behavior-animal-kingdom/&quot;&gt;a site&lt;/a&gt; without any references &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceray.com/about/&quot;&gt;claiming to publish on science&lt;/a&gt;, stating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you know the percentage of homosexual behavior in male giraffes? It is whooping 94%. Female giraffes too exhibit homosexual behavior; however, it is just 1%. Few homosexual behaviors among male giraffes include necking, caressing, courting and mounting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research supporting this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2012-03-12T13:55:29.327" LastActivityDate="2022-11-16T09:44:46.380" Title="Is 94% of male giraffe sexual behaviour homosexual?" Tags="|sexuality|ethology|zoology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8421" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-12T13:45:47.500" Score="19" ViewCount="30956" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard several people, including both a former dermatologist and a hair-dresser claim that coal-tar soap can help prevent hair-loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.herbsandhomeremedies.com/home_remedies/Home_Remedies_For_Hair_Loss.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Herbs and Home Remedies&lt;/a&gt; site recommends it (combined with an egg yolk treatment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.allexperts.com/q/Hair-Loss-1012/f/21-year-old-losing.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;commenter on a forum&lt;/a&gt; explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Continue to use coal tar shampoo or even better buy a coal tar soap (thats what im using ) pure 100% natural coal tar soap, no chemicals in it and it's very good for stopping dandruff and hair loss, it's increasing your blood circulation which is helping you to stop hair loss and grow a new hair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following article is from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://naturkosmetiks.ru/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=169:2011-04-11-07-44-34&amp;amp;catid=11:2010-08-18-14-17-37&amp;amp;Itemid=15&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Home Made Cosmetics&lt;/a&gt; web site &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coal-tar soap is recommended in case of hair loss dandruff and excessive fat formation. After the first - third use of coal-tar soap your hair won't look very presentable, but this phase will pass. With continued use your hair will stop falling out, dandruff will disappear, your hair will shine and look like they are much thicker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After trying it for a week I haven't found any difference, so I was wondering if this is a myth or if it actually works. If it does, is there any scientific explanation to that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6376" LastEditorUserId="41728" LastEditDate="2017-10-11T13:38:36.290" LastActivityDate="2017-10-11T13:38:36.290" Title="Does washing your hair with a coal-tar soap prevent hair loss and accommodate hair growth?" Tags="|natural-remedies|environmental-health|hair|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8420" CreationDate="2012-03-12T16:25:13.807" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Data is scarce, but there is definitely a lot of homosexual behavior among giraffes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I can tell by other places this claim is made on the web, the common source is Bruce Bagemihl's famous book, &lt;em&gt;Biological Exuberance&lt;/em&gt; (1999).  On p. &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=5CbRGV8AAIQC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=Bruce+Bagemihl+giraffe+94%25&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=wCBeT82OFOXA0QHL3MmoDw&amp;amp;ved=0CDcQ6AEwAQ#v=snippet&amp;amp;q=giraffes&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;34-5&lt;/a&gt; it states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three different species exemplify some of the issues that are involved in just one measure of frequency, the proportion of activity that is homosexual.  Observed versus actually occurring behaviors in Giraffes, seasonal variations in sexual activity in Mountain Sheep, and alternative standards of reference in Gray Herons complicate the calculation of homosexual frequency in each of these species.  During an exhaustive study of Giraffes in the Arush and Tarangire National Parks of Tanzania, researchers recorded 17 homosexual mounts and 1 heterosexual mount in more than a year (and 3,200 hours) of observation.  Thus, 94 percent of all observed mounting activity was same-sex.  Does this reflect the actual proportion of homosexual activity in Giraffes?  Certainly more than on heterosexual mating occurred during that time, since over 20 calves were born that year in one population alone.  However, these populations did have relatively low birth rates, and heterosexual  mating appeared to be genuinely rare.  In addition, if heterosexual matings were missed by the observers, probably homosexual ones were as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a footnote he gives the source and considers another study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Giraffe (Pratt and Anderson 1985, 1982, 1979).  In a study of another population of giraffes, only three mounts between males were recorded, but only 400 hours of observation were involved (Dagg and Foster 1976:124).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can't view the whole bibliography entry on Google Books, but I could swing by the library tonight and find it if someone expresses interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6272" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-03-14T04:36:08.753" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T04:36:08.753" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8402" CreationDate="2012-03-13T01:18:16.873" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it is of course almost impossible to debunk a conspiracy theory (there is always a counter-rebuttal if you don't mind how improbable you get) here are a few points that would clearly indicate the ridiculousness of the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://contrailscience.com/wwii-contrails/&quot;&gt;Contrails predate the jet age&lt;/a&gt;. High-flying aircraft of both sides in WW2 left them; if they were truly sprays of mind-control agents then we have to believe that the New World Order was so powerful it could force both sides to share their mind control drugs. (See the book &lt;em&gt;Bomber&lt;/em&gt; by Len Deighton).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrails&quot;&gt;Contrails are only left by aircraft above a certain height&lt;/a&gt;, and by ALL aircraft above that height, in a given area. Conspiracists are asking us to believe that ALL aircraft in the area - private, airliner, military, whatever - have all been equipped with these sprays, yet they are only activated above a certain height.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;High flying aircraft are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_maintenance_checks&quot;&gt;examined regularly by qualified mechanics&lt;/a&gt;. Conspiracists ask us to believe that none of the thousands of mechanics doing this have ever found the tanks of mind-control drugs that are injected into the engines. (The drugs can't be in the fuel tanks, because the contrails don't happen at low altitude)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Contrails &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrails&quot;&gt;only exist in specific weather conditions&lt;/a&gt;, which are relatively well known. Conspiracists ask us to believe the the NWOs need for mind-control sprays happens to coincide exactly with these weather conditions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wingtip_vortices&quot;&gt;Wingtip vortices&lt;/a&gt; are not related to engines. Gliders have been known to produce contrails, including but not limited to the Space Shuttle, which does its whole descent with power off. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conspiracists ask us to believe that a group of powerful masterminds capable of organizing at this level, and who have been doing so for fifty years, still hasn't come up with a mind-control spray that doesn't leave a white cloud.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://contrailscience.com/what-in-the-world-are-they-spraying/comment-page-7/#comment-130315&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; provides a huge amount of information on contrails, and specifically debunks many of the conspiracy allegations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-03-13T13:40:36.157" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T13:40:36.157" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8429" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-13T11:29:09.060" Score="9" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a belief that says children who count with the aid of their fingers will be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathsinsider.com/no-no-no-no-dont-let-your-child-finger-count/&quot;&gt;prone to having problems in math in the later years to come&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Is this belief true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5706" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-03-13T13:22:52.840" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T13:22:52.840" Title="Does counting with fingers diminish the ability to work with numbers in the future for children?" Tags="|children|mathematics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2028" CreationDate="2012-03-13T21:18:58.263" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acne lesions should NOT be squeezed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can lead to permanent scarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acne lesions should not be squeezed. Popping of acne spots does make acne less visible temporarily but it is followed by more severe inflammatory lesions in a few days. Squeezing acne spots results in the rupture of the pilosebaceous duct and the contents of the gland and duct are passed into the dermis. Here they incite an inflammatory&#xA;reaction, resulting in a deeper and more severe reaction. So the temptation to squeeze acne lesions should be curbed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://jpma.org.pk/PdfDownload/1684.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dispelling the Myths and Misconceptions of Acne by Zohra Zaidi, Journal of Pakistan Medical Association&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Try to resist the temptation to pick or squeeze the spots as this can lead to permanent scarring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Acne/Pages/Introduction.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NHS Acne page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Acne scarring&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acne scarring can sometimes develop as a complication of acne. This happens when the most serious types of spots – nodules and cysts – burst and damage nearby skin.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Scarring can also occur if you pick or squeeze your spots, so it is important not to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Acne/Pages/Complications.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NHS Complications of acne&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes acne worse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Picking and squeezing the spots may cause further inflammation and scarring.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Acne.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Acne information leaflet, Patient.co.uk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-13T21:18:58.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1059" CreationDate="2012-03-13T22:13:19.430" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found a document with lots of references called, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brewers-association.net.au/UserFiles/Brewers%20of%20Europe%20-%20Effects%20of%20Moderate%20Beer%20Consumption%281%29.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Effects of Moderate Beer Consumption&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It contains this chart, that shows drinking 4 drinks a day for a man has the same relative risk of mortality as drinking none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ShLHu.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Alcohol Dosing and Total Mortality in Men and Women: An Updated Meta-analysis of 34 Prospective Studies&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &#xA;Di Castelnuovo A, Costanzo S, Bagnardi V et al. (2006). “Alcohol dosing and total mortality in men and women: An updated meta-analysis of 34 prospective studies”. Archives of Internal Medicine, 166:2437-2445.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmsctech/1536/1536vw11.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sheffield Addiction Research Group, on a UK Parliamentary website&lt;/a&gt;, about the evidence that the chart presents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies of the relationship between alcohol and harm are frequently&#xA;  subjected to systematic reviews in order to identify those studies of&#xA;  the highest quality and to aggregate the effects into a more robust&#xA;  overall estimate of the relationship. Systematic reviews are carried&#xA;  out on a regular basis for individual harms and for&#xA;  all-cause mortality. This evidence is also compiled in the&#xA;  WHO's work on the burden of total disease which is due to alcohol.&#xA;  Therefore, the evidence on which guidelines are based can be&#xA;  considered as of the highest quality available and is reviewed and&#xA;  updated on a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many studies of the risk of alcohol consumption are based on survey&#xA;  data which ask respondents to report their consumption. Such reports&#xA;  are known to substantially underestimate the amount of alcohol&#xA;  believed to be consumed based on sales data, by between 40% and 60%.&#xA;  Although efforts have been made to explain and address this problem,&#xA;  many estimates of the risk from alcohol consumption may be biased&#xA;  upwards by under-reporting of heavy consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5005" LastEditorUserId="5005" LastEditDate="2012-03-15T21:35:48.417" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T21:35:48.417" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8435" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10961" CreationDate="2012-03-13T22:23:16.137" Score="30" ViewCount="13894" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common trope in popular culture regarding psychopaths is that they are above average to extremely intelligent. Granted, smart psychopaths make for a more interesting villain (or anti-heroes), but this seems to be a common assumption even in reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;The Mask of Sanity&lt;/em&gt; (5th ed.), Dr. Hervey Milton Cleckley claims (p. 339): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Very often indications of good sense and sound reasoning will emerge&#xA;  and one is  likely to feel soon after meeting him that this normal and&#xA;  pleasant person is also one with high abilities.  Psychometric tests&#xA;  also very frequently show him of superior intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was written in 1941 and it's very likely more thorough studies have been made since then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is, if any, the correlation between psychopathy and intelligence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T00:47:01.363" Title="Are psychopaths more intelligent than people in general?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8437" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-13T23:16:07.637" Score="15" ViewCount="1295" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do we have &quot;secret&quot; &quot;bundles of nerves&quot; &amp;mdash; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_point&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pressure points&lt;/a&gt; &amp;mdash; which, when struck with a particular Karate move, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dim_Mak&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;kill us&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia is skeptic but see this History Channel documentary (only the first minute is really necessary for the claim): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1-4LqEIP0o&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1-4LqEIP0o&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I dispute is the existence of pressure points that when manipulated with specific Karate moves cause death without deadly force. I do not dispute that there are sensitive points in our body, or that there are deadly Karate moves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are &quot;Touch of Death&quot; moves fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="3451" LastEditDate="2013-05-21T14:52:47.840" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T15:04:17.380" Title="Are there secret pressure points in our body?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|martial-arts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1238" CreationDate="2012-03-14T03:04:11.743" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ignoring records, what are the peak speeds that are often recorded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountwashington.org/weather/monthly_summary.php&quot;&gt;this Mount Washington Monthly Statistics report&lt;/a&gt; is accurate (and, unfortunately, they don't seem to have a permanent link to individual montly stats), February 2012 saw:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;   Average for the Month:   47.2mph&#xA;   Departure from Normal:   4.2mph &#xA;   Peak Gust:   118.0 from the W (13)&#xA;   Days with 73 MPH or More:    18&#xA;   Days with 100 MPH or More:   5&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The peak gusts as grouped by month can also be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountwashington.org/weather/normals.php&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So clearly, this is a very windy place.  I don't know what kind of probability distributions winds have been observed to follow, but it doesn't seem that unlikely that Gusts of double that would occur given enough timeframe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, we might want to examine what factors might strong winds, and/or bursts of wind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we consider jet streams: (Source: USA Today &quot;(Answered by meteorologist Bob Swanson, USA TODAY's assistant weather editor, June 27, 2007)&quot;) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/askjack/wawind.htm&quot;&gt;&quot;Typical winter speeds of the jet stream can range from 100 mph to 150 mph.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; mph range, which by the way, are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weather.com/maps/activity/aviation/mondayusjetstreamforecast_large.html&quot;&gt;regularly measured by meteorologists&lt;/a&gt; and often need to be accounted for by commercial pilots, we still find it isn't that hard to find around and above the where winds winds &lt;em&gt;regularly&lt;/em&gt; reach incredible speeds.  Furthermore, it doesn't seem implausible that a mountain that might regularly poke out into the jet stream (which, Mount Washington apparently does, although I lost the link, sorry)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I guess, my question to you, is, what is it about the claimed record that bothers you the most, and what precisely do you mean by &quot;wind records like this&quot;?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(BTW, it's ok to be bothered.)   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: ok, I know it's an old question, but I didn't like the accepted answer.  The Accepted answer doesn't even consider jet streams, and that's probably the critical part of this wind speed record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5544" LastEditorUserId="5544" LastEditDate="2012-03-14T03:13:52.433" LastActivityDate="2012-03-14T03:13:52.433" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8440" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8636" CreationDate="2012-03-14T12:35:43.800" Score="24" ViewCount="3861" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent survey in the UK claims that about 10% of women have been raped but that most do not report the incident even to friends. In the words of one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/unreported-rapes-the-silent-shame-7561636.html?origin=internalSearch&quot;&gt;news report:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One in 10 women has been raped, and more than a third subjected to sexual assault, according to a major survey, which also highlights just how frightened women are of not being believed. More than 80 per cent of the 1,600 respondents said they did not report their assault to the police, while 29 per cent said they told nobody – not even a friend or family member – of their ordeal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#cite_note-20&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's summary&lt;/a&gt; suggests similar numbers in the USA and some other countries but there is a &lt;strong&gt;huge&lt;/strong&gt; discrepancy between officially recorded numbers and the numbers reported in anonymous surveys. The gap between officially recorded rape and what the surveys suggest is partially a result of statistical misunderstandings (official figures tend to report incidence (rapes per year) whereas surveys report lifetime prevalence (number of people who have ever been raped at any time in their life)). But, even taking the statistical confusions into account the reported numbers are much smaller than the numbers implied from anonymous surveys. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, given the size of the gap between official numbers and the survey results, which is right?Are these recent estimates that one in ten women have experienced rape credible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="32459" LastEditDate="2017-01-01T20:55:20.693" LastActivityDate="2017-01-01T20:55:20.693" Title="Have one in ten women suffered rape in the UK?" Tags="|criminology|sociology|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8441" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8449" CreationDate="2012-03-14T12:45:20.357" Score="4" ViewCount="673" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a section about Fugu fish in the &quot;Top 10 Most Dangerous Foods&quot; article on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1967235_1967238_1967227,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Time magazine&lt;/a&gt;  website suggests &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The toxin is so potent that a lethal dose is smaller than the head of a pin, and a single fish has enough poison to kill 30 people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but on a wikipedia page about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugu#Poison&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fugu&lt;/a&gt; we can see an article claiming that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Poison concentrations vary from fish to fish, so poisoning may not always lead to death, instead giving little more than numbness on the lips and tongue while eating and shortly thereafter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically the question is, is it actually possible that Fugu fish which sometimes has just enough poison to numb ones lips and tongue can also have enough poison to kill 30 people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6376" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-03-15T01:43:47.623" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T03:03:02.267" Title="Is there enough tetrodotoxin in a single fugu (blowfish) to kill 30 people?" Tags="|biology|zoology|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8442" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8456" CreationDate="2012-03-14T14:58:51.000" Score="13" ViewCount="764" Body="&lt;p&gt;The red meat and cancer link has already been addressed here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7188/does-eating-meat-increase-your-risk-for-cancer&quot;&gt;Does eating meat increase your risk for cancer?&lt;/a&gt; But recent reports suggest a broader more worrying relationship to  variety of other causes of death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/mar/12/red-meat-death-heart-cancer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; reports &lt;a href=&quot;http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/archinternmed.2011.2287&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the study&lt;/a&gt; thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regularly eating red meat increases significantly risk of death from heart disease and cancer, according to a study of more than 120,000 people carried out over 28 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The findings show that each extra daily serving of processed red meat – equivalent to one hot dog or two rashers of bacon – raised mortality rate by a fifth...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...The study found that cutting red meat out of the diet entirely led to significant benefits. Halving red meat consumption could have prevented 9.3% of deaths of men and 7.6% of women taking part in the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not everyone agreed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The findings were challenged by Dr Carrie Ruxton, of the Meat Advisory Panel, an expert body funded by the meat industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She said: &amp;quot;This US study looked at associations between high intakes of red meat and risk of mortality, finding a positive association between the two. However, the study was observational, not controlled, and so cannot be used to determine cause and effect.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So given the nature of the study, are the headline results credible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T11:37:59.613" Title="Is red meat responsible for one in ten early deaths?" Tags="|nutrition|disease|epidemiology|meat|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8443" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-14T20:48:43.317" Score="3" ViewCount="959" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prompted by various answers over an fitness.stackexchange.com where I put into doubt the existence of Chi, I was prompted to provide references for this assertion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Issues with the burden of proof aside, have there ever been systematic studies regarding Chi as an alleged energy flowing through our body? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This question is not aimed at practices that explain their effectiveness by invoking Chi. Whether or not, for example, acupuncture works is unrelated to Chi existing or not existing. It might very well work for reasons completely unrelated to Chi. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note 2: I believe this question is different from the question &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/8312/2703&quot;&gt;Does Chi exist?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; posted on this site, because that post doesn't bother to define what is meant by Chi and also makes no assertions regarding the properties of Chi. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Well, here's one example of someone making a claim that I think goes beyond the metaphysical:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both your physical body and chi generate sensations you can feel. The sensation of chi is just as concrete as the physical body, only slightly more subtle, with a feeling that is lighter but nonetheless very real. Some compare it to bioelectricity. Some of the standard sensations of chi are heat, cold, pressure, wind, light, electricity, numbness, and mist. For example, in a platonic relationship, a touching of hands or a peck on the cheek is usually a fairly physical experience. In a sexual context however, a touch or kiss can send an energy wave within and throughout one or both of the participant's bodies. This wave is chi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.energyarts.com/faq/energy-arts-practices/how-do-i-tell-difference-between-feeling-physical-sensations-and-feeling-c&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Energy Arts&quot;&gt;Energy Arts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T01:59:04.663" Title="Is Chi an energy flowing through the body?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|chi|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8444" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16638" CreationDate="2012-03-14T23:16:27.070" Score="5" ViewCount="1658" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main cough medicine I use (I am in Australia) contains Pentoxyverine as an active ingredient. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentoxyverine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia article for this chemical&lt;/a&gt; states the outcome of reducing a cough, but curiously states no understood mechanism for this outcome:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pentoxyverine suppresses the cough reflex in the central nervous system, but the exact mechanism of action is not known with certainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia also says no clinical trials are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=cough%20syrup%20skeptic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt; into cough medicines has turned up a whole host of skeptic websites claiming that studies show cough mixtures are ineffective at stopping a cough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that some medicines have been proven to work even though we do not understand their mechanism. But in this case the lack of an understood mechanism &lt;strong&gt;adds&lt;/strong&gt; to my overall skepticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any studies that assert whether this ingredient is effective or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T06:56:30.190" Title="Is Pentoxyverine (in cough syrup) effective in suppressing a cough?" Tags="|medical-science|common-cold|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8447" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14608" CreationDate="2012-03-15T01:36:20.050" Score="14" ViewCount="11030" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife was encouraged to try several &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doterra.com/us/&quot;&gt;doTERRA&lt;/a&gt; &quot;essential oils&quot;. She's convinced (through anecdotal evidence and perhaps the placebo effect) that different oils have been effective in treating &quot;constipation, tummy aches, fevers and immunity&quot; in my family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She dismisses my argument that if these oils were actually effective in treating the conditions doTERRA claims, the evidence would be abundant and well-documented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these oils are physically harmful I certainly want to know. But even if they're not, they're expensive, and (more importantly) I'm concerned that my wife is not modeling the kind of skeptical attitude I'd like to encourage in my children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did a web search (for &quot;doterra skeptic&quot; and &quot;doterra evidence&quot;) and mostly found what I think is a result of doTERRA's SEO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone recommend sources for reliable information on doTERRA's products?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1344" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T07:46:14.770" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T05:40:56.703" Title="Do essential oils safely and effectively treat constipation, stomach aches and fevers?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8296" CreationDate="2012-03-15T02:28:51.723" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The USA is currently the fattest &lt;em&gt;developed&lt;/em&gt; country in the world&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that when people talk about the US being the fattest country, they are referring only to developed countries. In which case the US currently comes in first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oecd.org/pages/0,3417,en_36734052_36734103_1_1_1_1_1,00.html&quot;&gt;Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development&lt;/a&gt; recently released a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/1/61/49716427.pdf&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; that puts The USA as the most obese developed country, with Australia coming in 5th and Finland coming in 10th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's interesting to note that this fluctuates. At &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/2157503/Australians-fatter-than-Americans-study.html&quot;&gt;one point&lt;/a&gt; Australia was ahead of the US in obesity rankings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, Nauru is currently the country with the highest rate of obesity, as Sklivvz shows in his anwer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be in part to &quot;fattening rituals&quot; which are a part of the Nauru culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fattening rituals were also practised in Nauru where fattening was&#xA;  associated with beauty and fertility. Young women of the chiefly class&#xA;  were the central focus of deliberate fattening, particularly at the&#xA;  time of first menses, such practices continuing past child-bearing&#xA;  into middle age. Some young men also participated in these fattening&#xA;  rituals, as preparation for boxing competitions between districts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;a href=&quot;http://apjcn.nhri.org.tw/server/apjcn/Volume4/vol4.4/pollock.htm&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-03-15T03:49:31.407" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T03:49:31.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8441" CreationDate="2012-03-15T03:03:02.267" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could be, if you had a big pufferfish, ignored safety and regulation, and ate the most toxic parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.terrapub.co.jp/onlineproceedings/fs/nu/pdf/nu2010227.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Toxins of Pufferfish that Cause Human Intoxications (Arakawa et al)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[The] minimum lethal dose (MLD) for humans is estimated to be approximately 10000 MU (≈2 mg)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;strong&gt;til&lt;/strong&gt; they measure toxicity in &quot;Mouse Units&quot;). And, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general, viscera, especially the liver and ovary are highly toxic (the toxicity often&#xA;  exceeds 1,000 MU/g), and the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare has&#xA;  prohibited these organs from being used for food from all species of pufferfish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you're talking about 10g per person x 30 ~= 300 grams of viscera &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Toxicity varies between species and while some species such as &lt;em&gt;Takifugu niphobles&lt;/em&gt; are small, others like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=8301&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Takifugu oblongus&lt;/em&gt; can grow to 40cm&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;T. oblongus&lt;/em&gt; is called out in the Arakawa paper as &quot;highly toxic.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throw one in the blender and share it on the bus and things could get ugly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T03:03:02.267" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8451" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8455" CreationDate="2012-03-15T03:46:19.507" Score="4" ViewCount="437" Body="&lt;p&gt;California has &lt;a href=&quot;http://auburnpub.com/lifestyles/coke-pepsi-make-changes-to-avoid-cancer-warning/article_27f3b828-6d68-11e1-a6bb-0019bb2963f4.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recently made legislative change&lt;/a&gt;s that required Coke and Pepsi to affix cancer warning labels to their soda products. From the news story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A representative for Coca-Cola, Diana Garza-Ciarlante, said the&#xA;  company directed its caramel suppliers to modify their manufacturing&#xA;  processes to reduce the levels of the chemical 4-methylimidazole,&#xA;  which can be formed during the cooking process and, as a result, may&#xA;  be found in trace amounts in many foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“While we believe that there is no public health risk that justifies&#xA;  any such change, we did ask our caramel suppliers to take this step so&#xA;  that our products would not be subject to the requirement of a&#xA;  scientifically unfounded warning,” Garza-Ciarlante said in an email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No other states or countries such as Canada or the UK have mandated a similar warning. What, if any evidence led to California considering 4-methylimidazole used in the manufacture of sodas to have a risk of causing cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The AP news story mentions studies done on rats, although I can't find anything on Google Scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-03-15T04:08:05.860" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T18:03:32.500" Title="Does the caramel colouring previously used in Coke and Pepsi in California cause Cancer?" Tags="|cancer|chemistry|soda|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8292" CreationDate="2012-03-15T07:47:10.797" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rather than get caught up in different definitions of the word 'prostitution', let's look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/profession&quot;&gt;definition&lt;/a&gt; for profession:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive&#xA;  academic preparation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since academia didn't exist at the onset of human culture, we can reduce the definition to &quot;a calling requiring specialized knowledge&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even allowing for prostitution requiring specialized knowledge it would seem that hunting or perhaps farming is the worlds oldest profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The earliest evidence for prostitution we have under any definition is 18th Century BC, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_prostitution#Ancient_Babylon_and_Sumer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (expanded on in Sklivvz's answer). By contrast, humans were hunting using specialized knowledge starting from some 80,000 to 70,000 years ago. To quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter-gatherer#History&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Starting at the transition between the Middle to Upper Paleolithic&#xA;  period, some 80,000 to 70,000 years ago, some hunter-gatherers bands&#xA;  began to specialize, concentrating on hunting a smaller selection of&#xA;  (often larger than had previously been hunted) game and gathering a&#xA;  smaller selection of food. This specialization of work also involved&#xA;  creating specialized tools like fishing nets and hooks and bone&#xA;  harpoons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hunting meets the definition of a profession as it is being used in this context and pre-dates prostitution as a profession by some 50,000 years, at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hunting may not be the oldest profession, but it is far older than prostitution.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T07:47:10.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8451" CreationDate="2012-03-15T08:15:49.357" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The toxicity and cancerogenicity of 4-methylimidazole (4MI) has been indeed studied in mice and rats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were species difference in the carcinogenicity of 4MI (not carcinogenic in rats, but carcinogenic in mice). However several other types of toxicity have been reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In January 2008, California's Office of Environment Health Hazard Assessment sent out a &lt;a href=&quot;http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/crnr_notices/admin_listing/requests_info/callin012508.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;request for information&lt;/a&gt; about 4-MI. They included a report called &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/crnr_notices/admin_listing/requests_info/pdf/ABPkg32_012508.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Package 32&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; which detailed one study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In May 2009, they &lt;a href=&quot;http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/crnr_notices/admin_listing/intent_to_list/noilpkg32.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;announced their intention to list 4-MI&lt;/a&gt; and included a newer report called &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/crnr_notices/admin_listing/intent_to_list/pdf_zip/NOIL_ABPkg32b_4methylimidazole.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Package 32b&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both versions of the report reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;National Toxicology Program (NTP, 2007).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/htdocs/LT_rpts/tr535.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Toxicology and Carcinogenesis Studies of 4-&#xA;Methylimidazole (CAS No. 822-36-6) in F344/N Rats and B6C3F1 Mice (Feed Studies)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;NTP Technical Report Series No. 535. NIH Publication No. 07-4471.  U.S. Department&#xA;of Health and Human Services, NTP, Research Triangle Park, NC&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NTP study reports that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under the conditions of these 2-year studies, there was no evidence of carcinogenic activity of 4-methylimidazole in male F344/N rats exposed to 625, 1,250, or 2,500 ppm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was equivocal evidence of carcinogenic activity of 4-methylimidazole in female F344/N rats based on increased incidences of mononuclear cell leukemia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was clear evidence of carcinogenic activity of 4-methylimidazole in male and female B6C3F1 mice based on increased incidences of alveolar/bronchiolar neoplasms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exposure to 4-methylimidazole resulted in nonneoplastic lesions in the liver of male and female rats and the lung of female mice and in clinical findings of neurotoxicity in female rats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study (from the same dataset?) by the same people is also published in Arch Toxicol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chan PC, Hill GD, Kissling GE, Nyska A., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17619857&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Toxicity and carcinogenicity studies of 4-methylimidazole in F344/N rats and B6C3F1 mice.&lt;/a&gt; - Arch Toxicol. 2008 Jan;82(1):45-53.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract (bold is mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the food consumption the calculated average daily doses were approximately 30, 55, or 115 mg 4MI/kg body weight to males and 60, 120, or 250 mg 4MI/kg to females. Survival of all exposed groups of males and females was similar to that of the control groups. Mean body weights of males in the 1,250- and 2,500-ppm groups and females in the 2,500- and 5,000-ppm groups were less than those of the control groups throughout the study. Feed consumption by 5,000-ppm females was less than that by the controls. Clonic seizures, excitability, hyperactivity, and impaired gait were observed primarily in 2,500- and 5,000-ppm females. &lt;strong&gt;The incidence of mononuclear cell leukemia in the 5,000-ppm females was significantly greater than that in the controls. The incidences of hepatic histiocytosis, chronic inflammation, and focal fatty change were significantly increased in all exposed groups of male and female rats. The incidences of hepatocellular eosinophilic and mixed cell foci were significantly increased in 2,500-ppm males and 5,000-ppm females.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under the condition of the present studies 4MI induced alveolar/bronchiolar adenoma and carcinoma in male and female mice. 4MI also induced clonic seizures and mononuclear cell leukemia in female rats, and hepatic histiocytosis, hepatocellular eosinophilic and mixed cell foci in male and female rats. The related compound methimazole was reported to induce toxic changes in the olfactory epithelium of rats and mice (Bergman and Brittebo 1999; Genter et al. 1995; Jeffry et al. 2006). The nasal cavities of mice and rats exposed to 4MI were checked histologically, but no changes were noted. No other treatment-related changes were noted in any of the organs examined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, does that mean that Coke/Pepsi is toxic/carcinogenic? Unfortunately I could not find the concentration of 4MI in Coke/Pepsi, which prevents me to give an answer to the question. (Remember: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus#Contributions_to_toxicology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sola dosis facit venenum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.)&#xA;Furthermore no evidence of carcinogenesis/toxicity has been reported so far in humans.&#xA;The NTP report clearly states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extrapolation of these results to other species, including characterization of hazards and risks to humans, requires analyses beyond the intent of these reports. Selection per se is not an indicator of a substance’s carcinogenic potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: usually &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pubmed&lt;/a&gt; gives better results than Google Scholar when looking for scientific studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T18:03:32.500" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8442" CreationDate="2012-03-15T13:07:59.073" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rawfoodsos.com/about/&quot;&gt;Denise Minger&lt;/a&gt; posted a rebuttal at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marksdailyapple.com/will-eating-red-meat-kill-you/&quot;&gt;Will Red Meat Kill You?&lt;/a&gt; Although she is not a scientist, her article breaks down the arguments against red meat in a very straightforward manner, such that a non-scientist can judge their validity without needing a Ph.D. The points made are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The quoted study is purely &lt;strong&gt;observational&lt;/strong&gt;, and based on people filling out a survey of food types they have eaten in the past (one survey every &lt;em&gt;four years&lt;/em&gt;). DM makes the point that the researchers overstated the case: &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lead researcher Frank Hu claimed the study “provides clear&#xA;  evidence that regular consumption of red meat, especially processed&#xA;  meat, contributes substantially to premature death,” despite the fact&#xA;  that the study is &lt;strong&gt;innately incapable of providing such evidence&lt;/strong&gt;. (my emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will note that the OP provided an example of that incorrect conclusion: &lt;code&gt;The study found that cutting red meat out of the diet entirely led to significant benefits.&lt;/code&gt; Except, that's not what the study &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; - that statement implies that someone actually &lt;em&gt;cut red meat out of their diet&lt;/em&gt;, and saw health improvements (which didn't happen). Now, if they had done a &lt;em&gt;controlled study&lt;/em&gt;, and actually changed people's diet (removing one factor at a time), the quoted statement, might be a legitimate result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The study's conclusion does not take into account other factors, such as total calories consumed, exercise levels, alcohol consumption, and &lt;em&gt;smoking&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The folks eating the most red meat were also the least physically&#xA;  active, the most likely to smoke, and the least likely to take a&#xA;  multivitamin (among many other things you can spot directly in the&#xA;  table, including higher BMIs, higher alcohol intake, and a trend&#xA;  towards less healthy non-red-meat food choices).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Study result that the Media failed to report: &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here we see the folks eating the least red meat have the &lt;em&gt;highest&lt;/em&gt; rates&#xA;  of elevated cholesterol, while the red-meat-indulgers have the &lt;em&gt;lowest&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  rates. Given the media’s eagerness to assign cause and effect to this&#xA;  study, it’s mighty strange none of the headlines proclaimed “Red meat&#xA;  reduces cholesterol!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then there's the bad statistics:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Those numbers thrown around in the fear-mongering news clips—20%&#xA;  increased risk of death from all causes for processed meat and 13%&#xA;  increased risk of death from all causes for unprocessed meat—are&#xA;  classic examples of how even the most ho-hum findings can sound&#xA;  dramatic if you spin them the right way (and remember to attribute&#xA;  them to Hahhh-vard). If your risk of dying from a particular disease&#xA;  is 5% to start with, a “20% increased risk” only bumps you up to 6% in&#xA;  the grand scheme of things. That’s a lot less scary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original study is at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/archinternmed.2011.2287&quot;&gt;Red Meat Consumption and Mortality&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4910" LastEditorUserId="4910" LastEditDate="2012-03-15T13:14:29.330" LastActivityDate="2012-03-15T13:14:29.330" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8461" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8463" CreationDate="2012-03-16T01:07:51.137" Score="17" ViewCount="9800" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that reusing cooking oil can be unhealthy. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Never re-use cooking oil once it has been exposed to heat. It is a&#xA;  recipe for trans fats and cancer-causing carcinogens. -&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.symptomfind.com/nutrition-supplements/healthy-cooking-oils/&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5819" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T13:25:24.597" LastActivityDate="2022-09-26T22:42:19.003" Title="Is it unhealthy to reuse cooking oil?" Tags="|nutrition|safety|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8461" CreationDate="2012-03-16T03:39:19.527" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Go Ask Alice, a Q&amp;amp;A site for health from Columbia University &lt;a href=&quot;https://goaskalice.columbia.edu/answered-questions/reusing-cooking-oil/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;addressed this question&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reusing cooking oil has been done for ages. There really isn't a&#xA;problem, if done properly. The greatest hazard is allowing the fat to&#xA;become rancid (spoiled) and deteriorated to the point it produces&#xA;undesirable flavors and odors. Besides ruining what would have been a&#xA;perfectly good meal, rancid oils also contain free radicals that are&#xA;potentially carcinogenic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However that entry is from 2002. Since then there have been studies that indicate the re-use of cooking oils can have detrimental effects on health:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experts say that different types of cooking oils are better for you&#xA;than others, and a new study suggests that the number of times you&#xA;reuse cooking oils can also affect your health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spanish researchers found that people whose kitchens contained any&#xA;type of oil that had been reused many times over were more likely to&#xA;have high blood pressure than people whose cooking oils were changed&#xA;more frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That text is quoted from a Reuters Health &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reutershealth.com/archive/2003/12/26/eline/links/20031226elin002.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;story&lt;/a&gt; which is no longer accessible, although it has been reprinted on many sites, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20210419001248/https://preventdisease.com/news/articles/reusing_cooking_oil_ups_bp.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A link to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/78.6.1092&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A separate study in 2005 found that a toxin called 4-hydroxy-trans-2-nonenal (HNE) forms when cooking oils are reheated and has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20060508220101/http://www.oss.mcgill.ca:80/everyday/hne.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;associated&lt;/a&gt; with increased risks of stroke, Alzheimers, Huntingtons disease and other health problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11746-006-1184-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Previous investigations in this laboratory showed that HNE is formed&#xA;in thermally oxidized soybean oil, which is high in linoleic acid.&#xA;Continuous exposure of the oil to frying temperature (185°C) for up to&#xA;6 h graduallyincreased the formation of HNE and other polar lipophilic&#xA;aldehydes. Additional investigations in this laboratory showed that&#xA;HNE is absorbed into food fried in thermally oxidized oil in the same&#xA;concentration as was found in the oil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there is evidence that re-heating cooking oils can have a negative health impact. It is unclear to what extent the impact would be on humans at this stage. Given that the study experiments continuously heated the oil for an extended period, re-using cooking oil once or twice is &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-26T22:42:19.003" LastActivityDate="2022-09-26T22:42:19.003" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6632" CreationDate="2012-03-16T07:42:24.053" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is important not to confuse taste with flavor. Taste is a sense perceived by special cells that constitute taste buds. When most people use the word taste they are referring to flavor, which is a combination of multiple senses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Flavor is what people commonly call the &quot;taste&quot; of food. It is&#xA;  actually a combination of smell, taste, spiciness, temperature and&#xA;  texture. Much of the flavor of food comes from smell, so that when you&#xA;  are unable to smell you have lost much of your ability to experience&#xA;  flavor. -&lt;a href=&quot;http://uconntasteandsmell.uchc.edu/facts/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In interpreting flavor the brain takes into account not only taste and smell, but also touch and heat&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;. With spicy food pain is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piquancy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;even a factor&lt;/a&gt; for flavor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in answer to the title question, no, ~80% of taste is not in the nose, no amount of taste is influenced by smell. Smell is indeed the primary determinate for flavor. I can't find a specific authoritative source for this, however the claim appears repeated in several reputable sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Flavor defines the food that is eaten, and is recognized mainly&#xA;  through the sense of smell.-&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.utsouthwestern.edu/patientcare/healthlibrary/smell_and_taste_disorders__chemosensory_disorders_/0,,P00466,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers say 80 percent of the flavors we taste come from what we&#xA;  smell, which is why foods become relatively flavorless when we're&#xA;  plugged up. -&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/10457-smell.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It surprised me to read, when I began my research, that about 90% of&#xA;  what we believe to be taste is really due to smell. -&lt;a href=&quot;http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1575&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Dr Alan Hirsch of the Taste Treatment and Research&#xA;  Foundation in Chicago, 90% of what is perceived as taste is actually&#xA;  smell. -&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2008/jul/21/anosmiasensetaste&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems fair to say that yes, smell accounts for somewhere around 80% of flavor (taste).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="22682" LastEditDate="2016-06-13T19:36:00.137" LastActivityDate="2016-06-13T19:36:00.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8468" CreationDate="2012-03-16T09:29:29.997" Score="10" ViewCount="3048" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard anecdotes from pregnant women that they have a heightened sense of smell, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/&quot;&gt;How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did&lt;/a&gt; cites a NYT article mentioning similar claims about preferring unscented products:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Pole] ran test after test, analyzing the data, and before long some&#xA;  useful patterns emerged. Lotions, for example. Lots of people buy&#xA;  lotion, but one of Pole’s colleagues noticed that women on the baby&#xA;  registry were buying larger quantities of &lt;strong&gt;unscented lotion&lt;/strong&gt; around the&#xA;  beginning of their second trimester. Another analyst noted that&#xA;  sometime in the first 20 weeks, pregnant women loaded up on&#xA;  supplements like calcium, magnesium and zinc. Many shoppers purchase&#xA;  soap and cotton balls, but when someone suddenly starts buying lots of&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;scent-free soap&lt;/strong&gt; and extra-big bags of cotton balls, in addition to&#xA;  hand sanitizers and washcloths, it signals they could be getting close&#xA;  to their delivery date. [emphasis added]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I can see the evolutionary advantages in pregnant women being more sensitive to bad smells, I assume that our sense of smell would be limited by the number of receptors, which can't be increased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T06:32:14.060" Title="Do pregnant women have a heightened sense of smell?" Tags="|pregnancy|smell|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8467" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-16T09:30:28.933" Score="15" ViewCount="5600" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often see/hear this argument used as an argument against raising income tax, at least here in the UK. The argument being the rich will leave, taking their cash out of the country, resulting in damage to the economy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am always slightly sceptical about this argument. Have there been any documented cases of tax rises resulting in wealthier citizens leaving for places with lower taxes, in such numbers that the economy was harmed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: I'm not talking about business tax here, I'm specifically talking about &lt;em&gt;income&lt;/em&gt; tax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few references to this claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/277249/you-can-t-tax-rich-thomas-sowell&quot;&gt;http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/277249/you-can-t-tax-rich-thomas-sowell&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politicalforum.com/political-opinions-beliefs/193114-will-raising-taxes-cause-rich-leave-united-states-they-bluffing-3.html&quot;&gt;http://www.politicalforum.com/political-opinions-beliefs/193114-will-raising-taxes-cause-rich-leave-united-states-they-bluffing-3.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110530093031AA53cpp&quot;&gt;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110530093031AA53cpp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://savingmoneytoday.net/would-you-ever-leave-the-us-if-taxes-got-too-high/&quot;&gt;http://savingmoneytoday.net/would-you-ever-leave-the-us-if-taxes-got-too-high/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the these articles claim evidence for this effect, but I have no way to judge the veracity or validity of this evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6406" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2015-11-05T21:09:14.400" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T21:09:14.400" Title="If you raise taxes, will the rich leave the country?" Tags="|taxes|economics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-11-06T01:52:54.807" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8466" CreationDate="2012-03-16T11:46:46.937" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do pregnant women &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; they have a heightened sense of smell? Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steven Nordin, Daniel A. Broman, Jonas K. Olofsson and Marianne Wulff, &lt;a href=&quot;http://chemse.oxfordjournals.org/content/29/5/391.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Longitudinal Descriptive Study of Self-reported Abnormal Smell and Taste Perception in Pregnant Women&lt;/a&gt;, Chem. Senses (2004) 29 (5): 391-402.&#xA;doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjh040&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results show that abnormal smell and/or taste perception was reported by 76% of the pregnant women, typically believed to be caused by their pregnancy. &lt;strong&gt;Increased smell sensitivity was found to be very common at the early stage of pregnancy (67% of all pregnant respondents)&lt;/strong&gt; and occasionally accompanied by qualitative smell distortions (17%) and phantom smells (14%). The smell abnormalities were less common at the late pregnancy stage and almost absent post partum. Abnormal taste sensitivity was fairly commonly reported (26%), often described as increased bitter sensitivity and decreased salt sensitivity. These results, suggesting that &lt;strong&gt;abnormal smell and/or taste perception is experienced by a large majority of pregnant women&lt;/strong&gt;, imply that further research is needed to understand to what extent these chemosensory changes may underlie food aversions and craving with implications for food intake during pregnancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the question remains: Are they really more sensitive, or is it more that their opinion of the smells that change (i.e. things smell better, worse or just subjectively stronger?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, the science is a little unclear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AN Gilbert and CJ Wysocki, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/content/53/6/693.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quantitative assessment of olfactory experience during pregnancy&lt;/a&gt; Psychosomatic Medicine November 1, 1991 vol. 53 no. 6 693-700&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These scientists surveyed ridiculously large numbers of women (13,610 pregnant and 277,228 nonpregnant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In comparison to nonpregnant women, pregnant women rated their own sense of smell lower, more often rated the test odors less pleasant smelling, more often classified the test odors as inedible, were less likely to report odor-evoked memories, and used perfume and cologne less frequently. &lt;strong&gt;Differences in odor detection and intensity rating did not favor either group.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it seems that the smells aren't stronger, just subjectively less pleasant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nicole Kölblea, Thomas Hummelb, Ruth von Meringa, Albert Hucha, Renate Hucha,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301211501004080&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gustatory and olfactory function in the first trimester of pregnancy&lt;/a&gt;, European Journal of Obstetrics &amp;amp; Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, Volume 99, Issue 2, 1 December 2001, Pages 179–183, DOI: 10.1016/S0301-2115(01)00408-0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These scientists measured smell of over 100 women in early pregnancy, and got a similar result. Sense of smell wasn't stronger, but some smells were subjectively less pleasant. However, they also measured their sense of taste (gustatory) and found it had weakened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pregnant women had significantly lower overall gustatory sensitivity scores. There were no differences in olfactory sensitivity. However, pregnant women rated the odors ‘rum’, ‘cigarette’ and ‘coffee’ as more aversive than did non-pregnant women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: Our data do not support the hypothesis of a generalized increase in chemosensitivity in early pregnancy. In terms of adaptive changes of the olfactory system may act as a sentinel to potentially harmful chemicals. In contrast, the gustatory system appears to retreat to allow a greater intake of electrolytes and a more widely sourced diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be fair, at least one set of scientists didn't get the same result, testing a smaller sample:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;M. Laska, B. Koch, B. Heid and R. Hudson &lt;a href=&quot;http://chemse.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/5/567.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Failure to Demonstrate Systematic Changes in Olfactory Perception in the Course of Pregnancy: a Longitudinal Study&lt;/a&gt; Chem. Senses (1996) 21 (5): 567-571. doi: 10.1093/chemse/21.5.567&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Olfactory function was assessed in 20 women during each trimester of pregnancy and post partum, and compared with that of 20 non-pregnant women tested in parallel. In contrast to earlier reports, no consistent differences in olfactory sensitivity or odor evaluation were found between the two groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, another scientist wasn't impressed with the research, to date in 2007:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E. Leslie Cameron, &lt;a href=&quot;http://chemse.oxfordjournals.org/content/32/8/775.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Measures of Human Olfactory Perception During Pregnancy&lt;/a&gt; Chem. Senses (2007) 32 (8): 775-782.&#xA;doi: 10.1093/chemse/bjm045&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although considerable anecdotal evidence suggests that pregnancy affects olfactory sensitivity, scientific evidence is limited and inconclusive. Whereas hedonic ratings are affected by pregnancy, odor identification is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr Cameron tested 100 women in total (pregnant, postpartum, or had never been pregnant) against a standard smell identification test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mean UPSIT scores did not differ significantly across groups indicating no difference in odor identification. Trends in planned comparisons suggested that in the first trimester, odors were rated as more intense and less pleasant. In the first trimester, women scratched the odor strips significantly fewer times. Consistent with previous reports, 90% of pregnant women reported that specific odors smelled less pleasant and 60% reported that some odors smelled more pleasant. Although nearly two-thirds of pregnant women rated their olfactory sensitivity to be enhanced during pregnancy and overall pregnant women's self-rated olfactory sensitivity was higher than controls', self-ratings were not correlated with UPSIT scores nor odor intensity ratings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These results suggest that these and previous findings may reflect the fact that the &lt;strong&gt;effect of pregnancy on olfaction is small and inconsistent.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So her results were largely consistent that pregnancy doesn't make you a bloodhound, even if it makes you feel like one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it even biologically feasible that pregnancy would make your sense of smell different?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, a paper in Science showed that hormones in pregnant rats stimulated the production of new olfactory interneurons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tetsuro Shingo, Christopher Gregg, Emeka Enwere, Hirokazu Fujikawa, Rozina Hassam, Colleen Geary, James C. Cross, Samuel Weiss&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stke.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;299/5603/117&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pregnancy-Stimulated Neurogenesis in the Adult Female Forebrain Mediated by Prolactin&lt;/a&gt; Science 299 (5603): 117-120&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T06:32:14.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8469" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32192" CreationDate="2012-03-16T12:14:29.243" Score="11" ViewCount="1356" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Japan, women give chocolates to men on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day#Japan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Valentine's Day&lt;/a&gt;, and men give gifts to women on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Day&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;White Day&lt;/a&gt;, which falls on March 14.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various claims that Valentine's Day and White Day customs are retailer inventions in Japan and neighbouring countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One is that Valentine's Day is a retailer invention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day#Japan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia on Valentine's Day in Japan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Japan, Morozoff Ltd. introduced the holiday for the first time in&#xA;  1936, when it ran an advertisement aimed at foreigners. Later in 1953&#xA;  it began promoting the giving of heart-shaped chocolates; other&#xA;  Japanese confectionery companies followed suit thereafter. In 1958 the&#xA;  Isetan department store ran a &quot;Valentine sale&quot;. Further campaigns&#xA;  during the 1960s popularized the custom.[63][64]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another is that the tradition of women giving chocolates to men (rather than the opposite in western countries) is the result of a translation error by one of the retailers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The custom that only women give chocolates to men appears to have&#xA;  originated from the translation error of a chocolate-company executive&#xA;  during the initial campaigns.[65][citation needed] [the citation given repeats the claim, but isn't confident that the claim is actually true]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/ek20060321wh.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;So, what the heck is that? White Day&lt;/a&gt;) contradicts this, giving a different explanation to why it's girls giving to boys:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The concept finally took off in the 1970s when marketers began&#xA;  promoting inexpensive valentine chocolates as a means for schoolgirls&#xA;  to express their interest in a boy without having to say so in words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another is that the name &quot;White Day&quot; is a retailer invention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the 1980s the Japanese National Confectionery Industry Association&#xA;  launched a successful campaign to make March 14 a &quot;reply day&quot;, where&#xA;  men are expected to return the favour to those who gave them&#xA;  chocolates on Valentine's Day, calling it White Day for the color of&#xA;  the chocolates being offered. A previous failed attempt to popularize&#xA;  this celebration had been done by a marshmallow manufacturer who&#xA;  wanted men to return marshmallows to women.[63][64]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;So, what the heck is that? White Day&quot; column gives even more details on the conspiracy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the course of my research I came across a photo of the original&#xA;  planning committee. I don't know what I was expecting -- a female&#xA;  conspiracy? -- but I was somehow disappointed to see that the great&#xA;  minds behind White Day were just typical oyaji (middle-aged men), a&#xA;  cabal of gray suits at the Keio Plaza Hotel. According to the official&#xA;  White Day Web site, the committee chose the name &quot;White Day&quot; because&#xA;  white is the color of purity, and they hoped to evoke images of pure,&#xA;  sweet teen love. It helped that white is also the color of sugar, the&#xA;  main ingredient of chocolate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these related claims (that Valentine Day was retailer created, that women giving to men was the result of a translation error, and that White Day was a concept created by retailers) true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why am I skeptical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've encountered other bogus claims about holidays being created by retailers: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4505/was-the-modern-santa-claus-created-by-cocacola&quot;&gt;Was the modern Santa Claus created by CocaCola?&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2968/is-mothers-day-an-invention-of-florists&quot;&gt;Is Mother&amp;#39;s Day an invention of florists?&lt;/a&gt; . See also the sarcastic comment &quot;No doubt, Black Day [a celebration in South Korea on April 14] is just a ploy by the powerful Korean noodle industry.&quot; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tofugu.com/2012/03/14/white-day-japan/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;White Day: Japan’s Answer To Valentine’s Day&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For a &quot;Hallmark Holiday&quot; (Wikipedia actually puts &quot;Hallmark Holiday&quot; in White Day's &quot;See also&quot;), the &lt;a href=&quot;http://japanese.about.com/od/japanesecultur1/a/Valentines-Day-In-Japan.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;greeting card industry&lt;/a&gt; doesn't get much activity around Valentine's day or White Day. If they were retailer-invented holidays, wouldn't the greeting card industry get a cut of the action?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For a retailer-created holiday, Valentine's Day has become very sophisticated and Japanese. As well as honmei-choko (本命チョコ, favorite chocolate) which is chocolate given to your love, there's giri-choko (義理チョコ, obligation chocolate) given to male co-workers, chō-giri choko given to unpopular male co-workers, and tomo-choko (友チョコ, friendship chocolate) given to friends, especially female ones. Would a made-up holiday become that sophisticated?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the claim about &quot;White Day&quot; is to be believed, a marshmallow company tried and failed (in the short term) to sell marshmallows on a day, but succeeded in starting the idea of &quot;White Day&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T00:09:05.473" Title="Were modern Japan customs for Valentine's Day and White Day instigated by retailers?" Tags="|sexuality|commerce|japan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8470" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-16T12:59:40.110" Score="7" ViewCount="484" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard many people talking about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci&quot;&gt;&quot;The Memory Palace&quot;&lt;/a&gt; method (&lt;em&gt;Method of loci&lt;/em&gt;), and how powerful it is.&#xA;Is it possible to achieve significant improvement in memory using &quot;The Memory Palace&quot; method, and are there studies that can refute or prove it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4337" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T22:38:01.923" Title="Is it possible to achieve significant improvement in memory using &quot;The Memory Palace&quot; method?" Tags="|memory|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8471" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8485" CreationDate="2012-03-16T14:17:40.920" Score="13" ViewCount="4739" Body="&lt;p&gt;Glenn Beck this morning claimed that Eleanor Roosevelt made the argument at the time of WWII that the Jews had brought the German actions on themselves because of their control of finance and media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any record or her making statements that support this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transcript typed from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/03/16/blaze-advertiser-under-attack/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; around the 4m15s mark. As it starts, &lt;strong&gt;Glenn Beck is speaking ironically&lt;/strong&gt; as though he held the same view on Jews as the caller whose recording he had just played.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glenn Beck: &amp;quot;If you studied what happened in Europe, it's happening all again. They were involved-&amp;quot;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Someone makes muffled interjection.]&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GB: &amp;quot;the controlling of the banks, they controlled, uh,&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Someone makes muffled interjection.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GB: &amp;quot;they controlled entertainment. They also controlled, um, ah, all of the finances of the government. And so it was those guys - it was really the Jews that brought it on.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone interjects: &amp;quot;that's the argument&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GB: &amp;quot;And believe it or not, that's the argument of Eleanor Roosevelt! Eleanor Roosevelt said 'you know what, they brought it on themselves.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GB faces forward and pauses to clarify these are not his views:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GB: &amp;quot;So, just want to make sure we know: The stuff that 'they brought on themselves' for World War 2-&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone interjects referring to caller: &amp;quot;And he calls them vermin!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GB: &amp;quot;Vermin! - that's right out of the Nazi Playbook.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-11-12T07:39:57.043" Title="Did Eleanor Roosevelt say that the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves?" Tags="|united-states|history|quotes|antisemitism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8472" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8508" CreationDate="2012-03-16T14:54:07.457" Score="5" ViewCount="1591" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few years ago, a viral email in the USA falsely claimed that refugees received greater weekly welfare support than American retirees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/refugees.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; addressed it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claim: The U.S. government provides a much greater monthly allowance to refugees than to retirees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FALSE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also mention variants circulated with the numbers the same, but Australia substituted for America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like a different version is now being circulated about Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5xSQF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Viral claim on Facebook&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that Australian Aged Pensioners receive about $AU16,000 per annum from the Australian government, while &amp;quot;illegal immigrants&amp;quot; receive about $AU56,700?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T07:18:34.580" Title="Does the Australian Government provide more pension to refugees than the elderly?" Tags="|politics|australia|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8472" CreationDate="2012-03-16T15:36:22.333" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This claim is utterly false.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like the similar claims for the US and Canada, there is no justfication for what is said in these emails. In fact the figures are based on the Canadian emails that Snopes debunked. So says the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hoax-slayer.com/refugee-payment-hoax.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hoax Slayer&lt;/a&gt; website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The figures quoted in the email bear no resemblance to income-support payments to pensioners, or to payments to refugees settling in Australia,' DIAC spokesman Sandi Logan said today. The text and figures in the email appear to have originated in Canadian emails, websites and internet chatrooms. We suspect that the email circulating here has been cut and pasted from these sources&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T15:36:22.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8476" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8479" CreationDate="2012-03-16T16:54:53.007" Score="13" ViewCount="5145" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is something I found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://tinyfacts.tumblr.com/post/4496624183&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tumblr&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lPzwJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;Fact 61: men are 6 times more likely to be struck by lightning than women - tinyfacts tumblr&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found this on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/opacity/6550781505/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flickr&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;image license&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/shHcD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Did you know? Men are 6 times more likely to be struck by lightning than women&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This image was posted to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/gxiy3/men_are_6_times_more_likely_to_be_struck_by/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reddit&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6mIv9.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;men are 6 times more likely to be struck by lightning than women&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this claim have any scientific basis at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4196" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:44:55.063" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:44:55.063" Title="Are men 6 times more likely to be struck by lightning than women?" Tags="|psychology|gender|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8467" CreationDate="2012-03-16T18:33:21.090" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are / have been tax exiles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actor Michael Caine &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.walesonline.co.uk/showbiz-and-lifestyle/2009/11/02/unknown-91466-25073719/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;says in this interview&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I decided not to become a tax exile, so I stayed in Britain, but they kept putting the tax up, so I’d do any old thing every now and then to pay the tax, that was my tax exile money.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Michael did leave Britain though, for the United States, in the late 1970s, when tax hit 82% for the super-rich.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I realised that’s not a socialist country, it’s a communist country without a dictator, so I left and I was never going to come back. Maggie Thatcher came in and put the taxes back down and in the end, you know, you don’t mind paying tax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a chart of UK tax receipts &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/apr/25/tax-receipts-1963&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FL1T7.png&quot; alt=&quot;tax receipts&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this is a chart of UK GDP &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/nov/25/gdp-uk-1948-growth-economy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/un83a.png&quot; alt=&quot;gdp&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just eye-balling it, the correlation between pre- and post-Thatcherite tax regimes and GDP doesn't seem overwhelming. IOW, the return of Michael Caine and other tax exiles (which would presumably occur if tax rates were a dominant driver), isn't clearly visible in these large-scale data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-03-16T18:33:21.090" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8476" CreationDate="2012-03-16T19:25:15.840" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The numbers may not be right, but the tendency is.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that men are more likely to be struck by lightning than women is backed up by several scientific studies. &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1999/essd18jun99_1/&quot;&gt;NASA backs this up&lt;/a&gt; but says that it is four times as many men as women. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/papers/techmemos/NWS-SR-193/techmemo-sr193-10.html&quot;&gt;NOAA&lt;/a&gt; has a very detailed breakdown of lightning strikes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In summary, males are killed 4.6 times as often as females, and are 5.3 times as likely as females to be injured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these figures are for the US, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-03-17T19:02:03.497" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T19:02:03.497" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8480" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-16T19:34:50.390" Score="10" ViewCount="2093" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rick Santorum one of the Republicans seeking the presidential candidate nomination in America &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ricksantorum.com/enforcing-laws-against-illegal-pornography&quot;&gt;posted a piece&lt;/a&gt; on how and why he opposes pornography with some claims that he suggests is backed up by research (of which none is cited):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography.  A wealth of research is now available demonstrating that pornography causes profound brain changes in both children and adults, resulting in widespread negative consequences. Addiction to pornography is now common for adults and even for some children. The average age of first exposure to hard-core, Internet pornography is now 11. Pornography is toxic to marriages and relationships. It contributes to misogyny and violence against women. &lt;strong&gt;It is a contributing factor to prostitution and sex trafficking.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[..]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that research has shown that an increase in the availability of pornography leads to an increase in prostitution and sex trafficking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T00:23:22.553" Title="Does the availability of pornography increase prostitution and sex trafficking?" Tags="|prostitution|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8480" CreationDate="2012-03-17T00:23:22.553" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is little direct evidence as to whether increased access to pornography increases prostitution or sex trafficking, but based on the evidence we have I think its more likely that porn decreases or has no effect on rape.  I link to the most rigorous research I've heard of below, but there is also the following brute fact that is hard to explain away: Access to porn has radically increased since the late 1990s with the rise of the internet... during the same time period the number of rapes in the U.S. has fallen quite a lot.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2006/10/how_the_web_prevents_rape.html&quot;&gt;Research suggesting access to porn decreases rape&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/08/10/more-on-rape-and-porn-does-internet-access-increase-sex-crimes/&quot;&gt;Research suggesting access to porn increases rape&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://garthzietsman.blogspot.com/2012/03/pornography-intelligent-view.html&quot;&gt;More research on pornography&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6411" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T00:23:22.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8471" CreationDate="2012-03-17T02:53:28.420" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a conclusive argument that Eleanor Roosevelt never said this - it is practically impossible to prove that someone never made a particular argument. Further, I have not spent much time reading biographies or other histories about her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is some circumstantial evidence to suggest that this was not her (publicly espoused) point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On September 2, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, she wrote in her syndicated newspaper column, &amp;quot;My Day&amp;quot;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I listened to Hitler's speech, this letter kept returning to my mind. How can you feel kindly toward a man who tells you that German minorities have been brutally treated, first in Czechoslovakia and then in Danzig, but that never can Germany be accused of being unfair to a minority? I have seen evidence with my own eyes of what this same man has done to people belonging to a minority group--not only Jews, but Christians, who have long been German citizens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the tone of her article is strongly hostile to Hitler, but sympathetic to both the German people and the minorities who suffered under Hitler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On August 13, 1943, she published another column.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In it, she takes a balanced view of the Jewish people, but identifies that they have suffered strong persecution, and calls for going to their support:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Jews are like all the other people of the world. There are able people among them, there are courageous people among them, there are people of extraordinary intellectual ability along many lines. There are people of extraordinary integrity and people of great beauty and great charm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, largely because of environment and economic conditions, there are people among them who cringe, who are dishonest, who try to take advantage of their neighbors, who are aggressive and unattractive. In other words, they are a cross-section of the human race, just as is every other nationality and every other religious group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But good or bad, they have suffered in Europe as has no other group. The percentage killed among them in the past few years far exceeds the losses among any of the United Nations in the battles which have been fought throughout the war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know what we can do to save the Jews in Europe and to find them homes, but I know that we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence that her point of view had been different &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the war:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monty N. Penkower, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4467372?uid=3737536&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=47698768635057&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eleanor Roosevelt and the Plight of World Jewry&lt;/a&gt; Jewish Social Studies Vol. 49, No. 2 (Spring, 1987), pp. 125-136&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper claims she had revealed an &amp;quot;inbred dislike&amp;quot; of Jews, based on her correspondence complaining about a party (seems a bit flimsy to me), but goes on to explain how much support she gave (sometimes behind the scenes) for pro-Jewish initiatives during and in the lead up to the war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=kMXmM-CnxlMC&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eleanor Roosevelt: A Face of Humanitarianism and Social Change 1884-1962&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;By Crystal Roberts, Xlibris Corporation, 2011, ISBN 1462892744, 9781462892747.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book agrees that Eleanor Roosevelt's view of Jews changed over time (page 32), until by 1952, she was supporting Israel and being the World Patron of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_Aliyah&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Youth Aliyah&lt;/a&gt; (page 35).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what her earlier views, by the time World War II began, Eleanor Roosevelt was a vocal supporter of the Jewish people, and continued to act openly and behind the scenes in their aid, up until her death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't prove she never made such an argument, but it is clear that the argument wasn't consistent with her sustained actions and public opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T02:53:28.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3313" CreationDate="2012-03-17T08:43:19.530" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only evidence for the claim that the device must be removed by a medical professional comes from the device creator, on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antirape.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=6&amp;amp;Itemid=18&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; of the product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like an important point, since the idea is that in having to have such a device removed the authorities would be alerted and the rapist caught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing how hard the device is to remove isn't something that has had a lot of time dedicated to it yet, perhaps in no small part due to a lack of volunteer test subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether or not the device needs to be removed by a medical professional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antirape.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=7&amp;amp;Itemid=20&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rape Axe FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Will there be a lot of blood? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No, the penis is encapsulated and the barbs penetrate skin deep only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also captured this frame from the animation showing how the device works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eFzD3.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hooks don't penetrate very deeply into the skin, although will dig deeper if attempting to forcibly remove the device. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the device is latex, the device could be cut into sections, which would allow sections to be removed, reducing overall pressure which would otherwise force other hooks in more deeply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assistance would still be needed to remove the device, although given that the device does not penetrate below skin level I would not think a surgeon is specifically required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim about needing a surgeon and potential permanent damage seems like advertising and nothing more. It seems likely that the device could be removed without a surgeon or even by someone without a lot of medical training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the worst case scenario, the device can probably be forcibly removed without permanent damage. The website gives no reference to explain how permanent damage could come about and given how the device works it seems unlikely. Given a few weeks/months of healing or years of jailtime, removing the device forcibly is probably going to be a pretty common approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that the device has attracted a lot of criticism:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That the device is based on male hatred and a misunderstanding of the nature of rape and violence in society&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4080162.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That the device can lead to the rapist becoming aggravated, further endangering the victim&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/06/12/PKGJNCEPT51.DTL&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That the device can be used to frame innocent men&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vainjayne.com/?p=2563&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That it is a form of enslavement and gives a false sense of security&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20008347-10391704.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[4]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rape is a serious problem that still requires a lot of work to try and eliminate, and to support the victims. The consensus seem to be that devices in the vein of the Rape-Axe cause more problems than they solves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the title question, can the device only be removed by a doctor? It's hard to say without a more thorough investigation, although I've found nothing that would indicate only a doctor or surgeon would be able to remove the device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T08:43:19.530" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1456" CreationDate="2012-03-17T16:19:01.610" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The TV show &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Nature of Things&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; on CBC this week talked about man's (homo sapiens) evolutionary adaptations, which make us long-distance runners (able to run down animals until they have to stop from heat exhaustion - suggested we ought to be called 'homo cursor', &quot;running man&quot;, instead).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of that show mentioned the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abebe_Bikila&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;first Ethiopian who won an Olympic gold medal&lt;/a&gt; for running: barefoot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The show then took us to modern Ethiopia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people who do well (as runners) there come from similar backgrounds: really really poor (and, motivated). The fact that children of poor farmers don't wear shoes was asserted to be one of the reasons why they're stronger runners as adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If nature (e.g. 'black' or 'white' skin) might be a part of it, so might nurture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also this program wasn't talking about &quot;the average&quot;: it was talking about athletes, and elite athletes at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't answer your question, which is explicitly about the average: but maybe that's the wrong question. &quot;White men can't jump&quot; might be more of a statement about elite athletes (e.g. the NBA) than about the average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T16:19:01.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8488" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8489" CreationDate="2012-03-17T16:37:17.593" Score="19" ViewCount="2519" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people I know consider bespectacled individuals to be smarter than the average normal sighted person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific basis to this belief?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4196" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-03-17T21:55:51.877" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T21:55:51.877" Title="Is there a correlation between intelligence and wearing spectacles?" Tags="|intelligence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8488" CreationDate="2012-03-17T16:57:38.083" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a correlation between IQ and myopia (near-sightedness). I believe &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/jensen.shtml&quot;&gt;Arthur Jensen&lt;/a&gt; was the first to explore the link. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iovs.org/content/45/9/2943.full&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a newer open-source article on the topic, though there are many more. The correlation also holds within families, and is apparently not related to reading books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After controlling for age, gender, school, parental myopia, father’s education, and books read per week, myopia (spherical equivalent [SE]) of at least −0.5 D was associated with high nonverbal IQ (highest quartile) versus low IQ (lowest quartile) (odds ratio = 2.4; 95% confidence interval, 1.7–3.4). Controlling for the same factors, children with higher nonverbal IQ scores had significantly more myopic refractions (−1.86 D for children with nonverbal IQ in the highest quartile compared with −1.24 D for children with nonverbal IQ in the lowest quartile; P = 0.002) and longer axial lengths (24.06 mm versus 23.80 mm; P = 0.022). Nonverbal IQ accounted for a greater proportion of the variance in refraction compared with books read per week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to read up on this further, a lot of hits will come up if you make a search for intelligence, myopia and pleiotropy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5696" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T16:57:38.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8491" CreationDate="2012-03-17T21:10:31.670" Score="17" ViewCount="15494" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I wonder if there is scientific foundation on decreasing frequency&#xA;of sound we can hear as we age, as indicated on this website&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.freemosquitoringtones.org/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What about the lowest frequency we can hear?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does that mean high frequency sound become less harmful as we become&#xA;older and older?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some side questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does this explain that when I was younger, I was more sensitive to&#xA;sound and slept less well?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does this fact indicate some trend of our change of  music taste&#xA;over the time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="623" LastEditorDisplayName="user5169" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T06:13:11.617" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T06:13:11.617" Title="Does the range of sound we can hear decrease as we age?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8490" CreationDate="2012-03-17T21:30:33.830" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a well-known disease/condition, medically known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/855989-overview&quot;&gt;presbycusis&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The term presbycusis refers to sensorineural hearing impairment in elderly individuals. Characteristically, presbycusis involves bilateral high-frequency hearing loss associated with difficulty in speech discrimination and central auditory processing of information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The disease is well studied and there are four known factors, two of which are related to the loss of high frequencies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sensory presbycusis: This refers to epithelial atrophy with loss of sensory hair cells and supporting cells in the organ of Corti. This process originates in the basal turn of the cochlea and slowly progresses toward the apex. &lt;strong&gt;These changes correlate with a precipitous drop in the high-frequency thresholds, which begins after middle age.&lt;/strong&gt; The abrupt downward slope of the audiogram begins above the speech frequencies; therefore, speech discrimination is often preserved. Histologically, the atrophy may be limited to only the first few millimeters of the basal end of the cochlea. The process is slowly progressive over time. One theory proposes that these changes are due to the accumulation of lipofuscin pigment granules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mechanical (ie, cochlear conductive) presbycusis: This condition results from thickening and secondary stiffening of the basilar membrane of the cochlea. The thickening is more severe in the basal turn of the cochlea where the basilar membrane is narrow. &lt;strong&gt;This correlates with a gradually sloping high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss that is slowly progressive.&lt;/strong&gt; Speech discrimination is average for the given pure-tone average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/855989-overview#a0104&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a full ISO specification (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rotman-baycrest.on.ca/index.php?action=download_resource&amp;amp;id=1463&amp;amp;module=resourcesmodule&amp;amp;src=%40random4822efcfb6385&quot;&gt;ISO 7029&lt;/a&gt;) which describe exactly the amount of hearing loss (up to 8 kHz) starting from age 20:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://img.skitch.com/20120317-t9abqanahr8kda9b72f7ap9c4q.png&quot; alt=&quot;hearing loss table&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-03-17T21:30:33.830" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8492" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-18T00:48:04.197" Score="8" ViewCount="485" Body="&lt;p&gt;Marc Prensky defines the term &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/prensky%20-%20digital%20natives,%20digital%20immigrants%20-%20part1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;digital natives&lt;/a&gt;, referring to people who were born after digital computers were popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He claims that they process information in fundamentally different ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in my experience in teaching I have not seen much differences from so-called &quot;digital immigrants&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm more inclined to believe that digital natives are &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt; technologically adept because they have only encountered fully functional &quot;magic boxes&quot; and locked down products like the iPad aren't very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a study of this phenomenon and does it even make sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6311" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-18T01:10:30.303" LastActivityDate="2017-10-10T15:15:34.297" Title="Do &quot;digital natives&quot; process information in fundamentally different ways" Tags="|computers|education|society|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8493" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8497" CreationDate="2012-03-17T13:03:30.623" Score="9" ViewCount="25755" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this how the name Pepsi was formed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thechroniclesofislam.blogspot.com.au/2009/06/pepsi-pay-every-penny-to-save-israel.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example of the claim&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" OwnerDisplayName="just_name" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-18T22:26:09.887" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T07:31:55.363" Title="Does the Pepsi brand name stand for &quot;pay every penny to save Israel&quot;?" Tags="|israel|culture|soda|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8493" CreationDate="2012-03-18T03:14:41.740" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No. This is an urban legend.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The name Pepsi-Cola has been around since about 1898.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An archival page from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20080212003647/http://www.sodamuseum.bigstep.com/generic.jhtml?pid=3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Soda Museum&lt;/a&gt;  (via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepsi&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;) explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cola is a term based on the African kola nut and it was used for its caffeine content. Caleb's drink didn't contain either the kola nut or any caffeine, but it did taste pretty close to the already popular &amp;quot;Coca-Cola&amp;quot; and that was the reason for using the term &amp;quot;Cola&amp;quot; in its name. The &amp;quot;Pepsi&amp;quot; part of the Pepsi-Cola name comes from pepsin, an enzyme which aids in digestion and was also a popular ingredient in early soft drinks (and chewing gum). There has been some dispute as to whether or not the original Pepsi-Cola actually contained pepsin as an ingredient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term &amp;quot;Pepsi&amp;quot; in its name is surely an indicator. One of Pepsi-Cola's earliest known advertisement is found in the Feb. 25th, 1903 New Bern Daily Journal, and one of it's claims was that it &amp;quot;Aids Digestion&amp;quot; -- a popular claim for items containing pepsin. Lastly, another newspaper ad produced in 1908 flatout said &amp;quot;PEPSI-Cola is an absolutely pure combination of pepsin -- that's what your stomach needs these days -- acid phosphate and the juices of fresh fruits.&amp;quot; (However, it is a fact that by 1923 Pepsi-Cola no longer contained pepsin as an ingredient).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This explains two things that contradict the original claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pepsi-cola is named after Pepsin, not a political slogan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if it wasn't named after Pepsin, it was named over 50 years before the formation of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;State of Israel&lt;/a&gt;, meaning the slogan would have been meaningless at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DB3KR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Photo of 1930s Pepsi-cola bottle&quot; /&gt;[Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sodamuseum.com/Pepsi/bottles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Soda Museum&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A picture of a bottle of Pepsi-Cola from the 1930s, showing the brand pre-dates Israel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T11:23:10.137" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8498" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8504" CreationDate="2012-03-18T10:00:54.387" Score="12" ViewCount="1844" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is Julian Assange being charged with sexual assault merely because he's alleged not to use a condom?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard the claim on Australian talkback radio station 2UE this afternoon, and the following was the second hit I got while googling for &lt;code&gt;Assange condom&lt;/code&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.sfgate.com/abraham/2010/12/05/wikileaks-julian-assange-rape-charge-for-not-using-condoms/&quot;&gt;Wikileaks Julian Assange rape charge for not using condoms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to The Raw Story and Crikey, Swedish prosecutors charge that&#xA;  while Mr. Assange did have consensual sex with his two accusers, he&#xA;  allegedly did not use a condom, which, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/swedens-reputation-is-on-trial-in-julian-assange-case/story-e6frfhqf-1225965772832&quot;&gt;The Herald Sun&lt;/a&gt;, is&#xA;  against Swedish law.  Thus, Swedish authorities &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelocal.se/30606/20101203/&quot;&gt;are in the process of&#xA;  re-issuing&lt;/a&gt; the once-closed arrest warrant for Assange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T08:44:53.003" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T08:44:53.003" Title="Is the Julian Assange sexual assault charge merely alleging condom non-use?" Tags="|sexual-abuse|julian-assange|condoms|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8490" CreationDate="2012-03-18T15:11:59.617" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although age-related hearing loss is not the norm, it's a quite &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2132585&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;common condition&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results showed that the prevalence of central presbyacusis increased&#xA;  with age and that the highest &lt;strong&gt;prevalence was a striking 95 percent in&#xA;  the 80+ year age group&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of my answer is based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://mustelid.physiol.ox.ac.uk/drupal/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt;, some parts of which exist online (which I'll quote). I'll be referring to &lt;a href=&quot;http://mustelid.physiol.ox.ac.uk/drupal/?q=acoustics/clinical_audiograms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this part&lt;/a&gt; of the website specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sklivvz already answered your first two questions, but here is a graph to illustrate it as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consequently, &lt;strong&gt;patients with age-related hearing loss often have&#xA;  normal sensitivity at low frequencies, but progressively poorer&#xA;  sensitivity for higher frequencies&lt;/strong&gt;, as shown here: &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PCgYh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;audiogram of presbyacusis-&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see from the graph, severity of age-related hearing loss depends on sound frequency: older people need high-pitched sounds to be displayed more loudly, in order to hear them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Does that mean high frequency sound become less harmful as we become older and older?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It actually does! But that's because the harm has already been done... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not described much on the website, but the book explains that there is a relationship between how loud a sound has to be to harm you, and which frequency it is. Sounds that are near our auditory thresholds (under 20 Hz and above 20.000 Hz in the normal, healthy hearing range) can't harm us even if they are extremely loud. We don't hear them because they cause no mechanical change in our ear that responds to those frequencies, and consequently no harm is done. In the case of age-related hearing loss, the hair cells in the inner ear that should respond to high-frequency sounds, have already stopped responding, so there is nothing left to harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a plot of the connection between loudness and frequency in auditory perception, in which you can see that sounds around 4kHz can most easily harm us. Human speech is at this range, so we're particularly sensitive to it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WlXWr.gif&quot; alt=&quot;decibel-frequency connection in auditory perception&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does this explain that when I was younger, I was more sensitive to sound and slept less well?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably not, except if it was mosquitoes that were keeping you up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does this fact indicate some trend of our change of music taste over the time?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see that it does. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5696" LastEditorUserId="5696" LastEditDate="2012-03-18T16:43:51.733" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T16:43:51.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8500" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8561" CreationDate="2012-03-18T17:26:43.873" Score="7" ViewCount="453" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page for margarine&lt;/a&gt; has an unsourced line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unlike other dietary fats, trans fatty acids are not essential and provide no known benefit to human health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems like pretty bold claim to be completely unsourced. Are trans fats non-essential? Do they provide no known benefit to human health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T12:40:02.163" Title="Are trans fatty acids not essential and provide no known benefit to human health?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8505" CreationDate="2012-03-18T19:59:55.877" Score="16" ViewCount="1370" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading today's newspaper (3/18/2012), and this question appeared in Dear Abby's column:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DEAR ABBY: I will graduate from college in June and be a social&#xA;  worker. I am psychic, although I dislike that word because it conjures&#xA;  up visions of crystal balls, quacks and scams. For legitimate psychic&#xA;  individuals, it can be overwhelming to live this way. I first noticed&#xA;  my ability when I was young, but I repressed it because my folks&#xA;  thought I was imagining things. It began to resurge in college. This&#xA;  school is haunted, so I have become used to daily interactions with&#xA;  ghosts -- often in the dead of night. I also notice that during client&#xA;  counseling sessions images will pop into my head. I once gave a&#xA;  classmate the &quot;willies&quot; by perfectly describing the garden in her&#xA;  backyard having never laid eyes on it. My adviser says I must never&#xA;  tell my clients the things I &quot;see&quot; in them because it will frighten&#xA;  them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's hard to separate my own thoughts and emotions from those of&#xA;  spirits around me. I'm concerned about my psychic ability in relation&#xA;  to my clients. If I pick up on abuse in the mind of a child, for&#xA;  example, am I obligated to report it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Being psychic is as natural to me as my having blue eyes. It will&#xA;  never go away. I must now find the means to manage it. I don't want a&#xA;  career as a medium. I'm dedicated to the profession I have chosen. Can&#xA;  you offer me advice? -- GIFTED IN NEW YORK&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is Abby's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DEAR GIFTED: Instead of using your visions to form judgments about&#xA;  your clients, use them to guide you during interviews. If you do, you&#xA;  will then be better equipped to provide concrete proof of the need for&#xA;  an intervention than revealing you &quot;saw&quot; something that others can't&#xA;  see or wasn't disclosed to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many people have psychic abilities to a greater or lesser degree than&#xA;  you do, and those &quot;vibes&quot; can be invaluable. It is possible that your&#xA;  gift will give you insight into the individuals you will serve. I wish&#xA;  you success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is available online here:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/?uc_full_date=20120318&quot;&gt;http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/?uc_full_date=20120318&lt;/a&gt;.  I was surprised how &quot;matter of factly&quot; Abby claimed that &quot;Many people have psychic abilities to a greater or lesser degree than you do&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this have any basis in fact?  Has there ever even been anyone proven to actually have psychic abilities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6417" LastEditorDisplayName="user5169" LastEditDate="2012-03-21T21:16:52.537" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T21:16:52.537" Title="Do psychic abilities work?" Tags="|psychics|esp|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8502" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8569" CreationDate="2012-03-18T20:47:31.690" Score="20" ViewCount="3144" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a bunch of sites claiming this, with the most disparate theories: that &lt;a href=&quot;http://tuberose.com/Sweating.html&quot;&gt;saunas directly melt fat&lt;/a&gt;, that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sharecare.com/question/do-you-burn-calories-by-sitting-in-sauna&quot;&gt;saunas burn calories because your body needs to maintain the normal temperature&lt;/a&gt;, that &lt;a href=&quot;http://goaskalice.columbia.edu/benefits-sauna&quot;&gt;saunas increase your metabolism&lt;/a&gt;, that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saunaaa.com/sauna-burns-calories.php&quot;&gt;they make your heart work harder&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found a ton of suspicious pages like &lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/forums/weight-loss/burn-extra-calories-steam-room&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are a million theories, has anyone measured if any extra calories are burnt at all? If so, does sitting idly in a sauna burn significantly more calories than sitting idly elsewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-21T21:23:52.477" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T02:12:23.597" Title="Do saunas burn significantly more calories than just sitting idly?" Tags="|medical-science|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8498" CreationDate="2012-03-18T21:17:52.410" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/swedenversusassange/d/71282275-Assange-High-Court-Judgement-2-November-2011&quot;&gt;Judgement issued by The High Court, 2nd November 2011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The European Arrest Warrant issued by the Swedish Prosecuter set out the following four offences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Unlawful coercion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On 13-14 August 2010, in the home of the injured party [AA] in&#xA;  Stockholm. Assange, by using violence, forced the injured party to&#xA;  endure his restricting her freedom of movement. The violence consisted&#xA;  in a firm hold of the injured party's arms and a forceful spreading of&#xA;  her legs whilst lying on top of her and with his body weight&#xA;  preventing her from moving or shifting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Sexual molestation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On 13-14 August 2010. in the home of the injured party [AA] in&#xA;  Stockholm, Assange deliberately molested the injured party by acting&#xA;  in a manner designed to violate her sexual integrity. Assange. who was&#xA;  aware that it was the expressed wish of the injured party and a&#xA;  prerequisite of sexual intercourse that a condom be used, consummated&#xA;  unprotected sexual intercourse with her without her knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Sexual molestation&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On 18 August 2010 or on any of the days before or after that date, in the home of the injured party [AA] in Stockholm. Assange deliberately molested the injured party by acting in a manner designed to violate her sexual integrity i.e. lying next to her and pressing his naked, erect penis to her body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Rape&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On 17 August 2010, in the home of the injured party [SW] in Enkoping,&#xA;  Assange deliberately consummated sexual intercourse with her by&#xA;  improperly exploiting that she, due to sleep, was in a helpless state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is an aggravating circumstance that Assange, who was aware that it&#xA;  was the expressed wish of the injured party and a prerequisite of&#xA;  sexual intercourse that a condom be used. still consummated&#xA;  unprotected sexual intercourse with her. The sexual act was designed&#xA;  to violate the injured party's sexual integrity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The linked document contains more details of what is alleged to have taken place (paragraph 70 onwards).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That High Court ruling also made a judgement on whether or not failure to use a condom could be a criminal offence in England &amp;amp; Wales (the &lt;em&gt;Dual Criminality&lt;/em&gt; test):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It would plainly be open to a jury to hold that, if AA had made clear that she would only consent to sexual intercourse if Mr Assange used a&#xA;  condom, then there would be no consent if, without her consent, he did not use a&#xA;  condom, or removed or tore the condom without her consent. His conduct in having&#xA;  sexual intercourse without a condom in circumstances where she had made clear she would only have sexual intercourse if he used a condom would therefore amount to an offence under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, whatever the position may have been prior to that Act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-03-18T21:17:52.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8501" CreationDate="2012-03-19T01:38:25.393" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1988 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences gave a report on the subject and concluded there is &quot;no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They cite a source I haven't read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Druckman, D. and Swets, J. A. eds. (1988). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=1025&quot;&gt;Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories and Techniques&lt;/a&gt;. National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.. p. 22. ISBN 0-309-07465-7.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other widely cited evidence is that of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html&quot;&gt;JREF Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At JREF, we offer a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event. The JREF does not involve itself in the testing procedure, other than helping to design the protocol and approving the conditions under which a test will take place. All tests are designed with the participation and approval of the applicant. In most cases, the applicant will be asked to perform a relatively simple preliminary test of the claim, which if successful, will be followed by the formal test. Preliminary tests are usually conducted by associates of the JREF at the site where the applicant lives. Upon success in the preliminary testing process, the &quot;applicant&quot; becomes a &quot;claimant.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This prize has been available (in growing amounts) since &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/component/content/article/37-static/254-jref-challenge-faq.html&quot;&gt;1964&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To date, no one has passed the preliminary tests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &quot;GIFTED IN NEW YORK&quot; could truly demonstrate psychic abilities, she would be able to do a lot of good as a Social Worker with a spare $US1m. Maybe that's the advice Abby should have given!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the column author would need to consider how his or her audience (including the original correspondent) would react to such advice; it possibly wouldn't be a sound commercial move in terms of maintaining readership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T01:38:25.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8506" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8515" CreationDate="2012-03-19T04:18:47.687" Score="16" ViewCount="913" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common claim that regular exercise makes you &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.walkingofftheweight.com/articles/exercise-feel-great.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Walking Of The Weight&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not only does exercise make your body work better, it makes you feel better too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More examples (out of hundreds):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fitwatch.com/weight-loss/9-ways-exercise-can-make-you-feel-better-605.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fitwatch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tryingfitness.com/how-exercise-makes-you-feel/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trying Fitness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a likely area of placebo and self-delusion. Is there evidence that regular exercise improves the average level of mood? Is the effect widespread, or just a small subset of the population? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am not questioning that regular exercise can make you healthier, stronger, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3725/does-exercise-and-eating-healthy-make-you-live-longer&quot;&gt;live longer&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5620/does-moderate-exercise-improve-learning-ability&quot;&gt;improve your learning&lt;/a&gt; and reduce some forms of pain (and cause others!). I am challenging that it universally improves mood, on top of all this.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T04:22:33.693" Title="Does regular exercise improve how you feel?" Tags="|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8472" CreationDate="2012-03-19T07:18:34.580" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;False.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asylum Seekers in Australia are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.immi.gov.au/media/fact-sheets/61protection.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;not eligible for Government assistance until their claim for asylum has been assessed&lt;/a&gt;. Currently, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redcross.org.au/asylum-seeker-assistance-scheme.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Red Cross runs a program&lt;/a&gt; that provides assistance during this time. The Red Cross pays 89% of the Centrelink allowance, which is as of now $405.84 per fortnight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once an asylum seeker has been processed and is deemed to be a genuine refugee, they are granted permanent residency and afforded the same benefits that anyone in Australia gets - no more, no less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current Centrelink welfare payment for Citizens and Permanent Residents is $456 per fortnight. A pensioner in Australia receives $671.90 per fortnight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T07:18:34.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8512" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-19T07:45:41.473" Score="6" ViewCount="6616" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently seen the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collapsemovie.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Collapse&lt;/a&gt;. They make many claims about oil and an hypothetical global collapse when it runs low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this movie, Michael Ruppert says that a simple car tire needs 7 US gallons (~ 26 liters) of oil. He then quickly concludes that the electrical car is joke, because it needs too much oil in order to be built. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any fact or study about this matter? Do we know how much oil is needed for building a tire and a car?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6380" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-20T21:16:29.620" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T00:24:16.047" Title="Does a car tire require 26 Liters / 7 US Gallons of crude oil to manufacture?" Tags="|road-vehicles|oil|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5385" CreationDate="2012-03-19T09:40:21.823" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/23/health/stem-cell-research-breakthrough/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Embryonic stem cells improve sight of legally blind women&lt;/a&gt;, CNN.com, 23 January 2012:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two women with untreatable eye diseases said they had dramatic&#xA;  improvements in their vision after injections of human embryonic stem&#xA;  cells, making it the first documented time these controversial cells&#xA;  have helped someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2011/11/21/helpful-mouse-fetuses-naturally-send-stem-cells-to-mom-to-fix-her-damaged-heart/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pregnant mice benefit from fetal stem cells&lt;/a&gt;, the same might occur in pregnant humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="5079" LastEditDate="2012-09-27T15:01:54.973" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T15:01:54.973" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8500" CreationDate="2012-03-19T10:09:26.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What about this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat#cite_ref-p423_0-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Trans fatty acids are not essential and provide no known benefit to human health&quot;, whether of animal or plant origin.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Food and nutrition board, institute of medicine of the national academies (2005). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309085373/html/423.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dietary Reference Intakes for Energy, Carbohydrate, Fiber, Fat, Fatty Acids, Cholesterol, Protein, and Amino Acids (Macronutrients)&lt;/a&gt;. National Academies Press. p. 423 and 447&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6425" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T10:09:26.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8506" CreationDate="2012-03-19T12:14:09.940" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is good evidence that exercise improves symptoms in people suffering from anxiety and depression. There isn't enough evidence available yet to make the case for exercise improving mood more generally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fitness.gov/mentalhealth.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Influence of Exercise on Mental Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research literature suggests that for many variables there is now ample evidence that a definite relationship exists between exercise and improved mental health. This is particularly evident in the case of a reduction of anxiety and depression. For these topics, there is now considerable evidence derived from over hundreds of studies with thousands of subjects to support the claim that “exercise is related to a relief in symptoms of depression and anxiety.” Obviously, more research is needed to determine if this overall relationship is “causal,” and there is also a need to examine further some of the variables that are believed to moderate the overall relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For many of the other variables related to mental health, the initial meta-analyses have shown evidence that is promising. Compared to the area of depression and anxiety, however, there is either a need for more research on these topics or more quantitative reviews of the expansive research that already exists. For example, the relatively new research into the influence of exercise on positive mood states is in need of more research studies, whereas the area of exercise and self-esteem needs quantitative reviews of the expansive research literature that already exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also had a look through &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Cochrane Library&lt;/a&gt; and found the following articles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004366/exercise-for-depression&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Exercise for depression&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We found exercise did seem to improve the symptoms of depression, but we cannot be sure exactly how effective it is, or the most effective type of exercise. The evidence suggests that exercise probably needs to be continued in the longer-term for benefits on mood to be maintained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004691/exercise-for-preventing-and-treating-anxiety-and-depression-in-children-and-young-people&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Exercise for preventing and treating anxiety and depression in children and young people&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exercise is promoted as an active strategy to prevent and treat depression and anxiety. We found that the research data are sparse and mostly done on college students. Six small trials indicate that exercise decreases reported anxiety scores in healthy children when compared to no intervention. Five small trials indicate that exercise decreases reported depression scores when compared to no intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD003683/exercise-to-improve-self-esteem-in-children-and-young-people&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Exercise to improve self-esteem in children and young people&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This review of trials suggests that exercise has positive short-term effects on self-esteem in children and young people, and concludes that exercise may be an important measure in improving children's self-esteem. However, the reviewers note that the trials included in the review were small-scale, and recognise the need for further well-designed research in this area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T12:14:09.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8516" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-19T12:57:52.003" Score="14" ViewCount="1153" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does exercising your muscles also increase your intelligence like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2108584/How-exercise-makes-smarter-boosting-energy-levels-brain.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the daily mail&lt;/a&gt; (and many others) report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Exercise makes you smarter 'by boosting energy levels in the brain&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now a team from the University of South Carolina have found that regular treadmill sessions also give a boost to the cell's powerhouses in the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research leader, Dr Mark Davis said this energy boost helped the brain to work faster and more efficiently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T18:09:06.467" Title="Does exercise make you smarter?" Tags="|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8517" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13629" CreationDate="2012-03-19T13:40:58.060" Score="16" ViewCount="2078" Body="&lt;p&gt;The New York Times today published &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/world/asia/drones-at-issue-as-pakistan-tries-to-mend-us-ties.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; in which senior Taliban commander Wali ur-Rehman claims the Taliban now uses camcorders to scan cars and other potential drone targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Rehman explained that the camera could somehow detect otherwise invisible signals from the “patrai” — local slang for small electronic tracking devices that, many tribesmen believe, guide American missiles to their target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“This is our new weapon,” said Mr. Rehman, who has a $5 million United States government bounty on his head, pointing to the Sony camera. “It has saved a lot of lives.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a book distributed on the Internet (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/07/infrared-beacons-guiding-cia-drone-strikes-qaeda-claims/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;since taken down&lt;/a&gt;), high-ranking al-Qaeda official Abu Yahya al-Libi claims the US is using 9-volt infrared flashing beacons as homing devices for drone strikes. Wired published &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2009/07/ir_aq.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;photos of the devices&lt;/a&gt; provided by al-Libi, and cites an admission of US military use of the devices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In April, 19 year-old Habibur Rehman made a videotaped “confession” of planting such devices, just before he was executed by the Taliban as an American spy. “&lt;a href=&quot;http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2009/04/17/4376383-taliban-style-justice-for-alleged-us-spies&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I was given $122 to drop chips wrapped in cigarette paper at Al Qaeda and Taliban houses&lt;/a&gt;,” he said. If I was successful, I was told, I would be given thousands of dollars.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can basic camcorders be used to find these infrared devices? Are the Taliban &amp;amp; al-Qaeda using these readily available consumer goods to stymie drone strikes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T03:59:19.853" Title="Can the Taliban detect drone targets with a camcorder?" Tags="|military|pakistan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8518" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8534" CreationDate="2012-03-19T14:18:23.380" Score="20" ViewCount="3697" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of people who either claim that cardio or weight lifting is the key to losing weight. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturallyintense.net/blog/exercise/rethinking-the-need-for-cardio/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article questioning the need for cardio&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weight-lifting-complete.com/cardio.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article claiming that cardio is the key to weight loss&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cardio folks usually point out the &quot;afterburner&quot; effect, where the body continues to burn calories even after the workout. And weight lifting people mention that muscles burn more calories than fat, so more muscle is the key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there studies showing if either one is true? Or are both needed? And what about interval training?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Inspired by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1371/topic-of-the-week-fitness&quot;&gt;Topic of the Week&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5335" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T16:38:42.083" LastActivityDate="2019-07-15T06:34:06.307" Title="Cardio vs. weight lifting for weight loss" Tags="|weight-loss|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8520" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9880" CreationDate="2012-03-19T18:41:03.557" Score="28" ViewCount="5949" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been reading a lot about longevity and I came up with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster#Longevity&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; Wikipedia article where it states that it might be possible for lobsters to live indefinitely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recent research suggests that lobsters may not slow down, weaken, or lose fertility with age. In fact, older lobsters are more fertile than younger lobsters. This longevity may be due to telomerase, an enzyme that repairs DNA sequences of the form &quot;TTAGGG&quot;.[9] This sequence is often referred to as the telomeres of the DNA.[10][11] It has been argued that lobsters may exhibit negligible senescence and some scientists have claimed that they could effectively live indefinitely, barring injury, disease, capture, etc.[12] Their longevity allows them to reach impressive sizes. According to the Guinness World Records, the largest lobster was caught in Nova Scotia, Canada, and weighed 20.15 kilograms (44.4 lb).[13][14]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seriously find this hard to believe, so under the right circumstances, can lobsters maintain their Negligible Senescence forever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8930" OwnerDisplayName="user5169" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-15T22:26:28.510" LastActivityDate="2018-07-30T04:17:01.400" Title="Under the right circumstances, can lobsters live indefinitely?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8521" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8524" CreationDate="2012-03-19T21:05:14.203" Score="23" ViewCount="5407" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was once given a question in the popular quiz-show game, You Don't Know Jack, that went something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You find yourself suddenly ejected into space.  Which of these gruesome things happens first?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your blood would boil&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your eyes would explode&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You'd freeze to death&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You'd suffocate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer was &lt;strong&gt;1.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(followed shortly by &lt;strong&gt;2.&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/em&gt;, because the drop in pressure reduces the boiling-point of the blood.  They are usually pretty good about checking their facts, so I trusted this as a fact, until today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.slashdot.org/story/12/03/17/202257/baumgartner-completes-135-mile-free-fall-jump-aims-for-record&quot;&gt;this thread&lt;/a&gt;, the top-rated comment states that this &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; true, and gives a plausable-sounding explanation for why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, which is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastEditorUserId="249" LastEditDate="2012-03-20T14:59:43.163" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T04:29:28.580" Title="Would a human's blood suddenly boil (or eyes/body explode) in a vacuum?" Tags="|biology|physics|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8521" CreationDate="2012-03-19T23:14:36.190" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the slashdot comments points to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html&quot;&gt;NASA article&lt;/a&gt; originally from 1997 which tells you not to hold your breath and then says in summary,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;theory predicts -- and animal experiments confirm -- that otherwise, exposure to vacuum causes no immediate injury. You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.  Various minor problems (sunburn, possibly &quot;the bends&quot;, certainly some [mild, reversible, painless] swelling of skin and underlying tissue) start after ten seconds or so. At some point you lose consciousness from lack of oxygen. Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two minutes, you're dying. The limits are not really known. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then describes a test subject accidentally exposed to a near vacuum in a vacuum chamber in 1965 who remained conscious for about 14 seconds, until oxygen-deprived blood went from the lungs to the brain. After repressurisation, the subject reported that his last conscious memory was of the water on his tongue beginning to boil. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer therefore seems to be &lt;strong&gt;4&lt;/strong&gt;.  You may also be affected by other common pressure effects such as the bends and ear tube issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your blood does not boil because your skin maintains pressure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-03-19T23:14:36.190" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8440" CreationDate="2012-03-20T03:17:20.480" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a brief summary of the relative merits of victim surveys and official crime statistics (in this case related to Australian data) you might like to check out this website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/T8poY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aifs.gov.au/acssa/statistics.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.aifs.gov.au/acssa/statistics.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It contains links to relevant stats and information about research methodology, sampling etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously not all 'surveys' (and therefore all stats) are equally reliable or scientific, however I assume that you will be able to find US and UK sources (check out government statistics bodies and government criminology bodies) that are as sound and scientific as those conducted on behalf of the Australian government at the above link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6431" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-03-01T14:24:47.397" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T14:24:47.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8528" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8529" CreationDate="2012-03-20T14:13:56.403" Score="5" ViewCount="45924" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard about people dying from being &quot;intoxicated&quot; (I'm not sure if thats the term) from smelling their own farts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There  is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8632&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;story&lt;/a&gt; of a man that actually died:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A terrible diet and room with no ventilation are being blamed for the death of a man who was killed by his own gas. There was no mark on his body but an autopsy showed large amounts of methane gas in his system. His diet had consisted primarily of beans and cabbage (and a couple of other things). It was just the right combination of foods. It appears that the man died in his sleep from breathing the poisonous cloud that was hanging over his bed. Had he been outside or had his windows been opened, it wouldn't have been fatal, but the man was shut up in his near airtight bedroom. According to the article, &quot;He was a big man with a huge capacity for creating 'this deadly gas.'&quot; Three of the rescuers got sick and one was hospitalized. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: While this has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://my.ece.ucsb.edu/sanabria/humor/Darwinawards.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;attributed as the 1993 Darwin Award Winner&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.darwinawards.com/legends/legends1998-12.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Darwin Award site describes it as apocryphal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can your own farts kill you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8930" OwnerDisplayName="user5169" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T12:54:41.843" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T12:54:41.843" Title="Can you die from breathing your own farts?" Tags="|medical-science|mortality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8528" CreationDate="2012-03-20T14:25:07.707" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/03/franklins_kite_flatulence.html&quot;&gt;MythBusters&lt;/a&gt; episode 48 says no, or at least not within any sensible timeframe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*They calculated how long it would take to reach deadly concentrations from other components of flatus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Methane (deadly at 2%): 441 days&#xA;Hydrogen sulfide: 22 years*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5885" LastActivityDate="2012-03-20T14:25:07.707" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8530" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-20T21:26:41.110" Score="16" ViewCount="3359" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Bueno_de_Mesquita&quot;&gt;Bruce Bueno de Mesquita&lt;/a&gt; is called the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.good.is/post/the-new-nostradamus/&quot;&gt;New Nostradamus&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. According to his claims he is able to &lt;a href=&quot;http://decision-making.moshe-online.com/criticism_of_bueno_de_mesquita.html&quot;&gt;predict&lt;/a&gt; (and has predicted) big economic events such as the 2009 economic crisis. Supposedly he has a mathematical model that he is unwilling to reveal. Some of this predictions can be found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you listen to Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, and a lot of people don't, he'll claim that mathematics can tell you the future. In fact, the professor says that a computer model he built and has perfected over the last 25 years can predict the outcome of virtually any international conflict, provided the basic input is accurate. What's more, his predictions are alarmingly specific. His fans include at least one current presidential hopeful, a gaggle of Fortune 500 companies, the CIA, and the Department of Defense. Naturally, there is also no shortage of people less fond of his work. &quot;Some people think Bruce is the most brilliant foreign policy analyst there is,&quot; says one colleague. &quot;Others think he's a quack.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has he predicted the future with his mathematics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8930" OwnerDisplayName="user5169" LastEditorUserId="6411" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T16:33:51.800" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T22:03:15.463" Title="Can Bruce Bueno de Mesquita predict the future with mathematics?" Tags="|mathematics|divination|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8531" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10036" CreationDate="2012-03-21T00:59:40.970" Score="25" ViewCount="7046" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/mental/visualization.html&quot;&gt;following story&lt;/a&gt; many times:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A study conducted by Dr. Blaslotto at the University of Chicago was&#xA;  done where he split people into three groups and tested each group on&#xA;  how many free throws they could make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After this, he had the first group practice free throws every day for&#xA;  an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second group just visualized themselves making free throws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The third group did nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After 30 days, he tested them again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first group improved by 24%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second group improved by 23% without touching a basketball!!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it hard to believe that real practice provides only a 1% greater improvement over visualisation. Is visualisation really that effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-21T01:44:21.943" LastActivityDate="2018-11-21T12:55:04.830" Title="Is visualisation almost as effective as practice?" Tags="|sport|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8533" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-21T04:40:00.833" Score="6" ViewCount="5178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read from several sources online&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;  that &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; suncreen, even physical sunscreen, must be reapplied at least every 2 hours (or more frequently if you've been swimming or sweating).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For chemical sunscreen, I understand this—chemicals like avobenzone protect you by breaking down under UV radiation. The longer you stay in the sun, the less protection these chemicals are able to provide. However, physical sunscreen forms a physical barrier—why is it necessary to reapply it, assuming you haven't been sweating or swimming? Shouldn't it still be on your skin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should note that neither of the two packages of physical sunscreen I have make any mention of &amp;quot;mandatory&amp;quot; reapplication in the absence of excessive sweating or product wear. That being said, I've also seen a bottle of chemical sunscreen (made for the face) that makes no mention of it, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should save you all some time and note that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunscreen#Dosage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia indicates&lt;/a&gt; that the best action might be to reapply &lt;em&gt;once within two hours&lt;/em&gt; of your first application, and then only reapply as product wear occurs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to the common advice that sunscreen should be reapplied every 2–3 hours, some research has shown that the best protection is achieved by application 15–30 minutes before exposure, followed by one reapplication 15–30 minutes after the sun exposure begins. Further reapplication is only necessary after activities such as swimming, sweating, or rubbing/wiping.&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/23/oddthinking&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recent research at the University of California, Riverside, indicates that sunscreen must be reapplied within 2 hours in order to remain effective. Not reapplying could even cause more cell damage than not using sunscreen at all, due to the release of extra free radicals from those sunscreen chemicals that were absorbed into the skin.[6]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This still doesn't address the issue of physical sunscreens. Am I avoiding the need to reapply by wearing physical sunscreen? I don't mind the paleness of physical sunscreen as long as it's &amp;quot;buying&amp;quot; me the right not to have to worry about reapplication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;Most of these sources have blog or forum comments, because I don't see many normal articles talking about this subject. However, from a quick Google search, here are a few other websites that seem to lump all sunscreens together into the &amp;quot;reapply-every-two-hours&amp;quot; category: &lt;del&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.melanomafoundation.org/prevention/facts.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Melanoma Foundation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/del&gt; (thanks, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/23/oddthinking&quot;&gt;Oddthinking♦&lt;/a&gt;), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.faboverforty.com/skincare/may-is-skin-cancer-awareness-month-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fab Over Forty&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deardoctor.com/inside-the-magazine/issue-16/sun-protection-for-the-face/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dear Doctor&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6437" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T00:15:27.050" Title="Must one reapply physical sunscreen every two hours?" Tags="|environmental-health|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8518" CreationDate="2012-03-21T05:13:19.120" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tough question to answer as there are a lot of ifs and buts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weight loss is all about caloric deficit, expend more energy than you consume and you lose weight. Most people do this by dieting, but the body tends to readjust the resting metabolic rate so that you don't lose too much reserves. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drlenkravitz.com/Articles/regain.html&quot;&gt;Thus exercise plus&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drlenkravitz.com/Articles/exvsdietinwtloss.html&quot;&gt;diet is needed for weight loss&lt;/a&gt; to be effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How effective is 'Diet Only' versus 'Diet plus Exercise' for Weight&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Loss? Most studies demonstrate that when diet (caloric restriction)&#xA;  and physical activity are combined in a weight management program,&#xA;  encouraging results in weight loss occur. Donnelly and colleagues&#xA;  (2009) explain that a weight loss program design may create an energy&#xA;  deficit (e.g., 500 to 1500) composed of exercise (e.g., 250&#xA;  kilocalories/day) and caloric restriction (e.g., 250 kilocalories/day)&#xA;  for the daily caloric deficit total (500 kilocalories in this&#xA;  example). In studies where investigators introduce an energy deficit&#xA;  of 700 to 1000 kilocalories per day, 'diet only' and 'diet plus&#xA;  exercise' result in similar losses. Donnelly explains that this is due&#xA;  to metabolic adaptations that “diminish any additive effect of energy&#xA;  expenditure from physical activity on weight loss”. However, in&#xA;  investigations where the energy deficit is 500-700 kilocalories/day,&#xA;  the 'diet plus exercise' group is about 20% greater than the 'diet&#xA;  only' intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So weight loss needs to be related to your activity and diet in order to understand your basal metabolism. But weight loss isn't just about bodyweight as it is about losing bodyfat (&lt;a href=&quot;http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3aANd9GcSqtAIrrNR1ebrPhdbohz2IO1DCprAfcPkaGBy5lQH3uJWpNTMkFMvi6v19Xg&quot;&gt;as muscle is useful for maintaining basal metabolism and body function&lt;/a&gt;). When you calculate this you are able to figure out how many calories need to be removed from the diet in order to lose fat. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.musclemecca.com/showthread.php/214331-How-to-Calculate-Your-Daily-Caloric-Needs&quot;&gt;See here&lt;/a&gt;. There are also strategies that can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drlenkravitz.com/Articles/Metabolism.pdf&quot;&gt;change your metabolism&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exercise is usually broken down into two categories: cardio and weight training. There are many benefits to both and generally both are recommended for long term health. Weight training is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16258184&quot;&gt;known to burn fat&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study is the first to directly show that resistance exercise&#xA;  increases adipose tissue lipolysis and thus contributes to improved&#xA;  body composition. This boost in lipolysis is apparently due to the&#xA;  excitatory effect of resistance training on specific hormones (e.g.,&#xA;  epinephrine, norepinephrine and growth hormone). As this study design&#xA;  was completed with trained male subjects, it is hoped that the methods&#xA;  and procedures will be completed with other subject populations (e.g.,&#xA;  females, untrained persons, youth, seniors, overweight, etc.) in&#xA;  future research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For cardio training, there is obviously fat burning taking place. The amount of fat burning that occurs is related to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drlenkravitz.com/Articles/epocarticle.html&quot;&gt;intensity of the cardio&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In summary, that data clearly show that exercise intensity is the main&#xA;  factor in determining the magnitude and duration of EPOC following&#xA;  aerobic exercise. Thus, when developing a cardiorespiratory exercise&#xA;  prescription for weight maintenance and weight loss, the influence of&#xA;  exercise intensity on EPOC and its potential contribution to total&#xA;  caloric expenditure should be taken into consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same is true of weightlifting (from the same article):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The data on resistance training and EPOC suggest that EPOC is&#xA;  distinctly influenced by the intensity of the resistance training&#xA;  program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual amount of post activity &quot;fat burning&quot; will be related to the intensity and duration of the exercise done. Weightlifting has advantages in terms of encouraging muscle satellite cell accumulation that sustains and grows muscle. Cardio has the benefit that it can be performed for longer durations than weightlifting. So the essential answer will come down to the individual and their strength and fitness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially any exercise program should incorporate both cardio and weight training for weight loss, especially targeting fat loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more articles on fitness and metabolism &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drlenkravitz.com/Pages/articles.html&quot;&gt;see here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5775" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T05:13:19.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8535" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8568" CreationDate="2012-03-21T10:06:37.777" Score="12" ViewCount="1801" Body="&lt;p&gt;On his website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanbirdwings.net/&quot;&gt;http://www.humanbirdwings.net/&lt;/a&gt; the dutch engineer Jarno Smeets claims to have successfully build a set of 17 m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; bird-like wings from material of a kite. It is claimed that it uses sensors taken from Wii controllers and a smart phone as well as two motors on the back of the &quot;pilot&quot; which amplify the flapping from the &quot;pilots&quot; arms which are connected with robes to the wings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A video showing him fly can be seen at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYW5G2kbrKk&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYW5G2kbrKk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There is an official press release at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanbirdwings.net/press/&quot;&gt;http://www.humanbirdwings.net/press/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His project to build such a flying device has been published by the Belgian weekly HUMO and the German Financial Times. However, I could not find any news report which featured his claimed success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While totally self-powered human bird-flight is AFAIK impossible due to the fact that humans don't have the muscle power to move wings large enough to carry them, a (semi-)motorized setup could IMHO work in theory. However, I'm skeptical if it is possible with a rather lightweight setup as shown here. This especially includes the possibility to lift-off from an even ground as claimed in the video. There is still a good chance that the shown flight is faked using video editing tricks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1072" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-20T00:58:21.443" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T00:58:21.443" Title="Is it possible to fly like a bird using semi-motorized wings?" Tags="|aviation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8536" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-21T13:26:07.877" Score="2" ViewCount="233" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent widely reported news story (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/chemicals-in-plastic-linked-to-rise-in-obesity-and-diabetes-7578153.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;example report from the Independent&lt;/a&gt;) suggested that one explanation for the modern rise in obesity was not too much food or two little exercise but many of chemical additives common in the modern environment (especially those found in plastics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The news stories mostly wrote up the report as though a proper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/cochrane-reviews&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cochrane-style&lt;/a&gt; meta analysis  had been done. But the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemtrust.org.uk/documents/CHEM%20Trust%20Obesity%20&amp;amp;%20Diabetes%20Full%20Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;original report&lt;/a&gt; is not a proper meta analysis but a selective review of references produced by a lobby group. That doesn't mean their conclusions are wrong, but it should be a reason to apply some skepticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are common plastic additives and related chemicals a plausible and significant cause of the modern rise in obesity? Or is this just another &quot;chemicals are bad&quot; scare?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T13:26:07.877" Title="Are plastics making us fat and giving us diabetes?" Tags="|nutrition|epidemiology|chemistry|obesity|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8537" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8538" CreationDate="2012-03-21T14:28:43.993" Score="35" ViewCount="46053" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim was made popular by being said in the movie &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network&quot;&gt;The Social Network&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. It exactly says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did you know there are more people with genius IQs living in China&#xA;  than there are people of any kind living in the United States?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8930" OwnerDisplayName="user5169" LastEditorUserId="1760" LastEditDate="2012-03-21T18:24:39.833" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T10:46:47.007" Title="Are there more people with genius IQs living in China than there are people total in the U.S.?" Tags="|united-states|china|intelligence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8537" CreationDate="2012-03-21T15:55:20.733" Score="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim can actually be tested very easily. Others have done it, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.limaohio.com/articles/people-57597-living-few.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brian Dickerson: The perils of repeating political nonsense&lt;/a&gt; and came to the conclusion that the claim was wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You just need the chance a random person from a large group has a genius level IQ, then multiply it with the number of people in China and compare the result with the number of people in the USA. The IQ follows a Gaussian distribution where 100 is the mean by definition and a standard deviation (SD) of 15 (after Wechsler) or 16 (after Stanford-Binet). (sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQtable.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iq&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;). The rarity of a particular IQ can be calculated easily and are listed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQtable.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;. This numbers give the percentage of people with an IQ equal or lower than the given IQ and the rarity of this occurring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main question actually is what an genius level IQ is. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/IQBasics.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt; it is 140 or higher (&quot;Genius or near genius&quot;) while &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychology.about.com/od/psychologicaltesting/f/genius-iq-score.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[4]&lt;/a&gt; states it as at least 160.&#xA;The rarity of such an IQ is 1/261 (with a SD of 15) or 1/161 (SD=16) for an IQ of 140 and&#xA;1/31,560 (SD=15) or 1/11,307 (SD=16) for an IQ of 160 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iq&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The population of USA for 2012 is about 313,221,000 according to the U.S. Census Bureau &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[5]&lt;/a&gt;. The population of China for 2011 is about 1,370,537,000 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stats.gov.cn/english/newsandcomingevents/t20110428_402722244.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[6]&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Taking the lowest rarity of 1/161 from above then there are about 1,370,537,000/161 =  about 8,513,000 geniuses in China, which is significantly less then the 313,221,000 Americans.&#xA;If you take the 15 SD value of 1/261 then you get only about 5,251,000 Chinese geniuses. &#xA;With the 160 IQ points, which are more realistic &lt;a href=&quot;http://hem.bredband.net/b153434/Index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[7]&lt;/a&gt; to indicate a real genius, the numbers are even smaller (about 43,400 or 12,100). Note that 1,370,537,000/313,221,000 = 4.375, so in order for this claim to be true actually one of every four (or say five) Chinese would need to be a Genius. Even without the numbers above, it can be easily understood that this is not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt; This claim is wrong according to the definition and probabilities of the IQ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Supplement:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/revisions/8538/7&quot;&gt;It has been pointed out&lt;/a&gt;, that there are published research results &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/revisions/8538/7&quot;&gt;[7]&lt;/a&gt; showing that China and other Asian countries have a higher average IQ of about 106 (or even as high as 115) as the normed average of 100. This would increase the number of geniuses in China: The above factor of 1/161 would drop to about 1/60 or, for a Chinese average of 115, even to about 1/17. These numbers can be easily calculated using the standard deviation, e.g. using MS Excel's function &lt;code&gt;NORM.DIST(140, 106, 16, TRUE)&lt;/code&gt;. However, both these factors are not in any way close to the US/Chinese population ratio of about 1/4.375, so the original conclusion still holds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1072" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2017-01-23T10:46:47.007" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8553" CreationDate="2012-03-21T17:12:02.027" Score="20" ViewCount="1552" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/5552-taller-people-earn-money.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; that state that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/Careers/02/02/cb.tall.people/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tall people make more money&lt;/a&gt;. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_discrimination&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; it is a known fact that some jobs require tall people, however I'm skeptical that on average this is indeed a fact.&#xA;Do taller people earn more money on average?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8930" OwnerDisplayName="user5169" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T14:21:32.147" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T14:21:32.147" Title="Do taller people earn more money?" Tags="|employment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8541" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8542" CreationDate="2012-03-21T17:14:12.670" Score="3" ViewCount="567" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8296/is-the-united-states-the-fattest-country-in-the-world&quot;&gt;Is the United States the fattest country in the world?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to different sources and the media, the United States is well known for being the country with the highest obesity rate, no one ever has asked my weight so I don't see how reliable this information is.&#xA;Is it true then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6442" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5169" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T10:40:08.253" Title="Is the United States the country with the highest obesity rate?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2012-03-21T21:04:19.587" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8541" CreationDate="2012-03-21T17:35:16.443" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/2007/02/07/worlds-fattest-countries-forbeslife-cx_ls_0208worldfat_2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/health/101118/fat-and-fatter-worlds-10-fattest-countries&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Global Post&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoplease.com/world/statistics/obesity.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Infoplease&lt;/a&gt;, the &#xA;country (island country) of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nauru&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the top 10 list according to forbes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Rank    Country     %&#xA;1.  Nauru           94.5&#xA;2.  Micronesia      91.1&#xA;3.  Cook Islands    90.9&#xA;4.  Tonga           90.8&#xA;5.  Niue            81.7&#xA;6.  Samoa           80.4&#xA;7.  Palau           78.4&#xA;8.  Kuwait          74.2&#xA;9.  United States   74.1&#xA;10. Kiribati        73.6&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8930" OwnerDisplayName="user5169" LastEditorUserId="2836" LastEditDate="2012-03-23T10:40:08.253" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T10:40:08.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8535" CreationDate="2012-03-21T19:00:07.070" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the people at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_light_and_magic&quot;&gt;Industrial Light &amp;amp; Magic&lt;/a&gt; seem to think &lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/5895235/cgi-experts-say-flying-bird-man-is-fake&quot;&gt;the video is a CGI fake&lt;/a&gt;, and they should know...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bad physics, shaky cam with bad focus (always a giveaway) and the most&#xA;  steady head I've ever seen on a guy flapping his arms in order to not&#xA;  break every bone in his body. FAKE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4910" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T19:00:07.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8548" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8551" CreationDate="2012-03-21T21:44:49.960" Score="3" ViewCount="588" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=Cg8fWLPBidkC&amp;amp;lpg=PA45&amp;amp;dq=%22develop%20brain%20efficiency%20and%20to%20long%20life%22&amp;amp;pg=PA45#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22develop%20brain%20efficiency%20and%20to%20long%20life%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Proceeding of the Mini Workshop Southeast Asia Germany Alumni Network (SEAG)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;... the Korean ginseng (Panax schinsen) has been well known as a tonic,&#xA;  treatment for Diabetes Mellitus, effective to develop energy, sex&#xA;  ability, to cure eyes and hearing to develop brain efficiency and to&#xA;  long life...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that a local myth or a well-established scientific fact?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5725" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T22:07:12.813" Title="Does Korean ginseng develop brain efficiency and prolong life?" Tags="|medical-science|neurology|natural-remedies|nutritional-supplements|life-expectancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8549" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-03-21T21:48:00.933" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-21T21:48:00.933" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T21:48:00.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8550" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-03-21T21:48:00.933" Score="0" Body="The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK or Britain) is a sovereign state located off the north-western coast of continental Europe." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-21T21:48:00.933" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T21:48:00.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8548" CreationDate="2012-03-21T22:07:12.813" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no proof that ginseng has any effect on cognitive faculties, so it's &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; an established fact at all:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently, there is a lack of convincing evidence to show a cognitive enhancing effect of Panax ginseng in healthy participants and no high quality evidence about its efficacy in patients with dementia. Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel group trials with large sample sizes are needed to further investigate the effect of ginseng on cognition in different populations, including dementia patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD007769/no-convincing-evidence-of-a-cognitive-enhancing-effect-of-panax-ginseng.&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Geng J, Dong J, Ni H, Lee MS, Wu T, Jiang K, Wang G, Zhou AL, Malouf R. Ginseng for cognition. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2010, Issue 12. Art. No.: CD007769. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD007769.pub2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the review (i.e. a collation of all the scientific results known so far), the author identifies some &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; effects, but not enough scientific evidence to claim them as fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T22:07:12.813" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8540" CreationDate="2012-03-21T23:23:30.713" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a meta-analysis of four studies (&gt;8k total subjects) by &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.washington.edu/mdj3/MGMT580/Readings/Week%201/Judge.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Judge and Cable (2004)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;height is positively related to income after controlling for sex, age, and weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study by &lt;a href=&quot;http://economics.sas.upenn.edu/~apostlew/paper/pdf/short.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Persico et al 2004&lt;/a&gt; provide further review and analysis of the height-income relationship, and point out that most presidents are well above the average height of their time (see fig below). Finally, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=no-tall-tale-height-matters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt; article provides an interesting discussion of the relationship between height and other traits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/m1N7m.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Judge and Cable, 2004,The effect of physical height on workplace success and income: preliminary test of a theoretical model. J Appl Psychol. Jun;89(3):428-41. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.89.3.428&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1037/0021-9010.89.3.428&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Persico, Nicola, Andrew Postlewaite, and Dan Silverman. 2004. The Effect of Adolescent Experience on Labor Market Outcomes: The Case of Height,” Journal of Political Economy, 112(5) (2004), 1019-1053&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/422566&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1086/422566&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="238" LastEditorUserId="238" LastEditDate="2012-03-21T23:42:16.277" LastActivityDate="2012-03-21T23:42:16.277" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-22T12:09:18.550" Score="20" ViewCount="2508" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the Coca-Cola recipe a secret?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to draw attention to the distinction between a &lt;em&gt;recipe&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;composition&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Composition&lt;/strong&gt;: a list of all &lt;em&gt;ingredients&lt;/em&gt;, including quantity/proportion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recipe&lt;/strong&gt;: a list of &lt;em&gt;steps&lt;/em&gt; one can take to create the final composition. In other words, one of many possible ways of achieving the &lt;em&gt;composition&lt;/em&gt;, and certainly not defining it all by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T14:11:06.380" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T20:04:24.893" Title="Is the Coca-Cola recipe a secret?" Tags="|chemistry|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8560" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16719" CreationDate="2012-03-22T12:11:40.517" Score="44" ViewCount="67470" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I study, I like to do it in blocks of a few hours, with little rests in between. I have heard from multiple (possibly unreliable) sources, however, that a human's concentration will drastically drop after 45 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it doubtful that this limit should be the same for all humans. If there is a limit, I find it doubtful, to be so low, since there are people with jobs that require much more concentration than that (also, exams usually last longer than that, requiring people to concentrate for a few hours straight). I also doubt that this limit can't be improved by exercising your brain regularly or possibly by some sort of meditation. My question is therefore: &lt;strong&gt;Is there any research behind this claim?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A google search quickly reveals the ubiquity of this claim, so I suspect it falls in the category of &quot;common psychological wisdom&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080302193618AAkt9i4&quot;&gt;Yahoo! Answers&lt;/a&gt; the chosen answer advocates partitioning your studying time into intervals of 45 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Don't try to work for 10 hours straight. Schedule 45 minute blocks with 15 minute breaks. Decide what you are going to accomplish during those 45 minutes, and record what you have done.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this claim from the same source (user JAMES) is even more interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hey friend,,, i wanna tell you a fact,,, that it is scientifically proved that human brain can concentrate on one thing only for 40 - 45 minutes (not more than that,,,, it is the maximum limit)....&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Finish-Your-Homework&quot;&gt;wikiHow's How to Finish Your Homework&lt;/a&gt; we find the same claim (see Tips):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Your homework may take several hours to complete. You must take a 10-15 minute break every 45 minutes. Your brain can only concentrate for 45 minutes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webanswers.com/education/trivia/what-is-the-best-way-for-concentrate-on-studies-04271b&quot;&gt;WebAnswers&lt;/a&gt;, again (user Leandraluv):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Right, get back to your checklist and start studying. Take a break every 45 minutes to one hour or so to get some water and take a little walk. It makes no sense if you keep going for three hours straight .. after some time you won't absorb any information.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://studies-tips.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-concentrate-while-studying.html&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Continuous studying is not a recommended habit as brain needs rest in every 40-45 minutes thus make sure you give yourself breaks while studying. A 15 min break for a 45 minute continuous learning is enough.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize none of these sources are very reliable, but I'd say this is strong evidence of the claim being completely ingrained into the collective consciousness of our society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6479" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T13:15:49.567" LastActivityDate="2021-01-26T15:32:17.577" Title="How long is it possible to maintain concentration?" Tags="|psychology|concentration|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8500" CreationDate="2012-03-22T12:40:02.163" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's plenty of evidence showing that &lt;em&gt;manufactured&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;trans fatty acids&lt;/a&gt; are harmful. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjugated_linoleic_acid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Conjugated Linoleic Acid&lt;/a&gt; is a &lt;em&gt;naturally-occurring&lt;/em&gt; trans fat, which has several studies showing that it might have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12368384&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;anti-cancer properties&lt;/a&gt;, as well as helping in weight management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Inhibition of carcinogenesis by conjugated linoleic acid: potential mechanisms of action.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is composed of positional and&#xA;stereoisomers of octadecadienoate (18:2); it is found in foods derived&#xA;from ruminants (beef and lamb as well as dairy products from these&#xA;sources). When a mixture of isomers is fed to experimental animals,&#xA;chemically induced tumorigenesis of mammary, skin and colon is&#xA;reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;J Nutr. 2002 Oct;132(10):2995-8.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although CLA isn't an &lt;em&gt;essential&lt;/em&gt; nutrient, the OP actually made two claims, the other being about CLA having &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4910" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T12:40:02.163" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8559" CreationDate="2012-03-22T13:14:28.430" Score="20" Body="&lt;h1&gt;The recipe&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recipe is a secret. It &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2012/01/06/vault-with-coca-cola-trade-secret-formula-on-public-display/id=21588/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;is kept in a vault that is on display&lt;/a&gt;, but the recipe itself as with its other products are considered &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howstuffworks.com/question625.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;trade secrets&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A trade secret is any information that allows you to make money&#xA;because it is not generally known. A trade secret could be a formula,&#xA;c­omputer program, process, method, device, technique, pricing&#xA;information, customer lists or other non-public information. If the&#xA;economic value of a piece of information relies on it being kept&#xA;private, it could be a trade secret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most famous examples of a trade secret is the formula for&#xA;Coca-Cola. The formula, also referred to by the code name &amp;quot;Merchandise&#xA;7X,&amp;quot; is known to only a few people and kept in the vault of a bank in&#xA;Atlanta, Georgia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The composition&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coca-Cola and all of its varieties have their &lt;a href=&quot;http://productnutrition.thecoca-colacompany.com/products/coca-cola#ingredients&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;basic ingredients listed on their home page&lt;/a&gt;.  As noted below some key ingredients are listed in a way that makes the specific ingredient difficult to tell. Since they provide the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.netgrocer.com/pd/Coca-Cola/Coke-Classic/67-60-fl-oz/049000006391/?clksrc=gproduct&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFzf14c2Y5nVZv7bSMlNstbLcnXLw&amp;amp;ei=9zVrT--oK4TlsQfSnr3tAg&amp;amp;ved=0CDQQqxIwAg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;final product to consumers without licence&lt;/a&gt; it is hard to say that it (the final product) is a secret.  The recipe to make it, as noted above, is a secret.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_formula&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; has some links to recipes proported to have been used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Addendum&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2006 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,202439,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a disgruntled employee tried to sell the Coke recipe to rival Pepsi.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;when PepsiCo Inc. got a letter offering Coke trade secrets, it went&#xA;straight to its corporate rival.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Six weeks later, three people were scheduled to appear in federal&#xA;court Thursday to face charges of stealing confidential information,&#xA;including a sample of a new drink, from The Coca-Cola Co., and trying&#xA;to sell it to PepsiCo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;on June 27, an undercover FBI agent offered to buy other trade secret&#xA;items for $1.5 million from &amp;quot;Dirk.&amp;quot; The same day a bank account was&#xA;opened under the names of Duhaney and Dimson, and the address used on&#xA;the account was that of Duhaney's residence, prosecutors said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Video surveillance showed Williams at her desk at Coke headquarters&#xA;going through multiple files looking for documents and stuffing them&#xA;into bags. She also was observed holding a liquid container with a&#xA;white label, which resembled the description of a new Coca-Cola&#xA;product sample, before placing it into her personal bag, prosecutors&#xA;say, adding that Coca-Cola later verified the sample was genuine and&#xA;is a product the company is developing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while the composition is not a secret, the recipe to make it the drink that it is, is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T20:04:24.893" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8563" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-22T13:46:00.223" Score="9" ViewCount="795" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several websites (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kombuchakamp.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.kombuchakamp.com/&lt;/a&gt; and &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kombu.de/english.htm&quot;&gt;http://kombu.de/english.htm&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;as well as books (e.g. search Amazon for &quot;Kombucha&quot;) about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kombucha&quot;&gt;kombucha&lt;/a&gt; tea and most of them claim that drinking it has a positive effect on health. The main claim is that it &lt;strong&gt;improves your immune system&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;detoxifies the body&lt;/strong&gt;. Further claims even go so far to say that it helps people which suffer from cancer or AIDS. This could be explained as well from the improved immune system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kombuchakamp.com/basic-kombucha-faq&quot;&gt;http://www.kombuchakamp.com/basic-kombucha-faq&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drinking Kombucha promotes better health by detoxifying and improving the efficiency of your digestive system which boosts immunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kombuchakamp.com/health-benefits-of-kombucha&quot;&gt;http://www.kombuchakamp.com/health-benefits-of-kombucha&lt;/a&gt; for a larger list of claimed health benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are also people which warn for kombucha, as it can lead to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yourhealthbase.com/database/a86l.htm&quot;&gt;lead poisoning&lt;/a&gt; if done in an inappropriate container, or for other reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any scientific results supporting at least some claims of an improved health due to kombucha consumption? &#xA;I'm looking for an answer showing research results in favor or against the main claims mentioned above. Results about similar claims are also welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1072" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T16:32:02.037" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T13:03:16.247" Title="Does drinking kombucha tea have a positive effect on your health?" Tags="|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8564" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-22T14:05:05.600" Score="4" ViewCount="8841" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see ads for numerous supplements and all of them seem to be a scam. Except I have noticed when I am eating a lot of spicy food and hot sauce I tend to lose weight. I have found capsaicin in pure form via a pill but I don't know if it is safe or will help me lose weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.capsiplex.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is an example of such a supplement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All you have to do is read the proof, testimonials and our list of celebrity endorsements and fans to know how effective Capsiplex is at speeding up your metabolism and burning extra calories&#xA;  278 more calories burned before, during and after exercise for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies have established that consumption of capsicum as red pepper or capsacinoids:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Burn 278 more calories every day.&#xA;  Burns carbs and fat.&#xA;  Stimulates carbohydrate and fat oxidation.&#xA;  Enhances diet-induced thermogenesis (an increase in energy expenditure in the body)&#xA;  Reduces appetite levels (shown by decreased cumulative food intake)&#xA;  Helps reduce caloric intake.&#xA;  Gives a beneficial reduction in body mass, % body fat, waist circumference, and desirable reduction in levels of critical markers of weight maintenance such as blood glucose, insulin and triacylglycerol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Remember you can easily burn an additional 278 more calories EVERY DAY with the celebrity used and endorsed Capsiplex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6484" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-22T16:22:28.180" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T03:11:07.127" Title="Is taking capsaicin in pill form safe and does it speed up metabolism or help you lose weight?" Tags="|nutritional-supplements|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8250" CreationDate="2012-03-22T17:19:00.607" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer addressed the question about whether you can get a sunburn trough a glass window. This is what the title and the last paragraph of the question mentions. The &amp;quot;magnifying glass&amp;quot; part doesn't really fit with that, IMHO, and could be a different questions by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://cancerhelp.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/cancer-questions/can-glass-block-sun-rays-that-cause-skin-cancer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Can glass block sun rays that cause skin cancer?&lt;/a&gt; (cancer research UK) normal glass windows reduce the UVB part (wavelength range 315–280 nm &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet#Subtypes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacewx.com/ISO_solar_standard.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2]&lt;/a&gt;) but not the UVA part (400–315 nm, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet#Subtypes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacewx.com/ISO_solar_standard.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2]&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UVA causes skin ageing and research has now shown that it is also likely to cause skin cancer. UVB causes redness and sunburn and is a major risk factor for all types of skin cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most glass used for windows blocks UVB but not UVA. This means that although glass might reduce the risk of sunburn, it does not prevent long term damage from UVA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Important here is the part which states that UVB causes sunburn. This is also stated by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skincancer.org/prevention/uva-and-uvb/understanding-uva-and-uvb&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.skincancer.org/prevention/uva-and-uvb/understanding-uva-and-uvb&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UVB, the chief cause of skin reddening and sunburn, tends to damage the skin's more superficial epidermal layers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunburn&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunburn&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation causes dangerous sunburns and increases the risk of two types of skin cancer [..]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further sources for the UVB blocking by glass windows are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smartskincare.com/skinprotection/uv-indoors.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.smartskincare.com/skinprotection/uv-indoors.html&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people believe that ordinary window glass blocks UV radiation, making any other UV protection unnecessary indoors. This is half-truth at best. Window glass blocks UVB but lets much of UVA through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12925188&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UV exposure in cars&lt;/a&gt; (research paper):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UV wavelengths longer than &amp;gt;335 nm were transmitted through car windows, and UV irradiation &amp;gt;380 nm was transmitted through compound glass windscreens&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This means they both block UVB (315–280 nm) completely.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16635665&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Photoprotection by window glass, automobile glass, and sunglasses&lt;/a&gt; (research paper):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been known for some time that window glass filters out UVB and transmits UVA and visible light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this paper mentions that there is also special glass which blocks the whole UV spectrum including UV-A, but normal glass doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;These bring me to the following conclusions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The risk of sunburn through a glass window is, depending on the source, either heavily reduced or not existing compared to direct exposure to sunlight. In the first case you could still get a sunburn after a longer time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because UVA is not blocked at the same time the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwVVpwBKUp0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;use of sunscreen&lt;/a&gt; is still required in order to avoid skin damage like skin cancer. This is a real danger, because the warning effect of the sunburn is then missing or delayed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1072" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T17:55:30.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8535" CreationDate="2012-03-22T19:39:52.693" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The maker and claimed &amp;quot;pilot&amp;quot; of the construction now has outed the whole thing as an hoax on Dutch TV and made an official statement on its website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.floriskaayk.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.floriskaayk.com/&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, I revealed my latest project on Dutch prime-time TV show 'De wereld draait door'. In the past months I have been working on an exciting fictional online storytelling project called Human Birdwings . To be precise, Human Birdwings was an online adventure and invention story in which fictional character Jarno Smeets developed wings in a do-it-yourself manner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following websites mentioning it as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gizmodo: &lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/5895638/flying-bird-man-admits-flying-bird-man-is-fake++here-he-is&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flying Bird Man Admits Flying Bird Man Is Fake&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're looking at the Internet Bird Man, who captivated the web's attention for dozens of hours and divided us between skeptics and the faithful. It was a hoax! It turns out he even made up his name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jarno Smeets—actually a Dutch CGI artist named Floris Kaayk—fessed up to the hoax on De Wereld Draait Door, a Dutch TV show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tested.com/news/articles/43440-thoughts-on-the-mechanics-of-assisted-human-flight/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mythbusters (some link as below, now edited)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Editor's note: &amp;quot;Jarno Smeet&amp;quot; has gone on Dutch TV exposing the entire affair as an elaborate hoax. I've updated the headline to reflect. More details to come soon.--WS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://presurfer.blogspot.de/2012/03/man-flies-like-bird.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://presurfer.blogspot.de/2012/03/man-flies-like-bird.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;update: It's a hoax. The Internet Bird Man fessed up to the hoax on a Dutch TV show. It turns out he even made up his name. Jarno Smeets is actually a Dutch CGI artist named Floris Kaayk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the recent publication of the &amp;quot;success&amp;quot; video there have been several responses on different websites. Through them I'm actually now able to give a referenced answer myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some people with technical expertise which note that it seems to be technical possible, and does not need to be a fake on technical grounds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jamie Hyneman (Mythbusters): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tested.com/news/articles/43440-thoughts-on-the-mechanics-of-assisted-human-flight/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thoughts on The Mechanics of Assisted Human Flight.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rhett Allain, Associate Professor of Physics at Southeastern Louisiana University: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/analysis-of-the-human-birdwings/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Analysis of the Human Birdwings&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the following news and science/technology websites have reported it seems to be a fake either by themselves or by quoting experts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fox News: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/22/viral-human-bird-wings-video-fake-probably-ad-expert-says/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Viral 'human bird wings' video fake, probably an ad, expert says&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wired Science: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/03/human-bird-wings-hoax/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bird-Man’s Resume Doesn’t Check Out: ‘Nobody Knows Him’&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gizmodo: &lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/5895235/cgi-experts-say-flying-bird-man-is-fake&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CGI Experts Say Flying Bird Man Is Fake&lt;/a&gt; (taken from John C's answer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gizmodo: &lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/5894904/man-flies-like-a-bird-flapping-his-own-wings&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Man Flies Like a Bird Flapping His Own Wings &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science on msnbc.com: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46822559/ns/technology_and_science-science/#.T2t7llSP-Xs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Human bird' video flying high, but experts say it looks fake&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gadget Review: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gadgetreview.com/2012/03/fake-human-birds-wings.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fake: Human Birds Wings (video)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently there are some clear hints about CGI techniques used for the video(s). Other things like missing load on the wings have been pointed out. Also the background story of the pilot does not check out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some (in the above linked posts) assume that this is meant as a viral ad video for one of the companies which products were used by the project, like Nintendo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1072" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-24T20:21:26.137" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8502" CreationDate="2012-03-22T20:06:50.387" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Sauna makes your heart work harder&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sauna definitely increases heart rate (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colorado.edu/eeb/courses/1230jbasey/abstracts%202008/14.htm&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scielo.br/pdf/rbme/v12n4/en_10.pdf&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does sauna makes you burn calories the same as exercise ? No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most accurate method of measuring calorie burn is through VO2&#xA;  testing&#xA;  ... &#xA;  Combustion, which turns the fuel you receive from food into&#xA;  energy, needs oxygen. Because there is a direct relationship between&#xA;  how much oxygen you use and how much energy you burn, by measuring the&#xA;  oxygen to carbon dioxide exchange through VO2 testing, you will get a&#xA;  fairly precise gauge of how many calories you're burning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5700177_heart-monitors-calculate-calories-burned.html&quot;&gt;eHow &quot;How Heart Rate Monitors Calculate Calories Burned&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jpts/8/1/25/_pdf&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; has show following results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VO2 on exercise (ml/min) 1269,4 +/- 426,1&#xA;VO2 on suana (ml/min)  236,9 +/- 42,7&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oxygen update in suana was much less then during exercise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about sauna and sitting ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say sitting requires 1 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metabolic_equivalent&quot;&gt;MET&lt;/a&gt;, then for 120 kg person would intake about 120 ml / min. &#xA;Walking for the same person (120 kg) would be 120 kg * 3 ml / min kg = 360 ml / min&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, sauna makes your body burn more calories than sitting, it's can't be compared to exercises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6181" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T20:06:50.387" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8516" CreationDate="2012-03-22T20:56:38.763" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.normandoidge.com/normandoidge/MAIN.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;The Brain That Changes Itself&quot;&lt;/a&gt;  not the exercise itself, but the learning &#xA;of new exercise, dance, activity, etc. is making your brain build new neuronal connection and even creates new neurons. &#xA;It' not repeating of the same exercise, but learning of new ones makes you &quot;smarter&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This theory, that novel environments may trigger neurogenesis, is&#xA;  consistent with Merzenich's discovery that in order to keep the brain&#xA;  fit, we must learn something new, rather than simply replaying&#xA;  already-mastered skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But walking is actually the activity which can make new neurons itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gage's colleague Henriette van Praag showed that the most effective&#xA;  contributor to increased proliferation of new neurons was the running&#xA;  wheel. After a month on the wheel, the mice had doubled the number of&#xA;  new neurons in the hippocampus.&#xA;  Mice don't really run on running wheels, Gage told me; it only looks like they&#xA;  do, because the wheel provides so little resistance. Rather, they walk&#xA;  quickly. Gage's theory is that in a natural setting, long-term fast&#xA;  walking would take the animal into a new, different environment that&#xA;  would require new learning, sparking what he calls &quot;anticipatory&#xA;  proliferation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/96/23/13427.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Running enhances neurogenesis, learning,&#xA;and long-term potentiation in mice&lt;/a&gt; was done by &lt;a href=&quot;http://neuroscience.nih.gov/Lab.asp?Org_ID=569&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Henriette van Praag, Ph.D.&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://neuroscience.nih.gov/Publications.asp?People_ID=2918&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;all publications&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Running increases neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus of the&#xA;  hippocampus, a brain structure that is important for memory function.&#xA;  ... Our results indicate that physical activity can regulate&#xA;  hippocampal neurogenesis, synaptic plasticity, and learning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one more: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20133882&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Running enhances spatial pattern separation in mice.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Increasing evidence suggests that regular exercise improves brain&#xA;  health and promotes synaptic plasticity and hippocampal neurogenesis.&#xA;  Exercise improves learning, but specific mechanisms of information&#xA;  processing influenced by physical activity are unknown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6181" LastEditorUserId="6181" LastEditDate="2012-03-23T08:49:02.433" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T08:49:02.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8574" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-22T23:10:29.370" Score="4" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that putting wine in a blender for a few seconds (or using something like the Vinturi wine aerator) gives me the same result as putting the wine in a decanter for 1 or 2 hours as suggested here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2011/12/18/hyperdecanting-wine/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2011/12/18/hyperdecanting-wine/&lt;/a&gt; ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5192" LastActivityDate="2012-03-22T23:10:29.370" Title="Is decanting wine in a blender the same as in a decanter?" Tags="|nutrition|physics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8564" CreationDate="2012-03-23T03:11:07.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started searching, assuming there would be no evidence. I was happy to find there was actually some - perhaps not the strongest, and not enough to start recommending that you take the tablets, but at least there was some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two most relevant studies I found were these two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Westerterp-Plantenga, Smeets and Lejeune, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v29/n6/abs/0802862a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sensory and gastrointestinal satiety effects of capsaicin on food intake&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;International Journal of Obesity (2005) 29, 682–688. doi:10.1038/sj.ijo.0802862&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For two days, they watched what 12 men and 12 women chose to eat from a small selection in a lab restaurant, after the subjects had either swallowed 0.9g of Red Pepper&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;, capsaicin pills or a placebo, with tomato juice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSION: In the short term, both oral and gastrointestinal exposure to capsaicin increased satiety and reduced energy and fat intake; the stronger reduction with oral exposure suggests a sensory effect of capsaicin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; Cultural note: They are Dutch researchers in an international journal: I think they are referring to small chilli peppers, not large bell peppers (a.k.a. capsicum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;H.C. Reinbacha, A. Smeetsb, T. Martinussenc, P. Møllera, M.S. Westerterp-Plantengab, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261561409000235&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effects of capsaicin, green tea and CH-19 sweet pepper on appetite and energy intake in humans in negative and positive energy balance&lt;/a&gt; Clinical Nutrition&#xA;Volume 28, Issue 3, June 2009, Pages 260–265, doi: 10.1016/j.clnu.2009.01.010&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this study, they looked at 27 people over three weeks, where they were given various treatments of: capsaicin, green tea, CH-19 sweet pepper, capsaicin + green tea or placebo. They were also given either enough calories or insufficient calories to meet their &quot;energy balance&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CH-19 sweet pepper and a combination of capsaicin and green tea reduced energy intake during positive energy balance. Capsaicin and green tea suppressed hunger and increased satiety more during negative than during positive energy balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: &lt;strong&gt;This paper has two co-authors in common&lt;/strong&gt; with the above one, so should &lt;strong&gt;NOT be seen as &lt;em&gt;independent&lt;/em&gt; confirmation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/292/1/R77.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;third report from some of the same co-authors&lt;/a&gt;, they claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Capsaicin has been shown to be effective, yet when it is used clinically it requires a strong compliance to a certain dosage, that has not been shown to be feasible yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of these small, brief human studies, there have also been a number of animal studies, which I won't go into, but list a couple of examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/oby/journal/v18/n4/full/oby2009301a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Diabetes in mice on high-fat diet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165614707002817&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evidence that the capsacain receptors are involved in diabetes and obesity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some promising evidence, but what I saw was based on very small trials, didn't look at the long-term risks, didn't demonstrate that the effects are sustained, and wasn't independently replicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not enough evidence to suggest spending money and risking side-effects by taking these tablets - especially as doses are hard to maintain - but it is enough to pique the scientific interest&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T03:11:07.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8576" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8579" CreationDate="2012-03-23T11:17:54.860" Score="4" ViewCount="1473" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17476690&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC article&lt;/a&gt; extolled the virtues of Chia seeds. My skeptical alarm bells were ringing throughout, as nearly every source quoted had a commercial interest in selling chia seeds. In particular, some pretty wild claims were made:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Literally, you could live on this stuff because it's pretty much everything you need&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] chia reduces inflammation, improves heart health, and stabilises blood sugar levels. A few tablespoons are touted as remedying just about anything - without any ill effects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In terms of nutritional content, a tablespoon of chia is like a smoothie made from salmon, spinach and human growth hormone,&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[chia is capable of] building muscle, lowering cholesterol, and reducing your risk of heart disease&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be precise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is Chia capable of replacing a diet entirely (is it possible to live healthily on nothing but chia seeds)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does chia have any recognised medicinal properties published in a medical journal? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-03-23T16:00:38.160" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T21:23:02.390" Title="Are Chia seeds a 'super-food'?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8535" CreationDate="2012-03-23T13:48:02.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Lying Dutchman already admitted that it was indeed a hoax. His real name is Floris Kaayk and he is a movie animator. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;v=OESwdRb48jM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;v=OESwdRb48jM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dutch filmmaker and animator Floris Kaayk in collaboration with media&#xA;  production company Revolver fessed up to creating a “media art&#xA;  project” that took the world by storm in recent days -- a video of&#xA;  inventor Jarno Smeets taking flight by flapping his arms.&#xA;  (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/22/dutch-artist-admits-faking-viral-human-bird-wings-video/#ixzz1pwncxTKX&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FoxNews&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The human birdman Jarno Smeets is in fact Dutch filmmaker and animator&#xA;  Floris Kaayk, who developed the eight-month project as an experiment&#xA;  to see how online media works, he told chat show De Wereld Draait&#xA;  Door. (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2012/03/flying_dutchman_is_lying_dutch.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DutchNews&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T13:48:02.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8576" CreationDate="2012-03-23T21:23:02.390" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt anybody would test humans on a diet of any single product, especially one which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/3673&quot;&gt;30% fat by weight&lt;/a&gt;, and which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/nut-and-seed-products/3061/2&quot;&gt;low in vitamins, iron and some other minerals&lt;/a&gt;.  That does not mean you could not survive for some time on enough of it (and water). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find many studies in the last 20 years of aspects of &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=chia%20seeds&quot;&gt;Chia seeds via Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; or from similar sources.  A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20028328&quot;&gt;systematic review&lt;/a&gt; of Chia (&lt;em&gt;Salvia hispanica&lt;/em&gt;) in 2009 said &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RESULTS:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The available human and non-human studies show possible effectiveness&#xA;  for allergies, angina, athletic performance enhancement, cancer,&#xA;  coronary heart disease (CHD), heart attack, hormonal/endocrine&#xA;  disorders, hyperlipidemia, hypertension, stroke, and vasodilatation.&#xA;  Some evidence also suggests possible anticoagulant, antioxidant, and&#xA;  antiviral effects of Salvia hispanica.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSION:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is limited evidence supporting the efficacy of Salvia hispanica&#xA;  for any indication; thus far, only two clinical studies have examined&#xA;  the effects of Salvia hispanica on cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk&#xA;  factors (including body weight). One study showed some effects on some&#xA;  CVD risk factors, while the other did not. Neither study showed any&#xA;  effects of Salvia hispanica on weight loss. However, the historical&#xA;  use of Salvia hispanica suggests that it is safe for consumption by&#xA;  nonallergic individuals. Further rigorous examination is warranted&#xA;  pertaining to the use of Salvia hispanica as a dietary supplement, as&#xA;  well as in the treatment or prevention of human disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-03-23T21:23:02.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8580" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26433" CreationDate="2012-03-24T05:53:31.797" Score="14" ViewCount="1304" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2063587/Amazon-Kindle-scrambled-airport-X-ray-machines-say-travellers.html&quot;&gt;Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt;, there have been reports of X-ray machines scrambling Kindle screens, despite Amazon's claims that it is impossible. Can X-ray machines have this effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-24T09:23:06.907" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T11:24:38.133" Title="Can airport X-ray machines scramble Kindle screens?" Tags="|physics|aviation|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-24T08:45:17.173" Score="5" ViewCount="196" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TRS-80 Model 100&lt;/a&gt; sold 6 million units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This number seems very high. In fact, our former Dear Leader, Jeff Atwood &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/#!/codinghorror/status/183466722626502656&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wrote&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;wow, they sold six million portable TRS-80s? &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100&lt;/a&gt; I'm calling {{citation needed}} on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there documentary evidence to support the 6 million unit figure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-24T09:45:46.910" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T08:15:03.360" Title="Were 6 million units of the TRS-80 Model 100 portable computers sold?" Tags="|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-03-24T08:45:17.173" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8582" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-03-24T09:44:45.880" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A consumer product is generally any tangible personal property for sale and that is used for personal, family, or household for non-business purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:23:18.990" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:23:18.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8583" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-03-24T09:44:45.880" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about the effectiveness of products which are sold to end consumers. Typically this is used for claims about products when there is no more specific tag available, such as [medicaments] or [natural-remedies]." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:23:18.990" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:23:18.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7668" CreationDate="2012-03-24T15:09:08.150" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Good numbers are hard to find, but the answer is still certainly NO.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the key problems in evaluating anything to do with the Porn industry is that almost nobody has any incentive to report honest numbers. All the really big numbers come either from  dodgy sources trying to &quot;big up&quot; the industry or from campaign groups opposing porn who want to exaggerate how big the problem is for their own reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the famous $97bn estimate (&lt;a href=&quot;http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;from here&lt;/a&gt;) is often misunderstood. That isn't internet revenues at all but a crude estimate of worldwide revenue from &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; sources which includes three huge contributions from countries where the statistics are most likely very ropey (about $72bn from China, Japan and South Korea alone with the porn spend in Korea topping $500 &lt;strong&gt;per person&lt;/strong&gt;). The estimates from the USA suggest about £13bn total spend in 2006 with about $3bn on the internet, $1bn on magazines and maybe $4bn of videos. These numbers look more plausible but far less impressive compared to mainstream media and internet companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some skeptical analyses, though, suggest far smaller numbers. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/25/0524porn.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forbes piece&lt;/a&gt; from 2001 estimates US revenue at less than $4bn. It concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The industry is tiny next to broadcast television ($32.3 billion in 1999 revenue, according to Veronis Suhler), cable television ($45.5 billion), the newspaper business ($27.5 billion), Hollywood ($31 billion), even to professional and educational publishing ($14.8 billion). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent study done as part of an attempt to understand the social impact or porn is more generous to the industry. The study, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.socialcostsofpornography.com/Doran_Industry_Size_Measurement_Social_Costs.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Industry Size, Measurement, and Social Costs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is by K. Doran In an attempt to validate the Adult Video News estimate that internet porn generates about $2.5bn in revenue in 2005 he goes throughout the following logic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the PIAL 2005 May tracking poll, 66% of Americans aged 18 or over used the internet, and 11.25% of these (about 16.7 million) accessed pornography. According to the May 2004 tracking poll data, 20% of internet pornography consumers admit to paying for online&#xA;  content, which, combined with PIAL’s finding on consumption, yields about 3.3 million paying internet pornography consumers in 2005.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These numbers could be an underestimate, because people may fear revealing themselves as an internet pornography user during a telephone survey. But dividing the revenue estimate by the pornography consumer estimate helps evaluate whether either of them seems to be biased in the directions we fear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So I divide the $2.5 billion by 3.3 million consumers to get $737 per paying customer per year, or $61 per month. Pay sites charge $10 to $100 per month (in 2007, for example, Vivid.com charged $30 per month), so $61 per month is a fairly reasonable average. Thus, the $2.5 billion in annual internet pornography revenue and the 3.3 million internet pornography paying customers seem reasonable estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The numbers become more plausible if you accept that many actual paid consumers of pornography won't admit it to strangers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting all this into perspective suggests that the porn industry in the USA might reasonably be of the order of a $5bn to $10bn a year industry. This is small compared to internet commerce (Amazon alone is $30bn-$40bn) or Hollywood (in the USA about $10bn box office and $20bn DVD, see this great visual aggregation &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2012/how-much-does-hollywood-earn/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't even obvious that porn constitutes a big proportion of internet search traffic, according the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2618/how-much-of-all-internet-traffic-is-pornography&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think it is fair to say that the internet has propagated badly sourced and low credibility estimates about the scale of porn because they sound sensational rather than because they are plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update with a recent internet survey&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;A recent survey of internet searches (&lt;a href=&quot;http://museum.museumofsex.com/exhibitions/universe-of-desire/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported here, possibly NSFW&lt;/a&gt;) reported the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam, authors of the best-selling book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts, provide much of the inspiration for “Universe of Desire.” Ogas and Gaddam gathered and coded 400 million internet searches, 55 million of which (or roughly 13 percent) proved to be searches for some kind of erotic content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is much lower than the numbers often quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Further update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ministryoftruth.me.uk/2013/06/24/how-big-is-online-porn/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent estimate&lt;/a&gt; of the amount of web traffic related to porn made a good attempt to put some of the exaggerated numbers in context and also arrived at a low estimate. In addition to debunking many recent &quot;shock horror&quot; newspaper headlines it came to this conclusion on web traffic by studying &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alexa.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alexa&lt;/a&gt; statistics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of the 400 sites ranked from 101–500 on Alexa’s list just ten are in the business of delivering adult content; there are eight more free porn tubes to add to the six in the top 100 plus one more adult webcam site and an adult dating site, and collective these sites generate just 0.158% of global monthly page views, which is 2.65% of the total amount of page view traffic generated by those 400 sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall, the figures here seem to present a relatively consistent picture, one which suggests that overall, adult websites account for no more than 2–3% of global Internet traffic, measured in terms of both individual visits to websites and page views, and to put that in perspective, if you add together the monthly visitor figures for the ten busiest porn tube sites on the Internet, you’ll still come up 25 million visitor short of the traffic figures for Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, to sum up, online porn is less popular than search engines, web portals, social media, video sharing, blogging, online shopping, email, keeping your computer’s software up to date and virus-free and Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while this doesn't make any attempt to judge revenue, the traffic numbers are not consistent with the idea that porn has a major share of the internet's revenue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2018-06-27T16:26:00.853" LastActivityDate="2018-06-27T16:26:00.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-24T16:22:32.240" Score="3" ViewCount="281" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6996/is-diet-soda-less-healthful-than-regular-soda&quot;&gt;Is diet soda less healthful than regular soda?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've always assumed that diet drinks are indeed healthier than their counterparts (as that is what they're advertised for, they have no calories, no/little sugar, no fat, and very low sodium).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, every time I get a diet drink, there is always someone to say &quot;Ew, diet, its not even healthier&quot; or something akin to that. Then someone always (half-jokingly) says &quot;it causes cancer.&quot; But when I press them on why it is less healthy, they are never able to form a coherent argument beyond &quot;It has artificial stuff in it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that drinking diet soda, is less or more healthy than drinking regular non diet soda?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6499" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T03:14:39.637" Title="Are diet sodas healthier than normal sodas?" Tags="|nutrition|soda|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2012-12-01T09:10:54.713" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8589" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-24T23:53:12.443" Score="1" ViewCount="140" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/155/can-you-create-energy-out-of-nowhere&quot;&gt;Can you create energy out of nowhere?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cheniere.org/references/brokensymmetry.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tom Bearden postulates&lt;/a&gt; that the vacuum is highly energy dense, and that it is that energy coming from the vacuum that actually is the source of all energy. It can also &lt;a href=&quot;http://cheniere.org/correspondence/011905.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;produce free energy&lt;/a&gt; given enough resources to finish some quriks with the prototypes that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cheniere.org/books/excalibur/moray.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;have been built since the 1930s&lt;/a&gt;. Additionally, he says that the field of Electrical Engineering &lt;a href=&quot;http://cheniere.org/articles/JobA.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;has been purposefully crippled&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://cheniere.org/references/MEG_Patent.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;has a patent&lt;/a&gt; on a prototype which generates this free energy from the vacuum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all comes from a single source and thus is not very worrying, except that the belic counterpart of all these theories has surfaced as what's known as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.es/search?q=longitudinal%20wave%20interferometers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Longitudinal Waves Interferometers&quot;&lt;/a&gt; that are being used in super secret &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.es/search?q=scalar%20wars&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Scalar Wars&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, those weapons are purportedly capable of doing all sorts of damage, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectworldawareness.com/2011/03/scalar-em-weapons-the-real-nightmare/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;from mind control&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rense.com/general30/mager.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;to triggering earthquakes remotely&lt;/a&gt;; the latest quake in Chile has been &quot;predicted&quot; by a fellow who, based on Bearden's ideas, says that it's been caused by secret weapons by the US government applying these principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I want to know about the core of the idea that vacuum is energy filled and that that energy can be tapped into somehow. To what degree (if any) does the idea contradict current regular scientific knowledge? Is it even plausible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4822" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-03-25T00:00:22.920" Title="Can energy be extracted from the vacuum?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2012-03-25T08:57:41.130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8467" CreationDate="2012-03-25T06:52:11.460" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. There are too many ancillary benefits to staying. PlanetMoney did a story on this before. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/04/29/135813061/studies-rich-dont-flee-high-tax-states&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/04/29/135813061/studies-rich-dont-flee-high-tax-states&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people will move of course, and if it's convenient, some people will buy their toys in a low-tax jurisdiction (like a yacht or plane), but otherwise, most will stay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a study tracking 18 years of migration between states in New England, Thompson found that people mostly move for job-related reasons. They go where the jobs are, regardless of whether it's low-tax New Hampshire or higher-tax Maine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If you're living in a state and your tax bill goes up by a thousand or two thousand dollars,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;that ... pales in comparison to what it would cost you to actually move. And it might not be worth it to have to be farther away from your job, farther away from your friends.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And Thompson says the stickiness of where you live is just as strong for those with higher incomes. In fact, they often have bigger houses, and businesses they can't move, and more ties to a community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6507" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-05T18:00:18.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8593" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7953" CreationDate="2012-03-25T07:52:01.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. The government purposely does not include food &amp;amp; energy costs in the core CPI, because they are 'too volatile', and 'makes it hard to measure inflation', while the correct procedure would be to include them and use a moving average. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition to the All Items CPI, BLS publishes thousands of other consumer price indexes. One such index is called &quot;All items less food and energy&quot;. Some users of CPI data use this index because food and energy prices are relatively volatile, and these users want to focus on what they perceive to be the &quot;core&quot; or &quot;underlying&quot; rate of inflation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpifaq.htm#Question_13&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bureau of Labor Statistics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another answer claimed that no one would buy treasuries with a negative real interest rate, however if you have billions of dollars, there is little choice where to park such a large amount of money besides treasuries. They are very liquid. Cash could be caught in a fire. FDIC insurance limit is &amp;lt; $1M. Banks go under. Gold is more volatile and difficult to transport. People are afraid of Eurobonds. No other country has the same liquidity. In fact, the nominal interest rates on treasuries DID go negative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3Mqa2.png&quot; alt=&quot;Yahoo chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=%5EIRX+Interactive#chart4:symbol=%5Eirx;range=2y;indicator=dividend+volume;charttype=line;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=on;source=undefined&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yahoo Chart&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(Sorry apparently the log-based charts can't display negatives.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bill Gross of PIMCO (manager of trillions in bonds) does not recommend US treasuries, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/08/markets/bill_gross_pimco_morningstar/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;believes they are a trap&lt;/a&gt;. He underestimated the fear people had about Eurobonds, causing treasuries to rise, so has decided to buy some US treasuries after all, but not for long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes it is unsustainable, however like an avalanche or earthquake, no one can predict when the tipping point is. It is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/07/20/138518262/the-tuesday-podcast-how-much-debt-is-too-much&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;estimated to be 90% debt-to-GDP&lt;/a&gt; as the limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6507" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-25T12:01:06.087" LastActivityDate="2012-03-25T12:01:06.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8597" CreationDate="2012-03-25T10:50:59.150" Score="11" ViewCount="6304" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend was saying that shark never sleeps. Because to keep it afloat, it has to continuously swim, so that it can't sleep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is repeated in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://oceanofk.org/sharks/introShark.html&quot;&gt;Ocean of Know&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They certainly need to conserve their energy because they never really sleep and most of them never stop swimming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know shark has to continuously swim to keep it afloat. But does that mean that sharks never sleep?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3442" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2016-03-22T12:43:04.753" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T12:43:04.753" Title="Do sharks never sleep?" Tags="|zoology|sleep|sharks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8613" CreationDate="2012-03-25T12:21:08.590" Score="17" ViewCount="2036" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the middle of a blog post on &lt;a href=&quot;http://massagemag.com/massage-blog/massage-art-science/2009/01/19/be-concerned-about-human-trafficking/&quot;&gt;human trafficking&lt;/a&gt;, it's claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another way to be involved with this issue is to help prevent boys and&#xA;  girls from being trafficked in the first place.  Many of the&#xA;  trafficked children come from and through the Golden Triangle area of&#xA;  Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand.   One of the at-risk groups are&#xA;  the Akha tribe, non-Thai residents who live in villages throughout the&#xA;  mountains of this region.  &lt;strong&gt;The Akha children who finish the&#xA;  fifth-grade in local schools can only go on to middle-school if they&#xA;  have the mandatory school uniforms.  Since the families generally do&#xA;  not have the funds to purchase the uniforms&lt;/strong&gt;, the children, out of&#xA;  school and with nothing to do, are susceptible to being lured by&#xA;  traffickers with the promise of work in the ciy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with text afterwards mentioning a charity that's raising funds to purchase uniforms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do people end up missing out on school for want of a uniform?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm somewhat suspicious of the source - I suspect that a charity could be creating an overly-simplified explanation for what's going wrong so that they can raise funds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim being made is even more extraordinary considering what can happen to people who aren't allowed to attend school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-03-27T01:37:54.490" LastActivityDate="2019-04-19T01:06:19.347" Title="Are people unable to go to school because they can't afford uniforms?" Tags="|economics|education|clothing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8595" CreationDate="2012-03-25T14:19:13.930" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/27MKZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Spiny Dogfish&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marinebiodiversity.ca/shark/english/spiracle.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spiny Dogfish&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/education/questions/basics.html#sleep&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Florida Museum of Natural History&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was once believed that all sharks had to swim constantly in order&#xA;  to breathe and could not sleep for more than a few minutes at a time.&#xA;  Oxygen-rich water flows through the gills during movement allowing the&#xA;  shark to breathe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;While some species of sharks do need to swim&#xA;  constantly, this is not true for all sharks&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some sharks&lt;/strong&gt; such as the&#xA;  nurse shark &lt;strong&gt;have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marinebiodiversity.ca/shark/english/spiracle.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;spiracles&lt;/a&gt; that force water across their gills&#xA;  allowing for stationary rest&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sharks do not sleep like humans do, but&#xA;  instead have active and restful periods&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elasmo-research.org/education/topics/b_sleep.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ReefQuest Centre for Shark Research&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;when it comes to whether or not sharks sleep, we just don't know&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There have been reports from all over the globe, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isla-mujeres.com.mx/english/sharks.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;including Mexico&lt;/a&gt;, Japan, and Australia, of sharks resting motionless in caves. These have been called &quot;sleeping sharks&quot;, but I can attest that the eyes of these quiescent sharks do follow divers moving about in the caves with them, so they're definitely not asleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From experiments carried out on a small shark called the Spiny Dogfish (&lt;em&gt;Squalus acanthias&lt;/em&gt;), we know that the 'Central Pattern Generator' that co-ordinates swimming movements in sharks is not located in the brain, but in the spinal chord. Thus, it is possible for an unconscious shark to swim.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is even a possibility that the sharks' fore, mid-, and hind- brain shut down in sequence, resulting in the shark equivalent of sleep-walking&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/bio99/bio99287.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NEWTON - Ask A Scientist&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;we don't know whether sharks sleep or not&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Many shark species need to constantly swim in order to breathe (or respire) but this does not necessarily mean that they don't &quot;sleep&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many animals can &lt;strong&gt;shut down part of their brains for a short time, while keeping other parts &quot;awake&quot; or alert, and watching for predators;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other animals &lt;strong&gt;merely slow their brain function for a certain amount of time each day;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sharks may do these things as well&lt;/strong&gt;, even though they keep swimming. It's also possible that they don't sleep at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only way for us to find out for sure is to catch them and measure their brain activity all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indyzoo.com/SitePages/AboutTheZoo/Sharks.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Indianapolis Zoo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is unclear how sharks sleep.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some sharks can lie on the bottom&#xA;  while actively pumping water over their gills, but their eyes remain&#xA;  open and actively follow divers&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a shark is resting, they do not&#xA;  use their nares, but rather their spiracles. If a shark tried to use&#xA;  their nares while resting on the ocean floor, they would be sucking up&#xA;  sand rather than water. Many scientists believe this is one of the&#xA;  reasons sharks have spiracles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The spiny dogfish's spinal cord, rather&#xA;  than its brain, coordinates swimming, so it is possible for a spiny&#xA;  dogfish to continue to swim while sleeping&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is also possible that a&#xA;  shark can sleep with only parts of its brain in a manner similar to&#xA;  dolphins.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sharks.org.za/sleep.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sharks.org.za - Sleep&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/uk/indepth/shark-facts.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC Nature - Surprising Shark Facts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-03-25T14:43:13.467" LastActivityDate="2012-03-25T14:43:13.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8467" CreationDate="2012-03-25T18:18:29.747" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a well know fact, that if you raise taxes beyond certain level, the income from taxation will decrease as it will cause more people to avoid taxation. It's a direct consequence of applying supply-side economics. It's not a new concept, it's been described as early as 1377 in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ik/Muqaddimah/Chapter3/Ch_3_36.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun&lt;/a&gt;. In modern days the concept is widely known as Laffer curve, name coined by &lt;em&gt;The Wall Street Journal&lt;/em&gt;'s writer Jude Wanniski. His article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalaffairs.com/doclib/20080528_197805001taxesrevenuesandthelaffercurvejudewanniski.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Taxes, revenues and the  &quot;Laffer curve&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; has been originally published in The Public Interest in 1978. This has lead to so called &lt;em&gt;Reaganomics&lt;/em&gt;, of which important part were huge tax cuts. In 2004 Arthur Laffer revisited the concept with article &lt;a href=&quot;http://The%20Laffer%20Curve:%20Past,%20Present,%20and%20Future&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Laffer Curve: Past, Present, and Future&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LlD9I.png&quot; alt=&quot;Laffer curve&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:LafferCurve.svg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;): &lt;em&gt;&quot;A non-symmetric Laffer Curve with a maximum revenue point at around a 70% tax rate. This graph is based on the results from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.wiwi.hu-berlin.de/institute/wpol/papers/Trabandt_Uhlig_SFB649DP2006-023.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;How Far Are We From The Slippery Slope? The Laffer Curve Revisited&quot;&lt;/a&gt; by Mathias Trabandt and Harald Uhlig, NBER Working Paper No. 15343, September 2009.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note however, that this whole concept is opposed by advocates of Keynesian economics, which lately seem to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932009_Keynesian_resurgence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;regaining public attention&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for the question of &quot;taking money and leaving&quot;... Well, economist deal with abstract statistics, talking about &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; the rich will avoid taxes, but without getting into details &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;. According to the laws of economics they will any way they can, and offshoring to another tax jurisdiction is viable option.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2012-03-25T18:18:29.747" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8601" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9565" CreationDate="2012-03-25T21:36:25.617" Score="20" ViewCount="21391" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.addictivetips.com/hardware/fix-your-graphics-card-by-baking-in-oven/&quot;&gt;There's&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.overclock.net/t/529271/bake-your-graphics-card-in-the-oven-fix-it-worked&quot;&gt;a&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair-VGA-card-by-re-flowing-solder-on-the-board/2240/1&quot;&gt;tonne&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/293183-15-baking-graphics-card-oven&quot;&gt;of&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1421792&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://playstuff.net/showthread.php/3119-Anyone-tried-baking-their-graphics-card-before&quot;&gt;online&lt;/a&gt; about fixing you graphics card by baking it in the oven. Supposedly this 'reflows' the solder to fix flaky connections. It's even been reported on sites such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5823227/save-dying-video-cards-with-a-quick-bake-in-the-oven&quot;&gt;Lifehacker&lt;/a&gt;. Does it work? Is it safe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T07:09:47.700" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T14:17:59.800" Title="Does baking your graphics card fix it?" Tags="|computers|electronics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8602" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-25T22:13:33.327" Score="11" ViewCount="1640" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.instructables.com/id/Predict-weather-with-a-cup-of-coffee/#step1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Instructable&lt;/a&gt; was picked up by &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5896281/use-your-coffee-cup-as-a-basic-barometer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lifehacker&lt;/a&gt;. It states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you pour the coffee into your cup, watch the bubbles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the bubbles move to the edge of the cup rather quickly, that's a good sign. Expect clear skies for the next 12 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the bubbles hang around in the center of the cup, get out your rain gear. You can expect rain in 12 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the bubbles slowly move to the edge of the cup, you may get a bit of weather, but it should be clearing in a few hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've managed to make a cup without bubbles, flop a spoonful of coffee back into your cup and make some more bubbles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 'theory' section, they say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theory behind this trick is that high pressure will push the bubbles to the edge, and high pressure indicates a period of sunny, calm weather. Low pressure won't move the bubbles and low pressure systems typically bring unsettled weather.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-04T14:11:25.263" Title="Can a cup of coffee be used as a barometer?" Tags="|weather|divination|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8606" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8607" CreationDate="2012-03-26T13:03:36.687" Score="2" ViewCount="731" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many smokers have told me that smoking gives them immense pleasure - that they let go of all their worries when they smoke a cigarette. Their descriptions of the sensations produced are quite similar to those produced by drugs, alcohol etc and that they are addicted to the pleasure that smoking gives them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This led me to believe that cigarettes have a physiological effect on the brain. But I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://smokingsides.com/docs/whysmoke.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on the Internet that states that any effect produced by cigarettes is purely &lt;em&gt;psychological&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone clarify?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4196" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T13:24:29.653" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T13:32:32.700" Title="Do people smoke only due to psychological reasons?" Tags="|medical-science|addiction|cigarettes|tobacco|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8606" CreationDate="2012-03-26T13:22:33.947" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No idea where that article came from but it's from 1947, where the effects of smoking were less studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, smoking addiction is due to both a psychological and a physiological factor. The physiological part is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/chq/pages/2278.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;nicotine addiction&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why is smoking addictive?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cigarettes contain nicotine, which is highly addictive.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Even if you want to quit smoking, you may find it difficult because you’re addicted to the effects of nicotine. Some research has suggested that nicotine can be more addictive than heroin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chemicals in your brain&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nicotine alters the balance of chemicals in your brain. It mainly affects chemicals called dopamine and noradrenaline. When nicotine changes the levels of these chemicals, your mood and concentration levels change. Many smokers find this enjoyable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The changes happen very quickly. When you inhale the nicotine, it immediately rushes to your brain where it takes effect. This is why many smokers enjoy the nicotine rush and become dependent on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The more you smoke, the more your brain becomes used to the nicotine. This means that you have to smoke more to get the same effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Effects of quitting smoking&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you stop smoking, the loss of nicotine changes the levels of dopamine and noradrenaline. This can make you feel anxious, depressed and irritable.&#xA;  It’s normal to crave nicotine when you quit, as smoking provides an immediate fix to these problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Dependence_and_withdrawal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine#Dependence_and_withdrawal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine_withdrawal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine_withdrawal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000953.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000953.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/infofacts/cigarettes-other-tobacco-products&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/infofacts/cigarettes-other-tobacco-products&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T13:32:32.700" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T13:32:32.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1624" CreationDate="2012-03-26T13:52:41.113" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Mt 2,1 and Lk 1,5 (KJV): &#xA;Mt 2,1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1 Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod&#xA;  the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lk 1,5 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was in the days of Herod, the king of Judaea, a certain priest&#xA;  named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the&#xA;  daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... the birth of Jesus happened during the kingdom of Herodes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And according to Lk 2,2, Cyrenius was governor of Syria at that time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from&#xA;  Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. And this&#xA;  taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quirinius#Life&quot;&gt;According to our today knowledge, the census in Syria took place at 6 or 7 AD.&lt;/a&gt; From the writings of Flavius Josephus, a second census seems impossible, since the census was unknown to the Jews. More: Their province didn't belong to Syria before 6 or 7 AD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod_the_Great#Death&quot;&gt;But Herodes died 4 BCE&lt;/a&gt; so there is a 10 to 11 year gap between both possibilities. Some authors have speculated, that Luke might have confused Herod the Great with another Herod, Herod Antipas, but the gospel of Mathew clearly speaks about Herod the Great. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the story of the birth is inconsistent with other historically more reliable material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some Original sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emil Schürer, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, 5 vols. New York, Scribner’s, 1896.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gerd Theißen, Annette Merz, Der historische Jesus: ein Lehrbuch, (Vandenhoeck &amp;amp; Ruprecht, 2001), 149-50.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flavius Josephus Ant. XVI 5,3 und Bell. Jud. I,21,12&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T13:52:41.113" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-26T16:25:05.653" Score="15" ViewCount="2102" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this anecdote in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.in/books?id=N3eLdCTynR0C&amp;amp;dq=surely%20you%20are%20joking&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=LpRwT_f-EcuxrAfn2o2gDg&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot;&gt;Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Richard Feynman. In the passage below, Feynman describes his attempts to analyze his dreams&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I also noticed that as you go to sleep the ideas continue, but they&#xA;  become less and less logically interconnected. You don't notice that&#xA;  they're not logically connected until you ask yourself, &quot;What made me&#xA;  think of that?&quot; and you try to work your way back, and often you can't&#xA;  remember what the hell did make you think of that! So you get every&#xA;  illusion of logical connection, but the actual fact is that the&#xA;  thoughts become more and more cockeyed until they're completely&#xA;  disjointed, and beyond that, you fall asleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the following paragraphs, he continues..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;....I kept practicing this watching myself as I went to sleep. One&#xA;  night, while I was having a dream, I realized &lt;strong&gt;I was observing myself&#xA;  in the dream. I had gotten all the way down, into the sleep itself!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible? Can you observe yourself in a dream? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I discovered that I could turn around, and walk back  through the&#xA;  train ­­ I could control the direction of my dream. I get back to the&#xA;  car with the special window, and I see three old guys playing violins&#xA;  ­­ but they turned back into girls! So &lt;strong&gt;I could modify the direction of&#xA;  my dream, but not perfectly.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard of this phenomenon called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream&quot;&gt;Lucid Dreaming&lt;/a&gt; before but I have never heard that you can learn to voluntarily observe your dreams with some practice. Can someone clarify? Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4196" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-27T07:39:38.537" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T17:40:38.260" Title="Has lucid dreaming been scientifically observed?" Tags="|psychology|sleep|dreaming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8612" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-26T16:34:10.883" Score="8" ViewCount="887" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a common household tip: Put your jeans in the freezer to freshen them up. Denim enthusiasts &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-to-clean-your-jeans-withou-109266&quot;&gt;claim it will kill bacteria&lt;/a&gt; (although it won't remove stains). Is this true? Is it hygienic to forgo normal cleaning for jeans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T16:34:10.883" Title="Is freezing jeans a substitute for cleaning them with soap and water?" Tags="|clothing|cleaning|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8596" CreationDate="2012-03-26T16:38:30.660" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's address the basic question first: &lt;strong&gt;Are there people who can't afford a school uniform?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;. A big fraction of the world's population live on $1 per day. At that level almost all of your income goes on food and shelter; anything but the most basic of clothing is unaffordable. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/poor-economics-j-pal-0426.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2007/12/071227_dollar_a_day_1.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does lack of school uniform prevent some kids from attending school?&lt;/strong&gt; Let's confine ourselves to Thailand for the sake of simplification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266407672_School_Dropout_in_Thailand_Causes_and_Remedies/download&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; by the KU Leuven (formerly &lt;em&gt;Katholieke Universiteit Leuven&lt;/em&gt;) is a very detailed study of the impediments to education in Thailand. Lack of school uniform is certainly cited as one of the significant factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The extension of the right to basic education up to the end of upper secondary&#xA;  school has been accompanied by substantial efforts by the government to ensure&#xA;  free education. [...] Yet, important problems appear to persist:[...] − school uniforms still can constitute a tumbling stone for low-income families;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Direct costs include school fees and costs of uniforms, school books,&#xA;  school equipment, transport and meals (Watkins, 1999). Transportation and the uniform&#xA;  are often the most expensive elements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study notes that free uniforms are sometimes provided, but that there are families that fall between the cracks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is made by many, many charities involved with education in Thailand. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hhnthailand.org/en/projects/educational-support/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shanland.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=3473:educating-the-shan-refugees-without-a-camp&amp;amp;catid=feature&amp;amp;Itemid=267&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thethailandproject.org/formal-education-as-a-strategic-sustainable-solution.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thaistudentcharity.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;task=view&amp;amp;id=23&amp;amp;Itemid=31&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; as examples. Technically all these charities might benefit from this claim, but it's very unlikely that they would all choose to make up the same lie when they could also ask for donations for other things like fees, meals or equipment. They also list school uniforms as only one of the inhibiting factors: other include transport and school equipment, which also agrees with the &lt;em&gt;KU Leuven&lt;/em&gt; study. Blogs from people in the Thai education sector (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thaiworldview.com/society/day5.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajarnmichael.com/Isaan.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) also back up the claim. &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=wRlvU1MJX2EC&amp;amp;pg=RA1-PA1086&amp;amp;lpg=RA1-PA1086&amp;amp;dq=thailand%20afford%20school%20uniform&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=PimmnkbiM8&amp;amp;sig=6ciHWQZXEEX2ug9bemEpjIZe5bM&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=C5xwT9XIAoqB0QGG2OzABg&amp;amp;ved=0CEkQ6AEwBTgo#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=thailand%20afford%20school%20uniform&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is an extract from parliamentary records that says the same thing for Kenya.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the sites state that sometimes the reason for non-attendance is that Thai parents are ashamed to send their kids to school without the uniform. You could argue that they aren't technically prevented from going, but in the end the result is the same - the kids aren't in school because of uniform issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: &lt;strong&gt;Yes, kids in Thailand and elsewhere sometimes don't attend school because they can't afford uniforms.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relation to human trafficking deserves a separate question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="43618" LastEditDate="2019-04-18T12:32:33.537" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T12:32:33.537" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8614" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31248" CreationDate="2012-03-26T17:43:14.597" Score="43" ViewCount="6342" Body="&lt;p&gt;Electronic cigarettes pose as a replacement of cigarettes. It is claimed that they help in quitting smoking. They do come in flavors, and in various levels of nicotine.&#xA;But, are they less harmful? Do they have any side effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/media/advisories-avis/_2009/2009_53-eng.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Health Canada issued an advisory against electronic cigarettes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Health Canada is advising Canadians not to purchase or use electronic smoking products, as these products may pose health risks and have not been fully evaluated for safety, quality and efficacy by Health Canada&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In recent months, a number of electronic cigarettes, cigars and pipes as well as cartridges of nicotine solutions and related products have been marketed in Canada, and through the Internet. Most of these products are shaped and look like their conventional counterparts. They produce a vapour that resembles smoke and a glow that resembles the tip of a cigarette. They consist of a battery-powered delivery system that vapourizes and delivers a liquid chemical mixture that may be composed of various amounts of nicotine, propylene glycol, and other chemicals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nicotine is a highly addictive and toxic substance, and the inhalation of propylene glycol is a known irritant. Although these electronic smoking products may be marketed as a safer alternative to conventional tobacco products and, in some cases, as an aid to quitting smoking, electronic smoking products may pose risks such as nicotine poisoning and addiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A research study in late 2015 seems to add weight to Health Canada's claims. In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-12/varc-chs122815.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;press release&lt;/a&gt; (which was quoted uncritically in many newspaper headlines e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/dec/30/e-cigarettes-may-be-no-better-than-regular-cigarettes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; ) one author stated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the evidence to date, I believe they are no better than smoking regular cigarettes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is, is an electronic cigarette significantly healthier than a normal cigarette?&#xA;Is an electronic cigarette with non-nicotine cartridges not harmful whatsoever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5143" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-04-24T19:51:56.770" Title="Are electronic cigarettes a healthier alternative to regular cigarettes?" Tags="|smoking|epidemiology|public-health|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8616" CreationDate="2012-03-26T17:45:06.373" Score="15" ViewCount="6161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was always told that boiling &lt;strong&gt;cold&lt;/strong&gt; water in a pot is better for you then boiling warm or hot water (from the sink).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="651" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-26T19:58:38.507" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T19:58:38.507" Title="Is there any reason to use cold water over hot water for boiling?" Tags="|nutrition|water|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8615" CreationDate="2012-03-26T17:57:52.660" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, but not for any reason related to nutrition or ease-of-boiling. Older home plumbing systems may use lead solder, and lead is a neurotoxin which is particularly harmful to children. Hot water dissolves lead more readily and stays in your home's plumbing system far longer, so it may end up with much more dissolved lead than cold water. &lt;a href=&quot;http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/lead.cfm&quot;&gt;The EPA states:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How can I reduce lead in drinking water at home?&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Flush your pipes&#xA;  before drinking, and only use cold water for consumption. The more&#xA;  time water has been sitting in your home's pipes, the more lead it may&#xA;  contain. Anytime the water in a particular faucet has not been used&#xA;  for six hours or longer, &quot;flush&quot; your cold-water pipes by running the&#xA;  water until it becomes as cold as it will get. This could take as&#xA;  little as five to thirty seconds if there has been recent heavy water&#xA;  use such as showering or toilet flushing. Otherwise, it could take two&#xA;  minutes or longer. Your water utility will inform you if longer&#xA;  flushing times are needed to respond to local conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use only water from the cold-water tap for drinking, cooking, and&#xA;  especially for making baby formula. Hot water is likely to contain&#xA;  higher levels of lead. The two actions recommended above are very&#xA;  important to the health of your family. They will probably be&#xA;  effective in reducing lead levels because most of the lead in&#xA;  household water usually comes from the plumbing in your house, not&#xA;  from the local water supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5120" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T17:57:52.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8615" CreationDate="2012-03-26T17:59:29.440" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had heard that cold water from the tap contains less minerals and other contaminants.  The only source I found refers to lead contamination, which should be quite rare.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PUBS/5056.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PUBS/5056.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your drinking water is contaminated with lead, or you suspect that it may be, EPA recommends two immediate steps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the water in a particular faucet has not been used for six hours or longer, &amp;quot;flush&amp;quot; your cold water pipes by running the water until it becomes as cold as it will get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use only water from the cold water tap for drinking, cooking, and especially for making baby formula. Hot water is likely to contain higher levels of lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6520" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T18:03:06.490" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6046" CreationDate="2012-03-26T18:05:28.327" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jacques Piccard wrote that they saw a fish in the Challenger Deep on board Trieste, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Fish Meets Sphere on Bottom&#xA;...And to demonstrate well all the significance of this dive, nature would have it that the Trieste come down on the bottom a few feet from a fish, a true fish, joined in its unknown world by this monster of steel and gasoline and a powerful beam of light. Our fish was the instantaneous reply (after years of work!) to a question that thousands of oceanographers had been asking themselves for decades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slowly, very slowly, this fish—apparently of the sole family, about a foot long and half as wide—moved away from us, swimming half in the bottom ooze, and disappeared into the black night, the eternal night which was its domain.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article was originally published in the August 1960 issue of National Geographic magazine and retains the original language and spellings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Man’s Deepest Dive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By Jacques Piccard&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this entire article is now at:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://deepseachallenge.com/the-expedition/1960-dive/&quot;&gt;http://deepseachallenge.com/the-expedition/1960-dive/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6521" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T18:05:28.327" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8615" CreationDate="2012-03-26T18:15:46.387" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Warm tap water might contain small amounts of lead from old pipes and should be avoided according to the following sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;fitsugar.com: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fitsugar.com/Why-You-Shouldnt-Use-Hot-Tap-Water-When-Cooking-4193089&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Healthy Cooking Tip: Start With Cold Water&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hot water is much more likely to leach the heavy metal from your plumbing pipes. Using lead to solder pipes wasn't banned until 1986, and unfortunately brass plumbing parts might contain a bit of lead as well. Plumbing parts legally considered lead-free today may contain up to eight percent lead. This means your chances of having lead-free plumbing are slim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article quotes the following recommendations by EPA (the US Environmental Protection Agency): &lt;a href=&quot;http://water.epa.gov/drink/info/lead/lead1.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Actions You Can Take To Reduce Lead In Drinking Water&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Only Use Cold Water for Consumption&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Use only water from the cold-water tap for drinking, cooking, and especially for making baby formula. Hot water is likely to contain higher levels of lead.The two actions recommended above are very important to the health of your family. They will probably be effective in reducing lead levels because most of the lead in household water usually comes from the plumbing in your house, not from the local water supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was also published by the New York Times &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/health/29real.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Claim: Never Drink Hot Water From the Tap&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reason is that hot water dissolves contaminants more quickly than cold water, and many pipes in homes contain lead that can leach into water. And lead can damage the brain and nervous system, especially in young children.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [..]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Scientists emphasize that the risk is small. But to minimize it, the E.P.A. says cold tap water should always be used for preparing baby formula, cooking and drinking. It also warns that boiling water does not remove lead but can actually increase its concentration. More information is at www.epa.gov/lead or (800) 424-5323 (LEAD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is USA specific. Other countries might have banned lead soldered pipes much earlier or replaced such already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also this related question on Cooking.SE: &lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/21471/is-hot-tap-water-safe-for-cooking&quot;&gt;Is hot tap water safe for cooking?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1072" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:33:29.713" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T18:15:46.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4709" CreationDate="2012-03-26T20:35:03.577" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an example case: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20141127155506/http://www.medmal-law.com/illegibl.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20141127155506/http://www.medmal-law.com/illegibl.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On June 23, 1995, Ramon Vasquez received the following prescription from his cardiologist. He began taking the medication given to him by the pharmacist on a Saturday morning. By Sunday night, the medication had affected his heart so much that he had a heart attack. He died several days later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BOeXE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Illegible prescription&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the name of the first drug prescribed? Is it Plendil??? Isordil???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pharmacist who filled this prescription read it as Plendil. The cardiologist who wrote the Rx states that he wrote Isordil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This case marks the first time that a physician has been found negligent for illegible handwriting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6524" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T13:35:51.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8623" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8625" CreationDate="2012-03-26T22:08:21.470" Score="13" ViewCount="18845" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have run across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theppsc.org/Staff_Views/Aveni/Shift-Survival.htm&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iaff1775.org/news/local/294-the-truth-about-firefighter-retirement&quot;&gt;references&lt;/a&gt; that mention that police officers and firefighters have a much shorter life expectancy than average. Is this claim true? Are there any reputable studies that have been done on this topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4876" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-23T18:24:58.103" LastActivityDate="2018-03-23T18:35:14.840" Title="Do police officers and firefighters have a shorter than average life expectancy?" Tags="|environmental-health|work|life-expectancy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2077" CreationDate="2012-03-26T23:45:58.907" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Soda pops&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sugar-sweetened beverage consumption is associated with a significantly elevated risk of type 2 diabetes, whereas the association between artificially sweetened beverages and type 2 diabetes was largely explained by health status, pre-enrollment weight change, dieting, and body mass index.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/93/6/1321.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sugar-sweetened and artificially sweetened beverage consumption and risk of type 2 diabetes in men&lt;/strong&gt;, by Lawrence de Koning, Vasanti S Malik, Eric B Rimm, Walter C Willett, and Frank B Hu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Sugary foods and HCFS&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rates of overweight and obesity have been on a steady rise for decades, and the problems society faces from this and associated metabolic diseases are many. As a result, the need to understand the contributing factors is great. A very compelling case can be made that excess sugar consumption has played a significant role. In addition, fructose, as a component of the vast majority of caloric sweeteners, is seen to be particularly insidious. Evidence shows that fructose bypasses many of the body's satiating signals, thus potentially promoting overconsumption of energy, weight gain, and the development on insulin resistance. It has also been shown to increase uric acid levels, which in turn promotes many of the abnormalities seen in the metabolic syndrome including hypertriglyceridemia. However, the main source of fructose in the diet is high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), an artificially manufactured disaccharide that is only 55% fructose. This review highlights the fact that limited data are available about the metabolic effects of HFCS compared with other caloric sweeteners. The data suggest that HFCS yields similar metabolic responses to other caloric sweeteners such as sucrose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jn.nutrition.org/content/139/6/1242S.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Effect of High-Fructose Corn Syrup Consumption on Triglycerides and Uric Acid&lt;/strong&gt;, by Theodore J. Angelopoulos, Joshua Lowndes, Linda Zukley, Kathleen J. Melanson, Von Nguyen, Anik Huffman, and James M. Rippe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Fatty foods&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different type of fats have different effect, often, but not always, negative. These are the USDA 2010 &quot;Dietary Guidelines for Americans&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consume less than 10 percent of calories &#xA;  from saturated fatty acids by replacing them &#xA;  with monounsaturated and polyunsaturated &#xA;  fatty acids. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consume less than 300 mg per day of &#xA;  dietary cholesterol. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Keep trans fatty acid consumption as low &#xA;  as possible, especially by limiting foods &#xA;  that contain synthetic sources of trans fats, &#xA;  such as partially hydrogenated oils, and by &#xA;  limiting other solid fats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/DietaryGuidelines/2010/PolicyDoc/Chapter3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dietary Guidelines for Americans&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The document has a large section dedicated to the effects of fats and references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-03-26T23:45:58.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8623" CreationDate="2012-03-27T00:21:27.387" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was an easy one! The claims were referenced. I randomly clicked on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iaff1775.org/news/local/294-the-truth-about-firefighter-retirement&quot;&gt;second link&lt;/a&gt; which claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Firefighters have shorter life expectancies than the average population and are three times more likely to die on the job, due to inherent risks, physical and mental stresses, and exposures to toxic and carcinogenic compounds released in smoke. (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/iif/oshwc/cfar0029.txt&quot;&gt;US Bureau of Labor Statistics&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthnews.uc.edu/news/?/3750/&quot;&gt;University of Cincinatti&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I randomly clicked on the first link (although &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/opub/cwc/archive/summer1999art1.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is an easier-to-read PDF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cindy Clarke and Mark J. Zak, &quot;Fatalities to Law Enforcement Officers and Firefighters, 1992-97&quot;, Compensation and Working Conditions, Summer 1999&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this paper, they look at the fatality rates for both firefighters &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; police officers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude that the relative risk of dying for both professions is around 3 times the size of the general population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although occupations such as timber&#xA;  cutter, fisher, seaman, and aircraft pilot have the highest fatality rates, they&#xA;  are found in relatively few parts of the&#xA;  United States.  [...]  Firefighters&#xA;  and law enforcement personnel, on the&#xA;  other hand, are found in every community in the United States.   Although&#xA;  the dangers are quite different, both&#xA;  groups experience high fatality rates&#xA;  and risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T00:21:27.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8626" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-27T00:34:18.950" Score="8" ViewCount="1003" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a common claim that drinking excess soda of any type can result in Type 2 Diabetes. In my experience when I have seen these claims made it is without regard to the type of soda (sugar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, diet, etc.). Rather, there seems to be a belief that too much soda of any kind will result in Type 2 Diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of some such claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/035070_diet_soda_weight_loss_aspartame.html&quot;&gt;Evidence shows diet soda is not a healthy weight loss product&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://diabetes.co.in/can-drinking-soda-cause-diabetes/&quot;&gt;Can drinking soda cause diabetes?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://healthnotweight.com/death-by-soda&quot;&gt;How sugary drinks can cause diabetes:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people who make the claim seem to believe that it holds for all types of soda, regardless of if HFCS, sugar or Aspartame is used. All sodas regardless of sweetener used have some common ingredients such as additives, colors and artificial flavors, which may be the source of the belief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any ingredient common to all types of sodas that may be a factor in the risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes when consumed in excess? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the ingredients common to many sodas, when combined and consumed in excess, pose a greater risk in causing diabetes than singularly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-05-13T14:31:18.877" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T07:15:22.013" Title="Does drinking any type of soda increase the risk of Type 2 Diabetes?" Tags="|nutrition|soda|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8627" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9421" CreationDate="2012-03-27T05:12:55.813" Score="26" ViewCount="2922" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed &lt;a href=&quot;http://techcitement.com/culture/the-best-birth-control-in-the-world-is-for-men/&quot;&gt;an article about birth control method for men&lt;/a&gt; (called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_inhibition_of_sperm_under_guidance&quot;&gt;RISUG&lt;/a&gt;) being developed in India. It's described as being &lt;em&gt;something like&lt;/em&gt; this description of a near perfect contraceptive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;no babies, no latex, no daily pill to remember, no hormones to interfere with mood or sex drive, no negative health effects whatsoever, and 100 percent effectiveness&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The method requires a visit to doctor, who under local anesthetic injects some polymer gel into &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vas_deferens&quot;&gt;vas deferens tube&lt;/a&gt; by what's described as a simple medical procedure (no hospital time - just anesthetic, cut, injection and a band-aid).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The polymer gel, formed by styrene maleic anhydride and dimethyl sulfoxide, coats the inside wall of the vas deferens tube, and &quot;tears apart&quot; any sperm passing through, due to the polymer's pattern of negative/positive polarization (&lt;a href=&quot;http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-03252004-143258/unrestricted/02-hhr-Chapter1.pdf&quot;&gt;the polyelectrolytic effect&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The procedure is described as cheap, as is the polymer gel. The effect lasts for 10+ years, and can be cancelled by a similar simple doctor procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the article does mention some big pharma stuff, and how this all is being hidden if not deliberately, at least because of no monetary incentive involved. Which makes me feel very, very skeptical...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, is this RISUG method real?&lt;/strong&gt; Is it accurately described in the article, or are the positive sides overblown and negative sides downplayed? Is it wishful thinking, or just a plain hoax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newmalecontraception.org/risug.htm&quot;&gt;Male Contraception Information Project: RISUG&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://malecontraceptives.org/methods/risug.php&quot;&gt;Male Contraceptives: RISUG&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/04/ff_vasectomy/all/1&quot;&gt;Wired:The Revolutionary New Birth Control Method for Men&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(April 26, 2011)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://digitaljournal.com/article/307482&quot;&gt;Digital Journal: RISUG reversible male contraceptive almost ready for U.S. tests&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(June 3, 2011)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gizmag.com/risug-male-contraception/18824/&quot;&gt;Gizmag: Reversible male contraception method lasts 10 years&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(June 7, 2011)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;... and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=risug&quot;&gt;others&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="154" LastEditorUserId="154" LastEditDate="2012-03-28T17:53:09.907" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T09:05:40.973" Title="Is RISUG a simple, effective birth control for men?" Tags="|medical-science|contraception|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8630" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10412" CreationDate="2012-03-27T07:56:11.427" Score="5" ViewCount="3241" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure why this isn't asked here already, but Peter Farey and Ros Barber convinced me that Christopher Marlowe wrote the works of Shakespeare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This resolved my own cognitive dissonance from many years ago, when I picked up a copy of Tambourlaine, and immediately was annoyed that it was stylistically indistinguishable from Shakespeare (except for some minor maturity issues). At the time, I concluded that Shakespeare was just ripping off Marlowe, but it was a rip-off too methodical and too shameless to be consistent with literary genius, so I wasn't sure what to think of the bard. Of course, it's not a problem given that they're the same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This requires you to believe that Marlowe was not killed in 1593, but kept on writing, exiled in continental Europe. I believe that this is perfectly reasonable, considering the privy-council's death threat to  Marlowe, his known connections, and the similar shenanigans in the McCarthy era. My question is not about this stuff, which I think is firmly on the Marlovian's side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is simply about the stylometric evidence. Farey has compiled his own page on the stylometries (you can find &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/hoffman.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;two plots here&lt;/a&gt;: and there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.prestel.co.uk/rey/appx6a.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;more here&lt;/a&gt; ), his analysis concludes that any stylometry that claims to distinguish between Shakespeare and Marlowe's style is better interpreted as a maturity curve for a single writer in two periods of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know how reasonable this conclusion is. I haven't checked the figures, and I do not know if there are other stylometries which are missed by his analysis. Further, is there any known way of establishing single-authorship from large batches of text, when the text is written several years apart, but is essentially infinite in length?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How good is this new stylometric evidence? What confidence level does it give to the assertion that Marlowe was the author?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are previous stylometries which are weaker, namely Mendenhall's letter distribution, which was a major foreshadowing of modern Marlovian theory. I am not so interested in this, since this is well known to pick out Marlowe as the author of Shakespeare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6256" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T13:02:29.750" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T13:02:29.750" Title="Was Shakespeare Marlowe? What does stylometry say?" Tags="|history|literature|william-shakespeare|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="15" ClosedDate="2014-12-11T02:46:54.430" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7424" CreationDate="2012-03-27T12:29:58.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be one of our questions which have to be answered with &amp;quot;Not sure&amp;quot; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a dispute about the reliability of the Rorschach test under psychologists. The test also seems to have been hyped greatly over its actual usefulness. Some research papers try to analyze the usefulness of the test to  to differ between certain disorders, like psychosis and non-psychosis disorders. However, different papers came to opposite results as shown below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pros and cons of the Rorschach test seems to be analyzed from both sites by Wood, Nezworski and Garb, which first published a book against Rorschach test &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/078796056X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;What’s Wrong With the Rorschach?&lt;/em&gt; (2003)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What's Wrong With the Rorschach?&lt;/em&gt; challenges the validity and utility of the Rorschach and explains why psychologists continue to judge people by their reactions to ink blots, in spite of a half century of largely negative scientific evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What's Wrong With the Rorschach?&lt;/em&gt; offers a provocative critique of one of the most widely applied and influential - and still intensely controversial - psychological tests in the world today. Surveying more than fifty years of clinical and scholarly research, the authors provide compelling scientific evidence that the Rorschach has relatively little value for diagnosing mental illness, assessing personality, predicting behavior, or uncovering sexual abuse or other trauma. In this highly engaging, novelistic account of the Rorschach's origins and history, the authors detail the wealth of scientific evidence that the test is of questionable utility for real-world decision making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An excerpt has been published by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csicop.org/si/show/rorschach_inkblot_test_fortune_tellers_and_cold_reading/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Rorschach Inkblot Test, Fortune Tellers, and Cold Reading&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;There is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www45.pair.com/divisdyp/pub_reviews_detail.php?book_id=54&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a book review available&lt;/a&gt;, which claims that the authors fail to make a case against Rorschach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the same authors as above also wrote the following article&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.srmhp.org/0202/focus.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;What's Right with the Rorschach?&lt;/a&gt; and point out there that there seem to be valid areas for the test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the present article, we discuss the validity and clinical utility of the Rorschach as a measure of intelligence, thought disorder, and other psychological characteristics. We also summarize potential uses of the test in research and psychotherapy. Controversy has surrounded the Rorschach throughout most of its history not because it is worthless, but because it has so often been used for the wrong purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paradoxically, although the Rorschach is held in disrepute by many research psychologists, it has achieved its greatest successes as a research tool. Its value as a measure of thought disorder in schizophrenia research is well accepted. It is also used regularly in research on dependency, and, less often, in studies on hostility and anxiety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Furthermore, substantial evidence justifies the use of the Rorschach as a clinical measure of intelligence and thought disorder.&lt;/strong&gt; Although clinicians should normally rely on well-established tests such as the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Third Edition (Wechsler, 1997) to measure intelligence, and on clinical interviews to assess thought disorder, there may be times when the Rorschach can usefully supplement these “front-line” methods. In addition, the Rorschach may be useful as an exploratory technique in some forms of insight-oriented psychotherapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The virtues of the Rorschach are modest but genuine. If, over its long history, the test had been promoted solely for the uses identified here, it probably would have been less popular among psychologists, but also far less controversial.&lt;/strong&gt; It remains to be seen whether clinical psychologists of the future can learn to accept the limitations of the Rorschach while respecting its strengths. Otherwise, it will continue to be promoted for purposes for which it has no usefulness and will inevitably be a flashpoint for controversy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also contradictory research results on the use of the Rorschach test to differ between certain types of disorder:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psy-journal.com/article/S0165-1781%2809%2900165-6/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Differentiating adolescents at clinical high risk for psychosis from psychotic and non-psychotic patients with the Rorschach&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study was designed to assess cognitive functioning in a clinical sample of adolescents with heterogeneous psychiatric diagnoses, with a specific focus on patients at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis. The sample comprised 22 patients identified at CHR for psychosis, 67 psychotic and 187 non-psychotic, non-CHR patients. Neuropsychological assessment was conducted as part of the clinical examination and treatment, including Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)-III and/or Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)-III measures of verbal comprehension, perceptual organisation, working memory and processing speed, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) measures of executive function, and the Rorschach Comprehensive System measures of perceptual and thinking accuracy. Patients at CHR for psychosis did not significantly differ from other patient groups in terms of intellectual or executive functions. &lt;strong&gt;The Rorschach Perceptual Thinking Index (PTI) distinguished patients at CHR for psychosis from those diagnosed as having non-psychotic disorders, but not from those diagnosed as psychotic.&lt;/strong&gt; Our results suggest perceptual and thought disturbance as an important indicator of vulnerability to psychosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;while the following comes to the opposite result:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/pas/22/2/336/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Validity of Rorschach Inkblot scores for discriminating psychopaths from nonpsychopaths in forensic populations: A meta-analysis.&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gacono and Meloy (2009) have concluded that the Rorschach Inkblot Test is a sensitive instrument with which to discriminate psychopaths from nonpsychopaths.&lt;/strong&gt; We examined the association of psychopathy with 37 Rorschach variables in a meta-analytic review of 173 validity coefficients derived from 22 studies comprising 780 forensic participants. All studies included the Hare Psychopathy Checklist or one of its versions (Hare, 1980, 1991, 2003) and Exner's (2003) Comprehensive System for the Rorschach. Mean validity coefficients of Rorschach variables in the meta-analysis ranged from −.113 to .239, with a median validity of .070 and a mean validity of .062. Psychopathy displayed a significant and medium-sized association with the number of Aggressive Potential responses (weighted mean validity coefficient = .232) and small but significant associations with the Sum of Texture responses, Cooperative Movement = 0, the number of Personal responses, and the Egocentricity Index (weighted mean validity coefficients = .097 to .159). The remaining 32 Rorschach variables were not significantly related to psychopathy. &lt;strong&gt;The present findings contradict the view that the Rorschach is a clinically sensitive instrument for discriminating psychopaths from nonpsychopaths.&lt;/strong&gt; (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other studies show that the test is not useful to differ between other patterns, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gradworks.umi.com/34/03/3403381.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Using the Rorschach to identify differential psychological and personality patterns of patients diagnosed with psychogenic non-epileptic seizures&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Psychological and personality patterns were examined amongst a sample of non-epileptic and epileptic individuals using the Rorschach Inkblot Method and Toronto Alexithymia Scale with the intent to identify differentiating psychological characteristics of these samples and to determine Rorschach’s utility in this area. The data collected from these two samples was compared with normative data. Results suggests that participants in both the epileptic and non-epileptic groups are able to experience and express their emotions but have limited coping skills to deal with stress as compared to normative data. &lt;strong&gt;Statistically significant differences between the two groups themselves were not identified and, in this study, Rorschach did not provide to be of use in differentiating the two groups.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1072" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T12:29:58.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8633" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-27T13:33:46.093" Score="1" ViewCount="663" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6151/does-your-heart-stop-beating-when-you-sneeze&quot;&gt;Does your heart stop beating when you sneeze?&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA; &#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/6153/651&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; to the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6151/does-your-heart-stop-beating-when-you-sneeze&quot;&gt;Does your heart stop beating when you sneeze?&lt;/a&gt; it is stated that your heart can &lt;strong&gt;skip a beat&lt;/strong&gt; when you sneeze?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that even possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="651" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T12:49:59.850" Title="Does your heart skip a beat when you sneeze?" Tags="|biology|physiology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-03-27T13:59:21.023" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8611" CreationDate="2012-03-27T14:47:06.550" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Conversations on Consciousness by Susan Blackmore (ISBN 978-0-19-280623-9),&lt;/em&gt; on page 140, Stephen LaBerge references a study he did to provide evidence of lucid dreaming. He knew that observed eye movement in REM state did sometimes correspond with reported subjective gaze direction in regular dreams. He'd also already mastered techniques to become lucid in a dream, but evidence of these was completely subjective. He then designed an experiment to get solid evidence of the phenomenon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I thought that in a lucid dream I could look to the left and right, left and right, and thus make a unique and easily identifiable signal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They could then monitor the dream in laboratory conditions, and gather data on lucid dreams. It worked. He says the signal-verified lucid dreams were almost without exception in phasic REM sleep mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study was reportedly hard to get published, but was eventually published in &lt;em&gt;Perceptual and Motor Skills&lt;/em&gt;. The following &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be a reference to the study in question (found from the book's general references on lucid dreaming):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gackenbach, J. and LaBerge, S., &lt;em&gt;Conscious Mind, Sleeping Brain&lt;/em&gt; (New York: Plenum, 1986)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using known techniques for gaining lucidity during dreaming, they succesfully performed different types of these signal-confirmed lucid dreaming experiments with other test subjects as well. They've for example found out that during lucid dreaming, time flows at same rate than in waking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and by the way he draws some &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; interesting (and admittedly very speculative) conclusions about the nature of consciousness based on these observations. Read the book for more. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt; Having performed repeatable experiments in laboratory coditions, where subjects were measured to be in a dream state (phasic REM) but were able to perform externally observed signals that correspond with their reported lucid state, I would conclude this &lt;strong&gt;confirms lucid dreaming as a real phenomenon that can be learnt to be induced by certain techniques.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It should be noted, though, that the direct reference I've used for this information is a book that consists of &lt;em&gt;edited records of conversations&lt;/em&gt; where the book's editor is the &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; party of the conversation in question, not the one providing the information. Feel free to edit to provide more direct references.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="154" LastEditorUserId="154" LastEditDate="2012-03-27T17:40:38.260" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T17:40:38.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8635" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8657" CreationDate="2012-03-27T16:41:12.720" Score="35" ViewCount="22963" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archived.parapsych.org/members/r_d_nelson.html&quot;&gt;Roger D. Nelson&lt;/a&gt;, PhD (Experimental Psychology), claims to have proven using scientific methods that humans can influence the outcome of random number/event generators (RNG or REG) with their mind. The influence is claimed to be rather small but statistically significant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has founded the &lt;a href=&quot;http://noosphere.princeton.edu/&quot;&gt;Global Consciousness Project&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Consciousness_Project&quot;&gt;wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;) based on this results. The project installed random number/even generators on 65 locations around the world. It is claimed that this system detects changes in the level of randomness when important events happen, like during the &lt;a href=&quot;http://noosphere.princeton.edu/911formal.html&quot;&gt;September 11, 2001 attacks&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If such a claim would come from a non-scientists, it would be quite easy for me to ignore it. However, this one comes from a scientist which works/has worked for a research group Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory at Princeton University, which has &lt;a href=&quot;http://noosphere.princeton.edu/media.html&quot;&gt;published journal papers&lt;/a&gt; about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a scientific consensus on this claimed effect? Like were there any neutral scientific tests which were able to repeat or refute it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1072" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T00:01:58.547" LastActivityDate="2019-09-18T21:25:58.410" Title="Can humans influence the outcome of random event generators with their mind?" Tags="|psychology|consciousness|esp|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8440" CreationDate="2012-03-27T19:52:06.137" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The 10% quoted in the British survey is not credible because of how the survey was conducted, but reliable numbers might be as high as 4%&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original survey that prompted the Question was conducted by UK campaigning website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mumsnet.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mumsnet&lt;/a&gt; as part of their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mumsnet.com/campaigns/we-believe-you-mumsnet-rape-awareness-campaign&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rape Awareness Campaign&lt;/a&gt;. Unfortunately their good intentions are undone by bad survey design and some statistical illiteracy in how they quote their results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is analysed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightstatistics.org/article/has-one-every-ten-women-really-been-raped&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightstatistics.org/article/mumsnet-rape-survey-take-two&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; by UK fact checkers Straight Statistics. The first problem is that the survey was not a properly conducted random sample but a self selecting voluntary survey. This is always a major source of bias but a good way to back up campaigns when you are less than choosy about the statistical rules. As Straight Statistics says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Mumsnet survey is part of a campaign called We Believe You. I certainly don’t disbelieve Mumsnet’s respondents, as it’s unlikely they are making it up. But I don’t believe that any self-selected survey of this sort provides a basis for reaching any conclusion at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they also showed some illiteracy when adding up their numbers. In the second comment in Straight Statistics the problems is explained like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I overlooked the very strange way in which the survey was reported by Mumsnet. The PDF of the survey results on the Mumsnet website shows one question that read as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/f1fk9.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;mumsnet results table from Straight statistics&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mumsnet reported this as 10 per cent reporting having been raped and 35 per cent sexually assaulted. But this ignores the third answer, those who have suffered both rape and sexual assault. Taking this into account, the true figure should be that 27 per cent have been raped and 52 per cent sexually assaulted, with only 38 per cent experiencing neither. Even worse than Mumsnet claimed!&#xA;  The figures make it even more unlikely that the responses represent a true representation of women’s experiences, but the survey was widely reported, using the headline figures in the Mumsnet press release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So they underreported the answer but didn't give a convincing account of their statistical skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put this in perspective Straight Statistics quote the results of a more reliable source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The best data we have, from the British Crime Survey (BCS), suggests this is an overestimate.&#xA;  The latest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/science-research-statistics/research-statistics/crime-research/hosb0212/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;bulletin on Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence&lt;/a&gt;, published in January, indicates (Table 3.01) that 3.7 per cent of women report having been raped since the age of 16 (4.5 per cent if attempted rape is included), and 18.6 per cent report having experienced any form of sexual assault – around half the proportions reported by Mumsnet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The BCS figures come from a properly-chosen sample of more than 6,000 women. The Mumsnet results come from “write-in” responses on its website from 1,609 women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me the much more reliable BCS results are still disturbingly high and the mumsnet survey just muddied the waters by exaggerating by bad survey design. Newspapers mostly swallowed the numbers with little critique or reference to previous, better, work. On topics as important as this they should have done a better job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-27T19:58:37.173" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T19:58:37.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8641" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-27T21:19:16.053" Score="5" ViewCount="411" Body="&lt;p&gt;As reported by major news outlets, a study allegedly claims that eating chocolate can make you slimmer: Here the report from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-57405100-10391704/eating-lots-of-chocolate-helps-people-stay-thin-study-finds/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CBS News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;for the study, published in the March 26 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers examined more than 1,000 healthy men and women who were free of heart disease, diabetes and cholesterol problems. They were all enrolled in another study that measured the effects of cholesterol-lowering statin drugs, but for this study researchers assigned them questionnaires that gauged how often participants chowed down on chocolate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The researchers found that the participants - who were an average age of 57 - ate chocolate for an average of twice of week and exercised roughly 3.5 times per week. But the more frequent chocolate-eaters had smaller BMIs, a ratio of height and weight that's used to measure obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know about more details to this study? This claim sounds to me like typical wishful thinking: Any research that shows positive effects of, e.g., chocolate or alcohol, gets way more media attention than research showing the opposite... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-28T20:20:23.937" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T20:20:23.937" Title="Does eating Chocolate make you skinnier?" Tags="|medical-science|weight-loss|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8642" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9277" CreationDate="2012-03-27T21:36:12.767" Score="10" ViewCount="810" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/alternative-fuel/gas-mileage/4276846&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; initially seems to investigate so-called water powered cars. The final few paragraphs of the article however branches off into discussion about a system where (as I understand it):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A car's electrical system (powered by its alternator) is used to power an electrolyzer of water, which&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generates hydrogen and oxygen gas, which&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is fed into the engine's air intake, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Improves the way the gasoline burns, thus &lt;em&gt;maybe&lt;/em&gt; increasing overall fuel economy (ie km/litre or miles per gallon)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously (to anyone who knows their laws of physics anyway) any improvements in the way the fuel burns would have to more than make up for the inefficiency of producing the extra electricity to split the water into hydrogen/oxygen. However, in cars where the fuel burns inefficiently in the first place, maybe there is the potential to improve overall fuel economy? This seems less likely to be possible in modern cars where more effort has been put into designing an efficient engine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article is old (2008), and suggests that further work would be done, but provides no link. Can anyone shed light on whether this research has been pursued and what the results were?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5343" LastEditorUserId="5343" LastEditDate="2012-03-28T09:41:33.250" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T03:04:30.453" Title="Can an on-the-fly water electrolyzer linked to the air intake improve fuel efficiency of a gasoline engine?" Tags="|road-vehicles|water|fossil-fuel|energy-efficiency|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8648" CreationDate="2012-03-28T04:02:28.357" Score="20" ViewCount="19477" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following quote has been widely attributed to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Tutu&quot;&gt;Desmond Tutu&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said “let us close our eyes and pray.” When we opened them, we had the Bible, and they had the land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of the attribution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://giantisopodofdeath.tumblr.com/post/19947296857/when-the-missionaries-came-to-africa-they-had-the&quot;&gt;Tumblr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://homelands.org/worlds/quotes.html&quot;&gt;Homelands Productions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ahfir.eu/page_news.php?lg=0&amp;amp;id_nouvelle=1442&quot;&gt;Afhir Europe&lt;/a&gt; - misspelling his name, and describing him as an 'African novelist'.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thinkexist.com/quotation/when_the_missionaries_came_to_africa_they_had_the/200308.html&quot;&gt;Think Exist&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scotsindependent.org/2004/040319/&quot;&gt;Scots Independent&lt;/a&gt;, attributing the source as &lt;em&gt;The Observer&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2003/aug/19/globalrecession.politics&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Desmond Tutu is an outspoken activist, but this sentiment seems unlikely coming from a former Archbishop and Primate of the Anglican church.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the attributions I found suggested when and where he uttered these words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/21275&quot;&gt;also been attributed&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jomo_Kenyatta&quot;&gt;Jomo Kenyatta&lt;/a&gt;, former Prime Minister and then President of Kenya.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unfamiliar with him, and the attribution might be apocryphal, but it seems a little more plausible, at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-28T13:32:36.700" LastActivityDate="2024-03-23T08:50:48.980" Title="Did Desmond Tutu criticize African missionaries for stealing land?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8646" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8649" CreationDate="2012-03-28T10:43:30.980" Score="30" ViewCount="28566" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a popular belief that drinking tea shortly after meal can cause health problems and is also dangerous to anemic people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drinking tea just after a meal restricts the body's absorption of iron (Fe) consumed with the meal. [...] Tea or coffee consumed at least one hour after a meal does not interfere with iron absorption&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action;jsessionid=036AA494FDF5439C21508241CC833E20?newsId=186262&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Today's Zaman&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;7 Things Not To Do After a Meal&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  Don't Drink Tea&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Because tea leaves contain a high content of acid. This substance will cause the Protein content in the food we consume to be hardened thus difficult to digest however Japanese Green tea is known as a drink which has many benefits for your health. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.knowledgepublisher.com/article/91/health-time-7-things-not-to-do-after-a-meal.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Health Time&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to know if this claim is true and if it is, exactly what kinds of problems it can cause?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5706" LastEditorUserId="53549" LastEditDate="2020-02-21T18:56:13.730" LastActivityDate="2020-02-21T18:56:13.730" Title="Is drinking tea after a meal unhealthy?" Tags="|nutrition|drinks|tea|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8644" CreationDate="2012-03-28T13:25:39.643" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tutu,_Desmond&quot;&gt;Wikiquote&lt;/a&gt; mentions this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As quoted in Desmond Tutu: A Biography (2004) by Steven Gish, p. 101; this is a joke Tutu has used, but variants of it exist which are not original to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So he didn't make it up, but he did say it. He may not have meant it completely seriously. On the other hand he may have thought it humourous way of presenting a significant truth. Being a Christian doesn't automatically mean you approve of everything other Christians do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=S6UYpCoGUkgC&amp;amp;pg=PA101&amp;amp;lpg=PA101&amp;amp;dq=%22they%20had%20the%20bible%22%20biography&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=YpQ28_e147&amp;amp;sig=wOvgwGQI78g5Ng6sO0WT5S4Q2Z8&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=OhBzT6mrLKG10QGv_q3hAQ&amp;amp;ved=0CCUQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;an extract from the book&lt;/a&gt;, giving more context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before [Tutu] left for the Nobel Prize Ceremony in Oslo, Norway, he spoke at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, and told one of his favorite stories. &quot;When the missionaries came to Africa, they had the Bible and we had the land. They said “let us close our eyes and pray.” When we opened them, we had the Bible, and they had the land.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-07-26T20:29:08.403" LastActivityDate="2012-07-26T20:29:08.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8646" CreationDate="2012-03-28T14:40:20.803" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Drinking tea immediately after a meal can inhibit iron absorption from vegetable sources, however it does not inhibit iron absorption from cooked meat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1410962/pdf/gut00496-0045.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The effect of tea on iron absorption&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect of tea on iron absorption was studied in human volunteers. Absorption from solutions of FeCl3 and FeSO4, bread, a meal of rice with potato and onion soup, and uncooked haemoglobin was inhibited whether ascorbic acid was present or not. No inhibition was noted if the haemoglobin was cooked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect on the absorption of non-haem iron was ascribed to the&#xA;formation of insoluble iron tannate complexes. Drinking tannin-containing beverages such as tea with meals may contribute to the pathogenesis of iron deficiency if the diet consists largely of vegetable foodstuffs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T14:40:20.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8650" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-28T15:53:40.380" Score="22" ViewCount="1701" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the period between AD 30 and AD 70, many historians claim that there was an Early Jerusalem Church active and preaching in Palestine. The mainstream historical narrative can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=2&amp;amp;ved=0CDcQFjAB&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.biblicalstudies.org.uk%2Fpdf%2Fcbrfj%2Fchurch-jerusalem_bruce.pdf&amp;amp;ei=bi1zT8iBLcfKtgfr8vWNBg&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFbO2ghoN06Z_FS288yB65rMs7K_A&amp;amp;sig2=MKkb4BqCDkrFxdrj07JGrw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in this pdf&lt;/a&gt;. I am curious how the accepted story withstands skeptical scrutiny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Jerusalem Church was supposedly active for only a few decades, and qualitatively different from the contemporary Pauline Church, which took over after the last Jewish revolt in 135AD. Most of the documents related to the teaching of this church or its existence are contained in Pauline documents. These Pauline documents serve as religious texts too, as proselyzing tools, so I don't trust them as historical sources. For all I know, Paul just made up all his correspondence with the Jerusalem church so as to justify various positions. The only time the Jerusalem church comes up is when he has a debate with somebody on church policy, and then he sends off a letter to Jerusalem, and then Jerusalem tells him he was right. Modern religious leaders seem to have no compunctions about fabricating even more outrageous things, so I don't want anything reliant on Paul's testimony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I doubt this church, is because the Christian faith has Gnostic and Pagan components which are significant. I hesitate to say &quot;Pagan&quot;, because I don't mean it negatively, I think these are important teachings, you find them in Gnostic texts. One of the Pagan things seems to be Plato's realm of the spirit, where forms and souls have eternal life, and which is can be seen as a precurser to the very distinctive Christian concept of eternal life. This idea does not have a Jewish source that I can see. Ecclesiastes, which is one of the latest Jewish texts in the old testament, while showing Greek influence, denies the afterlife, although it talks about it, so the idea must have been floating around. Job too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious whether there was an actual Jerusalem church. This question is inspired by the question about the historical Jesus: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/is-there-any-verifiable-historical-and-or-scientific-evidence-that-jesus-lived&quot;&gt;Did Jesus live?&lt;/a&gt; . I guess you can phrase it as &quot;Was there a historical Peter?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So was there a major church in Jerusalem in AD 30-130? Like unfabricated archeological evidence: church buildings, grave-markers, documentary evidence from people other than Paul about figures other than James the Just or John the Baptist, both of whom are well documented, but not clearly affiliated with an organized Christian Church.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number and type of each church is significant evidence, so that if the Church spread out from Jerusalem, you expect to find churches spreading radially from there, and to find other Jerusalem-style church communities elsewhere after 135AD, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was there a Jerusalem Church? What was its size and composition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6256" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-08-22T00:36:19.010" Title="Was there an organized early Jerusalem church?" Tags="|history|religion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8635" CreationDate="2012-03-28T20:32:26.183" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;: The hypothesis is unfalsifiable, relies on confirmation bias and cherry picking of data, has no predictive or explanatory power (in fact, it makes post-hoc predictions), lacks any kind of controls... in every sense, it is pseudo-science.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question has been addressed quite thoroughly at the following locations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;v=oHTJUX9TZJ8&quot;&gt;Debunking the Global Consciousness Project&lt;/a&gt; (from YouTube user C0nC0rdance): &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4049&quot;&gt;Skeptoid Article: Unconscious Research of Global Consciousness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/globalconsciousness.html&quot;&gt;Global Consciousness on The Skeptic's Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To a lesser extent, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Consciousness_Project#Criticism&quot;&gt;criticism section on the Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; that you linked to. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also like to point out that accepting somebody's words purely on the basis of them having letters in front of their name (e.g. Dr) is known as an '&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority&quot;&gt;appeal to authority&lt;/a&gt;'.  The veracity and accuracy of a claim have everything to do with the evidence to support it and nothing to do with a person's credentials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6562" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-29T00:16:19.587" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T00:16:19.587" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8635" CreationDate="2012-03-28T22:56:29.680" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examining psychokinesis: The interaction of human intention with random number generators &amp;mdash; A meta-analysis.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Bösch, Holger; Steinkamp, Fiona; Boller, Emil;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/?&amp;amp;fa=main.doiLanding&amp;amp;doi=10.1037/0033-2909.132.4.497&quot;&gt;Psychological Bulletin, Vol 132(4), Jul 2006, 497-523.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Séance-room and other large-scale psychokinetic phenomena have&#xA;  fascinated humankind for decades. Experimental research has reduced&#xA;  these phenomena to attempts to influence (a) the fall of dice and,&#xA;  later, (b) the output of random number generators (RNGs). The&#xA;  meta-analysis combined 380 studies that assessed whether RNG output&#xA;  correlated with human intention and found a significant but very small&#xA;  overall effect size. The study effect sizes were strongly and&#xA;  inversely related to sample size and were extremely heterogeneous. A&#xA;  Monte Carlo simulation revealed that the small effect size, the&#xA;  relation between sample size and effect size, and the extreme effect&#xA;  size heterogeneity found could in principle be a result of publication&#xA;  bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;As for Global Consciousness Project, they are using their own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psyleron.com/reg1.aspx&quot;&gt;&quot;random events generators&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. However, unlike other commercially available random number generators, this one has no independent certificates at all. One would expect such a device to be tested independently, and conform to at least basic level of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIPS_140-2&quot;&gt;NIST FIPS-140-2&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-03-28T23:47:22.427" LastActivityDate="2012-03-28T23:47:22.427" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="39601" CreationDate="2012-03-28T22:56:52.533" Score="25" ViewCount="38589" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/03/26/maximizing-vitamin-d-exposure.aspx?e_cid=20120326_DNL_art_1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent article by Dr Mercola&lt;/a&gt; on a health advocacy web site makes a number of claims about Vitamin D production in your skin.  The most surprising to me is the claim that you can &lt;em&gt;wash off&lt;/em&gt; a meaningful fraction of the Vitamin D created due to sun exposure if you wash with soap within two days of sun exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to understand that vitamin D3 is an oil soluble steroid hormone. It's formed when your skin is exposed to ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation from the sun (or a safe tanning bed). When UVB strikes the surface of your skin, your skin converts a cholesterol derivative in your skin into vitamin D3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the vitamin D3 that is formed is on the surface of your skin does not immediately penetrate into your bloodstream. It actually needs to be absorbed from the surface of your skin into your bloodstream. The critical question then is: how long does it take the vitamin D3 to penetrate your skin and reach your bloodstream? If you're thinking about an hour or two, like I did until recently, you're wrong. Because new evidence shows it takes up to 48 hours before you absorb the majority of the vitamin D that was generated by exposing your skin to the sun!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, if you shower with soap, you will simply wash away much of the vitamin D3 your skin generated, and decrease the benefits of your sun exposure. So to optimize your vitamin D level, you need to delay washing your body with soap for about two full days after sun exposure. Now, few are not going to bathe for two full days. However you really only need to use soap underneath your arms and your groin area, so this is not a major hygiene issue. You'll just want to avoid soaping up the larger areas of your body that were exposed to the sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many will dispute this recommendation as &amp;quot;conventional&amp;quot; thinking teaches that vitamin D is formed in the skin, but this research is based on Dr. Michael Hollick's work, which is over 25 years old. New evidence suggests the current view on how vitamin D is formed is inaccurate. At this time no one has ever tested whether vitamin D is formed in human sebum, the fat that your skin produces. The only study that supports that vitamin D3 is formed in the dermal epidermal junction was done in humans where the sebum was removed from the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia (lacking a direct citation), Vitamin D3 is made in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;inner layers of the epidermis&lt;/a&gt;, which one would expect to be insulated from the effects of washing with soap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2022-10-31T01:33:11.330" Title="Does Vitamin D created by sun exposure get washed off in the shower?" Tags="|environmental-health|vitamins|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8659" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-03-28T23:46:06.503" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr Joseph M. Mercola is a celebrity osteopath and author/co-author of several books such as The No-Grain Diet and The Great Bird Flu Hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-17T01:24:54.557" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T01:24:54.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8660" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-03-28T23:46:06.503" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for claims **about** (not *by*) Dr Joseph M. Mercola" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2017-03-02T04:29:48.233" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T04:29:48.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8614" CreationDate="2012-03-29T02:41:03.173" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2009, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) did a chemical analysis of several products from two leading brands of electronic cigarette.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/newsevents/publichealthfocus/ucm173146.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;What they found&lt;/a&gt; was disturbing. Here are some excerpted points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;DPA's analysis of the electronic cigarette samples showed that the product contained &lt;strong&gt;detectable levels of known carcinogens&lt;/strong&gt; and toxic chemicals to which users could potentially be exposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Diethylene glycol was detected in one cartridge at approximately 1%. &lt;strong&gt;Diethylene glycol, an ingredient used in antifreeze, is toxic to humans.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Certain tobacco-specific &lt;strong&gt;nitrosamines which are human carcinogens&lt;/strong&gt; were detected in half of the samples tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tobacco-specific impurities suspected of being harmful to humans—&lt;strong&gt;anabasine, myosmine, and β-nicotyrine—were detected in a majority of the samples tested&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The electronic cigarette cartridges that were &lt;strong&gt;labeled as containing no nicotine had low levels of nicotine present&lt;/strong&gt; in all cartridges tested, except one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One high-nicotine cartridge delivered &lt;strong&gt;twice as much&lt;/strong&gt; nicotine to users when the vapor from that electronic cigarette brand was inhaled than was delivered by a sample of the nicotine inhalation product (used as a control) approved by FDA for use as a smoking cessation aid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/ScienceResearch/UCM173250.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;more technical description&lt;/a&gt; of the process was also published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These results suggest that the manufacturers claims (as of 2009) are not to be trusted, that electronic cigarettes contain a number of dangerous compounds and that they are unsuitable as a mechanism for quitting smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: At least one manufacturer &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.libertystix.com/LibertyStixFDAResponse.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;disputed these findings&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T02:35:25.230" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8662" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-03-29T07:23:20.617" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-03-29T07:23:20.617" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T07:23:20.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8663" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-03-29T07:23:20.617" Score="0" Body="ESP (Extrasensory perception) involves reception of information not gained through the recognized physical senses but sensed with the mind." OwnerUserId="1072" LastEditorUserId="1072" LastEditDate="2012-03-29T08:11:31.880" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T08:11:31.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8666" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-29T14:04:56.987" Score="5" ViewCount="834" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to be taken as self-evident that law and medicine are one of the highest paying professions in the United States.  However it seems to me that much of the high income from these professions can be simply attributed to the extraordinarily long hours they work.  If evaluated as an &quot;hourly rate&quot; would law and medicine really stack up to professions like truck driving or skilled construction trades (e.g. electrician, plumber, carpenter)?  If not, what is there to justify the incredibly high cost (in time and money) of obtaining the necessary training and education for law and medicine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3278" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-29T14:56:46.800" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T19:25:13.783" Title="Are law and medicine high-paying professions?" Tags="|medical-science|united-states|law|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8668" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-29T16:41:15.917" Score="13" ViewCount="2170" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onnit.com/alphabrain/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alpha Brain&lt;/a&gt; is a tablet offered as a dietary supplement by Onnit. They make many claims about its ability to help cognitive function:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The idea behind the Alpha Brain™ dietary supplement was to create the first ever fully balanced nootropic. Alpha GPC and Huperzia Serrata maximize acetylcholine levels while other ingredients assist in elevating dopamine and GABA levels, crucial components to remaining calm, focused, and mentally driven. Our vinpocetine assists in delivering oxygen and nutrients to the brain via increased blood flow, and the combination of neuro-specific antioxidants, led by our proprietary AC-11® helps to clear away mental fog and reduce free radical burden. The result experienced by many of our satisfied customers is an extraordinary combination of lucid dreams, mental drive, focus, memory, and mental acuity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mcZ73.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Ingredients&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A buddy at the office just recently tried it, and is claiming it is real. It apparently is able to increase your memory recall and cognitive abilities, but I don't know if this is placebo or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't see how it is for real, but if it is, I wouldn't mind trying it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4311" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-29T17:17:33.157" LastActivityDate="2016-11-09T03:08:21.747" Title="Can Alpha Brain dietary supplement improve mental acuity and focus?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8671" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-29T18:48:53.270" Score="21" ViewCount="1482" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a comment to the best answer to question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/528/is-food-cooked-in-a-microwave-oven-harmful-for-the-health&quot;&gt;582&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/6185/muhd&quot;&gt;Muhd&lt;/a&gt; writes: &quot;&lt;em&gt;I would add that it is also unhealthy if you microwave in something that is not microwave safe as toxic chemicals could migrate into the food from the container (e.g. from most plastics).&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence for this?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Are some plastics more dangerous than others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="37" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T22:45:03.210" Title="Do harmful chemicals migrate from the container into the food if you microwave the food in a plastic container?" Tags="|nutrition|chemistry|microwaves|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8672" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8676" CreationDate="2012-03-29T19:02:05.117" Score="1" ViewCount="2127" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen many examples of air conditioning units that claim they can emit Vitamin C, D, E, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, taken from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gizmag.com/go/3083/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gizmodo article:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fujitsu have again come up with another world first, by incorporating&#xA;  a revolutionary Vitamin C emission filter into these new models&#xA;  scheduled for a Japanese release this August (August 21st).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this actually true? How can an air conditioner create vitamins out of the air?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally is there really any benefits on breathing vitamins?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6574" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-04-05T22:24:18.030" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T22:24:18.030" Title="Can air conditioner units emit vitamins?" Tags="|consumer-products|vitamins|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8672" CreationDate="2012-03-29T19:54:15.470" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The air conditioner does not create the Vitamin C. Ascorbic Acid is stored in some kind of material, comes to the surface in a defined way, and is carried with the air. The filters / dispensers have to be replaced when they are empty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find any references to the actual replacement parts. Some info about the Nissan system is &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.drive.com.au/drive/motor-news/the-car-that-moisturises-your-skin-20100802-1129o.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Interestingly enough, they say Vitamin D and E are too heavy to carry in air. Vitamin C weighs 176,13 g·mol−1, D&amp;amp;E more than twice as much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=siemens%20%20vitamin%20c%20filter&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CCMQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.siemens-home.com/Files/Siemens/Ae/ae_en/Document/Siemens_AC.pdf&amp;amp;ei=Prt0T7WABc3ltQbL4M3yDQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNHPTuahJoj7WI8DtkF8YlneO-7H-w&amp;amp;cad=rja&quot;&gt;Siemens&lt;/a&gt; manages to make their information about the dispersed amount of Vitamin C quite unfathomable. They say it can reach up to 0.65 mg/l of Vitamin C in air. 20°C air holds about 20mg/l of water at 100% humidity, making about 10mg/l at normal household humidity of 50-ish %. So 6.5% of humidity is available as Vitamin C. Also, the unit delivers about 800 m^3 / hour. This does not quite add up: about half a kilo of Vitamin C per hour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what little the companies divulge, it seems to be possible to dispense amounts of Vitamin C about as heavy as the truth in these papers into the air, which then might get absorbed by a human body before being lost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6399" LastEditorUserId="6399" LastEditDate="2012-03-29T20:09:19.027" LastActivityDate="2012-03-29T20:09:19.027" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="453" CreationDate="2012-03-29T21:02:08.220" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an essay by the late Stephen Jay Gould, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/SS05/efs/materials/FlatEarth.pdf&quot;&gt;“The Late Birth of a Flat Earth”&lt;/a&gt;, that discusses this very question. In a nutshell, Gould traces back the myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth was flat to a 19th-century origin in the form of a fabricated textbook passage. The text is included in Gould’s 1995 collection of essays, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=twhb3ZPN2ZgC&amp;amp;dq=isbn:0-517-88824-6&amp;amp;hl=en&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dinosaur in a Haystack&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gould recounts a reconstruction of the flat-earth myth from a book by historian J.B. Russell, who traces the myth back to two 1870s books, by John Draper and Andrew D. White (founder of Cornell University), respectively, which argued for a continual, and ultimately winning, struggle of reason and science against the obscurantism of the Church. But, as Gould vividly explains, scholars from the Venerable Bede to Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas took a spherical earth entirely for granted. The upshot: neither Dark nor Middle Ages were quite as benighted as some stories would have them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4600" LastEditorUserId="1072" LastEditDate="2012-04-11T10:31:04.023" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T10:31:04.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8678" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-29T21:13:54.263" Score="6" ViewCount="2301" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was surprised to read in a Long Hair Care forum that people who spray diluted Monistat (the yeast-infection treatment!) onto their scalp significantly increases and accelerates hair growth. I can't imagine what the mechanism is. Is there any reason to think this could be true? Could bacteria be a reason for slow hair growth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many example claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=2144&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/showthread.php?t=2144&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090513211653AAqnTUs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090513211653AAqnTUs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.curlycopia.com/natural-hair-experts/doctors-den/can-monistat-increase-your-hair-growth-fact-of-fiction/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.curlycopia.com/natural-hair-experts/doctors-den/can-monistat-increase-your-hair-growth-fact-of-fiction/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6576" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-03-30T03:32:59.453" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T06:05:10.677" Title="Can Monistat improve hair growth?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|hair|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8681" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-30T01:57:39.760" Score="37" ViewCount="12567" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This question is on a sensitive topic, and I would like to say up front that I am not looking for holocaust denial. My grandfather was a Nazi slave, my family on my mother's side was all but wiped out, and the denials are a stain on humanity.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Wiesel&quot;&gt;Elie Wiesel&lt;/a&gt; presents an account of Auschwitz in his book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_%28book%29&quot;&gt;Night&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The account is based on an earlier, longer, Yiddish account, &lt;em&gt;Un di Velt Hot Gesvign&lt;/em&gt; (trans: &lt;em&gt;And the World Remained Silent&lt;/em&gt;), which is attributed to Lazar Wiesel. Lazar is documented in camp accounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elie consistently has claimed that he was in fact this very same Lazar Wiesel. Lazar is the Jewish name &quot;Eli'ezer&quot;, which can be shortened &quot;Elie&quot;. Elie claims, in &lt;em&gt;Night&lt;/em&gt;, that he has Auschwitz tattoo number A-7713 - the same as Lazar. While originally published as a novel, Elie recategorised it as an autobiography in 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is some doubt over some of the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some of the details between Elie's accounts and the camp records don't match: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lazar is older than Elie.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lazar was a fluent Yiddish-speaking Hungarian Jew, while Elie is fluent in French.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many details are not consistent with other accounts of the camp (a particularly lucid one is provided by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primo_Levi&quot;&gt;Primo Levi&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_This_Is_a_Man&quot;&gt;If This Is a Man&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Miklos Gruner,  a camp inmate who appears in the Buchenwald photo where Elie also (extremely dubiously) claims to appear, has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bosnewslife.com/19094-nobel-prize-winner-wiesel-lied-about-holocaust-past-survivor-claims&quot;&gt;recently made public his claim&lt;/a&gt; that Elie Wiesel is not a Hungarian, not a fluent Yiddish speaker, and certainly not the Lazar Wiesel who Miklos knew intimately at Auschwitz.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com/&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that Elie Wiesel does not have a distinctive Auschwitz tattoo given to all prisoners.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many further places to read about these, unfortunately many of these items are linked to neo-Nazi and holocaust denial sites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/blog/fester/riddle-lazar-l-z-r-eliezer-elie-wiesel&quot;&gt;Fester's blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/elie-wiesel-holocaust-survivor-a7713/&quot;&gt;Further Glory blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com/tag/miklos-gruner/&quot;&gt;Miklos Gruner articles at Elie Wiesel Tattoo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com/tag/lazar-wiesel/&quot;&gt;Lazar Wiesel articles at Elie Wiesel Tattoo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr8_JaKde2Q&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any actual, real evidence for the person who calls himself Elie Wiesel ever having been at Auschwitz? At Buchenwald? In any camp whatsoever? Is he an imposter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: It seems that Gruner wrote a whole book about this, and the pdf can be downloaded through a link on &lt;a href=&quot;http://littlegreyrabbit.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/of-feigs-and-wiesels-a-solution-to-the-mystery-of-elie-wiesels-tattoo/&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6256" LastEditorUserId="6256" LastEditDate="2012-03-30T15:58:00.470" LastActivityDate="2018-05-27T06:36:15.113" Title="Are Elie Wiesel and Lazar Wiesel the same person?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8682" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8683" CreationDate="2012-03-30T03:59:52.180" Score="24" ViewCount="30968" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of James Joyce's characters explains, in his book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/ulysses/12/&quot;&gt;Ulysses&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would, according to the best approved traditions of medical science, be calculated to inevitably produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres, causing the pores of the cobra cavernosa to rapidly dilate in such a way as to instantaneously facilitate the flow of blood to that part of the human anatomy known as the penis or male organ resulting in the phenomenon which has been dominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and outwards philoprogenitive erection in articulo mortis per diminutionem capitis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e. when a man is hanged with a rope around the neck, &#xA;this can provoke the corpse to have an erection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This same idea seems to be wide-spread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6581" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-30T04:33:35.243" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T22:53:27.640" Title="Does a hanged man get an erection?" Tags="|sexuality|mortality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8682" CreationDate="2012-03-30T04:33:06.133" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. This is known as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_erection&quot;&gt;death erection&lt;/a&gt; or a  terminal erection, amongst other names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Helen Singer Kaplan wrote in 1983, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=WCqMzcAka54C&amp;amp;pg=PA167&amp;amp;lpg=PA167#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;The evaluation of sexual disorders: psychological and medical aspects&lt;/a&gt; (page 167):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acute cervical spinal cord transection produces immediate erection. Men subjected to capital punishment by hanging and laboratory animals sacrificed with cervical dislocation have terminal erections. The implication is that either central inhibition of erection is released and erection created or that a sudden massive spinal cord stimulus generates an erectile response. There is ample experimental and clinical evidence to support the former supposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T04:33:06.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8682" CreationDate="2012-03-30T04:34:36.147" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, it is possible and has been observed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a well cited Wikipedia page on the phenomenon (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_erection&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Death Erection&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phenomenon has been attributed to pressure on the cerebellum created by the noose.&lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt; Spinal cord injuries are known to be associated with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priapism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;priapism&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;(2)&lt;/sup&gt; Injuries to the cerebellum or spinal cord are often associated with priapism in living patients.&lt;sup&gt;(3)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Death by hanging, whether an execution or a suicide, has been observed to affect the genitals of both men and women. In women, the labia and clitoris will become engorged and there may be a discharge of blood from the vagina. In men, &amp;quot;a more or less complete state of erection of the penis, with discharge of urine, mucus or prostatic fluid is a frequent occurrence ... present in one case in three.&amp;quot; Other causes of death may also result in these effects, including fatal gunshot wounds to the brain, damage to major blood vessels, and violent death by poisoning. A postmortem priapism is an indicator that death was likely swift and violent.&lt;sup&gt;(4)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is even a published peer reviewed paper on the topic of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priapism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;priapism&lt;/a&gt; in acute spinal cord injury.&lt;sup&gt;(5)&lt;/sup&gt; (Note: SCI stands for spinal cord injury).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Priapism that follows acute traumatic SCI is high-flow (non-ischaemic) priapism, that is, the blood within the corpus is arterial in nature. Priapism does not occur in all patients with acute SCI. The literature does not allow us to determine in what proportion of patients priapism occurs. Priapism has been reported following a wide variety of spinal cord pathologies including acute SCI, transverse myelitis and postoperative extradural haematoma. In all patients, priapism is associated with complete motor and sensory (American Spinal Injury Association A) paraplegia. Priapism has been reported following spinal shock. Following traumatic SCI, priapism usually settles rapidly without specific treatment being required. Priapism occurs at the moment of complete motor and sensory paraplegia, it does not occur following a delay. There are medicolegal implications: the presence/absence of priapism assists in determining when the complete spinal cord lesion occurred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; (1) George M. Gould and Walter L. Pyle (1900). &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC29165096&amp;amp;id=VeoIAAAAIAAJ&amp;amp;pg=RA5-PA683&amp;amp;lpg=RA5-PA683&amp;amp;dq=priapism%20hanging&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine&lt;/a&gt;. Retrieved 2007-01-26.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(2) David Levy, DO. &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emedicine.com/EMERG/topic331.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Neck trauma&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;. eMedicine.com. Retrieved 2007-01-26.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(3) Willis Webster Grube (1897). &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC02395549&amp;amp;id=2fQSJLwOgy0C&amp;amp;pg=RA3-PA455&amp;amp;lpg=RA3-PA455&amp;amp;dq=priapism%20hanging&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Compendium of practical medicine for the use of students and practitioners of medicine&lt;/a&gt;. Hadley Co.. Retrieved 2007-01-26.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(4) William Augustus Guy (1861). &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC36308102&amp;amp;id=n0YJAAAAIAAJ&amp;amp;pg=RA3-PA246&amp;amp;lpg=RA3-PA246&amp;amp;dq=priapism%20hanging#PRA3-PA245,M1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Principles of Forensic Medicine&lt;/a&gt;. London: Henry Renshaw. Retrieved 2007-01-26&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(5) Todd, N V. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/sc.2011.57&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Priapism in Acute Spinal Cord Injury&lt;/a&gt;. Spinal Cord 49.10 (2011): 1033-1035. &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T23:25:46.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8686" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8687" CreationDate="2012-03-30T07:29:38.277" Score="9" ViewCount="1117" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just came across a random post on a random news blog saying that several words were banned from New York's standardized tests. This included common words, such as Christmas, dinosaurs, birthdays. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I really disbelieved of this so I made a quick search hoping to end up in nothing, but came across several non reliable sources with the same info, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/50-plus-banned-words-on-standardized-tests/2012/03/30/gIQANuqJkS_blog.html&quot;&gt;this post from The Washington Post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You might expect a standardized test to avoid using profane words but, it turns out, other words are banned too and they may surprise you: dinosaur and Halloween, rock ‘n roll and rap music, just to name a few. (...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still have a rough time believing in this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5427" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-03-30T07:51:43.250" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T10:38:25.330" Title="Are there banned words in New York standarized tests?" Tags="|united-states|children|language|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8686" CreationDate="2012-03-30T08:04:19.927" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is a real list of &lt;em&gt;guidelines&lt;/em&gt; sent to test-makers by the New York Department of Education - a practice in common with other US states, but differing in its extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was covered by &lt;a href=&quot;http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/03/26/war-on-words-nyc-dept-of-education-wants-50-forbidden-words-removed-from-standardized-tests/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CBS in New York&lt;/a&gt;. While the video attached to this page includes a lot of speculation, it includes a door-stop interview with an official, Schools' Chancellor Dennis Walcott, that confirms the nature of the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-03-30T10:38:25.330" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T10:38:25.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8666" CreationDate="2012-03-30T17:17:15.057" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, here's earnings data for graduates of law-related fields:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/95dWW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here's the same for &quot;health-related&quot; graduates which appears to mostly concern nurses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rRb4M.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Biology and Life Sciences&quot; appears to mostly concern research biologists than MDs, so I omitted that. The data is coming from &quot;What’s it Worth?: The Economic Value of College Majors&quot;, an 2011 publication by Carnevale, Strohl and Melton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If not, what is there to justify the incredibly high cost (in time and money) of obtaining the necessary training and education for law and medicine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, one does not often become, say, a plumber out of a burning passion to improve people's lives through better plumbing. One becomes a plumber to have a nice job that pays well, whereas idealism is a significant motivator for starry-eyed high school seniors who go into law and medicine. Say what you will, but it's obvious how a doctor would save lives (although that's not mentioning the numerous &quot;boring doctors&quot; who give you acne medicine and come up with a diet for your fat kids), and it isn't obvious how a plumber will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, the education and practice of such technical professions requires building up a sizable amount of intellectual capital, if that's the word. Both medicine and law are such fields that learning them for its own sake can be rewarding to many people. The prospect of doing intellectually demanding (and satisfying) things and being rewarded for it is attractive &#xA; to many people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, there is often prestige associated with such professions, and even if it's baseless, it still matters. Stating you're an MD or lawyer commands an amount of respect in our societies that identifying as a truck driver or plumber doesn't, deservingly so or otherwise. Even if you yourself don't care about this, your parents may, and they influence career decisions for some people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, there is no such thing as getting a double BS in Plumbing and Sewer Maintenance, going on to get an MS in Toilet Science, receiving your PhD for work on Efficient Urinal Architecture and joining the National Institute of Plumbers to work on a promising plumbing project. You just go out there and find customers. The prospect is daunting to many confused young men (and women?) and they find it easier to just run along these clear lines of successive qualifications which ostensibly guarantee a well-defined government job that involves using your technical skills and not marketing them. So there is the fact that it's &quot;easier&quot; to make the decision to become a lawyer, or doctor, than it is to become a plumber.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fifth, men are overrepresented among truckers and plumbers, which may be driving women towards law and medicine and what not in their hope to escape a &quot;male-dominated workplace&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, it is presumably easier to become a plumber after being a doctor for 15 years than it is to become a doctor after driving a truck for 20. (That would make for an interesting med school application!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6586" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T17:17:15.057" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5141" CreationDate="2012-03-30T19:59:22.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, your brother is right.  The answers here all are for Earth-class facilities, which indeed are inadequate for the task.  But planet-sized, or even smaller antennas, can do the trick out to anywhere our signals have gotten so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've written up (with some reasonably detailed computations) what would be possible with alien-class facilities, and they &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; watch our TV if they wish to.  See &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://contactincontext.org/lucy.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://contactincontext.org/lucy.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6592" LastActivityDate="2012-03-30T19:59:22.753" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8666" CreationDate="2012-03-30T21:11:53.957" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, they are high-paying professions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://laffeymatrix.com/see.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This matrix&lt;/a&gt; is used to estimate reasonable fees for lawyer's operating in the Washington, DC, metro area. Current values range from $305 / hr for someone 1-3 years out of law school to $734 / hr for someone 20+ years out. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the proposition is that legal &quot;high pay&quot; arises from very long hours, we can start with a 40-hour-per-week, 50-week-year (2 weeks vacation!), which is not considered &quot;long hours&quot; by most Americans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;40 hours / week * 50 weeks / year == 2000 hours per year * $305 / hr == $610,000 / yr&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indeed.com/salary/Truck-Driver.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Indeed.com,&lt;/a&gt; a truck driver might expect to make approximately $54,000 per year :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/z4HsE.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the proposition to hold, it must be the case that some combination of the following conditions holds for lawyers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The conversion of task-specific hours into billable hours must be very inefficient; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There must be a large amount of non-billable hours required by the job; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The conversion of the hourly fee into income is very inefficient&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(While the comparison is of the pay in a metropolitan area with a nationwide search, the order-of-magnitude difference establishes that the truck driver cannot make up the difference by working longer hours.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is (1) likely? Perhaps, in the case of lawyers working on contingency. But it is standard in the legal community to bill per hour, not on a fixed-bid, and anyone who has worked with a lawyer knows that they track their time assiduously. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is (2) likely? Yes, but only to a certain extent. Lawyers and Doctors are required to &quot;stay current&quot; in their fields, a task which requires considerable time. But is this amount of time likely to be the large multiple of their billable hours that it needs to be to make the proposition hold? It can't &quot;just&quot; require 50% of their working week (20 billable hours @ $305 for our 2000 hr / yr lawyer is still ~$300K). For this to be the driving force, it would have to be such a large number it drives billable hours down to the order of, say, 10 hours per week (~500 billable hours / yr ~= $150K, which is at least in the ballpark of what a skilled tradesmen might gross). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is (3) likely? I suspect it probably is for junior employees in large law-firms, which I believe typically follow the &quot;agency model&quot; of paying junior employees very much less than their billing-rate. But in the same model, senior employees and partners reap the rewards, so it all evens out. (There is, of course, the difference between gross and net income, but this is hardly unique to any profession.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, it seems unlikely that &quot;much of the high income from these professions can be simply attributed to the extraordinarily long hours they work.&quot; A person working for several dozens of dollars per hour cannot put in so many more hours that they are on parity with someone making a few hundreds of dollars per hour, unless the conversion of the higher-rate into income is very inefficient. While there are &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; inefficiencies that are evident, they fall well short of reducing income to the level of a skilled tradesperson. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;UPDATE&lt;/em&gt;: The Bureau of Labor Statistics provides this sortable &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#23-0000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;table of wages by job function&lt;/a&gt;; medical and legal professions dominate the high-income professions, with mean lawyers wages at $130,490:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hY9M1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electricians' mean wages are $52,910 and &quot;heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers&quot; wages are $39,830. While these numbers represent wages, not gross or even taxable income, and are means, they further argue against the proposition that much of the disparity can be &quot;simply attributed to the extraordinarily long hours they work.&quot; Even if you start with the (wildly incorrect) premise that truckers earn their current $39,830 by only working 40 hours per week, they would have to &lt;em&gt;more than triple&lt;/em&gt; those hours to make mean lawyer wages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm in no way saying that lawyers and doctors are not hard-working, it may well be the case that one cannot maintain standing and competence without working, say, 70 hours per week. (They are not unique in that respect.) Their careers start late relative to those in the trades and their training costs are very high: all true. Perhaps it is a bad economic or life-quality decision to be a lawyer or a doctor: could be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; high-paying professions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2012-04-01T19:25:13.783" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T19:25:13.783" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4488" CreationDate="2012-03-31T04:03:00.487" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=336&amp;amp;dat=19501212&amp;amp;id=6zMcAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=o1gEAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=3851,2687209&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Deseret News, Dec 12 1950, via news.google.com, &lt;/a&gt; has an article about a soldier who survived a bullet from a North Korean rifle at point blank range -- the soldier had a metal plate in the head from a previous traffic accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The North Korean soldier had his foot on the G.I's neck. He put the muzzle of his rifle to the G.I's head and pulled the trigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, wrote Pfc, Richard F. Webb, a metal plate in his head — placed there three years ago after he suffered a fractured skull in a traffic accident — proved his unexpected life insurance &amp;quot;policy.&amp;quot; The bullet, Webb said, bounced off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other newspapers also picked up the story, as can be seen from Google news list of related articles when following the above link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-03-31T06:56:08.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8699" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9227" CreationDate="2012-03-31T09:13:42.020" Score="14" ViewCount="5832" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example by stepping on, stabbing with tiny needles or by pushing hard with thumb on a specific spot, etc? Can bacteria die in a car crash? Or as a result of playing football? Another situation might be bacteria sitting on the surface of drums and being beaten by drummer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of the claim (2 pro and 1 against):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110716062247AA3gOEy&quot;&gt;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110716062247AA3gOEy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080825104807AAGz885&quot;&gt;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080825104807AAGz885&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100321235319AALZWiX&quot;&gt;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100321235319AALZWiX&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6601" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T11:43:00.973" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T08:01:14.023" Title="Is it possible to crush bacteria?" Tags="|biology|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8700" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-31T10:54:13.747" Score="16" ViewCount="856" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife yesterday bought a new refrigerator for our house. She choose a refrigerator which within the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ehaier.com/product/2132.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sales blurb&lt;/a&gt; has the following claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;光波增鲜&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  生成5种仿自然光波，让采摘后的果蔬继续光合作用，叶绿素、VC含量比存放普通冰箱高30%以上。&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translating that into English we get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fresh by light&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Generate five kinds of imitation of natural light, picking fruits and vegetables to continue photosynthesis, chlorophyll, vitamin C content is increased up to 30 percent higher than the storage ordinary refrigerator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical of this claim. Can light increase the vitamin C content of fruit stored in the refrigerator by up to 30% compared to keeping the fruit in a dark refrigerator?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-07-11T08:55:33.183" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T09:58:19.010" Title="Can an extra internal refrigerator light increase the vitamin C content of fruit?" Tags="|nutrition|vitamins|fruit|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8702" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9611" CreationDate="2012-03-31T15:29:04.507" Score="35" ViewCount="3607" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every time I go to the dentist, I'm told I need to be flossing more.  We always go over the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adha.org/oralhealth/flossing.htm&quot;&gt;techniques&lt;/a&gt;, etc, and I always get a Stern Talking To about not flossing once or twice a day.  If I go to the dentist regularly (every 4-6 months), then aren't they cleaning everything out anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I only got cavities after not going to the dentist for three years, and even then, just two little ones.  Prior to that, for 30 years, no cavities, and no flossing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one example of the claim, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saveyoursmile.com/healtharticles/flossing.html&quot;&gt;http://www.saveyoursmile.com/healtharticles/flossing.html&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you do not floss and allow plaque to remain in between teeth it eventually hardens into a substance known as tartar. Unlike plaque which can be easily removed by brushing, tartar can only be removed by your dentist.&#xA;  Over time, levels of more dangerous types of bacteria build up within tartar. Mean and vengeful, these bacteria produce toxins which irritate and inflame the gums. This condition is known as gingivitis. If gingivitis is left untreated it can progress to periodontal disease - a condition where bacteria and their toxins invade not only the gums but also the bones and the structures supporting the teeth. This can lead to bone loss, loose teeth, and teeth which fall out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the scientific articles I can find use small sample sizes (N=4, for &lt;a href=&quot;http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/6937641&quot;&gt;http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/6937641&lt;/a&gt;, to first establish that flossing reduces bacterial buildup, and N=119 for &lt;a href=&quot;http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/2786959&quot;&gt;http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/2786959&lt;/a&gt;, taking patients who already have gingivitis to see if flossing helps).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there been a large, longitudinal study that compares the effectiveness of flossing to regular dentist visits for plaque reduction and avoidance of gingivitis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2158" LastEditorUserId="2158" LastEditDate="2012-09-07T17:16:02.753" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T17:16:02.753" Title="Does flossing produce better oral health?" Tags="|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8705" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-03-31T20:51:16.320" Score="17" ViewCount="4690" Body="&lt;p&gt;On &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Real Time with Bill Maher&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;aired March 30, 2012&lt;/em&gt;), host &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2012/3/31/1079412/-Bill-Maher-Lack-of-gun-laws-led-to-Trayvon-Martin-s-murder&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bill Maher said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are now more guns in America than there are people&lt;/strong&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm guessing he is talking about &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;civilian firearms&lt;/em&gt; &amp;quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20121221010501/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia - Number of guns per capita by country&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_guns_per_capita_by_country&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a section which was since removed&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;div class=&quot;s-table-container&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;table class=&quot;s-table&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;th style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Country&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Guns per 100 residents (2007)&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Rank (2007)&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;United States&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;88.8&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;1&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Yemen&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;54.8&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;2&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Switzerland&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;45.7&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;3&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Finland&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;45.3&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;4&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Serbia&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;37.8&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;5&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Cyprus&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;36.4&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;6&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Saudi Arabia&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;25.0&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;7&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Iraq&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;34.2&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;8&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Uruguay&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;31.8&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;9&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;Sweden&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;31.6&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: center;&quot;&gt;10&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;/table&gt;&#xA;&lt;/div&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above figure &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/fileadmin/docs/A-Yearbook/2007/en/Small-Arms-Survey-2007-Chapter-02-annexe-4-EN.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;from 2007&lt;/a&gt; is close to what Bill Maher claims, but a quick google search yielded no results for more recent figures. This made me wonder where he got his info from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Are there now more guns (civilian firearms) in America than people?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-06-14T22:27:37.610" LastActivityDate="2021-06-14T22:31:37.743" Title="Are there more guns in America than people?" Tags="|united-states|guns|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8705" CreationDate="2012-04-01T01:09:43.713" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no firm statistics for the amount of guns in the US at any one time.  Estimates are based on surveys to gun owners, estimates of illegal guns and guns imported into and manufactured in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue also gets blurred if you choose to consider military bases or overseas territories as part of the USA and how broadly you want to define gun. For example, are self-made guns to be included?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the US Census, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.ca/publicdata/explore?ds=kf7tgg1uo9ude_&amp;amp;met_y=population&amp;amp;idim=country:US&amp;amp;dl=en&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;q=us%2bpopulation&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=DKd3T7mtH8bf0QG6zq2xDQ&amp;amp;ved=0CDMQ6xYwAA&amp;amp;q=usa%20population&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNE00BVW9S_JGlUQFLEghHFbFrsQHw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;population of the USA&lt;/a&gt; is about 311 million people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most reliable or semi-reliable estimates I can find for the amount of firearms in the US seem to put the number at between 200 and 300 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reuters.com/article/us-world-firearms/u-s-most-armed-country-with-90-guns-per-100-people-idUSL2834893820070828&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reuters report&lt;/a&gt; which quotes from a 2007 survey (I will link to it when I find it), U.S. citizens own 270 million firearms which would be less than the total population of the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to data from the General Social Survey collected in 2004, there were approximately 44 million firearm owners with Americans owning 192 million firearms.&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2610545/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms from 1994 also put the amount of firearms privately owned by Americans at 192 million.&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to statistics from the NRA, it is estimated the total number of firearms owned by Americans in 2010 is about 300 million.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statisticbrain.com/national-rifle-association-nra-statistics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not clear to me how these estimates are calculated, if they included seized guns, or whether they account for smuggled or self-made guns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it does not seem unreasonable to me that the number of guns in the USA could surpass the number of people living there, at the moment, the figures we have would indicate that this is not the case. These figures are restricted to the census population and privately owned firearms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Firearms used by police and military&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unregistered firearms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self-made firearms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of firearms in the US could easily surpass the population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-06-14T22:31:37.743" LastActivityDate="2021-06-14T22:31:37.743" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8712" CreationDate="2012-04-01T03:29:16.783" Score="10" ViewCount="1973" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2012/4/1/lifefocus/11012859&amp;amp;sec=lifefocus&quot;&gt;Wasteful Earth Hour?&lt;/a&gt;, it's claimed that candles emit roughly 10 times the carbon dioxide of light bulbs of the same brightness. While emissions will vary depending on the candle, the lightbulb and the electricity source, is this claim more or less correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-04-01T14:03:50.060" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T14:03:50.060" Title="Do candles emit ten times the carbon dioxide of an equivalent lightbulb?" Tags="|environment|climate-change|energy-efficiency|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8708" CreationDate="2012-04-01T13:46:56.223" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I do not agree with the statement here is a link that explains mathematically how some people got to this particular ratio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://enochthered.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/earth-hour-candles-and-carbon/&quot;&gt;http://enochthered.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/earth-hour-candles-and-carbon/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writer takes into account the carbon dioxide emitted by a candle and the carbon dioxide that is emitted by the electricity that powers a light bulb with the same luminosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion the calculation is not complete since it leaves out the energy needed to manufacture a light bulb. We should make comparisons taking into account the overall carbon dioxide footprint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6611" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T13:46:56.223" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7196" CreationDate="2012-04-01T15:15:09.780" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was actually tested in &lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/db/animals/trick-bloodhounds-sense-of-smell.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MythBusters&lt;/a&gt; (episode 74, which is in Season 8).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, that personal perfume is strong enough that none of Jamie's bloodhound-busting tactics worked. He zigzagged and doubled back on his trail, ran through a river, washed and changed clothes, doused himself in coffee and cologne, and even covered his tracks in ground pepper — all to no avail. Each time, the bloodhound sniffed right through the ruse and found the hiding Hyneman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were only able to confuse the dog a little bit - when they changed out of their clothes, there was so much scent, that the dog wasn't sure where to go. But within a few minutes, the dog picked up the track again and found Jamie within minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6598" LastEditorUserId="6598" LastEditDate="2012-04-01T15:29:18.340" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T15:29:18.340" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8716" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8718" CreationDate="2012-04-01T15:27:21.823" Score="28" ViewCount="6269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard this used in arguments (and even used it myself several times): that 20% of the US population pays 80% of the taxes. But I am starting to wonder if that is statistically accurate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as a sub-question, I have also heard that 40% of people in the US don't pay taxes at all. These are specifically for US Federal income tax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are either of these true, or are they just myths?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6598" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-04-02T18:22:31.697" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T18:22:31.697" Title="Does 20% of the population pay 80% of Federal income tax in the US?" Tags="|united-states|taxes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8717" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-01T15:46:11.097" Score="29" ViewCount="1929" Body="&lt;p&gt;I happened across this website &lt;a href=&quot;http://overpopulationisamyth.com&quot;&gt;http://overpopulationisamyth.com&lt;/a&gt;, which raises some interesting arguments against the notion that overpopulation is a real problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it isn't obvious from the site. It appears to be backed by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pop.org/&quot;&gt;Population Research Institute&lt;/a&gt; who clearly has a political  (pro-life, anti-euthanasia, and a few others) agenda. Also, the fact that they didn't exactly go out of their way to make it easy to see who was behind the site is enough to make me skeptical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I also know that the messenger or their agenda isn't enough by itself to dismiss the message, and they do make some interesting points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is this: Do the claims in the 3-4 videos stand up to rigorous scrutiny? Does the &quot;science behind this video&quot; posted on the site add up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the claims made in these videos:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The rate of population growth is declining and will soon become negative.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reason for undernourishment famine is not lack of supply, but political.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We aren't running out of space. Everyone on earth could live in the area of Texas.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1227" LastEditorUserId="1227" LastEditDate="2012-04-01T18:58:42.613" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T13:14:19.773" Title="Is overpopulation a myth?" Tags="|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8716" CreationDate="2012-04-01T15:48:02.997" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's pretty much true if by taxes you mean federal Income Tax. Both in case of 20% paying 80% of taxes, and bottom 40% paying insignificant amount of taxes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Data from 2009:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Top &lt;strong&gt;1%&lt;/strong&gt; (income above $343,927) paid &lt;strong&gt;36.73%&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Top &lt;strong&gt;5%&lt;/strong&gt; (income above $154,643) paid &lt;strong&gt;58.66%&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Top &lt;strong&gt;10%&lt;/strong&gt; (income above $112,124) paid &lt;strong&gt;70.47%&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Top &lt;strong&gt;25%&lt;/strong&gt; (income above $66,193) paid &lt;strong&gt;87.30%&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Top &lt;strong&gt;50%&lt;/strong&gt; (income above $32,396) paid &lt;strong&gt;97.75%&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bottom &lt;strong&gt;50%&lt;/strong&gt; (income below $32,396) paid &lt;strong&gt;2.25%&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source IRS via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html&quot;&gt;National Taxpayers Union&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2012-04-01T15:48:02.997" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8716" CreationDate="2012-04-01T16:12:59.300" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;For Federal Income tax you can get the actual numbers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=133521,00.html&quot;&gt;from the &lt;em&gt;IRS Tax stats&lt;/em&gt; webpage&lt;/a&gt;. There are a few complications to figuring this out including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The IRS numbers are broken down by Income into ranges, so getting exactly 20% is tricky.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These numbers only include people who filed a tax return, people with no income are not included in these numbers, but I assume you meant to include them in your 20% number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A lot of people file jointly, these numbers are based on the # of returns, not people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I was able to calculate in my trusty Excel spreadsheet that is close to an answer is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Top 16.7% by adjusted gross income ($100K+) pay 69% of the federal income taxes.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The top 27.7% by adjusted gross income ($75K+) pay 79.5% of federal income taxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to get technical the claim that 20% pay 80% is false since the top 27% don't pay quite that much. That said, the numbers aren't so far off that the underlying point doesn't have merit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The numbers get more lopsided if you look at the tippy top of income earners with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factcheck.org/2008/05/top-1-what-they-make-and-pay/&quot;&gt;top 1% paying almost 27.6% of all federal income taxes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: These are 2009 numbers. They, of course, vary by year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1227" LastEditorUserId="1072" LastEditDate="2012-04-02T13:33:46.160" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T13:33:46.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2112" CreationDate="2012-04-01T22:09:21.910" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rock that came out of the volcano isn't magically reformed into brand new material: it's just some ancient rock from the mantle that's been brought up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a read of &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/1986/0110/report.pdf&quot;&gt;Radiometric Dating, Geologic Time, And The Age Of The Earth: A Reply to &quot;Scientific&quot; Creationism&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by G. Brent Dalrymple. U.S. Geological Survey Open file report 86-110. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your exact question is on page 26. These (flawed) studies cite examples of &quot;anomalous&quot; ages from specific lava floes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Volcanic rocks produced by the lava flows which occured in Hawaii in the years 1800-1801 were dated by the potassium-argon method. Excess argon produced apparent ages ranging from 160 million to 2.96 billion years.&quot; (Kofahl and Segraves, 1975, p.200)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the author's response:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These authors cite a study by Funkhouser and Naughton (1968) on xenolithic&#xA;  inclusions in the 1801 flow from Hualalei Volcano on the Island of Hawaii.&#xA;  The 1801 flow is an unusual flow because it carries very abundant inclusions of rocks foreign to the lava. These inclusions, called xenoliths (meaning foreign rocks), consist primarily of olivine, a pale-green, iron-magnesium silicate mineral. They come from deep within the mantle and were carried upward to the surface by the lava. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the field, they look like large raisins in a pudding, and even occur in beds piled one on top of the other, glued together by the lava. The study by&#xA;  Funkhouser and Naughton (1968) was on the xenoliths, not on the lava.&#xA;  The xenoliths, which vary in composition and range in size from single mineral&#xA;  grains to rocks the size of basketballs, do indeed carry excess argon in&#xA;  large amounts. Funkhouser and Naughton were quite careful to point out&#xA;  that the apparent &quot;ages&quot; they measured were not geologically meaningful.&#xA;  Quite simply, &lt;strong&gt;xenoliths are one of the types of rocks that cannot be dated&#xA;  by K-Ar techniques.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Funkhouser and Naughton were able to determine that the excess gas resides primarily in fluid bubbles in the minerals of the xenoliths, where it cannot escape upon reaching the surface. &lt;strong&gt;Studies such as the one by Funkhouser and Naughton (1968) are done to determine which materials are suitable for dating and which are not, and to determine the cause of sometimes strange results.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  They are part of the continuing effort to learn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There have been two extensive K-Ar studies on historic lava flows&#xA;  (Dalrymple, 1969; Krummenacher, 1970) that showed that excess argon is not&#xA;  a serious problem for dating lava flows.&#xA;  An exception is the lava from the 1801 Hualalei flow, which is so badly contaminated by the xenoliths that it is not possible to obtain a completely inclusion-free sample.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6619" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2012-07-01T02:35:21.107" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T02:35:21.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8729" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-02T01:52:20.523" Score="2" ViewCount="58" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/150/does-drinking-milk-lead-to-osteoporosis&quot;&gt;Does drinking milk lead to osteoporosis?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard that eating dairy products and other animal proteins contribute to osteoporosis due to the acid content in the food and how our bones neutralize the acid. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of the claim can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makingpages.org/health/calcium.osteoporosis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, contrary to what was printed in your column, &lt;strong&gt;excess protein prevents absorption of calcium, and can actually leach it from your bones, causing osteoporosis.&lt;/strong&gt; Dr. Neal Barnard writes, &amp;quot;Dairy products contain sodium and animal protein, both of which encourage calcium losses.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abby, the average American eats double the amount of protein they need! No wonder we have a higher incidence of osteoporosis than, say, Japan, where they rarely drink milk. The low fat Japanese diet also helps explain why severe symptoms of menopause are virtually unknown there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6623" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T03:40:16.557" Title="Do dairy products and animal protein contribute to osteoporosis?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-04-02T04:32:44.130" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8731" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-02T05:42:44.580" Score="25" ViewCount="16577" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other day, I saw a show on the History channel about &quot;giant skeletons&quot; being found in North America. It also said that, for some reason, these findings have been hidden from people, maybe due to them being hoaxes or something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.mx/2011/03/who-were-red-haired-giants-of-early.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;new illuminati&lt;/em&gt; blog&lt;/a&gt; they have found 12ft (3.65m) skeletons. A lot of these skeletons have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si-Te-Cah&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;found&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://garry-nelson.hubpages.com/hub/Human-Giants&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nevada&lt;/a&gt;. There is another &lt;a href=&quot;http://stevequayle.com/Giants/N.Am/Victoria.Cty.TX.giant.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;documented case in Texas&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sources state that there's been a finding with several bodies together:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://s8int.com/giants3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Ooparts Collection: &lt;em&gt;There Were Giants in Those Days&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A mound near Toledo, Ohio, held 20 skeletons, seated and facing east&#xA;  with jaws and teeth &quot;twice as large as those of present day people,&quot;&#xA;  and besides each was a large bowl with &quot;curiously wrought hieroglyphic&#xA;  figures.&quot; (Chicago Record, Oct. 24, 1895; cited by Ron G. Dobbins,&#xA;  NEARA Journal, v13, fall 1978)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://urbantitan.com/5-most-mysterious-ancient-discoveries/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Urban Titan: &lt;em&gt;5 Most Mysterious Ancient Discoveries&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1895 in Toledo, Ohio 20 giant skeletons were found seated with jaws&#xA;  and teeth twice as large as a normal skeleton’s. Yet another giant&#xA;  skeleton was unearthed in 1928 by a farmer in Louisiana. This skeleton&#xA;  was 9 feet 11 inches. Many claims have been made about these abnormal&#xA;  skeletons, the majority of people claiming they belong to the&#xA;  mysterious Sasquatch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.articlesafari.com/2010/10/red-haired-giants-north-america/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ArticleSafari: &lt;em&gt;Who were the red-haired giants of early North America?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; says that real encounters were logged by Magellan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there seems to be a lot of information out there, unfortunately none of the sites that I found has references. So I'm not sure how reliable the information is. Was there a giant red-haired  race in North America?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qc7tZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Jaw comparison: Human vs. &amp;quot;Giant&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hg0tj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Scull comparison: Human vs. &amp;quot;Giant&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8930" OwnerDisplayName="user5169" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:39:15.923" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:39:15.923" Title="Was there a giant red-haired race in North America?" Tags="|anthropology|archaeology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8734" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-02T14:46:23.783" Score="15" ViewCount="1132" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here in Germany there are a number of beer brands that come in a swing top bottle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fCwO6.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fCwO6m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;A common swing top bottle&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(picture taken &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Datei:Beugelfles.jpg&amp;amp;filetimestamp=20070309190704&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;from Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;; copyright by &lt;a href=&quot;http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Michiel1972&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michiel1972&lt;/a&gt;, license GNU/GFDL)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often heard the claim that you should leave those bottles open before returning them, because otherwise it would harm the beer producer, create additional work and cost, be bad for the environment and raise the beer costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time when you ask people claiming such things, they will tell you that in order to clean and reuse these bottles, the lids have to be open. If the lids are not open, they have to be &lt;strong&gt;opened manually&lt;/strong&gt; and the company has to hire additional workers for that in their factory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this very hard to believe, especially considering the massive amounts of bottles that are returned for refilling every day. The factories surely are able to open those bottles automatically if this is necessary for cleaning and refilling them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the claim that you should leave the bottles open?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2749" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-12T10:56:18.867" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T10:56:18.867" Title="Does closing a swing-top bottle make recycling more costly?" Tags="|consumer-products|productivity|beer|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1326" CreationDate="2012-04-02T14:49:25.167" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 2011 IgNobel price in physiology has been awarded to a group for their paper&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wilkinson, A., N. Sebanz, I. Mandl, and L. Huber. “No Evidence of Contagious Yawning in the Red-footed Tortoise Geochelone Carbonaria.” Curr Zool 57, no. 4 (2011): 477–484.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is freely available on the web: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.currentzoology.org/paperdetail.asp?id=11922&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.currentzoology.org/paperdetail.asp?id=11922&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have a nice summary of the current state of affairs. While contagious yawning is known to occur in some species, the reason for it is still not understood. There are several hypotheses to explain contagious yawning in humans, and each hypothesis makes a different prediction for what other animals should experience contagious yawning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One hypothesis states that &quot;yawning is a fixed action pattern for which the releaser stimulus is the observation of another yawn&quot;. This hypothesis would predict that contagious yawning should be observed in all vertebrates that yawn.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another hypothesis states that this is an act of &quot;non-concious social mimicry&quot;, in which case it should be observed in those species where &quot;perception and action rely on common neural representations and social relations are of import&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yet a third hypothesis relates contagious yawning to empathy, in which case only the higher primates should show it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aim of the study was to find an animal that does not show empathy or non-social mimicry and see if that species showed contagious yawning. If so, it would support the first hypothesis, if not, it would rule it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result of their paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results revealed that there was no overall difference in responding across conditions suggesting that tortoises do not possess the ability to yawn contagiously&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we have at least one species that yawns, but doesn't yawn contagiously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastActivityDate="2012-04-02T14:49:25.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8736" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-02T14:54:18.280" Score="16" ViewCount="1119" Body="&lt;p&gt;You find this advice all over the web: Use your non-dominant hand to do simple tasks such as brushing your teeth because it will make new brain cells grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it is suggested that it is potentially harmful to retrain left handed people to write with the right hand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there any evidence to support the first claim, i.e., that engaging the off-hand more in minor tasks fosters growth of brain cells?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Some sources for where this claim is made:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2009/04/improve-your-willpower-by-shifting-your-tooth-brushing-hand/&quot;&gt;http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2009/04/improve-your-willpower-by-shifting-your-tooth-brushing-hand/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://reassembler.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/neurobic-of-the-day-brush-your-teeth-left-handed/&quot;&gt;http://reassembler.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/neurobic-of-the-day-brush-your-teeth-left-handed/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodfinancialcents.com/benefits-of-using-your-opposite-hand-grow-brain-cells-while-brushing-your-teeth/&quot;&gt;http://www.goodfinancialcents.com/benefits-of-using-your-opposite-hand-grow-brain-cells-while-brushing-your-teeth/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot further substantiate what &quot;keeping your brain active&quot; means because the sources I give also don't really substantiate it. But maybe there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; some scientific research that is more specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="1183" LastEditDate="2012-04-02T16:46:06.003" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T09:28:30.790" Title="Should I perform minor daily tasks with my &quot;off&quot;-hand to keep my brain active?" Tags="|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8737" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10405" CreationDate="2012-04-02T15:21:41.400" Score="8" ViewCount="989" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently in the United States ground beef can be sold under the label &quot;100% ground beef&quot; as per the the USDA &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsis.usda.gov/oppde/larc/policies/labeling_policy_book_082005.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Food Standards and Labeling Policy Book (August 2005)&lt;/a&gt;; however, there have been a number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html?_r=3&amp;amp;pagewanted=all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recent claims&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lean finely textured beef&lt;/a&gt; (LFTB) or &quot;pink slime&quot;, not to be confused with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanically_separated_meat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mechanically separated meat&lt;/a&gt; which is not considered safe to eat due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy&lt;/a&gt; concerns, may not be safe to eat and proper studies have not been conducted. Is there actually any validity to this claim or has the issue been over-hyped by the media?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-08-09T11:30:49.460" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T16:13:12.353" Title="Is lean finely textured beef (LFTB) or &quot;pink slime&quot; safe to eat?" Tags="|nutrition|united-states|safety|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17889" CreationDate="2012-04-02T19:03:22.820" Score="28" ViewCount="1912" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, are people with habitually skeptical attitudes less likely to benefit from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo&quot;&gt;placebo effect&lt;/a&gt;?  Has this been studied? (For instance, one might seek a correlation based on professions such as law enforcement, science, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/salud/esp_salud35.htm&quot;&gt;Example claim:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That is, the placebo effect is dependent not on the drug's effectiveness but solely on therapeutic intention and expectation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="1072" LastEditDate="2012-04-02T19:36:54.963" LastActivityDate="2017-09-27T22:49:14.653" Title="Is the placebo effect dependent on the amount of belief in it?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|placebo|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8742" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-02T20:36:24.087" Score="94" ViewCount="239685" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very popular quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins383803.html&quot;&gt;attributed to Albert Einstein&lt;/a&gt; but did he really say it? If so, what is the original document containing the original explanation of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3518" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-04-06T18:39:15.877" LastActivityDate="2021-12-26T21:32:10.957" Title="Did Einstein say &quot;if you can't explain it simply you don't understand it well enough&quot;?" Tags="|education|quotes|albert-einstein|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8743" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8769" CreationDate="2012-04-02T20:53:40.233" Score="14" ViewCount="7251" Body="&lt;p&gt;So there is this letter going around facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PLEASE SHARE IT , HUMBLE REQUEST ----&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a commercial street in China, little tortoises are found packaged as souvenir!!! These little tortoises are still alive and swimming inside a herbal solution. The store owner says it can live for 1-3 months. 5 RMB a piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is too cruel and unacceptable!!! God knows how many little lives were slowly suffocated to silent death; their fate sealed in a bag!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has the commercial world no more other ideas to make money!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help &amp;quot;Share&amp;quot; this. Hopefully some media or government will pick up this news and step in to stop this animal cruelty! Perhaps find the real victim and put an end to such uncivilized act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please help this little lives. Small as they may be, they are still lives!!!!!!!!!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr:&lt;/strong&gt; Salesmen in china sell turtles sealed in platic bags as keychains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds more like Bonsai Kittens 2.0 to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A site called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hoax-slayer.com/live-turtle-keyrings.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hoax slayer&lt;/a&gt; allready tried to bust the myth, but as the cite credible sources like THE SUN, I am still not really convinced. At least the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ktar.com/category/local-news-articles/20110406/PETA-outraged-at-China%27s-live-key-chains/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;last source&lt;/a&gt;, states that PETA supposes the animals to only survive for some hours after beeing sold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was the first thing I was sceptical about, three months with that tiny bubble of air sounded very unconvincing. But now with that peta statement I'm asking myself how they actually manage this. If the lifespan is below a day, these creatures would still have to be put into the bags and everything has to be sealed. So I assume this has to be done &lt;em&gt;freshly&lt;/em&gt; in the store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: Are there really live animals sold as keychains in china?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5638" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-06-05T05:28:33.383" Title="Are bagged turtles and goldfish sold as keychains in China?" Tags="|zoology|china|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2112" CreationDate="2012-04-02T21:17:32.037" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Statistically significant disparity in measured ages is inconsistent with the assumptions required to make radiometric dating predictions.  Therefore no prediction of the theory has been contradicted.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drawing inferences from radiometric dating requires at least two basic assumptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At the time the rock as formed, no daughter product was present.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No daughter or parent product has entered the sample since then.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Igneous rock often forms under conditions that favor (1).  But not always -- contamination of both types is common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To falsify K-Ar dating, as the claim is attempting to do, one must not only show that the predictions of K-Ar measurements lead to incorrect years, but that both assumptions (1) and (2) hold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim shows one sample that dated to 3.5 +/- 0.2 million years before present.  While other answers are correct that the half-life of Potassium-40 is very large, the 0.2 MY error bars indicate that the measurements were accurate enough to establish the &quot;age&quot; with a high degree of certainty.  The claim &quot;the real ratio of elements would indicate a 50 year old sample&quot; lies more than 17 standard deviations away from the mean measurement, so it is very unlikely that the sample matched that prediction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here's a problem.  The &lt;strong&gt;same flow&lt;/strong&gt; yielded samples that dated to 1.3 +/- 0.3 MYA, 0.8 +/- 0.2 MYA, and 1.2 +/- 0.2 MYA.  These are also significant numbers.  (One sample also dated to &lt;em&gt;less than&lt;/em&gt; 270,000 years ago, which appears to be the minimum measurable value, so is not a significant aberration).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Radiometric dating would predict that, if the assumptions (1) and (2) hold, samples from the same flow would have the same age.  But this is not what is observed,&lt;/strong&gt; so the theory rejects (1) and/or (2). Therefore, radiometric dating does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; predict that the rocks would date accurately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore this data cannot be used to falsify K-Ar dating, because it does not violate a prediction of radiometric dating.  Instead, the hypothetical contamination scenarios proposed by other answers/comments gain support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other methods, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/isochron-dating.html&quot;&gt;Isochron dating&lt;/a&gt; could potentially be used to show that the data are still consistent with current geological theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note&lt;/strong&gt;: This answer has been completely rewritten.  I wrote the first draft thinking the entire range of reported dates represented the error bars on one sample, implying that the perceived dating error was not statistically significant.  I later realized that this was not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6272" LastEditorUserId="6272" LastEditDate="2012-04-04T05:19:43.583" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T05:19:43.583" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8739" CreationDate="2012-04-03T01:20:59.543" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is some weak evidence that knowing that a placebo can work even if the patient knows it is a placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kaptchuk TJ, Friedlander E, Kelley JM, Sanchez MN, Kokkotou E, et al. (2010) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.pone.0015591&quot;&gt;Placebos without Deception: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Irritable Bowel Syndrome.&lt;/a&gt; PLoS ONE 5(12): e15591. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0015591&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study compared patients who received no treatment (the control) with patients who received sugar pulls and were told they were sugar pills, but that they might experience placebo effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two-group, randomized, controlled three week trial (August 2009-April 2010) conducted at a single academic center, involving 80 primarily female (70%) patients, mean age 47±18 with IBS diagnosed by Rome III criteria and with a score ≥150 on the IBS Symptom Severity Scale (IBS-SSS). Patients were randomized to either open-label placebo pills presented as “placebo pills made of an inert substance, like sugar pills, that have been shown in clinical studies to produce significant improvement in IBS symptoms through mind-body self-healing processes” or no-treatment controls with the same quality of interaction with providers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Placebos administered without deception may be an effective treatment for IBS. Further research is warranted in IBS, and perhaps other conditions, to elucidate whether physicians can benefit patients using placebos consistent with informed consent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These were only mild effects and, by the authors own admission, this was only a &quot;proof-of-principle&quot; study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was some criticism about the strength of the result - Ed Yong summarised some in Discover Magazine's &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/12/22/evidence-that-placebos-could-work-even-if-you-tell-people-they%E2%80%99re-taking-placebos/&quot;&gt;Not Exactly Rocket Science blog&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, it wasn't clear to what level (a) whether patient's misunderstandings of the contents of the pills affected expectations, and (b) whether patients' expectations affected the result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This second omission makes this a less than ideal answer to the OP's question. Yong reports that a follow-up publication was expected to answer this, but I have been unable to find one. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://tedkaptchuk.com/bibliography&quot;&gt;Did I miss it?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Gorski of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/placebo-effects-without-deception-well-not-exactly/&quot;&gt;Science-Based Medicine blog&lt;/a&gt; was also critical - mainly about the hype surrounding this result, but also suggesting that the patients still had an expectation of some success. Again, this undermines this as an answer to the OP's question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While we are piling on weak evidence, there was an older study &lt;strong&gt;with no control group&lt;/strong&gt; that showed &lt;strong&gt;with no control group&lt;/strong&gt; that neurotics &lt;strong&gt;with no control group&lt;/strong&gt; openly given placebos &lt;strong&gt;with no control group&lt;/strong&gt; improved, &lt;strong&gt;with no control group&lt;/strong&gt;. It was described by Dr Ben Goldacre in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badscience.net/2008/03/all-bow-before-the-might-of-the-placebo-effect-it-is-the-coolest-strangest-thing-in-medicine/&quot;&gt;Bad Science column&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt; I present no strong evidence that skeptics can or can't benefit from a known placebo, but there have been some interesting exploratory studies that suggest that, &lt;em&gt;just perhaps&lt;/em&gt;, they can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T01:20:59.543" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5283" CreationDate="2012-04-03T03:35:15.723" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;McDonald's state they they apply sugar to their fries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This bit below is from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://mcdonalds.com.au/about-us/qna#Q16&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;McDonald's Australia website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: Do you add sugar to the fries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: We know that you want beautiful, golden brown French fries.  Potatoes already naturally contain sugars that, when cooked, can rise to the surface in places and result in unevenly coloured French fries that look light in some areas and dark or burned in others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All French fries – either those you’d buy in the supermarket or at a restaurant – are sprayed or washed in a solution containing a small amount of sugar which ensures they have an even exterior colour once they’re cooked.  It’s not done for flavouring and it doesn’t mean you’re eating additional sugar.  In fact, total sugar represents approximately .007% per pound of potato, so it’s an extremely small part of the finished product.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They don't say which sugar they use. One might expect that it is glucose (dextrose) but there are a lot of things that qualify as &amp;quot;sugar&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6641" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T05:59:22.363" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8750" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-03T07:14:02.923" Score="11" ViewCount="3077" Body="&lt;p&gt;I originally found this claim in a Facebook post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now, these temples are located strategically at a place where the&#xA;  positive energy is abundantly available from the magnetic and electric&#xA;  wave distributions of north/south pole thrust. The main idol is placed&#xA;  in the core center of the temple, known as “&lt;em&gt;Garbhagriha&lt;/em&gt;” or&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Moolasthanam&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Google search gave me many sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://bachodi.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/why-visit-temples-scientific-reason/&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; with the same text (and many other similar claims about 'positive' energy in these temples) and have no citations whatsoever. Do these claims have any scientific backing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4196" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-03T07:52:02.330" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T18:43:27.003" Title="Are Indian temples placed on sites where &quot;positive energy is abundantly available&quot;?" Tags="|physics|alternative-medicine|india|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8752" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8754" CreationDate="2012-04-03T08:37:35.427" Score="38" ViewCount="13315" Body="&lt;p&gt;On July 17, 1944 at the Port Chicago naval base, near the San Francisco Bay area, an explosion of epic proportions occurred on a dock handling munitions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ugRsQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Damage at Port Chicago, courtesy of Wikipedia&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=__5PAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=HVUDAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=6527,3780225&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Evening Independent, Jul 18, 1944, via Google News&lt;/a&gt; makes mention of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;~350 dead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;almost every house in Port Chicago wrecked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;two ships destroyed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;felt for 50 miles to San Jose; broken windows 20-30 miles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;300 lb chunk of steel blown one miles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;recorded on seismograph&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia cites additional details, treating this tragedy as a conventional blast caused by recklessness in loading munitions. The nuclear theory is mentioned but not advocated. see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Chicago_disaster&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia Port Chicago Disaster&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At 10:18 p.m., witnesses reported hearing a noise described as &quot;a&#xA;  metallic sound and rending timbers, such as made by a falling&#xA;  boom.&quot;[26] Immediately afterward, an explosion occurred on the pier&#xA;  and a fire started. Five to seven seconds later,[16][30][31] a more&#xA;  powerful explosion took place as the majority of the ordnance within&#xA;  and near the SS E. A. Bryan detonated in a huge fireball some 3 mi&#xA;  (4.8 km) in diameter.[31] Chunks of glowing hot metal and burning&#xA;  ordnance were flung over 12,000 ft (3,700 m) into the air.[16] The E.&#xA;  A. Bryan was completely destroyed and the Quinault was blown out of&#xA;  the water, torn into sections and thrown in several directions; the&#xA;  stern landed upside down in the water 500 ft (150 m) away. The Coast&#xA;  Guard fire boat CG-60014-F was thrown 600 ft (180 m) upriver, where it&#xA;  sank. The pier—along with its boxcars, locomotive, rails, cargo and&#xA;  men—was blasted into pieces. Nearby boxcars—waiting within their&#xA;  revetments to be unloaded at midnight—were bent inward and crumpled by&#xA;  the force of the shock. The port's barracks and other buildings and&#xA;  much of the surrounding town were severely damaged. Shattering glass&#xA;  and a rain of jagged metal and undetonated munitions caused many&#xA;  additional injuries among both military and civilian populations,&#xA;  although no one outside the immediate pier area was killed.[32] Nearly&#xA;  $9.9 million worth of damage ($131 million in current value) was&#xA;  caused to U.S. Government property.[33] Seismographs at the University&#xA;  of California, Berkeley sensed the two shock waves traveling through&#xA;  the ground, determining the second, larger event to be equivalent to&#xA;  an earthquake measuring 3.4 on the Richter scale.[34]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An online article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lhdigest.com/Digest/StoryPage.cfm?StoryKey=1964&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lighthouse Digest on The Great Port Chicago Disaster and Mutiny&lt;/a&gt; mentions a large wave created by the blast:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tidal Wave At The Lighthouse&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the Roe Island Lighthouse, keeper Erven Scott, his wife, Bernice,&#xA;  and the assistant keeper were just finishing a late cup of coffee. The&#xA;  explosion shook the house violently and broke all the windows. Mrs.&#xA;  Scott grabbed the two children and sent her husband upstairs for the&#xA;  baby. As he ran up the stairs, Scott saw a plume of smoke and flame&#xA;  rising above Port Chicago and a 20-30 foot high wave rolling toward&#xA;  the lighthouse from the direction of the explosion. He dashed back&#xA;  downstairs with the baby. By the time the tidal wave reached Roe&#xA;  Island, it had expended most of its energy. Still, it hit with such&#xA;  force to push the lighthouse about 40 feet up on the beach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.petervogel.us/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peter Vogel's website&lt;/a&gt; and book is devoted to a nuclear theory of the explosion. As a book is involved there are numerous claims and it is difficult to list all of the key claims in the question... But the following excerpt, purportedly suggesting a cover-up, appears on the page for Chapter 2 of his book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of even more significance, Paul made an unauthorized copy of the document &quot;History of 10,000 ton gadget&quot; [referring to the atomic bomb]&#xA;  and removed that copy from Los Alamos in his&#xA;  shirt pocket.... ... the bottom line said the ball of fire of the&#xA;  10,000 ton gadget would mushroom out at 18,000 feet in typical Port&#xA;  Chicago fashion. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dmc.members.sonic.net/sentinel/usa5.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Mushroom Cloud What really happened at Port Chicago in 1944, a nuclear explosion?&lt;/a&gt; by Harvey Martin, tries to argue that the flash and cloud observed at Port Chicago bear considerable similarity to the description of the mushroom clouds from atomic bomb detonations over Japan.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The story seems too incredible to believe - that the U.S. would test a&#xA;  weapon on itself. In order to ascertain the truth of this matter, one&#xA;  must study old reports. In the beginning of this series, the simplest&#xA;  reports to study are the uncensored news reports of local newspapers,&#xA;  such as the St. Helena Star and the Napa Journal - The Napa Journal&#xA;  was bought out in the 1950's and became the Napa Register. These eye&#xA;  witness reports were made in the pre-atomic age, when no one knew&#xA;  about atomic weapons - what they were, how they worked, what&#xA;  devastation they created, what they looked like, or for that matter,&#xA;  that they even existed. It was one of the most closely guarded top&#xA;  secrets of World War Two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;One of the few to see the flash from here was Tom Street, who&#xA;  happened to be standing in the patio if his Spring Mountain home when&#xA;  the blast came,&quot; reported the July 21, 1944 edition of the St. Helena&#xA;  Star. &quot;First there was a sudden mushroom of white light, followed an&#xA;  instant later by another, then a few moments later the intense roar&#xA;  and the concussion of the blast. At the rate of about a mile for every&#xA;  5 seconds, it required a little over 4 minutes for the blast to reach&#xA;  St. Helena.&quot; In another account in the same newspaper, it states. &quot;The&#xA;  force of the explosion was felt at the Mt. St. Helena observation&#xA;  tower, but apparently the range of the mountains at the end of the&#xA;  valley stopped the concussion, for Lake County residents didn't feel&#xA;  it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The hills of the Napa Valley were momentarily illuminated by&#xA;  sunlight.&quot; reported the Napa Journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also mentions the famous &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/truman-ein39/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Einstein letter to President Roosevelt&lt;/a&gt; describing detonating an atomic bomb in a port:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More than two years before the United States entered World War II,&#xA;  Albert Einstein sent a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt,&#xA;  informing him that a nuclear bomb was possible. That letter was&#xA;  written on August 2, 1939. &quot;A single bomb of this type, carried by&#xA;  boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port&#xA;  together with some of the surrounding territory,&quot; Einstein wrote.&#xA;  &quot;However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for&#xA;  transportation by air.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if the blast were nuclear, one might reasonably wonder: Where was the fallout? Where were the radiation casualties? This appears to be a weak point of these claims. The Martin article claims that Contra Costa county, where the blast occurred, has &quot;one of the highest rates of cancer in the United States&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hobbyist and self-proclaimed skeptic went looking for residual radiation, and found a little, in 2004-2005. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ian.kluft.com/pc44/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Background Radiation Measurements near Port Chicago&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were the detonation of 4100 metric tons of explosives, possibly with 800,000 liters+ of fuel oil sufficient to cause the explosion described, or should the nuclear option be given serious consideration? If nuclear, this raises other questions such as &quot;accidental event&quot; or &quot;intentional test&quot; -- but the only claim being questioned here is whether the blast was nuclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2012-04-03T09:33:07.150" LastActivityDate="2016-10-11T14:41:12.870" Title="Did a nuclear blast devastate Port Chicago on July 17, 1944?" Tags="|history|physics|nuclear-weapons|world-war-ii|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8752" CreationDate="2012-04-03T13:44:45.870" Score="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;The primary issue with the Port Chicago incident being due to a nuclear device is that it would require us completely rewrite the currently known history of the Manhattan Project &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/362098/Manhattan-Project&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;1 to include &quot;The Gadget&quot; not being the first nuclear device and that if one was created for Port Chicago that it predated The Gadget by almost a full year as the Trinity Test was on July 16, 1945 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_test&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt;. Given the degree of time and effort invested into the Manhattan Project I would be hard pressed to believe that a second, smaller project was running in parallel to it so if anything was going on, it would have been under the oversight of the Manhattan project. That said though, work was being conducted on a plutonium gun-type nuclear device known as Thin Man and work was abandoned on July 17, 1944 after determining that &quot;the background fission rate of the plutonium was so high that it would be highly likely the plutonium would predetonate and blow itself apart in the initial forming of a critical mass&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_Man_%28nuclear_bomb%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[4]&lt;/a&gt; 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the explosion itself, one of the biggest strikes against a nuclear explosion is that the lack of fallout which is a major concern when it comes to surface burst explosions &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/effects.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[5]&lt;/a&gt;. Given the nature of Port Chicago we can speculate that a surface burst explosion would have been the most likely to occur which would have lead to a significant amount of fallout being generated. Had nuclear material of some sort been involved then we can speculate that someone would have arrived to do extensive testing of the area around Port Chicago, for which no evidence appears to exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fXwaD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Photograph of the Port Chicago disaster, view of the pier&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next strike against things is there don't appear to be any thermal effects &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/thermal.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[6]&lt;/a&gt; visible in the photographs provided in the Wikipedia article and one of the pier itself (above) looks more like the aftermath of a conventional explosion that personally calls to mind photographs I've of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Halifax Explosion&lt;/a&gt;, such as the one below. You will not that in the picture of the Port Chicago pier you can still discern where the pier was and there is a considerable amount of rubble around the site, this is not what one would expect given that the equivalent ground zero at Hiroshima was effective laid bare following the detonation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/08/hiroshima_64_years_ago.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[7]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ly4il.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Postcard: View Of Halifax Explosion Titled: &amp;quot;Roome St. School/Disaster Halifax, N.S.&amp;quot; &quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, based apparent lack of fallout and thermal effects visible in photographs following the incident, we can conclude that a nuclear explosion was not the cause of the incident. Additionally, based upon the currently accepted historical record and the declassified documents currently available, is is quite likely that a nuclear device was not involved with the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes: &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;1. Yes, a number of these sources are Wikipedia; however, it is convenient for timelines and the history of the Manhattan project is considered to be well established.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;2. From a conspiracy theory standpoint, this is a very interesting coincidence and thinking creatively for a moment, an accidental predetonation while a device was in route to test site that was covered up for the war effort is not outside the realm of possibility. The strike against it is that it likely would have been declassified in the intervening years given that the majority of the non-restricted documents from the Manhattan project have been declassified &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.osti.gov/opennet/forms.jsp?formurl=document/rdd-1/drwcrta.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[8]&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Photo Credits: &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;1. Port Chicago Pier: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Portchicago2.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Portchicago2.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;2. Halifax Disaster: &lt;a href=&quot;http://museum.gov.ns.ca/imagesns/html/20099.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://museum.gov.ns.ca/imagesns/html/20099.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T13:44:45.870" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8750" CreationDate="2012-04-03T14:07:06.280" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;With regards to the first part of your question, yes, there is a strategy for the selection of the sites for Hindu Temples that involves &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vastu_shastra&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;vastu shatra&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sanskrit.org/www/Hindu%20Primer/hinduarchitecture.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;more information&lt;/a&gt;) which describes the theoretical flow of energy on the basis of vaastu purusha. Sites for temples themselves are selected on the the local geography and specifically &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mahavidya.ca/hindu-art-and-architecture/the-hindu-temple/hindu-temple-site-preparations/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;near water, in forests and gardens, on mountaintops and in valleys, and especially in caves&lt;/a&gt;&quot; which are believed to be places where the gods play and are happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the second part of the question, I couldn't find anything in peer reviewed journals as to the validity of the claims that there is any &quot;energy&quot; actually being manipulated. Doing a journal search I was able to find results on vastu shatra from the stand point of architecture, anthropological studies, or religion. There is a chance that there might be some research that has been published in a foreign language journal, but most likely the primary sources of discussion of the energies involved are going to be religious or spiritual texts or discussions about Hindu architecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing to note on my read is that this appears to be fairly new from the Western society standpoint at large when compared other systems such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_Shui&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;feng shui&lt;/a&gt; so there is a chance that there hasn't been enough interest in it to do a proper analysis as well in the same way that you can find research into the feng shui.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T18:43:27.003" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T18:43:27.003" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6723" CreationDate="2012-04-03T14:18:48.463" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answer: It's rarely as simple as that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You suggest picking a couple of diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, we have already seen that the story for &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/195/is-there-an-autism-epidemic&quot;&gt;Autism&lt;/a&gt; is far more complicated than just measuring diagnoses per 1000 people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I figured &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epilepsy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;epilepsy&lt;/a&gt; would be a good example of a mental disorder with fairly well-defined symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sander JW., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12644744&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The epidemiology of epilepsy revisited.&lt;/a&gt;, Curr Opin Neurol. 2003 Apr;16(2):165-70.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, Professor Sander explains that prevalence depends on whether you are in developed or resource-poor countries. So, there's the first confounding factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, there are other geographical factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is geographic variation in the incidence of epileptic syndromes likely to be associated with genetic and environmental factors, although as yet causality has not been fully established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that (combined with immigration) is going to make the figures difficult to understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, he explains that the &lt;em&gt;age groups&lt;/em&gt; of the incidences have changed (&quot;a decrease in younger age groups and an increase in persons above 60 years&quot;) over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is this just because the population is getting older so the numbers of diagnoses in that age has increased? A poll of people from the street might give a totally misleading result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion: There are many different factors that make the underlying question much more complicated than it sounds. Simply asking &quot;Has the number of diagnoses gone up?&quot; doesn't answer anything unless you control for many, many confounding variables like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Population's age&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Population's immigration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Population's wealth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diagnostic techniques (which you did try to control for in the question)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stigma/support attached to diagnosis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-04-03T14:18:48.463" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8757" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14035" CreationDate="2012-04-03T15:53:04.727" Score="8" ViewCount="11125" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Japan it is sometimes said a remedy for the common cold is to wear a warm green onion (Allii Fistulosi) around the neck. This practice is not as popular as before, but still many other articles about the topic can be found on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/STjHRs.png&quot; alt=&quot;風邪　長ネギ　首&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any study showing this is an effective cure?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theory is for instance reported in a guide by mainstream media company &lt;a href=&quot;https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/OKWave&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OKwave&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://okguide.okwave.jp/guides/29495&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://okguide.okwave.jp/guides/29495&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;「ねぎを首に巻くと風邪が治る」は本当だった！&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ネギには硫化アリルという成分が含まれており、抗菌・殺菌作用があるんだそうです。&#xA;  首に巻くと、硫化アリルが口や鼻から吸収されて、鼻やのどを殺菌してくれるのだそうです。 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Green onion cures common cold&quot;: The old saying is actually true!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  It is said that in green onion there is an allyl sulphuration component, which has an antibacterial/antimicrobial and bactericidal/germicidal action, and by wrapping it around the neck, the allyl sulphuration is absorbed via the mouth and nose, which sterilizes the nose and throat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another article focuses on simply alleviating the symptoms of common cold: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.houstonspresidentialsummit.com/cold/minkan01.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.houstonspresidentialsummit.com/cold/minkan01.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ネギを首に巻くということから、喉に直接何らかの物質が入り込んで効果を発揮すると思いがちだが、実際には喉に巻き付けたネギから匂い成分が効率的に吸引できる場所というわけです。ネギの匂い成分には、消炎や殺菌効果と、神経を落ち着かせて睡眠へ誘導するする働きがあります。&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most people think that wrapping a green onion around the neck means that substance gets into the threat by contact, but in fact the most efficient way the substance enters the body is by gas from the wrapped green onion. The scent of the green onion has components that act as anti-inflammatory and sterilizer, &#xA;  allowing nerves to relax allowing better sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2047" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-04-16T01:54:32.117" LastActivityDate="2016-04-16T01:54:32.117" Title="Does warm green onion cure the common cold?" Tags="|japan|common-cold|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8759" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-03T19:40:48.663" Score="4" ViewCount="866" Body="&lt;p&gt;My grandfather considers himself a skeptic. His wife (my grandmother) recently passed away, and ever since, he swears that he can hear distant ethereal music late at night, every night, and only in the upper story of his household.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people have claimed to experience similar phenomena. Although not identical, here are some other instances of similar occurences. I've seen this dubbed &quot;clairaudience&quot; numerous times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://carlzimmer.com/articles/2004.php?subaction=showfull&amp;amp;id=1177189852&amp;amp;archive=&amp;amp;start_from=&amp;amp;ucat=7&amp;amp;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Link 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiritual-experiences.com/real-spiritual-story.php?story=559&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Link 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://alicelandry.suite101.com/signs-from-the-angels-a99868&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Link 3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are some psychological or neurological explanations for this type of experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-04-03T22:22:54.523" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T17:45:03.967" Title="Explanation for regularly hearing music of no apparent source?" Tags="|psychology|biology|music|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8760" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-03T19:55:01.863" Score="19" ViewCount="3717" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been suggested (particularly in the 1980s) that individuals that listen to heavy metal are more likely to be commit a crime, as shown &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2008-05-09/entertainment/metal.violence_1_heavy-metal-metal-musicians-marilyn-manson?_s=PM%3aSHOWBIZ&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://content.usatoday.com/communities/popcandy/post/2011/09/metal-monday-when-heavy-metal-becomes-linked-with-crime/1#.T3ynFWE2-uI&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Have any studies statistically shown so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-04-27T19:41:24.600" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T17:31:44.150" Title="Are heavy metal music listeners more likely to commit crimes?" Tags="|music|behavior|criminology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8761" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="39020" CreationDate="2012-04-04T00:12:14.637" Score="12" ViewCount="3444" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/10/23/cancer.scorpion.venom/&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; just recently, in which it states that no data had been collected about the effectiveness of blue scorpion venom as a treatment for cancer. However, this article was written in 2003. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has any definitive research been performed recently?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-07T13:43:00.707" LastActivityDate="2018-03-05T14:36:07.033" Title="Is &quot;blue scorpion venom&quot; a legitimate treatment for cancer?" Tags="|cancer|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8767" CreationDate="2012-04-04T02:22:20.043" Score="12" ViewCount="13147" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently stumbled on a blog post detailing the successful prediction of the gender of the author's child using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://followinginmyshoes.com/life-as-i-know-it/mommyhood/pregnancy/determining-gender-with-the-red-cabbage-test/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Red Cabbage Test&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AGDzx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the imperfect analysis of the results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LnXex.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prediction was correct:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;10/09/11 UPDATE&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well … it’s October and I have a seven week old ….&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a baby ….&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BOY!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This test was the ONLY gender prediction test that ended up correct!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Woo hoo for cabbage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_cabbage&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;red cabbage&lt;/a&gt; can be boiled down and used as a PH indicator (although this wasn't mentioned in the post). Is it possible to discover the gender of the fetus by calculating the PH of the urine of the mother? Or could red cabbage have another property that allows for the prediction of sex based on a sample of the mother's urine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it possible to determine the gender of an unborn child by following the Red Cabbage Test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="994" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T15:23:08.627" Title="Can a woman determine the gender of her unborn child using the Red Cabbage Test?" Tags="|gender|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8764" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8765" CreationDate="2012-04-04T02:49:57.390" Score="22" ViewCount="24968" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJg9EHILugM&amp;amp;t=1m35s&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;, at about 1:35, a claim is made that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_conduction&quot;&gt;bone conduction&lt;/a&gt; headphones are safer with regards to hearing loss, because the sound doesn't &quot;affect the eardrum&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true? I thought hearing loss is caused by damage to the hair cells in the inner ear, which I'd think can still be provoked by bone hearing headphones if they are turned up very loud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3675" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T13:05:36.270" LastActivityDate="2022-08-30T07:11:10.843" Title="Are bone conduction headphones safer with regards to hearing loss?" Tags="|physiology|consumer-products|safety|ear|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8764" CreationDate="2012-04-04T05:20:35.717" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote about this exact thing in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://davidkessner.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/aftershokz-bone-conduction-headphone-review/&quot;&gt;review of the AfterShokz headphones on my blog&lt;/a&gt;.  But here's the general idea...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wording of the AfterShokz marketing material is very clever (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aftershokz.com/Bone-Conduction-Headphones-AfterShokz-s/1477.htm&quot;&gt;from this page&lt;/a&gt;).  They say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientific studies have found that extended use of regular headphones&#xA;  and earbuds promote hearing loss and damage to the eardrum. Since&#xA;  AfterShokz headphones do not use the eardrums to transmit sound, they&#xA;  provide consumers with a quality stereophonic listening experience&#xA;  while reducing the risk of eardrum damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So their wording claims that earbuds promote hearing loss &lt;em&gt;AND&lt;/em&gt; damage to the eardrum.  The second thing they say is that AfterShokz reduces the risk of eardrum damage.  Nowhere do they claim that it reduces the risk of hearing damage!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/pages/noise.aspx&quot;&gt;This web page&lt;/a&gt; by the National Institues of Health, has this to say about noise-induced hearing loss:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, when we are exposed to harmful noise—sounds that are too loud&#xA;  or loud sounds that last a long time—sensitive structures in our inner&#xA;  ear can be damaged, causing noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). These&#xA;  sensitive structures, called hair cells, are small sensory cells that&#xA;  convert sound energy into electrical signals that travel to the brain.&#xA;  Once damaged, our hair cells cannot grow back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exposure to harmful sounds causes damage to the hair cells as well as&#xA;  the auditory, or hearing, nerve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowhere on that page does it say anything about eardrums or any connection between eardrum damage and hearing loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusions that I take from this are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I &lt;em&gt;ASSUME&lt;/em&gt; that damage to the eardrum is mostly from the &quot;stick it in your ear canal&quot; type of earbuds.  From physical contact and not from high volume levels from the earbuds.  I have absolutely nothing backing this up, except that it fits the rest of what I'm saying.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;IF&lt;/em&gt; #1 is correct then the AfterShokz marketing material is 100% correct (but misleading).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The NIH says that hearing loss is caused from nerve damage or damage to the hair cells in your ear.  Since both of these are still used by the AfterShokz headphones (otherwise you wouldn't hear anything), it is unlikely that these headphones will prevent hearing loss due to high volume levels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Turning down the volume is still the best way to prevent hearing loss.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3938" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T05:20:35.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8766" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-04T07:06:56.320" Score="41" ViewCount="150550" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a move often &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWAWQYID8Jo#t=13s&quot;&gt;seen in action movies&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NeckSnap&quot;&gt;very&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moviedeaths.com/categories/broken_neck/&quot;&gt;often!&lt;/a&gt;), someone takes the head of another person with both hands, usually from behind, and twists it only once or twice in order to break their neck. A sound of breaking bone is normally played.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also claimed to be real by some martial arts teachers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm going to break the neck so once again this is only in a life or death situation and it's very serious; don't play around with this. [...] It's kind of a swift motion; I let go, release the jaw and push and pull back. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/video_4949014_womens-self-defense-neck-break.html&quot;&gt;Martial arts lesson transcript&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical that this is possible, at least as easy as depicted. The neck bones and muscles should provide quite some resistance. The movie depictions may be largely exaggerated and I think that practically none of the martial arts teachers have had the chance to test if it really works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1072" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T07:59:22.047" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T07:59:22.047" Title="Can you break a person's neck with a manual head twist?" Tags="|physiology|martial-arts|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8763" CreationDate="2012-04-04T10:25:34.727" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, the Red Cabbage test is very unlikely to be a reliable way of determining the sex of a fetus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I was unable to find any reliable, scientific test of the &quot;Red cabbage&quot; method there has been informal study of a related test, the Drano Test. The Drano Test would likely rely on the same method of operation (Colour of mum's urine affecting the colour of another liquid in such a way as to expose the sex of the fetus).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This letter was written to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/248/7/831.5.extract?sid=f842eef8-207c-4d2c-b656-f4a50d0f925f&quot;&gt;Journal of the American Medical Association&lt;/a&gt; in 1982.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To the Editor&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  During the past several years, we have been asked&#xA;  frequently to do the &quot;Drano test&quot; to determine the sex of an unborn&#xA;  baby. It has been published in the lay press that this is a reliable&#xA;  means of sex determination. A Medline search failed to reveal anything&#xA;  in the medical literature concerning the Drano test. As a result, we&#xA;  performed the test in 100 consecutive pregnant women, checking monthly&#xA;  during the last trimester. The test was done by adding a small amount&#xA;  of crystal Drano to approximately 2 mL of urine, agitating, and&#xA;  interpreting results in one minute's time. Reportedly, the color green&#xA;  indicates a male baby, and yellow to amber indicates a female. Of the&#xA;  100 patients, 21 failed to have the same color change consistently. Of&#xA;  the babies born to these 21, eleven were girls and ten were boys. Of&#xA;  the remaining 79, we were right in sex determination of 37; of these,&#xA;  there were 20 girls and 17 boys. We were wrong in 42 predictions; of&#xA;  these, there were 22 girls and 20 boys. From this brief study, it&#xA;  would appear that the Drano test for antenatal sex determination is&#xA;  roughly equivalent to flipping a coin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Robert M. Fowler, MD&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  University of Wyoming&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Casper&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have attributed the changing colour of the Red Cabbage solution to different pH levels of the Urine, which may or may not be true. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003583.htm&quot;&gt;This medical article on Urine pH&lt;/a&gt; attributes high Urine pH to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gastric suction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kidney failure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kidney tubular acidosis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Urinary tract infection&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vomiting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And low Urine pH to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diabetic ketoacidosis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diarrhea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Starvation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of which sound like symptoms of pregnancy, boy or girl!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=52367&quot;&gt;this article on Medicine.Net&lt;/a&gt; there exists a few ways to predict the sex of a fetus, with varying levels of reliability as well as possible side effects (eg, miscarriage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrasound&quot;&gt;Ultrasound&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amniocentesis&quot;&gt;Amniocentesis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorionic_villus_sampling&quot;&gt;chorionic villus sampling&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dna_testing&quot;&gt;DNA Testing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2012-04-04T13:13:08.220" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T13:13:08.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8768" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-04T13:14:34.677" Score="8" ViewCount="419" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://gist.github.com/2300860&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;viral message about margarine&lt;/a&gt; (seen in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6275/is-margarine-one-molecule-away-from-plastic&quot;&gt;Is margarine &amp;quot;one molecule away from plastic&amp;quot;?&lt;/a&gt; ) claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Margarine] decreases immune response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;truthorfiction.com (no link - I'm not sure if the site is safe for Windows OSes) gives more detail and says that it is true&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;14&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Margarine decreases immune response-Truth! We found several references to this including an article by nutritionist Dr. Mary Enig&#xA;  that said that consuming trans fatty acids &quot;Affects immune response by&#xA;  lowering effeciency of B cell response and increasing proliferation of&#xA;  T cells.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia describes &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_G._Enig&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mary Enig&lt;/a&gt; as a nutritionist and that &quot;She has promoted skepticism towards the widely held view in the medical community that high saturated fat diets lead to heart disease&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard from Ben Goldacre's book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Science_%28book%29#Chapter_6:_The_Nonsense_du_Jour&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bad Science&lt;/a&gt; that many nutrionists promote pseudoscientific theories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the claim in the viral email is a bit terse, I'll ask about the claim in the truthorfiction.com page: does eating trans fatty acids affect the immune response of humans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T11:33:49.183" Title="Does eating trans fatty acids affect immune response?" Tags="|nutrition|immune-system|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8743" CreationDate="2012-04-04T13:19:56.417" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The internet is full of reports on the phenomena, as well as many images. A simple Google image search for &quot;live fish keychain&quot; or &quot;live turtle keychain&quot; will give you many different images of such keychains.&#xA;As well I've found those two Youtube movies showing the animals (not a slide of pictures):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K332w_YyZ0&quot;&gt;A live goldfish&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0LP1fht8Rs&quot;&gt;A small turtle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hoax-slayer.com/live-turtle-keyrings.shtml&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; that you yourself pointed to in hoax-slayer which quotes many sources. &#xA;It shows that those things are real and exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is not sure is how long can they live in those bags, and how prolific is the phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T13:19:56.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8771" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8828" CreationDate="2012-04-04T14:46:01.940" Score="21" ViewCount="5837" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this image doing the rounds on Facebook, etc:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/c2HV3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm dubious out these figures. Is this an over-simplification? &#xA;Can you use those figures in the same calculation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5005" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-04-06T19:48:17.913" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T15:29:35.720" Title="&quot;The [US] budget explained in simple English&quot;" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8771" CreationDate="2012-04-04T15:42:54.350" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The numbers aren't quite the same for the year I could find data, but the overall story is correct. According to &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gao.gov/financial/fy2010/10stmt.pdf&quot;&gt;the GAO's Financial Statements of the United States Government for the Years Ended September 30, 2010, and 2009&lt;/a&gt;, the figures would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Income:              2.2T&#xA;Net Cost:            4.3T&#xA;Net Operating Cost: (2.1T)&#xA;Net Position:      (13.5T)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it an oversimplification to compare the Federal budget to a family budget? Definitely. Federal obligations are much more complicated than that of a family, Federal borrowing costs much less than credit cards, Federal income growth (and volatility) is very different than typical wages, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T15:42:54.350" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8766" CreationDate="2012-04-04T16:22:44.050" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, with regards to actually breaking the neck itself, it depends on exactly what type of fracture is involved, but cadaver studies have shown a range of 840 to 1500 N to cause the C2 vertebrae to be fractured &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0021929001000719&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;. A C2 fracture is highly correlated with high mortality but said injury is also most commonly associated with motor vehicle accidents &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1267150-overview&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt; which gives you an idea as to the force involved with the injury. Given that amateur boxers have been shown to generate up to 8000 N of force with a hook punch &lt;a href=&quot;http://w4.ub.uni-konstanz.de/cpa/article/view/4491/4179&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt; it is within the realm of possibility to fracture the vertebrae under the right conditions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So breaking the vertebra is possible; however, the issue the video and those like it is that you need to apply the pressure the right way and the neck itself is built with a fair degree of flexibility &lt;a href=&quot;http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/50376/1/1100040212_ftp.pdf&quot;&gt;[4]&lt;/a&gt; so it's not just a matter of twisting the neck a given way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This takes us to the next point, as some blogs have &lt;a href=&quot;http://martial.jessecrouch.com/2009/08/how-to-neck-break-crappy-technique-of.html&quot;&gt;already pointed out&lt;/a&gt;, the technique she is describing in and of itself doesn't seem like a viable technique. Neck cranks or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_lock&quot;&gt;spinal locks&lt;/a&gt; are taught; however, you will note that they tend to require that additional leverage be applied to the body and have been known to injure the person they are applied to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-04-05T07:37:41.960" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T07:37:41.960" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8771" CreationDate="2012-04-04T16:35:45.000" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that another reason this is a bad analogy is that, &quot;America owes foreigners about $4.5 trillion in debt. But America owes America $9.8 trillion.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/21/who-owns-america-hint-its-not-china/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/21/who-owns-america-hint-its-not-china/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The breakdown:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hong Kong: $121.9 billion (0.9 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Caribbean banking centers: $148.3 (1 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taiwan: $153.4 billion (1.1 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brazil: $211.4 billion (1.5 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oil exporting countries: $229.8 billion (1.6 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mutual funds: $300.5 billion (2 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Commercial banks: $301.8 billion (2.1 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;State, local and federal retirement funds: $320.9 billion (2.2&#xA;  percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Money market mutual funds: $337.7 billion (2.4 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;United Kingdom: $346.5 billion (2.4 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Private pension funds: $504.7 billion (3.5 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;State and local governments: $506.1 billion (3.5 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Japan: $912.4 billion (6.4 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;U.S. households: $959.4 billion (6.6 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;China: $1.16 trillion (8 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The U.S. Treasury: $1.63 trillion (11.3 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Social Security trust fund: $2.67 trillion (19 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5005" LastEditorUserId="5005" LastEditDate="2012-04-04T16:43:13.417" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T16:43:13.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8118" CreationDate="2012-04-04T18:21:40.517" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1438463904700048&quot;&gt;Diez, et al&lt;/a&gt;(2000): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Correlations between VOC exposures and infections were calculated by&#xA;  multiple logistic regression. Selected VOC show a direct association&#xA;  to actually painted dwellings (OR 2.4; 95% Cl 1.1-5.3). An increase of&#xA;  risk of pulmonary infections was observed in infants aged 6 weeks if&#xA;  restoration (painting OR 5.6; 95% Cl 1.3-24.0) or flooring connected&#xA;  with painting had occurred during the pregnancy period. Higher&#xA;  concentration of styrene (&gt;2.0 µg/m3, indicator for flooring) elevated&#xA;  the risk of pulmonary infections in six-week-old infants (OR 2.1; 95%&#xA;  Cl 1.1-4.2). Environmental benzene &gt;5.6µg/m3 increased the risk of&#xA;  airway infections in six-week-old babies (OR 2.4; 95% Cl 1.28-4.48).&#xA;  Smoking in the dwelling (OR 2.0; 95% Cl 1.1-3.5) as well as&#xA;  restoration (OR 1.9; 95% Cl 1.1-3.5) are also risk factors of the&#xA;  development of wheezing in the one-year-old child&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paints which have dried will still emit VOC's continuously, as do carpets, wallpaper glues, and treated flooring (and subflooring). If the objects are exposed to sunlight, they will emit higher levels of chemicals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For further reading you could look up specific emission rates for the desired object)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The biggest way to combat poor indoor air is to ventilate.  You'll never be able to rid your house of VOC's, but you can lessen their impact by ensuring you refresh the air often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1063" LastActivityDate="2012-04-04T18:21:40.517" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8766" CreationDate="2012-04-05T04:11:23.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, but not as easy as in the movies. You can crack your neck doing yoga too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://updates.pain-topics.org/2012/03/report-warns-of-yoga-induced-spinal.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://updates.pain-topics.org/2012/03/report-warns-of-yoga-induced-spinal.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/how-yoga-can-wreck-your-body.html?_r=2&amp;amp;ref=magazine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/how-yoga-can-wreck-your-body.html?_r=2&amp;amp;ref=magazine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the self defense classes I took, the instructor did warn us of a maneuver that would likely break someone's neck and kill them, but it involved wrapping your arm around their neck while they were bent towards you, pulling up very tightly, and dropping to the floor - much harder and much more force than a movie. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6507" LastActivityDate="2012-04-05T04:11:23.257" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8784" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-05T15:24:45.377" Score="43" ViewCount="11977" Body="&lt;p&gt;An article in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/2445/&quot;&gt;the Atlantic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; quotes several experts who claim that the Amazon rainforest is the remnants of planted and cultivated orchards and farms, and that the land is not naturally conducive to this type of growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Planting their orchards, the first Amazonians transformed large swaths&#xA;  of the river basin into something more pleasing to human beings. In a&#xA;  widely cited article from 1989, William Balée, the Tulane&#xA;  anthropologist, cautiously estimated that about 12 percent of the&#xA;  nonflooded Amazon forest was of anthropogenic origin—directly or&#xA;  indirectly created by human beings. In some circles this is now seen&#xA;  as a conservative position. &quot;I basically think it's all&#xA;  human-created,&quot; Clement told me in Brazil. He argues that Indians&#xA;  changed the assortment and density of species throughout the region.&#xA;  So does Clark Erickson, the University of Pennsylvania archaeologist,&#xA;  who told me in Bolivia that the lowland tropical forests of South&#xA;  America are among the finest works of art on the planet. &quot;Some of my&#xA;  colleagues would say that's pretty radical,&quot; he said, smiling&#xA;  mischievously. According to Peter Stahl, an anthropologist at the&#xA;  State University of New York at Binghamton, &quot;lots&quot; of botanists&#xA;  believe that &quot;what the eco-imagery would like to picture as a&#xA;  pristine, untouched Urwelt [primeval world] in fact has been managed&#xA;  by people for millennia.&quot; The phrase &quot;built environment,&quot; Erickson&#xA;  says, &quot;applies to most, if not all, Neotropical landscapes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that supports this position?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit - This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://ethnobiology.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/JoE/9-1/Balee.pdf&quot;&gt;a link to a paper&lt;/a&gt; that may be what the Atlantic Article was referring to. (thanks Oddthinking)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-04-09T12:46:02.737" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T06:47:18.973" Title="Is the Amazon rain forest man-made?" Tags="|biology|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8790" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-05T20:37:15.093" Score="18" ViewCount="1703" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of rumors and claims being made that products manufactured by Huawei act suspiciously or in a non-standard way in order to send information &quot;back home&quot; or to facilitate unauthorized access. The more general claim is that Huawei is linked to the PRC and is a front for a spying or espionage attempt on western nations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples of such claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2010-05-07/news/27580384_1_chinese-telecom-huawei-technologies-ren-zhengfei&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huawei part of Chinese spy network, says R&amp;amp;AW&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://m.nbr.co.nz/article/huawei-nz-almost-certainly-front-chinese-intelligence-defence-analyst-rv-114974?page=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huawei NZ almost certainly a front for Chinese intelligence - defence analyst&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/07/28/what-makes-china-telecom-huawei-so-scary/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;What makes China telecom Huawei so scary?&lt;/a&gt; (A few paragraphs down)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lancope.com/blog/huawei-and-the-chinese-pla-can-we-trust-netstream-flows/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huawei and the Chinese PLA: Can We Trust NetStream Flows?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/sep/1/pentagon-fears-listening-posts-from-china/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pentagon fears listening posts from China - Tech firm tied to nation’s military&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia also has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huawei#Security_concerns&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;good summary&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally I've worked with several people who refuse to use Huawei equipment because they claim to have witnessed the devices generating suspicious traffic which could not be accounted for. I'm very skeptical that this is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently Australia &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/03/australia-blocks-chinese-owned-huawei-from-bidding-on-national-broadband-plan.ars&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;denied Huawei the chance to bid&lt;/a&gt; on developing the national broadband network. This is following in the steps of India who prevented Huawei from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-04-30/india-said-to-block-china-s-huawei-zte-from-selling-phone-network-gear.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;selling to domestic phone carriers&lt;/a&gt;. In both cases no official reason was given, but rumors of spying or espionage persist. The US Department of Defense also expressed concerns about Huawei in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/2011_CMPR_Final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2011 report to Congress&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any documented evidence of network devices manufactured by Huawei acting in a non-standard or suspicious manner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="37939" LastEditDate="2017-12-13T16:40:24.657" LastActivityDate="2017-12-15T08:57:00.803" Title="Is Huawei the front for a Chinese espionage attempt?" Tags="|politics|china|networks|espionage|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8797" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-06T17:18:03.623" Score="18" ViewCount="17217" Body="&lt;p&gt;My boss was arguing that this is true and that it's a well known fact amongst culinary professionals that you should never put hot food in the refrigerator (he used to be a baker and had restaurants and such.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick Google search seems to suggest this is a widely held belief that I've never heard of before:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.is/Rclxj&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;URL: message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=30056&quot;&gt;Snopes Thread&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I remember my grandmother would let food cool down on the counter before storing it in the refrigerator. Someone told me that you should never put hot food in the refrigerator as germs/bacteria would multiply. Is this true? Is this an urban myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081117044223AAqjRKp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yahoo Answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you put food that's still hot in the fridge, it will raise the temperature of the fridge. Unless you have a huge commercial refrigerator with a strong motor, it will take awhile for the temperature to go back down to the safe level. This means that every single thing that is is the fridge will be at risk for bacterial growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://ask.metafilter.com/31450/Is-it-ok-to-put-stillwarm-food-in-the-fridge-or-freezer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Metafilter&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My girlfriend and I constantly disagree about this. She was always told, growing up, that you have to wait until recently-cooked food has cooled to room temperature before you can put it in the fridge. If you don't, she says, bacteria will grow on it much more easily and you will get sick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this been investigated properly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-05-20T20:33:43.353" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T20:33:43.353" Title="Does putting warm food in the refrigerator make it more likely to give you food poisoning than letting it cool off first and then refrigerating it?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8771" CreationDate="2012-04-06T17:49:36.810" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The overall comparison for income, expenses, and deficit are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gao.gov/financial/fy2011/11frusg.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;correct&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;2011 Income:   $2,400 Billion&#xA;2011 Expense:  $3,700 Billion&#xA;2011 New Debt: $1,300 Billion&#xA;Total Debt:   $16,000 Billion&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To say the $16,000 billion in debt is like credit card is not an accurate comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the $16,000 billion in debt, approximately $10,200 billion is held by the public and $5,800 billion is held by other government agencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/feddebt/feddebt_ann2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;$5,800 billion&lt;/a&gt; that is held by other government agencies is debt that was purchased mainly by the social security trust fund.  For most of its existence the social security trust fund ran a surplus (that ended in March of 2011 when the first boomers started to retire.  Since then the fund has been sending out more payments then it has been taking in).  This surplus allowed the fund to pile up an excess of $2.5 trillion.  The fund was required to purchase government bonds with the excess.  This allowed the US government to spend the money in the trust fund.  This is similar to borrowing from you retirement account in order to spend the money now.  All that sits in the trust fund now is $2.5 trillion in US government bonds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument is frequently made for this type of debt: &quot;we owe it to ourselves&quot;.  This always makes me chuckle.  The US government owes the social security trust fund $2.5 trillion. I'm not the US government so don't count me in the &quot;we&quot; part of &quot;we owe it to ourselves&quot;. I'm also fairly certain I will never see a dime of social security so don't count me in the &quot;ourselves&quot; portion either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GMLZF.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remaining $10,200 billion that is held by the public is mainly short term debt.  Around &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/mspd/2010/opds112010.prn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;83%&lt;/a&gt; of the public debt is held in bonds that mature in less than 10 years.  This means the US government is more exposed to interest rate moves since it is continually rolling over short term debt and issuing new debt at the prevailing interest rates.  This makes this debt closer to a very large adjustable rate mortgage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/S7OeL.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="929" LastEditDate="2012-04-07T02:24:25.513" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T02:24:25.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8797" CreationDate="2012-04-06T22:42:26.327" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim is from a time when refrigerators weren't nearly as efficient as today. By waiting for food to cool down on the counter, it will stay much longer inside the dangerous threshold (5-60ºC, 40-140ºF). If you put it in the fridge immediately, it will cool down to &amp;lt;5º much faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It won't raise the temperature in your fridge unless it's a 50x50cm 20cm high lasagna straight from the oven - just don't put it over other food containers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety-education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/safe-food-handling/refrigeration-and-food-safety/ct_index&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This page by the USDA confirms it&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hot food can be placed directly in the refrigerator or it can be rapidly chilled in an ice or cold water bath before refrigerating&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6683" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-05-20T20:33:39.640" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T20:33:39.640" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1039" CreationDate="2012-04-07T04:47:01.250" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can find a lot of varying estimates, based on other varying estimates, and they're almost always from a source with a vested interest in skewing the statistics one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And numbers for accidents caused by windmills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my attempt at nuclear vs windmills (except I'm only mildly biased in the pro-nuclear direction and trying to be as fair as possible):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nuclear&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The vast majority of nuclear power plant deaths occurred from Chernobyl.  This has been estimated anywhere from 57 deaths to 985,000 deaths.  Obviously these numbers are both BS.  A realistic estimate appears to be &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Assessing_the_disaster.27s_effects_on_human_health&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;about 5,000&lt;/a&gt;.  (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/2024/155&quot;&gt;Have several hundreds of thousands of people died because of the Chernobyl disaster?&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, Fukushima happened, which released radiation that may result in 130-640 cancer deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From 1965-2015, nuclear power plants worldwide have generated 82,337 TWh, if you add up all the totals from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bp.com/statisticalreview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BP Statistical Review of World Energy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Together, this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=5640+people+%2F+(82337+TWh)+to+people%2FTW*hr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;0.068 deaths / TW⋅h&lt;/a&gt; = &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=5640+people+%2F+(82337+TWh)+to+people%2FTW*year&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;600 deaths / TW⋅yr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wind&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/page4.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CWIF lists 165 windfarm-related fatalities&lt;/a&gt; up to to September 2016.  Some of these are dubious (car accidents caused by distraction from shadows), but there are certainly others unreported, so we'll just use that number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's really hard to find a single statistic for the total amount of energy produced by wind.  Wind advocates always quote &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;installed capacity&lt;/a&gt;&quot; because it sounds bigger, but that's just the &lt;em&gt;maximum theoretical&lt;/em&gt; power a wind farm could produce under constant high wind.  The actual amount of energy produced in reality is less than 1/4 of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combining several incomplete sources (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.gov/opendata/embed/iframe.php?series_id=INTL.37-12-WORL-BKWH.A&amp;amp;analysis=none&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EIA&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wind-works.org/articles/DeathsDatabase.xls#Deathsbyyear&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paul Gipe&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iea.org/stats/renewdata.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=29&amp;amp;Submit=Submit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IEA&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wwindea.org/home/index.php/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;task=blogcategory&amp;amp;id=21&amp;amp;Itemid=43&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WWEA&lt;/a&gt;) that seem to match each other more or less, I get a total of 4799 TWh total from 1980 to 2015.  (&lt;a href=&quot;https://plot.ly/~endolith/59/wind-power-annual-generation-twh/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;data&lt;/a&gt;)  (Actually, the BP source says 4778 TWh total now.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VrKUR.png&quot; alt=&quot;graph of actual wind energy production&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Together, this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=165+people+%2F+(4799+TWh)+to+people%2FTW*hr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;0.034 deaths / TW⋅h&lt;/a&gt; = &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=99%20people%20/%20%282400%20TWh%29%20to%20people/TW*yr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;301 deaths / TW⋅yr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This matches &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wind-works.org/cms/index.php?id=340&amp;amp;tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=164&amp;amp;cHash=286b80c2e2af695492a9bb1d94513821&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paul Gipe's estimate of 0.032&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So based on (pretty imprecise) death estimates, nuclear still has to catch up with wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said in a comment, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Next Big Future&lt;/a&gt; source is being dishonest by extrapolating the nuclear numbers 25 years into the future and assuming no accidents during that time, which they don't do for other power sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="155" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T13:03:02.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8807" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8808" CreationDate="2012-04-07T10:53:17.627" Score="48" ViewCount="8226" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1pBLH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Titanic&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.finewebstores.com/White-Star-Line-RMS-Titanic-Vintage-Tin-Sign_p_27923.html#&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/titanic-myth-is-sunk-1093836.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Independent&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (1999):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claims that one of history's greatest ships could never sink were never made during the Titanic's short lifetime and are a classic example of myth creation&lt;/strong&gt;, according to a British academic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Richard Howells, lecturer in communications studies at Leeds University, says in a new book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://us.macmillan.com/themythofthetitanic/RichardHowells&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Myth of the Titanic&lt;/a&gt;, that it was only after the liner had gone down that she was described as being unsinkable.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;As soon as the Titanic sank, everyone decided it was the great unsinkable ship, but &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;it was never, in fact, publicised as being an unsinkable ship,&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;The belief that the Titanic's builders had promoted her as the world's first unsinkable ship has been repeatedly reinforced over the years in books and films&lt;/strong&gt; about her maiden voyage in 1912, when she sank after hitting an iceberg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;James Cameron's film Titanic has the heroine's mother looking up at the ship before she set sail and remarking: &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;So this is the ship they say is unsinkable?&lt;/em&gt; &amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, Dr Howells claims that an extensive search of the Titanic literature at the time has revealed only three instances when the word &amp;quot;unsinkable&amp;quot; was mentioned in print - and then only with the proviso &amp;quot;practically&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The population as a whole was unlikely to have thought of the Titanic as a unique, unsinkable ship before its maiden voyage,&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;My question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Was the Titanic ever advertised as being &amp;quot;Unsinkable&amp;quot;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T17:54:13.843" Title="Was the Titanic ever publicised as &quot;Unsinkable&quot;?" Tags="|history|titanic|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8807" CreationDate="2012-04-07T13:16:27.073" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RElju.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;HMS Titanic&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RMS_Titanic_3.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, multiple times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See for example the statements of Captain E. J. Smith, captain of the Olympic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the Olympic is unsinkable, and the Titanic will be the same when she is put in commission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/captain-smith-believed-titanic-be-unsinkable.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Captain Smith Believed Titanic To Be Unsinkable&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fABndm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Captain E. J. Smith&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EJ_Smith.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The above statement is only reported to be coming from him. While the page claims that the Washington Post is the official source, I can't confirm at this time)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, you may want to review the official press statements by P. A. S. Franklin, vice-president of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mercantile_Marine_Co.&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Mercantile Marine Co.&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;the day after&lt;/em&gt; the disaster, when the ship was still claimed to be &quot;unsinkable&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“While we have had no direct wireless communication from the Titanic,” said Mr Franklin, “we are satisfied that the vessel is unsinkable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archiveamericana.com/media/newspapers/the-titanic-is-unsinkable-1912&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;She cannot sink, says official of White Star Line&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is then the following image, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historyonthenet.com/Titanic/unsinkable.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reportedly from a White Star Line brochure&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZIzjy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Clip from marketing brochure on Titanic and her sister ship: “As far as it is possible to do so, these two wonderful vessels are designed to be unsinkable&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot confirm the image is original, but I have no reason to doubt it either. This is also confirmed by an article in the Denver Post of 15 April 1912:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Belfast, April 15, 1912. — A representative of Harland and Wolff, the constructors of the Titanic, interviewed today, said that if the Titanic were sinking, the collision must have been of great force.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The plating of the vessel, he said, was of the heaviest caliber and even if it were pierced, any two of her compartments could be flooded without imperilling the safety of the ship.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archiveamericana.com/media/newspapers/the-titanic-is-unsinkable-1912&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Builders of Titanic say she’d survive great blow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aOxaC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Denver Post&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://home.comcast.net/~georgebehe/titanic/page2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this nice, but old page&lt;/a&gt; which describes the available evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrary to popular opinion, there is a considerable body of evidence which proves pretty conclusively that the Titanic (as well as the Olympic) was called unsinkable not only in pre-disaster publicity brochures and newspaper articles but that there was a widespread oral tradition to that same effect -- a tradition that seems to have been promoted by top individuals at both Harland and Wolff and the White Star Line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funnily enough, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legends_and_myths_regarding_RMS_Titanic#Unsinkable&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; looks at the same evidence and finds it relevant to claim that the ship was only claimed to be &quot;virtually unsinkable&quot; until the sinking &amp;mdash; they do not provide any reason or strong reference as to why it would make a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally there is at least one book (&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Zt2QQgAACAAJ&amp;amp;dq=isbn:0333725972&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=CDiAT7iRBsHK0QXXlpXlBg&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Myth of the Titanic&lt;/em&gt;, by Richard Parton Howells, Macmillan, 1999, ISBN 0333725972, 9780333725979&lt;/a&gt;) taking the opposite stance. I cannot access it or review the quality of the evidence presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-07T13:40:36.777" LastActivityDate="2012-04-07T13:40:36.777" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8810" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-07T19:30:38.973" Score="30" ViewCount="36090" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5kHIz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Kelsey Serwa, Julia Murray&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bleacherreport.com/gallery/FIS%20Freestyle%20World%20Ski%20Championships?d=2011-02-03#page/17&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Julia Murray &amp;amp; Kelsey Serwa&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;In movies you commonly see treasure hunters, pirates, thieves, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;bite down on a gold coin to verify it's real gold&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;Gold Medal winners often pose with the medal between their teeth, and I'm guessing it derives from that trope)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;My question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the &quot;Bite Test&quot; a working method to verify the authenticity of a gold coin?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:28:10.577" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T11:06:20.317" Title="Is biting a gold coin a working method to verify its authenticity?" Tags="|history|physics|chemistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8807" CreationDate="2012-04-08T03:42:41.027" Score="-4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No one ever claimed that the Titanic was &quot;unsinkable&quot;. The quote,&#xA;  &quot;practically unsinkable&quot; was taken out of context. In 1911,&#xA;  Shipbuilder magazine published an article describing the construction&#xA;  of the Titanic. The article stated that when the watertight doors were&#xA;  closed, the ship would be &quot;practically unsinkable&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.titanicstory.com/interest.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6694" LastActivityDate="2012-04-08T03:42:41.027" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8813" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8816" CreationDate="2012-04-08T08:44:15.783" Score="17" ViewCount="1515" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to one prolific contributor to &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090215155316AALYyio&quot;&gt;Yahoo Answers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So-called &quot;Israeli settlers&quot; can shoot Palestinians at will without fear of prosecution so you do want a lot of doctors,and although it rarely does any good an attorney can at least try to keep your home from demolition because you aren't of the &quot;right&quot; ethnicity or religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: The same author makes other claims, like the brother of PLO's representative in the U.S., Michael Tarazi, was crucified on the hood of an Israeli jeep in 1988. I couldn't find any other source corroborating that either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that Israeli settlers can or have shot Palestinians without any legal reprisal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="15980" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T16:29:01.327" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T16:29:01.327" Title="Can Israeli settlers shoot Palestinians with impunity?" Tags="|law|israel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26" CreationDate="2012-04-08T11:32:40.887" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/5654/6629&quot;&gt;Krzysztof's answer&lt;/a&gt;. There were also studies suggesting that people can control somewhat the date of their death around major events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ewk2110/papers/dying.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt;, that won the 2001 Ig Novel for economics suggests that death rates changed around a change at the inheritance tax rate people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper examines data from U.S. federal tax returns to shed light on whether the timing of death is responsive to its tax consequences. We investigate the temporal pattern of deaths around the time of changes in the estate tax system - periods when living longer, or dying sooner, could significantly affect estate tax liability. We find some evidence that there is a small death elasticity, although we cannot rule out that what we have uncovered is ex post doctoring of the reported date of death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19907890&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt;, that suggests the same with asian male Cancer patients around Chineese Harvest Moon Festival.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RESULTS:&lt;/strong&gt; There were significantly fewer deaths overall in men before the holidays than after (p-value equals 0.0081), with most of the difference being due to cancer deaths, particularly among men over 75 years of age. For women, there were actually more deaths before than after the holidays. The data, stratified according to age, gender, disease and holiday, yielded only five out of 48 variables with a p-value of less than 0.05, which was slightly above chance, considering the large number of comparisons made. In four of the five situations, there were significantly fewer deaths before than after the holidays; but after Bonferroni correction, only the finding of fewer cancer deaths for men aged over 75 years before HMF was significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CONCLUSION:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Other than cancer deaths in males, we found little evidence in this dataset of death postponement until after important holidays in the Hong Kong Chinese population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the studies are not conclusive, they do suggest that if a person really wants to live through some important occasion (like a major holiday) he or she may be able to postpone their death by a few days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T14:07:54.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5614" CreationDate="2012-04-08T11:41:02.390" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Brian Dunning addressed this question in &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4249&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;episode 249&lt;/a&gt; of his skeptical podcast called &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Skeptoid&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While his analysis is reasonably brief, he claims that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;at the end of the day, that the only truly significant environment&#xA;  impacts of each are landfill space for disposables, and water for&#xA;  laundering cloth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And his conclusion is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Read any study that tries to take an objective, unbiased view, and&#xA;  you'll find that the research is unclear, comparing landfill space to&#xA;  water usage is an apples-to-oranges comparison, and that any benefit&#xA;  upon the environment conferred by either product is likely to be&#xA;  pretty insignificant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He gives several references for his opinions in the footnotes of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4249&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;episode guide&lt;/a&gt;. I have not reviewed his references personally. But, knowing Brian Dunning's reputation as a Skeptic, I am quite comfortable assuming his argument will be based on solid research and reasonably free of bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My interpretation of Brian Dunning's point of view, in the context of the original question, is that &lt;strong&gt;there is no objective measure to compare the &quot;cost to the earth&quot; of the two approaches due to their significantly different characteristics (i.e. landfill vs water usage)&lt;/strong&gt;. This is similar to asking whether car pollution or deforestation is worse for the environment. They are both bad in different ways and there is no common scale by which each can be measured against the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5723" LastEditorUserId="5723" LastEditDate="2012-04-12T05:29:30.593" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T05:29:30.593" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8813" CreationDate="2012-04-08T14:20:16.543" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;. The longer answer is that while many things are not allowed, in a conflict zone, like in all wars, soldiers and other participants sometimes do things that are not allowed. In the cases where the (Israeli) authorities learn about it, they prosecute the offenders to the full extent of the law, just like other Western democracies treat violations in a time of war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the sources I'll present will be in Hebrew, and I'll try to give a translation of what I consider to be the most important parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the site of the peace organisation Hamoked &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hamoked.org.il/Document.aspx?dID=Updates1121&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;given the story of Shlomo Adir, a settler from Ptzael who shot a Palestinian worker to death&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that time Shlomo Adir, the guard of Ptzael, noticed two [Palestinian] workers in the field and suspected them to be thieves... Adir entered the area of the greenhouses and called them to stop with a loudspeaker, stepped out of the car, loaded his weapon and shot approximately 10 shots at the air, immediately after he saw one of the workers next to him and shot three bullets at his upper body from close range resulting in his immediate death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In March 2008, Adir was convicted in a court in negligent manslaughter and was sentenced for 200 hours of community service, conditioned incarceration and compensation to the victim's family of 25,000 NIS. The judge ruled that Adir opened fire too quickly and in a negligent matter. Appeals that Adir filed in higher courts and the Supreme court were rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the 25/11/2010, 7.5 years after the deadly and unnecessary shooting, an agreement was reached in court saying that the shooter and the settlement Ptzael would pay 763,670 NIS to the victims family as compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some links to occurrences where Israeli military personal were charged for killing Palestinians:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20100525&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Border police officer who shot a Palestinian boy charged with negligent manslaughter&lt;/a&gt; (in English)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-2891024,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lieutenant colonel is charged with negligent manslaughter in Jenin&lt;/a&gt; (in Hebrew)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many more examples. The Hebrew Wikipedia has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%98%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%A8_%D7%99%D7%94%D7%95%D7%93%D7%99_%D7%91%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C#.22.D7.AA.D7.92_.D7.9E.D7.97.D7.99.D7.A8.22&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article about Jewish terrorism&lt;/a&gt; and in it a section of Jewish terrorism against Arabs. All of the people performing such acts who survived them were prosecuted and sentenced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another act is the act of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_tag_policy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;price tag&lt;/a&gt; where settlers go and hurt Arab property as a &amp;quot;price tag&amp;quot; for an action of the Israeli government against them. Those acts are also dealt with by the law authorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to your first question is no. Neither settlers nor anybody else can go around shooting or hurting Palestinians and Arabs without consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to your second question, it's possible that what Michael Tarazi describes happened to him, but, if it happened it was the act of rogue soldiers. If the authorities learned about it they dealt with the offenders, and Tarazi can follow legal actions against the perpetrators and the state of Israel for compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T12:25:28.360" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8818" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-08T17:12:15.650" Score="6" ViewCount="6745" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read a lot of claims regarding GAP syndrome and GAPS diet with the most surprising of them being that the proposed diet can even cure disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.&#xA;For example in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gapsdiet.com/uploads/GAPS.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;, Dr Campbell states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...The toxicity, which is produced by the abnormal microbial mass in&#xA;these patients, establishes a link between the gut and the brain. That&#xA;is why I grouped these disorders under one name: the Gut and&#xA;Psychology Syndrome (GAP Syndrome or GAPS). The GAPS children and&#xA;adults can present with symptoms of autism, ADHD, ADD, OCD, dyslexia,&#xA;dyspraxia, schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, sleep&#xA;disorders, allergies, asthma and eczema in any possible combination.&#xA;These are the patients who fall in the gap in our medical knowledge.&#xA;Any child or adult with a learning disability, neurological or&#xA;psychological problems and allergies should be thoroughly examined for&#xA;gut dysbiosis. Re-establishing normal gut flora and treating the&#xA;digestive system of the person has to be the number one treatment for&#xA;these disorders, before considering any other treatments with drugs or&#xA;otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although these claims seem unrealistic to me, I would like to find solid scientific evidence that refutes them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6611" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T16:21:56.050" Title="Can GAPS diet cure autism, schizophrenia and dyslexia?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1438" CreationDate="2012-04-09T00:09:50.187" Score="21" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Introduction&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the ages, people have developed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or&#xA;  correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed&#xA;  scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical&#xA;  and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;quote from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Scientific method&quot;&gt;Scientific method, Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those techniques of inquiry are usually known as &lt;strong&gt;scientific method&lt;/strong&gt;. Working hypotheses are proposed as explanations for phenomena, and are then tested with experiments. A hypothesis must be able to predict some outcome, and it must be possible to test if the prediction is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Falsifiability or refutability of an assertion, hypothesis or theory&#xA;  is the logical possibility that it can be contradicted by an&#xA;  observation or the outcome of a physical experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;quote from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Falsifiability, Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;. See Karl Popper, Logic of Scientific Discovery. In the meantime check &lt;a href=&quot;http://cla.calpoly.edu/~fotoole/321.1/popper.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Science: Conjectures and Refutations&lt;/a&gt; as an introduction.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theories are groups of hypotheses which have some logical structure and help &quot;explain&quot; phenomena in a common mental framework.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Theories that encompass wider domains of inquiry may bind many&#xA;  independently derived hypotheses together in a coherent, supportive&#xA;  structure. Theories, in turn, may help form new hypotheses or place&#xA;  groups of hypotheses into context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Scientific method&quot;&gt;Scientific method, Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some phenomena in the field are not predicted by the current (dominant) theory, then hypotheses with which we could explain that phenomena are formed and tested. Those that can be incorporated in the current theory are. If a tested hypothesis cannot be incorporated in the current theory, then that theory is changed, or a new theory which better fits all experimental data becomes dominant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;see The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn, overview at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;. If you think Mathematics is exempt, see Proofs and Refutations by Imre Lakatos (which draws influence from George Pólya's teachings on the subject).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is very important to note that any new theory would have to take into account all hypotheses that have not been disproved.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Current theories&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a large number of predictive hypotheses that have been tested with many experiments and have not been disproved yet and either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;predict an old earth or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;require an old earth for their explanatory power&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We say that such hypotheses are &lt;em&gt;consistent with an old Earth&lt;/em&gt;. Those hypotheses are lumped together to form the best theories we currently have to explain various phenomena.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples are already mentioned in Sklivvz's answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Biological evolution (&lt;em&gt;see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;talkorigins&lt;/a&gt; for an accessible introduction&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Radiometric dating (&lt;em&gt;introduction at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;talkorigins faq on age of Earth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Big Bang theory (some consistent hypotheses are &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hubble's law&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cosmic microwave background radiation&lt;/a&gt;, the distribution and abundance of light nuclides&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plate tectonics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not an exhaustive list. Most sciences (at least 'hard sciences') have contributed some hypotheses that are consistent with old Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim about the Earth being 6000 years old could be true (in the &quot;scientific&quot; sense) if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it would not be in contradiction with tested hypotheses or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;it would provide a model (theory) that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;covers all phenomena explained by current hypotheses &lt;em&gt;consistent with an old Earth&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is predictive and falsifiable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is thoroughly tested&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;provides a convenient and understandable explanation for all such phenomena&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only one such theory comes close to that as far as I know -- the Earth and the Universe coming to existence 6000 ago looking and behaving as though they were much older than that. As there is no predictive and explanatory difference, we usually choose the simpler explanation (i.e. that the Earth and the Universe really are much older). &lt;em&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Occam's razor&lt;/a&gt; to learn about the motivation for such a choice.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All young earth theories that I have heard of yet do not satisfy some of the above requirements (or none of them). &lt;em&gt;For popularly accessible details, refer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkreason.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;talkreason website&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;talkorigins website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually though, the demands are even higher:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it should cover some additional phenomena (otherwise why change an old working model that has the same predictive and explanatory power; partly motivated by Occam's razor and also partly by economic considerations). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Problems in understanding&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are usually a couple of problems that impede our understanding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not a lot of people truly grasp the scientific method. Only around 30% of 25-64 U.S. population has a Bachelor's degree as of 2008. Source: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_ice.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Condition of Education&lt;/a&gt; from Institute of Education Sciences&lt;/em&gt;. Furthermore, a degree does not always imply that the person understands the scientific method. See &lt;em&gt;Konrad Paul Liessman's Theory of Miseducation for possible explanations&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Above-mentioned theories are sometimes presented as given facts in the educational system. &lt;em&gt;See school curricula in your country&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even though the evidence for an old Earth is overwhelming, it is sometimes very complex and is scattered throughout many fields of science. It is hard (time-demanding) to have operational knowledge for even one such science and exceedingly difficult for all such sciences. Therefore scientists versed in one field rely on &lt;em&gt;peer-reviewed results&lt;/em&gt; from other sciences. Some people mistake such reliance for &lt;em&gt;faith&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many people do not have operational knowledge in any science that is directly related to the age of Earth. They believe that the results from other sciences are true because they understand the scientific method, but when asked to explain such results, they cannot do so. That makes it easier to mistake their &lt;em&gt;belief&lt;/em&gt; for &lt;em&gt;faith&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, there is a large number of people who do not understand the scientific method at all. As a result they make many logical fallacies in their arguments, and are often ideologically motivated to be combative in their arguments with people holding differing opionins.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2016-05-02T12:11:26.807" LastActivityDate="2016-05-02T12:11:26.807" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-09T06:38:01.450" Score="1" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicates:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2057/demonstrable-and-repeatable-examples-of-evolution&quot;&gt;Demonstrable and repeatable examples of evolution&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/101/does-the-fossil-record-evidence-sufficiently-support-evolution&quot;&gt;Does &quot;The Fossil Record&quot; evidence sufficiently support evolution?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1849/have-we-observed-evolution-through-natural-selection-in-areas-of-high-child-yout&quot;&gt;Have we observed evolution through natural selection in areas of high child/youth mortality? &lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1669/does-dna-add-credibility-to-the-theory-of-evolution&quot;&gt;Does DNA add credibility to the theory of evolution? &lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2230/are-evolutionary-explanations-just-so-stories&quot;&gt;Are evolutionary explanations &quot;Just so stories&quot;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some creationists argue that there is legitimate scientific debate about evolution and that students should be taught the controversies and debates.  For example, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFjoEgYOgRo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;, a creationist argues that evolution is not universally accepted and there are many flaws in the theory.  She argues that the controversy over evolution is being ignored by the mainstream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that there is a great deal of scientific controversy over evolution, or is it almost universally accepted in the scientific community?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3145" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T10:31:16.940" Title="Is there legitimate scientific debate about evolution?" Tags="|evolution|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2012-04-09T10:06:12.763" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8824" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-04-09T10:32:44.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wpyjC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Electro-Magnetic Force&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VFPt_Solenoid_correct2.svg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electromagnetic force is one of the four fundamental interactions in nature, the other three being the strong interaction, the weak interaction and gravitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electromagnetism is the interaction responsible for practically all the phenomena encountered in daily life, with the exception of gravity. Ordinary matter takes its form as a result of intermolecular forces between individual molecules in matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electrons are bound by electromagnetic wave mechanics into orbitals around atomic nuclei to form atoms, which are the building blocks of molecules. This governs the processes involved in chemistry, which arise from interactions between the electrons of neighbouring atoms, which are in turn determined by the interaction between electromagnetic force and the momentum of the electrons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IBwlYm.png&quot; alt=&quot;James Clerk Maxwell&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:James_Clerk_Maxwell.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;James Clerk Maxwell&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electromagnetism manifests as both electric fields and magnetic fields. Both fields are simply different aspects of electromagnetism, and hence are intrinsically related. Thus, a changing electric field generates a magnetic field; conversely a changing magnetic field generates an electric field. This effect is called electromagnetic induction, and is the basis of operation for electrical generators, induction motors, and transformers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electric fields are the cause of several common phenomena, such as electric potential (such as the voltage of a battery) and electric current (such as the flow of electricity through a flashlight). Magnetic fields are the cause of the force associated with magnets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-09T10:32:44.213" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T10:32:44.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8825" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-04-09T10:32:44.213" Score="0" Body="Electromagnetism is the branch of science concerned with the forces that occur between electrically charged particles. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Use this tag for anything related to electricity, electrical or magnetic fields (such as microwave radiation), etc." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-09T10:32:44.213" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T10:32:44.213" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2230" CreationDate="2012-04-09T19:04:03.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, but scientists aren't immune to spreading &quot;just-so&quot; stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Karl Popper's influential book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Structure of Scientific Revolutions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; would agree that that, in any area, the scientific establishment will try to shoehorn newly-discovered anomalies and shortcomings into the old worldview (&quot;paradigm&quot;). According to Popper (whose model is not universally accepted), the establishment will resist change even when its shortcomings seem, in retrospect, obvious. For instance, it seems odd to us that a model of planets moving along wheels-within-wheels-within-wheels was thought to be more reasonable than Kepler's model where they move along ellipses. More recently, it seems strange that the key-and-lock shapes of South America and Africa were dismissed as coincidences as recently as the 1960s, before plate tectonics became accepted.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In retrospect, the increasingly implausible defences of the old paradigm (&quot;add another epicycle to the planetary motions!&quot;, &quot;Mid-ocean mountain range? Just another coincidence!&quot;) might be called &quot;just-so&quot; stories. It's an insulting viewpoint, since it makes it sound like the defenders are willfully lying, which they're not. Our worldview (our &quot;paradigm&quot;) is filled with unexamined assumptions and conclusions; we've invested hundreds and thousands of hours of time into understanding the way things work in this worldview and we are really good at defending it. We get &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=caremad&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;caremad&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Importantly, though, the scientific ideal is accuracy, not popularity or tradition. Science &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have paradigm shifts. Celestial spheres gave way to Kepler's ellipses gave way to Einstein's model. Plate tectonics are accepted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said all that, is evolutionary theory in a paradigm-shifting &quot;crisis&quot;? No. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a lot of hubbub about altruism lately and the Haldane/Hamilton &quot;kin selection&quot; paradigm, but there's nothing about the argument that presents any kind of challenge to evolutionary theory in general. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-04-09T19:04:03.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8771" CreationDate="2012-04-09T22:55:47.380" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is this an over-simplification?&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Yes.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;However, it's not so much an over-simplification as just plain wrong.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First, families have to pay back their debt. Governments don’t — all&#xA;  they need to do is ensure that debt grows more slowly than their tax&#xA;  base. The debt from World War II was never repaid; it just became&#xA;  increasingly irrelevant as the U.S. economy grew, and with it the&#xA;  income subject to taxation. &lt;br/&gt;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/index.html?inline=nyt-per&quot;&gt;Paul Krugman&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html&quot;&gt;Nobody Understands Debt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whenever a demagogue wants to whip up hysteria about federal budget&#xA;  deficits, he or she invariably begins with an analogy to a household’s&#xA;  budget: “No household can continually spend more than its income, and&#xA;  neither can the federal government”. On the surface that, might appear&#xA;  sensible; dig deeper and it makes no sense at all. A sovereign&#xA;  government bears no obvious resemblance to a household. &#xA;  &lt;br/&gt;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://cas.umkc.edu/econ/_people/facultypages/wray/Wray-CV-Spring2010.pdf&quot;&gt;L. Randall Wray&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/02/10/the-federal-budget-is-not-like-a-household-budget-heres-why-8230/&quot;&gt;The Federal Budget is NOT like a Household Budget: Here’s Why&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary of points&lt;/strong&gt; (from the source above)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The US federal government is 221 years old, if we date its birth to the adoption of the Constitution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don’t know any head of household with such an apparently indefinitely long lifespan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no “day of reckoning”, no final piper-paying date for the sovereign government. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nor do I know any household with the power to levy taxes, to give a name to — and issue — the currency we use, and to demand that those taxes are paid in the currency it issues.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;With one brief exception, the federal government has been in debt every year since 1776.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In January 1835, for the first and only time in U.S. history, the public debt was retired, and a budget surplus was maintained for the next two years in order to accumulate “a fund to meet future deficits.” &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In 1837 the economy collapsed into a deep depression that drove the budget into deficit, and the federal government has been in debt ever since. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Since 1776 there have been exactly seven periods of substantial budget surpluses and significant reduction of the debt. 1817-1821, 1823-1836, 1852-1857, 1867-1873, 1880-1893, 1920-1930, the Clinton years. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I do not know any household that has been able to run budget deficits for approximately 190 out of the past 230-odd years, and to accumulate debt virtually nonstop since 1837.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The United States has also experienced six periods of depression. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The depressions began in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, and 1929 (see the dates listed above).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With the exception of the Clinton surpluses, every significant reduction of the outstanding debt has been followed by a depression, and every depression has been preceded by significant debt reduction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Clinton surplus was followed by the Bush recession, a speculative euphoria, and then the collapse in which we now find ourselves.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don’t know of any case of a national depression caused by a household budget surplus.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The federal government is the issuer of our currency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Its IOUs are always accepted in payment. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Government actually spends by crediting bank deposits (and credits the reserves of those banks);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you don’t want a bank deposit, government will give you cash; if you don’t want cash it will give you a treasury bond. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People will work, sell, panhandle, lie, cheat, steal, and even kill to obtain the government’s dollars.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don’t know any household that is able to spend by crediting bank deposits and reserves, or by issuing currency.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some claim that if the government continues to run deficits, some day the dollar’s value will fall due to inflation; or its value will depreciate relative to foreign currencies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But only a moron would refuse to accept dollars today on the belief that at some unknown date in the hypothetical and distant future their value might be less than today’s value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My household’s spending in excess of income won’t reduce the purchasing power of the dollar by any measurable amount.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the speaker claims that government budget deficits are unsustainable, that government must eventually pay back all that debt, ask him or her why we have managed to avoid retiring debt since 1837.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is 173 years long enough to establish a “sustainable” pattern?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Bad idea: Vote them out* and demand a balanced budget.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can think of nothing more fundamentally foolish, more unequivocally&#xA;  self-destructive to our economic well being today than attempting to&#xA;  balance the US federal budget. It is totally unnecessary and every&#xA;  dollar we cut from government spending is a dollar taken from&#xA;  someone’s income. That we should be so enthusiastically pursuing such&#xA;  a policy when there are almost 14 million unemployed workers is mind&#xA;  boggling. How is further lowering the effective demand for goods and&#xA;  services supposed to help? It cannot, of course, and will only serve&#xA;  to make things worse – much, much worse. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.forbes.com/people/johntharvey/&quot;&gt;John T. Harvey&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntharvey/2011/06/05/how-to-destroy-the-us-economy/&quot;&gt;How to Destroy the US Economy? Balance the Budget&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Ok, voting them out might not be such a bad idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Bottom Line...&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The federal budget is NOT like a household budget.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Facebook is most likely NOT a good source for information on economics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Politicians can lie through their teeth. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_privilege&quot;&gt;Parliamentary privilege&lt;/a&gt; grants protection against civil or criminal liability for actions done or statements made related to one's duties as a legislator.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Ps. Another bad idea.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remove banking regulations by passing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm-Leach-Bliley_Act&quot;&gt;Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999&lt;/a&gt; and allow the creation of giant financial supermarkets that could own investment banks, commercial banks and insurance firms, something banned since the Great Depression (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-Steagall_Act&quot;&gt;Glass-Steagall Act of 1933&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, allow investment banking firms to gamble with their depositors' money and drive the economy into crapper by 2007. Not smart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="35" LastEditDate="2012-04-10T17:29:13.150" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T17:29:13.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7973" CreationDate="2012-04-10T01:23:33.650" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Knights Templar &amp;amp; the Protestant Reformation book referenced above attributes the apocryphal Gandhi quote to a secondary source (an article in Christian Today by Dibin Samuel), which in turn wrongly attributes the quote to the Millie Graham Polak book (Mr. Gandhi: The Man). I am holding a copy of the Graham book in my hand, and that &quot;so unlike Christ&quot; quote is nowhere to be found. Not only that, but there are no statements in the book anywhere that criticize Christians for being &quot;unlike Christ.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sites mention a Bara Dada quotation, &quot;Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians -- you are not like him.&quot; which is said to be found in the book The Christ of the Indian Road by E. Stanley Jones. I have not independently verified that the Dada quote is accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6709" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T01:23:33.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8830" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-10T04:46:20.313" Score="4" ViewCount="2711" Body="&lt;p&gt;I watched this documentary, but I am doubtful of the evidence that they are using and their claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFL3X4lhcaU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ancient Aliens Season 1 Episode 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The documentary uses ancient relics and evidences to try to prove that ancient civilizations built flying vehicles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It attempts to explain that by appealing to ancient people having been visited by aliens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did ancient people have have and build flying vehicles (no matter if assisted by alien visitations)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1844" LastEditorUserId="39658" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-08-11T06:54:30.570" LastActivityDate="2020-08-11T12:26:33.073" Title="Did ancient people have flying vehicles?" Tags="|egypt|archeology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8832" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-10T06:33:18.783" Score="23" ViewCount="40733" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people believe excessive masturbation causes acne, among many other things (e.g. hair loss and erectile dysfunction - off topic for this question). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One such site that claims or supports this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.herballove.com/article.asp?art=614&quot;&gt;Herballove&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His chronic over-masturbation resulted in acne outbreak, hair loss and&#xA;  erectile dysfunction at age 24.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer further says in response of having body acne, hair loss and ED:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All of your symptoms can result from sexual exhaustion as a result of&#xA;  your chronic over-masturbation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is further explained in the answer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acne is caused by a number of factors, including diet, stress,&#xA;  accumulation of dead skin cells, bacteria in the pores, use of&#xA;  steroids, poor hygiene, drugs and medication. &lt;strong&gt;In addition, acne can&#xA;  be caused by over-ejaculation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Excessive sex and masturbation can increase histamine, the super&#xA;  hormone DHT, the stress neurohormone epinephrine, and the inflammatory&#xA;  hormone prostaglandin E2 to induce acne outbreak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just one of the site, there are many out there. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6712" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2015-10-26T10:41:38.167" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T10:41:38.167" Title="Can excessive masturbation cause acne?" Tags="|environmental-health|masturbation|acne|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="814" CreationDate="2012-04-10T21:20:39.243" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Fukushima Daiichi incident was a second Chernobyl.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13045341&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Both were rated as 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale&lt;/a&gt; i.e. a Major Accident, the highest on the scale.  By comparison, both Three Mile Island in 1979 and the Windscale fire in 1957 were rated 5, an accident with wider consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At Fukushima, (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/2012/fukushima1yearon.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;according to this IAEA review&lt;/a&gt;) reactors 1, 2 and 3 had meltdowns and reactors 1, 3 and 4 had hydrogen explosions in the reactor buildings, releasing radioactive material into the environment and causing an evacuation eventually extending 30 kilometers in radius plus some special areas, affecting 160,000 residents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were both extremely serious, though the details were different, and the death toll was much lower in Fukushima, mainly because of the deaths of firefighters in Chernobyl.  The 13-15,000 deaths in the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20110421a5.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mainly by drowning&lt;/a&gt;, was far higher than either.     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-04-10T21:20:39.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8841" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27804" CreationDate="2012-04-10T22:07:15.707" Score="44" ViewCount="5799" Body="&lt;p&gt;While in Rome, I heard a claim that Ancient Romans had invented the taxi meter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Ancient&quot; here means the common usage of &quot;a long time ago&quot; instead of a specific historical period such as the Early Republic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claim:  Ancient Roman taxis had meters.  A taxi in Ancient Rome had a crude mechanical odometer of some sort that was attached to a wheel that, according to distance, used gears or belts or wheels to deposit stones from a container of some sort into a cup.   When the taxi arrived at the destination, the customer would pay accordingly.  Differing versions of the claim exist at this point.  The one I heard used a balance scale to compare the accumulated stones to silver coins paid by the customer, which could mitigate the problem of intentionally nibbled silver coins in circulation. Other versions simply count the number of stones to set the fare.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding a detailed, duplicate claim on the web has been difficult, which makes me suspicious of it as some sort of oral myth spread among tourists and guides.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taximeterworld.com/history.html&quot;&gt;taxi meter manufacturer in India credits Ancient Rome&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taximeters have evolved over the years from those in ancient Rome&#xA;  functioning from Axle-release-balls mechanism to the present day&#xA;  Global Positioning System - equipped Data Terminals and the works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=VyYDAAAAMBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA112&amp;amp;lpg=PA112&amp;amp;dq=Ancient+Roman+taximeter&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=GASceIMWCv&amp;amp;sig=c-kD6UNrVzR3FZfYswA4BaFM6x0&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=MISFT-HbLsyaiQfz1rSzBw&amp;amp;ved=0CC8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Ancient%20Roman%20taximeter&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;November 1960 issue of Popular Science&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In ancient Rome, some hired vehicles had a primitive taxi meter. A compartmented wheel driven by a road wheel dropped pebbles from a hopper into a box. Counter at the end of the ride, these set the fare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab#History&quot;&gt;wikipedia:Taxicab&lt;/a&gt; makes no mention of it in the History section, claiming:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first documented service was started by Nicolas Sauvage in Paris&#xA;  in 1640.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicab#History&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odometer&quot;&gt;wikipedia:Odometer&lt;/a&gt; mentions ancient versions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[from Wikipedia Odometer: History] Classical Era&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Possibly the first evidence for the use of an odometer can be found in&#xA;  the works of Pliny (NH 6. 61-62) and Strabo (11.8.9). Both authors&#xA;  list the distances of routes traveled by Alexander the Great (r.&#xA;  336-323 BC) as measured by his bematists Diognetus and Baeton.&#xA;  However, the high precision of the bematists's measurements rather&#xA;  indicates the use of a mechanical device. For example, the section&#xA;  between the cities Hecatompylos and Alexandria Areion, which later&#xA;  became a part of the silk road, was given by Alexander's bematists as&#xA;  529 English miles long, that is with a deviation of 0.4% from the&#xA;  actual distance (531 English miles). From the nine surviving&#xA;  bematists' measurements in Pliny's Naturalis Historia eight show a&#xA;  deviation of less than 5% from the actual distance, three of them&#xA;  being within 1%. Since these minor discrepancies can be adequately&#xA;  explained by slight changes in the tracks of roads during the last&#xA;  2300 years, the overall accuracy of the measurements implies that the&#xA;  bematists already must have used a sophisticated device for measuring&#xA;  distances, although there is no direct mentioning of such a device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An odometer for measuring distance was first described by Vitruvius&#xA;  around 27 and 23 BC, although the actual inventor may have been&#xA;  Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC) during the First Punic&#xA;  War. Hero of Alexandria (10 AD - 70 AD) describes a similar device in&#xA;  chapter 34 of his Dioptra. The machine was also used in the time of&#xA;  Roman Emperor Commodus (c. 192 AD), although after this point in time&#xA;  there seems to be a gap between its use in Roman times and that of the&#xA;  15th century in Western Europe.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odometer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; Some researchers have speculated&#xA;  that the device might have included technology similar to that of the&#xA;  Greek Antikythera mechanism.[4]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The odometer of Vitruvius was based on chariot wheels of 4 feet (1.2&#xA;  m) diameter turning 400 times in one Roman mile (about 1400 m). For&#xA;  each revolution a pin on the axle engaged a 400 tooth cogwheel thus&#xA;  turning it one complete revolution per mile. This engaged another gear&#xA;  with holes along the circumference, where pebbles (calculus) were&#xA;  located, that were to drop one by one into a box. The distance&#xA;  traveled would thus be given simply by counting the number of&#xA;  pebbles.[4] Whether this instrument was ever built at the time is&#xA;  disputed. Leonardo da Vinci later tried to build it himself according&#xA;  to the description, but failed. However, in 1981 engineer Andre&#xA;  Sleewyck built his own replica, replacing the square-toothed gear&#xA;  designs of da Vinci with the triangular, pointed teeth found in the&#xA;  Antikythera mechanism. With this modification, the Vitruvius odometer&#xA;  functioned perfectly.[4]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But... no mention of taxi meter applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is well known that Ancient Rome had a number of remarkable achievements, including concrete aqueducts and roads and a population over 1 million. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Ancient Rome have taxicabs with metered payment, or is that a myth for modern tourists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2012-04-11T22:02:49.490" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T19:08:06.537" Title="Were metered taxis busy roaming Imperial Rome?" Tags="|history|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8844" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-04-11T00:35:56.130" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-04-11T00:35:56.130" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T00:35:56.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8845" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-04-11T00:35:56.130" Score="0" Body="Sleep is a naturally recurring state characterized by reduced or absent consciousness, relatively suspended sensory activity, and inactivity of nearly all voluntary muscles. It is distinguished from quiet wakefulness by a decreased ability to react to stimuli, and is more easily reversible than being in hibernation or a coma." OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-04-11T01:02:25.773" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T01:02:25.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-11T01:58:06.640" Score="4" ViewCount="1221" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, the manufacturer of the slot machine is on the hook for any progressive jackpot the machine pays out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that modern day slot machines use a random number generator (and knowing a few things about how RNGs are not quite random enough), is the manufacturer aware of when a particular machine will hit the jackpot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the manufacturer is aware, is it because the machine itself notifies them in some fashion or are they aware because they can simply model the results in some simulator?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recall watching a Travel Channel show about slot machine gambling a few years ago. They mentioned that when somebody wins one of these progressive jackpots that the manufacturer is notified by the machine.  They also mentioned that the manufacturer and casino have an agreement where the manufacturer provides the machines for free or a nominal cost in exchange for a cut of the revenue the machine takes in.  They also said that the manufacturer pays out the jackpot.  During the show, one of the casino managers was interviewed on the floor and he seemed to know (or feel, I'm not sure) that the jackpot was going to be hit very soon.  Sometime during the show, I recall the jackpot was paid out.  Honestly I don't know if the show was dramatizing the manager's knowledge.  Unfortunately, I don't have any references at this time and I'll have to look for them after work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3989" LastEditorUserId="3989" LastEditDate="2012-04-11T13:26:21.617" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T21:01:13.797" Title="Do modern day slot machines notify the manufacturer that a jackpot is about to be hit?" Tags="|gambling|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8847" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8852" CreationDate="2012-04-11T01:59:11.873" Score="-8" ViewCount="3845" Body="&lt;p&gt;I find it hard to believe that dinosaurs ever existed. They were never mentioned and totally skipped in the holy books (Old Testament, New Testament, Qur'an) although these books do contain stories as old as it gets (to Adam and Eve, Noah, The Great Flood, and Ibrahim). How can we know dinosaurs existed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-11T06:32:18.127" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T18:18:25.120" Title="Did dinosaurs exist?" Tags="|fossil-record|paleontology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8849" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-11T04:19:14.997" Score="41" ViewCount="41392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have experienced that during take-off and landing on commercial passenger flights, there are clear instructions to the passengers to keep their window shades open. This is done both during day and night times, presumably ruling out any kind of illumination concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just a convention that we happen to be adhering to, or is there a logical reason behind the same. I have searched for possible explanations with the exact question phrase and have come across &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_you_put_up_window_shades_on_airplanes_during_takeoff_and_landing&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, but it does not sound logical to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reason why they want all shades up is because, airlines rely on passenger's vision of the whole outer aircraft. The only people who can see the engines and what happens in the surroundings, are their passengers. Crew who are seated at their crew seats, will not be able to see a whole lot of the plane's exterior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3588" LastEditorUserId="3588" LastEditDate="2012-04-11T05:52:28.627" LastActivityDate="2015-12-15T05:18:24.347" Title="Why do we open the window shades during landing and take-off?" Tags="|aviation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8847" CreationDate="2012-04-11T06:28:15.823" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a whole &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paleontology&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;science&lt;/a&gt; dedicated to the study of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fossils&lt;/a&gt;, which we know puzzled mankind at least since 500bc:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In ancient times Xenophanes (570-480 BC) wrote about fossil sea shells indicating that land was once under water&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dinosaurs&lt;/a&gt; is a very broad term and refers to a group of animals of which we have bones and entire skeletons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, approximately 230 million years ago, and became the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for 135 million years, from the beginning of the Jurassic (about 200 million years ago) until the end of the Cretaceous (65.5 million years ago), when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of most dinosaur groups at the close of the Mesozoic era. The fossil record indicates that birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs during the Jurassic, and consequently they are considered a type of dinosaur in modern classification systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cX7At.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Oxford Dino&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;I own copyright for the photo&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can visit most museums and see or touch some fossils them if that convinces you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-11T07:03:37.310" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T07:03:37.310" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8849" CreationDate="2012-04-11T07:49:49.373" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the US, there appears to be no FAA requirement for the flight crew to require window blinds to be in any particular position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&amp;amp;sid=14b667bc63eb85dbd7294d1444e6c89a&amp;amp;rgn=div8&amp;amp;view=text&amp;amp;node=14:2.0.1.3.10.2.4.2&amp;amp;idno=14&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAR 91.103 - Preflight actions&lt;/a&gt; makes no mention of window blinds, nor does &lt;a href=&quot;http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&amp;amp;sid=14b667bc63eb85dbd7294d1444e6c89a&amp;amp;rgn=div8&amp;amp;view=text&amp;amp;node=14:2.0.1.3.10.2.4.3&amp;amp;idno=14&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAR 91.105&lt;/a&gt; which covers the next phase of the flight (when the flight crew are at their stations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next relevant section is probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&amp;amp;sid=14b667bc63eb85dbd7294d1444e6c89a&amp;amp;rgn=div8&amp;amp;view=text&amp;amp;node=14:2.0.1.3.10.6.7.9&amp;amp;idno=14&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAR 91.517&lt;/a&gt; which covers the passenger briefing and notification of their requirements (ie, wearing a seat belt).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there seems quite a large amount of anecdotal evidence (Including &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081024032815AAO5mBe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this post by an ex-flight attendant&lt;/a&gt;) which states there are a few reasons why it might be a good idea to have window blinds open for take-off and landing - which is notoriously the most dangerous phase of all flights:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Crew and passengers can easily see any external damage, fire or smoke indicating a problem and perhaps bringing it to the attention of flight crew quicker.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In an evacuation during daylight, crew and passengers will not need to aclimatise their vision to the brighter conditions outside. Effectively having window shades open equalises the light levels between outside and inside the cabin.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, when in need of evacuation, it is clearer if one side of the airplane might be hazardous due to fire/smoke&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the event of a crash, rescue workers can see into the cabin allowing them to locate bodies/injured. &lt;em&gt;(This one seems &lt;strike&gt;rather silly&lt;/strike&gt; quite sensible!)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the above seem rather sensible, if a little overblown. This I suggest is why even though there appears no FAA regulation, most airlines have it as a standard operating procedure of their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Footnote: I have found talk that it is a requirement of the CAA, although a scan through &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/cap670.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CAP 670 - Air Traffic Services Safety Requirements&lt;/a&gt; I can't find it&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question has also been answered by a &lt;a href=&quot;https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/1536/why-open-up-the-window-shades-before-takeoff-and-landing&quot;&gt;Pilot on aviation.se&lt;/a&gt; and an &lt;a href=&quot;https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/20207/why-are-airline-passengers-asked-to-lift-up-window-shades-during-takeoff-and-lan&quot;&gt;Aviation Safety specialist on Travel.se&lt;/a&gt;. Neither should be taken as gospel, they are after all appeal to authority, but its good to get more opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:59:54.117" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T09:04:51.583" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8854" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8856" CreationDate="2012-04-11T08:40:22.067" Score="14" ViewCount="2193" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard countless times the perils of global warming and how we should all do our fair share to save the Earth for future generations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is but one example from an NPR article:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99888903&quot;&gt;&quot;Global Warming is Irreversible, says Study&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that&#xA;  the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years. What&#xA;  we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an&#xA;  irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years,&quot;&#xA;  Solomon says. [in an interview regarding a study published in the Proceedings of the National&#xA;  Academy of Sciences]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Makes trying to improve the state of affairs sound rather hopeless, doesn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others think that mitigating or reversing the effects of global warming might be possible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/askasci/1993/environ/ENV033.HTM&quot;&gt;US Department Of Energy's Ask a Scientist&lt;/a&gt; website (which I realize pales on peer review compared to PNAS...), some creative solutions are offered by a visitor and the scientists who reply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Visitor: If we do not do enough to thwart Global Warming, and the oceans start&#xA;  to rise, could we use the effects of Nuclear Winter to offset global&#xA;  warming? Of course we would have to be careful about radiation and &#xA;  radioactive contamination by using the cleanest possible nuclear&#xA;  devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reply by Marc Frenau: This is a good question, but fortunately you do not have to use&#xA;  nuclear bombs to put the dust and particles in the atmosphere. The&#xA;  idea is to reflect sunlight back to space and you could do this by&#xA;  putting lots of sulfur particles into the atmosphere. You do not need&#xA;  dust from nuclear explosions, you could just use rockets or supersonic&#xA;  transports or whatever to get the sulfate particles up to the correct&#xA;  height in the atmosphere....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reply by Don Libby:  Actually, some scientists (e.g. Reid Bryson at&#xA;  the University of Wisconsin) believe that there is sufficient dust in&#xA;  the atmosphere already to effectively counter any global warming&#xA;  effect from C02...I wonder if we could not provide the shade with less &#xA;  potential harm than nuclear explosions would cause, such as putting a&#xA;  huge tarpaulin into earth orbit to create a solar eclipse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm not sure I'd bet on manufacturing a tarp to blot out the sun, is it scientifically reasonable to doubt the irreversibility of global warming?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Couldn't there be some present or future technological countermeasure to global warming that would make it reversible, not irreversible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2014-03-21T17:10:52.880" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T18:59:36.220" Title="Is global warming irreversible?" Tags="|environment|technology|climate-change|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8849" CreationDate="2012-04-11T09:16:28.457" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;About as definitive answer as you can probably get is &quot;that it's a procedure required by some operators&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;a href=&quot;http://flightsafety.org/files/cabin_safety_compendium.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cabin Safety Compendium 0 A Companion to the Operator's Flight Safety Handbook&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In its 174 pages it only mentions &quot;window shades&quot; once, on page 2-10 (26th page in manual) and there it says, as part of the Taxi-Out Procedures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Opening window shades fully (some Operator's procedures).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a December 2001 publication on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://flightsafety.org/files/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;'Flight Safety Foundation' website&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A search of the site using their search facility for &quot;window shade&quot; and &quot;shade&quot; found a few relevant references and more irrelevant ones but no other ones that addressed this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this organisation that aims to be an international authority in aviation safety has nothing substantive to say on the topic, then there probably isn't a useful universal answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I have always personally understood (quite possibly fallaciously)  that the answer listed as seeming rather silly by Jamiec is in fact the main one.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the event of a crash with multiple but not complete fatalities the ability to provide aid MAY be assisted by being able to see into the aircraft - either to see if individual passengers are able to be assisted or for general purposes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have flown extensively in recent years, mostly in Asia and between Asia and New Zealand, and my recollection is that the requirement to have window shades open is essentially universal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Takeoff and landing are by statistical record, the most dangerous parts of a flight. One claimed breakdown of accident rates by flight phase. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.1001crash.com/index-page-statistique-lg-2-numpage-3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Taken from here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jNhSq.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a second cousin of the &quot;please return to your original seat for landing&quot; request. This makes identification of incinerated bodies just slightly easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://ntl.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/177/~/statistics-on-take-offs-and-landings-by-airport&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Department of Transport takeoff and landing statistics by airport&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4566" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T09:16:28.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8854" CreationDate="2012-04-11T10:24:46.450" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't much scientific controversy about geoengineering by injecting SO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; into stratosphere being effective in stopping (or even reversing) global warming. However, the opponents of geoengineering call it intentional pollution, argue that results are &quot;hard to predict&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some peer reviewed references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/314/5798/452.short&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;A Combined Mitigation/Geoengineering Approach to Climate Stabilization&quot;&lt;/em&gt; T. M. L. Wigley&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Projected anthropogenic warming and increases in CO2 concentration&#xA;  present a twofold threat, both from climate changes and from CO2&#xA;  directly through increasing the acidity of the oceans. Future climate&#xA;  change may be reduced through mitigation (reductions in greenhouse gas&#xA;  emissions) or through geoengineering. Most geoengineering approaches,&#xA;  however, do not address the problem of increasing ocean acidity. A&#xA;  combined mitigation/geoengineering strategy could remove this&#xA;  deficiency. Here we consider the deliberate injection of sulfate&#xA;  aerosol precursors into the stratosphere. This action could&#xA;  substantially offset future warming and provide additional time to&#xA;  reduce human dependence on fossil fuels and stabilize CO2&#xA;  concentrations cost-effectively at an acceptable level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/366/1882/4039.full&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Global and Arctic climate engineering: numerical model studies&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;Ken Caldeira and Lowell Wood&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We perform numerical simulations of the atmosphere, sea ice and upper&#xA;  ocean to examine possible effects of diminishing incoming solar&#xA;  radiation, insolation, on the climate system. We simulate both global&#xA;  and Arctic climate engineering in idealized scenarios in which&#xA;  insolation is diminished above the top of the atmosphere. We consider&#xA;  the Arctic scenarios because climate change is manifesting most&#xA;  strongly there. Our results indicate that, while such simple&#xA;  insolation modulation is unlikely to perfectly reverse the effects of&#xA;  greenhouse gas warming, over a broad range of measures considering&#xA;  both temperature and water, an engineered high CO2 climate can be made&#xA;  much more similar to the low CO2 climate than would be a high CO2&#xA;  climate in the absence of such engineering. At high latitudes, there&#xA;  is less sunlight deflected per unit albedo change but climate system&#xA;  feedbacks operate more powerfully there. These two effects largely&#xA;  cancel each other, making the global mean temperature response per&#xA;  unit top-of-atmosphere albedo change relatively insensitive to&#xA;  latitude. Implementing insolation modulation appears to be feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/104/24/9949.long&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Transient climate–carbon simulations of planetary geoengineering&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;H. Damon Matthews and Ken Caldeira&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] Proposed schemes to reduce incoming solar radiation (e.g., ref.&#xA;  3) have drawn on the climatic effect of large volcanic eruptions&#xA;  (e.g., Mt. Pinatubo in 1991), which inject sulfate aerosols into the&#xA;  stratosphere and generate global cooling of a few tenths of a degree&#xA;  for several years after an eruption (7). By extension, it is possible&#xA;  that deliberate (and repeated) injection of aerosols into the&#xA;  stratosphere would affect a long-term cooling that could compensate&#xA;  for some (or perhaps all) of the climate warming induced by&#xA;  anthropogenic greenhouse gases. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-04-11T11:25:44.877" LastActivityDate="2012-04-11T11:25:44.877" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8858" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-11T17:33:09.337" Score="10" ViewCount="521" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/035511_insecticide_bees_collapse.html#ixzz1rbxrR6Y7Bensonin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent article in NaturalNews&lt;/a&gt; claims that last year there were &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/030921_EPA_pesticides.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;leaked documents&lt;/a&gt; exposing that the &lt;em&gt;U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA)&lt;/em&gt; illegitimately approved toxic pesticide &lt;em&gt;clothianidin&lt;/em&gt; for use, while being aware it might kill bees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the article says, there's a new study by &lt;em&gt;Purdue University&lt;/em&gt; that confirms that clothianidin is actually killing off bees, and that it's spread has become systematic in the entire food chain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entire report is available online via PubMed: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250423/?tool=pubmed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Multiple Routes of Pesticide Exposure for Honey Bees Living Near Agricultural Fields&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article goes on to warn about the consequenses of all this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Without bees, which are now dying off at an alarming rate due to&#xA;  exposure to clothianidin and various other insecticides and&#xA;  fungicides, one third or more of the food supply will be destroyed,&#xA;  including at least 100 varieties of fruits and vegetables that rely on&#xA;  bees for pollination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that if people in US don't do something to stop the bees from dying, at least one third of the food supply (in the US) will be destroyed. Because bees are dying. Which is the caused mainly by clothianidin. Which is in use because of EPA's failure or corruption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this information accurate?&lt;/strong&gt; Or does the article misrepresent the situation somehow? Is the study legitimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/286/are-bees-disappearing-and-why&quot;&gt;Are Bees Disappearing and Why&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="154" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T11:46:21.057" Title="Is EPA-approved insecticide (clothianidin) responsible for killing off bees?" Tags="|bees|pesticides|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8858" CreationDate="2012-04-11T19:10:43.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The toxic Clothianidin is banned in Germany by the Federal Ministry for Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection because of a wave of honey bee deaths a few weeks after the application of Clothianidin. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.i-sis.org.uk/honeybeePesticideBan.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess the report is true, but exaggerated since there is more than one reason a bee can die. (parasites, fungi, other pesticides, the monogamy of agricultural areas... )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/oppfead1/cb/csb_page/updates/2008/bees-act.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EPA&lt;/a&gt; states that the incident in Germany was a result of improper use and that right used Clothianidin is relatively safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, an interesting fact: France had a similar incident with the pesticide but came to the same conclusion as the EPA, so either way there are many sloppy farmers or the pesticide is harder to use than you would expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6736" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-04-12T00:22:04.727" LastActivityDate="2012-04-12T00:22:04.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8832" CreationDate="2012-04-11T21:17:39.623" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt; No amount of masturbation (&amp;quot;excessive&amp;quot; or otherwise) causes acne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Self-help forum and product retailer, Acne.org explain on their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acne.org/myths.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Acne Myth&lt;/a&gt; page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This antiquated notion, originating as early as the 17th century to dissuade young people from having premarital sex, is not based on scientific evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Masturbation and Acne&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a correlation between acne and masturbation? I do not answer this in this answer, but I do argue any correlation is weak, and I look at other ways acne and masturbation &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be correlated, and yet still not be causally related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For this discussion, &amp;quot;acne&amp;quot; is regarded as a full-blown severe case covering substantial areas of skin, and not the occasional lonely zit.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Correlation, if any, is weak&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of people with acne is much lower than the number of people who masturbate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/sex-101/masturbation-23901.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Planned Parenthood Federation of America&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Masturbation is very common. Studies show that about 7 out of 10 adult men and more than 5 out of 10 adult women masturbate. It’s also common for children and teens to masturbate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acne.org/adult-acne.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Acne.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adult acne affects 25% of all adult men and 50% of adult women at some time in their adult lives&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, looking at the male population, 70% of male masturbate only 25% have acne. (The numbers for women are closer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a correlation between masturbation and correlation it can't be a strong one. Masturbation doesn't automatically lead to acne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Hormones&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hormones may cause acne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acne.org argues on their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acne.org/myths.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Acne Myth page&lt;/a&gt; that any correlation may be caused by androgens:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more plausible explanation may be that higher levels of androgens (male sex hormones) can cause increased sex drive. We also know that high levels of androgens can be related to more severe cases of acne. So it may be the higher androgen levels and not the associated increase in desire for sexual activity that is related to acne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testosterone is an androgren that is related to acne and sex-drive and hence might be related to masturbation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://acne.about.com/od/acnetriggers/a/hormones.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The relation of testosterone and acne&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most dermatologists believe acne is closely linked with hormonal changes that occur within the body. In fact, testosterone has been identified as a chief trigger of acne development. According to the American Academy of Dermatology, testosterone works to stimulate oil gland activity, creating an oilier skin more prone to acne breakouts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources for this have also been:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masturbation#Health_and_psychological_effects&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;masturbation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of Wikipedia's cited &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springerlink.com/content/g24qw076248406u4/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Masturbation and Other Effects&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A separate concept is what constitutes &amp;quot;excessive&amp;quot; masturbation. From Planned Parenthood Federation of America's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plannedparenthood.org/info-for-teens/sex-masturbation/myths-facts-about-masturbation-33824.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Myth and Facts about Masturbation page&lt;/a&gt; largely dismissed the idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The myth is that too much masturbation will make you blind, crazy, or stupid, damage your sex organs, or stunt your growth.  Some people masturbate every day — or even more than once a day. That's fine. So is there such a thing as &amp;quot;too much&amp;quot; masturbation? According to the experts (the American Psychiatric Association), it's only when masturbation gets in the way of daily activities — like going to school or work, or meeting friends — that it would be considered &amp;quot;too much.&amp;quot; And not many people have that problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some people worry that masturbating frequently will affect a girl's ability to get pregnant or a guy's ability to produce sperm. It doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people masturbate daily or more than once a day, some people masturbate once in a while, and some people never masturbate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think that it's worth noting that they may be some negative side-effects to masturbation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a couple is trying to get pregnant the man should hold off from masturbation on the days before the woman's ovulation and only have sex (once a day or every other day) as it reduces the sperm count and will reduce the chance of successful fertilization, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justmommies.com/getting-pregnant/having-problems-getting-pregnant/can-too-much-sex-harm-your-chances-getting-pregnan&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ezinearticles.com/?5-Tips-Men-Should-Know-for-Conceiving-a-Baby-Boy-Or-Girl&amp;amp;id=5042035&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about the negative effects of masturbation &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.askmen.com/dating/love_tip_500/500b_negative-side-effects-of-masturbation.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T05:13:27.813" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8858" CreationDate="2012-04-13T03:01:16.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothianidin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clothianidin&lt;/a&gt; is similar to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;imidacloprid&lt;/a&gt;, being of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;same chemical group of insecticides&lt;/a&gt; and both being linked to bee population decline (Colony Collapse Disorder - CCD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is controversy over the role of neonicotinoids in relation to&#xA;  pesticide toxicity to bees and imidacloprid effects on bee population.&#xA;  Neonicotinoid use has been strictly limited in France since the 1990s,&#xA;  when neonicotinoids were implicated in a mass die-off of the bee&#xA;  population. It is believed by some to account for worker bees'&#xA;  neglecting to provide food for eggs and larvae, and for a breakdown of&#xA;  the bees' navigational abilities, possibly leading to what has become&#xA;  generally known as Colony Collapse Disorder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Low concentrations of imidicloprid and clothianidin have impacts upon bees' &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bulletinofinsectology.org/pdfarticles/vol56-2003-063-067bortolotti.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ability to forage and return to the hive&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results show that almost all the control honey bees returned to&#xA;  the hive, and started again visiting the feeder between 2 to 5 hours&#xA;  after the release. Honey bees fed with the concentration of 100 ppb&#xA;  also returned to the hive, but they returned to visit the feeder only&#xA;  24 hours after the release. Honey bees fed with 500 ppb and 1000 ppb&#xA;  completely disappeared after the release, and they were not seen&#xA;  during the following 24 hours, neither at the hive nor at the feeding&#xA;  site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But neonicotinoid insecticides are only one of of many things impacting upon bees, and most research indicates that it is a combination of factors that is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/br/ccd/ccdprogressreport2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;behind CCD&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most recent report (USDA - 2010) states that &quot;based on an initial&#xA;  analysis of collected bee samples (CCD- and non-CCD affected), reports&#xA;  have noted the high number of viruses and other pathogens, pesticides,&#xA;  and parasites present in CCD colonies, and lower levels in non-CCD&#xA;  colonies. This work suggests that a combination of environmental&#xA;  stressors may set off a cascade of events and contribute to a colony&#xA;  where weakened worker bees are more susceptible to pests and&#xA;  pathogens.&quot;[20] Applying proteomics-based pathogen screening tools in&#xA;  2010, researchers announced they had identified a co-infection of&#xA;  invertebrate iridescent virus type 6 (IIV-6) and the fungus Nosema&#xA;  ceranae in all CCD colonies sampled. (Quoted from Wiki, original USDA report linked above)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this issue is much larger than any one chemical group and is about environmental management and pesticide usage in general. Most &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesticide_toxicity_to_bees&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;insecticides will kill bees&lt;/a&gt;, especially with direct contact. Bees are only one of several pollination vectors in the world, so while they are important, this scare campaign is misguided. What is actually needed is further understanding of CCD, bee breeding programs and management strategies that will actually deal with this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5775" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T03:01:16.933" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8873" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8874" CreationDate="2012-04-13T03:59:50.467" Score="20" ViewCount="5521" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a computer programmer I assumed that every single spin of a poker machine was pre-calculated by the machine thus avoiding the chance of multiple large pays being payed out in a short period of time. e.g Some guy puts in 5 bucks but spins 3 x $10,000 in three spins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am just reading a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.problemgambling.vic.gov.au/files/Inside_the_pokies.pdf&quot;&gt;government designed pamphlet&lt;/a&gt; and I am surprised to see the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;There are millions of possible combinations on modern poker machines and every spin has an equal chance of bringing up a winning&#xA;  combination&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does say later that the operator can change the bias of the machine so that there are fewer chances to win, that is adjusting the probability, but the above statement suggests that the provided payout is still left to chance. Meaning you could effectively get multiple large payouts in a row.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most slot machine players I have met suggest that a machine &quot;goes quiet&quot; after a medium/big payout and you are better off pulling your money out and switching machines because the machine knows it has already paid you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are poker machine payouts for each spin calculated on the fly or is purely down to statistics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-04-20T23:37:58.563" LastActivityDate="2018-03-17T12:50:05.523" Title="Are slot machines purely random or do they pre-calculate every spin?" Tags="|gambling|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8873" CreationDate="2012-04-13T04:41:14.823" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the case that results are pre-calculated in gaming machines. The result of each game is calculated independently and on-the-fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gaming machines' randomness is validated statistically by independent companies such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gaminglabs.com/&quot;&gt;Gaming Laboratories International&lt;/a&gt;. [Warning: Site has annoying voice-over.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At GLI, we have one job: to test electronic gaming equipment. In fact, our clients are gaming regulators in jurisdictions all over the world, more than 450 in all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They test against standards such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gaminglabs.com/downloads/GLI%20Standards/updated%20Standards/GLI-11%20V1.3.pdf&quot;&gt;Gaming Devices in Casinos&lt;/a&gt;, although the appropriate standard depends on &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=y3YHW-xSD1gC&amp;amp;lpg=PA133&amp;amp;ots=LAm-03wH2K&quot;&gt;jurisdiction&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gamingstandards.com/pdfs/press_releases/pr_20100318.pdf&quot;&gt;there is not yet a universally accepted standard&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example rules from the &lt;em&gt;Gaming Devices in Casinos&lt;/em&gt; standards:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each possible permutation or combination of game elements that produces winning or losing game outcomes shall be available for random selection at the initiation of each play, unless otherwise denoted by the game;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The RNG [Random Number Generator] shall be cycled continuously in the background between games and during game play at a speed that cannot be timed by the player.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unless otherwise denoted on the payglass, where the gaming device plays a game that is recognizable such as Poker, Blackjack, Roulette, etc,, the same probabilities associated with the live game shall be evident in the simulated game. For example, the odds of getting any particular number in Roulette where there is a single zero (0) and a double zero (00) on the wheel, shall be 1 in 38; the odds of drawing a specific card or cards in Poker shall be the same as the live game. For other gaming devices (such as spinning reel games or video spinning reel games), the mathematical probability of a symbol appearing in a position in any game outcome shall be constant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Some machines manage a growing jackpot. Where there is a jackpot, the expected payouts between games are not independent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I have a friend who used to work in the gaming validation industry, but not for this company. I have no connection with Gaming Laboratories International.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T04:41:14.823" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8846" CreationDate="2012-04-13T05:35:04.493" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not an expert on this subject but I still feel this is just a myth. According to a famous book &quot;The Art of Intrusion&quot; by Kevin Mitnick, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computerbooksonline.com/content/viewer.asp?a=3186&amp;amp;z=38&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;See Chapter 1 here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://gaming.nv.gov/stats_regs.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nevada Gaming Commission&lt;/a&gt;, a governmental agency involved in the regulation of casinos throughout the state, which is responsible for administering regulations, granting licenses and ruling on disciplinary matters brought before it by the Nevada Gaming Control Board. A simple common sense says that if US (Nevada) has such governing body, then other countries (at least those where gambling is legal) also must have these type of government department for the safeguard of the players.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read about how such organization works and don't think that what you are saying is possible in any way. A special team of highly skilled programmers and architects do a thorough analysis of the assembly code (the code is a random number generator module) before the casino gets the licenses to buy a new machine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However what may be possible is that, since manufacturer continues to use the same hardware/code combination for a long period of time, because of some obvious reason (see the quote from the book below), casino owner can easily figure out logic of RNG with the help of any one, or a combination, of a computer engineer, or a mathematician or the manufacturer itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Extract from the book&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Whenever a casino wants to buy a machine of a new design, the Las Vegas Gaming Commission has to study the programming and make sure it's designed so the payouts will be fair to the players. Getting a new design approved can be a lengthy process, so casinos tend to hold on to the older machines longer than you would expect. For the team, an older machine seemed likely to have outdated technology, which they hoped might be less sophisticated and easier to attack.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this has helped !!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6756" LastEditorUserId="6756" LastEditDate="2012-04-13T05:43:53.093" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T05:43:53.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8876" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8892" CreationDate="2012-04-13T09:20:05.350" Score="11" ViewCount="4366" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a story of cannibalism in a snowed-in mountain pass, from the American western pioneer days.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of websites and much historical lore in California advocating the theory that the ill-fated Donner party resorted to cannibalism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is also an article on Discovery News &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/history/donner-party-cannibalism.html&quot;&gt;Donner Party Ate Family Dog, Maybe Not People:  Did ethnic prejudice spur the now infamous legend of the Donner Party's cannibalism?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which is it? Did they eat the forbidden flesh or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a large amount of background and accounts of cannibalism that I have picked through from the fairly long wikipedia article on the Donner Party.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Party&quot;&gt;wikipedia:Donner Party&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Donner Party was a group of 87 American pioneers who set out in a&#xA;  wagon train headed west for California, only to find themselves&#xA;  trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada [in what is now known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donner_Pass&quot;&gt;Donner Pass&lt;/a&gt; elevation 2150m]. The subsequent casualties were&#xA;  extremely high, and many of the survivors cannibalized members of the&#xA;  party who had already died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The wagons left Missouri for California in May of 1846.... They had&#xA;  planned to be in California by September ... but found themselves&#xA;  trapped in the Sierra Nevada by early November...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Quickly, food stores ran out and a group of 15 men and women&#xA;  attempted to reach California on snowshoes in December, but became&#xA;  disoriented in the mountains, then succumbed to starvation and cold.&#xA;  Only seven members of the snowshoe party survived, by eating the flesh&#xA;  of those who had died  ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...No one at Truckee Lake had died during the interim between the&#xA;  departure of the first relief party and the arrival of the second&#xA;  relief party. Patrick Breen documented a disturbing visit in the last&#xA;  week of February from Mrs. Murphy, who said her family was considering&#xA;  eating Milt Elliott. Reed and McCutchen found Elliott's mutilated&#xA;  body.[126] The Alder Creek camp fared no better. The first two members&#xA;  of the relief party to reach it saw Trudeau carrying a human leg. When&#xA;  they made their presence known, he threw it into a hole in the snow&#xA;  that contained the mostly dismembered body of Jacob Donner. Inside the&#xA;  tent, Elizabeth Donner refused to eat, although her children were&#xA;  being nourished by the organs of their father.[127] The rescuers&#xA;  discovered that three other bodies had already been consumed...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Publication of Historical Accounts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last paragraph of the wikipedia article, three authors are noted to have produced written accounts of what happened:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although some survivors disputed the accounts of cannibalism, Charles &gt;McGlashan, who corresponded with many of the survivors over a 40-year period, &gt;documented many recollections that it occurred. [he later wrote &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://m.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6077.mobile&quot;&gt;History of the Donner Party&lt;/a&gt;&quot; in 1879]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://m.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11146.mobile&quot;&gt;Eliza Donner Houghton, in her 1911 account of the ordeal&lt;/a&gt;, did not&#xA;  mention any cannibalism at Alder Creek. Archaeological findings at the&#xA;  Alder Creek camp proved inconclusive for evidence of cannibalism&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eliza Farnham's 1856 account of the Donner Party was based largely on&#xA;  an interview with Margaret Breen. Her version details the ordeals of&#xA;  the Graves and Breen families after James Reed and the second relief&#xA;  left them in the snow pit. According to Farnham, seven-year-old Mary&#xA;  Donner suggested to the others that they should eat Isaac Donner,&#xA;  Franklin Graves, Jr., and Elizabeth Graves, because the Donners had&#xA;  already begun eating the others at Alder Creek, including Mary's&#xA;  father Jacob. Margaret Breen insisted that she and her family did not&#xA;  cannibalize the dead, but Kristin Johnson, Ethan Rarick, and Joseph&#xA;  King – whose account is sympathetic to the Breen family – do not&#xA;  consider it credible that the Breens, who had been without food for&#xA;  nine days, would have been able to survive without eating human flesh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Discovery article &quot;Donner Party Ate Family Dog, Maybe Not People:  Did ethnic prejudice spur the now infamous legend of the Donner Party's cannibalism?&quot; by Viegas (2010)&lt;/strong&gt; provides its own summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;THE GIST:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Analysis of bones discovered at the Donner Party campsite found no&#xA;  evidence for cannibalism  The members did resort to consuming the&#xA;  family dog, cattle, deer and horses. Slate pieces and china shards&#xA;  reveal the members tried to live with dignity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This portion also seems relevant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Detailed analysis of the bones instead found that the 84 Donner Party&#xA;  members consumed a family dog, &quot;Uno,&quot; along with cattle, deer and&#xA;  horses. Cattle, likely eaten after the animals themselves died of&#xA;  starvation, appear to have been their mainstay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't a bit late for an examination of bones and garbage from around the camp?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the Donner Party resort to cannibalism, or is that merely pernicious slander embellished to sell books and newspapers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2012-04-13T11:02:54.270" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T01:45:53.970" Title="Did the Donner party resort to cannibalism while snowbound in 1846-7?" Tags="|history|cannibalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8877" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-04-13T10:11:44.510" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-04-13T10:11:44.510" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T10:11:44.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8878" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-04-13T10:11:44.510" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for claims about the law. This must be almost always be accompanied by a country tag, such as [united-states] to clarify which country's laws the claim is about." OwnerUserId="4727" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:13:22.020" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:13:22.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8879" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-04-13T10:14:16.983" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-04-13T10:14:16.983" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T10:14:16.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8880" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-04-13T10:14:16.983" Score="0" Body="for questions about claims based on cannibalism, the act of individuals eating other individuals of the same species." OwnerUserId="48266" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-08-31T12:03:34.920" LastActivityDate="2019-08-31T12:03:34.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8882" CreationDate="2012-04-13T10:55:23.673" Score="43" ViewCount="16580" Body="&lt;p&gt;The pictures of nebulae are always depicted as vividly colored and with a great variety of colors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/At6tT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Omega nebula&quot;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/72/Omega_Nebula.jpg/296px-Omega_Nebula.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Omega nebula&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IWmgG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Eagle nebula pillars&quot;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eagle_nebula_pillars.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Eagle nebula pillars&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;English wikipedia article on nebulae&lt;/a&gt;, under the section &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula#Formation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Formation&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;«as the material collapses under its own weight, massive stars may form in the center, and their ultraviolet radiation ionizes the surrounding gas, &lt;strong&gt;making it visible at optical wavelengths&lt;/strong&gt;.»&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that we can see the nebulae, but not whether we see them colored or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/omega-nebula/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on Wired.com, there is a photograph of the Omega Nebula, which states: &lt;em&gt;«Looking more like a painting than an astronomy photograph, the Omega nebula glows with vivid colors in this new image from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. [...] The heart of the Omega nebula contains roughly 35 stars, the hottest of which spew out ultraviolet radiation that causes the surrounding hydrogen gas to glow red and pink.»&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On another site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seasky.org/celestial-objects/nebulae.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;seasky.org&lt;/a&gt;, the article states: &lt;em&gt;«They are also among the most beautiful objects in the universe, glowing with rich colors and swirls of light. Stars inside these clouds of gas cause them to glow with beautiful reds, blues, and greens.»&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I want to know is: if we could observe directly these nebulae, either by telescope or with our own eyes, would they appear like this? If not, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4727" LastEditorUserId="4727" LastEditDate="2012-04-16T12:03:11.743" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T22:10:58.600" Title="Are nebulae colored?" Tags="|physics|ophthalmology|astronomy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8881" CreationDate="2012-04-13T11:42:23.233" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HubbleSite - Behind The Pictures&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Meaning of Color&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/U36wT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Meaning of Color&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The colors in Hubble images, which are assigned for various reasons, aren't always what we'd see if we were able to visit the imaged objects in a spacecraft&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We often use color as a tool, whether it is to enhance an object's detail or to visualize what ordinarily could never be seen by the human eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Example: The Eagle Nebula&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0aLiP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Eagle Nebula&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;The three B&amp;amp;W images each correspond to a certain wavelength (=color).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WYT92.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Three Colors&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Left&lt;/strong&gt;: Oxygen - Green&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Middle&lt;/strong&gt;: Hydrogen - Red&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Right&lt;/strong&gt;: Sulfur - Red&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of these B&amp;amp;W images are then (re-)assigned a unique color, &lt;em&gt;because otherwise the red light from hydrogen and that from sulfur would be hard to tell apart.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Choosing Colors&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/L3JuZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Color as a Tool&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why are the inital images B&amp;amp;W?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The digital camera you have at home basically works the same way: &lt;a href=&quot;http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cameras-photography/digital/question362.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Light is &amp;quot;converted&amp;quot; into electrons.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://panasonic.jp/support/global/cs/dsc/knowhow/knowhow29.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Panasonic&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Since a &lt;a href=&quot;http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cameras-photography/digital/question362.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CCD&lt;/a&gt; can only distinguish whether light is strong or weak, color filters are used to obtain each color's light and dark information.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wX6J6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;RGB&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;I modified the above picture to make it more clear&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can see that the &lt;em&gt;yellow&lt;/em&gt; flower emits more in &lt;em&gt;red&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;green&lt;/em&gt; (light) and less in &lt;em&gt;blue&lt;/em&gt; (dark).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jErpo.png&quot; alt=&quot;RGB&quot; /&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RGB_color_model&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RGB Color Model&lt;/strong&gt; on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Hubble's Color Filters&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hubble uses special filters to &amp;quot;screen out&amp;quot; the types of light from an object that astronomers are not currently studying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;These filters allow only a certain range of light wavelengths through.&lt;/strong&gt; Once the unwanted light has been filtered out, &lt;strong&gt;the resulting light is allowed to fall onto one or more light-sensitive detectors.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NCEeh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Spec Wheel&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This produces a &amp;quot;picture&amp;quot; of the star in the selected wavelength.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the detectors can detect light outside the visible light spectrum, the use of filters allows scientists to see &amp;quot;invisible&amp;quot; objects — those only visible in ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://hubblesite.org/the_telescope/nuts_.and._bolts/spec101.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Example: The Eagle Nebula&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BZmuL.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;M16&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=49866&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ESA&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Eagle Nebula in Visible Light (Wide Angle)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r7fGX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;M16 visible&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three-colour (blue, green, red) composite mosaic image of the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16, or NGC 6611), based on images obtained with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eso.org/sci/facilities/lasilla/instruments/wfi/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wide-field camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2 m-diameter telescope at the La Silla Observatory&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the centre, the &lt;em&gt;Pillars of Creation&lt;/em&gt; can be seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This wide-field image shows not only the central pillars, but also several others in the same star-forming region, as well as a huge number of stars in front of, in and behind the Eagle Nebula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=49868&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ESA&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2005/06/how_do_space_pictures_get_so_pretty.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slate - How Do Space Pictures Get So Pretty?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space.com/8059-truth-photos-hubble-space-telescope-sees.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Space.com - Truth Behind the Photos: What the Hubble Space Telescope Really Sees&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.universetoday.com/11863/true-or-false-color-the-art-of-extraterrestrial-photography/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Universe Today - True or False (Color): The Art of Extraterrestrial Photography&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T10:32:26.433" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8883" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-13T11:52:35.597" Score="23" ViewCount="105245" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is widely reported at several places that certain trees such as Peepal (Botanical name:Ficus religiosa) and Tulsi (Botanical name: Ocimum tenuiflorum) release oxygen even at night. My understanding has always been that photosynthesis can not take place in the absence of light. Is this phenomenon real? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The search results appear biased due to the religious connotations attached to the plants above, esp. in India. Here are some links where this is discussed: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.secrets-of-longevity-in-humans.com/oxygen-producing-plants.html&quot;&gt;http://www.secrets-of-longevity-in-humans.com/oxygen-producing-plants.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_some_trees_like_peepul_and_neem_even_emit_oxygen_at_night_time&quot;&gt;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_do_some_trees_like_peepul_and_neem_even_emit_oxygen_at_night_time&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And others found using the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/#hl=en&amp;amp;sclient=psy-ab&amp;amp;q=tree%20release%20oxygen%20at%20night&amp;amp;oq=trees%20that%20release%20oxygen&amp;amp;aq=2q&amp;amp;aqi=g-b1g-q3&amp;amp;aql=&amp;amp;gs_l=hp.11.2.0i8j0i22l3.1657l9284l0l10897l25l21l0l4l4l0l550l4763l0j11j8j1j0j1l25l0.&amp;amp;pbx=1&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&amp;amp;fp=7db0b50b83c4e821&amp;amp;biw=1366&amp;amp;bih=634&amp;amp;pf=p&amp;amp;pdl=300&quot;&gt;Google search &quot;tree release oxygen at night&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETA:&#xA;There is another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.questionswithanswer.com/how/how_is_it_possible_that_peepal_tree_releases_oxygen_all_the_time.html&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; that purports to explain the same, but uses so much jargon that it becomes impossible to decipher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most plants largely uptake Carbon dioxide (CO{-2})and release oxygen during the day (photosynthesis) and uptake oxygen and release CO{-2} during the night (respiration). Some plants such as Peepal tree can uptake CO{-2} during the night as well because of their ability to perform a type of photosynthesis called Crassulacean Acid Metabolism (CAM). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, it is not true that they release large amounts of oxygen during the night. CAM is one of the three types of photosynthesis pathways occurring commonly in plants; the other two being C3 and C4 pathways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of these, C3 is the most common among land plants. CAM occurs primarily in desert plants and epiphytes (plants that live on other plants, usually large trees). CAM plants do not open their stomata during the day in order to minimise water loss. During the night, they open their stomata and fix CO{-2} in the form of malate . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the day, they breakdown the malate and use the released CO2 through Kalvin cycle to produce sugars, similar to C3 plants. However, CAM is an energy inefficient reaction and hence plants use CAM only during certain conditions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peepal tree is a hemi-epiphyte in its native habitat i.e. the seeds germinate and grow as an epiphyte on other trees and then when the host-tree dies, they establish on the soil. It has been suggested that when they live as epiphyte, they use CAM pathway to produce carbohydrates and when they live on soil, they switch to C3 type photosynthesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, Peepal tree would either release or not release CO{-2} in the night depending on if they are epiphytic or not. For other CAM plants, it would depend on if they have adequate water or not, or other environmental factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3588" LastEditorUserId="3588" LastEditDate="2012-04-14T04:05:32.517" LastActivityDate="2019-02-02T09:08:32.343" Title="Plants that release oxygen even at night" Tags="|biology|plants|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8886" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-13T17:57:41.337" Score="5" ViewCount="570" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resveratrol is a buzz word in health science research.  It is hailed&#xA;as the discovery of “the fountain of  youth” .   In the past 10 years&#xA;over 500 medical research studies were performed. These studies&#xA;consistently demonstrate that life expectancy can be increased an&#xA;adjusted  25 to 35 years, as evidenced by good animal studies.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://naturalhealthsecrets.ws/1180/resveratrol-the-amazing-longevity-breakthrough/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Naturalhealthsecrets&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the state of the evidence that Resveratrol does, in fact, increase human life expectancy? (Even if the effect is lower than those 25 to 35 years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-08-23T20:18:45.867" Title="Does Resveratrol increase human life expectancy?" Tags="|nutrition|nutritional-supplements|life-expectancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8881" CreationDate="2012-04-13T19:43:41.363" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;To the human eye, nebulae always appear overwhelmingly B&amp;amp;W. Human dark-adapted eyes are much more sensitive to B&amp;amp;W (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation_%28eye%29&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;) and their color sensitivity shifts. There are only a few nebulae that are reliably visible to the naked eye and your pupil just can't pick up enough photons to detect color.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astropix.com/HTML/I_ASTROP/DSLR_HA.HTM&quot;&gt;This discussion of amateur astrophotography&lt;/a&gt; breaks down the colors that you would be able to perceive with enough aperture: essentially there's a lot of very faint red up there (from hydrogen emissions) and there's some amount of relatively &quot;bright&quot; blue that's caused by scattering similar to what happens in our atmosphere during the day. You can reliably perceive blue nebulosity in, for instance, the Orion nebula with moderate amateur equipment. With exceptional equipment and conditions (a 24&quot; Starmaster at 9000' on Mauna Kea) I've perceived faint red and green. Modern professional telescopes do not allow for direct visual observation :-( . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T19:43:41.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8846" CreationDate="2012-04-13T21:01:13.797" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't seem to be specifically forbidden, but only if the jackpot is fully deterministic, which would seem unwise. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://gaming.nv.gov/stats_regs/reg14_tech_stnds.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nevada Gaming Statutes regulating slot machines&lt;/a&gt; state that &#xA;the machine is allowed to communicate only for certain purposes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Remote access to a gaming device may only be granted for the  following activities:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(a)  Monitoring system health and performance;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(b)  Scheduling operational gaming device functions such as downloading of content;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(c)  Troubleshooting system issues;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(d)  Performing inquiry-only functions such as viewing logs or generating reports&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(e)  Any other activity that is approved by the Chairman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be argued that &quot;system health and performance&quot; could include the complete internal state of the machine. If the play were fully deterministic, that would seem to allow for the scenario you propose. But although software-based pseudo-random-number-generators (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;) are deterministic, &#xA;the results of the machine could be (and it would seem foolish not to) &quot;salted&quot; with impossible-to-predict inputs such as the millisecond at which the coin was dropped or the button pushed or what-have-you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The random number generator itself is not allowed to be externally manipulated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The random number generator and random selection process must be impervious to &#xA;  influences from outside the device, including, but not limited to, electro-magnetic interference, &#xA;  electro-static interference, and radio frequency interference. A gaming device must use &#xA;  appropriate communication protocols to protect the random number generator and random &#xA;  selection process from influence by associated equipment which is conducting data &#xA;  communications with the gaming device.&#xA;  (Adopted: 9/89. Amended: 11/05; 11/17/05)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T21:01:13.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="156" CreationDate="2012-04-13T21:27:42.857" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good overview about this including references is given by&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rokto.org/blood_vocation.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does blood type affect vocational behavior?&lt;/a&gt; by Andrew D. Carson, Ph.D.&#xA;In summary it states that an influence of the blood type on the behavior can not be fully dismissed out of hand, but there are also research results which did not found any connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except: (emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been a number of studies over the years testing relationships between blood type and personality, and the following brief review is &lt;strong&gt;illustrative rather than definitive&lt;/strong&gt;. I provide this review purely to demonstrate that claims of a relationship between blood type and personality should not be dismissed out of hand. &lt;strong&gt;Early published reports (Koga &amp;amp; Kato, 1934; Thompson, 1936) in general found no relation between blood type and personality traits or abilities.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, more recent research has tended to find some linkages. Rinieris, Stefanis, and Rabavilis (1980), in a large (N=600) study of normal individuals, found greater incidence of obsessional personality traits in blood types A, B, and AB than in type O. In a study of 137 graduate students, Marutham and Prakash (1990) found Type B individuals to have higher neuroticism scores (compared to types O and A) on the Eysenck Personality Inventory; there were no differences on either extraversion or Type A behavior pattern. In a small study of individuals with duodenal ulcers, Neumann, Shoaf, Harvill, Jones, and Edward (1992) reported that Type A individuals had higher trait anger, trait anxiety, and depression compared to Type O individuals on standard measures of personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are indeed relations between blood type and personality, then it is not impossible that there may also exist differences in typical blood type across occupations, and that some blood types are associated with greater performance or resistance to occupational stress than are others within given occupations. In other words, it may be possible to apply a person-environment fit theory of work using blood type as a person-attribute. &lt;strong&gt;However, I recommend a more thorough literature review, followed by empirical research directly testing this notion before engaging in further speculation along these lines.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found an journal paper which claimed a (small?) relationship between blood type and personality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1932327/pdf/ajhg00550-0013.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Blood Groups and Personality Traits&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, by R. B. CATTELL, H. BOUTOURLINE YOUNG, AND J. D. HUNDLEBY, published in the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAAN GENETICS, VOL. 16, No. 4 (DECEMBER), 1984.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SUMMARY:&#xA;The High School Personality Questionnaire, Form A (10 items per factor)&#xA;was given to 581 Italian or Italo-American boys averaging 14 years of age in&#xA;four different cities. They were also classified for ABO types. Analysis of&#xA;variance was used to detect associations between ABO type and the 13 personality&#xA;factors and intelligence.&#xA;An association beyond the P &amp;lt; .01 level was found for I factor, premsia vs.&#xA;harria (&amp;quot;tender-minded vs. tough-minded&amp;quot;), A blood type being more premsic,&#xA;and 0, B, and AB more harric, in that order. A relationship which appeared&#xA;to warrant further investigation was personality factor J, coasthenia, with&#xA;blood group AB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1072" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-13T21:27:42.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8876" CreationDate="2012-04-14T06:31:30.527" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there was cannibalism in the Donner Party. How do we know? Well, for one thing, a number of survivors -- William H. Eddy, Sarah Graves Fosdick, Mary Graves, Louis Keseberg, Georgia Donner, and others -- said they ate human flesh. In addition, rescuers found some of the emigrants preparing or consuming human flesh, and also saw the evidence of cannibalism in the form of mutilated corpses. Please see the recently published &lt;em&gt;An Archaeology of Desperation&lt;/em&gt; (University of Oklahoma Press, 2011) for factual information about the Donner Party and the Alder Creek digs.--Kristin Johnson, historian for the Donner Party Archaeology Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6764" LastActivityDate="2012-04-14T06:31:30.527" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8893" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-14T09:47:18.397" Score="12" ViewCount="4486" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been doing some research on breeding rabbits and saw many people mentioning that if you inbreed rabbits (father-daughter/mother-son/sister-brother) that there is only a small chance of birth defects and a chance at an improved outcome if the stock is already good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another party that says inbreeding leads to serious side effects including fused spine, skeletal problems and missing or extra limbs example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJrKWuieq-c&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the science say? I would be interested to find a range of answers if there is a difference between &quot;first generation&quot; of inbreeding and if it makes a difference if recurring inbreeding happens?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2012-04-14T10:00:03.670" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T15:21:55.283" Title="Does inbreeding cause severe birth defects?" Tags="|genetics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8895" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-14T15:20:46.023" Score="13" ViewCount="1106" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/px7uy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sleepwalker&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jokeroo.com/pictures/other/why-do-people-sleepwalk.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NeverWakeUpASleepwalker&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;common belief&lt;/a&gt; that you should&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;never wake up a sleepwalker&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepwalking#Treatment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia - Sleepwalking&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are conflicting viewpoints on whether it is harmful to wake a sleepwalker.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Some experts say that sleepwalkers should be gently guided back to bed without waking them. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Others counter that idea and state that waking a sleepwalker may result in their disorientation, but it is not harmful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, does waking a sleepwalker cause any harm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="4727" LastEditDate="2012-04-14T17:31:00.253" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T03:03:43.803" Title="Is it dangerous to wake a sleepwalker?" Tags="|medical-science|neurology|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8895" CreationDate="2012-04-14T20:05:40.903" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/17/science/studying-states-of-consciousness.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Awake or Knocked Out? The Line Gets Blurrier&lt;/a&gt; by James Gorman, published on April 12, 2012 in the &lt;em&gt;New York Times&lt;/em&gt;, talks about experiments involving different states of consciousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to what I infer from this article, if you 'wake' a sleepwalker you're then interacting with someone whose 'higher' brain function (i.e. the neocortex: I assume you know what that is) isn't active and in control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;do not expect an intelligent reaction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some unintelligent reactions are dangerous&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;apart from that it's harmless (though bewildering, perhaps annoying)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine#Origins &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How is the Castle doctrine relevant? I jokingly expected sleepwalking to be an exception to the idea that a natural right existed to kill a robber or other home invader. But, I saw no mention of sleepwalking... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That citation starts with Exodus 22:2-3 saying: &quot;it's OK to kill someone who invades your house&quot; (I read: sleep) &quot;during the night, but not ok during the day&quot; (I read: awake). Also, re. castle doctrine: if you interact with someone in their sleep, and if they irrationally choose to be dangerous, they have no duty to retreat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No duty to retreat: not because they're (sleepwalking) in their own house, but because they're unconscious (irresponsible, incapable of 'mens rea').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example from the news, of someone waking up their co-pilot: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/groggy-air-canada-pilot-unbuckled-seatbelts-caused-injuries-in-jet-dive-report/article2403820/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Groggy Air Canada pilot ... caused injuries in jet dive: report&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2012-04-17T03:03:43.803" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T03:03:43.803" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-04-15T00:27:32.277" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8958" CreationDate="2012-04-15T01:19:45.380" Score="21" ViewCount="30579" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often heard the story that if you cut a worm in half in the middle, both halves of the worm will grow the other part back, and you will eventually end up with two worms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6598" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-18T17:08:49.220" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T03:21:06.227" Title="Will a worm, cut in half, survive as two worms?" Tags="|physiology|mortality|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8901" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-15T05:30:52.267" Score="14" ViewCount="1447" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1377150/Every-language-evolved-single-prehistoric-mother-tongue-spoken-Africa.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Is this how Eve spoke? Every human language evolved from 'single prehistoric African mother tongue'&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; from the UK Daily Mail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every language in the world - from English to Mandarin - evolved from&#xA;a prehistoric 'mother tongue' first spoken in Africa tens of thousands&#xA;of years ago, a new study reveals. After analysing more than 500&#xA;languages, Dr Quentin Atkinson found compelling evidence that they can&#xA;be traced back to a long-forgotten dialect spoken by our Stone Age&#xA;ancestors. The findings don't just pinpoint the origin of language to&#xA;Africa - they also show that speech evolved at least 100,000 years&#xA;ago, far earlier than previously thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I find it difficult to believe that all humans ever spoke the same language or even a small handful of languages, say 3-4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the article, the evidence for this seems to be a theory that the sounds of local African languages are more complex because these languages have evolved more and are thus older.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr Atkinson, of Auckland University, has now come up with fascinating&#xA;evidence for a single African origin of language. In a paper published&#xA;today in Science, he counted the number of distinct sounds, or&#xA;phonemes, used in 504 languages from around the world and charted them&#xA;on a map. The number of sounds varies hugely from language to&#xA;language. English, for instance has around 46 sounds, some languages&#xA;in South America have fewer than 15, while the San bushmen of South&#xA;Africa use a staggering 200. Dr Atkinson found that the number of distinct  sounds in a language tends to increase the closer it is to sub-Saharan Africa....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... 'People have suspected for a long time that language arose with the origin of our species in Africa and this is consistent with that view.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wouldn't Dr Atkinson's findings also be consistent with African languages simply evolving at either a different rate or in a different way than other languages, instead of being older?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also a set of languages being older does not logically imply the existence of a single oldest language that was a universal mother tongue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At one time did all humans speak the same language [as in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tower of Babel]&lt;/a&gt;, or just a small handful of languages, or did early humans speak a variety of languages dependent upon geography and education, as today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T02:31:12.130" Title="Was there ever a universal human language or mother-tongue?" Tags="|language|anthropology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8902" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8911" CreationDate="2012-04-15T08:47:53.050" Score="11" ViewCount="5645" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people experience unease going through the airport, and it seems best to provide something soothing and uncontroversial to look at while walking to the aircraft .... like advertising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly I wouldn't expect to see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A dead child in a casket holding their bible&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/McfBA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;artwork allegedly on display at Denver International Airport&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Soldier marching through ruins complete with gun, sword, and gas mask and civilian casualties&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uUvaU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;artwork allegedly on display at Denver International Airport&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[ my descriptions, as titles are uncited in source article ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have these murals been on public display to travelers at the Denver International Airport?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_sociopol_denver.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_sociopol_denver.htm&lt;/a&gt;, which seems to contain conspiracy theory material, a large section is devoted to Denver International Airport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some claims, though repeated, about Denver's airport are so bizarre they seem like hoax material that no one would seriously believe:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that the runways form a swastika [doesn't really look like it to me]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that there is a secret base with underground buildings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that murals depict what the conspirators plan to do with the rest of us&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A google search for &quot;denver international airport bizarre murals&quot; turns ~50,000 hits and the first page shows a lot of similar material, much more than I would have expected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if these murals were ever there, or are still there, or are off in a special art gallery near the terminal, so that regular travelers would not be greeted by the images as they changed planes.  If absent, then this may be a complete hoax.  Even if present, a reasonable explanation for the murals would be expected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though Art in the United States is protected from government censorship by the First Amendment to the US Constitution as part of freedom of speech and press, I just can't imagine a busy airport sponsoring these kinds of disturbing images in the travel areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2012-04-15T09:09:40.463" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T23:28:04.533" Title="Does Denver International Airport display murals of conquering stormtroopers and dead children?" Tags="|psychology|art|airport-security|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8900" CreationDate="2012-04-15T10:24:12.120" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know this claim from my childhood about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;earthworms&lt;/a&gt;, not any kind of worms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story is untrue according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wormfarmguide.com/earthworms.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Worm Farm Guide&lt;/a&gt;. The two half do not survive independently. However, the head part can regrow some fraction at his back end if it got lost:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have heard that you can cut an earthworm in half and both halves will grow back. That's not true. If an earthworm is cut in half, it will usually die. However, it is true that if a third or less of the posterior portion of the worm gets chopped off, the earthworm can usually regrow that portion - but the chopped off posterior will not grow a new head&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also stated by the following sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://compost.css.cornell.edu/worms/faq.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://compost.css.cornell.edu/worms/faq.html&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What happens if you cut a worm in half?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost everyone wants to know the answer to this question. Some species of worms can regenerate, or re-grow, a new tail, if their tail is cut off. However, a worm cut too closely to its' head will have difficulty growing a new tail. Most worms will not regenerate a head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, we tell students that if you cut a worm in half, you will most likely end up with two dead pieces of worms. However, if you are lucky, the piece with the head may grow a new tail, so you will have one alive worm and one piece of dead worm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some worms have a natural reflex, in which they will eject their tail when the tail is pulled. For example, when a bird catches the tail end of a worm, the worm would eject or sever its' tail from the rest of its' body. Thus, the worm remains alive and safe, while the bird gets only part of the worm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.animalcorner.co.uk/insects/worms/worm_anatomy.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.animalcorner.co.uk/insects/worms/worm_anatomy.html&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a common myth that has been around for a long time now that if you cut a worm in half, the two halves will grow into worms - making 2 worms out of 1. This is very untrue. It is true that if a worm loses part of its body it will survive, but if you cut a worm into 2 pieces, one half will surely die. The half with the saddle (the fatter, pink part) will burrow itself into the soil and survive. It is not a good idea to cut worms in half or any other creature for that matter - it is very cruel - so please do not be taken in by this myth and leave the worms whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1072" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T10:24:12.120" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8904" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-15T13:20:19.250" Score="14" ViewCount="2386" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_E._Mann&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Michael E. Mann&lt;/a&gt; recounts a story in his recent book (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Hockey-Stick-Climate-Wars/dp/023115254X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1334494879&amp;amp;sr=1-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars)&lt;/a&gt; about an encounter with Hillary Clinton during a hostile congressional hearing. While he was fending off hostile questions from senators like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Inhofe&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Senator James Inhofe&lt;/a&gt; (who described climate change as &quot;the single greatest hoax ever perpetuated on the American public&quot;) Hillary Clinton asked a (friendly) question along the lines of &quot;what was the world like the last time carbon dioxide levels were this high?&quot; (the story is on pages 119-120 of the hardback version of Mann's book). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mann responded thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have to go back to the time of the dinosaurs probably to find CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels that we know were significantly higher than the CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This struck me as being something of a spur of the moment exaggeration (I still remember some of my training in geology), a view at least supported by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_atmosphere&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia summary&lt;/a&gt;. Mann neither gives a source nor a comment on his response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: has current thinking about historic CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels changed? Do we have more CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; than at any time since the Cretaceous when dinosaurs still roamed the earth? Or was Mann just using hyperbole for effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB: This isn't a question about the &lt;em&gt;effects&lt;/em&gt; of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; or about the broader issues of climate change. It is just about the specific topic of the history of the atmospheric level of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-01-02T14:23:03.987" LastActivityDate="2016-11-16T16:34:58.917" Title="Was the cretaceous the last time atmospheric carbon dioxide was significantly higher than it is today?" Tags="|climate-change|geology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8905" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-15T15:01:47.670" Score="2" ViewCount="833" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is widely believed that a warming world will be a worse world (but see this question for a discussion of the minority view: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7499/could-global-warming-be-good-for-life&quot;&gt;Could Global Warming be good for life?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The medical community seems to feel it has a responsibility to do something to help stop warming. But many of their attempts to link warming directly to health seem tenuous if not ridiculous. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c7008&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;news report&lt;/a&gt; from the British Medical Journal (BMJ), for example, reports 350,000 climate change deaths a year but as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c7008?tab=responses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;my response&lt;/a&gt; to the article points out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The major causes of death that climate change is supposed to&#xA;  exacerbate are malaria, diarrhoeal disease and malnutrition. As the report&#xA;  point out these deaths are entirely preventable with simple cheap actions&#xA;  (mosquito nets, rehydration solutions and basic dietary supplements). None&#xA;  of these have anything to do with climate change and any effort spent&#xA;  trying to reduce carbon dioxide emission is likely to be millions of times&#xA;  less effective in saving lives than spending on these simple, cheap&#xA;  remedies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other articles in the BMJ (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6357&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one by Roberts and Stott)&lt;/a&gt; have argued for strong connections between climate change and health and that doctors have a strong responsibility to engage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Responding to climate change could be the most important challenge that health professionals face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But all the measures they propose are things that would be good health measures even if global warming was not happening. Again a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/03/climate-bandwagon-and-public-health-dont-mix&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;skeptical response argues&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The authors (Roberts and Stott) seem to want us to focus our public&#xA;  health attention on climate lobbying (&quot;Responding to climate change could&#xA;  be the most important challenge that health professionals face&quot;). This is&#xA;  where being part of a bandwagon starts to damage public health. Every good&#xA;  measure they propose (eat less meat, walk more, drive less) is irrelevant&#xA;  to global warming. We should lobby for those anyway, and might be more&#xA;  effective if we didn't pretend that the climate was involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks to me as though medics are grasping at straws in an attempt to join the global warming bandwagon. I have a point of view already, but in the spirit of skepticism I ask this question to give space for a proper case to be made: &lt;strong&gt;are there any well documented areas where human health will be damaged because of a warmer climate?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T23:31:08.670" Title="Will a warming world directly damage human health?" Tags="|medical-science|climate-change|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8900" CreationDate="2012-04-15T16:18:44.220" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some worms with extraordinary regenerative capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example many species of flatworm categorized as &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planarian&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Planarians&lt;/a&gt;&quot; which are well known for being able to regenerate into two individuals when cut in half.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best general purpose reference on this I can find is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/~bu6/Introduction03.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;page&lt;/a&gt; written by Dr. Wolfgang Seifarth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The diagram on that page show some of the regenerations possible for that species. It can also regenerate if cut laterally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a more rigorous reference, Various research into the causes of this effect has been summarized in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.physics.illinois.edu/Selvin/PRS/498IBR/Planarian%20Regeneration_annurev.cellbio.2004.Reddien.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper published in the Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology&lt;/a&gt;. An illustrative quote from that paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a planarian is amputated transversely, two fragments are&#xA;  generated and are capable of regenerating (Pallas 1774; Johnson 1822,&#xA;  1825). The term polarity has been used to describe the fact that an&#xA;  anterior-facing wound will regenerate a head and a posterior-facing&#xA;  wound will regenerate a tail (Morgan 1901). “Something in the piece&#xA;  itself determines that a head shall develop at the anterior cut&#xA;  surface and a tail at the posterior cut surface. This “something” is&#xA;  what we call polarity”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed not only can it regenerate a head, but in a few cases, it can accidentally produce one with a head on each end!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Second, some small fragments, for example, from Dugesia tigrina&#xA;  animals, occasionally regenerate two-headed animals (Janus-heads)&#xA;  (Morgan 1898, 1904a) or, for example from D. lugubris animals,&#xA;  two-tailed animals (Morgan 1904d)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what they look like, perhaps this image from Wikipedia showing one of the two headed ones will give you an idea.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GzPjB.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Two Headed Planarian&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1226" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-04-17T06:19:44.057" LastActivityDate="2012-04-17T06:19:44.057" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8905" CreationDate="2012-04-15T20:05:29.693" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are definitely cases where global warming will damage human health.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you live in the Maldives, then &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maldivesmission.ch/index.php?id=68&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a rise in sea level of several feet will flood your country&lt;/a&gt;, drowning you (if it happens fast enough) but more likely turning you into a stateless refugee, with the well-documented health problems that go along with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In certain parts of the world &lt;a href=&quot;http://ecoethics.net/cyprus-institute.us/PDF/Rosensweig-Food-Supply.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;climate change can affect the viability of crops&lt;/a&gt;, resulting in malnutrition for those unable to buy imported food. Malnutrition is definitely a health problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm not going to get into the detailed arguments as to how likely these effects are to occur - see any question or discussion of climate change for arguments).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point about the articles you quote isn't whether global warming can harm health. it's about whether it is politically sensible to focus on climate change as a means of advancing certain policies (walk more, drive less)  that would definitely have a beneficial effect on &lt;em&gt;British&lt;/em&gt; health (the main area of focus of the BMJ) while also providing minor benefits in terms of climate change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-04-11T23:31:08.670" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T23:31:08.670" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8909" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16456" CreationDate="2012-04-15T20:58:33.353" Score="33" ViewCount="134488" Body="&lt;p&gt;Making the rounds is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apparentlyapparel.com/2/post/2012/03/pyramids-of-glass-submerged-in-the-bermuda-triangle.html&quot;&gt;this story about glass pyramids underwater at the Bermuda Triangle&lt;/a&gt;. They're claiming they were discovered by an oceanographer but they I find no mention of this story in popular press and no actual scientific articles referenced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These strange underwater pyramid structures at a depth of two thousand meters were identified with the help of a sonar according to oceanographer Dr. Verlag Meyer. Studies of other structures like Yonaguni in modern day Japan have allowed scientists to determine that the two giant pyramids, apparently made of something like a thick glass, are really impressive - each of them is larger than the pyramid of Cheops in Egypt.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything to back up these claims? Other sources are skeptical:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It doesn't sound too real to me,&quot; said Calvin Jones of the Florida state Division of Historical Resources.  &quot; I'm always open minded because we`re always learning new things. But the idea of a pyramid structure, let alone one made of glass, under more than 10 feet of water -- the chances are about one in a million.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5040" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-05T01:08:04.920" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T14:10:27.580" Title="Were pyramids of glass found under the Bermuda Triangle?" Tags="|archeology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8910" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8960" CreationDate="2012-04-15T21:25:49.467" Score="24" ViewCount="7508" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, yes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism&quot;&gt;atheism&lt;/a&gt; isn't a religion. Taking from the Wikipedia link, atheism is defined as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3rGev6OZ3w&quot;&gt;Penn Jillette&lt;/a&gt; claims (at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;amp;v=E3rGev6OZ3w#t=354s&quot;&gt;5:54&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I believe, if you counted atheism as a religion, it's the fastest growing religion in the history of the United States of America. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am doubting this. The US seems like such a religious country still, I find it hard to believe that atheism is growing that fast. Especially since &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1786422&amp;amp;page=1&quot;&gt;atheist are the most distrusted group in America&lt;/a&gt;, ahead of gays, Muslims, and blacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the purpose of answerability:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;only openly declared atheists or non-believers are counted (for example, in a census or poll);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;only large and/or officially recognized religions are counted (say, that have at least 1 million adherents in the US);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;confounding factors (&quot;more acceptable to come out&quot;) are ignored;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;self-description is what counts (if you call yourself a Christian in a poll, you are a Christian for our purposes).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;either proportional or absolute terms are counted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Points 1. and 4. may seem arbitrary but I think they are strongly correlated/proportional to &quot;true&quot; believers. I think we can make the question answerable by assuming this as an objective criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Point 2. removes the &quot;yesterday it was me, today it's me and 4 friends: 500% growth!&quot; factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding point 3, let's make an arbitrary assumption that an &quot;out&quot; atheist counts &quot;more&quot; than a &quot;closet&quot; atheist, because in a sense it's still an increase of numbers. I am not sure it's right to correct for these, and that Penn Jillette claims otherwise. If you find real numbers to quantify these people do so for bonus points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding point 5, Jillette doesn't say what he means about this and I think an answer can easily cover both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-05-29T22:39:22.360" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T22:39:22.360" Title="Is atheism the fastest growing &quot;religion&quot; in the history of the United States?" Tags="|united-states|religion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8902" CreationDate="2012-04-15T23:19:44.940" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, they are there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The top image is part of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flydenver.com/artdetailpage?URI=tcm:8-34021&amp;amp;PURI=tcm:8-34002&quot;&gt;In Peace and Harmony with Nature&#xA;Artist: Leo Tanguma | Location: Jeppesen Terminal, Level 5&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second image is part of a two frame mural titled:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Children of the World Dream of Peace (right side) which is also by Leo Tanguma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not mentioned on the DIA website where the right hand panel is located, but it does list the left hand panel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of conspiracy theories around the airport and the images themselves which you don't specifically ask about, but the artist does &lt;a href=&quot;http://leotanguma.com/DIA-conspiracy-theories.html&quot;&gt;address them on his website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To the many people who have viewed or MAY view my DIA murals in the future, I wish to explain their thematic subjects and their meanings. I do so after seeing repeated postings on the internet suggesting the most outrageous and sinister interpretations of my murals by conspiracy theorists. Those ridiculous assertions, however, have caused confusion among some and it is for their benefit that I write these lines&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-15T23:28:04.533" LastActivityDate="2012-04-15T23:28:04.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8912" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8913" CreationDate="2012-04-16T04:13:17.337" Score="6" ViewCount="13674" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the tv show &lt;em&gt;&quot;1000 Ways To Die&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, a death that is mentioned (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_Ways_to_Die_%28season_1%29#Episode_10%3a_Cure_for_the_Common_Death.2C_Part_I&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Season 1, episode 10, death #710&lt;/a&gt;) claims that a girl exploded from what would seem to be decompression poisoning&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A female scuba diver waits in a decompression chamber after making an emergency swim back to the surface. A maintenance worker, not knowing the diver is in the room, releases the pressure of the room, causing her body to instantly explode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6598" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-16T09:05:24.043" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T20:49:08.203" Title="Can decompression after diving cause you to explode?" Tags="|physiology|physics|mortality|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8912" CreationDate="2012-04-16T07:22:41.400" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible for a person to effectively 'explode' in the event of an explosive decompression, but only if the pressure differential is significant. A chilling example of this is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin#Diving_bell_accident&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Byford Dolphin diving bell accident&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;, where divers were decompressed from 9 to 1 atmospheres. This sort of catastrophic injury &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8521/would-a-humans-blood-suddenly-boil-or-eyes-body-explode-in-a-vacuum&quot;&gt;does not occur&lt;/a&gt; in the case of explosive decompression of an aircraft or spacecraft as the pressure differential is too small, however death can still occur through hypoxia and/or outgassing of dissolved gasses &lt;em&gt;in vivo&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;Whilst the wikipedia article is not graphic, some readers may find the description of the event disturbing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/00000433-198806000-00002&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;An explosive decompression accident&quot; in the  American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fate of diver 4 clearly demonstrates the tremendous force released in an accident like this. He was undoubtedly mutilated when he was shot out through the small opening left by the jammed chamber door. However, the expulsion of all internal organs from the thoracoabdominal &quot;sack,&quot; including the spinal column and the ribs, suggest that he also must have exploded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4060" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T20:49:08.203" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8909" CreationDate="2012-04-16T09:15:02.923" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This story appeared in &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.fr/books?id=8vMDAAAAMBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA4&amp;amp;lpg=PA4&amp;amp;dq=weekly%20world%20news%20pyrmaids&amp;amp;source#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=weekly%20world%20news%20pyrmaids&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;May 1991 in &lt;em&gt;Weekly World News&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cp2x3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Cover&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/g4ska.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Part 1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nq5NT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Part 2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;How seriously should one take &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekly_World_News&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Weekly World News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; ?&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Well, you'll have to judge for yourself, but here are two &lt;a href=&quot;http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/3075/five-classic-weekly-world-news-covers/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sample covers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lF8eL.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Cover Stories&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T09:15:02.923" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8915" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-16T09:36:50.087" Score="10" ViewCount="1258" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research by Magda Havas, Ph.D., of Trent University in Canada, and U.S. epidemiologist Samuel Milham, M.D., links something called “dirty electricity” with diabetes, malignant melanoma, and cancers of the breast, thyroid, uterus and lung. Dirty electricity is an industry term that describes a multi-frequency exposure when higher frequencies like RF couple with the lower frequencies running along power lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BPL (Broadband-Over-Power-Lines) is 100% dirty electricity — that’s how it functions — and people barraged by it can now measure RF radiation emanating from their light sockets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bantexassmartmeters.com/2012/documentation-issues-installation-smart-meters/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DOCUMENTATION on Issues Regarding the installation of Smart Meters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is any of this supported by evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do these people have the qualifications claimed here?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do these people claim what is summarised?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will &amp;quot;dirty electricity&amp;quot; cause cancer?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can people &amp;quot;measure RF radiation emanating from their light sockets&amp;quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T09:36:50.087" Title="Does &quot;dirty electricity&quot; cause cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|safety|electromagnetism|cancer|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8905" CreationDate="2012-04-16T11:29:39.863" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/series/health-and-climate-change&quot;&gt;The Lancet published a series of papers on health and climate change&lt;/a&gt; in 2009. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The series is framed from the perspective of: how does climate-change mitigation provide a health dividend? And that's pretty much the same question as asked here, &quot;Will a warming world directly damage human health?&quot;, from a different perspective. Either we mitigate climate change successfully, and get the health benefits; or we don't, and health suffers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736%2809%2961759-1&quot;&gt;Haines et al&lt;/a&gt; summarised the findings of the whole series, and is the best place to start in grasping the breadth of issues, summarising the findings across all the papers. I'll give a quick overview below: first of the most directly-relevant paper, and then of three of the context-relevant papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the specifics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One of the most significant papers in that series relates directly to the question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736%2809%2961993-0&quot;&gt;Chan&lt;/a&gt; found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several health consequences of a changing climate have been identified with a high degree of certainty. Malnutrition, and its devastating effects on child health, will increase. Worsening floods, droughts, and storms will cause more deaths and injuries. Heat waves will cause more deaths, largely among people who are elderly. Finally, climate change could alter the geographical distribution of disease vectors, including the insects that spread malaria and dengue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The other papers looked at additional health benefits of climate-change mitigation:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, the causal linkage is one step back: climate-change mitigation measures will reduce global warming, and bring health benefits. Absence of these mitigation measures will lead to worse global warming, and worsened health. So, in addition to the direct causal links identified by Chan above, there are several links between a warming world and worsened health, that come about via the common cause of absence of mitigation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736%2809%2961713-X&quot;&gt;Wilkinson et al&lt;/a&gt; found that for household energy, on the subject of interventions to prevent global warming:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;interventions were generally beneficial for health. For a strategy of combined fabric, ventilation, fuel switching, and behavioural changes, we estimated 850 fewer disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), and a saving of 0·6 megatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), per million population in 1 year &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736%2809%2961714-1&quot;&gt;Woodcock et al&lt;/a&gt; found that, in a study of Delhi and London:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In both cities, we noted that reduction in carbon dioxide emissions through an increase in active travel and less use of motor vehicles had larger health benefits per million population (7332 disability-adjusted life-years [DALYs] in London, and 12 516 in Delhi in 1 year) than from the increased use of lower-emission motor vehicles (160 DALYs in London, and 1696 in Delhi). However, combination of active travel and lower-emission motor vehicles would give the largest benefits (7439 DALYs in London, 12 995 in Delhi), notably from a reduction in the number of years of life lost from ischaemic heart disease (10–19% in London, 11–25% in Delhi). Although uncertainties remain, climate change mitigation in transport should benefit public health substantially. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736%2809%2961715-3&quot;&gt;Markandya et al&lt;/a&gt; found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Changes in modes of production of electricity to reduce CO2 emissions would, in all regions, reduce PM&lt;sub&gt;2·5&lt;/sub&gt; and deaths caused by it, with the greatest effect in India and the smallest in the EU. Health benefits greatly offset costs of greenhouse-gas mitigation,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="6236" LastEditDate="2012-04-16T11:38:36.313" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T11:38:36.313" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4159" CreationDate="2012-04-16T11:48:16.320" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a near-miss answer: it addresses only 60 km/h roads, not highways. Nonetheless, it addresses some of the attitudes to driving described in the question, so it may shed some light on the answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;60 km/h&lt;/strong&gt; speed-limits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Driving &lt;strong&gt;faster&lt;/strong&gt; than the speed limit is associated with a &lt;strong&gt;huge increase&lt;/strong&gt; in the chance of being involved in an accident involving a casualty.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Driving &lt;strong&gt;slightly slower&lt;/strong&gt; than the speed limit doesn't make much difference.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Driving &lt;strong&gt;very slowly&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. 40 km/h in a 60 km/h zone) is associated with a &lt;strong&gt;moderate increase&lt;/strong&gt; in the chance of being involved in an accident involved a casualty.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is illustrated in &lt;a href=&quot;http://casr.adelaide.edu.au/speed/vol-1.html#sec4.1.4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Table 4.3&lt;/a&gt; of a 1997 report from the NHMRC Road Accident Research Unit of The University of Adelaide: Kloeden CN, McLean AJ, Moore VM, Ponte G, &lt;a href=&quot;http://casr.adelaide.edu.au/speed/vol-1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Travelling Speed and the Risk of Crash Involvement&lt;/a&gt;, Volume 1 - Findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their headline finding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a 60 km/h speed limit area, the risk of involvement &#xA;  in a casualty crash doubles with each 5 km/h increase &#xA;  in travelling speed above 60 km/h.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kSz7H.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Graph of relative risk&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correlation is not causality. Correlation is not causality. Correlation is not causality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T11:48:16.320" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8443" CreationDate="2012-04-16T12:48:41.060" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this is really going to depend heavily upon what you are defining &quot;chi&quot; (or &quot;qi&quot; or &quot;ki&quot;) as and what the context is. To take things from a slightly different angle, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aikido&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;aikido&lt;/a&gt; relies heavily upon the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aikidofaq.com/philosophy/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;concept of &quot;ki&quot;&lt;/a&gt; which relates to the Chinese concept of &quot;chi&quot; but is very overloaded in that it doesn't really have a well defined definition of what it means and if you talk to some aikido-ka they will tell you it means one thing, other's well tell you another thing, and still others will say it's bunk. However, the truth of the matter seems to be somewhere in the middle as you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94sOPZ4WtyY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;watch an aikido demostration&lt;/a&gt; and see that they are in fact doing effective techniques regardless of the language in which it is taught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wickedlocal.com/beverly/sports/adult_leagues/x1468646730/Beverly-master-Bernie-Mulligan-reaches-highest-rank-in-Aikido#ixzz1sCpDhDjz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Shihan Bernie Mulligan&lt;/a&gt; &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; described the concept of &quot;chi&quot; in aikido loosely as follows (quoted from article):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All Aikido techniques use a circular motion around a balanced core or center. The student directs his/her weight to their lower abdomen, and must maintain a calm but alert mind. The centering of weight and clarity of thought contributes to a state of “ki,” or a strong spiritual energy. Students also learn how to capture energy from the opponent and redirect it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along with some comments about how there is nothing magical about it, just that you don't understand it until you have trained yourself to understand it subconsciously in the same way that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle_memory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;muscle memory&lt;/a&gt; works for anything else you continuously practice. Thus, when it comes to aikido, &quot;chi&quot; is less about a single poorly defined &quot;energy&quot; and more about the sum of your &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrioception&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sense of balance&lt;/a&gt; coupled with a better awareness of your own &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;momentum&lt;/a&gt; in your movement. Likewise, the redirection of your opponents &quot;chi&quot; is nothing more than taking that same understanding of momentum and coupling it with a mild understanding of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fightingarts.com/reading/article.php?id=423&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bodies pressure points&lt;/a&gt; &lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; and basic mechanics of the human body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with that in mind, is &quot;chi&quot; an energy flowing through the body, well, maybe if you are very liberal with your definitions; however, it does become less of a &quot;magical&quot; concept and more of one grounded in reality. Just with very vague language wrapped around it which does make it easier to explain things to students at times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Shihan&quot; is effectively the highest rank you can make in aikido and isn't given out very often. The current list of aikido-ka at this level is &lt;a href=&quot;http://usafaikidonews.com/usaf-shihan/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;very short&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pressure points is poorly defined at times and in this context I mean weak points in the body that you can manipulate via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_lock&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;joint locks&lt;/a&gt; or just the application of pain to encourage someone to move differently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T12:48:41.060" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8920" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8925" CreationDate="2012-04-16T15:51:28.580" Score="9" ViewCount="2574" Body="&lt;p&gt;Within the past few months, Warren Buffett has been quoted as saying he only paid 15% income tax while his secretary paid much more (I think the number is 35%, but I could be wrong). This &quot;fact&quot; has been used as an argument for raising taxes on the wealthy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without having her tax return I know we can only &lt;em&gt;speculate&lt;/em&gt;, but are there any clues that can point us to a true or false assumption? The way the US tax code works is on tax brackets, so having an overall tax rate of 35% seems, well, rather foolish (or you need a better CPA)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For bonus points, was Buffet talking about his income as most Americans have (ie, a pay check from some company) or was he including capital gains? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA; according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/01/warren-buffett-and-his-secretary-talk-taxes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bosanek [his secretary] pays a tax rate of 35.8 percent of income, while Buffett pays a rate at 17.4 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Did Ms Bosanek have an effective tax rate of 35.8%?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6204" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-04-18T07:58:43.613" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T07:58:43.613" Title="Did Warren Buffett pay a lower rate of income tax than his secretary?" Tags="|united-states|taxes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6881" CreationDate="2012-04-16T16:13:03.827" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This just made &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17702226&quot;&gt;BBC news&lt;/a&gt; again, so bit more data on the myth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A couple of years ago, there were more Cayennes circulating in Greece&#xA;  than individuals who declared and paid taxes on an annual income of&#xA;  more than 50,000 euros, a figure only slightly above the vehicle's&#xA;  list price&quot; is a quote widely reported in mainstream media and on&#xA;  blogs worldwide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It came from Prof Herakles Polemarchakis, a former economics adviser&#xA;  to the prime minister of Greece, and now a lecturer at Warwick&#xA;  University in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But when asked, Prof Polemarchakis said his remark was casual, based&#xA;  on what had been circulating in policy circles in Greece a few years&#xA;  back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He said the only hard fact he was aware of was &quot;the per capita number&#xA;  of Cayennes in [the Greek city of] Larissa was twice that of Cayennes&#xA;  in the OECD countries&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So what are the facts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In 2010, there were 311,428 people with declared incomes of more than 50,000 euros (£41,260) paying tax in Greece.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a figure that made a spokesman at Porsche laugh. Lukas Kunze&#xA;  says the story is &quot;ridiculous&quot;. &lt;strong&gt;In total, they had only sold around&#xA;  1,500 Porsche Cayennes in Greece since the launch of the luxury car&#xA;  nine years ago&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T16:13:03.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8905" CreationDate="2012-04-16T17:27:38.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people die each year due to heat waves around the world, so for me it seems obvious that an overall warmer climate could result in more severe heat waves and more deaths due to that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what seems obvious to me maybe does not seem obvious to others. However according this research article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/info%3adoi/10.1289/ehp.1002430&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Toward a Quantitative Estimate of Future Heat Wave Mortality  under Global Climate Change&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Heat waves have had debilitating effects on human mortality, and global climate models predict an increase in the frequency and severity of heat waves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors are trying to estimate a future increase in deaths due to heat waves in the city of Chicago using global climate models concluding that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this study, we have estimated future annual excess mortality attributable to heat waves for Chicago, Illinois, a major U.S. city, using several global climate models and climate change scenarios. We found considerable variability in the projections of annual heat wave mortality, with point estimates ranging from 166 to 2,217 deaths per year. In particular, the largest source of variation appeared to be the different climate model implementations, followed by variation due to statistical noise and the choice of SRES. Nevertheless, even in the presence of large intermodel variations, the results of our analysis suggest that annual heat wave mortality will increase in the future and that a mitigation of this projected increase may be expected through a lower pathway of future CO2 emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6611" LastEditorUserId="6611" LastEditDate="2012-04-16T18:14:51.420" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T18:14:51.420" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8920" CreationDate="2012-04-16T18:54:56.403" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to (at least the start of) &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204002304576627420875519978.html&quot;&gt;this WSJ article&lt;/a&gt; in October 2011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he made almost $63 million last year, yet paid less than $7 million in federal income tax&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;though it is well known that his salary as chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway is $100,000 and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/2001/04/26/buffett.html&quot;&gt;has been for many years&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The secretary tax rate issue (taking account of federal income tax and payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare) has also been running since at least this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/26/business/yourmoney/26every.html?_r=1&quot;&gt;NYT column in 2006&lt;/a&gt; which pointed out that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it looks like a combination of different income tax treatment of different types of incomes and gains, together with non-progressive Social Security contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that given Warren Buffett's charitable donations (e.g. he is giving over $1 billion a year over 20 years to the Gates Foundation), a modest amount of tax planning could reduce his tax rate to almost nothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-04-16T18:54:56.403" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8927" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22414" CreationDate="2012-04-16T23:46:10.397" Score="4" ViewCount="704" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’ve heard this claim from several people in Ukraine: people who die of alcoholism tend to have little trace of atherosclerosis (fatty deposits which lead to heart attacks and strokes) in their veins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(obviously this doesn’t help people who want to prevent atherosclerosis in order to live longer, but nevertheless an interesting result if true)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastEditorUserId="106" LastEditDate="2012-04-16T23:51:40.453" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T12:16:21.500" Title="Does heavy alcoholism prevent atherosclerosis?" Tags="|nutrition|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8929" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18513" CreationDate="2012-04-17T08:09:59.570" Score="14" ViewCount="6172" Body="&lt;p&gt;An ion heater manufacturer &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stafor.lv/ion/index.php?part=6&amp;amp;lng=en&amp;amp;part2=18&quot;&gt;claims their ion heaters&lt;/a&gt; are a lot more efficient than common electric heaters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How ion boilers (heaters) STAFOR can reach COP 1,57?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In solid conductors only half (statistically) of the free electrons react to the applied voltage. In liquid conductors, if using special construction ionization chamber, it is possible to achieve that almost all of the free electrons will react to the applied voltage. This means that - theoretically it is possible to achieve COP 2. At the moment company STAFOR EKO, ltd. (www.stafor.lv) managed to achieve COP 1,57. It is confirmed by certification of European Union approved Center of Metrology, protocol № 016TP11.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument about &quot;only half of the free electrons&quot; sounds like pseudo-science to me, or perhaps the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance&quot;&gt;COP (Coefficient of Performance)&lt;/a&gt; value is real, but it does not mean what it appears to mean? COP is used to compare heat pumps, but in case of a ion heater I cannot see anything gaining the energy from the environment. Yet the next paragraph says it is an &quot;economical .. product&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-04-17T09:46:34.480" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T18:37:40.530" Title="Are ion heaters significantly more efficient then normal electric heaters?" Tags="|physics|energy-efficiency|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8932" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8978" CreationDate="2012-04-17T12:55:20.167" Score="7" ViewCount="882" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the essay &#xA;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.clemson.edu/~wahoo/211/recycling%20myths.pdf&quot;&gt;Eight Great Myths&#xA;of Recycling&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, Daniel K. Benjamin (formerly a &lt;a href=&quot;http://economics.clemson.edu/daniel-k-benjamin&quot;&gt;Professor of Economics at Clemson University&lt;/a&gt;) lists a number of misunderstanding related to recycling, including specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We squander irreplaceable resources when we don't recycle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Recycling saves resources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically the author writes &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Trees are renewable, but what about nonrenewable resources&#xA;  such as fossil fuel? Here, too, there is no reason to fear that we will&#xA;  run out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for myth 5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the authors claims about &quot;never running out&quot; of resources justified as a reason not to recycle? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="1229" LastEditDate="2012-04-17T19:48:07.280" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T17:56:51.617" Title="Does recycling protect our resources?" Tags="|environment|recycling|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8933" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-17T17:42:24.077" Score="14" ViewCount="793" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a person who regularly contributes to comments sections on various news sites and political discussion forums, I have heard this claim being espoused by left-leaning commenters about the overwhelming amount of very similar conservative leaning comments on many news sites and political forums.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have long suspected it myself actually, they seem to come in waves, they all have very short, very similar posts.  Much of it seems to be chest beating or name calling. Many of their arguments seem to be recycled and usually there are no references or outside links to support anything they claim.  They almost never respond but when they do it is a very short strawman type defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In searching I found very little to support these claims, among them a Facebook page and the other a discussion forum for a radio show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2011/02/info-pay-post-trolls&quot;&gt;http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2011/02/info-pay-post-trolls&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/RepublicanDirtyTricks&quot;&gt;http://www.facebook.com/RepublicanDirtyTricks&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately there is little of substance here to help verify this claim, just a lot of people who notice similar patterns and have also reached the same hypothesis as I have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not necessarily asking for a smoking gun but is there any solid evidence that organizations are funding Pay-Per-Post campaigns to give discussion boards a political slant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about solid evidence of such activities being performed by left-wing think tanks and organizations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6794" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:07:48.030" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T02:42:06.483" Title="Do astroturfing campaigns target news sites and political discussion boards?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2795" CreationDate="2012-04-17T18:11:45.867" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;New study at the University of Illinois at Chicago reported by Medical daily: &lt;a href=&quot;http://medicaldaily.com/news/20120411/9496/alcohol-solving-skills-analytical-thinking-creativity-study.htm&quot;&gt;Drinking Alcohol May Significantly Enhance Problem Solving Skills&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientists found that men who drank two pints of beer or two glasses of wine before solving brain teasers were quicker in delivering correct answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the related scientific publication&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Highlights  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;We examine the effects of alcohol intoxication on creative problem solving.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sober and intoxicated (BAC = .075) individuals solved Remote Associates Test items.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Intoxicated individuals solved more items in a shorter time compared to sober.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Intoxicated individuals were more likely to rate their solutions as insightful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810012000037&quot;&gt;Uncorking the muse: Alcohol intoxication facilitates creative problem solving&lt;/a&gt; by &#xA;Andrew F. Jarosz, , Gregory J.H. Colflesh , Jennifer Wiley&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6796" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-03T10:58:26.563" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T10:58:26.563" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8936" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8943" CreationDate="2012-04-17T20:55:26.413" Score="17" ViewCount="21032" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read this comic: &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/579/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;xkcd: The Race (Part 3)&lt;/a&gt;, and felt the urge to shout &quot;Cite your references!&quot;.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NYP8p.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NYP8p.png&quot; alt=&quot;No, the best things about The Sarah Connor Chronicles were: (1) watching Sarah and Cameron try to pass for normal, and (2) Cameron throwing people and things through walls.  Everything else was pretty secondary.&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Is it true? Does the average human consume their body weight in food in just over a month?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6109" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-01-14T01:21:28.623" LastActivityDate="2017-08-14T21:48:00.053" Title="Does the average human eat their own body weight in food every month?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2141" CreationDate="2012-04-18T02:36:01.337" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tough question to answer as there is going to be cultural bias at play as different countries are going to have different &quot;standard&quot; sized tubs and different techniques for bathing. Case and point are some of the comments in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/2147/6629&quot;&gt;Skliwz's&lt;/a&gt; but also, if you look how the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treehugger.com/bathroom-design/navy-showers-water-saving-goes-hardcore.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;typical Japanese &quot;shower&quot; is done&lt;/a&gt; or even a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treehugger.com/bathroom-design/navy-showers-water-saving-goes-hardcore.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Navy shower&lt;/a&gt;&quot; then you will note that you can get pretty extreme with the water savings. Using the &quot;Navy shower&quot; example with the cited 11 L (3 US gallons) then showers would come out ahead as long as you are using bucket larger than 11 L. If I take a fairly typical &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1v/R-202264041/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&amp;amp;langId=-1&amp;amp;keyword=bucket&amp;amp;storeId=10051&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;5 US gallon (about 19 L) bucket&lt;/a&gt; then the cited argument is going to be false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To look at things from the perspective of the United States I'll take a shower head and bath tub on the unscientific method of &quot;cheapest possible and therefore what you will typically find in a typical apartment in the United States&quot;. This gives us a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homedepot.com/Bath-Bath-Tubs-Showers-Whirlpool-Tubs-Bath-Tubs-Soaking-Tubs/h_d1/N-5yc1vZbzci/R-100389008/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&amp;amp;langId=-1&amp;amp;storeId=10051&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;42 US gallon tub&lt;/a&gt; and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homedepot.com/Plumbing-Bathroom-Faucets-Shower-Heads-Hand-Showers-Shower-Heads/h_d1/N-5yc1vZbrdy/R-202551023/h_d2/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10053&amp;amp;langId=-1&amp;amp;storeId=10051&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2.5 US gallon per minute shower head&lt;/a&gt; &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. Assuming that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/445121.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;average shower in the United States is eight minutes&lt;/a&gt; then that means the shower consume 20 US gallons of water were as the tub would be fixed at 42 US gallons on the upper end (i.e. someone climbs in to the tub after it reaches the max fill) and likely around 21 US gallons if they climb in after it reaches the halfway mark. &lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the end, it all depends and there are a lot of variables at play with this statement. Odds are, depending upon where you are, you could manipulate the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;statistics&lt;/a&gt; to show that any of the above are going to be the most efficient although generally speculation the bucket is likely to be the most efficient in terms of water usage if the proper bathing technique is used. &lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Note that I'm bending the methodology here a bit as the cheaper shower heads were plastic and this was the cheapest metal shower head.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We could get a lot more accurate with these calculations, but then you also have to account for the fact that most people can't submerge their full body in the water and are likely sitting in the tub with most of their torso outside of the water. Also, you need to account for people that &quot;top off&quot; the hot water in the tub if they are soaking and it starts to cool off. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;i.e. If someone hands you a bucket, a washcloth, and some soap and tells you to clean yourself up using what you have, you will figure out how to make it work regardless.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T02:36:01.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8936" CreationDate="2012-04-18T03:36:14.523" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=846300&quot;&gt;a study by the clinical nutrition centre of Addenbrokes Hospital, Cambridge, UK&lt;/a&gt; measuring the food consumed by a random sample of the population of a Cambridge village:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The average weight of food eaten per day (excluding drinks) was 1277 g&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would give &lt;strong&gt;a month's weight of food as around 38kg&lt;/strong&gt;. That's less than the average weight of a person, by a factor of around 2. I would expect an average British person to be eating significantly more than the average for people worldwide. They could be eating less than the average for the US, but I doubt it is by a factor of 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;no the claim is not strictly true. But an error by a factor of two is actually pretty good for a web comic, and might be just a case of artistic license&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-04-19T08:16:38.453" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T08:16:38.453" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8933" CreationDate="2012-04-18T04:08:42.953" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to ignore the part of your question that seems to try to imply this is a left v right issue. However the answer to the simple version of your question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes there are definitely organized campaigns where people are paid to post internet comments that support a particular issue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2011/feb/23/need-to-protect-internet-from-astroturfing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article from the Guardian&lt;/a&gt; describing the practice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After I wrote about online astroturfing in December, I was contacted by a whistleblower. He was part of a commercial team employed to infest internet forums and comment threads on behalf of corporate clients, promoting their causes and arguing with anyone who opposed them. Like the other members of the team, he posed as a disinterested member of the public. Or, to be more accurate, as a crowd of disinterested members of the public: he used 70 personas, both to avoid detection and to create the impression there was widespread support for his pro-corporate arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indianexaminer.com/astroturfing-and-internet-comments.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Indian Examiner&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anyone writing a comment piece in Mandarin critical of the Chinese government, for example, is likely to be bombarded with abuse by people purporting to be ordinary citizens, upset by the slurs against their country. But many of them aren’t upset: they are members of the 50 Cent Party, so-called because one Chinese government agency pays 5 mao (half a yuan) for every post its tame commenters write. Teams of these sock-puppets are hired by party leaders to drown out critical voices and derail intelligent debates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the investigators Andy Rowell and Jonathan Matthews looked into a series of comments made by two people calling themselves Mary Murphy and Andura Smetacek. [...] When a Bivings [PR company] executive was challenged by Newsnight, he admitted that the “Mary Murphy” email was sent by someone “working for Bivings” or “clients using our services”. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/07/putin-hacked-emails-russian-nashi?newsfeed=true&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guardian article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A pro-Kremlin group runs a network of internet trolls, seeks to buy flattering coverage of Vladimir Putin and hatches plans to discredit opposition activists and media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general consensus is that anyone who can afford to now buys astroturfing teams much as they would buy other kinds of advertizing. You can even buy &quot;persona management software&quot; that allows to you set up and manage the necessary online accounts, and provide them with fake details needed to be plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-04-20T03:49:19.307" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T03:49:19.307" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8933" CreationDate="2012-04-18T11:44:43.023" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to DJClayworth's excellent answer, I dug in a little deeper and was inherently interested in the bit about the US Air Force interested in bids for Persona Management Software (which coincidentally I first discovered existed by reading his answer).  The Air Force has since taken the bid down but the DailyKo's has appeared to have saved the relevant information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED-The-HB-Gary-Email-That-Should-Concern-Us-All&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DailyKOs&lt;/a&gt; NOTE: Not an unbiased source so only considering relevant facts&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Solicitation Number:  RTB220610&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Notice Type:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Sources Sought &#xA;  Synopsis:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Added: Jun 22, 2010 1:42 pm &#xA;  Modified: Jun 22, 2010 2:07 pmTrack Changes&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  0001- Online Persona Management Service. 50 User&#xA;  Licenses, 10 Personas per user.  Software will allow 10 personas per&#xA;  user, replete with background , history, supporting details, and cyber&#xA;  presences that are technically, culturally and geographacilly&#xA;  consistent. Individual applications will enable an operator to&#xA;  exercise a number of different online persons from the same&#xA;  workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophisticated&#xA;  adversaries. Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly&#xA;  any part of the world and can interact through conventional online&#xA;  services and social media platforms. The service includes a user&#xA;  friendly application environment to maximize the user's situational&#xA;  awareness by displaying real-time local information.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;0002- Secure Virtual Private Network (VPN). 1 each  VPN provides the ability for&#xA;  users to daily and automatically obtain randomly selected  IP&#xA;  addresses through which they can access the internet. The daily&#xA;  rotation of  the user s IP address prevents compromise during&#xA;  observation of likely or  targeted web sites or services, while hiding&#xA;  the existence of the operation. In  addition, may provide traffic&#xA;  mixing, blending the user s traffic with traffic from  multitudes of&#xA;  users from outside the organization. This traffic blending provides &#xA;  excellent cover and powerful deniability. Anonymizer Enterprise&#xA;  Chameleon or equal   0003- Static IP Address Management. 50 each &#xA;  Licence protects the identity of government agencies and enterprise &#xA;  organizations. Enables organizations to manage their persistent online&#xA;  personas  by assigning static IP addresses to each persona.&#xA;  Individuals can perform  static impersonations, which allow them to&#xA;  look like the same person over time.  Also allows organizations that&#xA;  frequent same site/service often to easily switch IP  addresses to&#xA;  look like ordinary users as opposed to one organization. Anonymizer IP&#xA;  Mapper License or equal   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;0004- Virtual Private Servers, CONUS. 1 each&#xA;  Provides CONUS or OCONUS points of presence locations that are setup&#xA;  for  each customer based on the geographic area of operations the&#xA;  customer is  operating within and which allow a customer?s online&#xA;  persona(s) to appear to  originate from. Ability to provide virtual&#xA;  private servers that are procured using  commercial hosting centers&#xA;  around the world and which are established  anonymously. Once&#xA;  procured, the geosite is incorporated into the network and  integrated&#xA;  within the customers environment and ready for use by the customer. &#xA;  Unless specifically designated as shared, locations are dedicated for&#xA;  use by  each customer and never shared among other customers.&#xA;  Anonymizer Annual Dedicated CONUS Light Geosite or equal   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;0005- Virtual Private Servers, OCONUS. 8 Each  Provides CONUS or OCONUS&#xA;  points of presence locations that are setup for  each customer based&#xA;  on the geographic area of operations the customer is  operating within&#xA;  and which allow a customer?s online persona(s) to appear to  originate&#xA;  from. Ability to provide virtual private servers that are procured&#xA;  using  commercial hosting centers around the world and which are&#xA;  established  anonymously. Once procured, the geosite is incorporated&#xA;  into the network and  integrated within the customers environment and&#xA;  ready for use by the customer.  Unless specifically designated as&#xA;  shared, locations are dedicated for use by  each customer and never&#xA;  shared among other customers. Anonymizer Annual Dedicated OCONUS Light&#xA;  Geosite or equal   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;0006- Remote Access Secure Virtual Private Network.&#xA;  1 each  Secure Operating Environment provides a reliable and protected&#xA;  computing  environment from which to stage and conduct operations.&#xA;  Every session uses a  clean Virtual Machine (VM) image. The solution&#xA;  is accessed through sets of  Virtual Private Network (VPN) devices&#xA;  located at each Customer facility. The  fully-managed VDI (Virtual&#xA;  Desktop Infrastructure) is an environment that allows  users remote&#xA;  access from their desktop into a VM. Upon session termination,  the VM&#xA;  is deleted and any virus, worm, or malicious software that the user&#xA;  inadvertently downloaded is destroyed. Anonymizer Virtual Desktop&#xA;  Infrastructure (VDI) Solution or equal.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contracting Office Address: &#xA;  2606 Brown Pelican Ave.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  MacDill AFB, &#xA;  Florida 33621-5000&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  United States   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Place of Performance:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Performance will be at MacDIll AFB, Kabul, Afghanistan and Baghdad, Iraq.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  MacDill AFB , Florida 33679&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  United States&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result of this being brough to light from hacked emails by Anonymous also brought forth some more dirty laundry about plans for a similar smear campaign against WikiLeaks in retaliation for leaked documents between Bank of America and law firm Hunton &amp;amp; Williams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/17/hbgary_hack_redux/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TheRegister.co.uk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The leaked emails detail a supposed business proposal by HBGary to&#xA;  assist Bank of America's law firm, Hunton &amp;amp; Williams, in a dirty&#xA;  tricks campaign aimed at discrediting WikiLeaks in the run-up to the&#xA;  expected publication of confidential bank documents. The leaked&#xA;  documents detail supposed plans to dig up dirt and apply pressure to&#xA;  key WikiLeaks supporters as well as proposals to submit false&#xA;  documents in a bid to discredit the whistle-blowing website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, so we know a good deal about this one particular company and some of their ethically dubious involvement in reputation management products and services.  We have solid proof that the US Air Force and thus probably other areas of the US government are interested in such things.  We also have alleged smoking gun leaked emails that Bank Of America was planning such a smear campaign as well &lt;em&gt;(however in BoA's defense, Anonymous can hardly be considered credible, they very well could have altered the leaked emails)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other links in DJClayworth's answer suggest these practices are common in foreign governments.  The question still remains if one or more US political parties or special interest funded political organizations have also been engaged in such astroturfing campaigns which frankly if they are then they are doing a superb job of keeping it under wraps.  I will continue to look and edit if I find evidence to support this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6794" LastEditorUserId="6278" LastEditDate="2012-04-18T14:36:30.283" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T14:36:30.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2134" CreationDate="2012-04-18T15:07:47.483" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/2135/3790&quot;&gt;DVK's answer&lt;/a&gt; is true in theory, it's based on comparing nominal tax rates. In practice most companies don't pay that rate.  In case of US based international companies there are few tricks to avoid most of the taxation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;double Irish&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement#Dutch_Sandwich&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dutch sandwich&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;combination of both &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example Google uses double Irish with Dutch sandwich, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-21/google-2-4-rate-shows-how-60-billion-u-s-revenue-lost-to-tax-loopholes.html/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;effectively paying as low as &lt;strong&gt;2.4%&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Facebook also uses double Irish with Dutch sandwich. So are companies like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39784907/ns/business-bloomberg_businessweek/#.T47XrbQtiyg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apple, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle&lt;/a&gt; and many others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While question ask explicitly for &lt;em&gt;&quot;standard tax rates&quot;&lt;/em&gt; w/o gimmicks and loopholes, above schema has became standard (as in most commonly used). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fxdIo.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T15:07:24.367" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6141" CreationDate="2012-04-18T23:05:30.053" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a response to your third question.  &lt;strong&gt;Gee, I was only allowed to post 2 hyperlinks, so sorry about the lack of references.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's first start with body pH. Body pH can be measured by measuring blood pH or other body fluid pH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some proponents of acid-alkaline theory propose measuring urine pH.  This is however misleading, because urine is just a collection of wastes that the body is trying to get rid of. If it fluctuates it does not mean the body pH fluctuates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sciencebasedpharmacy.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/your-urine-is-not-a-window-to-your-body-ph-balancing-a-failed-hypothesis/#more-1424&quot;&gt;https://sciencebasedpharmacy.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/your-urine-is-not-a-window-to-your-body-ph-balancing-a-failed-hypothesis/#more-1424&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small fluctuations of body pH is generally not caused by pH of ingested fluids, but by several other metabolic processes, in particular body temperature and oxygen metabolism:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemistry.wustl.edu/~edudev/LabTutorials/Buffer/Buffer.html&quot;&gt;http://www.chemistry.wustl.edu/~edudev/LabTutorials/Buffer/Buffer.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Serious deviations of blood pH (acidosis or alkalosis) are also generally not caused by diet, but typically by failure of one of the body's systems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(links removed, just check alkalosis / acidosis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, however, documented cases of alkaline diet causing alkalosis, in combination with impaired renal function.  This particularly happens when a lot of alkaline (for example, sodium bicarbonate) is ingested over a period of time, in an attempt to treat peptic ulcers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(links removed, check google scholar &quot;alkaline treatment peptic ulcer&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concluding, I certainly hope that Kangen water is not actually alkaline, because drinking liters of pH 9 water a day may cause alkalosis in people with a kidney insufficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6815" LastActivityDate="2012-04-18T23:05:30.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8955" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-18T23:22:42.987" Score="10" ViewCount="2423" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some door locks you can turn twice (or even three times!). Is there added security in doing so? Or would it basically take the same amount of time to break / open a lock? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE: I'm not sure if I use the proper words, but I'm referring to putting in the key, and turning it completely (it's locked now), and then, turning it another round (the pin goes in deeper - it's even 'more' locked). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6604" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T21:59:22.510" Title="Is it more secure to close the door turning the key twice?" Tags="|household|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8956" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8996" CreationDate="2012-04-18T23:32:07.403" Score="22" ViewCount="18552" Body="&lt;p&gt;At some point, I read a news report that investigators found out it is actually safer not to light your house when you are not there or when asleep. It mentioned that thieves found very dark places 'creepy' as well (that was the theory), and they would not try to rob the place. At least not as much as better lit places. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched for this but can not find it. Do you know of any investigations that support this theory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6604" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-04-20T21:59:17.750" LastActivityDate="2016-10-28T13:26:07.820" Title="Is it safer to NOT light your house at night?" Tags="|criminology|security|household|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8900" CreationDate="2012-04-19T03:21:06.227" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(The information in this answer was taken and fused from &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8900/will-a-worm-cut-in-half-survive-as-two-worms#8906&quot;&gt;Kevin Cathcart's Answer&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8900/will-a-worm-cut-in-half-survive-as-two-worms#8903&quot;&gt;Martin Scharrer's Answer&lt;/a&gt;. )&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Most people would immediately interpret this question as asking about the most familiar type of worm, the Earthworm. Interpreted like that it is an untrue urban legend. However the legend is based in fact, in that some other &quot;less traditional&quot; types of worms do actually regenerate. Therefore, I will address both.&lt;/h3&gt; &#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Earthworms:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most commonly, this myth is about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planarian&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;earthworms&lt;/a&gt;, not any kind of worms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story is untrue according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wormfarmguide.com/earthworms.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Worm Farm Guide&lt;/a&gt;. The two half do not survive independently. However, the head part can regrow some fraction at his back end if it got lost:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have heard that you can cut an earthworm in half and both halves will grow back. That's not true. If an earthworm is cut in half, it will usually die. However, it is true that if a third or less of the posterior portion of the worm gets chopped off, the earthworm can usually regrow that portion - but the chopped off posterior will not grow a new head&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also stated by the following sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://compost.css.cornell.edu/worms/faq.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://compost.css.cornell.edu/worms/faq.html&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;em&gt;What happens if you cut a worm in half?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost everyone wants to know the answer to this question. Some species of worms can regenerate, or re-grow, a new tail, if their tail is cut off. However, a worm cut too closely to its' head will have difficulty growing a new tail. Most worms will not regenerate a head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, we tell students that if you cut a worm in half, you will most likely end up with two dead pieces of worms. However, if you are lucky, the piece with the head may grow a new tail, so you will have one alive worm and one piece of dead worm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some worms have a natural reflex, in which they will eject their tail when the tail is pulled. For example, when a bird catches the tail end of a worm, the worm would eject or sever its' tail from the rest of its' body. Thus, the worm remains alive and safe, while the bird gets only part of the worm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.animalcorner.co.uk/insects/worms/worm_anatomy.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.animalcorner.co.uk/insects/worms/worm_anatomy.html&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a common myth that has been around for a long time now that if you cut a worm in half, the two halves will grow into worms - making 2 worms out of 1. This is very untrue. It is true that if a worm loses part of its body it will survive, but if you cut a worm into 2 pieces, one half will surely die. The half with the saddle (the fatter, pink part) will burrow itself into the soil and survive. It is not a good idea to cut worms in half or any other creature for that matter - it is very cruel - so please do not be taken in by this myth and leave the worms whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Some... &amp;quot;Less Traditional&amp;quot; Worms:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some worms with extraordinary regenerative capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example many species of flatworm categorized as &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planarian&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Planarians&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; which are well known for being able to regenerate into two individuals when cut in half.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best general purpose reference on this I can find is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rzuser.uni-heidelberg.de/%7Ebu6/Introduction03.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;page&lt;/a&gt; written by Dr. Wolfgang Seifarth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The diagram on that page show some of the regenerations possible for that species. It can also regenerate if cut laterally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a more rigorous reference, Various research into the causes of this effect has been summarized in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.physics.illinois.edu/Selvin/PRS/498IBR/Planarian%20Regeneration_annurev.cellbio.2004.Reddien.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper published in the Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology&lt;/a&gt;. An illustrative quote from that paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a planarian is amputated transversely, two fragments are&#xA;generated and are capable of regenerating (Pallas 1774; Johnson 1822,&#xA;1825). The term polarity has been used to describe the fact that an&#xA;anterior-facing wound will regenerate a head and a posterior-facing&#xA;wound will regenerate a tail (Morgan 1901). “Something in the piece&#xA;itself determines that a head shall develop at the anterior cut&#xA;surface and a tail at the posterior cut surface. This “something” is&#xA;what we call polarity”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed not only can it regenerate a head, but in a few cases, it can accidentally produce one with a head on each end!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, some small fragments, for example, from Dugesia tigrina&#xA;animals, occasionally regenerate two-headed animals (Janus-heads)&#xA;(Morgan 1898, 1904a) or, for example from D. lugubris animals,&#xA;two-tailed animals (Morgan 1904d)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for what they look like, perhaps this image from Wikipedia showing one of the two headed ones will give you an idea.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GzPjB.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Two Headed Planarian&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6598" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T03:21:06.227" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-04-19T03:21:06.227" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8910" CreationDate="2012-04-19T10:09:26.317" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/population/religion.html&quot;&gt;the US Census Bureau Statistical Abstract data on religion for the last three issues&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between 2001 and 2008, for the numbers of people giving their religion as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Atheist&quot; rose from 902,000 to 1,621,000 (+70%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Atheist, Humanist or Agnostic&quot; rose from 1,942,000 to 3,696,000 (+90%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Atheist, Humanist,Agnostic or No Religion&quot; rose from 25,428,000 to 34,119,000 (+34%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other religions clearly grew faster than all of those in terms of pure numbers. Christianity added nearly fifteen million.  In percentage terms both &quot;Atheism&quot; and &quot;No religion&quot; outgrew most mainstream relgions. However the number of people giving their religion as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Evangelical Christian&quot; rose from 1,088,000 to 2,154,000 (+98%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Nondenomination Christian&quot; rose from 2,489,000 to 8,032,000 (+223%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Wiccan&quot; rose from 134,000 to 342,000 (+155%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Pagan&quot; rose from 149,000 to 340,000 (+142%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Spiritualist&quot; rose from 115,000 to 426,000 (+267%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is likely that many of those describing themselves as &quot;Evangelical Christian&quot; or &quot;Nondenominational Christian&quot; previously described themselves as some other form of Christian, so you may not want to include those. However it is clear that the claim is not in fact correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;While Atheism grew faster than the main religions in percentage terms, a number of religions grew faster still&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:There is a sense in which the statement could be perhaps true. &quot;No religion&quot; as a percentage of the population grew from 7.5% to 13.3%, the highest percentage increase of any category. However it is far from clear that &quot;no religion&quot; implies a disbelief in all deities, and self-declared atheists are counted separately from this, so this figure would not satisfy criterion 1 of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-05-29T16:15:55.037" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T16:15:55.037" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8977" CreationDate="2012-04-19T10:44:22.773" Score="16" ViewCount="1251" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as I can remember when people have fried steak, they have flipped it after the first say 20 seconds to sear it and &quot;seal in the juices&quot;, then cooked the other side, then flipped it back to the first side again to finish it off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, recently I heard someone claim that the concept of sealing in the juices doesn't work at all and is pointless - so does it really work or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My experience is that the technique has been applied to beef steak in particular, but maybe other meats too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5343" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-09T21:59:33.613" LastActivityDate="2019-03-17T18:43:36.933" Title="Does briefly searing a steak on one side before flipping it over once &quot;seal in the juices&quot;?" Tags="|nutrition|cooking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8962" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-19T11:49:11.257" Score="5" ViewCount="548" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tomohiko Suzuki, author of the book &lt;em&gt;The Yakuza and the Nuclear Industry&lt;/em&gt;, claims that several members of the Fukushima 50, workers who stayed behind to work on the Fukushima dai-ichi nuclear reactor post 3/11 when others fled, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-in/9084151/How-the-Yakuza-went-nuclear.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;were Yakuza members&lt;/a&gt;. Was this the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why I'm skeptical: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suzuki has apparently edited fanzines about the Yakuza, so I wouldn't be surprised if he has made exaggerated claims about them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have encountered many bogus claims about nuclear energy - I wouldn't be surprised if some sections of the media biased against nuclear energy decided not to scrutinize these claims too closely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have also seen dubious claims about organized crime. Sometimes people make extraordinary claims about its level of influence, while others (in both fiction, and non-fiction) have glamorized organized crime. Both the former and the latter would be consistent with bogus claims about the yakuza's involvement in the Fukushima 50.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-04-19T12:20:40.737" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T22:31:19.160" Title="Were members of the yakuza amongst the Fukushima 50?" Tags="|criminology|japan|fukushima-daiichi|organized-crime|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8963" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-04-19T11:50:30.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main nuclear reactor that suffered damage from the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-04-20T01:00:47.863" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T01:00:47.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8964" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-04-19T11:50:30.820" Score="0" Body="The main nuclear reactor that suffered damage from the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan." OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-04-19T12:15:50.680" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T12:15:50.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8965" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-04-19T11:53:17.697" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-04-19T11:53:17.697" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T11:53:17.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8966" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-04-19T11:53:17.697" Score="0" Body="Groups that make their money mainly through criminal enterprises. Examples include the Yakuza and the Mafia." OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-04-19T12:16:23.533" LastActivityDate="2012-04-19T12:16:23.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8967" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12425" CreationDate="2012-04-19T12:46:39.100" Score="8" ViewCount="6434" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://chealth.canoe.ca/columns.asp?columnistid=6&amp;amp;articleid=32761&amp;amp;relation_id=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fountain of youth?&lt;/a&gt; Apr. 14, 2012, Written by: Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, QMI Agency, the author claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today more than 8,000 scientific articles have been reported on the importance of telomeres in aging. But one peer reviewed study, published in September 2011, reported on humans who were given the telomerase activator, TA-65, to maintain the normal length of telomeres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study carried out on men showed that TA-65 resulted in a rejuvenated immune system with fewer senescent white blood cells. This suggests improved immunity protection in the elderly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we age we invariably experience a gradual decline in vision. A 2005 study showed that TA-65 has a positive effect on the structure and function of the eyes, causing improved vision in elderly men. Also seen was an improvement in the quality of skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other studies using TA-65 showed cognitive and verbal memory improvement and increased bone density. Researchers also observed a lowering of cholesterol, blood pressure, fasting blood sugar. And some patients reported improved energy, increased flexibility and being more productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seem to be ample studies that indicate that we have a molecule that puts a stopper in what we call symptoms of aging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not having read the studies referred to, I am skeptical of whether the observed studies demonstrate a phenomenon that is akin to &amp;quot;stopping aging&amp;quot;, and in any case how reliable those studies are (i.e. were they in peer reviewed journals and can the results be reproduced).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T19:06:55.807" Title="Does a molecule called TA-65 reverse aging in humans?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|pharmaceutical|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8969" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-19T17:17:06.357" Score="14" ViewCount="1399" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The story of this 11th century english noblewoman is that her mean&#xA;  husband the Earl Leofric raised taxes on the townspeople of Coventry&#xA;  which Lady Godiva, and not surprisingly the locals, thought were too&#xA;  high. She badgered her husband and he conceded the exasperation if she&#xA;  rode to the town naked, assuming that she never would but she did.&#xA;  Because people don't like taxes even though that's how civilization is&#xA;  purchased, Lady Godiva's story lives on notably in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com.br/search?q=godiva%20logo&amp;amp;um=1&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;hl=pt-BR&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;source=og&amp;amp;sa=N&amp;amp;tab=wi&amp;amp;ei=akeQT93aCcX9ggeV-MTmBA&amp;amp;biw=1366&amp;amp;bih=667&amp;amp;sei=bEeQT4WrGYrjgge2g5TRBA&quot;&gt;Godiva&#xA;  logo&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Godiva_%28song%29&quot;&gt;popular songs&lt;/a&gt;. But while Lady Godiva was a real&#xA;  person and Coventry is a real town there's no record from her nude&#xA;  ride from the time it happened so we safely assume that the story is&#xA;  false.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/user/CGPGrey&quot;&gt;CGPGrey&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;amp;v=sYzfKiIWN4g#t=40s&quot;&gt;&quot;5 Historical Misconceptions Rundown&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3518" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-05-09T14:44:38.417" LastActivityDate="2018-11-02T15:56:16.087" Title="Did Lady Godiva ride to the town of Coventry naked?" Tags="|history|politics|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8972" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8984" CreationDate="2012-04-19T18:50:42.223" Score="49" ViewCount="24524" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was an engineering student, I had many friends who were atheist, or otherwise became so as the years progressed, including myself.  Because I grew up with a religious background, I tend to notice when others took the same turn in the road as I have, but I can't help noticing that most of these people have engineering backgrounds.  I'm wondering if the nature of the studies is less conducive to the belief in any religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any statistical evidence that shows that engineering (or science) students / graduates have a high percentage of atheists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I found an article stating that there are high number of scientists being atheist, but I'm not sure how credible it is:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://religions-of-the-world.tressugar.com/Why-so-Many-Scientists-Atheists-6259603&quot;&gt;Popsugar social blog about statistics of scientists being atheist&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only 33% of scientists believe in &quot;God&quot; while another 18% believe in a &quot;universal spirit&quot; or &quot;higher power&quot;. (See source 1.  )  The study concluded that scientists are less likely to believe in a &quot;God&quot; or &quot;Higher Power&quot; as the general public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4980" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:43:35.803" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T12:45:00.643" Title="Are a high percentage of scientists atheist?" Tags="|sociology|religion|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8961" CreationDate="2012-04-19T21:46:03.707" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, searing doesn’t seal in the juices. Probably the only rigorous analysis of this has been done by Kenji López-Alt for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/12/the-food-lab-how-to-cook-roast-a-perfect-prime-rib.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Serious Eats&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If searing does in fact &quot;lock in juices,&quot; then we would expect that the steak which was first seared then roasted should retain more juices that the steak that was first roasted then seared. Unfortunately for old wives' tales, &lt;strong&gt;the exact opposite is the case.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PxHnG.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PxHnG.png&quot; alt=&quot;Roasting meat graph&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seriouseats.com/images/20091218-roasting-meat-graph.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;seriouseats.com&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sub&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wired Magazine &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/10/why-do-we-sear-meat/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;offers the explanation&lt;/a&gt; – albeit without  giving any references – that the &lt;em&gt;perceived&lt;/em&gt; juiciness in seared meat comes from our saliva since it &lt;em&gt;looks&lt;/em&gt; juicier to us and we salivate more in anticipation. Well … I take that with a grain of salt. And maybe some pepper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, the &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; reason for searing is to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;create flavour through the Maillard reaction&lt;/a&gt;, as well as aesthetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2019-03-17T18:43:36.933" LastActivityDate="2019-03-17T18:43:36.933" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="8978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8932" CreationDate="2012-04-19T21:59:12.190" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This specific part of the author's argument is economic. The argument seems to take roughly the following form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Direct resource extraction will become more difficult as we exhaust the easily-accessible and are forced to extract deeper, further away, and more dangerously&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More difficult --&gt; more expensive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More expensive --&gt; we will find and use cheaper alternatives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Using those cheaper alternatives in accordance with economic concerns will avoid problems and cause good things&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see some problems with this argument. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/841.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;economic efficiency is a tool, not a master&lt;/a&gt;. It is used to produce good. It's trivial to find examples where economic efficiency produces suboptimal human outcomes. It is wrongheaded to assert that because something is economically efficient that it is therefore good. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can therefore be argued that letting resources get rare and expensive and being economically forced to use something else is not necessarily the optimal outcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;isn't recycling one of the alternatives he thinks will naturally arise?&lt;/em&gt; The costs of resources are going up, not necessarily to the immediate producer or consumer, but to society. Society considers the costs and externalities of continued direct resource extraction and decides cooperatively to recycle more and extract less. I fail to see the logical fallacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a great example of the pitfalls that arise from relying on economic costs to drive shifts in resource utilization. Those costs are frequently either not easily recognized by the decision-maker, or are externalized to someone else. As Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney of the Hamilton Project note in the realm of energy,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the status quo is characterized by a tilted playing field, where energy choices are based on the visible costs that appear on utility bills and at gas pumps. This system masks the “external” costs arising from those energy choices, including shorter lives, higher health care expenses, a changing climate, and weakened national security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their example is electricity, but the principle applies to any resource or scarce good. They quantify energy costs, including external ones: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JNHl7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Image via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/why-we-pay-too-little-for-energy/2012/04/25/gIQAMyqqgT_blog.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ezra Klein&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So purely rational economic actors, per Benjamin's model, will choose poorly due to externalized or unaccounted costs. In this way, alternative resources that are cheaper &lt;em&gt;in fact&lt;/em&gt; might be eschewed because they &lt;em&gt;appear&lt;/em&gt; more expensive. For example, recycling to conserve energy, land, or resources might be the most cost-effective choice, but since those costs are spread out across society (and perhaps concentrated on groups with less political power), using Benjamin's approach would cause it to remain the choice not taken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Third&lt;/strong&gt;, we have historical examples of cultures that run counter to his purely theoretical construction. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/features/print/2735/civilisations-why-they-fail&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Easter Islanders cut down every last tree&lt;/a&gt;, regardless of his idea that the increasing costs will spur innovation and the use of alternative resources. Theories which have counterexamples should be re-evaluated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4569" LastEditorUserId="4569" LastEditDate="2012-04-25T17:56:51.617" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T17:56:51.617" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-04-25T17:56:51.617" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8972" CreationDate="2012-04-20T00:29:42.037" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question will be very difficult to answer to the standards that this site demands.  That is mostly because it is so difficult to actually come to a coherent definition of an atheist, as well as to actually determine what different reports say and mean...  There is a joke on some atheist community forums that the word atheist means:  &amp;quot;The only people who really are concerned what the word atheist really means.&amp;quot;  As I said in the comment section, it's hard to even pin down the basic spectrum of where someone falls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even having this image as a guide (which is still a way over simplification of things, which goes to show that it's even harder than this!), we still have the difficulty of people identifying themselves in one area or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yX0vu.png&quot; alt=&quot;Spectrum of belief and non-belief&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, concerning the god of the bible, or koran, I consider myself a gnostic atheist because that god has failed every claim made in those books.  However, if someone starts talking about a deistic type of deity, then I must admit that I am an agnostic atheist, because such a god hypothesis doesn't materially affect our universe in any way, and as such there is no testable criteria to put that hypothesis to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in regards to your specific question, let's have some fun!  Lets go to a website called &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/why_are_scientists_atheists.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;god and science&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; (a christian apologetic site).  They introduce their page by saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the early 20th century, studies showed that scientists were less likely than the general population to believe in the existence of God.&lt;em&gt;1&lt;/em&gt; A survey conducted in 1969 showed that 35% of scientists did not believe that God existed.&lt;em&gt;2&lt;/em&gt; In contrast, recent surveys on religious belief have shown that 90 percent of Americans believe in God and 40 percent attend a place of worship weekly.&lt;em&gt;3&lt;/em&gt; Is a lack of belief in God among scientists due to their higher intelligence and knowledge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, their conclusion leaves a great deal to be desired (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that scientists believe less in the existence of God than the general population of the United States. However, the recent study by Ecklund, and Scheitle reveals that the most important factors in belief were related to upbringing and family status, and not area of expertise. The fact that social scientists as well as those in the natural sciences expressed nearly the same disbelief in God suggests that rejection of God's existence is not a result of knowledge in any particular area of expertise. &lt;em&gt;It is likely that those who have rejected religious morality (i.e., those who were cohabiting) wanted to justify their behavior by saying that there was very little truth in any religion.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, enough fun, how about serious studies?  Well, one scientist comes right out and asks why scientists in his field are atheists.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://preposterousuniverse.com/writings/nd-paper/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sean Carrol of CalTech concludes in a paper&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question we have addressed is, ''Thinking as good scientists and observing the world in which we live, is it more reasonable to conclude that a materialist or theist picture is most likely to ultimately provide a comprehensive description of the universe?'' Although I don't imagine I have changed many people's minds, I do hope that my reasoning has been clear. We are looking for a complete, coherent, and simple understanding of reality. Given what we know about the universe, there seems to be no reason to invoke God as part of this description. In the various ways in which God might have been judged to be a helpful hypothesis --- such as explaining the initial conditions for the universe, or the particular set of fields and couplings discovered by particle physics --- there are alternative explanations which do not require anything outside a completely formal, materialist description. I am therefore led to conclude that adding God would just make things more complicated, and this hypothesis should be rejected by scientific standards. It's a venerable conclusion, brought up to date by modern cosmology; but the dialogue between people who feel differently will undboubtedly last a good while longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lhup.edu/%7Edsimanek/sci_relig.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Donald Simanek of Lock Haven University summarizes a great number of the studies that are out there&lt;/a&gt;.  He does add in some observations about the general difficulty of getting a straight answer in such a &lt;a href=&quot;http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hyper religious country such as the US&lt;/a&gt; (which seems to be a statistical anomaly amongst first world nations), that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/Zuckerman_on_Atheism.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;also harbours many prejudices against atheists&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;It's basically the same paper that was mentioned in a comment to another answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the specific answer again, it's hard to find anything that says one thing or another definitively because we aren't privileged to see the raw data.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.rice.edu/2005/08/11/natural-scientists-are-less-likely-to-believe-in-god-than-are-social-scientists/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Rice University article states&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Natural scientists are less likely to believe in God than are social scientists&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in reading the entire article, it doesn't do a great deal of analysis.  It does state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nearly 38 percent of natural scientists surveyed said they did not believe in God, but only 31 percent of the social scientists gave that response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among each of the two general groups, one discipline stood out: Forty-one percent of the biologists and 27 percent of the political scientists said they don’t believe in God.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These numbers are higher than the percentages given in the general US population (which have been reported as anywhere from 3% to 15% depending on who you ask.  Lies, damn lies, and statistics...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am attempting to locate another study which did a more thurough breakdown of specific fields of study and belief in god, whoever I am unable to locate it at the moment.  The basic conclusion from that study was that mathematicians were the most likely to believe in a god, followed by engineers, and physicists least likely.  However, that study is escaping my google-fu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T07:12:35.277" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3420" CreationDate="2012-04-20T02:15:22.310" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the comments you have received adequately summarize how far off the charts this idea really is.  As has been said by many, it's far easier to just make things up that to do research and actually investigate a claim.  Sadly, it is also harder to refute such fanciful made up stories that no matter what one says in an arena of total lack of any evidence, that someone will continue to cling to the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/UFOS.pdf&quot;&gt;I suggest you read this 1994 report by the United States Air Force regarding the incident&lt;/a&gt; (it's a PDF, otherwise I would quote it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/physics10/Roswell/RoswellPopSci.html&quot;&gt;Popular Science did an article about this on the 50th anniversary back in 1997&lt;/a&gt;.  A telling line is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The report had been classified only because it mentioned the 509th Bomb Group, which at the time was the nation's only nuclear strike force-a fact that was a closely held secret. The Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, was based in Roswell. In fact, the entire area around Roswell is sensitive. The White Sands Missile Range, where the first nuclear bomb was tested, is nearby and is still a weapons-testing site that is also used to stage war games. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No conspiracy theory needed.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/UFOS.pdf&quot;&gt;If you are really interested in Project Mogul (the real event), you can read up on it here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Project MOGUL initially focused on three areas of technology: (1) an expendable microphone, capable of detecting, at long range, low-frequency sound transmissions generated by explosions and missiles; (2) a means of telemetering these sounds to a ground or airborne receiver; and (3) a system from which to suspend the microphone and telemetering device in the upper atmosphere for an extended period of time. To meet these criteria, contracts were awarded by AMC to Columbia University (AMC contract no. W28499-ac-82) for the acoustical equipment, and to New York University (NYU) for the development of constant-level balloons (AMC contract no. W28-099-ac- 241). After the initial contracts were awarded, Project MOGUL branched out into many areas related to the geophysical properties of the upper atmosphere, including radiowave propagation, radar propagation, ionospheric physics, solar physics, terrestrial magnetism, meteorological physics, and weather forecasting. Considerable resources were devoted to Project MOGUL which included numerous bomber and transport aircraft and two oceangoing vessels. At one point the staff, exclusive of contractors, numbered over 100 persons. To accommodate this sensitive, high-priority project, facilities of the secluded Oakhurst Field Station of Watson Laboratories were used. Balloon operations associated with Project Mogul were conducted at various locations throughout the United States and the Pacific, the latter in reference to acoustical detection research associated with the Sandstone atomic tests at Entiwetok Atoll in April and May 1948. (7)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://muller.lbl.gov/teaching/physics10/Roswell/RoswellPopSci.html&quot;&gt;The &quot;Sound Channel&quot; phenomenon is described on this page&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5272" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-04-20T11:46:01.760" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T11:46:01.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8972" CreationDate="2012-04-20T03:28:06.540" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been several studies over the years on the rates of atheism in the top scientists in various fields, the people who are recognized as being highly accomplished.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; is a letter in Nature in 1998 describing the findings of the most recent iteration of this study.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1998, members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences were polled on their beliefs in human immortality and a personal god.  Only 7% of the respondents reported belief in a personal god.  In earlier versions of this study (in 1914 and 1933), with different groups of &quot;greater scientists,&quot; rates of belief in a personal god are always less 30%.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving down a step in terms of scientific street cred, there was also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/4488208&quot;&gt;2007 paper&lt;/a&gt; which surveyed 1,646 academic scientists at 21 top universities on their belief in god.  Their findings show rates of atheism at about 30% and agnosticism also at 30%, and find that the rates are not dependent on academic discipline; academic scientists in the natural and social sciences have similar rates of atheism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast to the high rates of atheism among academic professionals, there was a study carried out by &lt;a href=&quot;http://religions.pewforum.org/reports/detailed_tables&quot;&gt;The Pew Forum&lt;/a&gt; on religious belief in the general population along with several other social factors, including education.  17% of American adults surveyed identified as &quot;unaffiliated&quot; and only 1.6% of the population said that the were atheists and 2.4% agnostic.  The ~4% of the general population that identify as non-believers is clearly significantly different than the ~60% of professors and ~90% of top scientists who are non-believers.  The Pew study also shows that in the population of adults with at least a high school diploma, rates of atheism do not increase with increasing educational attainment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/files/postgrade.jpg&quot;&gt;This neat plot&lt;/a&gt;, from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2008/05/educational-levels-denomination/&quot;&gt;Discover Magazine blog post&lt;/a&gt; graphs the amount of Biblical literalism in a specific religion vs the amount of postgraduate education level of its adherents found in the Pew Forum survey.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for students in the sciences going through a change from theism to atheism, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/7256&quot;&gt;2009 study&lt;/a&gt; of 26,200 college students over 6 years actually showed that students in the social sciences and humanities are more likely to become less involved in, and lose interest in, their religion than students in the physical sciences.  The explanation the authors give for the lack of change among science students is two fold:  1) Religions have already effectively worked to integrate belief in science with belief in religion, so learning about science doesn't change the way a student views the world and 2) There's a lower level of religiosity in science students to start with. Very religious students are drawn to humanities and social sciences degrees, and have more potential for a significant change in their religiosity than the less religious students in the physical sciences. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: Becoming a scientist doesn't seem to make you an atheist, but badass scientists tend to be atheists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(This has been a guest answer by my wife, an atheist pre-badass scientist, who refuses to sign up for anything)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastEditorUserId="5973" LastEditDate="2012-04-21T01:47:03.757" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T01:47:03.757" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8988" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-20T08:25:25.763" Score="2" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1304/were-people-shorter-in-the-middle-ages&quot;&gt;Were people shorter in the middle ages?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When talking about human evolution, I've heard several people comment that humans used to be a lot smaller, and that we can tell this by the size of the doors in old houses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe this to be true as evolution is a much slower process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I've heard this so many times, I'm wondering why this has come about, and if there is any truth to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to show a change in average height in the last 500 years or so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6733" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:55:04.593" Title="Did humans used to be a lot smaller on average?" Tags="|evolution|archaeology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-04-20T10:27:53.277" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8990" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="8991" CreationDate="2012-04-20T14:10:14.530" Score="19" ViewCount="15320" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone in my Twitter feed said today:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TIL starbucks put ground up insects in stuff, and milk has blood in&#xA;  it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.couriermail.com.au/business/starbugs-coffee-chain-starbucks-to-stop-using-insects-to-colour-food-and-drinks/story-fn7kjcme-1226333912518&quot;&gt;ground up insects&lt;/a&gt; part is true for now, but I'm not sure about the blood-in-milk one. It sounds half-way plausible, considering that breastfeeding mothers can sometimes suffer bleeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more specific example of the claim, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.notmilk.com/kradjian.html&quot;&gt;notmilk.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, all cows' milk contains blood! The inspectors are simply asked&#xA;  to keep it under certain limits. You may be horrified to learn that&#xA;  the USDA allows milk to contain from one to one and a half million&#xA;  white blood cells per millilitre. (That's only 1/30 of an ounce). If&#xA;  you don't already know this, I'm sorry to tell you that another way to&#xA;  describe white cells where they don't belong would be to call them pus&#xA;  cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Snopes says (no links due to its dodgy advertising) that the blood in milk (specifically, blood in chocolate milk) is false, but doesn't provide any specific references. Most of the other top Google hits for &lt;code&gt;cow's blood milk&lt;/code&gt; are for anti-milk sites, user-generated content, or pages unrelated to this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For convenience, assume that the claim is about the processed and government-approved milk that people in the USA drink, not what immediately comes from the cow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="1760" LastEditDate="2012-04-21T12:31:02.517" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T09:15:32.123" Title="Does cows' milk contain blood?" Tags="|nutrition|milk|blood|cows|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8990" CreationDate="2012-04-20T15:00:55.963" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;We can debunk this just by analysing the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;White blood cells&quot;, despite their name, are the cells responsible for the immune system, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_blood_cells&quot;&gt;occur throughout the body&lt;/a&gt; (see reference number 2). Also called leukocytes, the presence of these cells is not an indication that blood (or pus) is present. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The claim actually says &quot;all cows milk contains them&quot;. So even if you milked your own pure-bred grain-fed cow in perfectly clean conditions you would still find leukocytes. This is not a contaminant, it's a perfectly normal part of milk. It's no worse than saying &quot;milk contains fat&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The math is hideously wrong here. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28mass%29&quot;&gt;A million cells weigh about a millionth of a gram&lt;/a&gt;, not a thirtieth of an ounce. So even according to the claim, only one part per million of milk is allowed to be leukocytes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes I referenced Wikipedia, because this is very basic stuff, which Wikipedia is allowed for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-04-25T16:09:38.787" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T16:09:38.787" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8990" CreationDate="2012-04-20T16:44:09.173" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Milk contains blood&quot; is a metonymical exaggeration for the correct idea that milk contains some of the same components as blood. The word for a whole (&quot;blood&quot;) is wrongly being used to denote only a part (&quot;white blood cell&quot;) giving rise something reminiscent of this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6844" LastActivityDate="2012-04-20T16:44:09.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8956" CreationDate="2012-04-20T18:08:47.347" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a theoretical explanation of the mechanism for why outdoor nighttime lights are counterproductive for the purpose of reducing crime. Someone breaking into your house needs to see. If your house is lit, that problem is solved. If not, they must use a flashlight (which is more suspicious to you and neighbors) or they must navigate in the dark, with the attendant increased risk for making noise. As the New Yorker notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Much so-called security lighting is designed with little thought for how eyes—or criminals—operate. Marcus Felson, a professor at the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, has concluded that lighting is effective in preventing crime mainly if it enables people to notice criminal activity as it’s taking place, and if it doesn’t help criminals to see what they’re doing. Bright, unshielded floodlights—one of the most common types of outdoor security lighting in the country—often fail on both counts, as do all-night lights installed on isolated structures or on parts of buildings that can’t be observed by passersby (such as back doors). A burglar who is forced to use a flashlight, or whose movement triggers a security light controlled by an infrared motion sensor, is much more likely to be spotted than one whose presence is masked by the blinding glare of a poorly placed metal halide “wall pack.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is fairly substantial anecdotal evidence that this mechanism does, in fact, pertain to reality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the early seventies, the public-school system in San Antonio, Texas, began leaving many of its school buildings, parking lots, and other property dark at night and found that the no-lights policy not only reduced energy costs but also dramatically cut vandalism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/20/070820fa_fact_owen?currentPage=all&quot;&gt;David Owen's article in the New Yorker&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same effect of reduced crime following reduced lighting occurred in two cities in northern Sweden:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The number of thefts and burglary has been halfed since the city was darkened this autumn [2006] because of the well-known dispute with Ekfors Kraft [local energy company].&quot;&#xA;  &quot;- We thought it would be the opposite, says Sören Mukkavaara, police constaple in Övertorneå.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the comments section has several more references and examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/09/light_and_crime.html#c201584&quot;&gt;Swedish SvD in Bruce Schneier's security blog comments section&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20070303080746/http://www.svd.se/dynamiskt/inrikes/did_14733730.asp&quot;&gt;original article by way of the Internet Archive&lt;/a&gt; (article dated March 1 2007, archived March 3 2007)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4569" LastEditorUserId="2004" LastEditDate="2016-10-28T13:26:07.820" LastActivityDate="2016-10-28T13:26:07.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8972" CreationDate="2012-04-20T20:31:39.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some figures: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sci_relig.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sci_relig.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, it's a tricky question, and this is why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being religious requires having beliefs which are not based on valid evidence - being a scientist requires abandoning all belief altogether, and forming &lt;em&gt;opinions&lt;/em&gt; that are based on valid evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the scientific mind set is fundamentally incompatible with the religious mindset.&#xA;Science does not require one to believe or not to believe in God/Gods - it only requires that, if one forms an opinion about the topic, one bases that opinion on evidence, and make the evidence public, ready to be scrutinized and put to the test of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, it's not surprising that great many scientists are atheist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that being an atheist simply means not believing in a deity or deities. Being a scientist requires you to go a step beyond that - science recognizes that &lt;em&gt;noting&lt;/em&gt; is 100% certain, so, a scientist cannot truly be a gnostic atheist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can, however, make claims about the existence of a specific kind of God (the Christian God, Allah, Zeus...), and form an evidence-based opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why any scientist who claims to be a believer is essentially living by double standards. &#xA;In that sense, 100% of scientists are atheist. Some small X% of them don't seem to know it. :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I've been asked to expand on this, so here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, note that my point was that such figures don't really answer your question - the question is fundamentally ill-posed. None who values the principles of modern scientific thought (form models based on available valid evidence) can honestly claim that is simultaneously religious in the same sense religious people are (who form models of reality based on invalid &quot;evidence&quot;, essentially hearsay). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's what being a scientist is by &lt;em&gt;definition&lt;/em&gt;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;science&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scientist&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article I linked to shows some figures, for 1914, 1933, 1998:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; BELIEF IN PERSONAL GOD          1914   1933    1998&#xA;&#xA; Personal belief                 27.7    15       7.0&#xA; Personal disbelief              52.7    68      72.2&#xA; Doubt or agnosticism            20.9    17      20.8&#xA;&#xA; BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY           1914    1933    1998&#xA;&#xA; Personal belief                 35.2    18       7.9&#xA; Personal disbelief              25.4    53      76.7&#xA; Doubt or agnosticism            43.7    29      23.3&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note: The 1998 immortality figures add up to more than 100%. The&#xA;  misprint is in the original. The 76.7% is likely too high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note high percentages for non-belief. But, how was the study done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Larson and Witham present the results of a replication of 1913 and 1933 surveys by James H. Leuba. In those surveys, Leuba mailed a questionnaire to leading scientists asking about their belief in &quot;a God in intellectual and affective communication with humankind&quot; and in &quot;personal immortality&quot;. Larson and Witham used the same wording [as in the Leuba studies], and sent their questionnaire to 517 members of the [U.S.] National Academy of Sciences from the biological and physical sciences (the latter including mathematicians, physicists and astronomers). The return rate was slightly over 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ask yourself this: are this questions good? The word &quot;belief&quot; is problematic - as it doesn't have the same meaning for religious and opinion-based belief. So, what does a scientist mean when by &quot;personal belief&quot; or &quot;personal disbelief&quot;, exactly?&#xA;Are they talking about the concept of God (creator, ultimate cause) in general, or is it a deity with more specific characteristics? Is there doubt in disbelief?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My point is, studies like this don't paint a representative picture.&#xA;If the right questions were asked, the percentage would be much lower (now &lt;em&gt;that's&lt;/em&gt; an unsupported claim - but different at least).&#xA;If a scientist would provide evidence for God, and this evidence was confirmed, and most scientists started &quot;believing&quot; that there in fact is a God, this wouldn't classify them as theists - as their &quot;belief&quot; would actually be an opinion based on factual evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, they could be wrong. But science doesn't forbid you to be wrong - it only asks of you to admit it when you are presented with contradicting evidence. Religion, however, does - if you doubt, you're doomed.&#xA;And that is just not compatible with science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those few who have religious beliefs would never apply such reasoning to scientific research, and if they did, they would be laughed at, as that is not science, and they wouldn't be able to defend their claims.&#xA;So such people have double standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing: creationists and the like are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; scientists - not because of their claims, but because of invalid (even fabricated) evidence, and because of flawed logic they use to support them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know many of you won't like this answer - but there you have it, and it's all yours to judge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK. Maybe this answer is not quite adequate, but that's because the question, as posed, doesn't really make sense - at least not without first precisely defining terms like &quot;belief&quot;, &quot;atheist&quot;, and even &quot;scientist&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6848" LastEditorUserId="6848" LastEditDate="2012-04-21T01:25:30.033" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T01:25:30.033" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="8999" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9009" CreationDate="2012-04-20T21:41:36.197" Score="11" ViewCount="33821" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a widely held belief, and oft-advertised property of neosporin that its use reduces scarring, especially as opposed to other triple antibiotic ointments.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/308611-neosporin-for-scar-removal&quot;&gt;Livestrong&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neosporin is a popular antibiotic first aid ointment used on minor cuts, scratches, etc. According to the manufacturer, using Neosporin can help minimize the appearance of scars when the injury heals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific basis behind this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6847" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T13:39:18.403" LastActivityDate="2016-05-17T16:39:37.460" Title="Does neosporin reduce scarring?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|pharmaceutical|livestrong|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8905" CreationDate="2012-04-21T04:33:00.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;These days, what used to be referred to as global warming is more often referred to as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/basicinfo.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;global climate change&lt;/a&gt;, and sometimes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/globalchange/environment/en/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;global environmental change&lt;/a&gt;, as warming is not the only anthropogenically driven global scale change.  The news article that you refer to gives a brief summary of a report, &lt;a href=&quot;http://daraint.org/climate-vulnerability-monitor/climate-vulnerability-monitor-2010/download-the-report/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Climate Vulnerability Monitor&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, which correctly identifies the threats to human health as being caused by &quot;climate change&quot; instead of simply &quot;global warming.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Global climate change is mostly studied in departments of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cotf.edu/ete/ESS/ESSmain.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Earth System Science&lt;/a&gt;, because you simply cannot just separate out the anthropogenically driven changes, like warming, without considering the way that that change will effect the earth system.  Yes, we're &quot;only&quot; looking at a global average temperature increase of &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/12/06/two-degree-global-warming-limit-is-called-a-prescription-for-disaster/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&amp;deg;C&lt;/a&gt;, but that warming will directly cause changes in the earth system that will seriously effect human health. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch8.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chapter 8&lt;/a&gt; of the Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007 addresses the impacts of climate change on human health.  Some of the most serious impacts on human health by the anthropogenically driven global environmental changes include &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/globalchange/ecosystems/biodiversity/en/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;loss of food sources due to biodiversity changes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/globalchange/ecosystems/water/en/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lack of potable water&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch8s8-2-3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;changing climate belts effecting the location of land suitable for food production&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch8s8-2-4.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;spread of pests that threaten food safety&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch8s8-2-6.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;poor air quality&lt;/a&gt; as well as the more direct effects of warming such as deaths due to changing temperatures and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch8s8-2-2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;increasing storm frequency&lt;/a&gt;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way that global environmental change will effect human health is the the &lt;em&gt;central&lt;/em&gt; reason to be concerned about mitigating anthropogenically driven climate change.  &lt;strong&gt;There's nothing tenuous about the links between public health and changes to the environment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T04:33:00.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9004" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9008" CreationDate="2012-04-21T08:02:19.637" Score="10" ViewCount="2952" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am curious about a phenomena (supposedly confirmed by J. Cousteau) that is said, by a Facebook page, to support some quotes in the Quran.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They say that some seas do not join and mix with each other even though they run adjacent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=247174465300446&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Barrier Between Seas Facebook page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;9- He has let free the two seas meeting together.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;20- Between them there is a barrier which they do not transgress.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;55-Gracious, 19-20&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;A famous French oceanographer, J. Cousteau, gives the following account as a result of his studies in water barriers: J.Cousteau “We studied the assertions by certain researchers about barriers separating seas, and noticed that the Mediterranean Sea had its own salinity and density and housed autochthonous fauna and flora. Then we examined the water of the Atlantic Ocean and discovered features entirely different from those of the Mediterranean Sea. According to our expectations, these two seas that merged in the strait of Gibraltar should present similar characteristics in terms of salinity, density and other properties.Gibraltar The two seas presented different features even though they were adjacent. This greatly puzzled us. An incredible barrier prevented the two seas from coming together. The same sort of a barrier had also been observed in Bab Al-Mandab in the Gulf of Aden connecting with the Red Sea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subsequent to our observations, further researchers made it clear that the seas which had different characteristics had some barriers.” This fact that astounded oceanographers was revealed 14 centuries ago in the Quran. This aspect, not visible to the naked eye and appearing to be in conflict with the properties of water known to man, was first revealed to men in the Arabian peninsula, men who were not at all experienced in any sense with oceanography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone could confirm this and explain why it is so, I would really appreciate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related Question:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7748/is-there-a-place-in-the-world-where-two-oceans-meet-and-they-dont-mix&quot;&gt;Is there a place in the world where two oceans meet and they don&amp;#39;t mix?&lt;/a&gt; (About the same part of the Quran, but with different evidence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6747" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:27:39.863" Title="Do the Mediterranean and Strait of Gilbraltar have scientifically explicable different salinities, flora and fauna?" Tags="|religious-texts|oceanography|quran|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9007" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25218" CreationDate="2012-04-21T14:53:59.660" Score="7" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a popular &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;amp;v=JL1pKlnhvg0&quot;&gt;Youtube video&lt;/a&gt; about an investigation into Monsanto's push for BGH/BST by Fox News reporters (and their subsequent dismissal), at around &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL1pKlnhvg0&amp;amp;t=1m50s&quot;&gt;1:50&lt;/a&gt;, it claims that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...the longest test they did for human toxicity was 90 days on 30 rats.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there proof to support this claim?  Or rather, is there documentation existing showing that more testing was done than this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: There are other questions S.SE regarding the safety, etc. of BGH, but I'm specifically addressing the claim that the human trial was so paltry.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6854" LastActivityDate="2014-12-25T10:42:11.557" Title="Was bovine somatotropin (&quot;BGH/BST&quot;) deemed safe for humans after a 90-day test on 30 rats?" Tags="|nutrition|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9004" CreationDate="2012-04-21T15:55:35.980" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ah, not only are there liars for Jesus, be there are liars for Mohamed...  I will note that the facebook page claims that Cousteau converted to islam.  That is false.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://atheisme.free.fr/Votre_espace/Temoignage_conversion_cousteau_islam.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This page (in French) addresses that&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, about the specific claims in oceanography that there is no mixing, this is patently false.  The Straits of Gibraltar do not provide any sort of barrier that is impassable.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://ualg.academia.edu/RitaCastilho/Papers/1298333/Pillars_of_Hercules_is_the_Atlantic_Mediterranean_transition_a_phylogeographical_break&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;What you have here is a different ecological niche&lt;/a&gt;, much like you have on land.  From the abstract (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The geological history of the Mediterranean Sea, its hydrography and connection with the Atlantic Ocean have been well documented. Despite a wealth of historical and oceano-graphic data, the Atlantic–Mediterranean transition remains controversial at the biological level as there are discordant results regarding the biogeographical separation between the Atlantic and Mediterranean biota. The opening of the Strait of Gibraltar at the end of the Messinian Salinity Crisis (some 5.33 million years ago), removed the land barrier that impeded the marine biota allowing it to disperse freely into the Mediterranean Sea. How-ever, present day genetic patterns suggest a limitation to gene flow for some marine species,preventing population admixture. In the last few years, a large number of studies have challenged the hypothesis of the Strait of Gibraltar representing a phylogeographical break. A review of more than 70 papers reveals no obvious relationship between either dis-persal ability or life history, and observed patterns of partial or complete genetic isolation between Atlantic and Mediterranean populations. We re-analysed a selection of this large body of data (20 studies in total) in order to provide a homogeneous and coherent view on the generality of the phylogeographical patterns and the presence of a phylogeographical barrier. This offered the opportunity to summarize the state of the art on this matter and reach some general conclusions on the evolutionary history across the Atlantic–Mediterranean range. Geographically, some species in the transition zone showed step changes of allele frequencies associated with the Almeria-Oran Front rather than with the Strait of Gibraltar itself. A major part of the data describe evolutionary events well within the time frame of the Quaternary age as very few taxa pre-date closure of the Tethys Sea. Results point to a combined signature of vicariance, palaeoclimate fluctuation and life-history traits on the Atlantic–Mediterranean phylogeographical patterns. Principal component analysis failed to show any particular association between biological traits and genetic variables.&lt;strong&gt;It would argue that organismal determinism may play a far less significant role than marinebiogeographers have generally believed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lpi.usra.edu/publications/slidesets/humanimprints/slide_15.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lunar and Planetary Institute&lt;/a&gt; mentions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High rates of evaporation in the relatively shallow Mediterranean basin cause the water to become saltier, and thereby denser, than the relatively fresh Atlantic water. As Atlantic water is forced through the narrow strait it accelerates and interacts with Mediterranean water. Internal waves (particularly those formed at depths of 60–80 meters) develop where these two different water masses interact. Large, tidally induced pulses of Atlantic water entering the Mediterranean can be seen here as a series of crescents emanating from the strait. These crescents result from interactions of these different water masses at depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This picture shows the actual effect of this inflow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/thFuf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Atlantic and Med mix&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if anything, there is a massive inflow and mixing.  Just not at a biological level as detailed above.  Although, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whoi.edu/cms/files/dsr56_praca_53984.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute has a paper (PDF) where there is indeed mixing&lt;/a&gt;.  As well as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbl.umces.edu/~secor/tuna-meta-population.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a paper by University of Maryland (PDF)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, all it proves is that the Atlantic is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/08/ajb/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Ecological_niche.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;different ecological niche&lt;/a&gt; than the Mediterranean.  Mountains and prairies don't particularly mix (nor the flora and fauna at each environment), although there is a huge range through the middle of the North American continent where they are next to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;false dilemma&lt;/a&gt;. Phenomena can be &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; uncommon and have natural, rather than supernatural, explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T22:15:40.597" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T22:15:40.597" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8999" CreationDate="2012-04-21T16:46:35.263" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, at least compared to simply dressing wounds, specifically to abrasive wounds, there are studies supporting the claim.  Neosporin is the &quot;triple-antibiotic&quot; ointment comprised of polymyxin B, bacitracin, and neomycin (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugs.com/cdi/neosporin-ointment.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;).  A clinical study from June of 2000 reports that the combination minimizes scarring.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The triple-antibiotic ointment was superior to simple gauze-type dressing alone in minimizing the scarring observed in dermabrasion wounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract linked here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10879311&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10879311&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6854" LastActivityDate="2012-04-21T16:46:35.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9011" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9012" CreationDate="2012-04-21T23:00:40.163" Score="10" ViewCount="1002" Body="&lt;p&gt;A 2010 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/pcast-nitrd-report-2010.pdf&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; to the U.S. President and Congress about past and future advances in information technology notes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While improvements in hardware accounted for an approximate 1,000 fold&#xA;  increase in calculation speed over a 15-year time-span, improvements&#xA;  in algorithms accounted for an over 43,000 fold increase.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am intrigued by how they came up with this figure. It quotes research by &lt;code&gt;Professor Martin Grötschel of Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik Berlin&lt;/code&gt;, but I couldn't find the specific source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This report was also cited by the New York Times &lt;a href=&quot;http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/software-progress-beats-moores-law/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, where the title reads &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Software Progress Beats Moore’s Law&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; and the author claims that the &lt;strong&gt;&quot;[the findings] sharply contradict the conventional wisdom.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, the conclusion in the report seems to be that software improvements account for more increase in calculation speed than hardware improvements (apparently in the period between 1988 and 2003).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? How did they measure it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="943" LastEditorUserId="943" LastEditDate="2012-04-22T13:30:25.697" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T19:06:51.107" Title="Does progress in algorithms beat progress in hardware?" Tags="|technology|software|hardware|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9011" CreationDate="2012-04-21T23:46:14.353" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a misquote. It does not come from the report that you cite. It is a paraphrase without enough context&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real quote, in context, is far less exciting (emphasis mine, link in question):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the field of numerical algorithms, however, the improvement can be quantified.  Here is just one &#xA;  example, provided by Professor Martin Grötschel of Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik Berlin.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Grötschel, an expert in optimization, observes that &lt;strong&gt;a benchmark production planning model&lt;/strong&gt; solved &#xA;  using linear programming would have taken 82 years to solve in 1988, using the computers and the linear &#xA;  programming algorithms of the day.  Fifteen years later – in 2003 – this same model could be solved in &#xA;  roughly 1 minute, an improvement by a factor of roughly 43 million.  Of this, a factor of roughly 1,000 was &#xA;  due to increased processor speed, whereas a factor of roughly 43,000 was due to improvements in algorithms!  Grötschel also cites an algorithmic improvement of roughly 30,000 for mixed integer programming &#xA;  between 1991 and 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that &lt;strong&gt;one limited subclass of algorithms&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. to perform &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_programming&quot;&gt;a certain form of mathematical modelling&lt;/a&gt;) may have improved does not 'sharply contradict[...] the conventional wisdom'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-04-22T13:34:53.337" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T13:34:53.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9013" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9014" CreationDate="2012-04-22T00:24:27.470" Score="14" ViewCount="13302" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does removing the seeds from chilli actually reduce the heat? Is there any difference to just using less chilli? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The seeds and flesh of the chilli can both be eaten, but cooking&#xA;  chillies does not reduce the intensity of capsaicin; only removing the&#xA;  seeds and veins will lessen their heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/chilli&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/chilli&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5005" LastActivityDate="2020-11-16T11:20:09.920" Title="Does removing the seeds and pith from a chilli lessen the heat" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9013" CreationDate="2012-04-22T00:57:54.747" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not really a myth, but technically incorrect.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ogxPKm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Chilli pepper cross section&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://medplant.nmsu.edu/capsicum.shtm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Photo by Yvonne M. Tso&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most pungent bits are in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/462554/placenta&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;placental tissue&lt;/a&gt;, i.e. around the seeds, and the pith. The seeds themselves have a low content of capsaicin, but the advice of removing pith and seeds is quite sound, because it also implies removing the placental tissue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the pepper fruit, capsaicinoids mainly accumulate along the epidermal cells of the interlocular septum, which deﬁnes the fruit locules and is&#xA;derived from the tissue connecting the placenta to the pericarp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/43/5/1344.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Capsaicinoids Content in Habanero Pepper (Capsicum chinense Jacq.): Hottest Known Cultivars&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Capsaicin is present in large quantities in the placental tissue (which holds the seeds), the internal membranes and, to a lesser extent, the other fleshy parts of the fruits of plants in the genus Capsicum. The seeds themselves do not produce any capsaicin, although the highest concentration of capsaicin can be found in the white pith of the inner wall, where the seeds are attached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Capsaicin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q. Where does the &amp;quot;heat&amp;quot; reside in the chile pepper? Many claim it is ALL in the seeds. I have also heard that the capsaicinoids are stored in the membranes of the chile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. Capsaicinoids are located on the chile membrane, or in the placental tissue, which holds the seeds. Although many people believe the seeds to be the hottest, seeds do not produce any capsaicin, but do absorb some from the placental tissues during processing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070924232608/http://spectre.nmsu.edu/dept/academic.html?i=1274&amp;amp;s=sub&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chile Information - Frequently Asked Questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T15:14:11.123" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9015" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-22T01:45:42.673" Score="18" ViewCount="1833" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I've recently found out about scam-baiting, and I've discovered a whole community around just wasting the times of scammers, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.419baiter.com/&quot;&gt;419Baiter&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thescambaiter.com/&quot;&gt;TheScamBaiter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of the people there are quite passionate about it. Some have set up fake websites, banks and stuff in order to fool the scammers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most also think that &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/540138&quot;&gt;what they do makes a difference&lt;/a&gt; by wasting the scammer's time and effort and acting as a deterrent. My question is, does it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly it seems to take more time and effort for the scam-baiter. So given the number of scammers out there, it doesn't seem like it could ever scale to be an effective solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, if it was successful as a deterrent, wouldn't it be in, say, the FBI or Google's best interest to start producing software that automatically baited scammers in order to waste their time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, these schemes seem to have increased not decreased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone actually offer any research which suggests that scam-baiting is an effective deterrent and that the scam-baiting has a measurable effect in lowering the incidence of internet fraud?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source of notability: &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/540138&quot;&gt;http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/540138&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:05:24.477" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:05:24.477" Title="Does scam-baiting make a noticeable difference to the prevention of internet fraud?" Tags="|security|email|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9019" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9037" CreationDate="2012-04-22T08:44:28.983" Score="8" ViewCount="1097" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some media have in the past reported that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/143629-dems-warn-of-devastating-education-cuts-in-gop-budget&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;education has been/or will be cut by the GOP&lt;/a&gt; at the federal level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: Bush Cuts &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thedubyareport.com/education3.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Education 2002&lt;/a&gt; budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;May 2, 2002 Sen Jack Reed of Rhode Island assailed the administration's proposed cuts. &quot;The Bush Administration is endangering our future economically and socially by shortchanging education spending,&quot; ...  Senator James Condos, ... &quot;What the federal government is asking us to do is dump our state educational system.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have significant cuts to education spending ever occurred (e.g. greater than 1%) and if so, what was the actual percentage of the cut? How long did those cuts last?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T23:49:55.273" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T23:49:55.273" Title="Politicians claim there have been big &quot;cuts&quot; to education, has this ever occurred?" Tags="|united-states|economics|politics|education|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9023" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-22T16:05:54.227" Score="4" ViewCount="349" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has long been believed that bees use dance to communicate the location of food amongst each other. If true, this would make bees unique in the insect world, as all other insects are guided by smell. Here's what &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggle_dance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says about the dance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Waggle dance is a term used in beekeeping and ethology for a particular figure-eight dance of the honey bee. By performing this dance, successful foragers can share with their hive mates information about the direction and distance to patches of flowers yielding nectar and pollen, to water sources, or to new housing locations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this seems to be disputed. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beesource.com/point-of-view/adrian-wenner/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adrian Wenner&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beesource.com/point-of-view/adrian-wenner/read-me-first/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;experiments&lt;/a&gt; have the greatest evidence to support &quot;odor plume&quot; theory over &quot;waggle dance&quot; theory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper that might be of most interest to you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beesource.com/point-of-view/adrian-wenner/dance-language-hypothesis/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Elusive Honey Bee Dance &quot;Language&quot; Hypothesis&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beesource.com/point-of-view/adrian-wenner/the-anatomy-of-an-ecological-controversy-honey-bee-searching-behavior/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Anatomy of a Ecological Controversy&lt;/a&gt;: Honey Bee Searching Behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="154" LastEditDate="2012-04-23T06:50:58.307" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:27:53.853" Title="Do bees use odor instead of dance to communicate the location of food?" Tags="|bees|entomology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30577" CreationDate="2012-04-22T16:52:27.717" Score="22" ViewCount="2411" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/healthday/650536.html&quot;&gt;Bloomberg Businessweek article&lt;/a&gt; using electronics before bed may hamper sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that using a computer, watching T.V. or using some other type of face-to-screen electronics before going to bed causes people to have trouble sleeping?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6864" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-22T17:03:59.357" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T13:24:14.387" Title="Does using the computer before sleeping affect sleep patterns?" Tags="|sleep|computers|television|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9025" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-22T19:59:26.077" Score="12" ViewCount="1104" Body="&lt;p&gt;The media and government officials have often claimed that the rate of teen suicide for homosexuals is vastly higher than the suicide rate of heterosexual teens. The figure they often use is that an estimated 1/3 of all teen suicides are homosexual. This estimate has led to the focus on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itgetsbetter.org/splash/mobile/&quot;&gt;It Gets Better&lt;/a&gt; campaign, and increased funding to anti-discrimination programs in schools with a focus on homosexuality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How accurate is this estimate, and where did they likely get this figure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/8734-gay-teen-suicide-epidemic.html&quot;&gt;Recent research in 2001&lt;/a&gt; would indicate that the 1/3 figure is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/LabarberaSuicideMyth.php&quot;&gt;exaggerated&lt;/a&gt;, and that homosexual teen suicide rates are only marginally greater than heterosexual teens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2019-08-20T02:05:20.090" LastActivityDate="2019-08-20T02:05:20.090" Title="Are one-third of teen suicides homosexuals?" Tags="|united-states|mortality|gender|sociology|suicide|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9027" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-04-22T22:24:31.297" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-22T22:24:31.297" LastActivityDate="2012-04-22T22:24:31.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9028" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-04-22T22:24:31.297" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions on insects and spiders. Entomology is the scientific study of insects, a branch of arthropodology. Historically this also included other arthropods such as arachnids (spiders)." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T08:33:11.930" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T08:33:11.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9029" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-22T23:16:15.520" Score="8" ViewCount="43258" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend was making tea with dry milk, I asked to him  to let me eat some dry milk (it is delicious) and he said that alone it is harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched for that and found this link,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondiva.quickanddirtytips.com/is-powdered-milk-bad-for-you.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://nutritiondiva.quickanddirtytips.com/is-powdered-milk-bad-for-you.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that in the process of turning fresh milk into a powder, the cholesterol in the milk is likely to get oxidized. And it is true that oxidized cholesterol appears to be a particularly dangerous form of cholesterol of all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oxidized cholesterol is cholesterol that’s been sort of roughed up around the edges, which makes it particularly irritating to your blood vessels. To make a long story short, that irritation is what triggers the formation of plaques, which are the beginning of heart disease. What’s worse, oxidized cholesterol molecules can in turn oxidize other cholesterol molecules, setting off a sort of chain reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is dry milk really harmful? Could eating it alone be more harmful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T21:07:57.970" Title="Is eating Dry Milk (powdered milk) harmful?" Tags="|nutrition|milk|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9030" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-23T00:02:58.713" Score="25" ViewCount="2491" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a widespread claim that we use beauty in the selection of a partner as a proxy to their overall health. The idea is that this is an evolutionary adaptation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies to confirm that people we generally find physically attractive are &lt;strong&gt;actually more healthy&lt;/strong&gt; compared to people who are generally considered unattractive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not mean perceived health. I don't know &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1610/another-answer-that-mis-reads-the-question-or-interprets-it-too-liberally-is-t&quot;&gt;why my questions keep getting mis-interpreted or what to do about it&lt;/a&gt;. The correlation between perceived health and beauty is unrelated to the claim: &lt;strong&gt;the claim is that beauty actually helps us predict the person's overall health&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example source: Michio Kaku, a well-respected physicist, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqTbwMmwGlw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a &quot;big think&quot; episode&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beauty, for example, according to one theory, is a way in which we have [sic] of judging the health of another person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T16:38:42.083" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T08:23:04.597" Title="Is physical beauty correlated with health?" Tags="|medical-science|evolution|beauty|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9029" CreationDate="2012-04-23T00:56:42.467" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, dry milk is not harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It certainly isn't harmful because of &lt;a href=&quot;http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2009/01/we-are-all-now-abnormal-and-all-shall.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cholesterol&lt;/a&gt;, Oxidized or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the American Heart Association in its latest Guidelines for Cardiovascular Disease Prevention in Women when it decided that all women were at “high risk” for heart disease — because nearly all heart attacks occur in women without risk factors. Rather than admit that the risk factors themselves are poor measures for predicting heart disease, the guidelines called for treating the risk factors in nearly all women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As covered in-depth &lt;a href=&quot;http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/05/making-it-up-on-volume.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, none of the clinical trials the AHA used to support its new guidelines for women made their case at all. Multiple cardiologists examining the evidence, as well as several major studies published since the AHA guidelines, concluded cholesterol and, except for age, the traditional risk factors are next to worthless for predicting risks for heart disease,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... In other words, the people who end up hospitalized for heart problems have average LDL-cholesterol levels that are lower than the general population (104 versus 123 mg/dl).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dry Milk does have a tendency to stick to the roof of your mouth, or tongue when eaten dry. This might cause a person to choke, but likely isn't life threatening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T03:43:03.127" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="286" CreationDate="2012-04-23T02:06:38.777" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might be the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beesource.com/point-of-view/adrian-wenner/varroa-mite-spread-in-the-united-states/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Varroa Mite&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The influx of tracheal and Varroa mites (particularly the latter), however, poses problems far greater than any faced before. From all indications, we can breed strains of tracheal mite-resistant bees and can do so ever better as we gain greater understanding of the interaction of those parasites with their bee hosts. Varroa mites, by contrast, feed on the blood of larvae, pupae and adults and can reproduce astonishingly fast; faster, that is, than the rate at which bee colonies can replace their losses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T02:06:38.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="286" CreationDate="2012-04-23T09:07:23.417" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/21543469&quot;&gt;Current research by Jeff Pettis&lt;/a&gt; [1] shows that the most widely used pesticide, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imidacloprid&quot;&gt;imidacloprid&lt;/a&gt;, compromises bees’ immune system even when present in sub-lethal doses. Bees thus weakened are very susceptible to infection with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosema_apis&quot;&gt;other pathogens&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both of the groups that had been exposed to imidacloprid harboured an average of 700,000 parasite spores in each bee. Bees from the control colonies, by contrast, harboured fewer than 200,000 spores in their bodies. The insecticide, in other words, was exposing bees to infestation, and thus to a much greater chance of dying prematurely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0405-hance_colonycollapse_pesticides.html&quot;&gt;Other research&lt;/a&gt; [2,3,4] had similar findings. In fact, the pesticide may be enough in producing colony collapse disorder even without the presence of a pathogen, merely by affecting their nervous system, as suggested by Lu &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp; al.&lt;/em&gt; [2]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]o test the effect of even small amounts of these pesticides on western honeybees …, Harvard researchers treated 16 hives with different levels of imidacloprid, leaving four hives untreated. After 12 weeks, the bees in all twenty hives—treated and untreated—were alive, though those treated with the highest does of imidacloprid appeared weaker. &lt;strong&gt;But by 23 weeks everything had changed: 15 out of the 16 hives (94 percent) treated with imidacloprid underwent classic Colony Collapse Disorder: hives were largely empty with only a few young bees surviving. The adults had simply vanished.&lt;/strong&gt; The hives that received the highest doses of imidacloprid collapsed first. Meanwhile the four untreated hives were healthy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They manage to replicate the exact conditions of colony collapse disorder. This suggests that their explanation is likely the correct one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1] Jeffery S. Pettis, Dennis vanEngelsdorp &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp; al.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Pesticide exposure in honey bees results in increased levels of the gut pathogen&lt;/em&gt; Nosema, Naturwissenschaften, Jan 2012. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00114-011-0881-1&quot;&gt;DOI 10.1007/s00114-011-0881-1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] Chensheng Lu, Kenneth M. Warchol, Richard A. Callahan. &lt;em&gt;In situ replication of honey bee colony collapse disorder&lt;/em&gt;. Bulletin of Insectology. 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[3] Penelope R. Whitehorn, Stephanie O’Connor, &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp; al.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Neonicotinoid Pesticide Reduces Bumble Bee Colony Growth and Queen Production&lt;/em&gt;, Science, Mar 2012. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6079/351.short&quot;&gt;DOI: 10.1126/science.1215025&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[4] Mickaël Henry, Maxime Béguin, &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp; al.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;A Common Pesticide Decreases Foraging Success and Survival in Honey Bees&lt;/em&gt;, Science, Mar 2012. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/336/6079/348&quot;&gt;DOI: 10.1126/science.1215039&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2012-04-23T09:19:48.817" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T09:19:48.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9030" CreationDate="2012-04-23T11:48:25.640" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Physical beauty, or rather human beauty varies differently by culture, but there are some extremely common trends that tend to follow in most definitions of beauty that can be traced back to our primitive roots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important indicator of female beauty is the Waist-to-Hip ratio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Female Hip Size&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hip size indicates pelvic size and the amount of additional fat storage that can be used as a source of energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Female Waist size&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Waist size conveys information such as current reproductive status or health status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301051104001000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301051104001000&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course with a larger pelvic size means less physical trauma during childbirth, greatly decreasing the chance of injury or death to mother and child as a result of procreation.  Evolutionarily speaking, doing the deed is meaningless if viable offspring is not likely.  Remember that human beings are a special animal in that we have an unusually long post-partem dependence on parents to become independent physical, mental, and emotionally mature adults.  This in many ways is a direct result of our large brains needing time to develop as well as other physical limitations imposed on how large an offspring can be produced as a two legged creature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the pelvic size and fat comes into play that you look very well fed and are more likely to carry to term, produce ample milk for the offspring, and have vitality to raise and feed children after nursing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A persons waist tells a lot about their overall health.  The most obvious thing that can be told is telling if the female is pregnant or not.  Other health factors can be told by looking at the waist, general fitness, core strength, obvious deformities or flaws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the source cited above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We postulate that in westernized societies with no risk of seasonal lack of food, the waist, conveying information about fecundity and health status, will be more important than hip size for assessing a female’s attractiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in most modern western societies we tend not to suffer from diseases of poverty but diseases of indulgence and abundance.  It is therefore deemed more attractive that a woman not have excess body fat around the waist however it is still acceptable and beautiful for women to have bodyfat around their hips and buttocks as these are physiologically the healthiest places on the body to store excess body fat, thus one is still healthy for having fatty hips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Male Attractiveness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Women, on average, tend to be more attracted to men who have a relatively narrow waist, a V-shaped torso, and broad shoulders, are taller than they are, and display a high-degree of facial symmetry, and relatively masculine facial dimorphism. With regard to male-male-attractiveness, one source reports that the most important factor that attracts gay men to other males is the man's physical attractiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness#cite_note-19&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness#cite_note-19&lt;/a&gt;*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again this is a throwback to our primitive roots where men and women didn't live and operate within a society that gives them equal standing to take care for themselves.  When a women was with child, pregnant or otherwise she was severely hindered to hunt, gather, and build.  To survive they needed to not only find and copulate with a strong provider, they needed the ability to keep them around (sex) so that they can be provided for while taking care of a child.  The cost of reproduction is almost negligible for males unless women had the ability to keep men interested in them.  Of course evolutionary speaking from the male perspective the primitive desire for fatherhood was another huge factor as raising viable offspring is the end goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attractive men tend to be tall, have strong upper body strength and narrow waists.  This conveys strength, ability to build strong structures and hunt.  Ability to defend from danger.  They tend to have good skin, and symetric features conveying they are healthy and free of genetic abnormalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6794" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T11:48:25.640" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9036" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9264" CreationDate="2012-04-23T12:42:18.847" Score="6" ViewCount="2030" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wasserkultur.com/basisch_ionisiertes_AktivWasser+Wasserionisierer_files/Diabetes-mellitus-und-AktivWasser-COMED-08-07_AQUACENTRUM-de.pdf&quot;&gt;article about activated alkaline water&lt;/a&gt; (I'm sorry, it's in German, but I couldn't find an English version by the same claimants) claims that drinking this water aids therapy of both Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes.&#xA;Interestingly, half of the references at the end (found on pubmed, in English) don't seem to have anything to do with what is being claimed. The references in German are self-references, which makes me suspect that this is pure self-assertion with no evidence at all behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately the title and summary of results at the end lead people to assume that this is a &lt;em&gt;cure&lt;/em&gt; for diabetes (I was given this resource by someone who believes that I should stop taking insulin and drink this water instead), which would be potentially lethal if someone actually follows this advice, but I lack the expertise to debunk this well. Any help here would be very much appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T07:57:18.467" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T07:57:18.467" Title="Can activated alkaline water cure diabetes?" Tags="|water|diabetes|alkaline-diet|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9019" CreationDate="2012-04-23T13:32:09.110" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. For example, the charges leveled by Reed/Condos above have been disproven by, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factcheck.org/democratic_internet_ad_confuses_fiction_and_fact.html&quot;&gt;Fact Check&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;funding for the Department of Education is up 58% in the first three years of Bush's term and is set to rise further under the budget he proposed in January&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Department of Education keeps track of dollars per pupil expenditures. The line graph and chart both show that per pupil spending increases or remains relatively flat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html#3&quot;&gt;line chart&lt;/a&gt; from the Department of Education, measured in &lt;strong&gt;Constant Dollars&lt;/strong&gt; (inflation adjusted for those who don't know)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here is another &lt;a href=&quot;http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66&quot;&gt;chart from the Department of Education&lt;/a&gt; showing the difference between Actual Dollars, and inflation adjusted dollars. (for those who will quibble of the term Constant).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above charts are for K-12 spending. Here is a chart with total spending by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/spending_chart_1960_2011USb_13s1li011lcn_20t&quot;&gt;Department of Education&lt;/a&gt; (not adjusted for inflation). Note that 2011 is only a guess, not actual reported spending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Department of Education is to be believed, there have only been 2 cuts to education of 1% or less, and they didn't last more than a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T13:32:09.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9030" CreationDate="2012-04-23T14:56:40.280" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been studies which appear to confirm the correlation between facial symmetry and health (&lt;a href=&quot;http://alittlelab.stir.ac.uk/pubs/Jones_01_perception_symandhealth_EHB.pdf&quot;&gt;see this one from the University of St. Andrews for example&lt;/a&gt;) so there is certainly something connecting appearance and apparent health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you just need to be able to correlate beauty with symmetry and this should be at least partly demonstrated, and in fact this has been shown &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080818185213.htm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jyi.org/volumes/volume6/issue6/features/feng.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and in other articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T14:56:40.280" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9019" CreationDate="2012-04-23T15:22:34.153" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on what exactly you mean by &quot;cuts,&quot; the U.S. Government operates under &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseline_%28budgeting%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;baseline budgeting&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2011/08/04/a-budget-cutting-deal-that-boosts-federal-spending/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;another&lt;/a&gt; baseline budgeting explanation). This means that each year budgets are projected to increase by a certain amount (I believe they use 10% but can't find a good reference). This means that for a budget of $100 this year they expect a budget of $110 next year, assuming a 10% increase, therefore if the budget is only $105 next year, this was a cut of 4.6% despite actually increasing the total dollar amount in the budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know there hasn't been a cut that resulted in a budget being lower than a previous year in recent times, I'll keep digging to source this though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6876" LastActivityDate="2012-04-23T15:22:34.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9042" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9528" CreationDate="2012-04-23T22:53:46.547" Score="44" ViewCount="50899" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSP3IjH2cAg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;comedy act&lt;/a&gt;, Ricky Gervais shows examples of homosexuality in nature, all of them from the book &quot;Biological Exuberance, animal homosexuality and natural diversity&quot; by Bruce Bagemihl. One of the examples is homosexuality among dolphins, having anal sex or &quot;blowhole sex&quot; (from minute 8:40 in the above video) depicted in a figure from that book:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SL46k.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Dolphins getting it on&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there reliable sources other than that book that have recorded dolphins get their freak on with nasal cavity sex?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And do they do it during heterosexual sex as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to emphasize, a dolphin sticking his little man in the blowhole of another dolphin is like a human sticking his little dolphin into another human's &lt;strong&gt;nose&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-08-27T23:18:12.750" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T21:39:32.050" Title="Do dolphins have homosexual &quot;blowhole&quot; sex?" Tags="|zoology|sexuality|dolphins|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9043" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10604" CreationDate="2012-04-23T23:03:43.710" Score="12" ViewCount="3415" Body="&lt;p&gt;A famous quote atributed to Oscar Wilde is that, when he was asked by a customs officer in New York if he had anything to declare, he answered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have nothing to declare except my genius.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this have any corroboration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2017-01-16T13:25:19.917" LastActivityDate="2020-03-23T08:35:15.197" Title="Did Oscar Wilde declare his genius to a customs officer?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9044" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9049" CreationDate="2012-04-24T00:49:45.753" Score="4" ViewCount="649" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems a bit bold for one to think that everything that he or she throws in the recycling bin is recycled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know how often things that are thrown into the recycling bin (assuming that the truck comes by to pick up the recycling and that everything in the bin is recyclable) are actually recycled, because I've never personally seen proof that any city or state government does anything with even part of the recyclable materials that it receives. It's possible that recyclables end up in the same piles as garbage, but how can one truly know? Does anybody in the community know for sure that most recyclables are recycled?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I could narrow this question down a bit, I'd like to know about American recycling statistics. The information provided by Benjol and Oddthinking is helpful in giving a general idea on recycling though, so I thank you for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6882" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T23:39:08.767" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T23:39:08.767" Title="How often are recyclable items recycled?" Tags="|environment|recycling|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9045" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9070" CreationDate="2012-04-24T01:24:18.580" Score="8" ViewCount="1532" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a scientific consensus that glaciers are melting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Buzzle (Non-peer reviewed web-article):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The last century has been a problem for glaciers across the globe. They are melting, but at an alarming rate. Fresh snow that replaces the melting ice is not able to maintain the size of almost any glacier worldwide. One of the main causes for this is thought to be 'global warming'. As the average global temperature keeps on increasing, ice from glaciers keep melting faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850&quot;&gt;Retreat of glaciers since 1850&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since 1980, a significant global warming has led to glacier retreat becoming increasingly rapid and ubiquitous, so much so that some glaciers have disappeared altogether, and the existence of a great number of the remaining glaciers of the world is threatened.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/05/010529235344.htm&quot;&gt;Science Daily Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ASU geologist Rick Wessels is part of an international team of scientists studying the climate of the entire earth over several years with the Global Land Ice Measurement from Space (GLIMS) project. The team, led by United States Geological Survey (USGS) scientist Hugh Kieffer, is monitoring climate change by tracking the melting of glaciers across the earth. The global scale combined with a long study period will give the scientists the broad perspective needed to determine whether worldwide changes in climate are actually taking place. But in only seven months of monitoring, Wessels has already seen melting in glaciers all over Earth, which provides some solid evidence -- or liquid evidence -- for global warming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some glaciers are growing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/9206785/Himalayan-glaciers-growing-despite-global-warming.html&quot;&gt;The Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Glaciers in parts of the greater Himalayas are growing despite the worldwide trend of ice melting due to warmer temperatures, a study has found.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  The site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iceagenow.com/Growing_Glaciers.htm&quot;&gt;Ice Age Now&lt;/a&gt; lists many more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do these finds show that glaciers are, overall, not shrinking?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do these expanding glaciers show that there has not been any global warming?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5577" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-04-25T00:31:50.470" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T06:25:17.880" Title="Are glaciers melting?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9044" CreationDate="2012-04-24T01:46:57.663" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are government agencies and commodity guilds that track that sort of thing. The percentage of materials that are recycled that have deposits would most likely be accurate. Who would lie since money is involved? The recycling rate for those is 30% for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.packaginglaw.com/3232_.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Plastic&lt;/a&gt; and 60% for &lt;a href=&quot;http://earth911.com/news/2011/09/01/aluminum-can-recycling-rate-highest-in-a-decade/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;aluminium&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-04-24T05:28:56.220" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T05:28:56.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9044" CreationDate="2012-04-24T01:47:19.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is going to depend on the region. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Australia, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.environment.gov.au/wastepolicy/publications/national-waste-report.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The National Waste Report&lt;/a&gt;, claims that in 2006-07, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;22 707 000 tonnes or 52% of Australia's waste was recycled&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and that figure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;22% was from the municipal solid waste (MSW) stream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(i.e. the recycle bins, rather than from industrial, construction, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, 11% of all waste, or about 5 million tonnes per year is recycled, as you would normally understand it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not answer the question &quot;What percentage of the waste that I put in the recycling bin gets recycled?&quot; but it does show that recycling does account for a significant part of the waste process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard unconfirmed reports that some councils, after first issuing recycling bins, would discard recyclables into landfill until the general population had been trained well enough to produce the volume and quality to make a recycling programme worthwhile. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T01:47:19.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14957" CreationDate="2012-04-24T04:04:12.407" Score="29" ViewCount="1896" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been several reports that a large number of prostitutes visit the host city of the Super Bowl each year:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2010/01/prostitutes_super_bowl_south_florida.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prostitutes Plan to Profit Big From Super Bowl Week in South Florida&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Local police forces have announced that they will be especially diligent this week, with active stings targeting both prostitutes and potential patrons. Still, as many as 100,000 prostitutes -- male and female -- will descend upon South Florida in hopes of cashing in with football fans before the Super Bowl&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Pimps-and-Prostitutes-Expected-with-Super-Bowl-XLV-110948159.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pimps and Prostitutes Expected with Super Bowl XLV&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pedigo estimates 15,000 prostitutes will be brought to North Texas for the Super Bowl, many against their will and that many of the women selling their bodies are underage and on the verge of homelessness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the Houston Press published an article claiming it was a hoax:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.houstonpress.com/2012-02-02/news/the-super-bowl-prostitution-hoax/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Super Bowl Prostitution Hoax&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, one of America's great urban legends is again being trotted out just in time for kickoff: The notion that legions of out-of-town prostitutes descend on whichever city hosts America's Big Game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Said Phoenix police Sergeant Tommy Thompson after the 2008 Super Bowl: &amp;quot;We may have had certain precincts that were going gangbusters looking for prostitutes, but they were picking up your everyday street prostitutes. They didn't notice any sort of glitch in the number of prostitution arrests leading up to the Super Bowl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence for these claims of a local influx of prostitutes following the Super Bowl?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T17:17:11.993" Title="Do 15,000+ prostitutes travel to the Super Bowl each year in the USA?" Tags="|united-states|prostitution|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9054" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-24T06:00:38.270" Score="29" ViewCount="2779" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore state this as part of the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWolRkZPFw4&quot;&gt;Real Men Don't Buy Girls&lt;/a&gt;&quot; campaign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/americas/04/14/kutcher.moore.piers.morgan/&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt; -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's between 100,000 and 300,000 child sex slaves in the United States today,&quot; Ashton Kutcher tells CNN's Piers Morgan. &quot;If you don't do something to stop that -- that's when there's something wrong with you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been repeated in numerously, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-01-31-child-prostitution-super-bowl_N.htm&quot;&gt;USA Today&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing &amp;amp; Exploited Children &quot;Each year, 100,000 to 300,000 American kids, some as young as 12 years old, are exploited in the sex trade&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-310461.html&quot;&gt;CBS News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study (The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico), released Monday, reported that 300,000 to 400,000 children in the United States — 1 in 100 children&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:42:30.110" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:42:30.110" Title="Are there between 100,000-300,000 child sex slaves in the United States today?" Tags="|united-states|sociology|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9044" CreationDate="2012-04-24T13:19:05.183" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_management_in_Switzerland&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; article states that 40% of Swiss household waste is recycled (citing official administration statistics, I can't tell from your question whether you're likely to believe them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.igora.ch/en/index/igora/igo-organisation.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; claims that 91% of aluminium beverage cans are recycled (in Switzerland)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2192" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T13:19:05.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9057" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9058" CreationDate="2012-04-24T15:03:54.057" Score="15" ViewCount="5347" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the spring of 1986 (when I was in the fifth grade), I earned the &lt;em&gt;Presidential Academic Fitness Award&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IFvyj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Presidential Academic Fitness Award&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than good grades and perhaps a good standardized test score from the time, I don't remember exactly what I did to earn this achievement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, Ronald Reagan's signature is in the bottom right hand corner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that his real signature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like there were at least 50 other kids in my one Elementary School that earned this achievement.  Doing a little math for nation-wide achievers makes it seemed pretty far-fetched.  However, just wanted to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4905" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T20:06:01.640" Title="Did Ronald Reagan sign my Academic Fitness Award?" Tags="|politics|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9057" CreationDate="2012-04-24T15:28:18.233" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is going to depend a bit upon how you want to define &quot;real signature&quot;. The ink on the page was almost certainly created using an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;autopen&lt;/a&gt; such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realsig.com/m80.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Model 80 by DAMILIC&lt;/a&gt;. The Autopen has been in use for presidential signatures &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Images/People/Sigs/Autopen.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;since Eisenhower&lt;/a&gt; and the general rule of thumb is that if it's a form letter with a signature, it's almost certainly an autopen signature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QPMxM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To come back to the part about depending on if it is a real signature or not. A pen is used and the signature is based upon a template so it may be a real signature from the standpoint of not being a printed signature, but may not be the same as it may or may not carry the same force of law as an &lt;a href=&quot;http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/06/republican-protest-obama-bill-signing-with-autopen-/1#.T5bGQo470dM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;actual signature affixed by a person&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-09-12T20:06:01.640" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T20:06:01.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9059" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-24T15:46:14.500" Score="12" ViewCount="5380" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3085885.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3085885.stm&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Astronomers in Australia say there are &lt;strong&gt;10 times&lt;/strong&gt; more &lt;strong&gt;stars&lt;/strong&gt; in the&#xA;  visible Universe than all the &lt;strong&gt;grains of sand&lt;/strong&gt; on the world's beaches&#xA;  and deserts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The figure - presented to the International Astronomical Union&#xA;  conference in Sydney - is the kind that really can be called&#xA;  astronomical: 70 sextillion, or seven followed by 22 zeroes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been unable to find a source for this comparison (e.g. an article or presentation by the authors) other than the BBC article itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only estimation that I found online in relation to this claim is an exercise that was put up by Howard C. McAllister, a Professor of Physics University of Hawaii at Manoa here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hawaii.edu/suremath/jsand.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.hawaii.edu/suremath/jsand.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any way to verify or measure how reliable is this comparison? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:42:06.513" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T15:28:06.340" Title="More stars than grains of sand?" Tags="|physics|astronomy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9059" CreationDate="2012-04-24T18:59:44.930" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Comparing the two estimates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The star count estimate is documented in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/534/inevitability-beyond-billions&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Astrobiology Magazine&lt;/a&gt; (Hat-tip Oliver_C):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At this week's General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Sydney, the researchers put forward their big number: 70 sextillion, or 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 [seven followed by twenty-two zeros]. Previous estimates were approximately twenty-five percent smaller. &quot;This is not the total number of stars in the universe, but it's the number within the range of our telescopes,&quot; said Driver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no error range cited here, but given the previous estimates are only 25% different, using 7&amp;times;10&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; seems reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The grains-of-sand estimate is already discussed in another Skeptics.SE question, where &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/4509/6876&quot;&gt;Thomas_O&lt;/a&gt; explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Estimating the number of grains of sand on Earth is difficult. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hawaii.edu/suremath/jsand.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This source suggests 7.5x10^18 grains&lt;/a&gt;, but only includes beaches (deserts, under-sea sand and other sources not included.) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/ast99/ast99215.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This source suggests 10^20 to 10^24 grains&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the lower number there, 7.5&amp;times;10&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt; doesn't include the deserts explicitly included in the original quote; we can discard that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second estimate has a wide (two orders of magnitude) error range, which covers the star estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the estimates we have previously found of the number of grains of sand in the world aren't accurate enough to answer the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6876" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-04-24T23:56:47.137" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9064" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-25T04:07:14.507" Score="10" ViewCount="2105" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a conversation with a friend recently, she was telling me about a new car that &quot;some Japanese company&quot; had developed, apparently a working prototype that's about to be put into production.  It has a rather astounding fuel source: water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently it operates by using electrolysis to separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen, and then burning the hydrogen as fuel to power the car.  Some of the surplus energy runs an alternator, which produces electricity like in a conventional car, some of which is used for electrolysis to produce more hydrogen fuel...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I hear that and my mind goes on yellow alert. That's not &lt;em&gt;technically&lt;/em&gt; a description of a perpetual motion machine, but the concept of running both halves of a reversible reaction and turning a profit on the energy involved has &quot;stop in the name of the Second Law!&quot; written all over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yet, according to my friend at least, a working prototype exists and they're about to put it into production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that possible?  Is there some missing detail in the description?  And is some car company actually producing it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T13:15:49.930" Title="Does a prototype car that runs on water exist?" Tags="|physics|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9066" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-25T05:09:06.943" Score="17" ViewCount="1610" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2011-09-12/politics/truth.squad.social.security_1_ponzi-scheme-social-security-board-future-benefit-cuts?_s=PM:POLITICS&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Texas Gov. Rick Perry&lt;/a&gt; said at a September 7 MSNBC presidential debate that &amp;quot;it is a Ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today, you're paying into a program that's going to be there. Anybody that's for the status quo with Social Security today is involved with a monstrous lie to our kids, and it's not right.&amp;quot; The &amp;quot;Ponzi scheme&amp;quot; label was also discussed during Monday night's CNN/Tea Party Republican presidential debate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Ponzi scheme as defined by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sec.gov/answers/ponzi.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Securities and Exchange Commission&lt;/a&gt;, and why they collapse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why do Ponzi schemes collapse?&lt;/strong&gt; - With little or no legitimate earnings, the schemes require a consistent flow of money from new investors to continue. Ponzi schemes tend to collapse when it becomes difficult to recruit new investors or when a large number of investors ask to cash out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T12:50:08.437" Title="Is Social Security a Ponzi scheme?" Tags="|united-states|economics|politics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9066" CreationDate="2012-04-25T09:17:42.823" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there are some parallels, but it's not a Ponzi scheme. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme&quot;&gt;Ponzi scheme&lt;/a&gt;, you have a hierarchical, most often pyramid like structure. These at the top of pyramid make lot of money, at expense of the people at the bottom. Another difference between the illegal Ponzi scheme, and the somewhat legal &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_marketing&quot;&gt;Multi-Level-Marketing&lt;/a&gt;, is that Ponzi scheme is always based on investment from bottom people, while MLM might mean constant stream of revenue. Ponzi scheme is bound to collapse when there no more people willing to join (i.e when the structure is not a pyramid anymore). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Ponzi scheme is a type of fraud (as quoted in definition in the question). Fraud by definition requires element of deception. Workings of social security system are well known and transparent. Thus it cannot be considered a fraud. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US Social Security and some of European state retirement systems are based on pay-as-you-go, also called Bismarck scheme (as it was first &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Socialism#Old_Age_and_Disability_Insurance_Bill_of_1889&quot;&gt;introduced in Germany in 1889 by Otto von Bismarck&lt;/a&gt;). One parallel to the Ponzi scheme is that contribution from new joiners (currently working people) are used as for benefit payout to old joiners. Unlike the Ponzi scheme, it's currently not a pyramid and wasn't for quite some time already. However, with life expectancy being drastically higher than when the scheme was originally invented, it became unsustainable, as it becomes inverted pyramid. It's imminent collapse is another reason why it's being compared to the Ponzi scheme. However, the reason for collapse is quite different from the Ponzi scheme. State retirement schemes are unsustainable because of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition&quot;&gt;demographic transition&lt;/a&gt; in developed countries. Life expectancy is growing (currently aprox. 80 in developed countries), which means there are more people eligible for retirements benefits, and for a longer period of time. Thus the pension burden is growing. At the same time fertility rate is dropping, meaning that in each of next generations there are less people to contribute to this growing burden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most developed countries already are making the transition to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defined_contribution_plan&quot;&gt;sustainable systems&lt;/a&gt;, where an individual's contributions are not only taken into account when calculating the pension, but actually invested and protected. However, during the transition period there are hybrid systems in which you have to contribute to both PAYG and capital systems. So yes, in a sense having young people contribute to PAYG is unfair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-04-27T09:47:28.807" LastActivityDate="2012-04-27T09:47:28.807" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9068" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9111" CreationDate="2012-04-25T11:46:33.610" Score="5" ViewCount="824" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to point out that this question is from a dubious and unverified claim that I had encountered.  I thoroughly searched the internet for any information on such claims but could not find anything so please close if you feel it is a poor question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the bus, I typically see University of Pittsburgh advertisements for various medical and psychological research studies.  (Eg. Are you a smoker between the ages of 25-55).  On one bus I saw was a study, &lt;strong&gt;Are you the parent of a child that is emotionally stable between the ages of 8-12?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone had vandalized the ad with a permanent marker.  On the very top of the poster was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;WE NEED MORE AND MORE FUNDING&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the description of the voluntary participants that they are looking for was written:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NO MATTER WHAT, WE WILL FIND SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR CHILD&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then at the very bottom after the address of the research center:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;WE HAVEN'T PAID ANY TAXES SINCE 1951&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There really are several highly charged claims in this vandalism.  The first statement suggests that they are highly self-serving and much more concerned about securing funding and grants than any noble cause such as helping children.  This claim is probably too generic by itself.  We all know that there are some unethical professors and research assistants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second claim particularly bothered me.  It seems to suggest that they are purposely looking for emotional and psychological disorders in these children to further their own agenda and purpose, perhaps their purpose to continue existing and collecting grants.  What is more is that since these are children they are incapable of making such a voluntary choice to participate in such a study.  It really has to do with the parents volunteering their own children for this study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study itself claims they are looking for &lt;strong&gt;Emotionally Stable&lt;/strong&gt; children however, which seems highly subjective criteria to me anyway.  Why would a parent who &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; believed that their child was emotionally stable submit them to a study like this unless they had a seed of doubt in their mind to begin with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps this is just an enraged fantasy by a parent living in denial about some real psychological issues with their child that these researchers had made known to the parent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then there is the third claim about them not paying &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; taxes which might be true, but why deface the ad with that information unless you are just looking for faults? The mostly tax-free status of the many presitigouos and lucrative Pittsburgh higher education institutions is a highly politically charged issue for this region and am wondering if all of these claims simply exist as a political retaliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated earlier I scoured the internet mostly looking for information on child behavioral studies that are scams but turned up nothing.  I was hoping to find more information on that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6794" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:39:33.900" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:39:33.900" Title="Are university research studies involving children a money making scheme?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|children|taxes|psychiatry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9069" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-25T12:37:24.133" Score="3" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2485/is-some-level-of-radiation-good-for-you&quot;&gt;Is some level of radiation “good for you”?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,161866,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a Fox News article by Steven Milloy, called Trillion-Dollar Radiation Mistake&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A federal research panel last week concluded that there is no safe&#xA;exposure to radiation. It’s a conclusion based on assumptions about&#xA;cancer that may be all wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the last 30 years or so, the scientific establishment has become heavily invested in the notion that cancers are caused by genetic, or DNA mutations. The idea is that something — say a single molecule of a “cancer-causing” chemical, the smallest radiation exposure or even chance alone — can cause a change or mutation in a cell’s DNA, thereby turning a normal cell into a cancer cell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to regulation of radiation exposures, this supposition is the basic rationale that government regulators have relied on for decades to regulate exposures to chemicals allegedly linked with cancer risk — even though there is virtually no real-world evidence to support it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a new idea spotlighted by Tom Bethell in the July/August issue of the American Spectator should cause regulators to begin to re-think their decades-old-but-still-unproven assumption of gene mutation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence of a safe threshold? Or is it the case that every bit of radiation is a risk to us?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1762" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T17:07:03.907" Title="Is there a lower limit on radiation that's harmless to humans?" Tags="|radiation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-04-26T00:55:56.790" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9045" CreationDate="2012-04-25T15:41:51.693" Score="13" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Summary&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do these finds show that glaciers are, overall, not shrinking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. The estimated rate of change in the mass of glaciers in the Himalayas is 3+/-6 Gt/year. (1 Gt = 10&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; tonnes = 10&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; kg.) Given this level of uncertainty, it is not certain that they are growing. The global rate of mass lost from glaciers overall is closer to -500±100 Gt/y (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature10847&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jacob et al 2012&lt;/a&gt;), which is much greater in magnitude than the changes observed in the Himalayas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do these expanding glaciers show that there has not been any global warming?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Global warming is observed directly as the increase in surface temperature over time  (e.g. see &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6302/is-the-world-warmer-now-than-during-the-medieval-warm-period&quot;&gt;Is the world warmer now than during the Medieval Warm Period?&lt;/a&gt;). The effects of global warming, including melting glaciers, do not affect conclusions whether or not the warming is actually occurring. But the global declines in ice mass are consistent with what is expected to occur in a warming world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Background&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glaciers lose mass through melting, ablation, and calving. In the popular press, the term &quot;melting&quot; is used to account for all three. Thus, saying that the glaciers are 'melting' is used as a way of saying that the amount of ice in the world - the size of the cryosphere - is decreasing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mass of a glacier is dynamic - it changes through time: mass is lost to melting etc. and mass is gained through precipitation of ice and snow. A nice overview of glacial dynamics is provided by the IPCC (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch4s4-5.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IPCC 2007 section 4.5.1&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Evidence&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch4s4-5-2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;section 4.5.2&lt;/a&gt;, The IPCC concludes that the global mass of glaciers is decreasing. According to a recent estimate that is based on satellite measurements of changes in the earth's gravitational field, the cryosphere is losing ~500±100 Gt / year  of water per year &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature10847&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Jacob et al 2012)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although not every single glacier is decreasing in size, the overall trend is decreasing. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature10847&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jacob et al&lt;/a&gt; provide a nice synthesis of the variability among different parts of the cryosphere, as shown in the figure and table below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qSLW1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y5FTK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="238" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T06:25:17.880" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2485" CreationDate="2012-04-25T17:07:03.907" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an open question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are at least three competing theories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the health impact of ionising radiation (IR) is linear, with no lower threshold dose. This is known as the LNT (Linear No Threshold) model.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is a threshold dose below which there is no effect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is a threshold below which there is a beneficial effect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each has their advocates. LNT is used as the cautious response to the uncertainties. The epidemiological evidence is complicated by several factors: difficulties in measuring the actual exposure received by very large numbers of people; and other things which affect health that correlate with radiation exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/7814250/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cohen 1995&lt;/a&gt; found evidence against LNT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;no potential explanation for the discrepancy other than failure of the linear-no threshold theory for carcinogenesis from inhaled radon decay products could be found&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, various bodies have come to the conclusion that LNT is the right model to use, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/annexg.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UNSCEAR, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the effects of Ionizing Radiations&lt;/a&gt;, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/radiation/docs/assessment/draft-RGCRMPUSPv1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US Environmental Protection Agency&lt;/a&gt;, which found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Underlying the risk models is a large body of epidemiological and&#xA;  radiobiological data. In general, results from both lines of research are&#xA;  consistent with a linear, no-threshold dose (LNT) response model in which the&#xA;  risk of inducing a cancer in an irradiated tissue by low doses of IR is proportional&#xA;  to the dose to that tissue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T17:07:03.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9072" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2012-04-25T17:08:17.450" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm one of the current pro-tempore moderators on Skeptics, but I'm also active across the SE network, mostly on Gaming, Meta.SO and also on Biology where I'm a moderator, too. My main interest in the site is on scientific topics, pseudoscience needs to be debunked at every opportunity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm very familiar with the moderation process and the moderator tools here at Stack Exchange as I've been moderating this site now for over a year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as my opinions on the different Skeptics policies go, I think we're heading into the right direction, though they might need some polishing in various areas, especially in making the site friendlier to new users without compromising the quality of our content. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have any questions about my nomination, feel free to comment here or &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/311/hub-of-reason&quot;&gt;ask me in our chat room&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-04-25T17:08:17.450" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T17:08:17.450" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-04-25T17:08:17.450" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9075" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2012-04-25T21:41:28.403" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am an Italian developer from UK. I have a long standing love for science, evidence &amp;amp; facts. I am mostly active on the Medical Science, Physics and History tags&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I love this site to a fault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Achievements&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lead us from private beta to grad&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ran the &quot;Topic of the Week&quot; and helped many users on meta&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Asked for references&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More than 2000 comments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Edited 800+ posts and got a copy editor gold badge&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Asked and answered many questions, a few with 100+ score, and gained more than 20K rep&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/102363&quot;&gt;Got us&lt;/a&gt; notices on posts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Promoted us! &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/502&quot;&gt;E.g.&lt;/a&gt; and gained 2x Publicist, 4x Booster and 18x Announcer badges&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;I love&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;References!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We can have a site that works differently and graduate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The community! Very strict on content, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/13&quot;&gt;not d***s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Vote for me&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have the &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites&quot;&gt;same traffic as meta.SO&lt;/a&gt; and SE plans to help us grow further!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can help us be at our best. I want to champion community-based moderation. I will help tweak and improve our policies with all of you and find better ways to welcome new users&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T13:55:56.527" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T21:41:28.403" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-04-25T21:41:28.403" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9076" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2012-04-25T22:50:45.930" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I may as well toss my hat in the ring.  I am not a moderator here (although I am over at Astronomy, but they are closing), but I have been with the site ever since Dr. Phil Plait directed me over here.  I have visited the site daily since then.  I strive for fairness and impartiality when evaluating what others are writing.  In particular, I do try to let any claim pass, and let the references speak to the validity of the answer (or question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a member of numerous skeptical communities online (JREF, RatSkep, BA) as well as in real life (Granite State Skeptics).  My goals for wanting to be a moderator here is to enable (advocate for) an easier first time user experience.  Keep the community open and inviting.  Encourage new users to come here and use this site as a resource for not only answering their questions, but also as a site that people can go to and research a topic and get a good start on finding those reliable resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have any questions, I am generally easy to find via email.  You can also read up more about me than you could possibly want to know at &lt;a href=&quot;http://larianlequella.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;my personal web page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-04-25T22:50:45.930" LastActivityDate="2012-04-25T22:50:45.930" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-04-25T22:50:45.930" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9078" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2012-04-26T00:27:00.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I became a mod, I wrongly thought graduation was just a few weeks away. I decided it would be fun for a while, but when the elections came, I'd not run. I'd be bored by then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ten months later&lt;/em&gt;, I'm surprised to find myself more committed than ever, and spending too much time here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But realistically, 95% of what I do (requesting refs/copy-editing/requesting refs/answering questions/requesting refs) can be done without a Blue Diamond. I plan to continue to contribute, either way. I have no bold plans for our future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which puts me in a position of not being too fussed. Often different lifetime phases of an organisation need different styles of leader. As long as there are some strong candidates, and we elect at least one existing mod to provide continuity and an ability to understand past decisions, I'm happy to see some fresh blood with new ideas take my place. (The sad part: When I hear myself say this, I realise that is exactly who I would vote for in a politician.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please nominate yourself; if there are good candidates, I'll step aside. If you are deciding between me and an existing mod, go with them. They all have earned my complete respect and endorsement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-04-26T11:14:46.763" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T11:14:46.763" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-04-26T00:27:00.927" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9066" CreationDate="2012-04-26T02:22:42.693" Score="-7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/fraud&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fraud&lt;/a&gt; must be proved by showing that the defendant's actions involved five separate elements: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(1) a false statement of a material fact,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(2) knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(3) intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(4) justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(5) injury to the alleged victim as a result&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-ErdU8Ck8g&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lockbox&lt;/a&gt; or the Trust Fund.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it isn't the politicians who make the laws lying to you, it is the bueracrats in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Social Security Administration&lt;/a&gt; lying to you. There is no lockbox, there is no Trust Fund. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q27: &lt;strong&gt;Do the Social Security Trust Funds earn interest?&lt;/strong&gt; - A:  Yes they do. By law, the assets of the Social Security program must be invested in securities guaranteed as to both principal and interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssa.gov/history/ponzi.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SSA&lt;/a&gt; argues that they aren't a ponzi scheme, but they know what one is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In contrast to a Ponzi scheme, dependent upon an unsustainable progression, a common financial arrangement is the so-called &quot;pay-as-you-go&quot; system. Some private pension systems, as well as Social Security, &lt;strong&gt;have&lt;/strong&gt; used this design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The SSA is aware that Social Security is no longer a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAYGO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pay-As-You-Go&lt;/a&gt; system. Social Security is currently running a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/assets.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;$2.6 Trillion deficit&lt;/a&gt;, although they would refer to this as an Asset. It isn't an asset in any normal sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(3) intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The government is intent on deceiving the victim (taxpayers paying the payroll tax) of their property to pay for current retirees and to loan itself money to pay for other obligations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(4) justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't patently absurd that social security won't be available to you in your old age, a normal person who has been told all their life about SS probably still believes it will make up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gallup.com/poll/1693/social-security.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a majority of their retirement&lt;/a&gt;, or at least a minor part of it. The SSA notes that income has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/pr/trustee12-pr.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;exceeded costs in 2010&lt;/a&gt;, and will remain so for the next 75 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(5) injury to the alleged victim as a result&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2006/506/images/p18.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;15.3% reduction&lt;/a&gt; in income is a serious injury. Based on 2010 Census data, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Per capita money income&lt;/a&gt; of $27,334 would result in $4,182 per annum. If invested with a modest rate of return (8%), over 46 years (age 21-67), would result in a return of $1.9 million dollars (2010 dollars).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T02:22:42.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9081" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="42320" CreationDate="2012-04-26T02:58:00.890" Score="26" ViewCount="4327" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I heard an interesting one tonight. My wife passed on that on a blog discussing contraceptive use, someone posted a link to a site stating that taking &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rxlist.com/ortho-tri-cyclen-drug.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ortho Tri Cyclen&lt;/a&gt;, an oral contraceptive, &amp;quot;ages&amp;quot; the cervix prematurely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The implication was that if a younger woman takes the pill, her cervix could end up being of an &amp;quot;age&amp;quot; of an older woman, thus preventing pregnancy when desired (and when taking oral contraceptives is stopped).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a heck of a time trying to research this on my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I started with googling &amp;quot;ortho tri cyclen&amp;quot; to find out more and examine side effects. I could only find it mentioned on the Wikipedia page for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_contraceptive_formulations&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;oral contraceptive formulations&lt;/a&gt; but no main site with side effects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I looked at the pages for the two types of birth control pill (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progestogen-only_pill&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;progestogen-only&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_oral_contraceptive_pill&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;combined&lt;/a&gt;) and didn't see anything like this listed in the side effects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;q=the+pill+ages+the+cervix&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;googling &amp;quot;the pill ages the cervix&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, the top link directed me to the potential source of this claim, a page on a site called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.woomb.org/omrrca/bulletin/vol24/no2/cervixnotes.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WOOMB&lt;/a&gt;, World Organization Ovulation Method Billings (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cervix undergoes a natural process of development and ageing. The area of the cervix given over to the mucus secreting crypts gradually diminishes from maturity. The number of S crypts decreases from teenage. They are first replaced by L crypts starting at the base of the cervix. Later G crypts replace the L crypts...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The L replaces S and G replaces L transformations are partially reversed by changes during pregnancy, but they are partially accelerated by the Pill. These circumstances may be simply stated by the expression: &lt;strong&gt;a pregancy rejuvenates the cervix by 2-3 years, but for each year the Pill is taken, the cervix ages by an extra year.&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.woomb.org/omrrca/bulletin/vol24/no2/cervixnotes.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;The Discovery of Different Types of Cervical Mucus and the Billings Ovulation Method&amp;quot;, Professor Erik Odeblad&lt;/a&gt;, Bulletin of the Natural Family Council of Victoria, ISSN 0321-7567, Vol 21 No 3 September 1994, pp3-35).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following the link to Professor Erik Odeblad's work, I was surprised to find what I considered a much more modest statement (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study of the effects of contraceptive pills on the cervix is a difficult task. A considerable amount of work is required for each patient and the time required spans many years, up to 10 years or more. Many women also want to change to other pills or to other methods of contraception, or perhaps now want to become pregnant. It also happens that some pills are withdrawn from the market. To these difficulties are added the normal age changes in the cervix and the dynamic processes which are of constant occurrence. &lt;strong&gt;After 3 and up to 15 months of contraceptive pill use, there is a greater loss of the S crypt cells than can be replaced.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read the quote yourself, but there seems to be no obvious connection (at least in that quote, which is what Woomb itself chose to reproduce) made between S crypt cells, the &amp;quot;age&amp;quot; of the cervix, or the ability to become/stay pregnant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://loveundefiled.blogspot.com/2009/09/research-shows-how-pill-ages-cervix.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; that reiterates the above and might be something similar to what caused my wife to bring this up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there evidence supporting the claim that the oral contraceptive pill (or some specific formulation) &amp;quot;age&amp;quot; the cervix prematurely such that the chances for pregnancy are reduced or eliminated even when no longer taking contraceptives?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I'm a former Catholic and very familiar with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_family_planning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;natural family planning&lt;/a&gt; (NFP), of which the Billings method is a type. I find it intriguing that this claim would originate with a natural family planning researcher, as these methods &lt;em&gt;tend&lt;/em&gt; to be associated with Catholics/Christians who want to avoid pregnancy while not disobeying the doctrine to which they subscribe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Catholic culture, natural family planning is not often pitched as simply that -- avoid pregnancy while not sinning; there tends to be a lot of preaching &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; other forms of contraception to make them less appealing, probably because NFP involves long(er) periods of abstinence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I simply add this to shed light on what I think &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be a side agenda of various natural family planning groups: to downplay alternative methods (condoms reduce sensation, the pill ages the cervix, etc.) to keep enticement down as much as possible for religious populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2021-11-25T06:48:30.333" Title="Does the oral contraceptive pill &quot;age&quot; a woman's cervix prematurely?" Tags="|biology|pregnancy|contraception|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9083" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9087" CreationDate="2011-10-18T03:36:37.127" Score="35" ViewCount="3344" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the premises of a new film, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/film-casts-fresh-doubt-on-shakespeares-authenticity/story-e6frg6so-1226169467829&quot;&gt;Anonymous&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, due to come out in a couple of weeks, is that Shakespeare's plays were authored by Edward de Vere, instead of by Shakespeare. The producers have also created educational materials arguing that Shakespeare was a fraud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notion that de Vere was the author has been around a while, having first been proposed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123998633934729551.html&quot;&gt;1920&lt;/a&gt; by a schoolmaster named J. Thomas Looney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what's the evidence? Is there a consensus among historians who've looked into the topic? Were Shakespeare's plays written by Shakespeare, de Vere, or someone else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" OwnerDisplayName="Jivlain" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T13:03:02.957" LastActivityDate="2016-09-05T16:20:19.753" Title="Who wrote Shakespeare's plays?" Tags="|history|literature|william-shakespeare|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9083" CreationDate="2011-10-19T22:27:24.933" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no consensus, for example the author of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/hidncode.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; claims that Shakespeare wrote the plays: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The author of Willaim &lt;em&gt;[sic]&lt;/em&gt; Shakespeare's plays was William Shakespeare.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also several persons have been suggested as an author of one or more plays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;And so, almost every prominent Elizabethan has been suggested at one time or another as the author of one or more of Shakespeare's plays: Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe, the Earl of Derby, the Earl of Rutland, the Earl of Southampton, the Earl of Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh and of course, Francis Bacon.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Shiraz Bhaiji" LastEditorUserId="185" LastEditDate="2016-06-06T09:06:47.943" LastActivityDate="2016-06-06T09:06:47.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9083" CreationDate="2011-10-19T23:49:40.043" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question has been the subject of a debate for (literally) centuries. Yes, as you mentioned from the film &quot;Anonymous&quot;, &lt;strong&gt;Edward de Vere&lt;/strong&gt; was one possible candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's start with de Vere. He was the 17th Earl of Oxford. The bulk of evidence seems to be circumstantial, though plausible. Shakespeare was not a nobleman, so he was able to write sharp-witted parody without fear of repercussion e.g. getting exiled or executed for treason against HM Queen Elizabeth I. De Vere was certainly educated and well-versed in music, law, aristocratic sports and classic as well as contemporary Italian culture, which is a big part of Shakespeare's plays. Oxford wrote poetry and prose under his own name, and it was considered very good. If he wrote the plays, they could be interpreted as political satires of Court life and critiques of government. Final facts, which are suggestive but not conclusive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oxford died in 1604, and the last play was written shortly before that&lt;br&gt;&#xA;EDIT&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;This is questionable as a supporting claim for Oxford, as there is much evidence that &lt;code&gt;The Tempest&lt;/code&gt; was written approx 1610-1611&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In 1623, Oxford's surviving family funded the first Shakespeare folio.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1920, the book &lt;em&gt;&lt;code&gt;Shakespeare Identified&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/em&gt; was published. It is the first modern reference to the Oxford theory of authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other candidate for authorship that I am most familiar with is &lt;strong&gt;Christopher Marlowe&lt;/strong&gt;. Here is a rather focused website devoted exclusively to this subject, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shakespeareanauthorshiptrust.org.uk/&quot;&gt;The Shakespeare Authorship Trust&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Their list of possibilities include both de Vere and Marlowe, as well as &lt;strong&gt;Francis Bacon&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Roger Manners&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Henry Neville&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Mary Sidney Herbert&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;William Stanley&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;William Shakespeare&lt;/strong&gt; himself, or even a &lt;strong&gt;group theory&lt;/strong&gt; of authorship, of one or more of that list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/&quot;&gt;Shakespeare-Oxford Society&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (founded in 1957) also lists most of these individuals, as well as a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/?p=38&quot;&gt;timeline&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for why and when each was proposed as &quot;the True Bard&quot; and who believed it. For example, Sigmund Freud believed that de Vere was the real author, and came to that conclusion in 1926. Note that the Shakespeare-Oxford Society is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;dedicated to... researching evidence that Edward de Vere (1550 – 1604) is the true author of the poems and plays of&#xA;  “William Shakespeare.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4301" OwnerDisplayName="Feral Oink" LastActivityDate="2012-01-06T19:53:38.823" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9083" CreationDate="2011-11-09T23:21:31.463" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shakespeare wrote the plays and the arguments that he didn't are mostly based on very implausible assumptions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I'm not misrepresenting any of the arguments against Shakespeare authorship, but it seems to me they all rely on just a handful of key assumptions. First, that the the plays and sonnets are about the &lt;em&gt;author's life&lt;/em&gt;, and not primarily imagined. Second, that they are therefore &lt;em&gt;coded references&lt;/em&gt; to the identity and experience of the author. And, third, that Shakespeare didn't have the &lt;em&gt;relevant experience&lt;/em&gt; to write the content because he could not have had the necessary range of experiences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how easy it is to definitively prove any point one way or the other, but it seems to be a big stretch to assume that an author cannot write fiction from their &lt;em&gt;imagination&lt;/em&gt; rather than their life. Moreover it is a very modern assumption that everything is autobiography. According to James Shapiro's review of the evidence (In &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0048ELD4G&quot;&gt;Contested Will&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;) nobody at all made this sort of assumption about Shakespeare until 1780 at the earliest. And it was decades more before anyone used the assumption to build a case for a different author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes no sense in general to assume that all fiction is really about the author or their experience. Did Thomas Harris have to experience cannibalism or psychopathology to write about Hannibal Lecter in &lt;em&gt;The Silence of the Lambs&lt;/em&gt;? Or did he do some research and imagine the character? How can we judge so long after his life that the author was writing from experience and not the imagination? And if we don't establish that he did, the other assumptions fall down. If the works emerge from the imagination, perhaps based on research, we can't use them to challenge authorship on the grounds the author didn't have the relevant experience. Even the literary evidence backs this up. As Shapiro summarises:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The evidence strongly suggests that imaginative literature in general and plays in particular in Shakespeare's day were rarely if ever a vehicle for self-revelation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there is concrete evidence in favour of Shakespeare as the author. Shapiro estimates that there were nearly enough extant copies of Shakespeare's works in London for every household to have one. He was extremely well known. Other writers talked about him and knew him well. No hint of alternative authorship appears in their writings. The plays were written to be performed not published and show many hints of an author intimately familiar with stagecraft (some versions offer stage directions with actors names instead of the characters they play, the sort of slip not likely to be made by a distant author but not unexpected of a fellow actor or director). Many other writers knew Shakespeare (and record their opinions of him) and some collaborated with him. It would require a monumental conspiracy to make sure no hints of another author appeared in these comments (all his collaborators and performers would have needed to be in on the conspiracy for a start).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, unless we are prepared to make a leap of faith that the plays provide clues to the author's experience rather than his &lt;em&gt;imagination&lt;/em&gt;, we have no basis to even start to question Shakespeare as the author. None of the other evidence in the plays even makes sense if we can't establish this assumption (and it's hard enough to judge even for authors still living).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" OwnerDisplayName="matt_black" LastActivityDate="2012-03-27T20:04:27.383" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9083" CreationDate="2012-03-28T01:22:40.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the preponderance of the evidence, neutrally evaluated, there is no conclusion that can be supported other than that the plays of Shakespeare were written by Christopher Marlowe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Evidence&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to obtain evidence about this is stylometry. The stylometric evidence has been compiled by Farey, and it is found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rey.prestel.co.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.rey.prestel.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; . This evidence extends Mendenhall's idea, of using word-length distributions to distinguish authors. Farey used stylometries which were specifically chosen to distinguish Shakespeare from Marlowe (this is one of the most difficult tasks for a stylometry, for reasons that I think are obvious). He shows that in each case where a distinguishing feature is found, Shakespeare's work, if plotted in time, shows a trend, and that Marlowe's work fits this trend. It also conclusively shows that in the overlap region, of 1593 and the years around there, Shakespeare and Marlow are indistinguishable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two plots here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rey.prestel.co.uk/appx6a.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.rey.prestel.co.uk/appx6a.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and two more in this wonderful Hoffman prize winning essay: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rey.prestel.co.uk/hoffman.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.rey.prestel.co.uk/hoffman.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6256" OwnerDisplayName="Ron Maimon" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-08-10T08:13:50.657" LastActivityDate="2016-08-10T08:13:50.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9089" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9092" CreationDate="2012-04-26T14:00:44.747" Score="28" ViewCount="71210" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a child, do you remember being told not to stick metal utensils into the toaster to unlodge toast?  If by chance that utensil touches the wrong &lt;em&gt;thing&lt;/em&gt; inside of the toaster, you could be easily electrocuted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there really exposed components inside toasters, that touching, would close a circut, and send a lethal amount of electricity through someone?  Has there every been an account of this &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; happening to &lt;em&gt;anyone&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems unlogical to me that, with as strict regulations that we have in the United States, that a company could get away with or &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; sell something so very dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read an article that pointed out that the continued jamming of utensils into a toaster could cause components to weaken and loosen.  In turn, you'd have your date with electricity.  It seems unlikely that anyone would sit there and stab the innards of a toaster, with that amount of force, to the point where wires were becoming exposed on a large scale.  Usually when you are attempting to extract toast, you are being very gentle not to break the toast -- so I don't know how valid that argument is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6287" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-04-26T17:18:18.927" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T14:01:51.360" Title="Will sticking a knife into a toaster electrocute me?" Tags="|safety|electromagnetism|mortality|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9089" CreationDate="2012-04-26T16:12:58.843" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer is, Yes it certainly &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt;.  Is it likely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electric toasters work much the same way as space heaters or hair dryers, in that they run a current through high electrical resistant wires to generate incredible amounts of heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most toasters tend to use Nichrome (alloy of 80% Nickel and 20% Chromium).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electrical resistivity at room temperature: &lt;code&gt;1.0 × 10−6 to 1.5 × 10−6 Ωm&lt;/code&gt; .  The Nichrome wire typically under this heat will react with air to be chemically stable meaning it forms an outer layer of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromium%28III%29_oxide&quot;&gt;Chromium Oxide&lt;/a&gt; which has incredibly high electrical resistance.  If this isn't enough then in modern toasters these wires are coated with Mica which can provide enough resistance from the point of the coil to the knife where current will not ground through you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichrome&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichrome&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing all of this it is safe to assume that simply touching the wire with a knife while current is flowing will probably be okay.  While the voltage is about 100-115 it will hurt, but the current travelling through is high to generate heat and certainly high enough to risk injury or death (Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_1/chpt_3/4.html&quot;&gt;http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_1/chpt_3/4.html&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jabbing at the coils can risk flaking away the protective Mica or Chromium Oxide to make such a thing dangerous.  Furthermore jabbing inside a toaster and making contact with the wires connecting the coil can certainly electrocute you however these are typically tucked safely away where you couldn't reach it with a knife unless you disassembled the body.  (Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2119/is-poking-a-knife-into-the-toaster-really-dangerous&quot;&gt;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2119/is-poking-a-knife-into-the-toaster-really-dangerous&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other electrical components if applicable are probably feeding a circuit board and shouldn't go above 5 volts typically.  There is no danger from jabbing the circuit board if that happens to be exposed, unless of course if you were to touch the timer relay which could cause a great amount of current to flow through you. (Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-an-electrical-relay.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-an-electrical-relay.htm&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically, if you are viciously jamming a knife into a toaster, thats plugged into an outlet that doesn't have polarity or proper circuit breaker protection, and you are barefoot, then yes you certainly run the risk of electrocution or death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I forgot YET ANOTHER possibility of electrocution!  If through the process of jamming an object into the device you inadvertently cause the toaster to short through the aluminum or steel internal casing, and the ground wire for the casing has been damaged OR the outlet is not grounded or not properly grounded... then YOU will become the ground! (Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.allexperts.com/q/Electrical-Wiring-Home-1734/Dangers-Ungrounded-Outlet.htm&quot;&gt;http://en.allexperts.com/q/Electrical-Wiring-Home-1734/Dangers-Ungrounded-Outlet.htm&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6794" LastEditorUserId="6794" LastEditDate="2012-04-26T18:12:03.360" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T18:12:03.360" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9064" CreationDate="2012-04-26T16:35:18.537" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though in the opposite of the way you are describing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Hydrogen Fuel Cell harnesses waste energy from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://inventors.about.com/od/sstartinventions/ss/Physics_Illustr_2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen that produces water&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The electrons flow out of the cell to be used as electrical energy.&#xA;  The hydrogen ions move through the electrolyte membrane to the cathode&#xA;  electrode where they combine with oxygen and the electrons to produce&#xA;  water&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_water&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Water is a stable compound&lt;/a&gt;.  So it is not going to split into its respective compound with out a catalyst. Because of this water will never act as the sole &quot;Fuel.&quot;    For &lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/electrol.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Water Electrolysis&lt;/a&gt; to occur like you have suggested would also require an electrical input.  This would more correctly be the termed the fuel that would run an Electrolysis Motor.  There is currently no evidence of a motor that can do this more efficiently than a standard &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_motor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;electric motor&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastActivityDate="2012-04-26T16:35:18.537" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9064" CreationDate="2012-04-27T01:20:25.180" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This system implies that the burning of hydrogen &amp;amp; oxygen into water generates more energy than is required to electrolyse water, as there needs to be enough energy left over after the electrolysis, to move the car. Unless the car is not a &quot;closed&quot; system, (e.g. they're using power from the grid to run the electrolysis, and then run the car on the resultant hydrogen) this is impossible by the most stringent law of physics: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics&quot;&gt;the second law of thermodynamics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastActivityDate="2012-04-27T01:20:25.180" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9108" CreationDate="2012-04-27T03:01:54.570" Score="-7" ViewCount="3825" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wnd.com/2008/11/56494/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Michael Savage&lt;/a&gt; thinks so. A psychiatrist, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forensicpsychiatrist.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Lyle Rossiter&lt;/a&gt; wrote a book about it back in 2006, and thinks so as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rossiter says the kind of liberalism being displayed by both Barack Obama and his Democratic primary opponent Hillary Clinton can only be understood as a psychological disorder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On what basis is this claim made, and is there any validity to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-11-29T21:31:40.703" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T21:31:40.703" Title="Is the claim of liberalism being a psychological disorder accurate?" Tags="|psychology|politics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9101" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2012-04-27T05:19:47.147" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been a contributing member here for a little over 5 months but I lurked for about 2 months before I made an account to make sure I got a feel for the community and rules before I tried to contribute. I am very interested in keeping the quality high, that is what makes this site so great, but it requires some work. I am not the best at writing answers so I started contributing in other ways to improve this site. I started editing and re-tagging to improve questions and answers. I have &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users?tab=editors&amp;amp;filter=all&quot;&gt;the most edits for a non-mod user&lt;/a&gt; mostly as a result of my efforts to clean up the &quot;sex&quot; and &quot;nuclear&quot; tag, which were determined on meta to be invalid. I'm also one of three users with the deputy badge. As a mod I strongly believe in &quot;&lt;strong&gt;guide the community with gentle — but firm — intervention&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;strong&gt;The ideal moderator does as little as possible&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; Being welcoming and &lt;strong&gt;respectful&lt;/strong&gt; is also an extremely important for community leaders. I'm &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a mod elsewhere and I am &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; very active across the SE network, for what it is worth. I am just mostly interested in &lt;em&gt;this site&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-04-27T05:19:47.147" LastActivityDate="2012-04-27T05:19:47.147" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-04-27T05:19:47.147" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="286" CreationDate="2012-04-27T08:41:54.863" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;2 Studies have linked a pesticide (named only as a neonicotinoid) to CCD (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/30/science/neocotinoid-pesticides-play-a-role-in-bees-decline-2-studies-find.html&quot;&gt;NY Times: 2 Studies Point to Common Pesticide as a Culprit in Declining Bee Colonies&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clothianidin is a Neonicotinoid so may be the chemical referred to in the article. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clothianidin&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; has a NPOV warning but presumably that Clothianidin is a Neonictinoid is not disputed)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://grist.org/politics/food-2010-12-10-leaked-documents-show-epa-allowed-bee-toxic-pesticide/&quot;&gt;leaked EPA memo&lt;/a&gt; show that the EPA permitted only conditional registration because of fears about the toxicity to bees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clothianidin has not been used in Germany since 2009, but I have not seen any studies that show whether or not this has had an effect on the rate of CCD in Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="624" LastActivityDate="2012-04-27T08:41:54.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9029" CreationDate="2012-04-27T12:48:43.533" Score="6" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dry Milk contains higher levels of some chemicals than regular milk (but lower than, say, eggs). There is some evidence that these chemicals may cause heart disease, although the link is not clearly established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Definitions&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some definitions, which might be useful later:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesterol&quot;&gt;Cholesterol&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LDL&quot;&gt;Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiovascular_disease&quot;&gt;Cardiovascular Disease&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atherosclerosis&quot;&gt;Atherosclerosis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_milk&quot;&gt;Dry Milk&lt;/a&gt; (A.K.A. Powdered Milk)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Oxysterols in Dry Milk&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_milk&quot;&gt;Dry Milk&lt;/a&gt; reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Commercial milk powders are reported to contain oxysterols (oxidized&#xA;  cholesterol) in higher amounts than in fresh milk (up to 30 μg/g,&#xA;  versus trace amounts in fresh milk). Oxysterols are derivatives of&#xA;  cholesterol that are produced either by free radicals or by enzymes.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Certain free radicals-derived oxysterols have been suspected of being&#xA;  initiators of atherosclerotic plaques.&lt;/strong&gt; For comparison, powdered eggs&#xA;  contain even more oxysterols, up to 200 μg/g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To support the oxysterol levels, it references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Advanced Dairy Chemistry: Volume 2 - Lipids&quot; by P.F. Fox and P. McSweeney, Birkhäuser, 2006 ISBN 978-0-387-26364-9&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To support the idea that dry-milk-based oxysterols are dangerous, they cite:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RHubbard, RW; Ono, Y; Sanchez, A (1989). &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2678267&quot;&gt;Atherogenic effect of oxidized products of cholesterol&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Progress in food &amp;amp; nutrition science 13 (1): 17–44. PMID 2678267.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract of this paper makes only weak claims of suspected/possible danger:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cholesterol under certain in vitro and possibly in vivo conditions may be oxidized to oxysterols, which are suspected of being initiators of atherosclerotic plaques. Oxysterols inhibit HMG-CoA reductase activity resulting in a decreased cholesterol concentration in the cell membrane, which leads to endothelial membrane injury and probable premature cell death. Exogenous oxidation of cholesterol in human tissues under certain unusual conditions is highly probable. Dietary oxysterols are absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract and are selectively transported by the athrogenic lipoproteins LDL and VLDL. The oxysterols cholestanetriol and 25-OH cholesterol have been shown to be atherogenic. Oxysterols are commonly found in dried egg products, powdered milk, cheeses and in a variety of high temperature dried animal products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching further, I found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Klaus Zorn-Pauly, Peter Schaffer, Brigitte Pelzmann, Eva Bernhart, Guofeng Wei, Petra Lang, Gerhard Ledinski, Joachim Greilberger, Bernd Koidl, Gunther Jurgens, &lt;a href=&quot;http://cardiovascres.oxfordjournals.org/content/66/1/74.full.pdf+html&quot;&gt;Oxidized LDL induces ventricular myocyte damage and abnormal&#xA;electrical activity—role of lipid hydroperoxides&lt;/a&gt; Cardiovasc Res (2005) 66 (1): 74-83.&#xA;doi: 10.1016/j.cardiores.2004.12.009&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They showed that guinea-pig cells, in a dish, dosed with Ox-LDL:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;induced cell damage and irregular electrical activity in ventricular myocytes. [...] The observed&#xA;  effects may play a role for functional cardiac abnormalities in patients with increased ox-LDL levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source cast further doubts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ingemar Björkhem, Ulf Diczfalusy, &lt;a href=&quot;http://atvb.ahajournals.org/content/22/5/734.full.pdf+html&quot;&gt;Oxysterols: Friends, Foes, or Just Fellow Passengers?&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology 2002; 22: 734-742&#xA;doi: 10.1161/​01.ATV.0000013312.32196.49&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to current concepts, oxysterols are physiological&#xA;  mediators in connection with a number of cholesterol-induced metabolic effects. &lt;strong&gt;However, most of the evidence for this&#xA;  is still indirect&lt;/strong&gt;, and there is a discrepancy between the documented potent effects of oxysterols under in vitro conditions&#xA;  and the studies demonstrating that they are of physiological importance in vivo. [...]  The present review is a critical evaluation of the literature on oxysterols, in particular, the in vivo evidence for a role of oxysterols as physiological regulators of cholesterol homeostasis and as atherogenic factors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As judged from the results of animal experiments, the &lt;strong&gt;normal&#xA;  dietary intake of oxysterols is probably of little or no importance&#xA;  in the development of atherosclerosis.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2003, a Chilean paper repeated (but did not test) the claims that milk powder contains oxidized cholesterol, and that it is potentially harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alfonso Valenzuela, Julio Sanhueza, Susana Nieto, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scielo.cl/scielo.php?pid=S0716-97602003000300002&amp;amp;script=sci_arttext&quot;&gt;Cholesterol oxidation: Health hazard and the role of antioxidants in prevention&lt;/a&gt;, Biological Research, ISSN 0716-9760&#xA;Biol. Res. v.36 n.3-4 Santiago 2003, doi: 10.4067/S0716-97602003000300002 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several dairy products and milk powder are reported to contain&#xA;  oxidized cholesterol after processing (Dionisi et al., 1998). The&#xA;  oxysterols found in these products are the same as those in processed&#xA;  eggs. However, fresh milk contains 0 or only trace amounts of&#xA;  cholesterol oxides, which means that processing (e.g high temperature)&#xA;  is the main source of oxysterols (Angulo et al., 1997). Other&#xA;  milk-derived products such as cheeses, yogurt, and evaporated milk,&#xA;  contain very low amounts of cholesterol oxides. The oxysterol content&#xA;  of milk powder is in the range 1.0-2.5 ug/g. Dehydrated cheese has&#xA;  8-15 ug/g; skimmed milk powder, 0.01-0.1 ug/g; and whole milk powder,&#xA;  0.2-0.8 ug/g (Paniangvait et al., 1995). The amount of oxysterols present in these products depends on the processing temperature and&#xA;  the length of the storage period (Nourooz-Zadeh &amp;amp; Appelqvist, 1988).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cytotoxic, mutagenic and probably carcinogenic effects described for some oxysterols have been observed in in vitro models. However, the atherogenic action of oxysterols has been demonstrated in both in vitro and in vivo study models, to be the best-characterized pathological expression of cholesterol oxidation (Staprans et al., 1998; Leonarduzzi et al., 2002) and comparable to the atherogenic action of trans fatty acid isomers (Valenzuela &amp;amp; Morgado, 1999).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper supports the idea that some oxidized LDL could cause harm, based on experiments in dishes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;G M Chisolm, G Ma, K C Irwin, L L Martin, K G Gunderson, L F Linberg, D W Morel, and P E DiCorleto, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/91/24/11452&quot;&gt;7 beta-hydroperoxycholest-5-en-3 beta-ol, a component of human atherosclerotic lesions, is the primary cytotoxin of oxidized human low density lipoprotein&lt;/a&gt;, PNAS November 22, 1994 vol. 91 no. 24 11452-11456&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this link also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hivehealthmedia.com/author/cole_w/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cole Watts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; have mentions of oxysterols and their possible relation to Alzheimer's disease:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hivehealthmedia.com/oxysterols-alzheimers-disease/&quot;&gt;Hive Health Media&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oxysterols are substances that are created as our bodies use and break&#xA;  down the elements in cholesterol. We’ve all heard how it’s important&#xA;  to keep our cholesterol levels down, and that our “good” cholesterol&#xA;  number, or HDL, should be normal or above normal, for better health.&#xA;  But it plays a more important role than that. Oxysterols that are&#xA;  produced from our bodies using cholesterol are meant to be broken down&#xA;  by the liver. &lt;strong&gt;However, people with a number of diseases like Hardened&#xA;  Arteries and Multiple Sclerosis have been found to have extremely high&#xA;  level of Oxysterols in their bodies. This has been found in some&#xA;  patients with Alzheimer’s Disease, as well&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The reason science is taking a hard look at the link between&#xA;  Oxysterols and Alzheimer’s is that our central nervous system contains&#xA;  the highest concentration of cholesterol in our bodies. Our brains&#xA;  need cholesterol to function properly.&lt;/strong&gt; Many people believe that&#xA;  cholesterol is simply something to be watched in the diet to avoid&#xA;  heart disease and arteriosclerosis, but it’s something that’s vital&#xA;  for life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While cholesterol itself doesn’t actually cross the blood-brain&#xA;  barrier, some of its by-products do. &lt;strong&gt;So any cholesterol-related&#xA;  processes that take place will affect the brain and nervous system&#xA;  heavily, most likely more than any other bodily system.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Only about a dozen of the known Oxysterols have been studied&lt;/strong&gt;, and much&#xA;  more research is needed for the many that we haven’t explored.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Scientists do say that since the Oxysterols are created when our&#xA;  bodies utilize cholesterol, and that a great deal of the cholesterol&#xA;  we have is produced by our bodies and not thanks to diet, a change in&#xA;  diet won’t affect the levels that might be linked to Alzheimer’s and&#xA;  other diseases.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://cardiovascres.oxfordjournals.org/content/66/1/74.full.pdf+html&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;  looks at the types of Low Density Lipoproteins (LDL)and shows that Oxidized Low Density Lipoproteins (ox-LDL) causes cell damage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Briefly:&lt;/strong&gt; Oxysterols are produced in our body already. Dry Milk contains oxysterols in a low amount, but enough to increase the natural levels. Research on diseased bodies shown that they also contain high oxysterol levels. This shows us oxysterols &lt;strong&gt;might be&lt;/strong&gt; playing a bigger role than we know and that Dry Milk ma be harmful for long term usage, but &lt;strong&gt;the research is not yet clear.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6533" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-04-30T13:07:02.343" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T13:07:02.343" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9106" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11193" CreationDate="2012-04-27T13:48:55.963" Score="20" ViewCount="2781" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/is-there-any-verifiable-historical-and-or-scientific-evidence-that-jesus-lived&quot;&gt;Jesus was a real person&lt;/a&gt;, it is a generally accepted fact that he died on a cross. On the other hand, Jehovah's Witnesses are of the belief that the crucifixion of Jesus is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.watchtower.org/e/bh/appendix_05.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mistranslation&lt;/a&gt; and the word &lt;em&gt;stauros&lt;/em&gt; shall be translated as &quot;pole&quot;, not &quot;cross&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now there's seems to be some academic support for the pole interpretation. According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://hdl.handle.net/2077/22126&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;doctoral thesis&lt;/a&gt; by Gunnar Samuelsson at the University of Gothenburg, there is actually no mention of a cross in the original or contemporary texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hum.gu.se/english/current/news/Nyhet_detalj/what-do-we-really-know-about-the-crucifixion-of-jesus-.cid938216&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;press release&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The thesis clearly shows that although the studied texts are full of &#xA;  references to suspension of objects and the equipment used to this &#xA;  end, no reference is made to 'crosses' or 'crucifixion'. Samuelsson &#xA;  therefore concludes that the predominant account of the destiny of &#xA;  Jesus is not based on the antique texts, but rather on for example the &#xA;  tradition of the Christian church and artistic illustrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/7849852/Jesus-did-not-die-on-cross-says-scholar.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He claims the Bible has been misinterpreted as there are no explicit references the use of nails or to crucifixion - only that Jesus bore a &quot;staurus&quot; towards Calvary which is not necessarily a cross but can also mean a &quot;pole&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2010/06/jesus-died-on-a-tree-trunk/19465/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Atlantic Wire&lt;/a&gt; (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Samuelsson did some serious research before advancing this provocative argument: &quot;I spent almost three years,&quot; he says, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;reading all the ancient texts I could find&lt;/strong&gt; ... from about Homer until the first century of the Common Era.&quot; He says &quot;some kind of suspension of a living or a dead person or a part of a person&quot; was indeed common at the time, but &lt;strong&gt;crucifixion is not mentioned&lt;/strong&gt;. In the Bible itself, all it says is that Jesus carried and then was executed on a staurus--&quot;there is no other description beyond that.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Specifically, are there really no original sources that explicitly mention the practice of crucifixion in the sense generally understood today?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:21:03.953" Title="Was Jesus crucified?" Tags="|history|religion|bible|religious-texts|jesus-christ|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9107" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2012-04-27T18:36:20.410" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a moderator over on Security Stack Exchange, have been fairly involved in a range of SEI sites since January 2011, and a member here for just over a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I approach moderation in a very fair and mediatory manner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I provide gentle steer where necessary through comments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I follow the community lead when flagged&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I review unanswered and outdated questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Where necessary I wield the mod hammer - but only as a last resort&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here on Skeptics I have nowhere near the quality/number of answers that the usual suspects have, but am still almost at 2k rep - I am very interested in scientific facts and evidence based research and most of the questions here are of interest to me so I am involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the existing mods do a grand job, but if you want someone with 16 months moderation experience I could be that person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="619" LastEditDate="2012-04-27T18:36:20.410" LastActivityDate="2012-04-27T18:36:20.410" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-04-27T18:36:20.410" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2012-04-27T21:58:23.073" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;No it is not.  The definitive answer as to what is, or is not, a psychological disorder is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://allpsych.com/disorders/dsm.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV)&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsm5.org/about/pages/dsmvoverview.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5th edition release has been delayed to 2013&lt;/a&gt;).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://search.freefind.com/find.html?oq=liberal%2a&amp;amp;id=61207866&amp;amp;pageid=r&amp;amp;_charset_=UTF-8&amp;amp;bcd=%C3%B7&amp;amp;scs=1&amp;amp;query=liberal&amp;amp;Find=Search&amp;amp;mode=ALL&amp;amp;search=all&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A search of the document for the word &quot;liberal&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (with wildcards) only turns up three entries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://allpsych.com/personalitysynopsis/trait_application.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Application of Trait Theory in Personality Synopsis at ALLPSYCH Online&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  Openness to experience refers to the dimension ranging from outgoing, liberal, interested in new things, and imaginative to reserved, conservative, traditional, and conforming.&#xA;  allpsych.com/personalitysynopsis/trait_application.html&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://allpsych.com/journal/pow.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Related to Prisoners of War in AllPsych Journal&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  Once liberated, soldiers are given a medical exam and ... years after the former prisoners of war have been liberated and readjusted to life. Sometimes this happens when other&#xA;  allpsych.com/journal/pow.html&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://allpsych.com/personalitysynopsis/cattell.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trait Theory in Personality Synopsis at ALLPSYCH Online&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  Openness to Change liberal versus traditional Perfectionism compulsive and controlled versus indifferent Privateness pretentious versus unpretentious Reasoning abstract versus&#xA;  allpsych.com/personalitysynopsis/cattell.html&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two of the links are about the trait of liberalism without making any statement in regards to any psychological disorders.  The second return only got caught in the search because it mentions &quot;liberation&quot; in the context of being freed from captivity, and how that applies to PTSD.  None of them even hint at there being any association with a psychological disorder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your citation of the two sources are a bit problematic.  First of all, Michael Savage is a well known ideologue.  You even use WorldNetDaily as your citation for him.  I would suggest that going to professional psychology sites where there are peer reviewed papers is a better and more impartial source.  Not books, which are not subject to that peer reviewed process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Lyle_Rossiter&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In looking over a synopsis of Dr Rossiter's book&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;in a nutshell, the book's thesis is, &quot;My political views are so obviously correct that anyone who doesn't accept them just has to be nuts.&quot; It &lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Presuppositionalism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;presupposes&lt;/a&gt; the truth of a right-wing political outlook and then tries to plumb the reasons why other people do not accept this truth, the conclusion being that they have to be in massive denial.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not particularly neutral either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon further research, it appears that Dr. Rossiter's book is a direct rebuttal to a government funded study titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12784934&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition&lt;/a&gt;.  A study published in 2003.  Most of the claims in Dr. Rossiter's book are not so subtle reversals of the conclusions reached by Drs Jost JT, Glaser J, Kruglanski AW, and Sulloway FJ (listed authors of the paper, which &lt;em&gt;HAD&lt;/em&gt; received peer review in the Psychological Bulletin as well as being supervised by the National Foundation as well as the National Institutes of Health).  As a counter point to some of the assertions by Dr. Rossiter, Dr &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/aug/13/usa.redbox&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kruglanski states&lt;/a&gt; (about this study in particular):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The variables we talk about are general human dimensions,&quot; he said. &quot;These are the same dimensions that contribute to loyalty and commitment to the group. Liberals might be less intolerant of ambiguity, but they may be less decisive, less committed, less loyal.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Kruglanski added a disclaimer that their study &quot;&lt;em&gt;does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the items that Dr Rossiter objected to in particular were statements like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither of those statements make any particular value judgments, unlike Dr Rossiter's book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a counter to the Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition study, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/23/2/187&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact&lt;/a&gt;, published by Sage Journals.  This was published well after Dr. Rossiter's book, and carries a message that aligns with the political outlook that Dr Rossiter espouses, yet this paper makes no judgment on liberal (or &quot;left&quot;) ideologies being a mental illness. Instead the paper focuses on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite their important implications for interpersonal behaviors and relations, cognitive abilities have been largely ignored as explanations of prejudice.  We proposed and tested mediation models in which lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice, an effect mediated through the endorsement of right-wing ideologies (social conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism) and low levels of contact with out-groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, there are many nuances that seem to get ignored in social discourse regarding conservatism and liberalism.  One can't really equate conservative with right-wing in all cases.  For many, right wing is a fiscal policy stance, while conservatism is a social policy, and people cross over those definitions in numerous permutations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So again, Mr Savage and Dr Rossiter appear to have political and ideological motivation, and are using the hallmarks of that rhetoric.  There is no evidence their statements regarding liberalism (or any other political viewpoints) are supported as being a psychological disorder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-09-11T21:33:18.370" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T21:33:18.370" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9068" CreationDate="2012-04-28T09:02:47.707" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Researchers are driven by their research interest. As in any occupation, fraudsters exist. However, the types of fraud involving grants are, to my knowledge, in the paperwork domain. For example, researchers may grant people outside a research project money, for example, a spouse who is not entitled to the funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: This Swedish article from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.svd.se/nyheter/stockholm/ki-forskare-riskerar-atal_6970999.svd&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SvD Nyheter&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;js=n&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;layout=2&amp;amp;eotf=1&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.svd.se%2Fnyheter%2Fstockholm%2Fki-forskare-riskerar-atal_6970999.svd&amp;amp;act=url&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;English translation&lt;/a&gt;) describes one researcher who fell under suspicion of misusing funds from &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/rea/index_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a European Commission funding agency&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Children&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to research on children, one might become concerned about the vulnerability of children. However, US researchers are required to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gather informed consent - signed approval - from parents or guardians prior to any participation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;to compensate participants when the research is time consuming.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(In clinical research,) gain approval  from an Ethic Committee (most often an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Institution Review Board (IRB)&lt;/a&gt;). They are generally very strict.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Psychological researchers are required to adhere to ethical principles, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct of the American Psychological Association (APA)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WMA Declaration of Helsinki - Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/390&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nüremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal, 1950&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/ScienceResearch/SpecialTopics/RunningClinicalTrials/GuidancesInformationSheetsandNotices/ucm113709.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FDA Guidance on running clinical trials&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Funding&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Securing &amp;quot;funding&amp;quot; in research usually translates to one of the following for researchers: &amp;quot;my salary&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;I get to keep my job&amp;quot;. To achieve certain promotions in academia, you have to show evidence that you are able to independently secure funding (among other criteria). Otherwise you loose your job. In academia, funding is about self-maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of call for application (professorship): &amp;quot;Applicants are expected to demonstrate research experience on an international level as well as a successful track record in acquiring external project funding and carrying out externally funded projects.&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.min.uni-hamburg.de/Berufungsverfahren/informatik_w3_kennz_2144_engl.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recruiting Participants&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often, researchers require participants to fulfil certain initial criteria for their conclusions to hold. For example, if a research group aims to draw conclusions&#xA;about children in general, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ijbnpa.org/content/8/1/24&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;emotionally unstable children might bias their conclusion&lt;/a&gt;, making it difficult to generalize. At other times, emotionally unstable children might not benefit from the intervention (if any) or need to be excluded from participation for their own sake. In some cases, behavioural &amp;quot;screening&amp;quot; is applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Diagnostic Criteria&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In clinical research, there are established standards of diagnostics. For example, there is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychiatry.org/practice/dsm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV)&lt;/a&gt;, currently in its fourth edition. Thus, fishing for &amp;quot;new&amp;quot; diagnoses is very unlikely to occur, because they are not within the scope of the DSM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Basic Research&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All research is not clinical. Much of psychological research aims to understand people better, and the way they think. This approach is known as basic research. Some consider it to be less &amp;quot;noble&amp;quot; - as you say. However, applied research (e.g. clinical research) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2012/march-12/a-dangerous-dichotomy-basic-and-applied-research.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;heavily relies on findings from basic research&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope to have answered some of your questions. I am currently not in a position to comment about taxes. Some researchers are funded by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://nih.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Institutes of Health&lt;/a&gt;, a governmental body. Why would the government pay taxes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I would personally not give vandals too much legitimacy. For all I know, this could be a group of graduate students cracking a joke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6933" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T17:34:55.963" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8233" CreationDate="2012-04-28T09:33:05.283" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Specifically designed games increase working memory performance and may boost intelligence scores:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/105/19/6829.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pnas.org/content/105/19/6829.full&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cogmed.com/gains-fluid-intelligence-training-nonverbal-reasoning-4yearold-children-controlled-randomized-study#.T5u4zFK92Xs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cogmed.com/gains-fluid-intelligence-training-nonverbal-reasoning-4yearold-children-controlled-randomized-study#.T5u4zFK92Xs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the popular games feature elements similar to the games referenced in the links, then yes. Most likely, they do not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cogmed develops games for training working memory, which affects intelligence. However, significant effects do not occur for verbal training. This is only one of several studies using the games that they developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jaeggi and colleagues found that in order for the training of working memory to affect intelligence, the amount of training matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The take home message is that the game design together with amount of gaming determines the outcome in &quot;boosting&quot; intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6933" LastEditorUserId="6933" LastEditDate="2012-04-28T15:49:43.877" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T15:49:43.877" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8025" CreationDate="2012-04-28T09:58:19.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;More recent research suggest that white noise has a moderate impact on improving attention in inattentive children:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=12588&amp;amp;postid=1790546&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Söderlund et al., 2010&quot;&gt;The effects of background white noise on memory performance in inattentive school children&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=12588&amp;amp;postid=951355&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Söderlund et al., 2007&quot;&gt;Listen to the Noise: Noise is Beneficial for Cognitive Performance in ADHD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6933" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T09:58:19.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5553" CreationDate="2012-04-28T11:38:34.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/236944/internet_explorer_users_are_kinda_stupid_study_suggests.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study by ApTiquant&lt;/a&gt; is bogus (as was pointed out by @Durathor); moreover, the differences the claim are to high to even look reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it &lt;em&gt;does not&lt;/em&gt; mean that the effect (i.e. relation of one's IQ to the browser of choice) does not exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And actually, one other find this effect (and also differences in other psychological traits, no only IQ), see &lt;a href=&quot;http://mypersonality.org/research/2011/08/05/do-internet-explorer-users-have-a-low-iq/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Do Internet Explorer users have a low IQ? on myPersonality.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IE’s average IQ is way below average, but Firefox’s is way above average. So actually ApTiquant’s fake results aren’t completely off the mark! However, the average IQ of people who like IE is around 93, and for Firefox it’s about 104, so the differences are a long way from the massive ones that ApTiquant fabricated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s not all bad for people who like IE though. You can see from the profiles above that their life satisfaction is above average (Firefox’s is below average). IE likers also have more Facebook friends than Firefox ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: By the way, here’s the LikeAudience page for Chrome. Average IQ is ever so slightly lower than Firefox, around 103.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2078" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T11:38:34.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1234" CreationDate="2012-04-28T11:51:58.603" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neurology is a medical discipline engaged in diagnostics and clinical applications. The practice of neurology can be separated from the scientific study of the brain, which aims for an increased understanding without necessarily any clinical application in mind. The techniques are often the same, but neuroscientific reports rarely involve individual cases (except e.g. neuropsychological case studies). The way conclusions are drawn in the practice of neurology and the neurosciences differ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Christian:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So by refuting social neuroscience, the whole of neuroscience is refuted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is still cognitive and affective neuroscience if you consider domains, and basic neuroscience if you consider levels of explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vul himself, whom you cite in the secondary literature, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edvul.com/pdf/FVS-infancy2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;engages in social neuroscience&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggests that the neurosciences are self-critical at worst.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking from personal experience, mirror neurons are controversial within the field. Some researchers have at times been willing to draw the conclusions of research on mirror neurons too far. For example, Iacoboni suggested that mirror neurons &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adineu.com.ar/IMITATION%20EMPATHY%20AND%20MIRROR%20NEURONS%20IACOBONI.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;solve the problem of other minds&lt;/a&gt;. It is no wonder, then, why many neuroscientists remain skeptic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6933" LastActivityDate="2012-04-28T11:51:58.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9099" CreationDate="2012-04-28T12:09:30.470" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is study that counters the US Government funded study of 2003 to a degree:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/23/2/187&quot;&gt;Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes&#xA;Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6933" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-04-29T22:18:30.870" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T22:18:30.870" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9118" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9165" CreationDate="2012-04-28T13:55:55.937" Score="21" ViewCount="3489" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2010/12/17/fox-news-viewers-are-the-_n_798146.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt; writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fox News viewers are much more likely than others to believe false information about American politics, a new study concludes.&#xA;The study, conducted by the University of Maryland, judged how likely consumers of various news outlets and publications were to believe misinformation about a wide range of political issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the study said, &amp;quot;increased viewership of Fox News led to increased belief in [listed false stories]&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar claims have also been made on multiple websites including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/11/21/fox-news-viewers-uninformed-npr-listeners-not-poll-suggests/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2011/nov/21/news/la-pn-fox-news-poll-20111121&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LA Times&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/fox-news-viewers-less-informed-anyone-else-&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crooks and Liars&lt;/a&gt;.  The claims appear to be based on this &lt;a href=&quot;http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2011/knowless/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this study fair and accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:14:52.530" Title="Are Fox News viewers more likely to believe misinformation than viewers of other news outlets?" Tags="|united-states|politics|media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9119" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11128" CreationDate="2012-04-28T14:59:13.613" Score="26" ViewCount="824" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across the following page, describing &quot;The Farm&quot;'s midwifery statistics: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalbirthandbabycare.com/farm-statistics.html&quot;&gt;http://www.naturalbirthandbabycare.com/farm-statistics.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That page wasn't that convincing. The only statistic that it directly compared against conventional birthing is the rate at which caesarian section is performed. That fewer c-sections are done is marvellous, but it doesn't prove that it's safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I clicked on a link from that page to  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalbirthandbabycare.com/home-birth.html&quot;&gt;http://www.naturalbirthandbabycare.com/home-birth.html&lt;/a&gt; , which talks about a paper published in BMJ: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/330/7505/1416.full&quot;&gt;Outcomes of planned home births with certified professional midwives: large prospective study in North America&lt;/a&gt;. That paper doesn't seem to be looking at maternal mortality, but says that other research has already shown that home birthing for low risk mothers has similar safety to low risk hospital mothers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalbirthandbabycare.com/home-birth.html&quot;&gt;http://www.naturalbirthandbabycare.com/home-birth.html&lt;/a&gt; also claims that studies showing home birthing for low risk mothers has a higher risk include counting unplanned emergency births as &quot;home birthing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is home birthing with midwives is as safe for low risk mothers as in-hospital ones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T12:47:51.400" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T08:46:24.753" Title="Is home birthing as safe as in-hospital births for low risk mothers?" Tags="|medical-science|birth|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9120" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10767" CreationDate="2012-04-28T20:25:36.743" Score="13" ViewCount="4119" Body="&lt;p&gt;CNN has this statement about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2000-09-27/politics/clinton.surplus_1_budget-surplus-national-debt-fiscal-discipline?_s=PM%3aALLPOLITICS&quot;&gt;Clinton Surplus&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;President Clinton announced Wednesday that the federal budget surplus for fiscal year 2000 amounted to at least $230 billion, making it the largest in U.S. history and topping last year's record surplus of $122.7 billion.&quot;This represents the largest one-year debt reduction in the history of the United States,&quot; Clinton said Wednesday morning. &quot;Like our American athletes in Sydney, we've been breaking records and have come a long way.&quot;In June, the administration predicted the surplus would be $211 billion, and would increase by as much as $1 trillion over the next 10 years. Clinton also announced the federal government paid down the national debt by $223 billion this year, and by more than $360 billion since 1998, the largest debt reduction in U.S. history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I have seen this contested and I am skeptical that the national debt got reduced by $223 billion that year. Did it happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T01:59:00.083" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T01:59:00.083" Title="Did US President Bill Clinton pay down the national debt by $223 billion in 2000?" Tags="|united-states|economics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9120" CreationDate="2012-04-29T07:07:37.840" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was an item that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;was reported in a great many major news outlets at the time, e.g.:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2000-09-27/politics/clinton.surplus_1_budget-surplus-national-debt-fiscal-discipline?_s=PM%3aALLPOLITICS&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1110165.stm&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42578539/ns/politics/t/deficitdebt-dilemma-way-uglier-s/#.T5zm8bNSQms&quot;&gt;MSNBC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is documented on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://clintonpresidentialcenter.org/georgetown/files/arecordinbrief_onepager.pdf&quot;&gt;official&lt;/a&gt; Clinton biography website.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is analysed and confirmed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-under-clinton/&quot;&gt;Factcheck.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is documented in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/Accomplishments/eightyears-03.html&quot;&gt;National Archive&lt;/a&gt; website.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is tabulated in a college student's &lt;a href=&quot;http://home.adelphi.edu/sbloch/deficits.html&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is reported by the White House &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.ed.gov/PressReleases/08-2000/wh-0805.html&quot;&gt;educational directory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is recorded by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/article_display.cfm?HHID=621&quot;&gt;University of Houston&lt;/a&gt;'s historians.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, &lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2011/02/lessons_from_the_great_governm.html&quot;&gt;The Washington Post&lt;/a&gt; even goes into great detail, recalling that Clinton literally allowed the government to &lt;em&gt;shut down&lt;/em&gt; rather than pass a budget that wouldn't accomplish his goal of reducing the debt.  People tend to downplay that incident, but it was probably the single most important event you can point to when discussing this issue as it demonstrates that Clinton was commited to a balanced budget and did take the necessary steps to do it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6936" LastEditorDisplayName="user6936" LastEditDate="2012-04-29T22:40:22.053" LastActivityDate="2012-04-29T22:40:22.053" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9143" CreationDate="2012-04-29T21:11:26.883" Score="6" ViewCount="4521" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've encountered it in several places, mainly in public/hotel toilets, but also in my sister's old apartment, where people are asked to not throw anything (except for bodily waste) including toilet paper in to the toilet as it could cause a clog in the toilet bowl itself or the plumbing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throwing used toilet paper to a garbage bin that sits in the toilet always seemed disgusting to me, but there are people who do it due to fear of a clog. And the notion that tissue paper can cause a clog always seemed ridiculous to me as it seems that tissue paper dissolves and tears up in water really easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a normal amount of toilet paper used in one &quot;sitting&quot; made of tissue paper alone, together with bodily waste, cause a clog in a modern toilet/properly maintained plumbing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could it cause a clog in an old toilet or unmaintained plumbing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this claim have any root in real cases that happened?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm talking only about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_paper&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tissue paper toilet paper&lt;/a&gt;, not about wipes, toilet towels or any other fabric or paper product that isn't made of tissue paper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related question&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3632/are-flushable-baby-wipes-flushable&quot;&gt;If I buy &amp;quot;flushable&amp;quot; wipes, can I flush them without problems?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T07:05:37.073" Title="Can toilet paper (together with bodily waste) alone cause a clog in the toilet" Tags="|consumer-products|toilets|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9132" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-29T23:19:12.400" Score="22" ViewCount="5088" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reading the latest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.explosm.net/comics/2781/&quot;&gt;explosm comic&lt;/a&gt; I realized that I often heard about this claim, but never read anything drawing from credible sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eating pineapples makes semen taste better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the contrary beer is said to make it taste worse. Of course, taste is a matter of preference that differs between individuals. So my question is, if the eating (or drinking) behaviour really has any influece at all on the taste (read composition) of sperm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pineapplejuice.com/improve-the-taste-of-your-sperm-with-pineapple-juice.html&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://ezinearticles.com/?Sperm-Taste---10-Simple-Tips-For-Better-Tasting-Semen&amp;amp;id=164106&quot;&gt;random&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.askmen.com/dating/dzimmer_100/117_love_answers.html&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5638" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T07:04:56.073" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T04:59:38.480" Title="Does diet affect the taste of semen?" Tags="|physiology|human-reproduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9140" CreationDate="2012-04-30T18:44:25.470" Score="48" ViewCount="29756" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this claim quite a few times and have even repeated it as fact.  The basic claim is that 'gravity compresses the spine' during the waking hours and since (most people) sleep at night, they are tallest first thing in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can find examples of the claims online - many with answers - but most are from non-reputable sites without sources.  In my own personal experience, I believe this to be true; but I would like something more official than my own experience to support my claim (or I'd like to know that I'm wrong).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_we_are_taller_in_the_morning_than_in_the_evening&quot;&gt;Answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/5129-are-we-taller-in-the-morning-than-at-night/&quot;&gt;ScienceForums&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060907133350AAMwKHx&quot;&gt;Yahoo! Answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2637" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T08:44:15.997" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T08:00:14.463" Title="Are people taller in the morning than at night?" Tags="|physiology|anatomy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9139" CreationDate="2012-04-30T19:16:10.047" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, we are taller in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1459276/&quot;&gt;The transformation of spinal curvature into spinal deformity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (2005):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The effects of gravity on the upright human posture are powerful:&#xA;  Individuals are as much as 25 mm taller in the morning than in the&#xA;  evening&lt;/strong&gt; (1)(2), as a result of compressive forces bearing down all day,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And &lt;strong&gt;astronauts 'grow' by nearly 75 mm when released from the&#xA;  force of the earth's gravity&lt;/strong&gt; (3).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;(1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8235834&quot;&gt;Diurnal variation of Cobb angle measurement in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;(2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6686916&quot;&gt;Postural and time-dependent effects on body height and scoliosis angle in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;(3) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1502639&quot;&gt;Diurnal changes in the profile shape and range of motion of the back&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/F_How_Youve_Grown_5-8.html&quot;&gt;NASA&lt;/a&gt; (2004):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Did you know that astronauts are up to 2 inches taller while they're in space?&lt;/strong&gt; As soon as they come back to Earth, though, they return to their normal height. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To some degree, a similar stretching of the spine happens to you every night.&lt;/strong&gt; When you lie down, gravity isn't pushing down on your vertebrae. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can do your own experiments with a meterstick. Measure your height carefully as soon as you get up or while you are still lying down. You will find that you're about a centimeter or two taller. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That's not as much as astronauts change in space. The idea, however, is the same. &lt;strong&gt;As the day passes, your vertebrae compress through normal activities, and you'll lose those few centimeters you &quot;grew&quot; overnight.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2012-04-30T19:16:10.047" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9131" CreationDate="2012-04-30T23:15:51.660" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, if tree roots are incurring the sewer pipes, toilet tissue can become snagged on the incurring roots and can cause a blockage. This is apparently one of the most common causes of blockages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tree root incursion is particularly bad in areas with cracked or porous ceramic pipes, where moisture and vapours can escape into the soil, which attracts and encourages growing tree roots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The experts on this matter are plumbers, &lt;a href=&quot;http://drainwise.com.au/why_drains_block_up.html&quot;&gt;so let me quote one&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once inside the pipe, tree roots will continue to grow and if not disturbed, they will completely fill the pipe with multiple hair-like root masses at each point of entry. &lt;strong&gt;The root mass inside the pipe becomes matted with&lt;/strong&gt; grease, &lt;strong&gt;tissue paper&lt;/strong&gt;, and other debris discharged from the residence or business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some suitably gory images of sewer pipes showing root incursions on that site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should note that this is not the same reasoning for not flushing toilet paper in some other countries - plumbing systems need to be of an appropriate diameter, with pipes at specific angles and with few bends. If those criteria aren't met, flushing toilet paper can also cause a clog with or without any root incursion. An example of the fairly specific &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.orrutilities.com/pdf/watersewerstd.pdf&quot;&gt;regulations for Orrville, Ohio&lt;/a&gt; (PDF) state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All sanitary sewer service laterals from the main to the building may be vitrified clay pipe meeting ASTM C-700 material specification and ASTM C-425 joint specification or approved PVC pipe conforming to ASTM D3034 material&#xA;  specification and ASTM D 3212 joint specification. &lt;strong&gt;Said sanitary sewer shall be a minimum of six (6) inches in diameter and installed with a minimum slope of&#xA;  one (1) percent. Where an existing four (4) inch “Y” branch is found, and&#xA;  deemed serviceable by the City, the building sewer may be four (4) inches in&#xA;  diameter and installed with a minimum slope of two (2) percent.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These guidelines can vary from city to city, and depend on climate, types of pipes and fittings available, quality of mains water supply, and a host of other factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T22:34:03.540" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T22:34:03.540" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9144" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-04-30T23:31:30.223" Score="16" ViewCount="10820" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2136513/Brain-damaged-college-dropout-maths-genius-attack.html?ito=feeds-newsxml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/04/27/real-beautiful-mind-accidental-genius-draws-complex-math-formulas-photos/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;news&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.google.com/news/story?pz=1&amp;amp;cf=all&amp;amp;ned=in&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;q=john%20padgett&amp;amp;ncl=d95-ke9a-gyEGeMZ9MweUz5dkhtGM&amp;amp;cf=all&amp;amp;scoring=d&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; about a college dropout, Jason Padgett, becoming a math genius after getting hit on the head. Could this be true or how much of this could be true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3781" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-12T12:32:27.203" LastActivityDate="2023-01-13T06:00:18.797" Title="Did Jason Padgett become a math genius after getting hit on the head?" Tags="|neurology|mathematics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7750" CreationDate="2012-05-01T00:28:31.557" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/1846141214&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Outliers-Story-Success-Malcolm-Gladwell/dp/1846141214&lt;/a&gt; This book has a section on why age is a bad way to divide students in education. Basically the author argues that those who are the older ones in their age group at a young age have a maturity advantage to those who are younger. Thus, society labels them as talented or gifted and hence they receive better education or training than their peers from then on. Due to this fact, their minuscule maturity advantage becomes a significant advantage by the time they finish high school. Therefore, statistically they are more likely to become top athletes or successful professionals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5591" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T00:28:31.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6703" CreationDate="2012-05-01T04:01:12.137" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In summary:&lt;/strong&gt; There is not sufficient evidence to show that Vitamin D has a preventative effect on dental caries. It is plausible, and following the recommended intake of Vitamin D is important for a number of health reasons, but &lt;strong&gt;there is no solid evidence to show that it alone is adequate for the prevention of dental caries.&lt;/strong&gt; Fluoride, on the other hand, &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; been shown to prevent dental caries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I would like to address the Dr. Mercola claim, as there's some fishy conflict of interest stuff going on here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the original Mercola article quotes an article from the &quot;Vitamin D Council&quot;, which itself is a restated version of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3219170/&quot;&gt;paper from the Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center (Sunarc)&lt;/a&gt; called &lt;em&gt;A review of the role of solar ultraviolet-B irradiance and vitamin D in reducing risk of dental caries&lt;/em&gt;. Indeed, the &quot;Vitamin D Council&quot; article is written by the very same man that wrote this paper for Sunarc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a number of issues with this paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The obvious conflict of interest - this center promotes Vitamin D as a cure for nearly everything, appears to have just the one author, and its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sunarc.org/&quot;&gt;website spruiks books by the same author&lt;/a&gt;. I have no issue with this &lt;em&gt;if it was stated anywhere as a conflict of interest&lt;/em&gt;, but it's not. He makes his living selling books that rely on the studies performed by his center and therefore probably wants them to fit his agenda. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The study performs meta-analyses on these studies from the 1920s and 30s, but does not address any of the potential flaws in those studies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The abstract concludes with &lt;em&gt;&quot;It is unfortunate that the UVB and vitamin D findings were not given more consideration in the 1950s as a way to reduce the risk of dental caries when water fluoridation was being proposed.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; This screams &quot;agenda&quot; to me, as the study should &lt;em&gt;control&lt;/em&gt; for water fluoridation but not hold a position on the practice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, let's leave that aside and have a look at each of the studies cited by the Vitamin D council. (Why can't they link to the studies directly?) Firstly, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;May Mellanby and coworkers in Sheffield, England, did studies on the role of vitamin D on teeth in the 1920s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably refers to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2456958/pdf/brmedj07730-0003.pdf&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; (PDF warning) &lt;em&gt;&quot;The Action of Vitamin D in Preventing the Spread and Promoting the Arrest of Dental Caries in Children&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (1928).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first experiments were with dogs, where it was found that vitamin D stimulated the calcification of teeth. Subsequently, they studied the effect of vitamin D on dental caries in children, finding a beneficial effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not going to comment on the dog study, but my 1928 citation above discusses a 1924 study by the same group and notes the very large flaw that the two diets compared had vast differences aside from vitamin D content. Most notably the vitamin A levels lower and processed grains were higher in the control group than the vitamin D group. I'll therefore just focus on this 1928 study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A cursory glance shows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The study is not blinded or randomised&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The groups used in the study contained children of different ages and they therefore cannot be directly compared&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The groups were small (18-20 children per group)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They did not control for dental hygeine, i.e. tooth brushing or flossing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They did not control for sun exposure (one of the major sources of vitamin D) or season&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They did not measure vitamin D levels in the participants.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have trouble saying anything about vitamin D based on this study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Vitamin D council quotation continues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Additional studies were conducted on children in New York regarding dental caries with respect to season, artificial ultraviolet-B (UVB) irradiance, and oral intake of vitamin D with the finding that it took 800 IU/day to prevent caries effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I can only assume they mean the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jn.nutrition.org/content/15/6/547.full.pdf&quot;&gt;1938 study by the same author&lt;/a&gt; (PDF) titled &lt;em&gt;&quot;The Role of Vitamin D in the Control of Dental Caries in Children&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study tracks groups of children across the seasons in New York and has some groups exposed to UVB by a lamp, others take cod liver oil and others a vitamin D supplement of a specific dose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several similar problems to the previous study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The trial is not blinded or randomised&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They did not control for dental hygeine, i.e. tooth brushing or flossing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They did not control for sun exposure (one of the major sources of vitamin D)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They did not directly measure vitamin D levels in the participants.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, though I would be extremely hesitant to draw any conclusions, some of their results showed a decrease in the occurrence of dental caries with increasing doses of vitamin D when administered in the same fashion. At best, I would say &quot;There may be a correlation&quot; based on these studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Vitamin D Council&quot; or &quot;Sunlight, Nutrition and Health Research Center&quot;, however, find this evidence solid enough to include in their meta-analysis, which concludes that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations around 30-40 ng/ml (75-100 nmol/L) should significantly reduce the formation of dental caries&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I probably wouldn't draw the same conclusion based on that evidence, as I wouldn't have included these studies from the 1920s and '30s. But is there anything more recent and scientifically rigorous available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(To be completed: a review of any recent studies including vitamin D serum levels and any correlation/causation with dental caries)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/84/1/18.full.pdf+html&quot;&gt;Estimation of optimal serum concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D for multiple health outcomes&lt;/a&gt;(2006) says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus, although data vitamin D and dental health outcomes are limited, available evidence suggests that serum 25(OH)D concentrations between 90 and 100 nmol/L are desirable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This study only found sufficient data relating to tooth loss in elderly patients)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this stage, I am unable to find any recent studies showing that vitamin D serum levels have a preventative effect on dental caries. Vitamin D is important for a host of other reasons, but there is not sufficient evidence to recommend its use in place of Water Fluoridation, which has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/fluoride_drinking_water_full.pdf&quot;&gt;proven effective&lt;/a&gt; (PDF) for over 50 years at decreasing the incidence of dental caries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T04:59:08.713" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T04:59:08.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9149" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9153" CreationDate="2012-05-01T06:25:50.053" Score="15" ViewCount="3741" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of movies and cartoons that humorously have a hero saving the day by rescuing a cat from a tree (the first one that pops into my mind is in the movie The Incredibles).  There are a TON of these kinds of scenes documented here at &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CatUpATree&quot;&gt;tvtropes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do cats really get stuck in trees often enough for it to be used so much in movies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4980" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T08:01:23.057" LastActivityDate="2016-08-12T11:51:09.273" Title="Do cats get stuck in trees?" Tags="|ethology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9149" CreationDate="2012-05-01T08:06:58.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some cases, yes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to make sure that the cat is not at risk please contact the RSPCA 24-hour cruelty and advice line immediately if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is a kitten or young cat that is up a tree;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the cat appears to be sick or injured in some way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rspca.org.uk/utilities/faq/-/question/ENQCADCatsUpTreesPoles/category/Animal%20in%20distress/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RSPCA FAQ page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So young or sick specimen do get stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T08:06:58.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9149" CreationDate="2012-05-01T10:21:47.143" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is yes, that cats do get stuck in trees and the reason they can't get themselves down is well established. More on that in a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether it happens often enough to warrent such a strong featuring in the public psyche is a subjective question and one which is difficult to answer. But the concrete &quot;Does it happen at all&quot; is much easier; a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_information_legislation#United_Kingdom&quot;&gt;Freedom of Information Request&lt;/a&gt; was submitted to North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service enquiring &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/number_of_cats_rescued&quot;&gt;How many cats that were stuck up trees, did you rescue in 2010&lt;/a&gt; and the answer (as you'll see in the link above) was Seven. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elsewhere, there has been a case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.japanprobe.com/2009/02/26/japanese-firefighters-cut-down-tree-to-rescue-stranded-cat/&quot;&gt;firemen having to fell a tree to rescue a stranded cat in Japan&lt;/a&gt;  and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk6JvkdQAa0&quot;&gt;Tiger  stuck in a tree at a zoo&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most cats (Including most big cats, domestic cats) climb trees very easily due to the shape of their claws allowing them to scale upwards very easily. However to get down they usually jump from the lowest point they can reach, edge down backwards, or scamper down forwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cats from the Genus Panthera and Leopardus are generally much better climbers and often live in trees, with some species (eg, the Margay) able to rotate their claws:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When descending a tree trunk, the margay can go down headfirst, but&#xA;  does not have to scamper down quickly like the majority of cat species&#xA;  must. The long claws, broad feet and nimble toes, plus the fact that a&#xA;  margay has the ability to rotate its feet 180 degrees to an outward&#xA;  position, make this possible. The margay is also agile enough to grab&#xA;  a branch with its long claws to prevent a serious fall when it does&#xA;  make a mistake while in the tops of trees&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T12:18:33.760" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T12:18:33.760" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9155" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9160" CreationDate="2012-05-01T11:07:18.240" Score="-2" ViewCount="1260" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.checkfacebook.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; map 25 680 users of Facebook list their location as Greenland. 26 000 is about half of the number of inhabitants of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Greenland&lt;/a&gt;. If these data are reliable it says that there are 26 000 computers (or other devices with IP address) from which a Facebook account was created. At least I hope that the extreme that all the accounts were created from a few computers, does not hold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible for Greenland to have reliable Internet infrastructure? What types of networks are there (optic, cable, wireless, satellite)? What special problems have they to solve (cold, snowstorm, bad visibility) to have good connection?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(maybe not suitable question for &lt;em&gt;skeptics&lt;/em&gt; now, please suggest moving to other SE site)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2103" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:41:08.660" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:41:08.660" Title="26 thousand users of Facebook list their location as Greenland" Tags="|sociology|social-media|facebook|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9158" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-01T12:21:28.960" Score="19" ViewCount="1111" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is made &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/15/uk-aid-forced-sterilisation-india&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tens of millions of pounds of UK aid money have been spent on a programme that has forcibly sterilised Indian women and men [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet a working paper published by the UK's Department for International Development in 2010 cited the need to fight climate change as one of the key reasons for pressing ahead with such programmes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Googling has only turned up the Guardian article and no further original sources (all other sources just block-quote the Guardian article)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-12-22T17:36:32.310" Title="Is the United Kingdom funding forced sterilization in India to combat climate change?" Tags="|climate-change|united-kingdom|india|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9155" CreationDate="2012-05-01T17:09:59.067" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2009 Greenland had &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.internetworldstats.com/am/gl.htm&quot;&gt;52,000 internet&lt;/a&gt; users, which are over 90% of the population. Greenland is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telepost.gl/en-US/GreenlandConnect/Soekablet/Sider/Teknologi.aspx&quot;&gt;connected via fiber-optic&lt;/a&gt; to Canada and Iceland. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, is 45-50% reach in case Facebook accounts something impressive? It isn't. Facebook's global average &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/facebook.com#reach&quot;&gt;reach of &lt;strong&gt;active&lt;/strong&gt; users is 44.5%&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What special problems have they to solve (cold, snowstorm, bad&#xA;  visibility) to have good connection?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Greenland there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_and_towns_in_Greenland&quot;&gt;no inland settlements&lt;/a&gt;, most of the population lives in the towns on the south-west coast. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.checkfacebook.com/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; map [...] If these data are reliable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's another issue. I don't think this map is reliable, as it shows many countries with FB usage way over 100% (with cases as extreme as 619% in Central African Republic or 505% in Iraq). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-05-01T17:31:16.033" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T17:31:16.033" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6921" CreationDate="2012-05-01T18:18:54.130" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gladwell.com/2002/2002_03_25_a_paper.htm&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt;(more about the life of paper than productivity) says the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But why do we pile documents instead of filing them? Because piles&#xA;  represent the process of active, ongoing thinking. The psychologist&#xA;  Alison Kidd, whose research Sellen and Harper refer to extensively,&#xA;  argues that &quot;knowledge workers&quot; use the physical space of the desktop&#xA;  to hold &quot;ideas which they cannot yet categorize or even decide how&#xA;  they might use.&quot; The messy desk is not necessarily a sign of&#xA;  disorganization. It may be a sign of complexity: those who deal with&#xA;  many unresolved ideas simultaneously cannot sort and file the papers&#xA;  on their desks, because they haven't yet sorted and filed the ideas in&#xA;  their head. Kidd writes that many of the people she talked to use the&#xA;  papers on their desks as contextual cues to &quot;recover a complex set of&#xA;  threads without difficulty and delay&quot; when they come in on a Monday&#xA;  morning, or after their work has been interrupted by a phone call.&#xA;  What we see when we look at the piles on our desks is, in a sense, the&#xA;  contents of our brains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems like the anwer would be: &quot;It depends.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your space is used (as above), then having a tidy desk would actually be &lt;em&gt;counterproductive&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note, I wasn't able [didn't try] to track down the actual research by Alison Kidd, so that information would be a welcome addition.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1283" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T18:18:54.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9164" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9199" CreationDate="2012-05-01T22:19:15.003" Score="33" ViewCount="4547" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's May Day, while Communist regimes celebrated this day, others &lt;a href=&quot;http://volokh.com/2012/05/01/victims-of-communism-day-4/&quot;&gt;mourn&lt;/a&gt;.  Specifically there are claims that communist governments have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.victimsofcommunism.org/history_communism.php&quot;&gt;killed 80 to 100 million people in the last 100 years&lt;/a&gt;.  Are communist governments directly responsible for over 80 million deaths?  (directly means killed via execution, internment, work camps, etc. but would not count deaths theoretically due to a weakened economy)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Communism. In less than 100 years, Communism has claimed more than 100&#xA;  million lives. Today, it continues to enslave one-fifth of the world's&#xA;  people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="16282" LastEditDate="2013-12-20T22:11:55.973" LastActivityDate="2016-08-08T21:06:16.127" Title="Have communist governments killed more than 80 million people?" Tags="|history|mortality|government|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="34" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9118" CreationDate="2012-05-01T23:29:39.783" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;This survey is not a measure of how &quot;informed&quot; someone is, but rather a measure of how well they align with certain views. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The survey was taken regarding highly volatile and changing situations on three different days spanning three weeks.  With a sample size of only 100, this alone would significantly skew the results.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's a poll, not a &quot;study&quot;.  The two are not synonymous.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To the best of your knowledge, have the opposition groups protesting&#xA;  in Egypt  been successful in bringing down the regime there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering that Egypts military council still has not &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/muslim-brotherhood-still-waiting-for-egypts-ruling-military-council-to-reshuffle-cabinet&quot;&gt;handed over the reins of government&lt;/a&gt;, and certainly had not when this poll was taken, it's a matter of opinion whether or not the revolt &quot;succeeded&quot;.  In fact, since, at that time, elections had not been held (&lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577174832117262816.html&quot;&gt;they finished in late January&lt;/a&gt;) calling it a success before the first free election is more accurately the misinformation.  Now, one could argue that success just means ending the regime, which is fine for an argument over beer.  However any academic should know that success would mean different things to different audiences.  Many people would still consider this a failure based on the rise of Islamic control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How about the opposition groups in Syria…? PROMPT if necessary …have&#xA;  they been successful  in bringing down the regime there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question would have been asked differently of different respondents.  Those who were not prompted would have been implying the ending, which may not well align with the prompted ending.  Again, they have been successful in many ways (ending the state of emergency, asylum for political dissedents, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15563900&quot;&gt;the creation of the Free Syrian army&lt;/a&gt;, so it would depend on how the respondent filled in the blank left by the absent prompt.   The difference in &quot;No&quot;s with FOX watchers primarily shifted to &quot;Don't Know&quot;, not to yes, implying not misinformation but rather lack of information (or undecided, or perhaps confused with this bad question).  Notably, MSNBC from the other end of the political spectrum, which the paper praises, had a similar response -- again indicating that the problem may be with the question, not the respondents.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, with timing, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2011%E2%80%932012_Syrian_uprising_%28September%E2%80%93December_2011%29&quot;&gt;this survey was taken right after the Arab League announced a two week deadline on sanctions&lt;/a&gt;.  This is not an insignificant fact, as it would have affected again the respondents view of &quot;success&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Right now, which candidate seems to be leading in the polls  for&#xA;  Republican Presidential nomination in 2012?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fox news consumers were actually more likely to get this one right, according to the cited paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question about Occupy Wallstreet is reasonable and probably OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the above problems with the cited poll, consider the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hij.sagepub.com/content/10/3/56.short&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; found that Fox News watchers were more likely to want entertainment based news stories, again implying that they are differently informed, not &quot;misinformed&quot;, and that Fox News viewers are more concerned with topics other than middle eastern revolutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/73/1/130.short&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; exposes significant issues with using anecdotal self reporting of news exposure due to people drastically overreporting news exposure, meaning that we can't be sure that the people surveyed actually watched any of the news they claimed to.  This reveals a significant flaw in the methodology of the poll cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It follows that apparent media effects may arise not because of differences in exposure, but because of unknown differences in the accuracy of reporting exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or... the problem is with your survey, not the news source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The poll cited is not enough, on it's own, to support the claim made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastActivityDate="2012-05-01T23:29:39.783" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9132" CreationDate="2012-05-02T01:33:35.203" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find anything in the scientific literature, but then I &lt;em&gt;thought&lt;/em&gt; I had found the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/humanbody/truthaboutfood/sexy/spermtaste.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;description of an experiment&lt;/a&gt; performed by the BBC show The Truth About Food. Not peer-reviewed scientific journal, but perhaps the best you can hope for on a question that is unlikely to get normal funding. It sounded promising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their video link is (currently) broken, but the segment is available on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1k1Dy1mVeQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;YouTube&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it turned out to be a terribly low-quality experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three couples took part. (Flaw: sample too small to draw any strong conclusions.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The men were given a diets free of garlic, asparagus and alcohol, but high in one of spices, fish or fruit. (Flaw: There was no control to see if the changes were non-existent.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After three days, and kept in the dark about which diet was involved, the three women tasted the semen from a test-tube. (Flaw: There was no control; they relied on memory to compare; presumably with a faster and less formal presentation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were given four choices (including one &quot;distractor&quot; answer) to select between. (Flaw: The hypothesis was that changing diet could affect the taste in some way. The actual test was that it would affect the taste in a manner that was previously associated with the food. It would fail to detect if fruit actually made the semen more spicy in flavour, for example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the three selected correctly - this is not significantly different to random guesses. (Do I need to do a detailed statistical analysis to prove this?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reporter's conclusion was entirely facile:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence perhaps that food flavour molecules &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; pass into the seminal fluid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I draw an entirely different set of conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The flavour of the semen is not &lt;em&gt;strongly&lt;/em&gt; changed in a &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; direction and in a way that shines through the unusual protocol (e.g. test tubes), to enable all three women to predict the diet correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even the BBC's Science and Nature unit has a pitiful understanding of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_design&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;experimental design&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-05T04:59:38.480" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T04:59:38.480" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9170" CreationDate="2012-05-02T03:10:11.613" Score="16" ViewCount="70823" Body="&lt;p&gt;A colleague is trying to tell me that I should pay more and get a ceramic heater rather than a cheap convection room heater because I'll save money on electricity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have one like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yuLvs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Convection room heater&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure it's 2kW but with the thermostat it's only on 1/5 of the time. It heats the room in about 15 minutes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has one like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ggpb7.png&quot; alt=&quot;Ceramic Heater&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's only 400W but with no thermostat, it's on all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A watt only has so much energy...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think my convection heater is just as efficient and a quarter of price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Edit: &lt;a href=&quot;http://econo-heat.com/za/products/eheater-wall-panel-heater/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; website claims they are 50% more efficient but this is the manufacturer's website...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that ceramic room heaters are more efficient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related Question&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8929/are-ion-heaters-significantly-more-efficient-then-normal-electric-heaters&quot;&gt;Are ion heaters significantly more efficient then normal electric heaters?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T23:45:24.563" Title="Are ceramic heaters more efficient than convection heaters?" Tags="|physics|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9168" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9175" CreationDate="2012-05-02T04:14:16.313" Score="14" ViewCount="2217" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can human males lactate (produce milk) in the manner females can?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Spontaneous lactation occasionally occurs in starving men; after World&#xA;  War II, for example, thousands of cases were observed among POWs&#xA;  released from concentration camps. The phenomenon of successful human&#xA;  male breastfeeding has been credibly observed in several cases.&#xA;  However, the cases are not sufficiently documented to allow&#xA;  distinguishing of possible pathologic galactorrhea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_lactation#Human_male_lactation&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_lactation#Human_male_lactation&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-males-can-lactate&amp;amp;sc=rss&quot;&gt;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=strange-but-true-males-can-lactate&amp;amp;sc=rss&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If true, under what conditions can males lactate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6966" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-06-18T07:07:43.760" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T07:07:43.760" Title="Can human males produce milk?" Tags="|physiology|gender|milk|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9169" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20437" CreationDate="2012-05-02T09:26:11.187" Score="14" ViewCount="8320" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard the following quote:&#xA;&quot;A rocket to the moon spends only 7% of the time on the correct course, the rest of the time it is off course and needs to be corrected and put back on course.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a nice anecdote in relation to how important it is to keep correcting your own course in life, have a destination in mind but keep checking if you are on course and correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of similar quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Apollo moon rockets were off course 97% of the time. Yet they still reached their chosen destinations – and returned to earth – with pin-point precision and timing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.profitclinic.com/SmallBiz/ResInfo/DntGo/Rckt.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Don't Go Into Small Business Until You Read This Book&lt;/em&gt; by John Counsel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did you know that an Apollo rocket is actually on course only two or three percent of the time? At least 97% of the time it takes to get from the earth to the moon, it’s off  course. Put another way, for every half hour the ship is in flight, it is on course for less than sixty seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.betternetworker.com/articles/view/personal-development/mindset/course-correction&quot;&gt;Better Networker&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are nice examples but are they really true. Where would these percentages come from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6968" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-03T01:00:51.290" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T11:06:46.427" Title="What percent of time is a rocket to the moon on the right trajectory?" Tags="|moon|physics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9167" CreationDate="2012-05-02T10:23:55.297" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer: A heater is about as efficient as you can possibly get for an electrical device. Almost 100% of the input energy that goes in is converted to heat&lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;. For a newer heater to be 50% more efficient, it would have to use about 67% of the energy to give the same heat - which is difficult, because the original heater is already 100% efficient, so this new one would have to be 150% efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ceramic materials are very good electrical insulators and have excellent thermal conductivity. The only difference between his ceramic heater and your normal electric heater is the element is probably wrapped around a ceramic core and this then heats up the outer plate, whereas yours just has elements and relies on natural convection to circulate and spread the heat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both will be equally efficient at providing heat energy, but they provide it in different ways. Maybe the heat plate is better for heating up one part of a room, but the convection heater is good for the whole room, for example. If you were only using one part of the room, then it would be less efficient to heat up all of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are heating systems that are more than 100% efficient - they are known as heat pumps. They are typically in excess of 300% efficient. However, a heat pump would require an external connection to outside the building to work, as it works by using the thermal energy from outside (and electricity is only drawn to move the heat one way.) And, they are very expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conservingelectricity.com/ElectricSpaceHeaters.asp&quot;&gt;http://www.conservingelectricity.com/ElectricSpaceHeaters.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1626" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T10:23:55.297" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9171" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2012-05-02T12:50:52.753" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I passionately believe that &lt;strong&gt;this community makes the internet a better place.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make this more than a belief, we need to hold ourselves to the highest standards. This is an uphill battle, but I think that we have succeeded pretty well: the quality of the questions and answers on this site is unrivalled by almost all other sites on the internet&lt;sup&gt;[citation needed]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, this requires more intervention than on the other Stack Exchange sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless &lt;strong&gt;my goal is to keep meddling actions to a minimum&lt;/strong&gt;, and for the community to act itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I’m against&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/hqwo9q&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;excessive deleting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/IFQlZ4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;excessive closing&lt;/a&gt; if the question could be salvaged&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/Jeo8ow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;deletion of valuable comment discussions&lt;/a&gt; (but moving them to a chat is fine!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I’m for&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;leading by example&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;editing to improve&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/467/82&quot;&gt;downvoting&lt;/a&gt;, and leaving comments&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/1707/82&quot;&gt;improving the user experience&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I was a &lt;em&gt;pro tempore&lt;/em&gt; moderator on tex.stackexchange.com.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T12:50:52.753" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T12:50:52.753" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-05-02T12:50:52.753" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9169" CreationDate="2012-05-02T14:46:50.023" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because of the incredible cost of getting propellant out of the Earth's gravity, I am pretty certain the moon rockets were almost always perfectly on course, with occasional corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://history.nasa.gov/afj/launchwindow/lw1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to NASA&lt;/a&gt;, the launch phase gets the Apollo rockets to Earth's orbit, then there is a burn to join what they call the Trans Lunar Coast Phase, during which no propellant is expected to be fired. The next burn is at the Moon end to join a Lunar orbit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The calculations on that page are &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; about making sure the phases line up with the minimum burn required to transition from one to the next, which is why launch windows are so critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the indicative diagrams from that page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jNN49.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A comparison of lunar landing strategies can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agi.com/downloads/resources/white-papers/A-Comparison-of-Lunar-Landing-Trajectory-Strategies-Using-Numerical-Simulations.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;here&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Again, it is heavily focused on savings in propellant, or as they state it, delta V (change of velocity):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... the TLI maneuver for the WSB is greater than for the standard&#xA;  ballistic transfer, there  can be a lunar capture DV savings of about&#xA;  25% when capturing into a Lunar orbit.   The Hiten mission 17&#xA;  (originally called Muses-A) performed such a capture in October, 1991&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="619" LastEditDate="2012-05-02T15:01:53.953" LastActivityDate="2012-05-02T15:01:53.953" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9168" CreationDate="2012-05-02T23:30:39.383" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The medical term for lactation outside of pregnancy and childbirth is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galactorrhea&quot;&gt;galactorrhea&lt;/a&gt;. It has been observed in males&lt;sup&gt;(1)(2)&lt;/sup&gt;. In newborns, it is relativity common in both sexes, and is called &quot;witch's milk.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;(3)&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolactin&quot;&gt;Prolactin&lt;/a&gt; is the hormone associated with lactation and it is secreted by the anterior pituitary gland.&lt;sup&gt;(4)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The causes are varied. According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aafp.org/afp/2001/0501/p1775.html&quot;&gt;American Academy of Family Physicians&lt;/a&gt; some causes are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Medicines, like hormones, antidepressants and blood pressure medicines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Herbs, such as nettle, fennel, blessed thistle, anise and fenugreek seed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Street drugs, like marijuana and opiates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Hormone imbalance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Tumors (usually benign), especially tumors of the pituitary gland (say: pit-too-it-tarry), which is in the brain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Pregnancy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Clothing that irritates the breasts (like scratchy wool shirts or bras that don't fit well)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Doing very frequent breast self-exams (daily exams)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stimulation of the breast during sexual activity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sometimes the cause can't be found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(1)Kleinberg, David L., Gordon L. Noel, and Andrew G. Frantz. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm197703172961103&quot;&gt;Galactorrhea: A Study of 235 Cases, Including 48 with Pituitary Tumors&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; New England Journal of Medicine (1977).&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(2)Finn, James E., and Lester A. Mount. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thejns.org/doi/abs/10.3171/jns.1971.35.6.0723?journalCode=jns&quot;&gt;Galactorrhea in Males with Tumors in the Region of the Pituitary Gland&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Journal of Neurosurgery 35.6 (1971): 723-27.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(3)Madlon-Kay, DJ. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3946357&quot;&gt;'Witch's Milk'. Galactorrhea in the Newborn&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; American Journal of Diseases of Children (1986).&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(4)PEÑA, KRISTIN S., and JO ANN ROSENFELD. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aafp.org/afp/2001/0501/p1763.html&quot;&gt;Evaluation and Treatment of Galactorrhea&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; American Family Physicians (2001).&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="6598" LastEditDate="2012-05-03T05:09:24.897" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T05:09:24.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9177" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-03T02:48:19.940" Score="4" ViewCount="912" Body="&lt;p&gt;My father has problems with his knees. His doctor said that he should get an operation. However, the operation does not usually work, is very expensive, and can make things worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A multi-level marketer offered him an alternative: he wears &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthotics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;orthotic&lt;/a&gt; shoes that are &quot;tilted&quot;. It seems that the shoes are working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I look around and I do not see anyone disputing that orthotics works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is a highly unusual situation. I mean if doctor says A and alternative medicine proponent says B, usually, the doctor is right. However, this seem to be an exception. Or is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If such simple solution like tilted shoes can cure injured knees, why is it not more common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-03T07:36:31.713" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T07:36:31.713" Title="Does orthotics work?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9177" CreationDate="2012-05-03T03:36:01.487" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I love the answers that surprise me. I had never doubted the effectiveness of orthotics. (To be fair, I've never needed to care.) I thought it was part of evidence-based medicine. I went to find the evidence to show this. However, the literature seems more divided than I expected.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When there is controversy about the effectiveness of a treatment, I look to the Cochrane Collaboration, who produce high-quality meta-analyses of smaller studies to draw more robust conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a recent such analysis done that sounds (without knowing the details of your father's medical history, nor having the skill to understand it if I did) perfect for this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hossain M, Alexander P, Burls A, Jobanputra P, &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD008402/moulded-foot-insoles-for-adults-with-pain-around-the-knee-cap&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Moulded foot insoles for adults with pain around the knee cap&lt;/a&gt;. Published Online: January 19, 2011&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They looked at two available studies, and warned of the biases they found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were no important differences in knee pain and function in people given foot orthoses as well as physiotherapy when compared with people given physiotherapy only. Results for knee pain and function did not show important differences between foot orthoses versus physiotherapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;On the basis of the available evidence we do not recommend foot orthoses for adults with pain around the knee cap.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be some areas where foot orthotics might have a benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://adisonline.com/sportsmedicine/Abstract/2008/38090/Effectiveness_of_Foot_Orthoses_for_Treatment_and.5.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This review&lt;/a&gt; concludes that they are largely ineffective at treating pain or preventing injury, but that there is &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; evidence of helping with plantar fasciitis, posterior tibial stress fractures, and patellofemoral pain syndrome. Mainly, it suggests more high-quality evidence is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD002302/pressure-relieving-interventions-for-preventing-and-treating-diabetic-foot-ulcers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;unrelated situations where orthotics may assist&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The New York Times had an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/health/nutrition/18best.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article discussing the controversy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T03:42:55.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9179" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-03T04:27:06.760" Score="12" ViewCount="12611" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today while visiting the tiger exhibit at my local zoo, I read that in areas where tiger attacks on humans are common, people will often wear a mask on the back of their head to ward of tiger attacks, as tigers only ever attack from behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia makes the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_attacks_in_the_Sundarbans#Precautions&quot;&gt;unreferenced claim&lt;/a&gt; that this strategy used to work, but no longer does because tigers are too clever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to show that wearing a mask on the back of one's head is, or ever has been, effective in warding off tiger attacks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2018-04-13T14:29:44.837" Title="Does wearing a mask on the back of one's head protect against tiger attacks?" Tags="|zoology|safety|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10825" CreationDate="2012-05-03T04:32:00.513" Score="16" ViewCount="13222" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen it many times &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_featuring_mental_illness#Retrograde_amnesia&quot;&gt;in movies&lt;/a&gt;; people not only forget something that happened, but they forget who they are entirely- including their name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A much-used plot device, retrograde amnesia occurs when a person forgets part or all of his or her past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a list of movies (sorted by year) where people forget their own identity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;I Love You Again (1940)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sullivan's Travels (1941)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Random Harvest (1942), in which Ronald Colman's character suffers from the condition not once but twice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Crime Doctor (1943)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Anastasia (1956)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;RoboCop (1987)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Overboard (1987)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Regarding Henry (1991)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Majestic (2001)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Addams Family (1991)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The English Patient (1996)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Dark City (1998)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Mulholland Drive (2001)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Bourne Identity (2002)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Finding Nemo (2003)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Number 23 (2007)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Spider-Man 3 (2007)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Unknown (2011)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A list of more of these movies can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~kihlstrm/movies.htm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason I am so skeptical about this, is that a person's name is one of the first things they learn. Often even before an infant learns to talk, it will still respond to it's name. So it would seem like, if you were unable to remember your name, you would also be unable to remember how to talk and do other very basic human functions. (This is just my speculation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the term &lt;code&gt;Retrograde Amnesia&lt;/code&gt; means the inability to remember something from the past (as apposed to &lt;code&gt;Anterograde amnesia&lt;/code&gt; which is the inability to form new memories.) Retrograde Amnesia is a well known medical condition, however, I have yet to hear of a real, documented case, of retrograde amnesia that was so extreme, that the person couldn't even remember his or her own name / identity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Retrograde Amnesia is often temporally graded, consistent with Ribot's Law: more recent memories closer to the traumatic incident are more likely to be forgotten than more remote memories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact - the only time I have actually heard of this happening (a person forgetting who they were), was with regards to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.everydayhealth.com/senior-health/alzheimers/recognizing-the-symptoms.aspx&quot;&gt;Stage III Alzheimer's Disease&lt;/a&gt;. However, in Stage III Alzheimer's, the other symptoms include &quot;Loss of communication, relying instead on grunts or moans&quot;, and &quot;Loss of control over bodily functions, such as trouble swallowing or lack of bowel and bladder control&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any scientific evidence or backing to this being possible (forgetting one's own name / identity, but &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; being able to function as a &lt;em&gt;normal&lt;/em&gt; human being)? Has there ever been a documented case of this actually happening?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;for those of you wondering, the link on Wikipedia on retrograde amnesia doesn't cover forgetting your name&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6598" LastEditorUserId="6598" LastEditDate="2012-08-12T08:55:49.190" LastActivityDate="2016-11-17T17:30:33.973" Title="Can a person forget their own name?" Tags="|biology|neurology|memory|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7605" CreationDate="2012-05-03T13:32:03.153" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;BMW drivers are not the worst on the road:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://insurance-news.tiger.co.uk/tiger-co-uk-reveals-britains-safest-drivers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;comparison of accident rates&lt;/a&gt; for drivers of different cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The website looked at over almost a million car insurance quotes in order to produce the analysis. The data looks at different car manufacturers and car colours and correlates these with claimed driver accident rates in the five year period before the quote was run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zzt44.png&quot; alt=&quot;table&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BMW drivers appear to be more likely to have had an accident (16.7% of BMW drivers reported that they had an accident in the previous 5 years compared to 13.3% for all drivers), but they are not the most accident-prone drivers.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T13:32:03.153" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9184" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9208" CreationDate="2012-05-03T14:37:58.220" Score="4" ViewCount="1055" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a fad going around, especially in the NBA to use &quot;Cryotherapy&quot; to reduce healing time and relieve pain and fatigue.  The patient is placed in a chamber, which is lowered to -166 degrees Celsius (107 Kelvin), for about five minutes.  There are many reported benefits, but I haven't been able to find anything to legitimize the treatment beyond anecdotes from players, coaches, and company representatives, nor have I found any skeptical debunking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cryotherapychamber.co.uk/en/therapy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Maximus Cryotherapy Chambers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxsportsnorth.com/01/27/12/Wolves-get-pain-relief-at-minus-166-degr/msn_landing.html?blockID=654530&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fox Sports&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is cryotherapy an accepted, evidence-based, medical modality, an unproven possibility, a pipe dream, or a fraud?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1617" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-05T03:19:12.787" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T03:19:12.787" Title="Do cryotherapy chambers reduce healing time and relieve pain and fatigue?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9188" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2012-05-03T17:50:11.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some things about myself :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have a scientific mind. While I only have an Undergrad, I graduated with a BSc in Physics and Computer Science&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have all the best OCD tendencies, which means it fundamentally bothers me to see badly formatted posts, questions without accepted answers, and unresolved flags and edits.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have a good feel for grassroots skepticism and distinguishing good references from bad ones.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm a happy guy. I see no point in participating in a community, however professional and rigorous we strive to be, unless we can make friends and enjoy ourselves while we do it, and I try to bring that to all my questions, answers, and comments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should be upfront about my sporatic participation. I tend to spend most of my time over at stackoverflow, but for some reason my contributions on Skeptics seem to be much more well-received, so maybe it's a sign that I should give up computers and go back to my roots in science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I could never compete with the breadth of participation we see from Sklivvz and Oddthinking on a daily bases, I have the skills and good nature it takes to be a constructive and effective moderator for Skeptics.&#xA;2K&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2012-05-03T17:55:28.043" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T17:55:28.043" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-05-03T17:50:11.157" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9192" CreationDate="2012-05-03T18:08:08.953" Score="0" ViewCount="1480" Body="&lt;p&gt;As many parts of the world commemorate New Year's Eve with a lot of fireworks (which explode at the height of a take-off/landing). Are airplanes pilots required to deviate from their original route on this special day/night?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6990" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-01-23T04:48:21.767" LastActivityDate="2021-02-10T12:18:11.487" Title="Do airplanes need to deviate their routes on New Year's Eve due to firework displays?" Tags="|aviation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9189" CreationDate="2012-05-03T18:41:28.597" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.manchesterairport.co.uk/manweb.nsf/alldocs/A84C2DF5BB1B149F8025747B004B2AF5/%24File/Using+Fireworks+near+Manchester+Airport.pdf&quot;&gt;A brochure from Manchester Airport&lt;/a&gt; announced windows to launch fireworks near Manchester airport in England. It’s not for New Year’s, but it states information that would be relevant for any time period:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, … a suspension of [airport] operations is difficult to arrange and not often possible. […]&#xA;  These [above-mentioned periods] are the only suspensions that will take place, so please plan your displays to fit these time periods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fireworks can distract pilots during critical landing and takeoff phase and their use around airports is strictly controlled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failure to notify a nearby airport about use of fireworks can result in up to 5 years in jail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6876" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2012-05-04T09:46:02.283" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T09:46:02.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9191" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-03T19:26:40.893" Score="8" ViewCount="1681" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim that the Abrahamic god is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent is popular among theologians, practitioners of Abrahamic religions and atheists alike (I am referring to the idea of god, regardless of whether there is a being that fits the bill or not). Many theological arguments rely on some or all of these attributes, e.g. the problem of evil (requiring all three), the impossibility of coexistence of free will and omniscience, the famous &quot;could god make a boulder so heavy even he himself could not lift it&quot; (omnipotence), et cetera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these claims appear in major religious texts, such as the Torah, Bible, or Koran?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.equip.org/articles/how-should-christians-approach-the-problem-of-evil&quot;&gt;An article from the Christian Research Journal asserts that god is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tutor2u.net/blog/index.php/religious-studies/comments/the-problem-of-evil&quot;&gt;An educational books publisher claiming to have their material used in 3500 educational institutions in the UK alone, as well as 85 other countries, claims the Abrahamic god possesses all of these attributes.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://torah.org/features/spirfocus/suffering.html&quot;&gt;Article by Rabbi Dovid Gottleib dedicated to the problem of evil in Judaism.&lt;/a&gt; It claims god is omnipotent, omniscient and just.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6189" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:21:33.093" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:21:33.093" Title="Do the key Abrahamic holy books claim that their god is omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent?" Tags="|religion|bible|religious-texts|torah|quran|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9189" CreationDate="2012-05-03T19:35:39.343" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firework displays can be a hazard to aircraft. Sufficiently large firework displays are notified to aircraft operators through NOTAMs. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.navcanada.ca/contentdefinitionfiles/publications/notam/notam_manual_en.pdf&quot;&gt;Canadian NOTAM Manual&lt;/a&gt; contains a specific section on fireworks and pyrotechnics (Section 5.5.10). Some displays may result in the establishment of restricted airspace, which would compel aircraft to route around it. Aircraft may also choose to avoid areas in which firework displays are happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However as Ryathal says, fireworks are in general forbidden near airports, and airliners cruise too high to be affected by regular firework displays. The NOTAMs mentioned above are more likely to affect smaller unscheduled aircraft. There might also be occasional suspensions of operation like the Manchester one described by him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2012-05-03T19:35:39.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9193" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-03T20:19:25.920" Score="14" ViewCount="4326" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often hear people claim &quot;global warming will cause the ice-caps to melt, and that will cause the water levels in the ocean to rise, and that will cause major world-wide flooding.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, ignoring the question &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/9045/6873&quot;&gt;are ice cap melting&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, I am still wondering how it is possible for melting ice-caps to cause water levels to rise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is why I am skeptical:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/9045/6873&quot;&gt;law of displacement&lt;/a&gt;, the volume of an immersed object will be exactly equal to the volume of the displaced fluid. Therefor, if an icecap is floating in water, the displacement of the water would be based on the volume of the icecap, not it's shape, and the levels should be the same regardless of whether or not it is melted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fluid mechanics, displacement occurs when an object is immersed in a fluid, pushing it out of the way and taking its place. The volume of the fluid displaced can then be measured, as in the illustration, and from this the volume of the immersed object can be deduced (the volume of the immersed object will be exactly equal to the volume of the displaced fluid).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [....]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In the case of an object that floats, the amount of fluid displaced will be equal in weight to the displacing object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The icecap will have the same weight, regardless of whether it is in ice form, or liquid form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So how is it that people claim that melting ice caps can cause floods? Shouldn't water level stay exactly the same?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Icecaps includes &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_ice_cap&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;polar ice&lt;/a&gt;, and smaller &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cap&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;icecaps&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6598" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T09:58:36.000" Title="Will melting icecaps and glaciers cause the ocean to rise?" Tags="|physics|climate-change|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9193" CreationDate="2012-05-04T01:14:08.570" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gma.org/surfing/antarctica/antarctica.html&quot;&gt;Antarctica contains 70% of the world's ice&lt;/a&gt; and the vast majority of this is on land, so there is no displacement confusion - if it melts it will pour off the land into the sea, thus raising the sea level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thickness of ice on the Antarctic continent (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11434-009-0546-z&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; at RD Springer) averaged 2.2km in the East Antarctic Ice Sheet!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/HannaBerenblit.shtml&quot;&gt;The Physics Factbook&lt;/a&gt; (which is based on USGS ice caps area and thickness data) the maximum sea level rise potential globally is 73.44 m:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Geographic region: Antarctica&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Volume: 30,109,800 km3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maximum sea level rise potential: 73.44 m&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Area: 13,586,400 km2&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="619" LastEditDate="2012-05-04T13:02:01.023" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T13:02:01.023" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9195" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-04T01:49:30.807" Score="2" ViewCount="892" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/best-belly-blasting-supplements&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Oz show website claims&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers have found that forskolin can help to promote the breakdown of stored fats in animal and human fat cells. It may also release fatty acids from adipose tissue, which results in increased thermogenesis, resulting in loss of body fat and, theoretically, increased lean body mass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link above is dead, but another example is this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x21mh2w_forskolin-fuel-reviews-dr-oz-rapid-belly-melt_lifestyle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video clip from the Dr Oz show&lt;/a&gt; where he spruiks forskolin, and googling &quot;Dr Oz Forskolin&quot; leads to many dodgy looking websites peddling the stuff.&#xA;Is there any evidence that forskolin promotes the breakdown of stored fats in humans? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2015-10-20T21:28:22.163" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T21:28:22.163" Title="Does Forskolin help to break down fat?" Tags="|nutrition|nutritional-supplements|weight-loss|mehmet-oz|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9197" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-04T02:32:03.907" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-04T02:32:03.907" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T02:32:03.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9198" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-04T02:32:03.907" Score="0" Body="Dr. Oz (Mehmet Cengiz Oz) is an author, cardiothoracic surgeon and television presenter." OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-04T02:32:03.907" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T02:32:03.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9164" CreationDate="2012-05-04T02:42:44.130" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0674076087&quot;&gt;Black Book of Communism&lt;/a&gt; has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo114.html&quot;&gt;communist government death totals&lt;/a&gt; at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;U.S.S.R.: 20 million deaths &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;China: 65 million deaths &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vietnam: 1 million deaths &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;North Korea: 2 million deaths &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cambodia: 2 million deaths &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eastern Europe: 1 million deaths &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Latin America: 150,000 deaths&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Africa: 1.7 million deaths &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Afghanistan: 1.5 million deaths&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This totals just over 94 million.  These are the deaths committed by government agents against citizens of their own country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; estimates the Chinese number between 50 and 78 million deaths and the Soviet number at 23 million which is similar in magnitude to the source above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="929" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-06-28T23:47:25.583" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T23:47:25.583" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9203" CreationDate="2012-05-04T03:08:12.167" Score="15" ViewCount="184346" Body="&lt;p&gt;This video has been around for a few years, but the first time I saw this I was shocked and disturbed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fFDEalKXT8&amp;amp;has_verified=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Got talent goes horribly wrong archer&lt;/a&gt; &lt;sup&gt;[not safe for work]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have looked online and have found competing information being claimed that the video was a marketing campaign, and other videos claiming this is not true and that it is in fact real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/photos/accident/russiantalent.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes further claims that this is Undetermined&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anybody verify if the video is real and if so, can it be confirmed if the man indeed died?  It certainly appears like he did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6794" LastEditorUserId="36995" LastEditDate="2018-12-17T18:40:08.923" LastActivityDate="2019-09-15T11:11:17.193" Title="Is the video of the Russian talent show archery tragedy faked?" Tags="|mortality|video|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9193" CreationDate="2012-05-04T08:35:27.483" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, they are already doing so&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what the IPCC has to say about this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During recent years (1993–2003), for which the observing system is much better, thermal expansion and melting of land ice each account for about half of the observed sea level rise, although there is some uncertainty in the estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-5-1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAQ 5.1 Is Sea Level Rising?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, as the ocean warms up it expands and as the land ice melts, it pours into the ocean. At the moment the contributions are 50% each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following graph shows the past/present/future of sea levels according to the IPCC:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AguQ2.png&quot; alt=&quot;sea rise&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-5-1-figure-1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Time series of global mean sea level (deviation from the 1980-1999 mean) in the past and as projected for the future.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T08:35:27.483" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9202" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9217" CreationDate="2012-05-04T10:46:01.357" Score="15" ViewCount="1737" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/may/01/root-causes-rise-obesity-diabetes&quot;&gt;letter to The Guardian newspaper&lt;/a&gt; artist and pro-tobacco campaigner David Hockney suggests that there could be a link between not smoking and being obese or having diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a link between the decline of smoking and the rise of obesity and diabetes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some people might be much better off smoking instead of nibbling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any evidence that smoking can prevent obesity or diabetes?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T11:37:19.450" Title="Does smoking prevent obesity and diabetes?" Tags="|medical-science|smoking|diabetes|obesity|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9200" CreationDate="2012-05-04T11:44:48.590" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's obviously not real. At very first glance it looks like a parody. But since you want some &quot;hard evidence&quot;, here it goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whole setup is very, very amateur, too amateur to be considered from a show on national TV in Russia (or Ukraine for that matter)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TV station logo is: &lt;code&gt;TVД&lt;/code&gt;, yet in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_alphabets&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cyrillic alphabet&lt;/a&gt; there is no &lt;code&gt;V&lt;/code&gt;, obviously no &lt;code&gt;TVД&lt;/code&gt; station exist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's allegedly Russian show, yet show logo says &quot;Talent&quot; in Latin alphabet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actual Russian &quot;Got Talent&quot; franchise is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuta_slavy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Минута славы&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Caption's second line says &quot;Киева&quot;, which would point to Ukraine, rather than Russia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But than again, &lt;a href=&quot;http://talant.stb.ua/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ukraine Got Talent (Україна має талант)&lt;/a&gt; has completely different logo, is show on a different TV station and fully professional setup&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Caption says &quot;Удивительный братьями &quot;, which is supposed to mean  &quot;Amazing brothers&quot;, however it's grammatically incorrect (singular adjective instead of plural, and noun in wrong &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_grammar#Nouns&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;case&lt;/a&gt; - instrumental instead of nominative). Same goes for second line, it's also ungrammatical, should either read &quot;з Киева&quot; or just &quot;Киев&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No one in the whole video speaks a single word, further showing that whoever made that video had no knowledge of Russian nor Ukrainian&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The arrow nocking changes color midflight&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &quot;victim&quot; falls politely to the ground like he's about to make a snow angel - there's no pain on display, frantic flailing, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="637" LastEditDate="2019-09-15T11:11:17.193" LastActivityDate="2019-09-15T11:11:17.193" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9204" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-04T12:16:28.927" Score="5" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard one day on the radio about a study that showed that people that in school were the best or the worst are the ones more likely to succeed in life. If you are in the middle of the bunch you will be an average dude basically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried searching for the study but couldn't find anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does such a study exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6998" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:40:31.453" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:40:31.453" Title="Are chances of succeeding in life increased if in school you were either the best or the worst?" Tags="|education|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9204" CreationDate="2012-05-04T14:25:48.910" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Correlation != Causation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does this mean?  Essentially it means that because two things are corellated to each other does not mean that one begets the other.  The notions of &quot;Good Schools&quot; vs. &quot;Bad Schools&quot; seems to imply that the school itself is the major contributing factor and influence to a childs education.  Many studies, politicians, and everyday people espouse this but it may not be reflective of reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-12-07-childrens-brains_N.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Poverty affects childrens brains&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this article about this study done in 2008, they have found that the brains of impoverished children 9-10 compared to wealthy children of the same age have such stark contrasts that it is as if comparing a healthy brain to that of a stroke victim.  Environment and diet play an enormous factor when it comes to a child's brain development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another contributing factor that may play into a child's performance at school is parental involvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/spq/9/4/256/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Does parental involvement influence the academic achievement of Mexican-American eighth graders?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Sorry paywall, but the abstract summarizes the findings&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study finds a significant corellation between parental involvement and better educational outcomes for their children.  It stands to reason here also that middle and upper class parents have more time and ability to be involved in their children's education than say an impoverished family working multiple jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the final correlation to tie these two together is in a study that finds that socioeconomic index is the most likely indicator of negative school outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://epa.sagepub.com/content/13/2/189.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://epa.sagepub.com/content/13/2/189.short&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would reason that such a hypothetical claim in light of this evidence doesn't stand to reason.  The school itself has little influence on your education, it has to do with your family and community background that you grew up in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6794" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-04T15:24:01.033" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T15:24:01.033" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9206" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9231" CreationDate="2012-05-04T14:41:15.767" Score="8" ViewCount="1482" Body="&lt;p&gt;I watched &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; video on YouTube about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGurk_effect&quot;&gt;McGurk effect&lt;/a&gt;. Then I saw the following comment on Google+ :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Singularity Utopia Feb 25, 2012 (edited)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am often sceptical regarding&#xA;  so-called illusions. I listened without looking and there seems to be&#xA;  cycle of 3 utterances; the first utterance is &quot;baar&quot;, the middle one&#xA;  is ambiguous (but leaning towards baar), and the third is &quot;faar&quot; (they&#xA;  are actually all rather ambiguous).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is incorrect to say what we hear may not always be the truth, it is&#xA;  incorrect to say we may not able to trust what we hear. Even regarding&#xA;  the more clearly enunciated 1st and 3rd utterances there is a degree&#xA;  of ambiguity, which I suspect is an intentional bias of the&#xA;  experimenter to prove the McGurk Effect. I would like to see the&#xA;  experiment where the words are uttered with greater clarity, greater&#xA;  uniformity, and then see how the visual component alters the&#xA;  perceptions of sound. The brain or eyes do not mislead the ears, the&#xA;  truth is that when sounds are ambiguous other senses will help us&#xA;  discover the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What you watch on TV (videos) may not always be the truth. You cannot&#xA;  always &lt;strong&gt;trust what you see&lt;/strong&gt; on &lt;strong&gt;TV&lt;/strong&gt; because the presentation of info is&#xA;  skewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TV is an illusion, thus it is ironic or fitting for illusions to be&#xA;  highlighted via an illusion. When you watch TV do you really think&#xA;  those people you are watching are 2D tiny humans constructed from&#xA;  pixels?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The illusion of &quot;illusions&quot; is that they take something out of context&#xA;  to make something look strange or mis-representative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is a bizarre effect if people whom you are looking at in real life&#xA;  suddenly transform into 2D pixelated images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm unable to decide whether the skeptic is right or wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4196" LastEditorUserId="2603" LastEditDate="2012-05-04T15:44:32.977" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T05:39:32.743" Title="Is the McGurk effect real?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9207" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9379" CreationDate="2012-05-04T15:02:12.350" Score="4" ViewCount="2305" Body="&lt;p&gt;I prefer to use peer reviewed journals of the highest integrity as the sources of what I would consider a good answer on this site.  While perusing the JREF Forums, I was struck by a question asked there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=231624&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How did crackpot Electric Universe papers get published in a peer-reviewed journal?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The folks at JREF point out that &quot;Bentham Open uses a pay-for-publication model.&quot;  In this context, it means that the author pays the journal to be published beyond just basic administrative fees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Open access has been criticized on quality grounds, as the desire to obtain publishing fees could cause the journal to relax the standard of peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see this practice seriously impacting the peer-review process, as well as the impartiality of published papers (see my comment below as well).  As of late, when trying to find papers, I am running into the &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.sagepub.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sage Journals&lt;/a&gt; a lot, and am noticing some papers there that make me ponder the impartiality and reputability of that site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the Sage Journals truly a peer reviewed series of publications, or are they more of a vanity publishing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:14:02.530" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:14:02.530" Title="Do the Sage Journals use a pay-for-publication model (such as Bentham Open)?" Tags="|media|scientific-papers|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9184" CreationDate="2012-05-04T16:06:53.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a couple of studies for you from Europe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Objectives:&lt;/strong&gt; The aim of this study was to determine the influence of whole body cryostimulation on aerobic and anaerobic &#xA;  capacities.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Conclusions:&lt;/strong&gt; It can be concluded &#xA;  that whole body cryostimulation can be beneficial, at least in males, for increasing anaerobic capacity in sport disciplines &#xA;  involving speed and strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imp.lodz.pl/upload/oficyna/artykuly/pdf/full/2010/2_Kilmek.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Influence of the ten sessions of the whole body cryostimulation on aerobic and anaerobic capacity&lt;/a&gt; by Andrzej T. Klimek et al.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In all testing sessions, the simulated 48 min trail run induced a similar, significant amount of muscle damage. Maximal muscle strength and perceived sensations were recovered after the first WBC session (post 1 h), while recovery took 24 h with FIR, and was not attained through the PAS recovery modality. No differences in plasma CK activity were recorded between conditions. Three WBC sessions performed within the 48 hours after a damaging running exercise accelerate recovery from EIMD to a greater extent than FIR or PAS modalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0027749&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effects of whole-body cryotherapy vs. far-infrared vs. passive modalities on recovery from exercise-induced muscle damage in highly-trained runners&lt;/a&gt; by Christophe Hausswirth et al.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several other good ones showing benefits.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7000" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-04T19:37:34.337" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T19:37:34.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9191" CreationDate="2012-05-04T16:17:48.037" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The link you provide in the comments, has references to scripture to support its claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;E. Calvin Beisner and Chad Meister, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.equip.org/articles/how-should-christians-approach-the-problem-of-evil&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How Should Christians Approach the Problem of Evil&lt;/a&gt;, &#xA;Point-Counterpoint, JAE140&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scripture declares God&amp;rsquo;s omnipotence&amp;mdash;God is able to accomplish everything He desires (Jer.&amp;nbsp;32:17; Matt.&amp;nbsp;19:26; Luke&amp;nbsp;1:37; 2&amp;nbsp;Cor.&amp;nbsp;6:18); omniscience&amp;mdash;God knows everything, including all past, present, and future truths (1&amp;nbsp;Sam.&amp;nbsp;23:11&amp;ndash;13; Ps.&amp;nbsp;139:2; Isa.&amp;nbsp;46:9&amp;ndash;10; 1&amp;nbsp;John&amp;nbsp;3:20); and omnibenevolence&amp;mdash;God is the standard of goodness, which primarily is reflected in His moral attributes, especially love (Ps.&amp;nbsp;25:8; Mark&amp;nbsp;10:18; Rom.&amp;nbsp;5:6&amp;ndash;10; 1&amp;nbsp;John&amp;nbsp;4:8,&amp;nbsp;16).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the site, it has pop-ups to give quotes from the Bible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T16:17:48.037" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9202" CreationDate="2012-05-04T18:08:53.017" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://quitsmoking.pharmacydiscountrx.com/weight_gain.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; basically says that you need to be careful when you quit smoking not to allow yourself to gain weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there is nothing that says that you can lose weight by smoking.  In fact:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;University of Kansas researchers found in a 2006 study that heavy&#xA;  smokers tend to exercise less, eat in front of the television more&#xA;  often and frequent restaurants that serve high-calorie food much more&#xA;  often than nonsmokers, suggesting heavy smoking often occurs alongside&#xA;  a package of unhealthy behaviors that can lead to obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://health.msn.com/health-topics/quit-smoking/can-you-smoke-the-pounds-away&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while quitting can lead to weight gain(it did for me), resuming smoking is unlikely to take those pounds back off.  But diet changes and exercise will.  Smoking is never going to make you healthier even if it causes you to lose weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the &lt;a href=&quot;http://EzineArticles.com/1113854&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article I found that said it might help&lt;/a&gt; said this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Heavy smokers are believed to burn up to 200 additional calories each&#xA;  day as a result of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caloriesperhour.com/tutorial_pound.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1 pound requires 3500 calories of burn&lt;/a&gt;.  So if you need to lose 10 pound smoking will take heavy smoking for 175 weeks.  That is over 3 years.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the damage that it does to your body you are better off spending a half an hour a day doing a slow run(12 minute mile) and gaining benefits of that which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nutristrategy.com/activitylist3.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;include a greater calorie burn&lt;/a&gt; than best case smoking, than you are taking smoking back up.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the reasons given for smoking helping to lose weight: Smoking damages your body cause it to malfunction. &lt;a href=&quot;http://EzineArticles.com/1113854&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-05-04T18:25:45.930" LastActivityDate="2012-05-04T18:25:45.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9213" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-05T00:09:01.550" Score="4" ViewCount="344" Body="&lt;p&gt;For years, certain classic retinal indicators have been considered absolute evidence of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaken_baby_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;shaken baby syndrome&lt;/a&gt;.  Doctors have made &lt;a href=&quot;http://dontshake.org/sbs.php?topNavID=3&amp;amp;subNavID=25&amp;amp;navID=278&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;explicit statements&lt;/a&gt; that other activities like falls can't cause similar injuries (with a typical &quot;well given infinite time&quot; hedge). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dontshake.org/sbs.php?topNavID=3&amp;amp;subNavID=25&amp;amp;navID=279&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;other source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it proven that the severe retinal haemorrhages can only be attributed to SBS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="34" LastEditDate="2012-05-07T02:43:21.310" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T14:14:57.820" Title="Are severe retinal haemorrhages proof of SBS?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9214" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-05T04:58:26.103" Score="6" ViewCount="2684" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Rush Limbaugh, we would need about 600,000 to 700,000 new jobs a month to really begin job creation. However, the unemployment rate has been dropping with significantly smaller figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Rush's transcript, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2012/05/04/obama_s_orwellian_unemployment_numbers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Obama's Orwellian Unemployment Numbers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you realize that to begin job creation at a replacement level, we would have to be in the neighborhood of 500,000 jobs a month and getting close to 600,000 to 700,000 a month to gain ground?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I know Rush says a lot of things. Furthermore, he has political interests. So, I know things must be taken with a grain of salt. With that said, are there any facts to back his claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1345" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-07-05T11:54:50.657" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T17:40:21.370" Title="How many new jobs are needed per month for job creation?" Tags="|united-states|economics|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9214" CreationDate="2012-05-05T07:27:37.223" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States#Vital_Statistics&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (which cites U.S. Census data and CDC data, so I'm going with wikipedia anyway, for the sake of its easy-to-digest chart), the U.S. population has grown by well over 1,000,000 every year (not counting immigration) and some times more than twice that, every year since at least 1950.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also looking at the U.S. immigration data found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/yearbook/2010/table01.xls&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (link from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States#Contemporary_immigration&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;), for which 2010 is the last year available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm making a few assumptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Everyone enters the workforce at the age of 20, and works until they die.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Everyone enters the workforce before they die.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All legal U.S. immigrants enter the workforce.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These assumptions ought to lead to artificially high workforce figures for my following estimate, but should provide us with a useful upper-bound to weigh Mr. Limbaugh's claim against.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1992 had a natural population growth of 1,889,401, so this many new workers will be entering the workforce this year, given our assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2010, 1,042,626 legal immigrants came to the U.S. (We'll use the same number for 2012, since it's the latest data available).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives us 2,932,026 new workers in 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to maintian our current employment rate, we'd need to create, on average, 244,336 jobs every month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd say Mr. Limbaugh was off by at least a factor of 2-3. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless, of course, he's pining for the rights of illegal immigrants who don't get counted in these numbers, and who cannot file for unemployment benefits. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T07:27:37.223" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9202" CreationDate="2012-05-05T11:21:05.617" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has to be one of the most pathetic attempts to earn money I can imagine - ignoring all of the evidence and actually recommending smoking? That is bat!@#$ crazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Comparing the Risks&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at the mortality rates. (I've limited myself to just the evidence in the UK, because that is where this &amp;lt;expletive&amp;gt; lives.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;70-75 thousand people in the UK with diabetes die every year... not &lt;em&gt;of&lt;/em&gt; diabetes... &lt;em&gt;with&lt;/em&gt; diabetes. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ic.nhs.uk/webfiles/Services/NCASP/Diabetes/200910%20annual%20report%20documents/NHS_Diabetes_Audit_Mortality_Report_2011_Final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;34 thousand people in the UK die &lt;em&gt;of&lt;/em&gt; obesity. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ic.nhs.uk/webfiles/publications/003_Health_Lifestyles/opad11/Statistics_on_Obesity_Physical_Activity_and_Diet_England_2011_revised_Aug11.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;] No doubt, there is overlap with the above figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Compare that to the 100 thousand people in the UK dying &lt;em&gt;of&lt;/em&gt; smoking every year. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Smoking-The-Facts.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole idea of putting yourself at risk of smoking-related deaths to avoid obesity and diabetic mortality is in-f!@#ing-sane. Why not douse yourself in petrol and set fire to yourself to avoid the risk of frostbite?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Positive Correlation - Diabetes&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even that is assuming, of course, that smokers genuinely have &lt;em&gt;reduced&lt;/em&gt; the risk of diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's not the case! For diabetes, the association goes the other way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carole Willi, Patrick Bodenmann, William A. Ghali, Peter D. Faris, Jacques Cornuz, &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/298/22/2654.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Active Smoking and the Risk of Type 2 Diabetes: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt;, JAMA 2007;298(22):2654-2664. doi: 10.1001/jama.298.22.2654&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Results&lt;/em&gt;  The search yielded 25 prospective cohort studies (N = &lt;strong&gt;1.2 million participants&lt;/strong&gt;) that reported 45 844 incident cases of diabetes during a study follow-up period ranging from 5 to 30 years. Of the 25 studies, 24 reported adjusted RRs greater than 1 (range for all studies, 0.82-3.74). The pooled adjusted RR was 1.44 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.31-1.58). &lt;strong&gt;Results were consistent and statistically significant in all subgroups. The risk of diabetes was greater for heavy smokers&lt;/strong&gt; (≥20 cigarettes/day; RR, 1.61; 95% CI, 1.43-1.80) &lt;strong&gt;than for lighter smokers&lt;/strong&gt; (RR,1.29; 95% CI, 1.13-1.48) and lower for former smokers (RR, 1.23; 95% CI, 1.14-1.33) compared with active smokers, &lt;strong&gt;consistent with a dose-response phenomenon.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Conclusion&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;strong&gt;Active smoking is associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes.&lt;/strong&gt; Future research should attempt to establish whether this association is causal and to clarify its mechanisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smokers are &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; likely to get diabetes. This idiotic risk reduction technique won't get you out of the frying pan into the fire - it will leave you in the frying pan &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the fire!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Negative Correlation - Obesity&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For obesity, I have to accept that there is an association between obesity and never smoking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carole L Hart, Laurence Gruer, and Graham C M Watt, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3125471/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cause specific mortality, social position, and obesity among women who had never smoked: 28 year cohort study&lt;/a&gt; BMJ. 2011; 342: d3785. doi: 10.1136/bmj.d3785&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overweight and obesity were more prevalent among never smokers than among current smokers in all occupational classes and among both never smokers and smokers in the lower occupational classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Note: I couldn't find a measure of statistical significance of this anywhere - I expected it in Figure 1 or Table 2.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this was the line in the study that the media, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-13955516&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;such as the BBC&lt;/a&gt; latched on to, even as they reminded people:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prof Johan Mackenbach from the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam welcomed the study but added: &amp;quot;It is important not to forget that smoking is a much stronger risk factor for mortality than most other risk factors, including obesity.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the &lt;strong&gt;same data set&lt;/strong&gt; supports the idea that any upside to be being smoker is outweighed by the downsides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Laurence Gruer, Carole L Hart, David S Gordon,  and Graham C M Watt, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2645845/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effect of tobacco smoking on survival of men and women by social position: a 28 year cohort study&lt;/a&gt; BMJ. 2009; 338: b480.&#xA;doi:  10.1136/bmj.b480&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusions &lt;strong&gt;Among both women and men, never smokers had much better survival rates than smokers in all social positions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This crap hits a trigger button for me, and makes me angry. Giving people false information about life decisions that kill 100,000 people a year is obnoxious, callous and unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you assume the inverse relationship between obesity and smoking is causal, smoking to prevent obesity is putting you in a higher-risk category, and so is counter-productive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smoking to prevent diabetes is even more nuts. It doesn't reduce the risk, it is associated with a higher risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, give up the cigarettes. Then, work on your weight. Then, work out how we can retain freedom of speech and yet get guys like this to shut up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T11:21:05.617" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9219" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-05T12:46:48.613" Score="1" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7622/do-mcdonalds-burgers-have-an-unnaturally-long-lifespan&quot;&gt;Do McDonald&amp;#39;s burgers have an unnaturally long lifespan?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its a recurring theme over a few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.occupymonsanto360.org/2012/02/06/why-mcdonalds-happy-meal-hamburgers-wont-decompose-the-real-story-behind-the-story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.occupymonsanto360.org/2012/02/06/why-mcdonalds-happy-meal-hamburgers-wont-decompose-the-real-story-behind-the-story/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim I want to examine is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The burgers are so processed and impregnated with chemicals that makes it &lt;strong&gt;repulsive to microbes and any other life forms&lt;/strong&gt;, and it is evidence that it is harmful to humans who consume it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An impactful quote from the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is only one species on planet Earth that’s stupid enough to&#xA;  think a McDonald’s hamburger is food. This species is suffering from&#xA;  skyrocketing rates of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, dementia and&#xA;  obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.occupymonsanto360.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.occupymonsanto360.org&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://s.tt/18OaL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://s.tt/18OaL&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7622/do-mcdonalds-burgers-have-an-unnaturally-long-lifespan&quot;&gt;Do McDonald&amp;#39;s burgers have an unnaturally long lifespan?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that it is a combination of high salt and quick dehydration, so only the high salt is problematic to humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T20:37:53.127" Title="Do McDonald's burgers resist decomposing because it harms any life form that ingests it?" Tags="|nutrition|mcdonalds|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2012-05-05T13:16:26.997" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9220" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9221" CreationDate="2012-05-05T15:35:25.110" Score="12" ViewCount="5642" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading Mathew Reilly's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarecrow_and_the_Army_of_Thieves&quot;&gt;Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves&lt;/a&gt;. In the book, a guy is shot in the forehead, but miraculously he does not die because his forehead is that strong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true, can a shot like that not kill?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4936" LastEditorUserId="4569" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T05:42:11.787" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T20:47:17.713" Title="Can shooting someone in the forehead from point blank range not kill him?" Tags="|mortality|weapons|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2016-03-09T02:06:32.293" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9220" CreationDate="2012-05-05T19:51:17.553" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lxUKI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Gabrielle Giffords&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703667904576072190494009886.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Former Arizona Rep. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabrielle_Giffords#Attempted_assassination&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gabrielle Giffords&lt;/a&gt; was shot in the head on January 8, 2011. She survived.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/15/us/15medical.html?pagewanted=2&amp;amp;_r=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The New York Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (January 14, 2011):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ms. Giffords needed surgery immediately. She had skull fractures, dead&#xA;  brain tissue that had to be removed, and increasing pressure from&#xA;  swelling that could further damage her brain as it expanded and&#xA;  pressed against her skull. In addition, her eye sockets had fractures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The bullet had passed through her skull. Fortunately, it had not&#xA;  severed arteries or veins.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3lcDp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Giffords - 2012&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/picturesoftheday/9038139/Pictures-of-the-day-25-January-2012.html?image=24&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gabrielle Giffords on January 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110111/full/news.2011.9.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nature - Anatomy of a brain injury&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20110109/gabrielle-giffords-brain-injury-faq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WebMD - Gabrielle Giffords' Brain Injury&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gabrielle-giffords-gunshot-survival&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American - A Key Series of Events Helped Giffords Survive a Gunshot Wound to the Head&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2012-05-05T19:51:17.553" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8699" CreationDate="2012-05-06T06:15:53.923" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, theoretically it's possible to crush all types of bacteria, but practically you can crush only the bigger types, and not with the ways you suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All sizes have been taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the answer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080825104807AAGz885&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one of the questions you provided&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Technically you can crush them. In practical terms it's difficult because of their size and the surface of whatever you are using to crush them. Even what appears to be a perfectly smooth surface to the naked eye is often rough and filled with groves under magnification. Most bacteria get pushed into these groves and escape crushing. If you try to crush them with your fingers they escape into groves in the skin. Try stepping on them and they escape in the many groves / imperfections in your shoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have crushed many while looking down the microscope. If you are not careful and over focus your lenscan push on the slide cover, which will crush your bacteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well as @Rex Kerr's comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you can crush bacteria. (And stab them, etc..) They're soft. But you can't crush all of them, because nothing is flat enough. (Actually, that's not quite true--a common mistake in undergrad bio lab is to drop some bacteria on a petri plate (agar, basically), and spread it around and around and around and around and around and around with a small bar of glass. After this inordinately thorough spreading, often no or very few bacteria grow--they've all been crushed!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you won't be able to crush all bacteria types. The easiest (single cell organism) to crush will be the Amoeba, which is of the size as a needle point (diameter of ~0.5 mm). On the other hand an E.coli bacteria is 3x0.6 micro meters in size which makes it ~900 times smaller. At those sizes the surfaces are no longer flat and have tiny grooves on them which makes it almost impossible to put two surfaces exactly aligned together at a specific point to crush the bacteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your skin has very large grooves, so large they are visible with a naked eye, the same goes for a drum surface, a football or a car, so those materials will probably not kill any bacteria at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could crush some of the larger types of bacteria, but not all of them and not by accident. You would need to use special equipment, such as two surfaces made of glass or similar materials, as in @Rex Kerr's example. It would be much easier to just use anti bacterial gel or soap to sanitize your surroundings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some micro images of surfaces that look to us as extremely smooth but are't in actuality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A picture of paper, taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://spie.org/x15526.xml?ArticleID=x15526&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ia2OI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;paper&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A picture of glass, taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pv-magazine.com/archive/articles/beitrag/rough-diamond-_100004491/86/?tx_ttnews%5BbackCat%5D=33&amp;amp;cHash=4b17f676e4e0f44f82c6a57dde71977a#axzz1tcLUrS4A&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/feO9s.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;glass&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and a picture of E. coli bacteria showing that they are just a few micro meters squared in size:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC140897/bin/pq0136912002.gif&quot; alt=&quot;E_coli&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;shown &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC140897/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; in better resolution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T08:01:14.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9228" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18643" CreationDate="2012-05-06T11:36:48.130" Score="16" ViewCount="5772" Body="&lt;p&gt;Borrowing shamelessly from a travel Stack Exchange question &lt;a href=&quot;https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/2825/2fabe-the-secret-international-travel-postcard-stamp-code&quot;&gt;https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/2825/2fabe-the-secret-international-travel-postcard-stamp-code&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was told about this about three years ago, that if you were&#xA;  desperate and didn't have time to buy stamps for a postcard, merely&#xA;  putting the code '2FABE' would get your postcard to its intended&#xA;  destination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sceptical at the time, I searched for it on Google and found nothing.&#xA;  Now searching for it has a couple of people asking if it's real, but&#xA;  no actual answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After being in the expatriate community in London for four years, I'd&#xA;  met several people who have tried this, from many countries, and aside&#xA;  from sending from China, word is they've all gotten through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The obvious question would be 'is it real?' - but that doesn't seem to&#xA;  matter as it seems to work. The real question is WHY does it work? Is&#xA;  it a special code that means something? Is it an informal system like&#xA;  the old 'S2S' (Student to Student) code was meant to do? Or is it just&#xA;  blind luck that these have all made it through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It came up in tonight's #TTOT (Travel Talk on Twitter), after I&#xA;  mentioned it, but nobody else had heard of it, so figured it might be&#xA;  a good one to ask on here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One person has posted a suggestion of &lt;a href=&quot;https://travel.stackexchange.com/a/6911/324&quot;&gt;comparing&lt;/a&gt; it against some controls: putting random codes on the postcard, or no codes at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is 2FABE any better than a random code, or no code at all, at getting a postcard sent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:01.993" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T21:43:27.783" Title="Is 2FABE a secret code for sending postcards without a stamp?" Tags="|economics|travel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2632" CreationDate="2012-05-06T13:57:12.840" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't read this paper, so I don't know how it reaches its conclusions, but I would really like to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: Re-formatted for Skeptics.SE. &amp;quot;Ss&amp;quot; stands for &amp;quot;subjects&amp;quot;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/77/1/61/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Toward an explanation of stage hypnosis.&lt;/a&gt; Meeker, William B.; Barber, Theodore X.&#xA;Journal of Abnormal Psychology, Vol 77(1), Feb 1971, 61-70. doi: 10.1037/h0030419&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explains stage hypnosis by 8 principles which do not utilize the concept of hypnotic state or trance. To produce an amazing performance, stage hypnotists rely primarily on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the high base rate of waking suggestibility,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a highly selective procedure for screening Ss,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the heightened suggestibility that is produced when the situation is defined to Ss as hypnosis, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;important social-psychological variables that are present in the stage situation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, some stage hypnotists at times use&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &amp;quot;stage whispers&amp;quot; technique (in which Ss are told privately, in whispers, to help make the demonstration a success);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the &amp;quot;failure to challenge&amp;quot; technique, where the audience is misled;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;trained Ss to carry out the difficult stunts, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 or more tricks, e.g., pressure on the carotid baroreceptors which produces stupor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T13:57:12.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9206" CreationDate="2012-05-06T15:08:37.063" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The McGurk effect is a very robust&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; effect. After its first publication in &quot;McGurk, Harry, and John MacDonald (1976). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v264/n5588/abs/264746a0.html&quot;&gt;Hearing lips and seeing voices&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;264&lt;/strong&gt;: 746–748&quot; it has been reproduced in &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;cites=1662319842029847594&amp;amp;um=1&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;ei=25CmT7ccw6HRBdKjuYkJ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=science_links&amp;amp;ct=sl-citedby&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;ved=0CFoQzgIwAA&quot;&gt;hundreds of other articles&lt;/a&gt;. It is demonstrated in psychology courses all over the world (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.umass.edu/cmdavis/201/Fall2008/phonetics.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) just because it's so easily reproducible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/paul/papers/McGurk3.pdf&quot;&gt;A constraint-based explanation of the McGurk effect&lt;/a&gt; by Paul Boersma, 2011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1051" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T15:42:56.337" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T15:42:56.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9233" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:55:07.257" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T21:55:07.257" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T21:55:07.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9234" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:55:07.257" Score="0" Body="A global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T23:28:22.703" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T23:28:22.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9235" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:55:53.323" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T21:55:53.323" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T21:55:53.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9236" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:55:53.323" Score="0" Body="A process in which energetic particles or energetic waves travel through a medium or space." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T23:28:54.967" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T23:28:54.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9237" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:56:25.010" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T21:56:25.010" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T21:56:25.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9238" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:56:25.010" Score="0" Body="The scientific study of animal behaviour, and a sub-topic of zoology." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T23:28:19.553" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T23:28:19.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9239" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:56:59.110" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T21:56:59.110" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T21:56:59.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9240" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:56:59.110" Score="0" Body="A telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome (black-and-white) or colored, with or without accompanying sound." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T23:21:26.597" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T23:21:26.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9241" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:57:35.180" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T21:57:35.180" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T21:57:35.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9242" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:57:35.180" Score="0" Body="The state of the atmosphere, to the degree that it is hot or cold, wet or dry, calm or stormy, clear or cloudy." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T23:28:42.017" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T23:28:42.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9243" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:58:03.727" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T21:58:03.727" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T21:58:03.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9244" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:58:03.727" Score="0" Body="The set of practices perceived by a community to be associated with the preservation of health and healthy living. " OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T23:20:11.373" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T23:20:11.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9245" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:58:41.777" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T21:58:41.777" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T21:58:41.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9246" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:58:41.777" Score="0" Body="All forms of competitive physical activity which, through casual or organized participation, aim to use, maintain or improve physical fitness and provide entertainment to participants." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T23:28:51.423" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T23:28:51.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9247" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:59:07.313" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T21:59:07.313" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T21:59:07.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9248" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:59:07.313" Score="0" Body="The scientific study of society." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T23:20:53.837" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T23:20:53.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9249" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:59:51.883" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T21:59:51.883" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T21:59:51.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9250" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-06T21:59:51.883" Score="0" Body="The ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T23:19:26.600" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T23:19:26.600" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9251" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-06T22:00:40.353" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T22:00:40.353" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T22:00:40.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9252" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-06T22:00:40.353" Score="0" Body="The science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T23:19:51.263" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T23:19:51.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9253" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-06T22:01:18.093" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T22:01:18.093" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T22:01:18.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9254" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-06T22:01:18.093" Score="0" Body="A preparation intended to supplement the diet and provide nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, fiber, fatty acids, or amino acids, that may be missing or may not be consumed in sufficient quantities in a person's diet." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T23:28:26.183" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T23:28:26.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9255" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-06T22:01:40.383" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T22:01:40.383" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T22:01:40.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9256" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-06T22:01:40.383" Score="0" Body="The activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T23:20:21.217" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T23:20:21.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9257" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-06T22:02:09.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tag is appropriate for questions where the authenticity of a quote is being questioned rather than questions where a quotation is the source of a claim. In other words, the underlying claim is about the authenticity of the quote itself rather than any claims made within the quotation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h5&gt;Example appropriate questions for the tag&lt;/h5&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Famous Person X claims in his recent book that Famous Person Y gave a speech claiming that the sky is green. Did Famous Person Y really give a speech in which he claimed that the sky is green?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smith (2019), in a paper published in &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;, claims that his assertion that &amp;quot;x is bounded by the lesser hyperbola when n &amp;lt; 3&amp;quot; is a quotation from a paper by Johnson (1995), but I cannot find this paper anywhere. Does it really exist and does it in fact contain the claimed mathematical assertion?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h5&gt;Example inappropriate questions for the tag (choose a more appropriate tag)&lt;/h5&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Famous Person Y claims that the sky is green, is it really green?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A paper by Johnson (1995) claims that &amp;quot;x is bounded by the lesser hyperbola when n &amp;lt; 3&amp;quot;. Is x actually so bounded? The proof that Johnson provides appears very specious, and I have these specific concerns about it specifically....&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="36598" LastEditorUserId="36598" LastEditDate="2021-09-24T09:38:29.200" LastActivityDate="2021-09-24T09:38:29.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9258" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-06T22:02:09.837" Score="0" Body="Use this tag when the question is about whether someone said or wrote a quote." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-17T01:21:42.447" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T01:21:42.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9259" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-06T22:02:35.610" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T22:02:35.610" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T22:02:35.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9260" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-06T22:02:35.610" Score="0" Body="The fertilization and development of one or more offspring, known as an embryo or fetus, in a woman's uterus." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-06T23:20:36.113" LastActivityDate="2012-05-06T23:20:36.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9191" CreationDate="2012-05-07T13:30:19.350" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Methodology:  simple google searches, restrict results to direct quotes that are clear and straightforward and from the old testament (since the OP asks for Abrahamic books, not sure which he means but certainly not new testament).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Omnipotence:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;O Sovereign Lord! You have made the heavens and earth by Your great&#xA;  power. Nothing is too hard for You!&quot; (Jeremiah 32:17).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as cited by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.discovergod.com/character02.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;discover God: God is all powerful&lt;/a&gt; and&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bible.cc/jeremiah/32-17.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;parallel translations from bible.cc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and from the Christianity SE site, in &lt;a href=&quot;https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/2643/biblical-evidence-for-omnipotence-omniscience&quot;&gt;https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/2643/biblical-evidence-for-omnipotence-omniscience&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the 1st answer cites Genesis 17:1-2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Genesis 17:1 (ESV) 1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old the LORD&#xA;  appeared to Abram and said to him, &quot;I am God Almighty; walk before me,&#xA;  and be blameless,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bible.cc/genesis/17-1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Parallel versions of Genesis 17:1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the OP of the Christianity SE question noted, here in Genesis GOD itself is making the claim that &quot;I am God Almighty&quot; rather than it simply being a record of praise from one of his believers, who might be offering mistaken praise. [Note: this was all still written down by believers, obviously...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Omniscience:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hearken unto this, O Job: stand still, and consider the wondrous works&#xA;  of God. Dost thou know when God disposed them, and caused the light of&#xA;  his cloud to shine? Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds, the&#xA;  wondrous works of Him which is perfect in knowledge ... (Job 37:14-18)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bible.cc/job/37-16.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Parallel versions of Job 37:16 from bible.cc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also a claim is made that God sees what everyone is doing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Psalm 33:13,14 states, &quot;The Lord looketh from heaven; he beholdeth all&#xA;  the sons of men. From the place of his habitation he looketh upon all&#xA;  the inhabitants of the earth.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bible.cc/psalms/33-14.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Psalm 33:14 parallel versions from bible.cc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these cites were from &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youshine.com/nld/0201omni.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Omniscience of God: Old Testament teaching&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Omnibenevolence&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A google search for &quot;omnibenevolent god old testament&quot; does not yield any positive claims among the first page of article titles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a search for &quot;God is good to all&quot; quickly yielded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;New International Version (©1984) The LORD is good to all; he has&#xA;  compassion on all he has made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://bible.cc/psalms/145-9.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://bible.cc/psalms/145-9.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and that seems a pretty clear statement of Omnibenevolence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For counterexamples to omnibenevolence a simple google search is all that is required. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:56:43.530" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T15:12:07.727" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9036" CreationDate="2012-05-07T16:17:42.060" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was linked in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6141/is-it-beneficial-to-drink-alkaline-water-aka-kangen-water&quot;&gt;other question about alkaline water&lt;/a&gt; that I already linked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sciencebasedpharmacy.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/your-urine-is-not-a-window-to-your-body-ph-balancing-a-failed-hypothesis/#more-1424&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://sciencebasedpharmacy.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/your-urine-is-not-a-window-to-your-body-ph-balancing-a-failed-hypothesis/#more-1424&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the &quot;paper&quot; in question does not make it clear what method alkaline water could have any effect at all makes it difficult to debunk a specific claim, since none was really made. This is the first flaw: Since the claim made no mention of a possible way in which alkaline water can have any curative effect, even if all the data they presented was accurate and correct, the best claim that could be made is only a correlation. They have established no causation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite this lack of a mechanism, there is mention in the introduction about free radicals and other oxidative stress playing a part in the development of diabetes (which type is not described). Since alkaline water does not significantly effect the pH of the body - and definitely not by the time it reachees the intestine where the water can be absorbed, then the alkalinity of the water can have no protective effect against oxidative damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to this, drinking alkaline water &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; diabetes has already been developed will do nothing to restore oxidative damage to the tissues that has already been sustained (I guess much like trying to splint a bone that has already set badly). In this case, their introduction giving a plausible-sounding problem does not match with their proposed therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As zefciu pointed out, type I diabetes is caused by an auto-immune reaction while type II is caused by insulin resistence of the cells that take up insulin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of type I diabetes, the alkaline water would need to prevent the immune system from attacking its own beta cells (the ones in the pancreas that produce insulin), allowing the body to regenerate them. This would indeed be miraculous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of type II diabetes, the water would need to restore the cells ability to take up insulin or at least improve the uptake of insulin. Since no active ingredient would make it in to the body and the pH is unaffected by drinking alkaline water, there is no possible cause of this insulin sensitivity to be improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6649" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2012-05-07T16:17:42.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9266" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9276" CreationDate="2012-05-07T16:57:39.797" Score="14" ViewCount="2585" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a commonly believed &quot;old wives tale&quot; that states that &quot;if you swallow gum, it will stay in your stomach for seven years.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific backing to this? Is your stomach really unable to digest gum? Will undigested food really stay in your stomach? If so, is there something special about 7 years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6598" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T00:01:58.283" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T14:29:38.460" Title="Will swallowed gum stay in your stomach for 7 years?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9267" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9280" CreationDate="2012-05-07T17:09:32.247" Score="6" ViewCount="22111" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard the claim that if you shave your eyebrows, they will never grow back. I have even heard that surgeons try as much as they can not to shave a person's eyebrows unless absolutely necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence behind this claim? Will eyebrows really never grow back when shaved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6598" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T01:51:41.057" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T05:36:50.117" Title="Do eyebrows grow back when shaved?" Tags="|biology|hair|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9268" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20817" CreationDate="2012-05-07T17:16:46.510" Score="21" ViewCount="40802" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently heard the claim that eating bananas on an empty stomach is bad for you, because of something related to magnesium or potassium levels in your body. A quick search found articles like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.peacefmonline.com/health/200911/31924.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peace FM Online&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eating bananas on an empty stomach is not good for your health, because when the stomach is empty, there is nearly no food in the stomach that can be digested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If in this moment one eats bananas, it will speed up the stomach's movement and the promotion of blood circulation, to increase the heart load. It is very easy to induce the myocardial infarction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lookchem.com/Chempedia/Health-and-Chemical/7843.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Look Chem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Banana is rich in magnesium. Eating banana with an empty stomach will suddenly increase the magnesium in the body and damage the balance between magnesium and calcium in the blood, which may has an inhibiting effect on the cardiovascular and is not conducive to human health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there negative health effects associated with eating bananas on an empty stomach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4876" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-12-08T18:09:18.380" Title="Is eating a banana on an empty stomach bad for you?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8067" CreationDate="2012-05-07T18:25:37.657" Score="32" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as hot as the surface of the sun&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, they like to claim self-contradicting things &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140409121013/http://www.hybridtech-energy.com/faq.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;like this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HHO produces a 279 degree flame, that can sublimate tungsten in seconds at over 10,000 degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this were really sublimating tungsten (boiling point of 5555 °C = 10031 °F), then yes, it would be hotter than the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_temperature#Star&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;surface of the sun&lt;/a&gt; (5780 K = 9940 °F).  But it's not true.  Whenever you see them demonstrating this feat, they're aiming the torch at tungsten rods &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;in air&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFm9bIskctg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;it sublimates at 5960 degrees celsius&amp;quot; &amp;quot;you will notice the tungsten instantly sublimates&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFR3-CGq1a8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sublimating Tungsten with Hydrogen and Oxygen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tungsten doesn't &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublimation_%28phase_transition%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sublimate&lt;/a&gt; in air.  It &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combustion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;burns&lt;/a&gt;, reacting with atmospheric oxygen to form &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten_trioxide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tungsten trioxide&lt;/a&gt;, which then melts (at 1473 °C) or vaporizes (1700 °C) and is blown away by the torch, exposing a layer of fresh tungsten, which burns, etc.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a tungsten specimen is heated, its surface becomes covered with crystals which melt when the melting point of tungsten trioxide is reached, the liquid oxide flowing to the lower (frontal) part of the specimen and forming a drop which then separates. Melting of the oxide coating is accompanied by rapid self-heating of the specimen with transition to the combustion regime. - &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00743115&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ignition and combustion of high-melting metals (tungsten, molybdenum, boron)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The particles that are blown away form smoke, which you can see in the video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why light bulbs are bulbs, and not just tungsten filaments hanging around in the air.  They need to be surrounded by an oxygen-free atmosphere in order to take advantage of their high boiling point.  When the bulb breaks, they burn up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;HHO gas&amp;quot; doesn't exist.  It's just a hoax name for conventional &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyhydrogen&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;oxyhydrogen&lt;/a&gt; gas  (2× H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; gas mixed with 1× O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; gas), as produced by a conventional &amp;quot;water torch&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;water welder&amp;quot;, which burns at 2800 °C, plenty hot to turn tungsten into smoke.  All their other claims are equally sloppy and unscientific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="155" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2022-06-02T16:23:19.470" LastActivityDate="2022-06-02T16:23:19.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9271" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-07T20:41:40.587" Score="6" ViewCount="475" Body="&lt;p&gt;The author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Carter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Robert M Carter&lt;/a&gt; argues against Anthropogenic Global Warning and his book is called &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Climate-Counter-consensus-Professor-Robert-Carter/dp/1906768293/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1336423174&amp;amp;sr=1-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Climate: the counter consensus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. In it he makes two related claims: that the cumulative funding on climate research bureaucracy and advocacy by western governments exceeds $100 billion and the current rate of spending is in excess of $10 billion per year. In his words (I'd quote the page but I can't fathom how to extract it from my Mac Kindle app):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...global warming alarmism is fuelled by an estimated worldwide expenditure on related research and greenhouse bureaucracy of more than US$10 billion annually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...an estimated expenditure since 1990 of around $100 billion ($79 billion in the USA alone)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have western governments spent $100bn on climate change and are they spending $10bn a year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-10T09:15:16.483" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T09:15:16.483" Title="Have western governments spent $100billion on global warming research and advocacy?" Tags="|economics|climate-change|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9272" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9728" CreationDate="2012-05-07T21:53:16.573" Score="22" ViewCount="3183" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to CBS news (May 7, 2012) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57428878/south-korea-cracks-down-on-human-flesh-capsules-from-china/&quot;&gt;South Korea cracks down on human flesh capsules from China&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(AP) SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea has seized thousands of smuggled&#xA;  drug capsules filled with powdered flesh from dead babies, which some&#xA;  people believe can cure disease, officials said Monday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The capsules were made in northeastern China from babies whose bodies&#xA;  were chopped into small pieces and dried on stoves before being turned&#xA;  into powder, the Korea Customs Service said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two aspects of this article cause me to be skeptical:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The article does not discuss what forensic techniques the Korea Customs Service used to determine the contents of the capsules.  I would think that officials would realize such bizarre claims would require proof and disclosure of some of the techniques they used to come to this conclusion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The last sentence claims no ill effects.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The South Korean customs agency began investigating after receiving a&#xA;  tip a year ago. No sicknesses have been reported from ingesting the&#xA;  capsules.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What proof is there that these capsules contain powdered human flesh obtained from dead babies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2015-12-09T23:04:03.583" LastActivityDate="2022-09-13T15:10:51.007" Title="Did pills from China seized in South Korea contain the powdered flesh of dead babies?" Tags="|china|forensics|pharmaceutical|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9273" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9550" CreationDate="2012-05-07T21:54:21.510" Score="22" ViewCount="5185" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/uBnlXGvA1Wk&quot;&gt;recent YouTube video&lt;/a&gt; features a claim that the VW Passat TDI 1.6 and similar cars have been banned by the US government, specifically because their gas mileage is too high. The purported reasoning is that if many people bought these cars, the government would lose revenue on gas taxes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could Volkswagen sell the Passat TDI 1.6 in the US if it wanted to? If not, what laws prohibit it? Does the US systematically ban high-gas-mileage cars?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I find myself completely uninformed about the US auto market and vehicle regulations, but I'm also psychologically biased against the claim and so don't trust my own research very strongly.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2440" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T14:23:37.610" Title="Does the US ban high-gas-mileage cars?" Tags="|united-states|road-vehicles|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9266" CreationDate="2012-05-08T00:15:47.033" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a classic old wives tale.  It is so common that one could almost consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/oldwives/chewgum.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; the final authority on this, but let's actually dig into it a bit more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://shs.osu.edu/blog/medical-mythbusters-does-gum-really-stay-in-your-stomach-for-7-years&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ohio State University says false&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: Is it true that swallowed gum stays in your stomach for 7 years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A:  This myth is definitely false.  The body is very good at digesting material that it can use and passing the rest out in the stool.  It is true that your body is unable to digest the synthetic portion of chewing gum, but it doesn't stay in the stomach for an extended period of time because the stomach periodically empties into the small intestine.  The gum then moves through the small intestine into the colon and is eventually passed in the stool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ent.med.nyu.edu/content?ChunkIID=156975&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NYU Medical school&lt;/a&gt; tackles this a bit differently, listing both points for and against the myth, but they conclude with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documentation of intestinal blockages due to chewing gum seem to point only to a danger in swallowing excessive amounts of chewing gum repeatedly, as opposed to swallowing a single piece occasionally. Although the gum base itself is indigestible, a small piece of chewing gum can pass easily through the digestive tract in the same time it would take digestive waste to travel the same path and be eliminated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The seven-year myth may have sprung from a misconception of gum’s digestibility based on the look and feel of gum. After all, it doesn’t dissolve in your mouth like other foods. Or, maybe it was mom’s clever way of scaring you into not swallowing your gum and freeing up your mouth for another piece!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?num=100&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;newwindow=1&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;q=chewing%20gum%20digestion%207%20years&amp;amp;oq=chewing%2bgum%2bdigestion&amp;amp;aq=3jC&amp;amp;aqi=g-C2g-vC1g-jC2&amp;amp;aql=&amp;amp;gs_l=serp.1.3.0i33l2j0i15i33j0i18i33l2.184464.185884.0.189244.10.10.0.0.0.0.241.879.4j5j1.10.0...0.0.vBcK4M6sH1k&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The same type of refutation of this myth are common throughout the Internet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as to your other questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is your stomach really unable to digest gum?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The previous articles addressed this.  Basically there are compounds that are not digestible, but they just pass through your system much like any other material one can't digest.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://breakingjewellerynews.blogspot.com/2011/05/child-swallows-ring.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;There is always the classic story of some toddler or animal eating an expensive piece of jewelry&lt;/a&gt;, and everyone examining feces for a few days until it's recovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will undigested food really stay in your stomach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, as previously mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, is there something special about 7 years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds authoritative.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_%28number%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;And the number seven seems to be associated with a lot of things in western culture&lt;/a&gt;.  7 year itch.  Lucky 7.  Seven deadly sins.  Why not add another thing that uses the number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T02:10:23.363" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8642" CreationDate="2012-05-08T02:56:45.077" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you're not going to find a scientific study on the matter, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29899191/&quot;&gt;Dateline commisionned an assessment&lt;/a&gt; of a very expensive ($1800) system with all of the bells and whistles (fuel heaters, tuning to make the car run a leaner air:fuel mixture, fuel line magnets(?), etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They had the cars performance measured before and after at an EPA accredited facility and with a couple of steady-state cruising tests. From the video transcript:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We brought the car back to that government-approved lab and manager Robert DePalma for two more road tests. Robert DePalma: We got no significant difference in anything.  Fuel economy, emissions – basically what it was last week, without the device installed. Thirty-four miles per gallon before, 34 miles per gallon after, and no change in emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This test was done with the assistance of Popular Mechanics' Mike Allen, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/alternative-fuel/gas-mileage/4310717-2&quot;&gt;who also wrote about it&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The total improvement in fuel economy after $1800 plus of expenditure? Bupkis. Too small to measure. Nada. In fact, if you look at the EPA tests with the system switched on and then off, there's a tiny &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; in fuel consumption when the system is turned on. I attribute this to the 15 amps or so of current the electrolysis cell consumes to produce hydrogen. That current uses horsepower to spin the generator, and that consumes gasoline. The hydrogen &quot;boost&quot; couldn't even compensate for its own losses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This agrees with the chemistry/physics that the amount of hydrogen generated is simply to small for there to be any significant effect, even with a sufficient and properly managed flow of Hydrogen gas. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/alternative-fuel/gas-mileage/4271579&quot;&gt;Mike Allen discussed this in a separate column&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Properly managed H2 enrichment seems to increase the burn rate of the hydrocarbons in the cylinder, extracting more energy. However, these studies only suggest increases in fuel economy by a few percentage points and don't apply unless the engine is running far too lean for decent emissions. That's a long way from the outrageous claims of as much as 300-percent improvements in economy that I see on the Internet and in my mailbox. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T03:04:30.453" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T03:04:30.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9278" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9284" CreationDate="2012-05-08T07:27:47.580" Score="5" ViewCount="2206" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a well-known claim that weather is particularly rainy in England. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the UK, a country known for its bad weather and lack of sunshine, there appears to be an ever increasing number of very tanned young people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/newsaboutbritain/2009/05/090616_nab_sunbed.shtml&quot;&gt;Sunbeds&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that there are more rainy days in England with respect to the rest of Europe? What about with the rest of the (populated) world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T22:39:05.417" Title="Is the weather particularly bad in England?" Tags="|weather|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9267" CreationDate="2012-05-08T08:14:23.347" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes they do grow back&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM9p_vWvT9Q&quot;&gt;As this video shows. :-)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you prefer something a little more informative you can look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.keratin.com/aa/aa011.shtml&quot;&gt;growth rates of various follicles&lt;/a&gt;, and the references around that article (it's well known eyebrow follicles are the slowest to grow).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems likely that surgeons avoid shaving them as they are so slow to grow, rather than because they don't grow at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3606" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T08:14:23.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9278" CreationDate="2012-05-08T10:43:36.773" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It depends on where you are in the UK.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It rains more frequently in Western areas of the UK than in the east&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yBmLl.gif&quot; alt=&quot;UK - Days of Rain&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/averages/ukmapavge.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Met Office&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This map gives a European-wide comparison of annual rainfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SMg06.png&quot; alt=&quot;Europe - average annual rainfall&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/figures/average-annual-precipitation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;European Environment Agency&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt; - here's a map of the annual rainfall for North America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LE0hR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;North America - average annual rainfall&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cec.org/Page.asp?PageID=122&amp;amp;ContentID=1322&amp;amp;SiteNodeID=497&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CEC&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="2603" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T13:07:30.723" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T13:07:30.723" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9278" CreationDate="2012-05-08T10:55:01.457" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Raninfall varies greatly in the UK, depending on the region. The map below illustrates&#xA;this point better than words. It is interesting to note that London is actually in&#xA;one of the driest regions of UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MEQgj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/averages/ukmapavge.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[ source ]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quantity of yearly rainfall (mm) in various cities&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;London: &lt;code&gt;611.3&lt;/code&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldclimate.com/cgi-bin/data.pl?ref=N51W000+2100+0377801G1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; source &lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paris:  &lt;code&gt;2089.1&lt;/code&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldclimate.com/cgi-bin/data.pl?ref=N48E002+2100+07156W&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; source &lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rome: &lt;code&gt;792.9&lt;/code&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldclimate.com/cgi-bin/data.pl?ref=N41E012+2100+1623501G1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; source &lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New York: &lt;code&gt;1239.8&lt;/code&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldclimate.com/cgi-bin/data.pl?ref=N40W073+2200+300351C&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; source &lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sydney: &lt;code&gt;1222.7&lt;/code&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldclimate.com/cgi-bin/data.pl?ref=S33E151+2100+94768W&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; source &lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Moscow: &lt;code&gt;600.6&lt;/code&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldclimate.com/cgi-bin/data.pl?ref=N55E037+2100+27612W&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; source &lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tokyo: &lt;code&gt;1523.1&lt;/code&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldclimate.com/cgi-bin/data.pl?ref=N35E139+2100+47662W&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; source &lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beijing: &lt;code&gt;635.3&lt;/code&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldclimate.com/cgi-bin/data.pl?ref=N39E116+2100+54511W&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; source &lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cairo: &lt;code&gt;24.8&lt;/code&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldclimate.com/cgi-bin/data.pl?ref=N30E031+2100+62366W&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; source &lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bangkok: &lt;code&gt;1466.9&lt;/code&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldclimate.com/cgi-bin/data.pl?ref=N13E100+2100+48455W&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; source &lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lima: &lt;code&gt;19.7&lt;/code&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldclimate.com/cgi-bin/data.pl?ref=S12W077+2100+84628W&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; source &lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Berlin: &lt;code&gt;570.7&lt;/code&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldweather.org/016/c00059.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; source &lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see from the above, you might be hard-pressed to find a city with less rainfall than&#xA;London, although other regions ( the mountainous north-west ) do have high rainfall amounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1781" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T10:55:01.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9278" CreationDate="2012-05-08T11:15:55.050" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are mixed claims in the question, &lt;em&gt;&quot;lack of sunshine&quot;&lt;/em&gt; does not mean &lt;em&gt;&quot;above average rainfall&quot;&lt;/em&gt; nor &lt;em&gt;&quot;more rainy days&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. It means more days with significant cloud coverage (some of which may be rainy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see on below map, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insolation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;insolation&lt;/a&gt; (average sunshine energy received) of UK is significantly lower than rest of Europe.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XXMiw.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two factors determining insolation, weather and latitude. Since insolation of UK is much lower than of other European countries at same latitude, and similar to countries much farther north, only factor responsible for that difference can be bad (cloudy) weather.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T11:15:55.050" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9285" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-08T12:03:49.797" Score="2" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/is-routine-screening-for-breast-cancer-for-asymptomatic-women-younger-than-50-wo&quot;&gt;Is routine screening for breast cancer for asymptomatic women younger than 50 worthwhile?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Mercola seems pretty confident that mammography not only doesn't improve breast cancer outcomes, but likely causes more cancer than it prevents.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/03/03/experts-say-avoid-mammograms.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/01/05/mammograms-only-occasionally-save-lives.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, for typical articles on the subject from his site.  Is he right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conventional advice, of course, is to get a mammogram every year or two.  This is of more than academic concern, because I need to advise the women in my life what to do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T04:25:38.010" Title="Does mammography cause more cancer than it prevents?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2012-05-08T12:35:15.217" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9286" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-08T13:22:48.543" Score="9" ViewCount="1689" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today while preparing for one of my classes, this time on law, I found the snippet on a great many websites saying that in China:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drivers of power-driven vehicles are forbidden to stop at pedestrian crossings or they risk a 5RMB fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hntbat.com/laws/drivers-of-power-driven-vehicles-are-forbidden-to-stop-at-pedestrian-crossings-or-they-risk-a-5rmb-fine/&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I have a Chinese driver's license and I remember in the test that you must stop at a pedestrian crossing if there are pedestrians using it. However, the common practice in China is to not stop for anything - just blow the horn and swerve through the gaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, was there ever any basis to the above law quote forbidding you to stop? Did such a law exist before or is it all just a fabrication or urban myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T14:30:46.673" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T23:54:47.417" Title="Is it illegal to stop a car for a pedestrian crossing in China?" Tags="|road-vehicles|law|china|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9286" CreationDate="2012-05-08T14:41:30.767" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_Traffic_Safety_Law_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, recent (2004) Chinese road laws now dictate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under the new law, when accidents occur between pedestrians or non-motorised vehicles and motor vehicles, except for the case where the pedestrian or the non-motorised vehicle deliberately causes the incident, the motorist must always bear responsibility. Responsibility for the motorist is reduced if the pedestrian or non-motorised side violated traffic laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It references the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gov.cn/banshi/2005-08/23/content_25575_2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;new law&lt;/a&gt; (written in Chinese). Using the translation given in &lt;a href=&quot;https://chinese.stackexchange.com/q/1623/43&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, we get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Article 47: When a motor vehicle vehicle passes through a crosswalk, it should proceed at reduced speed; in the case when a pedestrian is crossing the crosswalk, the vehicle should stop and yield to the pedestrian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one might expect, it seems clear that the original claim is false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:06.443" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T23:54:47.417" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9289" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:41:58.723" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:41:58.723" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:41:58.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9290" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:41:58.723" Score="0" Body="A person in the service of another under any contract of hire, express or implied, oral or written, where the employer has the power or right to control and direct the employee in the material details of how the work is to be performed." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:30:22.233" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:30:22.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9291" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:42:37.567" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:42:37.567" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:42:37.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9292" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:42:37.567" Score="0" Body="A score derived from one of several different standardized tests designed to assess intelligence." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:31:27.320" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:31:27.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9293" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:43:39.250" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:43:39.250" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:43:39.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9294" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:43:39.250" Score="0" Body="The science that studies the lands, the features, the inhabitants, and the phenomena of the Earth." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:30:37.570" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:30:37.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9295" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:44:19.953" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:44:19.953" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:44:19.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9296" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:44:19.953" Score="0" Body="The principled guide to action taken by the administrative or executive branches of the state with regard to a class of issues in a manner consistent with law and institutional customs." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T21:51:30.603" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T21:51:30.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9297" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:45:20.327" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:45:20.327" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:45:20.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9298" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:45:20.327" Score="0" Body="AIDS is a disease of the human immune system caused by HIV, a virus." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:31:10.160" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:31:10.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9299" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:46:14.677" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:46:14.677" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:46:14.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9300" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:46:14.677" Score="0" Body="Any system by which some members of society act in an organized manner to promote adherence to the law by discovering and punishing persons who violate the rules and norms governing that society." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:31:47.163" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:31:47.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9301" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:46:45.033" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:46:45.033" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:46:45.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9302" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:46:45.033" Score="0" Body="A sharp decrease in the diversity and abundance of macroscopic life." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:30:26.493" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:30:26.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9303" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:47:14.583" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:47:14.583" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:47:14.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9304" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:47:14.583" Score="0" Body="Having successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:29:46.090" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:29:46.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9305" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:47:50.837" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:47:50.837" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:47:50.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9306" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:47:50.837" Score="0" Body="A reduction of the total body mass, due to a mean loss of fluid, body fat or adipose tissue and/or lean mass." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:36:30.900" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:36:30.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9307" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:48:24.877" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:48:24.877" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:48:24.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9308" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:48:24.877" Score="0" Body="The study of the adverse effects of chemicals on living organisms." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:34:28.830" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:34:28.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9309" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:48:55.983" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:48:55.983" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:48:55.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9310" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:48:55.983" Score="0" Body="A sanitation fixture used primarily for the disposal of human excrement and urine." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:34:25.380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:34:25.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9311" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:49:57.497" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:49:57.497" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:49:57.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9312" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:49:57.497" Score="0" Body="The act of burning a substance and inhaling or tasting the smoke produced." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:34:06.380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:34:06.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9314" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:50:35.437" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:50:35.437" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:50:35.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9315" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:50:35.437" Score="0" Body="The process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:33:48.127" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:33:48.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9316" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14811" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:50:53.710" Score="23" ViewCount="30256" Body="&lt;p&gt;On of the theories in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Kursk_explosion&quot;&gt;Kursk incident&lt;/a&gt; suggest that it was sunk by USS Memphis following the collision with USS Toledo. Theory has originally surfaced in 2005 film, but lately allegedly there are some leaks from Russian Navy officers confirming it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;French filmmaker Jean-Michel Carré, in &lt;em&gt;Kursk: a Submarine in Troubled&#xA;  Waters&lt;/em&gt;, which aired on 7 January 2005 on French TV channel France 2,&#xA;  alleged that Kursk sank because of a sequence of events triggered by a&#xA;  collision with a US submarine. Carré claimed that Shkval torpedo tests&#xA;  were being observed by two US submarines on duty in the region: USS&#xA;  Toledo and USS Memphis. According to his version, these observations&#xA;  eventually led to a collision between USS Toledo and Kursk. Carré&#xA;  theorized that neither of the subs was seriously damaged in this&#xA;  incident, but the sound of the collision, combined with sounds of&#xA;  loaded torpedo tubes, made the captain of USS Memphis believe that&#xA;  Kursk was preparing an attack on USS Toledo, so he launched a&#xA;  pre-emptive strike against Kursk with a MK-48 torpedo. According to&#xA;  Carré, this attack was successful and was the cause of the powerful&#xA;  explosion within Kursk's hull, sinking the submarine and leaving&#xA;  Memphis and Toledo slightly damaged. Carré claimed that specific&#xA;  damage visible on the Kursk hull was the main evidence of this&#xA;  version, including signs of an initial collision, and a hole left by&#xA;  the torpedo when it entered the Kursk hull. He also claimed that a&#xA;  damaged submarine was sighted leaving the Kursk incident area, and USS&#xA;  Memphis was sighted soon afterwards being repaired in a Norwegian&#xA;  port.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In below screen capture you can see a round hole, which allegedly is point where torpedo penetrated the hull. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rYmde.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Alleged hole -- point of torpedo&amp;#39;s penetration&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is there any indication that collision actually happened?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is there any possibility that it was sunk by Mk-48 fired by USS Memphis?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-12-10T13:30:47.280" LastActivityDate="2021-06-22T18:37:28.657" Title="Was Kursk sunk by USS Memphis?" Tags="|history|weapons|military|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9317" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:51:07.260" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:51:07.260" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:51:07.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9318" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:51:07.260" Score="0" Body="Any substance that is liquid at ambient temperatures and does not mix with water but may mix with other oils and organic solvents." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T21:51:47.653" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T21:51:47.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9319" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:51:35.840" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:51:35.840" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:51:35.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9320" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:51:35.840" Score="0" Body="A white liquid produced by the mammary glands of mammals." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:32:20.140" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:32:20.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9321" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:52:22.407" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:52:22.407" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:52:22.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9322" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:52:22.407" Score="0" Body="Experiences that indicates phenomena claimed to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:33:36.880" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:33:36.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9323" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:53:03.640" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:53:03.640" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:53:03.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9324" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:53:03.640" Score="0" Body="An unusual apparent anomaly in the sky that is not readily identifiable to the observer as any known object." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:34:34.490" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:34:34.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9325" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:53:26.993" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:53:26.993" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:53:26.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9326" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:53:26.993" Score="0" Body="The result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:30:15.807" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:30:15.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9327" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:54:03.793" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:54:03.793" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:54:03.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9328" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:54:03.793" Score="0" Body="A system of biological structures and processes within an organism that protects against disease." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:31:23.090" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:31:23.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9329" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:54:46.337" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:54:46.337" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:54:46.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9330" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:54:46.337" Score="0" Body="A filamentous biomaterial that grows from follicles found in the dermis." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:31:06.040" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:31:06.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9331" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:55:33.760" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:55:33.760" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:55:33.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9332" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:55:33.760" Score="0" Body="The science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:30:42.110" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:30:42.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9333" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:55:57.363" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:55:57.363" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:55:57.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9334" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:55:57.363" Score="0" Body="An organic compound required as a vital nutrient in tiny amounts by an organism." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:34:42.290" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:34:42.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9335" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:56:27.987" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:56:27.987" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:56:27.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9336" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:56:27.987" Score="0" Body="A mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:34:13.570" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:34:13.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9337" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:57:19.437" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:57:19.437" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:57:19.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9338" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:57:19.437" Score="0" Body="The forcing of undesired sexual behavior by one person upon another." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:34:01.153" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:34:01.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9339" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:57:52.773" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:57:52.773" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:57:52.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9340" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:57:52.773" Score="0" Body="An organized, armed, and often a prolonged conflict that is carried on between states, nations, or other parties." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:34:48.767" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:34:48.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9341" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:58:25.567" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:58:25.567" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:58:25.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9342" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:58:25.567" Score="0" Body="An organization authorized by its greater society to use lethal force, usually including use of weapons, in defending its country by combating actual or perceived threats." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:32:16.677" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:32:16.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9343" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:58:54.537" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:58:54.537" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:58:54.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9344" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:58:54.537" Score="0" Body="A kitchen appliance that heats food by dielectric heating accomplished with radiation used to heat polarized molecules in food." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:32:12.810" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:32:12.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9345" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:59:23.193" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T16:59:23.193" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T16:59:23.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9346" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T16:59:23.193" Score="0" Body="A psychological pattern, potentially reflected in behavior, that is generally associated with distress or disability, and which is not considered part of normal development of a person's culture." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:32:04.680" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:32:04.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9347" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:00:03.457" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T17:00:03.457" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:00:03.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9348" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:00:03.457" Score="0" Body="The processes by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T21:51:39.400" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T21:51:39.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9349" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:00:36.030" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T17:00:36.030" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:00:36.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9350" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:00:36.030" Score="0" Body="The management of money in which an individual or a business decides how the money will be used to generate more revenue or profit." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:30:31.143" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:30:31.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9351" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:02:02.630" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-17T01:22:37.203" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T01:22:37.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9352" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:02:02.630" Score="0" Body="a substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases, prepared from the causative agent of a disease, its products, or a synthetic substitute, treated to act as an antigen without inducing the disease.&#xD;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2016-05-20T09:00:01.570" LastActivityDate="2016-05-20T09:00:01.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9353" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:02:30.257" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T17:02:30.257" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:02:30.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9354" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:02:30.257" Score="0" Body="A tool or instrument used in order to inflict damage or harm to living beings - physical or mental -, artificial structures, or systems." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:36:25.580" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:36:25.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9355" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:03:01.007" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T17:03:01.007" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:03:01.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9356" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:03:01.007" Score="0" Body="An unpleasant feeling often caused by intense or damaging stimuli." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:33:13.790" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:33:13.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9357" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:04:19.537" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T17:04:19.537" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:04:19.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9358" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:04:19.537" Score="0" Body="A device that can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:32:28.707" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:32:28.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9359" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:04:46.027" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T17:04:46.027" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:04:46.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9360" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:04:46.027" Score="0" Body="Any form of sexual reproduction resulting in the conception of a child." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:31:20.797" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:31:20.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9361" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:05:22.140" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T17:05:22.140" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:05:22.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9362" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:05:22.140" Score="0" Body="A measure of the efficiency of production." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T21:51:51.757" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T21:51:51.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9363" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:07:28.940" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T17:07:28.940" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:07:28.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9364" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:07:28.940" Score="0" Body="The only natural satellite of the earth, visible (chiefly at night) by reflected light from the sun. Use this tag for questions about the moon specifically in any regard, and for questions about the lunar landings.&#xD;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2020-07-20T23:24:59.190" LastActivityDate="2020-07-20T23:24:59.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9365" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:08:16.817" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T17:08:16.817" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:08:16.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9366" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:08:16.817" Score="0" Body="The specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T20:31:37.147" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T20:31:37.147" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9367" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:09:14.150" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T17:09:14.150" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:09:14.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9368" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:09:14.150" Score="0" Body="Use this tag when questioning something about the movies, not when being skeptical of something seen in a movie." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:23:04.507" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:23:04.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9369" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:10:47.703" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-08T17:10:47.703" LastActivityDate="2012-05-08T17:10:47.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9370" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-08T17:10:47.703" Score="0" Body="The making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems, or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function." OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-04-23T18:48:36.967" LastActivityDate="2019-04-23T18:48:36.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9377" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-09T09:04:46.113" Score="6" ViewCount="1324" Body="&lt;p&gt;European Parliament Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/europe/newsid_9714000/9714694.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;has adopted the resolution &amp;quot;on women and climate change&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report argues that climate change exacerbates gender&#xA;discrimination, because women, who make up 50% of the population, are&#xA;&amp;quot;more affected&amp;quot; by climate change and natural disasters than men&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dutch far-left MEP Kartika Liotard, from the environment committee,&#xA;believed gender equality would be better for the climate. She said it&#xA;was ironic women were worst affected by climate change when they have&#xA;the &amp;quot;least effect&amp;quot; on the climate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2132344/Global-warming-Women-greater-risk.html#ixzz1uMTPGfvh&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;another source&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Members of the European Parliament will vote today on a report by a&#xA;French Green party MEP who claims global warming ‘is not gender&#xA;neutral’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women, claims Nicole Kiil-Nielsen, ‘consume more sustainably&#xA;than men and show greater willingness to act to preserve the&#xA;environment’ as they tend to organise household consumption and&#xA;childcare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She said that discrimination against women could be made&#xA;worse in the developing world if climate policies do not take gender&#xA;discrimination into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do women 'consume more sustainably than men'?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will having gender quotas in environmental organizations reduce climate change?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-03-02T02:00:33.387" Title="Do women 'consume more sustainably than men'?" Tags="|climate-change|gender|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9378" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9384" CreationDate="2012-05-09T09:28:36.333" Score="8" ViewCount="1999" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got this random science fact from my mobile carrier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a human reaches the age of 34, he/she will start losing approximately 7,000 brain cells a day. The cells will never be replaced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the above claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-09-18T15:40:58.970" LastActivityDate="2022-09-18T15:40:58.970" Title="Do people over the age of 34 lose about 7,000 brain cells per day, irreplaceably?" Tags="|neurology|aging|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9207" CreationDate="2012-05-09T11:00:27.917" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;SAGE Publications is the fifth-largest journals publisher in the world. It is a reputable academic publisher that has been in business for just under 50 years. Almost all SAGE journals are traditionally peer-reviewed and require no author payments of any kind, contrary to @nico's experience. There may be one or two exceptions; if in doubt, check the individual journal's homepage and author submission guidelines. All relevant information is available on the web. Recently, SAGE, in common with other academic publishers, has begun to publish Gold Open Access articles and journals (e.g. SAGE Open) - i.e. in return for payment, an article that has been accepted for publication after traditional peer review will be made freely accessible to readers. Note: the article has to be peer reviewed and accepted before any payment would arise, as @nico also points out in his final sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fifth-largest journals publisher: &lt;a href=&quot;http://apy.sagepub.com/content/20/1/76.1.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://apy.sagepub.com/content/20/1/76.1.full&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reputable (winner of Independent Publisher's Guild Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year 2012): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/award-won.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/award-won.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;List of SAGE-published journals (600+): &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.sagepub.com/browse/by/title&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://online.sagepub.com/browse/by/title&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-peer-reviewed journals: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ioc.sagepub.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ioc.sagepub.com/&lt;/a&gt; and www.uk.sagepub.com/journals/Journal201746&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SAGE Open press release: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sagepub.com/press/2010/november/SAGE_open.sp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sagepub.com/press/2010/november/SAGE_open.sp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SAGE Choice (Open Access option): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uk.sagepub.com/sagechoice.sp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.uk.sagepub.com/sagechoice.sp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7046" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-10T10:53:26.873" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T10:53:26.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9377" CreationDate="2012-05-09T11:52:24.077" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/716100620&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a study that shows it&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Findings show no substantial gender differences in level of activism, but reveal that women engage in significantly higher rates of environmentally friendly behavior&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But before, it should be noted that there is a difference between the women who are affected more by climate change and the women who supposedly 'consume more sustainably than men'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women are affected by climate change more than men in poor countries, where the traditional societal order is still in place. As said &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.disasterwatch.net/climatechange/gndr_climt07.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women are particularly vulnerable to climate change because they are more prone to the&#xA;adverse impacts from climate change. Their limited adaptive capacities arise from prevailing&#xA;social inequalities and ascribed social and economic roles that manifest itself in differences in&#xA;property rights, access to information, lack of employment and inequal access to resources.&#xA;Further, changes in the climate usually impact on sectors that are traditionally associated with&#xA;women, such as paddy cultivation, cotton and tea plantations, and fishing. This means&#xA;increased hardship for&#xA;women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or as described &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/05/07/us-climate-women-idUSN0633990420080507&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, by the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Many destructive activities against the environment disproportionately affect women, because most women in the world, and especially in the developing world, are very dependent on primary natural resources: land, forests, waters,&amp;quot; said Wangari Maathai of Kenya.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Women are very immediately affected, and usually women and children can't run away,&amp;quot; said Maathai, who won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for her work on sustainable development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, in those places, the household is not ruled by women, especial economic aspects of it, such as what work to do, what crops to grow or how to utilize the small amount of natural resources available. More over, the main impact on man made climate change (if exists) is done by developed countries, such as the U.S. Europe and east Asia (S.Korea, China, Taiwan and Japan). Those are not the places where the described affects on women happen. One source for this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901105001103&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IcpBT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;pic_1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the societies where women are greater affected by the climate change, they are not heads of households and are affected exactly because of the fact that they have no economical or social power. The societies where women actually have economic and social power are the greatest contributes to climate change. Women head approximately 40% of house hold in the US:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the CEX in 2008, 53% of married&#xA;householders were men, down from 85% in 1994. Similarly, in the CPS the share of&#xA;married male householders fell from 88.6% in 1994 to 61.8% in August 2009.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://business.fullerton.edu/Economics/kkleinjans/Man_of_the_house.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;, pg.7&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in many more households women have a big say at decision making. Those are the places where women can make environmental friendly decisions, while they are not affected by environmental issues differently than their male counterparts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also conducted a small examination of the ratio of female-male among board members in several prominent international environmental organizations. The results are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/how-is-greenpeace-structured/governance-structure/board/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Greenpeace&lt;/a&gt;: 3 female, 4 male&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/board/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;World Wildlife foundation (WWF)&lt;/a&gt;, the one with the cute panda simbol:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Staff: 3 female, 4 male&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Board Members: 2 female, 16 male&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Honorary directors: 3 female, 6 male&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;total: 7 female and 26 male&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gcint.org/who-we-are/our-people?title=&amp;amp;field_people_category_tid=41&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Green Cross&lt;/a&gt;, founded by Mikhail Gorbachev:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Board members: 0 female, 10 male&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Honorary Board: 5 female, 9 male&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;staff: 5 female, 6 male&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;total 10 female, 15 male&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pattfoundation.org/about-us/staff-and-trustees/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Plant a tree today&lt;/a&gt; (Staff members): 8 female, 13 male&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wri.org/about/board&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;World Resource Institute&lt;/a&gt;, Al Gore's organisation: 10 female 24 male&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In total women consist 31.67% of examined organisation's staff and board members (25% if only board members and honorary board members are considered), which is higher than the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catalyst.org/file/533/2011_fortune_500_census_wbd.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;16.1% on fortune 500 companies boards&lt;/a&gt;, and even higher that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hewlett/2011/05/women_on_boards_america.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;European standard&lt;/a&gt;, which has to be enforced, unlike those organisations that don't have quotas. This can show that women do have greater concern for environmental issues. Or on the other hand that environmental organisations are more open to accept women in their leadership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-01-05T20:13:07.300" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9382" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-09T12:56:42.520" Score="6" ViewCount="592" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today I found an interesting &lt;a href=&quot;http://feline-nutrition.org/nutrition/just-what-is-raw-feeding-anyway?start=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; that claims that feeding fish to cat is not a good idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fish should be avoided, except for occasional use, for many reasons including: heavy metal contamination, vitamin E depletion and the fact that cats get addicted to it because of its strong taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never seen such claims before. I've never noticed any difference in behavior in the cats I have owned or known when I was feeding them with fish or meat. (Once my cat refused to eat his meal until I gave him some fish I was eating, but that happened only once in 15 years.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that the claim originated in &quot;&lt;em&gt;Histamines in Fish&lt;/em&gt;, State Government of Victoria Department of Health, Australia, 2000&quot;, but the document is not available from the source indicated there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that cats get addicted to fish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:&#xA;Thanks to Oddthinking we now have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.vic.gov.au/archive/archive2011/foodsafety/archive/downloads/histamines_summary.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the source&lt;/a&gt; on the claim by the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also managed to find more information about the addiction caused by fish, as stated &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.littlebigcat.com/nutrition/why-fish-is-dangerous-for-cats/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Fish tends to be “addictive” to cats. They love it, and will often stage a “hunger strike” by refusing their regular food in favor of fish. Tuna or other fish should be reserved as a rare and special treat. Feed fish no more than once a week, and even then in very small amounts only.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7049" LastEditorUserId="6598" LastEditDate="2012-05-09T16:37:44.547" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T16:37:44.547" Title="Are fish addictive to cats?" Tags="|nutrition|zoology|addiction|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9383" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9385" CreationDate="2012-05-09T12:57:19.970" Score="16" ViewCount="7314" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend was informed by his mechanic that his tyres were filled with Nitrogren rather than compressed air. He was skeptical of the claims he heard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are major benefits with nitrogen inflation over the traditional compressed air that can significantly increase the life, performance and safety of your tyres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;JAXQuickfit N27 Nitrogen Programme offers you the following benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stable Tyre Pressure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Better Grip&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Safer in all weather conditions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Less frequent pressure checks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Increased fuel economy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Zero internal oxidisation through elimination of moisture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Increased tyre life&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pressure loss is caused by air migration. Nitrogen migrates 3 to 4 times slower than compressed air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Claims from an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jaxquickfit.com.au/nitrogen-tyre-inflation&quot;&gt;example site&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I, too, am doubtful. Are any of these claims true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T14:21:50.690" Title="Are there benefits to filling car tyres with Nitrogen?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9378" CreationDate="2012-05-09T13:52:54.400" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is not true; neurons continue to form, and the connections between them to change, throughout our lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s11064-007-9330-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This paper on neurogenesis&lt;/a&gt; (i.e. forming of new brain cells) opens with this sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is now well documented that active neurogenesis does exist&#xA;throughout the life span in the brain of various species including&#xA;human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is true that the rate of forming new cells slows down with age. Here is a quote from a webpage of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://qbi.uq.edu.au/groups/bartlett&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;lab&lt;/a&gt; dedicated specifically to researching neurogenesis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The brain continues to produce new neurons throughout life; however,&#xA;the Bartlett laboratory has shown that the rate at which these new&#xA;nerve cells are produced declines with age and may contribute to&#xA;age-associated memory loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found no sources for the age of 34 to be critical, but in my experience a reputable neuroscience paper would never give a statement like that, because a myriad of additional factors are likely to be involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5696" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-18T14:23:09.397" LastActivityDate="2022-09-18T14:23:09.397" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9383" CreationDate="2012-05-09T14:09:50.360" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btmauk.com/data/files/Nitrogen-inflation-for-car-tyres.pdf&quot;&gt;British Tyre Manufacturers’ Association&lt;/a&gt; (pdf)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tyre dealers who promote the benefits of nitrogen inflation for passenger car tyres are on the increase. However the British Tyre Manufacturers’ Association cannot endorse the claims being made as they are based on the use and the experience of nitrogen inflation in specialist applications such as aircraft, earthmover and mining machinery, and in motor racing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the specific point of tyre pressure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More worrying from a tyre industry point of view is the claim of reduced pressure loss associated with nitrogen inflation, often with a suggestion that tyre maintenance periods can be extended. &lt;strong&gt;The tyre industry recommendation for regular checks (at least monthly and before any long journey) applies regardless of whether the tyre is inflated with nitrogen or air.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The questionable claim of reduced pressure loss is often accompanied by claims of cost savings linked to better fuel economy and improved tread wear performance. Provided tyre inflation pressures are maintained at the levels recommended by the vehicle manufacturer there should be no appreciable difference in performance between tyres inflated with air and those using nitrogen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theaa.com/motoring_advice/safety/filling-tyres-with-nitrogen.html&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; from the UK Automobile Association addresses the issue of corrosion in tyres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Corrosion of the tyre from using normal compressed air is unlikely anyway because only the outer tread band of a car tyre contains steel – the amount of moisture reaching it from the inside is minimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T14:09:50.360" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6191" CreationDate="2012-05-09T19:27:50.297" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The acidity of the &quot;soda&quot; is the issue that contributes a lot to tooth decay.  The can says &quot;Phosphoric Acid.&quot;  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphoric_acid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphoric_acid&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phosphoric Acid may also reduce bone density.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carbonic Acid is also present ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find Wikipedia useful as television has shown us most people might not be smarter than a 5th grader :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7052" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-09T20:01:53.147" LastActivityDate="2012-05-09T20:01:53.147" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9316" CreationDate="2012-05-10T09:33:36.623" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;A torpedo does NOT penetrate the hull of a target vessel, it will have a proximity fuse with possible backup contact fuse and probably a timer fuse as well. So that's one claim already debunked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_48_torpedo&quot;&gt;Wikipedia on the Mark 48 Torpedo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can't find independent verification of this (it's most likely classified what exact fuzing modes exist), but it is consistent with knowledge I have accumulated over the years about torpedoes from several post-WW2 designs (WW2 and earlier designs typically used contact fuses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dote.osd.mil/pub/reports/FY1999/navy/99mk48adcap.html&quot;&gt;This DOT&amp;amp;E report&lt;/a&gt; mentions &quot;influence fuzing&quot;, meaning magnetic, acoustic, etc. rather than impact or time delay.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The MK 48 ADCAP torpedo is a submarine launched, heavyweight acoustic homing torpedo with sophisticated sonar and an influence-fuzed warhead. The improved ADCAP torpedo includes all digital guidance and control systems, digital fusing systems, and propulsion improvements, which add speed, depth, and range capability. The Mk 48 class torpedoes are the Navy's only submarine launched torpedoes used for engagement of submarine and surface targets, contributing significantly to the submarines' precision engagement. They are also essential to the force protection role of submarines. There are a number of upgrades to the ADCAP torpedo discussed in the following paragraphs.&#xA;  &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Every seemingly interesting bit of detail ends after a few words with:&#xA;  More details are provided in the classified version of this report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.franksemails.com/powerpoint/mk48torpedoshot.pps&quot;&gt;This Powerpoint presentation&lt;/a&gt; (unreferenced, but with photographs) shows the effect of a Mk.48 torpedo detonating to sink an old frigate. Compare the damage done by the warhead exploding under the ship to the supposed &quot;entry hole&quot; :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the collision claim, collisions between submarines have happened in the past so might have happened here, but are highly unlikely to lead to the ships sinking. And if one were to sink, I'd expect the smaller, lighter built one to sink which would be the US submarine. (The Kursk is a lot larger than a US (or Soviet/Russian) fast attack sub.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastEditorUserId="263" LastEditDate="2013-12-09T06:13:02.670" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T06:13:02.670" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9383" CreationDate="2012-05-10T12:21:53.690" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many sub-claims in the question. I'll focus on only one of them - air loss, compared to nitrogen loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article (&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2007/10/tires-nitrogen-.html&quot;&gt;Nitrogen loss study&lt;/a&gt;) suggests that while nitrogen filled tires did lose a bit less than air filled tires, the difference is not terribly large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact is, air is roughly 78% nitrogen. (I don't think this statement needs any research to back it up.) The remainder of air is mainly oxygen, a bit of CO2, some water vapor, some methane from the cow down the road or the beans I ate for dinner, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point is, if nitrogen moves so slowly compared to &quot;air&quot; which is mostly nitrogen, then the air inside the tire would quickly become strongly nitrogen enriched, because only the oxygen and other gases leave. Then every time you add air to fill the tire again, the volume inside becomes more and more strongly nitrogen enriched, quickly becoming nearly pure nitrogen after only a few re-fills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study I cite in fact suggests that some of this is happening. They state that a 30 psi air filled tire lost on average 3.5 psi, versus 2.2 psi for the nitrogen filled tire. That is, an air filled tire lost 3.5/30 = 11.7% in volume. In that study, a nitrogen filled tire lost 2/30 = 6.7% in volume. This suggests the additional 5% loss in volume must have been almost entirely oxygen. If this is true, then in fact the oxygen is indeed migrating out at a rate that is several times faster than the nitrogen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The obvious conclusion is that the other stuff that comprises air must be migrating out at a preferentially faster rate. (Unless someone can postulate a mechanism which would enable the oxygen in air to mitigate faster movement of nitrogen too.) The preferentially faster loss of oxygen in the tire would be easily testable. In fact, one could not actually breath the air from inside a tire if it was that significantly oxygen depleted. As I said, this would be easily testable, although I don't know of any tests having been made. In fact, while it is purely anecdotal, I have heard of people inhaling the air from inside a tire, and not quickly succumbing from the lack of oxygen. This suggests a problem with the logic above. Only a test and experimental evidence can resolve the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Some simple algebra suggests that for air to have the greater loss as described in the study, if this is because oxygen is escaping at a faster rate, then the loss rate for oxygen (and argon, etc.) must be 29.4. Thus over a set period of time, 6.7% of the nitrogen will escape, but 29.4% of the oxygen will escape in that same period of time. That extent of oxygen depletion would be easily measured. If this is true of course, then the claim that nitrogen will migrate 3-4 times faster than air is false. While it MAY migrate roughly 4 times faster than pure oxygen, air is not pure oxygen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, if we are to believe the study (and the conclusions I've drawn from it) then the claim about the loss from a pure nitrogen filled tire has been falsely inflated, as if air was composed of pure oxygen. An inflated claim, strangely like the inflation of a tire. Does this invalidate the other claims? It should cause you to wonder if the other claims were also inflated by a bit, since if one is willing to play with the numbers once, they will surely be willing to do so in other respects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re-edit: In an effort to beat this horse completely to death, suppose that a pure nitrogen filled tire did deflate at a rate 3-4 times slower than an air filled tire? What would this imply about the exfiltration rate of the non-nitrogenous components of air? Again, a bit of arithmetic yields the answer. If it is 3x slower, then we have oxygen depleting at a rate of 67.6%, compared to the 6.7% for pure nitrogen over the same period of time. If the difference is 4x, then we would have 98% of the oxygen lost in the same time that 6.7% of the nitrogen migrates out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at this over the long term. Suppose we allow our tire to deflate by 10%, so from 30-27 psi, and then re-inflate it with simple air from the pump. Since most of that air is nitrogen, it is replacing the oxygen we have lost. Clearly this will take only a few cycles before we approach a steady state. That steady state composition of the air in our tire will be approximately 98% nitrogen, and 2% oxygen. So nearly pure nitrogen. Again, the point is, why bother to inflate our tires with pure nitrogen when the simple act of inflation and then re-inflation to replace what is lost will yield essentially pure nitrogen anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3344" LastEditorDisplayName="user3344" LastEditDate="2012-05-10T15:00:01.090" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T15:00:01.090" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9395" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9396" CreationDate="2012-05-10T15:30:06.877" Score="13" ViewCount="1412" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently heard that you should steam vegetables instead of boiling them, because boiling &lt;a href=&quot;http://wyanjen.hubpages.com/hub/high-vitamin-foods-vitamin-rich-foods&quot;&gt;washes away&lt;/a&gt; the vitamins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really true? Is there any scientific backing to this claim? Can you really wash away vitamins or nutrients?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Source of Notability: &lt;a href=&quot;http://wyanjen.hubpages.com/hub/high-vitamin-foods-vitamin-rich-foods&quot;&gt;http://wyanjen.hubpages.com/hub/high-vitamin-foods-vitamin-rich-foods&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6598" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-05-10T17:05:10.680" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T22:19:20.833" Title="Does boiling vegetables wash away important vitamins?" Tags="|nutrition|vitamins|cooking|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9395" CreationDate="2012-05-10T17:08:57.070" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; It depends on the vegetable, and what other preparation method you're comparing it to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jsfa.1585/abstract&quot;&gt;A study in the Nov 2003 issue of Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture&lt;/a&gt; (Paywall--some key points explained &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/QAA400193&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). From the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High-pressure boiling, low-pressure boiling (conventional), steaming and microwaving were the four domestic cooking processes used in this work. ... The results showed large differences among the four treatments in their influence on flavonoid and hydroxycinnamoyl derivative contents in broccoli. Clear disadvantages were detected when broccoli was microwaved, namely high losses of flavonoids (97%), sinapic acid derivatives (74%) and caffeoyl-quinic acid derivatives (87%). Conventional boiling led to a significant loss of flavonoids (66%) from fresh raw broccoli, while high-pressure boiling caused considerable leaching (47%) of caffeoyl-quinic acid derivatives into the cooking water. On the other hand, steaming had minimal effects, in terms of loss, on both flavonoid and hydroxycinnamoyl derivative contents. &lt;strong&gt;Therefore we can conclude that a greater quantity of phenolic compounds will be provided by consumption of steamed broccoli as compared with broccoli prepared by other cooking processes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now whether the nutrients studied here constitute &quot;important vitamins&quot; is an exercise left to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to another study from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ift.org/knowledge-center/read-ift-publications/journal-of-food-science.aspx&quot;&gt;Journal of Food Science&lt;/a&gt; (paywall), summarized &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090415163730.htm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results showed that, depending on the vegetable, cooking on a flat metal surface with no oil (griddling) and microwave cooking maintained the highest antioxidant levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these studies are not limited to the &quot;washing away&quot; or leeching effect on nutrients, but also consider the destruction of nutrients during cooking.  The latter obviously does not directly answer your claim, but is probably equally relevant to anyone interested in food nutrition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, the preferred cooking method likely depends on your vegetable, but boiling is known to leech nutrients (sometimes this is even beneficial, as in the case of Swiss chard, where boiling allegedly reduces the acidic content &lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&amp;amp;dbid=16&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;). I've also seen (unreferenced) claims that Spinach ought to be boiled briefly, or blanched, to help release vitamins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-05-10T19:45:37.623" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T19:45:37.623" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9383" CreationDate="2012-05-10T18:07:50.057" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/auto/what-are-the-benefits-of-nitrogen-filled-tires/article697136/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/auto/what-are-the-benefits-of-nitrogen-filled-tires/article697136/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article is a newspaper Q/A column, where the issue is discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, every benefit claimed in the original question is real, and measurable and completely insignificant for personal automobile use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TLDR; If you're flying a plane or racing on a track, nitrogen can be beneficial. If you're driving to and from work, you'll probably end up spending more on nitrogen than it will save you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2007/10/tires-nitrogen-.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2007/10/tires-nitrogen-.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mechanic claims that it stops pitting in alloy rims, but I haven't found any evidence to support that, (Nor have I found any evidence that pitting is a bad thing over the average life of an automobile.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="880" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T18:07:50.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9395" CreationDate="2012-05-10T22:19:20.833" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Boiling vegetables does reduce vitamins, sometimes substantially.  The method of boiling makes a difference: boiling thawed vegetables reduces Vitamin C more than boiling direct from frozen.  Even the pan makes a difference: the 2000 study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11190845&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Vitamin C losses in some frozen vegetables due to various cooking methods&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; includes the result:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While boiling spinach, peas, green beans, and okra without thawing&#xA;  resulted 46.5, 25.2, 18.2, and 21.6% vitamin C loss in double based&#xA;  stainless steel pan, boiling them in pyrex pan resulted 58.5, 36.0,&#xA;  42.1, and 28.2% vitamin C loss, respectively&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For related comments on fresh, frozen and canned vegetables see the earlier question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2400/are-frozen-vegetables-typically-healthier-to-buy-and-eat-than-fresh-ones&quot;&gt;Are frozen vegetables typically healthier to buy and eat than fresh ones?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-05-10T22:19:20.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9399" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-11T02:10:58.377" Score="10" ViewCount="1256" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many years ago, I learnt of the concept of &quot;personal space&quot; - the idea that people carry  a small territory around them that they do not like strangers to invade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the size of one's personal space is claimed to be inversely related to the population density of one's culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I probably read about it in some variant of the Pease's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0553804723&quot;&gt;Body Language&lt;/a&gt; franchise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one (plagiarised?) &lt;a href=&quot;http://westsidetoastmasters.com/resources/book_of_body_language/chap9.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like most animals, each human has his own personal Portable 'air bubble', which he carries around with him; its size is dependent on the density of the population in the place where he grew up. Personal Space is therefore culturally determined. Where some cultures, such as the Japanese, are accustomed to crowding, others prefer the 'wide open spaces' and like you to keep your distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As mentioned, the amount of Personal Space someone needs is relative to the population density where they live. People raised in sparsely populated rural areas for example, need more Personal Space than those raised in densely populated cities. Watching how far a person extends his arm to shake hands gives a clue to whether he is from a large city or a country area. City dwellers typically have their private 18-inch (46cm) 'bubble'; this is also the measured distance between wrist and torso when they reach to shake hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another (copyright infringing?) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/discover/pease-allan-body-language&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; (from slide 19) attributing similar words to Allan Pease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: An anecdote about different cultural expectations has quietly changed from Danish to Italians between the two stories, which should ring alarm bells about its veracity.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my experience, on the rare occasions I have found people who don't respect the social norms of my personal space, they have turned out to be from similar - or even slightly more rural - cultures to me. [Sampling bias alert - that probably accounts for most of the people I meet in person.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a relationship between the population density in the area a person grew up, and their preferred distance apart when standing with others?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-06-10T17:35:45.357" Title="Is preferred personal space affected by population density?" Tags="|psychology|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9400" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25234" CreationDate="2012-05-11T03:30:55.217" Score="14" ViewCount="8029" Body="&lt;p&gt;The below image popped up on Facebook apparently alleging that Roger Ailes, president of the Fox News Channel, said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The truth&quot; is whatever people will believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZSN43.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Roger Ailes alleged quote&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The peculiar placement of the quote marks makes it unclear whether this is intended as a direct quote attributed to Roger Ailes or is just commentary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google reveals that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Heller#God_Knows_.281984.29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joseph Heller&lt;/a&gt; said something very much like this in his 1984 book &lt;em&gt;God Knows&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The truth is whatever people will believe is the truth. Don't you know history?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I can find no reference to Roger Ailes having said this, or anything substantially similar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="8600" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T20:44:30.983" LastActivityDate="2014-12-25T19:06:12.870" Title="Did Roger Ailes say &quot;the truth is whatever people will believe&quot; or something substantially similar?" Tags="|quotes|media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4582" CreationDate="2012-05-11T03:43:12.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many alternatives to sunscreen, the most obvious of which you already put in your question: just stay out of direct sunlight during midday.  At best sunscreen is &lt;em&gt;convenient&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yourhealthbase.com/sunscreens.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this well-referenced article&lt;/a&gt; argues that there may be health risks to the pervasive use of sunscreens.  The article is a bit old, though, so it doesn't take into account the study which Oddthinking provided, but most of it is still relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A summary of the articles' points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sunscreen may give people an unwarranted sense of security since not&#xA;all sunscreens completely block UVA radiation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most &quot;chemical&quot; sunscreens (sunscreens that do not use particles as a &quot;physical&quot; reflective barrier) contain benzophenone or its derivatives (oxybenzone is one of them--see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ewg.org/analysis/toxicsunscreen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; by the EWG on oxybenzone, it also references a number of studies) which is likely not good for one's health.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use of sunscreen significantly reduces Vitamin D production, and low blood levels of Vitamin D are associated with increased risk of colon and breast cancer (which have a higher rate of mortality than melanoma)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article goes on to make some recommendations many of which are good, and some I wouldn't agree with.  The most relevant for the discussion at hand (which I agree with) is that you should use sunscreens which use reflective particles to block UV rays (zinc oxide or titanium dioxide). I note that these are &lt;a href=&quot;http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowAbstractBuch&amp;amp;ArtikelNr=98701&amp;amp;ProduktNr=232767&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;not absorbed through the skin&lt;/a&gt; the way &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/v123/n1/abs/5602391a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;other sunscreens are&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another recommendation I agree with (unless you are &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; fair) is to get moderate doses of sunlight to produce vitamin D and build up a natural resistance to the sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6185" LastEditorUserId="6185" LastEditDate="2012-05-11T22:08:16.477" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T22:08:16.477" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-11T15:50:21.143" Score="5" ViewCount="616" Body="&lt;p&gt;Attachment parenting (AP) is often succinctly defined as “Parents focus on forming strong emotional bonds with their children as they grow, using techniques such as co-sleeping, baby wearing and extended nursing”, and there was recently a picture of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20120521,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a woman breast-feeding a three-year old on the cover of Time Magazine&lt;/a&gt; (Time Magazine, May 21, 2012) raising AP as an issue for discussion. AP is generally attributed to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.ca/The-Baby-Book-Everything-About/dp/0316778001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Baby Book&lt;/a&gt; by Dr. Bill Sears and his wife Martha.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been a lot of controversy about the story and cover picture. Some of the comments are along the lines of “people's reactions seem to indicate almost everyone agrees that it's not natural, it looks absurd, it's insane, it's terrible and it's wrong!”, per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nj.com/parenting/index.ssf/2012/05/time_magazine_breastfeeding_co.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TIME Magazine breastfeeding cover shines spotlight on Attachment Parenting (no, it's not crazy)&lt;/a&gt; (NJ.com)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of that article linked above goes on to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From what I have read, AP isn't bad at all. It seems pretty cost-effective (using cloth diapers may seem gross but think about how much money you save not having to buy packs of disposables) and it looks like it does help parents develop a close and positive bond with their children from an early age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignoring cost-savings from cloth diapers, are there any known long-term benefits to AP? Are there any detriments? Have there been any solid studies on some or all of the effects (positive or negative) of the tenets of AP: (a) co-sleeping, (b) extended nursing, and (c) baby-wearing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:54:19.167" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T10:08:37.727" Title="Benefits and detriments of attachment parenting" Tags="|psychology|children|parenting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9399" CreationDate="2012-05-11T16:36:11.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of a couple of counterexamples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Index Mundi has population density for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indexmundi.com/map/?t=0&amp;amp;v=21000&amp;amp;r=na&amp;amp;l=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;North America&lt;/a&gt; and for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indexmundi.com/map/?v=21000&amp;amp;r=me&amp;amp;l=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Middle East&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One would observe that North America has these population densities (people per square KM):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mexico: 58&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US: 32&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Canada: 3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Counterexample one: Although there is a ten-fold difference in density between Canada and the US, there is not an appreciable difference in personal space, to my knowledge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Middle East, here are some selected population densities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lebanon: 398&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UAE: 62&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Saudi: 12&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many sites have noted that the concept of personal space is quite different for Arabs. For example, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/army/arabculture.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Arab Cultural Awareness&lt;/a&gt; PDF says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The conventions in the Middle East are that social &#xA;  interaction and conversation among Arabs occurs at a &#xA;  much closer distance than normal in the Western World &#xA;  and well within the “personal space” defined by the West. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Counterexample two: The population densities bracket the North American population densities, but in general, personal space is more similar in the Middle East than between Middle Eastern countries and North American countries of similar population density. Specifically, one would expect Saudis to stand farther apart from each other than those in the US; however, the opposite is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that a different question about population density among similar cultures might yield a different answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1403" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T16:36:11.553" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9407" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-11T17:36:05.153" Score="22" ViewCount="7986" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been reading about tuning musical instruments to A=432 frequency instead of recently (meaning in the last century) arbitrarily defined standard of tuning to A=440Hz. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supposedly the 432Hz frequency and its derivative tones have been &quot;naturally&quot; developed standard of tones throughout the past. These tones are supposed to be common in some dislocated primitive tribes or communities like shaman's chanting, native Indian flutes, Tibetan &quot;chakra bowls&quot;, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some claim that instruments tuned to A=432Hz &quot;just sound better&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is claimed that old classical music was originally composed and played in these frequencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also when the 440Hz standard was set in previous century, many musicians protested against it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The temperament that is suggested to be most &quot;natural&quot; is Pythagorean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the claims that 432Hz is superior to 440Hz?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.schillerinstitute.org/music/rev_tuning_hist.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Schiller Institute - A Brief History of Musical Tuning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.spiritualresults.com/content/view/41/51/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spiritual Results - 432 Documents&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: in my opinion there is a lot of disinformation, false claims, sellers of &quot;healing divine sounds&quot; which makes investigation into subject somewhat difficult for me. At first glance I would easily dismiss any such debate as a new age hoax, on the other hand one may quickly fall into spiritual faith thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7067" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2015-09-29T19:45:05.087" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T19:45:05.087" Title="Is 432Hz sound frequency more &quot;natural&quot; or beneficial to human body than 440Hz?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|music|sound|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8818" CreationDate="2012-05-11T20:57:09.740" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Such generic claims encompassing so many mental diseases looks preposterous and fraudulent  on face of it but I don't think there is or would be any scientific study which can refute all such claims, because it is easy to theorize and difficult to refute all such claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said there seems to be very good link between microbes in our body and how we react and behave and eventually it may be true that to some level gut flora affects our mental health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2005 paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://jmm.sgmjournals.org/content/54/10/987.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Differences between the gut micro-flora of children with autistic spectrum disorders and that of healthy children&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new scientist article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19011-gut-bacteria-may-contribute-to-autism.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gut bacteria may contribute to autism&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;there are many other articles on New scientist related to gut flora an dhow it affects us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But IMO bottom line is that Human system is so complex and so less understood that any small level clinical test claiming otherwise would be a hasty conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7071" LastActivityDate="2012-05-11T20:57:09.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9409" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9419" CreationDate="2012-05-11T22:41:37.560" Score="9" ViewCount="672" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know enough atomic physics to know whether &lt;a href=&quot;http://kommoncents.blogspot.com/2012/02/was-technology-for-safe-cheap-nuclear.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; is even plausible or not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brown built a small prototype plant, which bombarded radioactive&#xA;  elements with high energy photon radiation, in the form of X-rays&#xA;  produced by an accelerator. (...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...) his ideas were based upon sound&#xA;  nuclear textbook theory. &quot;It is well known that X-ray or Gamma-ray&#xA;  bombardment of nuclei can induce nuclear decay&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...) He&#xA;  announced that he was able to transmute iodine-129, into iodine-130,&#xA;  ...which only has a half-life of 12.4 hours, and which will decay&#xA;  naturally to Xenon-130, a safe and stable gas, plus electrons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Any info on the associated-conspiracy-theory-style scenario is welcome too)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2192" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T18:17:12.633" Title="&quot;Photodeactivation&quot; of nuclear waste" Tags="|physics|nuclear-energy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9410" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9411" CreationDate="2012-05-12T07:48:25.980" Score="18" ViewCount="1823" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was watching documentary about Earth's formation National Geographic. They made this following statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;......An astonishing event is about to take place.The Earth is on a collision course with another planet and about to experience the biggest bang in its history. The only reason we knew about this collision is because of the moon encircling the earth...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then it went on, not clearly stating how the moon and the collision are related.&#xA;Are there any studies done about this assertion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-09-10T07:23:46.093" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T01:55:34.260" Title="Did Earth collide with a planet in its early days of formation?" Tags="|astronomy|earth|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9410" CreationDate="2012-05-12T08:15:20.317" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Giant Impact Hypothesis&lt;/a&gt; or the &quot;Big Splash&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As remarkable as it sounds, it is actually is the scientific consensus of how the moon was formed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Moon is generally believed to have formed from debris ejected&#xA;  by a large off-centre collision with the early Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nature.com/articles/35089010&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;letter to Nature magazine&lt;/a&gt;, August 2001.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More evidence for this event, including: Earth's spin, the Moon's orbit, the Moon's core, lunar rock samples, and evidence of other collisions is listed on the Wikipedia page. It also describes the process. (I am comfortable relying on Wikipedia, because this is high-school-level astronomy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2019-06-26T01:55:34.260" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T01:55:34.260" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6548" CreationDate="2012-05-12T09:14:02.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not in virtue of their chemical composition, possibly only if they specifically contain an insect repellent a particular&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/westnile/faq/repellent.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC&lt;/a&gt; has a FAQ regarding insect repellents. In particular it states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CDC recommends the use of products containing active ingredients which have been registered with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for use as repellents applied to skin and clothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of the products registered with the EPA, those containing DEET, picaridin, IR3535, and some oil of lemon eucalyptus and para-menthane-diol products provide longer-lasting protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the EPA has a list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/health/mosquitoes/ai_insectrp.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recognized active ingredients&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Catnip oil -- EPA pesticide regulatory information (Nepeta cataria, also known as catmint) (4 products)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Oil of citronella (3 registered products; also used in unregistered products that meet the requirements for exemption from registration)&#xA;  EPA pesticide regulatory information&#xA;  National Pesticide Information Center (NPIC) fact sheet Exit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;DEET (more than 500 products)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;IR 3535 -- EPA pesticide regulatory information (3-[N-Butyl-N-acetyl]-aminopropionic acid, ethyl ester) (about 45 products)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Picaridin (about 40 products)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;EPA pesticide regulatory information&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;NPIC fact sheet Exit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;p-Menthane-3,8-diol -- EPA pesticide regulatory information (also known as Oil of Lemon Eucalyptus) (10 products)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2-undecanone -- EPA pesticide regulatory information (or methyl nonyl ketone) (1 product)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: insect repellents have a specific &quot;active ingredient&quot;. A list of such ingredient is kept by an agencies because of safety concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now: dryer sheets basically are composed of a non-active substrate, one or more softening ingredients and a fragrance, for example Bounce:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LTXzq.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pgproductsafety.com/productsafety/ingredients/household_care/laundary_fabric_care/Bounce/Bounce_Dryer_Sheets_-_All_Varieties.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.pgproductsafety.com/productsafety/ingredients/household_care/laundary_fabric_care/Bounce/Bounce_Dryer_Sheets_-_All_Varieties.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these components is an active insect repellent in the list provided by EPA, except possibly the fragrance -- which is left unspecified. If the dryer sheet is, for example, scented with Citronella, then of course the dryer sheet will be a repellent. PG, the company producing &quot;Bounce&quot; keeps &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pgproductsafety.com/productsafety/ingredients/Perfume_and_Scents.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a list of them&lt;/a&gt; which contains &quot;Citronella ceylon natural&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, if a dryer sheet happens to be scented with an insect repellent, it will possibly repel insects. If not, it shouldn't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T12:52:38.687" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T12:52:38.687" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8671" CreationDate="2012-05-12T11:27:58.027" Score="8" Body="&lt;h1&gt;No&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microwaved plastics do not cause cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can I microwave food in plastic containers or covered in plastic film?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;There is no scientific evidence that microwaving food in plastic containers or wrapped in clingfilm can affect the risk of cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/healthyliving/cancercontroversies/Plasticbottles/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Plastic bottles - Cancer Research UK&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim&lt;/strong&gt;: Research has proved that microwaving foods in plastic containers releases cancer-causing agents into the foods.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Status&lt;/strong&gt;: False.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cookplastic.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Plastic-Tac-Toe - Snopes.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Myth: Microwaving plastic containers and wraps releases harmful, cancer-causing substances into food.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fact: Microwave-safe plastic containers and wraps are safe to use in the microwave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/cancer-causes/CA00085&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cancer causes: Popular myths about the causes of cancer - Mayo Clinic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T11:27:58.027" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2094" CreationDate="2012-05-12T13:34:34.453" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;It turns out that there's a nice chap who already investigated this, and found no evidence of the matter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I first did a Google search for PC Professional Magazine. No such magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google turns up a fair number of hits for Lisa Holst; none of them is a columnist for computer magazines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a British magazine called PC Pro. I called them. They’ve never changed their name and they’ve also never heard of Lisa Holst or PC Professional Magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick email to the contact form on Snopes asking them where they found the magazine and whether they have a copy of it I can have a look at receives an automated response suggesting I use their search function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A call to the Library of Congress confirms that they do not have, in their records, any magazines with the title “PC Professional” They don’t even have anything close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20121201005508/http://www.eightspiders.com/2008/08/why-eight-spiders.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Why eight spiders? (Archived version)&quot;&gt;Why eight spiders?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;A big troll?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/22367/avery&quot;&gt;Avery&lt;/a&gt; points out that &lt;code&gt;Lisa Birgit Holst&lt;/code&gt; is an anagram for &lt;code&gt;This Is A Big Troll&lt;/code&gt;. Hmmm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;facts&lt;/em&gt; on this matter are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one resource cites a name and a magazine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;nobody seems to be able to confirm the existence of this person or magazine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the name of the author can be anagrammed to a clue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only possible conclusion is &amp;quot;there is no evidence that Snopes is correct&amp;quot;, and there is something suggesting it is a fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-10-06T16:22:42.783" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9418" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-12T14:43:52.043" Score="15" ViewCount="9622" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to numerous sources on the internet, you cannot snore and dream at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boredpanda.com/15-interesting-facts-about-dreams-dreaming/&quot;&gt;Source 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If you are snoring, then you cannot be dreaming. This fact is repeated all over the Internet, but I’m a bit suspicious whether it’s really true as I haven’t found any scientific evidence to support it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=19570&amp;amp;view=next&amp;amp;sid=63647f1dc6383b658329c5776961c970&quot;&gt;Source 2&lt;/a&gt; (which is more credible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080911223619AArI3xt&quot;&gt;Source 3&lt;/a&gt; (Yahoo Answers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick google search yields pages of sites that claim that this is a &quot;fact&quot;. Could this possibly be true from a physiological/psychological perspective, and is the claim backed up by any scientific evidence whatsoever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6652" LastActivityDate="2020-01-30T20:31:44.250" Title="Can you snore and dream at the same time?" Tags="|sleep|dreaming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9409" CreationDate="2012-05-12T16:57:05.823" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The proposed process is to use the x-ray band &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremsstrahlung&quot;&gt;bremsstrahlung&lt;/a&gt; photons from a electron accelerator (see also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-als.lbl.gov/index.php/about-the-als/quick-facts.html&quot;&gt;advanced light source&lt;/a&gt;) to initiate photo-disentigration reactions in long lived radioisotopes with the goal of generating either stable daughters or short-lived daughters that will decay to stability in a reasonable amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.aip.org/link/doi/10.1063/1.3120165&quot;&gt;a randomly chosen photo-disentigration paper&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_americium#Americium-241&quot;&gt;Am-241&lt;/a&gt; which is long enough lived to be hard to store, but active enough to be dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is not new (I recall seeing a colloquium talk on the subject from a Los Alamos scientist in the mid 1990s and his pitch was &lt;em&gt;&quot;we may be getting there&quot;&lt;/em&gt;), but it is a very difficult technology and the need for a particle accelerator has long made it a power hungry one as well. Recent improvements in accelerator design have improved the available beam power and the efficiency with which these beams can be produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These kinds of processes are of active interest to the US Department of Energy which is funding them as part of it's activities on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fnal.gov/directorate/plan_for_discovery/ch3.shtml&quot;&gt;&quot;the intensity frontier&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Quote from the last section of the linked Fermilab blurb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition to its broad program in fundamental science, Project X could support R&amp;amp;D towards the destruction of spent fuel from conventional nuclear reactors, and the development of accelerator-driven subcritical systems for safe and abundant nuclear energy production.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The issue of high radio-toxicity and the long lifetime of conventional spent nuclear fuel is a global challenge. Accelerator-driven systems can be used to transmute spent nuclear fuel, significantly reducing the lifetime and toxicity of nuclear waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="782" LastEditorUserId="782" LastEditDate="2012-05-12T18:17:12.633" LastActivityDate="2012-05-12T18:17:12.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9420" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-13T03:43:01.870" Score="6" ViewCount="32577" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.secretofthieves.com/&quot;&gt;Thieves essential oil&lt;/a&gt; is supposed to help keep you from getting sick by killing germs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Packed with powerful, germ-killing essential oils, the Thieves line helps eliminate airborne bacteria and boost the immune system. The Thieves Kit offers protection during cold and flu season of winter months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am wondering what scientific evidence is available that supports this. I am looking for clinical studies, etc. that support the claims made by companies that promote this essential oil. Do any exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4932" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-13T13:07:39.483" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T17:57:39.837" Title="Does &quot;Thieves oil&quot; kill bacteria and boost the immune system?" Tags="|medical-science|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8627" CreationDate="2012-05-13T08:57:36.413" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You seem to have two main questions here, asking if RISUG exists and if so, if it is safe and effective. I will answer each in turn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does RISUG exist?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is little question that RISUG exists, as there is an abundance of evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a patent filed in the US which shows at the least that the design/technique exists&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents?vid=5488075&quot;&gt;(1)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are several peer reviewed studies introducing and exploring RISUG&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7056760&quot;&gt;(2)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15722073&quot;&gt;(3)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;RISIG has been reported in numerous credible media sources such as Forbes&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2012/05/11/are-men-ready-for-an-injection-of-contraception/&quot;&gt;(4)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; and Wired&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/04/ff_vasectomy/all/1&quot;&gt;(5)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. If RISUG did not exist it seems likely that it would have been exposed by now with a retraction printed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are clinical trials currently underway in India&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webcitation.org/5zHEacvXH&quot;&gt;(6)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is currently undergoing FDA trials in the USA under the name Vasalgel&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parsemusfoundation.org/Parsemus/New_male_contraceptives.html&quot;&gt;(7)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is RISUG safe?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been a lot of studies done so far based on a number of clinical trials on humans and animals. While the results may not be conclusive, it certainly seems that RISUG is as safe and effective as claimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2001 study&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11597307&quot;&gt;(8)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; found that  “the intervention of RISUG in the vas deferens even for a period as long as 8 years is absolutely safe and does not lead to prostatic diseases.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2005 study found that&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15897977&quot;&gt;(9)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; “SMA vas occlusion and its non-invasive reversal do not damage the accessory reproductive organs.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results of a 2003 study&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12826690&quot;&gt;(10)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; on langur monkeys found that RISUG does not cause sperm granulomas to form (a reaction of sperm leaking into surrounding tissue) which can be painful for some men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results of a 1999 study&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10361629&quot;&gt;(11)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;  indicated that the vas deferens returns to normal after the removal of RISUG. These results toger indicate that RISUG has less of a health impact than a vasectomy does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as reversing the procedure, a 2005 study again using langur monkeys as test subjects found reversal was safe without adverse side effects.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15722073&quot;&gt;(3)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the studies so far show no adverse reactions or side effects and far less of an impact on the reproductive organs than existing methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to all of that there is also the possibility that RISUG could prevent the transmission of HIV to partners, which certainly would do a lot for health in general&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877%2805%2900096-4/abstract&quot;&gt;(12)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is RISUG effective?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as effectiveness goes, it seems that RISUG takes effect almost immediately and is successful in inducing azoospermia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Phase 2 clinical trial conducted over 12 months found that all test subjects had azoospermia . No pregnancies were reported and the method was considered safe&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9408706&quot;&gt;(13)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second follow up study from 1998&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.contraceptionjournal.org/article/S0010-7824%2898%2900096-1/abstract&quot;&gt;(14)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; had similar results to the 1997 study, except this time the method was shown to be effective for a two year period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, in a third study from 2003&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12521662&quot;&gt;(15)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;  performed on a group of 25 men, six of the men developed azoospermia within the first month, an additional 15 in the second month, with the last 4 men following in the third and fourth months. No pregancies were reported over a six month period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All signs point to yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the evidence we have so far indicates that RISUG is indeed safe and effective. It looks like it should be appearing for use by consumers in the next few years in the USA if the FDA trials go well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;(1): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents?vid=5488075&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com/patents?vid=5488075&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;(2): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7056760&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7056760&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;(3): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15722073&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15722073&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(4): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2012/05/11/are-men-ready-for-an-injection-of-contraception/&quot;&gt;http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2012/05/11/are-men-ready-for-an-injection-of-contraception/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;(5): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/04/ff_vasectomy/all/1&quot;&gt;http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/04/ff_vasectomy/all/1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;(6): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webcitation.org/5zHEacvXH&quot;&gt;http://www.webcitation.org/5zHEacvXH&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;(7): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parsemusfoundation.org/Parsemus/New_male_contraceptives.html&quot;&gt;http://www.parsemusfoundation.org/Parsemus/New_male_contraceptives.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;(8): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11597307&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11597307&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;(9): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15897977&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15897977&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;(10): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12826690&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12826690&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;(11): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10361629&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10361629&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;(12): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877(05)00096-4/abstract&quot;&gt;http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877(05)00096-4/abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;(13): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9408706&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9408706&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;(14): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.contraceptionjournal.org/article/S0010-7824%2898%2900096-1/abstract&quot;&gt;http://www.contraceptionjournal.org/article/S0010-7824%2898%2900096-1/abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;(15): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12521662&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12521662&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-05-13T09:05:40.973" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T09:05:40.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9422" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-13T13:21:06.687" Score="8" ViewCount="18592" Body="&lt;p&gt;This purifier claims to produce 100% pure water. They use chlorine. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pure-earth.com/chlorine.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chlorine, when taken in for a long period, is bad for health&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pureitwater.com/IN/4stage-purification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The 4 stage purification process.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Polisher&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Removes chlorine and other contaminants to make water clear, odourless and great tasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have claimed that they do remove chlorine from the water. Now, if this claim is false, it could be a health hazard - so, is this claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5341" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-06-17T10:51:25.373" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T10:51:25.373" Title="Does Pureit Polisher remove the chlorine from chlorinated water?" Tags="|consumer-products|chemistry|water|chlorine|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9423" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9769" CreationDate="2012-05-13T13:58:37.847" Score="89" ViewCount="237307" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard this several times, is it really true or just a joke/rumor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is, that&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Charlie Chaplin once only came second in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fEvZJm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;image of Chaplin&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Charlie_Chaplin.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2749" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-04-21T19:36:22.757" LastActivityDate="2021-07-11T23:12:39.570" Title="Did Charlie Chaplin lose a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest?" Tags="|history|charlie-chaplin|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9423" CreationDate="2012-05-13T14:02:32.253" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Snopes has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/movies/actors/chaplin2.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;good page&lt;/a&gt; on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chaplin did indeed fare poorly in a Chaplin look-alike contest, but&#xA;  the competition took place in a San Francisco theater. His final&#xA;  standing is not recorded, although it was noted that he &quot;failed even&#xA;  to make the finals.&quot; Chaplin told a reporter at this time that he was&#xA;  &quot;tempted to give lessons in the Chaplin walk, out of pity as well as&#xA;  in the desire to see the thing done correctly.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sources listed on the Snopes page are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=FX2fkglUqZcC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=The%20Life%20of%20Charlie%20Chaplin&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=w7-vT5SgCMa0gwfZsOngAw&amp;amp;ved=0CDkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=The%20Life%20of%20Charlie%20Chaplin&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Milton, Joyce.   Tramp: The Life of Charlie Chaplin.&#xA;    New York: HarperCollins, 1996.   ISBN 0-06-017052-2   (pp. 92-93).&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Chicago Herald. 15 July 1915.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevant quote from the book is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vaudeville houses still showed motion pictures in 1915, and many were promoting the Chaplin vogue by sponsoring amateur Charlie look-alike contests. Among the early winners was Bob Hope, who took first prize in a Chaplin contest in Cleveland. Charlie himself was not so lucky. When he entered a contest run by a theater in San Fransisco, he failed even to make the finals. &quot;I am tempted to give lessons in the Chaplin walk&quot; he told a reporter, &quot;out of pity as well as in the desire to see the thing done correctly&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only citation listed for this passage in the book is the very same &lt;em&gt;Chicago Herald&lt;/em&gt; for July 15, 1915, Vol. 11, RLC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unable to verify the second reference at present, as I am unable to find any archive online for the Chicago Herald, which seemed to only exist under that name &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago%27s_American&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;for four years&lt;/a&gt;. Short of going to a library with access to the archive there does not seem to be a way to verify this reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1782/can-a-us-based-skeptic-help-us-out-with-a-charlie-chaplin-question/1786#1786&quot;&gt;This answer&lt;/a&gt; records that the article could not be found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T16:38:42.083" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T11:13:33.670" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9425" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9427" CreationDate="2012-05-13T14:06:23.260" Score="23" ViewCount="6072" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1955/are-any-notable-biblical-characters-historical-figures&quot;&gt;Are any notable biblical characters historical figures?&lt;/a&gt; the answer touches the Davidic dynasty and not king David himself. I was wondering whether or not there was a real &quot;king David&quot; to whom can be attributed all of the following accomplishments, as they are all attributed to him by the bible (old testament):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being one of the first kings of the Israelite people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conquering and settling Jerusalem (called Jebus before the conquest).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conquering relatively vast territories and bringing the borders of the kingdom of Israel (not modern day Israel) to their biggest extent ever. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actually being called David (or something resembling that name)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="41728" LastEditDate="2017-09-16T16:45:47.570" LastActivityDate="2017-09-20T14:04:25.240" Title="Did the biblical King David exist?" Tags="|history|bible|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9426" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9514" CreationDate="2012-05-13T14:20:40.340" Score="8" ViewCount="1022" Body="&lt;p&gt;The bible describes the battle between Goliath and David as a dual between two champions each represents his side fighting between them selves to determine the outcome of a battle. The same is described at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq-uMIZGETs&amp;amp;feature=fvwrel&quot;&gt;opening scene of the movie Troy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it a real practice in ancient times (say before the Roman Empire)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:21:56.657" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:21:56.657" Title="Was a duel between representatives of the fighting armies an accepted way to end armed conflicts in ancient time?" Tags="|history|war|bible|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9425" CreationDate="2012-05-13T14:33:20.857" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;There does not seem to be an abundance of evidence, although it is the opinion of scholars that King David likely existed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence we do have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Dan_Stele&quot;&gt;The Tel Dan Stele&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Tel Dan Stele is written in Aramaic script without vowels which makes translation difficult, allowing for multiple interpretations. Scholars seem to agree that the first part of a phrase refers to house, but disagree if the second part of the phrase is &quot;beloved&quot;, &quot;uncle&quot;, or &quot;house&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consensus seems to be that the stele refers to a &quot;House of David&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The inscription, which dates to the ninth century bce, that is to say,&#xA;  about a century after David was thought to have ruled Israel, includes&#xA;  the words Beit David (&quot;House&quot; or &quot;Dynasty&quot; of David&quot;). It is the first&#xA;  near-contemporaneous reference to David ever found. It is not&#xA;  conclusive; but it does strongly indicate that a king called David&#xA;  established a dynasty in Israel during the relevant period. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/2000_2009/2003/9/King%20David%20and%20Jerusalem-%20Myth%20and%20Reality&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesha_Stele&quot;&gt;The Mesha Stele&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mesha Stele is also thought to contain the Name David in two places, which scholars consider a very reasonable translation, however it is not certain. &lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1159&amp;amp;context=lib_research&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; is a series of updates and corrections to an earlier paper, however it still explains the problem in establishing the text on the stele. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will update with the original paper when I find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_David&quot;&gt;The City of David&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The City of David is a subject of much scholarly debate, of which the Wiki page has a good summary of. There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_99.pdf&quot;&gt;evidence&lt;/a&gt; of pots and sculptures that have been dates to a time that corresponds to what scholars agree would have been King Davids reign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence we have so far shows only that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There may have been a &quot;House of David&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was a functioning city and government that corresponds with the time and place King David is thought to have ruled&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't yet have enough evidence to say for sure that King David existed, or that the claims made about him are true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-05-13T14:37:39.853" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T14:37:39.853" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9428" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-13T16:45:54.420" Score="3" ViewCount="912" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10301/can-we-end-poverty-for-us175-billion-per-year&quot;&gt;Can we end poverty for $US175 billion per year?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have come across &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/TheZeitgeistMovement/posts/10150425344206900&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.donnellycolt.com/catalog/postcards.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://jhameia.tumblr.com/post/10968938130/the-money-required-to-eradicate-hunger-for&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120323052336AAfHWXt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;times&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Money required to eradicate hunger for everyone in the world has been estimated at 30 billion per year...about as much as the world spends on the military every eight days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it indeed take as little as thirty billion dollars a year to eradicate hunger in the world? Any studies to back up this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6217" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-05-13T18:30:17.983" Title="Would eradicating hunger worldwide cost about 30 billion US dollars a year?" Tags="|nutrition|economics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2012-12-15T14:33:38.983" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9423" CreationDate="2012-05-14T00:29:35.593" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a note on this in the Wikipedia article for Charlie Chaplin in the Legacy section &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin#Legacy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Chaplin#Legacy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chaplin's &quot;tramp&quot; character&#xA;  is possibly the most imitated on all levels of entertainment. Chaplin&#xA;  once entered a &quot;Chaplin look-alike&quot; competition and did not make the&#xA;  final round.[198][199]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also referenced Snopes.com, but they also referenced Howell, Melissa; Howell, Greg; Pierce, Seth (1 August 2010). Fusion: Where You and God Connect. Review and Herald Pub Assoc. p. 275. ISBN 978-0-8280-2547-8. Retrieved 23 March 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7074" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T00:29:35.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9431" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9438" CreationDate="2012-05-14T01:50:31.493" Score="6" ViewCount="2530" Body="&lt;p&gt;One tip that I heard as a young driver was something along the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Try to refuel in the early morning or in the evening as the denser gas&#xA;  will get you better fuel economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since then I have seen the same advice or question appear online from &lt;a href=&quot;http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061208112438AAf4N76&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;time&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/non_aviation/read.main/619333/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;time&lt;/a&gt;. As such, I have been wondering, does the time of day that you refuel have a meaningful (even if over the long run) impact on a vehicle's fuel economy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-14T13:44:01.143" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T19:50:35.013" Title="Does the time of day affect fuel economy?" Tags="|road-vehicles|fossil-fuel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9432" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-14T03:44:20.757" Score="12" ViewCount="37383" Body="&lt;p&gt;My guitar teacher once told me that leaving a magnet near a LCD screen will affect it. I was skeptical because I guess that he believes that because magnets can affect CRT screens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples of others making this claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=207276&quot;&gt;Bit-Tech Forum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sevenforums.com/sound-audio/131580-speakers-magnet-power-effect-lcd-monitor.html&quot;&gt;Windows Seven Forum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest that this may be true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6504" LastEditorUserId="7086" LastEditDate="2012-05-14T14:37:06.020" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T22:39:39.810" Title="Can magnets damage LCD screens?" Tags="|physics|electronics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9433" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9437" CreationDate="2012-05-14T06:00:39.943" Score="14" ViewCount="2403" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently watched a movie called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0326965/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;In My Sleep&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; where the character allegedly is able to drive and even have sex while he is &quot;sleepwalking.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Marcus struggles with parasomnia, a sleepwalking disorder that causes him to do things in his sleep that he cannot remember the next day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the movie, Marcus has a conversation with his doctor (or whatever he's called):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Marcus: What's a parasomniac?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Doctor: Someone who can do just about anything while they're sleeping.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Marcus: Drive a car?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Doctor: Yes.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Marcus: Make love?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Doctor: There are documented cases of that.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Marcus: Swim? Which is the one thing I &lt;em&gt;haven't&lt;/em&gt; done.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Doctor: I've never heard of anyone swimming while sleepwalking...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to do things such as this while sleepwalking? What all &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; a person do while sleepwalking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6597" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T15:15:18.810" Title="Is it possible to drive while sleepwalking?" Tags="|medical-science|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9432" CreationDate="2012-05-14T11:55:06.013" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Magnets affect electrons only &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=189387&quot;&gt;when they are moving&lt;/a&gt;. The force on an electron in a magnetic field is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=magnetic%20fields%20electron%20speed&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=6&amp;amp;ved=0CHkQFjAF&amp;amp;url=http://www.phy.syr.edu/courses/PHY222.07Spring/manuals/electronmotion.pdf&amp;amp;ei=Ar2xT9-UGq-fiAfKiJzuCA&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGJdShNOGkk-HyXb8Gitl2hqpTtCA&amp;amp;cad=rja&quot;&gt;proportional to its speed&lt;/a&gt;. If it is stationary, the force is zero. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_crystal_display&quot;&gt;LCD screens&lt;/a&gt; there are no moving electrons, except when the image changes, so there cannot be any effect with a steady display. Any effect during a moving display will be very small (because the electrons in and LCD cannot drift as they can in a CRT), and will disappear once the display is steady again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other problem with CRTs is that they can become permanently magnetised, and thus always affect electrons as they fly to the screen. That is why CRTs sometimes need to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.repairfaq.org/samnew/tvfaq/tvdegacrt.htm&quot;&gt;de-gaussed&lt;/a&gt;. In LCDs there is nothing to magnetise (and no flying electrons) so this effect is also negligible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I noticed that both your links point out that LCDs will &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; be affected by magnetic fields (actually the Win 7 link says that any effect is too minor to be visible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastEditorUserId="6710" LastEditDate="2012-05-15T02:41:08.323" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T02:41:08.323" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9436" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-14T12:50:00.103" Score="18" ViewCount="4587" Body="&lt;p&gt;I ran into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.com/news/2012/apr/17/gas-pods-save-money-maybe-planet/?print&quot;&gt;this claim&lt;/a&gt; today about detachable car fins, and was wondering if there is any validity to it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;about a five percent reduction in drag and corresponding five percent boost in fuel efficiency. One of the researchers was so excited by the results that he personally drove the report to Evans from L.A., and exclaimed that car companies “kill” for even just a two percent boost in efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will adding these objects to a car realize that large a drag/fuel savings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-14T14:28:24.743" LastActivityDate="2020-02-10T22:43:44.800" Title="Do gas pods improve fuel efficiency?" Tags="|road-vehicles|fuel-economy|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9433" CreationDate="2012-05-14T12:58:44.907" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is closer to your question: &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/03/14/what-drives-sleep-driving/&quot;&gt;What Drives Sleep-Driving?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The FDA has announced it will require makers of certain sleeping pills&#xA;  to warn consumers about serious side effects including allergic&#xA;  reactions and sleep-driving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Somnambulism (sleep-walking) incidents involving complex tasks like&#xA;  driving, preparing and eating food, and having sex while asleep, with&#xA;  no memory of the tasks when awakened, have made the news in recent&#xA;  years. Now the FDA wants consumers and doctors to have direct warnings&#xA;  on labels and in brochures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Z-drugs are a class of drugs called pyrazolopyrimidines, the&#xA;  best-known being zolpidem (Ambien), eszopiclone (Lunesta, Imovane),&#xA;  and zalepron (Sonata).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001811/&quot;&gt;Somnambulism&lt;/a&gt; reference.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Calling your health care provider&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  You probably won't need to visit your health care provider if you are&#xA;  sleepwalking.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  However, discuss the condition with your doctor if:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - You also have other symptoms&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Sleepwalking is frequent or persistent&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - You perform potentially dangerous activities (&lt;strong&gt;such as driving&lt;/strong&gt;) while&#xA;  sleepwalking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Older data.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sleepless-in-america/200812/can-people-drive-while-asleep&quot;&gt;Can people drive while asleep?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;sub&gt;from December 6, 2008 by John Cline&lt;/sub&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some sleep walkers have actually driven, sometimes for significant&#xA;  distances. This is a frightening possibility as sleep walkers can be&#xA;  injured while sleepwalking and most certainly can injure themselves or&#xA;  others while sleep driving. Amazingly sleep drivers have been able to&#xA;  get from one location to another without ever waking up. We do not&#xA;  know how many driving fatalities may have resulted from sleep driving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Cline is a clinical psychologist, Diplomate of the the American Board of Sleep Medicine, a fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and a clinical professor at Yale University.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I'd still like to see some more references tho...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2224" LastEditorUserId="2224" LastEditDate="2012-05-14T13:06:50.937" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T13:06:50.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9431" CreationDate="2012-05-14T13:04:16.500" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can expect a density change of 0.7 g/l/Degree:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FOw6A.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Density of fuels in g/l with respect to temperature; red curves represent the tolerance band for gasoline; blue curves represent the tolerance band for diesel fuel and the pink curve represents the density of pure ethanol&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.petrolplaza.com/technology/articles/MiZlbiYxMTA1NyYmMSYyJiY=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you consider a temperature span of 20 C during the day, your density variation will be near 15 g/l (or 2% = 15/700) ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two interesting related articles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/gastips.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;: Tips help consumers get the most from their gasoline dollar&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2007/aug/22/autos/hy-wheels22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LA Times&lt;/a&gt;: As temperatures rise in underground storage tanks, gasoline loses energy, but fuel prices don't flex to compensate consumers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1765" LastEditorUserId="1765" LastEditDate="2012-05-14T14:19:13.897" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T14:19:13.897" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9059" CreationDate="2012-05-14T17:32:31.550" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a thoughtful analysis in plain English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It concludes there are easily more grains of sand on the world’s beaches than there are stars in our (visible) Universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So by my rough estimate, there are easily more grains of sand on our planet’s beaches (by at least two, maybe three magnitudes) than there are stars in our known visible Universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cosmologyscience.com/cosblog/comparing-total-number-of-stars-with-grains-of-beach-sand/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stars or Sand? Are there more Grains of Beach Sand or Stars in our Visible Universe?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article has abundant references to the number of stars in our galaxy and the number of galaxies and it provides measurements of sand grains made with a precise instrument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7087" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-08-31T20:00:51.140" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T20:00:51.140" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9442" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-14T19:37:05.117" Score="5" ViewCount="579" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had Silicea capsules suggested by a pharmacist as a food supplement which is supposed to help maintain healthy hair. The product is manufactured by hübner, entitled &lt;em&gt;Original Silicea Capsules&lt;/em&gt;, the description says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;thicker hair&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;firmer skin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;stronger nails&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Silica, a natural elemental substance derived from quartz crystals, is everywhere in nature where strength, elasticity and flexibility are important. It is an essential trace element for all living beings, and is found in each cell of your body. Silica is important for thick and vigorous hair, beautiful and firm skin, and strong nails. After the age of 20, the body loses its ability to store silica. The human body cannot produce silica itself and it has to be supplemented through diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that silica actually makes hair thicker?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-14T20:27:36.647" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T20:27:36.647" Title="Do silicea capsules make hair thicker?" Tags="|natural-remedies|hair|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9431" CreationDate="2012-05-14T19:50:35.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Canada fuel prices are by law corrected for this effect. Here is what the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumerscouncil.com/index.cfm?PAGEPATH=&amp;amp;ID=13906#temperature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Consumers Council of Canada says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gasoline, like everything else, expands as it gets warmer and&#xA;  contracts as it gets colder.  Without temperature correction, a litre&#xA;  of gasoline on a warm day would contain less gasoline by weight than&#xA;  on a cold day.  Gasoline is sold by volume but what you are actually&#xA;  paying for is the energy to make your car go.  Temperature correction&#xA;  ensures that, regardless of temperature, you receive the same amount&#xA;  of energy for your purchase although the volume may differ.&#xA;  Measurement Canada, an agency of Industry Canada, regulates&#xA;  measurement of gasoline at the pump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T19:50:35.013" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1663" CreationDate="2012-05-14T21:32:20.830" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mensa.org.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=1016&amp;amp;u=pg_dtl_art_news&amp;amp;m=pg_hdr_art&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.mensa.org.uk/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=1016&amp;amp;u=pg_dtl_art_news&amp;amp;m=pg_hdr_art&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Mensa often gets enquiries as to which we have more of - left handed members or right handed members? And whether which hand you use is linked to IQ. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we recently began to collect statistics from new members. With the information collected so far 10.58% of new members are left handed and 89.42% are right handed. This appears to reflect estimates of the UK population as a whole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the data does not cover membership as a whole, and Mensa members do not represent everyone with a high IQ. However it seems that what hand you use does not necessarily correlate with IQ.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the creative part and the left-right brain, that's something that has already been discussed at skeptics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/58/left-brain-right-brain&quot;&gt;Do the Left Brain and Right Brain have different functions?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;I've heard that the left brain controls the logical aspects of the thought and right brain controls the creative. Is there any truth to such claims?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of Left Brain/Right Brain &quot;function&quot; has been interpreted as &quot;thought.&quot; Thought and function are not the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each hemisphere of the brain has specializations or function sets. Generally:&#xA;Right hemisphere: Processing of visual and audiological stimuli, spatial manipulation.&#xA;Left hemisphere: Linear reasoning and language functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... definite evidence for language lateralisation arose from studies in split brain patients. In these patients, the nerve fibres that connect the two hemispheres were severed in order to stop the spread of epileptic seizures from one hemisphere to the other ... studies of these split brain patients were carried out in the 1960s and 1970s by the Nobel Prize laureate Roger Sperry and his colleagues at the Californian Institute of Technology ... Sperry’s experiments yielded an amazing result: when split brain patients processed an object with their right hand, i.e. with their left hemisphere, they could easily name the object. In contrast, when an object was touched with the left hand, i.e. processed by the right hemisphere, they could not name it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole &quot;philosophy&quot; of Left Brain/Right Brain was pulled from this information, not from further research. In other words, it's made up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notion of different hemispheric thinking styles is based on an erroneous premise: each brain hemisphere is specialised and therefore each must function independently with a different thinking style. This connection is a bridge too far: it uses scientific findings regarding functional asymmetries for the processing of stimuli to create conceptions about hemispheric differences on a different level, such as a cognitive thinking style. Furthermore, there is no direct scientific evidence supporting the idea that different thinking styles lie within each hemisphere. Indeed, deriving different hemispheric thinking styles from functional asymmetries is quite a bold venture, which oversimplifies and misinterprets scientific findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above two quotes come from The left brain/ right brain myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a neurophysiologist, I suppose I ought to feel that progress has been made: in no other age could it have taken a mere twenty years to shift from a predominantly religious metaphor to a semi-scientific one. But the neurophysiologists and neuropsychologists who specialize in the human cerebral cortex are starting to view the left-righters with something of the wariness which the astronomers reserve for astrology.&quot; -William Calvin&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk/lh-info/myths.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.anythinglefthanded.co.uk/lh-info/myths.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Trivia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Officials in Mensa, the high IQ society believe as many as 20% of their members are left-handed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This fact, has been circulating through the net. I don't think it's true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also will leave this comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jeremypuma.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/the-left-brainright-brain-dichotomy-is-nonsense/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://jeremypuma.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/the-left-brainright-brain-dichotomy-is-nonsense/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;What we call “creativity” is so diverse that it can’t be localized in the brain very well. – Daniel Willingham, UVa&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7091" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T22:13:10.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9455" CreationDate="2012-05-14T22:59:28.030" Score="67" ViewCount="34164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this statistic reported on several sites (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/10.10/451.html&quot;&gt;Those Who Don't Build Must Burn&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://donmilleris.com/2012/04/03/want-to-do-meaningful-work-keep-reading-literally/&quot;&gt;Want To Do Meaningful Work? Keep Reading. Literally&lt;/a&gt;), along with a list of other startling numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;33% of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;42% of college graduates never read another book after college.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;80% of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;70% of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;57% of new books are not read to completion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Mental Floss article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/85938&quot;&gt;Who Reads Books?&lt;/a&gt; these numbers came from a 2003 survey conducted by an organization called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jenkinsgroupinc.com/index.php&quot;&gt;Jenkins Group&lt;/a&gt;.  That article mentions that they've been unable to uncover any explanation of the results, and I haven't been able to find the original survey myself.  (Do a search for some of the phrases in the bulleted list above and you'll see that the survey has been quoted so many times that it makes finding anything useful via a Google search very difficult.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own very biased and unscientific survey of &quot;a bunch of people that I know&quot; makes me skeptical of the reported figures.  My question has two parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has anyone verified (or debunked) the results of the original survey? (If anyone can even find it.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A lot has changed since 2003 (&lt;em&gt;Harry Potter&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Hunger Games&lt;/em&gt;, ebooks).  Have there been any more recent surveys that show a decline in the statistics reported by the Jenkins Group?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="892" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-15T22:58:25.033" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T02:16:01.273" Title="Do 33% of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives?" Tags="|united-states|education|books|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9420" CreationDate="2012-05-14T23:09:35.450" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Plants have evolved various defence mechanisms including antiseptic, antibiotic and antifungal components. Some of these are collected in so-called &quot;essential oils&quot; and these oils can certainly have an impact.  Perhaps the best known is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/113.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tea tree oil&lt;/a&gt;. Some essential oils are toxic in high concentrations and some others seem merely to smell nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for Thieves essential oil, which seems to be a mixture of Clove, Lemon, Cinnamon Bark, Eucalyptus and Rosemary, the commercial website points a single published study of this particular mixture, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10412905.1998.9700958&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in 1998 in the Journal of Essential Oil Research&lt;/a&gt; which does show some impact but does not seem to imply it is a cure-all.  There is rather more in other publications on the individual components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said in a comment, the Thieves website has a disclaimer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug&#xA;  Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat,&#xA;  cure, or prevent any disease&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which I think suggests that you should not rely too heavily on it preventing all forms of disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-05-14T23:09:35.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9451" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9460" CreationDate="2012-05-15T13:10:56.747" Score="13" ViewCount="7924" Body="&lt;p&gt;On films and TV you always see characters puncture a regular car tire with something like a folding knife or a swiss army knife. How hard would it be in real life to do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3112" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:27:59.533" LastActivityDate="2016-05-05T22:03:47.807" Title="Can you puncture a tire with a Swiss Army knife?" Tags="|road-vehicles|weapons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9454" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9481" CreationDate="2012-05-15T16:54:05.033" Score="10" ViewCount="16026" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is this claim that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_dress&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Academic Dress&lt;/a&gt; (shown below) is originally derived form &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avicenna&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Avicenna&lt;/a&gt;'s style of clothing. I wonder if it's true.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_it_true_that_graduation_dress_is_kind_of_dresses_Avicenna&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is a link to a sample of this claim&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AAcademic_dress#Insufficient_History_section&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Discussion on a Wikipedia talk page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mYgJC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Academic Dress&quot;&gt;  &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dphil_gown.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Academic dress (&lt;em&gt;above&lt;/em&gt;), Avicenna (&lt;em&gt;below&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QcwjE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Avicenna&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IbnSina-Dushanbe.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5706" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2018-08-09T13:16:35.497" LastActivityDate="2019-07-01T19:21:09.083" Title="Is the Western academic dress originally derived from Avicenna's style of clothing?" Tags="|history|education|clothing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9446" CreationDate="2012-05-15T18:05:55.567" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Brief summary for those who don't want to read the whole thing&lt;/strong&gt; - reading in the United States is in decline, but not to the extent suggested by the Jenkins Group survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll take each point from the question in turn and attempt to answer it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wasn't able to find the Jenkins Group survey referred to, however I found two useful reports by National Endowment for the Arts - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nea.gov/research/ToRead.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;To Read or Not To Read&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nea.gov/research/ReadingAtRisk.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reading At Risk&lt;/a&gt; and I'll mostly be using these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;33% of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;42% of college graduates never read another book after college&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading At Risk shows the rates of literature reading amongst high school and college graduates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/a3Nlr.png&quot; alt=&quot;Literary Reading by Education&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that respondents were asked if they had read any novels, short stories,&#xA;plays, or poetry in their leisure time (not for work or&#xA;school) during the previous 12 months. So &lt;strong&gt;this would appear to be a narrower question&lt;/strong&gt; than that asked by the Jenkins Group survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth noting that the more education you have received the &lt;strong&gt;more likely&lt;/strong&gt; you are to read literature, which is the opposite of what was claimed by the Jenkins Group survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;80% of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This graph from Reading At Risk shows that 56.6% of &lt;em&gt;individuals&lt;/em&gt; stated that they had read a book in the previous 12 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9ZBOp.png&quot; alt=&quot;Participation in Literary Activities&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If 56.6% of individuals have read a book, then I don't see how only 20% of households could have read a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;70% of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was unable to find much useful data on this point. Bookstores have been in decline and now account for less than half of book sales (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2011-02-10-1Abookstores10_CV_N.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Traditional bookstores accounted for less than half of the book market last year ... The majority of books were sold by a variety of other retailers including Amazon, Price Clubs, supermarkets and convenience stores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that book sales have been relatively flat (source - To Read or Not To Read), and I'm not convinced that it matters &lt;strong&gt;where&lt;/strong&gt; a book was bought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5f5zK.png&quot; alt=&quot;Unit Sales of Consumer Books&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;57% of new books are not read to completion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was unable to find any useful data on this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T18:05:55.567" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9456" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9458" CreationDate="2012-05-15T20:57:59.297" Score="4" ViewCount="762" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-natural-gas/reviews.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Honda touts great safety for their Civic CNG&lt;/a&gt;, but I have second thoughts concerning their fuel tank's safety in rear-end collisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked for some tests and data, but could not find anything specific.  I'd like to know before I buy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6868" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-15T22:38:00.020" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T01:10:23.403" Title="Does Honda Civic CNG fare well in crash safety tests as claimed by its manufacturer?" Tags="|road-vehicles|safety|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9457" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9459" CreationDate="2012-05-15T21:26:08.253" Score="-1" ViewCount="732" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm watching &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_perspective_is_everything.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; by Rory Suterland in which he claims at 6:15 that Eurostar could have implemented a WiFi network for £600, but instead choose to spend £6,000,000 decreasing the journey time by 40 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a substianted claim? This seems to be an awfully low amount to implement a working and usable Wi-Fi network for a tunnel spanning from London to Paris and then to Brussels that will work inside a train travelling through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6722" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-15T22:36:54.340" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T21:18:38.003" Title="Could Eurostar have implemented a Wifi network on their train for £600 (GBP)?" Tags="|economics|computers|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9456" CreationDate="2012-05-15T22:02:49.217" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Honda Civic 2012 performs well in crash tests:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iihs.org/ratings/ratingsbyseries.aspx?id=300&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IIHS&lt;/a&gt; rated it as &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; in all test areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.euroncap.com/results/honda/civic/2012/475.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Euro NCAP gave it 5 stars overall&lt;/a&gt; and rated specific areas as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adult occupant - 94%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Child occupant - 83%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pedestrian - 69%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Safety assist - 86%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SbCsQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Crash Test&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the safety of Compressed Natural Gas fuel tanks, these are tested using Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhtsa.gov/DOT/NHTSA/Vehicle%20Safety/Test%20Procedures/Associated%20Files/TP304-03.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FMVSS 304&lt;/a&gt;. The tests involve the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A. Pressure Cycling Test&lt;/strong&gt; to evaluate a container's durability by requiring a container to withstand, without any leakage, 18,000 cycles of pressurization and depressurization (based on 15 years of service with 4 refuelings per day, 300 days per year). This requirement helps to ensure that a CNG container is capable of sustaining the cycling loads imposed on the container during refuelings over its entire service life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;B. Burst Test&lt;/strong&gt; to evaluate a container's initial strength and resistance to degradation over time. This requirement helps to ensure that a container's design and material are appropriately strong over the container's life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;C. Bonfire Test&lt;/strong&gt; to evaluate a container's pressure relief characteristics when pressure builds in a container, primarily due to temperature rise.&#xA;The Bonfire Test is designed to demonstrate that CNG fuel containers, complete with the fire protection system (container valve, pressure relief devices and/or integral thermal insulation) specified in the design, will prevent the rupture of the container when tested under the specified fire conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T01:10:23.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9457" CreationDate="2012-05-15T22:15:00.737" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It certainly sounds as if he says &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Six million pounds to reduce the journey time between Paris and London by about 40 minutes. For 0.01% of this money you could have put Wi-Fi on the trains&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that was not the cost of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (now called &lt;em&gt;High Speed 1&lt;/em&gt;).  That cost has been estimated at almost £6 &lt;em&gt;billion&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/highspeedone/&quot;&gt;reported here&lt;/a&gt; as £5 billion for the link and £800 million for the revamped station at St Pancras in London.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea what the cost of Wi-Fi on the trains would have been, but £600,000 (about US$1 million) seems more plausible than £600. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-05-15T22:15:00.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9451" CreationDate="2012-05-15T23:44:45.197" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/xccLyHSYRqA?t=1m17s&quot;&gt;This video advert&lt;/a&gt; shows a man easily puncturing and cutting a tire with a pocket knife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJBCpUDrqvA#t=231s&quot;&gt;This Mythbusters episode&lt;/a&gt; shows a snippet of Adam Savage puncturing a tire with a knife in the first 30 seconds. [Hat-tip: @ratchetfreak]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-18T19:55:06.697" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T19:55:06.697" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9463" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9468" CreationDate="2012-05-16T07:05:30.493" Score="3" ViewCount="3425" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/diets-every-decade&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Oz's Tangerine Weight-Orade&lt;/a&gt; recipe, it is claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For a powerful metabolism-boosting drink, try Dr. Oz’s Tangerine Weight-Orade. It contains: &lt;strong&gt;green tea, shown to boost metabolism 12% by drinking just one cup&lt;/strong&gt;; tangerine, with a chemical composition that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any scientific studies showing that drinking green tea boosts your metabolism in any measurable way? Is this due to the caffeine content, or is there another mechanism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-16T07:17:09.653" LastActivityDate="2012-05-18T13:10:04.720" Title="Does drinking one cup of green tea boost your metabolism by 12%?" Tags="|nutritional-supplements|mehmet-oz|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="155" CreationDate="2012-05-16T09:35:09.353" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Unlimited&quot; and &quot;free&quot; are two absolutes that, in this case, mean infinite energy with 0 cost. Obviously this is not possible according to present human knowledge. However, as correctly mentioned by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/4701/keith-thompson&quot;&gt;Keith Thompson&lt;/a&gt;, solar power is a good approximation of &quot;unlimited free energy&quot;. If proven true, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hyperion-ecat.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;E-Cat&lt;/a&gt; technology, (claimed to be) based on a low energy nuclear reaction, could be another low cost/almost limitless energy source. Quoting the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The device was meant to take energy from the reaction between nickel and hydrogen and use that energy to create heat. The reaction would also produce a small amount of copper which would need to be taken out every once in a while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's wait and see, even though what the scientific community has seen until now is too much marketing and too little science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7121" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T09:35:09.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9466" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9467" CreationDate="2012-05-16T11:07:50.300" Score="8" ViewCount="2738" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have TV commercials in Israel right now of a new invention that is also planned, from what I read, to be marketed worldwide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a bracelet that according to the company protects you from electromagnetic radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://bioguardx.com/content/about-sr18&quot;&gt;company website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The SR18 formula, inserted into the silicone BioGuard X bracelets, is&#xA;  unobtrusive and is designed to help the body's cells, without any&#xA;  direct physical contact, by transmitting signals to the cells. This&#xA;  process is designed to assist various elements contributing to the&#xA;  cells' activity in stress situations, such as the exposure to&#xA;  electromagnetic radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's originally in Hebrew so I put it in &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;sl=auto&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;twu=1&amp;amp;u=http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4222823,00.html&quot;&gt;Google translate&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The translation at the beginning is pretty bad so I'd suggest skipping to the part &quot;How to prove the defense capability of the material that you developed?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some more info about its function from the official website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The formula prevented the phosphorylation of the protein in the cells, a phenomenon caused by the negative response of exposure to&#xA;  electromagnetic radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Reinforced activity of the EGF, which is an essential factor that strengthens the cell's ability to cope in stress situations (such as&#xA;  exposure to radiation).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Despite the stress caused to the cells as a result of exposure to electromagnetic radiation, the formula balanced the P53 protein level,&#xA;  the cell's regulator and cell balance supervisor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The formula has been tested in laboratories on sperm cells, which are recognized as defenseless cells.  This test, which is customary&#xA;  for toxicity testing, showed that after six hours not only had the&#xA;  material not had any affect on the cells, it actually increased their&#xA;  motility.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is this really possible: a bracelet that lessens the effects of electromagnetic&#xA;radiation, all from the outside of your body?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to get to the whole &quot;does radiation have any effects?&quot;, we all know that's a hot topic, but I want to focus on whether its even possible for such a bracelet to have any effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7123" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-17T02:11:51.190" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T04:35:57.260" Title="Can the Bioguard X bracelet protect the body from radiation?" Tags="|consumer-products|radiation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9466" CreationDate="2012-05-16T12:40:42.887" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &amp;quot;Bioguard X&amp;quot; bracelet is a hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Ministry of Health Israel has issued a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.gov.il/NewsAndEvents/SpokemanMesseges/Pages/16052012_1.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;statement&lt;/a&gt; (translated from Hebrew) saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Ministry of Health would like to inform the public that after inspecting the information about the Bioguard X bracelet as claimed by the manufacturer, no evidence was found for any health benefit of the product. The bracelet doesn't meet the accepted standards for proving efficicacy and was not studied in a clinical study as commonly practiced when testing a product that alleges to have influence on health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The marketing approval refers only to safety and contains a directive to not attribute health properties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to point out that the Ministry is in contact with the Authority of Consumer Protection to check the claims regarding the product and continuation of its advertising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tapuz.co.il/blog/net/ViewEntry.aspx?EntryId=2311805&amp;amp;skip=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Israeli blog&lt;/a&gt; already analyzed the &amp;quot;research&amp;quot; behind the bracelet and came to the following conclusions: (Translated from Hebrew)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no problem if people want to believe in energetic halos and to pay for it with their hard earned money, but once it's sold as the product of a scientific development it starts to be problematic. I've gathered some claims from the product's site, from an interview at the news site Ynet and from the promotional video and we shall go over them together and see why the product is problematic. &lt;strong&gt;Take notice: all the research that they provide is provided in the company's format, meaning they were not published in scientific peer reviewed publications&lt;/strong&gt;. But lets ignore that and address them as they appear [in the product's site]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The critique on each of their pieces of &amp;quot;research&amp;quot; in short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research number 1:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't provide proof for its underlining assumptions, and similar results can be gained by many toxins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research number 2:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't have a control group, and the cells experimented on that are suppose to simulate cancer cells are not cancer cells at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research number 3:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't have a control group, or a positive control groups, lacks control groups for each possible factor in that test. &lt;strong&gt;The test have been done only on cell cultures and never on whole biological systems (live animals) which is a must with a product like this.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research number 4:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some unexplained reason done on sperm cells and shows to improve mobility, but lacks statistical analysis to show that it isn't a statistical error. Toxicity tests were never done on animals: what happens if the bracelet breaks and the SR-18 leaks out and comes in contact with the skin? What happens if a child bites the bracelet and swallowed the SR-18? All formulas, especially new formulas have to be tested on animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research number 5:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same as number 2 and 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research number 6:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zal_tt0Esj4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;promotional video&lt;/a&gt; they show a person tested by a BIM device, which tests for electrical conductivity in the skin. It's unclear how a result from that device indicates anything about the harms of radiation. In the video the man wears the bracelet in the same hand he is holding the phone, while the product claims to protect the whole body, what will happen if they put the phone in the other hand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the time of the effect is puzzling. The effect seems to be immediate, but all the experiments mentioned a time of minutes to hours, while in the video is affect takes place in seconds. Also, why didn't they show the results of that test with all their other tests. And why didn't they do an experiment with a placebo control where a person is given a bracelet with no active substance inside?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research number 7:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4222823,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article in Ynet&lt;/a&gt; is claimed that a clinical trial was made with 35 people that wore the bracelet for 2 month and with 85% of them there was a rise in the Endoxins levels but they didn't publish the results of this experiment as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the problem with the &amp;quot;scientific background&amp;quot; of that product, the site publishes a list of its advisory board consisting of five researchers and doctors. I've contacted three of them, of which one, Dr Ehud Neeman, gave me the following reply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/s17Ui.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tlbyp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole conversation can be viewed &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9m1Lu.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (I've blacked out my email address)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T02:09:20.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9463" CreationDate="2012-05-16T12:50:29.430" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if there have been any clinical trials on the particular product that Dr. Oz is promoting, but there have been several studies published in peer-reviewed journals on the effects of green tea on metabolism and weight loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2008 study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/content/87/3/778.abstract&quot;&gt;Green tea extract ingestion, fat oxidation, and glucose tolerance in healthy humans&lt;/a&gt; found that &quot;average fat oxidation rates were 17% higher after ingestion of green tea extract than after ingestion of placebo.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2009 &lt;a href=&quot;http://jn.nutrition.org/content/139/2/264.abstract&quot;&gt;Green Tea Catechin Consumption Enhances Exercise-Induced Abdominal Fat Loss in Overweight and Obese Adults&lt;/a&gt; studied the effects of green tea catechin &quot;on body composition and fat distribution in overweight and obese adults during exercise-induced weight loss.&quot;  The study found that green tea enhances exercise-induced abdominal fat loss.  (Note that the placebo used in this study was caffeine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2010 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jacn.org/content/29/1/31.long&quot;&gt;Green Tea Supplementation Affects Body Weight, Lipids, and Lipid Peroxidation in Obese Subjects with Metabolic Syndrome&lt;/a&gt; showed that green tea caused a significant decrease in body weight, body mass index, and cholesterol levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/450271-does-green-tea-speed-up-your-metabolism/&quot;&gt;Does Green Tea Speed Up Your Metabolism?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="892" LastActivityDate="2012-05-16T12:50:29.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8033" CreationDate="2012-05-16T13:53:53.780" Score="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Were children safer in the good old days?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have four definition problems here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What age are included when talking about &amp;quot;children&amp;quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What risks are included and excluded in &amp;quot;safe&amp;quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When were the &amp;quot;good old days&amp;quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What geographic regions are included? Just the US? UK? Western-style cultures? The globe?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Interpretation #1: Children under 5 years, all mortality risks, 50 years ago, western countries.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the answer is provided by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.au/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&amp;amp;met_y=sh_dyn_mort&amp;amp;idim=country:GBR&amp;amp;dl=en&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;q=child+mortality+uk#!ctype=l&amp;amp;strail=false&amp;amp;bcs=d&amp;amp;nselm=h&amp;amp;met_y=sh_dyn_mort&amp;amp;scale_y=lin&amp;amp;ind_y=false&amp;amp;rdim=region&amp;amp;idim=country:GBR:USA:AUS&amp;amp;ifdim=region&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;dl=en&amp;amp;ind=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;World Bank data, extracted by Google&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/N8eGM.png&quot; alt=&quot;Graph of Declining Infant mortality&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I chose USA and UK, because the claims were from there, plus Australia, because that's where I am based, and to show the trends aren't limited.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Broad summary: &lt;strong&gt;Infant mortality has decreased greatly in the past 50 years.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But perhaps they didn't mean to include the fact we have vaccinations and other health improvements, and meant to talk about violent crime?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Intepretation #2: Youths 12-17, victims of violent crime, 30 years ago, USA.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/phenviro6.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ChildStats.gov&lt;/a&gt; has the data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/e0A5U.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Graph of Declining Violent Crime Youth Victims&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Broad summary: &lt;strong&gt;Youths are less likely to be victims of violent crime.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, no, maybe they meant to include all the risks of car-accidents and injuries playing sport?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Intepretation #3: Aged 1-4 and 5-14, deaths due to injury, 30 years ago, USA.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/phenviro6.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ChildStats.gov&lt;/a&gt; has the data (with a warning to treat the 2008/09 figures as preliminary):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/587Ta.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Graph of declining death-by-injury rates in young US children&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Broad summary: &lt;strong&gt;Children younger than 15 are less likely to die of injuries.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Interpretation #4: Any ages, kidnapping, &amp;gt;15 years ago, USA.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about kidnapping?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to give a detailed answer here, as it was only recently (e.g. since 1997) that &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/2000_6_2/contents.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;kidnapping has been tracked&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until recently, the nature and scope of the problem have been unclear because existing crime data collection systems—such as the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system and OJJDP's National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Thrownaway Children—do not collect law enforcement data on kidnaping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, that is about to change. In partnership with the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the FBI is supplanting the UCR with the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). This will enhance our understanding of youth abduction and create a comprehensive picture of kidnaping offenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncjrs.gov/html/ojjdp/2000_6_2/page2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;kidnapping is very rare&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Data indicate that kidnaping of juveniles is a relatively rare crime in NIBRS jurisdictions. It constitutes only one-tenth of 1 percent of all the crimes against individuals, 1 percent of all crimes against juveniles, and 1.5 percent of all violent crimes against juveniles recorded in the database. Kidnaping is dwarfed by the much more common crimes of simple and aggravated assault, larceny, and sex offenses, which make up most of the crimes against juveniles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kidnapping by a stranger (presumably the relevant subset) is rarer still (a little over a quarter of the offenders, according to the same source).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When we talk about dangers being faced by children, being kidnapped by strangers on the street doesn't contribute much to a child's overall risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Intepretation #5: Various ages, child abuse, 15 years ago, USA.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where the picture gets less rosy. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.childhelp.org/pages/statistics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Child Help&lt;/a&gt;, deaths due to child-abuse have been on the rise recently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GAbsB.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Graph of child abuse increase&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: The y-axis on the graph does not extend to zero, which serves to exaggerate the rise for people unfamiliar with the technique. Also, these are absolute figures, not per capita figures, so the growth should be tempered by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;approximately 10% population increase&lt;/a&gt; over that period.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Child abuse includes a number of sub-categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jSwtv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Pie-chart showing different types of child abuse&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without wishing to dismiss the seriousness of this issue, this problem does not seem to fall into the type of issues that the original claims expressed concern about - the dangers of letting their children play on the street.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without clearer definitions, it is impossible to give a precise answer, but it seems under a number of different measures, &lt;strong&gt;these&lt;/strong&gt; are the good days when it comes to child safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T23:08:14.977" CommentCount="30" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9470" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9474" CreationDate="2012-05-16T15:37:41.823" Score="7" ViewCount="4937" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several claims that sexual orgasm is good for preventing breast cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Example of claim for Women: &lt;a href=&quot;http://happynewstime.com/?p=1595&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Happy News Time&lt;/a&gt; Blog:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Able to reach orgasm is not just make a woman feel satisfied, but it also makes staying healthy breasts.&lt;sup&gt;[sic]&lt;/sup&gt; Studies show that hormones released during orgasm a woman can lower the risk of breast cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Example of claim for Men: &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/964086.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC News&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers in Greece compared the lifestyles of 23 men with breast cancer with 76 healthy men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found that men who had fewer than six orgasms per month were significantly more likely to develop breast cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7090" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2022-09-11T23:38:19.887" Title="Can orgasm help prevent breast cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|sexuality|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9471" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-16T15:49:18.717" Score="4" ViewCount="1108" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it more dangerous to be in a passenger car with compressed natural gas than with a petrol fuel tank when it comes to rear-end collisions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://EzineArticles.com/6501949&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lawrence Godwin, on eZine&lt;/a&gt; claims there is a explosion risk with CNG vehicles, although suggests that they are overall safer than petrol vehicles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A NG cars' fuel tank is usually located in the vehicle's trunk area, which reduces the space available for other uses, especially for long distance trips. There is also the danger of explosions during rear end collisions. Overall, CNG vehicles are considered to be safer than gasoline powered vehicles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further Info:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cleanvehicle.org/committee/technical/PDFs/Web-TC-TechBul2-Safety.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clean Vehicle Education Foundation&lt;/a&gt; don't address the rear-end risks, but suggest that, overall, CNG is safer than petrol.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://cuttingthroughthefog.blogspot.com/2008/09/compressed-natural-gas-cng.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cutting Through the Fog&lt;/a&gt; blog speculates that a ruptured CNG tank is safer than a ruptured petrol tank.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6868" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-17T02:30:16.380" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T02:30:16.380" Title="Are rear-end collisions more dangerous in Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) than Petrol cars?" Tags="|road-vehicles|safety|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9470" CreationDate="2012-05-16T17:58:46.970" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The hormone claim means that there could be a causal link.  However, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306453000000536&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;these hormones&lt;/a&gt; (oxytocin and prolactin) are released during breastfeeding and other normal activities.  These hormones are therefore released during the course of other activities, and isolating their potential effects to just orgasm is tricky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One population to examine are nulliparous (never had a child) women and men, as these groups won't be lactating; however, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030100820900046X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;oxytocin is also associated with social behaviors and is known as the 'love hormone'&lt;/a&gt;, so again, isolating orgasm as a sole producer of sufficient oxytocin to reduce breast cancer risk is difficult.  It may also be that all the social activity leading up to and after orgasm also causes oxytocin release, in which case orgasm may not be the sole cause of any risk reduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://edrv.endojournals.org/content/19/3/225&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prolactin is also a hormone that does more than just orgasm response&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;more than 300 separate actions of PRL have been reported in various vertebrates, including effects on water and salt balance, growth and development, endocrinology and metabolism, brain and behavior, reproduction, and immune regulation and protection&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199401133300201&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a slight reduction in risk associated with breast feeding&lt;/a&gt; (again, relevant because these are the same hormones):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After adjustment for parity, age at first delivery, and other risk factors for breast cancer, lactation was associated with a slight reduction in the risk of breast cancer among premenopausal women, as compared with the risk among women who were parous but had never lactated (relative risk, 0.78; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.66 to 0.91); the relative risk of breast cancer among postmenopausal women who had lactated, as compared with those who had not, was 1.04 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.95 to 1.14). With an increasing cumulative duration of lactation, there was a decreasing risk of breast cancer among premenopausal women (P for trend &amp;lt;0.001) but not among postmenopausal, parous women (P for trend = 0.51). A younger age at first lactation was significantly associated with a reduction in the risk of premenopausal breast cancer (P for trend = 0.003). As compared with parous women who did not lactate, the relative risk of breast cancer among women who first lactated at less than 20 years of age and breast-fed their infants for a total of six months was 0.54 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.36 to 0.82).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are some of the same hormones released during orgasm; as such, these hormones might cause a risk reduction.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00668213&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A causal link was hypothesized in 1995&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sexual activity in nulliparous women also protects and OT levels have been shown to rise with orgasm in women and in men. OT systems in the brain are intricately linked to oestrogen and progesterone levels, and it is possible that these hormones may modify the OT secretory response both centrally and through an effect on the sensitivity of the breast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, most searches for breast cancer and orgasm relates to the sexual activity of survivors, rather than the possible preventative technique of frequent orgasm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;: There may be a link, even a causal link, but the effect appears to be pretty slight, and difficult to isolate relative to the other producers of the hormone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2158" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-09-11T23:38:19.887" LastActivityDate="2022-09-11T23:38:19.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9476" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-17T02:42:58.017" Score="12" ViewCount="447" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Your Baby's First Year&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Academy_of_Pediatrics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the American Academy of Pediatrics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;, in a chapter about very young babies, includes the following paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to handle crying is to respond promptly to your infant whenever he cries during his first few months. You cannot spoil a young baby by giving him attention; and if you answer his calls for help, he'll cry less overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder what evidence there is for &amp;quot;You cannot spoil a young baby by giving him attention&amp;quot;. Was there, perhaps, a longitudinal study done of children who were paid less and more attention, and how spoiled they were — which I take to mean how much attention they demanded — when they were older? Is the claim pure conjecture on the AAP's part? Or what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt; It's actually edited by one Steven P. Shelov, but has the imprimatur of the AAP. The edition I'm quoting from is the June 1998 Bantam edition, ISBN 0-553-57904-5, and the quotation is from page 52.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2916" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T08:57:14.237" Title="Can't spoil a young baby with attention?" Tags="|psychology|children|parenting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9477" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-17T02:50:35.793" Score="26" ViewCount="78223" Body="&lt;p&gt;My (Asian) parents keep on telling me to take my socks off whenever it's summer because they think that the feet need &quot;fresh air&quot; and that they need to breathe and that keeping them in socks all the time prevents them from breathing. They also think that wearing socks can contribute to foot fungus when it's warm. And they say that the &quot;damage&quot; will just &quot;accumulate&quot; over time, whatever &quot;damage&quot; that wearing socks most of the time actually causes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also tell me to at least take my socks off when I sleep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm somewhat more sensitive to cold than most people, so at any given temperature I generally dress in more layers than most people. I also live in Seattle so it almost never gets to temperatures warm enough for me to take my socks off. Frankly, it's a matter of personal preference, and they shouldn't interfere with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to finally convince them that what they say is pseudoscience, but frankly nothing I look for will convince them, unless someone can finally authoritatively address the question for once and for here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="727" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:32:13.473" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:32:13.473" Title="Is wearing socks all the time bad for your feet?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9477" CreationDate="2012-05-17T15:31:26.790" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wearing socks can be bad for your feet if they become damp because they can keep that moisture surrounding your foot for prolonged periods, this is fairly common among soldiers. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bordeninstitute.army.mil/published_volumes/dermatology/Ch4.pdf&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; pdf outlines various ailments caused by prolonged exposure to wet conditions at varying temperatures. It also links to two studies performed on soldiers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A convincing controlled study along these lines&#xA;  was conducted by Maj. (later Lt. Col.) Laurence&#xA;  Irving, Chief, Physiology Section, Headquarters,&#xA;  Eglin Field, Fla. Sandals were issued to approximately&#xA;  1,000 men, who were permitted to wear&#xA;  them on the post as much as they wished; most of&#xA;  them practically gave up wearing shoes. A similar&#xA;  number of men wore shoes as usual. Within a&#xA;  month, &lt;strong&gt;the proportion of severe dermatophytoses&#xA;  in men wearing sandals fell from 30 to 3 percent&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;  while in the control group, the disease remained as&#xA;  troublesome as usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A similar study was conducted in New Guinea,&#xA;  while the 43d Infantry Division was in a rest area.&#xA;  Some 300 men with unclassified skin diseases, many&#xA;  of whom undoubtedly had dermatophytosis of the&#xA;  feet, were kept on the beach for 4 hours daily,&#xA;  without clothing or shoes. They bathed, exercised,&#xA;  or just lay in the sun as they wished. Within a&#xA;  month, the majority of infections had cleared without&#xA;  any other treatment.5(pp602–603)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;emphasis mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Athletes foot is a more common problem for a civilian which &lt;a href=&quot;http://nursing.advanceweb.com/sharedresources/Downloads/2009/050409/N5030209_p27PatHandout.pdf&quot;&gt;is also caused&lt;/a&gt; by your feet being Damp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these conditions can be avoided by properly caring for your feet and keeping them clean and dry, as both sources state. If you use clean socks, and wash your feet regularly and let them dry before putting on socks, its unlikely you will experience any problems, taking off your socks sometimes will allow your feet to dry naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6876" LastActivityDate="2012-05-17T15:31:26.790" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9454" CreationDate="2012-05-17T17:16:28.857" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;strong&gt;this is false&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's analyze this by looking at the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In order for this to be true, Avicenna would have to have a distinctive form of dress different from other people of the time. While this image does appear to show him in a two-layered robe and an unusual hat, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.ca/search?tbm=isch&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;source=hp&amp;amp;biw=1513&amp;amp;bih=888&amp;amp;q=avicenna&amp;amp;gbv=2&amp;amp;oq=avicenna&amp;amp;aq=f&amp;amp;aqi=g10&amp;amp;aql=&amp;amp;gs_l=img.3..0l10.1223.2789.0.4400.8.8.0.0.0.0.120.922.0j8.8.0...0.0.PAfkXNFl7e8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;other images of him&lt;/a&gt; show him in a much more standard robe and turban. Even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fouman.com/history/img/Tajikistan_Avicenna_Statue.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;other images of the same statue&lt;/a&gt; show that the hat looks much more like a turban. So &lt;strong&gt;Avicenna's dress wasn't noticeably different from other people, and his preferred headgear was a turban&lt;/strong&gt;. Turbans were not used in either academic dress or medieval Christian religious dress.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is universally agreed that modern academic dress derives from Western everyday university dress, which in turn is related to clerical dress&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_dress&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jefferson.edu/university/academic-affairs/tju/academic-services/commencement/registrar/history/regalia.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://time.com/4767679/college-graduate-cap-gown-commencement/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://fashion-history.lovetoknow.com/clothing-types-styles/academic-dress&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[4]&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academicapparel.com/caps/Early-Academic-Dress.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[5]&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ox.ac.uk/news-and-events/The-University-Year/Encaenia/academic-dress&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[6]&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://visual.ly/community/infographic/history/history-academic-regalia-timeline&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[7]&lt;/a&gt;. The history of clerical and university garb does back at least to medieval times, probably to around the time of Avicenna. So for the Avicenna theory to be true, it would have to be true that medieval Christian religious dress was derived from the dress of a contemporary Islamic philosopher. This would seem to be extremely unlikely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There appears to be no evidence whatsoever for the connection to Avicenna, simply unsupported claims.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2018-08-09T13:19:01.697" LastActivityDate="2018-08-09T13:19:01.697" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9484" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-17T18:17:35.457" Score="6" ViewCount="12726" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the name of the Prophet &lt;code&gt;Muhammad&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;Ahmad&lt;/code&gt; mentioned in the Bible? Does Jesus predict the coming of &lt;code&gt;Muhammad&lt;/code&gt; in the Bible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm3sZfPwv1g&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWHauK5KyjE&amp;amp;feature=related&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;part 2&lt;/a&gt;) is an example of this claim. Here is a quote of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irf.net/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=205&amp;amp;Itemid=101&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;similar claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is mentioned by name in the Song of Solomon chapter 5 verse 16:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hikko Mamittakim we kullo Muhammadim Zehdoodeh WA Zehraee Bayna Jerusalem.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Translation:&quot;His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is Mohammad. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the Hebrew language im is added for respect. Similarly im is added after the name of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) to make it Muhammadim. In English translation they have even translated the name of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as &quot;altogether lovely&quot;, but in the Old Testament in Hebrew, the name of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is yet present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6416" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:12:31.200" LastActivityDate="2023-11-30T11:38:38.590" Title="Is the name of Prophet Muhammad mentioned in the Bible?" Tags="|history|islam|bible|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9484" CreationDate="2012-05-17T20:43:55.320" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This claim is false.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a simple matter to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/&quot;&gt;search the entire contents of the Bible&lt;/a&gt;. Doing so will reveal no occurrences of the words &lt;em&gt;Muhammad&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Ahmad&lt;/em&gt; or any of their spelling variants. Anyone even slightly familiar with the New Testament will know that there is no passage in which Jesus predicts Muhammad or anyone who remotely resembles him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The videos appear to be referring to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Barnabas&quot;&gt;Gospel of Barnabas&lt;/a&gt;. The Gospel of Barnabas  has never been part of the Christian Bible. It contradicts all of the early Christian documents in many ways, follows a remarkably Islamic point of view, and includes a passage in which Jesus predicts Muhammad. No manuscripts of this gospel, or any indication of its contents, exist from before the 16th Century. (There are mentions of &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; Gospel of Barnabas from the 6th Century - still much later then the canonical gospels -  but we have no way of knowing if this is the same document.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a claim that an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christianpost.com/news/turkeys-1500-year-old-28m-bible-linked-to-gospel-of-barnabas-70148/&quot;&gt;allegedly ancient book found recently in Turkey&lt;/a&gt; contains the Gospel of Barnabas. However nobody has been able to analyse this book, either to prove its age or to see if it really does contain a copy of the Gospel of Barnabas. Even if both of these turned out to be true, it would not make the Gospel of Barnabas a part of &quot;The Bible&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:The bit about the Song of Solomon was added to the question after I wrote this. Please see Caleb's answer to that, and vote it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2016-02-19T21:58:33.010" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T21:58:33.010" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9488" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-18T03:38:27.747" Score="20" ViewCount="9685" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone sent me the following claim: a US Army person who had met with President Obama had suggested that he was wearing his American Flag lapel pin upside down. Obama had the woman removed from her assignment and demoted because she had corrected the President.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.military.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/409192893/m/7210013982001&quot;&gt;Example of the claim&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few weeks ago a young female Marine Staff Sergeant (one of very few chosen for this post) was serving with HMX-1, the Presidential Helicopter Squadron. She had just finished her tour as a Drill Instructor and is/was obviously a squared away Marine that was on a fast track and who planned on making the Marine Corps her career. I am assuming that she excelled on the Drill Field which landed her the &quot;choice&quot; assignment with HMX-1. A few weeks ago she was assigned to the flight crew and after giving our illustrious President her best &quot;Main Gater&quot; hand salute, she respectfully advised the President that the American flag pin on his lapel was on upside down, you got to remember this young lady has been around for a while and had just finished her tour as a Drill Instructor, I have no doubt that she advised him in the proper way....do you?? Anyway, President Obama relieved her on the spot. Apparently he doesn't like being told that he doing something wrong, especially by lowly military personnel...WTF. That man just ruined a young lady's career when all she was trying to do was prevent him from being embarrassed....what a gem. This info comes from a very,very reliable source who has the &quot;inside&quot; scoop on the Marine Detachment at HMX-1. Is he really the best man for &quot;Commander in Chief&quot;????? What a joke. I am sure other Marines will be &quot;lining up&quot; for that assignment now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this rumor true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7140" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-06-05T17:27:46.113" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T19:10:34.803" Title="Did Obama have a marine demoted for correcting him?" Tags="|united-states|politics|military|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9488" CreationDate="2012-05-18T10:07:42.487" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, let me clarify some distinctions; a Marine is certainly not a Soldier. Soldier is Army, Airman is Air Force, and a Sailor is Navy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, the story is false. As someone with an 'inside scoop', the President wouldn't (and cannot) 'relieve' an enlisted military personnel on the spot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest I could find to this &lt;strong&gt;story&lt;/strong&gt; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/03/marine-sergeant-critical-president-obama.html&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 26-year-old sergeant and Iraq veteran is in the process of being&#xA;  dismissed from the Marine Corps after making &quot;political statements&quot;&#xA;  about the commander-in-chief on Facebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Such comments are considered detrimental to &quot;good order and&#xA;  discipline&quot; under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is just that, enlisted personnel are under a contract with the government to serve the time period they signed for unless violating a Punitive Article of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, medical separation, or a few other special circumstances. And for every circumstance, there is a board of high-ranking, competent personnel who make the decision to separate an individual. If the President &lt;em&gt;had&lt;/em&gt; in fact said such a thing, it would be in direct violation of the Marine ethos of being able to correct anyone, regardless of rank (In the correct manner, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to chalk this up to President-bashing, which has been gaining increased momentum over the past decade. The likelihood that the President of the United States (who is ALWAYS shown in the world's eye) would wear the American Flag pin upside-down, which is disrespectful of our country in almost every way, is low. He has teams of people to look over his appearance before stepping out and into the public's view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anything like his had happened, it would be all over the military press (Yes, we have a press).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I have a few more references and points to make (For quality assurance, of course);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, on the &lt;strong&gt;unverified&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_discharge&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Below are some of the most common reasons for discharge:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Expiration of Term of Service (ETS)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Reaching the maximum age limit&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;High Year Tenure (reaching the maximum allowable time-in-grade, and not selected for promotion)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Disability, Dependency, or Hardship&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Pregnancy/Parenthood&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Personality Disorder&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Condition not a disability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Physical or Mental Conditions that interfere with military service resulting in being placed on the Temporary or Permanent &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Disability Retirement Lists&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Convenience of The Government/Secretarial Authority (voluntary redundancy due to funding cutbacks, for example)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Unsuitability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Misconduct - Minor Disciplinary Infractions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Misconduct - Drug Abuse with and without administrative review board&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Misconduct - Commission of a serious offense&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Entry-Level Performance and Conduct&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Resignation (available to officers only)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Reduction in Force (RIF)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;UnCharacterized if discharged within the first 180 days of service and no misconduct found in service members record&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Punitive Discharges - Bad Conduct Discharge issued by either Special Court Martial or General Court Martial only. Dishonorable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Discharge issued by a General Court Martial only&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all seems very vague, though what isn't covered here is likely covered underneath an Administrative Separation Board for review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, &lt;a href=&quot;http://usmilitary.about.com/od/justicelawlegislation/l/aadischarge2.htm&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; goes over the process pretty extensively, specifically&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once the commander receives the attachments from the respondent,&#xA;  he/she determines whether or not to proceed with the discharge&#xA;  proceedings. If the commander elects to proceed an administrative&#xA;  discharge board is convened (if required). If the board is not&#xA;  required, the commander forwards the package to the approval authority&#xA;  (usually the installation commander) for final approval or&#xA;  disapproval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The President would certainly have to go through the proper &lt;strong&gt;military&lt;/strong&gt; channels in order to separate a service member.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7145" LastEditorUserId="4082" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T05:43:43.940" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T05:43:43.940" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9498" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-18T16:54:30.673" Score="6" ViewCount="790" Body="&lt;p&gt;A highly publicized study in the news this week has been used in a slew of articles to suggest that drinking several cups of coffee a day will extend your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coffee, caffeinated or decaffeinated, may help extend the lives of people who drink it daily, a U.S. study found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Men who drank 2 to 3 cups a day had a 10 per cent chance of outliving those who drank no coffee, while women had a 13 per cent advantage, according to research published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1179816--coffee-may-help-you-live-longer-study-suggests&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Toronto Star&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this is a huge misinterpretation of the observational study (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1112010&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;N Engl J Med&lt;/a&gt;), which appears to have merely correlated self-proclaimed coffee drinkers with living longer. We know of course that correlation does not imply causation, and the relationship could be due to a number of things, such as the possible fact that coffee drinkers tend to wake up earlier and have more active days, which might improve their overall health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything in this or any other study to actually suggest a causal relationship between drinking coffee and living longer, or is this being blown out of proportion by popular media?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-20T07:01:46.140" Title="Does drinking coffee increase your chance of living longer?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|coffee|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9502" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-18T21:42:22.713" Score="3" ViewCount="677" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2/does-water-have-a-memory-as-claimed-in-homeopathy&quot;&gt;Does water have a memory as claimed in homeopathy?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently watched a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B-tRys7haI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;debate between Ben Goldacre and Peter Fischer&lt;/a&gt; on homeopathy. During the course of the debate, an audience member asked, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B-tRys7haI#t=1h11m25s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;If water has a memory, how come you're not sick every time you drink water out of the tap?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A homeopathic practitioner answered (paraphrased) that boiling the water resets the memory and that homeopathic remedies are only effective when using boiled water. He makes another comment implying that if a remedy were prepared with tap water, it wouldn't be effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize the above related question (&quot;Does water have a memory...?&quot;) is nearly identical. I'm trying to ask it another way as it's possible to persist with the water memory concept despite the other question's answer. One could simply say (my hypothetical response), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Well, we don't know &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; it works and perhaps it isn't by the known mechanism of how water behaves... but trials indicate &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; it works, nonetheless and that's all I need.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the audience member in the video indicated tangible predictions, I'm interested if they've ever been put to the test. Thus, my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has a trial ever been conducted in which homeopathic remedies prepared from both unboiled and boiled water were compared against one another in terms of patient response?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is another way to answer this question please go for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Even better, I would find it fascinating if a double blind trial used three groups:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Placebo/control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Homeopathic remedy prepared from boiled water&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Homeopathic remedy prepared from boiled water, then reboiled prior to giving to patient&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T15:26:48.863" Title="Will individuals respond differently to homeopathic remedies prepared with unboiled vs. boiled water?" Tags="|water|homeopathy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9506" CreationDate="2012-05-19T04:16:44.667" Score="9" ViewCount="53792" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title says it all. Here in the United States, especially the south, I've heard growing up never to hold a frog because it will pee on you and the pee causes warts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1283" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T15:58:30.043" Title="Can frog pee cause warts?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9504" CreationDate="2012-05-19T08:36:30.280" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;This urban legend has been debunked so often and so consistently on the Internet, it is almost redundant to repeat it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are just some of the sources - including many medical experts and frog experts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/stories/animalsnature/animal-myths-busted/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Geographic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Warts are caused by a human virus, not frogs or toads,&amp;quot; says dermatologist Jerry Litt. But the wartlike bumps behind a toad's ears can be dangerous. These parotoid glands contain a nasty poison that irritates the mouths of some predators and often the skin of humans. So toads may not cause warts, but they can cause other nasties. It's best not to handle these critters—warts and all!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://health.ninemsn.com.au/whatsgoodforyou/theshow/693981/does-touching-toads-gives-you-warts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NineMSN Health &amp;amp; Wellbeing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr Lee Grismer is a herpetologist from La Sierra University in Los Angeles in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Dr Grismer, the warts on toads are an accumulation of mucus glands and poison glands that are in the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;When the toad is alarmed or feels threatened it can actually produce a milky secretion that comes out of those glands,&amp;quot; he says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The toad we're most familiar with in Australia is the cane toad. Handle it roughly, and it's likely to react by excreting a bufo toxin — ingest this toxin and you'll set off a chain reaction which could include intense pain, seizures, cardiac collapse, even death. But there's one thing these fellas won't give you, and that's warts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://srel.uga.edu/ecoviews/ecoview051204.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Whit Gibbons&lt;/a&gt;, Herpetologist&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An old superstition has been that toads can give you warts (they do indeed have wart-like bumps on their bodies), but I have never seen any scientific evidence that it is true for toads or frogs. Until someone actually proves that it can happen (and no one ever has), let's assume it is not true. As far as a frog actually carrying a virus that causes warts, my dermatologist says she has never heard of that being a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jeff Beson M.D., &lt;a href=&quot;http://orient.bowdoin.edu/orient/article.php?date=2006-02-17&amp;amp;section=3&amp;amp;id=3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bowden Orient&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humans are the only known reservoir of HPV. No other animals, including toads, are known to carry or transmit the virus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://uhs.nd.edu/assets/9502/warts_08.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University Health Services, Notre Dame&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WARTS are NOT caused by touching a toad or frog!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-19T08:36:30.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9498" CreationDate="2012-05-19T12:26:24.340" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer - I claim no expertise what so ever in nutrition and health. Do not take my statement as fact, do your own research&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mainstream opinion seems to be that high intake of antioxidants are one big component for longevity. And coffee, according to some studies, is a powerful antioxidant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A thought experiment:&#xA;Two subjects 'A' and 'B'&#xA;Subject 'A' drinks no coffee.&#xA;Subject 'B' drinks 2 Cups a day. Plain black coffee from organic crops, no additives (E.g. Sugars, Spices, Milk...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EVERYTHING else EQUAL , it seems to me that subject 'B' statistically would outlive subject 'A'.&#xA;This would be based on the idea that antioxidant &quot;protects&quot; the body from so called &quot;free-radicals&quot;.&#xA;Additionally subject 'B' could have better health because of the additional hydration from the coffee. (This statement could potentially be wrong, the diuretic effects of coffee is debated. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fitsugar.com/Does-Coffee-Increase-Dehydration-8244174&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This blog post&lt;/a&gt; gives some information on the topic)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's some weak links in these arguments:&#xA;Coffee includes many other things then just antioxidants, these ingredients could possibly be harmful and thus invert the result, I.e subject 'A' outlives subject 'B'.&#xA;Subject 'B' might have genetic disadvantages/differences that makes &quot;normally non-harmful ingredients&quot; of coffee into something that the subject can't handle efficiently. Nutrition is a really hard topic and we do not understand it all yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the book &quot;The most effective ways to live longer&quot; (isbn-13: 978-1-59233-340-0);&#xA;&quot;Coffee Scored at the top of the heap in antioxidant capacity among alcohol, teas and coffee.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This statement is based on the study:&#xA;Pelligrini, N., M. Seafini, B. Colombi, et al. - Antioxidant capacity of plant foods, beverages and oils consumed in Italy assessed by three different assays. J Nutr 133 (September 2003): 2812-2819.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7158" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2012-05-19T15:41:38.413" LastActivityDate="2012-05-19T15:41:38.413" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9426" CreationDate="2012-05-21T00:11:40.293" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_combat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hundreds of historical accounts of this&lt;/a&gt;, though it obviously didn't happen universally across all cultures prior to a certain time. Some cultures used single combat to resolve disputes in place of a battle, but others used the single combat as a starting point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sometimes however, such single combat would merely initiate a battle rather than prevent it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sword, and later, pistol duelling was a natural evolution of this activity off the battlefield.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2012-05-21T03:22:20.637" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T03:22:20.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9519" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20757" CreationDate="2012-05-21T08:47:07.893" Score="7" ViewCount="4195" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard on the radio this morning that it's rumoured that Victoria Beckham is using a &quot;new&quot; treatment including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/weird-celeb-news/victoria-beckham-beauty-secrets-claim-842290&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sheep placenta&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 38-year-old is a regular at Beverly Hills dermatologist Dr Harold&#xA;  Lancer, who uses the treatment said to work because of the power of&#xA;  the beneficial sheep’s stem cells to regenerate skin cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr Lancer, whose offices are on world famous Rodeo Drive, ensures his&#xA;  sheep placentas come from prime New Zealand stock for the £320-a-time&#xA;  treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He said: “These sheep are completely untouched by the modern world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It is very important as they have no impurities in their system&#xA;  whatsoever. The stem cells we harvest are amniotic cells which means&#xA;  no harm is caused to the animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed on a quick research, this is not an entirely new treatment. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2010906/Dont-fancy-facelift-Try-sheep-placenta-treatment-tackle-wrinkles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's an article from the Daily Mail from a year ago on this very subject.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aesthetic surgeon Dr Roberto Viel uses the placentas for his Actistem treatment, which costs £600, takes 30 minutes and lasts for up to five months.&#xA;  He says Actistem works by stimulating your own collagen production from within by infusing your skin with a particular protein contained in the placenta. They are packed with stem cells, which replenish and rebuild other cells, and fibroblasts which build up collagen and elastin to make the skin firmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to me this seems like dodgy science, and unproven, and what articles I found in a search say things about stem cells in the placenta interfering with free radicals which sounds a bit like woo to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what I want to know, its there any proper evidence that such treatments work? Or any studies at all as to their efficacy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3606" LastEditorUserId="3606" LastEditDate="2012-05-22T09:16:53.223" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T05:38:22.557" Title="Does sheep placenta work as an anti-ageing agent?" Tags="|medical-science|beauty|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3506" CreationDate="2012-05-21T16:18:41.510" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://milano.repubblica.it/cronaca/2012/05/21/news/lega-35631664/?ref=HRER3-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Repubblica&lt;/a&gt;, it just happened for the mayor of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meda,_Lombardy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Meda&lt;/a&gt; (MB, Italy), won by 3867 vs. 3866.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dB7sz.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comune.meda.mi.it/news/59/238/1901/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4350" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-21T16:30:30.270" LastActivityDate="2012-05-21T16:30:30.270" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9522" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-22T03:27:29.743" Score="44" ViewCount="6210" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was sent an email with a copied/pasted version of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/035789_Fukushima_Cesium-137_Plume-Gate.html&quot;&gt;this NaturalNews article&lt;/a&gt; which contains the following quote (emphasis original):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Concerned about the 2012 U.S. presidential election? Worried about GMOs? Fluoride? Vaccines? Secret prisons? &lt;strong&gt;None of that even matters&lt;/strong&gt; if we don't solve the problem of Fukushima reactor No. 4, which is on the verge of a catastrophic failure that could unleash enough radiation to &lt;strong&gt;end human civilization&lt;/strong&gt; on our planet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Japan and the whole world depends on No.4 reactor.&quot; - Mitsuhei Murata, Former Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland and Senegal, Executive Director, the Japan Society for Global System and Ethics&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To better understand the severity of this situation, read these facts about Fukushima reactor No. 4 which I have assembled from available news sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Reactor #4 contains 1,535 spent fuel rods which remain highly radioactive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;These fuel rods currently hold the potential to emit 37 million curies of radiation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Those fuel rods are stored in a concrete pool located 100 feet above the ground, inside the structurally compromised reactor building, effectively making the pool open to the air.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The pool holding these fuel rods is &quot;structurally damaged.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&quot;If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.&quot; - Mr. Robert Alvarez, former Senior Policy Adviser to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment at the U.S. Department of Energy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The opening statement says, &quot;on the verge of a catastrophic failure,&quot; however subsequent statements say, &quot;If an earthquake or other event were to...&quot; These seem to be at odds. Couldn't one say my house is &quot;on the verge of a catastrophic failure if an earthquake or other event were to destroy it&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Just how likely is the failure of Fukushima Reactor Number 4, and what would the impact of such a failure be?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-01-04T12:17:40.597" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T12:17:40.597" Title="Is Fukushima reactor No. 4 on the verge of catastrophic failure that will destroy the world?" Tags="|japan|nuclear-energy|fukushima-daiichi|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9522" CreationDate="2012-05-22T04:35:49.410" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Through my research, it's clear that such an event would indeed effect the entire world (much like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_St._Helens&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mount St. Helens&lt;/a&gt;), but it wouldn't be enough &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;to end human civilization on our planet&lt;/em&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm using Chernobyl as a baseline, since it was mentioned in the article. It says that 10 times the amount of Cs-137 will be released. Taken from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#The_Exclusion_Zone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chernobyl Wiki&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An area extending &lt;strong&gt;19 miles&lt;/strong&gt; (31 km) in all directions from the plant is known as the &amp;quot;zone of alienation.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a mathematician, but 10 times 19 miles is 190 miles (Or ~310 km). That's hardly a planet-wide apocalypse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Nuclear_Event_Scale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Nuclear Event Scale&lt;/a&gt;, and the Fukushima disaster earned the highest rating (Level 7) right underneath Chernobyl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, a series of events beginning on 11&#xA;March 2011 ... Major damage to the backup&#xA;power and containment systems caused by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and&#xA;tsunami resulted in overheating and leaking from some of the Fukushima&#xA;I nuclear plant's reactors. Each reactor accident was rated&#xA;separately; out of the six reactors, three were rated level 5, one was&#xA;rated at a level 3, and the situation as a whole was rated level 7.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;A temporary exclusion zone of 20 km was established around the plant&#xA;as well as a 30 km voluntary evacuation zone.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another excerpt from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Fukushima_and_Chernobyl_nuclear_accidents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Comparison of the Fukushima and Chernobyl nuclear accidents&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maximum level of radiation detected&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FUKUSHIMA: 72,900 mSv/h (inside reactor 2)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CHERNOBYL: 200,000 mSv&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point I'm trying to make is that all of the observations about both Level 7 Nuclear incidents says that Fukushima isn't as large as Chernobyl, and Chernobyl wasn't exactly a civilization-ending event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT for @Jozzas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of all of the studies I have found of various nuclear disasters, it seems that scientists are just now coming out with the long-term effects of small-scale events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found numerous predictions about the effects of this, concentrating on the Pacific Ocean. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2011/03/19/japan-nuclear-meltdown-multiple-times-worse-than-chernobyl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Al Jazeera claimed “prevailing winds are likely to carry any&#xA;contaminated smoke or steam away from the densely populated Tokyo area&#xA;to dissipate over the Pacific Ocean.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2011/03/12/japan-fallout-map-from-destroyed-fukushima-daiichi-nuclear-plant/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;image&lt;/a&gt;, as claimed official by a commenter (Doc Holiday, comment #2), shows the Pacific Ocean effects;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/12DvG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;US-NRC Pacific Ocean prediction&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the predictions come from conspiracy-theorist sites, and I'd hardly call them accurate by any means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another Edit for @jozzas&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm on a restricted network pretty much 100% of the time, so research on the subject has been hit and miss as far as graphics and being able to access certain pages. Here's a graphic posted on 03/18/2011 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://endtimeinfo.com/2011/03/new-york-times-posts-downplayed-radioactive-plume-map/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reference&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/16/science/plume-graphic.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reference&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/j2S9P.png&quot; alt=&quot;Fallout map&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7145" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T04:00:05.743" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9522" CreationDate="2012-05-22T05:53:28.277" Score="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The assembled facts are all fairly inflammatory, and include a few common misconceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reactor #4 contains 1,535 spent fuel rods which remain highly radioactive.&#xA;These fuel rods currently hold the potential to emit 37 million curies of radiation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, definitions: Reactor 4 was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nisa.meti.go.jp/english/files/en20110406-1-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;shut down for maintenance&lt;/a&gt;(PDF, p35) when the earthquake struck, and all of the fuel assemblies had been removed from the reactor. There is a spent fuel pool which comprises part of the reactor 4 &lt;em&gt;building&lt;/em&gt;, but these are absolutely not the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The spent fuel pool is literally a pool filled with water for holding spent fuel rods (in their assemblies) which allows them to cool (a years-long process once they are deemed &amp;quot;spent&amp;quot; and removed from the reactor core). All of the fuel assemblies that were removed from reactor 4 prior to the earthquake were placed into this pool in the reactor 4 building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The spent fuel pool contained &lt;a href=&quot;http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110320b1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1535 spent fuel assemblies at the time of the earthquake&lt;/a&gt;. As spent fuel assemblies are kept underwater, under normal conditions it is perfectly safe to walk around near the surface of the pool (see below), as no or very little radiation is emitted. &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/05/21/fukushima-daiichis-unit-4-spent-fuel-pool-safe-or-not/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Each fuel assembly contains 50-70 fuel rods&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IBELK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Fuel Pool Image&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://politically-confused.blogspot.com.au/2011/03/japan-alarm-over-spent-fuel-rods.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Credit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Those fuel rods are stored in a concrete pool located 100 feet above the ground, inside the structurally compromised reactor building, effectively making the pool open to the air.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few points here. Firstly, the concrete pool is located 4-5 storeys above ground level and is part of the structure of the reactor building itself. See the image below, where the spent fuel pool is labelled (5) and the spent fuel rods (27). It is not inherently more dangerous to have the spent fuel pool high above ground level - in fact &lt;em&gt;the opposite is the case&lt;/em&gt;. The reactor is designed this way in order to eliminate any risk of any part of a damaged fuel pool's contents reaching the water table, allowing for redundant containment systems to be built beneath it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uLpsc.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, that the reactor building is structurally compromised. This is more or less restated in the next bullet point, which I address below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, that the spent fuel pool is open to the air. The upper surface of the pool is normally enclosed by a sheet metal structure (see picture above), which was blown off by a hydrogen explosion (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/news_images/pdf/ENGNEWS01_1320979544P.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the hydrogen may have come from reactor 3 via a pipe&lt;/a&gt;, but there have been subsequent contradictory reports) after the earthquake. The sheet metal structure is not meant for containment of radiation, so the pool being &amp;quot;open to the air&amp;quot; is not considerably more dangerous than if the sheet metal structure was intact. The fuel pool is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/asia/concerns-grow-about-spent-fuel-rods-at-damaged-nuclear-plant-in-japan.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;currently covered with plastic sheeting&lt;/a&gt; to minimise evaporation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The pool holding these fuel rods is &amp;quot;structurally damaged.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reactor building and the pool were damaged, yes. A lot of things happened, so this is a massive oversimplification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The upper reactor building (sheet metal structure) was badly damaged by a hydrogen explosion (the pool is &amp;quot;open to the air&amp;quot;). I am unsure as to whether repairs have been made to this portion of the structure, as it is not critical for structurally or for safety I assume its repair would have been a lower priority.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The pool was structurally compromised. This has been defined as a &amp;quot;4cm bulge&amp;quot; in one of the walls of the fuel pool. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/betu11_e/images/110819e2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;It has supposedly since been reinforced&lt;/a&gt;(PDF) with steel beams and concrete pours. It should be noted that at no time during the earthquake, tsunami or explosion did the fuel pool leak.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reactor itself or other parts of the reactor building may have been structurally compromised. I can't find much information on this, but the reactor was not running, has not been restarted and it is unlikely that it ever will be.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;If an earthquake or other event were to cause this pool to drain this could result in a catastrophic radiological fire involving nearly 10 times the amount of Cs-137 released by the Chernobyl accident.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The points leading up to this last one are worded so as to make you more and more fearful, culminating in this scary quote. However, since the earthquake:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All ability to circulate cooling water through the fuel pool was lost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Water injection was used to keep the levels high until the ability to pump was restored&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Circulation cooling (rather than injection) has since been resumed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The pool has been structurally reinforced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The fuel rods in the pool &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_No_significant_damage_to_fuel_at_Unit_4_3004111.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;show no signs of damage when observed with overhead photography&lt;/a&gt;, from both the low water levels and the earthquake itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fuel pool has proven itself as remarkably resilient, withstanding a magnitude 9 earthquake, a tsunami, a loss of power, a loss of cooling, an explosion, low water levels partially exposing fuel rods, &lt;em&gt;and minimal damage was sustained.&lt;/em&gt; I consider that pretty damn impressive. Given the repairs made to it, the likelihood of an earthquake causing the pool to drain is low. If it did occur, workers would follow the same procedure to keep the pool partially filled until cooling could be restored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote sounds like a response to a question like &amp;quot;What if the spare fuel pool drained completely?&amp;quot;, and there are a number of unlikely events required in order for such a situation to arise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another earthquake of an intensity causing structural failure of the (repaired, structurally sound) fuel pool. &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/05/21/fukushima-daiichis-unit-4-spent-fuel-pool-safe-or-not/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This would have to be of a similar magnitude to the last one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That this structural failure itself is &lt;em&gt;so severe&lt;/em&gt; that the fuel rods for some reason cannot be cooled by topping up the leaking fuel pool (&amp;quot;emergency cooling&amp;quot; like was performed last time), causing a radiological fire&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That the radiological fire could not be contained by any other means (dumping boric acid / sand / any number of other potential options) and is allowed to burn all of the available fuel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That a radiological fire could and would release &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the Cs-137 contained in the fuel rods into the atmosphere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;likelihood&lt;/em&gt; of all four of these things happening is just not very high. I haven't even looked at the consequence if these things &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; to happen, I may add something later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would assess the situation with the reactor 4 spent pool fuel as &amp;quot;stable, but obviously not ideal&amp;quot;. It is not &amp;quot;on the verge of catastrophic failure&amp;quot;. The end of the world is not nigh. &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2012/05/21/fukushima-daiichis-unit-4-spent-fuel-pool-safe-or-not/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; seems to be a fairly honest assessment of the situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of potential &lt;strong&gt;consequence&lt;/strong&gt;, I have been scouring the internet for any kind of modelling performed for expected outcomes for radiological fires in fuel pools. I can't find a thing. Please comment if you know of anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I'm aware, the statement that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the potentially radioactive material in the fuel rods could be released by a cladding fire is completely unfounded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what little I have been able to find, it appears that runaway zirconium cladding fires are an area of active research, and there aren't any definitive answers. For one to have any chance of happening, there would need to be relatively &amp;quot;fresh&amp;quot; (hot) fuel rods that had recently been moved to storage, and for them to become completely uncovered due to another loss of cooling/water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the zirconium &amp;quot;fire front&amp;quot; could spread from those initial assemblies to other, cooler assemblies is unknown. It also commonly stated that this event occurring may also require a physical failure in containment (dropped assembly / falling debris) causing two rods/assemblies to come into contact causing a criticality/excursion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;30th June 2012 Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;It also appears that the cooling system for the fuel pool in reactor building 4 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marketwatch.com/story/fukushima-reactor-cooling-system-suspended-kyodo-2012-06-30&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;has failed&lt;/a&gt; and is set to be restarted within a couple of days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tepco has been unable to activate a backup cooling system for the pool and is looking into the cause of the trouble, officials of the plant operator said later in the day, adding it is unlikely the temperature will rise rapidly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The water temperature of the pool was 31 C at the time of the suspension at around 6.25 a.m. local time and no leakage of water with radioactive materials has been found, Tepco said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The temperature of the pool rose 0.26 C per hour by late Saturday afternoon, according to the utility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Tepco continues to be unable to cool the pool, the temperature could reach 65 C, which is the upper limit designated in the safety regulations, on Tuesday morning. The cooling system at the No. 4 reactor was previously suspended on June 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T05:11:04.983" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9042" CreationDate="2012-05-22T13:02:45.550" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes they do. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aquaticmammalsjournal.org/share/AquaticMammalsIssueArchives/1985/Aquatic_Mammals_11_2/Sylvestre.pdf&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; from 1985 by Jean-Pierre Sylvestre&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The same adult male, once more tried briefly to insert its erect penis into the blowhole of one of the juvenile male Orinoco dolphins swimming underneath it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/8074843&quot;&gt;article at the Economist&lt;/a&gt;: (credit to endolith)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Male Amazonian river dolphins, for example, penetrate the blowholes of other males; female bottlenose dolphins use their snouts as dildos on other females.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/magazine/04animals-t.html?pagewanted=all&quot;&gt;article at the NY times&lt;/a&gt; (credit to Oliver_C):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Male Amazon River dolphins have been known to penetrate each other in the blowhole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T19:29:07.737" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T19:29:07.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9502" CreationDate="2012-05-22T15:26:48.863" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really doesn't make any difference if the water is boiled or not, homeopathy doesn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Minimum Dose and Avagadro's Number The second and most&#xA;  controversial tenet in homeopathy is that remedies retain biological&#xA;  activity if they are diluted in a series (usually in a 1:10 or 1:100&#xA;  diluent–volume ratio) and agitated or shaken between each dilution.&#xA;  Hahnemann began this process to reduce toxicity, but later he claimed&#xA;  that this “potenization” process extracted the “vital” or&#xA;  “spirit-like” nature of these substances (2). The limit of molecular&#xA;  dilution (Avagadro's number) was not discovered until the later part&#xA;  of Hahnemann's life; by then homeopaths all over the world were&#xA;  reporting that even very high potencies (dilutions lower than&#xA;  Avagadro's number) produced clinical effects. The implausibility of&#xA;  such claims has led many to dismiss any evidence of homeopathy's&#xA;  effectiveness as artifact or delusion (3). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annals.org/content/138/5/393.full&quot;&gt;http://www.annals.org/content/138/5/393.full&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But lets pretend for a moment that water does have memory. The aspect of boiling has not been researched. A search of Google Scholar nets no results for boiling and homeopathy. When referring to &quot;how-to&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://oaks.nvg.org/home-remedies.html&quot;&gt;guides of preparations&lt;/a&gt; it becomes obvious that homeopaths are merely after clean or unpolluted water to make their preparations in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ingredients&#xA;  ...&#xA;  1/2 or 1 litre of boiled water&#xA;  (distilled water may be bought at pharmacies in some countries, if you&#xA;  want that, and bottled, rinsed water is commonly sold in groceries&#xA;  too) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bayareahomeopathy.com/remedies/preparing-the-remedy/&quot;&gt;Another example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Preparing your own bottle:&#xA;  Boil the glass bottle and dropper in filtered water for 15 min. and let it cool completely.&#xA;  Fill it just to the neck with filtered or distilled water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So clearly the idea that boiling is the only way to reset the water is not backed up by the practices employed by homeopaths themselves. This combined with the fraudulent claim that water retains memory shows that this is another misdirection to allow justification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5775" LastActivityDate="2012-05-22T15:26:48.863" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9534" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9537" CreationDate="2012-05-22T19:16:48.880" Score="9" ViewCount="4314" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read and been told that the use of airbags can cause severe damage in case of accident, specially with children and short adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I would like to know to what extent it can increase your chances of dying and how you can determine if you should activate or deactivate certain airbags depending on the people traveling in a vehicle equipped with this technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7191" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T15:26:48.263" Title="Are airbags safe or dangerous in case of accident?" Tags="|mortality|vehicle|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9534" CreationDate="2012-05-22T20:44:47.140" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Airbags are safe for the intended target person but can be dangerous for others, such as infants and children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There have been over 800,000 air bag deployments, saving over 1,500&#xA;  lives. To date, completed investigations of air bag crashes show that&#xA;  many of the air bag injuries were due to the driver sitting too close&#xA;  to the air bag module or passengers riding unbuckled or incorrectly&#xA;  secured. The latter includes infants in rear-facing child safety seats&#xA;  that are placed in the front seat or small children incorrectly placed&#xA;  in a lap/shoulder safety belt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Air bags save lives. Air bags in passenger cars and light trucks&#xA;  prevented an estimated 1,136 fatalities from 1986 to 1995, with&#xA;  another 600 saved in 1996. Once these life saving devices are equipped&#xA;  in all cars, it is estimated that 3,000 lives will be saved each year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Driver-Side Air Bags Driver-side air bags reduce the overall fatality&#xA;  risk of car drivers by a statistically significant 11 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In other words, a fleet of cars equipped with driver-side air bags&#xA;  will have 11 percent fewer driver fatalities than the same cars would&#xA;  have had if they did not have air bags. Still, air bags can be&#xA;  dangerous to short stature adults sitting too close to the air bag&#xA;  module, especially when unbuckled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Passenger-Side Air Bags Passenger-side air bags reduce the overall&#xA;  fatality risk of car passengers age 13 and older by a statistically&#xA;  significant 13.5 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is estimated that an additional 88 right front passengers ages 13&#xA;  and older would have died from 1986 to 1995 if passenger cars or light&#xA;  trucks had not been equipped with passenger-side air bags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To date only one passenger, a 98-year-old female, has died as the&#xA;  result of an adult passenger-side air bag-related injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ou.edu/oupd/kidseat.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, which reports the NHTSA as its source for these claims, though I found the NHTSA site a bit difficult to navigate to find anything like this. I am not sure whether the to date part means some time in 1995/96 or more recently, the updated date did not cite a year and the latest copyright date was 2004.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would assume that these numbers have gotten better in recent years simply due to better airbag technology (like cars that automatically disable airbags based on weight) and awareness of proper usage and precautions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6876" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-09-13T16:28:46.617" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T16:28:46.617" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9539" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9540" CreationDate="2012-05-23T04:25:14.190" Score="27" ViewCount="4388" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a current scare going around FB that now that it wants to make some actual money, they'll start using profile pics and other things uploaded to facebook in advertisements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of the messages that get sent around:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On Friday, FACEBOOK will start using your photos in ads that will appear on the profile of your contacts. It is legal and was mentioned to you when you open an account. To prevent this do the following: Home -&gt; Account Settings -&gt; Facebook Adverts -&gt; Adverts shown by third parties -&gt; Edit third party advert settings, then choose &quot;No one&quot; in the list and save the changes. Copy this and paste in your profile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it won't hurt to have this confirmed or debunked here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:03:57.863" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:03:57.863" Title="Do Facebook or its third-party partners use my photos in ads?" Tags="|security|social-media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9539" CreationDate="2012-05-23T05:00:27.207" Score="34" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes, they do.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Facebook's privacy page for ads&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone wants to know what their friends like. That's why we pair ads and friends—an easy way to find products and services you're interested in, based on what your friends share and like. Learn more about social ads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the facts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Social ads show an advertiser's message alongside actions you have taken, such as liking a Page&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your privacy settings apply to social ads&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We don't sell your information to advertisers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only confirmed friends can see your actions alongside an ad&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If a photo is used, it is your profile photo and not from your photo albums&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can turn it off in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;your settings&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1434" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T05:00:27.207" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9541" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9575" CreationDate="2012-05-23T05:37:31.590" Score="35" ViewCount="171618" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://pinterest.com/pin/147704062749322384/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;picture on Pinterest&lt;/a&gt; depicting a child's skull with all &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deciduous_teeth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;deciduous teeth&lt;/a&gt; (baby teeth) still attached, and adult teeth showing in a quite developed stage underneath:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/35njF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;picture described as a child&amp;#39;s skull on Pinterest, originally from the Tobokoz photoblog&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The picture is described as &quot;A child’s skull before losing baby teeth&quot;. The point of displaying the picture seems to be that it's expected to be scary or disgusting - repulsive to the audience. This raises doubts about whether it is accurate, or an image that has been edited, or where context has been altered for shock value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this image accurate&lt;/strong&gt; (as a representation of a child's skull during normal teeth development)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="154" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T20:21:05.950" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T12:07:15.793" Title="Is this image about child teeth development accurate?" Tags="|biology|children|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9543" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9551" CreationDate="2012-05-23T09:44:26.390" Score="139" ViewCount="63909" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've tried to tweet &quot;Get Better.&quot; (without the quotes) a dozen times now, and it keeps not showing. A friend of mine told me that, while in high school, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Dorsey&quot;&gt;Jack Dorsey's&lt;/a&gt; (the creator of Twitter) father used to spur him to work harder with that exact sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've done some research and couldn't find any evidence of this, neither an explanation of why you, apparently, can't tweet that exact sentence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7200" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:03:44.793" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:03:44.793" Title="Is one not able to tweet &quot;Get Better.&quot; because it's something Dorsey's father used to say?" Tags="|social-media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9546" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-05-23T10:28:51.447" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-05-23T10:28:51.447" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T10:28:51.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9547" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-05-23T10:28:51.447" Score="0" Body="Engineering is the discipline, skill, and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes." OwnerUserId="7201" LastEditorUserId="7201" LastEditDate="2012-05-23T12:24:52.950" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T12:24:52.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9273" CreationDate="2012-05-23T14:23:37.610" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no law in the US that bans high gas mileage cars&lt;/strong&gt;. In fact under &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhtsa.gov/fuel-economy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Corporate Average Fuel Economy&lt;/a&gt; (CAFE) regulations &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/cafe/CAFE_Fines-Jan2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;manufacturers are fined&lt;/a&gt; for producing low gas mileage cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are however &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/levprog/cleandoc/cleancomplete_lev-ghg_regs_12-10.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;regulations&lt;/a&gt; that place strict limits on the emissions produced by cars (note - Californian regulations but also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_emission_standards#Motor_vehicles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;used by many other states&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UnrFl.png&quot; alt=&quot;LEV II Exhaust Mass Emission Standards&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The emissions for the VW Passat 1.6 TDI sold in the UK are as follows (&lt;a href=&quot;http://carfueldata.direct.gov.uk/search-new-or-used-cars.aspx?vid=28586&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GB1gF.png&quot; alt=&quot;VOLKSWAGEN Passat Saloon 1.6 CR TDI&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Converting the above data from mg/km to g/mi gives CO Emissions of 0.267 g/mi and NOx Emissions of 0.166 g/mi. &lt;strong&gt;So the VW Passat 1.6 TDI can not be sold in any state using the Californian regulations as it emits too much NOx&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T14:23:37.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9543" CreationDate="2012-05-23T14:51:55.783" Score="195" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason that certain tweet content appears to do nothing is that Twitter is interpreting them as commands, according to this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;code&gt;GET [username]&lt;/code&gt; - retrieves the latest Twitter update posted by that person. You can also use &lt;code&gt;g [username]&lt;/code&gt; to get a user's latest Tweet. Examples: &lt;code&gt;get goldman&lt;/code&gt; or &lt;code&gt;g goldman&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.twitter.com/articles/14020&quot;&gt;Twitter SMS Commands&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;code&gt;get&lt;/code&gt; command will send the latest tweet from the named user to your phone. I've tried some of the other commands listed in that article, and they don't post a tweet. They do, however, have the listed effect. For example, &lt;code&gt;fav accountname&lt;/code&gt; does indeed mark the most recent tweet from &lt;code&gt;accountname&lt;/code&gt; as a favourite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's perhaps useful to remember that &lt;code&gt;d accountname Some message here&lt;/code&gt; will send a direct message to &lt;code&gt;accountname&lt;/code&gt;, even if entered in the public tweet box &lt;strong&gt;or via another client&lt;/strong&gt;. This shows that they have a standard text to action parser that works on tweets as they are submitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your question: No, it's not down to Jack Dorsey's father. It's purely because Twitter is interpreting it as a command. Sorry!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7211" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-24T08:21:38.033" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T08:21:38.033" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9554" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-23T16:38:24.683" Score="1" ViewCount="798" Body="&lt;p&gt;Exrx, a widely-known exercise resource site, claims in its article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.exrx.net/WeightTraining/LowVolumeTraining.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Low Volume Progressive Intensity Training&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By performing an additional set (50% to 100% more sets) only 0 to 5% more progress will be observed. Each additional set yields even less progress to a point of diminishing return.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this statement supported by any research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7226" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T18:33:10.667" Title="Does performing an additional weightlifting set not increase progress by more than 5%?" Tags="|medical-science|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9555" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-23T17:15:25.887" Score="26" ViewCount="1355" Body="&lt;p&gt;My work has a sign in the bathrooms requesting that you stand closer to the urinals to avoid splashing onto the floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this actually a workable fact?  My query is that if you stand closer, wouldn't there be more force impacting the back of the urinal and it'd splash back further?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5933" LastEditorUserId="5142" LastEditDate="2012-05-24T02:55:44.093" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T04:45:01.883" Title="Does standing closer to the urinal prevent urine splashes?" Tags="|hygiene|toilets|urine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8601" CreationDate="2012-05-23T21:24:21.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some cases this can repair it through causing solder to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflow_soldering&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;flow&lt;/a&gt; correcting any possible gaps. Occasionally a board can come from the manufacturer with defects such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldering#Electronic_components_.28PCBs.29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cold solder joints&lt;/a&gt; (referenced to near the paragraph end) which can make a board prone to failure if it ever works at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a period where HP laptops suffered from a high rate of defects in their laptop video cards which would result in various symptoms. A search on motherboard baking or motherboard reflow will have a high count of HP models. &lt;a href=&quot;http://computerszine.com/baking-the-motherboard-hp-pavilion-dv2500-nvidia-video-chip-fix-no-video-corrupted-video-issue&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; they show a how to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: To answer the &quot;Is it safe?&quot;, I wouldn't do it with a card that is still functional as you can very well kill it. If it is done at low temperatures there is not likely to be any harm to the oven or baking person. The proper tool for something like this is actually more likely to be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_gun&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;heat gun&lt;/a&gt; however I am sure you are more likely to have an oven. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*I am in no way liable for any negative outcomes!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I don't know why there would be a downvote since you are not going to find many sources on putting computer components in an oven. Anecdotal evidence is really all you are going to find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oven reflow would be considered roughly equivalent to convection reflow referenced &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ami.ac.uk/courses/topics/0132_rs/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; using a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hellerindustries.com/reflow-ch.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reflow oven&lt;/a&gt; which a home oven can match in temperatures (operating temp of 350*F up to 450*F).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ami.ac.uk/courses/topics/0100_gls/glossary/glossc.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cold solder&lt;/a&gt; (or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.solderinguide.com/cold-joints/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) joint can be defined as &quot;A solder connection exhibiting poor wetting and of greyish, porous appearance due to insufficient heat or excessive impurities in the solder. The condition can be caused by applying insufficient heat to the joint, inadequately cleaning the surfaces prior to soldering, insufficiently heating the part being soldered, improper tinning of the soldering iron tip, or poor heat control.&quot; which can actually occur in automated production. On a micro scale some characteristics described would be very difficult to visually see. This definition appears in IPC-T-50 (Interconnecting and Packaging Electronic Circuits - Terms and Definitions for Interconnecting and Packaging Electronic Circuits).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The HP nvidia graphics problem was wide spread enough to prompt a class action lawsuit (formerly at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nvidiasettlement.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nvidiasettlement.com/&lt;/a&gt; but referenced by &lt;a href=&quot;http://fairnvidiasettlement.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fairnvidiasettlement.com/&lt;/a&gt;) which the complainants lost. They were seeking replacements with &quot;similar value and kind&quot; laptops however the judge ruled against them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7251" LastEditorUserId="7251" LastEditDate="2012-05-24T13:38:09.433" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T13:38:09.433" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8784" CreationDate="2012-05-23T21:55:50.217" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0122njp&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt; documentary, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As more trees are felled, the story of a far less natural Amazon is&#xA;  revealed - enormous manmade structures, even cities, hidden for&#xA;  centuries under what was believed to be untouched forest. All the time&#xA;  archaeologists are discovering ancient, highly fertile soils that can&#xA;  only have been produced by sophisticated agriculture far and wide&#xA;  across the Amazon basin. This startling evidence sheds new light on&#xA;  long-dismissed accounts from the very first conquistadors of an Amazon&#xA;  teeming with people&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The programme page doesn't contain explicit references to the research quoted, but I'm sure the programme team would respond to questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7252" LastActivityDate="2012-05-23T21:55:50.217" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9563" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-24T07:32:18.257" Score="3" ViewCount="1884" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that getting your children to drink chocolate milk so that they will get some milk somewhat defeats the purpose, as the chocolate prevents the calcium from being absorbed. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7267" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T14:57:09.520" Title="Does chocolate prevent you from absorbing the calcium in milk?" Tags="|nutrition|milk|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9564" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9568" CreationDate="2012-05-24T08:56:51.133" Score="25" ViewCount="12330" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't ask &quot;better&quot;, because that's subjective. But anyway, this is something I've heard again and again, and it sounds plausible, but I have never found any scientific studies in the area. I've seen people say that of course they do, and some say that it differs from person to person, but isn't gender specific. I can't think of any evolutionary reason why it might be so, and I've also considered a possibility that it might just be woman's &lt;em&gt;reactions&lt;/em&gt; to orgasms that make it appear as though theirs are more powerful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are there any studies in the area? If so, what are their results? Obviously, people can't have experiences as both, so I'm willing to accept that no one has yet come up with a suitable way to test this, if that is the case. On the other hand, I'd be surprised if no one had at least tried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7197" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2012-12-15T04:23:10.337" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T04:23:10.337" Title="Are women's orgasms more powerful than men's?" Tags="|sexuality|gender|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8601" CreationDate="2012-05-24T11:29:10.333" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, baking a broken graphics card will not necessarily fix it. It is not safe for the graphics card (may cause further problems), and may be a health risk.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to repair failed joints in a reflow oven. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.au/patents?id=ADacAAAAEBAJ&amp;amp;zoom=4&amp;amp;dq=reflow%20oven%20repair&amp;amp;pg=PA29#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=reflow%20oven%20repair&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many options exist for repairing. In one embodiment the repairing&#xA;  can be repeating the reflow operation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://goarticles.com/article/Why-Xbox-360-Laptops-and-Other-Electronics-Fail-Xbox-360-RROD-Repair-Ring-Of-Death-E73-E74/4912914/&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; discusses repairing consumer electronics yourself. (They also disclose that they are a &quot;company that specializes in the repairs of electronics&quot;, and that they offer great service and fair pricing - not the most reliable of sources)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As mentioned earlier, solder tends to melt at 183C/217C, and without&#xA;  proper equipment these temperatures in that environment will never be&#xA;  achieved. These fixes are highly advised against. While they may&#xA;  provide a temporary fix, the issue has been exacerbated by causing&#xA;  more damage to a perfectly working PCB component.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Problems with baking your broken graphics card in a standard oven at home:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The problem that you're trying to fix may not be a failed solder joint - it could be a software problem, or a failed hardware component. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since you are not using a reflow oven with a set temperature profile, you may damage smaller components, as your oven temperature will not be accurate and consistent throughout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.au/patents?id=vrMkAAAAEBAJ&amp;amp;zoom=4&amp;amp;dq=%22cold%20solder%20joint%22%20pcb%20reflow&amp;amp;pg=PA9#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22cold%20solder%20joint%22%20pcb%20reflow&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;This patent&lt;/a&gt; describes a &quot;Reflow Minioven for Electrical Components&quot; - a temperature controlled oven that follows a specific temperature ramp profile to minimise adverse effects such as thermal shock and PCB/component damage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In reflow soldering typically a ramp-soak-spike heater panel recipe is used [snip]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect of hot spots:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[snip] forced convection can assist in reducing hot spots [snip]. As a&#xA;  result more uniform heating of the PCBs and the components is produced&#xA;  and more uniformly satisfactory results and better solder joints are&#xA;  achieved without damage due to overheating of small components.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.au/patents?id=jKIfAAAAEBAJ&amp;amp;zoom=4&amp;amp;dq=reflow%20soak&amp;amp;pg=PA12#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=damage&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are plastic parts on graphics cards (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.au/patents?id=LYELAAAAEBAJ&amp;amp;zoom=4&amp;amp;dq=%22graphics%20card%22%20plastic&amp;amp;pg=PA10#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22graphics%20card%22%20plastic&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Here's a patent&lt;/a&gt; for a fan-cooled card, which uses an injection moulded plastic shroud). Depending on what plastic is used and the temperature of your oven, these parts may melt/burn in the oven, which is likely to damage your graphics card, and may produce toxic fumes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When plastic is subjected to fire, noxious and toxic fumes result. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.au/patents?id=p9ubAAAAEBAJ&amp;amp;zoom=4&amp;amp;dq=plastic%20toxic%20fumes&amp;amp;pg=PA6#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=plastic%20toxic%20fumes&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the graphics card (or a component on it) was released before &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substances_Directive&quot;&gt;RoHS&lt;/a&gt; was enforced (2003), the solder may be lead-based, and since lead is toxic, this is not a good idea to do in the same oven you cook food. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exposure to solder flux fumes can be harmful: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[snip] evidence of a peripheral airways reaction, while working in the&#xA;  electronics industry and exposed to solder flux fumes containing&#xA;  colophony (pine resin).&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2222.1978.tb00441.x/abstract&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you do succeed in melting the solder, components may shift (causing short circuits, failed connections) or fall off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Double sided products such as printed circuit boards are more&#xA;  difficult to reflow solder than single sided products since special&#xA;  care must be directed to the components already soldered on one side&#xA;  of the product to prevent them from shifting position or falling off&#xA;  while the other side is being reflow soldered. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com.au/patents?id=BfwgAAAAEBAJ&amp;amp;zoom=4&amp;amp;dq=reflow%20component%20shift&amp;amp;pg=PA4#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=reflow%20component%20shift&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7277" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T11:29:10.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9564" CreationDate="2012-05-24T12:45:43.803" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696&quot;&gt;Mah and Binik have an excellent survey paper on the research related to human orgasm&lt;/a&gt;.  Section &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#section_lbl1.3.2&quot;&gt;1.3.2&lt;/a&gt; is dedicated to comparing the experiences of male &lt;em&gt;vs.&lt;/em&gt; female orgasms.  While they report that most studies conclude that there is more variance in the qualitative experience of female orgasm, it is also claimed that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the scant research comparing male and female orgasm experiences demonstrates &lt;strong&gt;striking similarity between male and female accounts&lt;/strong&gt; and suggests that male orgasm experiences are not completely determined by ejaculatory events. In the studies of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB267&quot;&gt;Vance and Wagner (1976)&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB215&quot;&gt;Proctor, Wagner, and Butler (1973)&lt;/a&gt;, medical students, obstetrician–gynecologists, and psychologists were &lt;strong&gt;unable to differentiate between descriptions of orgasm written by male and female students&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;sub&gt;[Emphasis added by me.]&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as duration, the physical effects actually appear to be longer in men:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Average contractile duration was 16.7 seconds in females and 25 seconds in males (&lt;em&gt;cf.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB34&quot;&gt;[Bohlen et al., 1980]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB35&quot;&gt;[Bohlen et al., 1982]&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB52&quot;&gt;[Carmichael et al., 1994]&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;however, it should be noted that the neurochemical and hormonal effects (which are much harder to measure) may have different durations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as whether or not women are more prone to having multiple orgasms, that is still a somewhat open question.  It is clear that women are quite capable of multiple orgasm, however, there is still variance.  Men have been observed to have multiple orgasms (even in the laboratory), however, there are not enough studies yet to make any conclusions about its prevalence.  Furthermore, there is not even an accepted definition for what constitutes &quot;multiple orgasm&quot;.  From the survey:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The biological capacity for multiple orgasm in women appears to be upheld&lt;/strong&gt;, though there are individual differences ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB181&quot;&gt;[Masters &amp;amp; Johnson, 1966]&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB241&quot;&gt;[Sherfey, 1972]&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;em&gt;cf.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB9&quot;&gt;[Amberson &amp;amp; Hoon, 1985]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB36&quot;&gt;[Bohlen et al., 1982]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB66&quot;&gt;[Darling et al., 1991]&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB128&quot;&gt;[Hite, 1976]&lt;/a&gt;). While male orgasm is usually followed by a refractory period, &lt;strong&gt;male multiple orgasm with and without ejaculation has been described in a few uncontrolled self-report studies&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB80&quot;&gt;[Dunn &amp;amp; Trost, 1989]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB129&quot;&gt;[Hite, 1981]&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB222&quot;&gt;[Robbins &amp;amp; Jensen, 1978]&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB146&quot;&gt;Kinsey et al. (1948)&lt;/a&gt; reported the occurrence of &lt;strong&gt;multiple orgasm in just over 55% of pre-adolescent males but in substantially fewer adult males, about 3% of men over the age of 30. Male multiple orgasm was reportedly observed in one laboratory study&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB222&quot;&gt;(Robbins &amp;amp; Jensen, 1978)&lt;/a&gt;, but only a single subject was involved, and results were difficult to interpret. Operational definitions of multiple orgasm vary greatly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB9&quot;&gt;[Amberson &amp;amp; Hoon, 1985]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB80&quot;&gt;[Dunn &amp;amp; Trost, 1989]&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000696#BIB222&quot;&gt;[Robbins &amp;amp; Jensen, 1978]&lt;/a&gt;, and so &lt;strong&gt;interpretations about findings are difficult to make&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;sub&gt;[Emphasis added by me.]&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2012-05-24T14:24:19.343" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T14:24:19.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6218" CreationDate="2012-05-24T13:33:35.217" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, because of epigenetic effects it's unlikely that a child&#xA;that spent 9 month in the womb of an average mother who lived thousand&#xA;years ago would be well adapted for today's world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over most of human history, people didn't have enough to eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you randomly take a child from history there is a good chance that&#xA;food for its mother wasn't plentiful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_famine_of_1944&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dutch famine of 1944&lt;/a&gt; we &lt;a href=&quot;http://ihome.ust.hk/~lbcaplan/dutchfamine.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;saw&lt;/a&gt; that the children of mothers&#xA;who carried them during that time were more likely to get diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease, microalbuminuria and other health problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Viral antibodies that a child gathers during pregnancy are also important to allow the child to deal with the illnesses of their environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite this, given the nature of viral evolution, it's unlikely that the child from history would suffer any worse in that regard than a modern child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2012-05-25T15:51:07.343" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T15:51:07.343" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9563" CreationDate="2012-05-24T14:57:09.520" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Official answer: &lt;strong&gt;we aren't sure, but probably not&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/calcium/AN01294&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article from the Mayo Clinic&lt;/a&gt; which says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The jury is still out, however, on whether chocolate causes problems for healthy people who eat calcium-rich diets. [...] In the meantime, if you get the daily recommended amounts of calcium and vitamin D from food or supplements, and practice weight-bearing exercise, eating chocolate in moderation is unlikely to adversely affect your bone health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2012-05-24T14:57:09.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9571" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10320" CreationDate="2012-05-24T16:51:30.470" Score="11" ViewCount="18775" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've got casual acquaintances linking to things on Twitter about how &lt;a href=&quot;http://vigilantcitizen.com/vigilantreport/the-hidden-hand-that-changed-history/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this gesture of sticking your hand in your shirt in your formal portrait is actually Masonic&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FsaLl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Stalin and Washington being portrayed with their hand in their shirt&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without worrying about how much the Masons did or did not influence history by being an secret society who thought they were all cool and occult, I'd like to know whether the characterization of this gesture as &amp;quot;Masonic&amp;quot; is actually accurate. Are there other things it could indicate, or stylistic reasons for being portrayed that way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7287" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2024-03-08T21:12:50.160" LastActivityDate="2024-03-08T21:12:50.160" Title="Is this hand-in-shirt gesture Masonic?" Tags="|history|art|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9541" CreationDate="2012-05-24T19:56:49.597" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deciduous_teeth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; on decidious teeth references the picture from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray%27s_Anatomy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gray's Anatomy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JfLlN.png&quot; alt=&quot;Front view of skull.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google search also gives some references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scheme on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colgateprofessional.com/patienteducation/Developing-Teeth-Moving-From-Primary-To-Permanent/article&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Colgate professional.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bBphg.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Permanent teeth&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rickwilsondmd.typepad.com/rick_wilson_dmds_blog/2011/01/dental-pulp-calcification-and-changes-with-age.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Article in dentist Rick Wilsond blog&lt;/a&gt; featuring X-Ray picture from 9 year old:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y3eR6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also child's skull from Hunterian Museum in London:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7yAU0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Children&amp;#39;s skull&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay I think it's enough for this answer.&#xA;So, I assume there're no obvious inaccuracies in the scary picture from question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-07-01T23:47:34.763" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T23:47:34.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9578" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9584" CreationDate="2012-05-24T23:25:29.853" Score="23" ViewCount="13078" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always wondered about this. When times are tough, the officers seem to start getting stricter, writing tickets in cases where they may otherwise give a warning or not bother to pull you over. No, I didn't just get pulled over, but I have been seeing more cars pulled over on my commutes to/from work each day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The police departments will of course say that they apply the law equally, and it doesn't matter whether the Dow's at 13k or 6k, a person going 90 on the freeway will get pulled over. The conspiracy theorists will say that traffic officers are a huge moneymaker for cities/states, especially when other revenue sources like sales, property and income taxes are reduced in economic recessions, and officers are given a monthly quota of tickets they must write; either a particular number of tickets, or an explicit dollar value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't deny that traffic tickets are a big source of revenue. The question is, do cities write budgets that depend on a certain amount of money from traffic tickets, and then put pressure on the police to meet that intake? And, does that result in police officers having to write $X worth of tickets per month or face disciplinary action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously the question is jurisdiction-dependent; one city might have a quota policy while others don't. So, I'll consider any answer that can explain and back up a pattern, or that can show that particular jurisdictions do or don't have quotas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5997" LastEditorUserId="5997" LastEditDate="2013-08-16T01:24:22.130" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T01:24:22.130" Title="Do police officers have monthly quotas of traffic tickets to write?" Tags="|politics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9578" CreationDate="2012-05-25T13:56:26.483" Score="15" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Secret Policies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various pieces of evidence some police forces have informal quotas despite official denials and/or official policy suggesting that they don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some reports of leaked memos:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/leaked-email-reveals-police-ordered-to-meet-arrest-quota/story-e6frea6u-1226199485326&quot;&gt;Adelaide, South Australia, 2011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Senior police now say the email's directions were &quot;outside of SAPOL's guidelines and policies&quot; and it had been rescinded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The five-week targets required each officer to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;MAKE five arrests and reports.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;ARREST or report two drink-drivers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;MAKE nine traffic contacts, including on-the-spot fines, using mobile breath tests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;ISSUE one drug-related fine or diversion (for minor illegal drug possession).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/ten-fines-a-month-police-quota-20111101-1v0ie.html&quot;&gt;Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, 2011&lt;/a&gt; (In this story, a police officer was issuing &lt;em&gt;too many&lt;/em&gt; tickets.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The letter stated that Mr Curie, who has since left ACT Policing and has been engaged in a long-running legal dispute with his former employer, was issuing ''at least 50 traffic infringement notices a month''.&#xA;  The senior constable was concerned that Mr Curie was neglecting other policing duties, and warned him to limit the number of fines he issued to 20 per month.&#xA;  The letter then goes on to claim ''... it is expected that members issue roughly 10 traffic infringement notices per month, time and other priorities permitting.''&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/09/secret-recording-busts-quota-pushing-cops/&quot;&gt;Brooklyn, New York, 2010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A secret tape recording from a Brooklyn police station, obtained by the New York Times, provides compelling evidence that quotas for summonses aren’t just real but are being pushed upon officers by their superiors. Police Captain Alex Perez encourages hunting down seatbelt and mobile phone law transgressors, among other violations, saying he expects five citations issued per week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these are reports that have only been scrutinised by a journalist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2006, an &quot;arbitrator&quot; found that &quot;the New York Police Department violated state labor law by setting traffic summons quotas in a Brooklyn precinct and then penalizing officers who failed to meet them&quot;. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/20/nyregion/20police.html?_r=1&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;] [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nycpba.org/publications/mag-05-06-winter/alejandro.html&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;] It is unclear what the standards of evidence are for an arbitrator, but presumably some scrutiny was given to the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Open Policies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other jurisdictions, the&#xA; quota may be/have been official policy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2009/11/more_fines_more_respect_says_p.php&quot;&gt;Dutch News, 2009&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While the national quota was scrapped from police performance contracts, individual forces may still impose their own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.winnipegsun.com/2012/03/07/pellerin-ticket-quotas-nothing-but-trouble&quot;&gt;Winnipeg Sun, 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Again the issue has come to light, due to a recent email authored by the Inspector of one of the busiest patrol districts. In the directive, the police officers under his command are exhorted to triple their traffic ticket numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-25T15:26:35.247" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T15:26:35.247" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9585" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-25T14:31:50.103" Score="9" ViewCount="1238" Body="&lt;p&gt;Observations: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Advertisers heavily market weight-reduction programs and present&#xA;anorexic young models as the paradigm of sexual desirability&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Clothes are designed and displayed for thin bodies in spite of the&#xA;fact that few women could wear them successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Photoshop is used extensively to portray real people as perfect&#xA;unattainable fictions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uZP8z.jpg&quot; width=&quot;600&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mass media appears to provide unrealistic portrayals of the human body. Does that &#xA;contribute to the number of cases of anorexia nervosa or other eating disorders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="1134" LastEditDate="2012-05-25T20:26:10.457" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T08:01:37.707" Title="Are media's portrayals of physical perfection a contributing cause of eating disorders?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9578" CreationDate="2012-05-25T15:32:13.117" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caranddriverthef1.com/coches/planeta-motor/54654-rebajan-el-sueldo-un-guardia-civil-trafico-por-poner-pocas-multas&quot;&gt;Spanish Guardia Civil de Traffico&lt;/a&gt; (traffic gendarmerie). Long story short, the officer has been punished with 200 euros of pay reduction because he:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;ha formulado 21 denuncias a la Ley de Seguridad Vial [...] una desviación porcentual del -42,29 % respecto de la media de su Unidad&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;translated&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;had issued 21 tickets regarding the Road Safety Act [...] a percentage deviation of -42,29 % relative to average in his Unit&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example, also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elidealgallego.com/articulo/coruna/la-guardia-civil-expedienta-a-quince-agentes-de-perillo-por-no-lograr-la-cuota-de-28-multas-al-mes/20120515232111044740.html&quot;&gt;Guardia Civil de Traffico&lt;/a&gt; (completely different region of Spain though): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;una práctica corriente en el destacamento de la Agrupación Civil de&#xA;  Tráfico de Perillo, el único de toda España con 15 agentes a los que&#xA;  se les ha abierto un expediente de preaviso advirtiéndoles de que&#xA;  deben cumplir con su cuota de multas, que a día de hoy es de 28 al&#xA;  mes. La media se sitúa en cuatro casos cada dos o tres meses en cada &#xA;  comunidad autónoma, pero los quince expedientes de aquí fueron abiertos &#xA;  en solo un mes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;translated&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a common practice in the detachment of the Traffic Civil Guard &#xA;  of Perillo, the only one in Spain with 15 agents that have been issued&#xA;  formal warning  notice, &lt;strong&gt;for not meeting their quota of fines, which&#xA;  stands at 28 per month&lt;/strong&gt;. The average is four cases every two or three&#xA;  months in each region, but here the fifteen warnings were issued&#xA;  in same month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, this confirms that there are quotas, and it's common practice, and this unit only makes news by sheer number of officer who hadn't made quota at same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nto.pl/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110811/POWIAT11/64759059&quot;&gt;case in Poland&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;translated&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Officialy] The police did not indicate quotas of tickets, but it is verifying&#xA;  effectiveness of police work. [...]&#xA;  - We are in the 10th place in the province because of your activity - reproached his subordinates at the briefing aspirant Adam Dudko, head&#xA;  of Dept. of Prevention and Traffic in Prudnik precinct. - When it&#xA;  comes to punishment and conclusions, &lt;strong&gt;I do not see a policeman, who&#xA;  finishes the service without a minimum of eight tickets, not counting&#xA;  warnings&lt;/strong&gt;. And even so there is no chance that we'll make up these 9000&#xA;  [tickets], because it's not f***king possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this has leaked to the press, disciplinary action was taken, not for illegal quotas, but rather for &lt;em&gt;&quot;obscenity during official briefings&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-05-25T16:02:42.063" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T16:02:42.063" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9585" CreationDate="2012-05-25T18:21:39.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his book &lt;em&gt;Wij zijn ons brein&lt;/em&gt; (We are our brain), Dutch professor and neuroscientist Dick Swaab states that evidence suggests anorexia nervosa is a neurological disorder. (page 173) It appears to be a disorder in the hypothalamus. There is absolutely no reason to believe this disorder is caused by media attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3255442&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a case of anorexia nervosa has been found found in a 19-year old woman who has been blind since birth&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below is a summary of Swaab’s conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The current trend seems to be that anorexia is an infectious disease,&#xA;  similar to the way people thought homosexuality was an infectious disease some&#xA;  time ago. In both cases, there is absolutely no evidence supporting&#xA;  this. Being skinny might get one a job as a model, but skinny models&#xA;  do not cause eating disorders. [He mentions the blind woman as not&#xA;  supporting the idea that visual stimulus causes eating disorders.] In&#xA;  fact, there is no evicence that the number of people suffering from&#xA;  anorexia is increasing, although many dare to admit suffering from it now. All&#xA;  symptoms indicate that anorexia is a disease of the hypothalamus. [He&#xA;  then mentions functions of the body controlled by the hypothalamus&#xA;  that are affected by anorexia as well, such as lower levels of sex&#xA;  hormones, and how this could be an evolutionary advantage.] Several symptoms can still&#xA;  occur after weight has been gained again. A tumour or cyst in the&#xA;  hypothalamus can cause anorexia, and this was found to be the cause of&#xA;  anorexia in several women. Of course this does not mean all anorexia&#xA;  patients have a tumour in their hypothalamus, but it can be the cause.&#xA;  It is not clear which disorder is involved here. It is clear that, apart&#xA;  from sexual differentiation of the brain, genetic factors exist that increase the chance of getting anorexia. A few&#xA;  directly involved genes are know. A very stressful event could seem a&#xA;  direct cause of the disease, but factors who made the person&#xA;  vulnerable to the disease probably had effect during the development&#xA;  of the brain in the womb.The original process on which all that has&#xA;  an influence, remains unknown. [Swaab mentions his favourite theory is&#xA;  that it is an autoimmune disease.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7302" LastEditorUserId="7302" LastEditDate="2012-05-26T08:01:37.707" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T08:01:37.707" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9589" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-25T18:31:16.027" Score="8" ViewCount="23656" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/297/how-dangerous-is-a-broken-compact-fluorescent-lamp-cfl#comment26729_297&quot;&gt;How dangerous is a broken compact fluorescent lamp (CFL)?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually someone &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/297/how-dangerous-is-a-broken-compact-fluorescent-lamp-cfl#comment26729_297&quot;&gt;asked this exact thing&lt;/a&gt; on that question, but it wasn't addressed, perhaps because they provided no link/further details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My wife just sent me a bulletin concerning mercury exposure from CFL bulbs. Aside from the inhalation/skin exposure issues typically raised (which are answered in the above linked question quite well), there were pictures of a foot injury supposedly incurred from stepping on a broken CFL bulb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't post the pictures as they &lt;em&gt;are pretty graphic&lt;/em&gt;. Find them in &lt;a href=&quot;http://delmarva.asse.org/docs/Salisbury%20Fire%20Dept%20Training%20%20Newsletter%20-%20April%202012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this bulletin&lt;/a&gt;, supposedly created by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://salisburyfd.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Salisbury Fire Department in Maryland&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the scenario:&#xA;You are dispatched to The Smith residence for a laceration to the foot.  Routine run huh?  Nope.  What you were not told is that Mr. Smith uses CFL lamps in his home. One of those lamps burned-out, and Mr. Smith did not wait for the lamp to cool down before he stood on a chair and removed it.  Because the lamp was hot to the touch, Mr. Smith dropped it.  As the lamp hit the floor, it exploded.  As Mr. Smith descended from the chair he stepped, barefooted, into the broken glass and exposed mercury. Here is what Mr. Smith’s foot looked like during his 2-week stay in ICU: [graphic pictures follow]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At one stage it was feared that his foot would need to be amputated.  Currently his foot is connected to a vacuum pump to remove continuously dead tissue. [another graphic picture]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I dig a bit of digging, but this appears not to have been answered definitively:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Snopes has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/photos/medical/cfl.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; on this which states that the Salisbury Fire Dept. &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; author the newsletter, but subsequently was led to believe that &lt;a href=&quot;http://salisburyfd.com/message.cfm?id=38&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the information they based it on was sent to them via a hoax&lt;/a&gt;. Snopes didn't find information related to mercury and such types of injuries, but couldn't definitively reject the idea, either.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hoax Slayer &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hoax-slayer.com/mercury-exposure-foot-injury.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;also wrote about the document/pictures&lt;/a&gt; and has the same stance. No evidence was found to support this type of injury, but it couldn't be denied, either.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Could a laceration from a CFL bulb and subsequent contamination with mercury create the necrosis-looking large gashes shown in the linked article?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. The answer might end the same as Snopes or Hoax Slayer... I'm considering trying to answer this myself by searching for some specialists or institutions specializing in mercury exposure care. Someone else could feel free to do the same -- just one way that might help answer this definitively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also took one of the images and did a reverse Google image search hoping to find some instance of it on a medical case example (non-mercury related), but was unsuccessful. All the hits seem to be for the same types of CFL warning pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T08:31:48.247" Title="Could cutting one's self on a broken CFL bulb cause severe injury?" Tags="|consumer-products|toxicology|compact-fluorescent-lamps|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="278" CreationDate="2012-05-25T18:36:45.023" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/flu/professionals/vaccination/effectivenessqa.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why do estimates of influenza vaccine effectiveness vary widely?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates of influenza vaccine effectiveness are affected by several factors, including the specific study biases discussed above, the match between the vaccine influenza strains and the circulating strains, host factors and the sample size of a specific study. As noted above, the specificity of the outcome measured in a study has an important influence on the observed effectiveness. As more data are collected globally from annual studies that estimate effectiveness for RT-PCR confirmed influenza, it is expected that our estimates will become more refined. However, vaccine effectiveness will always vary from season to season, based upon the degree of similarity between the viruses in the vaccine and those in circulation, as well as other factors. In years when the vaccine strains are not well-matched to circulating strains, vaccine effectiveness is generally lower. In addition, host factors also affect vaccine effectiveness. In general, influenza vaccines are less effective among people with chronic medical conditions and among people age 65 and older, as compared to healthy young adults and older children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adults 65 years or older&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only one large randomized, controlled trial of influenza vaccine has been conducted among an elderly population. During the 1991-1992 influenza season, a group of Dutch people 60 years of age and older not living in long-term care facilities (e.g., nursing homes) was studied (Govaert et al., 1994). In this study, &lt;strong&gt;vaccine efficacy was 58% in preventing clinically-defined influenza with serologic confirmation of infection.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;There are no published studies of the efficacy or effectiveness of influenza vaccines in preventing laboratory-confirmed, serious outcomes of influenza such as hospitalization&lt;/em&gt;, primarily because the size of the study would be large, and therefore, such a study is very expensive to conduct. Published observational studies conducted among people 65 and older not living in long-term care facilities have used non-specific outcomes, such as pneumonia hospitalizations or all-cause mortality. These studies may be subject to substantial confounding and selection bias, and they use outcomes in which the proportion of illness associated with influenza virus infections vary by season (as other respiratory viruses can cocirculate). As a result, it is difficult to interpret the results of these studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adults 65 years or older in long-term care facilities&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All residents of long-term care facilities s (e.g., nursing homes) should receive annual influenza vaccination, as outbreaks of influenza can be explosive and result in substantial morbidity and mortality among residents of such facilities. There is evidence that vaccination prevents respiratory illnesses during periods of influenza circulation for elderly nursing home residents. For example, one study conducted during the 1991-1992 influenza season found that &lt;strong&gt;vaccination was associated with a 34% reduction in total respiratory illnesses and a 55% reduction in pneumonia&lt;/strong&gt; during the two-week peak of influenza activity (Monto, 2001). In addition, one study conducted in UK nursing homes found that vaccinating health care workers decreased deaths during periods of influenza activity during one season with substantial influenza circulation, but not during the next year, when influenza activity was low throughout the winter (Hayward, 2006).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Children&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a four-year randomized, placebo-controlled study of inactivated and live influenza vaccines among &lt;em&gt;children aged 1–15 years&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;vaccine efficacy was estimated at 77% against influenza A (H3N2) and 91% against influenza A (H1N1)&lt;/strong&gt; virus infection (Neuzil et al., 2001). A two-year study of &lt;em&gt;children aged 6–24 months&lt;/em&gt; found that the &lt;strong&gt;vaccine was 66% effective in preventing laboratory-confirmed influenza in one year of the study&lt;/strong&gt; (Hoberman et al., 2003). Only children who were fully vaccinated (i.e., had either two doses if not previously vaccinated, or one dose if previously vaccinated) versus unvaccinated children were included in the analysis. In the other year of this study, few cases of influenza occurred, making it difficult to assess the vaccine's efficacy (Hoberman et al., 2003). Children younger than 9 years of age who have not been vaccinated previously are recommended to receive two doses of vaccine the first year they get vaccinated. In subsequent years, they need only one dose. This recommendation was made because many children younger than 9 years of age have not been infected with influenza viruses previously, and a booster dose is needed for them to produce a protective immune response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;emphasis mine in all cases&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty more studies on the website but this answer is long enough already, but all studies I looked at showed vaccines were effective, though some where by fairly small margins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6876" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-25T18:36:45.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9593" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-26T04:31:01.387" Score="15" ViewCount="2204" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://money.aol.co.uk/2012/05/25/spanish-singer-told-to-lose-eurovision/&quot;&gt;Spanish singer told to lose Eurovision?&lt;/a&gt; claims that countries deliberately avoid winning the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_Song_Contest&quot;&gt;Eurovision Song Contest&lt;/a&gt; because of the expense of hosting it. It claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Montenegro, Andora and Hungary pulled out of the Eurovision song contest in 2010, with Hungary supposedly doing so because of the IMF.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It claims that countries send artists who cannot win.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EurovisionSongContest&quot;&gt;TV Tropes&lt;/a&gt; also state that Sweden withdrew from the 1976 contest for this reason, and mentions an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&amp;amp;v=jzYzVMcgWhg&quot;&gt;episode&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;em&gt;Father Ted&lt;/em&gt; where Ireland deliberately chose the main characters as their entrants to avoid the expense of hosting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any verified instances of countries taking actions in order to avoid winning Eurovision?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-26T15:05:51.600" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T11:09:54.330" Title="Do countries deliberately avoid winning Eurovision?" Tags="|economics|politics|europe|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9594" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-26T05:59:21.477" Score="7" ViewCount="26479" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen sites and pictures online that say castor oil cures baldness, complete with photos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are some commercial products available that claim to stop and reverse hair loss, using home remedies work too. Castor oil for hair loss is one such home remedy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Castor oil is replete with omega-9 essential fatty acids, which help to nourish hair and prevent the scalp from itching. In addition, the oil has ricinoliec acid, which is a fungicide. This prevents scalp infections, which can cause hair loss. The oil also works as a humectant and attracts moisture from the body to the scalp and skin. So, the hair stays soft and lustrous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailyglow.com/castor-oil-for-hair-loss-and-treatments.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Castor Oil for Hair Loss and Treatments&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some home remedies you can use to help prevent or treat hair loss. Castor oil is one remedy that does not require any special recipe since you can directly apply it to your scalp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_2119738_use-castor-oil-treat-hair.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Use Castor Oil to Treat Hair Loss&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this supported by scientific evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3010" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T09:13:53.657" Title="Does castor oil cure baldness?" Tags="|natural-remedies|hair|oil|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9597" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-26T09:17:59.060" Score="41" ViewCount="15589" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://airobserver.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/ryanair-tricking-passengers-into-paying-more-than-necessary-using-cookies-information/&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitterwallet.com/save-money-on-ryanair-fares-by-deleting-your-cookies/42133&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and a few others, apparently, RyanAir uses cookies to detect whether you've been to the site before and increases the price, presumably because it believes if you're checking it again, you're going to be more desperate to buy at a higher price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first impression is I'm skeptical as I would've thought it'd basically be illegal to offer two sets of prices to two customers at the same time. Also, doesn't seem very good business sense as the customer who've checked for the second time is more likely to have looked at other sites too, therefore, more likely to be deterred by a higher price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone confirm if this actually takes place with RyanAir or with any other airlines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="955" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:02:37.890" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T23:14:49.100" Title="Does Ryanair use cookies to raise the price of their tickets after you have visited the site before?" Tags="|consumer-products|aviation|travel|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="278" CreationDate="2012-05-26T13:22:11.050" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt; Influenza vaccines do work but might not be as effective as they could be (or as advertised).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two reviews should cover the whats, whys and WTFs...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2010&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD001269.pub4/abstract&quot;&gt;Vaccines for preventing influenza in healthy adults&lt;/a&gt;. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2010, Issue 7. Art. No.: CD001269.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Authors’ conclusions&lt;/strong&gt;   Influenza vaccines have a modest effect in reducing influenza symptoms and working days lost. There is no&#xA;  evidence that they affect complications, such as pneumonia, or&#xA;  transmission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WARNING:&lt;/strong&gt;   This review includes 15 out of 36 trials funded by industry (four had no funding declaration). An earlier systematic&#xA;  review of 274 influenza vaccine studies published up to 2007 found&#xA;  industry funded studies were published in more prestigious journals&#xA;  and cited more than other studies independently from methodological&#xA;  quality and size. Studies funded from public sources were&#xA;  significantly less likely to report conclusions favorable to the&#xA;  vaccines. The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza&#xA;  vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of&#xA;  conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies. The content and&#xA;  conclusions of this review should be interpreted in light of this&#xA;  finding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Plain Languange Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vaccines to prevent influenza in healthy adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over 200 viruses cause influenza and influenza-like illness which&#xA;  produce the same symptoms (fever, headache, aches and pains, cough and&#xA;  runny noses). Without laboratory tests, doctors cannot tell the two&#xA;  illnesses apart. Both last for days and rarely lead to death or&#xA;  serious illness. At best, vaccines might be effective against only&#xA;  influenza A and B, which represent about 10% of all circulating&#xA;  viruses. Each year, the World Health Organization recommends which&#xA;  viral strains should be included in vaccinations for the forthcoming&#xA;  season. Authors of this review assessed all trials that compared&#xA;  vaccinated people with unvaccinated people. The combined results of&#xA;  these trials showed that under ideal conditions (vaccine completely&#xA;  matching circulating viral configuration) 33 healthy adults need to be&#xA;  vaccinated to avoid one set of influenza symptoms. In average&#xA;  conditions (partially matching vaccine) 100 people need to be&#xA;  vaccinated to avoid one set of influenza symptoms. Vaccine use did not&#xA;  affect the number of people hospitalised or working days lost but&#xA;  caused one case of Guillian-Barré syndrome (a major neurological&#xA;  condition leading to paralysis) for every one million vaccinations.&#xA;  Fifteen of the 36 trials were funded by vaccine companies and four had&#xA;  no funding declaration. Our results may be an optimistic estimate&#xA;  because company-sponsored influenza vaccines trials tend to produce&#xA;  results favorable to their products and some of the evidence comes&#xA;  from trials carried out in ideal viral circulation and matching&#xA;  conditions and because the harms evidence base is limited.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Lancet Infectious Diseases 2012&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Findings, interpretation and some numbers from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S147330991170295X&quot;&gt;Osterholm et al (2012)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Efficacy and effectiveness of influenza vaccines: a systematic review and meta-analysis&lt;/em&gt;, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Volume 12, Issue 1, January 2012...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Findings&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  We screened 5707 articles and identified 31 eligible studies&#xA;  (17 randomised controlled trials and 14 observational studies).&#xA;  Efficacy of TIV was shown in eight (67%) of the 12 seasons analysed in&#xA;  ten randomised controlled trials (pooled efficacy 59% [95% CI 51–67]&#xA;  in adults aged 18–65 years). No such trials met inclusion criteria for&#xA;  children aged 2–17 years or adults aged 65 years or older. Efficacy of&#xA;  LAIV was shown in nine (75%) of the 12 seasons analysed in ten&#xA;  randomised controlled trials (pooled efficacy 83% [69–91]) in children&#xA;  aged 6 months to 7 years. No such trials met inclusion criteria for&#xA;  children aged 8–17 years. Vaccine effectiveness was variable for&#xA;  seasonal influenza: six (35%) of 17 analyses in nine studies showed&#xA;  significant protection against medically attended influenza in the&#xA;  outpatient or inpatient setting. Median monovalent pandemic H1N1&#xA;  vaccine effectiveness in five observational studies was 69% (range&#xA;  60–93).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Interpretation&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Influenza vaccines can provide moderate protection against&#xA;  virologically confirmed influenza, but such protection is greatly&#xA;  reduced or absent in some seasons. Evidence for protection in adults&#xA;  aged 65 years or older is lacking. LAIVs consistently show highest&#xA;  efficacy in young children (aged 6 months to 7 years). New vaccines&#xA;  with improved clinical efficacy and effectiveness are needed to&#xA;  further reduce influenza-related morbidity and mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Randomised controlled trials of trivalent inactivated vaccine (TIV) meeting inclusion criteria&lt;sup&gt;§&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vaccine efficacy (95% CI), n = Patients randomly allocated to receive TIV and placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adults (18–64 years)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;75%&lt;/strong&gt; (42 to 90), n = 728. Healthy adults aged 18–46 years (2004–05) Type A: drifted H3N2; type B: mixed lineage. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa061850&quot;&gt;Ohmit et al (2006)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;16%&lt;/strong&gt; (–171 to 70), n = 1205. Healthy adults aged 18–48 years (2005–06) Type A: drifted H3N2; type B: lineage mismatch (1 isolate). &lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/198/3/312.short&quot;&gt;Ohmit et al (2008)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;22%&lt;/strong&gt; (–49 to 59), n = 6203. Healthy adults aged 18–64 years (2005–06) Type A: similar H3N2 and H1N1; type B: lineage mismatch. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/9/2/&quot;&gt;Beran et al (2009)&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;62%&lt;/strong&gt; (46 to 73), n = 7652. Healthy adults aged 18–64 years (2006–07) Type A: similar H3N2; type B: lineage mismatch. &lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/200/12/1861.short&quot;&gt;Beran et al (2009)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;68%&lt;/strong&gt; (46 to 81), n = 1139. Healthy adults aged 18–49 years (2007–08) Type A: drifted H3N2; type B: lineage mismatch. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0808652&quot;&gt;Monto et al (2009)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;50%&lt;/strong&gt;† (14 to 71), n = 3514. Healthy adults aged 18–49 years (2005–06) Type A: similar H3N2; type B: lineage mismatch. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/10/71/&quot;&gt;Jackson et al (2010)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;50%&lt;/strong&gt;† (–3 to 75), n = 4144. Healthy adults aged 18–49 years (2006–07) Type A: similar H3N2; type B: mixed lineage. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2334/10/71/&quot;&gt;Jackson et al (2010)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;63%&lt;/strong&gt; (one-sided 97·5% lower limit of 47%), n = 7576. Healthy adults aged 18–49 years (2007–08) Type A: mixed strains; type B: lineage mismatch. &lt;a href=&quot;http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/51/9/997.short&quot;&gt;Frey et al (2010)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;76%&lt;/strong&gt; (9 to 96), n = 506. Adults aged 18–55 years with HIV infection (2008–09) Type A: drifted H1N1; type B: not reported. &lt;a href=&quot;http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/52/1/128.short&quot;&gt;Madhi et al (2011)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Children (6–24 months)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;66%&lt;/strong&gt; (34 to 82), n = 411. Healthy children aged 6–24 months (1999–2000) Type A: similar H3N2 and H1N1; type B: not reported. &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?volume=290&amp;amp;issue=12&amp;amp;page=1608&quot;&gt;Hoberman et al (2003)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;–7%&lt;/strong&gt; (–247 to 67), n = 375. Healthy children aged 6–24 months (2000–01) Type A: similar H3N2 and H1N1; type B: lineage match. &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?volume=290&amp;amp;issue=12&amp;amp;page=1608&quot;&gt;Hoberman et al (2003)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Notes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;No studies were available for adults aged 65 years or older or children aged 2–17 years.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;§ One other study by Loeb and colleagues23 met inclusion criteria and contained data for all age groups.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;† Our calculation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Randomised controlled trials of live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV) meeting inclusion criteria&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vaccine efficacy (95% CI), n = Patients randomly allocated to receive LAIV and placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adults (&gt;=60 years)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Overall &lt;strong&gt;42%&lt;/strong&gt; (21 to 57); 31% (–3 to 53) for patients aged 60–69 years; 57% (29 to 75) for patients aged &gt;=70 years, n = 3242. Community-dwelling ambulatory adults aged &gt;=60 years (2001–02). Type A: similar H3N2; type B: lineage match. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X0901439X&quot;&gt;De Villiers et al (2010)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Adults (18–49 years)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;48%&lt;/strong&gt; (-7 to 74), n = 725. Healthy adults aged 18–46 years (2004–05). Type A: drifted H3N2; type B: mixed lineage. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa061850&quot;&gt;Ohmit et al (2006)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;8%&lt;/strong&gt; (–194 to 67), n = 1191. Healthy adults aged 18–48 years (2005–06). Type A: drifted H3N2; type B: lineage mismatch (1 isolate). &lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/198/3/312.short&quot;&gt;Ohmit et al (2008)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;36%&lt;/strong&gt; (0 to 59), n = 1138. Healthy adults aged 18–49 years (2007–08). Type A: drifted H3N2; type B: lineage mismatch. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0808652&quot;&gt;Monto et al (2009)&lt;/a&gt;†&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Children (6 months–7 years)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;93%&lt;/strong&gt; (88 to 96), n = 1602. Healthy children aged 15–71 months (1996–97). Type A: similar H3N2; type B: lineage match. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199805143382002&quot;&gt;Belshe et al (1998)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;87%&lt;/strong&gt; (78 to 93), n = 1358. Healthy children aged 26–85 months (1997–98). Type A: drifted H3N2; type B: not reported (1 isolate). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022347600700977&quot;&gt;Belshe et al (2000)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;84%&lt;/strong&gt; (74 to 90), n = 1784. Healthy children aged 26–85 months (1997–98). Type A: similar H3N2 and H1N1; type B: lineage match. &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/118/6/2298.short&quot;&gt;Vesikari et al (2006)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;85%&lt;/strong&gt; (78 to 90), n = 1119. Healthy children aged 6–&amp;lt;36 months attending day care (2001–02). Type A: similar H3N2 and H1N1; type B: mixed lineage. &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/118/6/2298.short&quot;&gt;Vesikari et al (2006)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;72%&lt;/strong&gt; (62 to 80), n = 1886. Healthy children aged 6–&amp;lt;36 months (2000–01). Majority of strains were similar (not reported by type). &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/pidj/Fulltext/2009/05000/Efficacy_and_Safety_of_1_and_2_Doses_of_Live.1.aspx?WT.mc_id=HPxADx20100319xMP&quot;&gt;Bracco Neto et al (2009)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;68%&lt;/strong&gt; (59 to 75), n = 3174. Healthy children aged 12–&amp;lt;36 months (2000–01). Type A: similar H3N2 and H1N1; type B: lineage match. &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/pidj/Abstract/2007/07000/Efficacy_and_Safety_of_a_Live_Attenuated,.14.aspx&quot;&gt;Tam et al (2007)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;57%&lt;/strong&gt; (30 to 74), n = 2947. Healthy children aged 12-&amp;lt;36 months (2001–02). Type A: similar H3N2 and H1N1; type B: mixed lineage. &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/pidj/Abstract/2007/07000/Efficacy_and_Safety_of_a_Live_Attenuated,.14.aspx&quot;&gt;Tam et al (2007)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;64%&lt;/strong&gt; (40 to 79), n = 1233. Healthy children aged 11–&amp;lt;24 months (2002–03). Type A: similar H1N1 and mixed H3N2; type B: mixed lineage. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X0901857X&quot;&gt;Lum et al (2010)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Notes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;No studies were available for adults aged 50–59 years or children aged 8–17 years.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;† Authors reported culture, RT-PCR, and RT-PCR/culture; we report RT-PCR/culture results.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Vaccine effectiveness of seasonal influenza vaccine in studies meeting inclusion criteria&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vaccine efficacy (95% CI), n = Patients randomly allocated  Vaccine effectiveness against medically attended influenza.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All patients aged 6–59 months admitted to hospital, seen in emergency department or by primary-care doctors for acute respiratory illness (2003–05). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/content/122/5/911.short&quot;&gt;Eisenberg et al (2008)&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;44%&lt;/strong&gt; (–42 to 78), n = 927 patients (2003–04).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;57%&lt;/strong&gt; (28 to 74), n = 1502 patients (2004–05).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All patients aged 6–59 months admitted to hospital, seen in emergency department (inpatient) or by primary-care doctors (outpatient) for acute respiratory illness (2003–05). &lt;a href=&quot;http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?volume=162&amp;amp;issue=10&amp;amp;page=943&quot;&gt;Szilagyi et al (2008)&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;12%&lt;/strong&gt; (–120 to 60), n = 4760 inpatients (2003–04).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;52%&lt;/strong&gt; (–100 to 90), n = 696 outpatients (2003–04)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;37%&lt;/strong&gt; (–50 to 70), n = 4708 inpatients (2004–05).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;7%&lt;/strong&gt; (–80 to 50), n = 742 outpatients (2004–05).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Residents recommended for vaccination by ACIP with acute respiratory illness. &lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/199/2/159.short&quot;&gt;Belongia et al (2009)&lt;/a&gt;      &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;10%&lt;/strong&gt; (–36 to 40), n = 818 patients. Age &amp;lt;24 months, &gt;=65 years, or high-risk (2004–05).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;21%&lt;/strong&gt; (–52 to 59), n = 356 patients. Age &amp;lt;24 months, &gt;=50 years, or high-risk (2005–06).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;52%&lt;/strong&gt; (22 to 70), n = 932 patients. Age &amp;lt;59 months, &gt;=50 years, or high risk (2006–07).    &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All patients aged &gt;=9 years presenting with ILI to sentinel primary-care practitioners. &lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/199/2/168.short&quot;&gt;Skowronski et al (2009)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;47%&lt;/strong&gt; (18 to 65), n = 841. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cohort of patients aged 6–35 months presenting with ILI enrolled in a randomised controlled trial for antivirals (2007–08). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1473309910702553&quot;&gt;Heinonen et al&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;72%&lt;/strong&gt; (35 to 88), n = 340.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All patients &gt;=65 years old presenting with ILI (2008–09). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X10001192&quot;&gt;Savulescu et al (2010)&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;79%&lt;/strong&gt; (–26 to 96), n = 103.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All patients &gt;=65 years old presenting with ILI (2008–09). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurosurveillance.org/viewarticle.aspx?articleid=19388&quot;&gt;Kissling et al (2009)&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;59%&lt;/strong&gt; (15 to 80), n = 292.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;All patients aged 6–59 months presenting with ILI (2008). &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/pidj/Abstract/2011/02000/Vaccine_Effectiveness_Against_Laboratory_confirmed.4.aspx&quot;&gt;Kelly et al (2011)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;68%&lt;/strong&gt;§ (26 to 86), n = 289. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Adults aged &gt; 50 years admitted to hospital with respiratory symptoms or non-localising fever (2006–09). &lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/203/4/500.short&quot;&gt;Talbot et al (2011)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;57%&lt;/strong&gt; (–44 to 87)†, n = 168 patients (2006–07). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;56%&lt;/strong&gt; (–63 to 88)†, n = 68 patients (2007–08).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;73%&lt;/strong&gt; (–15 to 94)†, n = 181 patients (2008–09).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Notes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;ACIP = Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;ILI = influenza-like illness.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;§ Controls tested negative for influenza but positive for other respiratory viruses.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;† Vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Bottom Line&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The more restrictive selection criteria for study inclusion used by&#xA;  Osterholm and colleagues led to some differences in results from the&#xA;  most recent Cochrane review. The new meta-analysis estimated a pooled&#xA;  inactivated vaccine efficacy against influenza infection in adults of&#xA;  59% (95% CI 51–67), compared with estimated efficacy in healthy adults&#xA;  of 73% (54–84) in the Cochrane review for years when circulating and&#xA;  vaccine strains were well-matched and 44% (23–59) in years when they&#xA;  were not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The median vaccine effectiveness of the monovalent pandemic vaccine&#xA;  against medically attended pH1N1 influenza was 69%, whereas in another&#xA;  study effectiveness was estimated to be 90% (95% CI 48–100) against&#xA;  hospital admission due to laboratory-confirmed pH1N1 infection.&#xA;  However, other studies have reported lower vaccine effectiveness for&#xA;  the same outcome. In Australia in 2010, when pH1N1 influenza made up&#xA;  79% of documented infections, vaccine effectiveness against hospital&#xA;  admission was 49% (13–70). A study undertaken in the Navarra region of&#xA;  Spain in 2010–11 estimated vaccine effectiveness against hospital&#xA;  admission to be 58% (16–79) with a cohort analysis and 59% (4–83) with&#xA;  a test-negative design (J Castilla, Public Health Institute Navarra,&#xA;  Spain; personal communication).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...snip...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now might also be an appropriate time to use revised estimates of the&#xA;  most probable effectiveness of influenza vaccines to re-examine the&#xA;  effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of some policy options. This&#xA;  re-examination would need to be done in conjunction with studies that,&#xA;  similar to the new meta-analysis of the effect of influenza vaccines,&#xA;  use highly specific laboratory-confirmed outcomes to assess influenza&#xA;  burden.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1473309911702894&quot;&gt;Estimating the effect of influenza&#xA;  vaccines&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;  The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Volume 12, Issue 1, January 2012.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most importantly: Always discuss healthcare issues with your doctor...not the internet.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2012-05-26T13:22:11.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9599" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14966" CreationDate="2012-05-26T16:17:10.293" Score="12" ViewCount="51793" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm possibly selling a used mattress (plead the 5th) and to my surprise was told that it's illegal! I've never heard this before. It seems that many others are asking this question and have heard it too:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=45067&quot;&gt;Snopes discussion forum post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_states_is_it_illegal_to_sell_used_mattresses&quot;&gt;Wiki answers question&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_it_illegal_to_sell_a_used_mattress_in_pa&quot;&gt;Another Wiki answers question specifically about Pennsylvania&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.topix.com/forum/city/jonesboro-ar/T4MHDGP94IG3U8GBG&quot;&gt;Topix discussion board&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None but the Pennsylvania question seems to have a definitive answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it illegal to sell a [for simplicity's sake, non-stained, not-known-to-be-infested, etc.] used mattress?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to differentiate between person-to-person sales vs. via a business if the requirements differ. If, as one of the Wiki answers posts states, this might be state dependent, a summary of which states (or countries) allow/disallow this would be neat to have.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-26T16:32:50.583" LastActivityDate="2019-08-18T20:59:20.743" Title="Is it illegal to sell used mattresses?" Tags="|united-states|law|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9600" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-26T16:58:01.420" Score="9" ViewCount="525" Body="&lt;p&gt;For over 30 years, politicians from Israel and the US have said that &quot;Iran will&#xA;have a nuclear weapon in less than a year&quot;. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/content/view/print/422252&quot;&gt;Christian Science Monitor timeline of these warnings&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-09-24-Iran-nuclear_N.htm&quot;&gt;USA Today, Sep 2008&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For: &lt;a href=&quot;http://onespot.wsj.com/small-business/2011/11/14/ea8d2/iran-will-have-five-nukes-by-april-2012&quot;&gt;Wall Street Journal, Nov 2011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By April 2012 Iran will have five nuclear bombs or warheads, says intelligence reaching US president Barack Obama and relayed to Jewish leaders at a closed meeting in New York Sunday, Nov. 13, debkafile's sources report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Against: &lt;a href=&quot;http://mediamatters.org/blog/201202210012&quot;&gt;Media Matters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iranwatch.org/ourpubs/articles/iranucleartimetable.html&quot;&gt;IranWatch, April 2012&lt;/a&gt;, which actually gives some more detail estimates of their progress, which seem consistent with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/iaeairan/iaea_reports.shtml&quot;&gt;International Atomic Energy Agency's reports on Iran&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not have a nuclear engineering degree, but the timelines seem to based on the time taken to produced &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enriched_uranium#Highly_enriched_uranium_.28HEU.29&quot;&gt;highly enriched uranium&lt;/a&gt;. It's hard for me to&#xA;know how much time enriching this uranium takes. IranWatch (see above) claims 3-12 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is twofold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Could Iran enrich their 20% uranium to 90% in under 12 months?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, could they make a nuclear weapen with 20% uranium in under 12 months?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: &lt;strong&gt;I am in no way suggesting&lt;/strong&gt; that Iran is seeking to build a nuclear bomb. The question is whether the hypothetical estimates provided are feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7123" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-27T03:56:37.483" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T03:56:37.483" Title="Could Iran produce a nuclear weapon in under a year if they wanted to?" Tags="|nuclear-energy|nuclear-weapons|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9593" CreationDate="2012-05-26T17:34:05.963" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an &lt;strong&gt;indirect answer&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The &quot;hosting rule&quot; was established in 1958:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ok, here we go now: the winning country will be hosting the next ESC&#xA;  from now on! &lt;br&gt;(&lt;em&gt;Generally speaking, anyway – &lt;strong&gt;some countries did make&#xA;  exceptions once in a while&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20060526065558/http://www.eurovision.tv/english/611.htm&quot;&gt;Official Eurovision Song Contest website from 2006 (via the Wayback Machine)&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;The mentioned exceptions are:&lt;/strong&gt; (quotes taken from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurovision.tv/page/history&quot;&gt;official ESC website 2012&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurovision.tv/page/history/by-year/contest?event=277#About%20the%20show&quot;&gt;1960&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;The capital of the United Kingdom, London, provided the settings for the fifth Eurovision Song Contest. This was despite&#xA;  the fact that the Netherlands actually won the Eurovision Song Contest&#xA;  the year before [..] the Dutch broadcaster didn't want to host the&#xA;  contest again.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurovision.tv/page/history/by-year/contest?event=280#About%20the%20show&quot;&gt;1963&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;The honour of hosting this year's song contest was handed over by the French to the United Kingdom.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurovision.tv/page/history/by-year/contest?event=288#About%20the%20show&quot;&gt;1972&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Despite the victory of Monaco the previous year, the 1972 ESC took place in Edinburgh. The reason that the contest did&#xA;  not take place in Monaco was because the small Mediterranean nation&#xA;  could not provide a decent venue. However, it was later rumoured that&#xA;  the real reason was that Monaco was not in a financial position to&#xA;  host the contest.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurovision.tv/page/history/by-year/contest?event=290#About%20the%20show&quot;&gt;1974&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;For the second year in three, the United Kingdom and its national broadcaster BBC held the Eurovision Song Contest&#xA;  without having won in the preceding year. Due to the fact that the&#xA;  Luxembourg broadcaster RTL did not wish to host the song contest again&#xA;  because of financial reasons, British BBC embraced the possibility&#xA;  once more.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurovision.tv/page/history/by-year/contest?event=296#About%20the%20show&quot;&gt;1980&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Israeli TV didn't want to host the 1980 Song Contest again even if they won it the year before on home ground.&#xA;  After a lot of discussions with several European broadcasters it was&#xA;  decided that the contest would be arranged by Dutch TV NOS in The&#xA;  Hague.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurovision.tv/page/history/by-year/contest?event=292#About%20the%20show&quot;&gt;1976 Sweden&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;withdrew from the contest as Swedish TV thought that the contest had&#xA;  become too commercial. They were also afraid of winning again and&#xA;  having to host the expensive show again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p007x95f&quot;&gt;This led to&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a new rule being introduced which meant each participant had to&#xA;  contribute in part to the costs of staging the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the easiest way to &quot;avoid winning&quot; is obviously not to register for the contest in the first place (e.g. this year &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurovision.tv/page/news?id=44483&amp;amp;_t=43_countries_represented_at_eurovision_2012&quot;&gt;Poland decided not to participate&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;there are precedents of countries declining hosting duties due to financial strain &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to these two points it seems to be an unnecessary measure to &lt;em&gt;deliberately send artists who cannot win&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-05-27T11:09:54.330" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T11:09:54.330" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9602" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-26T18:47:49.287" Score="7" ViewCount="9619" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only thing I've found regarding &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/342380-hot-pepper-during-pregnancy/&quot;&gt;hot peppers while pregnant&lt;/a&gt; says that it can possibly induce labor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mom just told my pregnant wife that eating hot pepper can damage the fetus' skin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the skin will be prone to rashes/buttons/blisters/etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the skin will become darker&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She said it's because of the heat caused by the pepper.  Is this based in reality, or is it just a housewives' tale?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4979" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T18:06:23.793" Title="Can eating hot peppers while pregnant affect the fetus' skin?" Tags="|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9603" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-27T04:29:02.513" Score="14" ViewCount="1755" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many examples of people claiming they need their morning cup of coffee in order to be able to function at their normal level:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nicindy.org/blog/fraternal-coffee-orders/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NIC blog&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like many early morning risers, I need my morning cup of coffee to get&#xA;  my brain going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ezinearticles.com/?Read-This-Article-if-You-Must-Have-Your-Morning-Cup-of-Coffee&amp;amp;id=116951&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Read This Article if You Must Have Your Morning Cup of Coffee&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many Americans simply cannot function without their morning cup of&#xA;  coffee; in fact it is estimated that 72% of all Americans have a&#xA;  morning cup of coffee to get going&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/539001-does-coffee-take-away-blood-flow-to-the-brain/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Does Coffee Take Away Blood Flow to the Brain?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coffee is a staple drink of the morning, particularly for people who&#xA;  are tired and need a boost of energy to get going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does a single cup of (non-decaf) coffee drank in the morning have a real physiological effect that would aid in waking up and increasing concentration? Or is the morning cup of coffee ritual perhaps something closer to a placebo like effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-06-02T06:36:55.923" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T11:51:38.313" Title="Can a single cup of coffee help a person to wake up and be more focused?" Tags="|nutrition|physiology|coffee|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9604" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14598" CreationDate="2012-05-27T08:17:05.140" Score="10" ViewCount="8324" Body="&lt;p&gt;ADSL connections in Sydney, Australia seem to either not work, or work slower when it's been raining or after it's been raining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried googling for ADSL and rain, and I got a lot of user-generated content, but not many reliable sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does rain affect ADSL speed and reliability, or am I imagining it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:01:43.147" LastActivityDate="2022-05-04T20:22:23.537" Title="Does rain affect ADSL speed or reliability?" Tags="|weather|networks|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9589" CreationDate="2012-05-27T09:39:12.883" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt; - The injuries depicted in the Salisbury Fire Department bulletin are consistent with reports of Necrotizing Soft Tissue Infection (&quot;flesh-eating bacteria&quot;). &lt;strong&gt;They are not consistent with reports of mercury poisoning&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lightingcouncil.com.au/pdf/news/Mercury%20poisoning%20claim.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this statement&lt;/a&gt; from Lighting Council Australia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alleged Mercury Poisoning From Stepping On A Broken Compact Fluorescent Lamp&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no medical or other evidence in the internet material viewed by Lighting&#xA;  Council Australia that links the foot injury to mercury poisoning. Neither Lighting&#xA;  Council Australia nor its international colleagues in the Global Lighting Association&#xA;  is able to find any evidence that mercury could cause the injury depicted in the&#xA;  internet images. Accordingly Lighting Council Australia rejects the notion that the&#xA;  injury is the result of mercury poisoning. A more likely explanation is that the&#xA;  initial injury (which may or may not have been caused by stepping on a broken&#xA;  CFL) has been exacerbated by bacterial infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did a search for medical articles related to bacterial infections and found the following article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://faoj.org/2008/04/01/necrotizing-soft-tissue-infection-of-the-foot-a-case-report/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Necrotizing Soft Tissue Infection of the Foot: A Case Report&lt;/a&gt;&quot; which contains graphic images similar to those in the Salisbury Fire Department bulletin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found two medical articles describing cases where people have injected themselves with mercury. Although both cases report abscesses around the injection site, the large scale tissue damage depicted in the Salisbury Fire Department bulletin was not present. The amounts of mercury injected in these two cases were massive compared to the amounts present in CFL bulbs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2890926/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elemental mercury poisoning caused by subcutaneous and intravenous injection: An unusual self-injury&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 20-year-old man presented with diffuse chest pain for three days and moderate grade fever for one day with hemoptysis. About three months earlier he had injected approximately 5 ml of elemental mercury subcutaneously into his left forearm; in addition, seven days prior to presentation he had injected approximately 8-10 ml of elemental mercury (obtained from a sphygmomanometer) intravenously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On examination, the patient was conscious, oriented, and afebrile. Puncture marks were seen in the left antecubital fossa. Abscess formation at the injection site and small amount of mercury could be seen coming out from the puncture sites. The blood urea, serum creatinine, and urine analysis were normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2482/11/31&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Auto-aggressive metallic mercury injection around the knee joint: a case report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;sections of the specimen showed cicatricial tissue, granulomas caused by foreign bodies, multiple abscesses and black amorphous material (mercury depots) surrounded by the foreign-body reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-05-27T09:39:12.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9609" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9627" CreationDate="2012-05-27T20:47:53.120" Score="24" ViewCount="2505" Body="&lt;p&gt;I once had a conversation with a colleague about the correct way to make tea. He stated that adding milk to hot tea &quot;scalds the milk&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Won't having hot water poured into some milk &quot;scald&quot; it just as much?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For the record, I've never been able to tell the difference. I'm amazed so many people are so passionate about this question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7318" LastEditorUserId="7318" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T08:23:48.243" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T08:23:48.243" Title="Does the point when milk is added to tea make a significant difference to the final drink?" Tags="|milk|tea|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8702" CreationDate="2012-05-28T07:51:01.193" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found several small studies looking at (a) the effectiveness of flossing, and (b) the amount of flossing that happens in different groups. However, you seemed to be after larger studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any large studies, but what I could find were meta-analyses, where they systematically look for small, high-quality studies and put the data together to get stronger conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;P.P. Hujoel,&#xA;J. Cunha-Cruz, D.W. Banting, W.J. Loesche,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jdr.sagepub.com/content/85/4/298.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dental Flossing and Interproximal Caries: a Systematic Review&lt;/a&gt;, JDR April 2006 vol. 85 no. 4 298-305, doi: 10.1177/154405910608500404.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study looked at the &lt;em&gt;professionally&lt;/em&gt; flossed teeth of &lt;em&gt;children&lt;/em&gt;. Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No flossing trials in adults or under unsupervised conditions could be identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They looked at six trials, with 808 children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professional flossing performed on school days for 1.7 years on predominantly primary teeth in children was associated with a 40% caries risk reduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both three-monthly professional flossing for 3 years and self-performed flossing in young adolescents for 2 years did not reduce caries risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professional flossing in children with low fluoride exposures is highly effective in reducing interproximal caries risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They explicitly warn:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These findings should be extrapolated to more typical floss-users with care, since self-flossing has failed to show an effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, regular flossing of children, &lt;em&gt;done right&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;done daily&lt;/em&gt; seems to help (especially where there is low fluoride - I don't know if that is referring to water, or toothpaste exposure). Other situations are not as clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sambunjak D, Nickerson JW, Poklepovic T, Johnson TM, Imai P, Tugwell P, Worthington HV. &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD008829/flossing-to-reduce-gum-disease-and-tooth-decay&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flossing for the management of periodontal diseases and dental caries in adults.&lt;/a&gt; Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2011, Issue 12. Art. No.: CD008829. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD008829.pub2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Cochrane group looked at self-flossing and brushing of adults, versus brushing alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were a little scathing about the studies available: They rated five of the twelve trials they looked at (totalling over 1,000 participants) as &amp;quot;at high risk of bias&amp;quot;, and the others they rated as &amp;quot;at unclear risk of bias&amp;quot;. Overall, they stated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trials were of poor quality and &lt;strong&gt;conclusions must be viewed as unreliable&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They explain that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was weak, very unreliable evidence of a possible small reduction in plaque. There was no information on other measurements such as tooth decay because the trials were not long enough and detecting early stage decay between teeth is difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the included trials reported data for the outcomes of caries, calculus, clinical attachment loss, or quality of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question basically asked: is there high-quality evidence that long-term self-flossing helps prevent caries and gingivitis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is: No, there are no high-quality studies found by two teams that were systematically searching for them. Meta-analysis of the smaller studies suggests that are not yet of a high-enough quality to draw a firm conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In children, it seems a systematic daily flossing by professionals reduces the risk of caries by 40%, but this is clearly not a cost-effective treatment plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T07:51:01.193" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9609" CreationDate="2012-05-28T09:36:10.033" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rsc.org/pdf/pressoffice/2003/tea.pdf&quot;&gt;How to make a Perfect Cup of Tea&lt;/a&gt;, Royal Society of&#xA;Chemistry&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Milk should be added before the tea, because denaturation (degradation) of milk proteins&#xA;  is liable to occur if milk encounters temperatures above 75°C. If milk is poured into hot tea,&#xA;  individual drops separate from the bulk of the milk and come into contact with the high&#xA;  temperatures of the tea for enough time for significant denaturation to occur. This is much&#xA;  less likely to happen if hot water is added to the milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The British Standard for making tea (&lt;a href=&quot;http://sub.spc.org/san/docs/BS6008.pdf&quot;&gt;BS 6008&lt;/a&gt;) also states that tea should be added after the milk:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prepare the liquor as described in 7.2.1 but pour it&#xA;  into the bowl after the milk, in order to avoid&#xA;  scalding the milk&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="2603" LastEditDate="2012-05-28T10:10:07.233" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T10:10:07.233" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9617" CreationDate="2012-05-28T15:21:45.093" Score="12" ViewCount="1379" Body="&lt;p&gt;An organization called &lt;em&gt;Freedom Health Canada&lt;/em&gt; makes an extraordinary claim on their website, which can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomhealthcanada.ca/the-problem&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Scientifically controlled clinical trials have shown that only 10 -20 % of all procedures used in present-day medical practices are of benefit to patients. It was concluded that the vast majority of medical procedures now being utilized routinely by physicians are &quot;unproven&quot; when subjected to the same rigid standards these same orthodox physicians are demanding of alternative, nutritional practitioners.” - U.S. Office of Technology Assessment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the claim is certainly questionable in my opinion, they do quote the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessment&quot;&gt;U.S. Office of Technology Assessment&lt;/a&gt;, which is legitimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: &lt;strong&gt;Was this claim ever made by the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, and could the claim be true?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-08T12:47:13.257" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T12:47:13.257" Title="Are the vast majority of medical procedures routinely used by physicians ineffective and unproven?" Tags="|medical-science|healthcare|philosophy-of-ebm|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9615" CreationDate="2012-05-28T17:09:50.407" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The quote attributed to the OTA is untrue, both in its exact words and in its intended meaning.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With thanks to Oliver C, the quote that they are referring to is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.org/ota/reports/7805.pdf&quot;&gt;this report&lt;/a&gt;. The full quote is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been estimated that only 10 to 20 percent of all procedures&#xA;  currently used in medical practice have been shown to be efficacious by controlled&#xA;  trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short that does not mean &quot;we did controlled tests on all medical procedures, and only 10-20% were found to be effective&quot;, it means &quot;we have only done enough controlled tests to show that 10-20% of procedures were effective&quot;. That is very different from what FreedomHealthCanada is claiming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note first that this is from 1978, and things have changed a lot since then. Second the OTA did NOT think this was a good state of affairs, even then, and wanted more clinical trials. Quite a lot of procedures are of course known to be effective without the benefit of controlled trials. There are also a large number of procedures where it would be unethical to do a controlled trial - such as performing CPR on only half the patients with a stopped heart to see how many recovered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-05-28T20:59:36.237" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T20:59:36.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9139" CreationDate="2012-05-28T17:50:58.360" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This topic is actually discussed in a physics lecture found on MIT OpenCourseWare. You can enjoy Prof. Walter Lewin do an experiment showing that a person is taller laying down vs. standing up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-01-physics-i-classical-mechanics-fall-1999/video-lectures/lecture-1&quot;&gt;http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-01-physics-i-classical-mechanics-fall-1999/video-lectures/lecture-1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevant part starts at about 5:20&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7329" LastActivityDate="2012-05-28T17:50:58.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9620" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-05-29T03:03:01.153" Score="3" ViewCount="2373" Body="&lt;p&gt;I spoke to someone this weekend who was adamant that dimmer switches in households &quot;cause&quot; cancer. His claim was that since dimmer switches work by rapidly modulating the voltage to the lights they emit rapidly changing electromagnetic waves that are, I guess, more dangerous than a steady electromagnetic wave. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like physics pseudoscience bunk to me, but I was unable to find any articles online either confirming or debunking this claim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-05-29T20:36:49.280" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T20:36:49.280" Title="Do dimmer switches increase the likelihood of cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9656" CreationDate="2012-05-29T04:17:14.777" Score="25" ViewCount="10611" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/04/19/healthiest.sleep.position/index.html&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt; claims that sleeping on your side and sleeping on your stomach can lead to saggy breasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sleeping on your side can cause you to get wrinkles,&quot; Glaser says. Blame all that smushing of one side of your face into the pillow. &lt;strong&gt;This pose also contributes to breast sag&lt;/strong&gt;, since your girls are dangling downward, stretching the ligaments, says Health magazine's Medical Editor Roshini Rajapaksa, M.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has any scientific research been done on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The following websites are talking about &quot;gravity&quot; being one of the reasons of breast sag.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;When we sleep on our stomach doesn't gravity come into effect?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ayurvediccure.com/breast_sagging_shapes.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.ayurvediccure.com/breast_sagging_shapes.htm&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Breast sagging occurs for several different reasons - multiple pregnancies, breast feeding, rapid weight loss, genetics, &lt;strong&gt;gravity&lt;/strong&gt; and age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://seamist.hubpages.com/hub/what-causes-saggy-breasts&quot;&gt;http://seamist.hubpages.com/hub/what-causes-saggy-breasts&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The size of the breasts and gravity - If your breasts are larger, the size of your breasts and &lt;strong&gt;gravity&lt;/strong&gt; can stretch the ligaments and skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arizonafoothillsmagazine.com/afm-style-files/scottsdale-fashion-how-tos/should-you-sleep-in-your-bra&quot;&gt;http://www.arizonafoothillsmagazine.com/afm-style-files/scottsdale-fashion-how-tos/should-you-sleep-in-your-bra&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over time, &lt;strong&gt;gravity&lt;/strong&gt; and poor support can stretch the ligament beyond repair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realself.com/question/breast-lifting-exercises&quot;&gt;Peter A. Aldea, MD&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Memphis Plastic Surgeon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gradually with age, increased breast weight, unopposed &lt;strong&gt;gravity&lt;/strong&gt; (= not wearing proper support) - the breast skin AND Cooper's ligaments are stretched out resulting in sagging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5341" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-08-20T09:36:59.543" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T09:36:59.543" Title="Do side sleeping postures contribute to breast sagging?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|sleep|breast|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9620" CreationDate="2012-05-29T05:21:51.250" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pcbheaven.com/wikipages/Dimmer_Theory/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;From pcbheaven.com,&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A dimmer is a device that is originally created to control the&#xA;  brightness of lamps. This is done by altering the total power&#xA;  delivered to the lamp and thus the brightness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify the question, &lt;strong&gt;do fluctuations in the amplitude (power) of the electromagnetic waves produced from a light source cause cancer?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lumec.com/newsletter/focal-point/10-2010/effects-artificial-light-humain.html?utm_source=newsletter&amp;amp;utm_medium=email&amp;amp;utm_campaign=nl_focalpoint10-10_effects-artificial-light-humain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lumec.com&lt;/a&gt; reports a study in specific to unnatural light patterns on the human body:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where it becomes an even more important concern is that it has been&#xA;  known for over a hundred years that cell division inside the body&#xA;  follows a circadian rhythm, we have just explained that the circadian&#xA;  rhythm is affected by light, and we also know that damage to cell&#xA;  division is characteristic of cancer. You do the math…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies have shown that mice, when exposed to unnatural patterns of&#xA;  artificial light, developed certain problems related to their cell&#xA;  division and also to the transcription of many genes. In other words,&#xA;  they were in for some major health problems on the long run, if they&#xA;  remained exposed to that type of light – and so would we.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well as an article from &lt;a href=&quot;http://thedailystar.com/local/x112899483/Doctor-speaks-out-on-artificial-light&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Daily Star&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blask and his colleagues have been recognized for research on the&#xA;  cancer-stimulatory effects of light at night through the suppression&#xA;  of melatonin, a key hormone, according to a Bassett Healthcare media&#xA;  release. A study in 2005 by Blask and his colleagues provided evidence&#xA;  that light at night promotes growth of human breast cancer. The study&#xA;  also provided insight into why breast cancer is increasing rapidly in&#xA;  developing countries and industrialized societies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that evidence is leaning heavily toward the fact that either A) our natural cycles rely on light at specific times, or B) the lack of production of melatonin in the brain has adverse and sometimes cancerous effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The information provided against artificial light is almost strictly based on non-direct processes in the body - not the amount of energy produced by the light source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our bodies are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation#Units&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;constantly subjected&lt;/a&gt; to all different areas of the electromagnetic spectrum and radiation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For comparison, the average 'background' dose of natural radiation&#xA;  received by a person per day, based on 2000 UNSCEAR estimate, makes&#xA;  BRET 6.6 μSv (660 μrem). However local exposures vary, with the yearly&#xA;  average in the US being around 3.6 mSv (360 mrem)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify one point, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_spectrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;light is essentially radiation&lt;/a&gt; as being part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;electromagnetic spectrum&lt;/a&gt;. This consists of radio waves, micro waves, wireless devices, visible light, x-rays, etc. If varying the voltage that goes through a light bulb has anything to do with cancer, every human on Earth would have cancer after being exposed to huge amounts of every type of wavelength known and unknown to man every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7145" LastEditorUserId="7145" LastEditDate="2012-05-29T07:55:01.597" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T07:55:01.597" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9625" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9646" CreationDate="2012-05-29T09:35:59.427" Score="6" ViewCount="2034" Body="&lt;p&gt;I do have a good understanding of how stars form. Mass exerts gravity and gases will collapse together and when the density crosses a certain limit, the fusion starts in the core.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was reading the wikipedia page of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationist_cosmologies&quot;&gt;Creationist cosmologies&lt;/a&gt; which has a section &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationist_cosmologies#Stellar_and_planetary_formation&quot;&gt;Stellar and planetary formation&lt;/a&gt; which leads to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n4/stars-of-heaven-confirm&quot;&gt;Answer in Genesis page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim in Answers in Geneis is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Secular astronomers believe that stars form spontaneously from the collapse of a nebula. A nebula is an enormous “cloud” of extremely low-density hydrogen and helium gas. If there were a way to compress such gas, then its own gravity would keep it together—a star would form. However, such compression would be very difficult to accomplish because gas has a tendency to expand, not contract. In fact, if a gas cloud were to begin to be compressed, it would drastically increase its pressure, magnetic field, and rotation speed.6 All of these factors would strongly resist any further compression. The compression of a nebula would be stopped long before any star could form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds ridiculous. Especially using the claim that gas has to expand which completely ignores the gravity. How do you explain it properly? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6559" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T18:13:07.690" Title="If gas expands then how are stars formed from collapse of gas and dust?" Tags="|physics|astronomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9604" CreationDate="2012-05-29T11:37:43.427" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not really about ADSL, which is the technology responsible for connection from the switchbox to your home (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;the last mile&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;), but more about the broadband relay links. These can be either wired (typically in densely populated areas) or wireless using microwave transmission relays (more typical in less populated areas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Water particles, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_transmission#Planning_considerations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;rain cause microwaves to scatter&lt;/a&gt;, thus causing &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_loss&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;path loss&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rare events of temperature, humidity and pressure profile versus&#xA;height, may produce large deviations and distortion of the propagation&#xA;and affect transmission quality. High intensity rain and snow must&#xA;also be considered as an impairment factor, especially at frequencies&#xA;above 10 GHz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This effect is so well known and documented, that it's actually used as a measure of rainfall's intensity. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lte/research/past-research/page-50160-en-html/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Rainfall estimation using microwave links&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5438724&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Identification of Dry and Rainy Periods Using Telecommunication Microwave Links&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-05-04T19:49:15.597" LastActivityDate="2022-05-04T19:49:15.597" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9609" CreationDate="2012-05-29T12:01:11.603" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. The demonstration of this fact is actually a famous anecdote in the history of statistics. Ronald A. Fisher, one of the towering figures in the history of statistics, gave the case as an example in the second chapter of his book &lt;em&gt;The Design of Experiments&lt;/em&gt; (1951), without mentioning it being based on a true story. Some references can be found on the Wikipedia page for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea&quot;&gt;Lady tasting tea&lt;/a&gt;. A detailed description of the experiment can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dean.usma.edu/math/people/sturdivant/images/MA376/dater/ladytea.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, where one can find the following account from &lt;em&gt;R. A. Fisher: The Life of a Scientist (1978)&lt;/em&gt; by Box:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Already, quite soon after he had come to Rothamstead, his presence had&#xA;  transformed one commonplace tea time to an historic event. It happened&#xA;  one afternoon when he drew a cup of tea from the urn and offered it to&#xA;  the lady beside him, Dr. B. Muriel Bristol, an algologist. She&#xA;  declined it, stating that she preferred a cup into which the milk had&#xA;  been poured first. “Nonsense,” returned Fisher, smiling, “Surely it&#xA;  makes no difference.” But she maintained, with emphasis, that of&#xA;  course it did. From just behind, a voice suggested, “Let’s test her.”&#xA;  It was William Roach who was not long afterward to marry Miss Bristol.&#xA;  Immediately, they embarked on the preliminaries of the experiment,&#xA;  Roach assisting with the cups and exulting that Miss Bristol divined&#xA;  correctly more than enough of those cups into which tea had been&#xA;  poured first to prove her case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7336" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T12:01:11.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9066" CreationDate="2012-05-29T12:50:08.437" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The definition provided by the SEC is according to the disclaimer on the bottom of their page: &quot;neither a legal interpretation nor a statement of SEC policy.&quot; Still, we can work with it. The first point is of course that faud &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a legal term that is likely not to apply to the present issue. If the police is cathing criminals, it is not necessarily kidnapping. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the question has three parts to it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has social security characteristics of a Ponzi scheme?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The answer is certainly yes. In a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) system, there is a constant flow of new people financing social security. There is an implicit debt that never gets payed back.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there legitimate reasons why social security works differently from a &quot;usual&quot; Ponzi scheme?&lt;/strong&gt; The answer is again yes. The problem with Ponzi schemes is, as was pointed out on the SEC page, that one runs out of contributors eventually. In a PAYG system, a government can force people to contribute and the time scale is such that new contributors get actually born. This guarantees a constant inflow of new money, especially when the economy is growing. Of course, it could still be possible that this inflow is insufficient. But a PAYG system can, theoretically, allow for more consumption for everyone. This point was made in the very influential paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.cdn.blog.hu/el/eltecon/file/Samuelson1958%5B1%5D.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An Exact Consumption-Loan Model of Interest with or without the Social Contrivance of Money&lt;/a&gt; (1958) by Paul A. Samuelson, that created the standard framework for economists discussing social security, the so called &lt;a href=&quot;http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/~gean/art/p1275.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;overlapping generation models&lt;/a&gt; (OLG). It should be noted though that this is a theoretic possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is social security sustainable?&lt;/strong&gt; This question is actually much less clear than it seems to be. The real issue is what menu of sacrifices allows for social security to be sustained in which form. This includes changes in how much gets payed in and how long, and how much gets payed out. Since the time span is very large and effects of growth, demographics and other factors matter over a long period, exact answers are not possible. Something that one should bear in mind is that any change of the system will bring a transition cost that has to be borne by someone. Also, valuing accumulated social security benefits involves &lt;a href=&quot;http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/~gean/art/p1303.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;highly nontrivial economics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7336" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T12:50:08.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8813" CreationDate="2012-05-29T18:25:00.760" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is certainly not legal for settlers to shoot Palestinians, and if a settler is found to do so, he or she will be tried under Israeli law. The question is how strong enforcement is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The settlers are in an area that has never been annexed to Israel. I will use the term &lt;em&gt;settler&lt;/em&gt; for all Israeli civilians living outside the armistice lines of 1967 and outside Jerusalem, which has been annexed by Israel. In particular, this includes people living in outposts that are not considered to be legal by Israeli law. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since settlers are outside the area annexed by Israel, they are formally subject to military law. In effect, by a regulation enacted in 1967, Israeli citizens are subjet to Israeli law and Palestinians to military law. Here is an entry on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/settler_violence/dual_legal_system&quot;&gt;dual system of law&lt;/a&gt; on the homepage of the Israeli human rights organization &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/&quot;&gt;B'Tselem&lt;/a&gt;. The enforcement of law against Israeli citizens is, with some exceptions, not done by the military but by the police. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/settler_violence/law_enforcement&quot;&gt;According&lt;/a&gt; to B'Tselem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Israeli security forces have done little to prevent settler violence&#xA;  or to arrest offenders. Many acts of violence have never been&#xA;  investigated; in other cases, investigations have been drawn out and&#xA;  resulted in no action being taken against anyone. According to&#xA;  B'Tselem's follow-up with the Israel Police on incidents in which&#xA;  settlers injured Palestinians or Palestinian property in the years&#xA;  2007-2010, 67 percent of investigation files opened have been closed&#xA;  date; indictments were filed in 8 percent of cases regarding which&#xA;  B'Tselem wrote to the police. In cases where settlers were tried and&#xA;  convicted, they were generally given extremely light sentences – in&#xA;  stark contrast to the policy of law enforcement and punishment where&#xA;  Palestinians harm Israelis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many Palestinians avoid filing a complaint with the police for injury&#xA;  at the hands of settlers, among other reasons, because they do not&#xA;  trust the Israeli legal system. The police usually refuse to&#xA;  investigate an incident unless a complaint is filed, even if they are&#xA;  informed of it by other sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the case of settlers actually shooting at Palestinians, one can find lots of evidence on the B'Tselem entry on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/topic/settler_violence&quot;&gt;violence by settlers&lt;/a&gt;, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20120527_urif&quot;&gt;video material&lt;/a&gt; showing settlers firing on Palestinians in the presence of non-interviening sodiers and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/settler_violence/20110918_susiya_appeal_rejected&quot;&gt;examples&lt;/a&gt; of cases that were closed after very little investigation. I would suggest looking through the extensive video material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the answer of Ilya Melamed also discussed military violence against Palestinians, it is worth pointing out that military information is classified, soldiers are not allowed to speak about their experiences. There is however an organization, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/&quot;&gt;Breaking the Silence&lt;/a&gt;, that collects hundreds of testimonies from Israeli soldiers, most of them anonymously. There are also non-anonymous testimonies, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/videos/?ci=115&quot;&gt;including&lt;/a&gt; video testimonies of soldiers commiting war crimes. There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/videos/84876&quot;&gt;testimonies&lt;/a&gt; of unjustified killings that never got investigated. Also, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/testimonies/database&quot;&gt;rules of engaement&lt;/a&gt; the soldiers are subjected to are classified. As such, it is very hard to figure out for the public whether an israeli soldier killing a Palestinian did so within the rules he or she is subjected to, or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7336" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T18:25:00.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8373" CreationDate="2012-05-29T19:41:13.287" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a working paper, Pornography, Rape, and the Internet, by Todd Kendal that argues the answer is no. The abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The arrival of the internet caused a large decline in both the&#xA;  pecuniary and non-pecuniary costs of accessing pornography. Using&#xA;  state-level panel data from 1998-2003, I find that the arrival of the&#xA;  internet was associated with a reduction in rape incidence. However,&#xA;  growth in internet usage had no apparent effect on other crimes.&#xA;  Moreover, when I disaggregate the rape data by offender age, I find&#xA;  that the effect of the internet on rape is concentrated among those&#xA;  for whom the internet-induced fall in the non-pecuniary price of&#xA;  pornography was the largest – men ages 15-19, who typically live with&#xA;  their parents. These results, which suggest that pornography and rape&#xA;  are substitutes, are in contrast with most previous literature.&#xA;  However, earlier population-level studies do not control adequately&#xA;  for many omitted variables, including the age distribution of the&#xA;  population, and most laboratory studies simply do not allow for&#xA;  potential substitutability between pornography and rape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper contains also an extensive discussion of previous literature. A popular exposition of the results can be found in a Slate column of Steven Landsburg: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/everyday_economics/2006/10/how_the_web_prevents_rape.html&quot;&gt;How the Web Prevents Rape&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7336" LastActivityDate="2012-05-29T19:41:13.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9632" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9635" CreationDate="2012-05-30T00:28:02.867" Score="6" ViewCount="1373" Body="&lt;p&gt;As many parents know, bed-wetting in young children is a frustrating problem. In a nearby town, at least two of the three chiropractors claim they can resolve bed-wetting issues. Are there any merit to these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7348" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-05-30T17:46:16.840" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T17:46:16.840" Title="Do chiropractors cure bed wetting?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6572" CreationDate="2012-05-30T01:29:33.193" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jobst Brandt, author of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avocet.com/wheelbook/wheelbook.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;The Bicycle Wheel&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; (which explains how to build strong bike wheels and which includes a finite-element analysis of spoked wheels) lays out the argument at &lt;a href=&quot;http://sheldonbrown.com/brandt/slicks.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sheldon Brown's&lt;/a&gt; site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commercial aircraft, and especially motorcycles, demonstrate that a round cross section tire, like the bicycle tire, has an ideal shape to prevent hydroplaning. The contact patch, a pointed canoe shape, displaces water exceptionally well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A window-cleaning squeegee demonstrates this effect well. Even with a new sharp edge, it glides effortlessly over wet glass leaving a microscopic layer of water behind to evaporate. On a second swipe, the squeegee sticks to the dry glass. This example should make apparent that the lubricating water layer cannot be removed by tire tread, and that only the micro-grit of the road surface can penetrate this layer to give traction. For this reason, metal plates, paint stripes, and railway tracks are incorrigibly slippery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides having better wet and dry traction, smooth tread also has lower rolling resistance, because its rubber does not deform into tread voids. Rubber being essentially incompressible, deforms like a water filled balloon, changing shape, but not volume. For a tire with tread voids, its rubber bulges under load and rebounds with less force than the deforming force. This internal damping causes the energy losses of rolling resistance. In contrast the smooth tread transmits the load to the loss-free pneumatic compliance of the tire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In curves, tread features squirm to allow walking and ultimately, early breakout. This is best demonstrated on knobby MTB tires, some of which track so poorly that they are difficult to ride no-hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've ridden both but mostly slicks.  I haven't had significant trouble with either on wet tarmac, though I really notice a difference between 25mm and 28mm wide tires on wet mountain descents.  The wider tire (and hence larger contact patch) gives much more traction on turns and seems to have a much greater effect than the tire surface pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I doubt many cyclists get fast enough to hydroplane on wet roads.  I've done above 45 mph (75 kph) downhill on dry tarmac in good visibility which is more than fast enough to hydroplane a rectangular cross-section tire, but I would never do that in the rain because water hides potholes.  Even if that weren't a problem and I had visibility around turns, in the rain you have to pump brakes to keep your rims (which the brake pads grip on almost all road bikes) clear of water which has the side effect of limiting speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4082" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T02:47:18.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9632" CreationDate="2012-05-30T02:39:54.370" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bed-wetting is a perfect place for sham cures to thrive. It is a non-life-threatening and largely self-limiting concern, where it is plausible a placebo could be quite effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Cochrane Collaboration examine and assess the evidence for medical treatments. Sure enough, they found a number of alternative&lt;strike&gt;s to&lt;/strike&gt; health treatments had been tried, including chiropractic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Huang T, Shu X, Huang YS, Cheuk DKL. &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD005230/complementary-treatments-such-as-hypnosis-psychotherapy-acupuncture-chiropractic-and-medicinal-herbs-for-bedwetting-in-children&quot;&gt;Complementary and miscellaneous interventions for nocturnal enuresis in children&lt;/a&gt;. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2011, Issue 12. Art. No.: CD005230. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD005230.pub2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They looked at three small trials for chiropractic treatment of bed-wetting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of three RCTs identified on chiropractic therapy provided weak evidence for its effectiveness (Reed 1994). The group given active chiropractic adjustment were more likely to improve and had less frequent enuresis post-treatment. However, children in the active treatment group had less severe enuresis at baseline, leading to doubts about adequacy of randomisation and comparability of enuresis severity between the groups, which might bias the results. Another trial (Leboeuf 1991), was too small and the duration too short to provide useful information. In another trial (Feng 2008), pinching massage seemed to be as good as desmopressin during treatment, but it was a single small trial with no follow up, and needs to be verified in further trials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was weak evidence to support the use of hypnosis, psychotherapy, acupuncture, chiropractic and medicinal herbs but it was provided in each case by single small trials, some of dubious methodological rigour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combined with the weakness of the evidence for, one of the studies described adverse effects, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;headache, stiff neck and lumbar spine pain with chiropractic (Leboeuf 1991);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't despair for your children. There are some other remedies with more substantial evidentiary support. &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD002112/desmopressin-for-bedwetting-in-children&quot;&gt;Desmopressin&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD002117/tricyclic-drugs-for-bedwetting-in-children&quot;&gt;Tricyclics&lt;/a&gt; work in the short-term. &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD002911/alarm-interventions-for-nocturnal-enuresis-bedwetting-in-children&quot;&gt;Alarm interventions&lt;/a&gt; combined with &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD004668/abstract&quot;&gt;dry bed training&lt;/a&gt; work in the longer term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading: &lt;a href=&quot;http://apgaylard.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/chiropractic-a-bogus-treatment-for-bedwetting/&quot;&gt;Chiropractic: a bogus* treatment for bedwetting?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-30T13:31:40.007" LastActivityDate="2012-05-30T13:31:40.007" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9615" CreationDate="2012-05-30T21:31:40.997" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;While the specific claim is exaggerated and doesn't support the argument for alternative medicine, there is evidence that a disturbing proportion of &lt;em&gt;conventional&lt;/em&gt; medicine is unproven and wasteful&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I first saw the headline question I thought it raised an interesting and challenging issue for modern medicine. Then I read the Freedom Health Canada argument which seems to want to make a case for applying &amp;quot;alternative&amp;quot; medicine. So while they raise interesting criticisms, the argument that conventional medicine hasn't been proved to work so you should be prepared to try other forms of medicine that haven't been proved to work, isn't coherent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is legitimate and skeptical criticism of much of what is done in the western medical establishment which is sometimes shockingly complacent when it comes to demonstrating the need and value of the treatments it offers. Some examples are given below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good review of some of the key issues is found in the recent books &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jameslindlibrary.org/testing-treatments.html#Testingtreatments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Testing Treatments&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Better-Doctors-Patients-Decisions-Envisioning/dp/0262016036&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Better Doctors, Better Patients, Better Decisions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. The first chapter of the second book starts by quoting two extraordinary examples where the US health system overuses screening in expensive and damaging ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost ten million U.S. women have had unnecessary Pap smears to screen for cervical cancer--unnecessary because, having already undergone complete hysterectomies, these women no longer have a cervix.&lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?volume=291&amp;amp;issue=24&amp;amp;page=2990&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; [Original JAMA paper here]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every year, one million U.S. children have unnecessary CT scans. An unnecessary CT scan equates to more than a waste of money: an estimated 29,000 cancers result from the approximately 70 million CT scans performed annually in the United States. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMra072149&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[NEJM reference here]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While we tend to casually assume that medical treatment is good when it happens and when it doesn't happen it is because of rationing, that idea can be tested and that testing provides an excellent test of whether the treatment benefits patients in the first place. Natural experiments exist because the amount of specific types of activity varies widely in different regions of most countries. For example, the number of hip replacements per 1,000 people varies by a factor of more than 5 in different parts of england.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most thorough analysis of such variation and the best analysis of the resulting cost and health gain for patients is found in the ongoing work of the Dartmouth Atlas Project for US healthcare (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;website here&lt;/a&gt;). Their work has uncovered vast degrees of variation in what activity gets done and has demonstrated that more healthcare is often worse for patients. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/keyissues/issue.aspx?con=2937&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;their own words&lt;/a&gt; (but my emphasis to show how their work is relevant to the question):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supply-sensitive care refers to services where the supply of a specific resource has a major influence on utilization rates. &lt;strong&gt;The frequency of use of supply-sensitive care is not determined by well-articulated medical theory, much less by scientific evidence&lt;/strong&gt;; rather, it is largely due to differences in local capacity, and a payment system that ensures that existing capacity remains fully deployed. Simply put, in regions where there are more hospital beds per capita, patients will be more likely to be admitted to the hospital. In regions where there are more intensive care unit beds, more patients will be cared for in the ICU. More specialists will result in more visits to specialists. And the more CT scanners are available, the more CT scans patients will receive. The Dartmouth Atlas has consistently demonstrated these relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regions where there are relatively fewer medical resources, patients get less care; however, there is no evidence that these patients are worse off than their counterparts in high-resourced, high-spending regions. &lt;strong&gt;Patients do not experience improved survival or better quality of life if they live in regions with more care. In fact, the care they receive appears to be worse.&lt;/strong&gt; They report being less satisfied with their care than patients in regions that spend less, and having more trouble getting in to see their physicians. Most studies have found that mortality is no better in higher in high-spending regions, almost certainly because the benefits to some patients are counterbalanced by the harms to others. Hospitals can be dangerous places, where patients face the risk of medical error, adverse events, and hospital-acquired antibiotic-resistant infections. As more physicians get involved in a patient’s care, it becomes less and less clear who is responsible, and miscommunication and mistakes become more likely. Greater use of diagnostic tests increases the risk of finding -- and being treated for -- abnormalities that are unlikely to have caused the patient any problem. Patients who receive care for conditions that would have never caused a problem can only experience the risk of the intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These examples show that much activity in conventional medicine cannot be justified by evidence. More detailed evidence could show that whole classes of activity are hard to justify, but the above examples are simpler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, though the original claim exaggeration is a failed attempt to advocate alternative medicine, there are legitimate and important reasons to be skeptical of the evidence base about much conventional medical activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T07:18:15.887" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9597" CreationDate="2012-05-31T03:03:14.730" Score="21" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can anyone confirm if this actually takes place with RyanAir or with any other airlines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An indirect answer, but yes, Delta Airlines admitted to having made a similar system, in error, for a period of 19 days, in April 2012, where customers that weren't logged in were offered cheaper flights:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In late April we began testing a new search functionality as part of these enhancements. We phased the installation, to first offer the new search function to customers who weren’t logged in because we wanted to be particularly careful not to disrupt the booking experience for our best customers. As a result, over a period of about 19 days, logged-in customers were seeing different flight search results than customers who chose not to log in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They further explain the discrepancy in prices was because the same search may have returned &lt;em&gt;different flights&lt;/em&gt;, and hence the different prices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;please know that delta.com did not sell the same flight itinerary to different people for different prices. That very idea goes against the grain of how Delta treats its customers. And based on the way we file our fares it’s actually not technically possible. In fact, Delta’s fares are consistent in all channels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.delta.com/2012/05/18/fare-displays-on-delta-com/&quot;&gt;Delta Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T04:56:58.443" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T04:56:58.443" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9597" CreationDate="2012-05-31T03:57:41.907" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;This belief seemed to spread in April 2011 via twitter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to Ryanair's reputation as being overly greedy at the cost of the consumer, I think many people have simply assumed that this claim was true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does not appear that it has been looked into too conclusively, but the investigations that have been done indicate that the claim is not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Popular travel blog tnooz &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tnooz.com/2011/04/12/news/why-ryanair-the-cookie-monster-is-just-an-urban-myth/&quot;&gt;investigated this&lt;/a&gt;, which has an unsourced quote from a Ryanair official denouncing the claim as untrue. tnooz refers to a company called  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tnooz.com/2011/02/10/tlabs/tlabs-showcase-invisiblehand/&quot;&gt;Invisible Hand&lt;/a&gt; which make a browser addon of the same name which helps to find the lowest flights on airline websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Invisble Hand &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.getinvisiblehand.com/2011/04/08/ryanair-manipulating-prices-with-cookies-it%E2%80%99s-an-urban-myth/&quot;&gt;tested this claim&lt;/a&gt; by running 52 flight searches in Firefox and Chrome over 2 days, with cookies being consistently cleaned from Chrome but not from Firefox. The conclusion they reached was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“If the price manipulation allegations were true, we would have&#xA;  expected to see price discrepancies in the results between Firefox and&#xA;  Chrome on day two. What we actually saw were exactly the same prices&#xA;  on both browsers.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't a comprehensive test and doesn't take into account the possibility of manipulation based only on certain usage patterns, but is interesting nevertheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the widespread attention this news item received, if it were the case it would seem reasonable that it would have been independently confirmed. However there were no reliable reports of reproducing what was reported, which along with the Invisible Hand results may indicate that some sort of bug was encountered rather than a deliberate action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T04:03:56.173" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T04:03:56.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9643" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9645" CreationDate="2012-05-31T14:33:28.387" Score="14" ViewCount="6598" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking for altertative ways of Human–computer interaction, I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leapmotion.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.leapmotion.com&lt;/a&gt;, which looks promising.  They say in the website and in some interviews that they will release this device to the market in winter 2012, and they have a pre-order page on the web site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone found any evidence that this is not a scam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4430" LastEditorUserId="4430" LastEditDate="2013-03-01T14:21:56.443" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T18:21:53.990" Title="Is leapmotion a scam?" Tags="|consumer-products|computers|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9643" CreationDate="2012-05-31T15:14:03.797" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No &lt;strong&gt;leapmotion is not a scam&lt;/strong&gt; in the same sense that a ponzi scheme or a perpetual motion machine is a scam. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/05/why-the-leap-is-the-best-gesture-control-system-weve-ever-tested/&quot;&gt;Wired has tested it&lt;/a&gt; and found it to be a useful system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean that leapmotion will end up being a world-beating system, or that it will even be released. There are hundreds of things that can come between a working, effective prototype and a best-selling production system that are nothing to do with being a 'scam'. There is no way to evaluate these factors at this stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T15:14:03.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9643" CreationDate="2012-05-31T15:17:59.003" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The word &quot;scam&quot; suggests fraudulence - a deliberate intention to deceive. It is a strong accusation, and we should be careful about wielding it without evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given &lt;a href=&quot;https://live.leapmotion.com/order.html&quot;&gt;Leap Motion&lt;/a&gt; claim that they will not charge until the product is shipped &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; that they bill via credit-card, which enables consumers and the banks to recover their money if they charge without delivering, this is not a scam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That still leaves other options.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware&quot;&gt;vaporware&lt;/a&gt; and never get delivered. The fact they had a unit to deliver to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/05/why-the-leap-is-the-best-gesture-control-system-weve-ever-tested/&quot;&gt;Wired&lt;/a&gt; [Hat-tip Oliver.] is evidence suggesting this is not the case, but not proof that they can get the item into production as planned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wired article warns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In person, the pre-production version of the Leap is as impressive as the demo video. Once we have the production model in our hands, we’ll be able to determine if Leap Motion transfers all the magic of its demo unit into the final shipping product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another risk is that the actual device may not work as well as the advertising has suggested. It may not be as game-changing as hyped. For example, Wired warns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;without something concrete to place one’s hands and fingers on, there’s the potential for fatigue after using the system for an entire day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, this is a well-known limitation to human (primate?) physiology that has been understood for decades:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html&quot;&gt;Jargon File for &quot;Gorilla Arm&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The side-effect that destroyed touch-screens as a mainstream input technology despite a promising start in the early 1980s. It seems the designers of all those spiffy touch-menu systems failed to notice that humans aren't designed to hold their arms in front of their faces making small motions. After more than a very few selections, the arm begins to feel sore, cramped, and oversized — the operator looks like a gorilla while using the touch screen and feels like one afterwards. This is now considered a classic cautionary tale to human-factors designers; “Remember the gorilla arm!” is shorthand for “How is this going to fly in real use?”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't a quality reference, so I am just using it to illustrate a point - that a &quot;Minority Report&quot;-style user interface may not actually be the ideal UI system for the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These caveats are not suggestions that the product is a scam, but that there are normal business risks in dealing with yet-to-be-released products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T15:17:59.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9625" CreationDate="2012-05-31T21:48:57.400" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;As is typical of &quot;Answers in Genesis&quot; they don't seem to even have a basic understanding of what they are talking about.  They are confusing how gases normally behave in common experience (i.e. on scales of human experience).  When dealing with a nebula, we are talking structures that expand for light years in all directions...  Read that again:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-year&quot;&gt;light year*&lt;em&gt;s&lt;/em&gt;*&lt;/a&gt;!  Over such great distances, even the most diffuse material will have enormous gravitational attraction.  Because there is a whole lot of mass there (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astro.wisc.edu/~dolan/constellations/messier/m42.html&quot;&gt;for instance, the Orion Nebula has a mass over 2000 times that of our sun&lt;/a&gt;).  For the sake of your sanity, as soon as someone uses Answers in Genesis or Conservapedia as a source, just walk away.  They are &lt;em&gt;notoriously&lt;/em&gt; biased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the process itself, and to explain it properly, one must first admit that there are still many questions that are not &lt;em&gt;yet&lt;/em&gt; answered.  However, we still have a fairly good idea how it works (and not knowing &lt;em&gt;parts&lt;/em&gt; of how something happened does in no way invalidate a sound theory).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/COMPLETE/learn/star_and_planet_formation.html&quot;&gt;Harvard takes a rather humerous and simple approach in explaining it&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Steps to the formation of stars and planets&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/COMPLETE/learn/formation_of_clouds/formation_of_clouds.html&quot;&gt;Clouds of gas&lt;/a&gt; form within galaxies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2 Formation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/COMPLETE/learn/formation_of_structure/formation_of_structure.html&quot;&gt;structure within the gas clouds&lt;/a&gt;, due to &quot;turbulence&quot; and activity of new stars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3 Random turbulent processes lead to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/COMPLETE/learn/blobs/blobs.html&quot;&gt;regions dense enough to collapse under their own weight&lt;/a&gt;, in spite of a hostile environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4 As blob collapses, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/COMPLETE/learn/disk_formation/diskformation.html&quot;&gt;a disk forms&lt;/a&gt;, with growing &quot;protostar&quot; at the center.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5 At the same time, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/COMPLETE/learn/outflow/outflow.html&quot;&gt;bipolar outflows&lt;/a&gt; from forming star/disk system begin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;6 Material is processed, moving in from the blob to the disk. What is not lost in the outflow builds up on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/COMPLETE/learn/protostars/protostar.html&quot;&gt;protostar&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;7 When the protostar begins to undergo &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/COMPLETE/learn/fusion/fusion.html&quot;&gt;fusion&lt;/a&gt;, it becomes a real star.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;8 Once the outflow ceases and the &quot;accretion&quot; phase that lead to the buildup of the star ends, a d&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/COMPLETE/learn/protoplanetary_disk/protoplanetary_disk.html&quot;&gt;isk of &quot;leftover&quot; material&lt;/a&gt; is left around the star.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;9 At or near the end of the star-formation process, the remaining material in the &quot;circumstellar disk&quot; (a.k.a. &quot;protoplanetary disk&quot;) forms a variety of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/COMPLETE/learn/planets/planets.html&quot;&gt;planets&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;10 Eventually, all that is left behind is a new star, perhaps some planets, and a disk of left-over ground-up solids, visible as a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/COMPLETE/learn/debris_disks/debris.html&quot;&gt;Debris Disk&lt;/a&gt;&quot; around stars other than the Sun, and known as the &quot;Zodaical Dust Disk&quot; around the Sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2012/clumpcores/&quot;&gt;National Radio Astronomy Observatory&lt;/a&gt; has a great article about actually observing some of the early stages involved in star formation.  Again, while not everything is understood, they are gathering more clues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stars are formed, astronomers think, when such a cloud of gas and dust collapses gravitationally, first into clumps, then into dense cores, each of which can then begin to further collapse and form a young star. The details of how this happens are not well understood. One difficulty is that most regions where this process is underway already have formed stars nearby. Those stars affect subsequent nearby star formation through their stellar winds and shock waves when they explode as supernovae.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu/NatSci102/NatSci102/lectures/starform.htm&quot;&gt;The astronomy department at the University of Arizona has a web page&lt;/a&gt; (horrible design in my opinion, but good info) that also goes into a lot of detail on the things we do know, the things we hypothesize, and the things we don't know at all.  Interestingly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/Cyberia/Bima/StarForm.html&quot;&gt;the University of Illinois also has a page that covers the subject&lt;/a&gt;, albeit with a different focus on what they consider important.  However, they all agree that gravity does a great deal of work.  As a matter of fact, it's easy to find pages from pretty much any &lt;em&gt;accredited&lt;/em&gt; university out there (&lt;a href=&quot;http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast122/lectures/lec13.html&quot;&gt;University of Oregon&lt;/a&gt;) that discusses the same subject matter.  Now, one may say this is an argument from authority, but keep in mind that this is a competent authority  with expertise in the subject.  Much like one wouldn't ask a brain surgeon to be a car mechanic, it's probably best to leave astronomy to actual astronomers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-05-31T22:26:28.320" LastActivityDate="2012-05-31T22:26:28.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9647" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9651" CreationDate="2012-05-31T22:57:28.817" Score="7" ViewCount="12817" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHaToylOZDs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;While talking to CNN, Donald Trump&lt;/a&gt; said President Barack Obama himself wrote that he was born in Kenya. Is it true that the President's book said this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When his publisher comes out with a statement from him made in the 1990s that he was born in Kenya and he was raised in Indonesia [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trump, at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHaToylOZDs&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;amp;t=4m3s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4m03s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And all I know is last week somebody came out with a very strong statement saying that he stated himself that he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia. Now I didn't make that statement. That was made by  I assume either the publisher or the President himself. And, that's the statement. That's a pretty hard statement to refute.&#xA;  That was a statement made prior to somebody knowing that he was going to be running for the presidency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trump, at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHaToylOZDs&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;amp;t=8m1s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;8m01s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/17/obama-wasnt-born-in-kenya-except-when-he-claims-he-was-born-in-kenya/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Daily Trawler came out with an excerpt from a promotional booklet.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-06-04T13:27:37.690" LastActivityDate="2022-08-15T14:00:02.550" Title="Did Obama mention in his book he was born in Kenya?" Tags="|history|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9554" CreationDate="2012-06-01T01:35:07.350" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many of the low volume or high intensity styled programs make claims about diminishing returns from extra work. The easiest way to address this question is to look at the science of training volume. I agree with one of the commenter's (Dave) that exercise science is not always a solid science, but his recommendation replaces measurement with opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Volume vs HIT: The Answer&#xA;There have been many studies that have sought to understand whether it is better to use a single set, many sets, how many sets, etc. Most of the training programs used by athletes today are based upon periodized programs developed by the former eastern block Olympic coaches. But there are two issues: strength and hypertrophy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly a &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/nsca-jscr/Abstract/2009/09000/Single_Versus_Multiple_Sets_of_Resistance.37.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;strength training meta-analysis by James Krieger&lt;/a&gt; (Journal of Strength &amp;amp; Conditioning Research. 23(6):1890-1901, September 2009) found that 2-3 sets led to 46% greater strength gains than 1 set. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There has been considerable debate over the optimal number of sets per&#xA;  exercise to improve musculoskeletal strength during a resistance&#xA;  exercise program. The purpose of this study was to use hierarchical,&#xA;  random-effects meta-regression to compare the effects of single and&#xA;  multiple sets per exercise on dynamic strength. English-language&#xA;  studies comparing single with multiple sets per exercise, while&#xA;  controlling for other variables, were considered eligible for&#xA;  inclusion. The analysis comprised 92 effect sizes (ESs) nested within&#xA;  30 treatment groups and 14 studies. Multiple sets were associated with&#xA;  a larger ES than a single set (difference = 0.26 +/- 0.05; confidence&#xA;  interval [CI]: 0.15, 0.37; p &amp;lt; 0.0001). In a dose-response model, 2 to&#xA;  3 sets per exercise were associated with a significantly greater ES&#xA;  than 1 set (difference = 0.25 +/- 0.06; CI: 0.14, 0.37; p = 0.0001).&#xA;  There was no significant difference between 1 set per exercise and 4&#xA;  to 6 sets per exercise (difference = 0.35 +/- 0.25; CI: -0.05, 0.74; p&#xA;  = 0.17) or between 2 to 3 sets per exercise and 4 to 6 sets per exercise (difference = 0.09 +/- 0.20; CI: -0.31, 0.50; p = 0.64).&#xA;  There were no interactions between set volume and training program&#xA;  duration, subject training status, or whether the upper or lower body&#xA;  was trained. Sensitivity analysis revealed no highly influential&#xA;  studies, and no evidence of publication bias was observed. In&#xA;  conclusion, 2 to 3 sets per exercise are associated with 46% greater&#xA;  strength gains than 1 set, in both trained and untrained subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the low volume claims are for diminishing returns after the first set. This is clearly not the case, but there is a point that no more strength is gained (4-6 sets) by performing more work. I won't address it here, but it is to do with how fast the body can restore ATP and how much micro-trauma has been induced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hypertrophy is the second part of weight training. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20300012&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Krieger again performed a meta-analysis of the research&lt;/a&gt; (Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research: April 2010 - Volume 24 - Issue 4 - pp 1150-1159) and found that increasing the number of sets increased the amount of hypertrophy by 40% (up to 6 sets).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Previous meta-analyses have compared the effects of single to multiple&#xA;  sets on strength, but analyses on muscle hypertrophy are lacking. The&#xA;  purpose of this study was to use multilevel meta-regression to compare&#xA;  the effects of single and multiple sets per exercise on muscle&#xA;  hypertrophy. The analysis comprised 55 effect sizes (ESs), nested&#xA;  within 19 treatment groups and 8 studies. Multiple sets were&#xA;  associated with a larger ES than a single set (difference = 0.10 Â±&#xA;  0.04; confidence interval [CI]: 0.02, 0.19; p = 0.016). In a dose-response model, there was a trend for 2-3 sets per exercise to be&#xA;  associated with a greater ES than 1 set (difference = 0.09 Â± 0.05;&#xA;  CI: −0.02, 0.20; p = 0.09), and a trend for 4-6 sets per exercise to&#xA;  be associated with a greater ES than 1 set (difference = 0.20 Â± 0.11;&#xA;  CI: −0.04, 0.43; p = 0.096). Both of these trends were significant&#xA;  when considering permutation test p values (p &amp;lt; 0.01). There was no&#xA;  significant difference between 2-3 sets per exercise and 4-6 sets per&#xA;  exercise (difference = 0.10 Â± 0.10; CI: −0.09, 0.30; p = 0.29). There&#xA;  was a tendency for increasing ESs for an increasing number of sets&#xA;  (0.24 for 1 set, 0.34 for 2-3 sets, and 0.44 for 4-6 sets).&#xA;  Sensitivity analysis revealed no highly influential studies that&#xA;  affected the magnitude of the observed differences, but one study did&#xA;  slightly influence the level of significance and CI width. No evidence&#xA;  of publication bias was observed. In conclusion, multiple sets are&#xA;  associated with 40% greater hypertrophy-related ESs than 1 set, in&#xA;  both trained and untrained subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is no science to support the claim that doing more sets will only see small increases in returns. It is possible the person making this claim has not understood the conclusions of studies such as the ones I have cited, but it is more likely that the claims are unfounded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5775" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-06-01T18:33:10.667" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T18:33:10.667" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5576" CreationDate="2012-06-01T02:17:55.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apart from the to and fro of costs and tourism, consider that The Queen doesn't just sit on her throne 24/7, Her Majesty and many others of the Royal family do perform community and charity work. Many of the Royal Family also have regular jobs (and therefore do not cost) and have served in the Army / Navy / Airforce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to tourism though, if Britain did not have a Monarchy, all of the historical assets would continue to require maintenance. The £50 million pound for security is almost purely the main attraction at the Palace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the £230m income to treasury, I think it is certainly beneficial. The entire argument about the cost of the Monarchy is a malevolent one with little to no substance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7371" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T02:17:55.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9647" CreationDate="2012-06-01T03:08:57.197" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As linked from the site you provided in the question, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140910030638/http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/05/17/literary_agent_says_1991_booklet_was_a_mistake.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Political Wire (Archived 05/17/2012)&quot;&gt;Political Wire reports&lt;/a&gt; that the author of a promotional booklet that included a brief erroneous bio of Obama has explained:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're undoubtedly aware of the brouhaha stirred up by Breitbart about the erroneous statement in a client list Acton &amp;amp; Dystel published in 1991 (for circulation within the publishing industry only) that Barack Obama was born in Kenya.  This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me -- an agency assistant at the time.  There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii.  I hope you can communicate to your readers that this was a simple mistake and nothing more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This was a promotional booklet for his then-literary agent, Acton &amp;amp; Dystel. It is not part of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreams_from_My_Father&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;his book of memoirs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2022-08-15T14:00:02.550" LastActivityDate="2022-08-15T14:00:02.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9647" CreationDate="2012-06-01T03:11:06.157" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, it was &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; in his book, rather it was a promotional pamphlet circulated amongst other literary agents, which was not written by President Obama (nor was it approved, or even distributed to him).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/born-kenya-obamas-literary-agent-misidentified-birthplace-1991/story?id=16372566#.T8gvhcXdMjA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The person (Miriam Goderich) who wrote that particular promotional piece has admitted that it was a mistake&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me--an agency assistant at the time,&amp;quot; Goderich wrote in an emailed statement to Yahoo News. &amp;quot;There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii. I hope you can communicate to your readers that this was a simple mistake and nothing more.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same article states (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a promotional booklet &lt;em&gt;produced by&lt;/em&gt; the agency, Acton &amp;amp; Dystel,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the agent also &lt;a href=&quot;http://politicalwire.com/archives/2012/05/17/literary_agent_says_1991_booklet_was_a_mistake.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;states the same to this news agency&lt;/a&gt;. And they also state (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for circulation &lt;em&gt;within the publishing industry only&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even Breitbart (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/17/The-Vetting-Barack-Obama-Literary-Agent-1991-Born-in-Kenya-Raised-Indonesia-Hawaii&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;who doesn't buy into the birther nuttery&lt;/a&gt;) also states that the pamphlet was produced by the agency, and was not in President Obama's book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breitbart News has obtained a promotional booklet produced in 1991 by Barack Obama's then-literary agency, Acton &amp;amp; Dystel, which touts Obama as &amp;quot;born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The booklet, which was distributed to &amp;quot;business colleagues&amp;quot; in the publishing industry, includes a brief biography of Obama among the biographies of eighty-nine other authors represented by Acton &amp;amp; Dystel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the distinct assertions:  produced by Acton &amp;amp; Dystel; distributed  in the publishing industry;  that this wasn't Obama's book, but rather a listing of 90 authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I will give The Trump the benefit of &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; doubt, and he may just be mis-stating what he heard.  However, his history of behaviour and bombastic (thanks Skava for reminding me of that word) style indicates this will become a revisionist position to Mr. Trump.  Now that he has stated it, he will not retract from his position, no matter how wrong he may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also related &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1355/is-barack-obama-a-natural-born-us-citizen&quot;&gt;Is Barack Obama a natural born US citizen?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T13:51:23.340" CommentCount="22" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-08-23T13:51:23.340" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9603" CreationDate="2012-06-01T05:40:15.827" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it does, and there is plenty of evidence to support this fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A ~240mL (8 oz) cup of coffee has ~150 mg caffeine (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=coffee&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WolframAlpha&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a recent review of 41 studies, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-3010.2007.00665.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ruxton (2008)&lt;/a&gt; finds consistent evidence that doses of coffee less than and equal to what might be found in a cup of coffee provide  &quot;improvements in physical endurance, cognitive function, particularly alertness and vigilance, mood and perception of fatigue.&quot; Here is the abstract (with bits about a secondary hypothesis related to hydration replaced by '...':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reputed benefits of moderate caffeine consumption include&#xA;  improvements in physical endurance, cognitive function, particularly&#xA;  alertness and vigilance, mood and perception of fatigue... This paper is a&#xA;  review of double-blind, placebo-controlled trials published over the&#xA;  past 15 years to establish what range of caffeine consumption would&#xA;  maximise benefits and minimise risks for cognitive function, mood,&#xA;  physical performance and hydration. Of the 41 human studies meeting&#xA;  the inclusion criteria, the majority reported benefits associated with&#xA;  low to moderate caffeine intakes (37.5 to 450 mg per day)... &#xA;  It was concluded that the range of caffeine intake&#xA;  that appeared to maximise benefit and minimise risk is 38 to 400 mg&#xA;  per day, equating to 1 to 8 cups of tea per day, or 0.3 to 4 cups of&#xA;  brewed coffee per day. The limitations of the current evidence base&#xA;  are discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another systematic literature review by &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nut.2010.08.004&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Glade (2010)&lt;/a&gt;, in which most effects were observed at doses were in the 50-200mg range (referred to as moderate), concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The consumption of moderate amounts of caffeine 1) increases energy&#xA;  availability, 2) increases daily energy expenditure, 3) decreases&#xA;  fatigue, 4) decreases the sense of effort associated with physical&#xA;  activity, 5) enhances physical performance, 6) enhances motor&#xA;  performance, 7) enhances cognitive performance, 8) increases&#xA;  alertness, wakefulness, and feelings of “energy,” 9) decreases mental&#xA;  fatigue, 10) quickens reactions, 11) increases the accuracy of&#xA;  reactions, 12) increases the ability to concentrate and focus&#xA;  attention, 13) enhances short-term memory, 14) increases the ability&#xA;  to solve problems requiring reasoning, 15) increases the ability to&#xA;  make correct decisions, 16) enhances cognitive functioning&#xA;  capabilities and neuromuscular coordination, and 17) in otherwise&#xA;  healthy non-pregnant adults is safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A summary of the studies on which the above conclusions are based can be found in table 2 of the Ruxton reference, the first page of this table is shown below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O7iRz.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O7iRz.png&quot; alt=&quot;table 2&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="238" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-02T11:51:38.313" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T11:51:38.313" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9603" CreationDate="2012-06-01T15:57:32.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few studies that suggest that drinking coffee is just a placebo effect or the reversal of caffeine withdrawl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100602211940.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Frequent coffee drinkers develop a tolerance to both the&#xA;  anxiety-producing effects and the stimulatory effects of caffeine.&#xA;  While frequent consumers may feel alerted by coffee, evidence suggests&#xA;  that this is actually merely the reversal of the fatiguing effects of&#xA;  acute caffeine withdrawal. And given the increased propensity to&#xA;  anxiety and raised blood pressure induced by caffeine consumption,&#xA;  there is no net benefit to be gained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/02/decaf-coffee-buzz-caffeine_n_946746.html?ir=Food&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of East London&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People who drank the decaf coffee thinking it was caffeinated coffee&#xA;  did just as well on the tests as the people who really did have the&#xA;  caffeine...Both caffeine and expectation of having consumed caffeine&#xA;  improved attention and psychomotor speed,&quot; researchers wrote in the&#xA;  study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://taketwoofthese.com/?p=135&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of California&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People who drink caffeine decline in their ability to do tasks at the&#xA;  same time that their opinion of that ability goes up. Performance&#xA;  down, opinion of that performance up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7374" LastActivityDate="2012-06-01T15:57:32.973" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9655" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-01T17:22:09.227" Score="17" ViewCount="2418" Body="&lt;p&gt;My 13-year-old stepson just told me this story: When &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Red_and_Blue&quot;&gt;Pokémon Red and Green&lt;/a&gt; was first released in 1996, there were dozens or hundreds of suicides of children caused by high-frequency sounds in the theme music for the &quot;Lavender Town&quot; location in the game.  The game developers had to change the music to prevent additional suicides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are detailed descriptions of this story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Lavender_Town_Syndrome&quot;&gt;http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Lavender_Town_Syndrome&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lavender-town-syndrome-creepypasta&quot;&gt;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/lavender-town-syndrome-creepypasta&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forums.711clan.net/showthread.php?t=10752&quot;&gt;http://www.forums.711clan.net/showthread.php?t=10752&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that anything like this occurred, or that it could have occurred?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I should note that I dismiss this story as false simply due to its implausibility and lack of credible sources, but my stepson is convinced it is true.  His friends who told him about it believe it, and it is discussed as if true in online gaming forums.  To him, the fact that major news organizations did not report it is evidence of a cover-up.  I'm hoping to use this opportunity to teach him something about critical thinking.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1859" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-01T21:34:26.523" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T02:09:07.503" Title="Was there a peak in suicides associated with the release of Pokémon red and green?" Tags="|videogames|suicide|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9621" CreationDate="2012-06-01T19:25:47.037" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to convert my comments to an answer, since this seems to be a bit of a tough nut to crack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, the CNN article links to an article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20479110,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Health.com&lt;/a&gt; which states the same thing.  The only reference is that a Dr. Roshini Rajapaksa makes this assertion.  There is no links or discussion of any studies or even any particular expertise in this.  Dr. Roshini Rajapaksa is actually a Gastroenterologist, and as such may not be fully qualified to speak on the subject of breast tissue, or breast sagging.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.med.nyu.edu/biosketch/rajapr01&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;At her NYU web page&lt;/a&gt;, it shows that she has no studies listed to her credit.  She does have numerous articles and publications in the field of Gastroenterology &amp;amp; Hepatology.  From 1999 to 2008 (on her web page), all the publications are in her area of expertise.  Later on though, in 2008, she started publishing in the Health Magazine, and the articles seem to step outside the bounds of her expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the claim of breast sagging, I got led around to quite a few sites on the internet, and can't seem to find a great deal of impartial information on the subject.  I examined first of all if there is actually a ligament involved in the physiology.  On that count, there is.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper%27s_ligaments&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;It is called the Cooper's ligament&lt;/a&gt;.  This wikipedia article says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many women have held the mistaken belief that sagging is caused by the failure of the Cooper's ligaments to support the breast tissue. In fact, sagging is partly determined by genetic factors, but cigarette smoking, a woman's body mass index, her number of pregnancies, the size of her breasts before pregnancy, and age are all influencing factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newimage.com/resource-center/sagging-breasts.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The citation wikipedia gives is somewhat questionable in my opinion&lt;/a&gt;, because it seems to suffer from the same problem that the assertion that your sleep position can cause sagging....  That is, it doesn't cite any original research on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The medical term for sagging breasts is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptosis_%28breasts%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ptosis of the breast&lt;/a&gt; (as opposed to plain Ptosis that generally refers to eyelid drooping).  Again, I am not able to locate any specific studies on breast ptosis and sleeping position.  All the studies indicate that it's simply the combined effect of gravity, &lt;em&gt;combined with time&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medbroadcast.com/channel_section_details.asp?text_id=5822&amp;amp;channel_id=1003&amp;amp;relation_id=4536#.T8kWtsXdMjB&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;With time being the main contributor, because ligaments just naturally wear out over time&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aging: Because of the way that breasts are built, sagging is common and largely unavoidable. After all, breasts contain no muscles of their own to hold them up. Rather, breasts are made of fat, glands, milk ducts, and a type of connective tissue called the &amp;quot;Cooper's ligaments,&amp;quot; which are thought to provide some structural support. As a woman gets older, these ligaments may get stretched and lose elasticity. Breasts may lose fullness and size as they lose their underlying support system of tissue and fat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://goaskalice.columbia.edu/sagging-breasts-i-fear-not-wearing-brassiere&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An advice column at Columbia University does say that&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to popular belief, going braless doesn't mean that your breasts are destined to droop. There's also nothing unhealthy about wearing one as long as it fits properly. Bras do not preserve the shape or perkiness of breasts. Sagging results from a number of factors unrelated to brassiere wearing, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;breast fat and tissue composition&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;softening of breast ligaments and loss of breast tissue with age&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;enlarged breasts during pregnancy, which causes the skin to stretch and remain stretched even after they revert to pre-pregnancy size&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;effects of gravity over a woman's lifetime&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the main factor appears to be age and time, and not sleeping position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all these cases, there is a mention of gravity.  Physiologically, all the previously cited places indicate that if a woman has large breast, they will naturally sag more just because they are large.  However, the Cooper's ligament still is able to accommodate that weight as part of its job.  The only thing that affects the ligament tissue, from what I read in the papers, was the loss of elasticity due to natural aging.  They will not cause accelerated sagging due to sleeping position (or not wearing a bra).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T01:57:02.990" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-02T19:10:34.530" Score="7" ViewCount="1044" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gallup.com/poll/155003/Hold-Creationist-View-Human-Origins.aspx?version=print&quot;&gt;recent Gallup poll&lt;/a&gt; claims that 46% of Americans believe :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;God created human beings pretty much in their present form within the last 10,000 years or so&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me possible that, when asked about a matter of faith on a phone survey, people might exaggerate their position or, alternatively, they might provide the sarcastic answer that is the opposite of their actual feeling. I admit that I have answered polls in ways intended to confound the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One might expect that dishonest responses cancel each other out, but that is not &lt;em&gt;necessarily&lt;/em&gt; the case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do polling companies account for exaggeration/dishonesty? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-02T20:29:50.523" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:53:38.737" Title="Does Gallup assume people answer honestly in their creationist vs. evolution polls?" Tags="|politics|religion|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9663" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-02T20:11:54.310" Score="24" ViewCount="3186" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard several times from creationists that now, if scientists would examine the land in Hiroshima, it will tell them it is millions of years old all because of the atom bomb.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And because of that now we can't trust Scientific datings of the earth, universe, rocks, etc. because &quot;god&quot; or events like the biblical flood could have made the earth seem older.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched and couldn't find any information about this, can you guys help me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7390" LastEditorDisplayName="user32299" LastEditDate="2018-08-18T20:14:43.163" LastActivityDate="2018-08-19T18:16:36.720" Title="Does the radioactivity on Hiroshima's soil affect radiometric dating?" Tags="|physics|radiation|geology|young-earth-creationism|hiroshima-nagasaki|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9661" CreationDate="2012-06-02T20:23:28.327" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do polling companies account for exaggeration/dishonesty? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes they do (in a way).  Polling methodology is a very well researched field.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/52/1/125.short&quot;&gt;Mostly because of the spectacular failure of the 1936 Literary Digest presidential poll&lt;/a&gt;.  Even if a poll is set up to take into account exaggeration, dishonesty, confusion, or the many other variables involved in these polls, there is still a lot of room for biased and flawed polls to get out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main counter that polls have is sample size (you can get an idea on the sample size from the degree of confidence in the poll, i.e. the +- error bar).  The larger (and more &quot;controlled&quot; random &lt;em&gt;(1)&lt;/em&gt; ) the sample size, the more likely you are to get a good result.  There are many, many books that go over the methodology, and why it works.  Here is a small list of Scholarly books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=ctow8zWdyFgC&amp;amp;dq=polling%2bmethodology&amp;amp;lr=&quot;&gt;Survey Methodology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=2Enm9gWeH2IC&amp;amp;dq=polling%2bmethodology&amp;amp;lr&amp;amp;source=gbs_similarbooks&quot;&gt;Survey Research Methods&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=BZBB9NoqICYC&amp;amp;dq=polling%2bmethodology&amp;amp;lr&amp;amp;source=gbs_similarbooks&quot;&gt;Improving Survey Questions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, know how to conduct a survey still doesn't prevent people from intentionally skewing results to their favour, or against an opponent.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pollster.com/blogs/poll_of_pollsters_rating_the_i.php?nr=1&quot;&gt;Even amongst (political) polling organizations, some do have perceptions of being more or less reliable&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://aprendeenlinea.udea.edu.co/revistas/index.php/ceo/article/view/7537/6935&quot;&gt;One group suggest a series of 20 questions one should ask to determine if a poll is scientific&lt;/a&gt;.  They are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who did the poll?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who paid for the poll and why was it done?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How many people were interviewed for the survey?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How were those people chosen?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What area (nation, state, or region) or what group (teachers,lawyers,&#xA;  Democratic voters, etc.) were these people chosen from?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are the results based on the answers of all the people interviewed?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who should have been interviewed and was not? Or do response rates&#xA;  matter?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When was the poll done?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How were the interviews conducted?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What about polls on the Internet or World Wide Web?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the sampling error for the poll results?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Who’s on first?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What other kinds of factors can skew poll results?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What questions were asked?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In what order were the questions asked?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What about &quot;push polls?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What other polls have been done on this topic? Do they say the same thing? If they are different, why are they different?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What about exit polls?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What else needs to be included in the report of the poll?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;So I've asked all the questions. The answers sound good. Should we report the results?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even so, it takes a great deal of research on the part of anyone who is digesting poll results to really get an idea of what is truly happening.  Sadly, the general public does not put forth that effort, nor does the media traditionally delve into polls beyond the surface results.  Does that mean one should discount the results entirely?  No, as previously stated, the science and methodology is actually pretty well understood.  It's just what people do with the results that ends up making the results so difficult to parse.  There is an actual quarterly publication journal for polling organizations.  I suggest you read up in &lt;a href=&quot;http://poq.oxfordjournals.org/content/75/5/962.short&quot;&gt;Public Opinion Quarterly&lt;/a&gt; if you desire to learn more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(1) By controlled random is that the pollsters actually understand how their selection methodology may bias a &quot;random&quot; population.  For instance, if they only call people with a land line, they are more apt to get older and rural respondents.  If they conduct it via the internet, then that population also has a bias.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-06-02T20:31:20.717" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T20:31:20.717" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9661" CreationDate="2012-06-02T20:27:22.320" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gallup publishes the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gallup.com/file/poll/155006/Creationism_120601.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;data along with the methodology&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results are based on telephone interviews conducted May 3-6, 2012 with a random sample of –1,024—adults, aged 18+, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the margin of error is ±4 percentage points.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  For results based on the sample of –534—national adults in Form A and –490—national adults in Form B, the maximum margins of sampling error are ±5 percentage points.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each sample includes a minimum quota of 400 cell phone respondents and 600 landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas among landline respondents by region. Landline numbers are chosen at random among listed telephone numbers, cell phone numbers are selected using random-digit dial methods. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Samples are weighted by gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, adults in the household, and phone status (cell phone only/landline only/both, having an unlisted landline number, and being cell phone mostly). Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2011 Current Population Survey figures for the age 18+ non-institutionalized population living in U.S. telephone households. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting and sample design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in other words there's about a 5-point margin of error on the results, and they may well be imprecise due to lying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the results are way less precise than presented. It is assumed that there will be errors, but that the picture is &lt;em&gt;substantially correct&lt;/em&gt;. I find no fault in the overall picture, but of course the exact numbers are probably different from what was presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, what counts is the qualitative answer: most US residents are creationists. Quantitatively we can say it's the largest subset, although the number is only known to be between 41 and 51 percent of the population (within a 2&amp;sigma; &amp;mdash; 95% &amp;mdash; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68-95-99.7_rule&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;confidence interval&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the results are slightly different from what is presented on the main site, from the same pdf as above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LPIX6.png&quot; alt=&quot;Gallup Poll&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the table above it is clear that, once we consider the 5 point uncertainty, nothing new has emerged from the poll: the fluctuations of the values across the years are consistent with the predicted errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there's a big manipulation here: &lt;em&gt;the significant question is whether man evolved or not, not whether God assisted!&lt;/em&gt; Believing that God influences the world has nothing to do with either the scientific position of evolution and the charlatanerie of creationism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one discards that false dilemma, then the numbers look much more sane and believable: 47% of Americans accept evolution, and 46% believe in the superstition of creationism. It's still a frighteningly high percentage though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The polls don't account directly for people being dishonest. However, that's not the big problem. The real sham is the misrepresentation of the results via omitting the error bars and introducing a false dilemma to make the position of evolution look much, much lower than it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-06-02T20:27:22.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9663" CreationDate="2012-06-02T22:29:54.547" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the comments, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/18331/gary-kindel&quot;&gt;Gary Kindel&lt;/a&gt;, pointed out, &quot;&lt;em&gt;Just answer the question and stop worrying who is going to use to support a specific dating technique.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the short answer is yes, radioactivity can and does affect radiometric dating techniques. This is a well established phenomenon and as such, there are many other dating methods that make up for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of different radiometric dating methods, based on different elements (Uranium Lead, Potassium Argon, Uranium Thorium, Carbon, Chlorine-36, Luminescence, Samarium-neodymium, Rubidium Strontium and more.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creationists usually point to carbon dating, carbon 14 decay dating. Carbon dating, like other radiometric dating relies on a fairly constant decay over time. Since the creation of carbon 14 varies slightly due to things like volcano eruptions, a calibration curve can be used to adjust it. Results that use a calibration adjustment are called Calibrated or Cambridge Dates. These dates are usually expressed in regular calender dates. As apposed to Uncalibrated or Libby Dates, that use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Before_Present&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BP (before present) date&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Science&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Carbon-14 is a radioactive isotope of carbon, with a half-life of&#xA;  5,730 years,[23][24] which is very short compared with the above&#xA;  isotopes. In other radiometric dating methods, the heavy parent&#xA;  isotopes were produced by nucleosynthesis in supernovas, meaning that&#xA;  any parent isotope with a short half-life should be extinct by now.&#xA;  Carbon-14, though, is continuously created through collisions of&#xA;  neutrons generated by cosmic rays with nitrogen in the upper&#xA;  atmosphere and thus remains at a near-constant level on Earth. The&#xA;  carbon-14 ends up as a trace component in atmospheric carbon dioxide&#xA;  (CO2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An organism acquires carbon during its lifetime. Plants acquire it&#xA;  through photosynthesis, and animals acquire it from consumption of&#xA;  plants and other animals. When an organism dies, it ceases to take in&#xA;  new carbon-14, and the existing isotope decays with a characteristic&#xA;  half-life (5730 years). The proportion of carbon-14 left when the&#xA;  remains of the organism are examined provides an indication of the&#xA;  time elapsed since its death. The carbon-14 dating limit lies around&#xA;  58,000 to 62,000 years&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rate of creation of carbon-14 appears to be roughly constant, as&#xA;  cross-checks of carbon-14 dating with other dating methods show it&#xA;  gives consistent results. However, local eruptions of volcanoes or&#xA;  other events that give off large amounts of carbon dioxide can reduce&#xA;  local concentrations of carbon-14 and give inaccurate dates. The&#xA;  releases of carbon dioxide into the biosphere as a consequence of&#xA;  industrialization have also depressed the proportion of carbon-14 by a&#xA;  few percent; conversely, the amount of carbon-14 was increased by&#xA;  above-ground nuclear bomb tests that were conducted into the early&#xA;  1960s. Also, an increase in the solar wind or the Earth's magnetic&#xA;  field above the current value would depress the amount of carbon-14&#xA;  created in the atmosphere. These effects are corrected for by the&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating#Calibration&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;calibration of the radiocarbon dating scale&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating#Radiocarbon_dating_method&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating#Radiocarbon_dating_method&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nuclear carbon dating is not the only test used to date fossils. There many other dating methods that are used to date things; one of witch is chemical properties of igneous rock formations. Others are thermoluminescence, amino acid, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, nuclear weapons testing brought about a reaction that simulated atmospheric production of carbon 14 in unnatural quantities. The huge thermal neutron flux produced by nuclear bombs reacted with nitrogen atoms present in the atmosphere to form carbon 14. The carbon 14 produced is what is known as bomb carbon or artificial radiocarbon. Nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s and 1960s have nearly doubled the atmospheric carbon 14 content as measured in around 1965.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The level of bomb carbon was about 100% above normal levels between 1963 and 1965. The level of bomb carbon in the northern hemisphere reached a peak in 1963, and in the southern hemisphere around 1965.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this graph, and description below.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Radiocarbon_bomb_spike.svg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Radiocarbon_bomb_spike.svg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the main methods used to date fossils is by the strata they are found in. Some strata are dated absolutely via radiometric dating. These methods are sufficient to determine a great deal of stratigraphy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some fossils are seen to occur only in certain strata (like dinosaurs.) Such fossils can be used as index fossils. When these fossils exist, they can be used to determine the age of the strata, because the fossils show that the strata correspond to strata that have already been dated by other means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information on radiometric dating, read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dating.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale, Circular Reasoning or Reliable Tools?&lt;/a&gt; By Andrew MacRae.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given that the half-life of carbon-14 is 5730 years, one can calculate&#xA;  that 4 billion C-14 atoms will produce 1 decay per minute on the&#xA;  average. Converting the 4 billion atoms to grams (a nickel weighs 5&#xA;  grams), we get 0.000000000000093 grams of carbon-14. Consequently, by&#xA;  tallying one click per minute on the Geiger counter, we can measure a&#xA;  whole lot further than 7 decimal places!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 1-gram, fresh sample of carbon, containing the atmospheric&#xA;  concentration of one ten-billionth percent of carbon-14, will yield&#xA;  about 12 decays per minute. That figure follows directly from the&#xA;  mathematics and, as the atmospheric portion of carbon-14 given above&#xA;  is an approximation, is close enough to Dr. Hovind's present-day&#xA;  figure of 16 counts per minute per gram. Because of atomic bomb tests,&#xA;  the rate is slightly higher today, but the present rate would not&#xA;  apply to animals and plants which died before such tests. One book&#xA;  used a figure of about 13.5 decays per minute per gram for the&#xA;  pre-bomb rate. Consequently, a 64-gram sample of fresh carbon will&#xA;  still give about 7 clicks per minute after 40,000 years. Because of&#xA;  background radiation, that's about as far as one can normally go with&#xA;  this counting method. As noted above, Dr. Dalrymple would extend that&#xA;  to 50,000 years in special laboratories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once again, Dr. Hovind has relied on bad data. If you get your&#xA;  information from a creationist source, you'd better triple-check it!&#xA;  Errors get handed down in the creationist literature like the family&#xA;  jewels!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. Hovind (R6): The shape of the curve of the line is based on too&#xA;  few real measurements to be reliable. R6. It's not clear to me what&#xA;  Dr. Hovind is talking about. If he is referring to the carbon-14 decay&#xA;  curve then he has demonstrated, once again, his ignorance of&#xA;  radiometric dating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The decay curve is mathematically determined by the fact that every&#xA;  atom of carbon-14 in a sample has the same chance of decaying during&#xA;  each second of time. That much is predicted by quantum mechanics,&#xA;  which is possibly the greatest of our modern, scientific revolutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The random character of radioactive decay is a special case of the&#xA;  indeterminacy of quantum theory, as was pointed out in 1928 by George&#xA;  Gamow, Ronald Gurney and Edward Condon. They showed that a particle&#xA;  held inside the nucleus by a &quot;potential barrier&quot; may be able to&#xA;  &quot;tunnel through&quot; the barrier and emerge on the other side, since if&#xA;  the barrier is finite the wave function of the particle is not&#xA;  completely localized and there is a finite probability that the&#xA;  particle will be outside the nucleus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Brush, 1982, p.42)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since we are dealing with millions of C-14 atoms in even the smallest&#xA;  samples, the amount of C-14 remaining with respect to time will be an&#xA;  excellent approximation of an exponential decay curve. Statistics&#xA;  assure us of that. Indeed, it would be absurd to speak of the&#xA;  half-life of a radioactive isotope if it did not have a good&#xA;  exponential decay curve!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once we have a good approximation of the half-life for carbon-14, its&#xA;  decay curve can be constructed with complete confidence. We don't need&#xA;  Egyptian mummies or what have you at that point. At that point it's&#xA;  just a routine exercise in math. If you want additional assurance that&#xA;  we have the correct half-life, then look at the close correlation&#xA;  between C-14 dates and tree-ring dates (after correcting for variances&#xA;  in C-14 production caused by changes in the earth's magnetic field).&#xA;  The snug fit indicates that the half-life of C-14 is stable and&#xA;  accurately known. Therefore, so is its decay curve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today, the half-lives of those radioactive elements used in dating are&#xA;  known to a few percent by careful laboratory study. So, there's no&#xA;  problem in getting an accurate decay curve.&#xA;  -&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-c14.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-c14.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All said and done, radiometric dating methods provide a reliable means of determining the ages of critical points in geologic and planetary history, including the age of the Earth, the Moon, and meteorites. That the age of the Earth is billions of years is virtually beyond question because it is supported by a wide variety of independently determined scientific evidence which indicates that the Earth is 4.5 to 4.6 billion years old. Scientists are continually refining this age, but it is highly unlikely that it will change in the future by more than a few percent. In the past, the age of the Earth was the subject of much dispute, but the past few decades have seen the development of new techniques not previously available. There is virtually no dispute among knowledgeable scientists about the antiquity of the Earth and her sister planets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Creationism&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creationists calculate the age of the earth to be (depending on the sect of creationists,) from 6,000 to 200,000 years old, with the majority coming in at 10,000 years old. These calculations are derived from numerous methods like Thomas Barnes' &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dalrymple/creationist_age_earth.html#h33&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;decay of the Earth’s magnetic field&lt;/a&gt;, in his book, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books/about/Origin_and_destiny_of_the_earth_s_magnet.html?id=97woAQAAMAAJ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Origin and destiny of the earth's magnetic field&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dalrymple/creationist_age_earth.html#Table10&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; is a list of the tabulated ages of the Earth. Keep in mind that none of these methods and results are scientifically valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to young earth creationists, in my opinion the most misinformed segment of creationists, the method originally used to calculate the age of the earth (and therefore a max age of the life on the earth,) was using the genealogies from the Bible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Bible begins with the Book of Genesis, in which God creates the&#xA;  world, including the first human, a man named Adam, in six days.&#xA;  Genesis goes on to list many of Adam's descendants, in many cases&#xA;  giving the ages at which they had children and died. If these events&#xA;  and ages are interpreted literally throughout and the genealogies are&#xA;  considered closed, it is possible to build up a chronology in which&#xA;  many of the events of the Old Testament are dated to an estimated&#xA;  number of years after creation. Some scholars have gone further, and&#xA;  have attempted to tie in this Biblical chronology with that of&#xA;  recorded history, thus establishing a date for creation in a modern&#xA;  calendar. Since there are periods in the Biblical story where dates&#xA;  are not given, the chronology has been subject to interpretation in&#xA;  many different ways, resulting in a variety of estimates of the date&#xA;  of creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Numerous efforts have been made to determine the Biblical date of&#xA;  creation, yielding varying results. Besides differences in&#xA;  interpretation, which version of the Bible is being referenced also&#xA;  impacts on the result. Two dominant dates for creation using such&#xA;  models exist, about 5500 BC and about 4000 BC. These were calculated&#xA;  from the genealogies in two versions of the Bible, with most of the&#xA;  difference arising from two versions of Genesis. The older dates are&#xA;  based on the Greek Septuagint. The later dates are based on the Hebrew&#xA;  Masoretic text.[58] The patriarchs from Adam to Terah, the father of&#xA;  Abraham, were often 100 years older when they begat their named son in&#xA;  the Septuagint than they were in the Hebrew or the Vulgate (Genesis 5,&#xA;  11). The net difference between the two genealogies of Genesis was&#xA;  1466 years (ignoring the &quot;second year after the flood&quot; ambiguity),&#xA;  which is virtually all of the 1500-year difference between 5500 BC and&#xA;  4000 BC. For example, the period of creation to the Flood is derived&#xA;  using the genealogical table of the ten patriarchs listed in Genesis&#xA;  5, and 7:6, called the generations of Adam. According to the Masoretic&#xA;  Text, this period consists of 1,656 years, and this dating is also&#xA;  followed by Western Christian Bibles derived from the Latin Vulgate.&#xA;  However, according to the Samaritan texts the period is 1,307 years,&#xA;  and according to the Septuagint (Codex Alexandrinus, Elizabeth Bible)&#xA;  it is 2,262 years. J. Ussher agrees with the dating until the birth of&#xA;  Abraham, which he argues took place when Terah was 130, and not 70 as&#xA;  is the direct reading of Genesis 11:26, thus adding 60 years to his&#xA;  chronology for events postdating Abraham.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_creation#Biblical_creation_dates&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_creation#Biblical_creation_dates&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many ancient cultures tried to calculate the age of the earth, and since they didn't have to tools and knowledge that we have now, they usually based it on human record and creation myths. According to one interpretation of Puranic Hinduism, the world is believed to have been created 158.7 trillion years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dates that science comes up with, when compared to results calculated by Creationists, are far less varied. The scientific date will continue to be defined as new technology and theories come forth, but the main thing is that this result will become more precise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In science, we collect facts, or observations, we use laws to describe them, and a theory to explain them. Scientific theories are explanations of natural phenomena built up logically from testable observations and hypotheses, and the wonderful part of the scientific method is that it requires repeatability, and peer review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We rely on the accuracy of science in most every part of our lives, why is it that when science is inconstant with the Bible, some people (a majority of Americans,) reject the scientific answer and use the Bible's?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source I recommend reading is, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dalrymple/radiometric_dating.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Old is the Earth&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Dalrymple&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brent Dalrymple&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7387" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T11:43:34.443" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9661" CreationDate="2012-06-03T02:53:38.737" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pollsters are aware of a number of problems with polling. Some of the other answers address this, but they don't seem to focus on the core issue: respondents giving unreliable answers about their true intentions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In election polling, one such suspected bias is known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bradley Effect&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Bradley effect, less commonly called the Wilder effect, is a theory proposed to explain observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes in some United States government elections where a white candidate and a non-white candidate run against each other. The theory proposes that some voters will tell pollsters they are undecided or likely to vote for a black candidate, while on election day they vote for the white candidate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theory is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/10/the_bradley_effect_selective_m.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;controversial&lt;/a&gt;. I am not presenting it as true. I am presenting it as evidence that pollsters and analysts are aware of effects that might systematically skew results, and they &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; assume that all respondents are honest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Other similar claims that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_desirability_bias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;social desirability bias&lt;/a&gt; affect the polls include the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shy_Tory_Factor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Shy Tory Factor&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to show more evidence that analysts are openly concerned about the reliability of surveys, so I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://malawi.pop.upenn.edu/Level%203/Papers/PDF-files/bignami-2003.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rather arbitrary research article&lt;/a&gt; looking at the problem in surveys in rural Malawi about HIV/AIDS, which started with a bit of a literature review. They looked at some US studies that attempted to detect inconsistencies by reinterviewing people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These studies shared several conclusions about survey response error in&#xA;  demographic surveys carried out in developing countries. First, response error varies&#xA;  according to respondent characteristics, and to the content and psychological nature of&#xA;  the questions asked. More personal, sensitive questions tend to be less reliable than&#xA;  questions pertaining to relatively concrete factual matters (Knodel and Piampiti 1977).&#xA;  Second, although reporting at the aggregate level may appear to be relatively reliable, it&#xA;  often masks a high level of individual-level inconsistency. There is contradictory&#xA;  evidence, however, about whether these individual errors are randomly or&#xA;  systematically distributed (Coombs 1977: 255)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Remember: This is not about voting preferences, but just demonstrates it is a known issue in the field.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some techniques to address poll &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_(statistics)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reliability&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Item_Response_Theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Item Response Theory&lt;/a&gt; can look for &#xA;questions that are not getting the expected distribution of responses.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_consistency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Internal Consistency&lt;/a&gt; can look for  answers that describe inconsistent positions within the same survey.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't provided much solid evidence that particular polls are biases in particular way. I have provided evidence that the pollsters and analysts are not naive, and don't simply assume people are reliable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I have used Wikipedia throughout, as my goal is not to prove that the effects are real, but merely that the risks are well-known.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T02:53:38.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5402" CreationDate="2012-06-03T23:26:34.620" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's my answer, this time copy-pasted instead of linked, posted as a reply to the same question on Biology - Stack Exchange:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer belongs on Skeptics. Sorry to disappoint, but the &quot;boiled frog&quot; phenomenon is an &quot;old folk warning&quot;. This essentially negates your original question altogether. Neither a cold-blooded animal (such as a frog) or warm-blooded animal will boil to death under the conditions implied by the warning (i.e. escape is permitted and water is heated very gradually).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conservationmagazine.org/2011/03/frog-fable-brought-to-boil/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1897 research by German scientist E. W. Scripture, upon which the fable may have first been based, has been deemed flawed by scientists:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From Scripture's research: “. . . a live frog can actually be boiled&#xA;  without a movement if the water is heated slowly enough; in one&#xA;  experiment, the temperature was raised at the rate of 0.002 degrees&#xA;  Celsius per second, and the frog was found dead at the end of 2.5&#xA;  hours without having moved.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Dr. Karl S. Kruszelnicki (Australian scientist): &quot;[T]he&#xA;  numbers just don’t seem right. If the water comes to a boil, that&#xA;  means a final temperature of 100 degrees Celsius. In that case, the&#xA;  frog would have to have been put into the water at 82 degrees Celsius.&#xA;  Surely, the frog would have died immediately.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Dr. Victor H. Hutchinson (Herpetologist and Zoology&#xA;  Professor at University of Oklahoma): &quot;The legend is entirely&#xA;  incorrect! The 'critical thermal maxima' of many species of frogs have&#xA;  been determined by several investigators. In this procedure, the water&#xA;  in which a frog is submerged is heated gradually at about 2 degrees&#xA;  Fahrenheit per minute. As the temperature of the water is gradually&#xA;  increased, the frog will eventually become more and more active in&#xA;  attempts to escape the heated water. If the container size and opening&#xA;  allow the frog to jump out, it will do so.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://srel.uga.edu/ecoviews/ecoview071223.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Whit Gibbons (University of Georgia) says that there is an important message behind the false legend:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So where does that leave us with the boiling frog as a metaphor for&#xA;  the human response to economic change or environmental degradation?&#xA;  Well, it's not true that you can induce a frog to willingly remain in&#xA;  boiling water by starting it off in cold water. But that does not&#xA;  diminish the truth of the message that the accumulation of&#xA;  imperceptible changes can have a significant effect on the economy and&#xA;  the environment. We need to be aware of what changes are occurring and&#xA;  to respond to them in a timely fashion. The metaphor lies in the&#xA;  frog's ability to escape from the container: if there's no way out,&#xA;  then the frog's fate is a foregone conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3930" LastActivityDate="2012-06-03T23:26:34.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9676" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-05T06:43:11.113" Score="14" ViewCount="3424" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Wve7a.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;KNM-ER 1470&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The skull was originally dated to be almost 3 million years old. This led Richard Leakey, the son of famed archeologist Louis Leakey to comment, &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mail.nysoclib.org/digital_archives/periodicals/National_Geographic/IMAGES/273F/273F0819.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Either We toss out this skull or we toss out our theories on early man&lt;/a&gt;. It simply fits no previous models of human beginnings.&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://mail.nysoclib.org/digital_archives/periodicals/National_Geographic/index/1970s/1973/273F.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Geographic, June 1973&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This 2.6 million year old date was verified by many &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earthage.org/radio/The%20Case%20of%20the%20KBS%20Tuff.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;different testing methods&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Based on other fossils that were very similar. Vertebrate faunas -- Elephant, Suid (pig), Australopithicus, and tools  (Maglio, 1972; Nature 239:379-85, Leakey, 1967-69, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On K-Ar and Ar40-Ar39 dating. Potassium-Argon dating -- selected crystals (K-Ar and Ar40-Ar39) (Fitch &amp;amp; Miller '70, Nature 226:226-8 and see 251:214)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Paleomagnetism. Paleomagnetism -- polarity data, based on 247 samples below KBS tuff (Brock &amp;amp; Isaac, 1974, Nature 247:344-48)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fission Track Dating. Fission Track Dating -- involving uranium, noting possible reanealing (Hurford, 1974, Nature 249:236; '76, 263:738)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, these 2.6 million year date was revised to a more recent date (1.8 million years). Instead of tossing out the theory, they determined that the dating methods that all agreed on the 2.6 million timeframe must all be in error &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earthage.org/radio/The%20Case%20of%20the%20KBS%20Tuff.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;because the fossil record&lt;/a&gt; wasn't in agreement with the dates. This has led some credence to some creationists arguments that the dating methods aren't accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then in the late 1970's, a remarkable thing happened. One by one (with much heated controversy apparent in the papers) the other &amp;quot;independent methods&amp;quot; re-evaluated their work in light of the new radiometric date, and confirmed the new age:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.E.: One by one all of those former &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; dates were scrapped in favor of a younger date which was more in agreement with the theory of evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Paleomagnetism -- pinpointing a different polarity reversal, in light of the change in the K-Ar date (Hillhouse et al, 1977,  Nature 265:411)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vertebrate Faunas -- three suid (pig) species (based on teeth) suggesting possible phylogenetic branching and its timing in relationship to the new radiometric date (Cooke, 1978; Science 201:460-63 (&amp;amp;198:13-21)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fission Track Dating -- (U-238 in zircon) emphasizing re-annealing, in light of the change in the accepted K-Ar date (Gleadow, 1980, Nature 284:229-230)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By 1980 there was a new &amp;quot;remarkably concordant&amp;quot; well-accepted radiometric date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you see what happened? Many more dates than those mentioned here were obtained by radiometric methods, but the choice of which one to accept was made on the basis of the fossils (as you pointed out), because the acceptable range of dates for each fossil form was known (by evolutionary theory).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bestbiblescience.org/apeimage.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;creationist&lt;/a&gt; page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make matters even more confusing, Garnis Curtis at Berkeley has recently used potassium argon dating on the KBS tuff and come up with younger dates yet. His first series of tests showed it to be 1.8 m.y.o. and his second series of tests showed it to be 1.6 m.y.o. To add chaos to confusion, recent fission track studies of zircons from the KBS tuff indicate an age of 3 m.y.o.! No wonder radiometric dating labs require that all samples to be &amp;quot;dated&amp;quot; be identified as to their source in the Geological column! Approximately 8 out of 10 specimens (&amp;quot;dates&amp;quot;) are discarded by radiometric dating labs because they are well out of range of age they &amp;quot;ought to be&amp;quot; given there source in the geological column. In their book POTASSIUM ARGON DATNG, PRINCIPLES, TECHNIQUES AND APPLICATIONS TO GEOCHRONOLOGY, Dalrymple and Lanphere sum up the whole circular process of radiometric dating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If the potassium-argon ages of a group of rocks agree with the stratigraphic sequence determined on the basis of physical relationships of fossil evidence, then the probability is good that radiometric ages are reliable...&amp;quot; (page 197)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was Richard Leakey correct, did they toss out the fossil, or the theories on early man? Were the first 4 (2.6 Million) dates thought to be accurate at the time of their original publication. Were they later revised to the more recent 1.8 million-years-ago timeframe? Is this evidence that the fossil record trumps all other dating methods (i.e. if there is disagreement, the fossil record is not revised, it is the other dating methods)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-09-24T17:27:24.413" Title="Is the fossil KNM-ER 1470 evidence that other dating methods other than the fossil record are inaccurate?" Tags="|evolution|archeology|paleontology|history-of-science|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9678" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9680" CreationDate="2012-06-05T13:04:46.427" Score="14" ViewCount="16672" Body="&lt;p&gt;This facebook post has gone viral among my friends&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PRIVACY NOTICE: Warning - any person and/or institution and/or Agent&#xA;  and/or Agency of any governmental structure including but not limited&#xA;  to the United States Federal Government also using or monitoring/using&#xA;  this website or any of its associated websites, you do NOT have my&#xA;  permission to utilize any of my profile information nor any of the&#xA;  content contained herein including, but not limited to my photos &amp;amp;&#xA;  videos, and/or the comments made about my photos, videos or any other&#xA;  &quot;picture&quot; art posted on my profile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You are hereby notified that you are strictly prohibited from&#xA;  disclosing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or taking any other&#xA;  action against me with regard to this profile and the contents herein.&#xA;  The foregoing prohibitions also apply to your employee, agent, student&#xA;  or any personnel under your direction or control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The contents of this profile are private and legally privileged and&#xA;  confidential information, and the violation of my personal privacy is&#xA;  punishable by law. UCC 1-103 1-308 ALL RIGHTS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of whom gave this justification&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For those of you who do not understand the reasoning behind this&#xA;  posting, &lt;strong&gt;Facebook is now a publicly traded entity&lt;/strong&gt;. Unless you state&#xA;  otherwise, anyone can infringe on your right to privacy once you post&#xA;  to this site. It is recommended that you and other members post a&#xA;  similar notice as this, or you may copy and paste this version. If you&#xA;  do not po...st such a statement once, then you are indirectly allowing&#xA;  public use of items such as your photos and the information contained&#xA;  in your status updates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer, and have no understanding of these things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is two fold, is this necessary? and even if it is necessary, will it have the desired effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it's similar to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9539/do-facebook-or-its-third-party-partners-use-my-photos-in-ads&quot;&gt;Do Facebook or its third-party partners use my photos in ads?&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;but maybe different because the game has changed now that FB is a public traded entity&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4422" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:01:18.960" Title="Is the trending Facebook &quot;privacy notice&quot; necessary and/or effective?" Tags="|law|security|social-media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9678" CreationDate="2012-06-05T13:22:44.323" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question has already been addressed by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/computer/facebook/privacy.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[the claim is] erroneous, an expression of the mistaken belief that the use of some simple legal talisman — knowing enough to ask the right question or post a pertinent disclaimer — will immunize one from some undesirable legal consequence. The law just doesn't work that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the basic premise of this item is false: The fact that Facebook is now a publicly traded company (i.e., a company that has issued stocks which are traded on the open market) has nothing to do with privacy rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/06/05/facebook-privacy-notice-chain-letter-is-a-hoax/?utm_source=facebook&amp;amp;utm_medium=status+message&amp;amp;utm_campaign=naked+security&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Naked Security&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately taking control of your online identity is not as simple as making a declaration on your Facebook wall. Using any website to store content or personal details requires compliance with the site's Terms of Service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These messages are simply another chain letter type hoax pinned upon wishful thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither site offer rigorous legal references to support their point-of-view, but it seems to be pretty basic contract law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/06/05/facebook_privacy_notice_debunked_.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They got a response from Facebook along the same lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“We have noticed this recent status update that is being widely shared implying the ownership of your Facebook content has recently changed,” Alex Kirschner, a member of Facebook’s PR team, told me. “This is not true and has never been the case.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also point out that the two US statutes referenced (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/1/article1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UCC 1-103 &amp;amp; 1-308&lt;/a&gt;) are &amp;quot;completely unrelated to privacy or social networking, making its inclusion irrelevant&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T17:52:04.493" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9488" CreationDate="2012-06-05T18:17:50.647" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;I submitted this story to Snopes, and was notified that today they released an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/flagpin.asp&quot;&gt;article about the incident&lt;/a&gt;, claiming it is verified to be &lt;strong&gt;false&lt;/strong&gt;, in short because no female member of HMX-1 was in a position to have met Obama under the circumstances described in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most relevant bit from the Snopes article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We contacted the U.S. Marine Corps about the rumor, and here is what the media officer tasked with handling our query reported back to us:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;I spoke with representatives from HMX-1 in regards to your query on the supposed firing of a female Staff Sergeant from HMX-1. HMX-1 representatives confirmed that there is no truth to the story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;I forwarded the representatives the copy of the story you sent in your initial inquiry and I was told that no Staff Sergeants have been relieved or fired at HMX-1 and they do not have a female Staff Sergeant at HMX-1 that has been to the drill field. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T18:17:50.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5942" CreationDate="2012-06-05T19:33:52.897" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a BBC World recent documentary series, &lt;em&gt;In The Shadow of the Taj&lt;/em&gt;. In it, they went to Agra, where they interviewed descendants of some of the workers who built the monument. They all categorically asserted that the &quot;hands cut off&quot; story was a myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3718166.stm&quot;&gt;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3718166.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was fascinating documentary, and I learned a lot about the building. For instance, did you know that Shah Jehan was going to build an additional monument, known as &quot;the Black Taj Mahal&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7422" LastActivityDate="2012-06-05T19:33:52.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8668" CreationDate="2012-06-06T01:51:52.170" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only ingredient that stands out to me is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huperzine_A&quot;&gt;Huperzine A&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clinical trials in China have shown it to be effective in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease[4] and enhancing memory in students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia cites the study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10678121&quot;&gt;Huperzine-A capsules enhance memory and learning performance in 34 pairs of matched adolescent students.&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;METHODS:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using double-blind and matched pair method, 34 pairs&lt;/strong&gt; of junior middle school students complaining of memory inadequacy were divided into two groups by normal psychological health inventory (PHI), similar memory quotient (MQ), same sex and class. The Hup group was administrated orally 2 capsules of Hup (each contains Hup 50 micrograms) b.i.d., and the placebo group was given 2 capsules of placebo (starch and lactose inside) b.i.d. for 4 wk.&#xA;  RESULTS:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the end of trial, &lt;strong&gt;the Hup group's MQ (115 +/- 6) was more than that&#xA;  of the placebo group (104 +/- 9, P &amp;lt; 0.01)&lt;/strong&gt;, and the scores of Chinese&#xA;  language lesson in the Hup group were elevated markedly too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSION:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Hup capsules enhance the memory and learning performance of&#xA;  adolescent students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the Huperzine A seems legit. No clue if any of the other ingredients are useful though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1434" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T01:51:52.170" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9690" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-06T03:14:19.390" Score="6" ViewCount="1549" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is discussed at &lt;a href=&quot;http://artofmanliness.com/2010/03/24/cold-water-shaving/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Art of Manliness&lt;/a&gt;, as quoted from the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=RXvrygAACAAJ&amp;amp;dq=Shaving+made+easy&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=VsnOT5HnFeng2QXT-KneDA&amp;amp;ved=0CDwQ6AEwAA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Shaving Made Easy&lt;/em&gt; (1824)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;. . . the author argues that the idea that a soft beard gives a better shave is a bunch of bunk and that hot water should be avoided:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;A hair, as is well known, is a tube composed of a hard fibrous substance, growing from a bulb or root, which secretes an oily matter.&#xA;    This oil works its way up through the hair, and by permeating all parts, renders the hair soft and pliable. Now in this natural oily condition, it is very difficult to cut the hair with a razor, and &lt;strong&gt;it becomes even more difficult if the beard be made still softer by the application of hot water.&lt;/strong&gt; Many do this, and it is no wonder they find shaving difficult. When this is done, the hairs become soft and limp, and the razor will either slip over them entirely, or else cut partly into them, bend them back and shave them lengthwise, all the while pulling and straining them at the roots, and making the process of shaving most painful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis presumably added by artofmanliness.com)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article itself discusses the claim, and its possible merits as well as possible shortcomings.  Simply reasoning through the arguments, one can make a strong case for both cold-water shaving and hot-water shaving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm curious if there are any studies on the matter that show that a softer beard leads to a closer shave (hot water theory), or if a coarser beard leads to a closer shave (cold water theory).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there is a related question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2022/does-the-temperature-of-the-water-when-you-shave-affect-your-pores&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, which touches on related topics, but doesn't really address the claim that a coarser beard, promoted by cold water, makes for a closer or worse shave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For clarity, the specific claim I'm interested in is:  &lt;strong&gt;Shaving with cold water produces a closer shave than hot water due to the softening effect of hot water which causes the razor to slide over the hair, rather than cutting it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T03:14:19.390" Title="Does shaving with cold water produce a closer shave?" Tags="|hygiene|cosmetics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9691" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-06T03:25:58.950" Score="2" ViewCount="434" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who sells some sort of supplement called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.protandim.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Protandim&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, and I'm wondering if it actually works or is any good. I'm skeptical of it, but I'm not aware of any evidence either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The unique blend of phytonutrients in Protandim signal your body’s genes to&#xA;  produce special antioxidant enzymes, SOD (superoxide dismutase) CAT (catalase)&#xA;  that work together as the body’s first line of defense against free radicals.*&#xA;  These enzymes are “catalytic,” which means that SOD and CAT are not used up&#xA;  when they neutralize free radicals. A single daily caplet of Protandim creates&#xA;  a cascade of your body’s natural catalytic antioxidants that are able to&#xA;  destroy millions of free radicals per second, on a continuous basis–24/7.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7430" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-06-06T03:34:27.137" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T15:31:06.970" Title="Does Protandim &quot;reduce age-related symptoms&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22424" CreationDate="2012-06-06T05:08:51.740" Score="3" ViewCount="1052" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/293659-good-and-bad-foods-for-arthritis/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Livestrong&lt;/a&gt; claim that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sunflower, safflower, corn and soybean oils are polyunsaturated fats, also known as omega-6 fatty acids. These oils are bad for arthritis sufferers because they increase inflammation and prolong pain and stiffness, according to the University of Maryland Medical Center. Not all omega-6 oils are bad for arthritis, but these particular oils are. In lieu of these items, use olive oil. Many commercially baked goods like cookies and cakes contain these omega-6 oils.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I followed their link, but failed to see where the Uni of Maryland's Medical Center made such a claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that corn oil (or omega-6 fatty acids in general) may prolong pain and stiffness in arthritis sufferers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T13:40:02.227" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T22:48:14.397" Title="Is corn oil bad for arthritis?" Tags="|nutrition|livestrong|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9693" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9702" CreationDate="2012-06-06T07:12:13.947" Score="7" ViewCount="1515" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tomorrow my daughter will take her Gaokao exams. This is China's national end of high school exam for university entrance - something akin to Americas SAT or GRE exams. It is commonly said that such exams, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/chinese-pupils-prepare-to-sit-the-exams-that-will-decide-their-fate-1994955.html&quot;&gt;Decide their fate&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are many famous examples of successful people who didn't do well or even take such exams. For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Branson&quot;&gt;Richard Branson&lt;/a&gt; left school at 16 with poor academic performance but now is a multi billionaire. Educationalists like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html&quot;&gt;Ken Robinson&lt;/a&gt; claim that education and exams stifle the creativity required for real success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the degrees that require the highest entrance exam grades may not actually result in the highest paid profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is - Do exam end of high school exam marks really decide your fate. Is there a correlation between high school exam grades and future career success?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-06T09:19:19.343" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T17:48:23.227" Title="Do high-school-leaving exams decide your future?" Tags="|education|employment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9695" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27434" CreationDate="2012-06-06T08:34:29.610" Score="11" ViewCount="1037" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend recently posted this on their Facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PsPGUm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Vaccines don&amp;#39;t cause autism. They cause hypertoxicity which leads to neurological impairment, and cell death. DRAW YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS! ~Dr. D.Mihalovic&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vaccines don't cause autism. They cause hypertoxicity which leads to neurological impairment, and cell death. DRAW YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS! ~Dr. D.Mihalovic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my personal opinion, it &lt;em&gt;reeks&lt;/em&gt; of woo, and finding sources that make Mr. Mihalovic look like a loon isn't hard, but I need a more solid foundation to work from if I plan to rattle any beliefs. I find it telling that Wikipedia doesn't appear to have a &quot;hypertoxicity&quot; article, but I've never heard the term before. Is it being used in much the same sense that &quot;toxins&quot; are invariably used to sell expensive placebos, or is it an actual term that's being (mis)used here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6117" LastEditorUserId="17804" LastEditDate="2015-04-22T18:03:27.487" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T10:55:22.430" Title="Do vaccines cause &quot;hypertoxicity&quot;?" Tags="|vaccines|toxicology|autism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9697" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-06T09:11:37.653" Score="4" ViewCount="257" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.santosha.com/pavana.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pavan Mukta Asana&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As mentioned above, &lt;strong&gt;practicing the purvana-mukta-asana will help to release gastrointestinal gas&lt;/strong&gt;. It is also improves other gastrointestinal problems like upset stomachs and constipation by stimulating the abdominal region.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this pose release the gasses if done as mentioned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5341" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-06T09:17:37.240" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T09:17:37.240" Title="Does Pavan Mukta Asana help releasing gastrointestinal gas?" Tags="|physiology|alternative-medicine|physical-fitness|yoga|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9698" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-06T13:45:47.380" Score="3" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4639/is-drinking-hot-water-more-beneficial-during-hot-weather&quot;&gt;Is drinking hot water more beneficial during hot weather?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many people who claim that they like to drink hot drinks during warm or hot weather, as it cools them down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of such claims are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebase.com/science-blog/a-cooling-hot-drink.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.virtualcountries.com/forums/showthread.php?p=78164&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support this claim, or is there an alternative explanation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7436" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T22:15:54.617" Title="Does a hot beverage cool you down in summer?" Tags="|nutrition|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-06-06T22:16:20.730" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9700" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9703" CreationDate="2012-06-06T15:05:02.450" Score="10" ViewCount="42602" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was watching the movie, &quot;A Beautiful Mind&quot;, in which John Nash walks into the Pentagon, looks at a board having codes and deciphers them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am quite skeptical about the way the scene is portrayed in the movie. Did Nash actually decipher such complex codes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:27:32.653" LastActivityDate="2016-08-11T20:40:28.597" Title="Did John Nash decipher code from a large board in the Pentagon?" Tags="|movies|cryptography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9701" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-06T15:05:33.277" Score="5" ViewCount="1369" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9676/is-knm-er-1470-evidence-that-other-dating-methods-other-than-the-fossil-record-a&quot;&gt;my question regarding KNM-ER 1470&lt;/a&gt;'s and the change from previously believed &amp;quot;good dates&amp;quot; from methods other than the fossil record might be too broad. There is an aspect of the question that should be fairly easy to verify though. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bestbiblescience.org/apeimage.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;creationist website claims&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No wonder radiometric dating labs require that all samples to be &amp;quot;dated&amp;quot; be identified as to their source in the Geological column! Approximately 8 out of 10 specimens (&amp;quot;dates&amp;quot;) are discarded by radiometric dating labs because they are well out of range of age they &amp;quot;ought to be&amp;quot; given there source in the geological column. In their book POTASSIUM ARGON DATNG, PRINCIPLES, TECHNIQUES AND APPLICATIONS TO GEOCHRONOLOGY, Dalrymple and Lanphere sum up the whole circular process of radiometric dating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If the potassium-argon ages of a group of rocks agree with the stratigraphic sequence determined on the basis of physical relationships of fossil evidence, then the probability is good that radiometric ages are reliable...&amp;quot;(page 197)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does Potassium Argon Dating, Principles, Techniques and Applications to Geochronology actually say if the quote above (page 197)?&lt;/strong&gt; (is it taken out of context?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it common practice for radiometric dating labs to require samples to identified as to their source in the Geological column?&lt;/strong&gt; (Since it would be better science to blind the dating of the samples, by making sure that the source is unknown to the radiometric dating lab, why is this required?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T17:03:57.380" Title="Do radiometric dating labs throw out 8 of 10 specimens, and are the samples blinded?" Tags="|physics|geology|young-earth-creationism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9693" CreationDate="2012-06-06T15:14:22.090" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the question is &quot;Does level of education correlate with income in the United States?&quot; then the answer is Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Infoplease reveals the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0883617.html&quot;&gt;Median Annual Income, by Level of Education, 1990–2009&lt;/a&gt; and the table has some very clear jumps as the level of education rises, dropping only once you reach a Doctorate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g in 2008 (last year with full data), man with a high-school completion earns $43,165, compared with $33,435 for starting but not finishing. For a woman, the figures are $31,533 and $21,937 respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question is &quot;Do the &lt;em&gt;grades&lt;/em&gt; achieved correlate with &lt;em&gt;salary&lt;/em&gt; in the United States?&quot;, the answer is murkier, but Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jvbe.1997.1621&quot;&gt;Meta-Analyzing the Relation between Grades and Salary&lt;/a&gt;, Philip L. Roth, Richard L. Clarke, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Volume 53, Issue 3, December 1998, Pages 386–400&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Academicians and business people have disagreed about whether grades predict occupational outcomes such as training success, job performance, and salary. Recent meta-analyses have suggested that grades are useful predictors of training success and job performance. Unfortunately, the results of meta-analyses examining the grades–salary relation were limited by methodological problems. These problems included confusing income and salary as the same dependent variable, not conducting moderator analyses, using unorthodox schemes of weighting correlations, and not correcting for research artifacts. The current meta-analysis focused only on studies that reported salary as the dependent variable and found uncorrected correlations of .13 for grades and starting salary, .18 for grades and current salary, and .05 for grades and salary growth. The correlations for grades and starting salary rose to approximately .20 when corrected for relevant artifacts and the &lt;strong&gt;corrected grades–current salary correlations rose to the mid- to high .20s.&lt;/strong&gt; Moderator analyses are also reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read this paper (paywall), and note that it isn't clear about which education level is being analysed here - secondary? tertiary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;If the question is &quot;Do SAT scores correlated with &lt;em&gt;income&lt;/em&gt; in USA?&quot;, the answer is Yes, for SAT Math scores, according to an Honors project. (Caution: Honors project may not be to the same standards as peer-reviewed articles.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oehrlein, '09, Paul, &lt;a href=&quot;http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/econ_honproj/99&quot;&gt;&quot;Determining the Future Income of College Students&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (2009). Honors Projects. Paper 99.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This student attempted to model the future income of college students based on a number of variables, and found that their SAT Math score was a significant factor, but that their SAT verbal scores were not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results for the math and verbal variables are very interesting.  The &#xA;  SAT math variable is significant in the regression, but the SAT verbal variable is insignificant. &#xA;  This supports the previous research.  It implies that math ability is much more important than &#xA;  verbal or linguistic skills in most occupations.  The results also suggest that math ability is  more &#xA;  directly linked to acquiring human capital than verbal ability.  The coefficient for the SAT math &#xA;  variable is above 10 in the regression.  &lt;strong&gt;This means that a student that scores a 700 on the SAT &#xA;  math will make over $2,000 more each year on average than someone that scores a 500&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question is &quot;Do high school exam grades correlate with salary in China?&quot;, it is complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An interesting approach is taken by &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hongbin Li, Pak Wai Liu, Ning Ma, Junsen Zhang, &lt;a href=&quot;http://iis-db.stanford.edu/pubs/22571/hongbin-Does-Education-Pay-in-Urban-China.pdf&quot;&gt;Does Education Pay in Urban China?&#xA;Estimating Returns to Education Using Twins&lt;/a&gt;, September 23, 2005, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0084.2012.00697.x, (Link is to pre-print).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First they show that one year of schooling increases an individual’s earnings by 8.4 percent. Then, by comparing twins, they show that the schooling itself only accounts for  2.7 percent, and the rest are due to &quot;omitted ability or the family effect&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More&#xA;  speciﬁcally, we ﬁnd that high school education mainly serves as a mechanism to select&#xA;  college students, and has zero returns in terms of earnings. In contrast, both vocational&#xA;  school education and college education have a large return that is comparable to that&#xA;  found in rich Western countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, doing well in exams may not directly lead to much greater earnings, but just open the door to an education that will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correlation is not causation! The income of the parents is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danpink.com/archives/2012/02/how-to-predict-a-students-sat-score-look-at-the-parents-tax-return&quot;&gt;good predictor of a child's SAT scores&lt;/a&gt;. No doubt, it is also highly correlated to a child's future income levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-06-06T17:48:23.227" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T17:48:23.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9700" CreationDate="2012-06-06T15:32:45.273" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know Wikipedia isn't a great source, but in this case, Wikipedia seems to have good references, so I'm going to quote Wikipedia because it's concise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Nash never worked for the Pentagon, so he never would have had the chance to do that, as portrayed in the film.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Beautiful_Mind_%28film%29#Divergence_from_actual_events&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...in real life Nash spent his years between Princeton and MIT as a consultant for the RAND Corporation in California, in the film he is portrayed as having worked for the Pentagon instead. (Source: &lt;em&gt;A Beautiful Mind&lt;/em&gt; DVD Commentary)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further information about Nash's career can be found on the wikipedia page specifically about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash,_Jr.#Recognition_and_later_career&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Forbes Nash, Jr&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T15:32:45.273" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9704" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-06T15:37:35.220" Score="2" ViewCount="260" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across this claim in the wikipedia entry of EA Sport's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madden_NFL#Madden_Curse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Madden NFL Football series&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While appearing on the cover has become an honor akin to appearing on the Wheaties box,[1] much like the Sports Illustrated Cover Jinx, certain players who appeared on Madden video game box art have experienced a decline in performance, usually due to an injury.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Whether or not the Madden Curse exists, EA believes that many fans voted against their favorite player in hopes of avoiding it.[2] The Madden Curse has become so prominent, that it's even gained the attention of the gaming world, creating odds on how likely an injury will occur to the player appearing on the cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see the (quite long) list of examples there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that a player appearing on the cover of Madden NFL is more likely to suffer from injuries and/or a major performance drop in the upcoming season.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was the number of injuries and bad luck happening to the cover players really unusually high? Or is this just a case of selective perception?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2749" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-06T17:45:09.727" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T18:43:40.590" Title="Was the number of injuries happening to the Madden cover players unusually high?" Tags="|sport|videogames|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9704" CreationDate="2012-06-06T18:35:14.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the list in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madden_NFL#Madden_Curse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; article there are 8 players who missed at least one game due to injury during the season they were on the cover, 9 if you count the pro-bowl. There have been 16 players on the cover, so that is 9/16=56.25% of the cover athletes end up injured. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't found much to give an idea of the percentage of all players that play a full season, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pro-football-reference.com/articles/iron.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; is the best I could come up with, It lists how many games were played by a player in a season from 1988-98 for RB, QB, and WR. I calculated 56.93% played a full season, which is close to the number for the cover athletes, but it also is not a very reliable number based on the many limitations of the data i got it from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is close enough for me to conclude that the number of injured cover athletes is not significantly different than the number of injured athletes in football, the &quot;Madden Curse&quot; is likely just confirmation bias and ignorance of overall injury rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6876" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-06T18:43:40.590" LastActivityDate="2012-06-06T18:43:40.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9701" CreationDate="2012-06-07T03:14:46.450" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I do not have a copy of &lt;em&gt;Potassium Argon Dating, Principles, Techniques and Applications to Geochronology&lt;/em&gt;, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/170/3953/54.2.extract&quot;&gt;review of the text&lt;/a&gt; in Science Magazine reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The book grew out of a pamphlet written in response to requests from&#xA;  a number of US Geological Survey geologists who wanted a better&#xA;  understanding of potassium-argon dating.  The author attempted to&#xA;  preserve the simplicity of the original pamphlet while making the book&#xA;  more nearly complete and more useful.  As they point out in their&#xA;  preface, the book is not intended to be a scholarly or comprehensive&#xA;  review of potassium-argon dating, but rather an introduction to the&#xA;  principles, techniques, and applications of the method.  Nevertheless&#xA;  it succeeds in doing for potassium-argon dating what Willard Libby's&#xA;  book Radiocarbon Dating did for that radioactive clock; it provides a&#xA;  balanced and sufficiently comprehensive introduction to the subject&#xA;  for the nonspecialist user of the data.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that this book is a very introductory text and the quote you present from the creationist website could very likely be a part of an introductory explanation of how K-Ar dates are done.  This book is written for someone who has collected samples, sent them to a lab, received a report with the lab's measurements, and wants to interpret what they're seeing.  Sometimes the measurement is different than you expected, and the quote is probably about trying to figure out where exactly the disconnect is - is it with your sampling?  The sample prep?  Your stratigraphy?  The measurement itself?  If you pull it out of context, it can look incriminating, especially to the lay person, but it seems like a pretty basic statement: &quot;if the data you got from the lab agrees with the data you have, then the data from the lab is probably good&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the claim that eight out of ten samples are discarded, I couldn't find a citation for that in your source. It's certainly not the case in any literature I've read.  In most publications, scientists list all of the measurements that were made, including those that they ultimately left out of their data analysis, with detailed explanations as to why any dates were discarded - usually with fancy language like &quot;we believe that the specimens may have been contaminated with modern organics during the chemical pretreatment stage&quot;, meaning &quot;I'm pretty sure I dropped a hair in there.&quot; I've never read a paper that threw out more than 2 or 3 out of 40 dates, and I'm pretty sure that if you were tossing 8 out of 10 dates your paper would never get published in the first place. If you can find a published paper with such a high rejection rate, I would be interested in reading it - something really weird must have been going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the topic of blind studies:  for the following, please keep in mind that my personal experience with radiometric dating is with radiocarbon, not K-Ar. However, the general principles involved in radiometric dating apply across methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blind studies are employed to prevent bias in the results.  When you're measuring something &lt;em&gt;qualitative&lt;/em&gt; (non-numeric) like increased nausea or headache, a blind study is useful because prior knowledge could alter a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dtmi.duke.edu/about-us/organization/duke-clinical-research-unit/for-volunteers/what-are-single-blind-and-double-blind-studies&quot;&gt;person's self-assessment&lt;/a&gt; of these kinds of factors.  When you're measuring something &lt;strong&gt;quantitative&lt;/strong&gt; (numeric), like the ratio of K to Ar, prior knowledge would only matter if you're deliberately tampering with the measurements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd only need to employ a blind study in doing quantitative research if there was reason to believe that the people making the measurements were not only untrustworthy, but also &lt;em&gt;incredibly&lt;/em&gt; adept at altering or manufacturing records of the data collected by instruments.  In radiocarbon dating, each sample is measured &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physics.arizona.edu/ams/education/component/ion_sr.htm&quot;&gt;&quot;for ~5 minutes, and the complete target wheel of 32 targets is rotated a total of 6 times, giving a total analysis time on each target of about 30 minutes.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; The instrument &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physics.arizona.edu/ams/education/component/detector.htm&quot;&gt;records the number of isotopes reaching the counting device&lt;/a&gt; every second and creates hundreds of megabytes of data per sample.  &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=19&amp;amp;ved=0CGgQFjAIOAo&amp;amp;url=http://www.ess.uci.edu/ams/Text%2520bodies/Southon%25202004%2520_%2520KCCAMS%2520Facility.pdf&amp;amp;ei=aPHQT4bwH6GW2AXtyczNDA&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGCWWmxDK8vSBbVNfUsS1sOJtGrKQ&amp;amp;sig2=zDRNjmbsxDQEsRTi8cvHFg&quot;&gt;We routinely use the strip chart feature of the NEC analysis code (abc) to scan the cycle by cycle data records to investigate anomalous results.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;  That is, we look at every single data point that the instrument generates and we keep that data on file, which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colorado.edu/INSTAAR/RadiocarbonDatingLab/&quot;&gt;available on request&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fudging that much data in a convincing way would take effort and a depth of expertise that makes me sleepy just thinking about it.  More than that, just think of the conspiracy that would be involved - just considering radiocarbon there's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.radiocarbon.org/Info/lablist.html&quot;&gt;well over 50 radiocarbon dating labs&lt;/a&gt; in the world, and each lab employs tens of people including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physics.arizona.edu/ams/staff/undergrad.htm&quot;&gt;undergraduates&lt;/a&gt; who have no stake in an old earth, and would absolutely love to be the person who broke this vast conspiracy like something out of a Nancy Drew novel.  No scientist I know has the kind of spare time or vindictiveness necessary to pull off that kind of thing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean we never do blind dates. One of the times that it's done blind is in laboratory intercomparisons. In radiocarbon, for example, there have been several International Radiocarbon Intercomparisons. The most recent intercomparison, &lt;a href=&quot;http://digitalcommons.arizona.edu/holdings/journal/article?r=http://radiocarbon.library.arizona.edu/Volume52/Number3/495980f6-6c77-4d2d-93f1-800c2b50a1e5&quot;&gt;VIRI&lt;/a&gt; (Fifth International Radiocarbon Intercomparison), took place in 2010.  Scientists at the University of Glasgow selected 7 samples which were sent to over 50 radiocarbon dating laboratories without information regarding the ages of the samples.  These intercomparisions are done to learn about the variability in the measurements between labs, and so that these samples may be later used as standards.  Standards are samples which have been measured repeatedly, and have an age that is well agreed upon.  When measuring unknown samples, standards are always measured as well, so that you can be confident that the measurement is accurate.  That is, if you can reproduce the value of the standard, you can be sure that the measurement made on the unknown is reliable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blind studies are not useful in standard radiometric studies, and in fact, knowing the approximate age of a sample is important so you can select appropriate standards.  &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rses.anu.edu.au/research/themes/radiocarbon-14c/background&quot;&gt;To obtain a radiocarbon age the sample activity or the 14C/12C ratio must be compared to a standard material of known age.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;  When you are measuring samples, you tune your instrument to obtain the best precision in the sample's range.  So if your standard is of similar age to your unknowns, you will be able to get good precision for both your standards and your unknowns.  If the measurement deviates widely from the expected value, you can use the measurement on the standard to be sure that the difference between the measured value and the expected value isn't a laboratory error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastEditorUserId="5973" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T20:36:11.313" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T20:36:11.313" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9709" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-07T06:34:46.763" Score="10" ViewCount="13581" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't a religious/Jewish question or about living conditions over two millennia ago. I hear it's bad to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/7116-drinking-milk-and-eating-red-meat-together/&quot;&gt;drink milk while eating meat&lt;/a&gt; but hear no reliable scientific evidence to support it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7446" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T10:18:29.490" LastActivityDate="2015-04-19T15:38:09.580" Title="Is eating meat &amp; drinking milk during the same meal unhealthy?" Tags="|nutrition|milk|meat|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9710" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-07T07:47:33.583" Score="4" ViewCount="4875" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently attended a very interesting talk from this woman about how she changed her own brain using exercises that simulated deficient areas. While this was very interesting, especially from the stand point of someone suffering with a learning disorder, I was unable to uncover the scientific research behind some of her claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do her exercises help? This seems likely, but I'd like to know if this is proven&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there truly no drop-off in other, more developed cognitive areas?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And this isn't one of her claims, however, are these exercises better than any every-day activities?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7447" LastActivityDate="2012-09-28T22:26:50.840" Title="Barbara Arrowsmith–Young's Neuroplasticity exercises" Tags="|neurology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9715" CreationDate="2012-06-07T08:23:53.253" Score="30" ViewCount="142319" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Stephen King's novel &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Mile_%28novel%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Green Mile&lt;/a&gt; and its &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_green_mile_%28film%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;film adaptation&lt;/a&gt; one of the characters (Eduard Delacroix) is getting electrocuted. Before the execution one of the correction officers instead of wetting the sponge placed under electric chair's cap left it dry, turning Delacroix's execution into a torturous burning instead of usually &quot;quick&quot; and &quot;effective&quot; death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120689/faq#.2.1.8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;explanation&lt;/a&gt; of this in IMDB FAQ:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the purpose of the wet sponge placed under the electrocution cap?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Water, particularly salt water, is a good conductor of electricity. Having the brine-soaked sponge causes the electricity to move in a more efficient line, thus killing the prisoner faster (comparable to a fast blow to the head with a large hammer). Without the sponge, the electricity would simply disperse over the body, meeting with a lot of resistance, causing the body to cook, and death would be much more agonizing, as seen during Del (Michael Jeter)'s execution (comparable to getting hit all over the body with a lot of small hammers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the whole concept of electrocution is awkward and immensely cruel to me, it seems to me a strange thing that level of sponge wetting could change the whole process of electrocution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is: Are there any researches about wet sponge contribution to the death of electrocuted inmate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also appreciate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Examples of execution malfunctions proved to be caused by sponge wetting. Or burning of electrocuted person caused by other factors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instructions for correction officers considering sponge wetting.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Google search bring me to the case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Medina&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pedro Medina&lt;/a&gt;. Some witnesses claim that they saw flames on Medina's head. But I couldn't find any evidence that flames were caused by Medina's body burning because of insufficiently wet sponge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4790" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-02-15T20:12:48.033" LastActivityDate="2017-02-15T20:12:48.033" Title="How much does wet sponge matter in electrocution process?" Tags="|mortality|electromagnetism|literature|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9712" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-07T10:34:00.420" Score="3" ViewCount="3214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm wrapping my mind over Einstein's Special Relativity. He postulates an abolute speed of light which concludes (in my perspective) to several illogical paradoxes. Is there any evidence, that the speed of light is absolute and not relative to the speed of the emitter, which sends out the light?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example of skepticism&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.complexrelativity.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.complexrelativity.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every round trip measurement of the speed of light has been on a moving platform.  Therefore, there hasn't&#xA;  ever been two identical round trip measurement of the speed of light.  Nobody can dispute the statement.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The reason is simple.  While both points for the round trip are fixed relative to each other, they are moving&#xA;  relative to the center of the earth and to the sun and to the galaxy and so on.  This paper has two parts.  First, I show that the speed of light is relative and additive to the speed of&#xA;  earth.  Second, I show how the issue is addressed in the theory or relativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7448" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:42:41.477" LastActivityDate="2018-06-25T12:42:25.967" Title="Evidence for the absolute speed of light" Tags="|physics|light|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9712" CreationDate="2012-06-07T11:01:15.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is plenty of evidence for the speed of light being not relative to the speed of the emitter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/experiments.html#Tests_of_Einsteins_two_postulates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's a decentish overview.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980327b.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The rules of special relatively form a central part of particle physics and predictions to do with design and construction of Particle accelerators (for decades of research).&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these particles are accelerated close to speed of light but don't exceed it for a variety of experiments. Their behaviour at high speeds can be observed, and fit with Special Relativity's predictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3606" LastEditorUserId="3606" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T11:11:28.643" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T11:11:28.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9712" CreationDate="2012-06-07T11:03:13.140" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well there were experiments that confirmed it, some in a straightforward way. Most notable was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michelson--Morley experiment&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Einstein said that speed of light is absolute he really simplified view of the universe. Basically to state the opposite we must say that there is some &lt;code&gt;magical&lt;/code&gt; base reference and that all measurements of speed of light are done with respect of the speed of the emitter relative to that base reference. One of ways to test it would be to check if there is any change in measured speed of light when we measure light speed in the same direction the earth travels and opposite direction earth travels around sun. Experiments (Michelson Morley and other) repeatedly shown that we can't measure change of measured light speed in this manner (and we know that our equipment would be capable to detect that difference). This leaves us with two options: either light speed is absolute or Earth is this magical base reference that all measurements of light speed are taken with reference to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover despite being 'illogical' relativity theory is used in commodity equipment --- for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#History&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GPS wouldn't work without relativity&lt;/a&gt;. Basically GPS rely on a very accurate time measurements --- and these need a correction based on gravity strength on GPS satellite orbit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7449" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-06-25T12:42:25.967" LastActivityDate="2018-06-25T12:42:25.967" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9711" CreationDate="2012-06-07T11:42:43.690" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;The whole issue with electrodes in medicine (and Medical physics which I did my degree in) is that there needs to be a good electrical contact between the skin and the item transferring the current, otherwise burns may occur. The aim is to have a low resistance at the point of contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about it this is entirely logical electrical physics - if there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.korins.com/m/isi/electricalSystemsF.htm&quot;&gt;high resistance when you are transferring current, heat is generated.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why conducting gel is used in a clinical setting with clinical electrodes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus it seems a logical reason for the &quot;wetting of the sponge&quot;, a high resistance between the current supplier and the skin will generate lots of heat. so you wish to minimise this by using a good conductor of electricity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In answer to point 1 I would suggest the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here's a case of a condemned man suffering burns when he was electrocuted (pretty recently) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Lee_Davis&quot;&gt;Allan Lee Davis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A case which sounds very similar to Stephen Kings, and seems to be very similar is that of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Tafero&quot;&gt;Jesse Tafero&lt;/a&gt;. Wikipedia states blandly that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A member of the execution team had used a synthetic sponge rather&#xA;  than a sea sponge, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But provides no citations, although a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.fsu.edu/library/flsupct/76150/op-76150.pdf&quot;&gt;later court case supports this view&lt;/a&gt;, saying that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it was determined that for  the first time a synthetic, rather than a&#xA;  natural, sponge had &#xA;  -2- been used in the headpiece.  The Department concluded that the  burning of the sponge caused the flames and smoke which were seen &#xA;  during Tafero's execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/03/weekinreview/tightening-the-nuts-and-bolts-of-death-by-electric-chair.html?pagewanted=all&amp;amp;src=pm&quot;&gt;Heres an interesting article on the whole process&lt;/a&gt;, and insight onto the legal thought around the two cases I referred too above, and the Medina case you refer to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what the judge concluded around the Medina Case&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The fire and smoke during the Medina execution was the result of the dry sponge laced onto the brass electrode in the head piece&#xA;  catching fire and burning almost completely due to a lack of saline&#xA;  solution in that sponge. The lack of saline solution in the dry sponge&#xA;  caused the dry sponge to act as a resistor. The resistance produced&#xA;  heat which ignited and consumed the dry sponge.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Any future executions should be performed using only one wet sponge in the head piece. . . . The sponge should be thoroughly soaked in a&#xA;  saturated saline solution, and not a 9% saline solution . . . $(to$)&#xA;  further reduce any possibility of a reoccurrence of a burning sponge.&#xA;  . . .&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That article also contains (in point 3 - a bit too big to post in here) the process for soaking the sponge etc. which appear to answer your question 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3606" LastEditorUserId="3606" LastEditDate="2012-06-07T12:06:52.910" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T12:06:52.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9712" CreationDate="2012-06-07T12:59:04.057" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The expectation you're asking about is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emission_theory&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Emission theory&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;obeying the usual laws of Newtonian mechanics, and we expect light to be moving towards us with a speed that is offset by the speed of the distant emitter (c ± v).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the section entitled &lt;strong&gt;Refutations of emission theory&lt;/strong&gt;, you'll see some of the most concrete examples of how this was shown not to hold true for light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One convincing argument comes just from looking up at the night sky:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1910 Daniel Frost Comstock &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/details/physicalreviewv07univgoog&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt; and in 1913 Willem de Sitter &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/desit-1e.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt; wrote that for the case of a double-star system seen edge-on, light from the approaching star might be expected to travel faster than light from its receding companion, and overtake it. If the distance was great enough for an approaching star's &quot;fast&quot; signal to catch up with and overtake the &quot;slow&quot; light that it had emitted earlier when it was receding, then the image of the star system should appear completely scrambled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/x1Fkw.png&quot; alt=&quot;de Sitter&amp;#39;s double star argument&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;de Sitter's double star argument&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experiments (similar to Michelson--Morley which was already mentioned) can measure photons from the same source travelling both in the same direction of earth's travel, and in the opposite direction of earth's travel. In the world of classical mechanics, one would expect the one launched in the direction of earth's travel to get a fixed distance away from the source faster, but experiments repeatedly show that both travel the same distance in the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Such experiments include that of Sadeh (1963) &lt;a href=&quot;http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v10/i7/p271_1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt; who used a time-of-flight technique to measure velocity differences of photons traveling in opposite direction, which were produced by positron annihilation. Another experiment was conducted by Alväger et al. (1963), who compared the time of flight of gamma rays from moving and resting sources. Both experiments found no difference, in accordance with relativity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the simplest arguments that can be conjured up without requiring you to dig too deeply into things like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometry&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;interferometry&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quantum electrodynamics&lt;/a&gt; - but these too are easily observable in the classical world and are completely incompatible with any theory that postulates a speed of light that is affected by the speed of the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/details/physicalreviewv07univgoog&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt; Daniel Frost Comstock. &lt;strong&gt;A Neglected Type of Relativity&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Physical Review&lt;/em&gt;, Feb 1910, 30 (2): 267&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.datasync.com/~rsf1/desit-1e.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt; W. de Sitter. &lt;strong&gt;An Astronomical Proof for the Constancy of the Speed of Light&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Physik. Zeitschr&lt;/em&gt;. 14, 429, (1913) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v10/i7/p271_1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt; D. Sadeh. &lt;strong&gt;Experimental Evidence for the Constancy of the Velocity of Gamma Rays, Using Annihilation in Flight&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Phys. Rev. Lett.&lt;/em&gt; 10, 271–273 (1963) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="898" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T13:37:35.723" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T13:37:35.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9711" CreationDate="2012-06-07T13:43:44.693" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It matters greatly as it becomes the main electrode of what is tantamount to &lt;em&gt;death by electrical cooking&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smoke frequently emanates from the inmate's leg and head whilst the current is flowing. Witnesses hear a loud and sustained sound like bacon frying, and the sickly sweet smell of burning flesh may permeate the chamber.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/chair.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The electric chair&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The brine increases conductivity&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Salt water is an excellent conductor of electricity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A metal or leather helmet is placed on the inmate’s head which contains one or two copper electrodes in direct contact with a brine soaked sponge to improve the contact with the prisoners skull.  Natural sea sponge is used and soaking it in brine improves electrical conductivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/chair.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The electric chair&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The sponge has full contact with the skull&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sponge fills the gap between the electrodes and the inmate’s head when the chin strap holding the head piece in place is tightened.  Heads are not a regular shape and the sponge takes up the “lumps and bumps” well.  The leg electrode which typically forms part of the chair may be coated with gel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/chair.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The electric chair&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The water prevents the sponge from becoming too hot and burning up&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's clearly a lot of heat generated in the process and the sponges have been known to catch fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the electrical resistance of the body, its temperature rises to about 138ºF (59ºC) and is initially too hot to touch. This heating destroys the body's proteins and &amp;quot;bakes&amp;quot; the organs. According to Robert H. Kirschner, the deputy chief medical examiner of Cook County, Illinois, &amp;quot;The brain appears cooked in most cases.&amp;quot;&#xA;Physical reactions to electrocution may include burning of the scalp and calf, heaving chest, gurgles, foaming at the mouth, bloody sweat, burning of the skin, shattering of the eye lens and release of urine and/or feces. After electrocution, the body typically turns a bright red color.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/chair.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The electric chair&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Botched executions&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's plenty of literature documenting botched execution with fire and burning due to poor sponges:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tafero,  his  left  hand  clenched  into  a  fist except  for  his  little  finger,  was  seemingly  burnt  to  death,  rather  than electrocuted  quickly  and painlessly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—Robert J. Sech, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol30/iss1/8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hang 'Em High: A Proposal for Thoroughly Evaluating the Constitutionality of Execution Methods&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, 30 Val. U. L. Rev. 381&#xA;(1995).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty more (not all due to bad sponges, but all documenting the burning) on the following peer reviewed article, which I don't include because it's very lengthy and pretty gruesome, with eyewitness accounts. Go to page 664 (the 115&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; in the linked pdf) to find the relevant bits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deborah W. Denno, &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol35/iss2/4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is Electrocution an Unconstitutional Method of Execution? The Engineering of Death over the Century&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, 35 Wm. &amp;amp; Mary L. Rev. 551 (1994)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-07T16:22:05.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6166" CreationDate="2012-06-07T14:55:39.693" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The german federal association of med. doctors, in a meta-study in 2009 ordered a scientific inquiry into osteopathy&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aerzteblatt.de/archiv/66809&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;. First, as you state there is no clear definition pertaining to osteopathy everywhere. In short, osteopathic methods can be applied without the philosophy riding on it in the U.S. If you remove that cruft, it is striking that many methods are similar to those of so-called &quot;manual therapy&quot;. This is why european doctors rather use that label, and it's specifically those methods which are supported by some evidence, first and foremost in the field of chronic spinal pain syndromes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aerzteblatt.de/archiv/66809&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bundesärztekammer: &quot;Wissenschaftliche Bewertung osteopathischer Verfahren&quot;. In: Dtsch Arztebl 2009; 106(46): A-2325 / B-1997 / C-1941&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper first goes into depth about the history, also in the U.S., the definition problems, and the economic forces of the profession. The history of osteopathy associations is mentioned and the UK compared with the US, after which follows a description of the German situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In III.2 the central question is posed, is osteopathy Heilkunst, i.e. does it heal people? This would have legal consequences. It is stated that that question is equivalent to if it's an effective method without side effects. First attempts to show this are listed. The density of evidnce-based studies with that subject is found low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With section IV, the main investigation starts and separates the (in the US) associated philosophy from the healing method. The difficulty that osteopath diagnostics differ from medical standards and cannot be categorized using the ICD is mentioned. IV.2 finally has the core result, coming from the work of two experts, that all osteopathy methods with evidence based study support are also part of &quot;manual therapy&quot;: one of the reports found 62 relevant papers using Medline of which 16 were of evidence class Ia, 16 of Ib, and the rest II-IV and meta-studies. The second report stated that most relevant literature isn't even listed in Medline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, there are few illnesses where we have reliable statements about the effectivity of the respective osteopathic method, (mainly chronic pain syndromes of the spine), some RCTs (randomized controlled trials) also pointing at visceral effects, apart from the musculo-sceletal field. Studies about &quot;craniosacral&quot; effects are methodically flawed, the effects remain speculative. Even osteopathic papers have shown that humans cannot &quot;feel&quot; movements of those skull joints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About risks and side effects, there is nothing like post-marketing surveillance in osteopathy. So, precondition is a thorough medical investigation and differential diagnosis, and important are written after-reports, also for legal reasons. The experts found no reports of problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm not a native english speaker, please bear with me)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7450" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-02T17:32:26.943" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T17:32:26.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8056" CreationDate="2012-06-08T04:30:33.350" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the Guttmacher Institute the answer is yes - 98% of sexually experienced Catholic women have used artificial contraception.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive&#xA;  method other than natural family planning. This figure is virtually&#xA;  the same, 98%, among sexually experienced Catholic women.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/Religion-and-Contraceptive-Use.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guttmacher Institute, April 2011, page 4&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study also finds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only 2% of Catholic women rely on natural family planning; even among&#xA;  Catholic women who attend church once a month or more, only 2% rely on&#xA;  this method (not shown). Sixty-eight percent of Catholic women use&#xA;  highly effective methods: sterilization (32%, including 24% using&#xA;  female sterilization,) the pill or another hormonal method (31%) and&#xA;  the IUD (5%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gUhrG.png&quot; alt=&quot;Supplementary table to Figure 3 from Countering Conventional Wisdom: New Evidence on Religion and Contraceptive Use&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding it all up, of the Catholic women surveyed who were sexually active, but avoiding pregnancy, 87% were using some form of contraception, 2% were using natural family planning, and 11% were relying on what I can only imagine is &quot;pull and pray.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastEditorUserId="5973" LastEditDate="2012-06-08T04:49:18.067" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T04:49:18.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9727" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-08T08:45:50.427" Score="11" ViewCount="8826" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblog.com/20159/science-and-technology-in-ancient-india/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; which claimed that Ancient India was an extremely advanced civilization whose technology equaled &amp;amp; in some cases even surpassed current technology. None of the claims have external, reliable citations. Can anyone support or debunk any of the claims made?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt; Guns:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some people in medieval Europe heard of powerful fire weapons of the&#xA;  India. Marco Polo (in 13th century) was financed by the&#xA;  king of his country with the specific purpose of finding the secret of&#xA;  the Indian fire weapons. Marco Polo was given gold coins and precious&#xA;  stones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Who invented nuclear weapons?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You may have heard about the great Astras mentioned in our Puranas.&#xA;  But you may not have read about them in detail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The Mahabharata – an ancient Indian epic compiled 3000 years ago –&#xA;  contains a reference to a terrible weapon. Regrettably, in our age of&#xA;  the atomic bomb, the description of this weapon exploding will not&#xA;  appear to be an exaggeration: ‘…. a blazing shaft possessed of the&#xA;  effulgence of a smokeless fire (was) let off…’. That was how this&#xA;  weapon was perceived. The consequences of its use also evoke&#xA;  involuntary associations. ‘… This makes the bodies of the dead&#xA;  unidentifiable. … The survivors lose their nails and hair, and their&#xA;  food becomes unfit for eating. For several subsequent years the Sun,&#xA;  the stars and the sky remain shrouded with clouds and bad weather’.&#xA;  This weapon was known as the Weapon of Brahma or the Flame of Indra&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mahabharata&lt;/a&gt; is just a story. But even if we assume that the technology described in the book is not a product of the author's imagination, then could anyone confirm whether the above paragraph is actually taken from a reliable translation of the epic? It is possible that the writer of the article perverted the story to fit his hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also:&#xA;Did our ancients know &lt;strong&gt;radars and laser weapons&lt;/strong&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes, the technology was given in the Sanskrit manuscript &lt;em&gt;Samarangana&#xA;  Sutra Dhara&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4196" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-10T13:32:03.363" LastActivityDate="2018-04-06T20:26:47.950" Title="Did ancient Indians invent guns, lasers, radars and nuclear weapons?" Tags="|history|technology|india|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9272" CreationDate="2012-06-08T09:32:22.837" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;OK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to trace this story through the steps, but the simplest answer is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What proof is there that these capsules contain powdered human flesh&#xA;obtained from dead babies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None. Or at least, none has been provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main source for the vast majority of these news stories in the western media appears to be an &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130409094524/http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gBBn-B98Qxt_N1T7jyVz87uL53Gg?docId=CNG.0d1928fdcd23d15470af67793e901283.241&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AFP Newswire&lt;/a&gt; story. This story quotes a Korean customs official by name saying the pills trade will be cracked down on, but no source has been provided at all for the supposed fact these pills are made from babies, the custom official refers to them as &amp;quot;Human Flesh&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a look over all other news sources for this story I could find, and none of them provided any more evidence or information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The earliest mention I can find for the story is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2012/05/117_110386.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Korean Times&lt;/a&gt;. ( 6th May 2012 ) However this provides no sources other than the nebulous &amp;quot;Customs Officials&amp;quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Mention a couple of days later, (which is mentioned in the AFP story) comes in &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2012/05/08/2012050801334.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the English version Chosun Ibo&lt;/a&gt;  (8th May 2012). This story says in first paragraph &amp;quot;powdered flesh&amp;quot; tablets were caught by customs, then, the second paragraph says that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Illegal sales of capsules containing the powdered flesh of dead babies&#xA;from China are not uncommon,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which to me is a little weasely and doesn't provide evidence. One thing to note is that nowhere in the article does it state that the specific pills seized by customs contain dead baby flesh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; The short English version in Chosun Ibo appears to come from a korean story which can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120711042145/http://news.chosun.com:80/site/data/html_dir/2012/05/06/2012050600599.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (6th May 2012), I guess - as it has the same image. I would love someone who reads Korean to come and translate this article. Google translate shows a bit more info. on the number reported in AFP (29 attempts where 11,430 tablets smuggled in hand luggage, and 6 attempts where 6021 tablets smuggled in the mail). But it really doesn't illuminate whether the dead babies part is speculation or coming direct from the customs service.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, on early news sources there's [this story] 6th May 2012. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-46867-0_7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What facts we can take as read I guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The story was in Korean news on the Sunday (6th may), and went across the world after AFP posted it's story on the 8th May. AFP appears to collate Sundays news and gets some quotes from an official, which don't reflect on the crux of the story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;South Korean Customs did seize &amp;gt; 17,000 pills in a public health&#xA;crackdown, most sources seem to agree on that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;South Korean customs related that these pills most likely contained human tissue/flesh, as most of the news sources agree on that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The source of this flesh is unconfirmed or no evidence is provided either way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It would be exceedingly difficult to tell scientifically whether these pills containing a ground up substance contain placenta, menstrual blood, or material from a foetus. In addition most early news sources appear more worried at the public health issue than the source of the pills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As purely circumstantial evidence, and knowing these pills are intended as medicine, we can look at Chinese traditional medicine and see what the most traditional medicines are, we can see that &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/0-306-46867-0_7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;placenta, Urine, menstrual blood, bone, even Penis's have been commonely&lt;/a&gt; used in the past, but &lt;a href=&quot;https://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-05/08/content_15241260.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;experts say there is no history of usage of Foetus's&lt;/a&gt;, and I would tend to believe them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion I think we can say that &amp;quot;as yet&amp;quot; no evidence is available of such a widespread practice, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160607092308/http://www.illuminantpartners.com/tag/tcm/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kane Gao's explanation that this is most likely Placenta pills seems very plausible.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry this isn't a definite answer, but I thought it was best to put the best knowledge i could find up, so people would see a likely answer first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3606" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-09-13T15:10:51.007" LastActivityDate="2022-09-13T15:10:51.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9730" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-08T11:49:46.243" Score="2" ViewCount="75" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8502/do-saunas-burn-significantly-more-calories-than-just-sitting-idly&quot;&gt;Do saunas burn significantly more calories than just sitting idly?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm not disputing the fact that sitting in a hot room will cause weight loss through the loss of fluids due to sweating, I am skeptical of claims (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sunlighten.com/infrared-weight-loss.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_2105350_lose-weight-sauna.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;) that frequent use of the sauna can lead to sustainable weight loss such as that through the loss of excess fat in the body. As such, is there any evidence that the regular use of a sauna actually leads to sustainable weight loss?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T23:43:43.020" Title="Do saunas assist in sustainable weight loss?" Tags="|weight-loss|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-06-08T12:58:53.480" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9732" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-08T15:37:41.627" Score="25" ViewCount="61959" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buffalonews.com/city/communities/niagara-county/article21909.ece&quot;&gt;BuffaloNews.com - Niagara County procedures in place for missing seniors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sheriff said the department doesn’t wait &lt;strong&gt;the usual 24 hours in a&#xA;  missing-persons case&lt;/strong&gt; when the person being sought is under age 16 or&#xA;  an Alzheimer’s patient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_8483103_do-nationwide-search-person.html&quot;&gt;eHow - How to Do a Nationwide Search For a Person&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some people claim you need to wait 24 hours before filing a missing&#xA;  person report with the police, but &lt;strong&gt;this is a myth&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;My Question(s):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you have to wait 24 hours before you can file a missing person report?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(&lt;em&gt;Does it depend on the missing person's age?&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2016-03-08T04:16:07.527" Title="Do you have to wait 24 hours before you can report a missing person?" Tags="|united-states|law|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9732" CreationDate="2012-06-08T16:13:24.750" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least for the Seattle Police Department, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seattle.gov/police/contact/reporting/missing_person.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the answer is no&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;YOU DO NOT NEED TO WAIT 24 HOURS BEFORE REPORTING A MISSING PERSON!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the individual is a vulnerable person, such as a child, developmentally disabled or elderly person, call 9-1-1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are suspicious circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the individual, call 9-1-1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other cases, call the SPD non-emergency number at (206) 625-5011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lapdonline.org/lapd_adult_missing_persons_unit/content_basic_view/1883&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Los Angeles&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may initiate a Missing Persons Report of any adult or juvenile by contacting your local law enforcement agency. Contrary to popular belief, law enforcement agencies in California do not require a person to wait a specific period of time before reporting a missing person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.2b0f5665a68d45aee846f0b001c789a0/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long do I have to wait before I report someone missing?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;No set amount of time must elapse before you may report someone missing. Use common sense and specific circumstances. In certain cases - if the missing individual is a child, a senior citizen, senile, mentally or physically impaired - an immediate search will be conducted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7464" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T19:00:24.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1355" CreationDate="2012-06-08T18:39:06.380" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a simple (legal) answer to this question, but it won't satisfy the conspiracy theorists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obama has released his birth certificate, and the State of Hawaii confirms that it is real. &lt;em&gt;op cit - previous answers&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.house.gov/house/Constitution/Constitution.html%20Article%204%20of%20the%20US%20Constitution&quot;&gt;Article 4 of the US Constitution&lt;/a&gt; states, in part, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Full Faith and Credit&lt;/strong&gt; shall be given in each State to the public Acts, &lt;strong&gt;Records&lt;/strong&gt;, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. &lt;em&gt;emphasis  mine&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this means, is that Barack Obama is a natural born citizen solely for the reason that Hawaii says he is.  No other argument is necessary or required.  The only way to counter this argument is to have Hawaii repeal the certificate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that this doesn't answer the implied question &quot;Where was Barack Obama really born?&quot;  But it does shoot a hole into any Arizona laws intending to keep Obama off the ballot.  If Hawaii says he's eligible, then Arizona has to respect that.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="880" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T18:39:06.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9735" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-08T18:41:29.680" Score="4" ViewCount="777" Body="&lt;p&gt;Earlier today I heard some radio DJ's discussing some news story that brought up &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/1555/96&quot;&gt;urinating on a jellyfish sting&lt;/a&gt;. That led to a discussion about using &quot;the first urine of the morning&quot; to dab on acne in order to clear it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They wanted to know if anyone tried it and whether it worked. I thought it sounded strange since the only thing I could think of in urine that might possibly even remotely have an effect on pimples would be urea or uric acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies that discuss this and actually shows if this is nonsense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5750" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T15:29:34.233" Title="Does urine, used topically, clear pimples?" Tags="|natural-remedies|acne|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9736" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30707" CreationDate="2012-06-08T19:34:04.610" Score="17" ViewCount="5469" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read many blogs and forums that either say eating and drinking at the same time is safe, good for you or bad for you. No sources are ever cited on any of the sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does research exist to support either side?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a couple of sites I have found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fi-fo.blogspot.ca/2007/12/is-eating-and-drinking-at-same-time.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alfred Chew's Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The explanation I got from most medical practitioners are that our digestive system works the best with less liquid in the stomach. Our 'stomach juice' (hydrochloric acid) reacts with the food we eat. It then passes through our small intestine and finally to the large intestine which we sometimes call it colon. The process is actually much more complex that what we discuss here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order for our digestion system to function well, we need to reduce the liquid content in our stomach. The food we eat will broken down easier and faster. We will have less problem with the digestion and the system digestive system will function perfectly. There will be less hydrochloric acid produced. Less work for your stomach which in turn your organ will last longer and healthier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=584222&amp;amp;page=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Body Building Forum&lt;/a&gt; (Lots of competing answers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You should be drinking lots of water while eating. Part of the reason people say to drink water when dieting is that water is a very serious ingredient in the glycolitic cycle (i.e. ATP creation, transport, and destruction among a ridiculous amount of other things). In other words, water helps break down your food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Always drink 10-15 minutes before you eat. [...] Never drink while you eat [...] Don’t drink after your have eat for at least two hours (four hours if you had meat products like beef, pork, chicken, fish)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7466" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-11-23T17:12:33.357" Title="Does drinking while eating impair digestion?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9737" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17464" CreationDate="2012-06-08T20:56:44.897" Score="33" ViewCount="14135" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5m2_xeJ4VdwC&quot;&gt;Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, by James W. Loewen, or at least the online sources (Cracked.com and some sites that I Googled) that cite it, two (native, obviously) Americans shipwrecked in Holland in 60 B.C.E.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Native Americans also crossed the Atlantic: anthropologists conjecture  that Native Americans voyaged east millennia ago from Canada to Scandinavia or Scotland. Two Indians shipwrecked in Holland around 60 B.C and became major curiosities in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ww2.ramapo.edu/libfiles/CRW/Lies%20My%20Teacher%20Told%20Me.pdf?n=5904&quot;&gt;Lies My Teacher Told Me&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would mean the Americans discovered Europe long before Europeans such as Leif Ericson and Cristopher Columbus have been said to have discovered America (although the book apperantly also states that there are archeolocal clues that the Romans, Greeks and Japanese have visited the America's long before the vikings did).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds pretty damn interesting, and I'm pretty curious how much evidence (if any) there is to support this claim. Does anyone know more about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7467" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-07-19T03:39:49.717" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T16:56:09.717" Title="Did two Native Americans shipwreck in Holland in 60 B.C.?" Tags="|history|united-states|netherlands|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9732" CreationDate="2012-06-08T23:38:12.053" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For missing children&lt;/strong&gt; there is the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Child_Search_Assistance_Act&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Child Search Assistance Act of 1990&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;National Child Search Assistance Act of 1990&lt;/strong&gt; - Requires each Federal,&#xA;State, and local law enforcement agency to report each case of a&#xA;missing child under age 18 to the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ncic&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Crime Information Center&#xA;(NCIC)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of the Department of Justice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Requires States reporting&#xA;under this Act to: (1) &lt;strong&gt;ensure that no State law enforcement agency&#xA;establishes a policy which requires a waiting period before accepting&#xA;a missing child or unidentified person report&lt;/strong&gt;; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.findthekids.org/pdf/searchassistance.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;There is also &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_Act_of_2003&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Suzanne's Law&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Suzanne's Law&amp;quot; amends Section 3701 (a) of the Crime Control Act of&#xA;1990 so that there is &lt;strong&gt;no waiting period before a law enforcement&#xA;agency initiates an investigation of a missing person under the age of&#xA;twenty one&lt;/strong&gt; and reports the missing person to the NCIC of the Department of Justice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This law was signed by President Bush&lt;/strong&gt; as part of the national Amber Alert bill &lt;strong&gt;on April 30, 2003&lt;/strong&gt;, requires police to initiate prompt investigation into missing young people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fandm.edu/publicsafety/megan-s-law-suzanne-s-law-notifications&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What about missing adults?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acic.org/missing/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arkansas Crime Information Center&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no waiting period before a person can be entered into the&#xA;NCIC Missing Person File.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br&gt;Arkansas law requires all missing persons to&#xA;be entered immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://attorneygeneral.state.wy.us/dci/pdf/AnnualReportMissingPerson.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wyoming Attorney General's Office&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NCIC does not require a waiting period&lt;/strong&gt; for the entry of a person into&#xA;the NCIC Missing Person File.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;em&gt;Of course, just because a waiting period is not required doesn't necessarily mean that one can't be imposed. But I haven't yet found a state that does so.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Examples:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atg.wa.gov/uploadedFiles/Home/News/Press_Releases/2007/Missing_Persons_Pamphlet.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Washington State Attorney General's Office&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may have seen on television or heard that you must wait 24 or even&#xA;72 hours to report someone missing. This is not true. &lt;strong&gt;There is no&#xA;required waiting period.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oag.ca.gov/missing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;State of California Departement of Justice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is NO waiting period for reporting a person missing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All&#xA;California police and sheriffs' departments must accept any report&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;including a report by telephone, of a missing person, including&#xA;runaways, &lt;strong&gt;without delay&lt;/strong&gt; and will give priority to the handling of the&#xA;report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/internetforms/Forms/MP-14.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Texas Departement of Public Safety&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Under Texas law there is no waiting period&lt;/strong&gt; before a record of a&#xA;missing person can be filed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdsp.org/Organization/MissingPersons/MissingAdults.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Departement of Maryland State Police&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;§ 3-601. Procedure for taking missing person reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a)  Mandatory waiting period prohibited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) &lt;strong&gt;A law enforcement agency may not establish a mandatory waiting period before taking a missing person report&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ct.gov/post/lib/post/pdf_documents/guidelines_concerning_the_acceptance_of_missing_persons_reports.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The State of Connecticut&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is an incorrect assumption that 24 hours, or any other time frame,&#xA;must pass before a law enforcement unit will accept a missing person&#xA;report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is NO waiting period for reporting a missing person.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://publicsafety.utah.gov/bci/MPCcontact.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Utah Departement of Public Safety&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;THERE IS NO WAITING PERIOD TO REPORT A MISSING PERSON.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is mandatory with many federal laws that the report be taken&#xA;immediatley and entered into NCIC within 2 hours for missing persons&#xA;under the age of 21. (Protect Act, Suzanne's Law, and the Crime&#xA;Control Act of 1990)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For people under the age of 21 a waiting period is explicitly forbidden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And in general, there doesn't seem to be a law that demands a waiting period. On the contrary, there is no waiting period for entry into the NCIC (and several states explicitly emphasize that there is no waiting period).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-08T23:38:12.053" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4847" CreationDate="2012-06-09T04:59:06.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems legit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/130600-cycling-male-fertility/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LiveStrong&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8124458.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt; both reference a 2009 Cordoba study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe those are talking about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.es/en/revistas/revista-andaluza-medicina-deporte-284/sperm-morphology-normalcy-is-inversely-correlated-to-13139214-articulo-original-2009&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Sperm morphology normalcy is inversely correlated to cycling kilometers in elite triathletes&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; which concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main finding of the present study is that cycling training volume inversely correlates to sperm morphology. That is, athletes with the highest weekly training volume (greatest distance covered in km) had the lowest percentage of normal sperm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to cycle more than 100km a week for there to be a measurable effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;De Souza and colleagues established that, in order to observe alterations in semen parameters, a &lt;em&gt;minimum effective volume of a 100 km/week&lt;/em&gt; had to be attained&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, it seems that those systematically covering distances &lt;em&gt;over 300 km per week&lt;/em&gt; would have values so low that they would be included in the p-group (poor prognosis) with regards to pregnancy outcome according to Kruger's newest categorization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite a few regular riders will do 100km over a sunny weekend but few do 300km/wk unless they also commute by bike during the week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cause does seem to be compression and heating and possibly damage to the testes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This condition may be further aggravated in cycling where subjects are clearly exposed to mechanical compression and irritation, even sometimes producing a microtrauma, of the testes, epididymis, and vas deferens during cycling27,28. Due to such compression, a reduction in blood flow may occur; this aspect is of special importance since nutrition of the sperm cell line-ages may be impaired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4082" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T04:59:06.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9691" CreationDate="2012-06-09T05:37:18.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends on two questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Does Protandim activate &lt;em&gt;NRF2&lt;/em&gt; in normal persons to increase the level of SOD and CAT in many cell types? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer&lt;/strong&gt;: one in-vitro study has shown this for curcumin, a part of Protandim, and kidney cells[1]; there are no clinical studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Do higher levels of SOD and CAT, probably leading to lower &quot;radicals&quot; (to be exact, SOD neutralizes O2-, and KAT H2O2 which are not radicals but can lead to such), reduce age-related symptoms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer&lt;/strong&gt;: there is growing evidence that oxidative stress is actually needed by the body[2], one example being macrophages producing O2-, H2O2, and NO- to kill bacteria).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Balogun E, Hoque M, Gong P, Killeen E, Green CJ, Foresti R, Alam J, Motterlini R (2003). &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12570874&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Curcumin activates the haem oxygenase-1 gene via regulation of Nrf2 and the antioxidant-responsive element&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Biochem J 371 (10): 887–95. DOI:10.1042/BJ20021619. PMC 1223348. PMID 12570874.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioxidant#Potential_of_antioxidant_supplements_to_damage_health&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page on antioxidant supplements&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and the refs therein&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7450" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T15:31:06.970" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T15:31:06.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9422" CreationDate="2012-06-09T09:33:48.190" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I didn't see any claim for 100% pure water, as your original post indicates. Nevertheless, they clearly state that it achieves purity &quot;comparable to boiling water.&quot; &lt;sup&gt;(1, 2)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product claims to be EPA certified, &lt;sup&gt;(4)&lt;/sup&gt; so it must comply with the safety levels for disinfectants, including chlorine &lt;sup&gt;(5)&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, you could contact the EPA concerning the product, or even ask Pureit for official stats concerning chlorine ppm levels and whether they are NSF &lt;em&gt;60&lt;/em&gt; certified, &lt;sup&gt;(3)&lt;/sup&gt; And, you can always send a sample to a lab to check it for yourself. That's the only way to be sure, except from official communication with the NSF/EPA of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://pureitwater.com/IN/faqs#ans6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pureit FAQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://pureitwater.com/IN/media/02Discoverpureit/04%20Certification/indian/images/Neeri.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Environmental Engineering Research Institute Certificate for Pureit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(3) &lt;a href=&quot;http://nsf.org/business/water_distribution/standards.asp?program=WaterDistributionSys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NSF/ANSI Standard 60: Drinking Water Treatment Chemicals and NSF/ANSI Standard 61: Drinking Water System Components&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(4) &lt;a href=&quot;http://pureitwater.com/SL/faqs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pureit FAQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(5) &lt;a href=&quot;http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/disinfectants.cfm#What%20are%20EPA%E2%80%99s%20drinking%20water%20regulations%20for%20disinfectants?&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US EPA - Basic Information about Disinfectants in Drinking Water: Chloramine, Chlorine and Chlorine Dioxide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7395" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-06-09T20:16:55.520" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T20:16:55.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1555" CreationDate="2012-06-09T10:01:54.273" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8652992/Use-seawater-or-vinegar-to-treat-jellyfish-stings-not-urine.html#&quot;&gt;The Telegraph - Use seawater or vinegar to treat jellyfish stings, not urine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... &lt;strong&gt;according to the British Red Cross, the widespread belief that urine&#xA;  can lessen the pain of venom injected by the marine creatures is&#xA;  misplaced.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redcross.org.uk/About-us/Media-centre/Spokespeople&quot;&gt;Joe Mulligan&lt;/a&gt;, head of first aid at the British Red Cross&lt;/strong&gt;, said: “&lt;em&gt;A sting from a jellyfish can be extremely painful, but &lt;strong&gt;trying to treat it with urine isn’t going to make your day any better&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“&lt;em&gt;Urine just doesn’t have the right chemical make-up to solve the problem.... slowly pouring seawater over the sting will help ease the pain. Doing the same thing with &lt;strong&gt;vinegar can be even more effective&lt;/strong&gt; as the acid helps neutralise the jellyfish sting.&lt;/em&gt;” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-urinating&quot;&gt;Scientific American - Fact or Fiction?: Urinating on a Jellyfish Sting is an Effective Treatment&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Urine can actually aggravate the jellyfish's stingers into releasing more venom.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The concentration of salts and other compounds people have in their&#xA;  urine changes. If it is too dilute it will be similar to&#xA;  freshwater and cause those stingers to fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other liquids and compounds, however, can help. &lt;strong&gt;Most stings in North American waters can be assuaged by vinegar, or 5 percent acetic acid&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For stings from a few species, &lt;em&gt;Cyanea capillata&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Chysaora quinquecirrha&lt;/em&gt;, a baking soda and seawater paste is even better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Urine is worthless&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;,&quot; says &lt;a href=&quot;http://medschool.umaryland.edu/dermatology/history.asp&quot;&gt;Joseph Burnett&lt;/a&gt;, a dermatologist at the University of Maryland Medical Center, who is part of the school's &lt;a href=&quot;http://medschool.umaryland.edu/dermatology/jellyfish.asp&quot;&gt;Consortium of Jellyfish Stings&lt;/a&gt;, which tracks jellyfish injuries worldwide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2283933&amp;amp;page=1&quot;&gt;ABC News -  Old Wives' Tale? Urine as Jellyfish Sting Remedy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Urine has not been scientifically proven to help in jellyfish stings&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;  said &lt;a href=&quot;http://med.stanford.edu/profiles/Paul_Auerbach/&quot;&gt;Dr. Paul Auerbach&lt;/a&gt;, an emergency physician at Stanford University&#xA;  Hospital and an expert on jellyfish stings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The best thing to use is acetic acid, or regular household white vinegar&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, Auerbach said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... the beaches of Australia are lined with vinegar stands, says &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.med.upenn.edu/apps/faculty/index.php/g321/p5619&quot;&gt;Dr. Suzanne Shepherd&lt;/a&gt;, a travel medicine specialist and emergency physician at the University of Pennsylvania. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shepherd also &lt;strong&gt;recommends avoiding fresh water to treat a jellyfish sting because it could just cause the remaining nematocysts to fire.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/07/22/7142878-urine-doesnt-ease-jellyfish-stings-after-all?lite&quot;&gt;MSNBC - Urine doesn't ease jellyfish stings, after all&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/12/13/3389985.htm&quot;&gt;ABC Science - Should vinegar be used on all jellyfish stings?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T10:01:54.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9749" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9752" CreationDate="2012-06-09T17:08:54.783" Score="1" ViewCount="1353" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was offered a bed. The seller claimed that the bed has probiotic bacteria in it. It contains special living bacteria that will eat germs and sweat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that really work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, I'll buy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claims: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/NPD/Probiotic-bed-bugs-that-don-t-bite&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/NPD/Probiotic-bed-bugs-that-don-t-bite&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim was made at the mall actually. However, a search in Google shows many marketing results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-10T13:10:06.680" LastActivityDate="2012-06-10T13:10:06.680" Title="Do probiotic bacteria prevent or ameilorate dust mites in beds?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|natural-remedies|allergies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9676" CreationDate="2012-06-09T20:14:44.573" Score="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;First let me just give you a philosophical overview as to why the question is disingenuous and you are barking up the wrong tree.  You ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was Richard Leakey correct, did they toss out the fossil, or the theories on early man?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, he was not.  Of course, that is because he was taken out of context in that selective quote (&lt;a href=&quot;http://arensb.umd.edu/text/patton/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a favorite creationist tactic&lt;/a&gt;).  I'll lecture later on why he said it, but later in the same article, he also admits that he, or someone else could have made a mistake, and they needed to figure it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were the first 4 (2.6. Million) dates thought to be accurate at the time of their original publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not exactly, because again, this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://gondwanaresearch.com/hp/tuppence.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;creationist propaganda&lt;/a&gt;.  If you actually read the cited papers, they aren't actually dating the skull, but other material found in the same strata as the skull, and in locations they thought were similar.  Also, note the dates of all those publications.  Methodologies have changed since the 1970s.  Furthermore, we understand the geology of the area better, which has cleared up a lot of confusing results.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/knm-er-1470&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Note that the skull was discovered in 1972&lt;/a&gt;, yet the creationist page uses papers from 1970.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were they later &amp;quot;revised&amp;quot; to the more recent 1.8 million years ago timeframe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because that's what the evidence indicated they should do.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://chem.tufts.edu/science/Stear-NoAiG/no-AiG/cg_is_there_fossil_evidence%20.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Not because of the old and inaccurate radiometric results, but because they figured out their mistake&lt;/a&gt;...  The ability for science to be a self correcting mechanism isn't a weakness or a fault, that is the strength.  You seem to indicate that this is an unacceptable practice, yet I am sure the computer you are using isn't from the 1970s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this evidence that the fossil record trumps all other dating methods (i.e. if there is disagreement, the fossil record is not revised, it is the other dating methods)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.  The fossil record really isn't &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt; to have evidence for evolution.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eorigins/X-PDF/Leakey2001.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;However, what the fossil record does is give us a more &lt;em&gt;detailed&lt;/em&gt; understanding of evolution.&lt;/a&gt;  Of course, there aren't Post-It&lt;sup&gt;(TM)&lt;/sup&gt; notes attached to fossils describing all the circumstances of fossilization, what exact species it is, or exactly how it fits in to the evidence trail.  That's what the scientists need to figure out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, now to some more detailed rebuttals, and again, I am sorry if this seems like a lecture, but all to often, creationists will try to use one single misunderstanding to attempt to &amp;quot;prove&amp;quot; their point, while totally ignoring the mountain of evidence that makes their stance the height of ignorance and foolishness.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://factsnotfantasy.com/creationists.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;They trot out the same lame arguments time and again, and never listen to the actual replies&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to Leakey's quote, as a scientist, he understood that when you find an earth-shattering discovery that goes against or disagrees with what we know, there are several possibilities, two of the most commonly thought are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have made an earth-shattering discovery that will totally rework everything we know about the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have made a mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists want and desire to make the first type of discovery.  It's what puts them into the journals and history books.  What usually happens is the second one.  In the case of KNM-ER 1470, it was indeed the latter, but with a touch of the former.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tarha.ulpgc.es/leakey_1973.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In this paper, Leakey admits to his mistake about the initial date and the KBS Tuff&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At present, analysis of samples collected for dating from the KBS Tuff in area 131 has proved inconclusive because of the apparent alteration of the sanidine felspars. This was not seen in the 105/108 samples from the same horizon which provided the date of 2.61 m.y. and there is no reason to suspect the validity of that date (personal communication from J. A. Miller).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as a result of all this investigation, he did figure out that he may be on to a new species in the genus Homo.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://archaeologyinfo.com/homo-rudolfensis/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Specifically Homo rudolfensis&lt;/a&gt;.  Now that we have figured out that there is a new member of the genus Homo, the fact that creationists keep using this 40 year old argument, goes back to the fact that they don't listen...  As the archeology info site states (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specimen was originally thought to be around 2.9 myr old, &lt;em&gt;due to an inaccurate dating of 2.6 myr for the KBS volcanic tuff located above it&lt;/em&gt;. This inaccuracy was caused by contamination of older material, and the tuff is now know to be much younger. The specimen is now thought to date to approximately 1.8 myr (Leakey et al. may have been more willing to attribute the specimen to habilis had they known the real antiquity of the specimen from the beginning). Though this date is now generally accepted for the specimen, the geologists who orignally dated the KBS tuff continue to argue for a later date for the specimen. While they admit the dating of the volcanic tuff was inaccurate,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This page doesn't quote anything after 2000, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eorigins/X-PDF/Leakey2001.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the 2001 paper with Leakey et al does figure out the problem with the Tuff&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DzAo4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Tuff Layers, with inversions&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other problem that many people ignorant of human evolution fail to understand is that it's not a linear path.  As a previous link mentions, &lt;a href=&quot;https://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/fossils/knm-er-1470&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;several hominid species co-existed&lt;/a&gt;.  Some became extinct, and some didn't.  This is where Leakey actually made a great new discovery.  Again, it's all part of the self correcting mechanism of science.  Something was off, and at first they didn't know.  Further investigation and scientific methodologies actually gave them clues, and then they had to revise what they thought they knew.  This is the accepted scientific method, not blindly accepting the first thought that may come to one's mind.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ehogwash/BW_PDFs/RP079.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A paper that details a &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; understanding of the family tree was published by Bernard Wood&lt;/a&gt; (one of the men that help assemble the skull with Leakey:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OpjQt.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Revised homo family tree&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discussing the radiometric dating as it was understood in the 1970s compared to the 1990s and beyond, &lt;a href=&quot;http://chem.tufts.edu/science/Stear-NoAiG/no-AiG/cg_is_there_fossil_evidence%20.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr Groves of Tufts university relays some information on KNM-ER 1470 that may be relevant&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;White et al wrote of Aramis: &amp;quot;All hominid specimens were surface finds ...&amp;quot; This does not mean that they were rolled in from elsewhere; in fact, their condition indicates otherwise (there is a whole field called Taphonomy which is devoted to the study of how fossils got to be where they are). The date was also, at one point, queried by Kappelman and Fleagle (1995, Nature, 376:558-559), and satisfactorily answered by Wolde Gabriel et al. in the same edition of Nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an account of the history of the growth of understanding of the dating of the deposits; it is not some kind of admission of circular reasoning, of making the 40Ar/39Ar dates fit. They then go on to explain in some detail why Kappelman et al. misunderstood the argument about the dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[As an aside, there has been much speculation, informed and uninformed, about the reasons for the delay in publishing further information about Ardipithecus. White presented a paper at a congress in South Africa in late June/early July, 1998, attended by about 750 palaeoanthropologists and human biologists. The paper was illustrated by slides of the site and some of the fossil material. The site is flat, stony and arid; the fossils are scattered over the landscape, friable in the extreme, and difficult to collect, let alone to preserve. It is true that remains of at least 50 specimens ascribed to A.ramidus have been collected, but these will take years to preserve, fit together, study and describe.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Lubenow, this seems to be an attempt to make the radiometric dates fit the faunal analysis, which reminds him of the polemic over the date of the famous skull KNM-ER 1470, from Lake Turkana in Kenya. There was, he claims, such disagreement between radiometric and other dating techniques that it was finally dated by &amp;quot;biochronological comparisons&amp;quot;, in this case the stages of evolution of pigs in East Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not true, actually. What is true is that the palaeontologists argued for some years for restudy of the K/Ar dating techniques, because their faunal analyses suggested that the date of the KBS Tuff, below which ER 1470 was found, was anomalous. Ian McDougall’s group finally managed to date material from which all contaminants had been eliminated, and showed that the palaeontologists were correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Incidentally, the significance of these &amp;quot;stages of evolution of pigs&amp;quot; is passed over in silence by Lubenow. Surely he is not making a tacit admission that pigs did evolve! In creationism, neither humans nor pigs should evolve; and yet, there they are - several lineages of them, abundantly represented - in sites like Omo/Shungura, whose stratigraphy and dating are entirely uncontroversial, evolving away and eventually either becoming extinct or ending up as the modern Bushpig, Warthog and Giant Forest Hog. Elephants, incidentally, did the same thing, and their remains are likewise sufficiently numerous that their evolution can be tracked in great detail between about 4 and 1 million Ma.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://paleo.cortland.edu/tutorial/Taphonomy&amp;amp;Pres/taphonomy.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Taphonomy&lt;/a&gt; is a delicate science that may require decades to fully understand how something happened.  And initial mistakes are remembered, while the correct answer seems to go ignored.  Of course, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_habilis.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this is nothing new from creationists&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you need to get a Christian perspective, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiana.edu/%7Eensiweb/evid.anc.earth.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this individual takes a biblical approach, and still has to conclude that radiometric dating works and is accurate&lt;/a&gt;.  A telling bit in that paper states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other creationists have focused on instances in which radiometric dating seems to yield incorrect results. In most instances, these efforts are flawed because the authors have misunderstood or misrepresented the data they attempt to analyze&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which seems to be the entire premise of the KNM-ER 1470 discussion.  Nothing but misunderstanding and misrepresentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-09-24T17:27:19.997" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9751" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-09T21:15:57.343" Score="72" ViewCount="4487" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/11/we-are-typists-first-programmers-second.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CodingHorror&lt;/a&gt; writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So if you want to become a great programmer, start by becoming a great typist.&#xA;  [...]&#xA;  When you're a fast, efficient typist, you spend less time between thinking that thought and expressing it in code. [...] I believe in practicing the fundamentals, and typing skills are as fundamental as it gets for programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://asna.com/us/articles/newsletter/2013/q3/better-programming&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ASNA&lt;/a&gt; writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Having spent tons of classroom time with lots of students for the last 14 years or so, one of my general observations is that many programmers aren’t as good at typing as they should be. [...] I’ll get arguments here, but for my money, better typists make better programmers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dodgycoder.net/2011/10/how-to-become-better-programmer.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dodgy Coder&lt;/a&gt; writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Learning to touch type is a quick and effective way to give your productivity a boost as a programmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there empiric evidence that programmers who learn to type faster will tend to be better programmers? Do those programmers perform better on the job that employers pay programmers to do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2017-12-27T13:54:39.477" LastActivityDate="2018-01-05T12:38:50.963" Title="Do programmers who learn to type faster become better programmers?" Tags="|computers|productivity|programming|programming-productivity|keyboard|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9749" CreationDate="2012-06-09T21:58:53.030" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you follow this and other similar mattress marketing back, it leads to a product called Purotex made by Bekaert Textiles.  They have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bekaerttextiles.com/library/PurotexFolder.pdf&quot;&gt;promotional leaflet&lt;/a&gt; which has clearly been supervised by lawyers checking against laws which restrict health claims.  The leaflet says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Probiotic bacteria and textile products containing probiotic bacteria&#xA;  are not active substances or biocidal products within the meaning of&#xA;  Biocidal Products Directive 98/8/EC, as they exert no action against&#xA;  harmful organisms. Instead, these bacteria consume the excrements of&#xA;  dust mites that are known to contain several allergens, causing&#xA;  uncomfortable conditions to humans. There are no intended (claimed) or&#xA;  known unintended biocidal effects as regards the use of probiotic&#xA;  bacteria or textile products containing such bacteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Probiotic Task Force members are committed to ensure that statements, e.g., in marketing materials, the press or elsewhere are clear, consistent and not misleading for the users of their products.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So they seem to claim that it could reduce allergens from mite excrement, but seem to deny claiming that it &quot;eats germs&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-06-09T21:58:53.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9754" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-10T01:28:57.743" Score="3" ViewCount="172" Body="&lt;p&gt;The WHO released a press release with preliminary finds to the media. After examining the preliminary study, the Telegraph, the Guardian and other newspapers printed articles with headlines like, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ash.org.uk/files/documents/ASH_654.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Passive Smoke Does't cause cancer -Official&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This caused the WHO to issue another press release to say that there was a link between &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/inf-pr-1998/en/pr98-29.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Second Hand Smoke and lung cancer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study found that there was an estimated 16% increased risk of lung cancer among non-smoking spouses of smokers. For workplace exposure the estimated increase in risk was 17%. However, due to small sample size, neither increased risk was statistically significant. Although, the study points towards a decreasing risk after cessation of exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davehitt.com/facts/who.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pro smokers rights site&lt;/a&gt; shows an analysis of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/90/19/1440.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WHO study&lt;/a&gt;. This study did show the increased RR of 16% and 17%, but it also showed a decreased RR for children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results: ETS Exposure during childhood was not associated with an increased risk of lung cancer (odds ratio [OR] for ever exposure = 0.78; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.64-0.96).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the WHO wants to use this study to say, &quot;Passive Smoke Does Cause Lung Cancer - Don't Let Them Fool You,&quot; shouldn't they also mention it's preventative effect on children? (i.e. The press release should have said, &quot;Passive Smoke Does Cause Lung Cancer, Unless You Are a Child?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2012-06-10T01:28:57.743" Title="Did the WHO study show a significant RR of lung cancer, and not a preventative effect?" Tags="|smoking|epidemiology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9755" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9756" CreationDate="2012-06-10T04:28:20.097" Score="8" ViewCount="1131" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obama said in a speech in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;amp;v=WPs3EmkFI8I#t=325s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;El Paso, Texas May 10, 2011&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theroot.com/buzz/transcript-obamas-immigration-reform-speech&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;full transcript&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They wanted a fence. Well, that fence is now basically complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And we've gone further. We tripled the number of intelligence analysts working the border. I've deployed unmanned aerial vehicles to patrol the skies from Texas to California. We've forged a partnership with Mexico to fight the transnational criminal organizations that have affected both of our countries. And for the first time we are screening 100 percent of southbound rail shipments -- to seize guns and money going south even as we go after drugs coming north.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement. But even though we've answered these concerns, I suspect there will be those who will try to move the goal posts one more time. They'll say we need to triple the border patrol. Or quadruple the border patrol. They'll say we need a higher fence to support reform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How basically complete is the fence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did they actually go above and beyond what was requested by the Republicans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T05:12:29.503" Title="Is the border fence basically complete as Obama said, and did they go above and beyond what was requested?" Tags="|united-states|barack-obama|immigration|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9755" CreationDate="2012-06-10T04:44:56.300" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. No. The Secure Fence Act of 2006 that was passed by the Republicans and signed by George W. Bush required a double layered fence. Only 36.3 miles of double layered fences are complete (PolitiFact quote, link below)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to go back to the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which was passed by a Republican Congress and signed by President George W. Bush. It authorized the construction of hundreds of miles of additional fencing along the border with Mexico. The act specified &amp;quot;at least two layers of reinforced fencing.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/may/16/barack-obama/obama-says-border-fence-now-basically-complete/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PolitiFact&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DHS reports that there is now fencing for 649 of the 652 miles described in the Secure Fence Act of 2006. But the vast majority of the requirement was met with vehicle barriers and single-layer pedestrian fence. The original act specifically called for double-layer fencing, and only 36.3 miles of double-layered fencing currently exist. However, the act was later amended to allow Border Security the discretion to determine which type of fencing was appropriate for different areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Obama can make a case that the vehicle barriers and single-layer pedestrian fences meet the amended letter of the law. But we also think Obama misleads, particularly when he mocks Republican opponents, saying that even though the fence has been built, &amp;quot;They'll want want a higher fence. Maybe they’ll need a moat. Maybe they want alligators in the moat.&amp;quot; The Border Patrol has not gone &amp;quot;above and beyond&amp;quot; what Republicans requested, as Obama claimed. What they originally requested was a double-layer fence, and they didn't get much of it. And so we rate Obama's statement Barely True.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-10T04:44:56.300" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9422" CreationDate="2012-06-10T05:16:28.257" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me start off by saying it is very hard to determine what is fact and what is propaganda, since this is a water filter that competes with the biggest water filter company in India. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Layout/Includes/TOINEW/ArtWin.asp?From=Archive&amp;amp;Source=Page&amp;amp;Skin=TOINEW&amp;amp;BaseHref=TOIM/2009/10/16&amp;amp;ViewMode=HTML&amp;amp;GZ=T&amp;amp;PageLabel=9&amp;amp;EntityId=Ar00901&amp;amp;AppName=1&quot;&gt;Court to Decide Water Purifier Battle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/2009/12/08/forbes-india-water-purifier-germkill-chlorine-competition.html&quot;&gt;Pure Water, Dirty Linen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moneylife.in/article/water-purifiers-ineffective-in-preventing-waterborne-diseases-revealed-through-rti/18423.html&quot;&gt;Water purifiers ineffective in preventing waterborne diseases, revealed through RTI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who don't know (as I didn't,) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Pureit water filter consists of four parts that purify the water&#xA;  in four stages: a 'microfibre mesh', a 'compact carbon trap', a&#xA;  'germkill processor' and a 'polisher', as branded by Hindustan&#xA;  Unilever. For the Pureit Marvella model, the microfibre mesh has been&#xA;  rebranded as a 'pleated filter', while the compact carbon trap has&#xA;  been rebranded as an 'activated carbon filter', along with a prefix of&#xA;  'unique'. The microfibre mesh functions as a sieve, filtering out&#xA;  visible dirt. The carbon trap removes parasites and pesticides. The&#xA;  processor is a tablet consisting of chlorine. This stage removes&#xA;  bacteria and viruses. The polisher improves taste and clarity of water&#xA;  and removes the residual form of chlorine from the water. These four&#xA;  parts are collectively branded the germkill kit or the battery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This battery needs continual replacing, as indicated by a germkill&#xA;  battery indicator visible on the front of the device. Pureit also&#xA;  features an 'auto switch off' mechanism whereby the filter prevents&#xA;  the flow of water following the consumption of the germkill kit. This&#xA;  kit itself comes in various models. The model of the germkill kit&#xA;  determines how much water it can purify before the kit needs&#xA;  replacing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The germkill kit is designed to work at 25° C in moderately humid&#xA;  conditions. The volume specified by the germkill battery assumes these&#xA;  conditions. The germkill kit has an expiry date of three years from&#xA;  the date of packaging.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pureit&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pureit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While according to Pureit, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first batch of water that gets purified in your new Pureit, or&#xA;  from a new 'Germkill Kit™', should be drained away when it collects in&#xA;  the transparent chamber. This batch of water may have a distinctive&#xA;  taste and needs to be drained out by opening the tap. It should be&#xA;  noted that even though the first batch of water may have a distinctive&#xA;  taste, it is completely safe, even if accidentally ingested. Once you&#xA;  drain away the first batch, you will get pure and great tasting water&#xA;  in subsequent batches.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pureitwater.com/IN/faqs#ans19&quot;&gt;http://www.pureitwater.com/IN/faqs#ans19&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would suggest that at least some chlorine gets through on a new system or a new 'Germkill Kit' (ie. chlorine tablet.) However I cannot seem to find any factual information to support claims that they &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; remove 100% of the chlorine from the water, after the initial use. This doesn't mean that they truly do, but since they have had samples of there water tested by numerous labs around the world (a result of court cases and competitive company attacks,) if they didn't in fact remove 100% of the chlorine you would think there would be a large amount of evidence showing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their 'polisher' is a activated carbon filter, and activated carbon is very good at removing chlorine, and it is entirely possible for a activated carbon filter to remove 100% of chlorine from water. Most remove between 96% to 100% with the average at 99%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HUL claims Pureit does the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meets E.P.A. germ kill criteria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Provides complete protection from waterborne diseases caused by germs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is 'As Safe As Boiled Water'. This is also Pureit's tag line.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also claim that it has been tested by the following institutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SRL Ranbaxy Clinical Reference Laboratories, Mumbai, Maharashtra.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sundaram Medical Foundation, Chennai, Tamil Nadu.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;King Institute of Preventive Medicine, Chennai, Tamil Nadu.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Indian Public Health Association, Kolkata.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Institute of Public Health Engineers, Kolkata.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases, Kolkata.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore, Karnataka.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, Chennai, Tamil Nadu.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scottish Parasite Diagnostic Laboratory, Glasgow, UK.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pureitwater.com/IN/certification&quot;&gt;http://www.pureitwater.com/IN/certification&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-3156.2009.02318.x/pdf&quot;&gt;Virological evaluation lab test results&lt;/a&gt;, Pureit is Unit 8 (Chlorine levels not tested.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in conclusion, if you exclude the first batch of water produced, as the company says to do, it does seem like this unit filters out very close if not all of the chlorine it introduces in the stage before the polisher. It seems it's virus filtering ability is the most serious potential flaw in the unit, as this is the majority of the articles I read focused on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if this wasn't very helpful, it isn't easy finding much unbiased information on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7387" LastEditorUserId="7387" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T11:50:04.573" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T11:50:04.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9759" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9764" CreationDate="2012-06-10T07:44:31.213" Score="3" ViewCount="819" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many calls to help bring down Carbon Dioxide levels. But what are the effects of such an action?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My intuition of the earth as a slow-moving complex system tells me that it will settle into a &quot;new state&quot; in which new patterns of temperature and rain will establish for a very long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a widespread opinion says that we will able to &lt;strong&gt;reverse&lt;/strong&gt; the rise in temperatures and other effects like rainfall patterns if we reduce emissions. It seems a simpler explanation to sell and to believe in (most people, like me, are not trained in complex systems theory!). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These emissions change the balance of gases in the atmosphere, and&#xA;  cause climate change, global warming and degrade the ozone layer.  It&#xA;  up to all of us to reduce our emissions to &lt;strong&gt;reverse these effects&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HowStuffWorks &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/reverse-global-warming.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt; thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Assuming that the IPCC's conclusions are accurate, reducing greenhouse&#xA;  gas emissions and planting trees could help slow and eventually&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;reverse global warming trends&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A call to reduce emissions will get more support if we promise to get it reversed in decades, rather than ambiguously reduce the stimulus that is accelerating changing climate patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so it is a common-enough notion. But is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-10T13:15:07.767" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T23:53:49.330" Title="Will reducing atmospheric CO₂ reverse the effects of climate change over a few decades?" Tags="|climate-change|climatology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6479" CreationDate="2012-06-10T11:34:06.537" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/oral-health/healthy-teeth-10/brushing-teeth-mistakes&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Michael Sesemann&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (president of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aacd.com/index.php?module=cms&amp;amp;page=912&quot;&gt;American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry 2009-2010&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brushing should last at least two minutes. Three&#xA;  minutes is even better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's an arbitrary number, but it's just so people take the time to clean all&#xA;  the surfaces.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ada.org/2624.aspx&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;American Dental Association&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; recommends:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brush your teeth twice a day...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but does not specify a time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cda-adc.ca/en/oral_health/cfyt/dental_care/flossing_brushing.asp&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Canadian Dental Association&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; however does say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't rush your brush. &lt;strong&gt;A thorough brushing should take at least two to&#xA;  three minutes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://ada.org.au/oralhealth/fln/smcomm/how2brush.aspx&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Australian Dental Association&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; also recommends:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Brushing should take at least two minutes!!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;The same from the british &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/dentalhealth/Pages/Teethcleaningguide.aspx&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NHS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Brush your teeth for at least two minutes&lt;/strong&gt; in the morning before&#xA;  breakfast and last thing at night before you go to bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/updates/Brushing-up-on-brushing.shtml&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Harvard Medical School&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A good, thorough brushing takes at least two minutes&lt;/strong&gt; whether you are using a manual or powered toothbrush&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Studies:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15455739&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One- and 3-minute plaque removal by a battery-powered versus a manual toothbrush&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Both toothbrushes showed &lt;strong&gt;statistically significantly greater plaque removal following 3 minutes of brushing than following 1 minute of brushing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19723429&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The effect of brushing time and dentifrice on dental plaque removal in vivo&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Oral health care professionals should reinforce efforts to persuade patients to brush for longer periods of time, as &lt;strong&gt;increasing brushing time to the consensus minimum of 2 minutes from a more typical 45 seconds increases plaque removal to an extent likely to provide clinically significant oral health benefits&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;The latter study &lt;a href=&quot;http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb6368/is_3_83/ai_n39306681/pg_2/?tag=content;col1&quot;&gt;also says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given these considerations, &lt;strong&gt;the results show brushing time is likely to be an important determinant of plaque removal&lt;/strong&gt; in the general population. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The degree of plaque reduction was related to brushing time across the examined 30-second to 3-minute time period. &lt;strong&gt;Plaque removal was dependent on brushing time at shorter times, but tended towards a maximum at extended times&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2012-06-10T11:34:06.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9761" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9784" CreationDate="2012-06-10T13:32:15.617" Score="46" ViewCount="9292" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this claim in &lt;em&gt;Unweaving the Rainbow&lt;/em&gt; by Richard Dawkins. This is the Google Books &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.in/books?id=ZudTchiioUoC&amp;amp;q=camouflage#v=snippet&amp;amp;q=camouflage&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;link to the relevant page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nobody knows whether or how this benefits them, but it may be&#xA;  suggestive that bomber crews in the Second World War liked to include&#xA;  at least one colour-blind member, who could penetrate certain kinds of&#xA;  camouflage on the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research to back this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4196" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2019-02-03T03:10:41.290" LastActivityDate="2020-01-29T22:04:12.837" Title="Do colour-blind people see through certain kinds of camouflage?" Tags="|biology|war|colors|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9762" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9804" CreationDate="2012-06-10T14:53:07.327" Score="5" ViewCount="8351" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read that there is something called &quot;splash pregnancy&quot; which is when you get pregnant without having penetration. So far I have only found &lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=25269&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;anecdotal stories&lt;/a&gt; about it, but is there any documented case? If so, what are the chances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7482" LastEditorUserId="7482" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T16:19:58.593" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T16:19:58.593" Title="Can a woman become pregnant through splash pregnancy?" Tags="|physiology|pregnancy|human-reproduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9763" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-10T15:34:47.547" Score="12" ViewCount="1673" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to babycenter.com and countless other pregnancy sites and youtube videos, women should sleep on their left side while pregnant to improve blood flow to the fetus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sleeping on your side is best while you're pregnant. In particular, sleeping on your left side may benefit your baby by improving blood flow – and therefore nutrients – to the placenta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babycenter.com/404_whats-the-best-sleep-position-during-pregnancy_7608.bc&quot;&gt;babycenter.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has definitive research been done proving this to be true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4979" LastActivityDate="2017-12-24T00:21:05.737" Title="Does sleeping on your left side, while pregnant, improve blood flow?" Tags="|sleep|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9759" CreationDate="2012-06-10T17:13:06.307" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without geo-engineering solutions, a certain amount of warming is irreversible.  Even if we stop emitting CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; today, the energy is in the system and it will cause a certain amount of warming.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. James Hansen of NASA Goddard has talked a lot about this.  He often says that there is already warming &quot;in the pipeline&quot; that is irreversible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a 2005 paper in Science Magazine he says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Earth's energy imbalance.&lt;/strong&gt; We infer from the consistency of observed&#xA;  and modeled planetary energy gains that the forcing still driving&#xA;  climate change, i.e., the forcing not yet responded to, averaged ∼0.75&#xA;  W/m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; in the past decade and was ∼0.85 ± 0.15 W/m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; in 2003.&#xA;  This imbalance is consistent with the total forcing of ∼1.8 W/m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&#xA;  relative to that in 1880 and climate sensitivity of ∼2/3°C per W/m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;.&#xA;  The observed 1880 to 2003 global warming is 0.6° to 0.7°C,&#xA;  which is the full response to nearly 1 W/m2 of forcing. Of the 1.8&#xA;  W/m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; forcing, 0.85 W/m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; remains, i.e., &lt;strong&gt;additional global warming of&#xA;  0.85 × 0.67 ∼ 0.6°C is “in the pipeline” and will occur in the future even if atmospheric composition and other climate forcings remain&#xA;  fixed at today's values.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;from &lt;em&gt;Earth's Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and Implications&lt;/em&gt;  (DOI: 10.1126/science.1110252)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is inertia in the Earth System. The CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; has been emitted, and the radiation balance is off.  It will take a while for that warming to show up in the climate, but it will happen.  The Earth System is out of equilibrium and is working towards getting to it, and it will be a warmer equilibrium. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this doesn't mean we can just forget about trying to reduce CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emissions because we're screwed anyway.  This image from the IPCC AR4 shows the model predictions of warming for different CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emission scenarios.  The yellow line represents if we could manage to get our atmospheric CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; concentrations down to 2000 levels, and the red line represents a business as usual approach where we make no changes whatsoever.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qjssl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-projections-of.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Projections of Future Change in Climate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see from this chart that the scenario we choose, and how much CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; that we emit in the future, does make a difference in considering how much warming will occur.  Reducing CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emissions is &lt;em&gt;crucial&lt;/em&gt; for being able to mitigate the amount of warming that will occur, but at this point we've already locked in a certain amount of warming becuase of past CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastEditorUserId="5973" LastEditDate="2012-06-11T23:53:49.330" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T23:53:49.330" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9766" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9782" CreationDate="2012-06-10T22:33:31.897" Score="0" ViewCount="5453" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately I have been reading a lot about the origins biblical stories, and I have noticed that a lot of people mock the bible and the christians by telling them that they follow &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.topix.com/forum/religion/judaism/TNIEACVVMFIN3V78A&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bronze age myths&lt;/a&gt;/beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is a melange of Bronze Age ravings &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My first google result)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, are Old Testament stories actually bronze age myths? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7484" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:22:05.893" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:22:05.893" Title="Is the Old Testament based on Bronze-Age myths?" Tags="|history|religion|bible|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9767" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-11T00:03:09.367" Score="3" ViewCount="194" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim &quot;Antioxidants can also be important in improving immune responses in dogs.&quot; is being made on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iams.co.uk/dog/Food-Nutrition-7/Antioxidants-Iams-Research-237.html#A2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this web page&lt;/a&gt;. They go on to say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because antioxidants play a key role in minimizing damage to cells,&#xA;  such as those that make up the immune system, recent research examined&#xA;  the benefits of certain antioxidants on the immune system activity of&#xA;  dogs. The results of these studies confirmed that antioxidants are&#xA;  important in helping dogs maintain a healthy immune system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though they don't say exactly what the &quot;recent research&quot; is. Is this just a case of noting that if you have too few nutrients then you will be ill, so eating these nutrients &quot;improves&quot; your health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7326" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-11T00:35:52.460" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T15:33:25.790" Title="Do antioxidants improve immune responses in dogs?" Tags="|medical-science|dogs|antioxidant|medications|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9423" CreationDate="2012-06-11T03:07:32.140" Score="94" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update: Possibly?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to @alan-boisvert the passage that the &lt;em&gt;Association Chaplin&lt;/em&gt; referred to in the book &lt;em&gt;My Father, Charlie Chaplin&lt;/em&gt; does exist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dad told me about one of these that had taken place before I was born. It was at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, and there were thirty or forty people on the stage doing their best to imitate Dad. Dad was one of them. He'd gone up incognito to see how he would fare. He came in third. Dad always thought this one of the funniest jokes imaginable—whether on him or the judges or both, I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd argue that this is still an anecdotal claim, told decades after the fact. But it does have significantly more precise detail than some of the other published examples of the claim. So, whether or not this happened depends on whether or not you believe the story a father told his son.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strike&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NRb9u.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;“Charlie Chaplin Look-Alike Contest” by J. W. Sandison, November 5, 1921&quot; /&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://familylegends.ca/2010/12/06/tricksters-and-disney-dollars/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“Charlie Chaplin Look-Alike Contest” by J. W. Sandison, November 5, 1921&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a myth that has been around for a &lt;em&gt;long&lt;/em&gt; time, but there is no direct record of it happening, and all of the claims are anecdotal. As far as I can tell, Charlie himself never admitted this, &lt;strike&gt;and his son didn't mention it in the book he wrote about his father.&lt;/strike&gt; I emailed the &lt;a href=&quot;http://charliechaplin.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Association Chaplin&lt;/a&gt; and got a response:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... The only real reference I have ever seen to this story is in English newspaper clippings from 1918, when Mary Pickford was in London at an Anglo Saxon Club dinner, and told a story to Lord Desborough who repeated it to the press  that Charles Chaplin entered a Chaplin walk contest at a fair in the US and came in 20th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This anecdote told by Lord Desborough, whoever he may have been, was quite widely reported in the British press at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no other references to such a competition in any other press clipping albums that I have seen so I can only assume that this is the source of that rumour, urban myth, whatever it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it may be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also scribbled on a piece of paper a note to myself a while back that Charles Chaplin Jr mentions the competition in his book called My Father... but I have been unable to find the reference again in that book...(!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mary Pickford was a popular actor at the time and a good friend of Charlies. Unfortunately this story has an &amp;quot;I know a person who knows a person who says...&amp;quot; smell about it. I managed to track down some newspaper articles which are simple rewordings of the same gossip story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Singapore's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straitstimes.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Straits Times&lt;/a&gt;, 10 Aug 1920, &lt;a href=&quot;http://newspapers.nl.sg/Digitised/Article/straitstimes19200810.2.4.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;How Charlie Chaplin Failed&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ibx2D.png&quot; alt=&quot;How Charlie Chaplin Failed&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another version of the same story from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&amp;amp;d=PBH19200825.2.42&amp;amp;l=mi&amp;amp;e=-------10--1----0--&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Poverty Bay Herald (NZ)&lt;/a&gt;, also in 1920:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q5z88.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another from the 23 March 1921 &lt;a href=&quot;http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/70146933?searchTerm=%22Charlie%20Chaplin%22%20AND%20(lookalike%20OR%20look%20OR%20alike%20OR%20walk%20OR%20contest%20OR%20competition)&amp;amp;searchLimits=exactPhrase=Charlie+Chaplin%7C%7C%7CanyWords=lookalike+look+alike+walk+contest+competition%7C%7C%7CnotWords%7C%7C%7Cl-textSearchScope=*ignore*%7C*ignore*%7C%7C%7Cfromdd%7C%7C%7Cfrommm%7C%7C%7Cfromyyyy%7C%7C%7Ctodd%7C%7C%7Ctomm%7C%7C%7Ctoyyyy=1929%7C%7C%7Cl-word=*ignore*%7C*ignore*%7C%7C%7Csortby&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Albany Advertiser&lt;/a&gt; (Australia):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A competition in Charlie Chaplin&#xA;impersonations was held in California&#xA;recently. There was something like&#xA;40 competitors, and Charlie Chaplin,&#xA;as a joke, entered the contest under&#xA;an assumed name. He impersonated his&#xA;well known film self. But he did not&#xA;win; he was 27th in the competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These examples are all of 1920s gossip columns - simple retellings of a story that was spreading virally at the time. These early versions of the myth all also share many similarities with the Association Chaplin retelling. I'm unsure of the location of this Anglo-Saxon club based on any of the articles, and they're also sparse on details (in different ways) on Charlie Chaplin's supposed competition loss. I would say that it's unlikely that any of these particular retellings are true in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have personally read the &amp;quot;My Father&amp;quot; book, while researching this question, &lt;strike&gt;and there's no mention of any kind of impersonation or walk contests, even in passing. I paid particular attention to the 1915-1922 period that most of the claims fall into.&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;Edit:&lt;/em&gt; The claim from the book has been identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's most likely that this story was completely made up, using Mary Pickford's name to lend credibility ('a friend of Mary Pickford's who is friends with Charlie says that...') and spread through gossip columns the world over throughout the following months and years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it amazing that despite the wildly varying dates and locations that these retellings state, and the lack of specific dates, times and locations (&amp;quot;a fair in the United States&amp;quot;) within the claims, the myth has still survived for almost 100 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2021-07-11T23:12:39.570" LastActivityDate="2021-07-11T23:12:39.570" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9773" CreationDate="2012-06-11T08:06:04.257" Score="26" ViewCount="30181" Body="&lt;p&gt;The anti-war song &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSGvqjVHik8&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;19&lt;/em&gt; by Paul Hardcastle&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In World War II the average age of the combat soldier was 26... In Vietnam he was 19.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are these figures accurate?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm more interested in the claim about Vietnam, but ideally I'd like an answer that covers both figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2018-08-28T00:32:59.673" LastActivityDate="2018-08-28T00:32:59.673" Title="Was 19 the average age of a combat soldier in Vietnam?" Tags="|united-states|history|war|vietnam-war|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9772" CreationDate="2012-06-11T10:24:55.797" Score="18" Body="&lt;h1&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vietnam&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking KIA's as a good cross-section of the serving force, the average age (according to (Combat Area Casualty File) November 1993) was 22. However, using publicly available information, it appears this figure is closer to 23 (see below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Assuming KIAs accurately represented age groups serving in Vietnam, the average age of an infantryman (MOS 11B) serving in Vietnam to be 19 years old is a myth, it is actually 22 [CACF]  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can also easily verify this data using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics.html#age&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;casualties by age statistics&lt;/a&gt;  on the archives.gov website (Thanks @Oliver_C). Using this data (and extrapolating &lt;em&gt;slightly&lt;/em&gt;) to assume that the 4,927 deaths of soldiers 30-39 were evenly spread across each year of age, and making the same assumption for the 40-49, 50-59 and 60-62 age bands gives us the following table of data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Age Casualties&#xA;17  12&#xA;18  3103&#xA;19  8283&#xA;20  14095&#xA;21  9705&#xA;22  4798&#xA;23  3495&#xA;24  2650&#xA;25  2018&#xA;26  1414&#xA;27  917&#xA;28  768&#xA;29  710&#xA;30  492.7&#xA;31  492.7&#xA;32  492.7&#xA;33  492.7&#xA;34  492.7&#xA;35  492.7&#xA;36  492.7&#xA;37  492.7&#xA;38  492.7&#xA;39  492.7&#xA;40  115.6&#xA;41  115.6&#xA;42  115.6&#xA;43  115.6&#xA;44  115.6&#xA;45  115.6&#xA;46  115.6&#xA;47  115.6&#xA;48  115.6&#xA;49  115.6&#xA;50  12.1&#xA;51  12.1&#xA;52  12.1&#xA;53  12.1&#xA;54  12.1&#xA;55  12.1&#xA;56  12.1&#xA;57  12.1&#xA;58  12.1&#xA;59  12.1&#xA;60  40.33333333&#xA;61  40.33333333&#xA;62  40.33333333&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A weighted average gives us a figure of &lt;code&gt;22.96&lt;/code&gt; (Standard Deviation: &lt;code&gt;5.85&lt;/code&gt;) which is pretty close to the linked information above from the CACF. Somewhat interestingly, the median of this same data set is &lt;code&gt;21&lt;/code&gt; - one year the opposite way from the quote at the start of this answer!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it appears that in times of war when a Draft is in operation (as it was for the Vietnam conflict) soldiers are drafted using a lottery process starting with 20 year olds, followed by 21, 22, 23, 24 and finally 25 year olds (&lt;a href=&quot;http://usmilitary.about.com/od/deploymentsconflicts/a/draftprocess.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;). It would seem that this would further the argument that the average age of combat soldiers was into the early 20's as this would have been the largest group of drafted soldiers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WWII&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The average age (according to General William C. Westmoreland before the Third Annual Reunion of the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association (VHPA) at the Washington, DC Hilton Hotel on July 5th, 1986) was 26&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The average man who fought in World War II was 26 years of age. [Westmoreland]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.vhfcn.org/stat.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding similar data to the above for Vietnam in order to verify with some simple statistical analysis is proving hard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T02:57:52.220" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T02:57:52.220" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9767" CreationDate="2012-06-11T15:33:25.790" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The US &lt;a href=&quot;http://nccam.nih.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM)&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;a href=&quot;http://nccam.nih.gov/health/antioxidants/introduction.htm#status&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;that&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Large, long-term studies (randomized, controlled trials) funded&#xA;  primarily by NIH have generally found that antioxidant supplements&#xA;  have no beneficial effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that NCCAM is a division of the US &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nih.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Institutes of Health (NIH)&lt;/a&gt; which is generally pretty keen on backing their statements with evidence (or noting the absence of it). As one of the institutes of NIH, NCCAM is &lt;a href=&quot;http://nccam.nih.gov/about/ataglance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;charged to&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;… define, through rigorous scientific&#xA;  investigation, the usefulness and safety of complementary and&#xA;  alternative medicine interventions and their roles in improving health&#xA;  and health care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which I read as biasing them toward favorable CAM results if supportable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the statements of the NIH are generally about humans, one would expect that there is even less evidence on anti-oxidant benefits in dogs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1871" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T15:33:25.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9780" CreationDate="2012-06-11T20:18:08.797" Score="7" ViewCount="683" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to wikipedia,the popular program called MythBusters were able to fool a security door with a printed scan of a fingerprint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;^ &quot;Crimes and Myth-Demeanors 1&quot;. Mythbusters. episode 16. season 4.&#xA;  Yes. July 12, 2006. The Discovery Channel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometrics#cite_note-52&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometrics#cite_note-52&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How true is this and how have things changed to mitigate the jaw dropping error in the biometric system?.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7490" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T21:10:11.797" Title="Fooling a commercial security door using printed scan of a fingerprint" Tags="|security|airport-security|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9779" CreationDate="2012-06-11T20:57:15.713" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, a few links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over on Security Stack Exchange we have &lt;a href=&quot;https://security.stackexchange.com/q/11681/485&quot;&gt;discussed this exact case&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Noted security commentator Bruce Schneier has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/04/security_risks_2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some interesting discussion&lt;/a&gt; - and in fact it is a recurring theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most fingerprint readers have independently measured EER of 5%; the&#xA;  best ones allegedly get down to about 0.2%. That means that when the&#xA;  system is set to a sensitivity such that it only randomly locks you&#xA;  out one time in 200 (say, 3 times a year), a crook has a 1 in 200&#xA;  chance of stealing your car just be swiping his finger on the reader&#xA;  and seeing if it works by luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Chaos Computer Club in Germany has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ccc.de/updates/2008/schaubles-finger&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;excellent piece on how they did this&lt;/a&gt; to Dr Wolfgam Schauble, the Home Secretary. (You might want to google translate that link if you can't speak German) - basically they got his fingerprint from a glass, made it more visible using cyanoacrylate (like you will have seen on NCIS or CIS), took a photograph using a digital camera and printed it onto wood glue which could then be attached to their own fingertips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that in order for a biometric system to work it needs to reject the wrong finger (or retina or whatever) but allow the right one in a world where nothing is perfect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fingers might be presented at a different angle, or pressed a little too hard etc., so a little leeway is required in order to make sure valid users are allowed in. In addition, only a number of points are selected, not the entire fingerprint, which further reduces the accuracy required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ifVTz.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;image from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rtcmagazine.com/articles/view/100725&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.rtcmagazine.com/articles/view/100725&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the trade-off is between false accepts and false rejects - which leads to the possibility of using faked fingerprints, such as a printout, or the amusing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/05/16/gummi_bears_defeat_fingerprint_sensors/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gummy bear fingerprints&lt;/a&gt; used by Matsumoto.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Matsumoto took a photo-sensitive printed-circuit board (which can be&#xA;  found in many electronic hobby shops) and used the fingerprint&#xA;  transparency to etch the fingerprint into the copper. From this he&#xA;  made a gelatine finger using the print on the PCB, using the same&#xA;  process as before. Again this fooled fingerprint detectors about 80&#xA;  per cent of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not a jaw-dropping error, it is actually well within design parameters. Biometrics can never be 100% accurate, and in fact if it was it would be useless as a security tool - as soon as your biometrics changed you would be locked out. Have a read of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://security.stackexchange.com/q/6349/485&quot;&gt;this question on Security Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for more information on why biometrics are used &lt;strong&gt;as well as&lt;/strong&gt; username and password, not &lt;strong&gt;instead of&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-17T10:46:09.503" LastActivityDate="2012-06-11T21:10:11.797" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9766" CreationDate="2012-06-12T01:03:52.067" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, yes and no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theology.edu/faq01.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to the Quartz Hill School of Theology&lt;/a&gt; (I will give leeway to the obvious bias in the site, however the dates seem to align with other scholarly sites &lt;em&gt;in my emphasis&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though some scholars would claim a &lt;strong&gt;composite authorship for these books starting around 950 BC with them reaching their final form during the time of Ezra around 500 BC&lt;/strong&gt;, I would take a more conservative position and argue for a unitary authorship within fifty years of the Exodus (which would date from either around &lt;strong&gt;1290 BC or 1440 BC&lt;/strong&gt;; that is another whole area of controversy), with much of the material coming from Moses himself&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignoring the whole problem of there being no evidence for the exodus story, we can say that given a range of anywhere from 950BCE to 500BCE actually places the writing of the stories in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_age&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Iron Age&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;:  These are the dates of the stories being &lt;em&gt;written down&lt;/em&gt;!  That means that the timing of these stories is such that they are a supposed narrative of events that took place as the author of the theological site claims, in the 1290BCE to 1440BCE time-frame.  That actually places it in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronze_age&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bronze Age&lt;/a&gt;.  Now that is generally accepted as the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  Joshua is another ancient story, and as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theology.edu/faq01.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;theological site&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book would thus date to either the 15th or 13th century BC, depending, again, upon exactly when the Exodus from Egypt occured (sic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, ignoring the problem of the historicalness of the exodus... it is squarely in the Bronze Age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to accept what theologians who accept the default position of the bible as the ground truth, this page from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/archive/biblicalDates.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Minnesota gives the following dates for supposed authorship&lt;/a&gt; (again, note that this is when the books were authored, not the time-frame of the sorties they are telling):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B.C.E. Old Testament&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. 2166 to c. 1876 Job&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. 1446 to c. 1406 Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c. 1406 to c. 1050 Joshua, Judges&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the remaining books being written later and later in history.  Again, you see that some were written in the bronze age, while others were written in the iron age.  Of course, the time-line of the events are somewhat argued, but for the sake of simplicity, we can go with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology#Ussher.27s_history_of_the_Earth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Usher's time-line&lt;/a&gt; which places everything up to Exodus in the Bronze Age:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ussher's chronology provides the following dates for key events in the Biblical history of the world:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4004 BC - Creation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2349-2348 BC - Noah's Flood&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1921 BC - God's call to Abraham&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1491 BC - The Exodus from Egypt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1012 BC - Founding of the Temple in Jerusalem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;588 BC - Destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon and the beginning of the Babylonian Captivity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4 BC - Birth of Jesus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while the writing of the stories may not be bronze age, I think it is still a fair characterization based on when the events are alleged to have taken place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-24T15:39:20.120" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9783" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-12T01:38:46.300" Score="10" ViewCount="842" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of learning during sleep, say by listening to a recorded class, can be tempting to make a good use of roughly a third of the day. Has it ever worked though? If so what is the most efficient method to retain information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3518" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T19:18:15.300" Title="Has hypnopaedia been proven to work? To what extent?" Tags="|sleep|memory|learning|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9761" CreationDate="2012-06-12T04:53:55.300" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would seem to be correct. The following is an extract the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v146/n3694/abs/146226a0.html&quot;&gt;Nature Journal's archive&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, in a building camouflaged with large irregular patches of&#xA;  colour, the actual outline of the building may be lost in the jumble&#xA;  of these patterns. But the colour-blind person may be scarcely&#xA;  conscious of the variegated colours, so that to him the outline of the&#xA;  building may be almost unaffected by the camouflage. In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_perception_test&quot;&gt;Ishihara&#xA;  test for colourblindness&lt;/a&gt;, certain of the cards actually use this&#xA;  principle; a faint blue figure is printed on a background of highly&#xA;  coloured dots of various hues. To the normal observer the blue figure&#xA;  is lost against the background, but the colour-blind person may spot&#xA;  it. Again, in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protanopia#Dichromacy&quot;&gt;protanopic&lt;/a&gt; and protanomalous type of defect, reds&#xA;  and yellows appear darker than usual, and with certain colouring of&#xA;  building and background this could lead to an enhanced contrast and so&#xA;  give the colour-blind person his advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following are extracts taken from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4498734.stm&quot;&gt;BBC article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Cambridge team tested this idea by asking deuteranomalous and&#xA;  &quot;colour-normal&quot; individuals to report whether they were able to&#xA;  distinguish between pairs of colours that were theoretically predicted&#xA;  to look different to people with deuteranomalous colour blindness, but&#xA;  the same to those with normal colour vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The researchers duly found some colour pairs were only seen to be&#xA;  different by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness#By_cause&quot;&gt;deuteranomalous&lt;/a&gt; individuals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, the researchers found people with deuteranomalous colour&#xA;  blindness gave large difference ratings to pairs of colours which&#xA;  appeared indistinguishable to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The researchers, led by Dr John Mollon, said: &quot;The present findings&#xA;  recall reports from the Second World War, which &lt;strong&gt;suggested that 'colour&#xA;  blind' observers might be superior in penetrating camouflage.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information visit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_blindness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archimedes-lab.org/colorblindnesstest.html&quot;&gt;http://www.archimedes-lab.org/colorblindnesstest.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3037/is-colorblindness-an-evolutionary-advantage&quot;&gt;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3037/is-colorblindness-an-evolutionary-advantage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastEditorUserId="4196" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T18:15:22.977" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T18:15:22.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9786" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9793" CreationDate="2012-06-12T06:50:46.213" Score="14" ViewCount="24599" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder if the scene in the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulp_Fiction&quot;&gt;Pulp Fiction&lt;/a&gt;, where a girl (Marsellus Wallace's wife), in a bad health situation after taking too much heroin, is brought to life by a direct prick of adrenalin in her heart is a real &quot;medical&quot; practice or it's just a joke from the scenarist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="873" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:26:28.943" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:26:28.943" Title="Is adrenalin shot directly in the heart to revive people overdosing?" Tags="|medical-science|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9789" CreationDate="2012-06-12T09:14:01.827" Score="44" ViewCount="8778" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this post &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/supig/stay_classy_islam/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;on Reddit&lt;/a&gt; in which it is mentioned that the Quran advises men to beat their wives if they do not obey them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a quote from the link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Surah 4:34:&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has&#xA;  given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from&#xA;  their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in&#xA;  [the husband's] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those&#xA;  [wives] from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if&#xA;  they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true? Are they misrepresented or quoted out of context?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4196" LastEditorUserId="32459" LastEditDate="2016-12-09T15:46:03.800" LastActivityDate="2016-12-19T17:37:03.410" Title="Does the Quran advise men to beat their wives if they disobey them?" Tags="|religion|islam|religious-texts|quran|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2017-01-02T16:00:34.293" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9788" CreationDate="2012-06-12T13:08:30.910" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/quran/women/long.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Quran has some specific things to say about women&lt;/a&gt;, and how they are to be treated.  These particular suras are the ones that may have some bearing on that particular belief (all emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4:34 &lt;strong&gt;Men are in charge of women&lt;/strong&gt;, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, &lt;strong&gt;admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and &lt;em&gt;scourge&lt;/em&gt; them.&lt;/strong&gt; Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High, Exalted, Great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4:129 Ye will not be able to deal equally between (your) wives, however much ye wish (to do so). But turn not altogether away (from one), &lt;em&gt;leaving her as in suspense&lt;/em&gt;. If ye do good and keep from evil, lo! Allah is ever Forgiving, Merciful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;66:10 Allah citeth an example for those who disbelieve: the wife of Noah and the wife of Lot, who were under two of Our righteous slaves yet betrayed them so that they (the husbands) availed them naught against Allah and it was said (unto them): &lt;em&gt;Enter the Fire&lt;/em&gt; along with those who enter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with any text written in a poetic style, and based on mysoginistic viewpoints, the interpretation is up to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T13:08:30.910" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9790" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10984" CreationDate="2012-06-12T17:41:24.190" Score="19" ViewCount="8451" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wm8hG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;A photograph of two birds on pavement, one lying dead. An inset of a piece of chewing gum held between thumb and index finger. Text underneath, a translation of which is transcribed below.&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This image popped up in my facebook feed today. The translation reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Did you know that:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chewing gum thrown on the street looks like pieces of bread to birds. They try to eat it, but it gets stuck in their beak. No longer able to eat or drink, they die a slow and painful death.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Stop this, not today but yesterday!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was pointed out already that the species of birds in the picture actually eat insects and rarely walk around on the ground. But I'd like to know how the above mentioned theory applies to birds that do eat bread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6172" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2023-01-03T15:41:16.213" LastActivityDate="2023-01-03T15:41:16.213" Title="Do birds eat chewing gum they think is bread?" Tags="|mortality|ethology|birds|chewing-gum|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9727" CreationDate="2012-06-12T18:07:15.240" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The text &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aiming at all his visible and invisible foes, the preceptor's son, the slayer of hostile heroes, inspired with &lt;em&gt;mantras&lt;/em&gt; a blazing shaft possessed of the effulgence of a smokeless fire, and let it off on all sides, filled with rage. Dense showers of arrows then issued from it in the welkin.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=19LAyplIr64C&amp;amp;pg=PA481&amp;amp;lpg=PA481&amp;amp;dq=%22a%20blazing%20shaft%20possessed%20of%20the%20effulgence%20of%20a%20smokeless%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=Fo3uzJ5oAg&amp;amp;sig=9ShUEJ7PpJxvsrRwZYnlXxRP6AM&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=7oPXT73FCeKv0QWa_IGvBA&amp;amp;ved=0CFQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22a%20blazing%20shaft%20possessed%20of%20the%20effulgence%20of%20a%20smokeless%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;page 481 of this translation&lt;/a&gt;. The context does not suggest nuclear weapons any more than other massive weapons. And nuclear weapons are not normally associated with arrows. This extra context seriously undermines the interpretation of the &lt;em&gt;partial&lt;/em&gt; quote given in the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An free e-book edition of volume 6 of The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Translated Into English Prose from the Original Sanskrit Text by Pratap Chandra Roy can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forgottenbooks.org/info/The_Mahabharata_of_Krishna-Dwaipayana_Vyasa_Translated_Into_English_v6_1000063626.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2018-02-15T20:30:43.817" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T20:30:43.817" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9792" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-12T21:16:53.703" Score="20" ViewCount="6055" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlp-now.co.uk/eye_accessing.htm&quot;&gt;NLP adherents&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The NLP Eye movements indicate how a person is thinking - whether they are imagining a future or past event, internally re-hearing a sound or making up a sound, talking to themselves, or attending to their feelings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, when a person is accessing visual memories, they will characteristically glance upwards, while when they are accessing kinaesthetic memories, they will glance down and to their left. (Chart available at the link above.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard extensions to this that certain eye movements indicate lying (that is, some movement means &quot;they're making it up&quot; while others mean they are relying on memory), but to keep it simple, let's start with the basic claim. What does the science say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T01:08:37.653" LastActivityDate="2022-08-29T01:43:04.680" Title="Do eye movements reveal &quot;how&quot; a person is thinking?" Tags="|psychology|memory|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9786" CreationDate="2012-06-12T21:47:31.157" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2584/do-intravenous-sedatives-act-instantly-as-depicted-by-hollywood&quot;&gt;Straight Dope column&lt;/a&gt; that covers this question, it notes that there is an element of truth to the scene:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;doctors honest to God do on (rare) occasion jab a big hypodermic of epinephrine, AKA adrenaline, directly into the heart of someone who's gone into cardiac arrest, a technique called intracardiac injection (ICI). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a few articles on ICI:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eurheartj.oxfordjournals.org/content/11/3/269.abstract&quot;&gt;Feasibility of intracardiac injection of drugs during cardiac arrest&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anesthesia-analgesia.org/content/46/2/253.full.pdf&quot;&gt;Effective routes of drug administration during cardiac arrest&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Straight Dope article goes on to point out a number of inaccuracies with the scene, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3: Mia's problem probably isn't cardiac arrest anyway — the immediate consequence of heroin overdose is severe respiratory depression. As long as her heart keeps beating, ICI is pointless. If Mia needs an injection of something, a plain old intravenous shot will work just fine, since her blood is still circulating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;National Institute of Health - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002861.htm&quot;&gt;Heroin overdose&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4: Epinephrine wouldn't sober up someone who was ODing. To neutralize heroin you'd administer a drug such as Narcan (naloxone), which blocks the opiate receptors in the brain and can bring a junkie back to earth in a matter of minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;British Medical Journal - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1610781/&quot;&gt;Degree and Duration of Reversal by Naloxone of Effects of Morphine in Conscious Subjects&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, for a more realistic portrayal of heroin overdose I'd recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJbMWwSnErA&quot;&gt;this scene from Trainspotting&lt;/a&gt; note - contains swearing (and drug use).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-06-12T21:47:31.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4290" CreationDate="2012-06-12T22:54:34.273" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a study by Trinity College that concludes there is 99.9% chance that a magnetic water softener will reduce hardness to some degree, very interesting how it happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Carbonates formed by heating water containing ≈120 mg(Ca)/l are characterized by X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. Tests on 32 pairs of samples establish, at the 99.9% probability level, that drawing water through a static magnetic field (B≈0.1T, ∇B≈10 T/m) increases the aragonite/calcite ratio in the deposit. There is an incubation period of several hours, and memory of magnetic treatment extends beyond 200 h.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;Cass, S., &amp;amp; Coey, J.M.D. (2000). &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0304-8853%2899%2900648-4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Magnetic water treatment&lt;/a&gt;. Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, 209, 71-74. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecaa.ntu.edu.tw/weifang/water/Magnetic%20water%20treatment.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Full text - PDF&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7505" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-06-14T00:56:44.597" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T00:56:44.597" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5063" CreationDate="2012-06-12T23:24:48.343" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a cognitive bias known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;anchoring bias&lt;/a&gt;. In an extremely cited article (according to google it has over 20 thousand cites), cognitive scientists Tversky and Kahneman explain that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In many situations, people make estimates by starting from an initial value that  is adjusted to yield the final answer.&#xA;  The initial value, or starting point, may&#xA;  be suggested by the formulation of the&#xA;  problem, or it may be the result of a&#xA;  partial computation. In either case, &#xA;  adjustments are typically insufficient&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and they furthermore propose the following example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a demonstration of the anchoring effect, subjects were asked to estimate various quantities, stated in percentages (for example, the percentage of African countries in the United Nations). For each quantity,a number between 0 and 100 was determined by spinning a wheel of fortune in the subjects' presence. The subjects were instructed to indicate first whether that number was higher or lower than the value of the quantity, and then to estimate the value of the quantity by moving upward or downward from the given number. Different groups were given different numbers for each quantity, and these arbitrary numbers had a marked effect on estimates. For example, the median estimates of the percentage of African countries in the United Nations were 25 and 45 for groups that received 10 and 65, respectively, as starting points. Payoffs for accuracy did not reduce the anchoring effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.econ.yale.edu/~nordhaus/homepage/documents/tversky_kahn_science.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases&lt;/a&gt; by Tversky, et al.&#xA;Science 27 September 1974: 1124-1131.&#xA;DOI:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;widely used&lt;/em&gt; in marketing and advertisement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example it is forbidden by law to use this trick to advertise seasonal sales &amp;mdash; for example, if a shop sells a pair of shoes for 50£ in January, it cannot expose a &quot;&lt;strike&gt;70£&lt;/strike&gt; 50£&quot; sign to make it appear as a bargain in February.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-07-26T15:10:29.240" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T15:10:29.240" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9796" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-13T02:40:11.167" Score="8" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;The fruit &quot;açaí&quot; is marketed in the US as having special antioxidant-related nutritional value. A frequently heard claim is that is provides special benefits against diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The price of any product containing this berry makes me very suspicious. Other reasons for a skeptic attitude include its marketing with an exotic orthography (not just Anglicized &quot;acai&quot;) and the fact that it is virtually never sold by itself but only ever with other fruits providing flavors. This makes it very hard to verify any claim about just açaí in particular (because any effect from any product could also come from other ingredients).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a scam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7509" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T06:30:44.860" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T00:10:08.947" Title="Does açaí provide special benefits against diabetes?" Tags="|natural-remedies|diabetes|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9797" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9803" CreationDate="2012-06-13T02:47:32.590" Score="30" ViewCount="2230" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been stated that drinking a glass of red wine per day is good for the heart. There has been a lot of discussion surrounding this issue; two examples are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2001/dec/20/research.medicalscience&quot;&gt;this article from the Guardian&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2000-03-31/health/wine.heart.wmd_1_grape-juice-nonalcoholic-wine-john-folts&quot;&gt;this CNN article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering whether there is a marketing campaign behind the claims about red wine, as has been stated about &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/acai-miracle-berry-marketing-scam/story?id=10085901&quot;&gt;açaí&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where does the received wisdom about a glass of red wine at night come from? What about the veracity of these statements about red wine? What are some definitive facts (with references) for this debate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7509" LastEditorUserId="7509" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T09:06:29.940" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T11:40:17.680" Title="Is a glass of red wine a day beneficial for the heart?" Tags="|nutrition|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9798" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-13T02:54:00.147" Score="8" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;While there are &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; dimensions about wine taste that seem consistent across wine tasters and that can be scientifically measured, many of the dimensions and terminology used seem suspiciously impressionistic and are described using adjectives in wild metaphorical usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ratings on certain dimensions of wine taste can only be accurate if there is consistency across time (for a single taster) and consistency across different tasters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are (some) wine tasters proven to give consistent judgements ((a) across time for themselves or (b) across wine tasters)? If so, on what dimensions has such consistency been demonstrated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore: Consistency on a certain dimension is only possible if that dimension has &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; scientifically describable correlate (such as acidity or tannin levels). Even though we might not be able to identify the scientific correlate for a particular dimension (just like we might not be able to generally name which exact substances or chemical reactions or combinations thereof cause a &quot;smell of roses&quot;), this ought to be possible in principle. So if we could scientifically prove that a particular dimension of wine judgment can be identified with a particular scientifically describable property of the wine, all the better. If such a thing has been attempted or done, I would be curious to hear about such results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7509" LastEditorUserId="7509" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T09:18:02.370" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T09:18:02.370" Title="Are wine ratings consistent?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9798" CreationDate="2012-06-13T09:17:46.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not sure this is provable one way or the other - there are some wine tasters whose opinion I would trust, and others who seem more about the sensationalism. Standards also vary between testers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the industry has done a lot to add consistency, at least at the higher levels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Court of Master Sommeliers, Masters of Wine and the International Sommelier's Guild do have consistency and standards built in to their requirements. The Court of Master Sommelier's top level certification, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mastersommeliers.org/Pages.aspx/Master-Sommelier-Diploma-Exam&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Master Sommelier Diploma&lt;/a&gt; includes these two requirements (amongst some other very interesting ones - follow the link)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discuss menu content and wine list, recommending wines to accompany a wide range of foods; displaying a sound knowledge of the products, their vintages and characteristics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Identify, where appropriate, grape varieties, country of origin, district and appellation of origin, and vintages of the wines tasted.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mastersofwine.org/en/about/faq.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Masters of Wine&lt;/a&gt; exam require an extensive knowledge of wines and incorporate blind taste tests to identify wines, as well as descriptive sections to list the wine's make-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A Master of Wine (MW) is someone who has demonstrated, by way of rigorous examination,a thorough knowledge of all aspects of wine and an ability to communicate clearly. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Practical exam comprises three papers of 12 wines each, tasted blind. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T09:17:46.210" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9792" CreationDate="2012-06-13T09:19:11.980" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had this question myself recently and searched for answers. Here's a quick summary of findings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's Wikipedia's breakdown of occular nerve &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement#Neuroanatomy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mapping&lt;/a&gt;. The most important distinction is &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=tX0PB4OSpPQC&amp;amp;lpg=PA205&amp;amp;ots=3IRnJJjcdI&amp;amp;dq=manipulative%20eye-movement&amp;amp;lr&amp;amp;pg=PA207#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;voluntary&lt;/a&gt; vs. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23508-5_306&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;involuntary&lt;/a&gt;. An example of the latter is &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nss062&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pupil dilation&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; – difficult to control, subject to common &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03210265&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;stimuli&lt;/a&gt;. An example of the former is &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s10919-012-0133-x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;direction of gaze&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;quot; Basically, greater affinity for voluntary affectation = more complex heuristics for analysis = fewer easy rules like &amp;quot;looking up is visual.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My opinion is that most eye-direction articles are 99% pseudo, pop content. I suppose mind-reading intrigues us. Most related university studies I read fell under &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03195475&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eye-tracking&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vjmb20&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;point of gaze&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; research, but the left-brain right-brain visual/auditory/kinesthetic lingo was nowhere to be found in relevant, recent literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking of VAK, I'd argue learning styles theory is a fair comparison. It has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-228X.2012.01141.x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;disproved&lt;/a&gt; many times over yet &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1080/02671520701755416&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;persists&lt;/a&gt; as a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.edweek.org/leadership/learning-styles-debunked-again/2011/08&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dominant&lt;/a&gt; theory of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_psychology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ed psych&lt;/a&gt;. Even the article you linked alludes to it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;[Looking up] could indicate that they need you to demonstrate, rather than verbally explain.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I don't want to beat a dead horse.  Bottom line: according to my research, it's mostly crap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7098" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-08-29T01:43:04.680" LastActivityDate="2022-08-29T01:43:04.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9801" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-13T10:19:53.840" Score="20" ViewCount="2745" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Iran Air Flight 655&lt;/a&gt; is allegedly a case of &quot;mistaken identity&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible for AEGIS with most advanced radar system ever put on a ship, not to be able tell a difference between an F-14 and twice as large Airbus A300?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Formal_Investigation_into_the_Circumstances_Surrounding_the_Downing_of_Iran_Air_Flight_655_on_3_July_1988&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Annotated US Navy report&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="56171" LastEditDate="2020-06-13T13:29:10.217" LastActivityDate="2022-10-02T07:42:40.260" Title="Was Iran Air Flight 655 shot down by mistake?" Tags="|united-states|history|aviation|military|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9801" CreationDate="2012-06-13T13:32:37.430" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/aeronautics-and-astronautics/16-422-human-supervisory-control-of-automated-systems-spring-2004/projects/vincennes.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Three professors from MIT have done an admirable job in analyzing this incident&lt;/a&gt; (PDF).  Slide 12 has a particularly compelling statement, especially given the complexity of the situation, and the attempt of uninformed people to simplify the situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although many analysts have tried in the past 15 years to point to a single factor theory, the general consensus remains that the shoot down of Iran Flight 655 was caused by a multitude of factors. In the interests of time, we have attempted to simplify those factors into two main categories: Human error and Mishaps due to the human/system interface. By human error, I mean poor decision making and erroneous expectancies and other psychological factors that contributed to an inaccurate portrayal of the actual situation. Many human errors were directly caused by deficiencies in the Vincennes’ automated system as well as a lack of training that led to faulty interpretation of data and more errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You specifically ask: &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Is it possible for AEGIS with most advanced radar system ever put on a ship, not to be able tell a difference between an F-14 and twice as large Airbus A300?&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; to which the answer is absolutely!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA316956&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The AEGIS is not an &lt;em&gt;imaging&lt;/em&gt; radar&lt;/a&gt;.  As such, when a return is received by the system, and attempts to identify a target, there are numerous geometries to consider.  As such, an A300 and an F-14 could give a return that doesn't classify the aircraft by type, but rather by a radar cross section which will be dynamic based on the flight profile of the aircraft.  As such, a nose on picture of an A300 may easily be confused for a beam profile of an F-14.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://navysite.de/weapons/aegis.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The AEGIS system didn't receive the baseline 6 upgrade that allowed it to perform non-cooperative target recognition until 1994&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.org/man//dod-101/sys/ship/docs/cg_14-93.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;from a program started in 1992&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, the AEGIS radar system was developed in the early 1970s.  This event occurred in 1988.  You are attributing a level of technology to the event that is disproportionate compared to today's technology.  Even though the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/systems/an-spy-1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AN/SBY-1&lt;/a&gt; is currently in use, that doesn't mean that the system hasn't undergone numerous changes since then.  And even still, the system has specific limitations.  As slide 15 shows, they are many, and in some cases severe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iMq6v.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iMq6v.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Slide 15&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;System Deficiencies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aegis not intended for small-craft battle in enclosed area like Persian Gulf&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Combat Information Center (CIC) provided no actual view of the area&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CIC was dark, and its few lights flickered every time the Vincennes fired at speedboats&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Electronic and verbal confusion in CIC&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IFF device had to be manually reset&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Papers and book flew off consoles as ship swung around to bring guns to bear on speedboats&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Radar displays violated Proximity Compatibility Principle (Wickens and Hollands, 2000)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Duplicate tracking numbers with no computer alert (Fisher, 2001)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;And to tell you about what was going on, I would like to talk about the deficiencies of the system itself. And by system, I don't simply mean the Aegis computer. I mean the complete interaction between man and machine. A little bit of the Human Centered System Approach would have gone a long way in this case. First, the Aegis cruisers were not designed for small-craft battles in the enclosed areas like the Persian Gulf. Instead, they were designed for all-out battles in the open sea with the Soviet Union. So that was a problem, especially when trying to track and fire upon those annoying little speedboats. The CIC also provided no actual view, no actual video, of the area and the situation outside. Dials and displays are nice, but it is also helpful to bring some reality to the area where the decisions are made. The CIC was also very dark, and the few lights it did have flickered every time the Vincennes fired at the speedboats. This was of special concern to Petty Officer Andrew Anderson, who first picked up Flight 655 on radar and thought it might be a commercial aircraft. As he was searching in the navy's listing of commercial flights, he apparently missed Flight 655 because it was so dark. There was a great deal of electronic and verbal confusion in the CIC as well. Capt Rogers and his key commanders where linked on a certain communications circuit. However, over half of the crew on the Vincennes had figured out a way to &amp;quot;tap into&amp;quot; the circuit to listen to everything that was going on. This drained the power on the circuit and forced some Lt to switch the frequency every now and then and call out &amp;quot;switch!&amp;quot; as loudly as he could while doing it. One problem that could have prevented the entire disaster also had to with Petty Officer Anderson. The first time he had beamed out his IFF query to the departing airplane, he had received back the signature of a commercial airplane. However, after someone had shouted out that it could be an F-14, Anderson used his IFF again, but this time received back the signature of a military airplane. Investigators later figured out that Anderson had forgotten to reset the range on the IFF device that he used and was actually getting back the signature of a military airplane on the ground in the Bandar Abbas airport, which begs the question: Why on earth should he have had to manually switch the range on his IFF device? Why couldn't it automatically switch itself? Nevertheless, that occurred, and then one of the forward guns jam med, and in an attempt to turn the ship around, the rapid movement forced all of the papers, books, and charts in the CIC to go flying off the tables. Two final comments about the system: the radar displays violated the Proximity Compatibility Principle. One device displaying the airplane's location was in a completely separate place fro m the device that described the plane's vertical action, adding to the confusion and errors. Finally, it was discovered that although the Aegis system can track several hundred objects in the air, it reuses its tracking numbers and can sometimes switch the tracking numbers of planes without any warning, which is what might have happened to the Vincennes according to a 2001 report by C. W. Fisher.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These limitations agree with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_19776_6-disasters-caused-by-poorly-designed-user-interfaces.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cracked article&lt;/a&gt; as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the comments section, you assert:  &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;AEGIS is computerized, so it should contain radar signatures recognition&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; as well as &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;I do know how classifiers work. On images, sound, SONAR, RADAR, whatever.. And it's not some crappy airport radar, we're talking about one of most modern phased array radars&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; However, I would contend that you don't know how the AEGIS radar of 1988 worked.  Especially given the thorough outline of the system interface as discussed in slide 15 as well as the Cracked article.  And again, it doesn't matter what sort of resolution or differentiation the radar itself can make if the cursor and display do not present that information.  The humans in the equation can still make mistakes, which seems to be the overall conclusion of MIT, international courts, and experts in the field.  You seem to be conflating the capabilities of the AEGIS radar as it stands today, &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/details/bispectralmethod109452422/page/n7/mode/2up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;given advances we have made since 1988&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="29579" LastEditDate="2022-10-02T07:42:40.260" LastActivityDate="2022-10-02T07:42:40.260" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9797" CreationDate="2012-06-13T13:59:12.407" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The debate over if red wine had benefits for the heart or other areas of the body focuses around the current debate over the supposed health benefits of the natural phenol Resveratrol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/phytochemicals/resveratrol/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Linus Pauling Institute OSU&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although resveratrol can inhibit the growth of cancer cells in culture and in some animal models, it is not known whether high intakes of resveratrol can prevent cancer in humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moderate alcohol consumption has been consistently associated with 20-30% reductions in coronary heart disease risk, but it is not yet clear whether red wine polyphenols, such as resveratrol, confer any additional risk reduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that they used the word &lt;strong&gt;associated&lt;/strong&gt; in the above quote meaning that there could be any number of other factors that are not measured in scientific study that could influence this correlation (Eg. moderate alcohol consumption may lower stress and lower stress improves heart health?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Socioeconomic and lifestyle differences between people who prefer wine and those who prefer beer or liquor may explain part of the additional benefit observed in some studies. Several studies have found that people who prefer wine tend to have higher incomes, more education, smoke less, and eat more fruits and vegetables and less saturated fat than people who prefer other alcoholic beverages&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the mass media hype surrounding the potential health benefits of red wine, and various &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugs.com/clinical_trials/sirtris-announces-positive-results-proprietary-version-resveratrol-srt501-phase-1b-type-2-diabetes-3127.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;press releases by pharmeceutical companies&lt;/a&gt; surrounding the supposed benefits, this study has never been published in a peer reviewed scientific journal, so claims made here cannot be taken seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all, there may be some truth to this, as high dosages of resveratrol had positive effects in lab mice, but so far nobody can really say for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6794" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T14:12:51.220" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9762" CreationDate="2012-06-13T14:30:18.077" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlikely but possible according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanpregnancy.org/preventingpregnancy/pregnancyfaqmyths.html&quot;&gt;http://www.americanpregnancy.org/preventingpregnancy/pregnancyfaqmyths.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can sperm travel through clothing or material? If the clothing was completely saturated with semen and was in direct contact with a woman’s vagina, there is a very slight chance the sperm could enter the vagina, but this is highly unlikely. No conclusive studies have been found to give a definite answer on this possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I can't find any cited cases, it seems that it's physiologically possible with close contact - ejaculation directly on or near the vaginal area, or ejaculation spread onto the vaginal area by clothing. Sperm loses potency quickly outside the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7512" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-13T20:22:27.927" LastActivityDate="2012-06-13T20:22:27.927" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9805" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9963" CreationDate="2012-06-13T18:38:12.057" Score="19" ViewCount="7563" Body="&lt;p&gt;This famous painting by Ivan Aivazovsky is called &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ninth_Wave&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Ninth Wave&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/Aivazovsky%2C_Ivan_-_The_Ninth_Wave.jpg/320px-Aivazovsky%2C_Ivan_-_The_Ninth_Wave.jpg&quot;/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia tells about the origin of the name:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both English and Russian titles refer to the nautical tradition that waves grow larger and larger in a series up to the largest wave, the ninth (or tenth) wave, at which point the series starts again&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true? Is there any short-period pattern in the ocean waves' strength?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:38.593" LastActivityDate="2023-08-09T00:54:30.630" Title="Is the ninth wave the largest?" Tags="|physics|oceanography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9809" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9814" CreationDate="2012-06-11T19:07:25.243" Score="5" ViewCount="1118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently came across a claim that the earth's geomagnetism will change and all the electronics devices will be disrupted due to the Sun's magnetic pole change, as described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;v=27ji-NL2Pb4&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;.  Additionally, the claim is that all electronics on earth will no longer function correctly because of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7598" OwnerDisplayName="arun" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-14T06:25:34.323" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T22:54:34.240" Title="Will the Sun's magnetic activity disrupt electronics on Earth?" Tags="|physics|electromagnetism|astronomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9809" CreationDate="2012-06-14T11:40:44.273" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/spaceweather/#q13&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NASA - Do space weather effects / solar storms affect Earth?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7qDHd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Solar Storm&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modern society depends on a variety of technologies susceptible to the extremes of space weather&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Strong electrical currents driven along the Earth’s surface during auroral events disrupt electric power grids and contribute to the corrosion of oil and gas pipelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Changes in the ionosphere during geomagnetic storms interfere with high-frequency radio communications and Global Positioning System (GPS) navigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;During polar cap absorption events caused by solar protons, radio communications can be compromised for commercial airliners on transpolar crossing routes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exposure of spacecraft to energetic particles during solar energetic particle events and radiation belt enhancements cause temporary operational anomalies, damage critical electronics, degrade solar arrays, and blind optical systems such as imagers and star trackers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Human and robotic explorers across the solar system are also affected by solar activity. Research has shown, in a worst-case scenario, astronauts exposed to solar particle radiation can reach their permissible exposure limits within hours of the onset of an event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Surface- to-orbit and surface-to-surface communications are sensitive to space weather storms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/NOAAscales/index.html#GeomagneticStorms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOAA Space Weather Scales&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;click link for bigger image&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fDKDH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;NOAA Scale&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Just recently, &lt;strong&gt;in March 2012, a solar storm hit earth&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/story/2012-03-08/solar-storm-earth/53414948/1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;USA Today&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/solar-storm-peaks-at-strong-level-inside-space-weather-forecasting/2012/03/09/gIQAfQBQ1R_blog.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Washington Post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/03/solar-flares-2012-another-storm-coming/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ABC News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17295337&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It peaked as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News030712-X5-4.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;G-3 level&lt;/strong&gt; storm&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinode/news/pole-asymmetry.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sun's Polar Change&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Approximately every 11 years the magnetic field on the sun reverses&#xA;completely&lt;/strong&gt; – the north magnetic pole switches to south, and vice&#xA;versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Solar Cycle&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3t2ze.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Solar Cycle&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hathaway_Cycle_24_Prediction_%28Feb_2011%29.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NASA - 2012: Beginning of the End or Why the World Won't End?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q:&lt;/strong&gt; Is there a danger from giant solar storms predicted for 2012?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Solar activity has a regular cycle, with peaks approximately every 11&#xA;years. Near these activity peaks, solar flares can cause some&#xA;interruption of satellite communications, although engineers are&#xA;learning how to build electronics that are protected against most&#xA;solar storms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is no special risk associated with 2012. &lt;strong&gt;The&#xA;next solar maximum will occur in the 2012-2014 time frame and is&#xA;predicted to be an average solar cycle, no different than previous&#xA;cycles throughout history.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;History&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Carrington Event&lt;/strong&gt; (1859)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The strongest geomagnetic storm on record is the Carrington Event of August-September 1859&lt;/strong&gt;, named after British astronomer Richard Carrington.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A contemporary repetition of the Carrington Event would cause … extensive social and economic disruptions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;,&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12507&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a NASA-funded study&lt;/a&gt; by the &lt;em&gt;National Academy of Sciences&lt;/em&gt; entitled &lt;em&gt;Severe Space Weather Events—Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts&lt;/em&gt; warns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Power outages would be accompanied by radio blackouts and satellite malfunctions; telecommunications, GPS navigation, banking and finance, and transportation would all be affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some problems would correct themselves with the fading of the storm: radio and GPS transmissions could come back online fairly quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other problems would be lasting: a burnt-out multi-ton transformer, for instance, can take weeks or months to repair. &lt;strong&gt;The total economic impact in the first year alone could reach $2 trillion&lt;/strong&gt;, some 20 times greater than the costs of a Hurricane Katrina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VQUP6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Interdependency&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/21jan_severespaceweather/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_1989_geomagnetic_storm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quebec&lt;/strong&gt; (1989)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In March &lt;strong&gt;1989, a solar storm&lt;/strong&gt; much less intense than the perfect space&#xA;storm of 1859 caused the &lt;strong&gt;Hydro-Quebec (Canada) power grid to go down&#xA;for over nine hours&lt;/strong&gt;, and the resulting damages and loss in revenue&#xA;were estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2003/23oct_superstorm/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The sun's magnetic field is flipping frequently (about every 11 years)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, this can cause problems on earth. It obviously depends on how strong the solar storm is (see &lt;em&gt;NOAA scale&lt;/em&gt; above)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/29may_noaaprediction/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;predictions&lt;/a&gt; for the current &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle_24&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Solar Cycle 24&lt;/a&gt; are not unusually alarming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120308-solar-flare-storm-sun-space-weather-science-aurora/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Geographic - What If Biggest Known Sun Storm Hit Today?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/sun_darkness.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quebec 1989 -The Day the Sun Brought Darkness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T12:38:17.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9815" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9831" CreationDate="2012-06-14T11:43:04.410" Score="9" ViewCount="4839" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://russiapedia.rt.com/prominent-russians/history-and-mythology/princess-olga-of-kiev/&quot;&gt;legend&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The last vengeance took place in the year 946 when Olga traveled&#xA;  around the land of the Drevlyans in order to gather tributes. She&#xA;  besieged the town of Iskorosten, which refused to pay her. According&#xA;  to legend, the Princess asked that each household present her with a&#xA;  dove as a gift. Then she tied burning papers to the legs of the doves&#xA;  and let them fly back to their homes. As a result, the entire town was&#xA;  destroyed by fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_of_Kiev&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; has the same story, but with sulphur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Drevlians begged for mercy and offered to pay for their freedom&#xA;  with honey and furs. She asked for three pigeons and three sparrows&#xA;  from each house, since she did not want to burden the villagers any&#xA;  further after the siege. They were happy to comply with such a&#xA;  reasonable request. Now Olga gave to each soldier in her army a pigeon&#xA;  or a sparrow, and ordered them to attach by thread to each pigeon and&#xA;  sparrow a piece of sulfur bound with small pieces of cloth. When night&#xA;  fell, Olga bade her soldiers release the pigeons and the sparrows. So&#xA;  the birds flew to their nests, the pigeons to the cotes, and the&#xA;  sparrows under the eaves. The dove-cotes, the coops, the porches, and&#xA;  the haymows were set on fire. There was not a house that was not&#xA;  consumed, and it was impossible to extinguish the flames, because all&#xA;  the houses caught on fire at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, this is exaggerated. However, is it a feasible method of burning down a house and is there any evidence that this event actually occurred?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="188" LastEditDate="2012-06-14T13:31:05.743" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T20:32:12.053" Title="Would tying sulphur to the feet of birds allow you to burn down a house?" Tags="|chemistry|war|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9815" CreationDate="2012-06-14T16:16:14.653" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saintalbans.org.au/protectrural.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Houses burning down from flying embers&lt;/a&gt; is a very real event, and there is evidence from various eras of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/greatfire.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;vast sections of cities burning down&lt;/a&gt; due to a fire in one building - as they didn't have fire safety codes back then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question really is about whether a bird with a burning package tied to its leg (out of a flock of similarly burdened birds) will land on a house (or possibly fly over a house, and the burning package drop from its leg onto a flammable roof)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Panic behaviour in different types of birds varies, but most tend to flocking and some will return to their nests, so this combination could give good reason to believe that the birds (which came from the town) would fly homewards with the burning embers attached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find any information on whether birds with fire attached will flock together or will spread apart (needs a study?) but flocking to a small area can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raymond.cc/blog/swarm-of-birds-take-out-tree-see-to-believe/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;destructive enough&lt;/a&gt; without fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update from Chad's comment - Sulfur in itself will not spontaneously combust, so if the packages were just sulfur but not burning, this seems incredibly unlikely, despite sulfur being  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scienceviews.com/geology/sulfur.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;very easy to light&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="619" LastEditDate="2012-06-15T13:08:32.853" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T13:08:32.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1855" CreationDate="2012-06-14T17:02:19.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;And to show that Stuxnet definitely wasn't just a one off - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/06/11/new-research-shows-flame-malware-was-almost-certainly-a-u-s-or-israeli-creation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flame&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It links to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.securelist.com/en/blog/208193568/Back_to_Stuxnet_the_missing_link&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kaspersky article&lt;/a&gt; that discusses evidence that Stuxnet and Flame are linked, possibly commissioned by the same team, and how Flame is a spying weapon designed to extract sensitive information from Iran.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The long term aspects (2009 to the present) and the scale of Flame (over 20Mb framework for delivery of code, retrieval of data and compromise of systems) show just how much investment has been made into the 'cyber' aspect of war, and these are just the ones we know about!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastActivityDate="2012-06-14T17:02:19.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9826" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-15T10:17:09.880" Score="16" ViewCount="5083" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a story, widely circulated on the Russian internet, Nike (or Adidas, or any other major footwear manufacturer) faced a problem of pilfering on their new factories somewhere in the Third World.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When standard methods (increased security etc.) yielded no result, they contracted a freelance problem solver, who, after a brief thought, offered them to split production of left and right shoes across factories in two different countries. They did it and pilfering stopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is usually presented as a good example of &quot;thought outside the box&quot;, along with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp&quot;&gt;NASA space pen&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/innovate.asp&quot;&gt;elevator on the outer wall&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it as false as those?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T07:10:34.440" Title="Does Nike produce left and right shoes in different countries?" Tags="|manufacturing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9792" CreationDate="2012-06-15T11:48:21.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the beginning Bandler&amp;amp;Grinder proclaimed in &lt;em&gt;The Structure of Magic&lt;/em&gt; that if a person access a visual memory they will always glance upwards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today the NLP folks don't make that claim anymore. Nowadays arguing against the orginial claim is like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/is-nature-presenting-the-whole-story-about-south-korea/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arguing&lt;/a&gt; against outdated evolutionary evidence in South Korean textbooks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead the page you quoted says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;It would be lovely if we could take this map and know instantly what a person is doing internally. But people differ and not everyone will have the same pattern. Treat this diagram as a starting point only - and use your &lt;strong&gt;NLP observation skills&lt;/strong&gt; to establish what they do.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the truth of the original claim goes there's a paper called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kevinhogan.com/NLPeyeaccess.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NLP Eye Accessing Cues: Uncovering the Myth&lt;/a&gt; by Kevin Hogan. In it Kevin shows that the way Kevin understood the original claim, the original claim is false. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NLP community believes that Kevin misunderstood the claim. According to them the sentences that Kevin used in his experiments wouldn't cause people to reliably think of a visual or auditory stimulus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim that's currently believed by the NLP community is hard to test in a scientific setting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need objective knowledge about whether someone thinks of an image, a sound or a feeling. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need subjects who are trained in NLP observation skills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You need somehow to eliminate the possibility that your subject use other means than Eye assessing cues in figuring out what the other person thinks. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge no study that satisfies those concerns exists today. Most people in the NLP community don't care about academia and most people in academia don't care about NLP. You need people from both settings to fulfill those 3 criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="6876" LastEditDate="2012-06-15T13:38:36.700" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T13:38:36.700" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9828" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-15T14:09:23.333" Score="20" ViewCount="18342" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596550/&quot;&gt;White Collar TV Episode Bottlenecked&lt;/a&gt; it was claimed that a test of all vintage wines bottled before the ABomb would not contain any Cesium-137 but wine bottled in the years since all contain detectable amounts of Cesium-137.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A search shows this could be plausible.  But none of the sites I have found that explore this trope cite any reputable references for there claims of &lt;a href=&quot;http://hendriekusr.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/authenticity/&quot;&gt;true&lt;/a&gt;.  I can understand that if it is present that then you can say that the wine is not pre 1940's but is there any proof that the Cesium shows up in all wine bottled since?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://epa.gov/rpdweb00/radionuclides/cesium.html#environment&quot;&gt;The EPA site&lt;/a&gt; says that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cesium-137 in the environment came from a variety of sources. The&#xA;  largest single source was fallout from atmospheric nuclear weapons&#xA;  tests in the 1950s and 1960s, which dispersed and deposited cesium-137&#xA;  world-wide. However much of the cesium-137 from testing has now&#xA;  decayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it possible that a bottle of wine bottled since 1950 would pass a Cesium-137 test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-06-15T14:23:25.703" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T14:49:42.167" Title="Is Cesium-137 detectable in all wine bottled after the 1940's?" Tags="|chemistry|radiation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9828" CreationDate="2012-06-15T14:49:42.167" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing it's based on the paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168900207009606&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From the mass of the neutrino to the dating of wine&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; from scientists at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cenbg.in2p3.fr/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Centre Etudes Nucléaires de Bordeaux Gradignan&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This technique has therefore led to &lt;strong&gt;the possibility to date the wine bottles having vintage between 1950 and 1980 or at least to control the year written on the label or on the cork&lt;/strong&gt;. Furthermore, it has been shown that it is not necessary to open the bottle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5cziZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Caesium 137&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most interesting&#xA;  aspect is the &lt;strong&gt;presence of peaks of activity&lt;/strong&gt;, which&#xA;  show that the &lt;strong&gt;wine keeps in memory the&#xA;  atmospheric nuclear testing (years 1950-1963) and&#xA;  the accident of Chernobyl (1986)&lt;/strong&gt;, which in both&#xA;  cases led to the presence on French soil of&#xA;  measurable amounts of cesium 137.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a strong correlation between the&#xA;  rate of cesium 137 decay and the year the wine&#xA;  was produced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is obvious that such a curve can&#xA;  be exploited as of now to estimate the age of a&#xA;  given wine, and to detect any possible anomalies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For example, a 1930 vintage wine should not&#xA;  contain cesium 137. Conversely, an unknown wine&#xA;  in which activities of about 1 Bq/l or more of&#xA;  cesium 137 are measured can only correspond to&#xA;  the year 1963.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cenbg.in2p3.fr/heberge/DDV/Wine_dating2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7755014.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC News - Wine makers crack open hi-tech tricks&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2008/sep/29/proton-beam-technique-dates-fine-wine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PhysicsWorld - Proton-beam technique dates fine wine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.decanter.com/news/wine-news/483617/new-atomic-bomb-test-can-detect-vintage-fraud&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Decanter - New 'atomic bomb' test can detect vintage fraud&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2012-06-15T14:49:42.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9830" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-15T15:49:47.630" Score="25" ViewCount="22221" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is widely &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Science/Question1104234.html&quot;&gt;believed&lt;/a&gt; that paper blunts scissors. But it is difficult to imagine why paper should be more harmful than say hair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is paper really any worse for scissors than hair, or any other object?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7539" LastEditorUserId="6598" LastEditDate="2012-06-15T22:08:37.030" LastActivityDate="2019-11-08T10:32:17.803" Title="Does paper blunt scissors?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9815" CreationDate="2012-06-15T17:58:20.527" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Russian Wikipedia says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;после безуспешной осады в течение лета Ольга сожгла город с помощью птиц, к ногам которых велела привязать зажжённую паклю с серой.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means that pieces of cloth (which is not cloth actually) were set on fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my first idea was that sulphur could create fire because of friction, like when birds fly or land in the nest pieces of suplhur rub against each other and produce flame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;I have found a part in Primary Chronicle (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_Chronicle&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_Chronicle&lt;/a&gt;) about the vengeance of Olga and it says that every bird had a tinder tied to its leg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Древляне же с радостью вошли в город и поведали обо всем людям, и обрадовались люди в городе. Ольга же, раздав воинам - кому по голубю, кому по воробью, приказала привязывать каждому голубю и воробью трут, завертывая его в небольшие платочки и прикрепляя ниткой к каждому. И, когда стало смеркаться, приказала Ольга своим воинам пустить голубей и воробьев. Голуби же и воробьи полетели в свои гнезда: голуби в голубятни, а воробьи под стрехи, и так загорелись - где голубятни, где клети, где сараи и сеновалы, и не было двора, где бы не горело, и нельзя было гасить, так как сразу загорелись все дворы.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally I have found an &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.ku.edu/~russcult/culture/handouts/chronicle_all.html#olga&quot;&gt;english translation of this chapter&lt;/a&gt;. It starts in the year of 6454 (946), paragraph 7 (by the way there is typo - year 8454 instead of 6454):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now Olga gave to each soldier in her army a pigeon or a sparrow, and&#xA;  ordered them to attach by a thread to each pigeon and sparrow a match&#xA;  bound with small pieces of cloth. When night fell, Olga bade her&#xA;  soldiers release the pigeons and the sparrows. So the birds few to&#xA;  their nests, the pigeons to the cotes, and the sparrows under the&#xA;  eaves. Thus the dovecotes, the coops, the porches, and the haymows&#xA;  were set on fire. There was not a house that was not consumed, and it&#xA;  was impossible to extinguish the flames, because all the houses caught&#xA;  fire at once. The people fled from the city, and Olga ordered her&#xA;  soldiers to catch them. Thus she took the city and burned it, and&#xA;  captured the elders of the city. Some of the other captives she&#xA;  killed, while she gave others as slaves to her followers. The remnant&#xA;  she left to pay tribute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is only a mistake in english version of text in wikipedia and Rory Alsop was right with the idea of birds carrying ember.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7542" LastEditorUserId="7542" LastEditDate="2012-06-16T09:46:58.877" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T09:46:58.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9832" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-15T19:05:56.973" Score="15" ViewCount="3426" Body="&lt;p&gt;Eating placenta has become &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/some-mothers-see-health-benefits-in-eating-their-placenta-after-giving-birth/2012/04/02/gIQAVfgLrS_story.html&quot;&gt;really popular&lt;/a&gt;, especially since Mad Men star &lt;a href=&quot;http://celebritybabies.people.com/2012/03/23/mad-men-january-jones-placenta-capsules-not-witch-crafty/&quot;&gt;January Jones spoke to People Magazine&lt;/a&gt; about her own choice to have her son's placenta freeze dried and put into pill capsules.  I have a lot of pregnant friends who plan on turning theirs into pills or consuming them in some other fashion.  There are claims that it helps boost milk production, aid in healing, and alleviates postpartum depression &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bellybelly.com.au/post-natal/placenta-encapsulation-benefits-of-eating-your-placenta#2&quot;&gt;among other things&lt;/a&gt;.  Is there scientific evidence that this is true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-16T16:18:25.260" LastActivityDate="2016-04-12T14:35:31.623" Title="Does eating her newborn's placenta relieve a mother's postpartum symptoms?" Tags="|natural-remedies|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9836" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9844" CreationDate="2012-06-16T07:19:17.690" Score="43" ViewCount="5935" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_rich_get_richer_and_the_poor_get_poorer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; page&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The rich get richer and the poor get poorer&quot; is a catchphrase and proverb, frequently used (with variations in wording) in discussing economic inequality. Its most common use is as a synopsis of a socialist criticism of the free market system (Capitalism), implying the inevitability of what Karl Marx called the Law of Increasing Poverty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Was Karl Marx correct, do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this true in the USA, for example?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2012-06-16T17:16:50.230" LastActivityDate="2015-09-28T12:58:30.340" Title="Do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9830" CreationDate="2012-06-16T12:10:07.203" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt; Unless you're only using them to cut paper. Then you probably won't notice for decades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the provided link...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All females say that paper blunts scissors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All men say 'Impossible'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This part is straight forward....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The females are using the scissors as a tool in a specific&#xA;application; cutting hair, fabric, or anything that requires accuracy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The men just want to cut whatever happens to need cutting (paper,&#xA;cardboard, duct-tape, tin, wire, thin rocks, etc.) with whatever&#xA;tool is close at hand. Any foul-ups in accuracy can be fixed with&#xA;more duct-tape.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cheapest pair of children's safety scissors will cut paper and, as many parents know full well, they will also cut hair (and most fabrics). &lt;strong&gt;Very poorly.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scissors cut things! Don't mix up scissors that you use for fabric&#xA;with scissors that you use to cut paper because fabric scissors are a&#xA;lot better when they are super sharp and paper dulls scissors. You&#xA;won't notice it too much on paper because you can still cut paper with&#xA;really dull scissors, but when you go back to cutting fabric, you'll&#xA;have a sad face! &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thingiverse.com/tool:71&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;-source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not cut anything else other than fabric or thread with your&#xA;favorite sewing scissors/shears. Especially paper dulls blades very&#xA;fast ==&amp;gt; there is nothing more frustrating and tiring to your hand&#xA;than using dull scissors. Non-sharp scissors can damage fabric. Your&#xA;cutting accuracy will also be affected if the scissors/shears are&#xA;trying to chew through the fabric rather than cut through it.&#xA;&lt;em&gt;...snip...&lt;/em&gt; trusted sharpening companies to do this as once messed up scissors will only be good for paper cutting jobs after. &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsuzsybee.hubpages.com/hub/Sewing-Scissors-Scissors-Basics-for-Every-Sewing-Task&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;-source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Super sharp&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; is key. Fabric and hair are thin &amp;quot;floppy&amp;quot; fibers that bend out of the way easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The steel of the scissors is of course very hard. However, it is important to note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A sharp edge is a thin edge.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it is the edge that is easily blunted by the minerals found in most paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are four popular minerals used in paper filling and coating:&#xA;kaolin clay, calcium carbonate (available as ground or precipitated),&#xA;titanium dioxide and talc. Both titanium dioxide and talc, however,&#xA;are consumed in small quantities for special applications where&#xA;extreme whiteness and opacity, or pitch control are required. Hence,&#xA;the workhorse minerals employed in the paper industry today are&#xA;precipitated and ground calcium carbonates and kaolin clay.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.specialtyminerals.com/paper/why-are-minerals-used-in-paper/why-is-pcc-preferred-in-paper/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;-source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Barium Sulfate and Precipitated Calcium Carbonate (typical fillers)&#xA;have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/387714/Mohs-hardness&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mohs-Hardness&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;strong&gt;~3.0&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Titanium Dioxide (used to increase opacity &amp;amp; brightness) has a&#xA;hardness of &lt;strong&gt;~5.75&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A copper penny has a hardness of &lt;strong&gt;~3.2&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cutting up copper pennies will most assuredly dull scissors.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;em&gt;(The progression from 3 to 4 on the Mohs scale reflects an increase in hardness of approximately 25 percent. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/387714/Mohs-hardness&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;-source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Bottom Line&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a guy that sharpens stuff for a living...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caution!    Tools I Sharpen Will Be Extremely Sharp! They Must Be Handled With Awareness.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are uncomfortable using &lt;strong&gt;extremely sharp scissors or shears you&#xA;can easily reduce their sharpness.&lt;/strong&gt; If your shears are stylist, barber&#xA;or grooming shears &lt;strong&gt;simply cut on a paper towel&lt;/strong&gt; until the sharpness is&#xA;reduced to a level you are comfortable with. If your shears are for&#xA;cutting fabric or other materials &lt;strong&gt;make several cuts on a piece of 20&#xA;pound copier paper&lt;/strong&gt; until you are comfortable. Razors or surgical&#xA;scissors should never be reduced in sharpness. They should be&#xA;maintained to extreme sharpness in relation to their intended&#xA;procedure. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fastsharp.com/Shears___Scissors.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;-source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Postscript&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My wife and I have a simple agreement...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't cut paper (or anything else) with her fabric shears and she&#xA;doesn't cut up flagstones with my chainsaw.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T12:10:07.203" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9832" CreationDate="2012-06-16T12:46:01.110" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The eating of placenta is widespread in the mammalian kingdom - virtually all mammalian species do it (with humans, camels, llamas and alpacas being the notable exceptions). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find studies looking at the affect of postpartum placenta eating in human females, however there are a couple out there looking at animals instead. Notably, there's a couple of studies in rats showing that placenta eating increases the analgesic effect of opiates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On longer term benefits to the mother, it has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-4877.2006.00016.x/abstract;jsessionid=0D2807A2910A444C0BEB34BEC62A9C63.d03t02&quot;&gt;shown in dairy cows&lt;/a&gt; that placenta eating enables the mother to become fertile sooner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any sound studies on whether placenta eating increases milk production, decreases the chances of depression or aids in healing. I have also heard that it's supposed to reduce the chance of the mother becoming anaemic (as it contains so much iron). However, there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reproduction-online.org/content/60/2/273.short&quot;&gt;study in rats&lt;/a&gt; which shows that eating placenta does have an affect on hormone concentrations in the blood, so this would be a viable mechanism by which these effects occur. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frustratingly, as I am more of a lurker than a contributor, I have been caught out by the spam filter and can only post two links. I've chosen the two I think most useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to add: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon reading the dairy cow study closely, it seems that the cows were fed dried and ground placenta. This is interesting as it shows that the hormones in the placenta survive the drying process (so long as the hormones aren't denatured - they explicitly state they kept the temperature below 50 degrees C). This shows that there could be a basis for a woman having her placenta dried and put into capsules, however the cows ate up to 18kg of placenta over a period of a month. This is about 6 times the mass of a cow's placenta tissue, so is rather a lot! An average human placenta weights around 500g and so it could be assumed would contain a significantly smaller amount of hormone and the effects of eating one human placenta would probably be less. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7550" LastEditorUserId="7550" LastEditDate="2012-08-06T20:24:58.223" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T20:24:58.223" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9839" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9845" CreationDate="2012-06-16T13:04:37.110" Score="3" ViewCount="1631" Body="&lt;p&gt;Besides what a government can obviously do: listen to live conversations, know my approximate location, read my SMS and look at my unencrypted internet traffic, people claim that some phones could be silently turned on, record sound from the microphone and send the recording. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this ever been documented?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7551" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-16T15:36:20.120" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T06:40:31.607" Title="Have cell phones ever been used as microphones by a government?" Tags="|consumer-products|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9841" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-16T14:43:20.517" Score="11" ViewCount="2663" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the pale blue dot Earth in the image taken by Voyager? What I'm wondering is, why is there no other thing visible in the frame(like sun, other planets etc.,). How is the camera able to capture only Earth ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/t6NbG.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2434" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-16T15:20:17.753" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T18:22:58.130" Title="Is the pale blue dot Earth?" Tags="|physics|astronomy|earth|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9841" CreationDate="2012-06-16T15:38:57.683" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the answer is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;-Douglas Adams, Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing else is visible in the frame simply because the angle of the image is too narrow to encompass other major objects in our solar system. The Earth is incredibly tiny compared to the Sun, to the point where &lt;em&gt;even if&lt;/em&gt; you zoom out far enough that it's a pale blue dot, you &lt;strong&gt;still&lt;/strong&gt; can't see the sun in the same image. However, if you zoom out &lt;strong&gt;even more&lt;/strong&gt;, you'll get something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mok1C.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Pale Blue Dot, Venus and the Sun&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00450&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Courtesy of NASA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a wider-angle image taken at about the same time, with the narrow-angle images of the Earth and Venus scaled and superimposed on it. The Pale Blue Dot image is all the way on the left (and rotated 90° relative to the usual presentation), with Venus in the middle and the Sun at the right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, &lt;strong&gt;every&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrery&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;orrery-style&lt;/a&gt; representation you have &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; seen that contains both a visible Earth and the entire Sun had the ratios blatantly wrong - the size of the Earth is absolutely miniscule relative to the size of the Sun, and the distance between the Earth and the Sun is absolutely gigantic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T18:22:58.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9836" CreationDate="2012-06-16T15:46:46.927" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbo.gov/publication/42729&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Everyone gets Richer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Growth in Real After-Tax Income from 1979-2007&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jM6o6.png&quot; alt=&quot;Real Dollars 1979-2007&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CBO finds that, between 1979 and 2007, income grew by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;275 percent for the top 1 percent of households,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;65 percent for the next 19 percent,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Just under 40 percent for the next 60 percent, and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;18 percent for the bottom 20 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, you might say that the &amp;quot;gap&amp;quot; increased. Unfortunately, these numbers don't take into account individual people who might be rich, they only look at the group as a whole. The people who make up that group change over time. If you are rich/poor one year, it doesn't follow that you will continue to be so the next year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't true of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/Documents/incomemobilitystudy03-08revise.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;individuals over time&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yoVPh.png&quot; alt=&quot;IndividualsQuintile-Distribtion&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The table shows a high degree of income mobility over this period. Nearly 58 percent of households (i.e., 57.6 = 100 – 42.4) in the lowest income quintile in 1996 had moved to a higher quintile by 2005.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Middle-income taxpayers also did well with respect to mobility across income quintiles in the population. A much larger portion moved up to a higher income quintile (42.1 percent = 29.6 +12.5) than dropped to a lower quintile (24.6 percent = 7.1 +17.5).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mobility of the top 1 percent of the income distribution is also important.  More than half (57.4 percent = 100 – 42.6) of the top 1 percent of households in 1996 had dropped to a lower income group by 2005&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't true between &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Economic_Mobility/PEW_Upward%20EM%2014.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;generations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gvf1t.png&quot; alt=&quot;Parent-Child Income Quintile&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the transition rates in Figure 1 showed that 33.5 percent remained in the bottom quintile, that implies that 66.5 percent (100 – 33.5 = 66.5) exceeded the bottom quintile, as shown in Table 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... 38 percent of those whose parents were in the top income quintile remain in the top quintile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-17T01:40:33.873" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9839" CreationDate="2012-06-16T16:10:29.170" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's certainly possible and it has happened in a few cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example of this happening, as reported by media:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029-6140191.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also mentions its sources, which we can check:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judge Jones&#xA;granted the application, authorizing continued interception at the&#xA;four restaurants and the installation of a listening device in&#xA;Ardito's cellular telephone. The device functioned whether the phone&#xA;was powered on or off, intercepting conversations within its range&#xA;wherever it happened to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politechbot.com/docs/fbi.ardito.roving.bug.opinion.120106.txt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UNITED STATES of America, v. John TOMERO, et al., Defendants.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second link points to an old NOAA page which warns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone. This is done by transmitting to the cell phone a maintenance command on the control channel. This command places the cellular telephone in the &amp;quot;diagnostic mode.&amp;quot; When this is done, conversations in the immediate area of the telephone can be monitored over the voice channel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dm.usda.gov/ocpm/Security%20Guide/V2comint/Cellular.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cellular Phones&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article has been removed by NOAA, and the link points to an USDA version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further on, we can find references to these bug existing back to 2004:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pvVh8.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Remote monitoring BBC&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mobile phones&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to security experts, the most common listening device remains the electronic bug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But government agencies such as the CIA and MI5 have far more advanced systems at their disposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3522137.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;'This goes no further...'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BBC also reports this happening at the United Nations (with my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But today's spies are also able to convert conventional phones into bugs without the owners' knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Experts believe this is the most likely method used to gather information in the UN building.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to some reports, intelligence services do not even need to obtain permission from the networks to get their hands on the codes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So provided it is switched on, a mobile sitting on the desk of a politician or businessman can act as a powerful, undetectable bug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to one security expert, telephone systems are often fitted with &amp;quot;back doors&amp;quot; enabling them to be activated at a later date to pick up sounds even when the receiver is down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T16:10:29.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9849" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10009" CreationDate="2012-06-16T16:12:00.453" Score="24" ViewCount="2904" Body="&lt;p&gt;How strong is the evidence for the argument made in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1594203075&quot;&gt;Willpower&lt;/a&gt; by Baumeister and Tierney?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically willpower (or better: &quot;self-control&quot;) is supposed to be proportional to the amount of glucose in your blood and if you use up the willpower, it takes time to replenish the resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robert Kurzban argues in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mind-design/201108/willpower-is-not-resource&quot;&gt;Psychology Today&lt;/a&gt; that it's false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an academic consensus about the issue? If so what's the current consensus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" OwnerDisplayName="Christian" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2015-11-20T20:46:33.900" LastActivityDate="2015-11-20T20:46:33.900" Title="Does willpower depend on the amount of glucose in the body?" Tags="|nutrition|psychology|physiology|willpower|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9849" CreationDate="2012-06-16T22:30:59.660" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there's a correlation and a causation. Here are 9 studies that prove it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The present work suggests that self-control relies on glucose as a limited energy source. Laboratory tests&#xA;  of self-control (i.e., the Stroop task, thought suppression, emotion regulation, attention control) and of&#xA;  social behaviors (i.e., helping behavior, coping with thoughts of death, stifling prejudice during an&#xA;  interracial interaction) showed that (a) acts of self-control reduced blood glucose levels, (b) low levels&#xA;  of blood glucose after an initial self-control task predicted poor performance on a subsequent self-control&#xA;  task, and (c) initial acts of self-control impaired performance on subsequent self-control tasks, but&#xA;  consuming a glucose drink eliminated these impairments. Self-control requires a certain amount of&#xA;  glucose to operate unimpaired. A single act of self-control causes glucose to drop below optimal levels,&#xA;  thereby impairing subsequent attempts at self-control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/~lchang/material/Evolutionary/Brain/Self-control%20relies%20on%20glucose%20as%20a%20limited%20energy%20source%20willpower%20Is%20more%20than%20a%20metaphor.pdf&quot;&gt;Self-Control Relies on Glucose as a Limited Energy Source: Willpower Is&#xA;More Than a Metaphor&lt;/a&gt; by Gailliot, et al., Journal of Pers and Soc Psycholy (2007), Vol. 92, No. 2, 325–336, DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.92.2.325&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Past research indicates that self-control relies on some sort of limited energy source. This review suggests that blood glucose is one important part of the energy source of self-control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psr.sagepub.com/content/11/4/303.short&quot;&gt;Unlocking the Energy Dynamics of Executive Functioning: Linking Executive Functioning to Brain Glycogen&lt;/a&gt; doi: 10.1111/j.1745-6924.2008.00077.x - &#xA;Persp on Psychol Sc, July 2008 vol. 3 no. 4 245-263&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This provides a different spin on it:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The strength model suggests that self-control relies on a limited resource. One candidate for this resource is glucose. Counter to the proposals of the glucose hypothesis, this study argues that the resource issue is one of allocation, not of limited supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21896791&quot;&gt;The Role of Glucose in Self-Control: Another Look at the Evidence and an Alternative Conceptualization&lt;/a&gt; - Pers Soc Psychol Rev May 1, 2012 16: 143-153&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Interpersonal provocation is a common and robust antecedent to aggression. Four studies identified angry rumination and reduced self-control as mechanisms underlying the provocation—aggression relationship. Following provocation, participants demonstrated decreased self-control on an unpleasant task relative to a control condition (Study 1). When provoked, rumination reduced self-control and increased aggression. This effect was mediated by reduced self-control capacity (Study 2). State rumination following provocation, but not anger per se, mediated the effect of trait rumination on aggression (Study 3). Bolstering self-regulatory resources by consuming a glucose beverage improved performance on a measure of inhibitory control following rumination (Study 4). These findings suggest that rumination following an anger-inducing provocation reduces self-control and increases aggression. Bolstering self-regulatory resources may reduce this adverse effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psp.sagepub.com/content/37/6/850.short&quot;&gt;Understanding Impulsive Aggression: Angry Rumination and Reduced Self-Control Capacity Are Mechanisms Underlying the Provocation-Aggression Relationship&lt;/a&gt; - &#xA;Pers Soc Psychol Bull June 1, 2011 37: 850-862&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Worthy of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.improbable.com/&quot;&gt;Annals of Improbable Research&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We test the&#xA;  common caricature of realism that justice is “what the judge ate&#xA;  for breakfast” in sequential parole decisions made by experienced&#xA;  judges. We record the judges’two daily food breaks, which result in&#xA;  segmenting the deliberations of the day into three distinct “decision sessions.” We ﬁnd that the percentage of favorable rulings&#xA;  drops gradually from ≈65% to nearly zero within each decision&#xA;  session and returns abruptly to ≈65% after a break. Our ﬁndings&#xA;  suggest that judicial rulings can be swayed by extraneous variables&#xA;  that should have no bearing on legal decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lsolum.typepad.com/files/danziger-levav-avnaim-pnas-2011.pdf&quot;&gt;Extraneous factors in judicial decisions&lt;/a&gt; - &#xA;Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA April 26, 2011 108: 6889-6892&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;These researchers prove reality is not so simple, after all:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Much recent research suggests that willpower—the capacity to exert self-control—is a limited resource that is depleted after &#xA;  exertion. We propose that whether depletion takes place or not depends on a person’s belief about whether willpower is &#xA;  a limited resource. Study 1 found that individual differences in lay theories about willpower moderate ego-depletion effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stanford.edu/~gwalton/home/Publications_files/Job,%20Dweck,%20%26%20Walton,%202010.pdf&quot;&gt;Ego Depletion--Is It All in Your Head?: Implicit Theories About Willpower Affect Self-Regulation&lt;/a&gt; - &#xA;Psychological Science November 1, 2010 21: 1686-1693&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A group of participants who drank a soft drink that contained sugar showed a reduced rate of future discounting afterward, when we controlled for sex, age, body mass index, and the taste of the drink. In contrast, a group of participants who drank a soft drink that contained artificial sweetener showed an increased rate of future discounting. Blood glucose levels not only varied as a result of caloric intake but also regulated the rate of future discounting, according to participants’ dynamic body-energy budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.usd.edu/~xtwang/Papers/Sweet%20Future%20%28Wang%20%26%20Dvorak%20PS%29.pdf&quot;&gt;Sweet Future: Fluctuating Blood Glucose Levels Affect Future Discounting&lt;/a&gt; - &#xA;Psychological Science February 1, 2010 21: 183-188&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Past work suggests that executive functioning relies on glucose as a depletable energy, such that executive functioning uses a relatively large amount of glucose and is impaired when glucose is low. Glucose from the bloodstream is one energy source for the brain, and glucose stored in the brain as glycogen is another. A review of the literature on glycogen suggests that executive functioning uses it in much the same way as glucose, such that executive functioning uses glycogen and is impaired when glycogen is low. Findings on stress, physical persistence, glucose tolerance, diabetes, sleep, heat, and other topics provide general support for this view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pps.sagepub.com/content/3/4/245.short&quot;&gt;Unlocking the Energy Dynamics of Executive Functioning: Linking Executive Functioning to Brain Glycogen&lt;/a&gt; - &#xA;Perspectives on Psychological Science July 1, 2008 3: 245-263&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This experiment used the attraction effect to&#xA;  test the hypothesis that ingestion of sugar can reduce reliance on intuitive, heuristic-based decision making. In the&#xA;  attraction effect, a difﬁcult choice between two options is&#xA;  swayed by the presence of a seemingly irrelevant ‘‘decoy’’&#xA;  option. We replicated this effect and the ﬁnding that the&#xA;  effect increases when people have depleted their mental&#xA;  resources performing a previous self-control task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://users.wfu.edu/masicaej/MasicampoBaumeister2008PsychSci.pdf&quot;&gt;Toward a Physiology of Dual-Process Reasoning and Judgment: Lemonade, Willpower, and Expensive Rule-Based Analysis&lt;/a&gt; - Psychological Science March 1, 2008 19: 255-260&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T22:30:59.660" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9849" CreationDate="2012-06-16T22:42:33.047" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can only quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.ca/The-Willpower-Instinct-Self-Control-Matters/dp/1583334386&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It&lt;/a&gt; by Kelly McGonigal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kelly McGonigal makes connection with glucose and willpower (claiming it is one of most energy demanding tasks) and also quotes the work of Baumeister from the book in question. She also notes that it's not direct relationship between glucose level in blood, but the direction of change of glucose level in blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;WHY IS SELF-CONTROL LIMITED?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Obviously we don’t have an actual self-control muscle hidden&#xA;  underneath our biceps, keeping our hands from reaching for dessert or&#xA;  our wallet. We do, however, have something like a self-control muscle&#xA;  in our brain. Even though the brain is an organ, not a muscle, it does&#xA;  get tired from repeated acts of self-control. Neuroscientists have&#xA;  found that with each use of willpower, the self-control system of the&#xA;  brain becomes less active. Just like a tired runner’s legs can give&#xA;  out, the brain seems to run out of the strength to keep going. Matthew&#xA;  Gailliot, a young psychologist working with Roy Baumeister, wondered&#xA;  whether a tired brain was essentially a problem of energy.&#xA;  Self-control is an energy-expensive task for the brain, and our&#xA;  internal energy supply is limited—after all, it’s not like we have an&#xA;  intravenous sugar drip into our prefrontal cortex. Gailliot asked&#xA;  himself: Could willpower exhaustion simply be the result of the brain&#xA;  running out of energy? To find out, he decided to test whether giving&#xA;  people energy—in the form of sugar—could restore exhausted willpower.&#xA;  He brought people into the laboratory to perform a wide range of&#xA;  self-control tasks, from ignoring distractions to controlling their&#xA;  emotions. Before and after each task, he measured their blood sugar&#xA;  levels. The more a person’s blood sugar dropped after a self-control&#xA;  task, the worse his performance on the next task. It appeared as if&#xA;  self-control was draining the body of energy, and this energy loss was&#xA;  weakening self-control. Gailliot then gave the willpower-drained&#xA;  participants a glass of lemonade. Half of them received&#xA;  sugar-sweetened lemonade to restore blood sugar; the other half&#xA;  received a placebo drink that was artificially sweetened and would not&#xA;  supply any usable energy. Amazingly, boosting blood sugar restored&#xA;  willpower. The participants who drank sugar-sweetened lemonade showed&#xA;  improved self-control, while the self-control of those who drank the&#xA;  placebo lemonade continued to deteriorate. Low blood sugar levels turn&#xA;  out to predict a wide range of willpower failures, from giving up on a&#xA;  difficult test to lashing out at others when you’re angry. Gailliot,&#xA;  now a professor at Zirve University in Turkey, has found that people&#xA;  with low blood sugar are also more likely to rely on stereotypes and&#xA;  less likely to donate money to charity or help a stranger. It is as if&#xA;  running low on energy biases us to be the worst versions of ourselves.&#xA;  In contrast, giving participants a sugar boost turns them back into&#xA;  the best versions of themselves: more persistent and less impulsive;&#xA;  more thoughtful and less selfish. Well, as you can imagine, this is&#xA;  just about the most best-received finding I’ve ever described in&#xA;  class. The implications are at once counterintuitive and delightful.&#xA;  Sugar is your new best friend. Eating a candy bar or drinking soda can&#xA;  be an act of self-control! (Or at least restoring self-control.) My&#xA;  students love these studies and are only too happy to test the&#xA;  hypothesis themselves. One student used a steady supply of Skittles to&#xA;  get through a difficult project. Another kept a tin of Altoids (one of&#xA;  the last breath mints to contain real sugar) in his pocket, popping&#xA;  them during long meetings to outlast his colleagues. I applaud their&#xA;  enthusiasm for translating science into action and empathize with&#xA;  their sweet tooth. And I even confess that for years, I brought candy&#xA;  to every Introduction to Psychology class, hoping to get the&#xA;  undergraduate students focused and off Facebook.7 If sugar were truly&#xA;  the secret to more willpower, I’m sure I’d have a runaway bestseller&#xA;  on my hands and a lot of eager corporate sponsors. But as my students&#xA;  and I were trying our own willpower-replenishing experiments, some&#xA;  scientists—including Gailliot—started to raise some smart questions.&#xA;  How much energy, exactly, was getting used up during acts of mental&#xA;  self-control? And did restoring that energy really require consuming a&#xA;  substantial amount of sugar? University of Pennsylvania psychologist&#xA;  Robert Kurzban has argued that the actual amount of energy your brain&#xA;  needs to exert self-control is less than half a Tic Tac per minute.&#xA;  This may be more than the brain uses for other mental tasks, but it is&#xA;  far less than your body uses when it exercises. So assuming you have&#xA;  the resources to walk around the block without collapsing, the&#xA;  absolute demands of self-control couldn’t possibly deplete your entire&#xA;  body’s store of energy. And surely it wouldn’t require refueling with&#xA;  a sugar-laden 100-calorie drink. Why, then, does the brain’s increased&#xA;  energy consumption during self-control seem to deplete willpower so&#xA;  quickly? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ENERGY CRISIS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To answer this question, it may be helpful to recall the American&#xA;  banking crisis of 2009. After the 2008 financial meltdown, banks&#xA;  received an influx of money from the government. These funds were&#xA;  supposed to help the banks cover their own financial obligations so&#xA;  they could start lending again. But the banks refused to lend money to&#xA;  small businesses and individual borrowers. They weren’t confident in&#xA;  the money supply, so they hoarded the resources they had. Stingy&#xA;  bastards! It turns out that your brain can be a bit of a stingy&#xA;  bastard, too. The human brain has, at any given time, a very small&#xA;  supply of energy. It can store some energy in its cells, but it is&#xA;  mostly dependent on a steady stream of glucose circulating in the&#xA;  body’s bloodstream. Special glucose-detecting brain cells are&#xA;  constantly monitoring the availability of energy. When the brain&#xA;  detects a drop in available energy, it gets a little nervous. What if&#xA;  it runs out of energy? Like the banks, it may decide to stop spending&#xA;  and save what resources it has. It will keep itself on a tight energy&#xA;  budget, unwilling to spend its full supply of energy. The first&#xA;  expense to be cut? Self-control, one of the most energy-expensive&#xA;  tasks the brain performs. To conserve energy, the brain may become&#xA;  reluctant to give you the full mental resources you need to resist&#xA;  temptation, focus your attention, or control your emotions. University&#xA;  of South Dakota researchers X. T. Wang, a behavioral economist, and&#xA;  Robert Dvorak, a psychologist, have proposed an “energy budget” model&#xA;  of self-control. They argue that the brain treats energy like money.&#xA;  It will spend energy when resources are high, but save energy when&#xA;  resources are dropping. To test this idea, they invited sixty-five&#xA;  adults—ranging in age from nineteen to fifty-one—into the laboratory&#xA;  for a test of their willpower. Participants were given a series of&#xA;  choices between two rewards, such as $120 tomorrow or $450 in a month.&#xA;  One reward was always smaller, but participants would get it faster&#xA;  than the larger reward. Psychologists consider this a classic test of&#xA;  self-control, as it pits immediate gratification against&#xA;  more-favorable long-term consequences. At the end of the study, the&#xA;  participants had the opportunity to win one of their chosen rewards.&#xA;  This ensured that they were motivated to make real decisions based on&#xA;  what they wanted to win. Before the choosing began, the researchers&#xA;  measured participants’ blood sugar levels to determine the baseline&#xA;  status of available “funds” for self-control. After the first round of&#xA;  decisions, participants were given either a regular, sugary soda (to&#xA;  boost blood sugar levels) or a zero-calorie diet soda. The researchers&#xA;  then measured blood sugar levels again, and asked the participants to&#xA;  make another series of choices. The participants who drank the regular&#xA;  soda showed a sharp increase in blood sugar. They also became more&#xA;  likely to delay gratification for the bigger reward. In contrast,&#xA;  blood sugar dropped among the participants who drank the diet soda.&#xA;  These participants were now more likely to choose the immediate&#xA;  gratification of the quicker, smaller reward. Importantly, it wasn’t&#xA;  the absolute level of blood sugar that predicted a participant’s&#xA;  choices—it was the direction of change. The brain asked, “Is available&#xA;  energy increasing or decreasing?” It then made a strategic choice&#xA;  about whether to spend or save that energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7496" LastActivityDate="2012-06-16T22:42:33.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9858" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-17T11:48:37.260" Score="16" ViewCount="1636" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia describes content of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Army_Field_Manual_30-31B&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Army Field Manual 30-31B&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It identifies a strategy of tension involving violent attacks which are then blamed on radical left-wing groups in order to convince allied governments of the need for counter-action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia says that US government claims it's a forgery. Other noteworthy people claim that it's real:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The former deputy director of the CIA, Ray S. Cline, has stated it to be genuine. Licio Gelli, the Italian leader of the anti-Communist P2 freemason lodge bluntly told the BBC's Allan Francovich, &quot;The CIA gave it to me&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there convincing evidence to determine the authenticity of the document that goes beyond the summary of Wikipedia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2017-12-23T01:44:29.870" LastActivityDate="2017-12-23T01:44:29.870" Title="Is the US Army Field Manual 30-31B a forgery?" Tags="|united-states|history|military|cia|document-authenticity|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9788" CreationDate="2012-06-17T15:27:33.337" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://quran.com/4/34&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://quran.com/4/34&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sahih International&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in [the husband's] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them. But if they obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Credits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;About the Noble Qur'an&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Noble Qur'an is the central religious text of Islam. Muslims believe the Qur’an is the book of Divine guidance and direction for mankind, and consider the original Arabic text the final revelation of Allah (God).[1] All translations of the original Arabic text are thus interpretations of the original meanings and should be embraced as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information about the Noble Qur'an, you may visit its Wikipedia article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Credits&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This website was created by a few volunteers and was made possible with the will of Allah (Glory be unto Him) and with the help of the open source Muslim community online. Data sources include Tanzil, QuranComplex, Zekr and Online Qur'an Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The greek quran translation also has a similar interpretation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alislam.org/quran/tafseer/?page=133&amp;amp;region=GK&amp;amp;CR=&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.alislam.org/quran/tafseer/?page=133&amp;amp;region=GK&amp;amp;CR=&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This guy seems to agree:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bible.ca/islam/islam-wife-beating-koran-4-34.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.bible.ca/islam/islam-wife-beating-koran-4-34.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Counterarguments(?):&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An-Nisa,_34&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An-Nisa,_34&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flw.ugent.be/cie/bogaert/bogaert4.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.flw.ugent.be/cie/bogaert/bogaert4.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any knowledge of the arabic language but, if words do have many different meanings, then it clearly depends on the eye (or mind?) of the beholder. If someone wants to beat his wife, he'll use the meaning that fits his purpose. If someone wants to be a &amp;quot;true believer&amp;quot;, he will pat her with a toothbrush.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7395" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-21T17:29:52.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9860" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9863" CreationDate="2012-06-17T16:40:36.657" Score="5" ViewCount="1110" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found several articles, claiming that soy beans and corn flakes have the effect of decreasing libido. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://howto-howto.blogspot.com/2011/01/foods-that-can-decrease-sexual-desire.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;M Lai's HowTo-Howto Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Soy is very good for your health. However, if consumed too much the same effect as licorice, namely reducing the levels of testosterone.&#xA;  [...]&#xA;   Kellogg created cornflakes to reduce sexual desires of the patient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.11points.com/Food-Drink/11_Foods_That_Just_Might_Kill_Your_Sex_Drive&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;11 Points&lt;/a&gt; makes similar claims.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are not high-quality sources. Are they right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7564" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-06-17T16:56:38.607" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T00:09:41.480" Title="Do soy beans and corn flakes decrease libido?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9860" CreationDate="2012-06-18T00:09:41.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did a broad research on google scholar. Here what I found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2007 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/17710586/reload=0;jsessionid=s7Pe14OVZjNyJ6YYgcN5.0&quot;&gt;http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/17710586/reload=0;jsessionid=s7Pe14OVZjNyJ6YYgcN5.0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Short-term increased soybean intake does not affect sex hormone status, but improves spatial cognitive performance in young healthy men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2011 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neptjournal.com/NEPT10(3)Full%20Issue.pdf#page=18&quot;&gt;http://www.neptjournal.com/NEPT10(3)Full%20Issue.pdf#page=18&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] soy diet had negative effect on male reproductive system in mice&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I read, it is not clearly demonstrated that soybean lower testosterone, but I would still be careful about how much I eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T00:09:41.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9867" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-18T12:51:26.683" Score="8" ViewCount="4192" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of my friends think that e.g. smiling leads to having wrinkles around your mouth, where your skin folds when you smile, but I'd also count if someone works in the sun a lot an thus squints all the time (if the squinting is causal, not the UV).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Google search of the claim easily turns up some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/video_4951115_smiling-cause-wrinkles_.html&quot;&gt;beauty people&lt;/a&gt; saying so. A cursory Google scholar search didn't &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&amp;amp;q=%22facial%20expression%20%2awrinkles%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=1,5&quot;&gt;yield much&lt;/a&gt;. In German it may have entered language as &quot;Lachfalten&quot; and in English apparently the equivalent is &quot;laugh lines&quot; though I've never read that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was skeptical of the claim, mainly because &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I imagine properly testing it would be a very big project (i.e. you'd have to have to rule out a lot of alternatives and ideally do it longitudinally with actual behaviour)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can easily imagine how such an idea would come about, because people who have such laugh lines may appear more friendly (misinterpretation of wrinkles as facial expression) which leads observers to reconstruct that they must have smiled a lot.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know Botox works by paralysing the facial muscles whose activity causes wrinkles so I think it's somewhat plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T15:28:04.723" Title="Do facial expressions cause wrinkles?" Tags="|physiology|aging|beauty|dermatology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9868" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30731" CreationDate="2012-06-18T13:04:25.230" Score="22" ViewCount="8117" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been pretty hot in my neck of the woods over the last week.  It has been roughly 80 degrees in my room at night.  To try to stay comfortable and get to sleep I have been running two fans.  One in the window and one pointed at my bed.  Today I woke up with a headache, runny nose, and sore throat.  Someone was telling me that if you have a fan blowing on you at night it will make you sick.  It seems a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ilovefreeenergy.info/water-power/could-i-have-gotten-sick-from-the-fan-blowing-in-my-face/&quot;&gt;common&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Can_you_catch_a_cold_by_sleeping_with_a_fan_on&quot;&gt;meme&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chacha.com/question/can-you-get-sick-from-a-fan-when-your-sleeping&quot;&gt;on the&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/does-sleeping-fan-sick-1460677.html&quot;&gt;internet&lt;/a&gt;  Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6926" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:31:40.703" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T07:02:38.463" Title="Can a fan blowing on you at night make you sick?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9867" CreationDate="2012-06-18T14:34:32.177" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a study that was published in 2010, in the &lt;strong&gt;British Journal of Dermatology&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2133.2010.09709.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An 8-year longitudinal study on the progression of expression lines into persistent wrinkles&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Methods:&lt;/strong&gt;  Standardized images were captured at baseline and at 8 years of 122 women (ages 10–72 years, skin types I–VI) with and without a smiling expression. The wrinkle pattern with expression at baseline was compared with the pattern without expression at 8 years. Severity of facial wrinkling was quantified using computer-based image analysis. Skin colour, hydration, sebum and pH were measured at baseline. A structured questionnaire captured demographic and lifestyle data at baseline and at 8 years.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results:&lt;/strong&gt;  Each subject’s unique pattern of persistent facial wrinkling observed without expression at year 8 was predicted by the pattern of lines observed with a smiling expression at baseline. Having a drier, more alkaline stratum corneum, a lighter complexion, being middle-aged (40s) or becoming menopausal were associated with faster persistent wrinkling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oVRSv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Wrinkles&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&lt;em&gt;Temporary facial wrinkles&#xA;  visible only with a smiling expression in 1999 were&#xA;  predictive of and progressed into persistent wrinkles visible&#xA;  without expression in 2008.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EstOG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Ethnicity&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&lt;em&gt;African Americans&#xA;  showed the least change in both persistent and temporary&#xA;  wrinkling from 1999 to 2008, significantly less than that of&#xA;  Caucasians&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://pgbeautyscience.com/assets/files/posters/AAAS09/Hillebrand%20P101%203MB.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Additional Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Persistent wrinkles evolve from temporary wrinkles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The pattern of expression lines predicts the pattern of future persistent wrinkles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While skin wrinkling progressively increases over one’s&#xA;  lifetime, the most significant period of change was in&#xA;  the 40s.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Certain intrinsic and extrinsic factors are not causative, but influence the rate, of facial wrinkling&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lighter and/or dryer skin individuals are more prone to&#xA;  skin wrinkling than their darker and more hydrated&#xA;  counterparts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2133.1985.tb02042.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The anatomy and pathogenesis of wrinkles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/wrinkles/ds00890/dsection=causes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic - Wrinkles: Causes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-06-18T14:43:23.600" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T14:43:23.600" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9873" CreationDate="2012-06-18T17:24:35.763" Score="70" ViewCount="71727" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was installing Java today and this was shown in the installation. Is there anything that supports this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Jteqd.png&quot; alt=&quot;3 billion devices run Java&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4957" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-06-20T16:52:26.920" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T15:24:22.303" Title="Do 3 billion devices run Java?" Tags="|technology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9849" CreationDate="2012-06-18T19:05:47.977" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As of right now, it seems like the issue is actually still up for debate within the scientific community and there was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mind-design/201108/glucose-is-not-willpower-fuel&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com&quot;&gt;Psychology Today&lt;/a&gt; in 2011 that attacks the general concept and the model of the experiments themselves. Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epjournal.net/blog/2012/02/wontpower-new-data-further-undermine-the-glucose-model-of-self-control/&quot;&gt;recent study&lt;/a&gt; &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; showed a correlation between the reward (i.e. the sweet drink) and the action being preformed drove performance as opposed to glucose itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based upon my reading, the issue seems to be the current understanding of the brain indicates that there is a fixed consumption of energy that is independent of the tasks being performed and preventing yourself from doing something shouldn't cause more energy to be consumed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another recent (March 2012) article has &lt;a href=&quot;http://triplehelixblog.com/2012/03/our-draining-willpower-in-the-digital-age/&quot;&gt;pointed out&lt;/a&gt; that newer studies and models are being replaced by the concept that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recent experiments indicate that cognition heavily influences willpower. Specifically, our beliefs about willpower – whether we conceive of it as biologically limited or not – immensely influence our self-control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which has been giving rise to the concept of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_depletion&quot;&gt;ego depletion&lt;/a&gt; as a willpower model as opposed to glucose depletion so at the present time it seems like the best answer is that further research is needed and the jury is still out as to what the best model will end up being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See the articles cited in the article for more details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2012-06-18T19:05:47.977" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9870" CreationDate="2012-06-18T19:17:15.697" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is actually some more detail on this on the Java website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1.1 billion desktops run Java&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;930 million Java Runtime Environment downloads each year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;3 billion mobile phones run Java&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;31 times more Java phones ship every year than Apple and Android combined&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;100% of all Blu-ray players run Java&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1.4 billion Java Cards are manufactured each year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Java powers set-top boxes, printers, Web cams, games, car navigation systems, lottery terminals, medical devices, parking payment stations, and more.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which comes from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.java.com/en/about/&quot;&gt;Learn about Java Technology&lt;/a&gt; webpage. These numbers can be drilled down into a bit more (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdrinfo.com/sections/news/Details.aspx?NewsId=24360&quot;&gt;blu-ray sales&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/mar/04/computing-windows-sales&quot;&gt;PCs with Windows installed&lt;/a&gt; &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;, etc.) but the figure they give in the setup actually seems to be fairly conservative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to some specific claims, Blu-ray players have to support &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BD-J&quot;&gt;BD-J&lt;/a&gt; which is used to for bonus content on Blu-ray disks which is why Blu-ray players must support Java. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the biggest areas of use of Java is in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javacard/overview/index.html&quot;&gt;Java Cards&lt;/a&gt; which are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_card&quot;&gt;smart cards&lt;/a&gt; containing embedded Java based programs that can be run on various devices. While Oracle cited a number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/javame/mobilemarket/&quot;&gt;1 billion units manufactured in 2007&lt;/a&gt; back in 2008, others have noted total &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/personalhistoryofthejavacard/&quot;&gt;cumulative sales of about 5 billion units&lt;/a&gt; in 2007. This is another point that leads to the 3 billion devices claimed perhaps being a conservative estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In truth the number of Windows PCs sold by year isn't the best number, but generally OEM machines generally ship with Java installed by default so this is a soft number to work with.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-09-12T12:57:43.640" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T12:57:43.640" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9870" CreationDate="2012-06-19T01:15:17.303" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3 Billion seems reasonable based on the number of Java ME and Android devices in use.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a fair amount of evidence corroborating the &quot;3 Billion devices&quot; powered by Java - in fact there are likely be close to that number running Java ME (Micro Edition). This includes most of the low-cost phones currently being sold in China and India. There are also some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/16/google-200-million-android-devices-activated-over-550-000-acti/&quot;&gt;200 million active Android devices&lt;/a&gt; as of late 2011, with Android is still the fastest-growing mobile operating system. These should also be included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Java ME makes up the bulk of this number, and is still available on most current-model phones that aren't Apple, Android or Windows Mobile, as well as practically all phones prior to iPhone/Android, going back as far as 2001. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.developer.nokia.com/Devices/Device_specifications/?filter1=all&amp;amp;filter2=javame&quot;&gt;Nokia lists 338 handsets&lt;/a&gt; that they have released that support Java ME, dating back to the monochrome-screened 3410 in 2001. All Nokia OS and Symbian OS devices were Java ME compatible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Motorola, RIM (Blackberry), Ericsson (now Sony Ericsson), Samsung, LG, Sagem, Sharp, Siemens, and others all &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javame/javamobile/overview/about/index.html&quot;&gt;have licenses for&lt;/a&gt; and have released phones based on Java ME.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats/a#subscribers&quot;&gt;This site claims close to 6 billion active mobile subscriptions&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html&quot;&gt;the CIA factbook claims 5.4 Billion&lt;/a&gt;(2010) which would put just over half as &quot;run Java&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that while many devices use a great deal of the Java ME stack, others (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian&quot;&gt;Symbian&lt;/a&gt;) are not java-based but allow Java ME applications to be run. Symbian also supports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C++ (Qt, native) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;python &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adobe Flash lite&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ruby&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For application development. It's difficult to argue that a Symbian device is &quot;powered by Java&quot;, and indeed many Symbian users have likely never run a Java ME application on their phone. But Oracle only claim &quot;3 Billion devices run Java&quot;, and if you interpret that statement in a certain way it's probably fair. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2012-06-19T23:12:37.503" LastActivityDate="2012-06-19T23:12:37.503" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="95" CreationDate="2012-06-19T07:06:15.003" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article you link to is all over the place and largely references itself rather than linking to primary sources. It's hard to mount an argument against such a profligate barrage of claims. The best you can do is patiently take claims one at a time and search the &lt;code&gt;scientific literature&lt;/code&gt; for studies that refute the various hypotheses presented. The worst thing you can do in an argument (in which you wish to convince the adversary) is dismiss their concerns without evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are simple things to point out about the article. For instance,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Health professionals and doctors with government ties were also blamed&#xA;  in Finland and Sweden after a H1N1 vaccination program was halted&#xA;  following a 300 per cent increase in cases of the neurological&#xA;  disorder narcolepsy amongst children and young people who had received&#xA;  the shot over the last six months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 300% INCREASE! Responsible epidemiologists, I believe, would report something like &quot;4 times greater risk of developing narcolepsy&quot;. If you look at the data, you see that this &quot;300% increase&quot; amounts to 20 patients, it appears. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2954689/&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; So, instead of 20 in 100,000, you might expect 80 in 100,000. It's still worth a look and worth striving to improve; but, this fact alone might not justify violent revolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1054139X1100615X&quot;&gt;Gardasil&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X12003325&quot;&gt;appears to&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/jwh.2011.2895&quot;&gt;be safe&lt;/a&gt;, according to my brief look at the literature. Although, I'm not a pediatric neurologist and, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18563_162-4781658.html&quot;&gt;at least one thinks that Gardasil was brought to the market too soon and that it is causing serious long-term side-effects&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a humble degree in mathematics with a concentration in epidemiology. I'm very interested in vaccine safety and cost/benefit. I would like to be strongly pro-vaccine. However, dismissive statements implying that there is no debate do not push me in the pro-vaccine direction. Flatly saying &quot;there's a significantly greater risk in not getting vaccinated&quot;, &quot;it's been refuted countless times&quot;, &quot;the claim ... is based solely on .. a complete scam&quot; without any reference is unbecoming of a true skeptic. Use references to peer-reviewed papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The case of universal Hepatitis B vaccination for newborn Americans may put me slightly at odds with those who would suggest that following the AAP schedule to the letter is the absolute best approach to vaccination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19399791&quot;&gt;The incidence of HepB before vaccination in the United States for those under 15 was on the order of 1 in 100,000&lt;/a&gt;. At $100 a series, we are spending $10,000,000 to prevent 15 cases of HepB when we vaccinate 100,000 low-risk Americans? (please correct me if this is not the right ballpark).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: the low incidence reported in the above paper might be due to the fact that those under 5 are far less likely to suffer from an acute HepB infection. People who are infected as children, on the other hand, are more likely to develop chronic life-long infections resulting in severe outcomes such as liver cancer and death. The CDC reports that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/whatifstop.htm#hepb&quot;&gt;45,000 children &amp;lt; 10 were infected with HepB every year before universal vaccination&lt;/a&gt;. Meanwhile, the CHOP reports &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chop.edu/service/vaccine-education-center/a-look-at-each-vaccine/hepatitis-b-vaccine.html&quot;&gt;&quot;18,000 children were infected with hepatitis B virus by the time they were 10 years old&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. These numbers suggest an incidence rate more on the order of 70/100,000 and 30/100,000, respectively. According to the CHOP report, 1/2 of these infections were from infected mothers, while the CDC's numbers have about 1/4 coming from infected mothers. Using the CDC's high number of vaccine-preventable incidence, it looks like vaccinating 100,000 children could prevent as many as 1,000 cases of HepB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the incidence estimates from the CDC, universal HBV looks like a slam dunk in cost/benefit. BUT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurology.org/content/63/5/838.abstract&quot;&gt;Three times the risk of multiple sclerosis?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lup.sagepub.com/content/21/2/146.short&quot;&gt;Other autoimmune diseases?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fourteenstudies.org/pdf/hep_b.pdf&quot;&gt;9 times higher risk of needing special education?&lt;/a&gt;(&lt;em&gt;*&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21058170&quot;&gt;Threefold higher risk of autism for boys?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568997204002010&quot;&gt;&quot;a review is made of data suggesting that HBV is remarkable by the frequency, the severity and the variety of its complications, some of them probably related to a mechanism of molecular mimicry leading to demyelinating diseases, and the others reproducing the spectrum of non-hepatic manifestations of natural hepatitis B&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://het.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/03/08/0960327112440111.abstract&quot;&gt;&quot;a positive correlation between the number of vaccine doses administered and the percentage of hospitalizations and deaths?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of scary stuff out there, at first glance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If any of those peer-reviewed papers have one grain of reality in them, then universal HepB vaccination may not be best thing to do in terms of risk and benefit. A high-risk child going immediately into daycare in NYC who has an infected father should almost certainly still bear the risk of receiving HBV in the first month. On the other hand, a child with a stay-at-home mom, living in a rural area in the US, with almost no chance of contracting HepB, may be better off not getting HBV within 12 hours of birth. If HBV within the first day of birth does indeed put the child at greater risk of autoimmune disorders and special education needs, the extremely low-risk child perhaps should not receive HBV at such a young age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(*) UPDATE: I wanted to check on the &quot;9 times higher risk of needing special education given HBV&quot; numbers. The NHANES database &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/skyl/NHANES-opensource/tree/master/1999-2000&quot;&gt;is available as csv here&lt;/a&gt; . Doing a simple model in R to look at the relationship between HBV and special education, adjusting for age, health and neonatal ICU (&lt;strong&gt;TL; DR: Any claim of 9X from this data is highly misleading.&lt;/strong&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;gt; summary(hbv)&#xA;2or3    1 NA's &#xA; 228  678   65 &#xA;&amp;gt; summary(spec_ed)&#xA;   Not SpecEd   NA's &#xA;   912     58      1 &#xA;&amp;gt; cs(spec_ed, hbv)&#xA;&#xA;          Exposure&#xA;Outcome    Non-exposed Exposed Total&#xA;  Negative 221         632     853  &#xA;  Positive 7           46      53   &#xA;  Total    228         678     906  &#xA;&#xA;           Rne         Re      Rt   &#xA;  Risk     0.03        0.07    0.06 &#xA;&#xA;                                         Estimate Lower95ci Upper95ci&#xA; Risk difference (attributable risk)     0.04     0.01      0.08     &#xA; Risk ratio                              2.21     0.98      5        &#xA; Attr. frac. exp. -- (Re-Rne)/Re         0.55                        &#xA; Attr. frac. pop. -- (Rt-Rne)/Rt*100 %   47.52                       &#xA; Number needed to harm (NNH)             26.92    12.69     149.36   &#xA;   or 1/(risk difference)                                            &#xA;&#xA;&amp;gt; cc(spec_ed, hbv)&#xA;&#xA;        hbv&#xA;spec_ed  2or3   1 Total&#xA;  Not     221 632   853&#xA;  SpecEd    7  46    53&#xA;  Total   228 678   906&#xA;&#xA;OR =  2.3 &#xA;Exact 95% CI =  1.01, 6.12  &#xA;Chi-squared = 4.27, 1 d.f., P value = 0.039&#xA;Fisher's exact test (2-sided) P value = 0.049 &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand how these numbers are stretched for an 8.6 OR with p=0.0003!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I make a model with their covariates, I can come up with a 2.77 OR:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;gt; model = glm(spec_ed ~ hbv + ecq + age + health, family=binomial)&#xA;&amp;gt; print(summary(model))&#xA;&#xA;Call:&#xA;glm(formula = spec_ed ~ hbv + ecq + age + health, family = binomial)&#xA;&#xA;Deviance Residuals: &#xA;    Min       1Q   Median       3Q      Max  &#xA;-1.0094  -0.3549  -0.2697  -0.1989   2.9430  &#xA;&#xA;Coefficients:&#xA;            Estimate Std. Error z value Pr(&amp;gt;|z|)    &#xA;(Intercept) -4.08455    0.68606  -5.954 2.62e-09 ***&#xA;hbv1         1.02191    0.45226   2.260  0.02385 *  &#xA;ecqNot      -1.51885    0.33112  -4.587 4.50e-06 ***&#xA;age          0.16108    0.05827   2.764  0.00570 ** &#xA;health       0.40134    0.14618   2.746  0.00604 ** &#xA;---&#xA;Signif. codes:  0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’ 1 &#xA;&#xA;(Dispersion parameter for binomial family taken to be 1)&#xA;&#xA;    Null deviance: 391.85  on 899  degrees of freedom&#xA;Residual deviance: 351.47  on 895  degrees of freedom&#xA;  (71 observations deleted due to missingness)&#xA;AIC: 361.47&#xA;&#xA;Number of Fisher Scoring iterations: 6&#xA;&#xA;&amp;gt; exp(1.02)&#xA;[1] 2.773195&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, it's worth noting that using only those who got the triple series (&quot;1&quot;) and those who got no HBV (&quot;3&quot;) (instead of putting &quot;2&quot; -those who got some- in with those who got none, &quot;3&quot;), a statistically significant correlation is not achieved. Also, learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder are &lt;em&gt;uncorrelated&lt;/em&gt; with HBV in this NHANES data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I made a little tool to test hypothesis of any variable in NHANES with a simple contingency table. The protective effect of HBV on females is actually more pronounced than the supposed negative effect on the boys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The girls were clearly protected by HBV:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;In [12]: ct, p, nhanes = test_kwargs(NHANES, only_test={&quot;riagendr&quot;: [&quot;2&quot;]}, float_limits={&quot;ridageyr&quot;: [0,9]}, imq020=([&quot;1&quot;], [&quot;3&quot;]), pfq040=([&quot;1&quot;], [&quot;2&quot;]))&#xA;    pfq040 in ['1'] pfq040 in ['2']&#xA;imq020 in ['1'] 12  559 &#xA;imq020 in ['3'] 10  140 &#xA;&#xA;p = 0.00381724204472&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas, the boys were only borderline statistically significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;In [13]: ct, p, nhanes = test_kwargs(NHANES, only_test={&quot;riagendr&quot;: [&quot;1&quot;]}, float_limits={&quot;ridageyr&quot;: [0,9]}, imq020=([&quot;1&quot;], [&quot;3&quot;]), pfq040=([&quot;1&quot;], [&quot;2&quot;]))&#xA;    pfq040 in ['1'] pfq040 in ['2']&#xA;imq020 in ['1'] 46  632 &#xA;imq020 in ['3'] 4   147 &#xA;&#xA;p = 0.0535442211328&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe you should isolate each claim and judge it on the evidence. Even peer-reviewed articles can be misleading, sadly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7563" LastEditorUserId="7563" LastEditDate="2012-07-01T17:29:43.567" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T17:29:43.567" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9877" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-19T12:29:16.217" Score="3" ViewCount="437" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw the following claim in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/beating-injury/qa-why-these-blisters-every-time-i-run/656.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; on Runner's World website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If your feet sweat profusely, this can increase the chance of blisters. Try soaking them in surgical spirit, or even better, three per cent formaldehyde solution once a day. This will help reduce the perspiration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this a valid technique for reducing perspiration in your feet?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judging from the Wikipedia entry, I don't think I'd want to put &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formaldehyde#Safety&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;formaldehyde&lt;/a&gt; on my feet, although &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surgical_spirit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;surgical spirit&lt;/a&gt; doesn't sound as dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-06-19T14:22:25.503" LastActivityDate="2012-06-19T14:22:25.503" Title="Can surgical spirit and formaldehyde prevent blisters?" Tags="|medical-science|safety|sport|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8520" CreationDate="2012-06-19T15:16:22.810" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1196/annals.1297.096/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Emerging Area of Aging Research: Long-Lived Animals with “Negligible Senescence”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Field observations have suggested for quite some time that certain fish, turtles, and invertebrates have extremely long maximum life span potential. Age validation techniques have since confirmed these observations, but scientific analysis to understand the genetic and biochemical basis of this longevity has occurred only recently. The Centenarian Species and Rockfish Project now encompasses 13 pilot research projects, including such diverse investigations as histology, a cDNA library, and mitochondrial mutation analysis. In this document, the term “negligible senescence” is defined, and its background is given; age validation techniques are listed, and the various projects to date, including research results, are summarized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9849895&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Longevity of lobsters is linked to ubiquitous telomerase expression.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lobsters (Homarus americanus) grow throughout their life and the occurrence of senescence is slow.[...]We conclude that telomerase activation is a conserved mechanism for maintaining long-term cell proliferation capacity and preventing senescence, not only in cellular models or embryonic life stages but also in adult multicellular organisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Answer:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't know, and there are probably better examples of biological immortality than lobsters. It is still a matter under extensive research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional resources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agelessanimals.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fulltext of the first article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_immortality&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia on Biological immortality&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayflick_limit&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia on Hayflick limit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/zoology/marine-life/400-pound-lobster.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HowStuffWorks: 'Is there a 400 pound lobster out there?'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bookrags.com/research/telomere-gen-04/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Research Article: Telomere&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7395" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T07:24:14.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9884" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-19T21:31:47.463" Score="56" ViewCount="71823" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just been forwarded a video about a jetfighter landing with just one wing and I wonder if this could indeed be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the link to the video: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slLKmtIKccs&quot;&gt;One-Winged F 15 Crash Landing Video&lt;/a&gt; (landing starts at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slLKmtIKccs#t=2m45s&quot;&gt;2:45&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding of flight is that the airplane would have started to spin out of control because the lift on the still intact wing would be much higher than on the other side, causing the plane to flip over without hope of recovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then again this airplane has two vertical stabilizers and side rudders, also two rather big horizontal stabilizers. And jetfighters can fly upside down, anyway. So perhaps that, combined with the shape of the plane, would suffice to stabilize the flight somehow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7595" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-06-20T00:59:23.487" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T19:54:54.953" Title="Did an F-15 airplane successfully land with just one wing?" Tags="|physics|aviation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9887" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-20T00:16:36.190" Score="18" ViewCount="8971" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn3jrZSf-s0&quot;&gt;Big Bang Theory episode&lt;/a&gt; (sec 56) Leonard is talking over the phone and everyone wonders who's the person on the other side, afterward Sheldon claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This should be fairly easy to deduce. He’s holding the phone to his&#xA;  left ear. Ears do not cross hemispheres, so he’s using the analytical&#xA;  rather than the emotional side of the brain, suggesting that he has no&#xA;  personal relationship with the caller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any correlation between the ear you choose to hold the phone and the person on the other side of the line?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8930" OwnerDisplayName="user5169" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T13:08:08.037" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T20:14:22.943" Title="Is there any correlation between the ear to which you hold the phone and the person on the other end?" Tags="|psychology|neurology|ear|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9888" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9905" CreationDate="2012-06-20T00:53:17.767" Score="8" ViewCount="3274" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rd.com/home/12-smart-ways-to-use-bleach/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This Reader's Digest article&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Increase cut flowers’ longevity&lt;/strong&gt; Freshly cut flowers will stay fresh longer if you add 1/4 teaspoon bleach per quart (1 liter) of vase water. Another popular recipe calls for 3 drops bleach and 1 teaspoon sugar in 1 quart (1 liter) water. This will also keep the water from getting cloudy and inhibit the growth of bacteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any proof? I would imagine bleach would be toxic to flowers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-06-21T18:58:44.737" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T18:58:44.737" Title="Can I increase the longevity of fresh cut flowers with bleach?" Tags="|biology|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9889" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9891" CreationDate="2012-06-20T02:46:10.007" Score="1" ViewCount="390" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaswinder_Kaur_Sidhu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; claims that the mother and uncle were arrested in the case of Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu. However, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theprovince.com/news/Charges+laid+historic+Jassi+Sidhu+homicide/5959874/story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;main link&lt;/a&gt; given there is broken. Is there any alternate reliable source confirming this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1229" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:47:45.920" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:47:45.920" Title="Were the mother and uncle of Jaswinder Kaur Sidhu arrested?" Tags="|history|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9890" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-20T04:34:30.607" Score="3" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7061/is-running-the-engine-for-five-minutes-before-driving-beneficial-for-the-car&quot;&gt;Is running the engine for five minutes before driving beneficial for the car?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My wife, her dad, and my dad says so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They said that before you drive a car, you need to turn on the car for a few minutes, let the engine heat up, then drive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My dad has a different theory. You don't need to heat up the engine, however, the engine oil is more well distributed when the car is running for a few minutes with no load.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one is right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How it really works anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it even true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T04:34:30.607" Title="Should we heat up engines before driving a car?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-06-20T08:12:45.687" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9889" CreationDate="2012-06-20T08:18:39.907" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/01/06/bc-jassi-sidhu-murder-arrests.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CBC News&lt;/a&gt;, Jan 6, 2012&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A B.C. woman and her brother have been arrested in connection with the 2000 slaying of the woman's daughter, Jassi Sidhu, and the attempted murder of the young woman's husband in India in what has been described as an honour killing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Malkit Kaur Sidhu, 63, the mother of victim Jassi Sidhu, was arrested Friday in the Vancouver suburb of Maple Ridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/09/accused-in-honour-killing-of-jaswinder-sidhu-to-get-bail-hearing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Post&lt;/a&gt;, Jan 9, 2012&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VANCOUVER • Wearing grey jailhouse sweats and grim expressions on their wrinkled faces, Malkit Kaur Sidhu and Surjit Singh Badesha made brief court appearances Monday, their first since their surprise arrests last week when local authorities announced their intention to see the pair extradited to India, where they are accused of playing a long-distance role in a notorious honour killing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T08:23:46.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9897" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-20T14:20:12.713" Score="5" ViewCount="1312" Body="&lt;p&gt;We have a bit of a discussion with the administration of our university about putting up posters on the glass doors in our campus buildings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hallways have a lot of doors made of glass which would make a great place for people to see information while they walk through. There is a rule here that forbids bill-sticking on these doors with the single reason that if the glass door is not 100% transparent anymore, people will hurt themselves on a regular basis because they cannot see if other people are on the opposite side of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For some reason this does not seems to happen though &lt;strong&gt;with every other type of door that is not transparent&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just bureaucratic nonsense or are there any studies/experiments that actually proof that more accidents occur with glass doors that have an obscured view?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2749" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-06-20T14:36:16.123" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T16:50:24.117" Title="Will people start running against glass doors if they cannot see through?" Tags="|safety|sociology|architecture|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9897" CreationDate="2012-06-20T15:30:33.623" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question title asks if you can run against a glass door you can't see through but the meat of your question asks if it's true that someone might get hit with a glass door you are opening when it isn't transparent, correct? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer though, I doubt it would take a study for either one of these, as they seem to be fairly common sense things (I could be wrong, government will fund studies on the dumbest, most self-evident subjects from time to time).  I stand corrected:  here is a study done on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11405360&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;walking through glass door injuries&lt;/a&gt;.  In fact, it is such a concern that the state of New York has a section of their building code dedicated to it:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.labor.ny.gov/workerprotection/safetyhealth/sh47.shtm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PART 47 TRANSPARENT GLASS DOORS&lt;/a&gt;.  Can't seem to find anything on obscured glass door injuries though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are approaching a clear glass door, you may not see the door and smack into it.  You could even hurt yourself severely enough to require surgery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are approaching a door that is not transparent (for whatever reason, building material, flyers, etc) you run the risk of 1)hitting someone on the other side with your swinging door or 2)being hit by someone opening it onto you from the other side.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since many non-sliding glass doors have a metal separator with a handle in the middle of the door, a person will most likely SEE this as a door (and the people on the other side).  I suppose it all comes down to what kind of a glass door it is:  a divider or handle or some sort of appendage to suggest a door, or a sheet of clear glass that is begging to have your nose get squashed upon.&#xA;If the glass door is then obscured with materials, people on the other side are no longer visible, and for safety's sake (and LIABILITY issues), the university errs on the side of caution, I would imagine.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7608" LastEditorUserId="7608" LastEditDate="2012-06-20T16:50:24.117" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T16:50:24.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9884" CreationDate="2012-06-20T16:03:10.133" Score="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR;&lt;/strong&gt; The F-15 is somewhat unique among current airframes, in that its body shape and size induce a certain amount of lift. That extra lift, along with the speed achievable with afterburners, allowed this aircraft to recover from an incident which would bring down most other aircraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that we have a picture of this aircraft on the ground and intact, should be the first hint that this is no hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/I7ObU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;IDF/AF photograph - one-winged F-15 on the ground&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote the pilot, Zivi Nedivi:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point I collided with one of the Skyhawks, at first I didn't realize it. I felt a big strike, and I thought we passed through the jet stream of one of the other aircraft. Before I could react, I saw the big fire ball created by the explosion of the Skyhawk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The radio started to deliver calls saying that the Skyhawk pilot has ejected, and I understood that the fireball was the Skyhawk, that exploded, and the pilot was ejected automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a tremendous fuel stream going out of my wing, and I understood it was badly damaged. The aircraft flew without control in a strange spiral. I reconnected the electric control to the control surfaces, and slowly gained control of the aircraft until I was straight and level again. It was clear to me that I had to eject. When I gained control I said : &amp;quot;Hey, wait, don't eject yet!&amp;quot; No warning light was on and the navigation computer worked as usual; (I just needed a warning light in my panel to indicate that I missed a wing...).&amp;quot; My instructor pilot ordered me to eject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wing is a fuel tank, and the fuel indicator showed 0.000 so I assumed that the jet stream sucked all the fuel out of the other tanks. However, I remembered that the valves operate only in one direction, so that I might have enough fuel to get to the nearest airfield and land. I worked like a machine, wasn't scared and didn't worry. All I knew was as long as the sucker flies, I'm gonna stay inside. I started to decrease the airspeed, but at that point one wing was not enough. So I went into a spin down and to the right. A second before I decided to eject, I pushed the throttle and lit the afterburner. I gained speed and thus got control of the aircraft again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next thing I did was lower the arresting hook. A few seconds later I touched the runway at 260 knots, about twice the recommended speed, and called the tower to erect the emergency recovery net. The hook was torn away from the fuselage because of the high speed, but I managed to stop 10 meters before the net. I turned back to shake the hand of my instructor, who had urged me to eject, and then I saw it for the first time - no wing !!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uss-bennington.org/phz-nowing-f15.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.uss-bennington.org/phz-nowing-f15.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to answering how this aircraft was able to stay airborne with little of its starboard wing intact, the source above hints at the answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;McDonnell Douglas attributes the saving of this aircraft to the amount of lift generated by the engine intake/body and &amp;quot;a hell of a good pilot&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking into this a bit further shows that the wide-fuselage design of the F-15 indeed provides a certain amount of lift on its own:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fighters like the F-15 Eagle also produce substantial lift from the wide fuselage between the wings. Because the F-15 Eagle's wide fuselage is so efficient at lift, a F-15 was able to land successfully with only one wing, albeit under nearly full power, with thrust contributing significantly to lift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_body#Body_lift&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifting_body#Body_lift&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last line there being important - lift increases proportionately to thrust:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;lift force = ½ρV² × coefficient of lift × area&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/4forces.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/4forces.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So although initially the aircraft entered a descending spiral (presumably for much the reason you stated - differential lift from the intact vs missing wing), the pilot was able to stabilise this by increasing his airspeed to generate enough lift to halt the descent, and enough airflow over the control surfaces (ailerons &amp;amp; rudders) to halt the spin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hell of a good pilot&amp;quot; appears to be the understatement of the century! This guy now attains the &amp;quot;Sullenberger&amp;quot; level of pilot-awesome for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T19:28:01.847" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9903" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-20T19:06:28.300" Score="32" ViewCount="6048" Body="&lt;p&gt;My brother claims that a person will get less wet walking through rain that is falling vertically than running through it.  He says that when running less rain may fall on top of the head and shoulders, but far more rain will come in contact with the front part of the person's body.  Therefore, the best way to get the least wet in a rainstorm is to walk slowly through it.  Can anyone confirm this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7614" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T04:10:55.467" Title="Do you get less wet walking through a vertical rainstorm than running through it?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9903" CreationDate="2012-06-20T19:45:44.603" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/827/which-will-keep-you-drier-running-through-the-rain-or-walking&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cecil Adams at the Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; tested it with a small experiment, and then cited Thomas Peterson and Trevor Wallis of the National Climatic Data Center, who also did an experiment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;One rainy day the two men donned identical sweat suits and hats, which they'd weighed before the test. For added accuracy, they wore plastic garbage bags underneath the sweat suits to keep their underclothes from wicking away any water. They then set out through the downpour on a 100-meter course. Wallas ran; Peterson walked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;When they finished, the men weighed their clothes again to find out how much water they'd soaked up. Peterson's had absorbed about seven and half ounces (212 g), while Wallis's sopped up only four and a half (127 g).&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, running will keep you drier than walking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original paper is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peterson, T. C. and Wallis, T. W. R. (1997), Running in the rain. &lt;em&gt;Weather&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;52&lt;/strong&gt;: 93–96. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.1477-8696.1997.tb06281.x&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1002/j.1477-8696.1997.tb06281.x&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2005/10/episode_38_mythbusters_reviste.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MythBusters also tried it... twice&lt;/a&gt;, and the second time they confirmed it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-11-15T04:10:55.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9888" CreationDate="2012-06-20T21:34:04.187" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-vodka-citrus-sodas-keep-flowers-fresh&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scientific American:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] while water and sugar keep the flowers fresh, this mixture also&#xA;encourages bacterial growth, which can harm the flowers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;add&#xA;bleach&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;,&amp;quot; says &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umass.edu/psis/personnel/han.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Susan Han&lt;/a&gt;, a professor in the plant, soil and insect science department at the &lt;em&gt;University of Massachusetts Amherst&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A little bleach kills the bacteria without damaging&#xA;the flowers.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://media.rsc.org/In%20Search%20of%20Solutions/ISOSact48.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Royal Society of Chemistry:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bleach kills bacteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The flower stems have water channels. Bacteria clog up these channels - the bleach kills the bacteria.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lancaster.unl.edu/hort/youth/flowertips.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;University of Nebraska:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The acidity of the lemon-lime soda or vinegar lowers the pH of the water so bacteria don't grow well; &lt;strong&gt;the chlorine bleach kills bacteria on the stems&lt;/strong&gt; and the sugar provides food for the flower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/quickref/flowers/add_hours.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NC State University - Add Hours to Your Flowers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/pdf/8113.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of California - Extending the Freshness of Cut Flowers at Home&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-20T21:34:04.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-21T08:39:07.290" Score="29" ViewCount="1963" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc&quot;&gt;animated video of his talk&lt;/a&gt;, Dan Pink claims performance incentives do not work, and can actually lead to &lt;em&gt;worse&lt;/em&gt; performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, he quotes two studies (which he unfortunately does not name) where people are asked to do a task, and receive a higher bonus if they do it better. What they both find is that as long as the task requires at least rudimentary cognitive skill, the bonus does not lead to improved results. In fact, if the bonus is high enough, it actually leads to people performing worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this view present the current scientific consensus? Does anyone have any links to good studies (preferably meta-studies) on this subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7618" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T11:43:05.530" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T04:24:10.620" Title="Do performance incentives work for knowledge workers?" Tags="|psychology|economics|productivity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9911" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9914" CreationDate="2012-06-21T14:56:13.367" Score="8" ViewCount="30956" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trial watchers occasionally assert fast verdicts are more likely to be guilty ones. The idea has been expressed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.beaumontenterprise.com/bayou/2007/12/11/instant-verdicts-obvious-guilt-or-impatient-jury/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;small town newspapers&lt;/a&gt; and even &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/TJQuinnESPN/statuses/214814270129586178?tw_i=214814270129586178&amp;amp;tw_e=details&amp;amp;tw_p=tweetembed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sports reporters.&lt;/a&gt; At the same time, other &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8149100/ns/msnbc_tv-the_abrams_report/t/do-long-deliberations-mean-guilty-verdicts/#.T-MwgitYvw4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;news organizations&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.courtroomlogic.com/blog/2012/05/29/the-john-edwards-jury-deliberate-deliberations/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;trial blogs&lt;/a&gt; assert exactly the opposite, that fast verdicts favor the defense, or that length of deliberation means the jurors are taking their roles seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can find no systematic evidence of either assertion. A fast verdict could indicate sympathy with the defense or an overwhelming recognition of guilt. Perhaps it just means one side outperformed the other in the courtroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the speed at which a verdict is delivered (measured as the length of time it takes the jury to deliberate) correlate to the verdict itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7622" LastEditorUserId="7622" LastEditDate="2012-06-21T17:43:44.453" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T18:16:24.157" Title="Do fast jury verdicts favor either the prosecution or the defendant?" Tags="|law|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6730" CreationDate="2012-06-21T17:39:40.170" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found many research's papers addressing this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1865124&amp;amp;show=abstract&quot;&gt;http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1865124&amp;amp;show=abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The paper highlights that social networking technology can facilitate improved workplace productivity by enhancing the communication and collaboration of employees which aids knowledge transfer and consequently makes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netaddiction.com/articles/eia_new_trends.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.netaddiction.com/articles/eia_new_trends.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a survey of 1439 workers by Vault.com, an online&#xA;  analyst firm, 37% admitted to surfing constantly at work, 32% surfed a few times a day, and 21% surfed a few times a week (Adschiew, 2000).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sigs.aisnet.org/sighci/icis03_wksp/hci03_program_proceedings.pdf#page=50&quot;&gt;http://sigs.aisnet.org/sighci/icis03_wksp/hci03_program_proceedings.pdf#page=50&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several&#xA;  recent studies reveal much abuse of the Internet in the&#xA;  workplace by employees; users exchange personal emails,&#xA;  shop on line, check scores on sporting events,&#xA;  gamble on line, view pornographic material, and chat on&#xA;  instant messaging services.&#xA;  In the most recent U.S. study (Colby and Parasuraman,&#xA;  2002), it is estimated that employees spend between 3.7&#xA;  and 6.5 hours per work week on personal Net use. Earlier&#xA;  studies (Lim, 2002) revealed that between 64% and 90%&#xA;  of U.S. workers engaged in personal activities while at&#xA;  work. Financial losses from this abuse have been&#xA;  estimated to reach 64% of organizations, costing $378&#xA;  million in 2001 (Computer Security Institute, 2001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Internet abuses (counseling):&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2161-1920.2003.tb00859.x/abstract&quot;&gt;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2161-1920.2003.tb00859.x/abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book about Internet at workplace:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?hl=fr&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=SiOOeEBrxywC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PR11&amp;amp;dq=internet+productivity+workplace&amp;amp;ots=mtr2YHMeFR&amp;amp;sig=Wrv5kyGJ9eN99YyndlY33ohcc2Q#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=internet%20productivity%20workplace&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;http://books.google.ca/books?hl=fr&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=SiOOeEBrxywC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PR11&amp;amp;dq=internet+productivity+workplace&amp;amp;ots=mtr2YHMeFR&amp;amp;sig=Wrv5kyGJ9eN99YyndlY33ohcc2Q#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=internet%20productivity%20workplace&amp;amp;f=false&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, there is clearly no scientific consensus today. More research would need to be done. The first paper showing increase of productivity do not prove that it is always the case. It proves that in the context they used, the social media were positive on productivity. However, it could have been very different in another context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastEditorUserId="7569" LastEditDate="2012-06-21T17:47:40.233" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T17:47:40.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9911" CreationDate="2012-06-21T17:54:02.593" Score="5" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/rlecon/v5y2009i1n23.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Factors Affecting the Length of Time a Jury Deliberates: Case Characteristics and Jury Composition&lt;/a&gt;, Brunell, Thomas L. / Dave, Chetan / Morgan, Nicholas C., Review of Law &amp;amp; Economics. Volume 5, Issue 1, Pages 555–578, ISSN (Online) 1555-5879, DOI: 10.2202/1555-5879.1334, October 2009 [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CFMQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fciteseerx.ist.psu.edu%2Fviewdoc%2Fdownload%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.163.9937%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf&amp;amp;ei=O1rjT9XYIYPI2gXYjIHPCw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFLOj2o_kPhxpZWN-vVVnJhqBC_CA&amp;amp;sig2=q7wxdNLQCZ02mhU6YlRwYA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Full PDF&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper (page 16,20) suggests guilty verdicts are returned faster than innocent verdicts for 12 person jury criminal trials from Oregon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Guilty verdicts take less time than verdicts that declare the&#xA;  defendant not guilty. This is interesting and could be indicative of cases that are&#xA;  so clearly presented and evidenced so as to leave little doubt in the minds of&#xA;  jurors about the innocence or guilt of the defendant, thereby speeding up the&#xA;  decision-making process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found 6 person trials to have the opposite effect, but the p value was high for this and they cite small sample size and types of cases presented as potential reasons for this. 12 person jury trials were more likely to be serious crimes (rape, murder) than 6 person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is shown in the table below. A Hazard Ratio above 1 indicates a longer than average trial. Below 1 is a shorter than average trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZnU0x.png&quot; alt=&quot;Table 4&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6876" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-06-21T18:16:24.157" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T18:16:24.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9915" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9916" CreationDate="2012-06-21T18:17:59.020" Score="5" ViewCount="449" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past, I heard that affirmation at the ecology department of my university. I found it strange and did not believed it. So, is it true that coffee ground is and effective method to remove lead ions from drinking water?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rense.com/health3/coffee.htm&quot;&gt;Here is a site&lt;/a&gt; that says the same thing with no references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... there's nothing quite like a good coffee for taking the lead and&#xA;  copper out of your drinking water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastEditorUserId="7569" LastEditDate="2012-06-21T18:26:43.013" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T22:11:58.420" Title="Can coffee ground be used to reduce lead ions from drinking water?" Tags="|coffee|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9915" CreationDate="2012-06-21T18:18:16.693" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I posted this question because I came across a scientific research exactly answering the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Toshimitsu Tokimoto, Naohito Kawasaki, Takeo Nakamura, Jyunichi Akutagawa, Seiki Tanada. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcis.2004.08.083&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Removal of Lead Ions in Drinking Water by Coffee Grounds as Vegetable Biomass&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 281.1 (2005): 56-61.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rate of lead ion adsorption by coffee grounds was directly proportional to the amount of coffee grounds added to the solution. When coffee grounds were degreased or boiled, the number of lead ions decreased. When proteins contained in coffee grounds were denatured, the lead ion adsorption was considerably reduced. The lead ion adsorption capacity of coffee grounds decreased with increased concentration of perchloric acid used for treating them and disappeared with 10% perchloric acid. The experiments demonstrated that proteins contained in coffee beans depend upon the adsorption of lead ion. The present study gave an affirmative answer to the possibility of using coffee grounds, an abundant food waste, for removing lead ions from drinking water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-06-21T22:11:58.420" LastActivityDate="2012-06-21T22:11:58.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9920" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-22T05:31:02.423" Score="7" ViewCount="6409" Body="&lt;p&gt;Normally car manuals say to let the car break in gently, not accelerating or breaking fast for first 1,000 km or driving below 80km/h. Is that really necessary in today's world? Is there any proof anywhere that this makes the engine run better in the long run?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there also any validity in the opposite approach &quot;Hard break-in&quot;? It's linked below, but essentially it's just heating up your engine and then letting it run hard for some time.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mototuneusa.com/break_in_secrets.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.mototuneusa.com/break_in_secrets.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7496" LastEditorUserId="7496" LastEditDate="2012-06-22T06:02:51.947" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T13:14:01.760" Title="Do you need to break in new engine on a car/bike for first 1,000 km by driving slowly and otherwise following manual's advice?" Tags="|road-vehicles|engineering|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9887" CreationDate="2012-06-22T11:20:17.237" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Ears do not cross hemispheres&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's obviously wrong. Hearing, from both ears, is first processed by one of the parts of brainstem &amp;mdash; &lt;a href=&quot;http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/mesencephalon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mesencephalon (aka midbrain)&lt;/a&gt;. On higher level it's processed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10900/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;primary auditory cortex&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2016-04-21T20:14:22.943" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T20:14:22.943" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9920" CreationDate="2012-06-22T14:37:21.210" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe&lt;/strong&gt;, it really depends upon the type of engine you are talking about. If you do some searching around, the usual reason cited for the break-in period, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break-in_%28mechanical_run-in%29#Modern_versus_older_break-in_regimens&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;summarized by Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; is that modern engines are built with higher tolerances than previous years which eliminates the need for the break-in period. However, on smaller engines such as ones used for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arcticinsider.com/Article/1100-4-Stroke-Discussion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;snowmobiles&lt;/a&gt; or or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/info_12225974_harley-davidson-break-new-motors.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;motorcycles&lt;/a&gt; tend to recommend that break-in procedures be followed to allow for proper seating of the piston rings and/or cleaning out manufacturing contaminates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the larger engines used in automobiles, it seems that the piston rings are once again &lt;a href=&quot;http://ask.cars.com/2007/10/engine-break-in.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cited as the common reason&lt;/a&gt; for the break-in period. That said though, the actual need for a break-in period seems to be dependent upon the engine itself and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/saturday-mechanic-blog/how-to-break-in-a-new-car&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;generally there isn't a need for one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="292" LastEditDate="2013-10-25T13:14:01.760" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T13:14:01.760" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1783" CreationDate="2012-06-22T15:03:00.980" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;To address the subquestion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Someone is trying to convince me that the maximum speed ever reached was 3,529.6 km/h and thus space exploration does not exist because nobody has ever been there, how can I prove him wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is a velocity of nominally 1 km/s (3600 seconds in an hour), or about 3280 feet per second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several &lt;a href=&quot;http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/MariaPereyra.shtml&quot;&gt;ammunition&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chuckhawks.com/rifle_ballistics_table.htm&quot;&gt;loads&lt;/a&gt; (available for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun&quot;&gt;both&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://defense-update.com/products/digits/120ke.htm&quot;&gt;military&lt;/a&gt; and non-military purposes) which achieve velocities greater than this - as high as 5700 m/s (or 5.7 km/s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Achieving velocities higher than that which the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird&quot;&gt;SR-71&lt;/a&gt; is &lt;em&gt;confirmed&lt;/em&gt; to have achieved in flight is, therefore, possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For larger objects, even excluding orbital vehicles, Wikipedia has a list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_airspeed_record&quot;&gt;airspeed records&lt;/a&gt;, including a substantially higher speed attained by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15&quot;&gt;X-15&lt;/a&gt; (5500-6200 kmh).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For non-US vehicles, you could look at the history of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_%28spacecraft%29&quot;&gt;Buran&lt;/a&gt;, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="637" LastActivityDate="2012-06-22T15:03:00.980" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9927" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-22T20:20:05.440" Score="28" ViewCount="4874" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just received an email entitled &quot;Why are Jews So Smart&quot;. You can read an article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sapulse.com/new_comments.php?id=A3426_0_1_0_M&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found a similar article in New York Magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did Jewish intelligence evolve in tandem with Jewish diseases as a result of discrimination in the ghettos of medieval Europe? That’s the premise of a controversial new study that has some preening and others plotzing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/culture/features/1478/&quot;&gt;Are Jews Smarter?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim supported by scientific research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2019-11-12T06:58:27.880" LastActivityDate="2019-11-12T06:58:27.880" Title="Are Ashkenazi Jews smarter?" Tags="|intelligence|genetics|jews|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9928" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9932" CreationDate="2012-06-23T00:05:38.030" Score="32" ViewCount="15064" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the tales of Wall Street financiers plunging to their deaths in 1929 are probably well known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EAskp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Hudsucker&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://coenbrothers.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:The_Hudsucker_Proxy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Hudsucker Proxy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://facts.randomhistory.com/2009/04/12_great-depression.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Random Facts - The Great Depression&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the initial crash, &lt;strong&gt;there was a wave of suicides in the New York’s financial district&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;It is said that the clerks of &lt;strong&gt;one hotel even started asking new guests if they needed a room for sleeping or jumping&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1. Feinstein, Stephen. 2006. &lt;em&gt;The 1930s: From the Great Depression to the Wizard of Oz.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt; Revised Ed. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Publishers, Inc.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But according to John Kenneth Galbraith's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Crash,_1929&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Great Crash, 1929&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; this &lt;strong&gt;is a myth&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the wake of &lt;em&gt;Black Thursday&lt;/em&gt; London newspapers reported that ruined speculators were throwing themselves from windows, but &lt;strong&gt;Galbraith asserts there was no substance to these claims of widespread suicides&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was there a crash related wave of suicides in New York City?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was there a high(er) number of people plunging to their deaths?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-12-10T20:07:38.133" Title="Stock Market Crash of 1929: Did Wall Street investors jump off buildings?" Tags="|history|suicide|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9927" CreationDate="2012-06-23T11:34:10.720" Score="17" Body="&lt;h1&gt;TL;DR: Maybe.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Maybe Ahkenazi Jews score somewhere between 0.3 and 1 SD higher on IQ tests or verbal IQ. The genetic explanation in the question (disease-conferring genes are also intelligence-boosting genes, there was no bottleneck, but directional selection) has come under criticism.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From your question it's unclear whether you want to know whether ethnic Jews are smarter for genetic reasons or simply smarter as a group. A commenter cites the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://harpending.humanevo.utah.edu/Documents/ashkiq.webpub.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Natural History of Ashkenazi Intelligence&lt;/a&gt;, which makes a more specific claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/sites/fasn/files/How%20Jews%20Became%20Smart%20%282008%29.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article critical of the genetic explanation by Prof. Brian Ferguson at Rutgers&lt;/a&gt; provides a useful counterperspective. It didn't appear in a peer-reviewed journal, but it did receive peer review and the author simply tells us why the editor rejected it, so it probably gives a good perspective on the debate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also cites one of the original authors with a revision to their theory, which may or may not be a bit more plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taking all the information together, it is fair to say that &#xA;  most, though not all, studies give Ashkenazi descendants a higher IQ than non-Jewish whites. &#xA;  How much?  Take your pick. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrast his quote of the criticised paper: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ashkenazi Jews have the highest average IQ of any ethnic group for which there are reliable data.  They score 0.75 to  1.0 standard deviations above the general European average, corresponding to an IQ of 112-115 ...  although a recent review concludes that the advantage is slightly less-only half a standard deviation (Cochran et al.  2006, 3) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His view (shortened):&#xA;The &quot;recent review&quot; they mention conveys a very different impression from that forceful assertion (Lynn 2004). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has often been asserted that Jews have a higher average level of intelligence than non-Jewish whites of European origin ...  Despite these assertions, the purported high IQ of the Jews has never been systematically reviewed...  Despite the widespread consensus on the high Jewish verbal ability, not all studies have shown that Jews have a higher verbal IQ than gentiles.  Furthermore, virtually all the existing studies are unsatisfactory because the &#xA;  samples have been unrepresentative, very small or for other reasons (pgs. 201-202) ... There is only one study of the intelligence of American Jews in the last century which appears to be representative and had a reasonable sample size.  This is Backman's (1972) analysis...  The mean IQs of the Jew in relation to gentile white means of 100 and standard deviations of 15 were as follows:  verbal knowledge (described as &quot;a general factor, but primarily a measure of general information&quot; ... )--107.8, English language 99.5; mathematics-1 09.7; visual reasoning (&quot;a measure of reasoning with visual forms&quot;)-91.3; perceptual speed and accuracy - 102.2; memory (short term recall of verbal symbols)-95.1 (pg.203). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On exceptional ability (i.e. a fat tail at the upper end of the bell curve) he says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NHAI also focuses on the high end of the curve, how many very, very gifted there are among Ashkenazim (Cochran et al.  2006, 661).  In this they follow Patai (1977, 321-342) and others who tallied the disproportionate number of Jews winning Nobel Prizes.  Cochran et al.  add world chess champions, and winners of ACM Turing awards.  This clear over-representation is cited frequently in print and internet discussions of NHAI, as clear demonstration of the power of &#xA;  Jewish genes.  But these impressive totals provide no evidence in favor of the NHAI hypothesis. &#xA;  They would only support that conjecture if it were shown that a disproportionate number of those winners were heterozygote carriers of one of the supposed IQ-booster genes, as compared to the normal distribution of these alleles among the Ashkenazi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="2722" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T22:42:23.533" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T22:42:23.533" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9928" CreationDate="2012-06-23T13:56:01.707" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The heavy lifting has been done by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2412/after-the-1929-stock-market-crash-did-investors-really-jump-out-of-windows&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To start with, let's look at the quality of your two conflicting sources. One is a respected academic book by a world-class economist. The other is a website that by admission devotes itself to &amp;quot;random facts and trivia&amp;quot;. Guess which is going to be more reliable. Interestingly Galbraith's book is one of the main sources used by The Straight Dope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's pull some summary quotes from The Straight Dope:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studying U.S. death statistics, Galbraith found that while the U.S. suicide rate increased steadily between 1925 and 1932, during October and November of 1929 the number of suicides was disappointingly low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say that a few failed investors, executives, etc., didn't kill themselves in the wake of the crash. But the suicides happened all around the country, didn't necessarily involve jumping out the window, and for the most part didn't take place immediately following the crash. [...] In 1929: The Year of the Great Crash (1989) historian William K. Klingaman says asphyxiation by gas was the most common method of doing oneself in, although there was considerable variety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several well-publicized suicides did fulfill the stereotype. Winston Churchill, visiting New York, was awakened the day after Black Tuesday by the noise of a crowd outside the Savoy-Plaza Hotel. &amp;quot;Under my very window a gentleman cast himself down fifteen storeys and was dashed to pieces, causing a wild commotion and the arrival of the fire brigade,&amp;quot; he wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In defense of Randomfacts, it is entirely possible that a few notable jumpers would have been reported as 'a wave' in contemporary sources, but would not make a significant difference to suicide statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-26T14:00:34.647" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9933" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-24T02:15:49.773" Score="12" ViewCount="4103" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today I read something quite unexpected:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Preliminary tests revealed the Tifton 85 grass, which has been here for years, had suddenly started producing cyanide gas, poisoning the cattle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is more worrisome: Other farmers have tested their Tifton 85 grass, and several in Bastrop County have found their fields are also toxic with cyanide. However, no other cattle have died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57459357/gm-grass-linked-to-texas-cattle-deaths/&quot;&gt;GM grass linked to Texas cattle deaths&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that one should logically assume, in a first instance, that someone put the cyanide on the grass, instead of assuming it was produced by it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this particular claim based on a study? Are GM organisms prone to mutate after a few years (15 in this case) in this manner? Is Tifton 85 known to produce cyanide at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is it biased reporting playing on fear of GM crops?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:12:49.620" LastActivityDate="2022-09-18T12:09:44.513" Title="Can Tifton 85 grass produce cyanide gas?" Tags="|genetics|toxicology|agriculture|gmo|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9933" CreationDate="2012-06-24T04:05:54.257" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick look around seems to show that although uncommon, it is not unique to have range animals poisoned by cyanide. It does not seem to be a &quot;GM&quot; issue(?). Many plants produce cyanide as a defence mechanism against browsers (mainly snail sized). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the plant is under stress (like when a drought occurs) the levels and concentration of this toxin increases and can be lethal to larger animals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We should also remember that a cow eats a LOT of grass, so even a little in each adds up quickly. There is also the possibility that the source of the cyanide (which itself is still only tentative) may not be the GM grass but other field plants like Johnsongrass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also suspect that 15 years is enough for any organism, especially agricultural plants, to mutate irrespective of its parentage (GM or otherwise)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://extension.missouri.edu/publications/DisplayPub.aspx?P=G4970&quot;&gt;Plants Poisonous to Livestock &lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gainesvilleregister.com/local/x1255111318/Cattle-deaths-blamed-on-natural-poisoning&quot;&gt;Cattle deaths blamed on natural poisoning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7648" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T04:05:54.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9933" CreationDate="2012-06-24T09:44:37.687" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first important point that is completely misrepresented in most articles I've seen about this is that Tifton 85 &lt;strong&gt;is not a genetically modified grass&lt;/strong&gt;, but was created conventionally by crossing Tifton 292 and Tifton 68. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.2135/cropsci2001.4115&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article about the history and creaton of Tifton 85 bermudagrass&lt;/a&gt; for more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this event to highlight the dangers of GMOs is ignorant at best, this grass is a conventional hybrid, not a GMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is known that certain plants and also grasses can produce cyanide in amounts that are dangerous to livestock (see &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.2307/3898869&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Potential for Hydrocyanic Acid Poisoning of Livestock by Indiangrass&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s10886-011-0049-7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effects of Cyanogenic Plants on Fitness in Two Host Strains of the Fall Armyworm (&lt;em&gt;Spodoptera frugiperda&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-18T12:09:44.513" LastActivityDate="2022-09-18T12:09:44.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9937" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9940" CreationDate="2012-06-24T13:00:10.070" Score="17" ViewCount="13292" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very popular videogame character, which is famous for his sonic speed, is depicted breathing underwater by using air bubbles. Now since I've never heard anyone complaining about this, despite the large amount of people I see complaining about the lack of reality in fiction media, I assume many of them believe it's possible. I hope that's enough to constitute a popular claim by omission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, considering the air flowing at the bottom of a swimming pool is the same as the ground atmosphere's, is it possible for a human, not a hedgehog, to breath in it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been discussed in the Mythbusters forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://community.discovery.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7501919888/m/49019185301&quot;&gt;Can you breathe underwater using air bubbles?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://community.discovery.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7501919888/m/95619561501&quot;&gt;Underwater breathing air bubbles?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Animals reportedly breathing underwater with air bubbles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/14517-diving-bell-spiders-underwater-bubbles.html&quot;&gt;Diving Bell Spiders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/about_6550331_insect-information-whirligig-beetles.html&quot;&gt;Whirligig Beetles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3518" LastEditorUserId="3518" LastEditDate="2012-06-24T13:43:06.523" LastActivityDate="2021-08-24T08:19:16.820" Title="Can you breathe underwater using bubbles of air?" Tags="|medical-science|physics|water|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9938" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-24T16:30:26.253" Score="11" ViewCount="618" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the method of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elimination_communication&quot;&gt;Elimination communication&lt;/a&gt; to bring up a baby without using diapers real and working?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And since it was &quot;taken&quot; from primitive tribes where the mother is with the baby 24/7 for a long period, can the same be achieved with a modern day society where many times after the first ~half year the child is left for long time with other caregivers like the grandparents or a nanny and not the parents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, can it be practiced in an environment with many children like a day-car/kinder-garden?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="2158" LastEditDate="2012-06-24T19:40:54.213" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T13:50:56.820" Title="Does Elimination communication work and can it be practiced in a modern society?" Tags="|children|parenting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9937" CreationDate="2012-06-24T20:18:25.663" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can breathe from a sufficiently robust stream of bubbles:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my9sS_LpwoY&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my9sS_LpwoY&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video shows a diving instructor breathing from a free-flowing regulator, which means that it's providing a continuous stream of air, not &quot;on demand&quot; as is typical in SCUBA. Essentially, to breathe air bubbles, you place your mouth as close vertically above the source as possible, allowing the air stream to enter your mouth but leaving your lips open; the air displaces the water that would otherwise enter your throat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find additional videos or discussion by searching for that term. It's a basic diving skill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is confusion if &quot;[t]he question concerns breathing in air bubbles that are floating in the ocean or any other place with a decent amount of water.&quot; Air bubbles large enough to be significant to a human rise rapidly in water, as seen in the video. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-25T11:42:31.423" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T11:42:31.423" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9937" CreationDate="2012-06-24T23:29:15.873" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a scuba diver I can assure you it's possible. One thing you need to do to get your licence is to breathe from a stream of bubbles from a free-flowing (faulty) regulator. That kind of fault causes the air to flow freely from the air tank, generating a major stream of bubbles. By placing your mouth over that stream you can breathe from it. Even though we were less than 1 meter under, to me it was by far the hardest of all the tests, but I did it, and so did everyone else in my class. I just hope I never have to do this deep underwater!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://knows-dive.com/scuba-diving-tips/open-water-course-skills/free-flowing-regulator-tutorial/&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; explains how to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastActivityDate="2012-06-24T23:29:15.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9943" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-25T12:39:53.967" Score="4" ViewCount="601" Body="&lt;p&gt;A proverb says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The treated cold lasts seven days and the untreated cold lasts a week&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A pharmaceutical company however &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rodina.cz/clanek6002.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims in a PR article&lt;/a&gt; that its product containing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymetazoline&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oxymetazoline&lt;/a&gt; will reduce average duration of a runny nose to four days, and that oxymetazoline has a proven antiviral effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;shortened runny nose treatment ... about one third ... patients were treated only for four days, instead of six days for those using Saline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;proved beyond any doubt antiviral effect of oxymetazoline&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PR article mentions a study by Dr. Stephan Kölsch from Merck Selbstmedikation GmbH,  Darmstadt from September 2005, with no further references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are those claims true (none of this is mentioned on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinorrhea&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;runny nose&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymetazoline&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;oxymetazoline&lt;/a&gt; Wikipedia pages)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T16:47:43.923" Title="Is oxymetazoline an efficient runny nose treatment?" Tags="|medical-science|virus|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8962" CreationDate="2012-06-25T12:40:59.133" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As it stands at this time, yes, there is some fairly significant evidence that yakuza are tied to Fukushima and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/05/first-arrest-made-linking-yakuza-fukushima-nuclear-clean-crews/52649/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arrests have been&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/05/how-yakuza-and-japans-nuclear-industry-learned-love-each-other/52779/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;made in the matter&lt;/a&gt;. While the initial reports where largely made by Katsunobu Onda, the author of the expose &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E6%9D%B1%E4%BA%AC%E9%9B%BB%E5%8A%9B%E3%83%BB%E5%B8%9D%E5%9B%BD%E3%81%AE%E6%9A%97%E9%BB%92-%E6%81%A9%E7%94%B0-%E5%8B%9D%E4%BA%98/dp/4822807533&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TEPCO: The Dark Empire (東京電力・帝国の暗黒)&lt;/a&gt;, the allagations have been picked up by some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/12/yakuza-and-nuclear-mafia-nationalization-looms-tepco/46803/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fairly&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/japan-earthquake-and-tsunami-in/9084151/How-the-Yakuza-went-nuclear.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reputable&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201202020055&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;news&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.japantoday.com/category/crime/view/yakuza-involved-in-fukushima-clean-up-reporter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt; some of which went on to do some investigative reporting on their own. &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said though, this involvement doesn't exactly appear to be altruistic as the yakuza was in a position to make significant profits from the relationship they had with TEPCO. Likewise, the workers themselves were not in a position to necessarily be picky about their work &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Asia/Story/STIStory_745271.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;due to indebtedness to the yakuza&lt;/a&gt; or are alleged to have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://enenews.com/book-mentally-handicapped-working-fukushima-plant-after-meltdowns-given-worse-radiation-suits-regular-employees&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mentally handicapped&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See the Asahi Shimbun article previously linked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2012-06-25T12:40:59.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9945" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-25T14:56:56.560" Score="8" ViewCount="505" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several doctors told me by that taking Finasteride (AKA Proscar or Propecia), I have a better-than-even chance of reducing hair loss.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finasteride&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; cites one study the corroborates this claim, but it leaves some important questions unanswered. &#xA;For example: Was the study conducted by someone affiliated with a pharmaceutical company? Is it possible that other studies, that had different conclusions, have been conducted but not published?&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone cite more reliable information about this issue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7658" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T16:13:19.753" Title="Does Finasteride reduce hair loss?" Tags="|medical-science|medications|hair|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9946" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-25T15:37:19.823" Score="8" ViewCount="679" Body="&lt;p&gt;While indirectly related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7490/can-a-himalayan-crystal-salt-cave-reduce-stress&quot;&gt;Himalayan salt caves&lt;/a&gt; due to their sourcing, Himalayan Salt Lamps are not quite the same.  These lamps are sold for the dual purposes of mood lighting and supposed health benefits due to the generation of negative ions that &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.natural-salt-lamps.com/negative-ions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;...help remove airborne contaminates.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and &quot;help mitigate EMF fields&quot;.  Sometimes salt lamps are also alleged to work in the same way as an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_ioniser&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;air ioniser&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the aesthetics of salt lamps are subjective and can't be tested; however, is there any evidence the support the claim that the lamps remove airborne contaminates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T14:48:16.983" Title="Do Himalayan Salt Lamps remove airborne contaminates?" Tags="|environmental-health|himalayan-salt|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20840" CreationDate="2012-06-25T18:00:46.703" Score="8" ViewCount="1165" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aS625.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;India's total population 118 Crores&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Daily Death - 62389&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Daily Birth - 86853&#xA;If Daily Dead People Donate their Eyes, within 11 Days All Blinds will be able to see&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Then in India there will be NO Blinds.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Don't Delete this message without&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Sending atleast to 1 person&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;KINDNESS Costs GREATNESS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't Just Read... Please SHARE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was shared in Facebook. The picture asserts that there are theoretically enough donors to solve most blindness in India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The numbers suggest a maximum of 28% rejects. Does a good organ donation system make a &lt;strong&gt;decisive impact&lt;/strong&gt; agaisnt blindness, given that all dead people cant give useful transplants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Note that a &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crore&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;corere&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is equlivient to 10,000,000 so the total population cited is 1,180,000,000.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T02:56:03.097" Title="Can we solve most blindness by cadaver donation?" Tags="|medical-science|ophthalmology|india|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9950" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-25T18:43:10.393" Score="28" ViewCount="4276" Body="&lt;p&gt;An answer (now deleted) at the new Islam.SE site made the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one takes a look at society where polygamy is banned or discouraged, you will see that some men will always try to fulfill their need for more partners by illegal means; which gives rise to the ‘oldest profession in the world’: prostitution. Seldom has there been a demand for male prostitution in the annals of history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same claim is mentioned on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/017-polygamy.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; Islam site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, the apologist usually falls back on a defense of polygamy - claiming that it reduces prostitution, for example - while effectively conceding that men and women are equal in Islam except with[sic] they aren't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And again in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/kadyrov-says-polygamy-reduces-promiscuity/398192.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this news release&lt;/a&gt; (full article quoted, due to reports of unreliable paywall):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Kadyrov Says Polygamy Reduces Promiscuity&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov said Monday that &lt;strong&gt;he supports polygamy&lt;/strong&gt; among Russian Muslims &lt;strong&gt;because it reduces sexual promiscuity and prostitution&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“That’s a tradition we’ve always had. God allows Muslims to do so,” Kadyrov, 33, said in an interview broadcast by state-run RT television. “Is it better to have 20 lovers rather than four lawful wives?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kadyrov said he was not asking federal authorities to the change law, which prohibits multiple marriages. Polygamy makes men accountable to their wives and reduces philandering, he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kadyrov is “married with seven children,” according to his web site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that polygamous behavior (specifically polygyny) leads to lower rates of marital infidelity and/or prostitution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-01-24T10:57:33.157" Title="Does polygamy result in less infidelity and prostitution?" Tags="|sexuality|islam|marriage|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9954" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-26T13:10:49.973" Score="12" ViewCount="803" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've come across software that claims to improve one's sleep and to help falling asleep in the first place, by listening to an audio track with spoken words, music, and ambient sounds. &lt;a href=&quot;http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pzizz-sleep/id341324632?mt=8&quot;&gt;Here's one example of an iPhone app&lt;/a&gt;. The vendor also offers a reverse product with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pzizz-energizer/id326427471?mt=8&quot;&gt;power-nap effect&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of reviews that claim this stuff works, and maybe it does, but maybe the reviewer was tired anyway or it's a placebo effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://appadvice.com/appnn/2010/02/review-pzizz-sleep&quot;&gt;AppAdvice review&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5817500/pzizz-helps-you-get-to-sleep-faster&quot;&gt;Lifehacker review&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/software/softwarereviews/news/2007/07/sleepsoftware?currentPage=all&quot;&gt;Wired review&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3467" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T09:54:03.240" Title="Can Software Help You Sleep?" Tags="|sleep|technology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9956" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10057" CreationDate="2012-06-26T15:03:17.620" Score="16" ViewCount="16625" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fight Club&lt;/a&gt;, the character Tyler Durden says that equal parts gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate make &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napalm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;napalm&lt;/a&gt;. The question's very simple; would this mixture make napalm, anything like napalm, or a precursor to it? My guess is it wouldn't work, and would &lt;em&gt;reek&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5997" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:26:17.297" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:26:17.297" Title="Can gasoline and frozen orange juice concentrate make napalm?" Tags="|explosives|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9959" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9988" CreationDate="2012-06-26T21:44:37.860" Score="9" ViewCount="1673" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realufos.net/2008/10/ufo-over-istanbul-kumburgaz-turkey-not.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; UFO sighting had some decent-quality video, compared to what's typical for most other sightings. Strangely though, for a UFO sighting event with such good &quot;evidence&quot;, there's been surprisingly little publicity or notability relating to it. What few news articles I could find mention the fact that it's supposedly been verified as being genuine footage. Here are my two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the footage real or fake?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it is real, what is the object shown in the video? The skeptic in me says it ain't aliens.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7040" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-06-27T00:42:27.880" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T02:30:32.710" Title="The 2008 Istanbul UFO sighting: What does the video actually show?" Tags="|ufo|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9962" CreationDate="2012-06-27T02:46:33.983" Score="10" ViewCount="44569" Body="&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago, I got vaccinated against rabies, because I was in a contact with a cat that was bitten by an unknown animal. Better safe than sorry, I went and had my five shots over a period of a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had heard before that after these shots you cannot consume ANY alcohol for a period varying from 3 to 9 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The doctor who gave me the shots haven't had heard about any restrictions, but other doctors said it is very dangerous and can result in death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've searched the web a lot, but without any hard proof, only &quot;someone told someone&quot; etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;are there any restrictions for alcohol consumption after rabies vaccine?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7675" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-07-07T03:41:03.090" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T08:17:35.577" Title="Does rabies vaccine have a dangerous interaction with alcohol?" Tags="|medical-science|mortality|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9961" CreationDate="2012-06-27T03:45:58.750" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rabies treatments available in the USA [Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/medical_care/index.html&quot;&gt;CDC&lt;/a&gt;] are listed below, with links to the information sheets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Human Diploid Cell Vaccine (HDCV) - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/Vaccines/ApprovedProducts/UCM133484.pdf&quot;&gt;Imovax® Rabies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Purified Chick Embryo Cell Vaccine (PCEC) - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.novartisvaccines.com/downloads/diseases-products/us-pl-rabavert.pdf&quot;&gt;RabAvert®&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Human Rabies Immune Globulin  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whale.to/a/p/imogam.pdf&quot;&gt;Imogam® Rabies-HT&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/drugInfo.cfm?id=40794&quot;&gt;HyperRab TM S/D&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While each sheet includes the standard worry-inducing list of every known, suspected and barely plausible potential side-effect and counter-indication for use, none mention alcohol. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T03:45:58.750" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9805" CreationDate="2012-06-27T04:28:43.427" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there isn't any pattern to the waves. In fact, the waves are defined as &amp;quot;with random periods/frequencies&amp;quot;, as you can see in this paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientiairanica.com/PDF/Articles/00001039/ketabdari.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;paper of Simulation of Random Irregular Sea Waves for Numerical and Physical Models Using Digital Filters&quot;&gt;of modeling of sea waves and sea states&lt;/a&gt;, this is mainly due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://chl.erdc.usace.army.mil/chl.aspx?p=s&amp;amp;a=ARTICLES;655&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;ACES site, with  multiples references to wave generation&quot;&gt;how the waves are generated due action of wind&lt;/a&gt;, also as is described &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hec.usace.army.mil/misc/watershed_conference/PDF_Files/Tucker_Hadley.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Here in page 9&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldscibooks.com/etextbook/7021/7021_chap05.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;wave generation theory&quot;&gt;there&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140331153417/http://oceana.org/en/explore/marine-science/ocean-waves&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;web page with simple explanation&quot;&gt;this webpage (more easy to understand)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://champs.cecs.ucf.edu/Library/Journal_Articles/pdfs/The%20generation%20and%20propagation%20of%20ocean%20waves%20and%20swell.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;interesting in page 5-8&quot;&gt;another page&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.cl/books/about/Automated_Coastal_Engineering_System.html?id=tJiDHAAACAAJ&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;google books&quot;&gt;in the extend bibliography&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://chl.erdc.usace.army.mil/chl.aspx?p=s&amp;amp;a=ARTICLES;656&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;more bibliography&quot;&gt;or this other bibliography list&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we can cite the following: (My additions in bold):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wind energy is imparted to the sea surface through friction and pressure, causing waves. (&lt;strong&gt;impossible for wind to &amp;quot;select waves&amp;quot; to give more energy&lt;/strong&gt;) As the wind gains strength, the surface develops gradually from flat and smooth through growing levels of roughness. First, ripples form, then larger waves, called chop. The waves continue to build, their maximum size depending on three factors: wind speed, wind duration, and the area over which the wind is blowing, called the fetch. When ocean waves are as large as they can get under the current conditions of wind speed and size of fetch, the sea surface is said to be “fully developed.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the fetch, many different groups of waves of varying wavelength are generated and interfere (&lt;strong&gt;noted in the literature as &lt;em&gt;sea state&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;). As they disperse away from the fetch, the waves become more regularly sized and spaced (&lt;strong&gt;known as &lt;em&gt;swell state&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;). This is because the speed of a wave in open water is closely related to its wavelength. The different groups of waves move at different speeds and so are naturally sorted by wavelength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140331153417/http://oceana.org/en/explore/marine-science/ocean-waves&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;web page with simple explanation&quot;&gt;Oceana.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when it is possible for two wave trains (generated by two diferent storms or conditions) to converge (as the largest, fastest-moving waves at the fore of the second train can &amp;quot;catch&amp;quot;, the smaller, slower-moving ones behind of the first train) or the sorting of wave frequencies as described above, generate waves coupling that can be interpreted as this &amp;quot;ninth wave&amp;quot; this effect is accidental due the difficulty of measuring wave height with the naked eye, the variability of amplitude of the waves and phasing of the waves ratios and due the fact the most waves have periods between 8 and 26 seconds and it is extremely hard get in the sea periods ratios of 9 to 10 to generate this &amp;quot;ninth wave.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7676" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-08-09T00:54:30.630" LastActivityDate="2023-08-09T00:54:30.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9964" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-27T06:47:16.037" Score="16" ViewCount="2620" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Travel Doctor (a chain of clinics that does vaccination for travellers) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.traveldoctor.co.nz/vaccinations.aspx/vaccinations.aspx#drink&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can I drink alcohol after vaccines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Don't drink too much after Japanese Encephalitis vaccine]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The myth about &quot;no alcohol after receiving vaccines&quot; may have begun&#xA;  this way... Apparently army recruits used to be given numerous&#xA;  vaccines and then be given a day off to recover...and what did the&#xA;  army recruits do when they had the day off? They went to the pub and&#xA;  got drunk and obnoxious, so the army advised them not to drink any&#xA;  alcohol for 48 hours after their vaccines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the military start the &quot;no alcohol after receiving vaccines&quot; meme?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T17:26:10.440" Title="Did the military start the &quot;No alcohol after vaccines&quot; meme?" Tags="|alcohol|military|vaccines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9965" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9966" CreationDate="2012-06-27T08:58:48.397" Score="9" ViewCount="2601" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a chain email:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are you to do if you have a heart attack&#xA;While you are alone.&#xA;If you've already received this,&#xA;It means people care about you.&#xA;The Johnson City Medical Center staff actually&#xA;Discovered this and did an in-depth study&#xA;On it in our ICU.&#xA;The two individuals that discovered this then did&#xA;An article on it, had it published and have had it incorporated into ACLS&#xA;and CPR classes.&#xA;It is very true and has and does work.&#xA;It is called cough CPR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A cardiologist says it's the truth&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If everyone who gets this sends it to 10 people,You can bet that we'll save&#xA;at least one life.It could save your life!&#xA;Let's say it's 6:15 p.m. And you're driving home (alone of course), after&#xA;an usually hard day on the job. You're really tired, upset and&#xA;frustrated.Suddenly you start experiencing severe pain In your chest that&#xA;starts to radiate outInto your arm and up into your jaw.You are only about&#xA;five miles from the hospitalNearest your home.Unfortunately you don't know&#xA;if you'll beAble to make it that far.What can you do?You've been trained in&#xA;CPRBut the guy that taught the course didn't tellYou what to do if it&#xA;happened to yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, this article&#xA;seemed to be in order.Without help, the person whose heart is beating&#xA;improperly and who begins to feel faint,Has only about 10 seconds left&#xA;before losing consciousness.&lt;strong&gt;However, these victims can help themselves by&#xA;coughing repeatedly and very vigorously.A deep breath should be taken before&#xA;each Cough, and the cough must be deep And prolonged, as when producing&#xA;sputumFrom deep inside the chest.A breath and a cough must be repeatedAbout&#xA;every two seconds without let upUntil help arrives, or until the heart is&#xA;felt to be beating normally again. Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs&#xA;and coughing movements squeeze the heart andKeep the blood circulating.The&#xA;squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this&#xA;way, heart attack victims can get to a hospital.&lt;/strong&gt; Tell as many other people as&#xA;possible about this, it could save their lives!From Health Cares, Rochester&#xA;General Hospital via Chapter 240s newsletter 'AND THE BEAT GOES ON '&#xA;(reprint from The Mended Hearts, Inc. Publication, Heart Response)BE A&#xA;FRIEND AND PLEASE SENDTHIS ARTICLETO AS MANY FRIENDS AS POSSIBLE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that likely to do anything?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T09:32:58.777" Title="Is &quot;self-CPR&quot; effective?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9965" CreationDate="2012-06-27T10:16:02.937" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The chain email says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;Health Cares, Rochester General Hospital&lt;/strong&gt; via Chapter 240s newsletter 'AND THE BEAT GOES ON ' (reprint from &lt;strong&gt;The Mended Hearts, Inc. Publication, Heart Response&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However,&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rochestergeneral.org/rochester-general-hospital/centers-and-services/rochester-heart-institute/patient-education/how-to-survive-a-heart-attack-when-alone/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rochester General Hospital - IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hundreds of people around the country have received an e-mail message entitled “&lt;em&gt;How to Survive a Heart Attack When Alone.&lt;/em&gt;” This article recommends a procedure to survive a heart attack in which the victim is advised to repeatedly cough at regular intervals until help arrives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We can find no record that an article even resembling this was produced by Rochester General Hospital within the last 20 years.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Furthermore, the medical information listed in the article can not be verified by current medical literature and is in no way condoned by this hospital’s medical staff.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, both The Mended Hearts, Inc., a support organization for heart patients, and the American Heart Association have said that this information should not be forwarded or used by anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mendedhearts.org/resources/about-heart-disease/the-coughing-rumor&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mended Hearts - Cure this Contagious Rumor: Coughing Won’t Fend Off a Heart Attack&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Despite a contagious rumor, coughing doesn’t prevent a heart attack.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An e-mail that spread around the world like a contagious disease a few years ago claimed that anyone who feels heart attack symptoms while alone should cough “repeatedly and very vigorously, repeating a breath about every two seconds…until help arrives, or (a normal heartbeat returns).”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The coughing technique known as “cough CPR” has been used in hospitals by physicians to treat sudden irregular heartbeats in monitored patients during cardiac catheterization procedures. In this case, a responsive patient who develops a sudden irregular heartbeat could possibly maintain blood flow to the brain and remain conscious for a few seconds if they cough vigorously and forcefully while being directed by a physician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But traditional CPR is not used to treat heart attack victims who remain conscious – but only if the heart attack if followed by cardiac arrest, the American Heart Association says.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/More/CardiacArrest/Cough-CPR_UCM_432380_Article.jsp#.TvxPIZfw18F&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;American Heart Association:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The American Heart Association does not endorse &quot;cough CPR,&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; a coughing procedure widely publicized on the Internet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As noted in the 2010 American Heart Association Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care, “cough CPR” is not useful for unresponsive victims and should not be taught to lay rescuers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During a sudden arrhythmia (abnormal heart rhythm), it may be possible for a conscious, responsive person to cough forcefully and repetitively to maintain enough blood flow to the brain to remain conscious for a few seconds until the arrhythmia is treated. Blood flow is maintained by increased pressure in the chest that occurs during forceful coughs. &lt;strong&gt;This has been mislabeled &quot;cough CPR,&quot; although it's not a form of traditional resuscitation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why isn't &quot;cough CPR&quot; appropriate in CPR training courses?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&quot;Cough CPR&quot; should not be taught in lay-rescuer CPR courses because it is generally not useful in the prehospital setting. In virtually all lay-rescuer CPR courses, the finding that signals an emergency is the victim's unresponsiveness. Unresponsive victims will not be able to perform &quot;cough CPR.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there situations when &quot;cough CPR&quot; is appropriate?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;“Cough” CPR may be considered in settings such as the cardiac catheterization laboratory where patients are conscious and constantly monitored (for example, with an ECG machine). A nurse or physician is also present who can instruct and coach the patients to cough forcefully every one to three seconds during the initial seconds of a sudden arrhythmia. However, as this is not effective in all patients, it should not delay definitive treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/112/24_suppl/IV-47.full&quot;&gt;LINK with references to studies&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lubbock.redcross.org/index.php?pr=Health_and_Safety_FAQs#faq0&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;American Red Cross&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The American Red Cross does not endorse the &quot;How to Survive A Heart Attack When Alone&quot; coughing technique that is being publicized on the Internet.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cough CPR is a self-administered form of cardiopulmonary resuscitation described by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2441386/&quot;&gt;CM Criley in 1976&lt;/a&gt;. According to Criley, self-initiated CPR is possible; however, &lt;strong&gt;its use is limited to clinical situations&lt;/strong&gt; in which the patient has a cardiac monitor, the arrest is recognized before loss of consciousness, and the patient can cough forcefully. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To date, there is insufficient scientific research concerning the efficacy of Cough CPR. Therefore, American Red Cross cannot advocate teaching the technique until it has been thoroughly tested in national studies and found to be effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.resus.org.uk/pages/coughCPR.htm&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ressuscitation Council (UK)&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The BLS/AED Subcommittee has received a number of enquiries from people who have been informed about &quot;cough CPR&quot; and &quot;How to survive a heart attack when alone&quot;. Advice has been put on the Internet that someone who thinks he or she is suffering a heart attack should repeatedly cough and go at once to a hospital, by car if necessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This advice is based (very loosely) on published case reports of people being able to maintain some sort of cardiac output during cardiac arrest by vigorous coughing - so-called &quot;cough CPR&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The scenario has usually been of a patient developing ventricular fibrillation whilst being monitored, often whilst undergoing cardiac catheterisation. The patient has been encouraged to cough and a measurable circulation has been recorded. This anecdotal evidence supports the theory that chest compressions during CPR are successful because they increase intrathoracic pressure and result in a flow of blood. The collapsed veins and patent arteries at the thoracic inlet result in this flow being in a forward direction. Coughing produces the same effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The BLS/AED Subcommittee knows of no evidence that, even if a lone patient knew that cardiac arrest had occurred, he or she would be able to maintain sufficient circulation to allow activity&lt;/strong&gt;, let alone driving to the hospital. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/medical/homecure/coughcpr.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes - Cough Dropped&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-06-27T10:58:25.830" LastActivityDate="2012-06-27T10:58:25.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9954" CreationDate="2012-06-27T20:16:10.213" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This argument presumes that you&lt;/em&gt; cannot &lt;em&gt;sleep on your own in a relaxed state and need assistance to fall asleep.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order for software to &lt;em&gt;cause&lt;/em&gt; sleep it would have to inititate the stages of sleep in a fashion beyond your control. By cause I mean 'to render you unconscious', as per the Hollywood image of someone being chloroformed, or the very real use of anesthesia at the doctor's office. Putting an individual to sleep in this manner should be as automatic as a drug, but still step by step, as the process should naturally occur. I will presume here that no other method of establishing sleep is being used (especially &lt;em&gt;pharmaceutical&lt;/em&gt; at this point).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The software should, if successful in &lt;em&gt;initiating&lt;/em&gt; sleep, cause your brain to produce High Amplitude Theta Waves.  According to about.com's &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychology.about.com/od/statesofconsciousness/a/SleepStages.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; on the stages of sleep, this is stage 1.  If this does not happen because of the software alone, then it did not cause Stage 1 Sleep.  &quot;Initiating&quot; in this sense is a forceful start of the Sleep cycle that allows the body to take over after it &quot;gets the ball rolling&quot;. There are also no claims or explanations about how the product protects the Sleep Cycle from being interrupted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a comment on the page linked in the product review provided where a commenter claims to be a light sleeper and cannot fall asleep with this Software active.  &lt;em&gt;This is clearly an instance of the Software being unable to fulfill what it was deisgned for.&lt;/em&gt; I can definitely say, this product does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; work for everyone, but may &lt;em&gt;remove stress&lt;/em&gt; in &lt;em&gt;some or most&lt;/em&gt; cases, if the comment is accurate.  The Wired review article also linked in your question states something very similar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sara Mednick, a sleep researcher at the Salk Institute and the author of Take a Nap, Change Your Life, says &lt;em&gt;there's no hard science proving that pzizz and programs like it actually improve sleep.&lt;/em&gt; But the promise of a planned, computer-controlled, 30-minute nap to refresh the system is alluring to the modern psyche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Verdict: It's all in your head. It may trick you into sleeping, but you're really falling asleep on your own.  You could possibly achieve the same sleeping success by listening to an extremely boring lecture, or sitting on a comfy couch after eating a large meal, but there's nothing in the product listed that would cause you to sleep directly.  This product only assists in relaxing the listenener. This software is more accurately a &quot;Stress Removal Aid&quot; and not a &quot;Sleep Aid&quot;. If you fall asleep to the product linked above, there's a good chance that you could have fallen asleep on your own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7685" LastEditorUserId="164" LastEditDate="2012-09-10T09:54:03.240" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T09:54:03.240" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9977" CreationDate="2012-06-27T23:43:15.077" Score="9" ViewCount="9276" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several TV options are available and most sellers tend to convince you that the higher frequency the TV is the better it is. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tested.com/news/news/1761-what-tv-refresh-rates-mean-for-watching-the-big-game/&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LCD TV manufacturers have tried doubling their refresh rates to 120Hz, and then doubling them again to 240Hz. As a result, modern LCD’s can update their images very quickly, drastically reducing motion blur. For watching sports, or even playing fast-moving video games, higher refresh rates will make a big difference on an LCD TV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the perceptible rate of change for the eye is 1/60th of a second per image or 60Hz I am dubious that any difference can be perceived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any proof that TVs with frequency greater than 60Hz are better than 60Hz?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5992" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-06-28T07:00:29.157" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T22:56:57.603" Title="Do high refresh rates prevent motion blur on TVs?" Tags="|consumer-products|ophthalmology|television|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9954" CreationDate="2012-06-28T07:25:34.867" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My attempts to find any evidence for or against the use of audio in general, or binaural beats in particular, as a treatment for insomnia revealed no strong evidence either way (making this answer rather less than definitive.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this paper argues against the practice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Joan E. Hamblin, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spbu.com.uy/pdf/Curso_EMC_2008/insomnia_an_ignored_problem_Prim_Care_Clin_Office_Pract_07_Dra_Labraga.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Insomnia: An Ignored Health Problem&lt;/a&gt;, Prim Care Clin Office Pract 34 (2007) 659–674&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One should not watch television, &lt;strong&gt;listen&#xA;  to music or audio tapes&lt;/strong&gt;, check e-mail, answer cell phones, solve family problems, or read in bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is justified on the basis of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_hygiene&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sleep hygiene&lt;/a&gt;&quot; - the idea of training the mind to associate lying in bed with sleeping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I speculate that for some insomniacs, having a set routine which involves lying down, shutting your eyes and ignoring some patternless noise from a phone, may actually serve as a higher-quality routine for sleep-hygiene that using the same phone to watch videos and answer questions on StackExchange web sites while lying in bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two other studies were of interest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Self-help therapy for insomnia: A meta-analysis,  Annemieke van Straten, Pim Cuijpers, &#xA;Sleep Medicine Reviews&#xA;Volume 13, Issue 1, February 2009, Pages 61–71 &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2008.04.006&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DOI: 10.1016/j.smrv.2008.04.006&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ementalhealthsummit.com/documents/1_5_4_%20meta%20sleep%20A%20van%20Straten.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Summary Presentation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This meta-study grouped together a pool of unrelated self-help techniques for insomnia, and found their overall strength was poor-to-moderate. Their conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Self-help fits well as a first step in a stepped care model for insomnia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read this as suggesting running to the doctor need not be your first remedy, although your doctor has more effective tools available if you need them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll throw in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9214187&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;another study from 1997&lt;/a&gt; even though I haven't found the original article, the abstract doesn't contain enough relevant information and overall, it looks rather suspect. It claims that playing music previously generated from the data in a patient's own EEG can improve insomnia. Definitely something I would like to see independently replicated and more details of the experimental method before I could accept it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T07:25:34.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9973" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9976" CreationDate="2012-06-28T08:04:35.993" Score="8" ViewCount="14225" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was told that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; pure white cats with both eyes being blue are completely deaf, and that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; pure white cats with one blue eye are deaf on the side that has the blue eye. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the cat has even a single spot on it it is not considered pure white.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google presents me with contradictory answers to this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's partially brought up in the 1869 edition of &lt;a href=&quot;http://darwin-online.org.uk/Variorum/1860/1860-12-c-1869.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Origin of Species Chapter 1&lt;/a&gt; (earlier versions omits cat color):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Breeders believe that long limbs are almost always accompanied by an elongated head. Some instances of correlation are quite whimsical; thus cats which are entirely white and have blue eyes are generally deaf; but it has been lately stated by Mr. Tait that this is confined to the males. Colour and constitutional peculiarities go together, of which many remarkable cases could be given among animals and plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7691" LastEditorUserId="631" LastEditDate="2014-10-15T09:12:54.157" LastActivityDate="2022-09-26T22:42:22.283" Title="Are all white cats with blue eyes deaf?" Tags="|zoology|genetics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9971" CreationDate="2012-06-28T08:10:29.553" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two separate concepts are being confused here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold&quot;&gt;Flicker Fusion Threshold&lt;/a&gt; (a.k.a. the Critical Flicker Fusion or CFF) is the minimum rate that a screen must flash before the human eye stops seeing it flicker and starts seeing it as a steady dot. It is affected by many factors, &lt;em&gt;and it is dependent on individuals&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under some conditions 60 Hz is entirely flicker free; however. under other conditions even 75 Hz may produce flicker.&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-4229173039731191/unrestricted/flicker.pdf&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have ever been in a situation where some people in the room find the flickering of the fluorescent lights annoying, while others can't understand what the problem is, you have experienced that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://hf.tc.faa.gov/hfds/hfds_pdfs/dot_faa_tc_07_11.pdf&quot;&gt;US FAA recommendations&lt;/a&gt; agree:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Non-interlaced CRT displays shall be &#xA;  refreshed at a rate of at least 80 Hz, preferably 100 Hz or higher, &#xA;  to avoid the perception of flicker  for photosensitive users.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [Source: Bauer &amp;amp; Cavonius, 1980; Cardosi &amp;amp; Murphy, 1995; DOE, 1992; &#xA;  NASA, 1995; Vanderheiden &amp;amp; Vanderheiden, 1991]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some experiments that demonstrate that higher than 60Hz rates can make a different to perception:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016981418690003X&quot;&gt;Visual discomfort reduced as frequency increased to 180 Hz&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167876097000743&quot;&gt;Differences in brain action between watching 60 and 72Hz screens detected on EEG&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/vsp/spv/1997/00000010/00000004/art00003&quot;&gt;Reading speed increased by 3% on 500Hz over 60Hz&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this Flicker Fusion Threshold is a different measure to the minimum refresh rate to observe smooth movement by objects. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_can_humans_see.htm&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to argue whether a higher refresh rate is better &lt;em&gt;in the case of television&lt;/em&gt;, because it is a subjective call. Some people argue that the algorithms used to interpolate movement when the input rate is slower than the refresh rate leads to an alien or artificial feel to the movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T08:10:29.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9973" CreationDate="2012-06-28T09:48:26.970" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;, not all pure white cats with blue eyes are deaf, however:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130910180632/http://www.fabcats.org:80/breeders/inherited_disorders/neurological.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;FabCats:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In cats, congenital deafness is seen almost exclusively in white coated individuals.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The deafness is caused by degeneration of the auditory apparatus of the inner ear and may affect one ear (unilateral) or both (bilateral).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breeding studies have defined the relationship between deafness in white cats and blue eye colour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The gene responsible is autosomally dominant gene W with complete penetrance for white coat colour, with incomplete penetrance for deafness and incomplete dominance for blue iris colour. The variable penetrance of deafness and eye colour may be caused by interplay with other genes or environmental factors.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cumulative studies from various countries have found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mveLm.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Cats&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h5&gt;References:&lt;/h5&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Delack J B (1984) &lt;em&gt;Hereditary deafness in the white cat.&lt;/em&gt; Compendium on continuing Education for the practising Veterinarian 6, 609–617&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Heid S, Hartmann R, Klinke R. (1998) &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1016/s0378-5955(97)00182-2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;A model for prelingual deafness, the congenitally deaf white cat - population statistics and degenerative changes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Hearing Research 115:101-112&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bergsma, D.R &amp;amp; Brown, K.S (1971) &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1093/jhered/62.3.171&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;White fur, blue eyes and deafness in the domestic cat&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Journal of Heredity 62:171-18&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Strain GM. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lsu.edu/deafness/VetJEd2007WhiteCat.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Deafness in blue-eyed white cats: the uphill road to solving polygenic disorders&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Vet J. 2007;173(3):471-2. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tvjl.2006.01.015&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1016/j.tvjl.2006.01.015&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lsu.edu/deafness/VetJEd2007WhiteCat.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deafness in blue-eyed white cats&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (by &lt;a href=&quot;http://facultypages.vetmed.lsu.edu/faculty/strain&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;George M. Strain&lt;/a&gt;, Louisiana State University):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[Pure white cats with blue eyes] are well-known&#xA;to be commonly affected by a congenital hereditary deafness&#xA;that may affect one or both ears&lt;/strong&gt;; the deafness is linked&#xA;to the so-called W gene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reports of this condition date&#xA;back to at least the 1930s (&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02981752&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bamber, 1933&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;), and many investigators&#xA;have studied it in subsequent years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.jhered.a105123&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wolff, 1942&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.3109/00016485909129195&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wilson and Kane, 1959&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.1965.0030&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bosher and Hallpike, 1965&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1093/jhered/62.3.171&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bergsma and Brown, 1971&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4363431/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mair, 1973&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00665540&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mair and Elverland, 1977&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.3109/00016487709128813&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pujol et al., 1977&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1016/0378-5955(81)90044-7&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rebillard et al., 1981a,b&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1016/0006-8993(96)00719-6&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Saada et al., 1996&lt;/a&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1096-9861(19980810)397:4%3C532::AID-CNE6%3E3.0.CO;2-2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ryugo et al., 1998&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1016/s0378-5955(03)00171-0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2003&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Delack (1984)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1)&lt;/sup&gt; analyzed three studies of deafness in nonpure&#xA;breed white cats&lt;/strong&gt; that included a total of 256 cats (&lt;em&gt;Bosher and Hallpike, 1965&lt;/em&gt;; &lt;em&gt;Mair, 1973&lt;/em&gt;; &lt;em&gt;Bergsma and&#xA;Brown, 1971&lt;/em&gt;);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;12.1% were unilaterally deaf and 37.9% were&#xA;bilaterally deaf, or a total of 50% were affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When cats&#xA;that were the offspring of two white parents were examined,&#xA;the prevalence of deafness (unilateral or bilateral) ranged&#xA;from 52% to 96%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1) Delack, J.B., 1984. &lt;em&gt;Hereditary deafness in the white cat.&lt;/em&gt; Compendium on&#xA;Continuing Education for the Practicing Veterinarian 6, 609–619&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Two of the studies&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Mair, 1973&lt;/em&gt;; &lt;em&gt;Bergsma&#xA;and Brown, 1971&lt;/em&gt;) &lt;strong&gt;examined the effect of blue eye colour on&#xA;deafness, finding (respectively) a prevalence of deafness&#xA;(unilateral and bilateral combined)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;of 85 and 64.9% in cats&#xA;with two blue eyes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;40 and 39.1% in cats with one blue eye,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;and 16.7 and 22% in cats with no blue eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, not all&#xA;white cats are deaf and not all blue-eyed white cats are&#xA;deaf&lt;/strong&gt;, but a great many of them are so-affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h5&gt;More:&lt;/h5&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vet.cornell.edu/departments-centers-and-institutes/cornell-feline-health-center/health-information/feline-health-topics/ask-elizabeth-white-cats-and-blindnessdeafness&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cornell University - Ask Elizabeth:  White Cats and Blindness/Deafness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110509031653/http://www.gallaudet.edu/library/research_help/research_help/frequently_asked_questions/othermiscellaneous/deaf_animals.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gallaudet University - Cat breeds with tendency to hereditary deafness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/11/11/2416286.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ABC Science - Deaf cats draw a blanc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-26T22:42:22.283" LastActivityDate="2022-09-26T22:42:22.283" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="9977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9971" CreationDate="2012-06-28T10:00:09.073" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Refresh rate&lt;/strong&gt;: First of all, in case of modern flat screens, be it LCD or OLED, refresh rate is misnomer. It's actually &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;frame rate&lt;/a&gt; &amp;mdash; rate at which the TV is able to change image from one frame to another. Pixels on these panels are constantly on, thus &lt;strong&gt;there is no flicker on LCD or OLED&lt;/strong&gt;. On the other hand, CRTs had refresh rates, since pixels would glow fully only after the refresh and then gradually go black. Hence flicker in case of low refresh rate on CRT. However, on CRT refresh rate did not mean frame rate. In fact even 100Hz CRT TV would still have frame rate of SDTV - 25Hz. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HDTV resolution and frame rate&lt;/strong&gt;: In the future HDTV will go beyond 60Hz, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;H.264/MPEG-4 AVC&lt;/a&gt; &amp;mdash; code used in modern HDTV defines &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Levels&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;frame-rates up to 172Hz&lt;/a&gt;. However, at the moment it's purely experimental. Highest standard currently in commercial use is 1080p60 (1920×1080, progressive, 60Hz). ESPN HD transmits sports in &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20080309195610/http://hd.espn.com/hd/pdfs/playbook.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;720p60&lt;/a&gt; (1280×720, progressive, 60Hz), they argue that lower resolution progressive (ie. non-interlaced) gives smoother experience for sports, than 1080i (1920×1080, interlaced, half-frames at 60Hz, roughly equivalent to full frames at 30Hz). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, thus far it seem like having TV with more than 60Hz doesn't help you much. But there is a catch. Actual parameter for LCD (similarly for OLED) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/speccontent.htm#response%20time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;is response time/pixel latency&lt;/a&gt;. Higher pixel latency leads to ghosting (motion blur). In case of TVs LCDs with lower response time are marketed as TVs with higher &quot;refresh rate&quot;.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xUC25.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/speccontent.htm#response%20time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TFTCentral&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can faster displays result in less motion blur? &amp;mdash; yes, they can. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it because of &quot;refresh rate&quot;? &amp;mdash; Not really, it's LCD's response time that matters, which for marketing purposes is translated to higher &quot;refresh rate&quot;. However with current HDTV signal, there are only 60 frames per second. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some TVs use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_interpolation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;motion interpolation&lt;/a&gt;, in which case they &quot;fake&quot; intermediate frames by interpolating consecutive real frames. This reduces &quot;jumpiness&quot; known as judder. It's more significant at lower frame rates as 24Hz of movies or 25Hz of SDTV. Motion interpolation is completely unrelated to motion blur. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-06-28T14:16:14.937" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T14:16:14.937" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9981" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10016" CreationDate="2012-06-28T19:21:26.453" Score="5" ViewCount="10118" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was recently recommended to me by a colleague after I complained about insomnia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-582-ANISE.aspx?activeIngredientId=582&amp;amp;activeIngredientName=ANISE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WebMD&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other uses include treatment of seizures, nicotine dependence, &lt;strong&gt;trouble sleeping (insomnia)&lt;/strong&gt;, asthma, and constipation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any validity to the claim that aniseed (anise) helps you sleep?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-04T08:29:25.537" LastActivityDate="2016-03-20T20:00:59.390" Title="Does aniseed (anise) effectively treat insomnia?" Tags="|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8242" CreationDate="2012-06-28T20:04:14.077" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether it will be exactly the same benefit in all physiological aspects may not be, but there is at least some corroborating evidince for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jp.physoc.org/content/588/6/1011&quot;&gt;http://jp.physoc.org/content/588/6/1011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The present study demonstrates that 2 weeks of low-volume,&#xA;  constant-load interval exercise is a practical, time-efficient&#xA;  strategy to induce mitochondrial biogenesis in skeletal muscle and&#xA;  improve functional exercise capacity.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study shows measurable molecular and cellular outcomes. Note that it is not exactly the kind of H.I.T in the quoted article, but the concept of low voume high intensity remains the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though it does seem counterintuitive, there must be some sort of signaling system that tells your body to respond to the physiological stresses of exercise, and this may just be one way to trigger it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article you quote from also states that it is only effective in some individuals, which would make perfect sense in a genetic transcription/protein setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastEditorUserId="2383" LastEditDate="2012-06-28T20:14:35.277" LastActivityDate="2012-06-28T20:14:35.277" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="9986" CreationDate="2012-06-28T23:37:41.693" Score="12" ViewCount="1516" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent article on Cracked.com, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_19910_5-things-you-wont-believe-are-making-you-dumber.html&quot;&gt;5 Things You Won't Believe Are Making You Dumber&lt;/a&gt;, claims &quot;jet lag gives you &lt;em&gt;permanent&lt;/em&gt; memory and learning problems&quot; and cited several studies. But when you look at the cited study, it shows permanent mental deficits in hamsters only a month after they get jet lagged. I'm not sure if this can be construed as permanent damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, do frequent travelers have more memory and learning problems than other people? Numerous academics and world leaders frequently travel and none of them attribute memory/learning problems to their travel (yet), so I'm a bit inclined to treat this with skepticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="727" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-06-30T17:45:08.543" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T17:45:08.543" Title="Can jet lag give you permanent memory and learning problems?" Tags="|environmental-health|aviation|memory|learning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9971" CreationDate="2012-06-29T00:03:17.787" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The advantages of higher frequencies depend a lot on what you are viewing. In most resolutions, as per &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ATSC&lt;/a&gt; standards, the signal your TV will receive is likely to be either 24 or 30 frames per seconds, as the 60 frames per seconds format is not yet standardised to all display resolutions (as per ATSC standards, 60fps is supported on 720p resolutions, but not yet on 1080p).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your television has a 60hz frequency (which is the standard in North America to be in sync with the AC current provided), this means that a signal sent at 30fps will display each frame for exactly 2 60th of a second. This is very good, as each image will be displayed for the same duration. However, if the signal sent to your television is set at 24fps, this means that half of the images will be displayed 2 60th of a second while the other half will be displayed 3 60th of a second. This is what is called a 2:3 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/glossary.php#2-3+Pulldown+%28also+mentioned+as+3-2+pulldown%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pulldown&lt;/a&gt;. In slow shots with a steady camera, this can result in telecine &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9971/do-high-refresh-rates-prevent-motion-blur-on-tvs/9985#comment40486_9985&quot;&gt;judder&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;In fast moving shots, this judder might be le&#xA;ss visible, but it can reduce the overall sharpness of the image, leading to motion blur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most motion pictures are still shot using 35mm film at 24 frames per second, as this film type has a very good definition. In older televisions, this lead to a large use of the 2:3 pulldown. However, modern HDTVs also use what is known as motion &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_interpolation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;interpolation&lt;/a&gt; to generate additional images in between the frames to artificially raise the footage to 60fps. On a 24fps footage, the 2:3 pulldown is first used to raise the signal to 30hz, then interpolation is used to raise it further to 60hz. This reduces the judder slightly, but it does little to alleviate other sources of motion blur, such as your TV's pixel response time, resolution resampling or compression algorithms used in some video formats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To alleviate those other sources of motion blur, TV manufacturers have begun making TVs with higher refresh rates. As 120hz is a multiple of both 24 and 30, it can eliminate the need for the 2:3 pulldown. In effect, each frame of a 24fps footage would be displayed 5 times before switching to the next, eliminating judder. However, a lot of 120hz TVs are currently using their faster frame rates only to reduce motion blur on regular 60hz signals by using &lt;strong&gt;more&lt;/strong&gt; motion interpolation. On such TVs, the 2:3 pulldown is used to convert the 24fps footage to 60hz, and only then does the motion interpolation take place. This double conversion of the original signal can lead to visual artefacts in the end signal, reducing the quality of the image in a way that is probably assimilated to motion blur although it does not stem from the same source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This HDTV Magazine &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/articles/2008/01/lcd_specs_playing_with_your_eyes.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; gives good complementory information on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal conclusion would be that a good 120hz TV can in fact be better than a 60hz one. However, I see no need for a 240hz TV as it does nothing more than a good 120hz one to reduce the need for the 2:3 pull down. The only thing it would do is add more interpolation to the footage, which can result in unnaturally smooth motion and an equally unnatural cardboard cutout look (characters appear as cardboard cutouts in front of the background). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7698" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T18:43:35.067" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9984" CreationDate="2012-06-29T00:12:44.207" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It can, but only if it's &lt;em&gt;chronic&lt;/em&gt; jet-lag (i.e. You're a long haul flight attendant or pilot, or you make long haul trips regularly).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paper in &lt;em&gt;Nature Neuroscience&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v4/n6/full/nn0601_567.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Chronic 'jet lag' produces temporal lobe atrophy and spatial cognitive deficits&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, came to the following conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Time-zone travelers encounter a pattern of light and darkness, and their endogenous circadian rhythms adapt to the new external time cue until both timing systems synchronize, but &lt;strong&gt;the long-term repeated disturbance of synchronization between the two timing systems impairs physiological and psychological health and induces stress.&lt;/strong&gt; Salivary cortisol levels in cabin crew after repeated exposure to jet lag were significantly higher than after short distance flights, and the &lt;strong&gt;higher cortisol levels were associated with cognitive deficits&lt;/strong&gt; that were dependent on non-semantic stimuli. The present study demonstrates that significant prolonged cortisol elevations produce reduced temporal lobe volume and deficits in spatial learning and memory; &lt;strong&gt;these cognitive deficits became apparent after five years of exposure to high cortisol levels.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I would be interested in reading the full paper if anyone has a Nature subscription.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the same author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ennassor.com/Publications/Chronic%20Jet%20Lag%20Produces%20Cognitive%20Deficits.pdf&quot;&gt;Chronic jet lag produces cognitive deficits&lt;/a&gt; (PDF) measured the saliva cortisol levels of airline ground staff and cabin crew and found that they were elevated for long-haul flight crews &lt;em&gt;even before they departed&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the present study, all the aircrew subjects had at least several&#xA;  transmeridian flights in the preceding weeks, which may account&#xA;  for the increased cortisol secretion in the aircrew subjects. This&#xA;  finding is in contrast to earlier reports of no increased cortisol&#xA;  secretion after transmeridian flying (Desir et al., 1981). The study&#xA;  of Desir et al. (1981), however, was conducted in subjects that had&#xA;  no circadian rhythm disruption in the previous year. &lt;strong&gt;International transmeridian flying was associated with significantly raised salivary cortisol compared to short-distance flying in the same cabin crew subjects on the outward journey. This indicates that the increase in circulating cortisol was not caused by the effect of flying per se. It is possible, however, that anticipation of&#xA;  the deleterious effects of “jet lag” was stressful for these subjects, and this caused the increase in cortisol secretion before the&#xA;  circadian disruption.&lt;/strong&gt; This effect was observed across all four&#xA;  career cohorts, which suggests that it is not something to which&#xA;  the subjects were able to adapt. &lt;strong&gt;One might have expected that&#xA;  after 4 years of flight experience, the subjects would have adopted&#xA;  a successful strategy for reducing the negative impact of flying.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recent evidence has shown that chronic exposure to high levels&#xA;  of circulating corticosteroids impairs cognitive function in both&#xA;  animals and humans (Lupien et al., 1994, 1997, 1998; McEwen&#xA;  and Sapolsky, 1995). After 4 years of transmeridian flying expe-&#xA;  rience, the aircrew showed statistically significant correct key rate&#xA;  and reaction time deficits. The delayed onset of this decrement&#xA;  implies that exposure to the elevated level of cortisol for 4 years&#xA;  had impaired these functions a result, which is in line with&#xA;  previous findings (Lupien et al., 1994, 1997; McEwen and Sapol-&#xA;  sky, 1995). Years of career also appeared to negatively affect the&#xA;  ground crew’s cognitive performance as well. This decline may be&#xA;  explained by age-related influences, however, further study is&#xA;  required to confirm this (Grady et al., 1998; Hazlett et al., 1998).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2012-06-29T00:33:23.143" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T00:33:23.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9981" CreationDate="2012-06-29T01:34:28.937" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found very little literature on this subject. The only thing that popped up was a US patent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Patent US2008/0039526 : &lt;em&gt;Composition for promoting sleep&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.ca/patents?hl=fr&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;vid=USPATAPP11843913&amp;amp;id=9runAAAAEBAJ&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;dq=anise+sleep+disorder&amp;amp;printsec=abstract#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=anise%20sleep%20disorder&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.google.ca/patents?hl=fr&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;vid=USPATAPP11843913&amp;amp;id=9runAAAAEBAJ&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;dq=anise+sleep+disorder&amp;amp;printsec=abstract#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=anise%20sleep%20disorder&amp;amp;f=false&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The herbs are not restricted in particular, and anise, carrot seed, clove, coriander, cypress, cinnamon, juniper, ginger, sweet orange, pine needles, basil, patchouli, bitter orange, fennel, black pepper, bay, peppermint, bergamot, mandarin, myrrh, lemon grass, rosemary, grapefruit, vanilla, hyssop, eucalyptus, lime, lemon, ylang-ylang, cardamom, clary sage, jasmine, geranium, Bulgarian rose, rose, olibanum, chamomile, geranium, sandalwood, neroli, verbena, petitgrain, vetiver, majorum, melissa, rosewood, etc., can be cited as examples. Among these, peppermint is preferable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This patent obviously describe a compound of products that can be used to &lt;em&gt;promote&lt;/em&gt; sleep. Note that the word promote itself give a good clue to answer your question. Moreover, the inventors say that amount a considerable list, peppermint is preferable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, I cannot draw the conclusion that &lt;strong&gt;anise&lt;/strong&gt; cannot treat effectively the insomnia. However, from the lack of valid source and the patent I found  allow me to say that it is probably not highly effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-07-01T14:45:48.057" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T14:45:48.057" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9959" CreationDate="2012-06-29T02:30:32.710" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://usuarios.multimania.es/aduarte/&quot;&gt;Andrés Duarte&lt;/a&gt; published an analysis in Spanish, which is non-peer-reviewed and self-published, but fairly systematic. It was translated to English by &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forgetomori.com/2010/ufos/kumburgaz-turkey-ufo-yacht-window-reflections/&quot;&gt;Forgetomori&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sighting was not a single event, but a number of sightings spread out over two or three years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion reached was that the images were&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;mainly of yacht side windows reflecting light at night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He determines the source and angle of the shots, and identifies the marina and the style of boat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T02:30:32.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9981" CreationDate="2012-06-29T03:59:26.673" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aniseed (Pimpinella anisum) has a long history of being used for a wide range of ailments, including insomnia. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anise&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; suggests it goes back at least to Pliny The Elder (i.e. the 1st Century AD ), but others (e.g. Jodral, below) cite Hippocrates in the Fifth Century BC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book *&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Illicium_Pimpinella_and_Foeniculum.html?id=qW5F6EbD1dMC&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot;&gt;Illicium, Pimpinella and Foeniculum&lt;/a&gt; by Manuel Mirò Jodral (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earthwebz.com/library/holistichealth/Herbs%20and%20Homeopathy/Illiciu,%20Pimpinella%20and%20Foeniculum.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;) contains a detailed history of the evidence for its use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence from 1889 that it induces sleep and muscular relaxation in humans. In 1973, this was narrowed down to just one component, on rabbits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At higher doses of the trans-isomer, only slow and wide waves appeared, characteristic&#xA;  of a state of drowsiness; sleeping time was doubled with respect to controls at doses ranging from 300 to 700 mg/kg body weight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the book also explains many of the side-effects and risks, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seizures in humans.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Catatonic states and death in mice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Confusion with other toxic species with similar names (e.g. star anise).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not appear to be a suitable herb to be experimenting with. Your doctor has more carefully controlled doses of more carefully studied and more effective sleep-inducing medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T03:59:26.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9992" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-29T06:06:23.243" Score="5" ViewCount="7533" Body="&lt;p&gt;These anxiety related sites recommend holding breath with regard to getting rid of depression:&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindbodytherapy.net/breath.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mindbodytherapy.net/breath.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are three steps to full breathing: Inhalation (to a count of four); &lt;strong&gt;Retention/Holding (to a count of four);&lt;/strong&gt; and Exhalation (to a count of eight).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://depressivedisorder.blogspot.in/2011/12/6-breathing-therapy-exercises-for.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://depressivedisorder.blogspot.in/2011/12/6-breathing-therapy-exercises-for.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This exercise lets you to get rid of your depression and feel energized.&#xA;  1. Sit on a chair with your back straight and feet flat on the floor.&#xA;  2. Reach straight up with both hands.&#xA;  3. &lt;strong&gt;Inhale deeply. Hold your breath and while holding your breath, squeeze your fists so that the muscles in your arms tighten.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then these talk the opposite:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fibromyalgiahope.com/relaxation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fibromyalgiahope.com/relaxation.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's the holding the breath that can be very detrimental whereas long, deep breaths will give you benefits of clearing out toxins, more energy, plus more relaxation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breathing.com/articles/breath-holding.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.breathing.com/articles/breath-holding.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EMAIL APNEA? In the November 23, 2009 Huffington Post, well known&#xA;  writer Linda Stone in her &quot;Just Breathe: Building the case for Email&#xA;  Apnea&quot; stated that &quot;Dr. Margaret Chesney, at the National Institute of&#xA;  Health (NIH). Research conducted by Chesney and NIH research&#xA;  scientist, Dr. David Anderson, demonstrated that &lt;strong&gt;breath holding&#xA;  contributes significantly to stress-related diseases. The body becomes&#xA;  acidic, the kidneys begin to re-absorb sodium, and as the oxygen (O2),&#xA;  carbon dioxide (CO2), and nitric oxide (NO) balance is undermined, our&#xA;  biochemistry is thrown off.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Breath-holding and hyperventilating disturb our body's balance of&#xA;  oxygen, CO2, and NO. Nitric oxide, not to be confused with the nitrous&#xA;  oxide used in dental offices, plays an important role in our health.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  From a briefing document prepared for the Royal Society and&#xA;  Association of British Science Writers, Pearce Wright explains, &quot;The&#xA;  immune system uses nitric oxide in fighting viral, bacterial and&#xA;  parasitic infections, and tumors. Nitric oxide transmits messages&#xA;  between nerve cells and is associated with the processes of learning,&#xA;  memory, sleeping, feeling pain, and, probably, depression. It is a&#xA;  mediator in inflammation and rheumatism.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;YOGA AND BREATH HOLDING The so called yoga breathing count where you&#xA;  breathe in hold the breath for several counts and breathe out and hold&#xA;  the several counts are in my opinion training us to hold our breathing&#xA;  even more than we do already. &lt;strong&gt;Breath holding can give some relief from&#xA;  hyperventilation but at the cost of tightening the stomach muscles,&#xA;  worsening the startle response and over time making inviting shallow&#xA;  breathing.&lt;/strong&gt; I understand the Hale Clinic in the UK used to teach a&#xA;  Russian breath holding technique for asthma and they no longer do&#xA;  that.  I often hear of yoga teachers and personal power experts&#xA;  advocating a pattern of say the 2:4:6:4 ratio; 2 inhale: 4 hold : 6&#xA;  exhale: 4 hold; or 2:4:16:4 ratio; or whatever numbers they think are&#xA;  good or fit their ego. I totally disagree and caution everyone to not&#xA;  hold their breath nor try such difficult lengths of breathing&#xA;  extensions. Your diaphragm can support the voice best when it keeps&#xA;  moving.  Listen to people's voices.  See if they sound deep, full and&#xA;  resonant or thin, dry or raspy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5341" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2012-06-29T11:33:07.267" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T11:33:07.267" Title="Is breath holding disadvantageous for mental or physical health?" Tags="|medical-science|depression|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9971" CreationDate="2012-06-29T17:58:35.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term &quot;motion blur&quot; appears to be a misnomer.  When taking the answer literally, the answer is no.  In fact, higher refresh rates can increase motion blur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've discussed perceptual flicker and other perceptual differences between low and high refresh rate, but we hardly discussed motion blur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Motion blur is not necessarily a bad thing.  There are (at least) three relevant meanings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Motion blur in the video source.  This is the same as motion blur in a still image.  When a short shutter time is used, little motion blur is visible.  For example, for sports photography one often uses 1/500 sec or less.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://photo.tutsplus.com/tutorials/shooting/8-tips-for-taking-sports-photos-like-a-pro/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://photo.tutsplus.com/tutorials/shooting/8-tips-for-taking-sports-photos-like-a-pro/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same goes for video.  While a video camera may record 50-60 images per second, the shutter time used for each image is actually often much less.  With a lot of light, 1/500 sec is pretty normal for a video camera.  When you look at a movie, you can see the difference between a 50 Hz video with 1/500 second shutter time, and a 50Hz video with an 1/50 second shutter time (which is obviously the maximum).  So, this type of motion blur has nothing to do with the refresh rate, except that the &lt;em&gt;maximum&lt;/em&gt; shutter time is given by the frame rate.  My own experience is that a blurry video actually looks better, as very short shutter times produce a &quot;choppy&quot; animation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://alexschwindt.typepad.com/alexschwindtcom/2012/02/10-common-mistakes-dslr-video-shooters-make.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://alexschwindt.typepad.com/alexschwindtcom/2012/02/10-common-mistakes-dslr-video-shooters-make.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Motion blur is also generated artifically in video games for this reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch27.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch27.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gamingbolt.com/ten-games-with-beautiful-motion-blur&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://gamingbolt.com/ten-games-with-beautiful-motion-blur&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Motion blur as an artifact of the display (=TV).  When the latency of the display pixels is too high for the frame rate, you get a blurry image.  So, increasing frame rate without appropriately shortening the display latency may cause an &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; in motion blur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Display latency is usually specified as part of product specifications. See also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/speccontent.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/speccontent.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Perceptual motion blur, caused neither by video source or display.  The human eye has (complex) limitations so as to what speed animation it can keep up with.  Very fast changes will result in a blurry perception.  Low light will increase perceptual latency and hence will affect blurriness (as is demonstrated by the Pulfrich effect).  A higher frame rate may increase perceptual motion blur, as there is simply more temporal information for the eyes to digest.  Again, more motion blur will likely look better here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6815" LastEditorUserId="6815" LastEditDate="2012-06-29T22:56:57.603" LastActivityDate="2012-06-29T22:56:57.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9994" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-29T19:17:23.837" Score="23" ViewCount="1882" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently been doing research about the health benefits of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probiotic&quot;&gt;probiotics&lt;/a&gt;. While doing this research I have come across an interesting &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/probiotics/page2.htm&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;During a delivery through the birth canal, a newborn picks up&#xA;  bacteria from his/her mother. These good bacteria are not transmitted&#xA;  when a Cesarean section is performed and have been shown to be the&#xA;  reason why some infants born by Cesarean section have allergies, less&#xA;  than optimal immune systems, and lower levels of gut microflora.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also found some supporting evidence for this claim on this &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2010/02/26/c-sections-allergies-and-probi/&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;. Is there substantial truth to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7674" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T08:47:41.253" Title="Do C-Section born babies have worse immune systems?" Tags="|medical-science|birth|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8447" CreationDate="2012-06-29T20:26:38.190" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;doTERRA is a brand of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_oil&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;essential oils&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Cancer Institute&lt;/a&gt; published a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cam/aromatherapy/healthprofessional/page7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;summary&lt;/a&gt; of published, peer-reviewed, clinical scientific studies into aromatherapy and essential oils.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7711" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-06-30T03:29:13.227" LastActivityDate="2012-06-30T03:29:13.227" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9998" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-30T00:56:03.617" Score="3" ViewCount="711" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people recommend cocoa butter be applied to chapped lips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://naturesnaturalhealing.com/ChappedLips.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Natures Natural Healing&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Treat chapped lips using cocoa butter - Applying a small amount of cocoa butter onto your chapped lips every couple of hours will help keep them moist. It is important to keep your lips moist so you don't get chapped lips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any study supporting the claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2333" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-06-30T02:48:02.840" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T11:22:10.343" Title="Does cocoa butter help remedy chapped lips?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="9999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-06-30T02:49:07.090" Score="3" ViewCount="5873" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ46Ot4_lLo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this viral video&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choi_Sung-Bong&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Choi Sung-Bong&lt;/a&gt;, a finalist on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea%27s_Got_Talent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Korea's Got Talent&lt;/a&gt; gives a background story that is astonishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His story is generally accepted as factual even without references (for instance, on Wikipedia). I'd like to see some references which back him up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm specifically interested in the bit about him running away from the orphanage at the age of 5 (after which he allegedly survived for many years by selling gum on the street).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5577" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-09-29T23:35:02.830" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T04:32:25.537" Title="Did Choi Sung-Bong run away from an orphanage at the age of 5?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10003" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10017" CreationDate="2012-07-01T07:31:40.947" Score="14" ViewCount="11940" Body="&lt;p&gt;A person I know (and his colleagues) does not wear his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comparestoreprices.co.uk/images/unbranded/c/unbranded-construction-helmet-yellow-plastic.jpg&quot;&gt;civil engineers helmet&lt;/a&gt; because they believe that it causes or contributes to hair loss. An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_5887333_prevent-helmet-hair-motorcycle-helmets.html&quot;&gt;ehow post&lt;/a&gt; also makes the same claim regarding motorcycle helmets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any research done to back claims that helmets or any kind of head-wear causes hair loss?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7718" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2012-07-03T01:13:56.243" LastActivityDate="2020-09-27T21:55:19.487" Title="Does wearing a helmet cause/aggravate hair loss?" Tags="|safety|engineering|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10006" CreationDate="2012-07-01T12:22:34.577" Score="39" ViewCount="22953" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm on vacation and got sunburnt, so someone said I should go get Aloa Vera since that apparently helps. There seems to be a plethora of made-for-adsense-sites that claim the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.care2.com/greenliving/caring-for-a-sunburn.html&quot;&gt;http://www.care2.com/greenliving/caring-for-a-sunburn.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For sunburn there is nothing better than aloe vera gel; it is antibacterial and deeply healing for burns in part because of aloectin B, which stimulates the immune system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  Is there solid ground for that belief?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-04T08:30:43.273" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T09:31:08.857" Title="Does aloe vera help cure sunburn?" Tags="|natural-remedies|plants|dermatology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10005" CreationDate="2012-07-01T12:53:25.110" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, Aloe Vera doesn't help prevent or heal sunburn.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to admit to being surprised by this. I was expecting to see a (small) effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Porntip Puvabanditsin and Rujirat Vongtongsri, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mat.or.th/journal/files/Vol88_No4_173.pdf&quot;&gt;Efficacy of Aloe Vera Cream in Prevention and&#xA;Treatment of Sunburn and Suntan&lt;/a&gt; J Med Assoc Thai 2005; 88(Suppl 4): S173-6.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This experiment involved 20 volunteers in a randomized double-blind trial, where they applied aloe vera cream (or placebo) either before, after or before and after exposure (twice daily for 3 weeks).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results showed that the aloe vera cream has no&#xA;  sunburn or suntan protection and no efficacy in sunburn treatment when compared to placebo. The aloe vera&#xA;  cream has no bleaching effect too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&#xA;Feily, A.; Namazi, M. R., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/20093176154.html;jsessionid=CCA96C9FD9A4BA779B5FEB5EEFC85726&quot;&gt;Aloe vera in dermatology: a brief review.&lt;/a&gt; Giornale Italiano di Dermatologia e Venereologia 2009 Vol. 144 No. 1 pp. 85-91&#xA;ISSN 0026-4741.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was a review of the scientific literature that came to the same conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Topical application of A. vera is not an effective prevention for radiation-induced injuries and has no sunburn or suntan protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;General Burns&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is evidence that general (e.g heat-based) burns and wounds can be helped by aloe vera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same paper, Feily and Namazi, also states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It can be effective for genital herpes, psoriasis, human papiloma virus, seborrhoeic dermatitis, aphthous stomatitis, xerosis, lichen planus, frostbite, burn, wound healing and inflammation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17499928&quot;&gt;The efficacy of aloe vera used for burn wound healing: a systematic review.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Maenthaisong R, Chaiyakunapruk N, Niruntraporn S, Kongkaew C.&#xA;Burns. 2007 Sep;33(6):713-8. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pha.nu.ac.th/nathorn/articles_PDF/13%20%20Aloe.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also concluded that aloe vera helped with burns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the summary weighted mean difference in healing time of the aloe vera group was 8.79 days shorter than those in the control group&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that aloe vera helps with regular burns but not sunburn still surprises me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hans B. Juneby, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pha.nu.ac.th/nathorn/articles_PDF/13%20%20Aloe.pdf&quot;&gt;Aloe barbadensis – a legendary medicinal plant&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Pharmacognosy, 15 hp, 2009&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This essay, sometimes straying into superlatives and past what the scientific evidence supports, discusses some of the history of the research, and makes an interesting distinction between fresh aloe vera and the gels found in cosmetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-07-02T01:04:58.793" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T01:04:58.793" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9849" CreationDate="2012-07-01T21:23:09.317" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're lucky, the intense debate about psychology's (and other sciences') false-positive problem has spawned &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.utm.utoronto.ca/~w3psyuli/PReprints/IC.pdf&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; (by Schimmack, hailing from your FU Berlin by the way) which uses Gaillot's initial study as a case study of incredible results. The author shows how dodgy methodology, analysis and reporting choices made the initial study incredible (actually some of Gaillot et al.'s reported studies didn't replicate the effect, but those tests weren't reported).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Cherries (picking and emphasis mine):&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He [Kurzban] was informed that the data from Study 1 were &#xA;  corrupted and not available, but he obtained the data from studies 3 to 6, which also provided &#xA;  information about the influence of self-regulation on glucose consumption although &lt;strong&gt;these results &#xA;  were not reported in the original article&lt;/strong&gt;. The main finding was that across the four studies, the &#xA;  results showed &lt;strong&gt;no significant decrease in glucose levels.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  sample sizes were modest, ranging from N = 12 to 102. Four studies &#xA;  had sample sizes of N &amp;lt; 20, which Simmons et al. (2011) considered to require special &#xA;  justification.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Effect sizes of the various paradigms were converted into d-values. Effect sizes varied &#xA;  considerably from d = .23 to d = 1.53. This &lt;strong&gt;variation was strongly negatively related to sample &#xA;  sizes&lt;/strong&gt;, r = -.79, without any explicit explanations for this correlation.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  This indicates that from a statistical point of view, Bem’s (2011) evidence for ESP is more credible than Gailliot et al.’s (2007) evidence for a role of blood-glucose in self-regulation.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In conclusion, Gailliot et al. (2007) had limited resources to examine the role of blood glucose in self-regulation. By attempting replications in nine studies &lt;strong&gt;they did not provide strong evidence for their theory&lt;/strong&gt;. Rather, the results are incredible and difficult to replicate, presumably because the original studies yielded inflated effect sizes. A better solution would have been to test the three hypotheses in a single study with a large sample. This approach also makes it possible to test additional hypotheses, such as mediation (Dvorak &amp;amp; Simons, 2009). Thus, Example 2 illustrates that a single powerful study is more informative than several small studies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm glad you asked this question and led me to Kurzban's blog. My first problem with Gaillot et al. (read it years ago) was that with effects this big, it seemed implausible that so many people eat more sweets than they &quot;want&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that this isn't a meta-analysis of the findings, but I think it helps a lot to see what is dodgy about it spelled out clearly by more skeptical scientists. I'd reckon (from experience, without having read them all) that some of the articles collected by Sklivvz suffer from similar ailments (clearly Gaillot et al. is not a solid, confirmatory study) and that those by Kurzban do not. There is a grand unified idea behind it, i.e. &quot;the self&quot; but I'm unsure whether this is a good metatheory that can generate claims to be disproved as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: Why was this moved from cogsci? Seems like a perfect fit, maybe we should move it back. Skepticism of cognitive science should be part of cogsci if you ask me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastActivityDate="2012-07-01T21:23:09.317" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2112" CreationDate="2012-07-02T00:21:31.273" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;K-Ar dating relies on very long half-lives, and hence should not be used for dating new rocks. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-Ar_dating&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says &quot;the technique is most applicable for dating minerals and rocks more than 100,000 years old. For shorter timescales, it is likely that not enough Argon 40 will have had time to accumulate in order to be accurately measurable.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icr.org/article/373/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; from the Creation Institute admits that K-Ar's effective range starts at about 400,000 years old. That should refute your creationist friends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T00:21:31.273" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9981" CreationDate="2012-07-02T15:44:33.283" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that Aniseed could help you sleep due to the active ingredient anethole having the following effect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The pharmacologic effects of trans-anethole most often noted&#xA;      are reduction in motor activity, lowering of body temperature and&#xA;      hypnotic, analgesic, and anticonvulsant effects. By either the i.p. or&#xA;      oral route, administration of more than &lt;strong&gt;10% of LD50&lt;/strong&gt; by that route&#xA;      appears necessary for significant effects. (Boissier et al., 1961;&#xA;      Seto, 1969; Gruebner, 1972; Le Bourhis &amp;amp; Soene, 1973).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v14je02.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v14je02.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly I was unable to find the Human LD50 value for anethole, but it is about 2g/kg for rats. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9922940&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Haz-map it can cause coma in high dosis: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A mutagen and tumorigen; Causes hepatitis, somnolence, and coma in&#xA;  high-dose feeding studies of rats; [RTECS] Fennel oil is toxic by&#xA;  ingestion--may cause vomiting, seizures, and pulmonary edema; [HSDB]&#xA;  It causes intolerance to anethole-containing toothpaste; Food handlers&#xA;  may develop contact dermatitis to anethole; [Kanerva, p. 1129] May&#xA;  cause irritation; [MSDSonline]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hazmap.nlm.nih.gov/category-details?id=3697&amp;amp;table=copytblagents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://hazmap.nlm.nih.gov/category-details?id=3697&amp;amp;table=copytblagents&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be used to help you sleep BUT I have failed to find any medicine to help you sleep where anethole is an ingredient which may be a bad indication. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also no dosage recommendation anywhere, so to summarise: It works but you probably shouldn't use it for insomnia. It is however safe as a food additive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-07-02T15:55:57.887" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T15:55:57.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10003" CreationDate="2012-07-02T20:11:02.330" Score="12" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Environmental and cosmetic factors in hair loss and destruction&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acquired hair loss may be a manifestation of various internal diseases, hormonal and nutritional conditions, systemic intoxications and genetic traits. However, exogenous exposures may be major contributors to hair thinning and decline of texture, color, luster, elasticity and manageability. In this review, we describe the effects of various exogenous agents on hair, including hair cosmetics, &lt;strong&gt;traction&lt;/strong&gt;, heat, water, solar radiation and X-irradiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hair loss affects a large part of the population. It is usually categorized into five pathogenetic mechanisms: hair shaft defects, telogen effluvium, anagen&#xA;arrest, destruction of hair follicles or miniaturization of the follicle. Hair loss often occurs due to various internal diseases, hormonal and nutritional conditions, intoxications and genetic traits. In addition, hair loss also occurs as a manifestation of external stimuli. This chapter describes the various exogenous factors that promote hair loss by the first four mechanisms (table 1), and downgrade hair’s physical properties such as strength, shine, and tactile characteristics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find the paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/Katalogteile/isbn3_8055/_83/_13/CUPDE35_03.pdf%20here&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Continuous pressure on the scalp, such as one from a helmet, may lead to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hairlosstalk.com/hair-loss-news/article225.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;telogen effluvium&lt;/a&gt;, that is more hair loss that usual, although normally that is a naturally reversible process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another resource:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hairdoc.com/book/Chapter_04_hair_loss_answers.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.hairdoc.com/book/Chapter_04_hair_loss_answers.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Physical trauma to the scalp, such as from wounds from acciden-&#xA;tal cutting or impact, thermal burns from heat or fire, chemical burns&#xA;from acids, alkalis, or other caustic substances, and from freezing due&#xA;to exposure to severe cold or liquefied gas such as liquid nitrogen can&#xA;cause permanent hair loss. Continuous pressure on the scalp from a&#xA;tight fitting helmet or other headgear worn every day can in some&#xA;people cause permanent hair loss. &lt;strong&gt;Hair loss due to a tight fitting&#xA;helmet will cause loss only at the site of too much pressure and is a&#xA;result of friction and pressure breaking the hair shafts. This will not&#xA;cause permanent baldness unless prolonged pressure prevents blood&#xA;from getting to the hairs.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;(My) Conclusion:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible, but I wouldn't worry too much about it under normal circumstances, unless there are other reasons that would contribute to the emergence of alopecia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7395" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-02T20:11:02.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10018" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-03T11:06:24.870" Score="7" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2829/is-refilling-water-bottles-bad-for-you&quot;&gt;Is refilling water bottles bad for you?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several articles claim that the 'chemical leaching' from reusable clear plastic water bottles leads to toxins in the water, not even just when left in the sun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wvecouncil.org/issues/misc/toxic_bottles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;West Virginia Environmental Council&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1998, Dr. Patricia Hunt of Case Western University in Ohio discovered that one of the components of Lexan polycarbonate resin--bisphenol-A (BPA)--can leach into water from water bottles. BPA is a potent hormone disruptor. It can impair the reproductive organs and have adverse effects on breast tissue and prostate development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cornellsun.com/node/47860&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Cornell Daily Sun&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chemical leaching is another pertinent problem in reusable bottles because it poses a significant risk to the drinker’s health. Bisphenol A, more commonly known as BPA, is a hotly controversial molecule that has been implicated in several disorders, like heart disease, diabetes, sterility and altered childhood development. [...] BPA isn’t the only chemical that has been recently investigated. Environmental Health Perspectives published a study earlier this year examining chemical leaching in BPA-free products, concentrating on baby bottles and water bottles. The researchers discovered that, despite not containing any BPA, these products still leach chemicals that mimic estrogen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If plastic bottles are so detrimental to our health, wouldn't we have seen major signs since it is so widely used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this supposed chemical leaching actually harmful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7145" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:31:17.217" Title="Do reusable plastic water bottles leach dangerous chemicals?" Tags="|environmental-health|chemistry|toxicology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2012-07-04T06:22:37.267" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10020" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10216" CreationDate="2012-07-03T13:43:11.867" Score="35" ViewCount="4108" Body="&lt;p&gt;National healthcare spending in the USA consumes more than 18% of GDP and is growing rapidly. Europeans criticise the expense and relatively poor quality of the US system (for example, see this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6001/is-the-us-newborn-mortality-rate-higher-than-40-countries&quot;&gt;Is the US Newborn Mortality Rate higher than 40 Countries?&lt;/a&gt;); Americans seem to like it, though, and the majority seem opposed to anything that restricts choice. As a recent economist article put it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TO SUGGEST curbing an American’s health care is like threatening to kidnap his child. More care, he believes, must be better care. On Mr Obama’s watch new attempts have been made to weigh evidence for different treatments. But the notion that evidence might be used to limit care remains heretical.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/21556928&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.economist.com/node/21556928&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article goes on to discuss how other countries judge which treatments are effective but claims, in passing, that a large proportion of US spending is waste (my bold highlight in the following quote):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To an outsider, it might seem helpful to know which services are worthwhile. America, after all, spends 18% of its GDP on health, far more than other rich countries. &lt;strong&gt;About one-third of that spending is waste.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it isn't just the Economist making such claims. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18432483&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent BBC story&lt;/a&gt; contains the following passage (my bold highlights a quote from Dr Brent James, Chief Quality Officer of Intermountain Healthcare in Utah):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In America, the rising cost of healthcare has the capacity to bankrupt the nation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;National healthcare expenditure is expected to top $3tn in 2012. Some estimates see it reaching $4.6tn by 2020.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Dr James claims that &lt;strong&gt;a little under 50% of that is technically waste, through a combination of inefficient payment mechanisms and poor quality control&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that is two recent claims that much US health spending is waste. Does the evidence support these views?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB a clear definition of what constitutes &lt;em&gt;waste&lt;/em&gt; will probably make for a better answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T14:18:05.240" Title="Is more than 30% of US healthcare spending waste?" Tags="|united-states|economics|healthcare|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10020" CreationDate="2012-07-03T15:26:30.240" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perfect data for this would answer the question. It would show us how much is spent per country on primary treatment (physicians, nurses, pharmaceuticals, medical procedures), and how much on overhead (administration, fees, insurance overhead, etc.). Unfortunately this information is hard to come by - though it is probably out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer this question in the absence of perfect data, a hypothetical metric that may provide a useful comparison is the ratio of &lt;code&gt;results : spending&lt;/code&gt;. Results may be one of e.g. life expectancy, population free from morbidity and premature mortality, and others. Spending should be per-capita, normalized to account for variables such as demographics (i.e. a country with an aging population should have higher healthcare costs, and these costs would not be considered a &amp;quot;waste&amp;quot; since they are accounted for in the higher cost of caring for the elderly population).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the United States spends more than 30% more than a demographically equivalent country, and achieves results equal or less than those of that other country, in the absence of other benefits arising from the higher healthcare costs-per-capital I believe the conjecture would be demonstrated to a reasonable degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the best sources of information is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oecd.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;OECD&lt;/a&gt;. They produced this chart:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zn8H5.png&quot; alt=&quot;OECD healthcare vs spending in 2008&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although dated, I do not expect that there has been significant deviation since 2008. As you can see, the USA spends approximately 40 - 50% more than peer countries per capita, yet has lower life expectancy and significantly higher infant mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insofar as life expectancy and infant mortality are barometers of the effectiveness of the healthcare system, they show that healthcare in the USA is at a quality less than those of peer countries. One way to visualise the OECD number is shown below and this appears to clearly show how exceptional the USA is and how much less value the country gets from its healthcare spending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ioIHz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;visualization of spend versus life expectancy from Kenworthy blog&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some problems with such direct comparisons, however. For a recent discussion see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://lanekenworthy.net/2011/07/10/americas-inefficient-health-care-system-another-look/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog by Lane Kenworthy&lt;/a&gt;. As he says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The inference is problematic, however, because America differs from the other countries in a number of ways that may affect health outcomes. It has a higher murder rate. It has more obesity. The U.S. population is more spatially dispersed than those of most other countries, so rural residents may live farther away from medical providers. Given these and other differences, how confident can we be that health spending is less effective in the U.S. than elsewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this author also points to a comparison that is much less subject to the problems of an analysis at a single point in time. This is shown below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cUWCF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;trend comparison for life expectancy versus spend from Kenworthy&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As he says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The United States still stands out, and in a big way. Our gain in life expectancy per additional health spending is much smaller than in other countries, particularly after the early 1980s when we reached expenditures of about $2,500 per person (in 2005 dollars) and life expectancy of around 74-75 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of analyzing country differences in &lt;em&gt;change&lt;/em&gt; is that it takes constant nation-specific factors out of play. It’s not a foolproof analytical strategy, but it reduces the likelihood of mistakenly inferring causation from correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistics on life expectancy and infant mortality do not address the question of qualify of life. Healthcare spending that improves the quality of life by relieving morbidity is not waste. Unfortunately there is a spectrum of what one would consider useful through waste; it  is a somewhat subjective consideration, and I am not sure what data one would wish to look at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At one end of the spectrum of quality of life is cosmetic appearance. It is possible that the USA spends a significant amount of healthcare costs on cosmetic procedures. These costs may, or may not, be considered &amp;quot;waste&amp;quot;, and they may or may not be considered &amp;quot;healthcare&amp;quot;. In any case, I could not find the data on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recall reading a study, but cannot find it offhand, that also indicated that the poorest Canadians have a higher life expectancy than the wealthiest Americans. If true, this is also an indicator that the healthcare system is ineffective, and arguably the money spent on it is &amp;quot;waste&amp;quot; since it is not even able to satisfy the needs of those who have no financial barriers to healthcare (i.e. the higher mortality is not accounted for by poverty and lack of public healthcare).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All to say, in the absence of an explanation as to where the cost-per-capital of healthcare for the USA goes, it would appear that the claim that the USA is wasting healthcare costs of more than 30% is supported by the data available from the OECD because the USA is spending quite a lot more money and achieving significantly worse results. If the money spent on healthcare were used in a more efficient way, one would expect the USA ought to be able to achieve the results seen in its peer countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that is a somewhat useful post. For more reading, here is a useful site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conferenceboard.ca/hcp/hot-topics/healthspending.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Health Spending: Do countries get what they pay for when it comes to health care?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T10:19:50.450" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="36933" CreationDate="2012-07-03T20:50:03.743" Score="15" ViewCount="1997" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;a href=&quot;http://gunfreezone.net/index.php/2011/09/05/mike-summit-knows-history/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt; the the Liberator pistol made bay the U.S. in WWII took longer to reload than it did to manufacture the gun, is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Liberator was a single-shot pistol stamped out of sheet metal for&#xA;  dropping behind enemy lines into the hands of resistance movements&#xA;  during WWII. It was lacking because you only got a single .45 ACP shot&#xA;  at an enemy who probably had a semi-automatic pistol/rifle or a fully&#xA;  automatic submachine gun. Also reloading was extremely troublesome as&#xA;  you had to push a stick down the barrel to push the spent cartridge&#xA;  out.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://listverse.com/2012/05/06/top-10-worst-firearms-in-history/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6876" LastEditorUserId="38106" LastEditDate="2017-01-30T10:21:09.640" LastActivityDate="2017-01-30T10:21:09.640" Title="Did the Liberator pistol take longer to reload than to manufacture?" Tags="|history|military|guns|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10026" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10027" CreationDate="2012-07-04T07:18:23.377" Score="10" ViewCount="3391" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/news/speeches/06272006a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Surgeon General released a report in 2006&lt;/a&gt; regarding the dangers of secondhand smoke (SHS). One of the claims in the report is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is NO risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure, with even brief exposure adversely affecting the cardiovascular and respiratory system&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that secondhand smoke harms people's health, but many people assume that exposure to secondhand smoke in small doses does not do any significant damage to one's health. However, science has proven that there is NO risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke. &lt;strong&gt;Let me say that again: there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breathing secondhand smoke for even a short time can damage cells and set the cancer process in motion. Brief exposure can have immediate harmful effects on blood and blood vessels, potentially increasing the risk of a heart attack. Secondhand smoke exposure can quickly irritate the lungs, or trigger an asthma attack. For some people, these rapid effects can be life-threatening. People who already have heart disease or respiratory conditions are at especially high risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim has appeared &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8245/does-second-hand-smoke-cause-cancer&quot;&gt;more&lt;/a&gt; than &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3562/is-secondhand-smoke-dangerous&quot;&gt;once&lt;/a&gt; within answers here on Skeptics.SE. Before taking on the more difficult question of does SHS cause lung cancer, it should be easy enough to determine if...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is NO risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T02:15:51.523" Title="Is there no risk-free level of second hand smoke?" Tags="|medical-science|smoking|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10026" CreationDate="2012-07-04T07:21:00.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a skeptic, any claim which is accompanied by the phrase, &amp;quot;the science is settled,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;science has proven,&amp;quot; should set off alarm bells. You will also notice a peculiar high usage of the word &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; in explaining the possible consequences of brief secondhand smoke exposure. The truth of the matter is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Every &amp;quot;safe&amp;quot; chemical has some level at which it is not safe&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Every &amp;quot;dangerous&amp;quot; chemical has some level at which it is safe&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The father of toxicology, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paracelsus&lt;/a&gt; said, &amp;quot;All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; only the dose permits something not to be poisonous.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A real world example might be in order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless and odorless chemical compound, referred to by some as Hydrogen Hydroxide, Dihydrogen Oxide, or simply Hydric Acid. This chemical is used in the development of genetically engineered crops, and is used as an industrial solvent and coolant. Fruits and Vegetables once contaminated with DHMO cannot be decontaminate, even by carefully washing them. DHMO is found in many carbonated beverages, and isn't even listed as an ingredient in many supposedly &amp;quot;all-natural&amp;quot; fruit juices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The acute toxicity of DHMO as measured by its median lethal dose &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927321&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(LDv50) is only 90g/kg&lt;/a&gt;, at which half the test subjects die. Babies are especially susceptible to DHMO because of their low body weight (avg. 3.5 kg). DHMO will pass to the unborn children of mothers, and is passed to babies through their mother's breast milk. In solid form, DHMO has been known to cause severe tissue damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The air isn't even DHMO free. DHMO was found to be a major component of acid rain. DHMO concentrations in the air can be greater than 30g/m3. Air quality concerns have resulted in some states canceling recess on days in which the air quality is poor, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=resources.aqi_conc_calc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DHMO is not a measured pollutant in the EPA's Air Quality Index&lt;/a&gt;, so it is impossible to know how safe the air is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DHMO is the leading cause of unintentional injury death worldwide, and the highest rates are among children 1 to 4 years of age. From 2000 to 2009, the babies and newborn &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6115a5.htm?s_cid=mm6115a5_w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;death rate increased from 23.1 to 27.7 per 100,000&lt;/a&gt;, this is greater than half the rate of &lt;strong&gt;all deaths&lt;/strong&gt; due to Lung and Bronchus Cancer 52.2 per 100,000 = (158,592 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/statistics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;total US deaths LC&lt;/a&gt;) /(304,059,724 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/popest/data/historical/2000s/vintage_2008/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Estimated US population&lt;/a&gt;) * 100,000. If you count deaths at all ages, DHMO was responsible for an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6119a4.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;estimated 3,880 deaths in the USA&lt;/a&gt;, more than the estimated deaths each year due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/secondhand_smoke/general_facts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;secondhand smoke (3,400 per year)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with all the known dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide, many industries continue to lobby congress to &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574384731898375624.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;limit regulation of DHMO use in agriculture&lt;/a&gt; and industry. The EPA has been powerless to stop big business from dumping DHMO into our rivers and streams, or from spewing it directly into the air we breathe. Environmental organizations like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division&lt;/a&gt; have been actively spreading the truth about the dangers of DHMO, and extensive polling have shown the public supports a DHMO ban in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above statements are all 100% true, but extremely misleading. If you are currently attempting to protect yourself from the dangers of Dihydrogen Monoxide, you will likely be issued a Darwin Award. This dangerous chemical is &lt;strong&gt;water&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All &amp;quot;dangerous&amp;quot; chemicals are also safe at some level. Many of the chemical compounds listed below are found in secondhand smoke. To the right of these chemicals, is the Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) allowed by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/index.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EPA in drinking water&lt;/a&gt; with notes indicating possible natural causes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;|Arsenic       |0.010 mg/L3 |(Erosion of natural deposits)&#xA;|Lead          |0.015 mg/L3 |(Erosion of natural deposits)&#xA;|Benzene       |0.005 mg/L3 |&#xA;|Cadmium       |0.005 mg/L3 |Corrosion of galvanized pipes; erosion of natural deposits&#xA;|Chromium      |0.100 mg/L3 |Discharge from steel and pulp mills, erosion of natural deposits.&#xA;|Benzo[a]pyrene|0.002 mg/L3 |&#xA;|Toluene       |1.000 mg/L3 |Discharge from petroleum factories&#xA;|Vinyl chloride|0.002 mg/L3 |Leaching from PVC pipes;discharge from plastic factories&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lead naturally occurs in the soil and water. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/tips/water.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EPA limits Lead to 15 ppb&lt;/a&gt; (parts per billion). If your drinking water does not exceed that level, it is of no concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does my water have lead in it above EPA’s “action level” of 15 parts per billion (ppb)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the answer is no, your water does not contain lead at current levels of concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The EPA says we shouldn't be concerned about lead in our drinking water that is below an action level, but the Surgeon General wants to repeatedly warn us that NO risk free level of second-hand smoke exists. Lead is a carcinogen whether it is in your drinking water, or in your smoke. It seems foolish to warn us about exposure from one source while ignoring the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/health_effects.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Radiation is a potent carcinogen&lt;/a&gt; that has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.remm.nlm.gov/remm_RadPhysics.htm#allowableLimitsExposure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;low recommended exposure limits each year (5 rem/year whole body OSHA, 100 mrem/year general public&lt;/a&gt;, but it is used as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.europeanurology.com/article/S0302-2838(04)00621-9/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;treatment to cure Prostate Cancer&lt;/a&gt;. The benefits of radiation therapy almost always exceed the risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Damage occurring at the cellular or molecular level, can disrupt the control processes, permitting the uncontrolled growth of cells cancer This is why ionizing radiation's ability to break chemical bonds in atoms and molecules makes it such a potent carcinogen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your food isn't even safe. Bananas because of their high potassium content, contain more [radioactive Potassium] than other fruit. Eating 2 bananas a day for a year would expose you to more radiation than you would get from a single chest x-ray (about 10 mrem).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/151/2/140&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chinese oil cooking fumes&lt;/a&gt;, barbequed foods causing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/risk/cancer/cancer-substances2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons&lt;/a&gt; in the food or carcinogens from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16002925&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wood smoke itself&lt;/a&gt;, there is no risk free exposure to anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is NO risk-free level of &lt;strong&gt;blank&lt;/strong&gt; exposure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fill in the blank however you want, water, bananas, BBQ smoke, Chinese grills, or anything else. Living is full of risk, the only away to avoid all risk is to cease to exist. The Surgeon General's warning about there being no risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure is misleading, and ignores hundreds of years of toxicology that show that all poisons have some minor exposure level that is not harmful. If brief exposure to secondhand smoke has you running scared, don't forget about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/third-hand-smoke/AN01985&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;thirdhand smoke&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T15:16:00.380" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10028" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-07-04T08:38:20.313" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Readily visible alterations of the skin surface have been recognized since the dawn of history, with some being treated, and some not. Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine (1025) described treatments for a variety of skin conditions, including skin cancer. The preferred medication it recommended was zinc oxide. Though today it is no longer used for treating skin cancer, it is still widely used today to treat a variety of other skin conditions, in products such as baby powder and creams to treat diaper rashes, calamine cream, anti-dandruff shampoos, and antiseptic ointments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2MymOm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Jean Astruc&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Jean_Astruc_02.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jean Astruc (1684-1766)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1572, Geronimo Mercuriali of Forlì, Italy, completed De morbis cutaneis (translated &quot;On the diseases of the skin&quot;), and is known as the first scientific work to be dedicated to dermatology. One source lists Jean Astruc (1684-1766) as the founder of modern dermatology. In 1799, Francesco Bianchi wrote the book Dermatologia which is the first comprehensive textbook of modern dermatology written for the students of medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1801 the first great school of dermatology became a reality at the famous Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris, while the first textbooks (Willan's, 1798-1808) and atlases (Alibert's, 1806-1814) appeared in print during the same period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-04T08:38:20.313" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T08:38:20.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10029" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-07-04T08:38:20.313" Score="0" Body="Dermatology is the branch of medicine dealing with the skin and its diseases. Use this tag for claims related to the skin, skin conditions and skin treatment." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-04T08:38:20.313" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T08:38:20.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10026" CreationDate="2012-07-04T14:45:26.253" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I still prefer my more humorous answer, but with the idea that it is better to keep it simple, I have added this answer as well. We will see which one people prefer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Surgeon Generals key claim revolves around the fact that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Tobacco/ETS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;69 chemicals in second-hand smoke are carcinogens&lt;/a&gt;, so there is no risk free exposure level. From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/oswer/riskassessment/ragsa/pdf/ch7.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EPA's Toxicology Assesment&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;7.3.1  CONCEPT OF NONTHRESHOLD EFFECTS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carcinogenesis, unlike many noncarcinogenic health effects, is generally thought to be a phenomenon for which risk evaluation based on presumption of a threshold is inappropriate.  For carcinogens, EPA assumes that a small number of molecular events can evoke changes in a single cell that can lead to uncontrolled cellular proliferation and eventually to a clinical state of disease.  This hypothesized mechanism for carcinogenesis is referred to as &amp;quot;nonthreshold&amp;quot; because there is believed to be essentially no level of exposure to such a chemical that does not pose a finite probability, however small, of generating a carcinogenic response.  That is, no dose is thought to be risk-free.  Therefore, in evaluating cancer risks, an effect threshold cannot be estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while it is true that there is no risk free exposure to SHS, there is also no where on earth that you can be free of natural occurring carcinogens. Report of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unscear.org/docs/reports/gareport.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation&lt;/a&gt; to the General Assembly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;11 . Everyone is exposed to natural radiation. The natural sources of radiation are cosmic rays and naturally occurring radioactive substances existing in the Earth itself and inside the human body. A significant contribution to natural exposure of humans is due to radon gas, which emanates from the soil and may concentrate in dwellings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since radiation is everywhere, the Surgeon General could just as well had said,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is NO risk free level of living on earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be just as true, and less misleading. Now onto the harder question of, &amp;quot;does secondhand smoke cause lung cancer, and is it dangerous.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-04T19:32:46.923" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10020" CreationDate="2012-07-04T16:51:02.457" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, this is the case - for some definition of 'waste'&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The New England Journal of Medicine &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa022033&quot;&gt;ran a study&lt;/a&gt; to determine the overhead costs of the US and Canadian healthcare system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0 percent of health care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 percent of health care expenditures in Canada.  Canada's national health insurance program had overhead of 1.3 percent; the overhead among Canada's private insurers was higher than that in the United States (13.2 percent vs. 11.7 percent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_12523427&quot;&gt;The Denver Post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The U.S. has the most bureaucratic health care system in the world. More than 31 percent of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to paperwork, overhead, CEO salaries, profits, etc. The provincial single-payer system in Canada operates with just a 1 percent overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now technically not all administration is waste. Some administration has to be done, and even the most efficient hospital needs a couple of accountants and probably a lawyer. However if a healthcare system can be run with 1% overhead, then there is a reasonable argument that the 30% difference between that and the US figure is unnecessary administration - i.e. 'waste'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some slightly more optimistic figures, &lt;a href=&quot;http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/why-does-us-health-care-cost-so-much-part-ii-indefensible-administrative-costs/&quot;&gt;from the New York Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One thing Americans do buy with this extra spending is an administrative overhead load that is huge by international standards. The McKinsey Global Institute estimated that excess spending on “health administration and insurance” accounted for as much as 21 percent of the estimated total excess spending ($477 billion in 2003). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-07-05T13:11:33.693" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T13:11:33.693" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8700" CreationDate="2012-07-04T19:34:48.263" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Update #1:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17556807&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17556807&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dark storage limited the decrease in juice asparagine to some extent. Aromatic lactones, such as gamma-decalactone and gamma-dodecalactone, both in skin and in flesh tissues increased more rapidly when the fruits were stored under a light condition, irrespective of fruit harvest stage. From these results, &lt;strong&gt;we conclude that fruit storage under a light condition is better for fruit quality of the 'Hakuho' peaches than storage in darkness.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/17907/PDF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/17907/PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;strong&gt;These results indicate that postharvest application of UV-C radiation can decrease decay caused by ripe rot in blueberries and may enhance antioxidant levels.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Review papers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3536313&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3536313&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://openagricola.nal.usda.gov/Record/FNI86010719&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://openagricola.nal.usda.gov/Record/FNI86010719&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://openagricola.nal.usda.gov/Record/FNI86011422&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://openagricola.nal.usda.gov/Record/FNI86011422&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current status of research on the application of ionizing radiation for improving the storage of temperate fruits, i.e., apple, pear, peach, nectarine, apricot, cherry, plum, strawberry, bilberry, cranberry, raspberry, and black currant, is reviewed. Changes in fruit metabolism, chemical composition, texture, and organoleptic quality attributes are discussed with reference to the irradiation dose. The feasibility of using radiation either alone or in conjunction with heat treatment, refrigeration, and controlled atmospheres (CA) for the control of storage decay caused by fungal pathogens is considered. Areas of further research are suggested before irradiation could be considered for practical application in some of these temperate fruits. The recent trends in the possible use of irradiation for disinfestation of certain pome and stone fruits and the prospects for the commercial utilization of irradiation for improving the market life of strawberries are discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, I've contacted LG Support and asked for explanations concerning the more technical aspects of their various light technologies for fruit/vegetable storage, and I'll update this post once I receive their answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;- Edit -&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, LG support never got back to me, so I can only be more distrustful to their claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Old answer:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pharmacie.hug-ge.ch/rd/posters/espen09_gb_vitc.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://pharmacie.hug-ge.ch/rd/posters/espen09_gb_vitc.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, vitamin C degradation was reduced in IV administration sets stored in the&#xA;dark compared with IV administration sets stored in the ambient light or under an UV lamp&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clinchem.org/content/50/1/135.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.clinchem.org/content/50/1/135.full&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When solutions of multivitamin preparations (MVPs) are exposed to light, H2O2 as well as organic peroxides are generated and the concentration of vitamin C decreases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this study focuses on byproducts of Vitamin C, but for our needs (Vitamin C) it's a good enough source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lg.com/ae/microsite/healthyliving/products-refrigerator.swf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.lg.com/ae/microsite/healthyliving/products-refrigerator.swf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Green Tea Ions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, seriously now...?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone should ask Mitsubishi and LG for some scientific references for their claims. To me, it looks like marketing bull.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7395" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T09:58:19.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8531" CreationDate="2012-07-05T11:25:17.430" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The University of Chicago's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/about/suggestions.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;librarians&lt;/a&gt;, when the topic came up, &lt;a href=&quot;http://lib.typepad.com/suggest/2010/07/judd-blaslotto-basketball-and-the-university-of-chicago.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;could find no trace&lt;/a&gt; of a &quot;Dr Blaslotto&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From the outset the Suggestions Office thought this story a little fishy. (A U of C faculty member who's also a world-class powerlifter?) Indeed, trolling through PubMed, Web of Science, and WorldCat revealed no articles or books by Dr. Blaslotto -- leaving us doubtful he even existed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(another variation of this story adds the claim that he's a world-class powerlifter)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peculiarly for a world-class powerlifter or a researcher, there seems to be no mention of a Dr Blaslotto on Google except in this story. There are no results for &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=&amp;quot;Judd+Blaslotto&amp;quot;&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Judd Blaslotto&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?q=&amp;quot;Dr.+Blaslotto&amp;quot;&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Blaslotto&lt;/a&gt; on Google Scholar. It does appear that Dr Blaslotto and his study are about as real as the hoops that his second group dunked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the University of Chicago's librarians do point out &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1962-00248-001&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;another study&lt;/a&gt;, from 1960, which &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; exist, with similar results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The effect of mental practice was compared with that of physical practice in the development of a motor skill, the Pacific Coast 1-hand foul shot. 144 high school boys were equated into physical and mental practice groups on the basis of arm strength; intelligence; and varsity, junior varsity, or novice experience. Mental practice was found to be nearly as effective as physical practice under the conditions of the experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 1994 meta-analysis of 35 studies found that mental practise was effective, but not as good as physical practise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First, the results of this analysis indicate that mental practice is an effective means for enhancing performance. However, the data also indicate that mental practice is less effective than overt, physical practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also dropped off faster:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/izqwF.png&quot; alt=&quot;Effect of Retention Interval on Magnitude of Effect&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JITE/v32n4/whetstone.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1995 study&lt;/a&gt; found that adding mental practise into firearm training for police recruits was effective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The treatment group mean marksmanship gain score was 32.86 points above the control group's score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, they also found that recruits who believed that mental practise would help benefited the most from it (possibly because the worked harder at it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it looks like mental practise does improve performance, though not as much as physical practise. However, it can be combined with physical practise (this may be of particular benefit where resources for physical practise are limited). However, the study cited in the original post appears to have been invented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T11:25:17.430" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10026" CreationDate="2012-07-05T18:09:24.557" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several different forms of dose-effect curve possible. A toxin following the &quot;threshold model&quot; has no adverse effect up to a particular threshold, and increasingly strong adverse effects past that threshold. &quot;Hormesis&quot; is a model under which small doses have a beneficial effect, but increasing dosage beyond a particular point has adverse effects (common amongst essential nutrients - for example, drinking moderate amounts of dihydrogen monoxide is beneficial, but in excess can cause &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_toxicity&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;water toxicity&lt;/a&gt;). Another, curve, the &quot;linear no-threshold model&quot;, applies for substances whose risk factor increases linearly as the concentration rises, with no zero-effect threshold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These different curves are illustrated in the diagram below, taken from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://old.iupac.org/publications/cd/essential_toxicology/IUPACTOX4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;set of lecture notes on toxicology&lt;/a&gt; created by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LjPiE.png&quot; alt=&quot;various dose-response curves&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The surgeon-general is talking about which dose-effect curve that second-hand smoke follows. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This finding suggests that the effect of secondhand smoke in producing an MI comes from &#xA;  interference with the vascular endothelium. There is no evidence indicating a threshold level of exposure that is needed to produce this effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To say that &quot;there is NO risk-free level of secondhand smoke exposure&quot; is to say that &quot;secondhand smoke follows a no-threshold toxicant model of dose-effect curve&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many researchers argue that chemical carcinogens follow a no-threshold model, because it just takes a few molecules of a carcinogen can damage a cell and cause cancer [&lt;a href=&quot;http://extoxnet.orst.edu/faqs/risk/dose.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;], [&lt;a href=&quot;http://ocw.jhsph.edu/courses/environmentalhealth/PDFs/Lecture5.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report cites a number of studies which find that even low levels of exposure to secondhand smoke carries increased risks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=194029&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Acute Effects of Passive Smoking on the Coronary Circulation in Healthy Young Adults&lt;/a&gt; found that 30 minutes of exposure to second-hand smoke severely reduced the function of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endothelial&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;endothelial cells&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2916883&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Passive smoking affects endothelium and platelets&lt;/a&gt; found that sitting beside a single smoker in a corridor for 20 minutes affected several key bloodflow parameters.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chestjournal.chestpubs.org/content/103/2/353.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effects of a bronchoprovocation challenge test with cigarette sidestream smoke on sensitive and healthy adults&lt;/a&gt; found increasing adverse affects at just 2ppm over 2 minutes, increasing as levels of exposure increased.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://toxsci.oxfordjournals.org/content/29/1/86.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tobacco Smoke Upper Respiratory Response Relationships in Healthy Nonsmokers&lt;/a&gt; found statistically significant (but minor) symptoms of secondhand smoke at just 1ppm (at 1ppm, just mild symptoms, but symptoms got worse as the concentrations got higher).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(not a comprehensive list, that was just from a couple tables that were convenient to skim)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting accurate numbers on this question is necessarily difficult - someone's exposure to secondhand smoke over a lifetime is a lot more variable than active smoking, even moreso when we're talking about low-level exposures rather than, say, someone married to a smoker. And low exposures are always going to be more difficult to separate from the controls - that's the nature of a dose-response curve. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it certainly seems that low exposures to secondhand smoke have been shown to have adverse impacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastActivityDate="2012-07-05T18:09:24.557" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10038" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10040" CreationDate="2012-07-06T03:41:03.553" Score="25" ViewCount="212403" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supposedly, it's a mutation that gives you purple eyes at puberty, no hair, and for women, fertility without menstruations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vq4vt.png&quot; alt=&quot;Illustration of the phenomenon&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://solarflaresinmymind.tumblr.com/post/4536728191&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6357" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-07-06T12:11:00.237" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T06:58:39.947" Title="Does Alexandria's Genesis exist?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3515" CreationDate="2012-07-06T04:16:03.843" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is how microfinancing works. As long as the people understand the terms and conditions that they receive with the loan - there is no scam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nature of microcredit - small loans - is such that interest rates need to be high to return the cost of the loan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three kinds of costs the MFI has to cover when it makes microloans. The first two, the cost of the money that it lends and the cost of loan defaults, are proportional to the amount lent. For instance, if the cost paid by the MFI for the money it lends is 10%, and it experiences defaults of 1% of the amount lent, then these two costs will total $11 for a loan of $100, and $55 for a loan of $500. An interest rate of 11% of the loan amount thus covers both these costs for either loan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third type of cost, transaction costs, is not proportional to the amount lent. The transaction cost of the $500 loan is not much different from the transaction cost of the $100 loan. Both loans require roughly the same amount of staff time for meeting with the borrower to appraise the loan, processing the loan disbursement and repayments, and follow-up monitoring. Suppose that the transaction cost is $25 per loan and that the loans are for one year. To break even on the $500 loan, the MFI would need to collect interest of $50 + 5 + $25 = $80, which represents an annual interest rate of 16%. To break even on the $100 loan, the MFI would need to collect interest of $10 + 1 + $25 = $36, which is an interest rate of 36%. At first glance, a rate this high looks abusive to many people, especially when the clients are poor. But in fact, this interest rate simply reflects the basic reality that when loan sizes get very small, transaction costs loom larger because these costs can't be cut below certain minimums.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cgap.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CGAP: Consultative Group to Assist the Poor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7757" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T04:41:20.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10038" CreationDate="2012-07-06T04:48:56.517" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;The origins appear to be invented in some fan fiction. There's no reference to it in Google Scholar, which covers abstracts from a huge number of scientific papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cameron Miquelon &lt;a href=&quot;http://33avenuemiquelon.com/2011/12/16/alexandrias-genesis-meet-the-creator-behind-the-fallacy/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims to be the original author&lt;/a&gt; in about 1998, and is frustrated by people who can't tell the difference between fiction and fact:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alas, what’s truly astonishing is that in spite of this post’s existence (as well as the true origin of Alexandria’s Genesis being a Daria fan fiction website), nothing has changed among the 99 percent of you who believe that what I wrote is truth, if my bookmarked Tumblr search tag is anything to go by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that, I hate you all so very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, there you have it: Alexandria’s Genesis is simply a bad mashup of Daria, Art Bell, Twilight, witchcraft and Cylon skinjobs adopted by New Agers and others who should know better, but don’t and won’t.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T15:08:26.067" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10041" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-06T07:54:06.270" Score="15" ViewCount="1776" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common rebuttal to scientific studies is that most scientists are funded by the government, and hence are working to a government's agenda. Sometimes the claim extends to suggest that the peer-review process is biased towards the government's opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is most common for political topics, such as Evolution or AGW. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that some notable research has been biased in the findings or peer review due to government influence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7657" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-10-05T09:09:31.123" LastActivityDate="2015-10-13T01:04:49.127" Title="Are scientists biased towards the government's influence?" Tags="|politics|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="31" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10042" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10045" CreationDate="2012-07-06T08:24:01.403" Score="11" ViewCount="18163" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common knowledge that if a fly falls into your food or drink, you probably shouldn't drink it because it might cause food poisoning. This might be a myth itself but that is not what I'm sceptical about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Islamic teachings, if a fly falls into your food/drink, you need to push it further in so its wings touch your food/drink. It's said that the wings have the antidote property that can prevent food poisoning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Prophet said “If a house fly falls in the drink of anyone of you, he should dip it (in the drink), for one of its wings has a disease and the other has the cure for the disease.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;- Source: Sahih Al-Bukhari: Volume 4, Book 54, Number 537&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just heard the claim on the radio (in Malaysia) and many people are calling in to confirm it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notability &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2002/10/01/689400.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answering-christianity.com/hadiths_of_the_fly.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1321" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2016-05-13T21:20:32.277" LastActivityDate="2016-05-13T21:20:32.277" Title="Does dipping a fly into food/drink prevent food poisoning?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|islam|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10041" CreationDate="2012-07-06T11:41:12.393" Score="-6" Body="&lt;p&gt;What constitutes bias? How might be go about finding whether there's bias?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone wants to do health research in the US then it's important for scientists to qualify either for industry funding or NIH grants. &#xA;For this question it doesn't make sense to look at bias caused by industry funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If those people who get grants don't find the truth but something else you could call the bias due to grant seeking government indused bias. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have to therefore ask ourselves, whether such systematic biases exist in science or whether the scientific community manages to kill those biases.&#xA;Before editing the original questions contained the assumption that the scientific process leads to truth. I therefore consider that to be a fair test of whether bias exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a paper called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dbem.ws/FeelingFuture.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous&#xA;Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Daryl Bem in 2011 because the paper followed provided evidence for precognition that is as strong as the evidence in an average paper in the journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to be right to get a result published in academia. Precognition goes against the scientific consensus and therefore the paper got critized. A lot of papers who have similar evidence for the claims that they are making however don't go against the scientific consensus and therefore don't get critisied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breakthrough findings in basic cancer research seem to have a replication &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rate of 11%&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a famous peer reviewed article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Why Most Published Research Findings Are False&quot;&lt;/a&gt; John Ioannnidis comes to the conclusion: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both cancer research and psychology are fields where it's easy to relicate experiments and make predictions about the outcome of experiments.&#xA;Climate Research is a field where a lot of researchers think that successfully predicting the past with their model is as good as predicting the future. It therefore plausible that Climate Research isn't much better than cancer research or psychology at correcting against bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to small scale grants, sometimes researchers also want to get the government to pay for something that's more expansive.&#xA;As one example biologists wanted 3 billion dollar to sequence the human genome. If you would ask an average well educated person about the percentage of the human DNA that got sequenced I would guess that most people without a background in biology would say 100%.&#xA;In reality the number is something like 92%. &#xA;Those biologists had an incentive to show the general public that the 3 billion dollar were well spent money. They profit if the public believes that they actually archived more than they achieved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly if you read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-uncertaintyguidancenote.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fine print&lt;/a&gt; of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/spms2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IPCC report&lt;/a&gt;, the report concludes that &quot;net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming&quot; is a claim with &quot;At least 9 out of 10 chance of being correct&quot;.&#xA;In the public discourse it's hard to tell people that a 9/10 of being true should motivate people to reduce emissions. Many people can't handle it intellectually that a claim isn't either true or false but can be 90% true. As a result a lot of the public communication is targeted at getting people to believe that the claim has a 10/10 chance of being true. That what people do who want to achieve the politically goal of lowering emissions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's problematic because if we had models that would 100% accurately predict what the climate does geoengieering would probably outperform cutting emissions. &#xA;Explaining to the public that a model is good enough to advocate cutting emissions but not good enough for geoengieering is hard. It's politics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2015-10-12T20:38:17.820" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T20:38:17.820" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10042" CreationDate="2012-07-06T15:36:23.393" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;This idea that one wing causes illness while the other is the antidote simply isn't plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/creatures/urban/flies/house_fly.htm&quot;&gt;University of Florida's Entomology Department explains&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pathogenic organisms are picked up by flies from garbage, sewage and other sources of filth, and then &lt;strong&gt;transferred on their mouthparts, through their vomitus, feces and contaminated external body parts&lt;/strong&gt; to human and animal food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;the wings are not the only source of the pathogens.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, Wikipedia explains that house flies carry a number of different pathogens, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;parasitic diseases: cysts of protozoa e.g. Entamoeba histolytica, Giardia lamblia and eggs of helminths, e.g., Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuros trichura, Haemenolypes nana, Enterobius vermicularis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;bacterial diseases: typhoid, cholera, dysentery, pyogenic cocci, [...]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;viruses: enteroviruses: poliomyelitis, viral hepatitis (A &amp;amp; E) [...]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the wings would not merely need to contain antibacterial agents (which might be &lt;a href=&quot;http://jmm.sgmjournals.org/content/57/5/617.full&quot;&gt;theoretically feasible&lt;/a&gt;), but antiviral agents and protozoacides, suitable for knocking out all the different diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Why would only one wing contain these toxins, while the other, apparently identical wing, does not?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T15:36:23.393" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10041" CreationDate="2012-07-06T15:36:47.997" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;From 2001 to early 2009, the US was governed by an administration which frequently got involved in climate science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When an oil company demanded that climate scientists working on the IPCC and the United States' own National Assessment &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20100120095525/http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/15148655/the_secret_campaign_of_president_bushs_administration_to_deny_global_warming/3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;be removed&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exxon's wish was the CEQ's command. According to an internal e-mail obtained by Rolling Stone, Connaughton's first order of business - even before his nomination was made public - was to write his White House colleagues-to-be from his law firm of Sidley &amp;amp; Austin. He echoed Exxon's call that Bierbaum, the acting director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, be &amp;quot;dealt.&amp;quot; In the end, each of the scientists on Exxon's hit list was replaced. &amp;quot;It was clear there was a strong lobby and activity against me by some in the energy industry - especially ExxonMobil,&amp;quot; says Watson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Bush administration then appointed industry lobbyists to head the White House's Council on Environmental Quality. They &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20080117172136/http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/15148655/the_secret_campaign_of_president_bushs_administration_to_deny_global_warming/5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;edited scientific reports&lt;/a&gt; being put out by scientists working in the administration to undermine their conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the opening page of the chapter on climate impacts, Cooney inserted a litany of language in bold intended to cast doubt on the science: &amp;quot;the weakest links in our knowledge . . . a lack of understanding . . . uncertainties . . . considerable uncertainty . . . perhaps even greater uncertainty . . . regarded as tentative.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And after it turned out that those modifications weren't enough:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We tried to put some qualifiers on that chapter in the report,&amp;quot; Cooney told him. &amp;quot;We'd take the text from EPA, and then we'd add a sentence like, 'We don't really know if this is really happening.' So we tried to do it, but I can see now that we made a total mess of it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, Cooney was then given &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20080103183638/http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/15148655/the_secret_campaign_of_president_bushs_administration_to_deny_global_warming/6&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;veto power&lt;/a&gt; over scientists working within the administration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From then on, Cooney wielded a heavier pen when editing official reports on global warming. Not content to obscure science with uncertainty, he began to rewrite the science itself. Draft documents made public by the House Oversight Committee reveal that Cooney now had veto power over federal scientists, including Richard Moss, coordinator of the Climate Change Science Program Office, and even James Mahoney, the assistant commerce secretary nominally in charge of America's climate science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Council on Environmental Quality also controlled which administration scientists would be able to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1212/p03s03-uspo.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;speak to the media&lt;/a&gt;, and edited the statements they made:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Karl, it says, &amp;quot;was not allowed to comment in his written testimony that 'modern climate change is dominated by human influences,' that 'we are venturing into the unknown territory with changes in climate,' or that 'it is very likely (&amp;gt;95 percent probability) that humans are largely responsible for many of the observed changes in climate.' &amp;quot; Instead of saying that global warming &amp;quot;is playing&amp;quot; a role in increased hurricane intensity, his comment became &amp;quot;may play&amp;quot; a role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the midst of all this, the scientific community made statements that contradicted the White House position. For example, in 2006 the world's largest general scientific society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, put out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/climate_change/mtg_200702/aaas_climate_statement.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a statement&lt;/a&gt; saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society. Accumulating data from across the globe reveal a wide array of effects: rapidly melting glaciers, destabilization of major ice sheets, increases in extreme weather, rising sea level, shifts in species ranges, and more. The pace of change and the evidence of harm have increased markedly over the last five years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2005 the Joint Science Academies, a group of 11 national scientific societies, including the US National Academy of Sciences, &lt;a href=&quot;http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;stated that&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There will always be uncertainty in understanding a system as complex as the world’s climate. However there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring. The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in&#xA;average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes to many physical and biological systems. It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities (IPCC 2001). This warming has already led to changes in the Earth's climate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2003 the American Geophysical Union &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aip.org/fyi/2004/042.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;stated that&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human activities are increasingly altering the Earth's climate. These effects add to natural influences that have been present over Earth's history. Scientific evidence strongly indicates that natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed during the second half of the 20th century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An article in the New York Times gives many examples of several administrations attempting to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/11/washington/11surgeon.html?_r=2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;prevent the Surgeon-General from issuing statements on politically sensitive topics&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Koop, said he had been discouraged by top officials in the Reagan administration from discussing the AIDS crisis. He did so anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Satcher said that the Clinton administration discouraged him from issuing a report showing that needle-exchange programs were effective in reducing disease. He released the report anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations. The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Carmona described being invited to testify at the government’s nine-month racketeering trial of the tobacco industry that ended in 2005. He said top administration officials discouraged him from testifying while simultaneously telling the lead government lawyer in the case that he was not competent to testify. Dr. Carmona testified anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the most famous example of political interference in science is, of course, Lysenkoism in Soviet Russia, described in Martin Gardner's &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=TwP3SGAUsnkC&amp;amp;pg=PA140&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science&lt;/a&gt; [copied by hand, blame me for any typos]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seldom before in the history of modern science has a crackpot achieved the eminence, adulation and power achieved by Trofim D. Lysenko, the Soviet Union's leading authority on evolution and heredity. Not only have his opinions been pronounced dogma by the Kremlin, but his Russian opponents (whose views are held everywhere but in the USSR) in recent years have been systematically eliminated from their posts. Some have died in prison camps. Some have simply vanished. A few remain at work - but it is work in other fields of biology...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A host of experiments have been designed to test Lamarckianism. All that have been verified have proved negative. On the other hand, tens of thousands of experiments - reported in journals and carefully checked and rechecked by genticists throughout the world - have established the correctness of the gene-mutation theory beyond all reasonable doubt...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as Lamarckianism combines easily with an idealism in which the entire creation is fulfilling God's vast plan by constant upward striving, so also does it combine easily with political doctines which emphasize the building of a better world...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In 1933 or thereabouts,&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.J._Muller&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Muller&lt;/a&gt; wrote, &amp;quot;the geneticists Chetverikoff, Ferry, and Ephroimson were all, on separate occasions, banished to Sibera, and Levitsky to a labor camp in the European Arctic... in 1936, the Communist geneticist Agol was convicted of 'Menshevik idealism' in genetics... Certain it is, however, that from 1936 on Soviet geneticists of all ranks lived a life a terror. Most of them who were not imprisoned, banished, or executed were forced to enter other lines of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an expression of grim humour, Tony Judt observed in &amp;quot;A History of Europe Since 1945&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stalin left his nuclear physicists alone... [He] may well have been mad but he was not stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst the Soviet government was able to use coercive pressure on scientists within the Soviet Union, Lysenkoism never caught on outside the reach of the Soviet bloc, and eventually collapsed even within it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just a few examples - clearly politicians (on both sides of politics) do frequently attempt to interfere with science - ranging from outright oppression to limiting speech or editing reports - where the scientific results went against their political positions. However, it does seem that again and again the independent, international scientific community has been robust to government interference and influence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, the Climate Action Report, was still largely seen as in support of climate science in spite of the bits where extra uncertainty was edited in for political reasons. The Surgeons-General were still able to publish health warnings even when the government were able to oppose it. And the ultimate judge will be the independent scientific community, who continued to strongly support climate science even when the government of the day was trying to edit it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-06T15:45:46.683" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10053" CreationDate="2012-07-06T21:17:03.263" Score="16" ViewCount="15428" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common cop procedural trope suggests only the guilty sleep in jail. It shows up in Law and Order: SVU (S6E04), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114814/quotes?qt=qt0480679&quot;&gt;award winning movies&lt;/a&gt;, and even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2002/01/bellin.htm&quot;&gt;articles about poker tells&lt;/a&gt;. The guilty, or so the argument goes, are so relieved to be caught they accept their fate and get some rest. The innocent are so stressed by their wrongful arrest they suffer insomnia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tropes about a suspect's behavior extend far beyond whether or not he or she sleeps, and into the anecdotal literature around police interrogation. Psychopaths cannot empathize, thus the &lt;a href=&quot;http://policelink.monster.com/training/articles/37300-the-psychopath-as-an-interrogation-subject&quot;&gt;guilty exhibit egotism and narcissism.&lt;/a&gt; The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reid.com/educational_info/critictechnique.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Reid [interrogation] technique&quot;&lt;/a&gt; suggests innocent suspects will act angry when confronted with a false allegation (search for &quot;Step One -- The Positive Confrontation&quot; section, third paragraph), but warns not to read too deeply into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For better or worse, measuring &quot;hours slept while in the hole&quot; makes for messy data collection. I suspect &quot;do only the guilty sleep in jail?&quot; is unanswerable. The psychological state of suspects after arrest might be much easier to measure. Is there any evidence to suggest the psychological state of a suspect after arrest, but before arraignment, correlates to his or her guilt or innocence? Is there any truth to the tropes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7622" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-09T20:25:37.943" LastActivityDate="2020-05-10T23:50:55.993" Title="Does a suspect's psychological state after arrest correlate to guilt or innocence? e.g. do only the guilty sleep in jail?" Tags="|psychology|criminology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10051" CreationDate="2012-07-07T12:22:27.580" Score="12" ViewCount="3144" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weightwatchers.com/plan/index.aspx&quot;&gt;Weight Watchers&lt;/a&gt;: The proven Weight Watchers approach makes losing weight simpler than ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some dietary interventions for weight loss result in the person losing weight for a short term period, only to regain the weight afterwards.&#xA;Does Weight Watchers succeed in helping people to lose weight permanently?&#xA;Is it proven to work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-07T13:35:27.850" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T19:18:35.503" Title="Does Weight Watchers work?" Tags="|nutrition|weight-loss|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10050" CreationDate="2012-07-07T14:29:57.793" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: &lt;strong&gt;It works well for some people, but not everyone.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is tricky because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weight-Watchers is not a single, homogenised regime, but has changed over time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are likely to be subclasses of patients with different initial conditions. (Is &amp;quot;patients&amp;quot; the right word? Possibly not, but I am going to stick with it, as I am treating it as a medical intervention, even if I am not intending to imply an illness.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Different patients are going to stick with the program for different lengths, and for different reasons. How do you judge the long-term effects? By the few that stick to the program or all the people who started, including the attrition?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Permanently&amp;quot; is difficult to confirm with a finitely-resourced study. &amp;quot;Short-term&amp;quot; isn't a clear range either (Is 6 months short-term? 1 year? 5 years?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at some research anyway:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Four Weeks, Effectiveness&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lowe MR, Miller-Kovach K, Frye N, Phelan S., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10023730&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An initial evaluation of a commercial weight loss program: short-term effects on weight, eating behavior, and mood.&lt;/a&gt; Obes Res. 1999 Jan;7(1):51-9.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;985 patients were randomly assigned to either Weight Watchers or self-help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After 4 weeks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weight Watchers participants showed greater improvements than Self-Help participants on all measures; weight losses averaged 1.87 and 0.77 kg, respectively. The superior outcomes shown by Weight Watchers participants on measures of vitality and eating behavior were still evident when extent of weight loss was controlled. Weight losses across different sites, incomes, and levels of obesity were similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Twelve Weeks, Attrition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These studies show a majority of patients drop out, but those who do are more likely to have started out thinking they couldn't control their weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fred R. Volkmar, MD; Albert J. Stunkard, MD; Joseph Woolston, MD; Robert A. Bailey, &lt;a href=&quot;http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=600880&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;High Attrition Rates in Commercial Weight Reduction Programs&lt;/a&gt; Arch Intern Med. 1981;141(4):426-428. doi:10.1001/archinte.1981.00340040022010&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a study of 108 women enrolled in a commercial weight reduction program, we found very high attrition rates; 50% of the members dropped out in six weeks and 70% in 12 weeks. Similar attrition rates have been reported in five other programs in three different countries. Very high attrition rates diminish the effectiveness of commercial weight reduction programs, and they suggest caution in the interpretation of data based on weight losses of persons who remain in these programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/ccp/52/6/1100/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effect of self-efficacy on dropout from obesity treatment.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Mitchell, Christine; Stuart, Richard B.&#xA;Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Vol 52(6), Dec 1984, 1100-1101. doi: 10.1037/0022-006X.52.6.1100&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They had a much smaller drop-out rate:  after 12 weeks, 101 of 414 patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;dropouts were significantly more likely than stayers to report low self-efficacy at the beginning of their memberships. Dropouts were also significantly less likely to feel successful in weight control and behavior change, even though their rates of weight loss did not differ significantly from those of the stayers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Six Months, Effectiveness&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stanley Heshka, Frank Greenway, James W Anderson, Richard L Atkinson, James O Hill, Stephen D Phinney, Karen Miller-Kovach, F Xavier Pi-Sunyer, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002934300004940&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Self-help weight loss versus a structured commercial program after 26 weeks: a randomized controlled study&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;The American Journal of Medicine, Volume 109, Issue 4, September 2000, Pages 282–287&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They had 423 patients, who were either given 2x20 minute sessions with a nutritionist and some printed materials, or Weight Watchers membership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After 26 weeks, subjects in the commercial program, as compared with those in the self-help program, had greater decreases in body weight [mean (± SD) −4.8 ± 5.6 vs −1.4 ± 4.7 kg] and body mass index (−1.7 ± 1.9 vs −0.5 ± 1.6 kg/m2, both P &amp;lt;0.001) in intention-to-treat analyses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A structured commercial weight-loss program is more likely to be effective for managing moderately overweight patients than brief counseling and self-help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;One Year, Effectiveness and Attrition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=200094&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Comparison of the Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers, and Zone Diets for Weight Loss and Heart Disease Risk Reduction: A Randomized Trial&lt;/a&gt;, Michael L. Dansinger, MD; Joi Augustin Gleason, MS, RD; John L. Griffith, PhD; Harry P. Selker, MD, MSPH; Ernst J. Schaefer, MD. JAMA. 2005;293(1):43-53. doi:10.1001/jama.293.1.43&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study assigned 40 people randomly to Weight Watchers (and 120 to other programs), and at the end of &lt;strong&gt;one year&lt;/strong&gt; found the average loss was 3.0 kg (standard deviation: 4.9 kg), with 65% of the participants completing the program. (They made a &amp;quot;reasonable but imprecise&amp;quot; assumption that people who discontinued the study remained at the same weight.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fifteen Months After Hitting Goal Weight, Keeping the Weight Off&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stuart RB, Guire K. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/711367&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some correlates of the maintenance of weight lost through behavior modification.&lt;/a&gt; Int J Obes. 1978;2(2):225-35.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This study was done on patients who lost their weight in the mid 1970s. Techniques have probably changed since then.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They followed up with 721 members of Weight Watchers classes, after they had reached their goal weight (at which point some stuck to the program and some didn't.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They had all lost of a lot of weight before hitting their target weight:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The group averaged 73.2 kg (162.1 lb) before losing 19.0 percent of their body weight to reach goal weights averaging 59.6 kg (131.2 lb) in an average of 31 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: This is only looking at the people who achieved their dieting goal. Those who dropped out early are not included.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most were within 5% of their initial goal weight:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fifteen months after reaching goal, 24.6 percent were below goal, 28.9 were within 5 percent of their goal, 17.5 percent were from 6--10 percent above their goal and 28.9 percent were 11 percent or more above goal. Those who maintained their goal weight, as opposed to those who regained, tended to have several things in common: they attended classes after reaching goal weight in the same locations and with the same lecturers that assissted their weight loss; they had lower initial weights: they conceived of themselves as 'overweight' when they were approximately three pounds above goal; they had improved self-concepts; they made more lifestyle changes supporting weight maintenance; and they continued, after goal, use of many of the techniques used to reach goal weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, longer-term, Weight Watchers remained effective for most of them, especially those who stuck to the program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Five Years After Hitting Goal Weight, Keeping the Weight Off&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Michael R. Lowe, Tanja V. E. Kral, and Karen Miller-Kovach &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FBJN%2FBJN99_04%2FS0007114507862416a.pdf&amp;amp;code=ca784fdea4cb9d39d563057d88374391&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Weight-loss maintenance 1, 2 and 5 years after successful completion&#xA;of a weight-loss programme&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;, British Journal of Nutrition (2008), 99, 925–930 doi: 10.1017/S0007114507862416&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like the previous study, this one only looked at people who had achieved their target weight, ignoring any who had dropped out early. There were 699 in the sample, and an additional 217 used to oversample to calibrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The percentage of Weight Watchers lifetime&#xA;members who maintained at least 5% of their weight loss 1, 2 and 5 years after successful completion of the programme was 79.8, 71.0, and 50.0,&#xA;respectively. The percentage of participants who remained below their goal weight 1, 2 and 5 years after completion of the programme was 26.5,&#xA;20.5, and 16.2, respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the bottom line, is 16% of people maintained their weight after 5 years, and 50% managed to keep at least a bit of the weight off. This suggests that 50% were NOT able to keep their weight off for 5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-07T14:52:39.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10049" CreationDate="2012-07-07T17:10:24.353" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question &quot;Do only the guilty sleep in jail?&quot; is easier to answer than &quot;Does innocence/guilt affect psychological state?&quot; which is presumably true, but harder to define. I couldn't find anything about sleep the &lt;em&gt;first&lt;/em&gt; night in jail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insomnia is a serious issue in prisons. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14655964&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It correlated with many factors (not merely a sense of feeling wronged), [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016025270900003X&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;] including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;writing letters, diaries or a book in prison, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“arts-related” activities such as painting and listening to music.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Worries about medical problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;being separated or divorced (odds ratio: 8.8)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;having experienced stressful events during the past week&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;having poor mental health (GHQ scale)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Factors that reduced the (correlated) risk included:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;practicing sports&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;watching television&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;discussing and meeting other detainees. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, a Finnish forensic psychologist found [&lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/08039488909098653&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;] a result that suggests the opposite to the original claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A clearly greater quantity of sleep disorders [...] occurred in the persons who had committed offence against life than in the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems those who have a greater burden of guilt may find it &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; difficult, not &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt; difficult to sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I have only read the abstract to this paper, and it did not contain enough info to confirm the result.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-07-07T17:10:24.353" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10054" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10056" CreationDate="2012-07-07T17:38:49.560" Score="19" ViewCount="2424" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is common belief that adding citrus juice (or in some claims, any acid, including ascorbic acid/vitamin C, vinegar, tomatoes, etc) to guacamole will reduce browning.  Examples of the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/9358/6498&quot;&gt;Seasoned Advice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can stop this reaction dead in it's tracks by introducing an acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://askville.amazon.com/homemade-guacamole-turning-brown/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=6017381&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Askville&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The acid you use can range from tomatoes to vinegars to lemons/limes. Regardless of your preference, it must be added immediately to stave off oxyidzation; the reason guac browns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_4608191_prevent-guacamole-turning-brown.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eHow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Add something acidic!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are also claims to the contrary, that adding acid to guacamole has no effect, or can even have a negative effect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/24603/6498&quot;&gt;Seasoned Advice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's a myth, as is adding something acidic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seriouseats.com/2012/01/the-food-lab-the-best-guacamole-avocados-science-browning-ripening.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Serious Eats&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What about acid? Many books claim that lime or lemon juice will prevent avocados from browning. That's not what my tests said. In fact, depending on how much I added, some batches of guacamole actually browned faster in the presence of citrus juice—significantly so. By the time I added enough acid to slow the browning down to a reasonable degree, the guacamole was inedibly sour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that adding something acidic to guacamole will prevent an enzyme reaction, that causes oxidization, and thus browning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:33:29.713" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T22:03:50.663" Title="Does lemon juice slow the oxidation of guacamole?" Tags="|chemistry|cooking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10054" CreationDate="2012-07-07T17:59:54.260" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I love this question, because, until now, I never doubted lemon juice worked.&#xA;I love this answer, because it surprised me even more than the question.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes... and No! Lemon juice may make things better or worse. It depends on the avocado! Ascorbic acid works though.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;R. P. Bates, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avocadosource.com/Journals/FSHSP/FSHSP_VOL_81_PG_230-235_1968.pdf&quot;&gt;THE RETARDATION OF ENZYMATIC BROWNING IN AVOCADO &#xA;PUREE AND GUACAMOLE&lt;/a&gt;, Proc. Fla. State Hort. Soc. 81:230-235. 1968. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this study,  the author looked at different mechanisms to reduce the browning of both plain avocado (in puree form), or a standardised batch of guacamole (which itself, contained lemon juice).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bates tried to use a photometer to precisely measure the browning, and describes the difficulties found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bates started with a &quot;Booth 8&quot; avocado, from Florida.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lemon juice at 2 and 4% was of no value and actually speeded up browning during the &#xA;  first 4 hours [...], although after 8 hours the control sample read as low [...]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, later in the season, replaced it with a &quot;Lula&quot; avocado, also from Florida.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lula browned much less rapidly. Also, samples acidified with lemon juice &#xA;  browned less rapidly than the control [...]. &lt;strong&gt;It is not too surprising that a different &#xA;  browning response was observed since in morphology and flavor these two varieties &#xA;  are quite different.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author goes on to recommend some other, more successful preservatives based on other experiments described in the paper - including sodium bisulfite and/or &lt;strong&gt;ascorbic acid&lt;/strong&gt;. There are descriptions of some combinations, including lemon juice, where the extra acidity may help improve the effect of the sodium bisulfite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-07-07T17:59:54.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9956" CreationDate="2012-07-07T20:53:07.673" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Credit to Oliver_C&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dvdtalk.com/interviews/chuck_palahniuk.html&quot;&gt;interview with Chuck Palahniuk&lt;/a&gt; (he wrote the book): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well, Ed Norton changed one ingredient in every one to make them useless. So, that really pissed me off because I really research those really well. Actually its styrofoam and gasoline...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7772" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-07T21:03:04.310" LastActivityDate="2012-07-07T21:03:04.310" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-07T20:53:07.673" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10059" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-08T02:45:04.837" Score="10" ViewCount="2111" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dorodango&lt;/em&gt; is the art of making shiny mud spheres, such as these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jTIi1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Earth Dorodango&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aLox6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Colored Dorodango&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a dorodango, you collect a core of dirt (optionally mixing in color powder), mold it into a sphere, and then rub it with progressively finer dirt in order to dry it out, until by the end you're rubbing it with dust.  When no more dust will cling to the surface, you rub it gently with a cloth to polish it, and it's done.  Various sources indicate that it takes a couple days to a week to complete (that is, dry) a traditional dorodango.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to wait a week for your dirt to dry, you can speed up the process by using a refrigerator.  Wrap the dorodango in a plastic bag, put it in the fridge, and it will increase the rate of condensation, supposedly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;amp;v=3rax27_ZIVM#t=109s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Claim 1: Mythbusters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dorodango.com/create.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Claim 2: Dorodango.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Wikipedia says that for water to evaporate faster, you need higher temperatures and lower pressures.  In a fridge, you have lower temperatures and higher pressures (due to cold air being denser).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporation#Factors_influencing_the_rate_of_evaporation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia: Factors influencing the rate of evaporation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that the &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; effect of cooling off the dorodango is that the mud contracts due to the lower temperature, which squeezes more water out of the core and toward the surface. I can't find any dorodango sources that mention this, though - they just say that a fridge increases the rate of condensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does putting a dorodango into the fridge change the rate of condensation, or does it just force the dirt to compress more?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6673" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-08T10:57:22.747" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T22:37:31.217" Title="Does putting a dorodango in the fridge aid evaporation, or just compress the dirt?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10063" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-08T15:08:35.160" Score="29" ViewCount="44015" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today, my wife has shocked me by telling me that a scarf does not and cannot help a sore throat. I could swear that it works wonders for me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty much the entire knowledgable Internet seems to agree with my wife (a scarf does not help), but at the same time they report on a widespread usage in Germany and other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reasonable report in deference of my experience I could find is this &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111127104148AAMmMKw&quot;&gt;Yahoo.Answers question&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q: My mom always put us in a scarf when we were getting or had a sore throat. Was that an old wives tale or does it actually help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A: Actually it does work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tradition comes from Northern Europe and especially Germanic countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No one knows exactly why it helps, the theory is that it raises the temperature of your throat very slightly but that is enough to make the environment more hostile to the infection. Thereby giving your immune system a chance to respond to it and clear it from your system before the infection has a chance to get serious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An other possible mechanism is that the slight warming helps draw immune cells to the area, speeding recovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wish I could locate the reference right now, but about 3 years ago there was a large study that showed a statistically significant shortening of symptoms in the group that wore scarfs as soon as they started to get the first signs of a scratchy throat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It mentions that there's a conclusive study that shows that scarfs do indeed help, but it fails to give any reference to the study, and Googling/Bingling/DuckDucking does not help me either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Do we have any studies that show that scarfs do or do not work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) If there are no studies, do we know the answer by other means? Is that quite certain, or can there be some reasonable doubt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) If the scarfs do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; help, how come so many people believe that they do, from their own experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: Looks like nobody has any definitive answer, and perhaps nobody has even worked on collecting any real data. So I'll describe my own experience. Perhaps comparing experiences of multiple people can get us closer to the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not a childhood habit for me (as far as I remember). Picked it up when I was 18-19 y.o.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When my throat gets sore, it gets sensitive to outside temperature. When it's cold outside or there's an air flow close to my throat, I feel as if it's getting dry inside, and as if it's aching more. With a warm scarf or blanket, the throat quickly gets comfortable and starts feeling as if it's getting better within 1-2 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The best perceived effect is, of course, after sleeping through the night with a scarf. (This is useless info, because sleeping through the night should give the best improvement with or without scarf.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I propose a theory that a sore throat feels comfortable when it gets warmer, and the comfort &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be producing a measurable effect on the overall illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7779" LastEditorUserId="7779" LastEditDate="2012-07-11T07:46:20.087" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T07:35:46.873" Title="Does wearing a scarf help a sore throat?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|common-cold|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10066" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-08T23:40:28.747" Score="3" ViewCount="288" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read many claims that the Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York is low on funds and is in massive &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mta.info/mta/investor/pdf/debt_outstanding.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;debt&lt;/a&gt;, but I've also heard several allegations of fraud, including claims of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osc.state.ny.us/press/releases/apr03/042303.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;keeping two sets of financial plans&quot; to improperly justify fare hikes&lt;/a&gt; (I'm not asserting that they're necessarily true).  As such, the truthfulness of the MTA's financial documents is in question.  With these allegations in mind, are the MTA's financial documents accurate in their indication that the MTA is in debt and continuing to lose money?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.transalt.org/files/newsroom/magazine/032Spring/08mta.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Transport Alternatives &quot;MTA Cooked Books, Hid $500 Million&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In double bombshell accusations, the New York State Comptroller and New York City Controller issued separate reports in April showing that the MTA kept two sets of books and hid $500 million over several years in order to justify the 50-cent city bus and subway fare increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2730" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-08T13:36:46.000" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T13:36:46.000" Title="Are the New York MTA's financial documents accurate?" Tags="|united-states|economics|transportation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10068" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-09T09:48:20.677" Score="13" ViewCount="723" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several years ago, a friend of mine who had a long career as a commercial/industrial plumber related an anecdote about a colleague who was working at a power plant. He was in the vicinity of a high-pressure steam pipe, presumably part of the same circuit as the main turbines, when a leak from it severed two of his fingers. Apparently, the cut was so fast and clean that the colleague didn't even notice that they were missing for several minutes afterwards. There was no bleeding, as the heat instantly cauterised the wound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time it sounded plausible to me, but I thought why not ask the local SE mythbusters? It's a nice interdisciplinary sort of question. There are quite a few aspects of this that I think demand closer inspection:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can someone really lose a digit and not notice for several minutes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What sort of pressure / temperature would be required to achieve this?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do such conditions typically exist in the turbine circuits used in power plants?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are steam pipe failures of this type common, or even plausible?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7786" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T09:48:20.677" Title="Instant, painless amputation via high-pressure steam" Tags="|pain|engineering|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10070" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10120" CreationDate="2012-07-09T12:07:22.747" Score="14" ViewCount="11870" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was taught in school that nutritionists measure the calories in food with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calorimeter#Bomb_calorimeters&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;bomb calorimeter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-nutritionists-measure-calories.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dummies.com make the same claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nutrition scientists measure the number of calories in food by actually burning the food in a bomb calorimeter, which is a box with two chambers, one inside the other. The researchers weigh a sample of the food, put the sample on a dish, and put the dish into the inner chamber of the calorimeter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They fill the inner chamber with oxygen and then seal it so the oxygen can’t escape. The outer chamber is filled with a measured amount of cold water, and the oxygen in the first chamber (inside the chamber with the water) is ignited with an electric spark. When the food burns, an observer records the rise in the temperature of the water in the outer chamber. If the temperature of the water goes up 1 degree per kilogram, the food has 1 calorie; 2 degrees, 2 calories; and 235 degrees, 235 calories — or one 8-ounce chocolate malt!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has never made sense to me, and so I remain skeptical. The human body doesn't obtain all the calories from all food. The food isn't burnt to an ash by the human digestive system. Presumably the bomb calorimeter would find that hay has a high calorific value, but the human body can't extract that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were my teacher and Dummies.com over-simplifying when they describe the technique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the nutritional information on our food essentially flawed, because the model is overly simplistic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or am I being ignorant and cynical by suggesting that the technique wouldn't work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'm using the old-school term, because the actual numbers are irrelevant. 1 food Calorie = 1000&lt;/em&gt; real &lt;em&gt;calories = 4.2 kilojoules.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-24T21:55:04.463" Title="Can a bomb calorimeter meaningfully measure food calories?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10071" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-09T14:27:48.093" Score="16" ViewCount="557" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/healthier-office-spaces-benefit-everyone.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Treehugger:&lt;/a&gt; Research has shown that a healthy office space with plants and open windows is more conducive to productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do plants in the office increase the productivity of employees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T20:10:40.170" Title="Do office plants increase productivity?" Tags="|environmental-health|productivity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10072" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-07-09T15:17:19.373" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-07-09T15:17:19.373" LastActivityDate="2012-07-09T15:17:19.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10073" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-07-09T15:17:19.373" Score="0" Body="QUESTIONS ASKING FOR PERSONALIZED MEDICAL ADVICE ARE OFF-TOPIC. CONSULT YOUR PHYSICIAN. Healthcare refers to the system or systems used to deliver medical care to patients. It may be a monolithic, government controlled system (like the NHS in some parts of the UK) or a mixed system of providers and insurers (as in the US). Healthcare is the way the delivery of medical science is organised (at least for the purposes of tagging on this site)." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="36598" LastEditDate="2019-11-22T16:42:56.120" LastActivityDate="2019-11-22T16:42:56.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10070" CreationDate="2012-07-09T17:26:55.233" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is how a bomb calorimeter works, and as you suggest doesn't translate to the same mechanism as the human body. It is, however, an upper bound on the amount of energy your body can extract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way that the calorie information on food is calculated is slightly different. This uses the g/100g of fat, sugar and protein to calculate calories based on the calories per gram of each of these substances. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/GuidanceDocuments/FoodLabelingNutrition/FoodLabelingGuide/ucm064904.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FDA guidelines, L12&lt;/a&gt; Those values are obtained from bomb calorimetry for the fat and sugar, and a modified version to account of the fact that protein is not turned into N2 by the body but into urea, and so the chemical energy of urea is subtracted from the value for raw protein.&lt;a href=&quot;http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/3311/3390593/blb0508.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Combustion of protein&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is as you suggest an overly simplistic model, and there is research to suggest these values are wrong and should be tweaked in light of how the human body metabolises food.(I can't find a link at the moment though, too much diet nonsense when you search.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a similar question/answer here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/3315/how-are-the-calories-in-food-calculated&quot;&gt;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/3315/how-are-the-calories-in-food-calculated&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/08/27/the-hidden-truths-about-calories/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This excellent article&lt;/a&gt; explains how the amount of calories you get out of food depends on how well cooked it is (more cooking increases available calories / reduces cost of digestion) and your gut microbes. Processed vs non-processed food can have a 10% difference in effective calorific content as a result!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:12.727" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T23:10:29.167" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10075" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-09T17:27:15.670" Score="16" ViewCount="1037" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to an online article SmartMoney magazine titled, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blogs.smartmoney.com/advice/2012/07/06/the-jobless-class-of-2012/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Jobless Class of 2012&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only a half of those who graduated since 2006 are now employed full&#xA;  time, according to a recent Rutgers University survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.heldrich.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/content/Chasing_American_Dream_Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link to the PDF report that statement is based on&lt;/a&gt;, and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.rutgers.edu/medrel/news-releases/2012/05/chasing-the-american-20120510/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;news release covering it&lt;/a&gt; too. The report was the result of interviews with 444 graduates of four-year colleges and universities from the classes of 2006 through 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it roughly true that half of those who graduated from colleges and universities from 2006 to 2011 were employed full time in 2012?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2011/01/january-23-2011-only-47-of-working-age.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to analysis of a January 2011 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment report&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;only 47% of working age Americans have full time jobs&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE 2:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The number of young adults in America who have full-time employment is&#xA;  currently at its lowest in four years, even for those workers who have&#xA;  a college degree, according to a recent Gallup survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Less than half, about 44 percent, of adults aged 18 to 29 held a&#xA;  full-time job as of June 2013. That number is down from 46.3 percent&#xA;  in 2010, as well as the previous low of 45.8 percent in 2011. Last&#xA;  year, 47 percent of young adults were employed full-time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usnews.com/news/newsgram/articles/2013/07/29/full-time-employment-for-young-americans-is-decreasing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source: July 29, 2013&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="513" LastEditorUserId="37939" LastEditDate="2019-09-17T16:55:40.460" LastActivityDate="2019-09-17T16:55:40.460" Title="Were only half of US college graduates from 2006-2011 employed full-time in 2012?" Tags="|united-states|economics|work|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10049" CreationDate="2012-07-09T19:25:00.790" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell from looking at databases of journals, there's no study that looks for this correlation in the literature. And in the context of the movie quote (which predates your other sources) the purpose isn't to give the idea credibility, but rather to highlight the blind spot of the character speaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at the movie quote: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First day on the job, you know what I learned? How to spot a murderer. Let's say you arrest three guys for the same killing. You put them all in jail overnight. The next morning, whoever's sleeping is your man. You see, if you're guilty, you know you're caught, you get some rest, you let your guard down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that even make sense? If you're innocent, you &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; think that this is a all a misunderstanding, it'll blow over, so you sleep. You know you didn't do it, you don't worry about it. If you're guilty, you &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; think that you can get away with it if you can figure out how, spend all night going over your story, your alibis, figuring out what do do. This doesn't even pass the smell test for the audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A literary function of that quote might be to highlight the arrogance of a character that we later find out was focused on his own obsessions to the point of missing what was right under his nose (if you listen closely, the character of Verbal literally confesses to killing Keaton to Kujon's face, and Kujon doesn't catch it.) It also is used to allow foreshadowing, the character who did steal the truck is the only one trying to sleep in the cell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also not sure that &quot;only the guilty sleep in jail&quot; is a Hollywood trope. It isn't &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/TheUsualSuspects?from=Main.TheUsualSuspects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;listed&lt;/a&gt; as one of the tropes in &quot;The Usual Suspects&quot;. A quick internet search doesn't show any evidence of this idea in popular culture prior to &quot;The Usual Suspects&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd have to say that no, there is no clinical evidence to support this idea, and the origin of the idea in popular culture is likely from the movie itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7164" LastEditorUserId="7164" LastEditDate="2020-05-10T23:50:55.993" LastActivityDate="2020-05-10T23:50:55.993" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9994" CreationDate="2012-07-10T08:28:36.007" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research is not finished on this topic, as one can see from recent papers.&#xA;Newer studies than those cited not only confirm the statement on gut flora but go further, namely that other habitats, not only the gut, are impacted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We found that in direct contrast to the highly differentiated&#xA;  communities of their mothers, neonates harbored bacterial communities&#xA;  that were undifferentiated across multiple body habitats, regardless&#xA;  of delivery mode. Our results also show that vaginally delivered&#xA;  infants acquired bacterial communities resembling their own mother's&#xA;  vaginal microbiota, dominated by Lactobacillus, Prevotella, or&#xA;  Sneathia spp., and C-section infants harbored bacterial communities&#xA;  similar to those found on the skin surface, dominated by&#xA;  Staphylococcus, Corynebacterium, and Propionibacterium spp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dominguez-Bello MG, Costello EK, Contreras M, et al.: &lt;em&gt;Delivery mode shapes the acquisition and structure of the initial microbiota across multiple body habitats in newborns.&lt;/em&gt; In: Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.. 107, Nr. 26, Juni 2010, S. 11971–5. doi:10.1073/pnas.1002601107. PMID 20566857. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/20566857/?tool=pubmed&quot;&gt;Free full text&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent review concluded&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given the complexity of the gut micriobiota, additional research is&#xA;  needed before we can confidently establish whether its manipulation in&#xA;  early life can prevent or treat asthma, obesity, or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N. P. Ly, A. Litonjua, D. R. Gold, J. C. Celedón: ''Gut microbiota, probiotics, and vitamin D: interrelated exposures influencing allergy, asthma, and obesity?'' In: ''The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology.'' Band 127, Nummer 5, Mai 2011, S.&amp;nbsp;1087–1094. doi:10.1016/j.jaci.2011.02.015. PMID 21419479. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/21419479/?tool=pubmed&quot;&gt;Free full text&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, please ask this again in three or five years. However, the fact that gut and other flora are greatly influenced by delivery appears to be without question, and is in itself an argument against Caesarean, IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7450" LastEditorUserId="7450" LastEditDate="2012-07-10T08:47:41.253" LastActivityDate="2012-07-10T08:47:41.253" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10080" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10093" CreationDate="2012-07-10T15:06:39.937" Score="12" ViewCount="13017" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/7702/637&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt; on &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/7701/637&quot;&gt;Is it illegal to refuse US currency for a purchase?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, @&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/5878/dan-neely&quot;&gt;Dan Neely&lt;/a&gt; said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't think the main reason many businesses ban $50/100 bills is that they'd deplete their ability to make change for future customers. Minimizing losses from counterfeiters is the dominant concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the higher prevalence of $20 bills over $50 or $100 bills, I have always heard that the $20 is more frequently counterfeited in the US. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/5521284/why-you-dont-want-to-counterfeit-the-hideous-new-100-bill&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gizmodo&lt;/a&gt; makes a throw-away claim that the $100 is the most counterfeited but with no sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="637" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2016-02-17T23:39:49.423" Title="Is the US $20 bill the most counterfeited?" Tags="|united-states|economics|currency|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10020" CreationDate="2012-07-10T17:02:35.097" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We can be sure there is waste in the US system by looking at the variation among US regions in spend and outcomes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short Summary:&#xA;&lt;em&gt;There is plenty of internal evidence that the US healthcare system overtreats patients to the point of harming them and doesn't inform them well enough to make informed tradeoffs about their care. In short, it spends a lot on activity that doesn't benefit the patient, in other words too much activity is waste.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comparisons of different countries healthcare systems suggest that the USA has a lot of waste. But there are a lot of confounding factors that complicate such comparisons (as the other answers here discuss). But there are analyses of the regional variations present in the US healthcare system that come to similar conclusions and that don't suffer from the problems of international comparisons. This answer summaries some of those studies and concludes that internal evidence shows that there is significant waste in the US system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth being clear what we mean by waste. A useful definition is &lt;em&gt;spending that doesn't benefit the patient&lt;/em&gt;, though we have to be careful what we mean by this. Some commentators and politicians any spending not on &amp;quot;front line staff&amp;quot; (i.e. on administration and management) is waste because it doesn't directly benefit the patient. This isn't the definition of waste required here not least because any effective healthcare system needs &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; level of management to be coordinated and well organised. There is even evidence linking lower death rates with the quality of management in hospitals (see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cep.lse.ac.uk/textonly/_new/research/productivity/management/PDF/Management_in_Healthcare_Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pdf available on the London School of Economics site&lt;/a&gt;; NB this is a download link).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This definition of waste recognises that not all medical activity is useful and points to the sort of evidence that might help decide whether a particular type of activity is good for the patient. The american public sometimes seems to believe that more medical activity is always good (see the skeptics questions here &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6568/does-screening-for-prostate-cancer-save-lives&quot;&gt;Does screening for prostate cancer save lives?&lt;/a&gt; and here &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/is-routine-screening-for-breast-cancer-for-asymptomatic-women-worthwhile&quot;&gt;Is routine screening for breast cancer for asymptomatic women worthwhile?&lt;/a&gt;). This definition also avoids the issue of value for money. The issue isn't whether it is worth spending a &lt;em&gt;large&lt;/em&gt; amount to get a &lt;em&gt;small&lt;/em&gt; benefit, but whether there is &lt;em&gt;any benefit at all&lt;/em&gt; from doing more medical activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why analysis of the variations in activity levels in the USA are useful is because they allow a good statistical comparison of both activity rates, outcomes and patient perception. The most thorough analysis is the result of the ongoing work of the Dartmouth Atlas Project (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;website here&lt;/a&gt;). And a major conclusion of their work is that a disturbingly large proportion of healthcare activity in the USA is waste by the definition above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line of much of the Dartmouth work is summarised &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/keyissues/issue.aspx?con=1339&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...studies comparing similar patients have found that those in higher-spending regions are more likely to be admitted to the hospital, spend more time in the hospital, receive more discretionary tests, see more medical specialists, and have many more different physicians involved in their care. &lt;strong&gt;The extra care does not produce better outcomes overall or result in better quality of care, whether one looks at measures of technical quality (such as providing appropriate medication to heart attack patients), or survival following such serious conditions as a heart attack or hip fracture. Higher spending also does not result in improved patient perceptions of the accessibility or quality of medical care.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So by the definition of waste given above, this suggests there is a lot of waste. One estimate of how much was given by Wennberg (one of the founders of the Dartmouth Project) in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d1513&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ article in 2011&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the whole of the US followed the practice patterns of high quality, low cost regions served by organised systems such as Mayo Clinic and Intermountain Healthcare, Dartmouth atlas benchmarks suggest it would save 40% of resources spent on chronic illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wennberg's book, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=3riIUS-A4_gC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=wennberg&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=sFb8T6OIKoaa1AWGlOyvBw&amp;amp;ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tracking Medicine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, is a good source for the background, history and conclusions of the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These figures are easier to understand in the light of their causes. Two in particular seem to be major factors driving variation in the US system: &lt;em&gt;preference sensitive care&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;supply sensitive care&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Preference sensitive care occurs when the different patients may choose different trade-offs when weighing up treatment options. But the Dartmouth analysis reveals large degrees of variation that depend on medical practice not patient choices. As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/keyissues/issue.aspx?con=2938&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;they summarise&lt;/a&gt; (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when evidence exists as to outcomes, surgery rates can vary dramatically from place to place. This is the case in early stage breast cancer. Studies show that mastectomy and lumpectomy achieve similar long-term survival, but women generally differ sharply in their attitudes toward these treatments. Yet in an early Dartmouth Atlas study, we found regions in which virtually no Medicare women underwent lumpectomy, while in another, nearly half did. We see dramatic variations in rates of surgical treatment for other conditions where multiple treatment options are possible, such as chronic angina (coronary bypass or angioplasty), low back pain (disc surgery or spinal fusion), arthritis of the knee or hip (joint replacement), and early stage cancer of the prostate (prostatectomy). Such extreme variation arises because patients commonly delegate decision-making to physicians, under the assumption that doctors can accurately understand patients’ values and recommend the correct treatment for them. &lt;strong&gt;Yet studies show that when patients are fully informed about their options, they often choose very differently from their physicians.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that adequately informed patients often choose lower rates of intervention. As the conclusion of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19588325?dopt=Abstract&amp;amp;access_num=19588325&amp;amp;link_type=MED&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Decision aids have a variable effect on decisions. They reduce the use of discretionary surgery without apparent adverse effects on health outcomes or satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supply sensitive care occurs when the capacity of system seems to drive the level of activity in it. This sounds like a good thing to those who assume more medicine is always good, but if the extra activity doesn't result in better results for patients, it is waste. This, again, is what the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/keyissues/issue.aspx?con=2937&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dartmouth studies find&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply put, in regions where there are more hospital beds per capita, patients will be more likely to be admitted to the hospital. In regions where there are more intensive care unit beds, more patients will be cared for in the ICU. More specialists will result in more visits to specialists. And the more CT scanners are available, the more CT scans patients will receive. The Dartmouth Atlas has consistently demonstrated these relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regions where there are relatively fewer medical resources, patients get less care; however, there is no evidence that these patients are worse off than their counterparts in high-resourced, high-spending regions. &lt;strong&gt;Patients do not experience improved survival or better quality of life if they live in regions with more care. In fact, the care they receive appears to be worse.&lt;/strong&gt; They report being less satisfied with their care than patients in regions that spend less, and having more trouble getting in to see their physicians. Most studies have found that mortality is no better in higher in high-spending regions, almost certainly because the benefits to some patients are counterbalanced by the harms to others. Hospitals can be dangerous places, where patients face the risk of medical error, adverse events, and hospital-acquired antibiotic-resistant infections. As more physicians get involved in a patient’s care, it becomes less and less clear who is responsible, and miscommunication and mistakes become more likely. &lt;strong&gt;Greater use of diagnostic tests increases the risk of finding -- and being treated for -- abnormalities that are unlikely to have caused the patient any problem. Patients who receive care for conditions that would have never caused a problem can only experience the risk of the intervention.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also recommend dipping into two other books for more detailed discussion of the evidence: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jameslindlibrary.org/testing-treatments.html#Testingtreatments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Testing Treatments&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Better-Doctors-Patients-Decisions-Envisioning/dp/0262016036&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Better Doctors, Better Patients, Better Decisions.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; The first chapter of the second book starts by quoting two extraordinary examples where the US health system overuses screening in expensive and damaging ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost ten million U.S. women have had unnecessary Pap smears to screen for cervical cancer--unnecessary because, having already undergone complete hysterectomies, these women no longer have a cervix. &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?volume=291&amp;amp;issue=24&amp;amp;page=2990&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Original JAMA paper here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every year, one million U.S. children have unnecessary CT scans. An unnecessary CT scan equates to more than a waste of money: an estimated 29,000 cancers result from the approximately 70 million CT scans performed annually in the United States. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMra072149&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NEJM reference here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: I quoted these examples in an to the question answer here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9615/are-the-vast-majority-of-medical-procedures-routinely-used-by-physicians-ineffec&quot;&gt;Are the vast majority of medical procedures routinely used by physicians ineffective and unproven?&lt;/a&gt; but they are even more relevant to this question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In summary: there is plenty of internal evidence that the US healthcare system overtreats patients to the point of harming them and doesn't inform them well enough to make informed tradeoffs about their care. In short, it spends a lot on activity that doesn't benefit the patient, in other words too much activity is waste.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB This should no be considered an attack on the US system. Other systems also show this sort of variation and waste. See for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rightcare.nhs.uk/index.php/nhs-atlas/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NHS Atlas of Variation&lt;/a&gt; for a similar analysis in the (supposedly) more centrally controlled English NHS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T14:18:05.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3246" CreationDate="2012-07-10T18:54:25.927" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tongue-in-cheek but true, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_18409_the-5-most-statistically-full-shit-national-stereotypes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cracked article&lt;/a&gt; pretty much sums it up&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They've won 109, lost 49 and drawn (or as close as you can &quot;draw&quot; a war) 10 times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for references, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.militaryfactory.com/battles/french_military_victories.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page on French military action&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And some examples still unquoted here&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marignano&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The battle of Maregnano&lt;/a&gt;, and its legendary swiss-kickings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolutionary_Wars&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;French revolutionary wars&lt;/a&gt;, where France held its ground against pretty much everyone in Europe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Western Front in WWI, was led by the French, and &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; by the US, despite what some Americans seem to believe. The US army entered only in April 1917, so no Verdun for them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TvTropes&lt;/a&gt; states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even so, the French have a somewhat troublesome tendency to win battles but lose wars, as with Napoleon and Louis XIV&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7801" LastEditorUserId="7801" LastEditDate="2018-05-24T21:22:17.837" LastActivityDate="2018-05-24T21:22:17.837" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10090" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-11T10:46:46.287" Score="6" ViewCount="500" Body="&lt;p&gt;I must admit that I lost the original reference for the claim, but almost certain it was LifeHacker, so it is notable enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that 72-73 degrees Fahrenheit (or about 22-23 Celsius) is THE optimal temperature range for office productivity, with above 74 and below 71 measurably negatively impacting productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there unambiguous and uncontested study results proving that there's a measurable (beyond statistical noise) effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-07-11T11:50:05.023" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T18:15:15.350" Title="Is 22-23 Celsius (72-73 degrees F) measurably the optimal temperature for office productivity" Tags="|environment|productivity|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5119" CreationDate="2012-07-11T12:09:35.920" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/41da67cc-cab1-11e1-89be-00144feabdc0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;climate change does mean that weather becomes more variable in addition to being warmer&lt;/a&gt; (Financial Times link, registration required).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Global warming “significantly” increased the odds of some of last year’s most unusual weather&lt;/strong&gt;, including the brutal Texas drought and the freakishly warm November in Britain, according to findings released Tuesday alongside the latest “state of the climate” report in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.ametsoc.org/loi/bams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper is available online at &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00021.1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DOI:10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00021.1 - Explaining Extreme Events of 2011 from a Climate Perspective&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/people/peter-stott&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr Peter Stott&lt;/a&gt; and others have been using attribution science to look at these causes. See, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/joc.2262&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Human activity and anomalously warm seasons in Europe&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The attribution analysis described here employs temperature data from observations and experiments with two climate models and uses optimal fingerprinting to partition the climate response between its anthropogenic and natural components. These responses are subsequently combined with estimates of unforced climate variability to construct distributions of the annual values of seasonal mean temperatures with and without the effect of human activity. &lt;strong&gt;We find that in all seasons, anthropogenic forcings have shifted the temperature distributions towards higher values.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(my bold in each quote)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/07/20/craps/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tamino on Climate extremes and anthropogenic climate change&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://climatecrocks.com/2012/07/10/new-video-welcome-to-the-rest-of-our-lives/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pete Sinclair on &quot;Welcome to the rest of our lives&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the IPCC's 2012 special report on climate extremes (SREX)&lt;/a&gt;, we find:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is evidence that &lt;strong&gt;some extremes have changed as a result of anthropogenic influences&lt;/strong&gt;, including&#xA;  increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. It is likely that anthropogenic influences have led&#xA;  to warming of extreme daily minimum and maximum temperatures at the global scale. There is medium confidence&#xA;  that anthropogenic influences have contributed to intensification of extreme precipitation at the global scale. It is&#xA;  likely that there has been an anthropogenic influence on increasing extreme coastal high water due to an increase in&#xA;  mean sea level&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="5326" LastEditDate="2012-07-21T00:03:42.053" LastActivityDate="2012-07-21T00:03:42.053" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10092" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-11T13:57:31.783" Score="16" ViewCount="1394" Body="&lt;p&gt;My mother always relayed this one to me: put sunglasses on and your eyes won't itch so much. I always laughed at this as being an old wives tale, however there seems to be plenty of anecdotal advice given out online substantiating the claim - albeit most sources suggesting &lt;em&gt;wraparound&lt;/em&gt; sunglasses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, I suppose, makes more sense than any old sunglasses; at least wraparounds have less gaps for small pollen particles to enter your eyes. However, I am still skeptical that this has any benefit whatsoever as it was my belief that the itchy, watery eyes were just another histamine overreaction by the body in response to pollen entering through other channels (nasal, oral).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there been any proper studies of this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notable claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/hay-fever/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hay fever prevention - NHS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://blog.glassesdirect.co.uk/2009/05/26/top-5-tips-for-giving-hayfever-symptoms-the-heave-ho&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Top tips for beating Hay fever symptoms - glassesdirect.com&lt;/a&gt; (Shock/Horror - this one &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be bias!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20121103105605/http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/physical_health/conditions/in_depth/allergies/allergicconditions_hayfever.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Preventing hay fever - BBC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-07-04T08:24:39.237" LastActivityDate="2019-07-04T13:02:35.057" Title="Can sunglasses reduce the symptoms of hayfever?" Tags="|allergies|hay-fever|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10080" CreationDate="2012-07-11T14:41:17.783" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes and no&lt;/strong&gt;, while the $20 note is the most commonly encountered counterfeit bill in the United States, the $100 note is the most common counter fit bill in worldwide circulation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that the $20 note is typically the bill most likely to be attributed to being counterfeited in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fuzeqna.com/ccul/consumer/kbdetail.asp?kbid=362&amp;amp;ap=t&quot;&gt;various factoids&lt;/a&gt; without that distinction. However, in journalistic articles that feature quotes attributed to representatives from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_the_Treasury&quot;&gt;United States Treasury Department&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secret_Service&quot;&gt;United States Secret Service&lt;/a&gt; the $100 note is cited as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/04/21/usa-currency-idUSN2119469720100421&quot;&gt;most&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://business.time.com/2012/02/24/how-the-u-s-could-pressure-north-korea-tomorrow-quit-the-100-bill/&quot;&gt;commonly&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0920/p14s02-wmgn.html&quot;&gt;counterfeited&lt;/a&gt; in world wide circulation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worldwide circulation is the interesting aspect of this answer as there are a number of different techniques that are used by well-funded organizations for counterfeiting (from bleaching US$5 bills to turn into $100 note to making new ones with stolen engravings) that tend to provide indications as to where the bills are being produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Counterfeiting is a big enough issue that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_System&quot;&gt;Federal Reserve&lt;/a&gt; periodically releases reports about the problem. In a report issued in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/rptcongress/counterfeit.pdf&quot;&gt;January 2000&lt;/a&gt;, one of the key findings was as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... the denomination with the largest amount of counterfeits, both in&#xA;  dollar terms (about $6 million) and as a proportion of notes processed&#xA;  (about 60 per million notes), was the $100 note.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See page 52 - 53 which includes a table summary of counterfeiting rates at Federal Reserve banks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-07-11T16:21:54.283" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T16:21:54.283" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10080" CreationDate="2012-07-11T17:02:25.213" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR: $100 notes are counterfeited more overall, but there are more low-quality $20 forgeries than low-quality $100 forgeries (by count, but not by face-value).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/policy_discussion_papers/2010/PDP2010-2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Estimating the Volume of Counterfeit U.S. Currency in Circulation Worldwide: Data and Extrapolation&lt;/a&gt; contains a long evaluation of the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, due to an unexplained error, the tables are omitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Through private communication with the lead author, Dr Ruth Judson, I have obtained &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mediafire.com/?stztgmup493pds4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;another copy&lt;/a&gt; of the report. She states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The wording at some points might vary slightly, but the tables should be the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study explains the term &quot;circular&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Circular” notes are&#xA;  those that are assigned classification numbers by the U.S. Secret Service for further&#xA;  investigation. They are typically of higher quality than the other categories of counterfeit notes,&#xA;  which include those printed on office copiers or computer printers or other relatively crude&#xA;  methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Table 6, we see the essential information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zMm1Y.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Remember that, $1,000 worth of $20 notes is five times more notes that $1,000 worth of $100 notes.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this table we can see that when it comes to higher-quality &quot;circular&quot; counterfeits, the $100 notes dominate, even after multiplying five. For the lower quality forgeries, there are more $20 notes, but they don't add up to as much value as the $100 notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding both groups together, the $100 notes win when it comes to count and value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-07-11T17:02:25.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16121" CreationDate="2012-07-11T18:55:44.773" Score="14" ViewCount="1656" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shangri-La_Diet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Shangri-La diet&lt;/a&gt; method was arrived at by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Roberts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Seth Roberts&lt;/a&gt;, according to him, by self-experimentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://calorielab.com/news/2006/04/09/seth-roberts-shangri-la-diet-reviewed/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article showering it with praise&lt;/a&gt; sums it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. Roberts’s Shangri-La Diet maintains that the body’s “set point,” the weight a body “wants” to be, can be lowered by consuming small amounts of tasteless oil or sugar between meals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of anything that goes beyond calories in - calories out and Roberts has been demonstrated to be &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1230/what-are-the-greatest-successes-of-long-term-climate-prediction&quot;&gt;wrong on-the-record&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.sethroberts.net/2010/05/12/preventive-stupidity-exists/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;numerous&lt;/a&gt; times before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't have access to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/clinnutrinsight/Citation/2007/04000/Shangri_La_in_a_Bottle__of_Olive_Oil__.5.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one paper&lt;/a&gt; citing it, but research on the set-point theory should tell us something about the theory's plausibility too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good answer might also talk about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://sethroberts.net/science/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;old (classic or out-dated?) articles he cites in support&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T08:44:06.463" Title="Does the Shangri-La diet work (according to its supposed mechanism)?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10070" CreationDate="2012-07-11T19:41:42.380" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book is correct, the bomb calorimeter is still the official measure of the caloric content for food. You still see it in all the textbooks and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nutrientdataconf.org/PastConf/NDBC18/12-1_Li.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;government required nutritional labels are all legally required to based on it.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are correct that the calorimeter merely measures the total energy in the sample that can be released by complete oxygen combustion of the sample. Since the body doesn't burn food but instead processes it biochemically, the nutritional calalory is only a very rough guide to the energy content in food. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you put a chunk of dry wood in calorimeter it will tell you the wood had a great deal of energy in it. However, since all that energy is bound up in cellulose and humans can't digest cellulose, the actual nutritional caloric content of wood is zero. Celery is likewise the mostly wood and cellulose. Notionally, it provides something like 11 calories a stalk when burned but in actuality, it takes more calories to chew and other wise process celery than you extract from it. Celery is calorically, anti-food. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different people also process different foods more effectively or not at all. The common example is the processing of lactose (milk sugar) in adults. Only about 20% of the human species presently has the gene to produce &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lactase&lt;/a&gt; which allows them convert lactose into absorbable simple sugars. For those people, milk provides a great deal of calories almost as many as the calorimeter reports. For the other 80% of humanity, 90%+ of the lactose remains as lactose until it travels to the large intestine where it is eaten by microbes who convert it to energy, CO2, Methane, water and embarrassing social situations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, diabetics, especially Type 1, can absorb carbohydrates into their blood but their cells cannot &quot;burn&quot; the carbohydrates without insulin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best guide today to actual nutritional calories is arguably &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the glycemic index&lt;/a&gt; which measures how much carbohydrates/sugars appear in the blood a set time after consumption. However, given the great range of variation from person to person even that is practically only a rough guess for any given individual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7814" LastEditorUserId="7814" LastEditDate="2012-07-12T21:22:09.567" LastActivityDate="2012-07-12T21:22:09.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10112" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10148" CreationDate="2012-07-12T09:50:02.520" Score="19" ViewCount="2756" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article warns of cell phone radiation on trains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FKA/is_8_64/ai_89379593/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Train passengers exposed to cell phone electromagnetic radiation (Better Nutrition)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Passengers on packed trains and subways may be exposing themselves to electromagnetic fields far more intense than those recommended under international guidelines. The problem? Crowds of commuters using cellular phones at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When hundreds of mobile phones emit radiation, their total power is found to be comparable to that of a microwave oven or even a satellite broadcasting station, according to a recent study published in the February 2002 issue of the Journal of the Physical Society of Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the last few years I have noticed increased cell phone usage for texting, calling and 3G/EDGE/GPRS texting or browsing on trains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When should I begin to worry? Should I move to another train car? Are underground trains (subways) with underground repeaters/cell towers more dangerous because of weaker signal strength (thus phones compensate with stronger radiation)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7579" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T01:18:23.997" Title="Are train passengers exposed to dangerous levels of cell phone electromagnetic radiation?" Tags="|radiation|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10116" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10117" CreationDate="2012-07-12T13:09:42.173" Score="19" ViewCount="3922" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18793045&quot;&gt;story&lt;/a&gt; on the BBC News website makes the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brown rats are one of the planet's most serious mammalian pests, ruining crops and harbouring disease. Expert jumpers, climbers and swimmers, a single pair can multiply to 200 within a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can rats multiply this quickly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2017-11-28T22:23:27.217" Title="Can a pair of rats multiply to 200 within a year?" Tags="|zoology|environmental-health|reproduction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10116" CreationDate="2012-07-12T14:06:48.813" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Rattus_norvegicus.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; rats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reach sexual maturity at 4 months (for females, who are the limiting factor here)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can give birth seven times a year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;have litters of about 8&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting with two sexually mature rats (and assuming averages of all the above throughout), the original pair will produce 7 litters of 8 rats in a year - 56 rats. The first litter in the second generation become fertile at 4 months after birth (5 months from the start of the year), and so the four females in that litter will have around 7/12*7 = 4 litters each in the year - 128 rats. 128 + 56 = 184. That's so close to the 200 that we don't need to worry about the remaining 6 litters or further generations. Rats are clearly capable of becoming at least 200 within a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2017-11-24T18:24:46.333" LastActivityDate="2017-11-24T18:24:46.333" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10118" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28391" CreationDate="2012-07-12T14:45:26.060" Score="4" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently had a discussion over some fruit that rotted a lot faster that we expected. I was told that this was a good sign because it meant that the fruit was grown more naturally (probably without preservatives).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a common practice for industrial agriculture to apply preservatives to fruit? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.organicfoods101.com/organic-food-blog/what-chemicals-are-used-with-organic-foods/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;organicfoods&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt;  and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.progressiveic.com/n28may05.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this other&lt;/a&gt; claim that lack of wax causes this effect&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;they also claim this effect &lt;a href=&quot;http://student.sheboyganfalls.k12.wi.us/14malamb/food-culture/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3213" LastEditorUserId="3213" LastEditDate="2012-07-13T19:46:28.103" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T10:42:14.687" Title="Are preservatives applied to commercially distrubted fruit?" Tags="|fruit|organic-food|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10070" CreationDate="2012-07-13T03:36:40.433" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This answer is strongly based on a reference provided by @TechZen, so credit there. However, I draw a very different conclusion from it, and I didn't want to edit the answer that substantially... I decided to go with a separate Community Wiki answer.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, the bomb calorimiter values are not the definitive measure of calorific values.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nutrientdataconf.org/PastConf/NDBC18/12-1_Li.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nutrition Labeling of Carbohydrates: Definition, Analyses, and Caloric Calculations&lt;/a&gt; by Betty Wang Li, National Nutrient Databank Conference 18, 1993&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this conference paper, the techniques used to adhere to FDA Food Labelling guidelines are described and their limitations discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For regulatory purposes, five options have been provided for the calculation of caloric content of foods. They are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;specific Atwater food factors,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;general factors of 4, 4, and 9 calories per gram of protein, total carbohydrate including dietary fiber, and fat, respectively,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;same as 2. except that insoluble dietary fiber content may be subtracted from total carbohydrate content,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;specific factors for particular food ingredients petitioned by manufacturers/users and approved by FDA as appropriate, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bomb calorimetry data after subtraction of 1.25 calories per gram of protein.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This demonstrates that the nutritional labelling does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; rely on bomb calorimetry data without regard for the factors the question was concerned about. If a bomb calorimeter would give an unfair over-estimate, the manufacturer can use a more reasonable evaluation of the components. If even that is unreasonable, (I assume &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olestra&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;olestra&lt;/a&gt; would be an example,) they may request a ruling for a different technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper gives examples of how the different techniques (plus UK labelling regulations) give different answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also explains how chromatographic techniques can be used to measure the different types of sugar levels of foods, such as honey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignoring the water content, wood would consist of largely insoluble dietary fiber (which the paper demonstrates can be defined physiological, chemically or gravimetrically, and that the guidelines stipulate the last definition.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper does point out there are some unanswered questions, such as whether all soluble dietary fibers, by the legal definition, have the same physiological effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, the textbooks were the ones over-simplifying the process. The nutrition scientists and the FDA realise it isn't a gold standard for calorific content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-13T03:36:40.433" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-07-13T03:36:40.433" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2785" CreationDate="2012-07-13T05:01:04.417" Score="36" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's unlikely that Apple's support for USB had any significant impact on the adoption of the standard.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two other events that, in combination, &quot;jump started&quot; USB adoption. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1. Windows 98 release provides comprehensive USB support&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Windows 98 was released in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_98&quot;&gt;June 1998&lt;/a&gt;. Prior to Windows 98, USB support in Windows was flaky at best. Support was hastily added to Windows 95 through a patch which was pretty &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/19980214145354/http://pcworld.com/hardware/networking/articles/sep97/1509p070.html&quot;&gt;universally panned at the time&lt;/a&gt;, with some vendors even disabling the ports if the machine shipped with Windows 95:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We spent hours trying to get the Panasonic notebook's USB port to work, then found out the port had been disabled. Panasonic believes that USB with Windows 95 OSR2.1 is so unreliable that users are better off without it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If all goes well, the next version of Windows may help. &quot;&lt;strong&gt;We acknowledge that support [for USB in Windows 95] is very limited&lt;/strong&gt;,&quot; acknowledges Stacey Breyfogle, a Microsoft product manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vendors must write complex drivers to make their USB peripherals work under Windows 95 OSR2.1, but Microsoft will build more of the USB technology into Windows 98.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Windows 98 &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20080429233236/http://www.microsoft.com/taiwan/whdc/archive/usbwin98.mspx&quot;&gt;added this extra functionality, fixed many bugs&lt;/a&gt; and made it easier for vendors to write robust drivers for their devices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me) operating systems contain second-generation Universal Serial Bus (USB) support from Microsoft. A fundamental assumption in the PC industry is that second-generation software is always more stable and has fewer bugs than the first-generation version. This is partly because the availability of first-generation software encourages IHVs to produce a greater number and variety of devices; therefore, as the second-generation software is developed, it can be tested against many more devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is particularly true for USB device support; only a handful of devices were available for testing the USB support first released to OEMs in October 1996 (in the release known as OEM Service Release [OSR] 2.1). In contrast, the &lt;strong&gt;USB support in Windows 98/Windows Me has been tested against over 100 production, pre-production, and engineering prototype USB devices. In particular, more interoperability testing has been done, with multiple USB devices attached to the bus at the same time. In addition to stability and fewer bugs--and therefore a better user experience with USB--USB support in Windows 98/Windows Me has significantly more functionality than the first-generation release.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2. USB 1.1 Specification release&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#USB_1.0&quot;&gt;USB 1.1 Specification&lt;/a&gt; was released in August 1998 (though peripheral manufacturers would have had access to draft revisions much earlier than that in order to have 1.1 devices ready for market). The USB 1.1 spec had &lt;a href=&quot;http://esd.cs.ucr.edu/webres/usb11.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;Updates to all chapters to fix problems identified&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Texas Instruments' &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ti.com/analog/docs/microsite.tsp?sectionId=590&amp;amp;tabId=2207&amp;amp;micrositeId=11&quot;&gt;assessment of the adoption of USB&lt;/a&gt; identifies the updated standard as a key driver for vendors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The release of the USB 1.1 specification combined with the native operating system support offered by Microsoft enabled the rapid adoption of USB hosts in the PC. It also drove the conversion of many peripheral devices from legacy interfaces&lt;/strong&gt; such as serial (RS- 232), PS-2 (mice and keyboards), and parallel ports (Centronix and IEEE-1284 for printers) to this common interface standard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ComputerWorld released an article in December 1997 which describes in more detail how &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=i7IKOaAy8J0C&amp;amp;lpg=PA50&amp;amp;ots=XaGJmYnOBm&amp;amp;dq=computer%20world%20universal%20serial%20bus%20awaits%20windows%2098%20drivers&amp;amp;pg=PA50#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=computer%20world%20universal%20serial%20bus%20awaits%20windows%2098%20drivers&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;peripheral manufacturers were waiting for Windows 98 USB driver support&lt;/a&gt; before fully backing the standard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Universal Bus awaits Windows 98 drivers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Most notebook PCs have come equipped with a USB port since mid 1997, but most vendors aren't yet making the printers, scanners, cameras, mice or monitors that comply with the USB standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But at Comdex/Fall '97, held recently in Las Vegas, a handful of vendors displayed USB-compliant devices. They included Eastman Kodak in Rochester, N.Y.; Intel Corp. in Santa Clara, Calif.; Logitech Corp. in Fremont, Calif.; and Connectix Corp in San Mateo, Calif. And 3Com Corp. announced that its new 56K bit/sec voice/fax modem will have USB support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, the &quot;one-size-fits-all&quot; port &lt;strong&gt;isn't expected to be easy to use until end users upgrade to Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 98, which has the necessary drivers to support USB devices. Windows 95 doesn't fully support USB.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We're getting close to this being a real product and a real standard with support&quot;, said Nathan Nuttall, an analyst at Sherwood Research  in Wellesley, Mass. But he said &lt;strong&gt;corporate adoption of USB will take two to three years.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &quot;If you've got a system [in place], you're not going to throw away all your monitors and printers&quot;, he said. &quot;For now, you're looking at a lot of serial connections.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Published just after the release of Windows 98, this CNET article does a good job of summarising the numerous &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/Peripherals-to-surge-with-Win-98/2100-1001_3-212671.html&quot;&gt;benefits the new OS would bring to peripheral makers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Peripherals to surge with Win 98&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peripheral vendors--companies that specialize in modems, digital cameras, add-in cards, and the like--will likely experience an upswing in business following Microsoft's Windows 98 rollout, since &lt;strong&gt;the new operating system will bring built-in support for a number of emerging hardware technologies&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;By far the most practical addition to Windows 98 is built-in support for the universal serial bus (USB) connector.&lt;/strong&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Up until now, there has been no reason to implement [USB] on low-end products because it adds to cost,&quot; Bursley noted. &quot;That said, we expect within the next year some inkjet printers will offer USB connections. Many already offer USB printers in Japan,&quot; she added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But peripherals manufacturers are working on USB devices as PCs, toward the day when Windows 98 and USB connectors become more common. Eventually, &lt;strong&gt;economies of scale will help persuade companies to come out with more USB products.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &quot;There will be a pretty impressive showing of peripherals this summer,&quot; said Rob Bennett, group product manager for Windows 98. &quot;There are 250 devices due to be launched around Windows 98 and 100 in development [to be] released in the next year,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John W. Koon's book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldcat.org/title/usb-peripheral-design/oclc/247160062&quot;&gt;USB: Peripheral Design&lt;/a&gt; summarised the landscape for USB peripheral manufacturers in 1998:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Dataquest and Intel's projectsion (USB conference, July 1996), USB PC shipments were estimated at 20 million units in 1997 and 100 million units in 1999. In addition, the Bishop Report stated that the USB connector market would hit $400 million in 1999. The estimated ratio of peripheral use per host PC is four to one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mid 1998 saw an explosion of USB devices onto the market. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1998_March_23/ai_20410345/&quot;&gt;the USB implementers forum chair&lt;/a&gt; at the time, Stephen Walley:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three main factors are credited for the large volume of development activity, according to Whalley. These include: &lt;strong&gt;USB becoming mainstream on all consumer desktop and most notebook PCs, the wide availability of building blocks for developing products (such as silicon and development tools), and the upcoming availability of Windows '98&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What About Apple?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apple's release of the iMac spurred the recovery of the company, but it's difficult to argue that a single computer model (accounting for less than 5% of private desktop computer sales at its peak) influenced the adoption of USB in any great way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1997, Steve Jobs had recently been re-hired as Apple CEO and was trying to put the company back on the path to success. He slashed their product line and penned a deal with Microsoft to get Office on the Mac for at least 5 years, and announced the iMac which did away with all Apple proprietary ports and offered only USB. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;USB at the time didn't support high speeds - the aim was for Apple to be interoperable with the world of PC peripherals that was largely incompatible at the time. Apple users had to buy Mac-specific scanners, printers and webcams, and Apple moving to USB would make it easy for peripheral manufacturers to make their products cross compatible, which made the Mac a more attractive platform and made it easier for PC users to switch and keep all of their PC peripherals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/5454/jobs_hints_hesquots_part_of_applesquots_future.html&quot;&gt;earliest public hint at Apple support for USB&lt;/a&gt; was in October 1997&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jobs' keynote, meanwhile, offered many promises and few details for the bedraggled company's recovery.&#xA;  ... He also said that in 1998 the company will support FireWire, Apple's high-speed technology for linking Macintoshes with devices such as printers and cameras, and Universal Serial Bus, which links peripherals like scanners and monitors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;prior to any indication that Apple would support USB, the following had been ocurring&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jan 1996&lt;/strong&gt; - USB Specification 1.0 released, authored by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lammertbies.nl/comm/info/usb-specification.html&quot;&gt;Compaq, Intel, Microsoft and NEC&lt;/a&gt;, see also &lt;a href=&quot;http://esd.cs.ucr.edu/webres/usb11.pdf&quot;&gt;the full USB 1.1 Specification (PDF)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nov 1996&lt;/strong&gt; - PCWorld deems USB a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/19980214150051/http://pcworld.com/hardware/storage_backup/articles/nov96/1411p312.html&quot;&gt;radical rethink&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and &quot;grand idea&quot;, and eagerly anticipates devices being made available &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jan 1997&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;strong&gt;Microsoft&lt;/strong&gt;, in addition to previously helping to develop the USB standard, releases an updated version of Windows 95 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/4107/universal_serial_bus_products_stalled.html&quot;&gt;enabling the use of USB devices&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Feb 1997&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;strong&gt;Kodak&lt;/strong&gt; demonstrate the first &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/19980214145716/http://pcworld.com/hardware/input_devices/articles/apr97/1504p059b.html&quot;&gt;Digital Camera with USB connection&lt;/a&gt; for power and data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Feb 1997&lt;/strong&gt; - Xirlink &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telecompaper.com/news/xirlink-launches-video-phone--110622&quot;&gt;demostrated&lt;/a&gt; a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Corporate+Profile+for+Xirlink+Inc.,+dated+Feb.+28,+1997.-a019160516&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USB Webcam&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; which went on sale in Sept 1997&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;June 1997&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;strong&gt;Philips&lt;/strong&gt; demonstrated a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/4831/catching_the_universal_serial_bus_bug.html&quot;&gt;USB hub enabled monitor, USB infrared port (for already existing wireless mice and keyboards) and USB speakers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;June 1997&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;strong&gt;Thrustmaster&lt;/strong&gt; demonstrated a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/4831/catching_the_universal_serial_bus_bug.html&quot;&gt;USB Joystick&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;June 1997&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;strong&gt;Sony&lt;/strong&gt; began producing laptops, these had &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/4828/sony_steps_into_notebook_market_this_summer.html&quot;&gt;both USB and Firewire ports&lt;/a&gt; as standard&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;July 1997&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;strong&gt;HP&lt;/strong&gt; announced &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/5107/hp_pcs_get_new_look_multimedia_keyboard.html&quot;&gt;future computers would be USB enabled&lt;/a&gt;, and showed off &lt;strong&gt;PCs with USB keyboards&lt;/strong&gt; which included multimedia buttons, as well as &lt;strong&gt;USB printers and scanners&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;July 1997&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;strong&gt;Canon&lt;/strong&gt; had functional &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/5059/universal_serial_bus_a_flop_in_first_handson_tests.html&quot;&gt;USB Printers&lt;/a&gt; available for testing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;July 1997&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;strong&gt;Dell, Gateway, NEC, and Panasonic&lt;/strong&gt; were &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/5059/universal_serial_bus_a_flop_in_first_handson_tests.html&quot;&gt;selling consumer PCs with USB ports&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Oct 1997&lt;/strong&gt; - Connectix (now Logitech) QuickClip &lt;strong&gt;USB Webcam&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1997_Oct_16/ai_19861849/&quot;&gt;available for purchase&lt;/a&gt; for $99&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nov 1997&lt;/strong&gt; - Connectix (now Logitech) QuickCam VC &lt;strong&gt;USB Webcam&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/5604/bargain_basement_digital_video_for_your_pc.html&quot;&gt;available for purchase&lt;/a&gt;. Over 1 million Connectix units sold before the release of Win98. &lt;strong&gt;This camera didn't work with the iMac until &lt;a href=&quot;http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1998_Sept_2/ai_21193493/?tag=content;col1&quot;&gt;September 1998&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1997 (Month unknown)&lt;/strong&gt; - USB-IF membership increased to more than 400. &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=fRvbxgH4wmsC&quot;&gt;Over 500 products were in development&lt;/a&gt; worldwide. First third party USB developers' conference held.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, all of the major technology players had decided to support USB as a standard and peripheral makers were switching over. Prior to the release of the first Apple with USB support, USB devices and computers with USB ports (for example: the Dell GXa, one of the best selling business PCs of the era, IBM's PC 300 Series) were both widespread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There were well over 50 USB peripherals on the market prior to the launch of the iMac in 1998&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1998_March_23/ai_20410345/&quot;&gt;hundreds more came onto the market throughout that year&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason that Apple likely had little impact on adoption of USB was their tiny market share at the time. In November 1998, &lt;strong&gt;over &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/IBM,-HP-top-retail-PC-sales/2100-1001_3-217333.html&quot;&gt;84%&lt;/a&gt; of retail sales were PCs&lt;/strong&gt; just from the top 4 brands at the time, with Apple coming in at under 5%. This also doesn't take into account business PC sales, which were at the time even more heavily lopsided in the PCs favour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2016-01-26T23:05:27.690" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T23:05:27.690" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4245" CreationDate="2012-07-13T09:24:46.247" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR: This is a speculative conjecture. The proponent hasn't yet published any experiments to demonstrate the effect.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cite in the question is to an article called &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160319212253/http://www.luisprada.com:80/Protected/the_cats_purr_for_healing.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Cat's Purr for Healing&lt;/a&gt; which excepts from a book by Paula Peterson, who interviewed a researcher called Elizabeth Von Muggenthaler, so that is where we must go to find the evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Von Muggenthaler is the President of &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170927034525/http://animalvoice.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fauna Communications Research Institute&lt;/a&gt;. You can visit the site and get a feel for how august this institution is. They &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160306105857/http://animalvoice.com/howwework.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;offer Reiki&lt;/a&gt; to help with your pet's behaviour problems, and have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20161103184046/http://www.animalvoice.com/about.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spiritual adviser&lt;/a&gt; on staff because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without Spirit, (God) you have no science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this doesn't mean what they claim is wrong, just that you should have your skepticism hat firmly fastened before continuing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core idea is outlined in on their web-site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20161117073516/http://www.animalvoice.com:80/catpur.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Felid Purr: A bio-mechanical healing mechanism&lt;/a&gt;, Proceedings from the 12th International Conference on Low Frequency Noise and Vibration and its Control, Bristol, 2006.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The web-site claims it has been peer-reviewed, but conference proceedings often go through minimal review, I haven't been able to check the level of review at that conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument in the paper is basically as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Felids (cats) purr even when they are not contented, but injured.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There must be some evolutionary advantage. (A fallacy!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cats recover faster from operations, and have certain types of complications less often than dogs, who don't purr. (A poor control!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some other scientists claim that low frequency motion (20-50 Hz) can help in the development and healing of bone. An example is given of chickens stuck standing on a moving plate getting stronger bones. In &lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7842923/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;another study&lt;/a&gt; rabbits with radius fractures were mechanically vibrated and healed faster. (This study tried no vibrations, 12.5Hz, 25Hz, 50Hz, 100Hz and 200Hz. They all apparently worked - the study is in Chinese, so I can't easily check - but 25 and 50Hz were the best.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They decide that the (invented term) &amp;quot;anabolic frequency&amp;quot; is 25Hz-50Hz, or 20-140Hz or 120Hz. (It helps to have a few different targets that can be declared hits.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They measure the purrs of several species of cat, and discover the &amp;quot;dominant and fundamental&amp;quot; frequency is exactly 25Hz... or 50Hz, which they describe as the &amp;quot;best frequencies for bone growth and fracture healing&amp;quot; (which is nonsense; they were only shown to be the best of five tested. No-one knows if 31.34Hz wouldn't be better still.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They find similar coincidences for harmonics and tendon recovery, with the harmonics falling exactly on 120 Hz (except for the ones that didn't), and so on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conjectured that cats must purr to help their own healing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately there is no easy way to test this hypothesis.&#xA;Purring-cat physiology would have to  be compared to non-purring cat physiology to test this theory. The study would have to be entirely non-invasive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. No, it wouldn't. If this had any real chance of being true, the potential impact on human health would be great - I am sure Ethics Committees would approve invasive steps to depurr some cats, if such a process was possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim that &amp;quot;the scientific version of this paper has been submitted for review&amp;quot;. I would have expected this process to have finished after 6 years (or 11 years after it was first presented  at the 2001, 142nd annual Acoustical Society of America, American Institute of Physics, International Conference).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are also appealing for help and money to further the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So where did we get? We have some studies that show vibrations may help some healing, we have a study that show cats purr, we have a ten-year-old wild conjecture that cats purr to help healing, and we have some appeals for money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think in conclusion, we can say that &lt;strong&gt;this claim has not been proven&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-06-10T10:46:44.547" LastActivityDate="2022-06-10T10:46:44.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-13T12:09:39.310" Score="43" ViewCount="7188" Body="&lt;p&gt;Athletics events that take place on a track are always run anti-clockwise (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iaaf.org/mm/Document/Competitions/TechnicalArea/04/63/93/20080802085950_httppostedfile_IAAF_TF_Manual2008_web-1_4481.pdf&quot;&gt;IAAF Track and Field Facilities Manual, section 2.2&lt;/a&gt;). There has been some discussion in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/9401674/Athletes-have-not-always-run-anti-clockwise.html&quot;&gt;letters page in The Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; about the reason for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One writer suggested that the reason is down to uneven leg strength:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Athletes run anti-clockwise so that their right leg – for most people the stronger – runs the greater distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;another writer suggested that it is due to the position of the heart:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When I was a junior athlete I asked the same question of a leading coach and sports doctor. They both told me that it was all to do with the position of the heart, which sits on the left side of the chest. This makes running anti-clockwise more natural and comfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is running anti-clockwise easier than running clockwise, and if so why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="2192" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T13:36:55.850" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T19:00:12.217" Title="Is running anti-clockwise easier than running clockwise?" Tags="|physiology|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10131" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-14T01:19:56.370" Score="9" ViewCount="1151" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a common claim that, by looking into the face or eyes of a person, you can see that they have seen combat, or other traumatic events. It is particularly mentioned in movies, songs and poems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Movie: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0962711/&quot;&gt;The Objective&lt;/a&gt; - an old man tells a soldier he can see the desert in his eyes. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Poetry: &lt;a href=&quot;http://iwvpa.net/hutchersonj/a-soldie-en.php&quot;&gt;A Soldier's Eyes&lt;/a&gt; by Johnny Hutcherson&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Essay: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.darkcanyon.net/The%20Eyes%20Of%20A%20Soldier.htm&quot;&gt;The Eyes Of A Soldier&lt;/a&gt; by William Douglas Roser, I.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies that show if you can indeed see in one's eyes his (traumatic) experiences. If so, is it general trauma, or is it possible you can detect &quot;the desert&quot;, &quot;the combat&quot;, &quot;killing&quot;, etc... in the eyes or face?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7804" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-14T11:23:51.497" LastActivityDate="2016-08-24T12:12:28.070" Title="Can you tell someone has seen combat by looking at their face?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10132" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10143" CreationDate="2012-07-14T06:02:39.323" Score="8" ViewCount="6382" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife is currently suffering from a small ulcer which is refusing to heal and a friend of hers suggested a topical application of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_sulfoxide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DMSO&lt;/a&gt; to improve healing time. Please not that I am explicityl &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; asking for medical advice, I'm just curious what, if anything, the studies surrounding DMSO actually have to say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the face of it, DMSO seems shrouded in scandal, but from what I can tell the scandal is more about its woo-sounding uses as a cancer and rheumatoid arthritis cure, and I'm well aware of the lack of data to support those claims, but there are a host of lesser claims that I'm interested in the research surrounding, specifically its use as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a topical anesthetic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a promoter of rapid skin healing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a treatment for general skin aliments like calluses, eczema, psoriasis, etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a treatment for inflammation, specifically inflammation following an injury such as a sprain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found a number of sources cited in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dmso.org/articles/information/muir.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, but given that it's hosted by &quot;dmso.org&quot; the text itself hardly seems unbiased and I don't have access to the publications referenced to draw my own conclusions directly from the source studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the official scientific opinion of DMSO for the above purposes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6117" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-07-15T01:04:28.020" LastActivityDate="2022-09-16T19:07:42.057" Title="Does Dimethyl Sulfoxide (DMSO) speed the healing of wounds?" Tags="|medical-science|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10134" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-07-14T11:25:28.003" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiognomy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;From Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Credence of such study has varied from time to time. The practice was well-accepted by the ancient Greek philosophers, but fell into disrepute in the Middle Ages when practised by vagabonds and mountebanks. It was then revived and popularised by Johann Kaspar Lavater before falling from favour again in the late 19th century. Physiognomy as understood in the past meets the contemporary definition of a pseudoscience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the term physiognomy is no longer used, the concept is being revived to some extent. There is no clear evidence that physiognomy works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Physiognomy is also sometimes referred to as anthroposcopy, though the expression was more common in the 19th century when the word originated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-14T11:25:28.003" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T11:25:28.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10135" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-07-14T11:25:28.003" Score="0" Body="Physiognomy (from the Gk. physis meaning 'nature' and gnomon meaning 'judge' or 'interpreter') is the assessment of a person's character or personality from his outer appearance, especially the face. The term physiognomy can also refer to the general appearance of a person, object or terrain, without reference to its implied characteristics." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-14T11:25:28.003" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T11:25:28.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2793" CreationDate="2012-07-14T13:08:06.180" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The source is actually a humourous story in the Strand Magazine, May, 1942. See here (The Quote Investigator):&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/04/churchill-preposition/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/04/churchill-preposition/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Churchill never said it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7845" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T13:08:06.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8248" CreationDate="2012-07-14T18:11:40.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Epidemiological evidence suggests there is a slight benefit from the usual inorganic minerals&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common inorganic minerals in drinking water are salts of calcium and magnesium (which are what cause &quot;hard&quot; water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A full answer is given here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2884/is-water-calcification-bad-for-your-health&quot;&gt;Is water calcification bad for your health?&lt;/a&gt; . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key conclusion (based on statistical comparisons of death rates from specific cause that attempted to remove other confounders) is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After adjustment for other factors &lt;strong&gt;cardiovascular mortality in areas with very soft water&lt;/strong&gt;, around 0 25 mmol/l (calcium carbonate equivalent 25 mg/l), &lt;strong&gt;was estimated to be 10-15% higher than that in areas with medium-hard water&lt;/strong&gt;, around 1-7 mmol/l (170 mg/l), while any further increase in hardness beyond 1-7 mmol/l did not additionally lower cardiovascular mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there appears to be a small effect that suggest lower inorganic mineral content is &lt;em&gt;worse&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, some mineral waters can and do contain nasties such as lead or radioactive radon, but the source of the claim isn't talking about those and doesn't show any understanding of chemistry, nutrition or epidemiology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-07-14T19:18:50.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10132" CreationDate="2012-07-14T19:04:34.697" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would avoid it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, DMSO causes everything that's sitting on your skin to get absorbed into your bloodstream (the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_sulfoxide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia article about it&lt;/a&gt; is fairly thorough), to the point that it's actually a drug delivery system.  Putting it onto your skin means that other things on your skin will get in as well.  The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;skin acts as the first line of defense against the outside world&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/05/us/hospital-fumes-that-hurt-6-are-tied-to-nerve-gas.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the NY Times, in 1994&lt;/a&gt;, a woman who treated herself topically for pain with DMSO had the chemical metabolize into a nerve gas in her bloodstream:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report theorized that DMSO, through the right combination of temperature, oxygen and blood chemicals, changed into dimethyl sulfone in Mrs. Ramirez's body and changed into a third chemical, dimethyl sulfate, in the syringe with her blood sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The final, volatile product is extremely poisonous,&amp;quot; the report said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been some reported healing improvement on gastric ulcers in rats, viz. &lt;a href=&quot;https://europepmc.org/article/MED/8774996&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Naito et al in 1995&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DMSO and allopurinol significantly increased the collagen fiber proliferation index and the PAS-positive mucous score compared with controls. These results indicate that scavenging hydroxyl radicals or inhibiting xanthine oxidase enhances the quality but not the speed of gastric ulcer healing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find recent studies showing that DMSO was a useful healing agent, although it does appear to be used as a control in other wound healing studies, including those for PADMA 28 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s00403-010-1066-z&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aslam et al, 2010&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15542444/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Barak et al, 2004&lt;/a&gt;);  and for &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07687&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Caspase 8&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while it might do some good, it might also do some real harm.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/analysis-of-a-toxic-death&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another account in Discover&lt;/a&gt; stated that a doctor who supports the use of DMSO as a healing remedy, Stanley Jacob:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;doubts that significant quantities of the suspect chemicals could have been produced from dmso. In fact, Jacob says, the Livermore scientists should never have allowed the Riverside coroner to release their report. It’s like that silliness with cold fusion, except this has the potential to hurt people, he says. His office has received dozens of calls from worried women being treated with dmso for interstitial cystitis. I just tell them the dimethyl sulfate theory is a chemical impossibility, says Jacob.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This same Dr. Jacob appears all over the &lt;a href=&quot;https://dmso.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dmso.org&lt;/a&gt; website, so he may or may not have a commercial interest in thinking that the chemical analysis in the Discover article is bogus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any event, as I said, I would avoid it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2158" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-16T19:07:42.057" LastActivityDate="2022-09-16T19:07:42.057" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10112" CreationDate="2012-07-15T17:50:43.703" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Simple calculations suggest this story is nonsense.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not an expert in radiative physics but I can see from simple calculations that the story has strayed beyond the bounds of plausibility. The first, very simple, calculation is to look at the total power used if 200 mobile phones (a very full train carriage) were being used at the same time. I'm going to summarise from a couple of sources (the UK's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAweb&amp;amp;HPAwebStandard/HPAweb_C/1195733844923&quot;&gt;Health Protection Agency&lt;/a&gt; has a good summary of the key issues and others are covered on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antenna-theory.com/tutorial/cancer/cellphone.php&quot;&gt;www.antenna-theory.com&lt;/a&gt;). Point number 1 is that the worst case power transmission from a GSM phone is about 2W. So even here we can see that the &lt;em&gt;total power emitted&lt;/em&gt; by 200 mobile phones is less than half that of a typical microwave (on the order of 1kW). Moreover, as @vartec points out in the comments, the train carriage has more than 10,000 times the volume of a microwave oven, so the specific effects on the contests will be a lot lower &lt;em&gt;even if we assume all the energy is reflected back into the carriage&lt;/em&gt; (which is ridiculous not least because, if it were true, you wouldn't be able to &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; your phone in the carriage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second, more sophisticated, argument involves recognising that the &lt;em&gt;peak&lt;/em&gt; power isn't the average power output. As the HPA site explains: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;GSM mobile phones transmit their radio signals as 217 bursts of information every second. There is one burst every 4.6 ms (thousandth of a second) and each burst is 577 µs (millionths of a second) in duration. This means that, on average, they transmit for 1/8 of the time and their average output power is 8 times less than their peak output power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exposure guidelines, such as those published by ICNIRP, require exposures to be averaged over 6 minutes for comparison with their basic restrictions and it is more relevant to consider the average output power than the peak output power from phones. In this respect, GSM phones transmitting at 900 MHz and 1800 MHz have &lt;strong&gt;maximum time-averaged output powers of 0.25 W and 0.125 W respectively.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor is also relevant here. GSM phones don't usually transmit at close to full power. Again the HPA summarise the reality well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A key feature of mobile phone technology is that a mobile phone does not operate with a fixed output power level when a call is made. The maximum power output from a GSM mobile phone is around 2 W peak, but this can reduce in a sequence of 15 steps down to around 2 mW during calls, a power reduction factor of 1000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the typical power output is likely (crudely) 1,000 times lower than the reported peak (factor of 10 for time averaging factor of 100 for not always using maximum power) even ignoring the volume issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then we have to consider where the power is absorbed. The antenna-theory site summarises part of the issue like this (not using quite the numbers or adjustments above):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The antenna is radiating, but less than half the power will be directed at your head - most radiates in all directions away. In addition, the antenna efficiency will be 50% for a good antenna that is held directly up against a head (the head actually detunes the antenna and makes it less efficient). Hence, of the 0.5 W of output power the phone transmits, there is a loss of at least 50% for the antenna efficiency, and at least 50% for the radiation that is not directed to your head. Hence, we can safely take 0.125 W (=0.5*0.5*0.5) as an upper bound for the power absorbed by your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This argument needs to be extended a little to cope with the 200-users-on-a-train scenario. But the key point it that the relevant thing for the amount of energy you will absorb is related to the distance from the transmitter and the cross sectional area of whatever is absorbing the radiation. If you are not holding the phone to your head, the possible absorption is much, much lower than the loss factor of 80% you get when you are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, again very crudely, if we start with a peak power output of 400W (200*2W) we should realistically factor in reductions of 10,000 (volume), 1,000 (average power) and perhaps 5 (cross section for absorption) to give a reduction of 50 million on the 400W initial estimate (which is half the typical Microwave's output). Or about 4 millionths of a typical microwave's intensity per unit volume. And the biggest contributor will be the phone held next to your head which isn't going to dump much more than 0.1W into you. If you are on a train outdoors where sunlight is shining through the window it might be worth putting this in context as antenna-theory does:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this a lot? Well, it is tough to say without comparison to something else. Let's take our good friend, sunlight on the Earth's surface. The power density of sunlight is roughly 1.35 kW/m^2 (killiWatts [sic] per square meter). Now, the bigger your head is, the more energy your head absorbs from the sunlight. Let's say you have a standard adult head, which we'll approximate with a circular cross section of radius 4&quot;. Your head would then be roughly 0.0324 square meters in cross section. As a result, the power absorbed by your head will be roughly 1.35*0.0324 = 0.0438 kW = 43.8 W.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also want to consider the fact that that the 40-odd watts of sunlight contains ionising UV which is a &lt;strong&gt;known&lt;/strong&gt; carcinogen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="6993" LastEditDate="2012-07-15T23:49:07.500" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T23:49:07.500" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10150" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10153" CreationDate="2012-07-15T19:23:11.153" Score="52" ViewCount="112232" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard claims from several people in relation to the occasional donation my wife or I make: that some charities have so much waste in their organization, or use so much money to market their charity work in order to get donations, that only &lt;em&gt;x%&lt;/em&gt; of the donated money goes to the advertised cause, where &lt;em&gt;x%&lt;/em&gt; varies from 10% to 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought I might get some good results by Googling, but wasn't too successful: I seem to encounter specific numbers only in un-cited sources, like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.aprilwine.ca/blog/best-and-worst-charities/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; which is where I got the UNICEF/14% claim from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only pennies from the actual donations go to the UNICEF cause (less than $0.14 per dollar of income)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the one hand, a charity might need to pay their employees at least &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;, but on the other hand requiring lots of employees to do the same work as another charity can do with a third of the cost is certainly a waste of the donated money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been proper studies of how much of the money donated to UNICEF in particular (since it is claimed to be the worst offender) is used wastefully, in the sense that the same charity work could actually be done without spending that money?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastEditorUserId="38403" LastEditDate="2020-03-22T03:23:30.463" LastActivityDate="2020-03-22T03:23:30.463" Title="Does UNICEF use less than 14% of the donated money for the advertised causes?" Tags="|economics|finance|charities|united-nations|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10150" CreationDate="2012-07-15T20:23:03.317" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No this allegation is not true.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Charities are subject to strict auditing requirements, and UNICEF is no different. i'm going to point you at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.charityintelligence.ca/charity-details/16-unicef-canada&quot;&gt;the report of Canadian UNICEF&lt;/a&gt; because I'm more familiar with it it. It says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4% of your donation goes on administration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;20% of your donation is used for fundraising&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means 76% goes to the actual programs. That's a pretty good ratio. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Red cross is not quite as good: 16% administrative and 30% fundraising leaves 55% spent on programs. For World Vision (which your example singles out for special criticism) it is 5% and 14%, leaving 81% for programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2012-07-15T20:23:03.317" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10150" CreationDate="2012-07-15T20:42:02.080" Score="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is not the case.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All charities in the United Kingdom (&lt;em&gt;excluding Scotland&lt;/em&gt;) are under the remit of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Charity Commission&lt;/a&gt;.  As part of a charities registration, they are required to submit annual financial returns to the regulator, which in the case of large charities such as Unicef UK (&quot;The United Kingdom Committee for Unicef&quot;, Charity Number 1072612) are made public for transparency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2010&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having looked up the records for Unicef, in summary for the year 2010 (there is some delay) Unicef received £81,312,000 and spent £81,246,000.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the £81.25M that they spent, £63.17M was classified as charitable spending.  &lt;strong&gt;This equates to 78% of spending reaching charitable causes&lt;/strong&gt;.  Of the remainder, only 22% was spent on further fundraising and governance whilst &amp;lt;1% was retained for future use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2012-13&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2012&lt;/strong&gt;: To illustrate that this trend is continuing, the spending percentages for &lt;strong&gt;2012&lt;/strong&gt; recorded &lt;strong&gt;67.4% on charitable spending&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XAVHz.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Screenshot of funding for 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2013&lt;/strong&gt;: In 2013 &lt;strong&gt;70%&lt;/strong&gt; of  spending was &lt;strong&gt;charitable spending&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qHwi6.png&quot; alt=&quot;2013 Financial Spending&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/RegisterOfCharities/CharityWithPartB.aspx?RegisteredCharityNumber=1072612&amp;amp;SubsidiaryNumber=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source of data for current financial year (with links to previous years accounts)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What counts as charitable spending?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of this charitable spending that the Charity Commission provide (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/Showcharity/ShowCharity_Help_Page.aspx?ContentType=Chart_Help_Spending&amp;amp;SelectedLanguage=English&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this help page&lt;/a&gt;) indicates that this figure &lt;em&gt;only includes&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Costs incurred by the charity in supplying goods or services to meet the needs of its beneficiaries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Grants made to meet the needs of the charity’s beneficiaries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore costs to simply raise awareness would be counted as &quot;Generating voluntary income&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Costs incurred in encouraging other parties to make grants, gifts or legacies to the charity (e.g. mailshots, collection costs, assembling funding applications).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meaning that the figure quoted above seem accurate - &lt;strong&gt;the percentages of spending given in this answer is directly helping people&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you mentioned employees, it is worth mentioning that Unicef UK has 216 paid employees, the remainder being volunteers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6588" LastEditorUserId="6588" LastEditDate="2015-07-12T12:50:51.590" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T12:50:51.590" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10154" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21953" CreationDate="2012-07-16T00:47:29.783" Score="8" ViewCount="1707" Body="&lt;p&gt;What the title says- is it as it is often portrayed in cartoons? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EdPSI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7855" LastActivityDate="2018-09-24T05:53:49.307" Title="Can an electric chair shock raise your hair?" Tags="|electromagnetism|hair|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10155" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10157" CreationDate="2012-07-16T02:06:09.920" Score="13" ViewCount="3595" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2007/01/25/comic-book-urban-legends-revealed-87/&quot;&gt;Good Comics&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1963, the Disney Studio learned just how wide and faithful a&#xA;  readership Barks had. A letter arrived from Joseph B. Lambert of the&#xA;  California Institute of Technology, pointing out a curious reference&#xA;  in “The Spin States of Carbenes,” a technical article soon to be&#xA;  published by P.P. Gaspar and G.S. Hammond (in Carbene Chemistry,&#xA;  edited by Wolfgang Kirmse, New York: Academic Press, 1964). “Despite&#xA;  the recent extensive interest in methylene chemistry,” read the&#xA;  article’s last paragraph, “much additional study is required…. Among&#xA;  experiments which have not, to our knowledge, been carried out as yet&#xA;  is one of a most intriguing nature suggested in the literature of no&#xA;  less than 19 years ago (91).” Footnote 91, in turn, directed readers&#xA;  to issue 44 of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. It seems Donald’s&#xA;  reference to CH2 in panel 2.1 was years ahead of its time: the&#xA;  existence of this elusive chemical intermediate had not been proven in&#xA;  1944.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they also believe that a Donald Duck comic caused a patent for raising a ship from the bottom of the ocean to be rejected, which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.starch.dk/isi/kroyer/schrooge.asp&quot;&gt;actually a myth&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2012-07-16T10:11:06.700" Title="Did Donald Duck accidentally use methylene in a comic before it was discovered?" Tags="|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10155" CreationDate="2012-07-16T10:11:06.700" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I couldn't find an online version of the original paper,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;The Spin States of Carbenes. (No. 3036)&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;, P.P. Gaspar and G.S. Hammond, Chapter 12 in &amp;quot;Carbene Chemistry&amp;quot;, Vol. 1. W. Kirmse, Editor, Academic Press, New York, pp 235-274 (1964)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.pdx.edu/%7Ewamserc/Hammond/pubs.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;it does exist&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;But there is a reference to it in the textbook &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/cen/education/83/8341education1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Organic Chemistry&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;by Morrison and Boyd:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/I7p36.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Morrison &amp;amp; Boyd&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/cen/education/83/8341education1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DyY6v.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Donald Duck&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chemistress-sarah.blogspot.co.at/2009/12/comic-quackery.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rHI9e.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://llrc.mcast.edu.mt/digitalversion/Table_of_Contents_123857.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uky.edu/Projects/Chemcomics/html/dd_15_2_n.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Periodic Table of Comic Books - Donald Duck&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-16T10:11:06.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10159" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-16T14:00:49.810" Score="5" ViewCount="1837" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A&quot;&gt;MAO-A gene&lt;/a&gt;, also known as the &quot;Warrior gene&quot;, is thought to cause increased antisocial and violent behavior patterns in people who have experienced an abusive childhood. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&amp;amp;artid=1872046&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[ref]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Caspi et. al. found &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1072290&quot;&gt;similar results&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also remember an episode of BBC Horizon (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Horizon_episodes#Series_48%3a_2011-2012&quot;&gt;48x05&lt;/a&gt;) that studied psychopathy, which touched on the MAO-A gene and its links to anti-social behaviour, psychopathy and murder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In popular media (e.g. the character Dr Raymond Langston in &lt;em&gt;CSI: Crime Scene Investigation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Langston#Trouble_with_Nate_Haskell&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[ref]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;) people with a mutation in this gene have been depicted as short-tempered and innately violent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results seem pretty solid around violent behaviour - a combination of a poor childhood, especially an abusive one, and an abnormal MAO-A gene can lead to violent behaviour and psychopathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently saw someone present a quote on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An abnormal MAO-A gene has been shown to be prevalent in serial-killers, mass murderers, paedophiles, sexual sadists and pathological sex offenders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, I can't find the source of the quote, nor has the person who posted it got back to me with a source. I can't find any studies or information that study the correlation between an abnormal MAO-A gene and any of those groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone provide links to studies that prove, disprove or even just study such a correlation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5495" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T17:55:38.703" Title="Correlation between MAO-A gene and murderers / sex offenders" Tags="|medical-science|behavior|genetics|criminology|violence|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10160" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10171" CreationDate="2012-07-16T14:22:46.693" Score="21" ViewCount="3762" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been suggested many times that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_possible_monorchism&quot;&gt;Adolf Hitler suffered from monorchism&lt;/a&gt; - i.e. he had only one testicle. Amusingly, people always seem to remember that it was (supposedly) his left testicle that was missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article is pretty verbose and has numerous issues, and I couldn't spot anything definitive on Snopes, so I'm not quite sure where this one stands. Some suggest that it was a rumour started to boost British morale, others suggest that autopsy notes proved it to be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone provide a definitive, or at least comprehensive, answer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Foot-note: I really am surprised that nobody has asked this on here yet!&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5495" LastActivityDate="2018-10-04T05:18:57.097" Title="Did Hitler only have one testicle?" Tags="|adolf-hitler|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10159" CreationDate="2012-07-16T14:47:03.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the wikipedia page you reference is a section called 'Aggression and the &quot;Warrior Gene&quot;'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This section describes the phenotype you're talking about, and cites this paper (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1126%2Fscience.8211186&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brunner &lt;em&gt;et al&lt;/em&gt;. 1993&lt;/a&gt;) that finds loss-of-function point mutations in &lt;em&gt;MAO-A&lt;/em&gt;, in a family with 'abnormal' behaviour (defined as &quot;&lt;em&gt;impulsive aggression, arson, attempted rape, and exhibition&lt;/em&gt;&quot;);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Isolated complete MAOA deficiency in this family is associated with a recognizable behavioral phenotype that includes disturbed regulation of impulsive aggression&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper has been cited 618 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com/results/results.url?cc=10&amp;amp;sort=plf-f&amp;amp;cite=2-s2.0-0027442475&amp;amp;src=s&amp;amp;nlo=&amp;amp;nlr=&amp;amp;nls=&amp;amp;imp=t&amp;amp;sid=yyQGXllwM_egzHMpKspa7Ww%3a50&amp;amp;sot=cite&amp;amp;sdt=a&amp;amp;sl=0&amp;amp;ss=plf-f&amp;amp;ws=r-f&amp;amp;ps=r-f&amp;amp;cs=r-f&amp;amp;origin=resultslist&amp;amp;zone=resultslist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scopus&lt;/a&gt;) times, and one of the more recent reviews is titled &quot;Genetic determinants of aggression and impulsivity in humans&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13353-011-0069-6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pavlov &lt;em&gt;et al&lt;/em&gt;. 2012&lt;/a&gt;), and the following is quoted from the abstract;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Genetic predisposition to aggression appears to be deeply affected by the polymorphic genetic variants of the serotoninergic system that influences serotonin levels in the central and peripheral nervous system, biological effects of this hormone, and rate of serotonin production, synaptic release and degradation. Among these variants, functional polymorphisms in the monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) and serotonin transporter (5-HTT) may be of particular importance due to the relationship between these polymorphic variants and anatomical changes in the limbic system of aggressive people. Furthermore, functional variants of MAOA and 5-HTT are capable of mediating the influence of environmental factors on aggression-related traits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6972" LastActivityDate="2012-07-16T14:47:03.717" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10164" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-16T23:09:22.800" Score="24" ViewCount="18108" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GKEkt.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.safetysign.com/Facility+ID+Signs/Wash+Your+Hands+Signs/D5834/19207.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is hand-washing after urination and defecation merely a product of social norms, or is there a health-related reason that we wash our hands after going to the bathroom?  Or is there some other reason altogether?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6847" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-07-19T11:25:08.693" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T22:24:07.073" Title="Do I need to wash my hands after using the bathroom?" Tags="|medical-science|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10164" CreationDate="2012-07-17T02:18:08.073" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without washing your hands after going to the toilet, you are running the risk of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000296.htm&quot;&gt;E. coli enteritis&lt;/a&gt;. E-Coli can lead to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodsafety.gov/poisoning/causes/bacteriaviruses/ecoli/index.html&quot;&gt;severe illness&lt;/a&gt; or even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/02/e-coli-outbreak-uk-cases&quot;&gt;death&lt;/a&gt;. Keep in mind, every time you flush the toilet that a plume of water droplets can spread by up to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=7106.0&quot;&gt;couple of metres&lt;/a&gt;, coating tooth brushes and such in contaminant. This is also backed up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2081680/How-leaving-toilet-lid-flushing-aid-spread-winter-vomiting-bug.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to OddThinking:&#xA;If you were to only touch yourself I would reason that the risk remains. As noted above, everything within a few metres of the loo is likely to be swimming in bacteria, especially if the lid was not closed when it was last flushed. So just entering the bathroom is problematic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, people fart about a &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceray.com/biology/10-things-you-didnt-need-to-know-about-farts/&quot;&gt;litre of gas&lt;/a&gt; a day. Since farts &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flatulence&quot;&gt;contain bacteria&lt;/a&gt;, you can pretty much assume your clothes and body are also contaminated. This was posted on Dr Karl's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/homework/s312551.htm&quot;&gt;site&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/917/&quot;&gt;Naked Scientist&lt;/a&gt; tested the effect of clothing on bacterial content of farts and found the clothes (jeans + undies) seem to absorb the bacteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking this further: can you make yourself sick with your own facel material? Given that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diet.com/g/food-poisoning&quot;&gt;20% of food poisoning&lt;/a&gt; occurs at home, I would think so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2417" LastEditorUserId="2417" LastEditDate="2012-07-18T02:08:16.840" LastActivityDate="2012-07-18T02:08:16.840" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10177" CreationDate="2012-07-17T04:00:00.543" Score="14" ViewCount="3404" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm prompted to ask this question by a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=443357255698761&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Facebook post by &amp;quot;US Uncut&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[Image lost to link rot.]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mexican media has blacking out the protests against their new government, who have been accused of doing everything from buying votes to buying off the media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the corporate media won't spread this story, then let's spread the story. Share this all over your pages and your friend's pages and help support the democracy movement in Mexico.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has a number of similarities to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6498/is-this-photo-of-occupy-wall-street-authentic&quot;&gt;fake image of Occupy Wall Street protests&lt;/a&gt; - improbably dense crowd, dodgy quality, and an indictment of the &amp;quot;corporate media&amp;quot; suppressing the truth. Also making me suspicious is how the same photo has popped up on a number of other websites, all without attribution, all with the same general message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5326" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:12:19.513" Title="Does this photo show large crowds of protestors in Mexico?" Tags="|politics|mexico|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10167" CreationDate="2012-07-17T04:37:19.483" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Answer: No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Facebook comments have a link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://anarcho-queer.tumblr.com/post/27082215694&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anarcho-Queer&lt;/a&gt; that demonstrates this picture is photoshopped, using crowds in Montreal as the base photo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kvLo9.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the &lt;a href=&quot;http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/2012/07/10/mexicans-loudly-protest-election-results-mass-media-quiet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mexicans really are  protesting&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7872" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-07-17T04:50:46.443" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T04:50:46.443" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10169" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10205" CreationDate="2012-07-17T05:07:02.377" Score="36" ViewCount="7645" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever peeling a fruit or vegetable, someone will usually comment (sarcastically), &quot;that's where all the good stuff is&quot;, meaning vitamins, minerals, or whatever.  Do the skins or peels of common plants in Western foods (apples, potatoes, carrots, pears) really contain the majority of the nutrients?  They would seem to contain a bit of fiber, but what about lighter compounds?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-21T19:33:23.607" LastActivityDate="2016-10-27T02:36:48.480" Title="Are most of the nutrients of vegetables and fruits contained in the peel?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10160" CreationDate="2012-07-17T07:39:33.550" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like Skeptics.SE, The Straight Dope column by Cecil Adams looks at urban myths and investigates the evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back in 1987, The Straight Dope looked at this question: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/881/did-hitler-have-only-one-testicle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Did Hitler have only one testicle?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion reached was less than definitive: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The idea was recorded in insulting ditties sung during World War II.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A British historian determined that he and Eva Braun shot themselves and were cremated without autopsy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Russians initially maintained he escaped.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In 1950, the Russians claimed they had taken poison and then buried. Later still, they claimed that his remains had been exhumed, and an autopsy performed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A book published in 1968 with purported autopsy results claimed that he was missing a left testicle, even though none of his medical records or doctor's reports mention it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The autopsy was later pronounced genuine by an American dental expert in 1972.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All up, the evidence found by Cecil Adams seems rather dubious. He is a talented researcher. This suggests (but doesn't prove) that there isn't (or at least wasn't) any quality evidence in either direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-10-04T05:18:57.097" LastActivityDate="2018-10-04T05:18:57.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-17T14:26:24.337" Score="11" ViewCount="9536" Body="&lt;p&gt;What does it cost for The United States Congress to be in session for a single day? I recently heard a quote of $30 million, but did not see any supporting facts to back it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would the total be taking into account their collective salaries, their staff, admin support, facilities, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is made a facebook wall photo on the Democratic Party profile &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yi24y.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150948557451943&amp;amp;set=a.413933741942.188832.12301006942&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Facebook link to the picture&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7877" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-05-17T16:45:14.947" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T18:21:45.627" Title="Does US Congress cost $30m per day to run?" Tags="|united-states|economics|government|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10159" CreationDate="2012-07-17T17:55:38.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a press hype, pushed up by wrong interpretation of a paper. I have personally researched this incident and put the result in the German Wikipedia. As a good summary and last word on the matter see &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hook, GR: “Warrior genes” and the disease of being Māori MAI Review 2009, 2&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.review.mai.ac.nz/index.php/MR/article/viewArticle/222&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.review.mai.ac.nz/index.php/MR/article/viewArticle/222&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the (german) summary see &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoaminooxidase#MAOA-Varianten_und_menschliches_Verhalten&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoaminooxidase#MAOA-Varianten_und_menschliches_Verhalten&lt;/a&gt; and refs therein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7450" LastActivityDate="2012-07-17T17:55:38.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10175" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-17T20:29:10.563" Score="5" ViewCount="660" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a meme going around Facebook. From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/HumaneWatch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HumaneWatch's Facebook page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RL66s.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;85% of HSUS&amp;#39; TV fund-raising features shelter pets ... 99% of their budget doesn&amp;#39;t&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the Humane Society of the United States only budget 1% for actually helping animals as claimed here?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-07-18T03:36:04.940" LastActivityDate="2012-07-18T03:47:38.983" Title="Does the Humane Society of the United States provide only 1% of their budget to pet shelters?" Tags="|zoology|charities|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10167" CreationDate="2012-07-17T22:58:37.623" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Answer: Yes, it is real&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I live in Mexico City, and those protests were real, the picture from the Facebook post by &quot;US Uncut&quot; looks real, but recently we have had many demonstrations like that, I think the date of that specific picture is June 27th, here are other pictures of the same day: &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MgVpn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Picture 1&quot;&gt;&#xA;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://lopezobradordvds.blogspot.mx/2012/06/amlo-cierre-de-campana-zocalo-de-la.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://lopezobradordvds.blogspot.mx/2012/06/amlo-cierre-de-campana-zocalo-de-la.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/v9wnm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Picture 2&quot;&gt;&#xA;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://lopezobrador.org.mx/2012/06/27/fotos-amlo-cierre-de-campana-en-el-zocalo-de-la-ciudad-de-mexico/mitin-amlo-zocalo-27-jun-12-9/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://lopezobrador.org.mx/2012/06/27/fotos-amlo-cierre-de-campana-en-el-zocalo-de-la-ciudad-de-mexico/mitin-amlo-zocalo-27-jun-12-9/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OmSqU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Picture 3&quot;&gt;&#xA;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://aristeguinoticias.com/zocalo-del-df-a-la-espera-de-amlo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://aristeguinoticias.com/zocalo-del-df-a-la-espera-de-amlo/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the key words I used for the search:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/imghp?tab=wi&amp;amp;q=Junio%2027%20amlo%20zocalo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Junio+27+amlo+zocalo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SXtT6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This picture from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://anarcho-queer.tumblr.com/post/27082215694&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anarcho Queer blog&lt;/a&gt; from @Daniel Carlsson answer is a different one from the original question, @Daniel Carlsson's picture indeed looks fake. Look at my first picture and you will see that it's almost the same point of view from the original picture. It is a mistake saying that a 2nd fake picture makes the 1st one fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And about corporate media suppressing the truth, yes that is also true, the biggest media company in the Spanish speaking world received payments to give biased coverage to the elections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/07/mexico-presidency-tv-dirty-tricks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Computer files link TV dirty tricks to favourite for Mexico presidency&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/08/mexico-televisa-files-genuine-qanda&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mexico's Televisa files: how do we know they are genuine?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/12/televisa-mexicans-tv-bias-pena-nieto&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Televisa should apologise to Mexicans for its Peña Nieto election bias&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6053" LastEditorUserId="6053" LastEditDate="2012-07-18T16:55:25.647" LastActivityDate="2012-07-18T16:55:25.647" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10180" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-18T03:34:12.287" Score="9" ViewCount="527" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading the Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding_depression#In_humans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Inbreeding depression&lt;/a&gt; when I came across this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Charles Darwin, through numerous experiments, was one of the first&#xA;  scientists to demonstrate the effects of inbreeding depression. Darwin&#xA;  had married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood. He later became concerned&#xA;  that inbreeding within his own family would adversely affect the&#xA;  health of his own children. The Darwins had ten children, but three&#xA;  died before the age of ten. Of the surviving children, three of the&#xA;  six who had long-term marriages did not have any children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote makes reference to the paper below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Was the Darwin/Wedgwood Dynasty Adversely Affected by Consanguinity?&quot; Berra et al., Tim M.; Alvarez, Gonzalo; Ceballos, Francisco C. (2010) which is available in full via &lt;a href=&quot;http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/60/5/376.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence for Darwin's concern is based solely on this quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I have now six Boys!! &amp;amp; two girls; &amp;amp; it is the great drawback to my&#xA;  happiness, that they are not very robust; some of them seem to have&#xA;  inherited my detestable constitution” (Burkhardt and Smith 1991, p.&#xA;  60).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here are my concerns about the quote above and also the multitude of news stories that were generated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does this paper provide proof of an in-breeding depression in Darwin's family?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the paper &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; any other reliable source provide proof that Darwin was concerned about the marriage to his cousin affecting the health of his children or descendants?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any proof to suggest that in-breeding caused Darwin or one of Darwin's descendants to be barren, have frequently ill children or to have children that were unfit so as to die prior to 10 years of age?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="14740" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T06:22:21.487" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T15:23:26.650" Title="Was Charles Darwin's family adversely affected by inbreeding?" Tags="|genetics|charles-darwin|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10175" CreationDate="2012-07-18T03:47:38.983" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://triblive.com/news/2201940-74/humane-animal-consumer-society-center-freedom-group-local-pacelle-states&quot;&gt;this news article&lt;/a&gt; from TribLive. It seems that the Humane Society is not denying the spend, but stating they are more concerned with other things that they see as more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The Center for Consumer Freedom is a fraudulent organization,” Wayne&#xA;  Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States,&#xA;  told the Tribune-Review. “Their job is to undermine public interests,&#xA;  charities and other entities.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pacelle said the mission of the Humane Society of the United States,&#xA;  which has no affiliation with local humane societies, is to bring to&#xA;  light — and bring down — puppy mills, dog and cock fighting rings and&#xA;  baby seal killing operations, among others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While the national group supports some local programming for dogs and&#xA;  cats, its mission is more broad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“They’re essentially saying the only legitimate animal welfare work is&#xA;  local animal welfare work,” Pacelle said. “We’re not trying to hide&#xA;  who we are. We shout from the rooftops that every day we fight for&#xA;  animals everywhere. Animals in all sorts of places, not just in animal&#xA;  shelters.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2012-07-18T03:47:38.983" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="35821" CreationDate="2012-07-18T09:41:51.833" Score="16" ViewCount="2662" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=Is+Minimum+Wage+Racist%3F&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a common claim&lt;/a&gt; that applying minimum wage laws impacts the poorer members of society, and thus impacts poorer minorities, such as blacks, more than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Milton Friedman openly argued that minimum-wage laws are racist in effect if not intent; in the early 1960s, he pointed out that, as a result of higher minimum wages, black teenage unemployment was much higher than it would otherwise be. Denied the opportunity to earn incomes and to acquire valuable skills, those adversely affected by the minimum wage were not allowed to share in the general prosperity that a market economy produces. Empirical evidence reported by economists David Neumark and William Wascher suggests that among the long-run effects of minimum wages are lower degrees of educational attainment, less on-the-job training, and lower lifetime earnings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mises.org/daily/3261&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This view wasn't held by, for example, Martin Luther King:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two years earlier on March 18, 1966, King had called for Congress to boost the minimum wage. &quot;We know of no more crucial civil rights issue facing Congress today than the need to increase the federal minimum wage and extend its coverage,&quot; he said. &quot;A living wage should be the right of all working Americans.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seattlepi.com/local/opinion/article/Martin-Luther-King-Jr-valued-workers-1192698.php#ixzz210Z7CtCB&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the minimum wage disproportionately harm black unemployment rates while increasing the salary of white people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="24963" LastEditDate="2017-01-18T19:21:48.520" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T19:21:48.520" Title="Do minimum wage laws disproportionately harm black employment?" Tags="|politics|economics|racism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10183" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10196" CreationDate="2012-07-18T09:54:09.947" Score="20" ViewCount="1457" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://skype-open-source.blogspot.ch/2012/05/microsoft-wiretapping-on-skype-now.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skype-Open-Source Blog&lt;/a&gt; speculates that Microsoft have changed the architecture of Skype  in order to facilitate wiretapping:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two months ago, Skype replaces user-hosted P2P supernodes with Linux grsec boxes hosted by Microsoft, but for what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer is: WIRETAPPING&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can Microsoft intercept the content of Skype calls?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T09:41:24.630" Title="Can Skype wiretap your calls?" Tags="|software|surveillance|microsoft|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10183" CreationDate="2012-07-18T12:54:07.357" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's clear that from a legal point of view, the are obliged to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA)&lt;/a&gt; wiretapping law was passed in 1994. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;requiring that telecommunications carriers and manufacturers of&#xA;  telecommunications equipment modify and design their equipment,&#xA;  facilities, and services to ensure that they have built-in&#xA;  surveillance capabilities, allowing federal agencies to monitor all&#xA;  telephone, broadband internet, and VoIP traffic in real-time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/Feds-back-wiretap-rules-for-Internet/2100-7352_3-5296417.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;In 2004 FCC ruled&lt;/a&gt;, that CALEA applies to &quot;Internet phone services&quot;, which they defined as &quot;providers of interconnected (with the public switched telephone network) Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) services&quot;. Skype is such a service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ruling was &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/Appeals-court-upholds-Net-wiretapping-rules/2100-1028_3-6082085.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;upheld by U.S. Court of Appeals&lt;/a&gt; in 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Skype-with-care-Microsoft-is-reading-everything-you-write-1862870.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;it has been confirmed&lt;/a&gt; that they are screening text messages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Skype may use automated scanning within Instant Messages and SMS to&#xA;  (a) identify suspected spam and/or (b) identify URLs that have been&#xA;  previously flagged as spam, fraud, or phishing links.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A spokesman for&#xA;  the company confirmed that it scans messages to filter out spam and&#xA;  phishing websites. This explanation does not appear to fit the facts,&#xA;  however. Spam and phishing sites are not usually found on HTTPS pages.&#xA;  By contrast, Skype leaves the more commonly affected HTTP URLs,&#xA;  containing no information on ownership, untouched. Skype also sends&#xA;  head requests which merely fetches administrative information relating&#xA;  to the server. To check a site for spam or phishing, Skype would need&#xA;  to examine its content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;Update 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skype is one of the participants in the PRISM program&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But now it seems as though there isn't the bright line separating&#xA;  Silicon Valley from the telcoms like we thought. The Washington Post&#xA;  and The Guardian crack open the White House surveillance scandal even&#xA;  wider by uncovering a secret program called PRISM—a six-year-old&#xA;  classified intelligence program that &quot;[taps] directly into the central&#xA;  servers of nine leading U.S. Internet companies, extracting audio,&#xA;  video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(quote source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/there-s-an-even-more-secret-surveillance-program-and-it-s-called-prism-20130606&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Journal&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vi9Pj.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More on this in &lt;a href=&quot;http://venturebeat.com/2013/06/06/prism-big-data-mining/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;VentureBeat&lt;/a&gt;, which in turn sources The Washington Post, The Guardian, National Journal and more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-06-07T09:41:24.630" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T09:41:24.630" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5063" CreationDate="2012-07-18T13:19:51.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you'd like to read this, in a way it's a case study of what you're asking about. I think it counts a little more than an anecdote, because it's systematically done, but it's just one issue of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lscp.net/persons/ramus/fr/GDP1/papers/block95.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Block (1995)&lt;/a&gt; describes how the publication of &quot;The Bell Curve&quot; by Herrnstein and Murray in 1994 shifted debate, so suddenly they were discussing &quot;the degree of blacks' genetic inferiority&quot; when it comes to IQ, when before it wouldn't have been okay to assert any genetic inferiority at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What you consider as possible  affects what you think &#xA;  is an extremist position. The  critics  of Herrnstein and Murray have tended to &#xA;  trip  over  this  possibility. &#xA;  For example, in a New  York  Times  op.  ed.  critique that describes The Bell &#xA;  Curve  as  &quot;bogus&quot;  and  &quot;nothing but  a  racial  epithet&quot;  (Herbert,  1994),  Bob &#xA;  Herbert  insists  that  &quot;the  overwhelming consensus  of  experts  in  the  field  is &#xA;  that  environmental  conditions  account  for  most  of  the  disparity  when  the &#xA;  test  results  of  large  groups  are  compared&quot;.  In  effect,  he  uses  known &#xA;  environmental effects on IQ to argue for a low degree of genetic inferiority  in &#xA;  blacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Again, we can see that what you take as  possible  affects  what  you  take  as  actual.  As  with  the  passage  from Herrnstein  and  Murray  that  I  quoted  earlier,  agnosticism  ends  up  as agnosticism about  just  how  genetically inferior blacks  are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastActivityDate="2012-07-18T13:19:51.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6961" CreationDate="2012-07-19T12:34:24.210" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;They can detect &lt;em&gt;magnetic fields&lt;/em&gt;, or are at least designed to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/GeomagneticField.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Android API for predicting Geomagnetic field strength&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/devices/a-compass-in-every-smartphone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE Spectrum article&lt;/a&gt; on the detection on the use of the Hall Effect to detect magnetic fields.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=imoblife.androidsensorbox&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an app that does detect and display magnetic fields&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your phone doesn't have the hardware for it, you shouldn't be able to see it on the App Store (assuming it was programmed properly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A little off topic, but they can detect humidity, pressure, temperature too, which I didn't know before this :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7871" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T09:55:47.180" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T09:55:47.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10183" CreationDate="2012-07-19T13:00:33.897" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-supernodes-with-linux-boxes-hosted-by-microsoft/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ars Technica&lt;/a&gt; reported on the change in infrastructure on May 1st 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Microsoft has drastically overhauled the network running its Skype&#xA;  voice-over-IP service, replacing peer-to-peer client machines with&#xA;  thousands of Linux boxes that have been hardened against the most&#xA;  common types of hack attacks, a security researcher said. The change, which Immunity Security's Kostya Kortchinsky said occurred about two months ago, represents a major departure from the design that has powered Skype for the past decade. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because Microsoft now controls a the connection mechinism between each call, and controls the software that routes the call they have the ability to route the data (of select clients)to a third party server. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to what I expected &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA31/does-skype-use-encryption&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skype does use encryption&lt;/a&gt;.  However if you read the answer on the Skype FAQ:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you make a call from Skype to landlines and mobile phones, the part&#xA;  of your call that takes place over the PSTN is not encrypted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, in the case of conference calls involving two users on&#xA;  Skype-to-Skype and one user on PSTN, then the PSTN part is not&#xA;  encrypted, but the Skype-to-Skype portion is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Skype uses the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard*), also known as&#xA;  Rijndael, which is used by the US Government to protect sensitive&#xA;  information, and Skype uses the maximum 256-bit encryption. User&#xA;  public keys are certified by the Skype server at login using 1536 or&#xA;  2048-bit RSA certificates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So since Skype is the one doing the encryption/decryption it is conceivable that even encrypted calls could be intercepted at this point and recorded/retransmitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to Can they is apparently yes.  In answer to will they I would refer you to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/10184/3126&quot;&gt;Vartec's answer&lt;/a&gt;. As a result of CALEA any call that involves a phone network (land line or cell), would fall into the realm of the law.  Microsoft would be required, with appropriate court orders, to provide Law Enforcement with real time access to the phone call(s) through Skype.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-07-19T15:59:38.323" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6923" CreationDate="2012-07-19T16:04:41.527" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you do not drink water before you feel thirsty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e4848&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mythbusting sports and exercise products&lt;/a&gt;, British Medical Journal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottom line: drinking ahead of thirst&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;General public&lt;/em&gt;—Drinking ahead of thirst may worsen performance in endurance exercise and carries a rare but serious risk of hyponatraemia. The body’s internal mechanism for staying hydrated is cheaper, easier, and seems to be the best way to optimise performance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Professional athletes&lt;/em&gt;—Elite endurance athletes perform best when they drink to thirst; some studies suggest exercise induced dehydration can improve performance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review &lt;em&gt;did not&lt;/em&gt; find sufficient evidence to be able to say this finding is generalizable beyond endurance athletes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A high quality randomised trial measuring the performance effects of different hydration regimes during shorter&#xA;exercise (sprint-type) would determine whether the results of systematic reviews are generalisable beyond endurance athletes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user30557" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-07-22T19:18:43.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4540" CreationDate="2012-07-20T01:36:03.350" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I quote the Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy#cite_ref-72&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;psychopathy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three behaviors — bedwetting, cruelty to animals and firestarting, known as the &lt;strong&gt;Macdonald triad&lt;/strong&gt; — were first described by J.M. MacDonald as possible indicators, if occurring together over time during childhood, of future episodic aggressive behavior. However, subsequent research has found that bedwetting is not a significant factor and the triad as a particular profile has been called an urban legend. Questions remain about a connection between animal cruelty and later violence, though it has been included in the DSM as a possible factor in conduct disorder and later antisocial behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the one on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_cruelty#Psychological_disorders&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cruelty to animals&lt;/a&gt;, which makes the interesting point that there may be a common cause to both (I think this runs somewhat counter to this &quot;evil shows itself early&quot; thing that I feel is associated with it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has also been found that children who are cruel to animals have often witnessed or been victims of abuse themselves. In two separate studies cited by the Humane Society of the United States roughly one-third of families suffering from domestic abuse indicated that at least one child had hurt or killed a pet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I don't have access to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J460v02n04_04&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; though it promises to be a current review on the matter. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272735800000660&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt; I do have access to, they urgently call for more research, which may have happened in the meantime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="2722" LastEditDate="2018-06-18T14:32:45.647" LastActivityDate="2018-06-18T14:32:45.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10204" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10207" CreationDate="2012-07-20T16:04:08.470" Score="14" ViewCount="5173" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scary stories told around the campfire often include people killed by a monstrous entity. Its image, imprinted on the victim's retina, drives the coroner out of their mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone ever researched that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastActivityDate="2012-07-21T00:30:09.973" Title="Is the last thing a person sees imprinted on their retina?" Tags="|physiology|mortality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10169" CreationDate="2012-07-20T17:09:10.493" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's first define &quot;nutrients&quot;. There are macronutrients and micronutrients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mckinley.illinois.edu/handouts/macronutrients.htm&quot;&gt;Macronutrients&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; are the familiar protein (amino acids), carbohydrates (sugars and starches including fiber), fats (saturated/unsaturated/polyunsatured and fatty acids). These are the substances that provide energy and building materials.  An alternative definition of macronutrient is the set of chemical elements we need the most of in large amounts: CHNOPS (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, sulfur). Additionally water is an important bulk nutrient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't survive without macronutrients, and they are undoubtedly &quot;good stuff&quot;. So in an apple, for example, by far the bulk of the macronutrients are in the flesh and not just the peel: water, sugar, fiber.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micronutrient&quot;&gt;Micronutrients&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; are the substances that support &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; metabolic functions. These are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin&quot;&gt;vitamins&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dietary_mineral&quot;&gt;minerals&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytochemicals&quot;&gt;phytochemicals&lt;/a&gt;. You can't survive without certain micronutrients, and others while not essential are very healthy (like antioxidants). This is the category that most people mean by &quot;nutrients&quot;, and what you seem to be asking about in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take a potato as an example. The potato provides many macronutrients throughout, notably starch and water. &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2546/2&quot;&gt;A 100g potato has 75g of water, 15g of starch&lt;/a&gt;. The flesh contains significant amounts of the minerals phosphorus, vitamin C, and potassium. Now -- ounce for ounce, the potato skin &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; contain more micronutrients than the flesh. But that's ounce for ounce, and the flesh far outweighs the skin. So in a potato as a whole, the &lt;em&gt;majority&lt;/em&gt; of nutrients (both macro- and micro-) are in the flesh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is not to say you should peel them! The real issue is that the skin and the flesh contain &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt; nutrients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that many fruits and veggies have skins that are more colorful than the flesh - potatoes, apples, pears, peaches, etc. The colors are usually a sign that the skin contains nutritious phytochemicals like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carotenoid&quot;&gt;carotenoids&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavonoid&quot;&gt;flavonoids&lt;/a&gt;. Apple skins are red due to the presence of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthocyanin&quot;&gt;anthocyanins&lt;/a&gt; which are not present in the flesh. Anthocyanins are powerful antioxidants. &lt;em&gt;So if you don't eat the apple skin, you don't get the antioxidants.&lt;/em&gt; Grape skins contain most of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grape#Health_claims&quot;&gt;resveratrol&lt;/a&gt;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, oranges and grapefruits (for example) contain plenty of fantastic nutrients in the juice and flesh - orange peel is good for you, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1976/2&quot;&gt;doesn't contain as many nutrients as the flesh&lt;/a&gt;. Blueberries are blue all the way through, and the whole darn fruit flesh-and-skin is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueberry#Nutrients.2C_phytochemicals_and_research&quot;&gt;rich with nutrients&lt;/a&gt;. This is similarly true for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato#Nutrition&quot;&gt;tomatoes&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: &lt;strong&gt;in &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; fruits and vegetables, the skins contain major amounts of &lt;em&gt;certain&lt;/em&gt; nutrients, in particular phytochemicals. But it's wrong to say as a blanket statement for all fruits and vegetables that &quot;most of the nutrients are contained in the peel&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5877" LastActivityDate="2012-07-20T17:09:10.493" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10207" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10204" CreationDate="2012-07-20T20:49:03.357" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The American College of Optometrists has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.college-optometrists.org/en/knowledge-centre/museyeum/online_exhibitions/eye/optography.cfm&quot;&gt;a page on this alleged phenomenon, called &quot;optograms&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. They claim that &lt;em&gt;with chemical fixatives and immediate extraction of the retina&lt;/em&gt;, one can discern a rough image representing the last image exposed on the retina. This is vaguely plausible, since the formation of an image does induce chemical changes in the retina. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the mid-17th Century, a Jesuit friar named Christopher Schiener did some experiments on frogs [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.museumofoptography.net/Hackney_Empire_files/Hackney%20Micro%20copy.pdf&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;]; later &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_K%C3%BChne&quot;&gt;Wilhelm Kühne (a physiologist of some repute)&lt;/a&gt; did &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.museumofoptography.net/www.museumofoptography.net/People_%28Scientists%29/Entries/2011/8/15_Wilhelm_Kuhne.html&quot;&gt;similar experiments on rabbits&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The College go so far as to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The one and only case of a 'Human Optogram' is therefore that of&#xA;  Erhard Gustav Reif in November 1880....[H]e was executed by guillotine in the prison&#xA;  yard in the small German town of Bruchsal. His left eye was extracted&#xA;  within ten minutes of the sentence being carried out. Reif's optogram,&#xA;  some 4mm in height, does not survive, merely a simple sketch drawing&#xA;  taken from it.... It has a superficial resemblance to a&#xA;  guillotine blade although the victim's eyes were bandaged seconds&#xA;  before the blade fell. Possibly they are the steps he had to ascend&#xA;  shortly beforehand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1975 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.escrs.org/milan2012/programme/poster-details.asp?id=13127&quot;&gt;a group of German scientists in Heidelberg reproduced the original rabbit research&lt;/a&gt;. It seems that they were able to produce rough images, but concluded that the technique had no forensic or scientific value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5877" LastEditorUserId="5877" LastEditDate="2012-07-21T00:30:09.973" LastActivityDate="2012-07-21T00:30:09.973" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10209" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-21T05:12:28.437" Score="8" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2359/the-origin-of-99-cents&quot;&gt;The origin of &amp;ldquo;99 cents&amp;rdquo;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_pricing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Psychological pricing&quot;&lt;/a&gt; refers to the theory that certain prices are more likely to lead to a sale than others. In the United States, that price is usually 99 cents - it is far more common to see a product priced at $5.99 than it is to see a product priced at $6.00. Theoretically, therefore, customers are more likely to purchase a $5.99 product than to purchase a $6.00 product.  I wonder if this is actually true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are consumers more likely to make a purchase if the price ends in x.99 rather than x.00?  And if not, why do products continue to be priced this way?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6673" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T03:19:25.770" Title="Are prices ending with 99 cents more likely to result in purchase decisions?" Tags="|psychology|economics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-07-22T06:15:40.943" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10210" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10212" CreationDate="2012-07-21T16:50:57.170" Score="16" ViewCount="18035" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that lizards don't drink water? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My friend told me that lizards don't drink water, they lie upside down whenever they get thirsty. I found that some desert lizards absorb water instead of drinking. But most were saying that &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061207061017AAyOgff&quot;&gt;generally lizards don't drink water&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-21T19:32:09.313" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T21:16:11.653" Title="Do lizards drink water?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10211" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10237" CreationDate="2012-07-21T18:10:35.510" Score="15" ViewCount="2059" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;New research shows that [tomatoes] capture and kill small insects with&#xA;  sticky hairs on their stems and then absorb nutrients through their&#xA;  roots when the animals decay and fall to the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is thought that the technique was developed in the wild in order to&#xA;  supplement the nutrients in poor quality soil – but even domestic&#xA;  varieties grown in your vegetable patch retain the ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So go the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/6727709/Tomatoes-can-eat-insects.html&quot;&gt;findings of research&lt;/a&gt; carried out at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Furthermore, their conclusions also contend that &lt;em&gt;potatoes&lt;/em&gt; and other plants are also similarly &quot;carnivorous&quot;, and that a number of other plant species exhibit such behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sceptical about the whole business and believe that these researchers are attributing too much importance (and murderous intent!) to insects getting caught in the sticky hairs, dying, decaying, falling to the ground, decaying further into the soil and being absorbed as nutrients by the plant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How reliable is this research? How was the paper (which was submitted to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0024-4074&amp;amp;site=1&quot;&gt;Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society&lt;/a&gt;) received?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:51:56.463" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T00:51:56.463" Title="Are tomatoes carnivorous?" Tags="|biology|vegetables|entomology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10210" CreationDate="2012-07-21T22:57:43.920" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Summary:&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, lizards drink water. The idea that they absorb water through their skin seems to have been over-turned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some lizards drink water by lapping it into their mouths:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1993.tb02663.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The kinematics of drinking of Lacerta viridis were analysed. A drinking bout is composed of four phases: approach, immersion, emersion and withdrawal. The tongue and gravity are central to moving water through successive compartments of the buccal cavity and into the oesophagus. Upon the basis of formifunction analysis of water intake and transport, a kinematic model of drinking in lizards is proposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some lizards drink water by having it soak into their mouths, via the skin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1564473?uid=3737536&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21101098747301&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When wetted, animals assumed a stereotyped posture [...] Drinking involved repeated, slight tongue protrusion, but without lapping from the substrate. [...] He hypothesize that the drinking posture 1) facilitates drinking rain water, and/or 2) facilitates drinking water condensed on the skin and moved to the mouth by capillary action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some lizards collect the rain water that lands on their backs, drinking it through their mouths:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1564398?uid=3737536&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21101098747301&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SEM stereophotographs illustrate the interscalar channels through which water is carried, apparently by capillary action, over body surfaces to the jaws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that lizards absorb water into their body through their skin appears to have fallen into disfavour:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reptilechannel.com/lizards/lizard-species/meet-the-moloch.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1923 Davey was the first to report his observations on the remarkable hygroscopic nature of thorny devil skin, presumably with the animal drinking through the walls of its body. He reported that its skin “absorbs moisture almost as readily as blotting paper.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This unlikely scenario for a desert lizard, having skin permeable to water (water is more likely to move out than in), was not formally questioned until 1962.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two scientists at the University of Western Australia, in Perth, used a colloidal blue dye to show that water actually moves up and across the surfaces of moloch skin very rapidly in all directions, including up and onto the head and back. It did not penetrate the skin surface. The dyed water from the skin’s surface was found in a lizard’s stomach after the animal, standing in dyed water, slowly and slightly opened and closed its jaws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1982, the water-transport hypothesis was again revised. Researchers now noted that the water carried over the skin by capillary action actually did not move across the surfaces of scales, where it may be initially captured, but it moved down channels between individual scales, subsequently flowing through this channel network toward the mouth for ingestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(That doesn't prove that there isn't any single lizard that does it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mapoflife.org/topics/topic_339_Drinking-adaptations-in-desert-lizards/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;readable description&lt;/a&gt; of how lizards drink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-21T22:57:43.920" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8630" CreationDate="2012-07-21T23:03:34.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a complete or final answer to your question, but a recent (2012) and seemingly rigorous statistical analysis of works by Shakespeare, Marlowe, and other contemporaries, in order to distinguish authorship, is here:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their key conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...our results are best explained by the assumption that Marlowe is not Shakespeare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.brown.edu/research/pubs/theses/masters/2012/ehmoda.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.cs.brown.edu/research/pubs/theses/masters/2012/ehmoda.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statistical comparisons were based on 1) general vocabulary and 2) a combination of &quot;function word frequency, frequency of part of speech tags among words that are not on the function word list, and bigram...called 'two-word collocations'...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comparison tests &quot;misidentified&quot; four out of seven of Marlowe's works as Early or Late Shakespeare's; however, the &quot;Unsupervised Clustering Experiment&quot; clearly separated Marlowe's works from Shakespeare's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is noted that &quot;Marlowe is hard to pin down because of the small corpus that exists for him&quot;.  Would internal variability in the Marlowe works (written prior to all the Shakespeare works) versus more internal consistency in the Shakespeare works have produced this outcome?  A skeptic would like to see more data from the &quot;Unsupervised Clustering Experiment&quot; and a better explanation for how it discriminates among authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7922" LastEditorUserId="7922" LastEditDate="2012-07-22T01:19:53.437" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T01:19:53.437" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5130" CreationDate="2012-07-22T01:04:54.997" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the nutrients, you're better off in general consuming the whole fruit, not just the juice. I'll look at oranges and apples. You can use the links and do the math to figure the same thing out for the other items, I imagine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Orange vs Orange Juice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1966/2&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One medium orange&lt;/strong&gt; (about 130g) contains&lt;/a&gt; 1.2g protein, 3.1g fiber, 116% &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daily_Value&quot;&gt;daily value (DV)&lt;/a&gt; of Vitamin C, 8% DV thiamine, 10% DV folate, 7% DV potassium (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_in_biology&quot;&gt;K&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;), 5% DV calcium (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_in_biology&quot;&gt;Ca&lt;sup&gt;2+&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;). (I am not including nutrients under 5% DV or sugars).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1971/2&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;juice of one medium orange&lt;/strong&gt; (about 86g) &lt;/a&gt; contains 0.6g protein, 0.2g fiber, 72% DV Vitamin C, 5% DV thiamin, 6% DV folate, 5% DV K&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt;, 1% DV  Ca&lt;sup&gt;2+&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So by not including the pulp, you miss: &lt;strong&gt;0.6g protein, 2.9g fiber, 44% DV vitamin C, 3% DV thiamin, 4% DV folate, 2% DV K&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt;, and 4% DV  Ca&lt;sup&gt;2+&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Apples vs. Apple juice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1809/2&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;medium apple with skin&lt;/strong&gt; (about 180g)&lt;/a&gt; contains 0.5g protein, 4.4g fiber, 14% DV vitamin C, 5% DV &lt;em&gt;vitamin&lt;/em&gt; K, 6% DV K&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1822/2&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;juice of one medium apple&lt;/strong&gt; (about 120g)&lt;/a&gt; contains 0.1g protein, 0.2g fiber, 1% DV vitamin C, no vitamin K,  3% DV K&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, if you consume just the juice with no pulp or skin, you miss: &lt;strong&gt;0.4g protein, 4.2g fiber, 13% DV vitamin C, 3% DV K&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt;, and all 5% DV of the vitamin K&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pulp and rinds of fruits and vegetables contain different amounts of nutrients than the flesh. This is more true in fruits like apples and oranges than in carrots and beets. Carrots and beets don't have a 'rind' and have brightly-colored flesh and juice, while an apple has certain nutrients that can only be found in the skin. In particular, if you drink only the juice you'll miss most of the fiber and protein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, you do get more nutrients consuming the whole thing - consider blending instead of juicing, maybe. Quality is subjective, so I won't address it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5877" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T01:04:54.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10020" CreationDate="2012-07-22T14:49:01.607" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; Yes. Annual waste estimates of between 21% and 47% are &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1148376&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;supported&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OED defines &lt;strong&gt;waste, n.&lt;/strong&gt; as a...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Useless&lt;/em&gt; expenditure or consumption, &lt;em&gt;squandering&lt;/em&gt; (of money, goods, time, effort, etc.).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following categories of waste in US Health Care fit this definition :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JSk6b.png&quot; alt=&quot;Estimates&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Failures of Care Delivery:&lt;/strong&gt; the waste that comes with poor execution or lack of widespread adoption of known best care processes,&#xA;  including, for example, patient safety systems and preventive care&#xA;  practices that have been shown to be effective. The results are&#xA;  patient injuries and worse clinical outcomes. Better care can save&#xA;  money. We estimate that this category represented between $102 billion&#xA;  and $154 billion in wasteful spending in 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Failures of Care Coordination:&lt;/strong&gt; the waste that comes when patients fall through the slats in fragmented care. The results are&#xA;  complications, hospital readmissions, declines in functional status,&#xA;  and increased dependency, especially for the chronically ill, for whom&#xA;  care coordination is essential for health and function. We estimate&#xA;  that this category represented between $25 billion and $45 billion in&#xA;  wasteful spending in 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overtreatment:&lt;/strong&gt; the waste that comes from subjecting patients to care that, according to sound science and the patients' own&#xA;  preferences, cannot possibly help them—care rooted in outmoded habits,&#xA;  supply-driven behaviors, and ignoring science. Examples include&#xA;  excessive use of antibiotics, use of surgery when watchful waiting is&#xA;  better, and unwanted intensive care at the end of life for patients&#xA;  who prefer hospice and home care. We estimate that this category&#xA;  represented between $158 billion and $226 billion in wasteful spending&#xA;  in 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Administrative Complexity:&lt;/strong&gt; the waste that comes when government, accreditation agencies, payers, and others create&#xA;  inefficient or misguided rules. For example, payers may fail to&#xA;  standardize forms, thereby consuming limited physician time in&#xA;  needlessly complex billing procedures. We estimate that this category&#xA;  represented between $107 billion and $389 billion in wasteful spending&#xA;  in 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pricing Failures:&lt;/strong&gt; the waste that comes as prices migrate far from those expected in well-functioning markets, that is, the actual&#xA;  costs of production plus a fair profit. For example, because of the&#xA;  absence of effective transparency and competitive markets, US prices&#xA;  for diagnostic procedures such as MRI and CT scans are several times&#xA;  more than identical procedures in other countries. We estimate that&#xA;  this category represented between $84 billion and $178 billion in&#xA;  wasteful spending in 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fraud and Abuse:&lt;/strong&gt; the waste that comes as fraudsters issue fake bills and run scams, and also from the blunt procedures of inspection&#xA;  and regulation that everyone faces because of the misbehaviors of a&#xA;  very few. We estimate that this category represented between $82&#xA;  billion and $272 billion in wasteful spending in 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1148376&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eliminating Waste in US Health Care, JAMA, 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This interview with Matthias Rumpf of the OECD has some information as to why Americans might be resistant to change (other than general politics)... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NEWSHOUR:&lt;/strong&gt; How do Americans compare with other nations in terms of general health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MATTHIAS:&lt;/strong&gt; The United States has the highest proportion of adults -- &lt;strong&gt;90&#xA;  percent&lt;/strong&gt; -- reporting that they are in good health, far above the OECD&#xA;  average of 69 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...snip...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NEWSHOUR:&lt;/strong&gt; Are there any health care areas in which the U.S. system is faring better than other countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MATTHIAS:&lt;/strong&gt; When we look at the quality of cancer care, the United States stands out as having excellent results. Screening rates for&#xA;  breast and cervical cancer are excellent, so problems can be diagnosed&#xA;  early on. Your chances of living five years after being diagnosed with&#xA;  breast cancer, or cervical cancer, or indeed several other cancers,&#xA;  are better in the United States than almost anywhere else in the&#xA;  world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2011/11/why-does-healthcare-cost-so-much.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why Does Health Care Cost So Much in the United States?, PBS&#xA;  Newshour, 2011.11.25&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this does not negate the known problems as mentioned above, but it does at least have a hint of reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In sum...&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claims of &lt;strong&gt;&quot;a little under 50% of that is technically waste&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;&quot;About one-third of that spending is waste.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; are supported (and without invoking &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_panel&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Death-panels&lt;/a&gt;&quot; no-less:).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2012-07-22T14:49:01.607" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8630" CreationDate="2012-07-22T15:45:31.663" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I disagree that &lt;em&gt;The Skeptical Inquirer&lt;/em&gt; is not a credible source. It is a peer-reviewed publication and I have found that it is quite rigorous in its examinations of issues. The article cited here concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To sum up, there really was a Shakespeare, and to believe that someone else wrote the plays and poems bearing his name—that there was in fact a conspiracy to perpetrate an elaborate hoax—is to gratuitously violate the principle of Occam’s razor, the dictum that the hypothesis with the fewest assumptions is to be preferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article is worth reading, and, I believe, represents the issue, and its answer, quite credibly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7927" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-10T02:58:42.243" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T02:58:42.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10218" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-22T15:53:17.837" Score="8" ViewCount="892" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seem to be many people that claim grapefruit, in one form or another, helps dieters with weight loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any good academically-rigorous evidence to support any of these claims?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the claims:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People who ate half of a grapefruit before each meal (without making any other dietary changes) shed an average of three and a half pounds over 12 weeks, found a study from the Nutrition and Metabolic Research Center at Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, California.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20564855_4,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20564855_4,00.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fruit's compounds aid in fat burning and stabilizing blood-sugar and insulin levels,' says Christine Gerbstadt, MD, author of Doctor's Detox Diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20564855_4,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20564855_4,00.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further evidence of notability is the 'Grapefruit Diet', which &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grapefruit_diet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; describes as a &lt;em&gt;fad diet&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7926" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-23T05:56:52.263" LastActivityDate="2012-07-23T05:56:52.263" Title="Grapefruit for weight loss?" Tags="|nutrition|fruit|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10224" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10238" CreationDate="2012-07-23T18:54:09.130" Score="12" ViewCount="2427" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read from several sources that humans kill 11,000 sharks per hour or 100 million per year, for example : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanesociety.org/news/interview/2007/06/cousteau_sharks_life_061107.html&quot;&gt;The Humane Society of the United States, quoting Jean-Michel Cousteau&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Look at what is happening to the great sharks. We humans are killing them off—11,000 of them an hour, around the clock, 365 days a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seashepherd.org&quot;&gt;Sea Shepherd Conservation Society&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;100 million sharks are killed each year-by longlines, by &quot;sport&quot; fishermen, or by a barbaric practice known as shark finning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5533" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2016-03-22T12:44:00.867" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T12:44:00.867" Title="Are 100 million sharks killed by humans per year?" Tags="|zoology|environment|sharks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10229" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-24T01:12:35.507" Score="33" ViewCount="7917" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see this popping up on my Facebook feed quite a lot (to be fair, it's usually the same 3 people): Claims that evidence has shown that marijuana/cannabis/THC/other cannabinoids can have a positive effect in cancer treatment. I wonder what the truth is behind this, as based on the reporting, I'm sure it's being exaggerated by heavily-biased parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1383240/Boy-brain-cancer-cured-secretly-fed-medical-marijuana-father.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Mail: Boy, two, with brain cancer is 'cured' after secretly being fed medical marijuana by his father&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.naturalnews.com/033757_cannabis_oil_cancer_cure.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Natural News: Cannabis oil is a highly efficient natural cancer cure&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130110210736/http://www.nowpublic.com/thc_marijuana_helps_cure_cancer_says_harvard_study&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Now Public: THC (marijuana) helps cure cancer says Harvard study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140429011853/http://cannacentral.com/news/the-growing-evidence-of-cannabis-cancer-curing-properties/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CannaCentral: The Growing Evidence of Cannabis’ Cancer Curing Properties&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-02-27T17:40:24.493" LastActivityDate="2023-02-27T23:56:40.147" Title="Do THC or other cannabis compounds cure/slow cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|marijuana|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10229" CreationDate="2012-07-24T03:39:39.000" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is yes, in laboratory experiments, and perhaps in a clinical setting as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me emphasize: the proof exists in controlled laboratory experiments.  It has &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; been demonstrated to be true in human trials.  So don't smoke up in the expectation that it's a better cancer treatment than a doctor's recommendations (generally chemotherapy, radiation therapy, or surgery, but would vary from patient to patient).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14570037&quot;&gt;article by Guzman in 2003&lt;/a&gt; states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition, these compounds have been shown to inhibit the growth of tumour cells in culture and animal models by modulating key cell-signalling pathways. Cannabinoids are usually well tolerated, and do not produce the generalized toxic effects of conventional chemotherapies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question, at the time, is what the causal relationship is to inhibiting tumor growth.  The answer to that question is apparently dependent on the type of cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, in prostate cancer, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3339795/&quot;&gt;a metastudy (Ramos and Bianco, 2012)&lt;/a&gt; found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prostate cancer cells possess increased expression of both cannabinoid 1 and 2 receptors, and stimulation of these results in decrease in cell viability, increased apoptosis, and decreased androgen receptor expression and prostate-specific antigen excretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, cannabis causes increased prostate cancer cell death.  They suggest that more study is warranted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It would be of interest to conduct clinical studies utilizing cannabinoids for patients with metastatic prostate cancer, taking advantage not only of its beneficial effects on prostate cancer but also of their analgesic properties for bone metastatic cancer pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar story (&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ijc.22917/full&quot;&gt;Greenhough et al, 2007&lt;/a&gt;) appears to hold true in colorectal cancer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... the mechanisms underlying the antitumoral effects of cannabinoids are incompletely understood, and evidence suggests these effects may be cell-type specific. Two signalling pathways that have been reported to be either positively or negatively regulated by cannabinoids (depending on the cell type and cannabinoid studied) are the RAS-MAPK/ERK pathway and the PI3K-AKT pathway. ... Here, we show, for the first time, that THC induces apoptosis in colorectal cancer cells, and that this occurs through the activation of the CB1 cannabinoid receptor.  THC treatment resulted in the inhibition of both RAS-MAPK and PI3K-AKT survival signalling cascades&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two articles provide very specific pathways for cannabinoids to inhibit tumor growth and reduce existing tumor extent, but it's important to note that both are based on work in the lab.  The call for bringing the prostate cancer work into more general therapeutic practice demonstrates that this is not, yet, a proven cancer therapy.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2158" LastEditorUserId="2158" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T20:03:21.750" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T20:03:21.750" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10231" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-24T07:35:20.567" Score="11" ViewCount="548" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several studies (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12683469&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12603781&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example 2&lt;/a&gt;) about the effect of sleep deprivation on alertness and cognitive performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies investigating the opposite - The effect of too much sleep on alertness, also known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answers.com/topic/rip-van-winkle-effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rip Van Winkle Effect&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With &quot;alertness&quot; I mean two factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;subjective mental alertness as reported by test subjects and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;objectively measured cognitive performance. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; talking about any health consequences, either long-term or short-term. There is already another question covering that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2414/does-sleeping-an-average-of-11-hours-or-more-raise-ones-risk-of-brain-related-d&quot;&gt;Does sleeping an average of 11 hours or more raise one&amp;#39;s risk of brain-related disorders?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7894" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T11:07:20.183" Title="Does oversleeping lead to reduced alertness?" Tags="|sleep|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10211" CreationDate="2012-07-24T18:30:24.270" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the paper in question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark Chase, Maarten Christenusz, Dawn Sanders, Michael Fay, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1095-8339.2009.01014.x/abstract&quot;&gt;Murderous plants: Victorian Gothic, Darwin and modern insights into vegetable carnivory&lt;/a&gt;, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society&#xA;Volume 161, Issue 4, pages 329–356, December 2009, DOI: 10.1111/j.1095-8339.2009.01014.x&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract, we can see this isn't an experimental paper, but just an overview. Tomatoes (i.e.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomato&quot;&gt;Solanum lycopersicum&lt;/a&gt;) do not appear in the article's abstract, unlike in the newspaper article where they feature heavily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article does talk about the difficulty of classification into &quot;carnivorous&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mechanisms for capture and digestion of prey vary greatly among the six (or more) lineages of flowering plants that have well-developed carnivory, and some are much more active than others. Passive carnivory is common in some groups [...] There is no clear way to discriminate between cases of passive and active carnivory and between non-carnivorous and carnivorous plants – all intermediates exist. Here, we document the various angiosperm clades in which carnivory has evolved and the degree to which these plants have become ‘complete carnivores’. We also discuss the problems with definition of the terms used to describe carnivorous plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It strikes me that the reporter has played with the classification difficulty to enable him to have a hook - that tomatoes and potatoes can be classified as carnivorous - despite it not being a key feature of the paper. Looking closely at what the researcher says, he suggests carnivorousness is not a key feature of the domesticated tomato.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to how it was received, it is necessary to look at the citations, to see if it is relied upon as a legitimate source, or argued against in the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been cited at least 18 times (&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?cites=6218356615643424651&amp;amp;as_sdt=2005&amp;amp;sciodt=0,5&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;), most prominently by '&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.butbn.cas.cz/adamec/Krol2012.pdf&quot;&gt;Quite a few reasons for calling carnivores ‘the most wonderful plants&#xA;in the world’&lt;/a&gt;' which draws on it approvingly several times. It is also cited approvingly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.brit.org/fileadmin/Publications/JBotResInstTexas_4_2/569-579_Judziewicz_Aulonemia_JBRIT_4_2__02.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/sites/harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/files/ellison-pubs/2011/ellison_adamec_2011_Oikos.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the freely available citations, none seemed to attack or contradict any of the findings - however, none referenced tomatoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T18:30:24.270" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10224" CreationDate="2012-07-24T18:55:30.027" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pacfish.org/sharkcon/documents/bonfil.html&quot;&gt;This probably-non-peer-reviewed document by a fisheries scientist&lt;/a&gt; gives a lower estimate circa 2000 but I can't parse out if his ~55M estimate includes targeted fishing or &quot;only&quot; by-catch:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Considering an average weight of 15 kg per individual, &lt;strong&gt;the total number of skates, rays and sharks killed by fisheries would be close to 90 million fish per year&lt;/strong&gt;, but this is probably overestimated as 15 kg for the average weight might be a bit low. However, &lt;strong&gt;if we consider only the sharks, then the figure is closer to 55 million or probably less&lt;/strong&gt; (again, due to a conservative estimate of average weight per fish of 15 kg; many commercially important and common bycatch shark species easily attain average weights between 50 and 100 kg per fish). Sharks are only about ½ of the reported catch (i.e. 380,000 t), they represent most of the high-seas bycatch (lets say 390,000 t/y), but only a minor part of the likely 200,000 t/y or so of skates, rays and sharks taken and discarded (i.e. unreported) in coastal bottom trawl fisheries (i.e. 50,000 t/y). Thus, the total of 55 million sharks by dividing the total kill of 820,000 t of sharks by 15 kg per fish. These very rough figures try to consider all sources of shark catches, the reported ones, the unreported bycatches in high seas fisheries, and the unreported bycatches in coastal trawl fisheries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Emphasis added]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2012-07-24T19:00:37.917" LastActivityDate="2012-07-24T19:00:37.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10239" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-25T09:04:04.683" Score="3" ViewCount="999" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/569/do-mobile-phones-have-anything-to-do-with-brain-cancer&quot;&gt;Do mobile phones have anything to do with brain cancer?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some discussion about the harm of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) emitted from mobile phones and other wireless devices. Is there reliable evidence for different kinds of harm? How does the distance of a baby to a wireless device affect the influence? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7949" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:31:01.740" Title="Can radiation from wireless phones and computers harm babies?" Tags="|environmental-health|electromagnetism|radiation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-07-25T19:20:31.547" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10239" CreationDate="2012-07-25T12:36:41.047" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cell phones emit microwaves, which do not belong to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ionizing radiation&lt;/a&gt;, what means they aren't able to split atoms. Ionizing radiation can cause cancer, but sometimes non-ionizing radiation can, too, like in the case of UV light. But UV light has quite a lot of energy, compared to microwaves, which aren't very energy intensive. Some people think Microwaves can cause cancer, too, but this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2011/pdfs/pr208_E.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hasn't been proven&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;The intensity of radio waves decreases with the square of the distance in near-field, so its a good idea to keep dangerous radio emitting devices away of the baby.&#xA;However, as said there is still no proof, microwaves can cause any illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7953" LastActivityDate="2012-07-25T12:36:41.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10245" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-26T08:07:00.597" Score="20" ViewCount="4481" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do stress balls (those things you squeeze that claim to reduce stress) show any efficacy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/4756/1/Reduce-Your-Stress-With-Stress-Balls.html&quot;&gt;HealthGuidance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The simple act of squeezing something in your hand can help you ease a few of your concerns, release some built-up tension, and make you feel like you are at least doing something rather than brooding upon everything that has you down. [...] Used properly, stress balls can have a very beneficial effect on your mind and body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried a stress ball before  and have personally not found it to work very well, yet there is a widely held belief that these products reduce stress by letting you squeeze something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; I am interested in the kind of stress that does not relate to anger,even though this is also interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastEditorUserId="2383" LastEditDate="2012-07-30T07:42:50.577" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T11:28:34.103" Title="Do stress balls reduce stress?" Tags="|psychology|stress|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10247" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10265" CreationDate="2012-07-26T12:46:35.503" Score="23" ViewCount="5599" Body="&lt;p&gt;The vicious murderer who shot up the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado last week was wearing, according to some reports, &quot;full body armor.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; Proponents of concealed-carry permits maintain that if the theater had not been a &quot;gun-free&quot; zone, the shooter could have been taken out in short order by an armed populace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the man was wearing body armor, is this a reasonable conjecture? If someone — an off-duty policeman carrying a standard-issue .40 caliber Glock 22, say — had been in the audience and been able to get off three shots at the shooter's center mass, would the impact, while not penetrating the chest cavity, at least have disabled the man long enough for him to be rushed and overpowered, or would he merely have shrugged it off and gone about his gruesome business?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My impression of body armor (absent any experience except from movies and TV) is that it prevents lethal injuries but perhaps transmits enough shock to the body to be extremely unpleasant, possibly disabling. My Google searches haven't led me to anything definitive (and, indeed, I feel a bit skeevy about searching for the term &quot;body armor&quot; on the web in the aftermath of the shooting). Can anyone shed some light on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ADDENDUM&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask this after reading William Saletan's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2012/07/the_aurora_shooting_bulletproof_vests_swat_gear_and_body_armor_refute_the_nra_.html&quot;&gt;contention&lt;/a&gt; that crazies can escalate the mass-murder war simply by use of readily available &quot;SWAT gear.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;The first reports of the shootings had the man in full body armor. Some people now say this was not true. Please treat this question as a hypothetical about a shooter who &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; wearing full body armor, including Kevlar vest, etc., as suggested in the Saletan article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OTHER EVIDENCE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Rusty cites a DOJ report which discusses body armor in depth. The portions of the document he quotes refer to protection against &lt;em&gt;fatalities&lt;/em&gt; from penetration, which is not really what I'm asking about. A portion of the document not cited states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Officers and police administrators must be aware of the possibility of blunt trauma injury sustained behind body armor that has stopped a ballistic threat (i.e., not been penetrated). Any officer who has had their body armor impacted by a ballistic threat should receive a medical evaluation as soon as possible. Even though the officer shows no after effects other than soreness or a bruise, the possibility of serious internal injury still exists. A prompt medical evaluation will allow for an assessment of occult serious injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The crux of my question hinges on whether the &quot;occult serious injury&quot; may include immediate incapacitation from the blunt trauma. Although the text refers to &quot;no after effects other than soreness or a bruise,&quot; it should be obvious that trauma resulting in soreness and bruises (such as a punch from someone who knows how to punch) can easily knock a person down, knock the wind out of him, or immediately incapacitate him from pain. For example, this personal account: when I played football in high school, I was once &quot;speared&quot; by a player's helmet during a play. The contact hit me right in the solar plexus, knocking me down and rendering me incapable of doing anything, even drawing a breath, for what seemed like a minute but was probably ten or fifteen seconds. If blunt trauma through body armor could result in the same sort of incapacitation, could not a deranged, body-armored shooter be stopped long enough for him to be overpowered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1415" LastEditorUserId="1415" LastEditDate="2012-07-28T13:19:42.407" LastActivityDate="2019-01-23T09:46:18.550" Title="Does body armor render the wearer &quot;invulnerable&quot; to bullets?" Tags="|weapons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10248" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-26T13:05:10.307" Score="3" ViewCount="9769" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found conflicting information on how different cooking methods affect the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;glycemic index&lt;/a&gt; (GI) of (white) potatoes and now I'm confused. My question is: does boiling potatoes lowers their GI relative to baking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This reference claims boiling will have a &lt;strong&gt;higher&lt;/strong&gt; GI relative to baking: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/430497-why-does-the-cooking-method-change-the-glycemic-index/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Livestrong&lt;/a&gt; article:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;slow-cooking carbohydrates by baking or steaming will result in a lower GI compared to boiling or microwaving&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These references claim boiling will have a &lt;strong&gt;lower&lt;/strong&gt; GI relative to baking: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jnume/2011/584832/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; on sweet potatoes .&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a South Beach Diet list of foods and their GI.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7970" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T13:40:27.217" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T13:40:27.217" Title="Do boiled potatoes have a higher glycemic index than baked?" Tags="|nutrition|diabetes|livestrong|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10253" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10256" CreationDate="2012-07-27T05:02:36.320" Score="18" ViewCount="3945" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dream-detective.com&quot;&gt;Christopher Robinson&lt;/a&gt;, who calls himself the Dream Detective on his web-site and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dream-detective.com/id11.html&quot;&gt;book by the same name&lt;/a&gt;, claims that he has worked with police, assisting their investigations with his psychic visions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He came to the attention of Scotland Yard, London England’s Police Department in 1984 and has had regular contact with either police or Intelligence officers from Customs and National Criminal Intelligence ever since. He has been able to provide then with warnings of serious crimes and terrorist activities on the UK mainland. Police officers with who he has worked have confirmed in public, that they evaluate the content of his dream messages and have monitored him for many years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these claims true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T07:31:26.040" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T13:50:49.360" Title="Did Christopher Robinson provide psychic information that was successfully used by Scotland Yard?" Tags="|psychics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10255" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-27T07:21:08.857" Score="3" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/150/does-drinking-milk-lead-to-osteoporosis&quot;&gt;Does drinking milk lead to osteoporosis?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://saveourbones.com/osteoporosis-milk-myth/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Save Our Bones&lt;/a&gt; claims that drinking milk is bad for your bones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the most surprising link is that not only do we barely absorb the calcium in cow’s milk (especially if pasteurized), but to make matters worse, it actually increases calcium loss from the bones. What an irony this is!&#xA;  Here’s how it happens. Like all animal protein, milk acidifies the body pH which in turn triggers a biological correction. You see, calcium is an excellent acid neutralizer and the biggest storage of calcium in the body is – you guessed it… in the bones. So the very same calcium that our bones need to stay strong is utilized to neutralize the acidifying effect of milk. Once calcium is pulled out of the bones, it leaves the body via the urine, so that the surprising net result after this is an actual calcium deficit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It cites the Harvard Nurses’ Health Study for evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7897" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T08:09:28.300" Title="Does drinking milk as an adult cause calcium loss from bones?" Tags="|nutrition|milk|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-07-27T18:05:55.117" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10253" CreationDate="2012-07-27T07:42:27.747" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;The organisation &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ukskeptics.com/article.php?dir=articles&amp;amp;article=police_and_psychics.php&quot;&gt;UK Skeptics&lt;/a&gt; looked at this issue in 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They wrote to all of the different police commissioners in the UK asking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;would it be possible for you to provide details of where, when and at what cost such psychics have been used - if at all - within your force’s jurisdiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They received replies from 26 forces. All of them, apart from the Metropolitan Police (i.e. Scotland Yard) varied from &quot;No, we don't use them.&quot;, &quot;No, we are not aware of using them,&quot; to &quot;No, the information we have received from them has been no value.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They received two from Scotland Yard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first stated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thank you for your email - I have passed this to the Freedom of Information Unit but as far as I know we have not and do not use psychics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The follow up stated: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have conducted a search of our indexes but have been unable to identify any relevant records relating to any official use of psychics. There is, however, a historical case where this played a major part. This case related to the disappearance of Thomas Alfred MARKS in 1965. The records relating to this case are now held by The National Archives at Kew under the references MEPO 2/10551 to MEPO 2/10558. The tape recording is under the last reference, MEPO 2/10558. This particular record is available but some parts of the record are closed as it remains an unsolved case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, Scotland Yard denied, in 2003, that Christopher Robinson helped them in 1984.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-07-27T12:53:16.077" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T12:53:16.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10248" CreationDate="2012-07-27T12:35:22.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am addressing the general issue of why two lists might have different values for the GI for potatoes, and ignoring any mechanism for how boiling or baking may affect the GI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is far more complicated that these simple lists might suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.southbeach-diet-plan.com/glycemicfoodchart.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;South Beach Diet Plan's Web-Site&lt;/a&gt; list provides no references, so that is the first strike against it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Glycemic_index_and_glycemic_load_for_100_foods.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harvard Health Publications&lt;/a&gt; list references &lt;a href=&quot;http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/31/12/2281.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;International Tables of Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load Values: 2008&lt;/a&gt; from &#xA;Diabetes Care December 2008 vol. 31 no. 12 2281-2283, doi: 10.2337/dc08-1239.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that article, the complexities start becoming clearer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some research laboratories continue to use white bread as the&#xA;  reference food for measuring GI values, whereas others use glucose (dextrose); therefore, 2 GI values are given for each food.&#xA;  The first value is the GI with glucose as the reference food (GI&#xA;  value for glucose = 100; GI value for white bread = 70), and the&#xA;  second value is the GI for the same food with white bread as the&#xA;  reference food (GI value for white bread = 100; GI value for glucose = 143). When bread was the reference food used in the original study, the GI value for the food was multiplied by 0.7 to&#xA;  obtain the GI value with glucose as the reference food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if we assumed that the Harvard list was correct at 82, and used glucose as the reference, but the South Beach Diet used bread as the reference, we would expect it to give a value of 57 - that is pretty consistent with the 56 it gave. There is no need to assume either is &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; just that one is using a different (older) definition of the scale than the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even having one single value is confusing. &lt;em&gt;Sticking to the glucose scale&lt;/em&gt;, this is &lt;em&gt;just some&lt;/em&gt; of what the Diabetes care journal includes for potatoes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Baked&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ontario, white, baked in skin (Canada) 60&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Russet, baked without fat 56&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Russet, baked without fat, 45–60 min 78&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Russet, baked without fat 94 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Russet, baked without fat 111&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Boiled&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Desiree, peeled, boiled 35 min 101 ± 15&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nardine  70 ± 17&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ontario, white, peeled, cut into cubes, 58&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pontiac, peeled, boiled whole for 30 min 56 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pontiac, peeled, boiled 35 min 88 ± 9&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prince Edward Island, peeled, cubed, boiled in salted water 15 min, 63 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sebago, peeled, boiled 35 min 87 ± 7&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Boiled or cooked, white or type NS 24&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This list continues much further, I just got bored of transcribing. You might like to take a look at it to look up the closest type of potatoes to the ones you consume, and how you prepare them. They also have far more detail (including some of the missing error ranges, when the original test was done with the bread scale), references to the original studies, sample sizes, etc. Where several studies are comparable, they also provide grouped averages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, it is unreasonable to expect that a wide-range of naturally grown potatoes, from many different countries, and measured by the effect on human volunteers, to have a single, precise value for their GI index.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-07-27T12:35:22.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10245" CreationDate="2012-07-28T06:25:21.520" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;“Venting” frustration in cathartic gestures like abusing stress balls only makes it worse. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Ebbushman/bbs99.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bushman, Baumeister, and Stack (1999)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to the catharsis hypothesis... people who read the procatharsis message and then hit the punching bag were subsequently more aggressive than were people who read the anticatharsis message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our findings suggest that media messages advocating catharsis may be worse than useless. They encourage people to vent their anger through aggressive action, and perhaps even foster the displacement of aggression toward new, innocent third parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/08/11/catharsis/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;More&lt;/a&gt; on Bushman's experiments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people in both groups were told they were going to have to compete against the person who [angered them].  One group first had to punch a bag, and the other group had to sit and wait for two minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the punching and waiting, the competition began.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The game was simple, press a button as fast as you can. If you lose, you get blasted with a horrible noise. When you win, blast your opponent. They could set the volume the other person had to endure, a setting between zero and 10 with 10 being 105 decibels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you predict what they discovered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On average, the punching bag group set the volume as high as 8.5. The timeout group set it to 2.47.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people who got angry didn't release their anger on the punching bag, it was sustained by it. The group which cooled off lost their desire for vengeance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In subsequent studies where the subjects chose how much hot sauce the other person had to eat, the punching bag group piled it on. The cooled off group did not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the punching bag group later did word puzzles where they had to fill in the blanks to words like ch_ _e, they were more likely to pick &lt;em&gt;choke&lt;/em&gt; instead of &lt;em&gt;chase.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bushman has been doing this research for a while, and it keeps turning up the same results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5120" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-28T06:30:22.993" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10247" CreationDate="2012-07-28T08:24:27.060" Score="40" Body="&lt;h2&gt;While nothing is &quot;invulnerable&quot;; Modern body armor is extremely effective.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As suggested by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_nature/2012/07/the_aurora_shooting_bulletproof_vests_swat_gear_and_body_armor_refute_the_nra_.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Saletan&lt;/a&gt;, here is the U.S. Justice Department’s breakdown on body armor... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Armor Classifications for Ballistic-Resistant Armor&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NIJ Standard–0101.04 establishes six formal armor classification types, as well as a seventh special type, as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Type I (.22 LR; .380 ACP).&lt;/strong&gt; This armor protects against .22 long rifle lead round nose (LR LRN) bullets, with nominal masses of 2.6 g&#xA;(40 gr), impacting at a minimum velocity of 320 m/s (1050 ft/s) or&#xA;less, and against .380 ACP full metal jacketed round nose (FMJ RN),&#xA;with nominal masses of 6.2 g (95 gr), impacting at a minimum velocity&#xA;of 312 m/s (1025 ft/s) or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Type I body armor is light. This is the minimum level of protection&#xA;every officer should have, and the armor should be routinely worn at&#xA;all times while on duty. Type I body armor was the armor issued&#xA;during the NIJ demonstration project in the mid-1970s. Most agencies&#xA;today, however, because of increasing threats, opt for a higher level&#xA;of protection.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Type II-A (9mm; .40 S&amp;amp;W).&lt;/strong&gt; This armor protects against 9mm full metal jacketed round nose (FMJ RN) bullets, with nominal masses of&#xA;8.0 g (124 gr), impacting at a minimum velocity of 332 m/s (1090 ft/s) or less, and .40 S&amp;amp;W caliber full metal jacketed (FMJ) bullets,&#xA;with nominal masses of 11.7 g (180 gr), impacting at a minimum&#xA;velocity of 312 m/s (1025 ft/s) or less. It also provides protection&#xA;against Type I threats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Type II-A body armor is well suited for full-time use by police&#xA;departments, particularly those seeking protection for their officers&#xA;from lower velocity 9mm and 40 S&amp;amp;W ammunition.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Type II (9mm; .357 Magnum).&lt;/strong&gt; This armor protects against 9mm full metal jacketed round nose (FMJ RN) bullets, with nominal masses of&#xA;8.0 g (124 gr), impacting at a minimum velocity of 358 m/s (1175 ft/s) or less, and .357 Magnum jacketed soft point (JSP) bullets,&#xA;with nominal masses of 10.2 g (158 gr), impacting at a minimum&#xA;velocity of 427 m/s (1400 ft/s) or less. It also provides protection&#xA;against Type I and Type IIA threats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Type II body armor is heavier and more bulky than either Types I or&#xA;II-A. It is worn full time by officers seeking protection against&#xA;higher velocity .357 Magnum and 9mm ammunition.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Type III-A (High Velocity 9mm; .44 Magnum).&lt;/strong&gt; This armor protects against 9mm full metal jacketed round nose (FJM RN) bullets, with&#xA;nominal masses of 8.0 g (124 gr), impacting at a minimum velocity of&#xA;427 m/s (1400 ft/s) or less, and .44 Magnum jacketed hollow point&#xA;(JHP) bullets, with nominal masses of 15.6 g (240 gr), impacting at a&#xA;minimum velocity of 427 m/s (1400 ft/s) or less. It also provides&#xA;protection against most handgun threats, as well as the Type I, II-A,&#xA;and II threats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Type III-A body armor provides the highest level of protection&#xA;currently available from concealable body armor and is generally&#xA;suitable for routine wear in many situations. However, departments&#xA;located in hot, humid climates may need to evaluate the use of Type&#xA;III-A armor carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Type III (Rifles).&lt;/strong&gt; This armor protects against 7.62mm full metal jacketed (FMJ) bullets (U.S. military designation M80), with nominal&#xA;masses of 9.6 g (148 gr), impacting at a minimum velocity of 838 m/s&#xA;(2750 ft/s) or less. It also provides protection against Type I&#xA;through III-A threats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Type III body armor is clearly intended only for tactical situations&#xA;when the threat warrants such protection, such as barricade&#xA;confrontations involving sporting rifles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Type IV (Armor Piercing Rifle).&lt;/strong&gt; This armor protects against .30 caliber armor piercing (AP) bullets (U.S. military designation M2&#xA;AP), with nominal masses of 10.8 g (166 gr), impacting at a minimum&#xA;velocity of 869 m/s (2850 ft/s) or less. It also provides at least&#xA;single-hit protection against the Type I through III threats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Type IV body armor provides the highest level of protection currently&#xA;available. Because this armor is intended to resist “armor piercing”&#xA;bullets, it often uses ceramic materials. Such materials are brittle&#xA;in nature and may provide only single-shot protection, since the&#xA;ceramic tends to break up when struck. As with Type III armor, Type&#xA;IV armor is clearly intended only for tactical situations when the&#xA;threat warrants such protection.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Requirements&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Types I, II–A, II, and III–A armor are required to prevent&#xA;penetration from the impact of six bullets per panel, for two&#xA;complete samples (front and back panels) at specified velocities and&#xA;locations for two types of ammunition. Two of the impacts in each&#xA;six-shot sequence must be at a 30-degree angle. A total of 48 shots&#xA;are completed on four samples. &lt;strong&gt;Furthermore, the deformation of the&#xA;backing material (a measure of blunt trauma protection) must not&#xA;exceed 44mm (1.73 in).&lt;/strong&gt; Deformation readings are taken on each panel&#xA;at shot location 1, then at either shot location 2 or 3, whichever&#xA;one had the highest shot velocity. The armor must meet these&#xA;requirements while wet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Type III armor requirements are identical to those above, except that&#xA;only one type of ammunition is specified, and all six test rounds are&#xA;fired perpendicular to the surface of the armor. A total of 12 shots&#xA;are completed (6 shots per sample).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Type IV armor is required to resist penetration from only a single&#xA;type of ammunition (armor piercing) and is only &lt;strong&gt;required to prevent&#xA;penetration and backface deformation greater than 44mm (1.73 in) from&#xA;a single perpendicular impact.&lt;/strong&gt; A total of two samples are tested.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The maximum allowable deformation of the clay-backing material was&#xA;determined through an extensive series of ballistic gelatin&#xA;measurements and experiments conducted by a team of medical experts.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;This limit ensures protection from blunt trauma that arises from an&#xA;impact occurring over vital locations. Even this level of protection,&#xA;however, does not give an absolute guarantee of protection against&#xA;internal injuries.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional protection from impact blunt trama:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trauma plates&lt;/strong&gt; are devices that can be added to the vest over a localized area (most commonly the mass center of the torso) to&#xA;increase the wearer’s protection against blunt trauma injuries. Blunt&#xA;trauma injuries are caused by the impact forces of the bullet against&#xA;the armor, resulting in nonpenetrating internal injuries such as&#xA;bruises, broken ribs, or other injuries to internal organs. Trauma&#xA;plates can be made of a hard substance such as metal wrapped in&#xA;rubber or ballistic fabric, or they can be made of additional layers&#xA;of ballistic fabric, similar to an armor panel. Some manufacturers&#xA;even build trauma plates into the armor panel itself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the UCR data from the period 1990 to 1999, 290 law enforcement officers were killed while wearing protective armor (see exhibit 11). Of those officers 160 (55.2 percent) were killed by gunshot wounds to the head; 101 (34.8 percent) died as a result of gunshot wounds to the upper torso; 18 (6.2 percent) died as a result of gunshot wounds below the waist; 5 (1.7 percent) were struck by automobiles; 2 (0.7 percent) were stabbed; and 4 (1.4 percent) died by other means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SrIRE.png&quot; alt=&quot;Exhibit 11&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the 101 officers killed by gunshot wounds to the upper torso, 40 (39.6 percent) were killed when the round entered the torso region between the panels of the vest or through the arm openings, and 34 (33.7 percent) were killed when the round landed above the coverage area of the vest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JjWJb.png&quot; alt=&quot;Exhibit 12&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twenty of the 101 officers killed by gunshot wounds to the upper torso died as a result of rounds penetrating the body armor. Of these 20 incidents, all were the reported result of rifle rounds, which the armor was not designed to protect against. &lt;strong&gt;It is important to note that no documented fatal injury has ever resulted from a round of ammunition penetrating body armor that NIJ had approved as protection against that level of threat.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/189633.pdf?q=law-enforcement-officers-killed-and-assaulted-1998&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Selection and Application Guide to Personal Body Armor&lt;/a&gt;, U.S. Department of Justice (2001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Shock Trauma&quot; from impact forces&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence that even without any armor humans can be pretty hard to stop: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Short of disrupting the brain or severing the upper spinal column,&#xA;  immediate incapacitation does not occur. Therefore, the threat remains&#xA;  to the officer. Yet, implicit in the media presentations of law&#xA;  enforcement encounters is the belief that with the “proper handgun”&#xA;  and the “proper ammunition,” officers will inflict immediate&#xA;  incapacitation if they shoot offenders anywhere in the torso. Varied&#xA;  and multiple real-life law enforcement experiences contradict this&#xA;  false and dangerous belief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the authors’ ongoing study of violence against law enforcement&#xA;  officers, they have examined several cases where officers used&#xA;  large-caliber handguns with limited effect displayed by the offenders.&#xA;  In one case, the subject attacked the officer with a knife. The&#xA;  officer shot the individual four times in the chest; then, his weapon&#xA;  malfunctioned. The offender continued to walk toward the officer.&#xA;  After the officer cleared his weapon, he fired again and struck the&#xA;  subject in the chest. Only then did the offender drop the knife. This&#xA;  individual was hit five times with 230-grain, .45-caliber hollow-point&#xA;  ammunition and never fell to the ground. The offender later stated,&#xA;  “The wounds felt like bee stings.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://valorforblue.org/Home/Publications/One-Shot_Drops_FBI_Law_Enforcement_Bulletin.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;One-Shot Drops: Surviving the Myth&lt;/a&gt;, FBI Law Enforcement&#xA;  Bulletin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when wearing armor...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So imagine your disbelief when a threat continues to progress-even&#xA;  after you've delivered what would normally be considered&#xA;  &quot;incapacitating&quot; rounds. You think to yourself, Is it the gun? The&#xA;  ammo? Did I hit or miss? I had to have hit, but he keeps coming.&#xA;  Imagine the thud of realization when you determine your adversary is&#xA;  wearing body armor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.policemag.com/Channel/Patrol/Articles/Print/Story/2003/06/Bullet-Proof.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bullet Proof: What do you do when the bad guy seems invincible?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And definitely no sign of &quot;shock trauma&quot; in the 1997 North Hollywood shootout: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The patrol officers were armed with standard Beretta 92F and Beretta&#xA;  92FS 9mm pistols and Smith &amp;amp; Wesson Model 15 .38 caliber revolvers,&#xA;  Officer James Zaboravan also carried a 12-gauge Ithaca Model 37&#xA;  pump-action shotgun, but the body armor worn by Phillips and&#xA;  Matasareanu was strong enough to resist penetration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this case, approximately 650 rounds were fired at two very heavily&#xA;  armored men, who had fired approximately 1,100 rounds. The responding&#xA;  police officers directed their fire at the &quot;center of mass,&quot; or&#xA;  torsos, of Matasareanu and Phillips. Each man was shot and penetrated&#xA;  by at least ten bullets, yet both continued to attack officers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;North Hollywood shootout&lt;/a&gt;, Wikipedia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple hits only seemed to give these two guys a direction to shoot in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could find no other evidence that the force of bullet impact(s) would &quot;have disabled the man long enough for him to be rushed and overpowered&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All things considered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An &quot;armed populace&quot; is not going to have much effect on a determined&#xA;psychopath in modern body armor.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ps. I'm not taking a stance on guns here so please don't start that debate.&lt;/em&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="35" LastEditDate="2012-07-28T16:15:09.547" LastActivityDate="2012-07-28T16:15:09.547" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8242" CreationDate="2012-07-29T11:20:47.070" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the same university as Tjaart's answer, but a different study by different people find similar results, where high intensity training has significant effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given the markedly lower training volume in the SIT group, these data suggest that high-intensity interval training is a time-efficient strategy to increase skeletal muscle oxidative capacity and induce specific metabolic adaptations during exercise that are comparable to traditional ET.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17991697&quot;&gt;Similar metabolic adaptations during exercise after low volume sprint interval and traditional endurance training in humans.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with Tjaart's answer, not exactly the same training, but a similar concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7553" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-07-29T13:48:56.637" LastActivityDate="2012-07-29T13:48:56.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10272" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-29T13:48:25.297" Score="10" ViewCount="3522" Body="&lt;p&gt;One element of misdirection used by magician Derren Brown is to &lt;strong&gt;apparently&lt;/strong&gt; place subjects into a catatonic state with the use of flashing lights or physical manipulation of the hands or arms. For example, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvyHH3C3Gds&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;, at about 2:10, Brown &lt;em&gt;appears&lt;/em&gt; to make someone lose track of several hours of time by pulling their arm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence, Brown gives the impression here that he is using a technique that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deeptrancenow.com/exc2_handshake.htm&quot;&gt;hypnotherapists call&lt;/a&gt; &quot;handshake induction&quot;, which supposedly will put the subject into a cataleptic trance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalepsy&quot;&gt;Catalepsy&lt;/a&gt; or catatonia &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2823166&quot;&gt;can be induced&lt;/a&gt; with the use of drugs, but I have been unable to discover any medical evidence that either can be induced without drugs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any evidence that so-called &quot;handshake-induction&quot; or a similar technique has, or can have, a pronounced physical effect?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7164" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-03T14:31:17.463" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T14:10:40.553" Title="Does an Erikson handshake induction induce a cataleptic trance?" Tags="|hypnotism|stage-magic|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10274" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-29T18:08:23.043" Score="16" ViewCount="14144" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many people who cook vegetables without washing them (before cutting) because they think it removes important nutrients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is predominant in some Asian countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2017-10-26T07:44:33.537" LastActivityDate="2017-10-26T07:44:33.537" Title="Does washing vegetables remove nutrients?" Tags="|nutrition|cooking|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10277" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10295" CreationDate="2012-07-29T22:16:00.940" Score="25" ViewCount="1454" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elastic_therapeutic_tape&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elastic therapeutic tape&lt;/a&gt;, better known as &lt;em&gt;kinesio tape&lt;/em&gt;, has become ubiquitous in sporting events, notably after the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, and again in 2012 in London.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/la0E0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Mario Balotelli&quot;&gt;&#xA;Mario Balotelli, another iconic taper, at the EM 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kinesiotaping.co.uk/history.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Websites that sell the tapes&lt;/a&gt; are very stingy when it comes to defining which precise effects the tape is supposed to have. However, there seem to be claims that taping stabilises muscles, increase blood circulation and support the lymphatic system. &lt;a href=&quot;http://goarticles.com/article/Kinesio-Taping-Method/6756738/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Supposed explanations&lt;/a&gt; aren’t detailed, and don’t sound scientifically plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be worth noting that the original inventor, Dr Kase, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18672458&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;admits to a lack of studies&lt;/a&gt;. But this doesn’t deter vendors from claiming effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which, if any, proven benefits does taping have?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2012-07-30T06:52:19.610" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T20:04:44.503" Title="Does kinesio taping work?" Tags="|medical-science|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="155" CreationDate="2012-07-30T08:22:00.247" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlimited free energy violates the SECOND (not the first law of thermodynamic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without the second law of thermodynamic, you can run a car and freeze the road around you at the same time. You don't violate the first law. The energy is taken from the heat you take from the road around you. It's the SECOND law of thermodynamic that you violate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other answer, like solar, etc. may be near unlimited. The truth is everything is limited, even the sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I presume the question ask about perpetual machine of the second kind, basically the interesting one. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_Motion_Machine#Classification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_Motion_Machine#Classification&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perpetual machine of first kind is &quot;unnecessary&quot;. Economically speaking you can make a lot of money even if the first law of thermodynamic hold, which is what you want. The money breaker is that you can't violate the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T18:31:02.573" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T18:31:02.573" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10279" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10282" CreationDate="2012-07-30T09:40:54.393" Score="31" ViewCount="2479" Body="&lt;p&gt;The common knowledge goes that cats, in general, have a particular dislike of water compared to other animals. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastActivityDate="2013-10-16T17:19:38.150" Title="Do cats have a notable dislike of water compared to other animals?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10279" CreationDate="2012-07-30T10:25:47.007" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cat's hate of water is widely accepted as fact, yes. But in truth, not all cats feel the same about taking a bath. The Turkish Van cat actually delights in getting wet. Scientists contend that cats dislike of water comes from house cats owners shielding them from the elements since the earliest periods of domestication and from their ancestors. If a cat's experiences with water are mainly exposure to a sopping rainstorm, a forced bath or being sprayed with water as a disciplinary measure, why wouldn't she shy away from water?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some big cats in the wild, especially those in hot, arid areas, regularly swim and bathe to stay cool or catch dinner. The Asian fishing cat is a skilled swimmer, with partially webbed paws, that dives to nab its prey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://whyfiles.org/2009/why-do-cats-hate-water/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://whyfiles.org/2009/why-do-cats-hate-water/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7992" LastEditorUserId="7992" LastEditDate="2012-07-30T10:36:44.987" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T10:36:44.987" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10274" CreationDate="2012-07-30T10:33:09.163" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Washing vegetables before you cut them wouldn't remove any nutrients since the skin of the vegetable protects it, just like in rain outside etc.&#xA;Leaving vegetables soaked in water for to long and the protecting layer would disolve and the water get inside the vegetable though. Cutting the vegetables and then soaking them in water could also very likely, depending on the vegetable in question, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/556663-is-soaking-raw-fresh-vegetables-in-water-good-or-bad/&quot;&gt;remove nutrients&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/556663-is-soaking-raw-fresh-vegetables-in-water-good-or-bad/&quot;&gt;U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends&lt;/a&gt; that you wash the vegetables to get rid of dirt and pathogenic microorganisms. I would find that a strong case to wash ;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7992" LastEditorUserId="7992" LastEditDate="2012-07-30T10:53:12.657" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T10:53:12.657" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10279" CreationDate="2012-07-30T10:57:48.360" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-smallcat.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;San Diego Zoo:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not all cats hate water.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_cat&quot;&gt;leopard cat&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Prionailurus bengalensis&lt;/em&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishing_cat&quot;&gt;fishing cat&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Prionailurus viverrinus&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat-headed_cat&quot;&gt;flat-headed cat&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Prionailurus planiceps&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffroy%27s_cat&quot;&gt;Geoffroy’s cat&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Oncifelis geoffroyi&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;all swim and hunt for amphibians and fish in streams and rivers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://animal.discovery.com/healthy-pets/cat-health-101/do-cats-really-hate-water.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Animal Planet:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cats' aversion to water is widely accepted as fact - but in truth, &lt;strong&gt;not all cats feel the same about taking a dip.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One domestic breed, the strikingly beautiful &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfa.org/client/breedTurkishVan.aspx&quot;&gt;Turkish Van cat&lt;/a&gt;, actually delights in getting wet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scientists contend that cats’ dislike of water comes from house cats’ owners shielding them from the elements since the earliest periods of domestication and from their ancestors&lt;/strong&gt; -- wild cats in Europe, Africa and China’s desert cat -- whose limited experience with water did not require adapting and evolving to deal with it. Lions and leopards avoid river-dwelling predators (like crocodiles) by staying away from water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.wisc.edu/16925&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;University of Wisconsin-Madison:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are plenty of cats that love water&lt;/strong&gt;, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vetmed.wisc.edu/people/sawchuks/&quot;&gt;Sandi Sawchuk&lt;/a&gt;, a clinical instructor at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vetmed.wisc.edu/Home.1.1.html&quot;&gt;School of Veterinary Medicine&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Big, wild cats, especially those that live in hot, arid areas, often love to swim. An Asian species known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishing_cat&quot;&gt;fishing cat&lt;/a&gt; uses webbed paws to dive for fish, frogs and crayfish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among domestic breeds, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Van&quot;&gt;Turkish Van&lt;/a&gt; is known for swimming. But most house cats shy away from water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“&lt;em&gt;Because cats groom themselves, we as owners tend not to introduce them to bathing like we do our dogs&lt;/em&gt;,” Sawchuk says. “&lt;em&gt;Ask somebody who has show cats, which have to be bathed regularly and have been in the water since they were young. Those cats will tolerate it. There’s no fight at all.&lt;/em&gt;”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18410-zoologger-the-amphibious-asian-mystery-cat.html&quot;&gt;New Scientist: The amphibious Asian mystery cat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boston.com/community/pets/articles/2011/01/03/cats_and_water/&quot;&gt;The Boston Globe: Cats and water&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://prev.dailyherald.com/story/?id=396337&quot;&gt;Daily Herald: Why do cats hate water?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/743-why-do-dogs-love-water-but-cats-hate-it.html&quot;&gt;Life's Little Mysteries: Why Do Dogs Love Water But Cats Hate It?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-07-30T11:23:51.153" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T11:23:51.153" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10274" CreationDate="2012-07-30T13:21:43.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim appears to be &quot;It is healthier not to wash vegetables at all, because washing may remove some of the nutrients.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim only considers one potential benefit of unwashed vegetables. It ignores a number of potential downsides, including potential leaving on the vegetables microorganisms known to be harmful (E. coli, Salmonella, Clostridium, Bacillus, Listeria), and also pesticide residues which are potentially harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Even if it were true&lt;/strong&gt; that some nutrients were lost, the risks of food poisoning and death outweigh the benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my searching, I found experts from the following science-based health organisations recommend washing your vegetables to remove microorganisms and contaminants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;US &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/food/resourcesforyou/consumers/ucm114299.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Food and Drug Administration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Australian's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/health/talkinghealth/factbuster/stories/2011/10/13/3338650.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CSIRO&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;UK's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/homehygiene/Pages/How-to-wash-fruit-and-vegetables.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NHS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6104414&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Partnership for Food Safety Education&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6104414&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Penn State University's Department of Food Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://umaine.edu/publications/4336e/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Maine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09380.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Colorado State University&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canfightbac.org/cpcfse/en/cookwell/ask/washing_foods/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Canadian Partnership for Consumer Food Safety Education&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080410101203.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Chemical Society&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=76712&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Medicine.Net&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found more articles from the following non-peer-reviewed media organisations that also recommend washing your vegetables:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2006/09/victual_ablutions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Slate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43298699/ns/health-food_safety/t/scared-your-salad-how-wash-veggies-safely/#.UBaH2LT9Png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Women's Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/31/how-to-wash-vegetables_n_1066588.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YouBeauty.com, via Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nutrition.about.com/od/ahealthykitchen/a/washveggies.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;About.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://suite101.com/article/how-to-wash-pesticides-off-fruit-vegetables-a174074&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Suite101&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_2301682_properly-wash-fresh-vegetables.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;eHow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondiva.quickanddirtytips.com/how-to-kill-e-coli-on-vegetables.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quick and Dirty Tips&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Make-an-Organic-Fruit-and-Vegetable-Wash&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WikiHow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=george&amp;amp;dbid=99&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;George Mateljan Foundation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/255880-how-to-clean-fruits-vegetables-with-vinegar/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LiveStrong&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oprah.com/food/Food-Myths-Busted/7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oprah&lt;/a&gt;, Princess of Woo!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found the following articles from &lt;em&gt;any source at all&lt;/em&gt; recommending you &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; wash your vegetables to preserve nutrients:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;-&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I wouldn't argue that the most popular point of view is necessarily the correct one, but the importance of washing vegetables compared to a claim about nutrients (an alleged claim, at that) isn't in the slightest bit controversial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-07-30T15:51:11.173" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T15:51:11.173" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="155" CreationDate="2012-07-30T14:18:12.533" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It really depends upon how you define things, as the other answers have noted, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_Motion_Machine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;perpetual motion&lt;/a&gt; machines violate the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;laws of thermodynamics&lt;/a&gt;, specifically the first and sometimes the second. However, if we remove systems that extract more energy from a system than is put in, we are still left with systems that are able to extract energy to produce useful work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we define unlimited free energy as a device that is able to run without human energy being put in (e.g. generated electricity, mechanical motion, etc.) then there are some devices that are able to operate on their own without an obvious means of input. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/B5o8E.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;aeger Le Coultre Atmos&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clocks, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmos_clock&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jaeger Le Coultre Atmos&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jaeger-lecoultre.com/DE/en/collections/atmos&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;catalog&lt;/a&gt;) is arguably one of the better examples of this in that it has no visible means of winding or putting energy into the system; however, it is not a perpetually motion device as it will eventually run down to to mechanical wear and tear due to the effects of friction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this does raise an interesting point, while true &quot;free energy&quot; may not be possible, does energy extracted from existing system and used to perform useful work count as free energy? While it is obvious that there is a significant amount of energy put into the construction of the clock (or extract of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wind&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tidal_power&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tidal&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;solar&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydropower&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;water&lt;/a&gt;, etc.) the long term work produced like exceeds what humans have put into the system. This could also apply to the other forms of power generation cited which generate significantly more useful work for the amount of human work put into the system when compared to more primitive devices such as hand powered &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crank_%28mechanism%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cranks&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Across the board though, the &quot;unlimited&quot; part of the equation is an issue as friction eventually wears things down if they are left to their own devices. Periodic maintenance can keep things running without too much effort in the scheme of things, but if that maintenance is neglected then the systems will eventually fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, it is very unlikely we are ever going to have a means of getting something out of nothing; however, with proper application of engineering it is possible to extract more useful energy from a system than is put into extracting that energy. This arguably could be considered &quot;low cost&quot; or even &quot;free&quot; energy depending upon how much energy is invested in getting it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-12-19T16:25:54.713" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T16:25:54.713" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6504" CreationDate="2012-07-30T15:59:28.343" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Watching television does not negatively affect intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since your brain is recognizing visual input, it is in fact creating neural associations that were not already in place. No matter what you watch, the brain is busy either creating new associations (learning) or recalling previous associations (remembering) [&lt;em&gt;On Intelligence&lt;/em&gt; by Jeff Hawkins, &lt;em&gt;Cognitive Evolution&lt;/em&gt; by Alice Travis, &lt;em&gt;The Singularity is Near&lt;/em&gt; by Ray Kurzweil].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way, you cannot become &quot;more stupid&quot; just by receiving visual input even if it is from a television (assuming the person is not susceptible to seizures or has some other input processing disorder)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are several studies that suggest that prolonged exposure to television can negatively affect attention span (especially in children) [&quot;Early Television Exposure and Subsequent Attentional Problems in Children&quot; by Dimitri A. Christakis, et. al]. Also it is possible for various parts of the eye and its connections to the brain to be damaged from staring at a digital screen for long periods of time [&lt;em&gt;Visual Ergonomics&lt;/em&gt;, Jeffrey Anshel]. Likewise, it has been known for quite some time that long periods of sitting (which watching tv tends to encourage) have negative effects on a person's health [&quot;Television Watching, Energy Intake, and Obesity in US Children&quot; by Carlos J. Crespo, et. al].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many more articles on the subject that can be found at scholar.google.com. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottom line&lt;/strong&gt;: The act of receiving visual input from a television does not negatively affect your intelligence. However, prolonged viewing can have negative effects on physical and mental health so go play outside every once in a while :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit - Apologies for the lack of references. They are now included in the answer. Also, thank you @Reuben for pointing out the issue with seizures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7996" LastEditorDisplayName="user7996" LastEditDate="2012-07-30T19:13:45.223" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T19:13:45.223" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10274" CreationDate="2012-07-30T16:19:53.007" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, washing vegetables &lt;a href=&quot;http://extension.colostate.edu/topic-areas/nutrition-food-safety-health/water-soluble-vitamins-b-complex-and-vitamin-c-9-312/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;does remove some of the water soluble vitamins&lt;/a&gt;, specifically &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_vitamins&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;B-complex group&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_C&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;vitamin C&lt;/a&gt;; however, in general, the health benefits of washing vegetables by avoiding pathogens as well as residual pesticides, herbicides, and other such residuals greatly outweighs the nutrient loss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the nutrient loss, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;vitamin B-12&lt;/a&gt; can be loss through the washing process; however, generally this is only a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wholevegan.com/vitamin_b12.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;concern for vegans&lt;/a&gt; who are unable to get the vitamin through animal sources. For example, most of the nutritional value of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_rice&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;rice&lt;/a&gt; is lost during milling which requires that it be enriched prior to sale. As the enrichment is on the surface of the rice, it can be lost if the water is discarded. Furthermore, the degree of vitamin loss can be mitigated by using proper &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutrition.about.com/od/ahealthykitchen/a/washveggies.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;washing and handling techniques&lt;/a&gt; and by limiting the washing of the vegetables until they are ready to be used and limiting the amount of washing that is needed (i.e. once washed, avoid contact with dirty vegetables; wash vegetables before they are chopped, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barring the issue of vitamin B-12 and vegans who generally use supplements to resolve the problem; the nutrient losses are greatly offset by the risk of &lt;a href=&quot;http://extension.missouri.edu/cmregion/thriving/archives2001/2001june/washing-produce.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;food poisoning&lt;/a&gt; caused by a not insignificant list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extension.iastate.edu/foodsafety/pathogens/index.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;food-borne pathogens&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-10-26T05:09:03.803" LastActivityDate="2017-10-26T05:09:03.803" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10287" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-30T17:37:04.230" Score="8" ViewCount="324" Body="&lt;p&gt;A radio program over the weekend had a doctor who stated that people who were breast fed as babies were at a greatly reduced risk of adult onset allergies and that the vast majority of patients she was seeing with adult allergies were not breast fed a children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.uninews.unimelb.edu.au/view-63044.html&quot;&gt;This site claims&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Breastfeeding increases long term allergy risks in those with a family&#xA;  history, says University of Melbourne study&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that strongly supports a link one way or the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:54:41.837" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T08:54:41.837" Title="Does breastfeeding affect the risk of Adult Onset Allergies" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|children|allergies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10287" CreationDate="2012-07-30T17:57:36.963" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is a University of Melbourne study!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(07)01252-3/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Breast-feeding and atopic disease: A cohort study from childhood to middle age&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;Melanie Claire Matheson, Bircan Erbas, Aindralal Balasuriya, Mark Andrew Jenkins, Cathryn Leisa Wharton, Mimi Lai-Kuan Tang, Michael John Abramson, Eugene Haydn Walters, John Llewelyn Hopper, Shyamali Chandrika Dharmage, The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology 1 November 2007 (volume 120 issue 5 Pages 1051-1057 DOI: 10.1016/j.jaci.2007.06.030)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They based on the results of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.menzies.utas.edu.au/article.php?Doo=Redirect&amp;amp;id=956&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tasmanian Longitudinal Health Study (TAHS - sic.)&lt;/a&gt; which started with 8,500 children - although the abstract doesn't mention the sample sizes they used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At age 7 years, exclusively breast-fed children with a maternal history of atopy had a marginally lesser risk of current asthma than those not exclusively breast-fed (odds ratio [OR], 0.8; 95% CI, 0.6-1.0). However, after age 7 years, the risk reversed, and &lt;strong&gt;exclusively breast-fed children had an increased risk of current asthma&lt;/strong&gt; at 14 (OR, 1.46; 95% CI, 1.02-2.07), 32 (OR, 1.84; 95% CI, 1.06-3.3), and 44 (OR, 1.57; 95% CI, 1.15-2.14) years. Exclusively breast-fed children also had a reduced risk of food allergy at age 7 years but an increased risk of food allergy (OR, 1.26; 95% CI, 1.1-1.5) and allergic rhinitis (OR, 1.2; 95% CI, 1.0-1.3) at 44 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ORs (Odds Ratios) aren't huge. You aren't condemning your child to certain asthma (or protecting them outright) based on your feeding choices. Other factors may be stronger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exclusively breast-fed babies with a maternal history of atopy were less likely to develop asthma before the age of 7 years, but more likely to develop asthma after the age of 7 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Clinical implications&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current recommendation to breast-feed high-risk infants for protection against early wheezing illness can be confirmed. However, the recommendation should be reconsidered for protection against allergic asthma and atopy in the longer term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The do mention that the existing literature is contradictory. Perhaps this surprising result of reducing the short-term risk but increasing the long-term risk explains some of the difficulty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-07-30T18:03:06.130" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10294" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-31T12:19:14.337" Score="6" ViewCount="1332" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefir&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kefir&lt;/a&gt; is a fermented milk drink from Russia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some claims that Kefir is effective at treating gastroenteritis and inflammatory or irritable bowel syndrome. A web search for Kefir results in massive amounts of information and even sites dedicated to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kefir.net/kefir-benefits/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kefir.net&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The regular use of kefir can help relieve all intestinal disorders,&#xA;  promote bowel movement, reduce flatulence and create a healthier&#xA;  digestive system. In addition, its cleansing effect on the whole body&#xA;  helps to establish a balanced inner ecosystem for optimum health and&#xA;  longevity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One pilot study looked at a restrictive diet, which included several &quot;probiotic&quot; foods Kefir, but did not test it exclusively:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umassmed.edu/uploadedFiles/MBD_Poster59_EDITED_5-15-2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pilot Testing a Novel Treatment for Inflammatory Bowel Disease&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Barbara Olendzki; Gioia Persuitte; Taryn Silverstein; &#xA;Katherine Baldwin, David Cave; John Zawacki; Kanishka Bhattacharya, Yunsheng Ma,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Notably, 9 out of 11 patients were able to be managed without anti-TNF&#xA;  therapy, and 100% of the patients had their symptoms reduced. To make&#xA;  clear recommendations for its use in clinical practice, randomized&#xA;  trials are neededalongside strategies to improve acceptability and&#xA;  compliance with the IBD-AID.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a strong result for IBD treatment. Most treatments do not even come close to this result. I also understand that with dietary changes it is more or less impossible to do proper blinding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am always wary of digestive system treatments as this has been a very difficult part for medical science to get a grasp on because of the sheer complexity of how everything in the gut interacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in whether Kefir can be successfully used to treat such illnesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-08-01T02:26:15.630" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T02:26:15.630" Title="Is Kefir an effective treatment for bowel disorders?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10277" CreationDate="2012-07-31T13:06:27.820" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the sites linked to in the question (www.kinesiotaping.co.uk) has been the subject of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications/2012/7/LimbVolume-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_165319.aspx&quot;&gt;complaint to the UK Advertising Standards Authority&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The complainant challenged whether the following claims were&#xA;  misleading and could be substantiated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the description of the therapy under the heading &quot;How does Kinesio Taping Work?&quot;;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the efficacy claim that the therapy could be used for &quot;Lymphoedema treatment, Sports Injuries, Hand Therapy, Paediatrics, Scar Taping&quot;;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the claim &quot;Kinesio Tex® can assist many conditions including …&quot; followed by the list of conditions; and&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the claims that the therapy could &quot;Reduce Swelling, Alleviate Pain and Manage Oedema&quot; and subsequent description &quot;The taping method can&#xA;  substantially aid sufferers of Lymphoedema by increasing the body's&#xA;  ability to drain lymphatic fluid to healthy lymph nodes. This is&#xA;  achieved using Kinesio Taping® techniques which have been designed&#xA;  specifically to aid lymphatic drainage&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ASA investigated the complaint and upheld all 4 parts of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We considered that the body of evidence provided in relation to this issue was not sufficiently relevant or robust to substantiate the description of the therapy under the heading &quot;How does Kinesio Taping Work?&quot; and concluded it was misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We considered that the body of evidence provided in relation to this issue was not sufficiently robust to substantiate the efficacy claim that the therapy could be used for &quot;Lymphoedema treatment, Sports Injuries, Hand Therapy, Paediatrics, Scar Taping&quot; and concluded that it was misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part 3:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We therefore considered that the body of evidence did not substantiate the efficacy claims that KT could assist the medical conditions listed on the website, and concluded that the claims were misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part 4:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LV provided six studies in relation to this issue. However, we considered that they were not sufficiently robust to substantiate the claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-07-31T13:06:27.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10298" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10299" CreationDate="2012-07-31T17:43:35.493" Score="38" ViewCount="4071" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Back when computers still consisted of vacuum tubes, a system&#xA;  went down one day and people started investigating the cause. They found that a moth&#xA;  was stuck in the computer which fouled it up. When asked what was wrong&#xA;  the tech said &quot;There was a bug in the computer&quot;, and since then the&#xA;  term has stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that a &lt;em&gt;mostly&lt;/em&gt; true story, and if so is that where the terms &quot;computer bug&quot; and &quot;debugging&quot; came from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6204" LastEditorUserId="8600" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T18:35:55.897" LastActivityDate="2021-01-31T04:28:06.870" Title="Did the computing term &quot;bug&quot; come from a moth stuck in a computer?" Tags="|computers|quotes|etymology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10299" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10298" CreationDate="2012-07-31T18:01:27.070" Score="61" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;; however, this is partly due to semantics, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/sep9/worlds-first-computer-bug/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;actual log entry&lt;/a&gt; is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First actual case of a bug being found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/97wRj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;First Computer &amp;quot;Bug&amp;quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a bit of a tongue-in-cheek reference to the term &amp;quot;bug&amp;quot; that was in use at the time meaning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term &amp;quot;bug&amp;quot; is used to a limited extent to designate any fault or&#xA;trouble in the connections or working of electric apparatus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whose definition is courtesy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=RxlIAAAAIAAJ&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;source=gbs_ge_summary_r&amp;amp;cad=0#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hawkin's New Catechism of electricity&lt;/a&gt; from 1896. So we know the term was already around at the time and from the log entry we can deduce that other mechanical failures were likely called &amp;quot;bugs&amp;quot; as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is apparently the first case of an actual bug being stuck in the computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2021-01-31T04:28:06.870" LastActivityDate="2021-01-31T04:28:06.870" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10301" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-07-31T19:40:03.200" Score="25" ViewCount="7303" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent question brought up the claim that poverty can be eliminated for 175 billion a year.  I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.visionofearth.org/economics/ending-poverty/how-much-would-it-cost-to-end-extreme-poverty-in-the-world/&quot;&gt;this claim&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To end extreme poverty worldwide in 20 years, Sachs calculated that&#xA;  the total cost per year would be about $175 billion. This represents&#xA;  less than one percent of the combined income of the richest countries&#xA;  in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand this is just extreme poverty but I am skeptical that this expense would actually be enough to take care of the extremely poor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-01T01:35:05.613" LastActivityDate="2017-12-28T11:09:02.090" Title="Can we end poverty for $US175 billion per year?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10302" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-01T03:57:51.083" Score="2" ViewCount="4030" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/534/can-bathing-after-having-eaten-make-you-drown&quot;&gt;Can bathing after having eaten make you drown?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elders have always been telling us that it's inappropriate to have a bath &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; after breakfast because it &quot;destroys the stomach&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this seems like a myth. Any clue whether there is actual scientific evidence suggesting whether having breakfast or bath first is a better way of going about a healthy stomach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8015" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T11:07:33.343" Title="Is showering after breakfast bad for the stomach?" Tags="|medical-science|superstition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2012-08-02T15:03:23.193" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8380" CreationDate="2012-08-01T09:20:19.373" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some cultures not only did, but still do. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weddingphotographydirectory.com/wedding-photo/for-wedding-photographers/bleeding-edge-column/art-of-stealing-souls.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; (with references) cites some Mexican towns, Voodoo practitioners and photographer James W. Bailey still sharing the belief that images can do harm to soul.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mirrors were considered a major part of the Mayan religion and culture. Mirrors opened portals into the Otherworld, allowing ancestors and gods to pass through between the two planes. They believed when praying to a saint, the soul leaves the body. To help the soul find its way back into the body, mirrors are placed in front of saint statues to reflect back the soul.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Chiapas, Mexico, there are towns which still adhere to the old Mayan ways. In San Juan Chamula it is illegal to take photographs in church. If you are caught using a camera in church - jail time is a distinct possibility. Older generation film cameras and todays SLR and digital SLR cameras still use mirrors. The Mayan beliefs led to photography being banned inside of churches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the people today allow their photograph to be taken, however infants are protected. It is still believed the souls of infants are fragile and are susceptible to leaving the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4855" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T13:29:20.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10301" CreationDate="2012-08-01T10:36:55.357" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, we cannot.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sachs poses it as purely economical problem, while in fact the most poverty stricken regions are either at war with neighboring countries, having a civil war or both (and it's actually hard to tell, as country borders don't coincide with ethnic regions). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The poorest region of the world is Congo and it's neighbors including Uganda, Rwanda. That region is at constant turmoil, with numerous belligerents ranging from ethnic, religious or plain crazy (eg. Joseph Kony's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LRA&quot;&gt;Lord's Resistance Army&lt;/a&gt;).&#xA;Just in that region you have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mai-Mai&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CNDP (National Congress for the Defence of the People)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LRA (Lord's Resistance Army)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AFDL (Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and the list goes on and on. This is just one small part of central Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another extremely poor region is Somalia. Currently the most violent region in the world. It's at constant civil war since 1991, with numerous belligerents. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Somalia_%282009%E2%80%93present%29&quot;&gt;Currently&lt;/a&gt; coalition of these loyal to government fighting against coalition of Islamist insurgents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UN tried to intervene there in 1992, which led to US military fiasco known as  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_%281993%29&quot;&gt;Battle of Mogadishu&lt;/a&gt; in 1993 (later depicted in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265086/&quot;&gt;a movie&lt;/a&gt;). Whole UN intervention proved to be a fiasco and was terminated in 1995. The cost on US side was estimated to be $7bn ($11.2bn inflation adjusted), and has allegedl saved lives of 10,000 Somalis. Which gives cost of $700,000 ($1,120,000 inflation adjusted) per Somali allegedly saved (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dartmouth.edu/~benv/files/Valentino%20-%20True%20Costs%20of%20Humanitarian%20Intervention.pdf&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afghanistan is another of the poorest regions in the world. The cost of US intervention in Afghanistan alone already exceeds $550bn.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, to solve problem of poverty in Africa, you'd need military peacekeeping  action on unprecedented scale. As previous attempts in Somalia show, it's neither cheap nor easy. As runaway costs of Iraq and Afghanistan wars show, the military costs can easily reach trillions of dollars. And that's not even starting to count the humanitarian help, the restoration of infrastructure, education etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And besides all that, the author of the article mentioned as source of the claim, suggest getting the money from...  reduced military spending.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update, to answer Oddthinking's question from comments. Sachs proposal &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tburg.k12.ny.us/hsking/Apgov/The%20End%20of%20Poverty.pdf&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt; is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Agricultural imports like fertilizers will greatly improve crop yields in many poor  countries and improved crops are the first step&#xA;  out of poverty. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Investments in basic health such as anti-malarial nets and effective anti-malarial  medication for areas with mosquito problems. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Treatments for AIDs/HIV and its attendant opportunistic infections. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Anti-retroviral medications for late-stage AIDs. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Skilled birth attendants and sexual and reproductive health services.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Investments in education including food for school-aged children.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Electricity could be made available via power lines or an off-grid diesel generator  and could power lights and perhaps a computer for&#xA;  schools, pumps for safe well  water, milling grain and other food&#xA;  processing, refrigeration and cooking.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Safe drinking water and sanitation facilities must be made available to everyone  and having water sources near villages would save hours&#xA;  of carting water daily.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, he &lt;strong&gt;does not address the issue of war and violence at all&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nor is it included as the condition preventing a country from economical advance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Countries that move backwards can normally  be characterized by some&#xA;  or all of the  following conditions:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;They lack savings and, therefore, the flexibility to adapt to changing the market.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;There is a lack of trade with other countries to bring in hard currency.  Usually,  trade is reduced or blocked by unreliable trade&#xA;  routes, monetary chaos, price  controls or other forms of government&#xA;  intervention that impede specialization and  trade.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Technological reversal occurs because imperative techniques fail to be passed on  from one generation to another.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Natural resource declines, such as a  reduction in arable land or lowered  production of other sorts of resources.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;There is a change to a different solution for the problem the country’s natural  resource had previously solved.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Adverse productivity shock for unanticipated reasons such as floods, droughts,  heat waves and diseases can wipe out income.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Population growth causes the amount of resources to be divided among more and  more people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-08-01T13:51:27.033" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T13:51:27.033" CommentCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10310" CreationDate="2012-08-01T12:23:12.337" Score="24" ViewCount="19326" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard from a Japanese person that Japanese people have a lower body temperature than caucasians. Is this the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples from the internet of people discussing claims that Japanese people, or asians in general, have a lower body temperature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-130927.html&quot;&gt;Straight Dope thread&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My Japanese girlfriend tells me that Asians have a lower body&#xA;  temperature than honkies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I dont have a link, but it is common knowledge in Japan, that we&#xA;  Japanese have a slightly lower body temperature than other ethnic&#xA;  groups. Instead of 98.6, ours is about 98.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bigdaikon.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=1&amp;amp;t=118570&quot;&gt;Big Daikon thread&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Japanese people have lower body temperatures&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A lady ... set forth this assertion ... and was upset I refused to&#xA;  believe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&#xA;  [on the next page]&#xA;  There was a Discovery Channel&#xA;  special on surviving in cold places and how some people adapt. They&#xA;  put a caucasian army officer and an inuit hunter the same age into a&#xA;  -20 meat locker wearing only shorts and a T-shirt. They had them wired up to check their vitals. The Inuit's body temp. dropped, but in&#xA;  small, steady amounts over a 30min period. The army dude on the other&#xA;  hand was near-hypothermic by the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have no doubt that certain people's heritages, based on environment&#xA;  can have certain advantages/disadvantages over the other. That's only&#xA;  natural. But for someone to suggest that Japanese, rather than&#xA;  mongoloid are X or Y is cultural jingoism bubbling to the surface (not&#xA;  limited to Japan, of course).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, the putative explanation is that some (but not all) people in Japan are ethnically different from some (but not all) people living in countries in Europe, North America, or Australia, and that those ethnic differences may be associated with different average body temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm primarily interested in Japanese people, any answer with a reliable source that says different ethnic groups have different body temperatures will be welcome. If you're of the opinion that different ethnic groups do not exist, then this claim may be a little hard to negate, but a study showing no differences between body temperature of people who live in Japan and people who live in a country perceived as predominantly caucasian would go a long way to debunking this myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2022-09-18T14:22:41.793" Title="Do Japanese people have a lower body temperature than caucasians?" Tags="|medical-science|japan|race|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10309" CreationDate="2012-08-01T13:11:48.720" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There may be a difference, depending on whether you are talking about internal or skin temperatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study compared 9 Japanese men to the results of a similar study done in Ohio with Caucasian men:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01463865&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thermoregulatory responses to heat and exercise in Japanese and Caucasians&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;K. Ohara, N. Okuda and S. Takaba, International Journal of Biometeorology, Volume 19, Number 2 (1975), 99-107, DOI: 10.1007/BF01463865&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subjects were made to walk on a treadmill for 2 hours, in carefully controlled conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were a  number of differences in the amount and composition of their sweat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Internally, they maintained the same body temperature:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were no differences in rectal temperature or heart rate, both at the period of equilibrium rectal temperature and at the end of the walk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there were differences in the skin temperature - perhaps not in the direction you were expecting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mean skin temperature during the walk was significantly higher in Japanese than in Caucasians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They concluded that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the Japanese group was better heat acclimatized than Caucasians, though the two groups were considered to have been naturally heat exposed by season to the same extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;While this result is suggestive, I don't find it to be definitive, as the caucasians were tested at a different time in a different facility, making them a poor control. Also the sample sizes were small, in an area which may vary by age and other factors.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Joo-Young Lee, Hitoshi Wakabayashi, Titis Wijayanto, Nobuko Hashiguchi, Mohamed Saat and Yutaka Tochihara &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-011-1912-5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ethnic differences in thermoregulatory responses during resting, passive and active heating: application of Werner’s adaptation model&lt;/a&gt; European Journal of Applied Physiology, Volume 111, Number 12 (2011), 2895-2905, DOI: 10.1007/s00421-011-1912-5&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study didn't involve Caucasians, but compared Malaysians (&amp;quot;tropical natives&amp;quot;) and Japanese males.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They put them under a number of different scenarios, such as soaking their feet in a warm bath, but also at resting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results saw that: tropical natives had a higher resting rectal temperature and lower hand and foot temperatures at rest [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-09-18T14:22:41.793" LastActivityDate="2022-09-18T14:22:41.793" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10312" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10316" CreationDate="2012-08-01T18:50:29.403" Score="17" ViewCount="4221" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some species, the Darwin's theory of evolution makes perfect sense to me. I can easily imagine how, for example, the giraffe has evolved to its current appearance: the natural selection was favoring individuals that could consume more vegetable food from trees using longer necks, and some individuals were getting at birth necks longer than average by pure genetic randomness and the long neck trait was being propagated to descendant individuals by means of genetic inheritance. I have no problem with understanding this kind of evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's have a look at the bat and its relatives. The bat is one of the few mammals that have something to do with flying and the only one that took flying to the bird level. Paleontologically, first mammals date to the dinosaur era and initially looked similar to the present-day shrew (which looks much like a mouse). The question is: how in the world prehistoric mouse-like creatures could grow wings over time? It impossible to believe that some mouse-like individuals were getting wing-like limbs by mutation and the &quot;wings&quot; were growing out accompanied with the knowledge of how the &quot;wings&quot; can actually be used. Ok, then maybe first wings were tiny moth-size wings and then grew larger? But where natural selection would come into play in this case? Such mouse-like individuals would have no advantage over their wingless relatives and thus would not be able to transfer those wing-growing genes to their descendants, quite the contrary, such individuals with useless mutations that interfere with their ability to walk would be suppressed by natural selection and therefore &quot;weeded out&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As noted by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.creationism.org/batman/bats.htm&quot;&gt;Ron Lyttle&lt;/a&gt; of Oregon's &quot;Design Science Association&quot;, an organization that studies creation/evolution issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you ask an evolutionist to show you the ancestor of a bat, he will, in all likelihood (as does the ZooBooks volume on &quot;Bats&quot;), show you a mythical creature with elongated limbs connected by stretched skin gliding from branch to branch like a modern flying squirrel.  It will have paws on all four limbs, and may be seen perching on a branch with skin folds hanging down (Wood and Rink, p. 6).  What the evolutionist will not show you is any kind of transition between paws used for standing and running, and hand-wings used for flying.  He won't show you because there is no fossil of such a creature, and he can't imagine what one would look like.  He also can't explain how &quot;survival of the fittest&quot; would produce it.  At some point elongating front toes would interfere with quadrupedal (four-footed) movement long before they could become the ribs of functional wings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So what is the story behind the bat's wings and is the Theory of Evolution really able to support it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8027" LastEditorUserId="8027" LastEditDate="2012-08-02T10:34:30.047" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T18:52:36.427" Title="Is the theory of evolution disproved by bats?" Tags="|biology|zoology|evolution|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10314" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-01T19:45:52.123" Score="3" ViewCount="5489" Body="&lt;p&gt;A common story that is sometimes repeated, going as far to be included in an episode of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosbius_Designs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How I Met Your Mother&lt;/a&gt;, is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once an architect was commissioned to design a library, they put a&#xA;  lot of effort into it and the client was pleased; however, once it was&#xA;  built it started to sink into the ground. Turns out that they forgot&#xA;  to take into account the weight of the books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moral of the story being to double check your work and make sure you factor in all variables; however, has this ever actually happened?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-08-02T03:56:34.153" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T03:56:34.153" Title="Has an architect ever forgotten the weight of the books when designing a library?" Tags="|architecture|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10312" CreationDate="2012-08-01T19:50:32.267" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. Darwin's theory is able to support the evolution of bat wings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bat fossil evidence is still coming to light. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/feb/13/bat.evolution&quot;&gt;in the last ten years&lt;/a&gt;, we have  found new bat fossils that lack the structures allowing echolocation. We now know that bats likely evolved flight before echolocation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem in finding specific fossils (such as a bat-like mammal without wings) is that you have to know where in the fossil record to look. Until &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050128215645.htm&quot;&gt;a 2005 discovery&lt;/a&gt; in molecular biology, the evolution of bat wings was thought to take place over a much longer time span than is currently thought to be the case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This changes two things: first, it lowers the likelihood of finding the right fossil (its in a smaller window) and two, it shows that we might be looking for pre-bat fossils in the wrong place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the overall &quot;story&quot; of how, why, and where bats evolved wings, without more fossil evidence we don't know. But the specific differences between bat and mouse genomes demonstrate that a small number of changes allow for the lengthening of finger bones in bats, which is the prerequisite for flight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transitional fossils &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/dinosaur/&quot;&gt;have been found&lt;/a&gt; for birds already--we have proto-birds that were not capable of flight but were capable of controlled gliding. These proto-birds appear to have been arboreal insectovores that glided from tree to tree, and it isn't unlikely that the ancestors of bats were much the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Birds are in fact as exceptional as bats, they are the only members of the dinosaur family to ever achieve flight. They don't seem as exceptional to us because all of their close relatives have gone extinct, unlike the close relatives of bats!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7164" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T19:50:32.267" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10312" CreationDate="2012-08-01T19:52:31.083" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is nothing about bat evolution that is a threat to the theory of evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the part of the claim that speaks of &quot;moth-like wings&quot; is not what elongated digits would look like. They might look more like those of a tarsier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sTeyV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;tarsier&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://tarsieruk.homestead.com/tarsier.html#anchor_113&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://tarsieruk.homestead.com/tarsier.html#anchor_113&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, the claim that there is no incremental benefit in having either elongated digits or glide-enhancing (pre-powered) surfaces is incorrect, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flyingsquirrels.com/Video/Wild/slomo_incoming.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as demonstrated by the flying squirrel&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://genesdev.cshlp.org/content/22/2/121.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Understanding of bat wing evolution takes flight&lt;/a&gt;&quot; acknowledges the challenge of fossil gaps :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Darwin recognized that the most serious challenge to his new theory of natural selection was its inability to explain the apparent sudden emergence of evolutionary novelty in the fossil record, and he appreciated the evolution of flight by bats to be one such problematic example ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the fossil record appears to have a long gap:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]he ancestors of modern bats that first appear in the fossil record ∼50 million years ago during the Eocene already have elongated digits, extensive interdigital membranes, and robust anterior forelimb muscles indicative of powered flight (Thewissen and Babcock 1992; Speakman 2001; Sears et al. 2006). This has led to speculation that bat evolution occurred rapidly... [but] recent systematic studies based on molecular and paleontological data suggest that the common ancestor of modern bats likely originated ∼64 million years ago at the Cretacious/Tertiary boundary, indicating that there is at least a 14-million-year gap in the existing fossil record. [Ibid.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it appears that researchers are seeing clear pathways that could lead to the important mutations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[O]ur results suggest that an up-regulation of the Bmp pathway is one of the major factors in the developmental elongation of bat forelimb digits, and it is potentially a key mechanism in their evolutionary elongation as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/103/17/6581.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Development of bat flight: Morphologic and molecular evolution of bat wing digits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-08-01T19:52:31.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10319" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-02T03:40:02.013" Score="8" ViewCount="801" Body="&lt;p&gt;Homoeopathy is the idea that a &quot;a substance that causes the symptoms of a disease in healthy people will cure that disease in sick people&quot;. Furthermore, the potency of the 'treatment' is alleged to generally increase the more the active ingredient is diluted. The dilutions are extreme, such as (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathic_dilutions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathic_dilutions&lt;/a&gt;) a dilution of 30C contains 1 ml of the ingredient in 1,191,016 cubic light years of water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the question of whether such a preparation is likely to have any effect on someone, for good or bad, how could a laboratory even prepare such a product? Even if a process was started with the smallest measurable amount of the active ingredient, how can a laboratory claim to have employed such a ludicrous amount of water in the dilution process? Given that it is impossible to test the end product for the original active ingredient, is it much more likely that homoeopathy products are 'manufactured' without even bothering with the active ingredient in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8036" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-03T06:35:58.277" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T01:13:38.217" Title="Do manufacturers of homeopathy products add any of the allegedly active ingredients?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|homeopathy|medications|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9571" CreationDate="2012-08-02T03:52:55.890" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question as it is written is loaded for a couple of reasons: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, if you are you asking if this is a Masonic gesture, consider that there are also many works of art where this gesture is done where the people involved are clearly not Masons. So it is wrong to suggest that this pose is &quot;purely&quot; a Masonic gesture and providing an answer to the question as is, is misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, and this has come up before on this site, you are asking about a secret society who: operates in secret, passes traditions on via word of mouth and does not have a published guidebook which states clearly what they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is a supposed* Masonic gesture where the right hand is placed inside the coat / shirt that appears quite similar to the above gesture. So the answer to your question is it is possible, but don't confuse that with meaning that everyone who does this in a portrait is a Mason or is copying a Mason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other possible valid explanations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is a gesture to make the person look more stately or civilised&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was one of the ways a person could rest their hands during a long portrait&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was a common gesture in that period for portraits (in 500 years time people could be asking why do so many kids do the peace sign in photographs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sacred-texts.com/mas/dun/dun08.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;From Duncan's Masonic Ritual and Monitor&#xA;by Malcolm C. Duncan [1866]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My words are Shem, Japhet, and Adoniram; my sign is this: (thrusting&#xA;  his hand in his bosom); it is in imitation of one given by God to&#xA;  Moses, when He commanded him to thrust his hand into his bosom, and,&#xA;  taking it out, it became as leprous as snow. My word of exhortation is&#xA;  explanatory of this sign, and is found in the writings of Moses, viz.,&#xA;  fourth chapter of Exodus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And the Lord said unto Moses, Put now thine hand into thy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;bosom. And he put his hand into his bosom; and when he took it out,&#xA;  behold, his hand was leprous as snow,&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lh3Nu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;FIG. 34. SIGN OF THE MASTER OF THE SECOND VEIL.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FIG. 34. SIGN OF THE MASTER OF THE SECOND VEIL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*In reference to the authenticity of this book or details within, refer to my second point above; this is a secret society. Furthermore rituals in one geographical area may only be for that limited area and not for the entire organisation or even at the country level for that matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the reasons above it is not possible to make an accurate assumption about the Masons and say &quot;oh yeah, this is something the Masons do&quot;. There is no evidence available to suggest that this is an organisation wide gesture. There is zero evidence to suggest that everyone who is doing this is making a Masonic symbol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T03:52:55.890" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10321" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-02T04:04:49.750" Score="22" ViewCount="1458" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw a table set up for &quot;Free Stress Test&quot; that someone was sitting at looking forlorn because everybody was walking past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked how it worked and she got me to sit down with these two cans attached to a device she called an &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-meter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;e-meter&lt;/a&gt;&quot; with a retro looking meter/arm thingy. While I held a can in each hand she twiddled with some knobs on the machine while explaining that emotions actually have weight (like it's a scientific fact).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then as I was watching the meter she pinched me and the arm swung across. Then she told me to recall that moment and the arm swung again!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the discussion was her pretty hard-selling me a book called *&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dianetics:_The_Modern_Science_of_Mental_Health&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dianetics the Modern Science of Mental Health&lt;/a&gt; by trying to delve into my personal life in search of times I was upset. She kept putting it in my hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've worked in retail and recognised the tactics, but this was like 100 times more intense than anything I've seen. It weirded me out, then when I said I'd ask about it online here before spending any money she went all wide-eyed and insisted the internet was full of lies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway I was more interested in the way the device worked. When I asked if it was anything more than a Galvanometer, she looked like she was hiding the fact that she'd never heard that word, and evaded my specific questions about what's inside it, even when I tried prompting her with guesses about a Wheatstone bridge. She didn't talk about crystals or stuff like that though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So now I'm home after agreeing to revisit her, and on the internet again asking here before doing a search, what's the deal? Are there any reputable sites that examine this device?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8037" LastEditorUserId="8014" LastEditDate="2016-04-13T16:18:17.177" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T16:18:17.177" Title="Do Hubbard Electrometers (E-meters) detect emotion about past experiences?" Tags="|physiology|electromagnetism|scientology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10321" CreationDate="2012-08-02T10:12:37.613" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rtc.org/religion/pg002.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What Scientology says:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. &lt;strong&gt;Hubbard developed the E-Meter based on the knowledge that the mind contains mental image pictures, actual recordings of past experiences. These pictures contain energy and mass.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a person views one of these mental image pictures, or thinks a thought, &lt;strong&gt;the E-Meter registers with precision the changes which occur in this mental mass and energy.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the book &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Understanding the E-Meter&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, by L. Ron Hubbard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/s0OUA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Book Cover&quot;&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://legacyimgs.lronhubbard.org/book/html/rl14.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In Scientology is has been discovered that mental energy is simply a finer, higher level of physical energy.  The test of this is conclusive in that a thetan &lt;strong&gt;“mocking up” (creating) mental image pictures and thrusting them into the body can increase the body mass and by casting them away again can decrease the body mass.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br&gt;&lt;em&gt;This test has actually been made and an increase of as much as thirty pounds, actually measured on scales, has been added to, and subtracted from, a body by creating ‘mental energy.’  Energy is energy,  matter is condensed energy.&lt;/em&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-meter#Scientology.27s_views_on_the_device&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ajSme.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;1&quot;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tD41z.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dnLSe.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;3&quot;&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://androvillans.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/understanding-the-e-meter-no-science-in-scientology/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So basically the claim is:&lt;/strong&gt; mental images increase the mass of the body. This increase can't just be measured with a scale, but also with an E-Meter (electrical current).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/emeter.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Skeptic's Dictionary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no concept in physics or neurology of the mass and energy of a mental image.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is not to say that thoughts don't have physical effects. They do, of course, but it really shouldn't be much of a revelation to find out that when one thinks of the most upsetting thing of the day that it has a negative physical effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finding a reading on a meter while having a thought or feeling is little more than a stage prop, a bit of theater to make the process of telling you what you already know seem magical and scientific.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_S._Touretzky&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;David S. Touretzky&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/E-Meter/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Computer Science Department &amp;amp; Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Carnegie Mellon University&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (he is a known critic of &lt;em&gt;Scientology&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_claims_in_Scientology_doctrine#The_FDA_lawsuit&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Food &amp;amp; Drug Administration raided Scientology on January 4, 1963 and seized hundreds of E-meters as illegal medical devices&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The incident is described in Jon Atack's book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Piece_of_Blue_Sky&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;A Piece of Blue Sky&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, and in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/E-Meter/barrett-quote.txt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this essay by Stephen Barrett, M.D.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since that time, &lt;strong&gt;meters have been required to carry a disclaimer stating that they are purely a religious artifact.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nmOfl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;disclaimer&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;By itself, this meter does nothing.  It is solely for the guide of&#xA;  Ministers of the Church in Confessionals and pastoral counselling.  The&#xA;  Electrometer is not medically or scientifically capable of improving the&#xA;  health or bodily function of anyone and is for religious use by students&#xA;  and Ministers of the Church of Scientology only.  HUBBARD, E-METER and&#xA;  SCIENTOLOGY are trademarks and service marks owned by RTC and used with its&#xA;  permission.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/E-Meter/courtfile-2-69.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This appellate court decision&lt;/a&gt; describes the trial and the various witnesses who appeared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;L. Ron Hubbard reveals in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/E-Meter/tbite.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Book Introducing The E-Meter&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yO4Q8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Book Cover&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is a Hubbard Electrometer called an E-Meter for short.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Technically it is a specially developed '&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheatstone_bridge&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wheatstone Bridge&lt;/a&gt;' well known to electrically minded people as a device to measure the amount of resistance to a flow of electricity.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/E-Meter/Mark-VII/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Inside the Mark Super VII&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Hubbard Professional Mark Super VII&lt;/em&gt; is the most sophisticated and expensive e-meter yet developed by the Church of Scientology. Its retail price in 1995 was US $3,850.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q5aRv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Mark VII&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kN3CA.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Mark VII&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although the Church of Scientology claims that their e-meters are made of special high-precision components, the electronic technology in the Mark Super VII is ordinary 1980s-era &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very-large-scale_integration&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;VLSI&lt;/a&gt;, including an Intel 8051 8-bit microprocessor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An electrical engineer who examined the meter in November, 1995 estimated that devices of this type, custom-manufactured and sold in low volume, would normally retail for around $300 today. That is one twelfth the Church's asking price. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/E-Meter/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Visit David S. Touretzky's page&lt;/a&gt; for a lot more technical details about the E-Meter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://leda.law.harvard.edu/leda/data/651/Cavanaugh.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jeanne Cavanaugh - Scientology and the FDA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/358746/20120702/scientology-science-e-meter-tom-cruise-psychiatry.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IB Times - How The Controversial Church Shocks Members Into Submission&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-08-02T19:01:02.357" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T19:01:02.357" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10302" CreationDate="2012-08-02T11:07:33.343" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I go with the elders.&#xA;After eating anything, the body tends to focus on digestion. Consequentially, the blood-circulation in other body parts is relaxed. (ever feel sleepy or ambiance  suddenly colder after a wonderful dinner ?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Body movements demand blood circulation to other body parts, causing distraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The converse is equally true.&#xA;If you've just finished rigorous workout, heavy meal might not be digested properly, as the body is then fulfilling blood demands in other body parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8040" LastActivityDate="2012-08-02T11:07:33.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10319" CreationDate="2012-08-02T16:42:02.753" Score="-7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A research by Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 2010 indicates the presence of nano-grams of fine nano-particles of the original starting material in 200c potency of homeopathic medicines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1475491610000548&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Extreme homeopathic dilutions retain starting&#xA;materials: A nanoparticulate perspective&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.katonics.com/uploads/2010%20-%20%20Paper%201%20-%20Extreme%20homeopathic%20dilutions%20retain%20starting%20%20materials-A%20nanoparticulate%20perspective.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(Full text PDF)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8044" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-08-03T08:56:11.830" LastActivityDate="2012-08-03T08:56:11.830" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10327" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31468" CreationDate="2012-08-02T19:36:36.343" Score="37" ViewCount="21136" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard various versions of this meme and was tempted to quote it in a comment on another thread.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/scientology/start.a.religion.html&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; appears to do a fairly decent job of investigating the claim but leaves the conclusion based at best on anecdotal evidence that is disputed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;L. Ron Hubbard is widely rumored to have said &quot;The way to make a&#xA;  million dollars is to start a religion.&quot; There are also variant&#xA;  rumors. For some reason, this is often mentioned on Usenet. Evidence&#xA;  is discussed below, but the short answer is that it's almost certainly&#xA;  true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest thing the author of the site has to evidence is someone who said they were there years ago and heard it, or something like it said.  Is there any evidence that Hubbard said this?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-19T00:20:08.807" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T19:10:42.860" Title="Did L Ron Hubbard say &quot;The way to make a million dollars is to start a religion.&quot;" Tags="|quotes|scientology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9709" CreationDate="2012-08-03T00:27:02.077" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=/NRR/NRR13_02/S0954422400000706a.pdf&amp;amp;code=35051831e10a7a6e6cb278dbfe6e39fd&quot;&gt;Calcium may inhibit iron absorption&lt;/a&gt;, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's &quot;unhealthy&quot;, just that if you're eating red meat to contribute to your body's iron reserves, and drinking milk to achieve the same thing with calcium, it may be best not to have them in the same meal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8049" LastActivityDate="2012-08-03T00:27:02.077" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10334" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10336" CreationDate="2012-08-03T01:04:01.740" Score="9" ViewCount="2939" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ufoinfo.com/filer/2005/ff0502.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UFO site&lt;/a&gt; which claims that the below image is captured by the Mars Global Surveyor and is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;of what looks like pine or other similar type of trees. I think this image is important because the trees seem to be on a hillside, and for the first time tree trunks can be seen from this perspective rather that just an overhead view which makes the trees easier to identify as life on Mars. They look like a rugged type of tree you might find at higher altitudes and in tough environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/k3h1V.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msss.com/moc_gallery/e07_e12/medium_jpg_tiled/E07/E0701717.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;image credit&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any evidence that this is a genuine image taken by the Mars Global Surveyor, and is there an official explanation from NASA or any other space agencies?&lt;/strong&gt; I would expect that these images, if real, are of a specific type of rock formation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:39:21.347" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:39:21.347" Title="Are there pine trees on Mars?" Tags="|biology|astronomy|biophysics|planetology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7093" CreationDate="2012-08-03T04:38:32.473" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;You ask about IQ, but a closely related question is even more commonly found - that  men show greater variance in the distribution of their &lt;em&gt;mathematics&lt;/em&gt; skills than women. I am hoping that, with only a slight wave of the hand, you will consider an answer in this area to be highly relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ed Yong wrote an article for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/06/01/gender-gap-in-maths-driven-by-social-factors-not-biological/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Not Rocket Science&lt;/a&gt; blog, which covers this area so well, I had to stop myself from simply quoting it all. I recommend reading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looked at, and summarised the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hyde, J., &amp;amp; Mertz, J. (2009). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/106/22/8801.long&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gender, culture, and mathematics performance&lt;/a&gt;  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (22), 8801-8807 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0901265106&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yong explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that men outnumber women in the highest echelons of mathematics (as in science, technology and  engineering) has always been controversial, particularly for the persistent notion that this disparity is down to an innate biological advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, two professors from the University of Wisconsin – Janet Hyde and Janet Mertz – have reviewed the strong evidence that at least in maths, the gender gap is down to social and cultural factors that can help or hinder women from pursuing the skills needed to master mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They looked at a number of factors - e.g. the performance of the genders in the general population, as well as the mathematically-talented (i.e. at the upper end of the distribution.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;gender differences in maths performance don’t really exist in the general population, with girls now performing as well as boys in standardised tests. Among the mathematically talented, a gender gap is more apparent but it is closing fast in many countries and non-existent in others. And tellingly, the size of the gap strongly depends on how equally the two sexes are treated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since 1894, some scientists have suggested that men have a greater variability in intellectual ability than women, a simple statistical quirk that would result in more male prodigies. This was the controversial hypothesis that Lawrence Summers mentioned in his now-infamous speech at the National Bureau of Economic Research Conference in 2005:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Even small differences in the standard deviation will translate into very large differences in the available pool substantially out… In the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To test that, Hyde looked at data from maths tests in Minnesota and compared the numbers of boys and girls who scored in the top 5% of their year. The ratio was 1.45, meaning that for every two girls in this elite group, there were around three boys. In the top 1%, the ratio was 2.06, meaning two boys for every girl. That seems to vindicate the Variability Hypothesis, but those figures only applied to white American children. In other ethnic groups or, indeed, in other countries, the picture was very different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Asian-Americans the ratio was actually 0.91, meaning more girls than boys in the top 1%. International studies have found similar trends. One analysis of tests from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) showed that 15-year-old girls matched or outnumbered their male peers in the top tiers  within Iceland, Thailand and the UK. Two studies found that 15-year-old boys and girls were equally varied in their mathematical skills in most of the countries taking part in PISA and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). In some, like the Netherlands, girls actually turned out to have the wider range of ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So much for the idea that a greater variation in ability underlies the larger number of men in the top ranks of mathematics – if that had any biological basis, it should apply to all populations regardless of ethnicity or nationality. Clearly, that’s not the case. Instead, the evidence suggests that whatever gender differences exist are mostly down to social factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, if we accept that the claim that men have a greater distribution in IQ has the same basis as the similar 1894 claim that men have a greater distribution of &lt;em&gt;maths skills&lt;/em&gt; than women, then we can see that there is strong evidence to suggest any such discrepancies in skill are cultural and not innate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-08-03T04:38:32.473" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10334" CreationDate="2012-08-03T04:43:21.517" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first and second panels bear streaks that look like what has been tentatively described as ejecta from '&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_geyser&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sand geysers&lt;/a&gt;'. These may occur when subsurface solid carbon dioxide (dry ice) deposits sublime, resulting in outgassing that blows dust into the air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See for instance this image from the wiki article, originally published by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003/2002JE002007.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Piqueux et al. in the Journal of Geophysical Research&lt;/a&gt;. The unidirectionality of the ejecta streaks due to prevailing winds gives the impression of shadows being projected from tall structures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/e8UMp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative to sand geysers is the possibility of sand cascade tracks, such as seen in this fantastic &lt;a href=&quot;http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100119.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;picture&lt;/a&gt; from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, aptly filenamed 'almosttrees_mro.jpg':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ptclh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both scenarios, the streaks lie on the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4060" LastActivityDate="2012-08-03T04:43:21.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10341" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-03T17:26:56.330" Score="7" ViewCount="644" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the early climate-skeptic arguments against the consensus view that the world is warming to a dangerous extent, was that the instrumental record of temperature was corrupted by the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect. Wikpedia has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_heat_island&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;good summary&lt;/a&gt; and even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/11/urban-heat-island-uhie/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;RealClimate&lt;/a&gt; refers to their summary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument was that a failure to correct for the (well-known) effect where urbanisation increases local temperatures led to exaggeration of the temperature trend measured by local weather stations and this, in turn, led to an overestimation of the average degree of warming across the world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The climate-skeptic argument has been widely criticised. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SkepticalScience&lt;/a&gt; dismisses it like this (and the link has further detail):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientists have been very careful to ensure that UHI is not influencing the temperature trends. To address this concern, they have compared the data from remote stations (sites that are nowhere near human activity) to more urban sites. Likewise, investigators have also looked at sites across rural and urban China, which has experienced rapid growth in urbanisation over the past 30 years and is therefore very likely to show UHI. The difference between ideal rural sites compared to urban sites in temperature trends has been very small...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a recent paper by the climate-skeptic Anthony Watts and others (&lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/29/press-release-2/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;press release here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/watts-et-al_2012_discussion_paper_webrelease.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;full draft paper pdf here&lt;/a&gt;) argues that, when properly classified by site-quality, there is a significant difference in the degree of warming reported between good and bad sites which leads to a significant exaggeration of the reported US temperature trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results are summarised well by this picture showing the apparent differences between the reported warming of good versus bad sites:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nSFds.png&quot; alt=&quot;figure from watts et. al. paper&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper argues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A reanalysis of U.S. surface station temperatures has been performed using the recently WMO-approved Siting Classification System devised by METEO-France’s Michel Leroy. The new siting classification more accurately characterizes the quality of the location in terms of monitoring long-term spatially representative surface temperature trends. The new analysis demonstrates that reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled, with 92% of that over-estimation resulting from erroneous NOAA adjustments of well-sited stations upward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is: does the new paper from Watts et. al. convincingly suggest that, when sites recording actual temperatures are properly classified, the warming trend is lower in sites where the UHI is less significant? Is Watts' observation-based argument credible? Does it undermine previous rebuttals of the influence of UHI on the temperature record?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB. Watts doesn't claim there is no warming, just that the extent of warming is lower when only good-quality temperature-recording sites are used. So the question is about the quality of the instrumental record not about whether warming is happening. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-08-03T21:44:26.213" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T08:53:15.217" Title="Has the Urban Heat Island effect on the US temperature record been underestimated?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10341" CreationDate="2012-08-03T21:29:38.607" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, it should not be convincing to anyone who cares about using data meaningfully and scientifically.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Raw ambient temperature data is seldom useful in and of itself. Particularly when:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;temperature measurements get taken at different times of day, because temperature varies in known patterns with time of day; this requires Time of Observations (TOBs) corrections. One of the paper's authors, McIntyre, has even publicly acknowledged that this is a significant flaw in the paper (ref 6). Despite McIntyre's own less-than-distinguished history with statistics in climate science. (ref 7)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;temperature sensors move from one location to another, because that causes systematic changes in recorded temperature:&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/n6J1a.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; (figure from ref 1)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the instruments themselves are sometimes changed, causing systematic changes in recorded temperature. (ref 3,4,5)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By ignoring all of those changes, by stripping out the data corrections as Watts et al do, information is stripped from the data. So whatever is claimed to be shown by the uncorrected data, is no longer meaningful. No conclusions can be taken from Watts et al. Not about underlying trends, nor about urban heat islands, nor about differing trends at high-quality and low-quality stations. The only thing the paper shows is that its authors have failed to do rigorous scientific analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Sources&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skepticalscience.com/watts_new_paper_critique.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skeptical Science analysis of the paper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rankexploits.com/musings/2012/initial-thoughts-on-the-watts-et-al-draft/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Initial thoughts on the Watts et al draft&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rankexploits.com/musings/2010/a-cooling-bias-due-to-mmts/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A cooling bias due to MMTs?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/v2/monthly/menne-etal2009.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Menne et al 2009&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0477%281991%29072%3C1718%3AEORTCI%3E2.0.CO%3B2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quayle et al 1991&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;When I had done my own initial assessment of this a few years ago, I had used TOBS versions and am annoyed with myself for not properly considering this factor. I should have noticed it immediately. That will teach me to keep to my practices of not rushing. Anyway, now that I’m drawn into this, I’ll have carry out the TOBS analysis, which I’ll do in the next few days &quot; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://climateaudit.org/2012/07/31/surface-stations/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;McIntyre's blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;McIntyre claimed to have reproduced a hockey stick from red noise. However, what he did was generate 10,000 sets of red noise, and then filter down to just the 100 of these that most resembled a hockey-stick, for his paper. &lt;a href=&quot;http://deepclimate.org/2010/02/04/steve-mcintyre-and-ross-mckitrick-part-1-in-the-beginning/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;7a&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://deepclimate.org/2010/02/08/steve-mcintyre-and-ross-mckitrick-part-2-barton-wegman/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;7b&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://deepclimate.org/2010/10/25/the-wegman-report-sees-red-noise/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;7c&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://deepclimate.org/2010/11/16/replication-and-due-diligence-wegman-style/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;7d&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="6236" LastEditDate="2012-08-05T08:53:15.217" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T08:53:15.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10345" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-04T16:15:41.667" Score="2" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5793/long-term-effects-of-sucralose&quot;&gt;Long term effects of sucralose&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that sucralose is the only chlorinated hydrocarbon we eat and that chlorinated hydrocarbons are inherently toxic?  (I realize the source of these claims is the pro-sugar brigade)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8063" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-08-04T17:57:53.913" Title="Are sucralose (&quot;Splenda&quot;) and all other chlorinated hydrocarbons toxic?" Tags="|nutrition|toxicology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-08-04T18:58:09.547" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7531" CreationDate="2012-08-05T12:59:23.770" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Violent or anti-social music lyrics may provide a short-term catharsis for depression and feelings of alienation, by giving the listener the company that mysery is said to crave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In larger doses, however, the negative emotions expressed in those songs are apt to work at ingraining the attitudes they portray in their lyrics into the minds of their listeners, thus reinforcing the feelings of depression and sometimes by validating thoughts of violence or suicide. (Shneidman and Farberow, 1994)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes, when addiction to heavy metal or rap music becomes extreme, a &quot;media delinquency&quot; can develop, when the music becomes an actual contributory factor in a person's thoughts, decision-making and behavior. (Pezdek &amp;amp; Roe, 1995)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, Goleman states (1995):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To immerse oneself in angry, desperate, depressing music is a poor strategy for coping with anger, despair, and depression. Neuroscience suggests that&#xA;  'brooding,' or dwelling on one’s current emotional state, is more likely to&#xA;  deepen the state rather than to alleviate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;On a brief personal note, I can tell you from first-hand experience how a person's choice of music can backfire on them. My husband (now ex-) has always listened to heavy metal head-banger stuff since I've known him. When we were 20, it was not such a big deal, I guess. But as the years passed, it was like the pissed off teen rebel &quot;I hate my parents and I'll do what I want&quot; theme somehow stunted his emotional growth. I have long believed that the 4 to upward of 10 hours each day he has spent listening to angry, depressing anti-social lyrics as though they were a personal anthem has seriously affected his brain and the way he thinks and views himself and the rest of the world. &quot;Hate Rock,&quot; I always called it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer the question: Yes, listening to sad music while a person is feeling sad themselves can be cathartic and is a matter of personal choice of whether to deal with their feelings that way. BUT, beware the negative effects of over-indulgence, especially in those prone to addictive behavior. (Pezdek &amp;amp; Roe, 1995) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=TFhHAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;q=Schneidman+Farberow&amp;amp;dq=Schneidman+Farberow&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=8wDn6bSXjS&amp;amp;sig=atHxY-fdj6RYzTw45XTx1jCaMzc&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=3oIeUNajD8utiQfKqYHADg&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Psychology of Suicide&lt;/a&gt; : Edwin S. Shneidman, Norman L. Farberow, Robert E. Litman (1994)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pezdek, K., &amp;amp; Roe, C. (1995). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cgu.edu/include/The%20Effect%20of%20Memory%20Trace%20Strength.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The effect of memory trace strength on suggestibility.&lt;/a&gt; Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 60, 116-128&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Goleman, D. P. (1995). &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=5AsRAQAAIAAJ&amp;amp;q=isbn:9780553383713&amp;amp;dq=isbn:9780553383713&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=gGuQo097mh&amp;amp;sig=abKx-plDCRnEDr-qHsuuSJM_xuA&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=3IEeUM2TL8qfiQeM54Eo&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Emotional Intelligence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8076" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-05T14:30:19.213" LastActivityDate="2012-08-05T14:30:19.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10321" CreationDate="2012-08-06T02:46:40.697" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mark Bunker has an anti-Scientology blog, called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xenutv.com/blog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Xenu TV&lt;/a&gt;. He links to a number of current affairs shows to suggest the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xenutv.com/blog/2012/08/01/e-meter-called-a-scam/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;e-meter is a scam&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Davis_%28Scientology%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tommy Davis, a senior Scientologist&lt;/a&gt; was &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2CsVcQgU_M#t=5m15s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;interviewed by a doubting reporter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The e-meter only measures resistance and the more in a trance you are the more &quot;TA&quot; is measured. Less involuntary actions like thoughts or twitching the more TA is gained. Most repetitive commands in auditing are done when they reach a &quot;flat point&quot; meaning no reaction, meaning hypnotised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Volney Mathison who invented the e-meter sold it as a &quot;self hypnosis machine&quot;. These are the booklets he wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Super-Visualization: The Duplication Techniques of Applied Creative Energy, Volume 1 (1950)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Creative Image Therapy (1954)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Electropsychometry (1954 or 1955)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How to Achieve Past Life Recalls (1956) published by Mathison Electropsychometers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Secret of the Lourdes Miracles Revealed (1956)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practical Self-Hypnosis: How to Achieve and Effectively to Use Hypnosis without the Presence of an Operator (1957)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Space-Age Self-Hypnosis (1957)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For four years, from 1954 to 1958 while Hubbard failed to talk Mathison into selling him the patent rights to the E-meter, Hubbard discouraged the use of the E-meter in the process of auditing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8086" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-06T03:17:55.590" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T03:17:55.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10366" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10369" CreationDate="2012-08-06T09:28:06.563" Score="11" ViewCount="3415" Body="&lt;p&gt;The winner of the 100m sprint is often labelled the &quot;fastest man on the planet&quot;. Often the average speed over the race is given, but the peak speed seems to reflect the description better. Is there any evidence to support the fastest man claim with respect to peak speed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, it seems at least plausible that, if still accelerating at the end of the 100m race, an athlete might reach a faster peak speed running the 200m.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1876" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T18:40:49.793" Title="Is the 100m winner the &quot;fastest man&quot;?" Tags="|physiology|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10368" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-06T10:56:20.157" Score="19" ViewCount="11882" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Electric muscle stimulation (EMS) is touted as having the ability to&#xA;  strengthen muscles, reduce weight, minimize body fat and improve local&#xA;  blood circulation. During physical activity, your brain (inside&#xA;  source) sends a message to nerves to signal the contraction of certain&#xA;  muscles. EMS uses an outside electrical source to communicate with&#xA;  nerve fibers. When the stimulation is applied, the brain sends a nerve&#xA;  impulse to the motor point of the muscle. This signal causes the&#xA;  muscle to expand and contract. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/37127-electrical-muscle-stimulation-work/&quot;&gt;Livestrong&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is physical training with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_muscle_stimulation&quot;&gt;electrical muscle stimulation&lt;/a&gt; safe and effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2016-04-24T09:49:02.387" LastActivityDate="2016-04-24T09:49:02.387" Title="Is electric muscle stimulation (EMS) training safe and effective?" Tags="|medical-science|electromagnetism|physical-fitness|livestrong|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10366" CreationDate="2012-08-06T12:59:47.840" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_World_Championships_in_Athletics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2009 Berlin World Championships&lt;/a&gt;, where Usain Bolt set his current world records for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_metres#Fastest_100_metres_runners&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;100m&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/200_metres#Men&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;200m&lt;/a&gt; races, following data was recorded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;br&gt; 100m&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/J0ehW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;100m&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://berlin.iaaf.org/mm/document/development/research/05/30/83/20090817081546_httppostedfile_wch09_m100_final_13529.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt; As can be seen in this data: &lt;strong&gt;the time between 60m - 80m was the shortest&lt;/strong&gt; for all the runners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For Usain Bolt it's: &lt;em&gt;20m in 1.61s, this translates to &lt;strong&gt;12.4 m/s&lt;/strong&gt; (~44.7 km/h, ~27.8 mph).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;br&gt; 200m&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DFM3F.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;200m&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://berlin.iaaf.org/mm/Document/Development/Research/05/37/17/20090820104454_httppostedfile_wch09_m200_final_15272.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Here the athletes &lt;strong&gt;run the fastest between 50m - 100m&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For Usain Bolt it's: &lt;em&gt;50m in 4.32s, this translates to &lt;strong&gt;11.57 m/s&lt;/strong&gt; (~41.6 km/h, ~25.9 mph).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; Usain Bolt ran the second leg (100m - 200m) in just &lt;em&gt;9.27s&lt;/em&gt;, which is considerably faster than his 100m world record of &lt;em&gt;9.58s&lt;/em&gt;. But that's not unusual, because for the second leg the athletes have a &lt;em&gt;running start&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;100m in 9.27s means an average speed of 10.79 m/s&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100m race: &lt;em&gt;Usain Bolt was the fastest between 60m - 80m, with an average speed (in that segment) of 12.4 m/s&lt;/em&gt; (his overall average speed being 10.44 m/s)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;200m race: &lt;em&gt;Usain Bolt was the fastest between 50m -100m, with an average speed (in that segment) of 11.57 m/s&lt;/em&gt; (his overall average speed being 10.42 m/s)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footspeed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia - Footspeed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100122102843.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science Daily - Human Running Speeds of 35 to 40 Mph May Be Biologically Possible&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/2004/05/14/cx_mh_0514running.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forbes - What's The Human Speed Limit?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-08-06T13:06:20.563" LastActivityDate="2012-08-06T13:06:20.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10374" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-06T23:29:28.600" Score="17" ViewCount="3185" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost everyone I know locks their car doors when they leave their vehicle for an extended time. However, I come from a country town and most people in that country town don't lock their car doors and rarely lock up their houses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I moved to the city to live when I was 8 years old and have always wondered what the point is in locking your car doors? If someone can start your ignition without a set of keys they can surely, with even less effort, open your car doors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest that locking your car door reduces the chance of your car being stolen &lt;em&gt;or&lt;/em&gt; reduces the chance of a valuable being stolen from an out-of-sight area (glove box, car boot)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of the claim that people should lock their doors to prevent vehicle theft:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.police.vic.gov.au/content.asp?document_id=9562&quot;&gt;Tips to help you prevent vehicle theft: Close all windows and lock&#xA;  all doors before leaving your car unattended.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/11823722/15-ways-to-protect-your-car-from-theft&quot;&gt;Lock your car. Approximately 50 percent of all vehicles stolen were left unlocked.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://owner.ford.com/servlet/ContentServer?cid=1238506408154&amp;amp;pagename=Owner/Page/ArticleDetail&amp;amp;recid=1251387049572&amp;amp;parentheadlineimageid=1234280151969&amp;amp;parentrightrecid=1251734739239&quot;&gt;How To Help Prevent Vehicle Theft: Lock your vehicle every time you leave it, even in the driveway or garage of your home.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2012-08-07T09:50:45.677" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T08:48:43.283" Title="Does locking your car doors reduce theft?" Tags="|road-vehicles|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10375" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10391" CreationDate="2012-08-07T02:02:14.287" Score="7" ViewCount="5107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I first heard this claim a few years ago on the Top Gear program from the BBC. Since then I keep hearing it whenever I hear the Lexus LFA discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.topspeed.com/cars/lexus/2011-lexus-lf-a-ar80592.html&quot;&gt;this February 2012 article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This necessitated the need for a digital rev counter, since an&#xA;  analogue system simply could not keep pace with the engine’s&#xA;  incredible ability to gain and lose revolutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the almost exact wording of all of these quotes is the same (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com.au/search?q=lfa%20digital%20speedometer&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla%3aen-US%3aofficial&amp;amp;client=firefox-a#q=%22since%20an%20analogue%20system%20simply%20could%20not%20keep%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&amp;amp;hs=2Fa&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla%3aen-US%3aofficial&amp;amp;prmd=imvns&amp;amp;filter=0&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&amp;amp;fp=22a3c0ce448c25ca&amp;amp;biw=1920&amp;amp;bih=923&quot;&gt;this google search&lt;/a&gt;), my guess is that this comes from a Lexus press release; although I cannot find it myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this sounds like marketing fluff so that you can laugh at all the poor people who can only afford a BMW M3; but maybe not. From the same article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So successful was this low-friction programme that the engine can rev&#xA;  from idle to its 9,000rpm redline in just six-tenths of a second&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is it possible that an analogue gauge can be too slow? Given that a lot of open-wheel racers can achieve massive acceleration with analogue gauges (although perhaps not in 6/10th of a second, but certainly sub-1.5 seconds), I don't see why the LFA would &quot;require&quot; a digital meter (although it is un-deniably cool).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2240" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-08T17:07:48.610" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T23:08:17.787" Title="Does the Lexus LFA need digital gauges because analogue ones are too slow?" Tags="|road-vehicles|marketing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10381" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-07T19:56:41.290" Score="21" ViewCount="1688" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several sources, among them &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/08/06/health-chemotherapy-backfire-boost-cancer_n_1745856.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2184277/Chemotherapy-encourage-cancer-growth.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt; claim &lt;strong&gt;a recent study showed that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotherapy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;chemotherapy&lt;/a&gt;, which is used as a cancer cure, actually makes cancer worse.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chemotherapy can backfire by helping healthy body cells to fuel treatment-resistant cancer and growth, research has shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The surprise discovery suggests that many forms of cancer treatment can actually make the disease tougher to tackle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Daily Mail and Huffington Post both published the same, word for word, and neither acknowledges the other as source. But that’s just an aside.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This sounds like very bad news indeed.&lt;/strong&gt; Is there any truth to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T10:47:38.740" Title="Does chemotherapy make cancer worse?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10381" CreationDate="2012-08-07T19:56:41.290" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This result is a blatant misrepresentation of what the study&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; actually did, namely cataloguing changes in behaviour in the cells surrounding a tumour when exposed to anticancer treatment, and how those changes affect the resistance of the tumour to the treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2012/08/06/headlines-about-backfiring-chemotherapy-are-misleading/?utm_source=twitter_cr_uk&amp;amp;utm_medium=cruksocialmedia&amp;amp;utm_campaign=owntwitter_tweet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cancer Research UK&lt;/a&gt; calls the headlines “misleading” and warns not to take them seriously. They go on to say that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the research from US scientists that sparked the coverage categorically &lt;strong&gt;does not&lt;/strong&gt; show chemotherapy makes cancer harder to beat. Instead, the work gives scientists a vital insight into one way that the body can develop resistance to chemotherapy, and it could help explain why treatment sometimes stops working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And quite contrary to what the newspapers write, they say that &lt;strong&gt;“this is a ‘good news’ story”&lt;/strong&gt;, because it explains a known weakness of existing chemotherapy which can help develop better treatments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also clarify that the new research “doesn’t affect current treatment”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cancer patients do not need to be alarmed by today’s headlines and should not stop treatment. Decades of clinical trials have proved the effectiveness of chemotherapy in treating cancer and extending life …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Radiotherapy and surgery – not to mention other strategies like healthy living, early diagnosis and screening – are crucial, but chemotherapy plays a big part too. And work to improve it must be welcomed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But while we applaud the media’s interest in this important scientific paper, we want to calm the nerves of anyone worried by some of the headlines, which by themselves don’t paint an accurate picture of the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sloppy news coverage indeed. Cancer Research UK call out this sloppy coverage again by nothing that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to what some news outlets claim, this is not a particularly surprising finding either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the acquisition of resistance to anticancer treatment by tumours is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotherapy#Principles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;very well-known and unfortunate side-effect&lt;/a&gt;. For a newspaper to claim that this is a “surprising” new finding is nothing short of ignorant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;References&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nm.2890.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Y. Sun, J. Campisi &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp; al.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Treatment-induced damage to the tumor microenvironment promotes prostate cancer therapy resistance through WNT16B&lt;/em&gt;, Nature medicine (2012)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-08-07T19:56:41.290" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10384" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10395" CreationDate="2012-08-08T10:58:49.030" Score="48" ViewCount="7784" Body="&lt;p&gt;Via word-of-mouth, I have twice heard claims that speedometers are deliberately designed to read high, so manufacturers would not be subject to litigation for speeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I first heard this claim, I thought it was simply an excuse to justify speeding.  However, I've noticed that this claim is even on Wikipedia (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedometer#Error&quot;&gt;ref.&lt;/a&gt;), albeit unreferenced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vehicle manufacturers usually calibrate speedometers to read high by an amount equal to the average error, to ensure that their speedometers never indicate a lower speed than the actual speed of the vehicle, to ensure they are not liable for drivers violating speed limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, simply, is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;:  Do manufacturers deliberately calibrate speedometers to read high?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be plenty of such claims online, but I didn't find any trustworthy evidence to support the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, this claim seems inconsistent with government-enforced accuracies on speedometers (i.e., if speedometers were deliberately designed to be incorrect, then they would be less likely to meet government standards).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="273" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-09-01T03:17:10.403" LastActivityDate="2019-02-14T11:57:15.767" Title="Are speedometers designed to read high?" Tags="|road-vehicles|driving-speed|manufacturing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10385" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10375" CreationDate="2012-08-08T11:34:44.353" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;All modern engines are controlled with a microprocessor-based &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_control_unit&quot;&gt;engine control units(ECU)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OBD_II&quot;&gt;OBD II&lt;/a&gt; has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/obd/regtech/420f08032.pdf&quot;&gt;mandatory in the USA since 1996&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino&quot;&gt;simplest microcontrollers&lt;/a&gt; have more than enough computing power to check all the probes on the engine 9000 times per minute. They run literally millions of operations per second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So at least since 1996 cars have fully digital on-board computers that track engine performance in great detail. This data is fed via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus&quot;&gt;CAN bus&lt;/a&gt; to the dashboard and displayed in various ways to the driver (from revolution counter to &quot;check engine&quot; light).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The design of the different dashboard gauges, dials and control lights is a matter of aesthetic, usability and safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1790" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-08T17:07:16.927" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T17:07:16.927" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10384" CreationDate="2012-08-08T12:27:59.863" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the EU, speedometers are not allowed to display a speed that is lower than the speed the vehicle is traveling. Manufacturers calibrate speedometers to comply with this regulation as they would not be allowed to sell their cars if they did not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference - &lt;a href=&quot;http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:1975:196:0001:0005:EN:PDF&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EU Regulations for Speedometers (75/443/EEC)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The speed indicated must never be less than the true speed. At the speeds specified for the test in 4.3.5 above and between these speeds, there shall be the following relationship between the speed indicated on the dial of the speedometer (V1) and the true speed (V2):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/z7hy4.png&quot; alt=&quot;formula&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T12:27:59.863" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10375" CreationDate="2012-08-08T23:08:17.787" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to read the whole thing, my ultimate conclusion is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is all digital anyway, but it could have equally well been displayed with an old fashioned mechanical needle.  An LCD is cheaper and have fewer moving parts and is apparently sexier, so that is what they did.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Lexus marketing speak for the LFA is at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lexus.ie/range/lfa/features.aspx&quot;&gt;http://www.lexus.ie/range/lfa/features.aspx&lt;/a&gt; (make sure &lt;strong&gt;&lt;code&gt;Features&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is selected and click on the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;code&gt;performance cockpit&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; item and look at the middle of the second paragraph after the picture.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lexus states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;The central tachometer runs to 10,000rpm and features a fast reacting LCD needle designed to exactly replicate the V10 engine’s insatiable appetite for revs.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the display is driven by a computer that shows something that looks like a classic analog needle on an LCD display. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This display is most likely driven by the sensors in the engine that knows the speed of rotation of the crankshaft to some ridiculous level of precision. That is, ridiculous if its only purpose was to display the engines RPM. In fact, the RPM is an almost an incidental piece of data from the high resolution sensors measuring the angle of the crankshaft at any given moment in time so that the precise timing of the ignition system can be delivered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a V10 at 10,000 RPM, the need for exact and timely data is a real design challenge. A rough &lt;em&gt;guess&lt;/em&gt; is that it measures the angle at least a thousand times per rotation, so my &lt;em&gt;guess&lt;/em&gt; is that it knows the speed and position of the crankshaft around 170,000 times a second. I'm probably grossly underestimating the precision as I don't know the actual details for this car. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now and then — maybe a few hundred times a second, maybe more — the RPM information is feed onto the main digital bus in the car (probably a standard CAN bus). The data is then received by the computer responsible for painting the LCD display of the tachometer, updating it at perhaps one or two hundred times a second. This is far faster than the human eye can follow, so much greater speed would be useless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could this be done with a mechanical needle looking just like similar displays have done for maybe a 100 years? Yes of course. The needle would probably be driven by a medium fast servo system and its own little micro controller. Even though it was a mechanical &quot;analog&quot; needle, it would still be digital in that it showed an approximation of the digital value from the CAN bus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8120" LastActivityDate="2012-08-08T23:08:17.787" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10384" CreationDate="2012-08-09T00:44:36.377" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think speedometers are deliberately set to read high, but you are less likely to get a speeding ticket that way than if they read too low. If they read high, you can guarantee to be below the speed limit, even when your speedometer indicates you're slightly over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT&#xA;The first sentence above conflicts with what follows below: if the manufacturer is not permitted to apply a speedo that reads low, that can only be done by making sure it reads high. The only other possibility is to make it read exactly right, which is obviously impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Australia the indicated speed must not be lower, but can be up to 10% + 4km/hr higher than the actual speed. This applies when the car is tested as prescribed (correctly inflated standard tyres, unloaded, etc). The testing procedure and accuracy specifications are here (Motor Vehicle standards act 1989, Australian design rule 18/03 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rvcs-prodweb.dot.gov.au/files/ADR%201803.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;.pdf&lt;/a&gt;)):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5.3.  The speed indicated shall not be less than the true speed of the vehicle. At the test speeds specified in paragraph 5.2.5. above, there shall be the following relationship between the speed displayed (V1) and the true speed (V2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;0 ≤ (V1 - V2) ≤ 0.1 V2 + 4 km/h&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this, police in Victoria only let you go about 2km/hr over the speed limit before they book you. As far as I know, New South Wales still allows you 10 km/hr.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More info about speeding laws in Australia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trafficlaw.com.au/speedos.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.trafficlaw.com.au/speedos.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-09-02T19:36:48.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7231" CreationDate="2012-08-09T04:23:24.867" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; It's more complicated than the dichotomy &quot;fat=jolly, slim=unhappy&quot; or vice versa. It depends on culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report that this newspaper article was based upon is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Patrik K. E. Magnusson, Finn Rasmussen, Debbie A. Lawlor, Per Tynelius and David Gunnell, &lt;a href=&quot;http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/163/1/1.full&quot;&gt;Association of Body Mass Index with Suicide Mortality: A Prospective Cohort Study of More than One Million Men&lt;/a&gt;, Am. J. Epidemiol. (1 January 2006) 163 (1): 1-8. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwj002 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found that there was a&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;strong inverse association was found between BMI and suicide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;weight loss as a consequence of mental illness does not explain the BMI-suicide association&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, suicide is not the opposite of happy, so the newspaper report was a bit off-the-point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the authors was involved in a later study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ottar Bjerkeset, Pål Romundstad, Jonathan Evans, David Gunnell, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/5864564_Association_of_adult_body_mass_index_and_height_with_anxiety_depression_and_suicide_in_the_general_population_the_HUNT_study&quot;&gt;Association of adult body mass index and height with anxiety, depression, and suicide in the general population: the HUNT study.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Department of Research and Development, Levanger Hospital, Health Trust Mid-Norway, Levanger, Norway. American journal of epidemiology. 01/2008; 167(2):193-202. DOI:10.1093/aje/kwm280&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Raised body mass index is associated with an increased risk of depression but reduced risk of suicide in men and women. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's an unexpected result - obese people are more likely to be depressed, but less likely to commit suicide. The authors acknowledge this needs more clarification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remembering that depression ≠ unhappy and suicide ≠ unhappy, and now we see that depressed ≠ suicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, neither of these directly address the question, despite being the basis for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Graham, Carol and Felton, Andrew, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ssrn.com/abstract=1024823&quot;&gt;Variance in Obesity Across Cohorts and Countries: A Norms-Based Explanation Using Happiness Surveys&lt;/a&gt; (September 2005). CSED Working Paper No. 42. doi:10.2139/ssrn.1024823&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well-being is a better match to happiness than (non-)depression or (non-)suicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was an interesting study that showed that there were, perhaps unsurprisingly, cultural norms and socioeconomic factors involved in the question. Obesity is correlated with being poor in the U.S., but (apparently) not as much in Russia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the USA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Poor whites have higher obesity-related well being costs than blacks or Hispanics.  Respondents in the top income quintile who are obese and those who depart from the weight norm for their profession also suffer higher well being costs than the average. Stigma seems to be higher for those in higher status professions. We find modest evidence that causality runs from overweight to depression rather than the other way around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Russia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;obesity and well being are positively correlated. The relationship seems to be driven by the prosperity that is associated with obesity rather than by the excess weight per se, and we find no evidence of stigma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marina Selini Katsaiti &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00036846.2011.587779&quot;&gt;Obesity and happiness&lt;/a&gt; Applied Economics&#xA;Volume 44, Issue 31, 2012, DOI:10.1080/00036846.2011.587779&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at some additional Western cultures, this study, again, looked at well-being:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results indicate that in all three countries [Germany, UK and Australia] obesity has a negative effect on the subjective well-being of individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: the answer didn't come from the original paper, and is far more complicated than the newspaper might suggest with its cherry-picked anecdotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relationship between well-being and obesity is culturally dependent and socioeconomically dependent; an inverse association (and stigma) appears in Western countries, while a positive association exists Russia. There is a relationship between depression and obesity in the USA, and seems to be more likely to run from obesity to depression. There is an inverse association  between obesity and suicide, despite the depression figures the other way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-09T14:34:15.223" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T14:34:15.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10400" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28613" CreationDate="2012-08-09T09:04:25.127" Score="39" ViewCount="6462" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Z2HR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Chart claiming to describe marriage according to the Old Testament. Relevant text below.&quot;&gt;&#xA;(Copied from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theliberaloc.com/2012/05/14/traditional-marriage-according-to-the-bible/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.theliberaloc.com/2012/05/14/traditional-marriage-according-to-the-bible/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relevant portion of the text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Marriage = Rapist and His Victim (Deuteronomy 22:28-29)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Virgin who is raped must marry her rapist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rapist must pay victim's father 50 shekels of silver for property loss&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of this claim. If anything, I assume it's that the rapist is forced to marry the victim, rather than vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, &lt;a href=&quot;https://judaism.stackexchange.com/a/16573/527&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; on Mi Yodeya (the Stack Exchange for Judaism) claims that marriage is only if the victim wants to marry the rapist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are rape victims forced to marry their rapist, according to the Old Testament?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:42:07.960" LastActivityDate="2019-01-06T14:48:25.360" Title="Are rape victims forced to marry their rapist, according to the Old Testament?" Tags="|bible|literature|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10404" CreationDate="2012-08-09T09:52:49.403" Score="25" ViewCount="5734" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_19442_8-simple-questions-you-wont-believe-science-cant-answer.html&quot;&gt;8 Simple Questions You Won't Believe Science Can't Answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bicycles have to designed by almost entirely by intuition and experimentation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Physical concepts used to explain them (gyroscopic and caster effects) have been proven irrelevant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Articles like these choose a pessimistic/condescending attitude while stating this. What is the actual status, does science have a model to explain how bicycles balance themselves?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2012-08-09T17:09:23.437" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T20:44:58.767" Title="Can science explain how bicycles work?" Tags="|physics|bicycles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10400" CreationDate="2012-08-09T13:07:17.297" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the cited passage of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy%2022&quot;&gt;Deuteronomy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;28&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married&#xA;  and rapes her and they are discovered, &lt;strong&gt;29&lt;/strong&gt; he shall pay her father&#xA;  fifty shekels[c] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has&#xA;  violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/ot_and_rape.htm&quot;&gt;this may be a problem with translation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the word which the NIV translates as rape comes from two Hebrew words,&#xA;  taphas and shakab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;taphas -  to catch, handle, lay hold, take hold of, seize, wield&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;shakab -  to lie down - to be lain with (sexually)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it would seem by this reading it would be more akin to today's statutory rape where the woman would not be able to consent though this would be less than involuntary.  It should be noted that the passage requires the man to take his victim as his bride.  There is nothing in the passage that requires the woman to accept the man as her husband.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing to consider is that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/ATLAS_EN/html/history_of_marriage_in_western.html&quot;&gt;times were different&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ancient Israelites had a patriarchal family structure. The status&#xA;  of women was low—they were regarded as the property of their fathers&#xA;  or husbands and could do nothing without their consent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the rape would make the woman undesirable to other men as a wife, the fathers property would have been damaged.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was usually the patriarch who selected a bride for his son and who&#xA;  paid a &quot;bride price&quot; to her father.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the daughter would not have commanded much if any bride price after the rape.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-08-10T13:03:48.433" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T13:03:48.433" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10401" CreationDate="2012-08-09T14:50:36.840" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on this &lt;a href=&quot;http://ruina.tam.cornell.edu/research/topics/bicycle_mechanics/stablebicycle/&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; (thanks to Oliver_C for posting it) you can quite clearly see that their behaviour is understood by physicists (they wrote a paper on it!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To find the essence of bicycle self balance we looked at simpler and simpler dynamical models until we found a minimal two-mass-skate (TMS) bicycle that theory told us should be self-stable. This bicycle has no gyroscopic effect and no trail. We built a bicycle (of sorts) based on the theory to prove the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This shows that theory predicts their simple bike to be stable without gyroscopic or trail effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gyroscopic forces and trail effects DO help bicycles remain stable, however. This paper just demonstrates that other effects are important too, and that bikes can be stable without gyroscopic forces or trail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why can a bicycle balance itself? One necessary condition for bicycle self stability is (once we define the words carefully) that such a bicycle turns into a fall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This situation seems similar to that of aircraft, where the Bernoulli effect is often cited as being the cause of lift, while planes can fly without it (for example when they fly upside down, which some planes can do.) The gyroscopic effect certainly helps balance a bike, but isn't necessary, much like the Bernoulli effect helps give an aircraft lift but isn't necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T14:50:36.840" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8737" CreationDate="2012-08-09T16:13:12.353" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's break down the core issues raised in the cited &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html?_r=3&amp;amp;pagewanted=all&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times article&lt;/a&gt; (which remains my main reference for this answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A product from a company called&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beefproducts.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beef Products&lt;/a&gt; involves treating &quot;fatty trimmings&quot; with a centrifuge (to remove the fat) and with ammonia (to kill the micro-organisms).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usda.gov&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;USDA&lt;/a&gt; believed that the treatment was so effective at killing micro-organisms, it could save money by not including it in routine checks, and excluded it from recalls. This proved to be wrong, so they reversed that decision. No-one reported getting sick in the interval (or since).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Micro-organisms, such as salmonella, have been detected in the product, and in hamburger meat. The manufacturer claims only 0.06% of samples contained E. coli. They also claim that their 3.6% salmonella tests figures (compared to 0.9% figures for other suppliers) are due to more stringent testing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If they use too much ammonia, it smells bad. They claim that lowered the levels are still effective at killing micro-organisms. That claim is under review.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The USDA agrees that the ammonia itself, while smelling bad, is not dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some people find the process disgusting. Some people are put off by its smell before being mixed with other meat. Some people perceive it as inferior to other butchery processes. Some children prefer its taste. It is cheaper than other processes. &lt;strong&gt;None of this is relevant to the question.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is important to this question is that none of these points make any claims about the &lt;em&gt;long-term&lt;/em&gt; danger of the meat. The only real health concern raised is in the &lt;em&gt;short-term&lt;/em&gt;, viz. &lt;strong&gt;is the meat contaminated with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmonella&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Salmonella&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;E. coli&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, both of which can cause severe food-poisoning, especially in children?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it is clear from the article that the answer (from both officials, schools and the manufacturer) is yes, bacterial contaminations do, very occasionally, occur in the raw product. Beef Products Inc deny that it is more common than from other suppliers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, whether you consider the risk of infection too high for your children is a personal choice.  (Remembering &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/salmonella/enteritidis-07-12/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;it happens in other meat too&lt;/a&gt;, and can be ameliorated by proper food preparation, including cooking the food adequately.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I haven't tried to challenge the reporting from the article, because I believe the article does not directly make the claims that the title suggests, so there are no substantial claims that have been called into doubt by the question.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-08-09T16:13:12.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10400" CreationDate="2012-08-09T17:55:32.013" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;Modern Western culture sees rape as a crime in which the &lt;em&gt;woman&lt;/em&gt; is the victim.  But many cultures, including the ancient Hebrew culture that produced Deuteronomy 22:28-29, view rape as an insult against the woman's family and her father in particular.  So when we read the passage we focus on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a man comes upon a virgin who is not engaged and he seizes her and lies with her, and they are discovered,...&lt;strong&gt;she shall be his wife. Because he has violated her, he can never have the right to divorce her.&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;mdash;Deuteronomy 22:28-29 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taggedtanakh.org/Chapter/Index/english-Deut-22&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NJPS&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the father of a rape victim would have been &lt;em&gt;most concerned&lt;/em&gt; with recovering the honor of his family.  For him, the critical bit is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the man who lay with her shall pay the girl’s father fifty [shekels of] silver&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may find &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shekel&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;550 grams&lt;/a&gt; of silver petty and trivial compared to the weight of the crime, but in the culture that produced the text, it would have signaled a return of honor to the father from the perpetrator who had shamed him.  If the shame could be further removed by arranging a suitable marriage, that would be even better.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/a/1632/68&quot;&gt;Later Jewish interpretation&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;did not&lt;/em&gt; require the girl to marry the rapist.  We can only speculate if that was the original intention of the text, however.  I know of no examples such a marriage, but by the same token the Bible does not mention an cases where the rule was &lt;em&gt;not enforced&lt;/em&gt; either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also important to remember that Deuteronomy represents a transition from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honour#Cultures_of_honour_and_cultures_of_law&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;culture of honor to a culture of law&lt;/a&gt;.  The clans represented in Genesis consisted of &lt;a href=&quot;https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/a/737/68&quot;&gt;less than a thousand people&lt;/a&gt;, in all likelihood.  The nation that is depicted in Exodus was much larger, if &lt;a href=&quot;https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/q/568/68&quot;&gt;not as massive&lt;/a&gt; as the straight reading of the text might lead one to believe.  In an honor culture, the shame brought about by the rape would be the most important consideration.  However, in a legal culture, such as what we see represented in the Talmud and Mi Yodeya, the injustice and harm done to the woman would be primary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that perspective to the text fails the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/cs-lewis-on-why-to-seek-an-authors-intention&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hermeneutical Golden Rule&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do unto authors as you would have them do unto you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of all the possible candidates for a universal morality, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Golden Rule&lt;/a&gt; seems the most promising.  It only seems fair to understand a text in the context of the culture that produced it first and then, maybe, critique it in terms of our own cultural biases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim the chart is making is that the Old Testament defines marriage in these various ways.  The article linked in the original question &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theliberaloc.com/2012/05/14/traditional-marriage-according-to-the-bible/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;states&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Take a look at the chart above which tracks the &lt;em&gt;Bible’s definition of traditional marriage&lt;/em&gt;.  Let’s talk about it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is &quot;Rapist + His Victim&quot; a definition of traditional marriage in the Bible?  On the one hand, it was written into the legal system and almost certainly was enforced.  But on the other, it's clearly not a desired model &lt;em&gt;by anyone's standards&lt;/em&gt;.  It could be argued that the consequences of rape in that society were more far-reaching than in ours as the entire family was considered a victim.  To give you an idea of the seriousness of the crime in the ancient world, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Babylonian legal code&lt;/a&gt; required a rapist to be put to death.  So while there were almost certainly rapists married to their victims by force, in no way was this an ideal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3252" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:47:46.920" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T21:46:10.893" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10408" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10673" CreationDate="2012-08-09T20:51:52.550" Score="56" ViewCount="8564" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep#Optimal_amount_in_humans&quot;&gt;It is said&lt;/a&gt; that an adult human needs around 7-9 hours of sleep per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do human beings need around 8 hours of consecutive sleep a day? Is it prejudicial to the body and brain that you don't? Or is that a myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6634" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-08-14T04:21:28.593" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T12:09:10.273" Title="Do we need 8 hours of consecutive sleep a day?" Tags="|medical-science|sleep|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10410" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10419" CreationDate="2012-08-09T22:41:24.687" Score="9" ViewCount="883" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recent bickering over who should require what to vote where have suggested that requiring a person bring some form of ID to the poll might help alleviate fraud. This makes important assumptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Requiring ID's from voters will make a difference in the rate of fraudulent votes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The difference in the rate of fraudulence is significant enough to matter in elections.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that both make a difference, but I am only guessing, I don't have any statistics to back this up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7905" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-08-10T15:15:07.520" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T18:09:07.840" Title="Are voter ID laws effective tools at *suppressing* voter fraud?" Tags="|government|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8630" CreationDate="2012-08-10T02:31:46.827" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From @MarloweFan's answer, I find that the most recent attempt to separate Marlowe and Shakespeare stylometrically is presented here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Neal Fox, Omran Ehmoda and Eugene Charniak, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.brown.edu/research/pubs/theses/masters/2012/ehmoda.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Statistical Stylometrics and the Marlowe-Shakespeare Authorship Debate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors failed to separate Marlowe from Early Shakespeare, and yet wrote a conclusion that claimed that they did so. This is dishonest, as I see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Known Marlowe Detected As Shakespeare&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their computer program, designed to separate these authors, found the following probable authors for these plays:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dido&lt;/em&gt;: Early Shakespeare (both methods)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Faustus&lt;/em&gt;: Early Shakespeare (both methods)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edward II&lt;/em&gt;: Early Shakespeare (both methods)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Jew of Malta&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Late&lt;/em&gt; Shakespeare/Early Shakespeare (depending on which method they used)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; works of Marlowe which were not confused as Shakespeare were &lt;em&gt;Tambourlain I&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;II&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;the Massacre at Paris&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The methodology was &quot;leave one and compare to the rest&quot;, so by separating the Tambourlaines, they leave out Tambourlaine I and compare to a corpus that includes Tambourlaine II. This is an unsafe comparison--- it is manifest that the closest match to Tambourlaine I is Tambourlaine II. If they had combined the two Tambourlaines into one text, there is &lt;em&gt;no doubt in my mind&lt;/em&gt; it would have been misclassified as Early Shakespeare as well. So among the Marlowe works, only &lt;em&gt;The Massacre at Paris&lt;/em&gt; is not misidentified!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means their program failed to separate nearly all of what Marlowe work from Shakespeare, consistently across two completely different methods, and despite their obvious bias against the Marlovian hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of their methods is based on vocabulary, how similar the word choice is in the works. It is notable that the vocabulary of &lt;em&gt;Jew of Malta&lt;/em&gt; matches Late Shakespeare, because nobody else matches Late Shakespeare in any way. The other method is based on function words, which are indicative of sentence structure. Both methods agreed in their misclassification of the majority of Marlowe works as belonging to Shakespeare (the two exceptions being Tambourlaine and Massacre). This is a ridiculous failure in a paper that claims to have something negative to say about Marlovian theory, considering the low failure rate with other authors (there were only a couple of other plays by other authors misclassified in this way - please read the paper).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Known Shakespeare Detected As Marlowe&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, one of Shakespeare's known works, &lt;em&gt;I Henry VI&lt;/em&gt;, was misclassified as Marlow in one of the methods, and classified as Shakespeare in the other. This is also notable, because the statistical biases they list explain why it is very unlikely for a work not by Marlowe to be classified as Marlowe by vocabulary (there are fewer words in Marlowe, so you find fewer matches to rare words). The biases in their method, that they explain, make it extremely significant when even a single work is misclassified as Marlowe - it means that the vocabulary in &lt;em&gt;I Henry VI&lt;/em&gt; is essentially a dead match to that of the few Marlowe works that exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Other Authors: Disputed Works not ascribed to them&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were two plays not by Shakespeare/Marlowe that were not correctly identified as by their canonical authors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Family of Love&lt;/em&gt; (Middleton), program attributed to (Johnson/Shakespeare) by (vocabulary/function-words)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Case is Altered&lt;/em&gt; (Jonson), program attributed to (Shakespeare/Chapman) by (vocabulary/function-words).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &quot;The Case is Altered&quot;, Jonson did not include it in his Folio, and it is of dubious authorship. To my mind, their program conclusively establishes it was not authored by Jonson, not exclusively, and not predominantly. Since their program finds a best-match within the list, one cannot say that Shakespeare or Chapman contributed to &quot;The Case is Altered&quot;, only that it is not by Jonson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The Family of Love&quot; &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; is of disputed authorship, it is only attributed to Middleton by academic convention. Their program's failure should conclusively demonstrate that the canonical attribution is wrong. Their program therefore &lt;em&gt;did not have a single failure&lt;/em&gt; other than in the case of Marlowe/Shakespeare, where the failure would have (if they hadn't stupidly separated the Tambourlaines) have misidentified all but one of Marlowe's work as Shakespeare by two different methods, and misidentified I Henry VI as by Marlowe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Estimating chance of authorship&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that their program is &lt;em&gt;dead on&lt;/em&gt; accurate for every single play they examined, only failing to discriminate between Shakespeare and Marlowe, one can estimate the probability that they are different authors. Vocabulary and function words are independent, so each mismatch, assuming separate authorship is at most 10% probable, otherwise the perfect match in the other play identifications is not reasonable. There are 5 mismatched plays, so a probability of $10^{-5}$ of different authorship under these generous assumptions (it is probably closer to 1 in $10^10$), so the chance is more like 1 in 100,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Co-authorship?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other hypothesis that is reasonable is that Shakespeare modified existing unfinished texts of unpublished Marlowe's plays into his early works. This is unlikely, considering that there is no sharp break in style between Shakespeare and Shakespeare. If one attributes the Shakespeare canon to one author, which I am sure is correct, one must attribute it to Marlowe, with at least 4 sigma confidence level, probably much more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Their Dubious Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The content of their computer experiments are an  &lt;em&gt;unacceptable&lt;/em&gt; counterpoint to their conclusion. Their methods classified nearly all of Marlowe dramatical works, other but the Tambourlaines, as Shakespeare, consistently in both methods, and over two different trials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this failure, I feel confident to conclude, unlike these authors, that there is no stylometric difference between Shakespeare and Marlowe, and it is nearly certain in the scientific sense that Marlowe and Shakespeare are the same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure this exhausts the question, considering that these authors are not so reliable, having published a paper with contents and conclusion diametrically opposed. A further more neutral study, even just a replication of their methods with a more quantitative Bayesian estimate of identity, would be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6256" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-29T03:19:37.987" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T03:19:37.987" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10413" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-10T04:39:17.747" Score="12" ViewCount="2603" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c015.html&quot;&gt;This website&lt;/a&gt; claims that the bible is the first to suggest that earth is a sphere way before the Greeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A literal translation of Job 26:10 is “He described a circle upon the&#xA;  face of the waters, until the day and night come to an end.” A&#xA;  spherical earth is also described in Isaiah 40:21-22—“the circle of&#xA;  the earth.”&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The Hebrew record is the oldest, because Job is one of the oldest books in the Bible. Historians generally [wrongly] credit the Greeks&#xA;  with being the first to suggest a spherical earth. In the sixth&#xA;  century B.C., Pythagoras suggested a spherical earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the full verses&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Isaiah 40:22 (NIV)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,&#xA;  and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens&#xA;  like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Job 26:10 (NIV)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters&#xA;  for a boundary between light and darkness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1321" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:13:25.560" LastActivityDate="2020-11-25T12:11:01.770" Title="Is the Bible (Christian and Hebrew) the first one to suggest that the Earth is a sphere?" Tags="|religion|bible|earth|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10413" CreationDate="2012-08-10T11:58:59.467" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two parts to this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does the Book of Job refer to a spherical Earth?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If so, did it beat the other contenders to be the first to have the idea?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Part 1&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't propose to properly answer Part 1. This is a question for Hermeneutics.SE, not Skeptics.SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will note the obvious: the modern English translation provided is clearly not evidence to support it, as it is too vague and wouldn't suggest a spherical Earth to someone who wasn't looking for such a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I have not seen any reports of Rabbinical scholars taking the idea of a spherical Earth seriously prior to much later, which suggests maybe the original version didn't suggest a spherical Earth to them either. I am open to hearing of reports I missed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Part 2&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cited text admits that the Greeks suggested a spherical Earth in the sixth century BC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Historians generally [wrongly] credit the Greeks with being the first to suggest a spherical earth. In the sixth century B.C., Pythagoras suggested a spherical &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth#History&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; explores the history in more detail. While it was credited to Pythagoras (6th century BC), it can't reliably be ascribed to him. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plato (427–347 BC), on the other hand, explicitly stating the Earth was round, and Aristotle (384–322 BC) has providing justifications and Eratosthenes (276–194 BC) estimated its size to within 15%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dating of the book of Job is even less clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Book of Job is dated at 6th-4th Century BC by &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=2Vo-11umIZQC&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;dq=Eerdmans%20commentary%20on%20the%20Bible%20James%20D.%20G.%20Dunn%2C%20John%20William%20Rogerson&amp;amp;pg=PP1#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Katherine Dell, p337&lt;/a&gt;, with no clear citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1949/were-there-originally-two-endings-to-the-book-of-job&quot;&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; column delves into the controversy, suggesting the stories evolved and changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It argues that the stories are believed to be much older (e.g. 1700 BC) and may have been first recorded later (around 1000 to 800 BC) and then the &quot;poetic middle section&quot; added later still, &quot;perhaps written around 6th Century BC.&quot; or even later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The poetic section has some parallels of thought with the second Isaiah writer (around 540 BC), but which came first, there's no way of knowing. Job is mentioned by Jeremiah, so probably the book as we know it was finished by (say) 600 BC, although some date it much later--for example, Jeremiah could have known the folktale, but not the poetry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on to point out that it may have just been one author at the later date. Whether it was just one author or many, we have to take the last one for the reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am ignoring nonsense estimates like &lt;a href=&quot;http://avbtab.org/rc/read/jobage.htm&quot;&gt;Ussher&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.probe.org/site/c.fdKEIMNsEoG/b.4222545/k.449D/When_Was_the_Book_of_Job_Written.htm&quot;&gt;Anderson&lt;/a&gt;, which are based on the claimed ages of the characters in the stories.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So where does that leave us?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the poetic sections &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; referring to a spherical earth, and the scholars are right about the age of the Book of Job,  then we find that it was probably written &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; Pythagoras, and perhaps even after Plato, but possibly before either of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, neither had clear priority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, if the answer to Part 1 is &lt;strong&gt;&quot;No, this is post-hoc rationalization, reading more into a poem than the original author could have intended&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, these datings are irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-08-11T15:38:46.940" LastActivityDate="2012-08-11T15:38:46.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10416" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-10T14:20:28.547" Score="9" ViewCount="800" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been told by several people that allowing my young children (aged 2 and 5 at the time of writing) to use an iPad, or similar device, would affect their eyesight. I have found the following articles that appear to support this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ninemsn.com.au/health/8476967/ditch-the-ipad-and-send-kids-out-to-play&quot;&gt;http://news.ninemsn.com.au/health/8476967/ditch-the-ipad-and-send-kids-out-to-play&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-03/09/content_14793242.htm&quot;&gt;http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2012-03/09/content_14793242.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/706432/iPad-or-iBad-The-notebook-might-look-cool-but-what-is-it-doing-to-children.aspx&quot;&gt;http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/706432/iPad-or-iBad-The-notebook-might-look-cool-but-what-is-it-doing-to-children.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The impression seems to be that children should be avoiding using this kind of device until they are at least 7 years old. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any more recent scientific evidence to back up this claim than the surveys in 2007 which were before the introduction of the iPad?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1956" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-08-10T15:13:30.503" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T15:13:30.503" Title="Is there credible evidence that a child using an iPad will have their eyesight affected?" Tags="|medical-science|safety|technology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10417" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-10T15:40:21.900" Score="16" ViewCount="2345" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amentsoc.org/insects/fact-files/orders/siphonaptera.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amateur Entomologists' Society&lt;/a&gt;, it is stated that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the most serious flea borne disease is &lt;em&gt;Yersinia pestis&lt;/em&gt;, or plague (known in the Middle Ages as the Black Death). This is a disease of rats and other rodents, and rodent fleas can transmit it to man. &lt;strong&gt;Plague carried in this way has probably caused more deaths than all the wars in history&lt;/strong&gt;. This began when man brought disease carrying rats to Europe in ships from Africa, in the middle ages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idph.state.il.us/envhealth/pcfleas.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Illinois Department of Public Health&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All told, perhaps 200 million people have died of plague – more than have died in all the wars in history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, another site, this time it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crittercontrol.com/facts/funanimaltrivia.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Critter Control&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] As carriers of the bubonic plague, fleas were responsible for killing one-third of the population of Europe in the 14th century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are then fleas responsible of more deaths from plague than all wars in history? I understand that it isn't possible to count &lt;em&gt;every death&lt;/em&gt; in &lt;em&gt;every war&lt;/em&gt;, but perhaps we can reach an acceptable answer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4727" LastEditorUserId="4727" LastEditDate="2013-10-01T18:01:04.063" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T18:01:04.063" Title="Have fleas caused more human deaths from plague than wars?" Tags="|mortality|disease|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10418" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-10T15:50:21.593" Score="8" ViewCount="6106" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Big Data&quot; is a big trending term on the internet (especially on the web sites of big companies selling data management services). For example, I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2012/0809/1224321786189.html&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; while reading the Irish Times in an airport. It contained this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/bigdata/&quot;&gt;recent claim from IBM&lt;/a&gt; which has been frequently repeated elsewhere (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — &lt;strong&gt;so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just marketing hype or is the claim credible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB it might also be worth asking whether the claim holds up with something other than a vague definition of &quot;data&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:01:01.480" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:01:01.480" Title="Has 90% of the world's data been created in the last two years?" Tags="|computers|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10410" CreationDate="2012-08-10T18:09:07.840" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Suggested reading: &lt;a href=&quot;http://brennan.3cdn.net/c176576c0065a7eb84_gxm6ib0hl.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Truth About Voter Fraud&lt;/em&gt; by Justin Levitt&lt;/a&gt; (2007, PDF, 303 KB) at the Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law. He cites numerous cases of alleged voter fraud that were too insignificant to make a difference in the elections or could not have been prevented by screening voters based on their photo ID (e.g. vote-buying, which rigs the election with the help of valid, eligible voters).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5326" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T18:09:07.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10418" CreationDate="2012-08-10T19:09:46.903" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have no rigorous research sources to cite, but based on reports &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-cetera/facebook-stores-10000x-more-photos-than-the-library-of-congress-20110920/&quot;&gt;like this&lt;/a&gt; I would judge the basic plausibility of this claim to be decent if the following hold up to scrutiny:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Devices with cameras have proliferated significantly in the last 4-6 years with the advent of so-called 'Smartphones'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Those cameras have increasingly large megapixel counts in each generation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Video is also more and more frequently a feature of these devices.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cloud services and online social sites allow all this data to be retained (and counted) more reliably.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;HD video has also proliferated online on many popular video sites - movies and even HD streaming (which is recorded) of video games (eSports) and other events.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that 1-4 have a kind of multiplicative effect on each other... tens of millions more devices (2 years ago, Apple and Google activated &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conceivablytech.com/4536/business/300000-new-android-phones-each-day&quot;&gt;9 million phones a month&lt;/a&gt;) taking 8MPix pictures and HD videos would add up very quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4824" LastActivityDate="2012-08-10T19:09:46.903" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10421" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-10T19:46:18.183" Score="6" ViewCount="887" Body="&lt;p&gt;A verse of the Quran refers to the &quot;farthest Mosque&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Glory to (Allah) Who did take His servant for a Journey by night from&#xA;  the Sacred Mosque to the &lt;strong&gt;farthest Mosque&lt;/strong&gt;, whose precincts We did&#xA;  bless,- in order that We might show him some of Our Signs: for He is&#xA;  the One Who heareth and seeth (all things). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cmje.org/religious-texts/quran/verses/017-qmt.php#017.001&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quran 17:1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some Muslims believe that refers to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Aqsa_Mosque&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Al-Aqsa Mosque&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikiislam.net/wiki/Scientific_Errors_in_the_Qur%27an#Muhammad_sees_an_imaginary_mosque.3F&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikiIslam&lt;/a&gt; claims that this mosque did not exist at the time. (e.g. 610-613 AD.):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Muslims claim that Al-Aqsa mosque is mentioned in the Qur'an as the&#xA;  furthest mosque. Even though there was obviously no mosque in&#xA;  Jerusalem during Muhammad's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the Al-Aqsa mosque (or any mosque) exist at the time this passage was written?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-11T14:40:38.350" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T15:33:08.567" Title="Did Al-Aqsa Mosque exist when it was used as a praying direction?" Tags="|history|islam|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10425" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10719" CreationDate="2012-08-11T11:02:29.520" Score="17" ViewCount="1552" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmLYGzlPLj0&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&quot;&gt;stories&lt;/a&gt; of drowning humans being rescued by Dolphins. Are these just tales or does this actually occur?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T19:30:09.757" Title="Do dolphins help humans to the surface?" Tags="|dolphins|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10421" CreationDate="2012-08-11T11:53:33.743" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It rather depends on what you mean by &quot;exist&quot; and by &quot;mosque&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qurandislam.com/coran/trans/?currSura=17&amp;amp;currAya=1&amp;amp;currTrans=tafsir_en_sahih&quot;&gt;17th chapter of the Koran, called Al-Isra,&lt;/a&gt; says Mohammed was taken at night from al-Masjid al-Haram (the sacred mosque or place of worship, in Mecca) to al-Masjid al-Aqsa (the furthest mosque or place of worship, in Jerusalem).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chowrangi.com/al-isra-wal-miraj-the-night-journey-and-the-ascension-of-prophet-muhammad-peace-and-blessings-be-upon-him.html&quot;&gt;Hadith&lt;/a&gt; (Muslim sayings) expands this to say that Mohammed prayed there before visiting the seventh heaven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in this sense it existed as a place, and indeed as a place of worship (i.e. a mosque), if you accept the Islamic writings.  As the location of the ruins of Herod's temple, it had been a place of worship to the Abrahamic God for much longer.  But there was no specificity Muslim building there at the time, either to commemorate Mohammed's visit to heaven, or Abraham's attempted sacrifice of his son, but that did not prevent it being a holy place.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-08-11T11:53:33.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10429" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-11T13:00:42.053" Score="5" ViewCount="2790" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://science1.knoji.com/how-to-catch-fish-with-asparagus/&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He discovered that tinned asparagus was included as part of the&#xA;  emergency ration kit given to American pilots in the Pacific Ocean&#xA;  region, who were working for the US spy organization called the Office&#xA;  of Strategic Services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The idea of the pilots eating asparagus was a clever one because those&#xA;  who were shot down, or stranded on remote islands had a very valuable&#xA;  way of feeding themselves. Asparagus contains mercaptans which are&#xA;  powerful chemical attractants, and when the vegetable is eaten, these&#xA;  chemicals pass into the urine. The pilots were told to urinate into&#xA;  the water, so that the chemicals would spread through the water and&#xA;  attract fish to the area, making them much easier to catch. This was&#xA;  of course, a valuable food source and the smell of asparagus is&#xA;  present in the urine after just fifteen minutes in many people, or&#xA;  thirty minutes at most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it included in the emergency ration kit and does asparagus attract fish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T22:29:07.640" Title="Will asparagus make your pee attract fish?" Tags="|vegetables|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10432" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-12T02:42:45.190" Score="7" ViewCount="2875" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metro.co.uk/weird/298523-weird-fact-of-the-day-that-you-probably-didnt-know&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Metro's Weird fact of the day&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is against the law to sing off-key in North Carolina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there such a law?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T12:21:26.070" LastActivityDate="2016-02-19T14:01:06.183" Title="Is it against the law to sing off-key in North Carolina?" Tags="|united-states|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10433" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-12T11:38:06.167" Score="14" ViewCount="3815" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2183858/All-presidents-bar-directly-descended-medieval-English-king.html#ixzz23KbuiKJl&quot;&gt;Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 12-year-old girl created family tree linking 42 of 43 U.S. presidents to King John of England, who signed the Magna Carta in 1215.&#xA;  Only the eighth president, Martin Van Buren, was not related to John.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been recently spreading on news web-sites and Facebook, especially by conspiracy theorists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8149" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-27T02:30:47.903" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T02:30:47.903" Title="Were all but one of the US presidents descended from King John of England?" Tags="|united-states|united-kingdom|population|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10435" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-12T14:41:09.050" Score="27" ViewCount="3653" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There is no such document...The HIV theory, the way it is being applied, is unfalsifiable and therefore useless as a medical hypothesis.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Said Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel prize for his invention of the PCR (that make HIV tests possible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if the HIV causes AIDS theory is unfalsifiable and there are no documents that demonstrate that HIV actually causes AIDS, then why is the theory widely considered to be correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related Question:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6215/is-hiv-a-sexually-transmitted-infection&quot;&gt;Is HIV a sexually transmitted infection?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related Question:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/269/kochs-postulates-for-judging-if-hiv-causes-aids&quot;&gt;Koch&amp;#39;s postulates for judging if HIV causes AIDS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8150" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-10-16T15:59:24.630" Title="Is HIV the cause of AIDS?" Tags="|medical-science|hiv-aids|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10435" CreationDate="2012-08-12T15:19:38.260" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;HIV causes AIDS. At this stage, it is dangerous and negligent to suggest otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim that there are no &amp;quot;documents&amp;quot; that show HIV causes AIDS is simply mistaken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some documents that do demonstrate that, or that, in turn, list the evidence that HIV causes AIDS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/hivaids/understanding/howhivcausesaids/pages/hivcausesaids.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Institude of Allergies and Infectious Diseases - Summary of Evidence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Numerous studies of HIV-infected people have shown that high levels of infectious HIV, viral antigens, and HIV nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) in the body predict immune system deterioration and an increased risk for developing AIDS. Conversely, patients with low levels of virus have a much lower risk of developing AIDS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0952791596800756&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HIV causes AIDS: Koch's postulates fulfilled&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avert.org/hiv-causes-aids.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AVERT - Summary of Evidence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is AVERT's considered opinion that the evidence that HIV causes AIDS is abundant and conclusive. This page outlines some of that evidence, while also mentioning how some dissidents have interpreted things differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp038194&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Discovery of HIV as the Cause of AIDS - A history about the discovery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other indirect evidence that HIV was the cause of AIDS came from the demonstration, in 1984, of its high degree of tropism for the subgroup of CD4+ T cells, its consistent isolation from patients of different origins who had AIDS, and the isolation of similar viruses that cause AIDS in nonhuman primates (specifically, macaques). Thus, the causative relation between HIV and AIDS was accepted by the scientific and medical community in 1984 and was further verified through the later isolation of HIV type 2 in West African patients with AIDS. The relation was also supported by the clinical efficacy of drugs that specifically inhibit HIV enzymes and the demonstration that mutations in one of the coreceptors for HIV (CCR5) make some persons highly resistant to HIV infection and AIDS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/qa/definitions.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC - Easy to understand summary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although &lt;strong&gt;the scientific evidence is overwhelming and compelling that HIV is the cause of AIDS&lt;/strong&gt;, the disease process is still not completely understood. This incomplete understanding has led some persons to make statements that AIDS is not caused by an infectious agent or is caused by a virus that is not HIV. This is not only misleading, but may have dangerous consequences. Before the discovery of HIV, evidence from epidemiologic studies involving tracing of patients’ sex partners and cases occurring in persons receiving transfusions of blood or blood clotting products had clearly indicated that the underlying cause of the condition was an infectious agent. Infection with HIV has been the sole common factor shared by AIDS cases throughout the world among men who have sex with men, transfusion recipients, persons with hemophilia, sex partners of infected persons, children born to infected women, and occupationally exposed health care workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The conclusion after more than 28 years of scientific research is that people, if exposed to HIV through sexual contact or injecting drug use for example, may become infected with HIV. If they become infected, most will eventually develop AIDS.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-08-12T15:45:26.583" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10439" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-12T17:44:13.610" Score="8" ViewCount="6477" Body="&lt;p&gt;An aunt of mine went to some sort of nutrition lecture course and claims to have been taught that using cold-pressed oils in frying would produce certain chemical compounds which are toxic to humans. Of course she wouldn’t remember the exact chemicals or other details. Is this claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I fried with cold-pressed oil a few days back not knowing the difference, and I’m fine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastActivityDate="2020-05-06T20:39:55.540" Title="Is food fried with cold-pressed oil dangerous?" Tags="|oil|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10441" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-12T20:17:55.617" Score="11" ViewCount="20437" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was playing Zynga's Draw Something when I saw an interesting icon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/btP1t.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick search of &quot;tying fingers&quot; produces results such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bigsiteofamazingfacts.com/why-do-we-tie-a-string-around-our-finger-to-remember-something&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Big Site of Amazing Facts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a carry-over from olden days when people tied pieces of cloth around any painful part of their body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This cloth was tied in one area to keep the “spirit of life” in that area, and so cure it and keep the pain from spreading to other parts of the body. The string on the finger was designed to “keep” the thought there, to be remembered later when it was needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which looks immediately dubious. But there are also some &quot;scientific&quot; (or pseudo-scientific) claims like the accepted answer in the other QA website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100530001016AAKFZl6&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yahoo Answers&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's a little known fact that the nerves that define your sense of&#xA;  touch on your index fingers are the ones with the quickest connections&#xA;  routed directly to the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible&#xA;  for memory. Tying a ribbon around the index finger means you&#xA;  constantly have a texture that's activating those nerves and thus&#xA;  keeping that part of the brain in alpha (high activity) mode. If you&#xA;  tie the ribbon (or wear a ring on your index finger, or any such&#xA;  apparatus) at the very moment you are trying to memorize something you&#xA;  mustn't forget later on, it associates that brain activity with said&#xA;  memory, keeping that pathway almost exclusively as a conduit for that&#xA;  memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That tying a knot on your fingers improves remembering things seems like a reasonable claim to me as a memory technique, since it is something unusual which you normally don't do unless you have something you want to recall later; but is it more effective compared to other arbitrary memory technique, say, drawing an &quot;X&quot; in the palm, or tying the leg, putting a pen in the breast pocket, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="542" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-13T02:52:57.917" LastActivityDate="2019-03-31T04:55:22.393" Title="Tying a finger to help memory recall" Tags="|psychology|memory|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10439" CreationDate="2012-08-13T03:22:37.940" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Once you realize that there is, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10026/is-there-no-risk-free-level-of-second-hand-smoke&quot;&gt;no such thing as risk free living&lt;/a&gt;, so everything is dangerous. This becomes a question of how dangerous is it to use cold pressed oils in frying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cold pressed oils aren't a kind of oil, they are a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oilseeds.com.au/pl/cold_pressed_oils_sales/8/1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;process for extracting the oil&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cold Pressing is a natural physical process used to extract vegetable oils from oilseeds such as Canola and Safflower and nut oils from the likes of almonds and walnuts. These oils are extracted from seed by a simple crushing and filtering process. There is no heat or chemical treatment so the oil is essentially unchanged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This differs from the way that oils such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iseo.org/FoodFatsOils2006.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;corn oil are extracted today&lt;/a&gt;, using a chemical solvent like Hexane, which is later distiller out of the oil. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Historically, cold and hot expression methods were used. These methods have largely been replaced with solvent extraction or pre-press/solvent extraction methods which give a better oil yield. In this process the oil is extracted from the oilseed by hexane ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still though, some oils are still extracted by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://whfoods.org/genpage.php?tname=foodtip&amp;amp;dbid=202&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cold press method&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Olive, peanut and sunflower are among the oils that are obtained through cold pressing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't anything in cold-pressed oils that isn't in their chemically extracted equivalents, so the only danger is from the production of cancer causing chemicals when the oils begin smoking. Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webcookingclasses.com/handouts/OilsSmokePoint.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;chart&lt;/a&gt; of some of the common smoke points of cooking oils, and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://chartsbin.com/view/1962&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;graph&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will note that sunflower oil has a much higher smoke point than extra virgin olive oil. Typically, the normal &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fapc.okstate.edu/files/factsheets/fapc126.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;frying temperatures&lt;/a&gt; are between 325-375 degrees Farenheit (163-191 Celcius). The frying temperature is very new the smoke point of extra virgin olive oil, but below regular olive oil. If you didn't notice any smoke coming off of the frying pan, you are probably completely safe (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://missclasses.com/mp3s/Prize%20CD%202010/Oils/oil%20cooking%20air%20pollution.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cancer causing smoke&lt;/a&gt;, and the formation of aldehydes). Even if you did consume or inhale the smoke from the frying process, you chances of getting cancer from that one exposure are extremely low. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T05:24:33.797" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10447" CreationDate="2012-08-13T11:12:02.363" Score="5" ViewCount="876" Body="&lt;p&gt;From this &lt;a href=&quot;http://politics.lilithezine.com/Interesting-Facts-China.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1985 the Chinese press announced the discovery of a strip of land&#xA;  1,000 metres by 15 metres, running down from a hill to a river, in&#xA;  Huanre County, Liaoning province. In winter when the surrounding&#xA;  temperature dips to -30° Celsius, the strip remains at 17° Celsius. In&#xA;  summer the reverse occurs, and the strip freezes to a depth of 1&#xA;  metre. The locals use the strip for growing vegetables in winter and&#xA;  as a refrigerator in summer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this land exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T14:02:53.813" Title="Is there a strip of land in China with unusual temperature properties?" Tags="|weather|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10446" CreationDate="2012-08-13T12:08:18.927" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd love to write an answer here where this frankly intriguing phenomena has been thouroughly investigated and tested to understand how the specific combination of climate, geology and topography has combined to form something which occurs nowhere else on Earth and seems to contradict conventional wisdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to quite get that!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim seems to have first surfaced in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/100-weird-years-1134528.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Independent Newspaper in the UK&lt;/a&gt; written by Paul Sieveking, the editor of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forteantimes.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fortean Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;47) In September 1985, the Chinese press reported a discovery on a strip of land, 1km by 15 metres, in Huanre county, Liaoning province. In winter, when the temperature drops to -30C, the strip remained at 17C; in summer, the strip froze to a depth of one metre. The locals used it as a fridge in summer and for growing vegetables in winter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing that makes me doubt that this is real is that searches for this phenomena turn up two blog posts repeating the infomation from the original independent article, without any further information, source or quote. Further searching reveals a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl/1985_38715/unusual-temperatures-on-land-strip-studied.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;report in the Houston Chronicle&lt;/a&gt; from 1985 apparenly reporting the finding in China - but yet again no reference back to the original report in China itself (Thanks @Rob_Z)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;The second is that a look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liaoning#Administrative_divisions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;administrative districts of Liaoning Province&lt;/a&gt; show no area called Huanre (or similar). Similarly a Google Maps search for this name in China yields no results.&lt;/strike&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Edit: This part of the mystery appears to have been solved. It looks like the area in question is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huanren_Manchu_autonomous_county&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Huanren Manchu Autonomous County&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, Although quoted that the &quot;Chinese press reported this in 1985&quot; Im supposing that something so wildly fantastic would have been picked up by other news agencies around the world, however I can find no press information, Chinese or otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2012-08-13T14:02:53.813" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T14:02:53.813" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10448" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10460" CreationDate="2012-08-13T12:45:01.343" Score="4" ViewCount="1951" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/aug/11/david-cameron-compulsory-competitive-team-sports?INTCMP=SRCH&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;proposal&lt;/a&gt; for all primary school children (ages 4 to 11) in England to play competitive team sports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Competitive team sports will be made compulsory for all primary age children, David Cameron said on Saturday, after he criticised schools for holding Indian dance classes instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prime minister, who is under fire for scrapping a target for pupils to do two hours of sport a week, said the new requirement would be included in the revised national curriculum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/aug/12/not-winning-takng-part&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;letter in The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; newspaper claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;proposals to introduce competitive team sports in primary schools beggars belief (Report, 1 August). It runs against all known research on child development. Children are not ready for traditional team sports until perhaps the last year of primary school at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2022-09-03T11:07:40.323" Title="Is participating in competitive sport harmful to young children?" Tags="|education|children|sport|united-kingdom|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10451" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10452" CreationDate="2012-08-13T15:17:59.387" Score="15" ViewCount="3389" Body="&lt;p&gt;In its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prodhelp.com/purell/content/faq.htm#q12&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt;, the company states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does Purell® instant hand sanitizer contribute to antimicrobial resistance?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, because alcohol evaporates completely, there is no alcohol left behind to promote adaptation. Alcohol has been used in health care for many years with minimal adverse effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This reasoning seems questionable. Does ethyl alcohol -- not to mention &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prodhelp.com/purell/content/faq.htm#q29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Purell's other ingredients&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isopropyl_myristate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Isopropyl myristate&lt;/a&gt;, in particular, is concerning) -- not apply selective pressure to germs, killing off those most susceptible to Purell and thus clearing the way for the proliferation of competing &amp;quot;superbugs&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Am I misunderstanding antimicrobial (antibiotic) resistance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T17:39:49.247" Title="Does Purell promote antibiotic resistance or &quot;superbugs&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|alcohol|antibiotic-resistance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10451" CreationDate="2012-08-13T17:39:49.247" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is true that bacteria can't become resistant to ethanol to our current knowledge, but the cited reason doesn't sound plausible to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15489352&quot;&gt;Epidemiologic background of hand hygiene and evaluation of the most important agents for scrubs and rubs.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; published in Clinical Microbiology Reviews in 2004:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No acquired resistance to ethanol, isopropanol, or n-propanol has been reported to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you compare the mechanism of alcohols with antibiotics, the reason for that is pretty plausible. Antibiotics like penicillin bind to specific proteins and disrupt their function, in the case of penicillin those are proteins that are responsible for building the cell walls. The bacteria can evolve a resistance to such antibiotics e.g. by changing the shape of the target protein in a way that reduces binding of the antibiotic, by creating a transporter that removes the antibiotic, or in the case of beta-lactam antibiotics like penicillin by creating an enzyme that inactivates those antibiotics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those mechanisms would not work for ethanol. The mechanism of ethanol is unspecific:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alcohols have a nonspecific mode of action, consisting mainly of&#xA;  denaturation and coagulation of proteins (241). Cells are lysed (229,&#xA;  428), and the cellular metabolism is disrupted (360).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no obvious ways to resist those effects, they are based on the fundamental chemistry of living organisms as we know them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2012-08-13T17:39:49.247" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10454" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-13T18:45:19.640" Score="11" ViewCount="1451" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shampoo manufacturers seem to be very keen to tell us about the all the fruit and fruit-extracts they put in their product. I suspect that the hair-care actually comes from the other ingredients they put in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is shampoo with added fruit really better for hair-care than shampoo with no fruit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the purposes of this question, let's leave the smell to one side. Yes, fruity shampoo smells nice, but unless shampoo would smell bad without it, its not really a hair-care benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;* &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ztPddsZp14&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ztPddsZp14&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;* &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoV_xfvTViA&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoV_xfvTViA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;* &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJgBWJwDC08&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJgBWJwDC08&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;* &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDmGQsuxguU&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDmGQsuxguU&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;* &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsfNXj9s-iY&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsfNXj9s-iY&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;* &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0bUZIXGIJc&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0bUZIXGIJc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;* &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW2GT2VQCw4&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW2GT2VQCw4&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7318" LastEditorUserId="7318" LastEditDate="2014-10-10T12:46:18.667" LastActivityDate="2016-05-12T06:50:02.177" Title="What hair-care benefits come from adding fruit or fruit-extracts to shampoo?" Tags="|hair|fruit|cosmetics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10455" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-13T22:07:08.113" Score="11" ViewCount="1686" Body="&lt;p&gt;For sports (such as wrestling, MMA, judo, etc) where the competition is divided into weight divisions, it's common to drop cut 10+ lbs of water weight hours before weigh ins and then rehydrate right after. It's a popular, and seemingly unproven, claim that when you are severely dehydrated, you should not take a shower because your skin can absorb some of the water, thereby increasing your bodyweight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is... can your skin, in fact, absorb water when severely dehydrated to a degree that it would affect your body weight by more than a quarter pound?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3643" LastActivityDate="2012-08-16T16:10:38.997" Title="Does taking a shower when dehydrated increase body weight?" Tags="|water|sport|weight-loss|dermatology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10456" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28101" CreationDate="2012-08-13T23:06:27.867" Score="11" ViewCount="1430" Body="&lt;p&gt;Baby flashcards have grown in popularity. They are advertised with seemingly amazing effects, like 1½ year old reading and counting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand academics seem to either say that they don't have long term positive effect, or worse yet, that they have negative effect (child did not learn at that age, what it should have normally have learnt, for example socializing). See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beinkandescent.com/articles/265/brain-development-in-the-early-years&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pat Wolfe's Q&amp;amp;A&lt;/a&gt; or book by &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1579546951&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kathy Hirsh-Pasek &lt;em&gt;&quot;Einstein Never Used Flash Cards&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any scientific, evidence-based, studies showing that they have either positive or negative effect on children's literacy or numeracy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/148/is-your-baby-can-read-effective-and-helpful&quot;&gt;Is “Your Baby Can Read” effective and helpful?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T07:45:42.263" Title="Do flashcards for babies improve literacy or numeracy?" Tags="|psychology|education|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10448" CreationDate="2012-08-14T12:19:38.757" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Responding to this question is a bit complicated as it requires a degree of inferring the intent of the original author of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/aug/12/not-winning-takng-part&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;response&lt;/a&gt; to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theguardian.com/education/2012/aug/11/david-cameron-compulsory-competitive-team-sports?INTCMP=SRCH&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;. Based upon this passage from the author:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Children are not ready for traditional team sports until perhaps the&#xA;last year of primary school at best. What he is pleased to call an&#xA;&amp;quot;all must have prizes&amp;quot; culture is experienced professionals ensuring&#xA;that all primary children develop confidence in their physical&#xA;identity, each optimally developing individual physical skills and&#xA;coordination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to ensure that definitions do not play too much of a role, I'm going to assume that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Primary_school&amp;amp;oldid=500827838#United_Kingdom&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;primary school&lt;/a&gt; when a child is approximately 10 years old, traditional team sports are sports that have organized rules that require multiple players per team (e.g. baseball, kickball, volleyball, etc.), and that competitive team sports are when fixed teams compete against each other in some sort of league play to prove they are better than all of the other teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With these definitions in mind, to address the first point, that children are not ready for traditional team sports and that they have a negative impact on child development, the answer is an emphatic &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;. The reason for this is many fold: first, children naturally develop an interest in team sports around 5-6 years old and this is seen as a &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120723233727/http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fy1001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;developmental milestone&lt;/a&gt;. Next, studies have been conducted that have show an positive correlation between team sport participation and &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120924173031/http://www.voxeu.org/article/does-sport-make-your-kids-smarter-new-evidence-germany&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;physical and mental development&lt;/a&gt; which is also born out by studies into &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1002/jbmr.5650061113&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bone density development in children&lt;/a&gt;. Finally, participation in team sports has been shown to lead to &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2004.00158.x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;positive self-esteem&lt;/a&gt; and that structured activities such as sports have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.170&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;positive impact on mental development&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the second point, that competitive team sports have a negative impact upon mental development, the answer is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; this does seem to be the case; however, a fair bit of point more towards &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120709043810/http://www.familyresource.com/parenting/sports/problems-in-youth-sports&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;burnout&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://howtoadult.com/the-negative-effects-of-youth-sports-4473116.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;injuries&lt;/a&gt; as the drawbacks as opposed to mental development. That said, right now it appears that the trending recommendation is that children are best kept from competitive team sports &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hellomotherhood.com/are-competitive-sports-bad-for-kids-5592888.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;until around age&lt;/a&gt; 10, when they fully understand effort and ability as it relates to winning. This appears to be backed by &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.1986.9713638&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;studies that have shown&lt;/a&gt; that failure in competition backed activities can have a demotivating effect versus mastery based activities.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus to summarize, sports play an &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025189118334&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;important role&lt;/a&gt; in the development of children and while there is some evidence to show that competitive sports can have a negative impact on child development&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; the consensus is almost universally in favor of encouraging children to participate in sports from a young age and then having them grow into more competitive league play as they get older.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Note that a fair degree of what I found with regards to the negative effects of competitive sports in young children was based around injury and the extent of training necessary to be competitive from a young age. I had a hard time finding papers that discussed long term negative effects that weren't due to the potential for injury or due to time invested in training for sports.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A mild editorial, but based upon the papers I have read and skimmed, it's hard to say what influence parenting might have upon a child with regards to competitive sports. Given that most papers agree that children naturally want to participate in sports among themselves, they should be familiar with the concepts of competition and loss before the recommended age of 10 cited in one of the previous articles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-03T11:07:40.323" LastActivityDate="2022-09-03T11:07:40.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10461" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-14T12:46:36.457" Score="10" ViewCount="2153" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some claims that taking B12 supplements which contain folic acid causes cancer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Are there vitamin B12 supplements without folic acid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a passage from the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/031612091X&quot;&gt;Eat to Live&lt;/a&gt; by Dr. Joel Fuhrman&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Avoid taking supplements that contain these ingredients: vitamin A,&#xA;  high-dose (200 IU or greater) isolated vitamin E, folic acid,&#xA;  beta-carotene, and copper. Ingesting vitamin A or beta-carotene from&#xA;  supplements instead of food may interfere with the absorption of other&#xA;  crucially important carotenoids, such as lutein and lycopene, thus&#xA;  potentially increasing your cancer risk.&lt;/strong&gt; (1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Folic acid is the synthetic form of folate added to food or used as an&#xA;  ingredient in vitamin supplements. Folate is found naturally in&#xA;  fruits, vegetables, grains, and other foods. Too much folate obtained&#xA;  naturally from food is not a concern. It comes naturally packaged in&#xA;  balance with other micronutrients, and the body regulates its&#xA;  absorption. (2)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Everyone, including pregnant women, should be getting&#xA;  adequate amounts of folate from natural plant sources. &lt;strong&gt;Recently, there&#xA;  have been some troubling studies connecting folic acid supplementation&#xA;  and cancer. More and more evidence suggests that folic acid&#xA;  supplementation may significantly increase the risk of cancer.&lt;/strong&gt; (3)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) Mayne ST. Beta-carotene, carotenoids, and disease prevention in&#xA;  humans. FASEB J. 1996;10(7): 690–701; Goodman GE. Prevention of lung&#xA;  cancer. Curr Opin Oncol. 1998;10(2):122–26; Kolata G. Studies find&#xA;  beta carotene, taken by millions, can’t forestall cancer or heart&#xA;  disease. New York Times. 1996 Jan 19. Omenn GS, Goodman GE, Thornquist&#xA;  MD, et al. Effects of a combination of beta carotene and vitamin A on&#xA;  lung cancer and cardiovascular disease. N Eng J Med.&#xA;  1996;334(18);1150–55; Hennekens CH, Buring JE, Manson JE, et al. Lack&#xA;  of effect of long-term supplementation with beta carotene on the&#xA;  incidence of malignant neoplasms and cardiovascular disease. N Eng J&#xA;  Med. 1996;334(18):1145–49; Albanes D, Heinonen OP, Taylor PR, et al.&#xA;  Alpha-tocopherol and beta-carotene supplements and lung cancer&#xA;  incidence in the alpha-tocopherol, beta-carotene cancer prevention&#xA;  study: effects of baseline characteristics and study compliance. J&#xA;  Natl Cancer Inst. 1996; 88(21):1560–70; Rapola JM, Virtamo J, Ripatti&#xA;  S, et al. Randomized trial of alpha-tocopherol and beta-carotene&#xA;  supplements on incidence of major coronary events in men with previous&#xA;  myocardial infarction. Lancet. 1997;349(9067): 1715–20; Bjelakovic G,&#xA;  Nikolova D, Gluud LL, et al. Antioxidant supplements for prevention of&#xA;  mortality in healthy participants and patients with various diseases.&#xA;  Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2008 Adr 16;(2):CD007176. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) Harvard School of Public Health. The Nutrition Source. Keep the&#xA;  Multi, Skip the Heavily Fortified Foods.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/folic-acid/&quot;&gt;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/folic-acid/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(3) Yi K. Does a high folate intake increase the risk of breast&#xA;  cancer? Nutr Rev. 2006; 64(10 Pt 1): 468–75; Cole B, Baron J, Sandler&#xA;  R, et al. Folic acid for the prevention of colorectal adenomas. JAMA.&#xA;  2007; 297(21):2351–59; Stolzenberg-Solomon R, Chang S, Leitzman M.&#xA;  Folate intake, alcohol use and postmenopausal breast cancer risk in&#xA;  the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial. Am&#xA;  J Clin Nutr. 2006;83:895–904; Smith AD, Kim Y, Refsuh H. Is folic acid&#xA;  good for everyone? Am J Clin Nutr. 2008;87(3):517; Kim Y. Role of&#xA;  folate in colon cancer development and progression. J Nutr.&#xA;  2003;133(11) (suppl 1):S3731–39; Guelpen BV, Hultdin J, Johansson I,&#xA;  et al. Low folate levels may protect against colorectal cancer. Gut.&#xA;  2006;55:1461–66.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another passage by Steven Novella on Vitamins and Mortality. But it seems to contradict with what Joel Fuhrman says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/vitamins-and-mortality/&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/vitamins-and-mortality/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/171/18/1625&quot;&gt;latest issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine&lt;/a&gt; is a&#xA;  population based observational study looking at health outcomes and&#xA;  vitamin use as part of the larger Iowa Women’s Health Study. The&#xA;  authors looked at 38,772 older women and asked them to self-report&#xA;  their vitamin use. This is a long term study and their vitamin use was&#xA;  reports in 1986, 1997, and 2004, and mortality was followed through&#xA;  2008. &lt;strong&gt;They found a small but statistically significant increase in mortality for those taking multivitamins, B6, folic acid, iron,&#xA;  copper, magnesium and zinc. There was also a small decrease in&#xA;  mortality for those taking calcium.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The strength of this study is that it is large with a long term follow&#xA;  up. There are many weaknesses, however. Vitamin use was self-reported.&#xA;  Further, this is a correlational study only. Therefore possible&#xA;  confounding factors could not be controlled for. For example, it is&#xA;  possible that women who have an underlying health issue that increases&#xA;  their mortality were more likely to take vitamins or to report taking&#xA;  vitamins.In fact, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21779961&quot;&gt;other studies suggest there is such a “sick-user&#xA;  effect”&lt;/a&gt; with vitamins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is therefore not possible from this study to draw any conclusions&#xA;  about cause and effect – that vitamin use increases mortality. But it&#xA;  does provide a cautionary reminder that it is not reasonable to assume&#xA;  that vitamin supplementation is without any risk. We still need to&#xA;  follow the evidence for the use of specific vitamins at specific doses&#xA;  for specific conditions and outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091117161013.htm&quot;&gt;Science Daily&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20091117/folic-acid-b12-may-increase-cancer-risk&quot;&gt;WebMD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8067" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-02-26T19:37:05.223" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T00:05:20.840" Title="Do supplements with folic acid cause cancer? Should they be avoided?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10462" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-14T17:12:38.130" Score="11" ViewCount="2115" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/75ul6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image showing a Pregnancy and Listing risks Full Text:  &quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full Text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ultrasounds in Pregnancy NOT as accurate and safe as YOU think&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm a Baby-weaning, Breast-feeding Natural-Birthing Mama and Proud&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Increasing Risks :&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;* Miscarriage, preterm labour, and even infant mortality.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;* Greater chance of suffering from dyslexia and other speech and learning problems&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine shared this picture on Facebook warning about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstetric_ultrasonography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ultrasound&lt;/a&gt;.  Is there any research that backs up the claims of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increased risk of Miscarriage, preterm labor, and infant mortality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Greater chance of suffering from dyslexia and other speech and learning problems?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-08-16T13:08:35.137" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T08:19:14.677" Title="Does obstetric ultrasonography (&quot;ultrasound&quot;) impose a significant health risk to the unborn baby?" Tags="|medical-science|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1112" CreationDate="2012-08-14T18:55:08.337" Score="20" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Criteria&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it's virtually impossible to &lt;em&gt;count&lt;/em&gt; the number of people who have read &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; published book, the claim must be analysed on purely statistical/circumstantial evidence.  I propose to show whether the Bible is the most widely available book in terms of translations and copies.  Then I will examine whether a copy of the Bible is more or less likely to be read than other likely contenders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Translations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wycliffe.net/resources/scriptureaccessstatistics/tabid/99/language/en-US/Default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wycliffe Global Alliance&lt;/a&gt; the Bible as a whole is available in 471 languages which covers 4.8 billion people:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lcSL6.png&quot; alt=&quot;Scripture access worldwide&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been unable to track down reliable numbers for other works, including the two listed in the question.  &lt;em&gt;Don Quixote&lt;/em&gt; is often cited as the second-most translated book, but I have yet to even find a number of target languages associated with it.  As a point of comparison, &lt;em&gt;Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung&lt;/em&gt; had been translated into &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao#Publication_number&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;65 languages&lt;/a&gt; by 1967.  The Qur'an exists in at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran#Translations&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;112 languages&lt;/a&gt;.  In terms of language availability, it seems unlikely that any work exceeds the Bible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Copies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of best-selling books&lt;/a&gt; excludes the Bible, the Qur'an, and &lt;em&gt;Quotations from Chairman Mao&lt;/em&gt; because of the difficulty of obtaining accurate figures.  However, the Gideon's International (of hotel-drawer-Bible fame) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gideons.org/AboutUs/WorldwideImpact.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;estimates&lt;/a&gt; they have distributed &quot;1.7 billion Bibles and New Testaments&quot;.  Last year, they counted 78.9 million copies.  Many websites list &quot;6 billion Bibles&quot;, but I can't find a solid source.  This number seems to be a guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=uGZIziWmlmsC&amp;amp;pg=PA186&amp;amp;dq=Quotations%20from%20Chairman%20Mao%20%226.5%20billion%22&amp;amp;as_brr=3&amp;amp;hl=ja&amp;amp;sig=8-PRBeIQMPYUjfDMkXACYtA4yhI#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Quotations%20from%20Chairman%20Mao%20%226.5%20billion%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;6.5 billion copies&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;em&gt;The Little Red Book&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotations_from_Chairman_Mao#Publication_number&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apparently&lt;/a&gt;, the actual number is somewhat smaller, however.  Because of changes in China, Mao's Quotations are extremely unlikely to be read anywhere near as often as other contenders.  I think it safe to remove this remarkable volume from further consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/10311317?story_id=10311317&amp;amp;CFID=3289446&amp;amp;CFTOKEN=a87381115ea0752-5130AD65-B27C-BB00-012B3B9A581DD567&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2007 article in The Economist&lt;/a&gt;, Saudi Arabia gives away 30 million copies of the Qur'an each year.   Most estimates for the total number of existing Qur'ans that I've found begin with the suspect assumption that each Muslim owns a copy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I could find no figures for either &lt;em&gt;Mahabharata&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Four Books and Five Classics&lt;/em&gt;.  I also had difficulty finding any verifiable figures for any book with more than a billion copies besides the three listed above.  Surprisingly, &lt;em&gt;The Book of Mormon&lt;/em&gt; has only been printed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/book-mormon-150-million&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;150 million times&lt;/a&gt;, which is roughly the total for &lt;em&gt;The Lord of the Rings&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of total copies, the most reliable evidence suggests that the Bible probably wins out over any other book.  There's a chance that the Qur'an approaches the same levels, but we have no solid data either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Readership&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, &lt;em&gt;having&lt;/em&gt; a copy of the Bible does not mean the book is actually &lt;em&gt;read&lt;/em&gt;.  I personally have more copies of the Bible than I can count as did my father as did his father.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that most Bibles distributed by the Gideon's and most &quot;family Bibles&quot; are rarely opened and never actually read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it seems quite likely that most books being sold are not read.  A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20381678/ns/us_news-life/t/poll-one-four-adults-read-no-books-last-year/#.UClxz51lTYg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2007 Associated Press-Ipsos poll&lt;/a&gt; conducted in the United States, which has &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;almost universal literacy&lt;/a&gt;, suggests that 27% of adults do not read books at all.  That year, 3.1 billion books were sold in the country.  Active readers read 7 books a year, which suggests that something like half of the books purchased were &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; read that year.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the article about the poll did note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Bible and religious works were read by two-thirds in the survey, more than all other categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another poll (&lt;a href=&quot;http://uncover.americanbible.org/downloads/2012_analysis.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;) by the Barna Group and commissioned by the American Bible Society, found that the average US household had 4.3 Bibles.  While that does indicate that many people own more Bibles than they read, it also suggests that, at least in the US, a Bible is likely to be on-hand when someone wants to read one.  More helpful to the question, however, the study asked how often the respondent read the Bible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;TABLE 1.31 TIME SPENT READING THE BIBLE&#xA;Question:  How often, if ever, do you actually read the Bible, not including times when&#xA;you are at a church service or church event?&#xA;                            2011  2012&#xA;never                         25%  26%&#xA;less than once a year         13   10&#xA;once or twice a year          11   10&#xA;three or four times a year     8    9&#xA;once a month                   8    8&#xA;once a week                    8    7&#xA;several times/4+ times a week 15   13&#xA;every day                     11   13&#xA;not sure                       3    5&#xA;                         n= 2,014 2,011&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this is self-reported and only in the US, which is probably the &lt;em&gt;best case&lt;/em&gt; scenario for independent Bible reading.  Even so, it's difficult to imagine any book besides the Bible and the Qur'an which could hope to be read even occasionally by 69% of the population.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;  That 26% claim to read often enough to finish the entire Bible once a year is staggering.  Very few books hold up to multiple readings across many generations.  If the question were focused entirely on the US, there's no question that the Bible is the most read book.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that people (especially Christians) believe they &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; read the Bible, it could be argued that these polls over-report Bible readership.  YouVersion, a popular Bible app, reports &lt;a href=&quot;http://now.youversion.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;live statistics&lt;/a&gt;.  At the moment, the software has been installed 57 million times.  According to the site, 28.5 billion minutes of reading have been logged.  A simple average shows 500 minutes per installation, which works out to 8 hours and 20 minutes.  Of course there's no way to know how many of those installations are active.  Another measure is the 3.8 million reading plans finished so far.  Not all of the plans are daily or cover the entire Bible, but it does indicate that at least 6% of YouVersion users are regular readers of the Bible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Bible versus the Qur'an&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the evidence above, the only two possible contenders for &quot;most read book&quot; are the Bible and the Qur'an.  If another book can claim significant readership, it has left little statistical evidence.  Certainly the works suggested by the question do not register on any of the lists I've been able to discover.  The Bible has a lot of statistical evidence to back its readership claim, but there's a nontrivial possibility that the Qur'an has it beat.  From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/10311317?story_id=10311317&amp;amp;CFID=3289446&amp;amp;CFTOKEN=a87381115ea0752-5130AD65-B27C-BB00-012B3B9A581DD567&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Economist&lt;/a&gt; article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reciting the Koran is the backbone of Muslim education. One of the most prized honorifics in Islamic society is “hafiz” or “one who has the entire scripture off by heart”. Do so in Iran and you get an automatic university degree. The great recitors compete in tournaments that can attract audiences in the hundreds of thousands—the world cups of the Islamic world. The winners' CDs become instant bestsellers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we expand the definition of &quot;reading&quot; to include listening to a live or recorded recitation, the Qur'an can claim a much larger, undocumented readership.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question considers the US only, the Bible clearly is the most read book.  Worldwide, the Bible is no worse than the second-most read book.  Whether the Qur'an is more widely read is difficult to determine because of the lack of statistical information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Footnotes:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My calculation is based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004986.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;300 million Americans&lt;/a&gt; multiplied by 73% who finished a book multiplied by the median number of books read (7).  That results in roughly 1.5 billion books finished.  Looking at my own book shelves, I estimate that I've finished about half of the books I own.  But that doesn't count my Kindle library, which has received the bulk of my purchases this past year and is substantially unread.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I arrived at this figure by subtracting number of people who never read the Bible and the number who are &quot;not sure&quot; from 100%.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20381678/ns/us_news-life/t/poll-one-four-adults-read-no-books-last-year/#.UClxz51lTYg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AP poll&lt;/a&gt; confirms this figure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not people &lt;em&gt;understand&lt;/em&gt; what they are reading, is a different question.  The Barna poll asked two questions that could be answered with fairly basic Biblical knowledge and many respondents answered incorrectly.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Again, understanding the Qur'an may be an issue.  In the same article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Muslims greatly prefer to read the Koran in the original Arabic. Yet the archaic language and high-flown verse, while inspiring, can also be difficult to understand even for educated Arabic speakers. And only 20% of Muslims speak Arabic as their first language. Illiteracy rates are high across the Muslim world. Many students of the Holy Book do not understand much of what they are memorising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3252" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-15T00:05:52.277" LastActivityDate="2012-08-15T00:05:52.277" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10469" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10471" CreationDate="2012-08-14T21:25:24.013" Score="9" ViewCount="1326" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a long-standing belief among anaesthsetists that people with red hair need more anaesthetic. There even appears to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/surgeries-procedures/redhead-anesthesia.htm&quot;&gt;some evidence.&lt;/a&gt; to back up this widely held idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, though, a different study (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2012/03/redheads-feel-pain-differently-to-the-rest-of-us/&quot;&gt;reported by Gizmodo here&lt;/a&gt;) has suggested the opposite: that redheads are &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt; sensitive to some types of pain. As they report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It turns out that gingers are less sensitive to stinging pain in the skin, according to researchers who injected capsicum, the active ingredient in chilies, into the arms of patients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be that the experiments looked at different types of pain but both seemed to conclude that redheads are &lt;em&gt;different&lt;/em&gt;. So, are they? Are the studies reliable enough to come to trustworthy conclusions? Are there other studies that support the findings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-09-17T22:15:26.933" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T22:15:26.933" Title="Do red-headed people feel pain differently?" Tags="|physiology|pain|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10470" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-14T21:33:14.533" Score="7" ViewCount="270" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an &lt;a href=&quot;http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/4-things-you-should-probably-never-do-at-work/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; I read recently the author mentions a certain study. He claims that it showed that people are likely to judge a task &quot;boring&quot;, when in truth it was not, but there were low-intensity background distractions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I read once about a study where people were expected to read material amid low-level stressors and distractions and they attributed their poor performance not to the environment but to the material being “boring”, while control-group subjects (who comprehended the material well) found it interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately the author does not reference the study and I cannot find it myself. While this claim does indeed seem plausible to me, I'd like to see some more solid evidence. Does anyone know about this study or any other similar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2857" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T11:17:35.133" Title="Can boredom at workplace be attributed to poor working conditions?" Tags="|environment|work|stress|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10469" CreationDate="2012-08-14T22:08:34.797" Score="16" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Answer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1736101/?tool=pmcentrez&quot;&gt;This scientific article&lt;/a&gt; states that a mutation in the MC1R (which is what causes red hair) can also cause &lt;em&gt;some sort of pain reduction&lt;/em&gt;, as well as a lesser sensitivity to anaesthetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results:&lt;/strong&gt; C57BL/6-Mc1re/e mutant mice and &lt;strong&gt;human redheads—both with non-functional MC1Rs—display reduced sensitivity to noxious stimuli and increased analgesic responsiveness&lt;/strong&gt; to the µ-opioid selective morphine metabolite, M6G. In both species the differential analgesia is likely due to pharmacodynamic factors, as plasma levels of M6G are similar across genotype.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692342/?tool=pmcentrez&quot;&gt;this report&lt;/a&gt; adds that redheads were &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; sensitive to thermal pain, while less responsive to the common anaesthetic lidocaine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results:&lt;/strong&gt; Current perception, pain perception, and pain tolerance thresholds were similar in the red-haired and dark-haired women at 2000, 250, and 5 Hz. In contrast, &lt;strong&gt;redheads were more sensitive to cold pain perception (22.6°C [15.1, 26.1] vs. 12.6°C [0, 20], P=0.004), cold pain tolerance (6.0°C [0, 9.7] vs. 0.0°C [0.0, 2.0], P=0.001), and heat pain (46.3°C [45.7, 47.5] vs. 47.7°C [46.6, 48.7], P=0.009). Subcutaneous, lidocaine was significantly less effective in redheads, e.g., pain tolerance threshold at 2000 Hz stimulation in redheads was 11.0 mA [8.5, 16.5] vs. &gt;20.0 mA [14.5, &gt;20] in others, P=0.005)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1362956/?tool=pmcentrez&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; states that redheads are significantly less sensitive to the anaesthetic desflurane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The desflurane requirement in redheads (6.2 volume-percent [95% CI, 5.9 - 6.5]) was significantly greater than in dark-haired women (5.2 volume-percent [4.9 – 5.5], P = 0.0004). Nine of 10 redheads were either homozygous or compound heterozygotes for mutations on the melanocortin-1 receptor gene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanocortin_1_receptor&quot;&gt;this Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; explains...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These observations suggests a role for mammalian MC1R outside the pigment cell, though the exact mechanism through which the protein can modulate pain sensation is not known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In summary:&lt;/strong&gt; Redheads do appear to be less responsive to general anaesthetics, as far as reported. However, either an &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;and/or&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;decrease&lt;/em&gt; to different types of painful stimuli is shown. Also, the mechanism for these results is still unknown, but is &lt;em&gt;very probably&lt;/em&gt; related to the mutation in the MC1R which gives redheads their red hair in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; All added emphasis is my own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;References&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mogil, J, J Ritchie, S Smith, K Strasburg, L Kaplan, M Wallace, R Romberg, et al.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;“Melanocortin-1 Receptor Gene Variants Affect Pain and Μ-opioid Analgesia in Mice and Humans.”&lt;/em&gt; Journal of Medical Genetics 42, no. 7 (July 2005): 583–587.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Liem, Edwin B., Teresa V. Joiner, Kentaro Tsueda, and Daniel I. Sessler.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;“Increased Sensitivity to Thermal Pain and Reduced Subcutaneous Lidocaine Efficacy in Redheads.”&lt;/em&gt; Anesthesiology 102, no. 3 (March 2005): 509–514.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Liem, Edwin B., Chun–Ming Lin, Mohammad–Irfan Suleman, Anthony G. Doufas, Ronald G. Gregg, Jacqueline M. Veauthier, Gary Loyd, and Daniel I. Sessler.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;“Anesthetic Requirement Is Increased in Redheads.”&lt;/em&gt; Anesthesiology 101, no. 2 (August 2004): 279–283.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6652" LastEditorUserId="6652" LastEditDate="2012-09-16T17:19:02.053" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T17:19:02.053" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10472" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10497" CreationDate="2012-08-15T01:46:02.927" Score="3" ViewCount="878" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/12/paul-ryan-bills_n_1769816.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, Paul Ryan has passed only two bills during ~13 years in Congress. (By passed, I assume the article means authored or co-authored bills passed in at least the House.) Is this number actually unusual compared to the records of other Congresspeople? What is a recent rough average for bills authored and passed by Congresspeople?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8175" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T20:22:52.620" Title="Is Paul Ryan's Congress record of two bills passed unusual?" Tags="|united-states|politics|government|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10473" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10506" CreationDate="2012-08-15T02:19:19.337" Score="7" ViewCount="4184" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm moving into an apartment with my cockatoo, and in thinking about sound level I realized I've never actually seen a source for the claim I've heard quite often and passively believed myself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cockatoos can scream as loud as a jet engine!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see this repeated over and over just by searching for &quot;cockatoo scream jet engine&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim itself lacks any real units, but often recited in decibels. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111203172716AAiI2kK&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;site suggests in a comment&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sun Conures are the loudest birds there is. Easily as loud as a jet&#xA;  engine. They scream at dawn and at dusk. It's instinct and they can't&#xA;  be trained out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youpet.com/forums/forums/topics/threads/?forumtopicid=1643&amp;amp;p=1&amp;amp;hlt=3995#tpos_4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most cockatoos will scream for about 20 to 40 minutes a day, for no&#xA;  reason. And, yes, they are very loud. The amount of decibels(unit of&#xA;  measurement for sound) their loudest scream has is greater than that&#xA;  of a jet engine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My&lt;/em&gt; own original attempt at linking the two is noting that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/loudness.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a jet engine (at 100 feet) is 140 dB&lt;/a&gt; (doubling the distance makes it about 134 dB, which would still be as &quot;loud as a jet engine&quot;, to me), and (apparently) a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mytoos.com/noise.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Moluccan cockatoo can reach 135 dB&lt;/a&gt;. But how is the latter figure being measured? At what distance and with what reference level? Has it been measured at all or is it just a guess? Where's the source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My cockatoo is not a Moluccan, but I can attest that at times he can be loud. I don't think, however, that the short-lived mid-to-high pitched screams of a bird can compare in loudness to the continuous rumbling of a jet engine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies regarding such comparisons, or the loudness of cockatoos, or is it bogus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7962" LastEditorUserId="1850" LastEditDate="2012-08-19T22:51:12.160" LastActivityDate="2012-08-19T22:51:12.160" Title="Can birds scream as loud as a jet engine?" Tags="|zoology|sound|birds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10462" CreationDate="2012-08-15T14:28:16.060" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/greenjournal/abstract/1990/07000/the_safety_of_obstetric_ultrasonography__concern.31.aspx&quot;&gt;Abstract to paper&lt;/a&gt; the author's claim that while high-power ultrasound can be dangerous, the low powers used in diagnostic tests pose no detectable threat to the fetus, and so the risks are outweighed by the benefits of having a diagnostic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been estimated that more than half of all pregnant women in the United States undergo diagnostic ultrasound during their pregnancies. In light of this, the question of safety is of fundamental importance. Nondiagnostic ultrasound has been shown to produce biologic effects by thermal and cavitational activities. &lt;strong&gt;However, diagnostic ultrasound uses much lower intensities, and no evidence exists to suggest that it is associated with adverse effects&lt;/strong&gt;. Numerous studies have examined the biologic effects of diagnostic ultrasound in insects, plants, cell suspensions, and even small mammals. The data from these experiments are confusing when attempting to relate these findings to the human. Epidemiologic data in humans, used to evaluate the potential adverse effects of exposure to diagnostic ultrasound, have revealed &lt;strong&gt;no ill effects from such exposure&lt;/strong&gt;. Current data indicate that there are no confirmed biologic effects on patients and their fetuses from the use of diagnostic ultrasound and that the benefits to patients exposed to prudent use of diagnostic ultrasound outweigh the risks, if any. This review discusses the available information on the safety of obstetric ultrasonography&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have access the the paper itself. This was published in 1990, so it is possible that more research has been done since then finding evidence of damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastActivityDate="2012-08-15T14:28:16.060" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10479" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-15T16:37:32.933" Score="9" ViewCount="2750" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today I stumbled across a massage therapy called &lt;a href=&quot;http://systems.marhythe.de/en/the-therapy&quot;&gt;matrix rhythm therapy&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Matrix-Rhythm-Therapy is an innovative therapeutic approach at the core of modern 21st Century medicine. It is based on the scientific fact that the all cells of biological systems vibrate rhythmically as long as they are alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The therapy is a practical outcome of fundamental research studies into cell biology conducted at Erlangen University in Germany (Research and Practical Experience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here the basic underlying principles : the human body is always oscillating – as are the bodies of all endothermic animals (e.g. horses, cats, dogs, etc.) – in a frequency range between 8 – 12 vibrations per second. That is not a new discovery but during the past 10 years has now been observed in great detail using high-tech video microscopy. Without such visual aids, these minimal vibrations can only be seen under rare conditions such as in the case of certain fevers (ague) or amyostasia (due to tension).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several other claims on the page, especially about how a reduction in this frequencies can cause several illnesses and how applying the frequency to the body from outside (through a special device that is extremely expensive for some modified vibrator) cures them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It claims to be based on research from Erlangen University, but I am highly sceptical about the reliability of this publication. There seem to be no studies available, neither proving or disproving the efficiency of the method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5638" LastActivityDate="2016-03-19T06:57:26.747" Title="Does Matrix Rhythm Therapy work?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6114" CreationDate="2012-08-15T19:35:57.640" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://misterdavid.typepad.com/traditional_sports/2009/12/man-vs-horse.html&quot;&gt;event in england&lt;/a&gt; that is run every year:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1980, in the mid-Wales town of Llanwrtyd Wells, an argument broke&#xA;  out in the pub concerning an age-old matter.  “Yes, we all know that&#xA;  horses can sprint fast,” one man declared, “but, over a real distance,&#xA;  man is its equal.”  The pub was the Neuadd Arms and the speaker was&#xA;  the landlord, Gordon Green.  To resolve the dispute, Green suggested a&#xA;  full public test: a race.  A £1000 prize was put up to attract&#xA;  competitors willing the attempt the feat, and the Man vs Horse&#xA;  Marathon has been staged every year since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Still organised by creator Gordon Green, the Man vs Horse Marathon is&#xA;  run over a rough, cross-country course of 22 miles, and has become the&#xA;  largest horse race in Britain, attracting more riders in recent years&#xA;  than the forty competitors in a Grand National.  Numbers of entrants&#xA;  on the side of the runners now usually reach over two hundred and&#xA;  fifty, and are also increasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;&#xA;Runners are given a 15 minute head start (A skilled runner can have over 2 miles down in that time some almost 3)   Dispite this&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Runners start 15 minutes earlier than the horse riders but the event is a timed race.  So times are compared not who comes in earliest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the results from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onlineraceresults.org.uk/mvh-full-07.htm&quot;&gt;2007&lt;/a&gt;(the last time a human won) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onlineraceresults.org.uk/mvh-full-12.htm&quot;&gt;2012&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onlineraceresults.org.uk/&quot;&gt;The site&lt;/a&gt; has other years but not all the Man v Horse results on a single easy to link page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Horses have had the upper hand on runners in all bar two of the races&#xA;  to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is possible for a man to run faster than a horse over a marathon but not as the norm.  In 2012 the first 8 times were all horses.  Though the top human did beat several horses. It seems a good horse will beat a good human runner most of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2013-02-11T18:02:35.500" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T18:02:35.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10462" CreationDate="2012-08-16T09:54:03.113" Score="12" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Clinical Damage from Ultrasound&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a look for some research for this and found the most recent study I could from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hpa.org.uk/webc/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1265028759369&quot;&gt;Health Protection Agency UK (2010)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some key quotes from the summary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At high levels of exposure, ultrasound is capable of causing permanent&#xA;  damage to biological tissues, including teratogenic effects, through&#xA;  heating, acoustic cavitation and radiation force. At lower levels,&#xA;  such as those used for diagnostic purposes, ultrasound does not&#xA;  generally cause heating beyond the normal physiological range, nor&#xA;  does it cause cavitation in the absence of pre-existing gas bubbles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote above considers is what tissue damage can be done through known and measurable processes from an ultrasound beam.&#xA;As Ultrasound is a non-ionising methodology the main causes of any potential tissue damage is through the pressure wave, which can lead to cavitation and heating effects at higher power levels. &#xA;In general diagnostic/imaging ultrasound (specifically on obstetric scanning), it found little significant evidence of heating or cavitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies of the effects of ultrasound in humans have largely concerned&#xA;  in utero exposure to diagnostic ultrasound. The available evidence&#xA;  does not suggest effects on several outcomes, which include perinatal&#xA;  mortality and childhood malignancies, but some observational studies&#xA;  have found increased prevalence of non-right-handedness in males with&#xA;  prenatal ultrasound exposure. The results  on handedness might reflect&#xA;  confounding rather than causation, however, and analyses comparing&#xA;  individuals randomly assigned to receive, or not receive, ultrasound&#xA;  in pregnancy have only shown weak evidence of an effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key finding from this and most other well-run studies I could find was that the heating produced at common diagnostic levels does not heat the tissue appreciably, or create cavitation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some wider studies have shown that with frequent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8105165&quot;&gt;Doppler Ultrasound, there may be a smaller foetal-growth&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22325988&quot;&gt;other issues&lt;/a&gt;. But a thing to bear in mind is that generally Doppler ultrasound use is minimised for this very reason (as it utilises a much more powerful beam).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Evidence of Problems in pregnancy/childbirth due to Ultrasound&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course a good skeptic looks for evidence for the phenomena being claimed, so I took a look around for evidence of the &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increased Miscarriage in people who had ultrasound versus those who didn't&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Greater chance of learning problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem I then found was that &lt;a href=&quot;http://birthamiracle.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/ultrasound-proven-unsafe/&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; of the online articles talking of this subject link back to things like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/ultrasound.asp&quot;&gt;this article, which dates back to Midwifery Today Issue 51, Autumn 1999.&lt;/a&gt;. Several of these pages link to studies which don't quite appear to say what is implied by the link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example. looking through the articles referenced in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/ultrasound.asp&quot;&gt;midwifery today &lt;/a&gt; piece a quote says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A large randomised controlled trial from Helsinki (Saari-Kemppainen et&#xA;  al., 1990) randomly divided over 9,000 women into a group who were&#xA;  scanned at sixteen to twenty weeks compared with those who were not.&#xA;  It revealed twenty miscarriages after sixteen to twenty weeks in the&#xA;  screened group and none in the controls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the abstract for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1974940&quot;&gt;actual study&lt;/a&gt; gives us this quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There were no differences in the number of labour inductions or mean&#xA;  birthweights in the two groups. Perinatal mortality was significantly&#xA;  lower in the screened than in the control group (4.6/1000 vs&#xA;  9.0/1000); this 49.2% reduction was mainly due to improved early detection of major &#xA;  malformations which led to induced abortion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found similar things in each of the other studies I looked at linked by that article. The claims made, did not quite tally with what was shown in the abstract for the paper - so the things Beverley Lawrence Beech was talking about are either viewed as not important enough to put in abstract (unlikely), or the highlights she has are not statistically significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research is always being conducted in this area, and I think you would struggle to find a clinician who would say Ultrasound is definitely and unequivocally safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I struggle to find well run and clear studies showing an increase in miscarriage or post-natal development, as a result of Ultrasound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Referring back to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hpa.org.uk/webc/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1265028759369&quot;&gt;Health Protection Agency (2010)&lt;/a&gt; document I started  with, which makes no secret that further long term research is desirable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there is no established evidence of specific hazards, but there are&#xA;  too few research data to draw firm conclusions about their absence,&#xA;  especially in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless there is some mechanism we are unaware of - and in the absence of specific evidence of dangers, normal Ultrasound is most likely pretty safe as a diagnostic tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In answer to the question posed by the title of this thread &quot;does ultrasound pose a &lt;strong&gt;significant&lt;/strong&gt; health risk?&quot; The answer is almost certainly NO, as the various studies performed would have clearly shown a greater effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3606" LastEditorUserId="3606" LastEditDate="2012-08-20T08:19:14.677" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T08:19:14.677" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="607" CreationDate="2012-08-16T23:50:22.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15287394.2011.573736&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This one&lt;/a&gt; from 2011 did. It's certainly low impact and I haven't gone through it to find the flaws. I'd be interested to look at the data and see if there is anything there. The study has garnered &lt;a href=&quot;http://biologyfiles.fieldofscience.com/2011/06/gayle-delong-safeminds-board-member-and.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;strong condemnation for a variety of reasons&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a scientific study, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc086269&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DHHS conceded that vaccines contributed to the autism-like symptoms of this neurologist's daughter&lt;/a&gt;. There is some more study to do regarding mitochondrial disorders, vaccination and autism, imho.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7563" LastEditorUserId="7563" LastEditDate="2012-08-17T01:05:39.280" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T01:05:39.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10489" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-17T02:14:02.183" Score="16" ViewCount="2642" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180810194402/http://www.preemieprimer.com/the-truth-about-vaccines-and-toxins-less-aluminum-than-breast-milk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This blog post&lt;/a&gt; claims that vaccines given to infants contain less aluminum than is typically ingested from milk - especially formula milk. A more prestigious source of this claim is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.chop.edu/centers-programs/vaccine-education-center/vaccine-ingredients/aluminum#.VdJoZixViko&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Children's Hospital of Philadelphia&lt;/a&gt;. They state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While infants receive about 4.4 milligrams of aluminum in the first six months of life from vaccines, they receive more than that in their diet. Breast-fed infants ingest about 7 milligrams, formula-fed infants ingest about 38 milligrams, and infants who are fed soy formula ingest almost 117 milligrams of aluminum during the first six months of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00869743&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper in Pediatric Nephrology&lt;/a&gt; says that the average infant on formula &lt;em&gt;absorbs&lt;/em&gt; .0008 mg Al per kg of body weight per day (&lt;a href=&quot;https://journals.lww.com/jpgn/Fulltext/1999/03000/Aluminum_Contents_of_Human_Milk,_Cow_s_Milk,_and.11.aspx?WT.mc_id=HPxADx20100319xMP&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the breast-fed infant receives significantly less - on the order of 1/10&lt;/a&gt;). I can't resolve how this matches the claims above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that more aluminum is ingested in the first six months of formula-drinking infant than is injected or ingested by the scheduled vaccines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7563" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-05-06T05:56:19.417" LastActivityDate="2019-05-06T05:56:19.417" Title="Do 6-month old babies ingest more aluminum from formula milk than from vaccines?" Tags="|medical-science|vaccines|milk|aluminum|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10491" CreationDate="2012-08-17T02:41:51.763" Score="16" ViewCount="1803" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read from quite a few sources stating that there was a mistranslation in the Bible, calling Mary a &quot;virgin&quot; instead of a &quot;young, marry-able woman&quot;. It would be interesting to know about such a big mistake in popular literature (that is, if it really is a mistake).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;br /&gt;Here are some sources, but I will look for the more reliable sources I read earlier after a night's sleep.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://carm.org/isaiah-7-14-virgin&quot;&gt;http://carm.org/isaiah-7-14-virgin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fuzzyquark.comxa.com/marynotavirgin.html&quot;&gt;http://fuzzyquark.comxa.com/marynotavirgin.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8198" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:15:13.263" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:15:13.263" Title="Does the new Testament claim that Mary, mother of Jesus, was a virgin?" Tags="|bible|literature|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10490" CreationDate="2012-08-17T04:19:00.407" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I want to point out that the original passage being debated is actually in Matthew and not in Luke as your second link suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their argument is around the translation of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almah&quot;&gt;Hebrew word &lt;em&gt;alma&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. They are taking issue with the fact that when the New Testament was written the Greek word for &quot;virgin&quot; was chosen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't say elsewhere in Matthew that Mary was a virgin, but it does call Mary a virgin &lt;em&gt;parthenos&lt;/em&gt; in Luke 1:27 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://biblos.com/luke/1-27.htm&quot;&gt;see Greek translation here&lt;/a&gt;) when not linking to any past text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, Isiah's prophecy aside, the Bible still says Mary is a virgin. So the people who are trying to make the argument are cherry picking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2012-08-17T04:34:17.583" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T04:34:17.583" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10492" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-17T04:31:52.470" Score="10" ViewCount="473" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &quot;The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People&quot;, Stephen Covey gives an anecdote about a computer error in England in which a group of 'bright' students are accidentally labelled as 'dumb' and a group of 'dumb' students are labelled as 'bright'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mistake is discovered after a period of time and the students are tested. It turns out that the dumb students are now classified as 'bright' as well.  The moral of the story is that people rise to the level expected of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This anecdote can be found, with minor variations, in many places on the internet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://csanemone.blogspot.com/2012/06/believe-in-your-students.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Believe in your students&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fatherhood.about.com/od/succeedingasafather/a/high_expectations.htm&quot;&gt;&quot;Children with parents who have high expectations tend to strive to reach them.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hmba.me/604&quot;&gt;&quot;Scripting Others&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://garywinters.com/archives/646&quot;&gt;&quot;People will rise or fall to your level of expectation&quot;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have any scientifically valid studies been done which support or disprove this claim?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6673" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T01:21:47.990" Title="Do individuals rise to the level expected of them?" Tags="|education|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8351" CreationDate="2012-08-17T14:05:57.177" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I understand the issue is not the thorium itself, but what thorium yields in terms of decay products. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/natural-decay-series.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This ANL report&lt;/a&gt; points out that Thorium 230 turns into radium 226, then radon 222, then polonium, etc. Thorium 228 has a similar decay chain. The decay products have much shorter half lives, but it is radon that one might fear the most since it will not stay in the ground, away from direct contact. As a gas, it will end up in the lungs of those who live in the area. Once in your lungs, &lt;a href=&quot;http://building-inspections.com/Radon%20Testing.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;radon is now a problem&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3344" LastActivityDate="2012-08-17T14:05:57.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10494" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10495" CreationDate="2012-08-17T15:00:38.727" Score="23" ViewCount="19634" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common claim in Quebec that McDonald's put anti-emetics in the food. I think I heard four times over the last week, alone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not uncommon for people to go to McDonald's when they're drunk because it apparently helps prevent them from vomiting. A lot of people attribute this to McDonald's putting anti-vomit &quot;stuff&quot; in their food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nature of the anti-vomit ingredients varies a lot, such as vitamin E but the claim is always that McDonald's food makes you less prone to throw up and that's because it has anti-vomit in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T17:24:11.773" LastActivityDate="2016-07-06T01:03:37.650" Title="Does McDonald's put anti-emetics (&quot;anti-vomit&quot;) in their food?" Tags="|nutrition|mcdonalds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10494" CreationDate="2012-08-17T16:33:53.677" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It a very common question indeed. So common that it have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://yourquestions.mcdonalds.ca/questions/4434&quot;&gt;addressed at the McDonalds &quot;YourQuestions&quot; section&lt;/a&gt;. The rumor seems to be &lt;strong&gt;false&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is absolutely no truth to this, Veronic.  We do not add any drugs or medication of any kind to our food. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to put this rumor to rest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8200" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-19T13:58:59.023" LastActivityDate="2012-08-19T13:58:59.023" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10472" CreationDate="2012-08-18T02:30:39.197" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure this is really a good answer, but in the absence of others I started looking at Congresspeople who joined the House in 1999. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shelley Berkley [D-NV1] Sponsored 109 Passed 5 (1 Bill, 4 Resolutions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Michael Capuano [D-MA8] Sponsored 92 Passed 9 (2 Bills 7 Resolutions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Joseph Crowley [D-NY7] Sponsored 136 Passed 23 (8 Bills 15 Resolutions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Charles Gonzalez [R-TX20] Sponsored 62 Passed 4 (2 Bills 2 Resolutions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rush Holt [D-NJ12] Sponsored 252 Passed 13 (3 Bills 10 Resolutions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Terry Lee [R-NE2] Sponsored 134 Passed 9 (1 Bill 8 Resolutions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jan Schakowsky [D-IL9] Sponsored 143 Passed 9 (1 Bill 8 Resolutions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mike Simpson [R-ID2] Sponsored 86 Passed 8 (6 Bills 2 Resolutions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lee Terry [R-NE2] Sponsored 134 Passed 9 (1 Bill 8 Resolutions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Greg Walden [R-OR2] Sponsored 79 Passed 11 (9 Bills 2 Resolutions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paul Ryan [R-WI1] Sponsored 75 Passed 2 (2 Bills 0 Resolutions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Data from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.govtrack.us/&quot;&gt;GovTrack&lt;/a&gt;. Resolutions are what GovTrack calls &quot;simple resolutions&quot;. What I've called Bills is anything that was signed by the President. I believe this is necessary for anything that actually changes, even if its for renaming a post office. Simple resolutions are the sort where &quot;The House resolves that...&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The summary seems to be that where it counts (bills signed by the President) Ryan is about on the average for his contemporaries. However the numbers are so low that it is not fair to draw any meaningful conclusions. He is much lower on resolutions passed and lower for bills introduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to add that I am deeply skeptical that this tells us anything useful about Ryan or anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-08-18T20:22:52.620" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T20:22:52.620" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10327" CreationDate="2012-08-18T18:02:31.177" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't appear that he wrote it, however many sources say he did say it, or something very similar at a sci fi convention in 1948.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1948 he described a method which could solve his financial&#xA;problems. He has been quoted as telling a science fiction convention&#xA;in 1948: &amp;quot;Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really&#xA;wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his&#xA;own religion.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Methvin, Eugene H. (May 1990). &amp;quot;Scientology: Anatomy of a Frightening Cult&amp;quot;. Reader's Digest. pp. 16. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard#cite_note-Methvin-132&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Numerous people report the same or similar statement at the time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Response to a question from the audience during a meeting of the&#xA;Eastern Science Fiction Association on (7 November 1948), as quoted in&#xA;a 1994 affidavit by Sam Moskowitz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This statement is similar or identical to several statements Hubbard is&#xA;reported to have made to various individuals or groups in the 1940s.&#xA;Variants include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The incident is stamped indelibly in my mind because of one statement that&#xA;Ron Hubbard made. What led him to say what he did I can't recall — but&#xA;in so many words Hubbard said: &amp;quot;I'd like to start a religion. That's&#xA;where the money is!&amp;quot; L. Ron Hubbard to Lloyd A. Eshbach, in 1949; as&#xA;quoted by Eshbach in his autobiography Over My Shoulder: Reflections&#xA;On A Science Fiction Era (1983) ISBN 1-880418-11-8&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Y'know, we're all&#xA;wasting our time writing this hack science fiction! You wanta make&#xA;real money, you gotta start a religion! As reported to Mike Jittlov by&#xA;Theodore Sturgeon as a statement Hubbard made while at the Los Angeles&#xA;Science Fantasy Society clubhouse in the 1940s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing for a penny a&#xA;word is ridiculous. If a man really wanted to make a million dollars,&#xA;the best way to do it would be start his own religion. As quoted in&#xA;the Los Angeles Times (27 August 1978)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing for a penny a word is&#xA;ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best&#xA;way would be to start his own religion. As quoted in the article&#xA;&amp;quot;Scientology: Anatomy of a Frightening Cult&amp;quot; by Eugene H. Methvin.&#xA;Reader's Digest (May 1980)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always knew he was exceedingly anxious to&#xA;hit big money — he used to say he thought the best way to do it would&#xA;be to start a cult. Sam Merwin, Editor of Thrilling Science Fiction&#xA;magazine Winter of 1946-47; quoted in Bare-Faced Messiah, The True&#xA;Story of L. Ron Hubbard (1987) by Russell Miller&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever he was&#xA;talking about being hard up he often used to say that he thought the&#xA;easiest way to make money would be to start a religion. Neison Himmel,&#xA;briefly a roommate of Hubbard in Pasadena during the fall of 1945, in&#xA;a 1986 interview, quoted in Bare-Faced Messiah, The True Story of L.&#xA;Ron Hubbard (1987) by Russell Miller&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7387" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T06:29:11.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10408" CreationDate="2012-08-18T19:41:57.843" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there is no absolute answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;edit with reference&lt;/strong&gt;  &quot;The one area about sleep where the experts are in full agreement is that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;there is no minimum number of hours that we should all spend sleeping&#xA;  before endangering our health.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of us can get by on six hours without feeling any ill-effects and others claim to a minimum of eight. It is a matter of horses for courses.&quot;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/womenshealth/features/gettingenoughsleep.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reference from University of Westminster.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case in point. My Mother of 95 yrs of age is of sound mind and not had any heart attacks and has lived on 4hrs sleep for decades. Sometimes more but often only this.  I too, at 60, have the same pattern.  I can work 48hrs straight without ill effects when motivated. I can be awake minutes after a 4hr sleep ready to take on the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting to sleep is not hard for me either. I can be asleep before the airplane leaves the runway, unless I have good company seated next to me.  My body is in great shape and my Doctor agrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like personality, sleep deprivation depends on your environment, your upbringing and your genes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7122" LastEditorUserId="7122" LastEditDate="2012-08-18T21:51:28.443" LastActivityDate="2012-08-18T21:51:28.443" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10408" CreationDate="2012-08-19T02:38:06.287" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Polyphasic sleep regimens (which usually are attempted to reduce total sleep time) are difficult to follow, and most who attempt it abandon it after a trial.  However, there is evidence that a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sleepdex.org/biphasic.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;biphasic pattern&lt;/a&gt; was common before the industrial revolution and electric lights.  This involved two periods of sleep, both during the night, but with a waking period of one to two hours in between the two phases.  More: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16964783&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8211" LastActivityDate="2012-08-19T02:38:06.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10473" CreationDate="2012-08-19T18:27:16.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;tl;dr&lt;/b&gt;: No, cockatoos output ~3000x less sound energy than jet engines, even taking claims of 135 dB at face value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Loudness measurements are, broadly speaking, a mess when it comes to answering questions like these.  Loudness is often measured for occupational health and safety reasons, and in these situations you put the microphone at the natural distance from the noise source.  Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sengpielaudio.com/TableOfSoundPressureLevels.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;good reference on loudness&lt;/a&gt;; the writing quality is a little shaky but the technical data seems sound.  As usual, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; has a decent article on sound pressure also.  Unfortunately, decibel numbers for birds seem to be widely spread without distances or citations; there are YouTube videos of Moluccans which are incredibly loud but it's very difficult to estimate even orders of magnitude from that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, although I cannot find at what distance the Moluccan cockatoo was measured (or even if it really was), it is presumably in normal ranges for people who are around screeching cockatoos (a few meters).  Also, note that jet engines do not radiate sound equally in all directions; they're a lot louder from the back than from the side.  So this leaves us to conclude that the comparison is essentially meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one can as a closely related but sensible question: at the presumably loudest point around either a jet engine or cockatoo, how far away does each have to be for the two to sound comparably loud?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we speculate that the 135 dB level is for about 3 meters, Wikipedia has a jet engine at 150 dB at 30 meters (which matches the top end of the 110-140 dB range at 100 meters).  Another 5 dB is 3x more less power per unit area, or sqrt(3) ~= 1.7x more distance, so a jet engine at 170 meters is probably &#xA;roughly comparable to a Moluccan cockatoo shriek at 3 meters.  Since this is around 55x farther away, we can estimate that jet engines put out about 55&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; ~= 3000x more sound energy than the cockatoo.  (Maybe somewhat less for the jet engine, given the reduced sound to the side.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More relevant is probably that if you want your cockatoo to be only as loud as a rock concert (~110 dB; also about equal to a chainsaw that you're holding), you will probably have to be about 50 meters away from it*. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;sup&gt;25 dB drop is a decrease in power of 300 times, sqrt(300) = 17 times farther away; 3m*17 = 51m&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastEditorUserId="1039" LastEditDate="2012-08-19T19:06:00.957" LastActivityDate="2012-08-19T19:06:00.957" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10507" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10510" CreationDate="2012-08-19T18:57:42.527" Score="162" ViewCount="26540" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pro life Rep. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Akin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Todd Akin&lt;/a&gt;, who was running for Senate in Missouri, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120829233756/http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/todd-akin-legitimate-rape.php?m=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, this claim is quite controversial. Is there any truth to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-12-31T03:45:32.917" LastActivityDate="2022-08-02T19:13:05.723" Title="Do victims of rape have biological defenses that prevent pregnancy?" Tags="|biology|sexual-abuse|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10507" CreationDate="2012-08-20T01:16:54.937" Score="226" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO WAY!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few sticky issues here that I will try to address. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all Mr. Akin is only talking about &quot;legitimate rape&quot; while not defining which rapes he considers legitimate. It could be the only rapes he considers legitimate are the ones where the victim doesn't get pregnant and if she does get pregnant, she must have been &quot;asking for it,&quot; or maybe he feels she should have fought back harder. I don't know this is the exact case, but the use of &quot;legitimate&quot; is very telling, that he considering some specific cases of rape not legitimate. He could be using the word &quot;legitimate&quot; to exclude false accusations of rape, but by definition those are not cases of rape. I'm wondering what Mr. Akin wants to define legitimate rape as. Others continue to use their own definition of what a real legitimate rape entails: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rape, ladies and gentlemen, is not today what rape was. Rape, when I was learning these things, was the violation of a chaste woman.&lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt; - Tennessee State Senator Douglas Henry&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second of all, we do know &lt;strong&gt;rape victims get pregnant&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One study&lt;sup&gt;(2)&lt;/sup&gt; found that there the pregnancy rate of rape is 5% in women age 12-45, and 32,101 pregnancies result from rape each year in the United States. The conclusion of the study even reads: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency&lt;/strong&gt;. It is a cause of many unwanted pregnancies and is &lt;strong&gt;closely linked with family and domestic violence&lt;/strong&gt;. As we address the epidemic of unintended pregnancies in the United States, greater attention and effort should be aimed at preventing and identifying unwanted pregnancies that result from sexual victimization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though there was a link between rape and violence, perhaps Mr. Akin doesn't consider those people surveyed to have experienced &quot;legitimate rape.&quot; Perhaps he would consider what these women went through &quot;legitimate&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_Wars&quot;&gt;conflict in the former Yugloslavia&lt;/a&gt; in the early 1990's, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_Bosnian_War&quot;&gt;rape was used as a highly systematized instrument of war&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Women were kept in various detention centres where they had to live in intolerably unhygienic conditions, where they were mistreated in many ways including, for many of them, being raped repeatedly. Serb soldiers or policemen would come to these detention centres, select one or more women, take them out and rape them …. All this was done in full view, in complete knowledge and sometimes with the direct involvement of the local authorities, particularly the police forces. The head of Foča police forces, Dragan Gagović, was personally identified as one of the men who came to these detention centres to take women out and rape them.&lt;sup&gt;(3)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Croatian Medical Journal study of 68 of these victims&lt;sup&gt;(4)&lt;/sup&gt; found that 29 got pregnant as a result of their sexual assault. That is 42.64% of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Forty-four of them were raped more than once, 21 were raped every day during their captivity, and 18 were forced to witness rapes. &lt;strong&gt;Most of the rapes (n = 65) were accompanied by physical torture&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've established that rape victims, even in extreme cases, get pregnant. We come back to the question of: Is it &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt; likely for sex as a result of rape to lead to a pregnancy? It is at least plausible that stress will in some way affect ovulation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Catecholamines, prolactin, adrenal steroids, endorphins, and serotonin all affect ovulation and in turn are all affected by stress. &lt;sup&gt;(5)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The biological interaction between stress and infertility is the result of the action of stress hormones at the brain level, especially on the hypothalamus-pituitary and on the female reproductive organs. Stress hormones such as catecholamines (adrenalin, nonadrenaline and dopamine) and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis interact with hormones which are responsible for normal ovulatory cycles: i.e., gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH), prolactin, LH and FSH. Endogenous opiates and melatonin secretion are altered by stress and interfere with ovulation. &lt;sup&gt;(6)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stress can interfere with ovulation, &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; in practice, &lt;strong&gt;this doesn't prevent pregnancy in cases of rape&lt;/strong&gt;. In fact, the study&lt;sup&gt;(7)&lt;/sup&gt; I found on the topic came to the conclusion that &lt;strong&gt;rape is more likely to produce a pregnancy than consensual sex&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is a given instance of rape more likely to result in pregnancy than a given instance of consensual sex? This paper undertakes a review and critique of the literature on rape-pregnancy. Next, it presents our own estimation, from U.S. government data, of pregnancy rates for reproductive age victims of penile-vaginal rape. Using data on birth control usage from the Statistical Abstract of the United States, we then form an estimate of rape-pregnancy rates adjusted for the substantial number of women in our sample who would likely have been protected by oral contraception or an IUD. &lt;strong&gt;Our analysis suggests that per-incident rape-pregnancy rates exceed per-incident consensual pregnancy rates by a sizable margin, even before adjusting for the use of relevant forms of birth control&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while &lt;em&gt;technically&lt;/em&gt; Mr. Akin's comment might have &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; merit based on the abstract idea of stress affecting ovulation, based on the data, I can't call it at all correct. Raped women do get pregnant in large enough numbers, even moreso than women who have consensual sex. In addition, the claim is very dismissive and insulting to rape victims, particularly those who were impregnated. Not to mention it is just a tasteless thing to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt; Valenti, Jessica, writ. The Purity Myth: The Virginity Movement's War Against Women. 2011. Film.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(2)&lt;/sup&gt; Holmes, Melisa, Heidi Resnick, Dean Kilpatrick, and Connie Best. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0002-9378%2896%2970141-2&quot;&gt;Rape-related pregnancy: Estimates and descriptive characteristics from a national sample of women&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. 175.2 (1996): 320-325.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(3)&lt;/sup&gt; &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icty.org/x/cases/kunarac/acjug/en/kun-aj020612e.pdf&quot;&gt;ICTY: Kunarac, Kovač and Vuković judgement&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. 2001-02-02.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(4)&lt;/sup&gt; Lončar, Mladen, Vesna Medved, Nikolina Jovanović, and Ljubomir Hotujac. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2080379/&quot;&gt;Psychological Consequences of Rape on Women in 1991-1995 War in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Croatian Medical Journal. 47.1 (2006): 67-75.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(5)&lt;/sup&gt; Seibel, MM, and ML Taymor. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7037462&quot;&gt;Emotional aspects of infertility&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Fertility and Sterility. 37.3 (1982): 137-145. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(6)&lt;/sup&gt; Schenker, JG, D Meirow, and E Schenker. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1618356&quot;&gt;Stress and human reproduction&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; European Journal of Obstetrics &amp;amp; Gynecology and Reproductive Biology. 45.1 (1992): 1-8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(7)&lt;/sup&gt; Gottschall, Jonathan, and Tiffani Gottschall. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12110-003-1014-0&quot;&gt;Are per-incident rape-pregnancy rates higher than per-incident consensual pregnancy rates?&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Human Nature. 14.1 (2003): 1-20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-08-20T20:12:57.527" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T20:12:57.527" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10514" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10516" CreationDate="2012-08-20T05:35:41.620" Score="9" ViewCount="25213" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may sounds funny but when I searched about the question over the Internet, I found an overall report which stated as a conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the heart stops forcing the blood around the body, it pools in whatever area is lowest. Sometimes people die standing up and sometimes people die lying face down. I think everyone here has enough spatial reasoning to understand what kind of blood pooling that would encourage. Meanwhile, for all that talk of relaxing muscles after death, it doesn't last forever. Certain types of muscle cells are activated by calcium ions. After activation, the cells expend energy putting the calcium ions back outside the cell. After death, the membranes become more permeable to calcium and the cells don't expend as much energy to push the ions out, so the muscles contract. This does lead to rigor mortis and can lead to ejaculation. It's real. It happens&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://io9.com/5862418/10-bodily-functions-that-continue-after-death&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to clarify that whether this information is true. Are there any research papers or any other things to prove this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8220" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-20T05:49:42.987" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T07:47:39.620" Title="Can dead men have erections and ejaculation?" Tags="|physiology|mortality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10514" CreationDate="2012-08-20T07:47:39.620" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a closely related question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8682/does-a-hanged-man-get-an-erection&quot;&gt;Does a hanged man get an erection?&lt;/a&gt;, we have seen that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_erection&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;terminal erections&lt;/a&gt; are a known phenomena, especially when the spinal cord is damaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the first part of the question is: Yes, dead men can have erections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether they can have ejaculation is a more complicated question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?vid=OCLC36308102&amp;amp;id=n0YJAAAAIAAJ&amp;amp;pg=RA3-PA246&amp;amp;lpg=RA3-PA246&amp;amp;dq=prostatic&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=snippet&amp;amp;q=%22prostatic%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Principles of Forensic Medicine&lt;/a&gt; from 1861, William Augustus Guy described that, with hanging: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in the male a more or less complete state of erection of the penis, with discharge of urine, of mucus, or of the prostatic fluid, is a frequent occurrence. It may be expected to be present in at least one case in three. But it must be borne in mind, that these appearances in the genital organs, when they do occur, are not characteristic of death by hanging or strangulation, for they have been observed in other forms of violent and sudden death, as in fatal gun-shot wounds of the brain, and of the large vessels, and in positing by prussic acid. It is probably that the fluid ejected from the urethra is not semen but mucus; for in the report of the case of a criminal executed in America, (`American Journal of the Medical Sciences,' May 1840,) there was no priapism, but a fluid was discharged which is stated not to have contained any seminal animalcules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, having some discharge from the penis of a corpse appears to have been uncommon, except in certain forms of death, and the discharge, when measured in a single case in 1840, wasn't semen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion: According to an admittedly very old source, the quoted text is wrong. Erections occur for some forms of death, and occasional non-ejaculatory discharges in others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T07:47:39.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10517" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-20T08:56:09.967" Score="10" ViewCount="6147" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/article/new-cancer-warning-about-laptop-computers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;There are a lot of rumors that the heat from a laptop causes cancer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I haven't found a lot of proper citations in these articles. Would there be be anything else regarding putting your laptop on your lap causing cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't mean the minor warm air near a laptop, because nobody is making that claim. I mean the significant heat going direct to skin, caused by putting it on your lap/thighs/belly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7871" LastEditorUserId="7871" LastEditDate="2012-09-06T05:46:48.250" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T05:46:48.250" Title="Does heat from a laptop cause cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10522" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10528" CreationDate="2012-08-20T13:24:26.037" Score="16" ViewCount="1925" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikileaks' twitter account &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/236136469033533440&quot;&gt;states&lt;/a&gt; that Julian Assange doesn't face charges (as well as not being charged with anything)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;UK Foreign Minister falsely states Julian #Assange faces &quot;charges&quot;,&#xA;  despite him not being charged with any crime&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/foreignoffice/status/236134553431969794&quot;&gt;https://twitter.com/foreignoffice/status/236134553431969794&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By contrast, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.sfgate.com/abraham/2010/12/05/wikileaks-julian-assange-rape-charge-for-not-using-condoms/&quot;&gt;pro-Assange editorial&lt;/a&gt; (written in 2010) talks about charges:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to The Raw Story and Crikey, Swedish prosecutors &lt;strong&gt;charge&lt;/strong&gt; that ... &#xA;  That is the basis for a reinstitution of rape &lt;strong&gt;charges&lt;/strong&gt; against WikiLeaks &#xA;  figurehead Julian Assange ... that the rape &lt;strong&gt;charges&lt;/strong&gt; read of a smear campaign&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is he &quot;facing charges&quot;, or isn't he?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there's no such thing as &quot;facing charges&quot;, that'd be a useful answer as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T08:44:29.330" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T08:44:29.330" Title="Is Julian Assange &quot;facing charges&quot;?" Tags="|law|julian-assange|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10522" CreationDate="2012-08-20T14:01:32.467" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.pdf&quot;&gt;Julian Assange is currently subject to a European Arrest Warrant.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text of this warrant reads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I request the person mentioned below be arrested and surrendered for&#xA;  the purposes of conducting a criminal prosecution or executing a&#xA;  custodial sentence or detention order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard process in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor#Sweden&quot;&gt;swedish law&lt;/a&gt; is for the prosecutor to interview all participants and collect basic evidence before interviewing the suspect and pressing charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no - Assange hasn't been charged, but reading the wording in the EAW, and knowing a little about the role of the Swedish prosecutor leads me to say it is likely that the next interview (the one he has so far avoided) that the next interview was going to end in charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also explains why the Swedish and UK governments refuse to interview him over video-link  or in the embassy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, the legal blogger David Allen Green is good on all the legal questions&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2012/08/legal-myths-about-assange-extradition&quot;&gt;http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/david-allen-green/2012/08/legal-myths-about-assange-extradition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key point from the &quot;charged&quot; point of view is shown in comments by the Swedish prosecutor in the supreme &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.html&quot;&gt;court ruling&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;7 . According to Swedish law, a formal decision to indict may not be taken at the stage that the criminal process is currently at. Julian&#xA;  Assange's case is currently at the stage of &quot;preliminary&#xA;  investigation&quot;. It will only be concluded when Julian Assange is&#xA;  surrendered to Sweden and has been interrogated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3606" LastEditorUserId="3606" LastEditDate="2012-08-21T08:16:25.613" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T08:16:25.613" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10527" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-20T15:37:03.343" Score="21" ViewCount="9775" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's sometimes cited that a full fridge or freezer helps reduce its overall energy usage (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/home/freezer-efficiency-tips.htm&quot;&gt;this source&lt;/a&gt; says so, based on the amount of cold air that 'can escape' when you open the door). However, I'm doubtful of this, based on the fact that you would also expect foodstuffs to warm up when you open the door. Even if there is a difference, it seems unlikely that it would be that large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what's the story? Does the fullness of a fridge or freezer affect its energy usage (&lt;strong&gt;edit&lt;/strong&gt;: to clarify, keeping everything else constant - i.e. how often it's opened, where it's situated, ambient temperature outside, etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4769" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-27T22:44:58.490" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T16:10:35.753" Title="Does keeping a fridge or freezer full improve its energy usage?" Tags="|energy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10522" CreationDate="2012-08-20T15:46:11.583" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem here is that the Swedish legal system is different from the more familiar Anglo-American system, and a term of art like &quot;charges&quot; can't be relied on to correspond one-to-one between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formally, &quot;An arrest warrant was issued on the basis that Julian Assange is accused with probable cause of the offences [of coercion, molestation, and rape].&quot;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.html&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; However, in the Swedish system, this step &lt;em&gt;precedes&lt;/em&gt; the opening of a criminal prosecution, which is what &quot;facing charges&quot; would normally mean in English. There is as of yet no criminal case &lt;em&gt;R. v. Assange&lt;/em&gt; (or whatever it would be called.) Under Swedish law he has to be arrested &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; there are &quot;charges&quot; in this sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line: Assange has been formally accused of a crime, and a warrant issued for his arrest, by a legal system which is widely recognized to meet international standards of due process. &quot;Hasn't even been charged&quot; is an attempt to fog the issue &amp;ndash; one of many you'll get from his legions of fans on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2011/2849.html&quot;&gt;Assange v Swedish Prosecution Authority 20111 EWHC 2849,&lt;/a&gt; paras 131-154&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7646" LastEditorUserId="7646" LastEditDate="2012-08-21T20:45:39.610" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T20:45:39.610" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5426" CreationDate="2012-08-20T19:14:01.767" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is going to be a very subjective question, even more so depending upon where in the world you are and what your motivations are. Thus, for the purposes of this answer, I am going to assume that it is for someone living in the United States and is concerned with saving &quot;real money&quot; (i.e. what is in their wallet) versus any subjective costs due to time invested in cooking or other time invested in preparing meals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, we need to look at this question from the standpoint of day to day meals. While some of the other answers and their comments cite a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/5454/6629&quot;&gt;fairly expenditure for foodstuffs&lt;/a&gt;, I am going to approach this from the standpoint of someone that is going to make a dedicated effort to save as much money on their meals as possible. Thus, they will be looking for meals that are inexpensive, filling, nutritional, and generate leftovers. The leftovers might be a significant point that is lost in some of the other answers as a meal that costs $5 for the ingredients but generates 8 servings has a cost of $0.625 per serving which automatically puts it under the $1 per serving that some fast food restaurants offer on their &quot;Dollar Menu&quot;. Finding such recipes is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allyou.com/food/supercheap-meals/cheap-recipes-00411000070180/page22.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fairly easy&lt;/a&gt;, although inflation and availability of ingredients may affect costs over time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you search online you can find a number of anecdotal and other articles (&lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/how-eat-month-twenty-dollars-431349.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;How I Eat for a Month with Twenty Dollars&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grocerycouponguide.com/articles/eating-well-on-1-a-day/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eating Well On $1 A Day&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://andrewhy.de/how-to-live-comfortably-on-36-a-month-for-food/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How To Live (Comfortably) on $36 A Month For Food&lt;/a&gt;&quot;) that demonstrate that living on a highly limited food budget is possible with a bit of creativity although a learning curve is involved. If we compare this to the aforementioned dollar menus and assume that people would at least two meals ($2 a day) for an average of 30 days gives us a budget of around $60 dollars. However, if you examine the &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/getnutrition/nutritionfacts.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;nutrition information&lt;/a&gt; available from McDonald's you will note that most Dollar Menu items are not high in calories and thus someone may be tempted to order more due to hunger and the perceived &quot;low cost.&quot; Once this starts to occur, the daily cost of eating fast food is going to go up high than the aforementioned $60 a month which could bring it well in the range of the low estimated average of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.personalfinanceanalyst.com/the-average-cost-of-groceries-per-person-best-guesses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;$112.25 per person, per month back in the 2003 - 2004 time frame&lt;/a&gt;. Even factoring inflation and other rising costs, it is not hard to see how purchasing off the Dollar Menu can bring you within the lower average cost for a single person to eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, to approach the question from the standpoint of long term costs such as heath, it is generally accepted that there is a clear connection between &lt;a href=&quot;http://emlab.berkeley.edu/~sdellavi/wp/fastfoodJan09.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fast food and obesity&lt;/a&gt;. Since obesity is connected to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/April12/ObesityCosts.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;higher health care costs&lt;/a&gt;, we can likely conclude that over the long run any short term savings would likely be wiped out by long term expenses. Although depending upon someones income level, that burden might be bore by the state as opposed to the individual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, a new study by the UDSA has shown that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/eib-economic-information-bulletin/eib96.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cost of food really depends upon how you measure it&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/17/usda-healthy-food-isnt-really-more-expensive/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN summarized things as follows&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For instance, take a chocolate glazed donut. Each donut is probably&#xA;  about 240 calories, and you could probably eat two or three of them&#xA;  with no problem (and just a teensy bit of guilt). Then take a banana&#xA;  with about 105 calories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If these two cost the same, the banana is more expensive per each&#xA;  calorie eaten. But you’ll probably only eat one and feel a lot fuller&#xA;  afterward, Carlson said. That makes it cheaper per edible gram and per&#xA;  the average portion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2012-08-20T19:14:01.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10533" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="40050" CreationDate="2012-08-20T21:12:39.403" Score="14" ViewCount="2180" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some people who continue to believe that there is a link between vaccination and autism. See this question for more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/607/are-there-any-other-studies-besides-the-discredited-wakefield-studies-that-hav&quot;&gt;Are there any other studies (besides the discredited Wakefield studies) that have found a link between vaccination and autism?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some claim that the &quot;vaccine denial&quot; viewpoint is correlated with liberal political beliefs, in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Chris Mooney argues in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney?page=4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mother Jones&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So is there a case study of science denial that largely occupies the political left? Yes: the claim that childhood vaccines are causing an epidemic of autism. Its most famous proponents are an environmentalist (Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) and numerous Hollywood celebrities (most notably Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey). The Huffington Post gives a very large megaphone to denialists. And Seth Mnookin, author of the new book The Panic Virus, notes that if you want to find vaccine deniers, all you need to do is go hang out at Whole Foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He further &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/04/20/vaccine-denial-and-the-left/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;defends this view in his blog&lt;/a&gt;, but says there is very little polling data to support it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been any studies that support this conclusion? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, is &quot;vaccine denial&quot; in general correlated? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-11-24T12:47:27.637" LastActivityDate="2017-11-27T14:43:37.927" Title="Is the belief that vaccinations cause autism correlated with liberal political beliefs?" Tags="|united-states|politics|vaccines|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10319" CreationDate="2012-08-21T01:13:38.217" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the United States, the manufacture of homeopathic &quot;remedies&quot; is covered by &lt;em&gt;Current Good Manufacturing Practice (CGMP) regulations for Finished Pharmaceuticals, Title 21, Code of Federal Regulations, Parts 210 and 211&lt;/em&gt;, and is regulated by the US Food and Drugs Administration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetters/2012/ucm314629.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;warning letter to one homeopathy manufacturer&lt;/a&gt; the FDA explained:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The investigator also observed for Batch #36659 that one out of every six bottles did not receive the dose of active homeopathic drug solution due to the wobbling and vibration of the bottle assembly during filling of the active ingredient. The active ingredient was instead seen dripping down the outside of the vial assembly. Your firm lacked controls to ensure that the active ingredient is delivered to every bottle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this, we can reach four conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, the manufacturer &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; attempting to include &quot;active&quot; ingredients in the bottles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, the FDA was actively auditing the process, which suggests that if other manufacturers weren't adding &quot;active&quot; ingredients they might be likewise in trouble.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No, in this one case, the manufacturer was not succeeding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The problem was found by the FDA, and not by the manufacturer validating their product, or the practitioners or patients noticing a lack of effect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1807-fda-ensures-magic-rituals-are-done-properly.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Steve Novella at the James Randi Foundation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T01:13:38.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10545" CreationDate="2012-08-21T13:34:13.967" Score="10" ViewCount="1302" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I've been reading about advances in quantum mechanics, particularly in the field of quantum teleportation.  It's a difficult subject to understand, and for that reason I explicitly don't trust the reporting on it.  Many articles,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/7647-teleportation-milestone-achieved.html&quot;&gt;http://www.livescience.com/7647-teleportation-milestone-achieved.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;by using their protocol, atom-to-atom teleported information can be recovered with perfect accuracy about 90 percent of the time — and that figure can be improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.technologyreview.com/view/427910/chinese-physicists-smash-distance-record-for/&quot;&gt;http://www.technologyreview.com/view/427910/chinese-physicists-smash-distance-record-for/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Teleportation turns out to be extremely useful. Because teleported information does not travel through the intervening space, it cannot be secretly accessed by an eavesdropper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;appear to be saying that information is being transmitted from one location to another instantaneously.  As in, faster than the speed of light.  From what I DO understand about relativity, this has the potential to massively violate causality.  Is the effect of quantum teleportation being misreported, misunderstood by me, or are they actually transmitting usable information at faster than light speed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1617" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T14:36:30.620" Title="Does Quantum Teleportation Transmit Information?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10541" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10542" CreationDate="2012-08-21T13:38:08.907" Score="18" ViewCount="12381" Body="&lt;p&gt;With a credit-card number, validity date and CVV-code, people can make purchases, so this information should be strictly protected. But if I post my bank account details online (IBAN + BIC/SWIFT), does this put me at any risk at all? In my understanding, this allows people to transfer money to my account; not from my account. But with direct debit, companies may be able to withdraw people from my account. Can they? Am I at risk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100227082922AAiHOpS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yahoo Answers&lt;/a&gt; the answer is &quot;not safe&quot;, whereas on &lt;a href=&quot;https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/15218/is-it-safe-to-give-out-ones-bank-account-number&quot;&gt;Money.SX&lt;/a&gt; the answer is &quot;it depends&quot;, but neither answer is sourced very well. In fact, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.small-business-forum.com/archive/index.php?t-40230.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/info_7844742_safe-give-bank-account-number.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;different&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.v7n.com/forums/online-business-forum/240368-still-safe-give-out-your-bank-account-number.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;websites&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=1495877&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;say&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://sg.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090419074200AAWhhLZ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;different&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pinoyexchange.com/forums/showthread.php?t=438204&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;things&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have a reliably sourced answer laying out the risks of doing so in different banking systems and different parts of the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:25:35.707" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:00:20.417" Title="Is posting my bank account number online unsafe?" Tags="|security|banking|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10541" CreationDate="2012-08-21T14:08:40.643" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7174760.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An experiment was conducted&lt;/a&gt; by Jeremy Clarkson in 2008 to test the hypothesis that it was safe. He published his bank details in the newspaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Top Gear host revealed his account numbers after rubbishing the furore over the loss of 25 million people's personal details on two computer discs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He wanted to prove the story was a fuss about nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Clarkson admitted he was &amp;quot;wrong&amp;quot; after he discovered a reader had used the details to create a £500 direct debit to the charity Diabetes UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I opened my bank statement this morning to find out that someone has set up a direct debit which automatically takes £500 from my account,&amp;quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The bank cannot find out who did this because of the Data Protection Act and they cannot stop it from happening again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I was wrong and I have been punished for my mistake.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/money/2008/jan/07/personalfinancenews.scamsandfraud&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report in The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The charity is one of many organisations that do not need a signature to set up a direct debit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal recollection of the incident (that I haven't been able to verify with references) is that, while it was legally possible for Clarkson to dispute the charge and demand that the bank reverse the transaction, he elected not to because the money went to a worthwhile charity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T08:19:58.223" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10541" CreationDate="2012-08-21T14:37:44.213" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It does depend.&lt;/strong&gt; In the USA, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre31.shtm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Federal Trade Commission&lt;/a&gt; says that you can limit your liability for fraudulent electronic transactions that are reported within 60 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What if I find unauthorized transactions on my account?&lt;/strong&gt;. - Generally, if you find unauthorized electronic check conversion on your account (or someone has fraudulently obtained your banking account information), notify your financial institution immediately. Your level of loss depends on how quickly you report the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Under federal law, for unauthorized electronic check conversion, you have 60 days to report these transfers after your bank account statement containing the problem is mailed to you.&lt;/strong&gt; If you fail to report the unauthorized transfers within this time period, you risk losing all the money in your account and the unused portion of your maximum line of credit for overdrafts. It’s also a good idea to report any other unauthorized transfers on your account or problems regarding any loss or theft of your checks immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contact your financial institution about any additional limits on liability they may offer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, they recognize that giving up your banking information to anybody is still dangerous. (Note: While your bank is investigating if the withdrawals were legal, you may not have access to your account or the money that should be in it. This can last from 45-90 days. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/rules/6500-3100.html#fdic6500205.11&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FDIC: laws and regulations&lt;/a&gt;))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be especially cautious about sharing your bank and checking account numbers. Do not give out personal information – particularly on the telephone, by e-mail or otherwise online – unless you have initiated the contact or know who you’re dealing with. Scam artists can use your personal information to commit fraud – such as identity theft. That’s where someone uses your personal information, such as your checking account number, Social Security number, mother’s maiden name, or birth date, without your knowledge or permission, to commit fraud or theft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These recommendations are based on the Electronic Funds Transfer act, the details of which can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/laws/rules/6500-3100.html#fdic6500205.6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. It might be as little as $50.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T15:02:12.460" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10540" CreationDate="2012-08-21T15:32:50.147" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the first article you linked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But because ion A's state is irreversibly tied to ion B's, the measurement also forces B into the complementary state. &lt;strong&gt;Depending on which state ion A is found in&lt;/strong&gt;, the researchers now know precisely what kind of microwave pulse to apply to ion B in order to recover the exact information that had been written to ion A by the original microwave burst. Doing so results in the accurate teleportation of the information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no faster-than-light information transfer. To retrieve the information from the destination, you need the results from the sending operation at the start. While the QuantumTeleportation is &quot;instant&quot; you cannot actually get any information out of the system until a light-speed message arrives at the destination as well. The advantage, is that you can eavesdrop this light-speed message and be unable to get the information, as you don't have access to the entangled particle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An analogy would be this process: You have some quantum carbon paper. You write an encrypted message on the top sheet, which in turn writes something to the bottom. You then separate the bits of paper. Someone then measures paperA and records the result. They send this result to someone who has paperB (loudly and in public) who then does a measurement to determine the original message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastEditorUserId="7188" LastEditDate="2012-08-21T16:14:53.510" LastActivityDate="2012-08-21T16:14:53.510" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10546" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10583" CreationDate="2012-08-21T16:10:10.193" Score="8" ViewCount="1495" Body="&lt;p&gt;While researching and educating myself about evolution, I've come across an interesting claim that I'd like to learn more about, but so far, I've only been able to find the claim and no sources or evidence. For example consider following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Scientists blocked the production of one protein in chicken eggs, and&#xA;  the chicks were born with scales rather than feathers. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.proof-of-evolution.com/information-theory.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Information Theory and Intelligent Design&#xA;  Can Information Increase in a Biological System&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A single point mutation turns feathers back into scales in chickens&#xA;  -&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/ham_more_fables.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Feathers, Fables, Dinosaurs and Ham&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I did find another claim which provided a source, but it appears to be saying something different (the opposite in away), &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; the sited link (Poling, J. 1996. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dinosauria.com/jdp/archie/scutes.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Feathers, scutes and the origin of birds&lt;/a&gt;. Dinosauria on-line. Retrieved April 11, 2007) is broken:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Experiments show that the same protein (when missing before birth)&#xA;  that causes bird feet to stay webbed, causes bird scutes and scales to&#xA;  become feathers (Poling 1996) - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Feather&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New World Encylcopedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that the debate on the origin of feathers (and flight) is ongoing among scientists with several hypotheses being proposed, as very well described in a recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/02/feathers/zimmer-text&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Geographic&lt;/a&gt; article from Feb 2011. While I am interested in this in general, I'm currently trying to make sense of the claims mentioned above. Can they be substantiated, or are they baseless? I've spent about an hour searching online and haven't found anything but ambiguity (which scientists, which protein/mutation, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Update&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found this related claim at &lt;a href=&quot;http://evolutionwiki.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx_was_probably_not_an_ancestor_of_modern_birds&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;evolutionwiki.org&lt;/a&gt;, emphasis mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientists have actually discovered that the same protein (when&#xA;  missing at birth) that keeps bird feet webbed causes &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;reptile&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; scales to&#xA;  become feathers. Birds thus could be descended from any number of&#xA;  reptilian species, also clear and powerful evidence for the evolution&#xA;  of birds from reptiles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim here seems to be a variation of the one above, but with &lt;em&gt;reptile&lt;/em&gt; being used instead of &lt;em&gt;bird&lt;/em&gt;. It is for reasons like this, and for lack of references, that I am very skeptical of these claims. They give the impression that a key gene mutation that stops the production of a protein will cause chicks to be born without feathers and instead contain scales. Or that again, a key gene mutation that stops the production of a protein will cause a developing reptile to be born with feathers instead of scales. This later claim seems even more extraordinary if you ask me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8282" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-23T19:39:24.990" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T19:39:24.990" Title="Have scientists demonstrated an absent protein can cause chicks to be born with scales rather than feathers (as well as reptile scales to feathers)?" Tags="|biology|genetics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9903" CreationDate="2012-08-22T00:22:22.527" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I actually asked this question at math.stackexchange earlier. &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/a/154221/17103&quot;&gt;Here is the top answer I received&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;https://math.stackexchange.com/users/14366/henning-makholm&quot;&gt;Henning Makholm&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TLDR: If the rain is coming down without angle it is better to maximise speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let's assume that the cow is spherical .. sorry, assume that the&#xA;  walker is a box with height h, width w and length l. The box needs to&#xA;  cover a horizontal distance D while being hit by a minimal amount of&#xA;  water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Further assume that the air is uniformly filled with ρ kilograms of&#xA;  water per cubic meter, moving straight downwards at a uniform speed vr&#xA;  (since we imagine that the raindrops have reached terminal velocity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the box is walking at speed vh, how much water hits him? In each&#xA;  infinitesimal moment Δt, the water in the air falls a vertical&#xA;  distance of Δtvr, and Δtvrwlρ amount of water hits the top of the box.&#xA;  The total amount of water to hit the top during the trip is Dvhvrwlρ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Similarly, during each infinitesimal moment Δt the front of the box&#xA;  pushes into a volume Δtvhhw of rain-filled air. The rain is moving&#xA;  downwards, but hits the box nevertheless, so the total amount of water&#xA;  to hit the front is Dvhvhhwρ=Dhwρ -- in other words this amount is&#xA;  independent of vh. The only influence vh has is that the larger vh is,&#xA;  the less water hits the top of the box. So under the above simplifying&#xA;  assumptions one should indeed attempt to maximize speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:19:21.250" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T00:22:22.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10555" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-22T02:48:58.170" Score="38" ViewCount="33490" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific definition or evidence of such a thing as &lt;strong&gt;the mosquito line&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first apartment in Manhattan was on the 25th floor of the Park Row building in the Financial District. The broker assured me I could keep the windows open because we were &lt;strong&gt;&quot;above the mosquito line.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was untrue, and mosquitos would regularly enter the apartment if the window was left open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I later found out that many New Yorkers believed that they lived above or below &quot;the mosquito line&quot;, and a search of Google reveals several casual mentions of a delineation above which there are no mosquitos. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a mention of &quot;the mosquito line&quot; in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://meigakuglobalchallenges.wordpress.com/2012/04/26/an-inconvenient-truth-transcript-part-ii-2/&quot;&gt;transcript&lt;/a&gt; of the 2006 documentary &lt;em&gt;An Inconvenient Truth&lt;/em&gt; where Al Gore states definitively:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There are cities that were founded because they were just above &lt;strong&gt;the mosquito line&lt;/strong&gt;. Nairobi is one. Harare is another. There are plenty of others. Now the mosquitoes with warming are climbing to higher altitudes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bjørn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and critic of &lt;em&gt;An Inconvenient Truth&lt;/em&gt; dedicates a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lomborg-errors.dk/MalariaKenya.htm&quot;&gt;fact checking page&lt;/a&gt; to Al Gore's mention of a &quot;mosquito line&quot; where he states that he had found no official definition for the term: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There seems to exist no official definition of what is meant by a &lt;strong&gt;&quot;mosquito line&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. You might compare with the term &quot;tree line&quot;, which is a line above which no trees can grow. By analogy, you would assume that a &quot;mosquito line&quot; is a line above which no mosquitoes can live. But this interpretation would not fit in relation to malaria in Kenya.&#xA;  Instead, you would have to understand the term as a line above which malaria is not present every year, but only in certain years, when epidemics occur. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lomberg then proposes a definition of the term as it relates to climate, and seems to give Al Gore the benefit of the doubt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nairobi is situated at 1660 m and thus may be said to be just above the line delimitating the zones of regular occurrence. The coldest month, July, has average maximum temperatures of 20.6° C, i.e. temperatures less than optimal for the P. falciparum parasite. Thus, it is true that Nairobi is just inside the zone where malaria occurs only as epidemics, not as a permanent or seasonal penomenon. If this is what is understood by &lt;strong&gt;&quot;the mosquito line&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, Al Gore is approximately right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no doubt altitudes above which mosquitos or any living thing would not survive - and there are climates in which mosquitos do not thrive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presumably New York apartment brokers and their customers imagine the &quot;mosquito line&quot; as a limitation on how high a mosquito can fly - because New York City is at sea level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is there anything in the literature that would suggest that there is, in fact, a &quot;mosquito line&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8290" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2019-05-08T14:38:08.903" LastActivityDate="2019-05-08T14:38:08.903" Title="Does a &quot;mosquito line&quot; exist, above which mosquitos do not travel?" Tags="|climate-change|entomology|malaria|al-gore|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10555" CreationDate="2012-08-22T03:41:00.617" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scholarly papers which mention the (geographical) mosquito line include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://grace.wharton.upenn.edu/risk/downloads/RiskSeminar2009-02-24_TL_ClimateChange.pdf&quot;&gt;Climate change and biodiversity T. Lovejoy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the Hawaiian islands, the surviving species of the great Hawaiian Honeycreeper evolutionary radiation survive only above a certain altitude – the ‘mosquito line’ – above which the introduced mosquito that transmits an introduced bird malaria (fatal to honeycreepers) does not survive. That line will move upslope in a warming world so the mosquito- and malaria-free zone will shrink&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1650/7820.1&quot;&gt;INCREASE IN AVIAN MALARIA AT UPPER ELEVATION IN HAWAI‘I Leonard A. Freed4, Rebecca L. Cann, M. Lee Goff, Wendy A. Kuntz, and Gustav R. Bodner&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most honeycreepers, especially endangered species, now persist only in forests above 1500 m elevation, where cool temperatures prevent effective malaria development in mosquitoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/diseases/malaria/en/&quot;&gt;World Health Organization&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Climate change (global warming) appears to be moving the altitude limits of malaria to higher elevations, for example in the East African highlands and Madagascar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=gR49AAAAIAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA40&amp;amp;lpg=PA40&amp;amp;dq=mosquito%20altitude%20limit&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=UDRxXHURwW&amp;amp;sig=A52JGZvuY8nMEgxZ-DuiCU5yBH4&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=0eI0UOKAGJGB0QHVp4HADw&amp;amp;ved=0CDQQ6AEwCDgy#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=mosquito%20altitude%20limit&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Aedes Aegypti the Yellow Fever Mosquito (Samuel Rickard Christophers)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An important factor influencing the prevalence of the species in particular localities and even in the major features of the world distribution is altitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and many more. I recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=%22mosquito%20line%22%20altitude&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=0,5&amp;amp;as_vis=1&quot;&gt;this Google search&lt;/a&gt; for a bigger list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that temperature is a factor, so there is no single worldwide altitude above which mosquitos cannot live - it varies from place to place. It is clear that the mosquito line altitude is measured in the thousands of feet - the height of a New York apartment building is not going to make a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-08-22T20:43:02.140" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T20:43:02.140" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10558" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-22T05:58:38.127" Score="8" ViewCount="760" Body="&lt;p&gt;From here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/98061-benefits-pushups-women/&quot;&gt;http://www.livestrong.com/article/98061-benefits-pushups-women/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chest muscles also receive a workout during push-ups &lt;strong&gt;and can help to&#xA;  alleviate sagging breasts.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/15977-home-remedies-sagging-breasts/&quot;&gt;http://www.livestrong.com/article/15977-home-remedies-sagging-breasts/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Step 4&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Perform push-ups. Either do the standard push-up in which the&#xA;  entire body raises into the air or do the modified push-up in which&#xA;  the knees are bent and only the upper portion of the body comes up off&#xA;  the floor. Start with as many push-ups as you can comfortably do;&#xA;  gradually increase the amount in each session. Do push-ups at least&#xA;  three times a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any researches been done on these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5341" LastActivityDate="2015-07-04T08:42:55.917" Title="Are push-ups beneficial for alleviating sagging breasts?" Tags="|medical-science|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2102" CreationDate="2012-08-22T06:01:03.477" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it virtually impossible to avoid HFCS when buying food over there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can avoid HFCS by purchasing whole foods such as fruits, nuts and vegetables (&lt;a href=&quot;http://save-a-lot.com/products/categories/garden-fresh-produce&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://aldi.us/us/html/product_range/productrange_fresh_produce_ENU_HTML.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source 2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.safeway.com/ShopStores/The-Market-SJ-Produce-Floral.page?&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source 3&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.walmart.com/browse/produce/fruit/976759_976793_1001437/?catNavId=976793&amp;amp;ic=48_0&amp;amp;path=0:976759:976793&amp;amp;ref_values=419001%20500580%20500702&amp;amp;tab_value=18728_All&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source 4&lt;/a&gt;), so it's a matter of choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there high fructose corn syrup in almost every grocery product in America?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends on whether you are talking about packaged foods only. You can see from the sources above that there are alternatives, however &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the USDA had this to say in 2000&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sugar— including sucrose, corn sweeteners, honey, maple syrup, and&#xA;  molasses—is ubiquitous and often hidden. In a sense, sugar is the&#xA;  number one food additive. It turns up in some unlikely places, such as&#xA;  pizza, bread, hot dogs, boxed mixed rice, soup, crackers, spaghetti&#xA;  sauce, lunch meat, canned vegetables, fruit drinks, flavored yogurt,&#xA;  ketchup, salad dressing, mayonnaise, and some peanut butter.&#xA;  Carbonated sodas provided more than a fifth (22 percent) of the&#xA;  refined and added sugars in the 2000 American food supply, compared&#xA;  with 16 percent in 1970.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The USDA also previously had a database which showed some typical analysis for foods to identify added sugars. On a page marked last updated 2012 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=12107&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it now says this&lt;/a&gt; regarding the previous mentioned database:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No method can analyze for added sugars so their amounts must be&#xA;  extrapolated or supplied by food companies, many of which are not&#xA;  willing to make public such proprietary information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yaleruddcenter.org/resources/upload/docs/what/law/sugarlabelingregulation_ajph_5.12.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This document around labeling requirements for sugar&lt;/a&gt; is also worth reading as it also goes into great detail around the lack of solid requirements to label sugars on packaging in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this information I would say if you are not going with whole foods then it is going to be difficult to tell. Your best option is to stick with fresh produce, nuts and meats. Anything packaged and you are heading into an area which is uncertain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2012-08-22T23:07:21.157" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T23:07:21.157" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10533" CreationDate="2012-08-22T19:16:00.083" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Despite the huge amount of debate on this subject, there is very little hard data to back it up. The only two polls I have been able to uncover are referred to in &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/04/27/more-polling-data-on-the-politics-of-vaccine-resistance/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In late 2009, USA Today/Gallup asked a question about Jenny McCarthy’s anti-vax views:&#xA;  Did Jenny McCarthy’s statements (she believes her son developed autism after getting a common childhood vaccine) make you more likely to question the safety of vaccines for children, or did her statements not make you more likely to question the safety of childhood vaccines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These results basically suggest that there’s little or no political divide in terms of who falls for Jenny McCarthy’s misinformation. Notably, liberals were somewhat more aware of her claims and yet, nevertheless, were least likely to listen to them. But not by a huge margin or anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a Pew poll that year that sought to differentiate between the views of scientists and average Americans of a variety of issues, people were asked whether childhood vaccines ought to be required, or if instead it should be left up to parental choice. [...] What’s interesting here is that Pew also provided a political breakdown of the results, and there was simply no difference between Democrats and Republicans. 71 % of members of both parties said childhood vaccinations should be required, while 26 % of Republicans and 27 % of Democrats said parents should decide. (Independents were slightly worse: 67 % said vaccinations should be required, while 30 % favored parental choice.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR The only available data says that vaccine denial is not correlated with left-wing views.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-08-24T14:16:56.750" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T14:16:56.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10566" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-22T20:49:37.693" Score="16" ViewCount="1403" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindpowernews.com/OrganMemoryTransfer.htm&quot;&gt;Mindpowernews&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1997, a book titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0446604690&quot;&gt;A Change of Heart&lt;/a&gt; was published that described the apparent personality changes experienced by Claire Sylvia. Sylvia received a heart and lung transplant at Yale–New Haven Hospital in 1988. She reported noticing that various attitudes, habits and tastes changed following her surgery. She had inexplicable cravings for foods she had previously disliked. For example, though she was a health-conscious dancer and choreographer, upon leaving the hospital she had an uncontrollable urge to go to a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet and order chicken nuggets, a food she never ate. Sylvia found herself drawn toward cool colours and no longer dressed in the bright reds and oranges she used to prefer. She began behaving in an aggressive and impetuous manner that was uncharacteristic of her but turned out to be similar to the personality of her donor. Interestingly, uneaten Kentucky Fried Chicken nuggets were found in the jacket of the young man (her donor) when he was killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among the consultants for the book were Dr. &lt;a href=&quot;http://paulpearsall.com/&quot;&gt;Paul Pearsall&lt;/a&gt;, PhD (author of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0767900952&quot;&gt;The Heart's Code: Tapping the Wisdom and Power of Our Heart Energy&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and many more books) whose name appears as an author of a paper co-written with Dr. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drgaryschwartz.com/&quot;&gt;Gary E. Schwartz&lt;/a&gt;, PhD (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Gary-E.-Schwartz/e/B001H6N8Y6/&quot;&gt;author of many books&lt;/a&gt; including &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0743436598&quot;&gt;The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death&lt;/a&gt;&quot;) and Dr. Linda G. Russek, PhD (co-author of many books including &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/157174455X&quot;&gt;The Living Energy Universe: A Fundamental Discovery that Transforms Science and Medicine&lt;/a&gt;&quot; with husband, Schwartz).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claire Sylvia's book and some of the books by the PhDs mentioned above have all been endorsed by that giant of scientific reason, Deepak Chopra. Some of the books written by the aforementioned doctors have also been co-authored by Chopra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does cellular memory exist? Were the studies conducted by these doctors published and peer-reviewed in a recognised journal and has there been a proper investigation that confirms or debunks these studies? I would also like to know if the credentials of these authors are genuine as some sites have cast doubts over them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T22:07:44.910" Title="Cellular Memory: Memory Transfer Between Organ Transplants" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ClosedDate="2016-08-10T00:30:04.150" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10567" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-22T22:10:29.230" Score="2" ViewCount="179" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9647/did-obama-mention-in-his-book-he-was-born-in-kenya&quot;&gt;Did Obama mention in his book he was born in Kenya?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To a friend who believes Obama was born outside the US I sent him links to all the excellent articles on this site. But then I got this reply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why would he claim to be Kenyan born in his campaign for Illinois&#xA;  Senate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What passport did he travel on when he went to prohibited countries as&#xA;  a student?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;27% of the people believing he is foreign born is a substantial&#xA;  amount, knowing he has spent millions of dollars to avoid going to&#xA;  court over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only birth certificates released were forged as proven by &#xA;  forensic experts, including the Maricopa County Sheriff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doesn't matter what Trump said. Obama has never proved his citizenship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know the subject has been exhausted but I'm convinced there are answers to those questions and I can finally put this to rest! And, sure, I've asked for citations about things like saying he was Kenyan born during his campaign but all I get are links to more conspiracy theory sites and fake news stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="764" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T22:10:29.230" Title="Where do the claims about Obama being Keyan born and using a foreign passport come from?" Tags="|politics|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2012-08-23T00:36:35.710" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10555" CreationDate="2012-08-22T23:22:59.580" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mosquitoes, like other animals, have ranges and if you draw a line around these ranges you have a &quot;mosquito line&quot;.  The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/biology/mosquitoes/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a map of the ranges of the 30-40 species from the genus &lt;em&gt;Anopheles&lt;/em&gt; which can carry malaria&lt;/a&gt;.  A map of all 3500 mosquito species would cover a wider area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZTblb.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to distinguish the highest mountains here, such as the Himalayas/Tibet in central Asia and the Rockies/Andes near the west coast of the Americas, and there are some small mosquito free areas in East Africa.  But areas of desert are as obvious, showing the importance of water for mosquitoes.  Many of the areas shown are now malaria-free due to 20th century malaria eradication efforts even where mosquitoes remain: Finland is an example of a relatively cold area which had &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.malariajournal.com/content/4/1/19/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;several malaria epidemics in the 19th century&lt;/a&gt; reaching to the Arctic circle, and which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.malariajournal.com/content/7/1/171&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;returned to soldiers in 1941&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-08-22T23:22:59.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2835" CreationDate="2012-08-23T02:04:13.203" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Did this event happen?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12191423&quot;&gt;According to the Vatican it did&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pope Benedict XVI has formally approved a miracle attributed to his&#xA;  late predecessor, paving the way to John Paul II's beatification on 1&#xA;  May.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Vatican credits him with the miraculous cure of a nun said to have&#xA;  had Parkinson's Disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So an actual event did happen, with a real person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there a known scientific explanation for this alleged miracle?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zenit.org/article-32430?l=english&quot;&gt;sister herself claims&lt;/a&gt; that she was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2001.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is currently no known cure for Parkinson's disease &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parkinson.org/Files/PDFs/NPF-Content-Documents/About-Us/PD-101_final_March_2012&quot;&gt;source 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pdf.org/pdf/fs_parkinson_plus_atypical_08.pdf&quot;&gt;source 2&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are only a few possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She was misdiagnosed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She has become one of the first people in history to have beaten Parkinson's&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's all a hoax&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second option we don't have enough evidence, we only have her anecdotal story. There is no lab test that can be done to confirm Parkinson's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umm.edu/parkinsons/diagnosis.htm&quot;&gt;source 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/parkinsons-disease/guide/parkinsons-disease-exams-and-tests&quot;&gt;source 2&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the information presented, unless the Vatican has access to technology the rest of the world doesn't, the Vatican would have to decide based on testimony of those around the Sister.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you are left with three choices: believe that she was cured based on testimony (because there is no other way of finding out post-event), assume that it was a misunderstanding or decide that it is all a lie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T02:04:13.203" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3009" CreationDate="2012-08-23T03:47:55.310" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is only &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-411038/Why-dogs-leapt-deaths-Overtoun-Bridge.html#ixzz1aJx13FkF&quot;&gt;one documented case&lt;/a&gt; of a dog who had to be euthanised after jumping from the bridge due to injuries sustained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no other documented evidence to suggest many or even a few dogs have leapt to their deaths from the bridge. So there is nothing to investigate. No dog deaths = no phenomenon. It's an interesting story, but not founded on fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4320&quot;&gt;Brian Dunning from the Skeptoid Podcast&lt;/a&gt; actually made the effort to ask around, including the owners of Overtoun House and a local vet who has only treated four dogs after leaping from the bridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In many of the stories I cover here on Skeptoid, it turns out that&#xA;  there's a person somewhere who obsessively collects every piece of&#xA;  data pertaining to their particular mystery: every newspaper clipping,&#xA;  every photograph, everything that anyone knows. When I find such a&#xA;  person, I often learn something new that's never made it into the&#xA;  popular telling of the story. And so, since every version of the&#xA;  Overtoun Bridge story I came across simply retold the same old vague&#xA;  facts, I tried to find the Overtoun Bridge guru. Professor Google did&#xA;  not seem to know of one. I spoke with the Dunbartonshire Chamber of&#xA;  Commerce; they did not know of either a local historian or of any&#xA;  records of dog jumps. I spoke with the Dog Warden for West&#xA;  Dunbartonshire Council; nothing. I even spoke with the Community&#xA;  Sergeant at the Dumbarton Police Office; she did not know of any such&#xA;  records. Finally, I went straight to the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overtoun House is now a bed and breakfast that supports a Christian&#xA;  shelter for local young women down on their luck. It's run by Bob and&#xA;  Melissa Hill, missionaries from Fort Worth, Texas. At the time I&#xA;  contacted them, they'd been there for over ten years, and I found them&#xA;  happy to share what they know of Rover's Leap. Turns out, it's not&#xA;  much. In those ten years, they've heard of three dogs who jumped, two&#xA;  of which walked away, and one of which was later euthanized due to his&#xA;  injuries. Those three include Ben the border collie and one other,&#xA;  Kenneth Meikle's golden retriever Hendrix, who jumped but survived&#xA;  uninjured. This number dovetails pretty well with that given by a&#xA;  doctor at the local Glenbrae Veterinary Clinic, who has treated four&#xA;  dogs who were injured in falls from the bridge over the past thirteen&#xA;  years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T03:47:55.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10582" CreationDate="2012-08-23T07:23:29.513" Score="8" ViewCount="1942" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read this claim in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-very-sad-facts-of-life#&quot;&gt;Quora&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &quot;richest&quot; country in the world (the u.s.) would assuredly lose that place if you excluded just the top 5% of wealth holders&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true? Is there any evidence to back it up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2079" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-23T07:37:25.417" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T21:09:04.507" Title="Would the United States lose its title as the richest country if we exclude top 5% wealth holders?" Tags="|united-states|economics|wealth|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10574" CreationDate="2012-08-23T07:46:48.613" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The United States isn't necessarily the richest country even with the top 5% wealth holders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if GDP is a perfect measure of wealth, but it should be closely correlated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go by nominal GDP, then Wikipedia lists &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_per_capita&quot;&gt;Luxemborg&lt;/a&gt; as the highest, with the US in 14th place. If you go by purchasing power parity GDP, then Wikipedia lists &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita&quot;&gt;Qatar&lt;/a&gt; as the highest, with the United States in 7th place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think Luxemborg and Qatar are too small to count, then Norway does better than the United States on both counts, and has a population of approximately &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway&quot;&gt;5 million&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T07:46:48.613" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10577" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-08-23T08:17:15.540" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-23T08:17:15.540" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T08:17:15.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10578" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-08-23T08:17:15.540" Score="0" Body="**please avoid this tag**" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-23T08:17:15.540" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T08:17:15.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10579" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-23T10:04:07.770" Score="22" ViewCount="11798" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got into trouble with someone yesterday for poo-pooing this idea as it smelled of apples and oranges to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific statistic was that genetically there is a 5% difference between men and women, while there is only a 2% difference between men and (I assume) male chimpanzees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Googling briefly brought up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/14/chimp_genome_y_chromosome_gumble/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (hardly authoritative) quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is this even true? And if it is, what gives?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; I chose a bad example, as &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10579/is-there-more-genetic-difference-between-men-and-women-than-men-and-monkeys#comment43002_10579&quot;&gt;vartec&lt;/a&gt; points out below. I actually heard this in French, here's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.womenology.fr/fr/reflexions/interview-de-serge-ginger-sur-les-differences-hommesfemmes-retranscription/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;, which (roughly) says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Genetically, there is only a 2% difference between men and male&#xA;  chimpanzees, whereas there is a 5% difference between men and women:&#xA;  thus there are twice as many differences between men and women than&#xA;  between men and male chimpanzees&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2192" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2021-11-07T17:06:43.977" Title="Is there more genetic difference between men and women than men and male chimpanzees?" Tags="|genetics|dna|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10579" CreationDate="2012-08-23T13:31:01.953" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only genetic difference between men and women is that men have 1 Y chromosome and 1 X chromosome on their &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_sex-determination_system&quot;&gt;sex determinative chromosome&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genome&quot;&gt;The Human Genome&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The human (Homo sapiens) genome is stored on 23 chromosome pairs and&#xA;  in the small mitochondrial DNA. Twenty-two of the 23 chromosomes&#xA;  belong to autosomal chromosome pairs, while the remaining pair is sex&#xA;  determinative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are a total of 46 chromosomes on the normal human.  Any 45 of them can be shared by men and women and only 1 belongs to men only.  Simple math (1/46) says that the difference is &amp;lt; 2.2% if 100% of the Y chromosome is unique to the Y chromosome and the number of genes on each is roughly equal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dhushara.freehosting.net/book/upd/aug201/xychr.htm&quot;&gt;However the Chromosomes are not equal.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The human chromosomes that determine sex, the X and Y, are a bizarre&#xA;  pair. The other 22 sets of chromosomes in our cells consist of&#xA;  wellmatched partners, as alike as twin candlesticks. One chromosome in&#xA;  each duo comes from the mother and one from the father, but both are&#xA;  normally the same size and carry the same genes. (Genes are the DNA&#xA;  blueprints for proteins, which do most of the work in the body.) In&#xA;  stark contrast, the Y chromosome is much smaller than the X; in fact,&#xA;  it is positively puny. It harbors no more than several dozen genes,&#xA;  far fewer than the 2,000 to 3,000 on the X. A number of the Y genes&#xA;  have no kin at all on the X. And the Y is riddled with unusually high&#xA;  amounts of &quot;junk&quot; DNA: sequences of code letters, or nucleotides, that&#xA;  contain no instructions for making useful molecules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/project/info.shtml#basics&quot;&gt;The human genome is estimated to contain 20,000-25,000 genes.&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/project/info.shtml#draft&quot;&gt;The Y chromosome has 231&lt;/a&gt;.  Other than those 231 sequences that do not exist in the female all of the genes are shared.  So the math says (231/20000) so &amp;lt; 1.2% difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the numbers in the quote are wrong.  But is there more difference between Men and Women than humans and Chimps? For that I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/tj/v17/n1/dna&quot;&gt;this research&lt;/a&gt; which found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Humans and chimps can have 95% or &gt;98.5% similar DNA depending on&#xA;  which nucleotides are counted and which are excluded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even using best case Men vs Women &amp;lt; 1.2%  : Man vs Chimp  &gt; 1.5%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly this is false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="2192" LastEditDate="2012-08-24T08:08:58.043" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T08:08:58.043" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3013" CreationDate="2012-08-23T17:24:08.537" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to both the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hangovers/DS00649/DSECTION=causes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/5089.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Medical News Today&lt;/a&gt;, hard liquors contain ingredients known as congeners, which can contribute to a hangover. Different drinks have different congeners, so the same quantity of two different spirits could plausibly produce different after effects. It is at least plausible that mixing your drinks could mean drinking a lot of different congeners, producing a more severe hangover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/ace-bvv121209.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;At least one&lt;/a&gt; controlled study found that drinking bourbon led to more severe hangover symptoms than drinking vodka. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount that congeners contribute to a hangover is not specifically known. What is &lt;a href=&quot;http://theconversation.edu.au/mondays-medical-myth-mixing-drinks-causes-hangovers-5055&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;generally agreed on&lt;/a&gt; is that you cannot &lt;em&gt;avoid&lt;/em&gt; a hangover by &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; mixing your beverages, the ethanol itself is the greatest contributor to hangover symptoms. So in that sense, it probably isn't true that the order you consume your beverages in is going to &lt;em&gt;prevent&lt;/em&gt; you from feeling sick the next day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7164" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T17:24:08.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10574" CreationDate="2012-08-23T17:52:10.830" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;EDIT:I found better figures so I'm updating the wealth values. This does change my conclusions somewhat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The MacKinsey Global Institute conducted &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/the-200-trillion-world-who-owns-all-the-wealth/249788/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a study of the wealth of the world&lt;/a&gt; . Wealth was defined in the economic sense of assets minus liabilities. All figures are for the year 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Global wealth amounted to $200 trillion. That includes household, government, corporate and financial assets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The US owns more than a quarter of that - around $58 trillion. (It has around 5% of the population)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Japan has the next most with $27 trillion &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;China has around $20 trillion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Western Europe has around $54trillion, but of course it's divided between many countries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Household wealth accounts for about $27trillion in the US.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wider.unu.edu/events/past-events/2006-events/en_GB/05-12-2006/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The top 10% of households own about 70% of that&lt;/a&gt;, or $19trillion - logically the top 5% must own at least $10 trillion and probably much more - say $15trillion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the wealth of the US minus its top 5% of households is around $43-48trillion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next richest country is Japan, with a wealth of $28trillion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR This statement is probably not true. The uncertainty in the figures make it impossible to be definitive&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly to be a fair comparison you should also exclude the wealthiest 5% of Japanese households. Japan has nearly as much of its wealth owned by its top 5% of households as the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, government assets make up only a few percent of total national wealth. After household wealth institutional investors are the next largest bracket, then corporations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should confess that I am not sure how these studies handle an asset that is owned by a company whose shares are owned by a thousand different household. I would welcome input from someone who understands this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2015-09-24T21:09:04.507" LastActivityDate="2015-09-24T21:09:04.507" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10546" CreationDate="2012-08-23T19:03:20.943" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not an exhaustive or conclusive answer, but I've come across experiments that show the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a paper from 1980, Danielle Dhouailly, Margareth Hardy, and Philippe Sengel succeeded in introducing retinoic acid (Vitamin A) to induce &lt;a href=&quot;http://dev.biologists.org/content/58/1/63.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;feathers instead of scales to form on chicken feet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Matthew Harris and John Falon were able to cause &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livedash.com/transcript/dinosaurs_return_to_life/6222/DSCP/Sunday_February_21_2010/202457/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;feathers on Silkie Birds to form on legs instead of scales&lt;/a&gt; by &quot;turning-on&quot; one of two feather genes before scales form (as mentioned in a recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/L_Uiuy-lfGs?t=1m15s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Discovery Channel video&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://leahlefler.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Make-a-Dinosaur-from-Chickens&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An article written by Leah Lefler over at HubPages.com&lt;/a&gt; mentions that the work of Harris and Fallon mentioned above can be reversed to turn feathered areas into scales as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Around the 1950-1970s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/89691223/Dhouailly-Lizard-to-Chicken&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Danielle Dhouaillly, Philippe Sengel, and others performed experiments&lt;/a&gt; that show it's possible to graph lizard epidermis over chick dermis, and feather-bud sized appendages appear in a hexagonal feather pattern (see figure 12 in the article, which is also linked at the end of this answer). Additionally, Lizard epidermis grafted over chick dermis can develop into scales having a large size, shape and distribution similar to those of bird scales (see figure 11).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The references show that the scales on the feet of some birds can develop feathers instead, and that some areas where feathers normally are can have scales instead (though this later claim I'm not sure is substantiated enough, at least in the reference sited - Leah Lefler's article). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, it seems to me that the claims shown in the question have a measure of truth to them, some more so than others, but are very simplified claims, likely even containing errors, that could cause a person to draw distorted conclusions. For example, the research certainly doesn't show that a baby lizard can be born today with feathers instead of scales. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://htmlimg1.scribdassets.com/6v5wbrwp4w1jbq4k/images/8-a6811b38ed.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Recombinant lizard/chick experiments http://htmlimg1.scribdassets.com/6v5wbrwp4w1jbq4k/images/8-a6811b38ed.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8282" LastActivityDate="2012-08-23T19:03:20.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10587" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-23T23:32:32.317" Score="23" ViewCount="2044" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/amateur-turns-church-fresco-of-jesus-into-hairy-monkey-in-botched-restoration/article4494768/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The story goes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A devout Spanish woman is being roundly criticized after taking it&#xA;  upon herself to restore a church fresco of Jesus, a ham-fisted attempt&#xA;  that left the piece looking like a child’s daubing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the end result:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/srnPH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It cracks me up every time I look at it, but the story seems like a fake. The thing that I think gives it away are the images of the two paintings side-by-side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there any truth in this story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There appears to be no evidence of the original painting aside from the image being circulated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:11:06.320" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:11:06.320" Title="Restoration of Jesus fresco a fake?" Tags="|art|spain|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10587" CreationDate="2012-08-24T10:36:21.717" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's real. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been extensively covered by Spanish national TV (TVE) and newspapers (mainstream, not tabloids).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2012/08/21/actualidad/1345563468_581914.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;La restauración que se convirtió en destrozo&quot; (Restoration becomes a disaster)&lt;/a&gt; &amp;mdash; one of numerous articles in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Pa%C3%ADs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;El País&lt;/a&gt;, mainstream daily, biggest in Spain &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rtve.es/noticias/20120822/expertos-intentaran-restaurar-ecce-homo-destrozado-anciana/559321.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Expertos intentarán restaurar el Ecce Homo &quot;destrozado&quot; por una anciana&quot; (Experts to attempt restore the Ecce Homo &quot;destroyed&quot; by an elderly)&lt;/a&gt; &amp;mdash; one of numerous reports in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Televisi%C3%B3n_Espa%C3%B1ola&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TVE, Spanish National TV&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The news originates from &lt;a href=&quot;http://cesbor.blogspot.com.es/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Centro de Estudios Borjanos&lt;/a&gt; (Study Center of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borja,_Aragon&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Borja&lt;/a&gt;). It has been originally reported on &lt;a href=&quot;http://cesbor.blogspot.com.es/2012/08/un-hecho-incalificable.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;their blog on 7th of August&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;15 days later it has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heraldo.es/noticias/cultura/2012/08/21/la_restauracion_una_pintura_mural_una_iglesia_borja_acaba_chapuza_200865_308.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;picked up&lt;/a&gt; by regional newspaper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heraldo.es/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Heraldo de Aragón&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. From there it made national news and went viral internationally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The painting itself has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://cesbor.blogspot.com.es/2012/08/un-articulo-publicado-hace-dos-anos.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mentioned 2 years ago&lt;/a&gt; in one of Centro de Estudios Borjanos information bulletins (&lt;em&gt;Boletín Informativo nº 129-130&lt;/em&gt; of 2010)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8Zqe4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Borja &quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, that it is not priceless art masterpiece, as some international news suggest. It's been painted by local painter in local church. Elías García Martínez &lt;a href=&quot;http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=El%C3%ADas_Garc%C3%ADa_Mart%C3%ADnez&amp;amp;action=history&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;didn't even have entry in Spanish wikipedia until yesterday&lt;/a&gt;. And only other mention of the author is in museum in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requena,_Valencia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Requena&lt;/a&gt;, town of 21.000 people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above bulletin doesn't mention exact date when it was painted, but gives some hints as author lived in region of Zaragoza in 1894-1934. The painting is a copy of engraving by William Trench, which itself is a copy of medieval painting by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guido_Reni&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guido Reni&lt;/a&gt;. The painting is a mural, but it is &lt;strong&gt;not fresco&lt;/strong&gt;. It's painted with oil paint.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-08-24T12:25:23.207" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T12:25:23.207" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7287" CreationDate="2012-08-24T14:38:50.820" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://greenmonk.net/2010/02/02/forget-mobile-phone-chargers-they-are-not-the-problem/&quot;&gt;Green Monk&lt;/a&gt; article, it is shown (with an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammeter&quot;&gt;ammeter&lt;/a&gt;) that most chargers idle between 0 and 0.1 watts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The mobile phone chargers I tested all consumed 0.1W or less of electricity when left plugged in and not charging a phone. That is minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It contrasts that with other devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well, my microwave consumes 3.5W when plugged in and not in use (that’s 35 mobile phone chargers worth), my printer draws 5.9W when on and not actually printing (59 mobile phone chargers worth), my Nintendo Wii draws a whopping 9.5W when on and not in use (95 mobile phone chargers worth), even cradles for cordless home phones can be consuming eight times more electricity than mobile phone chargers!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It concludes that you should unplug &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; devices (including microwaves, printers and games consoles) when not in use, but that chargers are a low priority, in comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8318" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-24T14:53:10.017" LastActivityDate="2012-08-24T14:53:10.017" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10600" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10603" CreationDate="2012-08-25T05:30:12.000" Score="7" ViewCount="1228" Body="&lt;p&gt;A tweet from @LeftSentThis stated that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/LeftSentThis/statuses/239038705845809153&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2,000 US troops have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001, more than 5,000 people have been killed by gun fire in Chicago during that time&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are at least two mis-matches in the data sets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people vs. US troops&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;killed vs. shot and killed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, are the facts of this claim accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4055" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-25T10:32:23.943" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T10:32:23.943" Title="Have more people been killed in Chicago than U.S. troops in Afghanistan?" Tags="|history|mortality|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10602" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-25T07:40:38.367" Score="10" ViewCount="5062" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember my mother telling me not to let other people yank any gray hairs or else more will come in its place. It has always stuck to me but wondering if it's true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8330" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2012-08-25T11:09:49.717" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T21:07:26.587" Title="Does pulling out a grey hair make more grow?" Tags="|medical-science|hair|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10600" CreationDate="2012-08-25T10:16:33.233" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;: The figures in the tweet are approximately correct, but it conflates gun fire deaths and homicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tweet appears to be based on the recent news reports &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/16/chicago-homicide-rate-wor_n_1602692.html&quot;&gt;e.g.&lt;/a&gt;, that seem to have been originally reported by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wbez.org/blogs/bez/2012-06/truth-numbers-former-gang-members-discuss-reality-chicagos-rising-homicide-numbers&quot;&gt;WBEZ&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the Department of Defense and FBI data, 2,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001. During that same period of time, more than 5,000 Chicagoans were killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, the tweet has subtly distorted the message. The 5,000 Chicagoans includes all homicides (clear from the context) not just gun deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to check &lt;em&gt;those&lt;/em&gt; facts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the 2,000 U.S. soldier deaths in Afghanistan estimate is about right; a slight underestimate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Department of Defense has identified 2,086 American service members who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/25/us/us-military-deaths-in-afghanistan.html&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt; 25-Aug-2012.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the 5,000 homicides in Chicago is about right - again, an underestimate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding the figures together from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://portal.chicagopolice.org/portal/page/portal/ClearPath/News/Statistical%20Reports/Murder%20Reports/MA11.pdf&quot;&gt;Chicago Police Statistics&lt;/a&gt; (Figure 1) for 2001-2011, I get 5588 homicides (which excludes 2012, but includes the first 9 months of 2001 before the October invasion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these statistics include the far greater number of Aghan military and civilian deaths, so while the tweet is approximately right, the &lt;em&gt;title&lt;/em&gt; of the question is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_in_the_War_in_Afghanistan_%282001%E2%80%93present%29&quot;&gt;horrendously inaccurate&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T10:16:33.233" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9043" CreationDate="2012-08-25T12:35:07.490" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;'Transatlantic Voyages and Sociology: The Migration and Development of Ideas' By Cherry Schrecker (&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iTH_M9ZZjDwC&amp;amp;lpg=PA129&amp;amp;ots=gvNuZtagv9&amp;amp;dq=I%20have%20nothing%20to%20declare%20except%20my%20genius&amp;amp;pg=PA129#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=I%20have%20nothing%20to%20declare%20except%20my%20genius&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Google Books&lt;/a&gt;) gives the date as 2 January 1882, and the actual quote as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have nothing to declare &lt;strong&gt;but&lt;/strong&gt; my genius&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(My emphasis)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schrecker cites the book 'Oscar Wilde' by Richard Ellman (1988) and another source as 'Bradbury 1995', but having no access the the actual Schrecker book, this reference remains sketchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8025" LastEditorUserId="8025" LastEditDate="2012-08-25T17:33:08.707" LastActivityDate="2012-08-25T17:33:08.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10606" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10612" CreationDate="2012-08-25T20:44:02.193" Score="34" ViewCount="48892" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.npr.org/news/Books/157231248&quot;&gt;came across&lt;/a&gt; this fact:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's enough DNA in the human body to stretch from the sun to Pluto and back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of &quot;Bollocks!&quot; alarms began to chime in my head. While I expect that it will stretch a long way, Pluto seemed a little far-fetched. Looking this up further led me to &lt;a href=&quot;http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1998/StevenChen.shtml&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; which actually calculates the figure in some detail. The final result came to around 2x10&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; metres or ~&lt;strong&gt;134AU&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;In the interest of keeping things manageable, I'm going to use AU from here on in.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://discovermagazine.com/2011/apr/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-dna&quot;&gt;Discover Magazine&lt;/a&gt; might be the source of the Pluto analogy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don’t try this at home: If uncoiled, the DNA in all the cells in your body would stretch 10 billion miles—from here to Pluto and back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10B miles = 10B * 1.62 / 150M = &lt;strong&gt;108AU&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto&quot;&gt;mean distance&lt;/a&gt; between Pluto and the Sun = 39AU. Distance between the Earth and Pluto and back = (39 - 1) * 2 = &lt;strong&gt;76AU&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/If_you_uncoiled_the_DNA_in_a_human_cell_how_long_would_it_be&quot;&gt;Another page&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you could unwrap the DNA you have in all the cells in your body, you would be able to reach the moon and back 6,000 times. This would be a distance of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;384000 * 2 * 6000 = 4608M Km ~= &lt;strong&gt;31AU&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless my calculations are ridiculously flawed, something is amiss here. While I'm flabbergasted that just the DNA in a human body can stretch to, well, almost three times the distance of Pluto from the Sun, it appears that most, if not all these analogies are incorrect. So, my question is: If all the DNA in an adult human body were to be uncoiled and stretched out, how long would it actually stretch for?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="8319" LastEditDate="2012-08-25T23:09:56.527" LastActivityDate="2017-05-17T12:17:05.523" Title="Length of uncoiled human DNA" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|astronomy|anatomy|dna|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10607" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10608" CreationDate="2012-08-26T03:46:06.793" Score="15" ViewCount="1798" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fluoridedangers.blogspot.com/2005/12/fluoride-never-fda-approved-for.html&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; makes the claim that the reason the FDA never tested fluoride for human consumption was because it was on the market prior to 1938, when the FDA was formed.  This claim is pretty well referenced with a letter I will presume to be accurate, from the FDA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drugs on the market prior to enactment of the 1938 law were exempted, or &quot;grandfathered&quot;, and manufacturers were not required to file an NDA. The premise was that all pre-1938 drugs were considered safe, and if the manufacturer did not change the product formulation or indication, then an NDA was not required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of the site (not of the letter quoted) makes the additional claim, however, that fluoride was sold as rat poison prior to 1938.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am willing to accept as granted that fluoride was sold as rat poison prior to 1938.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I find a bit harder to believe is the jump to the author's conclusion that fluoride being sold as rat poison prior to 1938 is the &lt;em&gt;reason&lt;/em&gt; it was grandfathered in under the (then) new FDA rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was fluoride also sold as a medication intended for humans, that would have exempted it from the new rules, or is it true it was only considered a rat poison in 1938?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T22:17:29.210" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T22:17:29.210" Title="Was fluoride grandfathered in by the FDA because it was sold as rat poison prior to 1938?" Tags="|government|fluoride|fda|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10607" CreationDate="2012-08-26T07:30:32.057" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several false claims in the site quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The arguments seem to be based on a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/00/Nov00/110600/cp00001.pdf&quot;&gt;petition&lt;/a&gt;&quot; to the FDA (filed as Docket &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/00/Nov00/110600/ack0001.pdf&quot;&gt;00P-1602&lt;/a&gt;) from then politician &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_V._Kelly&quot;&gt;John V. Kelly&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thesis seems to consist of the following claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sodium Flouride was only used as rat poison, in bulk, prior to 1938.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was not considered as an anti-cavity treatment until the 1950s and 1960s.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any drugs sold before 1938 were grandfathered into the new FDA law.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The FDA never approved it as safe for children's anti-cavity supplements.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Therefore, Sodium Fluoride has never been shown as safe for ingestion for children's anti-cavity supplements, and was only approved because it was used as rat poison.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several of these claims are untrue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Prior Art in Patents&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;June 29, 1909: German patent 222,716 &lt;em&gt;Verfahren zur Herstellung leicht resorbierbarer Fluorpräparate&lt;/em&gt; covered the use of &quot;an easily absorbable fluoride preparation&quot; by precipitating &quot;calcium fluoride (using sodium fluoride plus a calcium salt) together with a protein like egg-white, albumin, casein, to which it becomes adsorbed on co-precipitation.)&quot;, based on experiments by Deninger in 1896. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nov 28, 1911: German patent 281,148 &lt;em&gt;Verfahren zur Herstellung leicht löslicher, haltbarer Desinfektionsmittel zur Bereitung von Mund- und Spülwasser unter Verwendung von Natriumfluorid und Natriumsiliciumfluorid&lt;/em&gt;, covered &quot;a mouthwash and disinfectant made of sodium fluoride or sodium fluosilicate&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;May 19, 1927: US Patent (US) 1,813,936 &lt;em&gt;Mineral Food Composition and Process of Making Same&lt;/em&gt;, covered a calcium, magnesium and phosphate preparation as a food supplement, also containing Sodiom Fluoride.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fluoride-history.de/p-dentpr.htm&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the claim that Sodium Fluoride was only used as rat poison prior to 1938 is false. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Prior Art in Science&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1952 book &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=K0wrAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;A Survey of the Literature of Dental Caries&lt;/a&gt; by the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council shows that there was a lot of literature already existing by the beginning of the 1950s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cox write [in 1939]: &quot;Our evidence that fluorine aids in the formation of caries-resistant teeth, linked with the findings of Armstrong (1938) and of Dean, Jay, Arnold, Mclure and Elvove (1939), shows that a very great reduction of the incidence of human caries can be obtained by supplying in food and water an optimum amount of fluorine during teeth formation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other scientists were looking at natural fluoride overdoses (Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ada.org/sections/newsAndEvents/pdfs/fluoridation_facts.pdf&quot;&gt;Fluoridation Facts&lt;/a&gt; from the ADA):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the 1930s, Dr. H. Trendley Dean, a dental officer of the U.S. Public Health Service, and his associates conducted classic epidemiological studies on the &#xA;  geographic distribution and severity of fluorosis in &#xA;  the United States. These early studies were aimed at &#xA;  evaluating how high the fluoride levels in water could &#xA;  be before visible, severe dental fluorosis occurred. By &#xA;  1936, Dean and his staff had made the critical discovery &#xA;  that fluoride levels of up to 1.0 part per million (ppm) in &#xA;  the drinking water did not cause the more severe forms &#xA;  of dental fluorosis.  Dean additionally noted a correlation between fluoride levels in the water and reduced &#xA;  incidence of dental decay&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, this was looking at natural levels of fluoride, rather than supplements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1874, though, Erhardt 'recommended fluorine for internal use &quot;since it is fluroine which gives hardness and lasting quality to the enamel of teeth and so protects against caries&quot;' He went on to discuss the (existing) fluorine pastilles available in England, and performed experiments with potassium fluoride as a supplement for a dog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alas, I haven't directly contradicted the claim that &quot;&lt;em&gt;Sodium&lt;/em&gt; fluoride &lt;em&gt;supplements&lt;/em&gt; weren't tested as a decay preventative until the 1950's or 1960's&quot;, but certainly fluoride supplements, and experiments on the safety and effect of fluoride had started well before this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Prior Art in FDA Records&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1936, &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/fdanj/bitstream/123456789/63226/2/320002790.txt&quot;&gt;the FDA asked a court&lt;/a&gt; to destroy 4,500 Sodium Fluoride tablets that had been shipped in 1935, claiming they &quot;contained two-fifths grain of sodium fluoride each instead of one-half grain &#xA;as represented on the label.&quot; (i.e. 25 mg not 32 mg).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no record here of what the tablets were to be used for, but it is clear that 32mg tablets isn't &quot;in bulk form&quot; or an appropriate form for use as rat poison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether modern FDA records indicate this history of Sodium Fluoride is less clear. The original link quotes an unnamed FDA bureacrat saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We don't have information on the medical uses of fluoride before 1938. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and John V. Kelly claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The FDA records show only that &#xA;  sodium fluoride in bulk form was available prior to 1938. The FDA has no record of use as &#xA;  tablets, drops or any therapeutic dosage form. The only pre-1938 use of sodium fluoride my  office has been able to identify is as a rodenticide and insecticide&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;FDA Examination of Safety&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not true that the FDA has simply ignored the ingestion of flourides since 1938.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example in 1990, they examined a number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/DevelopmentResources/Over-the-CounterOTCDrugs/StatusofOTCRulemakings/UCM080429.pdf&quot;&gt;proposed changes&lt;/a&gt; in anti-cavity dentrifices (e.g. toothpaste). They rejected the idea of introducing lower fluoride versions and higher fluoride version, they tweaked what could be put on the labels, they noted that &quot;an NDA was approved in 1986 for an extra-strength fluoride dentrifice&quot; for over 2 year olds, and then recommended it be adjusted to over 6 year olds. They cite a number of submissions and scientific papers they used to make these determinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point being: there is evidence that the FDA has not ignored fluorides for 70+ years; they are reviewing the new evidence as it comes in, and adjusting their recommendations and approvals as required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-27T08:50:17.293" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T08:50:17.293" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10566" CreationDate="2012-08-26T11:55:10.113" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer given to this question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4800/can-transplant-patients-remember-things-their-donors-experienced&quot;&gt;Can transplant patients remember things their donors experienced?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By Monkey Tuesday would appear to cover this question completely&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To Quote from that answer &#xA;&quot;In a word, No. &#xA;One can't examine this claim without addressing the purported idea of &quot;cellular memory&quot; a topic already dealt with very nicely at the skeptic's dictionary.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read the full answer there it includes information about Claire Sylvia's book also and the Skeptic's Dictionary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8319" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-08-26T11:55:10.113" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10606" CreationDate="2012-08-26T14:41:39.607" Score="32" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Data&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Estimated number of eukaryotic (human) cells in the human body: 1.0×10&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+cells+in+body&quot;&gt;Wolfram Alpha&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The haploid human genome (23 chromosomes) is estimated to be about 3.2 billion base pairs long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genome#Information_content&quot;&gt;Human Genome &amp;ndash; Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full DNA content of a cell is therefore 6.4 Gbp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Average base pair size: one bp corresponds to approximately 3.4 Å of length along the strand&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_pair#Length_measurements&quot;&gt;Base Pair &amp;ndash; Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Average Pluto distance from Earth: 6.09×10&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; meters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=average+pluto+distance+from+earth&quot;&gt;Wolfram Alpha&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Average Pluto distance from Sun: 6.09×10&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; meters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=averagepluto+distance+from+sun&quot;&gt;Wolfram Alpha&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: Why are these basically the same distance? Think about it: 50% of Earth's orbit is behind the Sun so it adds to the distance, but the other 50% the Earth is in front of the Sun so it subtracts. On average, it's a very similar distance.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Pluto round trip is approximately: 1.2×10&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; meters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Average Moon distance from Earth: 3.85×10&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; meters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Moon+average+distance+from+Earth&quot;&gt;Wolfram Alpha&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Moon round trip is approximately: 7.7×10&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; meters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Calculation&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total length of DNA in 1 cell:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6.4×10&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; × 3.4×10&lt;sup&gt;-10&lt;/sup&gt; meters &amp;approx; 2 meters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total length of DNA of all cells in human body:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 meters &amp;times; 10&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; = 2×10&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; meters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The total length of the DNA strands in the human body in units of Pluto roundtrips is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2×10&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; meters / 1.2×10&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; meters/Pluto roundtrip &amp;approx; 17 Pluto roundtrips&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10 billion miles are 1.6×10&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; meters (assuming statute miles for &quot;miles&quot; &amp;ndash; you never know exactly with uncommon units)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The total length of the DNA strands in the human body in units of 1x10&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; statute miles is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2×10&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; meters / 1.6×10&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; meters/10&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; statute miles &amp;approx; 12&amp;times;10&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; statute miles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The total length of the DNA strands in the human body in units of Moon roundtrips is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2×10&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; meters / 7.7×10&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; meters/Moon roundtrip &amp;approx; 2.6x10&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; Moon roundtrips&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Claims verification&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's enough DNA in the human body to stretch from the sun to Pluto and back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;True&lt;/strong&gt;. It can be done 17 times&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If uncoiled, the DNA in all the cells in your body would stretch 10 billion miles—from here to Pluto and back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Incorrect&lt;/strong&gt;. Surely the DNA would stretch 10 billion miles (which is approximately the distance to Pluto and back). However it would do so 12 times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you could unwrap the DNA you have in all the cells in your body, you would be able to reach the moon and back 6,000 times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Incorrect&lt;/strong&gt;. You would be able to do so 260,000 times, not 6,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-08-26T14:41:39.607" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10617" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-27T01:59:26.020" Score="17" ViewCount="1013" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you believe the internet, there is no healthy way for you to sleep: front, back, side, fetal; they are all going to cause you problems like acid reflux, spinal problems, skin problems, problems with your breasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a sample of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/04/19/healthiest.sleep.position/index.html&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; and I have found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthiertalk.com/how-wrong-sleeping-causes-pain-4152&quot;&gt;a couple&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sharecare.com/question/sleep-on-back-bad-for-you&quot;&gt;of sources&lt;/a&gt; for sleeping on your back being a problem unless you add a rolled up towel or pillows under your legs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a sleep position which will give you less (or none at all) medical problems when compared to others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless there are medical concerns is it possible to sleep without assistance (extra pillows, towels, whatever) without risking or causing issues with your health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:29:59.347" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:29:59.347" Title="Which position is healthiest for sleep?" Tags="|medical-science|sleep|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10618" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14659" CreationDate="2012-08-27T02:28:41.073" Score="14" ViewCount="1579" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lance Armstrong has recently been &quot;stripped&quot; of his Tour de France titles by the USADA. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-usada-statement-lance-armstrong-20120824,0,334452.story&quot;&gt;They state, among other allegations&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) Use and/or attempted use of prohibited substances and/or methods including EPO, blood transfusions, testosterone, corticosteroids and masking agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Additionally, scientific data showed Mr. Armstrong’s use of blood manipulation including EPO or blood transfusions during Mr. Armstrong’s comeback to cycling in the 2009 Tour de France.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world cycling body has not made any similar allegations and Lance Armstrong maintains that he is the 'most tested athlete ever' and that he never failed a drug test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that the test for EPO is fairly new, being invented and first used &lt;a href=&quot;http://deadspin.com/5937611/what-the-hell-happened-to-lance-armstrong-all-your-doping-scandal-questions-answered&quot;&gt;around the year 2000&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A test for EPO didn't exist until 2000 and wasn't successfully used to catch doping until the 2002 Olympics. The accuracy of the procedure is getting better, but still has flaws. A 2008 study sent identical blood samples to two World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) labs, and the labs came back with completely different results. In one case, Lab A reported that all eight samples were positive for EPO doping, while Lab B found that all eight were negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People have even alleged that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/09/08/lance-armstrong-s-teammate-tells-all-the-secret-race-by-tyler-hamilton.html&quot;&gt;Lance himself admitted using EPO&lt;/a&gt; when asked about it in the 1990s, but he strongly denies these allegations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the evidence indicating that Lance Armstrong used EPO during his cycling career?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2012-09-10T22:47:45.477" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T02:54:27.750" Title="Did Lance Armstrong use EPO?" Tags="|medical-science|medications|sport|bicycles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10619" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10621" CreationDate="2012-08-27T04:14:04.700" Score="16" ViewCount="8665" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this claim originally in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Astley#cite_note-44&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, quoted from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/31/gema_youtube/&quot;&gt;Register&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The return to the artists is pitiful; ironic 80s icon Rick Astley's Never Going To Give You Up was played 39 million times on YouTube, but he received $12 for his performance share - Astley didn't compose the song, so receives only a performer's share of the sound recording copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Google search reveals a large number of interesting facts websites quoting this figure, but without a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2012-08-27T09:12:35.947" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T10:07:15.280" Title="Did Rick Astley receive only $12 in royalties for &quot;Never Gonna Give You Up' from YouTube?" Tags="|musicians|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10619" CreationDate="2012-08-27T09:30:53.483" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, it wasn't until 2011 that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nmpa.org/media/showrelease.asp?id=201&quot;&gt;YouTube settled the 2007 lawsuit to allow artists and publishers to enter into a licensing agreement with YouTube&lt;/a&gt;. This was after the &quot;$12&quot; quote was provided above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theroyaltyexchange.com/impact-of-youtubes-royalty-agreement-and-content-id/&quot;&gt;this article explains&lt;/a&gt; an artist/publisher has the following three options: keep the song there, take it down or make money off of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the third option is chosen the song appears with the artist information and typically a link to iTunes. You can see an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQtLoJlQD6E&quot;&gt;example of this here&lt;/a&gt; where a user has uploaded a version of Smashing Pumpkins &quot;Disarm&quot; and it has been marked as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you look at the main &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0&quot;&gt;RickRoll video from Youtube&lt;/a&gt;, the one with 64 million views, it isn't marked with artist information. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&quot;&gt;the VEVO one does&lt;/a&gt; and so does another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGS8re8cIVI&quot;&gt;one that was added later&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So they have chosen not to make money from the original video. Thus the $12 is realistic, maybe the $12 wasn't even made from that version of the video. Considering the VEVO video now has over 50 million views and there are other videos marked as copyright, someone is making money from them. However, how much Rick gets directly from this is not currently public information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="374" LastEditDate="2012-08-27T10:07:15.280" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T10:07:15.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10622" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26936" CreationDate="2012-08-27T09:56:56.103" Score="19" ViewCount="6213" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people do their dishes and leave the suds on, letting it air-dry, or using a towel. Some rinse it off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I cannot understand the British habit of washing and rinsing dishes in the same dirty water, and drying them without washing off the soap suds. Is this similar to having a bath and not rinsing off the soap? Am I missing something here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,,-185700,00.html&quot;&gt;Letter &amp;ndash; The Guardian, UK&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ecological water-saving, dirty towels, or nasty soap taste-arguments aside: I wonder if it is unhealthy to leave the suds on, and as a result, ingest minor traces of soap when drinking/eating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With most washing-up liquids being relatively newer formulations from petrochemicals, to which long-term exposure is still unknown, residuals cannot be beneficial if ingested. The health effects are probably on the order of second-hand smoking; chronic exposure adds up, incidental exposure is probably innocuous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,,-185700,00.html&quot;&gt;Answer to the above letter &amp;ndash; The Guardian, UK&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does scientific research say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8347" LastEditorUserId="22504" LastEditDate="2015-03-04T14:31:13.437" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T14:31:13.437" Title="When washing-up, is it unhealthy to omit the rinsing stage?" Tags="|medical-science|consumer-products|toxicology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10623" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-27T10:16:18.167" Score="5" ViewCount="8363" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Muhammad Ali say the following quote? Or was it created by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_is_nothing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adidas&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it&#xA;  easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the&#xA;  power they have to change it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Impossible is potential. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Impossible is temporary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Impossible is nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2012-08-28T12:39:44.647" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T00:29:47.483" Title="Did Muhammad Ali say &quot;Impossible is nothing&quot;?" Tags="|consumer-products|quotes|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10625" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-27T13:57:05.193" Score="22" ViewCount="62172" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do dolphins rape humans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10425/do-dolphins-help-humans-to-the-surface#comment42302_10425&quot;&gt;Comment&lt;/a&gt; on a dolphin-related question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[I have] no idea if they rescue humans when drowning but I know that&#xA;  there are documented cases of them raping people! (as a side-note)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beatricebiologist.com/2011/06/dolphin-sexual-harassment.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beatrice the Biologist: Dolphin Sexual Harassment&lt;/a&gt; claims that dolphins sexually harass humans, but they don't rape humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://expertscolumn.com/content/it-true-dolphins-rape-human-swimmers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is It True that Dolphins Rape Human Swimmers?&lt;/a&gt; doesn't rule it out entirely, but says there isn't any evidence of dolphins raping humans, and claims some of the evidence of dolphins raping humans is suspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't about whether dolphins rape dolphins - the latter acknowledges that dolphins do rape other dolphins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2020-03-17T17:12:13.393" Title="Do dolphins rape humans?" Tags="|sexual-abuse|dolphins|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10626" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5268" CreationDate="2012-08-27T14:02:29.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is slightly off the wall, but &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1016/S1469-0292(02)00039-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one particular study&lt;/a&gt; looks at the effect of music on Netball players.  But I think it translates across, especially with the swimming comparison, because it's about psychological state called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;flow&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  Their conclusion was: &quot;Interventions comprising self-selected music and imagery can enhance athletic performance by triggering emotions and cognitions associated with flow.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Music, especially music that you like and have heard many times to the point where you're not even paying attention any more and, more importantly, may drown out other noise sources (siblings, pets, the TV downstairs) that would otherwise distract you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question in a more apropos manner, though: your music may help you concentrate, but your music may also hinder your sister's concentration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For link rot, the study is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pates, J., Karageorghis, C. I., Fryer, R., &amp;amp; Maynard, I. (2003). Effects of asynchronous music on flow states and shooting performance among netball players. &lt;em&gt;Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 4&lt;/em&gt;(4), 415-427. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1016/S1469-0292(02)00039-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://doi.org/10.1016/S1469-0292(02)00039-0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5139" LastEditorUserId="43717" LastEditDate="2020-04-24T19:45:29.017" LastActivityDate="2020-04-24T19:45:29.017" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10527" CreationDate="2012-08-27T23:05:47.107" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Residential refrigerator efficiency is a very well studied field because of the impact these appliances have on overall energy consumption, but I have not found any evidence of a specific study on this strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some reputable organisations do support the claim. According to the Consumer Energy Center of the California Energy Commission:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A full refrigerator retains cold better than an empty one. If your refrigerator is nearly empty, store water-filled containers inside. The mass of cold items will enable the refrigerator to recover more quickly after the door has been opened. On the other hand, don't overfill it, since that will interfere with the circulation of cold air inside. The simplest solution is to buy the right size for your family in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/home/appliances/refrigerators.html&quot;&gt;Consumer Energy Center &amp;ndash; California Energy Commission&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Portland General Electric agrees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Keep it full.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Full refrigerators run more efficiently. To fill space, you can fill empty milk jugs with water and place in the refrigerator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.portlandgeneral.com/residential/energy_savings/household_appliances/kitchen/refrigerators.aspx&quot;&gt;Kitchen Appliances: Refrigerators | PGE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the basic theory is that having a cold mass inside will help when the door is opened (which I find easy to believe, similarly to how the sea makes temperature milder), and that this saving will pay back the cost of making such mass cold in the first place (which I find possible, but nowhere certain).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the best references I could find and while they do come from reputable organisations, they don't seem to be based on experiments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-08-27T23:05:47.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10631" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-28T00:32:56.717" Score="10" ViewCount="330" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth behind the claim that Japan doesn't need all the dolphin meat it gets and the excess is being passed off to the pet food industry because there is little demand for the meat or they are producing far more than they need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source 1: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluevoice.org/news_petfood.php&quot;&gt;The appearance of dolphin and whale meat in pet food indicates a clear lack of demand for the product from the public&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source 2: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whales.org.au/news/ajapanpet.html&quot;&gt;Japanese Pets grow Fat on Dolphin Meat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source 3: &lt;a href=&quot;http://savejapandolphins.org/blog/post/dolphin-meat-cruel-toxic-and-wasteful&quot;&gt;Second we have been told by several sources that dolphin meat is also ground up and used in animal feeds&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-08-28T03:43:13.970" LastActivityDate="2012-08-28T03:43:13.970" Title="Glut of dolphin meat in Japan going into pet food?" Tags="|economics|japan|dolphins|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10636" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10650" CreationDate="2012-08-28T15:29:27.647" Score="5" ViewCount="1941" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2001/do-weather-changes-affect-arthritis&quot;&gt;Do weather changes affect arthritis?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common claim is that changes in weather (e.g. low pressure system, colder, damper, etc.) can cause pain or increased pain. This often comes up in the context of old injuries (e.g. &quot;My old football injury.&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.traumarecoveryclinic.com/pain-conditions/scar-tissue-and-adhesions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;scar tissue&lt;/a&gt;, etc.), usually to joints, however other parts of the body can be affected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there has been some research conducted into this claim as it specifically applies to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2001/do-weather-changes-affect-arthritis&quot;&gt;arthritis&lt;/a&gt;, the full scope of the claim is much broader and covers general scar tissue, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/safety/2005-02-21-health-pressure_x.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;migraines&lt;/a&gt;, and other generalized aches and pains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, is there really any evidence to support any sort of joint pain or discomfort associated with changing weather conditions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T20:32:00.120" Title="Can changes in weather cause pain or increased pain?" Tags="|medical-science|weather|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2012-08-29T22:24:26.167" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10638" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-28T18:07:00.050" Score="11" ViewCount="1548" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen footage and articles that show living lizards walking out of a stone, when the stone is cracked open. Is this a reliable fact? Is it possible that a lizard (or in some cases, a beetle) lives inside a rock for thousands of years when that stone got formed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://paranormal.about.com/od/earthmysteries/a/aa011704.htm&quot;&gt;About.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Being at my seat near the village of Meudon, and overlooking a&#xA;  quarryman whom I had sent to break some very large and hard stones, in&#xA;  the middle of one we found a &lt;strong&gt;huge toad, full of life and without any&#xA;  visible aperture by which it could get there&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;The laborer told me it&#xA;  was not the first time he had met with a toad and the like creatures&#xA;  within huge blocks of stone.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reference from the same site&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The soldier pried a stone slab away from the quarry face when he saw &quot;in a pocket in the rock a &lt;strong&gt;large toad and beside it a lizard&lt;/strong&gt; at least nine inches long. &lt;strong&gt;Both these animals were alive&lt;/strong&gt;, and the amazing thing was that the cavity they were in was at least 20 feet from the top of the quarry face&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-08-28T19:18:57.063" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T15:14:16.623" Title="Do living lizards exist inside stones?" Tags="|biology|geology|fossil-record|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10641" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10643" CreationDate="2012-08-29T01:06:08.987" Score="10" ViewCount="1114" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The scientists then sat their subjects in front of a computer screen&#xA;  and showed them images of banks, people, and PIN numbers. They then&#xA;  tracked the readings coming off of the brain, specifically the P300&#xA;  signal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The P300 signal is typically given off when a person recognizes&#xA;  something meaningful, such as someone or something they interact with&#xA;  on a regular basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2012/08/25/scientists-successfully-hack-brain-to-obtain-private-data/&quot;&gt;Source: CBS Seattle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It just sounds far too advanced to translate information storaged in the brain to readable text but I'm no expert in the subject. Is it really possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3518" LastEditorUserId="619" LastEditDate="2012-08-29T22:21:44.733" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T13:51:01.253" Title="Can your thoughts be read through monitoring brain waves?" Tags="|neurology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10641" CreationDate="2012-08-29T06:38:50.540" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This report is based on a paper presented to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity12&quot;&gt;USENIX Security Symposium&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;em&gt;(Ironically, the web-site is currently unstable. Try hitting refresh.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The symposium does not appear to do a full peer review of presentations, but has &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity12/call-for-papers&quot;&gt;refereed papers and invited talks&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't clear that the referees would be experts in neuroscience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, it would be nice to see this novel work reproduced before accepting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper itself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ivan Martinovic, Doug Daviesy, Mario Franky, Daniele Peritoy, Tomas Rosz, Dawn Songy, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity12/sec12-final56.pdf&quot;&gt;On the Feasibility of Side-Channel Attacks with Brain-Computer Interfaces&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;describes their experiment (with 28 students), where they had the subject calibrate the EEG device, and then attempted to detect when a known image was displayed to the subject compared to an unknown image. The subjects were prepped to think about particular subjects (first digit of their (temporary) PIN, where they lived, their month of birth, their bank and the people they knew).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They didn't actively &quot;read&quot; the actual information from the brain - they tried to measure whether parts of the brain were active when it was thinking about a certain image. Nor did they deliberately focus on particular signals, but trained on the input during calibration to find whatever signal was best at indicating recognition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The correct answer was found by the first guess in&#xA;  20% of the cases for the experiment with the PIN, the&#xA;  debit cards, people, and the ATM machine. The location&#xA;  was exactly guessed for 30% of users, month of birth for&#xA;  almost 60% and the bank based on the ATM machines&#xA;  for almost 30%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a random guess of the first digit would be 10%, they brought that up to 20%. Further, they had a good second guess if the first one was incorrect. They measured their success in terms of the reduction in entropy, which for some measures ranged from 15% to 40%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they claim &quot;the classifiers perform significantly better than the random attack&quot;, I didn't see an analysis of the significance, which seems a serious shortfall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper performs a basic review of similar experiments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, the experimenters have come up with an interesting idea and produced a exploratory proof-of-concept paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this will need to be reproduced before it can be accepted. It will require a lot of new development and sophistication before it can be considered a serious threat and/or technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-08-29T06:44:26.863" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T06:44:26.863" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10638" CreationDate="2012-08-29T12:16:38.927" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. But they definitely can reside inside the cracks and crevices of stones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible that a lizard (or in some cases, a beetle) lives inside&#xA;  a rock for thousands of years when that stone got formed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. The longest living vertebrate is the Galapagos Tortoise which only lives for 100-200 years. And the oldest living insect is the Queen of Termites which can live about 50 years. Both of these are far from being &quot;thousands&quot; of years old.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast.com/long328.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://thelongestlistofthelongeststuffatthelongestdomainnameatlonglast.com/long328.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_tortoise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_tortoise&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing as this stands so far outside the realm of theoretical possibilities I would put this in the category of logical fallacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But some microbes have been known to live for thousands of years in solid materials...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/05/18/millennia-old-microbes-found-alive-in-deep-ocean-muck/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/05/18/millennia-old-microbes-found-alive-in-deep-ocean-muck/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2005/2005-02-24-05.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2005/2005-02-24-05.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Being at my seat near the village of Meudon, and overlooking a&#xA;  quarryman whom I had sent to break some very large and hard stones, in&#xA;  the middle of one we found a huge toad, full of life and without any&#xA;  visible aperture by which it could get there. The laborer told me it&#xA;  was not the first time he had met with a toad and the like creatures&#xA;  within huge blocks of stone.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this were true it would be a major scientific discovery. This is likely a worker hoaxing his gullible boss. If the worker said that &quot;it was not the first time he had met with a toad and the like creatures within huge blocks of stone&quot;, then this would indicate that the event is reproducible. In which case it might be able to stand up to the scientific method, and have the ability to produce real scientific merit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20170627224725/http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20170627224725/http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-authority.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The soldier pried a stone slab away from the quarry face when he saw&#xA;  &quot;in a pocket in the rock a large toad and beside it a lizard at least&#xA;  nine inches long. Both these animals were alive, and the amazing thing&#xA;  was that the cavity they were in was at least 20 feet from the top of&#xA;  the quarry face&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably due to something called &lt;strong&gt;memory distortion&lt;/strong&gt;. Which can easily and often does lead people to recall events inaccurately. The rock could have been loose and had a crevice on one side that the person didn't notice, which the animals were hiding in. Then after he pried the rock away he convinced himself they were sealed in there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the &quot;The Hindsight Bias&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psychology.learnhub.com/lesson/4818-memory-101-distorted-memories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://psychology.learnhub.com/lesson/4818-memory-101-distorted-memories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/2507&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/2507&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8370" LastEditorUserId="7606" LastEditDate="2017-06-28T15:14:16.623" LastActivityDate="2017-06-28T15:14:16.623" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10646" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-29T15:43:33.767" Score="17" ViewCount="10723" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our (two male) cats normally eat turkey and chicken flavoured canned wet cat food from our favorite cat food brand. However, we don't feed the cat's any other flavours which all contain fish, such as tuna or salmon, because of a vague recommendation from our vet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Don't feed fish-flavored cat food to cats, especially male cats. It's bad for them.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I attempted to find any evidence or statistics that any wet cat food causes any health problems of any kind in cats, specifically due to them having fish as an ingredient. Asking the manufacturer if the food has &quot;safe&quot; amounts of fish probably wouldn't be a trustable answer, either. Yet, this claim appears to be widespread and also very inconsistent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justanswer.com/cat-health/2zknn-heard-foods-contain-fish-bad-male-cats.html&quot;&gt;http://www.justanswer.com/cat-health/2zknn-heard-foods-contain-fish-bad-male-cats.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have heard foods that contain fish are bad for male cats. &lt;strong&gt;It can cause damage to their colon&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101121172648AAd7Ny1&quot;&gt;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101121172648AAd7Ny1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...male cats tend to have more &lt;strong&gt;UTI problems&lt;/strong&gt; when fed a high amount of fish based foods. Its not really good to give fish food more then once a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ask.metafilter.com/175111/How-much-fishbased-cat-food-is-too-much&quot;&gt;http://ask.metafilter.com/175111/How-much-fishbased-cat-food-is-too-much&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our vet warned us against feeding our cats too much fish-based wet food as we were dealing with Melon's second &lt;strong&gt;urinary-tract blockage&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catinfo.org/?link=cannedfoods#Ingredients&quot;&gt;http://www.catinfo.org/?link=cannedfoods#Ingredients&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fish and beef are common food allergens in the cat and can cause &lt;strong&gt;inflammatory bowel disease and skin allergies&lt;/strong&gt; in &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; cats. ... If you want to feed a fish-based food as a treat, please limit it to once or twice a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catforum.com/forum/38-health-nutrition/98679-fish-bad-cats.html&quot;&gt;http://www.catforum.com/forum/38-health-nutrition/98679-fish-bad-cats.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've heard that fish contains a lot of ash that can cause &lt;strong&gt;UTI's&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.littlebigcat.com/nutrition/why-fish-is-dangerous-for-cats/&quot;&gt;http://www.littlebigcat.com/nutrition/why-fish-is-dangerous-for-cats/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general, the small amounts of “fish meal” included as a flavoring and/or source of omega-3 fatty acids in cat foods are not a problem, but fish should not be a mainstay of any cat’s diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pet.solazylife.com/cat-health/179.html&quot;&gt;http://pet.solazylife.com/cat-health/179.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would recommend avoiding fish flavored foods, which are said to be suspect in &lt;strong&gt;crystal formation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wellnesspetfood.com/product-details.aspx?pet=cat&amp;amp;pid=103#ingredients&quot;&gt;one brand&lt;/a&gt; of cat food, and many others, use fish such as Tuna and Salmon as the main ingredient (not just a &quot;flavour&quot;).  Given that this is true, the question is threefold:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can any amount of fish cause health problems in cats?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If so, are there any observed amounts of fish that cause said health problems in cats?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If so, how does this relate to the amount of fish in canned cat foods?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7299" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T00:44:06.323" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T19:18:24.973" Title="Is fish-flavored cat food bad/dangerous to a cat's health?" Tags="|nutrition|zoology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10648" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28262" CreationDate="2012-08-29T18:38:24.437" Score="4" ViewCount="349" Body="&lt;p&gt;I stumbled across Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging (DITI) on the website of a pharmacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia explains that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DITI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DITI&lt;/a&gt; is a type of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;thermology/thermography&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, but has  scant information on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the name does it have any evidence supporting it as a diagnostic tool?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clinical thermography, also known as Digital Infrared Thermal Imaging (DITI), maps physiological patterns that indicate both normal health and disease.  Thermography is especially sensitive in the detection of early stage breast cancer.  As a screening of physiology, thermography can detect function associated with actively growing cancer years before a lump is large enough to be detected by mammography or self exam.   There exam involves no radiation and no contact with the equipment. All thermograms are interpreted by ACCT-accredited medical doctors.   Screenings include: Breast, Women’s Wellness, Full Body and other Regions of Interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peoplesrx.com/retailer/store_templates/am_custom_page.asp?PageID=392&amp;amp;storeID=5AB72154906F41D99BDB3286D064BA81&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peoples RX&lt;/a&gt; (link broken; see &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20101215021636/http://www.peoplesrx.com/retailer/store_templates/am_custom_page.asp?PageID=392&amp;amp;storeID=5AB72154906F41D99BDB3286D064BA81&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;archive&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the link to the site actually providing the service:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pictureyourhealth.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Picture your health&lt;/a&gt; (link broken; see &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120209165840/http://www.pictureyourhealth.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;archive&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7051" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-09-25T20:40:33.670" LastActivityDate="2018-09-25T20:40:33.670" Title="Can disease be detected with DITI or thermography?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2282" CreationDate="2012-08-29T18:48:51.803" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/bot5.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Box Of Truth blog&lt;/a&gt; examined the movie claim with padlocks, rather than door locks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a good reference because he uses pistol, rifle and shotgun with varying loads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this reference isn't about door locks, but the close up of the damage and clear explanation of the ammunition involved lends better understanding towards a conclusion with respect to door locks that are often just brass cylinders, not even laminated steel as with the padlocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8163" LastEditorUserId="8163" LastEditDate="2012-12-31T17:54:50.517" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T17:54:50.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10636" CreationDate="2012-08-29T20:32:00.120" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A doctor/researcher at Harvard Medical School concludes that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/features/weather_and_pain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;barometric pressure is the one area of &quot;weather&quot; that does physically affect the human body&lt;/a&gt; because pressure affects bones, tissues and cavities (eg. sinuses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, he says that rain and snow are utterly inconclusive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although many people say that their pain worsens with damp, rainy&#xA;  weather, research has shown that it's not the cold, wind, rain, or&#xA;  snow&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robert Jamison and others agree that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nervepainandweather.co.uk/Pressure_as_link_pain_and_weath.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pressure is the only real link between weather and pain&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arthritis writers point out that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arthritistoday.org/symptoms/pain/all-about-pain/weather-pain.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;thunderstorms may actually make allergies worse&lt;/a&gt;, exactly the opposite of conventional wisdom which says that &quot;storms wash pollutants out of the air&quot;.  Evidently, trips to the emergency room for asthma attacks &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; in the days following storms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4670" LastActivityDate="2012-08-29T20:32:00.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10653" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-30T01:44:14.777" Score="29" ViewCount="2361" Body="&lt;p&gt;Among some circles, co-sleeping is highly advocated for newborns/infants due to ease of breastfeeding and potential developmental bonding to the mother (for more examples, read about proposed advantages &lt;a href=&quot;http://kellymom.com/parenting/nighttime/familybed/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). The immediate and obvious red flag that came to mind was rolling over one's baby. A defense I've heard is that you... just won't:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[In response to inquiry about the safety of co-sleeping] You won't squash him. You couldn't even comfortably roll onto a teddy bear in your sleep, let alone your own baby that your subconscious is ALWAYS aware of. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://community.babycentre.co.uk/post/a20526405/how_do_you_sleep_when_co-sleeping&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you wont roll onto your baby. there is no way you forget they are there even when you're dead to the world. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.circleofmoms.com/young-moms-aged-20-30/i-really-want-to-start-co-sleeping-with-my-newborn-but-540901#_&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Physically and psychologically it is HIGHLY unlikely that you will roll over onto your baby when co-sleeping. It’s an evolutionary, parental instinct sorta thing (don’t remember the exact name for this but definitely learned about it in my psych classes). Essentially as a parent your conscious and unconscious self is aware that protecting your baby is a priority and you won’t smush or smother them. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.celebitchy.com/106514/kourtney_kardashian_defends_co-sleeping_with_her_baby/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cpsc.gov/CPSCPUB/PREREL/PRHTML99/99175.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Consumer Product Safety Commission&lt;/a&gt;, via &lt;a href=&quot;http://kidshealth.org/parent/general/sleep/cosleeping.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kid's Health&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the CPSC, at least 515 deaths were linked to infants and toddlers under 2 years of age sleeping in adult beds from January 1990 to December 1997:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;121 of the deaths were attributed to a parent, caregiver, or sibling rolling on top of or against a baby while sleeping&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more than 75% of the deaths involved infants younger than 3 months old&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another pro-co-sleeping advocate (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the University of Notre Dame's Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory, our studies of breastfeeding mothers who sleep with their 2- to 4-month-olds &lt;strong&gt;reveal that both mothers and their babies are extremely sensitive throughout the night to each other's shifting position in the bed.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During my many years of studying sleep-sharing, I've never heard of a single instance in which, under safe conditions, it was proven that a mother suffocated her child. Notice that I said safe conditions: &lt;strong&gt;Babies can and do accidentally suffocate when one or both parents doesn't know a baby is in the bed, is drunk or desensitized by drugs, or is indifferent to the baby's presence.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to follow in the vein of the last bit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is co-sleeping safe when parents are aware of the baby's presence, are not under the influence of substances, and are not indifferent to the baby's presence?&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In layman's terms: is co-sleeping safe under normal conditions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Is that criterion last just a catch-all &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;no true Scotsman&lt;/a&gt; variant? If the first two conditions aren't true then the parents &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; have been indifferent at some level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T21:34:45.490" Title="Is &quot;co-sleeping&quot; (infant sleeps in bed with parents) safe?" Tags="|sleep|mortality|children|parenting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10653" CreationDate="2012-08-30T05:40:33.577" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Co-sleeping is unsafe, particularly when compared to placing a child into a suitable cot / crib. Most of this risk comes from the bed and bedding not being suitable for infants, but suffocation by overlying is also a significant risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The only safe place for an infant to sleep is on its back in a crib/bed that meets relevant standards.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/112/4/883.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;retrospective review of death-scene and medical reports for SIDS and related deaths&lt;/a&gt; showed that  children sleeping in adult beds increases their risk of death by at least a factor of 20:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using cribs as the reference group and adjusting for potential confounders, the multivariate ORs showed that ...  &lt;strong&gt;the risk of suffocation was approximately 40 times higher for infants in adult beds compared with those in cribs. The increase in risk remained high even when overlying deaths were discounted (32 times higher) or the estimate of rates of bedsharing among living infants doubled (20 times higher).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instances of overlying (suffocation by a person sharing the bed) were rare, and the data is not as conclusive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The diagnosis by medical examiners and coroners that overlying of an infant while sharing an adult bed was the “cause of death” remains controversial. More overlying deaths were reported by medical examiners and coroners in the 1990s (70 deaths) than in the 1980s (7 deaths). In approximately 40.3% of the cases (31 of 77), the narratives reported that a third party found the infant covered by an adult or a child, there were compression marks on the infant, or other findings suggesting the likelihood of overlying (eg, infant sleeping in twin bed with 2 adults). In both decades, overlying deaths were associated with very young infants, with an average age of 1.9 months. Only 1 overlying death occurred after 6 months of age, a report of a 10-month-old found with another child over him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, this is not the major risk with co-sleeping, it's suffocation by other means - bedding, soft mattresses, a child getting wedged between the headboard/footboard/bedframe and the mattress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/106/3/e41.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;population-based death-scene study of SIDS and related deaths&lt;/a&gt; found that for their selected records (all sleep-based deaths of children under two in a particular geographical area), &lt;strong&gt;nearly half involved bed sharing&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Deaths Occurring While Sharing a Bed or Other Sleep Surface&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nearly one half (56) of the infants (47.1%) died while sharing a sleep surface with one or more bedmates (1.4 ± .7; range: 1–4 bedmates; Table 3). For the majority, deaths while bedsharing were diagnosed as SIDS, but for 13 the diagnoses were suffocation or undetermined (23.2% of bedsharing deaths). &lt;strong&gt;All deaths occurred on sleep surfaces that were not designed specifically for infant sleep.&lt;/strong&gt; In 13 cases (23.2%), the scene investigation showed evidence for entrapment of the infant, either by a bedmate or by the sleep surface. In 18 cases (33.0%), the bedsharing infant was found dead on a pillow or comforter, items specifically identified in earlier studies as bedding that increases risk for sudden death when used by infants.18,36,38 The pillows and comforters were on the shared sleep surface and the infant had been placed on top of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Controlling for smoking is also an important factor when assessing the risks of bedsharing, but it appears there is a definite effect when this is taken into account:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The impact of bedsharing on risk for sudden infant death remains controversial. Three case–control studies suggest that bedsharing increases risk for sudden death,24,26,45 but the risk is lessened when the high rate of maternal smoking in these studies is considered. In England, in particular, the rate of smoking among mothers whose infants died while bedsharing is so high that the risk for nonsmoking mothers cannot be calculated from the data.24 In the United States, a case–control study27 from Washington, DC showed increased risk especially when black infants bedshare. Finally, preliminary results from the Chicago Infant Mortality Study, a large, recent case–control study, &lt;strong&gt;strongly indicate an effect of bedsharing that is independent of smoking.&lt;/strong&gt; 46 There are no recent published results addressing risk for infants sleeping alone outside of cribs, but data from the US Consumer Products Safety Commission suggest that the risk may be high...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With specific regard to alcohol consumption and bed sharing, a nationwide case-control study in New Zealand found that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/307/6915/1312.abstract?ijkey=1d6f9bf102802f98be84d693395064d3e993ff41&amp;amp;keytype2=tf_ipsecsha&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;maternal alcohol consumption did not increase the risk of death while bed sharing&lt;/a&gt;, though it should be noted that there doesn't appear to be any conclusive research on this matter - there are studies whose conclusions are directly contradictory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neither maternal alcohol consumption nor the thermal resistance of the infant's clothing and bedding interacted with bed sharing to increase the risk of sudden infant death, and &lt;strong&gt;alcohol was not a risk factor by itself&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSION--Infant bed sharing is associated with a significantly raised risk of the sudden infant death syndrome, particularly among infants of mothers who smoke. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="26088" LastEditDate="2015-09-02T21:34:45.490" LastActivityDate="2015-09-02T21:34:45.490" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10507" CreationDate="2012-08-30T08:36:58.143" Score="-9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO WAY anyone knows.&lt;/strong&gt; Although their are biological reasons like those noted in other answers, reliable estimates are not available to make a determination one way or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What was the Question?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Todd Akin's comments were taken out of context. Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news-leader.com/article/20120822/NEWS01/308220046/todd-akin-legitimate-rape&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;full text of what Todd Akin said about rape&lt;/a&gt;, and the (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M09iWwKiDsA&amp;amp;feature=player_detailpage#t=123s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;video link&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Charles Jaco: Okay, so if an abortion can be considered in the case of, say, tubal pregnancy or something like that, what about in the case of rape? Should it be legal or not?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Todd Akin:&lt;/strong&gt; Well, you know, people always want to try and make that as one of those things: &amp;quot;Well, how do you - how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It seems to me, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Todd Akin's statement taken out of context seems ridiculous, because it is easy to find a single counter example of a woman who got pregnant from a rape. This isn't even close to what Todd Akin claimed. Todd Akin was arguing that you shouldn't use instances of rape to justify legalizing abortion, because pregnancy due to rape is really rare, he is not saying that pregnancy is &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; the result of rape. This is clarified in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R57E3S8RO7A&amp;amp;feature=player_detailpage#t=17s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Todd Akin's apology video&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Say it ain't So?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Todd Akins is talking about false accusations when talking about &amp;quot;legitimate&amp;quot; rape. Todd Akins clarified his position on Aug 21, on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://themoderatevoice.com/156824/todd-akins-clarifies-legitimate-rape-comment-now-says-women-make-false-claims-about-being-raped/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Huckabee show&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://soundcloud.com/thinkpro/akin-on-rape&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;audio available&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You know, Dr. Willke has just released a statement and part of his letter, I think he just stated it very clearly. He said, of course Akin never used the word legitimate to refer to the rapist, but to false claims like those made in Roe v. Wade and I think that simplifies it….. There isn’t any legitimate rapist…. [I was] making the point that there were people who use false claims, like those that basically created Roe v. Wade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women do lie about rape. What percentage of rapes are false accusations? Once again, the numbers &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_accusation_of_rape#Rumney&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;vary greatly&lt;/a&gt;. The US Department of Justice released a report &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/dnaevid.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Convicted by Juries, Exonerated by Science&lt;/a&gt; places the false accusation percentage between 20%-40% using DNA testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every year since 1989, in about 25 percent of the sexual assault cases referred to the FBI where results could be obtained (primarily by State and local law enforcement), the primary suspect has been excluded by forensic DNA testing. Specifically, &lt;strong&gt;FBI officials report that out of roughly 10,000 sexual assault cases since 1989&lt;/strong&gt;, about 2,000 tests have been inconclusive (usually insufficient high molecular weight DNA to do testing), &lt;strong&gt;about 2,000 tests have excluded the primary suspect&lt;/strong&gt;, and about 6,000 have “matched” or included the primary suspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that these percentages have remained constant for 7 years, and that the National Institute of Justice’s informal survey of private laboratories reveals a strikingly similar 26-percent exclusion rate, strongly suggests that postarrest and postconviction DNA exonerations are tied to some strong, underlying systemic problems that generate erroneous accusations and convictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: FBI statistics do not differentiate between accusers who lie, make an honest mistake. Neither does it preclude that a rape didn't take place, only that the person accused was innocent.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;False accusations will clearly affect any estimates of legitimate rapes, which will in turn affect any study based upon unsubstantiated claims of rape by the &amp;quot;victim.&amp;quot; Todd Akin clarified what he meant when he said &amp;quot;legitimate rape,&amp;quot; but lets explore some other possible explanations for what is legally a rape, instead of resorting to believing that Todd Akin must have meant women who weren't asking for it, didn't fight hard enough, or were the victims of war crimes. These cases might not cause a biological response in the victim, because the aren't forcible rape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Statutory Rape&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Incapacitated Rape&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drug/Alcohol Facilitated Rape&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;32,101? How confident are you?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, we come to the heart of the matter. &lt;strong&gt;Is a woman less likely to become pregnant if forcibly raped, than with consensual sex.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How confident should we be that 32,101 pregnancies are the result of rape each year? I wasn't able to access the study online, but you can glean enough information from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8765248&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;abstract&lt;/a&gt; to see some problems with the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;STUDY DESIGN: A national probability sample of 4008 adult American women ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Among 34 cases of rape-related pregnancy, ...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The national rape-related pregnancy rate is 5.0% per rape among victims of reproductive age ... and estimated 32,101 pregnancies&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I said, my local library didn't have online access to the study, so I can't verify their exact numbers or how they arrived at 5.0%. I was able to find &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/context-and-variation/2012/08/21/what-do-you-do-when-there-is-no-best-dataset-a-follow-up-on-pregnancy-and-rape-statistics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;secondary sources&lt;/a&gt; that explained some of the numbers from the study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their methods they called their study the &lt;strong&gt;National Women’s Study&lt;/strong&gt;, and say that they interviewed &lt;strong&gt;4008 women&lt;/strong&gt; in the first wave. Each wave had fewer women. They said they noted &lt;strong&gt;616 instances of rape from the 3031 respondents in wave three&lt;/strong&gt;. How then, do they then say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Analysis of the National Women’s Survey raw data (without statistical weighting required for determining representative population estimates) indicates that there were &lt;strong&gt;34 cases of rape-related pregnancy&lt;/strong&gt;. A total of 30 women reported one rape-related pregnancy and two additional women reported two rape-related pregnancies. Of the 34 cases 21% occurred when the victim was aged 12 to 15 years, 27% occurred among women aged 16 and 17, and 52% occurred after age 18.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study is extrapolating estimates for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1130/p251130.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;USA reproductive female&lt;/a&gt; (1996) (page 44): 67,047,000 women age (12-45), with only 616 rapes resulting in 34 pregnancies from a sample of 4008-3031 women. Using a handy dandy online &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confidence Interval&lt;/a&gt; calculator (Confidence Level 95%, Sample Size: 616, Population: 3031, Percent: 5 = &lt;strong&gt;CI: 1.54&lt;/strong&gt;). This represents a slightly greater than 30% margin of error. (&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; Hopefully I am using the right (someone correct me if I am wrong) sample size 616, not 34. Since I think the sample is 616 women with 5% (34 women) answering &amp;quot;Yes&amp;quot; to the quality of becoming pregnant as a result of the rape. If I was supposed to use 34, then the CI=7.29 which would make the margin of error greater than the estimated 5% pregnancy rate)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the authors of the study is &lt;strong&gt;Dean G. Kilpatrick&lt;/strong&gt;, should know better (I'm just an amateur scientist). He should be more cautious when using figures that have a &amp;gt;30% margin of error. He is at least aware of other measures of rape, since he wrote a white paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://new.vawnet.org/Assoc_Files_VAWnet/MakingSenseofRape.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Making Sense of Rape in America&lt;/a&gt;. One of the data sources used to measure rape listed on page 3 is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/183781.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Violence Against Women Survey&lt;/a&gt; (NVAWS), which has a nice little chart (page 7) showing estimated standard error. The NVAWS also notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates with RSEs [Ratio Standard Error] that exceed 30 percent were deemed unstable and were not tested for statistically significant differences between or among groups. These estimates have been identified in the tables and should be viewed with caution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess Kilpatrick wasn't cautious, since he uses a similar figure in the white paper (rape was 0.27%) that the NVAWS cautions about (page 14, Exhibit 14 &amp;amp; 15):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because annual rape victimization estimates are based on responses from only 24 women and 8 men who reported having been raped, they should be viewed with caution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; I have included another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79895.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;secondary reference for the Johnathan Gottschall&lt;/a&gt; estimate provided in the accepted answer (&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-003-1014-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reference 7&lt;/a&gt;), that challenges the 6.4% rape pregnancy rate claimed in that study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Gottschalls’ article looked at the National Violence Against Women survey, which polled 8,000 women. Of the 405 rape victims in the poll who fit the studies’ methodology, about 6.4 percent of them became pregnant. The Gottschalls think the best studies show consensual sex resulting in pregnancies about 3 percent of the time. Why the gap?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using data from the (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/183781.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Violence Against Women Survey&lt;/a&gt;) own Relative Standard Error chart, you will note that this gives an RSE of &amp;gt;30%, which means that Gottshall ignored the NVAWS recommendations about making statistical comparisons regarding subsets with such high RSE. In the politico article (linked above as the Update: secondary ref), Jonathan Gottschall even admits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Gottschall did warn that methodological problems mean the numbers “aren’t carved in a stone.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the major studies listed in Kilpatrik's whitepaper (see each national studies overview and methodological limitations), their doesn't exist a reliable estimate the chances of &lt;strong&gt;pregnancies&lt;/strong&gt; from rape, and without a reliable rape pregnancy rate, a comparison cannot be made to consensual sex leading to pregnancy. Not only that, but the studies (and consensual sex) estimates usually cannot account for confounding factors that might affect the outcome. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-victims&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rape Abuse and Incest National Network&lt;/a&gt; does a good job of breaking these down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When taken in context, it is clear that legal abortions for rape victims are very rare (Atkins actual claim). Without reliable estimates for the number of rapes, or resultant pregnancies from rape, it is impossible to tell if a woman is less likely to get pregnant after being raped than having consensual sex (the [possible] claim that Atkins says he gets from doctors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2022-08-02T19:13:05.723" LastActivityDate="2022-08-02T19:13:05.723" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10656" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-30T10:04:54.560" Score="8" ViewCount="742" Body="&lt;p&gt;This Livestrong article - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/447726-does-parsley-help-with-bad-breath/&quot;&gt;Does Parsley Help With Bad Breath?&lt;/a&gt; suggests that parsley can improve bad breath. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article suggests that bad breath is caused often by poor oral hygiene, allowing bacteria to metabolise food particles and produce sulphur compounds which smell bad.  This is the established scientific status-quo, however it does not mention that parsley has any antibacterial properties. The benefits are claimed to be due to &lt;em&gt;chlorophyll&lt;/em&gt; and I quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This substance has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties and helps to neutralize toxins and pollutants you ingest daily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hollandandbarrett.com/pages/product_detail.asp?pid=7&amp;amp;prodid=7&quot;&gt;bad breath tablets&lt;/a&gt; contain &lt;em&gt;parsley seed oil&lt;/em&gt; suggesting it isn't universally believed to be the chlorophyll that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of any research to support this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8375" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T17:39:39.183" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T17:39:39.183" Title="Does parsley improve bad breath?" Tags="|nutrition|dentistry|herbalism|livestrong|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10657" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10659" CreationDate="2012-08-30T12:42:01.533" Score="35" ViewCount="13176" Body="&lt;p&gt;An article in The Guardian - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/28/apple-rot-starts-with-samsung-lawsuit-win&quot;&gt;Apple's rot starts with its Samsung lawsuit win&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Makes the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apple is one of the most aggressive intellectual property litigators of all time&#xA;  ... It's sued about the lower case &quot;i&quot;; it's sued about the word &quot;pod&quot;; it's sued New York City over the &quot;big Apple&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Did Apple sue New York City over the &quot;Big Apple&quot;?&lt;/strong&gt; Looking at the Wikipedia entry for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Apple&quot;&gt;Big Apple&lt;/a&gt; the nickname has been around since the 1920's, so I don't see how Apple could sue over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="2712" LastEditDate="2012-09-14T17:14:01.733" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T17:12:10.250" Title="Did Apple sue New York city over the nickname Big Apple?" Tags="|computers|law|commerce|apple-inc|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2001" CreationDate="2012-08-30T12:54:16.990" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple different layers to this question, obviously changes in arthritis pain is the most obvious, but there is also a more subtle question about generalized pain due to weather changes. As the answer by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/2504/6629&quot;&gt;Kit Sunde&lt;/a&gt; handles the arthritis side of things quite handily, this will focus a bit more on the generalized pain stand point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to generalized pain, it appears that the answer is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; but&#xA;largely on the strength of the anecdotal evidence as properly controlled for studies tend to be lacking. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iasp-pain.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Technical_Corner&amp;amp;Template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&amp;amp;ContentID=2201&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;survey paper&#xA;released in 1996&lt;/a&gt; reviewed what had been published up to that point&#xA;and found that when properly surveyed and controlled for, there is a&#xA;link between the reports of perceived pain and changes in the weather;&#xA;however, actual laboratory controlled research was lacking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/93/7/2895.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article released in 1995&lt;/a&gt; argued there is no link&#xA;between changes in weather and arthritis pain following a small (n =&#xA;18) study, but given the limited study group and the fact that it stands in contrast to other findings, it is entirely possible that something else might be going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent (2011) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&amp;amp;pid=S0482-50042011000600008&amp;amp;lng=en&amp;amp;nrm=iso&amp;amp;tlng=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;literature review on osteoarthritis pain&lt;/a&gt; has also bore out the conclusion that most of the research supports a correlation between &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_pressure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;barometric pressure&lt;/a&gt; and various forms of chronic pain which seems to be the direction that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2009/04/30/why-does-pain-get-worse-when-a-storm-is-coming/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;scientific community is going as the accepted explanation&lt;/a&gt; although you do still see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.midwestprs.com/wives-tale-2-arthritis-pain-weather&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some people&lt;/a&gt; going the direction of saying there is no link (or no proven link) and that there is a psychological aspect to the pain (e.g. bad weather leads to a lousy mood and more sensitivity to pain). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, there appears to be a link between weather and pain along with a tentative mechanism as to why; however, the general consensus is that there haven't been sufficient studies to prove the connection yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T12:54:16.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10657" CreationDate="2012-08-30T13:14:35.570" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apple Inc. did sue NYC, however it was not about &quot;Big Apple&quot; nickname, but the logo that went along with it &amp;mdash; a stylized apple. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r03YY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;GreeNYC vs Apple&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apple filed a federal challenge to New York's trademark application&#xA;  for a new &quot;Big Apple&quot; logo, saying it's too similar to the stylized&#xA;  emblem found on iPhones, iPods and iMac computers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple said the symbol for New York's &quot;GreeNYC&quot;&#xA;  initiative promoting energy efficiency and recycling is confusingly&#xA;  similar to the logo used by the electronics maker since 1977.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NYC &amp;amp; Company Inc., the city's nonprofit tourism and marketing office,&#xA;  filed the trademark application in May, playing off of New York's &quot;Big&#xA;  Apple&quot; nickname.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;New York already has begun using the logo, which morphs the symbol for&#xA;  infinity (similar to a figure 8 on its side) with the outline of an&#xA;  apple, a stem and a single leaf. &#xA;  [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2008/apr/04/business/fi-apple4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Apple sues New York over logo&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, LA Times&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time Apple filled opposition in USPTO, &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/ttabvue-91181984-OPP-9.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;which sided with NYC, dismissing the opposition.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story was also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2008/04/apple_vs_apple#&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;covered on Wired.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-08-30T16:10:43.553" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T16:10:43.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10664" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10665" CreationDate="2012-08-30T16:39:51.787" Score="15" ViewCount="4637" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many places I have heard that living too clean weakens your immune system. For example, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2118871/How-keeping-children-clean-wreck-immune-systems.html&quot;&gt;Daily Mail article&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence is growing that dirt and germs can protect against disease - and that our indoor-based, ultra-clean lifestyles are bad for our health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My doubts are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it true for both adult and a child?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If yes then what is the medical-scientific basis of this claim?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my experience I have seen that people living in very dirty places, eating street foods regularly, can adapt to unhygienic environments and foods much easily than people living in more clean environments from birth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7695" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-08-30T23:11:23.630" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T17:38:12.143" Title="Does living clean weaken ones immune system?" Tags="|hygiene|immune-system|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10664" CreationDate="2012-08-30T17:13:01.640" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;1) Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Your immune system's memory response and capacity for leniency towards non-self antigens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a nice, comprehensive look that contrasts cleanliness versus pollutants: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D. Diaz-Sanchez &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2567.2000.00108.x&quot;&gt;Pollution and the immune response: atopic diseases – are we too dirty or too clean?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can quickly summarize some of the basics behind the theory (&lt;strong&gt;antigen&lt;/strong&gt; is basically anything that's not part of your body - it can be a virus, a bacteria, or just chemicals it doesn't recognize):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your immune system has both a nominal response and a memory response. The initial response is made by the Innate immune system, and is responsible for allergies (Mast Cells contain large amounts of Histamine - the primary agent in allergic reactions). &lt;strong&gt;Whether or not your immune system responds a little bit, a lot, or just the right amount depends on previous exposures to antigens.&lt;/strong&gt; Your Innate immune system can learn that some compounds (like pollen) don't require a large response, but &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; if it's been consistently exposed to pollen before. This is part of the reason why &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allergen_immunotherapy&quot;&gt;Exposure Therapy&lt;/a&gt;&quot; for allergies can yield success. It's basically repeated exposure to the allergen at higher and higher doses until the immune system stops overreacting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Memory Response is one of the most effective ways your body fights off infections, and it's the reason why vaccines are so effective. Once you are exposed to an antigen, your Adaptive immune system retains some white blood cells in the lymphoid tissues. If your body encounters the same antigen again (Chickenpox), it already has an extremely effective responder ready to undergo mitosis to quell the invasion. As you age, your immunological memory expands, to the point that removing the Thymus (the primary source of new T-cells - which are the basis for the Memory Response) becomes less and less of an issue as you age. After about the age of 35-40, the removal of the Thymus barely affects the immune response at all since the person is more or less encountering what they've already seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between the two the argument for the &quot;Living too cleanly&quot; is basically thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do not encounter a lot of antigens, like in a sterile environment, your body's immune system does not correctly calibrate itself and can overreact when it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; exposed to unfamiliar antigens. Also, there's the possibility that if you were to spend several decades away from sources of antigens, that your Memory Response library would be severely lacking - resulting in more severe illnesses which take more of a toll on an elderly person than young person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of any threshold of cleanliness that there's been agreement upon deciding which level of cleanliness is fine or not. I would think that as long as you get outside often, socialize occasionally, and keep your living areas relatively clutter free you're good. Obviously &lt;strong&gt;do not&lt;/strong&gt; do something like refuse to clean food prep areas under the delusion that it will only make your immune system stronger. It might do that until you catch Salmonella or something much worse, then you're in the hospital paying a few thousand dollars to vomit into a fancy bucket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-08-30T23:19:23.587" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T23:19:23.587" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10666" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10669" CreationDate="2012-08-30T17:31:29.583" Score="4" ViewCount="885" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife has started using a technique using various seeds through various times to regulate hormone balance. Does this have any merit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://naturalhealthperspectives.blogspot.ca/2012/02/seed-cycling-for-natural-hormonal.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;'s an example of using seeds as a supplement to regulate hormones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rotating of seeds is a valuable way of restoring hormonal balance for men and women.   Seed cycling is so effective because the hulls of the seeds contain chemicals called lignans, which help modulate the hormonal pathways of the body while the seed oils are comprised of essential (or omega) fatty acids that provide the building blocks for steroid hormone synthesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As each seed type contains variations of these lignans and fatty acids, rotation of these seeds through the month provides the body with the variety of precursors it needs to create normal hormonal cycles.  The additional oils (EPA/DHA &amp;amp; GLA) may also be added for added balancing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8382" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T23:25:15.433" Title="Can pumpkin/sunflower/flax/sesame/other seeds regulate hormones?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|physiology|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10517" CreationDate="2012-08-30T17:38:19.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two quick references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-you-hear-me-now&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Can You Hear Me Now? The Truth about Cell Phones and Cancer&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Michael Shermer in Scientific American a couple of years back&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I know you are talking about laptops -- do read on.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/4152/2224&quot;&gt;Does home-WiFi expose you to less radiation than using the 3G on your cell-phone?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(this one is local here)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;These laptop stories appear to have a background in the mobile phone ones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Radio emissions and heat producing actions of laptop (like the phone) are usually suspect&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(in these stories)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;heat&lt;/strong&gt; itself in the worst case might scar you but it is not sufficient to cause Cancer or Tumors; the nearest I can think of is a bad battery blowing up in your hands&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RSI or eye-strain is a lot more likely problem and you should care about these a lot more; also of importance is -- distraction from real life (as the mind tends to avoid moving focus away from the screen &lt;code&gt;:-)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which brings us to the &lt;strong&gt;radio&lt;/strong&gt; angle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are a lot of indications that mobile phone radio is not strong enough power (even the 3G version) to cause such problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;WiFi is in the same ball park (if not further)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With these things in mind I'll suggest reading those two references that discuss and elaborate at length. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2224" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T17:43:36.467" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10666" CreationDate="2012-08-30T17:57:52.017" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, indirectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flaxseeds don't inherently regulate hormones on their own, but they do provide a rich source of Omega-3 fatty acids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.betterinnovations.com/2011/06/30/supporting-hormonal-balance-with-omega-3&quot;&gt;Omega-3s help by&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Enabl[ing] the fats to create healthy, flexible and responsive cell&#xA;  membranes that accommodates cells in a rather more convenient and easy&#xA;  way.  While such is the primary health benefit of fish oil, omega-3&#xA;  fatty acids likewise help in the body by &lt;strong&gt;ensuring that the cellular&#xA;  receptor sites are repaired, in good condition and will work in&#xA;  optimal force&lt;/strong&gt; anytime.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having &lt;a href=&quot;http://mend.endojournals.org/content/5/10/1405.short&quot;&gt;optimal cellular receptors, in turn, is necessary to regulate hormones&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ergo, seeds provide the body with Omega-3s which in turn help repair and optimize cellular receptors which in turn keep hormones balanced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4670" LastActivityDate="2012-08-30T17:57:52.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10664" CreationDate="2012-08-30T18:07:39.413" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10664/does-living-clean-weaken-ones-immune-system/10665#10665&quot;&gt;reasons MCM already stated&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;HOWEVER...&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vaccinations can teach the immune system a &lt;del&gt;lot of&lt;/del&gt; little bit of what it missed learning the natural way by injecting antigens into the body &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccination#Types&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in a controlled process&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a school of thought that says that humans in developed societies are developing weak immune systems because they aren't exposed to enough grit and grime.  With vaccinations, that is not necessarily true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4670" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T17:38:12.143" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10672" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-30T19:26:56.350" Score="2" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the commonly cited reasons for the ratcheting of defense spending in the United States is that it's an easily justifiable kickback (tugging on patriotic heart strings) to representatives' districts.  A recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://bigthink.com/ideas/47155&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Howard Dean opinion piece&lt;/a&gt; has him claiming that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the defense establishment has plants in 420 out of the 435 Congressional districts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I would expect this number to be large, that seems extreme.  I'm guessing it's padded by including sub(-sub-sub...)contractors, but even then, how pervasive is the spending of the DoD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T18:37:38.397" Title="Does the Defense establishment have plants in vast majority of Congressional districts?" Tags="|united-states|politics|military|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10408" CreationDate="2012-08-30T21:06:39.890" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are actually two parts that need to be covered when addressing this question. One part pertains to the question if we even need 8 hours of sleep? Another part, if we need 8 hours of sleep, is there a need for them to be consecutive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to split up this question, because when people talk about different types of sleep patterns, like polyphasic sleep, it is often in an attempt to reduce the total amount one spends sleeping. We want to spend our days being more productive, and sleep is considered an unproductive part because we don't consciously do something during this part of our day. When googling polyphasic sleep this becomes evident with for example some titles referring to &amp;quot;Polyphasic Sleep Cycles Trick Your Body into Needing Less Sleep&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Alternative Sleep Cycles: You Don't Really Need 6-8 Hours!&amp;quot;... I however want to approach the issue of amount of sleep and consecutive sleep separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Do we need 8 hours of sleep?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So about the first part... do we need 8 hours of sleep? I have answered this question before [1], in which I cite a (freely accessible) article of Van Someren [2]. My answer based on this article (along with other studies that point in this direction) is &amp;quot;yes&amp;quot;... or as the title of Van Someren's article states &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Doing with less sleep remains a dream&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies have shown that &lt;strong&gt;when one gets deprived from their sleep need, this can have negative daytime consequences&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. in terms of concentration, mood, sleepiness, cognitive performance...) [3-4]. Or as Van Dongen et al. (2003) conclude from their study [5]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since chronic restriction of sleep to 6 h or less per night produced&#xA;cognitive performance deficits equivalent to up to 2 nights of total&#xA;sleep deprivation, it appears that even relatively moderate sleep&#xA;restriction can seriously impair waking neurobehavioral functions in&#xA;healthy adults. Sleepiness ratings suggest that subjects were largely&#xA;unaware of these increasing cognitive deficits, which may explain why&#xA;the impact of chronic sleep restriction on waking cognitive functions&#xA;is often assumed to be benign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sleep duration doesn't even have to be reduced in itself to have effects on cognitive function, as a study of Van Der Werf et al. (2009) has shown [6]. In this study an acoustic-perturbation setup was used to reduce the amount of slow-wave sleep (these are the deeper stages of sleep), while keeping total sleep duration intact. When talking about chronic sleep deprivation, e.g. as in insomnia, health outcomes can even be more detrimental, although it becomes harder to disentangle the contribution of sleep in itself, due to higher comorbidities and more health concerns in general at older age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Do we need 8 hours of consecutive sleep?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several &lt;strong&gt;arguments in favour of why we would need 8 hours of consecutive sleep:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the alignment of our circadian rhythm (24-hour rhythm) and homeostatic process (increased wakefulness increases sleep pressure, while sleep results in a dissipation of this pressure &lt;em&gt;this process also has physiological markers&lt;/em&gt;). These are the two main widely accepted processes regulating our sleep-wakefulness and one of the most important things when trying to understand our sleep-wake rhythm [7].&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the importance of light in regulating sleep/wakefulness and with it a lot of other hormonal/physiological processes (this relates to the aforementioned circadian rhythm). The timing of our sleep during the hours of darkness seems to be ideal in this sense, or the other way around, because of this darkness one could claim that from an evolutionary perspective it would have been more beneficial to sleep during this part of the day. Sleep could be seen as a very vulnerable state, but sleeping during darkness, could reduce these risks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;although a lot of research focuses on certain stages of sleep (e.g. slow-wave sleep, REM sleep, or even events at a microlevel, like spindle activity...) it is also believed that the cyclic alteration of different sleep stages might allow certain processes to take place (e.g. Diekelman &amp;amp; Bjorn on the memory function of sleep [8]). Splitting sleep patterns might interfere with these cyclic processes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the framework of Borbély's two-process model a deviation from the 8 hours of consecutive sleep would result into problems, either because homeostatic sleep pressure is too low, or because the circadian rhythm doesn't promote sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what about the people that claim they can do on far less sleep?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;one can use stimulants to overcome sleepiness, the most familiar one being caffeine. Caffeine acts upon the adenosine receptors (normally adenosine builds up during wakefulness, parallel to our homeostatic rhythm, and binds to adenosine receptors subsequently promoting sleep, caffeine however blocks the binding of adenosine to these receptors).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cognitive arousal: the two processes by Borbély don't tell the whole story... when one is mentally very engaged/aroused/stressed one can overcome sleepiness. Also discomfort (a term that however might be linked back to arousal as well) or sitting upright can prevent one from falling asleep (e.g. when trying to sleep during a bus ride...). Bouts of sleep however will intrude wakefulness and might reduce performance, even though one might not always notice this subjectively.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some people only comply to an altered sleep schedule for a limited amount of time (not long enough to experience negative health consequences)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people might misperceive the amount of time they sleep&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as metabolism decreases when one ages, it could be that sleep need decreases as well [9]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;although one often talks about 8 hours of sleep... this still is a general guideline based on a normal distribution, thus one's sleep need can deviate from this and their might be extreme cases as well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The BBC article about biphasic sleep has received some attention in the answer by James Riley and some comments a well. For a more elaborate opinion on this article, I refer to [1]. Bottom line of my comment on the article, is that the study cited to support the claim, isn't representative since people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month, and that our current society and technological advancement could pose some additional problems in maintaining the biphasic sleep pattern that was claimed to be the prevailing sleep pattern during the 16th century.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Do-humans-need-8-hours-of-sleep-per-night-or-is-this-a-myth/answer/Sarah-Moens&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.quora.com/Do-humans-need-8-hours-of-sleep-per-night-or-is-this-a-myth/answer/Sarah-Moens&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Van Someren, E. J. W. Doing with less sleep remains a dream. PNAS 107, 16003-16004 (2010).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meerlo, P., Sgoifo, A., &amp;amp; Suchecki, D. (2008). Restricted and disrupted sleep: Effects on autonomic function, neuroendocrine stress systems and stress responsivity. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 12(3), 197–210. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2007.07.007&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Goel, N., Rao, H., Durmer, J. S., &amp;amp; Dinges, D. F. (2009). Neurocognitive consequences of sleep deprivation. Seminars In Neurology, 29(4), 320–339. doi:10.1055/s-0029-1237117&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Van Dongen, H. P. A., Maislin, G., Mullington, J. M., &amp;amp; Dinges, D. F. (2003). The cumulative cost of additional wakefulness: dose-response effects on neurobehavioral functions and sleep physiology from chronic sleep restriction and total sleep deprivation. Sleep, 26(2), 117–129.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Der Werf, Van, Y. D., Altena, E., Schoonheim, M. M., Sanz-Arigita, E. J., Vis, J. C., De Rijke, W., &amp;amp; Van Someren, E. J. W. (2009). Sleep benefits subsequent hippocampal functioning. Nature neuroscience, 12(2), 122–123. doi:10.1038/nn.2253&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Borbély, A. A. (1982). A two process model of sleep regulation. Human neurobiology, 1(3), 195–204.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Diekelmann, S., &amp;amp; Born, J. (2010). The memory function of sleep. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 114–126. doi:10.1038/nrn2762&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Siegel, J. M. (2009). Sleep viewed as a state of adaptive inactivity. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(10), 747–753. doi:10.1038/nrn2697&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8385" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T15:38:25.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10674" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-31T01:03:34.623" Score="44" ViewCount="64997" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/z2unj/til_that_in_rare_cases_popping_a_pimple_in_the/&quot;&gt;This story&lt;/a&gt; is currently sitting at #13 on Reddit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TIL that in rare cases, popping a pimple in the so-called &quot;danger&#xA;  triangle&quot; can lead to facial paralysis, brain infections/meningitis,&#xA;  and even death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It links through to this Wikipedia article &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_triangle_of_the_face&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_triangle_of_the_face&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Reddit title and what has caused it to receive so many upvotes is the claim that squeezing something like a pimple on the surface of the face could cause sever infection, brain damage or death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many other similar claims if you search Google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this ever happened? Are there any documented cases of someone having brain damage or death as a result of popping a pimple or boil on their face due to infection that transmitted to the brain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastActivityDate="2023-11-14T23:30:21.180" Title="Can popping a pimple in the facial 'danger area' cause brain infection or death?" Tags="|medical-science|mortality|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10677" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10781" CreationDate="2012-08-31T07:25:21.360" Score="16" ViewCount="1748" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's an often repeated internet certainty that, to be truly good at something, you need to practice for 10,000 hours. As far as I have been able to ascertain, this theory (or hypothesis?) gained popularity with Malcolm Gladwell's book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_%28book%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Outliers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any factual basis for this claim, other that the fact that more practice is better?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This theory has been mentioned in other questions and answers right here on skeptics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5411/is-talent-a-real-thing&quot;&gt;Is talent a real thing?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5249/can-one-be-naturally-better-at-computers-than-english-or-maths&quot;&gt;Can one be naturally better at computers than English or Maths?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/952/does-authoritative-mean-something&quot;&gt;(Meta) Does 'authoritative' mean something?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="866" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T12:34:50.737" Title="Are 10,000 hours of practice necessary to gain true expertise in a subject?" Tags="|learning|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10680" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10758" CreationDate="2012-08-31T11:06:16.517" Score="9" ViewCount="1527" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of how-to guides on opening a laptop to clean its fan/motherboard/etc of dust. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/laptops/how-to-clean-your-laptop-of-dust-and-dirt-942783&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.instructables.com/id/Extend-your-laptop-s-life!-Clean-the-dust-out-of-i/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=how%20to%20clean%20laptop%20fan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google search&lt;/a&gt; yields a ton of results. So a lot of people believe it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any statistical evidence to back this up? i.e. the average lifespan of laptops that are regularly being cleaned vs those that aren't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4974" LastEditorUserId="8600" LastEditDate="2012-09-18T14:55:32.880" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T01:20:26.553" Title="Does opening a laptop and cleaning it from dust make it live longer?" Tags="|computers|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10684" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-08-31T15:16:56.290" Score="3" ViewCount="2425" Body="&lt;p&gt;Juil Shoes make shoes that have copper buttons in the sole &amp;quot;connecting&amp;quot; the wearer to the earth. The claim from &lt;a href=&quot;http://juil.com/grounding.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;their website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Free radicals&amp;quot; occur in our bodies when we are exposed to toxins, pesticides, and generally anything that is toxic to our tissue (now-a-days, its more things than not). Over time, free radicals build up in our bodies. In order for them to become stable, the radicals must find an electron to &amp;quot;connect&amp;quot; themselves to. Where are these electrons then? Beyond the sources found in certain foods, vitamins, etc, we have an abundant source of electrons right beneath us in the earth. If we fail to connect ourselves with these sources, radicals attack our healthy tissue to rob the cells of their electrons. The result? A high potential for infection and inflammation, among other ailments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Carol Davis (Professor Emerita – University of Miami Miller School of Medicine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, it turns out that our earth's surface carries a natural, bountiful source of electrons that our bodies also need. These electrons have a balancing effect on our nervous systems and quench free radicals as well. Essentially, when we connect directly with the earth's surface, electrons rising from its soil or sand will enter our bodies and turn the &amp;quot;negatives&amp;quot; we build up day-to-day into &amp;quot;positives.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Daniel Chong (Naturopathic Doctor)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the claim appears to be that staying connected to the earth reduces the number of free radicals in our body, and furthermore this reduction of free radicals leads to better health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at this piece from Steven Novella:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cell metabolism in part creates oxygen free radicals which are molecules that steal electrons from other molecules, causing a cascade of reactions that can damage proteins and other chemicals in the body. Anti-oxidants are chemicals that can stop free radicals and limit the damage. They therefore decrease “oxidative stress” on cells. So far it sounds like anti-oxidants are therefore a good thing and we should be gobbling up as much as we can. However – free radicals and anti-oxidants exist in cells in a homeostasis. Free radicals are used by the immune system, for example, to fight invading organisms. They are also important signaling molecules, triggering other cell-protective mechanisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, taking large amounts of anti-oxidants and disrupting this normal balance  may not necessarily be a good thing. I’m not saying it’s necessarily a bad thing, we just don’t know. You cannot extrapolate from pre-clinical data – essentially looking at what happens to various molecules and cell functions – to clinical claims. The role of free radicals and anti-oxidants in the body is too complex for us to extrapolate to net clinical effects. At best the existing data might suggest the potential for a clinical effect, but in order to know we would have to do properly designed clinical studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/are-berries-the-new-snake-oil/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Are Berries the New Snake Oil?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that free radicals are not well understood, and a lot of research still needs to be done to fully understand them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we trust Steven Novella we can assume the second claim of reducing free radicals provides health benefits is not based on current scientific knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there any research that shows being in direct contact with the Earth (or any electrically grounding surface I guess) reduces the number of free radicals in our bodies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7051" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-12-14T03:54:52.663" Title="Does being in contact with the earth remove free radicals from our bodies?" Tags="|medical-science|earthing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-11-30T10:34:41.560" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10684" CreationDate="2012-08-31T16:08:21.410" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I fear the first two people you quoted do not understand chemistry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_radical&quot;&gt;Free radicals&lt;/a&gt; are not electrically charged, they have a reactive unpaired electron. This is different from an ion, which has a net charge by having more or less electrons than the neutral molecule. Free radicals do not pick up free electrons by conduction, they either react with other molecules in a chain reaction where the product is also a radical, or they react with another radical to produce a non-radical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did simply add an electron to a radical, you would have an ion. Eg Cl.+e- -&gt;Cl- But without a positive counter-ion, you would then gain a net negative charge! I don't think this would be a good thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T16:08:21.410" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10672" CreationDate="2012-08-31T17:58:18.913" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Strictly speaking, the US DoD doesn't have plants/factories of its own anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's various sub-agencies (DARPA, NRO, NSA, CIA, etc) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.defense.gov/landing/contract_resources.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;create contract opportunities&lt;/a&gt; that private companies bid on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The government's role is in deciding contracts, dispersing money for payments, determining compliance and staffing the administrative operations.  The actual 'stuff' is almost always built by private companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you're referring to the location of where those private contracts are handed out, it's more interesting to look at how many &lt;strong&gt;contracts&lt;/strong&gt; there are per Congressional District, not how many plants/factories.  If it's about paying for Congressional votes, a physical &quot;plant&quot; doesn't have to be there.  Money just has to flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2011, &lt;a href=&quot;http://forthecommondefense.org/districts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;there were DoD contracts awarded in &lt;strong&gt;all 435&lt;/strong&gt; Congressional Districts&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not surprising when you consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) The DoD annual budget is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Budget_for_2010&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some $600 billion&lt;/a&gt; per year&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usaspending.gov/explore?&amp;amp;carryfilters=on&amp;amp;tab=By%20Prime%20Awardee&amp;amp;fiscal_year=2011&amp;amp;tab=By%20Prime%20Awardee&amp;amp;fromfiscal=yes&amp;amp;trendreport=top_cont&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;over 170,000 government contractors&lt;/a&gt; in the US, of which about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usaspending.gov/?carryfilters=on&amp;amp;fiscal_year=2011&amp;amp;fromfiscal=yes&amp;amp;trendreport=top_cont&amp;amp;tab=By%20Agency&amp;amp;overridecook=yes&amp;amp;q=explore&amp;amp;maj_contracting_agency=9700&amp;amp;maj_contracting_agency_name=Department%20of%20Defense&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;77k work primarily for the DoD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalatlas.gov/articles/boundaries/a_conApport.html#two&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;average size of a Congressional District&lt;/a&gt; is pretty big - more than 640k people.  What are the odds that with a defense budget that large, a random group of 640k people isn't going to end up with a piece of the pie in one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4670" LastEditorUserId="4670" LastEditDate="2012-08-31T18:37:38.397" LastActivityDate="2012-08-31T18:37:38.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10677" CreationDate="2012-09-01T00:36:16.563" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the 10,000 hours of practice you are referring to is the idea that Anders Ericsson talks about in some of his work on expertise, made popular by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_%28book%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Malcolm Gladwells book &quot;Outliers&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. The idea is not just 10,000 hours of repetitive practice, but Ericsson talks about the concept of &quot;deliberate practice&quot;. It's practice that has the qualities of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;being specifically designed for improvement of what is being practiced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;subject to consistent feedback from a coach or some kind of expert who can help direct your practice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;being intensely mentally engaging/challenging.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;being consistently worked at over a long period of time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very different than mindlessly doing something automatically for 10,000 hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how important the actual number 10,000  is, I think there's some debate surrounding that, but if you practice with those qualities in mind for a long period of time you will most likely improve more than you would if you mindlessly repeat something for the same amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ericsson wrote an article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skillteam.se/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Ericsson_delib_pract.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;explaining some of what I am talking about better than I can.&lt;/a&gt; [PDF]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8402" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2012-09-07T00:50:43.680" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T00:50:43.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10704" CreationDate="2012-09-01T03:13:31.793" Score="17" ViewCount="182974" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been widely claimed that the dosage levels of psychoactive drugs from second-hand marijuana smoke is insufficient to have an effect - i.e. to give a &quot;contact high&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opposingviews.com/i/ny-cops-worry-about-getting-high-during-marijuana-raids&quot;&gt;Opposing Views&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The notion of the “contact high” is a myth. In order to get “high”, the amount of active THC in your bloodstream has to spike. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://emergentfool.com/2009/04/23/placebo-effects-marijuana-and-the-contact-high/&quot;&gt;The Emergent Fool&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many users, and friends of users of marijuana report experiencing a “contact high.” That is, they purport to experience some of the effects of marijuana simply by being in contact with or around those using marijuana. Virtually all users wrongly attribute this experience to the inhalation of second hand smoke. This is unlikely for a number of reasons. Since exhaled smoke is virtually devoid of psychoactive substances and is widely dispersed in the surrounding air, it is not possible for one to inhale even a small fraction of a working dose. Additionally, many, including noted pharmacologist and psychedelic researcher Alexander Shulgin, report similar experiences involving drugs that are not inhaled, indicating that these effects are due to different biological processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this doesn't tally with the anecdotes and claims of others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Does_secondhand_marijuana_smoke_affect_you#ixzz25F8Au0Op&quot;&gt;Wiki Answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm allergic to marijuana, so I've gotten coughing and asthma from second-hand smoke, and also I get painful sores on my head when the neighbor smokes it. It gives me mood swings, then I smell her pot half an hour later. One time I was very, very tired from the marijuana smoke coming in, then when it wore off, my heart beat really fast for a couple of hours&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Can_you_get_high_on_secondhand_marijuana_smoke&quot;&gt;Wiki Answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://studenthealth.oregonstate.edu/answerspot/message.php?message=199&quot;&gt;Oregon State University Student Health Services&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exposure to second hand smoke can cause a drug test to be positive. A &quot;contact high&quot; indicates that THC has entered the blood stream where it is then detectable by drug analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://secondhandmarijuanasmoke.com/&quot;&gt;secondhandmarijuana.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, despite there being evidence that the second hand marijuana smoke can produce a very small high in people, there is no evidence that the smoke can cause a failed drug test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal experience is that even walking a few meters behind a person smoking a joint outdoors is sufficient to give me symptoms 20 minutes later, such as a strange feeling in the head area, slight alteration of taste, vivid dreams, slight insomnia, and an infuriating loss of higher mathematical ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the evidence say? Can the miniscule dosages inhaled this way lead to real signs of a small marijuana high, or are these symptoms of a nocebo effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6256" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-09-01T20:57:10.883" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T05:37:00.150" Title="Can you get high from second-hand marijuana smoke?" Tags="|medical-science|recreational-drugs|marijuana|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10693" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16689" CreationDate="2012-09-01T10:40:08.673" Score="5" ViewCount="434" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cleta Mitchell, president of the Republican National Lawyers Association, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/is-voter-fraud-a-real-problem/voter-fraud-deniers-ignore-the-facts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wrote&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Twelve thousand noncitizens registered to vote in Colorado; apparently 5,000 of those voted in 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And later:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There were 645,775 votes cast in the Tennessee primary, and only 266 persons did not show a photo ID at the polls ... Those 266 individuals were allowed to vote provisionally and if they returned with their photo ID, their ballots were counted. 112 of them did so, leaving &lt;strong&gt;only 154 voters of the 645,775 who did not return with a photo ID. That represents .023 percent of the total primary voters&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these numbers accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did 5000 noncitizens vote in Colorado in 2010?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Were only 0.023 percent of Tennessee primary voters unable to provide photo ID?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-06-21T20:06:37.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T20:06:37.730" Title="Colorado non-citizen vote vs Tennessee's photo ID frequency" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10696" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-01T14:40:13.053" Score="13" ViewCount="1078" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the NAACP, &lt;a href=&quot;http://on.aol.com/video/holder-says-texas-id-law-would-harm-minorities-517415135&quot;&gt;Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday&lt;/a&gt; he opposes a new photo ID requirement in Texas elections because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;the State of Texas filed against the Justice Department under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act seeking approval of its proposed voter ID law. Now, after close review the department found that this law would be harmful to minority voters ... Many of those without IDs would have to travel great distances to get them and some would struggle to pay for the documents they might need to obtain them. We call those poll taxes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do voter ID laws adversely affect minorities?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T01:04:53.460" Title="Are voter ID laws harmful to minority voters?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10696" CreationDate="2012-09-01T15:02:13.393" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This hasn't been true in Georgia, which has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncsl.org/legislatures-elections/elections/voter-id.aspx#ga&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;similar Voter ID law&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncsl.org/legislatures-elections/elections/voter-id.aspx#tx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Texas&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp has the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nccivitas.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/gpidp.pptx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;data to back it up&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 2008 elections were the largest in Georgia’s history, featuring record turnout among minority voters with the photo ID requirement in place. The following figures represent voter turnout statistics among Hispanic/Latino, African-American and White voters from the 2004 and 2008 General Elections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; Voter Demographic |2004 Total Votes Cast |2008 Total Votes Cast |% Increase&#xA; Hispanic/Latino.  | 18,000.              | 43,000               | 140%&#xA; African-American. |834,000.              | 1.2 million.         | 42%&#xA; White.            |2.3 million.          |2.5 million.          |   8%&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The slides above were presented by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nccivitas.org/2012/brian-kemps-clc-presentation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kemp at the Civitas Conservative Leadership Conference&lt;/a&gt;. He notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He reported that in the four years since the law was implemented, Georgians cast tens of millions of votes in 40 state and federal elections and hundreds of city and county elections, and the law has withstood challenges in four courts. He also said that the &lt;strong&gt;opponents of photo ID have failed to find one individual who has been harmed due to the requirement&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when opponents can find plaintiffs for their cases, when they lose the case, the plaintiff turns around and gets a &lt;a href=&quot;http://mobile.philly.com/news/?wss=/philly/news/politics/&amp;amp;id=166493236&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;VoterID the next day.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2012-09-11T21:36:56.050" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T21:36:56.050" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10698" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10700" CreationDate="2012-09-01T16:24:06.913" Score="13" ViewCount="2211" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found the following post &lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/109008933900993103361/posts/2NNu5JZQ48w&quot;&gt;on Google+&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So it Turns Out LG Released a Linux Based Tablet Called iPad 9 Years Ago&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apparently iPad was first introduced by South Korean hardware&#xA;  manufacturer LG Electronics at the CeBIT computer fair in Hanover,&#xA;  Germany 9 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also the name iPhone and iOS was licensed from Cisco.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Apple stole the iPad trademark &lt;a href=&quot;http://goo.gl/df8Mg&quot;&gt;from LG&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Apple stole the name iOS &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisco_IOS&quot;&gt;from Cisco&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Apple stole the name iPhone &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linksys_iPhone&quot;&gt;from Cisco&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Story Via Reddit&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PS: Don't forget to follow the discussion &lt;a href=&quot;http://goo.gl/3C7Wc&quot;&gt;on Reddit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the allegations true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4196" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T16:06:46.757" Title="Did Apple steal trademarks like iPad, iOS and iPhone from other companies?" Tags="|copyright|apple-inc|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10699" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-01T17:19:43.557" Score="10" ViewCount="6075" Body="&lt;p&gt;If so, what were they proven to do? I've heard this sometimes confused with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lakhovsky&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lakhovsky's MWO&lt;/a&gt;. Are there any primary sources of his work on &amp;quot;healing machines&amp;quot; and coils/tubes that eradicate disease? Did he have any success, and were his results reproducible? Did he ever actually start a &amp;quot;Tesla Electrotherapeutic Company&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nervous and perpetually on the brink of exhaustion, Tesla began to experiment with the healing properties of his oscillators as reports began to filter in from around the country about its remarkable curative properties. These high-frequency &amp;quot;vitality boosters&amp;quot; would generate a &amp;quot;universal healing agent&amp;quot; that, when applied, would enable the body to &amp;quot;throw off all diseases,&amp;quot; said Dr. F. Finch Strong. &amp;quot;Effects obtained [included] . . . increase of strength, appetite and weight, induction of natural sleep, and elimination.&amp;quot; Other doctors reported the ability to cure tuberculosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Tesla believes that electricity is the greatest of all doctors and says that when his laboratory was burned, nothing but regular daily applications of electricity kept him from sinking into a state of melancholia.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;My high frequencies,&amp;quot; he would say, &amp;quot;produce an anti-germicidal action.&amp;quot; Thus, as part of his routine for a day at the lab, the inventor would disrobe, step upon his apparatus, and turn on the juice. A prickly corona would envelop his body and restore it to a most pristine condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from Marc Seifer's &lt;em&gt;Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla&lt;/em&gt;, ch. 18 High Society (1894-97)&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=DzMR8x_rbPgC&amp;amp;lpg=PA1892&amp;amp;ots=hBbxFBt2FH&amp;amp;pg=PA1780#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tesla had a hunch that, since his high-potential, high-frequency currents could be passed into the body harmlessly, &amp;quot;these currents might lend themselves to electrotherapeutic uses.&amp;quot; He experimented upon himself. When Tesla was struck down in the streets by a New York taxi, he didn’t deliver himself over to the medicals but dragged himself up to his hotel room where, in seclusion and with the help of his own electrotherapy, he recovered from his fractures and contusions. He never patented in electrotherapy but in 1891 began publishing his observations in technical journals, and seven years later we find Tesla giving a speech to the American Electro-Therapeutic Association in which he details with drawings the high-frequency apparatus he has invented for this purpose, which included a Tesla coil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;via &lt;a href=&quot;http://teslapress.com/electrotherapy.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://teslapress.com/electrotherapy.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tesla in his lab in New York Tesla also applied his resonance engines in bizarre forms of physical therapy. He created machines that flooded the human body with electrical currents and strong vibrations, intended to soothe aches and promote healing. And Tesla wasn't just the inventor of the &amp;quot;electrotherapeutic&amp;quot; device -- he was also a client. He reportedly became somewhat addicted to administering the treatment to himself, insisting that a session with the machine rejuvenated him on his long stretches of work without food or sleep. Tesla once let his friend Samuel Clemens try out the healing machine. The author is said to have enjoyed the experience tremendously, until the vibrations brought him a case of spontaneous diarrhea. Tesla marketed this invention, and the Tesla Electrotherapeutic Company was one of the few commercial enterprises of his old age that was marginally successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/Biographies/TeslaBio-2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/Biographies/TeslaBio-2.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other similar claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://imun.tripod.com/TechWatch/ietesla.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://imun.tripod.com/TechWatch/ietesla.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://altered-states.net/barry/newsletter208/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://altered-states.net/barry/newsletter208/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6785" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-08T20:53:07.030" Title="Did Nikola Tesla work on &quot;healing machines&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|electromagnetism|nikola-tesla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10698" CreationDate="2012-09-01T17:41:35.200" Score="24" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://patentauthority.com/2010/03/apple-buys-ipad-trademark-from-fujitsu/&quot;&gt;Apple acquired the iPad trademark from Fujitsu&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apple now owns the iPad trademark.  The trademark (Serial No. 76497338) was filed by Fujitsu in March of 2003 for their iPad wireless handheld computing device used by retailers.  Records at the U.S. Patent and Trademark office show that the trademark was assigned to Apple on March 17.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.cisco.com/news/cisco_and_apple_agreement_on_ios_trademark/&quot;&gt;Apple licensed the iOS trademark from Cisco&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cisco has agreed to license the iOS trademark to Apple for use as the name of Apple’s operating system for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.  The license is for use of the trademark only and not for any technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/02/21Cisco-and-Apple-Reach-Agreement-on-iPhone-Trademark.html&quot;&gt;Apple and Cisco reached an agreement on use of the iPhone trademark&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cisco and Apple® today announced that they have resolved their dispute involving the “iPhone” trademark. Under the agreement, both companies are free to use the “iPhone” trademark on their products throughout the world. Both companies acknowledge the trademark ownership rights that have been granted, and each side will dismiss any pending actions regarding the trademark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8408" LastEditorUserId="408" LastEditDate="2012-09-01T22:26:59.583" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T22:26:59.583" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7765" CreationDate="2012-09-01T17:42:00.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jon Stewart is correct, Ron Paul gets less media coverage than other prominent candidates, at least from mainstream media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ron Paul does not get coverage commensurate with his delegate count, voting record, longevity [0] or influence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly as a candidate for the Republican nomination that has done as well as he has collecting delegates [1] he isn't as well known as Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich, who also ran but didn't do as well in the end collecting delegates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ron Paul does not run on a traditional Republican platform and self-describes as a Libertarian &lt;em&gt;running&lt;/em&gt; as a Republican [2][3][4].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe that the media has a political agenda then it isn't hard to see that as neither a Democrat nor a Republican there isn't much motivation to give any coverage to what is essentially a third-party candidate (Paul ran as a Libertarian in 1988[5]). This might explain the lack of coverage as the major media outlets cover the candidates they agree with. Libertarian media outlets cover Ron Paul, such as reason.com, but those outlets are much lower in profile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[0] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] www.cnn.com/election/2012/primaries/candidates/302&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] www.ronpaul.com/tag/libertarian/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] www.ibtimes.com/articles/379552/20120831/ron-paul-2012-interview-gop-party.htm&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[4] www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/11/06/paul-dont-want-to-run-as-independent/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[5] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1988&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8163" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T17:42:00.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10702" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-01T19:09:42.493" Score="3" ViewCount="4167" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question on Skeptics.SE &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2929/does-the-second-law-of-thermodynamics-contradict-the-theory-of-evolution&quot;&gt;regarding evolution and thermodynamics&lt;/a&gt; got me thinking. I always assumed that creationists argued that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.big-bang-theory.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Big Bang&lt;/a&gt;, and not evolution violated the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Specifically, that singularities are a violation of this universal fundamental law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prior to the singularity, nothing existed, not space, time, matter, or energy - nothing. So where and in what did the singularity appear if not in space? We don't know. We don't know where it came from, why it's here, or even where it is. &lt;strong&gt;All we really know is that we are inside of it and at one time it didn't exist and neither did we.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr John Ross of Harvard University states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;strong&gt;there are no known violations of the second law of thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems.&lt;/strong&gt; … There is somehow associated with the field of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics the notion that the second law of thermodynamics fails for such systems. It is important to make sure that this error does not perpetuate itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source is: Chemical and Engineering News, 7 July 1980, p. 40;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are singularities known violations of the 2nd law of thermodynamics?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the Big Bang Theory fundamentally flawed in this respect?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2019-01-28T10:10:52.153" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T10:10:52.153" Title="Does the second law of thermodynamics contradict the Big Bang Theory?" Tags="|big-bang-theory|thermodynamics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10702" CreationDate="2012-09-01T21:14:58.873" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it does not, and the theory is in no way &quot;fundamentally flawed&quot;.  Sadly, to adequately cover this, it would take a book.  Fortunately there is a book out there that does cover this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/145162445X&quot;&gt;A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Kraus&lt;/a&gt;s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUe0_4rdj0U&amp;amp;feature=related&quot;&gt;Or you can check out this video&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic gist of it is basically because the universe is energy neutral.  I guess the easiest way to think of it is to think of the universe as the start of digging a hole in the dirt.  As you take dirt out to make the hole, you are placing that dirt in a pile next to you.  In this way, there is nothing that is being specifically created without something else maintaining the balance.  Again, in terms of the universe, this is a way over simplified analogy...  Everything that we know about the universe, no laws are being violated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for your citation, keep in mind that this is an old citation. Furthermore, it seems to be confused about what overall &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/entropy.html&quot;&gt;entropy means&lt;/a&gt;, as opposed to local entropy.  There is also a confusion as to what Dr. Ross means by an open system.  If the universe is all that there is, how can it be anything other than a closed system?  If you read Dr. Krauss's book, you should see there is no violation of any sort.  Furthermore, I don't know anything about the quote, but I am suspicions of it being quote-mined since it starts in the middle of a sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2012-09-01T21:41:14.603" LastActivityDate="2012-09-01T21:41:14.603" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10692" CreationDate="2012-09-01T23:36:49.850" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had to dig a little, but I believe I have an answer for you, and the answer is: &lt;em&gt;Yes, but how quickly depends on the user.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm drawing from &lt;a href=&quot;http://bja.oxfordjournals.org/content/83/4/637.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study from the British Journal of Anesthesia&lt;/a&gt;. According to the study, your average modern joint is going to have between 60mg and 150mg of THC (which mirrors &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhtsa.gov/People/injury/research/job185drugs/cannabis.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;information gathered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration&lt;/a&gt;), with upwards of 300mg of THC if there's hashish oil involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the study: THC 2.5mg in a cigarette is enough to produce measurable psychological and physical effects in occasional cannabis users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However (emphasis mine): Approximately 50% of the THC and other cannabinoids present in a cannabis cigarette enter the mainstream smoke and are inhaled. The amount absorbed through the lungs depends on the smoking style. &lt;strong&gt;In &lt;em&gt;experienced&lt;/em&gt; smokers, who inhale deeply and hold the smoke in the lungs for some seconds before exhaling, virtually all of the cannabinoids present in the mainstream smoke enter the bloodstream.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if it's an inexperienced toker and they're taking quick, short puffs, then it's plausible that you could (assuming you were inhaling significant amounts of the exhaled smoke) get a contact high that only slightly lags behind the person smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, if you're in the same room as an experienced user who holds the breath in for a couple of seconds, it might take you a while. It &lt;strong&gt;will&lt;/strong&gt; eventually happen, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address the comment below (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idmu.co.uk/pdfs/drugtest.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Independent Drug Monitoring in the UK&lt;/a&gt; found that 15mg of THC would produce serum levels of between 14-42ng/ml THC. &lt;strong&gt;Sobriety tests were consistently failed when serum levels of THC achieved 25ng-30ng/ml.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4.2| Positive tests for cannabinoids in urine may also occur as a result of &lt;strong&gt;passive smoking&lt;/strong&gt;, with cannabinoid (THC-acid) levels of over 20ng/ml detectable in one case 4 days after passive exposure. It was concluded that presence of cannabinoids in urine or blood is not unequivocal proof of active cannabis smoking... &lt;strong&gt;Magerl et al found THC-acid levels of up to 30-50ng/ml from passive-exposed subjects, and recommended a threshold of 65ng/ml to differentiate between active and passive smoking of cannabis.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, experiments have confirmed cases where second-hand exposure to marijuana smoke produces blood-serum levels equivalent to or greater than levels which are associated with impairment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; get a contact high from second-hand marijuana smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum:  I cannot find an experiment done outdoors. I think the implausibility is enough to deter researchers. The closest lower limit I could find for impairment was 2-5ng &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0376871606001372&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T00:04:27.210" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10707" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-02T01:53:16.657" Score="2" ViewCount="4125" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea of an oscillator-based healing device was popularized by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lakhovsky&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Georges Lakhovsky&lt;/a&gt; and is now associated with scientists like &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/10699/6785&quot;&gt;Tesla&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drclark.net/en/hulda_clark/about_drclark.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clark&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lakhovskyscoil.com/whoswho.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beck&lt;/a&gt;. There are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lakhovsky+coil&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;many YouTube videos&lt;/a&gt; dedicated to Lakhovsky's work and the healing effects of his coil, usually with added reference to a conspiracy to suppress his results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the fundamental principles behind this technology, and how is it expected to work? Have results from these healing machines been tested for reproducibility? Has any independent organization attempted to confirm these results? &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lakhovsky&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says Lakhovsky's claims are considered quackery. What specific claims are considered quackery, and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Patients, by focusing certain frequencies on afflicted areas, or, in some cases, just sitting in the vicinity of vibrations from a device like the Lakhovsky Multi wave Oscillator, which produced a blend of specific frequencies, were said to have experienced relief from rheumatism and other painful conditions. It was even considered a cure for certain types of paralysis. Such radiation's increase the supply of blood to the area with a warming effect (diathermy). They enhance the oxygenation and nutritive value of the blood, increase various secretions, and accelerate the elimination of waste products in the blood. All this promotes healing. Electrotherapists even spoke of broadcasting vitamins to the body. Reversals of cancer tumor growths have been documented. Lakhovsky predicated science will discover, some day, not only the nature of microbes by the radiation they produce, but also a method of killing disease within the body by radiation.&lt;a href=&quot;http://altered-states.net/barry/newsletter208/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://altered-states.net/barry/newsletter208/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Altered state newsletter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This controversial device has been claimed to restore aging and diseased tissue by energizing cells at multiple wavelengths of electromagnetic emissions. The machine has also been claimed to neutralize certain types of cancer and other incurable ailments. . . . The system as described uses our BTC30 Tesla coil generator to energize the multi-wave antenna emitter. . . . Information Unlimited does not claim any health benefits from the use of this machine. It is offered assembled for research purposes only. . . . $895. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazing1.com/alternative_health.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazing1.com/alternative_health.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Health &amp;amp; Well-Being on Information Unlimited&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Similar claims:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://educate-yourself.org/be/lakhovskyindex.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Articles about Georges Lakhovsky&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://teslapress.com/electrotherapy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tesla Electrotherapy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://altered-states.net/barry/Lakhovsky/cancer.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Curing cancer with ultra radio frequencies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toolsforhealing.com/products/MWO/MWOHomePage.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tools for healing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copperhealth.com/lakhovsky_coil.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Lakhovsky Coil &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6785" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2019-01-18T19:59:52.190" Title="Can high-frequency coil radiation kill disease? (e.g., Lakhovsky's multiple-wave oscillator [MWO])" Tags="|electromagnetism|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18345" CreationDate="2012-09-02T06:50:03.027" Score="14" ViewCount="3289" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miswak&quot;&gt;miswak&lt;/a&gt; is a traditional Middle-Eastern toothbrush (so to speak) make from a twig of a particular branch, that is claimed to be especially effective. The dental efficacy has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miswak#Science&quot;&gt;studied&lt;/a&gt;, but frankly isn't very interesting - it is, essentially, just another form of abrasion for removing debris and plaque.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;is more interesting&lt;/em&gt; is that Islamic culture claims a myriad of &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; benefits, beyond dental. This is due to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunnah&quot;&gt;sunnah&lt;/a&gt; on the subject, with the consequence that this is believed by a lot of Muslims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll ignore the religious aspects (i.e. apparently Allah greatly magnifies his rewards for people using the miswak), as I believe such is beyond this site's remit; however, any &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=miswak+benefits&quot;&gt;Google search for &quot;miswak benefits&quot;&lt;/a&gt; will reveal the other claims, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.turntoislam.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28460&quot;&gt;cures illness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zikr.co.uk/content/view/50/90/&quot;&gt;improves memory &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://benefitof.net/benefits-of-miswak/&quot;&gt;cures headache&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salamcards.com/static/MiswakTheNaturalToothbrush.shtml&quot;&gt;improves eyesight&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.islam.tc/Miswaak/&quot;&gt;makes teeth glow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150663601979200.406638.229961919199&amp;amp;type=3&quot;&gt;helps digestion &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of these seem quite extraordinary claims (for a toothbrush), but also feel like they should be pretty easy to investigate. While extraordinary, some are also not entirely beyond plausibility - for example, the headache/willow/salicylic-acid/aspirin connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: has any research even been done into the non-dental, non-religious aspects of these claims? Or more simply: does the miswak help with digestion, eyesight, headache, memory or illness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="226" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-02T09:34:26.977" LastActivityDate="2016-02-25T21:02:29.810" Title="Does the miswak help with digestion, eyesight, headache, memory or illness?" Tags="|medical-science|hygiene|islam|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10710" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10711" CreationDate="2012-09-02T13:49:32.447" Score="12" ViewCount="1728" Body="&lt;p&gt;Richard Dawkins has claimed many times in public speeches, especially in reference to the documentary “Expelled”, that documentary filmmakers use the expression “Lord Privy Seal” in a disparaging manner to describe the amateur’s tendency to illustrate words or sentences spoken by the narrator with a straight picture depicting said concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a Google search for the term only reveals references to the English nobility title (which the saying is supposedly derived from) and to Richard Dawkins making this claim. Even the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Privy_Seal_%28term%29#.22Lord_Privy_Seal.22&quot;&gt;Wikipedia entry&lt;/a&gt; refers to Richard Dawkins. One would think that if it’s a well-known expression in the trade, surely some documentary filmmaking fansite, glossary or handbook would define the term, and Google should be able to find such a page which predates Richard Dawkins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this term real, or did Richard Dawkins (or someone he knows) make it up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="121" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2019-02-03T03:18:15.600" LastActivityDate="2020-04-12T16:27:28.330" Title="Is “Lord Privy Seal” a technical term in documentary film making?" Tags="|language|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10710" CreationDate="2012-09-02T15:34:41.160" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, Richard Dawkins did not invent the term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Lord Privy Seal&quot; is a reference to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVlfvdH7qwY&amp;amp;NR=1&quot;&gt;a parody of the practice&lt;/a&gt; performed by David Frost, on The Frost Report in 1966.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since then, the trope has been known by other terms, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BRollRebus&quot;&gt;B Roll Rebus&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Webster's Online Dictionary &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definitions/lord+privy+seal&quot;&gt;acknowledges this usage&lt;/a&gt; and the etymology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The term &quot;Lord Privy Seal&quot; (as in &quot;not bad, but it's a bit Lord Privy Seal&quot;) is used in the British television industry as shorthand for associating pictures too closely and literally with every element of the accompanying spoken script&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Webster's seems to rely on the memoirs of BBC insider, John Sergeant, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Give-Ten-Seconds-John-Sergeant/dp/0330484907&quot;&gt;Give me Ten Seconds&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, for the usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T15:34:41.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10425" CreationDate="2012-09-02T16:38:45.767" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to a book about Dolphins &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/details/dolphininhistory00mont&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The dolphin in history&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;papers delivered by Ashley Montagu and John C. Lilly at a symposium at the Clark Library, 13 October 1962.&#xA;Published 1963 by William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California in Los Angeles .&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A portion of the text read,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that dolphins save drowning swimmers ?  There&#xA;  is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1945 the wife of a well-known trial attorney residing in  Florida&#xA;  was saved from drowning by a dolphin.' This woman  had stepped into a&#xA;  sea with a strong undertow and was immedi-  ately dragged under.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same book is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/ia/dolphininhistory00mont&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8374" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T16:38:45.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10710" CreationDate="2012-09-02T17:45:22.180" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oddthinking's pointer to David Frost in 1966 shows the use in film making, but the over-literal interpretation of the title of position (in fact a minister without portfolio who had historically looked after the monarch's private seal) was promoted by Edward Heath (Lord Privy Seal 1961-1963), which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.portcullis.parliament.uk/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&amp;amp;dsqApp=Archive&amp;amp;dsqDb=Persons&amp;amp;dsqSearch=Code==%27649%27&amp;amp;dsqCmd=Show.tcl&quot;&gt;he attributed to Ernest Bevin&lt;/a&gt; (Lord Privy Seal 1951), saying he&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;was neither a lord, nor a privy nor a seal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was repeated by the British Ambassador in Washington D.C. and reported in US local newspapers, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&amp;amp;dat=19611218&amp;amp;id=Pv0rAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=ssYEAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=6166,5955715&quot;&gt;Florence Times, Alabama on December 18 1961&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T17:45:22.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10717" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-02T18:35:10.227" Score="24" ViewCount="12782" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep seeing &lt;a href=&quot;http://fluoridation.com/c-country.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this claim about the unpopularity of water fluoridation parroted&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite dental pressure, 99% of western continental Europe has rejected, banned, or stopped fluoridation due to environmental, health, legal, or ethical concerns&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to believe it because it seems to be a pretty well sourced point that anti-Fluoride side is making. It shows up all the time on my FB feed -- largely thanks to a slew of friends that are behind &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/FluorideFreeHouston&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flouride Free Houston&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RfIgD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Woman with sign, 98% of Europe banned water fluoridation&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sites, like FluorideAlert.org &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fluoridealert.org/content/water_europe/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;make similar claims&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the following table shows, only 3% of the population in western Europe is currently consuming fluoridated water. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To see the water fluoridation status of OECD nations, click &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fluoridealert.org/content/oecd_nations/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. To see a complete list of the 27 countries in the world that have at least one water fluoridation program, click &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fluoridealert.org/content/bfs-2012/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar claims appear on the video &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBnu76__LZE&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Which Countries Fluoridate Their Water?&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, this very image was &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/199701427498/photos/a.10150626535342499.384817.199701427498/10151998782327499/?type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;again shared by PreventDisease.com -- a Facebook Page with 282k followers as of the posting.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to these claims about the adoption/banning of water-fluoridation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Update&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In light of the information in the comments, I believe we'd be committing &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignoratio_elenchi&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ignoratio elenchi&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; to exclude mention of &lt;em&gt;water and milk fluoridation&lt;/em&gt; in an accepted answer. I didn't know about either of these when I asked the question. It seems that some of the abandonment of water fluoridation is because of these alternatives: most of Europe seems to be treated by one of these two methods. Neither of these two strategies are mentioned by the anti-fluoride camp. They exclude them and leave the reader to draw the false conclusion in ignorance that the only form of fluoridation is water fluoridation -- the method the USA employs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-07-18T10:02:29.530" Title="Has 99% of the western continental Europe banned water fluoridation?" Tags="|water|environmental-health|fluoride|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10425" CreationDate="2012-09-02T19:30:09.757" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://repository-intralibrary.leedsmet.ac.uk/open_virtual_file_path/i391n142863t%20/Animal%20Rescuers.pdf&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;em&gt;International Journal of Aquatic Research and&#xA;Education&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The use of dolphins in rescuing humans has been instinctive, rather&#xA;  than the result of formal training. Dolphins have rescued drowning&#xA;  victims or abandoned survivors by allowing them to ride on their back&#xA;  (Betancourt, 1998; Catton, 1990) or by psychologically encouraging&#xA;  them with their presence to continue their efforts to reach the shore&#xA;  (Waga News, 2001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper cites many evidence of dolphins helping drowning human (which can be found in the references a the end of the paper). However, the study also claims that animals can either do it by training or by instinct (depending on the breeds).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Therefore it seems that animals can rescue humans either by instinct&#xA;  or by being trained for rescue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other papers can be found supporting the evidence of dolphins having helped drowning humans through history:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://repository-intralibrary.leedsmet.ac.uk/open_virtual_file_path/i391n190404t/Drowning%20in%20Ancient%20Greek%20History%20and%20Mythology.pdf&quot;&gt;Drowning in Ancient Greek history and mythology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://repository-intralibrary.leedsmet.ac.uk/open_virtual_file_path/i1955n237905t/Drowning%20Incident%20Rescuer%20Characteristics.pdf&quot;&gt;Drowning incident rescuer characteristics: Encoding the first component of the 4W model&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And books:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?hl=fr&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=7gvcXTP_4oQC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA4&amp;amp;dq=dolphin%20save%20drowning&amp;amp;ots=9hwmIY63NU&amp;amp;sig=sOVPD6LARA68nyXC8ZNKCwqZl_w#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=dolphin%20save%20drowning&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Inside the Mind of a Clever Dolphin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?hl=fr&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=KHRfuZdxfLEC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA4&amp;amp;dq=dolphin%20save%20drowning&amp;amp;ots=JgydLbh520&amp;amp;sig=mTHV1SKG6sFAShiHaaDDO4Dcj-s#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=dolphin%20save%20drowning&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Swimming with Dolphins&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important side note should be expressed. Evidence of dolphins helping drowning humans does not mean that dolphins &lt;strong&gt;would&lt;/strong&gt; save a human in case of drowning. There are also some evidences of them &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aquaticmammalsjournal.org/share/AquaticMammalsIssueArchives/1995/AquaticMammals_21-02/21-02_Dudzinski.pdf&quot;&gt;attacking human&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?hl=fr&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=AqNiTC3uqGAC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA71&amp;amp;dq=dolphin%20save%20drowning&amp;amp;ots=ctl-KlxAPC&amp;amp;sig=z6pn0EMI_8e5FviHHMyHPPk_oNg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=dolphin%20save%20drowning&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;letting them drown&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastActivityDate="2012-09-02T19:30:09.757" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10798" CreationDate="2012-09-02T19:36:54.803" Score="11" ViewCount="53943" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://socyberty.com/society/genetics-experts-jewish-leader-albert-einstain-college-robert-guilham-islam/#ixzz25LJWm3kC&quot;&gt;widely broadcast story&lt;/a&gt; on Islamic sites claims that a Jewish genetics expert from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.einstein.yu.edu/&quot;&gt;Albert Einstein College of Medicine&lt;/a&gt; converted to Islam as a result of scientific evidence supporting the Quran. His name is listed variously as Robert Guilham, Robert Gelham or Robert Gilham.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, when I tried to find his name, I couldn't find it. He doesn't seem to be listed in faculty and staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does/did this person exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="3442" LastEditDate="2013-11-28T03:50:09.017" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T11:24:22.987" Title="Does putative Islam convert, Robert Guilham, exist?" Tags="|religion|islam|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10722" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-03T00:52:52.307" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T00:52:52.307" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T00:52:52.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10723" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-03T00:52:52.307" Score="0" Body="Fluoridation is the controlled addition of fluoride to publically accessible food/drink products for the purpose of reducing tooth decay. The most common form of fluoridation is water fluoridation, where fluoride is added to the public water supply." OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T01:12:54.257" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T01:12:54.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10429" CreationDate="2012-09-03T03:43:53.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found an &lt;a href=&quot;http://resources.metapress.com/pdf-preview.axd?code=x40j232406450310&amp;amp;size=largest&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; explaining why pee smells after having eaten asparagus. It seems that it is caused by dimethyl sulfide and methanethiol. Therefore, I searched if these elements where able to attract fish. I found this on &lt;a href=&quot;http://nl.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/rw0xt/til_asparagus_was_once_included_in_the_emergency/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reddit&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;dimethyl sulfide is one of the compounds causing the asparagus smell.&#xA;  The wiki says it is also produced by marine phytoplancton and at least&#xA;  one fly eating plant (as a part of the attractant).&#xA;  (scientific &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bk-1989-0393.ch011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; that claim the same thing as wikipedia)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we know that phytoplancton is at the base of eating chain, we can conclude that your thesis is &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt;. I also found this on the same Reddit post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC91606/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; suggests &quot;that DMSP is a major and hitherto unrecognized&#xA;  source of reduced sulfur for marine bacterioplankton&quot;. I'm no expert&#xA;  on the oceanic food chain, and don't know how long the cycle would be,&#xA;  but zooplankton like krill eat bacterioplankton, and are in turn eaten&#xA;  by fish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, I haven't found sufficient evidence supporting the claims that pilot where given asparagus to attract fish, but from biology literature we can infer that it could be possible. That is, however, not a proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T03:43:53.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1706" CreationDate="2012-09-03T06:13:08.427" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seem to be a lot of scientific literature around this question. If you agree that higher productivity at work should be a consequence of higher concentration, we have a lot of evidences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1016/S0278-6915(02)00096-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A. Smith: Effects of caffeine on human behavior&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper provides us with an extensive literature review of the past researches done on the effects of caffeine. It shows that many studies has demonstrated that regular coffee consumers show better performance at work. Caffeine seems to stop the decrease of performance as time past at work. However, that is only true for moderate consumption of caffeine. When people drink a large amount, the exact opposite happens, lost of concentration and lower productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, I also came across this paper about the effect of Red Bull (which compare to coffee):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/s007260170021&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;C. Alford, H. Cox and R. Wescott: The effects of Red Bull Energy Drink on human performance and mood&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-19T16:09:50.830" LastActivityDate="2022-09-19T16:09:50.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10653" CreationDate="2012-09-03T07:38:04.433" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it's worth providing an alternative viewpoint to this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside of the Western, developed world co-sleeping is the standard way for parents to sleep with young children, not the exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thebabybond.com/Cosleeping&amp;amp;SIDSFactSheet.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article's fonts makes me want to burn my eyes out&lt;/a&gt;, but the final paragraph has a very interesting graphic created from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11245994?dopt=Abstract/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NIMH data&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KLUSC.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In China, where I live, co-sleeping is so common &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raisingmykidinchina.com/?p=41&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as to be the assumed situation&lt;/a&gt;. To do otherwise is strange and discussion-worthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/health/23well.html?pagewanted=all&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NYT article from 2007&lt;/a&gt; says data is inconclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lactivist.net/in-china-where-co-sleeping-is-taken-for-granted-sids-is-so-rare-it-does-not-have-a-name/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another article&lt;/a&gt; mentions author Margot Sunderland quoting: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“In the UK, 500 children a year die of Sids,” Sunderland writes. “In China, where it [co-sleeping] is taken for granted, Sids is so rare it does not have a name.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margot_Sunderland&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;She seems to have decent credentials.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8419" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T07:38:04.433" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10717" CreationDate="2012-09-03T08:48:24.100" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://bfsweb.org/onemillion/09%20One%20in%20a%20Million%20-%20The%20Extent%20of%20Fluoridation.pdf&quot;&gt;this report&lt;/a&gt; &quot;fluoridation schemes operate in five countries in Europe -- in the UK, The Irish republic, Spain, Poland ans Serbia&quot;, for a total coverage of about 13,677,000 people (even in those countries only some parts are covered). Excluding Serbia and Poland that would be 13.397,000. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=western%20europe%20population&quot;&gt;According to Google&lt;/a&gt; Western Europe has a population of about 400 million (but there is no real agreement as to which countries exactly constitute western Europe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would put fluoridation coverage at about &lt;strong&gt;3.3%&lt;/strong&gt; of the population of Western Europe. So the last quote seems quite truthful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This of course doesn't say much about &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; certain regions do or do not operate fluoridation. They did &lt;strong&gt;not necessarily ban&lt;/strong&gt; it, specially not these countries that are providing fluoridated water in &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; regions. UK, Ireland and Spain alone constitute 28% of Western Europe, and it doesn't seem they have any kind of ban. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, what is the &lt;strong&gt;difference between banning and just not fluoridating&lt;/strong&gt;? It is something that in a given region has to be decided for all, at a governmental level, you cannot say everybody can do what he wants, because everybody drinks the same water. So either you decide to fluoridate, or you don't, ban perhaps is a somewhat misleading term, rejection would be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the first quote, I think that at least in some cases fluoridation seems to be rejected because it just seemed to not provide enough benefits, not neccessarly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;due to environmental, health, legal, or ethical concerns&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 99% number might be about right as they have excluded the UK and Ireland by saying Continental (quite arbitrarily in my opinion, they could have said Germany and say 100%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8420" LastEditorUserId="8420" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T19:35:43.573" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T19:35:43.573" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10717" CreationDate="2012-09-03T09:17:02.243" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;As for claim, that &quot;98% of Europe &lt;strong&gt;banned&lt;/strong&gt; water fluoridation&quot;. Without going much into detail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;population of European Union is 503 million;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fluoridealert.org/content/bfs-2012/&quot;&gt;according to claim's source&lt;/a&gt;, following EU countries have at least one active fluoridation program:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UK (62mln, 11% using fluoridated water)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spain (47mln, 11% using fluoridated water)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poland (39mln, 1% using fluoridated water)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ireland (5mln, 73% using fluoridated water)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So countries with active water fluoridation (meaning they don't have ban on national level) account for 30% of EU population. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T11:21:50.747" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T11:21:50.747" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10698" CreationDate="2012-09-03T12:28:42.287" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, No, Yes&lt;/strong&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;iPad&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; apparently LG never bothered to register that as trademark. Fujitsu did have a POS device called iPAD, and it was a point of trademark dispute between them and Apple. Apple settled out of court and paid estimated $4 mln to Fujitsu (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/technology/companies/29name.html&quot;&gt;NYT&lt;/a&gt;). This only took care of trademarking in USA, however not elsewhere in the world. For example Apple was sued in China by Proview, I-PAD brand holder for Chinese market since 1999 (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/07/apple-shells-out-60-million-settlement-for-ipad-trademark-in-china/&quot;&gt;ArsTechnica&lt;/a&gt;). Apple was forced to settle for $60 mln in that case.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;iOS&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; after previous run in with Cisco (see below), in this case Apple played it safe and licensed the name before Cisco sued them. (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://paidcontent.org/2010/06/07/419-deja-vu-apples-new-ios-brand-is-already-used-by-cisco/&quot;&gt;paidContent&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;iPhone&lt;/strong&gt;  &amp;mdash; Apple used brand iPhone without consent of the trademark holder - Cisco. Subsequently Apple was sued by them. (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2007/corp_011007.html&quot;&gt;Cisco&lt;/a&gt;). They have settled out of court. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On question whether that qualifies to be called &quot;stealing&quot; &amp;mdash; in current legal nomenclature, pushed also by key players such as Apple, trademark infringement is considered &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncpc.org/topics/intellectual-property-theft&quot;&gt;intellectual property &lt;strong&gt;theft&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-09-03T16:06:46.757" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T16:06:46.757" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10730" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10731" CreationDate="2012-09-03T15:36:51.443" Score="16" ViewCount="4854" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Steve Jobs make following statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We've always been shameless about stealing great ideas&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2016-03-17T11:38:22.760" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T11:38:22.760" Title="Did Steve Jobs say &quot;We've always been shameless about stealing great ideas.&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|copyright|apple-inc|patents|steve-jobs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10730" CreationDate="2012-09-03T16:18:33.070" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the 1996 &lt;strong&gt;PBS television special&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/nerds/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5ZS0q.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Triumph of the Nerds&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/media/rm2491980800/tt0115398&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/nerds/part3.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Part 3 - Great Artists Steal&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Steve Jobs:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Ultimately it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things in to what you're doing.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I mean Picasso had a saying he said good artists copy great artists steal. &lt;strong&gt;And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas&lt;/strong&gt; ehm and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU#t=00m17s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Watch video clip&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-03T16:27:30.123" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10732" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-03T17:06:28.733" Score="5" ViewCount="456" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the government advertisements and common media it is common belief that street foods are much less safe than restaurant foods. Yet when reading about street foods in Wikipedia I came across this claim that incidence of street food contamination is lower(or at least same) as restaurants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also from common sense it seems that the statistics should vary depending upon country, food etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any more studies supporting (or not) this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In face, research demonstrates that, despite theoretical risk, the incidence of street food is low - not higher than in restaurant foods&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.in/books?id=lNYuUcOKKmcC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=%22street%20food%22%20history%20africa&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=lwUpZL0coO&amp;amp;sig=M19qf3CfSkruetwUu091aILmjPY&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=qmYtUO7nJIPAyAGP3oHYDw&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22street%20food%22%20&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Foods of Association: Biocultural Perspectives on Foods and Beverages&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Update] I am from India but it is hard to find any paper published for this in India. So the answer concerning any country where street food is common, is acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For raw or cooked food I am wondering for both. My guess would be that cooked food would be much safer in streets than raw food. but just a guess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7695" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-17T08:15:20.987" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T08:15:20.987" Title="Is the health risk of street food less than restaurant food?" Tags="|nutrition|hygiene|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10734" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10753" CreationDate="2012-09-03T21:01:00.883" Score="6" ViewCount="678" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to verify an urban tech legend I heard a few years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some poor SuperMac TechSport got a call from some middle level official...&#xA;  from the legitimate government of Trinidad.  The fellow spoke very good&#xA;  English, and fairly calmly described the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It seemed there was a coup attempt in progress at that moment.  However,&#xA;  the national armoury for that city was kept in the same building as the&#xA;  Legislature, and it seems that there was a combination lock on the door&#xA;  to the armoury.  Of the people in the capitol city that day, only the&#xA;  Chief of the Capitol Guard and the Chief Armourer knew the combination to&#xA;  the lock, and they had already been killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, this officer of the government of Trinidad continued, the problem is&#xA;  this.  The combination to the lock is stored in a file on the Macintosh,&#xA;  but the file has been encrypted with the SuperMac product called Sentinel.&#xA;  Was there any chance, he asked, that there was a &quot;back door&quot; to the&#xA;  application, so they could get the combination, open the armoury door,&#xA;  and defend the Capitol Building and the legitimately elected government&#xA;  of Trinidad against the insurgents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Folklore/Humor/encryption_foils_coup.story&quot;&gt;eff.org&lt;/a&gt;, but this has &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22Some%20poor%20SuperMac%20TechSport%20got%20a%20call%20from%20some%20middle%20level%20official%22&quot;&gt;spread for years&lt;/a&gt;, dating back to at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sjgames.com/ill/1995/ill-jul95.html&quot;&gt;1995&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did this happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7686" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-05T16:49:31.353" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T19:53:35.087" Title="Was a tech support call made, mid-coup, to help unlock an armoury?" Tags="|war|software|guns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10737" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-04T02:22:25.093" Score="20" ViewCount="5318" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest that owning a dog or that evidence of a dog (barking alarm, beware of dog sign) reduce the likelihood of your home being broken into?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helium.com/items/1978895-best-ways-to-deter-home-burglars&quot;&gt;Most burglars do not want to have to deal with a dog.  Dogs can deter&#xA;  robbers in several ways.  First the burglar does not want to get bit&#xA;  so a big mean dog may very well deter a burglar.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/how-prevent-home-robbery-2095394.html&quot;&gt;Beware of Dog is another sign that is a good deterrent. Who would&#xA;  want to take the risk of being mauled by a Rottweiler or pit bull?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example 3:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-Home-Security-Systems-That-Use-Barking-Dog-Sounds-Work-So-Well-to-Deter-Burglars&amp;amp;id=4010078&quot;&gt;Barking dog alarm is the most efficient way to deter burglars and to&#xA;  keep your home safe and secured especially if you are out for&#xA;  travel.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-04T04:15:13.473" LastActivityDate="2015-10-03T16:11:19.333" Title="Does a dog provide a reasonable deterrent against house theft?" Tags="|criminology|dogs|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10740" CreationDate="2012-09-04T02:57:20.333" Score="17" ViewCount="1283" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's been reports of announced plans for a women-only city in Saudi Arabia. For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/12/saudi-arabia-city-women-workers?newsfeed=true&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Saudi Arabia plans new city for women workers only&lt;/a&gt; from The Guardian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/08/15/232445.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Al Arabiya&lt;/a&gt; claimed (on August 15, 2012) that the press release stated the city would not be for females only. This was mentioned in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/saudi-women-only-city-look-again-0022319&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; on Al Jazeera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Middle eastern media still seems to be talking about the press release as if it's for females only, based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zawya.com/story/Saudi_Arabia_Womenonly_industrial_cities_welcomed-ZAWYA20120831052132/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Women-only industrial cities welcomed&lt;/a&gt; (dated August 31, 2012).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who's right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any announcements, past or present, of female-only cities in Saudi Arabia will be acceptable for this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2017-03-18T22:47:24.043" LastActivityDate="2017-03-18T22:47:24.043" Title="Has Saudi Arabia announced plans for a women-only city?" Tags="|gender|sexism|saudi-arabia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10739" CreationDate="2012-09-04T06:18:48.790" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, Saudi Arabia has &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; announced plans for a women-only city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Guardian article only says that all the &lt;strong&gt;workers&lt;/strong&gt; in the cities will be women. Not all the &lt;strong&gt;residents&lt;/strong&gt;. And that's based on a misreading of the original press-release, which makes it clear that there will be opportunities for female and male entrepreneurs, female and male employees, and female and male residents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.modon.gov.sa/English/MediaCenter/News/Pages/ModonPlansDevelopmentWomenIC.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;original press release&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.modon.gov.sa/English/Pages/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MODON, the Saudi Industrial Property Authority&lt;/a&gt;, that the news outlets based their articles on, says (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MODON begins Planning and Development for the First Industrial City being readied for Women in the Kingdom&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Al-Ahsa 2nd Industrial City will create &lt;strong&gt;job opportunities for both men and women&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MODON has initiated works for planning and development of the first industrial city being readied for women workers in the Kingdom. It will be launched in Al-Ahsa 2nd Industrial city which is located in Hofuf near Al-Ahsa airport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to preliminary studies, the area allocated for Al-Ahsa 2nd will accommodate approximately 50 industrial projects. MODON will provide land at discounted rates to &lt;strong&gt;businessmen and businesswomen&lt;/strong&gt; to establish their industrial or service projects. They will have the option to choose the type of industry on specific terms of preservation of the environment and safety of workers. &lt;strong&gt;Special sections and production halls will be reserved for women within the factory, i. e, the city is not closed or not intended for women only.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T06:18:48.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10248" CreationDate="2012-09-04T12:52:33.370" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe I found the answer to my question: According to the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/76/1/5.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;International table of glycemic index and glycemic load values: 2002&lt;/a&gt;&quot; published by The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, mean of 4 studies of baked potatoes is 85 (+/-12), whereas mean of 5 studies of boiled or cooked potatoes is 50 (+/-9). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I agree with Oddthinking that the results may vary depending on the specific type of a given potato.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7970" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T12:52:33.370" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7011" CreationDate="2012-09-04T13:03:36.207" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only effective anti-wrinkle product I'm aware of is &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1529-8019.2006.00087.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot;&gt;Tretinoin&lt;/a&gt;, also known as Retinoic Acid, or Rentin-A. Creams containing Tretinoin are also &lt;a href=&quot;http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&amp;amp;cpsidt=21325747&quot;&gt;acne treatments&lt;/a&gt; and have been around since the 1980s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know the details of the physiological mechanisms, but Tretinoin increases cellular turnover rate where applied. The effect is the same as constant exfoliation - a younger layer of skin cells is always seen. It also has the side effect of making the treated skin slightly thinner, and more prone to sun damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your other treatments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resveratrol, a compound found in grape skins and red wine initially, was a &quot;hot&quot; anti-oxidant a few years back that showed some promise by nearly doubling the age of mice who ate large amounts of it. For humans, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mnfr.200900437/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot;&gt;bioavailability&lt;/a&gt; is quite low, as the molecule is quickly metabolized and very little sticks around the human body. I do not know what DMAE or Matryxil 3000 are - they sound like buzz terms. Resveratrol's mode of action can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0625.2006.00466.x/full&quot;&gt;with this general study of several botanical antioxidants&lt;/a&gt;, but also note that the author of the study acknowledges that Resveratrol has not been studied with regards to photoaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've searched for an article (&lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; article) on collagen as a basis for topical cream and wrinkles, but I haven't found a scholarly source. Given that your body's Fibroblasts maintain your collagen by exuding the necessary extracellular components, simply adding &quot;more collagen&quot; to be absorbed and possibly digested won't do anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your third option is basically a combination of the above two. An antioxidant and collagen thrown in. Neither have been proven as effective (if they're effective at all) as the Retinoid I linked above. The descriptions simply rely on a poor understanding of physiology. Yes, collagen definitely exists in the skin and breaks down as you age; that does not mean you can slather the stuff over your face and make it part of you. To the same token, yes; antioxidants might play a key role in overall health and the prevention of sun damage. However, that does not mean the antioxidants in the cream will fit into the body's ROS metabolism or be bioavailable enough to make an impact - assuming antioxidants actually do help, which I've yet to read conclusive evidence on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As usual, it's proper to be very skeptical about unsupported health claims. Buzz words and mysterious compounds are the trade of snake oil salesmen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastActivityDate="2012-09-04T13:03:36.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10737" CreationDate="2012-09-04T19:30:04.367" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is suggestion of moderate deterrence in the 1980s Kirkholt Crime Study (in north west England) reported on &lt;a href=&quot;http://s3.amazonaws.com/zanran_storage/www.crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk/ContentPages/6284834.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;page 7 of this burglary statistics report&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on findings from a small sample of burglars in a study in Kirkholt&#xA;  (Forrester et al., 1988; n=76), over half of the offenders felt deterred by&#xA;  occupancy, visible burglary alarms or high visibility at the point of entry.&#xA;  Findings from a small group of active burglars (Cromwell et al., 1991; n=30)&#xA;  indicated that for a sample of 30 active offenders, 90 per cent stated that they&#xA;  avoided selecting houses that appeared to be occupied and 70 per cent were&#xA;  deterred by the presence of a dog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130601154358/http://www.crimestoppers-uk.org/media-centre/guest-writers/crimestoppers-guest-articles/adopt-a-burglars-way-of-thinking-by-michael-fraser&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;advice to homeowners from Crimestoppers&lt;/a&gt; (an official English crime prevention organisation) from an ex-burglar said &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Avoid ‘Beware of the dog' signs. They are a sure indicator that you don't have an alarm in your property. A thief will also think that you probably leave your back door open to let the dog into the garden. The same goes for an ‘I love cats' sign, or something similar. Pet owners often don't have an alarm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="949" LastEditDate="2015-10-03T16:11:19.333" LastActivityDate="2015-10-03T16:11:19.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10750" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10751" CreationDate="2012-09-05T10:29:51.597" Score="4" ViewCount="648" Body="&lt;p&gt;A claim making rounds lately is that 86% of Apple patents attributed to Steve Jobs were for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;design patents&lt;/a&gt;, rather than technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of such a claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apple’s patent portfolio is weighted toward design patents.  According&#xA;  to one study, 2.7% of patents granted to technology companies are&#xA;  design patents, whereas 13.4% of Apple’s 5,000+ patents cover designs.&#xA;  86% of the 359 patents naming the late Steve Jobs as an inventor are&#xA;  for designs. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipnav.com/blog/apple-v-samsung-rectangles-on-trial/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-05T14:29:28.133" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T14:29:28.133" Title="86% of Steve Jobs patents were design patents?" Tags="|apple-inc|patents|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10750" CreationDate="2012-09-05T11:04:48.110" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's difficult to verify the statement that &quot;2.7% of patents granted to technology companies are design patents&quot;, since it's not obvious how &quot;technology companies&quot; differs from other companies, to which patents are assigned. Assuming that we limit the search to US patents, there were 247,727 patents issued/granted in 2011, of which 21,356 (12%) were design patents. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Limiting the search further to patents assigned to Apple or invented by Steve Jobs, the numbers in the statement are slightly off (still assuming that only US patents are relevant):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are 5,281 patents assigned to Apple, of which 895 (17%) are design patents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steve Jobs is quoted as inventor in 362 patents, of which 311 (86%) are design patents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All numbers are from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://patft.uspto.gov/&quot;&gt;US Patent And Trademark Office&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastEditorUserId="8188" LastEditDate="2012-09-05T12:04:35.203" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T12:04:35.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10752" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-05T13:05:49.117" Score="5" ViewCount="172" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9809/will-the-suns-magnetic-activity-disrupt-electronics-on-earth&quot;&gt;Will the Sun's magnetic activity disrupt electronics on Earth?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that &lt;strong&gt;solar flares&lt;/strong&gt; are one of the few things that have any factual weight among the possible causes of a &lt;em&gt;so-called&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;2012 event&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also evidence (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;) that at least one really strong solar flare &lt;strong&gt;did take place in the past (1859)&lt;/strong&gt; with some practical consequences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases shocking telegraph operators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;--source: Wikipedia, the article just referenced&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple search of google or youtube will probably yield you a lot of videos on the subject including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPdqr2v1rTQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; by the &lt;em&gt;pop&lt;/em&gt; physicist Michio Kaku.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could paralyze the economy of planet Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;--source: Michio Kaku, on the linked video&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12507#toc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; on the subject authored by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://sites.nationalacademies.org/SSB/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Space Studies Board (SSB)&lt;/a&gt; the &lt;a href=&quot;http://sites.nationalacademies.org/DEPS/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Engineering and Physical Sciences (DEPS)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The adverse effects of extreme space weather on modern technology--power grid outages, high-frequency communication blackouts, spacecraft anomalies--are well known and well documented, and the physical processes underlying space weather are also generally well understood. Less well documented and understood, however, are the potential economic and societal impacts of the disruption of critical technological systems by severe space weather.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a first step toward determining the socioeconomic impacts of extreme space weather events and addressing the questions of space weather risk assessment and management, a public workshop was held in May 2008. The workshop brought together representatives of industry, the government, and academia to consider both direct and collateral effects of severe space weather events, the current state of the space weather services infrastructure in the United States, the needs of users of space weather data and services, and the ramifications of future technological developments for contemporary society's vulnerability to space weather. The workshop concluded with a discussion of un- or underexplored topics that would yield the greatest benefits in space weather risk management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;--source: Description of the said report&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of people (&lt;em&gt;preppers&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://americanpreppersnetwork.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/doomsday-preppers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) who seem to be prepared to, among other things, a &lt;strong&gt;solar flare-induced doomsday&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, &lt;strong&gt;a strong enough solar flare would render all electronic (or electric?) equipment useless&lt;/strong&gt; thereby causing all sorts of troubles that range  from &lt;strong&gt;mildly annoying&lt;/strong&gt; (home appliances not working) to &lt;strong&gt;very unsettling&lt;/strong&gt; (banking system collapsing, food production plummeting, governments collapsing, me being out of a job) depending upon the sort of source you get your information from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such scenarios are at least consistent, in my opinion, with the effects of the 1859 event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &amp;quot;should we be worried&amp;quot; I mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can a solar flare really cause that much damage?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if so, how likely is it that one such strong solar flare might hit us in the foreseeable future?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;P.S.:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.2012hoax.org/solar-flares&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An attempt to debunk the &lt;strong&gt;killer solar flare&lt;/strong&gt; theory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8440" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T14:26:08.577" Title="Could a solar flare cause economic collapse?" Tags="|physics|environment|technology|sun|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2012-09-08T08:47:55.047" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10734" CreationDate="2012-09-05T16:52:14.453" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story doesn't quite add up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;yes there was &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.nl/books?id=_zkEAAAAMBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PT61&amp;amp;lpg=PT61&amp;amp;dq=supermac%20Sentinel&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=8BdYwmrLAa&amp;amp;sig=u4B4QszDXANPsEuuQkCN_LtQzgw&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=supermac%20Sentinel&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Supermac Software product called Sentinel&lt;/a&gt;, which did indeed use DES encryption;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;however in time frame when this could occur, there was only a &lt;strong&gt;failed&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/855216.stm&quot;&gt;coup attempt in Trinidad in 1990&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That night, the legitimate government of Trinidad fell. One of the BBC&#xA;  reporters mentioned that the casualties seemed heaviest in the&#xA;  capitol, where for some reason, there seemed to be little return fire&#xA;  from the government forces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't make much sense, as the only places they stormed were in the capitol. And most people were taken hostage, not killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that &lt;a href=&quot;http://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Folklore/Humor/encryption_foils_coup.story&quot;&gt;the original story&lt;/a&gt; is in the category &quot;Folklore/Humor&quot;, which doesn't speak very high of it's credibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2012-09-05T16:52:14.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10756" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10759" CreationDate="2012-09-05T23:05:52.763" Score="10" ViewCount="3531" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://dentalplans.lifetips.com/tip/100832/best-dental-plans/best-dental-insurance-tips/flossing-increases-lifespan.html&quot;&gt;Life Tips&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regular flossing, long considered an essential part of daily dental&#xA;  cleansing, has been found to have a positive effect on your life&#xA;  expectancy, increasing it by up to 6 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? How would flossing increase life-span? If so, how can anyone prove that it does?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other articles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thehillsdentalspa.com/blog/?p=113&quot;&gt;The Hills Dental Spa&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://longevity.about.com/od/liveto100/ss/life-expectancy_4.htm&quot;&gt;Health.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6966" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-06T04:17:23.933" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T07:03:37.583" Title="Does flossing your teeth regularly increase your lifespan?" Tags="|dentistry|life-expectancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10680" CreationDate="2012-09-06T01:25:45.070" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think statistics on this specific subject exist. But the answer is &lt;strong&gt;Yes, cleaning any computer will make it last longer&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is usually not the dust itself but the heat that is insulated into the device by the dust. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Your computer could fry if you don't keep it clean,&quot; says &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/athome/setup/cleancomputer.aspx#fbid=8nZz_kdGUqf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jonathon Millman&lt;/a&gt;, CTO for Hooplah Interactive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computers run hot, that's why they have a myriad of fans. When the fans get dust in them they are less effective. Combined with dust that blocks the ventilation you're computer's temperature will directly correlate with the amount of dust in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Microsoft's websites, cleaning your computer will make it&#xA;  &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/athome/setup/cleancomputer.aspx#fbid=8nZz_kdGUqf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;last longer&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue associated with dust is shorting out components, it's not so common, but it can happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1720&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This website&lt;/a&gt; has some stats on why computers die, the top 3:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;26% PSU and power issues&#xA;23% Bad gear and user negligence&#xA;13% Heatsink related&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...can all be dust related, dust shorting out the power, neglecting to clean your computer and heat dissipation related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't taken into account the chance that &lt;strong&gt;you may destroy your laptop by opening it&lt;/strong&gt;. I would say the chance of destroying it by opening it is much greater than the chance that dust would damage it but this depends on the technical skill of the cleaner. I have a certificate in computer repair and maintenance and I wouldn't do it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="5487" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T01:20:26.553" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T01:20:26.553" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10756" CreationDate="2012-09-06T01:31:07.777" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was a fun journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first couple of links didn't have any references, but the third one did. Not only did it propose a mechanism, but it ascribed it to &quot;Dr. Perls&quot; and &quot;Dr. Roizen&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Picking the second doctor (with the biggest claim) at random. His name is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Roizen&quot;&gt;Michael F. Roizen, MD.&lt;/a&gt; of the Cleveland Clinic. His claims are somewhat &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cleveland.com/medical/index.ssf/2008/05/does_roizens_vision_of_longevi.html&quot;&gt;controversial&lt;/a&gt; - popular, but attacked by academics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He wrote a popular book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealAge&quot;&gt;RealAge&lt;/a&gt;. The relevant section was quoted in more detail by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.21stcenturydental.com/smith/education/floss.htm&quot;&gt;this dentist&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;These studies show that the presence of periodontal diseases, diseases most common in people with tooth loss, actually affects longevity. The best of these studies done at Emory University with the Centers for Disease Control, indicated that people with gingivitis and periodontitis have a mortality rate that is 23 percent to 46 percent higher than those who don't... why? They are linked to increased rates of cardiovascular disease and stroke, as well as to an increase in mortality from other causes, such as infections.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I wandered over to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/OralHealth&quot;&gt;Center for Disease Control's Oral Health&lt;/a&gt; site, and looked for some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/OralHealth/publications/journal_articles.htm#pd&quot;&gt;references&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seemed to be the most direct reference they provided:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;James D. Beck,Paul Eke, Gerardo Heiss, Phoebus Madianos, David Couper, Dongming Lin, Kevin Moss, John Elter, Steven Offenbacher, &lt;a href=&quot;http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/112/1/19.full&quot;&gt;Periodontal Disease and Coronary Heart Disease: A Reappraisal of the Exposure&lt;/a&gt;, Circulation. 2005; 112: 19-24, doi: 10.1161/​CIRCULATIONAHA.104.511998&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which referenced an earlier paper by a similar team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beck JD, Offenbacher S, Williams R, Gibbs P, Garcia R., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9722697?dopt=Abstract&quot;&gt;Periodontitis: a risk factor for coronary heart disease?&lt;/a&gt; Ann Periodontol. 1998 Jul;3(1):127-41.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1998 paper makes some very tentative associations between periodontitus and coronary heart disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We conclude that the available evidence does allow an interpretation of periodontitis being a risk factor for atherosclerosis/CHD. This conclusion, however. is made with some qualifications. While the associations found across a wide variety of subjects are remarkably consistent, for the most part they are represented by incidence odds ratios around 2.0. While this level of association would result in oral conditions contributing to a large number of CHD cases, it is possible that associations of this magnitude are due to bias in the study designs. In addition, some studies report that periodontitis is associated with all-cause mortality and low birth weight infants. These multiple associations detract from the credibility of periodontitis as a risk factor, as specificity of association is more often related to causality. However, all-cause mortality may largely be driven by mortality from cardiovascular events: and some exposures, such as smoking. are indeed risk factors for multiple conditions. On the other hand, current findings regarding the associations between oral conditions and atherosclerosis/CHD imply that the criteria for causality may be met in the not-too-distant future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2005 paper shows they are still working establishing this association (e.g. by continuing to try to remove cofounders, such as smoking, and work out the best measures of periodontal disease) and reviews some of the criticism it has received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Case-control, cross-sectional, and longitudinal studies have found that periodontitis is associated with coronary heart disease (CHD) and cerebrovascular disease, even after adjustment for a variety of potential confounders of these associations. However, other studies have found either nonsignificant positive trends or no association after adjustment for variables considered to be confounders. Concerns about the validity of the periodontitis–cardiovascular disease associations have been expressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They go on to defend their hypothesis, but admit that standard clinical measurements of periodontal disease show no associations. (Instead, they recommend measuring antibody responses.) Again, their claims are heavily qualified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been some interesting research tentatively suggesting that periodontal disease is closely correlated to coronary heart disease, with a mechanism proposed. That research has been criticised and (as of 2005), the science hadn't reached a consensus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roizen published a popular health book in 2000 (which spawned a series of books and a web-site business) that claimed periodontal disease could &lt;em&gt;cause&lt;/em&gt; an elevated risk of coronary heart disease, without considering the confounding factors. He made the leap that flossing would therefore reduce the risk. His book was promoted on Oprah and gained widespread attention from dental web-sites, but it was widely criticized by scientists as being exaggerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-06T07:03:37.583" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T07:03:37.583" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1783" CreationDate="2012-09-06T01:35:44.810" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please base your answers on formal proof and facts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what kind of proof or fact you will accept, but I'll add another one to the facts already given by the other posters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The International Space Station (ISS) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/02/28/ridiculously-awesome-pic-of-discovery-and-the-iss-taken-from-the-ground/&quot;&gt;clearly visible from the ground&lt;/a&gt;. If it is overhead on a clear night, away from the brightest city lights you can see it clearly as it sweeps across the sky. The important point is that there is nothing except a satellite that could possible have that kind of movement across the sky. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only natural objects in the sky are stars (and galaxies), planets and meteorites. Stars sweep around in 24 hours (the rotation period of the earth). Planets move at almost the same rate as stars - with the naked eye it will take days to see them move relative to the stars. Meteorites on the other hand only take seconds to sweep across the sky, and they rarely go from horizon to horizon; they usually burn up quickly. Satellites on the other hand move majestically across the sky, at a steady pace. Satellites in low orbits (like the ISS) take a couple of minutes to cross from horizon to horizon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to know where the ISS is at any time, there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isstracker.com/&quot;&gt;websites&lt;/a&gt; that tell you. There are also sites that tell when you can see it from your location, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. Enter your location into the website, and you'll see suitable times in the next couple of weeks. It even tells you in which direction to look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that this is a NASA site, but the fact that you can see something that can only be explained by assuming it's a satellite, AND you can see it at the time that NASA tell you, is strong proof that the ISS is indeed up there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This proves that we can travel at 28,000 km/h in orbit. It also implies that all the other, even faster spacecraft to Mars and other planets, are also real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T01:35:44.810" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10761" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-06T05:49:40.147" Score="23" ViewCount="2304" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent Pew &lt;a href=&quot;http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1993/survey-is-college-degree-worth-cost-debt-college-presidents-higher-education-system&quot;&gt;survey&lt;/a&gt; found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A majority of Americans (57%) say the higher education system in the United States fails to provide students with good value for the money they and their families spend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a college education a good Return On Investment (ROI) for most Americans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T17:41:20.177" Title="Is college worth the cost for most Americans?" Tags="|united-states|education|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10765" CreationDate="2012-09-06T06:39:12.220" Score="70" ViewCount="35934" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it said (on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6nSFpj9HTCZ5t-N3Rm3-HA&quot;&gt;YouTube channel vsauce&lt;/a&gt;) that the earth is smoother than a billiards ball if it's scaled down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the earth is relatively smooth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mt. Everest: ~10km+&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mariana Trench: ~13km-&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Earth's Diameter: 12,750km&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a billiards ball feels as smooth as a mirror!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-09-07T20:34:09.377" LastActivityDate="2013-09-20T19:51:45.593" Title="Is Earth as smooth as a billiard ball?" Tags="|geology|earth|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10763" CreationDate="2012-09-06T10:16:12.723" Score="86" Body="&lt;p&gt;This strongly depends on definition of what smoothness is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2008/09/08/ten-things-you-dont-know-about-the-earth/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Discover Magazine blog addressed this in 2008&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, first, how smooth is a billiard ball? According to the World Pool-Billiard Association, a pool ball is 2.25 inches in diameter, and has a tolerance of +/- 0.005 inches. In other words, it must have no pits or bumps more than 0.005 inches in height. That’s pretty smooth. The ratio of the size of an allowable bump to the size of the ball is 0.005/2.25 = about 0.002.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Earth has a diameter of about 12,735 kilometers (on average, see below for more on this). Using the smoothness ratio from above, the Earth would be an acceptable pool ball if it had no bumps (mountains) or pits (trenches) more than 12,735 km x 0.00222 = about 28 km in size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The highest point on Earth is the top of Mt. Everest, at 8.85 km. The deepest point on Earth is the Marianas Trench, at about 11 km deep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hey, those are within the tolerances! So for once, an urban legend is correct. If you shrank the Earth down to the size of a billiard ball, it would be smoother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree with definition of smoothness used by Discovery Magazine. By that definition, medium sandpaper (grit particle size of 0.005 in) is also smooth, which doesn't quite go with my definition of smoothness. In fact I find claim that sandpaper is smooth to be ridiculous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With mountains reaching in excess of 8,000m, scaled down that would be 0.0015 in. which means, that &lt;strong&gt;scaled down Earth's &amp;quot;smoothness&amp;quot; is equivalent to that of 320 grit sandpaper&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bRUJn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does it compare with actual billiard ball, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/10766/3790&quot;&gt;woliveirajr's&lt;/a&gt; answer is helpful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does ball surface look like:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mscih.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aqpnG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, that variation is about 0.55μm, while 0.005 inches official tolerance for shape is 127μm. 0.55μm scaled up to Earth size would be &lt;strong&gt;less than 125 meters&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt; &#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for shape, which is really what the ±0.005 inches regulation is about, Earth is non-spherical, it's oblate spheroid with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Equatorial radius: 6,378.1370 km&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Polar radius: 6,356.7523 km&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mean radius: 6,371.009 km&#xA;(sources:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://earth-info.nga.mil/GandG/publications/tr8350.2/wgs84fin.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WGS-84&lt;/a&gt; and IUGG )&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just the non-spherical shape already disqualifies scaled down Earth as official billiard ball, allowable tolerance in diameter would be 28,326 m while difference between Earth's polar diameter and mean diameter is 28,513 m. Although it is quite close call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T15:17:18.720" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9120" CreationDate="2012-09-06T12:51:43.837" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treasury Direct shows that the Public Debt has increased every year (tables &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2010-2000&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo4.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1999-1990&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;09/30/2001    5,807,463,412,200.06&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;09/30/2000    5,674,178,209,886.86&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;09/30/1999    5,656,270,901,615.43&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;09/30/1998    5,526,193,008,897.62&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;09/30/1997    5,413,146,011,397.34&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;09/30/1996    5,224,810,939,135.73&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;09/29/1995    4,973,982,900,709.39&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;09/30/1994    4,692,749,910,013.32&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;09/30/1993    4,411,488,883,139.38&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;09/30/1992    4,064,620,655,521.66&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way they count such a large surplus, was by not counting money the government owes itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://quaap.com/D/clinton-surplus-factcheck&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quaap.com&lt;/a&gt; -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Factcheck states that there was a surplus, they are looking at only the public debt and are not including the intra-governmental debt. Looked at this way, yes, there was a surplus. So much money was coming in through Social Security taxes (and used to buy Treasury bonds) that the general fund exceeded the budget by several hundred billion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a valid way to view the matter? After all, the money the government owes itself shouldn't count, right? Well, yes, it should. The social security money was already earmarked for future social security payments, and the Social Security Trust Fund will want to get its money back when it comes time to make more payments. So yes, this is real debt and I can't think of any reason to exclude it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;More Analysis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T12:51:43.837" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10768" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10769" CreationDate="2012-09-06T13:46:07.067" Score="17" ViewCount="3903" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the last &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://reason.com/blog/2011/08/02/is-matt-damon-right-that-teach&quot;&gt;Save Our Schools&quot; rally, Matt Damon&lt;/a&gt; said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So you think job insecurity is what makes me work hard? I want to be an actor. That’s not an incentive. That’s the thing: See, you take this MBA-style thinking, right? It’s the problem with ed policy right now, this intrinsically paternalistic view of problems that are much more complex than that. It’s like saying a teacher is going to get lazy when they have tenure. A teacher wants to teach. &lt;strong&gt;I mean, why else would you take a shitty salary&lt;/strong&gt; and really long hours and do that job unless you really love to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are teachers paid poorly in the United States compared to other professions?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="30463" LastEditDate="2017-06-22T17:13:14.897" LastActivityDate="2017-06-22T17:13:14.897" Title="Are teachers in the United states paid poorly?" Tags="|united-states|politics|economics|education|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10768" CreationDate="2012-09-06T14:05:34.333" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, not according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/ooh/about/projections-overview.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bureau of Labor Statistics figures&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the national annual median wage, which was $33,840 in May 2010&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Table 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education&lt;/strong&gt; - $51,660&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or from their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Education-Training-and-Library/Kindergarten-and-elementary-school-teachers.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;occupational handbook&lt;/a&gt;, which has this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/ooh/Education-Training-and-Library/Kindergarten-and-elementary-school-teachers.htm#tab-5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;nice graph&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2010 Median Pay - $51,380 per year&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_080.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Center for Educational Statistics shows Base Salary by state based on years of experience&lt;/a&gt;. You can compare those numbers with BLS numbers and you will discover that even starting pay for teachers is higher than the national median salary, or do &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrcst.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;comparisons by state&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when you compare teachers with other occupations that require a bachelor's degree, the data doesn't look bad for teachers (&lt;a href=&quot;http://data.bls.gov/oep/noeted/empoptd.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BLS querry&lt;/a&gt;, search by education, bachelor's degree, (sort by) 2010 median annual wage. You will find that teachers rank 96-117th out of 154.) They are less than a standard deviation from the mean, only 16% difference from the median salary Accountants and Auditors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$65,060 - Average salary all 154 occupations listed for which the typical entry-level education is Bachelor's degree, sorted by 2010 median annual wage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$61,690 - (76th) Median Occupation, Accountants and Auditors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$20,815 - Standard Deviation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$53,230 - (105th) Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$51,960 - (109th) Middle School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$51,660 - (110th) Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$48,800 - (117th) Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, this only compares &lt;strong&gt;annual salary&lt;/strong&gt; of teachers versus other professions. Teachers work &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fewer hours per day&lt;/a&gt; (including weekends), and teachers work fewer (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politifact.com/new-jersey/statements/2011/dec/12/chris-christie/chris-christie-says-new-jersey-teachers-only-work-/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;185 days/year&lt;/a&gt;) on average versus &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ebs.t05.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;230 days/year&lt;/a&gt;. I used an 8 hour work day, even though teachers typically work less hours than most other occupations (see chart below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Median Salary (all 154 occupations) $61,690 / (230 * 8) = $33.53/hour&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Median Teacher's Salary $51,380 / (185 * 8) = $34.72&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/i6X6Y.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we further correct this data by adjusting for sex, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jec.senate.gov/public/?a=Files.Serve&amp;amp;File_id=9118a9ef-0771-4777-9c1f-8232fe70a45c&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;0.9 wage gap for women teachers&lt;/a&gt; (page 80), in this predominantly female field (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/mlr/1997/04/art2full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;84%&lt;/a&gt;). This also doesn't correct for CEO pay and Engineering pay that are highly dominated by males. This is all before you even look at benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T01:14:51.240" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10768" CreationDate="2012-09-06T15:10:31.493" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.payscale.com/teacher-pay&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PayScale has nice infographic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XWLiG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Country=United_States/Salary/by_Degree&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PayScale you can see&lt;/a&gt;, that the salary range for people with Bachelor degree is &lt;strong&gt;$33,421 - $102,559&lt;/strong&gt;, thus primary and secondary school teachers are at the low end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bachelor is minimum degree required of teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also if you look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/10771/3790&quot;&gt;answer to question about college ROI&lt;/a&gt;, you can see that teachers' salary is inline with graduate of the worst of the worst colleges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another interesting ranking on PayScale is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Best Undergrad College Degrees By Salary&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, full list consists of 120 degrees sorted by median mid-career salary, Education is in the 98th place of 120, Elementary Education 119th of 120.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 Petroleum Engineering — $155,000&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 Chemical Engineering — $109,000&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 Electrical Engineering (EE)   — $103,000&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;98 Education — $54,700&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;119 Elementary Education — $44,000&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;120 Child and Family Studies — $40,500&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T17:05:05.390" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10761" CreationDate="2012-09-06T15:32:42.580" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the college.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.payscale.com/college-education-value&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Payscale provides college ROI ranking&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;best provide 30-year net ROI of &lt;strong&gt;$1,467,000&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;while worst have negative ROI. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;median 30-year net ROI is $65,000.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 1248 colleges on the list, of which &lt;strong&gt;352 have negative ROI&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hicbV.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hicbVm.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VRDg1.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VRDg1m.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for doubt &quot;how can negative ROI exceed the cost of the college&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Return from Attending College: The main financial benefit of attending&#xA;  college is the gain in income received by a college graduate over a&#xA;  high school graduate. However, &lt;strong&gt;by choosing to attend college, one is&#xA;  giving up four to six years of income one could have received if one&#xA;  went straight to work after high school&lt;/strong&gt;. Therefore, we calculate the&#xA;  gain in pay over a high school graduate (earnings differential) as the&#xA;  difference between the 30-year median pay for a 2011 bachelor's&#xA;  graduate and weighted 34-36 year 75th percentile pay for a high school&#xA;  graduate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-01-14T01:16:47.827" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T01:16:47.827" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10763" CreationDate="2012-09-06T15:37:18.353" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think vartec has the best answer so far.  The quoted tolerance (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wpa-pool.com/web/WPA_Tournament_Table_Equipment_Specifications&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;specifications link&lt;/a&gt;) of 0.005 is for total size, not smoothness.  The spec says 2.25+.005, not +/-, is that a typo or does it mean the balls must be at least 2.25 but not more than 2.255&quot;?  Most balls are actually manufactured to a higher tolerance, with good ones being under 0.001&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pic from the site woliveirajr found is shows 1mm of an actual ball.  That equates to about 220 km on the surface of the Earth, here's the pic compared to part of the grand canyon and everest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YBd2g.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hjw4e.png&quot; alt=&quot;Grand Canyon (200km)&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uoK6z.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And while the scaled-down grand canyon would be 8.2 micrometers deep, the variation in the marks is less than 1 micrometer (about 0.87).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tyhGH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while I've seen billiard balls with scratches and chips that might be larger than mountains on Earth might be at that scale, that is not what you think of when you think of how smooth a billiard ball is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everest is different than the Grand Canyon though, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_McKinley&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mount McKinley&lt;/a&gt; in Alaska is actually taller base-to-peak as Everest has a higher base.  So while Everest would rise to a point further from the center of the billiard ball, Mount McKinley would be the highest bump at about 26 micrometers from the surrounding surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't compare &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauna_Kea&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mauna Kea&lt;/a&gt; because I would argue that under sea level should not be taken into account.  After all, looking at the Earth from space, you cannot see the Mariana Trench.  You run into all sorts of problems thinking about a giant being trying to feel how smooth the Earth is, so I would just just use how it looks from space, water or not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Giant fingers touching it would be like moons or huge asteroids impacting the surface.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In any gravity field that would drain the water, resting the earth on a surface or holding it would make it collapse, releasing the molten core and causing enough friction to turn the rest molten as well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Water molecules would be about 5&quot; big on the scaled down earth.  It would not act much differently from rock at that scale.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;60 foot Ocean waves would be about 0.08 microns, but as that is far from the norm and waves would be so tightly packed that they would seem to be almost one surface, most of the planet would be much smoother than a billiard ball.  Much of the rest of the world would be about as smooth as well, it would just be the large mountain ranges that would really be much rougher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8457" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T15:37:18.353" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10774" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10775" CreationDate="2012-09-06T17:00:42.807" Score="8" ViewCount="1237" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember a while back when I was younger (late 90's) when one of my friend's mom was pushing some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nikken.com/product/technology/index.cfm#magnet_tech&quot;&gt;Nikken&lt;/a&gt; magnetic insoles where she claimed that the effects of the magnets would increase muscular strength along with an increase in flexibility range. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using my own anecdotal evidence, it did seem to have an effect.  But this is before I had an understanding of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo&quot;&gt;placebos&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suggestion&quot;&gt;the power of suggestion&lt;/a&gt;.  I have seen other products like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/97548-benefits-magnetic-bracelets/&quot;&gt;bracelets&lt;/a&gt; and other wear that claim to have health benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any research to back the claims?&lt;/strong&gt;  All I have been able to find are non-independent claims of such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6102" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:29:45.657" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:29:45.657" Title="Do magnetic insoles or bracelets increase muscular strength and flexibility?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10774" CreationDate="2012-09-06T18:11:24.347" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Evidence and theory both suggest that &lt;strong&gt;the answer is no&lt;/strong&gt;, magnets do not have any health effect whatsoever. A nice &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1325112/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; that surveys the topic notes problems with studies showing positive effects not being blind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Many “controlled” experiments are suspect because it is difficult to blind subjects to the presence of a magnet. An example is a randomised trial of powerful magnetic bracelets for the relief of hip and knee osteoarthritis, which reports a significant decrease in pain because of the bracelets. The patients given real magnets could detect them because the magnets often stuck to keys in pockets. Perhaps subjects with magnetic bracelets subconsciously detected a tiny drag when the bracelets were near ferromagnetic surfaces (which are ubiquitous in modern life), and this distracted or otherwise influenced the perceived pain. Patients with fibromyalgia detected which sleeping pads were magnetic by their mechanical properties, by “comfort with the firmness” and thus unblinded the study. In a sophisticated postural assay, where magnetic soles were found to decrease swaying, the authors admit that the magnetic soles could have differed in stiffness from the controls.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additonally, when &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11927062&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt; different &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10714732&quot;&gt;tests&lt;/a&gt; were properly blinded, both the placebo and magnet groups saw equal improvement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The use of a magnet for reducing pain attributed to carpal tunnel syndrome was no more effective than use of the placebo device.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Application of 1 variety of permanent magnet had no effect on our small group of subjects with chronic low back pain.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason the affect of magnets has been studied is the safety of MRIs. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10931560&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; studying this found,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In the absence of ferromagnetic foreign bodies, there is no replicated scientific study showing a health hazard associated with magnetic field exposure and no evidence for hazards associated with cumulative exposure to these fields. The very high degree of patient safety in strong magnetic fields is attributed to the small value of the magnetic susceptibility of human tissues and to the lack of ferromagnetic components in these tissues.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that these claims are slightly different from the one you've heard. But at this point, all evidence suggests that magnets do virtually nothing to people. Someone can always invent a more specific or slightly different claim (maybe it only works on Tuesdays, or a particular brand, etc.) but at this point the science suggests rejecting all claims of bio-active magnets unless they are presented with very compelling evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8323" LastEditorUserId="8323" LastEditDate="2012-09-06T18:55:01.763" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T18:55:01.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10677" CreationDate="2012-09-06T23:37:41.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well it's hardly a full-scale scientific trial, but someone is actually putting this to the test right now: there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://thedanplan.com/theplan.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dan McLaughlin&lt;/a&gt; who has set out to do 10,000 hours of deliberate golf practice from complete novice... and we'll just have to wait and see how good they end up.  So far they've done around 3,300 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Freakonomics people have some commentary on his programme &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/01/12/10000-hours-later-the-pga-tour/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and some writing on Ericcson's theories &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freakonomics.com/2006/05/07/freakonomics-in-the-times-magazine-a-star-is-made/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  Reading the Ericsson paper they cite, the only mention of 10,000 hours seems to be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the following discussion we reexamine the evidence ... for the role&#xA;  of innate differences in the attainment of expert performance. The&#xA;  dichotomy between characteristics that can be modified and those that&#xA;  cannot may not be valid when we examine the effects of over 10,000 h&#xA;  of deliberate practice extended over more than a decade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the one cited by @Josh's answer also contains only one mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By the age of 20, the best musicians had spent over 10,000 hours&#xA;  practicing, which averages 2,500 and 5,000 hours more than two&#xA;  less-accomplished groups of musicians at the same academy,&#xA;  respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So really all this 10,000 hours figure is, is a guide to the magnitude of the amount of practicing needed to significantly influence expertise, at least in Ericcsons's studies.  However, it's a memorable enough soundbite that it seems to have taken on a life of it's own.  Further, once the the &quot;deliberate practice&quot; aspect has been forgotten (e.g see comments on original post!) people find it useful as a tool to justify complacency (&quot;well I've been doing this job for a few years and at least 10000 hours easily; so of course I must be an expert now&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8497" LastEditorUserId="8497" LastEditDate="2012-09-06T23:48:46.270" LastActivityDate="2012-09-06T23:48:46.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10763" CreationDate="2012-09-07T05:04:30.033" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm sorry to rain on vartec's parade, but his answer is conceptually incorrect and falls into the fallacy of comparing apples and oranges and tries to appeal to familiarity with every day objects to make the case (incorrectly). The quoted article is correct (of course, requires one to make the assumption that the earth is round, which is not a terrible assumption for the purposes of the article) and below, I offer a reasoning of why vartec's answer is grossly misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To understand why, one should understand dimensional comparisons. The billiards ball example compared the maximum bump to the radius (or diameter). Both these directions are comparable. As the quoted article shows, doing the same for the &quot;bumps&quot; on the Earth led to a smaller ratio of max bump size to radius and hence &quot;smoother&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the part that's misleading (and upon which the rest of the argument is based) is that scaling this down to &quot;normal size&quot; makes it comparable to sand paper! How? How is this scaling done? To scale properly, one would have to take the dimensionless ratio of bump size to radius (see crude figure below) of the billiard ball (or the Earth) and then multiply it by the corresponding dimension of another object you wish to compare. This dimensionless ratio is the definition of &quot;smoothness&quot; (0.0022 in the image), not the actual number 0.005&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the comparison with the sand paper, he &quot;scales&quot; Mt.Everest down to 0.0015 inches. How was this &quot;rescaling&quot; done? What is the base line that this is a &quot;deviation&quot; from? He doesn't tell you. And this is where the mistake lies. In the second half of my crude hand drawn image, I give an example. Let's assume that 0.0015 grit size sand paper is chosen. We now need to consider the dimension for which this grit can be considered a &quot;bump&quot;. No, it's not the length, but the thickness of the backing paper that matters. Let's now assume a thickness of 1/32&quot; (don't know the actual number, but somewhere between 1/32&quot; and 1/16&quot; is my guess).  Calculate the dimensionless &quot;smoothness&quot; factor again – turns out it is 0.048, which is much greater than 0.0022. Well, duh! No wonder it is rough — it is about 20 times rougher, in fact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you've ever worked on auto detailing, you might have come across 2500 grit sand paper. These are very smooth to the touch (seriously, smooth as talc), and still they're about 5 times rougher than a billiards ball. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, the entire answer is based on false math and I'm concerned that it has as many as 50+ votes on a Skeptics site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zqxjF.png&quot; alt=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rqxEV.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8502" LastEditorUserId="949" LastEditDate="2012-09-07T06:53:27.297" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T06:53:27.297" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2111" CreationDate="2012-09-07T07:07:02.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Medline Plus, eating right before bed can increase your metabolism and increase your brain's overnight activity, leading to dreams and nightmares. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Substances such as alcohol and nicotine cause a lighter sleep and prevent REM sleep, which decreases dreaming. However, some foods may increase REM sleep, which increases dreaming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The British cheese board (remarkably it does exist) conducted a &quot;study&quot; giving 200 people cheese at most 30 mins before bed and found that 67% (130 odd) remembered their dreams the following day. There was no control in this publicity stunt study (though it was endorsed by a sleep scientist at the University of Surrey) so there is no way of nothing if that is an increase or a decrease from normal rates of dream recall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would say it is possible that eating certain foods might increase your chances of dream recall upon waking. Though with the caevet that this could just be down to cultural expectations that lead people to expect to dream and therefore they &quot;remember&quot; dreams when they wake up. Though Richard Wiseman ran an experiment on this and a fair number of commenters who would have expected to dream failed to recall any dreams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: more research is needed but it's possible and may even be plausible depending on the food being consumed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="432" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T07:07:02.877" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10787" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10789" CreationDate="2012-09-07T07:55:37.210" Score="11" ViewCount="896" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard on the news that some countries in the European Union are planning a measure that will force Tobacco companies to use a generic package for their cigarettes (for a debate on the UK proposals see &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9743000/9743977.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this BBC link&lt;/a&gt;; for a BBC news story on the original UK proposals see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17698730&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). They want all the brands to have the same pack and use the same font, size &amp;amp; color. They say that by this measure they will somehow reduce smoking across the population. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see that the measure is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2011A00148&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;already law&lt;/a&gt; in Australia and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_cigarette_packaging#Australia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it will be implemented starting December this year&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there are any studies that support this claim ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8503" LastEditorUserId="8503" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T19:18:00.797" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T19:18:00.797" Title="Do plain packs for cigarettes reduce smoking?" Tags="|smoking|cigarettes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10787" CreationDate="2012-09-07T08:53:51.483" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is some research &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2590906/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tobaccolabels.ca/prohibit/canadaandu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; that shows generic packaging makes smoking less attractive to youth and those who are not yet addicted as it greatly cuts down the &quot;cool factor&quot;. Several countries have considered having such a ban in place but as none have enacted them yet there's no long-term research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effects will likely be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A decrease in youth smoking uptake.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An evening out of sales across different brands. Once you have the brand recognition people are likely to go for the cheaper types as there's no benefit to being seen with an expensive brand. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cheaper brands will get stronger with more added nicotine as the tobacco companies try to hold onto the smokers they do have by increasing retention through addiction rather than branding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8504" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-09-07T12:41:39.333" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T12:41:39.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10787" CreationDate="2012-09-07T14:07:42.443" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2011, &lt;a href=&quot;http://cancer.org.au/&quot;&gt;Cancer Council Australia&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://cancer.org.au/&quot;&gt;Quit Victoria&lt;/a&gt; issued a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org.au/content/pdf/CancerControlPolicy/PositionStatements/TCUCCVBkgrndResrchPlainPak270511ReEnd_FINAL_May27.pdf&quot;&gt;position statement&lt;/a&gt;, in which they summarise the evidence of the effect of plain packaging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They draw a number of conclusions, but the relevant ones include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Current pack colours and imagery can dilute the impact of graphic health warnings.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Unregulated package colouring and imagery contribute to consumers’ misperceptions that certain brands are safer than others.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That plain packs and larger health warnings reduce the appeal to both adults and adolescents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They rely on 24 different experimental studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting, that the relevant experiment studies (e.g. see page 11) tended to be surveys and studies measuring people's responses to plain packs. These is not as powerful as studies actually showing the effect in practice, but that has to wait until such legislature is implemented in some countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also examine the arguments put forward by tobacco companies, and cite studies that undermine or refute those arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T14:07:42.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10787" CreationDate="2012-09-07T15:47:50.183" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It won't break smoking habits (as seen in the FDA graphic warning label judgment in August), but it is less attractive to the youth and to children, and it is believed they will focus more on tobacco rather than on the fancy package (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnct.fr/images/site/20100802_120921paquets_neutres___dossier_de_presse_28_juin_2010_vf.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; a study sum up for the French Parliament).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noticing that while some countries want to make this a European Union regulation proposal, in some countries in the EU tobacco advertising is still legal (eg Germany, Greece).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my country,  research (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.invs.sante.fr/beh/2011/20_21/beh_20_21_2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effectiveness perception of plain packaging of tobacco products: findings from France&lt;/a&gt;) has only proven that neutral packages were perceived as &quot;unattractive&quot;, &quot;ugly&quot;, and  &quot;made the dissuasive pictures and messages more visible&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main study was conducted by some anti-tobacco group leaders but also tobacco research doctors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study, which also relies on government-conducted qualitative and quantitative studies made in 2007 and 2008, lists several references : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beede, Lawson, Shepherd (1991), The promotional impact of cigarette packaging: a study of adolescent responses to cigarette plainpacks,&#xA;paper presented to the Australian and New Zealand Association and management Educator’s conference, Launceston,,Australia.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beede and Lawson (1992), The effect of plain packaging on the perception of health warnings, Public health, 106 (4), 315-322.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beede and Lawson (1991), Brand image attraction: the promotional impact of cigarette packaging, The New Zealand family physician, 18, 175-177&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Canadian Cancer Society (1994), Putting health first : the case for plain packaging of tobacco products, april, submitted to the House&#xA;of Commons Standing on Health.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Canadian Cancer Society (1994), Responses to arguments against plain packaging on tobacco products, may 24, 1994, submitted to&#xA;members of the standing committee on health.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Canadian Cancer Society (1994), Marketing Professors endorse plain packaging of tobacco products, May 23, together with statements of 24 marketing professors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carr-Cregg and Gray (1990), Generic pack : a possible solution to the marketing of tobacco to young people, Medical J of Australia,&#xA;153, 685-6.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Centre for Behavioural Research in Cancer (1992), Health warnings and contents labelling on tobacco products, Report prepared for&#xA;the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy Tobacco Task Force, Melbourne: Anti-cancer council of Victoria.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Centre for health promotion (1994), Effects of plain cigarette packaging among youth, University of Toronto, ONT&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Donovan (1993), Smokers’ and non-smokers’ reactions to standard packaging of cigarettes, University of Western Australia.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Freeman, Chapman and Rimmer (2008), The case for the plain packaging of tobacco products, Addiction, 103, 580-590.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goldberg, Liefeld, Madill, and Vredenburg (1999), The Effect of Plain Packaging on Response to Health Warnings, American Journal&#xA;of Public Health, 89 (9), 1434-1435.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hammond (2007), The case for plain packaging: brand descriptors &amp;amp; design, National conference on tobacco or health, Edmonton, Canada, October 2nd.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Health Canada (1994), Background information on Tobacco and plain packaging, Ottawa, ONT, April.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jamieson (1993), Plain cigarette packaging – A turn-off for teens ! Canadian Cancer Society, Toronto, ONT.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Luik J. (1998), Plain packaging and the marketing of cigarettes, Luik J. editor., Oxfordshire: Admap Publications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Madill-Marshall, Goldberg, Gorn, Liefeld, Vredenburg (1996), Two experiments assessing the visual and semantic images associated&#xA;with current and plain cigarette packaging, Advances in Consumer Research, 23, 267-268.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mahood (1992), Generic or plain tobacco packages: moving toward real bans on tobacco advertising, 8th world conference on&#xA;tobacco or health, Buenos Aires, April 1992.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8511" LastEditorUserId="8511" LastEditDate="2012-09-07T19:51:43.390" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T19:51:43.390" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10796" CreationDate="2012-09-07T19:59:49.693" Score="22" ViewCount="7782" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following research claims that there is a link between one being a strong free market supporter and being more likely to reject scientific claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Paralleling previous work, we find that endorsement of a laissez-faire&#xA;  conception of free-market economics predicts rejection of climate science (r ' :80 between latent constructs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/documents/LskyetalPsychScienceinPressClimateConspiracy.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA faked the moon landing|Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax:&#xA;An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science&lt;/a&gt; (PDF)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Psychology Professor Stephan Lewandowsky claims that he has found a link between such beliefs and rejecting things like smoking causes cancer or climate change is real or in believing that the moon landing was a hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if his research holds up to close scrutiny?  Does this appear to be real science?  Some of his posts appear to be somewhat inflammatory and self-referentially serving to prove his assertion to me which gives me some question: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/lewandowskyCCCresponse1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirming the obvious&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original paper has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/DownloadFile.ashx?pdf=1&amp;amp;FileId=2918&amp;amp;articleId=40138&amp;amp;Version=1&amp;amp;ContentTypeId=58&amp;amp;FileName=Provisional%20PDF.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recursive follow up here&lt;/a&gt; wherein the author notes the conspiracy theories claimed about the first paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8467" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-05-01T12:30:26.707" LastActivityDate="2016-05-01T12:30:26.707" Title="Does being a strong free market supporter correlate with rejection of scientific claims?" Tags="|politics|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10793" CreationDate="2012-09-07T20:41:55.850" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr: Yes, being a strong laissez-faire free-market supporter is correlated with rejecting some specific science&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Lewandowsky study looks at the attitudes of people &lt;strong&gt;who read climate blogs&lt;/strong&gt;, and does indeed find a positive correlation between those who support a laisssz-faire (i.e. unregulated) view of free markets, and who reject specific areas of well-established science, such as anthropogenic climate change and that smoking tobacco causes cancers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it does not address the issue of people generally: it specifically addresses attitudes of one self-selecting sub-group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other studies have looked at other sub-groups, and come to very similar conclusions. As Lewandowsky et al note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There is little doubt that people's personal ideology also often referred to as worldview or cultural cognition is a major predictor of the rejection of climate science&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which they substantiate with citations of several other papers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Party-political allegiance in the USA&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dunlap, R. E., &amp;amp; McCright, A. M. (2008). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.environmentmagazine.org/Archives/Back%20Issues/September-October%202008/dunlap-full.html&quot;&gt;A widening gap: Republican and Democratic views on climate change&lt;/a&gt;. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 50 (5), 26-35.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;McCright, A. M., &amp;amp; Dunlap, R. E. (2003). Defeating Kyoto: The conservative&#xA;movement's impact on U.S. climate change policy. Social Problems, 50 , 348-373. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ireswb.cc.ku.edu/~crgc/NSFWorkshop/Readings/Defeating%20Kyoto.pdf&quot;&gt;pdf&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;McCright, A. M., &amp;amp; Dunlap, R. E. (2010). Anti-reflexivity: The American conservative movement's success in undermining climate science and policy. Theory Culture &amp;amp; Society, 27 , 100-133. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://history.ucsd.edu/_files/base-folder1/Anti-reflexivity%20-%20The%20American%20Conservative%20Movement%20Success%20in%20Undermining%20Climate%20Science%20and%20Policy.pdf&quot;&gt;pdf&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263276409356001&quot;&gt;DOI:10.1177/0263276409356001&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Politics generally&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hamilton, L. C. (2011). Education, politics and opinions about climate change evidence for interaction effects. Climatic Change, 104 , 231-242. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10584-010-9957-8&quot;&gt;DOI:10.1007/s10584-010-9957-8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Heath, Y., &amp;amp; Giord, R. (2006). Free-market ideology and environmental degradation:&#xA;The case of belief in global climate change. Environment and Behavior, 38 , 48-71. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.uvic.ca/~psycweb/gifford/pdf/Free-Market%20Ideology%20and%20Environmental%20Degradation-%20The%20Case%20of%20Belief%20in%20Global%20Climate%20Change%20%282006%29.pdf&quot;&gt;pdf&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0013916505277998&quot;&gt;DOI:10.1177/0013916505277998&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feygina, I., Jost, J. T., &amp;amp; Goldsmith, R. E. (2010). System justification, the denial of global warming, and the possibility of &quot;system-sanctioned change&quot;. Social Psychology Bulletin, 36 , 326-338. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167209351435&quot;&gt;DOI:10.1177/0146167209351435&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kahan, D. M., Jenkins-Smith, H., &amp;amp; Braman, D. (2011). &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1549444&quot;&gt;Cultural cognition of scientic consensus.&lt;/a&gt; Journal of Risk Research, 14 , 147-174. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/1083337&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="6236" LastEditDate="2012-09-07T20:56:35.720" LastActivityDate="2012-09-07T20:56:35.720" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10720" CreationDate="2012-09-07T22:18:13.397" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I did read an analysis of this story on a the Indonesian collaborative &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120920115731/http://grevada.com/islam/hoax-robert-guilhem-pemimpin-yahudi-masuk-islam/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;news site Grevada, written by Anindya Yumika Dewi&lt;/a&gt; . The story can be believed to be the same because it refers to the same link (through an obsolete Google cache link) on socyberty.&#xA;The story was then taken to the online website of Indonesian newspaper &lt;em&gt;Republika&lt;/em&gt; (cf Wikipedia), where it can still be found under the title &quot;&lt;em&gt;Gara-Gara Iddah, Pemimpin Yahudi Masuk Islam&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. The website redactors seem to give it full credential (Maybe someone could ask them?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beside reporting on the different sites that published the story, accordingly leading to Egypt, and stating that there is no Robert Guilhem at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the article written by Anindya Yumika Dewi questions the scientific content of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An unreferenced assertion in the article tells about the current state of scientific knowledge on the inner mould of the human vagina, which, according to the author of the article, would make the results of the study supposedly carried out by Mr. Guilhem very unlikely to be produced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author also indirectly points out the strangeness of a geneticist studying the mucous membrane of a vagina, which is (cf wikipedia) a difficult object of study when looking for &quot;fingerprints&quot; because of its changing form during the usual female life (i.e. sexual arousal, and giving birth).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author is able to demonstrate (provided his arguments are not false) that there is no geneticist called Robert Guilhem having worked on penis fingerprints on human vaginas at the AECM. However, the question of who the individual could be remains largely unexamined, and I couldn't find out at which place this study on the Quran-conformed penis fingerprints was carried out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a photo declared to be a portrait of Robert Guilhem on the &lt;em&gt;Republika&lt;/em&gt; website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the Indonesian website spiritislam.net (see alexa site ranking for more info) has &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120920045243/http://spiritislam.net/index.php/2012/08/25/gara-gara-iddah-wanita-muslimah-pakar-genetika-yahudi-masuk-islam/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;removed the story&lt;/a&gt; because of hoax charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8511" LastEditorUserId="17914" LastEditDate="2016-01-20T11:24:22.987" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T11:24:22.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10801" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10804" CreationDate="2012-09-07T23:33:20.863" Score="11" ViewCount="1771" Body="&lt;p&gt;With immigration reform being a hot political topic in 2012 I am seeing a lot of reports that throw around numbers. The one I see cited most often is that there are 12 million illegal immigrants currently residing in the United States (as of 2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/16/us-usa-immigration-idUSBRE85E0VA20120616&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reuters article from June 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/15/facts-on-immigration-in-the-united-states/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN article From June 2012 (claiming 11.5 million)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While these numbers do not seem unreasonably high, I am suspicious how reliable they could be. How would the government, or anyone, be able to accurately estimate the numbers for a population that is likely trying to hide their presence? Do they simply assume that the census counts are correct and that illegal immigrants are properly self-reporting their numbers to census takers? And if so, is there any evidence to support that kind of assumption?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7998" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2013-03-08T15:16:25.930" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T15:16:25.930" Title="Are there 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States?" Tags="|united-states|population|immigration|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10801" CreationDate="2012-09-08T11:09:30.340" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dhs.gov/estimates-unauthorized-immigrant-population-residing-united-states-january-2011&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2011&lt;/strong&gt;  Department of Homeland Security&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The unauthorized immigrant population is the remainder or “residual” after the legally resident foreign-born population -&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;legal permanent residents (LPRs)&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;naturalized citizens&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;asylees&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;refugees&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;and nonimmigrants&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;- is subtracted from the total foreign-born population.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Data to estimate the legally resident population were obtained primarily from the &lt;em&gt;Department of Homeland Security (DHS)&lt;/em&gt;, whereas the &lt;em&gt;American Community Survey (ACS)&lt;/em&gt; of the &lt;em&gt;U.S. Census Bureau&lt;/em&gt; was the source for estimates of the total foreign-born population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cbTvh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Population&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In summary, an estimated 11.5 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States in January 2011&lt;/strong&gt; compared to a revised 2010 estimate of 11.6 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CAUTION:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general, caution is recommended in interpreting changes in the size of the unauthorized population presented in this report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Annual estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population are subject to sampling error in the ACS and considerable nonsampling error because of uncertainty in some of the assumptions required for estimation&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;(see Limitations below)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;METHODOLOGY AND DATA:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two populations are estimated in order to derive the unauthorized&#xA;  population estimates: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1) the total foreign-born population living&#xA;  in the United States on January 1, 2011 and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2) the legally resident&#xA;  population on the same date. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The unauthorized population is equal&#xA;  to 1) minus 2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LIMITATIONS:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assumptions about undercount of the foreign-born population in the ACS and rates&#xA;  of emigration&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Accuracy of year of entry reporting&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assumptions about the nonimmigrant population estimate&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sampling error in the ACS&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Accuracy of state of residence for the non-naturalized legally resident population&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ibz1N.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Region&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MgzwL.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Age - Sex&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An estimated 11.5 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States in January 2011&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The DHS report does discuss limitations/errors in estimates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;For more detailed information about the estimates and their limitations &lt;em&gt;click the link above.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pewresearch.org/topics/immigration/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pew Research Center - Publications on Immigration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/i/immigration-and-emigration/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times - Immigration and Emigration&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="454" LastEditDate="2012-09-08T11:15:56.023" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T11:15:56.023" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3117" CreationDate="2012-09-08T12:20:14.667" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A well-documented news article by John Lott, author of &quot;More Guns, less crimes&quot;, can be found on the Fox News website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,377181,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is widely inspired by this paper : &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=270126&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Abortion and Crime: Unwanted Children and Out-of-Wedlock Births&lt;/a&gt; from the same author and John E. Whitley. Its conclusion and its alternative analysis of the Donohue-Levitt results tends to show there is no significant influence of the legalization of abortion on the crime rates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, a  study by G. Akerlof et al.,  &lt;em&gt;An Analysis of Out-Of-Wedlock Births in the United States&lt;/em&gt; can imply, if we link the &quot;investment in human capital&quot; received by a child to his/her likeliness to commit crimes (as implies the Donohue Levitt study), the exact opposite as the D-N results. This is linkable (I am simplifying) to a correlation between the increase in the number of abortions after Roe vs Wade and the increase in out-of-wedlock birth rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8511" LastEditorUserId="8511" LastEditDate="2012-09-09T10:31:07.080" LastActivityDate="2012-09-09T10:31:07.080" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10677" CreationDate="2012-09-08T12:34:50.737" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are a programmer, there is an old yet well-known article by Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google. It's called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.norvig.com/21-days.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several studies are quoted, as well as the Malcolm Gladwell report. The 10 000 hours are the result of a study on students at the Berlin Academy of Music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8511" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T12:34:50.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10807" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-08T13:56:41.033" Score="9" ViewCount="1142" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Governor of Moscow trained a large bear to serve pepper Vodka to' his guests. If anyone showed reluctance in accepting the drink, the bear would remove the guest's clothes, an article at a time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodandbeverageunderground.com/history-of-vodka.html&quot;&gt;Food and beverage Underground&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other people say it was Peter the Great? Did this really happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-08T17:46:05.993" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T10:58:15.293" Title="Did Governor of Moscow train bears to serve Vodka?" Tags="|history|russia|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10808" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="53288" CreationDate="2012-09-08T16:37:17.710" Score="9" ViewCount="1452" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joel on Software, 12 Steps to Better Code&lt;/a&gt;, Joel asserts that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Writing specs is like flossing: everybody agrees that it's a good&#xA;thing, but nobody does it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Software that wasn't built from a spec usually winds up badly designed&#xA;and the schedule gets out of control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not agree that specifications work well in software development and that iterative approaches work better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to support the use of specifications as a way to improve the quality of code?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For clarity, by specification I mean, &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Requirements_Specification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a complete description of the behavior of a system to be developed&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;. This is usually the first stage in any Waterfall software development methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5005" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-05-08T14:55:09.877" LastActivityDate="2022-05-09T13:21:45.807" Title="Does having a specification result in better code?" Tags="|software|programming|programming-productivity|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10809" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-08T17:01:17.420" Score="8" ViewCount="586" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peta.org/living/vegetarian-living/top-10-reasons-not-to-eat-tuna.aspx&quot;&gt;PETA&lt;/a&gt; cite a story of boy who suffered from eating too much tuna:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tuna fish accumulate toxic mercury in their flesh as a result of industrial pollution, and the side effects of mercury poisoning  include finger curling, cognitive impairment, and coordination problems. A California boy, who was the subject of a front-page Wall Street Journal article, went from being a star athlete and honor student to being unable to concentrate or catch a football because he ate canned tuna.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find the WSJ article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been cases of people experiencing adverse health effects caused by high tuna consumption (as in mercury poisoning)? Is there any research on the subject? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the safe daily limit of mercury consumption? How does measured tuna mercury content compare to this limit? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8524" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-08T17:41:23.657" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T16:44:12.063" Title="Does frequent tuna consumption pose a health risk?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10810" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-08T18:14:39.463" Score="1" ViewCount="239" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people who claimed to know things about human physiology and biology once told me that when held in a hand, a permanent magnet affects blood cells (specifically &lt;em&gt;ferrum&lt;/em&gt; in them) and makes your grip temporarily stronger (until the blood flow adjusts to the effect) at the cost of some harm done to muscle tissue due to unusual conditions. Is any of that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8525" LastEditorUserId="8525" LastEditDate="2012-09-08T18:23:16.830" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T18:23:16.830" Title="Are permanent magnets harmful to people?" Tags="|magnetism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2013-05-08T13:12:28.383" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="568" CreationDate="2012-09-08T18:15:12.723" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manatee&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manatees&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dugong&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dugongs&lt;/a&gt;, and the Stellar Sea Cow (extinct) are all members of the order, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirenia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sirenia&lt;/a&gt;. The names themselves are pretty suggestive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The name &lt;em&gt;manatí&lt;/em&gt; comes from the &lt;em&gt;Taíno&lt;/em&gt;, a pre-Columbian people of the Caribbean, meaning &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;breast&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The word &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;dugong&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; derives from the &lt;em&gt;Tagalog&lt;/em&gt; term &lt;em&gt;dugong&lt;/em&gt; which was in turn adopted from the Malay &lt;em&gt;duyung&lt;/em&gt;, both meaning &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;lady of the sea&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sirenia&lt;/em&gt;, commonly sirenians, are also referred to by the common name sirens, deriving from the &lt;strong&gt;sirens of Greek mythology&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sirenian.org/sirenians.html#5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sirenian.org has a section&lt;/a&gt; dealing with the history of the name:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do we call them sirenians?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manatees and dugongs are named after the Sirens of ancient Greek Mythology. In Homer's Odyssey, Sirens were half-woman, half-bird creatures that tried to lure Odysseus and his ship onto their island with sweet songs of love. Later, some authors confused Sirens with mermaids (mythical creatures described as half-woman, half-fish), which eventually led to naming of the scientific Order Sirenia. Early European explorers imaged manatees and dugongs were mermaids, &lt;strong&gt;possibly because of their pectoral breasts, dexterous forelimbs, and fish-like tails&lt;/strong&gt;. In 1493, when Columbus wrote about the &amp;quot;mermaids&amp;quot; he had seen in the Caribbean, he commented that they were not as lovely as he had expected. Indigenous cultures in Africa, Australia, and the Americas each have their own unique creation story about how manatees and dugongs &amp;quot;came to be&amp;quot;. Some legends say that manatees and dugongs came from human ancestors who were transformed into sirenians by a curse or other misfortune of living near the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same site also provides a helpful map outlining the habitats of various sirenians around the world:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WYJTx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sirenian Distribution&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Florida's &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2005-12-25/news/0512240086_1_mermaid-florida-manatee-sirens&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sun Sentinel&lt;/a&gt; mentions that Columbus made his sighting in 1493 somewhere (now) near the Dominican Republic and that English explorer, John Smith, made his sighting in 1614 in the Caribbean. Both incidents conform geographically to the map above. The same article offers a couple of explanations on why sea cows might have been mistaken for mermaids:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anthony Piccolo, a professor of &lt;em&gt;literature&lt;/em&gt; at Manhattanville College in Purchase, N.Y., said Columbus was mentally primed for mermaids when he saw what history holds to be manatees. Folklore and early travelers' tales featured mermaids aplenty, and the old maps of the known world, including those Columbus consulted, &amp;quot;were always fringed with mermaids and monsters.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Piccolo said manatees would have appeared only more human, and enticing, to New World explorers. The Age of Exploration was also the age of Peter Paul Rubens, the Flemish painter of voluptuous models. &lt;strong&gt;The female ideal was much heavier then, and &amp;quot;deprivation of intimacy inflamed all these voyages&lt;/strong&gt;,&amp;quot; Piccolo said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Anything in the water became a projection of the sailors' need for&#xA;contact.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sailors were deprived in other ways too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Some were near their deaths from hunger. It's incredible to me how&#xA;human beings could endure the extremes on these voyages ... when you&#xA;see the ship Columbus used, it's like a little pot,&amp;quot; Piccolo said,&#xA;without heat, fresh food or anything resembling comfort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some of these sailors apparently conflated their desires for food and&#xA;for intimacy, seeing both possibilities in the Rubenesque manatee.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and a second viewpoint:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even present-day observers have discerned human attributes in sea cows. In the 30 years that James Powell, a &lt;em&gt;biologist&lt;/em&gt; with the Wildlife Trust in St. Petersburg, has worked with manatees, &amp;quot;there have been times when they come up out of the water and the light has been such that they did look like the head of a person.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If you were expecting to see a mermaid,&amp;quot; he said, &amp;quot;you'd see this back and tail come up with no dorsal fin&amp;quot; -- as many mermaids are drawn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Timothy O'Keefe, author of &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0936513438&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manatees: Our Vanishing Mermaids&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, provides the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.floridawildlifeviewing.com/florida_animals_wildlife/manatee_as_mermaid.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;following reasoning on his website&lt;/a&gt; for the association of the sea cow with the mermaid legend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But consider how a sailor would view the manatee from hundreds of&#xA;yards away on a moving ship. Then it makes more sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a manatee feeds, it will sometimes bob on the surface, using &lt;strong&gt;its&#xA;flippers to grasp the vegetation&lt;/strong&gt; and bring it toward its mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When startled in such a position, a manatee will dive head-first, its&#xA;great tail almost breaking the surface as it sounds. Thus the creature&#xA;does indeed to seem to have a woman's head and the tail of a fish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the manatee's unglamorous appearance, there is still something&#xA;majestic, almost regal, in the way these unusual animals move and act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the book, &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1576072835&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mysterious Creatures: A Guide to Cryptozoology&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, author George M. Eberhart (besides citing a number of historical sightings) offers a list of possible explanations for mermaids including the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, manatees and dugongs often sit vertically in the water to hold their young, which suckle the pectoral mammary glands located at the base of each flipper. &lt;strong&gt;Seaweed could conceivable masquerade as hair.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eberhart also offers other explanations for sightings in the North Atlantic etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To conclude, yes, a lot of people have looked into the sea-cow-mermaid theory and offered some compelling explanations. Manatees do migrate. But I'm unaware of any scientific studies trying to corroborate their migratory patterns with historical sightings. However, the famous ones all occurred in regions where manatees are found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Picture (postcard) of a &amp;quot;fake&amp;quot; mermaid at Aden, Yemen, apparently constructed from a dugong's body:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XDWUO.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Fake Mermaid, Aden&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T17:55:05.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10814" CreationDate="2012-09-08T18:42:40.440" Score="3" ViewCount="5949" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_cosy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia claims&lt;/a&gt;, without attribution, that a tea cosy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... insulates a teapot, keeping the contents warm&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fortnumandmason.com/c-247-tea-cosies-fortnum-and-mason.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;purveyor's&lt;/a&gt; of these teapot covers follow a similar vein:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty, original and practical, any one of our tea cosies will keep&#xA;the pot perfectly warm while lending a cheerful air to the tea table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/trending-will-you-have-a-mrs-doyle-tea-cosy-go-on-7946866.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Independent newspaper's&lt;/a&gt; got in on the action (albeit on what seems to be a piece written solely to push the things):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you're going to have a drop (&amp;quot;go on!&amp;quot;), you'll be wanting a&#xA;nice tea cosy to keep it warm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it hard to believe that a standard knitted/cloth tea cosy, with a bit of air to help out, will keep a pot of boiled water &amp;quot;warm&amp;quot;. Do tea cosies make any &lt;em&gt;perceptible&lt;/em&gt; difference to the amount of time a teapot remains warm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nnoRO.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Really Wild Tea Cosies, Loani Prior&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of warm is, of course, up for grabs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8416" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-09T09:00:07.457" Title="Do tea cosies keep a pot of tea warm?" Tags="|physics|tea|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10812" CreationDate="2012-09-08T19:56:10.950" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; Yes, of course it will keep your tea warmer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tho following tea cosy is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/mn/search/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;amp;camp=1634&amp;amp;creative=19450&amp;amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;amp;node=10707911&amp;amp;rd=1&amp;amp;tag=upcloseandper-21&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the most popular tea cosy on Amazon.co.uk&lt;/a&gt;. I'll assume it as the &lt;em&gt;typical&lt;/em&gt; cosy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/u5k2H.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Tea Cosy&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is made of 100% cotton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Technical Details&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Keep Calm and Drink Tea Tea Cosy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;100% Cotton&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Blue with white trim&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00628UVQ2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;camp=1634&amp;amp;creative=19450&amp;amp;creativeASIN=B00628UVQ2&amp;amp;linkCode=as2&amp;amp;tag=upcloseandper-21&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon.co.uk &amp;ndash; Keep Calm and Drink Tea&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, cotton is a relatively good insulator, with an R-value of 3.7:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cotton insulation is increasing in popularity as an environmentally preferable option for insulation. It has an R-value of around 3.7 (RSI-0.65), a higher value than most fiberglass batts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_insulation_materials#Cotton_batts_.28Blue_Jean.29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, what is, exactly an R-value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The R-value is a measure of thermal resistance used in the building and construction industry. Under uniform conditions it is the ratio of the temperature difference across an insulator and the heat flux through it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-value_(insulation)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, it measures how much an insulator &quot;slows down&quot; the temperature decrease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, &lt;em&gt;by definition of r-value&lt;/em&gt;, and by showing that cotton has a positive one, and that a typical tea cosy is 100% cotton, I have shown that the tea will be kept &lt;em&gt;warmer&lt;/em&gt; than it would normally be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, how much warmer? Probably not much. Also, hugely variable: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the cosy fit snugly? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the tea pot made of? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the shape of the teapot? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the external temperature?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How long later will you measure?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then again, the definition of warm is quite subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume, of course, that you didn't mean that the tea would be kept warm indefinitely! That's not what is being claimed, clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-09-08T19:56:10.950" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10823" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-09T16:49:07.337" Score="-1" ViewCount="658" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.udel.edu/cpc/research/idrace2012/Voter_ID_and_Race_2012/Voter_ID_and_Race.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;research claims&lt;/a&gt; that there is a link between high &quot;racial resentment&quot; (as measured by answers to questions in the survey) and support for VoterID laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here, CPC researchers found an interesting pattern in the data: it is Democrats and liberals whose opinions on voter ID laws are most likely to depend on their racial attitudes. Republicans and conservatives overwhelmingly support voter ID laws regardless of how much “racial resentment” they express. In contrast, Democrats and liberals with the highest “racial resentment” express much more support for voter ID laws than those with the least resentment (see Figure 3).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers claim that he has found a link between being a non-black Democrat with high racial resentment and supporting VoterID laws, but no link between being a non-black Republican with high racial resentment and supporting VoterID laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if his research holds up to close scrutiny?  Does this appear to be real science? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is racial resentment towards African Americans correlated with Democrats support of a political position?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2012-09-09T20:59:29.270" LastActivityDate="2012-09-09T21:01:14.040" Title="Is racial resentment towards African Americans correlated with Democrats support of a political position?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9180" CreationDate="2012-09-09T18:12:40.777" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure why the OP is attributing so much importance to one's name as compared to recognising people close to the amnesiac or similar. But, here goes ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia's entry for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrograde_amnesia#Types_of_retrograde_amnesia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;retrograde amnesia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As previously mentioned, RA commonly results from damage to the brain regions most closely associated with episodic and declarative memory, &lt;strong&gt;including autobiographical information&lt;/strong&gt;. In extreme cases, individuals may completely forget who they are. Generally, this is a more severe type of amnesia known as global or generalized amnesia. However, memory loss can also be selective or categorical, manifested by a person's inability to remember events related to a specific incident or topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From page 220 of &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0415209668&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Psychology and Education, Volume 11&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is particularly true when an accident renders one unconscious. One is quite unable to recall what happened, or how the accident came about. The loss of memory may extend backwards over a period of only seconds or minutes; but the disruptive effect can also entail a &lt;em&gt;retrograde amnesia&lt;/em&gt; which, in an extreme instance, may involve the whole of one's past life. Cases have been reported in which, after recovery from a shock involving a state of coma, the entire memory was a blank, &lt;strong&gt;the individual being unable to remember or recognize even his own name&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the journal, &lt;em&gt;Learning &amp;amp; Memory&lt;/em&gt;, a study titled &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC379692/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Functional Amnesia: Clinical Description and Neuropsychological Profile of 10 Cases&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; (case #10):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His personality also changed after the accident. He seemed more pleasant and was a more motivated student, though he was more introverted and isolated. He lost interest in his religion, which had been important to him before the accident. He was also immature and childlike in his social interactions. He was less aware of the feelings of other individuals. He did not understand jokes and interpreted them literally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time of our evaluation, he told us that &lt;strong&gt;following the accident he had not remembered his own name or how to speak&lt;/strong&gt;. He said that he relearned the English language during his first 2 d in the hospital by reading a dictionary. He had some recall for faces of persons he knew when he was very young. He had relearned other information from the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, it is possible for an amnesiac to forget his/her own name and identity, and there are documented cases where this has happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T14:20:07.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10823" CreationDate="2012-09-09T19:53:51.880" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Racial resentment against African-Americans across all party-political lines corresponded with higher support for voter ID laws&lt;/strong&gt;, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.udel.edu/cpc/research/idrace2012/Voter_ID_and_Race_2012/Voter_ID_and_Race.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one study&lt;/a&gt; at the Centre for Political Communication at the University of Delaware, of attitudes among non-African Americans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Correlation between racial resentment and support for Voter ID across all party-political lines&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For every sample sub-group, including Republicans, Conservatives and Democrats, support for voter ID was higher among people who expressed higher racial resentment against African Americans, than among groups who expressed lower resentment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Republicans showed the highest support for voter ID laws, compared to Democrats and Independents; they also showed the highest resentment against African Americans, compared to Democrats and Independents. Given a total sample size of 906 people, the study was unable to say much of statistical significance about views on Voter ID within the small sub-group comprising of Republicans who expressed little or no racial resentment against African Americans. However, no mechanism was suggested that would support diversion from the trend in the sample as a whole, within which racial resentment against African Americans correlates with support for Voter ID; and the sample data is consistent with the hypothesis that higher racial resentment corresponds with support for voter ID among Republicans, just as it does among other groups, inclusing Democrats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The link between “racial resentment” and support for such laws persists even after controlling for the effects of partisanship, ideology, and a range of demographic variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for example, among Republicans, those few with lower racial resentment against African Americans, had &lt;strong&gt;87%&lt;/strong&gt; support for voter ID laws. Whereas among those Republicans who expressed higher resentment against African Americans, the support for voter ID laws was &lt;strong&gt;93%&lt;/strong&gt;. Within Democrats, both the levels of racial resentment and the levels of support for voter ID were lower: &lt;strong&gt;47%&lt;/strong&gt; of Democrats with low racial resentment supported voter ID; &lt;strong&gt;77%&lt;/strong&gt; of Democrats with high racial resentment supported voter ID. Overall, Democrats scored just 0.32 on the racial resentment scale (0.0 would be least resentment, 1.0 would be most), whereas Republicans scored 0.54&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Problems with sub-group sample sizes&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB the error margin in the whole sample is 3.9%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the sample consisted of too few Republicans with low racial resentment, to be able to say much (with statistical significance) about their views on voter ID, relative to Republicans with high racial resentment. The study does not give any explanation about why it was hard to find enough Republicans who expressed little-to-no racial resentment. All we know from the report of the survey is that racial resentment against African Americans was higher within Republicans than within any other group. By comparison, the lower support for voter ID within Democrats, and the lower racial resentment, means that there are higher sub-group samples within each of the four quadrants of: support for voter ID yes/no plotted against racial resentment high/low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;In summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the University's report of the survey:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brewer, the center’s associate director for research, said, “These findings suggest that &lt;strong&gt;Americans’ attitudes about race play an important role in driving their views on voter ID laws&lt;/strong&gt;.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(my emphasis) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Closing thoughts on correlations&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is a study of correlation and corresponding attitudes: not of reasons &lt;strong&gt;why&lt;/strong&gt; people support voter ID or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-09-09T20:09:56.393" LastActivityDate="2012-09-09T20:09:56.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10828" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-10T00:08:56.887" Score="17" ViewCount="112398" Body="&lt;p&gt;Twice in the last week I've heard and re-stated the 'fact' that your taste buds change every seven years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of claim: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.allexperts.com/q/Science-Kids-3250/f/Science-9.htm&quot;&gt;All Expert's Science for Kids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taste Buds change every 5 to 7 years and during these tansitional (sic) periods (lasting up to 6 months) we find that we begin to like the flavor of some things but not others and vis-a-versa (sic).  When your new taste buds erupt, is when you should be trying all kinds of new foods and flavors.  You may find that things you did not like before you will now and even foods like carrots you used to like and don't now, can be changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found, however, no scientific basis for this, which is annoying. I can't find any either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard the 'your entire body's cells change every 7 years' but have read that to be bunk - your neurons in your brain are largely the same you start with, apparently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So does anyone have any hard facts for or against the changing tastes every seven years theory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5933" LastEditorUserId="15622" LastEditDate="2013-09-24T22:02:25.853" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T15:48:38.340" Title="Do your taste buds change every seven years?" Tags="|physiology|taste|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5122" CreationDate="2012-09-10T03:33:13.763" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is no. For a longer answer, I'll look at the classic example of celery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/314315-vegetable-calories-per-gram/&quot;&gt;livestrong.com&lt;/a&gt;: Celery contains about 14 calories per 100 grams, which makes it only slightly less energy dense than most other non-starchy vegetables which average around 20 calories per 100 grams.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shapesense.com/nutrition/articles/thermic-effect-of-food.aspx&quot;&gt;shapesense.com&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;The general consensus in the scientific community is that the thermic effect of food accounts for roughly 5 to 10 % of the energy content of the food ingested.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://worldfitnessnetwork.com/thermic-effect-food-protein/&quot;&gt;worldfitnessnetwork.com&lt;/a&gt;: Fibrous vegetables have a thermic effect of about 20%. (also claims that &quot;many fruits and vegetables are negative calorie foods&quot; but without giving any specific examples or substantiation).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that most non-starchy vegetables have a thermic effect as high as 20% (from worldfitnessnetwork.com) and an energy density of 20 calories per 100 grams (from livestrong.com), we can estimate that it requires about 4 calories to digest 100 grams of non-starchy vegetables.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that digestion of celery is comparable to that of other non-starchy vegetables, then the 14 calories per 100 grams contained in celery would far outweigh the 4 calories required for digestion per 100 grams of celery.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For digestion of celery to burn more calories than it releases, then digestion would have to burn more than 14 calories per 100 grams of celery. This is 3.5 times the rate of other non-starchy vegetables.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, one might argue that eating some food other than celery burns more calories than it releases, but this would probably push the boundaries of what can reasonably be called &quot;food&quot;. You could burn calories by eating some sort of non-food (perhaps paper?), but we wouldn't call things &quot;food&quot; if they contained fewer calories than we could release by digestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7178" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T03:33:13.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10831" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10861" CreationDate="2012-09-10T07:02:11.790" Score="18" ViewCount="30037" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many sites on the internet cite this coincidence as ether a prof to a conspiracy by the gov. or a message that the terrorists wanted to pass to the American People. Here are just some exmples from around the net:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100702012900AAvzSU1&quot;&gt;Yahoo Questions:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q: I just got wondering, is it a coincidence that the terrorist attacks on the WTC towers was on 9/11? The emergency number to dial in the US is 911 after all. I always thought the number was chosen after the attacks, but I just read it has existed for a few decades already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, did the terrorists pick 9/11 on purpose because 911 is the US emergency phone number, or is this just a coincidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The accepted answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Haven't you heard about the &quot; the artificial accident of Pentagon &quot; ???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;more often than not that it was a &quot; fabricated &quot; accident rather than a pure coincidence or even a proceed of a smart planning of so called &quot; the terrorist and Bin Laden&quot; ....they probably have cooperated with each other( US government with bin laden ) to make that tragedy ....Bin Laden has never presented Islam in any way ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;actually you should rephrase that Q to this way: have &quot;&quot;US government&quot; chosen that day deliberately?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;just google it and you will find thousand sites talking about this ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And some of the other answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A1: I always thought that. Their idea of a joke or something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A2: I don't believe in &quot;coincidences.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ask.com/answers/118154081/does-the-emergency-number-911-have-anything-to-do-with-the-9-11-terrorist-attacks&quot;&gt;ask.com question:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the emergency number 911 have anything to do with the 9-11 terrorist attacks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one of the answers said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The emergency phone number 911 has been around for a very long time. I'm fairly sure the attacks occurred on 9/11 just to add insult to injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread634246/pg1&quot;&gt;From www.abovetopsecret.com:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was wondering of the coincidence or not of September 11 as called 9/11 &amp;amp; the emegency phone number for America being 911. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Was this just a coincidence? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Was this day chosen to teach America the fear of a real emergency from the &quot;alledged&quot; terrorist point of view? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Was this day chosen by the &quot;alledged&quot; TPTB to instill a date that could be easily remembered due to it being so close to an already well known number 911 phone number? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Was this day chosen to be an ironical slap in the face of the general populace? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just always seemed to much of a coincidence of 9/11 &amp;amp; 911 being chosen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I say this because many other countries use different dating systems for example 9/11/2001 is dated 11/9/2001. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also the 911 emergency phone number is differnet for other countries where numbers like 000 or 999 are used instead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anyone ever thought this as too much of an ironical coincidence? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the answers in that thread also think the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A1: The date was absolutely chosen on purpose. Regardless of who you think did the deed, there was months &#xA;  if not years of planning that went into the 911attack. With all that must have gone into putting all that together, the numeric symbol is to apparent and powerful to be by chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A2: Options 2,3 and 4 seem more likely than 1. But the number may be significant for other reasons. Numerology is extremely important to the Illuminati according to most of the people who study them. (How does one study a secret organization? Is it even organized enough to study?) Many of the sites google listed seem kooky, but something might make sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8541" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-09-11T17:28:23.817" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T07:32:51.420" Title="Was the date for the 9/11 attack chosen to be the same as the emergency number in the U.S. (911)?" Tags="|united-states|9-11|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10833" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10838" CreationDate="2012-09-10T10:21:03.993" Score="26" ViewCount="20107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am referring to claims such as those made at &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.glennbeck.com/news/05172002.shtml&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;. Basically they claim that a certain folding of the bill shows burning images of twin towers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The new U.S. $20 dollar bill contains hidden pictures of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these assertions supported by proof? Can it be proven that it's coincidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8542" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-09-10T12:30:59.677" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T23:48:50.580" Title="Does the $20 bill predict the 9/11 attacks?" Tags="|united-states|9-11|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10836" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10883" CreationDate="2012-09-10T11:30:17.873" Score="7" ViewCount="4785" Body="&lt;p&gt;I decided to ask this question based on the following question a user posted on DIY.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/16965/dealing-with-a-wasp-nest&quot;&gt;https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/16965/dealing-with-a-wasp-nest&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the user quoting his local pest control company:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I called a exterminator (Terminix, actually), and they tried to push a year-long maintenance contract on me, and claimed that wasps leave pheremones, and if you don't continually kill them off, they will keep coming back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own research, there is no note of this particular wasp behaviour on wikipedia, and I have actually found a lot of insect-control websites that specifically say wasps don't nest in the same place every year. This makes me think that Terminix may be stringing me along a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have in turn found the following claim by another pest control company:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gemtekpestcontrol.com/pests-wasps&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.gemtekpestcontrol.com/pests-wasps&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maintenance Plans Take Away the Sting of Being Stung&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an integral part of effective pest management because wasps and yellowjackets leave behind pheromones on their nests, which increases the likelihood of a re-infestation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading the OP's question, I was curious myself because I was told the same thing by an exterminator when a wasp nest formed inside my attic from a hole in the soffit.  I also could not find this claim outside of Pest Control websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It certainly seems like a plausible claim, as I habitually get 5 to 6 wasp nests per year and they usually always form in the same few places, but that may be because they are cozy little corners and near large flowering plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6794" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T17:01:25.583" Title="Do wasps and yellow jackets leave pheremones that attract them to return to old nests?" Tags="|entomology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10833" CreationDate="2012-09-10T13:57:39.920" Score="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;No it doesn't. It's all the workings of some very imaginative people. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allbrevard.net/_20bill/what.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;These guys&lt;/a&gt; claim to be the source, but they don't  claim it is any more than a coincidence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Spelling of OSAMA&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's start with the spelling of OSAMA when you fold the note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lsx3L.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be done with any US bill that has a 0 in its denomination; i.e. the $10, $20, $50 and the $100 bills. Simply use the 0 from the number as an 'O' and add 's', 'am' and 'a' from the phrase &quot;United States Of America&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, with this method, the word USSR can also be shown. This doesn't mean that the whole US economic system was put in place by Lenin. Try it yourself. What other words can you find in the phrase?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Burning Pentagon&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1iRYB.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The depiction does not resemble the burning Pentagon very accurately. Compare it to other scenes that are equally well represented:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the BP oil spill:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/x3cIu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eFH87.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ovens:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6jUth.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OVpgA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Word Trade Centre&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/l5p3U.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The picture of the burning World Trade Center tower on the back is achieved due to the green monochromatic color of the bill, some advanced origami and a lot of imagination. This effect can be achieved with almost any picture of the north view of the White House not taken during the winter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://fieldnotes.unicefusa.org/wp-content/uploads/White_House.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;white house&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If cut at the following places (the edges of the triangle roof) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JiTHs.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the cut areas are rotated by 90 degrees and put together:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0BdoI.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, cut out the chimneys and you get the white WTC burning with green smoke:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YgsAQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the picture was monochromatic, then the contrast between the lighter background and the White House itself to the dark green leaves creates the feeling of the black smoke, when in fact it's supposed to be green.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is essentially the process done with the note by origami. So the conspiracy dates back to whoever planted those trees in such a manner to be just on the edges of the White House.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same can be done with many pictures of the White House, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4059/4270648692_718083d485_m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;pic1&quot;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/k1kAe.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Pql3d.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While that picture of the White House was put on the note in 1998 (3 years before 9/11), the White House looked like this from at least 1913 (the year of the postcard shown, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/buildinghistories/4270648692/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bill doesn't show the collapse of building 7 of the WTC, the impact at the White House  (as was planned by the hijackers of flight 93), or at the field in Pennsylvania.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence here is thin and needs a lot of imagination to be seen. The same coincidence can be seen on almost anything if played with enough. Just look at the examples of the other bills that are given in the site and look at how much imagination is needed to get that result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:38.627" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T07:42:58.123" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7499" CreationDate="2012-09-10T14:56:03.777" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;In summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At human timescales? No, global warming is very bad for life on the whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At geological timescales? It could be very good for life. Or neutral. Or extremely bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;At human timescales&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at a scale of decades to a century or two, global warming is very bad for life as a whole: both human life, and global biodiversity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say that there won't be individual winners, as well as individual losers. As one habitat shrinks, so another habitat extends. Oceans warm, and acidity increases, meaning that species such as coral which are highly sensitive to temperature and acidity, will suffer hugely (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1152509&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DOI:10.1126/science.1152509&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eeb.cornell.edu/harvell/Site/2007_files/HoeghGulberg07.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pdf&lt;/a&gt;). This will open up new ecological niches, that will allow some other species to expand in the very short term, and evolve to suit the new niches, over centuries. The problem, as with changing sea levels and other ecosystem shifts, is not that the final equilibrium result is necessarily worse than the starting point: it is that we have built our civilisation based on the existing ecosystem; and the climate and ecosystem are now changing faster than our civilisation can adapt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the scale of decades, short by evolutionary standards, environmental change is more rapid than genetic change. Whereas previously the Earth has seen periods of warming and cooling that have raised or lowered the temperature by several Kelvin, those have happened over thousands of years or longer. Now, all the evidence is that this is happening over decades.  This, combined with humankind's other environmentally degrading activities, means that Earth's ecology is now going through its &lt;a href=&quot;http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/extinction/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sixth mass extinction&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's an issue of &lt;strong&gt;rate of change&lt;/strong&gt; of climate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/contents.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IPPC's 4th assessment report&lt;/a&gt; (AR4) presents the state of knowledge as of 2006-7. Specifically Working Group 2 (WG2) reported on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.desmogblog.com/new-analysis-chinese-and-saudi-diplomats-water-down-global-warming-estimates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This was watered down by a round of political editing&lt;/a&gt;.  That dilution not withstanding, the following image appears &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/spmsspm-c-15-magnitudes-of.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in the report&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dAfEC.png&quot; alt=&quot;IPCC AR4 summary&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment, with a &quot;business as usual scenario&quot;, we're on course for a global mean temperature change of 5-7&amp;deg;C or so, which would mean a loss of 40% or more of species. If we succeed in rapid mitigation, we can lessen the biodiversity impact so that there's a risk of losing  &quot;only&quot; 30% of species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;At longer timescales&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at a scale of thousands of years upwards, things become much more speculative.  We know that there are positive and negative feedbacks in the system. At some point, positive feedbacks will get balanced by negative feedbacks. However, we don't know how hot things will have got before then. Or what sort of life might be viable. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some forms of life do seem extraordinarily tenacious even at the very extremes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastActivityDate="2012-09-10T14:56:03.777" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17582" CreationDate="2012-09-10T21:10:49.133" Score="8" ViewCount="314" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondiva.quickanddirtytips.com/want-your-baby-to-love-vegetables.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sites&lt;/a&gt; claim that food eaten during pregnancy influences a child's future food preferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071203090135.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Research suggests&lt;/a&gt; babies born to mothers who eat lots of vegetables during pregnancy and/or while they are breast-feeding seem to have a greater affinity for the taste of vegetables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Are child's tastes developed during gestation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8542" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T20:12:46.300" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T20:12:46.300" Title="Does pregnancy food influence a child's future food preference?" Tags="|nutrition|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10848" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-11T03:56:58.913" Score="11" ViewCount="985" Body="&lt;p&gt;At a hearing before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whatthefolly.com/2012/02/23/transcript-sandra-fluke-testifies-on-why-women-should-be-allowed-access-to-contraception-and-reproductive-health-care/&quot;&gt;Sandra Fluke said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Without insurance coverage, contraception, as you know, can cost a woman over $3,000 during law school. For a lot of students who, like me, are on public interest scholarships, that's practically an entire summer's salary. 40% of the female students at Georgetown Law reported to us that they struggled financially as a result of this policy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this alone might not make her notable, since she is just a private citizen who testified at a single hearing during a Congressional recess, but a firestorm of controversy erupted when conservative radio host &lt;a href=&quot;http://video.msnbc.msn.com/nightly-news/46609275#46609275&quot;&gt;Rush Limbaugh called her a name&lt;/a&gt;. Additional, she has thrust herself into the public eye, most recently speaking at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/dnc-2012-sandra-flukes-speech-at-the-democratic-national-convention-full-text/2012/09/05/891a642a-f7ac-11e1-8253-3f495ae70650_story.html&quot;&gt;Democratic National Convention&lt;/a&gt;, and is considered a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/03/02/147809138/student-is-outraged-by-rush-limbaugh-calling-her-a-slut-and-prostitute&quot;&gt;poster child&lt;/a&gt; for the Democratic party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can contraception cost a woman over $3,000 during law school?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do 40% of female students at Georgetown Law struggle financially to pay for contraceptives?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that these are two claims (and normally, they should be separated), but they are both highly related. Both are about the affordability of contraceptives to women in law school. The first question is technically true, it &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; cost $3,000. (Example: I could spend $1 million on transportation by purchasing a Bentley for each day of the week to take me to law school). This is really a question of if this claim is true, how much contraception would you have to use to spend $3,000, and is this a reasonable amount (i.e. see Bentley transportation). The second question is related to the first, and is a function of how much money it costs for contraceptives for women. Is $3,000 (assuming that is true) an amount of money that someone going to Georgetown Law school would struggle paying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T19:54:27.723" Title="Are contraceptives unaffordable for female students at Georgetown Law?" Tags="|united-states|contraception|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1231" CreationDate="2012-09-11T11:37:16.710" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, researchers led by Dr. Ronald M. Krauss, of the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Center in California, compared data from 21 studies that included a total of nearly 348,000 adults, and found that &lt;strong&gt;there was no difference in the risks of heart disease and stroke between people with the lowest and highest intakes of saturated fat&lt;/strong&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.abstract&quot;&gt;results&lt;/a&gt; were published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=carbs-against-cardio&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; quotes a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fammed.usouthal.edu/JournalClub/Journal%20Club%2032609/WtLossWithLowCarbMediterraneanOrLowFatDiet--NEJM.pdf&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; in the New England Journal of Medicine which showed that subjects who were on the low-carb diet &lt;strong&gt;ate the most saturated fat&lt;/strong&gt; (compared to those on the low-fat diet and the medditerranean diet) &lt;strong&gt;and ended up with the healthiest ratio of HDL to LDL cholesterol&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As quoted by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascular_disease_controversy&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, similar conclusions were reached by popular science writers: Gary Taubes (&quot;Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease, or any other chronic disease of civilization.&quot;) and Micheal Pollan (&quot;The amount of saturated fat in the diet probably may have little if any bearing on the risk of heart disease...&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is: there appears to be no clear relationship between the risk of heart disease and the amount of saturated fat intake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7970" LastEditorUserId="7970" LastEditDate="2012-09-11T12:43:19.160" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T12:43:19.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1414" CreationDate="2012-09-11T11:54:31.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, it hasn't.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A team led by Bravata, a senior affiliate with Stanford’s Center for&#xA;  Health Policy, and Crystal Smith-Spangler, MD, MS, an instructor in&#xA;  the school’s Division of General Medical Disciplines and a&#xA;  physician-investigator at VA Palo Alto Health Care System, did the&#xA;  most comprehensive meta-analysis to date of existing studies comparing&#xA;  organic and conventional foods. They did not find strong evidence that&#xA;  organic foods are more nutritious or carry fewer health risks than&#xA;  conventional alternatives&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After analyzing the data, the researchers found little significant&#xA;  difference in health benefits between organic and conventional foods.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;No consistent differences were seen in the vitamin content of organic&#xA;  products&lt;/strong&gt;, and only one nutrient — phosphorus — was significantly&#xA;  higher in organic versus conventionally grown produce (and the&#xA;  researchers note that because few people have phosphorous deficiency,&#xA;  this has little clinical significance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2012/september/organic.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stanford School of Medicine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The referenced study is &lt;a href=&quot;http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1355685&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Are Organic Foods Safer or Healthier Than Conventional Alternatives?: A Systematic Review&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Crystal Smith-Spangler, MD, MS; Margaret L. Brandeau, PhD; Grace E. Hunter, BA; J. Clay Bavinger, BA; Maren Pearson, BS; Paul J. Eschbach; Vandana Sundaram, MPH; Hau Liu, MD, MS, MBA, MPH; Patricia Schirmer, MD; Christopher Stave, MLS; Ingram Olkin, PhD; and Dena M. Bravata, MD, MS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T11:54:31.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10853" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10858" CreationDate="2012-09-11T12:24:58.423" Score="14" ViewCount="1368" Body="&lt;p&gt;I spotted this BBC headline today: &quot;Scientists say drinking beer will not lead to beer belly&quot;. I have always believed that there is a clear relationship between drinking beer and &lt;em&gt;developing&lt;/em&gt; the so-called beer belly. According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v63/n9/full/ejcn200939a.html&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt;, however, there is no such relation. Has anyone heard about other similar studies that address this question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7970" LastEditorUserId="7970" LastEditDate="2012-09-11T12:46:37.953" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T17:48:43.550" Title="Is a &quot;beer belly&quot; caused by drinking beer?" Tags="|nutrition|beer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10853" CreationDate="2012-09-11T17:48:43.550" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know at least one other study: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v57/n10/pdf/1601678a.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;Beer and obesity: a cross-sectional study&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, published in &quot;European Journal of Clinical Nutrition&quot; in 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study was conducted in the Czech Republic and tried to find a relationship between beer consumption and obesity (more precisely waist-to-hip-ratio and body mass index). It is quite interesting to read and I don't want to pick out any specific parts of their discussion, but the conclusion is: &quot;In terms of moderate beer drinking, our results are consistent with the literature, which suggests that the association between beer and obesity, if it exists, is probably weak.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also refer to several other studies with similar or diverting conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T17:48:43.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1414" CreationDate="2012-09-11T18:10:34.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Depends on the food-- Organic Tomatoes have more Vitamin C&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1750-3841.2006.00196.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A large review in 2006&lt;/a&gt; showed that different vegetables have different contents depending on the farming practices used (ie, organic vs non-organic).  Most helpful here, including sources, is Table 2 of that study.  In that table, the following statements describe the results of various fruits and vegetables, as well as providing references to each claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/j03v5.png&quot; alt=&quot;Various food contents vs growing styles&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as the chart shows, organic tomatoes have more vitamin C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recent claim, as reported by the NYT and NPR, glosses over these levels of minute variation.  Note also, that &lt;a href=&quot;http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1355685&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Stanford study&lt;/a&gt;, linked by @vartec and the foundation of the NPR article, discusses health effects in humans, &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; vitamin content in the fruits themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusions of that review did mirror those of the Standford study, notably:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This review illustrates that tradeoffs exist between organic and conventional food production. Organic fruits and vegetables rely upon far fewer pesticides than do conventional fruits and vegetables, which results in fewer pesticide residues, but may also stimulate the production of naturally occurring toxins if organic crops are subject to increased pest pressures from insects, weeds, or plant diseases. Because organic fruits and vegetables do not use pesticides or synthetic fertilizers, they have more biochemical energy to synthesize beneficial secondary plant metabolites such as polyphenolic antioxidants as well as naturally occurring toxins. In some cases, food animals produced organically have the potential to possess higher rates of bacterial contamination than those produced conventionally since organic production generally prohibits antibiotic use. The prohibition of antimicrobial agents also explains the apparent lower incidence of antimicrobial resistance in bacterial isolates of organic food animals, as some studies have shown a correlation between increased rates of antibiotic use and increased antimicrobial resistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, organic tomatoes have more vitamins, the tradeoffs for producing and eating them may not be good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it's important to note that the review referenced in @ilvel's answer mimics the results of the 2006 study I posted, namely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xgy3a.png&quot; alt=&quot;case performance summary&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this chart, note that there is a difference between organic and nonorganic foods as relates to vitamin C concentration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2158" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T18:10:34.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10831" CreationDate="2012-09-11T20:35:00.497" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;No it wasn't, While the terrorists used the Gregorian calender to communicate the date of the attack, they used it in its form known throughout the rest of the world: dd/mm/yyyy and not the American form mm/dd/yyyy. So that it forms the 11/9 and not 9/11. Here is how Mohamed Atta transmitted the date of the attack to the operatives (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/09/60ii/main524947.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Saudis were arriving in the U.S. in July, Atta was taking off, flying into Madrid and driving 500 miles to a Spanish coastal resort for a working vacation. Joining him was Ramzi Binalshibh with a message from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. The final date for the operation was in Atta's hands. Atta had Shaikh Mohammed's complete trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, on Aug. 29, the phone rang in Binalshibh's Hamburg apartment at three in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was Atta with an important, but cryptic message: &amp;quot;He said to me, 'One of my friends related a riddle to me and I cannot solve it, and I called you so that you can solve it for me.'&amp;quot; Binalshibh is heard saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Atta goes, &lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Two sticks, a dash and a cake with a stick down.&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Binalshibh said, &amp;quot;I said to him, 'Is this the riddle? You wake me from a deep sleep to tell me this riddle? Two sticks and I do not know what?'&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, Yosri Fouda says, Binalshibh realized what Atta meant. So he says to him, &amp;quot;OK. Tell your friend, he has nothing to worry about. It's such a sweet riddle.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Binalshibh explained it: &amp;quot;The two sticks represent the number 11, then the dash, and then the cake from which a stick dangles represents number nine. Thus, the picture becomes complete: the 11th of September.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Binalshibh left Hamburg on Wednesday, Sept. 5, for Pakistan. From there, he sent a messenger into Afghanistan with news for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Osama bin Laden: Tuesday, Sept. 11, would be the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T20:25:47.010" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10862" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-11T20:36:20.620" Score="19" ViewCount="2624" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often see claims like this repeated, &lt;em&gt;&quot;six out of the Ten 9/11 Comission members have gone on record since to admit there was a U.S. government cover-up.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Any truth to it? This last time I saw it was on this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151072659151446&amp;amp;set=a.10150891164271446.416309.190824176445&amp;amp;type=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Facebook post&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/ConspiracyTheoryWithJesseVentura&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura on truTV&lt;/a&gt;. The page has 209,000 followers as of September 11, 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rKpMc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;9/11 truther propaganda.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this claim is rooted &lt;a href=&quot;http://beyondleftright.com/topics/september-11/1495-6-of-10-911-commissioners-say-qofficial-storyq-a-lie&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in this webpage.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-09-12T16:02:33.793" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T07:55:41.720" Title="Have six of the ten 9/11 commission members said that the US government was covering up something about the 9/11 attacks?" Tags="|united-states|9-11|terrorism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10864" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-11T22:38:15.983" Score="30" ViewCount="4698" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2012/09/10/pat-robertson-reminisces-about-the-days-when-wife-beating-was-a-ok/&quot;&gt;700 Club’s “Bring It On”&lt;/a&gt; segment where viewers ask Robertson questions, one man wondered how he should go about repairing his marriage with a wife who “insults” him and once tried to attack him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Well, you could become a Muslim and you could beat her,” Robertson responded. The co-host interjected, &quot; But, in lieu of that.&quot; Prompting Robertson, &quot;You don't want to go to Saudi Arabia?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it legal for muslims to beat their wives in Saudi Arabia?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="22115" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T21:53:44.383" LastActivityDate="2020-06-10T15:14:20.017" Title="Is it legal for a Muslim husband to beat his wife in Saudi Arabia?" Tags="|law|marriage|saudi-arabia|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10862" CreationDate="2012-09-11T23:09:20.223" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was one commission member, Max Cleland, who &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.democracynow.org/2004/3/23/the_white_house_has_played_cover&quot;&gt;&quot;blasted&quot; the White House&lt;/a&gt; and claimed a cover up. He withdrew as a commission member and was replaced by Bob Kerrey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from Max, I can find no evidence of any of the other members &quot;going on record&quot; to admit a government cover-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf&quot;&gt;full 9/11 report is available online&lt;/a&gt; (PDF) and the commission members are Thomas H. Kean, Lee H. Hamilton, Richard Ben-Veniste, Bob Kerrey, Fred F. Fielding, John F. Lehman, Jamie S. Gorelick, Timothy J. Roemer, Slade Gorton and James R.Thompson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastActivityDate="2012-09-11T23:09:20.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10696" CreationDate="2012-09-12T00:04:37.763" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to depend on who you ask, and they will depend on different interpretations of the same data gathered since &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help_America_Vote_Act&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HAVA&lt;/a&gt; went into effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt; Photo ID does not seem to lead to minority voter suppression, but it does lead to drops in lower income voter participation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lott&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Lott&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://fedsoc.server326.com/Publications/White%20Papers/Increasing%20the%20Security%20of%20Elections.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Federalist Society&lt;/a&gt;, voter fraud is a known problem, with increasing persecutions and dire consequences, while increasing voter ID requirements actually seems to produce more voters (and campaign finance laws reduce voter turnout).  From John Lott:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results provide some evidence of vote fraud and that regulations that prevent fraud&#xA;  can actually increase the voter participation rate. It is hard to see any evidence that voting &#xA;  regulations differentially harm either minorities, the elderly, or the poor.  While this study &#xA;  examines a broad range of voting regulations, it is still too early to evaluate any possible&#xA;  impact of mandatory photo IDs on U.S. elections.  What can be said is that the non-photo&#xA;  ID regulations that are already in place have not had the negative impacts that opponents&#xA;  predicted.  The evidence provided here also found that campaign finance regulations&#xA;  generally reduced voter turnout. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, according to this one (conservative) commentator, non-photo ID laws do not affect turnout, while the jury is still out on whether or not photo ID laws do affect turnout.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Lott's arguments seem to mimic those of @user1873; namely, that participation increased, so therefore there could not have been a suppression of the vote.  Later in the paper, he states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How did these laws impacted voter participation rates? As a first crude measure, I only &#xA;  considered states that had changed their laws over time to compare how the participation &#xA;  rates changed when the laws changed.  Obviously this simple comparison ignores that&#xA;  many other factors are changing, but it at least compares only the same states over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on to provide a number of other metrics, but they all seem to rely on the assumption that the introduction of a voter ID law should result in a lower number of participating voters.  To me, this seems like a shaky assumption, when such a small percentage of potentially eligible voters is participating in any given election.  If only 50% (or fewer) of people are voting, then increasing to 54% does not mean that some people were disenfranchised, it just means that more people decided to go vote.  People could still have been disenfranchised, and not reflected in final vote tallies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&amp;amp;crawlid=1&amp;amp;doctype=cite&amp;amp;docid=33%20J.%20Legis.%20268&amp;amp;srctype=smi&amp;amp;srcid=3B15&amp;amp;key=74757d4b8a0ac12bffab7763efb3510d&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Richard Atkinson argued in 2007&lt;/a&gt; that the logic in Lott's article is incorrect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper finds that photo ID requirements fail to fulfill their primary purpose (the prevention of fraud); in fact, photo ID requirements decrease legitimate voter turnout (and therefore may increase the impact of fraud)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it's paywalled, like many other legal documents on the subject, which limits my ability to present the results here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084598&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alvarez et al&lt;/a&gt; noted similar effects, going further into the data than Lott:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Looking first at trends in the aggregate data, we find no evidence that voter identification requirements reduce participation. Using individual-level data from the Current Population Survey across these elections, however, we find that the strictest forms of voter identification requirements - combination requirements of presenting an identification card and positively matching one's signature with a signature either on file or on the identification card, as well as requirements to show picture identification - have a negative impact on the participation of registered voters relative to the weakest requirement, stating one's name. We also find evidence that the stricter voter identification requirements depress turnout to a greater extent for less educated and lower income populations, for both minorities and non-minorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure 5 of the paper shows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JgPub.png&quot; alt=&quot;voter suppression by ID&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(X-Axis categories are: State Name, Sign Name, Signature Match, ID Requested, ID Required, ID Required + Signature Match, Photo ID Requested, Photo ID Required)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that this second paper acknowledges the incompleteness of the aggregate data in describing voter behavior, and then proceeds to address that lack in a closer examination of individual behavior, I believe they have produced a more robust argument that stringent voter ID laws lead to voter suppression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even so, they proceed to Figure 6, which shows that there's no correlation between race and voter suppression, and suggest that it is actually whites who are more disenfranchised than non-whites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WvSWK.png&quot; alt=&quot;whites v non-whites&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, however, the very large error bars for the minority voters-- this gap is probably why the problem is so difficult to resolve.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even so, the authors claim that it is not &lt;strong&gt;race&lt;/strong&gt; that determines real suppression, but &lt;strong&gt;income&lt;/strong&gt;.  They continue, with a later figure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0dgul.png&quot; alt=&quot;income based suppression&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that people with $50k or less in income have a ~72% chance to vote with just stating their name, and ~66% chance to vote if required to present photo ID, compared to 85% to 83% reduction for those making $750k.  To me, that's a very significant effect, and clearly demonstrates that photo ID requirements will reduce turnout of lower-income voters.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2158" LastEditorUserId="2158" LastEditDate="2012-09-12T00:16:43.307" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T00:16:43.307" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10864" CreationDate="2012-09-12T01:34:34.487" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is at least one very public &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3866969.stm&quot;&gt;case&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mohammed al-Fallatta had been sentenced to six months and 300 lashes after repeatedly hitting TV presenter Rania al-Baz's head against the floor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite difficult to find information on this topic. The sources I have found that confirm or deny that you may or may not beat your wife are less than respectable. This single case at least shows that you may not beat your wife severely if she is famous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-21T04:01:46.207" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T04:01:46.207" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10864" CreationDate="2012-09-12T03:51:07.873" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, if you accept as correct the recent English translation of the Quran. However, one has to keep in mind that translation of 1500 years old Arabic into English is not clear-cut (as outlined by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/2417/dave&quot;&gt;dave&lt;/a&gt;) and thus the answer greatly depends on that assumption and the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9788/does-the-quran-advise-men-to-beat-their-wives-if-they-disobey-them?lq=1&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though it seems that the basic laws of Saudi Arabia are unclear about that. The article 7 of the law says that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Article 7&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Government in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia derives its authority from&#xA;  the Book of God and the Sunna of the Prophet (PBUH), which are the&#xA;  ultimate sources of reference for this Law and the other laws of the&#xA;  State.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, article 8 says that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Article 8&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Governance in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is based on justice, shura&#xA;  (consultation) and equality according to Islamic Sharia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By searching a little bit deeper, one can read this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quran verse 4:34  Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah&#xA;  has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance]&#xA;  from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding&#xA;  in [the husband's] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those&#xA;  [wives] from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if&#xA;  they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], &lt;strong&gt;strike them&lt;/strong&gt;. But if&#xA;  they obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah&#xA;  is ever Exalted and Grand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer depend on your interpretation of the scripture, but to me it seems an evidence that &quot;strike them&quot; grant that right. However, according to article 10, a man beating his wife should do it by caring for her. Therefore, one could be punished by the law for excessive beating and/or beating without a reason (acceptable by the interpretation of the Quran). That could be an explanation to the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3866969.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;case&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; given by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/6862/user1873&quot;&gt;@user1873&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Article 10&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The State shall aspire to promote family bonds and Arab-Islamic&#xA;  values. It shall take care of all individuals and provide the right&#xA;  conditions for the growth of their talents and skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The laws of Saudi Arabia can be found on their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saudiembassy.net/about/country-information/laws/The_Basic_Law_Of_Governance.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;USA ambassy website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Stories and other interesting links&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;hr/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2009-05-10/world/saudi.court.wife.slapping_1_saudi-women-saudi-arabia-domestic-violence?_s=PM:WORLD&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Saudi judge says it's ok&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_domestic_violence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The section &quot;Undesirablity of beating&quot; show some sources supporting the claim&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;ps: It seems to me that a man has the right the beat his women to the same strength factor some parents would do to their children in eastern countries (without harm nor considerable pain) - I don't know if I am using the correct English formulation though, and it might be a dangerous comparison.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T17:19:29.197" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10875" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-12T06:19:49.903" Score="19" ViewCount="5960" Body="&lt;p&gt;In particular I am interested with one specific claim made by Jody Wells Memorial Prize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is his claim true and reasonable? I'll explain what I mean by reasonable latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The organisers of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/award.htm&quot;&gt;Jody  Wells  Memorial Prize&lt;/a&gt; say it hasn't:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rules for isolation of a retrovirus were thoroughly discussed at&#xA;  the Pasteur Institute, Paris, in 1973, and are the logical minimum&#xA;  requirements for establishing the independent existence of HIV. They&#xA;  are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Culture of putatively infected tissue.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Purification of specimens by density gradient ultracentrifugation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Electron micrographs of particles exhibiting the morphological characteristics &#xA;  and dimensions (100-120 nm) of retroviral particles at&#xA;  the sucrose (or percoll) density of 1.16 gm/ml and containing nothing&#xA;  else, not even particles of other morphologies or dimensions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Proof that the particles contain reverse transcriptase.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Analysis of the particles' proteins and RNA and proof that these are unique.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Proof that 1-5 are a property only of putatively infected tissues and can not be induced in control cultures. These are&#xA;  identical cultures, that is, tissues obtained from matched, unhealthy&#xA;  subjects and cultured under identical conditions differing only in&#xA;  that they are not putatively infected with a retrovirus.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Proof that the particles are infectious, that is when PURE particles are introduced into an uninfected culture or animal, the&#xA;  identical particle is obtained as shown by repeating steps 1-5.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if the article is misleading, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was the HIV virus isolated?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are the 7 rules cited in the competition reasonable? Can scientists do these for other viruses? Or have the authors just created an arbitrarily impossible step to make a point?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, say humans can isolate most virus but not HIV, then the claim is reasonable. However, if the 7 rules is equivalent of finding actual photograph of HIV virus hugging Elvis, which is not doable for all other virus or not, then the rules are not reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I really want to know whether HIV causes AIDS or not, I am not asking this. I am asking for one of their subclaims that is much easier to verify or check. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make this clear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should clarify that. In this question I am asking a specific claim. The website requires 7 rules to satisfy him that he claimed not to have been full filled. I want to know whether the claim is &lt;strong&gt;true&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;reasonable&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-12T12:54:31.657" LastActivityDate="2021-01-20T12:05:25.007" Title="Has HIV ever been isolated?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|hiv-aids|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2181" CreationDate="2012-09-12T08:44:56.073" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wonder why nobody mention Eduardo Saverin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillmatthews/2012/05/23/in-praise-of-eduardo-saverins-tax-avoidance/2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.forbes.com/sites/merrillmatthews/2012/05/23/in-praise-of-eduardo-saverins-tax-avoidance/2/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes he said he doesn't do it for tax. Look at other answers why. In short, tax laws are so vague that it judge people based on the &quot;intent&quot; of the person. Hence, openly admitting that he lets go his citizenship to avoid tax is politically costly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only the productive are forced to part with huge money they worked hard for, they have to lie their way just keep what's theirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is some snippets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So when Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin decided to give up his&#xA;  U.S. citizenship, and &lt;strong&gt;by so doing avoided paying millions of dollars&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  in U.S. taxes, New York Senator Chuck Schumer attacked him for&#xA;  “selling out the country. ”  I can’t recall Schumer being equally&#xA;  critical, or critical at all for that matter, of his above-mentioned&#xA;  congressional colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In his own defense, Saverin &lt;strong&gt;denies&lt;/strong&gt; that he left the U.S. to avoid&#xA;  paying taxes and stresses that he paid all applicable taxes at the&#xA;  time, including an “exit tax.”  He points out that he moved to low-tax&#xA;  Singapore in 2009 and filed to give up his U.S. citizenship in January&#xA;  of 2011, which became official last September.  But even if he didn’t&#xA;  intend to avoid the bigger tax bill that would come after the Facebook&#xA;  IPO, he did, and that’s what has Schumer and Pennsylvania Senator Bob&#xA;  Casey — and maybe even House Speaker John Boehner — so upset.  Who’s&#xA;  gonna pay for all those stimulus bills and spending sprees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorDisplayName="user4951" LastEditDate="2012-09-13T11:03:07.083" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T11:03:07.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10877" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2181" CreationDate="2012-09-12T10:09:51.883" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Celebrities and billionares:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That is the lesson from the disclosure that &lt;strong&gt;Eduardo Saverin&lt;/strong&gt;, the&#xA;  30-year-old billionaire who helped found Facebook, has renounced his&#xA;  U.S. citizenship to become a resident of Singapore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Singapore offers huge tax advantages for people like Mr. Saverin,&#xA;  whose wealth is primarily in the form of capital gains. The Southeast&#xA;  Asian city-state has no capital-gains tax and its top income-tax rate&#xA;  is 20%—compared with rates of 15% and 35%, respectively, in the U.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jet Li&lt;/strong&gt; became a citizen of Singapore in 2011, and while the kung fu superstar did not say whether he had renounced either his Chinese&#xA;  or American citizenship, Singapore law forbids dual citizenship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The act of expatriating isn't new, whether for tax or other reasons.&#xA;  Global investing titan &lt;strong&gt;John Templeton&lt;/strong&gt; famously gave up his U.S.&#xA;  citizenship in the 1960s to become a citizen of the Bahamas, although&#xA;  his family says it wasn't for tax reasons. Biographers of deceased&#xA;  director &lt;strong&gt;John Huston&lt;/strong&gt; and the late actor &lt;strong&gt;Yul Brynner&lt;/strong&gt; report&#xA;  that each gave up his American citizenship in the 1960s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303879604577410021186373802.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WSJ&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also long list on Wiki: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_United_States_citizens_who_relinquished_their_nationality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;List of former United States citizens who relinquished their nationality&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for numbers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rich Americans renouncing U.S. citizenship rose sevenfold&lt;/strong&gt; since UBS AG&#xA;  (UBSN) whistle-blower Bradley Birkenfeld triggered a crackdown on tax&#xA;  evasion four years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About 1,780 expatriates gave up their nationality at U.S. embassies&#xA;  last year, up from 235 in 2008, according to Andy Sundberg, secretary&#xA;  of Geneva’s Overseas American Academy, citing figures from the&#xA;  government’s Federal Register. The embassy in Bern, the Swiss capital,&#xA;  redeployed staff to clear a backlog as Americans queued to relinquish&#xA;  their passports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-01/wealthy-americans-queue-to-give-up-passports-in-swiss-capital.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bloomberg&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-09-12T10:31:56.573" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T10:31:56.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10880" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-12T14:03:20.340" Score="6" ViewCount="3740" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/308115-how-use-apple-cider-vinegar-to-lower-high-blood-pressure/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Livestrong&lt;/a&gt; claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can now lower your blood pressure by consuming apple cider vinegar. Other herbs, foods and dietary changes can assist in increasing the effectiveness of the vinegar. You can take a shot of it diluted in water or use it as a seasoning on uncooked or lightly cooked foods. The reason why the vinegar is best uncooked is because it retains its nutrients and fermentation when not cooked above 116 degrees F.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/diet/apple-cider-vinegar?page=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Web MD&lt;/a&gt; reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another study in rats found that vinegar could lower high blood pressure. A large observational study also found that people who ate oil and vinegar dressing on salads five to six times a week had lower rates of heart disease than people who didn't. However, it's far from clear that the vinegar was the reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I cannot find a study on humans. So can taking a bit of apple cider vinegar a day lower blood pressure in humans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7051" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T17:44:24.093" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T17:44:24.093" Title="Does taking honey and apple cider vinegar lower blood pressure in humans?" Tags="|natural-remedies|honey|livestrong|vinegar|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10875" CreationDate="2012-09-12T14:53:03.850" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2387184/&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; mentions that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HIV-1 transmission in humans results most commonly from virus exposure at mucosal surfaces (1). &lt;strong&gt;For practical reasons, it has been impossible to identify and characterize by direct analytical methods HIV-1 at or near the moment of transmission&lt;/strong&gt;, yet it is this virus that antibody or cell-based vaccines must interdict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which would seem to imply that the strict rules shown in the question have not been satisfied. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC113185/&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; the methods section contains subsections on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Virus and cell culture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Endogenous RT assay (Reverse Transcriptase)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sucrose gradient analysis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Electron microscopy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which seems to satisfy the majority of the requirements. They don't show re-infection of a human host with the cultured virus particles, but that would hardly be ethical to carry out! (And might not happen even if you did, due to the virus being grown in vitro for several generations, the virus might have lost the ability to infect in vivo.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T14:53:03.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10882" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-12T15:04:32.923" Score="16" ViewCount="1444" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia article about Myopia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Large amounts of near work while wearing glasses can be very detrimental to the eyes and can be a cause of worsening nearsightedness.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;   &lt;strong&gt;The best way to avoid needing new lenses is&lt;/strong&gt; by reducing the amount of near work, which forces the eyes into a continuous near-focusing position that eventually causes or increases myopia, by taking frequent breaks from near work, and &lt;strong&gt;by only wearing glasses when they are needed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the article doesn't put any reference to scientific article to support this claim. Does anyone know any research confirming this? Does it mean it's best for people with low degree of myopia to read without using their glasses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8569" LastEditorUserId="8569" LastEditDate="2012-09-12T17:27:15.590" LastActivityDate="2020-11-14T13:35:26.653" Title="Is using glasses for reading harmful for people with myopia?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10836" CreationDate="2012-09-12T18:53:06.483" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The the factors that determine nest site location (for honey bees these are well understood, less so for wasps, though things like protection, height off ground, etc. clearly play a part) are the primary reason wasp colonies appear in the same sites year after year. On shorter time scales (for example right after removing a nest) navigational cause will cause surviving nestmates to reappear in the location of the nest. In neither case (and especially in the former) do pheromones play a big role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, like honey bees, some wasps do leave a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0003347269901225&quot;&gt;&quot;footprint&quot; pheromone&lt;/a&gt; on heavily trafficked areas around the entrances to their nests, which attracts returning &lt;em&gt;foragers&lt;/em&gt;, and which may linger and continue to attract the interest of wasps (of any nest) for a time after a nest has been removed. It is unclear however whether it would attract a wasp &lt;em&gt;founding&lt;/em&gt; a new nest, since an existing nest would be of no interest to them (quite the opposite, actually).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it's unlikely that pheromones are responsible for the reappearance of a nest in an a previously occupied location; but doing something to clean up or mask  any odors left behind after the removal of a nest may help reduce visits by inquisitive foragers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5206" LastEditorUserId="5206" LastEditDate="2012-09-12T19:03:44.240" LastActivityDate="2012-09-12T19:03:44.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10522" CreationDate="2012-09-12T19:28:11.750" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assange was wanted for questioning. The original prosecutor dropped the &lt;em&gt;investigation&lt;/em&gt; into rape, which was misreported as &quot;charges&quot;, by Assange himself (see Jack of Kent link on my site)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was appealed on behalf of the plaitiff by Claes Borgstorm, her målsägarbiträde (no direct English equivalent - a sort of advisor/counsellor.  In Sweden, this is a standard process called &quot;överprövning av åklagarbeslut&quot; and Google does a decentish translation of the government page (link from the 4 corners page)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2010, 12% of these appeals resulted in a change of decision.  In Assange's case, the next-most senior prosecutor reversed the decision and took over the investigation, which was re-started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Sweden, as observed by other posters, the decision to charge comes very late - almost immediately before trial.  The High Court Summary gives a clear explanation at the top of page 4 (link all over our site but esp &quot;Resources&quot; and &quot;4 Corners&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have taken these sources from a website that I admin, and the above links came from our article on the &quot;4 corners&quot; show that recently aired on ABC Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The website has abundant links to primary sources and quotes them where necessary. Feel free to com and have a rummage around.  The &quot;Resources&quot; page used to live here on my old blog, and was linked to by Charon QC on his blog page here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://charonqc.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/lawcast-219-carl-gardner-on-the-assange-asylum-issues/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lawcast 219: Carl Gardner on the Assange asylum issues&lt;/a&gt;, under the heading &quot;Assange case: a quick reference of legal issues for journalists (with sources)&quot;.  That page has now moved to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikiwatch.org.uk/resources/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WikiWatch&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8570" LastEditorUserId="892" LastEditDate="2012-09-28T15:28:22.027" LastActivityDate="2012-09-28T15:28:22.027" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26521" CreationDate="2012-09-12T19:48:27.583" Score="24" ViewCount="1294" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read a pretty shocking blog post called &lt;a href=&quot;http://trojanbadger.com/2011/04/14/are-you-organ-donor/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Are you an organ donor?&#xA;After you read this, you will change your mind.&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you wish to be an organ donor? I'm sure many of you have answered yes, thinking that this is an honorable and responsible practice. I don't blame you. I used to think so also. After all, if I am dead, what do I need my organs for anymore?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This presumes, of course, that I am actually dead. There's the rub. This will probably shock you, but if so, you need to be shocked: There is no such thing as a dead organ donor [...] You are alive [...] you are very much alive. Your organs are, quite literally, cut out of your body while you are still breathing, and your heart is still beating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to describe several cases where organ donors were pre-maturely terminated and how the primary motivation for this practice isn't in the interest of saving lives but the huge profit that comes from performing a transplant procedure (side-stepping the fact that human organs cannot legally be sold).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are some pretty serious claims. Enough that, if valid, I would personally consider removing my organ donor status, as I'm sure many people would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure from a utilitarian point of view, it would be easy to argue that overall more lives are saved from this practice, but I'm not interested in that. I want to come at this from the point of view of the common &lt;a href=&quot;http://quotationsbook.com/quote/45591/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;adage&lt;/a&gt;: &amp;quot;that it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer&amp;quot;, i.e. without equating lives to one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are people who would have otherwise have gone on to live some semblance of a normal life sometimes euthanized due to their organ donor status?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="898" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T09:08:53.623" Title="Might organ donors be harvested when they could have otherwise lived?" Tags="|medical-science|mortality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10887" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10888" CreationDate="2012-09-13T11:00:19.367" Score="-2" ViewCount="5236" Body="&lt;p&gt;US Ambassador to Libya, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Stevens_%28ambassador%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Christopher Stevens&lt;/a&gt; was killed in one of the recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_U.S._diplomatic_missions_attacks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;attacks against the US Diplomatic Missions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nopcradio.com/nopc-news/news/67-ambassador-stevens-was-raped-before-he-was-killed.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NOPCRadio claim&lt;/a&gt; that he was raped before his death.  Here is a report that claims the same from &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;js=n&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;layout=2&amp;amp;eotf=1&amp;amp;u=http://www.tayyar.org/Tayyar/News/PoliticalNews/ar-LB/usa-killed-lybia-zek-970.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lebonon News&lt;/a&gt; (via google translate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Actually I just realized that the comment comes from a very anti islamic site and hence biased. However, it's being spread on facebook and most people that read it believe it. Currently I do not think it's true. However, politically incorrect facts is often hidden and I am still not sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report comes from Lebanese media.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tayyar.org/Tayyar/News/PoliticalNews/ar-LB/usa-killed-lybia-zek-970.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tayyar.org/Tayyar/News/PoliticalNews/ar-LB/usa-killed-lybia-zek-970.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use google or some other translator to read it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-09-14T13:13:31.887" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T13:13:31.887" Title="Was Ambassador Christopher Stevens raped before his death?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10887" CreationDate="2012-09-13T11:15:40.313" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Libyan doctor who treated Mr Stevens in hospital said &lt;strong&gt;he had died&#xA;  of severe asphyxiation, apparently from smoke inhalation, with no&#xA;  other injuries&lt;/strong&gt;, and that he had tried for 90 minutes to revive him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He was the only American brought into the Benghazi Medical Centre and&#xA;  initially nobody realised he was the ambassador, Ziad Abu Zeid told&#xA;  the Associated Press news agency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19570254&quot;&gt;BBC News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T11:15:40.313" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10889" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-13T13:47:05.587" Score="11" ViewCount="1855" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/suggestive-selling.asp#axzz26MiMO9AP&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Suggestive selling&lt;/a&gt; (or &quot;on-selling&quot; or &quot;up-selling&quot;) is a technique employed by a sales clerk with the goal of increasing the total sale amount (basket size).  The classic example is the McDonalds' cashier saying &quot;Would you like fries with that?&quot; Fries, being a legitimate related item, are a valid &quot;up-sell&quot; on a lunch order.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://foreword.mbsbooks.com/retailers-profit-from-suggestive-selling#gsc.tab=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;book&quot;&gt;Independent Retailer article&lt;/a&gt; makes the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lesson here is that suggestive selling not only works, but can add significant percentage to store sales volume and margin. When practiced consistently, suggestive selling not only adds additional sales and profits, but also demonstrates improved service and therefore VALUE to the customer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's intuitively that it could be helpful in certain establishments such as restaurants (&quot;May I suggest a glass of our 40 year old port with that cheese platter?&quot;) or clothing stores (&quot;This tie would go perfectly with that suit.&quot;) as the salesperson is suggesting legitimate upgrades to the purchase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I've noticed that recently there is a trend in gas stations to suggestive sell unrelated items for every transaction.  If I go into the gas station to buy a pack of gum, I'm persistently asked &quot;Would you like fresh coffee or Lotto with that?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't be the only person that finds it annoying. In fact, I've stopped buying my gum at the gas station. I'll actually make another stop at a variety store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Restaurant Doctor article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.restaurantdoctor.com/articles/1nosell.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Building Sales Without Selling&lt;/a&gt;, seems to support my view that S.S. can be detrimental (for restaurants, at least).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does evidence support this sales technique for retail?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to see a study that examines average basket size with and without small item suggestive selling.  Furthermore, we should examine total customer count with and without the up-selling technique.  Does average basket size increase? Does customer count decrease? and how does this relate to total revenue?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="880" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-02-24T01:19:50.993" LastActivityDate="2022-08-12T02:30:00.067" Title="Does suggestive selling work in small retail?" Tags="|psychology|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6118" CreationDate="2012-09-13T14:30:56.770" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;The essence of this conspiracy theory seems to be that the BBC was part of a greater conspiracy of 9/11 in which reports were scripted in advance of actual phenomenon, and in particular that the WTC-7 building fell as part of a planned demolition, and the BBC report of the building falling came from a script prepared for the conspiracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: While it would be impossible to prove this, one way or another, to the satisfaction of some, I believe that the following ought to be a persuasive argument for most that a conspiracy is highly improbable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Evidence in support of the claim&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foremost, the only evidence in support of the claim is the reporting of the fall of WTC-7 around 15 minutes before it actually fell. This is uncontroverted; the BBC acknowledges that this reporting happened in advance. This is the only thing that could be construed as direct evidence of conspiracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is suspicious circumstantial evidence. Notably, some believed reporter &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=125220&quot;&gt;Jane Standley had disappeared&lt;/a&gt;, the transmission of Ms. Standley was abruptly cut off, the original BBC tapes were lost. As well, the only reports of damage to WTC-7 were fire, and supposedly no steel building had ever collapsed from fire, the owner Larry Silverstein (who had apparently recently purchased and insured the buildings) had told the fire department to &quot;pull it&quot; before the building collapsed, and the building housed a number of US government departments including a floor dedicated to US federal agencies such as the CIA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Disappearance of Ms. Standley&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that Ms. Standley is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wfp.org/people/jane-standley&quot;&gt;working at the World Food Programme&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Statement by BBC&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Richard Porter of the BBC responded to the concerns about a conspiracy theory &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/02/part_of_the_conspiracy.html&quot;&gt;with a post on February 27, 2007&lt;/a&gt;. In it, he states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We're not part of a conspiracy. Nobody told us what to say or do on September 11th. We didn't get told in advance that buildings were&#xA;  going to fall down. We didn't receive press releases or scripts in&#xA;  advance of events happening.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the chaos and confusion of the day, I'm quite sure we said things which turned out to be untrue or inaccurate - but at the time&#xA;  were based on the best information we had. We did what we always did -&#xA;  sourced our reports, used qualifying words like &quot;apparently&quot; or &quot;it's&#xA;  reported&quot; or &quot;we're hearing&quot; and constantly tried to check and double&#xA;  check the information we were receiving.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Our reporter Jane Standley was in New York on the day of the attacks, and like everyone who was there, has the events seared on her&#xA;  mind. I've spoken to her today and unsurprisingly, she doesn't&#xA;  remember minute-by-minute what she said or did - like everybody else&#xA;  that day she was trying to make sense of what she was seeing; what she&#xA;  was being told; and what was being told to her by colleagues in London&#xA;  who were monitoring feeds and wires services.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We no longer have the original tapes of our 9/11 coverage (for reasons of cock-up, not conspiracy). So if someone has got a recording&#xA;  of our output, I'd love to get hold of it. We do have the tapes for&#xA;  our sister channel News 24, but they don't help clear up the issue one&#xA;  way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If we reported the building had collapsed before it had done so, it would have been an error - no more than that.&lt;/strong&gt; As one of the comments&#xA;  on You Tube says today &quot;so the guy in the studio didn't quite know&#xA;  what was going on? Woah, that totally proves conspiracy... &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Follow-up by BBC&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, of course, not the end of the story for the BBC. A further &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/07/controversy_conspiracies_iii.html&quot;&gt;post by Mike Rudin, on July 2, 2008,&lt;/a&gt; includes the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The mystery of the missing tapes didn't last that long. One very experienced film librarian kindly agreed to have another look for us one night. There are more than a quarter of a million tapes just in the Fast Store basement at Television Centre. The next morning I got a call to say the tapes had been found. They'd just been put back on the wrong shelf - 2002 rather than 2001. Not so sinister after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The internet movie Loose Change has been viewed by more than 100 million people according to its makers and it asks this question in&#xA;  the latest film release: &quot;Where did CNN and the BBC get their&#xA;  information especially considering the building was still standing&#xA;  directly behind their reporters?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It turns out that the respected news agency Reuters picked up an&#xA;  incorrect report and passed it on. They have issued this statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;On 11 September 2001 Reuters incorrectly reported that one of the&#xA;  buildings at the New York World Trade Center, 7WTC, had collapsed&#xA;  before it actually did. The report was picked up from a local news&#xA;  story and was withdrawn as soon as it emerged that the building had&#xA;  not fallen.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I put this to the writer and director of Loose Change, Dylan Avery. &lt;strong&gt;I&#xA;  asked whether he believed the BBC was part of the conspiracy. Given&#xA;  the question his film had posed about the BBC I was surprised by&#xA;  Dylan's response: &quot;Of course not, that's ludicrous. Why would the BBC&#xA;  be part of it?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He added candidly: &quot;I didn't really want to put that line in the&#xA;  movie.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the reason &lt;strong&gt;the interview with the BBC correspondent, Jane&#xA;  Standley, ended so abruptly? The satellite feed had an electronic&#xA;  timer, which cut out at 1715 exactly.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;NIST Report on WTC-7&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the engineering side, there is a thorough report of the collapse titled &quot;Final Report of the Collapse of World Trate Center Building 7&quot; that summarizes the cause on page 47ff as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• WTC 7 withstood debris impact damage that resulted in seven exterior columns being severed and subsequently withstood fires involving&#xA;  typical office combustibles on several floors for almost seven hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• &lt;strong&gt;The collapse of WTC 7 represents the first known instance of the&#xA;  total collapse of a tall building primarily due to fires.&lt;/strong&gt; The collapse&#xA;  could not have been prevented without controlling the fires before&#xA;  most of the combustible building contents were consumed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• WTC 7 collapsed due to uncontrolled fires with characteristics similar to&#xA;  previous fires in tall buildings. The fires in WTC 7 were similar to&#xA;  those that have occurred previously in several tall buildings (One New&#xA;  York Plaza, 1970, First Interstate Bank, 1988, and One Meridian Plaza,&#xA;  1991) where the automatic sprinklers did not function or were not&#xA;  present. However, because of differences between their structural&#xA;  designs and that of WTC 7, these three buildings did not collapse.&#xA;  Fires for the range of combustible contents in WTC 7 – 20 kg/m2 (4.0&#xA;  lb/ft2) on Floors 7 to 9 and 32 kg/m2 (6.4 lb/ft2) on Floors 11 to 13&#xA;  – persisted in any given location for approximately 20 min to 30 min.&#xA;  Had a water supply for the automatic sprinkler system been available&#xA;  and had the sprinkler system operated as designed, it is likely that&#xA;  fires in WTC 7 would have been controlled and the collapse prevented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• The probable collapse sequence that caused the global collapse of&#xA;  WTC 7 was initiated by the buckling of Column 79, which was&#xA;  unsupported over nine stories, after local fire-induced damage led to&#xA;  a cascade of floor failures. The buckling of Column 79 led to a&#xA;  vertical progression of floor failures up to the east penthouse and to&#xA;  the buckling of Columns 80 and &#xA;  81. An east-to-west horizontal progression of interior column buckling followed, due to loss of lateral support to adjacent columns, forces&#xA;  exerted by falling debris, and load redistribution from other buckled&#xA;  columns. The exterior columns then buckled as the failed building core&#xA;  moved downward, redistributing its loads to the exterior columns.&#xA;  Global collapse occurred as the entire building above the buckled&#xA;  region moved downward as a single unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• The collapse of WTC 7 was a&#xA;  fire-induced progressive collapse. The American Society of Civil&#xA;  Engineers defines progressive collapse—also known as disproportionate&#xA;  collapse—as the spread of local damage, from an initiating event, from&#xA;  element to element, eventually resulting in the collapse of an entire&#xA;  structure or a disproportionately large part of it (ASCE 7-05).&#xA;  Despite extensive thermal weakening of connections and buckled floor&#xA;  beams of Floors 8 to 14, fire-induced damage in the floor framing&#xA;  surrounding Column 79 over nine stories was the determining factor&#xA;  causing the buckling of Column 79 and, thereby, initiating progressive&#xA;  collapse. This is the first known instance where fire-induced local&#xA;  damage (i.e., buckling failure of Column 79; one of 82 columns in WTC&#xA;  7) led to the collapse of an entire tall building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• WTC 7 was prone to&#xA;  classic progressive collapse in the absence of debris impact and fire-&#xA;  induced damage when a section of Column 79 between Floors 11 and 13&#xA;  was removed. The collapse sequence demonstrated a vertical and&#xA;  horizontal progression of failure upon the removal of the Column 79&#xA;  section, followed by buckling of exterior columns, which led to the&#xA;  collapse of the entire building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• Neither the transfer elements&#xA;  (trusses, girders, and cantilever overhangs) nor the “strong” floors&#xA;  (Floors 5 and 7) played a significant role in the collapse of WTC 7.&#xA;  Neither did the Con Edison substation play a significant role in the&#xA;  collapse of WTC 7.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• There was no evidence to suggest that there was&#xA;  damage to the SFRM that was applied to the steel columns, girders, and&#xA;  beams, except in the vicinity of the structural damage from the&#xA;  collapse of WTC 1, which was near the west side of the south face of&#xA;  the building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• Even without the initial structural damage caused by&#xA;  debris impact from the collapse of WTC 1, WTC 7 would have collapsed&#xA;  from fires having the same characteristics as those experienced on&#xA;  September 11, 2001.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• Early fires in the southwest region of the&#xA;  building did not play a role in the collapse of WTC 7. The fires in&#xA;  this region were not severe enough to heat the structure&#xA;  significantly; and, unlike the northeast region where collapse&#xA;  initiated, there were no columns supporting long span floors in the&#xA;  southwest region. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• The observed descent time of the upper 18 stories of&#xA;  the north face of WTC 7 (the floors clearly visible in the video&#xA;  evidence) was 40 percent greater than the computed free fall time. A&#xA;  more detailed analysis of the descent of the north face found three&#xA;  stages: (1) a slow descent with acceleration less than that of gravity&#xA;  that corresponded to the buckling of the exterior columns at the lower&#xA;  floors, (2) a freefall descent over approximately eight stories at&#xA;  gravitational acceleration for approximately 2.25 s, and (3) a&#xA;  decreasing acceleration as the north face encountered resistance from&#xA;  the structure below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• Diesel fuel fires did not play a role in the collapse of WTC 7. The&#xA;  worst-case scenarios associated with fires being fed by the ruptured&#xA;  fuel lines (a) could not have been sustained long enough, or could not&#xA;  have generated sufficient heat, to raise the temperature of a critical&#xA;  column (i.e., Column 79) to the point of significant loss of strength&#xA;  or stiffness, or (b) would have produced large amounts of visible&#xA;  smoke that would have emanated from the exhaust louvers. No such smoke&#xA;  discharge was observed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• &lt;strong&gt;Blast events did not play a role in the&#xA;  collapse of WTC 7.&lt;/strong&gt; Based on visual and audio evidence and the use of&#xA;  specialized computer modeling to simulate hypothetical blast events,&#xA;  NIST concluded that blast events did not occur, and found no evidence&#xA;  whose explanation required invocation of a blast event. Blast from the&#xA;  smallest charge capable of failing a critical column (i.e., Column 79)&#xA;  would have resulted in a sound level of 130 dB to 140 dB at a distance&#xA;  of at least half a mile if unobstructed by surrounding buildings (such&#xA;  as along Greenwich Street or West Broadway). This sound level is&#xA;  consistent with standing next to a jet plane engine and more than 10&#xA;  times louder than being in front of the speakers at a rock concert.&#xA;  There were no witness reports of such a loud noise, nor was such a&#xA;  noise heard on the audio tracks of video recordings of the WTC 7&#xA;  collapse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NIST report is thorough; it gives its rationale, methods, evidence and assumptions. It would take an expert to contest this report, however the report is open to evaluation by experts around the world, and no contest by an expert has been forthcoming to my knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Larry Silverstein&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As regards &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Silverstein&quot;&gt;Larry Silverstein&lt;/a&gt;, according to Wikipedia he was born in 1931 in Brooklyn and involved in real estate development since 1977. He won the right to develop WTC-7 in 1980. There is no evidence or even allegation (so far as I can tell) that he benefitted from the fall of the tower. Given that he was 70 at the time of the attacks, I find it rather unlikely that he would aspire to involvement in a conspiracy against his own property in his own neighbourhood and risk tarnishing his legacy; it is also strikingly against the mindset of real estate owners to destroy their own property. As a real estate investor and property owner in New York, the attacks of September 11, 2001 would undoubtedly have hurt the values of his numerous properties, and he was since involved with a significant dispute with his insurers after the fall of the towers. The fall of the towers was a significant expense to Mr. Silverstein; one must ask what incentive he would have had to conspire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was noted that that when Mr. Silverstein said &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm&quot;&gt;&quot;pull it&quot;&lt;/a&gt; to the firefighters he meant to get the firefighters out of the building. Although &quot;pull it&quot; has a specific meaning in demolitions parlance, Mr. Silverstein was not a demolitions expert nor was he talking to one. In any case, saying &quot;pull it&quot; as in to destroy the building would be a bizarre and inexplicable admission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As regards the tenants of WTC-7 being employees of the federal government, I do not see how this itself could convince anyone of a conspiracy. I do not think it is surprising at all that the CIA, IRS, Department of Defence, Secret Service and others to occupy centralized office locations such as the WTC buildings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is all to say, there are reasonable explanations for the suspicious elements that otherwise contribute to an conclusion of conspiracy. However, in the circumstances, the likelihood of a conspiracy of the sort where the BBC or Reuters would have been handed a script is not likely, in my humble opinion. The question is one of what is more likely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That building 7 of the WTC fell&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;because of sustained irreparable damage from the fall of the nearby towers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the early reporting was a mistake in the heat of the moment of an event (which event was likely predictable by those on the ground); &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;OR&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;WTC-7 fell&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in a controlled demolition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;involved a conspiracy by the US government to bring down the towers with a secret yet complex set of controlled explosions by demolitions experts across numerous business towers in central New York&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;part of this conspiracy involved feeding Reuters/BBC information about the planned demolitions in advance of the actual demolitions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both are possible, but I believe the latter is improbable. The suspicious facts are allayed by reasonable explanations. Further, regardless of whether there was a conspiracy to bring down any WTC towers, I find it remarkably unlikely that the conspirators of such a grand scheme would take the effort to report news in advance of planned events. If their intention was to destroy the towers, the news would flow from the event; I have seen no rationale that would indicate a strategic benefit to reporting on the event in advance, and such reporting would have risked exposing the existence of the conspiracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, even the protagonist behind the &quot;Loose Change&quot; video, which seems to be one of the most popular arguments in favour of conspiracy, seems to admit that the BBC was not part of any conspiracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a parallel vein of reasoning, planned reporting on events that would inevitably be reported anyway does not in my mind indicate a conspiracy by actors of sufficient competence to pull off the events that transpired. Errors in judgment such as planned and early reporting that reveal the conspiracy would lead one to expect more errors by the conspirators that reveal the conspiracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is all that it is fair to conclude that the BBC did report early, but not as part of any conspiracy but as an accident that was part of the chaos of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="1792" LastEditDate="2013-01-05T19:09:02.653" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T19:09:02.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10891" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10900" CreationDate="2012-09-13T15:55:17.560" Score="6" ViewCount="2410" Body="&lt;p&gt;The warning signs at gas stations warn that you ought not enter and exit your vehicle while filling up your tank at the gas station.  I have also been told by many people that doing so runs a risk of igniting the fuel or making your vehicle explode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that a legitimate concern?  Can getting in and out of your car actually cause combustion of the fuel being dispensed or the fuel already present in the tank?  Or are the signs and stickers merely legal precautions to deter lawsuits and the widespread beliefs of the layman just an urban legend created from them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7907" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-10T10:43:38.950" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T20:59:26.707" Title="Can getting in and out of a vehicle at a gas station cause combustion?" Tags="|electromagnetism|causality|fossil-fuel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10891" CreationDate="2012-09-13T16:17:16.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, gasoline is used because it is very good at being ignited by a spark, and it contains a lot of chemical energy.  So on the face of it, a spark could ignite gasoline vapours in the air, and a vehicle with sufficient static charge could produce a spark if suddenly grounded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible, and extremely rare.  Two things need to happen before the gas will ignite. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The vapour pressure of the gasoline needs at the right level. &quot;If the gasoline fumes are between 1.4% (14,000 ppm) and 7.6% (76,000 ppm) then any sort of ignition source, i.e. spark of some kind, could cause the atmosphere to ignite or explode. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemicalspill.org/WorkerRTK/chemicals1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There needs to be a sufficient static charge on the vehicle, and it needs to be grounded to produce a spark.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically, 1. will not be an issue unless there is a spill on the ground that was not properly cleaned.  2 is certainly possible, particularly in dry conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/safety-gas-pump-avoid-accidents-437975.html?cat=27&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; summarizes several sources.  Of interest is this interesting breakdown of fueling accidents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;50% happen when the person returns to the vehicle during refueling and leaves the vehicle door open&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;29% happen when the person unscrews the gas cap&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;21% happen for unknown reasons - theories include new chemical used in tires, more electronics in cars, seat fabrics, and more volatile fuels&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;78% are women who return to the car to put a credit card into their purse, get money, write a check, get warm, check on the kids, write down odometer reading, apply lipstick, or use cell phone&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first three bullets add to 100%, so I'm not sure what the 4th stat is all about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know why the vehicle door being open is a factor, but returning to the vehicle is a common factor in fueling accidents.  (Apparently being female is a factor as well.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above article also states that there are about 100 fueling accidents a year out of 11-12 billion fuelings in the US.  So it is rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="880" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T16:17:16.133" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9534" CreationDate="2012-09-13T16:17:58.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://emj.bmj.com/content/19/6/490.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This medical article&lt;/a&gt; has an excellent summary of the benefits and dangers of airbag use in the EU and USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;USA airbags have had to be designed to protect both the belted and unbelted occupant. To achieve this, airbags inflate rapidly (50 ms) under high pressure to a volume of 70 litres. In contrast, UK (and Western European) fitted airbags are only designed to protect a belted occupant and inflate to 30 litres within the same time. This is in part attributable to seat belt use in the UK and Europe, which is estimated at 88%–91% (dependent on sex and age, R Cuerden, et al, IRCOBI Conference, 2001). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that the effects of a USA vs EU airbag is quite different. The US airbags will save the life of an unbelted adult, but can cause injuries in the process, especially to children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Death&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many of the injuries reported above have been fatal. The only case report of a fatality in the UK was as recently as 2000. With the larger airbags in the United States, deaths are much commoner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems the risks depend on which type of airbag you have. In the USA the risks seem to outweigh the benefits for children, but not adults:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;data from the US that suggest that passenger airbags are not only associated with cases of child fatalities, but also that &lt;strong&gt;the protective effects of the bags in terms of lives saved is outweighed by the lives lost&lt;/strong&gt;. However, for each of the child lives lost by passenger airbags in the USA, 5–10 adults are saved: this figure is 75 lives saved to one life lost for driver's side airbags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, airbags are beneficial to adults, but the USA airbags are dangerous for children, who should not ride in the passenger seat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T16:17:58.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10894" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10895" CreationDate="2012-09-13T20:24:49.930" Score="1" ViewCount="1612" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim comes from a work of fiction but it is often repeated as true by fiscally conservative individuals who respect the author. In Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, a character named Francisco gives a &lt;a href=&quot;http://capitalismmagazine.com/2002/08/franciscos-money-speech/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;speech&lt;/a&gt; on the nature of money. Francisco says (emphasis mine),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose–because it contains all the others–the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money.’&lt;/strong&gt; No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity–to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, a strict reading of this is demonstrably false, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002929.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; has several instances of a verb similar to 'to make' being used in relation to money. One is cited by the OED and reads as follows,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1472 R. CALLE in Paston Lett. (1976) II. 356, I truste be Ester to make of money..at the leeste l marke&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue with this strict of an interpretation though, is that Rand wasn't really talking about the word, but rather the way it was used. It's possible to use the verb 'to make' in relation to money in several ways. For instance,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accumulating a quantity of wealth (from a static or dynamic pool of wealth).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Printing or coining it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increasing the amount of wealth in the world through productive work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm certain mints and counterfeiters have used the second sense for ages and I don't know how common the first sense is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read Rand's claim as stating Americans were the first people to use 'to make money' in the third sense. Is this historically accurate? I'm skeptical because I think the fact that wealth is produced is obvious and I doubt previous nations would have held such a drastically different view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I don't want this to turn into an argument about the merits of Objectivism. It's controversial, but your opinion on it (in favor or against) is not relevant in the context of investigating this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8323" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T23:11:06.653" Title="Did Americans coin the phrase &quot;to make money&quot;?" Tags="|united-states|literature|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10894" CreationDate="2012-09-13T23:04:54.547" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably not.  The idea, if not the exact phrase, goes back at least to the Roman empire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/24356.html&quot;&gt;http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/24356.html&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quotes.net/quote/34375&quot;&gt;http://www.quotes.net/quote/34375&lt;/a&gt; Quintus Horatius Flaccus, the Roman poet, wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Make money, money by fair means if you can, if not, by any means make money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;moral sentiments&quot; of making money also seem fairly summarized by this advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2012-09-13T23:11:06.653" LastActivityDate="2012-09-13T23:11:06.653" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10898" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-14T01:33:38.183" Score="-4" ViewCount="13303" Body="&lt;p&gt;US Health Care Bill (PDF) in a “non-discussed” section titled: Subtitle C-11 Sec. 2521— National Medical Device Registry, and which states its purpose as…….. He quotes that part of the law and then goes on to say: &quot;In “real world speak”, according to this report, this new law, when fully implemented, provides the framework for making the United States the first Nation in the World to require each and every one of its citizens to have implanted in them a radio-frequency identification microchip for the purpose of controlling who is, or isn’t, allowed medical care in their country&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8578" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T23:18:47.710" Title="Does the US Health Care Bill have a provision of RFID chip implants on Americans?" Tags="|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10891" CreationDate="2012-09-14T02:18:09.260" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR: &lt;strong&gt;Yes, getting into and out of a car increases your chance of fuel combustion.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason there are unusual instructions like :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not entering your car &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not using a CB radio &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not using a mobile (cell) phone&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... while refueling is because of static discharge - you feel it when a car zaps you. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're in your carpeted car and you rub your rubber shoes on that carpet there can be a massive static electicity build up.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That build up is released into the first earthed item you come in contact with. In this case it's a car or petrol bowser. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time you touch your car, discharging the static before opening your petrol tank. But when uses a mobile phone or re-entering a car you often won't discharge the static before touching the car near petrol fumes, AND BOOM!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example Refueling Fire:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a watch of this video: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WohRAM4_NQg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Refueling Fire Caused by Static Electricity (long version)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The woman re-enters the carpeted car in what looks like rubber-soled shoes. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She doesn't touch the metal frame of the car (which would have discharge the static)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first metal object she touches is the bowser&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Remedy:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aircraft and petrol tankers have a discharge connector to release static from an area on the vehicle not exposed to flamable fumes to the bowser. You can see it here (it's the yellow cable):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TZopi.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Static Discharge reel in use&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you need one of these on your car...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/autos/hazards/static.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_electricity#Fueling_operations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-10T09:27:20.967" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T09:27:20.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10898" CreationDate="2012-09-14T02:35:32.303" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, this comes down to dismissing paranoid claims as to what the language actually says...  I did a search for 2521 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3200/text&quot;&gt;in the text of the bill&lt;/a&gt;, and didn't come up with anything remotely resembling this claim.  What I did find was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sec. 2521. Comprehensive programs to provide education to nurses and&#xA;  create a pipeline to nursing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I  searched for the words &quot;National Medical Device Registry' and came up with this (I'd start being suspicious if they can't even get the part they are paranoid about right):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SEC. 2561. NATIONAL MEDICAL DEVICE REGISTRY.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;        (a) Registry-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;       (1) IN GENERAL- Section 519 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 360i) is amended--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;            (A) by redesignating subsection (g) as subsection (h); and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;            (B) by inserting after subsection (f) the following:&#xA;      'National Medical Device Registry&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;       ‘(g)(1) The Secretary shall establish a national medical device registry (in this subsection referred to as the ‘registry’) to facilitate analysis of postmarket safety and outcomes data on each device that--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;             ‘(A) is or has been used in or on a patient; and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;            ‘(B) is--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;                 ‘(i) a class III device; or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;                 ‘(ii) a class II device that is implantable, life-supporting, or life-sustaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;         ‘(2) In developing the registry, the Secretary shall, in consultation with the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare &amp;amp; Medicaid Services, the head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, and the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, determine the best methods for--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;             ‘(A) including in the registry, in a manner consistent with subsection (f), appropriate information to identify each device described in paragraph (1) by type, model, and serial number or other unique identifier;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;             ‘(B) validating methods for analyzing patient safety and outcomes data from multiple sources and for linking such data with the information included in the registry as described in subparagraph (A), including, to the extent feasible, use of--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;                 ‘(i) data provided to the Secretary under other provisions of this chapter; and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;                 ‘(ii) information from public and private sources identified under paragraph (3);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;             ‘(C) integrating the activities described in this subsection with--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;                 ‘(i) activities under paragraph (3) of section 505(k) (relating to active postmarket risk identification);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;                 ‘(ii) activities under paragraph (4) of section 505(k) (relating to advanced analysis of drug safety data); and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;                 ‘(iii) other postmarket device surveillance activities of the Secretary authorized by this chapter; and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;  &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;           ‘(D) providing public access to the data and analysis collected or developed through the registry in a manner and form that protects patient privacy and proprietary information and is comprehensive, useful, and not misleading to patients, physicians, and scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;         ‘(3)(A) To facilitate analyses of postmarket safety and patient outcomes for devices described in paragraph (1), the Secretary shall, in collaboration with public, academic, and private entities, develop methods to--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;             ‘(i) obtain access to disparate sources of patient safety and outcomes data, including--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;                 ‘(I) Federal health-related electronic data (such as data from the Medicare program under title XVIII of the Social Security Act or from the health systems of the Department of Veterans Affairs);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;                 ‘(II) private sector health-related electronic data (such as pharmaceutical purchase data and health insurance claims data); and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;                 ‘(III) other data as the Secretary deems necessary to permit postmarket assessment of device safety and effectiveness; and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;              ‘(ii) link data obtained under clause (i) with information in the registry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;         ‘(B) In this paragraph, the term ‘data’ refers to information respecting a device described in paragraph (1), including claims data, patient survey data, standardized analytic files that allow for the pooling and analysis of data from disparate data environments, electronic health records, and any other data deemed appropriate by the Secretary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;         ‘(4) Not later than 36 months after the date of the enactment of this subsection, the Secretary shall promulgate regulations for establishment and operation of the registry under paragraph (1). Such regulations--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;             ‘(A)(i) in the case of devices that are described in paragraph (1) and sold on or after the date of the enactment of this subsection, shall require manufacturers of such devices to submit information to the registry, including, for each such device, the type, model, and serial number or, if required under subsection (f), other unique device identifier; and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;             ‘(ii) in the case of devices that are described in paragraph (1) and sold before such date, may require manufacturers of such devices to submit such information to the registry, if deemed necessary by the Secretary to protect the public health;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;             ‘(B) shall establish procedures--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;                 ‘(i) to permit linkage of information submitted pursuant to subparagraph (A) with patient safety and outcomes data obtained under paragraph (3); and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;                 ‘(ii) to permit analyses of linked data;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;             ‘(C) may require device manufacturers to submit such other information as is necessary to facilitate postmarket assessments of device safety and effectiveness and notification of device risks;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;             ‘(D) shall establish requirements for regular and timely reports to the Secretary, which shall be included in the registry, concerning adverse event trends, adverse event patterns, incidence and prevalence of adverse events, and other information the Secretary determines appropriate, which may include data on comparative safety and outcomes trends; and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;             ‘(E) shall establish procedures to permit public access to the information in the registry in a manner and form that protects patient privacy and proprietary information and is comprehensive, useful, and not misleading to patients, physicians, and scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;         ‘(5) To carry out this subsection, there are authorized to be appropriated such sums as may be necessary for fiscal years 2010 and 2011.’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;             (2) EFFECTIVE DATE- The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall establish and begin implementation of the registry under section 519(g) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, as added by paragraph (1), by not later than the date that is 36 months after the date of the enactment of this Act, without regard to whether or not final regulations to establish and operate the registry have been promulgated by such date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;             (3) CONFORMING AMENDMENT- Section 303(f)(1)(B)(ii) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 333(f)(1)(B)(ii)) is amended by striking ‘519(g)’ and inserting ‘519(h)’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;         (b) Electronic Exchange and Use in Certified Electronic Health Records of Unique Device Identifiers-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;            (1) RECOMMENDATIONS- The HIT Policy Committee established under section 3002 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 300jj-12) shall recommend to the head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria for the electronic exchange and use in certified electronic health records of a unique device identifier for each device described in section 519(g)(1) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, as added by subsection (a).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;             (2) STANDARDS, IMPLEMENTATION CRITERIA, AND CERTIFICATION CRITERIA- The Secretary of the Health Human Services, acting through the head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, shall adopt standards, implementation specifications, and certification criteria for the electronic exchange and use in certified electronic health records of a unique device identifier for each device described in paragraph (1), if such an identifier is required by section 519(f) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 360i(f)) for the device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, I don't see how this is &quot;non-discussed&quot; when it is available for all people with internet access...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this legal language really says is that medical devices that we already use (things like pacemakers, blood analysis machines, etc.) will be kept track of for purposes of taxation and safety.  This is really a continuation of an already existing bit of FDA law, with the addition of allowing the government to track and tax devices at the manufacturing level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no mention of making the insertion of devices mandatory, nor is there any mention of tracking the patients who may even have the type of devices that are inserted into them (such as pacemakers, insulin pumps, etc.) outside of standard medical practice.  And there is zero mention of anything like an RFID.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The absence of evidence in this case is indeed evidence of absence, and it seems &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/microchip.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes agrees with my search of the actual bill&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="949" LastEditDate="2012-09-14T07:10:03.290" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T07:10:03.290" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10906" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10907" CreationDate="2012-09-14T10:34:30.290" Score="20" ViewCount="10778" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a popular aphorism in Russia, translated as &quot;one drop of nicotine kills a horse&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cHfRy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;, which is widely used on the anti-tobacco posters etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can 0.05 ml of nicotine really kill a healthy 400-kg horse? What could be the origin of this phrase?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:29:18.100" LastActivityDate="2016-05-26T23:33:52.007" Title="Does one drop of nicotine kill a horse?" Tags="|biology|environmental-health|smoking|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10906" CreationDate="2012-09-14T11:13:13.163" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inchem.org/documents/pims/chemical/nicotine.htm#PartTitle:7.%20TOXICOLOGY&quot;&gt;Toxicity&lt;/a&gt;: 30–60 mg (0.5–1.0 mg/kg) can be a lethal dosage for adult humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a rough estimate, a horse can be 400kg, so a lethal does of 200mg-400mg for a horse. Density from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicotine&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; 1.01 g/cm³. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means a lethal dose would take up 0.25-0.5 cm³ which is a drop of diameter 0.8-1 cm. This is quite a large drop, approximately 5-10times the dose you stated (0.05ml), but isn't too far from being a drop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If horses are particularly susceptible to nicotine, then it could well be a lethal dose at 0.05ml.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.provet.co.uk/lorgue/5a8edcb.htm&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; puts the LD50 (The dose where half the subjects die) in horses as 100-300 mg/animal, so if 2.5 0.05ml drops kill 50% of horses, its possible that 1 drop could kill a horse, even if it didn't kill most horses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastEditorUserId="7188" LastEditDate="2012-09-14T13:25:27.677" LastActivityDate="2012-09-14T13:25:27.677" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10909" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10914" CreationDate="2012-09-14T11:43:39.980" Score="17" ViewCount="3451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen claims in several places that in some parts of the United States of America, the bureaucratic procedure to register to vote is more difficult/complicated than to get a permit to buy a personal firearm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two examples of these claims are as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/07/27/1114278/-It-s-easier-to-buy-guns-in-Pennsylvania-than-it-is-to-vote&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;It's easier to buy guns in Pennsylvania than it is to vote&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The voter ID bill – which has made it harder to vote – was signed into law last year under the watch of newly-elected Governor Tom Corbett. Current estimates show that the new voter ID law will negatively affect over 750,000 people – mostly minority and democratic-leaning voters – within the state of Pennsylvania.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, under Corbett’s watch, the process of purchasing weapons has become progressively easier while, at the same time, voting has become more difficult; to the point where it is now harder to vote than it is to buy a rifle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-horwitz/when-buying-a-gun-becomes_b_1320482.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;When Buying a Gun Becomes Easier Than Voting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And Virginia is not alone... Many GOP-controlled state legislatures across the nation are now moving to implement voter suppression laws before the 2012 elections. Of the eight states that require residents to show photo identification before voting -- Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, Kansas, Indiana and Wisconsin -- all allow residents to purchase firearms through private sales without undergoing any type of background check or showing any form of identification. These sales are cash and carry, and no paperwork is required. 23 other states require residents to produce some form of identification before voting (though not necessarily a photo ID). Of those 23, only Rhode Island prohibits all private sales of firearms (Connecticut requires background checks for private sales of handguns only). Finally, in a development that may or not be coincidental, some states are now allowing residents to use a concealed handgun permit as an acceptable document to verify identity when voting, but not a student ID card issued by a public university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it anywhere in the United States easier to get a firearm than to register to vote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2022-06-13T01:10:00.527" Title="Is it, in some parts of the U.S., easier to get a rifle than to register to vote?" Tags="|united-states|law|guns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10674" CreationDate="2012-09-14T15:22:26.877" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was skeptical myself about the existence of the danger triangle; I just asked my father, who is a physician, today, and he told me that this indeed is true, describing an area that covers the eyes (and brows), the nose and the upper lip. (Actually more like a square). He further told me that it leads to &lt;em&gt;cerebral sinus venous trombosis&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to know what this &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavernous_sinus&quot;&gt;cavernous sinus&lt;/a&gt; is, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavernous_sinus_thrombosis&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; is detailed on that (and does mention the facial area, too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cavernous sinus thrombosis (CST) is the formation of a blood clot within the cavernous sinus, a cavity at the base of the brain which drains deoxygenated blood from the brain back to the heart. The cause is usually from a spreading infection in the nose, sinuses, ears, or teeth. Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus are often the associated bacteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway I'd still count this is just as anecdotal evidence and he never had a case of this to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But with the help of the correct term I was able to dig up some results and there actually seem to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1390530/?page=1&quot;&gt;some cases&lt;/a&gt;, first were described even around 1852 (I assume that the facial cosmetics industry wasn't as powerful back then, but what do I know?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Infections of the &quot;dangerous area&quot; of the face were first mentioned in the literature in 1852, when Ludlow described six cases, three of them fatal. The first patient, a moderately stout man of 20, scratched the head off a pimple on his lip six days before admission to the hospital and died 36 hours after admission, in spite of the use of compresses, sedatives and leeches. […] In the first case autopsy revealed a purulent exudate in the lungs and kidneys […] In neither case was the head examined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1391443/?page=1&quot;&gt;Another paper&lt;/a&gt; cites the same work but goes further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From 1922, eighteen cases of primary infection of the nose, lips and face were admitted to the wards of Lebanon Hospital […] Of the six patient with severe symptoms who dies, four were males and six females, varying from twenty-four to fifty years of age. [...] In all six there was a positive &lt;em&gt;staphylococcus aureaus&lt;/em&gt; blood culture, with the subsequent cultures becoming progressively worse, with thrombosis of the cavernous sinus terminating in death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I think I would say: &lt;strong&gt;Yes, popping pimples in the face can be deadly&lt;/strong&gt;. Although cases are not very common and while reading across the lines treatment has improved, it might still be dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5638" LastEditorUserId="18134" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T20:50:31.893" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T20:50:31.893" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10909" CreationDate="2012-09-14T22:02:23.687" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any state, when purchasing at a gun show or from a private citizen, no formal registration or procedure is needed except for the purchase itself. So in those cases registering for voting, which is something that requires a procedure is harder that legally buying a gun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While what KeithS saying is only true for professional gun sellers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_shows_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;U.S. federal law requires persons engaged in interstate firearm commerce, or those who are &amp;quot;engaged in the business&amp;quot; of dealing firearms, to hold a Federal Firearms License and perform background checks through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System maintained by the FBI prior to transferring a firearm. Under the terms of the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, however, individuals &amp;quot;not engaged in the business&amp;quot; of dealing firearms, or who only make &amp;quot;occasional&amp;quot; sales within their state of residence, are under no requirement to conduct background checks on purchasers or maintain records of sale (although even private sellers are forbidden under federal law from selling firearms to persons they have reason to believe are felons or otherwise prohibited from purchasing firearms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that there is no regulation on the holding of guns. Here (in Israel) a permit is needed not only to buy a gun but also to hold it. So even if you find a gun on the street you can't legally hold it unless you have a permit for that gun specifically. And every sale, even between private people, must go through the Ministry of Interior Affairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since that regulation doesn't exists in the US, almost everyone can hold a gun and can buy a gun from a private individual selling his firearm. And if you wish to have a greater variety to choose from, you can go to a gun show and buy from the vast variety there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/closing-the-terror-gap-and-the-gun-show-loophole/2011/06/06/AGTKubKH_story.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source 1&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Purchasing deadly weapons in the United States is easy — especially at a gun show. Buyers can scoop up semiautomatic weapons and extended magazines from private dealers at these shows without undergoing a background check&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, individuals on the U.S. terrorism watch list are forbidden from air travel but may purchase a weapon. A recent report by the Government Accountability Office documented this “terror gap”: From February 2004 through February 2010, 1,228 individuals on the watch list underwent background checks to purchase firearms or explosives; 1,119, or 91 percent, of these transactions were approved. In an update published in April, the GAO reported that some 200 individuals on the watch list were approved for weapons purchases from March 2010 through December 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20075133-503544.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source 2&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Criminals already know how to take advantage of gaps in our gun laws, and now Al Qaeda knows, too,&amp;quot; said Bloomberg in a statement. &amp;quot;Americans, including NRA members, overwhelmingly support stronger laws to keep guns away from terrorists and other dangerous people. You are checked against the terror watch list to board an airplane, &lt;strong&gt;but you don't have to be checked when buying assault weapons&lt;/strong&gt;. Weak gun laws aren't just a crime problem, they're a national security threat - and this ad should be a wake-up call to Congress.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T21:44:00.083" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10915" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10934" CreationDate="2012-09-15T00:05:16.907" Score="5" ViewCount="4569" Body="&lt;p&gt;New washing machine (at least in the EU) often have a special program named with something like &quot;green&quot; or &quot;eco&quot; and that are supposed to be environmentally friendly. These are often for around 2–4 hours, compared to the other programs (on the same machine) which are for around 45 minutes to an hour and a half.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, how do these programs differ from each other and what makes the &quot;green&quot; programs more environmentally friendly? I know different machines won't have the exact same programs, but in general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they use lower energy?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they use less water?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there more or less wear on the textiles?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any other differences?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8527" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-09-16T21:56:33.967" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T01:04:35.993" Title="Are 2–4 hour washing machine programs eco friendly?" Tags="|energy|ecology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10906" CreationDate="2012-09-15T05:56:13.970" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It takes more than a drop of nicotine, swallowed, to kill a horse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Robin Sanecki, Ramesh C. Gupta, Wade L. Kadel, &lt;a href=&quot;http://vdi.sagepub.com/content/6/4/503.full.pdf&quot;&gt;Lethal nicotine intoxication in a group of mules&lt;/a&gt;, J Vet Diagn Invest 6:503-504 (1994)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper is about a number of mules that died from eating nicotine-contaminated feed. It claims, without a clear source, that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reported minimal lethal dose (MLD) of nicotine for the horse is 100-300 mg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tobacco has been used to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.motherearthnews.com/sustainable-farming/natural-dewormer-livestock-zmaz77mazbon.aspx?page=2&quot;&gt;de-worm horses&lt;/a&gt;, so it clearly isn't &lt;em&gt;immediately&lt;/em&gt; toxic. It isn't recommended though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nicotine is an effective nerve poison - injecting it &lt;a href=&quot;http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/14/1/137.abstract&quot;&gt;directly into the brain&lt;/a&gt; has far more severe effects, but that is hardly a useful warning against cigarette smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-09-15T05:56:13.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10919" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-15T11:43:40.207" Score="4" ViewCount="824" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some sites and people on the web that claim Omega 3 fatty acids reduce inflammation. One &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/omega-3-000316.htm&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research shows that omega-3 fatty acids reduce inflammation and may help lower risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and arthritis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is on a universities website, but filed under &lt;em&gt;Complementary Medicine&lt;/em&gt;. Basically if you search for Omega 3 and Inflammation you will find the claim all over dubious 'health' sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid#Inflammation&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; is a bit more cautious:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although not confirmed as an approved health claim, current research suggests that the anti-inflammatory activity of long-chain n−3 fatty acids may translate into clinical effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question basically is what the research (one specific study I guess) everyone seems to cite exactly says, I am mostly sceptical about the level of inflammation reduction and if the study itself is credible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5638" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T13:03:27.220" Title="Do Omega 3 fatty acids reduce inflammation?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10923" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10928" CreationDate="2012-09-15T21:09:56.290" Score="11" ViewCount="5734" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was presented with an &quot;interesting&quot; alternative form of medicine today: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clayremedies.com/&quot;&gt;clay&lt;/a&gt;. As in, the consumption of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;10 Good Reasons To Eat Clay!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To assist your body in the removal of toxic substances in the digestive system such as bacterial food poisoning, organic and inorganic toxicity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To cleanse your colon and promote proper bacterial balance in the intestines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To begin the process of detoxification of the liver and to stimulate your liver function.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To assist your body in the removal of heavy metals and recovery from chemical and radiation therapies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To detoxify throughout your entire body for better metabolism and weight control.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To reduce free radical damage; thus anti-aging.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To improve your immune systems function and cellular respiration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To increase the bio-availability/assimilation of calcium.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To help moderate acids in your body due to a high PH compound.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To provide your body with a full spectrum of natural bio-available colloidal trace minerals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The explanation goes roughly like this: the clay is apparently negatively charged, and when consumed bonds with positively charged &quot;toxins&quot; in the body. This Wikipedia article quotes, I assume, from the source of this idea (although, it isn't referenced).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific or medicinal basis for this? And if not, how much of the claims, if any, are true? (e.g. is clay actually negatively charged normally?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-16T03:48:12.640" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T11:39:34.287" Title="Does eating clay have any beneficial effect?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10923" CreationDate="2012-09-16T05:04:43.053" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/toxins-the-new-evil-humours/&quot;&gt;&quot;Toxins&quot; in the context of homeopathy/alternative medicine aren't real&lt;/a&gt; and are not harbored in the body. Therefore any &quot;cure&quot; is just as fake. Your colon does not accumulate detritus or poisons, and any blockage or accumulation is pathological.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelation&quot;&gt;Chelating agents&lt;/a&gt; are used to bind heavy metals &lt;em&gt;in vivo&lt;/em&gt; before they are excreted, and I'm not aware of any mechanism involving the common components of clay which would act in a similar fashion - though ingesting clay would certainly introduce heavy metals into your system if the clay contained them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are &lt;em&gt;DEFICIENT&lt;/em&gt; in Zinc, consumption of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9823012&quot;&gt;Zinc can increase immune system effectiveness&lt;/a&gt; if it is part of the clay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD-HealthProfessional/&quot;&gt;Vitamin D promotes Calcium absorption&lt;/a&gt;. However, the clay may contain Calcium - introducing more to your overall intake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clay does not enter your blood, where acidosis would take place. &lt;strong&gt;Positively&lt;/strong&gt; charged ions might help if they found their way into the bloodstream (Calcium, Sodium, Potassium) if the clay contained them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279487/&quot;&gt;article from the Royal Society of Medicine&lt;/a&gt; on Geophagia (eating dirt):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fine red clay is often preferred. In particular, geophagia is observed during pregnancy or as a feature of iron-deficiency anaemia. Where poverty and famine are implicated, earth may serve as an appetite suppressant and filler; similarly, geophagia has been observed in anorexia nervosa. However, geophagia is often observed in the absence of hunger, and environmental and cultural contexts of the habit have been emphasized. Finally, geophagia is encountered in people with learning disability, particularly in the context of long-term institutionalization; in this regard, geophagia and other forms of pica are associated with a high rate of complications and substantial morbidity and mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastEditorUserId="8380" LastEditDate="2012-09-16T16:51:28.207" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T16:51:28.207" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10919" CreationDate="2012-09-16T13:03:27.220" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a tricky question to answer, the main problem being that &quot;inflammatory diseases&quot; is one of those &lt;em&gt;buzz-words&lt;/em&gt; that includes a vast and diverse range of illnesses. For any type of claim at this regard to be at least meaningful very precise distinctions have to be made and extreme care has to be made before doing any generalization (i.e.: if a compound helps relieving symptoms of arthritis, this does not imply it will help for inflammatory bowel syndrome).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In summary:&lt;/strong&gt; there seems to be a possible acute effect of &amp;omega;3 PUFA on certain inflammatory situations. Evidence of prevention of inflammatory diseases is scarce at least. In certain cases such as prostate cancer certain PUFA may however be a risk factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further studies are warranted before being able to give a precise answer on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are few examples of studies to support this conclusion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article gives a meta analysis of clinical trials on the role of &amp;omega;3 in joint pain relieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17335973&quot;&gt;A meta-analysis of the analgesic effects of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation for inflammatory joint pain.&lt;/a&gt; - Goldberg and Katz - &lt;em&gt;Pain&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;2007&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude that there may be an effect in decreasing certain symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We conducted a meta-analysis of 17 randomized, controlled trials assessing the pain relieving effects of omega-3 PUFAs in patients with rheumatoid arthritis or joint pain secondary to inflammatory bowel disease and dysmenorrhea&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Supplementation with omega-3 PUFAs for 3-4 months &lt;strong&gt;reduces patient reported joint pain intensity&lt;/strong&gt; (SMD: -0.26; 95% CI: -0.49 to -0.03, p=0.03), &lt;strong&gt;minutes of morning stiffness&lt;/strong&gt; (SMD: -0.43; 95% CI: -0.72 to -0.15, p=0.003), &lt;strong&gt;number of painful and/or tender joints&lt;/strong&gt; (SMD: -0.29; 95% CI: -0.48 to -0.10, p=0.003), &lt;strong&gt;and NSAID consumption&lt;/strong&gt; (SMD: -0.40; 95% CI: -0.72 to -0.08, p=0.01). &lt;strong&gt;Significant effects were not detected for physician assessed pain&lt;/strong&gt; (SMD: -0.14; 95% CI: -0.49 to 0.22, p=0.45) &lt;strong&gt;or Ritchie articular index&lt;/strong&gt; (SMD: 0.15; 95% CI: -0.19 to 0.49, p=0.40) at 3-4 months. The results suggest that omega-3 PUFAs are &lt;strong&gt;an attractive adjunctive treatment for joint pain associated with rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and dysmenorrhea.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand this recent study found no effect of &amp;omega;3 in the amelioration of symptoms peripheral arterial disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22296885&quot;&gt;Effect of Omega-3 fatty acid supplementation on markers of platelet and endothelial function in patients with peripheral arterial disease.&lt;/a&gt; - Mackay et al. - &lt;em&gt;Atherosclerosis.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;2012&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OBJECTIVE:&lt;/strong&gt; Omega-3 fatty acids have been shown to reduce platelet and endothelial activation in patients with or at risk of cardiac disease. We aimed to determine if Omega-3 fatty acid supplementation in addition to best medical therapy can reduce the increased platelet and endothelial activity that is present in patients with intermittent claudication.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;CONCLUSION:&lt;/strong&gt; Supplementation with Omega-3 fatty acids had &lt;strong&gt;no affect on platelet and endothelial activation or markers of inflammation in patients with peripheral arterial disease.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study showed an amelioration in the inflammatory status of cancer patient with fish oil&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22295891&quot;&gt;Fish oil supplement alters markers of inflammatory and nutritional status in colorectal cancer patients.&lt;/a&gt; - Silva et al. - &lt;em&gt;Nutr Cancer.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;2012&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study aims at investigating whether there are changes in inflammation markers and/or in nutritional status of patients with colorectal cancer undergoing chemotherapy who were supplemented with fish oil.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Low doses of fish oil supplement can positively modulate the nutritional status and the C-reative protein/albumin ratio.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are these studies confirming the claim that &amp;omega;3 &quot;may help lower risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and arthritis.&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitely not. What these and other similar studies show is that they can lower inflammations markers during an already existing inflammatory state. They do not say anything about preventing or lowering the risk of inflammation, let alone of cancer or arthritis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this regard, I could find this study where the effect of &amp;omega;3 on the  risk of prostate cancer were monitored over the course of 7 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21518693&quot;&gt;Serum phospholipid fatty acids and prostate cancer risk: results from the prostate cancer prevention trial.&lt;/a&gt; - Brasky et al. - &lt;em&gt;Am J Epidemiol.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;2011&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Inflammation may be involved in prostate cancer development and progression. This study examined the associations between inflammation-related phospholipid fatty acids and the 7-year-period prevalence of prostate cancer in a nested case-control analysis of participants, aged 55-84 years, in the Prostate Cancer Prevention Trial during 1994-2003. Cases (n = 1,658) were frequency matched to controls (n = 1,803) on age, treatment, and prostate cancer family history. Phospholipid fatty acids were extracted from serum, and concentrations of &amp;omega;-3, &amp;omega;-6, and trans-fatty acids (TFAs) were expressed as proportions of the total.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;No fatty acids were associated with low-grade prostate cancer risk. Docosahexaenoic acid was positively associated with high-grade disease&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;The study findings are contrary to those expected from the pro- and antiinflammatory effects of these fatty acids and suggest a greater complexity of effects of these nutrients with regard to prostate cancer risk.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar conclusions are drawn by this review:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15141138&quot;&gt;Dietary N-6 and N-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids and prostate cancer risk: a review of epidemiological and experimental evidence.&lt;/a&gt; - Astorg - &lt;em&gt;Cancer Causes Control.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;2004&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RESULTS: There is no or little evidence of an association of linoleic or arachidonic acids with PCa risk.&lt;/strong&gt; Most epidemiological studies failed to find an association of PCa risk with fish or long-chain n -3 PUFA intake, but two recent cohort studies did find an &lt;strong&gt;inverse association of fish consumption with the risk of the latest stages of PCa. alpha -linolenic acid intake was associated with an increase of PCa risk in a majority of epidemiological studies, but other studies did not find this association.&lt;/strong&gt; Experimental work in vitro and in vivo, as well as mechanistic studies, support a protective effect of long-chain n -3 PUFA on PCa, but data on the effects of linoleic and alpha -linolenic acids are scarce.&#xA;  CONCLUSIONS: &lt;strong&gt;Long-chain n -3 PUFA from fish are possible promising nutrients for the dietary prevention of PCa, but to-date with little epidemiological support. In contrast, studies suggest that alpha -linolenic acid intake might be a risk factor.&lt;/strong&gt; New work, both epidemiological and experimental, is awaited to clarify these results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastActivityDate="2012-09-16T13:03:27.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10932" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10950" CreationDate="2012-09-16T21:13:13.537" Score="15" ViewCount="1256" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard calls for the ordinary public school system in my state to be replaced or supplemented with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/ss/sschtsch.pdf&quot;&gt;charter school system (pdf warning)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do charter schools perform better or worse than other public schools?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, by what measures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4865" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-09-16T21:44:30.143" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T07:33:51.263" Title="Do charter schools perform better than other public schools?" Tags="|united-states|education|school|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10915" CreationDate="2012-09-17T01:04:35.993" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The energy saving is in not heating the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the web-site of a random &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hotpoint.co.uk/hotpoint/eco_cycles/ecocycles.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;manufacturer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How does it all work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your washing machine uses the most energy when it's heating up the water at the beginning of the wash cycle.&#xA;  So Hotpoint's Eco Cycles simply don't heat up the water - that's how you can achieve fantastic energy savings of between 50% - 70% *.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;*Compared to an equivalent 30°C cycle,&#xA;  as verified by internal testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They go on to explain they don't consume more water:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tA8Am.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T01:04:35.993" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10935" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-17T02:16:34.660" Score="14" ViewCount="1149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep seeing this claim in alternative health circles that sugar feeds cancer and if you restrict carbohydrate from your diet, particularly refined sugar, you can prevent cancer or even &quot;starve&quot; existing cancer. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mnwelldir.org/docs/nutrition/sugar.htm&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is an example of this claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reason Food Therapies for cancer even exist today (beyond the fact&#xA;  that they work) is because someone once saw the connection between&#xA;  sugar and cancer. There are many food therapies, but not a single one&#xA;  allows many foods high in carbohydrates and not a single one allows&#xA;  sugars, BECAUSE SUGAR FEEDS CANCER.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why doesn't your physician tell you this? Hard to tell. Maybe your&#xA;  doctor feels it is his job to cure your cancer, not yours. Maybe&#xA;  because your doctor learned about Warburg, but never put the rest&#xA;  together, never placed nutrition into the equation. Maybe because your&#xA;  physician didn't study nutrition. Heck, as late as 1978, the AMA's&#xA;  official position (found in the Congressional Record) was that&#xA;  nutrition had nothing to do with disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5278" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-04-10T12:17:05.530" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T12:17:05.530" Title="Does sugar &quot;feed&quot; cancer?" Tags="|nutrition|alternative-medicine|cancer|sugar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10935" CreationDate="2012-09-17T02:53:21.587" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/cancer-metabolism-1121.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A fairly recent study performed at MIT&lt;/a&gt; has outlined a potential alternative pathway that's probably very common, as the study points out that lack of glucose and oxygen is not an uncommon state for cancer cells:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of the body’s supply of oxygen and glucose is carried in the bloodstream, but blood vessels often do not penetrate far into the body of tumors, so most cancer cells are deficient in those nutrients. This means they can’t produce fatty acids using the normal lipid-synthesis pathway that depends mostly on glucose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The finding, reported in the Nov. 20 online edition of Nature, challenges the long-held belief that cells synthesize most of their lipids from glucose&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T03:19:54.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1576" CreationDate="2012-09-17T04:24:10.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd say that the class-action lawsuit that the makers of Extenze have to pay on tells the story pretty effectively: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/lawsuit-news/855-extenze-class-action-lawsuit-settlement-&quot;&gt;ExtenZe Class Action Lawsuit Settlement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An extract from the class-action statement is given below (my emphasis to highlight the false claims):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A proposed $6 million settlement has been reached in a class action lawsuit against the manufacturer of “male enhancement” product ExtenZe. If you’ve purchased ExtenZe within the past five years, you may be able to receive a cash refund or free ExtenZe merchandise under the class action lawsuit settlement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ExtenZe class action lawsuit accuses Biotab Nutraceuticals, Inc. and several other defendants of &lt;em&gt;making false claims in their advertising, promotion, marketing and labeling&lt;/em&gt; of ExtenZe. According to the ExtenZe class action, &lt;strong&gt;the defendants’ claims that ExtenZe will increase the size of a man’s penis are allegedly false and not supported by any credible scientific evidence.&lt;/strong&gt; The lawsuit further charges that the defendants are already in violation of a court-ordered injunction prohibiting such claims. The case is entitled Williams, et al. v. Biotab Nutraceuticals, Inc. et al.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4639" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T12:50:08.847" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T12:50:08.847" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10939" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-17T10:42:09.170" Score="2" ViewCount="55" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/68/what-risks-exist-with-gmo-but-not-with-selective-breeding&quot;&gt;What risks exist with GMO, but not with selective breeding?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard that one of the reasons that people oppose GM food is because GM crops when digested create a protein that humans may not be able to process. Is there any truth to that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8597" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-09-17T10:42:09.170" Title="Genetically modified crops" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2012-09-17T15:06:20.393" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10940" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-17T13:28:35.423" Score="26" ViewCount="1442" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a tale spreading around about people who have supposedly resuscitated their cell phones using bags of rice after dropping them in water or otherwise getting them soaked.  The supposed science behind this is that the rice will &quot;help soak up the water in the phone&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/269427/dry-out-your-soaked-gadgets-in-rice&quot;&gt;http://lifehacker.com/269427/dry-out-your-soaked-gadgets-in-rice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Save-a-Wet-Cell-Phone&quot;&gt;http://www.wikihow.com/Save-a-Wet-Cell-Phone&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any legitimate science behind or proof of this claim?  As you can see in some of the comments on the above articles, people have also tried this &quot;trick&quot; and had it completely fail with no results.  The advocate of this technique could of course say that it doesn't cure overly-extensive water damage, but this doesn't seem to be a sufficient refutation without a proper scientific basis for the original claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7907" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-09-17T17:41:35.203" LastActivityDate="2016-04-15T12:39:22.857" Title="Does immersing a wet phone in rice prevent it from dying?" Tags="|consumer-products|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10808" CreationDate="2012-09-17T15:06:15.523" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off, when you say &amp;quot;better code&amp;quot; I'm going to assume that you mean that the general &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_quality&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;software quality&lt;/a&gt; of the project is better as opposed to any measure of the aesthetics of the code itself, although code that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.virginia.edu/%7Eweimer/p/weimer-tse2010-readability-preprint.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;is easier to read generally results in better quality software.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the big areas of study in software engineering research has been to see if there is a correlation between known requirements and defects.  These studies show that adding requirements or changing requirements of a system &lt;a href=&quot;https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/986710.986727&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;generally results in more defects&lt;/a&gt;. This tends to be born out by other studies that show a link between changing requirements and &lt;a href=&quot;https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1182970&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;schedule and cost overrun&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core reasoning for most of these findings boils down to knowing what is needed beforehand allows the system to be built to meet those needs and the system can be verified against those needs. This tends to work well in environments where the requirements can be explicitly defined and tested, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-stuff&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;failure is not an option&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for at least some segments of software development it can easily be established that specifications result in better code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about environments where the needs can &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CCIQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/Tax-Code,-Regulations-and-Official-Guidance&amp;amp;ei=8zFXUO3fMeHn0QG98YC4CQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNH89oMJZKqxHfdy5o3WMCqIVGj93A&amp;amp;sig2=Y3lEpXjrwcVnGwwLL-yDxA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;change on a regular basis&lt;/a&gt; based upon business needs? In these cases it is important to note that Agile methodologies tend to be used more for &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170829205529/http://www.aom-iaom.org/jitm_pdfs/jitm_08/article3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;internet development than for real-time, control, or systems development&lt;/a&gt;. Thus, Agile methodologies tend to target a different development space and we can speculate address different needs. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Fowler&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Advocates for Agile development&lt;/a&gt; generally call for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.martinfowler.com/articles/designDead.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;simple designs and refactoring&lt;/a&gt; as a means of ensuring that the code base does not become too complex which has &lt;a href=&quot;https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/177368&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;been tied to software defects&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, foreknowledge of fixed requirements results in better code, but when the requirements cannot be fixed due to changing business requirements, that advantage is largely irrelevant as you may not be able to fix the system requirements long enough to code a major system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="23506" LastEditDate="2022-04-20T11:27:19.853" LastActivityDate="2022-04-20T11:27:19.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10949" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10951" CreationDate="2012-09-18T06:11:51.990" Score="28" ViewCount="4726" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am cynical about a report on Gizmodo that NASA is developing Warp Drive.  This was trending on Google Plus tonight and gathering a bit of attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/5942634/nasa-starts-development-of-real-life-star-trek-warp-drive&quot;&gt;http://gizmodo.com/5942634/nasa-starts-development-of-real-life-star-trek-warp-drive&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Working at NASA Eagleworks—a skunkworks operation deep at NASA's&#xA;  Johnson Space Center—Dr. White's team is trying to find proof of those&#xA;  loopholes. They have &quot;initiated an interferometer test bed that will&#xA;  try to generate and detect a microscopic instance of a little warp&#xA;  bubble&quot; using an instrument called the White-Juday Warp Field&#xA;  Interferometer....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By creating one of these warp bubbles, the spaceship's engine will compress the space ahead and expand the space behind, moving it to&#xA;  another place without actually moving, and carrying none of the&#xA;  adverse effects of other travel methods. According to Dr. White, &quot;by&#xA;  harnessing the physics of cosmic inflation, future spaceships crafted&#xA;  to satisfy the laws of these mathematical equations may actually be&#xA;  able to get somewhere unthinkably fast—and without adverse effects.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He says that, if everything is confirmed in these practical&#xA;  experiments, we would be able to create an engine that will get us to&#xA;  Alpha Centauri &quot;in two weeks as measured by clocks here on Earth.&quot; The&#xA;  time will be the same in the spaceship and on Earth, he claims, and&#xA;  there will not be &quot;tidal forces inside the bubble, no undue issues,&#xA;  and the proper acceleration is zero. When you turn the field on,&#xA;  everybody doesn't go slamming against the bulkhead, which would be a&#xA;  very short and sad trip.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warp drive seems a bit speculative compared to the vast list of more practical projects NASA could or does sponsor. Is NASA devoting serious resources to such a project? Could these project reports perhaps be a wee bit exaggerated? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, as Scotty would say: &quot;Ye cannae change the laws of physics.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; See also Slate's article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/08/harold_sonny_white_warp_drive_faster_than_light_secret_physics_debunked.html&quot;&gt;Warp Speed? Not so fast.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2015-12-15T04:30:40.663" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T02:36:18.837" Title="Is NASA working on warp drive?" Tags="|physics|space-flight|nasa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10932" CreationDate="2012-09-18T07:33:51.263" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/21558265&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Economist&lt;/em&gt; ran an article on July 7, 2012&lt;/a&gt; reporting mixed results across states and types of pupils.  It pointed to particular gains for the weakest and poorest children and in elementary schools rather than high schools, but with bad results in some states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It highlighted two particular pieces of research, one in &lt;a href=&quot;http://credo.stanford.edu/research-reports.html&quot;&gt;2009 from CREDO at Sanford&lt;/a&gt; which said &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For students that are low income, charter schools had a larger and&#xA;  more positive effect than for similar students in traditional public schools. English Language Learner students also reported significantly better gains in charter schools... States&#xA;  with reading and math gains that were significantly higher for charter school students than would have occurred in traditional schools included: Arkansas, Colorado (Denver), Illinois (Chicago), Louisiana and Missouri.... States with reading and math gains that were significantly below their peers in the traditional public school system included: Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio and Texas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and another from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/publications/PDFs/education/charterschools_WP.pdf&quot;&gt;Mathematica Policy Research in 2011&lt;/a&gt; saying &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;We found that, on average, charter schools had no significant impacts on student achievement in math and reading.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Impacts on measures of both student and parent satisfaction were statistically significant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;We found that charter school impacts varied widely across schools.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Impacts were most positive among schools in large, urban areas and among those serving the most disadvantaged students.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T07:33:51.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10951" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10949" CreationDate="2012-09-18T07:53:07.933" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr. White is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icarusinterstellar.org/team/harold-white/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;member of Icarus Interstellar&lt;/a&gt;, &amp;quot;a nonprofit foundation dedicated to achieving interstellar flight by 2100&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. White holds a Ph.D. in Physics from Rice University, a Master’s of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Wichita State University, and a Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering from University of South Alabama. Dr. White has accumulated over 15 years of experience working in the aerospace industry with Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and NASA. &lt;strong&gt;He currently serves as the Advanced Propulsion Theme Lead for the NASA Engineering Directorate and is the JSC representative to the Nuclear Systems Working Group.&lt;/strong&gt; In his role, Dr. White is serving to help the Agency incorporate high TRL advanced power and propulsion technologies into near and mid-term human exploration architectures. &lt;strong&gt;He is also pursuing theoretical and laboratory research on developing lower TRL advanced propulsion and power technologies in the advanced propulsion physics laboratory known as Eagleworks that is located at the Johnson Space Center.&lt;/strong&gt; Over the past 15 years, Dr. White has worked with members of academia, industry, and government to further grow this area of research resulting in many published papers, presentations, development and study of physics models, engineering tools, and the implementation and execution of multiple high fidelity experimental efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*TRL = &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_readiness_level&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Technology Readiness Level&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110023492_2011024705.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; (PDF), the &amp;quot;Eagleworks&amp;quot; lab for &amp;quot;Advanced Propulsion Physics Research&amp;quot; has been created to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;pursue propulsion technologies necessary to enable human exploration of the solar system over the next 50 years, and enabling interstellar spaceflight by the end of the century. This work directly supports the &amp;quot;Breakthrough Propulsion&amp;quot; objectives detailed in the NASA OCT TA02 In-space&#xA;Propulsion Roadmap, and aligns with the #10 Top Technical Challenge identified in the report&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a paper titled &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110015936_2011016932.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Warp Field Mechanics 101&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; (PDF), Dr.White explains the theoretical basis for the &amp;quot;White-Juday Warp Field Interferometer&amp;quot;. The abstract reads as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper will begin with a short review of the Alcubierre warp drive metric and describes how the phenomenon might work based on the original paper. The canonical form of the metric was developed and published in [6] which provided key insight into the field potential and boost for the field which remedied a critical paradox in the original Alcubierre concept of operations. A modified concept of operations based on the canonical form of the metric that remedies the paradox is presented and discussed. The idea of a warp drive in higher dimensional space-time (manifold) will then be briefly considered by comparing the null-like geodesics of the Alcubierre metric to the Chung-Freese metric to illustrate the mathematical role of hyperspace coordinates. The net effect of using a warp drive “technology” coupled with conventional propulsion systems on an exploration mission will be discussed using the nomenclature of early mission planning. Finally, an overview of the warp field interferometer test bed being implemented in the Advanced Propulsion Physics Laboratory: Eagleworks (APPL:E) at the&#xA;Johnson Space Center will be detailed. While warp field mechanics has not had a “Chicago Pile” moment, the tools necessary to detect a modest instance of the phenomenon are near at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, the efforts of the Eagleworks labs are recognised in the July edition of a periodical titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/roundup/online/2012/0712.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roundup&lt;/a&gt; (PDF) released by the Johnson Space Center:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The math would allow you to go to Alpha Centauri in two weeks as measured by clocks here on Earth,” White said. “So somebody’s clock&#xA;onboard the spacecraft has the same rate of time as somebody in&#xA;mission control here in Houston might have. There are no tidal forces,&#xA;no undue issues, and the proper acceleration is zero. When you turn&#xA;the field on, everybody doesn’t go slamming against the bulkhead,&#xA;(which) would be a very short and sad trip.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you think space warp, imagine raisins baking in bread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“When you put dough in a pan&#xA;there’s little raisins in the bread. As you cook the bread, the bread&#xA;rises and those raisins move relative to one another,” White said.&#xA;“That’s the concept of inflation in a terrestrial perspective, except&#xA;in astrophysics it’s just the actual physical space itself that’s&#xA;changing characteristics.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, the research has official status and an entire laboratory has been formed for such initiatives at the Johnson Space Center.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-18T18:24:17.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10954" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10956" CreationDate="2012-09-18T10:36:01.513" Score="45" ViewCount="109189" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ikchX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;sperm factoid&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://twaggies.com/2012/08/no-865-qikipedia/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an episode of the BBC show &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;QI - Quite Interesting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (Series J, Episode 1) &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stephen Fry&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zcc7h0GAAas&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;said&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How much information do you think is in the DNA of one little sperm...?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It's 37.5 MB...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;...a normal male ejaculation, if there is such a thing, is equivalent of 15,875 GB. That's about 7500 laptops worth of information...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;The shows &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/qikipedia/status/224269273730789376&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Twitter page&lt;/a&gt; summarized it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A sperm has 37.5 MB of DNA info. &lt;br&gt;One ejaculation transfers 15,875 GB of data, equivalent to that held on 7,500 laptops.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;em&gt;(with&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.oakland.edu/biology/lindemann/spermfacts.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;200 million sperm per ejaculation&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;one would actually get 7150 TB; &lt;br&gt;but I'm more interested in where the 37.5 MB number comes from)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the DNA of one sperm contain 37.5 MB of information?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T13:44:22.013" Title="Does the DNA of one sperm contain 37.5 MB of information?" Tags="|biology|physiology|sperm|dna|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10954" CreationDate="2012-09-18T16:08:36.427" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure where these numbers come from and the answer depends on how you encode the genome data and if you define all the redundancy (unnecessary, repetitive data) as &quot;information&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, the humane genome contains somewhere around 3.1 (men) to 3.2 (women) billion base pairs. Since the X chromosome is three times longer than the Y chromosome, women have a higher total genome length than men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/projects/genome/assembly/grc/human/data/index.shtml&quot;&gt;&quot;Human Genome Assembly Information&quot; from the &quot;Genome Reference Consortium&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A base pair is made of two of the four nucleobases adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine, but only the four combinations AT, TA, CG and GC are possible as the A and T nucleobases won't bond with the C and G nucleobases and vice versa. These four combinations can be encoded with two bits, so that 6.2-6.4 gigabits or about 750 megabytes are required to store an exact copy of the genome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, even if you need 750 megabytes to store the &quot;raw data&quot; from a human genome, at least a computer scientist will have a hard time defining all of this as &quot;information&quot;. E.g. if you record 74 Minutes of complete silence on a CD, the disc contains roughly 750 megabytes of &quot;data&quot; as well, but actually no &quot;information&quot;. Large parts of the human genome are repetitive, only a very small part actually differ between different individuals and from the difference, several base pair sequences only occur in a few well-defined varieties. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is actually some research in the field &quot;how to store a human genome as compact as possible&quot;, since genome databases most likely are going to expand rapidly and scientists need efficient ways to share data. Some tools are available for this purpose, e.g. DNAzip, which using a ~5 gigabyte dictionary (permanent data) can compress a human genome down to roughly 4 megabytes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/content/25/2/274.full&quot;&gt;&quot;Human genomes as email attachments&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastEditorUserId="8188" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T16:30:50.760" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T16:30:50.760" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8435" CreationDate="2012-09-19T01:38:40.040" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;D/R&lt;/strong&gt;: Psychopathic criminals are no more intelligent than non-psychopathic criminals, but the highly intelligent ones are more likely to commit serious crimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr/&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The connection between psychopathy and intelligence is slight complicated. There were conflicting reports about whether psychopaths were more intelligent, or the same intelligence, as other criminals. [Note: They were compared to non-psychopathic criminals, &lt;strong&gt;not the general population&lt;/strong&gt; which is what the question was about; I hope this is close enough.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Swedish study tried to tease out some of the complexity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Johansson P, Kerr M, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16178679&quot;&gt;Psychopathy and intelligence: a second look.&lt;/a&gt;, J Pers Disord. 2005 Aug;19(4):357-69. PMID: 16178679&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the abstract, they explain the conflict:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Empirical studies using the PCL-R (Hare, 2003) have shown no intelligence differences between psychopaths and nonpsychopaths. However, Cleckley (1976) argued that psychopaths often show superior intelligence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study explored whether:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the correlation between intelligence and severity of criminal development is the opposite in psychopaths than in nonpsychopathic criminals using a sample of 370 men sentenced for violent (nonsexual) crimes. That pattern would provide a way of explaining the discrepancy between Cleckley's view and later empirical work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And concluded: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;for nonpsychopaths, higher total IQ and particularly verbal intelligence meant a later start in violent crime. For those diagnosed as psychopaths, however, this association was reversed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper was further written up in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crimetimes.org/06b/w06bp7.htm&quot;&gt;Crime Times&lt;/a&gt; where they had more quotes from the authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The key finding in this study is that &lt;strong&gt;psychopathic and non-psychopathic criminals, although not different in overall levels of intelligence&lt;/strong&gt;, did differ in how high intelligence was related to the seriousness of misbehavior. For non-psychopaths, higher intelligence, particularly verbal intelligence, meant a later start in violent crime. For those diagnosed as psychopaths, however, high intelligence meant an early start in violent offending and more problematic behavior in and outside of institutions.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-19T03:19:34.407" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T03:19:34.407" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10965" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-19T13:15:28.417" Score="6" ViewCount="1122" Body="&lt;p&gt;In movies and television, commercial airliners that have lost electronics often go into flat spins and inevitably crash. Is this what would really happen? Would the plane be able to glide to a (possibly survivable) crash landing? Would it dive nose first into the ground? What would really happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the past, some airplanes displayed an unrecoverable spin in which&#xA;  the nose was higher, relative to the horizon, than in conventional&#xA;  spins. This is sometimes called a &lt;strong&gt;flat spin&lt;/strong&gt;, although whether a flat&#xA;  spin is indeed unrecoverable depends on aircraft type and loading. The&#xA;  plane spins on its belly around the normal axis.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_%28flight%29#Unrecoverable_spins&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwfCRAtkYEI#t=40s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Revolution - Trailer&lt;/a&gt; (0:40/4:21)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2262" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:25:05.397" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:25:05.397" Title="Do commercial airliners go into flat spins if they lose electronics?" Tags="|physics|aviation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10966" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-19T13:41:29.540" Score="33" ViewCount="4772" Body="&lt;p&gt;What contemporary historical records of the existence of Muhammad, the &#xA;prophet of Islam, exist or are known to have existed at some point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8616" LastEditorUserId="32459" LastEditDate="2016-12-07T17:42:00.120" LastActivityDate="2018-04-07T01:16:15.330" Title="Did Muhammad exist?" Tags="|history|religion|islam|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10965" CreationDate="2012-09-19T13:44:09.543" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume by &quot;modern&quot; you mean &quot;fly by wire&quot;. The description creates an expectation that if &quot;the electronics&quot; go off, the plan can no longer fly and will be out of control (e.g. in a flat spin) until it crashes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are multiple levels of redundancy in flight critical avionics, and the degree of automation and &quot;flight envelope protection&quot; degrades in stages as specific pieces of equipment fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Airbus system has 4 stages of electronic control modes (&quot;laws&quot; from &quot;normal&quot; through &quot;alternate&quot;, &quot;abnormal&quot; and &quot;direct&quot; modes - basically the plane hands more and more control responsibility over to the pilot as things fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any non-normal mode, it's possible to stall or fly the aircraft unsafely, but there's no expectation that the plane would be &quot;out of control&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most relevantly to the specific question, there is a 5th &quot;mechanical backup&quot; option, as shown by this description of the Airbus flight laws:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mechanical backup provides for &quot;temporary control&quot; - it's quite unlikely that this would extend to making a safe landing - it wouldn't be possible to put the wheels down, for example, if there were no operating electronics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that loss of all engines does not mean loss of all electricity - planes have a RAT (Ram Air Turbine) for emergencies - a wind-powered generator that pops out and basically turns the planes forward motion into electrical power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this argument is relevant for commercial passenger planes - for military aircraft, much greater risks are taken for the sake of speed and maneuverability, and fly by wire planes do fall out of the sky:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/fly-by-wire-failure-downed-indian-su-30mki-330051/&quot;&gt;http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/fly-by-wire-failure-downed-indian-su-30mki-330051/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8617" LastActivityDate="2012-09-19T13:44:09.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10970" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-19T15:40:19.927" Score="26" ViewCount="6807" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2603/is-there-any-scientific-proof-that-ball-lightning-is-real&quot;&gt;Is there any scientific proof that ball lightning is real?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone passed along this &lt;a href=&quot;https://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Oatmeal comic about Tesla&lt;/a&gt;. It's quite interesting and entertaining. I was curious about a lot of the statements' complete veracity, but this one in particular struck me (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ever heard of ball lightning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's lightning that appears in the form of a sphere and travels slowly while traveling a few feet above the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an extremely rare phenomenon and even today no scientists have ever successfully produced it in a laboratory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Oh, except Tesla did it back in the 1890's&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The related link above says that we currently have no &lt;em&gt;explanation&lt;/em&gt;, which I would think makes it pretty difficult to replicate. Did Tesla, indeed, create the only &amp;quot;artificially-generated&amp;quot; ball lightning to date?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or perhaps a better question is, &amp;quot;What is the source and reliability of the evidence supporting Tesla as having created ball lightning?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-05-31T10:48:47.647" LastActivityDate="2021-05-31T10:48:47.647" Title="Is Nikola Tesla the only scientist to successfully create ball lightning?" Tags="|physics|weather|lightning|nikola-tesla|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10974" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-20T05:13:41.433" Score="8" ViewCount="18037" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://islamqa.info/en/ref/83423&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Islam Q&amp;amp;A site&lt;/a&gt;, the prophet Mohammad prescribed camel's milk and urine to cure illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to claim there are benefits from drinking camel's urine including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Camel’s urine is efficacious in the treatment of skin diseases such as ringworm, tinea and abscesses, sores that may appear on the body and hair, and dry and wet ulcers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Camel’s urine brings the secondary benefits of making the hair lustrous and thick, and removing dandruff from the scalp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific experiments have proven that camel’s urine has a lethal effect on the germs that cause many diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Camel’s urine is also efficacious in the treatment of swelling of the liver and other diseases such as abscesses, sores that appear on the body and toothache, and for washing eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list goes on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence on the efficacy of camel urine against any medical condition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2381" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T11:24:01.563" Title="Does drinking the urine of camels have medical benefits?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|islam|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10977" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10978" CreationDate="2012-09-20T13:39:17.330" Score="14" ViewCount="3305" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digitalnaturopath.com/treat/T22977.html&quot;&gt;Some naturopath websites&lt;/a&gt; claim that garlic is incredibly good for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If garlic had been created in the laboratory instead of by nature, it would probably be a high-priced prescription drug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article goes on to claim it prevents cancer, blod clots and infections too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really true? I'm rather suspicious of that article for a number of reasons, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The studies it quotes are from the 80's, where it quotes any at all - a lot of the time it just refers to &quot;lots of scientific studies&quot; or &quot;most scientific studies&quot; without referencing anything in particular.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If the health benefits were really that irrevocably provable, surely we'd have seen more of a use of the substance by now?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm pretty sure that at the very least, the article is exaggerating. But I'm wondering if there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; valid medicinal uses for garlic, or such claims are just completely bogus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8626" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T00:39:19.560" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T13:39:58.817" Title="Does garlic lower cholesterol and reduce blood pressure?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|herbalism|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10977" CreationDate="2012-09-20T14:19:31.443" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many, many claims here. Some are very broad. (e.g. Cancer is not one disease.) I thought the best way to answer is to list some of the properties of garlic that have been subjected to meta-analysis by the Cochrane Collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Garlic &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; help with &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD007653/garlic-for-hypertension&quot;&gt;the prevention of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in hypertensive patients&lt;/a&gt;, but isn't sufficiently studied.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Garlic doesn't help with &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD000095/garlic-for-peripheral-arterial-occlusive-disease-affecting-the-legs&quot;&gt;peripheral arterial occlusive disease&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One study suggested garlic might help &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD006206/garlic-for-the-common-cold&quot;&gt;reduce the number of colds&lt;/a&gt; (but not necessarily their length or severity.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One study hinted that it didn't help with &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD006065/garlic-for-preventing-pre-eclampsia-and-its-complications&quot;&gt;pre-eclampsia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There's no evidence that garlic assists with &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD008037/non-antibiotic-agents-to-assist-antibiotic-treatment-for-lung-infection-in-cystic-fibrosis&quot;&gt;antibiotic treatment for lung infection in cystic fibrosis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 1998, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imbi.uni-freiburg.de/OJS/cca/index.php?journal=cca&amp;amp;page=article&amp;amp;op=view&amp;amp;path%5B%5D=4337&quot;&gt;systematic review&lt;/a&gt; (semi-broken web-page) found 109 papers with experimental data about garlic being used as an alternative therapy for treating cancers, but complained that &quot;a paucity of data exists on safety and efficacy (i.e., clinical outcomes, quality of life, and symptoms)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several studies above suggest the side-effects of garlic are not well understood, but they list skin rashes and bad smells. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garlic#Adverse_effects_and_toxicology&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; suggests allergies and drug interactions have been reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T14:19:31.443" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-20T14:31:12.520" Score="19" ViewCount="3420" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's election season in the United States and something that you tend to hear from domestic and international pundits is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lower income workers tend to vote Republican...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which also tends to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2006/10/19/how-does-income-affect-voting/&quot;&gt;restated&lt;/a&gt; using the stereotype:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... while Republicans are mostly low and middle-income folk, for&#xA;  example, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/080507774X&quot;&gt;What's the Matter with Kansas?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; was also written on this topic and uses the concept of &quot;backlash-conservatism&quot; as an explanation of as to why worker vote against their economic self interests. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, is this claim of lower income workers actually accurate and if so, does it apply on a regional basis or can it realistically be extrapolated out to make generalizations about the entire country?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-04-22T01:39:42.467" LastActivityDate="2016-07-30T10:34:12.413" Title="Do lower income workers tend to vote Republican?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10981" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-09-20T14:45:15.927" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T14:45:15.927" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T14:45:15.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10982" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-09-20T14:45:15.927" Score="0" Body="The Republican Party (also called the GOP or &quot;Grand Old Party&quot;) is a political party in the United States that generally reflects American conservatism on the political spectrum in the United States." OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-09-20T21:12:56.637" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T21:12:56.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10983" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-20T16:35:00.100" Score="6" ViewCount="342" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this online: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zoklet.net/totse/en/religion/miscellaneous_religious_texts/africanpenteco173932.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The African Pentecostal Church's Guide of Inquisitions of Witches and Magicians in the African Continent - 1989&lt;/a&gt; (Translated from the Swahili Manuscript of the late Bakari Sudi Jabari)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find any reliable sources to verify such a thing really existed, but I do know that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33h_h7mtoN0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;alleged witches&lt;/a&gt; are &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2012/07/resurgance-of-witch-hunts-in-nigeria.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;still&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ab5_1237210736&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;being burned to death&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://harlcazz.bravepages.com/library/Paganism/Pagan%20History%20and%20Facts/Witchhunts%20in%20Africa.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;parts&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/575178.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;of&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1fe_1310865020&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Africa&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://mikemccormack.blogspot.nl/2009/01/nigerian-child-witches-hate-and-hope.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mostly&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gylWH14V9Bv6kGBv39p4N06laoNA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nigeria&lt;/a&gt;, it seems).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is this new &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Malleus Maleficarum&lt;/a&gt; real? I.e.: &lt;strong&gt;Was this guide really used by a Pentecostal church or its believers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I've removed the limit to Africa as I'm absolutely shocked to find such &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17040111&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;occurring in the UK&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="5079" LastEditDate="2012-11-14T00:48:29.353" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T00:48:29.353" Title="African Pentecostal Witch Hunting Guide real?" Tags="|religion|books|violence|africa|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9790" CreationDate="2012-09-20T18:16:11.027" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basis for both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hoax-slayer.com/birds-die-from-gum-warning.shtml&quot;&gt;Hoax-Slayer&lt;/a&gt;'s and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/gumbirds.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;' debunking efforts is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSPl1fFeuqo&quot;&gt;video on YouTube&lt;/a&gt; where &quot;CBS 21 News takes a viewer question to local wildlife experts&quot;. The question is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;My wife says that if you throw gum on the street, a bird will eat the gum and die from it. Will a bird attempt to eat the gum?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wildlife experts responded as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zooamerica.com&quot;&gt;ZooAmerica&lt;/a&gt; (Hershey, PA) Director Troy Stump:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;After careful consideration and discussion among our zoo staff, Here is our conclusion. &lt;strong&gt;Chewing gum, in and of itself, is not and would not be a fatal substance for a bird to ingest&lt;/strong&gt; and may draw some birds' interest. However, there are many variables, and we know better than to say anything could never happen. It is conceivable that a very small bird could attempt to eat a very large piece of gum. &lt;em&gt;Obviously anything that might be large enough to lodge in an airway, be it bird or human, can be a problem&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.laketobias.com/directory.php&quot;&gt;Ern Tobias of Lake Tobias Wildlife Park&lt;/a&gt; near Halifax, Dauphin County:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The birds we have here at the park, it's unlikely that they would even try to eat it. They might peck at it once or twice, and realize it's not something they want to eat. &lt;strong&gt;We've never had a bird die from eating gum&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I've come across a few sites that state that gum containing artificial sweeteners such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylitol#Dogs&quot;&gt;Xylitol&lt;/a&gt; could be dangerous to birds, I've found nothing to back this claim. Such sweeteners are &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.nilesanimalhospital.com/2012/07/dangers-of-artificial-sweetener-xylitol.html&quot;&gt;definitely dangerous to dogs&lt;/a&gt;. It is very likely that this fact has subsequently been exaggerated to include all pets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, while the OP has noted that the birds in the image are insectivorous and would therefore not be interested in bread, Snopes also notes that the image itself is a rehashed photograph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First off, the picture displayed above has nothing to do with a bird's dying from eating a piece of discarded gum. It's one of a sequence of much-circulated &lt;a href=&quot;http://writinghood.com/online-writing/birds-also-have-a-brain-and-feelings/&quot;&gt;photographs from 2009&lt;/a&gt; which was said to show a swallow who refused to abandon his mate after she was hit by a car and subsequently died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, there appears to be nothing in particular about chewing-gum that, if ingested by birds, will upset their digestive systems or similar. There is also no credible evidence that birds will even be interested in it. There is a small chance that small/young birds might choke on discarded gum. But this hazard is no different to them choking on a large nut and therefore does not really warrant any serious concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o26NSs2Rkk&quot;&gt;parrot chewing gum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2014-10-17T06:02:38.453" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T06:02:38.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10985" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10988" CreationDate="2012-09-20T19:11:40.403" Score="2" ViewCount="1786" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=279277375517785&amp;amp;set=a.241405075971682.47251.241392719306251&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this claim just came across Facebook&lt;/a&gt; -- that one can save $160USD by peeing in the shower. Certainly, peeing in the shower is both more green and will in fact save water, especially if you let the urine go down drain using gravity rather than water. However, what kinds of parameters would have to be true to save $160 a year by urinating in the shower?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://designtoimprovelife.dk/index.php?option=com_content_custom&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=589&amp;amp;catid=18&amp;amp;Itemid=287&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;You can also see the claim sort of explain on designtoimprovelife.dk&lt;/a&gt;. I'm not sure if that's a valid source, or just advocates of shower peeing. Here is how they explain this bold claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your water savings will depend on how many people live in your home and how much water your toilets use. If you are in Northern Europe, there are generally three different types of toilets: 12 liter flush toilets (oldest), 9 liter flush toilets (older) and modern 2-flush toilets (3 liters and 6 liters). So if you have a family of 5, using modern toilets, you would save 8,200 liters ($60) per year if everyone peed in the shower once a day (4,5x5x365).  If you have older toilets, the savings can be over 20,000 liters ($160) a year, but at that point you would probably save more money by buying newer toilets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rGOKu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Peeing in the shower&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At $160/yr of savings, I may very well just ask all of my guests to urinate in the shower instead. This claim just sounds unreal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T17:22:23.290" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T17:22:23.290" Title="Can one save up to $160 a year by peeing in the shower?" Tags="|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10979" CreationDate="2012-09-20T19:26:35.920" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, at least not as much as medium- and higher- income white voters, at least according to these graphics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/03/23/voting-patterns-of-americas-whites-from-the-masses-to-the-elites/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2012/03/23/voting-patterns-of-americas-whites-from-the-masses-to-the-elites/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZXS26.png&quot; alt=&quot;Republican vote share by income&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the HS degree or some college graphics, lower income is about 50/50.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8631" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-09-23T08:44:42.557" LastActivityDate="2012-09-23T08:44:42.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10985" CreationDate="2012-09-20T20:17:00.937" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Water is cheap. In the UK 1 cubic meter of water (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_metre&quot;&gt;1000 litres&lt;/a&gt;) costs &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anglianwater.co.uk/household/your-account/tariffs/standard-rates/&quot;&gt;around £1.45&lt;/a&gt;. So even if you could save 20,000 litres of water by peeing in the shower that would only be £29, which at &lt;a href=&quot;http://fx-rate.net/USD/GBP/&quot;&gt;current exchange rates&lt;/a&gt; is about $50.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-09-20T20:17:00.937" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10989" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10995" CreationDate="2012-09-21T07:48:00.280" Score="28" ViewCount="16943" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a few places online (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iep.org.au/workireland/inspiration.asp&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;) that lays out a statement, essentially with two claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Windmills always turn counter-clockwise. Except for the windmills in Ireland.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are two claims to check:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Windmills always turn counter-clockwise&quot; - true or false, with references?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Irish windmills turn clockwise&quot; - true or false.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of the sites I've seen claim it might be a local custom or design, but that's hypothetical; none of them provide proof of this, or where the 'facts' come from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone provide some insight into these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5933" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T14:28:57.993" LastActivityDate="2018-07-31T11:44:43.677" Title="Do windmills in Ireland turn clockwise, unlike the rest of the world?" Tags="|architecture|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10989" CreationDate="2012-09-21T09:11:57.927" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A single counter-example is sufficient to show that this statement is not &lt;em&gt;strictly&lt;/em&gt; true. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bigboytoyshow-nwia.com/pics/OCWindmill.jpg&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; windmill in Orange County, Iowa is a clockwise windmill. And it appears that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.travelireland.org/kerry/visitor_attractions/blennerville-windmill.html&quot;&gt;Blennerville Windmill - Tralee&lt;/a&gt; is an anti-clockwise windmill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, however, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=dutch%20windmill&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;tbo=u&amp;amp;prmd=imvns&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;source=univ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=HyxcUI7dOom80QXnvoCoDA&amp;amp;ved=0CEAQsAQ&amp;amp;biw=1600&amp;amp;bih=951&quot;&gt;google for images of windmills&lt;/a&gt; does suggest that the majority do turn counter-clockwise (assuming that the pictures returned by Google are not mirror-images). However, it isn't clear that the Irish windmills buck that trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that the idea originates from a common (at least in England) stereotype of the Irish as being prone to doing things in the opposite way to the way it should be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7574" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T09:11:57.927" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10992" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-21T09:30:19.660" Score="6" ViewCount="54564" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Paraffinum liquidum&lt;/strong&gt; can be found in a lot of cosmetic products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some articles say it is harmless but the other half said it causes harmful effects such as the premature aging of the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Examples of negative reports:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innocentoils.com/index8tox.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Innocent Oils&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it also prevents your skins normal respiration, causes it to sweat beneath the oily layer thus resulting in further drying the skin and inevitably causing a breakdown in its normal function. This will exacerbate eczema and psoriasis problems and potentially create a dependency, as the natural oils in the skin fail to function correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thechalkboardmag.com/toxic-tuesday-ingredient-focus-mineral-oil-aka-paraffinum-liquidum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Chalkboard&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Petrochemicals contain neurotoxins which damage the nervous system. Mineral oil forms a film on the surface of your skin that can not be absorbed, thereby blocking the pores and the skin’s natural respiration. It traps dirt and bacteria and blocks the absorption of vitamins/minerals/botanicals that may be in a product. John Hopkins University named mineral oil in cosmetics and moisturizers as the number two cause of aging (first being direct exposure to sun). It may also cause allergic reactions and dryness, as well as promote acne and other skin disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Examples of positive reports:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cosmeticscop.com/cosmetic-ingredient-dictionary/definition/963/mineral-oil.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paula's Choice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cosmetics-grade mineral oil and petrolatum are considered the safest, most nonirritating moisturizing ingredients ever found (Sources: Cosmetics &amp;amp; Toiletries, January 2001, page 79; and Cosmetic Dermatology, September 2000, pages 44–46). Yes, they can keep air off the skin to some extent, but that’s what a good antioxidant is supposed to do; they don’t suffocate skin! Moreover, mineral oil and petrolatum are known to be efficacious in wound healing, and are also among the most effective moisturizing ingredients available (Source: Cosmetics &amp;amp; Toiletries, February 1998, pages 33–40).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thebeautybrains.com/2006/11/28/the-top-5-myths-about-mineral-oil-part-1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Beauty Brains&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mineral oil works as a barrier between the skin and the air. It acts as an occlusive agent which prevents water from naturally leaving your body through your skin. It will not dry out your skin or cause premature aging. Quite the contrary. It will provide moisturization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does mineral oil have the harmful effects described in the first reports, or is it safe as described in the latter reports?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8637" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:28:55.250" Title="Is Paraffinum liquidum (mineral oil) in cosmetics dangerous?" Tags="|environmental-health|chemistry|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10979" CreationDate="2012-09-21T11:18:27.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2006/10/19/how-does-income-affect-voting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; provided in the question also includes an answer in the final paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In poor states, poor people vote Democrat and wealthy people vote&#xA;  Republican. The same is true in a medium-income state, though less so&#xA;  than in the poor state. In the wealthy state, however, income has very&#xA;  little effect on voting: both the rich and the poor vote Democrat and&#xA;  Republican.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T11:18:27.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10994" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-21T12:14:19.670" Score="9" ViewCount="1030" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microexpressions were validated in this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3210/do-involuntary-microexpressions-betray-liars&quot;&gt;Do involuntary &amp;quot;microexpressions&amp;quot; betray liars?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But can a human eye (as opposed to a frame by frame analysis of a high-speed video) detect them specifically? or is human sight too slow to detect microexpressions in realtime?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T15:53:27.570" Title="Can a trained human eye catch microexpressions?" Tags="|psychology|physiology|law-enforcement|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10989" CreationDate="2012-09-21T18:29:16.540" Score="43" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Short answer:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Windmills always turn counter-clockwise&amp;quot; - False, it depends&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Irish windmills turn clockwise&amp;quot; - False, it depends too&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Long Answer:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The older windmills have any spinning CW or CCW, in fact in the district of Cambridgeshire, England, you have an example of &lt;em&gt;nearby similar mills whose sails rotate in opposite directions in Cambridgeshire at Bourn (anticlockwise) and Great Gransden (clockwise).&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_direction_do_windmill_blades_spin#ixzz277Lplsa4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reference&lt;/a&gt;, here are some not so great pictures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cambridgeshire at Bourn (anticlockwise)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r2As9.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Rear view  of CCW Mill&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bourn.org.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Check the Windmill section&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/46mdB.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Front view of CCW Mill&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cambridgeppf.org/bourn-post-mill.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Great Gransden (clockwise)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hZ6Uh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Wikipedia view of CW Mill&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Gransden&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can check in my studies (for the fun), and in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5188926_windmill-spin_.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Website&lt;/a&gt;, the spinning depends of the shape of the blade... and the likes of the owner. Why?, well because...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In olden times all of the 'dutch' type of windmills turned left and there was a reason for that.  The sails were rigged on long pegs that were driven right through the spars and stuck out a long way beyond toward the trailing edge.  The windmiller would hammer these pegs through the main spar, climbing up them like a ladder from the tip as he went.  Being mostly right handed, they preferred if the pegs went in from the right hand side and so the trailing edge was on the left of the sweep.  This made the sails turn anticlockwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fieldlines.com/index.php?topic=143765.0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;scoraigwind's answer&quot;&gt;Here, discussion board&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern Windmills enforce this, for the practical reason, the nuts and the force:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your prop is attached to the generator using a Single Bolt or Nut, then you would want it to rotate Clockwise which would keep it tightened up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fieldlines.com/index.php?topic=143765.0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;wooferhound's answer&quot;&gt;Here, same discussion board&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a VAWT, a clockwise rotation will create a force in the downward direction and an anti clockwise rotation will create a force is the upward direction.  The greater the spin, the larger the force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a HAWT, a clockwise rotation will create a force with the wind and an anti clockwise rotation will create a force into the wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The forces are created by the angular momentum of a spinning object.  If you want a visual, do a youtube search for the topic &amp;quot;angular momentum&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fieldlines.com/index.php?topic=143765.0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;dsmith1427's answer&quot;&gt;Here, the same discussion board&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for both types of windmill/wind turbines the clockwise rotation &amp;quot;keep the system in place&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but lastly the proper design of the blades instead of just &amp;quot;put the blades in the opposite direction&amp;quot; will reverse this effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CW as seen on this video &lt;a href=&quot;http://videos.howstuffworks.com/siemens-corporation/2950-wind-power-the-worlds-fastest-growing-energy-source-video.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;CW wind Turbine&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxOYwWu7Xcc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;CW wind turbine&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu3EyzOYpGY&amp;amp;feature=related&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Another CW turbine&quot;&gt;there&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CCW as seen in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upLZZJyWfwY&amp;amp;feature=related&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;CCW turbine&quot;&gt;Video&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnhwK6KeUfo&amp;amp;feature=related&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;CCW turbine&quot;&gt;also here&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LQMmbsOyKw&amp;amp;feature=related&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;CCW turbine&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI7jJGj0fZs&amp;amp;feature=relmfu&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;CCW turbine Second 22&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A weird mix CW and CCW turbines in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI2_1n-45q4&amp;amp;feature=related&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;mix CCw and CW&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; (Seconds 0:30 - 0:40)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly in a related question &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/12734/what-happens-if-a-wind-mill-rotates-in-opposite-direction&quot; title=&quot;SE site&quot;&gt;Physics SE&lt;/a&gt;, we can see that the latest wind turbine generators take great care to prevent &amp;quot;reverse spinning&amp;quot; and have two sets of turbines (CW and CCW type) will just add cost and work overhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Windmills always turn counter-clockwise&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - False, it depends of the design and construction of the wind mill or wind turbine. Mainly right handedness of the builder/fixer in the older ones for CCW and Bolt/nuts design for CW in the-not-so-old windmills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wind turbines can go either way, but company/market policies dictate a CW or CCW for supplies (blades and generators), maintenance manuals, personal training and connection to the power grid (see physics SE).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Irish windmills turn clockwise&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt; - False, it depends too, same reason as above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference:&#xA;Civil Engineering University course UTFSM, Chile. So trust me, I'm a engineer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7676" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-21T19:25:05.547" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10996" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="10998" CreationDate="2012-09-21T19:29:36.880" Score="21" ViewCount="3157" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKjoDuYKAs8&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt; gives instructions on building a circuit to harvest energy from radio waves in the air using some pretty straightforward circuitry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The creator has another video showing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUG7SdrVnv0&amp;amp;feature=plcp&quot;&gt;such a circuit&lt;/a&gt; powering a wall clock. Is it possible to harvest enough energy from radio transmissions to power small devices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8641" LastEditorUserId="143" LastEditDate="2012-09-21T20:36:59.047" LastActivityDate="2022-05-17T21:16:39.183" Title="Can you harvest energy from radio transmissions?" Tags="|engineering|electronics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="10998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10996" CreationDate="2012-09-21T21:24:35.390" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, but from a practical standpoint, don't expect much from them as you aren't going to be getting that much electricity from the antenna.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, to address the basic claim that you can harvest electricity through the air and use it to do some sort of practical work. This is an emphatic yes as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;crystal radios&lt;/a&gt; are passive devices that are able to convert the radio waves over to electrical power that drives the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_earpiece&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;earpiece&lt;/a&gt; so you can hear sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the more robust claim of being able to power non-specialized equipment such as the clock in the example. This can &lt;a href=&quot;https://phys.org/news/2011-08-rectenna-radio-electricity.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;also be done&lt;/a&gt;, and is &lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=radio-frequency%20energy%20harvesting&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=0,22&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;well publicized&lt;/a&gt; as a research area but the amount of electricity being harvested tends to be very low, as the one article notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Engineers demoing the two devices say electricity produced by the WiFi&#xA;version is in the microwatts at a distance of just 10cm from the&#xA;source, not a lot of course, but enough to power a small sensor or&#xA;tag, they say. As for the terrestrial version, they were able to&#xA;generate about 1.2mV and 0.06µW of power inside the exhibition hall,&#xA;where the video was made, at the Tokyo Big Sight. The signals received&#xA;were from a digital terrestrial broadcast sent from the Tokyo Tower&#xA;which was about 5.5km away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tends to be enough to drive small electronics which is why there are some applications in &lt;a href=&quot;https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4494663&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sensor networks&lt;/a&gt; but you aren't going to get nearly enough electricity from passive sources to do much beyond the small applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-05-09T12:37:16.393" LastActivityDate="2022-05-09T12:37:16.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="10999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10996" CreationDate="2012-09-21T21:44:35.587" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely, and there are two sides to this which appear successful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Induction:&lt;/strong&gt; Nokia are one of those &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nokia.com/global/products/wireless-charging/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;manufacturing products in this space&lt;/a&gt; to wirelessly charge batteries in mobile devices, along with manufacturers of electric toothbrushes, shavers, computer mice etc:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zskny.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you need to do with one of these is pop your device on top of the wireless charger and your battery charges. No need to plug in fiddly cables:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make it work well you need quite electro-magnetic coupling so it is really only practical at very short range, and with a very focused antenna, but this is absolutely harvesting energy from radio transmissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Microwave Power Transmission:&lt;/strong&gt; From the International Journal of Computer Applications 2010 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ijcaonline.org/journal/number13/pxc387434.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; there is mention of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1904, an airship ship motor of 0.1 horsepower is driven by&#xA;transmitting power through space from a distance of least 100 feet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This works by strongly focusing a high power microwave beam. Companies like Raytheon, NASA and others have carried out Proof of Concept work and see that efficiencies are high enough to make it worthwhile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T08:41:43.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11004" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11044" CreationDate="2012-09-22T16:28:20.590" Score="11" ViewCount="1209" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many movies and series show people wearing handcuffs picking them using a small hidden piece of metal, like a bobby pin, paperclip, broken glasses, tweezers and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this be done in real life, with handcuffs that are used by police and other law enforcement agencies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-01-06T02:02:14.533" LastActivityDate="2017-01-07T08:45:24.303" Title="Can handcuffs be picked with a single hand while handcuffed?" Tags="|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10979" CreationDate="2012-09-22T23:33:00.807" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In short, no. It is a journalistic misunderstanding based on naive interpretations of statistics.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that the working poor tend to vote republican seems to be based on a misinterpretation of the sort of statistics presented in the chart below (which shows state-level comparison of the republican share in 2004 with state-level average income).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SC4d6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Gelman&amp;#39;s presentation of republican vote by state vs income in 2004&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a clear pattern of richer states having a &lt;em&gt;lower&lt;/em&gt; republican share of the vote; to express this differently: richer &lt;em&gt;states&lt;/em&gt; tend to vote democrat. It is all too easy to leap from this to assuming poor &lt;em&gt;people&lt;/em&gt; vote republican.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The charts here are from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/presentations/redbluetalkubc.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;presentation&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Andrew Gelman&lt;/a&gt;, a professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University. The presentation summarises some analysis from his book on the subject, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-State-Blue-Rich-Poor/dp/069113927X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. He also &lt;a href=&quot;http://andrewgelman.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;regularly blogs&lt;/a&gt; on related topics, frequently debuunking statistical errors that have appeared in the press and media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two different ways of visualizing the data show the nature of the error. The first analyses presidential share by voter income:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LK2Gj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;presidential share of vote by voter income&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes it clear that the poor tend to be more democrat voting. This view is reinforced by analysis of the pattern of voting for congress shown below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MpQFa.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;house vote and voter income&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This chart also hints at one of the complexities of american voting patterns: the general trend for the poor to be more democrat is universal, but the extent to which the rich and poor differ in their preferences changes greatly by region.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gelman summarises the key pattern in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/red_state_blue_state_revised.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one of his papers&lt;/a&gt; on the subject (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Census and opinion poll data since 1952 reveal that higher-income &lt;strong&gt;voters&lt;/strong&gt; continue to support the Republicans in presidential elections. However, higher-income &lt;strong&gt;states&lt;/strong&gt; have in recent years favored the Democrats. &lt;em&gt;The Republicans have the support of the richer voters within any given state but have more overall support in the poorer states.&lt;/em&gt; Thus, the identification of rich states with rich voters, or more generally, the “personification” of so-called red and blue states, is misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short the original claim is based on a common statistical error (often called the &quot;ecological fallacy&quot;) where the aggregate pattern for states is mistaken for the pattern for individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2016-07-30T10:34:12.413" LastActivityDate="2016-07-30T10:34:12.413" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9030" CreationDate="2012-09-24T08:19:56.773" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infectious_disease&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Infectious diseases&lt;/a&gt; like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;smallpox&lt;/a&gt; mess up the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_disorder&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Genetic disorders&lt;/a&gt; like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progeria&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Progeria&lt;/a&gt; mess up body proportions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More subtle are body part ratios in healthy people:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The distance between a woman's eyes and the distance between her eyes&#xA;  and her mouth are key factors in determining how attractive she is to&#xA;  others, according to new psychology research from the University of&#xA;  California, San Diego and the University of Toronto.&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091216144141.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New 'Golden Ratios' for Female Facial Beauty, ScienceDaily (Dec. 17, 2009)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intmath.com/numbers/math-of-beauty.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Math Behind the Beauty, By M. Bourne&lt;/a&gt; has an interactive Flash app to match photos with mathematical ratios, and you can enter your own data at &lt;a href=&quot;http://facethis.blogspot.nl/2012/01/perfect-face-golden-ratio-beauty.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Perfect Face - Golden Ratio Beauty Calculator&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO3o9drC1mQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt; demos gender bending using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gimp.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gimp&lt;/a&gt;. Depending on your position on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_scale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kinsey scale&lt;/a&gt;, the ratio of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masculinity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;masculine&lt;/a&gt; vs. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_body_shape&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;feminine&lt;/a&gt; traits is important for sexual attraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;cor·re·la·tion noun \ˌkȯr-ə-ˈlā-shən, ˌkär-\ Definition of&#xA;  CORRELATION 1: the state or relation of being correlated; specifically&#xA;  : a relation existing between phenomena or things or between&#xA;  mathematical or statistical variables which tend to vary, be&#xA;  associated, or occur together in a way not expected on the basis of&#xA;  chance alone &#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/correlation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/correlation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've linked to studies and mathematical models, but including images of disease progress and their resulting physical effects might run me afoul of delicate senses again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3068759&amp;amp;cid=41112685&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This guy&lt;/a&gt; never got scarred by a vaccine, so could be naturally immune to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've clearly shown that disease (health flaw) can affect appearance (beauty). &lt;strong&gt;Appearance does not affect disease that much.&lt;/strong&gt; (Nice clothes and make-up can attract people and so &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=talk-to-teens-live-longer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;improve health&lt;/a&gt;, but are unrelated to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenotype&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;phenotype&lt;/a&gt; and can also expose one to disease.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="5079" LastEditDate="2012-10-03T08:23:04.597" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T08:23:04.597" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10974" CreationDate="2012-09-24T09:29:15.377" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, to some extent, but probably not when drinking the stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Urine contains urea, which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urea#Medical_use&quot;&gt;used pharmaceutically&lt;/a&gt; as a rehydrating (water-binding) and keratolytic agent, e. g. in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2245997&quot;&gt;treatment of skin disorders&lt;/a&gt; that cause scaly, dry skin, or to assist in removing skin detritus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the presumed usefulness in diseases such as ringworm, tinea, sores, dandruff etc. appears at least understandable, although it would be a purely symptomatic treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some research also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/v132/n6/abs/jid201242a.html&quot;&gt;appears to indicate&lt;/a&gt; that urea possesses some antimicrobial activity and that it enhances the skin barrier function against external factors like bacteria/fungi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is only for external, topical application, not for drinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, why camel urine, not human urine? Well, this is all guesswork, but camels are able to &lt;a href=&quot;http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Doi=172650&quot;&gt;concentrate their urine much higher&lt;/a&gt; than humans (which makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint if you're a desert animal), so you'd get a higher dose from camel urine than from your homemade stuff. But if you don't have a camel around and don't mind the social disadvantages of this treatment, human urine should also work to some extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastEditorUserId="604" LastEditDate="2012-09-24T09:48:56.367" LastActivityDate="2012-09-24T09:48:56.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10996" CreationDate="2012-09-25T04:28:35.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;While possible, this proposal is only practical if there is a high efficiency coupling between the transmitter and receiver. Anything else would waste the vast majority of the broadcast energy. With ordinary broadcasts the coupling is extremely loose, and all you will receive is microwatts or less. That may be enough to drive a clock, but not much else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tight coupling can be achieved by transmitting over very short distances, as in electric toothbrushes or the Nokia phone charger shown by Rory Alsop. Alternatively, the energy can be tightly focused to the receiver, and the receiver made large enough to intercept all of the beam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been proposals to collect solar energy in space, using solar panels, and to beam it down to earth, using either lasers or microwave transmitters. In both cases the power would be tightly collimated to the receiver. A tightly focused beam is essential here, not only to ensure that no power is wasted, but also to avoid damaging structures and life outside the beam. The idea has been around for decades, but has not yet found backers. Obstacles to its implementation include safety issues, as well as the cost of launching a gigawatt space power station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References can easily be found by googling &amp;quot;space energy&amp;quot;, but here are a couple of examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/ast23mar_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beam it Down, Scotty!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/farming-solar-energy-in-space/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Energy—Roping the Sun&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Space-based solar power&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-05-09T14:11:45.330" LastActivityDate="2022-05-09T14:11:45.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11018" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11019" CreationDate="2012-09-25T07:09:27.243" Score="7" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Leviticus 11:6, a hare is referred to as a &quot;chewer of the cud.&quot; What evidence is there on this matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not necessary, strictly speaking, that the evidence be on chewing cud in the same sense as ruminants. From my research, hares are not ruminants and do not possess the proper physiology. However, I am interested in any references or pieces of evidence for behavior that could be &lt;em&gt;perceived&lt;/em&gt; as chewing cud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2694" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:18:49.577" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:18:49.577" Title="Do hares chew cud?" Tags="|physiology|zoology|bible|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11018" CreationDate="2012-09-25T07:27:59.780" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As long as you are willing for the definition of &quot;chewing cud&quot; to be very broad, then &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/caecotrophy&quot;&gt;caecotrophy&lt;/a&gt; may count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rabbit/hares excrete special pellets from the anus (different to regular faeces), which are reswallowed and redigested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Night feces (cecotropes) from this cecal fermented material are packaged in mucin &#xA;  and pass through the colon to the anus. These cecotropes are ingested by the rabbit and swallowed intact &#xA;  where they contribute substantially to the protein, mineral and vitamin nutriture of the animal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harrisonpet.com/index.php?p=download&amp;amp;file=38&quot;&gt;Harrison Pet&lt;/a&gt; - not a particularly strong reference, but I don't think the science is in doubt here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the sense that the food is passed through the mouth twice for further digestion, it has some similarities to chewing the cud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-09-25T07:27:59.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="907" CreationDate="2012-09-25T15:14:35.883" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quoting &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cjlf.org/deathpenalty/DezRubShepDeterFinal.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Does Capital Punishment Have a Deterrent Effect? New Evidence from Post-moratorium Panel Data, by Hashem Dezhbakhsh and Paul H. Rubin, Emory University, and Joanna M. Shepherd*, Clemson University and Emory University&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2009/12/25/aler.ahp024.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;contested&lt;/a&gt;), emphasis mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this study, we use a panel data set covering 3054 counties over the&#xA;  period 1977 through 1996 to examine the deterrent effect of capital&#xA;  punishment. The relatively low level of aggregation allows us to&#xA;  control for county specific effects and also avoid problems of&#xA;  aggregate time-series studies. Using comprehensive post-moratorium&#xA;  evidence, our study offers results that are relevant for analyzing&#xA;  current crime levels and useful for policy purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our results suggest that the legal change allowing executions&#xA;  beginning in 1977 has been associated with &lt;strong&gt;significant reductions in&#xA;  homicide&lt;/strong&gt;. An increase in any of the three probabilities of arrest,&#xA;  sentencing, or execution tends to reduce the crime rate. Results are&#xA;  robust to specification of such probabilities. &lt;strong&gt;In particular, our most&#xA;  conservative estimate is that the execution of each offender seems to&#xA;  save, on average, the lives of 18 potential victims.&lt;/strong&gt; (This estimate&#xA;  has a margin of error of plus and minus 10). Moreover, we find robbery&#xA;  and aggravated assault associated with increased murder rates. A&#xA;  higher NRA presence, measured by NRA membership rate, seems to have a&#xA;  similar murder-increasing effect. Tests show that results are not&#xA;  driven by tough sentencing laws, and are also robust to various&#xA;  specification choices. Our main finding, that capital punishment has a&#xA;  deterrent effect, is robust to choice of functional form (double-log,&#xA;  semi-log, or linear), state level vs. county level analysis, sampling&#xA;  period, endogenous vs. exogenous probabilities, and level vs. ratio&#xA;  specification of the main variables. Overall, we estimate 55 models;&#xA;  the estimated coefficient of the execution probability is negative and&#xA;  significant in 49 of these models and negative but insignificant in&#xA;  four models. Finally, a cautionary note is in order: deterrence&#xA;  reflects social benefits associated with the death penalty, but one&#xA;  should also weigh in the corresponding social costs. These include the&#xA;  regret associated with the irreversible decision to execute an&#xA;  innocent person. Moreover, issues such as the possible unfairness of&#xA;  the justice system and discrimination need to be considered when&#xA;  making a social decision regarding capital punishment. Nonetheless,&#xA;  our results indicate that there are substantial costs in deciding not&#xA;  to use capital punishment as a deterrent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/00036841003670804&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;meta-meta-study&lt;/a&gt; debunks debunkers' studies, so it's not 100% certain that the death penalty doesn't scare those it's intended for. However, if death row appeals are not mandatory, they indicate a willingness to avoid the death penalty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As evidence of innocent lives being lost to convicted murderers (thus their prison term was less effective at preventing their re-offence than death), I present &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wesleylowe.com/repoff.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a short list of convicted murderers who murdered again&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the arrest rate, sentencing, appeals, and long wait before a death penalty is even executed, it is more deterring to assault an armed civilian, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/09/30/media-silence-is-deafening-about-important-gun-news/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;. Those criminals do seem to value their own lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="5079" LastEditDate="2012-09-27T09:37:39.570" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T09:37:39.570" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10974" CreationDate="2012-09-26T03:08:58.733" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has camel's urine been studied scientifically? Yes, it has, although I only found preliminary studies and nothing that would suggest it was useful in clinical or practical circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Anti-bacterial/anti-fungal&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amira Hassan Abdullah Al-Abdalall, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academicjournals.org/AJar/PDF/pdf%202010/4%20Jun/Al-Abdalall.pdf&quot;&gt;The inhibitory effect of camel's urine on mycotoxins &#xA;and fungal growth&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;African Journal of Agricultural Research Vol. 5(11), pp. 1331-1337, 4 June, 2010&#xA;DOI: 10.5897/AJAR09.686&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper seems inspired by the Arab tradition of using camel urine for alternative treatment. It found that high concentrations of camels urine inhibited the growth of some fungi and bacteria (in vitro - this isn't a result that can be immediately applied to drinking urine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(The author is affiliated with the &quot;Faculty of Science for Girls&quot; in Saudi Arabia University - a stark reminder of the cultural differences compared to the West.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only found a couple of cites of this paper, one of which was relevant, in that it delved deeper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Munir Mustafa Al-Bashan &lt;a href=&quot;http://idosi.org/mejsr/mejsr7%286%2911/20.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;In vitro&lt;/em&gt; Assessment of the Antimicrobial Activity and Biochemical Properties of Camel's Urine Against Some Human Pathogenic Microbes.&lt;/a&gt;, Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research 7(6): 947-958, 2011.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this work was religiously inspired. It found the effect was time-bounded, and suggests the mechanism may be the alkalinity of the camel's urine. In the discussion, it references other studies of the anti-fungal nature of camel's urine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It concludes that camel's urine was &quot;satisfactory for using as a medicinal treatment in the field of medical therapy.&quot; I would counter that these in vitro studies show no such thing: efficacy in vivo, safety and a comparison to other treatments haven't been looked at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Anti-platelet&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a paper from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2010.0473&quot;&gt;Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine&lt;/a&gt;. If I was nervous about citing the religiously inspired science in low-quality journals above, you can understand why I haven't bothered to properly assess this one. Suffice to say, they claim to have &quot;the first scientific evidence of the mechanism of the presumed therapeutic properties of camel urine&quot; with respect to anti-platelets, but only from lactating or pregnant camels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T03:08:58.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26745" CreationDate="2012-09-26T13:03:22.023" Score="10" ViewCount="868" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a question which has been niggling me for ages, but I'm finally prompted to ask it by the numbers in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19661085&quot;&gt;this BBC news story&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;How many calories should you eat?&#xA;    2,500 calories for men daily&#xA;    2,000 calories for women daily&#xA;    1,800 calories for children aged five to 10 daily&#xA;Source: NHS&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And indeed it's easy enough to find this info &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/chq/pages/1126.aspx?categoryid=51&amp;amp;subcategoryid=165&quot;&gt;on the NHS site&lt;/a&gt; too).  Now I'm pretty sure a decade or two ago you'd read the nutritional information on the side of packages and it would recommend 2000 for men and 1800 for women, and then at some point it seemed to creep up to 2200 for men and 2000 to women.  And now I'm really surprised to see 2500 suddenly.  Certainly the government can and does change these numbers (and the above may even be out of date!): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/10/14/recommended-daily-calorie_n_1010324.html&quot;&gt;see this article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also vaguely remember seeing some comments (either in or associated with the TV programme &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01k0fs0&quot;&gt;&quot;The Men Who Made Us Fat&quot;&lt;/a&gt; or some commentary/review/blogging associated with the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodpolitics.com/why-calories-count-from-science-to-politics-available-april-2012/&quot;&gt;&quot;Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics&quot;&lt;/a&gt;) claiming that the food industry has an obvious interest in seeing such numbers pushed upwards and actively lobby for such.  But it's harder to find any concrete evidence for this; of course it's also hard to find anything which gives me any confidence the numbers are arrived at by a transparent process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;; subsequent finds: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is some history on the old &quot;2000&quot; number &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/08/why-does-the-fda-recommend-2-000-calories-per-day/243092/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; which&#xA;implies it was already considered to be too low when it was&#xA;introduced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NHS has information on the recent increases in the UK recommendations &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/11November/Pages/Recommended-daily-calories.aspx&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The SACN report which lead to those increases can be referenced can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sacn.gov.uk/reports_position_statements/reports/sacn_dietary_reference_values_for_energy.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (228 pages!).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway I think it's clear recommended calorie allowances certainly have increased and that part of the question is answered well enough; but the extent to which increases may have been influenced by industry/politics remains opaque.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Actually, some responses to the first draft of the SACN report can be seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sacn.gov.uk/pdfs/SACN1012%20-%20Energy%20summary%20of%20responses%20and%20actionsv2.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and there's only one obvious industry response from the &quot;Sugar Bureau&quot; in it; of course at that point the draft report was out and &quot;the industry&quot; was probably quite happy to see a proposed increase!  I note also a response from &quot;Safefood&quot; who &quot;expressed concern about... the seemingly paradoxical message of increased energy requirements for many population groups in the face of an obesity crisis&quot;!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8497" LastEditorUserId="8497" LastEditDate="2012-09-26T20:16:23.497" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T13:49:20.877" Title="Have recommended calorie intakes increased significantly over the years, and if so is it due to food industry lobbying?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11025" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11036" CreationDate="2012-09-26T13:35:22.363" Score="26" ViewCount="811" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is commonly believed that, if your Nintendo cannot read the cartridge, often removing the cartridge, blowing into it and putting it back in your NES will help to fix the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to that belief or is it just all confirmation bias?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-09-26T22:45:57.170" LastActivityDate="2012-09-28T14:06:33.633" Title="Does blowing on an NES cartridge help the system play it?" Tags="|videogames|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6671" CreationDate="2012-09-26T13:37:40.323" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;here is a link to an empirical study conducted by a professor of mine.  It may help answer your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.gsu.edu/~ecobth/Fraser_Union_Performance.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www2.gsu.edu/~ecobth/Fraser_Union_Performance.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A small exerpt from section IV&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on the extant evidence to date, a reasonable conclusion is that&#xA;  the average effect of unions upon productivity is small and, if&#xA;  anything, more likely to be negative than positive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In short, union firms clearly display substantially slower&#xA;  productivity growth than do nonunion firms, but most (if not all) of&#xA;  this difference is associated with effects  attributable to industry&#xA;  differences, since union firms are located in industries or sectors&#xA;  with slow growth.  As with the evidence on productivity, it is&#xA;  concluded that there exists no strong evidence that unions have a&#xA;  causal effect on productivity growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8681" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-09-26T13:47:44.733" LastActivityDate="2012-09-26T13:47:44.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11032" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14450" CreationDate="2012-09-26T21:00:40.707" Score="15" ViewCount="2678" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just came across a seemingly amazing product, called Pearly or Lady Comp. This product was recently mentioned in Sweden's biggest newspaper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the company, it can predict female fertility at the rate of 99.3% based on the menstruation cycle. This is higher than the preventive effect of birth-control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raxmedical.com/ladycomp.php&quot;&gt;Lady Comp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lady Comp is programmed with all available natural family planning research data and uses biomathematical forecasting calculations as well as the very latest computer techniques. LadyComp contains the first medical expertise to help provide safe, reliable and natural birth control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies they reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raxmedical.com/clinical-studies.php&quot;&gt;Clinical Studies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are their claims true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5625" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-02-03T22:01:57.103" LastActivityDate="2018-02-03T22:01:57.103" Title="Can Lady Comp predict women's fertility cycles with 99.3% accuracy?" Tags="|medical-science|contraception|menstrual-cycle|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11034" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11051" CreationDate="2012-09-27T08:46:17.730" Score="7" ViewCount="452" Body="&lt;p&gt;Were &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clown_Care&quot;&gt;medical clowns&lt;/a&gt; ever shown in a study to help patient recovery, recuperation or to have any other measurable positive effect on patients of any age?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These visits to hospitals have been shown to help healing patients with the positive power of hope and humor. There is also an associated positive benefit to the staff and families of patients.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, since medical clowns sometimes go to adult patients as well, were they shown to help adult (above 18 years old) patients?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clown Doctors attend specifically to the psycho-social needs of the hospitalised child but in some hospitals they also visit adults&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2012-09-27T19:37:48.013" LastActivityDate="2012-09-28T23:49:55.977" Title="Do medical clowns help patients?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11043" CreationDate="2012-09-27T11:18:36.027" Score="9" ViewCount="3935" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this first on &lt;a href=&quot;http://9gag.com/gag/139331&quot;&gt;a funny post&lt;/a&gt; online and discredited it as &lt;em&gt;just a fun fact&lt;/em&gt;, but I have been reading it on comments online and &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Gemini_72/statuses/29550631320&quot;&gt;people tweeting&lt;/a&gt; about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the human brain store 4TB of data? How is that measured? Are there any studies to support that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6634" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-09T21:58:57.283" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T11:24:18.410" Title="Can the human brain store around 4TB of data?" Tags="|medical-science|neurology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11025" CreationDate="2012-09-27T11:50:59.290" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, it appears that this is confirmation bias on the part of the users and in fact, Nintendo warns &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nintendo.com/consumer/systems/nes/trouble_game.jsp&quot;&gt;not to do so&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not blow into your Game Paks or systems. The moisture in your&#xA;  breath can corrode and contaminate the pin connectors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This statement by Nintendo has been backed up by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?117240-DP-MYTHBUSTERS-Blowing-in-NES-Cartridges&quot;&gt;non-scientific testing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; which has shown that blowing on the cartridges can cause build up on the connections which could theoretically interfere with the connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, with regards to the claims of blowing on the cartridge itself, I would first like to note that some searching around showed that most people don't recall hearing of anyone making this claim prior to the introduction of the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) nor does it seem to arise with later systems such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64&quot;&gt;Nintendo 64&lt;/a&gt; which was also a cartridge based system.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; When industry &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/142550&quot;&gt;experts are interviewed&lt;/a&gt; they tend to say that blowing on the cartridge would only really help in the case of dust on the cartridge and the rest of the time it was likely a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo&quot;&gt;placebo effect&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;, the following quote is quite telling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1.) The act of removing, blowing in, and re-seating a cartridge most likely creates another random opportunity for the connection to be&#xA;  better made. So removing the cartridge 10 times and putting back in&#xA;  without blowing on it might net the exact same results as blowing on&#xA;  it between each time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the real issue with the NES was one of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System#Hardware_design_flaws&quot;&gt;fundamental design flaw&lt;/a&gt; with the design of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_insertion_force&quot;&gt;zero insertion force (ZIF)&lt;/a&gt; connection, as summarized by Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The newly designed connector worked quite well when both the connector&#xA;  and the cartridges were clean and the pins on the connector were new.&#xA;  Unfortunately, the ZIF connector was not truly zero insertion force.&#xA;  When a user inserted the cartridge into the NES, the force of pressing&#xA;  the cartridge down and into place bent the contact pins slightly, as&#xA;  well as pressing the cartridge’s ROM board back into the cartridge&#xA;  itself. Frequent insertion and removal of cartridges caused the pins&#xA;  to wear out from repeated usage over the years and the ZIF design&#xA;  proved more prone to interference by dirt and dust than an&#xA;  industry-standard card edge connector.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/13&quot;&gt;[29]&lt;/a&gt; These design issues were&#xA;  not alleviated by Nintendo’s choice of materials; the console slot&#xA;  nickel connector springs would wear due to design and the game&#xA;  cartridge copper connectors were also prone to tarnishing.&lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2003/02/nintendo.ars&quot;&gt;[49]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also a major factor in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System_%28Model_NES-101%29&quot;&gt;Model NES-101&lt;/a&gt;, or the Top Loader. Which introduced a top loading cartridge slot that eliminated the need to force the connection and thus the wear and tear on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, to summarize: blowing on the cartridge likely only works in the case of dust on the connections which is likely fairly rare; however, the act of doing so gives another opportunity for a good connection to be made which allows for a confirmation bias to arise. The underlying problem though, was a design flaw with the connector that allowed it to degrade and break down over time due to wear and tear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-scientific from the standpoint that the sample set is not large enough to make proper conclusions from; however, it does provide a nominal example of confirmation of Nintendo's claims.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no good way to source this as it is a summary of what I read in various forums and discussion sites and should be treated as anecdotal evidence at best.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most likely a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&quot;&gt;confirmation bias&lt;/a&gt; is what was actually meant by the individual interviewed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T11:50:59.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11034" CreationDate="2012-09-27T14:23:58.730" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Patch Adam, whom they made a film of in 1998, seemed to think so (although not very happy with the film they made of him).&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_Adams&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Patch Adams&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as it's comes under the category holistic care it's hard to prove scientifically, and it often get pushed into the alternative branch with a negative nominator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's reasonable to assume that it do work for some, as an effect of placebo or not really doesn't matter if it do work for the patient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's known that high level of dopamine, serotonin and/or endorphins makes one feel good. One way of producing this is by laughter (ie. from indirect intervention with clowns):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/170399-effects-of-laughter-on-the-human-brain/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effects of Laughter on the Human Brain&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: (too low score to comment..)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Holistic care only mean (ref. &lt;a href=&quot;http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/holistic+health+care&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/holistic+health+care&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a system of comprehensive or total patient care that considers the&#xA;  physical, emotional, social, economic, and spiritual needs of the&#xA;  person; his or her response to illness; and the effect of the illness&#xA;  on the ability to meet self-care needs. Holistic nursing is the modern&#xA;  nursing practice that expresses this philosophy of care. Also called&#xA;  comprehensive care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes it very hard to measure in a scientific test as these require controllable and repeatable factors. The nature, so-to-speak, of holistic care make scientific testing very difficult due to factors influencing the person, that are variable and not controllable. It would be difficult to say if it is the clown, or the financial, or the social etc. that makes the actual effect, and/or which trigger the effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8690" LastEditorUserId="8690" LastEditDate="2012-09-28T23:49:55.977" LastActivityDate="2012-09-28T23:49:55.977" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5385" CreationDate="2012-09-27T15:17:18.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stem cell treatment for parkinsons disease has proven the most effective form of treatment , actually regaining functions and neurons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v480/n7378/full/nature10648.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dopamine neurons derived from human &lt;strong&gt;ES cells&lt;/strong&gt; efficiently engraft in animal models of Parkinson’s disease&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a more digestible version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;US researchers say they have overcome previous difficulties in coaxing &lt;strong&gt;human embryonic stem cells&lt;/strong&gt; to become the neurons killed by the disease. Tests showed the cells survive and function normally in animals and reverse movement problems caused by Parkinson's in monkeys.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/nov/06/stem-cells-brain-parkinsons-disease&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stem cells transformed into brain cells to treat Parkinson's disease - The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="427" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2018-09-08T15:23:50.427" LastActivityDate="2018-09-08T15:23:50.427" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11035" CreationDate="2012-09-27T15:48:55.847" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The human brain consists of about one billion neurons. Each neuron&#xA;  forms about 1,000 connections to other neurons, amounting to more than&#xA;  a trillion connections. If each neuron could only help store a single&#xA;  memory, running out of space would be a problem. You might have only a&#xA;  few gigabytes of storage space, similar to the space in an iPod or a&#xA;  USB flash drive. Yet neurons combine so that each one helps with many&#xA;  memories at a time, exponentially increasing the brain’s memory&#xA;  storage capacity to something closer to around 2.5 petabytes (or a&#xA;  million gigabytes). For comparison, if your brain worked like a&#xA;  digital video recorder in a television, 2.5 petabytes would be enough&#xA;  to hold three million hours of TV shows. You would have to leave the&#xA;  TV running continuously for more than 300 years to use up all that&#xA;  storage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-the-memory-capacity&quot;&gt;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-the-memory-capacity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm no medical expert by any means, but according to this, roughly 2.5 petabytes.  This seemed a little high so i looked some more.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The brain has about 100 billion nerve cells, so at least that many&#xA;  bits (about 10 gigabytes) could be stored, assuming the brain uses&#xA;  binary logic. But it probably doesn't do so. Instead, information is&#xA;  believed to be stored in the many connections that form between the&#xA;  cells. This is a much larger number: Current estimates of brain&#xA;  capacity range from 1 to 1000 terabytes! It would take 1,000 to 10,000&#xA;  typical disk drives to store that much information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moah.org/exhibits/archives/brains/technology.html&quot;&gt;http://www.moah.org/exhibits/archives/brains/technology.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This second article explains that if the brain used binary storage then it would be 1-10 terabytes, most likely around 3.  But since the brain does not and it stores information in the connections it is much likely a lot more.  But this article was written in 2000 I think. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first article is on the high side, while the second article is on the more realistic side.  But the truth is that no one knows because with the technology that we have and understanding of the brain it is impossible to accurately calculate this.  from other sources that I have read it looks like between 3-100 terabytes is what is generally accepted.  This is a large range, but because we don't know exactly.  And a lot of the calculations assume things that we, as of right now, cannot be 100% certain on.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2012/04/north_korea_s_2_mb_of_knowledge_taunt_how_many_megabytes_does_the_human_brain_hold_.html&quot;&gt;http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2012/04/north_korea_s_2_mb_of_knowledge_taunt_how_many_megabytes_does_the_human_brain_hold_.html&lt;/a&gt; was another good article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8691" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-09-27T17:29:08.023" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T17:29:08.023" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11004" CreationDate="2012-09-27T15:53:02.863" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes they can. This will show you how.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Escape-from-Handcuffs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.wikihow.com/Escape-from-Handcuffs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, fun fact for you.  Most handcuffs use a generic key that you could buy so you would not need to pick them, just unlock them.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handcuffs#Keys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handcuffs#Keys&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8691" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2017-01-07T08:45:24.303" LastActivityDate="2017-01-07T08:45:24.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10970" CreationDate="2012-09-27T16:00:00.720" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;While Tesla was reportably able to reproduce this in a laboratory setting well before any other scientists could, we have been able to produce it since then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110427125809/http://www.ipp.mpg.de/ippcms/eng/presse/pi/05_06_pi.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;press release from the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik&lt;/a&gt; which is repeated by &lt;a href=&quot;https://phys.org/news/2006-06-physicists-ball-lightning-lab.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PHYS ORG&lt;/a&gt; show it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8691" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-05-31T10:44:22.923" LastActivityDate="2021-05-31T10:44:22.923" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11035" CreationDate="2012-09-27T16:00:27.833" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering the estimated number of neurons differs by factors of ten depending on who you read, this can't be answered.  The brain does not work like a computer (whether that is good or bad, I am not sure)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the human brain does not use 10% of its capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/AniciaNdabahaliye2.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;neuron&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron#Neurons_in_the_brain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;counts&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="427" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T16:00:27.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10994" CreationDate="2012-09-27T17:05:10.667" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lets start with the eyes and perception [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The human eye and its brain interface, the human visual system, can&#xA;  process 10 to 12 separate images per second, perceiving them&#xA;  individually. The visual cortex holds onto one image for about&#xA;  one-fifteenth of a second, so if another image is received during that&#xA;  period an illusion of continuity is created, allowing a sequence of&#xA;  still images to give the impression of motion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this stance, it's certainly possible to to detect motion by at least 1/10 of a second (perhaps a twitch).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other part of this is determination of if the movement was involuntary or not, which is more or less a trained art. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another type of microexpression is auditory microexpressions, which involves detection in the form of involuntary inflections of pitch in your in somebody's voice.  First, the biology of the ear [2]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The inner ear, called the cochlea, has a remarkable thin compliant&#xA;  membrane stretched out along inside it. This membrane is called the&#xA;  basilar membrane, and it has two really interesting features. First,&#xA;  it is resonant at different frequencies at different points along its&#xA;  surface, and second, it is infused with thousands of nerve endings&#xA;  (called hair cells) that are attached to the auditory nerve going to&#xA;  the brain.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The net effect of these two features is that different&#xA;  frequencies excite different hair cells, so that in a general (if&#xA;  incomplete) way we can think of the mechanism as causing each hair&#xA;  cell to be excited by a very specific range of frequencies. This leads&#xA;  us to a concept called the &quot;place&quot; theory of pitch detection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly how we perceive sound:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The shortest sound we can hear is an impulse about 20&#xA;  microseconds long. This is related, of course, to the upper limit of&#xA;  frequencies, about 20,000 Hz. We can theoretically hear sounds that&#xA;  are indefinitely long. However, from a perceptual standpoint they&#xA;  cease to be perceived as events and instead become “a continuum.”&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, the sound events&#xA;  (like musical notes and spoken words) that we work with in audio are&#xA;  generally between 50 milliseconds (1/20th of a second) and five&#xA;  seconds long.   There are two other primary things to know about the&#xA;  time dimension. The first is that there is a fundamental neurological&#xA;  boundary for humans at about 50 milliseconds. Events occurring more&#xA;  quickly than that are perceived as a single or continuous event, not&#xA;  as a series of events. Events occurring less quickly are perceived as&#xA;  separate individual events. This holds true for vision as well (hence&#xA;  our 30 fps rate for film). So as I noted earlier, a 5 Hz square wave&#xA;  will be heard as a series of clicks, while a 50 Hz square wave will be&#xA;  heard as a continuous tone.   The other time phenomenon worth keeping&#xA;  in mind is our integration time. When we perceive “a sound,” we&#xA;  integrate all of the versions of that sound that occur within the&#xA;  first 50 milliseconds of the sound into a single holistic perception.&#xA;  So we sort of average all versions of a sound that occur during that&#xA;  period to produce our conscious perception of the sound source. We&#xA;  will discuss this at considerable length in later articles.   Finally,&#xA;  we have to keep in mind that frequencies are a subset of the time&#xA;  dimension. Individual pitched (periodic) sounds consist of an array of&#xA;  frequencies, as I mentioned above. The lowest such frequencies&#xA;  (fundamentals) usually fall within a four octave range from about 60&#xA;  Hz to 1 kHz All frequencies above 1 kHz can be regarded as harmonics&#xA;  that enable us to determine timbre and differentiate sounds from each&#xA;  other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This latter part of about perception of sound is rather interesting when compbined with visual microexpression.  The two sences seem to enhance one another if experienced simultaneously (ie, face to face conversations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is certainly potential for detection, but it's up to perceiver to decide whether it is indeed a microexpression.  So what's the success rate in determining of a trained eye?  Taken from the book &quot;The Philosophy of Deceptions&quot; and it's research, we find:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Measurements we have made of facial movements, voice, and speach show&#xA;  that high levels of accuracy are possible - over 80 percent correct&#xA;  classifications of who is lying and who is telling the truct.  While&#xA;  making those measurements required slow-motion replays, we also know&#xA;  that accurate judgments are possible just by viewing the videotapes. A&#xA;  small percent of thos we have studied have reached 80 percent or&#xA;  better accuracy, and tey have done so in more than one scenario, so it&#xA;  unlikely that their accuracy was a fluke (O'Sullivan and Ekman 2005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, more often than not, a human eye &lt;em&gt;CAN&lt;/em&gt; catch microexpressions in real-time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/194.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.recordingmag.com/resources/resourceDetail/194.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;em&gt;The Philosophy of Deception&lt;/em&gt; Pg 123&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6102" LastEditorUserId="6102" LastEditDate="2013-03-25T15:53:27.570" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T15:53:27.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11034" CreationDate="2012-09-27T20:14:25.250" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Medical clowns can reduce anxiety in children, and also in their parents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20348361&quot;&gt;The effects of clown intervention on worries and emotional responses in children undergoing surgery.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results emphasized the relevance of clown intervention on the reduction of preoperative worries and emotional responses, not only in children but also in their parents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19143948&quot;&gt;Clowns for the prevention of preoperative anxiety in children: a randomized controlled trial.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study found that the use of preoperative medically trained clowns for children undergoing surgery can significantly alleviate preoperative anxiety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found a proof of concept trial that looked at using a clown to treat adults with COPD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18488442&quot;&gt;Impact of laughter on air trapping in severe chronic obstructive lung disease&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a humor intervention was able to reduce hyperinflation in patients with severe and very severe COPD. Response was mainly associated with smiling and a higher degree of hyperinflation. The results of this proof-of-concept study need to be validated by a randomized cross-over study, especially for a more reliable appreciation of the effect size and duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-09-27T20:14:25.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11054" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16908" CreationDate="2012-09-27T23:05:53.130" Score="14" ViewCount="1520" Body="&lt;p&gt;This popular claim comes in different shapes, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a minute of laughter adds 5 minutes of life: &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.famouswhy.com/a_minute_of_laughter_prolongs_our_life_with_five_minutes/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;laughter is the best medicine (maybe) &lt;a href=&quot;http://ibdcrohns.about.com/od/mentalhealth/f/Is-Laughter-The-Best-Medicine.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding studies that confirm causation wasn't easy. I did stumble across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2007-03-13-humor-study_N.htm&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; which establishes correlation, but it's not obvious from this study whether laughter extended life, or to the contrary, those more likely to live (e.g. due to better health or emotional state) were also more likely to laugh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does laughter prolong life by itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:28:41.613" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:28:41.613" Title="Does laughter prolong life?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11061" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11064" CreationDate="2012-09-28T17:28:59.973" Score="21" ViewCount="7539" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following article claims that a man in England was sentenced to 18 months in jail for mistakenly blasting on his complete address book using Blackberry Messenger Service a sexually explicit text message to which two minor girls were among the recipients:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2012/09/28/the-blackberry-typo-that-landed-a-man-in-jail/&quot;&gt;http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2012/09/28/the-blackberry-typo-that-landed-a-man-in-jail/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the surface this seems unreasonable, but as the discussion at that article points out, perhaps there is more going on here than is being reported?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just a simple as a man being punished by an overreaching law for an albeit embarrassing mistake, but certainly not an intentional act to solicit minors or is there more going on here and another side to this story to counter balance what on the surface seems to be justice gone awry?  Is there substance to his claim that it was unintentional?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8467" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-20T14:55:24.023" LastActivityDate="2016-04-20T14:55:24.023" Title="Did a man get sentenced to 18 months in prison for accidentally texting a sexually explicit message to his complete address book?" Tags="|sexuality|law-enforcement|court-case|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11061" CreationDate="2012-09-28T20:28:50.460" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a true story and can be checked on the court hearings site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A man named Craig Daniel Evans was sentenced for something at the court mentioned in the article, during the month the article claims he was sentenced.  This makes it more than likely true, as its unlikely to have picked a random name and court and month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use this case number at the site below: T20118037&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelawpages.com/court-hearings-lists/crown-court-lists-results.php&quot;&gt;Court Hearing Info&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8710" LastEditorUserId="892" LastEditDate="2012-10-01T15:51:03.407" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T15:51:03.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5861" CreationDate="2012-09-28T21:49:45.560" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the questions raised by several of the commenters was that while one can estimate the calories burned by bicycling, it is hard to estimate what change in calories the cyclist requires (over what would have burned by driving to work).&#xA;I designed an experiment using a Heart Rate Monitor to help me estimate just that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Notes and assumptions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calories were determined by a Heart Rate Monitor, which infers calories burned based on heartbeat count. Assumption: number of heartbeats are directly proportional to actual calories burned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calories were burned either 1) While driving to a bus stop in a car and then taking the bus to or from work or 2) while bicycling to or from work. Assumption: the cyclist will eat more on the day he cycles, corresponding to the larger quantities of calories being burned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The car travels mostly at highway speeds to the bus park-and-ride. Distance 5.7 miles. Assumption: Nominal 30 mpg and 1 passenger were used to estimate 0.16 gallons of unleaded fuel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/coefficients.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/1605/coefficients.html&lt;/a&gt;; a car fueled with unleaded gasoline produces 8.87 kg of CO2 per gallon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bus takes a (mostly) express route over highway. Distance 10.8 miles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using &lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.wri.org/wri_co2comm_2002_commuting_protected.xls&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://docs.wri.org/wri_co2comm_2002_commuting_protected.xls&lt;/a&gt; and medium haul of .20 kg CO2 per passenger mile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CO2 is a proxy for environmental impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The commuter is a vegan male, weight 68 kg (150 pounds).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design of statistical test&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A difference between means (of total CO2 production) was the chosen hypothesis test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$\mu1 represents the mean CO2 emissions required to fuel the bus, car, and the subject's body while commuting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$\mu2 represents the mean CO2 emissions required by the foods needed to sustain the subject's body while bicycling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Null hypothesis: $\mu1 - $\mu2 &amp;lt;= 0&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This corresponds to the OP's friend’s assertion that bicycling produces as much or less CO2 as driving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternative hypothesis: $\mu1 – $\mu2 &gt; 0&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will choose a significance level of 0.01&#xA;Will use a one-tailed test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experimental data&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measurements were taken over a period of about one month. There were 18 measurements taken: 9 by bus and car, 9 by bicycle. Here is the data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Date    Mode    Cal             Food    Bus Car Total&#xA;                                CO2     CO2     CO2     CO2 &#xA;                                (kg)    (kg)    (kg)    (kg)&#xA;24-Aug  Bike    781             0.109   0.00    0.00    0.11&#xA;24-Aug  Bike    830             0.116   0.00    0.00    0.12&#xA;28-Aug  Bus/Car 177             0.025   2.16    1.42    3.60&#xA;30-Aug  Bus/Car 326             0.046   2.16    1.42    3.62&#xA;31-Aug  Bike   1148             0.161   0.00    0.00    0.16&#xA;31-Aug  Bike    770             0.108   0.00    0.00    0.11&#xA;11-Sep  Bus/Car 117             0.016   2.16    1.42    3.60&#xA;11-Sep  Bus/Car  77             0.011   2.16    1.42    3.59&#xA;12-Sep  Bike    842             0.118   0.00    0.00    0.12&#xA;12-Sep  Bike    802             0.112   0.00    0.00    0.11&#xA;13-Sep  Bus/Car 117             0.016   2.16    1.42    3.60&#xA;13-Sep  Bus/Car 102             0.014   2.16    1.42    3.59&#xA;17-Sep  Bus/Car 274             0.038   2.16    1.42    3.62&#xA;17-Sep  Bus/Car  97             0.014   2.16    1.42    3.59&#xA;20-Sep  Bike    850             0.119   0.00    0.00    0.12&#xA;21-Sep  Bike    871             0.122   0.00    0.00    0.12&#xA;21-Sep  Bike    712             0.100   0.00    0.00    0.10&#xA;24-Sep  Bus/Car 381             0.053   2.16    1.42    3.63&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stats&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Row Labels  Average of Total CO2 (kg)   StdDev of Total CO2 (kg)    Count&#xA;Bike        0.118315556             0.017288929                     9&#xA;Bus/Car     3.605146667             0.015794736                     9&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data indicates that the null hypothesis is rejected at p &amp;lt; 0.01. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discussion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This weakens the OP’s friend’s argument that bicycling causes as much environmental damage as commuting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The environmental cost of heating the water for a shower was not included, as it seems to have minimal impact (see dancek's fine answer on this point).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with a substitution of a more typical American diet with more meats and fewer vegetables, the “bicycling is as bad as a car” hypothesis would be rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1403" LastActivityDate="2012-09-28T21:49:45.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11071" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11106" CreationDate="2012-09-29T00:59:48.677" Score="27" ViewCount="75546" Body="&lt;p&gt;It first ran across the notion with this meme&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bm7BU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;www.fullpunch.com/random/28-interesting-general-facts.html/&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lifestyle.beiruting.com/2012/did-you-know-that-every-year-louis-vuitton-burns-all-their-unsold-bags/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Every year Louis Vuitton burns all their unsold bags&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A google search yields lots of results but none of them seems credible.&#xA;Snopes yields nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any credible info?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8717" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T12:14:42.663" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T15:52:51.650" Title="Does Louis Vuitton burn all their unsold bags?" Tags="|economics|consumer-products|marketing|corporate-finance|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7301" CreationDate="2012-09-29T03:10:56.583" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR version&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Yes&lt;/em&gt;, you could say carob is healthier than chocolate. &lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, I wouldn't call it a &quot;health food&quot; since the difference isn't large and carob isn't exactly a nutritional powerhouse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll try to address your concerns one by one, since you make a lot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Cocoa is fermented and contains carcinogens&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15462126&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;The first stage of chocolate production consists of... fermentation.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a microbial succession of a wide range of yeasts, lactic-acid, and acetic-acid bacteria during which high temperatures of up to 50 degrees C and microbial products, such as &lt;strong&gt;ethanol&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;lactic acid&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;acetic acid&lt;/strong&gt;, kill the beans and cause production of flavor precursors. Over-fermentation leads to a rise in bacilli and filamentous fungi that can cause off-flavors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ethanol is the alcohol in all alcoholic beverages (not to be confused with methanol, which is very toxic), acetic acid is the main component of vinegar, and lactic acid is used in anaerobic respiration within your muscles while exercising. So as far as &quot;carcinogens&quot; - not from the fermentation product. That's not to say that cocoa/chocolate doesn't contain &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; carcinogens - there are dozens of compounds in almost everything we eat, &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; are there any in significant quantities in cocoa? Well, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1999308&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;probably not:&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although there was no difference in the incidence of benign mammary gland fibroadenomas in female rats between the control group and any [cocoa powder]-fed group, a marginally significant (P = 0.04) trend test was apparent. The significance of this finding is doubtful, since the incidence of this lesion in the highest dose group was well within the historical control range for this strain of rats. No evidence of carcinogenicity from dietary CP was found in either sex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;The beans are left out in the sun where they can be contaminated by animals.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Yes, they are. However, like coffee beans - cocoa beans (after being dried) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoa_bean#Chocolate_production&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;are roasted.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;..caffeine and theobromine are bad for you...&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Well, what do you consider bad? Caffeine is widely used and unregulated, and a dark chocolate bar &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/BuyingUsingMedicineSafely/UnderstandingOver-the-CounterMedicines/UCM205286.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;contains about 30mg of caffeine - less than a cup of tea&lt;/a&gt; - which means you'd have to eat about 20 dark chocolate bars &lt;em&gt;in less than a day&lt;/em&gt; to enter the &quot;danger zone&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How caffeine affects people varies with their size, their sex, and how sensitive they are to caffeine’s effects. Experts agree that &lt;strong&gt;600mg&lt;/strong&gt; (four to seven cups of coffee [or &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;20 chocolate bars&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;]) of caffeine or more each day is too much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Howevder, that recommendation is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927475&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;far, far below the LD-50&lt;/a&gt; - which is between 125mg/kg and 200mg/kg in animal testing. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/caffeine/caffeine_dose.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Although, estimates put LD-50 for humans at between 3g and 20g.&lt;/a&gt; You'll note that's between 5x and 30x the amount physicians recommend (or between 20 and 120 cups of espresso). Personally, I wouldn't be worried. Although the claim that caffeine is addictive is correct (see the FDA sheet above), the withdrawal period is a whole 2-3 days and &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; involve headaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for Theobromine? Well, if you're a Sandostatin patient &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.carcinoid.org/faq#t139n220&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;you may want to avoid it:&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Xanthines and theobromines, as well as various foods and wines, contain substances that are provocative for carcinoid crisis and hence can interfere with the effectiveness of Sandostatin.  I do agree with Dr. Woltering in recommending carcinoid patients avoid these agents.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A normal person? Well, here's a clip from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/podcast/CIIEcompounds/transcripts/theobromine.asp?playpodcastlinkuri=/chemistryworld/podcast/CIIEcompound.asp?compound=Theobromine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Royal Society of Chemistry&lt;/em&gt; podcast:&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Theobromine is also poisonous to humans, though not to same the degree as dogs and shouldn't cause too much concern. Almost everything is poisonous in a large enough dose (even water, for example) and toxicity is all about dosage. In the case of theobromine, humans have about three times the resistance per kg of bodyweight as does a dog, and are significantly heavier, so we are much less likely to be damaged by our treats. A fatal dose for an adult human would involve eating more than 5kg of milk chocolate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's 11 pounds of chocolate. &lt;em&gt;Eleven pounds.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pIhZh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;10lbs of dark chocolate&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Carob is more nutritious and requires less sugar than chocolate.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, taking some nutrition facts from some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sunspire.com/unsweetened-carob-chips&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;15g of Sunspire unsweetened carob chips&lt;/a&gt; (presumably similar to what you'd replace chocolate with):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ingredients: Nonfat milk powder, carob powder, whey powder, palm kernel oil, soy lecithin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Energy 70 kcal&#xA;Protein 2 g&#xA;Total lipid (fat) 3.5 g&#xA;Carbohydrate, by difference 8 g&#xA;Fiber, total dietary 2 g&#xA;Sugars, total 7 g&#xA;Calcium, Ca 80 mg&#xA;Iron, Fe ~ mg&#xA;Sodium, Na 50 mg&#xA;Vitamin C, total ascorbic acid ~ mg&#xA;Vitamin A ~ IU&#xA;Fatty acids, total saturated 2.503 g&#xA;Cholesterol ~ mg&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the comparison for chocolate is going to depend on what chocolate you favor. Dark chocolate will have different nutritional info from milk chocolate, but since it seems milk chocolate is the standard, let's try &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thehersheycompany.com/brands/baking-pieces/hersheys-milk-chocolate-chips.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;15g of Hershey's Milk Chocolate Chips:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ingredients: MILK CHOCOLATE (SUGAR; CHOCOLATE; NONFAT MILK; COCOA BUTTER; MILK FAT; SOY LECITHIN; VANILLIN, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Energy 70 kcal&#xA;Protein 1.01 g&#xA;Total lipid (fat) 4.5 g&#xA;Carbohydrate, by difference 9 g&#xA;Fiber, total dietary 0.5 g&#xA;Sugars, total 8.01 g&#xA;Calcium, Ca 20 mg&#xA;Iron, Fe ~ mg&#xA;Sodium, Na 10 mg&#xA;Vitamin C, total ascorbic acid ~ mg&#xA;Vitamin A ~ IU&#xA;Fatty acids, total saturated 3.004 g&#xA;Fatty acids, total trans ~ g&#xA;Cholesterol 3 mg&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The differences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;+1g Protein for &lt;em&gt;Carob&lt;/em&gt; (4 kcal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;+1g Fat for &lt;em&gt;Chocolate&lt;/em&gt; (9 kcal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;+1.5g Dietary Fiber for &lt;em&gt;Carob&lt;/em&gt; (3 kcal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;+1g Sugars for &lt;em&gt;Chocolate&lt;/em&gt; (4 kcal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;+60mg Calcium for &lt;em&gt;Carob&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;+40mg Sodium for &lt;em&gt;Carob&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;+0.5g Fatty-Acids for &lt;em&gt;Chocolate&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;+3mg Cholesterol for &lt;em&gt;Chocolate&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, nutritionally speaking, &lt;strong&gt;carob&lt;/strong&gt; does win out. It is ~10% less energy dense and has more Calcium, Sodium, and Dietary Fiber. Though, it's worth it to point out that the 15g of carob chips above only contribute 8% of your Calcium, 2% of your Sodium, and 8% of your Dietary Fiber according to FDA recommendations - making Carob/Cocoa/Chocolate a fairly minor contributor to the overall nutritional makeup of the foods you (ideally) eat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastEditorUserId="8380" LastEditDate="2012-09-29T03:17:26.767" LastActivityDate="2012-09-29T03:17:26.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11075" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11134" CreationDate="2012-09-29T13:53:05.030" Score="13" ViewCount="9839" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of Q&amp;amp;A/forums where it is suggested that it is possible these spiders can survive being vacuumed (&quot;hoovered&quot;) up (and in some cases crawl back out the vacuum cleaner later).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible for these spiders to survive the vacuuming process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8723" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-10-28T15:45:47.443" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T16:18:29.720" Title="Can a house spider survive being vacuumed up?" Tags="|entomology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9446" CreationDate="2012-09-29T15:55:38.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another resource on reading statistics is the book &lt;em&gt;Reading Matters: What the Research Reveals about Reading, Libraries, and Community&lt;/em&gt; by Catherine Ross,  Lynne McKechnie, and Paulette Rothbauer. This book has data from a variety of sources grouped by age of reader. One idea I took from this book is when evaluating reading studies, you need to understand how they define reading and reading material. In our modern society, reading might not be declining. It may be that people are not reading as many books. Another important question is why are people not reading book and does this lack make our society dumb or are we evolving?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8724" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T10:06:06.143" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T10:06:06.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11079" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-30T00:19:29.037" Score="14" ViewCount="1494" Body="&lt;p&gt;An ad for Vodafone in Cairns airport, Australia, presents as a fact &quot;worth ringing home about&quot; that you can see more stars from the Australian outback than anywhere else on earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the Australian outback would have less light pollution and less humidity than some places, I'm doubtful about this claim because if the outback is a good place to see stars, it'd also be a good place to build optical telescopes, and I don't think the Australian outback has a lot of optical telescopes. I thought that most optical telescopes these days are being built in mountainous areas such as Hawaii.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are more stars visible with the naked eye from the Australian outback than anywhere else on earth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T11:23:57.723" Title="More stars visible from the Australian outback than anywhere else on earth?" Tags="|astronomy|australia|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11079" CreationDate="2012-09-30T04:37:53.717" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, the farther you are from any sources of light, artifical or otherwise, the more easily you can see the stars.  That said, I would think that this would be the place:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_points_of_Earth#Remoteness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Extreme points of Earth - Remoteness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Pacific &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_of_inaccessibility&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pole of inaccessibility&lt;/a&gt; (also called Point Nemo), the point in the ocean farthest from any land, lies in the South Pacific Ocean at 48°52.6′S 123°23.6′W, which is approximately 2688 km (1670 mi) from the nearest land (equidistant from Ducie Island in the Pitcairn Islands to the north, Maher Island off Siple Island near Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica to the south and Motu Nui off Rapa Nui in the north east).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4639" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-03-02T11:23:57.723" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T11:23:57.723" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11079" CreationDate="2012-09-30T08:37:30.317" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The relevant paper seems to be &quot;Cinzano, P., Falchi, F., Elvidge C.D.  2001, The first world atlas of the artificial night sky brightness&quot;. It gives numerical data per country and as of excellent observation conditions Australia is in the list of many other countries who are also pretty good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In table 1 they give numbers of how many percent of the population of every country have excellent viewing conditions. Unfortunatley, Australia is not the best location. But these are only percentages, so with a little work you might figure out absolute numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, viewing conditions not only depend on light pollution (which is the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale), but also on the 'seeing' which is influenced by turbulences in the atmosphere, humidity and such like (compare &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_seeing&quot;&gt;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_seeing&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;That's why people bothered building telescopes in Chile's Atacama desert in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, Vodafone has a claim, but it's only half the truth if you're talking about naked eye visibity - other locations are good too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inquinamentoluminoso.it/cinzano/download/0108052.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.inquinamentoluminoso.it/cinzano/download/0108052.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6180" LastEditorUserId="619" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T11:25:33.373" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T11:25:33.373" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11084" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-09-30T13:16:17.173" Score="3" ViewCount="599" Body="&lt;p&gt;What best evidences there are that demonstrate what Earth was like in its early years? According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9ZRHoawyOg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; Earth started out with no oxygen in its atmosphere. And according to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://eesc.columbia.edu/courses/ees/climate/lectures/earth.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; the Earth's atmosphere was dominated by carbon dioxide similar to Venus.  But is there any evidence to support this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&#xA;Just adding some links that claim to know or believe how Earth's atmosphere has evolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scijinks.jpl.nasa.gov/atmosphere-formation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scijinks.jpl.nasa.gov/atmosphere-formation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfjps/1400/atmos_origin.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfjps/1400/atmos_origin.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiology/PBearth.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.chem.duke.edu/~jds/cruise_chem/Exobiology/PBearth.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6016" LastEditorUserId="6016" LastEditDate="2012-10-01T19:00:39.413" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T19:00:39.413" Title="Evidence for early Earth's atmosphere" Tags="|evolution|geology|earth|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5050" CreationDate="2012-09-30T16:04:53.123" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The direction of brushing matters. Brushing horizontally with a stiff brush can lead to a horizontal scoring at the gum line, thinning the enamel there. Electric toothbrushes generally have rotating heads so their fast motion cannot do this, but a strong horizontal brusher using a stiff bristle brush can do this inadvertently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correct brushing is primarily composed vertical strokes, away from the gum line. Horizontal strokes should be angled to the gum line [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gums can also be damaged from excessive friction [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could find no good evidence that the abrasive in ordinary toothpaste erodes tooth enamel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/oral-health/healthy-teeth-10/brushing-teeth-mistakes?page=2&quot;&gt;http://www.webmd.com/oral-health/healthy-teeth-10/brushing-teeth-mistakes?page=2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1076089&quot;&gt;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1076089&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8163" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T16:04:53.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11084" CreationDate="2012-09-30T19:13:25.767" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr. G. Arnold is one of the world's leading authorities in molybdenum redox, which is a cornerstone of the anoxic (oxygen deficient) early-atmosphere model.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jdcAI3kAAAAJ&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many paper by her-and-team&lt;/a&gt; that reinforce the anoxic atmosphere hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple way to think of the evidence: Molybdenum is very sensitive to redox, an chemical process that involves oxygen.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://archenv.geo.uu.nl/pdf/Anbar%20et%20al%202007%20Science%20Whiff%20Oxygen.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;These charts on p1904 show that no redox occurred below a certain depth&lt;/a&gt; that is correlated with time... i.e. when that rock was exposed to the earth's surface or ocean floor.  Since no redox occurred below a certain level, no oxygen was in the atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Whether or not anoxic atmospheres are pre/non-biotic&lt;/em&gt;...... that is a whole separate discussion. (and why Science is so hard for many to care about, I think.  People want simple narrative packages, without many loose ends)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8735" LastEditorUserId="8735" LastEditDate="2012-09-30T19:39:46.437" LastActivityDate="2012-09-30T19:39:46.437" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11092" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-01T17:39:19.073" Score="4" ViewCount="128" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7202/do-oily-foods-have-any-effect-on-acne&quot;&gt;Do oily foods have any effect on acne?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a correlation between diet and acne? I've always assumed there was, but I'm not sure of the source of my assumption. I humorously label greasy foods as &quot;pimple fertilizer&quot;. But what are the facts? What sort of studies/experiments have been done on this topic? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7202/do-oily-foods-have-any-effect-on-acne&quot;&gt;a related, but unanswered question&lt;/a&gt; which the community here showed some interest in. But I wanted to broaden the question to allow for more answers.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8743" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-10-01T17:39:19.073" Title="Is there a correlation between diet and acne?" Tags="|nutrition|acne|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-12-04T16:46:30.763" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11071" CreationDate="2012-10-01T19:23:38.103" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;They probably do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I couldn't find evidence for Louis Vuitton destroying their unsold products, except for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifestyle.beiruting.com/2012/did-you-know-that-every-year-louis-vuitton-burns-all-their-unsold-bags/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;original article&lt;/a&gt;, there are proof for other companies doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/06/hm-says-it-will-stop-destroying-unworn-clothing/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;H&amp;amp;M and Wal-Mart&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The clothing retailer H &amp;amp; M promised on Wednesday that it would stop the practice of destroying new, unworn clothing that it could not sell at its store in Herald Square, and would instead donate the garments to charities...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She also found bags of new Wal-Mart garments with holes punched through them...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Wal-Mart spokeswoman, Melissa Hill, said that she had been unable to learn why new clothing with the store’s tags had been destroyed, but she added that the company typically donated or recycled such items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/about_5437699_happens-unsold-chanel-purses.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chanel&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, this rumor appears to be true. Chanel has been known to burn leftover goods at the end of a season. In an attempt to outrun counterfeiters who make millions each year producing fake designer bags, Chanel has burned leftover stock so that no part of its brand is left to easily duplicate. Coco Chanel herself is believed to have initiated the first conflagration. In addition, disposing of leftover stock this way helps to preserve the upper-class nature of the brand (only a few can afford it, as opposed to deep-discounted sale items winding up on the arms of middle-class soccer moms). In addition, the idea of a Chanel bonfire only adds to the mystic of Coco and her brand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, from the same source about LV:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Myths circulating around fashionable Internet forums claim Chanel never goes on sale. This is not true, however, the myth likely stems from other, high-end designers of handbags, such as Louis Vuitton, which historically does not put its pieces on sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thestar.com/living/fashion/article/95980--slumming-it-at-the-chanel-outlet-store&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another source for Chanel&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Years back I had written about how Chanel burns any merchandise that doesn't sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LV doesn't sell its products with discounts, and destroying unsold products is a common practice with both high-end and less expensive brands to avoid counterfeiting and increase the exclusivity of the brand. So it's a safe assumption that LV are destroying their unsold products. Not necessarily by fire, but still destroying them instead of putting them on sale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T09:39:01.517" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11104" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-02T09:06:07.947" Score="17" ViewCount="48446" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_2312399_choose-ripe-watermelons.html&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt;, as well as folk wisdom, suggests buying &quot;female&quot; watermelons since they are sweeter and have less seeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Female&quot; species are said to have a larger black spot on the side opposite to the stem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia says that there are male and female watermelon flowers, of which only female ones produce the fruit, but I believe this does not apply to the fruit itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the questions are: do the watermelons (fruits) with different black spot sizes really differ in sex (in whatever way), or it's just a metaphor helping to memorize which is which?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does size of the black spot correlate with sweetness and amount of seeds?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastEditorUserId="5039" LastEditDate="2012-10-03T10:45:59.277" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T04:10:28.757" Title="Are there male and female watermelon fruits?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11104" CreationDate="2012-10-02T11:05:29.567" Score="20" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Are there male and female watermelon fruits?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The claim&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The referenced article claims that there exist female and male watermelons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are two ways of interpreting the claim of the existence of a male watermelon fruit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;male watermelon fruits are any watermelon fruits formed by male watermelon plants&#xA;or by the male reproductive units of watermelon plants.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;some watermelon fruits contain seeds that all grow into male watermelon plants&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Refutation&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1: Fruit &lt;strong&gt;of&lt;/strong&gt; male&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;In botany, a fruit is a part of a flowering plant that derives from specific tissues of the flower, mainly one or more &lt;strong&gt;ovaries&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;n. pl. fruit or fruits 1. a. The ripened &lt;strong&gt;ovary or ovaries&lt;/strong&gt; of a seed-bearing plant&quot;&lt;/em&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/fruit&quot;&gt;The Free Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Fruits are produced only by flowering plants (angiosperms). Following pollination of the flower, the fertilized &lt;strong&gt;ovules&lt;/strong&gt; develop into seeds while the surrounding ovary wall forms the fruit tissue, or pericarp.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biologyreference.com/Fo-Gr/Fruits.html#b&quot;&gt;Biology encyclopedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female&quot;&gt;definition&lt;/a&gt;, males don't have ovaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Botanically speaking, a &quot;male fruit&quot; is a contradiction in terms&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2: Fruit &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; male.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plant sexuality is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_sexuality#Individual_plant_sexuality&quot;&gt;complicated&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a few species, individual plants are either wholly male or female. In this case I believe the male plants do not produce fruit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many common plants, the individual flowers may be male or female (on the same plant) but the plant from which they emerge can not be said to be either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way of classifying a fruit as &quot;male&quot; would be if the fruit were produced on a female plant but contained a single seed that would grow into a male plant. Since individual plants of some species can switch sexuality over time, the sex of an individual plant might not be wholly (or even partly) determined by the genetics of the seed from which it grew but by environmental influences on the growing plant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Quassnoi commented, Water meolons are monoecious - a single plant bears both male and female reproductive units. Therefore the plant itself cannot be considered either female or male. Therefore nether can the seed from which it grows or the fruit that contained that seed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The watermelon plant is a slender, sprawling, slightly hairy, &lt;strong&gt;monoecious&lt;/strong&gt; annual.&quot; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://ag.udel.edu/enwc/faculty/dmcaron/Pollination/watermelon.html&quot;&gt;Dewey M. Caron, Univ. of Delaware&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-10-03T21:04:30.830" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T21:04:30.830" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11071" CreationDate="2012-10-02T16:17:08.507" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work nearby the flagship LV shop in Paris, and I am pretty surprised by this kind of rumours. In fact, there is a constant line to enter the shop, like an Apple store if they were releasing a new iPhone every day of the year. Does Apple burn unsold iPhones? No because there are none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the record, 2 years ago, Louis Vuitton had to close all shops 1 hour early during fall season, in order to avoid stock shortage during Christmas holidays, despite raising price (yes, raising already over-priced items), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lefigaro.fr/societes/2010/09/13/04015-20100913ARTFIG00589-les-magasins-vuitton-ferment-plus-tot-pour-vendre-moins.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;according to &lt;em&gt;Le Figaro&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, a credible French newspaper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I honestly don't see why LV could not sell all their production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8756" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2017-06-01T15:52:51.650" LastActivityDate="2017-06-01T15:52:51.650" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9030" CreationDate="2012-10-02T20:33:08.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I propose that it would be easier to correlate &lt;strong&gt;*ugliness&lt;/strong&gt; with unhealthiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many (harmful) genetic traits and behavioral habits render a person dis-favorable in appearance. &quot;disfavorable in appearance&quot; is a mainstream generalization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all 'ugliness' is unhealthy - a person with a huge nose possess no inherent health problem.  Greeks may find them attractive.  'Plus Sized' has become a fashion model quality, and in many ancient days extra weight &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;plus&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; tone were considered supreme.  This is borderline, as beauty and tone fade with age and &lt;em&gt;fatness&lt;/em&gt; destroys your knees and heart, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;traits&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;downs syndrome&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;habits&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;meth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;long-term smoking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8735" LastActivityDate="2012-10-02T20:33:08.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11111" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-02T21:31:01.400" Score="1" ViewCount="204" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1128/has-man-walked-on-the-moon&quot;&gt;Has man walked on the Moon?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to see the Apollo landing station, US flag, footprints, moon rovers from Earth or from space (from Earth orbit, e.g. with the Hubble Space Telescope or other satellite)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/moon/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com/moon/&lt;/a&gt; - these photos are very limited and very bad quality.&#xA;They were made in the 70s by a moon orbiting station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moon has no atmosphere. There are very powerful telescopes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why are there no other photos? &#xA;Can telescopes magnify enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8654" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2016-01-24T23:42:48.453" Title="Making photo of apollo from earth" Tags="|moon|photography|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2012-10-02T21:36:54.490" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11113" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-03T01:00:07.597" Score="6" ViewCount="5447" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard the claim that &quot;Ocean waves travel in groups of seven, and the seventh wave is the biggest of the bunch.&quot; Is this fact of fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8761" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-10-03T03:44:40.243" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T05:05:48.727" Title="Do ocean waves come in sets of 7?" Tags="|physics|oceanography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2016-12-30T21:38:48.840" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11115" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-03T06:47:38.297" Score="4" ViewCount="2364" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heavensfamily.org/ss/resurrection-from-the-dead-pastor-daniel-ekechukwu&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this four-part report&lt;/a&gt;, a man named Daniel Ekechukwu, a resident of Nigera, died November 30, 2001 and came back to life December 2, 2001. A literal and modern resurrection. The same story can be found on a number of other websites, but the one I linked seems to be the original posting. This claim seems to be relatively well substantiated in comparison to most other stories of miraculous healings, given eyewitness reports from the man himself, the mortician, and from people who were present when Daniel came back to life as well as a photo of the death certificate Thus, at the very least, on the surface this appears to be an entirely legitimate resurrection event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How credible is the evidence behind this story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8765" LastEditorUserId="8765" LastEditDate="2012-10-03T07:26:23.703" LastActivityDate="2017-03-22T19:25:44.710" Title="Did Daniel Ekechukwu resurrect from the dead?" Tags="|medical-science|history|mortality|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11118" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11119" CreationDate="2012-10-03T10:37:32.603" Score="17" ViewCount="16986" Body="&lt;p&gt;I first overheard this claim in a Russian health show on national TV. It was claimed that every time the same water is boiled, the concentration of dioxins goes up, enough so to be a health concern, hence one should use fresh water every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim seems to exist in the western world too, &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080404203455AAI8MKL&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does repeated boiling of tap water make it dangerous to one's health, and is it enough to justify using fresh water every time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastEditorUserId="106" LastEditDate="2012-10-03T12:30:18.940" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T09:39:44.023" Title="Does boiling the same water twice make it dangerous to one's health?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11118" CreationDate="2012-10-03T11:51:47.470" Score="28" Body="&lt;h1&gt;The claims&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;every time the same water is boiled, the concentration of dioxins goes up, enough so to be a health concern,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;boiling water twice makes water poisonous &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Refutation&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Health effects of boiling of water&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Boiling some water kills off any biological organisms in it that might cause you harm (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/fulltext.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reference&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babycenter.in/baby/startingsolids/drinks/safe-drinking-water/#2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reference&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthlinkbc.ca/healthfiles/hfile49b.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reference&lt;/a&gt;). Once something is dead there is no point trying to kill it a second time, so boiling once just before use is sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Boiling water will also reduce the concentration of volatile contaminants - making the water safer (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/chemicals/vinylchloride.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reference&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you boil water for a very long time, you may reduce the total volume of water to say half, this would double the concentration of any dissolved compounds that are less volatile than water (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.algebra.com/algebra/homework/word/mixtures/Mixture_Word_Problems.faq.question.178514.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example for reference purposes&lt;/a&gt;). Normal use of electric kettles doesn't reduce the volume of water sufficiently to make this a concern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Dioxins&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dioxins have low volatility and low water solubility (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp104-c3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reference&lt;/a&gt;). So they only appear in sediment, if you filter out the sediment you should remove most of the dioxins. If you boil your water for a long time and condense the steam and drink that (i.e. distilled water) you would reduce the quantity of dioxins ingested. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: Dioxins (if any) in your water are probably more likely to be present in sediment in the bottom of the kettle than dissolved in the water. Modern kettles turn themselves off before significant volume of water is boiled off and so don't produce high concentrations from low concentrations. Rinse your kettle once a week if worried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: It isn't the ordinal number of boilings that is important, it is the reduction in volume of the water - which is related to boiling time. This isn't a significant factor for normal use of domestic kettles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I conclude the claim is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/q/50511/1230&quot;&gt;Is it safe to drink reboiled water?&lt;/a&gt; at Chemistry.SE&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:06.483" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T09:39:44.023" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11120" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11189" CreationDate="2012-10-03T13:22:55.267" Score="11" ViewCount="4174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen several articles claiming that Mother Teresa refused to make use of pain-killers within her hospices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The formulary at the facility Fox visited lacked strong analgesics which he felt clearly separated Mother Teresa's approach from the hospice movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Mother_Teresa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Criticism of Mother Teresa&lt;/a&gt; from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any reliable references. Is this claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2019-02-08T22:55:03.733" LastActivityDate="2019-02-12T18:39:45.327" Title="Did Mother Teresa's hospices lack strong painkillers?" Tags="|history|pain-control|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11124" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-03T20:23:54.747" Score="3" ViewCount="2203" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently found out that Darvocet had been banned in the US.  Being allergic to pain killers in the Vicodin family this severely limited my doctors choices in prescribing pain killers for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/news/20101119/darvon-darvocet-banned&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;So I did some research into why...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nov. 19, 2010 -- The FDA has at last banned Darvon, Darvocet, and&#xA;  other brand/generic drugs containing propoxyphene -- a safety-plagued&#xA;  painkiller from the 1950s. ... The FDA action comes nearly six years&#xA;  after the drug was banned in the U.K., and nearly a year and a half&#xA;  after the European drug agency banned it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Due to FDA negligence, at least 1,000 to 2,000 or more people in the&#xA;  U.S. have died from using propoxyphene since the time the U.K. ban was&#xA;  announced,&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's health research&#xA;  group, says in a news release.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical that a drug that had been around that long would actually be responsible for 200-400 deaths a year with out a large outcry.  Is there any data to back this up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2019-02-08T22:54:58.090" LastActivityDate="2019-02-08T22:54:58.090" Title="Was propoxyphene (Darvocet) as dangerous as claimed when it was banned?" Tags="|medications|pain-control|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11127" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11129" CreationDate="2012-10-03T21:27:09.787" Score="4" ViewCount="1148" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/369/does-the-artificial-sweetener-aspartame-cause-cancer&quot;&gt;Does the artificial sweetener aspartame cause cancer?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whilesciencesleeps.com/dangers-of-aspartame/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WhileScienceSleeps&lt;/a&gt;:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The methanol contained in the diet soda produced in many countries of&#xA;  the world is dangerous. It comes from the artificial sweetener&#xA;  Aspartame. There is no safe level of consumption of methanol as there&#xA;  are with other less poisonous substances that can occasionally find&#xA;  their way into our foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Methanol is particularly dangerous to humans, more so than any other&#xA;  animal. When humans consume low doses of methanol it is metabolized&#xA;  directly into formaldehyde which is a cancer producing agent of the&#xA;  same level of danger as asbestos and plutonium. This conversion does&#xA;  not all happen in the Liver, a common misconception, but also in the&#xA;  brain and a woman’s breast. It is my belief that diet soda has&#xA;  contributed to the rise of breast cancer and multiple sclerosis that&#xA;  has been preceded by the use of Aspartame as a food ingredient in&#xA;  every country that has allowed its use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard this from other sources I cannot locate right now.  What's the truth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5297" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T12:51:38.837" Title="Is aspartame dangerous?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|environmental-health|cancer|aspartame|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-10-04T06:58:02.870" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9119" CreationDate="2012-10-03T22:31:30.720" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, home birth is substantially more likely to result in the death of the baby, even with a qualified homebirthing midwife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the pro-homebirth articles and studies focus on the &lt;em&gt;reduction in medical interventions taken for the mother&lt;/em&gt; (cessarians, etc), which I will leave to the reader to decide if that's more important than the life of the baby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/home-birth-safety/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/home-birth-safety/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More and more American women (1 in 200) are opting for home birth, and midwife-assisted home birth is common in other developed countries. How safe is it compared to birth in a hospital? A new study sheds some light on the subject. It was recently published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology: Maternal and newborn outcomes in planned home birth vs planned hospital births: a metaanalysis, by Wax et al. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RESULTS&lt;/strong&gt;: Planned home births were associated with &lt;strong&gt;fewer maternal interventions&lt;/strong&gt; including epidural analgesia, electronic fetal heart rate monitoring, episiotomy, and operative delivery. These women were less likely to experience lacerations, hemorrhage, and infections. Neonatal outcomes of planned home births revealed less frequent prematurity, low birthweight, and assisted newborn ventilation. &lt;strong&gt;Although planned home and hospital births exhibited similar perinatal mortality rates, planned home births were associated with significantly elevated neonatal mortality rates.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CONCLUSION&lt;/strong&gt;: Less medical intervention during planned home birth is associated with a tripling of the neonatal mortality rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis mine)&#xA;(&lt;em&gt;Perinatal&lt;/em&gt; mortality refers to stillbirths or deaths up to 7 days, &lt;em&gt;neonatal&lt;/em&gt; mortality refers to deaths up to 28 days).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar findings from the 2003-2004 CDC data (the US birth certificate was revised in 2003 to include the location and attendant at the birth): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-tragic-death-toll-of-homebirth/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/the-tragic-death-toll-of-homebirth/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bfaLs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Neonatal mortality rate&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CNM = Certified Nurse Midwife (hospital birth), DEM = Direct Entry Midwife (home birth)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other related articles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/midwives-and-the-assault-on-scientific-evidence/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Midwives and the assault on scientific evidence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-critique-of-the-leading-study-of-american-homebirth/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A critique of the leading study of American homebirth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalob.com/2011/12/homebirth-2011-statistics-and.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Homebirth 2011: Statistics and scientific papers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1049" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-03T22:31:30.720" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11127" CreationDate="2012-10-04T01:35:49.590" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, it is true that aspartame decomposes to aspartic acid (~50%), phenylalanine (~40%) and methanol (~10%) when exposed to heat or in very acidic or alkaline environments and that methanol and formaldehyde are (can be) toxic. Comparing formaldehyde with asbestos and plutonium is very misleading. Smaller amounts of formaldehyde is both produced and required by the human body itself and ingested formaldehyde is rapidly metabolized. Asbestos and plutonium is accumulated in the body and can reach toxic levels after prolonged exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A can of diet soda contains up to a few 100 mg of aspartame, e.g. a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dm2nb.ca/pdf/patient_resources/diabetes/sugar_substitutes_cda.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;355 ml can of Diet Coke contains 131 mg&lt;/a&gt;. If all the aspartame is decomposed, you will be exposed to about 13 mg (10%) of methanol by drinking such a can of Diet Coke. Most kinds of fruits and vegetables have a natural methanol content as well. Since pectin easily decomposes to methanol, eating fruit with high pectin levels exposes you to much higher amounts of methanol than drinking diet soda. &lt;a href=&quot;http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/ig/pdf/IG_12001Methanol.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eating one kg of apples, will for example release up to 500mg of methanol in the digestive tract.&lt;/a&gt; I agree that one kg of apples is unusually much to eat at once, but comparing it with the 40 cans of Diet Coke required to ingest the same amount of methanol, there are obviously other things to worry more about than aspartame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is aspartame dangerous? I honestly can't answer that, but the amount of methanol you can be exposed to by eating or drinking &quot;normal&quot; amounts of food or beverages sweetened with aspartame is most likely not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T01:35:49.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11130" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-04T01:44:51.683" Score="14" ViewCount="786" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=102317&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First Presidential Debate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(October 3, 2012)&lt;/em&gt; I heard &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Barack Obama&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; mention &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;10 year old textbooks&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; in a negative way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It means that the teacher that I met in Las Vegas, wonderful young lady, who describes to me -- she's got 42 kids in her class.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The first two weeks, she's got them -- some of them sitting on the floor until finally they get reassigned. They're using textbooks that are 10 years old. That is not a recipe for growth; that's not how America was built.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Is there actually any evidence that shows old text books are actually a significant hindrance in a good education?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like older books would correlate with other lack of funding, so it might be a hard to isolate causation or find valid case studies where that variable is even somewhat controlled. But to me it seems most of the stuff I learned in high school hadn't changed in the past 10 years. Have there been any studies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1877" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T02:11:21.550" Title="Do older school textbooks detract from the quality of education?" Tags="|education|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="28" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11131" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11138" CreationDate="2012-10-04T07:59:39.337" Score="25" ViewCount="8054" Body="&lt;p&gt;I encountered the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qtt8E.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Picture of claim&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The chances of you dying on the way to get your lottery tickets is greater than your chances of winning&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, whether is is true depends on the lottery, on the demographics of participants in the lottery, on their method of transportation, the duration of transportation, and probably on other factors as well. However, if we take into account the age distribution of lottery participants, their method of transportation to the lottery, and statistics on the chance of winning the lottery (let's say a reasonably big prize), considering a developed, urbanised country, can we make any estimates whether this claim could be remotely true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related question (which actually includes a similar claim in the question):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4984/are-the-chances-of-dying-each-day-1-250-000&quot;&gt;Are the chances of dying each day 1 : 250 000?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:40:06.033" Title="Are the chances of dying on the way to get lottery tickets larger than the chance of winning?" Tags="|economics|mortality|gambling|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9119" CreationDate="2012-10-04T08:46:24.753" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The subject is matter of debate, at least in The Netherlands, where home-birthing is very common. A Dutch-language blog article links to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://cryptocheilus.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/babysterfte-de-cijfers-liegen-wel/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;number of studies&lt;/a&gt; which different conclusions. In 2010, a study was published concluding that homebirthing is more risky:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perinatal mortality and severe morbidity in low and high risk term pregnancies in the Netherlands: prospective cohort study, Annemieke C C Evers et al, BMJ 2010; 341:c5639 / doi: 10.1136/bmj.c5639&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the study was criticised at a number of points. From&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/03/too-early-question-effectiveness-dutch-maternity-care-system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Too early to question effectiveness of Dutch maternity care system, Ank De Jonge et al.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Given the limitations of the study, the conclusion that labour starting in primary care carries a higher risk of delivery related perinatal death compared to labour starting in secondary care is premature from a scientific point of view.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it's probably not at all easy to answer the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T08:46:24.753" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11075" CreationDate="2012-10-04T11:18:37.197" Score="23" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Vacuum Cleaner Mortality&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can a UK house spider survive being vacuumed up?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.†&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Journal of Venomous Animals and Toxins including Tropical Diseases published a study entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&amp;amp;pid=S1678-91992007000300005&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Evaluation of the efficacy of vacuum cleaners for the integrated control of brown spider Loxosceles intermedia&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results include&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A total of 60 male, 60 female, 60 young and 60 just-hatched L. intermedia were vacuumed from Stages 1 to 4, in which all individuals were dead at the end of the vacuuming process (Figure 1B). Most spiders showed leg loss and many of them presented either abdomen damage or had the cephalothorax severed from the abdomen. Even those few individuals without discernible body damage did not resist vacuuming (there was no subsequent recovery of individuals replaced in the pots).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study also looked at a variety of situations including mortality of spiders which were placed alive in the bag of the vacuum cleaner prior to vacuuming - these all survived - suggesting dust in the bag isn't an effective killer of spiders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above study cites&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vetter et al. (20) stated that &quot;vacuuming spiders can be an effective control technique because their soft bodies usually do not survive this process&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;VETTER RS., OCONNOR-MARER P., MUSSEN E., ALLEN L., DAANE K., HICKMAN G., SLATER A., PHILLIPS P., HANNA R. Integrated Pest Management in and around the home. Spiders. Pest Notes. California: Univ. Calif. Div. Agric. Nat. Res., PB7442, 2000.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7442.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;As HTML&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PDF/PESTNOTES/pnspiders.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This document describes a variety of spider species including another member of Tegenaria and contains the above statement about vacuuming without qualification by species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;† Of course, Loxosceles intermedia is not Tegenaria duellica. Vacuum cleaners in Brazil may differ from those in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Classification&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There appears to be some changes in the classification of the domestic house spider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;giant house spider (Eratigena atrica, previously known as Tegenaria atrica, T. duellica, T. gigantea, and T. saeva – updated in August, 2014)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;- From &lt;a href=&quot;http://askanaturalist.com/is-this-spider-venomous/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AskNaturalist.com&lt;/a&gt; quoting a Mandy Howe&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Previously genus Tegenaria (transferred to Eratigena in August 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Phylogeny and taxonomy of European funnel-web spiders of the Tegenaria−Malthonica complex (Araneae: Agelenidae) based upon morphological and molecular data.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  By Bolzern, Burckhardt, &amp;amp; Hänggi.&#xA;  Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 168(4): 723-848, 2013.&#xA;  Cite: 843116.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper transfers four of our North American Tegenaria to a new genus called Eratigena. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that Eratigena is an anagram of Tegenaria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;- From &lt;a href=&quot;http://bugguide.net/node/view/31449&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BugGuide.net&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2015-10-28T16:18:29.720" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T16:18:29.720" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11135" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11141" CreationDate="2012-10-04T12:21:13.263" Score="8" ViewCount="52582" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the last few days there is a video called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.obamasrealfather.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Dreams from My Real Father&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;. The video claims that Barack Obama's mother posed for erotic/pornographic pictures for a pornographic magazine, and provide pictures of a woman that they claim is his mother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it indeed Barack Obama's mother in those pictures?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And if yes, were they indeed taken for commercial purpose, or were they private photos that leaked out somehow?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pictures: (&lt;strong&gt;NSFW&lt;/strong&gt;): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.judiciaryreport.com/images_2/obama-mom-photos-9-30-12.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pic1 &lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qY2-__kOmn8/0.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pic 2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://s3.vidimg.popscreen.com/original/0/VU1VbFdiTzFyaGsx_o_dreams-from-my-real-father-the-intimate-ann-dunham---.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pic 3&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-20T21:11:08.373" Title="Are these nude photos of Barack Obama's mother?" Tags="|united-states|politics|celebrities|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11124" CreationDate="2012-10-04T13:08:36.683" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is significant evidence that Propoxyphene is more dangerous than its alternatives. The study &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2125.2005.02468.x/abstract&quot;&gt;&quot;Co-proxamol overdose is associated with a 10-fold excess mortality compared with other paracetamol combination analgesic&quot;&lt;/a&gt; published in 2005 in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When related to prescription volume overdoses involving co-proxamol in&#xA;  Scotland were 10 times more likely to be fatal (24.6 (19.7, 30.4))&#xA;  when compared with cocodamol (2.0 (0.88, 4.0)) or co-dydramol (2.4&#xA;  (0.5, 7.2)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The excess hazard from co-proxamol is due to inherent toxicity rather&#xA;  than increased use in overdose. We estimate from this study that&#xA;  withdrawal of co-proxamol would prevent 39 excess deaths per annum in&#xA;  Scotland alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also strong evidence that the withdrawal in the UK lead to a reduced number of deaths. The article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.b2270&quot;&gt;&quot;Effect of withdrawal of co-proxamol on prescribing and deaths from drug poisoning in England and Wales: time series analysis&quot;&lt;/a&gt; published in 2009 in BMJ states as a result:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These changes were associated with a major reduction in deaths&#xA;  involving co-proxamol compared with the expected number of deaths (an&#xA;  estimated 295 fewer suicides and 349 fewer deaths including accidental&#xA;  poisonings), but no statistical evidence for an increase in deaths&#xA;  involving either other analgesics or other drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This translates into more than a hundred deaths due to Propoxyphene per year in the UK, which is similar to the number you quoted if you take the different population sizes into account. The United States &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+USA+%2F+population+united+kingdom&quot;&gt;have roughly 5 times the population of the UK&lt;/a&gt;, which would translate into roughly 2500 deaths over 5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/315/7122/1565&quot;&gt;evidence that Propoxyphene is not more effective than alternatives&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the basis of data on analgesic efficacy and acute safety in both&#xA;  head to head and indirect comparisons, there is little objective&#xA;  evidence to support prescribing a combination of paracetamol and&#xA;  dextropropoxyphene in preference to paracetamol alone in moderate pain&#xA;  such as that after surgery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a drug with a questionable safety record that seems to be of limited effectiveness, it makes a strong argument to reconsider the use of this drug entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-10-04T13:24:33.933" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T13:24:33.933" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11131" CreationDate="2012-10-04T13:15:03.837" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;This looks to be plausible, at least for the UK National Lottery Jackpot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Lottery_%28United_Kingdom%29#Current_games&quot;&gt;chances of winning the Jackpot&lt;/a&gt; in the UK National Lottery are 1 in 13,983,815. The chances of dying on the way depends on the length of journey and the transport used. Number of Deaths for various forms of transport are listed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dft.gov.uk/statistics/releases/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-annual-report-2011/&quot;&gt;Reported Road Casualties Great Britain: annual report 2011&lt;/a&gt; along with the number of miles travelled using that form of transport:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cycling - 107 deaths in 3.1 billion miles (1 death every 29 million miles)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Motorcycling - 362 deaths in 2.9 billion miles (1 death every 8.0 million miles)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Driving Car - 613 deaths in 241 billion miles (1 death every 393 million miles)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your journey exceeds the following lengths, then you are more likely to die than win:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cycling - 2.1 miles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Motorcycling - 0.57 miles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Driving - 28 miles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T13:15:03.837" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11113" CreationDate="2012-10-04T14:42:55.347" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short Answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NO, the wave weather is called &quot;superposition of waves with random periods/frequencies and directions&quot; for a reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long Answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer  was already addressed, but  with a 9 instead a 7 &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9805/is-the-ninth-wave-the-largest/9963#9963&quot; title=&quot;Skeptics SE&quot;&gt;here in Skeptics SE&lt;/a&gt;, the remarkable part is... (&lt;strong&gt;notes in bold&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the fetch, many different groups of waves of varying wavelength are generated and interfere (&lt;strong&gt;noted in the literature as sea state&lt;/strong&gt;). As they disperse away from the fetch, the waves become more regularly sized and spaced (&lt;strong&gt;knows as swell state&lt;/strong&gt;). This is because the speed of a wave in open water is closely related to its wavelength. The different groups of waves move at different speeds and so are naturally sorted by wavelength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oceana.org/en/explore/marine-science/ocean-waves&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Marine Science&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with lead to the same answer with another number:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even when is possible for two wave trains (generated by two diferent storms or conditions) to converge (as the largest, fastest-moving waves at the fore of the second train can &quot;catch&quot;, the smaller, slower-moving ones behind of the first train) or the sorting of wave frequencies as described above, generate waves coupling that can be interpreted as this &quot;Xth wave&quot; this effect is accidental due the difficulty of measure wave height at naked eye, variability of amplitude of wave and phasing of waves ratios and due the fact the most wave have periods between 8 and 26 seconds and is extremely hard get in the sea periods ratios of 7 to 10 to generate this &quot;Xth wave&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7676" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T14:42:55.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11141" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11135" CreationDate="2012-10-04T16:21:23.093" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WARNING: Possibly NSFW.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The racy photos are from &lt;a href=&quot;http://richardperez.net/60s-retro-kink-bizarrelife-9-thumbnails.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Bizarre Life&quot; Magazine #9, the Spring 1969 Edition&lt;/a&gt;. It would have been quite a feat for her to appear in the magazine, as - to quote the &quot;About the Author&quot; section from the book &quot;&lt;em&gt;Pendekar-pendekar besi Nusantara: kajian antropologi tentang pandai besi tradisional di Indonesia&lt;/em&gt; (Peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia: surviving and thriving against all odds).&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From January 1968 to December 1969, Dunham taught English and was an assistant director of the Lembaga Persahabatan Indonesia Amerika (LIA)–the Indonesia-America Friendship Institute at 9 Teuku Umar Street in the Gondangdia administrative village of the Menteng subdistrict in Central Jakarta–which was subsidized by U.S. government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also very noteworthy is that the  image on the right below, who is purported to be &quot;Ann Dunham&quot; - &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;isn't actually in the magazine&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, which you can find high res images for via the link above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6WrWx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Purported image of Ann Dunahm&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who's on the right (and isn't actually clad in leather)? Whoever the person below is:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tmI6M.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're still iffy, here's another comparison between the only character dressed like the mysterious woman above and Ann Dunham herself (taken at a US Embassy):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QwPnM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Close-up&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eFOGk.png&quot; alt=&quot;Ann Dunham at the United Sates Embassy&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastActivityDate="2012-10-04T16:21:23.093" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11142" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11151" CreationDate="2012-10-04T16:53:06.573" Score="12" ViewCount="28902" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan#Georgia.2C_Crimea.2C_Kievan_Rus_and_Volga_Bulgaria&quot;&gt;From Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the Battle of Kalka River in 1223, Subutai's forces defeated the larger Kievan force, while losing the battle of Samara Bend against the neighboring Volga Bulgars – one of the Mongol's few, if not only, utter defeat; the Khwarizmi historian al-Nasawi says only 4,000 survived.[30] The Russian princes then sued for peace. Subutai agreed but was in no mood to pardon the princes. As was customary in Mongol society for nobility, the Russian princes were given a bloodless death. &lt;strong&gt;Subutai had a large wooden platform constructed on which he ate his meals along with his other generals. Six Russian princes, including Mstislav III of Kiev, were put under this platform and crushed to death.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Bad ass of the week&quot; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badassoftheweek.com/khan.html&quot;&gt;another site that mentions&lt;/a&gt; this along with another imaginative instance involving the Persians:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After defeating his ancient enemies in China, the Mongols turned West. The Russian and Persian Empires fell within a couple of years. &lt;em&gt;When Baghdad was captured, the Mongols wrapped the Sultan of Persia and his family up in a giant rug and then trampled him with their horses.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;When the Mongols conquered the Russian steppe and stormed Kiev, they put wooden planks over the bodies of captured Russian generals and princes and slowly crushed them to death by eating dinner on top of them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also seen this mentioned in a novel that I am reading. It sounds like a really bizarre form of torture. Did this really happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-09T21:59:52.117" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T21:59:52.117" Title="Did Genghis Khan and his troops kill prisoners by banqueting on top of them?" Tags="|history|mortality|genghis-khan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11169" CreationDate="2012-10-04T19:01:48.560" Score="4" ViewCount="659" Body="&lt;p&gt;Particularly after lunch, I feel a bit sleepy and I love to take a nap. But many of my friends insist that I take a bit of a walk after my lunch. They recommend it as a healthy habit that helps with digestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true? Could anyone point me to some sources that prove or disprove this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8779" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:28:20.133" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:28:20.133" Title="Is it a healthy habit to walk after having food?" Tags="|nutrition|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6601" CreationDate="2012-10-05T11:21:14.293" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am addressing the cited claim (not the different form stated at the top of the question)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Do not mix raw and boiled water! Grandma was right. Just why mixing of boiled and raw water leads to a rapid emptying of the bowel, the science cannot explain yet. But the fact is obvious.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The World Health Organisation (WHO) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/fulltext.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recommend&lt;/a&gt; that water be raised to a temperature of 100° C for 60 seconds in order to kill off bacteria and viruses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you pour water at 100° C into a cold container such as a cup (or teapot) at 20° C, the water reduces in temperature to about 80° C by the time you've finished pouring (I've measured this but have no reference at the moment)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2009/04/03/hot-tea-and-oesophageal-gullet-cancer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Studies in the UK have found that the average temperature for drinking tea is between 56° and 60° C&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, if you add cold unboiled water to the cup of 80° C water in order to reduce the mixtures temperature to 60° C, that new water is not going to be raised to 100° C for 60 seconds. Therefore any bacteria it contains (if any) may not be killed and may lead to an illness such as the diarrhoea suggested in the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science has no problem explaining this commonsense advice for people with unsafe water supplies. The difficulty in comprehension only arises when the claim is over simplified and separated from its context. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not the mixing of cold and hot water that creates a health threat out of nothing. It is the failure to follow a sterilization procedure that would treat an existing health threat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some &lt;a href=&quot;http://goeasteurope.about.com/od/russia/tp/healthandsafetyrussia.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;travel advisors&lt;/a&gt; say &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Russia Travel Health Tip: Don't Drink the Tap Water. Even locals do not drink the tap water in Russia. Tap water may be even more dangerous for foreigners. Not only will it contain elements that a traveler's body may be unused to, it also may also cause diseases due to being improperly sanitized.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggests that the safety of drinking water may be a subject of concern to Russian citizens to a greater extent than in countries where laws successfully require tap water to be safe for drinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;mixing boiled and unboiled water can be dangerous for one's health, even if it is safe to drink both liquids apart.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question contains no citation for any claim with that proviso.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To support this claim you'd need something like a study that takes two containers of water, one boiled one unboiled, and tests three groups of people (with significant numbers in each)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a group that drinks only a cup of the boiled water&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a group that drinks only a cup of the unboiled water&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a group that drinks only a cup of mixed water (say 50/50)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To support the claim, the third group would have to show a statistically significantly higher incidence of health problems than either of the other groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="25375" LastEditDate="2016-05-31T08:50:10.707" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T08:50:10.707" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11142" CreationDate="2012-10-05T11:45:45.490" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, this is generally accepted as historically accurate and is generally well &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=S7TA029vF5oC&quot;&gt;documented in the historical record&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=S7TA029vF5oC&amp;amp;q=suffocated#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=suffocated&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;direct&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;) as well as being consistent with Mongolian prohibitions on shedding royal blood at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rather than shed the blood of rival princes -- one of Genghis Khan’s&#xA;  commands -- Jebe and Subedei ordered the unfortunate commander and two&#xA;  other princes stretched out under boards and slowly suffocated as&#xA;  Mongols stood or sat upon the boards during the victory banquet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.columbia.edu/itc/eacp/japanworks/mongols/conquests/khans_horses.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;All the Khan’s Horses&quot; by Morris Rossabi, &lt;em&gt;Natural History&lt;/em&gt;, October 1994&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Captured princes were laid down to be suffocated to death under the&#xA;  planks on which Mongols held a banquet for their victory over&#xA;  Russians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/handle/2433/68515&quot;&gt;&quot;The First Raid of Mongols on Russia&quot; by Iwao Yamaguchi (山口, 巖)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sadly, since this book is available in full on Google Books, the best I can find is the call out. But it does include mention of the source citation which can sometimes be previewed on &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1841762334&quot;&gt;Amazon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T12:53:56.713" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T12:53:56.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11152" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11153" CreationDate="2012-10-05T12:39:52.680" Score="14" ViewCount="5685" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/nov/22/books.france&quot;&gt;It is reported&lt;/a&gt; that Margaret Thatcher, during the Falklands War, put pressure on French president François Mitterrand to give her secret codes so that the British armed forces could disable French-built Exocet missiles in use by the Argentinians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;With her four nuclear submarines in the south Atlantic, she's&#xA;  threatening to unleash an atomic weapon against Argentina if I don't&#xA;  provide her with the secret codes that will make the missiles we sold&#xA;  the Argentinians deaf and blind.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are missiles really built with the capability to be remotely disabled by secret codes? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6031" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T13:36:02.510" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T11:12:31.813" Title="Can Exocet missiles be remotely disabled with secret codes?" Tags="|war|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11152" CreationDate="2012-10-05T13:30:06.277" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt; Can Exocet missiles be remotely disabled with secret codes? &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Argentine Exocets destroyed HMS Sheffield, the Atlantic Conveyor and damaged HMS Glamorgan (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocet#Falklands_War&quot;&gt;Reference&lt;/a&gt;). It is evident that fleet protection vessels did not have the ability to remotely disable Argentine Exocet missiles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Chronology&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HMS Sheffield was destroyed on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Sheffield_%28D80%29&quot;&gt;4th May 1982&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/110663&quot;&gt;written&lt;/a&gt; that Mitterand reported to his psychoanalyst on May 7 that Thatcher asked for &quot;secret codes&quot; to Exocet earlier that day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Atlantic conveyor was sunk by Exocets on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Conveyor&quot;&gt;25th May&lt;/a&gt; whilst carrying 11 helicopters, 14 Harrier aircraft and other vital supplies. The loss of this vessel put the mission into jeopardy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HMS Glamorgan was hit by Exocet on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Glamorgan_%28D19%29&quot;&gt;12th June&lt;/a&gt; At this time, according to the story, the UK had the Exocet codes for more than a month (39 days).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cost of materiel destroyed&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been suggested that the strategic value of the supposed Exocet command-destruct codes so far exceeded the costs of vessels destroyed that it was not worth using the codes to prevent destruction of those vessels and crew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Britain &amp;amp; the Falklands War&quot;, 1988, Lawrence Freedman wrote: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The campaign itself, Operation Corporate, is now estimated to have cost about £1.5 billion. The cost of replacing lost equipment is put at £1,278 million. The largest single item in this figure is £641 million for four new Type 22 frigates... to replace Sir Galahad is put at £69 million, and new aircraft account for another £116 million.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Role of destroyers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been suggested that only ships other than the ones destroyed were provided with the Exocet command-destruct codes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A major part of the role of the type 42 guided missile destroyer HMS Sheffield and county-class destroyer HMS Glamorgan was to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_42_destroyer&quot;&gt;protect fleet vessels&lt;/a&gt;. We can infer that any anti-missile capability would likely have been provided in these destroyers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Did the British have the command-destruct codes but chose not to use them?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commenters suggest that the British, having urgently pressured Mitterand into giving up the secret destruct-codes, may have then decided to sacrifice the lives of dozens (potentially hundreds) of servicemen and hundreds of millions of pounds worth of assets to prevent the Argentinians from somehow deducing that the British might have access to secret destruct codes of which the Argentinians were hitherto either unaware or had neglected to change despite knowing how. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The least we can say is that the reported events of the Falklands war provide no evidence to support the claim that Exocets in 1982 had a remote command-destruct feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Value of hypothetical destroy-code vs radar info&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report of Mitterand's comments also says that &quot;The most valuable information was on the Exocet’s homing radar.&quot; This is inconsistent with the idea that the &quot;secret codes&quot; allowed remote abort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fire and Forget&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The manufacturer &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mbda-systems.com/mediagallery/files/EXOCET-family_background.pdf&quot;&gt;describes&lt;/a&gt; Exocet as being &quot;over the horizon&quot; and &quot;fire and forget&quot; meaning that once fired, it does not require further guidance commands from the firing platform, this suggests there is no need for it to be fitted with a remote command system, such a system for command-destruct alone, would add weight and cost for little operational benefit for small tactical missiles of the 1980s designed to be air-launched. Of course it does not rule out the presence of such a system but we can make some assessment of the balance of probabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britains-smallwars.com/Falklands/Exocet.html&quot;&gt;Argentine source&lt;/a&gt; writes the Exocet had &quot;range: 70 kms (35 miles) Cruise speed: 1100 km/h (Mach 0.9)&quot; - this gives a flight time of 3.9 minutes maximum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The essence of a fire &amp;amp; forget missile is that the pilot does not wait around to monitor the flight of the missile (with a finger hovering over a hypothetical command-destruct button), the pilot ducks below the horizon and turns away from the target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Are missiles really built with the capability to be remotely disabled by secret codes?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Command_Destruct_Self_Destruct_Capability_Tested_In_Surface_Launched_AMRAAM_999.html&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; that some &lt;strong&gt;more recent&lt;/strong&gt; missiles for &lt;strong&gt;surface to air&lt;/strong&gt; use do have a command-destruct capability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The capability helps mitigate collateral damage when used in a surface launch role within an urban environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This wasn't the role of air-launched anti-ship Exocets in 1982)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-10-05T18:54:35.763" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T18:54:35.763" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11152" CreationDate="2012-10-05T13:49:01.377" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe&lt;/strong&gt;, partly due to the Exocet misses still being &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exocet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in active use&lt;/a&gt; which means that certain aspects of their operation are classified. However, it has been documented &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1387576/How-France-helped-us-win-Falklands-war-by-John-Nott.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;by the Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; that the French provided classified information on the missiles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FRANCE was Britain's greatest ally during the Falklands war, providing&#xA;  secret information to enable MI6 agents to sabotage Exocet missiles&#xA;  which were desperately sought by Argentina, according to Sir John&#xA;  Nott, who was Defence Secretary during the conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it appears that the nature of this information is likely classified even though references to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/110663&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;codes&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nouvelle-europe.eu/en/are-britain-and-argentina-other-collision-course-over-falklands&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;code&lt;/a&gt; shows up in searches on the internet. Note that this might be a confusion of context though as it is entirely possible that France may have provided the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_code&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source code&lt;/a&gt; for the missiles which may have exposed a flaw that they could exploit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, while it is clear that France did provide Britain assistance with regards to the Exocet missiles, the exact nature of that assistance appears to be somewhat open to speculation and likely classified until some point in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T13:49:01.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11155" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-05T14:27:22.143" Score="3" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1801/did-the-development-of-agriculture-prevent-an-ice-age-occurring&quot;&gt;Did the development of agriculture prevent an ice age occurring?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some recent news reports about ancient anthropogenic methane emissions have hinted that the simultaneous contributions of the Roman Empire and the Han Chinese may have produced enough to start the human influence on climate two millennia earlier than the industrial revolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/03/science/la-sci-humans-climate-change-20121004&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LA Times&lt;/a&gt; expresses it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until now, it was assumed by scientists that human activity began increasing greenhouse gas levels only after the year 1750.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, though, some think:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Centuries before the Industrial Revolution or the recognition of global warming, the ancient Roman and Chinese empires were already producing powerful greenhouse gases through their daily toil...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...The burning of plant matter to cook food, clear cropland and process metals released millions of tons of methane gas into the atmosphere each year during several periods of pre-industrial history&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, were ancient civilisations kick-starting warming 2000 years ago? Does the analysis of ancient emissions tell us anything about current warming?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-05T14:27:22.143" Title="Did the Roman Empire and the Han Chinese cause (some) global warming?" Tags="|history|climate-change|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="16" ClosedDate="2012-10-06T21:22:41.670" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11158" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11159" CreationDate="2012-10-06T05:04:28.560" Score="11" ViewCount="843" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alan Bradley is a character in the 1982 film &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tron&lt;/a&gt;, the software developer who wrote Tron, a security program and the eponymous protagonist of the film. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alan Kay&lt;/a&gt;, on the other hand, is a pioneer of object oriented programming and graphical user interfaces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an awesomely titled page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FrontPage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WikiWikiWeb&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AlanKayIsTron&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alan Kay Is Tron&lt;/a&gt; that claims: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The protagonist in the TronMovie is named Alan, and is fighting against the command-line oriented MasterControlProgram. This was a deliberate allegory of the life of AlanKay. Alan and one of writers of Tron (BonnieMacBird? -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://us.imdb.com/Bio?MacBird,+Bonnie&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bonnie MacBird - Biography&lt;/a&gt;) subsequently were married.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, Alan Bradley is not the protagonist, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Boxleitner&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bruce Boxleitner&lt;/a&gt; plays both characters, Alan Bradley and Tron, so I think we can ignore that little inconsistency. At the end of that page, there's a second claim: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just a note here, after my recent purchase of the TRON 20th anniversary DVD I listened to the directors commentary in which they stated that while &quot;Allen&quot; was in fact named for Alan Kay the term TRON does not in fact refer to the acronym for Trace ON as at the time of filming they were not even aware that such a thing existed. It is actually a much less dramatic shortened version of the word elecTRON. I know it steals some of the nostalgia doesn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems plausible, and if true it would be a great opportunity to watch Tron again for the n-th time, just to try and spot any further references to Alan Kay's work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5142" LastEditorUserId="892" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T19:07:35.403" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T19:07:35.403" Title="Was Alan Bradley named after Alan Kay?" Tags="|movies|programming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11158" CreationDate="2012-10-06T10:16:39.290" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, it's true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mediamikes.com/2011/09/interview-with-trons-bonnie-macbird/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;interview with Bonnie MacBird&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Steven [Lisberger] and I met with several scientists, and the last interview of the day was Alan Kay, then still at Xerox Parc...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;em&gt;On the plane on the way back, &lt;strong&gt;I knew that we had to have a character based on Alan Kay&lt;/strong&gt; and I set out to write him... and to hire Alan as the technical consultant on our film&lt;/em&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;and the character based on Alan Kay became the creator of Tron.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;em&gt;As a side note, the real life Alan Kay and I enjoyed working together and became good friends during Tron. A few years later we married, and are still married today!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From an &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.is/20120915/http://www.denofgeek.com/Tron/687709/interview_justin_springer_and_steven_lisberger_coproducers_of_tron_legacy.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;interview with Steven Lisberger&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Everybody was doing backlit animation in the 70s, you know. It was that disco look. And we thought, what if we had this character that was a neon line, and that was our Tron warrior - &lt;strong&gt;Tron for electronic&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-06T10:16:39.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8420" CreationDate="2012-10-06T17:47:29.297" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bagemihl cites 3 sources of  which bibliographic particulars were not available. I believe it is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pratt DM and VH Anderson. 1982. Population, distribution and behavior of giraffe in the Arusha National Park, Tanzania.  Journal of Natural History 16 pp481-489&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pratt DM and VH Anderson. 1985. Giraffe social behavior. Journal of Natural History 19 pp771-781.&#xA;I do not see an article by Pratt and anderson in 1979.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dagg, AI and Foester JB. 1976. The giraffe, its biology, behavior and ecology. New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simmons RE and Scheepers L. 1996.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blc.arizona.edu/courses/schaffer/182/Giraffe/WinningByANeck.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Winning by a neck: sexual selection in the evolution of Giraffe.&lt;/a&gt; The American Naturalist 148(5) pp781-786.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The figure of 94% may be in the 3 articles, but I do not have access to it. Logic tells me that no species of which sexual behaviour is 94% homosexual will survive. The observations were simply inadequate. Further, Simmons and Scheepers propose that the giraffe's long neck originates from intrasexual competition and not from the alternative theory of feeding behaviour. Males with the sturdiest and longest necks passed their genes on. For them, necking is agonistic and not affiliative behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8725" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-12T16:16:13.920" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T16:16:13.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11162" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11166" CreationDate="2012-10-06T18:35:10.493" Score="18" ViewCount="3618" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that a man can fall faster than the speed of sound, and survive, by jumping from 36,000 meters; a free fall that, it seems, lasts ten minutes after the jump. Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:09:41.253" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:09:41.253" Title="Can a man fall faster than the speed of sound?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7626" CreationDate="2012-10-07T07:53:53.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a recent study (2011): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.national-toxic-encephalopathy-foundation.org/lsustudy.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity: Evidence for a Novel Neurological Syndrome (McCarty, Carrubba, Chesson, Frilot, Gonzalez-Toledo &amp;amp; Marino)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my untrained eyes, it looks very serious (double-blind, no conflict of interests, controlling for somatization, etc.). It also mentions the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/content/67/2/224.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;meta-analysis from 2005&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The subject developed symptoms in association with the presentation of&#xA;  a pulsed electric field significantly (p &amp;lt; .05) more often than could&#xA;  reasonably be explained on the basis of chance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our aim here was to concentrate on the previously unaddressed question&#xA;  whether acute exposure to weak EMF could produce real but not&#xA;  precisely predictable somatic effects mediated by nonpsychological&#xA;  processes. Within the limitations of the study, we concluded that we&#xA;  demonstrated the neurological syndrome in the subject we studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, at this point, it seems there's a possibility that &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; people (3-5% of the population, maybe) are actually hypersensitive to electromagnetic fields and that cell towers, mobile phones, wireless access points, etc. &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be a real problem (although more research is still needed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6067" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T07:53:53.837" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5101" CreationDate="2012-10-07T10:36:33.847" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, there is a net environmental benefit from photovoltaic panels&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be possible to contrive a corner case where there was not a net benefit (for example, having a PV system illuminated only by a light bulb, rather than by the sun); but such cases are extremely rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's break down the big, somewhat cloudy question of &quot;net environmental benefit&quot; into some component questions that are commonly raised. Does PV have net energy production? How much greenhouse gases from fossil-fuel production does it displace, when the full product lifecycle is accounted for? How do aggregate damage costs compare? I'll deal with each of those in turn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Net energy production&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fthenakis and Alsema (1) looked at the net energy production of photovoltaics, based on 2004 technology (things have improved a lot since then). They found energy payback times of between 1.0 and 2.2 years, depending on the specific panel technology, and where it was manufactured. So all energy generated after that time is net energy production. Systems typically last 15-30 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2009 review of life cycle assessments by Sherwani, Usmani and Varun (3) found energy payback times of 1.5-5.7 years, for systems with lifetimes of 20-30 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2012, Fthenakis (4) looked at historic trends of energy payback times [EPBT], and found that they'd been improving for 40 years (NB the vertical axis has a log scale):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0tzzF.png&quot; alt=&quot;Energy payback time of PV has dropped from around 40 years to 0.5 years&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That gives values for energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) in the range 10-40.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So PV has a high net energy production&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Greenhouse gases displaced&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, let's note that the power into a grid and the power consumed must match at all times. So if PV generation increases, some other source of power must decrease, in order to keep the system balanced. So some other generator will get turned down. The type of generation being displaced does make a difference. In most of the world, in 2012, it will usually be a fossil-fuel plant - coal or gas (see the World Energy Outlook, IEA).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fthenakis and Alsema (1) cite the ExternE and Australian Coal Association research on full-lifecycle greenhouse-gas emissions, and found that monocrystalline silicon PV came out at 100-180gCO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;e/kWh, whereas coal was 900g, and gas CCGT was 400-439g. Their own calculations for different PV technologies gave even lower results: 37g for polycrystalline silicon; 21g for EU Cadmium Telluride; 25g for US Cadmium Telluride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, Sherwani et al (3) found full-lifecyle greenhouse gas emissions from PV were in the range 9.4-104gCO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;e/kWh&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On a full-lifecycle analysis, there are substantial greenhouse-gas savings with PV.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Total Damage costs&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flimzy poster, in comments on the question, notes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;you're often comparing apples and oranges. Coal-generated electricity emits carbon into the atmosphere, whereas manufacturing a PV cell may result in some liquids being emitted into a river ... how do you measure which is &quot;overall worse?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's true. And there is a standard method for aggregating externalities, which is to monetise each aspect of damage, and then sum those costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fthenakis and Alsema (1) found that the unit damage cost for PV systems was 0.126-0.177 eurocent per Kwh, using a remarkably low value of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; damage (€19/tCO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;e). Even at that level, the CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;-damage &lt;strong&gt;alone&lt;/strong&gt; from fossil plant exceeds the total damage costs from PV (€19/tCO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;e x 400gCO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;e/kWh = 0.76 eurocent per kWh).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Total environmental damage costs from PV, are less than those of the fossil-fuel generation that they displace.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Metal specifics&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For anyone interested in the detail of metal extraction for PV, Ftheankis, Wang and Kim looked at the specifics for zinc, copper, aluminum, cadmium, indium, germanium, gallium, selenium, tellurium, and molybdenum (2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sources&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Fthenakis VM, Alsema E. &lt;strong&gt;Photovoltaics energy payback times, greenhouse gas emissions and external costs: 2004-early 2005 status.&lt;/strong&gt; Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications. 2006;14(3):275–280. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pip.706&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DOI:10.1002/pip.706&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Fthenakis VM, Wang W, Kim H. &lt;strong&gt;Life cycle inventory analysis of the production of metals used in photovoltaics.&lt;/strong&gt; Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 2009;13(3):493–517. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2007.11.012&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DOI:10.1016/j.rser.2007.11.012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3)  Sherwani AF, Usmani JA, Varun. &lt;strong&gt;Life cycle assessment of solar PV based electricity generation systems: A review.&lt;/strong&gt; Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. 2010;14(1):540–544. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2009.08.003&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DOI:10.1016/j.rser.2009.08.003&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) Fthenakis V. &lt;strong&gt;How long does it take for photovoltaics to produce the energy used?&lt;/strong&gt;, in PE Magazine, from the National Society of Professional Engineers, Jan/Feb 2012. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bnl.gov/pv/files/pdf/PE_Magazine_Fthenakis_2_10_12.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF available here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="6236" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T11:25:25.750" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T11:25:25.750" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11162" CreationDate="2012-10-07T10:37:05.593" Score="33" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Can a man fall faster than the speed of sound?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update (15 Oct 2012): &lt;a href=&quot;http://us.cnn.com/2012/10/14/us/skydiver-record-attempt/index.html?hpt=hp_t1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Definitely&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19943590&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;yes&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;strong&gt;372.8&lt;/strong&gt; m/s, or Mach 1.24,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, almost certainly, though none have yet (7 Oct 2012) in any well-published verified account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;on Aug. 16, 1960, Capt. Kittinger jumped from a height of 102,800 feet, almost 20 miles above the earth. With only the small stabilizing chute deployed, Capt. Kittinger fell for 4 minutes, 36 seconds. He experienced temperatures as low as minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit (-70 degrees Celsius) and a maximum speed of 614 miles per hour. … The 28-foot main parachute did not open until Capt. Kittinger reached the much thicker atmosphere at 17,500 feet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=562&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=562&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is &lt;strong&gt;274&lt;/strong&gt; m/s at some point during a descent from 31333 m to 5333 m altitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CYuue.png&quot; alt=&quot;Speed of sound graph&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_sound&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this graph we can see that if you start at 36000 metres, when you have fallen 16000 metres to 20000 metres height, the speed of sound is &lt;strong&gt;295&lt;/strong&gt; m/s. Kittinger's maximum speed was &lt;strong&gt;274&lt;/strong&gt; m/s at unstated altitude. It seems plausible that someone might be able to travel &lt;strong&gt;7.6%&lt;/strong&gt; faster oriented head down with no stabilising chute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are reports that say Kittinger in 1960 reached supersonic speeds - e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/1985/June%201985/0685valor.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Airforce Magazine&lt;/a&gt;  - but in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8475288.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC video&lt;/a&gt; (at 02:10) Kittinger says he was &quot;very nearly supersonic&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-10-14T23:08:06.803" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T23:08:06.803" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-10-07T15:09:54.413" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8904" CreationDate="2012-10-07T11:09:47.593" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, the Cretaceous was the last time atmospheric carbon dioxide was significantly higher than it is today,&lt;/strong&gt; (and this, of course, depends to a degree on what you interpret by significantly higher)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's very hard to be definite, because the error-bars on the estimates become large, as we look back in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as the first graph below, which aggregates the results of several studies, shows, the last time it was significantly higher what it is today, was around the Cretaceous period, denoted by &lt;strong&gt;K&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as we can tell, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1178296&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;current levels are higher than they've been for 15 million years&lt;/a&gt;. Now  &quot;&lt;strong&gt;significantly&lt;/strong&gt; higher&quot; isn't very specific. Current levels are &lt;a href=&quot;http://co2now.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;around 390ppm&lt;/a&gt;, up from around &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2005/s2412.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;280ppm before the industrial age started&lt;/a&gt;. So what's &lt;strong&gt;significantly&lt;/strong&gt; higher? Let's say 800-1000ppm would be significantly higher (2-2.5 times current levels), and as far as we can tell, the last time atmospheric CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; concentrations were that high, was indeed the Cretaceous period (which ended 65 million years ago). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(note that the present day is on the &lt;strong&gt;left&lt;/strong&gt; in this graph).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/x1xZr.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Rothman study is: &lt;strong&gt;Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels for the last 500 million years&lt;/strong&gt;, PNAS April 2, 2002 vol. 99 no. 7 4167-4171, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.022055499&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DOI:10.1073/pnas.022055499&lt;/a&gt; , from which the following graph comes, of historic atmospheric CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels expressed as a ratio relative to 2001 levels: so a value on the y-axis of 2 means double the level of 2001: (note that the present day is on the &lt;strong&gt;right&lt;/strong&gt; in this graph)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ru6Rq.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="6236" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T17:46:47.523" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T17:46:47.523" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11143" CreationDate="2012-10-07T13:27:21.573" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;a walk after my lunch [is] a healthy habit that helps with digestion.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Walking may be a healthy habit but it does not specifically assist digestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Digestion is a process which takes place in resting conditions. Exercise is characterised by a shift in blood flow away from the gastrointestinal (GI) tract towards the active muscle and the lungs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8460288&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Is the gut an athletic organ? Digestion, absorption, and exercise. [Sports Med. 1993] - PubMed - NCBI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="892" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T18:38:22.957" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T18:38:22.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="805" CreationDate="2012-10-07T14:29:45.600" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The murderer of Robert Kennedy, &lt;a href=&quot;http://law.jrank.org/pages/3182/Sirhan-Bishara-Sirhan-Trial-1969-Murder-Plan.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sirhan Sirhan&lt;/a&gt;, claimed he was hypnotized and in a trance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To investigate whether it is possible to hypnotize someone to carry out a murder, Derren Brown made a man in the show &lt;em&gt;Experiments&lt;/em&gt; shoot at Stephen Fry at a public event with a gun. The bullets were of course not real, but the participants believed they were. One can watch the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Gk4ShMdOY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;episode on youtube&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The participant was prepped for month and select from a large group for being particularly suggestive (and not being &lt;em&gt;a priori&lt;/em&gt; violent). Of course a TV show is not scientific evidence, so you have to make up your mind what to make of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7336" LastEditorUserId="8735" LastEditDate="2012-10-07T20:09:57.650" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T20:09:57.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="805" CreationDate="2012-10-07T18:39:39.970" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, there have been.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US CIA project MKUltra&lt;/a&gt; specifically dealt with hypnotic techniques, particularly involving drugs to augment the programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;espionage practices are not public record (national security),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assassination practices are even further shielded from public record,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_Agency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CIA is an agency for&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;intelligence gathering&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;executing foreign policy 'to dismantle threats'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can logically understand that creating assassination-capable &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1933053_1933052_1933042,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;assets&lt;/a&gt; is part of the agency's mandate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It's important to remember that the &lt;strong&gt;successfulness&lt;/strong&gt; of hypnotized-assassination-agent programming is not determinable at this time.&lt;/em&gt; Movies may be sensationalizing the attempts to do so.  Evidence otherwise is quite welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8735" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T18:39:39.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="805" CreationDate="2012-10-07T22:37:39.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Probably happened&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, I think &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Operation Gladio&lt;/a&gt; is a great example of something that could have very conceivably meet your criteria. Gladio is NATO's oldest covert mission. It was also one of the first missions that CIA cooperated on -- the CIA having largely been started to throw the free elections in Post-WWII Italy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gladio was a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stay-behind&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stay-behind&lt;/a&gt; operation. That means that it was a &lt;em&gt;fall-back&lt;/em&gt;. It's an ambitious &lt;em&gt;plan B&lt;/em&gt; that involved installing covert agents by way of natural (ideally) elevation and promotion so in the event of a regime change they have already established trust within the new regime to carry out the initiative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only questions are (1) how did Gladio operatives receive their instructions and (2) what would those instructions have looked like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the second question, it's quite clear Gladio was an operation of death, terrorism, assassination and infiltration. Just read about the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladio_in_Italy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;operation in Italy&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladio_in_Italy#Giulio_Andreotti.27s_revelation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;There were 127 weapons caches the Italians had to dismantle from this operation.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, on to the first question.. Who really cares? It's logical with a weapon cache in another country the action would have had to be triggered remotely on the command of whomever set up or participated in the secret op. Did the trigger come by way of a mass communication? It'd have been more conceivable in 1950's with a mission the size of Gladio, but I don't have any evidence that it was so. Now with SSL and IPSEC it's highly unlikely to permit the message to traverse an unsecured medium. If such an operation ever happened with mass media used in the trigger you should be reading about the years of 1900-1975.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2012-10-07T22:37:39.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11179" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-08T03:42:01.363" Score="14" ViewCount="604" Body="&lt;p&gt;The new wave in Hair Dryer technology involves marketing benefits based on Ionization. Is there any evidence for any of this though?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00132ZG3U&quot;&gt;Conair® Turbo 1875&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Ionic technology helps enhance your hair's natural shine and eliminates frizz for healthy-looking, smooth results. The high-torque motor speeds air through your hair for faster drying and styling while ionic technology reduces frizz and flyaways with ease.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B001UHN0I6&quot;&gt;BaByliss Pro BABP2800&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;ionic technology emits negative ions eliminate static, reduces drying time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-08T06:27:14.430" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T19:10:20.717" Title="Do ionizing hair-dryers reduce frizz and drying time?" Tags="|electromagnetism|consumer-products|hair|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11182" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-08T08:28:08.887" Score="12" ViewCount="529" Body="&lt;p&gt;This quote from TorrentFreak:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under the “sign-a-record-deal-or-remain-poor system”, 99% of artists&#xA;  didn’t get record deals with the abusive record industry – and out of&#xA;  those who did, 99.5% never saw a cent in royalties. Thus, we are&#xA;  moving away from a system that deliberately &lt;strong&gt;kept 99.995% of artists&#xA;  without any form of regular income for artistry.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Emphasis is theirs.) A few articles go the same path slamming record industries for passing along very few bucks to artists. Are these numbers true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T12:16:24.103" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T12:16:24.103" Title="Do record companies use a system that kept 99.995% of artists without any form of regular income?" Tags="|music|copyright|corporate-finance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="42" CreationDate="2012-10-08T09:25:53.717" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are drugs which boost the immune system. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGN1412&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TGN1412&lt;/a&gt; is an example where this was an unexpected side-effect. The results were catastrophic for the people involved. Boosting the immune system in healthy people is generally not a good idea!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastActivityDate="2012-10-08T09:25:53.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11184" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-08T10:18:01.663" Score="21" ViewCount="5386" Body="&lt;p&gt;In relation to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/5102/8479&quot;&gt;Does recharging a battery when it is only half-way dead decrease its life span?&lt;/a&gt; I read an article about &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworld.com/20269/maximizing_the_lifespan_of_a_laptop_computer_battery&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Maximizing the lifespan of a laptop battery&lt;/a&gt; where &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samsung.com/us/article/tips--tricks-extending-notebook-battery-life&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Samsung puts it&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most battery damage occurs when the cells inside are at or near capacity. That’s because batteries get a bit hot under the collar when they max out their charge at 100 percent. This heat causes the delicate structures within to start to break down, which ultimately makes the battery less capable of holding a charge. Eventually capacity drops to the point where the battery won’t hold a charge at all and it has to be replaced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They offer a solution which suggests to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...][cap] the charge at 80 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To what extent is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And although not directly related, I figure it must matter in this relation that &lt;a href=&quot;http://products.schneider-electric.us/products-services/products/electric-vehicle-charging-stations/fast-charging-electric-vehicle-charging-station/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;electric cars are charged to 80%&lt;/a&gt; when performing quick charging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8479" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2023-12-14T14:46:58.943" Title="Does never charging a laptop battery to more than 80% capacity increase its lifespan?" Tags="|electromagnetism|technology|battery|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11186" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-08T13:12:57.703" Score="16" ViewCount="676" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few days ago, former GE CEO Jack Welch made a contreversial accusation/claim that the September 2012 jobs report was manipulated by the Obama administration in an attempt to portray the economy in a good light for the upcoming election.  Here is the actual quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Unbelievable jobs numbers…these Chicago guys will do anything…can't debate so change numbers,&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/05/us-usa-economy-jackwelch-idUSBRE8941CR20121005&quot;&gt;http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/05/us-usa-economy-jackwelch-idUSBRE8941CR20121005&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this claim was made, right wing pundits started to report it as fact as well and further contributed to the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While proving this either way may be difficult, is at least plausible that any member of the executive branch could have manipulated these job reports in anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6794" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-10-08T14:39:04.740" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T11:52:57.547" Title="Was the September 2012 jobs report manipulated for political purposes?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15023" CreationDate="2012-10-08T13:27:36.280" Score="14" ViewCount="24114" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of sites that claim that massaging a point in the webbing between thumb and index finger can relieve headaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/154948-pressure-points-for-headaches/&quot;&gt;Livestrong.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One pressure point that may help relieve your headaches is located in the webbing of your hand between your thumb and index finger. Hold your hand so your palm is facing the floor and pinch the webbing with the thumb and forefinger of your opposite hand. Squeeze this area until it is tender and continue to massage for 15 to 30 seconds. Repeat on the opposite hand. &lt;em&gt;Do not stimulate this point if you are pregnant.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The page provides a seemingly credible reference site titled &quot;University of Maryland Medicine&quot; which 404s.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-energy-healing-site.com/acupressure-for-headaches.html&quot;&gt;The-Energy-Healing-Site.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The “Hoku point” (LI4) is excellent for headache relief. It is located on the back of the hand, in the webbing where the thumb and index finger meet. Find the exact point by bringing your thumb and index finger together. The muscle will bulge a little--that's the spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Squeeze the point by putting your thumb on the point, and your index finger on the palm side of your hand. Angle the pressure toward the bone that connects with the index finger. Hold for one minute and switch hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do not use the Hoku Point if you are pregnant.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Press the top of the feet, in the web between the big and second toes. You can either use your hands for this, working both feet at the same time, or you can use the heel of the opposite foot to work one foot at a time. Once again, hold for a minute or until you feel relief. This point is Lv3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most of these suggestions of acupressure for headaches are taken from &lt;em&gt;Acupressure’s Potent Points, by Michael Reed Gach&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_4449992_pressure-points-cure-headaches.html&quot;&gt;ehow&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the webbing between the thumb and your index finger is a pressure point well known to cure headaches. The point is located close to the bone in that area, not in the center of the webbing. Use your thumb and index finger to squeeze the point on your opposite hand. If you are doing it properly, you will feel the nerve beneath the skin and some pressure as you squeeze. Squeeze the point for a minute on each hand. Be sure to take deep breaths while treating yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use your feet. According to the art of reflexology, points on the feet are connected to the body's organs. By stimulating certain points on the feet, you can relieve a headache. In the space between the big toe and second toe is a pressure point. Use your thumb to apply pressure to the top of this spot. Rub the area for one minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering how frequently people experience headaches and the seemingly rudimentary techniques suggested above, have there been any scientific studies conducted on this subject? Also, why shouldn't pregnant women massage the webbing between the thumb and forefingers, or their big and second toes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T07:56:50.883" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T08:06:49.093" Title="Can headaches be relieved by massaging pressure points in the hands and feet?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|pain|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11120" CreationDate="2012-10-08T14:45:42.827" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be some truth to that claim, at least there are testimonies present that criticize the lack of strong painkillers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'There are doctors who call in from time to time but usually the sisters and volunteers (some of whom have medical knowledge) make decisions as best they can. I saw a young man who had been admitted in poor shape with high fever, and the drugs prescribed had been tetracycline and paracetamol. Later a visiting doctor diagnosed probable malaria and substituted chloroquine. Could not someone have looked at a blood film? Investigations, I was told, are seldom permissible. How about simple algorithms that might help the sisters and volunteers distinguish the curable from the incurable? Again no. Such systematic approaches are alien to the ethos of the home. Mother Teresa prefers providence to planning; her rules are designed to prevent any drift towards materialism: the sisters must remain on equal terms with the poor. ... Finally, how competent are the sisters at managing pain? On a short visit, I could not judge the power of the spiritual approach, but &lt;strong&gt;I was disturbed to learn the formulary includes no strong analgesics. Along with the neglect of diagnosis, the lack of good analgesia marks Mother Teresa's approach as clearly separate from the hospice movement.&lt;/strong&gt; I know which I prefer.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr Robin Fox, editor of The Lancet, perhaps the world's leading medical journal, visited and reported on Mother Teresa's Calcutta work in 17 September 1994; cited after &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalthinker.net/trl/texts/Hitchens,Christopher/MissionaryPosition.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Christopher Hitchens&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another often quoted testimony is that of Mary London, a volunteer in Calcutta:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's no garden, no yard even. No nothing. And I thought what is this? This is two rooms with fifty to sixty men in one, fifty to sixty women in another. They're dying. They're not being given a great deal of medical care, They're not being given painkillers really beyond aspirin and maybe if you're lucky some Brufen or something, for the sort of pain that goes with terminal cancer and the things they were dying of....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same source, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8817" LastEditorUserId="44487" LastEditDate="2019-02-12T18:39:45.327" LastActivityDate="2019-02-12T18:39:45.327" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11191" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="37813" CreationDate="2012-10-08T16:21:24.073" Score="11" ViewCount="557" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farewell_Sermon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The poorly-cited Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; states: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Farewell Sermon (Arabic: خطبة الوداع‎, Khuṭbatu l-Wadā), also&#xA;  known as Muhammad's Final Sermon or The Last Sermon, was delivered by&#xA;  Muhammad on the 9th of Dhu al-Hijjah, 10 AH (9 March 632) in the&#xA;  Uranah valley of Mount Arafat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10966/what-is-the-historical-evidence-that-the-prophet-muhammad-existed&quot;&gt;Whether Mohammed existed&lt;/a&gt; doesn't concern me, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.islam-watch.org/authors/89-other-authors/134-fraudulent-translation-of-muhammad-last-sermon-egalitarian.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; states that his famed &quot;Last Sermon&quot; is a fake from 1991.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The top of 4.630.000 Google results for &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.nl/search?q=last+sermon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;last sermon&lt;/a&gt;&quot; are indeed unsourced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3857469006279&amp;amp;set=a.1273801416204.2032216.1564999382&amp;amp;type=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;my last Facebook comment quoting it&lt;/a&gt; got &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3857468566268&amp;amp;set=a.1273801416204.2032216.1564999382&amp;amp;type=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;censored without comment&lt;/a&gt;, I'd like to know whether that part (&quot;You will neither inflict nor suffer any inequity.&quot;) was representative of the religion of Islam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T10:14:27.060" Title="Is prophet Mohammed's &quot;Last Sermon&quot; an accurate translation?" Tags="|religion|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2017-03-31T16:51:41.703" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11184" CreationDate="2012-10-08T16:29:20.547" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, despite my comment above (which was based on some info I had on early laptop batteries) I have found &lt;a href=&quot;http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article on batteryuniversity.com&lt;/a&gt; on Lithium based batteries. I would definitely recommend reading it, and the other information pages there – a lot of good into on the different types:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This table compares the number of discharge/charge cycles Li-ion can deliver at various DoD levels before the battery capacity drops to 70 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;div class=&quot;s-table-container&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;table class=&quot;s-table&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Depth of discharge&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Discharge cycles&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;100% DoD&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;300-500&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;50% DoD&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;1,200 - 1,500&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;25% DoD&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;2,000-2,500&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;10% DoD&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;3,750-4,700&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;/table&gt;&#xA;&lt;/div&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cycle life as a function of depth of discharge:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;A partial discharge reduces stress and prolongs battery life. Elevated temperature and high currents also affect cycle life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This table summarizes variation due to charge level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;div class=&quot;s-table-container&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;table class=&quot;s-table&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Charge level (V/cell)&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Discharge cycles&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Capacity at full charge&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;[4.30]&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;[150-250]&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;[110%]&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;4.20&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;300-500&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;100%&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;4.10&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;600-1,000&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;90%&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;4.00&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;1,200-2,000&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;70%&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;3.92&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;2,400-4,000&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;50%&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;/table&gt;&#xA;&lt;/div&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discharge cycles and capacity as a function of charge:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Every 0.1V drop below 4.20V/cell doubles the cycle; the retained capacity drops accordingly. Raising the voltage above 4.20V/cell stresses the battery and compromises safety&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This figure demonstrates cycle count as a function of charge voltage. At 4.35V, the cycle count is cut in half.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DfN55.png&quot; alt=&quot;Effects on cycle life at elevated charge voltages: Higher charge voltages boost capacity but lowers cycle life and compromises safety&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: 80% may well be the sweet spot, as over-charging causes damage and under-charging reduces effective capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-12-14T14:45:28.203" LastActivityDate="2023-12-14T14:45:28.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9106" CreationDate="2012-10-08T19:06:50.873" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenazareneway.com/details_history_of_crucifixion.htm&quot;&gt;The history of crucifixion&lt;/a&gt; mentions several forms of crosses being used (the pole, T-shaped cross, and X-shaped cross), and mentions that the pole shape is associated with Jehovah's Witnesses who seem to believe that's what was used to execute Christ. This mimics part of the information at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion&quot;&gt;crucifixion&lt;/a&gt; which goes more into the social aspects of the punishment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bible.ca/d-history-archeology-crucifixion-cross.htm&quot;&gt;A biblical history site&lt;/a&gt; claims to present archeological evidence a T-shaped cross was used, rather than a stake, to crucify people in Judea around the time of Christ. I've no way to ascertain whether this is correct or not. It does seem to be backed up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/crucifixion/roman-crucifixion-methods-reveal-the-history-of-crucifixion/&quot;&gt;by this site&lt;/a&gt;; however they might reference the same underlying information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14750495&quot;&gt;NIH did publish&lt;/a&gt; a short article as well in their library which confirms crucifixion was used as a method of execution of non-citizens in the Roman Empire which Christ, being an inhabitant born of Judea, would not have been a Roman citizen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.roman-colosseum.info/roman-life/roman-crucifixion.htm&quot;&gt;this site also lists&lt;/a&gt; the various types of crosses used historically, as well as confirming the punishment was used in Roman times for non-citizens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we have several sources indicating that stakes and crosses of various shapes were used historically over space and time, with at least one seeming to confirm that a cross as portrayed in Christian imagery was used in Judea during the time of Christ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-04-29T16:46:50.997" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T16:46:50.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1558" CreationDate="2012-10-09T07:37:20.530" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Snopes has an article on this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I don't even know of any evidence basis for gargling preventing influenza,&quot; Dr. Randy Taplitz (clinical director of infectious diseases at UCSD Medical Center) said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read more at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/medical/swineflu/prevent.asp#wU3muCIQWhdLYjKo.99&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/medical/swineflu/prevent.asp#wU3muCIQWhdLYjKo.99&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently this rumor was spread quite a bit during the Swine flu outbreak. It does apparently help for the symptoms of flu. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthyhorns.utexas.edu/ht_flu.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UHS health&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gargling with warm salt water can moisten a sore or scratchy throat and temporarily relieve pain. Dissolve a teaspoon of salt in a glass of warm water four times daily. (Don't swallow the salt water, but spit it out.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I actually can't find any references to it being a measure for prevention, rather just some symptomatic treatment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the search I used in case you want to research further:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.za/search?q=influenza%20salt%20water%20washing&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&amp;amp;channel=fflb#hl=en&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&amp;amp;hs=uTV&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;channel=fflb&amp;amp;sclient=psy-ab&amp;amp;q=influenza%20salt%20water%20gargle%20site:edu%20prevention%20influenza&amp;amp;oq=influenza%20salt%20water%20gargle%20site:edu%20prevention%20influenza&amp;amp;gs_l=serp.3...551913.559744.0.559902.36.29.0.0.0.1.1168.8132.2-7j5j0j2j1j2.17.0.les;..0.0...1c.1.MNuexCTYvmw&amp;amp;pbx=1&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&amp;amp;fp=e03ca260e9f037b5&amp;amp;biw=1429&amp;amp;bih=764&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;influenza salt water gargle site:edu prevention influenza&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2383" LastEditorUserId="37939" LastEditDate="2017-12-21T20:35:27.050" LastActivityDate="2017-12-21T20:35:27.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11162" CreationDate="2012-10-09T11:37:17.813" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19943590&quot;&gt;BBC News reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Austrian Felix Baumgartner has become the first skydiver to go&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;faster than the speed of sound, reaching a maximum velocity of 833.9mph (1,342km/h)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In jumping out of a balloon 128,100ft (24 miles; 39km) above New&#xA;  Mexico, the 43-year-old also smashed the record for the highest ever&#xA;  freefall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole thing is part of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redbullstratos.com/&quot;&gt;Red Bull Stratos&lt;/a&gt; project. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHtvDA0W34I&quot;&gt;Highlights video is available on YouTube&lt;/a&gt;, there will be the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121008-felix-baumgartner-skydive-how-to-watch-live-video/&quot;&gt;National Geographic documentary &quot;Space Dive&quot;&lt;/a&gt; released later on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-10-15T09:48:05.017" LastActivityDate="2012-10-15T09:48:05.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11184" CreationDate="2012-10-09T13:19:23.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As reported in &lt;a href=&quot;https://allthingsd.com/20120327/apple-ipad-battery-nothing-to-get-charged-up-about/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apple: iPad Battery Nothing to Get Charged Up About&lt;/a&gt;, the device showing &amp;quot;100%&amp;quot; does not mean that the battery is actually fully charged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here’s how things work: Apple does, in fact, display the iPad (and iPhone and iPod Touch) as 100 percent charged just before a device reaches a completely charged state. At that point, it will continue charging to 100 percent, then discharge a bit and charge back up to 100 percent, repeating that process until the device is unplugged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, &amp;quot;just before&amp;quot; is around 90% charge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8756" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-12-14T14:46:58.943" LastActivityDate="2023-12-14T14:46:58.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5719" CreationDate="2012-10-09T14:50:02.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can skinny guys get as big as Arnold the bodybuilder without performance enhancing drugs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.  No one can.  Humans appear to have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weightrainer.net/potential.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;maximum potential for muscle mass&lt;/a&gt; (warning: includes advertisement for ebook).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5185" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T14:50:02.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11182" CreationDate="2012-10-09T15:24:06.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cisac.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CISAC&lt;/a&gt;) can provide the figures for the number of member societies per country and their members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically a country will have a 'mechanical rights' and a 'performing rights' society collecting licence fees and distributing royalties. Some countries have joint societies or may be part of a multi-country joint venture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a music composer and or song writer becomes a member of such a society they enter into agreements about their musical works and other Interested Parties of those works, such as publishers. The interested parties of a musical work can be checked online using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://iswcnet.cisac.org/iswcnet/publicLogin.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ISWC-Net&lt;/a&gt; service of CISAC. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example &quot;A HARD DAY'S NIGHT&quot; has an ISWC (International Standard Work Code) of T-010.147.507-3 and its Interest Parties are two creators: LENNON JOHN WINSTON and MCCARTNEY PAUL JAMES&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can't be stated is the number of composers or authors that are not member of such music societies, and so the quoted percentage cannot be verified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8834" LastActivityDate="2012-10-09T15:24:06.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11204" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11205" CreationDate="2012-10-09T15:58:46.847" Score="11" ViewCount="3314" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across q picture on the net and now I'm skeptical that it's possible. I know liquids from different density scale wouldn't mix easily but stacking them on top of eachother with perfectly visible borders is something else. No more explanation! Here is the said picture. Is it possible?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PCvHo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5706" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-10-09T17:35:58.937" LastActivityDate="2012-10-15T23:02:24.357" Title="Is it possible to stack liquids of different density scale on top of each other?" Tags="|physics|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11204" CreationDate="2012-10-09T16:16:05.840" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, of course it's possible. It's one of the best ways to extract compounds in chemical workups via separating funnels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nC3AS.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Funnel&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Denser liquids will move to the bottom of the funnel. Often polar or non-polar solvents will be added depending on the compound (Alcohols or Benzenes were common in my labs). You then open the tap at the bottom, extract whatever portion you want, and then continue to process the compound (usually to a salt or powder).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the video that the picture you reference was captured from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CDkJuo_LYs&amp;amp;feature=relmfu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazing 9 Layer Density Tower&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastEditorUserId="8380" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T21:48:08.360" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T21:48:08.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11207" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-10T04:15:05.407" Score="6" ViewCount="2951" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm in a locality where I can find snakes walking around with ease. Its probable that I will also find the snake's baby &lt;em&gt;(sized 4-5 inches)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever we encounter any such child some people at locality say &quot;Don't touch it with hand, it can be as dangerous as adult snake.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I don't think so, because at such less age their venom gland won't be developed so much &lt;em&gt;(to harm a human being)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perhaps the question that I am posed most often relates to the relative danger of young versus adult rattlesnakes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livingalongsidewildlife.com/2009/10/are-bites-from-baby-venomous-snakes.html&quot;&gt;Are Bites from Baby Venomous Snakes More Dangerous Than Those From Adults?&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they true? Or am I wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8838" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T12:53:05.000" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T16:27:46.710" Title="Are baby snakes as venomous as adult ones?" Tags="|biology|toxicology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11208" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-10T06:43:23.540" Score="8" ViewCount="995" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr Mercola advertises &lt;a href=&quot;http://waterfilters.mercola.com/drinking-water-filter.aspx&quot;&gt;Pure &amp;amp; Clear Filters&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pure &amp;amp; Clear filters use a “selective filtration” process rather than a mechanical one for a couple of very important reasons. This advanced technology helps remove harmful contaminants such as THMs and lead, but retains beneficial minerals including potassium and calcium.  The contaminants or other substances removed or reduced by this water treatment device are not necessarily present in your water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&amp;hellip;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The exclusive five stage dual cartridge system removes contaminants based on their level of prevalence, eliminating the most competitive compounds first, such as chlorine and sediment, and allowing the latter stages to focus on the more difficult task of removing lead and synthetic chemicals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&amp;hellip;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lead is reduced by a complex ion-exchange process that replaces harmful lead ions with healthy potassium ions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&amp;hellip;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Herbicides, pesticides, industrial solvents and other synthetic chemicals are removed through absorption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these water filters work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8840" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-06-17T11:02:14.880" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T11:02:14.880" Title="Do the water filters in Pure &amp; Clear filters work?" Tags="|consumer-products|chemistry|chlorine|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11207" CreationDate="2012-10-10T09:40:15.177" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people believe the opposite:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The legend goes that young snakes have not yet learned how to control the amount of venom they inject. They are therefore more dangerous than adult snakes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;although it’s possible that this legend is true and baby snakes are more dangerous than adults because they haven’t learned to control the amount of venom they inject when they bite, it’s safe to say this is unlikely to be the case. Due to the complexities of the original question, I doubt this statement will ever be tackled in a manner that sufficiently addresses all of its assumptions. But until then, try not to get bitten by any venomous snakes, no matter how old they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livingalongsidewildlife.com/2009/10/are-bites-from-baby-venomous-snakes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Are Bites from Baby Venomous Snakes More Dangerous Than Those From Adults? &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.llu.edu/pages/faculty/whayes/documents/18_hayes.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;excerpt&lt;/a&gt; froma book authored by William K. Hayes, Department of Earth and Biological Sciences, Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, CA 92350 USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reptilechannel.com/media/kid-corner/beyond-beginners/bad-snake-myths-2.aspx.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; examines the myth that young snakes are &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; dangerous:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When [young] snakes&#xA;  bite, they typically bite hard, pumping the attacker full of every last bit of venom. If a young venomous snake’s bite were to&#xA;  be &lt;strong&gt;more&lt;/strong&gt; dangerous than an adult’s, this would be the only way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References are&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Ernst, Carl H. 1992. Venomous Reptiles of North America. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Mehrtens, John M. 1987. Living Snakes of the World in Color. Sterling Press, New York, New York&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="892" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T02:38:18.947" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T02:38:18.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11187" CreationDate="2012-10-10T10:00:38.357" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;have there been any scientific studies conducted on this subject?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that certain types of headaches can be relieved by certain types of massage&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1447303/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Massage Therapy and Frequency of Chronic Tension Headaches&lt;/a&gt; says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Objectives. The effect of massage therapy on chronic nonmigraine headache was investigated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Methods. Chronic tension headache sufferers received structured massage therapy treatment directed toward neck and shoulder muscles. Headache frequency, duration, and intensity were recorded and compared with baseline measures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusions. The muscle-specific massage therapy technique used in this study has the potential to be a functional, nonpharmacological intervention for reducing the incidence of chronic tension headache.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can speculate that it may be that relaxing the sufferer plays some part in relieving this type of headache, in which case some individuals who believe that massaging a part of the hand may help will thereby relax and will thereby ameliorate their headache - but I've no evidence to support this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;why shouldn't pregnant women massage the webbing between the thumb and forefingers&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No idea, my personal opinion is that this is simply pseudo-science gibberish mimicking the kind of language used in pharmaceutical pamphlets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-27T02:38:25.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7353" CreationDate="2012-10-10T10:13:04.257" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The archetypal pirate in your picture is based primarily on one memorable pirate film based on a work of fiction. The meme springs almost entirely from fictional sources and not from shared characteristics of notable historical (or modern) pirates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In films, books, cartoons, and toys, pirates often have an unrefined appearance that symbolizes the rogue personality and adventurous, seafaring lifestyle. They are frequently depicted as greedy, mean-spirited, and concentrated only on fighting enemy pirates and locating hidden treasure. They are often shown wearing &lt;strong&gt;shabby 17th or 18th century clothing&lt;/strong&gt;, with a bandana or a &lt;strong&gt;feathered tricorne&lt;/strong&gt;. They sometimes have an eye patch and almost always have a &lt;strong&gt;cutlass&lt;/strong&gt; and a flintlock pistol, or some other sword or gun. They sometimes have scars and battle wounds, rotten or missing teeth (suggesting the effects of scurvy), as well as a &lt;strong&gt;hook&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;wooden stump&lt;/strong&gt; where a hand or leg has been amputated. Some depictions of pirates also include monkeys or &lt;strong&gt;parrots*&lt;/strong&gt; as pets, the former usually assisting them in thieving goods due to their supposed mischievous disposition.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stereotypical pirate accents tend to resemble accents either from Cornwall, South Devon or Bristol in South West England, though they can also be based on Elizabethan era English or other parts of the world. Pirates in film, television and theatre are generally depicted as speaking English in a particular accent and speech pattern that sounds like a cross between a West Country accent and an old English accent, &lt;strong&gt;patterned on that of Robert Newton's performance as Long John Silver in the 1950 film Treasure Island&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O9QOH.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; A West Country native where many famous English pirates hailed from, Newton's strong West Country accent also featured in Blackbeard the Pirate (1952).&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eFMmG.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Wikipedia of course)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8ZbHv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DskDm.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Robert Newton as Long John Silver&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hat, Parrot, Peg-leg, &quot;Aaarh&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In the book (fiction) &quot;Treasure Island&quot;, Long john silver had a peg-leg and a parrot but he wasn't described with a patch or a hook. Robert Newton played him with a bit of a squint but no patch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hook&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The hook part of the meme presumably comes from another famous fictional pirate Captain Hook in &quot;Peter Pan&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eye-Patch&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The only notable one-eyed pirate was Rahmah bin Jabr c. 1756 - 1826 &quot;The most famous pirate of the Persian Gulf, this one-eyed captain plundered shipping for 50 years&quot; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.privateerdragons.com/pirates_famous6.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.privateerdragons.com/pirates_famous6.html&lt;/a&gt;, It isn't clear whether he was the origin of the eyepatch part of the pirate meme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe the eyepatch came from another famous (but non-pirate) multiple-maimed naval figure - Horatio Nelson. Who knows?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/H6pmf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Nelson&quot;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Not a pirate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Edward Teach (Blackbeard)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OcYYv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;T1&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O9QOH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;T2&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eFMmG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;T3&quot;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;no patch&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Bartholomew Roberts (Black Bart)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jOdLD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;no patch&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Henry Morgan&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PIvnO.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;no patch&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;William Kidd&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mGM3b.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;no patch&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Somali Pirates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3CbnR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter preformatted text here&quot;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;no patch&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Hayreddin Barbarossa&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CV6fE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;strong&gt;no patch&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-10-10T15:22:54.977" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T15:22:54.977" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11213" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-10T13:06:46.353" Score="6" ViewCount="2505" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently Australian politician, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Abbott&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tony Abbott&lt;/a&gt; suggested men are better at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/transcript-of-julia-gillards-speech-20121010-27c36.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;leadership&lt;/a&gt; in 1998:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He has said, and I quote, in a discussion about women being&#xA;  under-represented in institutions of power in Australia, the&#xA;  interviewer was a man called Stavros. The Leader of the Opposition&#xA;  says “If it's true, Stavros, that men have more power generally&#xA;  speaking than women, is that a bad thing?” Advertisement And then a&#xA;  discussion ensues, and another person says “I want my daughter to have&#xA;  as much opportunity as my son.” To which the Leader of the Opposition&#xA;  says “Yeah, I completely agree, but what if men are by physiology or&#xA;  temperament, more adapted to exercise authority or to issue command?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I tried to find the whole speech. I expected this to be easy, as such a comment would be political dynamite and Labour would be stupid not to be shouting this from the rooftops.&#xA;So I did some Google searches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22If%20it%27s%20true,%20Stavros,%20that%20men%20have%20more%20power%20generally%20speaking%20than%20women,%20is%20that%20a%20bad%20thing%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;qscrl=1&amp;amp;biw=1303&amp;amp;bih=683&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=Vm91UOCHL-XqiAfhroDgBA&amp;amp;ved=0CAwQpwUoBg&amp;amp;source=lnt&amp;amp;tbs=cdr:1,cd_min%3a,cd_max:1/10/2012&amp;amp;tbm=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Search 1&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22I%20want%20my%20daughter%20to%20have%20as%20much%20opportunity%20as%20my%20son%22%20tony%20abbott&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;qscrl=1&amp;amp;biw=1303&amp;amp;bih=683&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=FnB1UOXPFqatiQe9qoDoBQ&amp;amp;ved=0CAwQpwUoBg&amp;amp;source=lnt&amp;amp;tbs=cdr:1,cd_min%3a,cd_max:1/1/2012&amp;amp;tbm=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Search 2&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com.au/search?q=%22I%20want%20my%20daughter%20to%20have%20as%20much%20opportunity%20as%20my%20son%22%20tony%20abbott&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;qscrl=1&amp;amp;biw=1303&amp;amp;bih=683&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=FnB1UOXPFqatiQe9qoDoBQ&amp;amp;ved=0CAwQpwUoBg&amp;amp;source=lnt&amp;amp;tbs=cdr:1,cd_min%3a,cd_max:1/1/2012&amp;amp;tbm=#hl=en&amp;amp;qscrl=1&amp;amp;tbs=cdr:1,cd_max:1/1/2012&amp;amp;sclient=psy-ab&amp;amp;q=%22more%20adapted%20to%20exercise%20authority%20or%20to%20issue%20command%22%20tony%20abbott&amp;amp;oq=%22more%20adapted%20to%20exercise%20authority%20or%20to%20issue%20command%22%20tony%20abbott&amp;amp;gs_l=serp.3...42999.45970.0.46297.15.15.0.0.0.0.223.3019.0j8j7.15.0.les;..0.0...1c.1.WLDYh7qmmYo&amp;amp;pbx=1&amp;amp;fp=1&amp;amp;bpcl=35243188&amp;amp;biw=1303&amp;amp;bih=683&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&amp;amp;cad=b&amp;amp;sei=K3F1UOTuMYujiAfhwYCoBQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Search 3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Couldn't find any major newspapers with the quotes before today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T05:20:43.187" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T05:20:43.187" Title="Did Tony Abbott suggest that men might be better suited to leadership positions?" Tags="|politics|quotes|australia|tony-abbott|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11217" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11250" CreationDate="2012-10-10T19:44:01.723" Score="18" ViewCount="3513" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a bottle of Clorox Clean-Up Cleaner with Bleach, marketed for sale in the United States. Its label reads, in part (and with emphasis removed):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Directions for use: It is a violation of Federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling. Use only in well-ventilated areas. Before use, open windows and turn on fan. If vapors bother you, leave room while product is working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Other, similar products have a similar statement.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it really a violation of federal law to use the product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling? Suppose I &lt;em&gt;didn't&lt;/em&gt; open windows before cleaning my bathroom: did I violate the law?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What law? &amp;mdash; citation, please.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a punishment prescribed if one is found guilty?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2916" LastActivityDate="2016-01-21T18:53:52.593" Title="Against the law to spray-clean not according to label directions?" Tags="|united-states|consumer-products|law|marketing|cleaning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11217" CreationDate="2012-10-10T20:09:28.653" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It might refer to the OSHA Act however, the OSHA act obviously doesn't apply to you unless you are an employee or an employer using bleach-based products in your business&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Section 5(b) of the OSHA Act states that &quot;each employee shall comply with occupational safety and health standards and all rules, regulations and orders issued pursuant to the OSHA Act which are applicable to his own actions and conduct.&quot; In addition, the courts have repeatedly held that under Section 5(a)(2) of the Act (29 U.S.C. 654(a)(2)), employers are responsible for ensuring worker protection. OSHA and the courts have concluded that respirators and other protective equipment must be used during cleanups that require bleach if requested by the employee or required by the employer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/list_6707250_osha-regulations-use-bleach.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OSHA Regulations on Use of Bleach&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=OSHACT&amp;amp;p_id=3359&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Section 5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T20:42:36.943" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T20:42:36.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2391" CreationDate="2012-10-10T20:25:43.970" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/science/sodacan.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Snopes has already tackled this.&lt;/a&gt; They concluded it was &lt;strong&gt;FALSE&lt;/strong&gt;, tapping made no difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2012-10-10T20:25:43.970" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11220" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="29978" CreationDate="2012-10-10T22:05:39.530" Score="7" ViewCount="674" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that there is conflicting evidence on whether inducing labour causes an increase in the likelihood that a caesarian section becomes medically necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me quote two authorities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;British Medical Journal&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;“&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e2838&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Outcomes of elective induction of labour compared with expectant management: population based study&lt;/a&gt;”, BMJ 2012; 344 doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e2838&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.e2838&lt;/a&gt; (Published 10 May 2012)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusions and policy implications&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our finding that elective induction of labour is not strongly associated with an increased odds of caesarean section and is associated with a reduction in maternal complications, goes against obstetric dogma but supports evidence from a recent systematic review comparing elective induction of labour with expectant management, where &lt;strong&gt;induction of labour was associated with about a 20% reduction in caesarean section&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Mayo Clinic&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Website: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/labor-induction/MY00642/DSECTION=risks&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Labor induction: Risks&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The need for a C-section.&lt;/strong&gt; Labor induction is more likely to result in the need for a C-section — particularly if you've never given birth before and your cervix hasn't already begun to thin, soften and dilate (unfavorable cervix).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know which is correct - or perhaps why the two authorities differ. Does inducing labour increase the risk that a C-section will be necessary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T09:31:09.030" Title="Does inducing labour increase the risk that a C-section is required?" Tags="|medical-science|human-reproduction|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11221" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18195" CreationDate="2012-10-10T22:13:51.630" Score="21" ViewCount="7699" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my RSS feeds today, I got an article named &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5950692/gunnar-glasses-reduce-computer-eyestrain-are-75-off-for-the-next-two-days&quot;&gt;Gunnar Glasses Reduce Computer Eyestrain, Are 75% Off for the Next Two Days&lt;/a&gt; which links to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5861585/gunnar-prescription-eye+strain-reducing-glasses&quot;&gt;previous article about their benefits&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gunnar's website claims &lt;strong&gt;they protect your vision by filtering out &quot;artificial&quot; light, and relaxes your eyes, so you get tired slower&lt;/strong&gt;. They also claim that it prevents dryness, but I'm not quite sure how it would go about doing that, since the glasses aren't like those James Worthy or Horace Grant goggles that encase your eyes—they're just normal glasses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gunnars.com/what-are-gunnars/&quot;&gt;Gunnar's own website&lt;/a&gt;, they claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;GUNNARS increase contrast, comfort and focus while minimizing eye fatigue and visual stress&lt;/strong&gt; for anyone who spends long hours staring at digital screens. GUNNAR eyewear is powered by i-AMP lens technology comprised of a proprietary lens material in an advanced geometry tuned for intermediate viewing distance and finished with custom formulated lens filters, tints and coatings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gunnars.com/what-are-gunnars/how-do-they-work/&quot;&gt;specific claims&lt;/a&gt; (that seem relevant):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Improve contrast and filter out UV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IONIK lens tints improve overall contrast and comfort by filtering out harsh artificial light, eliminating UV rays and reducing high-intensity visible light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Anti-reflective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;iFi lens coatings include an anti-reflective layers to reduce glare and an exterior hard coat that minimizes environmental damage and scratching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Improved detail/focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FRACTYL lens geometry includes a specifically tuned focusing power to enhance detail and a highly wrapped lens design that limits air currents near the eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that these things actually reduce eye strain or fatigue? Or that they're beneficial at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/10/leveling-up-your-eyesight-with-gaming-glasses-ars-explores/&quot;&gt;a couple&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5980509/&quot;&gt;more articles&lt;/a&gt; about this recently, but they seem to be providing evidence that Gunnars are better than low-quality glasses, but they market them primarily to people who don't need glasses, so I think the relevant claim is that &quot;wearing Gunnar glasses is better than not wearing glasses&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1434" LastEditorUserId="1434" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T20:28:12.930" LastActivityDate="2021-03-13T22:11:50.070" Title="Do Gunnar Glasses reduce eye strain?" Tags="|medical-science|computers|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11223" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-11T04:14:44.473" Score="4" ViewCount="2689" Body="&lt;p&gt;As shown in the toothpaste cover:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0oVKN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sensodyne box&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is mentioned that using Sensodyne Total Care toothpaste can do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Protects against sensitive teeth&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Protects against tooth decay&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Removes plaque&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Helps maintain healthy gums&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;24/7 Sensitivity Protection&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have an existing question that addresses the first and last claims:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3389/does-sensodyne-toothpaste-actually-work&quot;&gt;Does Sensodyne Toothpaste reduce teeth sensitivity?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Sensodyne remove plaque, protect against tooth decay and help sensitive gums?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8840" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T11:27:40.873" Title="Does Sensodyne Total Care Toothpaste remove plaque, protect against tooth decay and help sensitive gums?" Tags="|medical-science|consumer-products|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11224" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12426" CreationDate="2012-10-11T04:30:46.187" Score="10" ViewCount="1303" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the following pages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eneloop.info/eneloop/whats-eneloop.html&quot;&gt;What's eneloop?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eneloop.info/eneloop/technology/self-discharge.html&quot;&gt;Self-Discharge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it is mentioned that the Eneloop battery has&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;has an even lower self-discharge&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&amp;hellip;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in comparison with other high quality rechargeable batteries, eneloop retains 70%*1 of its charge after 5 years of storage and does not require periodic recharging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&amp;hellip;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;you can count on eneloop supplying the power that you need, even three years later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&amp;hellip;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The durability of SANYO’s original super-lattice alloy, a negative-electrode material used in eneloop, has been enhanced by homogenizing the crystalline structure (a reduction of crystals with an irregular atomic order is irregular) as well as improving its composition (the ratio of constituent element) to reduce the deterioration of the super-lattice alloy by repeated charge and discharge&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8840" LastEditorUserId="892" LastEditDate="2012-10-25T20:42:24.330" LastActivityDate="2022-09-11T23:38:25.490" Title="Does the Eneloop battery have lower self-discharge?" Tags="|physics|consumer-products|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11226" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-11T10:18:49.743" Score="18" ViewCount="1720" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many individuals believe they can make significant quantities of money by stock trading. Much of the financial services industry wants the public to believe that it can take our savings and, by the application of investing skill, make better returns than the market average. Much of the advertising for mutual fund investment vehicles in the UK touts superior past performance despite the (legally mandated) small print asserting that past performance is no guide to the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, a UK mutual fund house, Jupiter, describes it mission thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are an active fund manager seeking to add value for our clients through the delivery of investment outperformance over the medium to long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are even two major schools of thought about &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; to achieve good returns: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_analysis&quot;&gt;technical analysis&lt;/a&gt; which focuses on historic patterns of price movement, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_analysis&quot;&gt;fundamental analysis&lt;/a&gt; which focuses on analysing the underlying economic performance of the firm.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is this: there is a solid body of financial theory that asserts that long term outperformance based on any form of market analysis is impossible. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_market_hypothesis&quot;&gt;Efficient Market Hypothesis&lt;/a&gt; asserts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;one cannot consistently achieve returns in excess of average market returns on a risk-adjusted basis, given the information available at the time the investment is made&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(unless, it is worth adding, you have inside information on which it is illegal to trade in most markets).&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burton_Malkiel&quot;&gt;Burton Malkiel's&lt;/a&gt; famous book on the topic, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street.html?id=O8x1YpBp6WYC&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot;&gt;A Random Walk Down Wall Street&lt;/a&gt;, is a very readable introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a test of investing skill more than one experiment has been conducted pitting the professional stock pickers against random choices (often vividly illustrated by having a monkey throw darts at the Wall Street Journal to select a portfolio). Experts often don't do significantly better than random. As a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickferri/2012/03/12/why-smart-people-fail-to-beat-the-market/2/&quot;&gt;Forbes article reports&lt;/a&gt;, when the Wall Street Journal did the random-selection experiment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On average, investors following the experts’ recommendations lost 3.8% on a risk‐adjusted basis over a 6‐month holding period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both the theory and this experiment seem to defy common sense. How can people who a skilled and well paid for their skill not actually consistently beat a random number generator? How can such a large industry exist when the skill they assert is impossible to demonstrate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question here is: &lt;strong&gt;is there evidence that experts can consistently beat the market? Are there demonstrable strategies to make returns ahead of the market average?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T15:31:30.603" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T21:07:13.053" Title="Do investment managers pick stock portfolios better, on average, than monkeys throwing darts?" Tags="|corporate-finance|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11227" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-11T12:41:51.637" Score="14" ViewCount="742" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the case of memory loss due to a blunt force impact, can memory later be restored by means of another blunt force impact? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems fairly common on TV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find some anecdotal evidence of this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1948&amp;amp;dat=19310708&amp;amp;id=mq00AAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=pn8FAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=1242,586780&quot;&gt;Blow on Head Restores Memory of Missing Man&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/1985-12-28/news/mn-29577_1_returns-home&quot;&gt;Bump on Head Restores Memories of Wife, Home : After 15 Years of Amnesia, Man Returns on Christmas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8852" LastEditorUserId="892" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T19:54:04.537" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T20:37:54.913" Title="In the case of memory loss due to a blunt force impact, can memory later be restored by means of another blunt force impact?" Tags="|biology|physiology|television|memory|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11226" CreationDate="2012-10-11T14:20:55.673" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;is there evidence that experts can consistently beat the market?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is. It's quoted in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickferri/2012/03/12/why-smart-people-fail-to-beat-the-market/&quot;&gt;the Forbes article&lt;/a&gt; you provide as a source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To answer this question, Fama and French compared the distribution of&#xA;  fund returns to a distribution of simulated portfolio returns formed&#xA;  with randomly selected stocks. Using a bootstrapping technique, they&#xA;  created thousands of simulated U.S. equity portfolios that selected&#xA;  stocks randomly. The range of actual mutual fund returns was then&#xA;  compared to the range of bootstrapped returns. The overlay was very&#xA;  close, which means most actual fund returns were a result of random&#xA;  stock selection and not skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There were, however, a handful of funds whose managers outperformed the bootstrapping method after adjusting for costs and risks. These&#xA;  so-called outliers may possess skill, if only they could be&#xA;  identified.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above references a research paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1356021&quot;&gt;&quot;Luck Versus Skill in the Cross Section of Mutual Fund Returns&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2012-10-11T14:20:55.673" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11227" CreationDate="2012-10-11T17:53:04.840" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cecil Adams, the syndicated columnist of &quot;The Straight Dope&quot;, addressed this precise issue in this column (which sides with &quot;Woodchip&quot;, more or less), that a closed-head injury is rarely so black and white that the person loses all past memory only, then miraculously regains past memory with another head blow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2504/can-you-get-amnesia-from-a-blow-to-the-head&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Can you get amnesia from a blow to the head?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8591" LastEditorUserId="892" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T19:51:58.130" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T19:51:58.130" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11213" CreationDate="2012-10-12T02:19:28.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1998: Tony Abbott, at round table that included Michael Costa, then a&#xA;  minister from New South Wales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tony Abbott: “If it’s true, Stavros, that men have more power,&#xA;  generally speaking, than women, is that a bad thing?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Costa: “Clearly it’s a bad thing.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abbott: “Why is that, Michael?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Costa: “I want my daughter to have as much opportunity as my son.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abbott: “Yeah, I completely agree, but what if men are by physiology&#xA;  or temperament more adapted to exercise authority or to issue&#xA;  commands?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Costa: “Well see, I don’t believe that. What I do think is that we&#xA;  should never be in a situation where women have got to define their&#xA;  notions of success and self worth by negating a traditional role. But&#xA;  in terms of the power structure I think it’s very hard to deny that&#xA;  there is an under-representation of women.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abbott: “But now there’s an assumption that that is a bad thing.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://anthonyalbanese.com.au/transcript-of-doorstop-senate-courtyard-parliament-house-4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://anthonyalbanese.com.au/transcript-of-doorstop-senate-courtyard-parliament-house-4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8860" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-12T07:05:22.090" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T07:05:22.090" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11242" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-10-12T13:47:07.520" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lifestyle and health web-site that claim to have &quot;authoritative expert content in the diet, nutrition, fitness, wellness and lifestyle categories that informs and empowers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T14:47:01.910" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:47:01.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11243" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-10-12T13:47:07.520" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for claims appearing on the http://livestrong.com web site." OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T14:47:01.910" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:47:01.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11249" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-12T21:35:48.277" Score="9" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that hedge funds (any in particular, or the industry as a whole) actually offer any expertise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, they claim that they do (that is what management fees are for after all), but after reading many things like:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“They’ll have to be very good at manager selection,” Mr. Lack said, “because there’s been very little return persistence. I looked at one-third of the hedge fund industry. Of those in top 40 percent of returns, only 7 percent stayed there throughout the period.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/business/colleges-and-universities-invest-in-unconventional-ways.html?pagewanted=2&amp;amp;hpw&amp;amp;_r=0&quot;&gt;NYTimes&lt;/a&gt; though I have seen statements like this in other places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I assume that one way of testing this would be to do &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value&quot;&gt;P-Test&lt;/a&gt; and see what the significance is. Unfortunately, I do not know anything that I need to use the test. I don't know the performance of the funds, a reasonable benchmark, a real null hypothosis, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this even a reasonable way to go about it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there studies that address this in a rigorous manner?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On a more minor note, is my intuition generally speaking OK (that one would expect persistence in &quot;games&quot; of skill.)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3874" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T16:15:00.707" Title="Hedge fund performance due to chance?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11217" CreationDate="2012-10-12T22:18:18.380" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is against the US Federal law. Yes, in theory it can cost you $1000 or 30 days' jail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pesticides are regulated in the US by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;United States Environment Protection Agency&lt;/a&gt;, in accordance with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/oecaagct/lfra.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Clorox Clean Up Cleaner With Bleach &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clorox.com/products/clorox-clean-up-cleaner/ingredients-and-safety/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;contains&lt;/a&gt; ingredients that are considered pesticides. (I'm not yet sure which ones are the ones that are considered pesticides.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hence, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/chem_search/ppls/005813-00016-20070320.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chlorox Cleaner label&lt;/a&gt; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://iaspub.epa.gov/apex/pesticides/f?p=PPLS:8:0::NO::P8_PUID:26728&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;registered&lt;/a&gt; with the EPA's &lt;a href=&quot;http://iaspub.epa.gov/apex/pesticides/f?p=PPLS:1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pesticide Produce Labelling System&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As explained in the EPA's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/regulating/labels/labels_faq/lr_faq_10.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pesticide Labeling Questions &amp;amp; Answers - General Labeling&lt;/a&gt;, this implies that the label is required by the EPA regulations to contain the quoted warning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it true that the manufacturer's label on a CONSUMER (as opposed to agricultural, etc.) pesticide imposes a legal obligation on the purchaser to use the product only as directed on the label? LC10-0330; 4/6/10&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FIFRA sec. 12(a)(2)(G) makes it a violation of federal law for any person &amp;quot;to use any registered pesticide in a manner inconsistent with its labeling.&amp;quot; All registered pesticides, including registered consumer pesticides, must bear the statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It is a violation of Federal law to use this product in a manner inconsistent with its labeling.&amp;quot; 40 CFR 156.10(i)(2)(ii).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 2(ee) of FIFRA provides limited exceptions to what is considered &amp;quot;in a manner inconsistent with&amp;quot; labeling. For instance it is not a violation to use a pesticide at a rate lower than that specified on the label unless the label specifically prohibits deviation from the specified rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The penalties are described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ag.senate.gov/download/fifra&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FIFRA Section 14&lt;/a&gt;, and for &amp;quot;private applicators&amp;quot; are limited to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Civil Penalties: Not more than $1,000 if you do it after receiving a citation or written warning from the EPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Criminal Penalties: &amp;quot;fined not more than $1,000, or imprisoned for not more than 30 days, or both.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T22:18:18.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7083" CreationDate="2012-10-12T22:25:25.877" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The website you quote makes it sound like the subconsciousness is a little man in your brain, with a book of knowledge, reviewing all the material during the night and &quot;strengthening knowledge without your influence&quot;. Although the website doesn't properly support the idea about how post-training sleep might benefit memory consolidation, it does convey some &quot;truth&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gais et al. &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eZmgN.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; studied the timing of learning, sleep and subsequent recall, and indeed found that when learning is immediately followed by sleep, this improves subsequent recall as compared to conditions in which learning was followed by wakefulness.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The task involved learning German words. In the picture below you can see the different conditions that were tested. In the first experiment (A) Gais tested whether sleep following learning or wakefulness following learning enhanced the consolidation of declarative memory (morning vs. evening). When comparing the different conditions, the evening-learning condition revealed a better performance than the morning condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To control for time-of-day effects a second experiment (B) was conducted, consisting of 2 evening conditions. One evening condition where learning was immediately followed by sleep and another evening condition where sleep was postponed until the morning hours. Again results favoured learning when it was immediately followed by sleep. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eZmgN.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eZmgN.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Different learning-sleep-recall conditions&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/13/3/259/F1.medium.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cshlp.org&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Some mechanisms by which the role of sleep following learning (and the role of sleep in learning in general) might be explained are &quot;memory replay&quot; during sleep (neuronal activity reflecting the learning of a certain task during the day, re-occuring during the night), and/or synaptic downscaling (the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The synaptic homeostasis hypothesis... predicts that sleep may enhance&#xA;  performance by global downscaling...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For more background information read the review of Tononi &amp;amp; Cirello &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~mnl/store/TononiCirelli2006a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, or a recent review by Ribeiro &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3256318/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now... what about these 15-20 minutes? Well I don't know where this advice comes from and don't know about scientific support for this claim. In the study of Gais the duration of learning (although not exactly mentioned) was &quot;a few hours&quot;. I would say they are advantages and disadvantages to a learning period of 15-20 minutes as opposed to a longer learning period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;15-20 minutes rehearsal seems ideal in the sense that you'll be focusing on a limited amount of information. Strengthening this limited amount of information might increase their chances of being retained (I think this idea could be integrated with the synaptic downscaling hypothesis). When keeping study time or learning time shorter you might be able to increase focus. Keeping focus for a long time is more difficult and the efficiency by which one learns might decrease. However, you can also choose to learn for a longer time on a limited amount of information, thus increasing repetition and again increasing chances of the information being retained. It more or less depends on how you spend the time learning... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the above mentioned claims might depend on what type of information you want to retain. Studies might report contradicting results, depending on what type of material is to be learned. E.g. complex material requires more investment. Also learning requires time... one has to invest in understanding the material and there are different strategies by which one can try to learn material that aren't covered in the studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I believe studies related to learning and sleep are really interesting to decipher what happens to the information we collect during the day. What happens during the part of the day where we are the least conscious of what's happening around us? When it comes to learning in itself however... I think it's more important to think about &quot;how&quot; you learn the material and how often you repeat learning the material, than the timing of learning in relation to sleep (e.g. paper on memory retrieval by Karpicke and Blunt &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3256318/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gais, S. (2006). Sleep after learning aids memory recall. Learning &amp;amp; Memory, 13(3), 259–262. doi:10.1101/lm.132106 &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/13/3/259.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/13/3/259.abstract&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(open access)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tononi, G., &amp;amp; Cirelli, C. (2006). Sleep function and synaptic homeostasis. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 10(1), 49–62. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2005.05.002&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~mnl/store/TononiCirelli2006a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~mnl/store/TononiCirelli2006a.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ribeiro, S. (2012). Sleep and plasticity. Pflugers Archiv : European journal of physiology, 463(1), 111–120. doi:10.1007/s00424-011-1031-5&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3256318/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3256318/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(open access)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Karpicke, J. D., &amp;amp; Blunt, J. R. (2011). Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping. Science (New York, NY), 331(6018), 772–775. doi:10.1126/science.1199327&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8385" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-03-19T17:29:59.657" LastActivityDate="2019-03-19T17:29:59.657" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="11252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6978" CreationDate="2012-10-12T23:20:56.563" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bottom-line:  colder ambient temperature does allow you to burn more calories. Whether you actually do it, is another question. E.g. in cold conditions, you may not excercise at maximum power for fear of getting really cold if you have to stop for some reason when moist of sweat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that it is not completely clear what &quot;the same exercise&quot; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the same physical (mechanical) work over the same time (ergometer excercise - but I guess there the temperature is rather constant)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;this burns more calories in heat&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the same excercise means that you are at the same percentage of your maximum physical power that you can perform. That would e.g. roughly be % max. heart beat.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;No direct evidence from the literature, but the educated guess is that this scenario is between 1. and 3., and probably close to zero effect&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the same physical (mechanical) work (e.g. running the same trail), but not enforcing the same time.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;this burns less calories in heat&lt;/strong&gt;, and it is most likely what will happen in outdoor excercise practice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the &lt;strong&gt;more&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;less&lt;/strong&gt; is in the order of magnitude of $\pm$ half a minute over 30 min excercise (for elite cyclists). In other words, add another minute for every hour of excercise, and you have the same effect. If your excercise happens to be cycling, wind speed will do more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;long explanation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One important consideration is that the efficency of muscles to make mechanical work isn't that high. Wikipedia says 18 - 26%, the papers below measure about 20% for cycling. That means that about 3 - 4 x the amount of energy that goes into mechanical work is heat that the body needs to get rid of. Both are burned calories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2039810/&quot;&gt;The effect of ambient temperature on gross-efficiency in cycling&lt;/a&gt; found that gross efficiency decreases with high ambient temperature. These experiments were done in fashion 1: at high temperatures the cyclists needed more breathing. Skin temp went up, so did body temp. Muscle temperature was even higher, but it was not measured at the &quot;low&quot; temperature. Bottomline is: the body needs to work actively to get rid of the excess heat. That means, lots of blood must flow through the skin where it can cool. As they enforce mechanic output, heart beat and respiratory rates need to go up to compensate for that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11104310&quot;&gt;Effects of heat stress on physiological responses and exercise performance in elite cyclists. Tatterson AJ, Hahn AG, Martin DT, Febbraio MA., abstract only: paper behind paywall&lt;/a&gt; did another experiment: the exercise was &quot;the same&quot; in the sense that the cycling distance was the same. They find (and so seem to do other papers that I cannot access neither) that the mechanical power is limited by body temperature, and is actually limited in advance. So in order not to exceed the heat dissipation capacity, the mechanical work is reduced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the first paper, the authors estimate that the lower efficiency can explain only about half of the time difference in hot vs. cool ambient temp observed in the second paper. In other words, the increased energy consumption for increased total and skin blood flow for the cooling is overcompensated by reduced mechanical output. They cite that different studies found power output decreased about 6.5% in the hot vs. moderate setting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these studies IMHO have quite high &quot;cool&quot; temperatures of 15 to 23 °C (hot is in the range of 32 - 35°C; but one needs to take into account the humidity as well.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thoughts about cold conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;shivering: I'd not consider shivering in the context of excercise. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;longer periods (few weeks) of cold, particularly cold air in the face, trigger increased base metabolic rate (acclimatization). As far as I know, most of this is still produced by muscles. Brown fat, however, is discussed as well (but we humans don't have much of that). (Unfortunately can't find again where I read this - can anyone help, please?)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases muscle work without gross movement is induced by the body in order to use the 80% of the burned calories that are dissipated as heat. When you excercise in cold weather and wear anything that can be called sensible clothes, the excess heat from the mechanic excercise is still more than enough. If it is really cold (say, below -25 or -30 °C) mouth breathing is not a good idea as the nose is needed for heat exchange and moistening of the air. Then of course the breathing puts a limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experimental/anecdotical: I've been cross-country skiing in shorts and T-shirt at ca. -10°C, and did not get cold. I've also been running at -20°C in T-shirt + thin long sleeve fleece pullover and at the end there was frost  at the back of the fleece: even though I did not get wet, I did sweat, thus obviously had excess heat. But then, these are not the preferred temperatures for cycling studies...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastActivityDate="2012-10-12T23:20:56.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11255" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="11258" CreationDate="2012-10-13T03:35:41.433" Score="4" ViewCount="1096" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Republican party in the US has a position that that raising taxes on rich people leads to less growth. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one example of the claim, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/01/politics/house-taxes/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN reported&lt;/a&gt; in August 2012:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Republicans seeking to shrink the size of government oppose any higher taxes and argue the Democratic plan of allowing rates to increase on higher-income Americans will stunt economic growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(see also &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1952/politically-motivated-deletion-of-answer&quot;&gt;meta discussion regarding deleted answer&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiswoodhill/2012/08/22/economic-growth-will-pay-for-mitt-romneys-tax-cuts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another example&lt;/a&gt; of the claim, from Forbes Magazine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Economic Growth Will Pay For Mitt Romney's Tax Cuts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6256" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T16:38:42.083" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T03:20:25.697" Title="Does a tax increase on high incomes slow down economic growth?" Tags="|economics|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="11258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11255" CreationDate="2012-10-13T18:08:26.023" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/study-tax-cuts-dont-lead-to-growth-2012-9&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; presents a number of charts and data from the Congressional Research Service and other sources that indicates the answer is tax increases do not slow down economic growth, nor do tax cuts increase economic growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taxwarriors.com/Portals/127975/docs/r42729_0917.pdf&quot;&gt;studied&lt;/a&gt; this issue and released a report in September 2012.  The author examined individual income tax rates - both marginal and average rates - over the period from World War II to the present.  The maximum marginal tax rates range from 70 to 90 % in the 1945 - 1980 period, to today's 35%.  Capital gains tax rates were also evaluated, which are also substantially lower today than they have been historically.  Pre WWII data were not examined because few Americans were required to file federal tax returns prior to that time.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tax rates were then correlated with economic growth data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis.  Statistical analysis showed virtually no correlation between tax rates and economic growth.  If anything, there is a very slight increase in growth during periods of higher tax rates, though the author notes that this could be a result of other changes in the economy during the time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is, however, a correlation to income distribution, with lower maximum tax rates leading to greater disparities in income, i.e. greater concentration of income at the very top of the economic scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastEditorUserId="8436" LastEditDate="2012-10-14T02:31:48.843" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T02:31:48.843" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12258" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-13T20:25:40.047" Score="18" ViewCount="1776" Body="&lt;p&gt;The premise of Eugene Jarecki's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2125653/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The House I Live In&lt;/a&gt; documentary is that the US &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;War on Drugs&lt;/a&gt;, other than being a mostly failed campaign, has also disproportionately affected minority communities. A summary of the film's premise is presented on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thehouseilivein.org/see-the-film/about-the-film/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;its website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While recognizing the seriousness of drug abuse as a matter of public health, the film investigates the tragic errors and shortcomings that have meant it is more often treated as a matter for law enforcement, creating a vast machine that feeds largely on America’s poor, and especially on minority communities. Beyond simple misguided policy, THE HOUSE I LIVE IN examines how political and economic corruption have fueled the war for forty years, despite persistent evidence of its moral, economic, and practical failures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The filmmaker iterates the claim on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/22/eugene-jarecki-bill-maher_n_1906689.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent interview&lt;/a&gt; with Bill Maher, where (0:30 of the video) he's answering a question about whether the campaign is a war on minorities as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been a war on people, and its especially been a war on people of colour in America; but that's nothing new, we've had racist drug laws in this country from really the dawn of it in the 1800s...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Michelle Alexander, in her book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1595581030&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newjimcrow.com/excerpt.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was rushing to catch the bus, and I noticed a sign stapled to a telephone pole that screamed in large bold print: The Drug War Is the New Jim Crow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there studies, preferably non-partisan, to support the claim that the War on Drugs has disproportionately affected or even targeted minority communities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related articles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/13/brad-pitt-the-house-i-live-in-director-eugene-jarecki-drugs_n_1963247.html?utm_hp_ref=entertainment&amp;amp;ir=Entertainment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brad Pitt &amp;amp; 'The House I Live In' Director Eugene Jarecki Dissect America's Failed War On Drugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-kim/rethink-interview-eugene-_b_1936196.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ReThink Interview: Eugene Jarecki, Director of The House I Live In&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rustwire.com/2011/01/25/the-drug-war-minorities-and-the-rust-belt/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Drug War, Minorities and the Rust Belt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rightsworkinggroup.org/content/war-drugs-a-war-america%E2%80%99s-minority-communities-reflections-a-former-drug-cop&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The War On Drugs, A War On America’s Minority Communities: Reflections From A Former Drug Cop&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5142" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-11-27T01:16:38.323" Title="Has the War on Drugs disproportionately affected minority communities?" Tags="|united-states|recreational-drugs|politics|race|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12259" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12261" CreationDate="2012-10-13T20:38:53.170" Score="2" ViewCount="1407" Body="&lt;p&gt;I went to the Natural History Museum in London today. I saw the dinosaur exhibition, and in the exhibition was this image, of an Allosaurus attacking a Diplodocus: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7tQm6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Allosaurus attacking Diplodocus&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Image by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.johnsibbick.com/library/display.asp?product=D1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Sibbick&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This scenario seems unlikely to me. It feels a bit like a lion attacking an elephant - the size is a natural defence. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_bush_elephant#Predators&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elephants have no natural predators.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did large herbivorous dinosaurs have any predators?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5005" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2012-10-15T07:14:57.670" LastActivityDate="2012-10-15T07:14:57.670" Title="Did large herbivorous dinosaurs have any predators?" Tags="|ethology|zoology|paleontology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12260" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-13T22:09:33.027" Score="23" ViewCount="10171" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Giant Möbius strips have been used as conveyor belts that last longer because the entire surface area of the belt gets the same amount of wear...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(No citations given.)  In fact, a Google search reveals that such a conveyor belt was patented by the &quot;B. F. Goodrich Company&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gJLBj.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Möbius strip conveyor belt&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, this raises an alarm bell.  Compare the situations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a normal conveyor belt has wear X on one side,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a Möbius strip conveyor belt has wear X distributed over both sides.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What difference does it make?  It seems (to me) that if a Möbius strip conveyor belt had a longer life, it would only be trivially longer.  (In fact, the Möbius strip design itself might increase wear and tear.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;:  Do Möbius strip conveyor belts last (non-trivially) longer than their conventional counterparts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum&lt;/strong&gt;: It was mentioned (thanks to cbeleites) that the linked Wikipedia page on &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conveyor_belt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;conveyor belts&lt;/a&gt;&quot; comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1957, the B. F. Goodrich Company patented a conveyor belt that it went on to produce as the Turnover Conveyor Belt System. Incorporating a half-twist, it had the advantage over conventional belts of a longer life because it could expose all of its surface area to wear and tear. Möbius strip belts are no longer manufactured because untwisted modern belts can be made more durable by constructing them from several layers of different materials.[8]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and following the link &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/M/Mobius_band.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[8]&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Incorporating a half-twist, it had the advantage over conventional belts of a longer life because it could expose all of its surface area to wear and tear. Möbius belts are no longer manufactured because untwisted modern belts can be made more durable by constructing them from several layers of different materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kYk6F.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Goodrich Turnover Conveyor Belt System&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Picture source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/M/Mobius_band.html]&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/M/Mobius_band.html]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;Meta comment&lt;/em&gt;: Not including these comments was simply an oversight on my part.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar claim is made &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.morethanmaths.com/fun/puzzles/mobius/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Giant Möbius strips were once used as conveyor belts (to make them last longer, since each “side” of the strip of material gets the same amount of wear), but nowadays, better materials are available, so this isn’t necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I still don't feel particularly satisfied with this state of affairs, as neither link provides &lt;em&gt;evidence&lt;/em&gt; for their claims.  Nor does it really address whether or not the Möbius strip design indeed saves (or did save in the past) the wear and tear (as they claim).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="273" LastEditorUserId="273" LastEditDate="2012-10-14T22:15:08.403" LastActivityDate="2016-09-23T11:08:51.653" Title="Do Möbius strip conveyor belts last longer?" Tags="|marketing|engineering|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12259" CreationDate="2012-10-13T23:21:00.053" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allosaurus#Feeding&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is dramatic evidence for allosaur attacks on Stegosaurus, including an Allosaurus tail vertebra with a partially healed puncture wound that fits a Stegosaurus tail spike, and a Stegosaurus neck plate with a U-shaped wound that correlates well with an Allosaurus snout.[86] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citation #86 is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carpenter, Kenneth; Sanders, Frank; McWhinney, Lorrie A.; and Wood, Lowell (2005). &quot;Evidence for predator-prey relationships: Examples for Allosaurus and Stegosaurus&quot;. In Carpenter, Kenneth (ed.). The Carnivorous Dinosaurs. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. pp. 325–350. ISBN 978-0-253-34539-4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Black Hills Institute appear to be selling a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bhigr.com/store/product.php?productid=482&quot;&gt;Camarasaurus sp. Tibia with Bite Marks - Fossil Replica&lt;/a&gt; of which they say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Camarasaurus was a long-necked (sauropodmorph) dinosaur that lived during the Jurassic age. Camarasaurus reached lengths of 60 feet (18 m) and weighed up to 18 tons (16 tonnes)! One end of this ‘teething bone’ has been completely removed by predation, probably a feeding or teething Allosaurus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-10-13T23:27:25.833" LastActivityDate="2012-10-13T23:27:25.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12264" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12266" CreationDate="2012-10-14T03:26:56.160" Score="18" ViewCount="2275" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many times when the religious permisibility of alcohol is debated (especially in substances with small amounts of alcohol in it) people will claim that even bread has traces of alcohol. How valid is that claim? Is there a published survey of the amount of alcohol found in bread in general?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1301" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T20:40:54.393" Title="Does bread contain traces of alcohol?" Tags="|nutrition|alcohol|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12264" CreationDate="2012-10-14T08:40:29.427" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker%27s_yeast&quot;&gt;Baker's yeast&lt;/a&gt; is capable of fermentation, so it can certainly produce alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1926 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1709087/pdf/canmedaj00470-0140b.pdf&quot;&gt;it was reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal&lt;/a&gt; that bread can contain between 0.04 and 1.9% of alcohol. This is just a short report, not a full scientific paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://jat.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/3/181.long&quot;&gt;&quot;Ethanol Content  of Various Foods and Soft Drinks and their Potential for Interference with a Breath-Alcohol Test&quot;&lt;/a&gt; the alcohol content of certain kinds of bread are reported. The highest alcohol content is found in Rosemary's onion bread with 0.98%, and lower values for other kinds of breads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, bread certainly contains at least traces of ethanol, and possibly even rather significant amounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T08:40:29.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12264" CreationDate="2012-10-14T10:05:50.693" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an additional answer, some kinds of bread are treated with alcohol as a preservative. For example Italian pancarré (sliced sandwich bread) is very commonly laced with ethanol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ingredients&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Type &amp;quot;0&amp;quot; wheat flour, water, lard (4.2%), dextrose (3.4%), salt, yeast, wheat malt extract. (Treated with ethyl alcohol).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manufactured in a facility that also uses peanuts, tree nuts, milk, sesame, soy, eggs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— translation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mulinobianco.it/pane-del-mulino/pancarre/pancarre&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pancarrè - Mulino Bianco&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T20:40:54.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12260" CreationDate="2012-10-14T15:28:39.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The next 2 sentences in the Wiki article are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Incorporating a half-twist, it had the advantage over conventional belts of a longer life because it could expose all of its surface area to wear and tear. &lt;strong&gt;Möbius strip belts are no longer manufactured because untwisted modern belts can be made more durable&lt;/strong&gt; by constructing them from several layers of different materials.[8]  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole section seems to come literally from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/M/Mobius_band.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;linked web page (scroll to practical applications)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: if turning is an option (i.e. both surfaces are the same - which is the case anyways for the one-sided Möbius version) you could turn the belt (periodically; like changing front and back wheels of a car).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;That gives the same benefit of wearing both sides, but without the strain of twisting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit to Sefan's question:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;sure you can make them layered. But the layers are only of indirect importance here, I think. The important consideration is that you can avoid the wear due to the twisting. And you can make more lasting constructions if you don't need to twist. One example (without layers) where this is immediately clear are hinge chain conveyors, that can basically just go straight (if you look at how curves become possible, you'll see that the constructions are inherently weaker).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing is: turning the belt meant that both sides could be worn down without the strain due to the twist. If the wear of the surface did limit the life of these belts, then this other option&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;did cost the additional work for turning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;but did avoid the additional wear due to the strain from twisting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another wear-related problem with the Möbius-band: conveyed material rests getting between belt and the rolls (e.g. if you convey sand or stones, you will get little grains in between there, and that will cause lots of wear)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;So you probably could use it only for certain applications, because for other applications you may end up with even more wear than not turning the belt at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that if the surface wear does limit the life time, but is different on the material and on the machine side of the belt, you may not get any benefit from turning - but then it is questionable, whether the Möbius-band helps at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm not sure at all whether this kind of surface wear was/is really what limits the life of these belts. Maybe someone else can add wisdom?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I have a bit of experience with flat transmission belts in &quot;ancient&quot; machinery. They don't get &quot;thin&quot; at the surface, they will usually rip across (the old leather belts regularly needed to be repaired), maybe because of a little cut at the side that propagates quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastEditorUserId="8865" LastEditDate="2012-10-14T16:37:29.190" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T16:37:29.190" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12272" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-14T23:13:36.250" Score="14" ViewCount="15293" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr William Davis claims that the protein &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliadin&quot;&gt;gliadin&lt;/a&gt; in wheat (at least, strains grown since the '60s or so) stimulates appetite, leading to obesity. He has released a book on the topic, called &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1609611543&quot;&gt;Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. His claims (including a video) are described in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505269_162-57505149/modern-wheat-a-perfect-chronic-poison-doctor-says/&quot;&gt;CBS report&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This thing has many new features nobody told you about, such as there's a new protein in this thing called gliadin. It's not gluten. I'm not addressing people with gluten sensitivities and celiac disease. I'm talking about everybody else because everybody else is susceptible to the gliadin protein that is an opiate. This thing binds into the opiate receptors in your brain and in most people stimulates appetite, such that we consume 440 more calories per day, 365 days per year&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an &lt;a href=&quot;http://blisstree.com/eat/nutrition/doc-calls-wheat-a-perfect-chronic-poison-backs-it-up-with-lies-784/&quot;&gt;article on BlissTree&lt;/a&gt;, Elizabeth Nolan Brown disputes Dr Davis's claims: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lie #1: Gliadin is a ”new protein” being engineered into wheat.&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;  Actually, gliadin has always been in wheat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lie #2: Gliadin is an appetite-expanding opiate.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Giadin&lt;i&gt;[sic]&lt;/i&gt; is not actually an opiate. Gliadin polypeptides can bind to opiate receptors in the brain, but there’s no evidence that this stimulates appetite&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her claims about the origins of gliadin are not well referenced, and she doesn't consider the quantity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Grain Foods Foundation have also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sixservings.org/2011/08/500/&quot;&gt;disputed the risks of gliadin&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cutting out one specific food is not only unrealistic, it’s dangerous. Omitting wheat entirely removes the essential (and disease-fighting!) nutrients it provides including fiber, antioxidants, iron and B vitamins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Besides this, the advice dished out by Dr. Davis is completely counter to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the gold standard of scientifically-sound nutrition advice. The Guidelines call for the average healthy American to consume six one-ounce servings of grain foods daily, half of which should come from whole grains and the other half from enriched grains. Wheat is the basis for a number of healthful whole and enriched grain foods including breads, cereal, pasta and wheat berries that provide valuable nutrients to the American diet and have been shown to help with weight maintenance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has wheat been modified to introduce gliadins? Do they act as opiates to increase appetite?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5343" LastEditorUserId="1860" LastEditDate="2012-11-29T21:33:26.430" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T04:37:35.237" Title="Does gliadin in wheat stimulate appetite to the point of obesity?" Tags="|nutrition|physiology|obesity|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3016" CreationDate="2012-10-14T23:32:14.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In short: MDMA may have some effects, but they are likely small and reversible.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble with much of the debate on the harms of MDMA is that the reporting is very biased and the underlying scientific studies are often not very good. So it isn't that difficult to find many studies the show significant harm. But this is likely a poor summary of the totality of our knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One illuminating example that resulted in major headlines and some smugness from government advisors keen on fighting the war on drugs occurred in 2002. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/297/5590/2260.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper was published&lt;/a&gt; in the prestigious journal &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;, which suggested that monkeys suffered permanent brain damage from typical recreational human doses of the drug. This looked like the first really conclusive experiment validating the idea that MDMA caused permanent brain damage. Unfortunately, the paper had to be retracted because a lab error meant the monkeys had actually been given overdoses of methamphetamine not MDMA (while chemically related, methamphetamine is a much nastier drug). That retraction didn't get anything like the headlines of the original paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/02/science/research-on-ecstasy-is-clouded-by-errors.html?pagewanted=all&amp;amp;src=pm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New York Times report&lt;/a&gt; on the retraction noted some other issues with Dr. George A. Ricaurte's work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was not the first time Dr. Ricaurte's lab was accused of using flawed studies to suggest that recreational drugs are highly dangerous. In previous years he was accused of publicizing doubtful results without checking them, and was criticized for research that contributed to a government campaign suggesting that Ecstasy made ''holes in the brain.''&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of the article is illuminating for discussion about the uncertainties of MDMA research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reviews of the effects of MDMA have been conducted in the last few years. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/mdma/mdma_info13.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;One such review&lt;/a&gt; by the ACMD (the &lt;em&gt;Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs&lt;/em&gt;, the scientific body intended to advise the UK government about the science of drugs) concluded that the drug was far less harmful than cocaine and heroin and should be downgraded. The government ignored this advice. Later, David Nutt, the chairman of the ACMD was sacked by the government when he (perfectly reasonably on statistical grounds) pointed out that Ecstasy was less harmful than recreational horse riding (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Drugs-Without-Minimising-Harms-Illegal/dp/1906860165/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1350256254&amp;amp;sr=1-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;see Nutt's book&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth quoting their summary of the literature and known science. All the following quotes are from (different sections of) the ACMD report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A concern has been raised that extensive, chronic MDMA use can lead to clinical depression, perhaps through changes in brain serotonin function discussed in Section 6. The evidence is currently equivocal – most studies do not find significantly increased levels of clinical depression in current or ex-MDMA users...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...The effects of MDMA on psychomotor function have been studied during driving performance. Studies on MDMA alone have shown that it can improve some aspects of driving and impair others (Ramaekers et al., 2006; Kuypers and Ramaekers, 2008). This contrasts with alcohol which impairs on all measures and leads to impulsively impaired judgement...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Like amphetamines, MDMA has been found to improve impulse control and sustained attention – an effect opposite to that of alcohol...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Early rat studies on the pharmacology of MDMA found that as well as elevating serotonin it also damaged serotonin neurons (those that release serotonin) in the brain (reviewed by Green et al., 2003). Subsequent studies in non-human primates produced similar findings (Hatzidimitriou et al., 1999), although in mice dopamine neurons were also affected. Although the doses used in these studies were considerably higher than those typically taken recreationally, these preliminary findings raise concerns that MDMA might produce similar nerve cell damage in humans.10 However, a recent non-human primate study using dosing similar to that seen in humans showed no effect (Fantegrossi et al., 2004)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Statistically significant alterations in some brain-imaging measures have been reported. Their magnitude is generally less than comparable findings in alcohol, cocaine and methylamphetamine misusers and the clinical relevance of these findings is unclear...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A systematic review of the literature by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hta.ac.uk/pdfexecs/summ1306.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rogers et. al. in 2009&lt;/a&gt; (which provided some of the ACMD's evidence) concluded that there seemed to be some consistent effects but that they were small. Moreover, many of the studies were poorly conducted and may be biased. In their words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The evidence we identified for this review provides a fairly consistent picture of deficits in neurocognitive function for ecstasy users compared to ecstasy-naïve controls. Although the effects are consistent and strong for some measures, particularly verbal and working memory, the effect sizes generally appear to be small: where single outcome measures were pooled, the mean scores of all participants tended to fall within normal ranges for the instrument in question and, where multiple measures were pooled, the estimated effect sizes were typically in the range that would be classified as ‘small’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, there are substantial shortcomings in the methodological quality of the studies analysed. Because none of the studies was blinded, observer or measurement bias may account for some of the apparent effect. There is a suggestion of publication bias in some analyses, and we saw clear evidence of selective reporting of outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In summary: there appear to be some effects on cognition, but they are small and there is little evidence of permanence. Moreover, some of the observations may be a result of confounding or bias.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2012-10-14T23:32:14.963" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12274" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12275" CreationDate="2012-10-15T07:16:19.157" Score="13" ViewCount="895" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many stories about twins being able to &quot;feel&quot; each other even when they are apart. Typically a twin would say that they felt that an accident or some other calamity happened to the other one even though they were in different cities etc. Has this been researched?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8889" LastEditorUserId="8889" LastEditDate="2013-12-25T13:30:21.060" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T13:30:21.060" Title="Can a twin perceive that the other is in trouble?" Tags="|genetics|esp|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12274" CreationDate="2012-10-15T09:55:43.680" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, twins do not have any special magical powers&lt;/strong&gt;, despite a number of studies investigating the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lightweight study was done in 1993 to examine if identical twins tended to have similarities in thinking, independent of any Extrasensory Perception (ESP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Susan Blackmore and Frances Chamberlain, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Articles/PDFs/JSPR%201993.pdf&quot;&gt;ESP and Thought Concordance in Twins: A Method of Comparison&lt;/a&gt;, Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Vol 59, No 83.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual study that was performed is largely irrelevant here. What is interesting is the literature search in the Introduction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research on ESP in twins has been limited and sporadic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to examine a fair number of studies that have been performed, and concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Generally there seems to be little evidence of either a special ESP relationship between twins or a closer one between identical twins. Watson (1981) concludes that there is no evidence to support the idea of any parapsychological phenomena involved in the twin bond, and Palmer (1978), after reviewing the literature, concludes &quot;There is no evidence that twins have any special aptitude for `telepathic' exchange&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-10-15T09:55:43.680" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12276" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-15T15:10:21.067" Score="19" ViewCount="1810" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent study at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis (see report &lt;a href=&quot;http://jezebel.com/5949235/absolutely-everyone-benefits-from-free-birth-control-says-yet-another-study-conservatives-will-ignore&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) concluded that provision of free long-acting contraception reduced the number of abortions in its recipients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even such an apparently simple result can be interpreted different ways given the deeply polarised nature of the debate about abortion and contraception in the USA. For example,  according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57526550/study-free-birth-control-leads-to-way-fewer-abortions/&quot;&gt;this CBS report&lt;/a&gt;, the conservative view (as expressed by Jeanne Monahan of the conservative &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.frc.org&quot;&gt;Family Research Council&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Additionally, one might conclude that the Obama administration's contraception mandate may ultimately cause more unplanned pregnancies since it mandates that all health plans cover contraceptives, including those that the study's authors claim are less effective&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I know that the whole contraception/abortion debate is particularly polarised in the USA, but is there an &lt;strong&gt;objective&lt;/strong&gt; scientific view of the issue? Are there other studies we should look at? &lt;em&gt;Does contraceptive provision reduce the incidence of abortion in the USA or elsewhere?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T13:11:33.993" LastActivityDate="2021-11-25T06:54:47.623" Title="Does freely available contraception cut the abortion rate?" Tags="|contraception|abortion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12276" CreationDate="2012-10-15T15:51:40.823" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The MEASURE Demographic and Health Surveys project published an analytical study on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.measuredhs.com/publications/publication-AS8-Analytical-Studies.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Recent Trends in Abortion and Contraception in 12 Countries&lt;/a&gt; in 2005, the 12 countries in the study being Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Romania, Russia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. From the Executive Summary of the study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a series of simulation models, the implications for further reductions in the&#xA;prevalence of abortion are estimated. For example, if the women currently using&#xA;modern methods of contraception were joined by those currently using traditional&#xA;methods, abortion rates on average could be reduced by 23 percent; if women classified as having unmet need for family planning were also added to this group, abortion&#xA;rates could be reduced by as much as 55 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study found strong patterns of abortion declining with modern contraceptive prevalence rising in several countries:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8hPHM.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zHasW.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hdpbs.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, 8 of the 12 countries show declines in abortion accompanied by increases in the prevalence of modern methods; one shows an increase in abortion with little change in prevalence (Azerbaijan); two show increases in abortion along with an increase in prevalence but with a substantial reduction in the ideal number of children&#xA;(Turkmenistan) or a very low ideal number of children with increasing contraceptive&#xA;failure rates (Ukraine); and one features no net change in abortion rates but with increasing contraceptive prevalence offset by increasing rates of  contraceptive failure&#xA;(Georgia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0738399194900329&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Contraception in the Netherlands: the low abortion rate explained&lt;/a&gt; seems to strongly suggest that contraception is a major factor in the country's low abortion rates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article gives a review of the main factors that are related to the low abortion rate in the Netherlands. Attention is payed to figures on abortion and the use of contraceptive methods since the beginning of the 1960s up to the end of the 1980s. The strong acceptance of family planning was influenced by changing values regarding sexuality and the family, the transition from an agricultural to a modern industrial society, rapid economic growth, declining influence of the churches on daily life, introduction of modern mass media and the increased general educational level. The introduction of modern contraceptives (mainly the pill and contraceptive sterilization) was stimulated by a strong voluntary family planning movement, fear for overpopulation, a positive role of GPs, and the public health insurance system. A reduction of unwanted pregnancies has been accomplished through successful strategies for the prevention of teenage pregnancy (including sex education, open discussions on sexuality in mass media, educational campaigns and low barrier services) as well as through wide acceptance of sterilization. The Dutch experience with family planning shows the following characteristics: a strong wish to reduce reliance on abortion, ongoing sexual and contraceptive education related to the actual experiences of the target groups, and low barrier family planning services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I don't have access to the full article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1999 book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0313305870&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;From Abortion to Contraception: A Resource to Public Policies and Reproductive Behavior in Central and Eastern Europe from 1917 to the Present&lt;/a&gt; examines the &amp;quot;abortion culture&amp;quot; in USSR successor states, and theorizes that a key factor in high abortion rates was the limited availability, high cost and bad press of modern contraceptives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I haven't got the slightest idea if freely available contraception will (significantly) cut the abortion rate in the US and I'm guessing that data from USSR successor states won't be enough to convince US conservatives, after giving a second read to the MEASURE DES study I'd say it's definitely worth a try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5142" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T12:52:49.600" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12282" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-15T18:58:07.157" Score="5" ViewCount="2477" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the number of leaves on a branch follow Fibonacci numbers from top to bottom? &#xA;Or is there more to nature than I really see it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question came up after reading this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aidan Dwyer took a hike through the trees last winter and took notice of patterns in the mangle of branches. His studies into how they branch in very specific ways lead him to a central guiding formula, the Fibonacci sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://inhabitat.com/13-year-old-makes-solar-power-breakthrough-by-harnessing-the-fibonacci-sequence/&quot;&gt;13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The kid in the above article states that he planted tiny solar panels in the form of a tree and it followed the Fibonacci series. But I really do not get the connection between the Fibonacci series and the tree structure as a whole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8897" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:08:45.167" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:08:45.167" Title="Do the trees follow Fibonacci series? How?" Tags="|biology|plants|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12290" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-16T12:44:21.047" Score="9" ViewCount="785" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has been popping up on &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.npr.org/story/162381686?url=/2012/10/08/162381686/another-thing-singing-the-housework-blues&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NPR&lt;/a&gt; , and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/9572187/Couples-who-share-the-housework-are-more-likely-to-divorce-study-finds.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;telegraph&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Divorce rates are far higher among “modern” couples who share the housework than in those where the woman does the lion’s share of the chores, a Norwegian study has found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In what appears to be a slap in the face for gender equality, &lt;strong&gt;the report found the divorce rate among couples who shared housework equally was around 50 per cent higher than among those where the woman did most of the work.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“What we’ve seen is that sharing equal responsibility for work in the home doesn’t necessarily contribute to contentment,” said Thomas Hansen, co-author of the study entitled “Equality in the Home”. “One would think that break-ups would occur more often in families with less equality at home, but our statistics show the opposite,” he said. The figures clearly show that “&lt;strong&gt;the more a man does in the home, the higher the divorce rate&lt;/strong&gt;,” he went on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Did the study find that the divorce rate was 50% higher in marriages where the housework was shared?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T00:03:08.587" Title="Are you more likely to get divorced if you share the housework?" Tags="|divorce|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7032" CreationDate="2012-10-16T13:37:58.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a larger study, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265689239_A_systematic_study_on_the_influence_of_the_main_ingredients_of_an_ivy_leaves_dry_extract_on_the_ss2-adrenergic_responsiveness_of_human_airway_smooth_muscle_cells&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A systematic study on the influence of the main ingredients of an ivy leaves dry extract on the ß2-adrenergic responsiveness of human airway smooth muscle cells&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Preparations of ivy leaves dry extract are used in the treatment of upper respiratory tract conditions characterized by hypersecretion of a viscous mucus and coughing. The extracts are well tolerated by children and adults suffering from acute or chronic obstructive bronchitis and the efﬁcacy of a special extract (EA 575,DER 5-7.5:1, 30% m/m EtOH) has been conﬁrmed by placebo controlled clinical trials and post-marketing surveillance studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8907" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T17:42:00.170" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T17:42:00.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12290" CreationDate="2012-10-16T19:04:21.303" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer your question first: Yes, the study shows that divorce and breakup rates are significantly higher for couples where the housework is equally shared or where the man does most of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oddthinking already linked to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://nova.no/asset/5912/1/5912_1.pdf&quot;&gt;report in Norwegian&lt;/a&gt;, the relevant chapter 9 is on the pages 201-214. You can of course run the text through e.g. Google Translate and get a reasonable translation if you are interested in the details. At the end of the study, there is also a short English summary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll try to give a few more details here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the introduction, the report refers to a report &quot;Cooke, L. P. (2006). &quot;Doing&quot; gender in context: Household bargaining and risk of divorce in Germany and the United States. American Journal of Sociology 112(2): 442–472.&quot;, in which similar correlations have been examined in Germany and the US. They find the same correlation in Germany, whereas in the US, there is an opposite correlation (work sharing couples are more stable). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Norwegian report is based on a 2007/2008 survey, where couples (married and living together) were asked how they share the housework (female does most of the work, equally shared or the husband does most of the work), if they are satisfied with their marriage (or more exactly: &quot;Have you thought about a breakup within the last year?&quot;) and actual statistic data throughout 2011 of their divorces and breakups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correlation between housework sharing and relationship satisfaction is shown in chart 9.1 on page 204. The vertical scale is the percentage of the respondents, which have thought about a breakup within the last year. The horizontal scale is from left to right &quot;the woman does clearly most&quot;, &quot;the woman does some more&quot;, &quot;the work is equally shared&quot; and &quot;the man does most&quot;. Women are represented with the square dots, men with the diamond dots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It shows that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Women are most satisfied if the housework is equally shared. They are clearly less satisfied if either of the partners do most of the work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Men are most satisfied if the woman does most of the work. The more work is done by the man, the less satisfied he is.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the following analysis of the actual divorce rates, the respondents are divided into three groups:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: the woman does most of the work&#xA;B: the work is equally shared&#xA;C: the man does most of the work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The divorce rates for these groups are found in table 9.2 (page 207). Group A: 3.1%, group B: 4.6%, group C: 5.4%. The numbers were then corrected for several factors, which have known impact on the breakup risk:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Age - elder people are less likely to breakup&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Education - breakup rates are lower among well educated people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Children - couples with children are less likely to breakup&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Married or living together - married couples are less likely to breakup than people &quot;only&quot; living together&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Satisfaction - people generally satisfied with the relationship are less likely to breakup&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Against the authors' expectations, these corrections emphasized the difference in breakup risk and did not provide any explanation. After corrections, the breakup risk in group B was 50% higher than in group A and 78% higher in group C than in group A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report does not find any definitive explanation for these figures. It assumes that the differences in breakup rates can be explained with the respondents' traditional values and attitudes towards work sharing and divorce/breakups. Couples abiding conservative, traditional values are both more likely to let the woman do most of the housework and less likely to breakup or divorce. Couples living a more alternative life style are probably more likely to have untraditional sharing of housework duties and less likely to eager for a stable relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastEditorUserId="8188" LastEditDate="2012-10-17T00:03:08.587" LastActivityDate="2012-10-17T00:03:08.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12260" CreationDate="2012-10-16T19:49:13.383" Score="12" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Usage&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many uses of conveyor belts, the one relevant to this question is probably the types of long conveyor using in mining, rather than conveyors used for less abrasive loads such as manufactured goods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Belt Durability&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bridgestone.com/products/diversified/conveyorbelt/technical_background.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bridgestone&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Life of a typical conveyor belt is dependent on &lt;b&gt;top cover wear and cut damage&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their diagram shows that a belt has laminated layers with a strengthened core covered by a carrying surface layer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/feR1h.gif&quot; alt=&quot;belt construction&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems obvious that if you can utilise both sides of a belt, you are doubling the surface area of the belt and halving the rate at which each section of belt surface is abraded or cut by the materials it carries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Return Roller Durability&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact modern belts are often twisted but for a different reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to manufacturers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.krk.com.br/html/produtos/phoenix/Design_Fundamentals.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;KRK&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Depending on the properties of the&#xA;  material handled, residues can still adhere to the top side&#xA;  of a conveyor belt despite the use of scraper systems. &#xA;  As time passes, these residues settle on the idlers in &#xA;  the return run, causing wear, and can affect the straight&#xA;  tracking of the belt and spoil the system. Under this&#xA;  aspect the possibility of turning over the conveyor belt &#xA;  in the return run, where conventional belt cleaning does&#xA;  not produce the effect as desired, is important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/T2MGd.png&quot; alt=&quot;Belt turning specs&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.miningandconstruction.sandvik.com/SANDVIK/1181/Internet/CIS/S000924.nsf/Alldocs/Products*5CConveyors*and*conveyor*components*5CBelt*cleaners*2ABelt*turners/$file/BELT-TWIST-eng.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sandvik&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Belt Turning is a solution where the lower belt is turned dirty side up as soon as possible after the drive pulley so that the return rollers will carry the belt touching the clean side&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks to Belt turning, areas where spillage occurs can be limited to the start and end of the conveyor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BUl2r.png&quot; alt=&quot;conveyor belt&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusions&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For certain types of belt, twisting (for whatever reason) confers advantages that can outweigh any problems due to stress during twisting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the life of a belt is limited by abrasion of the carrying surface (by the carried material), doubling the material-carrying surface must halve the rate of such abrasion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-10-16T20:04:05.423" LastActivityDate="2012-10-16T20:04:05.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12300" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-17T13:41:36.880" Score="6" ViewCount="521" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beautifyer.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beautifyer iPhone app&lt;/a&gt; is claimed to playback compressed audio files in an enhanced way, using a new algorithm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9hAAB.png&quot; alt=&quot;Beautifyer &amp;quot;How it works&amp;quot; image&quot;&gt;&#xA;  Transform your [...] music files into an extraordinary new listening experience [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is my guess that this is just marketing talk, and that the application, in fact, will not do much more than some equalizer adjustments and maybe some phase adjustments to give a stereo widening effect. In my opinion, this would make the music sound worse, not better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is this really some new, revolutionary new algorithm that really does enhance the audio output?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to spend my money on an app that turns out just to be a fancy equalizer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4603" LastEditorUserId="15002" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T10:57:11.360" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T10:57:11.360" Title="Can the Beautifyer app enhance audio?" Tags="|technology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12307" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12309" CreationDate="2012-10-18T01:20:09.487" Score="18" ViewCount="33892" Body="&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sheldonfan.com/transcript-s01-e02-Big-Bran-Scene-4.html&quot;&gt;Season 1, Episode 2&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Bang_Theory&quot;&gt;The Big Bang Theory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, characters Sheldon and Leonard are sneaking around in Penny's room. In order not to wake her, Sheldon warns Leonard to be careful to make pitched noises. He states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evolution has made women sensitive to high pitched noises while they sleep, so that they'll be roused by a crying baby. If you want to avoid waking her, speak in a lower register.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific research behind this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8930" OwnerDisplayName="user5169" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-18T02:26:41.113" LastActivityDate="2015-08-08T19:08:25.577" Title="Are women more sensitive to high-pitched noises than men?" Tags="|physiology|evolution|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12307" CreationDate="2012-10-18T09:54:57.720" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, women are more sensitive to high-pitched sounds than men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several studies (summarized &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcrcad.org/2010-Sax-hearing.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) have found that women are better than men when it comes to hearing acuity above 1 or 2 kHz:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Corso (1959) was among the first to report that females have superior&#xA;  auditory acuity (i.e. lower thresholds) compared with same-age males,&#xA;  particularly for test frequencies above 2 kHz. The same general&#xA;  finding – adult females having more sensitive hearing at high&#xA;  frequencies, compared with same-age males – has been replicated in&#xA;  other studies of adults (e.g. Chung, Mason, Gannon, and Willson, 1983;&#xA;  Royster, Royster, and Thomas, 1980), including studies with&#xA;  Caucasian, African-American, and Asian adults (Dreisbach and&#xA;  colleagues, 2007; Shahnaz, 2008).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7876442&quot;&gt;decline in hearing acuity&lt;/a&gt; differs between men and women, with men having an earlier onset (already detectable by 30 years of age). The portion of this paper that's behind a paywall (and is not copy-paste-able) says that the biggest difference in losing hearing sensitivity between men and women is in the range between 3 and 4 kHz. In other words, as they age, women lose the ability to distinguish sounds of different frequencies more slowly than men, and this gender difference in speed of decline is the greatest for high frequencies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this first paper I linked, it is mentioned that women have lower thresholds in terms of sound intensity as well, i.e. they will be able to hear softer sounds than men. The second paper mentions that it might also be true that men are more sensitive to low-pitched sounds than women. In conclusion, speaking in a lower register actually might help not wake her up, but speaking more softly is also preferable :) Whether this has anything to do with crying babies is a different question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5696" LastEditorUserId="5696" LastEditDate="2012-10-18T18:06:51.743" LastActivityDate="2012-10-18T18:06:51.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12282" CreationDate="2012-10-18T09:56:04.250" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Head over to this web page :&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-sites/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibnat.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fibonacci Numbers and Nature&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at the 'Leaf arrangements' sections . You can clearly see that the leave arrangements and the turn of leaves both follow Fibonacci sequence and also note the section 'Always Fibonacci? ' You will find that Nature is too unpredictable to always follow Fibonacci number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8929" LastEditorUserId="892" LastEditDate="2012-10-25T20:42:14.860" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T20:42:14.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12319" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16688" CreationDate="2012-10-18T21:12:45.797" Score="5" ViewCount="697" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many western democracies limit the power of their politicians to control the electoral boundaries to avoid the possibility of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gerrymandering&lt;/a&gt;. UK electoral boundaries, for example, are redrawn when required by an independent commission. Many US states, however, put the boundaries entirely under the control of elected politicians and this often results in some fairly odd boundaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some regard this as self-evidently bad. For example, the following argument is made on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fairvote.org/redistricting#.UIBnL7T19sQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.fairvote.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Redistricting encourages manipulation of our elections by allowing incumbent politicians to help partisan allies, hurt political enemies and choose their voters before the voters choose them. The current process is used as a means to further political goals by drawing boundaries to protect incumbents and reduce competition, rather than to ensure equal voting power and fair representation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some states have had non-political control for some time (Iowa, for example) and others have recently enacted citizen driven initiatives to remove the power from politicians (eg California). (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/18/politics/gerrymandering/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this CNN report&lt;/a&gt; for some examples).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems likely that gerrymandering will strengthen incumbents. But what does the evidence say? How much does it increase electoral security for incumbents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2017-12-24T23:54:26.417" LastActivityDate="2017-12-24T23:54:26.417" Title="Does politically controlled redistricting in US elections make incumbents more secure?" Tags="|united-states|politics|gerrymandering|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="490" CreationDate="2012-10-19T00:42:32.593" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/v55/n3/abs/5618137a.html&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; from the Journal of Investigative Dermatology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The effect of repeated shaving on human hair growth was studied. Five healthy young white men each shaved one leg weekly for several months and left the other leg as a control. No significant differences in total weight of hair produced in a measured area, or in width or rate of growth of individual hairs, could be ascribed to shaving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5873922/10-stubborn-body-myths-that-just-wont-die-debunked-by-science&quot;&gt;list&lt;/a&gt; of myths there are other studies that confirm the findings (although it does not contains citations from or links to the studies)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what some young individuals can find in their daily lives can seem to counter that claim. If an adolescent shaves their hair and waits for it to grow back it may indeed grow back &lt;a href=&quot;http://pbskids.org/itsmylife/body/puberty/print_article7.html&quot;&gt;thicker&lt;/a&gt; than before because the individual is going through puberty and their hair thickens with time. This has nothing to do with shaving but can fool an adolescent that it does. If they keep shaving their hair a long time can elapse until they see their hair fully grown out again. After they do they may rightly assume that it has gotten much thicker than before and accredit it to the shaving. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could possibly be how the myth originated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8106" LastEditorUserId="8106" LastEditDate="2014-04-16T00:06:47.447" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T00:06:47.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12324" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-19T02:10:45.347" Score="1" ViewCount="52" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4963/is-time-of-the-year-a-factor-on-the-risk-of-catching-a-common-cold&quot;&gt;Is time of the year a factor on the risk of catching a common cold?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard this from my father and I feel like I've experienced it personally, but I can't tell whether or not it's confirmation bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that when the weather starts to change (mid-fall or mid-spring), you're more likely to get a common cold. Is there any science to back this up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note - I'm not simply asking if cold weather makes you sick, the idea is that the fact that the weather is changing is what makes you sick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8888" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T02:10:45.347" Title="Do changes in weather make people more likely to get sick?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|weather|common-cold|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2012-10-19T06:42:24.963" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11186" CreationDate="2012-10-19T07:18:20.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what numbers you are interested in. There are two numbers that are common to use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unemployment number and workforce participation, the first one went down but the latter one also went down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unemployment number: This is the number most commonly used and the definition varies what constitutes &quot;unemployed&quot; from country to country. In the US the current number is 7.8% (September 2012), in August it was 8,1% and 8.3% in July. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the same time &quot;The U.S. labor force contracted by 368,000 in August 2012 compared to the previous month, reaching 154.6 million. The share of the working-age population, 16 years old and over, that was currently employed or unemployed (i.e., the labor force participation rate) was 63.5%&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to be clear; to be able to get a lower Unemployment number, 368,000 people had to stop looking for jobs. All in all this is a bad sign for the US economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But since this is the official U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics counts, and has not changed the last few months, the answer must be: No, the current administration did not manipulate the numbers. They told the truth but not the whole truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet?request_action=wh&amp;amp;graph_name=LN_cpsbref3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet?request_action=wh&amp;amp;graph_name=LN_cpsbref3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ilo.org/washington/ilo-and-the-united-states/spot-light-on-the-us-labor-market/recent-us-labor-market-data/lang--en/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ilo.org/washington/ilo-and-the-united-states/spot-light-on-the-us-labor-market/recent-us-labor-market-data/lang--en/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8942" LastEditorUserId="8479" LastEditDate="2012-10-19T11:52:57.547" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T11:52:57.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12327" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12336" CreationDate="2012-10-19T12:26:26.627" Score="13" ViewCount="493" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to be commonly accepted that having a physician do a physical exam every year is beneficial. However, others seem to have concluded otherwise, for example see the Oct 17, 2012 article in the Washington Post &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/10/17/are-general-physicals-pretty-much-useless/?hpid=z10&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Are general physicals pretty much useless?&lt;/a&gt;, which cites (with my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers at the Cochrane Review looked at more than 16 studies with 182,880 patients – all of whom were offered a general check up, but only some of whom who accepted. Those patients were followed between four and 22 years, depending on the study, to look at death rates for each group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big takeaway: &lt;strong&gt;“There was no effect on the risk of death, or on the risk of death due to cardiovascular diseases or cancer.”&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My skepticism is two-fold, then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, for my own edification, is the purpose of physical examinations to reduce risk, or risk of death due to cardiovascular disease or cancer? Or does the annual physical exam have other purposes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, about the conclusion - is this an uncontroverted study by a reputable organization following established principles and drawing sound conclusions based on an unbiased sampling of observable phenomena?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:39:37.953" Title="Are annual physical examinations valuable?" Tags="|medical-science|safety|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12328" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-19T20:06:21.940" Score="22" ViewCount="2801" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;James Hansen&lt;/a&gt; has long used the idea of a climate &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipping_point_%28climatology%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tipping point&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; in his public arguments for urgent and drastic action to combat climate change (For an extended exposition of his idea, see a &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Hansen_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pdf of one of his papers here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: in response to some comments about the term &amp;quot;tipping point&amp;quot; being vague, I have added some quotes below to illustrate what Hansen himself seems to believe. These are from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-james-hansen/twenty-years-later-tippin_b_108766.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huffington Post article&lt;/a&gt; by Hansen himself in 2008. I think it is fair to say he is talking about an irreversible catastrophe involving runaway change (my emphasis in the quotes to highlight this idea).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...we have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb. The next president and Congress must define a course next year in which the United States exerts leadership commensurate with our responsibility for the present dangerous situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise it will become impractical to constrain atmospheric carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas produced in burning fossil fuels, to a level that prevents the climate system from passing &lt;em&gt;tipping points that lead to disastrous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of humanity's control&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...climate is nearing &lt;em&gt;dangerous tipping points&lt;/em&gt;. Elements of a &amp;quot;perfect storm,&amp;quot; a &lt;em&gt;global cataclysm&lt;/em&gt;, are assembled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Climate can reach points such that &lt;em&gt;amplifying feedbacks spur large rapid changes&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all climate scientists agree. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/weekinreview/29revkin.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This New York Times report&lt;/a&gt;, for example, points out that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But other scientists say there is little hard evidence to back up specific predictions of catastrophe. They worry that the use of the term “tipping point” can be misleading and could backfire, fueling criticism of alarmism and threatening public support for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the last interglacial didn't tip the world into irreversible warming despite passing the threshold 2°C warmer than pre-industrial temperatures (it was followed by the ice age that ended ~10,000 years ago).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Tipping points are back in the news. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45084144&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The BBC recently reported&lt;/a&gt; this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers believe we could soon cross a threshold leading to boiling hot temperatures and towering seas in the centuries to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if countries succeed in meeting their CO2 targets, we could still lurch on to this &amp;quot;irreversible pathway&amp;quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An international team of climate researchers, writing in the journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says the warming expected in the next few decades could turn some of the Earth's natural forces - that currently protect us - into our enemies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are warnings that the earth's climate is close to a tipping point just alarmism designed to stir public action? Or is there concrete evidence from modelling or climate history that clearly signals an imminent tipping point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2021-08-13T19:26:34.653" Title="Is climate close to a &quot;tipping point&quot;?" Tags="|climate-change|climatology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1509" CreationDate="2012-10-19T21:55:59.007" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, it would be a major contribution!&lt;/strong&gt; (but it would not be sufficient)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Union of Concerned Scientists wrote a report called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/Solutions-for-Deforestation-Free-Meat.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Solutions for deforestation-free meat&lt;/a&gt;. The report is mostly about inefficiencies of existing food production; e.g. only 20% of the worlds agricultural land is used for crops for direct human consumption, and &lt;strong&gt;80% of the agricultural land is for pastures or cropland for livestock feed&lt;/strong&gt;. The report also mentions that &lt;strong&gt;The effects of tropical deforestation (...) are responsible for about 15% of the world's heat-trapping emissions&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study cites Stehfest et. al (2009). Stehfest et. al (2009) report that the livestock sector accounts for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions, and that &lt;strong&gt;A global transition to a low meat-diet (...) would reduce the mitigation costs to achieve a 450 ppm CO₂-eq. stabilisation target by about 50% in 2050&lt;/strong&gt;. The article explains the details, but it is due to the reversal of deforestation that a vegetarian (and certainly a vegan) diet would imply. This is 65–75% of the total cumulative emission reduction. Of course, there are some details to be considered, but certainly, &lt;strong&gt;a meat-free diet would be a significant contribution to reduce global warming&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Boucher, D., P. Elias., L. Goodman, C. May-Tobin, K. Mulik, S. Roquemore: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/global_warming/Solutions-for-Deforestation-Free-Meat.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Solutions for deforestation-free meat&lt;/a&gt;. Union of Concerned Scientists.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stehfest, E., L. Bouwman, D.P. van Vuuren, M.G.J. den Elzen, and P. Ka-&#xA;bat. 2009. Climate benefits of changing diet. Climatic Change 95:83–102.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2012-10-19T22:03:38.573" LastActivityDate="2012-10-19T22:03:38.573" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7044" CreationDate="2012-10-20T00:29:02.757" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been reported cases of coffee grounds blocking drains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/s/2111810_morrisons_cafe_shut_as_coffee_grounds_block_drain&quot;&gt;Morrisons cafe shut as coffee grounds block drain&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, &#xA;  &lt;em&gt;By Claire French, April 12, 2012&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A DRAIN blocked up with coffee grounds led to the closure of a supermarket cafe in Reigate for a day while the problem was sorted out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cafe at Morrisons in Bell Street was voluntarily shut by the store on Monday, April 2 following a visit by an environmental health officer from Reigate and Banstead Borough Council.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A drain at the cafe became blocked because of a build-up of coffee grounds and water in a pipe from the back of the coffee machines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is supported by opinion from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daytons-best.com/oh-plumbing/main-line-cleaning/&quot;&gt;professional drain cleaners&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the grease builds up in the drain, other substances can get stuck in it. One of the most common of these substances is coffee grounds, but any other food stuff can get trapped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These aren't the most definitive sources, but this doesn't seem like the sort of question that will be studied in a lab; my search for scientific sources was fruitless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T00:29:02.757" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12328" CreationDate="2012-10-20T09:39:49.650" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, climate is close to a tipping point: the increase in global heat content, brought about predominantly by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases, is now triggering positive feedbacks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that &quot;positive feedbacks&quot; is used here in the way it is used in control systems: the &quot;positive&quot; refers to an &lt;strong&gt;amplification&lt;/strong&gt; effect: the feedback reinforces / strengthens what's already going on.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2008/2008_Hansen_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The article by James Hansen&lt;/a&gt; sets out some of what's going on with the tipping points, and is a clear and accessible read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's break the opening statement into components, and look at each one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has global heat content increased?  Has this warming been brought about predominantly by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases? Are there potential positive feedbacks in the climate system? Are these positive feedbacks being triggered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Has global heat content increased?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt; We've covered this previously:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/1065/6236&quot;&gt;Has global mean temperature at sea level increased since 1900?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-3-1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How are Temperatures on Earth Changing?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Has this warming been brought about predominantly by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt; We've covered this previously too:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/3435/6236&quot;&gt;Is CO₂ the cause for Global Warming?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/41/6236&quot;&gt;Do human activities contribute to climate change?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Are there potential positive feedbacks in the climate system?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt; For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/12/methane-hydrates-and-global-warming/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;methane, e.g. as in methane clathrates, is stored under ice&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/bg-4-521-2007&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;very large quantities&lt;/a&gt;.  Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. So if that ice were to melt, releasing methane clathrates, that would be a positive feedback effect - a tipping point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Are positive feedbacks being triggered?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have already &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18120093&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;observed methane releases&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1480&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Arctic&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Could there be even worse to come?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-10-2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Likely are Major or Abrupt Climate Changes, such as Loss of Ice Sheets or Changes in Global Ocean Circulation&lt;/a&gt;, which says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abrupt climate changes, such as the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the rapid loss of the Greenland Ice Sheet or large-scale changes of ocean circulation systems, are not considered likely to occur in the 21st century, based on currently available model results. However, &lt;strong&gt;the occurrence of such changes becomes increasingly more likely as the perturbation of the climate system progresses&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T09:39:49.650" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12334" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-20T10:49:39.617" Score="2" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1368/on-911-was-building-7-destroyed-in-a-controlled-explosion&quot;&gt;On 911, was Building 7 destroyed in a controlled explosion?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently I read an article that claimed that WTC in reality was blown up rather than fell due to fire. In discord with various conspiracy theories the source claims that this fact is not a secret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source asserts that there were in fact the terrorist acts with the planes, but also that the both towers had demolishing mechanisms embedded at the time of construction. Once the planes hit, the fire started and the most of occupiers left the buildings, the authorities together with the owner decided to blow up the buildings so to prevent greater risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is further alleged that this decision and the real cause of the fall were properly reflected in the investigation documents and that anybody who wants to know the real cause and has access to restricted (but unclassified) documentation can see it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there any ground behind this version?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6248" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T10:49:39.617" Title="Destruction of WTC: is this version somehow substatinated?" Tags="|united-states|9-11|terrorism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-10-20T13:11:43.833" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12327" CreationDate="2012-10-20T14:04:04.553" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background: screening is often thought to have no downside, but this isn't true&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before dealing with the specific evidence, it is worth a quick review of why the benefits and costs of screening are often misunderstood. The basic problem is that public perception sees only the potential benefit (diseases can be spotted early and therefore treated more effectively) and regards screening as costless with no possible downside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two key problems with the view that screening is all upside. One is that the intuition that early diagnosis helps is not always true and needs to be proved with real statistics. The other is the perception that there is no downside. This is wrong for two separate reasons: one is that some diagnostic methods cause harm (CAT scans use x-rays which cause a small increase in the cancer rate in those exposed to them); the other is that even benign diagnostic methods can result in false positives and can diagnose issues which would never have cause the patient problems. Both result in unnecessary treatment which causes harm to patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The public perception is heavily influenced by sources that are not unbiased. As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/pspi_8_2_article.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one study&lt;/a&gt; concludes (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... information pamphlets, Web sites, leaflets distributed to doctors by the pharmaceutical industry, and even medical journals often report evidence in nontransparent forms that &lt;em&gt;suggest big benefits of featured interventions and small harms&lt;/em&gt;. Without understanding the numbers involved, the public is susceptible to political and commercial manipulation of their anxieties and hopes, which undermines the goals of informed consent and shared decision making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the clearest examples of the actual downside from screening is seen in the statistics for screening for prostate cancer (see the question and answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6568/does-screening-for-prostate-cancer-save-lives&quot;&gt;Does screening for prostate cancer save lives?&lt;/a&gt; for details). But even screening for breast cancer is controversial (see the alternative positions in answers here &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/is-routine-screening-for-breast-cancer-for-asymptomatic-women-worthwhile&quot;&gt;Is routine screening for breast cancer for asymptomatic women worthwhile?&lt;/a&gt; ). In both these cases the downside comes because the risks associated with treating false positives are large enough to balance of even overwhelm the gains from early diagnosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the apparent logic of screening must be tested by careful statistics that need to  weigh up the benefits and costs associated with the programme of screening. We should insist that the evidence is gathered and analysed rather than just accepting the apparent logic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Routine screening of healthy people doesn't seem to have any benefits&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study (&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD009009/general-health-checks-for-reducing-illness-and-mortality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;summary here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/store/10.1002/14651858.CD009009.pub2/asset/CD009009.pdf?v=1&amp;amp;t=h8iq6yfe&amp;amp;s=a825d5ba1608cfbaae2a321d81bf1c607d8f03d1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;full study here&lt;/a&gt;) that prompted the news story triggering the question is a Cochrane Review (a meta-analysis of the best existing studies from the medical literature). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The summary explicitly addresses the perception that screening is all upside (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To many people health checks intuitively make sense, but &lt;em&gt;experience from screening programmes for individual diseases have shown that the benefits may be smaller than expected and the harms greater&lt;/em&gt;. One possible harm from health checks is the diagnosis and treatment of conditions that were not destined to cause symptoms or death. Their diagnosis will, therefore, be superfluous and carry the risk of unnecessary treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recommendation is best summaried by this quote (quoted in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e7001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ report&lt;/a&gt;) from on of the authors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“What we’re not saying is that doctors should stop carrying out tests or offering treatment when they suspect there may be a problem. But we do think that public healthcare initiatives that are systematically offering general health checks should be resisted,” said Krogsbøll.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This clarifies one possible misinterpretation of the advice. People at risk of some diseases &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be investigated; but routine screening of the healthy is not justified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some details from the summary are quoted here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results were available from 14 trials, including 182,880 participants. Nine trials studied the risk of death and included 155,899 participants and 11,940 deaths. There was no effect on the risk of death, or on the risk of death due to cardiovascular diseases or cancer. We did not find an effect on the risk of illness but one trial found an increased number of people identified with high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and one trial found an increased number with chronic diseases. One trial reported the total number of new diagnoses per participant and found a 20% increase over six years compared to the control group...  ...Two out of four trials found that health checks made people feel somewhat healthier, but this result is not reliable. We did not find that health checks had an effect on the number of admissions to hospital, disability, worry, the number of referrals to specialists, additional visits to the physician, or absence from work, but most of these outcomes were poorly studied. None of the trials reported on the number of follow-up tests after positive screening results, or the amount of surgery used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the large number of participants and deaths included, the long follow-up periods used in the trials, and considering that death from cardiovascular diseases and cancer were not reduced, &lt;strong&gt;general health checks are unlikely to be beneficial.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So routine screening of healthy people doesn't seem to have any measurable benefits.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-10-20T14:04:04.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10954" CreationDate="2012-10-20T18:24:52.873" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a simpler answer, you can just look at the size of an ASCI encoded text file containing the human genome's information. This, of course, is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the information content of the genome which, as you can see from the answer above and the comments in this thread, is not that easy to define. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, when biologists work on the genome sequence, it tends to be in the form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FASTA_format&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FASTA sequences&lt;/a&gt;. The human genome as a multi fasta file is ~3Gb. See, for example, the file &lt;code&gt;UCSC/hg19/Sequence/WholeGenomeFasta/genome.fa&lt;/code&gt; obtained when extracting &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://igenome:G3nom3s4u@ussd-ftp.illumina.com/Homo_sapiens/NCBI/build37.2/Homo_sapiens_NCBI_build37.2.tar.gz&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this archive&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I stress that this &lt;strong&gt;is not the information content of the genome&lt;/strong&gt;. For those of us who are not information theorists though, it gives an easy way of picturing the genome's size in a format we are familiar with: text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8651" LastEditorUserId="8651" LastEditDate="2016-03-16T13:44:22.013" LastActivityDate="2016-03-16T13:44:22.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12338" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-21T02:22:25.810" Score="19" ViewCount="1777" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a cashier at a gas station in California and I recently had a customer put me in this situation.  They prepaid for $50 in gas with a fifty dollar bill and filled their car.  They had $19 in change.  When the customer came in for their change, I gave them a ten, a five, and four singles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The customer handed me back the ten and the five and told me she wanted all her change in singles.  I told her I could not do that because that would leave me very low in singles (only three left).  I said the best I could do is take the five back in exchange for five singles.  She refused and told me because I had nineteen singles in my register, I was legally obligated to give her change all in singles if she wished.  By then, there was a line of customers building, so I didn't want to argue any further and gave her all singles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So was she correct?  Does she have the legal right to receive her change in any denomination if the cashier has enough to cover it?  Hypothetically, if she wanted all her $19 of change in pennies, do I have to give it to her in that denomination if I had $19 worth of penny rolls in my register?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8952" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-21T07:39:27.517" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T14:07:54.083" Title="Does a customer have the legal right to receive change in whatever denomination they want if the cashier can cover it?" Tags="|united-states|law|economics|currency|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12338" CreationDate="2012-10-21T14:07:54.083" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is likely to be no, the customer cannot specify the form of the change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effectively you ended up in the position that you (or the owner of the gas station) owed the customer $19.  So long as you provided legal tender of $19, that would be enough to extinguish the debt so long as you had not previously agreed anything else with the customer or had a sign saying what would happen.  In some places there are specifications on what combinations are and are not legal tender (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.royalmint.com/aboutus/policies-and-guidelines/legal-tender-guidelines&quot;&gt;coins in the UK&lt;/a&gt;) but not as far as I am aware in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some locations there are specifications on change, such as a Madrid rule that taxi drivers must be able to provide &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madrid.org/cs/Satellite?apartado=2&amp;amp;cid=1139836016398&amp;amp;idioma=_es&amp;amp;pagename=PortalConsumo/Page/PTCO_DetalleSectoresPageTemplate&amp;amp;sector=1142444141061&quot;&gt;change up to 20 euros&lt;/a&gt; but not necessarily higher.  Sometimes these laws create a nonsense, leading to the old sign saying &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboard/shop/gowerse/complete/chap1.htm&quot;&gt;Postmasters are neither bound to give change nor authorised to demand it.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; By taking the pre-payment you seem to have implicitly agreed to provide change for any unused amount, presumably up to the $50.  But in the absence of anything else either by law or contract, you could provide the change in whatever form you wished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, you should remember that &lt;em&gt;the customer is always right&lt;/em&gt; even when they are wrong.  That is a matter of marketing rather than law.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-10-21T14:07:54.083" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12342" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-21T14:24:44.460" Score="10" ViewCount="837" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Edward Carpenter's, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1117208680&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pagan &amp;amp; Christian Creeds : Their Origin and Meaning&lt;/a&gt;&quot; one of the claims is made that the golden calf story in Exodus is allegorical due to the astrological turning of the age of taurus.  There are also claims that the death, 3 days, and then subsequent resurrection coincides with a solar cycle at the winter solstice.  These claims are also repeated in numerous other sources, such as the popular (but in all ways horrible and shoddy) movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zeitgeist&lt;/a&gt;.  The second source (due to its questionable conclusions) has led me to question if this is at all an accepted theory, or even matches actual timing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there seems to be a lot of confusion about astrological signs, their naming, the history surrounding them, and how those symbols were used in other cultures (whether symbolic or allegorical).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do other more reputable sources support Carpenter's assertions about the allegorical nature, as drawn from regular astronomical cycles, of the Abrahamic myths?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2018-01-20T03:11:07.523" LastActivityDate="2018-01-23T18:49:32.943" Title="Are the Claims of Edward Carpenter (and others) historically accurate regarding the Zodiac and biblical interpretation?" Tags="|history|religion|bible|religious-texts|astrology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3506" CreationDate="2012-10-21T15:37:17.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailyhampshiregazette.com/2012/01/26/once-again-tie-vote-defeats-new-library-in-shutesbury&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This municipal vote&lt;/a&gt; on whether to fund the building of a new library initially came out in a 522-522 vote &lt;strong&gt;tie&lt;/strong&gt; until a recount reached a 523-522 result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original link above is broken. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=34&amp;amp;t=33947&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=34&amp;amp;t=33947&lt;/a&gt; works at the moment, and is a reproduction of the article titled, &quot;Once again, tie vote defeats new library in Shutesbury&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3278" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-11-19T14:34:01.153" LastActivityDate="2013-11-19T14:34:01.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12345" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12350" CreationDate="2012-10-21T19:42:27.140" Score="8" ViewCount="3264" Body="&lt;p&gt;My physiotherapist suggested dry-needling. I waved him off saying that I don't believe in acupuncture, but he insists it is different.&#xA;He gave me a leaflet which tells about sticking needles into 'trigger points', which apparently has some kind of benefit for the muscles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: is there any research on this topic? Or is this just a new marketing ploy for acupuncturists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the translated (from Dutch) blurb on the little leaflet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Dry Needling&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dry Needling is a relatively unknown form of therapy in the Netherlands. Only in recent years has it been used in the Netherlands by physiotherapists. With Dry Needling, muscle knots (trigger points) are punctured with a dry acupuncture needle, which cause the muscle to relax rapidly and prolonged. Trigger points cause local pain also pain at a distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dry Needling differs from acupuncture in that dry needling focuses on the trigger points and acupuncture focuses on the energy system. Dry Needling treatment falls within the physiotherapy treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trigger points can be expressed as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pain / stiffness locally in muscle pain and elsewhere 'remote'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;restriction of movement in joints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;decreased strength in the muscle (s)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pain avoidance behavior. (Moving different than normal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tingling in arms / legs, headaches, dizziness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How could trigger points arise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Acute time - eg through a wrong move (above ourselves) or accident / sports injuries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chronic - eg by a prolonged poor posture and / or RSI / CANS.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prolonged absence of movement, eg plaster, brace or sling.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Weak&amp;quot; incidental ligaments ankles and / or knees.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Psychological factors such as stress and depression.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Foot Abnormalities, instability and / or differences in leg length, eg after a fracture or surgery.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Too tight clothing or improper wearing a backpack.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8956" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-01-13T12:17:09.830" Title="Does dry needling relieve pain caused by trigger points?" Tags="|acupuncture|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12346" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12347" CreationDate="2012-10-21T22:17:03.993" Score="9" ViewCount="32310" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was watching an episode of History´s channel program Superhumans whichs is hosted by comic artist Stan Lee, so far I´ve seen a few episodes and although I have seen pretty amazing things all of them seems to be feasible, although yesterday I watched an episode that got me thinking about how reliable this show is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This episode talks about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Bavli&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guy Bavli&lt;/a&gt; aka &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.com/shows/stan-lees-superhumans/videos/kinetic-man?cmpid=MRSS_TVGuide_HIS#kinetic-man&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;kinetic man&lt;/a&gt;&quot; a man who  supposedly is able to move objects with his mind, what caughts my attention is that this show is supposed to test the envirioment against any type of frauds from the subject studied, they even take guy to an office to measure his brain waves while he moves an object, surprisingly there is high peak of gamma activity when he moves an object, here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8J3srDRQKs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;episode&lt;/a&gt; sorry I couldnt find an english version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On top of all that I found an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eegym.com/can-eeg-tell-if-telekinesis-is-a-magicians-trick/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;  that was written by the guys who conducted the test on the show, and they seem pretty surprised about what they seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8930" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T14:19:07.807" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T14:19:07.807" Title="Can Guy Bavli move objects with his mind?" Tags="|stage-magic|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12346" CreationDate="2012-10-22T00:16:25.873" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's fake. Here's a screencap I took, and the arrows are pointing at the fishing line or piece of thread he's using to manipulate the objects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the Gamma waves... The best description I found was from &quot;Epilepsy &amp;amp; Behavior&quot; Vol. 13 Iss. 1: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1525505008000127&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[Gamma brainwaves] have been studied in all sensory systems and are associated with selective attention, transient binding of cognitive features, and conscious perception of the external world.&lt;/a&gt; Which is to say, after spending 45 minutes on Google Scholar, it might be simple &lt;em&gt;concentration&lt;/em&gt; that causes Gamma waves to spike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uPPrJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;The &amp;quot;Telekinesis&amp;quot; trick.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other things that should tip you off in the future:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He's &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; moving his hands frantically whilst performing the bits. This is a distraction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All&lt;/strong&gt; of the objects are small and lightweight, i.e.: The string/line won't break.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He's wearing oddly dark clothing for a talent he could &quot;supposedly&quot; do nude. Makes it easy to hide things. Also, he's not wearing a tie with the suit. Why? Because the moment he leaned over the object, it might catch on the line.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All of the objects &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;follow his right hand.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; All of them. Even when he &quot;pushes&quot; a ruler off the top of a Sharpie: his right arm (which is mostly obscured by the table and all his clothing) twitches the moment it falls.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He never moves anything without involving his hands. He has telekinesis! Why would he ever need to use his hands? He grabs things, turns them over several times, practically gropes all of them before using his &quot;mind.&quot; It just lets him hook his line onto the object.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastEditorUserId="8380" LastEditDate="2012-10-22T04:50:35.170" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T04:50:35.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12345" CreationDate="2012-10-22T13:03:38.713" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In conclusion, there is limited evidence deriving from one study that deep needling directly into myofascial trigger points has an overall treatment effect when compared with standardised care. Whilst the result of the meta-analysis of needling compared with placebo controls does not attain statistically significant, the overall direction could be compatible with a treatment effect of dry needling on myofascial trigger point pain. However, &lt;strong&gt;the limited sample size and poor quality of these studies&lt;/strong&gt; highlights and supports the need for large scale, good quality placebo controlled trials in this area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18395479&quot;&gt;Acupuncture and dry needling in the management of myofascial trigger point pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.&#xA;Tough EA, White AR, Cummings TM, Richards SH, Campbell JL.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2012-10-22T13:03:38.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12352" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12353" CreationDate="2012-10-22T15:25:16.193" Score="17" ViewCount="1060" Body="&lt;p&gt;This photo is circulating across Facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/b7i4w.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new owners [sic] of Ohio's voting machines under the brand name HART Intercivic is none other than Tagg Romney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We may not be able to buy this election, but we can buy  the company that does the counting !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that members of the Romney family own this company? Are these machines actually used in Ohio?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T17:33:15.007" Title="Is Tagg Romney the owner of a company that makes Ohio voting machines?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12352" CreationDate="2012-10-22T16:05:54.047" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart_InterCivic&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hart InterCivic Inc. is a privately held United States company that provides elections, and print solutions to jurisdictions nationwide. While headquartered in Austin, Texas, Hart products are used by hundreds of jurisdictions nationwide, including as of October 2012, all counties of Texas, the entire states of Hawaii and Oklahoma, half of Washington and Colorado, and certain counties in Ohio, California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This information is backed up by a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hartintercivic.com/pr/86&quot;&gt;press release on Hart Intercivic's website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Successful Primaries for Hart Customers in Ohio and Texas&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  published 03/05/2008&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  AUSTIN, Texas – In a closely watched election with record-breaking voter turnout, voters across Texas and Ohio cast their Primary Election ballots with ease using Austin-based Hart InterCivic's eScan and eSlate equipment on Tuesday, March 4.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That covers your second question - &lt;strong&gt;Yes, Hart InterCivic's machines are used in Ohio&lt;/strong&gt;. That's the easy bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there you have to follow the paper trail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taggart Romney is publicly the &lt;a href=&quot;http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=46056945&quot;&gt;Managing Director and Co-Founder of Solamere Capital&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/10/20/romney-family-investment-ties-to-voting-machine-company-that-could-decide-the-election-causes-concern/3/&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt;, Solamere Capital or its subsidiary Solamere Advisors has an ownership stake in private equity firm - HIG Capital - who &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.higprivateequity.com/NewsRelease.php?id=881&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;July 06, 2011 - H.I.G. Capital Completes Strategic Investment in Hart InterCivic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2012/4748&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;H.I.G. Capital has on its board of directors at least three close associates of the Romney family. H.I.G. Capital directors John P. Bolduk and Douglas Berman are major Romney fundraisers. So is former Bain and H.I.G. manager Brian Shortsleeve. H.I.G. employees have contributed at least $338,000 to Romney's campaign. Fully a third of H.I.G.'s leadership previously worked at Romney's old Bain firm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, it is unclear if the investments made by Solamere are involved in H.I.G. Capital's transactions relating to Hart InterCivic. A Solamere spokseman tells &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/tagg-romney-not-investor-voting-machine-company_657183.html&quot;&gt;The Weekly Standard&lt;/a&gt; no:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Not only does Solamere have no direct or indirect interest in this company [Hart Intercivic], Solamere and its partners have no ownership in this company, nor do they have any ownership in nor have made any investments in the fund that invested in the voting machine company,” the spokesman said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factcheck.org/2012/11/does-tagg-romney-own-ohio-voting-machines/&quot;&gt;FactCheck.org&lt;/a&gt; takes a stab at the accusation and concludes there is little reason to suspect foul play:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We cannot independently confirm Solamere’s statement, since it is a private company investing in another private company. But this much is clear: There is no evidence to disprove the company’s public declaration that it did not invest in Hart InterCivic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/politics/romney/votingmachines.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; rejects the claim: &quot;Mitt Romney's son Tagg owns a company that manufactures voting machines.&quot; as &quot;FALSE&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears this conspiracy theory is just about debunked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="4070" LastEditDate="2012-11-27T17:33:15.007" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T17:33:15.007" CommentCount="20" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-11-28T09:11:39.100" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28039" CreationDate="2012-10-22T17:27:32.637" Score="17" ViewCount="4931" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I've been seeing a claim around a lot lately in various articles and &quot;amazing fact&quot; lists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://positivepsychologynews.com/news/emiliya-zhivotovskaya/2012032321636&quot;&gt;Positive Psychology News&lt;/a&gt; is one example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;after only 20 seconds of hugging a romantic partner, one can achieve a spike in oxytocin levels&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They cite a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_zak_trust_morality_and_oxytocin.html&quot;&gt;TED talk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't seem to find the &lt;em&gt;original&lt;/em&gt; source of the claim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest I found was in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/content/67/4/531.full.pdf+html&quot;&gt;this study referenced in the above article&lt;/a&gt; which states: (emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Couples were seated on a loveseat in a quiet room&#xA;  and instructed to sit close together, holding hands if they felt comfortable&#xA;  doing so. They were asked to talk about a time they had spent together that&#xA;  had made them feel closer as a couple (2 minutes). They then watched a&#xA;  5-minute segment of a romantic video they had previously seen. They then&#xA;  were instructed to talk for 2 minutes about a time when they felt close as a&#xA;  couple. During this time, couples were unmonitored and unobserved except&#xA;  when the experimenter entered the room to give instructions. &lt;b&gt;At the end of&#xA;  this session, partners stood for a 20-second hug&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but that seems like the 20 second hug wasn't isolated as the cause alone. Have there been any other studies that suggest the 20 second time frame? Did I miss something in that one? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8739" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T08:14:52.710" LastActivityDate="2020-06-29T21:05:00.213" Title="Does hugging a romantic partner for 20 seconds cause an Oxytocin spike?" Tags="|psychology|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12357" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-22T21:18:48.380" Score="13" ViewCount="672" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57537288/italian-scientists-convicted-for-not-warning-about-deadly-2009-quake/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CBS News&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(October 22, 2012):&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An Italian court convicted seven scientists and experts of manslaughter on Monday for failing to adequately warn citizens before an earthquake struck&lt;/strong&gt; central Italy in 2009, killing more than 300 people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The court in L'Aquila also sentenced the defendants to six years in prison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... the prosecution said the case revolved around one key word, &amp;quot;analysis,&amp;quot; that &lt;strong&gt;in spite of the data the scientists failed to give adequate warning that a major earthquake might be imminent.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists worldwide had decried the trial as ridiculous, contending that science has no reliable way of predicting earthquakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Were the scientists negligent in their analysis or did the data at hand simply not hint at an upcoming major earthquake?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T00:37:13.183" Title="Did Italian seismologists fail to give &quot;adequate warning&quot; about the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake?" Tags="|geology|italy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12358" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-22T21:34:57.783" Score="12" ViewCount="1092" Body="&lt;p&gt;Political control of redistricting in state and congressional elections is common in the US. I've already addressed one possible effect in this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/12319/does-politically-controlled-redistricting-in-us-elections-make-incumbents-more-s&quot;&gt;Does politically controlled redistricting in US elections make incumbents more secure?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the possible side-effects of increased security is that incumbent politicians don't have to appeal to the &quot;floating voter&quot; in the middle of the political spectrum. Some commentators speculate that this has driven increased political polarisation between the main parties. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-strauss/megatrend-six-reasons-ame_b_1965182.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Huffington Post article&lt;/a&gt; about increasing political polarisation argues that incumbent security is one significant cause:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About 80% of all Congressional Districts are solidly Democratic or Republican. We have bipartisan agreement on one issue -- politicians prefer safe Congressional seats, which sometimes happens naturally, but also because politicians use redistricting to create them. Instead of engaging with challengers from the other party, most members of Congress now engage only with challengers within their own party -- Democrats with their Left, and Republicans with their Right. Bipartisan compromise becomes a dirty word, as a consequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is clear that polarisation is increasing. See this chart for a recent summary (sourced from &lt;a href=&quot;http://thedailyviz.com/2013/07/16/charting-partisan-polarization-in-congress/?utm_source=rss&amp;amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;amp;utm_campaign=charting-partisan-polarization-in-congress&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;thedailyviz&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CaYV5.png&quot; alt=&quot;thedailyviz chart of house polarisation&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, though it seem obvious to many, not everyone agrees that it drives polarisation, &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1154054&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;for example:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both pundits and scholars have blamed increasing levels of partisan conflict and polarization in Congress on the effects of partisan gerrymandering. We assess whether there is a strong causal relationship between congressional districting and polarization. We find very little evidence for such a link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what does the balance of evidence look like? Is there a relationship between higher security in gerrymandered constituencies and the polarisation of political views?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2017-12-24T23:53:55.387" LastActivityDate="2017-12-25T06:24:22.723" Title="Does gerrymandering of some US electoral boundaries drive polarisation between parties?" Tags="|united-states|politics|gerrymandering|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10977" CreationDate="2012-10-23T11:31:59.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I consider the answer provided by Berry120 a comprehensive one, in addition to it I would like to quote the main conclusions of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://download.journals.elsevierhealth.com/pdfs/journals/2211-8020/PIIS2211802011000374.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;review&lt;/a&gt; on health benefits of garlic published in the BioMedicine Journal this year (2012).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does garlic lower cholesterol and reduce blood pressure?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the potent antiinﬂammatory action of garlic and its sulfur-containing&#xA;compounds obtained from in vitro and animal studies supports the&#xA;potential value of garlic in preventing atherogenesis. Evidence&#xA;indicates that garlic also acts to maintain vascular tone and cardiac&#xA;function. Experiments on laboratory animals and investigations of&#xA;humans has proved that diets supplemented with garlic can restore&#xA;endothelial functions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Garlic and cancer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epidemiologically, garlic consumption inversely correlates with the&#xA;risk of oral, stomach, esophageal, colon, and prostate cancers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;most animal and cell studies suggest that garlic is a potent&#xA;chemopreventive agent for several types of cancer, acting by&#xA;inhibiting cell proliferation, arresting the cell cycle, inducing cell&#xA;apoptosis, and blocking invasion and metastasis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Garlic and antioxidation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken together, these results suggest that garlic has potent&#xA;antioxidant activity in delaying the onset and development of&#xA;cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and neurodegenerative&#xA;diseases caused by an imbalance between free radical production and&#xA;antioxidant defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;General conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors of the review acknowledge that most studies which have addressed the protective effect of garlic against cardiovascular disease and cancer were in vitro and animal studies. Importantly, human clinical and intervention studies have been reported to yield inconsistent results. However, the authors point out that the cell studies and the animal studies both seem to support the potential value of garlic in reducing blood pressure, cholesterol, as well as preventing arteriosclerosis and some forms of cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7970" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T12:12:21.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12364" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-23T13:41:09.983" Score="5" ViewCount="827" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3326/do-metal-items-stick-magnetically-to-magnet-boy&quot;&gt;Do metal items stick magnetically to “Magnet Boy”?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p9J2v.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Boy&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A six-year-old Croatian schoolboy Ivan Stoiljkovic has a magnetic personality and astounds people with his magnetic body. He can stick metallic objects such as spoons, mobile phones and even frying pans to his body. In total, his family says, he can carry up to 25kg (almost four stones) of metal stuck to his torso. But they say his talents don’t end there. It is claimed he has “healing hands” which he uses to ease pain. Grandfather Ivo said when he was having pains in his stomach; Ivan laid his hands on his body. They became extremely hot and the pain went away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This can't just be a talent, (not a talent at all indeed) , then how he has these abilities ? Does it have something to do with Static electricity ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenewstribe.com/2011/05/14/croatian-boy-with-magnetic-body/#.UIeICsXA-uZ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.thenewstribe.com/2011/05/14/croatian-boy-with-magnetic-body/#.UIeICsXA-uZ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Great mailz" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T16:21:48.363" Title="A Boy with the Magnetic body &amp; healing hands, How this is scientifically possible?" Tags="|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2012-10-23T18:30:26.583" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12364" CreationDate="2012-10-23T14:24:08.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whoo, Problem solved... As I've already mentioned, It's a FRAUD. There are other people like this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1304481/The-human-magnet-Mother-power-make-metal-stick-body.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;young lady&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; who says that she has got so may positive &amp;amp; negative charges. Adding to that &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/human/magnetic-boy-mystery-or-simple-physics-.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;small kiddo&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These people could also attach some plastics or wood objects and even a rubber where magnetic fields don't take place at normal conditions (you require a good value of &lt;em&gt;Teslas&lt;/em&gt; for that). However, when these &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;magnetic people&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; have been tested, there's no evidence of a magnetic field being produced. One thing should be noted that, &quot;All these people are using their skin (body surface) to do their astonishingly smart &lt;em&gt;magic activity&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;They should've done it with clothes in order to prove it.&lt;/strong&gt; They don't require some &lt;em&gt;nudeness&lt;/em&gt;... My sources say that, It's completely based upon FRICTION.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good image as PROOF:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://sciencebasedlife.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/magnet-people.png?w=529&amp;amp;h=396&quot; alt=&quot;An Image for that&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be noted in that boy's photography &lt;em&gt;either&lt;/em&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Reference:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencebasedlife.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/are-there-really-magnetic-people/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://sciencebasedlife.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/are-there-really-magnetic-people/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13175" OwnerDisplayName="user10293" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:38.693" LastActivityDate="2012-10-23T14:50:02.853" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3111" CreationDate="2012-10-23T21:26:18.820" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When reliable evidence about long established treatments is gathered it often overturns the conventional wisdom; this is clear evidence that &lt;em&gt;evidence based medicine&lt;/em&gt; is more effective than &lt;em&gt;ignorance based medicine&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble with the question is that it is, to some extent, self-referential. The point of evidence based medicine is about challenging what standard of evidence we should accept. The question asks us to apply the same standard to the whole approach. But the very act of comparing &lt;em&gt;not using evidence&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;using evidence&lt;/em&gt; seems to accept the premises of the evidence based approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is one way we can get something like a satisfactory answer: we can look at areas where a common medical practice has been accepted for a long time but where a properly controlled study has eventually been conducted. The book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Testing-Treatments-Better-Research-Healthcare/dp/1905177356&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Testing Treatments&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is a valuebale source of material on the subject and much of the material below is derived from it (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.testingtreatments.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the full text is online&lt;/a&gt;). But first a quick review of what counts as reliable evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What does reliable evidence look like?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Gold standard for evidence about treatments is the double-blind randomised trial. This means that a treatment or a comparison (a placebo or an alternative treatment) is given to two groups of patients, selected randomly without either the patients or the trial managers knowing who gets which. The blinding is necessary because of the placebo effect and the potential for investigators to be biased in how they assess the benefits if they know which group is being treated (even unconscious bias can be very significant). Randomisation is necessary to ensure that any observed differences between the groups are due to the differences in treatment not some other characteristic of the patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more detail see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.testingtreatments.org/tt-main-text/fair-tests-of-treatments/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this section&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;em&gt;Testing Treatments&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why does anyone resist the application of EBM?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people would look at the basic idea of EBM and wonder why it isn't just &lt;em&gt;obvious.&lt;/em&gt; But many have opposed it and it is worth asking why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One explanation which applies particularly to medicine (though it is also often seen in politicians) is what has been called &lt;em&gt;The God Complex&lt;/em&gt;. Tim Harford described it in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_harford.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ted Talk&lt;/a&gt; (it can also be found in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Adapt-Success-Always-Starts-Failure/dp/0349121516/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1351460252&amp;amp;sr=1-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Adapt&lt;/a&gt;) when telling the story of Archie Cochrane (first quote is from a transcript of the talk the second from the book):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Archie Cochrane all his life fought against a terrible affliction and he realized it was debilitating to individuals and it was corrosive to societies and he had a name for it he called it the God Complex. Now I can describe the symptoms of the God Complex very easily. The symptoms of the God Complex are: no matter how complicated the problem you have an absolutely overwhelming belief that you are infallibly right in your solution. Now Archie was a doctor so he hung around the doctors a lot and the doctors suffered from the God Complex a lot...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cochrane complained about the 'God Complex' of doctors who didn't need to carry out trials because they &lt;em&gt;knew&lt;/em&gt; the correct course of treatment - even when other doctors were issuing contradictory advice with equal confidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to be humble to recognise the need  for reliable evidence and doctors are not trained to be humble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what sort of practices have been overturned by evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Babies should sleep on their front&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the 1950s to the 1970s the top authority in childcare, Dr Benjamin Spock, made the following recommendation about how babies should sleep:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two disadvantages to a baby’s sleeping on his back. If he vomits he’s more likely to choke on the vomitus. Also he tends to keep his head turned towards the same side . . . this may flatten the side of the head . . . I think it is preferable to accustom a baby to sleeping on his stomach from the start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument has both authority and logic in its favour. But it is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When proper trials were done and the evidence reviewed the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/34/4/874.long&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;following conclusion emerged&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advice to put infants to sleep on the front for nearly a half century was contrary to evidence available from 1970 that this was likely to be harmful. Systematic review of preventable risk factors for SIDS from 1970 would have led to earlier recognition of the risks of sleeping on the front and might have prevented over 10 000 infant deaths in the UK and at least 50 000 in Europe, the USA, and Australasia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The earlier you detect something the better the outcome&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems intuitively obvious that detecting cancers early should improve the outcomes. They should be easy to treat in healthier patients where the disease has not progressed so much thereby improving survival. While the issue applies to many cancers and progressive diseases, a solid case study is provided by our experience with neurblastoma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;em&gt;testing Treatments&lt;/em&gt; summarises:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neuroblastoma was a tempting target for screening for four reasons: (1) children who are diagnosed before the age of one year are known to have a better outlook than those who are diagnosed later; (2) children with advanced disease fare much worse than those with early disease; (3) there is a simple and cheap screening test that can be carried out by blotting wet nappies and measuring substances in the urine; and (4) the test detects nine out of ten children with neuroblastoma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The logic of early screening seemed so good that Japan introduced screening for 6 month old children across the country in 1985. But:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But 20 years later there was no evidence that neuroblastoma screening had reduced the number of children dying from this cancer. How could that be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were several problems. One was that trial outcome was judged by counting survival from time of diagnosis. But this is a biased metric: earlier diagnosis makes it look better even if the treatment does nothing to change the date of death or the progression of the disease (survival should have been measured from birth, which is not biased). There are also several types of neuroblastoma: some regress naturally, other progress rapidly. Screening can miss the fast developing type but will often spot the slow and regressing type even though the disease may have disappeared naturally without intervention. But those patients who may not have suffered from the disease at all will suffer the costs of intervention, which are not negligible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When reliable evidence was collected, the following results emerged:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By contrast, when unbiased evidence was obtained from clinical trials done in Canada and Germany, involving about three million children in all, researchers were unable to detect any benefit from screening, but there were obvious harms. These included unjustified surgery and chemotherapy, both of which can have serious unwanted effects. In the light of this evidence, infant screening for neuroblastoma in Japan was stopped in 2004.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The intuition that early detection must be good is very deep seated and hard to overturn. The controversy affects other areas of screening such as screening for prostate cancer (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6568/does-screening-for-prostate-cancer-save-lives&quot;&gt;Does screening for prostate cancer save lives?&lt;/a&gt; ) and breast cancer screening (see the sometimes heated arguments made here &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/is-routine-screening-for-breast-cancer-for-asymptomatic-women-worthwhile&quot;&gt;Is routine screening for breast cancer for asymptomatic women worthwhile?&lt;/a&gt; ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Steroids will reduce brain swelling in traumatic head injury&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until about ten years ago if you turned up in a hospital emergency department with a traumatic head injury you would probably have been given steroids. The logic is clear: steroids are great drugs for reducing swelling in most parts of the body and brain swelling is serious; surely anything likely to help must be good for the patient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, reality again trumps logic. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15936423&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CRASH trial&lt;/a&gt; came to a different conclusion (this summary is from Margaret Mcartney's book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Patient-Paradox-Sexed-Medicine-Health/dp/1780660006&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Patient Paradox&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the results came in, it was found that steroids were neither effective nor neutral. They were actively harmful to the extent that, if you were given them, you were more likely to die. It was calculated that around 10,000 patients would not have died had this research been done sooner and the use of steroids stopped in these circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the criticisms made in the comments to the original answer was that the examples given above involve studies that would take a long time to produce answers. Part of the answer is that, when there is no reliable evidence, we should start systematically collecting information on outcomes as early as possible. Then we will have the results as fast as possible. We don't stop treating in the meantime but we know that the information that will help us improve will eventually emerge. Shockingly this isn't standard medical practice and the idea of collecting evidence in a systematic way is often opposed by the medical community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the benefits can be enormous. &lt;a href=&quot;http://gawande.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atul Gawande&lt;/a&gt; tells a story about military medics in chapter 3 of his magisterial book on medicine, &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0805082115&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Better: a surgeon's notes on performance&lt;/a&gt;. He noted that americas military medics had an unusual habit of diligence about recording what they did and what subsequently happened with military casualties. Unusual because record keeping is not the first thing you think of in the high pressure, under-resourced field hospital when injured soldiers arrive. But systematic recording of injury, treatment and outcomes enabled them to half the rate of death in less than a decade with no new technology for treatment. The simple process of observing which treatments were used and analysing their success rates led to a major improvement in outcomes. Gawande remarks towards the end of the chapter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do little tracking like this here at home. Ask a typical American hospital what its death and complication rates for surgery were during the last six months and it cannot tell you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem isn't how much effort it takes, the problem is some people just don't want to do it. Those who want to collect reliable evidence often face deep seated opposition. One of Archie Cochrane's early triumphs (See Tim Harford's TED talk or book) was based on the question of whether patients recovering from a heart attack would survive better if kept in a hospital bed or if they were sent home quickly. Conventional medical opinion was so strongly in favour of keeping them in convalescent beds that they opposed the idea of doing a trial as unethical and looked likely to challenge any statistics the might emerge if a trial were ever conducted. Somehow Cochrane managed to start a trial and get some early results. Then he presented the results to the established doctors showing that survival was clearly better in the group staying in bed. The established experts were so convinced by the statistics that they argued the trial should be stopped on ethical grounds. Only then did Cochrane reveal that he had swapped the results in his presentation and it was actually the patients going home who had better outcomes. The God Complex isn't open to evidence and isn't good for patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, evidence can sometimes be collected quickly. And sometimes even simple ideas can yield big improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Checklists for the insertion of central lines in ICUs&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very ill patients are often cared for in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). They don't usually stay there for long periods of time, but the care they receive is intense. Many need central venous catheters inserted. And they run some risk of harm. As Gigerenzer and Gray describe in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Better-Doctors-Patients-Decisions-Envisioning/dp/0262016036/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1351463256&amp;amp;sr=8-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Better Doctors, Better Patients, Better Decisions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...each year, central venous catheters cause an estimated 80,000 bloodstream infections and, as a result, up to 28,000 deaths in intensive care units (ICU) in U.S. hospitals. Total cost of these infections are estimated at US$2.3 billion annually. To save lives Peter Pronovost developed a simple checklist  of five steps (including hand washing and cleaning the skin with  chlorhexidine) for ICU doctors to follow before inserting an IV line to prevent the introduction of bacteria. The checklist reduced the infection rate to almost zero at some one hundred ICUs in hospitals in Michigan....Yet most ICU physicians do not use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original Pronovost study is reported in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa061115&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NEJM here&lt;/a&gt;. Gawande has a popular account in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/10/071210fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=all&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New Yorker&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key lessons are that even simple changes in practice (in this case using a simple checklist to ensure higher compliance with known good practice) can yield big improvement and do so quickly. We don't need to wait for large randomised trials. In this trial the benefits are obvious within weeks. But this is still not standard practice in most hospitals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Checklists to avoid complications in surgery&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surgeons are particularly prone the the God Complex. So they tend to resist interventions that imply they are not omnicompetent. Such as the systematic use of checklists in operating theatres before surgery. The story of checklists is told by Gawande in his book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gawande.com/the-checklist-manifesto&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Checklist Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again a simple intervention was tested and resulted in a large and significant improvement in results for patients and did so quickly. The clinical report of the original work is in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0810119&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NEJM here&lt;/a&gt;. The essential idea is a 19 point checklist that is designed to ensure key elements of good practice are not missed by the team in the operating theatre (such as confirmation of the actual procedure, or ensuring adequate supplies of the right type of blood are on hand in case of emergencies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the original paper reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rate of death was 1.5% before the checklist was introduced and declined to 0.8% afterward (P=0.003). Inpatient complications occurred in 11.0% of patients at baseline and in 7.0% after introduction of the checklist (P&amp;lt;0.001)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are significant improvements and didn't take that long to see. So again EBM doesn't have to wait forever to get results nor are the improvements achievable small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary and conclusions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty more examples similar to the above. All demonstrate that reliable evidence often overturns accepted medical practice and persuasive logic. That is the point of evidence based medicine: we should not accept conventional wisdom or standard practice. The only way to know for sure what works and what doesn't work is to use high quality, fair, trials. And the profession of medicine should become less of a craft and more of a science where everyone's duty is to collect the data to measure outcomes and continually improve medical practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are enough examples of where such evidence has reversed accepted practice for us to trust evidence based medicine rather than the alternative, ignorance based medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T22:59:12.747" CommentCount="28" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12371" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-23T22:56:55.273" Score="21" ViewCount="1241" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the hidden-camera clip &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6udew9axmdM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Behind The Veil: Never-Before-Seen Footage of Secret Mormon Temple Rituals&lt;/a&gt; we supposedly see never-before-seen footage of secret Mormon Temple rituals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A longer version of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms6ny86rXU4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Endowment Ceremony&lt;/a&gt; is also available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it might be hard to establish if these particular movies are genuine, is the movie an accurate representation of Mormon &amp;quot;secret&amp;quot; rituals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-09-09T17:48:20.373" LastActivityDate="2023-09-09T17:48:20.373" Title="Is &quot;Behind The Veil&quot; an accurate representation of secret Mormon rituals?" Tags="|religion|lds|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12373" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-24T02:29:29.490" Score="9" ViewCount="3791" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bamboo_charcoal&quot;&gt;Bamboo charcoal&lt;/a&gt;  is made up of pieces of bamboo, which are taken from plants five years or older and burned inside an oven at temperatures over 1000°C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bamboo charcoal is well known about its high porosity, which makes bamboo charcoal has excellent absorption properties. So it often be used in water purifying and harmful gas absorption. Nevertheless, it also be used in food for years. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.carbonscience.net/category/everyday-uses-of-carbon/&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; illustrates a Japanese cookie coated by bamboo charcoal. It also said bamboo charcoal can absorb and neutralize many poisons and toxins when ingested. However, I'm worry about that some carcinogens would be ingested too, since some carcinogens may be produced during&lt;br&gt;&#xA;the scorching process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus my question is what is the Toxicological result of bamboo charcoal? Is it safe? Or probably carcinogenic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8636" LastEditorUserId="8636" LastEditDate="2012-10-25T14:02:38.643" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T16:55:15.287" Title="Is bamboo charcoal safely edible?" Tags="|medical-science|chemistry|cancer|toxicology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12377" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6451" CreationDate="2012-10-24T16:27:21.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a complex question. Individual laws restricting alcohol sales are only a part of a solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some relevant findings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Voas RB, Tippetts AS, Fell J, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ukpmc.ac.uk/abstract/MED/10868751&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The relationship of alcohol safety laws to drinking drivers in fatal crashes.&lt;/a&gt;, Accident; Analysis and Prevention [2000, 32(4):483-492]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They looked at three types of alcohol safety laws, including &quot;administrative license revocation laws&quot;, and concluded: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results indicate that each of the three laws had a significant relationship to the downward trend in alcohol-related fatal crashes in the United States over that period. This paper points out that this long-term trend is not the product of a single law. Instead, it is the result of the growing impact of several laws over time plus the affect of some factors not included in the model tested (such as the increasing use of sobriety checkpoints and the media's attention to the drinking-and-driving problem).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;S.I. Ornstein, D.M. Hanssens, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/254353?uid=3737536&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21101193588513&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alcohol Control Laws and the Consumption of Distilled Spirits and Beer&lt;/a&gt; Journal of Consumer Research, Vol 12, No 2, Sep 1985.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper highlights some of the complexity, with beer and spirits consumption having different models for consumption. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Spirits and beer consumption are found to react differently to changes in economic, sociodemographic and regulatory variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While numerous studies have examined individual control laws (frequently finding little relationship between a law and consumption) or such social indicators of drinking as drunk arrests, driving while intoxicated or alcohol mortalities, few studies have examined a variety of control laws as a group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C A Graham, L S McLeod, D J Steedman &lt;a href=&quot;http://emj.bmj.com/content/15/1/23.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Restricting extensions to permitted licensing hours does not influence the numbers of alcohol or assault related attendances at an inner city accident and emergency department.&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;J Accid Emerg Med 1998;15:23-25 doi:10.1136/emj.15.1.23.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an example of a specific study that found no correlation. The title pretty much explains the whole study, which took place in the two weeks before and after a law change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No significant changes in the pattern of alcohol or assault related attendances followed the restriction in extensions to permitted licensing hours. CONCLUSIONS: A policy of uniform closing times of licensed premises does not influence the profile of alcohol or assault related attendances at an inner city A&amp;amp;E department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=54yUzyDiTJ0C&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Essential Handbook of Treatment and Prevention of Alcohol Problems&lt;/a&gt;, edited by Nick Heather and Time Stockwell (2004) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book argues that the whole area is complex:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, we also believe that research endeavours to elucidate the relationships between availability and use are highly complex, demand a great deal of the alcohol researcher and are unlikely to to provide simple answers to the question, &quot;Do reductions in availability reduce alcohol-related problems?&quot; While the answer to this question is usually &quot;yes&quot; it is also sometimes &quot;no&quot;, depending on the local context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to examine the theories behind the restrictions, the assumptions they make and many of the studies that support and undermine them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is possible to find studies that appear to support that limits to the sale of alcohol are associated with a reduction in the adverse effects of drunkenness. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is possible to find studies that fail to find any such association.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Social researchers consider the question to be more complicated - many other factors must be included in the model before predictions can be made.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T16:27:21.990" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12378" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-24T17:38:03.327" Score="4" ViewCount="984" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just bought some eggs from a local farmer in the same office building. She told me &lt;em&gt;blue eggs&lt;/em&gt; were lower in cholesterol than other eggs so I bought them. The difference in price was 50¢, so it didn't matter much. Is there any merit to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vdlaa.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T17:38:03.327" Title="Are blue eggs lower in cholesterol than other eggs?" Tags="|nutrition|cholesterol|egg|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12378" CreationDate="2012-10-24T17:38:03.327" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt; At least this is what the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ameraucana.org/faq.html&quot;&gt;Ameraucana Breeders Club&lt;/a&gt; has to say on this issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are blue eggs, from Ameraucanas and Araucanas, lower in cholesterol than white and brown eggs?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a very common question because years ago some hatcheries claimed that these eggs were reported to be lower in cholesterol and higher in nutritional value than other chicken eggs. William O. Cawley, Extension Poultry Specialist at Texas A&amp;amp;M University, wrote a paper, POULTRYDOM'S MYSTERY CHICKEN - THE ARAUCANA, 10/79, that sets the record straight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T17:38:03.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12380" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12381" CreationDate="2012-10-24T19:45:35.807" Score="16" ViewCount="1013" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across the claim that &lt;em&gt;Human DNA sequences are now owned by corporations&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eM4B3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Comic&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FACT: HUMAN DNA SEQUENCES ARE NOW OWNED BY CORPORATIONS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, what does this mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I realise question 2 may be off-topic on this site, but I find it is really part of question 1)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T12:16:48.830" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T12:16:48.830" Title="Do corporations own human DNA sequences?" Tags="|genetics|copyright|dna|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12380" CreationDate="2012-10-24T20:57:30.393" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on what you mean by &quot;own&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major issue is that of patents of individual genes, particularly in the United States.  A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/310/5746/239&quot;&gt;study in 2005 published in Science&lt;/a&gt; suggested 20% of human gene DNA sequences were patented and that some genes were patented as many as 20 times.  But (in theory at least) each patent is not of the gene itself, but of its use for a particular purpose.  A recent example in the news was the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19294050&quot;&gt;Myriad Genetics patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes&lt;/a&gt;, linked to diagnosing breast cancer, which were upheld by the US Federal Circuit Court of Appeals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is not ownership in the standard sense.  The company cannot sue you if you reproduce &lt;em&gt;your genes&lt;/em&gt; in the natural way.  Nor can you sue the company if one of &lt;em&gt;their genes&lt;/em&gt; in your body damages you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may also be copyright issues if you have your full DNA sequenced and &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2221&amp;amp;context=vulr&quot;&gt;that too has been discussed&lt;/a&gt;.  But it is much less likely to be a significant issue, as you can always have it resequenced, rather in the way a photograph of a mountain may be copyrighted but this does not prevent a different photograph of the same mountain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-24T23:37:05.840" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T23:37:05.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12357" CreationDate="2012-10-24T21:38:04.330" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Short Answer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO,&lt;/strong&gt; none of the data nor the &quot;analysis&quot; can predict effectively the earthquakes, because that impossible with our current detection capabilities and understanding of the earthquakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Long Answer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, what is a &quot;Scientific earthquake predictions&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientific earthquake predictions should state where, when, how big,&#xA;  and how probable the predicted event is, and why the prediction is&#xA;  made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ess.washington.edu/SEIS/PNSN/INFO_GENERAL/eq_prediction.html&quot;&gt;R. Ludwin Reference on The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let`s review each part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;where:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;We already know where the earthquake occurs, based on  list of prior earthquakes and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics&quot;&gt;Plate tectonics&lt;/a&gt;, but we can`t pinpoint the place of the next one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;when and how big:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;in  the same way you can check the statistic world wide &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and speculate about time intervals and such, but will be gambler fallacy state a date for a earthquake with 100% certainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;how probable:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;That depends of the method of predictions, as I state before, there is none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;why:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;even when we know &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake&quot;&gt;why an earthquake&lt;/a&gt; occurs, put this knowledge to use in predictions is sparse to say at least, there isn`t a practical way  to probe vast regions of the earth with stress sensors at such depths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despise all of this a statistic/&quot;finite element&quot; model, based on a well know area like California and with extensive computational power can &lt;strong&gt;forecast&lt;/strong&gt; earthquakes, but with &quot;not-so-impresive&quot; results (not useful for prevent deaths or evacuate people), best forecasts are about 10 times more accurate than a random prediction (seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2011-306&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://quakesim.org/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10025&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), still yielding results like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While all the forecasts showed some success in forecasting the&#xA;  locations of likely earthquakes, the NASA-funded UC Davis forecast&#xA;  team, which included Andrea Donnellan of NASA's Jet Propulsion&#xA;  Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., was found to be the most accurate at&#xA;  picking the quake locations. It correctly labeled 17 of the 22&#xA;  affected grids, and gave the highest probability of an earthquake in&#xA;  eight of these 17.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;reference &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2011-306&quot;&gt;nasa page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;California Has More Than 99% Chance Of A Big Earthquake Within 30&#xA;  Years, Report Shows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;reference &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080414203459.htm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, based on data from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=1914#.UIhWaIa57o5&quot;&gt;USGS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scientific community have studied many variables to find some form to predict earthquakes, from very long ago, like in &lt;strong&gt;radon analysis&lt;/strong&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientists studied radon as a possible earthquake warning signal as&#xA;  far back as the 1970s, and while they found convincing cases of radon&#xA;  releases before some earthquakes — for example, levels of radon in&#xA;  groundwater were 10 times normal before the earthquake that hit Kobe,&#xA;  Japan, in 1995 — the correlations were not strong enough or clear&#xA;  enough for useful &lt;strong&gt;predictions&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/science/14quak.html?_r=1&quot;&gt;NY times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in the same way a &lt;strong&gt;precursor&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;earthquake swarm&quot; or &quot;foreshock earthquakes&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreshock&quot;&gt;Wikipedia definition&lt;/a&gt;), are a big series of minor but very frequent minor earthquake, can be a energy release or a big earthquake precursor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The worry is that one of these small earthquakes could cascade into a&#xA;  big earthquake like the one that badly damaged Basel in 1356.&#xA;  Conversely, the small earthquakes could instead be relieving stress&#xA;  along a fault, reducing the likelihood of a larger quake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/science/14quak.html?_r=1&quot;&gt;NY times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;another reference about this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, most earthquakes lack obvious foreshock patterns and this&#xA;  method has not proved useful, as most small earthquakes are not&#xA;  foreshocks, leading to probable false alarms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ess.washington.edu/SEIS/PNSN/INFO_GENERAL/eq_prediction.html&quot;&gt;reference&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And we can go on and on and on about so many methods like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strain-rate changes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seismic velocity changes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Electrical conductivity changes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hydrological changes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Electromagnetic signals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thermal anomalies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anomalous animal behavior.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Seismicity patterns.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Proxies for accelerating strain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but in the end, nothing past beyond anecdotal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The search for diagnostic precursors has thus far been unsuccessful.&#xA;  This silver-bullet strategy for earthquake prediction is predicated on&#xA;  two hypotheses: (1) large earthquakes are the culmination of&#xA;  progressive deformation sequences with diagnostic precursory changes&#xA;  in the regional stress and strain fields, and (2) diagnostic&#xA;  information about an impending earthquake can be extracted from&#xA;  observations that are sensitive to these precursory stress and strain&#xA;  changes. Neither of these hypotheses has been empirically validated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annalsofgeophysics.eu/index.php/annals/article/download/5350/5371&quot;&gt;reference PDF&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annalsofgeophysics.eu/index.php/annals/article/view/5350&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, something very interesting about this paper &lt;em&gt;it was made specifically  for  Làquila incident&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More info about earthquake prediction can be found in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_prediction&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, even when is a wikipedia article this is &lt;strong&gt;very well&lt;/strong&gt; referenced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, there no way to predict or forecast earthquake in a meaningful way to prevent loss of life or mitigate his effects without incurring a BIG financial loss by false positives or loss of credibility in authorities or scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About the imprisonment&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;all the seven people, 6 scientists and a civil servant were, judged and convicted as a a whole, without regard for who said what:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The prosecution have not distinguished between the different&#xA;  defendants' actions or words. To be prosecuted for other people's&#xA;  miscommunication of your scientific advice is a travesty.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/22/laquila-earthquake-trial-verdict-uk-reaction_n_2001964.html&quot;&gt;The Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but above all for a terrible and gross miscommunication, never amended by those scientist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Employed by Italy's Major Hazards Committee to assess earthquake risks&#xA;  and communicate them to the government and the public, the&#xA;  seismologists got the science right, but left the job of public&#xA;  communication to a civil protection official with no specialist&#xA;  knowledge of seismology. His statement to the press was, to put it&#xA;  mildly, a grossly inaccurate reflection of the situation: &quot;The&#xA;  scientific community tells us there is no danger, because there is an&#xA;  ongoing discharge of energy. The situation looks favorable.&quot; At this&#xA;  point, the seismologists should have stepped in. But they did not, and&#xA;  the message stuck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22416-italian-earthquake-case-is-no-antiscience-witchhunt.html&quot;&gt;New Scientist&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well maybe being absent during this statement help to overlook this terrible misinterpretation for many of them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Immediately after that meeting, De Bernardinis and Barberi, acting&#xA;  president of the committee, held a press conference in L'Aquila, where&#xA;  De Bernardinis told reporters that &quot;the scientific community tells us&#xA;  there is no danger, because there is an ongoing discharge of energy.&#xA;  The situation looks favorable&quot;. No other members of the committee were&#xA;  at the press conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100622/full/465992a.html&quot;&gt;Nature&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Afterthoughts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another angles not seen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why the Italians, living in a seismic country, keep un-reinforced building inhabited? the tourism is worth the risk?&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Italy&quot;&gt;The centuries old list of earthquakes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why the Italians, living in a seismic country and in no seismic-resistant building, believe the authorities about &quot;you can sleep quietly, no earthquake&quot; statement? is to blame the lack of culture?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why blame the seismic expert instead the builder? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Why the Italian seismic expert never refute the &quot;there no danger&quot; statement?.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My last thought&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;would be terrible that we need to extend the CYA (Covert Your Ass) policy outside of USA.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can we blame the weather-cast announcer/scientists for the car accident occurred by his &quot;inexact, incomplete and contradictory information&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have to proof-read more this answer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7676" LastEditorUserId="5973" LastEditDate="2012-10-25T00:37:13.183" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T00:37:13.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12384" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2847" CreationDate="2012-10-24T22:31:42.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can the human make earthquakes? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course we can, it easy that many think:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By geothermal energy production &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/Home/Archive/Man-made_tremor_shakes_Basel.html?cid=46232&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thanks a Banjol for the link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By gas extraction by fracking &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/04/17/environment-fracking-earthquake-studies.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Link here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By groundwater extraction &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20025807&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reference here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By underground nuclear test like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.org/faspir/pir1197.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Small Earthquake Near Russian Test Site&#xA;Leads to U.S. Charges of Cheating on Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty&lt;/a&gt;, many of those are for &quot;Subsidence/colapse crater&quot; as you can check the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_nuclear_testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, rather than actual earthquakes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can any of those methods be weaponized?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nope so much, even for the &quot;already weaponized one&quot;, those are small geoengineering projects (reads as gigantic endeavors of massive size and cost) a bit off-place for a &quot;earthquake bomb&quot; (in layman's terms too little bang for the buck).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but that doesn`t stop the british and north americans to name  his bombs as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_bomb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Earthquake bombs&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, when in fact are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Ordnance_Penetrator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Massive Ordnance Penetrator&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7676" LastActivityDate="2012-10-24T22:31:42.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7202" CreationDate="2012-10-25T08:38:14.197" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The effect of diet on acne has had a bit of a back-and-forth history in the literature:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Historically, the relationship between diet and acne has been highly controversial. Before the 1960s, certain foods were thought to exacerbate acne. However, subsequent studies dispelled these alleged associations as myth for almost half a century. Several studies during the last decade have prompted dermatologists to revisit the potential link between diet and acne. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Source: Bowe WP, Joshi SS, Shalita AR. J &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20338665&quot;&gt;Diet and acne.&lt;/a&gt; Am Acad Dermatol. 2010 Jul;63(1):124-41. Epub 2010 Mar 24.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A systematic review in 2004 warned doctors of being too sure that diet had no effect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given the prevalence of lay perceptions, and the confidence of dermatological opinion in rebutting these perceptions as myths and misconceptions, surprisingly little evidence exists for the efficacy or lack of efficacy of dietary factors, face-washing and sunlight exposure in the management of acne. Much of the available evidence has methodological limitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusions. Based on the present state of evidence, clinicians cannot be didactic in their recommendations regarding diet, hygiene and face-washing, and sunlight to patients with acne. Advice should be individualized, and both clinician and patient cognizant of its limitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Source: Parker Magin, Dimity Pond, Wayne Smith and Alan Watson, &lt;a href=&quot;http://fampra.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/1/62.short&quot;&gt;A systematic review of the evidence for ‘myths and misconceptions’ in acne management: diet, face-washing and sunlight&lt;/a&gt; Family Practice (2005) 22 (1): 62-70. doi: 10.1093/fampra/cmh715]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By 2009, the science was in to make some more clear statements about the effects of diet on acne, contradicting some earlier reviews:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Acne causation foods:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;High-glycemic-load diet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Dairy (skimmed, chocolate, or total milk)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Not acne causation foods:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Salt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Iodine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h3&gt;Inconclusive:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Chocolate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Saturated fatty acids&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;This is a reformatted version of Table 2, in the source below, because Markdown has no tables&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[Source: Elsa H. Spencer, Hope R. Ferdowsian, Neal D. Barnard, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-4632.2009.04002.x/full&quot;&gt;Diet and acne: a review of the evidence&lt;/a&gt; International Journal of Dermatology, Volume 48, Issue 4, pages 339–347, April 2009, DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-4632.2009.04002.x]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back the first reference (Bowe et al), this 2010 review drew similar conclusions about the role of diet and the link with high-glycaemic load and dairy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dermatologists can no longer dismiss the association between diet and acne. Compelling evidence exists that high glycemic load diets may exacerbate acne. Dairy ingestion appears to be weakly associated with acne, and the roles of omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, zinc, vitamin A, and dietary fiber remain to be elucidated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't clear what foods count as &quot;oily&quot; in the original question. If it refers to saturated fatty acids, omega-3 fatty acids (or chocolate), the evidence is still not conclusive. If it refers to food that also happens to have a high-glycemic index or contains cheese (i.e. dairy), it may well be linked to acne problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-10-25T08:38:14.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12388" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12390" CreationDate="2012-10-25T18:41:47.767" Score="41" ViewCount="27479" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does Disney really have the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=disney%20%22largest%20navy%22&quot;&gt;world's third/fourth/fifth/sixth/seventh largest &quot;navy&quot;&lt;/a&gt;? I've often seen this claim being bandied about on trivia sites and the like. But there are never any credible sources backing it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T13:38:57.677" Title="Does Disney have the third largest navy in the world?" Tags="|water|military|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12388" CreationDate="2012-10-26T01:22:47.020" Score="58" Body="&lt;p&gt;By most standards, the answer is no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;navy&lt;/em&gt;, strictly defined, is an armed force for prosecuting warfare on bodies of water. The Walt Disney Company has no known ships that would meet this definition. For the sake of discussion, of course, we'll take &lt;em&gt;navy&lt;/em&gt; as a jocular synonym for &lt;em&gt;fleet&lt;/em&gt;, giving them a foot in the door. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second consideration is that a navy (or civilian fleet) may operate all manner of vessels, but will not include all of these in their fleet count. The U.S. Navy, for example, has not traditionally included mine sweepers or coastal patrol boats as combatant vessels (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/05/navy-warship-future-fleet-size-bob-work-050612/&quot;&gt;is reconsidering definitions in light of developments in warfare&lt;/a&gt;). Certainly, vessels under a certain displacement are generally excluded from consideration regardless of role, although there is no universally accepted cutoff. Mounting a machine gun at the bow of a dinghy will not likely satisfy maritime spotters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But let us count the vessels operated by the various branches of the Walt Disney Company that would meet a fairly broad definition of &quot;ship&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disney Cruise Line, a wholly owned subsidiary, currently operates &lt;a href=&quot;http://disneycruise.disney.go.com/ships-activities/ships/&quot;&gt;four cruise ships&lt;/a&gt;: the &lt;em&gt;Disney Magic&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Disney Wonder&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Disney Dream&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;Disney Fantasy&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For actual guest transport, Walt Disney World is served by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wdwmagic.com/transportation/ferry-boats.htm&quot;&gt;three &quot;ferryboats&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wdwmagic.com/transportation/cruiser-boats.htm&quot;&gt;two &quot;motor cruisers&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wdwmagic.com/transportation/friendship-cruisers.htm&quot;&gt;eight &quot;friendship cruisers&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wdwmagic.com/transportation/sassagoula-river-cruise.htm&quot;&gt;seven River Cruise ships&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wdwmagic.com/transportation/launch-boats.htm&quot;&gt;six water taxies (&quot;launches&quot;)&lt;/a&gt;, and two &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wdwmagic.com/transportation/disney-vacation-club-ferry.htm&quot;&gt;Vacation Club ferries&lt;/a&gt;. According to www.wcdept478.com, not a single one of these boats displaces more than 200 tonnes. No other Disney parks appear to operate water transport vessels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tokyo DisneySea has a &quot;Transit Steamer Line&quot; with 13 vessels&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As attractions/rides, the various Disney parks together operate five riverboats, eight &quot;submarines,&quot; plus the &lt;a href=&quot;http://disneyland.disney.go.com/disneyland/sailing-ship-columbia/?name=SailingShipColumbiaAttractionPage&quot;&gt;Sailing Ship Columbia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I exclude DisneySea's SS &lt;em&gt;Columbia&lt;/em&gt;, which I don't believe actually floats, and small craft like the &quot;Venetian gondolas&quot; and Davy Crockett/Beaver Brothers canoes that would never be counted in any trade accounting of a fleet's size. I count 61 total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_warships_in_service_worldwide&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's more strictly defined list&lt;/a&gt; gives these totals for navies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;United States 431&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PR China 425&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Russia 283&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Philippines 155&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Japan 109&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;India 103&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;United Kingdom 100&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;North Korea 98&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Turkey 85&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;France 72&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that the above listing includes coastal patrol boats and anti-mine ships but excludes support craft such as tenders and oilers). Disney would tie with the Republic of Singapore, certainly nowhere near the top ten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about private fleets? Numbers are harder to come by, as ships are swapped with greater frequency. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statista.com/statistics/197665/owned-and-chartered-ships-of-leading-container-ship-operators-in-2011/&quot;&gt;According to Dow Jones Statista&lt;/a&gt; at least, Disney would enter the top ten behind Hapag-Lloyd, but again only by granting them a much more generous standard for inclusion than the others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maersk 234&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mediterranean 194&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;COSCO 101&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PIL 97&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CSCL 90&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evergreen Line 88&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CMA CGM Group 88&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hapag-Lloyd 60&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NYK 54&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yang Ming 46&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike their claim to operate one of the largest monorail fleets in the world, which is verifiably true, the various figures that Disney operates the third-largest, fourth-largest, etc. ship fleets depend upon exceptionally loose definitions of &quot;ship&quot; in the same way their past claims to have operated the world's largest peacetime submarine fleet depend on rather broad definitions of &quot;submarine&quot;— if I recall correctly, their submarines never even actually submerged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8991" LastEditorUserId="6876" LastEditDate="2012-10-26T13:33:00.973" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T13:33:00.973" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12393" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-26T03:40:03.393" Score="13" ViewCount="663" Body="&lt;p&gt;A meta-analysis came out recently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Julia Mossbridge, Patrizio Tressoldi and Jessica Utts, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frontiersin.org/perception_science/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390/abstract&quot;&gt;Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt;, Frontiers in Psychology, Vol 3, 2012, DOI 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was authored and reviewed by researchers from reputable universities and the consensus appears to be that premonition to randomized stimuli is possible and reproducible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This meta-analysis of 26 reports published between 1978 and 2010 tests an unusual hypothesis: for stimuli of two or more types that are presented in an order designed to be unpredictable and that produce different post-stimulus physiological activity, the direction of pre-stimulus physiological activity reflects the direction of post-stimulus physiological activity, resulting in an unexplained anticipatory effect&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is of interest because it goes counter to standard conceptions of cause and effect. The question is, where is the problem with this paper? Or must we take this as evidence of a novel phenomenon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best explanation I have come up with is that when there are various unreported biases and errors in studies of this type they tend to accumulate in favor of the appearance of predictive prestimulus effects. I am interested whether a more satisfactory explanation is possible however since this is not a very satisfying refutation and could easily be erroneous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8997" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:58:17.393" LastActivityDate="2015-12-08T14:10:52.797" Title="Does this meta-analysis support premonition?" Tags="|esp|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7182" CreationDate="2012-10-26T16:19:03.327" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Interesting. I came to this question predicting I would find a long history of anaesthetic use in infants, lagging a little behind the adults (until the anaesthetics had been demonstrated to be safe and effective.) I expected that any doctors subscribing to the view that infants don't need anaesthetic would be maverick outliers. I found a lot of indirect evidence to convince me otherwise. Unfortunately, the ultimate evidence is behind paywalls or not online.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of anaesthesia in infants and children does go back many years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;T.C.K. Brown &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-9592.2011.03636.x/pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;History of pediatric regional anesthesia&lt;/a&gt;, Pediatric Anesthesia, Volume 22, Issue 1, Jun 2011.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This review article discusses some of the early research, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spinal anesthesia was used in children in Toronto by anesthetists in 1933 (12,13) and in Montreal in 1949 (14). Junkin commented on the lack of articles describing its use in children and, of those, he found them indeﬁnite and unenlightening in their brevity. Junkin used morphine and Nembutal for premedication and inserted the needle at L4–5 because the spinal cord reaches lower in infants than adults – an important observation. &lt;strong&gt;It was used from 2 weeks of age upwards&lt;/strong&gt; for a wide variety of cases including four thoracic operations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By 1950, Harry Curwen in Durban, South Africa,&#xA;was using caudals in neonates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review discusses much earlier studies in &amp;quot;children&amp;quot;, but I selected these examples to demonstrate they were anaesthetising babies (as opposed to 10 year olds. I am sure no-one denies they feel pain.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this shows some doctors considered babies needed anaesthesia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims that some doctors considered babies to &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; require anaesthesia comes from a number of sources, many of which cite references that I have been unable to confirm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1887206,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Time Magazine article&lt;/a&gt; cites &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.org/bio/13545736.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Robert Wilder&lt;/a&gt;, an expert on paediatric anaethesiology (I guess it is &amp;quot;p&lt;strong&gt;e&lt;/strong&gt;diatric an&lt;strong&gt;e&lt;/strong&gt;thesiology&amp;quot; as he is from the USA.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There was a whole series of papers showing that [giving anesthesia] was a bad thing to do,&amp;quot; says Dr. Robert Wilder, a co-author of the Mayo Clinic study. &amp;quot;One thing that is very clear is that kids who have surgery without the appropriate anesthetic have higher degrees of morbidity and, in some cases, even mortality associated with surgery compared to kids who have gotten the appropriate anesthetic.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whale.to/a/ruesch4.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;preface&lt;/a&gt; to the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B000FJGF82&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1000 Doctors Against Vivisection&lt;/a&gt;, Hans Ruesch cites the Lancet and Parade Magazine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the Lancet, Britain's most authoritative medical journal, could report with its usual professional aloofness in its January 31, 1987 issue that at Oxford's John Radcliffe Teaching Hospital eight premature babies had been subjected to open-heart surgery without any anesthesia. The controversy that flared briefly in a few press organs concerned mainly the question as to whether the babies had or had not received painkillers during the operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reported Parade magazine, USA, April 12,1987:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Doctors have struggled with the problem for years. At a conference of anesthesiologists held in Palm Springs, California, in 1970, a doctor stated that premature infants did not need anesthesia, just some adhesive tape to hold them down.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the strong partisan nature of the book, it would be better to see the original stories, which I haven't found online. (The Parade Magazine article has been cited elsewhere as &amp;quot;Ubell E.. Should infants have surgery without anesthesia?. Parade Magazine April 12, 1987: 18-19.&amp;quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the Second International Symposium on Circumcision, San Francisco, California, May 2, 1991, Dr David Chamberlain presented &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/second/chamberlain.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Babies Don't Feel Pain: A Century of Denial in Medicine&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hospitalized newborns, from preemies to babies up to 18 months of age, have been routinely operated upon without benefit of pain-killing anesthesia. This has been the practice for decades but was unknown to the general public until 1985 when some parents discovered that their seriously ill premature babies had suffered major surgery without benefit of anesthesia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chamberlain provides a long list of references to support his claims, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Several letters to journals with case studies from a couple of individuals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3694306&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A survey of neonatal intensive care units&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Discussion in the literature about the ethics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Studies looking at the benefits of anaesthetics in pediatric and neonatal intensive care units.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the dates, it is difficult to read the original sources, and come up with strong evidence that it was common practice not to anaesthetise babies, without getting up from my desk and actually visiting a decent medical library.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are many sources (both reputable and not) available online that make consistent claims, with references to precise journal articles to support their position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems safe to conclude that the original claim was right: that babies were commonly operated on without anesthesia prior to the mid-1980s, by western doctors who believed that this was the most appropriate treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-26T16:19:03.327" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2343" CreationDate="2012-10-26T19:07:41.590" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure if this is considered a good enough source, but in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B001PNVKS2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Season 3 Episode 2: &quot;Scuba Diver and Car Capers&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (free if you have Amazon Prime), the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/cars/top-10/car-myths/09.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mythbusters tested this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Discovery Channel TV show MythBusters tackled this question in a 2004 episode, shooting five bullets into the gas tank of a Cadillac. &lt;strong&gt;There was no explosion, not even a fire.&lt;/strong&gt; This raises the question of how a bullet would cause an explosion in the first place. To ignite gasoline, both heat and oxygen are required. If there's insufficient air in the tank, an explosion won't be possible, though an empty tank would be more likely to explode than a full one. And while a bullet is heated by the explosion that propels it, the bullet itself won't necessarily be hot enough to ignite gasoline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember seeing the episode, and they seemed to do a reasonable job testing it, using various fuel/air mixtures to see if they could get it to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also tried tracer rounds in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/episode38&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Mythbuster's Revisited&quot;&lt;/a&gt; episode, and also didn't manage to make it explode:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has already been proven that when shot by a normal bullet a gasoline tank will not explode. However, if a gasoline tank is shot by a tracer round from a great enough distance so that the round can ignite with air friction, it will cause the gasoline to catch fire. By the time this happened the tank was so riddled with bullets (from previous tracers that were fired too close to ignite) that there was no contained pressure, but &lt;strong&gt;the MythBusters surmised that had the tank been properly enclosed, it may have exploded; but overall it remains extremely improbable.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it's possible to ignite gasoline with tracer rounds, but really hard to get the tank to explode, since it loses pressure too fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean it's impossible, but the Mythbusters (who specialize in blowing things up) weren't able to do it &lt;em&gt;on purpose&lt;/em&gt;, so it's definitely not &quot;easily doable&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1434" LastEditorUserId="1434" LastEditDate="2017-03-29T15:46:40.340" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T15:46:40.340" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12403" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13683" CreationDate="2012-10-26T21:51:29.463" Score="29" ViewCount="2060" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McClintock_effect&quot;&gt;Menstrual synchrony&lt;/a&gt;, which claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Menstrual synchrony, also known as the McClintock Effect, or the Wellesley Effect [1] is a phenomenon reported in 1971 wherein the menstrual cycles of women who lived together (such as in homes, prisons, convents, bordellos, dormitories, or barracks) reportedly became synchronized over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the claim verified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9006" LastEditorUserId="892" LastEditDate="2012-10-27T02:38:28.140" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T16:57:27.773" Title="Do women who live together get synchronized menstrual cycles?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12404" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-27T00:05:37.920" Score="26" ViewCount="2203" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an obvious ethnic subdivision within Jews, between the Sephardic and the Ashkenazi. In several vaguely antisemitic websites (see for instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apfn.org/thewinds/library/khazars_2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailygrail.com/blogs/cnnek/2010/5/Documention-Zionist-Ashkenazi-Khazar-Jewish-Deceptions-And-Lies-The-Bibical-Jews&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=82216&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; ), but also in a completely un-anti-Semitic book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteenth_Tribe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Thirteenth Tribe: The Khazar Empire and Its Heritage&lt;/a&gt;, (Arthur Koestler 1976), there is this claim that the Ashkenazi Jews are largely descended from the Khazars, who converted to Judaism in the 7-8th century. The medieval conversion of the Khazars to Judaism is &lt;a href=&quot;http://dianarn.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/discovery-of-lost-capital-unearths-more-about-ashkenazi-jews/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;well accepted&lt;/a&gt;, and among other places, it is described in Yehudah Ha-Levi's famous 12th century classic, &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0805200754&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Kuzari&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some political baggage floating with this idea, since it tends to get interpreted as denying modern Jews a Biblically derived right to settle in Israel. This makes it difficult to get a straight answer from googling around. I would prefer to avoid politics, and I also would prefer to avoid anti-Semitism, just to settle the geneological question with unbiased research. I think that modern genetic tools should be able to easily trace the ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews, and determine the percentage of admixture of the central Asian, European, and Semitic elements, and tell us exactly what their genetic history was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to what extent are Ashkenazi Jews descended from Khazars? Can it be determined, or has the interbreeding diluted the genetic markers beyond any hope of reconstruction of those long ago migrations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to disclose my biases: my father is Sephardi, my mother Ashkenazi, and I don't think any person has any claim to any land other than a deed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6256" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2019-11-12T07:05:30.653" LastActivityDate="2019-11-12T07:05:30.653" Title="Are Ashkenazi Jews largely descended from Khazars?" Tags="|history|genetics|jews|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12282" CreationDate="2012-10-27T15:52:40.940" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vihart.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vi Hart&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi_Hart&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia biography&lt;/a&gt;) has produce a three part series of videos describing this phenomenon, called &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/ahXIMUkSXX0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Doodling in Math: Spirals, Fibonacci, and Being a Plant&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It explores the nature of spirals, Fibonacci and the patterns seen in plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14-NdQwKz9w&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;third part in the series&lt;/a&gt; describe how this phenomena can be explained with a simple model of growth hormone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this isn't a formal academic document, but Hart provides a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POKWkuwoihM&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;follow-up video&lt;/a&gt; containing appropriate references. If the goal of a good Skeptics.SE answer is to popularise scientific results, while retaining rigour, Vi Hart achieves this goal better than I ever will, so I am happy to defer to these videos as an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T11:29:34.637" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T11:29:34.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12411" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-28T02:17:21.897" Score="9" ViewCount="781" Body="&lt;p&gt;I been recently informed by my little sister who is in high risk for skin cancer and uses sun screen frequently that certain sun screens contain chemicals which are known carcinogens. I wonder if this is at all true and if so to what extent the amount of carcinogenic chemicals found in sun screen harmful. Could it be that they could cause similar harm as the sun rays? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there sun creams that dont use any chemicals that are carcinogens?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related articles: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.menshealth.com/sunscreen-controvers/2012/05/19/&quot;&gt;Does Sunscreen Cause Cancer?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.truthinaging.com/sun-protection/new-study-links-retinyl-palmitate-to-cancer&quot;&gt;New study links retinyl palmitate to cancer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.truthinaging.com/sun-protection/retinyl-palmitate-sunscreen-and-skin-safety&quot;&gt;Retinyl palmitate sunscreen and skin safety&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8106" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T11:05:03.057" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T05:55:16.290" Title="Does sun screen cause cancer?" Tags="|environmental-health|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12414" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12428" CreationDate="2012-10-28T13:21:32.223" Score="11" ViewCount="1261" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://subversivethinking.blogspot.com.au/2011/11/richard-dawkins-says-that-rape-is.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;following transcript&lt;/a&gt; between Richard Dawkins and Justin Brierley genuine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Justin Brierley&lt;/strong&gt;: When you make a value judgement don't you immediately&#xA;  step yourself outside of this evolutionary process and say that the&#xA;  reason this is good is that it's good. And you don't have any way to&#xA;  stand on that statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Richard Dawkins:&lt;/strong&gt; My value judgement itself could come from my&#xA;  evolutionary past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Justin Brierley:&lt;/strong&gt; So therefore it's just as random in a sense as any&#xA;  product of evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Richard Dawkins:&lt;/strong&gt; You could say that, it doesn't in any case, nothing&#xA;  about it makes it more probable that there is anything supernatural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Justin Brierley:&lt;/strong&gt; Ultimately, your belief that rape is wrong is as&#xA;  arbitrary as the fact that we've evolved five fingers rather than six.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Richard Dawkins:&lt;/strong&gt; You could say that, yeah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read or watched an awful lot of Dawkins' work, but it seems a little out of character for him. I would have expected him to talk more about the ability of humans to engage in rational thought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried googling for mentions of this discussion, but I could only find Christians mentioning it, rather than atheists or neutral sources mentioning it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the above transcript accurate (or largely accurate), or is it fake or misleadingly edited?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-06-14T14:07:34.863" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T14:07:34.863" Title="Is this conversation between Dawkins and Justin Brierley genuine?" Tags="|quotes|richard-dawkins|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10272" CreationDate="2012-10-28T13:59:12.673" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The handshake method, I believe, originates from Milton H. Erickson.  Here is an excerpt from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.karnacbooks.com/Product.asp?PID=27502&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Letters of Milton H. Erickson&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relation to catatonia: Briefly, so far as I can tell, there is no real relationship between self-induced trances and catatonia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recovered catatonia in excellent remission, trained to be a good hypnotic subject, impresses upon one most effectively the profound difference between catatonia and the trance state in the same person.  If that recovered catatonic, now trained as a hypnotic subject, is made to relive a previous catatonic state in the hypnotic trance, the hypnotic elements drop out of the picture as soon as he begins reliving the catatonic state and rapport is lost, and he ceases to be amenable to suggestion until he makes his own spontaneous recovery from this new induced catatonic state.  If, however, one succeeds in maintaining hypnotic rapport with the subject, it is impossible to get him to relive the catatonic period except in an obviously false way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, Brown's use of the word 'catatonic' is probably misdirection. I hope that answers your question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9023" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T14:10:40.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7933" CreationDate="2012-10-28T15:25:27.513" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The smoke wood burning can be bad for health but most of the damage occurs when done indoors in poorly designed dwellings&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/01/effects-air-pollution-health-%E2%80%93-attention-needs-be-focused-developing-world&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this letter&lt;/a&gt; from the BMJ summarises:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Globally however, human exposure to particulate matter (PM) in terms of the number of people, exposure intensity and time spent exposed varies greatly in different parts of the world. Only 1% of global PM exposure occurs in outdoor environments in the developed world with a further 9% occurring indoors in the developed world. 14% occurs outdoors in the developing world while a staggering 77% of human exposure to PM occurs in indoor environments in the developing world&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost one-half of the world’s population burns organic material such as wood, dung or charcoal for cooking, heating and lighting. This form of energy is associated with very high levels of indoor pollution and an increased incidence of respiratory infections, including tuberculosis, COPD and cataracts to name a few. The World Health Organization lists indoor air pollution from burning solid fuels as one of the top ten global health risks, responsible for 1.6 million premature deaths per year and 2.7% of the global burden of disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source for some of these numbers is a WHO publication &lt;em&gt;Fuel for life: household energy and health&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/indoorair/publications/fuelforlife.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;full text as pdf here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple summary would be that most of the damage from burning wood occurs when done in poorly ventilated indoor environments. Standing around an open air bonfire is probably not a big risk in comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-28T15:25:27.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6389" CreationDate="2012-10-29T10:29:12.743" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, checklists do make a significant difference in operating theatres in a variety of environments&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original research is reported in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa0810119#t=articleTop&quot;&gt;NEJM here&lt;/a&gt;. To put the results in context the article provides the following background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although surgical care can prevent loss of life or limb, it is also associated with a considerable risk of complications and death. The risk of complications is poorly characterized in many parts of the world, but studies in industrialized countries have shown a perioperative rate of death from inpatient surgery of 0.4 to 0.8% and a rate of major complications of 3 to 17%. These rates are likely to be much higher in developing countries. Thus, surgical care and its attendant complications represent a substantial burden of disease worthy of attention from the public health community worldwide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original conclusion are worth reporting directly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rate of death was 1.5% before the checklist was introduced and declined to 0.8% afterward (P=0.003). Inpatient complications occurred in 11.0% of patients at baseline and in 7.0% after introduction of the checklist (P&amp;lt;0.001)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The surgeon and writer Atul Gawande became so convinced that he wrote a whole book on the topic of checklists where he examined their history and value in areas such as aviation and sought to explain why they work. The book is &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gawande.com/the-checklist-manifesto&quot;&gt;The Checklist Manifesto&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and it is well worth reading for further examples and some convincing rationale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T10:29:12.743" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8967" CreationDate="2012-10-29T13:29:09.017" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;: The link between TA-65 and anti-aging is not substantiated by any evidence that meets accepted scientific standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An answer to this question was posted to this question by (now deleted) user &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/9030/ta-65&quot;&gt;TA-65&lt;/a&gt;, which answer purportedly affirmed the existence of a link between TA-65 and anti-aging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I reproduce the answer, properly down-voted into oblivion, as I believe it contributes to the conclusion about the merits of the claims made (although not for the substance of the answer that user TA-65 provided):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;YES ! And that proves scientific studies. In fact, the TA-65 is the only product of its kind to have scientific studies on human cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find more about that here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ta65doctor.com/blog/2012/10/19/ta-65-review/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TA-65 Supplement – Review and Scientific Research&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also read more about: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ta65doctor.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TA-65&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The circumstances of the answer suggest that it was made by a shill promulgating quackery. The user TA-65 seems to have registered solely for the purpose of answering this question. Both of the above links are to ta65doctor.com, a web-site that seems to exist only to sell supplements labelled TA-65.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking beyond the motivations of user TA-65, the ta65doctor.com website has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ta65doctor.com/research/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of research&lt;/a&gt;, that references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22683684&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beyond average: potential for measurement of short telomeres&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Aging (Albany NY). 2012 Jun 8. Vera E, Blasco MA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telomerescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/CNIO.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNIO scientists successfully test the first gene therapy against aging-associated decline&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;14-May-2012 Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncologicas (CNIO)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22493152&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shorter telomere length is associated with increased ovarian cancer risk in both familial and sporadic cases.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;J Med Genet. 2012 May;49(5):341-4. Epub 2012 Apr 6. Martinez-Delgado B et al&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21880373&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The load of short telomeres is increased and associated with lifetime number of depressive episodes in bipolar II disorder.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;J Affect Disord. 2011 Dec;135(1-3):43-50. Epub 2011 Aug 30. Elvsåshagen T et al&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=The%20telomerase%20activator%20TA-65%20elongates%20short%20telomeres%20and%20increases%20health%20span%20of%20adult/old%20mice%20without%20increasing%20cancer%20incidence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The telomerase activator TA-65 elongates short telomeres and increases health span of adult/old mice without increasing cancer incidence.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Aging Cell. 2011 Aug;10(4):604-21. doi: 10.1111/j.1474-9726.2011.00700. Blasco MA et al&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3094547/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Biologic function and clinical potential of telomerase and associated proteins in cardiovascular tissue repair and regeneration.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Eur Heart J. 2011 May;32(10):1190-6. Madonna R et al A natural product telomerase activator as part of a health maintenance program.Rejuvenation Res. 2011 Feb;14(1):45-56. Harley CB et al&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3101090/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;María Blasco: Keeping a cap on cancer and aging&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Interview by Caitlin Sedwick. J Cell Biol. 2011 Feb 7;192(3):370-1 Blasco M.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3001316/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Telomeres in cancer and aging.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2011 Jan 12;366(1561):76-84. Donate LE, Blasco MA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21211774&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aging by telomere loss can be reversed.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Cell Stem Cell. 2011 Jan 7;8(1):3-4. Bernardes de Jesus B, Blasco MA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20674573&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The role of telomeres and telomerase in stem cell aging.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;FEBS Lett. 2010 Sep 10;584(17): 3826-30. Flores I, Blasco MA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19261979&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Telomere shortening and aging of the immune system.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;J Physiol Pharmacol. 2008 Dec;59 Suppl 9:169-86. Kaszubowska L.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18718525&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Telomerase deficiency promotes oxidative stress by reducing catalase activity.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Free Radic Biol Med. 2008 Nov 1;45(9):1243-51. Epub 2008 Jul 30. Pérez-Rivero G et al&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18391173&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Telomeres and aging&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Physiol Rev. 2008 Apr;88(2):557-79. Aubert G, Lansdorp PM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20822369&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Telomerase induction in T cells: a cure for aging and disease?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Exp Gerontol. 2007 May;42(5):416-20. Epub 2006 Dec 19.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since they sell it, one would reasonably expect ta65doctor.com to put forward the best evidence in support of the association between TA-65 and anti-aging. Below is a synopsis of the conclusions of these papers. It is reasonable based on the analysis below to conclude that the papers cited fail to adequately demonstrate proof of the the claims put forward by the TA-65 website. Combined with the vacuous answer by the shill, it feels correct to conclude that at this time the link between TA-65 and anti-aging is as-yet unsubstantiated by accepted scientific standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT :&lt;/strong&gt; The only one evaluating TA-65 specifically is the last one of that whole list above (alternately titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045570/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Natural Product Telomerase Activator As Part of a Health Maintenance Program&lt;/a&gt;). Most of the articles are reviews of Telomerase functions (useless), studies done on mice (useless for humans), and one of the human trials only had 28 participants so its ability to discern information is limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the last study, here are a few excerpts to take note of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calvin Harley is one of the inventors of TA-65. He consults for TA Sciences and is personally taking TA-65 and is one of the subjects studied to generate data for this article. He owns stock and stock options in Geron Corporation, a company that is developing telomerase activators for therapeutic purposes and the company that licensed TA-65 to TA Sciences. He is co-founder, President, and CEO, and holds stock in Telome Health, Inc., a diagnostics company that will provide telomere- and telomerase-related assay services to the healthcare industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of the study for TA-65 has significant financial ties to the company producing TA-65. He's also participating in his own study, which practically ruins any chance the study had at producing clean data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While that tidbit alone isn't enough to write-off TA-65 completely, it should make anyone considering TA-65 &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; skeptical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of subjects at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months for most tests was 43, 59, 27, and 37, respectively. The age and gender frequencies of the subset at each time point were similar to those of the total baseline population (n = 114; 63 ± 12 years, 72% male).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The total number of participants was 114, but testing was incredibly inconsistent - with a low of 27 and a high of 59 (but never more than about half). That the authors didn't bother to strictly control who reported for tests and only keep those who were consistent about doing so (which is what you normally see for clinical trials - participant attrition over time until you have a single pool of subjects who completed all the exams/treatments), the results drawn from these numbers should be very suspect. I'd venture to call the results useless, but others might provide suggestions as to why they're not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting doses of 5–10 mg/day were considered safe on the basis of historical usage of extracts. Some subjects increased their dosage after several months on the product to 25–50 mg/day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there's that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Data from this study were collected primarily as a hypothesis-generating exercise because subjects were not participating in a controlled prospective study, and statistical analyses were not formally defined a priori.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and this, which isn't a huge surprise...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most striking in vivo effects were declines in the percent senescent cytotoxic (CD8+/CD28−) T cells (1.5, 4.4, 8.6, and 7.5% at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months, respectively; p = not significant [N.S.], 0.018, 0.0024, 0.0062) and natural killer cells at 6 and 12 months (p = 0.028 and 0.00013, respectively). Most of these decreases were seen in cytomegalovirus (CMV) seropositive subjects. In a subset of subjects, the distribution of telomere lengths in leukocytes at baseline and 12 months was measured. Although mean telomere length did not increase, there was a significant reduction in the percent short (&amp;lt;4 kbp) telomeres (p = 0.037).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally the meat of the whole thing. The results of the study show only that T-Cells who had short Telomeres benefited significantly, and that if you've never contracted CMV - your T-Cells might not benefit at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to believe the methods for performing the study are still valid, what you can conclude from the study is that the best affect you'll receive from TA-65 supported by evidence is that your Immune System will work slightly better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T19:06:55.807" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11224" CreationDate="2012-10-29T14:27:13.647" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, low self-discharge (LSD) NiMH batteries function as described. By the way, the Eneloop brand, by Sanyo, is not the only LSD battery on the market. Other LSD NiMH batteries are sometimes marketed as &amp;quot;hybrid,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;pre-charged&amp;quot; NiMH batteries. Duracell &amp;quot;StayCharged&amp;quot; and Panasonic EVOLTA batteries are other good alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the basic method of why these batteries self-discharge at such a lower rate than traditional NiMH cells:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every battery cell has an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anode&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;anode&lt;/a&gt; and a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cathode&lt;/a&gt;. Most batteries are just several cells placed together in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_and_parallel_circuits#Series_circuits&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;series&lt;/a&gt; (to increase voltage), or in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_and_parallel_circuits#Parallel_circuits&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;parallel&lt;/a&gt; (to increase capacity). It is common to see a combination of series and parallel to achieve specific voltages and reserve capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to keep the cells from shorting themselves out, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separator_%28electricity%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;separator&lt;/a&gt; has to be placed between the anode and cathode (negative and positive electrodes, respectively) that also allows the transport of ionic charge carriers, which are needed to complete the circuit during the passage of current.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more efficient this separator is at isolating and separating the cathode and anode from each other, the longer it will take to self-discharge the cell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A separator generally consists of a polymeric membrane forming a micro-porous layer. It must be chemically and electro-chemically stable towards the electrolyte and electrode materials, while remaining durable enough to withstand the high tension of battery construction. Their structure and properties considerably affect the battery performance, including the batteries energy and power densities, cycle life, and safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a thinner separator inside the cell provides the space necessary to increase its capacity, which leads to longer shelf life (requiring more time to discharge at the same rate) as well as longer application use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more efficient the separator is at trapping shuttle substances, the slower the battery will self-discharge. This is all evident in a study done some time ago:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The suppression mechanism of the self-discharge reaction in nickel-metal hydride batteries using a sulfonated polyolefin separator was investigated with sealed-type AA size cells. The experimental results indicate that a sulfonated polyolefin separator effectively suppresses the self-discharge reaction in nickel-metal hydride batteries by trapping nitrogen-containing redox shuttle substances. It is also found that a sulfonated polyolefin separator traps the shuttle substances as gaseous ammonia. In the experiment examining the influence of the amount of the shuttle substances on the self-discharge, the starting point of the self-discharge agreed well with the point at which the nitrogen adsorption capacity of a sulfonated polyolefin separator reached its maximum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1163/156856706777973673&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Suppression mechanism of the self-discharge reaction in nickel-metal hydride batteries using a sulfonated polyolefin separator&lt;/a&gt;, from the Research on Chemical Intermediates journal, Volume 32, Number 5 (2006), 453-459.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this answers your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: Yes, they last longer/self-discharge slower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9003" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-11T23:38:25.490" LastActivityDate="2022-09-11T23:38:25.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12414" CreationDate="2012-10-29T17:09:32.097" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The conversation did certainly take place in the interview linked to by Oliver_C. There is no sign on the interview of any editing, misleading or otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's a transcript from this 10 min long &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.premierradio.org.uk/listen/ondemand?mediaid=%7BFFAD6F7D-9F77-4045-9416-7D92377F84C6%7D&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;radio interview&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(excerpt above starts at 05m:29s)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/454/oliver-c&quot;&gt;Oliver_C&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a pure materialist who has often stated that everything is a product of time, chance and the laws of physics, Dawkins really doesn't have much choice but to agree that morality fits into that category too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T19:12:24.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12430" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-10-29T19:34:13.837" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2BpGsm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Richard Dakwins&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-19261235&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Born in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1941, Professor Richard Dawkins is one of the world’s leading scientific intellectuals, specialising in evolutionary biology. After undertaking his doctorate under the instruction of Nobel-prize winning ethologist Niko Tinbergen at Berkeley University of California, in 1967 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Zoology at Berkeley Dawkins returned to Oxford University, where he gained his degree, before becoming a fellow at New College, Oxford in 1970. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor Dawkins is an enormously successful writer. His first book, The Blind Watchmaker, published in 1976, was a huge success and has since been translated into 13 languages worldwide. His other books include: The Extended Phenotype (1982), The Selfish Gene (1989), River Our of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (1995), Climbing Mount Improbable (1996), Unweaving the Rainbow (1997), A Devil’s Chaplain (2003), The Ancestor’s Tale (2004) and The God Delusion (2006).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has won countless awards and regularly lectures around the world. He widely accredits Charles Darwin as having a profound influence on his life and work, commenting in an interview with The National Geographic Channel Online that Darwin was “the founder of really everything that I do…whereas some people make a discovery and they stumble upon it, Darwin devoted himself to making his theory clear, to listing all the evidence and spending decades of his life gathering the evidence so no one could doubt it.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://natgeotv.com/uk/dawkins-darwin-evolution/dawkins-biography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T20:06:44.953" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T20:06:44.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12431" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-10-29T19:34:13.837" Score="0" Body="Richard Dawkins is the former Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, a position he held from 1995-2008. &#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;A well known biologist and atheist, he's known for his selfish gene theory, his staunch defence of evolution through natural selection and his vocal support of atheism.&#xD;&#xA;&#xD;&#xA;Among his books are The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable, Unweaving the Rainbow and The God Delusion." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T19:34:13.837" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T19:34:13.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12432" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-10-29T19:52:23.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OpCqEm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Carl Sagan - from Wikipedia&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carl Edward Sagan (November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He spent most of his career as a professor of astronomy at Cornell University where he directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He advocated scientifically skeptical inquiry and the scientific method, pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sagan is known for his popular science books and for the award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which he narrated and co-wrote. The book Cosmos was published to accompany the series. Sagan wrote the novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T20:07:52.143" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T20:07:52.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12433" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-10-29T19:52:23.070" Score="0" Body="Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T19:52:23.070" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T19:52:23.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12434" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-10-29T20:00:58.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8WLwfm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Hitchen - Wikipedia&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British American author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades. Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as &quot;Hitch&quot;, contributed to New Statesman, The Nation, The Atlantic, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays, and concentrated on the subjects of politics, literature and religion. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure. Known for his contrarian stance on a number of issues, he critiqued revered figures such as Mother Teresa, and Diana, Princess of Wales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initially describing himself as a socialist, Hitchens began his break from the established political left after what he called the &quot;tepid reaction&quot; of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks &quot;exhilarated&quot; him, strengthening his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his criticism of what he called &quot;fascism with an Islamic face.&quot; His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not &quot;a conservative of any kind&quot;, and his friend Ian McEwan described him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A noted critic of religion and a self described antitheist, he said that a person &quot;could be an atheist and wish that belief in God were correct&quot;, but that &quot;an anti-theist, a term I'm trying to get into circulation, is someone who is relieved that there's no evidence for such an assertion.&quot; According to Hitchens, the concept of a god or a supreme being is a totalitarian belief that destroys individual freedom, and free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of teaching ethics and defining human civilisation. His anti-religion polemic, God Is Not Great, sold over 500,000 copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hitchens died on December 15, 2011, from complications arising from oesophageal cancer, a disease that he acknowledged was likely due to his lifelong predilection for smoking and drinking. His death prompted tributes and eulogies from a range of public figures, including Tony Blair, Richard Dawkins, Martin Amis, James Fenton, and Stephen Fry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hitchens&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T20:00:58.473" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T20:00:58.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12435" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-10-29T20:00:58.473" Score="0" Body="Christopher Eric Hitchens was a British American author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades. Known for his contrarian stance on a number of issues, he critiqued revered figures such as Mother Teresa, and Diana, Princess of Wales.&#xD;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-10-29T20:00:58.473" LastActivityDate="2012-10-29T20:00:58.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12437" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-29T22:57:52.047" Score="3" ViewCount="211" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10272/does-an-erikson-handshake-induction-induce-a-cataleptic-trance&quot;&gt;Does an Erikson handshake induction induce a cataleptic trance?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is &quot;instant&quot; hypnotism possible? Derren Brown apparently hypnotises with just a single touch to the neck and eyes. The subject then appears to be able to walk in a trance state - and can be directed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9036" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T17:30:39.777" Title="Is &quot;instant&quot; hypnotism possible?" Tags="|hypnotism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-11-02T08:30:01.030" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12438" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12439" CreationDate="2012-10-30T14:53:33.540" Score="25" ViewCount="8851" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the movies falling elevators aren't rare. However, given that elevators are protected by safety devices, is it even possible for elevator to fall?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user9045" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T15:06:03.690" LastActivityDate="2016-07-08T02:09:32.320" Title="Are there any known cases of falling elevators?" Tags="|elevators|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12438" CreationDate="2012-10-30T15:09:21.677" Score="31" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Falling Elevators&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are examples of elevators falling with fatal consequences&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the night of May 22, 1903, in Pittsburgh, PA, a large group of mostly young people who attended the Pennsylvania Electric Mechanical Institute were having a celebration party on the fifth and sixth floors of the Donnelley building. About 700 people packed the two floors for the ball, and at around 10 PM another group of seventeen passengers was loaded into the elevator on the first floor, bound for the party on floor six. Just as the elevator reached the floor, it suddenly let go and fell six stories, crashing into the elevator pit. The multi-ton elevator cable and assembly came crashing down onto the elevator, crushing the occupants. When the party goers heard the crash, they rushed to the elevator. In the panic, some nearly fell into the open shaft. Four bodies were pulled from the rubble and taken to a morgue. They were so badly mangled it was not until the next day they could be identified. So mangled were the bodies, they could only be identified by the cloths they were wearing. The others in the elevator, the youngest being only 3 years old, somehow survived. The accident was blamed on overloading of the elevator with 17 people when the maximum weight allowed for only 10-12.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://listverse.com/2011/12/23/10-tragic-elevator-accidents/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ten Tragic Elevator Accidents&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gendisasters.com/data1/pa/accidents/pittsburgh-donnellyelevatoraccident1903.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pittsbugh Donnelly Elevator Accident 1903&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reports attributed to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Weekly Sentinel, Fort Wayne, IN, 27 May 1903&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta, GA 24 May 1903&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://travel.usatoday.com/hotels/post/2011/10/celeb-packed-gramercy-park-hotel-elevator-plunges-four-stories/559561/1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Packed elevator goes into free fall at trendy NYC hotel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A late-night party at Gramercy Park Hotel in New York City for indie film &amp;quot;Janie Jones&amp;quot; last Thursday turned into a horror flick for 14 people - including the movie's star and director, the New York Post, New York magazine and others report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Party goers had packed into the elevator on the hotel's rooftop terrace and then made one more stop on another floor, when the elevator went into free fall - with the door partially open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It plunged eight stories before the emergency brakes stopped it, the stories say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Safety Devices&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elevators do have many safety devices, however maintenance workers will sometimes disable them to facilitate their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/27/suzanne-harts-midtown-ele_n_1304521.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Suzanne Hart's Midtown Elevator Death Due To Disabled Safety Device&lt;/a&gt; - Huff Post, New York, October 30, 2012&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/elevator-work-blamed-in-death-of-suzanne-hart/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elevator Work Blamed in Death of Suzanne Hart&lt;/a&gt; - New York Times January 23, 2012&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems possible that, in recent decades, being crushed or decapitated in an elevator doorway by unexpected elevator motion is more likely than dying in a falling elevator car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-10-30T16:21:58.943" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-30T18:40:19.583" Score="15" ViewCount="1984" Body="&lt;p&gt;People often talk about the indirect value of &quot;raising awareness&quot; or &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_raising&quot;&gt;consciousness raising&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For issues that most people already know about (like cancer), is there value to raising awareness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user9048" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-10-30T23:05:20.860" LastActivityDate="2022-09-17T15:44:40.710" Title="Does &quot;raising awareness&quot; have a meaningful impact?" Tags="|sociology|charities|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12442" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-10-31T14:19:15.667" Score="6" ViewCount="3675" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today, I expressed guilt for eating a large, coconut-based treat, not in keeping with a balanced diet (but quite delicious). I was assured by a friend that coconut oil isn't fattening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/026808_oil_coconut.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Natural News repeats the claim&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coconut oil primarily consists of medium-chain fatty acids. These triglycerides can speed up the metabolism because they are so easily digested and converted into energy. Long-chain fatty acids, like those in polyunsaturated oils, are more difficult for the body to break down and use for energy. Instead, long-chain fatty acids are usually stored as fat in the body.Several scientific studies have exhibited these principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One study examined the effect of medium-chain fatty acids on metabolism. Participants' metabolism was evaluated before and after a meal rich in these fats. On average, metabolism increased by 48 percent. In obese individuals, the increase was as high as an astounding 65 percent. Studies have shown this thermogenic effect can last for 24 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported that medium-chain fatty acids were three times more effective at raising the metabolism than long-chain fatty acids. Researchers concluded that replacing long-chain fatty acids with medium-chain fatty acids was an effective method for weight loss. Another study from the same journal showed that eating medium-chain fatty acids increases metabolism and also helps burn off stored fat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that coconut oil is less fattening (or even slimming) because it &amp;quot;increases metabolism&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T00:25:48.300" Title="Can coconut oil promote weight loss by increasing metabolism?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12442" CreationDate="2012-10-31T18:24:08.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answer: Potentially yes. Probably still a good idea to avoid excess calories in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium-chain_triglycerides&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Coconut oil is composed of approximately 66% medium-chain triglycerides&lt;/a&gt; There are studies that indicate that MCTs may &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9570335&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hold potential as weight loss agents&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fatty acids undergo different metabolic fates depending on their chain length and degree of saturation. The purpose of this review is to examine the metabolic handling of medium chain fatty acids (MCFA) with specific reference to intermediary metabolism and postprandial and total energy expenditure. The metabolic discrimination between varying fatty acids begins in the GI tract, with MCFA being absorbed more efficiently than long chain fatty acids (LFCA). Subsequently, MCFA are transported in the portal blood directly to the liver, unlike LCFA which are incorporated into chylomicrons and transported through lymph. These structure based differences continue through the processes of fat utilization; MCFA enter the mitochondria independently of the carnitine transport system and undergo preferential oxidation. Variations in ketogenic and lipogenic capacity also exist. Such metabolic discrimination is supported by data in animals and humans showing increases in postprandial energy expenditure after short term feeding with MCFA. In long term MCFA feeding in animals, weight accretion has been attenuated. &lt;strong&gt;These differences in metabolic handling of MCFA versus LCFA are considered with the conclusion that MCFA hold potential as weight loss agents&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(more studies linked in the Wikipedia article)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: Citing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2739575&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2739575&lt;/a&gt; (Abstract):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To test whether excess dietary energy as medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) affects thermogenesis differently from excess dietary energy as long chain triglycerides (LCT), ten male volunteers (ages 22 to 44) were overfed (150% of estimated energy requirement) liquid formula diets containing 40% of fat as either MCT or LCT. Each patient was studied for one week on each diet in a double-blind, crossover design. Resting metabolic rate (RMR) did not change during either week of overfeeding. The thermic response to food (TEF) was greater on day 1 following a meal (1,000 kcal) containing MCT than following an isocaloric meal containing LCT (8 +/- .8% v 5.8 +/- .8% of ingested energy; P less than .05). Moreover, the TEF observed after a 1,000 kcal meal containing MCT increased significantly to 12% (+/- 1.3%) overfeeding. The TEF of the 1,000 kcal meal containing LCT was unchanged by five days of LCT overfeeding (6.6 +/- 1.0% of ingested energy). Energy expenditure during a 20-hour continuous enteral infusion of the diet on day 7 was also significantly higher with the MCT diet than with the LCT diet (15.7 +/- 1.7% v 7.3 +/- .9% of ingested energy; P less than .05). Our results demonstrate that excess dietary energy as MCT stimulates thermogenesis to a greater degree than does excess energy as LCT. &lt;strong&gt;This increased energy expenditure, most likely due to lipogenesis in the liver, provides evidence that excess energy derived from MCT is stored with a lesser efficiency than is excess energy derived from dietary LCT&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit2&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermic_effect_of_food&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TEF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the TEF increases. We get numbers of almost 100% increase in &quot;Metabolism&quot;. However even for MCTs the &quot;Metabolism&quot; only eats a small fraction of the total energy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at both studies: &lt;em&gt;weight accretion has been attenuated&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;excess dietary energy as MCT stimulates thermogenesis to a greater degree than does excess energy as LCT&lt;/em&gt;. That indicates that subjects may not have lost weight at all but only gained weight at a slower rate. Consumption of &lt;strong&gt;extra&lt;/strong&gt; coconut oil could still result in weight gain compared to not eating it at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/dining/02Appe.html?pagewanted=all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NYTimes&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/463320-problems-with-coconut-oil/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Livestrong&lt;/a&gt; both cite a &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutrition.ucdavis.edu/faculty/hwang/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Daniel Hwang&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are a lot of claims that coconut oil may have health benefits, but there is no concrete scientific data yet to support this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7716" LastEditorUserId="7716" LastEditDate="2012-11-01T14:48:37.257" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T14:48:37.257" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12442" CreationDate="2012-10-31T20:09:30.023" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR = Coconut oil increases metabolism &lt;em&gt;in the sense&lt;/em&gt; that it doesn't require your body to perform any additional work to metabolize the energy in the oil. Does it increase your metabolic efficiency overall? &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;. In fact, &lt;em&gt;greater&lt;/em&gt; weight-loss is evident with Long-Chain Triglycerides than with Medium-Chain Triglycerides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My emphasis in bold below...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Medium chain fatty acids found in coconut oil are absorbed by the GI tract (gastrointestinal) with ease. They do not require any pancreatic enzymes to break them down, which means less work for your pancreas. Next, medium chain fatty acids are shipped to the portal blood stream, directly to the liver, where they go directly into mitochondria without the use of the carnitine palmitoyl transferase, and are immediately oxidized for energy. MCFA (medium chain fatty acids) from coconut oil do not get packaged up with lipoproteins, and do not get transported to a variety of tissues and are not stored as body fat, they go directly to the liver and are metabolized for energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024320597011430&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(Life Sciences 62 (14): 1203-1215)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this article, medium chain fatty acids of 8-10 carbon long&#xA;  increases activity of lipase and thus absorb to the intestine at a&#xA;  much faster rate than long chain fatty acids. Study indicated that&#xA;  medium chain fatty acids do not need a lipoprotein for transport but&#xA;  can transport straight to the mitochondria via portal circulation for&#xA;  beta-oxidation. In this paper, other oxidative process such as&#xA;  omega-oxidation and peroxisomal-oxidation occurs in the liver. As seen&#xA;  before, long chain fatty acid need some sort of transport to other&#xA;  organ through the blood. Most often with long chain fatty acids, a&#xA;  carnitine shuttle is required to get the fatty acid into the&#xA;  mitochondria to do beta-oxdation. With medium chain fatty acids, a&#xA;  shuttle is not needed. Energy intake and stored from medium chain&#xA;  fatty acids &lt;strong&gt;metabolism is much more sufficient&lt;/strong&gt; than long chain fatty&#xA;  acids. Appoximately &lt;strong&gt;13% more energy intake compare to long chain fatty&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  *&lt;em&gt;acids&lt;/em&gt;* (Papamandjaris, Macdougall, Jones, p. 1209). We see than medium&#xA;  chain fatty acids &lt;strong&gt;metabolism is more efficient&lt;/strong&gt; in which the &lt;strong&gt;intake and&#xA;  storing of energy is greater than that of long chain fatty acids&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an abstract from another study involving rats:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261561406800063&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clinical Nutrition&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Volume 14, Issue 1, February 1995, Pages 23–28&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Protein and energy metabolism were examined in 34 partially&#xA;  hepatectomized rats (70%), receiving total parenteral nutrition (TPN).&#xA;  The TPN contained either long chain triglycerides (LCT) or&#xA;  triglycerides comprising both medium- (MCFA) and long chain fatty&#xA;  acids (LCFA) on the same carbon skeleton (MILT, medium- and long chain&#xA;  triglyceride). The rats were divided into 4 groups with and without&#xA;  glucose (G) supplementation: LCT+G, LCT-G, MLT+G, MLT-G. 3 days after&#xA;  surgery protein synthetic rate in skeletal muscle, as evaluated from&#xA;  in vitro incorporation of 14C-phenylalanine into muscle protein, was&#xA;  significantly higher in rats receiving MLT if compared to rats&#xA;  receiving LCT (p &amp;lt; 0.05). &lt;strong&gt;Rats receiving MLT lost significantly less&#xA;  weight during the study period when compared to the LCT group&lt;/strong&gt; (p &amp;lt;&#xA;  0.005). Increased leucine oxidation was observed in rats receiving TPN without glucose regardless of the type of fat emulsion used (p &amp;lt;&#xA;  0.05). In conclusion, when given to partially hepatectomized rats TPN containing both MCFA and LCFA exerts a stimulatory effect on muscle&#xA;  protein synthesis and preserves body weight better than an emulsion&#xA;  containing LCT only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For other information concerning Lipids and Energy Storage/Useage, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Metabolomics/Metabolites/Lipids/Energy_Storage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this wikibooks link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9003" LastEditorUserId="9003" LastEditDate="2012-11-01T13:28:05.297" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T13:28:05.297" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12440" CreationDate="2012-10-31T22:08:53.003" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2164-4918.1984.tb00255.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BAKER, S. B., SWISHER, J. D., NADENICHEK, P. E. and POPOWICZ, C. L. (1984), Measured Effects of Primary Prevention Strategies&lt;/a&gt; conducted a meta-analysis on 40 primary prevention studies in the context of education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For evaluating the effectiveness they defined the Effect Size to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pJ8AR.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pJ8AR.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where ES is the Effective Size - means the benchmark how well prevention helped, X_t the &amp;quot;posttest mean of the treatment condition&amp;quot;, X_c the &amp;quot;posttest mean of control condition&amp;quot; and SD_c the posttest standard deviation of the control condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their benchmark ist defined after &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldcat.org/title/benefits-of-psychotherapy/oclc/6085506&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Smith, Mary Lee, Gene V. Glass, and Thomas I. Miller. The benefits of psychotherapy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the interpretation format in Smith, Glass and Miller (1980),&#xA;the combined primary prevention ES (without outlayer) of .55 means&#xA;that a hypothetical person not having received a primary prevention&#xA;treatment but being at the mean of the control group on dependant&#xA;measures will improve on those dependant measures to a position .55&#xA;standard deviations above the mean after experiencing primary&#xA;prevention treatmeant. In terms of percentile ranks, this represents&#xA;an increase from the 50th to approximately the 73rd percentile. In&#xA;other words, persons not previously exposed to primary prevention&#xA;strategies similar to those listed in Table 1 should improve 23&#xA;percentile points after having received such a treatment. Different&#xA;figures are appropriate when making estimates for the the specific&#xA;subcategories of primary prevention strategies listed in Table 2 (e.g.&#xA;moral education, values clarification).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After explaining their benchmark, they define the performance indices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cohen (1996) suggested that the criteria for judging effect size&#xA;magnitude should be: .20 to .49 = small, .50 to .79 = medium, and&#xA;above .80 = large. Therefor, based on Cohen's (1969) criteria, the&#xA;overall primary prevention strategy effect size (.91; with outlayer)&#xA;and the effect size for career maturity enhancement (1.33),&#xA;communication skills training (3.90 and .93; with and without the&#xA;outlayer, repsectively), deliberate psychological education programs&#xA;(1.43), and deliberate psychological education and moral education&#xA;programs combined (.83) may be classified as large. Furthermore, the&#xA;overall effective siize for primary prevention programs (:55; without&#xA;outlayer) and those for values clarification programs (.69) and all&#xA;values clarification programs combined (.51) may be classified as&#xA;medium. Finally, the effective size for cognitive coping skills&#xA;training programs (.26), moral education programs (.42), substance&#xA;abuse preventions programs (.34) and programs blending values&#xA;clarification with other strategies (.37) are viewd as low according&#xA;to Cohen's (1969) standards. Readers should note that the number of&#xA;studies in several categories is relatively small, which suggests&#xA;caution in intepreting the comparison of strategies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wMcOe.png&quot; alt=&quot;Table 2&quot; /&gt;&#xA;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webcitation.org/6BpqwxjuN&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Permanent link, in case imgur is down&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I ain't no social science scholar, so take my interpretation with care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prevention helps on a general scale in the context of this meta-study.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it fails in moral education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it fails in &amp;quot;coping skills training founded on cognitive-behaviour modification principles&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's excellent in &amp;quot;communication skills programs&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it fails in &amp;quot;moral education programs&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it also fails in &amp;quot;substance abuse programs&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have to keep in mind that this meta-study is from 1984. Anecdotal evidence and personal expericen tell me that the &amp;quot;substance abuse programs&amp;quot; improved quite a lot in the last 30 years, and I bet that there are improvements in other areas as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.: Needs copyediting, I had to manually type in all the quotes. Also, since I ain't no expert in that field it'd be helpful if someone familiar with the topic could review this posting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6180" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-03-18T10:29:26.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12447" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12471" CreationDate="2012-11-01T00:03:11.300" Score="10" ViewCount="1638" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://specialoperationsspeaks.com/articles/facebook-censors-the-seals-release&quot;&gt;SOS&lt;/a&gt; and many small journals, Facebook censored a meme stating that President Obama refused to save the lives of former Navy SEALs in Benghazi. The meme simply stated, “When Obama called the SEALs, they got bin Laden. When the SEALs called Obama, they got denied.”  The meme spread virally throughout Facebook’s network and within in 24 hours almost 30,000 people shared and hundreds of thousands viewed the meme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their page is all patriotic and the meme links to a site that merely presents a donation form, so I'm not sold on their credibility. Also, dissing the big chief is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/21/anti-obama-navy-seals_n_1820404.html&quot;&gt;not-done&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwqZuEgNmoE&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;, simple air support could have saved them, but I don't think Obama has to personally approve that for every battle. Then again, top AFRICOM Leader General Carter Ham &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4W1LDSs5X4&quot;&gt;reportedly&lt;/a&gt; never got &lt;em&gt;orders&lt;/em&gt; to save them. Despite that video description stating that &quot;Barack Obama releaved General Carter Ham from his post at AFRICOM on October 18.&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.africom.mil/&quot;&gt;the USAFRICOM site&lt;/a&gt; still says General Carter F. Ham is commander.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="5079" LastEditDate="2012-11-14T00:49:44.893" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T00:49:44.893" Title="Did Obama refuse to help former SEALs in Benghazi?" Tags="|war|barack-obama|africa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12451" CreationDate="2012-11-01T08:49:56.360" Score="25" ViewCount="126868" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across the following unsourced claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FPnPP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Claim&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a male penguin falls in love with a female penguin, he searches the entire beach to find the perfect pebble to present to her. And when he finally finds it, he waddles over to her and places the pebble right in front of her. Kind of like a proposal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastActivityDate="2014-11-29T17:25:53.243" Title="Do male penguins search for pebbles to present to female penguins?" Tags="|ethology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12450" CreationDate="2012-11-01T09:59:51.270" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick search on Google brings up lots of pages like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gdargaud.net/Antarctica/PenguinFAQ.html&quot;&gt;&quot;The Penguins FAQ&quot;&lt;/a&gt; stating it is just a myth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I heard that when Adelie penguins are choosing a mate the male searches for the perfect pebble and presents it to the one he wants as his mate.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  It's a myth based on the fact that Adelie penguins build nests out of pebbles. And they build the nest while they do the courting, so it's actually partly true. I guess a penguin who doesn't bring any pebble wouldn't stand a chance, but any pebble will do and both mates bring them in!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find any specific peer reviewed study on this, aside from a couple of papers showing that (very unsurprisingly) hormonal levels play an important role in courtship and nest leaving in Adélie penguins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10094854&quot;&gt;Sex steroid and corticosterone levels of Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) during courtship and incubation.&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;em&gt;Gen Comp Endocrinol.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;1999&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20691185&quot;&gt;Should I stay or should I go? Hormonal control of nest abandonment in a long-lived bird, the Adélie penguin.&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;em&gt;Horm Behav.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;2010&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seaworld.org/infobooks/Penguins/reproduction.html&quot;&gt;Seaword.org&lt;/a&gt; gives a few clues (with refs) about courtship&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a. Courtship varies among the species. It generally begins with both&#xA;  visual and auditory displays. In many species, males display first to&#xA;  establish a nest site and then to attract a mate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;b. Most penguin species are monogamous (one male breeds with one&#xA;  female during a mating season) (del Hoyo, et al., 1992); however,&#xA;  research has shown that some females may have one to three partners in&#xA;  one season and some males may have one or two partners (Davis and&#xA;  Speirs, 1990).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;c. Mate selection is up to the female, and it is the females that&#xA;  compete for the males (Davis and Speirs, 1990).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;d. A female usually selects the same male from the preceding season&#xA;  (Sparks and Soper, 1987). Adélie penguins have been documented&#xA;  re-pairing with the previous year's mate 62% of the time. Chinstraps&#xA;  re-paired in 82% of possible cases, and gentoos re-paired 90% of the&#xA;  time (Trivelpiece, 1990). In one study of Adélies, females paired with&#xA;  males within minutes of arriving at the colony (Davis and Speirs,&#xA;  1990).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;e. When a female selects a different mate it is usually because her&#xA;  mate from the previous season fails to return to the nesting area.&#xA;  Another reason may be mistiming in returning to the nesting area. If&#xA;  they arrive at different times and miss each other, one or the other&#xA;  penguin may obtain a new mate (Davis and Speirs, 1990).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the idea that the male builds a pebble nest first and then starts the courtship fits in very well and Occam's razor would favour this one rather than some forced antropomorphisation of penguins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the same page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One medium-sized gentoo nest was composed of 1,700 pebbles and 70 molled tail feathers (del Hoyo, et al., 1992).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it seems the male would have to go on and on bugging the female a couple of thousand times to show her yet another pebble he collected...&#xA;This seems unrealistic and this behaviour seems not to have been reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We can conclude that, lacking further scientific proof, this is just another myth.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T09:59:51.270" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12450" CreationDate="2012-11-01T10:02:21.417" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its funny how we &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropomorphism&quot;&gt;anthropomorphise&lt;/a&gt; almost all animal behaviour that we find even slightly similar to our own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However in this case it's more akin to you bringing home a brick to your girlfriend for building your house, than scouting the local jewelery stores for a dimond ring perfect for her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gentoo penguins are less likely to stick together than  other penguins and can be found in small groups, sometimes with other species. Although they are not strongly attached to the same nest site (they have plenty of choice of sites) their pair-bonding is strong, and they usually mate with the same partner as the previous year. They nest on low hilltops or open beaches. &lt;strong&gt;When available, they make a nest with pebbles and other objects&lt;/strong&gt;, and sometimes use a scrape in the ground - but all nests are fiercely defended  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_antarctica/wildlife/birds/penguins/gentoo.php&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T10:02:21.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7021" CreationDate="2012-11-01T13:42:43.377" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/db/human-body/fecal-matter-on-toothbrush.html&quot;&gt;Mythbusters,&lt;/a&gt; your toothbrush is in danger no matter where you keep it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every time you flush a toilet, it releases an aerosol spray of tiny&#xA;  tainted water droplets. [...] At the end of the month-long trial, they&#xA;  sent their toothbrush collection to a microbiologist for bacterial&#xA;  testing. Astonishingly, &lt;strong&gt;all the toothbrushes&lt;/strong&gt; were speckled with&#xA;  microscopic fecal matter, including the [control toothbrushes] that&#xA;  had never seen the inside of a bathroom. The &lt;strong&gt;confirmed myth&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  unfortunately proved that there's indeed fecal matter on toothbrushes&#xA;  — and also everywhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know anyone who drops a deuce while standing up, so even if you were to sit down to relieve yourself, your toothbrush is in danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9003" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T13:42:43.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12450" CreationDate="2012-11-01T14:00:53.270" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Edited)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Edinburg Zoo they Genntoo penguins do:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edinburghzoo.org.uk/news-and-events/news/articles/news_0089.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.edinburghzoo.org.uk/news-and-events/news/articles/news_0089.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pebbles are very important to penguins as you'll see here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/UCTfEaGcw5o&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://youtu.be/UCTfEaGcw5o&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;youtu.be/px9-eBAdteM (can't add link)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you'll see there penguins do give female penguins pebbles, but not as a token of affection nor because they are shinny. Pebbles are gathered to form a proper nest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9070" LastEditorUserId="9070" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T09:44:59.983" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T09:44:59.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3729" CreationDate="2012-11-01T14:26:34.380" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-foot_braking&quot;&gt;Left-Foot Braking&lt;/a&gt; can, in certain situations, result in better/faster racing times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One common race situation that requires left-foot braking is when a&#xA;  racer is cornering under power. If the driver doesn't want to lift off&#xA;  the throttle, potentially causing trailing-throttle over-steer,&#xA;  left-foot braking can induce a mild over-steer situation, and help the&#xA;  car &quot;tuck&quot;, or turn-in better. Mild left-foot braking can also help&#xA;  reduce under-steer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In rallying left-foot braking is very beneficial, especially to&#xA;  front-wheel drive vehicles. It is closely related to the handbrake&#xA;  turn, but involves locking the rear wheels using the foot brake&#xA;  (retarding actually, to reduce traction, rarely fully locking - best&#xA;  considered a misapplication), which is set up to apply a significant&#xA;  pressure bias to the rear brakes. The vehicle is balanced using engine&#xA;  power by use of the accelerator pedal, operated by the right foot. The&#xA;  left foot is thus brought into play to operate the brake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is not as necessary to use this technique with Rear-wheel drive and&#xA;  All wheel drive rally vehicles because they can be easily turned&#xA;  rapidly by using excess power to the wheels and the use of opposite&#xA;  lock steering, however the technique is still beneficial when the&#xA;  driver needs to decelerate and slide at the same time. In rear wheel&#xA;  drive, left foot braking can be used when the car is at opposite lock&#xA;  and about to spin. Using throttle and brake will lock the front tires&#xA;  but not the rears, thus giving the rears more traction and bringing&#xA;  the front end around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In restrictor plate NASCAR events, drivers were known to&#xA;  left-foot-brake at times, particularly in heavy traffic situations.&#xA;  Rather than lift off the throttle, which could lose considerable power&#xA;  and speed (due to the restrictor plates), a mild tap of the brakes&#xA;  while the right foot was still planted flat on the accelerator, could&#xA;  help avoid contact and bump drafting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as normal road use goes, left-foot breaking can only realistically be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.honestjohn.co.uk/faq/driving-automatics-safely&quot;&gt;recommended for cars equipped with automatic transmissions&lt;/a&gt;, which have far less control than manual transmissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The problem with automatic transmission is that, unless the driver&#xA;  drives 'two footed', he or she has far less control over the car than&#xA;  over a manual – which is why we read of many deaths and injuries&#xA;  caused by 'out of control' automatics. What usually happens is that&#xA;  during the engine's warm-up phase, or if the engine has been&#xA;  over-fuelling, the electronic control unit raises engine revs to above&#xA;  the point at which drive is taken up in the transmission, and the car&#xA;  starts to move. The driver may then panic, attempt to brake heavily,&#xA;  but hit the accelerator instead of the brake, and the car either&#xA;  crashes or runs someone over. (The phenomenon even has a name: 'Sudden&#xA;  Acceleration Syndrome'.) You cannot predict precisely when the car's&#xA;  ECU will increase revs independently, so my advice is to only buy an&#xA;  automatic if you can teach yourself to brake with your left foot at&#xA;  least while [sic] manoeuvring, which keeps the car fully under control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9003" LastActivityDate="2012-11-01T14:26:34.380" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2628" CreationDate="2012-11-01T16:28:00.820" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on how much you trust media, but here is excerpt from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/28/rachel-corrie-verdict-exposes-israeli-military-mindset&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Guardian (&quot;Rachel Corrie verdict exposes Israeli military mindset&quot;)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Israeli military commander in southern Gaza at the time was&#xA;  Colonel Pinhas &quot;Pinky&quot; Zuaretz. A few weeks after Corrie's death, I&#xA;  (as the Guardian's correspondent in Israel) spoke to him about how it&#xA;  was that so many children were shot by Israeli soldiers at times when&#xA;  there was no combat. His explanation was chilling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At that point, three years into the second intifada, more than 400&#xA;  children had been killed by the Israeli army. Nearly half were in&#xA;  Rafah and neighbouring Khan Yunis. One in four were under the age of&#xA;  12.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I focussed on the deaths of six children in a 10-week period, all in&#xA;  circumstances far from combat. The dead included a 12-year-old girl,&#xA;  Haneen Abu Sitta, killed in Rafah as she walked home from school near&#xA;  a security fence around one of the fortified Jewish settlements in&#xA;  Gaza at the time. The army made up an explanation by falsely claiming&#xA;  Haneen was killed during a gun battle between Israeli forces and&#xA;  Palestinians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Zuaretz conceded to me that there was no battle and that the girl was&#xA;  shot by a soldier who had no business opening fire. It was the same&#xA;  with the killings of some of the other children. The colonel was&#xA;  fleetingly remorseful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar story from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deseretnews.com/article/874128/Are-Israelis-off-hook-in-slaying.html?pg=all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Associated Press (&quot;Are Israelis off hook in slaying?&quot;)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are Israelis off hook in slaying?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] on July 7 in the Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Khalil&#xA;  Mughrabi, 11, was playing soccer with friends, and around 7 p.m.&#xA;  rested on mounds of sand near the nearby Israeli-Egyptian border&#xA;  fence. Without warning, Mughrabi was shot in the head, with none of&#xA;  his friends hearing the sound of shooting, one of the soccer players,&#xA;  Osama al-Ahras, 13, told The Associated Press. Palestinian doctors&#xA;  said Tuesday that Khalil was struck by a large-caliber bullet. Two&#xA;  more boys, ages 10 and 13, were seriously wounded in the abdomen and&#xA;  testicles, respectively, doctors said. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16886-2004Nov27.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Washington Post (&quot;A Girl's Chilling Death in Gaza&quot;)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's a little girl,&quot; a soldier watching from a nearby Israeli&#xA;  observation post cautioned over the military radio. &quot;She's running&#xA;  defensively eastward. . . . A girl of about 10, she's behind the&#xA;  embankment, scared to death.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Four minutes later, Israeli troops opened fire on the girl with&#xA;  machine guns and rifles, the radio transmissions indicated. The&#xA;  captain walked to the spot where the girl &quot;was lying down&quot; and fired&#xA;  two bullets from his M-16 assault rifle into her head, according to an&#xA;  indictment against the officer. He started to walk away, but pivoted,&#xA;  set his rifle on automatic and emptied his magazine into the girl's&#xA;  prone body, the indictment alleged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This is Commander,&quot; the captain said into the radio when he was&#xA;  finished. &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Whoever dares to move in the area, even if it's a&#xA;  3-year-old -- you have to kill him&lt;/strong&gt;. Over.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-08-17T23:18:36.187" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T23:18:36.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12461" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="53190" CreationDate="2012-11-02T04:29:20.167" Score="9" ViewCount="2062" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my neighbors raised the topic of toxins in the dryer effluence from our buildings' laundry rooms.  That's not particularly surprising, but she claimed there was evidence that the trace toxins in the air are dangerous.  It sounded just plausible enough to to possible, especially given the volume of laundry done, but, given the source, I decided to check into it before I worried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turns out there are plenty of examples of people claiming this is a serious health hazard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.holistichelp.net/blog/toxic-chemicals-in-dryer-exhaust/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Holistic Help: Chemicals Found in Dryer Exhaust and There (sic) Toxicology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2022/03/26/ukraine-on-fire.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mercola: The Household Appliance that Releases 600 Potentially Dangerous Chemicals into the Air&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20210126193756/http://www.naturallifemagazine.com/0608/softener.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Natural Life Magazine: Are Soft Clothes Really Worth It?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130417063347/http://www.onechristianministry.com/healthy-life-585.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;One Christian Ministry: Clothes Dryer Vent Exhaust Poisoning USA Neighborhoods, Families, Children&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://invisibledisabilities.org/publications/chemicalsensitivities/whygofragrancefree/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Invisible Disabilities: Why Fragrance Free?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only basis for most of which seems to be, when they bother to cite a source, this 2011 study, &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs11869-011-0156-1?from=SL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chemical emissions from residential dryer vents during use of fragranced laundry products&lt;/a&gt; which did find toxins (again, not surprising). According to the  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.washington.edu/news/2011/08/24/scented-laundry-products-emit-hazardous-chemicals-through-dryer-vents/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;press release&lt;/a&gt;, they went so far as to call dryer effluence a pollutant.  There's also &lt;a href=&quot;https://cfpub.epa.gov/si/si_public_record_report.cfm?Lab=NERL&amp;amp;dirEntryId=44765&amp;amp;fed_org_id=770&amp;amp;SIType=PR&amp;amp;TIMSType=&amp;amp;showCriteria=0&amp;amp;address=nerl&amp;amp;view=citation&amp;amp;personID=862&amp;amp;role=Author&amp;amp;sortBy=pubDateYear&amp;amp;count=100&amp;amp;dateBeginPublishedPresented=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this older EPA study&lt;/a&gt; cited by the Invisible Disabilities article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I haven't seen is anything which says these emissions are actually dangerous to people in the concentrations that are actually present. Most of this seems like a lot of overreaching and overreacting, but I'd like to know more if there is more to know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4415" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-04-14T17:58:52.687" LastActivityDate="2022-04-19T21:57:11.110" Title="Are laundry detergent and fabric softener fumes dangerous to human health?" Tags="|consumer-products|environmental-health|toxicology|cleaning|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2628" CreationDate="2012-11-02T04:42:38.697" Score="-10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian kids?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. And, there is all kinds of evidence for this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Numbers&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most amazing is &lt;a href=&quot;http://rememberthesechildren.org/remember2013.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; which remembers the Palestinian children killed by the IDF. Here is the lastest that was killed in May 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amer Nassar, 17,of Anabta, West Bank, shot and killed by IDF soldiers while protesting the death of Palestinian prisoner Maysara Abu Hamdeya in an Israeli prison&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found the link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/firearms/20130501_killing_of_amer_nassar_and_jaji_al_balbisi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amer Nassar's story&lt;/a&gt; using Google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another great site that documents and cites its findings: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/children.html#source&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;If Americans Knew&lt;/a&gt;. It claims &lt;em&gt;&quot;1,477 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis and 129 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians since September 29, 2000.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; And, as it points out Isreael has been the target of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifamericansknew.org/stats/un.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;65 UN Resolutions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dci-palestine.org/content/child-fatalities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;child fatalities is the Defense for Children International (DCI).&lt;/a&gt; They define their number as representing &lt;em&gt;children killed as a result of Israeli military and settler presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory since the beginning of the second Palestinian uprising against occupation, or Intifada, according to DCI-Palestine's documentation. &lt;strong&gt;These tables do not include children killed while involved in hostilities.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; DCI also tracks Palestinian Children held without bail, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dci-palestine.org/content/child-detainees&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Palestinian Children currently being detained.&lt;/a&gt; Lastly, DCI-Palestine does a great job talking about other areas of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dci-palestine.org/documents/children-prosecuted-israeli-military-courts-%E2%80%93-update&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;institutional racism and discrimination towards Palestinian children&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zzcJH.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this infographic&lt;/a&gt; (maybe NSFW), it's produced with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dci-palestine.org/content/child-fatalities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DCI-Palestine data&lt;/a&gt;. They find 1,397 children to have killed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;262 aged 0-8, 231 aged 9-12, 447 aged 13-15 and 457 aged 16-17.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The total number is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/statistics/fatalities/any/by-date-of-event&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;corroborated largely by B'Selem which finds the number at 1,376 to be the amount of Palestinian children killed by Israelis.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also watch plenty of anecdotal cases that you'd expect with this kind of data.&#xA;* YouTube video: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLUJ4fF2HN4&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Israeli TV airs Gaza doctor's pleas after children killed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/01/16/us-palestinians-israel-doctor-sb-idUSTRE50F6ML20090116&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the incident was covered by Reuters&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;My girls were sitting at home planning their futures, talking, then suddenly they are being shelled,&quot; he said in a voice shaking with emotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-29T19:39:00.450" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T19:39:00.450" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-05-29T16:58:41.060" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12463" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12467" CreationDate="2012-11-02T07:37:05.587" Score="6" ViewCount="2864" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been brought up believing that humans have virtually unlimited memory storage (long-term memory capacity) at least to the extent that we won't have to bother ourselves with that in our lifetime.&#xA;I have read somewhere that we ought to have enough capacity for multiple lifetimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that we can store information a lot better than what we can recall it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also seem some attempts to quantify the storage in terms of bytes, usually around 1-1000 terabytes. This seems rather naive and I could not find how much bytes humans use on average in their lifetimes so it was further meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how much information can a human really store within long term memory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know whether it really is so big (limitless, seems rather implausible) and whether it can be quantified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9078" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-09T21:58:29.093" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T21:58:29.093" Title="Do humans have virtually limitless memory capacity?" Tags="|neurology|memory|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12463" CreationDate="2012-11-02T13:43:56.723" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much memory capacity does a tree have? If you punch a hole into the tree the tree stores the information of that punch a long time into the future by keeping the hole. It doesn't really make sense to quantify the amount of information that the tree can store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evolution didn't design humans to be good at recalling past events. It designed us to be good at doing things. Our brains are optimized to learn to deal with the world around us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learning a skill like walking means having to gather a lot of information about how to balance your weight. It's not useful to be able to remember every experience. The same goes for most information storage in the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://brainblogger.com/2012/08/28/interview-with-the-woman-who-changed-her-brain/&quot;&gt;Barbara Arrowsmith-Young&lt;/a&gt; was a woman who had a learning disability as a child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I reversed numbers and letters, struggled with reading and writing, and could make no sense of the relationship between the big and little hands of an analogue clock. Asked to perform the simple addition of a small two-digit column of numbers, I would randomly choose numbers from the left or right side. The logic of basic math, the concept of telling time, the ability to truly comprehend what I was hearing or reading: all eluded me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand she had a verbatim auditory memory and a visual photographic memory. It seems that those people who can consciously remember all the details don't manage to be good at recognising the relationships between the details.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding the relationships between details is important to make good decisions. If you understand that a mushroom is poisonous you don't need to remember consciously the time where you throw up when you eat the mushroom. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As most stored information is not stored to be consciously recalled it's difficult to count that information in a meaningful way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T13:43:56.723" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12468" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-02T13:59:07.130" Score="11" ViewCount="18314" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traffic has almost always been keep-to-the-left since at least the time of Rome until relatively recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some historians, such as C. Northcote Parkinson, believed that ancient travellers on horseback generally rode on the left side of the road. As more people are right-handed, a horseman would thus be able to hold the reins with his left hand and keep his right hand free—to offer in friendship to passing riders or to defend himself with a sword, if necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-_and_left-hand_traffic#History&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a popular story that Napoleon changed the rule of the road in the European countries he conquered from keep-left to keep-right. Some justifications are symbolic, such as that &lt;strong&gt;Napoleon himself was left- (or right-) handed&lt;/strong&gt;, or that Britain, Napoleon's enemy, kept left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/about_5475849_usa-drive-right-side-road.html&quot;&gt;article on eHow&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This practice was common throughout medieval Europe, until it was changed by the French. During the French Revolution in a bid to turn absolutely everything on its antithesis, the driving laws were changed to &quot;keep right.&quot; Napoleon quickly adopted the right-hand rule as law for two reasons--a display of absolute power in even the minutest of details, &lt;strong&gt;and the singular fact that the emperor was left-handed&lt;/strong&gt;-- according to Ed Wright's &quot;A Left Handed History of the World.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any basis for this claim? Did Napoleon forcibly introduce driving on the right side simply because &lt;strong&gt;he&lt;/strong&gt; was left-handed (or even because the olde enemy drove on the left)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T16:54:06.373" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T17:24:01.517" Title="Did Napoleon introduce driving on the right side because he was left-handed?" Tags="|history|road|france|driving|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12469" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-02T14:23:08.950" Score="17" ViewCount="6843" Body="&lt;p&gt;I frequently hear claims that Joseph Smith was a convicted con artist. While looking into this, the claim is usually in reference to being driven from New York for taking money to find some treasures supposedly hidden in some native american trove, which he then never found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When this claim is brought up to mormons, they categorically dismiss that Joseph Smith was a con-man, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does any record of this exist? Was he convicted? Where's the evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6775" LastEditorUserId="21255" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T03:29:59.267" LastActivityDate="2016-08-25T12:35:23.067" Title="Was Joseph Smith (founder of Mormonism) a convicted con-man?" Tags="|religion|lds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12469" CreationDate="2012-11-02T15:01:10.443" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an urban legend. No reputable source claims Joseph Smith was ever convicted of fraud. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I have removed my elaboration as it appears that this issue has now become controversial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://byustudies.byu.edu/showtitle.aspx?title=5004&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://byustudies.byu.edu/showtitle.aspx?title=5004&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peter Bridgeman, a nephew of the wife of Josiah Stowell, presented a written complaint against Joseph Smith at South Bainbridge, New York, which led to his arrest and trial as a “disorderly person.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.fairmormon.org/Joseph_Smith/Legal_issues/Trials/1826_glasslooking_trial&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.fairmormon.org/Joseph_Smith/Legal_issues/Trials/1826_glasslooking_trial&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was likely that the court hearing was initiated not so much from a concern about Joseph being a money digger, as concern that Joseph was having an influence on Josiah Stowell. Josiah Stowell was one of the first believers in Joseph Smith. His nephew was probably very concerned about that and was anxious to disrupt their relationship if possible. He did not succeed. The court hearing failed in its purpose, and was only resurrected decades later to accuse Joseph Smith of different crimes to a different people and culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omninerd.com/articles/The_1826_Trial_of_Joseph_Smith_Jr&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.omninerd.com/articles/The_1826_Trial_of_Joseph_Smith_Jr&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fawn Brodie’s biography of JS provides perhaps the most famous allegation concerning the 1826 event. She claimed, &quot;On the basis of the testimony presented, including Joseph’s own admission of indulging in magic arts and organizing hunts for buried gold, the court ruled him guilty of disturbing the peace.&quot;4&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lightplanet.com/response/1826Trial/1826Trial_Hill.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.lightplanet.com/response/1826Trial/1826Trial_Hill.html&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9rCAP.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Image of Court Bill&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9085" LastEditorUserId="6775" LastEditDate="2013-04-24T20:40:36.050" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T20:40:36.050" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12447" CreationDate="2012-11-02T15:38:10.937" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-cias-benghazi-timeline-reveals-errors-but-no-evidence-of-conspiracy/2012/11/01/a84c4024-2471-11e2-9313-3c7f59038d93_story.html&quot;&gt;the timeline posted by The Washington Post&lt;/a&gt;. The times listed are Benghazi time (EET, UTC+2) on the night of Sept. 11 and the morning of Sept. 12:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;21:40 - The U.S. Consulate in Benghazi calls the nearest CIA base for help&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;22:04 - A six-person rescue squad leaves towards the embassy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;22:10 - The squad negotiates with heavily armed militias located few blocks from the embassy; 3 Libyans join the party&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;22:25 - The team engages the attackers at the consulate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;22:40 - The safe room containing Ambassador Christopher Stevens is unreachable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;23:11 - An unarmed drone arrives over the compound to provide aerial reconnaissance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;23:30 - CIA officers depart under fire and reach the annex six minutes later&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;23:56-01:01 - The CIA annex is attacked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;01:15-04:30 - CIA reinforcements are stalled by bureaucracy at Benghazi airport&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;05:04 - CIA reinforcements arrive at the annex&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;05:15-05:26 - A new assault claims the lives of Woods and Doherty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;06:00 - The Libyan army arrives and evacuates the Americans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A rescue team was assembled, dispatched, and within sight of the embassy in 30 minutes.  So calls for help were not ignored.  Within an hour of the SEALs being killed, the entire rescue team, reinforcements, and the bodies of the dead (including 2 former seals; 1 from the original rescue team and one from the reinforcements; the ambassador, and his aid) had been evac'ed from Libya.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-11-05T10:38:06.890" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T10:38:06.890" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12472" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-02T16:12:19.870" Score="12" ViewCount="600" Body="&lt;p&gt;While reading David Nutt's book on the harms caused by legal and illegal drugs and how to minimise them (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Drugs-Without-Minimising-Harms-Illegal/dp/1906860165/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1351872009&amp;amp;sr=8-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drugs without the hot air&lt;/a&gt;), I came across a claim which reminded me of some previous questions on passive smoking here (for example this question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3562/is-secondhand-smoke-dangerous&quot;&gt;Is secondhand smoke dangerous?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that passive smoking kills 600,000 people every year. This specific claim seems to have been widely circulated but the reference in Nutt's book is to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WHO summary report&lt;/a&gt; which itself does not reference any studies. But it seems to have been repeated many times. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;general&lt;/em&gt; question about passive smoking is fairly well addressed in previous answers. But I'm more interested in this &lt;em&gt;very specific&lt;/em&gt; claim. Is is based on some published analysis? Is that specific analysis credible? Or has it gained widespread attention because it fits with the consensus rather than because it is a credible, well argued result?*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T09:48:33.090" Title="Does passive smoking kill 600,000 people every year?" Tags="|medical-science|smoking|epidemiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12473" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-02T16:22:39.177" Score="10" ViewCount="1429" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often heard people talk about to an &lt;em&gt;Apple tax&lt;/em&gt; in reference to Apple products (especially their Mac products). This is one of many references to Apple having overly high prices compared with competitors, and is particularly popular on-line. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of how this is worded, the following graphic illustrates one example of such belief - that Apple charges considerably more than the cost to manufacture&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YJm1Cm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;http://www.bhatnaturally.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/apple-tax.jpg&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for every proponent of &lt;em&gt;Apple tax&lt;/em&gt; existing, there seems to be just as many who are ready to offer a &quot;Apple products are higher quality and use higher quality components&quot; or similar answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not Apple products are higher quality or not is not what I care about. I am interested in the multitude of claims which essentially state Apple has prices ridiculously higher than other products, resulting in a &quot;tax&quot; or premium requirement to purchase Apple products in addition to normal cost, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does such a premium exist when purchasing Apple products - ie does Apple have abnormally high prices on their products relative to functionally equivalent products from competitors?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9086" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-11-06T16:43:11.750" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T16:43:11.750" Title="Are Apple products sold at a premium price?" Tags="|technology|marketing|economics|apple-inc|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12476" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-02T17:12:43.713" Score="23" ViewCount="3677" Body="&lt;p&gt;Microsoft employee &lt;a href=&quot;http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.07.windowsconfidential.aspx&quot;&gt;Raymond Chen&lt;/a&gt; says that an encrypted copy of Microsoft Bob is included on the Windows XP CD to take up space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Windows XP doesn't take up the entire CD; there is a lot of free space remaining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the story true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8342" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-02T22:07:55.343" LastActivityDate="2023-08-15T04:14:41.343" Title="Did the Windows XP CD include Microsoft Bob?" Tags="|computers|software|microsoft|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12468" CreationDate="2012-11-02T17:24:01.517" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked a very &lt;a href=&quot;https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/4484/why-did-people-in-some-countries-start-to-drive-on-the-right&quot;&gt;similar question yesterday on History&lt;/a&gt; and after reading more about it, I believe the answer is not absolutely clear. In any case, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=qfak8nsMNGIC&amp;amp;pg=PA16&amp;amp;lpg=PA16#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article from New Scientist&lt;/a&gt; seems to provide the clearest answer I've found so far. Rather than because of being left-handed, Napoleon seems to have been keen on changing centuries-long traditions for the sake of creating a whole new society, the purpose behind the Revolution after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was an obvious class distinction in France between the left- and right-hand sides of the roads. The aristocrats drove in their carriages up the left hand side of the road, forcing the &lt;em&gt;citoyens&lt;/em&gt; over onto the right. Come the revolution in 1789, and the declaration of the &quot;rights of man&quot; in 1791, the aristocrats had a natural incentive to keep to the poor side of the road, to avoid drawing attention to themselves [...]. Napoleon established the change more firmly by ordering his military traffic to take the right side of the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9090" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:47:51.013" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T17:24:01.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2628" CreationDate="2012-11-02T19:29:56.327" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The body of the question has this clarification (screenshot if you can't find it for some reason &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EJ6iv.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EJ6iv.jpg&lt;/a&gt; or if it's edited):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any statistics on that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let me try and answer that part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any civilian killed, especially children is tragic and it's hard to speak of it as cold statistics, but since it was requested, here is what I've gathered so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statistics are debated, each side is blaming the other for bloating numbers, so it's hard to tell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one hand, the general evidence I've found is that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Civilian casualty ratio&lt;/a&gt; for the Israeli Army is not higher (and some say even lower) than other armies in recent history. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Supporting evidence:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A testimony of a British Colonel to the UN (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&amp;amp;b=1313923&amp;amp;ct=7536409&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&amp;amp;b=1313923&amp;amp;ct=7536409&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Testifying before the United Nations, Col. Richard Kemp, a British&#xA;  commander, stated that: Mr. President, based on my knowledge and&#xA;  experience, I can say this: &lt;strong&gt;During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli&#xA;  Defence Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a&#xA;  combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.&lt;/strong&gt; Israel did&#xA;  so while facing an enemy that deliberately positioned its military&#xA;  capability behind the human shield of the civilian population... The&#xA;  truth is that the &lt;strong&gt;IDF took extraordinary measures to give Gaza&#xA;  civilians notice of targeted areas&lt;/strong&gt;, dropping over 2 million leaflets,&#xA;  and making over 100,000 phone calls. Many missions that could have&#xA;  taken out Hamas military capability were &lt;strong&gt;aborted to prevent civilian&#xA;  casualties.&lt;/strong&gt; During the conflict, the IDF allowed huge amounts of&#xA;  humanitarian aid into Gaza. To deliver aid virtually into your enemy's&#xA;  hands** is, to the military tactician, normally quite unthinkable. **But&#xA;  the IDF took on those risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More about this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Colonel Richard Kemp] spoke in 2011 about Israeli operations in the Gaza War. He said&#xA;  that a study published by the United Nations showed &quot;&lt;strong&gt;that the ratio of&#xA;  civilian to combatant deaths in Gaza was by far the lowest in any&#xA;  asymmetric conflict in the history of warfare.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; He stated that this&#xA;  ratio was less than 1:1, and compared it favorably to the estimated&#xA;  ratios in NATO operations in Afghanistan (3:1), western campaigns in&#xA;  Iraq and Kosovo (believed to be 4:1), and the conflicts in Chechnya&#xA;  and Serbia (much higher than 4:1, according to anecdotal evidence).&#xA;  Kemp argued that the low ratio was achieved through &lt;strong&gt;unprecedented&#xA;  measures by the IDF to minimize civilian casualties&lt;/strong&gt;, which included&#xA;  providing warnings to the population via telephone calls, radio&#xA;  broadcasts and leaflets, as well as granting pilots the discretion to&#xA;  abort a strike if they perceived too great a risk of civilian&#xA;  casualties. He also stated that the civilian casualties that did occur&#xA;  could be seen in light of Hamas' tactical use of Gazan civilians &quot;as&#xA;  human shields, to hide behind, to stand between Israeli forces and&#xA;  their own fighters&quot; and strategic use of them for exploitation of&#xA;  their deaths in the media&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And more from the same &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The UN estimate&lt;/strong&gt; that there has been an &lt;strong&gt;average three-to-one ratio of&#xA;  civilian to combatant deaths in such conflicts worldwide.&lt;/strong&gt; Three&#xA;  civilians for every combatant killed. That is the estimated ratio in&#xA;  Afghanistan: three to one. In Iraq, and in Kosovo, it was worse: the&#xA;  ratio is believed to be four-to-one. Anecdotal evidence suggests the&#xA;  ratios were very much higher in Chechnya and Serbia. &lt;strong&gt;In Gaza, it was&#xA;  less than one-to-one&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even using B'Tselem's statistics which are not the official IDF statistics, the Civilian casualty ratio for Israel is still the same or better than other armed conflicts in recent history (e.g. the Israeli army is statistically not killing more civilians than the US army, Russian army, UK army etc, and some say even less)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand there are claims that the numbers are different, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Gaza_War&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the above article includes some criticism that the numbers reported by Hamas are inaccurate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Difficulties in ascertaining an accurate Palestinian casualty count&#xA;  have been attributed to a number of factors. It was reported that&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Hamas fighters had been ordered not to wear military uniforms during&#xA;  the fighting&lt;/strong&gt;.[15][16] Israeli-Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh wrote&#xA;  in The Jerusalem Post that &lt;strong&gt;this practice led to the over-counting of&#xA;  civilian casualties and under-counting Hamas military casualties&lt;/strong&gt;, as&#xA;  Palestinian casualties &lt;strong&gt;arrived at hospitals without weapons or any&#xA;  other signs revealing they were actually fighters&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And claims that even Hamas themselves have conflicting reports (from the same article)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In an interview published in the London-based Arabic newspaper Al&#xA;  Hayat (November 1, 2010), Hamas interior minister Fathi Hammad stated&#xA;  that around 700 of the Gaza fatalities were Hamas fighters or&#xA;  militants from allied groups such as Islamic Jihad. Between 200 to 300&#xA;  of these were from Hamas, and a similar number were from other&#xA;  militant groups, along with about 150 security forces. &lt;strong&gt;These figures&#xA;  differ dramatically from those given at the time of the conflict by&#xA;  Hamas.&lt;/strong&gt; As the Agence France Presse correspondent commented, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;His&#xA;  numbers roughly match the 709 &quot;terror operatives&quot; the Israeli military&#xA;  said it had killed during the fighting&lt;/strong&gt;, which included members of the&#xA;  Hamas-run police force that has patrolled Gaza since the group seized&#xA;  power in 2007.&quot;[23]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a better Combatant to Civilian ratio than US, Russia, UK does not mean that any child being killed from either side is not a tragedy, but since the OP did request for some statistics, it seems that even with the extreme numbers, the civilian casualties ratio is not higher (or even lower) than average in conflicts of similar settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8786" LastEditorUserId="8786" LastEditDate="2012-11-05T09:37:22.853" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T09:37:22.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4150" CreationDate="2012-11-02T22:13:28.977" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3078/are-women-better-at-multitasking-than-men&quot;&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; wrote an article on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A lot of the cognitive research on sex differences in multitasking,&#xA;  unfortunately, has fixated on simultasking. The results have been all&#xA;  over the place — some showing that men do better, some women, some&#xA;  neither. Few of the studies I’ve seen compare the results of&#xA;  simultasking against a control group of unitaskers, that is, people&#xA;  doing just one thing. My guess is that, for intellectually demanding&#xA;  work, unitaskers do way better than simultaskers of either sex...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research and common sense suggest that the only way to do two tasks&#xA;  competently at the same time is to make sure at least one of them&#xA;  requires minimal brainpower, for example folding laundry while on the&#xA;  phone. A reasonable surmise is that women’s reputation as superior&#xA;  multitaskers stems partly from the fact that they’re&#xA;  disproportionately burdened with mindless household chores that can&#xA;  readily be done simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2012-11-02T22:13:28.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6744" CreationDate="2012-11-03T00:52:32.077" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is almost an exact duplicate of this sister SE site question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/633/what-is-the-basis-for-the-claims-that-israel-mean-exiled-for-their-sins&quot;&gt;https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/633/what-is-the-basis-for-the-claims-that-israel-mean-exiled-for-their-sins&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://history.stackexchange.com/a/2522/1474&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; is similar to what I posted here earlier (got deleted for lack of sources) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is basically the same answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Israel&lt;/strong&gt; is the name given to Jacob, and means in Hebrew (my native language):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;persevere with God&quot; (1) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;striven with God&quot; (2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Contended with God&quot; - the word שרה in hebrew (3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The verse: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but [n]Israel; for you have&#xA;  striven with God and with men and have prevailed.” 29&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The footnote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;n. Genesis 32:28 I.e. he who strives with God; or God strives&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sources&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1)  Wells, John C. (1990). Longman pronunciation dictionary. Harlow, England: Longman. p. 381. ISBN 0-582-05383-8. entry &quot;Jacob&quot; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob#cite_note-0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob#cite_note-0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) The Bible, Genesis 32  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblica.com/bibles/chapter/?verse=Genesis+32&amp;amp;version=nasb#fen-NASB-957n&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.biblica.com/bibles/chapter/?verse=Genesis+32&amp;amp;version=nasb#fen-NASB-957n&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%94&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%94&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8786" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:47:51.013" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T01:49:30.507" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12486" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27336" CreationDate="2012-11-03T03:52:20.233" Score="31" ViewCount="6447" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw an image on Facebook that claimed 31 US states allow the fathers of children conceived by rape to have visitation rights to the children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qXdirm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;The number of states that rapists can sue their female victims for custory and visitation rights: 31&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image linked to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alternet.org/gender/number-states-which-rapists-can-sue-custody-and-visitation-rights-31-and-other-shocking-rape&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;alternet article&lt;/a&gt; that listed it in its &quot;50 Facts About Rape&quot;. Following the link there led to an article from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/08/31-states-grant-rapists-custody-and-visitation-rights/56118/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Atlantic Wire&lt;/a&gt; that repeated the claim and attributed it to one Shauna Prewitt, who wrote an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/22/opinion/prewitt-rapist-visitation-rights/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;opinion for CNN&lt;/a&gt; based on her experience giving birth to a rapist's child. This seems to be the origin of the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching Google for sources is nearly impossible because of the large number of people just repeating this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prewitt is a lawyer in Chicago so I don't doubt her credibility, but this claim is very extreme and I have been unable to find a list of states or even an example from statute or case law that demonstrates this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do 31 states in the US allow men who father children through rape to have parental rights? If possible, I'd like to know which states these are and what statute allows it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8323" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-03T09:34:54.133" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T19:45:30.847" Title="Do 31 US states give rapist fathers visitation rights?" Tags="|united-states|law|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12489" CreationDate="2012-11-03T05:03:24.813" Score="58" ViewCount="262760" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend just assured me that when a person is born, their eyes are at the size they will be for the rest of their life, or, that they do not grow. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/#hl=en&amp;amp;sugexp=les;&amp;amp;gs_nf=3&amp;amp;cp=10&amp;amp;gs_id=1a&amp;amp;xhr=t&amp;amp;q=do+your+eyes+grow&amp;amp;pf=p&amp;amp;output=search&amp;amp;sclient=psy-ab&amp;amp;oq=do+your+ey&amp;amp;gs_l=&amp;amp;pbx=1&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&amp;amp;fp=fc9ae2f3b598bc05&amp;amp;bpcl=37189454&amp;amp;biw=1400&amp;amp;bih=929&quot;&gt;Google&lt;/a&gt; for this question shows that it has been asked many times, and has varying answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do human eyes grow (increase in size) at all after they are born, or do they stay the same size the rest of their lives? Alternatively, do they grow so little that they are perceived not to grow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9096" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T04:22:41.037" Title="Do human eyes grow after birth?" Tags="|biology|physiology|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12487" CreationDate="2012-11-03T07:04:19.803" Score="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia (sans citations):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dimensions differ among adults by only one or two millimeters. The vertical measure, generally less than the horizontal distance, is about &lt;strong&gt;24 mm among adults&lt;/strong&gt;, at &lt;strong&gt;birth about 16–17 mm&lt;/strong&gt;. (about 0.65 inch) The eyeball grows rapidly, increasing to 22.5–23 mm (approx. 0.89 in) by the age of three years. From then to age 13, the eye attains its full size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug04/eye_size.hrs.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cornell neurobiologist named Howard C. Howland&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For his part, the Cornell neurobiologist has moved on to a new study of eye size throughout various stages of development. &lt;strong&gt;He observes that human eyes grow rapidly in the womb and for the first three months after birth&lt;/strong&gt;. That explains why babies are so adorably cute: Their disproportionately big eyes gaze out from those little round faces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;By three months, our eyes are as big as they'll ever be&lt;/strong&gt; -- at least from outward appearances: The &lt;em&gt;corneas&lt;/em&gt; have reached their &lt;strong&gt;full width&lt;/strong&gt;, although inside the eyes, the neurobiologist notes, the &lt;strong&gt;front-to-back length will increase&lt;/strong&gt; somewhat. &lt;strong&gt;Then our eyes move farther apart in the face&lt;/strong&gt; as the head grows. And we'll never be that cute again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/ehc.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eric H. Chudler&lt;/a&gt;, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington offers the following in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/qa3.html#q28&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;newsletter titled &lt;em&gt;Neuroscience for Kids&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the text General Ophthalmology (Vaughan, Asbury and Riordan-Eva, Appleton &amp;amp; Lange, Stamford, 1999), the size of the eyeball &lt;strong&gt;at birth averages 16.5 mm&lt;/strong&gt; in diameter (&lt;strong&gt;front to back measurement&lt;/strong&gt;). In &lt;strong&gt;adults, the diameter is 24.2 mm&lt;/strong&gt;. They go on to say that maximum eye size is reached when a person is 7-8 years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While more clarity on the time frame of growth (as well as its direction) will be nice, it appears to be undeniable that human eyes do grow after birth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T07:04:19.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12491" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-03T09:28:21.517" Score="22" ViewCount="2737" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifenews.com/2012/03/05/pro-life-laws-are-successful-in-reducing-abortion-rates/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;, the oft quoted result that abortion is higher in countries where it is legal is misleading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The obvious problem with The Lancet study is that many of the&#xA;  countries where abortion is illegal are located in Africa or Latin&#xA;  America. These countries have much higher poverty rates and a higher&#xA;  incidence of other social pathologies which may increase the perceived&#xA;  need for abortion. Douthat shrewdly points out that to properly&#xA;  analyze variations in abortion policy, similar regions have to be&#xA;  compared. For instance, in the United States red states, which tend to&#xA;  have more pro-life laws, have lower abortion rates than blue states.&#xA;  Additionally, Catholic and Catholic-influenced countries like France,&#xA;  Italy, Spain, and Germany tend to have somewhat more restrictions on&#xA;  abortion and somewhat lower abortion rates than Scandinavian nations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does banning abortions decrease the number of abortions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="188" LastEditDate="2012-11-03T10:51:22.147" LastActivityDate="2016-12-14T08:57:59.213" Title="Does banning abortion significantly increase or decrease the number of abortions?" Tags="|economics|law|abortion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12494" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="51986" CreationDate="2012-11-03T15:58:24.033" Score="19" ViewCount="3010" Body="&lt;p&gt;When the history of money is described, very often the &lt;strong&gt;claim&lt;/strong&gt; is made that &lt;strong&gt;people invented money because barter was impractical&lt;/strong&gt;: a quick Google Search lists many places where this claim is made, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/roots_of_money.asp#axzz2BAwKYDsB&quot;&gt;(1)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://library.thinkquest.org/28718/history.html&quot;&gt;(2)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.owngoldandsilver.com/article/from-barter-to-money.html&quot;&gt;(3)&lt;/a&gt;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds plausible, but not everything that sounds plausible is actually true. &lt;strong&gt;Is there any credible evidence for this claim?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example for an alternative explanation, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt%3a_The_First_5000_Years&quot;&gt;David Graeber&lt;/a&gt; poses that money was invented to keep track of debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2020-07-04T09:09:27.047" LastActivityDate="2021-07-02T12:14:21.627" Title="Was money invented because barter was deemed impractical?" Tags="|history|economics|david-graeber|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12473" CreationDate="2012-11-03T17:56:58.980" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The product often mentioned as having &quot;high Apple tax&quot; is iPad. But in fact &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Samsung-Galaxy-Note-101-Aims-for-Higher-Margins-than-iPad-IHS-iSuppli-Teardown-Reveals.aspx&quot;&gt;Samsung has higher margin on Galaxy Note 10.1&lt;/a&gt;, than Apple on iPad. &#xA;On the other hand however, Samsung also makes Nexus 10 for Google, which sells at much, much lower margin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apple gets &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/iPhone5-Carries-%24199-BOM-Virtual-Teardown-Reveals.aspx&quot;&gt;hefty margin from iPhone 5&lt;/a&gt;, however Samsung gets similarly high margin from Galaxy S3. Again, there is Nexus 4 from Google (this time it's made by LG, not Samsung), which will sell at much, much lower margin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So generally speaking, the margin on Apple products is similar to margin of other brand name premium products. However, there are exceptions, where equally capable premium products are sold with significantly lower margins (eg. Google's Nexus products). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW. Overall tendency is for &lt;a href=&quot;http://mashable.com/2012/10/25/apple-profits-decline/&quot;&gt;Apple's margin to go down due&lt;/a&gt; higher production costs and tighter competition. Hence investors' reaction on NASDAQ. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2012-11-03T17:56:58.980" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12494" CreationDate="2012-11-04T00:49:25.447" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think your linked sites, and numerous others, do provide significant evidence that what promissory notes, and then money gave us was a much easier way to carry the equivalent of a couple of cows, some gold and an acre of land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Economist Ludwig von Mises, in his 1912 book &lt;em&gt;The Theory of Money and Credit&lt;/em&gt;, had this to say on the Origin of Money (ellipses and bold indicating my edits):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.1.4 Suppose that A and B exchange with each other a number of units&#xA;of the commodities m and n. A acquires the commodity n because of the&#xA;use-value that it has for him. He intends to consume it. The same is&#xA;true of B, who acquires the commodity m for his immediate use. This is&#xA;a case of &lt;strong&gt;direct exchange&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.1.5 If there are more than two individuals and more than two kinds&#xA;of commodity in the market, &lt;strong&gt;indirect exchange&lt;/strong&gt; also is possible...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.1.6 Let us take, for example, the simple case in which the commodity&#xA;p is desired only by the holders of the commodity q, while the&#xA;comodity q is not desired by the holders of the commodity p but by&#xA;those, say, of a third commodity r, which in its turn is desired only&#xA;by the possessors of p. No direct exchange between these persons can&#xA;possibly take place. If exchanges occur at all, they must be indirect;&#xA;as, for instance, if &lt;strong&gt;the possessors of the commodity p exchange it&#xA;for the commodity q and then exchange this for the commodity r which&#xA;is the one they desire for their own consumption&lt;/strong&gt;. The case is not&#xA;essentially different when supply and demand do not coincide&#xA;quantitatively; for example, when one indivisible good has to be&#xA;exchanged for various goods in the possession of several persons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.1.7 Indirect exchange becomes more necessary as division of labor&#xA;increases ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.1.8 Thus along with the demand in a market for goods for direct&#xA;consumption there is a demand for goods that the purchaser does not&#xA;wish to consume but to dispose of by further exchange...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.1.9 Now all goods are not equally marketable...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.1.10 It was in this way that those goods that were originally the&#xA;most marketable became common media of exchange...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.1.11 Thus the requirements of the market have gradually led to &lt;strong&gt;the&#xA;selection of certain commodities as common media of exchange&lt;/strong&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I.1.12 This stage of development in the use of media of exchange...For&#xA;hundreds, even thousands, of years the choice of mankind has &lt;strong&gt;wavered&#xA;undecided between gold and silver&lt;/strong&gt;. The chief cause of this&#xA;remarkable phenomenon is to be found in the natural qualities of the&#xA;two metals. Being physically and chemically very similar, they are&#xA;almost equally serviceable for the satisfaction of human wants...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Translated by H. E. Batson 1934, additions 1953, this edition published by Liberty Fund in 1980 and retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.econlib.org/library/Mises/msT1.html#Part%20I,Ch.1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Library of Economics and Liberty&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have a read of the rest of that paper for much more in depth description!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="6308" LastEditDate="2020-07-10T19:08:53.587" LastActivityDate="2020-07-10T19:08:53.587" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12504" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12472" CreationDate="2012-11-04T15:22:06.690" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the literature, cigarette mainstream smoke (MS) essentially increases the risk of two major groups of life threatening diseases: Cancer and Cardiovascular diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The assessment that Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) exposure should cause similar effects is a logic deduction, albeit theoric but epidemiologic data is controversial, at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Cardiovascular Dieses are multifactorial and poor targets for comparison, most studies use Cancer (Lung Carcinoma specially) for comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the papers I had the opportunity to review, most are biased or are statistically weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some excerpts from Review Articles in the subject with the respective source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A significant part of an association between lung cancer and exposure&#xA;  to ETS would disappear, if, on the average, 1 patient out of 20&#xA;  nonsmoking cases had failed to tell the interviewer that he had, in&#xA;  fact, recently stopped smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fact that the mutation spectrum of the p53 tumor suppressor gene&#xA;  in lung tumors of ETS-exposed nonsmokers generally differs from that&#xA;  found in tumors of active smokers lends additional support to the&#xA;  notion that the majority of tumors found in ETS-exposed nonsmokers&#xA;  have nothing to do with tobacco smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11726024&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11726024&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The average intake of toxic and genotoxic compounds due to ETS&#xA;  exposure is that low that it is difficult, if not impossible, to&#xA;  explain the increased risk of lung cancer as found in epidemiological&#xA;  studies. The uncertainty is further increased because the validity of&#xA;  epidemiological studies on passive smoking is limited severely by&#xA;  numerous bias and confounding factors which cannot be controlled for&#xA;  reliability. The question of whether or not ETS exposure is high&#xA;  enough to induce and/or promote the carcinogenic effects observed in&#xA;  epidemiological studies thus remains open, and the assumption of an&#xA;  increased risk of lung cancer due to ETS exposure is, at present, more&#xA;  a matter of opinion than of firm scientific evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11401014&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11401014&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My point is: If the claim that ETS increases death risk is controversial and no large scale studies could have possibly been conducted, this number is, quite possibly at best, an abusive statistical deduction.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SIDENOTE: Here's, for comparison, a interesting study regarding Air Pollution exposure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19554969&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19554969&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9113" LastEditorUserId="9113" LastEditDate="2012-11-05T09:48:33.090" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T09:48:33.090" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12472" CreationDate="2012-11-05T00:34:53.610" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 600,000 figure seems to have come from &quot;Worldwide burden of disease from exposure to second-hand smoke: a retrospective analysis of data from 192 countries&quot; by Mattias Öberg and others published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2810%2961388-8/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Lancet, Volume 377, Issue 9760, Pages 139 - 146&lt;/a&gt;, 8 January 2011 and online 26 November 2010, which said &quot;603 000 deaths were attributable to second-hand smoke in 2004.&quot;  It also said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The calculations were based on disease-specific relative risk estimates and area-specific estimates of the proportion of people exposed to second-hand smoke, by comparative risk assessment methods, with data from 192 countries during 2004.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you accept the particular relative risks from exposure to second-hand smoke adopted by the article, and accept the rates of exposure in the different countries considered, then you should accept the total figure as being reasonable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't accept these relative risks (i.e. the more general question you point to), then you probably will not accept the total figure from this analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T00:34:53.610" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12507" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12509" CreationDate="2012-11-05T01:10:52.687" Score="7" ViewCount="1160" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1L3o88GKew&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; going around which proportedly is to sell a product called Lockitron. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise the video, Lockitron is a wifi-enabled, deadlock motivator. You can lock and unlock your door remotely using the internet. Or you can use bluetooth within a certain range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/M1rR8.png&quot; alt=&quot;Lockitron&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks awesome. And totally legit. Amazing, but believeable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then I saw &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOKT5ypDo3Q&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. This is the &quot;new lockitron video&quot;. In this one they control lockitron with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bananas, by playing a song on them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A magic wand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And mind control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That just seems over the top. Is Lockitron a legitimate product? Could you really control it using the above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-05T20:16:46.663" LastActivityDate="2015-12-08T20:51:41.707" Title="Is Lockitron a fake?" Tags="|consumer-products|marketing|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12507" CreationDate="2012-11-05T03:56:15.997" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question boils down to: Given we have an electronic device that can be triggered remotely (to lock or unlock a door), is it possible to produce a hardware-based solution that can trigger it by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;touching bananas connected to hardware? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pushing buttons on a wireless device in the shape of a wand?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;detecting when you raise your eyebrows, using a device that sits on your head?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answers are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hackaday.com/2012/05/17/bananaphone-lets-you-use-fruit-and-other-things-as-switches/&quot;&gt;Yes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hackaday.com/2009/05/17/magic-wands-for-disney/&quot;&gt;Yes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://emotiv.com/&quot;&gt;Yes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T03:56:15.997" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12507" CreationDate="2012-11-05T07:32:52.523" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lockitron has an interesting story, I was following them quite for a while (mostly on hacker news discussions) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They approached kickstarter and were rejected, created their own crowd-sourcing application, and open sourced it, and managed to get a very nice level of orders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More on this can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/07/the-story-of-lockitron-crowdfunding-without-kickstarter/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/07/the-story-of-lockitron-crowdfunding-without-kickstarter/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this positive media coverage, and peer reviews, adds to my confidence in their legitimacy.&#xA;It still doesn't prove anything, but I thought you will benefit from knowing they are quite famous now along the entrepreneurial community (e.g. not being an unknown / questionable company is certainly helping me when deciding if to trust a company or not) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8786" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T07:32:52.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12513" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-05T14:27:34.107" Score="9" ViewCount="905" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has marijuana been shown to be an &lt;strong&gt;effective&lt;/strong&gt; medicine for any one of these medical conditions: pain, glaucoma, cancer, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, or multiple sclerosis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For purposes of this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;effective&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt; means that marijuana works as well as or better than available alternatives and with comparable or fewer negative side effects; or it works nearly as well as available alternatives, but with fewer negative side effects; or it can successfully treat a condition for which there are no alternative treatments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;marijuana&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt; means any unpurified parts of cannabis plants (as opposed to purified extracts such as THC).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following are some examples of claims that marijuana can be used to effectively treat a variety of serious medical conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a subpopulation of people suffering from cancer, HIV/AIDS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), chronic pain and other debilitating illnesses for whom existing medications are ineffective or cause dangerous side effects. For many of these patients, medical marijuana can provide a superior treatment alternative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Massachusetts Patient Advocacy Alliance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence is overwhelming that marijuana can relieve certain types of pain, nausea, vomiting and other symptoms caused by such illnesses as multiple sclerosis, cancer and AIDS -- or by the harsh drugs sometimes used to treat them. And it can do so with remarkable safety. Indeed, marijuana is less toxic than many of the drugs that physicians prescribe every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Dr. Joycelyn Elders, former U.S. Surgeon General&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supporters of medical cannabis argue that cannabis does have several well-documented beneficial effects. Among these are: the amelioration of nausea and vomiting, stimulation of hunger in chemotherapy and AIDS patients, lowered intraocular eye pressure (shown to be effective for treating glaucoma), as well as gastrointestinal illness. Its effectiveness as an analgesic has been suggested—and disputed—as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Wikipedia article on Medical Marijuana&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5236" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:40:14.547" Title="Is marijuana an effective medicine for any one of these medical conditions?" Tags="|medical-science|recreational-drugs|marijuana|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5959" CreationDate="2012-11-05T20:26:40.287" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 1922 Fleming discovered an antiseptic compound capable of killing and dissolving certain bacteria ( * ) which he called &quot;lysozyme” ( * * )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many animals have this protein: cat, human, dogs, it can even be found in the eggs ( * * * ). All mammals do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This protein is widely distributed in the animal body, but is found in high concentration in saliva, blood, tears and duodenal (from the small intestine) secretions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epstein and Chain' of Oxford University (dunno the date) have confirmed the antiseptic effect of lysozyme by identifying the lysozyme-susceptible substrate in bacterial cells. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The antibacterial properties of saliva where studied later on dogs. It showed that the maternal grooming and in licking of wounds after birth helps prevent the infection of the wounds, but that not all types of bacteria are affected (Hart BL, Powell KL)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the lysozyme can not dissolve the bacterial compounds completely if it is alone. The acidulation of the saliva after swallowing (in the stomach) improves the antiseptic effect of the lysozyme. Another enzyme, the Trypsin which is a protease (it cuts proteins) is capable of dissolving different parts of the bacterial cell. Complete lysis, however, is affected by a combined action of these two enzymes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saliva can prevent the infection but it can not cure anything: British bacteriologists have shown that its bactericide effect depends A LOT on the composition of the cell wall of the bacteria. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;( * ) such as Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus anthracis, and Candida albicans. The GRAM+ bacteria are the most affected due to the structure of their cell wall. Follow this link if you do not know what the GRAM test is: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gram_staining&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gram_staining&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;( * * ) The “lys” part of the word comes from the ancient Greek: λύσις (lusis) which means “dissolve”. The other mart of the word “zyme” is the end of “enzyme”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;( * * * )As an example: A COMPARISON OF LYSOZYME PREPARATIONS FROM EGGWHITE,CAT AND HUMAN SALIVA. By E. A. H. ROBERTS,'&#xA;B. G. MAEGRAITH,2 and H. W. FLOREY. From the Sir William&#xA;Dunn School of Pathology, Oxford.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9123" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T20:26:40.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12518" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12519" CreationDate="2012-11-05T20:35:43.163" Score="174" ViewCount="24034" Body="&lt;p&gt;I encountered this picture of the &amp;quot;Russian space pen&amp;quot; from the MIT Museum gift shop&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140222192213/http://www.dailyfailcenter.com/sites/default/files/fail/d073c3d5cf3a.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/V477o.png&quot; alt=&quot;myth&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qptfx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;pen&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When NASA first started sending astronauts into space, they realized that the ball-point pen would not work at zero gravity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A million dollar investment and two years of tests resulted in a pen that could write in space, upside down, on almost any surface and at temperatures ranging from below freezing to over 300°C&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When confronted with the same problem, the Russians used a pencil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This anecdote was mentioned in the episode &lt;em&gt;We killed Yamamoto&lt;/em&gt; of &lt;em&gt;The West Wing&lt;/em&gt; as well as many emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-05-18T19:13:09.973" Title="Did NASA invest a million dollars in the research of a space pen, when the USSR simply used a pencil?" Tags="|united-states|history|nasa|soviet-union|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="12519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12518" CreationDate="2012-11-05T20:35:43.163" Score="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;strong&gt;NOT TRUE&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://history.nasa.gov/spacepen.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-nasa-spen&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt; and many other sources on the internet refuted the claim. Here is a summary of the story, taken mainly from Scientific American:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first both the USSR space program and NASA used pencils for their missions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Originally, NASA astronauts, like the Soviet cosmonauts, used pencils, according to NASA historians. In fact, NASA ordered 34 mechanical pencils from Houston's Tycam Engineering Manufacturing, Inc., in 1965. They paid $4,382.50 or $128.89 per pencil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, pencils are not really good for a space mission, as they are highly flammable in a rich oxygen environment, and can break off the tip which can hurt both astronauts and the equipment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pencils may not have been the best choice anyway. The tips flaked and broke off, drifting in microgravity where they could potentially harm an astronaut or equipment. And pencils are flammable--a quality NASA wanted to avoid in onboard objects after the Apollo 1 fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Fisher Pen Company developed a space pen by themselves at an investment of 1 million dollars, and only after development came to NASA to propose the pen, and NASA tested it for 2 years to make sure it stands up to their standards:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paul C. Fisher and his company, the Fisher Pen Company, reportedly invested $1 million to create what is now commonly known as the space pen. None of this investment money came from NASA's coffers--the agency only became involved after the pen was dreamed into existence. In 1965 Fisher patented a pen that could write upside-down, in frigid or roasting conditions ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That same year, Fisher offered the AG-7 &amp;quot;Anti-Gravity&amp;quot; Space Pen to NASA. Because of the earlier mechanical pencil fiasco, NASA was hesitant. But, after testing the space pen intensively, the agency decided to use it on spaceflights beginning in 1967.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since then and until this day, both Russian and American space crew have been using the Fisher company antigravity pen, and it's even offered for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacepen.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sale for the general public&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to an Associated Press report from February 1968, NASA ordered 400 of Fisher's antigravity ballpoint pens for the Apollo program. A year later, the Soviet Union ordered 100 pens and 1,000 ink cartridges to use on their Soyuz space missions, said the United Press International. The AP later noted that both NASA and the Soviet space agency received the same 40 percent discount for buying their pens in bulk. They both paid $2.39 per pen instead of $3.98.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the late 1960s American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts have used Fisher's pens. In fact, Fisher has created a whole line of space pens. A newer pen, called the Shuttle Pen, was used on NASA's space shuttles and on the Russian space station, Mir.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T22:01:18.037" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12520" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="12521" CreationDate="2012-11-05T20:43:08.067" Score="46" ViewCount="3148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read and heard a lot about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reproducibilityinitiative.org/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Reproducibility Initiative&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; recently, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.scienceexchange.com/2012/08/the-reproducibility-initiative/&quot;&gt;claiming that the data of many scientific studies cannot/was not/is not be reproduced&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“In the last year, problems in reproducing academic research have drawn a lot of public attention, particularly in the context of translating research into medical advances. &lt;strong&gt;Recent studies indicate that up to 70% of research from academic labs cannot be reproduced, representing an enormous waste of money and effort&lt;/strong&gt;,” said Dr. Elizabeth Iorns, Science Exchange’s co-founder and CEO. “In my experience as a researcher, I found that the problem lay primarily in the lack of incentives and opportunities for validation—the Reproducibility Initiative directly tackles these missing pieces.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I was not able to find those studies (where these reproduced!?) proving this statement. I want to know where these studies where carried out, medicine, biology, psychology, but couldn't find anything. I'm also somehow skeptical that science is in that bad shape, considering that studies are often used/mandatory here on skeptics.se for good answers and to get license for pharmaceutical products. 70% looks a bit too high to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4477" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:47:26.833" LastActivityDate="2016-02-24T11:15:14.257" Title="Can up to 70% of scientific studies not be reproduced?" Tags="|scientific-papers|epistemology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12520" CreationDate="2012-11-05T21:10:05.947" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;ALS Therapy Development Institute re-tested 70+ drugs from 221 independent studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0 reproduced (1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Minocycline: effective in four separate ALS mouse studies worsened symptoms in a clinical trial of more than 400 patients (2)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) conducted sponsored replication of 12 spinal cord injury studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2/12 successfully reproduced (3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bayer conducted in-house target validation studies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;14/67 reproduced (4)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amgen attempted to reproduce 53 “landmark” oncology publications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;6/53 reproduced (5)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;References&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scott et al. Amyotroph Lateral Scler. 9, 4-15 (2008).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gordon et al. Lancet Neurol. 6, 1045–1053 (2007).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stuart et al. Experimental Neurology 233, 597–605 (2012).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prinz et al. Nat Rev Drug Discov. 10, 712 (2011).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Begley and Ellis. Nature. 483, 531-3 (2012).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9124" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T16:04:17.170" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="12522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12520" CreationDate="2012-11-05T21:22:58.437" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several studies that document the problems of reproducibility, and thoroughly review the issue in indications of medicine, oncology, and neuroscience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two separate publications below detail how over 2/3 of landmark oncology studies were found not to be reproducible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asadullah: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v10/n9/full/nrd3439-c1.html&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v10/n9/full/nrd3439-c1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glenn Begley / Lee Ellis: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a.html&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v483/n7391/full/483531a.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9127" LastActivityDate="2012-11-05T21:22:58.437" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1449" CreationDate="2012-11-06T00:00:33.143" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a more direct way to answer this question.  The mars rover Curiosity is presently on Mars analyzing the planet.  Apropos to this question they do a direct comparison of the martian atmosphere and a sample of martian meteorite found on earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is here.. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16462.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Weighing Molecules on Mars&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The plot on the left shows new results from the Sample Analysis at Mars, or SAM, instrument on NASA's Curiosity rover. The instrument measured levels of different gas isotopes in the atmosphere. Isotopes are variations of atoms weighing different amounts. As seen on the plot, SAM detected about 2,000 times as much argon-40 as argon-36, which weighs less. This result is the most precise measurement yet of argon isotope ratios on Mars, and &lt;strong&gt;confirms the connection between Mars and Martian meteorites found on Earth&lt;/strong&gt;, an example of which is shown at the right. The dark blobs in the meteorite are areas where atmospheric gases were trapped when the meteorite was ejected from Mars, and &lt;strong&gt;they include argon with the same ratio of argon-40 to argon-36 as SAM has measured in Gale Crater&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The bolding is my emphasis&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XgjVM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="888" LastActivityDate="2012-11-06T00:00:33.143" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13535" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20867" CreationDate="2012-11-06T18:45:17.907" Score="11" ViewCount="10144" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard from a friend that holding in your sneeze can actually kill a few of your brain cells. I did a google search, but most of the results had no evidence (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100219184948AADKMBj&quot;&gt;Yahoo Answers&lt;/a&gt;). Moreover, I checked out &lt;a href=&quot;http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=42;t=000234;p=1&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;, but it was more of the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any scientific studies or evidence that supports what my friend says?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8822" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T12:51:25.983" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T06:19:11.493" Title="Will holding in your sneeze kill brain cells?" Tags="|biology|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13537" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-06T20:02:28.753" Score="3" ViewCount="468" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shroomery.org/9945/The-Tale-of-blue-honey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;I have read&lt;/a&gt; personal reports of adding mushrooms to honey to effect preservation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To save the magic, all one needs to do is immerse those morsels in raw honey and stash them in a cool, shady place, and let osmosis do its thing. The honey will first turn amber, then a deep blue-black color indicating that the honey has become psychoactive. At this point it is time to strain out the mushrooms from the honey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also asserts that this is an ancient practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The answer comes to us born on the w7inds (sic) of time. Kosmic, karmic trade winds from an ancient Mayan past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have never seen evidence that I would consider 'anthropological' or 'archeological', to document the ancient use of honey to preserve mushrooms.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone provide sources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8735" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T11:31:01.513" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T11:31:01.513" Title="Was honey used preserve psychoactive mushrooms in the ancient past?" Tags="|anthropology|honey|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13541" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-06T22:24:56.553" Score="1" ViewCount="384" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read that the actual benefit of flossing your teeth is not to remove food that is between them, but that your gums actually become stronger at fighting infections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="397" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T07:52:58.357" Title="Is the real benefit of flossing that your gums strengthen?" Tags="|hygiene|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13542" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13546" CreationDate="2012-11-06T22:49:29.773" Score="9" ViewCount="733" Body="&lt;p&gt;A family member posted a link to a blog about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businesspundit.com/5-giant-companies-who-use-slave-labor/&quot;&gt;companies using slave labor&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the title is a bit misleading because it is not the companies themselves directly employing slave labor but rather their suppliers in foreign countries.  Most of the claims boil down to sources using people under 18 working long hours for low pay rather than true slavery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I did find one claim that I found very troubling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Uzbekistan, the government actually removes throes of children&#xA;  from school and places them in cotton fields during the harvest&#xA;  season.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is:&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Is this an accurate statement that the government literally goes through schools and takes children to use as forced labor harvesting cotton?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastActivityDate="2017-10-27T12:10:00.587" Title="Does the Uzbekistan government force children to perfom slave labor harvesting cotton?" Tags="|children|labor|slavery|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13542" CreationDate="2012-11-07T08:34:40.143" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Literally &lt;em&gt;forces&lt;/em&gt; them? probably No. Compels them by threats of expulsion from school, lower grades or stigmatisation - Probably Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each September the cotton harvest begins. Many rural schools are closed down by government officials as children, some as young as nine, are forced to pick cotton by hand for up to three months in order to fill the shortfall in voluntary adult labour. They receive little, if any, pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it's not just limited to children&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Forced labour within the industry does not just affect children. Local administration employees, teachers, factory workers and doctors are commonly forced to leave their jobs for weeks at a time and pick cotton with no additional compensation. In some instances refusal to co-operate can lead to dismissal from work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antislavery.org/english/campaigns/cottoncrimes/forced_labour_in_uzbekistan_background.aspx&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, there was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/7068096.stm&quot;&gt;BBC Newsnight report on this subject back in 2007&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As part of a special report we filmed children in Uzbekistan being forced to work in cotton fields instead of going to school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the Uzbek embassy denied even then that they use Slavery, torture or coersion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The legislation of the Republic of Uzbekistan forbids any form of child labour on the cotton fields. &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/30_10_07_newsnight_cotton.pdf&quot;&gt;full statement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have things changed since 2007? Probably not, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14973062&quot;&gt;BBC again ran a piece in September of 2011&lt;/a&gt; which reports the situation to be mostly the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The BBC's Uzbek service has received reports of school children being&#xA;  bussed to agricultural areas in various parts of the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One human rights worker in Uzbekistan said she had talked to a&#xA;  10-year-old girl who said her class was made to pick cotton in the&#xA;  mornings and attend lessons only in the afternoon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-11-07T15:07:36.683" LastActivityDate="2012-11-07T15:07:36.683" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13550" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14209" CreationDate="2012-11-07T14:24:06.387" Score="67" ViewCount="16513" Body="&lt;p&gt;While everyone is telling us that we should brush our teeth twice a day, the human species has evolved for several million years without any teeth brushing. Apes don't brush their teeth, and they don't have a mechanism to change their teeth like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_tooth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sharks&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodilia#Teeth_and_jaws&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;crocodiles&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why do human need to brush their teeth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we do, do we only need to brush them to clean and remove food stuck in them, or is the use of Fluoride based toothpaste is needed as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YzXdz.gif&quot; alt=&quot;pic1&quot;&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--NvM8kIcQWU/T_Wuv5m2lWI/AAAAAAAAABM/pYqyb-yjz-E/s320/sticker_brush_your_teeth_dental_stickers.gif&quot; alt=&quot;pic2&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-01-07T07:41:35.630" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T09:54:10.163" Title="Do we need to brush our teeth?" Tags="|medical-science|hygiene|dentistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13551" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-07T14:33:56.640" Score="16" ViewCount="6701" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi&quot;&gt;German Wikipedia page for Nazi&lt;/a&gt; claims that the word &lt;em&gt;Nazi&lt;/em&gt; is a diminutive form of &lt;em&gt;Ignatius&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Ignatz&lt;/em&gt;). The cited source is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Nazi&quot;&gt;etymonline.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 24th edition of Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache (2002) says the word Nazi was favored in southern Germany (supposedly from c.&lt;strong&gt;1924&lt;/strong&gt;) among opponents of National Socialism because the nickname Nazi (from the masc. proper name &lt;strong&gt;Ignatz&lt;/strong&gt;, German form of &lt;strong&gt;Ignatius&lt;/strong&gt;) was used colloquially to mean &quot;&lt;strong&gt;a foolish person, clumsy or awkward person&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; Ignatz was a popular name in &lt;strong&gt;Catholic Austria&lt;/strong&gt;, and according to one source in World War I Nazi was a generic name in the German Empire for the soldiers of Austria-Hungary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The page also states the commonly held belief for the origin of the name:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1930&lt;/strong&gt;, noun and adjective, from Ger. Nazi, abbreviation of German pronunciation of Nationalsozialist (based on earlier Ger. sozi, popular abbreviaton [sic] of &quot;socialist&quot;), from Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei &quot;National Socialist German Workers' Party,&quot; led by Hitler from 1920. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also mentions the year &lt;strong&gt;1903&lt;/strong&gt; as another (slim) possibility for the first known use of &lt;em&gt;Nazi&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this new explanation rather dubious at this late date. There is also only a difference of six years between it and the generally accepted version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A book called &lt;em&gt;The Etymologicon&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8843158/Why-Hitler-hated-being-called-a-Nazi-and-whats-really-in-humble-pie-origins-of-words-and-phrases-revealed.html&quot;&gt;apparently has a related entry&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nazi&lt;/strong&gt; – an insult in use long before the rise of Adolf Hitler's party. It was a derogatory term for a backwards peasant – being a shortened version of Ignatius, a common name in Bavaria, the area from which the Nazis emerged. &lt;strong&gt;Opponents seized on this&lt;/strong&gt; and shortened the party's title Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, to the dismissive &quot;Nazi&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone confirm if the &lt;em&gt;Ignatius&lt;/em&gt; theory holds water and if &lt;em&gt;Ignatz&lt;/em&gt; was ever used to refer to a &quot;foolish person&quot; from Austria?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2012-11-07T17:25:16.177" LastActivityDate="2019-11-29T08:41:25.857" Title="Is Nazi a diminutive of Ignatius?" Tags="|world-war-ii|etymology|europe|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13554" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-07T17:19:06.780" Score="19" ViewCount="2207" Body="&lt;p&gt;Modafinil (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modafinil&quot;&gt;Wikipedia link&lt;/a&gt;) is a drug approved in many countries for specific medical conditions such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcolepsy&quot;&gt;narcolepsy&lt;/a&gt;. We don't, however, have a good idea how it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is is one of several drugs (including the unrelated stimulant Ritalin, which is approved for use in ADHD) which are believed by many to be cognitive enhancers. According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12922451&quot;&gt;BBC story&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been used by the military to keep soldiers awake in times of combat and its use is thought to be on the rise among shift workers, such as nurses, doctors, and pilots. Modafinil is also said to be popular among jet-lagged academics...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...A survey of 1,400 adults carried out by Nature found that one in five said they had taken Ritalin, Provigil (modafinil) or beta-blockers to stimulate focus, concentration, or memory - not for any medical condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20217737&quot;&gt;more recent BBC story&lt;/a&gt; on the ethical issues raised by the possibility of cognitive enhancers also highlights how significant their use is thought to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several surveys reveal that many students now use brain-enhancing “smart” pills to help boost their exam grades, which raises the question about whether colleges and universities should insist candidates are “clean” in the same way that Olympic athletes have to prove they are drug-free to compete...&#xA;  ...Dr Robin Lovell-Badge, of the Medical Research Council and who chaired one of the workshop sessions that formulated the report, said: &quot;It was clear from discussions that cognitive-enhancing drugs present the greatest immediate challenge for regulators and other policymakers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;They are simple to take, already available without prescription, and are increasingly being used by healthy individuals.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Modafinil is clearly being used off label and people believe its use improves their performance. But is there clear evidence that it improves intellectual performance? &lt;strong&gt;In simpler language, does Modafinil make you smarter?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="1871" LastEditDate="2015-08-22T23:29:11.293" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T16:00:55.523" Title="Does Modafinil make you smarter?" Tags="|medical-science|medications|intelligence|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12491" CreationDate="2012-11-07T18:05:52.150" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the various researches found, we can draw the conclusion that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;b&gt;Yes, it does decrease abortion rate in the place where it is banned&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Education, policies clearly influence&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can find a lot of work regarding the influence of good sexual education explaining lower abortion rate in some countries such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0738399194900329&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Netherlands&lt;/a&gt;. It is truly intuitive to believe it, but research demonstrate it. In 2003, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167629696004948&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; over abortion data of the United States from 1974-1988 induced that abortion policies influenced greatly the rate. It concluded that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Restrictions on Medicaid funding for abortion are correlated with lower abortion rates in-state and higher rates among nearby states. [...] A larger number of abortion providers in a state increases the abortionrate, primarily through inducing cross-state travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it does not directly answer your question since it does not imply the state banned abortion.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Legalization and its effect on the long term&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can find a lot of research notes and papers on the abortion rate trend in the various countries of the world. All of them draw the conclusion that the trend is downward in the majority. In particular, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2991902?uid=3737720&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21101404153427&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; draw that conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Legalization of abortion and access to abortion services do not lead to increased reliance on abortion for fertility control in the long term; in developed countries with these conditions, the predominant trend in abortion rates has been downward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So at least, we know that legalization does not spread the use of abortion as a contraceptive method if alternatives exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Effect of the ban in United state&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As we said, the legalization does not increase the number of women that want to rely on abortion at a certain moment of their life (at least over the long term). That said, we could conclude that for similar education (on contraception, religion), the rate should more or less the same inside a country. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?hl=fr&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=laNzDU3P07sC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PR8&amp;amp;dq=abortion%20rate%20policies&amp;amp;ots=RGrwWhg7X9&amp;amp;sig=THbHld9ea3nGjhKExtSSotXef8A#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=abortion%20rate%20policies&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; &quot;Abortion Rates in the United States: The Influence of Opinion and Policy&quot; study the various researches published on the subject to draw few conclusion. First, public opinion is the most influential factor between state were it is legal. Second, reported abortion number were much lower before legal abortion. Third, illegal abortion increase dramatically the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5309a1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;chance of dying&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no clear statement or proof that illegal abortion result in lower abortion rate (since we cannot count unreported abortion). But from known statistics, from the facts on influential factors we can draw the conclusion that yes it decreases the abortion rate in the place were it is illegal. However, as stated in the beginning, it might artificially increase the abortion rate in the country or state beside where it is legal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope that my little literature review has helped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastEditorUserId="7569" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T00:02:15.263" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T00:02:15.263" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13557" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-07T18:49:21.647" Score="5" ViewCount="134" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2858/is-cannabis-a-gateway-drug&quot;&gt;Is cannabis a gateway drug?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dare.org/parents/Parents_KeepingKidsDrugFree/Default2f75.asp?N=Parents_KeepingKidsDrugFree&amp;amp;M=29&amp;amp;S=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;D.A.R.E.&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What Is a Gateway Drug?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  A gateway drug is a drug that opens the door to the use of other, harder drugs. Gateway drugs are typically inexpensive and readily available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While there is no guarantee that a youngster will make the leap from gateway drugs to far more toxic and dangerous drugs such as methamphetamines, cocaine, or heroin, research suggests that in the majority of the cases they will not. ... Most addicts began their downward spiral with the gateway drugs; very few youngsters or adults jump right into hard drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://oregonmeasure80.org/cannabis-facts.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;oregonmeasure80.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Statistics are published about drug use trends, and can easily be analyzed to see that while marijuana use is incredibly popular, most other drugs pale in comparison. Almost half of all 12th graders in the U.S. have used marijuana once, and nearly one in four use it at least monthly. But that same group reports fewer than a tenth that many use the &quot;hard&quot; drugs like cocaine, heroin, or meth regularly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If there were a gateway effect, one would expect a much larger problem with the other drugs, especially given how many people use marijuana regularly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The gateway theory has been debunked many times scientifically, but we believe the statistics of drug use speak for themselves. If you feel the need to read further, please do research the matter thoroughly, though we offer a few resources below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20060657&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evaluating the drug use &quot;gateway&quot; theory using cross-national data: consistency and associations of the order of initiation of drug use among participants in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://healthland.time.com/2010/10/29/marijuna-as-a-gateway-drug-the-myth-that-will-not-die/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marijuana as a Gateway Drug: The Myth That Will Not Die&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drug use statistics from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/monitoring-future/trends-in-prevalence-various-drugs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NIDA&lt;/a&gt;'s Monitoring the Future survey, 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does &quot;gateway drug&quot; use actually impact &quot;harder drug&quot; adoption? Who is using cherry-picked research, and what does the scientific majority state?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6785" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-11-07T18:49:21.647" Title="Is the &quot;gateway drug&quot; theory valid?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2012-11-07T21:10:53.507" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13558" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13575" CreationDate="2012-11-07T19:37:01.763" Score="20" ViewCount="4918" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelawthatneverwas.com/&quot;&gt;Bill Benson&lt;/a&gt; released &lt;em&gt;The Law that Never Was&lt;/em&gt; in 1985, which &quot;claims that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sixteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution&quot;&gt;Sixteenth Amendment&lt;/a&gt; to the United States Constitution, commonly known as the income tax amendment, was never properly ratified.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Law_that_Never_Was&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; At least several have gone to jail for buying into his theories.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Law_that_Never_Was#Followers_of_Benson&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; On &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelawthatneverwas.com/&quot;&gt;his site&lt;/a&gt;, he summarizes his argument:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the 16th Amendment was not ratified by the requisite three-fourths of the states and [] nevertheless Secretary of State Philander Knox had fraudulently declared ratification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He presents an elaborate argument claiming &quot;that not a single [state] had actually and legally ratified the proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelawthatneverwas.com/&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; His argument has been rejected by many courts,&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Law_that_Never_Was#Legal_status_of_Benson.27s_claims&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; but is there a detailed &lt;strong&gt;point-by-point refutal&lt;/strong&gt; of his claims? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do Benson's claims of negligence in the ratification process have any validity? Was the Sixteenth Amendment improperly ratified? And would that even matter after being on the books for so long?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6785" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2018-10-31T17:06:07.987" LastActivityDate="2018-10-31T19:39:56.527" Title="Was the 16th Amendment (income tax) improperly ratified?" Tags="|united-states|law|taxes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12404" CreationDate="2012-11-07T22:51:37.813" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. There has been significant &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews&quot;&gt;research into the genetics of Jewish populations&lt;/a&gt; over the past 20 years and &quot;no evidence of a hypothetical Khazars' contribution to the Ashkenazi gene pool has ever been found.&quot; (Marina Faerman, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470015902.a0020818/abstract&quot;&gt;Population Genetics of the Ashkenazim&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10186" LastActivityDate="2012-11-07T22:51:37.813" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13563" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13564" CreationDate="2012-11-07T23:47:08.983" Score="6" ViewCount="9589" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/12sguj/til_that_before_coffee_became_popular_beer_was/&quot;&gt;Today I Learned on Reddit&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beer was the most popular drink for breakfast before coffee became&#xA;  popular&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allrandomfacts.com/view/Interesting%20Facts/5084&quot;&gt;reference given&lt;/a&gt; doesn't seem reliable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T04:31:53.173" Title="Was beer the most popular drink for breakfast before coffee became popular?" Tags="|beer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13563" CreationDate="2012-11-08T04:31:53.173" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is very open-ended: Where and when?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below, I reference a &lt;a href=&quot;http://chezjim.com/18c/breakfast-18th.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;draft version&lt;/a&gt; of an article by Jim Chevallier that later appeared in &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0739112074&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Consuming Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century: Narratives of Consumption, 1700-1900&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, edited by Tamara S. Wagner and Narin Hassan, Lexington Books (March 28, 2007). He provides references to support his claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In ancient Rome, the working classes began the day with &lt;strong&gt;bread soaked in wine&lt;/strong&gt;. [...] At the start of the eighteenth century, the prisoners in the Bastille – some of whom were surprisingly well fed – were still given bread and wine for their breakfast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wine, beer or brandy would have been more or less available in different areas&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does seem that in France, at least, breakfast was frequently limited to a liquid of some sort. Le Grand is quoted above on the idea that &lt;strong&gt;the lower classes often replaced breakfast with spirits&lt;/strong&gt;. Tobias Smollet seems to confirm this when he has a Picard peasant girl serve Roderick Random chocolate and spirits for breakfast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the 1744 account from Canada seems to refer to &lt;strong&gt;brandy – here with bread – as the most popular choice&lt;/strong&gt;, even with other options available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a 1716 German dictionary, quoted by Chevallier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Common people usually take a beer-soup, Marperger lists a number of north German beers as especially appropriate. If one adds spices and an egg such soups are comparable with any soup made with wine when it comes to giving physical strength. A wet stomach should prefer bread with butter or toasted white bread drenched in sect or Spanish wine. Some people enjoy sweets - things preserved in sugar like ginger or cherries, others dislike them because of their sweetness, so that everyone has to experiment in order to find out what goes well with his stomach.”&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;The fondness for beer soup however seems specifically German&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most likely source for the quote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Medieval English breakfasts consisted of alcoholic beverages, cold meats, dark bread, and frumenty. From this developed the Classic English breakfast that expanded to a very wide range of foods, high in fat and high in calories, …. three grains, barley, oats, and wheat became the basis of Anglo-Saxon breakfast. &lt;strong&gt;Barley, the &amp;quot;poor-man's wheat,&amp;quot; was &amp;quot;drunk&amp;quot; at breakfast as ale or beer, until replaced by coffee and tea during the 18th century.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;: fermented alcoholic drinks were known to be consumed at breakfast in different cultures, including beer-soup (which very different to the beers we drink today), ales, wine and spirits. However, different geographies, classes, periods and individual families had different preferences, making the overall claim that beer was the most popular breakfast drink too broad to be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T04:31:53.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13568" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-08T11:12:41.440" Score="30" ViewCount="2845" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is working at a standing desk more healthy than working at a regular sitting desk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://crackberry.com/standing-desks&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crackberry Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the past couple of years there has been a lot of buzz about the health benefits of standing desks, driven by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-07-27-sitting-death_N.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt; that concluded the longer you sit, the shorter your life is (all other things being equal). I don't pay too much attention to research as I know it can be argued and manipulated pretty much any and every which way you want, but as someone who's been working at a desk daily since graduating university in 2004, the notion of being a little more active and vertical during the work day intuitively made sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://artofmanliness.com/2011/07/05/become-a-stand-up-guy-the-history-benefits-and-use-of-standing-desks/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Art of Manliness Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excessive sitting is slowly killing you. I know. It seems like hyperbole. But it’s not. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A study&lt;/a&gt; found that men who sit for more than six hours of their leisure time each day had a 20% higher death rate than those who sat for three hours or less. The epidemiologist who conducted the study, Alpha Patel, concluded that excessive sitting literally shortens a person’s life by several years. Another study showed that men who sat for 23 or more hours a week had a 64% greater chance of dying from heart disease than those who sat for 11 hours per week or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you sit, the electrical activity in your muscles flat lines, and your body uses very little energy. Powering down your body like that for long periods of time leads to a cascade of negative effects. Your heart rate, calorie burn, insulin effectiveness, and levels of good cholesterol all drop. Your body also stops producing lipoprotein lipase and other molecules that are only released when you flex your muscles, such as when you are standing and walking. These molecules play an important role in processing fats and sugars; without them, your metabolism suffers. Add these factors up, and it’s no wonder that those who sit for long periods of time each day have larger waistlines and worse blood sugar and blood pressure profiles and are at higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and cancer than who sit less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://mashable.com/2011/04/22/standup-desks/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mashable&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-28/kill-your-desk-chair-and-start-standing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BusinessWeek&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10191" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T22:26:27.403" Title="Is using a standing desk for several hours healthier than sitting at a desk all day?" Tags="|environmental-health|ergonomics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13568" CreationDate="2012-11-08T13:18:54.093" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe&lt;/strong&gt;. There is a lack of significant research into the health benefits standing desks. Most research has been focused on reducing sitting time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it should be understood that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_desk&quot;&gt;standing desk&lt;/a&gt; is not a new invention having been around since the 1800s. Furthermore, in the late 1890s there was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://artofmanliness.com/2011/07/05/become-a-stand-up-guy-the-history-benefits-and-use-of-standing-desks/&quot;&gt;fairly significant push&lt;/a&gt; for the use of standing desks, or desks that can be used in a standing and sitting configuration in schools. This is currently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/us/25desks.html&quot;&gt;being examined once again&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to standing desks, there aren't many scientific studies that have looked at them in particular. In fact, a systematic review called out the need &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743510003518#&quot;&gt;for more research into the matter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently, there is a dearth of evidence on the effectiveness of workplace interventions for reducing sitting. In light of the growing body of evidence that prolonged sitting is negatively associated with health, this highlights a gap in the scientific literature that needs to be addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted though, that reducing sitting time at the office has been called out as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19338244.2012.697407&quot;&gt;a workplace health priority&lt;/a&gt;. The reasoning behind the push to reduce workplace sitting (which ties in with demand for standing desks) is that time spent sitting has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://pressroom.cancer.org/index.php?s=43&amp;amp;item=257&quot;&gt;tied to higher cancer rates&lt;/a&gt;. The research into this connection is &lt;a href=&quot;http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/stand-up-while-you-read-this/&quot;&gt;well accepted&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17sitting-t.html&quot;&gt;well&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/ct-met-standing-desk-20120808,0,800188.story&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; in the general media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while there is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/katetaylor/2012/08/02/can-standing-desks-fight-sitting-disease/&quot;&gt;increased push for standing desks&lt;/a&gt;, and many cites of the research focused around the adverse effects of sitting time, there doesn't seem to be any clear scientific evidence about standing desks per se. However, it seems quite likely that they would have a some positive effects, although those claims haven't been fully examined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See the bottom of the article for a fairly long list of citations of research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-11-09T15:30:01.737" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T15:30:01.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13570" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13572" CreationDate="2012-11-08T14:53:11.780" Score="24" ViewCount="1422" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prominently displayed on the front page of noted nutrition advocate Jamie Oliver's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamieoliver.com/us/foundation/jamies-food-revolution/home&quot;&gt;web page&lt;/a&gt; is the claim that &quot;20% of Australian children think pasta comes from animals&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/#hl=en&amp;amp;tbo=d&amp;amp;sclient=psy-ab&amp;amp;q=20%25+of+kids+in+australia+think+pasta+comes+from+animals&amp;amp;oq=20%25+of+kids+in+australia+think+pasta+comes+from+animals&amp;amp;gs_l=hp.3...150.9728.0.9873.59.57.1.1.1.0.247.5407.39j17j1.57.0.les%3B..1.0...1c.1.1v_pLzUAnlQ&amp;amp;pbx=1&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&amp;amp;fp=87441a1dbec92dd2&amp;amp;bpcl=37643589&amp;amp;biw=1600&amp;amp;bih=815&quot;&gt;google search&lt;/a&gt; shows that this meme has spread quite a bit, almost certainly originating from that site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I cannot find a source for this claim.  The infographic contained on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelunchtray.com/really-20-of-kids-surveyed-think-pasta-comes-from-an-animal/&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; seems to be the primary point of distribution for this factoid (along with the claim that 27% of Australian kids believe that yogurt comes from plants), but the sources at the bottom of the infographic list a bunch of rather generic web pages, without linking to the specific report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pinterest.com/pin/447826756666288741/&quot;&gt;This version of the graphic&lt;/a&gt; includes a link to a PDF source, but the link isn't valid.  I did find &lt;a href=&quot;http://foodcorps.org/about/FoodCorps-AnnualReport.pdf/at_download/file&quot;&gt;this PDF&lt;/a&gt; which is very similar to the broken link in that graphic, but there is no mention of any study, or even the claims cited&quot; in that document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the claim that 20% of children in Australia think pasta comes from animals, and 27% think yogurt comes from plants, backed by legitimate research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T07:17:06.297" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T07:17:06.297" Title="Do 20% of Australian children think pasta comes from animals?" Tags="|nutrition|education|australia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1779" CreationDate="2012-11-08T14:58:19.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ideomotor action&lt;/strong&gt; simply refers to small, unconscious movements. Since they are so subtle, those tiny movements aren't normally studied directly, but they can be &quot;magnified&quot; into a larger, more measurable effects. One of the easiest to study is the &lt;strong&gt;hand-held pendulum&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hand-held pendulum first came under scientific scrutiny during the&#xA;  early 1800s in studies by the highly regarded French chemist&#xA;  Michel-Eugene Chevreul. His investigation of the mysterious pendulum&#xA;  was prompted by an 1808 book published by a group of physicists who&#xA;  claimed &quot;such phenomena were attributed to a new force which&#xA;  inaugurated a new chapter in physics.&quot; Chevreul found this theory&#xA;  scientifically unacceptable. (snip) The conclusions of Chevreul's study were reduced to&#xA;  a single principle: The swing pattern of the pendulum was caused by&#xA;  &quot;nonconscious (involuntary) muscle movements initiated by&#xA;  autosuggestion.&quot;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.magician.org/portal/node/769&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.magician.org/portal/node/769&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes called &quot;Chevreul pendulum illusion&quot;, this effect has been widely studied (&lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.131.4874&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1975&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8712161&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1996&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/9/3/196.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1998&lt;/a&gt;). A 1976 study by Easton and Shor, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/956790&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An experimental analysis of the Chevreul pendulum illusion&lt;/a&gt;, found that the effect was enhanced when the subject was concentrating harder, or when the subject was under more physical strain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pendulum test is sometimes used as a measure of a subject's susceptibility to suggestion when studying other phenomenon, like &lt;strong&gt;facilitated communication&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Next, ideomotor responsiveness was assessed via the Chevreul pendulum&#xA;  illusion (Easton &amp;amp; Shor, 1976). The stimulus was a pendulum consisting&#xA;  of a metal washer fastened to a 30-cm string. Participants were asked&#xA;  to grasp the end of the string and to hold the pendulum directly above&#xA;  a line on a page that was placed on the desk in front of them.&#xA;  Ideomotor responding was indicated by movement in the direction of the&#xA;  line. The Chevreul pendulum illusion can be produced either by asking&#xA;  people to imagine the pendulum moving in the indicated direction&#xA;  (Easton &amp;amp; Shor, 1976) or by asking them to prevent the pendulum from&#xA;  moving in the desired direction (Ansfield &amp;amp; Wegner, 1996).&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubpages.unh.edu/~jel/713cog/facilitated_comm.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Facilitated Communication As An Ideomotor Response&lt;/a&gt;, Burgess et al, 1997 (PDF)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study found a significant correlation between the subject's response to suggestion using the pendulum and their success at the facilitated communication tasks. (Facilitated communication involves a helper guiding the hand of an impaired patient to type messages using a keyboard; controlled studies such as this show the message is really coming from the facilitator, not the patient.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this background, then, research into other mysterious phenomenon typically involves identifying a plausible mechanism to magnify these small involuntary movements, and tests carefully designed to rule them out. One further example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dowsing&lt;/strong&gt; typically involves a forked stick held at high tension, or one or two freely-pivoting wires held at their balance point. Small involuntary movements are magnified into dramatic dips or swings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With one rod in each hand, I first demonstrated how dowsing works by&#xA;  holding the rods in front of me, aimed straight ahead and with their&#xA;  horizontal arms parallel to each other and to the floor. I then slowly&#xA;  walked about the room until the rods suddenly crossed one another. I&#xA;  walked away from that spot and showed how the rods uncrossed and&#xA;  became parallel again. I suggested that the place where the rods had&#xA;  crossed must be near a source of flowing water, perhaps a water pipe&#xA;  under the floor. I then requested that each of the students try the&#xA;  rods. To their amazement, the rods crossed when they walked over the&#xA;  spot I had indicated. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I did similar demonstrations for the second group of students.&#xA;  However, this time I let them see my dowsing rods crossing at a&#xA;  different arbitrarily chosen location in the room. Sure enough, for&#xA;  these students, too, the rods crossed just at the spot where mine had.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ideomotor.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How People Are Fooled by Ideomotor Action&lt;/a&gt; by Ray Hyman, originally printed in The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, 1999)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to me to be a clear demonstration of how much subject expectation contributes to the effect, since it is unlikely these students had a stake in the outcome, like a professional dowser does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other related phenomenon include the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clever Hans effect&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, named after a horse who appeared to be able to perform arithmetic, but was eventually shown to be responding to the (involuntary) cues of his trainer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://business.highbeam.com/5799/article-1G1-76881170/chevreul-report-mysterious-oscillations-handheld-pendulum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chevreul's Report on the Mysterious Oscillations of the Hand-Held Pendulum: A French Chemist's 1833 Open Letter to Ampere&lt;/a&gt;, by Spitz, The Skeptical Enquirer, July 2001&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sgipt.org/medppp/psymot/carp1852.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;On the Influence of Suggestion in Modifying and directing Muscular Movement, independently of Volition&lt;/a&gt;, by Carpenter, 1852 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2001-05320-011&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An Analysis of ideomotor action&lt;/a&gt;, by Knuf et all, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Dec 2001&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1049" LastEditorUserId="1049" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T18:42:32.590" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T18:42:32.590" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13570" CreationDate="2012-11-08T16:21:23.550" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That information is based on a&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.primaryindustrieseducation.com.au/resources/media/piefacersurvey.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;survey&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;by the&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.primaryindustrieseducation.com.au/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Primary Industries Education Foundation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(PIEF)&lt;/em&gt;, which was undertaken by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Council_for_Educational_Research&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Australian Council of Educational Research&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(ACER)&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A sample of 150 primary schools and a sample of 150 secondary (or central) schools&#xA;  were selected with probability proportional to size of the student populations (Grade&#xA;  6 and Grade 10).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gcTFu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Students&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MQzGH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Table&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.primaryindustrieseducation.com.au/resources/reports/foodfibrefuture.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;full report&lt;/a&gt; has for much more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;So, according to this survey:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;18% of 6 Grade Students think that &lt;em&gt;Pasta&lt;/em&gt; is an &lt;em&gt;Animal Product&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only 7% of 10 Grade Students think that &lt;em&gt;Pasta&lt;/em&gt; is an &lt;em&gt;Animal Product&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;27% of 6 Grade Students think that &lt;em&gt;Yoghurt&lt;/em&gt; is an &lt;em&gt;Plant Product&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;13% of 10 Grade Students think that &lt;em&gt;Yoghurt&lt;/em&gt; is an &lt;em&gt;Plant Product&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/cultural-cringe-schoolchildren-cant-see-the-yoghurt-for-the-trees-20120304-1ub55.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sydney Morning Herald&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(March 2012)&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pkpvo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;What They Think&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In total, 900 rural and urban students were surveyed from 61 schools across the states&lt;/strong&gt; over almost four months to last October. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-11-08T17:10:52.457" LastActivityDate="2012-11-08T17:10:52.457" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13558" CreationDate="2012-11-08T18:53:43.973" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is legally incontrovertible that the 16th Amendment was properly ratified.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This matter was the subject of a court case, United States v. Thomas, eventually heard before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. It &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_protester_Sixteenth_Amendment_arguments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;found against Benson, and for the validity of the Sixteenth amendment&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thomas insists that because the states did not approve exactly the same text, the amendment did not go into effect. Secretary Knox considered this argument. The Solicitor of the Department of State drew up a list of the errors in the instruments and — taking into account both the triviality of the deviations and the treatment of earlier amendments that had experienced more substantial problems — advised the Secretary that he was authorized to declare the amendment adopted. The Secretary did so.&#xA;  Although Thomas urges us to take the view of several state courts that only agreement on the literal text may make a legal document effective, the Supreme Court follows the &quot;enrolled bill rule.&quot; If a legislative document is authenticated in regular form by the appropriate officials, the court treats that document as properly adopted. Field v. Clark, 143 U.S. 649, 36 L.Ed. 294, 12 S.Ct. 495 (1892). The principle is equally applicable to constitutional amendments. See Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130, 66 L.Ed. 505, 42 S.Ct. 217 (1922), which treats as conclusive the declaration of the Secretary of State that the nineteenth amendment had been adopted. In United States v. Foster, 789 F.2d. 457, 462-463, n.6 (7th Cir. 1986), we relied on Leser, as well as the inconsequential nature of the objections in the face of the 73-year acceptance of the effectiveness of the sixteenth amendment, to reject a claim similar to Thomas's. See also Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 83 L. Ed. 1385, 59 S. Ct. 972 (1939) (questions about ratification of amendments may be nonjusticiable). Secretary Knox declared that enough states had ratified the sixteenth amendment. The Secretary's decision is not transparently defective. We need not decide when, if ever, such a decision may be reviewed in order to know that Secretary Knox's decision is now beyond review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A point-by-point rebuttal would be (ahem) pointless. The view of the courts was that the declaration by the states that they had ratified the amendment, and the assessement by the Secretary of State that sufficient states had done so, is enough to validate the amendment. Wording variations were considered too trivial to affect the outcome. Even if Benson's historical facts were 100% accurate, they would not affect the validity of the amendment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The promulgation of these arguments has in fact been declared to be fraud. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The argument that the Sixteenth Amendment was not ratified and variations of this argument have been officially identified as legally frivolous federal tax return positions for purposes of the $5,000 frivolous tax return penalty imposed under Internal Revenue Code section 6702(a)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/The-Truth-About-Frivolous-Tax-Arguments-Section-I-D-to-E#_Toc350157905&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this dismissal from the IRS&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2018-10-31T19:39:56.527" LastActivityDate="2018-10-31T19:39:56.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13578" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13615" CreationDate="2012-11-09T06:49:47.703" Score="3" ViewCount="1648" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this discussion on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=865691&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hacker News&lt;/a&gt; forum, there is a debate about whether&#xA;taking &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adderall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aderall&lt;/a&gt; makes you less creative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://keithsawyer.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/adderall-vs-creativity/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;science blog&lt;/a&gt; quotes the New Yorker magazine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the New Yorker Magazine of April 27, 2009, Margaret Talbot has an extensive article on the widespread use of these “neuroenhancing” drugs.  She quotes two experts as having the same concern–that “drugs that heighten users’ focus might dampen their creativity.”  One expert, Martha Farah, the director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, says “Cognitive psychologists have found that there is a trade-off between attentional focus and creativity. And there is some evidence that suggests that individuals who are better able to focus on one thing and filter out distractions tend to be less creative.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if this is true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given Aderall is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adderall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;composed of&lt;/a&gt; of four amphetamine salts, is this the case with all amphetamines? All ADHD medications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8106" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-09T22:02:07.103" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T04:08:59.303" Title="Does Aderall make you less creative?" Tags="|neurology|medications|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5719" CreationDate="2012-11-09T11:32:11.830" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;You're asking a lot of questions and they aren't as specific as they probably should be for a site like this.  Let me just cut to the chase, and then try to justify my answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can anyone reasonably expect to obtain a physique like Arnold without drugs?  &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can anyone reasonably expect to obtain a physique like Arnold with drugs?  &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can tall, skinny guys get more muscular and stronger?  &lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are ads on TV and the internet misleading or out-right lies?  &lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are my answers, at a glance.  Now comes the justification.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, we need to make it clear that we are talking about 'average' people (as per the question) not outliers.  An average person who takes up sprinting can train and improve - but WILL NOT EVER run as fast as Usain Bolt.  It's safe to say that because, empirically we see that the world's best runners cannot run as fast as Usain Bolt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, I'm really not sure this question should be on this site.  It's easy to say X did Y but it's very hard to say it is physically impossible for X to do Y.  Can some ficticious guy run a four minute mile?  Well, there was a time when nobody had - and some people argued it was impossible for medical reasons, while other people argued it was achievable.  Then some guy did it; but he was the only one.  Now world class athletes can do it.  But what does that mean for the hypothetical question of 'Can some guy run a four minute mile'?  So, I'm doing my best to answer this question with actual data - but it does get pretty speculative.  Hopefully someone else can do a better job.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Let's have a look at Arnold&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's really important to clarify what we're talking about when you say 'Like Arnold'.  Let's try to get some perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arnold is one of the &lt;strong&gt;world's most successful&lt;/strong&gt; body builders.  He won The Mr. Universe three years in a row and the Mr. Olympia six years in a row.  He was also a world-class, competitive power-lifter, taking first in the International Powerlifting championships and the German Powerlifting Championships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schwarzenegger#Powerlifting.2Fweightlifting&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Schwarzenegger#Powerlifting.2Fweightlifting&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  http://castironknowledge.blogspot.ie/2010/10/arnolds-powerlifting-history.html&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was competing against the other best body builders in the world and he consistently beat them.  That means, all of the professional body builders competing in the Mr. Olympia, for six consecutive years, were unable to obtain the physique as good as Arnold's.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But let's talk about drugs.  The question specifically asks about what we can achieve without drugs....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is, Arnold took steriods.  He admits it.  The people he was competing against also took steroids.  Many of them weren't illegal or banned at the time.  '...the use of anabolic steroids was openly discussed partly due to the fact they were legal...'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20080329223151/http://espn.go.com/columns/farrey_tom/1655597.html&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20080329223151/http://espn.go.com/columns/farrey_tom/1655597.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodybuilding#1970s_onwards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Arnold's own words, '&lt;strong&gt;It was what I had to do to compete&lt;/strong&gt;'.  This would strongly suggest that Arnold probably could not have achieved his physique without drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line is, EVEN WITH STEROIDS, none of the world-class, professional body-builders could obtain a physique like Arnold's.  Arnold still dominated the sport.  Yes he used drugs too.  We can't say with absolute certainty that Arnold without drugs couldn't obtain his physique - but we can say he didn't do it and that he believes he couldn't have.  Arnold himself, who without drugs was a world-class powerlifter, most likely couldn't obtain his physique without drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'd need to be an extreme outlier &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; take drugs to get the physique that Arnold is famous for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What About Our Tall/Skinny Guy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay fine - so we're not going to look like Arnold, with or without drugs.  But what can a tall/skinny guy hope to achieve by working out?  Well, there are lots of health benefits...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/exercise/HQ01676&quot;&gt;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/exercise/HQ01676&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  http://www.cdc.gov/physicalactivity/growingstronger/why/index.html&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Controls weight, combats a whole slew of negative health conditions/diseases (arthritis, diabetes, osteoprosis, obesity, back pain, depression), increases muscle mass, improves sex life, and promotes better sleep.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I mean &lt;em&gt;that's pretty good&lt;/em&gt; right?  Reason enough for any tall/skinny guy to head to the gym!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I feel like that's not what you're looking for.  Still, I'm having a lot of trouble finding sources that seem appropriate for this site.  You can find a lot of different formulas online that will claim to tell you how much lean mass you can 'naturally' support.   You'll notice that they all give slightly different results and most of them don't explain or justify the methodologies used in their creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/whats-my-genetic-muscular-potential.html&quot;&gt;http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/whats-my-genetic-muscular-potential.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weightrainer.net/bodypred.html&quot;&gt;http://www.weightrainer.net/bodypred.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scoobysworkshop.com/muscle-gain-calculator/&quot;&gt;http://scoobysworkshop.com/muscle-gain-calculator/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ericweinbrenner.com/articles/training/how-to-calculate-your-maximum-muscular-potential/&quot;&gt;http://ericweinbrenner.com/articles/training/how-to-calculate-your-maximum-muscular-potential/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2637" LastEditorUserId="2637" LastEditDate="2012-11-09T15:34:01.017" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T15:34:01.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13581" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-09T12:35:26.773" Score="13" ViewCount="4131" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the following graph of male life expectancy of ex-Soviet states spanning Chernobyl accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lzcPc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Life expectancy graph, with text in Japanese&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source of the graph is a blog post (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.goo.ne.jp/newjolly/e/beef7c58b970fae4c4f528263c9f66bb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;チェルノブイリ事故後の平均寿命&lt;/a&gt;), which according to google translate means &quot;Life expectancy after the Chernobyl accident&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to someone who showed this to me, the title of the graph is &quot;Former Soviet Union Nations&quot;. Acquamarine is Ukraine, red is Russia, green is Belarus, yellow is Uzbekistan, and purple is Kazakhstan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By accurate, at a minimum I mean &quot;the data has not been fabricated by anti-nuclear activists&quot;. Ideally, this'd also mean &quot;the data has not been manipulated by the government, and is reasonably accurate&quot;, but maybe that's too much to ask.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was skeptical of this graph because the best alternative explanation I had for the fall in life expectancy was the collapse of the Soviet Union, and going from a dictatorship to a democracy being associated with a lowering of life expectancy was somewhat counter-intuitive to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2024/have-several-hundreds-of-thousands-of-people-died-because-of-the-chernobyl-disas&quot;&gt;Have several hundreds of thousands of people died because of the Chernobyl disaster?&lt;/a&gt; - the loss of life described in the accepted answer would probably not cause the dramatic decline in Russian life expectancy shown in this graph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T10:05:49.360" Title="Is this graph of life expectancy pre and post Chernobyl accurate?" Tags="|life-expectancy|russia|soviet-union|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13581" CreationDate="2012-11-09T12:35:26.773" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following graph from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Russia#Life_expectancy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; shows Russian life expectancy for males and females.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8Fj8E.png&quot; alt=&quot;Russian life expectancy from Wikipedia&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It shows a decline in male life expectancy from a peak of just under 65, to 57 and a bit, consistent with the initial graph. As that was the most striking feature of the graph, I doubt that the graph was fabricated by anti-nuclear activists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is interesting to note that they only graphed male life expectancy. Male life expectancy dropped by almost 8 years, whereas female life expectancy dropped by less than four years. Deliberately choosing male life expectancy could be cherry-picking on the part of the anti-nuclear activists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T12:35:26.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13581" CreationDate="2012-11-09T13:31:23.437" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Graph is accurate, but the conclusion is not. Unless you'd want to argue that radiation causes violence, rather than cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, during the fall of the Soviet Union there is huge increase in male violent deaths. However, cancer (neoplasms) rates remain practically flat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mortality rates by cause:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xwmhb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mortality rate by homicide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/US1Ca.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_REVUE=POPE&amp;amp;ID_NUMPUBLIE=POPE_201&amp;amp;ID_ARTICLE=POPE_201_0157&amp;amp;FRM=B&amp;amp;REDIR=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Mortality in Europe: the Divergence Between East and West&quot; by France Meslé and Jacques Vallin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing that speaks against the radiation, is the fact, that the drop in life expectancy does not correlate with the fallout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3wY30.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rt0uZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the graph quoted in the original question, the life expectancy drop is less significant in Belarus and Ukraine, which were more affected, and more significant in Kazakhstan, which wasn't affected at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2012-11-12T10:05:49.360" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T10:05:49.360" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13584" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-09T14:15:59.970" Score="12" ViewCount="570" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.energyfiend.com/caffeinated-coffee-the-anti-cancer-wonder-drug&quot;&gt;http://www.energyfiend.com/caffeinated-coffee-the-anti-cancer-wonder-drug&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above URL claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Study after study has been showing the cancer fighting properties of coffee because of the rich antioxidants it contains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen this in various other places too, but have been rather sceptical.. are such studies really pointing to the fact that coffee could be anti-cancerous, or is there some skewing of statistics going on here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8626" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-11-09T14:27:13.583" LastActivityDate="2015-09-07T08:12:35.350" Title="Is coffee anti-cancerous?" Tags="|cancer|coffee|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13581" CreationDate="2012-11-09T15:09:33.117" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't beleive this graph shows any correlation with Chernobyl disaster&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/thsF1.png&quot; alt=&quot;Chernobyl radiation map&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above is Chernobyl contamination map from wikipedia. As you can see it is North Ukraine and South-West Belarus that suffered the most. And yet according to the graph, biggest life expectancy drop was observed in Russia. While Russia certanly got it's share of the radiation, it's nowhere near to that of Ukraine and Belarus. And we are only talking about tiny South-East part of Russia, which couldn't have possibly had that much influence on the big picture. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The drop in life could be connected to similar drop in the quality of life after USSR collapce. Destroyed health service, low food quality, stress due rapid transition to capitalism (which explains why male life expectancy dropped more that female), high crime level, poverty, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10208" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T15:09:33.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13591" CreationDate="2012-11-09T21:42:00.667" Score="0" ViewCount="625" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the Daily Mirror:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Social networking sites such as Facebook could raise your risk of serious health problems by reducing levels of face-to-face contact, a doctor claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emailing people rather than meeting up with them may have wide-ranging biological effects, said psychologist Dr Aric Sigman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Increased isolation could alter the way genes work and upset immune responses, hormone levels and the function of arteries. It could also impair mental performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could increase the risk of problems as serious as cancer, strokes, heart disease and dementia, Dr Sigman says in Biologist, the journal of the Institute of Biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1149207/How-using-Facebook-raise-risk-cancer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How using Facebook could raise your risk of cancer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in practice (my summary) the claim is that Social Networking leads to isolation and isolation leads to diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is any of this piece of reporting by the Daily Mail, and the claim by Dr. Sigman based on any scientific fact? If not, what is the doctor in the news story actually claiming? Are his claims supported by evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2023-05-11T15:07:31.977" Title="Do Facebook and email have &quot;wide ranging biological effects&quot; and potentially cause cancer?" Tags="|cancer|social-media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8365" CreationDate="2012-11-09T21:43:30.220" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer: depends how they are designed and how you use them.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important thing to understand about any sort of fluorescent tube (including CFLs) is that it will have rather more ways to fail than a simple incandescent bulb. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An incandescent bulb is, essentially, a carefully tuned resistor designed to heat up to a white heat when a normal current flows through it (the resistance and voltage depending on the country and bulb type with DC bulbs usually being 12v and mains AC bulbs being 110v or 220v roughly). They fail when the resistor filament breaks usually because even tungsten evaporates slowly when white hot. Some specialist bulbs (eg &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halogen_lamp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;halogens&lt;/a&gt;) are made of specialist materials to minimise this effect and allow the filament to run hotter which is why they emit &quot;whiter&quot; light. There are few, if any, external effects that alter this basic mechanism and change the lifetime (except extreme physical shock isn't usually significant for fixed fitting in houses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typical fluorescent tubes are far more complicated. The light is emitted by a phosphor coating on the inside of the glass which is excited by ultraviolet light from a discharge in mercury vapour inside the tube. But getting a discharge to start and be sustained in the tube is not trivial. Domestic tubes rely on a ballast which contains some electronics which kick-starts the discharge and controls the current to a constant level. To achieve a reasonable current the electrodes are usually heated (exactly like a normal incandescent bulb but cooler). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bearing this in mind, there are three key ways the lamps can fail. The electrodes can fail by the same mechanism as a standard bulb; the electronics can fail; and the phosphor can &quot;wear out&quot;. Moreover, because they are more complex than simple incandescent bulbs, the way they are used can impact those failure modes. As the Lamptech site summarises (talking mainly about standard linear tubes, but the &lt;em&gt;mechanisms&lt;/em&gt; are the same in CFLs):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is relatively complex to specify the lifetime of a fluorescent lamp, because it depends on several variables and can be defined in different ways. Contrary to other light sources they do not always reach an abrupt failure point, but gradually lose their initial performance as they age. Often the light output may decrease so much that the tube is considered useless and must be replaced even though it is still producing some light. The useful lifetime of linear fluorescent lamps can vary from 6,000 hours to 60,000 hours depending on its construction, the operating conditions and type of control circuit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The long term life depends a lot on the phosphor lifetime (why build all the other components to last a very long time if the lamp slowly dims to the point of uselessness because of phosphor degradation?) Modern phosphors tend to last longer than older types. see this chart from The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lamptech.co.uk/Documents/FL%20Life.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lamptech&lt;/a&gt; site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OavU8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;phosphor lifetimes&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both the lifetime of the electronics and the electrodes are somewhat dependent on the way the bulbs are used. This is because kicking off the gas discharge is stressful for both compared to sustaining it. The result is that the actual operating life depends strongly on how often the lamp is switched on. Lamptech summarises:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each switching causes progressive erosion of the electron-emissive materials with which the electrodes are coated. The rated life will be achieved only when the frequency of switching does not exceed 8 times per 24 hours. Increased switching frequency can result in a dramatic reduction of life. Conversely the lamp can achieve up to double its rated life if it is switched on only once and never turned off again. The strong inter-relation between switching frequency and lamp lifetime is illustrated in Figure F15:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ArQsG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;FL lifetimes and switching frequency&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These general principles apply to linear tubes and CFLs. There have been specific studies on the relationship for common CFLs. One where the detail isn't hidden behind a paywall is found in the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://atmae.org/jit/Articles/SpeziaMaximizingCFL051511.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Journal of Industrial Technology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (pdf). The paper contains some analysis of the economics of using CFLs in different environments and with different switching frequencies. It also contains some links to other studies (but most are paywalled). Unfortunately it is written in a fairly opaque style and lacks a decent summary. But it does explain why the stated lifetimes of CFLs may be unrealistic for some consumers (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CFL manufacturers give consumers estimates of lamp life based on daily&#xA;  operating times of four hours per day &lt;strong&gt;but do not include the impact of life reduction due to starting&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper's key conclusion is that CFLs may not make economic sense if frequently turned on and off because of their short resulting lifetimes. If you want further technical detail of how they generated realistic lifetimes from actual experiment it is worth ploughing through the technical detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, to answer the original question, CFLs &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; last as long as manufacturers claim, but there are plenty of real world patterns of use where they will not.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2012-11-09T21:43:30.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13589" CreationDate="2012-11-09T23:55:48.530" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, the opposite is true.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, Dr. Aric Sigman himself has disclaimed the contents of the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr Sigman has published other papers. Well Connected?: The Biological&#xA;Implications of 'Social Networking', is published in The Biologist,&#xA;Vol 56(1), the journal of the Society of Biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This paper has been misrepresented by some news reports,&#xA;websites and bloggers as claiming that social networking causes cancer&#xA;or disease. This is not true. The paper addresses the extent to which&#xA;time online may be displacing face-to-face contact, and that lack of&#xA;social connection is associated with physiological changes, increased&#xA;incidence of illness and higher premature mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aricsigman.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aric Sigman website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More in general, even his claims on his website have been heavily criticised by Dr. Ben Goldacre on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badscience.net/2009/02/the-evidence-aric-sigman-ignored/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;his blog&lt;/a&gt;, where he provides three counter-example studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1. Caplan SE published a paper in 2007 entitled: “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17474841?ordinalpos=6&amp;amp;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Relations among loneliness, social anxiety, and problematic Internet use&lt;/a&gt;.” Dr Sigman did not quote this paper in his article. Why not? “The results support the hypothesis that the relationship between loneliness and preference for online social interaction is spurious.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2. Sum &lt;em&gt;et al &lt;/em&gt;published a paper in 2008 with the title: “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18422415?ordinalpos=2&amp;amp;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Internet use and loneliness in older adults&lt;/a&gt;“. Dr Sigman chose not to quote this paper. Why not? I don’t know, although it does contain the line “greater use of the Internet as a communication tool was associated with a lower level of social loneliness.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3. Subrahmanyam &lt;em&gt;et al&lt;/em&gt; published a paper in 2007 called “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18229503?ordinalpos=2&amp;amp;itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Adolescents on the net: Internet use and well-being.&lt;/a&gt;” It features the line “loneliness was not related to the total time spent online, nor to the time spent on e-mail”. Dr Sigman ignored it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another doctor, neurologist &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/vaughanbell&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vaughan Bell&lt;/a&gt; criticises Sigman on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindhacks.com/2009/02/19/facebook-causes-marble-loss/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mindhacks blog&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, like one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2007.0010&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; that found that older adults who use the internet more report lower levels of loneliness, or this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inderscience.com/search/index.php?action=record&amp;amp;rec_id=19191&amp;amp;prevQuery=&amp;amp;ps=10&amp;amp;m=or&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; in children that found internet use was associated with less loneliness, or this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18229503&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; that found no link in adolescents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;[...]&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article is quite clearly drivel if you spend more than 20 seconds on Google, but it seems to have been swallowed by most mainstream press outlets without question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, another paper completely disproving this claim that social media lead to loneliness (and consequently to disease), in fact finding that the opposite is true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the evidence presented in this article, it is plausible&#xA;to assume that &lt;strong&gt;online self-disclosure accounts for the positive&#xA;relationship between online communication and social connectedness&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ccam-ascor.nl/images/stories/publications/Journal_PDF_ENG/2009_Valkenburg__Peter_Current_Directions.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Social Consequences of the Internet for Adolescents&lt;/a&gt; by Patti M. Valkenburg and Jochen Peter, Amsterdam School of Communications Research ASCoR, University of Amsterdam, 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-05-11T15:07:31.977" LastActivityDate="2023-05-11T15:07:31.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13592" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13594" CreationDate="2012-11-10T03:19:44.700" Score="2" ViewCount="674" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coffee is certainly one of science's most investigated beverages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, I found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/coffee-drinkers-what-are-you-doing-to-your-body.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lifehacker website&lt;/a&gt; stating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to further research, regular coffee drinkers may have less of a risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease in later life – by as much as 60%!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for another claim on the same page, it cites the &quot;British Coffee Association&quot;.  I do not accept that as a credible source. For that specific claim, above, we only get  &quot;According to further research&quot; without any source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence supporting that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-10T10:24:57.767" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T10:24:57.767" Title="Does drinking coffee greatly reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease?" Tags="|medical-science|neurology|natural-remedies|coffee|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13592" CreationDate="2012-11-10T03:41:46.420" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is a strong association between drinking coffee and reduced Alzheimer's risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quantitative review of the data was published in 2007 that looked at the pooled data from four studies, published between 1990 and 2002.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quintana, José Luis Barranco; Allam, Mohamed Farouk; Del Castillo, Amparo Serrano; Navajas, Rafael Fernández-Crehuet, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/nres/2007/00000029/00000001/art00016&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alzheimer's disease and coffee: a quantitative review&lt;/a&gt;,  Neurological Research, Volume 29, Number 1, January 2007 , pp. 91-95(5)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was an obvious protective effect of coffee consumption in the pooled estimate [risk estimate: 0.73 (95% confidence interval: 0.58-0.92)]. However, the homogeneity test was highly significant (p&amp;lt;0.01), indicating heterogeneity across the pooled studies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although our pooled estimates show that coffee consumption is inversely associated with the risk of AD, the four studies had heterogeneous methodologies and results. Further prospective studies evaluating the association between coffee consumption and AD are strongly needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while they didn't find a risk reduction from the pooled data as high as 60%, as quoted by Lifehacker, they showed that the individual studies had found quite different figures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is quite reasonable to believe that Lifehacker had found (or at least had heard of) a study that showed a 60% risk reduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T03:41:46.420" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7856" CreationDate="2012-11-10T10:26:11.697" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is yes, plucking feathers causes a pain to birds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, can bird feel pain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://mobile.vetlearn.com/Media/PublicationsArticle/PV_27_02_98.pdf&quot;&gt;compendium&lt;/a&gt; explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is generally accepted that birds perceive pain&#xA;  similarly to mammals. Birds have neurologic&#xA;  components to respond to&#xA;  painful stimuli and endogenous antinociceptive (antipain)&#xA;  mechanisms to modulate&#xA;  pain, and some pharmacologic&#xA;  agents administered for pain in mammals also&#xA;  modulate pain pathways and behavioral&#xA;  responses to painful stimuli in birds.&#xA;  Pain&#xA;  perception allows animals to minimize their&#xA;  exposure to potentially harmful stimuli. Birds&#xA;  often do not indicate pain in an obvious manner&#xA;  because species that may be preyed on are less&#xA;  likely to display overt pain-associated behavior&#xA;  that may attract attention from predators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This 1992 Animal Welfare article[1] has a similar conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gentle, M.J.:&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ufaw/aw/1992/00000001/00000004/art00002&quot;&gt;Pain in Birds&lt;/a&gt;, Animal Welfare, Volume 1, Number 4, November 1992 , pp. 235-247(13)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Comparing pain in birds with mammals it is clear that, with regard to the anatomical, physiological and behavioural parameters measured, there are no major differences and therefore the ethical considerations normally afforded to mammals should be extended to birds.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, birds can feel pain and also in this animal group, pain has probably evolved as a adaptive mechanism to avoid potentially harmful stimuli. This is proposed, for example, by Richard Dawkins in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_Show_on_Earth%3a_The_Evidence_for_Evolution&quot;&gt;The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution&lt;/a&gt;. For a summary of his argument, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain#Evolutionary_and_behavioral_role&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just theoretically, plucking the feathers may cause a harm - at least in the way it may cause a skin rupture, what may lead to infection. One can then expect plucking to be painful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, in this 1991 study (with the same lead author as the Animal Welfare article), plucking the feathers was shown to be indeed painful for a chicken. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gentle, M.J. and Hunter, L.N. 1991. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2047598&quot;&gt;Physiological and behavioural responses associated with feather removal in Gallus gallus var domesticus&lt;/a&gt;. Research in Veterinary Science, 50: 95-101&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was concluded that feather removal is likely to be painful to the bird and feather removal by flockmates can be categorised as a welfare problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10224" LastEditorUserId="10354" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T19:23:15.780" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T19:23:15.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13599" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-10T11:11:57.907" Score="2" ViewCount="4155" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hcLmc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://adoholik.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/renault_megane_paris-berlin.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the above advert which claims that Renault Megane can cover 1700km with one tank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://carleasingmadesimple.com/business-car-leasing/renault/megane/fuel-tank-capacity/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; the Megane model has a fuel tank capacity of 60 Liters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the Megane cover 28.3 Kms per liter of petrol?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10228" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-10T11:37:20.863" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T11:37:20.863" Title="Can a Renault Megane drive 1700 km with 1 tank?" Tags="|road-vehicles|consumer-products|advertising|fuel-economy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13600" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13599" CreationDate="2012-11-10T11:31:40.130" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Renault's figures, a Scenic with the dCI 110 engine can do up to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.renault.co.uk/cars/model/meganesporttourer/ecoefficiency.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;80.7 mpg&lt;/a&gt; or 34.3 Km/litre. This would allow a maximum theoretical limit of 34.3Km/litre &amp;times; 60 litre/tank = 2058 Km/tank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how the figures are calculated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HOW ARE FUEL CONSUMPTION FIGURES CALCULATED?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Official Fuel consumption figures are produced for comparison purpose and are measured according to the European Directive 80/1268/EEC. These figures are specific for a vehicle type and not for a single car. Real world fuel (actual) consumption can vary as the fuel efficiency of a vehicle is influenced by driving behaviour, weather and road conditions. The use of technical equipment for example air conditioning, can also effect the fuel consumption. For further information, please visit the Vehicle Certification Agency web site www.vca.gov.uk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's a standard measurement, however it should be used fo &lt;em&gt;comparing car models&lt;/em&gt; and not to &lt;em&gt;predict usage of a specific car&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ad seems to be misleading on that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T11:31:40.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13601" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-10T12:34:33.623" Score="4" ViewCount="230" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraben&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Parabens&lt;/a&gt; are a class of preservative used in cosmetics and health related products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A large number of products, especially for infants, claim to be free of parabens implying that this is somewhat better. An even larger number of products contain this &quot;dreaded&quot; parabens and I have been using them for years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, with a young kid, I have been arguing with my wife about the relative merits (and have, in numerous instances, been &quot;strongly recommended&quot; to only buy parabens-free products). I have a suspicion that it is a marketing story, but I wonder if it can be debunked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are products without parabens healthier than counterparts with them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2416" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-10T22:56:46.950" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T07:07:09.920" Title="Are cosmetic/pharmaceutical products without parabens healthier than counterparts with it?" Tags="|environmental-health|cosmetics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13602" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-10T13:12:19.070" Score="7" ViewCount="5376" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard lots of people claim that whisky or rum or &quot;hot toddies&quot; help with symptoms of a sore throat or a cold. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it really or is it just people feeling more relaxed because they had a drink? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some variants also state that it actually helps reduce the healing time, but that seems far-fetched. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10230" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T13:12:19.070" Title="Does drinking alcohol help a sore throat?" Tags="|alcohol|common-cold|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1319" CreationDate="2012-11-10T14:56:40.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This phenomenon is just the result of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_detection&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agent detection&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked two similar questions on cogsci.stackexchange which interested people might like to read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/519/why-is-it-common-for-people-to-default-to-a-single-causal-source-to-explain-new&quot;&gt;Why-is-it-common-for-people-to-default-to-a-single-causal-source-to-explain-new&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think it is mostly a result of &quot;hyperactive agency detection&quot;; this&#xA;  results in &quot;single-cause&quot; reasoning as part of the search for an&#xA;  &quot;agent&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/243/why-are-people-inclined-to-praise-or-fear-the-unknown&quot;&gt;Why-are-people-inclined-to-praise-or-fear-the-unknown&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I remember Richard Dawkins mentioning the possible evolutionary&#xA;  benefit of belief in &quot;The God Delusion&quot;. It could basically be a&#xA;  necessity for survival. Accepting things without questioning them is&#xA;  essential in life, especially when growing up. Where reasoning falls&#xA;  short, belief can triumph. Why people are inclined to want a&#xA;  explanation, is quite an interesting question! – Steven Jeuris♦ Feb 2&#xA;  at 20:33&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wolpert argues that our wide range of beliefs, some of which are&#xA;  clearly false, grew out of a uniquely human trait. Alone in the animal&#xA;  world, humans understand cause and effect, and that, he says, led&#xA;  ultimately to the invention of tools, the rapid rise of sophisticated&#xA;  technology, and of course, beliefs. Even the earliest humans&#xA;  understood that many events that shaped their lives resulted from&#xA;  specific causes. Therefore, there must be a cause behind every event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We want to believe there is a reason for it all, and that leaves us&#xA;  predisposed to believe in some things for which there is little or no&#xA;  evidence. If a certain belief makes sense out of an otherwise&#xA;  senseless event, then it must be true, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3087" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:56:17.773" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T18:35:30.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13604" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13605" CreationDate="2012-11-10T16:54:47.133" Score="8" ViewCount="6187" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that sodium bicarbonate reduces the risk of cancer and the risk of metastatic cancer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, an Italian doctor, Tullio Simoncini is promoting this type of therapy (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npgyZMaewuE&quot;&gt;YouTube&lt;/a&gt; link here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any scientific evidences for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8498" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T08:02:01.637" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T08:02:01.637" Title="Does sodium bicarbonate reduce the risk of cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|alkaline-diet|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13604" CreationDate="2012-11-10T18:49:11.737" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The YouTube video you have link shows someone who has become unfortunately famous in Italy for being a fraud (sorry, some of the sources are in Italian, but Google Translate should suffice for a basic translation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tullio Simoncini was a medical doctor who proposes a pseudoscientific theory by which tumours would actually be derived by a fungal infection (specifically from &lt;em&gt;Candida albicans&lt;/em&gt;) and that should therefore cured with sodium bicarbonate. His theory is absolute pseudoscience, as there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/complementaryandalternativemedicine/herbsvitaminsandminerals/sodium-bicarbonate&quot;&gt;no evidence for tumour being generated by Candida infection&lt;/a&gt;, and his treatment is nothing more than a very dangerous hoax to spill money from desperate people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2003 Simoncini had his license to practice medicine revoked and was condamned for fraud and involuntary manslaughter after &lt;a href=&quot;http://archiviostorico.corriere.it/2006/maggio/21/Medico_condannato_omicidio_colposo_co_10_060521029.shtml&quot;&gt;the death of three people&lt;/a&gt; due to his treatment.&#xA;In 2007 a breast cancer patient in the Netherlands &lt;a href=&quot;http://anaximperator.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/sylvia-dies/&quot;&gt;died after the same treatment&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;On 17 January 2012 Italy's Supreme Court (&lt;em&gt;Corte di Cassazione&lt;/em&gt;) has finally confirmed his condemnation for menslaughter (sentence 1432/2012) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cgems.eu/newsletter/article/152&quot;&gt;(source, in Italian)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has also been recently sued in Albany by a family of a brain cancer patient who died after Simoncini's bicarbonate treatment &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tgcom24.mediaset.it/cronaca/articoli/1066229/si-cura-il-cancro-col-bicarbonato-e-muoredenunciato-medico-italiano-%28radiato%29-in-albania.shtml&quot;&gt;(source, in Italian)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, although Simoncini's theory is pseudoscience, this does not mean that sodium bicarbonate could not have an effect on cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been some scientific research on the effect of bicarbonate on tumours. Due to their high metabolic rate tumours are, in fact, acidic (pH ~6.5 compared to ~7.2 in normal tissue), and bicarbonate can act by increasing the pH in the tumoral environment. This could be important because low pH seems to be an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10796075&quot;&gt;important factor in chemoresistance&lt;/a&gt; and could have some effect in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16818644&quot;&gt;promoting metastases&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study shows an important effect of bicarbonate in preventing metastases in a mouse model of breast cancer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19276390&quot;&gt;Bicarbonate increases tumor pH and inhibits spontaneous metastases&lt;/a&gt; - Robey et al. - &lt;em&gt;Cancer Res.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;2009&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the authors warn that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Medically, the idea of treating cancer through p.o. administration of buffers is attractive but tethered to caveats. Reaction diffusion models show that the effect of bicarbonate on the pHe gradient will be graded with dose and that, at the current dose of 200 mmol/L, is not saturating. This dose translates to an intake of ~1.5 μmol/h/g of whole mouse. By comparison, the acid production rate of tumors can be ~100 μmol/h/g of tumor weight. &lt;strong&gt;Thus, these doses of NaHCO3 may be able to counteract the acid load of a 15-mg tumor, which translates to ~ 10&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; cells or a 1-mm&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; micrometastasis. The effectiveness of this therapy will be reduced with larger tumors&lt;/strong&gt;. It is somewhat surprising that this incomplete effect had such a dramatic effect on metastases. Another concern is that bicarbonate, with an effective pKa of 6.24, would seem to be poorly suited as an alkalinizing buffer; thus, it is possible that better pHe control and more dramatic antimetastatic effects will be observed with a higher pKa buffer. However, it remains possible that this effect may be specific for buffers in the bicarbonate/CO2 family through involvement of carbonic anhydrase activity, which is important to pH regulation in tumors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also noted in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3125283/&quot;&gt;this other study&lt;/a&gt; by the same authors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Certain determinations are required before considering systemic buffering of tumor acidity as feasible approach to cancer treatment. Effective doses, susceptible tumor types, ideal buffers, safety approaches, and other factors in the tumor microenvironment would need to be identified and validated. To assist our understanding of these phenomena, mathematical models were developed to predict the safety and efficacy of systemic buffering of tumor acidity in humans. &lt;strong&gt;Our findings suggest that chronic use of oral bicarbonate as a cancer intervention is limited&lt;/strong&gt;. Safe doses for consumption limit the amount of buffering to counteract tumor cell production of extracellular protons. In a previous study, it was reported that the saturating dose of oral bicarbonate in mice (which roughly translates to about 0.18 g/kg/day in humans) was only sufficient to counteract the acid load of a 15 mg tumor consisting of about 100,000 cells or 1.0 mm&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; [16]. Moreover, chronic application of oral bicarbonate at doses higher than 0.5 g/kg/day is predicted to induce systemic alkalosis (Martin N, Robey I, Gaffney E, Gillies R, Gatenby R, Maini P: Predicting the Safety and Efficacy of Buffer Therapy to Raise Tumor pHe: An Integrative Modeling Study, submitted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, sodium bicarbonate alone is not going to cure cancer, and at high doses it can even be dangerous.&#xA;There may be uses of bicarbonate or other pH modulators to enhance chemioterapy approaches, by increasing their efficacity thus allowing reducing the doses and the secondary effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2012-11-11T08:33:10.117" LastActivityDate="2012-11-11T08:33:10.117" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13606" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13627" CreationDate="2012-11-10T19:12:20.010" Score="29" ViewCount="34402" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_%282012_film%29&quot;&gt;Flight&lt;/a&gt;, to prevent the plane from diving, the pilot puts it upside down before flipping it back over just before landing. This is supposed to be loosely based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Airlines_Flight_261&quot;&gt;flight 261 from Alaska Airlines&lt;/a&gt; which unfortunately crashed without survivor after attempting a similar desperate manoeuvre. Let's just focus on the inverted flight part. Can a commercial airliner (50+ passengers) fly inverted for more than a few seconds before aerodynamics and/or propulsion problems arise? What are these specific problems?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10129" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T16:10:40.617" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T16:10:40.617" Title="Can a commercial airplane fly in an inverted position as depicted in Flight?" Tags="|aviation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3506" CreationDate="2012-11-10T22:10:59.230" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was young (8), I remember our city's mayoral election being decided by one vote in Kenosha, Wisconsin (USA). The final tally was 13,114 to 13,113. Here is a newspaper article, courtesy of Google News: &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&amp;amp;dat=19800409&amp;amp;id=KnpQAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=AxIEAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=5271,1364207&quot;&gt;http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1368&amp;amp;dat=19800409&amp;amp;id=KnpQAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=AxIEAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=5271,1364207&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2911" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T22:10:59.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="548" CreationDate="2012-11-10T23:35:06.013" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The excellent Skeptoid blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4287&quot;&gt;has an entry&lt;/a&gt; for this very question.  It's an entertaining read and well sums up the typical reasoning behind the myth and debunks them.  From his conclusion paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, there's at least one remaining possibility that can explain what's being reported, and it doesn't require any new discoveries about anatomy or fans, or any special conditions. The simple fact is that we absolutely expect to see a correlation between summer deaths and fan usage. When it's hot and muggy in the summer, people are going to be running their fans; and when high-risk elderly people happen to die from whatever heat-related cause, it's perfectly likely that a running fan will be found nearby. The perception of a causal relationship between the two will be reinforced every time it's confirmed by another such body being found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10232" LastActivityDate="2012-11-10T23:35:06.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10965" CreationDate="2012-11-11T01:44:54.357" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No,&lt;/strong&gt; airplanes do not always crash from losing electronics.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a real-life counter-example to the claim that losing electronics would cause a loss of control of the aircraft:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1998 a jet flew into hail, sustained damage to the electronics, and made a safe emergency landing in Chattanooga TN.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the report at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief2.aspx?ev_id=20001211X10040&amp;amp;ntsbno=DCA98MA045&amp;amp;akey=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/brief2.aspx?ev_id=20001211X10040&amp;amp;ntsbno=DCA98MA045&amp;amp;akey=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The flight crewmembers reported that as they proceeded through the gap, they observed an egg-sized piece of hail hit the center windshield, causing its outer pane to shatter. At the same time, they began experiencing turbulence that lasted about 10 seconds. They stated that approximately 1 to 2 seconds after the encounter with the first piece of hail, the airplane encountered significant hail, which lasted about 3 to 5 seconds and shattered the outer panes of the captain's and first officer's windshields. Both pilots stated that the hail caused significant damage to the&#xA;  skin of the airplane but that no control problems were noted. They&#xA;  stated the nose radome cover was torn off and that the noise level in&#xA;  the cockpit was high. They also stated that the airspeed indication&#xA;  was zero and the altimeter indications were erratic.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Erratic indicators show that the electronics was damaged.  There was actually quite a bit of damage from this event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DAMAGE TO AIRPLANE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The airplane's radome had separated and portions of it had been&#xA;  ingested into the right engine. All three outer panes of the cockpit&#xA;  front windshield were shattered. The wing leading edge devices,&#xA;  horizontal stabilizer leading edge, vertical stabilizer leading edge,&#xA;  and both left and right engine inlet cowls were dented and damaged.&#xA;  Both engines sustained foreign object damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even this level of damage did not prevent a safe emergency landing with no fatalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2012-11-11T11:36:51.083" LastActivityDate="2012-11-11T11:36:51.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13612" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="38344" CreationDate="2012-11-11T04:44:50.713" Score="11" ViewCount="22587" Body="&lt;p&gt;One day, while bouncing around some alternate history and conspiracy theory videos I came across a reference to a man named &lt;strong&gt;Drunvalo Melchizedek&lt;/strong&gt;. I was curious about some of his work and decided to check out one of his books &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1891824171&quot;&gt;The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. In the very first chapter I started questioning some of the claims about his research and decided to start fact checking, and hit a dead end on my first query (...not a huge surprise for a book in the &lt;em&gt;New Age&lt;/em&gt; section). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his book he states that there was a blind woman named &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Mary Ann Schinfield&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; that was studied by NASA and had some extraordinary psychic-like abilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an excerpt from another of his books, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/52386014/5/A-Blind-Woman-Can-See&quot;&gt;Living In The Heart&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I met Mary Ann Schinfield, an outstandingly unusual woman. (I mentioned her briefly in the first volume of The Ancient Secret of the Flower of Life.) Mary Ann was completely blind and technically had no eyes, could see absolutely nothing. However, she was able to perform normal everyday tasks — she could even read a book and watch television without any outside assistance. NASA scientists performed extensive tests to determine how she was able to &quot;see.&quot; They asked her what she was seeing inside her head while she was sitting in a room, and she—as she related to me later—told them that she was moving through space and was continuously watching what was going on in the solar system. Even more interesting was that she said she was restricted to this solar system and couldn't leave. Of course, NASA didn't believe that she was &quot;moving through space,&quot; and so they made up a test to see whether she was telling the truth. They asked her to move alongside one of their satellites and give them some kind of a reading from it, a serial number or something. I'm not sure what it was, but she did it precisely, and from that moment on, Mary Ann belonged to NASA. They have never let her go and continue to use her for their own purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I cannot find a single shred of evidence or information about this woman. All my searches lead me back to Drunvalo Melchizedek. Does anyone have any information on this? Is it completely bogus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10234" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-11T08:15:22.257" LastActivityDate="2017-05-18T01:06:58.550" Title="Is Mary Ann Schinfield a real person?" Tags="|psychics|nasa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13578" CreationDate="2012-11-12T05:12:36.723" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no conclusive evidence for or against amphetamine affecting creativity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Martha Farah's comments are liklely based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psych.upenn.edu/~mfarah/pdfs/Creativity-Psychopharm.pdf&quot;&gt;a small study (linked here)&lt;/a&gt; she and colleagues ran in 18 participants.  The tasks were brief puzzles (rather than longer  meaningful tasks one might expect to be sensitive to drugs that enable prolonged focus). Results were fairly inconclusive. Their conclusion begins with: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does cognitive enhancement with Adderall impair creativity? In this&#xA;  preliminary exploration of the issue, using four different tests of&#xA;  creative ability in healthy young adults, we found no evidence of a&#xA;  general impairment. On the contrary, Adderall enhanced performance on one test of convergent creative thought. For this test, the Embedded Figures Test, there was also a trend toward disproportionate enhancement of the lower-performing participants. For another test of convergent creative thought, the Remote Associates Test, Adderall also affected performance, although the direction of the effect depended on the creativity of the participant; the drug enhanced creativity for the lower-performing participants and impaired it for the higher-performing participants. This pattern has been noted in other studies of stimulants and cognition and is not unique to creative thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would caution that when researchers find different patterns in subsets of the data that differ from the larger group, we should regard them as very preliminary (possible fishing around for results), especially if they didn't state they intended to do that sort of subset analysis from the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aderall is indeed made of different amphetamine salts, but when amphetamine dissolves in the body, the amphetamine ion becomes separated from the salt ions.  As a result, there is no real difference in the biological effects of different amphetamine salts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most famous example of a high performing individual who used amphetamines and was extremely creative is mathematician Paul Erdos, who continued to coauthor papers in mathematical journals for over a decade after his death. We don't know if amphetamine made him more or less creative, but we do know that he believed they aided his productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10240" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T05:12:36.723" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4657" CreationDate="2012-11-12T16:28:22.140" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Breed-specific legislation was lifted in the Netherlands because it was found to be &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.foxnews.com/story/netherlands-will-lift-ban-on-pit-bulls-saying-no-decrease-in-bites&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ineffective in preventing dog bites&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breed-specific legislation has been found ineffective in other jurisdictions as well, whenever its effects have been studied. See &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20131029231452/https://www.nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com/uploaded_files/tinymce/World-wide%20Failure%20of%20BSL.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;World-Wide Failure of Breed Specific Legislation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10246" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-17T01:33:27.300" LastActivityDate="2019-10-17T01:33:27.300" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13604" CreationDate="2012-11-12T18:03:05.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is one particular type of cancer where (under certain conditions) the risk may be reduced by oral intake of hydrogencarbonate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carbonates are sometimes given in order to control the pH of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastroesophageal_reflux_disease&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reflux&lt;/a&gt;. Chronic damage (inflammation) of the oesophagus epithelium due to stomach acid can lead to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett%27s_esophagus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Barrett's oesophagus&lt;/a&gt; which is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett%27s_esophagus#Prognosis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pre-cancer stage&lt;/a&gt;.  The idea of controlling the stomach pH as prevention has long been around. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Updated Guidelines 2008 for the Diagnosis, Surveillance and Therapy of Barrett’s Esophagus say that there is indication that pH control helps preventing dysplasia, but there's a lack of prospective studies that conclusively show that this in fact reduces the cancer risk. (This may have changed meanwhile, but I didn't find a paper about that that I could access).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the link to hydrogencarbonate: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22356659&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;abstract of a recent paper that claims that pH can be controlled by hydrogencarbonate for some patients that did not respond to the usual medication.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Disclaimer: I'm no medical doctor. I just put together some bits and pieces I learned at conferences with a quick pubmed search)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastActivityDate="2012-11-12T18:03:05.057" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13635" CreationDate="2012-11-12T19:59:17.597" Score="8" ViewCount="24322" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend recently had an MRI performed on his back and said he experienced an uncomfortable amount of heat. In his own words, he said: &quot;The MRI tech said the reason I was boiling in the machine was because the machine excites the protons in my body.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think if the field strength was really that strong there would be other negative effects on the body. Do MRI machines really induce an extreme heat sensation by exciting protons in the body?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5750" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-12T23:01:30.310" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T23:11:19.763" Title="Can MRI machines induce a sensation of extreme heat?" Tags="|medical-science|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4657" CreationDate="2012-11-12T20:45:26.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Side note: I understand &quot;inherent&quot; as the average level of something and not as &quot;despite&quot; but as &quot;independent of&quot; something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main answer: As the influence of training is widely accepted, determining the inherent level of aggression for different breeds would need a study where the pairing of dog and owner is properly randomized because a strong positive correlation between certain types of owners with aggression levels is to be expected. I don't know proper literature about this. And I don't think it likely that anyone puts up the money for such an expensive study of a question that is mainly academic, because the practical danger as a function of the breed is probably of far more practical interest, and I think that is answered far more easily (see below). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find a few studies about breed-specific aggression levels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A dissertation in German &lt;a href=&quot;https://elib.tiho-hannover.de/dissertations/mittmanna_2002&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mittermann 2000: Assessment of Behaviour of Dogs of the Pitbull-type and Five other Breeds by Temperament Testing According to the Guidelines of the Dangerous Animals Act of Niedersachsen, Germany (GefTVO) of 5th of July 2000&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The dissertation has a total of 415 dogs which fell into categories 1 (American Staffordshire Terrier, Bullterrier and dogs of the Pitbull-type) and 2 (Rottweiler, Doberman Pinscher and Staffordshire Bullterrier) according to state law. The study found overall 20 of 415 animals with inadequate (or disturbed) aggressive behaviour. At that time the legislation treated these two categories differently, legislation required per-dog assessment of behaviour. The thesis cites 4 studies finding hereditive aggressive behaviour, there are physiological reasons like density of opiate receptors (p. 33). This can be changed within few generations by breeding (compare the concerns of the American Veterinary Association wrt. legislation needing a stable basis; paper linked by Kathy). Section 1.3.1.2 discusses breed-specific disposition (i.e. breed-specific high risk for particular types of inadequate behaviour). Breed specific differences were observed (e.g. 1/68 Staffordshire bull terriers 0/38 bull terriers vs. 8/93 Am. staffordshire terriers, 4/63 pitbull type and 5/56 dobermans with &gt;= inadequate agresssive behaviour). These differences are not significant at 5% niveau. But American staffordshire/doberman  vs. bull terriers / rottweilers were around 10% significance niveau. Conclusion is that the categories do not warrant the legislative differences (note dobermans in the lower category and bull terriers in the higher!).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This study has the dogs handled by their owner (which is sensible as the legal test should show that the does is not inadequately aggressive when handled by its owner; but this may distort breed-specific influence).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://supporthersheysbill.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/comparison-of-golden-retrievers-and-bslbreeds1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ott 2008&lt;/a&gt; compared those results to 70 golden retrievers, of which 1 showed inadequate aggression and concludes: not significant. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://vetline.de/bullterrier-wesenstest-aggressionsverhalten-gefahrtierverordnung/150/3130/69354&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ott 2009&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20496824&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Schalke 2010&lt;/a&gt; compare 38 bull terriers of a blood line that was suspected to be more aggressive with the results of the previous 2 studies. None according to Schalke and 1 according to Ott (they are the same group) displayed inadequate aggression. No significant differences.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a statistical point of view, the problem is that the differences would need to be &lt;em&gt;huge&lt;/em&gt; in order to be significant with these sample sizes. The 95% confidence interval for the proportion of 15 dogs with inadequate aggressive behaviour of a total of 415 dogs is ranges from  3 to slightly above 7 % (point estimate: 4.8%). 1 out of 70 golden retrievers: 1.4 % (0 - ca. 7 %). The point estimates are more than a factor 3 apart, but it is not significant (p is about 0.10). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, huge numbers of dogs need to be tested. Significantly less aggressive animals at 5% niveau would mean: finding a breed of which 1 of 141 show aggressive behaviour  vs. 20/415 (χ² test - that is an approximation that should work OK for these sample sizes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The breeds with highest proportion of inadequately aggressive dogs were the dobermans (5/56) and Am. staffordshires (8/93). That is almost every 10th and 11th dog showed inadequately aggressive behaviour. Pooling these two breeds (for which I don't see any particular reason) would give  13/149 as reference for highly aggressive breeds. Significance at 5% niveau is reached with 0/105 or 1/134 animals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compared to the Am. staffordshires, the proportion of inadequately aggressive golden retrievers was about a factor 6 lower (8.6 vs. 1.4%). Sample size estimation at β=20% and α=5% (i.e. 1 out of 5 such studies missing the fact that another breed shows only 1/6th of the proportion of inadequately aggressive dogs) needs about 200 animals of the other breed. Or 134 dogs if there were (truly) a factor 10 between the different proportions inadequately aggressive dogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the dissertation IMHO is a large study (considering the &quot;experimental&quot; effort). However, it is clear that the sample size per-breed is too low to detect reasonable differences in breed specific behaviour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;hereditary aggression characteristics can change within few generations (Mittmann, p. 35 [giving further references]). Inadequate selection (too fast breeding, breeding according to outer characteristics without selection of mental characterists) can cause particularly fear-related aggression for fashionable breeds.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the fact that any breed of dog can be trained for low aggression, does not answer the question of breed specific dangerousness, neither. One would need to study how much training is necessary on average to get to low/high aggression levels for different breeds and then account for the damage they are likely to achieve.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'd &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; that different breeds have different levels of aggression and &quot;dangerousness&quot;. In order to study this, I'd assume that such properties are related to target properties for breeding, and choose a comparison where a large difference can reasonably be expected. E.g.  low agression potential for rescue dogs (e.g. Newfoundland; though note that today's breeding targets often developed far away from the working aspect, so that e.g. today's St. Bernhard dogs are usually not considered fit as working dogs any longer, so are German shepherds). Higher bred-in danger for working breeds that were/are used to guard herds also without human supervision against predators as well as theft (aggression potential against unknown humans, size &amp;amp; strength to be effectively dangerous enough to guard the hers).&#xA;That would probe the &quot;hereditary&quot; part in Kathy's answer. And the last two sentences in ratchet's answer (whose literature tells us to expect higher variance also for certain breeds). So the meta analysis of answers already given points strongly to a &quot;yes&quot;. (Jolanta's answer deals with a different aspect of dangerousness which I'd not consider &quot;inherent&quot;. Those findings can be in accordance with higher inherent danger, see below).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I doubt that incidence statistics (of any kind) allow to &quot;measure&quot;  danger levels inherent to the breed. The reason is the already mentioned possibility of a positive correlation with respect to agression. It is quite possible (and IMHO probable) that certain dog owners who prefer an dangerous dog will both tend to have breeds that have the reputation of being more dangerous and also train them to exhibit more aggression rather than train them for low aggression (the other part of being dangerous, the level of damage the dog can achieve does depend on the breed. One bite of a St. Bernhard's can cause far more damage than a bite of a chihuahua - though ultimately a newborn may die from a chihuahua's nip into the nose).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to the &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Is breed a valid method of determining relative safety of a given dog?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; sub-question may be yes (personally I think this very likely; but I cannot give &quot;hard&quot; scientific evidence; the studies cited above did not find significance at 5% level [discussion whether p-values are appropriate are off-topic here], but they also found a factor 6 between the proportions of dogs handled by there owner with inadequately aggressive behaviour between Dobermans or Am. staffordshire terriers and golden retrievers (or bull terriers)).&#xA;The breed of dog may be (personal expectation: is) a good predictor for the aggression level of the dog owner. Meaning that there is a positive feedback loop between alleged or existing aggressiveness and dangerousness and training target characteristic. Which makes the answer to the subquestion a stronger &lt;strong&gt;&quot;yes&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, I have no hard evidence. But detailed studies for dog ban policies could give hints in favour or against this possibility:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If this were the case, one would expect&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that aggression studies on dogs from the breeds that fall under the typical ban policies would in fact be found to be aggressive on per-animal evaluation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;yet a dog ban on the basis of breeds should have only a small effect (if at all) on the overall danger of the dog population (incidents) as the potential of aggressively training dog owners is hardly affected, and there are enough dogs that can easily be trained to be aggressive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that banning of dog owners may have more impact, but I think it questionable whether anything the like could be practically enforced. So, again, this would be hard to observe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more thoughts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Huge critique point with the linked article: as there is not even an attempt to give approximate proportions of the respective breeds within the total dog population, the &quot;danger&quot; of a specific breed cannot be inferred.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;On the other hand it is also quite clear that pit bulls (whatever they specifically are) are far less than 60% of the total US dog population.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Huge difficulty with the whole question: there are enough different (more or less) sensible definitions of danger that every opining can find supporting studies.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Germany, about every town collects dog tax. For such countries, the relative frequencies of different breeds may be determined with enough precision for practical purposes. So the relative-to-the-general-dog-population difficulty can be addressed at least in some regions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, googling news for sure isn't proper research. In the particular question of fatal dog attacks, however,  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I think that the risk of missing any fatal incident is low to negligible &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also think it a fairly safe assumption that basically &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; fatal dog attack is reported.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also think that there are few enough fatal dog attacks that it is fairly easy to sort them out (i.e. not confusing two to be the same; nor double-counting) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and I'd expect that it would be big headlines if the same dog is repeatedly responsible for fatal attacks.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put together, I think fatal attacks may be treated as surrogate markers for severe aggressive incidents - under the usual caution you need with any kind of surrogate marker. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(more literature to come when time permits)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-17T01:37:08.683" LastActivityDate="2019-10-17T01:37:08.683" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13623" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-12T22:02:07.017" Score="3" ViewCount="8812" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often heard from people that sleeping on airbeds is not good for health, reasoning that it is filled with air and molds to the shape of our body, so cannot provide enough support for the back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My roommate has been sleeping on an airbed for last few months, but doesn't seem to have any kind of problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I wasn't able to find any credible proof to this claim on the internet. So was wondering if it is really true!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="606" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2012-11-14T18:31:20.163" LastActivityDate="2017-08-17T10:07:01.760" Title="Is sleeping on airbeds unhealthy?" Tags="|consumer-products|sleep|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12440" CreationDate="2012-11-12T23:24:03.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes it can have an impact; but that isn't necessarily a good thing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of issues in the world that people ought to know more about and raising awareness of them should not be a problem; unfortunately there are many things that &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; as though people ought to be more aware of, but that awareness just causes harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to point out some of the second kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sorts of issues that make us feel good are issues where we think awareness will save lives. There are several good examples in the field of cancer screening. The argument that raising awareness is good comes because the conventional belief is that screening can only save lives by catching cancer early and achieves this miracle at no cost to the patient. So we should encourage people's awareness of screening programmes and other ways to catch early signs of the disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several problems here. The first is that no screening programme is costless. Some pretty certainly cause more harm than good (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6568/does-screening-for-prostate-cancer-save-lives&quot;&gt;Does screening for prostate cancer save lives?&lt;/a&gt;); others are still the subject of much debate (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/is-routine-screening-for-breast-cancer-for-asymptomatic-women-worthwhile&quot;&gt;Is routine screening for breast cancer for asymptomatic women worthwhile?&lt;/a&gt;). When the trio of benefit to harm is not clear then improving awareness of the programme is itself of dubious benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second problem comes because of the way awareness is raised. If you (mistakenly) believe that medical screening is all upside, then your goal in raising awareness is to propagandise the uptake of screening. What you are unlikely to do is to give the patient a balanced view of the issues so they can make their mind up. This isn't just me being cynical but has been demonstrated. See the comments on patient advice on breast screening in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.b86&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ in 2008&lt;/a&gt; and in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.332.7540.538&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ in 2006&lt;/a&gt;. As the 2008 article reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No mention is made of the major harm of screening—that is, unnecessary treatment of harmless lesions that would not have been identified without screening. This harm is well known and acknowledged, even among screening enthusiasts. It is in violation of guidelines and laws for informed consent not to mention this common harm, especially when screening is aimed at healthy people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do know, in some cases, that patients who are given carefully structured and unbiased advice are far less likley to choose screening and medical intervention (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02600045&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;example here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third problem is related to the second. It is about what sort of organisations are attempting to increase our awareness of things. This is fairly obvious, but worth stating explicitly: they are often, effectively, lobbyists for a cause. This is one of the causes of problem two: lobbyists don't obey an oath of impartiality; they want your attention on &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; campaign, not someone else's. Medical charities, for all the good they can do, are not exempt from this. One question that should be asked when they are trying to raise awareness is: are they just &lt;em&gt;redistributing&lt;/em&gt; our awareness away from their competitors? I have no particular objection to charities raising money for their cause. But they may end up sending unbalanced views of the benefits of screening or, perhaps worse, unbalanced views about the health issues faced by the average person and the steps they should take to minimise that risk. AS Margaret McCartney, a british GP points out in her recent book, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1780660006&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Patient Paradox&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (the quote is p275 in my paperback edition):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All healthcare charities wish for more attention than they currently get...We have become so inured to the 'need' for awareness that most people never bother questioning whether it is a good idea to receive information about our health this way. Most people who hear the call to awareness will never have the disease or disorder in question, and the evidence-based messages about what can improve your quality and quantity of life ... are drowned out in the clamour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem with charity lobbying is that is tends to distort health spending towards sentimental or sensational headlines and away from boring, but more effective, ways of allocating resources on healthcare. Margaret McCartney has a whole chapter &amp;quot;The problem with PR&amp;quot; on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So raising awareness to raise money for the charity looks OK; raising awareness to encourage screening may well cause harm; and raising awareness to grab a bigger share of other people's spending for your cause is at best distorting and a worst very harmful if the money flows to the sensational headline not the real need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The bottom line is that, even in the area of medical charities where &amp;quot;raising awareness&amp;quot; &lt;strong&gt;feels&lt;/strong&gt; like it ought to be all good, there are plenty of ways for it to actually do harm&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorDisplayName="user66009" LastEditDate="2022-09-17T15:44:40.710" LastActivityDate="2022-09-17T15:44:40.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13606" CreationDate="2012-11-13T00:27:40.430" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely.  As a matter of fact, one of the first commercially successful aircraft (the Boeing 707) did a barrel roll during a demonstration flight.  In case you don't believe my claim, here is a video to back up my claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaA7kPfC5Hk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Boeing 707 Barrel Roll - Pilot Tex Johnston Performs Roll In Dash-80 Prototype Aircraft In 1955.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tailstrike.com/070494.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In 1994, FedEx Flight 705 (A DC-10), was put into a barrel roll during a rather insane hijacking attempt.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Captain Sanders joined the fray as Jim Tucker struggled to control the airplane. By now, Tucker’s right arm was nearly useless as the grave injuries to his skull brought on paralysis. He knew that his wounded crewmates could not last long against Calloway, so he assisted the only way he could. He pulled the control yoke all the way back to his chest, and rolled it to the left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The DC-10 was executing a barrel-roll at nearly 400 miles per hour—something the aircraft had never been designed to do. Peterson and Sanders were shouting “Get him! Get him!” to each other, as the three struggling men were tossed about the galley area, alternately weightless and pressed upon by three times their weight in G forces. By now, the aircraft was inverted at 19,700 feet, and the alarmed air traffic controllers in Memphis were desperately calling for Flight 705.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(EDITORIAL NOTE:  I take exception to the part where the NatGeo writers state &amp;quot;something the aircraft had never been designed to do&amp;quot; because a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_roll&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;perfect barrel roll&lt;/a&gt; is a constant 1G maneuver (generally with anything between .5G to 3G, well within most aircraft design parameters), and doesn't stress the aircraft in any way, although this particular execution was probably not per any aerobatics manual due to the actual &lt;em&gt;fight&lt;/em&gt; going on.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basic aerodynamics doesn't really care what the orientation of the aircraft is as long as you are able to balance the forces.  The basic forces you have to deal with are weight, lift, thrust and drag.  In an inverted position, you may think that the combination of lift and weight would be detrimental to flight, however you can tilt the angle of attack of the wing so that even in an inverted position you can get the lift to be opposite of the &amp;quot;top&amp;quot; surface of the wing.  Otherwise an aircraft would have a hard time descending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/Upside-Down.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Smithsonian Air &amp;amp; Space museum has a nice web page that explains how inverted flight works&lt;/a&gt;.  Aircraft are basically the same on a meta level.  The thing to keep in mind, that many subsystems of the aircraft may not operate well for extended inverted flight.  However, (and keep in mind I have not seen the movie in question) most systems will maintain operation for at least some time due to residual fluids and such in the oil and fuel systems.  Depending on the aircraft make and model, the fuel and oil lines should provide at least 30 seconds to a minute of uninterrupted operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For aircraft that do fly inverted, you can check out any airshow and see all manner of aircraft fly inverted for extended periods of time.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=130414&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jets and propeller aircraft have well understood physics&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/aero/airflylvl3.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;You can learn more about aerodynamics at this page if that helps&lt;/a&gt;. If you look at this image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HRkJy.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Angle of attack and lift&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All you have to do is get the angle of attack to be negative for the right-side up wing (thus if the wing is upside down, it's creating a net up force against gravity).  So again, it's quite possible and doesn't violate any flight dynamics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T03:39:26.407" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13628" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13630" CreationDate="2012-11-13T03:16:06.793" Score="59" ViewCount="11831" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EyDqt.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Purported election infographic for Cuyahoga County, Ohio&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/TheTeaParty.net&quot;&gt;Tea Party Facebook page&lt;/a&gt; posted this Monday night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it accurate that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are exactly 900135 registered voters in Cuyahoga County Ohio for the 2012 predidental election&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There were 900135 voters that cast votes in the 2012 election&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100% of them cast votes for Obama&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:55:02.550" LastActivityDate="2018-09-10T22:06:34.783" Title="Was there 100% turnout and 100% Obama support in Cuyahoga County in 2012 Presidential Election?" Tags="|united-states|politics|voting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8517" CreationDate="2012-11-13T03:59:19.853" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can basic camcorders be used to find these infrared devices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these infrared units are actually in use and constantly emitting then yes (this is the reason such devices are not used.) A lot of cameras can detect the infrared spectrum, especially black and white security cameras. This is why you can see your remote control's ir signal through a black and white camera, or detect security cameras that have ir emitters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The military and drones do use ir for tagging targets (in some situations,) and this can be detected by some cameras however a target will only be ir tagged for &lt;a href=&quot;http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=1323980&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a very short time&lt;/a&gt; (like to guide a missile, or to detect a dynamic optical tag and track the vehicle by another method.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it is extremely unlikely that these devices, the bulky 9 volt ir emitter you linked to, are used by the military. The story you quoted about the 19 year old planting these devices, is more than likely just propaganda that aims to show that the US doesn't put much thought or care into what and who their drones destroy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other part of the article, where &quot;&lt;em&gt;Mr. Rehman explained that the camera could somehow detect otherwise invisible signals from the ... electronic tracking devices that ... guide American missiles,&lt;/em&gt;&quot; is possibly true (like in that extremely brief time frame I mentioned above,) but it is most likely either just thought to be true, perhaps from looking at recordings of targets being destroyed and/or it is method to make other terrorist's feel like they have some control or protection from being killed by a drone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The military has many different types of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/files/Richardson_Continuous.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tagging tracking and locating (TTL) devices&lt;/a&gt;. From actual cellphones to radar responsive devices, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.losangeles.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=5318&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;infrared tracking&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.defensereview.com/1_31_2004/Insight%20Technology%20Incorporated%20AN-PEQ-2A%20Infrared%20Target%20Pointer-Illuminator-Aiming%20Laser.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;targeting devices&lt;/a&gt; all of which have been used to help &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csbaonline.org/4Publications/PubLibrary/S.20070221.Technological_Impl/S.20070221.Technological_Impl.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;defeat terrorist networks&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drones have multi-spectral targeting and tracking systems that include &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.janes.com/articles/Janes-Electronic-Mission-Aircraft/AN-DAS-1-Multi-spectral-Targeting-System-MTS--B-United-States.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;electro-optical, infrared, laser designation, laser illumination, synthetic aperture radar (SAR), ground moving target indicator (GMTI) and Electro-optical (EO)/Infrared (IR) Full Motion Video cameras.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So drones are able to detect an infra-red beacon like the one you mentioned. And as mentioned above a camera that could detect ir would also see the beacon, however &lt;strong&gt;it is very unlikely that the 9 volt device would be used&lt;/strong&gt;, because it is very detectable and presumably always on, limited battery life (military trackers usually aren't self powered or are at least triggered to turn on,) and more importantly it has the possibility of causing a large amount of false positives. It is just a cheap infrared light, it can be cheaply and easily reproduced by other parties, or its light could be reflected making pinpointing harder, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Optical device that are known to be used in this type of a situation are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nova-sol.com/capabilities/optical-communications/dots&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dynamic optical tags&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Known as &quot;DOTS,&quot; Dynamic Optical Tags, DARPA claims that the system is&#xA;  comprised of a series of &quot;small active retroreflecting optical tags&#xA;  for 2-way data exchange.&quot; The tags are small, 25x25x5 mm with a range&#xA;  10km ... possessing a &quot;low probability of detection,&quot; the devices can&#xA;  be covertly planted around alleged terrorist safe houses which can&#xA;  then be targeted at will by drones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DOTS, like lots of other tracking devices are passive. &lt;a href=&quot;http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=1323980&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Most of the time DOTS will be passive&lt;/a&gt; (not emitting light or even using power, like an RFID chip) and they only become active when interrogated by a laser with the correct code. Once correctly interrogated, the tags will begin to modulate and retro-reflect the incoming beam for a brief period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further information on tracking technology, read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=11032#toc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Summary of the Sensing and Positioning Technology Workshop of the Committee on Nanotechnology for the Intelligence Community: Interim Report&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The military has had a long time and spent a lot of money developing reliable systems, however from time to time there are huge oversights. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/185124/predator_drones_video_feed_hacked_on_the_cheap.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Like when insurgents have used programs like SkyGrabber — a program that allows for satellite data capture — to obtain access into the drone’s video feed.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7387" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T03:59:19.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13628" CreationDate="2012-11-13T04:29:23.223" Score="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/pdf_boe/en-US/ElectionResults2012/Nov2012/amended/11062012FinalAmendedofficialResultsbyContest.HTM&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here are the results of the Nov 6th 2012 election for Cuyahoga county Ohio.&lt;/a&gt;. A simple Google search found this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Registered voters 927,996&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Votes Cast 650,437&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Votes for Barack Obama 447,273&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Votes for Mitt Romney 190,660&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I apologize in advance for the the language but - why do people think they can get away with spreading this bulls**t?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I've updated for the official certified results, which were not significantly different from the 'unofficial' results published on the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2018-09-10T22:06:34.783" LastActivityDate="2018-09-10T22:06:34.783" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13628" CreationDate="2012-11-13T05:08:46.767" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;The graphic attributes the data to &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.floridapoliticalpress.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.floridapoliticalpress.com&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the Florida Political Press web-site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.floridapoliticalpress.com/2012/11/12/cuyahoga-county-ohio-did-not-vote-100-for-obama-the-power-of-the-internet/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;disavows&lt;/a&gt; the graphic and the data in it, as a distortion of their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.floridapoliticalpress.com/2012/11/10/ohio-vote-totals-for-obama-a-statistical-miracle/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;earlier claims&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;an unknown individual created an image [...] based on the aforementioned article, distorting the information within and then tagged Florida Political Press as the verifying source of this blatantly false production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As can be seen, it states that ALL of Cuyahoga County voted for Obama, which IS NOT true and is not stated in the article.  I’d guess this is the work of some well meaning individual distraught over the results of last Tuesday’s election, however, this effort distorts the truth, assaults my integrity and hurts the conservative movement because it gives detractors (Far Left) the opportunity to dismiss everything coming from bloggers on the Right. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With an assist from a reader, I was able to track the photo to a FaceBook page titled ‘Let’s Make Fun of Liberals – A Political Stomping Ground‘… ironically, it espouses the virtues of free speech.  While the page does not identify who is behind it, I was able to send a message requesting that the image be deleted – thus far, no response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T05:08:46.767" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13634" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13646" CreationDate="2012-11-13T07:31:19.903" Score="6" ViewCount="1412" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mryoungscholar.wordpress.com/2012/09/06/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This website&lt;/a&gt; claims that the slums of Nairobi is the most inhospitable place in the world, because of the Mungiki: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Operating in the slums of Nairobi this extremely violent gang syndicate stands at about 100,000 members strong. In the past its members have been known for their signature dreadlocks and a practice of bathing in blood. More recently though, they have been associated with numerous beheading's and forced female circumcisions as they assert themselves in the political arena. Unlike most gangs who identify themselves by either clothes or body markings, the Mungiki have opted for something a little more representative of their ideals – a severed human head on a stick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this an accurate summation of the gang?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they have over 100,000 members?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do they keep a severed human head on a stick to distinguish themselves?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10165" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-09-30T23:01:05.200" LastActivityDate="2017-09-30T23:01:05.200" Title="Is Mungiki one of the world's most dangerous gangs?" Tags="|africa|organized-crime|female-genital-mutilation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13621" CreationDate="2012-11-13T09:52:22.753" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;MRI scanners can produce heat in rare circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mrisafety.com/safety_article.asp?subject=17&quot;&gt;Guidelines to Prevent Excessive Heating and Burns Associated with MRI Procedures&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging is considered to be a relatively safe diagnostic modality. However, damaged radiofrequency coils, physiologic monitors, electronically-activated devices, and external accessories or objects made from conductive materials have caused excessive heating, resulting in burn injuries to patients undergoing MR procedures. Heating of implants and similar devices may also occur, but this tends to be problematic primarily for objects made from conductive materials that have elongated shapes or that form loops of a certain diameter. For example, excessive MRI-related heating has been reported for leads, guidewires, certain types of catheters (e.g., catheters with thermistors or other conducting components), and certain external fixation or cervical fixation devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;skin-to-skin contact points were suspected to be responsible for these injuries, however, the exact mechanism responsible for these incidents is unknown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2998395/&quot;&gt;Turning Up the Heat on MRI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2004, more than 22,000 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners performed some 65 million studies worldwide, with about half done in the United States. Magnetic resonance imaging has a stellar safety record and is not considered a significant risk. However, it is not hazard free. The worst danger is probably the projectile risk of magnetic objects being sucked into the main magnet, which is dealt with by diligent screening and control of access. Less dramatically, perhaps, is radiofrequency (RF) power deposition and &lt;strong&gt;heating in the body due to the MRI excitation field&lt;/strong&gt;. Power deposition is measured by the specific absorption rate (SAR) in watts per kilogram or by direct thermometry. A third hazard, related to both of these, is the effect of an MRI scanner on devices and leads that are implanted in patients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;my emphasis&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/MRI-scan/Pages/Who-can-use-it.aspx&quot;&gt;Who can have an MRI scan? / Tattoos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(new section)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some tattoo ink contains traces of metal, but most tattoos are safe in an MRI scanner. Tell the radiographer immediately if you feel any discomfort or heat to your tattoo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The essence of these reports seems to be that MRI scans do not normally produce heating in the vast majority of scans performed but that in very rare cases heating can occur either because of conductive implants or due to skin to skin contact or perhaps other circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, in rare circumstances, MRI scans can produce uncomfortable heating or even burns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, &quot;exciting protons in the body&quot; occurs during every MRI scan, &quot;a sensation of extreme heat&quot; does not and is rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-11-13T22:04:29.843" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T22:04:29.843" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13636" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19160" CreationDate="2012-11-13T09:56:59.427" Score="9" ViewCount="1835" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pennpoliticalreview.org/2011/11/does-us-food-aid-cause-famine/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While all efforts should be made to get emergency food aid to Africa&#xA;  during this famine, the tradition of US food aid in Africa is actually&#xA;  part of the problem. Giving food to the hungry seems like the epitome&#xA;  of charity, but under the current system it has stifled the growth of&#xA;  agriculture in Africa and helped continue the cash crop system forced&#xA;  on Africa during Colonialism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Facebook meme extends the claim to all countries:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/J5u0m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not limited to Africa, either, and as the first article shows, this &quot;charity&quot; is affected by politics and affects business: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publicintegrity.org/2012/01/11/7844/haitian-farmers-undermined-food-aid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Haitian farmers undermined by food aid&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The food aid from the USA is also expensive ($2.3 billion in 2010) but not expensive enough to be adequately nutritious: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publicintegrity.org/node/4619&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;U.S. food aid must boost nutrition for long-term recipients, adopt sturdier packaging&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does food aid cause famines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="5079" LastEditDate="2012-11-16T13:15:41.680" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T18:55:46.703" Title="Does food aid cause famines?" Tags="|economics|charities|africa|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13637" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-13T10:11:00.860" Score="15" ViewCount="42122" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some old news reports &quot;Chinese boy killed when height adjusting mechanism in chair explodes&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://techcrunch.com/2009/02/20/chinese-boy-killed-when-height-adjusting-mechanism-in-chair-explodes/&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;There are a lot of similar news, all happened in China.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can this mechanisms explode ? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the explosion sufficient to hurt or kill a person ?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any statistics for number of people killed in any region (and not in China)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6181" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2012-11-13T12:51:30.700" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T11:36:22.117" Title="Death by exploding office chair?" Tags="|consumer-products|mortality|china|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13638" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13641" CreationDate="2012-11-13T11:59:18.110" Score="39" ViewCount="4935" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue of voter fraud comes up very often at election times. In the media, it is nearly always pictured as a really important and urgent problem. It ranges from whether photo identification should be required, to rigged voting machines, to corrupt officials, to blatant lies (such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13628/was-there-100-turn-out-and-100-obama-support-in-cuyahoga-county-in-2012-presid&quot;&gt;Was there 100% turn out and 100% Obama support in Cuyahoga County in 2012 Presidential Election?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However Stephen Colbert stated on his show that voter fraud is for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/23/stephen-colbert-voter-fraud_n_2005790.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;all intents and purposes non-existent in the United States&lt;/a&gt;, citing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.minnpost.com/politics-policy/2012/08/cases-voter-id-election-fraud-found-virtually-non-existent&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MinnPost article&lt;/a&gt; which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“There is absolutely no evidence that [voter impersonation fraud] has&#xA;  affected the outcome of any election in the United States, at least&#xA;  any recent election in the United States,” Schultz said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is the problem way overblown? Is there even a problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1326" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T14:45:49.057" Title="Is voter fraud practically non-existent in the United States?" Tags="|united-states|politics|voting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13638" CreationDate="2012-11-13T14:45:37.230" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, after a quick search it seems that Stephen Colbert is probably correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it's good to mention that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/vot/misc/faq.php#faq18&quot;&gt;according to the Department of Justice&lt;/a&gt; most Voter Fraud will fall under state jurisdiction and not Federal jurisdiction unless there are threats or discrimination based on race, religion, or national origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a popular figure oft-cited by The Daily Show and other sources who make arguments against certain Voter ID laws, which is 10 cases of &quot;in-person&quot; Voter ID fraud over the last decade or so. This seems &lt;em&gt;technically&lt;/em&gt; correct, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/voter-fraud-real-rare/story?id=17213376&quot;&gt;this article by ABC&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the past decade Texas has convicted 51 people of voter fraud, according the state's Attorney General Greg Abbott. Only four of those cases were for voter impersonation, the only type of voter fraud that voter ID laws prevent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No doubt you noticed, though, that Stewart and other critics of Voter ID laws specifically mention cases that Voter ID laws would have prevented - although the total amount of Voter Fraud is higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it enough to matter? Well &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/results&quot;&gt;according to Google's statistics&lt;/a&gt; the difference in votes between the candidates was 3,378,662. A much closer race is the infamous 2000 Elections, where &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2000/geparty.htm&quot;&gt;the FEC's statistics&lt;/a&gt; show a difference of 350,428 between the Democrat and Republican candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would have taken 7,009 cases of voter fraud &lt;em&gt;per state&lt;/em&gt; in 2000 to make that gap, and over 67,500 cases of voter fraud &lt;em&gt;per state&lt;/em&gt; to close the gap in 2012. I could not find a source for the &lt;em&gt;total&lt;/em&gt; cases of voter fraud, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2012/sep/19/naacp/-person-voter-fraud-very-rare-phenomenon/&quot;&gt;one of PolitiFact's articles&lt;/a&gt; attempts to address this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To get the data, News21 reporters sent records requests to elections officers in all 50 states seeking every case of fraudulent elections activity, including registration fraud, absentee ballot fraud, voter impersonation fraud and casting an ineligible vote. News21 said it received no useful responses from several states. With some states, including Massachusetts, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South Dakota, the cases included in the database came from a survey of alleged election fraud conducted by the Republican National Lawyers Association. And in some states, some but not all local jurisdictions responded, and some responses were missing important details about each case. Despite those issues, News21 defends its work as &quot;substantially complete&quot; as the largest collection of election fraud cases gathered by anyone in the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also go on to say that News21 found &lt;strong&gt;307 cases of Voter Fraud&lt;/strong&gt; (en totale, including Impersonation) in Georgia - which is 6x higher than Texas and over 10x higher than Pennsylvania (who News21 said had 29 cases). The Republican National Lawyer's Association challenged the analysis, saying Georgia had &lt;strong&gt;375 cases&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that I've no baseline or average to work from, but Georgia &lt;em&gt;appears&lt;/em&gt; to be one of the more rampant offenders - &lt;em&gt;every state in the nation&lt;/em&gt; would have to have &lt;strong&gt;eighteen times&lt;/strong&gt; the amount of voter fraud that Georgia had &lt;em&gt;in a single year&lt;/em&gt; to make up the gap in the 2000 elections. It would take over 9,000-fold Georgia's cases &lt;em&gt;per state&lt;/em&gt; in &lt;em&gt;2012 alone&lt;/em&gt; to have made up the gap in the 2012 elections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, even if all states had as much voter fraud as the RNLA said Georgia had per year (which they don't), it would still only represent .0155% of the total vote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd agree with Stephen Colbert and other pundits; for all intents and purposes, Voter Fraud is practically a non-issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastEditorUserId="8380" LastEditDate="2012-11-13T14:51:51.410" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T14:51:51.410" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13642" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13647" CreationDate="2012-11-13T14:45:59.607" Score="6" ViewCount="1525" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard some legends about an early 17th century outlaw, who on one occasion allegedly defeated alone a number of musketeers: because of the terrain, they could only advance in a single line, so one had to shoot, and retreat to reload (if surviving the shots of their opponent), allowing the next one to shoot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never had the occasion to fire a matchlock, so I don't know that much about it. I know, that two explosions happen, when the burning match hits the priming charge, and a fraction of a second later, the shot is fired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can know in advance when the shot is coming, and may have time to react. However, there is the dilemma of the goalkeeper: you should jump before you know where the ball is coming. Maybe the shot would have missed you, but you dodged in exactly that direction for it to hit you?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine, that if you see one flash, it means the barrel is perfectly aligned and the shot will probably hit you, so you should dodge. If you see two distinct flashes, it means the aim is bad, and you should not move. If I remember correctly, that was the explanation of how he did it. (Of course, this all assumes the inaccuracy due to aiming is generally larger than due to the spread, but I don't think it's that big of a problem, as matchlocks fire with a thunderous explosion near your face so most shooters close their eyes before firing, and the heavy muskets of those times were significantly slower than from Napoleon's time, but more accurate due to being longer and not mass-produced)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, can one really dodge the fire of a matchlock musket (let's say at the very edge of its effective range), using the tactics described above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8692" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-13T22:19:04.000" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T09:56:49.053" Title="Is it possible to dodge the fire of matchlock muskets?" Tags="|history|weapons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13643" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16174" CreationDate="2012-11-13T15:51:53.407" Score="1" ViewCount="2119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have only anecdotal evidence to support the aforementioned claim: heard it from several people in my youth and believe to have experienced it myself, but that might be placebo. Some quick googling yields a handful of forum messages and health-related articles warning of cheese alone, but nothing in combination with red wine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any ingredient in red wine that would hint to the possibility of increasing the cheese's effects? The histamine? Some MAO-inhibitor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, what's going on with the cheese? Is it the tryptamine? Also, which ones are to be avoided? The forums conjured up by google advice against cheddar and similar, the old wives' tales I heard in my young days warned of any kind of mature (i.e., smelly) cheese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10269" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T12:16:10.610" Title="Does the combination of red wine and cheese cause bad dreams?" Tags="|nutrition|psychology|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13634" CreationDate="2012-11-13T18:43:43.520" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Mungiki is not necessary a &amp;quot;gang&amp;quot; in its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/gang&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;normal definition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A group of criminals or hoodlums who band together for mutual protection and profit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As they are heavily politically involved, and in addition have moral/religious intentions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Morality,&amp;quot; he said, sipping his beer. &amp;quot;That is what our movement must bring back, morality. And we want to push back the sources of inequality.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soon the conversation degenerated into crude, quasi-racist descriptions of non-Kikuyu communities and ended with a rant against homosexuality, divorce and other features of modern Kenyan society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We are about empowering people,&amp;quot; said Buili, glassy-eyed. &amp;quot;Making people have morals, and so many other things.&amp;quot;&#xA;(from the WP article)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They do seem to be involved in beheading of opponents, and with rituals that involve blood and/or human mutilation and sacrifice. However, it should be noted that the reports are by  western reliable sources, but are given as local police statements, a police that fights the organization, and might be inclined to over emphasis the more gruesome sides of that group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6998446.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Mungiki behead a policeman&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Police in Kenya say one of their officers has been beheaded by members of the illegal Mungiki sect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.com.au/top-stories/two-year-old-boy-beheaded-for-african-ritual/story-e6frfkp9-1111113940351&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A 2 year old boy was mutilated in a Mugiki ritual&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A TWO-year-old boy was beheaded and chopped up in a Kenyan capital slum today, police said, amid a fierce crackdown on an illegal sect blamed for a string of murders and decapitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The boy's mutilated torso was discovered in a maize farm and his head 500m away at a river bank in capital's Nairobi's crime-prone Korogocho slums, police commander Paul Ruto said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remains had no limbs, the chest was lacerated and the genitals chopped off, raising speculation that the body parts might be used in rites by the politically-linked Mungiki sect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the NYT article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These days Charity Bokindo, the district commissioner of Nairobi North, is taking no chances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wherever she goes, she carries not one but two pistols, and she always travels with armed guards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The Mungiki,” she whispered, “they threatened to circumcise me.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Police officials say the Mungiki aim to destabilize the country before the presidential elections in December and blame them for some downright ugly acts: chopping off legs, skinning heads and guzzling jerrycans of human blood. Government officials accuse them of running an extortion empire and hacking up victims as a scare tactic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though he had little bad to say about the Mungiki, Dominick declined to give his last name because, he said, “these guys drink blood. You never know what they might do to you.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the number of members, from the NYT article, a statement from one of the leaders:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the late 1990s, the Mungiki went urban, Mr. Waruinge explained, taking over the city’s minibus trade. Then they diversified into garbage collection, building materials and eventually the protection racket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“It was beautiful,” Mr. Waruinge said. “We had 500,000 members and millions of shillings coming in every day.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then the Mungiki made a mistake, Mr. Waruinge said, and dabbled in politics, supporting losing candidates in the elections of 2002 and falling on the wrong side of the government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while it is possible (from self proclamation) that the Mungiki were 500,000 men strong, they have lost power since then, and now count substantially less members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While I couldn't find any sources about severed heads on sticks, they do probably perform some sort of rituals that include blood and/or human body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They count thousands of members, and may have at some time had around 500,000 members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They have a moral/religious agenda that includes at least at one occasion forced female circumcision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They are involved in local politics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They have a racial agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/01/AR2007070101057.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Washington Post article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/world/africa/22mungiki.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The NY Times article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-13T18:43:43.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13642" CreationDate="2012-11-13T19:48:51.610" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whilst the process of loading and preparing a matchlock is slow, the actual firing, from ignition of the charge in the pan, to expulsion of the bullet, is a few tenths of a second. This is evident in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KTS8PQ06Qo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to fire a Matchlock musket&lt;/a&gt;. However if you have to wait for a muzzle flash before deciding how to react, time prior to the muzzle flash isn't time in which you can commence your avoidance (other than to perhaps tense your muscles in preparation?). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A matchlock musket ball travels at 400-500 m/s ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071014211636AAlE3hv&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amarillogunowners.com/index.php?topic=6229.0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref.&lt;/a&gt;). It would have been used at a range of less than 50m when aimed at an individual (&lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100728114607AABmTZB&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref.&lt;/a&gt;). That gives a flight time of no more than about &lt;strong&gt;0.1 s&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Matchlock muskets were not rifled and so were relatively inaccurate. To be assured of safety you'd have to move more than a few cm from the median line of fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The average human reaction time is about &lt;strong&gt;0.2 s&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;) and the fastest is about 0.1 s (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/stats.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;) but you are unlikely to move your torso far (from a standing start) in that sort of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the time the ball hit your body, even the quickest human would not yet have physically reacted. Your brain would not yet have signalled your muscles to move (or freeze).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, it seems unlikely that standing still and looking for aligned flashes at pan and muzzle would be the best strategy for avoiding injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-11-14T09:56:49.053" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T09:56:49.053" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13651" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13654" CreationDate="2012-11-14T06:42:18.380" Score="14" ViewCount="1584" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have recently read &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20121223013713/http://dvice.com/archives/2012/10/ethiopian-kids.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ethiopian kids hack OLPCs in 5 months with zero instruction&lt;/a&gt; which claims that children who never saw a book before and didn't know how to speak English learned how to use an Android phone and hacked it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? The article simply states that they have enabled the camera on the tablet which was previously disabled. Would what the children did really be considered hacking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also states that they began learning English. If someone could verify what is meant by that it would be great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8106" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-09-05T13:14:15.810" LastActivityDate="2021-09-15T19:40:59.163" Title="Did children in Ethiopia hack Android in five months?" Tags="|technology|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13652" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13657" CreationDate="2012-11-14T12:43:09.193" Score="24" ViewCount="9948" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a common folklore among Texans that Texas was the only state to specifically have it written that Texas may secede, although I've heard that other states have that right as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2009, Gov Rick Perry of Texas &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/texas-governor-rick-perry-talks-about-seceding-from-the-union-2009-4&quot;&gt;also made that threat&lt;/a&gt; at a rally.  All politicians know what they are talking about and don't lie, right?  As of recently, &lt;a href=&quot;https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/peacefully-grant-state-texas-withdraw-united-states-america-and-create-its-own-new-government/BmdWCP8B&quot;&gt;a petition to secede&lt;/a&gt; has appeared, but many critics are claiming &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chron.com/txpotomac/2012/11/texas-secession-fact-and-fiction/?fb_action_ids=4794285372924&amp;amp;fb_action_types=og.recommends&amp;amp;fb_source=timeline_og&amp;amp;action_object_map=%7B%224794285372924%22:169038626553357%7D&amp;amp;action_type_map=%7B%224794285372924%22%3a%22og.recommends%22%7D&amp;amp;action_ref_map=%5B%5D&quot;&gt;that it's simply fiction&lt;/a&gt; playing it off as a form of protest.  Still, there are many other petitions to secede for other states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not an expert in government research, and all I have been able to find are news articles.  &lt;strong&gt;Is there proof that Texas can or cannot secede in accordance to US Law?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6102" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-03-13T12:08:42.377" LastActivityDate="2016-07-13T02:46:19.743" Title="Does Texas have the right to secede from the United States?" Tags="|politics|government|geography|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13652" CreationDate="2012-11-14T13:44:36.927" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Abraham Lincoln would &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;disagree&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Texas was part of the confederacy during the American Civil War and wasn't spared or allowed to secede.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gov. Rick Perry have &lt;a href=&quot;http://houston.cbslocal.com/2012/11/13/perry-texas-will-not-secede-from-us/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;announced&lt;/a&gt; that the state of Texas has no such aspirations and will remain within the Union.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perry spokesperson Catherine Frazier tells CBS News that the governor “shares the frustrations many Americans have with our federal government,” but “believes in the greatness of our Union and nothing should be done to change it.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the lawfulness side of the matter, it depends on the person interpreting the law, if it's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Volokh&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prof. Eugene Volokh&lt;/a&gt; from the UCLA scool of law, then &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.volokh.com/2010/02/10/the-supposed-settling-of-the-question-of-secession-at-appomattox/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;he would say&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at the same time, surely this must be a judgment based on how we see the world today, not based on what happened 144 years ago. A matter is “settled” by political decision only so long as the political decision commands the adherence of the polity. If in 2065 Alaska, California, Hawaii, or Texas (just to consider some examples) assert a right to secede, the argument that “in 1865, the victorious Union government concluded that no state has a right to secede in opposition to the wishes of the Union, so therefore you lack such a right” will have precisely the weight that the Americans of 2065 will choose to give it — which should be very little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And beyond that, even if there is some precedent of some sort properly set by the Civil War (and I continue to disagree that there is), any such precedent can’t tell us much about consensual secession. The talk I occasionally hear of secession (again, talk that I think is not really serious) is not about departure in the face of military opposition — it’s about creating a political sentiment in some place in favor of seceding, and a political sentiment in the rest of the country in favor of allowing the secession. The results of a bloody civil war tell us nothing about the propriety of a Velvet Divorce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that’s not a “settlement” of the secession question for the centuries. And there can be and should be no such settlement. “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” So the present is different from the past, and the future from the present. Poetic allusions to a peace treaty resolving one particular conflict can’t tell us what is right to do in our country today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonin_Scalia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Justice Scalia&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorkpersonalinjuryattorneyblog.com/2010/02/scalia-there-is-no-right-to-secede.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;says that&lt;/a&gt; (Thanks to Oliver_C for the link):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... principally because I cannot imagine that such a question could ever reach the Supreme Court. To begin with, the answer is clear. &lt;strong&gt;If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, “one Nation, indivisible.”)&lt;/strong&gt; Secondly, I find it difficult to envision who the parties to this lawsuit might be. Is the State suing the United States for a declaratory judgment? But the United States cannot be sued without its consent, and it has not consented to this sort of suit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Emphasis is mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it really depends on your interpretation of the law, I however, not being a US citizen or resident, tend to agree with prof. Volokh, because if in the future there will be a situation where a state or a territory will want Independence, and the rest of the USA will be willing to give it to them, then the secession will be preformed peacefully, if the USA will not be willing to grant it, then there probably be some sort of bloodshed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T13:44:36.927" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13651" CreationDate="2012-11-14T14:16:18.127" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;The source &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.technologyreview.com/2012/10/29/84908/given-tablets-but-no-teachers-ethiopian-children-teach-themselves/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MIT Technology Review article&lt;/a&gt; seems to answer your questions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earlier this year, OLPC workers dropped off closed boxes containing the tablets, taped shut, with no instruction. “I thought the kids would play with the boxes. Within four minutes, one kid not only opened the box, found the on-off switch … powered it up. Within five days, they were using 47 apps per child, per day. Within two weeks, they were singing ABC songs in the village, and within five months, they had hacked Android,” Negroponte said. “Some idiot in our organization or in the Media Lab had disabled the camera, and they figured out the camera, and had hacked Android.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elaborating later on Negroponte’s hacking comment, Ed McNierney, OLPC’s chief technology officer, said that the kids had gotten around OLPC’s effort to freeze desktop settings. “The kids had completely customized the desktop—so every kids’ tablet looked different.  We had installed software to prevent them from doing that,” McNierney said. “And the fact they worked around it was clearly the kind of creativity, the kind of inquiry, the kind of discovery that we think is essential to learning.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, learning English consisted, at least, of learning to sing the Alphabet song.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hacking consisted of working around an OEM attempt to limit the settings. Whether you consider discovering and using a bug to unlock existing functionality to be  &amp;quot;hacking&amp;quot; depends entirely on your definition of &amp;quot;hacking&amp;quot;. It is quite different from, say, developing a technique to &amp;quot;jail-break&amp;quot; an iPhone or rebuilding a kernel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="29457" LastEditDate="2021-09-15T19:40:59.163" LastActivityDate="2021-09-15T19:40:59.163" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13655" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-14T14:27:22.743" Score="4" ViewCount="746" Body="&lt;p&gt;A vendor of VOC (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatile_organic_compound&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Volatile Organic Compound&lt;/a&gt;) sensor &lt;a href=&quot;http://appliedsensor.com/pdfs/AppliedSensor_iAQ_WhitePaper_DCVBeyondCO2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claims the VOC concentration correlates highly to CO₂ concentration&lt;/a&gt; in a typical conference room:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Figure 2 illustrates the correlation of true CO₂ and concentration of mixed gases measured in a typical conference room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other VOC vendors also claim a cheap VOC sensor can be used as a reliable counterpart of a more expensive CO₂ to help decide when to ventilate in an office or a household, and quite a few of them recompute the measured VOC concentration to a &quot;CO₂ equivalent level&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swegon.com/Global/PDFs/Flow%20control/WISE/_en/CAC.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clean Air Control - Swegon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When an occupant emits CO2, this creates a proportional amount of emissions/impurities    which are measurable by the VOC sensor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Breath: Acetone, Ethanol, Isoprene&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Example: 25% CAC output signal is equivalent to CO2 800 ppm&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kele.com/Catalog/08%20Gas_Specialty_Sensors/PDFs/BAC-VOC%20Series%20Catalog%20Page.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GAS &amp;amp; SPECIALTY SENSORS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The BA/BS3 VOC measures these VOCs and serves as an indicator of space occupancy with the same reliability as CO2 transmitters.&#xA;  VOC: 0 to 2,000 CO2 PPM equivalent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bapihvac.com/content/uploads/27301_ins_VOC_duct.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;VOC Duct Sensor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The output of the BAPI Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) Sensor is 0 to 100% VOC contamination. The VOC contamination can be turned into a CO2 ppm equivalent by multiplying by 2,000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the VOC vendor claim is obviously not independent, I would like to know what independent sources say about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T14:58:52.420" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T14:58:52.420" Title="Is typical indoor concentration of VOC correlated to concentration of CO₂?" Tags="|chemistry|environmental-health|household|air|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13652" CreationDate="2012-11-14T16:03:32.463" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;A good solid answer to this would be found in Texas v. White.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chief Justice Salmon Chase stated in his majority opinion... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered&#xA;  into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union,&#xA;  and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached&#xA;  at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the&#xA;  Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a&#xA;  new member into the political body. And it was final. The union&#xA;  between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and&#xA;  as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no&#xA;  place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or&#xA;  through consent of the States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._White#Majority_opinion&quot;&gt;Texas v. White Wikipedia Article&lt;/a&gt; and from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0074_0700_ZO.html&quot;&gt;Chief Justice Salmon Chase's majority opinion&lt;/a&gt; on Cornell's law site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, Texas, just like any other state, can only secede though revolution or if both Texas and the remainder of the United States agree on the secession. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8691" LastEditorUserId="8691" LastEditDate="2012-11-14T16:11:41.813" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T16:11:41.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13652" CreationDate="2012-11-14T16:08:42.120" Score="26" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Regarding the claim that Texas has the right to secede,&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as &lt;a href=&quot;http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/267413-texas-secession-petition-gains-enough-signatures-for-white-house-response&quot;&gt;implied by&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Gov. Rick Perry&lt;/em&gt; in 2009:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;“When we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation. And &lt;strong&gt;one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want.&lt;/strong&gt;”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factcheck.org/2011/08/what-perry-really-said-about-secession/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;FactCheck.org&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[Rick Perry] is wrong when he claims Texas has some unique arrangement that would allow it to secede at will&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perry's comments suggest the deal was part of the Joint Resolution for Annexing Texas to the United States, which was approved March 1, 1845. But &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ref/abouttx/annexation/march1845.html&quot;&gt;the document&lt;/a&gt; neither talks about nor conveys any such right to secede.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2011/aug/17/jay-carney/white-house-press-secretary-says-perry-wanted-sece/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Politifact&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/svl55/&quot;&gt;Sanford Levinson&lt;/a&gt;, a professor at the &lt;em&gt;School of Law at the University of Texas at Austin&lt;/em&gt;, says that &lt;strong&gt;between the Texas Constitution, the U.S. Constitution and the 1845 Joint Resolution Annexing Texas to the United States, there is no explicit right for the state to return to its days as a republic.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.texassecede.com/faq.htm#txconst&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Texas Secede!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; acknowledges:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q:&lt;/strong&gt;  Doesn't the Texas Constitution reserve the right of Texas to secede? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A:&lt;/strong&gt;  This heavily popularized bit of Texas folklore finds no corroboration where it counts: &lt;strong&gt;No such provision is found in the current &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.constitution.legis.state.tx.us/&quot;&gt;Texas Constitution&lt;/a&gt; (adopted in 1876) or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/texan03.asp&quot;&gt;terms of annexation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reasonstosecede.com/faq/faq.shtml&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reasons to Secede&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is also straightforward about this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q:&lt;/strong&gt; Does Texas have the right to secede?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A.&lt;/strong&gt; No... but yes, not explicitly. &lt;strong&gt;There is no verbiage in the Texas Constitution, the US Constitution, or the Texas Annexation Agreement that expressly grants the State of Texas the right to secede from the Union.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T16:08:42.120" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13661" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13665" CreationDate="2012-11-14T19:40:02.973" Score="17" ViewCount="16183" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyhgC4wF7MU&quot;&gt;a few videos on the internet&lt;/a&gt; that show long-range firing going almost deadly, when, supposedly, the shooter's own bullet ricochets at the target area, and comes flying back at the shooter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10287" LastActivityDate="2018-04-18T20:23:41.577" Title="Can a bullet ricochet back at the shooter?" Tags="|guns|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13662" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13664" CreationDate="2012-11-14T19:53:49.147" Score="2" ViewCount="558" Body="&lt;p&gt;To reduce tragedy, loss-of-life and, of course, disaster-relief costs, the idea of somehow stopping a hurricane has been around for some time now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of many theories is that a nuke in the coldest spot within a hurricane would heat enough air to stop the cycle that feeds a hurricane with energy. Literally nuking the hurricane into submission, and stopping it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10287" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T20:16:35.703" Title="Is it possible to stop a hurricane by nuking it?" Tags="|weather|nuclear-weapons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13663" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18488" CreationDate="2012-11-14T20:16:23.443" Score="17" ViewCount="2896" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read lately that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indianexpress.com/news/human-intelligence-progressively-diminishing/1031057/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;human intelligence has already peaked and that it will slowly decline&lt;/a&gt; over time because humans are no longer naturally selected for intelligence (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.darwinawards.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Darwin award&lt;/a&gt; winners aside). In particular, from the first link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humans are losing intellectual and emotional capabilities because we no longer need intelligence to survive, a new study has claimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers from Stanford University claim the intricate web of genes which endows us with our brain power is particularly vulnerable to mutations - and these mutations are not being selected against our modern society because we no longer need intelligence to survive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[The lead author] argues that the combination of less selective pressure and the large number of easily affected genes is eroding our intellectual and emotional capabilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although I have not read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23153596&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study referred to&lt;/a&gt;, none of my reading from the press has indicated that the theory is based on observed phenomenon. Rather, the theorist seems to be falling back to a more general theory related to evolution, namely that a trait will &amp;quot;devolve&amp;quot; unless it factors into breeding potential (if I have characterized that correctly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2022-09-29T15:36:58.683" Title="Is intelligence declining due to the lack of selection pressure?" Tags="|biology|evolution|intelligence|genetics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13662" CreationDate="2012-11-14T20:16:35.703" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Landsea&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chris Landsea&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Science and Operations Officer at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/C5c.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;writes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During each hurricane season, there always appear suggestions that one should simply use nuclear weapons to try and destroy the storms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Needless to say, this is not a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main difficulty with using explosives to modify hurricanes is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;amount of energy&lt;/a&gt; required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A fully developed hurricane can release heat energy at a rate of 5 to 20x10&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; watts and converts less than 10% of the heat into the mechanical energy of the wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The heat release is equivalent to a 10-megaton nuclear bomb exploding every 20 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 10&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;In addition, an explosive, even &lt;strong&gt;a nuclear explosive, produces a shock wave, or pulse of high pressure, that propagates away from the site of the explosion&lt;/strong&gt; somewhat faster than the speed of sound. &lt;strong&gt;Such an event doesn't raise the barometric pressure after the shock has passed&lt;/strong&gt; because barometric pressure in the atmosphere reflects the weight of the air above the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-14T20:16:35.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13661" CreationDate="2012-11-14T20:19:15.027" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. Your own video shows it, and there are several others on YouTube that do.  But for the sake of proving this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monan Jauhari, the Assistant directory of India's Central Forensic Science Laboratory wrote here about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1141995?uid=3739864&amp;amp;uid=2129&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=70&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;uid=3739256&amp;amp;sid=21101294498683&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bullet Ricochet from Metal Plates&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a bullet strikes a target of sufficient solidarity at low angle&#xA;  it may, while maintaining its integrity, be deflected from its&#xA;  original path as a result of impact and travel in a direction quite&#xA;  different from its original one.  Such a deflection of a bullet&#xA;  constitutes a true ricochet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you shoot a solid target, the bullet can deflect.  If the target is angled properly, it can deflect back at you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:  Since comments and votes positive/negative keep happening on this, here is a better source. &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs004140000148&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The International Journal of Legal Medicine, A case of “boomerang” bullet ricochet.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to the perpendicular impact resulting in a centric and symmetrical&#xA;  deformation, the fragment moved in a direction exactly backwards along&#xA;  the original line of fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8691" LastEditorUserId="8691" LastEditDate="2018-04-09T17:55:50.427" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T17:55:50.427" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13637" CreationDate="2012-11-14T22:59:46.760" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had to track down the original story for this, but here's the link to it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sinchew.com.my/node/102525?tid=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sinchew.com.my/node/102525?tid=2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's in Chinese, so I can't read it without help of the Google Translator. This is a google-translated excerpt (with my own grammatical fixes) of the news article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Xiaogang felt pain after the accident, and immediately called to tell his&#xA;  father about his injury. Emergency personnel said they rushed to the&#xA;  scene. When they arrived, Xiaogang could still speak, and he was immediately rushed to hospital&#xA;  for treatment, where he eventually died of excessive bleeding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is reported that in just one month the Jiaozhou Central Hospital&#xA;  admitted three other patients suffering from similar pneumatic rotary chair explosions.&#xA;  Although their injuries were also to the buttocks, no objects became&#xA;  lodged in the body, and they only suffered minor injuries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chinauncensored.com/index.php/real-china/202-womans-lower-body-pierced-by-exploding-computer-chair&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;another news report&lt;/a&gt; of a woman whose chair also exploded, along with descriptions to four other incidences involving exploding chairs, one of them about the young lad who died in the above story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;On 20th April, 2007, in Dinghai district, Zhoushan town of Zhejiang province, the chair on which Ms. Lou was sitting exploded; plastic&#xA;  pieces, timber splinters, and metal washers pieced her body to a depth&#xA;  of 100mm deep.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;On 26th November 2007, a 68 years old man was badly injured in similar circumstances.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;On 26th March 2008, the chair in front of Mr Lin's computer suddenly exploded while Lin was beside it. Mr. Lin's back and arms&#xA;  were injured and an 150mm long steel rod was ejected and hit the&#xA;  ceiling.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;On 14th January 2009,  in Jiaozuo,  Shandong province, a 14 year old boy was killed by his exploding&#xA;  chair. Doctors  told the media that similar explosions had happened on&#xA;  3 occasions in that month.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, these chairs' pneumatic mechanism can explode, and &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; it's possible to die from it. &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, there are no significant statistics available, particularly for outside of China. However, from what I have tracked down, there have been &lt;strong&gt;at least 8 incidents.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9003" LastEditorUserId="9003" LastEditDate="2012-11-16T18:15:48.867" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T18:15:48.867" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13670" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-15T02:08:36.520" Score="5" ViewCount="6193" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seattlites and sunglasses enthusiasts proudly assert the claim, but I've found no comparative analysis to back it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Typical claim&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terry D. Seidler, a Seattle tour guide, makes the typical statement in a list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.see-seattle.com/seattlefirsts.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Seattle Firsts&lt;/a&gt; and attributes it to the P.E.O. Record:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seattle sells more sunglasses per capita than any other major city in the nation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The P.E.O. (Philanthropic Educational Organization) Record Mar-Apr 1997&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peointernational.org/peo-record/archive&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;online archive&lt;/a&gt; of the P.E.O. Record goes back no further than December 2003, so it's difficult to know if the P.E.O. provides scientific support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sales-banter Juststification&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Darwin Liao, director of the Seattle Sunglasses Company's downtown shop, repeats the mantra in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.totallyoptical.com/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid&amp;amp;nm=Insight&amp;amp;type=Publishing&amp;amp;mod=Publications%3A%3AArticle&amp;amp;mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&amp;amp;tier=4&amp;amp;id=13371005C27541DCA46E312F42FFD639&amp;amp;AudID=D43BA48EA08F43A48D5C2E823EFB2AA5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;July 2011 interview&lt;/a&gt; with Sunglasses magazine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SG:&lt;/strong&gt; Do you think the weather in Seattle has any impact on your business?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DL:&lt;/strong&gt; Seattle has highest per-capita sunglasses sales than any other major city in the nation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Liao goes on to cite an active-outdoors population, the mountain geography, and tourism as reasons for the perennially strong sales:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do have a lot of water and people are active year round—whether they’re runners or cyclists—so they’re looking for eye protection, which is why we do sell a fair amount of bronze lenses and lighter color lenses. And we’ve got two mountain ranges where we get low sun at the horizon, so we get that really bright blue sky, sunny mornings, and all winter long when you’re driving, there’s a lot of glare. And even when it’s overcast, there’s a significant amount of light. But you definitely do see the seasonalities as well. We’ll definitely pick up sales in mid-February, as people are getting ready to go on spring break—we’ve got a lot of snow birds that go down to Arizona, Palm Springs, CA, or Hawaii. But, of course, the traditional strong months in spring and summer are just as strong for us because we’ve got tourists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His explanation of popularity is plausible, but it is qualitative and makes no comparison. A salesman in California or Florida, states famous for their sunshine, could easily make a similar statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without hard sales figures from stores in Seattle and other American cities, there is no way to disprove the claim of the &lt;em&gt;highest&lt;/em&gt; sales. In the end, it's easy to dismiss this as sales banter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any data available to prove his claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--Km3gZrktD8/Ti0mW5ZU0uI/AAAAAAAAAyc/NGCPnnLY4dI/s1600/SeattleSunset_ROW1535293454_20110725.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;A Seattle sunset&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Photo: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bingfotos.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/sunset-of-elliott-bay-taken-from-space.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Seattle Sunset from the Space Needle by Mohammed Kamel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10288" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T18:14:10.017" Title="Are more sunglasses sold in Seattle than in any other US city?" Tags="|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13670" CreationDate="2012-11-15T02:08:36.520" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The United States Census Bureau (USCB) aggregates sales data for &lt;em&gt;sunglasses merchant wholesalers&lt;/em&gt; into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/econ/industry/def/d423460.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NAICS industry class 423460&lt;/a&gt;, called &lt;em&gt;Ophthalmic goods merchant wholesalers&lt;/em&gt;. This class includes merchant wholesalers of binoculars, eyeglasses, and other optical goods, but not cameras.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The USCB's report of its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/econ/industry/ec07/a423460.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2007 economic census&lt;/a&gt; contains data that strongly suggests the Seattlites' claim is false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Washington has low ophthalmic sales per capita&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report contains a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/econ/industry/geo/g423460.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;table&lt;/a&gt; that sorts each US state for which data exists by total sales in USD. It includes a computed &lt;em&gt;per capita&lt;/em&gt; column that we can use as evidence against the claim if we know that Seattle is in the state of Washington.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uDQJQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;US states sorted by total sales of opthalmic goods&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For clarity, I removed the row that represents the US total sales and the rows for states that have no data.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's fairly clear that in this class the highest sales per capita ($262) goes to Rhode Island.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Washington has one of the lower sales per capita ($9).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The top five states by sales (New York, California, Florida, Georgia, and Rhode Island) all have sales per capita ($87, $38, $56, $59, $262) many times more than that of Washington.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The accompanying &lt;a href=&quot;http://smpbff1.dsd.census.gov/TheDataWeb_HotReport/servlet/HotReportEngineServlet?emailname=vh@boc&amp;amp;filename=sal1.hrml&amp;amp;20071127090603.Var.NAICS2002=423460&amp;amp;forward=&amp;amp;20071127090603.Var.NAICS2002&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Industry Snapshot Hot Report&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; links to a large-scale color-coded map of sales per capita by state. States with higher sales per capita are colored darker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CMEFA.png&quot; alt=&quot;US states colored by sales per capita of ophthalmic goods&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For clarity, I moved the legend closer to the map than in the source image.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the states are viewed like this, Washington appears insignificant. What stand out again are California, Florida, New York, and Rhode Island.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What about &lt;i&gt;Seattle&lt;/i&gt;?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the data I could find aggregates at the state level, no finer. The report is not detailed enough to prove that Seattle sells less sunglasses than some other city. I believe the state-level evidence renders the possibility highly unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What if everyone in Florida wears &lt;i&gt;contact lenses&lt;/i&gt;?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the way the report aggregates industries, we could be being mislead by high sales in lines other than sunglasses. Again, I think it's unlikely. Besides, I've heard no-one make proud claims about how myopic their citizens are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10288" LastEditorUserId="10288" LastEditDate="2012-11-15T02:15:34.380" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T02:15:34.380" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13674" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13677" CreationDate="2012-11-15T03:15:02.997" Score="46" ViewCount="10391" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that I have a modern magnetic (not SSD) hard drive, manufactured within the past ten years, and the hard drive is packed with the only copies of an unpublished paper about cheap cold fusion written by a scientist who died in the fire that burned down the only cold fusion lab in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whoops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard people say that if you want to be sure that the data is completely erased, you need to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use random data, not zeroes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Zero the hard drive with multiple passes, either 7 (&quot;standard&quot; practice) or 35 (for the truly paranoid).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Erase using passes that have special alternating patters.  Supposedly, this either degausses the original signal or adds enough extra noise that you can't pick it out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perform some kind of &quot;low level&quot; erase that causes the heads to move in different patterns, or causes the bit patterns to differ.  This requires hardware support.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Raise the platters above their Curie temperature&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: is it actually possible to recover data from a zeroed drive?  In other words, is it justifiable to use random data / multiple passes / etc. to bury your digital secrets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hostjury.com/blog/view/195/the-great-zero-challenge-remains-unaccepted&quot;&gt;The Great Zero Challenge&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (40 USD prize) has not been won, but hypothetically, if cost of such recovery is large or secret enough, then it's a moot point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3016" LastEditorUserId="2047" LastEditDate="2015-07-30T16:20:53.867" LastActivityDate="2015-07-30T16:20:53.867" Title="Is it possible to recover data on a zeroed hard drive?" Tags="|computers|security|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18985" CreationDate="2012-11-15T05:13:21.147" Score="19" ViewCount="2580" Body="&lt;p&gt;I enjoyed reading the fascinating story of how a climber took an amazing long-exposure photo of his climb up, down and around a Peak District landmark. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.news.yahoo.com/blazing-a-trail--climber-takes-spectacular-light-streak-images-during-peak-district-trek.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Blazing a trail! Climber takes spectacular light streak images during Peak District trek&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't doubt that he has produced a beautiful picture, but there is some alarm bells ringing in my head wondering if the light streaks were really created by his head-lamp as he performed his arduous journey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'd appreciate if you could take a sceptical look at this image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FCtGK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Light Trail&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long would it take to create an image of those stars that streak in that fashion and is it possible to travel the distance marked by the climber's headlamp in that time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are those lights the fleeting wisp of a hand torch, Photoshop or the climber's head lamp?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5072" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-15T12:03:29.390" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T13:39:22.163" Title="Is the climber's head-lamp backstory for this long-exposure photo feasible?" Tags="|astronomy|photography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8760" CreationDate="2012-11-15T05:20:23.747" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a couple of studies on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pom.sagepub.com/content/35/1/58&quot;&gt;Lifestyle correlates of musical preference: 1. Relationships, living arrangements, beliefs, and crime&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, this study doesn't seem to differentiate between &quot;rock&quot; and &quot;heavy metal&quot;. People who prefer &quot;rock&quot; have been arrested the most (13 times, but that's a fairly low number overall) and committed &quot;arrestable&quot; acts the third-highest, after Dance/House and Indie-fans. Check Table 16.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/15367247_The_relationship_between_heavy_metal_and_rap_music_and_adolescent_turmoil_real_or_artifact&quot;&gt;The relationship between heavy metal and rap music and adolescent turmoil: real or artifact?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adolescents who preferred heavy metal and rap music were compared with those who preferred other types of music. Results indicated that adolescents who preferred heavy metal and rap had a higher incidence of below-average school grades, school behavior problems, sexual activity, drug and alcohol use, and arrests. However, when gender was controlled, only below-average current and elementary school grades and a history of counseling in elementary school for school problems remained significant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A longer, good write-up is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metaphoricalplatypus.com/articlepages%20music/heavy%20metal%20music.html&quot;&gt;Music Psychology: Heavy Metal Music&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr: Metal itself doesn't cause crimes, but adolescents with problems (who are more likely to commit crimes) are drawn to it more than adolescents without problems&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10291" LastEditorUserId="10288" LastEditDate="2012-11-15T18:18:12.113" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T18:18:12.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13674" CreationDate="2012-11-15T11:12:31.443" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: It seems that data densities on HDs have increased to the point where it's not feasible to recover data from zeroed drives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process of recovering data from a &quot;zeroed&quot; hard drive revolves around the concept of residual magnetism.  Essentially, the idea is that if you examine the drive using a magnetic force microscope, there is some tiny difference between bits that were '1' before being overwritten, and bits that were '0'.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Securely_wipe_disk&quot;&gt;ArchLinux's wiki&lt;/a&gt; has some interesting background info for those interested.  Having said this, this process requires a clean-room disassembly of the drive, and expensive equipment to even attempt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is actually even worse, consider the &lt;a href=&quot;http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-88/NISTSP800-88_with-errata.pdf&quot;&gt;NIST Guidelines for Media Sanitization&lt;/a&gt; [PDF], which states (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Advancing technology has created a situation that has altered previously held best practices regarding magnetic disk type storage media.  Basically the change in track density and the related changes in the storage medium have created a situation where the acts of clearing and purging the media have converged.  &lt;strong&gt;That is, for ATA disk drives manufactured after 2001 (over 15 GB) clearing by overwriting the media once is adequate to protect the media from both keyboard and laboratory attack.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Another study supporting the above is &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-540-89862-7_21?LI=true&quot;&gt;Overwriting Hard Drive Data: The Great Wiping Controversy&lt;/a&gt; (sadly behind a paywall), which concludes (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study has demonstrated that correctly wiped data cannot reasonably be retrieved even if it is of a small size or found only over small parts of the hard drive. Not even with the use of a MFM or other known methods. The belief that a tool can be developed to retrieve gigabytes or terabytes of information from a wiped drive is in error.  Although there is a good chance of recovery for any individual bit from a drive, &lt;strong&gt;the chances of recovery of any amount of data from a drive using an electron microscope are negligible&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT 2:  It's actually not clear whether the above summary was referring to a &quot;pristrine drive and 1 wipe&quot;, or a &quot;pristine drive and 3 wipes&quot;.  I'd lean towards &quot;it doesn't matter&quot;, since they give the chance of recovering a single 32-bit number at around 1.16%, even with a single pass.  The authors also assert that no meaningful amount of data can be recovered with confidence levels with are &quot;beyond reasonable doubt&quot;, normally a legal requirement in the U.S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise, it seems that a single pass is sufficient to sanitise the drive to a point where it cannot be recovered with today's technology.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9002" LastEditorUserId="9002" LastEditDate="2012-11-16T06:15:28.960" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T06:15:28.960" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="755" CreationDate="2012-11-15T13:38:35.330" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19962588&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19962588&lt;/a&gt; , although the author does not state that eating exactly the same food at different times of the day makes a difference, it claims that skipping breakfast subconsciously influences the brain to seek out food with higher calories, resulting in subjects of normal weight eating 20% more calories after missing breakfast:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Twenty one people, who were all normal weight, were shown pictures of&#xA;  calorie packed foods while they were positioned in a magnetic&#xA;  resonance imaging (MRI) machine at Imperial College London.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On one day they were given no breakfast before the scans and on a&#xA;  different day they were fed a large, 730 calorie, breakfast an hour&#xA;  and a half before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The researchers said skipping breakfast created a &quot;bias&quot; in the brain&#xA;  in favour of high calorie foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results, presented at the Neuroscience 2012 conference, showed the&#xA;  brain changed how it responded to pictures of high calorie foods, but&#xA;  not low calorie foods, when breakfast was skipped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They showed part of the brain thought to be involved in &quot;food appeal&quot;,&#xA;  the orbitofrontal cortex, became more active on an empty stomach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the researchers offered the participants lunch at the end of the&#xA;  study, people ate a fifth more calories if breakfast was missed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It implies, though not explicitly state, that the additional 20% is a total, i.e.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;lunch&lt;sub&gt;skip&lt;/sub&gt; = 1.2 x (lunch&lt;sub&gt;no skip&lt;/sub&gt; + breakfast&lt;sub&gt;no skip&lt;/sub&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;instead of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;lunch&lt;sub&gt;skip&lt;/sub&gt; = 1.2 x lunch&lt;sub&gt;no skip&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="308" LastEditorUserId="308" LastEditDate="2012-11-15T13:48:38.160" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T13:48:38.160" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13636" CreationDate="2012-11-15T15:20:26.793" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without food aid, farmers cannot survive a famine, and therefore any economic incentive or disincentive is a moot point. The cycle depicted in the chart is &lt;strong&gt;false,&lt;/strong&gt; because it relies on a model of famine that is outdated and incomplete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cycle in the graphic depicts a speculative economic model based on famines caused by &lt;em&gt;FAD&lt;/em&gt; - Food Availability Decline. Unfortunately, the FAD model does not take into account important characteristics of a famine, the most notable to this question being that &lt;em&gt;agricultural workers suffer famines disproportionately.&lt;/em&gt;  Farmers are the first to starve and the first to die of hunger. This is because famines work according to the &lt;em&gt;FEE&lt;/em&gt; model - Failure of Entitlement Exchange, which replaced FAD as a more complete and accurate model in the early '80s. (Entitlement here being an academic term for &quot;stuff to buy or barter.&quot;) What happens is that food and labor are both commodities - and a farmer's Endowment (an academic term meaning stuff he can use to trade or buy) is insufficient to exchange for enough food to survive. A bag of rice is worth X amount of hours of labor - but in times of famine, no amount of labor is going to be enough to exchange for food. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-agricultural workers - tradesmen, professionals, merchants and the political class - will usually have enough resources - endowments - to secure a share of a dwindling supply of food, or to import their own supply - entitlements. Farmers, who rely on part of their harvest as their entitlement, cannot do likewise. Similarly, once conditions improve, they need to return to farming to obtain other, non-food entitlements, such as clothing, education, phone bill, etc. - a depressed market due to food aid means poor prices initially after a famine, but that's better than, you know, &lt;em&gt;dying.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wider.unu.edu/publications/working-papers/previous/en_GB/wp-107/_files/82530839138407609/default/WP107.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; (in PDF) includes a good overview of the FEE model, with clear explanations for laymen, as well as various criticism of FEE and the responses to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10295" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-11-15T16:07:50.933" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T16:07:50.933" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4107" CreationDate="2012-11-15T16:12:04.353" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it's technically true that Firefly was cancelled due to low ratings, it's also true that FOX were not behind the show, or as Joss Whedon put it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;They hated it. They killed it.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/video/video-joss-whedon-conversation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; @ 5:20)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, it wasn't marketed well, was placed in the infamous &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friday_night_death_slot&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Friday Night Death Slot&lt;/a&gt;, and wasn't given any sort of &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LeadIn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lead in&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before this they had refused to air the feature-length pilot they'd ordered, and told Whedon and Tim Minear (co-executive producer) they had to have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/03/lemgfireflylemg-re-watch-qthe-train-jobq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;new pilot script ready in two days&lt;/a&gt; or the show wouldn't be picked up. (Yes, that's right. Fox gave them &lt;em&gt;two days&lt;/em&gt; to write the most important episode of any TV show.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fox also set the schedule so that the show was taken &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117901954?refCatId=13&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;off the air for baseball&lt;/a&gt;, and pulled it from November &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_ratings#Sweeps&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sweeps&lt;/a&gt;, if you can believe that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results of &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2003/jan/20/business/fi-fox20&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gail Berman's decisions even made the news&lt;/a&gt;, being one of the worst Novembers Fox had ever seen. It even prompted then Fox Entertainment Television Chairman, Sandy Grushow, to admit they'd goofed: &quot;To put new shows on for two weeks and then take them off for four weeks for baseball is not a particularly effective launch strategy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, the show was cancelled because it was expensive and the ratings weren't great, but the show also very poorly handled by a network who had little faith in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's worse is that Berman knew that Whedon was a master at growing a fanbase. He'd never had an immediate TV hit before, but he'd grown a loyal group of followers for both Buffy and Angel. Given time, it's likely he would have done the same for Firefly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1835" LastEditorUserId="1835" LastEditDate="2013-06-21T21:08:54.497" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T21:08:54.497" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12403" CreationDate="2012-11-15T16:57:27.773" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there doesn't appear to be very good scientific support for this popular idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/menstrual-synchrony-do-girls-who-go-together-flow-together/&quot;&gt;This 2011 article at ScienceBasedMedicine&lt;/a&gt; appears to cover all the important bases (the article is well-referenced, I'll reproduce a few key links here):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Synchrony Is difficult to define&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consider that the normal menstrual cycle can vary from 21 to 35 days&#xA;  and can last 2 to 7 days. Consider that some women are regular and&#xA;  consistent, while others have variable patterns, even “regularly&#xA;  irregular” patterns. Consider that anovulatory cycles and other&#xA;  conditions often lead to menstrual irregularities that fall outside&#xA;  the normal range. Consider that strenuous exercise and other life&#xA;  events can affect menstruation. Put all that together, and you can see&#xA;  that often cycles will overlap simply by chance, and that it is&#xA;  difficult to define synchrony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research is mixed at best&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-women-who-live-together-menstruate-together&quot;&gt;A Scientific American article&lt;/a&gt; did a good job of reviewing the literature as of 2007. &#xA;  Suffice it to say that about half the published papers support the&#xA;  synchronization hypothesis and half don’t; and the half that do have&#xA;  been harshly criticized for their poor design and poor statistical&#xA;  analyses. So we haven’t reached a consensus, but it’s looking more&#xA;  likely that synchronization is a myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Comparative studies on animals have been negative&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was originally thought that other primates and other mammals&#xA;  demonstrated menstrual synchrony due to pheromones, but recent studies&#xA;  have shown that it doesn’t occur in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15940707&quot;&gt;chimpanzees&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10964523&quot;&gt;hamsters&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20594765&quot;&gt;mandrills&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;  or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8879503&quot;&gt;golden tamarins&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The proposed mechanism (human pheromones) has little to no scientific support&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In humans, pheromones have been postulated and even sold as sexual&#xA;  attractants. But there is little or no peer-reviewed evidence to&#xA;  suggest that any pheromone influences human behavior. No human&#xA;  pheromones have been identified, and the vomeronasal organ that&#xA;  detects pheromones in other mammals is rudimentary and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21377439&quot;&gt;nonfunctional&#xA;  in humans&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first comment on the article, by &quot;Al Morrison&quot;, summarizes it nicely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No agreed upon definition of menstrual synchronization + no plausible&#xA;  mechanism + poor research supporting the hypothesis + split research&#xA;  results + no support from comparative research + a tendency to over&#xA;  report synchronization = MYTH&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1049" LastActivityDate="2012-11-15T16:57:27.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13689" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-16T04:03:14.030" Score="2" ViewCount="929" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_rain_in_Kerala&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Kerala red rain phenomenon was a blood rain (red rain) event that occurred from July 25 to September 23, 2001, when red-coloured rain sporadically fell on the southern Indian state of Kerala. Heavy downpours occurred in which the rain was colored red, staining clothes pink. Yellow, green, and black rain was also reported. Colored rain had been reported in Kerala as early as 1896 and several times since then, most recently in June 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, it states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was not until early 2006 that the colored rains of Kerala gained widespread attention when the popular media reported that Godfrey Louis and Santhosh Kumar of the Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam proposed a controversial argument that the colored particles were &lt;strong&gt;extraterrestrial cells&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the rest of the article, it has given some details supporting this claim as well as criticism against this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a similar incident of &amp;quot;Red rain&amp;quot; in Sri Lanka (where I live) a few days ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rare showers of red rain fell for over 15 minutes in Sewanagala, Monaragala and Manampitiya,Polonnaruwa yesterday morning hours of yesterday and day before yesterday. According to Meteorology Department sources red rain fell heavily in these areas and the reason has not been found yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Red rain in Sewanagala and Manampitiya left red frost on the ground. This is the first time red rain was witnessed in Sri Lanka. The Health Ministry Secretary informed Medical Research Institute (MRI) Director Dr Anil Samaranayake to conduct a study to ascertain the reasons for red rain by taking water samples from Monaragala and Polonnaruwa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Increase in the acidity of the air and sand storms are the usual reasons for red rain. However, there are no sand storms in Sri Lanka. India had red rain last year and Indian scientists discovered a variety of micro organisms as a reason for the rains. Since the micro organisms had no DNA, they guessed it had to be a strange phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sri Lanka's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailynews.lk/2012/11/16/news11.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt; Some local officials claim that this can be similar to the Kerala incident and the water could contain similar organisms!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T00:22:25.647" Title="Does &quot;red rain&quot; contain extraterrestrial cells?" Tags="|weather|aliens|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13690" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13693" CreationDate="2012-11-16T05:11:54.517" Score="15" ViewCount="8001" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've come across the claim a few times that Diet Coke is 99% water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realage.com/food/8-diet-coke-claims-youll-want-to-know-about&quot;&gt;RealAge - 8 Diet Coke Claims You'll Want to Know About&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freakonomics.com/2007/08/20/diet-coke-is-99-water-and-that-is-now-a-good-thing/&quot;&gt;Freakonomics - Diet Coke is 99% Water (And That Is Now a Good Thing)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Partial support for the claim seems to stem from the following advertisement, which seems to imply there is no major difference between Diet Coke and water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-16T08:37:59.193" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T20:57:22.510" Title="Is Diet Coke 99% water?" Tags="|nutrition|soda|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13690" CreationDate="2012-11-16T09:19:56.343" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL,DR:&lt;/strong&gt; Diet cola is 99.8% water. Normal cola is 90% water and (basically) 10% sugar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is not correct, however in my opinion when someone claims &quot;A is 99% B&quot; they may not mean that literally. In particular the Freakanomics article works with any other ratio in mind - the article is about how claiming that something is mostly water has actually become a good thing and that relates to the price of water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the USDA data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Normal cola, contents per 100g&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Water    g   90.31&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/4253&quot;&gt;http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/4253&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Diet cola, contents per 100g&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Water    g   99.80&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/4166&quot;&gt;http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/4166&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Coca-Cola company sells &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_formula#Formula_variations_in_the_United_States&quot;&gt;syrup&lt;/a&gt; which is then diluted in order to make the beverage. The dilution varies on a case-by-case basis, within some acceptable parameters. See for example here for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cokepubandbar.co.uk/cola-factory-maintenance.html&quot;&gt;suggested soda fountain setting&lt;/a&gt;. This means that the percentage of water is variable, depending on the sample.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a big difference between 99% and 99.8% of water. There is five times more syrup (or &quot;taste&quot;) in a 99% dilution than in a 99.8% dilution . 99% means 1g every 100g of liquid; 99.8% means 1g every 500g.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The USDA data is meant to be a standard reference - you can check the links above - given they provide 4 significant digits in the measurement, I doubt that there's more than 1% error in the values. This would include making sure the sample is representative.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-16T19:49:56.793" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T19:49:56.793" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10641" CreationDate="2012-11-16T13:51:01.253" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scientists use brain imaging to reveal the movies in our mind&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational&#xA;  models, UC Berkeley researchers have succeeded in decoding and&#xA;  reconstructing people’s dynamic visual experiences – in this case,&#xA;  watching Hollywood movie trailers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As yet, the technology can only reconstruct movie clips people have&#xA;  already viewed. However, the breakthrough paves the way for&#xA;  reproducing the movies inside our heads that no one else sees, such as&#xA;  dreams and memories, according to researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It already looks able to detect large numerals:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsjDnYxJ0bo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsjDnYxJ0bo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastActivityDate="2012-11-16T13:51:01.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13697" CreationDate="2012-11-16T14:41:33.160" Score="5" ViewCount="2770" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Cannabis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikiquote&lt;/a&gt; and many other sites list this quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Make the most of the Indian hemp seed, and sow it everywhere!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;George Washington in a note to his gardener at Mount Vernon (1794), &lt;em&gt;The Writings of George Washington&lt;/em&gt;, Volume 33, page 270 (Library of Congress).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find that volume or page on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-11-16T18:13:12.937" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T13:11:48.787" Title="Did George Washington support the sowing of Hemp?" Tags="|quotes|recreational-drugs|george-washington|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13696" CreationDate="2012-11-16T14:41:33.160" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes he did. Though he didn't say it quite like that; according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=WasFi33.xml&amp;amp;images=images/modeng&amp;amp;data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&amp;amp;tag=public&amp;amp;part=all&quot;&gt;The writings of George Washington from the original manuscript sources&lt;/a&gt;, he wrote in Philadelphia on February 24, 1794 to William Pearce: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am very glad to hear that the Gardener has saved so much of the St.&#xA;  foin seed, and that of the India Hemp. Make the most you can of both,&#xA;  by sowing them again in drills. [...] The Hemp may be sown any where.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, THC-free hemp is relatively new:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To satisfy the UN Narcotics Convention, some Cannabis strains have&#xA;  been bred to produce minimal levels of THC, the principal psychoactive&#xA;  constituent responsible for the &quot;high&quot; associated with marijuana.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2912/did-george-washington-and-thomas-jefferson-grow-marijuana&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; could not find anything about him smoking it, though it was touted as superior crop to tobacco yet of quality too low to export. The superior European hemp fiber quality is interesting in light of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Cannabis genus was first classified using the &quot;modern&quot; system of&#xA;  taxonomic nomenclature by Carolus Linnaeus in 1753, who devised the&#xA;  system still in use for the naming of species.[35] He considered the&#xA;  genus to be monotypic, having just a single species that he named&#xA;  Cannabis sativa L. (L. stands for Linnaeus, and indicates the&#xA;  authority who first named the species). Linnaeus was familiar with&#xA;  European hemp, which was widely cultivated at the time. In 1785, noted&#xA;  evolutionary biologist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck published a&#xA;  description of a second species of Cannabis, which he named Cannabis&#xA;  indica Lam.[36] Lamarck based his description of the newly named&#xA;  species on plant specimens collected in India. He described C. indica&#xA;  as having poorer fiber quality than C. sativa, but greater utility as&#xA;  an inebriant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then again, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gametec.com/hemp/hempandmj.html&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;Indian hemp&quot; could also mean jute (Corchorus capsularis or C. clitorus) or dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="5079" LastEditDate="2012-11-18T13:11:48.787" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T13:11:48.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13698" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13735" CreationDate="2012-11-16T16:03:17.813" Score="11" ViewCount="812" Body="&lt;p&gt;David Brooks, in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/opinion/brooks-the-age-of-possibility.html&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; published today in The New York Time, has claimed &quot;There are now more American houses with dogs than with children.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seriously doubt this claim is true, especially after having considered that the word &quot;child&quot; means a person between birth and 12 year old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is if the above claim is true or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2012-11-16T16:09:03.947" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T19:37:39.720" Title="Are there more American houses with dogs than with children?" Tags="|human-reproduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13700" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13701" CreationDate="2012-11-16T20:38:12.993" Score="6" ViewCount="1030" Body="&lt;p&gt;The New Zealand Herald &lt;a href=&quot;http://mobile.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.php?c_id=2&amp;amp;objectid=10847996&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;published today (November 17, 2012)&lt;/a&gt; reports that John McAfee, the anti-virus creator, claimed &quot;to have founded an alternative medicine company using local plants to make a natural alternative to antibiotics, and a herbal version of Viagra for women.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of this claim, so I wonder if there are facts to prove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:08:21.610" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:08:21.610" Title="Did John McAfee, the anti-virus creator, found an alternative medicine company?" Tags="|celebrities|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13700" CreationDate="2012-11-16T21:09:43.200" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, that seems to be substantially true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. John McAfee - President &amp;amp; CEO - the founder of McAfee Anti-virus, Tribal Voice, and several other ventures, founded QuorumEx in order to re-invent the way modern medicine combats and disarms pathogenic bacteria.   Through his efforts, Quorumex has identified numerous new plant compounds that inhibit qs signaling and provide promise for new anti-quorum sensing medicines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://quorumex.com/content/about-us&quot;&gt;Quorumex: About Us&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's a relatively fringe topic for healing purposes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorum_sensing&quot;&gt;quorum sensing&lt;/a&gt; is accepted and being actively studied in mainstream biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-17T09:51:41.593" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T09:51:41.593" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4215" CreationDate="2012-11-17T02:02:38.657" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did some research about the Washington-Moscow Hotline and I can also say that there was NEVER a phone on that link. People who worked at the Hotline until as late as 2008 confirm in interviews that the hotline never had a voice capability. The Hotline first used teletype equipment, since 1988 facsimile units and since 2008 the messages are exchanged by e-mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more info and sources check my article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://electrospaces.blogspot.nl/2012/10/the-washington-moscow-hot-line.html&quot;&gt;http://electrospaces.blogspot.nl/2012/10/the-washington-moscow-hot-line.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The red phone of Jimmy Carter is not fake, but was used for a different purpose. It was most likely used as part of the Defense Red Switch Network, linking the president, the secretary of defense and all the major command centers. So not for international, but for internal use, that is the chain of command for the US defense system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10318" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-11-19T02:41:01.770" LastActivityDate="2012-11-19T02:41:01.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13706" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13707" CreationDate="2012-11-17T03:49:50.603" Score="32" ViewCount="149459" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read, and read before that the origin of the heart shape is based on the female anatomy.  I have tried researching it and every source I find gives differing opinions on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a Facebook page I follow they posted this  but gave no source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A professor of psychology who studied the symbolism, origin and&#xA;history of Valentine's Day said &lt;strong&gt;the traditional double-lobed heart&#xA;symbol on candy and cards is inspired by the shape of female buttocks&#xA;as they appear from behind&lt;/strong&gt;, according to Discovery News.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;essential literary and speculative evidence from mythology and&#xA;secondary sources&amp;quot; leads to the theory, Prof. Galdino Pranzarone of&#xA;Roanoke College in Salem, Va., told Discovery News.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that the symbol doesn't resemble the human heart organ is one&#xA;fairly glaring piece of evidence, he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The twin lobes of the stylized version correspond roughly to the&#xA;paired auricles and ventricles [chambers] of the anatomical heart,&amp;quot;&#xA;Pranzarone told Discovery News, adding that the organ &amp;quot;is never bright&#xA;red in color&amp;quot; and the &amp;quot;shape does not have the invagination at the top&#xA;nor the sharp point at the base.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ancient Romans and Greeks may have started the link between the&#xA;heart symbol and female anatomy, Pranzarone said. The Greeks&#xA;associated beauty with the female behind's curves, he said. &amp;quot;The Greek&#xA;goddess of beauty, Aphrodite, was beautiful all over, but was unique&#xA;in that her buttocks were especially beautiful,&amp;quot; he told Discovery&#xA;News. &amp;quot;Her shapely rounded hemispheres were so appreciated by the&#xA;Greeks that they built a special temple Aphrodite Kallipygos, which&#xA;literally meant, 'Goddess with the Beautiful Buttocks.' This was&#xA;probably the only religious building in the world that was dedicated&#xA;to buttock worship.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_%28symbol%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Heart Shape&lt;/a&gt; wikipedia page...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the traditional &amp;quot;heart shape&amp;quot; actually depicts is a matter of&#xA;some controversy. It only vaguely resembles the human heart. &lt;strong&gt;The&#xA;seed of the silphium plant&lt;/strong&gt;, used in ancient times as an herbal&#xA;contraceptive, has been suggested as the source of the heart&#xA;symbol. The heart symbol could also be considered to depict&#xA;features of the human female body, such as the &lt;strong&gt;female's buttocks,&#xA;pubic mound, or spread vulva&lt;/strong&gt;. The tantric symbol of the &amp;quot;Yoni&amp;quot; is&#xA;another example of a heart-shaped abstraction of a woman's vulva.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard several of these explanations before, but I was wanting to know if there was an actual answer to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8691" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T02:54:43.200" Title="Is the heart symbol based on female anatomy?" Tags="|history|anatomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13706" CreationDate="2012-11-17T05:24:36.283" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heartsymbol.com/english/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Armin Dietz&lt;/a&gt;, a cardiologist and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heartsymbol.com/english/index.html?author.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;man who's apparently written a book&lt;/a&gt; touching on this subject,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ivy leaf portrayed by prehistoric potters of long-forgotten cultures evolved into the red playing-card heart. This botanic symbol found in ancient Greek and Roman art - primarily in vase painting - represented both physical and, above all, eternal love, withstanding death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final transformation of the green heart-shaped leaf into the red playing-card heart took place in medieval writings, predominantly in the central-european literature of courtly love.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the Middle Ages and early modern times, when medicine had a scholastic character, this symbol was used even by anatomists to portray the heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worldwide circulation of the heart symbol through art, playing-cards and above all, however, through religious worship, has made the heart, besides the cross, to the probably most popular non-geometric symbol and to cardiology's emblem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also notes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, in Buddhism the playing-card heart also developed - independently of the western metamorphosis - from the fig tree (the bodhi tree) into the symbol not of love, but of enlightenment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was under such a tree that the ascetic Gautama found liberating enlightenment through years of meditation and became the Buddha.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His website (which contains excerpts from his book) traces the evolution of the heart symbol through the ages. The ivy leaf theory is also noted in some detail &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/life/history-heart-symbol-16517.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, the heart symbol appears to be less gynaecological and more botanical in origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-19T08:59:58.983" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13709" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-17T13:15:06.873" Score="3" ViewCount="881" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.in/books?id=F-Q_xGjWBi8C&amp;amp;pg=PT28&amp;amp;lpg=PT28&amp;amp;vq=surprise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;following passage&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;em&gt;Man's Search for Meaning&lt;/em&gt; by Dr Viktor Frankl&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would like to mention a few similar surprises on how much we could&#xA;  endure: we were unable to clean our teeth, and yet, in spite of that&#xA;  and a severe vitamin deficiency, we had healthier gums than ever&#xA;  before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research that supports this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4196" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T13:15:06.873" Title="Is cleaning of teeth necessary for healthier gums?" Tags="|hygiene|dentistry|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13717" CreationDate="2012-11-17T17:08:56.260" Score="7" ViewCount="1589" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;The use of energy drinks is very dangerous as there is a very high content of caffeine in a small volume,&quot;. Dr. Khan, the health minister of Trinidad &amp;amp; Tobago,  told the Trinidad Express Newspaper in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/ENERGY_DRINKS_ALERT-179757711.html?m=y&amp;amp;smobile=y&amp;amp;clmob=y&amp;amp;c=n&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;interview&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journal reports that a person died of a heart attack from caffeine toxicity after drinking two cans of some energy drink. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of this claim because I use to drink these energy drinks and I feel very good, so I wonder if there is evidence to support it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:28:06.533" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T08:48:41.547" Title="Can the over-use of energy drinks cause a heart attack?" Tags="|environmental-health|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8760" CreationDate="2012-11-17T17:31:44.150" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This topic featured today in the newspaper (The Times, Sat Nov 17 2012, page 43). &#xA;The article mentions a new survey of &quot;the nation's metal fans&quot; by the British Phonographic Industry with 3700 respondents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a piece of journalism rather than a scientific work, the article does not give me a reference to cite, but mentions that according to the study the average metal fan is &quot;more sporty, sociable and musical than fans of other genres ... highly educated&quot; and that metal &quot;is seen as a positive force in the lives of those who listen to it&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mention this in case anyone is interested in tracking down the original survey; the Times article itself is only available online behind a paywall (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/music/article3603301.ece).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10326" LastActivityDate="2012-11-17T17:31:44.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13711" CreationDate="2012-11-18T11:51:35.840" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two cans of a &quot;normal&quot; energy drink is &lt;strong&gt;less dangerous than a cup of brewed coffee&lt;/strong&gt; of 350 ml (12oz) - in terms of caffeine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/821863-overview&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Medscape&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Caffeine has differing CNS, cardiovascular, and metabolic effects based on the quantity ingested. Average doses of caffeine (85-250 mg, the equivalent of 1-3 cups of coffee) may result in feelings of alertness, decreased fatigue, and eased flow of thought. High doses (250-500 mg) can result in restlessness, nervousness, insomnia, and tremors. In high doses, caffeine can cause a hyperadrenergic syndrome resulting in seizures and cardiovascular instability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine#Caffeine_intoxication&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; referencing &lt;a href=&quot;http://jcp.sagepub.com/content/7/3/131.extract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Factors Affecting Caffeine Toxicity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The LD50 of caffeine in humans is dependent on individual sensitivity, but is estimated to be about 150 to 200 milligrams per kilogram of body mass or roughly 80 to 100 cups of coffee for an average adult&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/treatments/healthy_living/nutrition/healthy_caff.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The BBC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use this guide for the amounts of caffeine in products:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;One mug of instant coffee: 100mg&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;One mug of filter coffee: 140mg&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;One mug of tea: 75mg&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;One can of cola: 40mg&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;One can of energy drink: 80mg&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;One 50g bar of plain (dark) chocolate: around 50mg&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;One 50g bar of milk chocolate: around 25mg&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the above is correct, two cans of energy drink is a lot less than a lethal dose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_weight&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;average body weight&lt;/a&gt; of 80 Kg, the LD50 is 12000 to 16000 mg which is 150 to 200 cans of the above Energy drink. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Update:)&#xA;A girl aged 14 might weigh only 50 Kg, a thin girl maybe only 40 Kg. Therefore LD50 = only 6000 to 8000 mg which is 25 to 33 cans of an unusually strong 240mg/can drink. So 2 cans is a lot but not a lethal dose for most thin 14 year-old girls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously some people are more sensitive than others and will have complicating factors such as high blood pressure or other existing medical conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-11-18T15:44:11.327" LastActivityDate="2012-11-18T15:44:11.327" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13711" CreationDate="2012-11-18T11:52:42.987" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it can &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/821863-overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cause heart attacks&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1989, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) limited the amount&#xA;  of caffeine in OTC products to a maximum of 200 mg/dose. The ingestion&#xA;  of such concentrated sources of caffeine is the general cause of acute&#xA;  caffeine toxicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Caffeine has differing CNS, cardiovascular, and metabolic effects&#xA;  based on the quantity ingested. Average doses of caffeine (85-250 mg,&#xA;  the equivalent of 1-3 cups of coffee) may result in feelings of&#xA;  alertness, decreased fatigue, and eased flow of thought. High doses&#xA;  (250-500 mg) can result in restlessness, nervousness, insomnia, and&#xA;  tremors. In high doses, caffeine can cause a hyperadrenergic syndrome&#xA;  resulting in seizures and &lt;strong&gt;cardiovascular instability&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because caffeine overdoses, intentional or unintentional, are&#xA;  relatively common in the United States, physicians and other medical&#xA;  personnel must be aware of caffeine toxicity to recognize and treat it&#xA;  appropriately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 14-yo girl you mention drank, on consecutive days within 24 hours, two 710 ml cans of Monster Energy (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monsterenergy.com/ca/ca_fr/products/#!/products:killer-b&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Described as &quot;vicious&quot; and &quot;killer&quot; on the site.&lt;/a&gt;) at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Energy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;34 mg/100 ml&lt;/a&gt; caffeine, totaling 480 milligrams of caffeine. And she had a genetic vein issue that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.today.com/health/teen-girl-dies-caffeine-toxicity-after-downing-2-energy-drinks-506441?franchiseSlug=todayhealthmain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;affects 1 in 20 Americans&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="5079" LastEditDate="2014-11-05T08:48:41.547" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T08:48:41.547" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13719" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-18T16:08:00.217" Score="11" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ben Goldacre, in his sustained critique of the way the pharmaceutical industry and its regulators fall far from the standards of reliable evidence (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Pharma-companies-mislead-patients/dp/0007350740&quot;&gt;Bad Pharma&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;), makes an astounding claim (p193 of the paperback, my emphasis): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Trials have been done comparing statins against placebo, and these have shown they save lives rather well. Trials have also compared one statin to another: but these all use cholesterol as  a surrogate outcome. &lt;strong&gt;Nobody has ever compared the statins against each other to measure which is best at preventing death.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a truly staggering oversignt when you consider that tens of millions of people have taken these drugs and for many, many years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two pieces of background information that should provide the background required to see why this is an astounding claim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is that statins, designed to reduce cholesterol levels (for a more technical description read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statin&quot;&gt;wikipedia entry&lt;/a&gt;), are very widely prescribed and make a huge amount of money for the pharmaceutical industry. It has even been suggested that they should be widely used in healthy populations (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18091708&quot;&gt;BBC news story&lt;/a&gt; for background and discussion). They have been the single largest cost category of prescribed drugs in the NHS (&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/politics_show/7192271.stm&quot;&gt;2007 BBC story&lt;/a&gt;). Total worldwide sales &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8267876/Statins-the-drug-firms-goldmine.html&quot;&gt;are estimated&lt;/a&gt; to exceed $35 billion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second is that proxy or surrogate outcomes are not a reliable measure of the effectiveness of a drug. Surrogate outcomes are usually something that is easy or quick to measure (in the case of statins, cholesterol levels). They are used to judge results in trials of drugs because the ultimate goals (the primary outcome) are often harder to measure and take longer to measure (for statins, cardiovascular events and death). The trouble is surrogate outcomes are often misleading. For example, it was long thought that drugs that reduce irregular heart rhythm were good for people who have survived heart attacks as they often have irregular rhythm. But this was shown to be wrong by the famous CAST trial (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_Arrhythmia_Suppression_Trial&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/91/1/245.full&quot;&gt;review article&lt;/a&gt;): it turned out that drugs reducing irregular rhythm (the proxy) cause significantly more heart attack deaths (the primary outcome the drugs were intended to prevent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while I would normally just take Ben Goldacre on trust as an expert, this claim is so bold it deserves separate skeptical analysis. He claims there have never been proper trials of one of the biggest classes of drugs that measures what they are intended to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;em&gt;has there never been a trial comparing statins using the primary outcome of fewer deaths from cardiovascular events?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T14:52:18.660" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T14:52:18.660" Title="Has the primary benefit of statins in reducing early deaths never been fully tested in comparative trials?" Tags="|medical-science|pharmaceutical|medications|drug-development|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13720" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-18T19:35:28.977" Score="23" ViewCount="1082" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8YmVs.jpg&quot; height=&quot;300&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can your attitude (a positive outlook,  optimism, &quot;fighting spirit&quot; etc, or the converse) influence how well your immune system works? Most research that confirm mood correlating with immune system &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7413/does-stress-weaken-ones-immune-system&quot;&gt;seem to show it for stress&lt;/a&gt;, which is a physiological change in you body, something completely different. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But being optimistic, in itself, could that possibly influence you immune system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of the claim: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/8158-optimism-boosts-immune-system.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LiveScience.com: Optimism Boosts Immune System&lt;/a&gt;. The usage of &quot;boost&quot; in combination with &quot;immune system&quot; is enough to raise some flags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2013-09-08T18:19:58.987" Title="Can optimism &quot;boost&quot; the immune system" Tags="|medical-science|immune-system|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13721" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-18T20:18:36.310" Score="8" ViewCount="547" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branched-chain_amino_acid&quot;&gt;Branched-chain amino acid&lt;/a&gt;s (BCAAs) available in every shape and size. They are added to a lot of sports drinks and protein supplements. These can cost a lot of money and things are said to be better for recovery and performance if they contain them.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beside all the emotive hype of the websites from companies selling these products I cannot find any definitive information on to whether they are useful or not ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10341" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2012-11-19T02:41:46.927" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T10:40:02.170" Title="Can BCAAs be beneficial for recovery and performance for weight lifters?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|sport|medications|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13722" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-19T04:41:48.747" Score="14" ViewCount="3233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read the following: &lt;a href=&quot;http://vinienco.com/2012/11/18/islamic-community-forms-government-usa/&quot;&gt;Islamic Community Forms Own Government, In the USA&lt;/a&gt;.  Seems a bit sensationalist, and further searches about this Hancock, NY compound bring up lots of similar articles, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homelandsecurityus.com/special-investigative-reports/muslim-terrorist-training-camps-in-north-america&quot;&gt;Muslim Terrorist Training Camps in North America&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wnd.com/2012/01/381953/&quot;&gt;35 terror training camps now operating &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; U.S.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theatheistconservative.com/2011/08/25/terrorist-training-camps-for-muslims-in-america/&quot;&gt;Terrorist training camps for Muslims in America &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a hard time taking any of these articles seriously with their exclamations of terror this, terror that, and unsupported assertions of all the &lt;em&gt;terrorism&lt;/em&gt; that's going on in there and alleged ties to &lt;em&gt;more terrorism&lt;/em&gt;.  One article even makes them sound like any old cult (&quot;residents of the MOA believe that their top leader, Sheikh Gilani, is able to travel through space and time&quot; and he will &quot;turn them into a monkey&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamberg&quot;&gt;wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;, and especially &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,281074,00.html&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; paint an entirely different picture, of a compound for Muslims escaping poverty, reformed criminals, or folks just looking for community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard see some of those first articles as anything more than people using the specter of &quot;terrorism&quot; as a thin front to their own racist xenophobia, but I also find it hard to trust the word of compound leaders.  Is there actually any real evidence of any wrongdoing, or is it just more islamophobia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7610" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T07:59:43.873" Title="Is Islamberg a terrorist training camp?" Tags="|islam|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13724" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-19T05:49:21.220" Score="38" ViewCount="15596" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard people say this before; that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_5739112_shrink-stomach-eat-less-food.html&quot;&gt;eating less shrinks your stomach, making you desire less food in the future&lt;/a&gt;.  When I looked it up online just now, the first few results conflict:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/health/22real.html&quot;&gt;Eating less shrinks the stomach&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among the dieters, gastric capacity was reduced 27 percent to 36 percent, on average, depending on how it was measured. There was no significant change in the control group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://women.webmd.com/pharmacist-11/stomach-problems&quot;&gt;Eating less has no effect&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Answer: Myth. Once you are an adult, your stomach pretty much remains the same size -- unless you have surgery to intentionally make it smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://askville.amazon.com/eating-full-day-shrink-stomach-lose-weight/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=1536847&quot;&gt;Eating less makes your stomach &lt;em&gt;bigger&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Absolutely not!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s more lkely to distend your stomach and cause you to gain weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what's the truth?  Does it actually cause your stomach to change size?  Does it actually reduce your appetite?  Is there actually a direct connection between stomach size and appetite?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="155" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-19T06:45:40.463" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T16:31:30.837" Title="Does your stomach shrink if you eat less?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13725" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-19T08:34:23.153" Score="2" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zimbio.com/Cricket/articles/eGtbd6abbXo/JOSEPHIAN+MAFIA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This web article&lt;/a&gt; claims that the terms were coined by &lt;strong&gt;Mahendra Mapagunaratne&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The neologism Josephian Mafia is thought to be coined by Mahendra&#xA;  Mapagunaratne - a Sri Lankan cricket connoisseur based in Canada who&#xA;  incidentally coined the terms &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrom_ball&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Carrom Ball&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for Ajantha Mendis' finger&#xA;  flicking delivery and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilscoop&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dilscoop&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; for Tillekeratne Dilshan's unique back&#xA;  scoop over the wicket keeper's head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone please confirm this? Wikipedia articles on these two terms have no clues on who coined the terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10165" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2012-11-21T19:53:07.377" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T21:04:09.867" Title="Were the terms &quot;Dilscoop&quot; and &quot;Carrom ball&quot; coined by Mahendra Mapagunaratne?" Tags="|history|sport|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13724" CreationDate="2012-11-20T16:25:34.210" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;We can learn some things about the stomach from competitive eaters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Competitive eater Joey Chestnut trains his stomach to expand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chestnut practices by drinking up to a gallon of milk in a single sitting, which he says trains his stomach to expand.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/competitive-eating-how-safe-is-it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/competitive-eating-how-safe-is-it&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Competitive eater Sonya Thomas also says her stomach has been trained to expand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My stomach is really normal size, but over the years it has been trained to stretch quite a bit.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;      &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sonyatheblackwidow.com/id2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sonyatheblackwidow.com/id2.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/03/hot-dog-eating-contest-health_n_1647284.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huff Post&lt;/a&gt;, which references Dr. David C. Metz, a published gastroenterology professor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our hypothesis became that [competitive eaters] have the ability to relax their stomachs to such a degree that they can just eat and eat. While eating, the average person's stomach may expand to hold two or three liters, he imagines, whereas a competitive eater's may expand to hold six or seven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't a lot of research around this, and Dr. Metz's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajronline.org/content/189/3/681.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; is one of the most cited studies for competitive eating (according to the Huff Post article). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this limited information, I can only hypothesize that if a normal person's stomach expands to about three liters and a trained competitive eater's expands to seven liters, it's possible that a stomach can lose some stretching capacity when one eats less food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, it's important to make a distinction between the &lt;strong&gt;size&lt;/strong&gt; of the stomach and the &lt;strong&gt;capacity&lt;/strong&gt; of the stomach. Even if gastric capacity was reduced (as cited by the OP), that may or may not have any impact on the size of the stomach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10353" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2017-04-18T10:15:17.920" LastActivityDate="2017-04-18T10:15:17.920" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13698" CreationDate="2012-11-20T18:25:48.950" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR &lt;strong&gt;This is almost certainly true&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/population/households_families_group_quarters.html&quot;&gt;The US department of Census reports&lt;/a&gt; in 2010 there were &lt;strong&gt;35,218,000&lt;/strong&gt; households with &quot;own children under 18 years&quot; (This probably excludes some households with children, such as those being raised by someone other than the parents). This is out of a total number of households of 117,538,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dog statistics are a little harder to get accurate, but The Humane Society says &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/pet_overpopulation/facts/pet_ownership_statistics.html&quot;&gt;39% of US households own at least one dog&lt;/a&gt;. That would give a number of dog-owning households at &lt;strong&gt;45,839,000&lt;/strong&gt; - substantially more than the number of households with children. Other sources have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanpetproducts.org/press_industrytrends.asp&quot;&gt;similar figures&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's probably worth mentioning that the number of households who have &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; had children is more than the number who have children now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-11-20T19:37:39.720" LastActivityDate="2012-11-20T19:37:39.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13740" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13741" CreationDate="2012-11-21T11:46:31.583" Score="4" ViewCount="1541" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qutub_Minar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Qutub Minar&lt;/a&gt; and came across the fact that its builder &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qutb-ud-din_Aibak&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Qutb-ud-din Aibak&lt;/a&gt; died while playing polo. Upon reading more about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;polo&lt;/a&gt; itself, I realized it was around since 5th century BC or even earlier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polo#Origins&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The game first played in Persia at dates given from the 5th century BC. or much earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I tried to cross reference whether it was indeed the oldest sport, answers from other community-oriented question &amp;amp; answer sites provide contradictory answers. &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080916162755AAeYVyc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yahoo Answers&lt;/a&gt; mentions about wresting being the oldest sport with the source link currently unaccessible. Whereas &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_first_sport_ever_played_by_man&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki Answers&lt;/a&gt; states boxing was the oldest sport. Neither of the answers seem convincing enough with valid substantiations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Wikipedia article about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sport&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;History of Sport&lt;/a&gt; loosely mentions about archery, javelin, swimming and wrestling happening earlier than 5th century BC but it is not clear whether these activities were to be considered as a sport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, was polo the first recognizable sport to be played on earth? Or are there any other sport which is older than the polo?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the scope of the question, I am defining sport as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;competitive physical activity&quot;&lt;/a&gt; if I may borrow from the Wikipedia. Suffix to say, it has to be essentially between human beings. So, sprinting among humans count as sport while pie-chucking among chimpanzees don't. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the sport was played under well defined rules and regulations does not matter either as long as the sport is considered competitive and physical but I guess we all would agree that there needs to be some guidelines on how a sport has to be played.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10366" LastEditorUserId="10366" LastEditDate="2012-11-21T12:40:49.447" LastActivityDate="2021-03-29T04:59:11.077" Title="Was polo the first sport to be played on earth?" Tags="|history|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13740" CreationDate="2012-11-21T12:32:07.483" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt; There are several sports that predate Polo, the most notable being various forms of wrestling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Wikipedia article states Polo was first played around 5th century BC. The source, which I haven't been able to verify &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polo#cite_note-4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;states&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Its birth place was Asia and authorities credit Persia with having&#xA;  devised it about 2000 BC..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Polo is a very old sport, it certainly isn't the first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Ancient Egypt and Sumer we have written and illustrated depictions of  archery, boxing, wrestling, longjump and fishing all of which meet the modern definition of sport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Epic of Gilgamesh written in 2600 BC contains a scene where Gilgamesh engages in Belt Wrestling with Enkidu. There is a summary available &lt;a href=&quot;http://homepages.math.uic.edu/~ronan/Gilgamesh&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earlier than that even, cave paintings dating back to 7000 BC in the Bayankhongor Province of Mongolia show two naked men grappling while surrounded by crowds. &lt;sub&gt;This is mentioned on several wiki pages, although I am so far unable to find a source&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ycrKo.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image descrisption here&quot;&gt; -&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=pr8-i1iFnIQC&amp;amp;pg=PA187#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A limestone plaque from the Early Dynastic Period(~2900–2350 BC) in Mesopotamia depicts a bout of wrestling&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wrestling seems to be the earliest sport recorded, based on the available archaeological evidence. While it may not be the first sport, it certainly predates Polo by at least 500 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3332" LastEditorUserId="3332" LastEditDate="2012-11-21T12:45:19.563" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T12:45:19.563" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13744" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13745" CreationDate="2012-11-21T17:00:25.197" Score="11" ViewCount="13437" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is an excerpt from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chomsky.info/talks/19990404.htm&quot;&gt;speech by Noam Chomsky&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The United States took over from— inherited from Britain, the modalities of control over the region as well. These modalities had changed during and after WWI, when Britain no longer had the force to rule the Empire directly by occupation, and therefore had to turn to airpower and high technology— advanced technology. So, it was explained pretty frankly. &lt;strong&gt;The distinguished statesman Lloyd George&lt;/strong&gt; was commenting on Britain's success in undermining a disarmament conference— which would have barred the use of airpower against civilians. He pointed out that it was a success because, as he put it: “&lt;strong&gt;We have to reserve the right to bomb the niggers.&lt;/strong&gt;” Which kind of sums up world affairs rather nicely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lloyd_George&quot;&gt;David Lloyd George&lt;/a&gt; was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and led a Wartime Coalition Government between 1916 and 1922 and was the Leader of the Liberal Party from 1926 to 1931. He was voted the third greatest British prime minister of the 20th century in a poll of 139 academics organised by MORI, and in 2002 he was named among the 100 Greatest Britons following a UK-wide vote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did such a person make such a statement? If he did, what was the exact quote and the context in which it was made? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-21T23:42:27.167" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T23:42:57.290" Title="Did Lloyd George say, &quot;We must reserve the right to bomb niggers&quot;?" Tags="|history|quotes|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13744" CreationDate="2012-11-21T19:13:50.873" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;David Lloyd George died in 1945.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1971 his secretary and second wife Frances published &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=X7AgAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;q=%22Lloyd%20George%3a%20A%20Diary%22%20%22bomb%20niggers%22&amp;amp;dq=%22Lloyd%20George%3a%20A%20Diary%22%20%22bomb%20niggers%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=vimtUN_qMcqu0QXGmYDwBQ&amp;amp;ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lloyd George: A Diary&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; saying for 9 March 1934 (page 259):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At Geneva other countries would have agreed not to use aeroplanes for&#xA;  bombing purposes, but we insisted on reserving the right, as D[avid] puts&#xA;  it, to bomb niggers! Whereupon the whole thing fell through, &amp;amp; we add&#xA;  5 millions to our air armaments expenditure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this stage Lloyd George was in opposition, so it is unclear whether the comments are made with approval or not, and indeed whether the specific word is his own or something he was putting into the mouth of the Government. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many years earlier in 1920, Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for War and Air under Lloyd George, had ordered the RAF to Iraq to help quell a local revolt, where &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/apr/19/iraq.arts&quot;&gt;they dropped 97 tons of bombs and fired 183,861 rounds&lt;/a&gt; so this kind of approach was not novel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="949" LastEditDate="2012-11-21T19:20:33.650" LastActivityDate="2012-11-21T19:20:33.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13638" CreationDate="2012-11-21T20:36:27.317" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hans A. Von Spakovsky (Senior legal fellow at the Heritage foundation wrote and article called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/is-voter-fraud-a-real-problem/voter-fraud-is-a-proven-election-manipulation-tactic&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Voter Fraud Is a Proven Election Manipulation Tactic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Supreme Court answered this question in 2008 when it upheld&#xA;  Indiana's voter ID law. &quot;Flagrant examples of such fraud … have been&#xA;  documented throughout this Nation's history by respected historians&#xA;  and journalists,&quot; the court said, &quot;[and] not only is the risk of voter&#xA;  fraud real but that it could affect the outcome of a close election.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But ask voters in Troy, N.Y., Lincoln County, W.Va., and Florida&#xA;  whether voter fraud is a real problem.Four local officials and party&#xA;  activists were convicted in 2011 of voter fraud in Troy for forging&#xA;  enough absentee ballots to &quot;likely have tipped the city council and&#xA;  county elections&quot; in 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of them who pled guilty, Anthony DeFiglio, told police that such&#xA;  fraud was a &quot;normal political tactic.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In March 2012, the county sheriff and clerk in Lincoln County, W.Va.,&#xA;  pled guilty to voter fraud... [T]he Lincoln County auditor was also found&#xA;  guilty of voter fraud in 2005.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some other links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/09/05/Arkansas-Democrats-Plead-Guilty-To-Voter-Fraud&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arkansas Democrats Plead Guilty to Voter Fraud&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/us/indiana-secretary-of-state-convicted-in-voter-fraud-case.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Indiana Secretary of State Guilty of Voter Fraud&lt;/a&gt; - (a republican)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rnla.org/votefraud.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Republican National Lawyers Association has a list of cases as well&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/09/05/Mississippi-NAACP-Official-In-Jail-For-Casting-Absentee-Ballots-For-Dead-People&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mississippi NAACP Official Convicted for Casting Deceased's Absentee Ballots&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wfaa.com/news/politics/Second-Medrano-convicted-in-vote-fraud-scandal-140955953.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Second Medrano convicted in vote fraud scandal&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bluevirginia.us/diary/7766/conservatives-guilty-of-voter-fraud-themselves-after-pushing-voter-id-bills&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Conservatives guilty of voter fraud themselves after pushing voter ID bills&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/340174/voter-fraud-never-happens-keeps-coming-back-john-fund&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Voter Fraud That ‘Never Happens’ Keeps Coming Back&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2013-02-08T17:17:34.633" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T17:17:34.633" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13753" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13755" CreationDate="2012-11-22T08:40:13.410" Score="2" ViewCount="250" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/19/gene-predicts-death_n_2159918.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article from the Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt; it is mentioned that a certain gene can predict what time one will die (of natural causes). Not the date, but the time of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;This particular genotype affects the sleep-wake pattern of virtually everyone walking around,&amp;quot; Dr. Clifford Saper, chief of neurology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, wrote in the statement. &amp;quot;And it is a fairly profound effect so that the people who have the A-A genotype wake up about an hour earlier than the people who have the G-G genotype, and the A-Gs wake up almost exactly in the middle.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, investigators realized as some of the 1,200 older subjects in the project died that &lt;strong&gt;these nucleotide sequences were accurate predictors of their time of death&lt;/strong&gt;, within a range of only a few hours. Patients with the A-A and A-G genotypes typically died just before 11 a.m., while subjects with the G-G combination tended to die near 6 p.m.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;So there is really a gene that predicts the time of day that you’ll die.&lt;/strong&gt; Not the date, fortunately, but the time of day,&amp;quot; said Saper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would like to ask if it is possible for a gene to predict what time of the day one will die?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8840" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T16:28:14.307" Title="Does a gene predict the time of day one dies?" Tags="|medical-science|genetics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13754" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5191" CreationDate="2012-11-22T14:30:52.233" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1959/family-meals-cohabitation-divorce-new-findings-contradict-conventional-wisdom&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article from Pew Research in April 8, 2011&lt;/a&gt; disputes the idea that cohabitation before marriage leads to divorce:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the topic of cohabitation, everybody knows that couples who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce than couples who do not, because that is what much research has found. But some recent work disputes that conclusion. Now that most couples move in together before they marry, cohabitation may not be as linked to divorce as it was when live-in couples were less common.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Pew Research Center &lt;a href=&quot;http://pewsocialtrends.org/2010/11/18/the-decline-of-marriage-and-rise-of-new-families/2/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report on families&lt;/a&gt;, released last year, found that 44% of adults (and more than half of 30- to 49-year-olds) say they have cohabited at some point. Nearly two-thirds of adults who ever cohabited (64%) say they thought about it as a step toward marriage. The report also notes a trend toward rising public acceptance of cohabiting couples over the years. Most Americans now say the rise in unmarried couples living together either makes no difference to society (46%) or is good for society (9%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://paa2011.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId=112067&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper by Bowling Green State University researchers&lt;/a&gt;, using data from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nsfg.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Survey of Family Growth&lt;/a&gt;, concluded that among women who married since the mid-1990s, cohabitation is not tied to heightened risk of divorce. Looking at women who married in the past 15 years, &quot;our work shows that cohabitation no longer influences marital instability,&quot; wrote researchers Wendy D. Manning and Jessica A. Cohen in the paper they presented at the population meeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in Australia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/factssheets/fs2010conf/fs2010conf.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;78% of couples who marry have lived together beforehand in 2008&lt;/a&gt;, rising from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/info/charts/marriage/cohabit.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;16% in 1975&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/fm2003/fm65/dev2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Premarital cohabitation and subsequent marital stability&quot;&gt;2003 study &quot;Premarital cohabitation and subsequent marital stability&quot; by the Australian Institute of Family Studies&lt;/a&gt; found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The old finding that marriages of those who lived&#xA;  together before marrying were at a greater risk of breakdown was also partly attributable to the way in which&#xA;  marriage duration has been measured. We believe that, in&#xA;  the interests of comparing like with like, separation risk&#xA;  should be measured after set periods of the union rather&#xA;  than after set periods of marriage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The differences in measured outcomes for those from direct and&#xA;  indirect marriages appear to be entirely attributable to&#xA;  other factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So far, the evidence suggests that premarital cohabitation has little impact one way or the other [on the chances of any subsequent marriage surviving].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10391" LastEditorUserId="10391" LastEditDate="2012-11-25T12:31:44.500" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T12:31:44.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13753" CreationDate="2012-11-22T16:28:14.307" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ana.23636/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this research&lt;/a&gt; it is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A common polymorphism near PER1 is associated with the timing of human behavioral rhythms, and shows evidence of association with time of death. This may be mediated by differential PER1 expression. These results may facilitate individualized scheduling of shift work, medical treatments, or monitoring of vulnerable patient populations. ANN NEUROL 2012;72:324–334.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3343" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T16:28:14.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13757" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-22T20:52:46.237" Score="60" ViewCount="8112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a number of news articles about scarcity of Helium lately, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/09/helium-filled-hard-disks-will-lead-to-higher-capacities/&quot;&gt;for example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the moment, helium is cheap, primarily because the US government built up a large surplus supply, then decided to get out of the helium business.  But the Earth has a finite supply, and the gas is absolutely essential for uses like chilling the LHC and MRI machines, so there have been fears that the helium firesale will leave us a dwindling stock of this critical resource.  A bill has been introduced in the Senate that would revamp the US' helium policy, but it's currently languishing in committee&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas one of the commenters on this article noted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the 10 gazillionth time...there &lt;em&gt;is no helium shortage&lt;/em&gt;. There is plenty of helium. What there is is lack of production systems. The US dumped a crap load on the market which essentially drove producers out of the market. Now that its starting to be scarce you will see producers start to process, store and sell it at more reasonable pricing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is true? What are the facts? Is there really a worldwide Helium shortage, and are we at risk of running out of a non-renewable resource forever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T21:04:46.123" Title="Is there a worldwide helium shortage?" Tags="|economics|environment|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13757" CreationDate="2012-11-22T23:25:23.960" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is actually a surprisingly difficult question to answer for a variety of reasons and it seems that the best answer is that &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; there is a shortage of purified helium reserves, while at the same time it appears that &lt;strong&gt;maybe but likely no&lt;/strong&gt; there is not a long term shortage of helium in any meaningful understanding of what a shortage is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, some background is necessarily to see why this might be the case. Helium is recovered from natural gas and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linde-engineering.com/en/process_plants/natural_gas_treatment/helium_production/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;specialized equipment&lt;/a&gt; is sold this process. This equipment is advertized to generate about 99.999% pure gas with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#Natural_abundance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quantity being dependent upon the particular field&lt;/a&gt; that it is being extracted from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads us to the modern problem; historically, helium was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemmybear.com/helium.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;waste gas from natural gas wells&lt;/a&gt; and was released into the atmosphere. However, in the United States helium was eventually considered a strategic resource that was worth stockpiling and conserving. This in turn lead to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Helium_Reserve&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Helium Reserve&lt;/a&gt; which was built up due to the Cold War; however, has been in the process of being phased out due to the costs associated with maintaining and storing helium in the reserve. The purpose of the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/nm/programs/0/helium_docs.Par.80129.File.dat/pl104273.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Helium Privatization Act of 1996&lt;/a&gt;&quot; appears to have been to transfer the ownership over to private industry, but nobody appears to really have stepped up to build up their own stockpile so it's been getting sold cheaply on the open market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This brings us to the crux of the issue, while there is a shortage of the cheap purified reserves that are being sold off by the United States Government via the National Helium Reserve, the actually proven worldwide reserves are difficult to determine. The Bureau of Land Management provides periodic reports about the current state of helium reserves in the United States and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/nm/programs/0/helium_docs.Par.56459.File.dat/HeliumTN429_3-09.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;most recent one&lt;/a&gt; (2009) indicated the following in the summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, it is probable that production from Cliffside Field will&#xA;  continue to supply the helium needed to help meet worldwide helium&#xA;  demand indefinitely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is an interesting thing to say if you are concerned about running out of something! The problem I've been running into though has been finding out exactly what the annual worldwide consumption is which is a good indicator for if you are running out or not. While fairly recently summaries of the production and reserves are &lt;a href=&quot;http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/helium/mcs-2012-heliu.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fairly easy to find&lt;/a&gt; (January 2012), determining the exact worldwide consumption rates is harder. However, I have found quite a few &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/holidays/2012/11/macy_s_thanskgiving_day_parade_2012_helium_is_wasted_in_floating_parade.single.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;articles discussing the matter&lt;/a&gt; citing the potential for a 300 year reserve but nothing really definitive and searching has found that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1dbda574-f16d-11e1-a553-00144feabdc0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;new gas fields are being opened up&lt;/a&gt; and just now getting exported so the exact world reserves are still speculative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to summarize, while there is a shortage of purified helium, largely due to the policies regarding the National Helium Reserve, there doesn't appear to be much evidence of a critical worldwide shortage that is cause for major concern. From what I have been reading one of the larger concerns is not so much how much helium is in the ground but rather the availability of it being inconstant if the major reserves are shutdown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-01-19T21:04:46.123" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T21:04:46.123" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13757" CreationDate="2012-11-22T23:56:53.253" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, we need to consider the different isotopes of Helium differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Shortage of Helium-3&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/R41419_20100921.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Helium-3 Shortage: Supply, Demand, and &#xA;Options for Congress&lt;/a&gt;, Sep 2010&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Helium-3 is a &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a rare isotope of helium with applications in &#xA;  homeland security, national security, medicine, industry, and science&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this isn't the stuff you use in balloons. The US had a stockpile, but it is dwindling. A shortage is predicted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After the terrorist &#xA;  attacks of September 11, 2001, the federal government began deploying neutron detectors at the &#xA;  U.S. border to help secure the nation against smuggled nuclear and radiological material. The &#xA;  deployment of this equipment created new demand for helium-3. Use of the polarized helium-3 &#xA;  medical imaging technique also increased. As a result, the size of the stockpile shrank. After &#xA;  several years of demand exceeding supply, a call for large quantities of helium-3 spurred federal &#xA;  officials to realize that &lt;strong&gt;insufficient helium-3 was available to meet the likely future demand.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Helium-3 is &lt;em&gt;manufactured&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By far the most common source of helium-3 in the United States is the U.S. nuclear weapons program, of which it is a byproduct. The federal government produces tritium for use in nuclear warheads. Tritium decays into helium-3. This means that the tritium needs of the nuclear &#xA;  weapons program, not demand for helium-3 itself, determine the amount of helium-3 produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper goes to discuss policy decisions and alternative sources that may need to be found to increase supply and reduce demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Shortage of Helium-4&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;99.999863%&lt;/a&gt; of the helium found in the atmosphere is helium-4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Helium-4 is mined - it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/info/newsroom/2007/january/NR0701_2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;refined from natural gas&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2007, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/info/newsroom/2007/january/NR0701_2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bureau of Land Management&lt;/a&gt; reported that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The bottom line in terms of helium supply is that there is very little excess helium refining capacity, and domestic supplies of crude helium are growing ever tighter.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the reason given wasn't that we were running out of Helium, but that there was a privatisation of the Helium supply by the USA (and corresponding reduction in stockpile), combined with delays in bringing up new factories and outages with existing ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The short answer is that demand is up and several overseas helium plants that were expected to be up and running in 2006 were delayed and down.  Throw in things like the New Year’s storm in Kansas and Oklahoma that damaged power lines to two major refiners, and scheduled plant maintenance at other U.S. helium facilities, and Houston, we have a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are obviously short-term problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking much further into the future:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zhiming Cai, Richard H. Clarke, Bartek A. Glowacki, William J. Nuttall, Nick Ward, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301420709000518&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ongoing ascent to the helium production plateau—Insights from system dynamics&lt;/a&gt;, Resources Policy&#xA;Volume 35, Issue 2, June 2010, Pages 77–89.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper contains an economic model predicting the supply and demand of Helium over the next century, under a range of scenarios. They do predict first a plateau, and then a decline in supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The model indicates that improving resource exploitation strategies might extend a production plateau that emerges in the 2030s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2AyTZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NQt8w.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also predict that the wholesale price Helium will peak (in real terms) at about six times its 1991 levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, predictions 100 years into the future need to be treated with a grain of salt. (For example, who would have predicted the sudden increase in demand for helium-3 after 2001?) Nonetheless, even after accounting for increased prices making less efficient supply methods become profitable, this model predicts that Helium supplies will dwindle in 100-150 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-11-22T23:56:53.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13764" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-23T00:51:51.070" Score="17" ViewCount="652" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gamasutra.com/view/news/180603/Playing_games_while_driving_BrightDrivers_challenging_proposition.php&quot;&gt;Playing games while driving? BrightDriver's challenging proposition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At first blush, playing games while driving sounds like the kind of thing only the accident-prone would love. But apparently, &lt;strong&gt;certain types of games -- like trivia -- can increase a driver's focus, reduce the risk of accidents and even help with navigation&lt;/strong&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Albrecht tells Gamasutra. &quot;At first, I was like, 'wow. That's dangerous and slightly crazy.'&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the idea of solving the problem of boring drives -- which aren't just tedious, but can be dangerous when drivers space out or lose their attention -- through interactive entertainment appealed to Albrecht, especially given &lt;strong&gt;a number of studies that've been done by MIT, Duke University and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that show interactive entertainment can improve people's behavior behind the wheel.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I can find &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brightdriver.com/&quot;&gt;no concrete examples of such studies on the BrightDriver site&lt;/a&gt;. Most of the examples they give are of the form &quot;I was so bored I [did some incredibly unsafe thing like texting or reading a newspaper], but with the game I didn't.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there evidence that &quot;certain types of games&quot; actually reduce accidents or improve driving relative to drivers doing only things that are considered nearly universally safe, like listening to a radio or having a casual conversation with passengers? In other words, does the increased risk offset the risks caused by &quot;spacing out&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not, is there at least evidence that offering &quot;interactive entertainment&quot; would improve transportation safety by replacing other, less safe, behaviors? In other words, is the increased risk offset by reducing the chance of the average driver taking other risky actions like reading a newspaper?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As acceptable risk in driving can vary greatly between regions, I am most interested in statistics applying to the urban United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user792" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T08:25:21.840" Title="Is there a &quot;sweet spot&quot; of secondary engagement that makes driving safer?" Tags="|safety|videogames|driving|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="564" CreationDate="2012-11-23T03:22:47.670" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A homosexual person does not choose to have the trait of homosexuality.  However, the person is more likely than others to choose homosexual behavior due to having that trait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the controversy surrounding this topic can be attributed to misunderstandings in terminology.  This is because when someone mentions homosexuality, they could actually be referring to one or both of two very distinct things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing they could be referring to is a homosexual person.  A homosexual is defined as, &quot;a person who is sexually attracted to people of their own sex.&quot;  Sexual attraction is an inborn instinctual trait that affects whom we are drawn to and how we relate to them.  As with many things in nature, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.pone.0049294&quot;&gt;sexual attraction is subject to genetic variance&lt;/a&gt; which is why people tend to have their own &quot;types&quot; and not everyone is attracted to the same traits in others.  This is why (similar to being left-handed) homosexuality occurs in a small percentage of people regardless of their race or culture.  However, it's not a simple binary (yes/no, on/off, true/false) system.  Perceived gender is only one of many things that determines how one person falls on the spectrum of attractiveness to another person.  For some, gender bears little or no influence on their attraction at all (see bisexuality).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second thing they could be referring to is homosexual behavior or those who participate in it.  Homosexual behavior is typically seen as any sexual act involving members of the same gender.  Unlike sexual attraction, sexual behavior (or any behavior) is subject to reasoning (choice), which can be highly influenced by culture, experience and environment.  Being sexually attracted to a person is not a requirement for engaging in sexual behavior with them, it just makes it much more likely to occur.  This explains why a person who identifies as &quot;straight&quot; might participate in homosexual behavior in prison.  Not because their attractions have dramatically changed, but rather because their desire to perform the act (also instinctual) combined with their environment may lower the bar for whom they find acceptable.  The same can be said for those who participate in either side of a prostitution agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of parallels that can be drawn between homosexuality today and the time when being left-handed was controversial.  During that time, children were punished for using their left hand and forced to learn using their right one.  It's possible for a left-handed person to pretend being right-handed their entire life by choosing to avoid left-handed behavior and actions.  However, regardless of how proficient they get with their right hand, it won't feel natural to them.  A lot of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/therapeutic-response.pdf&quot;&gt;emotional damage can be caused&lt;/a&gt; along the way by the culture that rejects them for who they are or feelings they can't control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10407" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T03:22:47.670" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3348" CreationDate="2012-11-23T08:49:33.837" Score="13" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes, the eye can distinguish frame rates above 60 Hz. So can the brain. We are just not normally aware of it.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conscious perception of flicker is measured in laboratories using the &lt;strong&gt;critical flicker frequency (CFF) threshold&lt;/strong&gt;, which is the lowest frequency of flickering light (Hz) that produces the appearance of steady light in an individual.   It's a probabilistic statistic that is estimated by testing an individual -- it depends on the individual and the testing methods.  And the same person will have a different CFF depending on factors including fatigue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a pretty typical CFF plot (from Hartmann, E., B. Lachenmayr, and H. Brettel. &quot;The peripheral critical flicker frequency.&quot; Vision research 19.9 (1979): 1019-1023.) showing how one person's CFF (the y-axis) varies at different visual eccentricities (the x-axis, greater eccentricities meaning looking at it less and less directly) and lighting levels (the different points and lines.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YxNYv.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, this person is around 60 Hz CFF in bright illumination when the flicker is around 15 visual degrees away from the center of their vision.  This suggests that many people should be able to see the flicker of CRT monitors with 60 Hz refresh rates.  They can.  (As others have noted here, this is not possible with LCD monitors because LCD monitors do not flicker.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why isn't CFF even higher at these peak conditions?&lt;/strong&gt;  Good question.  The bottleneck in consciously seeing flicker is not necessarily the human eye or even the thalamus or the cortex. The eye can transmit flicker well above 60 Hz to the thalamus and cortex.  Lots of neurons can fire well above 100 Hz.  And we can even measure neural response to high frequency flicker. Here are a few papers doing this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uni-magdeburg.de/cherrman/articles/ExpBrRes2001.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Herrmann, Christoph S. &quot;Human EEG responses to 1–100 Hz flicker: resonance phenomena in visual cortex and their potential correlation to cognitive phenomena.&quot; Experimental brain research 137.3 (2001): 346-353.&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is also known that neurons in visual cortex respond to flickering&#xA;  stimuli at the frequency of the flickering light. .... We performed an&#xA;  experiment, where ten human subjects were presented flickering light&#xA;  at frequencies from 1 to 100 Hz in 1-Hz steps. The event-related&#xA;  potentials exhibited steady-state oscillations at all frequencies up&#xA;  to at least 90 Hz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~mjh/papers_pdf/williams_jn_24_8278_04.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Williams, Patrick E., et al. &quot;Entrainment to video displays in primary visual cortex of macaque and humans.&quot; The Journal of neuroscience 24.38 (2004): 8278-8288&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Macaque monkeys:&lt;/strong&gt; Of 92 cells in the primary visual cortex exposed to a 100 Hz refresh, 21 (23%) significantly phase locked to high-contrast stimuli.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Humans:&lt;/strong&gt; Responses measured using scalp EEG were seen at 72 Hz in some, but not all, observers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.incia.u-bordeaux1.fr/IMG/pdf/2003krolak.an.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Krolak‐Salmon, Pierre, et al. &quot;Human lateral geniculate nucleus and visual cortex respond to screen flicker.&quot; Annals of neurology 53.1 (2003): 73-80.&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first electrophysiological study of the human lateral geniculate&#xA;  nucleus (LGN), optic radiation, striate, and extrastriate visual areas&#xA;  is presented in the context of presurgical evaluation of three&#xA;  epileptic patients (Patients 1, 2, and 3). ... A periodic sinusoidal&#xA;  activity was recorded in Patient 1 at contacts lying in the LGN and&#xA;  optic radiation vicinity (G2 and G3) in the checkerboard reversal&#xA;  paradigm... Its frequency was 70Hz, identical to&#xA;  videodisplay refresh rate... In the same checkerboard paradigm, a similar &#xA;  periodic sinusoidal activity was recorded in Patients 2 and 3 at&#xA;  occipital electrode contacts (O1 to O6) exploring the calcarine area.&#xA;  It was not present in the other explored structures, especially not in&#xA;  the fusiform gyrus (contacts F1 to F6 in Patients 1, 2, and 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So if the information is in the brain, why can't we perceive it?  We don't really know.&lt;/strong&gt; The simplest theory might be that these signals are just too weak. But it seems unlikely that we could record something with electrodes on the scalp that isn't strong in the brain.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that our ability to perceive flicker is a side effect of our ability to perceive motion.  Most motion perception takes place in situations where we have other information about the moving objects.  Flicker perception as measured with CFF threshold or as noticed with monitor refresh rates is a strange edge case. It likely made little evolutionary sense to optimize this ability when we could already, for example, see most fast moving natural objects well enough to catch them. So you might invert the argument and ask why should we humans have bothered to see fast flicker?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most interesting possibility is that this may be a limitation of consciousness itself.  An initial intuition is that conscious perception will likely be slower than the low-level processes it relies on.  Because different types of perceptual processes have different computational demands, they take different durations to compute.  Thus, combining perceptual processing in consciousness may be slowed by rate limiting steps. Alex Holcombe wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psych.usyd.edu.au/staff/alexh/research/papers/Holcombe2009SeeingSlowSeeingFast.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a nice paper&lt;/a&gt; a few years ago summarizing the literature on temporal limits on visual perception of different kinds of stimuli. Moreover, Ruﬁn VanRullen and Christof Koch have argued that &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.klab.caltech.edu/212/1/449.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;conscious perception occurs in discrete batches&lt;/a&gt;.  They don't think it is perfectly regular, but rather quasi-periodic and determined by the task at hand.  &lt;strong&gt;Still, they are essentially arguing that consciousness itself has a refresh rate.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10240" LastEditorUserId="10240" LastEditDate="2012-11-23T22:58:19.170" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T22:58:19.170" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-11-23T22:58:19.170" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13768" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-23T13:59:40.800" Score="5" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debito.org/?p=10750&quot;&gt;this guy says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To that end, the ZRK [&lt;em&gt;Japanese alien ID card&lt;/em&gt;] has an embedded IC Chip with RFID technology, which, as I have argued for years now, is a means to remotely track NJ [&lt;em&gt;non-Japanese&lt;/em&gt;]] in a crowd and beef up racial profiling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this card contains &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_14443&quot;&gt;an ISO/IEC 14443 type B passive proximity chip&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I am well aware of demonstrations of (a) activating an RFID chip at distance with special equipment, and (b) creating a massive field to activate a chip, but there is a big difference between these experiments with isolated cards and the real world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Making the case against being able to remote scan, given the typical punter will have a wallet containing other RFID chips such as railway commuter cards, driving license, mobile phone and maybe work ID, then lots of other bits of metal, so the amount of extraneous noise will drown out the signal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, I have read somewhere that type of chip can be identified (even if not read) by the signal absorption patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to narrow the scope, I wish to ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Would it be possible to detect the presence of a particular RFID chip model in the trouser pocket of someone as they walked through a ticket gate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-23T14:32:56.790" LastActivityDate="2012-11-23T14:32:56.790" Title="Can an RFID tag be identified at distance in the real world?" Tags="|electronics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13771" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13926" CreationDate="2012-11-23T20:55:52.813" Score="6" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9695100/Hi-tech-sunglasses-could-banish-jet-lag.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Daily Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; (via yesterday’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.ie/travel/travel-news/hitech-sunglasses-could-banish-jetlag-3302669.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Independent.ie&lt;/a&gt;) carried an article titled “Hi-tech 'sunglasses' could banish jet-lag,” which claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Australian sleep researches have developed a set of hi-tech &quot;sunglasses&quot;, described as the world's first &quot;time-control&quot; spectacles, which can imitate sunlight patterns. The team, from Flinders University, in Adelaide, say &lt;em&gt;the glasses emit a soft green glow that helps a traveler adapt to changing sleep patterns and time zones in &quot;small steps&quot;.&lt;/em&gt; It targets a part of the brain that regulates the human body-clock, by sending signals to the rest of the body that help it slowly realise it is in a different area of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are we really towards the goal for banishing jet-lag during travels?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of this claim, so I wonder if there are facts to prove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-04T14:42:15.330" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T14:42:15.330" Title="Is it possible to banish jet-lag with hi-tech sunglasses?" Tags="|medical-science|travel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18371" CreationDate="2012-11-23T23:12:50.880" Score="16" ViewCount="2832" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim that sex cures headaches is commonly quoted. For example, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.surfwedding.com/10reasons.htm&quot;&gt;10 Reasons Sex is Good For You&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;10. Sex Can Cure Headaches&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A South Illinois School Of Medicine study on 52 migraine sufferers reported that 16 experienced considerable relief after an orgasm and another eight had their headaches completely gone. No reason now to say, &quot;Not tonight honey, I'm having a headache.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sex = endorphins = pain killers.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Does sex just act as pain killer and cure headache's symptoms: pain, or there is some other substance released that cures the causes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10372" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T23:05:48.227" LastActivityDate="2019-10-04T22:11:04.797" Title="Does sex cure headache's symptoms or causes?" Tags="|neurology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13777" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13786" CreationDate="2012-11-24T18:25:58.303" Score="39" ViewCount="46443" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an image going around Facebook, showing Israel's occupied territory over the last few decades:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0xM5P.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Isreale 1946-2010&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen at least two people (both Christian Zionists) criticize this map as &quot;very biased&quot; because it was created by an anti-semite.  My follow-up questions to these critics have gone completely unanswered. Personally, I don't care if it was created by Adolf Hitler himself, if the map is accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this map accurate?  If not, or if there is some sort of room for interpretation, what are its chief failures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T17:09:50.300" LastActivityDate="2018-03-14T07:47:32.037" Title="Is this map of Israel-occupied territory accurate?" Tags="|politics|israel|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13777" CreationDate="2012-11-24T22:46:54.483" Score="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several issues with these maps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Map of 1946.  There was no country of Palestine.  The entire area was under British control. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;. It might be a better idea to have a map of land owned by Jewish vs Arab hands.  &lt;s&gt;I doubt that an accurate map like that exists.&lt;/s&gt;.  (Per @Evargalo, map like that &lt;a href=&quot;https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/A73996728BA8B94785256D560060CD1A&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;exists&lt;/a&gt;, it provides more proof of the inadequacy of the 1946 map - see comments for further detail).  Furthermore, 10 miles south of Jerusalem, it's pretty much all desert which is very sparsely populated to this day.  So, no, not accurate at all. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negev#Demography&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Map of 1947. This map of the UN partition plan is accurate. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Partition_Plan_for_Palestine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;. However, it never ever came to be, as the nearby Arab states invaded Israel shortly after UN approved the partition (in 1948, iirc). &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Map of 1967. This map is not accurate at all.  It's actually the situation as it was after the war for independence (mentioned above) concluded. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War#1949_Armistice_Agreements&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;.  Following the six-day war in 1967, Israel actually conquered everything you see on the map (either marked Israel or Palestine), plus the Gaza strip and Sinai peninsula from Egypt (area much larger than Israel).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Facts+About+Israel/Israel+in+Maps/June+10-+1967-+Israel+After+the+Six+Day+War.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;.  Israel subsequently gave back all land conquered from Egypt.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt%E2%80%93Israel_Peace_Treaty#History&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%27s_unilateral_disengagement_plan&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source 2&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Map of 2010. The last map is simply absurd as well.  First off Gaza is completely in Arab hands, so it should be properly colored.  The map of West Bank is simply wrong.  Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:West_Bank_&amp;amp;_Gaza_Map_2007_%28Settlements%29.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;map&lt;/a&gt;, according to Wikipedia.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="646" LastEditorUserId="646" LastEditDate="2018-03-13T17:59:16.787" LastActivityDate="2018-03-13T17:59:16.787" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13781" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-25T05:13:05.840" Score="5" ViewCount="1953" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard somewhere that the earthenware pots contain lead, which can cause brain-damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this information correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10431" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-25T07:38:28.797" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T12:18:33.133" Title="Do earthenware pots contains lead?" Tags="|environmental-health|cooking|lead|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13781" CreationDate="2012-11-25T07:52:14.000" Score="6" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: Milton A. Lessler,  &lt;a href=&quot;https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/1811/23252/V088N3_078.pdf?sequence=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lead and Lead Poisoning from Antiquity to Modern Times&lt;/a&gt;, OHIO J. SCI. 88 (3): 78-84, 1988&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditional glazes used on earthenware pots used to contain lead. This lead can leach out and cause lead-poisoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;cider allowed to stand in glazed earthenware pots (to&#xA;make hard cider) was rapidly impregnated with lead&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, lead poisoning was known as &amp;quot;Potter's Disease&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, with the banning (in the US) of lead in glazes the threat is reduced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reduction of lead in gasoline,&#xA;controlling the use of lead pigments in paints and printing inks, and banning of lead-based glazes on pottery and&#xA;ceramic ware (Wallace et al. 1985) have resulted in a&#xA;reduction of both industrial and population exposure to&#xA;lead&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in 2010, the US FDA released a Consumer Update: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm233531.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some &amp;quot;Lead-Free&amp;quot; Pottery Can Still Taint Food&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In it, they warn that some pottery labelled &amp;quot;lead-free&amp;quot; may still contain significant levels of lead, because of contamination of old kilns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pottery made with earthenware must undergo glazing, a process in which a thin, glass-like coating is applied and fused onto the surface of the clay. This seals the pottery's pores, allowing it to hold food or liquid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The glaze fuses to the pottery when it is fired in a kiln, a special oven used to bake clay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“In the past, potters have usually used lead glazes,&amp;quot; says Kashtock. &amp;quot;Today, many of the potters in Mexico have switched to non-lead glazes. However, they may be using old kilns that were once used for firing lead-containing glazes.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kashtock says that while these potters believe they are making a lead-free product, the kilns they are using may be contaminated with lead residues from prior firings of lead glazed pottery. “‘Lead-free’ glaze can then become contaminated during the firing,&amp;quot; he says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to explain that some glazes containing lead are actually safe, as they do not leach lead into food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Earthenware pots themselves do not contain lead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some glazes on earthenware pots (especially decorative ones) contain lead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some of those glazes are safe, because the lead won't leach out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generally, pots for food use lead-free glazes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In a small number of cases, even &amp;quot;lead-free&amp;quot; pots may contain leachable lead, if they are not manufactured carefully.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The FDA link provides assistance in telling the difference.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-25T12:18:33.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13787" CreationDate="2012-11-25T09:15:57.300" Score="19" ViewCount="8928" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the James Bond movie, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246460/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Die Another Day&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, it is claimed that hovercrafts won't trigger mines in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.griffonhoverwork.com/applications/1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Griffon Hoverwork&lt;/a&gt; who sell hovercrafts make a similar claim (hat-tip to @Oliver_C):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Griffon hovercraft, with their low pressure cushion design, will operate over mines with impunity in deep or shallow water, since they produce virtually no pressure, acoustic or magnetic signatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hovercraft do not set off mines over which they travel (they produce virtually no acoustic, magnetic or pressure signatures) and the Royal Navy proved that, should a mine inadvertently be set off beneath a hovercraft, the air cushion will absorb the shock wave, there will be no injures to the crew, and the craft will travel back to its base under its own power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these claims true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user9045" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T08:52:45.737" Title="Do hovercraft trigger minefields?" Tags="|weapons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13777" CreationDate="2012-11-25T10:04:11.440" Score="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;: There are inaccuracies and biases in the map, however it seems to be based on facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a well sourced infographic, which is very similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.good.is/infographics/infographic-palestine-s-shifting-borders&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hFZd0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Loss of land&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.good.is/infographics/infographic-palestine-s-shifting-borders&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cartographic Regression: Good.Is&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prior to 1917, the region was part of the Ottoman Empire. The area shown as &quot;1917 Palestine&quot; was then the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem, the western part of the Vilayet of Syria and the southern part of the Vilayet of Beirut.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In 1917, during the first world war, in response to an attack on a British Protectorate  by the Ottoman army, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Syria&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ottoman Syria&lt;/a&gt; was invaded and occupied by British and French forces, this became the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupied_Enemy_Territory_Administration&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Occupied Enemy Territories&lt;/a&gt;. The OETA south region corresponds with the area identified as &quot;1917 Palestine&quot;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In 1920 the borders of &quot;mandatory Palestine&quot; were defined by the League of Nations. This area is what is shown in the infographic as &quot;1917 Palestine&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1920-1948, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.passia.org/palestine_facts/MAPS/1923-1948-british-mandate.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Palestine under British Mandate&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Your infographic for Palestine in 1946 shows some parts under Israeli control. That doesn't make sense.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Population of Palestine Prior to 1948&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/mideast/info/maps/palestine-1878-1927-map.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Palestine 1878 - 1927&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 1946, as far as I can tell, the boundaries were exactly the same.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 1947 a plan was proposed. Your infographic correctly mentions it is the &quot;UN plan&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mideastweb.org/un_palestine_partition_map_1947.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UN GA 181 - Annex A&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In 1949, after the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;first Arab-Israeli War&lt;/a&gt; (which Israel won) Palestine was reduced to two territories, Gaza and West Bank which were under control by Egypt and Jordan, respectively. Your infographic does not show this map.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mideastweb.org/sc62.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Detailed Map of Palestine Showing Armistice Lines of Israel and Jordan (1949)&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/mideast/info/maps/israel-1949-map.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1949 Israel/Palestine Map&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In 1967, after the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Day_War&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Six-Day War&lt;/a&gt;, Israel militarily occupied these territories. Your map shows them as &quot;Palestine&quot;, but doesn't mention they were occupied by Israel.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobaleducationproject.org/mideast/info/maps/israel-and-occupied-territories-map.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Israel and the Occupied Territories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At present, Israel has given back control of part of the territories to Palestinians. The map shows areas &quot;A&quot; and &quot;B&quot; (according to UN terminology), which means zones under at least civil control by the Palestinian Authority.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/OCHAoPt_ClsrMp_WB0106_En.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UN Map of West bank (2008)&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/download/separation_barrier_map_eng.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;B'TSELEM Map of West bank (2008)&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/West_Bank_July_2008_CIA_remote-sensing_map_3000px.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CIA map of the Palestinian Authority controlled areas&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a personal note, it is a very well known fact that Israel has annexed more and more lands as a result of political pressure and winning wars. It would be wildly misleading, though, not to mention that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Israel&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Israel was involved in many of these wars as a &lt;em&gt;defending party&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and that they have been giving back control to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_National_Authority&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Palestinian National Authority&lt;/a&gt; of some of the land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="36637" LastEditDate="2018-03-13T20:41:26.157" LastActivityDate="2018-03-13T20:41:26.157" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13785" CreationDate="2012-11-25T12:38:42.827" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Updated)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It must depend on the triggering mechanism used by the mine and on the characteristics of the specific vehicle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Land vs Water&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The DMZ between north and south Korea is land, not water so I will address land-based mines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe most military hovercraft are designed for use over littoral water. I can find no evidence that armies (as opposed to navies) make use of hovercraft to transport soldiers across minefields. There may be other factors which influence this choice but the outcome may be that no one has seriously studied the use of hovercraft for this purpose (though one or two more civilian organisations have studied the feasibility of using small hovercraft for detection of anti-personnel mines - and they don't address the triggering issues)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Mine trigger/fuze methods&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;TM-83 mine&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we take as an example the Russian &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TM-83_mine&quot;&gt;TM-83 mine&lt;/a&gt; this has a two-stage trigger, a seismic sensor arms an infra-red sensor that finally triggers the mine. The mine can be set-back up to 5m from the road it is targeting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seismic trigger&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hovercraft travelling over ground supports it's weight on a cushion of air, that means it still exerts the force of it's full weight on the ground but spread out over a larger area than a typical wheeled vehicle. Because of that weight and it's movement over the surface it will still produce sound and some vibrations that can be transmitted through the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hovercraft produces more noise and vibration than many land vehicles (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022460X72904245&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022460X66901374&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;) as anyone who has travelled in one or stood near one can attest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is hard to find relevant studies of hovercraft noise, one that sheds a little light on the subject is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.volpe.dot.gov/coi/ees/acoustic/docs/2000/2001-dts-34-vx015-lr1.pdf&quot;&gt;Hovercraft Underwater Noise &#xA;Measurements in Alaska&lt;/a&gt; which shows that hovercraft travelling over a frozen river produce more underwater noise than snowmobiles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an example, a single event (pass-by) hovercraft sound exposure &#xA;  (LE) of 134.1 dB measured at a distance of  78 feet is approximately equal to 14 &#xA;  snowmobile events at the same distance.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although both snowmobiles and tanks (the targets of anti-tank mines) are both tracked vehicles, in other respects they are not comparable. It is therefore difficult to apply this information to the subject at hand. At the least, this study does show that hovercraft can transmit significant vibrations through the surface on which they travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Infra-red trigger&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hovercraft also has engines that produce heat and therefore can be detected using an infra-red detector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Type 72 mine&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Chinese &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_72&quot;&gt;Type 72 mine&lt;/a&gt; is triggered by a pressure of 300 Kg but is resistant to overpressure produced by anti-mine ordnance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pressure trigger&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The skirt of a hovercraft might exert a force equivalent to less 100 Kg over the area of a mine. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hovercollege.com/Resources/Hovercollege%20and%20Hovercraft%20Frequently%20Asked%20Questions.htm&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;250 lbs/sf&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hover-gen.com/hovercraft-and-the-environment/&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;245 kg/m²&quot;, &quot;202 kg/m²&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;M75 Mine&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The South Koreans are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-monitor.org/index.php/publications/display?url=lm/2004/south_korea.html&quot;&gt;known to have deployed&lt;/a&gt; the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inertord.com/Minesm75M91.html&quot;&gt;M75 anti-tank mine&lt;/a&gt;. This has a magnetic trigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Magnetic trigger&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A magnetic trigger would presumably be set off by any sufficiently large vehicle with a significant amount of steel in it's structure and with typical engine construction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4S3h8j_NEmkC&amp;amp;pg=PA779&amp;amp;lpg=PA779&amp;amp;dq=anti-hovercraft+mine&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=hIWtRT1060&amp;amp;sig=sUmX0Qb5gS7wbuvOFuMSo13NVdQ&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=0MSzUNL5B-aZ0QXxiYHoCQ&amp;amp;ved=0CDoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=hovercraft%20&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;World Naval Weapon Systems, 5 Ed. By Professor Norman Friedman, PH.D.‌&lt;/a&gt;​&quot; he says &quot;Seemine anti-invasion … Fuzing is presumably magnetic to destroy landing craft including hovercraft&quot; Which suggests he believes magnetic triggers in mines can, in principle, detect hovercraft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;TM-57&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Russian &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TM-57_mine&quot;&gt;TM-57&lt;/a&gt; anti-tank mine can be triggered by a tilt-rod fuze.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tilt-rod trigger&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the skirt of a hovercraft is usually in contact with the ground, it is possible that it could deflect a tilt-rod by the 25 to 30 degrees needed to trigger the mine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;BLU-92&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BLU-92 is related to the M-75 and can be triggerred by trip-wire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each side of the BLU 92 (an anti-personnel mine) has four hair thin trip wires that shoot out as soon as it lands. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inertord.com/Minesm75M91.html&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tripwire trigger&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The air cushion of a hovercraft, and its skirts, disturb the surface over which it is travelling for at least the whole width of the vehicle (unlike a wheeled or tracked vehicle) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be plausible that there is a possibility that the skirt, or debris disturbed by the air cushion, will strike a trip-wire with sufficient force to activate a mine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is sufficient evidence to settle this question either way. It must be possible to construct mines that are effective against hovercraft and it must also be feasible to design hovercraft to avoid triggering certain types of mine, particularly pressure-sensitive mines. However, many mines incorporate triggering mechanisms which are not defeated by the low-ground pressure characteristics of a hovercraft and which may present hovercraft designers with substantial difficulty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a personal note: if I had a hovercraft, the last place on earth I'd use it would be to make an incursion into North Korea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-11-28T15:28:02.220" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T15:28:02.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13789" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-25T14:40:28.380" Score="13" ViewCount="853" Body="&lt;p&gt;Experts in the science of global climate change often criticise their opponents by disparaging their expertise in climate science. But experts in climate science are not experts in &lt;em&gt;economics&lt;/em&gt;. So when they campaign for particular measures to combat warming there is perhaps some ground for asking whether they are advocating the most cost-effective solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a big issue not made easier by the fact that questioning the suggested &lt;em&gt;actions&lt;/em&gt; is seen as the same as questioning the &lt;em&gt;existence&lt;/em&gt; of warming leaving many who accept the reality of warming labelled as &quot;skeptics&quot; or &quot;deniers&quot;. An example of this would be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bjorn Lomberg&lt;/a&gt;, whose book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_It:_The_Skeptical_Environmentalist%27s_Guide_to_Global_Warming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cool It&lt;/a&gt;, led to him being likened to a Nazi by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajendra_K._Pachauri&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rajendra Pachauri&lt;/a&gt; (see footnote 1046 in page 202 in the english edition).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lomberg's book doesn't challenge the reality of warming (though he questions how evidence has been used to persuade the public). More relevant to this question, he argues that the solutions proposed by many campaigners are poor ways to avoid the expected downsides of warming. For example, if we think malaria will spread in a warmer world (see related question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8905/will-a-warming-world-directly-damage-human-health&quot;&gt;Will a warming world directly damage human health?&lt;/a&gt; for more) spending money to avoid warming will be an incredibly wasteful way to hold back malaria (in fact we could probably eliminate it entirely for a tiny fraction of the cost of lowering carbon dioxide emissions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several other authors have made a similar argument (though many are regarded as skeptics on the reality of warming). Nevertheless both Nigel Lawson in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0064XJ2E2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An appeal to Reason&lt;/a&gt;, and Christian Gerondeau in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Climate-Great-Delusion-Independent-Minds/dp/1906768412&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Climate: the Great Delusion&lt;/a&gt;, accept the forecasts of the IPCC and base their arguments on the &lt;em&gt;economics&lt;/em&gt; of proposed solutions arguing that preventing climate change is both unrealistic and exceedingly expensive and that policy should focus on &lt;em&gt;adapting&lt;/em&gt; to change or developing new technologies to &lt;em&gt;sequester&lt;/em&gt; carbon dioxide rather than avoid &lt;em&gt;emitting&lt;/em&gt; it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are their economic arguments credible? Is attempting to freeze greenhouse emissions ridiculously unrealistic? &lt;em&gt;Might the world be better off is we devoted our energy to adapting to warming rather than attempting unrealistic and excessively expensive ways to avoid future greenhouse emissions? Might geoengineering CO₂ capture be better than avoiding emissions?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB This question is about the &lt;strong&gt;economics&lt;/strong&gt; of warming not the debate about the science or the history. So please stay on topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T21:59:27.440" Title="Is avoiding global warming by preventing CO₂ emissions far too expensive compared to geoengineering or adapting to a warmer world?" Tags="|economics|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13792" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-25T18:54:34.070" Score="16" ViewCount="2360" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard, and seen in TV, that many gurus do meditation in the Himalayas, without wearing any garments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tummo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tummo&lt;/a&gt; which is a meditation method from Tibetan Buddhism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buddhachannel.tv/portail/spip.php?article2139&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claimed that&lt;/a&gt; Tummo is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a form of Tibetan Buddhist yoga that preserves body temperatures through excessive production of internal heat despite the body’s exposure to extremely cold mountain climates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dlq2G.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Tummo in Practice&quot;&gt;&#xA;Image, via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tanumanasi_Los_seis_yogas_de_Naropa_Tumo_Tummo.JPG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, is from &lt;em&gt;Spain&lt;/em&gt;, but demonstrates the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I cannot understand, how do they manage to do this when the temperature is below freezing. If you ask them they would speak about spiritualism. But scientifically is it possible? Do they survive because they know some unknown trick or technique which helps them keep warm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10373" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-02-01T22:29:02.390" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T22:29:02.390" Title="Can Tummo yoga practitioners withstand extreme cold?" Tags="|physiology|meditation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13794" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-25T23:56:48.750" Score="12" ViewCount="1574" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adrian Bloomfield has written, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/palestinianauthority/9374010/Yasser-Arafat-poisoned-with-Polonium.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; in July 2012:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many theories have been advanced in the past for the cause of Arafat's death, and his case notes – which are alleged to show that he had suffered cirrhosis – have never been released.&#xA;  A former speech writer for President George W Bush claimed he had contracted Aids from a homosexual relationship with one of his guards, while aides of Arafat have alleged that he was poisoned by Mossad with Thallium, another radioactive element.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which are the facts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Arafat&lt;/a&gt; die of AIDS? Was he poisoned by Mossad with Thallium or Polonium? Did he have cirhossis? Or was there another alternative?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Added July 23 2014:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of December 2013, &quot;A team of French scientists probing the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2004 do not believe he was poisoned, according to leaks from their report.&quot; (Source:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25205170&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC NEWS&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Added April 25 2016:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“At the end of the investigation … it has not been demonstrated that Mr Yasser Arafat was murdered by polonium-210 poisoning,” according to a statement from the prosecutor from the court in Nanterre, near Paris. (Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/02/yasser-arafat-murder-investigation-closed-france&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="8702" LastEditDate="2016-04-25T13:32:15.893" LastActivityDate="2016-04-25T13:32:15.893" Title="How did Yasser Arafat die?" Tags="|politics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13795" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13796" CreationDate="2012-11-26T04:35:54.787" Score="21" ViewCount="14377" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just found &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=417306771671861&amp;amp;set=a.392233420845863.89075.392213267514545&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot;&gt;this one on Facebook&lt;/a&gt;. The people making the claim have 11k page likes (26th November 2012).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/a8hWO.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Barack Obama&amp;#39;s Aunt&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She lived in a homeless shelter for 2 years.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Lived in Government housing for 10 years.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  As an illegal alien.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Her nephew is a multimillionaire.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  He claimed $87,000 in charitable donations.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  But never gave her a dime.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  His name is Barack Obama.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T11:10:10.603" LastActivityDate="2016-08-31T18:36:22.797" Title="Does Barack Obama have an aunt who was a homeless illegal alien that used government housing for 10 years?" Tags="|united-states|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13795" CreationDate="2012-11-26T04:35:54.787" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's largely right. Her name is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeituni_Onyango&quot;&gt;Zeituni Onyango&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;She lived in a homeless shelter for 2 years. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/09/21/obamas_aunt_says_system_was_at_fault/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Zeituni Onyango, blamed “the system’’ for her controversial living arrangement in Boston public housing as an illegal immigrant&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lived in government housing for 10 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This source covers 2004-2010&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/17/AR2010051703817.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Onyango moved to the United States in 2000. Her first asylum request was rejected, and she was ordered deported in 2004. But she did not leave the country and continued to live in public housing in Boston.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As an illegal alien. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/17/AR2010051703817.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Onyango's status as an illegal immigrant was revealed just days before Obama was elected in November 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Her 'nephew' is a multimillionare. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, he's a multimillionaire. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-gifts-to-charity-just-1-percent/2012/02/14/gIQAXuMDER_blog.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2009, the president’s taxable income was about $5.5 million&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to be precise, he is her &lt;em&gt;half&lt;/em&gt;-nephew. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/17/AR2010051703817.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kenya native Zeituni Onyango, 57, is the half-sister of Obama's late father&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He has claimed $87,000 in charitable contributions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The year isn't specified. In recent years, the number is much higher. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-gifts-to-charity-just-1-percent/2012/02/14/gIQAXuMDER_blog.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2010, for instance, [...] he gave $245,075 in gifts to charity. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2009, [... he] listed $329,100 in charitable contributions on his tax return and also directed the Nobel Prize Committee to give his $1.4 million prize directly to 10 charities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2005: $77,315 to charity out of income of $1.66 million (4.6 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2004: $2,500 out of $207,647 (1.2 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2003: $3,400 out of $238,327 (1.4 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2002: $1,050 out of $259,394 (0.4 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;But never gave her a dime. &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/cSavIWCJiUo?t=2m50s&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this interview of her, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Nor, has [Obama] stepped in financially to get her off of public assistance.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;His name is Barack Obama. (this is kind of given and undisputed.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-08-27T11:50:40.707" LastActivityDate="2016-08-27T11:50:40.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15270" CreationDate="2012-11-26T05:42:23.107" Score="4" ViewCount="716" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read that one who knows Latin has a good command over English. Is this correct or just a myth? If it is correct, how does it work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10436" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-26T08:34:24.340" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T16:25:39.637" Title="Does knowing Latin help learning English?" Tags="|history|language|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13800" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-26T05:57:52.633" Score="13" ViewCount="17413" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apple Mac Retina display screens make text look great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retina pixel density = 220.5 PPI, vs. 135 PPI for the 2018 non-Retina MacBook Air (according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/11/3077659/retina-display-macbook-pro-comparison-statistics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Verge&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gary Heiting, an optometrist told &lt;a href=&quot;http://mashable.com/2012/03/19/ipad-retina-display-eye-strain/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mashable&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“A key factor in something that’s called computer vision syndrome, or just eye strain from computer use, is screen resolution,” Heiting says. “The new iPad, with twice the resolution of the iPad 2, 264 ppi (pixels per inch) instead of 132, people are going to notice less pixelation, especially in a small typeface. It’s not just an enjoyment issue or an aesthetic issue, but it’s definitely a visual comfort isue, over time.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So... is it true that Retina gives less eyestrain than lower resolution screens?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2021-02-03T23:41:36.783" LastActivityDate="2021-02-04T11:11:00.657" Title="Does the Retina Display cause less eyestrain than other screens?" Tags="|ophthalmology|apple-inc|ergonomics|monitor|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13801" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13810" CreationDate="2012-11-26T07:10:59.717" Score="23" ViewCount="2418" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been claimed that due to their large size, and the velocity of their blades that wind turbines kill large numbers of birds that run into them at night, or in fog, and die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/wind-farm-birds112011.html#cr&quot;&gt;http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/wind-farm-birds112011.html#cr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do wind turbines kill many birds each year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10450" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-11-26T09:03:55.733" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T22:06:15.353" Title="Do wind turbines kill many birds each year?" Tags="|ethology|energy|power-generation|ecology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13803" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16687" CreationDate="2012-11-26T10:16:52.907" Score="18" ViewCount="1528" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;classic&quot; explanation I was always taught at school for the appendix was that it probably once had a purpose and may have assisted with the digestion of cellulose, but is now just a redundant feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some sources now seem to imply it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071008102334.htm&quot;&gt;does have a purpose&lt;/a&gt;, albeit a minor one - but these sources seem to disagree as to what this purpose is. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/the-appendix-does-have-a-use--rebooting-the-gut-396277.html&quot;&gt;Here's another&lt;/a&gt; which takes a different standpoint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a general scientific consensus on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8626" LastEditorUserId="8626" LastEditDate="2012-11-26T18:16:35.417" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T17:23:35.140" Title="Does the human appendix have a purpose, or is it more of an evolutionary leftover?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13805" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-26T11:22:13.567" Score="12" ViewCount="4621" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Lee&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bruce Lee&lt;/a&gt; was an iconic actor and martial arts instructor who died at a young age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Lee#Death&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The preliminary opinion of Peter Wu, the neurosurgeon who saved Lee's life during his first seizure, was that the cause of death should have been attributed to either a reaction to cannabis or Equagesic. However, Wu later backed off from this position, stating that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor Teare was a forensic scientist recommended by Scotland Yard; he was brought in as an expert on cannabis and we can't contradict his testimony. The dosage of cannabis is neither precise nor predictable, but I've never known of anyone dying simply from taking it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the facts? How can the death of someone like Bruce Lee still be a mystery?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10452" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T03:32:23.247" Title="How did Bruce Lee die?" Tags="|mortality|celebrities|bruce-lee|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13807" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13816" CreationDate="2012-11-26T13:01:00.083" Score="19" ViewCount="72755" Body="&lt;p&gt;Found &lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/u/0/114626044795714305855/posts/TunVGvRZL4k&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this gem on G+&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ClSFF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;important health tips&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest seems all extremely circumstantial except the very last item. The 'radiation' they're talking about, I'm assuming, is electromagnetic radiation - which would be weaker by a low battery, not stronger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any evidence showing that cell phones emit more radiation while low on battery (say, below 20%)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7145" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-26T13:53:57.583" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T18:21:42.870" Title="Does a cell phone emit 1000 times more radiation when its battery is low?" Tags="|environmental-health|technology|radiation|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13801" CreationDate="2012-11-26T17:14:07.500" Score="20" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Do wind turbines kill many birds each year?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An upper estimate might be of the order of half a million birds per year in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it seems that hundreds of millions of birds are killed by &#xA;collisions with other man-made structures. So wind turbines account for a small percentage of bird deaths attributable to human activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless this can be a significant threat to the survival of some &#xA;important bird species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt; at night, or in fog&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wind turbines are hazard to birds (and other avians) in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRSAvD8VAbI&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;daylight&lt;/a&gt;. Bird evolution has evidently not incuded &#xA;the necessary millions of years of exposure to non-catastrophic&#xA;levels of threat from this type of fast-moving hazard. They are poorly equipped cognitively to recognise danger in any of these and &#xA;other man-made hazards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Per small installation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some individual wind-turbine operators think even ten deaths per year per turbine is too many:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/7870929/Primary-school-forced-to-turn-off-wind-turbine-after-bird-deaths.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Primary school forced to turn off wind turbine after bird deaths&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We were told by the manufacturer to expect maybe one fatality a year but it killed 14 in six months so we took advice and made the decision to turn it off.&#xA;  &quot;If it had happened at night time you could understand that the birds couldn't see the blades, which rotate at 135mph but it was happening at all different times of the day.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2002 Study&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Large numbers of birds die every year from other causes, turbine-related deaths are currently alleged to be only a very small proportion of these. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a 2002 study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dialight.com/Assets%5CApplication_Notes%5CSignaling%5CObstruction%20Lighting%20Bird%20Strike%20Study.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Summary and Comparison of Bird Mortality from Anthropogenic Causes with an Emphasis on Collisions&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;&quot;funded by DOE, with direction and support from the Wildlife Working Group of the National Wind Coordinating Committee&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collisions with buildings kill 550 million birds each year, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cats kill 100 million birds each year, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Collisions with wind turbines kill 28,500 birds each year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to the question depends on how many is &quot;many&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2016 study&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recent studies find higher numbers of avian deaths per year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2016 study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148116301422&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A preliminary assessment of avian mortality at utility-scale solar energy facilities in the United States&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;included this table: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Table 2.&#xA;&#xA;Estimated annual avian mortality from various sources &#xA;in the Southern California Region and United States.&#xA;&#xA;Mortality source                 Southern California    United States&#xA;                                 region&#xA;Utility-scale solar energy &#xA;(USSE) developments              16,200–59,400         37,800–138,600 a&#xA;&#xA;Wind energy developments         29,537–48,862         140,000–573,000 b&#xA;&#xA;Fossil fuel power plants         3,561,600             14.5 million c&#xA;&#xA;Communication towers             70,552                4.5–6.8 million d&#xA;&#xA;Roadway vehicles                 &amp;gt;453,000e             89–340 million f&#xA;&#xA;Buildings and windows            &amp;gt;7,800,000g           365–988 million h&#xA;&#xA;a   Based on approximately 14 GW total name plate capacity of   &#xA;    utility-scale solar facilities in operations or under construction  &#xA;    across the United States [7].&#xA;b   Sources: Loss et al. [36], Smallwood [23], Erickson et al. [24].  &#xA;c   Source: Sovacool [25].  &#xA;d   Sources: Erickson et al. (2005), Longcore et al. [33].  &#xA;e   Represents a minimum estimate using only estimated mortality for   &#xA;    paved roadways in the southern California study region.&#xA;f   Source: Loss et al. [49].  &#xA;g   Represents a minimum estimate using only estimated mortality   &#xA;    for residential structures in the southern California study region.  &#xA;h   Source: Loss et al. [34].&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not checked the dates of the references. It may be that this 2016 study is based on data from older studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Effects on endangered species&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deaths for some bird species may be more significant than others: &lt;a href=&quot;http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2012048835_windbirds07m.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientists study wind-farm risks to birds&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One survey at Big Horn Wind Farm in Klickitat County estimated that more than 30 raptors were killed during an initial year of operations — more than seven times the number forecast in a pre-construction study. The dead raptors included kestrels, red-tailed hawks, short-eared owls and a ferruginous hawk, which Washington state lists as a threatened species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2017-05-11T22:06:15.353" LastActivityDate="2017-05-11T22:06:15.353" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13814" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14835" CreationDate="2012-11-26T21:36:17.157" Score="9" ViewCount="785" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can the popular belief about some food items acting as aphrodisiacs be verified?&#xA;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphrodisiac&quot;&gt;wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; states that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, from a historical and scientific standpoint, the alleged results may have been mainly due to mere belief by their users that they would be effective (i.e., the placebo effect). In particular, Western medical science has no substantiated claims that any particular food increases sexual desire or performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the supporting link is dead. Interested in some studies proving/disproving the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9006" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T08:53:44.120" Title="Is there such a thing as an aphrodisiac?" Tags="|nutrition|sexuality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13807" CreationDate="2012-11-26T23:03:40.720" Score="29" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt; The radiation is 1000 times stronger&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; The transmission power of a GSM handset is limited to a maximum of 2 watts in GSM 850/900 and 1 watt in GSM 1800/1900.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a Radio-Electronics.com article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.radio-electronics.com/info/cellulartelecomms/gsm_technical/power-control-classes-amplifier.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GSM Power Control and Power Class&lt;/a&gt;&quot; the base station controls handset power output in the range 2-19 which is 39 dBm to 5 dBm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DBm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, 39 dBm is around 8 W and 5 dBm is 3.2 mW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;8 W is certainly more than a thousand times stronger than 3.2 mW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some inconsistency in this information, but if we take 3.2 mW to 2000 mW to be the actual range, a 625 X range is still not too far from the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;when phone's battery is low&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no &lt;em&gt;direct&lt;/em&gt; causative link between handset battery charge level and handset transmit power level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of battery charge, when you are standing next to a transmission tower your handset is only outputting the &lt;em&gt;minimum&lt;/em&gt; power needed to communicate. Not the &lt;em&gt;maximum&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the above linked article should make clear, the power level of the handset is determined by the base station and is adjusted so that the base station can receive the handset signal clearly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A low base-station signal level indicated at the handset will usually correlate with a need for the handset to transmit at higher power in order to reach through the distance or obstacle that is causing the weakness of the received base-station signal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A low battery level may indicate only that you have been playing Angry Birds for too long, or forgot to charge your handset last night and may have absolutely no correlation to current effective distance between handset and base-station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst a 1000 fold variation in power is of the right order of magnitude, your handset's battery level indicator is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a useful indicator of the amount of &quot;radiation&quot; currently emitted by the handset (in talk mode).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The related claim that radiation from the handset may cause health issues is covered in a number of related questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7219/does-the-presence-of-a-cellphone-affect-sperm-count-or-heart-rate&quot;&gt;Does the presence of a cellphone affect sperm count or heart rate?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1800/do-mobile-phones-cause-heart-troubles&quot;&gt;Do mobile phones cause heart troubles?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/569/do-mobile-phones-have-anything-to-do-with-brain-cancer&quot;&gt;Do mobile phones have anything to do with brain cancer?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4838/is-this-new-study-on-cell-phone-cancer-connection-legitimate&quot;&gt;Is this new study on cell phone / cancer connection legitimate?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T00:20:17.060" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13820" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-27T03:21:16.313" Score="4" ViewCount="168" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Season 4, episode 8 of Torchwood: Miracle Day, a character is said to have prolonged their life (not much, but definitely longer) by keeping their core temperature two degrees lower than normal, maintaining a lower caloric intake, and keeping their blood pressure below 110 (I assume systolic pressure).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there actually any scientific evidence to validate this? I know it's a science fiction show, but they seemed to at least imply that this part was accurate in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5933" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-27T03:59:06.943" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T03:59:06.943" Title="Can a lower core temperature, lower caloric intake and low blood pressure prolong life?" Tags="|medical-science|life-expectancy|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-27T08:43:52.850" Score="15" ViewCount="3940" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard this story for years now, about how the US military paid $600 per hammer for everyday garden-variety hammers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, for the first time, I saw an article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.govexec.com/federal-news/1998/12/the-myth-of-the-600-hammer/5271/&quot;&gt;debunking the story&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that article is hardly on a credible site. So, did the US military paid $600 for a hammer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10470" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T15:43:21.600" Title="Did the US military pay $600 for a hammer?" Tags="|united-states|military|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13824" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13825" CreationDate="2012-11-27T13:42:45.083" Score="7" ViewCount="788" Body="&lt;p&gt;IceNew online newspaper, in a recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icenews.is/2012/02/22/man-survives-in-snow-covered-car-for-two-months/&quot;&gt;news article&lt;/a&gt;, report that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a man &quot;has been trapped in his car since 19th December [to 22th&#xA;  February], surviving only by drinking melted snow.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The man had only a sleeping bag to keep him warm as temperatures in the country dropped to -30°C&quot; the news article adds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of this claim, so I wonder if it is really happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T13:45:06.333" Title="Can a man survive in snow-covered car for two months?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13824" CreationDate="2012-11-27T14:00:47.293" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;You may survive for longer than two months without eating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khader_Adnan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Khader Adnan for example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A father to two daughters, Maali and Bissan, Randa was pregnant with&#xA;  their third child, when he was arrested by the Israeli Army on 17&#xA;  December 2011 from their home in Arraba in the middle of the&#xA;  night. The next day he began a hunger strike that ended 66 days&#xA;  later on 21 February 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And thanks to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igloo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Igloo&lt;/a&gt; effect (and warm clothing and sleeping bag), it's not so strange that he may have survived, provided he had enough water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Snow is used because the air pockets trapped in it make it an&#xA;  insulator. On the outside, temperatures may be as low as −45 °C (−49&#xA;  °F), but on the inside the temperature may range from −7 °C (19 °F) to&#xA;  16 °C (61 °F) when warmed by body heat alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would add that some doctors are forwarding a kind of hibernation theory regarding survival in low temperatures, as in the case of Mitsutaka Uchikoshi&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/dec/21/japan.topstories3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Injured hiker survived 24 days on mountain by 'hibernating'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Japanese civil servant has described for the first time how he&#xA;  survived for more than three weeks in a mountain forest without food&#xA;  or water in what doctors believe is the first known case of a human&#xA;  going into hibernation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;regarding this case in particular the claim that he survived for two months on snow alone is somewhat contested. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/9106027/Swedish-man-was-not-trapped-in-his-car.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Swedish man was not trapped in his car&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It wasn't snowed in. Not the right passenger door,&quot; said Andreas&#xA;  Gidlund, one of the two traffic policemen who pulled Mr Skyllberg's&#xA;  emaciated body from the vehicle. &quot;If you look at the back door, on the&#xA;  left side, it was very compacted snow – but on the right side, it was&#xA;  very loose snow. &quot;So I imagine that is the place where he had been&#xA;  going out. There wasn't as much snow there as there was on the other&#xA;  side. It had been opened every now and then.&quot; But other people&#xA;  involved in the initial rescue maintain that he was indeed trapped –&#xA;  and that his miraculous story of survival is, as initially seemed,&#xA;  astounding but true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I think he was trapped,&quot; said Erik Ostman, one of the firemen who&#xA;  brought Mr Skyllberg from the car in a tank-tracked off-road vehicle.&#xA;  &quot;When we arrived, there had only been two scooters who'd driven there,&#xA;  so the road was pretty untouched. The snow was maybe 70cm deep.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, there were numerous food and drink wrappers in the car when he was found, so maybe he had food for some time at least&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/what-to-do-when-snow-traps-you-in-a-car-peter-skyllberg-oscar-rickett&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;what to do when snow traps you in a car - pictures&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastEditorUserId="8980" LastEditDate="2012-11-30T13:45:06.333" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T13:45:06.333" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13827" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-27T16:18:54.537" Score="10" ViewCount="1086" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was surprised to see in advertisements for &quot;miracle&quot; natural / alternative / herbal etc. medicine that they contain &quot;liquid chlorophyll&quot; and that is really useful for our health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wondered how it can be, because chlorophyll is actually what plants use for photosynthesis, so humans could make absolutely no use of it. Even if our whole skin could photosynthesize, it would provide only a small fraction of the required energy. By the way, absolutely any plant we eat contains chlorophyll, so why would anyone not eating exclusively meat require additional chlorophyll, even if it was useful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article shows absolutely nothing about any medical uses of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyll&quot;&gt;chlorophyll&lt;/a&gt;. A Google search for chlorophyll  and &quot;medical uses&quot;, &quot;health benefits&quot;, etc. returned only sites belonging to companies actively selling it, and describing it as a miraculous cure-all. I did not manage to find any independent or independent-seeming article about the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8692" LastActivityDate="2016-12-17T16:45:14.227" Title="Does chlorophyll have any health benefits for humans?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3727" CreationDate="2012-11-27T18:53:12.657" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is emerging evidence of a small effect suggesting HFCS is worse than sucrose and increases prevalence of diabetes and obesity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is, superficially at least, some reason to doubt that HFCS should be bad. Conventional sugar (chemically sucrose) is made of the smaller sugar molecules glucose and fructose and as  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucrose&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; points out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In humans and other mammals, sucrose is broken down into its constituent monosaccharides, glucose and fructose, by sucrase or isomaltase glycoside hydrolases, which are located in the membrane of the microvilli lining the duodenum. The resulting glucose and fructose molecules are then rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But HFCS contains &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; fructose. And there is some emerging evidence that is is digested differently which may have a health impact. As the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e7994&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ summary&lt;/a&gt; of a recent study reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidence is growing that the body metabolises fructose differently from glucose: independently of insulin and primarily in the liver, where it is converted to fat. This may be contributing to the rise in the prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, a condition that is increasing among Hispanic people in the US and Mexico.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study itself looked for measurable health differences between those countries that typically use different amounts of HFCS in their diets (regulation and economics result in sweetened drinks using different mixes of sugars, some countries use no HFCS at all). The study's (study is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17441692.2012.736257&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but paywalled) key conclusion is summarised by the BMJ report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research, published in Global Public Health, looked at average body mass index, diabetes prevalence, sugar intake, and HFCS intake in 42 countries around the world.1 The information came from a variety of sources, including the International Diabetes Federation and the UN Food and Agricultural Organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It found that of the 42 countries studied the United States had the highest per capita consumption of HFCS at a rate of 25 kg (55 lb) a year. Second was Hungary, with an annual consumption of 16 kg per person. Canada, Slovakia, Bulgaria, and Belgium, were also relatively high consumers of HFCS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Countries with per capita consumption of less than 0.5 kg a year included Australia, China, Denmark, France, India, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Uruguay. Altogether 14 countries, including India, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, and Austria, consumed no HFCS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The analysis found that countries with high use of HFCS had an average prevalence of type 2 diabetes of 8%, whereas in countries that didn’t use HFCS prevalence was 6.7% (P=0.03). High consumption countries also had a higher average fasting plasma glucose concentration (5.34 versus 5.22 mmol/L (P=0.03)). The results were independent of total sugar intake and prevalence of obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, there are several metrics that suggest there is a significant but small difference in measurable metabolic features associated with HFCS and that this is associated with a difference in the levels of diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, though, that some of the differences are small and it is always hard to remove confounding in studies like this so the best view of the conclusions may change with further evidence. Perhaps more significantly &lt;em&gt;sugary drinks are bad for you&lt;/em&gt;. That the ingredients used in some countries are marginally worse is less significant than the fact that drinking them at all makes you fatter and less healthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-27T18:53:12.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13801" CreationDate="2012-11-28T01:51:31.127" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is yes. The more complex answer is that the number of deaths is nothing in comparison to other man made structures and the risks from climate change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been several studies done to find the environmental impact of wind farms on birds. Generally birds lack the ability to dodge humans and their quest for global supremacy. From the American Bird Conservancy there are a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abcbirds.org/conservationissues/threats/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of deaths related to sources&lt;/a&gt; as deaths per year in the US:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feral and domestic cats - Hundreds of millions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Power lines - 130-174 million&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Windows - 100 million to 1 billion (NB the high end seems too large to me)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pesticides - 70 million&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cars - 60-80 million&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lighted communication towers - 40-50 million&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wind turbines - 10-40,000 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-turbine-kill-birds.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Table found here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously wind turbines aren't as popular as cars, cats and windows, but with the expected increase in wind energy generation, the impacts will likely increase. The thing that has to be borne in mind is that the wind turbines are on an order of magnitude smaller impact than other bird killers. It also has to be remembered that the studies are also showing that newer wind power plants are having less impact on birds due to design upgrades, better placement and better ecological planning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real issue here is climate change. Coal power plants kill birds, in fact, they are threatening to wipe out entire species. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=wind-turbines-dont-kill-birds-coal-2009-10&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to a study&lt;/a&gt; reported in Scientific American, at least 950 entire species of terrestrial birds will be threatened with extinction as a result of climate change under several scenarios, even at the lower estimate of temperature gains, just counting species of non-sea birds in the higher latitudes; outside the tropics. Birds in the tropics will be impacted by habitat loss, which brings the total species wiped out to ~1800 (Jetz, Wilcove, and Dobson 2007).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The take home point is that we need clean energy sources to save bird species. Those that fly into turbines each year will be minimised with better designs and locations of turbines. In the meantime, worry about the cats and climate change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: recent studies have shown that birds of prey are more prone to injury and death from wind turbines. Essentially, birds of prey spend a lot of time looking down for prey and not enough time looking where they are going. The usual bird collision rate is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.5253/078.097.0311&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;0.08 birds per turbine per day on average (range 0.05–0.19)&lt;/a&gt;, whilst the 'smarter' Eagles are colliding at a &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1474-919X.2006.00507.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;rate of 0.112 to 0.133&lt;/a&gt;. The study also suggests that bird size and speed of flight are important determinants of collision rates, hence why gliding and hovering prey birds are colliding more often. It is worth bearing in mind that both of these collision rates (that often result in death) still indicate an avoidance rate of 99%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This avoidance rate is important to compare to the relative deaths per gigawatt-hour of the power sources to realise that wind power is still a very good option. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421509001074&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study estimates&lt;/a&gt; that wind farms and nuclear power stations are responsible each for between 0.3 and 0.4 fatalities per gigawatt-hour of electricity while fossil-fueled power stations are responsible for about 5.2 fatalities per gigawatt-hour. Thus, wind turbines could do with some investigation into how to make them safer for birds, but they are already a much better option than fossil fuels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5775" LastEditorUserId="5775" LastEditDate="2013-02-12T07:18:28.373" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T07:18:28.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13835" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-28T11:29:37.520" Score="7" ViewCount="403" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simiomobile.com/downloads/coltan_deadly_ore_eng.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This PDF&lt;/a&gt; (i saw a translated version) has been brought to my attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it claims that Coltan is the main cause of a conﬂict which has claimed the lives of four million&#xA;people since 1997 and as also caused the disappearance of several populations of&#xA;gorillas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The extraction of coltan, a very rare mineral used mainly for&#xA;  technological purposes, has led to a long internal conﬂict in Congo,&#xA;  that since 1997 (more than a decade ago), as claimed more than four&#xA;  million lives. The struggle to control the mines of this mineral, as&#xA;  well as the diamond mines, has led to this terrible situation, which as&#xA;  claimed many lives before the eyes of the international community.&#xA;  There have been and there still are real situations of famine in many&#xA;  regions of this country that supports an almost untenable external&#xA;  debt. However, Congo is one of the richest countries in the world,&#xA;  being &quot;The basin of the Congo River”, the second largest rainforest on&#xA;  earth. In the mountains of Kakuzi‐Biega National Park, where Coltan is&#xA;  extracted, the lives of hundreds of gorillas are in danger or have&#xA;  ﬁnished this last decade, causing the loss of important groups of this&#xA;  endangered species, compromising its long term survival.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-10-30T12:33:41.860" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T12:33:41.860" Title="Is Coltan the main cause of conﬂict in Congo since 1997?" Tags="|technology|war|minerals|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13623" CreationDate="2012-11-28T12:25:34.200" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070822190444AASSmho&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this random person's friend's mother who is alleged to be a doctor&lt;/a&gt;, yes it is bad, but the general opinion of the other people on that page is that it's fine as long as it's properly inflated. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/bedsores/DS00570/DSECTION=causes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lack of cushioning causes bedsores.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_mattress&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says its light weight and possible folds can suffocate babies, though. But overall there's less to go wrong compared with a normal mattress:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Air mattresses can also improve the quality of life (and potentially&#xA;  provide some measure of relief) for people who suffer with back&#xA;  pain.[6] Having the ability to adjust the firmness of a mattress to&#xA;  accommodate different body shapes, sizes, and weights, can be a factor&#xA;  in the healing process. Additionally, air mattresses manufactured&#xA;  without the use of materials that may release VOCs or other toxic&#xA;  compounds from the manufacturing process (which can exacerbate&#xA;  allergies in children or other sensitive individuals) are&#xA;  available.[7][8][9]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.necksolutions.com/mattress-back-pain.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;A new mattress can relieve low back pain and improve sleep quality&quot;.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/blogs/organic-parenting/organic-mattresses-47090801&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;4 PVC-Free Inflatable Mattress and Guest Bed Options&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/health/healthup/Sep08.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Indoor Chemicals Linked to Respiratory and Allergic Effects in Children&quot;, California EPA, 2008.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://energy.lbl.gov/ied/sfrb/pdfs/voc-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Indoor Residential Chemical Emissions as Risk Factors for Respiratory and Allergic Effects in Children: a Review&quot;, Indoor Air Journal, vol. 17, pp. 259–277, 2007.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normal mattresses contain more material than inflatables, and thus could contain more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/03/should-you-ditch-your-chemical-mattress&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;harmful chemicals&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="5079" LastEditDate="2012-11-29T17:49:57.480" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T17:49:57.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13837" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-28T13:43:42.720" Score="4" ViewCount="472" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9678/is-the-trending-facebook-privacy-notice-necessary-and-or-effective&quot;&gt;Is the trending Facebook “privacy notice” necessary and/or effective?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have noticed several people posts a boilerplate notice on their Facebook wall as fallows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To Facebook, You are hereby notified that you are strictly prohibited&#xA;  from disclosing, copying, distributing, disseminating, or taking any&#xA;  other action against me with regard to this profile and the contents&#xA;  herein, including, but not limited to my photos, and/or the comments&#xA;  made about my photos or any other &quot;picture&quot; art posted on my profile.&#xA;  The foregoing prohibitions also apply to your employee, agent, stu&#xA;  dent or any personnel under your direction or control. The contents of&#xA;  this profile are private and legally privileged and confidential&#xA;  information, and the violation of my personal privacy is punishable by&#xA;  law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For those of you who do not understand the reasoning behind this&#xA;  posting, Facebook is now a publicly traded entity. Unless you state&#xA;  otherwise, anyone can infringe on your right to privacy once you post&#xA;  to this site. It is recommended that you and other members post a&#xA;  similar notice as this, or you may copy and paste this version. If you&#xA;  do not post such a statement once, then you are indirectly allowing&#xA;  public use of items such as your photos and the information contained&#xA;  in your status updates. Copy &amp;amp; paste, everyone!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=414842091916904&amp;amp;id=247453001989148&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=414842091916904&amp;amp;id=247453001989148&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the claim that Facebook now being a PLC changes the privacy of your profile content, stand up? Or is this just misguided nonsense that people are posting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:58:19.820" Title="Now that Facebook is a PLC does this change the privacy of your profile contents" Tags="|security|social-media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-11-28T14:52:22.213" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13837" CreationDate="2012-11-28T13:56:37.897" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://newsroom.fb.com/Fact-Check&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;no change&lt;/a&gt; in the policies, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;neither in data use nor privacy&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fact Check&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Copyright Meme Spreading on Facebook&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a rumor circulating that Facebook is making a change related to ownership of users' information or the content they post to the site. This is false. Anyone who uses Facebook owns and controls the content and information they post, as stated in our terms. They control how that content and information is shared. That is our policy, and it always has been.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the email is a scam (and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/9678/82&quot;&gt;an old one&lt;/a&gt; at that) – &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/computer/facebook/privacy.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;posting a notice on your wall does exactly nothing&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Facebook users cannot retroactively negate any of the privacy or copyright terms they agreed to when they signed up for their  accounts nor can they unilaterally alter or contradict any new privacy or copyright terms instituted by Facebook simply by posting a contrary legal notice on their Facebook walls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot help remarking that this should be obvious after a short reflection: First off, does anybody actually expect that Facebook scans everbody’s wall for such a disclaimer and keeps note of the contents? Impossible!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And secondly, since when can you unilaterally renegotiate contracts? Some people have wittily remarked that this is equivalent to writing to the tax office explaining that you no longer agree to pay taxes. Good luck with that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T14:51:16.797" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13839" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13859" CreationDate="2012-11-28T14:04:03.127" Score="9" ViewCount="18721" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/9701966/Was-Rotherham-councils-political-prejudice-to-blame-for-the-persecution-of-Ukip-foster-parents.html&quot;&gt;letter in The Daily Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vets are allowed legally to treat humans although doctors cannot treat animals. In my experience, vets offer the efficiency, pragmatism, charm, humour and common sense so often lacking in the NHS. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are vets legally allowed to treat humans?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T20:30:19.153" Title="Are vets legally allowed to treat humans?" Tags="|medical-science|law|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13840" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-28T16:49:57.533" Score="11" ViewCount="1736" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aris_Poulianos&quot;&gt;Aris Poulianos&lt;/a&gt;, a Greek anthropologist, claims that the hominid remains (a skull) discovered in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petralona_cave&quot;&gt;Petralona Cave&lt;/a&gt; are 700,000 years old and belong to a distinct species, which he named Archanthropus europeaus petraloniensis (commonly: Archanthropus of Petralona).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim and Poulianos' interpretations are surprisingly popular in Greece, and a further claim that an 11 million years old calcified tibia was found in nearby &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triglia&quot;&gt;Triglia&lt;/a&gt; also received some coverage in local news. Poulianos claimed the tribia belonged to a Homo erectus subspecies which he named Homo erectus trilliensis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the claim sound absurd, there are copious amount of literature re-iterating it. Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aee.gr/english/6petrlona/40years/40years.html&quot;&gt;THE 46th ANNIVERSARY SINCE THE DISCOVERY OF THE PETRALONA ARCHANTHROPUS’ SKULL&lt;/a&gt;, from Poulianos website,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCxR2p_klRU&quot;&gt;Petralona cave &amp;amp; man discovery&lt;/a&gt;, a Greek national tv documentary (English subtitles),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wikitravel.org/en/Petralona&quot;&gt;Wikitravel article on Petralona&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Perhaps) more importantly, Poulianos effectively controls access to the cave itself, through his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aee.gr/&quot;&gt;Anthropological Association of Greece&lt;/a&gt; and most tourist literature for the cave and the findings comes from the AAG operated museum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5142" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T13:49:19.100" Title="Is the hominid skull discovered in Petralona 700,000 years old?" Tags="|anthropology|paleontology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13841" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-28T17:09:09.747" Score="10" ViewCount="596" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard many parents, on several occasions, make statements to the effect that they believe it to be harmful to discuss sexuality openly and directly with young children (I'm talking about kids aged 5-10 or so).  Movies and TV shows with sex scenes (not pornographic ones, but unmistakeably nonetheless) are given higher age ratings, and many parents are careful not to let their children watch movies that feature sexuality or nudity, even in non-extreme situations.  Many parents are upset at the idea of sex ed in schools, particularly for children under the age of 13-14 or so.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all, there seems to be a consensus (not universal, but widespread in North America at least) that exposing children to sexuality is somehow harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any data to back up or refute that consensus?  Any studies on links between exposure to sexuality (at school, through discussions with family, through the media, etc.), and, say, STD rates, teen pregnancy rates, depression rates, sexual abuse rates (as victims or as perpetrators), etc.?  Note that I'm not much interested in &quot;starts having sex at an earlier age&quot; (the only effect I've ever seen claimed by a study), unless it is necessarily accompanied by abuse and/or poor use of protection.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm particularly interested in the effect of discussing the topic with children, i.e. the child who gets everything explained to them when they're 5 and whose parents are not shy about talking about sexuality in everyday life, versus the child whose parents hold off on &quot;the talk&quot; until they are 14 and try to never mention sexuality in the presence of their children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10490" LastActivityDate="2012-11-28T17:09:09.747" Title="Do frank (but not gratuitous) discussions or depictions of sexuality traumatize children?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|children|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13845" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-28T20:50:11.197" Score="1" ViewCount="52" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1853/is-human-evolution-slowing-down&quot;&gt;Is human evolution slowing down?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that this question already exists and have read through. &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1853/is-human-evolution-slowing-down&quot;&gt;Is human evolution slowing down?&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;Mutations have to happen agreed, but natural selection would only make a certain DNA more common in the gene pool only if the ones who have that certain DNA have survival advantage or advantages in procreating. The point is if there are 10 people in a hypothetical world(Producing only 1 offspring each) and 1 acquires ability to fend of malaria and the others get malaria and fend it off using medical aid. The next generation sees 10 people with no increase the % of the certain gene in the gene pool of those people. (I know medical aid is not everywhere on the planet and I am not disputing the rate of evolution there) Medical aid along with awareness is reducing the mortality rate and hence the rate of evolution should theoretically slow down. (And yes I know it isn't slowing down in the practical world rather according to an article I read its speeding up, but why?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10495" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T14:18:32.760" Title="Is the rate of Human Evolution Slowing down?" Tags="|evolution|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-11-28T21:20:23.413" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13846" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13849" CreationDate="2012-11-28T21:25:24.677" Score="24" ViewCount="9055" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just saw &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=535560823139795&amp;amp;set=a.286641944698352.83578.206934106002470&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this come across Facebook&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/I8LVE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Unemployment worse now than under the Great Depression&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It reads,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;UNEMPLOYMENT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If we measured unemployment the way they did&#xA;    during the 1930s, today's unemployment would be&#xA;    worse than any single year of the Great Depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graphic gives these numbers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1931 - 15.3%    2009 - 21%&#xA;1932 - 22.9%    2010 - 22%&#xA;1933 - 20.6%    2011 - 22%&#xA;1934 - 16%      2012 - 23%&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, it cites&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jon William' Shadow Government Statistics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/docs/meltzer/maremp93.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Employment &amp;amp; Unemployment in the 1930s, Robert A. Margo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;UPDATE&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I wrote in the comments section on FB under the picture, and the page that published the picture updated the description and commented officially:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LIruP.png&quot; alt=&quot;Image of comments and description showing official mention of it being debunked&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2012-11-29T16:44:53.893" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T16:07:37.907" Title="Is today's unemployment worse than the Great Depression?" Tags="|unemployment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13848" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-29T00:08:53.517" Score="1" ViewCount="16347" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2590/can-i-get-high-using-binaural-beats&quot;&gt;Can I get high using binaural beats?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a youtube video &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V-JtgXJ9Is&amp;amp;feature=related&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Anti Depressant&quot;1 hr Delta Binaural Beat Session (3.5Hz) ~ Pure &lt;/a&gt;, it says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Video: Right Ear (90.0Hz) Left Ear (93.5Hz)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;90 hz is associated with good feelings, security, well-being, and&#xA;  balancing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Download this session FREE at&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-binaural-beats.com/delta-3-5hz/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://free-binaural-beats.com/delta-3-5hz/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Delta Brain Waves Information ( O.5 to 4Hz) :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;0.5 Hz - Relaxation, helps soothe headaches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;0.5 - 1.5 Hz - Pain relief. Endorphin release&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;0.9 Hz - Euphoric feeling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1 Hz - Well being. Harmony and balance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2.5 Hz - Production of endogenous opiates (pain killers, reduce anxiety)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2.5 Hz - Relieves migraine pain. Produces endogenous opiates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;3.4 Hz - Helps achieve restful sleep&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;3.5 Hz - Feeling of unity with everything. Whole being regeneration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;3.9 Hz - Self renewal, enhanced inner awareness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;4.0 Hz - Enkephalin release for reduced stress&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;4.0 Hz - Allows brain to produce enkaphalins, all natural pain killer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;4.0 Hz - Full memory scanning. Releases enkephalins&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;4.0 Hz - Vital for memory and learning. Problem solving, object naming&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1 - 3 Hz - Profound relaxation, restorative sleep. Tranquility and peace&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.5 - Feeling of unity with everything, accelerated language retention; enhancement of receptivity; (a remedy for) depression &amp;amp;&#xA;  anxiety; Wholebeing regeneration, DNA stimulation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;---------------- What are delta brainwaves? ---------------&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Delta brainwaves are considered the most relaxing brainwave frequency&#xA;  range. Delta brainwaves are commonly associated with the deepest sleep&#xA;  [stages 3 &amp;amp; 4] and a state of unconscious awareness. Delta brainwaves&#xA;  are the lowest in brainwave frequency: ranging from 0 - 4 Hz, but are&#xA;  the highest in amplitude. Delta brainwaves, like other slower&#xA;  brainwave patterns, are generated in the right hemisphere, though they&#xA;  may be observed in widespread patterns throughout various parts of the&#xA;  brain. The delta brainwave range is associated with empathy, the&#xA;  unconscious mind, and a decreased sense of awareness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;--------------Benefits of increasing delta brainwaves-----------&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Extreme bliss&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Advanced healing of body and mind&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Connection with unconscious mind&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Deepest possible level of mind / body relaxation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Perfect intuition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Connecting with the spiritual body&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Related to O.O.B.E , Astral Travel, ESP, and other phenomenon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Boosted immune system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Release of Anti-Aging hormones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To find more detailed information on Binaural Beats and Brainwaves&#xA;  please visit -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/8179111/Binaural-Beats-Complete-with-ALL-info-about&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scribd.com/doc/8179111/Binaural-Beats-Complete-with-ALL-info-about&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To learn about research done with different frequencies please visit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lunarsight.com/freq.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.lunarsight.com/freq.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All Information provided by above links.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can barely hear anything. I wonder if the audio does help with &quot;good feelings, security, well-being, and balancing&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="623" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T09:50:08.107" Title="Does this audio of Delta Brain Waves help with mentality and emotion?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2012-11-29T23:11:00.817" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13846" CreationDate="2012-11-29T01:23:41.997" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL:DR&lt;/strong&gt; - The graph isn't comparing the same measurements of unemployment, disregards the preference of one of its sources, and as far as I can tell peak unemployment during the Great Depression was roughly double what it was during the &quot;Great Recession&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me start off with other sources before I delve into the specific works cited in your graphic. As-is, the Bureau of Labor Statistics defines Unemployment &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unemployment#United_States_Bureau_of_Labor_statistics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;six different ways (U1-U6):&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;U1&lt;/strong&gt;: Percentage of labor force unemployed 15 weeks or longer.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;U2&lt;/strong&gt;: Percentage of labor force who lost jobs or completed temporary work.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;U3&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Official unemployment&lt;/em&gt; rate per the ILO definition occurs when people are without jobs and they have actively looked for work within the past four weeks.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;U4&lt;/strong&gt;: U3 + &quot;discouraged workers&quot;, or those who have stopped looking for work because current economic conditions make them believe that no work is available for them.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;U5&lt;/strong&gt;: U4 + other &quot;marginally attached workers&quot;, or &quot;loosely attached workers&quot;, or those who &quot;would like&quot; and are able to work, but have not looked for work recently.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;U6&lt;/strong&gt;: U5 + Part-time workers who want to work full-time, but cannot due to economic reasons (underemployment).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Note: &quot;Marginally attached workers&quot; are added to the total labour force for unemployment rate calculation for U4, U5, and U6. The BLS revised the CPS in 1994 and among the changes the measure representing the official unemployment rate was renamed U3 instead of U5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Wikipedia states, the &lt;strong&gt;U3&lt;/strong&gt; measure is the &quot;Official&quot; measure, but &lt;strong&gt;U6&lt;/strong&gt; is oft-cited as the &quot;true&quot; unemployment rate by critics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates for the &lt;strong&gt;U3&lt;/strong&gt; rates since 1890 have been compiled, with the 1930-1940 data calculated by Robert M. Coen (1973) and afterwards by the BLS:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/x5aq8.gif&quot; alt=&quot;U3 rates from 1890 to 2010&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can tell from the graph, the &lt;strong&gt;U3&lt;/strong&gt; rates for the Great Depression mimic the information in the graphic: Roughly 23%. However, the &lt;strong&gt;U3&lt;/strong&gt; rates for 2010 is less than half of the Great Depression's peak: Roughly 10%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia also has a graph comparing the various UX rates since the 1950's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8f5sc.png&quot; alt=&quot;Different UX rates since 1950&amp;#39;s&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;U6&lt;/strong&gt; rates estimated by the graph for 2010 appears to be about 17-18%, which is closer but still not the numbers presented in the graphic. More to the point, if the Great Depression unemployment rate used by the graph is the estimated &lt;strong&gt;U3&lt;/strong&gt; rate (which seems likely), then comparing the U3 to the &lt;strong&gt;U6&lt;/strong&gt; is disingenuous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economicpopulist.org/content/u3-and-u6-unemployment-during-great-depression&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;potentially biased source from EconomicPopulist.org&lt;/a&gt; cites the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on that research, [N. Andrews] was able to generate a mathematical formula to calculate U3 and U6 unemployment for the entire period since 1900. He found that at the peak of the Great Depression, &lt;strong&gt;U3 was 25.2%. U6 was 37.6%&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.morningstar.com/cover/videoCenter.aspx?id=340391&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An interview of Robert Johnson conducted by Morningstar.com&lt;/a&gt; provides similar figures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was some academic work, where people have looked back and said, well if you constructed &lt;strong&gt;U6&lt;/strong&gt; the same way that it's constructed today, you'd be at something like &lt;strong&gt;37%-38%&lt;/strong&gt; unemployment rates on the U6 basis during the Great Depression. So, we are nowhere near that. Right now the number is about &lt;strong&gt;16.6%&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where is the graph getting the 20%+ statistics for modern era Unemployment? Well, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/10/11/obamas-real-unemployment-rate-is-14-7-and-a-recessions-on-the-way/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a Forbes.com article stated it thusly:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The U6 unemployment rate counts only 2.5 million of those 8.2 million who have given up hope and dropped out during the Obama years.  The ShadowStats website, which counts the long term discouraged workers the government doesn’t count, reports the total rate for the unemployed and underemployed (part time for economic reasons) as 22.8%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, where the current 23% (&lt;em&gt;which is actually 22.8% rounded up&lt;/em&gt;) comes from is the author of the site (John Williams) doing &lt;em&gt;his own math&lt;/em&gt; and adding more long-term unemployed to the &lt;strong&gt;U6&lt;/strong&gt; rate, and here is the graph that the graphic refers to (SGS = Shadow Government Statistics, the website):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cwUoW.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Shadow Government Stats graph&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other column in your graph, specifically referring to the &lt;strong&gt;Employment and Unemployment in the 1930's&lt;/strong&gt; paper by Robert A. Margo from 1993, is taken from the third page of the PDF document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what the graphic fails to mention is that Robert A. Margo actually delineates two different measures of Unemployment in the 1930's during the Great Depression. One by &lt;strong&gt;Darby&lt;/strong&gt; and one by &lt;strong&gt;Lebergott&lt;/strong&gt; (I've denoted the ones used in the graph):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Year  Lebergott  Darby  &#xA;1929    3.2      3.2  &#xA;1930    8.7      8.7  &#xA;1931    15.9   **15.3**  &#xA;1932    23.6   **22.9**  &#xA;1933    24.9   **20.6**  &#xA;1934    21.7   **16.0**  &#xA;1935    20.1     14.2  &#xA;1936    16.9     9.9  &#xA;1937    14.3     9.1  &#xA;1938    19.0     12.5  &#xA;1939    17.2     11.3  &#xA;1940    14.6     9.5  &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between the two sets, as Robert A. Margo puts it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The difference between Lebergott's and Darby's series&#xA;  reflects the treatment of persons with so-called &quot;work relief&quot; jobs. For&#xA;  Lebergott, persons on work relief are unemployed, while Darby counts them as&#xA;  employed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Work Relief&quot; in this context were the government-funded jobs programs for public works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with using Darby's numbers, as Robert A. Margo outlines, is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In counting persons on work relief as unemployed, &lt;strong&gt;Lebergott (1964) was effectively following census practice in 1940&lt;/strong&gt;... Consistency with the search approach to unemployment would, at the very least, require that such persons be separated out from the unemployed who were actively searching for work, which Darby fails to do. I am grateful to Stanley Lebergott for these points. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lebergott's&lt;/strong&gt; numbers are calculated the same way that the BLS calculated &lt;strong&gt;U3&lt;/strong&gt; numbers in the 1940's. Darby's numbers come from counting everybody building roads as &quot;Employed&quot;, which is why the numbers differ drastically in an era where great public work projects was the target of significant government spending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to sum up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graphic presented in the question is comparing what is essentially John Williams' (U6 + &quot;Other Factors&quot;) Unemployment rate to Darby's Unemployment rate, which is significantly less than the U3 Rate for the same era. &lt;strong&gt;The creator of the graphic is cherry-picking the highest numbers they could find for 2008-2012, and the lowest numbers (lower than what the BLS would calculate) they could find for the Great depression.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt; - the two cannot be compared. They are not only calculated in a wildly different fashion, but there's a significant amount of dishonesty by omitting Robert A. Margo's preference for Lebergott's numbers over Darby's because Lebergott's were calculated using practically the same method that the BLS uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I am able to tell, unemployment rates in the Great Depression peaked at &lt;strong&gt;double&lt;/strong&gt; the highest rate from 2008-2012 &lt;em&gt;when you compare the same measurements&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-29T06:28:14.297" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T06:28:14.297" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13850" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-29T02:10:37.823" Score="8" ViewCount="2414" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not even American and even I know of School House Rock's &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TI8xqLl_-w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Just a Bill&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and the Simpson's parody &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl3sgKj6oTQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An ammendment to be&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. In Just a Bill the bill is written by a congressman because of public outcry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/G43g5.png&quot; alt=&quot;Just a bill&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was watching a TV program, called &quot;Why Poverty&quot;, which said the idea of a congressman writing a bill was antiquated and that now-a-days bills were writen exclusively by lobby groups. The idea was that when you're rich enough you can buy a lobby group to make laws for you, basically destorying the idea of democracy. Here's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKhXxvT9iak&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;another Just a bill parody&lt;/a&gt;, this one supports the idea that lobby groups write bills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who actually writes congressional bills in America? &#xA;To be specific lets say over the last 10 or 20 years, answerers choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="24708" LastEditDate="2015-02-18T17:44:59.713" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T17:50:01.050" Title="Who writes congressional bills?" Tags="|united-states|law|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13848" CreationDate="2012-11-29T02:44:50.927" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/sound/earsens.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Human's&lt;/a&gt; can't &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/HearingRange.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hear that low&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/musicandcomputers/chapter2/02_03.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;first place&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case you didn't click any of the above, the range of the human ear is usually between 20Hz and 20kHz, but can be as low as 12Hz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't hear any of your Delta brainwaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T02:44:50.927" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10909" CreationDate="2012-11-29T06:45:33.010" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first barrier to gun ownership is &lt;strong&gt;cost&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Registering to vote is free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Handguns cost hundreds of dollars and an &lt;em&gt;assault rifle&lt;/em&gt; (definitions of these weapons vary) easily costs over a thousand dollars, even for a used model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next barrier to gun ownership is &lt;strong&gt;registration&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Registering to vote can be done extremely easily online, at voter registration election offices, at the department of motor vehicles, at public assistance agencies, at armed services recruitment centers, at state-funded programs that serve people with disabilities, and more. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/Voting/Register.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are fewer activities that are easier to perform than registering to vote! It can be done at 17 years old, younger than the age required to own a gun in the US, which is 18 for long guns (21 in New York State &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/03/politics/new-york-gun-laws-bills/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; and some other jurisdictions) and 21 is the the minimum age to own a handguns &lt;em&gt;in the entire United States.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next barrier to gun ownership are &lt;strong&gt;background checks&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buying a gun from a dealer requires a background check. This is true of a dealer at a gun show. A private sale at a gun show, depending on jurisdiction, does not always have the background check requirement &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.everytown.org/issues/keeping-guns-out-of-the-wrong-hands/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;. However less than 4% of sales occur at gun shows &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dailysignal.com/2013/02/08/background-checks-and-the-so-called-gun-show-loophole/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When buying a gun from a dealer anywhere in the US you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; fill out federal form ATF 4473 that clearly states that drug users (even &lt;em&gt;legal&lt;/em&gt; marijuana users), convicted felons, and many other classes of persons are absolutely barred from buying a gun for life &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atf.gov/firearms/atf-form-4473-firearms-transaction-record-revisions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; and the actual form is here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/4473-part-1-firearms-transaction-record-over-counter-atf-form-53009/download&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;. Yes, you can lie about drug use at the risk of a long jail sentence but your criminal record will be revealed after you present your ID to the seller for checking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast there is no background check for voter registration. State laws permitting drug use do not stop a person from registering to vote. Voting is permanently restricted only for convicted felons and then only in 11 states. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt; The other 39 states handle felons differently and most only restrict felons while actually incarcerated (same source).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; pending Voter ID laws that will impose an identification barrier to voting in a few states, but in &lt;em&gt;no case&lt;/em&gt; will the ID requirements &lt;em&gt;exceed&lt;/em&gt; those of those required of a gun buyer. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vote.org/voter-id-laws/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next barrier is &lt;strong&gt;licensing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may indeed be some rural place in the US where acquiring a gun is less difficult than in other places. However, the majority of Americans live in urban areas and cities. These places tend to have extremely onerous gun laws, with the possible exception of Texas. Jurisdictions such as San Francisco, New York City, Detroit, Chicago, Washington DC, etc put up such enormous legal barriers to gun ownership that the rates of legal ownership in these places is virtually zero &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/gun-ownership.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;9&lt;/a&gt;. There are also far fewer registered gun owners in the U.S. (about 20% &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/31/politics/gun-ownership-declining/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10&lt;/a&gt; than registered voters (over 70% &lt;a href=&quot;http://thedataweb.rm.census.gov/TheDataWeb_HotReport2/voting/voting.hrml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;11&lt;/a&gt;). This speaks to the relative difficulty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In DC for example, there are 20 distinct steps to getting a gun.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/guns/2011/oct/14/miller-steps-gun-ownership-dc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;12&lt;/a&gt; The cost to acquire a gun permit in New York City costs hundreds of dollars and requires several visits to a basement office. &lt;a href=&quot;https://newyorkcityguns.com/getting-a-nyc-firearms-permit/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;13&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the final barrier is &lt;strong&gt;purchase and transport&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having a car is probably going to be necessary to bringing your gun home. A car, obviously, is not required to register to vote or to perform actual voting, which can usually be done by absentee ballot. Furthermore, polling places are selected for their proximity to the voter, whereas gun dealers and gun shows are limited by zoning and regulation to specific districts and venues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final barrier is the &lt;strong&gt;law&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is &lt;em&gt;hard&lt;/em&gt;? Living as a felon with an illegal gun is hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the barriers I've laid out can be avoided by illegal acquisition. This is true, if you don't mind risking a long jail sentence it becomes a bit easier to get a gun. Not that getting a gun illegally is &lt;em&gt;easy&lt;/em&gt;, it does provide a way to bypass background checks and licensing requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A note on &lt;strong&gt;gun shows&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gun shows are a place where the law is hard to enforce. You might find an illegal high capacity magazine at a gun show. You may find an unscrupulous seller who will not do a background check. But you simply can't just go to a gun show whenever you like. You have to wait for one to happen! They generally take place only on weekends &lt;a href=&quot;http://gunshows-usa.com/index.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;14&lt;/a&gt; and only at certain specific venues. Cities like Washington DC and NYC simply do not allow them. You also have to research the date and location of a gun show and then arrive there to make your transaction. And you are almost certainly going to need transportation to get to one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to decide which is easier, now that you have some facts. Personally, I think getting a gun takes money, knowledge of the law and legwork and nearly always requires filling out a form at a gun dealer. You need a clean criminal record. You also cannot have a state marijuana card! This is far more difficult than simply registering to vote which takes a pen and 30 minutes plus a trip to the mailbox. In 20 states you can do it online and never even leave your house!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8163" LastEditorUserId="8163" LastEditDate="2022-06-11T13:32:01.800" LastActivityDate="2022-06-11T13:32:01.800" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13853" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13854" CreationDate="2012-11-29T07:24:51.653" Score="16" ViewCount="11041" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mysticways.wiki.zoho.com/The-Beautiful-Way-of-The-Samurai.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Beautiful Way of The Samurai&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Toshiro Mifune, the popular actor famed for his characterizations of quick-witted, taciturn samurai, never uttered a word about it. Akira Kurosawa, the well-known movie director, kept inscrutably mum. Not one of the many hundreds of samurai movies made in the past century even as much as hinted at it nanshoku, the “love of the samurai”*. From its pivotal position in the education, code of honor, and erotic life of the samurai class, the love of youths has sunk below the level of the untouchable to the level of the unmentionable, truly “the love that dare not speak its name”. &lt;strong&gt;But the indelible fact remains that one of the fundamental aspects of samurai life was the emotional and sexual bond cultivated between an older warrior and a younger apprentice, a love for which the Japanese have many names, as many perhaps as the Eskimo have for snow.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The samurai often called it bi-do, “the beautiful way”, and guarded the tradition jealously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://realfighting.tumblr.com/post/385069378/myths-about-the-samurai&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Myths about the Samurai&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Myth #26 - Samurai were all macho, masculine and heterosexual&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;False — &lt;strong&gt;Homosexuality was an integral part of samurai life and was actively and cooperatively practiced.&lt;/strong&gt; Although very few of the hundreds of samurai movies made in Japan hardly hinted at it; “nanshoku, the love of the samurai.” The indelible fact remains that one of the fundamental aspects of samurai life was the emotional and sexual bond cultivated between an older warrior and a younger (male) apprentice. Although women were deemed important because they continued the family line, many samurai preferred men for their emotional and physical relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How true is this? Was homosexuality was an integral part of samurai life? Was it an openly acknowledged practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T22:20:31.180" Title="Was homosexuality an integral part of samurai life?" Tags="|sexuality|japan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13854" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13853" CreationDate="2012-11-29T08:36:17.660" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR : &lt;strong&gt;Yes, it was common enough and mostly openly acknowledged.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, there is a pretty famous book the 男色大鑑 Nanshoku Okagami, from the 15th century, (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0804718954&quot;&gt;the great mirror of male love&lt;/a&gt;) from the very famous poet Ihara Saikaku that spoke about homosexual stories between samurais (and kabuki actors and others).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_Japan&quot;&gt;From wikipedia's article on Homosexuality in Japan&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Military same-sex love&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From religious circles, same-sex love spread to&#xA;  the warrior (samurai) class, where it was customary for a boy in the&#xA;  wakashū age category to undergo training in the martial arts by&#xA;  apprenticing to a more experienced adult man. The man was permitted,&#xA;  if the boy agreed, to take the boy as his lover until he came of age;&#xA;  this relationship, often formalized in a &quot;brotherhood contract&quot;, was&#xA;  expected to be exclusive, with both partners swearing to take no other&#xA;  (male) lovers. This practice, along with clerical pederasty, developed&#xA;  into the codified system of age-structured homosexuality known as&#xA;  shudō, abbreviated from wakashūdo, the &quot;way (do) of wakashū&quot;. The&#xA;  older partner, in the role of nenja, would teach the wakashū martial&#xA;  skills, warrior etiquette, and the samurai code of honor, while his&#xA;  desire to be a good role model for his wakashū would lead him to&#xA;  behave more honorably himself; thus a shudō relationship was&#xA;  considered to have a &quot;mutually ennobling effect&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the attitude toward homosexuality has always been quite different from the western world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The historical words for describing the practice (in general, not only regarding samurais) are usually nanshoku (男色), shudō (衆道) and wakashudō (若衆道).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To better understand the concept, I'll add that shudō  衆道 (which is commonly translated as homosexuality) is composed by the kanji &lt;strong&gt;SHU&lt;/strong&gt; with kun reading (kun-yomi) &lt;em&gt;oo.i&lt;/em&gt;, with the meaning of many, great numbers (ooi it's the common adjective to say &quot;many&quot;, even if the kanji is rarely used), and &lt;strong&gt;DOU&lt;/strong&gt;, kun reading &lt;em&gt;michi&lt;/em&gt;, which is road, the same as in judo, taekwondo, kendo, bushido ecc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waka 若 is simply the kanji for young.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nanshoku 男色, translated literally, would be male-color. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2012-12-14T22:20:31.180" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T22:20:31.180" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1121" CreationDate="2012-11-29T12:50:18.867" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2012.719168&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A new study that I just found says that there apparently is no difference between pornography stars and the general population&lt;/a&gt; (i.e. the &quot;damaged goods&quot; hypothesis).  From the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The damaged goods hypothesis posits that female performers in the adult entertainment industry have higher rates of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), psychological problems, and drug use compared to the typical woman. The present study compared the self-reports of 177 porn actresses to a sample of women matched on age, ethnicity, and marital status. Comparisons were conducted on sexual behaviors and attitudes, self-esteem, quality of life, and drug use. Porn actresses were more likely to identify as bisexual, first had sex at an earlier age, had more sexual partners, were more concerned about contracting a sexually transmitted disease (STD), and enjoyed sex more than the matched sample, although there were no differences in incidence of CSA. In terms of psychological characteristics, porn actresses had higher levels of self-esteem, positive feelings, social support, sexual satisfaction, and spirituality compared to the matched group. Last, female performers were more likely to have ever used 10 different types of drugs compared to the comparison group. A discriminant function analysis was able to correctly classify 83% of the participants concerning whether they were a porn actress or member of the matched sample. These findings did not provide support for the damaged goods hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2012.719168&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An article on Slate discusses this a little more&lt;/a&gt;, and notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stern’s routine line of questioning has fueled the perception that all porn performers are victims of child sexual abuse, and that their career choices are the result of this unresolved past trauma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is more a case of confirmation bias and (as the Slate article states) some of the actresses lying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is a limited study in pornography (and I think even just the US industry).  This does not cover prostitution and other sex industry workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was too long for a comment, but I wanted to add this into the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2020-01-05T16:41:54.533" LastActivityDate="2020-01-05T16:41:54.533" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13856" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-29T13:48:36.010" Score="8" ViewCount="1315" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the following claims which can be found on several sites, including: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/?p=363422&quot;&gt;Dr. Orly Taitz Esquire's Defend Our Freedoms Foundation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread901397/pg3&quot;&gt;AboveTopSecret.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Obama administration intends to force gun control and a complete ban on all weapons for U.S. &#xA;  citizens through the signing of international treaties with foreign nations. By signing international treaties &#xA;  on gun control, the Obama administration can use the U.S. State Department to bypass the normal &#xA;  legislative process in Congress. Once the U.S. Government signs these international treaties, all U.S. &#xA;  citizens will be subject to those gun laws created by foreign governments. These are laws that have &#xA;  been developed and promoted by organizations such as the United Nations and individuals such as &#xA;  George Soros and Michael Bloomberg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10501" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-01T17:31:46.453" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T08:35:50.423" Title="Does a UN Treaty force gun control in the USA?" Tags="|united-states|politics|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13857" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17675" CreationDate="2012-11-29T14:12:13.043" Score="18" ViewCount="528" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the BBC article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20538776&quot;&gt;US piracy crackdown delayed until 2013&lt;/a&gt;, dated November 29, 2012:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;New Zealand claims that piracy has halved since it introduced a &quot;three strikes&quot; rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a little searching, it turns out by &quot;New Zealand&quot; the BBC means &quot;the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand&quot;, per the BBC article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18953353&quot;&gt;Three strikes rule has 'halved piracy' in New Zealand&lt;/a&gt; from July 23, 2012. I did not find any other source for the claim other than the RIANZ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any independent sources that verify the claims by the RIANZ that the three strikes rule has halved piracy since its introduction? If so, has the halving of piracy been persistent or was it a short-term effect (i.e. does the effect continue to today)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-12-03T21:49:12.610" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T07:22:20.403" Title="Has copyright piracy halved in New Zealand since their &quot;three strikes&quot; rule?" Tags="|law|technology|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13856" CreationDate="2012-11-29T14:40:31.317" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no truth to the main claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposed Arms Trade Treaty is not about taking away guns from citizens who own guns&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposed Arms Trade Treaty is not about changing citizens rights to buy own or sell guns to other citizens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposed Arms Trade Treaty is not about restricting legal trade in arms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/27/un-arms-trade-treaty-nra_n_1711578.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;U.N. Arms Trade Treaty Fails On U.S. Opposition After False NRA Gun Rights Threat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the treaty concerns &lt;em&gt;international&lt;/em&gt; arms sales, not the rights of any nation's citizens to own arms, nor to sell arms to citizens within it's borders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ignore the legal principle that says no treaty can override the Constitution or U.S. laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forbes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2012/07/10/the-u-n-arms-trade-treaty-are-our-2nd-amendment-rights-part-of-the-deal/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a press release issued by the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs says that “The outcome will not seek to prohibit citizens of any country from possessing firearms or to interfere with the legal trade in small arms and light weapons.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Snopes rates a similar text (starting after the Reuters quote) as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/untreaty.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;False&lt;/a&gt;, saying it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;erroneous in all its particulars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FactCheck looks at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factcheck.org/2009/12/international-gun-ban-treaty/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;issue&lt;/a&gt; as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Much of what this e-mail claims is simply false. A &quot;complete ban on all weapons for US citizens&quot; isn’t possible under our Constitution, according to the Supreme Court [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some versions of this claim (including those referenced) include two initial paragraphs attributed from Reuters. These are accurate, from an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/10/15/us-arms-usa-treaty-idUSTRE59E0Q920091015&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;October 14, 2009 article&lt;/a&gt;, but it isn't made clear where the Reuters text stops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UN Arms Trade Treaty, Article 6, prohibits sales to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Those subject to UN Embargo (e.g. N.Korea?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Illicit arms dealers (e.g. suppliers to Al-Qaeda?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People known to be planning genocide (e.g. Akuzu in Rwanda?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Article 7 requires the exporting country to assess if the recipient will use the arms to undermine peace or violate international law. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the relevant text from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.un.org/disarmament/ATT/docs/ATT_text_%28As_adopted_by_the_GA%29-E.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.un.org/disarmament/ATT/docs/ATT_text_(As_adopted_by_the_GA)-E.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Article 6 &#xA;  Prohibitions &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A State Party shall not authorize any transfer of conventional arms covered &#xA;  under Article 2 (1) or of items covered under Article 3 or Article 4, if the transfer &#xA;  would violate its obligations under measures adopted by the United Nations Security &#xA;  Council acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, in particular &#xA;  arms embargoes. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A State Party shall not authorize any transfer of conventional arms covered &#xA;  under Article 2 (1) or of items covered under Article 3 or Article 4, if the transfer &#xA;  would violate its relevant international obligations under international agreements to &#xA;  which it is a Party, in particular those relating to the transfer of, or illicit trafficking &#xA;  in, conventional arms. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A State Party shall not authorize any transfer of conventional arms covered &#xA;  under Article 2 (1) or of items covered under Article 3 or Article 4, if it has &#xA;  knowledge at the time of authorization that the arms or items would be used in the &#xA;  commission of genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva &#xA;  Conventions of 1949, attacks directed against civilian objects or civilians protected &#xA;  as such, or other war crimes as defined by international agreements to which it is a &#xA;  Party.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T08:35:50.423" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T08:35:50.423" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13839" CreationDate="2012-11-29T17:26:50.063" Score="17" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&amp;quot;Vets are allowed legally to treat humans although doctors cannot treat animals&amp;quot;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Treatment as &amp;quot;Practise Medicine&amp;quot;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the purposes of this answer I will interpret &amp;quot;treat humans&amp;quot; as &amp;quot;practise medicine&amp;quot; as I believe the latter is the relevant term in the UK which corresponds most closely with the intent of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Qualifications for Vets&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons &lt;a href=&quot;http://findavet.rcvs.org.uk/about-us/about-the-veterinary-profession/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;say&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;veterinary surgeons have the initials ‘MRCVS’ or ‘FRCVS’ after their names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This stands for member, or fellow, of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS), and indicates their registration with the RCVS, the regulatory body for veterinary surgeons in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title ‘veterinary surgeon’ is protected in law: only those who are registered with the RCVS can use the title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Meaning of &amp;quot;Practise medicine&amp;quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UK General Medical Council &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gmc-uk.org/doctors/licensing/faq_licence_to_practise.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The licence to practise gives a doctor the legal authority to undertake certain activities, for example prescribing and signing statutory certificates, which the law restricts to doctors registered with a licence to practise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Who can practice medicine in the UK&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UK General Medical Council &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gmc-uk.org/doctors/plab/before_you_apply.asp#practise&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before you can practise medicine in the UK you must be both registered and hold a licence to practise with the GMC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It follows that possession of MRCVS or FRCVS is insufficient to practise medicine on humans in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Other forms of treatment&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above definition of &amp;quot;Practise medicine&amp;quot; is quite narrow. There are other things doctors do which most people might consider falling into the practise of medicine or medical treatment of humans&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article on the GMC contains the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Medical_Council#Registering_doctors_to_practise_in_the_UK&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quote&lt;/a&gt; from a 2007 book titled &amp;quot;Medicine, patients and the law&amp;quot; by Emma Cave and Margaret Brazier:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The GMC maintains a register of medical practitioners. However, no law expressly prohibits any unregistered or unqualified person from practicing most types of medicine or even surgery. A criminal offence is committed only when such a person deliberately and falsely represents himself as being a registered practitioner or as having a medical qualification. The rationale of the criminal law is that people should be free to opt for any form of advice or treatment, however bizarre&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have access to this book and cannot comment on the sources used to justify this claim, my conclusion assumes the above is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no special exemption for vets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anybody can provide medical treatment for humans in the UK so long as they don't prescribe, don't sign certain statutory forms, don't falsely represent themselves as qualified doctors of medicine and don't falsely claim to be licensed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Can Doctors treat animals?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rcvs.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/code-of-professional-conduct-for-veterinary-nurses/supporting-guidance/treatment-of-animals-by-unqualified-persons/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only registered members of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons may practise veterinary surgery. ...&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;A number of exceptions apply ...&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;anyone administering emergency first aid to save life or relieve pain or suffering&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Overall conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone, including Doctors, can treat animals in emergencies (subject to important provisos)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone, including Vets, can treat humans (with some important restrictions)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T20:30:19.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13860" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13861" CreationDate="2012-11-29T17:42:36.010" Score="4" ViewCount="41963" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like the title say, I've always heard that, but I tried it but I can't really tell.&#xA;So is there any scientific evidence for or against it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2487" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-12T08:28:28.157" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T20:26:11.253" Title="Does chewing coffee grounds or beans give you more caffeine than drinking coffee?" Tags="|nutrition|coffee|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13861" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13860" CreationDate="2012-11-29T18:09:59.950" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only things I could find that seemed legitimate and not from forum posts about this was from these &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/476658-the-effects-of-eating-coffee-beans/&quot;&gt;Livestrong&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/536440-much-energy-can-eating-coffee-beans/&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/476658-the-effects-of-eating-coffee-beans/&quot;&gt;first article&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before people learned to brew coffee as a beverage, they ate coffee&#xA;  beans to get a boost of energy for hunts or while farming. Eating&#xA;  coffee beans has the same effects as drinking coffee. However, the&#xA;  effects are magnified because eating the beans provides all of the&#xA;  caffeine and other chemicals in coffee, not just what manages to drip&#xA;  through the filter. In addition, the active ingredients in coffee&#xA;  beans are quickly absorbed through the mucus membranes in the mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/536440-much-energy-can-eating-coffee-beans/&quot;&gt;second article&lt;/a&gt; talks about the amount of caffeine you can get from eating coffee beans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An average cup of coffee is made from approximately 25 beans and&#xA;  contains 75 mg of caffeine. So the brewed value of each bean is about&#xA;  3 mg. However, when you eat the bean, the amount is a little higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though neither article directly states the amount of caffeine that you will get, if you combine the information in both of the articles they state that you will get more caffeine as well as the other chemicals and nutrients of coffee by eating or chewing on the beans vs drinking coffee.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8691" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T18:09:59.950" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13862" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-29T19:05:45.210" Score="15" ViewCount="622" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;A drug addict can only be helped if he/she wants to be helped.&quot; - is a common advice/statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been any studies/research which either confirms or rejects this statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at for example: drug addicts that became clean / failed to become clean when under forced treatment, compared to drug addicts that became clean / failed when undertaking a voluntary treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10506" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T12:48:50.103" Title="Drug addiction: &quot;You can only help if the person wants to be helped&quot;" Tags="|addiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13542" CreationDate="2012-11-29T20:10:30.760" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not unique to Uzbekistan, and was a standard practice all through USSR. Older age schoolchildren and all college students, every single autmn, were forced to go &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%82%D0%BE%D1%88%D0%BA%D0%B0_%28%D1%81%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%80_%D1%83%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B0%D1%8F%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Na kartoshku&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (the best idiomatic translation I can think up is &quot;Go potatoing&quot;), which basically was mandatory yealy harvesting trips to the collective farms to help with whatever harvesting was needed (the term was always the same even when the crop in question had nothing to do with potatoes). In Russia, it usually was around September/October for college students and summertrime (~20 days) for school kids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that - since the average school years were 6/7 YO to 16/17 YO before 1990s reforms - even freshman college students would be under 18.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, in Uzbekistan it was/is a more heavy load, often with entire summer instead of 20/30 days, and presumably cotton picking is harder than other harvesting (citation needed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Having lived in USSR when everyone went potatoing :) The linked Wikipedia article has some sources, and Google has a lot more, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://naviny.by/rubrics/society/2004/08/28/ic_news_116_250065/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/328084/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2 - by Russian Premier Dmitry Medvedev]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.tut.by/society/313211.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt; but the phenomenon is basically a cultural artefact experienced by pretty much every citizen and therefore not worth referencing extensively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3V5pT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;ЭТО СОВЕТСКИЕ СТУДЕНТЫ, ЗАГНАННЫЕ НА КАРТОШКУ, Их огорчает твое желание жить в ссср&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-10-27T12:10:00.587" LastActivityDate="2017-10-27T12:10:00.587" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13862" CreationDate="2012-11-29T20:54:16.250" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Have there been any studies/research which either confirms or rejects this statement?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar_url?hl=en&amp;amp;q=http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.115.492%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf%23page%3D5&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;scisig=AAGBfm1i7qn9GV3QQJLdnhWBgHjpTpnETw&amp;amp;oi=scholarr&amp;amp;ei=Dcq3UK7HB-LD0QWR4oDIBg&amp;amp;ved=0CEkQgAMoATAA&quot;&gt;The Effectiveness of Coerced Treatment for Drug-Abusing Offenders&lt;/a&gt; - Federal Probation, June 1998 (direct PDF download) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general, our review of 11 empirical studies of compulsory&#xA;  substance abuse treatment supports the use of&#xA;  the criminal justice system as an effective source of&#xA;  treatment referral&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.usask.ca/SHORE/effectiveness%20of%20coerced%20addiction.pdf&quot;&gt;Effectiveness of coerced addiction treatment (alternative consequences)&#xA;A review of the clinical research&lt;/a&gt; Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, June 1999.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The preponderance of the research literature confirmed&#xA;  efficacy and cost benefits from coerced addiction treatment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-11-29T21:00:52.557" LastActivityDate="2012-11-29T21:00:52.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11249" CreationDate="2012-11-30T11:30:01.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Performance attribution is a very major field of ongoing research. The most simple method of skill gauging is to look at a linear model between the fund's periodic returns and a number of risk factors which are already known to be relevant to the cross-section of asset returns. If there is a statistically significant intercept estimate, then this is attributable to the skill of the manager. The reason for this is that the manager is seen as generating returns that are gained &lt;em&gt;beyond&lt;/em&gt; how much they're exposed to the specified risk factors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A typical specification for an equity fund would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iszga.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some evidence from a model similar to this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/k5Qwv.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if we accept the alpha generating model used in the table to be the equilibrium model, our answer is YES. However, the question always remains as to whether we've included all the relevant risk pricing factors into our model. If the manager was to concentrate on very high leverage and very illiquid firms then we might get a very large, positive and statistically significant alpha, even if this manager wasn't actually being skillful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with performance attribution to a &lt;strong&gt;single&lt;/strong&gt; fund is that asset prices are very random. For example, if we think of stock prices as evolving according to some stochastic process (such as Geometric Brownian motion):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XPHO3.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and we tell 1000 funds to invest randomly in a number of these processes ... Well, there will be a large proper subset of these that look &quot;skillful&quot; from the outside. Yet they just got lucky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Future questions of this sort are better suited on &lt;code&gt;quant.stackexchange.com&lt;/code&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some reading material:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1581559&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1581559&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I think it'd be more beneficial for you to simply google &quot;performance attribution&quot; (or an analogous string). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, hedge funds lack transparency, are very difficult to monitor, are very hard for retail clients to invest in (they cap the number of investors so that they can avoid SEC regulations), and so are not recommended for clients that aren't very sophisticated. They also attempt to gain large exposure to very specific risks so are not suitable for retail clients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other important points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A single fund with a high alpha doesn't mean much. You have to make sure that the equilibrium model is correctly specified. Also you will have 5% type-1 errors due to the definition of p-values.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You have to take into account transaction costs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are many many other ways to measure performance. I've described only one way to measure performance from an external stand-point. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10516" LastEditorUserId="10516" LastEditDate="2012-11-30T13:28:43.503" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T13:28:43.503" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13874" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-11-30T14:37:27.087" Score="49" ViewCount="28476" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=%22India+never+invaded+any+country+in+her+last+10%2C000+years+of+history%22&amp;amp;oq=%22India+never+invaded+any+country+in+her+last+10%2C000+years+of+history%22&quot;&gt;common claim&lt;/a&gt; that India hasn't invaded any other country in the past 10,000 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been repeated in chain mails and various web-sites: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theholidayspot.com/indian_independence_day/facts.htm&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://isa.cs.txstate.edu/new/aboutindia.html&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;India never invaded any country in her last 10,000 years of history&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other variations exist, such as 5,000 or 1,000 or 100,000 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these claims true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If 10,000 years is too much into the infancy of civilization, what about 5000 years when civilization was more established?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-30T16:27:42.323" LastActivityDate="2020-05-18T14:09:48.440" Title="Has India invaded any country in the last 10,000 years?" Tags="|history|india|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13874" CreationDate="2012-11-30T15:27:02.510" Score="98" Body="&lt;h1&gt;1971&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the Impression India did a little bit of invading in 1971&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nLSwK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;map&quot; /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-Pakistani_war_of_1971&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After building tensions during the  Bangladesh Liberation war, Pakistan launched a pre-emptive attack against India, which responded with air-strikes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This marked the official start of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the immediate mobilisation of troops and launched the full-scale &lt;strong&gt;invasion&lt;/strong&gt;. This involved Indian forces in a massive coordinated air, sea, and land assault. Indian Air Force started flying sorties against Pakistan from midnight. The main Indian objective on the western front was to prevent Pakistan from entering Indian soil. There was no Indian intention of conducting any major offensive into West Pakistan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The invasion didn't last long but troops crossed international borders and engaged in armed conflict with the government of a foreign nation, forcing its surrender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;1948&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as Richard Terret points out above,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vEthT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Hyderabad invaded&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[In 1948] the Indian Armed Forces &lt;strong&gt;invaded&lt;/strong&gt; the State of Hyderabad and ended the rule of Nizam, annexing the state into the Indian Union.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/the-fall-of-hyderabad&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Fall of Hyderabad&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_annexation_of_Hyderabad&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Indian annexation of Hyderabad&lt;/a&gt; (Operation Polo).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;1944&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the question asks about the last 10,000 years, we can consider examples prior to the establishment of India as a fully independent state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1944 Indian troops participated in the invasion of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India_in_World_War_II#The_invasion_of_Italy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Italy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it was hoped that the &lt;strong&gt;invasion&lt;/strong&gt; would distract German attention and forces from France.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next attempt or Second Battle of Cassino&#xA;was made by Lieutenant-General Sir Bernard&#xA;Freyberg’s newly formed New Zealand Corps,&#xA;consisting of Major-General Tuker’s &lt;strong&gt;4th Indian&#xA;Division&lt;/strong&gt; and the 2nd New Zealand Division.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.veterans-uk.info/pdfs/publications/comm_booklets/monte_cassino.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Battles for Monte Casino&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe this is a case of irregular verb conjugation: &lt;em&gt;I liberate; You invade; He, She or It fight a border war&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Terminology&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of commenters have attempted to dispute the inclusion of the events above on several grounds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's not an invasion if your motives are good.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's not an invasion if the target is somehow not a country.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Invasion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Motivation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Motivation is irrelevant. In 1944 Britain and the USA invaded France†. At that time France was governed by a French government (the Vichy government) put in place by the Nazis. The British motivation was the liberation of France from Nazi occupation. They invaded France at the request of the Free-French government in exile. Their motives were good and their actions after 1945 proved this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it was still an invasion and described as such. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.winstonchurchill.org/learn/speeches/speeches-of-winston-churchill/116-the-invasion-of-france&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Target&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word invasion can validly be used where the target is not a country. For example, when a burglar enters my house, it is described as a home invasion. When a journalist listens to the phone messages of a member of the public it is described as an invasion of privacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the intent of the question obviously is aimed at violent military takeover of foreign territory. (foreign meaning outside the internationally recognised borders of the invading force)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Country&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In English, the words Country, Nation and State are often used interchangeably. There is a great deal of dispute about what constitutes a country and how many exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example which of England, Britain, Great Britain and the United Kingdom are or are not countries? If I invade London, am I simultaneously invading one, two, three or four countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example: Is the Principality of Monaco a country? Would it be nonsense to ask  whether Monaco has ever been or could be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Monaco#Sovereignty&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;invaded&lt;/a&gt;? Would any violent military takeover of Monaco by a foreign country not count as an invasion under any circumstances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The intent of the above question is best addressed by interpreting country to mean something like the kind of independent sovereign states recognised by the U.N. We should not get hung up over terms like &amp;quot;principality&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;princely state&amp;quot; - we should consider whether they meet common criteria such as internationally recognised borders, independent government and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Footnotes&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;† A great many other nations participated in the invasion of France (or in its liberation if you prefer), I haven't listed them all for brevity - not from a lack of recognition or respect for the scale and value of their contribution and losses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-08-19T16:19:06.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13877" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13878" CreationDate="2012-11-30T17:06:31.813" Score="28" ViewCount="4102" Body="&lt;p&gt;This image from &lt;a href=&quot;http://truth-saves.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Truth Saves&lt;/a&gt; is a little tongue-in-cheek but it makes claims to the real origins of several modern Christmas related traditions such as the tree and carols. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TPJ5D.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You don't need to believe in&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Yule&lt;/strong&gt;, the Scandinavian fertility god, to enjoy the tradition of Yuletide carols and greetings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You don't need to be a &#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Wiccan&lt;/strong&gt; to enjoy the tradition of wreaths or decking the halls with holly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You don't need to be a &lt;strong&gt;Druid&lt;/strong&gt; to enjoy the tradition of hoping for a kiss under the mistletoe.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You don't need to believe in the god &lt;strong&gt;Saturn&lt;/strong&gt; to enjoy the tradition of decorating a Saturnalia tree in your home.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You don't need to believe in &lt;strong&gt;Thor, Odin or St. Nicholas&lt;/strong&gt; to enjoy the tradition of a visitor bringing gifts at night.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You don't need to believe in &lt;strong&gt;Sleipnir&lt;/strong&gt;, Odin's flying 8-legged horse, to enjoy the tradition of listening for the sound of hooves on your roof top.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You don't need to believe in &lt;strong&gt;Mithras&lt;/strong&gt; to enjoy the tradition of celebrating the sun's rebirth on December 25th.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;And you don't need to believe in &lt;strong&gt;Jesus Christ&lt;/strong&gt; to enjoy the tradition of renaming this ancient holiday to Christ's Mass.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All you need to enjoy these winter festivities is to be merry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone have the skills to find out if they are all indeed the inarguable origins?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10523" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T20:06:40.950" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T22:13:36.113" Title="Do Christmas celebrations have these diverse non-Christian origins?" Tags="|history|religion|jesus-christ|christmas|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13877" CreationDate="2012-11-30T17:42:28.600" Score="41" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yule&lt;/strong&gt;: The word Yule comes into Modern English from the Old English ġéol and was a festival occurring around the Winter Solstice. &#xA;See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/yule&quot;&gt;Merriam Webster&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yule&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;strong&gt;Conclusion: False&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wicca&lt;/strong&gt;: There is no good reason to believe that Wicca predates Gerald Gardner in the 1950s (see Hutton's &lt;em&gt;Triumph of the Moon&lt;/em&gt; and Aidan A. Kelly's &lt;em&gt;Crafting the Art of Magic&lt;/em&gt;). &lt;strong&gt;Conclusion: False&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Druid&lt;/strong&gt;: The druids were religious figures within the cultures of Iron Age peoples who spoke Celtic languages. Saturnalia was a Roman pagan festival. &#xA;See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page on Saturnalia&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druids&quot;&gt;Druids&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Conclusion: False.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Odin and Slepnir:&lt;/strong&gt; There are clear influences on the pre-Coca-Cola-era Santa Claus that came from these figures. See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus#Influence_of_Germanic_paganism_and_folklore&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Conclusion: True&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mithras&lt;/strong&gt;: Mithras was associated with the sun and the celebration of the Sol Invictus was on the 25th of December. However this festival was not exclusive to Mithras. See: Wikipedia pages of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithras#Rituals_and_worship&quot;&gt;Mithras&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Invictus&quot;&gt;Sol Invictus&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Conclusion: True.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While some of these are false, the fact remains that people do not like to let go of old habits and traditions just because they have converted to a new religion or when abandoning religion all together. Most of the traditions we associated today with Christmas have some sort of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas#Pre-Christian_background&quot;&gt;origin in pre-Christian folk customs or religious traditions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, I would not be willing to argue the veracity of every one of those points but that does not invalidate the point it is trying to make. As an atheist, I celebrate Christmas because it is a part of the culture I was raised in and has very good moral ideas associated with it. I don't have to believe in ghosts, zombies, and demons to have fun celebrating Halloween and I certainly don't need to be religious to think that the traditions of Christmas are a great way to spend time with my family. I don't have to believe in Valkyries to find Wagner beautiful, right? And I don't have to believe in the Christian god to continue and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;adapt&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; the traditions of my ancestors who did the same with the traditions of their ancestors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10524" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T22:13:36.113" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T22:13:36.113" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13879" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13881" CreationDate="2012-11-30T19:00:51.410" Score="8" ViewCount="446" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a profile article published in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.cyprus-mail.com/profileneuroscientist-john-stein/profile-neuroscientist-john-stein/20121129&quot;&gt; Cyprus Mail newspaper (Nov. 2012)&lt;/a&gt;,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stein_%28physiologist%29&quot;&gt;Dr John Stein&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physiol.ox.ac.uk/~jfs/&quot;&gt;Emeritus Professor of Physiology &amp;amp; Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford&lt;/a&gt;, claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“a quarter of people in Western societies will get some mental disorder at some point during their life”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This number sounds exaggerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which are the facts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-11-30T22:17:16.683" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T17:25:50.487" Title="Will 25% of people in Western society develop a mental disorder during their life?" Tags="|medical-science|psychiatry|epidemiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13879" CreationDate="2012-11-30T22:37:35.230" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it likely depends on definitions of mental disorder and the diagnostic procedure (especially on the eve of a new edition of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-5&quot;&gt;DSM&lt;/a&gt;), this number is not too high. &lt;strong&gt;It is too low.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;R.V. Bijl á A. Ravelli á G. van Zessen, &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs001270050098?LI=true#page-1&quot;&gt;Prevalence of psychiatric disorder in the general population:&#xA;results of the Netherlands Mental Health Survey&#xA;and Incidence Study (NEMESIS)&lt;/a&gt;, Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol (1998) 33: 587-595&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this study 7076 Dutch adults were interviewed and given a psychiatric assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some 41.2% of the adult population under 65 had&#xA;  experienced at least one DSM-III-R disorder in their&#xA;  lifetime, among them 23.3% within the preceding year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this doesn't even include the second part of their lives after the interview. So the lifetime risk is likely to be considerably higher than 41.2%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Table 1, they break it down to show major contributors include Major Depression (15.4%),  Alcohol Abuse (11.7%) and Simple Phobias (10.1%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hagnell, Olle, &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1966-11364-000&quot;&gt;A prospective study of the incidence of mental disorder.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Oxford, England: Svenska Bokfoerlaget. (1966). 175 pp. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Attempts to measure the incidence of mental disorders in a Swedish population, based on 24,000 person years observed. The estimated cumulated risk of developing a mental illness for men is 43%; for women, 73%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given these studies, the estimate of 25% lifetime incidence of mental disorders is low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T22:37:35.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1154" CreationDate="2012-11-30T22:56:30.837" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I came across some news that reminded me of this question I posed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This news report is from a Portuguese TV channel and it does confirm that this saying is a myth, the origin of which seems to be rooted around the fact that in the past people used to steal oranges during the night. The saying was designed to discourage this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rtp.pt/noticias/index.php?article=405638&amp;amp;tm=2&amp;amp;layout=122&amp;amp;visual=61&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Comer laranja à noite não faz mal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The news report also mentions studies that have been made that confirm this as a myth although it doesn't say which studies specifically.&#xA;The dietitian on this report does mention that the orange can have a stimulant effect that could raise blood pressure slightly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have since found other posts that also confirm this saying as a myth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e9cvxZD58Y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mitos e Crenças: A laranja de manhã é ouro, à tarde é prata e à&#xA;noite mata!&lt;/a&gt; - (Harvard Medical School-Portugal)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mitos-alimentares.blogspot.com/2007/03/comer-laranja-noite-faz-mal.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Comer laranja à noite faz mal?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jn.pt/PaginaInicial/Sociedade/Saude/Interior.aspx?content_id=2451640&amp;amp;page=-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Médico quebra mitos sobre a saúde&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="928" LastActivityDate="2012-11-30T22:56:30.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13584" CreationDate="2012-12-01T08:59:15.553" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may have some anticancerous effect. A group of scientists at Harvard School of Public Health published their &lt;a href=&quot;http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2011/10/03/1055-9965.EPI-11-0766.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt; stating that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fewer than 4 cups of coffee per day were not associated with endometrial cancer risk. However, women who consumed 4 or more cups of coffee had 25% lower risk of endometrial cancer than those who consumed less than 1 cup per day (multivariable RR = 0.75; 95% CI = 0.57–0.97; Ptrend = 0.02). We found the similar association with caffeinated coffee consumption (RR for ≥4 vs. &amp;lt;1 cup/d = 0.70; 95% CI = 0.51–0.95). For decaffeinated coffee consumption, a suggestive inverse association was found among women who consumed 2 or more cups per day versus &amp;lt;1 cup/mo. Tea consumption was not associated with endometrial cancer risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3343" LastActivityDate="2012-12-01T08:59:15.553" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13887" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-01T09:26:06.337" Score="13" ViewCount="1001" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the light of a recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/savita-death-irish-church-breaks-silence-calls-it-a-terrible-disaster/1/230060.html&quot;&gt;death of a pregnant woman in Ireland&lt;/a&gt;, it has been heard in the print and electronics media that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/18/savita-halappanavar-death-abortion-ireland-change&quot;&gt;she was denied abortion&lt;/a&gt; because Ireland is a Catholic country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her repeated requests for a termination were refused, he said, as the foetal heartbeat remained. And he said they were told this was so because &quot;this is a Catholic country&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do Catholic medical ethics not allow abortion? It didn't sound realistic to me since it becomes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/10/19/abortion-mother-life-walsh/1644839/&quot;&gt;sometimes necessary&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10373" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-01T13:18:23.590" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T04:28:42.890" Title="Does the Catholic Church prohibit abortion?" Tags="|medical-science|catholic-church|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13887" CreationDate="2012-12-01T09:50:44.527" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The official position of the Catholic Church is pretty clear: they consider abortion to be murder. Though this doesn't mean that all Catholics agree with the official position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the encyclica &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/edocs/ENG0141/__PQ.HTM#%241I&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evangelium vitae&lt;/a&gt; from Pope John Paul II:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;58: Among all the crimes which can be committed against life, procured abortion has characteristics making it particularly serious and&#xA;  deplorable. The Second Vatican Council defines abortion, together with&#xA;  infanticide, as an &quot;unspeakable crime&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;61: The texts of Sacred Scripture never address the question of deliberate abortion and so do not directly and specifically condemn&#xA;  it. But they show such great respect for the human being in the&#xA;  mother's womb that they require as a logical consequence that God's&#xA;  commandment &quot;You shall not kill&quot; be extended to the unborn child as&#xA;  well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a5.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;From the catechism of the catholic church&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the&#xA;  moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human&#xA;  being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among&#xA;  which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of&#xA;  every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains&#xA;  unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either&#xA;  as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2272 Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense.&#xA;  The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this&#xA;  crime against human life. &quot;A person who procures a completed abortion&#xA;  incurs excommunication latae sententiae,&quot; &quot;by the very commission of&#xA;  the offense,&quot; and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law.&#xA;  The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy.&#xA;  Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the&#xA;  irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as&#xA;  to the parents and the whole of society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2273 The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual&#xA;  is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2013-07-25T19:16:50.283" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T19:16:50.283" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5202" CreationDate="2012-12-01T12:21:16.900" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to the points raised by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/5215/37236&quot;&gt;the other answer&lt;/a&gt;, the quote you provided is also seemingly historically inaccurate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This [Catholic] Church has been guided by the Holy Spirit and protected from teaching error on issues of faith and morals from generation to generation for some two thousand years, as Our Lord Jesus promised: (foretold Isaiah 22:15-25) Matt 16:13-20; Matthew 18:15-18 (in this verse the word is church, not community); 1 Tim 3:15.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the &lt;strong&gt;infallibility of the Pope was &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;only formally defined in 1870&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-04-13T18:34:29.967" LastActivityDate="2021-04-13T18:34:29.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13891" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14712" CreationDate="2012-12-01T17:32:40.050" Score="8" ViewCount="4083" Body="&lt;p&gt;High-intensity, broad-spectrum light has been an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder#Treatment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;effective therapy&lt;/a&gt; for Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). More recently and less proven &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/1589/4055&quot;&gt;blue light therapy&lt;/a&gt; has stemmed from the discover of ganglion cells that do not contribute to sight but are sensitive to blue light. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/review/ROUGHHG37NR8O/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;ASIN=B001HTM95M&amp;amp;linkCode=&amp;amp;nodeID=&amp;amp;tag=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon.com reviews&lt;/a&gt; for a commercial blue light therapy product suggest that a side-effect of intense blue-light therapy is a contribution to Age-related Macular Degeneration (AMD), but no references are cited.* &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there scientific consensus—or even solid evidence—that blue light therapy contributes to AMD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;* There is a reference to a Science article on the contribution of light therapy in general to AMD, but not a citation and it is apparently not specific to blue light therapy. &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4055" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2018-12-17T14:03:45.880" Title="Can blue light therapy contribute to Age-related Macular Degeneration?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|light|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13896" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13897" CreationDate="2012-12-02T13:56:33.220" Score="5" ViewCount="905" Body="&lt;p&gt;My parents went to a nutritionist, who tested their blood and diagnosed them with a dozen of 'delayed food allergies'. They are told that consuming any quantities these substances (which include tea, coffee, chocolate, meat, for example) reduces their general health and increases risks of particular diseases. &#xA;I was struggling to find medical data on this topic - almost every website that pops up is from a nutritionist website and contains hardly any references. &#xA;Is anyone here able to provide some relevant papers or information about the topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="503" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-02T20:33:58.330" LastActivityDate="2018-03-26T15:47:20.107" Title="Are delayed food allergies a recognized medical condition?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|allergies|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13896" CreationDate="2012-12-02T14:08:21.290" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Delayed Food Allergy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Delayed Food Allergy&amp;quot; does seem to be known to medical science&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10889481&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Treatment of delayed food allergy based on specific immunoglobulin G RAST testing.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This preliminary, descriptive study after extensive clinical experience demonstrates specific IgG food RASTs done in 114 consecutive patients with strong positive histories for delayed food allergy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as Fabian points out in a comment, there are only a handful of mentions of this term in scientific papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Delayed Hypersensitivity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more widely used term may be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_IV_hypersensitivity&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Delayed Hypersensitivity&lt;/a&gt; or Type IV hypersensitivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Allergies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Tests/allergytests.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Allergies: Dubious&#xA;Diagnosis and Treatment&lt;/a&gt; on Quackwatch&#xA;it is asserted that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;scientific studies have found that only about 6% of children and &lt;strong&gt;1-2% of adults&lt;/strong&gt; actually have a food allergy, and most people with food allergies are allergic to &lt;strong&gt;less than four foods&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct way to assess a suspected food allergy or intolerance is to begin with a careful record of food intake and symptoms over a period of several weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proper medical evaluation—done best by an allergist—will include careful review of your history and skin testing with food extracts (using a prick or puncture technique) to see whether an allergic mechanism is involved in your symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional information on food allergies and food intolerance is offered &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/igg-food-intolerance-tests-what-does-the-science-say/#more-18957&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;from an article at Science-Based Medicine&lt;/a&gt;. The author is a pharmacist and the article is well-referenced. Here are a few excerpts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to food intolerance testing, blood tests are just the start. Other methods used include vega testing, the K-Test, hair testing,and  applied kinesiology. But the blood tests are enjoying new popularity... Hemocode is just one of several blood tests that’s marketed. There’s also the YorkTest in the United Kingdom and also Canada. The Hemocode is an IgG blood test. The YorkTest is also an IgG test. There is no published information in the literature that describes either the Hemocode or the Yorktest, or their analytic validity for any of the products tested for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Food allergies are reaction to food proteins. They may be categorized as immunoglobulin E (IgE)–mediated (immediate) reactions, non–IgE-mediated (delayed) hypersensitivity reactions, and mixed reactions. IgE-mediated reactions are the ones we worry about when we hear about a “food allergy”: flushing, itchy skin, wheezing, vomiting, throat swelling, and even anaphylaxis... IgG molecules mediate interactions of cells with different cellular and humoral mechanisms. IgG antibodies signify exposure to products—not allergy. IgG may actually be a marker for food tolerance, not intolerance, some research suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At present, there are no reliable and validated clinical tests for the diagnosis of food intolerance. While intolerances are non-immune by definition, IgG testing is actively promoted for diagnosis, and to guide management. These tests lack both a sound scientific rationale and evidence of effectiveness. The lack of correlation between results and actual symptoms, and the risks resulting from unnecessary food avoidance, escalate the potential for harm from this test. Further, there is no published clinical evidence to support the use of IgG tests to determine the need for vitamins or supplements. In light of the lack of clinical relevance, and the potential for harm resulting from their use, allergy and immunology organizations worldwide advise against the use of IgG testing for food intolerance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T16:21:55.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13898" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13899" CreationDate="2012-12-02T14:56:53.957" Score="12" ViewCount="15637" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today I came across this picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IG9cp.png&quot; alt=&quot;bullfrogs do not sleep&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I searched a bit about it. In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_don%27t_bullfrogs_sleep&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wiki answer&lt;/a&gt; it is stated that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bullfrogs do sleep. They sleep underground from 2- 4 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounded ok, but in this website, &lt;a href=&quot;http://frogmatters.wordpress.com/tag/bullfrog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;frogmatters&lt;/a&gt;, it&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; says the opposite, thus confirming the picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] “The bullfrog is the only animal that never sleeps.” That’s as in N-E-V-E-R. Here’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasmus.co.za/Culna/Culna57/GgDouglas.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an explanation&lt;/a&gt; from Rod Douglas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although that link does not work, &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20060923041802/http://www.nasmus.co.za/Culna/Culna57/GgDouglas.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; archived link does work. In Chacha.com, the answer says they &lt;em&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chacha.com/question/why-dont-bullfrogs-sleep&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bullfrogs (Rana catesbeiana) seem not to fulfill sensory threshold criteria of sleep during resting states&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the real deal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1: Search for the post &lt;em&gt;&quot;Sleep deprivation of frogs and bloggers, and the hidden meaning of Jeremiah was a bullfrog.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4727" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-12-03T04:57:42.273" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T15:55:15.300" Title="Do bullfrogs sleep?" Tags="|zoology|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13898" CreationDate="2012-12-02T15:28:20.177" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060216&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is Sleep Essential?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (2008):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been argued that the assumption that sleep is universal is based on poor evidence &lt;sup&gt;&lt;strong&gt;7)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. &lt;br&gt;Summary of some of the “difficult” cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IPwtm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sleep&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The bullfrog is often promoted as an example of an animal that does not sleep. There is, however, only one study on this topic, published in 1967 &lt;sup&gt;23)&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This report concluded that bullfrogs do not sleep because even during the resting phase they never failed to show a change in respiratory responses after painful stimuli (cutaneous shock).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same report acknowledged that arousal thresholds could not be measured during the cyclic phases with the lowest respiratory activity, nor could they be tested with other physiological stimuli, such as light or sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the underlying assumption in that study was that shocks delivered late at night (presumably in the middle of sleep) should elicit less respiratory response than those given early in the night (when sleep had just started); however, the opposite was found &lt;sup&gt;23)&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, we now know that in rodents and humans the deepest sleep occurs early after sleep onset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At the very least, it seems that more experiments are needed before concluding that bullfrogs do not sleep.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7)&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18328577&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Siegel JM (2008) Do all animals sleep. Trends Neurosci 31: 208–213&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;23)&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/eeg/article/0013-4694%2867%2990150-2/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hobson JA (1967) Electrographic correlates of behavior in the frog with special reference to sleep. Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol 22: 113–121.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For details on the other references given in the picture above&lt;/em&gt; [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060216#references&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;click here&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://askabiologist.asu.edu/plosable/who-needs-sleep-anyway&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask a Biologist&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(Arizona State University)&lt;/em&gt; summarises it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bullfrog was chosen as an animal that doesn’t sleep because when tested for responsiveness by being shocked, it had the same reaction whether awake or resting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;there were some problems with how the bullfrogs were tested.  These problems convinced the scientists there wasn’t enough evidence that bullfrogs didn’t sleep.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-02T15:38:12.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13900" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14038" CreationDate="2012-12-02T18:48:15.373" Score="6" ViewCount="464" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/17951015/&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; describing  the effects of radiation on the human genome at peaks of solar cycles it is claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Those born in peaks of solar cycles lived an average of 1.5 years (CL 1.3-1.7) less than those born in non-peak years. Males were more sensitive to this phenomenon than females.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical&amp;sup1;  of this claim, so I wonder if real evidences exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&amp;sup1; The cosmic ray flux in the inner solar system is anticorrelated with the overall level of solar activity.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2012-12-03T00:16:27.727" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T10:50:07.867" Title="Do solar cycles influence life expectancy?" Tags="|life-expectancy|epidemiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13902" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-03T05:10:50.510" Score="19" ViewCount="77665" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep hearing this claim that a lab &quot;rat has 99% of the DNA of a human?&quot; Is that so? What exactly does this mean? &lt;a href=&quot;http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/12/04/coolsc.coolsc.mousegenome/&quot;&gt;One source for this claim seems to CNN&lt;/a&gt; which only says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;About 99 percent of genes in humans have counterparts in the mouse,&quot; said Eric Lander, Director of the Whitehead Institute Center for Genomic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. &quot;Eighty percent have identical, one-to-one counterparts.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It further says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mice and humans each have about 30,000 genes, yet only 300 are unique to either organism. Both even have genes for a tail, even though it's not &quot;switched on&quot; in humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/genetic-breakthrough-that-reveals-the-differences-between-humans-425432.html&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; says we only share 96% with chimps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another implication of the finding is that we are more different to our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, than previously assumed from earlier studies. Instead of being 99 per cent similar, we are more likely to be about 96 per cent similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not 99% as the original claim, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2352-just-25-of-dna-turns-mice-into-men.html&quot;&gt;here is a source along the same lines at 97.5% of their (&lt;em&gt;working&lt;/em&gt;) &lt;em&gt;DNA&lt;/em&gt; of humans.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mice and men share about 97.5 per cent of their &lt;em&gt;working&lt;/em&gt; DNA, just one per cent less than chimps and humans. The new estimate is based on the comparison of mouse chromosome 16 with human DNA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y19BDReuXzE#t=51m50s&quot;&gt;this video about Michio Kaku&lt;/a&gt; you can see the claim repeated too by &lt;a href=&quot;http://buckinstitute.org/campisiLab&quot;&gt;Judith Campisi, PhD, Professor&lt;/a&gt; at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://buckinstitute.org/&quot;&gt;Buck Institute for Age Research&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Think of this: mice and humans, we're 97% genetically identical. Mice live three years; Humans live a hundred years. And, somewhere in that 3% of genes are regulators that determine the pace at which these two pretty similar organisms age.&quot; - Judith Campisi&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T21:32:26.953" LastActivityDate="2018-01-24T18:40:08.973" Title="Do humans share 99% of their DNA with rats?" Tags="|genetics|dna|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13903" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13908" CreationDate="2012-12-03T06:00:38.343" Score="7" ViewCount="3862" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthshare.com.au/questions/46295-do-our-bodies-absorb-warm-water-quicker-than-cold-water&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;, it was mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;there may be advantages in drinking cold water for weight loss&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does drinking cold water really help to reduce weight? and does drinking warm water really help to increase weight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8840" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2012-12-03T10:38:21.780" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T16:19:30.020" Title="Does drinking cold water help to reduce weight?" Tags="|water|weight-loss|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13903" CreationDate="2012-12-03T06:11:45.727" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, drinking cold-water may help with weight loss, however this will probably be less effective than you'd like, and almost ineffective if used in isolation of greater diet reform and exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_temperature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Human operates at around 37.0°C (98.6°F)&lt;/a&gt;. This is called the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_temperature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;operating temperature&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. When the temperature of the body drops, the body must &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoregulation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;work harder (thermoregulate)&lt;/a&gt; to raise that temperature back to 98.6°F. It's just thermodynamics though. &quot;Cold water&quot; lowers your body temperature and because humans are warm blooded, your body will modify your metabolism to raise your body temperature: think a biological heater. This requires energy -- in dietary terms, calories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/diet-fitness/weight-loss/question447.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Discovery Health and Fitness estimates this to be 70 Calories (292 kJ) a day&lt;/a&gt; if you drink eight 8-ounce glasses (1.9L) of 0°C ice water. Some fluids will require more energy for your body to raise to body temperature, some will require less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-03T16:19:30.020" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T16:19:30.020" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13907" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13948" CreationDate="2012-12-03T10:55:09.697" Score="14" ViewCount="5246" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;https://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/6652/when-is-a-banana-ripe-enough-to-not-cause-constipation&quot;&gt;Parenting SE question&lt;/a&gt; there seem to be two opposite claims made: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A +7 answer claims that banana ripeness has no effect on constipation (I'm leaving aside the second, obvious claim that drinking enough liquids does). But it has zero refrences to back it up.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A zero score answer claims the opposite, but its reference is eHow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a proper research that addresses this (ceterus parabus, e.g. you drink a &quot;normal&quot; amount of water in either case)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it matters, we can restrict the answer to children, toddlers or infants, as that was the scope of the original question; though I would prefer an answer that isn't age-restricted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:41:15.657" LastActivityDate="2020-08-19T00:05:17.250" Title="Does the ripeness of a banana have any effect on causing constipation?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|natural-remedies|herbalism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13903" CreationDate="2012-12-03T12:15:53.513" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;: No, not to any large extent - the effects are swamped by other, much larger  factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clive M. Brown, Abdul G. Dulloo and Jean-Pierre Montani, &lt;a href=&quot;http://jcem.endojournals.org/content/91/9/3598.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Water-Induced Thermogenesis Reconsidered: The Effects of Osmolality and Water Temperature on Energy Expenditure after Drinking&lt;/a&gt;, The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology &amp;amp; Metabolism September 1, 2006 vol. 91 no. 9 3598-3602, doi: 10.1210/jc.2006-0407&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this study, the energy expenditure of some young subjects were measured before and after drinking 500mL of distilled water, saline, sucrose and cold (3&amp;deg;C) water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cooling the water before drinking only stimulated a small thermogenic response, well below the theoretical energy cost of warming the water to body temperature. These results cast doubt on water as a thermogenic agent for the management of obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Warning: The abstract does not detail the size of the sample, except noting it was a subgroup of the main experiment.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, we are talking about the human body, so it is more complicated than that. If you want to lose weight by increasing your energy expenditure, exercise is a major factor. If you want to exercise for long periods, ensuring you aren't dehydrated is a major factor. Which brings us to another effect of water temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Patricia C. Szlyk, Ingrid V. Sils, Ralph P. Francesconi, Roger W. Hubbard, Lawrence E. Armstrong, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0031938489900851&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effects of water temperature and flavoring on voluntary dehydration in men&lt;/a&gt;, Physiology &amp;amp; Behavior, Volume 45, Issue 3, March 1989, Pages 639–647, doi: 10.1016/0031-9384(89)90085-1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourteen men were offered 15°C water, 40°C water, 15°C flavored water, and 40°C flavored water while doing six hours (on-and-off) of treadmill exercise. The men were divided into two based on whether they tended to replenish the weight lost through sweat (&quot;Drinkers&quot; or D) or not (&quot;Reluctant Drinkers&quot; or RD). Both groups drank significantly more water when it was cold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compared to the warm water trial, 6 hr consumption of cool water was significantly increased in both D (59%) and RD (141%) and [body-weight] loss was dramatically reduced in both groups.  [...]  The results of this study indicate that either flavoring or cooling warm water will enhance fluid intake and reduce body weight deficits in men reluctant to drink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: The short-term body-weight loss here is presumably mainly water-loss not fat-loss.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of cold varies between the two studies cited. Which brings us to another interesting study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;D. Boulze, P. Montastruc, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0031938483900446&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Water intake, pleasure and water temperature in humans&lt;/a&gt;, Physiology &amp;amp; Behavior, Volume 30, Issue 1, January 1983, Pages 97–102&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They offered water at a range of temperatures to some people dehydrated through sweating or mountain climbing, measured how much they drank, and asked what they preferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subjects rated the coldest water as more pleasurable, but drank more when they drank it at 15&amp;deg;C. If given the opportunity to mix the water to a drinkable temperature, they also chose 14.9&amp;deg;C. This contradiction between drinking the most at 15&amp;deg;C but rating 0&amp;deg;C as more pleasurable was attributed to the volunteers being too hot as well as dehydrated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cold water was therefore both more pleasureable and less drunk. Dehydration resulted in a negative alliesthesia for warm water. Positive alliesthesia for cold water was probably the result of hyperthermia rather than dehydration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are expecting significant weight-loss due to colder water requiring more energy to heat up, you will be disappointed at the effect size. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are expecting significant weight-loss due to exercise, you will rehydrate yourself better with water at 15&amp;deg;C - you probably don't need for a thermometer to figure that out - you will want to drink it at that temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;But if you are hot, ice cold water tastes best.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T12:15:53.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13902" CreationDate="2012-12-03T15:25:23.210" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;We share &lt;a href=&quot;http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask404&quot;&gt;a large amount of our DNA in common with all mammals&lt;/a&gt; through our shared evolutionary past. But I think you have confused two different ideas. Sharing 99% of genes is not the same as sharing 99% of DNA. While we may have nearly the same number and type of genes (i.e. rat genes have counterparts in the human genome) it does not mean that these genes are completely identical. They are comparing the number and function of the genes only.They are NOT comparing the actual DNA sequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the article linked above, it states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Genes only make up about 3% of our genome. Yes, you read that&#xA;  correctly. The rest of our genome is called non-coding or junk DNA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a more up-to-date explanation of junk DNA see &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-09-05/national/35495178_1_human-genome-ewan-birney-european-bioinformatics-institute&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;‘Junk DNA’ concept debunked by new analysis of human genome&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; in the Washington Post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is not correct to confuse the ideas of number/function of genes with actual similarity of DNA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the article &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.genome.gov/11511308&quot;&gt;Scientists Compare Rat Genome With Human, Mouse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.genome.gov&quot;&gt;Genome.gov&lt;/a&gt; you can find some good insight into your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In their Nature paper, the researchers reported that, at approximately&#xA;  2.75 billion base pairs, the rat genome is smaller than the human genome, which is 2.9 billion base pairs, and slightly larger than&#xA;  mouse genome, which is 2.6 billion base pairs. However, they also&#xA;  found that the rat genome contains about the same number of genes as&#xA;  the human and mouse genomes. Furthermore, almost all human genes known&#xA;  to be associated with diseases have counterparts in the rat genome and&#xA;  appear highly conserved through mammalian evolution, confirming that&#xA;  the rat is an excellent model for many areas of medical research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that it says &quot;genes associated with disease&quot; and that these are &quot;highly conserved&quot;. This should not be taken to mean the genes are identical. It clearly implies that there were changes but that those changes have not been significant enough that medical experimentation is invalidated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to your question is no, we do not share 99% of our DNA with rats. But yes we do share a large number of genes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rgd.mcw.edu/&quot;&gt;http://rgd.mcw.edu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_genome_database&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_genome_database&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10524" LastEditorUserId="10524" LastEditDate="2012-12-06T18:33:41.570" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T18:33:41.570" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13910" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-03T15:48:18.693" Score="10" ViewCount="41860" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people are saying that after having driven a car with a turbo-charged engine, you need to let the engine run for several seconds (or even minutes) before switching off the engine. But nobody is able to explain why, which makes me wonder if it's even true at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any kind of evidence, or technical explanation that it is actually beneficial to respect such a cooling down period? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4603" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-12-04T02:21:43.307" LastActivityDate="2022-12-05T12:51:20.123" Title="Does a turbo-charged engine require a &quot;cooling down&quot; period?" Tags="|road-vehicles|engineering|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13907" CreationDate="2012-12-03T16:21:03.213" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL:DR - No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question is basically going to be &quot;Does more sugar contribute to constipation?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A brief explanation from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/FoodSci_p063.shtml#background&quot;&gt;Sciencebuddies.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The key enzymes involved in fruit ripening are amylase and pectinase. Amylase breaks down starch to produce simple sugars, so is responsible for the increasing sweetness of a ripening fruit. Pectinase breaks down pectin, a substance that keeps fruit hard, so is responsible for the increasing softness of ripening fruit. Other enzymes cause the color of the fruit to change by breaking down chlorophyll (which is green) and replacing it with pigments that are yellow, red, or other colors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does it? Well, I couldn't find a solid source evaluating sugar levels alone. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3409131?uid=3739256&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21101446411991&quot;&gt;The American Journal of Nursing&lt;/a&gt; has published recommendations that encourage giving constipated patients &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; of fruit juice (4 glasses per day of just about any juice). However, since fruit juice will introduce both sugar and water into your system, it's not conclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe a better question to ask after reading that is: &quot;Does sugar have an effect on hydration levels?&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/water-a-fluid-way-to-manage-constipation&quot;&gt;since hydration levels definitely have an effect on constipation&lt;/a&gt;, with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v57/n2s/full/1601907a.html&quot;&gt;some research suggesting even mild dehydration could exacerbate things&lt;/a&gt;. During periods of hypohydration, the body cannot properly lubricate itself, and it can easily progress to constiptaion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does increasing your sugar intake affect your hydration levels? &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/485820-does-sugar-make-you-dehydrated/&quot;&gt;Only if you eat enough to result&lt;/a&gt; in high blood-sugar levels. Diabetics are more at risk, naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do bananas gain a significant amount of sugar as they ripen? &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jsfa.2740321011/abstract&quot;&gt;One study suggests... barely:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bananas contained 1% starch when fully ripe and none when overripe, whereas plantains contained about 9% starch when fully ripe and 3% when overripe (composition expressed as percentage fresh weight). Total sugar content was 23% in fully ripe and overripe bananas...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similarly unspectacular result was also found in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=44&amp;amp;ved=0CE4QFjADOCg&amp;amp;url=http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/91/4/1436.full.pdf&amp;amp;ei=_8m8UK3PO-S-yQHO_4GACw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFvcGp1nzZ-F6UPAijvlQeJDQwx7A&quot;&gt;another study (direct-download PDF)&lt;/a&gt; where, after a day or two of reaching their ethylene peak, the production of sugars reached a plateu. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the differences between ripe and overripe bananas is going to be minimal. Both will contain about &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices/1846/2&quot;&gt;17g-18g&lt;/a&gt; of sugars when the banana is 8&quot;-9&quot; long, and have roughly similar Calorie counts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sugar content differences are further nullified when you remember that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starch&quot;&gt;humans can digest starches&lt;/a&gt;, so any conversion of starches into monomers by the fruit is only making the fruit quicker to digest (and explains why &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1395467&quot;&gt;overripe bananas have a higher Glycemic index&lt;/a&gt;). It's removing a step the body takes anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ultimately, no - the ripeness of a banana has no affect on constipation under normal hydration levels.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;If you're eating enough sugar to affect your hydration levels, switching to a less-ripe banana won't help you since the body will net similar amounts of total sugar once it converts the starch into glucose.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastActivityDate="2012-12-03T16:21:03.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13910" CreationDate="2012-12-03T17:20:35.310" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Why does a turbo engine require a “cooling down” period?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming we're talking about the typical turbocharger fitted to many current models of fairly ordinary car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What Manufacturers Say&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to an &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.turbotechnics.com/www/?page_id=123&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;engineering-based company specialising in turbocharger and supercharger design, replacement turbochargers, and manufacturers of specialist machinery and turbo components used in the turbocharger repair industry.&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I leave my engine ticking over before it is turned off ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not for normal every day driving, but still worthwhile if the engine has been under load or raced before being turned off. e.g. Towing a caravan or after climbing a long incline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is a water-cooled turbo ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The central part of the turbo, housing the bearings, is surrounded by a water jacket through which the engine’s water coolant is passed. This water continues to circulate after the engine is turned off, cooling the turbo, and preventing heat soak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.turbobygarrett.com/turbobygarrett/sites/default/files/PDF/Turbo%20Tech%20101.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;major manufacturer of turbochargers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following a hot shutdown of a turbocharger, heat soak begins. This means that the heat&#xA;in the head, exhaust manifold, and turbine housing finds it way to the turbo’s center&#xA;housing, raising its temperature. These extreme temperatures in the center housing can&#xA;result in oil coking.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;To minimize the effects of heat soak-back, water-cooled center housings were&#xA;introduced. These use coolant from the engine to act as a heat sink after engine&#xA;shutdown, preventing the oil from coking. The water lines utilize a thermal siphon effect&#xA;to reduce the peak heat soak-back temperature after key-off&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, there is no need to run a turbocharged engine after stopping the vehicle - unless you have an older vehicle with an early type of turbocharger and have been pushing the engine to its limits for an extended time. Check the owner's manual for your car to see if the manufacturer recommends any special procedure, if it doesn't, you can assume none is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="26893" LastEditDate="2022-12-05T12:51:20.123" LastActivityDate="2022-12-05T12:51:20.123" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13915" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13916" CreationDate="2012-12-04T00:22:18.650" Score="1" ViewCount="24340" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been widely reported that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallagher_%28comedian%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Leo Anthony Gallagher&lt;/a&gt; (the comedian who likes to smash watermelons with a large mallet) has a twin brother named Ron who tours the country and impersonates his brother. His act has been known as &quot;Gallagher Too&quot; or &quot;Gallagher Two&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supposedly, Ron and Leo got into a legal trademark violation dispute over the &quot;Sledge-O-Matic&quot; routine made popular by Leo. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20131265,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in the interviews with Ron and Leo&lt;/a&gt;, something seems a little fishy. Here are some quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Ron:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leo pretty much raised me, since both my parents worked&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, from Leo:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was never around my brother at all [...] He wasn't a part of my life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This made me skeptical that this relationship could be an elaborate joke/hoax/performance put on by Gallagher to gain publicity similar to what Joaquin Phoenix did with the movie &quot;I'm Still Here&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Gallagher have a twin or is it a hoax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10562" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T09:48:58.413" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T09:48:58.413" Title="Does Gallagher have a twin brother?" Tags="|television|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13915" CreationDate="2012-12-04T01:07:43.500" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, Leo Gallagher does not have a twin brother, Ron.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He has a &lt;em&gt;younger brother&lt;/em&gt;, Ron.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both the referenced Wikipedia page and the interview page explain that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attorney, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quarles.com/greg_everts/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Greg Everts&lt;/a&gt;, of Quarles &amp;amp; Brady documents the court-case details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leo Gallagher a/k/a “Gallagher” and Sold Out Shows, Inc. v. Ron Gallagher et al., Case No. 99-75657 (Eastern District of Michigan). Counsel for comedian-plaintiff in suit for trademark infringement, Lanham Act false advertising, unfair competition, and violation of right of publicity. Obtained preliminary injunction and settlement that included permanent injunctive relief. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the intrinsic difficulty in hoaxing a court to be a party on both sides of a dispute, the lack of motive to do so and the speculative nature of the original question, I consider this sufficient evidence to dismiss the claim that Ron and Leo Gallagher are the same person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-04T01:14:09.873" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T01:14:09.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13910" CreationDate="2012-12-04T01:30:36.137" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR: Yes, some turbochargers need time to decompress otherwise they could be damaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps my answer only applies to old turbocharged vehicles. My experience has only been with an early 90s Nissan Exa and an early 00s Subaru WRX and both of those had a &quot;turbo timer&quot;. With the timer the car would continue to run for about 1 minute &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; switching off the ignition (and removing the key). My understanding was that this was &lt;em&gt;normal&lt;/em&gt; for turbo cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Over Pressure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turbos can generate a lot of pressure when it's running. That pressure needs to have somewhere to go. When the engine is running it just blows out the exhaust, but when the engine just stops there is a buildup of pressure (not enough to crack a piston head like I've been told but), enough to blow backwards through the compressor, damaging it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an excerpt from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbocharger#Anti-surge.2Fdump.2Fblow_off_valves&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this situation, the surge can raise the pressure of the air to a&#xA;  level that can cause damage. This is because if the pressure rises&#xA;  high enough, a compressor stall will occur, where the stored&#xA;  pressurized air decompresses backward across the impeller and out the&#xA;  inlet. The reverse flow back across the turbocharger causes the&#xA;  turbine shaft to reduce in speed more quickly than it would naturally,&#xA;  possibly damaging the turbocharger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Turbo Lubrication and Excess Wear&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The engine feeds lubricant to the turbo. With the engine off the turbocharger isn't being lubricated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.turborepair.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=202&amp;amp;Itemid=154&quot;&gt;turborepair.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once you turn off the engine in your car, the turbocharger will&#xA;  continue to spin for up to a minute or more and during this time oil&#xA;  is not being delivered to the turbochargers bearings, causing wear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myturbodiesel.com/1000q/turbochargingpage2.htm&quot;&gt;myturbodiesel.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you were driving hard and hot, a 1 minute idling period or a few&#xA;  minutes of sensible driving before shut down should be enough to let&#xA;  the turbo cool down and receive fresh oil.  If the turbo is too hot&#xA;  and does not receive cooler oil upon shutdown, the oil could become&#xA;  burnt and &quot;coking&quot; may occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allpar.com/mopar/turbo-faq.php&quot;&gt;allpar.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hot shutdowns cause extensive deposits of carbon and shellac on the&#xA;  turbine end. As the deposits break up and flow into the oil they score&#xA;  and wear the bearing bore, bearing and shaft journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The twist&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turbos don't run all the time, they only run when they need to. Which means if you've been coasting around a car-park for a minute, the turbo isn't running and there is no pressure buildup. In this case you don't need the turbo timer, you can shut off your engine without waiting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sources&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbocharger&quot;&gt;turbos here&lt;/a&gt; and here's some rev-heads talking about &lt;a href=&quot;http://ask.metafilter.com/191444/how-do-you-cool-down-a-turbocharger&quot;&gt;turbo&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.turbobricks.com/showthread.php?t=87359&quot;&gt;cooldown&lt;/a&gt; and how &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.supraforums.com/forum/showthread.php?452168-Turbo-charging-basics-The-N00bs-guide&quot;&gt;important&lt;/a&gt; it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RedGrittyBrick's answer mentions 2 links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.turbotechnics.com/www/?page_id=123&quot;&gt;turbotechnics.com&lt;/a&gt; (a manufacturer) say allowing the turbo to decompress is &quot;worthwhile&quot; in some instances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.turbobygarrett.com/turbobygarrett/sites/default/files/PDF/Turbo%20Tech%20101.pdf&quot;&gt;turbobygarrett.com&lt;/a&gt; (also a manufacturer) say hotstopping can &quot;result in oil coking&quot;. It also says water cooled systems can reduce this, but not all turbos are water cooled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many Garrett turbos are water-cooled for enhanced durability&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="5487" LastEditDate="2012-12-04T08:09:11.490" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T08:09:11.490" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13920" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-04T03:19:20.017" Score="4" ViewCount="1007" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://gethealthinformations.com/at-night-the-best-time-to-drink-milk-369729/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;, it is noted that the best time to drink milk is at night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this discussion, dr. Sjoekri Rini replied that the milk contains the amino acid tryptophan, a precursor to the neurotransmitter serotonin which is useful. The nature of this alone is calming neurotransmitter that helps the sleep process more quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, according to nutritionists Stikes Husada Banjarbaru Borneo, Nor Hasanah, adding that the calcium in milk is one of the best nutrients for maintaining bone health as calcium is more readily absorbed. So that, for the most milk should be consumed at night. In the evening, osteoclasts, or cells of the bone destruction does not work. In addition, our activities in the evening is also limited so that the calcium of milk will be absorbed optimally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8840" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T07:18:35.277" Title="Does drinking milk at night help one to sleep better and absorb more calcium?" Tags="|milk|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13921" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13923" CreationDate="2012-12-04T08:23:09.253" Score="6" ViewCount="8167" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amezcua.com/biodisc.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bio Disc&lt;/a&gt; medically effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product description says &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bio Disc is able to redefine and harmonise the energy of water,&#xA;  greatly maximising its positive affect on the human body&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their website says &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] numerous independent scientific tests verified the Bio Disc’s&#xA;  ability to positively harmonise energy [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any references to these scientific tests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amezcua.com/Certifications.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amezcua.com/Certifications.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Check these out for references..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2641" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2016-01-18T19:48:56.410" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T19:48:56.410" Title="Does the QNET Amezcua Bio Disc work?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13921" CreationDate="2012-12-04T08:49:43.640" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say it doesn't work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sharad-pathology.blogspot.it/2010/08/biodisc-fraud-of-century.html&quot;&gt;Shared Pathology blog: Biodisc - fraud of the century&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As a scientist, I was astonished. It didn't surprise me that I&#xA;  couldn't find any scientific experiments [Emoto] has performed or any&#xA;  peer-reviewed journal articles that have been published describing&#xA;  controlled studies of Emoto's work. A further search revealed that&#xA;  Emoto's degree was from the Open International University in India,&#xA;  where an M.D. degree costs $500 and a Ph.D. costs $350, no classes or&#xA;  tests required.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://is-masaru-emoto-for-real.com/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is Masaru Emoto For Real?!! Blog:&lt;/em&gt; Review and analysis of Dr. Masaru Emoto’s&#xA;published work on the effects of external stimuli&#xA;on the structural formation of ice crystals.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;After the lengthy review of Emoto's research methods and results, I&#xA;  have come to believe that Dr. Emoto is offering pseudo-science to the&#xA;  masses in the guise of defensible research.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I think this comment by Masaru Emoto is particularly illuminating : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, in the Maui News interview, Dr. Emoto specifically stated,&#xA;  “I do not require any blind tests on any samples,” but rather he&#xA;  believes that “the researcher’s aesthetic sense and character is the&#xA;  most important aspect when taking crystal photographs.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-04T12:04:43.670" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T12:04:43.670" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13771" CreationDate="2012-12-04T14:36:48.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; Yes, they work, but they aren't for sale, and they have competition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first question to address is whether the claims in the Daily Telegraph match the claims made by the actual researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research team being quoted is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flinders.edu.au/sabs/psychology/research/labs/sleep/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sleep Research Laboratory in the School of Psychology at Flinders University&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team does indeed &lt;a href=&quot;http://flinders.edu.au/sabs/psychology/research/labs/sleep/bas.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;make such claims&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research shows that bright light visual stimulation (light which enters the eyes), can change the timing of the body clock and its timing of sleep or awakening signals to the body. Thus, &lt;strong&gt;bright light therapy has been used to treat the range of disorders caused by a mis-timed body clock including shift work, jet lag, sleep onset and early morning insomnia&lt;/strong&gt; mentioned above as well as winter depression (Seasonal Affective Disorder, SAD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of their small size and relatively inexpensive components, the LED glasses will be less expensive than the presently marketed light boxes. They suffer none of the handicaps of light boxes listed above. One of their main advantages is that &lt;strong&gt;our research has confirmed their body clock re-setting effects&lt;/strong&gt; which are the basis of treatment for all of the above conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At present the LED glasses are &lt;strong&gt;still experimental devices&lt;/strong&gt;. They are not yet commercially available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They cite their own research, such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wright, H. R., Lack, L. C., &amp;amp; Partridge, K. J. (2001). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jigsawhealth.com/document_manager/LEDPhaseDelayMelatoninRhythm.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Light emitting diodes can be used to phase delay the melatonin rhythm&lt;/a&gt;. Journal of Pineal Research, 31(4): 350-355.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These data suggest the portable&#xA;LED light source is an effective way of delivering light to phase shift&#xA;the melatonin rhythm, with the blue/green LED being the more&#xA;effective of the two LEDs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That research confirms the basis of the technology, but not that it works in a set of glasses. But these researchers are from Flinders University (in Adelaide, South Australia), and so is my BSc degree, so &lt;em&gt;clearly&lt;/em&gt; their claims are completely correct! It is the Flinders way!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you insist on wasting everyone's time by checking that these results have been reproduced independently...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paul MA, Miller JC, Gray G, Buick F, Blazeski S, Arendt J., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17679560&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Circadian phase delay induced by phototherapeutic devices&lt;/a&gt;, Aviat Space Environ Med. 2007 Jul;78(7):645-52.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this study 14 subjects were given a range of different phototherapies, including LED spectacles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All phototherapy devices produced melatonin suppression and significant phase delays. Sleepiness was significantly decreased with the light tower, the light visor, and the Litebook. Task performance was only slightly improved with phototherapy. The LED spectacles and light visor caused greater subjective performance impairment, more difficulty viewing the computer monitor and reading printed text than the light tower or the Litebook. The light visor, the Litebook, and the LED spectacles caused more eye discomfort than the light tower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So these scientists from Defence R&amp;amp;D Canada - some random institute that isn't prestigious enough to be based in Adelaide - found that, yes, the LED glasses work, but they aren't the most convenient form-factor for phototherapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T14:36:48.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4456" CreationDate="2012-12-04T17:33:51.947" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am answering the second point of the question.  The first point has already been answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does flipping the gender of the test result a drastically different outcome? (Say, a difference of 33% or more.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Reverse Bechdel Test (I'll denote RBT) is surprisingly difficult to find information about.  Many people post their own independently result for a particular work online, but common problems (in addition to scientific controls on objectivity and consistency) include a lack of a meaningful sample size, and a lack of any attempt to apply the RBT to a meaningfully random sample.  I only found three references that applied to RBT to 10 or more titles.  Here they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;comicbookGRRRL blog&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comicbookgrrrl.com/2012/05/30/women-in-comics-dc-vs-marvel-the-bechdel-test/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.comicbookgrrrl.com/2012/05/30/women-in-comics-dc-vs-marvel-the-bechdel-test/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This blogger applied the BT and the RBT individually to 6 episodes of 19 comic book series.  This falls short of what we wanted because these are comics, not movies, but it satisfies other criteria.  Mainly, it has a large amount of volume, with 6x19= 144 tests in total, looking for both BT and RBT.  Nothing else I've seen comes anywhere close to these numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Selection:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the Bechdel Test requires reading each comic thoroughly, I have had to &lt;strong&gt;limit this test to my own 'big publisher' reading list&lt;/strong&gt; (along with some borrowed from generous friends) - 8 DC titles, 8 Marvel titles, alongside Walking Dead, Chew and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So please consider this a Bechdel Test on a sample that this woman in particular likes to read (the DC picks are my regulars, alogng with the Best of the Rest titles at the bottom).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have &lt;strong&gt;sampled the most recent 6 issues of each title&lt;/strong&gt; (issue numbers detailed below) that I have to hand, all of them as recent as possible. If anyone would like me to expand my sample, I'm happy for someone else to buy them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that &amp;quot;titles&amp;quot; do not correlate directly with sales, but a similar criticism can be waged for any Bechdel Test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reporting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blogger reported results in batches of 6, one for each series.  In each batch, the number of BT and RBT passes are reported.  Now, this is a problem if you want cross-correlations.  For instance, you can't definitively put a number on the number of episodes that &lt;em&gt;failed both&lt;/em&gt; the BT and RBT.  Nonetheless, we don't need that information anyway.  Instead, I summed up all the BT and RBT passes, and I report them here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BT passes: 66&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RBT passes: 91&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;total tests: 114&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This translates to a pass rate of 57.9% for BT and 80.0% for RBT.  With a significant amount of data, &lt;strong&gt;this supports the hypothesis that comic books are not gender-symmetric&lt;/strong&gt; because BT passes are lower than RBT passes.  The most controversial outcome is that it suggests that the &lt;strong&gt;RBT fails are not negligible, at 20%&lt;/strong&gt;.  One disconnect between this data and the claims we are debunking is that this is for comic books and the claims are for movies.  Without evidence to the contrary, we must admit the possibility that comic books could be less male-centric than movies, or that just &lt;em&gt;her selection&lt;/em&gt; of comic books are more female-centric.  After all, she is female.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;bechdeltest.com tells us that 53% of 3,300 movies passed BT by their method, which is about 5% lower than comicbookGRRRL.  From her data, I calculate a standard deviation in counts of BT passes for a series (out of 6) to be 1.93.  That allows me to calculate a predicted error in the mean of BT passes, which is the standard deviation divided by the number of trials.  I find the error in the mean to be 5.2%, which implies that comicbookGRRRL's BT pass rate can be reported as 57.9% +/- 3.0%, which means that it's within 2 standard deviations of the rate from bechdeltest.com, which means that the &lt;strong&gt;statistics alone do not show a meaningful difference in the gender representation in major motion picture movies and this sample selection of comic books&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reverse Bechdel blog&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://reversebechdel.blogspot.com/2011/02/first-ten-statistics.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://reversebechdel.blogspot.com/2011/02/first-ten-statistics.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was an independent blogger who posted about their own selection of major motion pictures.  Other than their attempt to be non-biased in the selection there seems to be no controls on how the sample was formed.  This person reported individual movie results for some time through Jan-Feb 2011.  They made one blog post summarizing the numbers for the first 10 tests.  They subsequently conducted more, but I have not taken the time to aggregate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BT passes: 9&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RBT passes: 10&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;total tests: 10&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should note that their pass rate of 90% isn't even close to other sources.  This shows that someone managed to find 10 titles that passed the RBT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mild Concern Blog&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mildconcern.com/2012/03/08/the-bechdel-test/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://mildconcern.com/2012/03/08/the-bechdel-test/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a site that assessed 21 movies.  I can't find where they mention anything about how they selected them.  They don't given any information about their methods beyond the the definition of the Bechdel Test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BT passes: 6&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RBT passes: 21* (see note)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;total tests: 21&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;note: the wording of the site makes the exact number of RBT passes somewhat unclear.  They state that they have yet to find a movie that fails (although one came close), which suggests that they didn't actually test all the 21 movies for RBT.  Their pictogram list adds to the confusion where they list 15 movies that passed the RBT... even though the sample size was 21.  I think that 15/21 = 71% RBT pass rate would misinterpreting their data.  My best attempt to interpret their result is to say RBT passed 15 of 15 times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their BT pass rate 28.6% is very low compared to the bechdeltest.com average of 53% and outside the range of expected statistical error had the method been consistent and the sample random.  While few conclusions can be drawn from these data, it at least shows 15 RBT tests with all failing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick survey of internet sources found over 3,300 applications of BT to motion pictures, at least 25 applications of RBT to motion pictures, and 114 applications of both to comics.  For the applications of RBT to motion pictures the combination of sample selection and conflicting rates leaves an unreliable picture, although it does substantiate the claim that movies will generally pass the RBT.  Elsewhere, there are plenty of examples of RBT fails, although I can not find any data to put this into a statistical framework.  It is possible that &lt;strong&gt;a meaningful RBT survey has yet to be done&lt;/strong&gt; for movies.  In the survey of comic books, some top contributors to RBT fails were Batgirl, Batwoman, Catwoman, and Buffy.  These can account for 15 of the 23 RBT fails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of RBT fail examples in movies include Black Swan, Bridesmaids, and All About Eve, but these are just anecdotal examples, the overall prevalence of these is unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thisrecording.com/today/2011/10/26/in-which-we-mandate-a-reverse-bechdel-test.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://thisrecording.com/today/2011/10/26/in-which-we-mandate-a-reverse-bechdel-test.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything found did agree with the hypothesis that BT pass rates are much lower than RBT pass rates, indicating that movies are not gender-symmetric.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To answer the question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without a reverse test baseline to compare against, the Bechdel Test falls short of even making the point it was intended to make because it is not statistically meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7189" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T17:33:51.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4386" CreationDate="2012-12-04T20:01:08.917" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would like to reformulate my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FLUORIDATED Toothpaste can cause papulonodular eruptions or perioral dermatitis, both which resemble acne - that is,  both papulonodular eruptions and perioral dermatitis can cause small, red papules and pustules to form on the surface of the skin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, I am not sure the difference between a papulonodular eruption versus dermatits. They all look like zits to me when you google pictures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I provide links for the above statements below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Papulonodular reactions or dermatitis from fluoride are RARE, but can occur, and resemble acne. thus FLUORIDATED toothpaste can cause skin reactions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to what I hope can be viewed as a medically accepted website.  It discusses fluoroderma, which can occur from fluoride containing preparations - &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1090031-overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1090031-overview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have pulled from the site link I provided above, which discusses halogenoderma:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The terms iododerma, bromoderma, and fluoroderma are used to describe skin lesions that occur after an individual consumes iodide-, bromide-, or fluoride-containing preparations.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Halogenoderma may represent a delayed hypersensitivity allergic response&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Fluoride gel preparations for the prophylaxis of postirradiation dental caries may cause fluorodermas when they are applied to the teeth.[5]&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and Reference [5] is : 5.Blasik LG, Spencer SK. Fluoroderma. Arch Dermatol. Nov 1979;115(11):1334-5. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a different reference than the ones provided above.  Here is the abstract of the article from Blasik, et. al: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Papulonodular eruptions from certain bromide and iodide preparations are widely recognized entities, but skin lesions following fluoride ingestion are rare. Modern prophylaxis for postirradiation dental caries includes the use of fluoride gel preparations applied to the teeth. In two patients receiving such therapy a papulonodular eruption developed, similar to the recognized halogenodermas. These cases may help to increase awareness of this entity.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/507887&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/507887&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I consider toothpaste to be a fluoride containing preparation when applied to the skin or when it leaves residues on the skin or even in the saliva.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I admit this point could be up for debate, to consider FLUORIDATED toothpaste a fluoride preparation. However, every person is different and I do not think it insane to consider that a small amount of fluoride in toothpaste could cause acne in some and nothing at all in others. Logically, like any allergic substance - e.g. the people who can't even have peanuts in their schools or planes versus the ones who can test on their skin to see if there is a reaction.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, fluoride is frequently a very controversial substance. Because the CDC calls fluoridation one of the greatest public health accomplishments, it seems that attacking fluoride is tantamount to suggesting one lives in the 18th century without lights and running water.  It seems backward, no? And to study and document that a substance which is universally added to water can cause problems for a small minority of the population - especially something insignificant like acne - seems unimportant in light of all the teeth saved by fluoridation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(On the other hand, I wouldn't call acne insignificant. To those who have had it, I think it can be traumatizing, truly depressive and terrible.  I don't minimize cavities or acne's pain, but I guess it is up to the government and citizens to decide.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to conclude, perhaps some might react at lower doses and some might react at higher doses, like any allergy.  The dose makes the poison.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Universally, toothpaste will not cause acne, just like 1 beer cannot universally make people drunk, or universally people will have different reactions to gluten or dairy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, fluoroderma is a documented medical condition.  In a very small minority of cases, it could be possible that fluoridated toothpaste causes acne. The medical literature has not studied this issue so there is no proof for this statement, just an extension of logical thinking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus,  I respectfully disagree with Hendy and OddThinking for saying that just because there have not been studies published more recently that that means it is not possible for toothpaste to cause skin eruptions - which I classify as acne, whether they are perioral dermatitis, or papulonodular.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is absolutely possible and documented in medical literature that fluoride can cause acne. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the terminology acne versus dermatitis versus papulonodular eruptions is very confusing. I apologize if my logic is not easily followed and thank you for your participation in improving my previously poorly worded and anecdotal answer. Improvements are welcome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final note: I cannot validate this 100%, I have not actually read this book - actually in my hand, but this is also a nice resource documenting skin reactions to fluoride:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PHYSICIANS' DESK REFERENCE - Allergy/Hypersensitivity to Fluoride: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In hypersensitive individuals, fluorides occasionally cause skin eruptions such as atopic dermatitis, eczema or urticaria. Gastric distress, headache and weakness have also been reported. These hypersensitivity reactions usually disappear promptly after discontinuation of the fluoride. In rare cases, a delay in the eruption of teeth has been reported.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PHYSICIANS' DESK REFERENCE, 1994, 48th Edition, p. 2335-6.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10570" LastEditorUserId="10570" LastEditDate="2012-12-04T20:56:35.300" LastActivityDate="2012-12-04T20:56:35.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7202" CreationDate="2012-12-05T15:46:52.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Contrary to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-4632.2009.04002.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2009 study&lt;/a&gt; indicated and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/12386/23&quot;&gt;summarized in another answer&lt;/a&gt;, Iodine is a listed cause of &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acneiform_eruption&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;acneiform eruptions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iododerma&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;iododerma&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1090031-overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Medscape&lt;/a&gt; page says iodine-containing &lt;em&gt;preparations&lt;/em&gt; are the cause, yet the advice is that if one has these acneiform eruptions, one should stay away from iodine-containing foods!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I hate the classification system for acne and think it is a huge part of the problem with questions like this. Acneiform or acne, what is the difference? Some dermatologists classify acneiform eruptions as acne and others separate them from acne vulgaris. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acneiform_eruptions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The terminology used in this field can be complex, and occasionally contradictory. Some sources consider acne vulgaris part of the differential diagnosis for an acneiform eruption.[4] Other sources classified acne vulgaris under acneiform eruption.[5] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4.^ &quot;eMedicine - Acneiform Eruptions : Article by Julianne H Kuflik&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic620.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.emedicine.com/derm/topic620.htm&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  5.^ Acneiform+eruption at the US National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is even &lt;a href=&quot;http://dermatology.cdlib.org/DOJvol1num2/review/rosacea.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;acne rosacea&lt;/a&gt;! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001882/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this PubMed Health summary&lt;/a&gt; says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rosacea is a chronic skin condition that makes your face turn red and may cause swelling and skin sores that look like acne. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is rosacea acne or not?  The causes are often listed as sun, spicy food, irritating lotions, etc.  but the fact is no one really knows what causes rosacea just as no one really knows what causes acne because there are so many different kinds. As well, rosacea and other types of acne often respond to similar treatments as acne - benzoyl peroxide or isotretinoin, but how are they differentiated? The fact that they are prescribed the same treatment seems to indicate that dermatologists have difficulty distinguishing between them as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It angers me that the causes and presentations can be totally different, but there is no difference in name to many dermatological academies, and often no difference in treatment.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, back to the question: I think it could also be important to note this paper-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12472346&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Acne vulgaris: a disease of Western civilization.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Cordain L, Lindeberg S, Hurtado M, Hill K, Eaton SB, Brand-Miller J., Arch Dermatol. 2002 Dec;138(12):1584-90.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, in this paper there is data from two different groups.  They examine the Kitavans of Papua New Guinea and the Ache hunter-gatherers of Paraguay. Both were systematically examined by doctors trained to diagnose acne. Out of 1,200 Kitavans and 115 Ache of all ages, there was not a single case of acne that was observed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion drawn from this paper is that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the astonishing difference in acne incidence rates between nonwesternized and fully modernized societies cannot be solely attributed to genetic differences among populations but likely results from differing environmental factors. Identification of these factors may be useful in the treatment of acne in Western populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8450295&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; discusses the diet of the Kitavans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tubers, fruit, fish and coconut are dietary staples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;here is the diet of the Ache: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ihhr.asu.edu/kim/1984%20Seasonal%20Variance%20in%20the%20Diet%20of%20Ache%20Hunter-Gatherer%20in%20Eastern%20Paraguay.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; looks at the diet of the Ache and suggests that meat was 50% of the diet consumed - heart, liver, all animal organs, and fruits, tubers, even honey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cordain et. al make the point that neither of these groups ate what are traditionally considered newly introduced fats - canola or cottonseed oil, soybean oil, corn oil, peanut oil, flaxseed, rapeseed, grapeseed, etc. They ate fat from coconuts (which is saturated!) and animals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study of traditional people shows it is clearly possible to eat lots of fat (50% meat!) from animals and not have acne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source of fat must be important then, from wild, traditional animals versus seed oils, which are often mechanically and thermally expelled.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also draw your attention to the fact that your skin needs both omega-3 and omega-6 fats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20620762&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Healing fats of the skin: the structural and immunologic roles of the omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Linoleic acid (18:2omega6) and alpha-linolenic acid (18:3omega3) represent the parent fats of the two main classes of polyunsaturated fatty acids: the omega-6 (n-6) and the omega-3 (n-3) fatty acids, respectively. Linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid both give rise to other long-chain fatty acid derivatives, including gamma-linolenic acid and arachidonic acid (omega-6 fatty acids) and docosahexaenoic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid (omega-3 fatty acids). &lt;strong&gt;These fatty acids are showing promise as safe adjunctive treatments for many skin disorders&lt;/strong&gt;,** including atopic dermatitis, psoriasis, acne vulgaris, systemic lupus erythematosus, nonmelanoma skin cancer, and melanoma.** Their roles are diverse and include maintenance of the stratum corneum permeability barrier, maturation and differentiation of the stratum corneum, formation and secretion of lamellar bodies, inhibition of proinflammatory eicosanoids, elevation of the sunburn threshold, inhibition of proinflammatory cytokines (tumor necrosis factor-alpha, interferon-gamma, and interleukin-12), inhibition of lipoxygenase, promotion of wound healing, and promotion of apoptosis in malignant cells, including melanoma. They fulfill these functions independently and through the modulation of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors and Toll-like receptors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is clearly a connection between skin health and the right intake of omega-3 and omega-6 oils. Your body needs both, as the paper above illustrates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I draw you to this paper, as one example of why certain fats like omega-3 and omega-6 matter, and how an improper balance of them can cause health problems like acne:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17589522&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Increased dietary intake of omega-3-polyunsaturated fatty acids reduces pathological retinal angiogenesis&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Connor KM, SanGiovanni JP, Lofqvist C, Aderman CM, Chen J, Higuchi A, Hong S, Pravda EA, Majchrzak S, Carper D, Hellstrom A, Kang JX, Chew EY, Salem N Jr, Serhan CN, Smith LE.&#xA;Nat Med. 2007 Jul;13(7):868-73. Epub 2007 Jun 24.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These findings indicate that increasing the sources of omega-3-PUFA or their bioactive products reduces pathological angiogenesis. Western diets are often deficient in omega-3-PUFA, and premature infants lack the important transfer from the mother to the infant of omega-3-PUFA that normally occurs in the third trimester of pregnancy. Supplementing omega-3-PUFA intake may be of benefit in preventing retinopathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you might be asking yourself - ok, this is an ophthamology journal. How does this relate to acne? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, the key is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angiogenesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;angiogenesis&lt;/a&gt;, invoked improperly, can also cause rosacea, arthritis, obesity, psoriasis, endometriosis, dementia, and multiple sclerosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, this study, below, shows a link between angiogensis and rosacea which is relevant because this question concerns skin: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18071725&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A study of the pathogenesis of rosacea: how angiogenesis and mast cells may participate in a complex multifactorial process.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Aroni K, Tsagroni E, Kavantzas N, Patsouris E, Ioannidis E.&#xA;Arch Dermatol Res. 2008 Mar;300(3):125-31. Epub 2007 Dec 11.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Angiogenesis seems to play an important role in the pathogenesis especially of the more severe clinical form of Rosacea. MCs seem to participate in evolution to disease chronicity by contributing to inflammation, angiogenesis and tissue fibrosis.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should probably explain that angiogenesis is normally invoked during wound healing.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It needs Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA), which is an omega-3 fatty acid, shown by the paper below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gu X et al. &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmid.us/12923198.&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carboxyethylpyrrole protein adducts and autoantibodies, biomarkers for age-related macular degeneration.&lt;/a&gt; J Biol Chem. 2003 Oct 24;278(43):42027-35. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They talk about how &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Free radical-induced oxidation of docosahexaenoate (DHA)-containing lipids generates ω-(2-carboxyethyl)pyrrole (CEP) protein adducts that are more abundant in ocular tissues from AMD than normal human donors [...] &lt;strong&gt;The CEP adduct uniquely indicates oxidative modification from DHA derivatives because CEP protein modifications cannot arise from any other common polyunsaturated fatty acid.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In plain English:  CEP, an important component of wound healing and angiogenesis, is produced ONLY by oxidation of DHA (which is an omega-3 fatty acid), not other unsaturated fatty acids. Its abundance depends on DHA abundance, availability of retinyl proteins (i.e Vitamin A), and the level of oxidative stress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you add more CEP to a wound, it heals faster. but it needs DHA to happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or to make it easier to understand: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DHA (Omega-3 Fatty Acid) + Vitamin A + oxidative stress = angiogenesis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oxidative stress can come from stress, not eating right (like not having proper vitamin A, or enough minerals for the body to perform its reactions), not sleeping right, toxin exposure, OR EVEN just every day normal living - going to school, your job, trying to eat well, deal with family, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This recipe is invoked normally and properly during wound healing. You need angiogenesis! But too much or too little of the above items (i.e. too much Omega-3 fat (too much fish for example or supplements) or too much Omega-6 fat/too little Omega-3 (because you eat corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil, etc. - NOTE I am not saying that none of these oils have omega-3, just that they may not have sufficient amounts depending on vitamin A intake and oxidative stress of the body) in the formula can result in health problems like rosacea, your skin, or in your retina, or arthritis.  It depends on the composition of your body, your stress, your vitamin and mineral levels.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could argue rosacea is not acne, yet it is an acneiform eruptions, and clearly, this is one example showing a mechanism for improper fat in diet leading to creation of acneiform eruptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that I researched this based on the information provided here, and that &lt;a href=&quot;http://perfecthealthdiet.com/about/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paul Jaminet&lt;/a&gt; is the real genius for pulling this information together, not me: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2011/04/omega-3-fats-angiogenesis-and-cancer-part-i/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Omega-3 Fats, Angiogenesis, and Cancer: Part I&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2011/04/omega-3s-angiogenesis-and-cancer-part-ii/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Omega-3s, Angiogenesis and Cancer: Part II&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://perfecthealthdiet.com/2011/05/dha-and-angiogenesis-the-bottom-line/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;DHA and Angiogenesis: The Bottom Line&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this isn't too confusing. The pathology is not always clear, and I think that's why dermatologists and the internet are full of people who charge $30 for ebooks about how they cleared acne. There can be SO many different causes and pathologies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in sum: hunter-gatherers had not a single case of acne on diets of completely in the wild, scavenged and foraged fruits and vegetables or tubers, hunted animals, and/or coconuts, the later two categories which are rather high in saturated fat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, there is a mechanism presented above for the process by which too little or too much omega-3 can cause rosacea, and fairly backed up by researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, in closing, despite what these studies say, attempting to indemnify or completely clear a food from causing acne, there are people who have allergies which can cause skin conditions, per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1289474/?page=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3386601/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; discusses eczema, dermatitis herpeformitis  and urticaria, stating that food is often an important part. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, just because one study says there is no link to iodine, chocolate, etc. does not mean it is so. I don't accept that answer and neither should this community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allergies can take many forms, immediate or delayed, and skin conditions can be one of the many health problems resulting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that we still have yet to understand the root causes of acneiform eruptions and that those are the real important questions, not listing one study that contradicts another study about what can cause skin conditions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We need to get away from the mentality does &quot;X&quot; cause acne or &quot;Y&quot; cause acne and start seeing the root of the problem-that there is a process in the body which is imbalanced, and that diet certainly plays an important part, as evidenced by the fact that there were societies in existence completely free of acne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please, challenge me though because I honestly just research and research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acne is an extremely complex skin condition. Older societies who ate as much as 50% of diet from fresh meat, and even a society that ate many tubers, coconuts, and fish, did not have any incidences of acne.  These older societies did not eat flour, vegetable oils, or even beans or other grains. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This provides a strong link between acne and diet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also known and proven that the body and the skin need fat. There is an important biological mechanism for wound healing which requires DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid. Thus insufficient intake of this fat, omega-3 (this is controversial, but while some vegetable oils like canola, soybean, corn, etc. do have some omega-3, it is debatable if it is enough - and again, it depends on the body's needs, personal diets, etc.) or an overabundance of omega-3 (caused, for example by attempting to supplement with omega-3's like fish oil) can cause skin problems, and a mechanism was proposed above to show how this can happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the poster means oily food which has been cooked in substances which do not contain significant amounts of omega-3, there is the possibility that this could cause acne because without omega-3 in the diet in a proper amount, it is possible that excess angiogenesis could occur, causing skin conditions like acne, rosacea, or other inflammatory conditions in the body, which may or may not be visible on the skin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning saturated fat, the traditional people ate diets varying in composition - one group (Ache) ate a diet of ~ 50% meat, containing considerable saturated animal fat, and the other group (Kitavans) ate more tubers, fish, but also a saturated fat, coconut oil. Thus it seems that one could not necessarily implicate saturated fat with acne.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many confounding factors in treating, indeed even naming and properly diagnosing the types of acneiform eruptions, and oily foods are only one of many.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10570" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2012-12-05T22:57:32.773" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13945" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-05T16:08:25.500" Score="25" ViewCount="11726" Body="&lt;p&gt;In researching whether the brain limits our muscle strength, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090330200829.htm&quot;&gt;Sciencedaily&lt;/a&gt; has a quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Add to this the effect of severe electric shock, where people are often thrown violently by their own extreme muscle contraction, and it is clear that we do not contract all our muscle fibers at once,&quot; Walker writes. &quot;So there might be a degree of cerebral inhibition in people that prevents them from damaging their muscular system that is not present, or not present to the same degree, in great apes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been studies that show the brain actually limits our strength, or are there other factors that must be present in order for people to do things such as lifting cars off other people in a burst of &quot;adrenaline strength?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5750" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T09:55:33.837" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T04:21:10.643" Title="Does the brain limit muscle strength in humans, but not in other apes?" Tags="|physiology|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13947" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-05T17:07:24.227" Score="3" ViewCount="531" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many reports on the internet covering how the psychic Sonja Grace found the body of a missing boy 10 miles from his home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://tdn.com/news/state-and-regional/article_85c4cc6c-94ed-11df-8c2e-001cc4c002e0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TDN Daily News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've not seen any skeptical reports about it. Are there any?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10602" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T14:59:08.247" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T14:59:08.247" Title="Did the psychic Sonja Grace find the body of Austin David King?" Tags="|psychics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13907" CreationDate="2012-12-05T20:40:40.373" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ripeness of the banana can change its digestibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper is useful for addressing this claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/44/1/42.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Digestion of the carbohydrates of banana&#xA;(Musa paradisiaca sapientum) in the&#xA;human small intestine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When&#xA;  potatoes are used as a food, the starch granules&#xA;  must be gelatinized before they become susceptible&#xA;  to enzymic hydrolysis (2). This resistance&#xA;  to digestion does not normally cause&#xA;  any practical problems inasmuch as potatoes&#xA;  are not eaten raw and the starch granules are&#xA;  readily gelatinized by cooking. However, the&#xA;  a-amylase resistance of some raw starches may&#xA;  have importance for foods that are eaten&#xA;  raw-such as bananas. Experimental studies&#xA;  both in vitro and in animals suggest that&#xA;  banana-starch granules are largely indigestible&#xA;  (3,4).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is a study showing that green bananas were useful for diarrhea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Green banana and pectin improve small intestinal permeability and reduce fluid loss in Bangladeshi children with persistent diarrhea.&#xA;Rabbani GH, Teka T, Saha SK, Zaman B, Majid N, Khatun M, Wahed MA, Fuchs GJ.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To evaluate the effects of green banana and pectin (nondigestible, dietary sources of colonic shortchain fatty acids [SCFA]) on intestinal permeability, 57 boys (5-12 months) with persistent diarrhea (&gt; or = 14 days) were given a week's treatment with a rice-based diet containing either cooked green banana (n = 19), pectin (n = 17), or rice diet alone (n = 21). Intestinal permeability was assessed before and after treatment by giving a lactulose-mannitol (LM) drink and measuring urinary recovery after 5 hr. Treatment with banana significantly (P &amp;lt; 0.05) reduced lactulose recovery, increased mannitol recovery, and decreased the LM ratio, indicating improvement of permeability. Pectin produced similar results. Permeability changes were associated with a 50% reduction in stool weights which correlated strongly (green banana, r2 = 0.84, pectin, r2 = 0.86) with the LM ratio. Green banana-derived and SCFA-mediated stimulation of colonic as well as small bowel absorption is responsible for their antidiarrheal effects. The antidiarrheal effects of green banana and pectin are mediated by improvement of small intestinal permeability in addition to their known colonotrophic effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Green banana-supplemented diet in the home management of acute and prolonged diarrhoea in children: a community-based trial in rural Bangladesh.&#xA;Rabbani GH, Larson CP, Islam R, Saha UR, Kabir A.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SUMMARY OBJECTIVE: To determine the effectiveness of green banana in the home management of acute (&amp;lt;7 days) or prolonged (≥ 7 days) diarrhoea at the community level.&#xA;  METHODS: A cluster randomized field trial was conducted among 2968 Bangladeshi rural children 6-36 months old. Wards (villages) were randomly assigned to either a standard care group or a standard care plus green banana group where mothers were instructed to add cooked green banana to the diets of diarrhoeal children. Through a village-based surveillance system, diarrhoeal morbidity data (severity, duration, compliance) were collected for 14 days. Treatment effects were determined by analysing cumulative probability of cure by testing Cox proportional hazards models and relative risk (RR).&#xA;  RESULTS: The cumulative probability of cure was significantly (P &amp;lt; 0.001) different in children receiving GB for both acute [hazard ratio (HR) = 0.63 (95% CI: 0.56-0.67)] and prolonged diarrhoea [HR = 0.38 (95% CI: 0.26-0.59)]. The recovery rates of children with acute diarrhoea receiving GB (vs. control) were significantly more by day 3: 79.9%vs. 53.3% [(RR) = 0.47, 95% CI: 0.41-0.55], (P &amp;lt; 0.001) and day 7: 96.6%vs. 89.1% (RR = 0.32; 0.22-0.46), (P &amp;lt; 0.001). Children with prolonged diarrhoea receiving green banana had significantly higher recovery rates by day 10: 79.8%vs. 51.9% (RR = 0.42; 0.23-0.73), (P &amp;lt; 0.001) and day 14: 93.6%vs. 67.2% (RR = 0.22; 0.08-0.54), (P &amp;lt; 0.001).&#xA;  CONCLUSION: A green banana-supplemented diet hastened recovery of acute and prolonged childhood diarrhoea managed at home in rural Bangladesh.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those with fructose malabsorption issues are advised to avoid green bananas and instead eat ripe bananas in this paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shepherd S, Gibson, P., Fructose malabsorption and symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome Guidelines for effective dietary management, J Am Diet Assoc. 2006;106:1631-1639&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kyaw MH, Mayberry JF., Fructose malabsorption is thought to be a variation of IBS: &#xA;J Clin Gastroenterol. 2011 Jan;45(1):16-21.&#xA;Fructose malabsorption: true condition or a variance from normality.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fructose exists in food naturally or as a sweetening additive. It has been thought that fructose malabsorption may cause the gastrointestinal symptoms seen in patients with irritable bowel syndrome. However, fructose malabsorption is still poorly understood, and clinicians are still uncertain of its role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prevalence of fructose malabsorption may be aggravated by current american diet, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16183355&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fructose intake at current levels in the United States may cause gastrointestinal distress in normal adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thus, the bananas' ripeness causing constipation problems is totally dependent on the state of your gut flora and whether you experience gastrointestinal distress with fructose.&lt;/em&gt;*&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/constipation/DS00063/DSECTION=symptoms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Constipation symptoms are listed &lt;/a&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pass fewer than three stools a week&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Experience hard stools&#xA;  Strain excessively during bowel movements&#xA;  Experience a sense of rectal blockage&#xA;  Have a feeling of incomplete evacuation after having a bowel movement&#xA;  Need to use manual maneuvers to have a bowel movement, such as finger evacuation or manipulation of your lower abdomen&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Some people may have lower abdominal pain with constipation that is sometimes followed by diarrhea.&lt;/strong&gt; Other people have pain and mild constipation but no diarrhea.&#xA;  Symptoms that are sometimes present include intestinal gas and passage of mucus in stools.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/ibs/guide/irritable-bowel-syndrome-ibs-symptoms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IBS Symptoms are listed&lt;/a&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bowel movements may occur either more often (diarrhea) or less often (constipation) than usual, such as having more than 3 bowel movements a day or less than 3 a week.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Bowel movements may differ in size or consistency (may be hard and small, pencil-thin, or loose and watery).&#xA;  The way stools pass changes. You may strain, feel an urgent need to have a bowel movement, or feel that you haven't completely passed a stool.&#xA;  You may have bloating or a feeling of gas in the intestines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IBS and constipation have many overlapping symptoms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, it is possible that green bananas could cause constipation, if one has IBS issues/ fructose malabsorption, and apparently the current American-type diet could aggravate this type of issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10570" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-05T23:28:01.597" LastActivityDate="2012-12-05T23:28:01.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12272" CreationDate="2012-12-06T01:12:44.590" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suggest reading this: &quot;Demonstration of high opioid-like activity in isolated peptides from wheat gluten hydrolysates&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6099562&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6099562&lt;/a&gt;. And then judge for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OF COURSE the Wheat Industry disputes the findings - just like the tobacco industry said there was &quot;no evidence&quot; that tobacco use caused cancer or that nicotine was addictive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10610" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T01:12:44.590" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8007" CreationDate="2012-12-06T16:38:49.293" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;George W Bush &lt;a href=&quot;https://jewishdailyreport.wordpress.com/2010/09/11/if-you-want-respect-then-show-some-respect/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;bowed to&lt;/a&gt;, hugged, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/President_Bush_and_Saudi_Arabia%27s_Prince_Abdullah_meet_in_Crawford_ranch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;kissed&lt;/a&gt;, and walked in the garden &lt;a href=&quot;https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2005/04/why-bush-is-holding-hands-with-a-saudi-prince.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;holding hands&lt;/a&gt; with that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/images?q=Bush+Abdullah+bow&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;same Saudi king&lt;/a&gt;. So the answer is clearly no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://yasminroohi.com/president-bush-bowing-to-saudi&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The bow&lt;/a&gt; occurred in January 2008, while receiving a medal from King Abdullah. The visit was reported by many news providers, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/33289_Bush_Bowed_Too&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,322467,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fox News&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is likely that other previous (and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=Trump+Saudi+bow&amp;amp;tbm=isch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;subsequent&lt;/a&gt;) Presidents have also exchanged various courtesies with foreign leaders, including Muslim ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10614" LastEditorUserId="10614" LastEditDate="2019-09-27T11:33:24.487" LastActivityDate="2019-09-27T11:33:24.487" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13960" CreationDate="2012-12-06T17:33:17.010" Score="5" ViewCount="3521" Body="&lt;p&gt;I want to ask about a diet instrument I saw at a dietitian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is used to let the dietitian know what to let you eat and what not. He gives you a little cylindrical tube containing a source of liquid and written on it the name of a certain food. You are supposed to hold this tube in the palm of your hand and hold your hand horizontally. If your hands stood still, then this food is allowed, else it doesn't go with your body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I asked him, he said that this is a treatment using magnetic field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the name of this instrument (tool), and is it scientific? If it is, how does it work? Has anyone seen such thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10612" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-09-25T20:18:24.943" LastActivityDate="2018-09-25T20:18:24.943" Title="Can food allergies be detected by holding tubes of food samples?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13959" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13961" CreationDate="2012-12-06T21:20:32.187" Score="24" ViewCount="5454" Body="&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.cbsnews.com/storysynopsis.rbml?&amp;amp;feed_id=0&amp;amp;catid=7257670&amp;amp;videofeed=36&amp;amp;nb_splitPage=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CBS&amp;nbsp;NEWS &lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If you look in a spider web, if you just took one single strand of that spider silk, that strand is stronger than steel as well - a lot like Kevlar,&quot; said Mr Tucker Norton, a ballistics expert at duPont.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of this claim. What are the facts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="8702" LastEditDate="2013-11-29T21:38:17.353" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T14:41:02.297" Title="Is spider silk stronger than steel?" Tags="|materials|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13957" CreationDate="2012-12-06T22:22:31.330" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two questions here: What is it? Does it work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Is It?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your dietitian is using &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_kinesiology&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Applied Kinesiology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.naturaltherapypages.com.au/article/Kinesiology_for_Allergies#ixzz2EJPBd3c5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example of the claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applied kinesiology may be used to detect allergies and sensitivities to a variety of substances including foods, dustmites, pollens, vaccinations and many medications. When exposed to an allergen, the theory is that the muscle will weaken to indicate an allergy. To test for this weakness, the client will hold their arm out horizontally whilst holding the suspected allergen. The kinesiologist will then test the arm for weakness or strength by trying to push it down, usually from the wrist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Tests/ak.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;get it confused&lt;/a&gt; with &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinesiology&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;kinesiology&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applied kinesiology should be distinguished from kinesiology (biomechanics), which is the scientific study of movement.&amp;quot; Unfortunately, some professionals and educators refer to science-based kinesiology as &amp;quot;applied kinesiology,&amp;quot; which increases the risk that people searching for information will confuse the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Does it Work?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A literature review found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When manual muscle testing as used in Applied Kinesiology is disentangled from standard orthopedic/neurological muscle testing, the few studies evaluating specific AK procedures either refute or cannot support the validity of AK procedures as diagnostic tests. In particular, the use of MMT for the diagnosis of organic disease or putative pre/subclinical conditions is insupportable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mitchell Haas , Robert Cooperstein  and David Peterson, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20080203095028/http://www.chiroandosteo.com/content/15/1/11&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Disentangling manual muscle testing and Applied Kinesiology: critique and reinterpretation of a literature review&lt;/a&gt; Chiropractic &amp;amp; Osteopathy 2007, 15:11 doi:10.1186/1746-1340-15-11&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Tests/ak.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quackwatch&lt;/a&gt; documents a number of experiments (with references):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Three practitioners testing eleven subjects made significantly different assessments; their diagnoses of nutritional deficiencies did not correspond to the nutrient levels obtain by blood serum analysis; and that the responses to nutrient substances did not significantly differ from responses to placebos [10].&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another study found no effect from administering the nutrients &amp;quot;expected&amp;quot; to strengthen a muscle diagnosed as &amp;quot;weak&amp;quot; by AK practitioners.&amp;quot; [11]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Researchers who conducted an elaborate double-blind trial concluded that &amp;quot;muscle response appeared to be a random phenomenon.&amp;quot; [12]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another study showed that suggestion can influence the outcome of muscle-testing. During part of this experiment, college students were told that chewing M&amp;amp;M candies would give them instant energy that would probably make them test stronger. Five out of nine did so [13].&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Four AK practitioners tested seven patients who were extremely sensitive to wasp venom. Altogether, 140 muscle tests were done to see how the patients responded to preparations of venom or salt water in a bottle. If the test were valid, the venom bottles should result in &amp;quot;strong&amp;quot; reactions and the salt-water bottles should produce &amp;quot;weak&amp;quot; test reactions. However, the practitioners were unable to identify which bottles contained which [14].&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Several chiropractors were tested at a medical office while under unblinded and blinded conditions. During the volunteers could resist downward pressure when a drop of glucose was placed on their tongue but could resist when fructose was administered. The the arm tests were repeated using substances in coded test tubes so that the volunteer, the chiropractors, and the onlookers could not tell which solution being applied to the volunteer's tongue. When the code was revealed, There was no connection between ability to resist and whether the volunteer was given the &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; or the &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot; sugar [15].&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ideomotor.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ray Hyman performed an informal experiment&lt;/a&gt; (search for &amp;quot;Nurse&amp;quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, it's time to find a new dietitian, and to consider complaining about the current one to their licensing body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-09-24T15:58:40.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13959" CreationDate="2012-12-06T22:45:29.160" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what spider you are measuring, what sort of silk from that spider, and what properties you want to measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ingi Agnarsson, Matjaž Kuntner, and Todd A. Blackledge&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2939878/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bioprospecting Finds the Toughest Biological Material: Extraordinary Silk from a Giant Riverine Orb Spider&lt;/a&gt;, PLoS One. 2010; 5(9): e11234, 10.1371/journal.pone.0011234&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The toughness of forcibly silked fibers averages 350 MJ/m3, with some samples reaching 520 MJ/m3. Thus, C. darwini silk is more than twice tougher than any previously described silk, and over 10 times better than Kevlar®.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caerostris darwini major ampullate silk is, on average, about twice as tough as typical silks spun by other orbweavers (Figs 3–4, Table 1, Table S1). Spider dragline silk is already deservedly renowned for its high toughness of ∼150 MJm∧-3, which outperforms both steel and Kevlar [32]. Yet, C. darwini silk is far higher performing, absorbing about ten times more kinetic energy before fracturing than does Kevlar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk#Mechanical_properties&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; covers many different mechanical properties of spider silk, including strength (same as some steels, less than Kevlar), strength per weight (where it beats steel and Kevlar), ductility and toughness. This may help you understand how silk beats Kevlar in some measures but not others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-06T22:45:29.160" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13962" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-07T01:15:06.267" Score="6" ViewCount="551" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eatwell_plate&quot;&gt;Eatwell Plate&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is a broad dietary recommendation &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Goodfood/Pages/eatwell-plate.aspx&quot;&gt;produced by the UK National Health Service&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/23/rich-poor-food-nutrition-gap-ian-jack&quot;&gt;This article in The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; says that a diet based on the Eatwell plate could cost as little as £16.70 per person per week:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The government, after all, has devised a strategy called the Eatwell Plate, which shows how a healthy, well-balanced diet, rich in fruit and veg, can be achieved for £16.70 per stomach per week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't found any source which shows how that cost is calculated, for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=%2216.70%22+eatwell+plate&quot;&gt;via Google search&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm surprised (skeptical) to be told that a healthy diet of groceries can cost so little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;£16.70&quot; is mentioned in another government publication (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.defra.gov.uk/statistics/files/defra-stats-foodfarm-food-pocketbook-2012-121005.pdf&quot;&gt;Food Statistics Pocketbook 2012&lt;/a&gt;), but again there I don't see how they derive that figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Total spend per person/week on foods within the Eatwell &#xA;  categories is £16.49.  Based on actual spend, an overall &#xA;  shift to an Eatwell balanced diet would not cost low income &#xA;  households significantly more, at £16.70.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally I'd like to know how they arrive at that figure: precisely which foodstuffs are being bought, how much of each, and what cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-07T06:29:29.157" LastActivityDate="2012-12-07T06:29:29.157" Title="Does the &quot;Eatwell plate&quot; cost £16.70 per week?" Tags="|nutrition|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13964" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18772" CreationDate="2012-12-07T10:04:49.383" Score="27" ViewCount="4361" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard this story numerous times. Allegedly, Victor Hugo would ask every day to a servant to take his clothes so that he would be forced to stay, naked, in his room and work instead of going out and waste time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When Victor Hugo, the famous author of great tomes such as &lt;em&gt;Les Misérables&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;The Hunchback of Notre-Dame&lt;/em&gt;, ran into a writer's block, he concocted a unique scheme to force himself to write: he had his servant take all of his clothes away for the day and leave his own nude self with only pen and paper, so he'd have nothing to do but sit down and write.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neatorama.com/2007/01/30/the-naked-truth-authors-who-write-in-the-buff/&quot;&gt;Neatorama&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/10/11/101011crbo_books_surowiecki?currentPage=all&quot;&gt;The New Yorker&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that story confirmed by any academic source or verified document or is it just a myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10567" LastEditorUserId="10567" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T08:14:02.940" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T15:19:44.823" Title="Did Victor Hugo work naked to prevent himself from leaving his desk?" Tags="|history|literature|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13965" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-07T10:47:38.630" Score="8" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see recently on the news that the US, Japan, and South Korea are opposed to North Korea's satellite launch because, they claim, it's a cover-up for testing long-range missile technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-20654422&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;From the BBC&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;North Korea's space programme causes panic around the region because&#xA;  some countries believe it is a cover for the development of a weapons&#xA;  system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The US and other nations say the launch constitutes a test of&#xA;  long-range missile technology banned under UN resolutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/world/asia/north-korea-says-its-missiles-can-reach-us-mainland.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;From the NY Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition, North Korea has repeatedly conducted what it calls satellite launchings that American and South Korean officials, as well as the United Nations Security Council, have condemned as a cover for developing and testing intercontinental ballistic missile technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/08/us-korea-north-idUSBRE8B70AY20121208&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;From Reuters&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;North Korea, which planned to launch the rocket between December 10 and December 22, is banned from carrying out any missile or nuclear related tests by United Nations resolutions imposed in 2006 and 2009 after it conducted nuclear tests. [...] Critics say North Korea's rocket program is aimed at developing an ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much truth is there? I mean, fundamentally, what is so different between long-range missile technology and satellite launch rocket technology anyway? Would anyone be able to build a satellite launch rocket without a significant portion of technology that is also common to long-range missiles? How do we tell it's a cover-up? I thought a lot of the technology researched by NASA was also used in the US military anyway. Is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10200" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:32:32.990" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:32:32.990" Title="Are North Korea launching satellites to provide cover for testing of long-range missile technology?" Tags="|military|space-flight|north-korea|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13971" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-07T19:41:32.390" Score="8" ViewCount="662" Body="&lt;p&gt;The classic purported around the interwebs is of Dennis the Dentist or Lawrence the Lawyer - the idea that a person is likely to choose a career or place to live because it reminds them of their name. I've read some contrary reports on this but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/stuff_for_blog/susie.pdf&quot;&gt;this paper: &quot;Why Susie Sells Seashells by the Seashore: Implicit Egotism and Major Life Decisions&quot;&lt;/a&gt; seems to be the origin. So is this a real phenomenon and is the decision really about people's own names? Is it more likely to be a form of pareidolia from those conducting the studies? I'm skeptical of the claim for many reasons, but there seems to be a reported correlation at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8739" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:37:50.010" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:37:50.010" Title="Do peoples' names affect their choice of career?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13972" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14023" CreationDate="2012-12-07T21:12:55.510" Score="14" ViewCount="2945" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this to be strange, if not absurd:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Morteza Khalaj Amirhosseini, the author of the book &quot;Leonardo Da Vinci's Drawings&quot;, went on to say that the book presents a complete biography of Da Vinci in which he has proved based on first-hand sources that the Renaissance artist had become a Muslim. However, the west prefers to keep silent on the subject, he added.&lt;br /&gt; &#xA;  He added: &quot;A French writer in the 19th century has evaluated the issue of Da Vinci's conversion to Islam in a treatise, but the west has banned the publication of this treatise.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&amp;amp;id=307415&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of the claim for many reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there such a treatise? Is any verifiable evidence contained therein? Are there first-hand sources that claim that Leonardo converted to Islam, or other documents on the matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-13T05:31:57.693" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T05:31:57.693" Title="Did a banned treatise claim Leonardo da Vinci converted to Islam?" Tags="|religion|islam|leonardo-da-vinci|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13976" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-08T07:07:54.080" Score="6" ViewCount="720" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/479765-dengue-fever-herbal-treatment/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;livestrong&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Homeopathic Remedy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Boneset is also available as a homeopathic remedy under its Latin name, &lt;strong&gt;Eupatorium perfoliatum&lt;/strong&gt;. In his book &quot;Materia Medica and Repertory,&quot; homeopath, Dr. William Boericke notes it is indicated for the flu when accompanied by high fever, severe body pain, headaches and orbital neuralgia, or eye socket pain. Eupatorium perfoliatum in both herbal and homeopathic form is considered safe when taken according to the directions from your health practitioner. Eupatorium perfoliatum is available over the counter from health food stores. Ask your health practitioner for dosing guidelines. Dengue fever should not be self treated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://klemow.wilkes.edu/Eupatorium.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wilkes University paper&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The source of the common name of boneset is not clear. One proposition is that &lt;strong&gt;dengue fever&lt;/strong&gt; (a mosquito-transmitted viral infection marked by muscle and bone pain), formally known as breakbone fever, &lt;strong&gt;was relieved by boneset&lt;/strong&gt; (Innvista 2007).  Another suggests that boneset is used by indigenous people to heal broken bones (Innvista 2007). In the early years of medicine, Eupatorium perfoliatum was placed on bandages of broken bones.  The rationale behind this therapy was one of Doctrine of Signatures.  The users believed that the jointed appearance of the leaves was an indication that this plant healed broken bones (Connecticut Botanical Society 2005).  Boneset has also been shown to help treat wounds, cuts and other skin problems (Dweck 1997).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eupatorium&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eupatorium&lt;/a&gt; includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Boneset alludes to the use of the plant to treat broken bones, &lt;strong&gt;although it may also come from its use to treat dengue fever&lt;/strong&gt;, which was also called &lt;strong&gt;breakbone fever&lt;/strong&gt; because of the pain that it caused. The name thoroughwort also comes from &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Eupatorium perfoliatum&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, and refers to the perfoliate leaves, in which the stem appears to pierce (i.e. go through, note that in older usage &quot;thorough&quot; was not distinguished from &quot;through&quot;, compare for example the word thoroughfare) the leaf. Boneset, although &lt;strong&gt;poisonous to humans&lt;/strong&gt; and grazing livestock, has been used in folk medicine, for instance to excrete excess uric acid which causes gout. Caution is advised when using boneset, since it contains toxic compounds that can cause &lt;strong&gt;liver damage&lt;/strong&gt;. Side effects include muscular tremors, weakness, and constipation; &lt;strong&gt;overdoses may be deadly&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can boneset/&lt;em&gt;Eupatorium perfoliatum&lt;/em&gt;, homoeopathic or otherwise, cure &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengue_fever&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dengue&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was it ever used by &lt;em&gt;indigenous people&lt;/em&gt; to treat dengue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if it only has alleviating properties, does it require homoeopathic administration?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it authorised for medical use anywhere?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2013-02-19T16:10:30.033" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T18:59:41.177" Title="Can boneset cure dengue fever?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|homeopathy|disease|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13983" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-09T17:34:07.437" Score="29" ViewCount="1274" Body="&lt;p&gt;I need help confirming or debunking what may be an urban legend in the paranormal literature regarding the rocky public relationship between spiritualism believer (and famous author) Arthur Conan Doyle and American parapsychologist J.B. Rhine. The story starts when Rhine attended a seance by the famed Boston medium &quot;Margery&quot; (Mina Crandon) on July 1, 1926. He concluded she was a fraud. He published this paper with his wife:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/21/4/401/&quot;&gt;One evening's observation on the Margery mediumship&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Rhine, J. B.; Rhine, Louisa E.&#xA;The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol 21(4), Jan-Mar 1927, 401-421.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this paper got some press coverage in newspapers including &lt;a href=&quot;http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0D1FFE3D581B728DDDAE0894DA405B878EF1D3&quot;&gt;the New York Times&lt;/a&gt;, Margery's supporters raised a ruckus in the press. Doyle wrote a letter to the Boston Herald &lt;a href=&quot;http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0610FB3C5D13738DDDAC0894DB405B878EF1D3&quot;&gt;accusing Rhine of &quot;colossal impertinance&quot;&lt;/a&gt; and defending Margery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that is well documented. But a story in the paranormal literature claims Doyle went one step further, and ran a &quot;black bordered&quot; display ad in the Boston newspapers which said simply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;J.B. Rhine is a Monumental Ass&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen this repeated time after time after time in various books. None of the books offers specifics as to which newspaper and on what date, other than it was in Boston (where Margery lived and worked). Ideally, I would like to obtain a copy of the ad from a microfilm if it exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had two librarians make a stab at finding the ad, but obviously newspaper indices do not generally index the contents of ads. I can't find a library near me that has microfilms of the Boston Herald, which I consider the most likely newspaper this ran in.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the paper became public in February 1927 and Doyle responded in March 1927, it likely ran near that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone find proof or counter-proof of this ad being printed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several of the books in which this is repeated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mayer, E.L. &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/?isbn=0553382233&quot;&gt;Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind.&lt;/a&gt; Random House Digital: 2008. p.85 ISBN 0553382233&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Time Life Books. &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/?isbn=0809463083&quot;&gt;Psychic Powers: Mysteries of the Unknown.&lt;/a&gt; Time-Life Books: 1987. p. 50 ISBN 0809463083&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Brian, D. &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/?isbn=0132751070&quot;&gt;The enchanted voyager: the life of J.B. Rhine, an authorized biography&lt;/a&gt;. Prentice-Hall: 1982. ISBN 0132751070&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Berger, A.S. &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/?isbn=0899503454&quot;&gt;Lives and letters in American parapsychology: a biographical history&lt;/a&gt;, 1850-1987. McFarland: 1988. p. 203. ISBN 0899503454&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The earliest reference I've found to the phrase doesn't mention the ad, and is found in an 1956 newspaper profile of J.B. Rhine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Browning, Norma Lee &lt;a href=&quot;http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/chicagotribune/access/514713782.html?dids=514713782:514713782&amp;amp;FMT=ABS&amp;amp;FMTS=ABS%3aAI&amp;amp;type=historic&amp;amp;date=Feb%2007,%201956&amp;amp;author=&amp;amp;pub=Chicago%20Tribune&amp;amp;desc=Mediums%20Unmasked%20as%20Fakes%20by%20Probers&amp;amp;pqatl=google&quot;&gt;Mediums Unmasked as Fakes by Probers&lt;/a&gt; Chicago Tribune, Feb. 6, 1956, pp. 1,6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His published report contributed significantly to the sudden demise of Margery's popularity. Doyle, who was devoted to Margery, promptly cabled a Boston newspaper, calling J.B. Rhine a &quot;monumental ass.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="284" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2013-11-17T01:20:25.490" LastActivityDate="2019-01-31T21:44:31.817" Title="Did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle call J.B. Rhine a &quot;monumental ass&quot; in print?" Tags="|history|literature|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13988" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16357" CreationDate="2012-12-10T00:21:06.607" Score="22" ViewCount="5176" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a couple of documentaries where they insinuate that sense of humor and intelligence could be related. I couldn't find the documentaries on the web, but the following are some studies regarding the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5083702/Men-can-laugh-women-into-bed-with-GSOH-say-psychologists.html&quot;&gt;Men can 'laugh women into bed' with GSOH, say psychologists&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289611000523&quot;&gt;Humor ability reveals intelligence, predicts mating success, and is higher in males&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/20157303?uid=3739296&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21101543874617&quot;&gt;The Relationship of Humor to Intelligence, Creativity, and Intentional and Incidental Learning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/ep06652666.pdf&quot;&gt;Humor as a Mental Fitness Indicator&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can they be related? Is there a cultural or demographic influence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Particularly, the first study says that men are not attracted so much by women with GSOH, as woman could be by men with GSOH, and the second one that GSOH is higher among males.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it kind of suggests that women are not that much intelligent, or GSOH is not an indicator of intelligence among women, or men doesn't like intelligent women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10651" LastEditorUserId="10651" LastEditDate="2012-12-11T03:01:36.697" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T12:36:00.463" Title="Is sense of humor somehow related to intelligence?" Tags="|intelligence|humor|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2664" CreationDate="2012-12-10T00:42:09.483" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;By itself? &lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt; When paired with a workout regime? &lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of Whey Protein (or indeed, &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; complete protein source) as a supplement is to be utilized in lean-tissue anabolism (growth). In order for muscle mass to increase, there must be three things present:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1) Significant stress on the muscles, either increased weight or increased length of activity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2) Protein to build the new cellular structures.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3) An excess Caloric intake (lest your body simply deconstruct the new muscle for energy instead of retaining it).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whey Powder, or other sources of complete protein supplements, addresses #2. While Protein supplements do contain Calories, unless the workout is short, you will burn more energy than the supplement contains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/16948480/reload=0;jsessionid=n3ErAcD92JGnROGDEq6j.6&quot;&gt;A Placebo-controlled study&lt;/a&gt; has shown the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results showed that protein supplementation during resistance training, independent of source, increased lean tissue mass and strength over isocaloric placebo and resistance training (P &amp;lt; 0.05).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, how much additional protein is necessary can be difficult to determine, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://jap.physiology.org/content/73/5/1986.short&quot;&gt;this study in the Journal of Applied Physiology&lt;/a&gt; takes the time to research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The [High-Protein] diet did not result in increased [Whole Body Protein Synthesis] compared with the [Moderate-Protein] diet, but leucine oxidation did increase significantly, indicating a nutrient overload... In summary, protein requirements for athletes performing strength training are greater than for sedentary individuals and are above current Canadian and US recommended daily protein intake requirements for young healthy males. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there are two caveats to the above study. It was done over 13-days, so long-term side-effects (or lack thereof) weren't displayed, and the &lt;strong&gt;High-Protein&lt;/strong&gt; diet consisted of 2.4g of protein per kg of body-weight per day, which is &lt;em&gt;very high&lt;/em&gt; (3x the USDA recommended daily intake).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Moderate-Protein&lt;/strong&gt; diet in the study above (1.4g/protein per kg body-weight per day) is actually much closer to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://stronglifts.com/protein-daily-needs-myths-best-sources-protein/&quot;&gt;recommendations of popular strength-training websites&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whey Protein, by itself, will &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; make you gain muscle mass. In a workout program designed to build lean muscle mass, Protein Supplements can help you achieve your goals &lt;em&gt;faster&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T00:42:09.483" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13990" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-10T04:09:45.073" Score="18" ViewCount="13534" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whenever I'm sick I hear people say &amp;quot;Don't eat sugar. Sugar feeds infection&amp;quot;. It seems like a well-known concepts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eugeniemason.com/2011/03/sinus-infection-where-is-the-relief/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sugar feeds infection&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bodyecology.com/articles/how-to-cleanse-your-body-of-toxins#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;feeds infection and causes inflammation&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healingdaily.com/detoxification-diet/sugar.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;contributes to a weakened defense against bacterial infection&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, I had a throat infection, it seemed to be going away and I had a piece of (sugary, delicious) cake and got much, much worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when I asked my doctor about it he said, &amp;quot;sugar doesn't feed infection and it was probably circumstancial&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does sugar feed infection?&#xA;For specificity, let's say refined cane sugar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-11-07T16:09:32.773" LastActivityDate="2022-12-07T17:04:25.493" Title="Does &quot;sugar feed infection&quot;?" Tags="|sugar|infection|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13993" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13999" CreationDate="2012-12-10T08:10:54.433" Score="8" ViewCount="1692" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the last five decades, diet soda has been a given for anyone on a diet who wants to drink something other than water. This because instead of it containing large quantities of sugar it had artificial sweeteners, which according to physicians and dietitians would not make you put on more weight than if you drank regular water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize this is, as a whole, is still the popular belief. But every now and then you see news articles or TV segments that hint that these sweeteners actually don't help you lose weight at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for some concrete factual evidence on this. If the old belief is true, then fine. But if it isn't then what could be reason? Is it that the consumers often combine their diet soda with eating something that is unhealthy and fattening? Or is it in the actual sweetener, that it in itself is what makes people put on weight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10655" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-01-03T18:19:56.263" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T18:19:56.263" Title="Can artificial sweeteners make you gain weight?" Tags="|nutrition|consumer-products|weight-loss|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13994" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="13996" CreationDate="2012-12-10T13:36:37.137" Score="54" ViewCount="6445" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is known that the human eye anatomy makes it so that &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081225064352AA5UFCe&quot;&gt;all images we see with our eyes are flipped upside down&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Without noticing it, at an early age, the brain is adjusted to this. What I mean is that we at an adult stage don't walk around troubled with everything we see being upside down, even though this is the technical reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is that I remember hearing somewhere that if a person, at a later age (adult), were to start wearing glasses that flipped everything back around (so that the eyes now captures the image of how the reality actually looks in our mind) that person would eventually after some time be totally adjusted. The person would eventually see no difference between how his vision worked before he started wearing the glasses compared to how it works now after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this feasible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10655" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:57:09.767" LastActivityDate="2021-08-24T00:11:31.307" Title="Could an adult mind automatically adjust if a person was to wear glasses that inverted/flipped all vision?" Tags="|neurology|ophthalmology|anatomy|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13994" CreationDate="2012-12-10T13:49:25.790" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR : &lt;strong&gt;Yes. A person wearing glasses that inverted the vision would in a few days adapt and perceive the vision as normal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_M._Stratton#Wundt%27s_lab_and_the_inverted-glasses_experiments&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;George M. Stratton&lt;/a&gt;, a psychologist, was intrigued by the idea of&#xA;perceptual adaptation. Because the retina receives images upside down,&#xA;he was intrigued to see what happens when the brain receives an image&#xA;that is right side up. Stratton conducted experiments in the 1890s, in&#xA;which he tested the theory of perceptual adaptation. In one&#xA;experiment, which Stratton conducted, he wore a reversing telescope&#xA;for 21½ hours over three days. To his disappointment, his vision was&#xA;unchanged. After removing the glasses, &amp;quot;normal vision was restored&#xA;instantaneously and without any disturbance in the natural appearance&#xA;or position of objects.&amp;quot; Determined to find results, Stratton wore&#xA;the telescoping glasses for eight days straight. By day four, his&#xA;vision was upright (not inverted). However on day five, images&#xA;appeared upright until he concentrated on them; then they became&#xA;inverted again. By having to concentrate on his vision to turn it&#xA;upside down again, especially when he knew images were hitting his&#xA;retinas in the opposite orientation as normal, Stratton deduced his&#xA;brain had reprocessed his vision and adapted to the changes in vision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perceptual adaptation is an element that has been researched&#xA;extensively by George Stratton. All of his experiments failed to&#xA;falsify the theory of perceptual adaptation. Perceptual adaptation is&#xA;a theory that proposes the notion that our brain and senses&#xA;collaborate. Our vision can be altered, but our brain corrects this&#xA;alteration to seem correct. Our brain allows us to live a normal life&#xA;with an altered perception of a normal life&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastEditorUserId="1919" LastEditDate="2021-08-22T01:29:30.173" LastActivityDate="2021-08-22T01:29:30.173" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13994" CreationDate="2012-12-10T13:56:14.640" Score="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are referring to a classic experiment in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptual_adaptation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Perceptual Adaptation&lt;/a&gt; from 1896:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;George M. Stratton, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cns.nyu.edu/%7Enava/courses/psych_and_brain/pdfs/Stratton_1896.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some Preliminary Experiments On Vision Without Inversion of the Retinal Image&lt;/a&gt; (Read at the Third International Congress for Psychology, Munich, August, 1896.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kohUpQwZt8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;video from a BBC documentary&lt;/a&gt; reproducing the experiment. You can also check &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0127418504&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt; as it might contain other examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been more advanced experiments, such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;J.P. Rolland, Frank A. Biocca, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/105474698565703&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Virtual Eyes Can Rearrange Your Body: Adaptation to Visual Displacement in See-Through, Head-Mounted Displays&lt;/a&gt;, doi:10.1162/105474698565703, Presence, June 1998, Vol. 7, No. 3, Pages 262-277&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These days, the inversion goggles are easily available - I found several examples on Amazon, Ebay and Etsy by searching for that term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2021-08-24T00:11:31.307" LastActivityDate="2021-08-24T00:11:31.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="13997" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-10T14:01:21.907" Score="4" ViewCount="544" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://occupycorporatism.com/obama-gives-ok-for-black-box-data-recorders-to-be-installed-in-all-cars/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Occupy Corporatism&lt;/a&gt; reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With complete disregard for driver privacy, the Obama administration gave their consent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to mandate black box event data recorders (EDR) be installed in all new cars in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NHTSA says that by September 2014 all car and light trucks will be equipped with EDRs that will silently “record the actions of drivers and the responses of their vehicles in a continuous information loop.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33265.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Other&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://amodei4nevada.com/blog.asp?blogID=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sites&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message2076010/pg1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;have&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://iamisatthedoors.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/obama-gives-ok-for-black-box-data-recorders-to-be-installed-in-all-cars/comment-page-1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;similar&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/nhtsa-make-automotive-black-box-mandatory-286275&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10657" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T17:16:43.540" Title="Are &quot;black-box&quot; data recorders to be installed in all new US cars?" Tags="|united-states|road-vehicles|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13997" CreationDate="2012-12-10T14:44:50.903" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: To be fair to the OP, &lt;strong&gt;I&lt;/strong&gt; added the notability reference to the question.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original article provides a reference to support its claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/U.S.+DOT+Proposes+Broader+Use+of+Event+Data+Recorders+to+Help+Improve+Vehicle+Safety&quot;&gt;U.S. DOT Proposes Broader Use of Event Data Recorders to Help Improve Vehicle Safety&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is from the official web-site of the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It corroborates some of the details of the Event Data Recorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it differs in a substantial manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; say that the Obama administration gave their consent. It merely states that a &lt;strong&gt;proposal&lt;/strong&gt; has been put forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, it states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Members of the public are encouraged to provide comment on NHTSA's EDR proposal and will have 60 days to do so once the proposal is published in the Federal Register.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given just one day had passed between the press release and the the news report, it is clear that period has not yet expired. [I couldn't find it in the last few days of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=FR&amp;amp;browsePath=2012%2F12&amp;amp;isCollapsed=true&amp;amp;leafLevelBrowse=false&amp;amp;ycord=11&quot;&gt;Federal Register&lt;/a&gt;, so it may not have even been published yet.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T14:44:50.903" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="13999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13993" CreationDate="2012-12-10T16:04:03.727" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect that no definitive answer is known, but below is some interesting research.  In general, it sounds like little research has been done to directly test the question humans.  Epidemiological evidence suggest otherwise, though that may be not be causation (ie overweight people trying to stem weight gain might tend to eat artificial sweeteners more).  If the food reward hypothesis of obesity is correct, that would also suggest that artificial sweeteners wouldn't necessarily aid in weight loss if they increase the palatability of caloric food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent small study in rats &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodpolitics.com/2012/11/do-artificial-sweeteners-make-rats-fat/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;suggested artificial sweeteners can increase obesity&lt;/a&gt;, though nutritionist Marion Nestle is not particularly convinced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most informative reference I can find (other than the paper mentioned by @Oliver_C in the comments) is this paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2892765/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gain weight by “going diet?” Artificial sweeteners and the neurobiology of sugar cravings&lt;/a&gt;.  From the weight loss section of the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;do artificial sweeteners actually help reduce weight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surprisingly, epidemiologic data suggest the contrary. Several large scale prospective cohort studies found positive correlation between artificial sweetener use and weight gain. The San Antonio Heart Study examined 3,682 adults over a seven- to eight-year period in the 1980s. When matched for initial body mass index (BMI), gender, ethnicity, and diet, drinkers of artificially sweetened beverages consistently had higher BMIs at the follow-up, with dose dependence on the amount of consumption. Average BMI gain was +1.01 kg/m2 for control and 1.78 kg/m2 for people in the third quartile for artificially sweetened beverage consumption. The American Cancer Society study conducted in early 1980s included 78,694 women who were highly homogenous with regard to age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and lack of preexisting conditions. At one-year follow-up, 2.7 percent to 7.1 percent more regular artificial sweetener users gained weight compared to non-users matched by initial weight. The difference in the amount gained between the two groups was less than two pounds, albeit statistically significant. Saccharin use was also associated with eight-year weight gain in 31,940 women from the Nurses’ Health Study conducted in the 1970s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar observations have been reported in children. [...] In addition, consensus from interventional studies suggests that artificial sweeteners do not help reduce weight when used alone. BMI did not decrease after 25 weeks of substituting diet beverages for sugar-sweetened beverages in 103 adolescents in a randomized controlled trial, except among the heaviest participants. A double blind study subjected 55 overweight youth to 13 weeks of a 1,000 Kcal diet accompanied by daily capsules of aspartame or lactose placebo. Both groups lost weight, and the difference was not significant. Weight loss was attributed to caloric restriction. Similar results were reported for a 12-week, 1,500 Kcal program using either regular or diet soda. Interestingly, when sugar was covertly switched to aspartame in a metabolic ward, a 25 percent immediate reduction in energy intake was achieved. Conversely, knowingly ingesting aspartame was associated with increased overall energy intake, suggesting overcompensation for the expected caloric reduction. Vigilant monitoring, caloric restriction, and exercise were likely involved in the weight loss seen in multidisciplinary programs that included artificial sweeteners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit: July 7, 2013&lt;/em&gt;:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://download.cell.com/images/edimages/Trends/EndoMetabolism/tem_888.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This opinion/summary piece from&lt;/a&gt; in Cell gives a good summary.  Based on the research discussed in the paper, the answer to your original question is: the best available evidence points to yes, artificial sweeteners can make you gain weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10606" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T18:44:04.693" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13959" CreationDate="2012-12-10T21:57:24.953" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Along the same line as &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13959/is-spider-silk-stronger-than-steel/13961#13961&quot;&gt;Oddthinking's answer&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It depends on the spider and the application&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The major difference between the spider silk and other high-strength&#xA;  materials, such as steel and aramid fibres, is not strength but the&#xA;  degree that the silk fibres extend before they break. This reasonable&#xA;  balance of stiffness, strength and extensibility makes the silk an&#xA;  ideal multipurpose material for advanced biological network&#xA;  construction.&lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Compared to Kevlar&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephila_clavipes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;N. clavipes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; dragline silk shows a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young%E2%80%99s_modulus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Young’s modulus&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;  tensile strength, and stress at break of the same order of&#xA;  Kevlar, which is a benchmark of modern polymer fiber technology but&#xA;  absorbs almost one order of magnitude more energy than Kevlar when&#xA;  breaking.&lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...it is fair to say that spider MA silk is amongst the stiffest and&#xA;  strongest polymeric biomaterials known. Note, however, that the&#xA;  stiffness of MA silk is well below that of Kevlar, carbon fibre and&#xA;  high-tensile steel, engineering materials that are commonly employed&#xA;  to transmit and support tensile forces. Note also that the strength of&#xA;  MA silk is somewhat less than that of these engineering materials. &lt;strong&gt;At&#xA;  first glance, we might interpret this information as indicating that&#xA;  MA silk is superior to other biomaterials, such as collagen, but not&#xA;  as &quot;good&quot; as Kevlar and carbon fibres. However, this interpretation is&#xA;  based on the assumption that &quot;good&quot; means stiff and strong.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[3]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Compared to steel&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, their mechanical properties can be considered above those of&#xA;  steel itself. Its absorbed energy at breaking point is almost two&#xA;  orders of magnitude higher, while its &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensile_strength&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tensile strength&lt;/a&gt; [stress]&#xA;  is almost six times higher and the stresses at breaking point are&#xA;  equivalent. Additionally, although the Young’s modulus of steel is&#xA;  about three times higher than the spider-silk modulus, this last&#xA;  material has a much lower density. Its ratio of tensile strength to&#xA;  density is perhaps five times better than steel. &lt;strong&gt;Therefore, at equal&#xA;  mass, the spider silk behaves much better than steel. In conclusion,&#xA;  spider-silk fibers are nearly as strong as several of the current&#xA;  synthetic fibers and can outperform them in many applications in which&#xA;  total energy absorption is important.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Material comparisons&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[4]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yxSg3.png&quot; alt=&quot;Material comparison&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materials_science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Properties of materials&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[5]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiffness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stiffness&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;: a measure of how materials respond to &#xA;loads (the relationship between stress and strain).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_of_materials&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Strength&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;: a measure of the stress a material can withstand without failure.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elongation_%28materials_science%29#Stretch_ratio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Extensibility&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;: a measure, breaking length divided by the original length, of the elongation a material can withstand before failure (extension to failure). see &lt;em&gt;Strain.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toughness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Toughness&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;: a measure of the total amount of work, or energy, required to stretch the material until it breaks (normalized to the volume of material tested).&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;joule&lt;/a&gt; is equal to the energy expended (or work done) in applying a force of one &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton_%28unit%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;newton&lt;/a&gt; through a distance of one metre (1 newton metre or N·m). One megajoule (MJ) is the approximate kinetic energy of a one metric tonne vehicle moving at 160 km/h (100 mph).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_%28mechanics%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stress&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;: a measure of the average force per unit area of a surface within a deformable body on which internal forces act.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deformation_%28mechanics%29#Strain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Strain&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;: a normalized (dimensionless) measure of deformation representing the displacement between particles in the body relative to a reference length.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Other cool properties&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Balance of energy absorption and return&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Orb-web-weaving spiders appear to use the minimum amount of silk&#xA;  necessary in their webs to catch prey. The web has to stop a rapidly&#xA;  flying insect nearly instantly, so that the prey becomes entangled and&#xA;  trapped. To do this, the web must absorb the energy of the insect&#xA;  without breaking and yet not act as a trampoline and bounce the insect&#xA;  away from the web.&lt;sup&gt;[6]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Supercontraction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another unique feature of major ampullate silks is their&#xA;  supercontraction when exposed to water. Depending on the spider&#xA;  species and other factors, these silks will contract to 50% or less of&#xA;  their original length in water. This silk fiber supercontraction is&#xA;  the only known example of supercontraction in water. This&#xA;  supercontraction can occur repeatedly with virtually identical&#xA;  results. Suggestions are that it provides an advantage to the spider&#xA;  by tightening the web whenever the humidity is very high by&#xA;  contraction of the attachment lines and the framework of the&#xA;  web.&lt;sup&gt;[6]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sirichaisit, J.; Young, R. J.; Vollrath, F. (2000). &quot;Molecular deformation in spider dragline silk subjected to stress&quot;. Polymer 41 (3): 1223. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0032-3861%2899%2900293-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1016/S0032-3861(99)00293-1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rodríguez-Cabello et al. (2006). &quot;Genetic Engineering of Protein-Based Polymers: The Example of Elastinlike Polymers&quot;. Ordered Polymeric Nanostructures at Surfaces. Advances in Polymer Science. 200. pp. 119. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/12_047&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1007/12_047&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gosline, J. M., P. A. Guerette, C. S. Ortlepp, and K. N. Savage (1999) &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jeb.biologists.org/content/202/23/3295.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The mechanical design of spider silks: from fibroin sequence to mechanical function&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Journal of Experimental Biology 202, no. 23 : 3295-3303.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agnarsson I, Kuntner M, Blackledge TA (2010) &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObjectAttachment.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0011234&amp;amp;representation=PDF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bioprospecting Finds the Toughest Biological Material: Extraordinary Silk from a Giant Riverine Orb Spider&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. PLoS ONE 5(9): e11234. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0011234&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0011234&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Biology 427 Biomechanics: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://courses.washington.edu/biomechs/lectures12/lecture7.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Everyday stress and strain and the stiffness of &#xA;biological materials I: terms, definitions and other basics&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lewis, R. V. (2006). &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www1.tu-darmstadt.de/fb/ch/Fachgebiete/OC/AKSchmidt/TUD%20Boris%20Schmidt-Dateien/cr010194g.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spider Silk: Ancient Ideas for New Biomaterials&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Chemical Reviews 106 (9): 3762–3774. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/cr010194g&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1021/cr010194g&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Further reading&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blackledge, T. A.; Kuntner, M.; Agnarsson, I. (2011). &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theridiidae.com/uploads/6/6/8/0/6680387/blackledgeetal2011_advinsectphysiol_orbreview.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Form and Function of Spider Orb Webs&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Spider Physiology and Behaviour - Behaviour. Advances in Insect Physiology. 41. pp. 175. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-415919-8.00004-5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-415919-8.00004-5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sensenig, A.; Agnarsson, I.; Blackledge, T. A. (2010). &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gozips.uakron.edu/~tab27/pdfs/j_evol_biol_2010_biomaterial_coevolution.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Behavioural and biomaterial coevolution in spider orb webs&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 23 (9): 1839–1856. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2010.02048.x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1111/j.1420-9101.2010.02048.x&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-12-10T22:05:25.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14006" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14008" CreationDate="2012-12-10T23:23:19.630" Score="8" ViewCount="804" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stefan Beck, a visiting assistant professor at the University of California at Berkeley, claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The obligatory screening and counseling for Thalassemia in Cyprus is one of the most successful public health programs – but it violates all existing ethical norms. It is obvious that this program is successful because it violates the bioethical rules formulated by international agencies and associations of geneticists.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geneletter.com/cyprus-how-one-nations-culture-influences-its-genes-16/&quot;&gt;Source: Gene Letter, &lt;em&gt;Leading Online Magazine of Genetic&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could that health public program violate the bioethical rules formulated by international agencies and associations of geneticists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Thalassemia is a dangerous desease, I don't see how that claim can be true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the facts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T22:57:11.477" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T14:45:49.223" Title="Could obligatory screening for Thalassemia in Cyprus violate the bioethical rules?" Tags="|genetics|cyprus|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14007" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-11T01:04:38.470" Score="16" ViewCount="40272" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/26566406/The-3-City-States&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;explanation&lt;/a&gt; of the meaning of the stars on Washington DC's flag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three cities (city-states) across this planet that share striking similarities and play a crucial role in the global governmental system we have long been living under. The three city-states (along with the role they serve) is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;City of London&lt;/strong&gt; (finance)&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Washington DC&lt;/strong&gt; (military)&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Vatican City&lt;/strong&gt; (religion)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aforementioned city-states listed above are sovereign, corporate entities not connected to the nations they appear to be part of. In other words, the City of London (that is the square mile within Greater London) is not technically part of Greater London or England, just as Vatican City is not part of Rome or Italy. Likewise, Washington DC is not part of the United States that it controls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These sovereign, corporate entities have their own laws and their own identities. They also have their own flags. Seen below is the flag of Washington DC. Note the three stars, representing the trinity of these three city-states, also known as the Empire of the City. (There is also high esoteric significance to the number 3.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the U.S., the flag is frequently displayed, not only on public buildings, but on private residences. What is the true meaning of Washington DC's flag?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10657" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2021-01-18T04:43:04.530" LastActivityDate="2022-09-05T02:31:06.257" Title="Do the 3 red stars on Washington DC's flag represent 3 city states?" Tags="|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14006" CreationDate="2012-12-11T01:34:04.250" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your linked article has its own pointers to the issue: it says that the screening for being a carrier of a single mutation for beta thalassemia is compulsory and that the state (with religious backing) prevents marriage between carriers even if unrelated.  This degree of compulsion is moving towards a eugenics policy and is similar to the past &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2564466/&quot;&gt;compulsory screening of African-Americans for sickle-cell anaemia&lt;/a&gt; (another recessive blood disorder) in several US states until the 1970s.  Being identified as a carrier of such diseases can lead to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1654013/&quot;&gt;stigmatisation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The typical ethical position for genetic screening is that it should be voluntary and the results should be private, to avoid genetic discrimination, even if this privacy may adversely affect other family members. Some of the ethical issues on screening were discussed in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/ethics-of-genetic-testing-medical-insurance-and-651&quot;&gt;Nature Education&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, though related to Huntingdon's disease.  The more general issue has led to laws such as the US &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.genome.gov/24519851&quot;&gt;Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act&lt;/a&gt; of 2008. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a more speculative view of where widespread genetic screening might lead, consider the film &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca&quot;&gt;Gattaca&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T01:34:04.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14007" CreationDate="2012-12-11T01:44:23.307" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flag of Washington, DC&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uUVxM.png&quot; alt=&quot;Flag of DC&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_Washington,_D.C..svg&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is based on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_George_Washington&quot;&gt;coat of arms of George Washington&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SWYiN.png&quot; alt=&quot;coat of arms of george washington&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:COA_George_Washington.svg&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which also makes an appearance, along with George Washington's bust on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_Heart&quot;&gt;Purple Heart&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eFC9z.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;purple heart&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Purpleheart.jpg&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the the design of DC's flag is clearly taken from its namesake, George Washington. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flag was designed by Charles A.R. Dunn who wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/40067187&quot;&gt;The Origins of the District of Columbia Flag&lt;/a&gt; about his flag design. He was employed painting US state flags, which made him notice that many of them lacked a good design and that there was no flag for Washington, DC. He was inspired by the flag of Maryland, which is the coat of arms of Lord Baltimore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Washington coat of arms has been around for a while before the United States, it even appears on a stained glass window in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selby_Abbey&quot;&gt;Selby Abbey&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PzSA3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;washington coat of arms on stained glass&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Washington_coat_of_arms.jpg&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2012-12-11T04:19:32.753" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T04:19:32.753" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14012" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="38331" CreationDate="2012-12-11T10:31:45.693" Score="12" ViewCount="9983" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sundaytimes.lk/070715/FinancialTimes/ft312.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This newspaper article&lt;/a&gt; from sundaytimes.lk quotes a statement made by a politician in Sri Lanka.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among the 2,400 scientists at NASA, 263 scientists are Sri Lankan nationals according to Minister of Science, Professor Tissa Vitharana. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anybody confirm this? (How to verify this?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10165" LastEditorUserId="8702" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T02:01:22.697" LastActivityDate="2017-05-14T15:53:22.700" Title="Are there 263 Sri Lankans working for NASA?" Tags="|nasa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14016" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-11T15:16:53.637" Score="16" ViewCount="2784" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read various claims, but this &lt;a href=&quot;https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/can-money-buy-happiness.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;HowStuffWorks&quot;&gt;HowStuffWorks&lt;/a&gt; article seems the most representative (bolding is all mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The one place that money and happiness are significantly linked is&#xA;  when a person is &lt;strong&gt;unable to afford to meet their basic needs&lt;/strong&gt;. There&#xA;  is an appreciable difference in levels of happiness between those&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;below the poverty level and those above it&lt;/strong&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once people &lt;strong&gt;pass that poverty threshold&lt;/strong&gt;, though, the money boost&#xA;  tapers off; Inuits in Greenland and Masai ranchers living in Kenyan&#xA;  dung huts are &lt;strong&gt;just as happy&lt;/strong&gt; as the high-society Americans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201209/is-money-the-secret-happiness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Psychology Today&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...disappeared. Once people &lt;strong&gt;reached this level of income&lt;/strong&gt;, sufficient&#xA;  to meet basic needs (except if you happen to live in Marin county,&#xA;  like I do), more income did &lt;strong&gt;not make people any happier&lt;/strong&gt; or less&#xA;  stressed. Rather, individual personality factors and life&#xA;  circumstances were the major factors determining happiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand these are statistics. But these articles are also &lt;strong&gt;prescriptive&lt;/strong&gt; to the individual reader,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For starters, you may want to rethink quitting that job of&#xA;  yours...People with jobs they find highly satisfying but that don't&#xA;  pay as well can be just as content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;people also tend to report higher levels of satisfaction after&#xA;  spending money on experiences rather than things&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;research tells us are the real sources of happiness -- social&#xA;  connections, challenging work, good health&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research studies show that &lt;strong&gt;spending money on experiences&lt;/strong&gt;, such as&#xA;  family vacations, educational courses, or psychotherapy provides more&#xA;  happiness “bang for the buck” than spending money on possessions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a &lt;strong&gt;global absolute threshold&lt;/strong&gt; above which earning more doesn't make you happier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this statistical research be used to advise &lt;strong&gt;me&lt;/strong&gt; on how to choose life priorities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I rather spend on a movie ticket than a T-shirt (it's a valid trade-off where I live, in case you felt it was absurd) since experiences are superior?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-05-31T16:19:35.083" LastActivityDate="2019-05-31T16:19:35.083" Title="Does money correlate with happiness at a certain level?" Tags="|psychology|sociology|personal-finance|happiness|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14016" CreationDate="2012-12-11T15:48:45.573" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2019628,00.html&quot;&gt;Princeton University conducted a study in 2010&lt;/a&gt; where they found that the &lt;em&gt;happiness from salary tipping point&lt;/em&gt; was just under $75 000 a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/learnvest/2012/04/24/the-salary-that-will-make-you-happy-hint-its-less-than-75000/&quot;&gt;Forbes magazine&lt;/a&gt; stated it as such:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the sweet spot is somewhere between $50,000 and $75,000. If you make under $50,000, you might be stressed about your financial situation. If you make over $75,000, the additional returns on working longer hours might not be worth it anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there seems to be a tipping point, where additional salary makes you take on too much work, feeling more stress and more anxiety without raising your quality of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's also mentioned that people with a lower salary, and especially a salary that is decreasing, makes the individual more vulnerable to social insecurity (divorce, sickness, decease of relatives etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10655" LastEditorUserId="10655" LastEditDate="2012-12-11T16:06:41.427" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T16:06:41.427" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14018" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14092" CreationDate="2012-12-11T16:10:01.417" Score="25" ViewCount="1566" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a recent Slate article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/human_evolution/2012/10/evolution_of_lactose_tolerance_why_do_humans_keep_drinking_milk.html&quot;&gt;The Most Spectacular Mutation in Recent Human History. How did milk help found Western civilization?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (October 23, 2012), a claim was made that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Around 10,000 B.C.] a genetic mutation appeared, somewhere near modern-day Turkey, that jammed the lactase-production gene permanently in the “on” position. The original mutant was probably a male who passed the gene on to his children. People carrying the mutation could drink milk their entire lives. Genomic analyses have shown that within a few thousand years, at a rate that evolutionary biologists had thought impossibly rapid, this mutation spread throughout Eurasia, to Great Britain, Scandinavia, the Mediterranean, India and all points in between, stopping only at the Himalayas. Independently, other mutations for lactose tolerance arose in Africa and the Middle East, though not in the Americas, Australia, or the Far East.&#xA;  In an evolutionary eye-blink, 80 percent of Europeans became milk-drinkers; in some populations, the proportion is close to 100 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02evo.html?ref=science&quot;&gt;Human Culture, an Evolutionary Force (The New York Times, March 1, 2010)&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;journalist, Nicholas Wade summarized the intriguing reciprocal interactions between human culture and human genes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lactose tolerance is now well recognized as a case in which a cultural&#xA;  practice — drinking raw milk — has caused an evolutionary change in&#xA;  the human genome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I wonder, did drinking milk cause an evolutionary change in the human genome? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T06:47:17.897" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T06:47:17.897" Title="Did drinking milk cause an evolutionary change in the human genome?" Tags="|genetics|milk|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14022" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-11T19:11:57.680" Score="9" ViewCount="1455" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theweek.com/article/index/237579/the-cup-that-changes-color-when-date-rape-drugs-are-present&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every year, an estimated 1 million people are date raped, and many of&#xA;  them are victims of date-rape drugs, potent mixtures that disrupt the&#xA;  central nervous system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect the &quot;article&quot; appears to be more advertisement for the brand and company than actual article but it is being linked from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drudgereport.com/&quot;&gt;The DrudgeReport&lt;/a&gt; today as though it were actual news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the claim of 1 million date rapes backed up by any reputable studies?  I am not interested so much in the definition of date rape so much as seeing that the company has done more than pulling a nice round number out of there air and using it for the claim.  I am doubly dubious since the apparent reference to the claim on the article links to the home page of the company making the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2012-12-12T06:59:04.553" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T06:09:49.103" Title="Are 1 million people a year date raped?" Tags="|criminology|advertising|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13972" CreationDate="2012-12-11T20:10:22.837" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim appears to come from Morteza Khalaj Amirhosseini himself without actually giving the source.  He does not even give the name of the supposed French writer who the treatise was written to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shafaqna.com/english/component/k2/item/1681-was-da-vinci-a-muslim?.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Every&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://doctorbulldog.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/muzzy-claims-da-vinci-was-muslim/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;site&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://sheikyermami.com/2012/04/09/da-vinci-was-muslim/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;that&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibna.ir/vdceox8znjh8xei.1kbj.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;references&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jihadwatch.org/2012/04/iranian-book-claims-leonardo-davinci-converted-to-islam.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_display.cfm/blog_id/41467&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt; uses the &lt;a href=&quot;http://abna.ir/data.asp?lang=3&amp;amp;id=307415&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quote&lt;/a&gt; from Morteza Khalaj Amirhosseini.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;A French writer in the 19th century has evaluated the issue of Da&#xA;Vinci's conversion to Islam in a treatise, but the west has banned the&#xA;publication of this treatise.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1571851/Leonardo-Da-Vinci-may-have-been-an-Arab.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;these&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debbieschlussel.com/2701/so-what-leonardo-da-vinci-arabic-just-like-us/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; though, there is a high chance that Leonardo Da Vinci was of arab descent.  This is based on a finger print found on one of his paintings.&#xA;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1571851/Leonardo-Da-Vinci-may-have-been-an-Arab.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The print, taken from the artist's left index finger, was discovered&#xA;after an exhaustive three-year trawl through his works by researchers&#xA;at the University of Chieti.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor Luigi Capasso, an anthropologist who led the team, said the&#xA;central whorl of the fingerprint was a common pattern in the Middle&#xA;East.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Around 60 per cent of the Middle Eastern population have the same&#xA;structure,&amp;quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This clearly doesn't mean that he is a Muslim, but it is one of the supporting pieces of evidence that Morteza Khalaj Amirhosseini is using.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I can tell the only person who is making the claim that Leonardo was a Muslim is&#xA;Morteza Khalaj Amirhosseini and his evidence seems very flimsy.  And the fact that no one else is even making this claim also seems to lead me to conclude that this is a false claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8691" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-11T20:10:22.837" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13993" CreationDate="2012-12-11T20:38:55.280" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In most diet sodas you will find high fructose corn syrup or labeled as fructose-glucose. I don't know how valid this doctor is but take a look at the video:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fructose is found in fruits and in cane sugar but there seems to be different effects caused by what its ingested with and the concentration. Personally I'm trying to avoid HFCS but its getting harder since fructose is sweeter and costs less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10674" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-02-02T14:48:38.140" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T14:48:38.140" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14026" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14039" CreationDate="2012-12-12T06:40:50.147" Score="2" ViewCount="784" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbh5l0b2-0o&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; (around 9:45 into it), the narrator says one effect of being limited to the left hemisphere of the brain was that, without noticing it, one will lose the ability to describe the right side of someone's face. I don't know what to call such a phenomenon, so I can't find any evidence of this, although &lt;a href=&quot;http://brainmind.com/ConsciousAwareness.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt; looks like a promising place to start.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can those limited to the left side of their brains only describe the left half of one's face?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10683" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-12T07:30:44.320" LastActivityDate="2014-03-26T21:54:13.287" Title="Can those limited to the left side of their brains only describe the left half of one's face?" Tags="|psychology|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5180" CreationDate="2012-12-12T14:02:07.337" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;: There is evidence to support the figure, but it is misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the OP dismisses surveys out of hand as untrustworthy, they actually can shed light on the issue, and explain the higher-than-might-be-expected level of 1-in-3 porn viewers being female.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, consider this survey of 316 men and 372 women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gert Martin Hald, &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-006-9064-0?LI=true&quot;&gt;Gender Differences in Pornography Consumption among Young&#xA;Heterosexual Danish Adults&lt;/a&gt;, Arch Sex Behav (2006) 35:577–585 DOI 10.1007/s10508-006-9064-0.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: This is limited to Denmark, young adults and heterosexuals, and it is only a single study (the first I found; I didn't cherry-pick.) However, it is sufficient to address the question, by revealing how the original statistic was misleading, and not as astonishing as it originally sounds.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this is a survey and participants may have lied in the answers, we might expect that there would be more cultural pressure for women to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;decline to respond or, &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;if they did respond, to downplay their porn consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, women were significantly more responsive to the survey request than men, so the first concern can be discarded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the response rate of the ﬁnal sample was 65.6% for males (n = 316) and 78.0%&#xA;  for females (n = 372) (p &amp;lt; .05).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the second concern was to come about, it would show women's porn-viewing rate as lower-than-actual, which would reinforce our initial expectations. If our expectations are broken despite this bias, we can be confident that our initial expectations of male dominance in porn-watching are incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, one of the original sources of the claim said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The data, provided to the Herald by Nielsen Net Ratings/NetView, a world leader in internet analysis, reveals 4.3 million Australians viewed pornography or visited a sex-oriented matchmaker site on the internet at least once in the quarter ending in March. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Danish survey didn't ask about the last 3 months and didn't include sex-oriented match-making web-sites, but they did ask &quot;Have you watched pornography in the last 6 months?&quot; and &quot;last month?&quot; Here are the results (adapted from Table 3).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;          Men            Women&#xA; 6 months 92.2% (n=309)  60.0% (n=295)&#xA; Month    82.5% (n=309)  33.6% (n=295)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back-of-the-envelope suggests that women therefore account for between 29% and 39% of porn-viewers. The original 1-in-3 claim is right in the ball-park.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, if women were more reticent than men to admit to porn viewing, the actual percentage would be higher than this sampled one. If sex-oriented matchmaking sites were included, like they were in the original claim, it would be higher still.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this figure is misleading, because the number of times that the men viewed the pornography during that 1, 3 or 6 month period is much higher than then women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the same table compare the number of respondents who had viewed pornography in the past 24 hours:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;          Men            Women&#xA; 24 hours 26.2% (n=309)   3.1% (n=295)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suddenly women only account for 1-in-10 porn-viewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is explained further by another part of the same table, which is limited to only those who indicated they watched some porn, ever:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; Frequency of use          Men           Women&#xA; Less than once a month    15.3% (n=281) 51.4% (n=275)&#xA; 1–2 times per month       17.1% (n=281) 30.3% (n=275)&#xA; 1–2 times per week        28.8% (n=281) 11.4% (n=275)&#xA; 3 times per week or more  38.8% (n=281)  6.9% (n=275)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most women who did view porn used it less than once per month. Most men who did watch porn viewed it more than once per week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, from the perspective of a pornography web-site, a particular download of a piece of pornographic material is far more likely to be viewed by a male than a female. (Even more so, as men are more likely to watch pornography alone than women.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion: Despite the concerns about surveys, they can be used to explain how the original claimants shared a statistic that was plausible in accuracy, but was presented in a manner that was misleading, in that it over-emphasized the level of women's viewing of pornography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-13T06:46:30.223" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T06:46:30.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14028" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-12T14:04:14.770" Score="74" ViewCount="9620" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does modern research prescribe 40 hour workweeks, and agree that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;increasing hours doesn't proportionally increase productivity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you turn in less and worse work, and risk dangerous mistakes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;longer workweeks turn counter-productive after some time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it's applicable to white-collar workers and operators of industrial machinery alike&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm most interested in the fourth item. Most who repeat the claim gloss over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also personally curious about whether this is applicable to early-20s people with no dependents (spouses and children), who can resist fatigue better and don't look forward to loved ones after work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Examples of the claim&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few articles claim that working more than 40 hours per week makes you less productive. Longer workweeks &lt;strong&gt;eventually&lt;/strong&gt; make you less productive than 40-hour work weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/stop-working-more-than-40-hours-a-week.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Stop Working More Than 40 Hours a Week&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Inc.com&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's a century of research establishing the undeniable fact that&#xA;  working more than 40 hours per week actually &lt;strong&gt;decreases&#xA;  productivity&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the early 1900s, Ford Motor ... discovered that the &quot;sweet spot&quot; is&#xA;  40 hours a week–and that, while adding another 20 hours provides a&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;minor increase&lt;/strong&gt; in productivity, that increase only lasts for three to four weeks, and &lt;strong&gt;then turns negative&lt;/strong&gt;. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People who put in a solid 40 hours a week get more done than those who&#xA;  regularly work 60 or more hours. ... In every case that I've&#xA;  personally observed, the long hours result in work that must be&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;scrapped or redone&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it's proven from established industries for decades as in &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bring back the 40-hour work week&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Salon&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Business owners discovered that when they gave into the union and cut&#xA;  the hours, their businesses became significantly more productive and&#xA;  profitable. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1937, the 40-hour week was enshrined nationwide as part of the New Deal. By that point, there were a &lt;strong&gt;solid five decades of industrial research&lt;/strong&gt; that proved,&#xA;  beyond a doubt, that if you wanted to keep your workers bright,&#xA;  healthy, productive, safe and efficient over a &lt;strong&gt;sustained stretch&lt;/strong&gt; of&#xA;  time, you kept them to no more than 40 hours a week and eight hours a&#xA;  day. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Knowledge workers actually have &lt;strong&gt;fewer good hours&lt;/strong&gt; in a day than manual&#xA;  laborers do — on average, about six hours, as opposed to eight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Why I'm skeptical&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These articles make recommendations for the modern white-collar worker, but they use decades-old research on factory workers. In addition, some key points were not backed up by any research, but only by anecdote. Companies described in the articles are extreme examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="16860" LastEditDate="2016-12-29T11:30:34.140" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T11:30:34.140" Title="Does working over 40 hours a week make you less productive?" Tags="|psychology|productivity|work|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8757" CreationDate="2012-12-12T14:11:02.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best I can say, is that there are various studies regarding the anti-inflammatory and analgesic properties of all the allium family, including the scallion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://unilorin.edu.ng/publications/owoyelebv/analgesic%20and%20anti-inflammatory%20effects.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects of the Allium Ascalonicum (scallion)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In conclusion this study has shown that the acqueous and methanol&#xA;  extracts of Allium ascalonicum have mild analgesic activity and strong&#xA;  anti-inflammatory activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1610132&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial properties of garlic and onions (abstract only)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Findings&lt;/em&gt; – Both garlic and onions exert their effects on human health&#xA;  via multiple different functions, including antioxidant,&#xA;  anti-inflammatory, and antibacterial properties. The organosulphur&#xA;  compounds in these spices scavenge oxidizing agents, inhibit the&#xA;  oxidation of fatty acids, thereby preventing the formation of&#xA;  pro-inflammatory messengers, and inhibit bacterial growth, via&#xA;  interaction with sulphur-containing enzymes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smelling, so inhaling the fumes  of onion and garlic is essentially inhaling the volatilized chemical componds, expecially if the scallion or onion is minced and warmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not very different from the way commercial products like Vicks VapoRub works, as the &quot;Vapor&quot; part is essentially inhaling menthol and camphor fumes, and both  have analgesic and anti-inflammatory effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties are going to help with the symptoms of the cold (as Avrohom Yitzchok has said, right now you can't really cure the cause of the cold).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding to that, the anti-microbial and anti-bacterial properties may help curing eventual bacterial complications caused by the cold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastEditorUserId="8980" LastEditDate="2012-12-14T09:06:54.020" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T09:06:54.020" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1499" CreationDate="2012-12-12T19:36:38.580" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're describing sounds like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easterlin_paradox&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Easterlin Paradox&lt;/a&gt;.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Named for economist and USC Professor Richard Easterlin who discussed the factors contributing to happiness in the 1974 paper &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/04/16/business/Easterlin1974.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence.&lt;/a&gt; Easterlin found that within a given country people with higher incomes are more likely to report being happy. However, in international comparisons, the average reported level of happiness does not vary much with national income per person, at least for countries with income sufficient to meet basic needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more comprehensive studies have since claimed to disprove this paradox. (See the controversy section of the Wikipedia page.) One study is discussed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/04/17/the-economics-of-happiness-part-2-are-rich-countries-happier-than-poor-countries/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Freakonomics blog post&lt;/a&gt;. The link to the original study in this post is dead, unfortunately. The key finding is that happiness is strongly correlated (0.82) to the logarithm of wealth (see graph below). So the more money you have, the more additional money you need to move up by one &quot;happiness unit&quot;. But there is no evidence that happiness will actually start decreasing after a certain point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q06kF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Chart of happiness vs. log(wealth)&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1950" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T19:36:38.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8757" CreationDate="2012-12-12T21:54:18.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/biosi/subsites/cold/cure.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Common Cold Centre at Cardiff University&lt;/a&gt;  which says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There may never be a cure for the common cold! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is very unlikely that we are going to see a cure for the common&#xA;  cold because of the following problems-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• Common cold is not a single disease but a syndrome of symptoms&#xA;  caused by many different viruses. Defeating smallpox with a single&#xA;  vaccine was a relatively easy task compared to developing multiple&#xA;  vaccines for common cold&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• By the time you know you have a cold it is probably too late to&#xA;  treat, as antivirals need to be taken 24-48 hours after onset of&#xA;  symptoms&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;amongst other reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7539" LastActivityDate="2012-12-12T21:54:18.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13900" CreationDate="2012-12-13T10:50:07.867" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/17951015/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;original paper&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20452128&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;subsequent one&lt;/a&gt; were published in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/medical-hypotheses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Medical Hypothesis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a journal that, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journals.elsevier.com/medical-hypotheses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;by design&lt;/a&gt;, includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ideas which have a great deal of observational support and some hypotheses where experimental support is yet fragmentary [...] opening the field to radical hypotheses which would be rejected by most conventional journals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is an excellent source of novel ideas that may lead to experiments, but it is not a good place to find solid theories supported by substantial evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a way, it did its job, in that it inspired a more rigorous study of the evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Helle S., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19199108/?i=10&amp;amp;from=/17951015/related&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Solar activity during gestation does not affect human lifespan: evidence from national data.&lt;/a&gt;, Biogerontology. 2009 Dec;10(6):671-5. doi: 10.1007/s10522-009-9214-6.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here, the aim was to replicate the findings of those previous few studies that have suggested a reduced lifespan of individuals born during the years of high solar activity, measured as the sunspot numbers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This author looked at a large amount of data - data from ten (mainly European) countries, over a period of over 160 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;These data, however, provided no evidence that human&#xA;  life expectancy at birth was related to solar activity during&#xA;  gestation&lt;/strong&gt; among the countries studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this was a nice idea, but was ultimately not correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T10:50:07.867" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14026" CreationDate="2012-12-13T11:00:40.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Can those limited to the left side of their brains only describe the left half of one's face?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the diagram below you can see that the left side of each retina (which, due to inversion by optics of the eye, receives the &lt;em&gt;right&lt;/em&gt; side of the field of view) is connected to the left hemisphere of the brain. However you would think that a person with right hemisphere damage could just direct their gaze to bring both sides of the subjects face into view on the left side of their retina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HKhdJ.gif&quot; alt=&quot;nerve connections&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the problem is real. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemianopsia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hemianopsia&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemispatial_neglect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hemispatial Neglect&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3404967&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fresnel prisms--their value in the rehabilitation of homonymous hemianopsias&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a stroke affecting the right parietal lobe of the brain can lead to neglect for the left side of the visual field, causing a patient with neglect to behave as if the left side of sensory space is nonexistent (although they can still turn left). In an extreme case, a patient with neglect might fail to eat the food on the left half of their plate,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Hemineglect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scholarpedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/I4SO1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eye movements during visual search in an individual with left-sided neglect attempting to find letter Ts among Ls. Red dots show fixations and yellow lines depict saccadic eye movements from one fixation to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Footnote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a partial answer, I don't know any sources that answer whether damage to one occipital lobe &lt;em&gt;invariably&lt;/em&gt; leads to hemispatial neglect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-12-13T11:23:26.957" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T11:23:26.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7205" CreationDate="2012-12-13T14:59:01.213" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3544435?uid=3738032&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21101486910951&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Modelling sex vs asexual&lt;/a&gt; with respect to parasites showed in 1980 that sexual reproduction &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...in certain states of cycling sexual species easily obtain higher long-term geometric mean fitness than any competing monotypic asexual species or mixture of such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this was confirmed in landmark experiment in 2011 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3402160/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;published in Science&lt;/a&gt;. Here a worm (C. elegans.) which normally reproduced both sexually and asexually was modified to isolate a strain which only reproduces sexually, and one which only reproduces asexually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They then infected the worms with a bacterial parasite (S. marcescens) which can proved lethal within 24hours if the worm is not resistant. Both the worm and the bacteria can evolve resistance/virulence over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this experiment the sexually reproducing worms had a much lower mortality than the asexually reproducing species when infected with the bacteria. This effect was much greater after being co-cultured with the bacteria for 10 generations, where ~70% of the asexual worms died while only ~18% of the sexually reproducing worms died after 30 generations. The asexually reproducing lines all went extinct after 20 generations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In summary, we found that obligately selfing lineages were driven to extinction when confronted with a coevolving parasite. These results are consistent with the macroevolutionary aspects of the Red Queen hypothesis, as originally formulated by Van Valen (Van Valen L. Evol Theory. 1973;1:1–30.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, we do know at least one reason why sex has evolved; coping with parasites. As with all evolutionary rationalisation, this may not be the initial reason or the most important reason it evolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastEditorUserId="7188" LastEditDate="2012-12-13T15:57:37.227" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T15:57:37.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14042" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-13T17:19:28.350" Score="28" ViewCount="41468" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, I think this is a stupid unbelievable question. However, for the sake of getting on S.SE, is there any evidence to for the Nazis using fluoride maliciously for example, to make prisoners more docile?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is one graphic claiming, &lt;em&gt;&quot;Hitler used it to sterilize inmates nad make them more docile.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/C1cBlm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Anti-Fluoride Graphic&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Infowars claims it in graphics too, &lt;em&gt;&quot;Sodium Fluoride, used by Nazis, lowers your IQ.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lwyTxm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Infowars Anti-Fluoride Poster&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infowars.com/who-admits-omitting-fluorides-damaging-health-effects-to-prevent-controversy/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the InfoWars site says&lt;/a&gt;..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“the Nazi concentration camps used fluoridated water to suppress the will and vigor of inmates. This appears to have been during the 1930s and was the first known example of fluoridated water supplies for a specific population.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly the site sources &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thyroid-info.com/articles/shamesfluoride.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Richard Shames, M.D. graduated Harvard and University of Pennsylvania&lt;/a&gt;, however it doesn't say how he came to the conclusion. He also seems kind of sketchy as he offers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.feelingfff.com/appointments.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;consultations by telephone.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; But, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/159463002X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;he does have a book that is well reviewed on Amazon.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infonews.co.nz/news.cfm?id=17791&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here is a article entitled, &lt;em&gt;Nazi's used Sodium Fluoride&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; with all kinds of claims. Most bold is probably,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The first occurrence of fluoridated drinking water on Earth was found in Germany's Nazi prison camps. The Gestapo had little concern about fluoride's supposed effect on children's teeth; their alleged reason for mass-medicating water with sodium fluoride was to sterilize humans and force the people into their concentration camps into calm submission. (Ref. book: &quot;The Crime and Punishment of I.G. Farben&quot; by Joseph Borkin.)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infonews.co.nz/news.cfm?id=17791&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the article continues&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;&quot;The German chemists worked out a very ingenious and far-reaching plan of mass-control which was submitted to and adopted by the German General Staff. This plan as to control the population in any given area through mass medication of drinking water supplies. By this method they could control the population in whole areas, reduce population by water medication that would produce sterility in women, and so on. In this scheme of mass-control, sodium fluoride occupied a prominent place.&quot; Presumably the above excerpt continues, &quot;repeated doses of infinitesimal amounts of fluoride will in time reduce an individual's power to resist domination by slowly poisoning and narcotizing a certain area of the brain, thus making him submissive to the will of those who wish to govern him.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/e4Gedl.png&quot; alt=&quot;First page of &amp;quot;Nazi&amp;#39;s used Sodium Fluoride&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="8014" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T11:21:04.000" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T11:21:04.000" Title="Did the Nazis maliciously fluoridate drinking water?" Tags="|water|fluoride|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2600" CreationDate="2012-12-13T19:10:30.697" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a handfull of instances of people surviving much higher falls from plane crashes. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vesna Vulović&lt;/a&gt; is one such person. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2587/could-you-jump-off-a-bridge-or-a-tall-building-and-survive-the-fall&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; also mentions a case were someone survived a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this we can safely conclude that that if it was indeed the shock that kills, It definitely doesn't occur 100% of the time, so it is at best plausible. Going further than that to definitively prove the claim false in most or all cases is exceedingly difficult since the trauma caused by impact would overshadow evidence of cardiac arrest during an autopsy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6876" LastActivityDate="2012-12-13T19:10:30.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14047" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14133" CreationDate="2012-12-13T21:57:45.827" Score="74" ViewCount="13356" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://m.guardian.co.uk/science/2000/feb/24/spaceexploration.internationalnews1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US and Russian astronauts have had sex in space for separate research programmes on how human beings might survive years in orbit, according to a book published yesterday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pierre Kohler, a respected French scientific writer, says in The Final Mission: Mir, The Human Adventure that the subject is taboo both at Nasa and at mission control in Moscow, but that cosmic couplings have taken place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of this claim that Pierre Kohler made in 2000. Is there serious evidence nowadays?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2021-08-13T14:29:05.893" Title="Did astronauts or cosmonauts have sex in space?" Tags="|medical-science|sexuality|space-flight|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14052" CreationDate="2012-12-14T02:09:46.553" Score="12" ViewCount="40969" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=10034&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Via snopes.com Message Board&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/ubb/get_topic/f/20/t/000675.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and a similar question on &lt;a href=&quot;https://mechanics.stackexchange.com/questions/3102/are-automakers-required-to-maintain-spare-parts-infrastructure-for-15-years&quot;&gt;mechanics.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Auto manufacturers are required by US Federal Law to have parts available for any models they sold for the period of 10 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also heard this claim from various people over the years, with numbers ranging from 5 years to 20.  It seems reasonable, and was stated in one of the Snopes threads linked above, and implied in the mechanics.se answer (specifying California law), that manufacturers would need to provide parts necessary to fulfill their requirements under warranty.  I can especially see the feds regulating availability of parts related to federal emissions and safety standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip side an unresolved warranty claim is purely a civil matter, so the need for such a federal law eludes me.  Additionally, a manufacturer most certainly would not want to irritate their customers by telling them to junk a brand new major financial investment because they do not have brake pads available. This logic makes me skeptical that a federal law (or at least that a broad 'all parts' law) would exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there or is there not a Federal law or regulation?  If so, is this law/regulation for ALL parts, or just a subset of parts?  References?  I realize that it is almost impossible to prove the non-existence of something, but I would consider an answer to be legitimate if such a law used to exist but no longer does (as that would at least fortify the claim).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10698" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:47:21.433" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T18:56:48.970" Title="Are Auto Manufacturers required under US Federal Law to provide parts for a set period of time?" Tags="|united-states|road-vehicles|law|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14049" CreationDate="2012-12-14T11:37:07.643" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are &lt;b&gt;Auto&lt;/b&gt; &lt;b&gt;Manufacturers&lt;/b&gt; required under &lt;b&gt;US Federal Law&lt;/b&gt; to provide &lt;b&gt;parts ... for &lt;b&gt;10 years&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&quot;US Federal Law&quot;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;1) Warranties&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consumer products are not required to have warranties, but if one is given, it must comply with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty_Act&quot;&gt;Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The act says that warranties must be  &lt;em&gt;&quot;conspicuously designated&quot;&lt;/em&gt; as either a Full Warranty or as a Limited Warranty. I believe the terms of the act mostly apply to full waranties. I note that makers tend to advertise &quot;powertrain warranties&quot; etc rather than &quot;full warranties&quot;.&#xA;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.suzukiauto.com/owners/warranty.php&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://business.ftc.gov/documents/bus01-businesspersons-guide-federal-warranty-law#Magnuson-Moss&quot;&gt;FTC advice&lt;/a&gt; for more on &quot;Full&quot; vs &quot;Limited&quot; warranties and other aspects of the act. A powertrain warranty can be either full or limited (as defined in the act).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Parts&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A consequence is that vehicle manufacturers must be able to provide parts during the term of a warranty (if any) made at the time of sale. They need not make or stock these parts themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vehicle makers could choose not to do so, but then they would be required to provide a replacement vehicle or a full refund of the vehicle cost. In practice it is usually more cost effective for makers to procure replacement parts to effect a warranty repair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A further consequence is therefore that replacement parts are also available to people who do not have a warranty claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&quot;10 years&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unusual for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cars.com/go/advice/Story.jsp?section=buy&amp;amp;subject=warranty&amp;amp;story=manWarranty&quot;&gt;auto warranty periods&lt;/a&gt; to exceed 5 years. Most are shorter. &lt;sub&gt;credit: Oddthinking in comment below&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Manufacturer&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The act does not mandate that manufacturers provide warranties, dealers/retailers could provide warranties, the terms of the act would then apply to those dealers/retailers not to the manufacturers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Auto&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The act applies to all consumer products, not just to automotive vehicles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2) EPA&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The EPA provide information on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/oms/consumer/warr95fs.txt&quot;&gt;Federally required emission control warranties&lt;/a&gt; which says that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Manufacturers have been required by federal law to provide&#xA;  emission control coverage for vehicles since 1972.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this just means that manufactureres must pay for repairs &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if the emissions control system fails to meet performance requirements within  &lt;strong&gt;two years&lt;/strong&gt; of sale.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if a defect or design flaw in the emissions control system is found within &lt;strong&gt;eight years&lt;/strong&gt; of sale.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The EPA list the parts covered but do &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; say that replacement parts must be manufactured, provided or sold by the auto manufacturer, only that the manufacturer must pay for any necessary repair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is false (or at least misleading) in almost all respects. However, as is often the case, it springs from a kernel of truth. Albeit a truth which is altogether rather more mundane and unremarkable in character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-12-14T15:38:23.120" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T15:38:23.120" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5114" CreationDate="2012-12-14T19:14:08.217" Score="29" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Nobody knows.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;None of the sources for total LOC provide any means or methods.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sources for hard numbers after 2008 were a little hard to come by, my apologies.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Total number of lines of all code in use?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One trillion (2001).&lt;sup&gt;[19]&lt;/sup&gt; &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C/C++: 180 billion, Assembler: 140-220 billion, Other: 280 billion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Total number of lines of COBOL code in use?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;200 billion (2008).&lt;sup&gt;[10]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;180 billion (2006).&lt;sup&gt;[12]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;200 billion (2005).&lt;sup&gt;[14]&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;225 billion (2001).&lt;sup&gt;[19]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100 billion (2000).&lt;sup&gt;[21]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Total number of all programmers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;14.6 million (2009).&lt;sup&gt;[8]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Total number of COBOL programmers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.5 - 2 million (2008).&lt;sup&gt;[19]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;~2 million (2000).&lt;sup&gt;[20]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we consider the fact that there are at least 2000 banks in the U.S. alone and that the sources below give numbers between 100 thousand LOC and 343 million LOC for financial systems; Well it adds up fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you throw in civil and military systems...it's at least one billion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sources&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2012&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.&lt;/strong&gt; Case study In this work we analyze a Cobol software portfolio of a&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;large organization operating in the financial sector&lt;/strong&gt;. The Cobol&#xA;  sources are a mixture of code written manually and generated with&#xA;  Computer-Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools, such as TELON,&#xA;  COOL:Gen, CANAM, and others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The portfolio is decades-old and large in many dimensions; for&#xA;  example, in terms of lines of code, number of systems, or number of&#xA;  modules. To give an idea, the &lt;strong&gt;portfolio contains more than 18.2&#xA;  million physical lines of code (LOC)&lt;/strong&gt; partitioned over 47 information&#xA;  systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kwiatkowski, L. M., &amp;amp; Verhoef, C. (2012). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.vu.nl/~x/rmsc/rmsc.pdf&quot;&gt;Recovering management information from source code.&lt;/a&gt; Science of Computer Programming.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2.&lt;/strong&gt; David Brown is worried. As managing director of the IT transformation&#xA;  group at Bank of New York Mellon, he is responsible for the health and&#xA;  welfare of &lt;strong&gt;112,500 Cobol programs, 343 million lines of code, that run&#xA;  core banking and other operations&lt;/strong&gt;. But many of the people who built&#xA;  that code base, some of which goes back to the early days of Cobol in&#xA;  the 1960s, will be retiring over the next several years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That's the situation faced by Jim Gwinn, chief information officer for&#xA;  the USDA's Farm Service Agency. &quot;&lt;strong&gt;We have millions of lines of Cobol&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  and there's a long history of it being rewritten,&quot; he says. &quot;It has&#xA;  become increasingly difficult to change the code because of the&#xA;  complexity and the attrition of the knowledge base that wrote it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mitchell, R.L. (March 15, 2012) &lt;a href=&quot;http://features.techworld.com/applications/3344704/cobol-on-mainframe-does-it-have-future/&quot;&gt;Cobol on the mainframe: Does it have a future?&lt;/a&gt; ComputerWorld.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2011&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3.&lt;/strong&gt; We prototyped and applied the proposed strategy on a set of programs&#xA;  from our clients execution environment. These programs were of varying&#xA;  lengths &lt;strong&gt;from a few thousand lines of code to around 80 KLOC&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jiresal, R., Contractor, A., &amp;amp; Naik, R. (2011, September). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tcs-trddc.com/trddc_website/pdf/SWR/jiresal_pdouivilrlcpipourp_2011.pdf&quot;&gt;Precise detection of un-initialized variables in large, real-life COBOL programs in presence of unrealizable paths.&lt;/a&gt; In Software Maintenance (ICSM), 2011 27th IEEE International Conference on (pp. 448-456). IEEE.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4.&lt;/strong&gt; The subject software system of this case study is an excerpt of a&#xA;  confidential &lt;strong&gt;100k LOC COBOL system from the banking industry&lt;/strong&gt;. It&#xA;  consists of approximately 1,100 sections in 150 programs and copybooks&#xA;  (include files).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beck, M., Trumper, J., &amp;amp; Dollner, J. (2011, September). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/fileadmin/hpi/FG_Doellner/publications/2011/BTD2011/beck_vissoft2011_preprint.pdf&quot;&gt;A visual analysis and design tool for planning software reengineerings.&lt;/a&gt; In Visualizing Software for Understanding and Analysis (VISSOFT), 2011 6th IEEE International Workshop on (pp. 1-8). IEEE.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2010&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5.&lt;/strong&gt; VisualAge PACBASE is an application generator. &lt;strong&gt;Billions of lines of&#xA;  COBOL exist all over the world, which have been produced with this&#xA;  environment.&lt;/strong&gt; For historical reasons, such applications require&#xA;  specific execution contexts, namely old terminals (non graphical&#xA;  window-based screens), mainframes and CICS (Customer Information&#xA;  Control System).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The business scope of SCAFRUITS is broad: &lt;strong&gt;order management, shipping,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  supplier and product qualification and referencing, timely price management, &#xA;  product activation/inhibition&lt;/strong&gt;… &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Concerning its technical facets, the &lt;strong&gt;size of the application is&#xA;  estimated to be equal to 3M of LoC&lt;/strong&gt;, 600 programs, 400 screens, 200&#xA;  batch programs, 300 potential users, 48,000 product references with&#xA;  only 2,000 active references at a time. &lt;strong&gt;There are 350,000 transactions&#xA;  per day and 100,000 created order lines per day&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Barbier, F., Eveillard, S., Youbi, K., &amp;amp; Cariou, E. (2010). &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.158.9504&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf#page=42&quot;&gt;Model-driven reverse engineering of COBOL-based applications.&lt;/a&gt; Information Systems Transformation. Architecture Driven Modernization Case Studies, Morgan Kauffman, Burlington, MA, 283-299.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6.&lt;/strong&gt; The system under investigation in this paper is a &lt;strong&gt;large-sized (&gt; 1&#xA;  MLOC) industrial application&lt;/strong&gt; that supports &lt;strong&gt;the core activities (e.g.,&#xA;  insurances and mortgages) of a major, Belgian bank&lt;/strong&gt;. Despite that work&#xA;  on the &lt;strong&gt;system started as recent as 2005&lt;/strong&gt;, the bank opted to develop the&#xA;  back-end of this &lt;strong&gt;new system in COBOL&lt;/strong&gt; in order to ease integration with&#xA;  existing infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kellens, A., Noguera, C., D'Hondt, T., Jorissen, L., &amp;amp; Van Passel, B. (2010, September). &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://prog.vub.ac.be/tech_report/2010/vub-tr-soft-10-13.pdf&quot;&gt;Verifying the design of an outsourced COBOL system with IntensiVE.&lt;/a&gt; In Software Maintenance (ICSM), 2010 IEEE International Conference on (pp. 1-8). IEEE.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;7.&lt;/strong&gt; Project: The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). [M]odernization of&#xA;  the NEA’s business systems (Financial Management – Grants Management -&#xA;  Automated Panel Bank)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fully &lt;strong&gt;modernized the 656,000 LOC of Wang-COBOL&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;amp; RMS flat files to C++&#xA;  &amp;amp; SQL Server environment &amp;amp; 3,270 screens into a MS Windows&#xA;  environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Project: Northrop Grumman. [T]ransformation demonstration and&#xA;  subsequent modernization of the Increments 1 &amp;amp; 3 of the Air Force’s&#xA;  REMIS system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fully &lt;strong&gt;modernized over 400,000 LOC of Tandem COBOL&lt;/strong&gt; to both C++ &amp;amp; Java&#xA;  code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Newcomb, P. (2010) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a558512.pdf&quot;&gt;How Architecture-Driven Modernization Is Changing the Game in Information System Modernization.&lt;/a&gt; The Software Revolution, Inc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2009&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;8.&lt;/strong&gt; For 2009, Evans Data originally estimated that there would be&#xA;  approximately 15.2 million developers worldwide. However, it has&#xA;  reduced that estimated by about 600,000 in the current report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In North America, Evans Data projected in a previous report that the&#xA;  developer population would grow to 3.85 million in North America&#xA;  during 2009. In the current report, it changed that figure to 3.72&#xA;  million based on current economic conditions. Evans did not disclose&#xA;  data on other regions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feinman, J. (June 12, 2009) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=33548&amp;amp;page=1&quot;&gt;Software developers becoming scarce.&lt;/a&gt; SD Times.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;9.&lt;/strong&gt; The Social Security Administration is wrapping essential Cobol&#xA;  applications in Extensible Markup Language envelopes and publishing&#xA;  them as service-oriented architecture services. It will &lt;strong&gt;retain about&#xA;  20 percent of the 36 million lines of Cobol&lt;/strong&gt; code it uses, Hill said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Robinson, B. (July 9, 2009) &lt;a href=&quot;http://fcw.com/articles/2009/07/13/tech-cobol-turns-50.aspx&quot;&gt;Cobol remains old standby at agencies despite showing its age.&lt;/a&gt; ComputerWorld.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2008&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;10.&lt;/strong&gt; Recent statistics quoted to Datamonitor by IBM reveal the massive scale of intellectual property accumulated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• Around 200 billion lines of COBOL code are in live operation.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  • 75% of the world’s business data, and 90% of financial transactions, are&#xA;  processed in COBOL.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  • There are 1.5 – 2 million developers, globally, working with COBOL code.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  • Around 5 billion lines of new COBOL code are added to live systems every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Datamonitor, (November 2008) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microfocus.com/000/COBOL_continuing_to_drive_value_in_the_21st_Century_tcm21-23652.pdf&quot;&gt;COBOL – continuing to drive value in the 21st Century.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2007&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;11. Legacy COBOL systems usually contain millions of lines of code (LOC)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  spread over thousands of modules, developed by tens of people over&#xA;  many years, are often poorly documented and, to a large extent,&#xA;  knowledge about them is lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We used SQuAVisiT to study a large COBOL legacy system of a &lt;strong&gt;large&#xA;  insurance fund: 3 thousand modules, 1.7 million LOCs&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roubtsov, S., Telea, A., &amp;amp; Holten, D. (2007, September). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.rug.nl/~alext/PAPERS/SCAM07/paper.pdf&quot;&gt;SQuAVisiT: a software quality assessment and visualisation toolset.&lt;/a&gt; In Source Code Analysis and Manipulation, 2007. SCAM 2007. Seventh IEEE International Working Conference on (pp. 155-156). IEEE.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2006&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;12.&lt;/strong&gt; Gartner has estimated that there are 180 billion lines of Cobol code&#xA;  in use around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Washington, L. (November 13, 2006) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9004821/Cobol_The_New_Latin&quot;&gt;Cobol: The New Latin. This 'dead language' must be embraced and taught.&lt;/a&gt; ComputerWorld.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2005&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;13.&lt;/strong&gt; The customer of the authors is a &lt;strong&gt;mid-size German company providing&#xA;  financial services&lt;/strong&gt;. These services are based upon two large&#xA;  application  systems, which share the same HP UNIX platform, but&#xA;  belong to completely different worlds of software technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;•  The total COBOL system consists of 1398 batch programs, 485 on-line&#xA;  programs and 7621 copy modules.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  •  The total number of lines (LOC) is&#xA;  nearly 2 million, &lt;strong&gt;after deducting the comments (~ 25%) the actual code&#xA;  reaches approximately 1.5 million lines&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  •  The system is maintained&#xA;  by a staff of 8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Calculating with only 8 % of the net LOC &lt;strong&gt;means 120,000 code lines per&#xA;  year added, changed or deleted by eight programmers&lt;/strong&gt;. Assuming 80MM&#xA;  effort a year the maintenance productivity is 1500 code lines per&#xA;  person month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nyáry, E., Pap, G., Herczegh, M., &amp;amp; Kolonits, Z. (2005) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inf.u-szeged.hu/icsm2005/postevent/ICSM2005-Industrial_proceedings.pdf#page=5&quot;&gt;Supporting the Maintenance of legacy COBOL Applications with Tools for Repository Management and Viewing.&lt;/a&gt; Message from the Industry Co-Chairs, 5.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;14.&lt;/strong&gt; For example, &lt;strong&gt;Cobol remains the most widely deployed programming&#xA;  language in big business, accounting for 75% of all computer&#xA;  transactions&lt;/strong&gt; and it is not going to go away. Cobol is pervasive in the&#xA;  financial sector (&lt;strong&gt;accounting for 90% of all financial transactions&lt;/strong&gt;),&#xA;  in defense, as well as within established manufacturing and insurance&#xA;  sectors. &lt;strong&gt;We estimate that there are over 200 billion lines of Cobol in&#xA;  production today&lt;/strong&gt;, and this number &lt;strong&gt;continues to grow by between three&#xA;  and five percent a year&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Barnett, G. (2005). &lt;a href=&quot;http://ovum.com/section/home/&quot;&gt;The future of the mainframe.&lt;/a&gt; Ovum, October.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;15.&lt;/strong&gt; While the paper is shaped by a very tractable example project (just&#xA;  90,000 LOC), we have applied the same methodology in other projects.&#xA;  For instance, the methodology for analyzing impact, and for estimating&#xA;  effort and costs was also used to provide a customer with precise&#xA;  information &lt;strong&gt;on a project where a 50 million LOC&lt;/strong&gt; software portfolio had&#xA;  to be investigated for the architectural modification of existing bank&#xA;  account numbers to ten digits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Klusener, A. S., Lämmel, R., &amp;amp; Verhoef, C. (2005). &lt;a href=&quot;http://homepages.cwi.nl/~ralf/am/paper.pdf&quot;&gt;Architectural modifications to deployed software.&lt;/a&gt; Science of Computer Programming, 54(2), 143-211.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2004&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;16.&lt;/strong&gt; With &lt;strong&gt;an estimated 60% to 80% of all business applications still&#xA;  written in COBOL&lt;/strong&gt;, it was no surprise to find exactly this in the code&#xA;  base of the companies involved in ARRIBA. COBOL therefore quickly&#xA;  gained much of our focus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The code is badly structured and poorly documented. &lt;strong&gt;The amount of code&#xA;  is huge (millions of LOC)&lt;/strong&gt; and has been adapted many times for several&#xA;  reasons (switching platforms, year 2000 conversions, transition to the&#xA;  Euro currency,…). So keeping the documentation synchronized with those&#xA;  evolutionary changes didn't always happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Michiels, I., D’Hondt, T., De Schutter, K., &amp;amp; Hoffman, G. (2004, March). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.riacs.edu/research/technical_reports/docs/TR_04.01.pdf#page=103&quot;&gt;Using dynamic aspects to distill business rules from legacy code.&lt;/a&gt; In Dynamic Aspects Workshop (DAW04) (p. 1).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;17.&lt;/strong&gt; During the last three decades, a considerable amount of software was&#xA;  developed using procedural languages. For example, &lt;strong&gt;Coyle estimates the&#xA;  size of systems written in Cobol to be more than 100 billion LOC.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wu, L., Sahraoui, H., &amp;amp; Valtchev, P. (2004, November). &lt;a href=&quot;https://ritdml.rit.edu/bitstream/handle/1850/9859/LWuConfProc11-2004.pdf?sequence=1&quot;&gt;Automatic detecting code cooperation.&lt;/a&gt; In Software Engineering Conference, 2004. 11th Asia-Pacific (pp. 204-211). IEEE.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;18.&lt;/strong&gt; Two case studies were carried out with our transformations on&#xA;  real-life industrial Cobol systems.&#xA;  The source code in the first case study &lt;strong&gt;was IBM Cobol and came from&#xA;  the same banking company&lt;/strong&gt; as the code of the source base. There was one&#xA;  large &lt;strong&gt;system of 2.6 million LOC in almost 1000 programs&lt;/strong&gt;. The program&#xA;  sizes ranged from about 40 to 13000 LOC. The number of statements per&#xA;  program ranged from two to 4000 statements. In the whole system, there&#xA;  were about 400000 statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the second case study several systems that were &lt;strong&gt;written in Micro&#xA;  Focus Cobol were transformed&lt;/strong&gt;. Similar to the first case study, the&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;total size was 2.6 million LOC, but this was a coincidence. The source&#xA;  code consisted of almost 3000 programs&lt;/strong&gt; and the sizes of the individual&#xA;  programs ranged from 25 to 8000 LOC. The number of statements per&#xA;  program ranged from 10 to almost 3400. In total, &lt;strong&gt;there were over 1.2&#xA;  million statements&lt;/strong&gt;. This significant higher number of statements&#xA;  compared with the first case study was because in the first case study&#xA;  a great deal of code was used for data declarations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Veerman, N. (2004). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.vu.nl/~nveerman/research/revitalizing/revitalizing.pdf&quot;&gt;Revitalizing modifiability of legacy assets.&lt;/a&gt; Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice, 16(4-5), 219-254.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2001&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;19.&lt;/strong&gt; First, there are about 300 Cobol dialects, and each compiler product has a few versions—with many patch levels. Also, Cobol often&#xA;  contains embedded languages such as DMS, DML, CICS, and SQL. So there&#xA;  is no such thing as &quot;the Cobol language.&quot; It is a polyglot, a&#xA;  confusing mixture of dialects and embedded languages—a 500-Language&#xA;  Problem of its own. Second, according to Jones, &lt;strong&gt;the world's installed&#xA;  software is distributed by language as follows:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  •  &lt;strong&gt;Cobol: 30 percent (225 billion LOC)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  •  C/C++: 20 percent (180 billion LOC)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  •  Assembler: 10 percent (140 to 220 billion LOC)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  •  less common languages: 40 percent (280 billion LOC)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because &lt;strong&gt;there are about a trillion lines of installed software&#xA;  written in myriad languages&lt;/strong&gt;, its solution is a step forward in&#xA;  managing those assets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lammel, R., &amp;amp; Verhoef, C. (2001). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.vu.nl/grammarware/500/500.pdf&quot;&gt;Cracking the 500-language problem&lt;/a&gt;. Software, IEEE, 18(6), 78-88.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2000&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;20.&lt;/strong&gt; There are about two million COBOL programmers in the world - more than&#xA;  twice the number of JAVA programmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kizior, R. J., Carr, D., &amp;amp; Halpern, P. (2000) &lt;a href=&quot;http://proc.isecon.org/2000/126/ISECON.2000.Kizior.pdf&quot;&gt;Does COBOL Have a Future?.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;21. Estimated at over 100 billion lines of code, most of it Cobol&lt;/strong&gt;, it&#xA;  drives the world's infrastructure. The end result is a new&#xA;  appreciation of legacy and a search for ways to capitalize on its&#xA;  potential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coyle, F. P. (2000). &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=841604&quot;&gt;Legacy integration-changing perspectives.&lt;/a&gt; IEEE Software, 17(2), 37-41.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1996&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;22.&lt;/strong&gt; However, we have just (January 1996) embarked on a large project&#xA;  dealing with this subject, &lt;strong&gt;in collaboration with several industrial&#xA;  partners including the Dutch ABN-AMRO bank&lt;/strong&gt;, and we feel that this&#xA;  application is too interesting to leave undiscussed in a paper on&#xA;  industrial applications of ASF+SDF. &lt;strong&gt;The problem at hand involves the&#xA;  analysis, cleaning-up and reconstruction of a large suite (25,000&#xA;  programs, 30M LOC) of mainframe-based COBOL applications&lt;/strong&gt;. The two main&#xA;  problems currently studied are conversions between COBOL dialects and&#xA;  identification and correction of software errors related to the &quot;year&#xA;  2000&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;van den Brand, M., van Deursen, A., Klint, P., Klusener, A. S., &amp;amp; van der Meulen, E. (1996) &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.76.5906&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot;&gt;Industrial applications of ASF+SDF&lt;/a&gt; CS-R9622.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="35" LastEditDate="2012-12-15T10:56:46.240" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T10:56:46.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14042" CreationDate="2012-12-14T19:28:09.750" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Politifact gave this old story about the Nazis and fluoride a &quot;Pants On Fire&quot; rating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2011/oct/06/critics-water-fluoridation/truth-about-fluoride-doesnt-include-nazi-myth/&quot;&gt;&quot;Truth about fluoride doesn't include Nazi myth&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...We tracked down roots of these claims on the Web, reached out to Holocaust historians, contacted well-known critics of water fluoridation, and read book excerpts and magazine articles and news stories. And we can tell you: There's no teeth to this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, here is a link to an Institute for Science in Medicine white paper on the movement that spreads propaganda like this Nazi myth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scienceinmedicine.org/policy/papers/AntiFluoridationist.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;The Antifluoridation Threat to Public Health&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10708" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T23:24:42.543" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T23:24:42.543" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14060" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-14T23:15:57.407" Score="1" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/976/what-real-evidence-is-there-for-the-effects-of-gun-control&quot;&gt;What real evidence is there for the effects of gun control?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the wake of today's horrible tragedy in Connecticut, many say US handgun laws are to blame:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If laws controlled guns the way the NRA controls politicians, the US would be the safest country in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&amp;mdash; &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/BorowitzReport/status/279717969439899648&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Andy Borowitz (@BorowitzReport)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;22 children in China attacked with a knife today, no deaths. Senseless violence can't be prevented. Gun violence can.&lt;/p&gt;&amp;mdash; &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/alexblagg/status/279678907979014144&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alex Blagg (@alexblagg)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of this line of thinking: linking US gun law to individual acts of senseless violence, are really too many to list, though I welcome any additions edited into this post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is there any proof that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US gun law is more lax or irresponsible than in other countries&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;other countries experience less gun violence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is a direct causative link between the two&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, are our laws or lack thereof substantially responsible for gun violence? And therefore is there good reason to believe gun law reform will lead to less violence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-12-14T23:42:45.163" Title="Are lax gun laws responsible for the high rate of handgun violence in the United States?" Tags="|united-states|law|guns|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2012-12-15T00:33:45.460" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14064" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-15T04:08:14.260" Score="9" ViewCount="5373" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can you determine personal characteristics, i.e. helpfulness, work-ethic, good lover, just by looking at a person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nose Reading &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.2knowmyself.com/face_reading/face_reading_nose_shape&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.2knowmyself.com/face_reading/face_reading_nose_shape&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Face Reading&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.nydailynews.com/2009-03-15/entertainment/17917324_1_wrinkles-bernard-madoff-christine-quinn&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://articles.nydailynews.com/2009-03-15/entertainment/17917324_1_wrinkles-bernard-madoff-christine-quinn&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any proof of successful &quot;face reading&quot; technique supported by modern science? This is not about facial expressions, but the actual structures of the face; nose, eyebrows, eyes, lips, and jaws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10450" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:27:50.220" LastActivityDate="2016-01-15T21:03:14.523" Title="Is &quot;face reading&quot; accurate?" Tags="|psychology|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14064" CreationDate="2012-12-15T07:26:45.733" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is a basis in this. There are correlations between the shape of a person's face, and their personality type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The practice of using such correlations is known in the law enforcement community as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_profiling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;racial profiling&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/399/is-race-a-discredited-scientific-concept-in-biology&quot;&gt;the exact scientific definition of race&lt;/a&gt; remains unclear and arbitrary, it is clear that there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2000015&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;strong differences between nose-shapes and different races&lt;/a&gt; for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, whether by nature, nurture or both, there are correlations between race and personality. For example, in Table 5 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://aaronbolin.com/pubs/pubthesis.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;, a comparison of personality features (&quot;Openness to Experience&quot;, etc.) is made for African-American and Caucasian participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this, people have the ability to predict a person's race, and from that predict a person's temperament, thus saving them the effort by allowing people to be judged by the shape of their nose, rather than the content of their character.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Community Wiki, because my ulterior goal here is to explain why the original question is poorly formed.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T07:26:45.733" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2012-12-15T07:26:45.733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14064" CreationDate="2012-12-15T08:19:39.557" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Face reading is considered Pseudoscience and has no accepted modern studies. It has gone in and out of favor over the course of history, with its emergence in Greek society and a resurgence in the 15th and 16th century society in Europe, and is still investigated by few psychologists today. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study &lt;a href=&quot;http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/I2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://personal.lse.ac.uk/Kanazawa/pdfs/I2011.pdf&lt;/a&gt; by Satoshi Kanazawa, in 2011 is widely criticized for attempting to link body features of Black women with low physical attractiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia on Physiognomy&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiognomy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physiognomy&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Articles like the ones linked to in the original question can be considered physiognomy, racist, and unethical, yet these views nonetheless seem to be held by many: &quot;38,000,000 [visitors] can't be wrong&quot; - 2knowmyself.com &#xA; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YK8Go.png&quot; alt=&quot;pseudoscience&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10450" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T08:19:39.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14071" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-15T14:50:37.073" Score="2" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://entropyproduction.blogspot.de/2012/12/why-stretching-is-bad-for-you.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Robert McLeod&lt;/a&gt;: Pulling on a muscle for a long time doesn't make it longer, doesn't make it more pliable, and doesn't improve athletic performance. There's lots of scientific literature that shows that stretching before exercise increases the risk of injury, but still there's a lot of emphasis on it in common fitness literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true? Is the scientific consensus that the stretching before exercise that a lot of fitness literature recommends increases the risk of injury?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2012-12-15T15:18:16.110" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T15:18:16.110" Title="Does stretching before exercise raise the risk of injury?" Tags="|sport|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14073" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-15T17:58:50.273" Score="2" ViewCount="409" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9805/is-the-ninth-wave-the-largest&quot;&gt;Is the ninth wave the largest?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the movie Kon-Tiki, the crew relies crucially on the claim that every 13th wave (over a reef) is larger then the rest, I have heard before that every 7th is the largest (at the coast), is there any truth to these statements?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I imagine someone somewhere must have carried out this elementary experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10719" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2012-12-15T17:58:50.273" Title="Is every 13th wave larger then the rest?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2012-12-16T12:38:22.613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14075" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-16T03:31:25.350" Score="2" ViewCount="298" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/12/05/verizon_patent_would_monitor_you_as_you_watch_tv_so_it_can_customize_ads.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slate Magazine&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Verizon Files Patent for Creepy Device To Watch You While You Watch TV&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company has filed a patent, published last week, for a system designed to be used in the home to target advertisements at people. Using a combination of image and audio sensors, it would detect actions in your living room while you were watching TV. These sensors, deploying facial and profile recognition, would pick up “physical attributes” like skin color, facial features, and even hair length, and also detect “voice attributes” to help determine the tone of your voice, your accent, and the language you speak. Inanimate objects aren’t off-limits—the technology could also spot beer cans and wall art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10657" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T07:07:34.290" Title="Has Verizon filed a patent for a device to watch you while you watch TV?" Tags="|technology|advertising|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14075" CreationDate="2012-12-16T04:54:43.800" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. As directly referenced in the article, there is a patent that was granted in November:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&amp;amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;amp;p=1&amp;amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&amp;amp;r=1&amp;amp;f=G&amp;amp;l=50&amp;amp;co1=AND&amp;amp;d=PG01&amp;amp;s1=20120304206&amp;amp;OS=20120304206&amp;amp;RS=20120304206&quot;&gt;Methods and Systems for Presenting an Advertisement Associated with an Ambient Action of a User&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The granting of a US patent does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; mean that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The invention exists as a physical technology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That Verizon have any plans to build such a technology.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That no-one else will come forward with prior art that has been overlooked.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Reference: Basic understanding of patents, and the possible lack of plans is mentioned in the original article]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T07:07:34.290" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T07:07:34.290" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14078" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-16T12:26:31.573" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T12:26:31.573" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T12:26:31.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14079" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-16T12:26:31.573" Score="0" Body="http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_06_04.html" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-16T12:26:31.573" LastActivityDate="2012-12-16T12:26:31.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14090" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23424" CreationDate="2012-12-17T09:08:49.843" Score="19" ViewCount="8163" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Internet is full of references to the same story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was probably in 1946, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur was temporarily put in charge of running Japan, which was in tough shape after surrendering. He was such a decent overseer that many Japanese hoped that he could be voted into a position of power, possibly President of the USA. In one of Japan’s larger cities, they put up a banner across a principal street that said, something like&#xA;  “WE PRAY FOR MACARTHUR’S ERECTION”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://brog.engrish.com/2010/11/02/happy-erection-day/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comedycorner.org/7.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~jimella/signs.htm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pranseth.com/Home/chapter-20&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and there are many more on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Japanese people write a sign saying &quot;We pray [or play] for MacArthur's erection&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that native speakers of Japanese mix up &quot;r&quot; and &quot;l&quot; even when writing or typing, but when I google about this quote, I get a lot of user-generated content, rather than reliable sources, which makes me suspect that it's apocryphal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2013-03-20T09:36:08.613" LastActivityDate="2018-04-16T00:18:57.030" Title="Did Japanese people misspell &quot;We pray for MacArthur's election&quot;?" Tags="|united-states|quotes|language|japan|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14091" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14094" CreationDate="2012-12-17T09:55:01.447" Score="8" ViewCount="980" Body="&lt;p&gt;The anti-taser blog, &lt;a href=&quot;http://truthnottasers.blogspot.se/2008/04/what-follows-are-names-where-known.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Truth Not Tasers&lt;/a&gt; lists over 768 people that they claim have been killed by police &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taser&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tasers&lt;/a&gt; since the 1983. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taser#Users&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; contains an unsourced statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Police departments counter that while Tasers were used to subdue these individuals, their in-custody deaths were unrelated to their encounter, and could have likely been caused by more traditional police impact weapons (like batons).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, &lt;a href=&quot;http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/09/06/a-new-life-for-taser-this-time-with-less-controversy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Taser International&lt;/em&gt; CEO Rick Smith claims&lt;/a&gt; is reported to have claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;police surveys show the device has saved 75,000 lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does the use of tasers by the police lead to an increase in police killings&lt;/strong&gt; (as implied by the linked blog), &lt;strong&gt;or does it lead to a decrease&lt;/strong&gt; (as claimed by the Taser International CEO)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to @JoeWreschnig's &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14091/have-police-tasers-killed-many-hundreds-of-people-in-the-usa#comment51199_14091&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;em&gt;saved lives&lt;/em&gt; comment might refer to shooting with a taser &lt;em&gt;instead&lt;/em&gt; of shooting with a gun. The relevant subquestions are therefore:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the conditional probability of being killed when being shot by a taser?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What is the conditional probability of being killed when being shot by a police gun?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In what fraction of lethal taser shots was the taser shot used instead of a gun shot?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In what fraction of lethal taser shots were other alternatives available?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that with these sub-questions, the main question can be answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T15:42:03.517" Title="Does the use of tasers by the police lead to an increase in people killed by police?" Tags="|united-states|weapons|guns|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14018" CreationDate="2012-12-17T11:57:01.640" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this Nature Genetics paper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v35/n4/abs/ng1263.html&quot;&gt;Gene-culture coevolution between cattle milk protein genes and human lactase genes&lt;/a&gt; Nature Genetics  35, 311 - 313 (2003), the variants in Cattle milk proteins and Human lactase persistence genes were analysed. (Lactase persistence means that adults can keep digesting lactose, while normally the lactase gene switches off after childhood, giving rise to lactose intolerance.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Milk from domestic cows has been a valuable food source for over 8,000 years, especially in lactose-tolerant human societies that exploit dairy breeds. We studied geographic patterns of variation in genes encoding the six most important milk proteins in 70 native European cattle breeds. We found &lt;strong&gt;substantial geographic coincidence between high diversity in cattle milk genes&lt;/strong&gt;, locations of the European Neolithic cattle farming sites (&gt;5,000 years ago) &lt;strong&gt;and present-day lactose tolerance in Europeans&lt;/strong&gt;. This suggests a gene-culture coevolution between cattle and humans&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This shows that not only did humans evolve in response to milk consumption, but the cattle evolved to better produce that milk, as cows were under selective pressure from human preferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T11:57:01.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14091" CreationDate="2012-12-17T15:42:03.517" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The CNN report refers to a 2009 report from the Police Executive Research Forum as a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chasing that down, it appears the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.policeforum.org/&quot;&gt;PERF&lt;/a&gt; report is a September 2009 report to the National Institute of Justice, that goes by the clumsy name:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.policeforum.org/library/use-of-force/CED%20outcomes.pdf&quot;&gt;Comparing safety outcomes in &#xA;police use-of-force cases for &#xA;law enforcement agencies that have &#xA;deployed Conducted Energy Devices &#xA;and a matched comparison group &#xA;that have not:&#xA;A quasi-experimental evaluation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this title &quot;Conducted Energy Devices&quot; is the generic name for Tasers. It was &quot;quasi-experimental&quot; in that they used matched controls from existing police databases, comparing seven police departments (&quot;Law Enforcement Agencies&quot;, LEAs) with tasers to six without, and also for the two years before the tasers were introduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They controlled for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;force used by officer, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;time frame of incident, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;suspect race/gender/age, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;suspect resistant behavior, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;suspect weapon use,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;agency policy on CEDs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;size/density of LEA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;population density for jurisdiction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found that CEDs improved the following measures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Officer injuries &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Officers receiving injuries requiring &#xA;medical attention, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suspect injuries &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suspect severe injuries &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suspects receiving injuries requiring &#xA;medical attention, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suspects receiving an injury that resulted &#xA;in their being sent to a hospital or other &#xA;medical facility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found no difference with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;number of suspect deaths&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;officer severe &#xA;injuries, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;officer injuries requiring &#xA;hospitalization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Crime statistics notoriously suffer from reporting biases - those doing the reporting are being judged on their data - which may make it more difficult to completely trust any study in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-12-17T15:42:03.517" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14097" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14099" CreationDate="2012-12-17T21:06:42.223" Score="21" ViewCount="1866" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the John England's book titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/stream/worksofrightreve06engl#page/172/mode/1up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;The Works of Reverend John England, Volume 6&amp;quot; (page 172)&lt;/a&gt; I read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reverend Joseph Mezzofanti, first keeper of the Vatican library, of whom Lord Byron had so high an opinion; probably one of the first linguist in exisestence: he speak with facility thirty-four living languages, and several of the dead tongues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of this claim for some reasons, even if it is quite common on Internet. For example, recently I read it in The Huffington Post in an article by Stacie Nevadomski Berdan titled &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stacie-nevadomski-berdan/learning-multiple-languages_b_1453560.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Learning Two or Twenty Languages: Is There a Secret?&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, where the author claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The colorful characters past and present are quirky, interesting and make one gasp with their abilities to master 20 to 50 languages, sometimes in just a manner of weeks. These superlearners are dubbed hyperpolyglots, such as the 19th century Italian cardinal &lt;strong&gt;Joseph Mezzofanti, who was said to speak more than 38 languages&lt;/strong&gt;, and who learned Ukrainian in two weeks once challenged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Reverend Mezzofanti speak with facility thirty-four languages? What is the truth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2022-02-28T13:46:07.837" LastActivityDate="2022-02-28T13:46:07.837" Title="Did Reverend Mezzofanti fluently speak thirty-four languages?" Tags="|history|language|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14098" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-18T00:07:19.790" Score="31" ViewCount="6483" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States#Self-protection&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; the numbers reported range from 65 thousand to 2.5 million.  I am very skeptical of the 2.5 million figure and in fact I am even skeptical of the 65 thousand figure. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defensive_gun_use_incidents&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; lists documented cases where guns were used defensively and only 34 incidents are listed for 11 months of 2012.  I assume the people that are against any gun control would make sure any gun use that had real documented evidence would be included on that page, so I really doubt there are even 65 thousand incidents. At 65 thousand incidents per year, there would be 180 incidents per day, why would only there only be an average of 1 documented incident per 10 days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other more authoritative studies that don't rely on survey evidence? What is the truth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5297" LastEditorUserId="5297" LastEditDate="2012-12-18T18:08:21.467" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T00:10:47.907" Title="How often are guns used by private citizens in self defense per year in the United States?" Tags="|united-states|guns|violence|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14097" CreationDate="2012-12-18T00:45:01.070" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;A biography of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Caspar_Mezzofanti&quot;&gt;Giuseppe Caspar Mezzofanti&lt;/a&gt; was written in 1858.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Charles William Russell, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ia700300.us.archive.org/7/items/lifeofcardinalme00russ/lifeofcardinalme00russ.pdf&quot;&gt;Life of the Cardinal Mezzofanti&lt;/a&gt; (PDF).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a chapter starting on page 457, Russell attempts to skeptically evaluate the claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He finds several challenges including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How many words do you need to know in order to claim knowledge of a language?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When are two dialects considered two languages?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All the reports were indirect. Mezzofanti did not produce a list himself, as he planned, before his death. (i.e. someone said that he said in 1846 that he knew 78 languages, his nephew computed 114 by going through his papers.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Russell lists some 94 &quot;languages&quot; produced from a list made by Mezzofanti's nephew. He also lists 30 languages that Mezzofanti was &quot;frequently tested and spoken with rare excellence&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think I can sum up the evidence and the difficulty of counting the languages spoken by an historical figure (given only second-hand reports, no clear definition of fluency and no clear definition of where one language stops and another begins) any better than Russell himself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Summing up, therefore, all the authentic accounts&#xA;  of him as yet made public ; discarding the loose&#xA;  statements of superficial marvel-mongers, and divesting the genuine reports, as far as possible, of&#xA;  the vagueness by which many of them have been&#xA;  characterized, it appears that, in addition to a&#xA;  large number of (more than thirty) minor dialects,&#xA;  Mezzofanti was acquainted in various degrees with&#xA;  seventy-two languages, popularly, if not scientifically,&#xA;  regarded as distinct :— almost the exact number which&#xA;  F. Bresciani ascribes to him ; that of these he spoke&#xA;  with freedom, and with a purity of accent, of vocabulary, and of idiom, rarely attained by foreigners, no fewer than thirty ; that he was intimately acquainted with all the leading dialects of these&#xA;  ;&#xA;  that he spoke less perfectly, (or rather is not shown&#xA;  to have possessed the same mastery of) nine others,&#xA;  in all of which, however, his pronunciation, at least,&#xA;  is described as quite perfect; that he could, (and occasionally did,) converse in eleven other languages,&#xA;  but with what degree of accuracy it is difficult to&#xA;  say ; that he could at least initiate a conversation,&#xA;  and exchange certain conversational forms in eight&#xA;  others ; and that he had studied the structure and&#xA;  the elementary vocabularies of fourteen others. As&#xA;  regards the languages included in the latter categories, it is quite possible that he may also have spoken&#xA;  in a certain way some at least among them. So far&#xA;  as I have learned, there is no evidence that he&#xA;  actually did speak any of them : but with him there&#xA;  was little perceptible interval between knowledge of&#xA;  the elementary structure and vocabulary of a language, and the power of conversing in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-18T01:51:31.790" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T01:51:31.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10977" CreationDate="2012-12-18T13:38:49.473" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per &lt;em&gt;Medical Herbalism&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;The major odor principle of garlic, allicin is produced from the amino acid alliin by the enzyme alliinase when exposed to air. In both laboratory and clinical studies, allicin has demonstrated antidiabetic, antihypertensive, antibiotic, and hypolipidemic activities. It also enhances fibrinolytic activity in the blood and inhibits platelet aggregation.&quot; &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Garlic also contains B vitamins, minerals and flavonoids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that therapeutic doses of garlic will indeed have an antimicrobial effect against certain bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites. What's more, the volatile oil of the garlic gets excreted through the lungs. This makes it especially useful to use for upper respiratory tract infections. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding Cholesterol:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the cardiovascular system, garlic can be considered a healthy tonic that is preventative against chronic heart diseases. Not only does it lower blood pressure and blood sugar, but it promotes the production of HDL, the good cholesterol, and inhibits LDL, the dangerous lipoprotein. This prevents atherosclerotic build up in the arteries. It is a blood thinner because it lowers the activity of platelet activating factor (PAF) in addition to enhancing the break down of blood clots, which prevents sudden occlusion of arteries and veins. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hyperlipidemia: There is contradictory evidence about the effects of garlic on cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Initial research in the early 1990s, mostly using a specific garlic powder (Kwai, Lichtwer Pharma) 300 mg three times daily for 12-24 weeks, showed that garlic modestly reduces total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, and triglyceride levels (279,4782,4783,4784,4785,4786,4787,4788). Some evidence also showed that taking very high doses of a specific aged-garlic extract (Kyolic, Wakanuga) 7.2 grams daily for 24 weeks modestly reduces LDL cholesterol (1873,1875). However, many of these trials have serious design flaws and are low-quality studies (4786,4788).&#xA;  Later research has more consistently shown several garlic preparations to be ineffective, including the previously studied specific garlic powder product (Kwai, Lichtwer Pharma) (731,4792,4793,4795,4807), another specific garlic powder product (Garlicin, Nature's Way), an aged garlic extract product (Kyolic-100, Wakanuga), raw garlic (15295), a garlic oil product (Tegra, Hermes) (732), and other garlic preparations (4794,4795,15296).&#xA;  One analysis of garlic studies suggests that garlic might have short-term benefits on lipid levels after 1-3 months of treatment, but no significant benefit after 6 months (6897). Another analysis shows that when the results of all garlic studies are pooled, there appears to be some benefit; however, when only higher-quality studies are analyzed there is no significant benefit (6457).&#xA;  Advise patients with hyperlipidemia that taking garlic supplements is unlikely to provide a clinically significant reduction in cholesterol or triglyceride levels. [3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flavonoids are potent antioxidants and therefore protect our bodies against oxidative stress; especially the oxidation of lipids, which when not prevented can lead to atherosclerotic build up in the vasculature as well. In addition, thanks to these antioxidants, &quot;according to epidemiological evidence, garlic may have cancer-preventative properties, especially against cancers of the gastrointestinal tract.&quot; &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding Blood Pressure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hypertension: Some clinical research shows that taking garlic orally can modestly reduce blood pressure in patients with hypertension and in people with normal blood pressure (277,278,279,1873,6897,16605). In one analysis, garlic reduced systolic blood pressure by about 8% and diastolic blood pressure by about 7%, compared to placebo in patients with hypertension (16605). Most studies of garlic for hypertension have used a specific garlic powder formulation (Kwai, Lichtwer Pharma); however, an aged garlic extract has also been used (1873). [4]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;[1, 2] Hoffmann, David. Medical Herbalism: The Science and Practice of Herbal Medicine. Rochester, VT: Healing Arts, 2003. Print.&lt;/sub&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;[3,4] &lt;a href=&quot;http://naturaldatabase.therapeuticresearch.com.libproxy.bridgeport.edu/nd/Search.aspx?cs=&amp;amp;s=ND&amp;amp;pt=100&amp;amp;id=300&amp;amp;fs=ND&amp;amp;searchid=36958136&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://naturaldatabase.therapeuticresearch.com.libproxy.bridgeport.edu/nd/Search.aspx?cs=&amp;amp;s=ND&amp;amp;pt=100&amp;amp;id=300&amp;amp;fs=ND&amp;amp;searchid=36958136&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10731" LastEditorUserId="10731" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T00:42:02.013" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T00:42:02.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14101" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32204" CreationDate="2012-12-18T14:38:07.097" Score="23" ViewCount="9860" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a widespread belief that all the citizens of the UAE are very rich. In particular, a person I know who grew up in UAE suggested that &quot;Pretty much every citizen has a Bentley&quot; is &lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt; true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How close is this to reality? Is the average citizen of the UAE very rich, or is the income distribution more like that of other countries? If it helps, consider only long-term citizens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Links to this claim: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aqoul.com/archives/2006/08/in_the_uae_even_1.php&quot;&gt;In the UAE, even poor people are rich&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;&quot;provide native Emirati people, especially the upper class, with extra money&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110819022552AAYWn95&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/thread.jspa?threadID=1542536&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100909210656AAetocw&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Please note that only 20% of the population of UAE are citizens of the country,&lt;/strong&gt; so statistics that apply to the entire population are not very indicative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-08T01:52:51.353" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T14:10:37.070" Title="Are all the citizens of UAE very rich?" Tags="|wealth|united-arab-emirates|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14103" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-18T15:29:21.543" Score="26" ViewCount="1671" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the web, I find several unsourced claims that carrots are orange because the Dutch loved the colour. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nextnature.net/2009/08/why-are-carrots-orange-it-is-political/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nextnature.net/2009/08/why-are-carrots-orange-it-is-political/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Allegedly they are orange for entirely political reasons: in the 17th century, Dutch growers are thought to have cultivated orange carrots as a tribute to William of Orange – who led the the struggle for Dutch independence – and the color stuck. A thousand years of yellow, white and purple carrot history, was wiped out in a generation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/history.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;carrot museum&lt;/a&gt; writes that it's &lt;em&gt;probably apocryphical&lt;/em&gt;, but doesn't provide any sources either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The modern orange carrot was developed and stabilised by Dutch growers in the 16-17th century, evidenced from variety names and contemporary art works. (Art pages start here). A tale, probably apocryphal, has it that the orange carrot was bred in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century to honour William of Orange. Though the orange carrot does date from the Netherlands in the sixteenth century, it is unlikely that honouring William of Orange had anything to do with it!   Some astute historian managed to install the myth that the arboriculturists work on an unexpected mutation was developed especially to give thanks to King William I as a tribute to him leading the Dutch revolt against the Spanish to gain independence from Spain. There is no documentary evidence for this story!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrot&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; only mentions that &lt;em&gt;Orange-coloured carrots appeared in the Netherlands in the 17th century&lt;/em&gt;, but does not provide any reason. And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/carrots-are-orange-for-an-entirely-political-reason/2011/09/09/gIQAfayiFK_blog.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Washington Post blog post&lt;/a&gt; doesn't seem to have more research than me either, because it links the same two websites among the google top-5 that I'm doing above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tRukdl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;carrots of many colours&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Picture from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carrots_of_many_colors.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikimedia commons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are carrots orange for political reasons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-20T12:39:57.923" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T12:39:57.923" Title="Are carrots orange because the Dutch loved orange?" Tags="|nutrition|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="976" CreationDate="2012-12-18T17:13:17.507" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don’t know how well a single case-study can be generalised, or applied in a different cultural setting. But since &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/976/is-gun-control-effective/3535#3535&quot;&gt;jozzas’ answer&lt;/a&gt; on the Australian gun control act exclusively relies on a paper that completely misrepresents the evidence here’s another stab at it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1996, after a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australia)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mass shooting&lt;/a&gt; with an illegally purchased but legally available &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-automatic_firearm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;semi-automatic weapon&lt;/a&gt; in Port Arthur, Tasmania that killed 35 people and wounded 23, Australia enacted the &lt;em&gt;National Firearms Agreement&lt;/em&gt; (NFA), a strict ban on semi-automatic weapons and stricter requirements for acquiring a weapon permit. They also enacted a compulsory gun buyback scheme taking effect immediately which resulted in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_buy-back_scheme#In_Australia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;600,000 guns being bought back from the state, at a cost of 500 million AUS$&lt;/a&gt;. The government levied a 1% addition in income tax for one year to finance this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Data &amp;amp; evidence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following gives a broad overview over a huge mass of data. I tried my hardest to represent the data fairly; however, by necessity I leave out quite a lot (otherwise I’d have to publish a paper). Most of the missing data and justifications can be found in Leigh &amp;amp; Neill [2] which gives a truly excellent run-down of the evidence, along with a careful explanation and justification of the statistical methods used, and a &lt;em&gt;comprehensive explanation of the limitations of the data&lt;/em&gt;. In fact, this latter point makes the paper stand out particularly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Massacres.&lt;/strong&gt; In the 18 years prior to the enactment of the NFA, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/slow-erosion-of-gun-laws-presages-another-tragedy-20110427-1dwmx.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;there had been 13 massacres in Australia involving guns&lt;/a&gt; (defined as killing ≥ 4 people). In the years since, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-have-the-courage-to-stop-this.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;there have been none&lt;/a&gt;. However, while such large-scale killings are obviously tragic events they contribute relatively little to the overall rates of deaths by guns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Murder rate.&lt;/strong&gt; Australia has generally had &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia#The_Port_Arthur_massacre_and_its_consequences&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;low levels of violent crime&lt;/a&gt; even before the ban. Furthermore, there’s been a steady decline in the number of firearm-related deaths since the early 1980s [1, 2], in particular, there was a 47% decrease between 1991 and 2000. This was accompanied by a similar decrease in non-firearm related murders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there was a clear acceleration of the reduction after the NFA was enacted, but [2] found that this reduction falls short of statistical significance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Suicide rate.&lt;/strong&gt; What they managed to show, though, was that the NFA buyback contributed strongly and significantly to a reduction in suicides. To ensure that they weren’t just looking at a reduction over time which started before the NFA, they compared &lt;em&gt;across states&lt;/em&gt; and correlated reduction with number of guns bought back by the state, and find that more gun buyback by the state results in more reduction in suicide with a statistically significant trend (&lt;em&gt;R&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; = 0.7685, &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt;-value = 0.004% – this is a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; robust statistic that cannot be explained away by any other factors that the authors examined). The gun buyback led to a reduction by 1.9 per 100,000 for each 3.500 withdrawn guns per 100.000 individuals (95% CI), which is a 74% reduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This state-dependent trend and its correlation is shown here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VQaEp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;change in firearm suicide versus gun buyback&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Compensation.&lt;/strong&gt; Both murder and suicide rates declined &lt;em&gt;globally&lt;/em&gt;, that is, reductions in gun death weren’t increased by use of other weapons. However, in the first few years after the NFA, non-gun suicides were briefly raised, continuing a prior trend, before dropping as well. No such trend exists for homicides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cost.&lt;/strong&gt; The gun buyback cost 500 million AUS$. On the other hand, [2] estimates that the 200 annual deaths thus prevented correspond to an economic saving of 500 million AUS$ &lt;em&gt;per year&lt;/em&gt;. This would correspond to a 7 &lt;em&gt;billion&lt;/em&gt; AUS$ cost saving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could this money have spent differently to get a similar (or better) reduction in gun-related deaths? I couldn’t find any data analysing this. However, the buyback was essentially a &lt;em&gt;one-off&lt;/em&gt; cost so amortised over time no &lt;em&gt;ongoing&lt;/em&gt; intervention could have a better cost-benefit relation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Significance&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned, the robust data analysis shows a marked reduction in suicide rates. [2] goes into more detail to improve the robustness of the analysis by doing subsampling and trying (unsuccessfully) to explain the reduction with other variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lee &amp;amp; Suardi [3] have argued that no such reduction exists for homicide rates because the time series data doesn’t show a “structural break”. That may be so ([2] didn’t find a statistically significant reduction for homicide rates either). However, [2] notes that such structural breaks cannot be assumed to exist due to the large number of factors influencing death rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Baker &amp;amp; McPhedran [4] claim that even the suicide rate reduction is not related to the NFA buyback. However, [2] notes that this paper is deeply flawed since it wouldn’t infer significance even if homicide rates had been &lt;em&gt;negative&lt;/em&gt; in the years after 2004, and that the authors of [4] “should know better”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overall&lt;/strong&gt;, the NFA and buyback were correlated with a significant reduction in firearms related deaths, and no balancing increase in non-firearms related deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Putting things into perspective&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this evidence convincing? Yes: It is the best evidence we have, and while statistically flawed methods find no effect, correcting statistical mistakes invariably finds a significant reduction. And in fact, it is the &lt;em&gt;best evidence we could hope for&lt;/em&gt;, because it is the kind of signal we would &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; to get if we &lt;em&gt;knew&lt;/em&gt; that there were a real effect: no sharp break but a steady decline. In fact, in the words of the authors of [2],&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from the perspective of 1996, &lt;strong&gt;it would have been difficult to imagine more compelling future evidence of a beneficial effect of the law.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Notable references&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[1] Jenny Mouzos &amp;amp; Catherine Rushforth, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/tandi/261-280/tandi269/view%20paper.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“Firearm related deaths in Australia, 1991–2001”&lt;/a&gt;, Trends and issues in crime and criminal justice, no. &lt;strong&gt;269&lt;/strong&gt;, Nov 2003&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[2] Andrew Leigh &amp;amp; Christine Neill, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahq013&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“Do Gun Buybacks Save Lives? Evidence from Panel Data”&lt;/a&gt;, American Law and Economics Review, Vol &lt;strong&gt;12&lt;/strong&gt; (2) pp 462–508, Aug 2010 [&lt;a href=&quot;http://andrewleigh.org/pdf/GunBuyback_Panel.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[3] Wang-Sheng Lee &amp;amp; Sandy Suardi, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-7287.2009.00165.x&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“The Australian Firearms Buyback and Its Effect on Gun Deaths”&lt;/a&gt;, Contemporary Economic Policy, Vol &lt;strong&gt;28&lt;/strong&gt; (1) pp 65–79, Jan 2010 [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssaa.org.au/capital-news/2008/2008-09-04_melbourne-uni-paper-Aust-gun-buyback.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[4] Jeanine Baker &amp;amp; Samara McPhedran, &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/47/3/455&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“Gun Law and Sudden Death – Did the Australian Firearms Legislation of 1995 Make a Difference?”&lt;/a&gt;, British Journal of Criminology, Vol &lt;strong&gt;47&lt;/strong&gt; (3), 2007 [&lt;a href=&quot;http://moveleft.org/dog_ban/br_j_criminology_2006_.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-18T21:47:43.987" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14098" CreationDate="2012-12-18T19:00:36.533" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked the question and have at least a partial answer after reading some of the published research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, the 65,000 number of defensive gun uses per year is based on data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and I was unable to download the actual study - my computer complained the PDF file was corrupted. So I cannot explain the &lt;strong&gt;factor of 2000&lt;/strong&gt; discrepancy between the 65,000 number and the documented 34 incidents in 11 months of 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is reason to be skeptical of the far higher reported rates of defensive gun use based on telephone surveys.  In particular, there are two studies reporting roughly 2 million defensive gun uses per year: the Kleck and Gertz study that reported the 2.5 million use estimate and the Department of Justice study that reported a 1.5 million use estimate.  Both of these studies were based on national random telephone surveys of about 4500 and 2500 households respectively.  &lt;strong&gt;The reasons to be skeptical about these survey results are stated by the authors of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles/165476.pdf&quot;&gt;Department of Justice survey&lt;/a&gt; as shown in all the quotes below:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, of all, using a survey to estimate the rate of occurrence of a rare event will suffer from the false positive effect.  The study authors state (where DGU = defensive gun use and my emphasis is added in &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any estimate of the incidence of a rare event based on screening the&#xA;  general population is likely to have a positive bias. The reason can&#xA;  best be explained by use of an epidemiological framework.[15]&#xA;  Screening tests are always subject to error, whether the &quot;test&quot; is a&#xA;  medical examination for cancer or an interview question for DGUs. The&#xA;  errors are either &quot;false negatives&quot; or &quot;false positives.&quot; If the&#xA;  latter tend to outnumber the former, the population prevalence will be&#xA;  exaggerated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reason this sort of bias can be expected in the case of rare&#xA;  events boils down to a matter of arithmetic. Suppose the true&#xA;  prevalence is 1 in 1,000. Then out of every 1,000 respondents, only 1&#xA;  can possibly supply a &quot;false negative,&quot; whereas any of the 999 may&#xA;  provide a &quot;false positive.&quot; If even 2 of the 999 provide a false&#xA;  positive, the result will be a positive bias--regardless of whether&#xA;  the one true positive tells the truth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Respondents might &lt;strong&gt;falsely&lt;/strong&gt; provide a positive response to the DGU question for any of a number of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;o They may want to impress the interviewer by their heroism and hence&#xA;  exaggerate a trivial event. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;o They may be genuinely confused due to substance abuse, mental&#xA;  illness, or simply less-than-accurate memories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;o They may actually have used a gun defensively within the last couple&#xA;  of years but falsely report it as occurring in the previous year--a&#xA;  phenomenon known as &quot;telescoping.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course, it is easy to imagine the reasons why that rare respondent&#xA;  who actually did use a gun defensively within the time frame may have&#xA;  decided not to report it to the interviewer. But again, the arithmetic&#xA;  dictates that the false positives will likely predominate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study authors then go on to state (here NSPOF = National Survey of Private&#xA;Ownership of Firearms - this survey):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In line with the theory that many DGU reports are exaggerated or&#xA;  falsified, we note that in some of these reports, the respondents'&#xA;  answers to the followup items are &lt;strong&gt;not consistent&lt;/strong&gt; with respondents'&#xA;  reported DGUs. For example, of the 19 NSPOF respondents meeting the&#xA;  more restrictive Kleck and Gertz DGU criteria (exhibit 7), 6 indicated&#xA;  that the circumstance of the DGU was rape, robbery, or attack--but&#xA;  then responded &quot;no&quot; to a subsequent question: &quot;Did the perpetrator&#xA;  threaten, attack, or injure you?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So note that these reported statistics rely on only 19 respondents to generate the 1.5 million estimated rate of defensive gun uses and that some of these 19 reports were inconsistent.  Another possible unreliable report was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;one woman reported 52 &lt;em&gt;(defensive gun uses in a year)&lt;/em&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The survey authors also state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some troubling comparisons. If the DGU numbers are in the right&#xA;  ballpark, millions of attempted assaults, thefts, and break-ins were&#xA;  foiled by armed citizens during the 12-month period. According to&#xA;  these results, &lt;strong&gt;guns are used far more often to defend against crime&#xA;  than to perpetrate crime&lt;/strong&gt;. (Firearms were used by perpetrators in 1.07&#xA;  million incidents of violent crime in 1994, according to NCVS data.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus, it is of considerable interest and importance to check the&#xA;  reasonableness of the NSPOF estimates before embracing them. Because&#xA;  respondents were asked to describe only their most recent defensive&#xA;  gun use, our comparisons are conservative, as they assume only one&#xA;  defensive gun use per defender. &lt;strong&gt;The results still suggest that DGU&#xA;  estimates are far too high.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, in only a small fraction of rape and robbery attempts do&#xA;  victims use guns in self-defense. It does not make sense, then, that&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;the NSPOF estimate of the number of rapes in which a woman defended&#xA;  herself with a gun was more than the total number of rapes estimated&#xA;  from NCVS&lt;/strong&gt; (exhibit 8). For other crimes listed in exhibit 8, the&#xA;  results are almost as absurd: the NSPOF estimate of DGU robberies is&#xA;  36 percent of all NCVS-estimated robberies, while the NSPOF estimate&#xA;  of DGU assaults is 19 percent of all aggravated assaults. If those&#xA;  percentages were close to accurate, crime would be a risky business&#xA;  indeed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition the authors note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should the number of DGUs serve as a measure of the public benefit of&#xA;  private gun possession, even in principle? When it comes to DGUs, is&#xA;  more better? That is doubtful, for two kinds of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;o First, people who draw their guns to defend themselves against&#xA;  perceived threats are not necessarily innocent victims; they may have&#xA;  started fights themselves or they may simply be mistaken about whether&#xA;  the other persons really intended to harm them. Survey interviewers&#xA;  must take the respondent's word for what happened and why; a competent&#xA;  police investigation of the same incident would interview all parties&#xA;  before reaching a conclusion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;o Second and more generally, the number of DGUs tells us little about&#xA;  the most important effects on crime of widespread gun ownership. When&#xA;  a high percentage of homes, vehicles, and even purses contain guns,&#xA;  that presumably has an important effect on the behavior of predatory&#xA;  criminals. Some may be deterred or diverted to other types of crime.&#xA;  Others may change tactics, acquiring a gun themselves or in some other&#xA;  way seeking to preempt gun use by the intended victim.[16] Such&#xA;  consequences presumably have an important effect on criminal&#xA;  victimization rates but are in no way reflected in the DGU count&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my conclusion is that these kinds of random telephone surveys are not an accurate way to estimate the annual rate of defensive gun use in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5297" LastEditorUserId="5297" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T03:07:35.497" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T03:07:35.497" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14107" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-19T00:29:40.530" Score="21" ViewCount="1091" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many public toilets there are disposable toilet seat covers that can be placed over the seat before sitting down.  These covers certainly allay some of the &quot;yuck factor&quot; associated with placing one bare buttocks where so many have gone before, but &lt;strong&gt;is there any evidence that these covers actually prevent the spread of communicable diseases?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4449" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T13:21:34.730" Title="Do the commercially produced toilet seat covers significantly reduce the spread of disease?" Tags="|hygiene|toilets|disease|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14107" CreationDate="2012-12-19T02:23:53.400" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As pointed out by @KonradRudolph, this is &lt;strong&gt;only a partial answer&lt;/strong&gt;. It addresses sexually-transmitted diseases, but not others. It needs further additions or a companion answer to properly address the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before we can point to the evidence that covers &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt;, we need some evidence that there is any problem to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/2000/05/19/tinkle/&quot;&gt;Salon article&lt;/a&gt;, Mary Roach investigated this claim. She spoke to experts from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reproductive endocrinology at Mount Sinai Medical Center&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;American Social Health Association&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CDC’s STD hotline &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a microbiologist from University of Arizona &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She also searched Medline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She concluded there was no evidence of people catching any diseases from toilet seats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aurorahealthcare.org/yourhealth/getcontent.asp?URL=healthlibrary.epnet.com/GetContent.aspx?token=5344349d-8fbc-446e-8ae5-03a924025f8c-chunkiid=157008&quot;&gt;Aurora Health Care&lt;/a&gt; also looked into this. They looked at a number of possible diseases, and quote a number of health organisations, such as the CDC, suggesting contracting a sexually-transmitted disease from a toilet seat is a &quot;highly unlikely prospect&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They do concede at the end that it &quot;can't hurt&quot; to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;take a few extra hygienic precautions when using public toilet seats. If you use a public restroom, it is reasonable to wipe off the toilet seat and cover it with toilet paper or a toilet seat cover before sitting down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some measures may have negative effects. Women who avoid contact by crouching &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-0528.1991.tb10372.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot;&gt;empty their bladders less&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;highly unlikely prospect&quot; however may have happened. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1744865/&quot;&gt;case-study&lt;/a&gt; suggests &lt;em&gt;Neisseria gonorrhoeae&lt;/em&gt; may have been transferred to a small girl from a toilet seat, possibly in the act of wiping it down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However it is&#xA;  also accepted that cases of non-sexual transmission of &lt;em&gt;N gonorrhoeae&lt;/em&gt; in children do occur, but proof beyond all doubt can be very&#xA;  difficult to document scientifically&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It references another article that explains in its title &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/74/1/67.short&quot;&gt;&quot;Nonsexual Transmission of Sexually Transmitted Diseases: An Infrequent Occurrence&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related issue is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pediatricsdigest.mobi/content/125/2/e419.short&quot;&gt;toilet-seat contact dermatitis&lt;/a&gt;&quot; which is an allergic reaction to the materials in the toilet seat, as opposed to an infectious disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, the issue of whether toilet seat covers prevent disease is largely moot, because the risk of disease from toilet seats is so very low. (Oh, and crouching to avoid contact may not be a smart idea.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T13:46:14.417" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T13:46:14.417" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14109" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-19T02:31:00.500" Score="3" ViewCount="569" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vanish.co.uk/products/vanish-oxi-action/vanish-oxi-action-powder&quot;&gt;manufacturer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Have you seen a stain on your clothes that you can't seem to remove? Don't fear! Vanish Oxi Action Powder contains Oxi Powerlift which removes all types of stains, from the ones you can clearly see to the tougher ones that may be hidden. Vanish Oxi Action Powder is safe to use on both coloured and white clothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Vanish Oxi Action Powder work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8840" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-20T00:51:07.717" LastActivityDate="2013-03-03T13:26:09.403" Title="Are bleaching powders effective cleaning agents?" Tags="|chemistry|consumer-products|advertising|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14110" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14172" CreationDate="2012-12-19T11:54:36.143" Score="8" ViewCount="723" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lively debate on the health impact of passive smoking (other questions on skeptics.se are here &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/12472/does-passive-smoking-kill-600-000-people-every-year&quot;&gt;Does passive smoking kill 600,000 people every year?&lt;/a&gt; and here &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3562/is-secondhand-smoke-dangerous&quot;&gt;Is secondhand smoke dangerous?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But anti-smoking health campaigners made some startling claims when various towns, regions and countries started bring in legislation to ban smoking in the workplace over the last 15 years or so. The claims are that one major result of workplace bans is that the number of heart attacks is immediately reduced. One of the more lurid reports appeared in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scotsman.com/news/smoking-ban-slashes-heart-attacks-by-up-to-a-third-across-world-1-775905&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Scotsman in 2009&lt;/a&gt; (Scotland implemented its ban earlier than England):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SMOKING bans have dramatically reduced the number of heart attacks in Europe and North America, cutting rates by between a quarter and more than a third, two major studies have shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence suggests anti-smoking laws have had a bigger impact on heart health than first thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But these are big public health effects and the size seems at least a little implausible. Anti-nanny-state activists have criticised the early reports. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiked-online.com/site/article/7451/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Snowdon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Christopher Snowdon&lt;/a&gt; in Spiked argues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tales of heart attacks being ‘slashed’ by smoking bans have appeared with such regularity in recent years that it is easy to forget that there is a conspicuous lack of reliable evidence to support them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Criticising one high estimate of the effect thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...one must bear in mind that around 10 to 15 per cent of coronary heart disease cases are attributed to active smoking. That passive smoking could be responsible for a further 40 per cent strains all credibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there are several plausible reasons why over eager campaigners might inadvertently exaggerate the effect. Failing to account for natural variation or long term trends in heart attack rates might easily lead to implausibly large estimates of the effect of smoking bans. So the key question here is: &lt;em&gt;do smoking bans have a noticeable effect on heart attack rates? And, if there is an effect, how big is it?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Added clarification: since heart attacks are one of the prices smokers pay for their habit we expect to see reductions in heart attacks when they give up. And more people may quit when workplace and indoor smoking is banned. &lt;em&gt;The interesting question, though, is what effect is seen in non-smokers.&lt;/em&gt; We care more about them as it is much easier to justify legislation to prevent harm to third parties than it it is to prevent self-harm. Great care with statistics is required to clearly distinguish the two groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB Although the general question has been addressed here before, I'm asking this specific one as the effect on heart attacks has not, as far as I can tell, been covered in those questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim that the smoking ban dramatically reduces heart attack rates is still very much alive. This May 2016 piece in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/nanny-state-must-tackle-guzzlers-and-boozers-fwx3mp9n2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Times&lt;/a&gt; (paywalled) argues that it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...has slashed heart attack rates by 42 per cent...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T15:21:28.650" Title="Do workplace smoking bans reduce the number of heart attacks?" Tags="|medical-science|smoking|epidemiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14110" CreationDate="2012-12-19T13:39:36.163" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is good evidence that smoking bans reduce the number of heart attacks. In the meta-analysis &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19778665&quot;&gt;&quot;Cardiovascular effect of bans on smoking in public places: a systematic review and meta-analysis&quot;&lt;/a&gt; published in 2009 in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology the authors state in their conclusion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using 11 reports from 10 study locations, AMI risk decreased by 17%&#xA;  overall (IRR: 0.83, 95% CI: 0.75 to 0.92), with the greatest effect&#xA;  among younger individuals and nonsmokers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smoking bans in public places and workplaces are signiﬁcantly&#xA;  associated with a reduction in AMI incidence, particularly if enforced&#xA;  over several years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AMI in this context means &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_myocardial_infarction&quot;&gt;acute myocardial infarction&lt;/a&gt;, which is what is commonly known as heart attack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They used 11 different studies in this meta-analysis. The authors further state&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These studies include nearly 24 million people, observed 215,524&#xA;  cardiac events, and suggest that community smoking bans are associated&#xA;  with a 17% reduction in AMI incidence. If this association represents&#xA;  a cause-andeffect relationship, and assuming approximately 920,000&#xA;  incident AMIs each year in the U.S., a nationwide ban on public&#xA;  smoking might ultimately prevent as many as 156,400 new AMIs yearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2804%2917019-0/abstract&quot;&gt;INTERHEART study&lt;/a&gt;, a large study with  24767 people from 52 countries:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the most important risk factors for acute myocardial infarction&#xA;  in our study was smoking, which accounts for about 36% of the PAR of&#xA;  acute myocardial infarction worldwide (and about 44% in men)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the claim that only 10-15% of coronary heart disease are attributed to smoking seems to be wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T15:25:54.973" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T15:25:54.973" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14115" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14121" CreationDate="2012-12-19T16:46:18.740" Score="10" ViewCount="2892" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the Los Angeles Time (&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/05/science/la-sci-higgs-boson-collider-20120705&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Massive proton collider is a great big hit after all&lt;/a&gt;) and The New York Times (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/science/31collider.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;European Collider Begins Its Subatomic Exploration&lt;/a&gt;) the Large Hadron Collider did end up costing &lt;strong&gt;10 billion dollars&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2008, when faulty wiring closed down the $10-billion Large Hadron&#xA;  Collider for more than a year, many wondered whether physicists at the&#xA;  European Organization for Nuclear Research had a white elephant on&#xA;  their hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After 16 years and $10 billion — and a long morning of electrical&#xA;  groaning and sweating — there was joy in the meadows and tunnels of&#xA;  the Swiss-French countryside Tuesday: the world’s biggest physics&#xA;  machine, the Large Hadron Collider, finally began to make subatomic&#xA;  particles collide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas The Times of India (&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-09-10/india/27910537_1_quarks-subatomic-particles-lhc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;'Big Bang' day for 30 Indian scientists&lt;/a&gt;) talk about a cost of &lt;strong&gt;4 billion dollars&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the heart of this is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which was&#xA;  constructed at a cost of $4.4 billion. It is the latest in a series of&#xA;  successively more powerful particle accelerators that have been built&#xA;  at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) laboratory in&#xA;  Geneva.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is the truth? What are the facts? Did the Large Hadron Collider end up costing &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;10 billion dollars&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; as some journalists are claiming?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="8702" LastEditDate="2013-11-21T00:31:09.223" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T00:31:09.223" Title="Did the Large Hadron Collider end up costing 10 billion dollars?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14115" CreationDate="2012-12-19T17:26:42.643" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Cern's own &lt;a href=&quot;http://askanexpert.web.cern.ch/AskAnExpert/en/Accelerators/LHCgeneral-en.html#3&quot;&gt;ask an expert section of their website&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cost for the machine alone is about 4.6 billion CHF (about 3&#xA;  billion Euro). The total project cost breaks down roughly as follows:&#xA;  } 4.6 billion CHF total cost of the accelerator } 1.1 billion CHF&#xA;  total CERN contribution to the experiments (about 20% of the detector&#xA;  costs, supported by large collaborations of institutes worldwide) }&#xA;  0.26 billion CHF total contribution to computing (manpower and materials and both CERN’s and external contributions). The&#xA;  experimental collaborations are individual entities, funded&#xA;  independently from CERN. CERN is a member of each experiment, and&#xA;  contributes to the budget of CMS and LHCb at the 20% level, 16% for&#xA;  ALICE and 13% for ATLAS. TOTEM is a much smaller experiment, with a&#xA;  total material cost of about 6.5 million CHF. The CERN share of this&#xA;  is, however, 30%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4.6 CHF converted to dollars is $5,054,940,000.00 according to Google's conversion tool.  This number is the number that the LHC actually cost to build, and does not include the budget for operation nor the repairs done in 2008 and 2009. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popsci.com/science/gallery/2011-07/big-science-universes-ten-most-epic-projects?image=8&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; from Popular Science(PopSci) states that the LHC had a construction cost of $7.82 billion.  This figure may be the initial cost plus the cost of repairs that had to be done, it does not say. It also shows that the LHC has an annual operating budget of 1.2 billion (Numbers are on a picture, so I cannot direct quote them).  Which if you add the 7.82 billion and add 1.2 bil 4 times for the operating cost for the years of 2008-2012, which is when they found the Higgs boson particle, you get 12.62 billion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/07/05/how-much-does-it-cost-to-find-a-higgs-boson/&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt; though...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Large Hadron Collider was first turned on in August of 2008, then&#xA;  stopped for repairs in September until November 2009. Taking all of&#xA;  those costs into consideration, the total cost of finding the Higgs&#xA;  boson ran about $13.25 billion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 10 bil number that you have quoted could be the combination of the initial cost, repairs, and the annual budget that it took to find the Higgs boson particle.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have posted articles from &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-09-10/india/27910537_1_quarks-subatomic-particles-lhc&quot;&gt;2008&lt;/a&gt;, the 4.4 bil figure, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/science/31collider.html&quot;&gt;2010&lt;/a&gt;, the 10 bil figure.  So at the time of the 2008 article, 4.4 bil was roughly correct depending on the currency that was used.  In 2010 the 10 bil figure was roughly correct.  By using the number supplied by PopSci, in 2010 the cost came to $10.22 billion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to sum it up, Both figures appear to be correct at the times that they were written, but neither is correct now.  The total cost to find a Higgs boson particle, which was a major purpose of the LHC, appears to be between 12.62 billion, based off the numbers cited by PopSci and my own calculations, and 13.25 billion based off of Forbes calculations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8691" LastEditorUserId="8691" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T18:23:10.013" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T18:23:10.013" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14123" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-19T17:41:35.280" Score="38" ViewCount="4809" Body="&lt;p&gt;On Nov. 5, 2009, 12 soldiers and one civilian were killed, and more than two dozen others were wounded, when a gunman walked into the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood and opened fire.  Using not an assault rifle but a 357 magnum, with 40,000 trained soldiers on the base which is also the second biggest armory in America who took the guy out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The military swat team on the base that was called in and wounded him 10 minutes after his shootings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am really asking is there a printed story or proof of any armed bystander in the USA besides an off duty policeman ever stopping a multiple homicide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10762" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T18:38:35.387" LastActivityDate="2018-05-25T11:23:34.410" Title="What is the value of armed bystanders in preventing gun deaths?" Tags="|guns|violence|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14126" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20822" CreationDate="2012-12-19T18:10:50.457" Score="10" ViewCount="412" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://glutathioneforhealth.wordpress.com/glutathione-and-autism/&quot;&gt;GlutathioneForHealth&lt;/a&gt;: Autistic children have 50% less intracellular glutathione than other children), which is why they have so much trouble detoxifing vaccines, medications, environmental toxins, toxins in food and why they have so much trouble fighting infections and diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that claim well supported by scientific studies? Is there reason to assume that autistic children would improve their condition by increasing their glutathione levels?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T12:45:37.803" Title="Is Autism in Children frequently due to low Glutathione Levels?" Tags="|nutrition|nutritional-supplements|immune-system|autism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14123" CreationDate="2012-12-19T18:13:15.420" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.woai.com/mostpopular/story/Armed-bystander-stops-stabbing-outside-school/6zTYMpy8pUOeyrbElEBOTQ.cspx&quot;&gt;Armed Bystander stops a stabbing.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Police say a bystander who happened to be a concealed handgun license&#xA;  holder pulled his weapon and ordered Barron to drop the knife. Barron&#xA;  surrendered and was taken into custody by the bystander and a school&#xA;  district officer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2011/01/12/5824819-stories-of-armed-heroes?lite&quot;&gt;From a blog..&lt;/a&gt; Don't know how factual it is though as it is a personal account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It happened in a town where I used to live. Back in 1997, a kid took a&#xA;  gun to the high school in Pearl, Mississippi, and started firing. He&#xA;  killed two students and wounded seven, then fled the building. Hearing&#xA;  the shots, assistant principal Joel Myrick ushered a few kids into the&#xA;  safety of his office, then ran to get his .45 automatic from his car&#xA;  in the parking lot (state law allowed him to have it there). By the&#xA;  time Mr. Myrick got back, the shooter was in his own car, trying to&#xA;  get away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I just pointed at him and I said--I said, freeze,&quot; Mr. Myrick told&#xA;  Nightly News the next day. He continued, &quot;I said, don't move. And I&#xA;  could see his--the whites of his knuckles on the steering wheel. And I&#xA;  came up and I grabbed the door, and I opened the door. I said, don't&#xA;  you do anything, you know. I said, I'm going to shoot you. And he got&#xA;  out, he laid on the ground, and then put my foot on the back of the&#xA;  neck.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ktvn.com/Global/story.asp?S=8378732&quot;&gt;Man with Conceal and carry permit stops shooting.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Deputies say about 2:25 a.m., 30-year-old Ernesto Villa Gomez walked&#xA;  into the bar and starting shooting. 20-year-old Jose Torres and his&#xA;  19-year-old brother Margarito Torres were killed. When Villa Gomez was&#xA;  reloading his semi-automatic gun, a man from Reno took out a gun and&#xA;  shot Villa Gomez. That man has a concealed weapons permit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_School_of_Law_shooting&quot;&gt;App State law school Shooting.&lt;/a&gt;  I'll sum this one up.  It did involve an two students who were off duty officers, a county sheriff and a police officer. They confronted the man who had shot several people and he dropped his gun at that point and was subdued by several other students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.volokh.com/2012/12/14/do-civilians-armed-with-guns-ever-capture-kill-or-otherwise-stop-mass-shooters/&quot;&gt;posting&lt;/a&gt; lists 2 of the events I have listed as well as two more.  One did involve a former police officer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these the shooter was stopped after someone was killed, but in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uexpress.com/printable/print.html?uc_full_date=19990730&amp;amp;uc_comic=ac&quot;&gt;this example&lt;/a&gt;, the shooters were stopped before anyone was killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In December 1991, two armed men burst into a Shoney's restaurant in&#xA;  Anniston, Ala., and held the patrons and employees at gunpoint,&#xA;  herding them into a walk-in refrigerator. The robbers kept the manager&#xA;  behind for his assistance as they looted the restaurant. One patron,&#xA;  however, also remained behind. Thomas Glenn Terry had opted against&#xA;  being locked in a refrigerator, hiding from the attackers under a&#xA;  table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As one of the armed robbers ransacked the cash register, another&#xA;  patrolled the restaurant. When he came across Mr. Terry, he pulled his&#xA;  gun. But unlike the recent victims in Atlanta, this victim was armed.&#xA;  Using his own legally concealed handgun, Terry shot and killed the&#xA;  robber. The other armed robber, busily holding the manager at&#xA;  gunpoint, then opened fire on Terry. Terry shot back, mortally&#xA;  wounding the second robber. The two dozen hostages were released&#xA;  unharmed. Only the criminals -- who had been armed with stolen guns,&#xA;  by the way -- didn't make it out alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summation, Yes it does happen.  When a shooting is stopped I am willing to say that it would get much less coverage.  How often do you hear about good Samaritans vs criminals?  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.helium.com/debates/88744-do-mainstream-media-outlets-favor-bad-news-over-good-news/side_by_side?page=2&quot;&gt;Bad news brings more attention than good news.&lt;/a&gt;   Bad news can cause &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensationalism&quot;&gt;sensationalism&lt;/a&gt; more so than good news, which will lead to increased viewer or reader numbers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8691" LastEditorUserId="8691" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T18:19:26.903" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T18:19:26.903" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14123" CreationDate="2012-12-19T19:07:39.747" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/12/can_armed_citizens_stop_mass_shootings_examples_of_armed_interventions.html&quot;&gt;Slate article&lt;/a&gt; covers this very subject. As might be expected for such a highly-charged controversial subject, the results are contradictory and inconclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An investigation by Mother Jones concluded that no more than 1.6 percent of mass shootings were ended by armed civilians. On the other hand, gun advocates argue that it’s hard to know how many more shootings would have become mass murders had civilians not been on the scene to end them early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Academic studies on the issue have not reached consensus. A 1999 study by John Lott of the University of Maryland and William M. Landes of the University of Chicago, often cited by conservatives, found that “shall issue” laws allowing concealed handguns “reduce both the number of [multiple victim] shootings as well as their severity.” However, a review of studies on the topic found the evidence to be inconsistent and inconclusive. A recent Washington Post fact-check similarly found the current evidence to be too murky for representatives like Gohmert to cite as fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References backing those statements up can be found in the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2012-12-19T19:07:39.747" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14129" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14145" CreationDate="2012-12-19T19:07:49.530" Score="4" ViewCount="948" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://troopers.ny.gov/Crime_Prevention/Online_Safety/Identity_Theft/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to the New York State police,&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All an identity thief needs is any combination of your Social Security number, birth date, address, and phone number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;while &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/fraud_protection/identity_fraud&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the UK ActionFraud police (in the &lt;em&gt;Protect yourself&lt;/em&gt; tab) advise&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don’t throw out anything with your name, address or financial details without shredding it first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you receive an unsolicited email or phone call from what appears to be your bank or building society asking for your security details, never reveal your full password, login details or account numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How true is the first claim? I have read that &lt;a href=&quot;http://socialsecurity.gov/pubs/10064.html#a0=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;it is crucial to keep ones social security number secret&lt;/a&gt;, but how confidential must I make my date of birth? Presumably I need to expose my address and phone number for daily transactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the second claim, I often see bank account numbers &lt;a href=&quot;http://ouvc.net/alumni/match&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;freely given out&lt;/a&gt;. Is that risky?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What other information, such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;passport number&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;full name (including middle names)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mother's maiden name&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;should be kept private?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it much worse to publicise, for example, a scan of my driving licence than just its number?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="308" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T09:34:13.463" Title="What info should I keep secret to avoid identity theft?" Tags="|security|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14123" CreationDate="2012-12-19T20:47:16.267" Score="24" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...is there a printed story or proof of any armed bystander in the USA besides an off duty policeman ever stopping a multiple homicide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is &quot;Yes&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, a smaller list. Look at this article, listing 4 cases, &lt;strong&gt;two of them in schools&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/038404_massacres_gun_owners_defense.html&quot;&gt;http://www.naturalnews.com/038404_massacres_gun_owners_defense.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now for a bigger list - this one contains 8 incidents, 6 by armed civilian and 2 by civilians helping police with their firearms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a recent controversy when someone posted a meme on facebook, &quot;claiming the average number of people killed in mass shootings when stopped by police is 18.25, and the average number of people killed in a mass shooting when stopped by civilians is 2.2&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That statistics was challenged, therefore the meme poster decided to do the job &lt;strong&gt;properly&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dailyanarchist.com/2012/07/31/auditing-shooting-rampage-statistics/&quot;&gt;http://dailyanarchist.com/2012/07/31/auditing-shooting-rampage-statistics/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He explicitly detailed a more thorough research, listing all of the known facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;With 15 incidents stopped by police with a total of 217 dead that’s an average of about 14.29. With 17 incidents stopped by civilians and 45 dead that’s an average of 2.33.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make the statistics even cleaner, he separated civilian stops between armed and unarmed civilians&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... within the civilian category 11 of the 17 shootings were stopped by unarmed civilians.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  If you compare the average of people killed in shootings stopped by armed civilians and unarmed civilians you get 1.8 and 2.6 but that’s not nearly as significant as the difference between a proactive civilian, and a cowering civilian who waits for police.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also points out that the statistics could be even worse if not for the fact that many mass shootings aren't &lt;strong&gt;actually stopped&lt;/strong&gt; by the police, but that the shooter kills himself; AND that at least 2 of the police ones were where a police was very greatly assisted by armed civilians.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2012-12-20T02:57:23.953" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T02:57:23.953" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14047" CreationDate="2012-12-19T23:19:01.757" Score="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim that NASA has asked people to have sex in space as a scientific experiment seems a bit far-fetched to me. I would expect them to experiment with animal mating first, which it doesn't seem they have done. (&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/01/russia-death-five-geckos-space-sex-mission&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Russia experimented with gecko mating in July 2014&lt;/a&gt;. The experiment was not successful.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether or not &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; sex-in-space has happened, that is harder to say. No one has publicly admitted to it, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. There is this article in which an astronaut provides an adamant &amp;quot;no&amp;quot;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space.com/8683-time-sex-space-astronaut.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;No Time for Sex In Space, Astronaut Says&lt;/a&gt;. But that doesn't prove that it has never happened either. &lt;em&gt;(&amp;quot;He's just jealous!&amp;quot;)&lt;/em&gt; Astronauts are human and may give in to their emotions at times. You may recall that there was once an astronaut who &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Nowak&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;put on astronaut diapers and drove a thousand miles to try to kill another astronaut's girlfriend&lt;/a&gt;. So you can take any notion that they are completely professional all the time, and throw it out of the airlock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first married couple to fly in space together were N. Jan Davis and Mark C. Lee who both served as mission specialists aboard Endeavour on STS-47 in September 1992. Lee and Davis had met during training for the flight and had married in secret. They disclosed their marriage to NASA shortly before the flight, when it was too late to train a substitute. NASA has since changed the rules and will not allow married astronauts on the same flight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_married_couples_among_space_travelers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (sourcing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/08/astronaut.removed/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, they've never come out and said that they had sex while they were &lt;em&gt;newlyweds in space&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;del&gt;It looks like there may soon be a definitive &amp;quot;yes&amp;quot;, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/first-sex-in-space-pornhub-is-going-to-make-a-porn-film-in-space-10309285.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;there are now plans to film an adult movie in space&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/del&gt; It seems this was a crowdfunding campaign that did not raise enough funds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1950" LastEditorUserId="1950" LastEditDate="2021-08-13T14:29:05.893" LastActivityDate="2021-08-13T14:29:05.893" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14134" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14239" CreationDate="2012-12-19T23:22:27.907" Score="33" ViewCount="12085" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently &lt;a href=&quot;http://io9.com/5968164/why-you-should-probably-stop-eating-wheat&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; I09 article about wheat made the rounds and there was a part in it that stood out to me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Alessio Fasano, the Medical Director for The University&#xA;  of Maryland's Center for Celiac Research, no one can properly digest&#xA;  gluten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We do not have the enzymes to break it down,&quot; he said in a recent&#xA;  interview with TenderFoodie. &quot;It all depends upon how well our&#xA;  intestinal walls close after we ingest it and how our immune system&#xA;  reacts to it.&quot; His concern is that the gluten protein, which is&#xA;  abundant in the endosperm of barley, rye, and wheat kernels, is&#xA;  setting off an aberrant immune response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not an expert in the matter, but my understanding is that the very etiology of celiac involves the breakdown of gluten (specifically the gliadin) by tissue transglutaminase, which is definitely an enzyme*. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20170845&quot;&gt;However&lt;/a&gt;, in some instances, TG2 can react with water in preference over an amine, leading to the deamidation of glutamine residues. 118,119 Gluten proteins, the immunological trigger of gluten sensitivity, are glutamine-rich donor substrates amenable to deamidation. TG2 contributes to disease development in at least two ways: ﬁ rst, by deamidating gluten peptides and thereby increasing their aﬃ nity for HLA-DQ2/DQ8, which potentiates the T-cell response, 120,121 and, second, by haptenisation of self-antigens through crosslinking with gliadins. 122 This latter activity has been implicated in autoantibody development (ﬁ gure 4). Activation of TG2 and deamidation of gluten peptides seems to be central to disease development and is now well understood at a molecular level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, it's my understanding that testing for celiac often involves looking for those Anti-transglutaminase antibodies. So it's an enzyme that normally breaks down gluten and the process has gone haywire. If we have an enzyme able to do this, wouldn't that allow normal people to break down gluten? Am I misunderstanding things? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do find info that gluten tends to be hard for the human digestive system to break down**&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085%2807%2901010-4/abstract?referrer=http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=gluten%20enzymes&quot;&gt;Because&lt;/a&gt; human gastric and pancreatic enzymes lack postproline cleaving&#xA;  activity, the abundance of proline residues in gluten renders it&#xA;  highly resistant to complete proteolytic degradation in the human&#xA;  gastrointestinal tract, a feature that is most likely linked to the&#xA;  disease-inducing properties of gluten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But no evidence that this has negative effects on healthy people since most plant foods contain things we can't break down&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Gluten sensitivity: from gut to brain. Marios Hadjivassiliou, David S. Sanders, Richard A. Grünewald, Nicola Woodroofe, Sabrina Boscolo, Daniel Aeschlimann&#xA;Lancet Neurol. 2010 March; 9(3): 318–330. doi: 10.1016/S1474-4422(09)70290-X&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;** Combination Enzyme Therapy for Gastric Digestion of Dietary Gluten in Patients With Celiac Sprue Jonathan Gass, Michael T. Bethune, Matthew Siegel, Andrew Spencer, Chaitan Khosla&#xA;Gastroenterology 1 August 2007 (volume 133 issue 2 Pages 472-480 DOI: 10.1053/j.gastro.2007.05.028) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5278" LastEditorUserId="5278" LastEditDate="2012-12-19T23:28:43.520" LastActivityDate="2019-08-05T15:34:57.693" Title="Are humans incapable of digesting gluten?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14135" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-20T00:46:34.143" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-20T00:46:34.143" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T00:46:34.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14136" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-20T00:46:34.143" Score="0" Body="**Please do not use this tag**: use sexuality, human-reproduction or gender" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-20T00:46:34.143" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T00:46:34.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14138" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14139" CreationDate="2012-12-20T05:03:45.853" Score="15" ViewCount="4261" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not personally a fan of headbanging, but a friend of mine recently suggested they had brain damage from too many heavy metal concerts, and the suggestion got me thinking. A quick survey of my friends seems to indicate this is a widely held belief, but I'm not one to simply accept the conventional wisdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can understand whiplash maybe if done too quickly and too heavily, but I have trouble accepting that simply moving one's head too quickly could result in a minor concussion. The suggestion seems to be this could result in brain damage over a period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does headbanging cause any kind of specific brain damage, and what is the mechanism of said damage? I don't see many questions related to this subject, so hopefully this isn't the wrong StackExchange to post my question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10771" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T19:06:19.010" Title="Can headbanging cause brain damage?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14138" CreationDate="2012-12-20T06:34:16.483" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;A number of injuries have been attributed to the practice of head-banging to music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following list are individual case-studies, so should be considered little more than well-considered anecdotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1549725/pdf/bmjcred00577-0036a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carotid Dissection&lt;/a&gt; - a 15 year-old died of an aneurysm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurologyindia.com/article.asp?issn=0028-3886;year=2006;volume=54;issue=3;spage=319;epage=320;aulast=Neyaz&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Subdural Haemorrhage&lt;/a&gt; - 29-year-old had headaches for a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1683440&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fatal Subdural haemorrhage&lt;/a&gt; - No abstract available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003497512012118&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mediastinal Emphysema&lt;/a&gt; - A 34-year-old guitarist regularly expeirneced neck and chest pain after concerts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/maney/imm/2010/00000032/00000003/art00007&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Neck weakness and long-term neck pain and upper limb parasthesia&lt;/a&gt; - a 16-year-old suffered a neck injury while head-banging that continued to show symptoms for 4 years. No validated diagnosis was made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1819327&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vetebral Artery Aneurysm&lt;/a&gt; - a 15-year-old drummer suffered an aneurysm from violent head and neck motion. &amp;quot;He is neurologically normal 1 year after surgery&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://neurologyindia.com/article.asp?issn=0028-3886;year=2011;volume=59;issue=3;spage=478;epage=479;aulast=Edvardsson&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Basal Artery Thrombosis&lt;/a&gt; - 20 year old musician. While it is likely that head-banging caused the problem, it is not clear. He suffered further in hospital during treatment (I couldn't quite understand the details, but &amp;quot;the therapeutic intervention had resulted in significant neurological disability.&amp;quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article goes on to provide several references for head-banging related injuries (mostly covered elsewhere here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following studies are more than just case-studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurologyindia.com/article.asp?issn=0028-3886;year=2006;volume=54;issue=3;spage=319;epage=320;aulast=Neyaz&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Whiplash&lt;/a&gt; - Thirty-seven 13/14 year olds partook in a charity dance marathon for 7 hours. 82% of the girls and 17% of the boys who partook in headbanging during three heavy metal songs suffered cervical spine pain for 1-3 days. 26.2% of the girls and none of the boys who did not partake in headbanging suffered cervical spine pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a2825?view=long&amp;amp;pmid=19091761&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Head and Neck Injury&lt;/a&gt; - This was a biomechanical analysis of head-banging, rather than measuring actual outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An average head banging song has a tempo of about 146 beats per minute, which is predicted to cause mild head injury when the range of motion is greater than 75°. At higher tempos and greater ranges of motion there is a risk of neck injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To minimise the risk of head and neck injury, head bangers should decrease their range of head and neck motion, head bang to slower tempo songs by replacing heavy metal with adult oriented rock, only head bang to every second beat, or use personal protective equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, head-banging has been associated with injuries, including some fatal. The brain injuries appear to have had immediate effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found no evidence that long-term head-banging causes cumulative brain-damage, even in an article that attempted to summarise the risks. The biomechanical analysis did not warn against long-term use, but merely advised on prevention techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, these immediate risks should be considered when deciding whether head-banging is worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T06:46:57.873" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14129" CreationDate="2012-12-20T09:34:13.463" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is actually on topic over on &lt;a href=&quot;http://security.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;Security Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;in reality, &lt;strong&gt;any&lt;/strong&gt; information you give increases your risk of identity theft, as these groups also use &lt;a href=&quot;https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/11920/is-social-engineering-an-actual-threat&quot;&gt;social engineering&lt;/a&gt; to persuade your bank or other organisation to provide other information, and collect publicly available information (such as everything you have ever posted on Facebook!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while giving out a full set of information is obviously a bad idea, even divulging limited information should be looked at very carefully - ask yourself why they want/need the information they are asking you for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-17T10:46:09.503" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T09:34:13.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14103" CreationDate="2012-12-20T11:09:11.953" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if the Dutch preferred orange carrots, but carrots in different colours, including orange, were obviously common much longer ago than the 16th or 17th century. This drawing from the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Dioscurides&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vienna Dioscurides&lt;/a&gt;&quot; dates  back to appr. 515 CE and shows an orange carrot (source. Wikipedia):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sPY3m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T11:09:11.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14147" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23572" CreationDate="2012-12-20T13:28:57.237" Score="6" ViewCount="976" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfslr.ed.ac.uk/about/josephbell.htm&quot;&gt;The Joseph Bell Centre&lt;/a&gt; : Bell could tell patients their habits, their occupations, nationality, and often their names, and rarely, if ever, made a mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The physician Dr Joseph Bell, reportedly could determine the occupation of a random stranger just by looking at him.  The famous detective Sherlock Holmes was based on this fellow.  Is this possible and what observations could be used to precisely determine the occupation of a stranger?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T21:44:38.157" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T15:14:33.637" Title="Was Dr. Joseph Bell able to determine the occupation of a stranger by observation?" Tags="|history|stage-magic|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14148" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14163" CreationDate="2012-12-20T13:41:13.710" Score="14" ViewCount="1503" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the end of their show (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaF9nbLo8as&quot;&gt;Penn &amp;amp; Teller Bullshit, s.07 ep.03&lt;/a&gt;) on violent video games, Penn &amp;amp; Teller claim (at the 26:10 mark):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;from 1931 until 2007, 665 kids died from injuries they suffered playing football.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this question is about American Football and not Soccer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:35:59.360" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:35:59.360" Title="Did more than 660 High-School students die as a direct result of Football injuries?" Tags="|mortality|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14149" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-20T14:17:16.013" Score="12" ViewCount="733" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be clear: I am &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; asking if violent video games cause violent behavior. &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/598/do-violent-video-games-cause-violent-behavior&quot;&gt;That is covered here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am more interested if there is any correlation between violent video games and mass killings. I want to know if the killers are any more or less likely to play video games than other people from similar backgrounds. Video games are often &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/19/us-usa-shooting-connecticut-entertainmen-idUSBRE8BI1LU20121219&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a target for blame in these tragedies&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;At times like this, we need to take a comprehensive look at all the ways we can keep our kids safe. I have long expressed concern about the impact of the violent content our kids see and interact with every day,&quot; Rockefeller said in a statement. &quot;As Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, I have introduced legislation to direct the National Academy of Sciences to investigate the impact of violent videogames and other content on children's well-being.&quot;  --&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/121196-U-S-Senator-Seeks-New-Study-of-Violent-Videogames&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But from my own recollection it seems that there is no connection to video games more often than there is. Given the number of young males that play these games, it may even be an abnormally low number of these people who play violent video games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is well-known that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre#Video_games&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the killers in the Columbine massacre were avid players of Doom&lt;/a&gt;. The shooter in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting is said to have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9752141/Connecticut-school-massacre-Adam-Lanza-spent-hours-playing-Call-Of-Duty.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;spent hours in his basement playing Call of Duty&lt;/a&gt;. The killer in the Virginia Tech massacre &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1005764/virginia-tech-killer-had-brief-brush-with-counterstrike&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;played some Counter-Strike, but probably not very much&lt;/a&gt;. The killer in the 2011 shooting in Norway said he &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/19/anders-breivik-call-of-duty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;trained for the attack by playing Call of Duty&lt;/a&gt;. I can't recall others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1950" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T15:36:26.823" Title="Are perpetrators in mass killings more likely to play violent video games?" Tags="|videogames|violence|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="965" CreationDate="2012-12-20T14:26:53.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even discounting infant mortality, life expectancy at 15 was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;still only 39 years&lt;/a&gt; in the Paleolithic era. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/STATS/table4c6.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US average life expectancy&lt;/a&gt; at 15 is around 63. (The US figure happened to be handy; the US life expectancy is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;37th from the top&lt;/a&gt;, so it's a fairly representative figure of life expectancy in developed nations.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being that our modern idea of health is now &lt;em&gt;longevity&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;health into old age&lt;/em&gt; rather than &lt;em&gt;surviving until our kids grow up&lt;/em&gt; -- which is now more or less a given in more developed countries -- it shouldn't make sense that we'd still consider the same diet over other diets just because it used to work. Evolution doesn't care about the elderly, after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3776" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T14:26:53.113" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14152" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14157" CreationDate="2012-12-20T15:44:50.163" Score="31" ViewCount="18615" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk4iLoGpr7A&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt; states many claims, among others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the pyramids were built to create &quot;wireless electricity&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;electricity was created by &quot;aquifers&quot; - some mechanism based on water flowing underground&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;negative ions&quot; were transferred to the ionosphere, generating electrical current&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Egyptians used &quot;wireless electricity&quot; for communication purposes&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;fine gold plating found on some ancient artifacts requires electricity&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is anything about it feasible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10787" LastEditorUserId="8014" LastEditDate="2018-09-28T06:56:51.093" LastActivityDate="2018-09-28T06:56:51.093" Title="Were the Egyptian pyramids wireless power stations?" Tags="|history|egypt|pyramids|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14152" CreationDate="2012-12-20T19:03:57.343" Score="65" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Is anything about it feasible?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Baghdad battery&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video says (at 0:50)  &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;electricity was originally generated and widely utilised in ancient Egypt, the Baghdad battery and the first arc lights were used at that time&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the dates don't match up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Baghdad battery&lt;/a&gt;: between 250 BC and AD 224&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramids&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Egyptian pyramids&lt;/a&gt; 2630 BCE–2611 BCE&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only a small number of these &amp;quot;Baghdad batteries&amp;quot; were discovered, by contrast the number of Egyptian mummies is in the millions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.touregypt.net/museum/tutl28.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;alabaster oil lamps&lt;/a&gt; were found in Tutankhamen’s tomb (but no batteries)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't consistent with electricity being &amp;quot;widely utilised&amp;quot; in &amp;quot;ancient Egypt&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Soot&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At 1:18 the video claims &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;No soot has been found in the corridors of the pyramids&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; and this is used to suggest thet they therefore must have used electric lighting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this is untrue, there is plenty of soot found inside the pyramids. Most of it from visitors in the 18th or 19th centuries, who used oil lamps and candles. When the pyramids were built, the chambers and passageways were constructed in the open, in daylight. The roofs of these spaces were only closed after the work on the spaces was mostly completed/ After that the upper layers could be placed. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_lights_fd1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reference&lt;/a&gt;. In ancient times, visitors were not permitted to enter the sealed tombs of the pharaohs. Once completed there was no need for lighting within.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Pharos Lighthouse&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video says &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;the arc lamp used in the lighthouse of alexandria is further proof that&#xA;electricity was used in ancient Egypt, the energy required to power the lighthouse for 24 hours a day could only have been supplied by a regular electrical source&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Early European and American lighthouses did not require a regular electrical source. They were lit by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse#Lighthouse_technology&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;open fires, candles and oil lamps&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Granite is a conductor&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is made at 02:35.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;however this is untrue - by any reasonable interpretation of &amp;quot;conductor&amp;quot; in the context of practical transmission of electrical current for powering, for example, a lighthouse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.balkangeophysoc.gr/online-journal/2000_V3/may2000/v3-2-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Conductivity of granite&lt;/a&gt; =~ 10&lt;sup&gt;-3&lt;/sup&gt; - 10&lt;sup&gt;-7&lt;/sup&gt; S/m&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ndt-ed.org/GeneralResources/MaterialProperties/ET/Conductivity_Copper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Conductivity of copper&lt;/a&gt; = 5.8 x 10&lt;sup&gt;+7&lt;/sup&gt; S/m&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So granite is at least 10,000,000,000 times less conductive than copper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;This video states many claims, among others:&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;the pyramids were built to create &amp;quot;wireless electricity&amp;quot;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excavations have shown that the Egyptian pyramids were built to house the tomb of the Pharaohs and their families.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The British Museum &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/articles/e/egyptian_pyramids.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These monumental stone &lt;strong&gt;tombs&lt;/strong&gt; were part of the funerary complexes of the kings of the Old and Middle Kingdoms. Their form developed from the rectangular mastaba tombs of the kings of the Early Dynastic period. The first pyramid, the Step Pyramid of Djoser, consists of six tiers that are like mastabas of decreasing size stacked one on top of the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;National geographic &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/archaeology/valley-of-the-kings/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Pyramids of Giza and the Nile Delta were the &lt;strong&gt;tombs&lt;/strong&gt; of choice for pharaohs of Egypt's Old Kingdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z233o.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;sarcophagus in the central chamber of the pyramid at Giza - &lt;a href=&quot;http://euler.slu.edu/%7Ebart/egyptianhtml/kings%20and%20Queens/Khufu.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;From St Louis University&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;em&gt;A BRIEF HISTORY OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN TOMBS&lt;/em&gt; at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/egypt.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dartmouth University&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the king was revered as God, &lt;strong&gt;his tomb (the pyramid)&lt;/strong&gt; was constructed to last forever, thus ensuring the continuing prosperity of the king in his afterlife. Like the early mastabas, the 4th dynasty pyramids had no decorations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 5th dynasty (Old Kingdom) which saw the construction of more modest pyramids contained the first decorations. These decorations (Fig. 3 and 4) took the form of hieroglyphic writings - known as the Pyramid Texts - which provide guidelines and instructions on how to ensure safe voyage through the nether world and the eternal life thereafter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia cites &lt;em&gt;Lichtheim, Miriam (1975). Ancient Egyptian Literature, vol 1. London, England: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-02899-6&lt;/em&gt;. for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_Texts#Examples&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Utterance 373&lt;/a&gt; - It can also be found in &lt;em&gt;The Pyramid Texts, Volume 4 By Samuel Alfred Browne Mercer&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oho! Oho! Rise up, O Teti!&#xA;Take your head, collect your bones,&#xA;Gather your limbs, shake the earth from your flesh!&#xA;Take your bread that rots not, your beer that sours not,&#xA;Stand at the gates that bar the common people!&#xA;The gatekeeper comes out to you, he grasps your hand,&#xA;Takes you into heaven, to your father Geb.&#xA;He rejoices at your coming, gives you his hands,&#xA;Kisses you, caresses you,&#xA;Sets you before the spirits, the imperishable stars...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The contents which remain after looting and the inscriptions in chambers in the old-kingdom pyramids in Egypt provide evidence of their purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&amp;quot;Wireless Electricity&amp;quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electricity is actually a rather &lt;a href=&quot;http://amasci.com/miscon/whatis.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;vague notion&lt;/a&gt; but if we take it to mean the movement of charge carriers, wireless electricity would be what we experience in lightning or in the discharge of static electricity. This sort of electricity is much less useful to us than electricity conducted in wires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;fine gold plating found on some ancient artifacts requires electricity&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are methods for gold plating that do &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plating#Electroless_plating&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;not require electricity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T11:51:02.877" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17334" CreationDate="2012-12-20T20:02:22.637" Score="21" ViewCount="21623" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14156/&quot;&gt;this related question&lt;/a&gt;, I asserted that it was illegal to be in neutral gear while stopped at a red light. The first comment to that question challenged me to quote chapter and verse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Astonishingly, I may have been taken in by popular rumor. There are a lot of &lt;em&gt;assertions&lt;/em&gt; that this is illegal in various places, a lot of questions indicating driving instructors are teaching that it is so, and a lot of recommendations for or against actually doing it for a number of reasons. However, there are also assertions that for a manual transmission, you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; put it into neutral as part of coming to a &quot;complete stop&quot; (neutral gear, along with applying the handbrake, seems to be required in the UK).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the confusion may seem to come from is that it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; illegal in most jurisdictions to &lt;em&gt;coast&lt;/em&gt; while in neutral; you may only shift to neutral while moving if you are transitioning between gears. Therefore, the practice of shifting into neutral when approaching a stoplight is prohibited by many states' driving laws. It's also illegal, in some more mountainous U.S. States such as Minnesota, to leave a car unattended without the brake set &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; the wheels turned to the curb (Minn. Statutes 169.36), which has also been misconstrued to mean that the transmission must be in gear (to provide further rolling resistance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question to be answered is, does any law currently on the books of any U.S. State or territory, or any local jurisdiction thereof, prohibit shifting into neutral while stopped on a roadway, in a situation other than while legally parking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5997" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2018-12-23T03:54:30.800" Title="Is it illegal in any U.S. jurisdiction to be in neutral at a red light?" Tags="|united-states|road-vehicles|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="965" CreationDate="2012-12-20T20:44:14.103" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;We as humans only started eating large amounts of carbs when we got into agriculture. Even then, it's only in the last 100 years we started to put them (including sugar) into everything in large amounts.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humans have been consuming carbohydrates well into the Paleolithic. A method known as &quot;starch grain analysis&quot; has been able to recover all kinds of carbohydrate residue on the teeth of paleolithic humans. Some good papers in this field are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440308002847&quot;&gt;Changes in starch grain morphologies from cooking&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/108/2/486.short&quot;&gt;Microfossils in calculus demonstrate consumption of plants and cooked foods in Neanderthal diets (Shanidar III, Iraq; Spy I and II, Belgium)&lt;/a&gt;. Evidence for mortar/pestle-like starch &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101018/full/news.2010.549.html&quot;&gt;grinding&lt;/a&gt; dates back 30,000 years. Furthermore, almost all the &quot;hunter-gatherer&quot; cultures featured in paleo diet books are not hunter-gatherers, but horticulturalists like the Kitavans (or trade with horticulturalists like the Pygmies) who get most of their calories from starch. The !Kung and other related cultures are almost pure foragers, but they gather honey quite often, braving great danger to acquire it. So while evidence is spotty, I don't think there is any way we can say our ancestors ate a low-carb diet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot comment as extensively on the insulin driving fat storage since this is not my area of study, but I will say it's a perfect example of how you can build a story that looks and sounds scientifically sound by selectively referencing studies. I was initially swayed by Taube's book, particularly since I lost weight on that diet, but since then I have added carbohydrates back in and now eat a mainly carbohydrate diet and have not re-gained. My friend Dr. Stephan Guyenet has a few articles skeptical of the insulin=fat idea that are very good and extensively reference. He also works in that field: &lt;a href=&quot;http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/01/insulin-and-obesity-another-nail-in.html&quot;&gt;Insulin and Obesity: Another Nail in the Coffin&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/08/carbohydrate-hypothesis-of-obesity.html&quot;&gt;3 part series on the carbohydrate hypothesis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why then do diseases of civilization seem to track with the adoption of refined carbohydrates? We need to look for other mechanisms such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theendofovereatingbook.com/&quot;&gt;hyperpalatibility&lt;/a&gt;, lack of fiber that modulates inflammation via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.pone.0035240&quot;&gt;SCFA&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ismej2012153a.html&quot;&gt;LPS&lt;/a&gt;-induced inflammation, and other factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5278" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T20:44:14.103" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14164" CreationDate="2012-12-20T21:25:27.647" Score="8" ViewCount="849" Body="&lt;p&gt;Via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/155wyx/til_in_medieval_england_children_were_beaten_on/&quot;&gt;Reddit's Today I Learned&lt;/a&gt; (329+ votes):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/medieval_xmas.htm&quot;&gt;History Learning Site's Medieval Christmas page&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Medieval England, children were reminded of Herod’s cruelty by being beaten. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T20:08:26.380" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T20:08:26.380" Title="In medieval times, were children beaten at Christmas to remind them of the cruelty of King Herod?" Tags="|history|christmas|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14123" CreationDate="2012-12-20T22:02:00.190" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8oEO_MV57I&quot;&gt;Armed citizen stops liquor store robbery in Nashville area&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; To elaborate on my answer, it will be highly unlikely that we ever get a statistically-significant, unbiased set of data on mass shootings (or any shooting) in modern times to make the determination of whether an armed bystander reduces loss of life in such situations. This is for one very good reason; the overwhelming majority of mass shootings in modern history have occurred in locations where the intended victims were not allowed to carry weapons either by law or workplace policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To back that up, here's CNN's list of the 25 deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/16/us/20-deadliest-mass-shootings-in-u-s-history-fast-facts//&quot;&gt;http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/16/us/20-deadliest-mass-shootings-in-u-s-history-fast-facts//&lt;/a&gt;. Let's go down the top 10 one by one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Virginia Tech massacre, Blacksburg VA, 2007 - 32 dead.&lt;/strong&gt; Occurred on the campus of Virginia Tech University, a gun-free zone by state law.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sandy Hook Elementary, Newtown CT, 2012 - 27 dead.&lt;/strong&gt; Occurred primarily in a gun-free zone by Federal law (one victim, Adam Lanza's mother, was killed in their home).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Luby's massacre, Killeen TX, 1991 - 23 dead.&lt;/strong&gt; Texas did not allow public carry of handguns at the time. Susanna Gratia Hupp, present at the scene during the shootings, had left her firearm in her vehicle as required. This incident is notable as prompting adoption of concealed-carry in Texas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;McDonald's shooting, San Ysidro CA, 1984 - 21 dead.&lt;/strong&gt; California has not allowed public carry of loaded weapons since the Black Panthers protest march in 1967.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;U.T. Bell Tower shootings, Austin TX, 1966 - 18 dead.&lt;/strong&gt; Occurred on a college campus where firearms were rare; however, this event is notable as civilians on the scene had access to firearms while the shooter was active. Nearby residents retrieved hunting rifles from their homes and returned fire &lt;em&gt;alongside police and Texas Rangers&lt;/em&gt;, limiting Whitman's choice of targets after the initial killing spree.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ft. Hood shooting, Ft. Hood TX, 2009 - 13 dead&lt;/strong&gt;. Ft. Hood does not allow anyone not on active MP detail or participating in live-fire training exercises to carry a firearm.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ACA immigration center shooting, Binghamton NY, 2009 - 13 dead.&lt;/strong&gt; The building was a gun-free zone, and New York is notoriously selective about handgun permit issuance.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Columbine massacre, Littleton CO, 1999 - 13 dead.&lt;/strong&gt; Elementary schools, as stated previously, are gun-free by federal law.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wilkes-Barre massacre, Wilkes-Barre PA, 1982 - 13 dead.&lt;/strong&gt; George Banks targeted primarily family members, many of whom were sleeping, in multiple locations. This is a notable exception to the pattern of gunmen targeting strangers, and George Banks was ruled incompetent to be executed for the killings, but was not adjudged legally insane until after his conviction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Camden shootings, Camden NJ, 1949 - 13 dead.&lt;/strong&gt; Camden is a suburb of Philadelphia on the NJ side of the Delaware River, and New Jersey's gun laws have never been permissive. Howard Unruh was adjudged legally insane as a result of the shootings of 12 people while walking around his neighborhood. It is very likely he suffered from what we now know as PTSD stemming from his service in WWII, and was also harrassed for allegedly being gay.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remaining 15 are the Washington Navy Yard (GFZ), the Aurora theater shooting (GFZ, notable as the shooting occurred in the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; theater within 20 miles so marked), the Atlanta day trader shootings (private businesses, effectively GFZs), a family shooting in Alabama (family-targeted), the Red Lake High School shooting (GFZ), the Jacksonville GMAC shooting (GFZ), the Seal Beach massacre (California), the Hartford Distibutors shooting (private business effectively GFZ), the 2010 Appomattox shooting (GFZ), the Carthage nursing home shooting (GFZ), the Omaha mall shooting (GFZ), the SFO law office massacre (California, and San Fran to boot), the Standard Gravure shootings in 1989 (private business, effectively GFZ), and the 1982 killing of 8 people including the shooter at a Miami machine shop (the shooter was killed by an armed civilian while attempting to flee the scene).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the situations in the top 25 where citizens could have had guns but didn't primarily involved family members, and in the limited number of cases where civilians had access to guns, they used them, demonstrably limiting the effectiveness of the shooter in one case and ending the threat in another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5997" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-29T18:36:15.843" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T18:36:15.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14148" CreationDate="2012-12-20T22:25:05.220" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been a database of football/American Football/gridiron injuries maintained since 1931.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2011 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unc.edu/depts/nccsi/2011FBAnnual.pdf&quot;&gt;Annual Survey of Football Injury Research&lt;/a&gt; contains a table (Table 1) which lists &quot;Fatalities: Directly Due to Football&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2011 figure for High-School students is 678, and if you subtract the 13 deaths since 2008, you get the 665 figure quoted by Penn Jilette.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tragedies don't stop there. Table 2 lists another 484 high-school fatalities (1931-2011) &quot;indirectly&quot; related to football. Also, these figures don't include &quot;sandlot&quot;, pro, semi-pro and college deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, extending back to 1931 is distorting the picture, as the sport is now safer than it was 80 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is important is that the National &#xA;  Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research has been collecting &#xA;  catastrophic football injury data (fatalities, disability, serious &#xA;  injuries) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for &#xA;  the past 48 years and has been directly responsible for the &#xA;  reduction of football fatalities from 36 in 1968 to zero in 1990, &#xA;  and the reduction of cervical cord injuries from 30 a year in the &#xA;  late 1960s to single digits in most years since 1991. We will &#xA;  continue to collect this data and to make safety recommendations &#xA;  to the NFHS, the NCAA, and youth football programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T22:25:05.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14161" CreationDate="2012-12-20T22:41:11.020" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;in Faiths &amp;amp; Folklores 1905  By W. Carew Hazlitt it says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dufresne, in a note to Clement Marot’s cxxxvth Epigram, observes, that on Innocents’ Day there used to be a custom of slapping on the hinder parts any young folks who were surprised in bed on that morning, and occasionally it proceeded further. But this practice had even then fallen into disuse. The following is the passage in Dufresne :—&quot; Innocentes. Allusion a un usage pratiqué lors en France, où les jeunes personnes qn’on pouvoit surprendre an lit le jour des Innocens, recevoient sur le derrière qnelques claqnes, &amp;amp; quelque fois un peu pins, qnand les sujet en valoient lan peine. Cela ne se pratiqne plus aujourd’hui: nous sommes bien plus sages &amp;amp; plus reservés que nos pères.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;France not England. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A punishment for indolence?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fallen into disuse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AFk6b5YGs_oC&amp;amp;pg=PA112&amp;amp;lpg=PA112&amp;amp;dq=dufresne+clement+marot&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=rvlqgvm1ql&amp;amp;sig=KAmq3McYW1f-BUxGlT9LR5llSsI&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=NI_TUJ_EDuyY0QWeuICoBA&amp;amp;ved=0CEEQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=dufresne%20clement%20marot&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Text/Brands/childermass.htm&quot;&gt;The Hyms and Carols of Christmas&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gregory observes that it hath been a custom, and yet is elsewhere, to whip the children upon Innocents Day morning, that the memory of Herod’s murder of the Innocents might stick the closer, and in a moderate proportion to act over the crueltie again in kinde.&quot; Gregorii Posthuma, 1649. See Cotgarve’s &quot;Dict.&quot; and the &quot;Dictionn. de Furetiere.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source is given as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;W. Carew Hazlitt, Faith and Folklore: A Dictionary of National Beliefs, Superstitions and Popular Customs, Past and Current, With Their Classical and Foreign Analogues, Described and Illustrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forming A New Edition of &quot;The Popular Antiquities of Great Britain&quot; By Brand and Ellis, Largely Extended, Corrected, Brought Down To The Present Time, and Now First Alphabetically Arranged.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In Two Volumes&lt;br&gt;&#xA;London: Reeves and Turner, 1905.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mediaeval attitudes to children and corporal punishment were, of course, different to current ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.representingchildhood.pitt.edu/medieval_child.htm&quot;&gt;Childhood in Medieval England, c.500-1500&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;Nicholas Orme, University of Exeter says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then as now, adults cared for children and encouraged their play. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Infancy up to the age of 7 was viewed as a time of growth, childhood from 7 to 14 as one of play, and adolescence from 14 onwards as one of physical, intellectual, and sexual development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Corporal punishment was in use throughout society and probably also in homes, although social commentators criticised parents for indulgence towards children rather than for harsh discipline. Children were given tasks in keeping with their ages. For younger children this meant looking after their smaller siblings, or running errands. As they grew older they might be allocated lighter domestic or agricultural duties, but they were not capable of doing serious work until about the age of puberty when they began to acquire strength of an adult kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2012-12-20T22:41:11.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-21T00:21:31.307" Score="6" ViewCount="17204" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a show in Houston radio show on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.krbe.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;KRBE&lt;/a&gt; called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.krbe.com/page.php?page_id=411&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Roula &amp;amp; Ryan's Roses&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; -- you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stationcaster.com/clicktrack/?rss=%2Fstations%2Fkrbe%2Frss%2F5161&amp;amp;inf_usr_session=8590f475436bdd9de5d7a74ecf86e5a9&amp;amp;cat=The+Roses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;subscribe here&lt;/a&gt;. It's rather amusing and trashy. I've heard it a few times before. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kingwood.com/message_board/view_message.php?message_board_parent_id=839484&amp;amp;message_board_category_id=999page=&amp;amp;vpage=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Retired Engineer&quot; on Kingwood.com, a local forum, made the claim that on-air prank calls were illegal, that they were all scripted&lt;/a&gt;. You can see the claim here,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/J1BsS.png&quot; alt=&quot;Claim that radio prank calls are fake&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retired Engineer linked to this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.broadcastlawblog.com/articles/fcc-fines/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.broadcastlawblog.com/articles/fcc-fines/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, on examination that pages links to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.broadcastlawblog.com/2012/08/articles/fcc-fines/fcc-fines-of-25000-and-16000-for-airing-phone-calls-without-prior-consent/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;FCC Fines of $25,000 and $16,000 for Airing Phone Calls Without Prior Consent&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. The source seems to root its claim in this statute,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Section 73.1206 of the FCC’s rules prohibits the broadcast, or recording for purposes of broadcast, of telephone calls without first getting the consent of the person on the other end of the phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And these FCC rulings,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-12-1369A1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;DA 12-1369: Spanish Broadcasting System Holding Company, Inc. Licensee of Station WZNT(FM) 8-22-2012&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-12-1370A1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;DA 12-1370: WSKQ Licensing, Inc. Licensee of Station WSKQ-FM&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just find that &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; hard to believe. There is another show that is significantly less malicious that also airs in Houston called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.houstonseagle.com/list/entertainment/morning-show/birthday-scams/eG6/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dean &amp;amp; Rog's Birthday Scam&lt;/a&gt;. They don't interfere with marriages and relationships with information of adultery, but they sure do prank call people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it illegal to air a prank call in the United States because of FCC regulation? And, if so, how is everyone doing it?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T23:21:54.900" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T10:34:35.177" Title="Is it illegal to air a prank call in the United States because of FCC regulation?" Tags="|law|radio|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14166" CreationDate="2012-12-21T01:53:35.073" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not illegal per se (I know this is of interest &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/family-nurse-killed-blame-prank-deejays-death-article-1.1216672&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;because of the tragedy involving Jacintha Saldanha&lt;/a&gt; (the nurse in London that let the call through for the Australian radio prank call)).  Section 73.1206 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fcc.gov/document/16000-forfeitured-issued-against-wskq-fm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the FCC rules says is that they have to get permission of the person being recorded prior to airing the call&lt;/a&gt; (it is not done live despite what the DJs may say).  Face it, the entertainment industry will lie (entertainingly) to keep their audience.  Your question contained the answer really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Section 73.1206 of the Commission’s rules by recording a telephone conversation for broadcast without prior notification to the called party&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't seem to get the text of said section to come up on the FCC site, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fcc.gov/search/results/Section%2073.1206?solrsort=sort_title%20asc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this search string &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;on the FCC site&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; turns up a lot of hits where the FCC has taken action for this rule, and then relates the same verbiage&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another document from the FCC about prank calls is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://transition.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/tcpa.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TCPA (PDF Link)&lt;/a&gt;, which is the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.  There is a brief mention of prank calls in that flyer which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While registering home phone numbers on the national Do-Not-Call list prohibits telephone solicitations, this action does not make prank or harassing calls unlawful. For problems with such calls, contact local law enforcement agencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is not in the control of the FCC, but rather local officials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="819" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T10:34:35.177" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T10:34:35.177" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6894" CreationDate="2012-12-21T02:41:16.243" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.navalhistory.org/2010/09/02/world-war-ii-submarine-appendectomy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;According to the US Naval Institute, &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; an appendectomy was performed on a submarine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On 11 September 1942, Pharmacist’s Mate First Class (PhM1/c) Wheeler B. Lipes agonized over the most difficult decision of his life. He had just diagnosed his shipmate, Seaman First Class Darrel D. Rector, with acute appendicitis. With their submarine Seadragon (SS-194) external link cruising in enemy waters, there was no way to get Rector to port in time. World War II submarines always carried a well trained corpsman, but their small, 55-man complement did not rate a doctor. Lipes could attempt an appendectomy, but the operation might kill his shipmate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to that site (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?num=100&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;newwindow=1&amp;amp;tbo=d&amp;amp;site=&amp;amp;source=hp&amp;amp;q=appendectomy%20on%20a%20submarine&amp;amp;oq=appendectomy%20on%20a%20&amp;amp;gs_l=hp.1.1.0i30l2.3670.10468.0.12813.18.18.0.0.0.0.96.1302.18.18.0.les;eqn,rate_low=0-035,rate_high=0-035,min_length=2,cconf=1-2,second_pass=false,num_suggestions=1,ignore_bad_origquery=true,onetoken=false..0.0...1c.1.1UEkXHzNkFE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;and pretty much every google search result&lt;/a&gt;) the surgery was successful, and Lipes even received a special commendation for his actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4503760&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;According to NPR&lt;/a&gt;, a reporter even won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on that story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see no reason to doubt this story. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to requiring a person to have had one prior to serving on a submarine, there is no documentation saying so.  As one Navy site says (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As it turned out, &lt;strong&gt;most Appendicitis problems will cure themselves with proper care&lt;/strong&gt;, so the Navy quickly indocrinated the upcoming Submarine Officers and Pharmacist’s Mates to NEVER DO SURGERY UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.  The other two Pharmacist Mates that performed the surgeries, like Moore,  had assisted on many other surgeries prior to entering the Submarine Force, and the Navy worried that incoming Docs, who may not be as thoroughly trained may be lulled into a false sense of ease of surgery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="22258" LastEditDate="2016-06-22T12:26:47.337" LastActivityDate="2016-06-22T12:26:47.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14171" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-21T09:54:52.820" Score="13" ViewCount="1147" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a research project I've decided to look at the merits of teaching through video compared to teaching through the medium of a lecture. This lead me to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.khanacademy.org/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Khan Academy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, a website launched in 2006 with the purpose of teaching the masses for free using video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst I personally love the concept and think its a brilliant idea, I am yet to find ANY evidence on how effective Khan's solution is compared to more traditional teaching. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe I am missing something obvious, but my question is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any evidence supporting Khan's (and others like his) concept?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10761" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:57:41.693" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:57:41.693" Title="Is Khan Academy effective at teaching?" Tags="|education|learning|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14110" CreationDate="2012-12-21T14:03:20.643" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes there is an effect but it may not be as large as early studies suggested with a result of reducing heart attacks by 3-4% in some population subgroups&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble with science in areas where there is a broad consensus is that many people don't check their results carefully when they agree with the consensus view. And when those results can be used as public health propaganda, there is a large does of overeager confirmation bias to account for. This effect may explain some of the results reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally to get a good view of multiple studies we would use a meta analysis (and Fabian reports the results of one in his answer). The best meta-analyses in medical science are those done by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecochranelibrary.com/view/0/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cochrane Collaboration&lt;/a&gt;. Their &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD005992.pub2/pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;latest review&lt;/a&gt; of the effects of smoking bans was conducted in 2009. Their general conclusion is worth quoting (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Introduction of a legislative smoking ban does lead to a reduction in exposure to passive smoking. Hospitality workers experienced a greater reduction in exposure to SHS [second hand smoke] after implementing the ban compared to the general population. There is limited evidence about the impact on active smoking but the trend is downwards. There is some evidence of an improvement in health outcomes. &lt;em&gt;The strongest evidence is the reduction seen in admissions for acute coronary syndrome.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they also concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More research on the impact of smoking bans on active smoking is warranted. Whilst more comprehensive bans are now being enacted in many jurisdictions, there is also a need for research into the extent to which exposure to SHS in non-smoking areas is a result of smoke coming from the outdoor smoking areas. Further studies should utilise larger sample sizes with common agreed measures for smoking behaviour and exposure to SHS of the study population. The lack of a reference group in many studies means that it is difficult to differentiate between secular trends and impact of the intervention...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review was not, however, focussed on the heart attack issue (it covered many effects of legislation) and only looked at 12 studies where the impact on heart attacks were measured. Some of these were small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/340/bmj.c2161&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;high quality study&lt;/a&gt; has appeared in the BMJ which overcomes some of the issues with previous studies partially because comprehensive population-wide data is accessible from the English NHS hospital activity statistics which are collected centrally. They conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After adjustment for secular and seasonal trends and variation in population size, there was a small but significant reduction in the number of emergency admissions for myocardial infarction after the implementation of smoke-free legislation (−2.4%, 95%&#xA;  confidence interval −4.06% to −0.66%, P=0.007). This equates to 1200 fewer emergency admissions for myocardial infarction (1600 including readmissions) in&#xA;  the first year after legislation. The reduction in admissions was significant in men (3.1%, P=0.001) and women (3.8%, P=0.007) aged 60 and over, and men (3.5%, P&amp;lt;0.01) but not women (2.5% P=0.38) aged under 60.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their result is statistically reliable but much smaller than many of the earler reports. They report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The largest impacts have been reported in smaller studies in the United States, with reported reductions in the range of 27-40%, while larger studies have reported more modest reductions: 8% in the state of New York, 13% in four Italian regions, and 17% in Scotland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the quality of some previous studies is suspect for a variety of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is some uncertainty around the extent to which some of these studies have effectively accounted for other factors that might influence patterns of admissions&#xA;  for myocardial infarction. Firstly, admissions for coronary heart disease have been declining across Europe, the US, and Canada, and failure to account for this might lead to an overestimation of impacts. Secondly, other factors such as season, flu,&#xA;  and temperature have all been shown to influence the incidence of myocardial infarction with, for example, peak admission rates in winter, in spring, and over the Christmas break, and seen in association with high flu rates and low temperatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BMJ paper tried to address as many of these as possible by careful design and analysis. The biggest remaining confounding factor is the effect derived from smoking quitters which is hard to separate as English hospital records don't include smoking status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion seems to be that careful statistical analysis shows a real effect on the heart attack rate (AMI (acute myocardial infarction) admissions down by a few percent), but nothing like the large gains claimed by public health activists in the early days of legislation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T14:03:20.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14171" CreationDate="2012-12-21T14:09:55.537" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Is there any evidence supporting Khan's (and others like his) concept?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is at least one study that is supportive of the general concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.media-and-learning.eu/resource/effectiveness-of-video-as-an-instructional-medium-in-teaching-rural-children-agricultural-a&quot;&gt;Effectiveness of video as an instructional medium in teaching rural children&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there are almost certainly important differences which may have a bearing, for example the availablity of a teacher, familiar with the material, with whom the student can interactively discuss any parts they do not understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T14:09:55.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7527" CreationDate="2012-12-21T15:26:25.323" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sapolsky gives a quick version for the commencement speech. In his book, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0805073698&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.g2gfitness-mma-ccoach-sthqld.com/resources/Sapolsky%20why%20Zebras%20don%27t%20get%20ulcers.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;), this is explained in further depth. It's not that the &lt;em&gt;brain&lt;/em&gt; burns 6-7000 calories a day, it's the various stress responses in the body that are on the whole greatly on par with top athletes. You need to be in really good shape to play high level chess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His sources are a thesis by American scientists in the 70s and a book on chess science  and Soviet scientists in the 80s, IIRC. It checks out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thesis and book were a pain in the ass to find electronically, and I'm not about to do that again now -- I can bring it about later. Although his notes in the book are a start that at least makes his claim plausible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The definitive study on chess players was carried out by the&#xA;  physiologist Leroy DuBeck and his graduate student Charlotte Leedy.&#xA;  They wired up chess players in order to measure their breathing rates,&#xA;  blood pressure, muscle contractions, and so on, and monitored the&#xA;  players before, during, and after major tournaments. They found&#xA;  tripling of breathing rates, muscle contractions, systolic blood&#xA;  pressures that soared to over 200—exactly the sort of thing seen in&#xA;  athletes during physical competition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;See the original report, Leedy’s thesis, “The effects of tournament&#xA;  chess playing on selected physiological responses in players of&#xA;  varying aspirations and abilities” (Temple University, 1975) or their&#xA;  brief report (Leedy, C, and DuBeck, L., “Physiological changes during&#xA;  tournament chess,” Chess Life and Review [1971]: 708).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a telephone conversation, DuBeck also tells the story of the&#xA;  international match in the early 1970s between grand masters Bent&#xA;  Larson and Bobby Fischer, in which the former had to be given&#xA;  antihypertensive medication in the middle of his losing match; his&#xA;  blood pressure remained elevated for days afterward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Kasparov-Karpov report is from the New York Times, 20 December&#xA;  1990. And for that special chess fan out there who just can’t get enough of this subject, may I suggest as the perfect gift a copy of&#xA;  Glezerov, V., and Sobol, E., “Hygienic evaluation of the changes in&#xA;  work capacity of young chess players during training,” Gigiena i&#xA;  Sanitariia 24 (1987), in the original Russian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10803" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-21T23:05:56.383" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T23:05:56.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14175" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-21T16:40:48.310" Score="9" ViewCount="1615" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Summary&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some dispute about how much tongue-ties affect breastfeeding, where treating physicians and paediatricians have dramatically different perspectives than the lactation experts. In particular, the Canadian Paediatric Society (CPS) takes the position that clipping a tongue-tie (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frenectomy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;frenotomy&lt;/a&gt;) should essentially never be recommended. I am skeptical of this conclusion of the CPS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Background&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My wife and I just had a newborn and my wife is attempting to breastfeed. Unfortunately our newborn arrived with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankyloglossia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tongue-tie&lt;/a&gt;, and it has been a tremendous effort by my wife and I to get the tongue-tie fixed by a physician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I became skeptical because the lactation consultant at the hospital of delivery, two subsequent independent lactation consultants, a doula, a registered nurse who is a breastfeeding specialist, and ultimately the physician specializing in ear-nose and throat who performed the 30 second operation to clip the tongue-tie, stated that the tongue-tie was inhibiting – if not altogether precluding – effective breastfeeding. My google search indicated that this position is supported by many institutions, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canadianbreastfeedingfoundation.org/basics/ankyloglossia_tonguetie.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Canadian Breastfeeding Foundation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, the four paediatricians and the family physician who examined our newborn concluded that the tongue-tie would not inhibit breastfeeding and as a result they refused to recommend clipping it. Their opinion was unanimous, yet none of the observed or offered to observe the newborn attempting to latch or breastfeed. Further, of the four paediatricians consulted only one offered, after my probing to the point of having to be rude, a rational explanation for their policy: It's what the Canadian Paediatric Society recommends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Position statement of the Canadian Paediatric Society&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I searched for the CPS position statement, which led me to a 2011 paper on the Canadian Paediatric Society website entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cps.ca/en/documents/position/ankyloglossia-breastfeeding&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;POSITION STATEMENT: Ankyloglossia and breastfeeding&lt;/a&gt;, which offers in its summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Associations between tongue-tie and breastfeeding problems in infants have been inconsistent, and are a longstanding source of controversy in the medical community. Definitions of ankyloglossia vary, and management suggestions are not based on randomized controlled trials. Surgical correction involves cutting the lingual frenulum (frenotomy). &lt;strong&gt;Based on current available evidence, frenotomy cannot be recommended.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report suggests the risks of simple clipping of the tongue-tie (frenotomy):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a risk that postoperative scarring may limit tongue movement even more, necessitating reoperation [25][26][27].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[25] Levy PA. Tongue-tie: Management of a short sublingual frenulum. Pediatr Rev 1995:16:345-6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[26] Hay W Jr, Levin MJ, Deterding RR, Sondheimer JM. CURRENT Diagnosis &amp;amp; Treatment in Pediatrics, 20th Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional, 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[27] Klockars T, Pitkäranta A. Pediatric tongue-tie division: Indications, techniques and patient satisfaction. Int J Pediatr Otorhinolaryngol 2009:73:1399-1401.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the report does not state the likelihood of those risks, whether the risks are predictable &amp;amp; avoidable, or the cost-risk of reoperation. Further, it makes no mention of the cost of preventing a child from breastfeeding i.e. the loss of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breastfeeding&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lengthy list of breastfeeding benefits&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Skepticism&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical of the position of the Canadian Paediatric Society that frenotomy should never be recommended, with my skepticism being conceptually rooted in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The methodology of the position paper in assessing the prevalence of the problem (i.e. are tongue-ties that cause breastfeeding issues more common than the paper states, was there sampling error or a genetic sampling bias);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The contrast of the benefits described in the CPS paper versus other well-reputed journals (i.e. are the benefits of frenotomy on breastfeeding more certain than the paper suggests);&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The absence of discussion of the cost-risk of frenotomy (i.e. the risks are marginal probability or insignificant benefit, contrast the consequences of raising a baby who has not had the benefit of breast milk); and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The overstatement or misstatement of actual risks associated with frenotomy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sweeping recommendation &amp;quot;cannot be recommended&amp;quot; also reminds me of the hallmarks of bad logic, namely ... &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_dicto_simpliciter&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sweeping statements &lt;em&gt;(ad dictum simpliciter)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Armed with suspicion and some cynicism, I did a bit of research, to make sure that my concerns were somewhat valid and came up with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Effects of tongue ties on breastfeeding&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2008 article in the Official Journal of the American Academy of Paediatrics entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18573859&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Frenulotomy for Breastfeeding Infants With Ankyloglossia: Effect on Milk Removal and Sucking Mechanism as Imaged by Ultrasound&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For all of the infants, milk intake, milk-transfer rate, LATCH score, and maternal pain scores improved significantly postfrenulotomy.&lt;/strong&gt; Two groups of infants were identified on ultrasound. One group compressed the tip of the nipple, and the other compressed the base of the nipple with the tongue. These features either resolved or lessened in all except 1 infant after frenulotomy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Risks of frenotomy&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risks of Frenotomy, according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canadianbreastfeedingfoundation.org/basics/ankyloglossia_tonguetie.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Canadian Breastfeeding Society&lt;/a&gt; are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research shows that “frenotomy”, or clipping of the tongue-tie, is a safe and effective treatment. Frenotomy, like all procedures, may present some risks. They include bleeding at the incision site, infection, and salivary gland trauma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those risks sound less problematic than those stated in the CPS position paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The answer sought&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not having any particular medical expertise, I am left only with my feeling that the CPS position is not adequately supported by evidence (and, to some extent, logic), my layman reading of papers like the above, and my anecdotal experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is my feeling unfounded and in fact the CPS paper is a solid analysis of the available evidence that supports the conclusion that the appropriate times for frenotomy for breastfeeding is: never; or, is the balance of the medical community more aligned with my suspicion that the conclusion of the CPS position paper is scientifically unsound and the CPS has gotten its recommendation wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since DJClayworth (and likely others) believe that the &amp;quot;other side&amp;quot; of the CPS argument is my opinion, here are some supplemental sources that support my question (which is, in some ways, answering my own question, but there you have it):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17009777&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tongue tie and breastfeeding: assessing and overcoming the difficulties&lt;/a&gt;, J Hum Lact 1990 Sep; 6(3): 117-21.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(abstract) Tongue tie, a condition in which the tongue's mobility is restricted, may reduce the ability of babies to breastfeed successfully. &lt;strong&gt;In this age of mass artificial feeding, the management of this condition has been, until recently, overlooked.&lt;/strong&gt; This article highlights the effects of tongue tie on breastfeeding and what health professionals should be doing to assess and manage any difficulties&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2205230&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Neonatal frenotomy may be necessary to correct breastfeeding problems.&lt;/a&gt;, J Hum Lact. 1990 Sep;6(3):117-21.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(abstract) A review of cases of short frenulum (tongue-tie) seen in a recent year at the Lactation Institute and Breastfeeding Clinic provides data about its relationship to sucking and breastfeeding problems such as insufficient infant weight gain and reduced milk supply, sore nipples and repeat bouts of mastitis in the mother. Frenotomy was recommended for ten of 13 babies who appeared to have a short frenulum. Three mothers chose not to hae*(sic)* the frenulum clipped and either gave up breastfeeding or continued to experience problems. Breastfeeding was successfully established by the five healthy babies whose frenulum was clipped. The two babies for whom frenotomy did not completely correct breastfeeding problems had severe birth defects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16527363&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tongue tie division in infants with breast feeding difficulties&lt;/a&gt;, Int J Pediatr Otorhinolaryngol. 2006 Jul;70(7):1257-61. Epub 2006 Mar 9.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(conclusions) ... The procedure is quick and simple, not requiring any analgesia or anaesthesia and can be performed in the outpatient clinic. &lt;strong&gt;Although not conclusive, this case series suggests a possible benefit of tongue tie division in symptomatic infants.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4.) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21135930&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clinical inquiries. When should you treat tongue-tie in a newborn?&lt;/a&gt;, J Fam Pract. 2010 Dec;59(12):712a-b.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(abstract) &lt;strong&gt;Consider treatment when the infant is having difficulty breastfeeding. ... Complications from the procedure are minimal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5.) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21608523&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tongue-tie and breastfeeding: a review of the literature.&lt;/a&gt;, Breastfeed Rev. 2011 Mar;19(1):19-26.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(abstract) ... This review of research literature analyses the evidence regarding tongue-tie to determine if appropriate intervention can reduce its impact on breastfeeding cessation, &lt;strong&gt;concluding that, for most infants, frenotomy offers the best chance of improved and continued breastfeeding. Furthermore, studies have demonstrated that the procedure does not lead to complications for the infant or mother.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T04:38:24.527" Title="Recommendation of the Canadian Paediatric Society to never clip tongue ties for breastfeeding" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14171" CreationDate="2012-12-21T16:51:51.363" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVtCO84MDj8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt; discusses some of the problems with Khan Academy (and similar) videos. It seems that while these videos can definitely be useful, there are some problems with them in certain cases, most notably not paying enough attention and not recognising misconceptions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10622" LastActivityDate="2012-12-21T16:51:51.363" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14178" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-21T23:32:00.600" Score="22" ViewCount="2313" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2011, nearly a quarter (24.3%) of participating voters in Estonia &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vvk.ee/voting-methods-in-estonia/engindex/statistics&quot;&gt;cast their ballot by remote electronic voting&lt;/a&gt; (that is, on their computer/phone/tablet via the Internet). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several larger countries, including the United Kingdom (63M), France (65M), and the United States (312M) have experimented with the idea of Internet voting, but most applications are experimental or limited in scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://vote.caltech.edu/sites/default/files/vtp_wp60.pdf&quot;&gt;Caltech/MIT voting technology project&lt;/a&gt;, Estonia’s success is in part due to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Widespread Internet penetration&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A legal structure that addresses Internet voting issues&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An identification system that allows for digital authentication of the voter&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A political culture supportive of Internet voting&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, referring to United States problems, Ron Rivest, a computer scientist and cryptography expert at MIT, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,2025696,00.html&quot;&gt;claimed&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We don't have the technology yet to do this in a secure way, and we may not for a decade or more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the facts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:32:00.447" LastActivityDate="2016-07-22T01:59:40.333" Title="Does United States have no technology to allow Internet voting in a secure way?" Tags="|united-states|security|voting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14178" CreationDate="2012-12-22T00:02:07.747" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cited Caltech/MIT paper explains at least one impediment to Internet voting in the USA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A third lesson regards voter authentication, which is the subject of debate in many &#xA;  nations, including the United States.  In Estonia, the introduction and dissemination of their &#xA;  digital national identification card has opened the door for many uses of that identification, uses &#xA;  that pre-date the implementation of Internet voting in Estonia.  In other words, having a strong &#xA;  form of online voter authentication may be a critical step for implementation of secure Internet &#xA;  voting that has the trust of voters and other stakeholders in a particular nation’s election process.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  But it is unlikely that a strong form of voter authentication like that used in Estonia will be &#xA;  developed only for Internet voting; rather, it is likely that governments will develop and &#xA;  implement these forms of strong digital identification to enable citizens to interact with &#xA;  government in other ways:  paying fines, fees and taxes; checking out library books; or &#xA;  researching property transactions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a reasonable for Rivest to give a loose estimate of at least a decade for a robust national identification scheme to be introduced into the United States, especially given the political pushback it is likely to cause (for example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_Card&quot;&gt;Australia Card&lt;/a&gt; was a similar proposal.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not believe this is the only limitation against secure Internet voting, but it suffices for this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Rivest includes other reasons in, for example, his slides &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/Riv12w.slides.pdf&quot;&gt;Thoughts On Appropriate Technologies for&#xA;Voting&lt;/a&gt;, including that Internet voting isn't trust-worthy enough to convince losers they really lost, they can't guarantee &lt;em&gt;secret&lt;/em&gt; ballots, they can't prove a chain of custody, real software is likely to contain security flaws, they are at risk of insider attacks, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T00:16:00.067" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T00:16:00.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14181" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14200" CreationDate="2012-12-22T05:45:50.760" Score="10" ViewCount="2622" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/nyregion/poker-is-more-a-game-of-skill-than-of-chance-a-judge-rules.html?_r=1&amp;amp;&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NY Times article&lt;/a&gt; which claims that a US Judge ruled that poker is a game of skill and not one of chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a ruling that goes to the heart of what it means to play poker, Judge Jack B. Weinstein tossed out the conviction and vacated the indictment of the man who ran that gambling business. The judge’s reason: poker is more a game of skill than a game of chance, so game operators should not be prosecuted under the federal law the prohibits running an illegal gambling business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support that poker is a game of skill and not luck?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T12:26:09.157" LastActivityDate="2020-06-28T17:07:11.750" Title="Is poker more a game of skill than chance?" Tags="|mathematics|gambling|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14181" CreationDate="2012-12-22T08:38:25.030" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no doubt there is an element of chance involved in Poker. (Extreme example: If you are dealt a Royal Flush, you cannot lose.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am taking the question to mean &quot;Is there ANY skill involved in Poker?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to admit I find the answer to be blindingly obvious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give an extreme example, if a player had a sub-optimal strategy of betting 80% of their bank on every hand, no matter what its strength, would be quickly defeated by a moderately skilled competitor who merely folded when their cards were below the median strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, it has been studied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MICHAEL A. DEDONNO AND DOUGLAS K. DETTERMAN, &lt;a href=&quot;http://polskizwiazekpokera.org/download/glr.2008Pokerisaskill-Dedonno_and_Detterman.pdf&quot;&gt;Poker Is a Skill&lt;/a&gt;, GAMING LAW REVIEW, Volume 12, Number 1, 2008, DOI: 10.1089/glr.2008.12105&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They looked at a somewhat tighter question - could simple instruction improve the expected outcome of some non-expert players?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The unequivocal&#xA;  finding is that poker is a game of skill. In both&#xA;  studies, participants who were instructed outperformed those who were not instructed.&#xA;  Given that poker is a complex skill, it is somewhat surprising that even elementary instructions and limited practice had an effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reason that poker appears to be a game&#xA;  of luck is that the reliability of any short session is low. In a casino game of poker, about&#xA;  25 hands are dealt per hour. In Study 2, participants played 720 hands equivalent to about&#xA;  30 hours of casino play. Study 2 met the psychometric qualification for moderate reliability&#xA;  of a psychometric task. What this suggests is&#xA;  that obtaining accurate estimates of poker ability may not be easy. Luck (random factors) disguises the fact that poker is a game of skill.&#xA;  However, as these studies show, skill is the determining factor in long-term outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T08:38:25.030" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14184" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14186" CreationDate="2012-12-22T09:30:12.720" Score="7" ViewCount="1267" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this article:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epjournal.net/articles/smiles-as-signals-of-lower-status-in-football-players-and-fashion-models-evidence-that-smiles-are-associated-with-lower-dominance-and-lower-prestige/&quot;&gt;http://www.epjournal.net/articles/smiles-as-signals-of-lower-status-in-football-players-and-fashion-models-evidence-that-smiles-are-associated-with-lower-dominance-and-lower-prestige/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence that smiles are associated with lower dominance and lower&#xA;  prestige.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe this claim.  Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T12:27:16.507" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T00:28:10.773" Title="Does smiling too much indicate low social status?" Tags="|psychology|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14184" CreationDate="2012-12-22T10:38:14.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I only read the abstracts. That's not sufficient to evaluate the claims in detail and I'm not an expert in the field, but I also found the (generalized) notion counter-intuitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies' findings are based only on photographs taken in a controlled setting by a photographer with all kinds of intentions. Alternative explanations arise (3 studies). The other one is a priming study, I don't even really see the reasoning behind it. Also one sample (models) was presumably exclusively females, one sample was exclusively males.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;They say these groups are ranking by prestige or dominance, and say that this is two forms of status. Status can be taken to have many meanings (see below), but these two are more something like success dimensions in their respective professions (modeling and football), not the &quot;popularity&quot; kind, which I'd expect to go along with smiles all around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1022967721884?LI=true#page-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; finds smiling to be positively correlated with sociometric status (popularity), but unrelated to &quot;power&quot; i.e. dominance. Evidence to the contrary, from a setting that I find more appropriate to generalise from (housemates, ie. actual social groups with a hierarchy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psp.sagepub.com/content/16/3/531.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This social psychology experiment&lt;/a&gt; which may not generalize to other settings find that male interviewers smile less than their applicants in a simulated job interview, female interviewers do not. Here, sex acts as a moderator, an interesting pattern that couldn't be applied to the findings from the study you cite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="2722" LastEditDate="2012-12-23T00:28:10.773" LastActivityDate="2012-12-23T00:28:10.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14192" CreationDate="2012-12-22T11:08:12.613" Score="14" ViewCount="1585" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/nyregion/poker-is-more-a-game-of-skill-than-of-chance-a-judge-rules.html?_r=2&amp;amp;&quot;&gt;NY Times article&lt;/a&gt; which claims that a US Judge ruled that poker is a game of skill and not one of chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a ruling that goes to the heart of what it means to play poker,&#xA;  Judge Jack B. Weinstein tossed out the conviction and vacated the&#xA;  indictment of the man who ran that gambling business. The judge’s&#xA;  reason: poker is more a game of skill than a game of chance, so game&#xA;  operators should not be prosecuted under the federal law the prohibits&#xA;  running an illegal gambling business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did this happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2015-02-12T17:56:49.117" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T20:23:42.397" Title="Did this US judge rule that poker is a game of skill and not chance?" Tags="|history|united-states|law|gambling|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14190" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14196" CreationDate="2012-12-22T12:15:11.077" Score="45" ViewCount="15236" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently stumbled across the following article:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1274952/Men-ARE-brainy-women-says-scientist-Professor-Richard-Lynn.html&quot;&gt;Sorry, men ARE more brainy than women (and more stupid too!) It's a simple scientific fact, says one of Britain's top dons&lt;/a&gt;, in which the author claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;1.&lt;/code&gt; That men are on average smarter than women:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;one of the main reasons why there are not more female science&#xA;  professors or chief executives or Cabinet ministers is that, on&#xA;  average, men are more intelligent than women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Boys and girls may start out with the same IQ but by 16 or so boys are&#xA;  starting to inch ahead. The ever-growing success of girls at GCSE,&#xA;  A-level and now at university would seem to refute this - but the&#xA;  blame lies with our exam system, with its emphasis on coursework,&#xA;  which rewards diligence more than it does intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The undeniable, easily measurable fact remains that, &lt;strong&gt;by the time both&#xA;  sexes reach 21, men, on average, score five IQ points higher than&#xA;  women&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;2.&lt;/code&gt; That very-high-IQ men are much more common-place than very-high-IQ women:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For not only is the average man more intelligent than the average&#xA;  woman but also a clear and rather startling imbalance emerges between&#xA;  the sexes at the high levels of intelligence that the most demanding&#xA;  jobs require. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For instance, &lt;strong&gt;at the near-genius level (an IQ of 145), brilliant men&#xA;  outnumber brilliant women by 8 to one&lt;/strong&gt;. That's statistics, not sexism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this context, Professor Greenfield's indignation that only one in&#xA;  ten science professors is female doesn't seem all that bad. It also&#xA;  goes some way to explaining why, in almost 110 years of Nobel Prize&#xA;  history, only two women have ever won the Prize for physics, only four&#xA;  have won the Prize for chemistry and why no women at all have ever won&#xA;  the coveted Fields Medal for mathematics in eight decades of trying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This perplexed me, as I thought women and men were intellectually on par with each other.  Is the article right or wrong: about the relative average intelligences of adults, and the ratios of exceptional intelligences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article makes other claims as well, related to personality, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consequently, ambitious, high-achieving men typically work harder, compete more aggressively and become totally immersed in their careers, while even the most high-achieving women will often admit to finding themselves distracted by their genetically preconditioned aptitude for nurture and support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To keep this question focussed, please ignore such claims about personality, and about what may cause gender imbalance in the job markets, and focus only on the claims about &quot;intelligence&quot; as made above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-11-14T14:44:50.400" LastActivityDate="2017-01-06T16:14:09.313" Title="Are men smarter than women?" Tags="|gender|intelligence|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14187" CreationDate="2012-12-22T12:56:26.340" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judge Jack B. Weinstein concluded that, &lt;em&gt;under US Law&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Poker is Predominated By Skill Rather than Chance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his ruling, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nylj.com/nylawyer/adgifs/decisions/082212weinstein.pdf&quot;&gt;United States of America against Lawrence Dicristina&lt;/a&gt;, he explains the evidence from the prosecution and defendant, who both agreed that poker has a significant amount of skill and a significant amount of chance. They agreed that the top players would eventually tend to come out ahead. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They differed as to how many would be ahead (e.g. if you were slightly better than another player, you may eventually do better than them, but still lose out due to the &quot;rake&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They differed as to how long it would take to get ahead, and how long should be considered relevant. (Should the fact that a single hand is predominantly chance be considered, or the fact that after several dozens of hours played, the game is predominantly skill?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The judge quotes precedence that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[t]he rule of lenity requires ambiguous criminal laws to be interpreted &#xA;  in favor of the defendants subjected to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He draws on that rule of lenity to determine that this (rather meaningless, in my opinion) question should be decided in the defendant's favour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both the defendant’s and the government’s interpretations of the statute are plausible.  It &#xA;  is unclear from the text and legislative history of the IGBA whether every state gambling offense &#xA;  would permit a federal conviction.  See Part VI, infra.  It is equally uncertain whether, in &#xA;  enacting the statute, Congress foresaw that poker businesses would be prosecutable under it.  See&#xA;  Part VII, infra.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In light of these ambiguities, the rule of lenity requires that the defendant’s interpretation &#xA;  be adopted, and his conviction be dismissed.  His acts did not constitute a federal crime. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T12:56:26.340" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14193" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14197" CreationDate="2012-12-22T13:06:49.357" Score="8" ViewCount="980" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just stumbled across the following article:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://genuinewinner.com/science.html&quot;&gt;http://genuinewinner.com/science.html&lt;/a&gt;, which makes the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's no way of knowing exactly which number will spin next. And&#xA;  there's no way of knowing exactly which AREA of the wheel will spin&#xA;  next. However, you can determine, with enough accuracy to beat the&#xA;  house edge, which areas of the wheel is most likely to spin next. This&#xA;  is achieved by understanding the physics of roulette wheels, what&#xA;  patterns are likely to occur over the long term, and how to identify&#xA;  and exploit those patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that if you are astute enough, you can gain enough of a rough idea of where the roulette ball will land, that you can overcome the house edge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T14:47:57.490" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T17:44:57.783" Title="Is it possible to gain an edge in roulette through physics?" Tags="|physics|gambling|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14194" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14203" CreationDate="2012-12-22T13:24:04.270" Score="7" ViewCount="2163" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently stumbled across the following article:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/why-do-chameleons-change-their-colors/&quot;&gt;http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/why-do-chameleons-change-their-colors/&lt;/a&gt; which made the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many people believe chameleons change colors to disguise themselves&#xA;  and hide from predators. However, chameleons are very fast — many can&#xA;  run up to 21 miles per hour — and can avoid most predators quite&#xA;  easily. Camouflage is thus only a secondary reason why most chameleons&#xA;  change color. So why would they want to change colors? Scientists&#xA;  believe that chameleons change color to reflect their moods. By doing&#xA;  so, they send social signals to other chameleons. For example, darker&#xA;  colors tend to mean a chameleon is angry. Lighter colors might be used&#xA;  to attract mates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that the main reason chameleons change colour isn't to blend into their environment?  Don't chameleons change colour to match the environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T20:32:43.697" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T21:17:54.127" Title="Do chameleons change colour for a reason other than camouflage?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14195" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14198" CreationDate="2012-12-22T13:30:07.403" Score="4" ViewCount="491" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently stumbled across the following article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1240334/Dolphins-clever-humans--treat-like-people-say-scientists.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1240334/Dolphins-clever-humans--treat-like-people-say-scientists.html&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which makes the claim that dolphins are almost as clever as humans and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In one piece of research, bottlenose dolphins were shown to be able to&#xA;  recognise themselves in a mirror and use it to inspect various parts&#xA;  of their bodies. Captive animals can also learn a rudimentary&#xA;  symbol-based language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that dolphins can learn a rudimentary symbol-based language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T14:35:27.823" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T18:01:17.287" Title="Can dolphins learn a symbol based language?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|language|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14190" CreationDate="2012-12-22T16:40:32.937" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title of the article is &quot;Sorry, men ARE more brainy than women &lt;strong&gt;(and more stupid too!)&lt;/strong&gt; It's a simple scientific fact, says one of Britain's top dons&quot; - note the bolded part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article makes two independent claims, only one of which is relevant to the social/political topic being discussed (lack of women in top positions):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are more males with extremely high IQ compared to female (which is counterbalanced with having a lot more men with extremely low IQ compared to women)&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In scientific terms, the IQ distribution has fatter tails in males.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are astonishingly few studies (due to political sensitivities of the topic) either confirming or denying that, but the main one cited is usually the Scottish early 20th century survey, which is exceptional in that it looked at a vast majority of children of the studied age group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/54Fhd.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there are virtually identical amount of men and women with &quot;normal&quot; IQ (85-120 IQ) - the differences are +/- 2% one way or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But on a gifted level (typically considered to be 130-160) there are 15-20% differences at low end. The graph doesn't even show true genius levels (160+) but extrapolating the trend, it's likely that the differences are even higher (I've seen mentions of 1:8 ratios but couldn't find a reliable source on short order).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The second one is that &lt;strong&gt;on average, male IQ is higher than female&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly, I'm somewhat skeptical of this claim myself, but don't have time to dig out studies (as the topic under discussion is imbalance of women in top positions that typically involve 130+ IQ, I see the claim as irrelevant even if true).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T17:29:06.283" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T17:29:06.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14193" CreationDate="2012-12-22T17:44:57.783" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;With computers, yes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By applying this techniques [sic] to a standard casino-grade European roulette wheel we demonstrate an expected return of at least 18%, well above the -2.7% expected of a random bet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.6412&quot;&gt;Predicting the Outcomes of Roulette, Michael Small, Chi Kong Tse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the authors, there are two phases of the roulette spin: the first is rather predictable, as the ball rolls around the rim before it drops, at which point the second, highly chaotic phase starts. The authors say that by determining the state of the table when the ball is thrown and by timing the speed of the ball in its initial rotations, they had a statistical advantage in predicting where the ball would drop in to the second, more chaotic, state. This translated into a statistical edge predicting in which half of the wheel the ball would end up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T17:44:57.783" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14195" CreationDate="2012-12-22T18:01:17.287" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, but &quot;rudimentary&quot; is a good word for the limits of what has been proven. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dolphins &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/98/10/5937.full&quot;&gt;pass the mirror test&lt;/a&gt; and can understand word-order syntax (the difference between &quot;bring the ball to the hoop&quot; and &quot;bring the hoop to the ball&quot;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Their performance is high above chance level...it is difficult to interpret their results without postulating both semantic-symbolic and syntactic abilities in dolphins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=1S-tYOAsRVYC&amp;amp;pg=PA136&amp;amp;lpg=PA136&amp;amp;dq=dolphin%20word-order%20syntax&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=68aXAq7D--&amp;amp;sig=OlDx_MrwrB3-iAVwdWyEEBkk45g&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=NPLVUL-9CajxigKy64H4Cg&amp;amp;ved=0CFgQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=dolphin%20word-order%20syntax&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Origins of Language: Constraints on Hypothesis, Johansson&lt;/a&gt; discussing the results of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dolphin-institute.org/about_tdi/tdi_staff.htm&quot;&gt;Louis Herman&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T18:01:17.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14181" CreationDate="2012-12-22T19:35:05.513" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In tournament play, which is not a particularly long trial, there seems to be evidence that skill plays an important role:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Examining the performance in the 2010 World Series of Poker group of poker players identified as being highly skilled prior to the start of the events. Those &#xA;  players identified a priori as being highly skilled achieved an average return on investment of over 30 percent, compared to a -15 percent for all other players.  This large gap in returns is strong evidence in support of the idea that poker is a game of skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/WSOP2011.pdf&quot;&gt;The Role of Skill versus Luck in Poker: Evidence from the World Series of Poker&lt;/a&gt;, Levitt &amp;amp; Miles, 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know that it's valid to claim that the influence of skill is more than that of chance but it's interesting to note that the ROI magnitude for &quot;highly skilled&quot; players (30%) is greater than the magnitude (15%) of others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In table play, I cannot find a reference to something I recall, which is that skill only begins to statistically dominate after several thousand hands (~2000-3000 IIRC). I believe that is only relevant to &quot;correct&quot; play based on pot odds and ignores psychological aspects, betting and bluffing strategies, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2012-12-22T19:46:20.507" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T19:46:20.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14194" CreationDate="2012-12-22T21:17:54.127" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0926_050926_chameleon.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;National Geographic - Chameleons Say It With Color&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Communication is also partly the function of coloration,&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; says &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amnh.org/science/divisions/vertzoo/bio.php?scientist=raxworthy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Christopher Raxworthy&lt;/a&gt;, associate curator of herpetology at the &lt;em&gt;American Museum of Natural History&lt;/em&gt; in New York.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Males become more brightly marked to advertise their dominance. Females become dark or flash red spots to advertise their hostile response to males or their non-receptive status. Aggressive chameleons may become very dark.&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080128-chameleon-color.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chameleons Evolved Color Changing to Communicate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060025&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Selection for Social Signalling Drives the Evolution of Chameleon Colour Change&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JgL6E.png&quot; alt=&quot;Chameleon&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/reptilesamphibians/facts/factsheets/veiledchameleon.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Smithsonian National Zoological Park&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The color change serves only partly for camouflage.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although chameleons at rest tend to assume colors similar to their surroundings, &lt;strong&gt;color change is most often used to signify emotional state.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many chameleons are some shade of green or brown at rest, but can become far more brightly colored when frightened, courting, or defending a territory against another chameleon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sandiegozoo.org/animalbytes/t-chameleon.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;San Diego Zoo&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...each species of chameleon has a group of patterns and colors that it is able to display; some of these patterns are designed for camouflage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The skin color changes under the influence of the lizard's mood, such as fear or anger, the amount of light, and the temperature or humidity. The changing skin color also plays an important role in communication among males.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ccmr.cornell.edu/education/ask/index.html?quid=484&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cornell University&lt;/strong&gt; - Chameleons, communication and camouflage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/latest-questions/question/3268/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Naked Scientists&lt;/strong&gt; - What colour is a dead chameleon?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-22T21:17:54.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13550" CreationDate="2012-12-23T11:51:41.020" Score="45" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Do we need to brush our teeth?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are health benefits from brushing your teeth. Done correctly, it reduces the incidence of caries and periodontitis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you brush your teeth, you help remove plaque — a sticky film that forms on your teeth because of bacteria in your mouth. The bacteria in plaque causes the two major tooth-related diseases, cavities (dental caries) and gum disease (periodontitis).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/brushing-your-teeth/AN02098&quot;&gt;Mayo clinic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In normal use it must be concluded that the benefits of tooth brushing far outweigh the potential harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12875306&quot;&gt;Can tooth brushing damage your health? Effects on oral and dental tissues.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Cochrane Collaboration performed &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD002278/fluoride-toothpastes-for-preventing-dental-caries-in-children-and-adolescents&quot;&gt;a meta-analyses of several studies&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The review of trials found that children aged 5 to 16 years who used a fluoridated toothpaste had fewer decayed, missing and filled permanent teeth after three years (regardless of whether their drinking water was fluoridated). Twice a day use increases the benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD007693/is-the-use-of-fluoride-toothpaste-during-early-childhood-associated-with-discolourationmottling-of-teeth&quot;&gt;another meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt;, they looked at young children, and found that may be side-effects of fluoride toothpastes - a risk of fluorosis/mottling of teeth - especially in children younger than 12 months or under 5-6 years with high fluoride levels, but that for children at high-risk of tooth decay, this risk may be outweighed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;the human species has evolved for several million years without any teeth brushing. ... So why do human need to brush their teeth?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/j5E5o.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Graph of carious teeth per 100 vs last 500 years&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/11_1Epidemiology.htm&quot;&gt;EPIDEMIOLOGY OF DENTAL DISEASE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have pointed out&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We don't eat what people ate 5000 years ago (let alone 150000 years ago)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We need our teeth to last longer as we mostly don't expect to die before age 40.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies of the dentitions of ancient English populations show that a change in the prevalence and distribution of caries took place between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries and was closely associated in time with an increase in the consumption of refined carbohydrates, especially sugar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;Sup&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0300571283901823&quot;&gt;The role of sugar in the etiology of dental caries&lt;/a&gt; via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_caries#Bacteria&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bacteria in a person's mouth convert glucose, fructose, and most commonly sucrose (table sugar) into acids such as lactic acid through a glycolytic process called fermentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Apes don't brush their teeth&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't mean they wouldn't benefit from so doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Caries is moderately common among the great apes, particularly the chimpanzees. Of the great apes, chimpanzees have a diet most similar to our own;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uic.edu/classes/osci/osci590/11_1Epidemiology.htm&quot;&gt;EPIDEMIOLOGY OF DENTAL DISEASE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Caries in great apes is usually observed later in life when occlusal enamel is lost through wear and approximal enamel that maintains a tight contact between teeth breaks down and allows food and plaque stagnation between teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://carta.anthropogeny.org/moca/topics/dental-caries&quot;&gt;Dental Biology and Disease&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;is the use of Fluoride based toothpaste ... needed as well?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many medical professionals believe there is adequate evidence to support this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most toothpastes also contain fluoride, which helps to prevent and control cavities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/dentalhealth/Pages/Teethcleaningguide.aspx&quot;&gt;NHS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Multivariate analysis disclosed fissure sealants, early start of tooth brushing and topical fluoride application to be associated with the prevention of dental caries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23242815&quot;&gt;Evaluation of a preventive program aiming at children with increased caries risk using ICDAS II criteria.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-01-07T19:01:24.013" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T19:01:24.013" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14211" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14217" CreationDate="2012-12-23T15:46:10.497" Score="13" ViewCount="1646" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://benvitalisgreenvision.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/fluoride-doesnt-even-prevent-cavities-part-4/&quot;&gt;Green Vision blog&lt;/a&gt; made the claim that fluoride doesn't prevent cavities.  Here is a quote from the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The topical application of fluoride is a proven method for protecting&#xA;  teeth from cavities and decay. But there is no scientific evidence&#xA;  that adding industrial grade fluoride to public water supplies is&#xA;  effective, In fact, the opposite may be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in whether there is scientific evidence that supports the idea that fluoride when drunk rather than when used as tooth paste, helps to prevent cavities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-25T00:02:17.180" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T00:18:21.767" Title="Does drinking fluoridated water prevent cavities?" Tags="|dentistry|fluoride|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14213" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14214" CreationDate="2012-12-23T20:25:30.150" Score="58" ViewCount="16450" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently stumbled across this article &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2006-04-22/open-space/27812797_1_soldiers-march-bridge-oscillation&quot;&gt;&quot;Why are soldiers ordered to break their marching steps while crossing a bridge?&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (The Times of India) where a claim is made:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When soldiers march in three files over a bridge, they generate a&#xA;  rhythmic oscillation of sine waves on the bridge. At a certain point,&#xA;  the bridge would start oscillating to the same rhythm as that of the&#xA;  marching steps.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;This oscillation would reach a maximum peak when the bridge can no longer sustain its own strength and hence collapses. Therefore,&#xA;  soldiers are ordered to break their steps while crossing a bridge.&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;my emphasis&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that column of marching soldiers has to break their rhythm while crossing a bridge to prevent its collapse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="8702" LastEditDate="2013-04-24T16:43:26.680" LastActivityDate="2016-07-21T18:01:26.457" Title="Does a column of marching soldiers have to break their rhythm while crossing a bridge to prevent its collapse?" Tags="|physics|military|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14213" CreationDate="2012-12-23T20:42:30.510" Score="64" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Mechanical Resonance&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certain types of bridge are susceptible to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_resonance&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mechanical resonance&lt;/a&gt; effects even when marching soldiers are not involved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mechanical structures usually have one or more frequencies at which some part of the structure oscillates. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuning_fork&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tuning fork&lt;/a&gt; has a well-defined natural frequency of oscillation. More complex structures may have a dominant natural frequency of oscillation. If some mechanical inputs (such as the pressure of feet walking in unison) have a frequency that is close to a natural frequency of the structure, these inputs will tend to initiate and, over a short time, increase the  oscillating movements of the structure. Like pushing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parametric_oscillator&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;child's swing&lt;/a&gt; at the right time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;London Millenium Bridge&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example is London's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Bridge,_London#Resonance&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Millennium Bridge&lt;/a&gt; which was closed shortly after opening because low-frequency vibrations in the bridge were causing large groups of pedestrians to simultaneously shift their weight and reinforcing the oscillation. Dampers were fitted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mathsinthecity.com/sites/millennium-bridge-london&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ncR9I.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Maths in the city&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All 690 tons of its steel-and-aluminium deck began to sway left and right like a giant, executive desktop toy, so much so that pedestrians, suspended above the Thames on slender steel cables, began to clutch at handrails to steady themselves, and throw themselves against the sway, to stay upright. As they did, so the swings began to get increasingly violent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Report in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2001/mar/11/2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Soon after the crowd streamed on to London's Millennium Bridge on the day it opened, the bridge started to sway from side to side: many pedestrians fell spontaneously into step with the bridge's vibrations, inadvertently amplifying them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7064/abs/438043a.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crowd synchrony on the Millennium Bridge - Nature 438, 43-44 (3 November 2005)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;other bridges – with completely different structures to the Millennium Bridge – have also moved laterally under large crowds. An example of this is the Auckland Harbour Road Bridge which has a box-girder structure. This bridge was filmed vibrating laterally at 0.7 Hz when a large crowd of demonstrators walked over it in 1975.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is particularly significant because the Auckland Harbour Bridge is a large road bridge with a conventional structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingenia.org.uk/ingenia/articles.aspx?Index=123&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stabilising the London Millennium Bridge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Other Bridges&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are reports of small suspension bridges collapsing partly due to resonance effects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broughton_Suspension_Bridge#1831_collapse&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Broughton Suspension Bridge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arts-et-metiers.net/musee.php?P=157&amp;amp;id=10285&amp;amp;lang=ang&amp;amp;flash=f&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Angers Bridge Catastrophe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Studies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's at least one &lt;a href=&quot;http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16450/1/Ming-Hui_Huang_Thesis.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PhD Thesis&lt;/a&gt; on the subject&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Instructions to Soldiers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;bridges should be crosssed at a slow gait, and marching men should break step.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/lectures/Sherrill.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Examination &amp;amp; Repair of Bridges&#xA;WITH PRINCIPLES RELATING TO THEIR DESIGN,&#xA;Captain C. O. SHERRILL, Corps of Engineers&#xA;Instructor, Department of Engineering, 1909&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;companies  of  soldiers  must&#xA;  break  step when  crossing bridges  due  to  the  risk  of  creating  large  motions  at  resonant  frequencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA101604&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EVALUATION  OF  CONDITION  OF&#xA;LAKE  SUPERIOR  REGULATORY  STRUCTURE&#xA;SAULT  STE.  MARIE,  MICHIGAN. 1981&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T15:43:49.083" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T15:43:49.083" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14211" CreationDate="2012-12-23T20:48:54.947" Score="7" Body="&lt;h1&gt;By Region&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following studies from different regions suggest that fluoridation does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; reduce dental caries:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Kuoio, Finland&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was no increase in caries when water fluoridation ended in Kupio, Finland during the following three years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10901407&quot;&gt;Caries in the primary dentition, after discontinuation of water fluoridation, among children receiving comprehensive dental care&lt;/a&gt; PMID: 10901407&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The city of Kuopio in central Finland had fluoridated piped water for 33 years, beginning in 1959. Due to strong opposition by various civic groups, water fluoridation was stopped at the end of 1992. Changes in the mean dmfs values between 1992 and 1995 in Kuopio were compared to those in Jyväskylä, a low-fluoride community that has repeatedly been used as the reference area for Kuopio. In all age groups both in 1992 and 1995, the point estimates for mean dmfs values were lower in the non-fluoridated town. In both towns, the observed mean dmfs values were smaller in 1995 than in 1992. Despite discontinuation of water fluoridation, no increase of caries frequency in primary teeth was observed in Kuopio within a three-year period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Canada&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11153562&quot;&gt;Patterns of dental caries following the cessation of water fluoridation&lt;/a&gt; PMID: 11153562&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The prevalence of caries (assessed in 5,927 children, grades 2, 3, 8, 9) decreased over time in the fluoridation-ended community while remaining unchanged in the fluoridated community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Cuba&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10601780&quot;&gt;Caries prevalence after cessation of water fluoridation La Salud, Cuba&lt;/a&gt; PMID: 10601780&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the past, caries has usually increased after cessation of water fluoridation. More recently an opposite trend could be observed: following the cessation of drinking water fluoridation, in contrast to an expected rise in caries prevalence, DMFT and DMFS values remained at a low level for 6-9-year-olds and to decrease for 10/11-year-olds. In the 12/13-year-olds, there was a significant decrease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;East Germany&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11014515&quot;&gt;Decline of caries prevalence after the cessation of water fluoridation in the former East Germany&lt;/a&gt; PMID: 11014515&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In contrast to the anticipated increase in dental caries following the cessation of water fluoridation in the cities Chemnitz and Plauen, a significant fall in caries prevalence was observed. This corresponded to the national caries decline and appears to be a new population-wide phenomenon. There is still no explanation for the pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Brazil&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12244360&quot;&gt;An epidemiological profile of dental caries in 12-year-old children residing in cities with and without fluoridated water supply in the central western area of the State of São Paulo, Brazil&lt;/a&gt; PMID: 12244360&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was no statistically significant difference between DMFT in municipalities of the same size, regardless of the presence or absence of fluoride in the water supply... Prevalence of caries in the region was 'high', with a DMFT of 4.82, thus failing to reach the goals set for the year 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Nigeria&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18756850&quot;&gt;The fluoride content of drinking water and caries experience in 15-19 year old school children in Ibadan, Nigeria&lt;/a&gt; PMID: 18756850&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;955 students aged 15-19 years randomly selected from eleven secondary schools in Ibadan metropolis were examined for dental caries. The fluoride level of the different water sources was between 0.02 and 0.03 ppm. [only] Forty-four (4.6%) of the children had dental caries. In conclusion, both the fluoride level and caries prevalence were low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Mexico&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17436973&quot;&gt;Prevalence and severity of dental caries in adolescents aged 12 and 15 living in communities with various fluoride concentrations.&lt;/a&gt; PMID: 17436973&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In an analysis of caries severity (DMFT &gt; or = 4), both adolescents with very mild/mild and moderate/severe dental fluorosis have higher caries severity. Fluoride exposure (measured through fluorosis presence) does not appear to be reducing the caries prevalence (DMFT &gt; 0) or caries severity (DMFT &gt; or = 4) in these high-altitude communities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;North Carolina&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10728978&quot;&gt;The effects of a break in water fluoridation [11 months] on the development of dental caries and fluorosis&lt;/a&gt; PMID: 10728978&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was concluded that while the break had little effect on caries, dental fluorosis is sensitive to even small changes in fluoride exposure from drinking water, and this sensitivity is greater at 1 to 3 years of age than at 4 or 5 years.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;General Evidence&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following paper also conclude from existing data that there is negligible evidence for fluoride helping with dental caries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9161076&quot;&gt;New evidence on fluoridation&lt;/a&gt; PMID: 9161076 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A review of recent scientific literature reveals a consistent pattern of evidence-- hip fractures, skeletal fluorosis, the effect of fluoride on bone structure, fluoride levels in bones and osteosarcomas-- pointing to the existence of causal mechanisms by which fluoride damages bones. In addition, there is evidence, accepted by some eminent dental researchers... that there is negligible benefit from ingesting fluoride...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Lead-Induced Caries&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following papers explain that some caries are due to high lead levels and fluoride doesn't help in these cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Enamel biopsies taken from school children in a community where exposure to lead was a health hazard were analyzed for lead and fluoride. The children with high enamel lead had significantly higher caries scores than the children with low enamel lead, in spite of the fact that the high lead group also was higher in enamel fluoride. There was no increase in enamel lead with age. The lead in saliva was only a fraction of that in blood. Infants with lead poisoning showed higher saliva lead than a normal infant.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jdr.sagepub.com/content/56/10/1165.abstract&quot;&gt;Lead in Enamel and Saliva, Dental Caries and the Use of Enamel Biopsies for Measuring Past Exposure to Lead&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fluoride in their teeth did not prevent the caries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lead is passed on from mother to child. The child doesn't necessarily have to ingest the lead.  It can be transferred by the mother to her offspring, just like fluoride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=190537&quot;&gt;Association of Dental Caries and Blood Lead Levels&lt;/a&gt; in JAMA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study suggests that the fluoridation of water can lead to higher lead levels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11233755&quot;&gt;Association of silicofluoride treated water with elevated blood lead&lt;/a&gt; PMID: 11233755 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chronic, low-level dosage of silicofluoride (SiF) has never been adequately tested for health effects in humans. We report here on a statistical study of 151,225 venous blood lead (VBL) tests taken from children ages 0-6 inclusive, living in 105 communities of populations from 15,000 to 75,000. For every age/race group, there was a consistently significant association of SiF treated community water and elevated blood lead. The highest likelihood of children having VBL&gt; 10 microg/dL occurs when they are exposed to SiF treated water and subject to another risk factor known to be associated with high blood lead (e.g., old housing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10822" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-24T12:41:24.933" LastActivityDate="2012-12-24T12:41:24.933" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14211" CreationDate="2012-12-23T23:52:33.540" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, fluoridated water works to reduce dental caries in children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer originally consisted of one study based in the USA. This was revealed to be insufficient by a significant edit to @Skeptic's answer, which contained &lt;strong&gt;eight&lt;/strong&gt; similar studies from different regions, drawing different results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such situations, where there are conflicting studies, there is a risk of cherry-picking. (In my case, the study was found by working backwards from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/dwq/chemicals/fluoride.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WHO report on fluoridation&lt;/a&gt;.) It becomes important to look not at individual studies or even who can produce the most studies, but at a systematic review of all of the studies, based on their quality and statistical power. Below, I repeat the original study I quoted, for completeness. Then, I look at a more powerful meta-analysis of the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study looked at the results of two large epidemiological surveys:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;J.A. Brunelle and J.P. Carlos, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slweb.org/NIDR-DMFS.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Recent Trends in Dental Caries in U.S. Children and the Effect of Water Fluoridation&lt;/a&gt;, Journal of Dental Research, Volume 69 (Special Issue); Page 723-727, February 1990&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DMFS (Decayed/Missing/Filled Surface) is a measure of tooth-decay used in dentistry.  They found that children who grew up in fluoridated areas had 18% lower DMFS scores than those who never lived in fluoridated areas. If you removed the impact of other sources of fluoride, this jumped to 25%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The decline in dental caries in US schoolchildren, first observed nationwide in 1979-1980, was confirmed further by a second national epidemiological survey completed in 1987. Mean DMFS scores in persons aged 5-17 years had decreased about 36% during the interval, and, in 1987, approximately 50% of children were caries-free in the permanent dentition. Children who had always been exposed to community water fluoridation had mean DMFS scores about 18% lower than those who had never lived in fluoridated communities. When some of the &quot;background&quot; effect of topical fluoride was controlled, this difference increased to 25%. The results suggest that water fluoridation has played a dominant role in the decline in caries and must continue to be a major prevention methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again the above study should be treated with care, as there are conflicting studies. Instead, we should look at the preponderance of evidence with a meta-analysis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marian S McDonagh, Penny F Whiting, Paul M Wilson,  Alex J Sutton, Ivor Chestnutt, Jan Cooper, Kate Misso, Matthew Bradley,  Elizabeth Treasure and Jos Kleijnen. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC27492/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Systematic review of water fluoridation&lt;/a&gt; BMJ. 2000; 321(7265): 855–859. PMCID: PMC27492&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this systematic review, a total of &lt;strong&gt;214 studies&lt;/strong&gt; were incorporated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;45 controlled before-after studies, 102 cross sectional studies, 47 ecological studies, 13 cohort (prospective or retrospective) studies, and seven case-control studies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each of the studies was considered &quot;low to moderate&quot; quality, so the existence of conflicting results is not too surprising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of those 214, 26 were related to the key question here - water fluoridation and dental caries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found that fluoride helps with caries:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Water fluoridation was associated with an increased proportion of children without caries and a reduction in the number of teeth affected by caries. The range (median) of mean differences in the proportion of children without caries was -5.0% to 64% (14.6%). The range (median) of mean change in decayed, missing, and filled primary/permanent teeth was 0.5 to 4.4 (2.25) teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the figures gives a visual representation of the variance in the results: &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/o5EUe.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Table 1&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also found there were the expected minor side-effects - fluorosis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A dose-dependent increase in dental fluorosis was found. At a fluoride level of 1 ppm an estimated 12.5% (95% confidence interval 7.0% to 21.5%) of exposed people would have fluorosis that they would find aesthetically concerning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have included three more studies which are of related interest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18067684&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;When public action undermines public health: a critical examination of antifluoridationist literature.&lt;/a&gt; - A warning is given about the misleading tactics used by anti-fluoridationalists to give highly misleading and biased views of the science.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9599869&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New, or biased, evidence on water fluoridation?&lt;/a&gt; - responds to one of the key papers 'New evidence of fluoridation' that dismissed the link.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelines/publications/eh41a&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Systematic Review of the Efficacy and Safety of Fluoridation&lt;/a&gt; - Another meta-analysis drawing similar conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The existing body of evidence strongly suggests that water fluoridation is beneficial at reducing &#xA;  dental caries. After adjustment for potential confounding variables, McDonagh et al (2000a) showed &#xA;  in their systematic review that the introduction of water fluoridation into an area significantly &#xA;  increased the proportion of caries-free children, and decreased mean dmft/DMFT scores compared &#xA;  with areas which were non-fluoridated over the same time period. The findings of McDonagh et al &#xA;  (2000a) also suggest that cessation of fluoridation resulting in a narrowing of the difference in caries &#xA;  prevalence between the fluoridated and non-fluoridated populations. Only one additional relevant &#xA;  original study was identified in the current review and this did not change the conclusion of the &#xA;  existing systematic review. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This also addresses an earlier discussion point that I didn't know what dose of fluoride I had swallowed today, by showing the model used to calculate it when determining the appropriate fluoridation levels in my country.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-24T13:51:42.330" LastActivityDate="2012-12-24T13:51:42.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7160" CreationDate="2012-12-24T18:37:00.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This remains a controversial issue but the evidence doesn't appear to be strong enough to conclude there is a &lt;em&gt;significant&lt;/em&gt; decline&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB I'm adding this answer because of two contradictory papers I stumbled across in recent months that illustrate just how divided the actual evidence base is and also how the stories that hit the headlines are not an unbiased selection of the ones that get published in the scientific literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/12/02/humrep.des415.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;first recent paper&lt;/a&gt; was widely reported in the media. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20593467&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC report&lt;/a&gt; summarises thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sperm count of French men fell by a third between 1989 and 2005, a study suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and quotes one of the paper's authors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To our knowledge, this is the first study concluding a severe and general decrease in sperm concentration and morphology at the scale of a whole country over a substantial period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This constitutes a serious public health warning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper itself studied reported sperm counts in male partners of couples attending fertility clinics. The selection was refined to the subset where the &lt;em&gt;woman&lt;/em&gt; was shown to be infertile due to blocked or missing fallopian tubes and was therefore assumed to be a fair sample of the male population (there is no reason to expect confounding by male fertility status).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second paper was published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/4/e000990.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ open&lt;/a&gt; and has received no obvious publicity. It concludes (my emphasises):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This large prospective study of semen quality among young &lt;em&gt;men of the general population&lt;/em&gt; showed an &lt;strong&gt;increasing trend in sperm concentration and total sperm count&lt;/strong&gt;. However, only one in four men had optimal semen quality. In addition, one in four will most likely face a prolonged waiting time to pregnancy if they in the future want to father a child and another 15% are at risk of the need of fertility treatment. Thus, &lt;em&gt;reduced semen quality seems so frequent that it may impair the fertility rates and further increase the demand for assisted reproduction&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it another way, sperm counts are increasing slowly but there are a lot of people with poor quality semen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the possible reason why the studies differ is that the French study has not accounted for possible confounding factors. If the nature of the sample has changed over time (eg because those seeking fertility treatment represent a different mix of people by socioeconomic class over the long time period of the study) then this will not be a good random sample from the &lt;em&gt;same&lt;/em&gt; population. The Danish study is more likely to be a random sample so may be better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Danish study also showed that there are a lot of people with poor sperm counts or quality. If people are now more concerned with fertility than they used to be, that would explain many other (less careful) studies showing declines: the results reflect not actual declines in the same population but increasing concern among those with poor fertility. This is speculative, but possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general lesson is that in statistical studies where the underlying variable is known to show wide variability among individuals, you have to be really careful to avoid confounding factors. And, not enough studies achieve this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that the studies you hear about are far more likely to be the worrying ones, not the ones proclaiming that there isn't a problem (they don't make such good headlines).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this answer was originally written, the topic has remained controversial. Apocalyptic headlines have continued to appear, many driven by an &lt;a href=&quot;https://academic.oup.com/humupd/article/23/6/646/4035689&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;influential meta-analysis by Swann et. al.&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That meta-analysis led to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gq.com/story/shanna-swan-interview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;headlines such as&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Alarming Decline in Sperm Quality Could Threaten the Future of the Human Race, and the Chemicals Likely Responsible Are Everywhere&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the conclusions of that study have recently been challenged. The reanalysis appears in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14647273.2021.1917778&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Human Fertility here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/health/sperm-fertility-reproduction-crisis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The New York Times&lt;/a&gt; summarises the results of the reanalysis (my highlighting):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now a group of interdisciplinary researchers from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology contend that &lt;em&gt;fears of an impending Spermageddon have been vastly overstated.&lt;/em&gt; In a study published in May in the journal Human Fertility, they re-evaluated the 2017 review and found that it relied on flawed assumptions and failed to consider alternate explanations for the apparent decline of sperm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an interview, Sarah Richardson, a Harvard scholar on gender and science and the senior author on the new study, called the conclusion of the 2017 review “an astonishing and terrifying claim that, were it to be true, would justify the apocalyptic tenor of some of the writing.” Fortunately, &lt;em&gt;she and her co-authors argue, there is little evidence that this is the case.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NYT reports some alternative explanations offered in the new analysis of the original observations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps sperm levels naturally rise and fall over time and within populations. The question has not been explored by reproductive researchers and cannot be answered easily, as global sperm counts before 1970 are largely unknown...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sperm-counting is a tricky business and notoriously prone to human error, Dr. Pacey said. ... In a 2013 review article, he noted that as methodologies for counting had improved and been standardized since the 1980s, sperm counts had appeared to fall. In other words, it may simply be that earlier scientists were overcounting sperm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reanalysis notes two alternative hypotheses that are consistent with the original data but fundamentally contradict the earlier conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relationship between endocrine disrupting chemicals, geography, and sperm count has not been established by prospective studies across populations that control for confounders and use repeat individual measures in combination with a wide variety of social and biological measures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sperm counts rise and fall and vary across populations and time, and within individuals, in a dynamic, non-linear and non-continuous fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short both the apocalyptic conclusions (sperm counts are in sharp decline and so is fertility) and the supposed major cause (endocrine disrupting chemicals) are very doubtful. Should we panic: probably not (certainly unless someone generates much better quality data than the 2017 study).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2021-06-06T17:02:07.723" LastActivityDate="2021-06-06T17:02:07.723" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14243" CreationDate="2012-12-25T07:51:26.347" Score="34" ViewCount="18295" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://villageofjoy.com/north-korea-most-isolated-country-in-the-world/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;VillageOfJoy&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;14 Interesting Facts about North Korea&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You can’t turn off the government radio installed in your home, only reduce the volume. [...]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many of web-sites with similar claims: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/North_Korea&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://radicalsahm.blogspot.com.au/2010/06/radio-they-cant-turn-off-is-clincher.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/mytripsmypics/6283245121/in/photostream/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This photo&lt;/a&gt; by  photographer &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ericlafforgue.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eric Lafforgue&lt;/a&gt; purports to be an example of such a radio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true now? Did it used to be true? What sort of messages are/were sent over these radios?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure if it is technically a radio or rather a speaker. Most areas are not connected to the electricity grid. And I could not find telegraph poles on aereal pictueres yet, so it is interesting how this things work. Perhaps a fixed frequency radio on batteries is included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I found this BBC video: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRuqustZzKM&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRuqustZzKM&lt;/a&gt; at 1:43 min one can hear the speaker. It seems to be installed in flats in the cities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10319" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T11:44:47.467" Title="Does every North Korean home have a radio that can't be turned off?" Tags="|law|north-korea|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14232" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-25T11:17:53.973" Score="26" ViewCount="2813" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a persistent stereotype that geeks (let's formally define that as people a couple of standard deviations better than average in math, computers or other related abilities) as a whole have relatively poor language/communication skills, especially compared to other smart people with different talents (e.g. lawyery types). I hope this doesn't need &quot;notability&quot; claim :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research confirming or denying this?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there a significant difference between &quot;language&quot; skills and &quot;communication&quot; skills in this context?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:54:52.863" LastActivityDate="2016-06-01T13:36:21.180" Title="Do higher mathematical abilities inversely correlate with good communication skills?" Tags="|psychology|mathematics|cognitive-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14233" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2012-12-25T12:24:20.603" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2012-12-25T12:24:20.603" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T12:24:20.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14234" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2012-12-25T12:24:20.603" Score="0" Body="Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a parliamentary democracy in the Middle East, on the south-eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, Egypt and the Gaza Strip on the southwest, and the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea to the south. In its Basic Laws Israel defines itself as a Jewish and Democratic State." OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2012-12-25T13:47:06.423" LastActivityDate="2012-12-25T13:47:06.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14236" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14252" CreationDate="2012-12-25T13:40:03.447" Score="3" ViewCount="1550" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some relatives of mine think that drinking sea water is good for health, but I highly doubt it. They claim that drinking small amounts of sea water &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harmonikireland.com/sea-water/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;daily helps people to be healthier&lt;/a&gt; (reference provided by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/23/oddthinking&quot;&gt;Oddthinking&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this regular sea water consumption good for your health? If so, is there any scientific research about sea water and health benefits? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10835" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T14:00:19.937" Title="Is sea water suitable for human consumption?" Tags="|nutrition|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14134" CreationDate="2012-12-26T00:08:01.173" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, healthy people are capable of digesting wheat gluten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C E Bodwell, L D Satterlee, and L R Hackler, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/33/3/677.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Protein digestibility of the same protein preparations by human and rat assays and by in vitro enzymic digestion methods.&lt;/a&gt;  Am J Clin Nutr March 1980 vol. 33 no. 3 677-686, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/33/3/677.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this study they were attempting to compare the digestibility of several proteins in humans and rats. We are only interested here in gluten and humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an extract from Table 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kuaHd.png&quot; alt=&quot;Extract from Table 4&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It shows that, depending on which measurement system they used, wheat gluten protein was 80-100% digestible by (healthy) humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paper from back in 1949 calculated gluten digestibility using a fairly new (at the time) technique: Nitrogen Balance Indices, to see whether consuming Lysine would help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;William S. Hoffman and Gordon C. McNeil &lt;a href=&quot;http://jn.nutrition.org/content/38/3/331.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Enhancement of the Nutritive Value of Wheat Gluten by Supplementation with Lysine as Determined From Nitrogen Balance Indices In Human Subjects&lt;/a&gt; J. Nutr. July 1, 1949 vol. 38 no. 3 331-343&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The mean nitrogen balance index for gluten was 0.62. For&#xA;  gluten plus lysine, it was significantly higher, 0.76, approach&#xA;  ing the value for casein. Thus lysine, was shown to enhance&#xA;  the nutritive value of gluten for humans, as it had previously&#xA;  been shown to do for lower animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T00:08:01.173" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14231" CreationDate="2012-12-26T11:23:58.740" Score="32" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Does every North Korean home have a radio ... &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AAbGc.png&quot; alt=&quot;Bar graph showing access to media in N Korea&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://audiencescapes.org/sites/default/files/A_Quiet_Opening_FINAL_InterMedia.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;North Koreans in a changing media environment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WD5r4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;N Korean farm&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Photo by AP photographer David Guttenfelder&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A communal farm compound near Kaesong  ...&#xA;  Ordinary North Koreans rarely have access to electricity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2022821/Inside-lost-world-North-Korea-Incredible-pictures-life-planets-secretive-nation.html#ixzz2GA5ZuVDQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this doesn't rule out battery-powered radios, but it does support the notion that some N Korean homes might be too poor to own their own radio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt; ... that can't be turned off?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A commenter to the linked photo &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fM0nJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;Radio&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;photo by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ericlafforgue.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eric Lafforgue&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;well, In South Korea, those kind of speakers in apartment home only use for public announcement of apartment managing office. but in north korea, government took control to whole apartment....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to speculate a little: the pictured N korean home &quot;radio&quot; is probably also not a radio receiver but a loudspeaker for a communal system for relaying announcements. To be of value in emergencies, such loudspeaker units would probably not be equipped with an off-switch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;... that can't be retuned?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As pointed out by Oddthinking in a comment below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All radio frequencies are fixed to the official broadcasting service channels and sealed. If the seal is found broken, the person involved is assumed to be guilty of listening to South Korean or other foreign broadcasting services and is treated as a political prisoner.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kinu.or.kr/eng/pub/pub_04_01.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Korea Institute for National Unification's White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea &lt;strong&gt;2012&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that a reporter has accidentally transformed &quot;can't retune&quot; to &quot;can't turn off&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might not apply to whatever report included the photo of a wall-mounted &quot;radio&quot; that lacks any obvious off-switch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T13:03:38.253" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T13:03:38.253" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14247" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14249" CreationDate="2012-12-26T16:36:49.933" Score="15" ViewCount="1958" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://it.scribd.com/doc/20569051/The-Lawful-and-the-Prohibited-in-Islam&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi made a claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers have proven that chess did not appear until after the&#xA;  death of the Prophet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did chess not appear until after the death of the Prophet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="2974" LastEditDate="2013-07-29T15:53:56.647" LastActivityDate="2018-07-07T13:30:10.827" Title="Did chess not appear until after the death of Mohammad?" Tags="|history|islam|chess|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14247" CreationDate="2012-12-26T17:25:11.837" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chess#Origin&quot;&gt;origin of chess&lt;/a&gt; on Wikipedia,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The earliest precursor of modern chess is a game called chaturanga,&#xA;  which flourished in India by the 6th century, and is the earliest&#xA;  known game to have two essential features found in all later chess&#xA;  variations — different pieces having different powers (which was not&#xA;  the case with checkers and go), and victory depending on the fate of&#xA;  one piece, the king of modern chess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article then goes on the explain the transition of chess to Persia and then the transition to the Muslim world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chess was introduced to Persia from India and became a part of the&#xA;  princely or courtly education of Persian nobility. In Sassanid&#xA;  Persia around 600 the name became chatrang, which subsequently evolved&#xA;  to shatranj, due to Arab Muslim’s lack of ch and ng native sounds,&#xA;  and the rules were developed further. Players started calling &quot;Shāh!&quot;&#xA;  (Persian for &quot;King!&quot;) when attacking the opponent's king, and &quot;Shāh&#xA;  Māt!&quot; (Persian for &quot;the king is helpless&quot; – see checkmate) when the&#xA;  king was attacked and could not escape from attack. These exclamations&#xA;  persisted in chess as it traveled to other lands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The game was taken up by the Muslim world after the Islamic conquest&#xA;  of Persia, with the pieces largely keeping their Persian names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chess#Origin&quot;&gt;this page on the origin of chess&lt;/a&gt; says, the game was taken up by the Muslim world after the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_conquest_of_Persia&quot;&gt;Islamic conquest of Persia&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Arab conquest of Persia (Persian: تجاوز اعراب‎ Tajāvoz-e Arāb &quot;the&#xA;  attack of the Arabs&quot; or ظهور اسلام zohur-e eslâm &quot;the dawn of Islam&quot;),&#xA;  led to the end of the Sassanid Empire in 644, the fall of Sassanid&#xA;  dynasty in 651.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this conquest did not completely end until 651 and Muhammad died &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=when%20did%20muhammad%20die&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla%3aen-US%3aofficial&amp;amp;client=firefox-beta&quot;&gt;June 8, 632 AD&lt;/a&gt;, one could argue that chess was not brought to the Muslim world until 651, which is well after the death of Muhammad.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However chess continued to develop until the 19th century when the bishop and queen were changed so they could move how they do now and several other rules of the game were changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The queen and bishop remained relatively weak until between 1475&#xA;  AD and 1500 AD, in either Spain, Portugal, France or Italy, the&#xA;  queen's and bishop's modern moves started and spread, making chess&#xA;  close to its modern form. This form of chess got such names as&#xA;  &quot;Queen's Chess&quot; or &quot;Mad Queen Chess&quot; (Italian alla rabiosa = &quot;with the&#xA;  madwoman&quot;). This led to much more value being attached to the&#xA;  previously minor tactic of pawn promotion. Checkmate became easier&#xA;  and games could now be won in fewer moves. These new rules&#xA;  quickly spread throughout Western Europe and in Spain, with&#xA;  the exception of the rules about stalemate, which were finalized in&#xA;  the early 19th century. The modern move of the Queen may have&#xA;  started as an extension of its older ability to once move two squares&#xA;  with jump, diagonally or straight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following this evidence the Muslims had chess by at least 651, which is after Muhammad had died.  There is considerable evidence that they did not invent the game, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chess#Arab_world&quot;&gt;but mainly helped pass the game from Persia to Europe&lt;/a&gt;.  As far as the game and its rules are concerned, most of it appears to have been developed in India and Persia (pre-Islamic conquering) and then later modified to its modern form largely due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chess#Origins_of_the_modern_game&quot;&gt;Western Europe and Spain&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know a lot of these sources are from Wikipedia, but they were the only ones that I could find with citations in them.  There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chessncrafts.com/chess-history.html&quot;&gt;other&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://library.thinkquest.org/26408/feature/chess_history.shtml&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chessdryad.com/articles/wcc/transcribed/origin.htm&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mark-weeks.com/aboutcom/aa06a14.htm&quot;&gt;similar&lt;/a&gt; information, but have no citations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8691" LastActivityDate="2012-12-26T17:25:11.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14247" CreationDate="2012-12-26T18:08:37.857" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I guess it would depend a lot on what you consider the first chess game, really. If we're talking about the modern chess game, then yes, chess didn't appear until after the death of the Prophet. In &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0198661649&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Oxford Companion to Chess&lt;/a&gt;, Hooper and Whyld explain that the modern chess rules evolved from the game of shatranj (or chatrang) between 1200 and 1500, way after the coming of the Prophet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if we are talking about the &lt;em&gt;concept&lt;/em&gt; of chess and accept chess-like games as evidence for the development of the modern chess game, then it is safe to assume that chess-like games existed way before the coming of the Prophet. According to chess historian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gerhard-josten.de/app/download/17252333/CHESS%2B-%2BA%2BLIVING%2BFOSSIL.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gerhard Josten&lt;/a&gt;, the three core types of pieces found in chess can be traced to games played in different regions of the world way before the rise of the Muslims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Type 1: A relatively immobile central piece, the goal of the game being to paralyse this&#xA;  piece. The way in which it can be paralysed varies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the modern game of chess, the King is the only type 1 piece. Its role is crucial, as it provides the means to victory. Such pieces were found in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liubo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Liubo&lt;/a&gt;, a game that was very popular in the Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD) in China, even though it was probably invented a few centuries before that time. As such, the core concept of chess, the key to victory, is borrowed from games that existed in China between 2000 and 3000 years ago, definitely before the Prophet's time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Type 2: A number of pieces which can make various longer moves and – with some exceptions&#xA;  – can move in all directions without restriction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In modern chess, these pieces would include the bishop, the rook, the queen and, if stretched a bit, knights. Josten believes that these pieces are inspired by tools used to divine the future in ancient Mesopotamia. The pieces were used in conjunction with an astrolabe, and probably greatly influenced the development of the byzantine chess game that played on a circular board, a game that also appeared before the coming of the Prophet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Type 3: A number of pieces which can only move forwards, and if needs be sideways too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pawn would be the best example of this type of pieces. Josten believes that these simpler pieces come from the old race-type games that were very popular throughout the ages in India. In pachisi, the Indian national game, the pieces advance on a fixed track to reach the end goal, capturing the adersaries' pieces along the way. In such games, the pieces usually can't diverge from their original course and it is impossible for them to move backwards, much like the chess' pawns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Josten concludes that a tri-parallel development must have been possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Near Eastern astrolabe with its differentiated pieces assimilated&#xA;  the Chinese central piece and the Indian race pieces. The result in&#xA;  the Near East would have been a game of chess played on a circular&#xA;  board: a game like Byzantine chess. The game did not survive in this&#xA;  form. Whether and how its circular board was replaced by a square grid&#xA;  in a further phase and became the predecessor of the Western game of&#xA;  chess will have to be clarified at a later date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Near Eastern differentiated pieces and the Chinese central piece&#xA;  were added to the Indian 8x8 board for Asthapada with race pieces and&#xA;  the use of dice. The result in India would thus have been four-handed&#xA;  chess, the first Indian type of chess at all, a game that practically&#xA;  no longer exists today. The dice and the game for four was retained&#xA;  whilst the Chinese central piece lost its function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Near Eastern differentiated pieces and the Indian race pieces were&#xA;  adopted in the as yet unknown, early form of the Chinese chess game&#xA;  Xiangqi. This led to a game in China which, under the influence of&#xA;  Liubo and Weiqi, experienced its own separate development, the&#xA;  individual phases of which we still know little about. The river on&#xA;  the Xiangqi board, unknown in all other chess games, almost certainly&#xA;  came from Liubo, the central field of which according to Röllicke&#xA;  was called &quot;Water&quot;. I regard this a further, very important indication&#xA;  of the kinship of old games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These games evolved in parallel and influenced each other. Chess historian &lt;a href=&quot;http://ukbookworld.com/book-for-sale/tonypeterson/1510/linder-chess-old-russia-translated-rice&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Isaac Linder&lt;/a&gt; suggests that the Kushan Empire, a region located at the crossroads of the places that gave birth to the games Josten suggests as being the core influences on chess' development, might be the birthplace of the chess game. Linder has presented pieces of a game that clearly resembles chess but predate shatranj. It is not impossible that the game of shatranj itself was influenced by this game, as elephant-like pieces were among those uncovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By combining those two sources, it is possible to conclude that the game of shatranj evolved from an earlier game that appeared in the Kushan Empire between 50 BC and 200 AD as a result of the combination of concepts borrowed from sophisticated games found in nearby regions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chris' answer relates very well how the Muslim world came upon the game of chess/shatranj, and also hints at the fact that the muslims probably did not invent it, but rather propagated it. I hope this answer helped you understand the birth of this wonderful game. I highly suggest reading the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gerhard-josten.de/app/download/17252333/CHESS%2B-%2BA%2BLIVING%2BFOSSIL.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Josten article&lt;/a&gt;, as it is well documented and referenced, as well as being a fascinating read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7698" LastEditorUserId="36637" LastEditDate="2018-07-07T13:30:10.827" LastActivityDate="2018-07-07T13:30:10.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14236" CreationDate="2012-12-27T00:43:16.557" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it is toxic, causing convulsions, dehydration and death in mammals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The toxicities of Na+, Cl- and Mg++ ions in sea water and in artificial solutions were investigated. Convulsions commonly followed intraperitoneal injection of hypertonic salt or sucrose solutions in rats, but the convulsions due to sea water and NaCl solutions differed from sucrose or urea convulsions. Respiratory distress preceded death. Even in thirst, little sea water was taken voluntarily. Salt solutions or sea water given by stomach tube caused dehydration. Plasma Cl- concentrations reached the same low level after lethal doses by either route. Dogs and seals vomited sea water from the stomach. Seals were not more resistant than the other mammals. The lethal dose of sea water for rats was decreased by previous dehydration. Some adaptation appeared after repeated sublethal doses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/19501405591.html;jsessionid=BED42624968E669396AAAF5019585015?gitCommit=4.13.11-15-g9672536&quot;&gt;Toxicity of sea water in mammals&lt;/a&gt; by ALBRECHT, C. B., Journal&#xA;American Journal of Physiology 1950 Vol. 163 pp. 370-385&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a well cited 1950's article so I assume it's fairly authoritative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T00:43:16.557" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14255" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14426" CreationDate="2012-12-27T02:30:35.300" Score="2" ViewCount="4043" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://ccpurewater.org/Phyllis%20Mullenix.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this CC Pure Water article&lt;/a&gt;, Dr. Phyllis Mullenix was fired from her research position three days after it was announced that her research into the neurotoxicity of fluoride was to be published.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a quote from the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then in 1994, after refining her research and findings, Dr. Mullenix&#xA;  presented her results to the Journal of Neurotoxicology and Teratology&#xA;  [5], considered probably the world's most respected publication in&#xA;  that field. Three days after she joyfully announced to the Forsyth&#xA;  Institute that she had been accepted for publication by the journal,&#xA;  she was dismissed from her position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the research publication in question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phyllis J. Mullenix, Pamela K. Denbesten, Ann Schunior, William J. Kernan, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/089203629400070T&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Neurotoxicity of sodium fluoride in rats&lt;/a&gt;, Neurotoxicology and Teratology, Volume 17, Issue 2, March–April 1995, Pages 169–177, DOI: 10.1016/0892-0362(94)00070-T&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the claim about her losing her position after publication true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T03:36:18.680" LastActivityDate="2017-07-20T02:06:19.897" Title="Was Phyllis Mullenix fired after publishing research on neurotoxicity of fluoride?" Tags="|history|fluoride|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14260" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14268" CreationDate="2012-12-27T06:23:58.013" Score="23" ViewCount="12606" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the following infographic's comparison of Iran and the USA accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HPV0gm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Countries attacked by bombing, sabotage or attempted government overthrow since World War Two image&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not skeptical of the claim that the USA has attacked a lot of countries, but I am skeptical of the claim that, based on the criteria used for including countries on the &quot;USA&quot; list, that no countries would be included in the &quot;Iran&quot; list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Text in the infographic (largely copied from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cape-coral-daily-breeze.com/page/content.detail/id/532086/War-and-Peace.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this letter to the editor&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Countries attacked by bombing, sabotage, or attempted government&#xA;  overthrow since World War Two&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Iran&lt;/strong&gt; (none)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USA&lt;/strong&gt; (emphasis added by original image)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;China 1945-46, Syria 1949,&#xA;  Korea 1950-53, China 1950-53, &lt;strong&gt;Iran 1953&lt;/strong&gt;, Guatemala 1954, Tibet&#xA;  1955-70s, Indonesia 1958, Cuba 1959, Democratic Republic of the Congo&#xA;  1960-65, Iraq 1960-63, Dominican Republic 1961, Vietnam 1961-73,&#xA;  Brazil 1964, Belgian Congo 1964, Guatemala 1964, Laos 1964-73,&#xA;  Dominican Republic 1965-66, Peru 1965, Greece 1967, Guatemala 1967-69,&#xA;  Cambodia 1969-70, Chile 1970-73, Argentina 1976, Turkey 1980, Poland&#xA;  1980-81, El Salvador 1981-92, Nicaragua 1981-1990, Cambodia 1980-95,&#xA;  Angola 1980, Lebanon 1982-84, Grenada 1983-84, Philippines 1986, Libya&#xA;  1986, &lt;strong&gt;Iran 1987-88&lt;/strong&gt;, Libya 1989, Panama 1989-90, Iraq 1991, Kuwait&#xA;  1991, Somalia 1992-94, Iraq 1992-1996, Bosnia 1995, &lt;strong&gt;Iran 1998&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;  Sudan 1998, Afghanistan 1998, Yugoslavia Serbia 1999, Afghanistan&#xA;  2001, Iraq 2002-2003, Somalia 2006-2007, &lt;strong&gt;Iran 2005-present&lt;/strong&gt;, Libya&#xA;  2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Occupy London logo]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-08-10T08:21:22.917" LastActivityDate="2020-04-18T08:05:01.880" Title="List comparing countries attacked by Iran and the USA accurate?" Tags="|united-states|politics|iran|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14262" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22835" CreationDate="2012-12-27T08:16:02.323" Score="7" ViewCount="727" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0967954681&quot;&gt;According to this book description&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Matthias Rath, M.D., an internationally respected cardiovascular&#xA;  researcher, asserts that high cholesterol is not the actual cause of&#xA;  heart disease. Bears, for example, have average cholesterol levels of&#xA;  400 milligrams per deciliter of blood, but they don’t suffer heart&#xA;  attacks. Why? According to Dr. Rath, it is because bears produce large&#xA;  amounts of vitamin C, which optimizes collagen production and ensures&#xA;  maximum stability of their artery walls. Dr. Rath’s research&#xA;  identifies the true cause of heart disease as a deficiency of vitamin&#xA;  C &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that Vitamin C deficiency is the cause of heart attacks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T14:59:02.280" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T14:05:39.103" Title="Are heart attacks due to Vitamin C deficiency?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|vitamins|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14263" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14264" CreationDate="2012-12-27T08:23:14.973" Score="9" ViewCount="1965" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://soar.wichita.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10057/646/t06123.pdf;jsessionid=90154ED7ADA5BE195C8F55D684960883?sequence=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;thesis&lt;/a&gt;, the following explanation was given for why the majority of people are right handed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Primitive hunters needed to protect their most vital organ of the body&#xA;(the heart), so their left hand was used to hold the shield.  The&#xA;right hand was used to hold the sword or knife.  Therefore the right&#xA;hand acquired greater agility, which was passed down through the&#xA;generations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that people are right handed because they had to hold a shield in their left hand in order to protect their heart when hunting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-03-20T23:26:23.983" Title="Are most people right handed, because they had to protect their heart?" Tags="|evolution|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14263" CreationDate="2012-12-27T09:43:29.950" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The shield-holding idea is not well supported by the references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fisher's thesis &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://soar.wichita.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10057/646/t06123.pdf;jsessionid=90154ED7ADA5BE195C8F55D684960883?sequence=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Psychosocal differences between left-handed and right-handed children&lt;/a&gt;&quot; seems to mainly evaluating consequences not causation. She cites &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coates 1996&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hollingworth 1923&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the references section these are given as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coates, E.F. (1996). The left handed: &quot;Their sinister&quot; history.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hollingworth L.S. (1923). Special talents and defects, their significance for education.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the first paper was written by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&amp;amp;_&amp;amp;ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED399519&amp;amp;ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&amp;amp;accno=ED399519&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Costas, Elaine Fowler&lt;/a&gt; not by Coates. (I've put in a request for this paper)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other theories about left-handedness claim that left-handers had an advantage in combat. It seems to me that these two ideas are both plausible and yet are contradictory. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handedness#Left-handedness_and_close_combat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Faurie and Raymond&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The location of the human heart is approximately central although it is skewed significantly to the left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VF1Bu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;diagram human torso with location of heart&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kW4ys.png&quot; alt=&quot;diagram human torso with location of heart&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rT1s7.gif&quot; alt=&quot;diagram human torso with location of heart&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Images from &lt;a href=&quot;http://hap1nuo1group3.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/chapter-7a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Surface_anatomy_of_the_heart.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forensicmed.co.uk/pathology/sudden-cardiac-death/cardiac-anatomy-and-physiology-revision/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any benefit from holding a shield in the left hand is therefore perhaps marginal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Preliminary conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The selection of handedness is at least partly (but far from wholly) genetic and its origins are not definitively known. No single idea is likely to wholly explain the phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2013-04-18T16:18:38.890" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T16:18:38.890" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9887" CreationDate="2012-12-27T11:11:53.977" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ears cross hemispheres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.soundtherapyperth.com/overview/rightear.php&quot;&gt;http://www.soundtherapyperth.com/overview/rightear.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How you interpret the conversation, based on how well you hear it and which hemisphere is first to have contact it, may be affected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is currently research based on how people hold their cellphones based on left or right brain dominance: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.henryford.com/body.cfm?id=46335&amp;amp;action=detail&amp;amp;ref=1540&quot;&gt;http://www.henryford.com/body.cfm?id=46335&amp;amp;action=detail&amp;amp;ref=1540&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But someone should research whether people are more emotionally responsive, or rationally biased based on left or right ear cell-phone conversations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10855" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T11:11:53.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14267" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14276" CreationDate="2012-12-27T13:01:09.937" Score="19" ViewCount="2272" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prism_%28optics%29&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before Isaac Newton, it was believed that white light was colorless,&#xA;  and that the prism itself produced the color. Newton's experiments&#xA;  demonstrated that all the colors already existed in the light in a&#xA;  heterogeneous fashion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas in an article titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.it/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=%20%20muslim%20scientists%20and%20their%20inventions%20an%20untold%20history%20of%20science&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CDUQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://wb.gov.in/BanglarMukh/Download?FilePath=/alfresco/d/d/workspace/SpacesStore/87190ea1-71e1-4817-893f-8d48a8336644/Jul_10_17.pdf&amp;amp;ei=Q0PcULLVEoOE4gSeyIDgCw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGvZnrNXnuOqJvdwVDDGqIKP2FQOQ&amp;amp;bvm=bv.1355534169,d.bGE&amp;amp;cad=rja&quot;&gt;Muslim scientists and their inventions - An untold history of science&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, by Syed Samsul Alam, the following story was cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1000 CE, Al-Haytham discovered that white light consists of various&#xA;  rays of coloured light. In the late 13 th and early 14 th centuries,&#xA;  Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (1236-1311 CE) and his student Kamal al-Din&#xA;  al-Farisi (1260- 1320 CE) continued the work of Ibn al- Haytham, and&#xA;  they were the first to give the correct explanations for the&#xA;  phenomenon of rainbow. Al-Farisi published his findings in his Kitab&#xA;  Tanqih al-Manazir [The Revision of (Ibn al-Haytham’s ) Optics]. Newton&#xA;  did make original discoveries, but this was not one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Newton, or Al-Haytham, discover that white light consists of various rays of coloured light? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="8702" LastEditDate="2013-04-29T22:55:54.633" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T18:28:41.283" Title="Did Newton discover that white light consists of various rays of coloured light?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14260" CreationDate="2012-12-27T14:18:25.720" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer predated the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemeni_Civil_War_(2015%E2%80%93present)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yemeni Civil war&lt;/a&gt;, so let's prepend the fact that for several years now, Iran-backed Houthis rebels not only waged the civil war in Yemen, but also attacked Saudi Arabia (including by missiles supplied by Iran specifically for the purpose).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;List of direct (not by proxy) Iranian assassinations on non-Iranian sovereign soil &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1983 bombing of French paratroopers' barracks&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1985 - France - General Gholam Ali Oveissi&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1987 - UK - Amir Parviz, Ali Tavakoli, and Nader Tavakoli&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1989 - Austria - Dr. Abdolrahman Ghassemlou, Abdollah Ghaeri-Azar, and Fazil Rassoul&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1990 - Switzerland - Kazem Radjavi&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1992 - Germany - Sadegh Sharafkandi&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;2011 - USA+Saudi Arabia (Attempted assassination of Saudi ambassador to USA) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, Iran has been tied to at least 162 extrajudicial killings around the world since 1979 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iranhrdc.org/english/publications/reports/3152-no-safe-haven-iran-s-global-assassination-campaign.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;List of countries that Hezbollah &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt; attacked:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1983 and on - Lebanon. Up to and including assassinating a Prime Minister.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1983 - USA (Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1983 - Kuwait - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/etc/cron.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;U.S. Embassy Bombing&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1985 - Greece (Hijacking of Athens-originated TWA flight 847)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1996 and many others - Saudi Arabia, including in-country (1996 Khobar tower bombing (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/terrorism-charges-have-been-brought-against-13-members-of-the-pro-iran-saudi-hizballah&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;)) and diplomats' assassinations elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thailand (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldthreats.com/?p=10108&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/tracking-the-hezbollah-connection-in-thailand/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1992 and many other times - Turkey - murder of a security chief of Israeli Embassy. Collateral damage included 2 Turks dead, and 1 Turkish child injured. Several more attacks&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1992, 1994 - Argentina (29 killed, 140 injured in 1992 in bombing of Israeli Embassy, 85 killed and 300 injured in 1994 in bombing AMIA building in Buenos Aires)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1995 and on - Firing rockets at civilian targets in Israel&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;2012 - Azerbaijan - Plans to attack Israel embassy and Jewish civilian targets&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;2012 - Georgia - Plans to attack Israel Embassy&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;2012 - Bulgaria - Terrorist attack on Israeli tourists.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;List of countries where Iran fomented revolution or government overthrow, including as part of unrest in Middle East in 2011-2012:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bahrain - See timeline in this Stratfor article quoted &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitmail.com/email/51115095/10/Iranian-Covert-Activity-in-Bahrain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, as far back as 1981 Iranian-backed coup.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Iraq (&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-07-05/world/35237463_1_kataib-hezbollah-weapons-shiite-militia-groups&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5314.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500257_162-2458318.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_insurgency.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/1300.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42496&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the Iran-Iraq War (the longest war in the 20th century). Iraq was the initial aggressor, attacking Iran, but Iran's refusal to end the war and the brutality of its indiscriminate ballistic missile attacks on cities (Iraq did that too) cannot be ignored.&lt;a href=&quot;http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-long-shadow-the-iran-iraq-war-11535&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;The Long Shadow of the Iran-Iraq War&quot;&lt;/a&gt; via &lt;em&gt;National Interest&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Syria (al-arabiya (28 May 2012). &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webcitation.org/6AHaP6csJ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Iran confirms sending troops to Syria, says bloodshed otherwise would be worse&quot;. Archived from the original on 29 August 2012&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Afghanistan - support for Taliban (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/30/mcchrystal-evidence-is-clear-iran-aids-taliban/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/10/25/quds.force/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Israel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday Israel has no roots in the Middle East and would be &quot;&lt;strong&gt;eliminated&lt;/strong&gt;,&quot; ignoring a U.N. warning to avoid incendiary rhetoric ahead of the annual General Assembly session (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/24/us-un-assembly-ahmadinejad-idUSBRE88N0HF20120924&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reuters&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the USA list is somewhat inaccurate, to say the least:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kuwait wasn't &quot;attacked by USA&quot;. It was liberated from being occupied by Iraq!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Neither &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;was Korea&lt;/a&gt;. US was part of UN forces commissioned to defend South Korea from aggression from North Korea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Neither was Somalia - it was a UN military operation where US acted under Resolution 794 to support humanitarian relief.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sources:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iranhrdc.org/english/publications/reports/3152-no-safe-haven-iran-s-global-assassination-campaign.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; Hezbollah:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Its [Hezbollah] leaders were inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini, and its forces were trained and organized by a contingent of Iranian Revolutionary Guards (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt;,  Adam Shatz (April 29, 2004). &quot;In Search of Hezbollah&quot;. The New York Review of Books. Retrieved August 14, 2006)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/etc/cron.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;: Dr. Matthew Levitt; Director, Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence; The Washington Institute for Near East Policy; “Iranian Terror Operations on American Soil&quot;; Testimony before a joint hearing of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence and Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Management October 26, 2011. &lt;a href=&quot;http://homeland.house.gov/sites/homeland.house.gov/files/Testimony%20Levitt.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Link PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2018-05-11T12:59:55.670" LastActivityDate="2018-05-11T12:59:55.670" CommentCount="29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12411" CreationDate="2012-12-27T15:39:28.030" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;A critical review of the existing evidence for sun-screens has been published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to it, the concerns about cancer are not well-evidenced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Burnett, M. E. and Wang, S. Q. (2011), &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0781.2011.00557.x/full&quot;&gt;Current sunscreen controversies: a critical review&lt;/a&gt;. Photodermatology, Photoimmunology &amp;amp; Photomedicine, 27: 58–67. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0781.2011.00557.x&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They looked at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether sunscreens stop skin-cancers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether sunscreens hinder the production of Vitamin D.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether the controversial ingredients were shown to cause harm, specifically: &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;oxybenzone and hormonal homeostasis, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;nanoparticles of zinc oxide (ZnO) and titanium dioxide (TiO2) and toxicity through the skin.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;retinyl palmitate and cancer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this question, only the last two issues are relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Nanoparticles&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nanoparticle debate extends past just sunscreens, into other personal care and cosmetic products. They are widely used and have had a good safety record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, some studies in rats suggested they may be photogenotoxic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Considerable data assessing the potential toxicity of these materials in sunscreens has been published to date, and the studies referenced above were performed in controlled environments on healthy, undamaged skin. It has been established that the stratum corneum is an effective barrier preventing the entry of nano-ZnO and -TiO2 into deeper layers of the skin. Nonetheless, it remains to be determined whether a greater degree of penetration occurs through skin that is damaged, diseased or otherwise compromised. At the present time, however, the available data do not provide conclusive evidence demonstrating that damaged skin leads to an increased penetration of nanoparticles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, if your skin is undamaged, the nanoparticles can't get through. If your skin is damaged, there is no good evidence they get through, but more research is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Retinyl Palmate&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In conclusion, the available evidence from in vitro and animal studies fails to demonstrate convincing evidence indicating that retinyl palmitate imparts an increased risk of skin cancer. Furthermore, while no human data examining this relationship are available, decades of clinical observations support the notion that retinyl palmitate is safe for use in topical applications such as sunscreens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given sunscreens prevent Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and sunburn (although this study claims it is inconclusive in preventing melanomas and and basal cell carcinoma (BCC)), their use seems justified despite the fears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-27T15:46:44.523" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T15:46:44.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7962" CreationDate="2012-12-27T15:42:12.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer copied in part from: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/12411/does-sun-screen-cause-cancer&quot;&gt;Does sun screen cause cancer?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A critical review of the existing evidence for sun-screens has been published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Burnett, M. E. and Wang, S. Q. (2011), Current sunscreen controversies: a critical review. Photodermatology, Photoimmunology &amp;amp; Photomedicine, 27: 58–67. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-0781.2011.00557.x&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They looked at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether sunscreens stop skin-cancers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether sunscreens hinder the production of Vitamin D.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether the controversial ingredients were shown to cause harm, specifically:&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;oxybenzone and hormonal homeostasis,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;retinyl palmitate and cancer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;nanoparticles of zinc oxide (ZnO) and titanium dioxide (TiO2) and toxicity through the skin.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this question, only the last issue is relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Nanoparticles&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nanoparticle debate extends past just sunscreens, into other personal care and cosmetic products. They are widely used and have had a good safety record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, some studies in rats suggested they may be photogenotoxic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Considerable data assessing the potential toxicity of these materials in sunscreens has been published to date, and the studies referenced above were performed in controlled environments on healthy, undamaged skin. It has been established that the stratum corneum is an effective barrier preventing the entry of nano-ZnO and -TiO2 into deeper layers of the skin. Nonetheless, it remains to be determined whether a greater degree of penetration occurs through skin that is damaged, diseased or otherwise compromised. At the present time, however, the available data do not provide conclusive evidence demonstrating that damaged skin leads to an increased penetration of nanoparticles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, if your skin is undamaged, the nanoparticles can't get through. If your skin is damaged, there is no good evidence they get through, but more research is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T12:55:00.960" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14271" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14273" CreationDate="2012-12-27T17:05:15.440" Score="17" ViewCount="2461" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read that here in this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nteu280.org/Issues/Fluoride/NTEU280-Fluoride.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.nteu280.org/Issues/Fluoride/NTEU280-Fluoride.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EPA fired the Office of Drinking Water's chief toxicologist, Dr. William Marcus, who also was our local union's treasurer at the time, for refusing to remain silent on the cancer risk issue. The judge who heard the lawsuit he brought against EPA over the firing made that finding - that EPA fired him over his fluoride work and not for the phony reason put forward by EPA management at his dismissal. Dr. Marcus won his lawsuit and is again at work at EPA. Documentation is available on request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10822" LastEditorUserId="8436" LastEditDate="2016-03-24T10:29:06.593" LastActivityDate="2018-05-15T06:19:00.823" Title="Did the EPA fire a toxicologist, Dr. William Marcus, for refusing to remain silent on the cancer risk of fluoride?" Tags="|history|biology|politics|dentistry|fluoride|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4838" CreationDate="2012-12-27T17:20:17.447" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;While the Swedish study brings new data, it is inconsistent with other recent studies and suffers from similar flaws to many other studies reporting positive results&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Swedish study referred to in the question (full text &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spandidos-publications.com/ijo/38/5/1465&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;available here&lt;/a&gt; as a pdf) is typical of many studies on the effect of mobile phone use. It uses case-control retrospective studies starting with the population of people observed to have gliomas in a particular area. It uses self-administered questionnaires on groups of diagnosed patients and on a &amp;quot;matching&amp;quot; group of non-sufferers selected to be demographically similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are at least two key issues that affect the reliability of this sort of study. One is that the matching does not adequately eliminate some special characteristic of the group suffering cancer. The other is that questionnaires, especially when asking about behaviour a long time in the past, are unreliable and subject to recall bias especially in those patients seeking to blame something other than random chance for their condition. It is extremely hard to eliminate such bias and just as hard to estimate how big the bias might be. For relatively rare conditions the error bars are already large and the possibility of bias is also large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is worth finding ways to test the resulting statistics for credibility in ways that avoid the particular potential sources of error. For example, what would we expect to see in a different population if the estimated effects were applied there? This has been done in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e1147&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent BMJ paper&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BMJ paper built models of the expected rates of gliomas in the population of the USA using estimated effects based on the Swedish study and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/39/3/675?ijkey=35e545b789e60c6b36f1036d82bc08c697f74a2c&amp;amp;keytype2=tf_ipsecsha&amp;amp;linkType=ABST&amp;amp;journalCode=intjepid&amp;amp;resid=39/3/675&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Interphone study&lt;/a&gt; (which reported much lower risks than the Swedish study). They then compared the estimated incidence of gliomas to those predicted by various versions of the models (allowing for a variety of possible latency periods and so on.) Note, critically, there is no obvious trend in the population incidence of gliomas since before mobile phones became popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Age specific incidence rates of glioma remained generally constant in 1992-2008 (−0.02% change per year, 95% confidence interval −0.28% to 0.25%), a period coinciding with a substantial increase in mobile phone use from close to 0% to almost 100% of the US population. If phone use was associated with glioma risk, we expected glioma incidence rates to be higher than those observed, even with a latency period of 10 years and low relative risks (1.5). Based on relative risks of glioma by tumour latency and cumulative hours of phone use in the Swedish study, predicted rates should have been at least 40% higher than observed rates in 2008. However, predicted glioma rates based on the small proportion of highly exposed people in the Interphone study could be consistent with the observed data. Results remained valid if we used either non-regular users or low users of mobile phones as the baseline category, and if we constrained relative risks to be more than 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Raised risks of glioma with mobile phone use, as reported by one (Swedish) study&lt;/strong&gt; forming the basis of the IARC’s re-evaluation of mobile phone exposure, &lt;strong&gt;are not consistent with observed incidence trends in US population data&lt;/strong&gt;, although the US data could be consistent with the modest excess risks in the Interphone study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The meaning of their comment on the Interphone results is that the scale of the effect seen there is not large enough to be clearly seen in the whole US population. So even if it has avoided all the biases possible in these studies, the effect is so small as to be hard to confirm and probably not large enough to worry about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the overall conclusion is that while some studies produce estimates of significant (though small) effects, these are not consistent with the flat incidence of gliomas in large populations where mobile phone use has skyrocketed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T19:23:45.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14273" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14271" CreationDate="2012-12-27T18:28:20.633" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reference - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kkc.com/files/92tsc05a.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marcus v. United States Environmental Protection Agency, 92-TSC-5 (ALJ Dec. 3, 1992)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contentions of The Parties&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. William Marcus (Complainant) alleges that he was subjected to a hostile work environment and later terminated because of a memo he drafted and released that warned of potential harm from the use of fluoride, contrary to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's official position concerning the safety of fluoride use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) (Respondent) contends that it terminated Dr. Marcus after an investigation by the Inspector General's office, which alleged that Dr. Marcus was (1) using official information for private gain; (2) engaging in private business activities that resulted in or created the appearance of a conflict of interest; (3) failing to follow established leave procedures; and (4) failing to obtain administrative approval for outside employment. E.P.A. contends that while it was aware of Dr. Marcus' controversial memo, it was not a factor in the decision to terminate Dr. Marcus, employment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The judge ruled in favour of Dr Marcus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because three of the four charges against Dr. Marcus are not supportable in fact or law and therefore do not support the termination decision; and because no other E.P.A. employee who committed violations similar to those committed by Dr. Marcus was fired from her or his employment at E.P.A. and considering the treatment Dr. Marcus received from his supervisors before and after he issued his fluoride memo, I conclude that the reasons given for Dr. Marcus, firing were a pretext and that &lt;strong&gt;his employment was terminated because he publicly questioned and opposed E.P.A.'s fluoride policy&lt;/strong&gt;. This action by the agency constitutes a wrongful termination of Dr. Marcus, employment under applicable law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-27T18:28:20.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14267" CreationDate="2012-12-27T22:36:07.327" Score="23" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Did Newton, or Al-Haytham, discover that white light consists of various rays of coloured light?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far as we know from their writings, both knew that coloured light could be &lt;em&gt;produced&lt;/em&gt; from white light. Both wrote books which discussed, for example rainbows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Al-Haythem certainly lived earlier (965-1030) than Newton (1642-1727) so Al-Haytham understood and wrote about many principles of optics before Newton was born.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it seems that Al-Haytham didn't have a complete explanation, consistent with our current understanding of how the colours of a rainbow are produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kZcCtT1ZeaEC&amp;amp;pg=PA141&amp;amp;dq=&amp;amp;hl=en#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Rainbow Bridge Rainbows in Art, Myth, and Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;  Raymond L. Lee, Jr writes of the considerable achievements of Alhazen (Al-Haytham) but suggests some aspects that he was unable to complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/L9AAM.png&quot; alt=&quot;extract&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kWj83.png&quot; alt=&quot;extract&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibttm.org/ENG/museum/collection/3-6.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Istanbul Museum of the History of Science and Technology in Islam&lt;/a&gt; have a work on optics that states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Known in europe as alhazen, this &#xA;  eminent mathematician, astronomer and physicist, &#xA;  who came to the fore with a new optics arrived &#xA;  at by systematic experiments, developed his own &#xA;  meteorological−optical explanation for the phenomenon of the rainbow in his treatises on the circular &#xA;  burning glasses and on the rainbow and the halo.&#xA;  although with his explanation of the origin of the &#xA;  rainbow through reflection on a concave spherical &#xA;  cloud, Ibn al−Haitam did not understand the true &#xA;  state of affairs, nevertheless, he laid a solid foundation for further experiments which, after about 20 &#xA;  years, led to a revolutionary breakthrough.&#xA;  It was Kamaladdin Abu l−Hasan Muhammad b. &#xA;  al−Hasan al−Farisi (d. 718/1318), a versatile natural scientist, who declared the explanation of the &#xA;  preceding scholars about the origin of the rainbow &#xA;  through simple reflection of light on drops of water &#xA;  to be incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A step that Newton took, which (so far as I know) Al-Haytham did not was&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Newton set up a prism near his window, and projected a beautiful spectrum 22 feet onto the far wall. Further, to prove that the prism was not coloring the light, he refracted the light back together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/bh.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Newton and the Color Spectrum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Newton] gave a detailed explanation of his discoveries in public lectures between 1669 and 1671 (published in 1728 as Lectiones Opticae) and in a paper to the Royal Society in 1672. In 1675, he presented another paper which described further experiments on the colour of thin films and plates, and which put forward a corpuscular theory of light which was surprisingly similar to the modern theory of light quanta. Newton’s Opticks, first published in 1704, went through many editions and was the most influential work on experimental science for almost all of the century. Amongst other things, it explained how raindrops refract sunlight to form rainbows. This was the &lt;strong&gt;first chromatic explanation&lt;/strong&gt; of a phenomenon that had fascinated scientific writers, including Aristotle, &lt;strong&gt;Alhazen&lt;/strong&gt;, Vitello and Antonio de Dominis, since the account of Noah’s Ark was first written down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.college-optometrists.org/en/knowledge-centre/museyeum/online_exhibitions/observatory/newton.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Newton and the Colour of Light&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was most likely Newton who first demonstrated that white light &lt;em&gt;consisted&lt;/em&gt; of various rays of coloured light. He demonstrated that white light could be &lt;em&gt;split apart&lt;/em&gt; into coloured light which could then be recombined to re-form white light thus proving that white light consisted of a mixture of coloured light. I've not found any evidence that anyone prior to Newton was reported as having reached this conclusion and provided convincing proof. There is some evidence that Al-Haytham did not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the works he published and from the references to him by later scholars and scientists  it is evident that Al-Haytham was a fine scholar and scientist. There is no need to attribute to him discoveries that he did not make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newton famously said &lt;em&gt;&quot;If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-12-28T00:02:53.880" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T00:02:53.880" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14277" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14278" CreationDate="2012-12-27T22:38:16.757" Score="5" ViewCount="1539" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen on Facebook the following image being shared:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/E1gDxl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Reader voices strong opinion on atheists&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Letters to the Editor&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reader voices strong opinion on atheists&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's time to stomp out atheists in America. The majority of Americans would love to see atheists kicked out of America. If you don't believe in God, then get out of this country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The United States is based on having freedom of religion, speech, etc., which means you can believe in God any way you want (Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, etc.), but you must believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't recall freedom of religion meaning no religion. Our currency even says, &amp;quot;In God We Trust.&amp;quot; So, to all the atheists in America: Get off of our country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Atheists have caused the ruin of this great nation by taking prayer out of our schools and being able to practice what can only be called evil. I don't care if they have never committed a crime, atheists are the reason crime is rampant&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alice Shannon&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Soldotna&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this a complete hoax (i.e. no newspaper ever printed this hate speech)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this a troll (i.e. a newspaper did print it, but the author just wanted to grab attention)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:07:48.453" Title="Is the &quot;Reader voices strong opinion on atheists&quot; letter a hoax?" Tags="|united-states|religion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14277" CreationDate="2012-12-27T22:51:31.947" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/atheists.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; has investigated this exact issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude it &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; printed January 29, 2007 in an Alaskan newspaper, &lt;em&gt;Peninsula Clarion&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the editors were contacted by the putative author who claimed it was a hoax. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“While I’ve been thoroughly entertained by the overwhelming number of passionate responses to my January 29th letter, it should probably be noted that, as at least one writer speculated, it was a complete joke. I think it has run its course and at this time space in the Letters to the Editor section should be reserved for more important issues.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The newspaper published &lt;a href=&quot;http://peninsulaclarion.com/stories/030907/oped_0309ope001.shtml&quot;&gt;their side of the story&lt;/a&gt; in an editorial on March 9, 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reader claims the letter was lifted from a South Carolinan blog, but the editors did not provide a link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2012-12-28T02:55:21.073" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T02:55:21.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14280" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-28T00:35:05.503" Score="1" ViewCount="1324" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's what I read here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/nutritional_disorders/mineral_deficiency_and_toxicity/fluorine.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/nutritional_disorders/mineral_deficiency_and_toxicity/fluorine.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No tests to diagnose toxicity are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10822" LastEditorUserId="1708" LastEditDate="2012-12-28T15:53:14.103" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T15:53:14.103" Title="Are there currently any tests available to diagnose fluoride or fluorine toxicity?" Tags="|biology|chemistry|fluoride|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14280" CreationDate="2012-12-28T02:29:19.953" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The scary implication here is that you or your children could be dying of fluoride poisoning, and there is no way your doctor could ever know, because there isn't a single blood test that will report on the fact. The truth is that the medical profession can diagnose fluoride poisoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;em&gt;paragraph above&lt;/em&gt; the line you cite:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The earliest signs are chalky-white, irregularly distributed patches on the surface of the enamel; these patches become stained yellow or brown, producing a characteristic mottled appearance. Severe toxicity weakens the enamel, pitting its surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, long-term fluoride poisoning has a distinct medical sign, especially in children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Diagnoses of Fluoride Toxicity is documented by &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/814774-overview&quot;&gt;Medscape&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It discusses patient presentation, and differential diagnoses, so other poisonings are not confused with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It suggests the following tests when fluoride poisoning is suspected:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Serum electrolytes&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Hyperkalemia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Hypocalcemia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Hypomagnesemia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Hypoglycemia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Electrocardiogram and cardiac monitoring&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Effects of hyperkalemia (peaked T waves, widened QRS, bradycardia, atrioventricular [AV] nodal blockade)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Effects of hypocalcemia (prolonged corrected QT interval [QTc])&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Serum and urine fluoride levels are not available for ED evaluation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Perform a Dextrostix evaluation (fingerstick) on all patients with seizure and altered mental status because of the risk for hypoglycemia with systemic fluoride toxicity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101209164148.htm&quot;&gt;fluoride levels can also be measured in water&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T02:29:19.953" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14283" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-28T06:10:17.727" Score="12" ViewCount="22050" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many videos on youtube in which permanent magnets are used to make a motor. Although it might be possible in an ideal environment (e.g. no friction). As these devices are rotating continously means that they are producing energy to overcome friction and other energy losses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really possible to produce energy only using permanent magnets (without using other energy source other than initial force as shown in videos)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some videos:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PDeK6rprA4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Free Energy Magnet Motor (Engine)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT9s33X9D4I&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Xpenzif free energy screw magnet motor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yei0NMqUaZ8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Steorn concept Permanent Magnet Moter Test&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DvPLFX5gwA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Free energy 1 magnet disk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strike&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0oUaPZ_wF8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Removed video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://peswiki.com/index.php/OS:Screw-Magnet_Motor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Screw Magnet Motor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHVBu77jz4w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;perpetual motion machine selfrunning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/q/2167/847&quot;&gt;Can magnets rotate infinitely?&lt;/a&gt;  (I was suggested to ask it here as well)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:12.727" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T02:07:26.587" Title="Can permanent magnets be exploited to create energy?" Tags="|energy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14283" CreationDate="2012-12-28T09:20:26.423" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The old dream of a Perpetual motion, will never come true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reference&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A more obscure category is a perpetual motion machine of the third&#xA;  kind, usually (but not always)[5] defined as one that completely&#xA;  eliminates friction and other dissipative forces, to maintain motion&#xA;  forever (due to its mass inertia). Third in this case refers solely to&#xA;  the position in the above classification scheme, not the third law of&#xA;  thermodynamics. Although it is impossible to make such a&#xA;  machine,[6][7] as dissipation can never be 100% eliminated in a&#xA;  mechanical system, it is nevertheless possible to get very close to&#xA;  this ideal (see examples in the Low Friction section). Such a machine&#xA;  would not serve as a source of energy but would have utility as a&#xA;  perpetual energy storage device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use of the term &quot;impossible&quot; and perpetual motion&#xA;  The seemingly mysterious ability of magnets to influence motion at a&#xA;  distance without any apparent energy source has long appealed to&#xA;  inventors. One of the earliest examples of a magnetic motor was&#xA;  proposed by Wilkins and has been widely copied since: it consists of a&#xA;  ramp with a magnet at the top, which pulled a metal ball up the ramp.&#xA;  Near the magnet was a small hole that was supposed to allow the ball&#xA;  to drop under the ramp and return to the bottom, where a flap allowed&#xA;  it to return to the top again. The device simply could not work: any&#xA;  magnet strong enough to pull the ball up the ramp would necessarily be&#xA;  too powerful to allow it to drop through the hole. Faced with this&#xA;  problem, more modern versions typically use a series of ramps and&#xA;  magnets, positioned so the ball is to be handed off from one magnet to&#xA;  another as it moves. The problem remains the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10701" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T09:20:26.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14283" CreationDate="2012-12-28T13:20:10.850" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_motion&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a scientific consensus that perpetual motion in an isolated system violates either the first law of thermodynamics, the second law of thermodynamics, or both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=236AD2358A2C122EACC5E6B0F6D28BAF.journals?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=2943792&quot;&gt;long history&lt;/a&gt; of different types of failed perpetual motion machines - enough for &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=022yYXnS_GQC&amp;amp;lpg=PA9&amp;amp;ots=0DNyNC9VY6&amp;amp;dq=perpetual%20motion&amp;amp;lr&amp;amp;pg=PA15#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=perpetual%20motion&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;books to be written&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kevin Kilty has written a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kilty.com/pmotion.htm&quot;&gt;more readable discussion&lt;/a&gt; on the types of perpetual motion machine, and provides a categorisation of the types of false claims that they make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very quick review of the list of videos, and we are able to categorise them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Free Energy Magnet Motor (Engine): Category 5 = Fraud&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that the electromagnets in a simple electric motor were replaced by permanent magnets, requiring no external power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It only takes primary-school science to understand this is a fake. &lt;a href=&quot;http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/motor.htm&quot;&gt;Electric motors&lt;/a&gt; require the polarity of the magnetism to change as the axle turns. A permanent magnet would simple freeze the axle in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I speculate a hidden battery, although I also considered an electromagnet hidden behind the carpet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Xpenzif free energy screw magnet motor: Category 6 - Perpetually Out Of Balance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This design will not work. The magnets will not pull the next screw-head forward, as it would be dragged back by the other magnet closest to a screw-head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video shown would be easily faked, as the base of the axle was not shown.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Steorn concept Permanent Magnet Moter Test: Category 8 - Machines without losses or friction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only a prototype, which was not an isolated system, was shown. The device is manually powered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This design will not work. What is shown is a prototype where the builder is underestimating how much energy he is putting into the system. The system will not generate enough energy (due to friction and conversion loss) to continually power itself when he eventually does close the cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Free energy 1 magnet disk&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is insufficient detail shown to understand what the claim is here.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Removed video&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Screw Magnet Motor - Already covered under #2 above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;perpetual motion machine selfrunning: Category 4: Long running machine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't enough detail here to be sure, but it looks like merely a long running machine, that will eventually wind down. Note that it makes a considerable noise, so it fails to be a machine &quot;without losses or friction&quot; - the sound energy being lost is evidence of that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2012-12-29T04:13:38.380" LastActivityDate="2012-12-29T04:13:38.380" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9594" CreationDate="2012-12-28T13:40:17.090" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many causes of hair loss. As the claims do not clearly specify which one is intended, it isn't clear what to search for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, I have been unable to find any studies of the effects of Castor Oil on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002160/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;androgenetic alopoecia&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; - i.e. male pattern baldness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to &lt;em&gt;alopecia areata&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;alopecia totalis&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;alopecia universalis&lt;/em&gt;, I can be more categorical. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004413/treatments-for-alopecia-areata-alopecia-totalis-and-alopecia-universalis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cochrane review&lt;/a&gt; of the evidence revealed that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no good trial evidence that any treatments provide long-term benefit to patients with alopecia areata, alopecia totalis and alopecia universalis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if you merely want your remaining hair to &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; more lustrous, by giving it an oily sheen, &lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/14528387&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;castor oil may help&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T13:40:17.090" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14280" CreationDate="2012-12-28T15:34:35.710" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Are there currently no tests available to diagnose fluoride [...] toxicity?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Susheela, A.K. and Das, T.K. 1988 &lt;strong&gt;Fluoride toxicity&lt;/strong&gt; and fluorosis: &lt;strong&gt;diagnostic test&lt;/strong&gt; for early detection and preventive medicines adopted in India. [Abstract], International&#xA;Symposium on Environmental Life Elements and Health, Beijing, 89.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/publications/fluoride_drinking_water_full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;World health organisation - Fluoride in drinking water&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;... or fluorine toxicity?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/Inorganic_Chemistry/Descriptive_Chemistry/Main_Group_Elements/Group_17%3A_The_Halogens/Chemistry_of_Fluorine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fluorine&lt;/a&gt; is a pale yellow gas. It is highly reactive (e.g. water burns with a bright flame in fluorine). Consequently people generally don't come into contact with fluorine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-12-28T15:50:18.180" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T15:50:18.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14299" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-28T17:30:06.470" Score="8" ViewCount="5470" Body="&lt;p&gt;England's department of health has launched a new, very graphic anti-smoking TV ad (see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20805059&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC STORY&lt;/a&gt;). Aside from the graphic imagery it makes the specific claim that a smoker will suffer one mutation for every 15 cigarettes smoked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim credible? And, perhaps more importantly, is it &lt;em&gt;significant&lt;/em&gt; given the background level of mutagenic chemicals and radiation we are exposed to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T23:12:29.023" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T13:00:09.307" Title="Does your body suffer one mutation for every 15 cigarettes you smoke?" Tags="|medical-science|environmental-health|smoking|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14299" CreationDate="2012-12-28T17:46:11.387" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2010 the Wellcome Trust published &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/2010/News/WTX058965.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;One mutation per 15 cigarettes: genome maps reveal how cancer develops&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;These are the two main cancers in the developed world for which we know the primary exposure,&quot; said Professor Mike Stratton, from the Cancer Genome Project at the Sanger Institute. &quot;For lung cancer, it is cigarette smoke and for malignant melanoma it is exposure to sunlight. With these genome sequences, we have been able to explore deep into the past of each tumour, uncovering with remarkable clarity the imprints of these environmental mutagens on DNA, which occurred years before the tumour became apparent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same source was given in a 2009 article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/15-cigarettes-all-it-takes-to-harm-genes-1843077.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Daily Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They studied a lung-cancer victim who had built up about 23,000 DNA mutations in his lung cells that were linked with exposure to the toxins found in cigarette smoke and had accumulated over his lifetime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The newspaper doesn't state whether this is one example of a larger sample)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study was also reported in 2009 by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091216/full/news.2009.1143.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nature&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/174409.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Medical News Today&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the above to be supportive of the credibility and significance (re causes) of the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't found information on rates of mutations attributable to other causes of cancer but many credible organisations say that smoking accounts for around 90% of lung cancers in the UK. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/types/lung/riskfactors/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cancer Research UK&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/physical_health/conditions/in_depth/cancer/typescancer_lung.shtml#lung_cancer_causes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Cancerinformation/Cancertypes/Lung/Aboutlungcancer/Riskfactorscauses.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MacMillan&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bupa.co.uk/individuals/health-information/directory/l/lung-cancer#textBlock263524&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BUPA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://publications.cancerresearchuk.org/publicationformat/formatposter/csattrib-riskposter.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;infographic&lt;/a&gt; from Cancer Research UK - it has a lot of information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nS8mS.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Cancer causes&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2012-12-28T20:37:16.033" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T20:37:16.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14301" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14356" CreationDate="2012-12-28T18:54:07.167" Score="6" ViewCount="1764" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read this old news today as it's gone viral in Italy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That pain you feel listening to complainers? It's real enough to peel away neurons from your brain and render it pretty much useless, reports Inc. &quot;The brain works more like a muscle than we thought,&quot; says Trevor Blake, an entrepreneur who wrote Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life. &quot;So if you're pinned in a corner for too long listening to someone being negative, you're more likely to behave that way as well.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newser.com/story/152624/complainers-damage-neurons-in-the-brain.html&quot;&gt;http://www.newser.com/story/152624/complainers-damage-neurons-in-the-brain.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research shows that exposure to 30 minutes or more of negativity--including viewing such material on TV--actually peels away neurons in the brain's hippocampus. &quot;That's the part of your brain you need for problem solving,&quot; he says. &quot;Basically, it turns your brain to mush.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/listening-to-complainers-is-bad-for-your-brain.html&quot;&gt;http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/listening-to-complainers-is-bad-for-your-brain.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just a guy trying to sell his book or is there hard science behind his claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:07:13.647" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:07:13.647" Title="Does listening to complaints damage your neurons?" Tags="|neurology|cognitive-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14299" CreationDate="2012-12-28T20:20:11.940" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the number is derived from a study published in &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the majority of mutations derive from the mélange of mutagens present in tobacco smoke, the clone of cells that ultimately becomes cancerous would acquire, over its lifetime, an average of one mutation for every 15 cigarettes smoked. If this is the case in a localised cluster of cells, then the number of mutations acquired across the whole bronchial tree from even one cigarette must be substantial. The data presented here demonstrate the power of whole genome sequencing to disentangle the many complex mutational signatures found in cancers induced by tobacco smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2880489/&quot;&gt;Pleasance et al., 2010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my layman eyes, it appears that the finding is highly significant, but not so much because of the magnitude of mutations, but because there are specific cancer-related signature mutations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even in this single lung cancer genome, we can identify several distinctive point mutation patterns, reflecting the cocktail of carcinogens present in cigarette smoke, as well as signatures of the partially successful attempts of the cell's surveillance machinery to repair DNA damage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-12-28T20:20:11.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14306" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14307" CreationDate="2012-12-29T09:58:15.630" Score="7" ViewCount="6830" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/F3Y63.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;U.S. Government Retirement Program&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SADDAM HUSSEIN&#xA;  &quot;FRIEND&quot; 1983  &quot;RETIRED&quot; 2006&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OSAMA BIN LADEN&#xA;  &quot;FRIEND&quot; 1979  &quot;RETIRED&quot; 20?1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MUAMMAR GADDAFI&#xA;  &quot;FRIEND&quot; 2009  &quot;RETIRED&quot; 2011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The photos to the left seem to depict Americans who posed with them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Osama Bin Laden with an unknown American.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Muammar Gaddafu and Barak Obama&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this image exists to &quot;make a point&quot;, are the photos on the left true and represent a strong alliance as stated by &quot;friend&quot;? Did these alliances start (or were strong) on the mentioned dates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2012-12-29T11:45:02.093" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T10:25:59.023" Title="Was there a deep US involvement with Saddam, Osama and Gaddafi?" Tags="|history|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14306" CreationDate="2012-12-29T11:37:56.777" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Faked image&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not bin Laden&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Much less interesting than it seems &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;First Image: Rumsfeld and Hussein&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Donald Rumsfeld's visit to Baghdad in 1983 is described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Rumsfeld#Part-time_public_service&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GALoP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Rumsfeld and Hussein, photoshopped&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;source unknown, allegedly 1983&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A meeting between Rumsfeld and Hussein did take place in 1983 but the alleged photo of Rumsfeld+Hussein is almost certainly not a true record of that encounter. Iraqi TV coverage shows Hussein in army uniform. The (then secret) reports of the meeting describe Hussein as being in army uniform. Personally I think Photoshop may have been involved here, look at the &quot;shadow&quot; round Hussein's head, consider Rumsfeld's true appearance in 1983 and 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fd1Y5.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Saddam elsewhere&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Hussein &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/en/doc/2003-12/14/content_290213.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;elsewhere elsewhen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8PZTJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Rumsfeld in 2011&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Rumsfeld in &lt;a href=&quot;http://theview.abc.go.com/recap/thursday-february-24-2011&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LjbvR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Rumsfeld in 1983&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Rumsfeld in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2012/mar/09/archive-1983-reagan-russia-evil-empire&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1983&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a declassified report &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq31.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rumsfeld mission: December 20 meeting with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein&lt;/a&gt; on Rumsfeld's visit which describes the matters discussed by Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein. I assume the report is genuine and that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Archive&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Security Archive&lt;/a&gt; have reproduced it faithfully. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Archive's summary is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At a 90-minute meeting with Donald Rumsfeld, Saddam Hussein evinces &quot;obvious pleasure&quot; at a letter Rumsfeld brought from President Ronald Reagan. The two discuss common U.S.-Iraqi interests, including Lebanon, Palestine, opposition to an outcome of the Iran-Iraq war that &quot;weakened Iraq's role or enhanced interests and ambitions of Iran,&quot; and U.S. efforts to cut off arms sales to Iran. Rumsfeld says that the U.S. feels extremely strongly about terrorism and says that it has a home - in Iran, Syria, and Libya, and that it is supported by the Soviet Union. He encourages arrangements that might provide alternative transshipment routes for Iraq's oil, including pipelines through Saudi Arabia or to the Gulf of Aqaba in Jordan. The State Department calls the meeting a &quot;positive milestone.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read the full text, there was clearly an exchange of views on a large number of regional issues but no mention (that I can see) of any new strong alliance between the USA and Iraq.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion (re image 1)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This faked photograph does not represent the forging of a strong alliance between Rumsfeld and Hussein or between the USA and Iraq. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1983 there was a slight thawing in diplomatic relations due to shared national interests in opposing Syrian and Israeli invasion of Lebanon, Iranian expansion etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Second image: Brzezinski and unnamed Pakistani army major&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second picture is one of a series available from the&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/U1993539-24/zbigniew-brzezinksi-inspecting-gun&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Corbis Agency&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LzJm2.png&quot; alt=&quot;Corbis image of Brzezinsky with unnamed Pakistani soldiers&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;© Bettmann/CORBIS&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The caption there is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Original caption:Kyber Pass, Pakistan: United States Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski looks into Afghanistan through the sights of a machine gun at a Pakistan Army outpost here on the border 2/3. Brzezinski toured the area and then continued talks with the Pakistan delegation in regards to an aid package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Stock Photo ID:     U1993539-24&#xA;Date Photographed:  03 February 1980&#xA;Model Released:     No Release&#xA;Property Released:  No Release&#xA;Location:           Pakistan&#xA;Credit:             © Bettmann/CORBIS&#xA;Licence Type:       Rights Managed (RM)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems questionable whether Osama bin-Laden would have been present in a Pakistani border post in 1980 in the uniform of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://pakistanarmy.gov.pk/AWPReview/TextContent.aspx?pId=298&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;major&lt;/a&gt; in the Pakistani army and employed to hand weapons to visiting dignitaries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is well covered in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.911myths.com/index.php/Bin_Laden_and_Brzezinski&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;911 Myths&lt;/a&gt; which identifies an &lt;a href=&quot;http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/access/130385312.html?FMT=ABS&amp;amp;FMTS=ABS:AI&amp;amp;type=historic&amp;amp;date=Feb+4%2C+1980&amp;amp;author=By+Stuart+Auerbach+Washington+Post+Foreign+Service&amp;amp;desc=%27Zbig%27+Holds+His+Fire+at+Khyber+Pass&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article in the Washington Post&lt;/a&gt; on February 4, 1980, which says &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;President Carter's national security adviser peered resolutely with gun in hand at Soviet controlled Afghanistan from the top of a Pakistani military outpost high above the strategic Khyber Pass.&#xA;  ...&#xA;  Zbigneiw Brzezinski, high White House aide, hesitated for a second and then declined an offer to fire the Chinese-made light machine gun toward Afghanistan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tour started with an early morning helicopter visit to a remote refugee camp in the Kurram Agency ... 12 miles from the Afghan border.&#xA;  ...&#xA;  Brzezinski was careful not to promise military assistance to the rebels, but he told them of America's support for the efforts and said, &quot;The entire world is outraged,&quot; by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reporter was &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/alt.obituaries/sJZLIQUCXtE&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stuart Auerbach&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion (re image 2)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This photograph of Brzezinsky and an unidentified Pakistani army major does not represent the forging of a strong alliance between Brzezinski and bin-Laden or between the USA and Saudi-Arabian led groups opposing the Soviet invasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Third Image: Gadaffi and Obama.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Handshakes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the photo in the Washington Times on &lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/07/09/obama_shakes_hands_with_gaddaf.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;July 9, 2009&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7sCtB.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Obama meets Gadaffi&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, who former president Ronald Reagan once denounced as a &quot;mad dog,&quot; supped on pasta just two seats away from President Obama at the Group of Eight summit today and even secured a handshake with the U.S. president.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gaddafi is attending the summit in his role as president of the African Union&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the president of the USA shook hands with the president of the African Union. There is nothing in the report to indicate that this particular handshake committed the USA to a strong and enduring alliance with the African Union. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article continues&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Denis McDonough, a White House official, said before the meal that Obama would not hesitate to greet Gaddafi. ''He doesn't intend to choose which leaders he'll shake hands with and which he won't: he'll be very happy to greet everyone he meets,&quot; he said, adding: ''He wants to see cooperation with Libya continue in sectors such as Tripoli's decision a few years ago to give up its nuclear program, an absolutely voluntary decision that we consider positive.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be plausibly argued that the president of the USA viewed his shaking hands with the then ruler of Libya as helping to encourage or reward a process of nuclear disarmament and a cessation of sponsorship of terrorism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Alliances&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we look for an alliance using the dictionary meaning of &lt;em&gt;&quot;a formal agreement or treaty between two or more nations to cooperate for specific purposes.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One list of arms-control related agreements and treaties at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/LibyaChronology&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/LibyaChronology&lt;/a&gt; includes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;January 3, 2008: Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgam pays an official visit to the United States and signs a Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement. This is the first official visit by a Libyan Foreign Minister to the United States since 1972.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;August 14, 2008: The United States and Libya sign the U.S -Libya Claims Settlement Agreement, providing full compensation for victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing and the bombing of the Berlin disco. Under the terms of the agreement, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice certified to Congress that Libya paid $1.5 billion to cover terrorism related claims against Tripoli. The agreement also addressed Libyan claims arising from U.S. military actions in Tripoli and Benghazi in 1986 to the amount of $300 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note Barack Obama was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;November 20, 2009: Libya unexpectedly halts the shipment of the remaining 5.2 kilograms of HEU in spent fuel from its Tajoura research reactor. The material was scheduled to be flown to Russia for disposal that same month as part of an agreement between the Libya, Russia, and the United States. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;there's no mention of any bilateral USA-Libya agreement or treaty signed on or around July 9 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/202293.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;state department&lt;/a&gt;, the following USA-Libya treaties are currently in force&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Agreement relating to the termination of &#xA;  outstanding agreements with Libya.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Exchange of notes at Tripoli February 5, 1972.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Entered into force February 5, 1972.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  23 UST 82; TIAS 7275. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Agreement regarding grants under the Foreign &#xA;  Assistance Act of 1961, as amended, or succes­sor &#xA;  legislation, and the furnishing of defense &#xA;  articles, defense services and related training, &#xA;  including pursuant to the United States &#xA;  International Military Education and Training &#xA;  (IMET) Program.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Exchange of notes at Tripoli May 2 and December 8, 2009.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Entered into force December 8, 2009.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  NP &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION &#xA;  Agreement on science and technology&#xA;  cooperation, with annexes.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Signed at Washington January 3, 2008.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Entered into force April 4, 2008.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  TIAS 08-404. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ATOMIC ENERGY &#xA;  Agreement to facilitate the provision of &#xA;  assistance for the transfer of spent high-enriched &#xA;  uranium nuclear fuel to the Russian Federation.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Signed at Tripoli October 28, 2009.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Entered into force October 28, 2009.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  TIAS 09-1028.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CLAIMS &#xA;  Claims settlement agreement, with annex.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Signed at Tripoli August 14, 2008.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Entered into force August 14, 2008.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  TIAS 08-814. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DEFENSE &#xA;  Military assistance agreement.*&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Signed at Tripoli June 30, 1957.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Entered into force June 30, 1957.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  8 UST 957; TIAS 3857; 284 UNTS 177.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Note&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  * Terminated February 5, 1972, except that Article I, &#xA;  paragraphs 2 and 4, arrangements under Article I, para­&#xA;  graphs 3, 5, and 7, and under Article II remain in force.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Arrangement for return of equipment and &#xA;  material no longer needed in the furtherance of &#xA;  the mutual defense assistance program.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Signed at Tripoli June 30, 1957.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Entered into force June 30, 1957.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  8 UST 963; TIAS 3858; 284 UNTS 188. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Agreement relating to the termination of &#xA;  outstanding agreements with Libya.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Exchange of notes at Tripoli February 5, 1972.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Entered into force February 5, 1972.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  23 UST 82; TIAS 7275. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Agreement regarding grants under the Foreign &#xA;  Assistance Act of 1961, as amended, or succes­&#xA;  sor legislation, and the furnishing of defense &#xA;  articles, defense services and related training, &#xA;  including pursuant to the United States &#xA;  International Military Education and Training &#xA;  (IMET) Program.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Exchange of notes at Tripoli May 2 and December 8, 2009.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Entered into force December 8, 2009.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  NP &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Agreement on science and technology&#xA;  cooperation, with annexes.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Signed at Washington January 3, 2008.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Entered into force April 4, 2008.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  TIAS 08-404. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of those was signed in July 2009 at, or near, the date of the handshake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion (re image 3)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This photograph does not represent the forging of a strong alliance between Obama and Gaddafii or between USA and Libya.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Significance of Handshakes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another handshake&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PkqVj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Obama shakes hands Romney&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no indication that this handshake commits the Democratic Party and the Republican party to a strong alliance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Overall conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image in the question is a sloppy piece of propaganda that relies on fabrication, false identification and an exaggerated interpretation of the meaning of handshakes between politicians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T10:25:59.023" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T10:25:59.023" CommentCount="4" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-01-10T21:32:15.277" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14306" CreationDate="2012-12-29T16:24:50.307" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The photos oversimply a complex and changing set of relationships, the truth of which are relatively easy to discover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The US cooperated with Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime during the period following the Iranian revolution and the embassy hostage crisis. It is pretty unsurprising that the US needed allies in the region at this time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Osama Bin Laden fought with the Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan, which the US supported. Bin Laden was one among many Mujahideen leaders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The US pursued a policy of rebuilding relations with Libya, following some concessions and policy changes by the Libyan regime.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would certainly be an exaggeration to characterize any of these relationships as 'deep involvement&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-01-09T13:26:40.977" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T13:26:40.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="792" CreationDate="2012-12-29T20:21:25.913" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fluoride Alert is an anti-fluoridation group and has no credibility in the scientific community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fluoride in toothpaste has a concentration of 1,000 to 1,500 ppm of fluoride (which is considerably higher than fluoridated water at 0.7 ppm).  A small child would need to eat approximate two tubes of toothpaste in order to become seriously ill.  However, the other ingredients would cause vomiting long before a dangerous amount was ingested.  As for fluorosis, dentist recommend that very young children be given a pea-sized bit of toothpaste on their brush and instructed to spit out the toothpaste.  This precaution is so that the child can avoid getting mild to very mild fluorosis, a purely cosmetic effect in which very tiny, snowflake-like spots develop on the surface of the teeth.  It is actually an indication that the teeth are especially resistant to decay.  The CDC website has photos of various stages of fluorosis.  Moderate to serious fluorosis appears to occur more from drinking private well water with very high levels of fluoride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Institute for Science in Medicine:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scienceinmedicine.org/policy/statements/fluoridation.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.scienceinmedicine.org/policy/statements/fluoridation.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For children under 2 years of age, refer to the CDC's advice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/safety/dental_fluorosis.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/safety/dental_fluorosis.htm&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10882" LastActivityDate="2012-12-29T20:21:25.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7542" CreationDate="2012-12-29T20:53:23.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Skeptic would undoubtedly want to know about the systematic reviews done on fluoridation.  They are listed here on the CDC website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/safety/systematic.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/safety/systematic.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, these reviews find that fluoridation is cost-effective and safe.  There are some recommendations for further research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10882" LastActivityDate="2012-12-29T20:53:23.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14312" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17078" CreationDate="2012-12-30T11:53:29.777" Score="6" ViewCount="965" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.frontline.com/products/spot-on/Pages/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Frontline Spot On&lt;/a&gt; (active ingredient fipronil) is advertised as a treatment for cat fleas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kills fleas within 24 hours&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kills fleas for up to 5 weeks in cats&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mum recently went to her vet to buy some, but was told they don't sell it because it doesn't work. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fipronil&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article for fipronil&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;flea populations appear to be developing a genetic resistance to its effects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is fipronil an effective treatment for cat fleas?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T03:38:20.200" Title="Is Frontline (fipronil) an effective treatment for cat fleas?" Tags="|biology|zoology|entomology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14316" CreationDate="2012-12-30T16:56:09.747" Score="16" ViewCount="1621" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a review of the year &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-republicans-need-a-dose-of-lincolns-human-factor-8433200.html?origin=internalSearch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; in the UK newspaper the Independent, Rupert Cornwell argues that the Republican party is in some trouble because of the drift to the right and the resulting inflexible promises they have made about tax. It isn't the point of this question to incite arguments about whether that part of the analysis is sound. But the author also claims the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Worst of all, the mess is of the Republicans' own making. They hold a 233-200 majority in the House, even though they &lt;em&gt;lost the popular vote&lt;/em&gt; in congressional elections by over half a million. Americans, in other words, didn't vote for a Republican House in 2012. They got one however, thanks to the gerrymandering of Republican-controlled state legislatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two claims here, one of which surprised me as that isn't the impression generally transmitted: &lt;strong&gt;the republicans didn't win the popular vote.&lt;/strong&gt; The republicans in the House are certainly acting as though they have a mandate to oppose any tax rises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is Cornwell's claim correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB The other claim is that the republican majority resulted from gerrymandering of congressional boundaries. This is not the question here, but should be addressed in answers to this previous question:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/12319/does-politically-controlled-redistricting-in-us-elections-make-incumbents-more-s&quot;&gt;Does politically controlled redistricting in US elections make incumbents more secure?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2017-12-24T23:54:07.037" LastActivityDate="2017-12-24T23:54:07.037" Title="Did the democrats win the popular vote in the 2012 US congressional elections?" Tags="|united-states|politics|gerrymandering|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14315" CreationDate="2012-12-30T18:31:46.353" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjYj9mXEIO_QdHZCbzJocGtxYkR6OTdZbzZwRUFvS3c#gid=0&quot;&gt;According to a spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; kept by the editor of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cookpolitical.com&quot;&gt;The Cook Political Report&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, Democrats nationally accrued ~1.35M more votes than Republican House candidates in 2012 (out of ~118M total votes cast). The official tally will be issued by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/electionInfo/index.aspx&quot;&gt;Office of the Clerk&lt;/a&gt; sometime in 2013. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2012-12-30T18:31:46.353" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14318" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-30T20:48:15.753" Score="2" ViewCount="1097" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen various &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voice_phenomenon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EVP&lt;/a&gt;s on ghost hunters shows. Some are very feeble and can be only heard through a recorder, others can be picked up live and are clear as day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know science does not believe in soul and spirits. But then where do these voice come from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are EVP's real? Do they really capture something that does not have body or we have explanation for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I may add reference from ghost hunters shows if needed&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:34:35.957" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:34:35.957" Title="Can the dead speak via Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP)?" Tags="|mortality|ghosts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14325" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2012-12-31T10:44:12.833" Score="5" ViewCount="15246" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a remote rural area of India while traveling, I came to know that the people there believe that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coconut water should not be drunk by males as it harms sperm production [count?].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there truth to it? I googled it and found the reverse information. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://minnewiki.publicradio.org/index.php/Coconut_Water_Increase_Semen_Production_Large_Amounts_Sperm_Coventry,_Uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this source&lt;/a&gt; from Minnesota public radio, it is stated that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Increase semen load with herbs coconut water increase semen production produce more come. Diet to increase sperm best food to make sperm increase my sperm loads. This the side effects. That your condition is claimed the liver which includes both the coconut water increase semen production park, the time leading celebs where fat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cocotap.com/nutrition.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cocotap&lt;/a&gt; claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Coconut water is sweet, increasing semen. promoting digestion, and clearing the urinary path,&quot; says Ayurvedic medicine of India. Coconut water, also called coconut juice, is the liquid found inside a fresh coconut. Contrary to popular belief, this liquid is not the same as coconut milk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which one is true? Does coconut water at all has anything to deal with sperm production or count? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10373" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-09-21T13:20:02.647" LastActivityDate="2023-09-21T13:20:02.647" Title="Can drinking coconut water harm sperm production?" Tags="|medical-science|human-reproduction|fruit|sperm|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8107" CreationDate="2012-12-31T16:34:48.320" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no evidence that synthetic chemicals are more harmful than those produced by nature&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the problems with the debate about whether artificial chemicals (which could mean novel compounds or naturally occurring compounds synthesised by laboratory or industrial processes) are carcinogens is that the tests on artificial chemicals are rarely seen in context. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Ames&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bruce Ames&lt;/a&gt; summarises the issue well in the abstract of one of his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1871587&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;papers&lt;/a&gt; (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Toxicology studies of synthetic chemicals at high doses must be viewed in the context of the world of natural chemicals, which make up the vast bulk of the chemicals to which humans are exposed. In tests at near toxic doses (e.g., the maximum tolerated dose), &lt;strong&gt;one-half of all chemicals, whether synthetic or natural, are carcinogens; one-third are teratogens, and about half are clastogens.&lt;/strong&gt; Natural and synthetic chemicals are similar in their toxicology, and at the low doses of most human exposures where cell-killing does not occur, the hazards may be much lower than are commonly assumed and often will be zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bruce Ames can claim some expertise in this area as he is the inventor of the well-known &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_test&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ames Test&lt;/a&gt;, a cheap way of screening chemicals for their mutagenicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His work is smmarised well in a NY Times blog in 2007:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Dr. Ames began rethinking this war against synthetic chemicals after thousands of chemicals had been subjected to his test. He noticed that plenty of natural chemicals flunked the Ames test. He and Dr. Gold took a systematic look at the chemicals that had been tested on rodents. They found that about half of natural chemicals tested positive for carcinogencity, the same proportion as the synthetic chemicals. Fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices contained their own pesticides that caused cancer in rodents. The toxins were found in apples, bananas, beets, Brussel sprouts, collard greens, grapes, melons, oranges, parsley, peaches — the list went on and on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...Even though these natural chemicals are as likely to be carcinogenic as synthetic ones, it doesn’t follow that they’re killing us. Just because natural pesticides make up 99.99 percent of the pesticides in our diet, it doesn’t follow that they’re causing human cancer — or that the .01 percent of of synthetic pesticides are causing cancer either. Dr. Ames and Dr. Gold believe most of these carcinogenic pesticides, natural or synthetic, don’t present problems because the human exposures are low and because the high doses given to rodents may not be relevant to humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Everything you eat in the supermarket is absolutely chock full of carcinogens,” Dr. Ames told me. “But most cancers are not due to parts per billion of pesticides. They’re due to causes like smoking, bad diets and, obesity.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ames and Gold summarised the evidence about pesticide residues in food (a highly controversisal area but one where the results have much broader implications for artificial chemicals in other contexts) in a chapter of the Handbook of Pesticide Toxicology (pdf available online &lt;a href=&quot;http://potency.berkeley.edu/text/handbook.pesticide.toxicology.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outside the workplace, the levels of exposure to synthetic pollutants or pesticide residues are low and rarely seem toxicologically plausible as a causal factor when com- pared to the wide variety of naturally occurring chemicals to which all people are exposed. Whereas public perceptions tend to identify chemicals as being only synthetic and only synthetic chemicals as being toxic, every natural chemical is also toxic at some dose, and the vast proportion of chemicals to which humans are exposed are naturally occurring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is, however, a paradox in the public concern about possible cancer hazards from pesticide residues in food and the lack of public understanding of the substantial evidence indi- cating that high consumption of the foods that contain pesticide residues—fruits and vegetables—has a protective effect against many types of cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later in that chapter they argue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current regulatory policy to reduce human cancer risks is based on the idea that chemicals that induce tumors in rodent cancer bioassays are potential human carcinogens. The chemicals selected for testing in rodents, however, are primarily synthetic. The enormous background of human exposures to natural chemicals has not been systematically examined. This has led to an imbalance in both data and perception about possible carcinogenic hazards to humans from chemical exposures. The regulatory process does not take into account (1) that natural chemicals make up the vast bulk of chemicals to which humans are exposed; (2) that the toxicology of synthetic and natural toxins is not fundamentally different; (3) that about half of the chemicals tested, whether natural or synthetic, are carcinogens when tested using current experimental protocols; (4) that testing for carcinogenicity at near-toxic doses in rodents does not provide enough informa- tion to predict the excess number of human cancers that might occur at low-dose exposures; and (5) that testing at the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) frequently can cause chronic cell killing and consequent cell replacement (a risk factor for cancer that can be limited to high doses) and that ignoring this effect in risk assessment can greatly exaggerate risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book is a rich source of links to the primary evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In summary: when naturally occuring chemicals are tested with the same protocols as &amp;quot;artificial&amp;quot; chemicals roughly the same proportion emerge as possible carcinogens. This suggests that &amp;quot;natural&amp;quot; is no better than &amp;quot;artificial&amp;quot;. The results are not likely to be significant for explaining most cancers in people.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2012-12-31T16:34:48.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14327" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14354" CreationDate="2012-12-31T17:45:58.107" Score="13" ViewCount="1819" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/1308042--hume-these-two-things-will-change-toronto-forever&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent article of the Toronto Sun&lt;/a&gt; that discusses a proposed waterfront casino for the city of Toronto, the author Christopher Hume makes the following statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experience around the world shows that casinos are the kiss of death for the neighbourhoods and cities in which they are located.&lt;/strong&gt; Given the terrible social costs of gambling and the damage casinos can do to the urban fabric, Toronto is lucky to be able to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is is typically true that casinos contribute significantly to the destruction of urban and social fabric?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; I believe there are a few sensible proxies for the above question, which when answered would be illuminating, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What are the long-term economic effects of permitting a casino in a city? Namely, after a decade or so of permitting a casino does a city typically realize a significant economic benefit or contraction?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, does the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;GINI coefficient&lt;/a&gt; (income disparity) change significantly when one permits casinos in a city?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although one of many related metrics, the &quot;social fabric&quot; can (and often is in this comparison) extended beyond economics to include addressing the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is a significant increase in crime caused by permitting casinos in cities? Does crime increase significantly particularly where the casino is located? If so, can the crime increase be offset by increased revenue for policing and social services?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are there significant knock-on effects, e.g. health/sick care costs, mental illness, single or adoptive parents?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is reasonable I believe to expect that the above are the factors the author making the claim had been taken into account. Although I have focused on an economic proxy, there may be valid arguments that another proxy is preferable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further clarity, I would exclude from the analysis those cities whose predominant export is gambling-related tourism (e.g. Las Vegas). The crux of the question is the effect of a casino on cities whose economic foundations are not casino-related e.g. Toronto.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-02T06:22:33.907" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T17:43:48.657" Title="Do casinos have a negative economic and social impact on the neighborhoods they are located in?" Tags="|economics|sociology|politics|gambling|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14328" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14344" CreationDate="2012-12-31T18:58:24.423" Score="17" ViewCount="13748" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always liked Vodka + Red Bull for how it gets me drunk but also wakes me up and gives me more energy to dance or go out or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But now my Polish friends are telling me the combination is banned in France and that Polish cans used to have a warning about combining the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only sensible thing I've found so far is that Red Bull wakes you up, makes you feel more alert, and so you're going to be more likely to drink more drinks in the entire evening than if you were choosing other mixers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-491765/Mixing-vodka-Red-Bull-deadly-warn-experts.html&quot;&gt;Daily Mail claims&lt;/a&gt; that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mixing alcohol with energy drinks such as Red Bull is like 'mixing cocaine with heroin'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mixing caffeine with alcohol was like &quot;getting into a car and stepping on the gas pedal and the brake at the same time&quot;, said Dr O'Brien.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand what they mean by this on a physiological level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My interpretation is that there is no (more than normal) physiological danger, just danger from the fact that you're more awake and thus more likely to consume more alcohol or do more stupid stuff from being drunk with energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it dangerous for any specific chemical combination reason or is it all just myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10899" LastEditorUserId="5005" LastEditDate="2013-01-02T00:32:10.387" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T21:50:38.747" Title="Is Red Bull and Vodka more dangerous than other spirit cocktails?" Tags="|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14331" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-01T03:27:26.930" Score="20" ViewCount="5370" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the chess ELO rating of players (who have trained/played approximately the same amount of time) correlate positively with IQ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A usual claim is 'IQ and chess ELO ratings don't correlate', a view &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/relationship-bewteen-chess-rating-and-iq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;widespread&lt;/a&gt; in chess circles. However, I have never seen any actual study of it. Interestingly, some of the top chess players — Polgar 170, Kasparov 186, Fischer 190 — are claimed to have genius-level IQ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10901" LastEditorUserId="41720" LastEditDate="2019-09-26T21:11:43.580" LastActivityDate="2019-09-26T21:11:43.580" Title="Does Chess ELO correlate with IQ?" Tags="|psychology|intelligence|chess|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14331" CreationDate="2013-01-01T03:56:41.463" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found the following study on chess and intelligence:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289606001139&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does chess need intelligence? — A study with young chess players&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study claims that intelligence was not a significant factor in chess skill, and that if anything, intelligence correlated negatively with chess skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When an elite subsample of 23 children was tested, it turned out that&#xA;  intelligence was not a significant factor in chess skill, and that, if&#xA;  anything, &lt;strong&gt;it tended to correlate negatively with chess skill&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore I believe that there is no simple intuitive link between IQ and chess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, although not directly answering your question, the following study found here:  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-biosocial-science/article/how-intellectual-is-chess-a-reply-to-howard/1F1822D570C42F55BD8D9A9D2BF202F8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How intellectual is chess? – A reply to Howard&lt;/a&gt;, states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1927 Djakow et all first showed that world-class chess players do&#xA;  not have exceptional intellectual abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-09-24T23:08:52.247" LastActivityDate="2019-09-24T23:08:52.247" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14343" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14346" CreationDate="2013-01-01T19:14:16.760" Score="9" ViewCount="1036" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always thought that exercising was good for preventing heart disease.  I recently read an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medhelp.org/heart-disease/articles/Can-Excessive-Endurance-Exercise-Damage-Your-Heart/423&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; that claimed that long distance running (&gt; 1 hour of maximal/near maximal running) can be harmful to the heart, especially in people over 50.  To quote the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A growing number of influential cardiologists, including Missouri&#xA;  Medicine’s Preventive Medicine Editorial Board member James H. O’Keefe&#xA;  MD and his collaborators report persuasive evidence that prolonged (&gt;&#xA;  one hour) maximal or near maximal aerobic exercise, especially after&#xA;  age 50, may be damaging to the myocardium and coronary arteries. Part&#xA;  of this body of evidence is the finding that veteran (a code word for&#xA;  “older”) marathoners and other endurance athletes have higher than&#xA;  normal coronary artery calcium scores (CACS) and rates of atrial&#xA;  fibrillation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the claim true that excessive running as mentioned, can be damaging to the myocardium and coronary arteries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T23:10:53.130" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T23:10:53.130" Title="Can excessive exercise cause long term heart damage?" Tags="|medical-science|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14328" CreationDate="2013-01-01T19:25:34.560" Score="19" Body="&lt;h1&gt;CDC&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CDC website has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/cab.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;nice summary&lt;/a&gt; of our current knowledge on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dangers of Mixing Alcohol and Energy Drinks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Energy drinks are beverages that typically contain caffeine, other plant-based stimulants, simple sugars, and other additives. They are very popular among youth and are regularly consumed by 31% of 12- to 17-year-olds and 34% of 18- to 24-year-olds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When alcoholic beverages are mixed with energy drinks, a popular practice among youth, the caffeine in these drinks can mask the depressant effects of alcohol. At the same time, caffeine has no effect on the metabolism of alcohol by the liver and thus does not reduce breath alcohol concentrations or reduce the risk of alcohol-attributable harms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Drinkers who consume alcohol mixed with energy drinks are 3 times more likely to binge drink (based on breath alcohol levels) than drinkers who do not report mixing alcohol with energy drinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Drinkers who consume alcohol with energy drinks are about twice as likely as drinkers who do not report mixing alcohol with energy drinks to report being taken advantage of sexually, to report taking advantage of someone else sexually, and to report riding with a driver who was under the influence of alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Other literature&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a much more in depth review available. I've read most of the linked articles and this seem to me to be a comprehensive and adequate review of what has been published up to 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc2735818/#S7title&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drug Alcohol Depend. 2009 Jan 1;99(1-3):1-10. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2008.08.001. Epub 2008 Sep 21.&#xA;Caffeinated energy drinks--a growing problem.&#xA;Reissig CJ, Strain EC, Griffiths RR.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an association between the heavy use of caffeine and the heavy use of alcohol (Istvan and Matarazzo, 1984&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;; Kozlowski et al., 1993&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;), and the ingestion of energy drinks in combination with alcohol is becoming increasingly popular (O’Brien et al., 2008&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;; Oteri et al., 2007&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;), with 24% of a large stratified sample of college students reporting such consumption within the past 30 days (O’Brien et al., 2008&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;). In the previously mentioned survey of 496 college students, 27% reported mixing alcohol and energy drinks in the past month. Of those that mixed energy drinks and alcohol, 49% used more than three energy drinks per occasion when doing so (Malinauskas et al., 2007&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;). In a survey of 1,253 college students, energy drink users were disproportionately male and consumed alcohol more frequently than non-energy drink users (Arria et al., 2008&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One study showed that ingestion of a caffeinated energy drink (Red Bull) with vodka reduced participants perception of impairment of motor coordination in comparison to vodka alone, but did not significantly reduce objective measures of alcohol-induced impairment of motor coordination, reaction time, or breath alcohol concentration (Ferreira et al., 2006&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;). These results are consistent with other studies investigating caffeine-alcohol interactions (Marczinski and Fillmore, 2006&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt;). Thus, when mixing energy drinks and alcohol, users may not feel the symptoms of alcohol intoxication. This may increase the potential for alcohol-related injury. Indeed, a recent survey of college students found that in comparison to those who consumed alcohol alone, students who consumed alcohol mixed with energy drinks had a significantly higher prevalence of alcohol-related consequences including: being taken advantage of, or taking advantage of another student sexually, riding in an automobile with a driver under the influence of alcohol, or being hurt or injured (O’Brien et al., 2008&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;). In addition, mixing energy drinks with alcohol was associated with increased heavy episodic drinking and episodes of weekly drunkenness (O’Brien et al., 2008&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;). The recent introduction of pre-mixed caffeine-alcohol combination drinks may exacerbate these problems (Simon and Mosher, 2007&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;) and has prompted regulatory action. Accordingly, as part of a legal settlement reached in 2008 with State Attorneys in eleven states in the U.S., Anheuser-Busch has agreed to stop the manufacture and sale of caffeinated alcoholic beverages (Idaho Office of the Attorney General website, 2008&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6544436&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Istvan J, Matarazzo JD. Tobacco, alcohol, and caffeine use: a review of their interrelationships. Psychol Bull. 1984;95:301–326.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8510191/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Patterns of alcohol, cigarette, and caffeine and other drug use in two drug abusing populations.&#xA;Kozlowski LT, Henningfield JE, Keenan RM, Lei H, Leigh G, Jelinek LC, Pope MA, Haertzen CA&#xA;J Subst Abuse Treat. 1993 Mar-Apr; 10(2):171-9.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18439201/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Caffeinated cocktails: energy drink consumption, high-risk drinking, and alcohol-related consequences among college students.&#xA;O'Brien MC, McCoy TP, Rhodes SD, Wagoner A, Wolfson M&#xA;Acad Emerg Med. 2008 May; 15(5):453-60.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17651468/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Intake of energy drinks in association with alcoholic beverages in a cohort of students of the School of Medicine of the University of Messina.&#xA;Oteri A, Salvo F, Caputi AP, Calapai G&#xA;Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2007 Oct; 31(10):1677-80.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17974021/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A survey of energy drink consumption patterns among college students.&#xA;Malinauskas BM, Aeby VG, Overton RF, Carpenter-Aeby T, Barber-Heidal K&#xA;Nutr J. 2007 Oct 31; 6():35.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; Arria AM, Caldeira KM, O’Grady KE, Vincent KB, Griffiths RR, Wish ED. Energy drink use is associated with subsequent nonmedical prescription stimulant use among college students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I haven't found the previous article on the corresponding team &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cls.umd.edu/Publications.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16573577/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effects of energy drink ingestion on alcohol intoxication.&#xA;Ferreira SE, de Mello MT, Pompéia S, de Souza-Formigoni ML&#xA;Alcohol Clin Exp Res. 2006 Apr; 30(4):598-605.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17115872/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clubgoers and their trendy cocktails: implications of mixing caffeine into alcohol on information processing and subjective reports of intoxication.&#xA;Marczinski CA, Fillmore MT&#xA;Exp Clin Psychopharmacol. 2006 Nov; 14(4):450-8.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.odmhsas.org/resourcecenter/(S(43rcts553b1tdu3obf3cdx55))/ResourceCenter/Publications/Current/330.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Simon M, Mosher J. Alcohol, energy drinks, and youth: A dangerous mix. Marin Institute; San Rafael CA: 2007.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ag.idaho.gov/media/newsReleases/2008/Anheuser-Busch_AVCVC.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;State of Idaho Office of Attorney General Lawrence Wasden website. 2008.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T19:25:34.560" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14343" CreationDate="2013-01-01T22:06:55.647" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Is the claim true that excessive running as mentioned, can be damaging to the myocardium and coronary arteries?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The anecdotal article you read refers to a Mayo Clinic &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196%2812%2900473-9/abstract&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; whose abstract is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A routine of regular exercise is highly effective for prevention and treatment of many common chronic diseases and improves cardiovascular (CV) health and longevity. However, long-term excessive endurance exercise may induce pathologic structural remodeling of the heart and large arteries. Emerging data suggest that chronic training for and competing in extreme endurance events such as marathons, ultramarathons, ironman distance triathlons, and very long distance bicycle races, can cause transient acute volume overload of the atria and right ventricle, with transient reductions in right ventricular ejection fraction and elevations of cardiac biomarkers, all of which return to normal within 1 week. Over months to years of repetitive injury, this process, in some individuals, may lead to patchy myocardial fibrosis, particularly in the atria, interventricular septum, and right ventricle, creating a substrate for atrial and ventricular arrhythmias. Additionally, long-term excessive sustained exercise may be associated with coronary artery calcification, diastolic dysfunction, and large-artery wall stiffening. However, this concept is still hypothetical and there is some inconsistency in the reported findings. Furthermore, lifelong vigorous exercisers generally have low mortality rates and excellent functional capacity. Notwithstanding, the hypothesis that long-term excessive endurance exercise may induce adverse CV remodeling warrants further investigation to identify at-risk individuals and formulate physical fitness regimens for conferring optimal CV health and longevity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You ask about &lt;em&gt;&quot;excessive running&quot;&lt;/em&gt; but the actual article is about &lt;em&gt;&quot;chronic training for and competing in extreme endurance events&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;excessive running&quot;&lt;/em&gt; sounds like a lesser amount of exercise than the subject of the study, though you need to quantitatively qualify terms like excessive. A single instance of &lt;em&gt;&quot;&gt; 1 hour of maximal/near maximal running&quot;&lt;/em&gt; may not qualify, perhaps doing it twice every day for five years would?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article says &lt;em&gt;&quot;further investigation [is warranted] to identify at-risk individuals&quot;&lt;/em&gt; - unless you are continuously training for and competing in ultra-marathons it may be too early to start worrying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2013-01-01T22:06:55.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14349" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14350" CreationDate="2013-01-02T05:50:27.050" Score="17" ViewCount="26553" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tried &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.in/#hl=en&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;tbo=d&amp;amp;sclient=psy-ab&amp;amp;q=can+eggshell+be+digested&amp;amp;oq=can+eggshell+be+digested&amp;amp;gs_l=hp.3...350120.350272.2.350430.2.2.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0.les;..0.0...1c.1.2fVxu85jh-0&amp;amp;pbx=1&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&amp;amp;bvm=bv.1355534169,d.bmk&amp;amp;fp=763f662d365af90a&amp;amp;bpcl=40096503&amp;amp;biw=1366&amp;amp;bih=664&quot;&gt;Googling&lt;/a&gt; but got no significant trustworthy result in the top few searches. The only reference I found is &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Will_the_egg_shell_digest_when_eaten&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;: where the answered has guaranteed it without any reference!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes Egg shell is made from calcium and the hydrochloric acid that the stomach produces will rapidly dissolve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone provide me a solid answer backed up by solid references? I also heard from one of my friends that stomach can not digest egg shell efficiently. So when peeling an Egg shell we must be careful because as it can remain undigested, it can stick in out penis and create problem in urinating. Although it sounded ridiculous to me (&lt;em&gt;isn't it?&lt;/em&gt;) , I am more interested in finding whether stomach can digest it or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10373" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-02T10:38:14.020" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T23:45:26.157" Title="Can egg shells be digested?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14349" CreationDate="2013-01-02T06:12:45.890" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been studies that attempt to show egg shells can be a viable source of calcium. The egg shells are ingested in a powdered form, and prove a viable source of calcium for human consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Sources&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chicken eggshell powder (ESP) might be an attractive source of Ca for human nutrition. To study its nutritional value, we analyzed minerals, amino acids, and hormones in commercially available Slovakian ESP.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;…&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Therefore, ESP seems to have a beneﬁcial composition&#xA;with about 39% of elemental Ca, relevant amounts of Sr,&#xA;and low levels of Al, Pb, Cd and Hg. It may be used as&#xA;a Ca source in human nutrition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://ps.fass.org/content/79/12/1833.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mineral, amino acid, and hormonal composition of chicken eggshell powder and the evaluation of its use in human nutrition.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The present study indicates that healthy late post-menopausal women with an adequate Ca intake at baseline may increase BMD of the hip within 12 months following supplementation with the chicken eggshell powder-enriched supplement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1079/BJN2001515&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Positive effects of a chicken eggshell powder-enriched vitamin–mineral supplement on femoral neck bone mineral density in healthy late post-menopausal Dutch women.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Powdered chicken eggshells might be an interesting and widely available source of calcium. In two studies using piglets we determined the digestibility of calcium from different diets.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;…&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Our conclusion is that eggshell powder is, in the case of casein-based diets, as good a source of calcium as CaCO3 and, in the case of soya protein-based diets, better than CaCO3 for growing piglets. As the piglet model is considered to be representative for humans, chicken eggshell powder is also a promising source of calcium for human nutrition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/%28SICI%291097-0010%28199909%2979:12%3C1596::AID-JSFA406%3E3.0.CO;2-A&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eggshell powder, a comparable or better source of calcium than purified calcium carbonate: piglet studies.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10745" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T11:21:06.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14327" CreationDate="2013-01-02T11:23:29.740" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Casinos have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/us/more-casinos-and-internet-gambling-threaten-shakopee-tribe.html?pagewanted=all&amp;amp;_r=1&amp;amp;&quot;&gt;financially benefitted native American tribes&lt;/a&gt;, but may have led to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/110951/the-unequal-future-tribal-online-gaming&quot;&gt;greater conflict&lt;/a&gt; as a result.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gambling in general, specifically lottery gambling, can be a form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Implicit+Tax&quot;&gt;implicit&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax&quot;&gt;regressive&lt;/a&gt; tax associated with increased income inequality - although &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar_url?hl=en&amp;amp;q=http://www.accbo.com/general_images/pdf_files/2007_Income_Inequality.doc&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;scisig=AAGBfm3F7bLGduYdBwF7wsuQcUM-DIwdMQ&amp;amp;oi=scholarr&amp;amp;ei=ARPkUOy8MO6k0AXYy4HoBw&amp;amp;ved=0CEcQgAMoADAA&quot;&gt;Casinos appear to be less regressive than lotteries&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increased income inequality is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/resources/infographic-adam-frost-and-rosie-roche&quot;&gt;strongly negatively associated with&lt;/a&gt; all kinds of societal well-being indicators.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Native American tribes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is little doubt that casinos can be very good at generating wealth for their owners. This can be a powerful tool for societal change. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/us/more-casinos-and-internet-gambling-threaten-shakopee-tribe.html?pagewanted=all&amp;amp;_r=1&amp;amp;&quot;&gt;the Shakopee Mdewakanton tribe have benefited hugely from owning a casino&lt;/a&gt;. This could be seen as a big benefit to society through providing status/power to an oppressed minority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip-side, this has led to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tnr.com/blog/plank/110951/the-unequal-future-tribal-online-gaming&quot;&gt;greater inequality within and between tribes&lt;/a&gt; and increased tribal conflict. So from this perspective, not so good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Taxation and inequality&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_tax&quot;&gt;regressive tax&lt;/a&gt; is one that applies to poorer members of society at least as much as richer members, thereby increasing income inequality. Income tax is not regressive as people with higher incomes pay more tax. The most obvious example of a state-levied regressive tax is &lt;strong&gt;sales tax&lt;/strong&gt;, because everyone, regardless of their income, pays the same amount of tax for the same product. In fact, this can disadvantage the poor even more because tax on many good that are consumed in greater quantities by the poor have higher sales tax - e.g. cigarettes and alcohol. &lt;a href=&quot;http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Implicit+Tax&quot;&gt;implicit taxes&lt;/a&gt; can be similarly regressive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is absolutely conceivable that gambling could be an implicit regressive tax. This would mean that all forms of gambling would increase inequality, and therefore exacerbate all the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/resources/infographic-adam-frost-and-rosie-roche&quot;&gt;negative effects of high income inequality&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2007, Freund &amp;amp; Morris looked at &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar_url?hl=en&amp;amp;q=http://www.accbo.com/general_images/pdf_files/2007_Income_Inequality.doc&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;scisig=AAGBfm3F7bLGduYdBwF7wsuQcUM-DIwdMQ&amp;amp;oi=scholarr&amp;amp;ei=ARPkUOy8MO6k0AXYy4HoBw&amp;amp;ved=0CEcQgAMoADAA&quot;&gt;Gambling and Income Inequality in the States&lt;/a&gt;, and found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;nonlottery gambling has little impact on state-level income inequality. Lotteries, however, clearly foster income inequality--even when accounting for the effects of other forms of gambling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;although:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While one might reasonably argue that state lotteries have broad geographical effects, casinos (of all types) are likely to have far more restricted areas of impact. To the extent that is the case, casino gambling may well influence local income distributions without producing a discernible state-level effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nonlottery (casino) gambling is less regressive than lottery gambling because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;casinos generate more or their revenue from relatively wealthy gamblers than they do from lower-income gamblers. However, it still may be true that lower-income gamblers bear a greater financial burden from casino gambling than do higher-income gamblers (p. 6). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it is important to also note that casino gambling may well become similarly regressive on a state level to lottery gambling if it grows in coverage and popularity. And that this is only one study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10918" LastEditorUserId="10918" LastEditDate="2013-01-02T11:33:55.063" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T11:33:55.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14355" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-02T11:35:37.810" Score="14" ViewCount="1707" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the English Language and Usage stack exchange, &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/q/56582/1420&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt; people &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/q/96152/1420&quot;&gt;asked&lt;/a&gt; what was meant by &quot;testosterone-charged&quot;, as in the following quote, from the story &quot;2 States: The Story of My Marriage&quot; by Chetan Bhagat:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I’d have much preferred her place, as I didn’t want her to be the&#xA;  only woman in the dorm with twenty testosterone-charged men&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of English language dictionaries describe testosterone as a figurative way to refer to manly behaviour. For example, the English edition of Wiktionary has&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2 (figuratively) Manly behavior, often of an aggressive or foolishly reckless nature. &lt;em&gt;Mother encouraged James to rely more on intelligence&#xA;  and less on testosterone to deal with the neighbor's son.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/testosterone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;vocabulary.com&lt;/a&gt; has in the second paragraph&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The word testosterone was coined in the 1930s. It is based on the&#xA;  Latin word testis, which means testicle, and the word sterol, meaning&#xA;  steroid. Because it is the hormone that develops male characteristics,&#xA;  the word testosterone sometimes refers to the quality of being male. A&#xA;  room crowded with men watching football is commonly described as being&#xA;  &quot;full of testosterone.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/testosterone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Merriam Webster&lt;/a&gt; has&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2: qualities (as brawn and aggressiveness) usually associated with males : manliness&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These sources may or may not be notable in themselves, but they do attest to a widespread perception by the general public about what testosterone is and what it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question is, is this perception valid? I'd like to know, so that if I had to describe the metaphorical sense of &quot;testosterone&quot;, I'd be able to tell them right off the bat whether it was true or not, rather than polluting the world with more misinformation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering because many ideas that become popular in the general public are either incorrect, or have been over-simplified somewhat, whereas ideas that are complicated and nuanced aren't as popular in the general public. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;testosterone&lt;/a&gt; is very long, but most of it is about mundane details such as its effects on anatomy (in both a euphemistic and non-euphemistic sense). The section &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone#Romantic_relationships_and_fatherhood&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Romantic relationships and fatherhood&lt;/a&gt; onwards until the end of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone#Aggression_and_criminality&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aggression and criminality&lt;/a&gt; addresses the effects of testosterone on behaviour, but some of it is less than convincing. Sometimes it talks about correlation, and Wikipedia doesn't seem to mention a mechanism by which testosterone causes &quot;male&quot; behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does testosterone play a role in stereotypical &quot;male&quot; behaviour, such as a high desire for sex, and a propensity for competitive, aggressive or high risk behaviour?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:10.210" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T01:33:25.447" Title="Is testosterone responsible for typically &quot;male&quot; behaviour?" Tags="|biology|chemistry|gender|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14301" CreationDate="2013-01-02T14:05:52.557" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book cited makes a similar, but not as-strong, claim based on a scientific article which does not support it&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both articles cite a book by Trevor Blake, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0tXe-6k6qM4C&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;dq=1936661713&amp;amp;pg=PP1#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life&lt;/a&gt;. I've looked up the chapter in question and here is what it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/875LW.png&quot; alt=&quot;Excerpt from &amp;quot;Three Simple Steps&amp;quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tracked down (I believe) the original article. It does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; support the claims of the author! The article is about the discovery that the &lt;em&gt;meaning&lt;/em&gt; of words influences which parts of the brain are activated. It says nothing about negative words being detrimental, let alone &lt;em&gt;peeling away neurons&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effects of task conditions on brain activation to emotional stimuli are poorly understood. In this event-related fMRI study, brain activation to negative and positive words (matched for arousal) and neutral words was investigated under two task conditions. Subjects either had to attend to the emotional meaning (direct task) or to non-emotional features of the words (indirect task). Regardless of task, positive vs. negative words led to increased activation in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, while negative vs. positive words induced increased activation of the insula. Compared to neutral words, all emotional words were associated with increased activation of the amygdala. Finally, the direct condition, as compared to the indirect condition, led to enhanced activation to emotional vs. neutral words in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex. &lt;em&gt;These results suggest valence and arousal dependent brain activation patterns that are partially modulated by participants’ processing mode of the emotional stimuli.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—Thomas Straube, Andreas Sauer, Wolfgang H.R. Miltner, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2011.03.037&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brain activation during direct and indirect processing of positive and negative words&lt;/a&gt;, Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T14:05:52.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7367" CreationDate="2013-01-02T19:13:40.167" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Catnip has traditionally been used as a home remedy to treat a variety of human illnesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Catnip has been prepared and used by people for many years. It was originally used a tea, juice, tincture, infusion, and poultice and has been smoked and chewed. It fell out of favor with the development of more effective drugs. More recently, it has been used by people for its hallucinogenic effects.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;&amp;hellip;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Other uses for catnip have been as a cold remedy, for hives, as a diaphoretic (induces sweating), a refrigerant (cools the body), and an anodyne (relieves&#xA;  pain) (5,9,18). It has also been used as a tonic for pains and rheumatism, as an infusion for whooping cough and measles, a tea for asthma, yellow fever, scarlet fever, smallpox, and jaundice, and has also been smoked to relieve respiratory ailments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1480656/pdf/canvetj00079-0049.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Catnip Its uses and effects, past and present.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent study investigated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the chemical composition and pharmacological basis for traditional use of essential oil of Nepeta cataria L. (Limiaceae) (Nc.Oil) in gastrointestinal and respiratory disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and concluded&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These data indicate that Nepeta cataria possesses spasmolytic and myorelaxant activities mediated possibly through dual inhibition of calcium channels and PDE, which may explain its traditional use in colic, diarrhea, cough and asthma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jep.2008.11.004&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chemical composition and mechanisms underlying the spasmolytic and bronchodilatory properties of the essential oil of Nepeta cataria L.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10745" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T19:13:40.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14366" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-02T20:56:24.197" Score="7" ViewCount="349" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/q/1915/8717&quot;&gt;How do you remove garlic smells from your fingers?&lt;/a&gt; on Seasoned Advice and it reminded my of a claim I was always skeptical about. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/1918/8717&quot;&gt;accepted answer&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The smell of garlic is due to sulfur compounds. When you rub your hands against stainless steel, the iron of the stainless steel will react with some small volume of those compounds, but much more will remain in your hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have often heard the claim that rubbing the hands on a steel block &lt;em&gt;really works&lt;/em&gt; but I wonder if there is any real evidence for or against this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5638" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:33:29.713" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T21:08:11.473" Title="Does rubbing hands on a steel block reduce the smell of garlic?" Tags="|natural-remedies|cooking|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14367" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-02T21:30:45.137" Score="17" ViewCount="2021" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/g-roger-denson/is-homosexuality-populati_b_784449.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For even without a causal link established between homosexuality and population management, &lt;strong&gt;the obvious reduction in population growth attributable to homosexuality by itself indubitably works to preserve the species.&lt;/strong&gt;  (Emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &quot;&lt;em&gt;homosexuality by itself indubitably works to preserve the species&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, really?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, my question is: Does homosexuality work to preserve the species?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="8702" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T21:40:42.630" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T15:36:37.373" Title="Does homosexuality preserve the species?" Tags="|sexuality|genetics|evolution|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12272" CreationDate="2013-01-02T21:51:18.767" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer can only come from my experience working as a graduate student in a university wheat breeding program.  Gliadin is a storage protein&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; in the wheat kernel and 1980s research has shown that certain forms of this protein lead to better baking quality, but more recent research shows that it may be more complicated &lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In our program we did not specifically select for varieties that had higher amounts of any particular protein.  The specific goals of the program were adequate baking quality, improved yield, disease tolerance or resistance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://naldc.nal.usda.gov/download/23855/PDF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wheat and wheat improvement&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.pp.38.060187.001041&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Genetics of wheat storage proteins and the effect of allelic variation on bread making quality&lt;/a&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.agronomy.org/publications/cs/abstracts/30/3/CS0300030593&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effects of ‘Cheyenne’ Chromosomes on Milling and Baking Quality in ‘Chinese Spring’ Wheat in Relation to Glutenin and Gliadin Storage Proteins&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10931" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-02T23:46:50.567" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T23:46:50.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18" CreationDate="2013-01-02T23:21:39.460" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some very interesting results along those lines were produced by an asthma study done in 2011:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103319&quot;&gt;Active Albuterol or Placebo, Sham Acupuncture, or No Intervention in Asthma&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a double-blind, crossover pilot study, we randomly assigned 46&#xA;  patients with asthma to &lt;strong&gt;active treatment with an albuterol inhaler, a&#xA;  placebo inhaler, sham acupuncture, or no intervention&lt;/strong&gt;. Using a block&#xA;  design, we administered one each of these four interventions in random&#xA;  order during four sequential visits (3 to 7 days apart); this&#xA;  procedure was repeated in two more blocks of visits (for a total of 12&#xA;  visits by each patient). At each visit, spirometry was performed&#xA;  repeatedly over a period of 2 hours. &lt;strong&gt;Maximum forced expiratory volume&#xA;  in 1 second (FEV1) was measured, and patients' self-reported&#xA;  improvement ratings were recorded.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So after treatment, each patient was given a spirometry test to determine if there was any &lt;em&gt;objective improvement&lt;/em&gt; in their lung capactity. They were also asked to report their &lt;em&gt;subjective impression&lt;/em&gt; of whether the treatment helped their asthma symptoms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the spirometry test results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/V5gJL.png&quot; alt=&quot;Objective Improvement&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The active albuterol treatment group was the only one that showed significant improvement  in actual lung capacity after treatment, the placebo and sham acupuncture groups performed  the same as those who got no treatment at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ah, but what about the patient's subjective impression?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1Li3y.png&quot; alt=&quot;Subjective Improvement&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All treatment groups &lt;em&gt;felt like their asthma symptoms had significantly improved&lt;/em&gt; even though the spirometry test showed no such improvement!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while placebo treatments might make patients &lt;em&gt;feel better&lt;/em&gt; about their symptoms, this study suggests that the placebo effect &lt;em&gt;causes no actual objective improvement&lt;/em&gt;, and is, therefore, purely psychological.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I can imagine scenarios where this could lead to real harm, like a patient leaving their inhaler at home because they believed they were in better shape than they actually were.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1049" LastActivityDate="2013-01-02T23:21:39.460" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14372" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14374" CreationDate="2013-01-03T00:34:54.133" Score="6" ViewCount="1161" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://m.christianpost.com/news/woman-lifts-car-saves-dad-after-being-crushed-by-1-5-ton-bmw--79304/&quot;&gt;The Christian Post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A woman lifted a car to save her dad, according to reports in an amazing and daring rescue.&#xA;  L. K. is reported to have lifted the 1.5 ton car [BMW 525i] off of her father in an amazing incident that doctors are now saying saved his life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of this claim because it seems exaggerate, so I wonder: can a woman lift a 1.5 ton car?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:05:40.063" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:05:40.063" Title="Can a woman lift a 1.5 ton car?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14373" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-03T00:36:25.260" Score="21" ViewCount="3259" Body="&lt;p&gt;We often hear the claim that men are treated unfairly in relation to women by the Judicial System. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example of the claim can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://shaneleavy.blogspot.no/2011/01/does-justice-system-discriminate.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Women shoplifters were less likely than comparable males to receive a&#xA;  prison sentence. They were also more likely to be sentenced to a&#xA;  community penalty or to be discharged....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Men and women stood an equal chance of going to prison for a first&#xA;  violent offence. However among repeat offenders women were less likely&#xA;  to receive a custodial sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Women first offenders were significantly less likely than equivalent&#xA;  men to receive a prison sentence for a drug offence, but recidivists&#xA;  were equally likely to go to prison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among first and repeat offenders, women convicted of violence and drug&#xA;  offences were always more likely to be discharged and men more likely&#xA;  to be fined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the data of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AonYZs4MzlZbdGlaRnZoeWp1ZnpoYWRqNm5IOVZhZ3c#gid=12&quot;&gt;UK Criminal Justice System&lt;/a&gt;, which is detailed and broken down in several different categories, seems to also imply prejudice. Specifically, women are arrested in 18% of the cases, but convicted only in 6% of the cases, or men are 3 times more likely to be get convicted, in relation to their arrests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: Are men actually treated unequally wrt women by the judicial system. Is there prejudice against men?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are any other sources that could confirm/contradict the claim, they are welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanx&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10937" LastEditorUserId="10937" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T11:22:04.287" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T05:21:06.923" Title="Is the judicial system biased against men?" Tags="|gender|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14372" CreationDate="2013-01-03T00:57:01.877" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question sounds like the woman is alleged to have lifted a 1.5 ton weight into the air, like a weight-lifter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her claim is much more mundane - that she was able to shove the weight in a way that relieved the pressure from her father, and enabled him to be rescued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;thanks to the unevenness of the car due to the tire having been removed, Lauren was able to shove it hard enough to tip the car off her father and drag him out of harm's way&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/01/lauren-kornacki-lifts-bmw_n_1728396.html&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A shove against the car, tipped unevenly like a four-legged table with a short leg, was enough to relieve the pressure. She pulled her 210-pound, unconscious father from beneath the BMW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/family-thankful-joyous-over-daughter-s-rescue-of-dad/article_9f29c65e-554c-542e-91ca-779bf65513d3.html&quot;&gt;Times Dispatch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Wikipeda confirms that a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_5_Series_%28E34%29&quot;&gt;BMW 525i E34&lt;/a&gt; has a curb-weight of 1.5 tonnes, although it may vary by model and by what was in the car.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T00:57:01.877" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14375" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14379" CreationDate="2013-01-03T01:24:15.000" Score="13" ViewCount="9633" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, my company started using fingerprint scanners to identify employees for access control and for attendance. Many employees have a concern about developing skin cancer from the IR fingerprint scanners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&amp;amp;contentid=200805085836&quot;&gt;The Saudi Gazette&lt;/a&gt; also has a warning&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The dermatologist, whom the Makkah-based Arabic daily Al-Nadwah quoted spoke on the condition of anonymity, state these devices have a negative impact on the employees’ health, especially those who fingerprint their palms. He added that in the long run, exposure to infrared rays might cause cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this plausible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10938" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T23:10:08.670" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T02:07:01.350" Title="Do fingerprint scanners cause skin cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|disease|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14376" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14355" CreationDate="2013-01-03T01:33:25.447" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Human behavior is complicated. Here's for example a study titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890856709636352&quot;&gt;&quot;Male Testosterone Linked to High Social Dominance but Low Physical Aggression in Early Adolescence&quot;&lt;/a&gt; that investigates boys aged 6-12:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Boys perceived as socially dominant by unfamiliar peers were found to have concurrently higher levels of testosterone than boys perceived as less socially dominant. In contrast, boys who had a history of high physical aggression, from age 6 to 12, were found to have lower testosterone levels at age 13 compared with boys with no history of high physical aggression. The former were also failing in school and were unpopular with their peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim that testosterone always produces aggression is therefore false. On the other hand, you could label socially dominant behavior as &quot;manly&quot;. The kid who's socially dominant and is popular with his peers doesn't need to engage in aggression. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mazur, Allan, and Alan Booth. &quot;Testosterone and dominance in men.&quot; Behavioral and Brain Science (1998) says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In men, high levels of endogenous testosterone (T) seem to encourage behavior intended to dominate – to enhance one’s status&#xA;  over – other people. &lt;strong&gt;Sometimes&lt;/strong&gt; dominant behavior is aggressive, its apparent intent being to inflict harm on another person, but often&#xA;  dominance is expressed nonaggressively. &lt;strong&gt;Sometimes&lt;/strong&gt; dominant behavior takes the form of antisocial behavior, including rebellion against&#xA;  authority and law breaking. Measurement of T at a single point in time, presumably indicative of a man’s basal T level, predicts many of&#xA;  these dominant or antisocial behaviors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth noting that testosterone not only causes dominace but also the other way around (from the same study):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The act of competing for dominant status affects&#xA;  male T levels in two ways. First, T rises in the face of a challenge, as if it were an anticipatory response to impending competition. Second,&#xA;  after the competition, T rises in winners and declines in losers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person who wins the challenge for social dominance is more likely to engage in more challenges for social domiance through his raised testosterone.&#xA;The loser of the conflict reduces his testosterone and therefore is less likely to try to be socially dominant again and fail again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'd like to know, so that if I had to describe the metaphorical sense of &quot;testosterone&quot;, I'd be able to tell them right off the bat whether it was true or not&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asking whether a psychological model like this is true or false is a bad question. If you want to evaluate such a model you have to ask yourself whether the model is able to make useful predictions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a very bad psychology model would be the model that astrology proposes. You have 12 different personality traits that all depend on when the person got born. If you use that model and observe people's behavior you can't predict at all when they got born. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In physics Newton created a quite useful model for the way gravity works. Newton's model makes useful predictions. You can use it to effective calculate the aerodynamics of airplane travel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Words like dominance and aggression are theoretical constructs that humans invented to describe reality. If you ask two different observers whether a behavior is dominant, they are more likely than chance to agree. There are however also cases where the two observers will disagree. You can't measure the quantity of dominance as finely as you can measure the speed of an object. As a result a concept that uses terms like domiance is unable to make predictions with 99.9% certainty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have two people and judge their dominance you can't predict their testosterone levels with 99.9% certainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But let's get back to the definition of male behavior:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most males have a higher testosterone level than females. Testosterone does have an effect on behavior. If one wants to avoid vague human created terms like 'domiance' and 'aggression', it's tempting to define male behavior as that behavior that's created by a higher testosterone level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since testosterone levels are in principle less fuzzy than old psychological terms like 'dominance' there some idealistic hope that it's a better definition. Giving the complexity of human behavior it's however hard to invent good categories and some people might find it more useful to use words like 'dominance' and 'aggression' because they can better imagine what those words mean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T01:33:25.447" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1244" CreationDate="2013-01-03T04:08:51.383" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is LSD more harmful than alcohol?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A factual comparison of two sets of categorically different adverse reactions&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2857376/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;22&lt;/a&gt; is difficult. LSD produces some severe psychological reactions&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.petabox.bibalex.org/web/20011116091659/www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/lsd/lsd-4.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/hallucinogens-dissociative-drugs/why-do-people-take-hallucinogens&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.europepmc.org/abstract/MED/8251869&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; while adverse effects of alcohol are largely biological&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/alcohol.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;, and an association between alcoholism and dementia remains unclear&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alcoholmd.com/longtermeffects.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Despite all the years time on this pressing issue, researchers do still not know who may be predisposed to problems related with alcohol&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/Resources/ResearchResources/job22.htm#risk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;9&lt;/a&gt;. By comparison, 0 clinical research has been completed on LSD since 1976. Any possible psychological predisposition to LSD induced psychosis, purportedly making LSD safer&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_info7.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;17&lt;/a&gt;, clearly eludes typical users&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allpsychologycareers.com/topics/diagnosing-mental-illness.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;15&lt;/a&gt; and apparently those in medical and legal professions as well&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1440-1614.2000.00770.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;16&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673698080945&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;21&lt;/a&gt;. Data from the medical LSD time-frame, especially those dealing with long-term outcomes, are substandard&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&amp;amp;id=1973-30752-001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;14&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maps.org/research/abrahart.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; and subsequent anectodal evidence has always been complicated by a seemingly endless array of uncontrolled factors, leading to uncertainty as to what caused the harm&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23222128&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;11&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dangers of alcohol are related to overuse&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh342/135-143.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10&lt;/a&gt; and certain regulations of alcohol have lead to safer use&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh342/248-256.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;18&lt;/a&gt;. Following guidelines presented by a medical and governmental association seems like your best bet at staying safe. These recommendations may change over time, and waiting to see results of controlled studies&lt;a href=&quot;http://santacruz.patch.com/articles/landmark-clinical-lsd-study-nears-completion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;12&lt;/a&gt;, should prove worth the wait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the basis for this classification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies, like those associating slight alcohol use with lower risk of cardiovascular death&lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/1530196&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;13&lt;/a&gt;, have lead to recommended safe levels of consumption&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/dietaryguidelines.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; of a few drinks. Alcohol has long been manufactured for scientific research, fuel, dye, and as a medical supply, and contrary to popular myth, limited use of intoxicating liquor was never outlawed by the Volstead Act&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/Controversies/Volstead-Act.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;. These metrics possibly present a basis for legality, in contrast to LSD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking the long standing legal risk under consideration&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/criminal-defense/drug-charges/possession-lsd-conviction.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;20&lt;/a&gt;, alcohol obviously becomes a safer choice for an individual, over LSD. While healthy food and exercise remains the safest way to acheive a cardiovascular benefit&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/277349-what-are-the-benefits-of-eating-healthy-exercising/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;19&lt;/a&gt;. For mind expansion, I would suggest astronomy, art, yoga, extensive travel, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/hallucinogens-dissociative-drugs/why-do-people-take-hallucinogens&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hallucinogens and Dissociative Drugs&quot; Why do people take hallucinogens?&quot;. National Institute on Drug Abuse. 2001.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.europepmc.org/abstract/MED/8251869&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Abraham HD, Aldridge AM. Adverse consequences of lysergic acid diethylamide. Addiction; Abingdon, England: 88(10):1327-1334, 1993&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/dietaryguidelines.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;United States Department of Agriculture. Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion. Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/Controversies/Volstead-Act.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Volstead Act; Alcohol: Problems and Solutions.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maps.org/research/abrahart.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;David Abrahart. A Critical Review of Theories and Research Concerning Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) and Mental Health, 1998.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/alcohol.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; FASTSTAT, Alcohol Use. 2012.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.petabox.bibalex.org/web/20011116091659/www.usdoj.gov/dea/pubs/lsd/lsd-4.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DEA Public Affairs. &quot;DEA - Publications - LSD in the US - The Drug&quot;. 2001&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alcoholmd.com/longtermeffects.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;alcohol md. Information about Alcohol and Medicine. 2011.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.niaaa.nih.gov/Resources/ResearchResources/job22.htm#risk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Administering Alcohol in Human Studies. 2012.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh342/135-143.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Jürgen Rehm, Ph.D.. The Risks Associated With Alcohol Use and Alcoholism. 2011.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23222128&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Blacha C. Self-inflicted Testicular Amputation in First Lysergic Acid Diethylamide Use. 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://santacruz.patch.com/articles/landmark-clinical-lsd-study-nears-completion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SantaCruzPatch. Landmark Clinical LSD Study Nears Completion. 2011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/1530196&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Klatsky. Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, Department of Medicine, Oakland, CA 94611. Annals of Internal Medicine [1992, 117(8):646-654]. Alcohol and mortality.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&amp;amp;id=1973-30752-001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;McWilliams, Spencer A.. Long-term psychological effects of LSD. Psychological Bulletin, Vol 79(6), Jun 1973, 341-351.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allpsychologycareers.com/topics/diagnosing-mental-illness.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Psychology Career Center. Diagnosing Mental Health Illness. 2008.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1440-1614.2000.00770.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Assen Jablensky. Prevalence and incidence of schizophrenia spectrum disorders: implications for prevention. 2002.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_info7.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lamont Grandquist. LSD The facts! Information about the Health Effects of LSD. 1992.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh342/248-256.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gruenewald, Paul. Regulating Availability: How Access to Alcohol Affects Drinking and Problems in Youth and Adults. 2011.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/277349-what-are-the-benefits-of-eating-healthy-exercising/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ValerieL. What Are the Benefits of Eating Healthy &amp;amp; Exercising?. 2010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.criminaldefenselawyer.com/resources/criminal-defense/drug-charges/possession-lsd-conviction.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CriminalDefenseLawyer.com Possession of LSD: Defense and Impact of Conviction. 2013.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673698080945&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Shaw, Jenny, et al. Prevalence and detection of serious psychiatric disorder in defendants attending court. 1999.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2857376/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Woo-kyoung Ahn, Caroline C. Proctor, and Elizabeth H. Flanaganb. Mental Health Clinicians’ Beliefs About the Biological, Psychological, and Environmental Bases of Mental Disorders. 2009&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10939" LastEditorUserId="10939" LastEditDate="2013-01-06T15:33:51.880" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T15:33:51.880" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-01-06T15:33:51.880" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14375" CreationDate="2013-01-03T09:06:54.763" Score="18" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Sensor Technologies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fingerprint scanners use one of two methods&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;optical (light)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;capacitive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://computer.howstuffworks.com/fingerprint-scanner2.htm&quot;&gt;HowStuffWorks&lt;/a&gt; and note that this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zvetcobiometrics.com/Documents/chart_fingerprint_reader.html&quot;&gt;manufacturer&lt;/a&gt; has both &quot;E-Field&quot; and &quot;Active Cap&quot; sensors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Light&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So not all fingerprint readers shine light on your fingers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, patents such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect2=PTO1&amp;amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;amp;p=1&amp;amp;u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&amp;amp;r=1&amp;amp;f=G&amp;amp;l=50&amp;amp;d=PALL&amp;amp;RefSrch=yes&amp;amp;Query=PN/4210899&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; mention &quot;light&quot; and have no mention of &quot;infra-red&quot; so at first glance it seems that some sensors may be using wavelengths of light that are not infra-red.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Infra-red&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.hq.nasa.gov/kids/imagers/ems/infrared.html&quot;&gt;Infra-red light&lt;/a&gt; is the same as radiant heat. I'm unsure this would be useful to shine on a warm object like a finger. It would be better to use a passive-IR detector to capture the IR-radiation (heat) emitted by the finger. This is how some &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermographic_camera&quot;&gt;night-vision cameras&lt;/a&gt; work. In this case there would be no additional IR received by your finger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare with Passive Infra-Red (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_infrared_sensor&quot;&gt;PIR&lt;/a&gt;) detectors used in automatic lights and burglar alarms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Infra-Red light is commonly used in domestic heaters and in heaters used to raise chicks.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=infrared+heater&amp;amp;tbm=shop&quot;&gt;Examples&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=infrared+heater+chicks&amp;amp;tbm=shop&quot;&gt;Examples&lt;/a&gt;. So it would be surprising if these were a hitherto unknown cause of cancers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heating a finger could conceivably cause burns (though biometric scanners are unlikely to need high-powered IR emitters and so are probably unlikely to have circuits capable of carrying the electrical current needed to deliver a harmful heating effect). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The power emitted by a typical &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rapidonline.com/Electronic-Components/High-power-infrared-source-and-sensor-29398&quot;&gt;high-powered IR emitter&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is 20 mW (0.02 W). If this is all shone at a fingertip (area 0.0001 m²) with 100% efficiency (impossible) that gives 200 W/m². Compare this with the heat naturally &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~jones/cscie129/pages/health/thermreg.htm&quot;&gt;emitted by your skin&lt;/a&gt; which is 40 to 800 W/m²&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cancer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I search for &quot;Infra-Red and Cancer&quot; I only get results concerning the use of Infra-Red light to treat (i.e. attempt to cure) cancer! &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/343310/description/Infrared_light_offers_promise_of_laser-sharp_cancer_therapy&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Infra-red light is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation&quot;&gt;non-ionizing&lt;/a&gt; as pointed out by Nico in a comment below. This means it cannot cause the sort of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scitopics.com/DNA_Damage_and_Cancer.html&quot;&gt;damage to DNA molecules&lt;/a&gt; typically needed to cause cancers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skin cancer has been associated with UV-light (specifically UV-B), not IR light. Maybe there is some confusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See links referred to in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_light_and_cancer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Health&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To work out any health implications you'd need to know&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;does the specific fingerprint sensor used actually emit IR light&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what frequency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what power&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how long is the finger illuminated&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how many time a day/week/month/year does each person use the sensor &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find any reference that IR light causes cancer. As explained above, this seems very unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Saudi Gazette&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;wrong about device&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article mentioned shows a picture, not of a fingerprint scanner but of a different device - a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hrindustries.co.uk/biometric-hand-geometry-reader.htm&quot;&gt;hand geometry scanner&lt;/a&gt;. I believe these scanners typically &lt;a href=&quot;http://biometrics.cse.msu.edu/hand_proto.html&quot;&gt;use visible light and cameras&lt;/a&gt; not Infra-Red.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text of the article talks only about &quot;fingerprint devices&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;wrong about &quot;exposure to infrared rays might cause cancer&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be an error - no references in the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;other issues may be legitimate but grossly overstated&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The anonymous dermatologist warns about transmission of &quot;skin diseases&quot; - this may be a legitimate concern (though the same concerns would presumably apply to doorknobs and banknotes, etc). Some respondents suggested the device is treated to reduce the chance of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;irrelevant content&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article reports&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In biochemistry, a fingerprint is defined as a pattern of fragments obtained when a protein is digested by a prototypic enzyme, usually observed following two-dimensional separation by chromatography and electrophoresis.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reporter or editor seems to be introducing information that is completely irrelevant to the operation of fingerprint scanners. At the very least they fail to explain how it can possibly be relevant. This casts some doubts on the reporters competence and impartiality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;wrong about X-rays&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Physicians also said these devices emit X-rays directly at the hand&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the ridiculousness of this (in the context of fingerprint scanners) is not evident to anyone reading this, please say so in a comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(what follows is personal opinion - you can disregard it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the hazards (if any) of fingerprint scanners - this article is, on the whole, not credible. It is probably a good example of the worst kind of journalism. It seems to deliberately stir up concern and even panic, prey on peoples natural apprehensions about new technologies and does not make any attempt to give the makers of the devices any opportunity to respond to the claims. For the sake of it's citizens, I hope it is untypical of journalism and science in Saudi Arabia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T11:47:17.520" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T11:47:17.520" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14373" CreationDate="2013-01-03T12:26:13.637" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;The United States criminal justice system does treat men more harshly than women, at least as far as sentencing decisions are concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07418820902926197&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Independent and Joint Effects of Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Age on Sentencing Outcomes in U.S. Federal Courts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using data compiled by the United States Sentencing Commission, we examine&#xA;  the independent and joint effects of race/ethnicity, gender, and age on sentencing&#xA;  decisions in U.S. federal courts. We find that Hispanics and blacks, males,&#xA;  and younger defendants receive harsher sentences than whites, females, and&#xA;  older defendants after controlling for important legal and contextual factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following table shows that women are around 42% less likely than men to be sent to jail and that women receive sentences that are approximately 25% shorter than men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Table 2 shows the main effects of race/ethnicity, gender, and age on in/out and&#xA;  sentence length outcomes controlling for important legal factors and judicial&#xA;  district.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6vmeG.png&quot; alt=&quot;Table 2&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While men are treated more harshly than women by criminal courts, this is not necessarily proof of bias. The authors state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is important to emphasize that we are not suggesting that these disparities&#xA;  necessarily result from a conscious or overt hostility toward certain defendant&#xA;  groups or that these disparities are even unwarranted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we may be lacking relevant information that, if included in our models, would explain the racial/&#xA;  ethnic, gender, and age disparities in our models. For example, women may&#xA;  be sentenced more leniently than men because they are, on average, more&#xA;  remorseful than men. If we have not adequately controlled for these gender&#xA;  differences in remorse in our models, then any apparent gender disparity may&#xA;  not be “real.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2019-01-30T05:21:06.923" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T05:21:06.923" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14381" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-03T13:02:26.827" Score="14" ViewCount="1063" Body="&lt;p&gt;While getting the usual holiday cold, I searched around the internet a bit to find out why/if I/people get sick more often during holidays. Most articles deal with the temperature and the environment, but some of them claim there is a thing called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_Sickness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Leisure sickness&lt;/a&gt;. Two articles that seem to use the same source are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.boots.com/travel/features/do-weekends-and-holidays-make-you-sick&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Boots WebMD - Do weekends and holidays make you sick?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.koolstofcoaching.com/why-do-i-get-sick-at-christmas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;KoolStof Coaching - Why Do I get Sick at Christmas?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your immune system is stimulated by the pressure, so when you have deadlines your body knows you can’t get ill. When you take a break your immune system just thinks - no more pressure. I can get sick now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This to me does not sound right. As far as I know &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7413/does-stress-weaken-ones-immune-system&quot;&gt;stress has a negative impact on the immune system&lt;/a&gt;, not the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Does leisure sickness exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7716" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2015-09-12T02:06:54.693" Title="Is there such a thing as &quot;leisure sickness&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|stress|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14367" CreationDate="2013-01-03T14:29:06.657" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to some very apt criticism regarding my comment on the question I am going to rephrase it as an answer. It is not so much that the question has an invalid premise, but that the cited article that generated the question is based on an invalid premise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know as a fact that homosexuals do conceive children.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; The idea that they do not is false and the idea that they did so less than heterosexuals in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology#Environment_of_evolutionary_adaptedness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness&lt;/a&gt; is likely completely untestable. We would really need research to test this claim and none exists. The notion that this idea is in any way &lt;code&gt;indubitable&lt;/code&gt; is just foolish. And consider this: if that is what homosexuality is supposed to be &quot;for&quot;, then it is doing a very, very poor job considering the continued exponential growth of the human population&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;. Also, recent evidence is that homosexuality is not genetically determined but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/epigenetics-underpins-homosexuality/81247763/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;epigentic&lt;/a&gt;. This would make any sort of idea that there is a selective pressure FOR homosexuality false because it is not directly tied to genes. This means Natural Selection could not &quot;use&quot; it to &quot;better&quot; the species by making it more &quot;stable&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pO93j.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If homosexuality cannot be shown to control population growth, what do we know &lt;em&gt;DOES&lt;/em&gt; control population growth? Within other animals we know it to be things like disease (viruses, bacteria, parasites, etc), famine, and increased predation&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_population_control&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. I see no reason to assume that humans are exempt from most of these and &lt;em&gt;no evidence to conclude that we have evolved homosexuality as a method of population control&lt;/em&gt;, as again, current evidence shows homosexuality to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/epigenetics-underpins-homosexuality/81247763/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;epegenetic in origin&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine the author of the article thinks himself very progressive but what he is doing is actually harmful. The article seems to imply that homosexuality requires some sort of natural &quot;utility&quot; to make it &quot;ok&quot; or acceptable. This is just an extension of, or perhaps a reversal of, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Naturalistic Fallacy&lt;/a&gt;. It seems to be promoting the idea that if something is right or ok, it must be natural because what is natural is right, good, or ok. But if that is the only basis for why homosexuals must be treated with respect and not discriminated against then it rests on a very shaky foundation. If homosexuality is scientifically demonstrated to be a &quot;side-effect&quot; of a natural process, as it seems to be from recent research, then the idea that it is &quot;natural&quot; is eroded. If we as a society are going to make the choice that people should be respected and not discriminated against based on sexuality then we need to do so on real and not fallacious reasoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Supporting Claim that Homosexuals Conceive Children&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice I am not claiming all homosexuals conceive children nor that homosexuals conceive children at the same rate as heterosexuals.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/10/double-lives&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This American Life: Double Lives&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2115015/Gay-man-fathered-child-lesbians-wins-right-access.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gay man who fathered child for lesbians wins right to more access&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oscar Wilde, who is generally considered to have been a homosexual and not bisexual had two children. It strikes me as odd that people demanded a reference to this as the claim is, in my opinion, as easily verifiable as to be taken for granted since there have been so many instances of this throughout history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Regarding the Exponential Growth of the World Human Population&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the Wikipedia links given in the text, please see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UN's World Population Prospects&lt;/a&gt; site for the statistics regarding historical world population values and &lt;a href=&quot;http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html#The_Population_of_the_World&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Human Population Growth&lt;/a&gt; for details regarding the mathematics for demonstrating that the world population has been growing exponentially for several centuries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10524" LastEditorUserId="10524" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T19:18:05.237" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T19:18:05.237" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="14384" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:00:11.883" Score="0" Body="The people who participate in an economy by undertaking paid work. The collective workforce in an economy." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:33:19.663" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:33:19.663" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="14386" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:10:13.607" Score="0" Body="The balance of benefit versus harm of an activity, device, technology or substance." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:32:49.947" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:32:49.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="14388" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:14:47.670" Score="0" Body="The practice of treating disease with substances causing similar symptoms but where the active ingredient is extremely diluted " OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:32:53.690" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:32:53.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="14390" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:20:29.087" Score="0" Body="Devices designed to create extremely large explosions by exploiting nuclear processes within atoms. Fission devices use energy released by slitting large nuclei; fusion devices use the energy released by merging small nuclei. Many devices use fission to trigger fusion." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:32:38.107" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:32:38.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="14392" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:22:22.970" Score="0" Body="The primary means by which governments raise revenue. Taxes can be levied on almost any aspect of economic activity." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:33:32.427" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:33:32.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14393" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:26:59.840" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T15:26:59.840" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T15:26:59.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14394" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:26:59.840" Score="0" Body="A method of summarising collective health within a group by calculating the average time members are expected to remain alive. Most used at the country level where the statistic is how long a newborn child is expected to live if current rates of death remain constant." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:31:52.070" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:31:52.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="14396" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:31:43.347" Score="0" Body="A range of chemical substances containing carbon, hydrogen and oxygen which induce sweet taste and are important in living organisms storage and transport of energy. " OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:32:01.383" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:32:01.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="14398" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:36:23.200" Score="0" Body="A range of human diseases where the ability to regulate blood-sugar is compromised leading, if untreated, to a range of long term chronic harms. In type 1 diabetes insulin production is compromised; in type 2, cells fail to respond adequately to the insulin levels in the body." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:31:35.267" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:31:35.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="14400" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:42:52.590" Score="0" Body="A long chain biological polymer that acts as a store of genetic information using the sequence of 4 bases held inside a double spiral made from a sugar-containing backbone." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:33:14.110" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:33:14.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14401" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:46:51.573" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T15:46:51.573" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T15:46:51.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14402" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:46:51.573" Score="0" Body="A term for fuels derived from the remains of plants or animals by geological processes over long time periods. A blanket term covering coal, oil, and natural gas." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:33:42.597" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:33:42.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="14404" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:51:55.637" Score="0" Body="A non-active treatment used in clinical trials so the effect of being treated can be distinguished from the effect the active treatment being tested. Necessary because the effect of being treated often induces significant improvement even when the treatment has no demonstrable activity." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:33:37.840" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:33:37.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14405" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:56:44.823" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T15:56:44.823" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T15:56:44.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14406" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:56:44.823" Score="0" Body="The chemical element with atomic number 80 and symbol Hg. The only metal liquid at room temperature. Known to the ancients as it sometimes occurs natively in the environment. Its vapour and many compounds are toxic. " OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-07-26T17:42:28.567" LastActivityDate="2019-07-26T17:42:28.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14407" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:58:53.697" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T15:58:53.697" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T15:58:53.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14408" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T15:58:53.697" Score="0" Body="A leading US manufacturer of consumer electronics including computers, tablets and mobile-phones. " OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:32:15.920" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:32:15.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
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  <row Id="14410" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T16:01:29.187" Score="0" Body="A device for storing electricity in a convenient compact form usually via chemical processes." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:32:43.643" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:32:43.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14411" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-03T16:07:32.467" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T16:07:32.467" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T16:07:32.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14412" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T16:07:32.467" Score="0" Body="The legal framework protecting artists, authors and other content-originators. Copyright allows owners to prevent others reproducing their work without permission (though most jurisdictions allows some limited exceptions in specific circumstances for some types of content.)" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:33:08.823" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:33:08.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14413" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-03T16:09:42.277" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T16:09:42.277" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T16:09:42.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14414" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T16:09:42.277" Score="0" Body="The study of the fossilised remains of animals and plants, their relationships to each other and to living animals and plants. " OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:32:26.343" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:32:26.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14415" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-03T16:13:35.560" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T16:13:35.560" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T16:13:35.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14416" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-03T16:13:35.560" Score="0" Body="The subset of creationism (that is the movement opposed to the idea of darwinian evolution, believing life to be directly created by god) who also believe the earth was created recently (usually &lt; 100,000 years ago). " OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T21:33:27.450" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T21:33:27.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14418" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14448" CreationDate="2013-01-03T16:36:33.523" Score="30" ViewCount="4390" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is somewhat of the converse of the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/976/is-gun-control-effective&quot;&gt;Is Gun Control Effective&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quote of famous musician and gun advocate Ted Nugent has been making the rounds on the Internet again lately:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where you have the most armed citizens in America, you have the lowest violent crime rate. Where you have the worst gun control, you have the highest crime rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do larger numbers of legally armed citizens correlate to lower violent crime rates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not as interested in the converse portion of his quote, as the effectiveness of gun control is covered under the question I linked earlier.  Instead, I'm looking for any evidence that an increase in private gun-ownership acts as a deterrent for violent crimes within a given geographic region.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T14:14:52.350" Title="Does increased gun ownership in the US correlate with a reduction in violent crime rates?" Tags="|united-states|guns|criminology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14367" CreationDate="2013-01-03T16:39:58.367" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two things that are often overlooked in discussions of evolution, particularly when it comes to sexual behaviour, are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&amp;amp;id=2105&quot;&gt;sexually antagonistic traits&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33773/title/Can-Epigenetics-Explain-Homosexuality-/&quot;&gt;epigenetics&lt;/a&gt;. Recent studies indicate that homosexuality may be due to a normally beneficial epigenetic mechanism that occasionally malfunctions. If this is the case, then homosexuality is an abnormal consequence of a beneficial trait, and so there is no reason it should have been selected out of the gene pool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/668167&quot;&gt;W. R. Rice et al., “Homosexuality as a consequence of epigenetically canalized sexual development,” The Quarterly Review of Biology, 87:343-368, 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10943" LastEditorUserId="10943" LastEditDate="2013-01-03T22:41:32.720" LastActivityDate="2013-01-03T22:41:32.720" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14422" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-03T22:15:41.953" Score="11" ViewCount="605" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A] tax provision that allows multinational corporations to defer U.S.&#xA;  taxes by moving profits into offshore financial subsidiaries. This&#xA;  provision -- known as the &quot;active financing exception&quot; -- is the main&#xA;  tool GE uses to avoid nearly all U.S. corporate income tax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://washingtonexaminer.com/tim-carney-how-corporate-tax-credits-got-in-the-cliff-deal/article/2517397#.UOYBKHe4vcy&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that there is a single law that allows for the off shoring of profits(and thus the avoidance of US Taxes) and that it would have expired with the Fiscal cliff but for the compromise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2013-01-24T21:05:18.313" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T21:05:18.313" Title="Is there a single US tax law that allows profits to be moved offshore to avoid taxes?" Tags="|united-states|taxes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14422" CreationDate="2013-01-04T02:43:51.700" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you mean by &quot;off shoring profits&quot;. If you mean &quot;shelter profits earned offshore,&quot; then the answer is &quot;Yes.&quot; If you mean &quot;move profits earned in the US offshore and then shelter them,&quot; the answer is &quot;No.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Active Financing Exception&quot; rule was originally enacted in 1997 and has been extended on a &quot;temporary&quot; basis regularly since then. It was extended again for 2 years in Sec. 322 (page 50) of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112hr8eas/pdf/BILLS-112hr8eas.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SPECIAL RULE FOR INCOME DERIVED IN THE ACTIVE CONDUCT OF BANKING, FINANCING, OR SIMILAR BUSINESSES.—Paragraph (9) of section 954(h) is amended by striking ‘‘January 1, 2012’’ and inserting ‘‘January 1, 2014’’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alston.com/Files/Publication/f848fe8d-a202-4cd0-bc91-4530cae3d9f1/Presentation/PublicationAttachment/e1173cc3-5a2e-405e-a1dd-45816cf69fa4/Stevens_JOFP_07-02.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article written in 2007 by Matthew Stevens&lt;/a&gt; (&quot;a Partner in the International Tax Group for the law ﬁrm of Alston &amp;amp; Bird. He has also served as special counsel to the Chief Counsel for the IRS.&quot;) makes the structure of the rule fairly clear and that it is used to shift the status of some types of corporate income (specifically, &quot;qualified banking or financing income&quot;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a general rule, if a controlled foreign corporation &#xA;  (CFC) receives income from interest or dividends, or &#xA;  recognizes gain from the sale of property that produces &#xA;  interest or dividends, such income or gain constitutes &#xA;  foreign personal holding company income, which in &#xA;  turn is a type of Subpart F income. Accordingly, the &#xA;  U.S. shareholder of the CFC—I assume throughout this &#xA;  article that there is only one—&lt;strong&gt;must generally include &#xA;  such amount in income&lt;/strong&gt;, after it has been reduced by all &#xA;  properly allocated deductions. However, at least until &#xA;  December 31, 2008, for calendar year taxpayers, Code &#xA;  Sec. 954(h) &lt;strong&gt;provides that foreign personal holding &#xA;  company income does not &#xA;  include “qualiﬁed banking &#xA;  or ﬁnancing income” of an &#xA;  “eligible controlled foreign &#xA;  corporation.”&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that the article refers to a sunset of 2008, but as noted above, the rule has been continuously extended.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of GE, the rule benefits &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gecapital.com/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GE Capital&lt;/a&gt; which had a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gecapital.com/en/our-company/company-overview.html?gemid2=gtnav0501&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;net income of $6.5B in 2011&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T20:00:31.207" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T20:00:31.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14255" CreationDate="2013-01-04T10:54:57.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mullenix's experience was described in a recent book by Freeze and Lehr called &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=Abh47vD7JTEC&amp;amp;pg=PA307&amp;amp;lpg=PA307&amp;amp;dq=phyllis%20mullenix%20harvard%20lawsuit&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=JyuiXTiYan&amp;amp;sig=yJoToV4tCisisiiNj1OXcoH7j1w&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=GZ7mUO6RNMP40gGjjIHIAw&amp;amp;ved=0CEgQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The  Fluoride Wars&lt;/a&gt;.  This book claims to take a neutral position on the controversy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three days after telling her superiors that her 1995 paper [20] had been accepted, she was dismissed from her position.  She sued for wrongful dismissal and received an out-of-court settlement.[21]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry, I don't know the original references [20] and [21] since I don't have the full book.  The out-of-court settlement would appear to be evidence that wrongful dismissal did occur.  I don't know whether it is possible to obtain court records for cases that are dismissed out-of-court. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A rigorously researched book also discusses Mullenix's experience.  The Fluoride Deception by Chris Bryson is meticulously documented, and the author interviewed many of the principal people.  Here is the description of the firing in Bryson's book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On May 18,1994—Just days after the paper had been accepted—&#xA;  Forsyth fired Mullenix. The termination letter merely stated that her&#xA;  contract would not be renewed. There was no mention of fluoride.&quot; [p. 23]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although both these accounts probably rely on Mullenix's own account for some details, they have both been vetted by the respective authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading either book should convince almost anyone that career problems following reporting adverse health effects of fluoride is not uncommon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10955" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T18:25:10.640" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T18:25:10.640" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14427" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-04T11:55:58.133" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T11:55:58.133" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T11:55:58.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14428" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-04T11:55:58.133" Score="0" Body="A vehicle capable of travelling on land or water supported on a cushion of air generated by downward-blowing fans." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T13:50:31.367" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T13:50:31.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14429" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-04T11:58:02.703" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T11:58:02.703" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T11:58:02.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14430" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-04T11:58:02.703" Score="0" Body="Insomnia, or sleeplessness, is a sleep disorder in which there is an inability to fall asleep or to stay asleep as long as desired." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T13:51:19.413" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T13:51:19.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14431" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:00:09.630" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T12:00:09.630" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T12:00:09.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14432" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:00:09.630" Score="0" Body="The process of inventing, developing and testing new pharmaceuticals." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T13:49:41.770" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T13:49:41.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14433" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:04:43.977" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T12:04:43.977" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T12:04:43.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14434" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:04:43.977" Score="0" Body="A test designed to avoid bias caused by the expectation of test subjects. For example, in drug trials the subjects will not know whether they receive the active test compound or the inactive placebo." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T13:01:54.933" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T13:01:54.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14435" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:11:36.067" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T12:11:36.067" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T12:11:36.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14436" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:11:36.067" Score="0" Body="Intelligent design (ID) is a form of creationism promulgated by the Discovery Institute, a politically conservative think tank. The Institute defines it as the proposition that &quot;certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.&quot;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T14:03:16.133" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T14:03:16.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14437" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:14:36.420" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T12:14:36.420" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T12:14:36.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14438" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:14:36.420" Score="0" Body="Graphology is the pseudoscientific study and analysis of handwriting, especially in relation to human psychology. In the medical field, the word can be used to refer to the study of handwriting as an aid in diagnosis and tracking of diseases of the brain and nervous system. The term is sometimes incorrectly used to refer to forensic document examination." OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T13:49:35.640" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T13:49:35.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14439" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:19:41.263" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T12:19:41.263" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T12:19:41.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14440" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:19:41.263" Score="0" Body="Patents are granted by governments to inventors offering a time-limited monopoly to exploit an invention in return for open disclosure of the know-how behind the invention. Specific rules differ from country to country." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T13:50:01.970" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T13:50:01.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14441" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:25:09.603" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T12:25:09.603" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T12:25:09.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14442" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:25:09.603" Score="0" Body="Intimate sexual activity, usually intercourse, carried out without consent." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T13:02:42.220" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T13:02:42.220" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14443" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:30:03.353" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T12:30:03.353" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T12:30:03.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14444" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:30:03.353" Score="0" Body="High fructose corn syrup. A cheap alternative to sucrose as a food ingredient and sweetener often used in soft drinks (dependent on local subsidies and rules)." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T14:03:23.277" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T14:03:23.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14445" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:37:09.560" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T12:37:09.560" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T12:37:09.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14446" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-04T12:37:09.560" Score="0" Body="Genetically modified organism. Any plant or animal where the genetic code has been manipulated by biotechnological methods. Usually so the organism generates products from other species (for example pesticides in corn) or unnatural products (like modified human insulin in bacteria)." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T13:50:20.400" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T13:50:20.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14418" CreationDate="2013-01-04T17:02:15.790" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;In order to answer this question, I don't see any reason to restrict ourselves to comparison between states. The variation in gun laws between states are quite small, and the ease of crossing state boundaries make it easy for crime to flow across those borders. Instead lets look at comparison between countries, where there is marked different in gun laws and less likelihood of cross-border crime. Fortunately there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://mark.reid.name/iem/gun-deaths-vs-gun-ownership.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a study by Mark Reid, a machine learning researcher at Australian National University that does exactly that&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AMWLy.png&quot; alt=&quot;Graph of gun deaths versus gun ownership&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graph is for OECD countries, i.e. those with reasonably developed economies. There is a clear correlation between gun ownership and gun deaths. The outlier of Mexico is due to an ongoing drug war&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;of course gun deaths covers a lot of things other than homicides, including suicide, and it is possible that the prevalence of guns causes people to use a gun for a suicide that they would use something else for if it wasn't available. So let's restrict the analysis to gun homicides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4PQ5k.png&quot; alt=&quot;Gun homicides versus gun ownership&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again Mexico is the exception, but so is the US. It has a much higher level of gun ownership and gun homicide than any of the other countries. So much so that it obscures any trends in the graph. Let's replot without those two countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9vETP.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the trend is much less pronounced, but still detectable (especially if you consider Israel a special case, given its ongoing conflict). Without Israel there are certainly few countries with low gun ownership and high gun homicide. And it's probably worth restating that the US has rates of both gun ownership and gun homicide more than double any other country on that chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I haven't been able to make a chart, but the figures for all homicides (more than just gun-related) follow a similar pattern to gun-related homicides. &lt;strong&gt;The US has double the homicide rate of the next highest country in the OECD, and four times the rate of most&lt;/strong&gt; (with the strange exception of Luxembourg, whose homicide rate is very slightly higher than half the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:Several people commented that the questions was asking about violent crime, not just homicide. I found what look like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ass_vic-crime-assault-victims&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reasonable figures for assaults at Nationmaster Encyclopedia&lt;/a&gt; . Plotting those against gun ownership gives this graph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FtSlK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Assaults v Guns&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US is the data point at the top centre of the chart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it appears that high gun ownership is not correlated with high levels of assault. But that wasn't the claim. The claim was that high gun ownership &lt;em&gt;reduced&lt;/em&gt; levels of violent crime. This graph certainly indicates  there is &lt;strong&gt;no inverse correlation between gun ownership and assaults&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2013-04-05T14:14:52.350" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T14:14:52.350" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14449" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-04T17:10:40.827" Score="22" ViewCount="936" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just found an article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline&quot;&gt;&quot;America's Real Criminal Element: Lead&quot;&lt;/a&gt; via &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5006368&quot;&gt;Hacker News&lt;/a&gt; that made an assertion about the cause of violent crimes that I found rather surprising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article states that the addition and later removal of lead in gasoline is responsible for a large part of the rise and decline of violent crime:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Put all this together and you have an astonishing body of evidence. We&#xA;  now have studies at the international level, the national level, the&#xA;  state level, the city level, and even the individual level. Groups of&#xA;  children have been followed from the womb to adulthood, and higher&#xA;  childhood blood lead levels are consistently associated with higher&#xA;  adult arrest rates for violent crimes. All of these studies tell the&#xA;  same story: Gasoline lead is responsible for a good share of the rise&#xA;  and fall of violent crime over the past half century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On first glance, most of the cited data seems to be about finding a correlation between lead and violent crime, the causative link seems to be much weaker. While it might be plausible that lead poisoning has some effect on later violent behaviour, I find it hard to believe that a major part of the increased crime between 1960 and 1990 was caused by lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there strong evidence, preferably not only correlations, that show that lead poisoning is responsible for a large part of the rise and fall of violent crime in the United States?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T06:12:35.120" Title="Is lead exposure responsible for the rise and fall of violent crime in the US?" Tags="|united-states|environmental-health|lead|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11032" CreationDate="2013-01-04T18:25:00.233" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, if the woman has reliable cycles and also pays attention to her cervical fluid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a woman ovulates, it intrinsically causes a rise in progesterone (this is known as the luteal phase). The presence of progesterone causes the body's basal temperature to rise by a few centigrade. Therefore, a slight raise in the BBT mid-cycle helps to confirm the beginning of the luteal phase, ie. ovulation. This 'temperature shift' pattern becomes predictable if the woman has consistent, normal cycles and so charting one's BBT (which is what the Lady Comp does for you) will give you a good idea of when to avoid sexual intercourse due to the foreseen ovulation. According to one study (1):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Basal temperature is an indirect measure of ovulation as a result of&#xA;  the progesterone-induced temperature increase&lt;/strong&gt; of ∼0.3 °C from the&#xA;  follicular phase, when progesterone is low, to the luteal phase, when&#xA;  progesterone peaks following ovulation [7]. [...]∼75% of cycles had a&#xA;  temperature rise within 3 days of the LH surge [21].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not see anywhere on the Lady comp site, however, that cervical mucus is also documented. Lady Comp takes into account the cycle length and basal body temperature (BBT), which is quite similar to the natural family planning method of the book Taking Back your Fertility by Toni Weschler (http://www.tcoyf.com/), except the latter also observes and documents cervical fluid changes (also known as cervical mucus). To have such a high success rate in preventing pregnancy as Lady comp claims, cervical mucus must also be accounted for because different phases of the menstrual cycle correlate to different phases of cervical mucus, and this factor determines whether or not the sperm can travel up the female reproductive tract to actually reach the ovulated egg. In a study done on bovine to determine fertility properties of this mucus in mammals (2):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cervical mucus becomes more plentiful, watery, less viscous and &lt;strong&gt;easier&#xA;  to traverse by spermatozoa&lt;/strong&gt; in the follicular phase of the ovarian&#xA;  cycle, as well as under oestrogen administration. On the contrary, in&#xA;  the luteal phase of the cycle or under progesterone administration,&#xA;  this mucus becomes scanty, opalescent, viscous and, consequently, not&#xA;  favourable to sperm passage. Similarly, oviductal mucus becomes&#xA;  progressively less viscous during a short period after ovulation&#xA;  (Hunter 1995).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A close relationship between the rheological behaviour of bovine&#xA;  vaginal ﬂuid obtained at oestrus and the molecular organization of its&#xA;  structural elements has been shown. During the course of oestrus,&#xA;  cervical mucus is able to achieve a dramatic reduction in its&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;mechanical barrier eﬀect&lt;/strong&gt; while maintaining its three-dimensional&#xA;  ﬁlamentous structure. This structure is related to a low consistency&#xA;  index of samples, favouring sperm migration eﬃciency to the utmost.&#xA;  Taken together, all these ﬁndings suggest that in mid-oestrus (...),&#xA;  there seems only to be a short 2–4 h period (...) available for the&#xA;  sperm to reach the uterus. Either side of this time interval, &lt;strong&gt;the&#xA;  mucus is mechanically more hostile for the movement of sperm&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(1) Bedford J.L., Prior J.C., Hitchcock C.L., Barr S.I. Detecting evidence of luteal activity by least-squares quantitative basal temperature analysis against urinary progesterone metabolites and the effect of wake-time variability  (2009) European Journal of Obstetrics Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, 146 (1) , pp. 76-80.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(2)Rutllant J, López-Béjar M, López-Gatius F. Ultrastructural and Rheological Properties of Bovine Vaginal Fluid and its Relation to Sperm Motility and Fertilization: a Review. Reproduction In Domestic Animals [serial online]. April 2005;40(2):79-86. Available from: Academic Search Premier, Ipswich, MA. Accessed January 4, 2013.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10731" LastEditorUserId="10731" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T19:39:02.277" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T19:39:02.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2070" CreationDate="2013-01-04T19:28:41.223" Score="1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In an article written by an MD regarding winter swimming who references 24 other sources found that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Repeated exposure to cold stimuli results in an increased tolerance to&#xA;  cold, through a variety of adaptive mechanisms. A significant body of&#xA;  evidence raises the hypothesis that these mechanisms may also confer&#xA;  protection against several diseases and call for a large, prospective&#xA;  epidemiological study.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effects found have been:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Improved metabolic profile (decrease in insulin levels)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Activation of the immune system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Improved antioxidant protection&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cold water immersion may help symptoms of depression:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following evidence appears to support the hypothesis: Exposure to&#xA;  cold is known to activate the sympathetic nervous system and increase&#xA;  the blood level of beta-endorphin and noradrenaline and to increase&#xA;  synaptic release of noradrenaline in the brain as well. Additionally,&#xA;  due to the high density of cold receptors in the skin, a cold shower&#xA;  is expected to send an overwhelming amount of electrical impulses from&#xA;  peripheral nerve endings to the brain, which could result in an&#xA;  anti-depressive effect. Practical testing by a statistically&#xA;  insignificant number of people, who did not have sufficient symptoms&#xA;  to be diagnosed with depression, showed that the cold hydrotherapy can&#xA;  relieve depressive symptoms rather effectively. The therapy was also&#xA;  found to have a significant analgesic effect and it does not appear to&#xA;  have noticeable side effects or cause dependence. In conclusion, wider&#xA;  and more rigorous studies would be needed to test the validity of the&#xA;  hypothesis.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Hydrotherapy practice:&#xA;Application of hot water for less than five minutes has a stimulative effect on circulation. For more than five minutes, it is depressive and causes stasis of blood in the dilated arterioles.&#xA;Application of cold water for less than one minutes is stimulative, because the arterioles react quickly and vasoconstrict. This pumps the blood out of the periphery and into the core. For more than one minute, however, it is depressive to circulation because it causes a vasodilation. (p.30-33)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does it cause vasodilation? Well, since the blood becomes shunted, the tissues of the vasoconstricted vasculature have no nutrients and start to accumulate metabolic waste. The increase in metabolic waste and lack of nutrients intrinsically causes vasodilation again. This mechanism is a physiological response, and scientists debate which factor of the two causes the dilation. There are therefore two mechanisms proposed, known as the &quot;Vasodilator Theory&quot; and the &quot;Oxygen Lack Theory&quot; AKA &quot;Nutrient Lack Theory,&quot; respectively &lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many different tools and methods of Hydrotherapy including neutral baths, peat baths, fomentations, russian baths, enemas, wet sheet packs, cold mitten friction, constitutionals, etc. which use these basic principles as its guiding force, but we will focus on the cold shower:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hydrotherapy has a great role to play in the enhancement of athletic&#xA;  performance and the prevention and treatment of &lt;em&gt;althetic injuries.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  Kellogg did many experiments which showed that brief hot showers&#xA;  followed by brief cold showers greatly enhanced work performance if&#xA;  give before the activity and, if given after, significantly speeded&#xA;  recovery in persons exhausted by prolonged exercise.&quot; (p.201-202)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This can be further backed up with a meta-analysis of cold water immersion (CWI) for delayed-onset muscle soreness (DOMS) due to physical activity:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main findings of this study were as follows: (1) CWI alleviated&#xA;  symptoms of DOMS at 24, 48, 72 and 96 h post exercise and was&#xA;  effective at 24 and 48 h following high intensity exercise. (2) CWI&#xA;  had a small but significant effect in reducing efflux of CK post&#xA;  exercise. (3) CWI had no effect on recovery of muscle strength but was&#xA;  effective in improving recovery of muscle power.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More to the point (emphasis my own),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...&lt;strong&gt;correct use of hydrotherapy has an important role to play in the&#xA;  prevention of disease, both chronic and acute&lt;/strong&gt;. On one hand prolonged&#xA;  hot applications in the form of warm baths, showers, hot tubs, etc.,&#xA;  should be avoided because of their depressing effect on circulation,&#xA;  tissue tone and the immune and nervous systems which can lead to&#xA;  varicosities, premature aging, frequent colds, fatigue, and mental&#xA;  sluggishness. &lt;strong&gt;On the other hand cold applications in the form of cool&#xA;  showers&lt;/strong&gt;, cold friction rubs, barefoot walking in the morning dew or&#xA;  fresh snow, and wet socks at night &lt;strong&gt;are bracing treatments which can&#xA;  enhance immunity against colds and flu, increase energy and stress&#xA;  tolerance and improve mental and physical performance&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; (p.209)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Boyle, Wade, and André Saine. Lectures in naturopathic hydrotherapy. East Palestine, Ohio: Buckeye Naturopathic Press, 1988. Print.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(1) T.M Kolettis, M.T Kolettis, Winter swimming: healthy or hazardous?: Evidence and hypotheses, Medical Hypotheses, Volume 61, Issues 5–6, November–December 2003, Pages 654-656, ISSN 0306-9877, 10.1016/S0306-9877(03)00270-6.&#xA;(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306987703002706)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(2) Nikolai A. Shevchuk, Adapted cold shower as a potential treatment for depression, Medical Hypotheses, Volume 70, Issue 5, 2008, Pages 995-1001, ISSN 0306-9877, 10.1016/j.mehy.2007.04.052.&#xA;(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030698770700566X)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(3) Hall, John E., and Arthur C. Guyton. Guyton and Hall textbook of medical physiology. 12th ed. Philadelphia, Pa.: Saunders/Elsevier, 2011. Print. pp.192-193&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(4) Jonathan Leeder, Conor Gissane, Ken van Someren, Warren Gregson, Glyn Howatson . Cold water immersion and recovery from strenuous exercise: a meta-analysis. British Journal of Sports Medicine, Volume 46, Number 4 (March 2012), pp. 233-240, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=4606A5D29A0DA7DFE6DF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=4606A5D29A0DA7DFE6DF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10731" LastEditorUserId="10731" LastEditDate="2013-01-04T22:29:56.973" LastActivityDate="2013-01-04T22:29:56.973" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14454" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14473" CreationDate="2013-01-04T23:33:47.170" Score="12" ViewCount="8858" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am currently suffering a sore throat. I have purchased some &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betadine&quot;&gt;Betadine&lt;/a&gt; (gargleable iodine) which I believe and hope actually helps reduce the extent of the infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the risk of derision, I will confess I have also purchased &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strepsils&quot;&gt;Strepsils&lt;/a&gt; (antibacterial throat lozenges) which I believe is mostly a sugar-pill placebo, but it is sweet, distracting from the pain and gives me something to do to feel in control, while I wait for my immune system to get around to dealing with the invaders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Strepsils pack admits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The efficacy of an antibacterial agent in lozenges in reducing the severity or duration of throat infections has not been clinically established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggests &quot;We don't know yet whether this works.&quot; I am wondering if the science is actually further progressed than the company is admitting. Should this read &quot;Large-scale experiments have shown throat lozenges are no better than placebo. We know they don't make any noticeable difference.&quot; instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T00:17:24.453" Title="Have throat lozenges been shown to be ineffective?" Tags="|common-cold|placebo|pharmaceutical|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14418" CreationDate="2013-01-05T04:54:41.080" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE 4/4/2013:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is somewhat supported by graphing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/statab/ranks/rank21.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Census Bureau's 2006 Violent Crimes Data&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freeexistence.org/gunindex.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the &quot;Gun Rights Index&quot; calculated here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vwSDh.png&quot; alt=&quot;Scatter Diagram&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, statistically, the correlation is very weak. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the data I used, scraped from the cited sites: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;data = {&#xA;{Alabama, 425, 6.8},&#xA;{Alaska, 688, 8.0},&#xA;{Arizona, 501, 9.3},&#xA;{Arkansas, 552, 6.2},&#xA;{California, 533, 4.9},&#xA;{Colorado, 392, 7.7},&#xA;{Connecticut, 281, 5.1},&#xA;{Delaware, 682, 6.3},&#xA;{Florida, 712, 6.5},&#xA;{Georgia, 471, 7.1},&#xA;{Hawaii, 281, 2.6},&#xA;{Idaho, 247, 8.7},&#xA;{Illinois, 542, 3.0},&#xA;{Indiana, 315, 6.8},&#xA;{Iowa, 284, 5.8},&#xA;{Kansas, 425, 7.4},&#xA;{Kentucky, 263, 7.4},&#xA;{Louisiana, 698, 6.9},&#xA;{Maine, 116, 7.4}, &#xA;{Maryland, 679, 5.1},&#xA;{Massachusetts, 447, 3.7},&#xA;{Michigan, 562, 6.3},&#xA;{Minnesota, 312, 6.1},&#xA;{Missouri, 546, 7.4},&#xA;{Montana, 254, 8.7},&#xA;{Nebraska, 282, 7.4},&#xA;{Nevada, 742, 7.4},&#xA;{New Hampshire, 139, 7.4},&#xA;{New Jersey, 352, 4.1},&#xA;{New Mexico, 643, 7.4},&#xA;{New York, 435, 4.6},&#xA;{North Carolina, 476, 6.9},&#xA;{North Dakota, 128, 6.2},&#xA;{Ohio, 350, 7.4},&#xA;{Oklahoma, 497, 6.2},&#xA;{Oregon, 280, 7.4},&#xA;{Pennsylvania, 439, 7.4},&#xA;{Rhode Island, 284, 4.6},&#xA;{South Carolina, 766, 6.3},&#xA;{South Dakota, 171, 8.7},&#xA;{Tennessee, 760, 8.1},&#xA;{Texas, 516, 6.8},&#xA;{Utah, 224, 7.5},&#xA;{Vermont, 137, 8.0},&#xA;{Virginia, 282, 6.9},&#xA;{Washington, 346, 6.7},&#xA;{West Virginia, 280, 7.4},&#xA;{Wisconsin, 284, 6.2},&#xA;{Wyoming, 240, 8.7}&#xA;}&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really a comment on @RedGrittyBrick's answer, but I do not know how to put graphics in a comment...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is not supported by the data provided by @RedGrittyBrick (which are incomplete -- note FL's lack of gun crime data, which is a pretty important data point)... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the plot of &quot;Gun Murders / 1M Population&quot; vs &quot;Gun Ownership %&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wP7V4.png&quot; alt=&quot;gunmurders_vs_own&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the linear model parameter table:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6frlS.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is totally back-of-the-envelope stuff, I haven't checked the sources, I don't assert a logical connection between &quot;% gun ownership&quot; and weaker gun laws, I'm dubious about the logical connection between &quot;gun murders&quot; and all gun crime, I shudder at the use of &quot;The Guardian&quot; as a primary source, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Edit by RedGrittyBrick (I've now deleted my &quot;Answer&quot;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data came from &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://usliberals.about.com/od/Election2012Factors/a/Gun-Owners-As-Percentage-Of-Each-States-Population.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Liberals&lt;/a&gt;, &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jan/10/gun-crime-us-state&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;, &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipl.org/div/stateknow/popchart.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ipl for kids&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;but primary data sources were claimed to be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gun ownership by state, 2007 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usacarry.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;USA Carry&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gun crimes by state, 2011 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FBI Uniform Crime Reports&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Population by state, 2010  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/2010census/data/apportionment-dens-text.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2010 census&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2013-04-04T21:57:49.040" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T21:57:49.040" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14457" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-05T05:42:51.657" Score="16" ViewCount="478" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PoliceProcedural&quot;&gt;police procedurals&lt;/a&gt; media coverage and rewards are often depicted as resulting in a huge number of false reports.  Often depicting hundreds or in extreme cases thousands of false tips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any actual numbers exist to back this up this depiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the onslaught of false tips from are as bad as often depicted it seems like reward/bounties should not be offered, and media coverage should be kept low key as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any hard data that correlates the amount of useful/false information received with either the size of a reward, or media coverage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="934" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T21:24:06.987" Title="Police tip lines, are they huge source of false reports?" Tags="|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14460" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-05T14:40:23.873" Score="15" ViewCount="33247" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myperfectautomobile.com/featured/car-maintenance-shock.html&quot;&gt;My Perfect Automobile&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In many states the highway patrol carries two gallons of Coke in the trunk to remove blood from the highway after a car accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt it's real. Does Coca-Cola work this way? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6181" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-06T04:21:10.533" LastActivityDate="2022-02-08T22:49:19.280" Title="Is Coca-Cola effective at removing blood-stains?" Tags="|chemistry|consumer-products|soda|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14461" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-05T15:22:33.220" Score="18" ViewCount="36039" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people tell me to wear a magnetic or copper bracelet to improve my arthritis is there any science behind this? Many online shops sell copper bracelets containing magnets for their health effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an excerpt of the claim from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ilovecopper.com/pages.php/page/How%20Copper%20Bracelets%20Work/osCsid=6fa68aee7f9615d34ad713057a6365c3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I Love Copper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copper cuff bracelets are designed to not close completely. The small opening between the ends of the bracelet creates positive and negative magnetic fields that are supposed to help energy flow through the body. In addition, the body absorbs small amounts of copper into the blood stream when the bracelet is worn. Copper Link bracelets will also aid in circulation problems by simply having contacy with the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most common claims of the copper bracelet for hundreds of years has been that copper bracelets cure joint pain from conditions like arthritis. This was generally accepted for a long time but along the way doctors and scientists began to doubt the truth behind this claim. However, in 1983, Australian doctors G.R. Struthers and D.L Scott from the St. George Hospital conducted studies on different alternative methods for relieving arthritis pain. Their results showed that arthritis sufferers noticed significant relief from joint pain when wearing copper bracelets. While they are not exactly sure why, their research showed that using copper bracelets does help relieve arthritis pain. They concluded that doctors should consider copper bracelets along with other treatment methods for arthritis pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-63979/Do-copper-bracelets-really-work.html#ixzz2H8uPz1Ce&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Mail article&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copper has anti-inflammatory effects in the body, and may therefore have painkilling properties.&#xA;One study showed that copper from a bracelet can be absorbed into the body, and it does seem that this can offer some relief from arthritic pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skeptics.SE has dealt with questions about the effects of magnetism before, but there don't seem to be any analyses of the possible health effects of copper bracelets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what does the balance of evidence say about the possible health effects of copper bracelets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10974" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T05:17:01.290" Title="Do copper bracelets help arthritis?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7167" CreationDate="2013-01-05T18:20:31.287" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that this post references the study which is discussed in the feminist article that you site: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/11/12/rapists-who-dont-think-theyre-rapists/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/11/12/rapists-who-dont-think-theyre-rapists/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My interpretation of the statement, is that the men who commit these &quot;casual rapes&quot; (for lack of a better term) don't consider their behavior to be actual rape (it is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a survey asks men, for example, if they ever “had sexual intercourse with someone, even though they did not want to, because they were too intoxicated (on alcohol or drugs) to resist your sexual advances,” some of them will say yes, as long as the questions don’t use the “R” word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this information, we see that these men will admit to engaging in the behavior described above (rape) but not to &quot;rape&quot;.  Thus, if &quot;rape&quot; is abnormal, and &quot;not rape&quot; is normal, one can infer that these men see their actions as &quot;not rape&quot; and therefore normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10976" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-01-05T20:59:07.900" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T20:59:07.900" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14460" CreationDate="2013-01-05T18:47:04.930" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering that there is basically no information on this subject I doubt it's real (This question is #4 in a Google search for &quot;blood dissolves in coca cola&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to take a look at this article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/crime-scene-clean-up1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://science.howstuffworks.com/crime-scene-clean-up1.htm&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It explains some of the equipment, which I quoted some of below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Personal protective gear - a non-porous, one-time-use suit, gloves, filtered respirators and chemical-spill boots&#xA;  Biohazard waste containers - 55-gallon heavy duty bags and sealed, hard-plastic containers&#xA;  Traditional cleaning supplies - Mops, buckets, spray bottles, sponges, brushes, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hard-core cleaning supplies - Can include:&#xA;  Ozone machine (to remove odors)&#xA;  Foggers (to thicken a cleaning chemical so it can get all the way into tight places like air ducts, usually for odor removal)&#xA;  Hospital-grade disinfectants (bleach, hydrogen peroxide)&#xA;  Industrial-strength deodorizers&#xA;  Enzyme solvent (to kill bacteria and viruses and liquify dried blood)&#xA;  No-touch cleaning system (to clean blood-coated surfaces from a safe distance -- includes heavy-duty sprayer, long scrubbing brush, wet vacuum)&#xA;  Putty knives (to scrape up brain matter, which dries into a cement-like consistency)&#xA;  Razor blades (to cut out portions of carpet)&#xA;  Shovels (in about two hours, large amounts of blood coagulate into a Jell-O-like goo that can be shoveled into bags)&#xA;  Truck-mounted steam-injection machine (to melt dried brain matter that cleaners can't remove with putty knives)&#xA;  Chemical treatment tank (to disinfect and store matter sucked up by vacuum systems)&#xA;  Carpentry/restoration tools - sledgehammers, saws, spackle, paint brushes&#xA;  Ladders&#xA;  Camera (to take before-and-after shots for insurance purposes)&#xA;  Van or truck for transporting all of this stuff (and hauling waste to disposal site after clean-up)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question sheds some light: &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071023213703AAWWgoq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071023213703AAWWgoq&lt;/a&gt; saying that water with some alkaline detergent would work better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also not usually the police's job to clean up, and the fire department will often have to do that work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10975" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T18:47:04.930" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14466" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-05T20:40:14.950" Score="8" ViewCount="7564" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today I heard a doctor state, about the treatment of a dying person:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We will increase the morphine to ease the level of pain the patient experiences. But please note that even though many people think so, this morphine &lt;em&gt;will not&lt;/em&gt; speed up dying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He claims (if I grasped the English terms correctly) that morphine is &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; for &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palliative_care&quot;&gt;palliative care&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. He hints at a claim held by others to the opposite: that morphine doses &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be subtly increased to function as a form of assisted suicide, a.k.a. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia&quot;&gt;euthanasia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is either of these claims true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As noted in the comments, &quot;a doctor said&quot; is not quite a notable/sourced claim. However, there are quite a few links to be found on the subject, here are a few:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/28/us/passive-euthanasia-in-hospitals-is-the-norm-doctors-say.html?pagewanted=all&amp;amp;src=pm&quot;&gt;NY Times article from 1997&lt;/a&gt;, emphasis mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Or, she (Dr. Battin, red) said, if a doctor says, ''I can see you're in pain, let's start a morphine drip,' '' a patient may not realize that &lt;strong&gt;the pain medication will shorten his life&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/01/double-effect-myth-leading-double-life&quot;&gt;British Medical Journal, 2007&lt;/a&gt;, emphasis mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence over the past 20 years has repeatedly shown that, used correctly, morphine is well tolerated and &lt;strong&gt;does not shorten life or hasten death&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Medical College of Wisconsin, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eperc.mcw.edu/EPERC/FastFactsIndex/ff_008.htm&quot;&gt;Morphine and Hastened Death, 2nd ed&lt;/a&gt;, emphasis mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The principle of double effect refers to the ethical construct where a physician uses a treatment, or gives medication, for an ethical intended effect where the potential outcome is good (eg, relief of a symptom), knowing that there will certainly be an undesired secondary effect (such as death). [...] &lt;strong&gt;Although this principle of “double effect” is commonly cited with morphine, in fact, it does not apply, as the secondary adverse consequences are unlikely&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7206" LastEditorUserId="7206" LastEditDate="2013-01-05T21:10:57.773" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T23:40:39.950" Title="Can increased doses of morphine speed up dying?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14466" CreationDate="2013-01-05T23:07:04.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Morphine is a pain killer. It thus have a palliative function, in that it makes a patient feel better. For example it is used for cancer patients:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  An expert working group of the European Association for Palliative Care has revised and updated its guidelines on the use of&#xA;  morphine in the management of cancer pain. The revised recommendations presented here give guidance on the use of morphine and the&#xA;  alternative strong opioid analgesics which have been introduced in many parts of the world in recent years. Practical strategies for dealing&#xA;  with difficult situations are described presenting a consensus view where supporting evidence is lacking. The strength of the evidence on&#xA;  which each recommendation is based is indicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v84/n5/pdf/6691680a.pdf%3Farticoli_sezioniArticoliPage%3D1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Morphine and alternative opioids in cancer pain: the EAPC recommendations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it is also deadly at high dosages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kdxkL.png&quot; alt=&quot;Toxicity of drugs&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ocme.dhhs.nc.gov/toxicology/2002drugconc.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TOXIC DRUG CONCENTRATIONS&#xA;OFFICE OF THE CHIEF MEDICAL EXAMINER&#xA;CHAPEL HILL, NC 27713&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T23:07:04.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1244" CreationDate="2013-01-05T23:16:34.590" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/f9rzw.png&quot; alt=&quot;Toxicity Classes: Gosselin, Smith and Hodge&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/chemicals/ld50.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SUBSTANCE: &lt;strong&gt;ETHYL ALCOHOL, DENATURED&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TRADE NAMES/SYNONYMS:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ETHANOL, DENATURED; GRAIN ALCOHOL; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1400 mg/kg  oral-human LDLo (lowest published lethal dose)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atmos.umd.edu/%7Eruss/MSDS/ethanol_denatured.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source of MSDS: FISHER SCIENTIFIC CORPORATION&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;...estimated lethal dose in humans may be 0.2 mg/kg or about 14,000 mcg&#xA;(Klock et al. 1975).&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maps.org/research/lsd/swisslsd/IB_LSD.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;D-Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD)&#xA;Investigator’s Brochure&#xA;Lisa Jerome&#xA;January 2008&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John C. Klock, Udo Boerner, Charles E. Becker. Coma, Hyperthermia, and Bleeding Associated with Massive LSD Overdose a Report of Eight Cases. Clinical Toxicology; Informa Healthcare, Jan 1, 1975&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt; Grain alcohol is moderately toxic and LSD is super toxic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10939" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T03:23:53.447" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14466" CreationDate="2013-01-05T23:40:39.950" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He hints at a claim held by others to the opposite: that morphine doses can be subtly increased to function as a form of assisted suicide, a.k.a. euthanasia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Canadian law makes a distinction based on the doctor' intent: they're allowed to give morphine in order to manage pain, even if that shortens life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following quotes are from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/SEN/Committee/351/euth/rep/lad-e.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Parliament of Canada - The Special Senate Committee on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide - June 1995&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Canadian Bar Association referred specifically to the legal status&#xA;  of terminal sedation as a medical technique to control pain&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The policy of the Ontario coroner is illustrative of the practice in&#xA;  this regard. Palliative care that results in death is not considered&#xA;  to be criminal, so long as four conditions are satisfied: (1) the care&#xA;  must be intended solely to relieve suffering; (2) it must be&#xA;  administered in response to suffering or signs of suffering; (3) it&#xA;  must commensurate with that suffering; and (4) it cannot be a&#xA;  deliberate infliction of death. Documentation is required, and the&#xA;  doses must increase progressively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no precedent in this area. There have never been any legal&#xA;  convictions for providing such treatment and although there are no&#xA;  decided cases on point, a reference was made to the practice of&#xA;  providing potentially life-shortening treatment with the purpose of&#xA;  alleviating suffering in the Rodriguez case. The real issue in that&#xA;  case concerned assisted suicide under section 241 of the Criminal&#xA;  Code. Mr. Justice Sopinka, writing for the majority of the Supreme&#xA;  Court of Canada, however, drew a legal distinction, based on&#xA;  intention, between the administration of drugs that are likely to&#xA;  hasten death on the one hand and assistance in suicide on the other.&#xA;  Without deciding the issue, by implication he seems to have suggested&#xA;  that if the intention is to alleviate suffering, it is legally&#xA;  permissible to provide treatment notwithstanding that this may hasten&#xA;  death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above says, &quot;potentially life-shortening&quot; and &quot;likely to hasten&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the paragraphs after that imply that the expert witnesses disagreed about whether it will in fact shorten life, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Professor Schafer, testified: If we think about it, what the&#xA;  palliative care physician frequently does in giving an adequate dose&#xA;  of painkilling medication is hasten the death of the patient, entirely&#xA;  justifiably in my judgment, and entirely justifiably in the judgment&#xA;  of every one of my philosophical and legal colleagues whose briefs I&#xA;  have read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;compared with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. Macdonald stated: Another area of confusion is whether or not we&#xA;  are killing the patient with these drugs. That was a subject of&#xA;  correspondence I had with the committee. People think, for example, if&#xA;  we increase the dose of opioids so that a person is stuporous, we may&#xA;  kill the patient if we give them a little more. In my experience, that&#xA;  is highly unlikely to happen. Patients rapidly become tolerant to the&#xA;  respiratory effects of opioids, morphine and like drugs. If we give&#xA;  them a large dosage of a drug, we may sedate the patient but it is&#xA;  unlikely that the patient would die of our drug. They may die of&#xA;  pneumonia or an associated problem which sedation might make more&#xA;  likely to come about, but to die directly of a drug effect is unusual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last two sentences above implies that it shouldn't cause death directly, but may indirectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-01-05T23:40:39.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14454" CreationDate="2013-01-05T23:44:50.623" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Strepsils&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My packet of strepsils contains a leaflet saying each lozenge contains&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2,4-Dichlorobenzyl alcohol 1.2 mg&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amylmetacresol 0.6 mg&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Levomenthol 8.0 mg.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2,4-Dichlorobenzyl alcohol and Amylmetacresol&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15889535&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A throat lozenge containing amyl meta cresol and dichlorobenzyl alcohol has a direct virucidal effect on respiratory syncytial virus, influenza A and SARS-CoV.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's evidence the ingredients are effective at killing some viruses (e.g. in mucus but perhaps not in cells?) Therefore whilst effective and working in some sense, it may not reduce the length or severity of the infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We conclude that, formulated as a lozenge, the mixture could have significant effects in reducing the infectivity of certain infectious viruses in the throat and presumably in cough droplets, thus reducing, theoretically, opportunities for person-to-person transmission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're helping your friends and family?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Levomenthol&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if I correctly understand &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11301871&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Local anaesthetic activity of (+)- and (-)-menthol&lt;/a&gt;, the third ingredient, levomenthol, may reduce the perceived severity of the symptoms (though having no effect on the viruses)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you seek a mild anaesthetic effect, the lozenges may be effective (to some extent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-01-06T00:17:24.453" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T00:17:24.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14461" CreationDate="2013-01-06T03:34:31.733" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;No...  There is no evidence that copper bracelets are any more useful than a hologram, or an ion bracelet, or a piece of amber, etc.  (See below for a minor caveat.)  Any effect that could be out there is nothing more than the [placebo effect] (Link to abstract on placebo effect for this specific mechanism)&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19942103&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2859/do-ion-bracelets-work?lq=1&quot;&gt;read the linked question&lt;/a&gt;, you should ask yourself the same question as from that answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an excellent opportunity to practice grass roots skepticism. Ask yourself: By what mechanism is this supposed to work? How does the proposed mechanism align with what we know about science, biology, physics, etc.? Also, you may be interested to know that in some countries, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.startribune.com/local/blogs/113017079.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUnciatkEP7DhUsl&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Power Balance must state that they have no actual scientific backing for their claims&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepticbros.com/placebo-bands/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Placebo band&lt;/a&gt; is just as effective, and much cheaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To directly answer your question, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uams.edu/update/absolutenm/templates/medical.asp?articleid=3454&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences&lt;/a&gt; clearly states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Myth: Wearing a copper bracelet can cure arthritis.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reality&lt;/strong&gt;: Arthritis is a condition that results in deterioration and loss of the joint surface cartilage, basically the repair process fails to keep up with the breakdown. Copper bracelets have long been sold as a cure for arthritis, vendors propose that the metal is absorbed through the skin and helps cartilage regeneration. But there are certain facts you should know before you rush out and buy that bracelet, says Dr. Randy Bindra, director of the Center for Hand and Upper Extremity Surgery at UAMS. “Copper is a component of some of the normal cellular enzymes and we require very small amounts of copper in our daily diet,” says Dr. Bindra. Mineral-rich foods include vegetables (potatoes), legumes (beans and peas), nuts (peanuts and pecans), grains (wheat and rye) and fruits (peach and raisin). “Copper deficiency is extremely rare and most regular diets provide enough copper to meet the daily requirements. Supplementation is only needed in patients with other serious medical conditions that affect their gastrointestinal tract and impair their ability to absorb nutrients.” While it’s never been proven that copper can copper be absorbed through the skin by wearing a bracelet, research has shown that excessive copper can result in poisoning, causing vomiting and, in severe cases, liver damage. “This can be seen after ingesting foods boiled in copper vessels or from contamination of water from corroding copper pipes. In reality no modality of treatment has been shown to cure or reverse the changes of arthritis,” says Dr. Bindra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these silly assertions are nothing more than marketing schemes... As the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/copper-000296.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Maryland Medical Center&lt;/a&gt; states (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Copper bracelets are often &lt;em&gt;marketed&lt;/em&gt; to people with both osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis as a way to relieve symptoms, but there' s no evidence that they work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The University of Maryland page also has an extensive reading list that may help you go to actual scientific sites that do tell you what copper is actually good for though (it does have uses, which is what charlatans will use to make their distorted claims).  If you search reputable sources, you will find a distinct lack of evidence.  It is best to practice &lt;a href=&quot;http://homepages.wmich.edu/%7Ekorista/baloney.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;good baloney detection&lt;/a&gt; for things like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CAVEAT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the University of Maryland page shows, there are some uses for copper, however, these are &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ingested&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; routes.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.virginia.edu/metals/cases/reddaway2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Topical applications are also known in some compounds that use copper as a binding peptide&lt;/a&gt;.  Neither of these involve the wearing of a copper band, nor does the band display any mechanism by which it would even simulate the useful uses...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;FURTHER READING&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Araya M, Pizarro F, Olivares M, Arredondo M, Gonzalez M, Mendez M. Understanding copper homeostasis in humans and copper effects on health. Biol Res. 2006;39(1):183-7.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Borkow G, Gabbay J, Zatcoff RC. Could chronic wounds not heal due to too low copper levels? Med Hypotheses. 2008;70(3):610-3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bugel, S., Harper, A., Rock, E., O'Connor, J. M., Bonham, M. P., and Strain, J. J. Effect of copper supplementation on indices of copper status and certain CVD risk markers in young healthy women. BrJ Nutr 2005;94(2):231-236.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Christen Y. Oxidative stress and Alzheimer's disease. Am J Clin Nutr. 2000;71(2):621S-629S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Geerling BJ, Badart-Smook A, StockbrÃ¼gger RW, Brummer R-JM. Comprehensive nutritional status in recently diagnosed patients with inflammatory bowel disease compared with population controls. EAur J Clin Nutr. 2000;54:514-521.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harless W, Crowell E, Abraham J. Anemia and neutropenia associated with copper deficiency of unclear etiology. Am J Hematol. 2006;81(7):546-9.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Huff JD, Keung YK, Thakuri M, Beaty MW, Hurd DD, Owen J, Molnar I. Copper deficiency causes reversible myelodysplasia. Am J Hematol. 2007;82(7):625-30.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kumar N, Butz JA, Burritt MF. Clinical significance of the laboratory determination of low serum copper in adults. Clin Chem Lab Med. 2007;45(10):1402-10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;lein D, Lichtmannegger J, Heinzmann U, Summer KH. Dissolution of copper-rich granules in hepatic lysosomes by D-penicillamine prevents the development of fulminant hepatitis in Long-Evans cinnamon rats. J Hepatol. 2000;32(2):193-201.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mahabir S, Spitz MR, Barrera SL, Beaver SH, Etzel C, Forman MR. Dietary zinc, copper and selenium, and risk of lung cancer. Int J Cancer. 2007;120(5):1108-15.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Milanino R, Marrella M, Crivellente F, Benoni G, Cuzzolin L. Nutritional supplementation with copper in the rat. Effects on adjuvant arthritis develoment and on some in vivo- and ex vivo-markers of blood neutrophils. Inflamm Res. 2000;49(5):214-223.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nagano T, Toyoda T, Tanabe H, et al., Clinical features of hematological disorders caused by copper deficiency during long-term enteral nutrition. Intern Med. 2005;44(6):554-9.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Richmond SJ, Brown SR, Campion PD, Porter AJ, Moffett JA, Jackson DA, Featherstone VA, Taylor AJ. Therapeutic effects of magnetic and copper bracelets in osteoarthritis: a randomised placebo-controlled crossover trial. Complement Ther Med. 2009 Oct-Dec;17(5-6):249-56.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rottkamp CA, Nunomura A, Raina AK, Sayre LM, Perry G, Smith MA. Oxidative stress, antioxidants, and Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer Disease Assoc Disorders. 2000;14(Suppl 1):S62-S66.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strause L, Saltman P, Smith KT, et al. Spinal bone loss in postmenopausal women supplemented with calcium and trace minerals. J Nutr. 1994;124:1060-4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tamura T, Turnlund JR. Effect of long-term, high-copper intake on the concentrations of plasma homocysteine and B vitamins in young men. Nutrition. 2004;20(9):757-9.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thomson SW, Heimburger DC, Cornwell PE, et al. Correlates of total plasma homocysteine: folic acid, copper, and cervical dysplasia. Nutrition. 2000;16(6):411-416.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turnlund, J. R., Keyes, W. R., Kim, S. K., and Domek, J. M. Long-term high copper intake: effects on copper absorption, retention, and homeostasis in men. Am J Clin Nutr 2005;81(4):822-828.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/copper-000296.htm#ixzz2HA8nr8io&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/copper-000296.htm#ixzz2HA8nr8io&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Follow us: @UMMC on Twitter | MedCenter on Facebook&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T03:44:33.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14460" CreationDate="2013-01-06T04:07:12.610" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was actually tackled on &lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/episode5&quot;&gt;Mythbusters&lt;/a&gt;, and is also on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/acid.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mythbusters actually gave the blood &lt;em&gt;cleaning&lt;/em&gt; a &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Confirmed&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; in that episode (although said nothing about police carrying cola).  And Snopes says that using Coca-Cola to clean comes from a fellow by the name of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wackyuses.com/coke.html&quot;&gt;Joey Green&lt;/a&gt;.  As Snopes says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That you can cook and clean with Coke is relatively meaningless from a safety standpoint you can use a wide array of common household substances (including water) for the same purposes; that fact alone doesn't necessarily make them dangerous to ingest.  Nearly all carbonated soft drinks contain carbonic acid, which is moderately useful for tasks such as removing stains and dissolving rust deposits (although plain soda water is much better for some of these purposes than Coca-Cola or other soft drinks, as it doesn't leave a sticky sugar residue behind).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the claim that police use Coca-Cola, I think that is just an extension of the &quot;Coke is Bad&quot; myth that Snopes took on.  Keep in mind that it's not the job of police to clean up accident scenes.  Instead, they &lt;em&gt;investigate&lt;/em&gt; the scene, and it is left to other professionals to do the clean up (such as medical personnel, since in many cases blood could be used for either evidence in a criminal investigation, or that it is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/biosafety/publications/bmbl5/bmbl5_sect_iii.pdf&quot;&gt;biohazard&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-01-06T18:04:22.443" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T18:04:22.443" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14478" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14920" CreationDate="2013-01-06T11:16:07.843" Score="3" ViewCount="5006" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard people say that a defibrillator being used on someone whose heart has a normal beat, like if they have a blocked throat and can't breathe, but still have a regular pulse. However, I have also heard that defibrillators only stop and restart the heart. Wouldn't people then suffer the same risk from defibrillators if their heart is functioning normally as if it were stopped?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10975" LastEditorUserId="10975" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T15:23:18.090" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T08:16:04.310" Title="If a defibrillator is correctly applied to a person with a normal heart rate, what consequences will they suffer?" Tags="|medical-science|healthcare|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2013-02-07T09:07:58.650" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14101" CreationDate="2013-01-06T15:34:06.397" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zawya.com/story/Global_wealth_has_soared_14_since_2010_to_231tr__Credit_Suisse-ZAWYA20111019094727/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wealth of nations: Top 10 countries by average wealth per adult&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In term of average wealth per adult in 2011, Switzerland, Australia&#xA;  and Norway are the three richest nations in the world, with&#xA;  Switzerland recording the highest average wealth per adult at USD&#xA;  540,010 - the only country to exceed USD 500,000. In Asia Pacific,&#xA;  Singapore follows Australia as the second wealthiest nation in the&#xA;  region and fifth in the world in terms of average wealth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/crwKW.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Top 10 countries with highest average wealth per adult in 2011&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?section=theuae&amp;amp;xfile=data/theuae/2011/october/theuae_october513.xml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the Middle East and North Africa, or Mena region, Qatar recorded&#xA;  the highest average wealth per adult of $146,623 in 2011, a rise of&#xA;  456 per cent from 2000 while Kuwait followed closely with $134,592,&#xA;  rising 156 per cent from 2000. The UAE was placed third in the region&#xA;  with $115,774, up 104 per cent since 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;while UAE citizens (assuming adult ones) are quite rich, they are not extraordinarily so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_a_average_bentley_cost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bentley prices range from $200,000 to around $400,000. the average Bentley is closer to $200,000 brand new. The Bentley Continentals (the most popular ones) are 200k - 300k. The Mulsanne, Azure and Brooklands are $300k-400k.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is to be believed, it is not conceivable that every adult has a Bentley, unless they are massively into hire purchase!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="308" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T15:34:06.397" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3316" CreationDate="2013-01-06T15:45:55.703" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To the question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any risks associated with eating a lot of apples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/apples.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; asserts that apple pips (seeds) contain &quot;a cyanide and sugar compound that degrades into hydrogen cyanide (HCN) when metabolized&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/latest-questions/question/2737/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; claims 18 apples are sufficient but &lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120528084411AADwSsT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; estimates 2100 apples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="308" LastActivityDate="2013-01-06T15:45:55.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14483" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-06T17:49:13.767" Score="10" ViewCount="1723" Body="&lt;p&gt;Googling for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=steepest+island+in+the+world&quot;&gt;steepest island in the world&lt;/a&gt; leads numerous pages claiming that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Palma&quot;&gt;La Palma&lt;/a&gt; is the steepest island in the world. Having recently been there, I am inclined to believe it, but it appears the sources just copy each other, without any citing a reliable source. I can imagine many ways to define &lt;em&gt;steepest island in the world&lt;/em&gt;. Is there any reliable source to support this claim, or is it just a touristic claim not very well supported?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastActivityDate="2016-03-06T10:59:57.583" Title="Is La Palma the steepest island in the world?" Tags="|geography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14484" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-06T19:30:47.973" Score="14" ViewCount="602" Body="&lt;p&gt;This might be too vague of a question, but I've been trying to determine the effectiveness of time management systems.  There is &lt;em&gt;a lot&lt;/em&gt; of information on various time management systems....all of which explicitly or implicitly claim to save you time or increase your productive output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0142000280&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Allen's premise is simple: our productivity is directly proportional to our ability to relax. Only when our minds are clear and our thoughts are organized can we &lt;strong&gt;achieve effective productivity&lt;/strong&gt; and unleash our creative potential&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/faq/&quot;&gt;http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/faq/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Pomodoro Technique® is a time management method. This Technique helps you transforming time into a valuable ally by helping us &lt;strong&gt;accomplish what we want to do and charting continuous improvement in the way we do it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.franklincovey.ca/FCCAWeb/aspx/train_focus.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.franklincovey.ca/FCCAWeb/aspx/train_focus.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Help every individual in your organization &lt;strong&gt;focus and execute on your top priorities&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://processpolicy.com/posec-method-of-time-management.htm&quot;&gt;https://processpolicy.com/posec-method-of-time-management.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Time Manager ensures the use of best practices to manage employee time and effective management of employee's time.&#xA;  Time Manager &lt;strong&gt;improves employee efficiency and productivity&lt;/strong&gt; and ensures compliance by accurate working time recording.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of time management systems is actually quite overwhelming....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like there are enough people claiming that these various systems are effective that it constitutes a notable claim.  But I've been unable to find any evidence to support or deny the idea that people who implement these systems are more effective than they would be otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone shed some light on the subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2637" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-08T00:06:36.060" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T00:06:36.060" Title="Have Time Management Techniques Been Shown To Be Effective" Tags="|productivity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14457" CreationDate="2013-01-06T20:33:52.087" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google found me &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hampton.gov/police/programs/crime_line.html&quot;&gt;these statistics for the police department of Hampton, Virginia&lt;/a&gt;. Only one data point, and far from definitive, and not aimed at solving one big case with lots of media coverage, but here is the key quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The success of the Peninsula Crime Line between 1997 and 2008 can be illustrated through a few statistics. The total number of calls received was 9,704 resulting in 1,115 arrests solving 1,698 cases. The total dollar value of stolen property recovered and illegal drugs seized were $910,657. The total rewards paid during these 12 years totaled $242,725.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there were &lt;strong&gt;about three calls a day, and about one in nine resulted in an arrest&lt;/strong&gt; (probably more if we assume there was more than one call about some cases).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2010/04/26/record-number-of-calls-to-crimestoppers/&quot;&gt;another result for Shropshire, UK&lt;/a&gt;, with figures not too far away from that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T21:24:06.987" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T21:24:06.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14490" CreationDate="2013-01-07T00:56:23.917" Score="58" ViewCount="13453" Body="&lt;p&gt;This picture is making the rounds on Facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ojz07.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ojz07.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Presidential Vacation Days&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Picture of George W. Bush] 32% [Picture of Barack Obama] 5.2%&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Percentage of presidency spent on vacation.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Guess which one conservatives call &quot;The Vacationer in Chief&quot;?&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  facebook.com/CrazyAssShit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I do recall hearing about the large number of so called vacation days George Bush took on Meet the Press, I am slightly skeptical that President Obama's vacation days were counted in the same manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these figures accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What method was used to arrive at these figures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="37939" LastEditDate="2019-08-29T04:34:57.757" LastActivityDate="2019-08-30T19:30:41.753" Title="Did George W. Bush spend 32% of his presidency vacationing, versus Barack Obama's 5.2%?" Tags="|united-states|politics|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14487" CreationDate="2013-01-07T03:30:27.390" Score="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is abundant evidence that Obama takes less vacation than past presidents. George W Bush was notorious for taking a lot of time away from the Whitehouse, most of it at his ranch. Here are some articles and quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factcheck.org/2010/01/president-obamas-vacation-days/&quot;&gt;Factcheck.org&lt;/a&gt; . Obama spent 26 days on vacation in his first year in office: Reagan 42, George W Bush 77, George HW Bush 40.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-20093801.html&quot;&gt;CBS News&lt;/a&gt; Obama spent 61 days on vacation in his first 31 months in office: George W Bush 180, Reagan 112, Clinton 28.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/01/04/vacation-outrage-right-slams-obama-for-hawaii-trip-ignoring-the-facts/&quot;&gt;MSNBC&lt;/a&gt; Obama took 84 days vacation in his first term. George W Bush took over 1000 days vacation in his two terms. &lt;strong&gt;This equates to 5.7% for Obama and 34% for Bush&lt;/strong&gt; (we'll use 365 days a year as the basis on the assumption that the President works 7 days a week)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T14:17:47.297" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T14:17:47.297" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14491" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14492" CreationDate="2013-01-07T04:25:48.327" Score="19" ViewCount="27227" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least around here, in Costa Rica, it is common practice to avoid drinking cold drinks while drinking hot soup. I never questioned this (but didn't really care about it). Apparently it is, well, bad to mix two different-temperature drinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10354" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T05:16:33.147" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T12:55:24.270" Title="Is drinking a cold drink and drinking hot soup unhealthy in any way?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|drinks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14491" CreationDate="2013-01-07T05:22:51.197" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Try putting hot water in a glass, empty it and then pour ice cold water in it. It is very likely it will break. The rapid change in temperature causes non-even contractions of the material and makes it break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This happens to the enamel in your teeth. Although it does not need to break, since the temperature difference is not so extreme, it may weaken the enamel and make it easier for tooth cavities to form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a scientific paper which explains it more rigorously&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jdr.sagepub.com/content/51/2/461.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jdr.sagepub.com/content/51/2/461.abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper presents the results of experiments conducted with extracted human and bovine teeth. The teeth were subjected to thermal cycling at temperatures between 140 and 90 F. The results offer conclusive evidence that thermal fracture may be induced by the thermal stresses caused by the temperature cycling. Less than 3,000 thermal cycles cause severe cracking or the propagation of cracks previously existing in the teeth, or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10995" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2016-09-07T12:55:24.270" LastActivityDate="2016-09-07T12:55:24.270" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1244" CreationDate="2013-01-07T10:00:44.353" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are rational ways to assess the harmful effects of legal and illegal drugs and this one classified LSD as much less harmful than alcohol&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of debate about how to classify the harms of legal and illegal drugs. One of the major issues is that there are a variety of different ways that harm can be caused either to the user of the drug or to other people. It is not immediately obvious how to weigh up the balance of these effects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a rational approach to this has been attempted by Professional Psychiatrist David Nutt, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/oct/30/drugs-adviser-david-nutt-sacked&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sacked chair&lt;/a&gt; of England's ACMD (Advisory Committee on the Misuse of Drugs). Note that he was sacked precisely because he pointed out an apparent mismatch between the UK legislation controlling drugs and the assessment of drug harms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The essence of Nutt's attempt to classify harms was to identify the different types of harm and then use Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) fed by expert judgements about the different types of harm to produce a rational scale classifying all substances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2010/11/drugs_cause_most_harm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Economist&lt;/a&gt; provided an excellent graphical summary of Nutt's results which highlights the total harm as well as the self-harm and harm to others components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/B9KyX.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Economist summary chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673607604644&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; on their method from the journal The Lancet (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dobrochan.ru/src/pdf/1109/lancetnorway.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pdf here&lt;/a&gt;) describes the process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;. We developed and explored the feasibility of the use of a nine-category matrix of harm, with an expert delphic procedure, to assess the harms of a range of illicit drugs in an evidence-based fashion. We also included ﬁve legal drugs of misuse (alcohol, khat, solvents, alkyl nitrites, and tobacco) and one that has since been classiﬁed (ketamine) for reference. The process proved practicable, and yielded roughly similar scores and rankings of drug harm when used by two separate groups of experts. The ranking of drugs produced by our assessment of harm diﬀered from those used by current regulatory systems. Our methodology oﬀers a systematic framework and process that could be used by national and international regulatory bodies to assess the harm of current and future drugs of abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The resulting classification put alcohol near the top of a harm scale and psychedelic drugs like LSD near the bottom in a way that contrasts strongly with the legal classification in many countries (LSD is class A in the UK, the most dangerous category, alongside heroin and cocaine). As they comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our ﬁndings raise questions about the validity of the current Misuse of Drugs Act classiﬁcation, despite the fact that it is nominally based on an assessment of risk to users and society. The discrepancies between our ﬁndings and current classiﬁcations are especially striking in relation to psychedelic-type drugs. Our results also emphasise that the exclusion of alcohol and tobacco from the Misuse of Drugs Act is, from a scientiﬁc perspective, arbitrary. We saw no clear distinction between socially acceptable and illicit substances. The fact that the two most widely used legal drugs lie in the upper half of the &#xA;  ranking of harm is surely important information that should be taken into account in public debate on illegal drug use. Discussions based on a formal assessment of harm rather than on prejudice and assumptions might help society to engage in a more rational debate about the &#xA;  relative risks and harms of drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study does not argue that LSD and related compounds are harmless, but classifies them in as having far fewer harms than the most dangerous compounds like heroin. And alcohol is classified in the high harms group, along with heroin or cocaine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Nutt has, since leaving the ACMD, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Drugs-without-Minimising-illegal-ebook/dp/B009CA3MPO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1357310170&amp;amp;sr=8-2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;written a book&lt;/a&gt; on the topic and founded an independent team to do research and publish the sort of results the government were not comfortable with: the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugscience.org.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs&lt;/a&gt;. These are worthwhile resources to consult to see how further academic research is proceeding (quick summary: LSD is still low on the harm scale).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in conclusion, a rational assessment of harms using expert judgement and MCDA, suggests that LSD is substantially less harmful than alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-08T16:17:46.790" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T16:17:46.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14484" CreationDate="2013-01-07T12:14:08.613" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to give a single answer to this, as there are many techniques, and any one of them &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be much better than the others. It may make a difference whether these skills are discovered by experience, trained or come naturally to the individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also a lot of different measures by which time management skills could be measured (e.g. quality of work, timeliness of work, productivity per hour, reliability of productivity, stress, job satisfaction, etc.) and a lot of different fields (manufacturing, software development, creative writing, retail, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some pertinent results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Good Time Management helps college students&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Britton, Bruce K.; Tesser, Abraham, &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/edu/83/3/405/&quot;&gt;Effects of time-management practices on college grades.&lt;/a&gt; Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 83(3), Sep 1991, 405-410. doi: 10.1037/0022-0663.83.3.405&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was a moderately small study of 90 college students. They were asked about their time-management practices and a model was produced to explain their GPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regression analyses showed that 2 time-management components were significant predictors of cumulative GPA ( R–2 = .21) and accounted for more variance than did SAT scores (increment in R–2 = .05). &lt;strong&gt;It is concluded that time-management practices may influence college achievement.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the same as saying &quot;training someone who is poor in time-management practices will help them.&quot; It may be another confounding factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Good time management makes you happier, not better&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Macan, Therese Hoff, &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/apl/79/3/381/&quot;&gt;Time management: Test of a process model.&lt;/a&gt; Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 79(3), Jun 1994, 381-391. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.79.3.381&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They surveyed 353 workers and their supervisors, and came up with a model to explain them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Examination of the path coefficients in the model suggested that engaging in &lt;strong&gt;some time management behaviors may have beneficial effects on tensions and job satisfaction but not on job performance&lt;/strong&gt;. Contrary to popular claims, &lt;strong&gt;time management training was not found to be effective&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedsearch.com/article/College-students-academic-stress-its/65640245.html&quot;&gt;Another study of college students&lt;/a&gt; concurs that time management skills lower stress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T12:14:08.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14495" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-07T12:53:41.160" Score="9" ViewCount="704" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you can see in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/#q=apple+better+than+coffee&amp;amp;output=search&amp;amp;fp=1&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&amp;amp;cad=b&quot;&gt;this google request answers&lt;/a&gt;, it is often said that eating an apple will wake you up better than coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really? Are there scientific proof about this? (I mean not only assumptions based on fruit composition)&#xA;Or is it a simplification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1359" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T12:53:41.160" Title="Are apples better than coffee to wake up?" Tags="|coffee|apple|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14496" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14499" CreationDate="2013-01-07T13:12:07.493" Score="6" ViewCount="1413" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw the following claim in an article in The Guardian - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/06/how-not-to-catch-the-norovirus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How not to catch the norovirus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Incidentally – and you can consider this a public service announcement – forget most hand gels, the majority of which will scarcely dent the norobastard&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hand gel I have on my desk claims it will kill 99.9% of bacteria but makes no specific claims about killing viruses. We have had a question on Skeptics about &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2564/which-is-more-effective-at-removing-germs-washing-with-soap-and-water-or-using&quot;&gt;soap vs hand sanitizers&lt;/a&gt;, but that didn't cover the effectiveness of either method against norovirus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is hand gel effective against norovirus (specifically, the hand gel commonly sold to the public - e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Carex-Hand-Aloe-Vera-93040/dp/B0017TN3XO/ref=pd_cp_beauty_2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Purell-Hygienic-Hand-Gel-240ml/dp/B0083RNMAW/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1357563972&amp;amp;sr=8-4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/St-John-Ambulance-Hand-Sanitizer/dp/B0029LHCKY/ref=tag_dpp_lp_edpp_ttl_in&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T23:49:16.597" Title="Is hand gel effective against Norovirus?" Tags="|biology|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14496" CreationDate="2013-01-07T16:31:00.310" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;hand-sanitisers are available which are advertised as destroying viruses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZsnLjl.png&quot; alt=&quot;Can of Virashield&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one claimns to contain &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.byotrol.co.uk/byotrol_protects.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;byotrol anti-microbial technology&quot;&lt;/a&gt; a proprietary product which claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It kills and destroys bacteria &lt;strong&gt;and viruses&lt;/strong&gt; but here’s the clever bit; it then dries to form an invisible barrier which keeps on working to stop germs from coming back for up to 24 hours on surfaces you use daily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(my emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cisionwire.com/media-intelligence-partners-ltd/r/press-release--nhs-hand-wash--ineffective--against-superbugs,c473699&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;press release&lt;/a&gt; of Byotrol PLC says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The research, carried out by the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI), on behalf of anti-infection firm Byotrol, measured Byotrol hand-foam, NHS hand-gel (Spirigel), Vick’s First Defence and Dettol hand-foam on their performance in killing dangerous viruses 24 hours after application. &#xA;  The tests looked at which products prevent viruses returning for up to 24 hours after application. Worryingly, the NHS “gold standard” hand-gel offered no residual effect whatsoever. &#xA;  After 24 hours, First Defence continued to be effective against 90 per cent of the sample, a surrogate for Norovirus (Feline Calicivirus), with Dettol hand-foam remaining 50 per cent effective and the NHS standard hand-gel offering no ongoing protection at all.&#xA;  Byotrol hand-foam, the only product not based on alcohol, remained effective with a 99.9 per cent kill rate, 24 hours after application.&#xA;  The results are in line with last year’s study at Manchester Royal Infirmary,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find independent references for these claims however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a hand-sanitizer product doesn't even claim to destroy viruses, there are probably good grounds for suspecting that it doesn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T22:46:17.270" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T22:46:17.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14502" CreationDate="2013-01-07T18:48:04.327" Score="10" ViewCount="1120" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ionizing_radiation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Non-ionizing radiation&lt;/a&gt;, like radiation from mobile phones, electric power transmission, and radio frequencies, etc. is regarded by the majority of people as safe to the human body. However the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2011/pdfs/pr208_E.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;World Health Organization&lt;/a&gt; in 2011 stated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The WHO/International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has&#xA;  classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as possibly&#xA;  carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B), based on an increased risk for&#xA;  glioma, a malignant type of brain cancer, associated with wireless&#xA;  phone use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This release is not definite, just a possible link, and it has been refuted. I cannot seem to find any good study that shows a direct association between health issues and non-ionizing radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=645813&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; that showed brain glucose metabolism linked to cell phone proximity, but it has been refuted because it only involved 47 people and didn't control for the effect of the heat generated by the phone. And similar issues with other studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So my question is, is there any scientifically accepted link between non-ionizing radiation and health issues?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/6236/energynumbers&quot;&gt;@EnergyNumbers&lt;/a&gt; pointed out in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/14502/7387&quot;&gt;his answer&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your question is very broad - you've asked about non-ionizing&#xA;  radiation generally, rather than say specifically about radio waves.&#xA;  And that makes it much easier to answer in the affirmative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes it is very broad, I don't want only radio wave related answers, and he &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/14502/7387&quot;&gt;lists some good ones&lt;/a&gt;. The only answer I don't wan't is one related to heat; like the heat from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.darwinawards.com/legends/legends1998-11.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;microwave antenna&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also if anyone cares, I asked this question because of a discussion that took place in the comments of &lt;a href=&quot;https://electronics.stackexchange.com/a/28081/9730&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; on SE's Electronic site, and I was surprised it hadn't been asked/answered here (there are a lot of somewhat related questions, but I couldn't find what I wanted.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7387" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T01:13:18.930" Title="Is non-ionizing radiation known to cause any health issues?" Tags="|medical-science|radiation|causality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14501" CreationDate="2013-01-07T20:21:01.823" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, some non-ionizing radiation can cause health problems. Your question is very broad - you've asked about non-ionizing radiation generally, rather than say specifically about radio waves. And that makes it much easier to answer in the affirmative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.photobiology.info/Rozanowska.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;photochemical damage of the retina&lt;/a&gt; from high-intensity visible light:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MHn9p.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OL.22.000135&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;high-intensity near-infrared radiation will kill cells&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And focussed microwaves are also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ionizing_radiation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;non-ionizing&lt;/a&gt; and aren't particular kind on fat and proteins either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9qoiG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T22:37:54.887" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T22:37:54.887" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14503" PostTypeId="8" CreationDate="2013-01-07T21:16:00.770" Score="0" Body="&lt;h3&gt;What are the new user restrictions?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New users cannot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;post images&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;post hyperlinks in their user profile&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;contribute answers to protected questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ask or answer questions too rapidly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;access &lt;a href=&quot;/review&quot;&gt;the review tools&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Why are restrictions placed on new users?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because we allow participation from anonymous internet users, we must take some precautions to ensure that the rare malicious or spammy anonymous user doesn't ruin the experience for everyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're sorry that we have to sandbox new users, but the first few upvotes on your questions or answers will quickly elevate you out of it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What are protected questions?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High traffic questions on the site may be protected to prevent &quot;thanks&quot;, &quot;me too!&quot;, and spam answers from new users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How do I add images and links to my posts?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Markdown&lt;/a&gt; to format posts, so there are a variety of ways of adding links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bare urls &lt;code&gt;http://example.com&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;HTML &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://example.com&quot;&amp;gt;example link&amp;lt;/a&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Markdown &lt;code&gt;[example link](http://example.com)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the editor toolbar button &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lSZui.png&quot; alt=&quot;insert link toolbar button&quot;&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Images can be added similarly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;HTML &lt;code&gt;&amp;lt;img src=&quot;http://example.com/img.jpg&quot;&amp;gt;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Markdown &lt;code&gt;![sample image](http://example.com/img.jpg)&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the editor toolbar button &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/C3zkF.png&quot; alt=&quot;insert image toolbar button&quot;&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What are the review tools?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/review&quot;&gt;Review&lt;/a&gt; allows you to monitor posts that are likely to require additional assistance from more experienced users. It is thus geared towards users with more than &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.stackoverflow.com/privileges/vote-down&quot;&gt;125 reputation&lt;/a&gt; who have a better grasp of the site and its policy than a user with 10 reputation might have; the feature is, indeed, completely hidden until then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This privilege level unlocks it, though, and you can help through editing. Look at &lt;a href=&quot;/review/low-quality-posts&quot;&gt;low quality posts&lt;/a&gt; and see if you can propose improvements to them. Every edit suggestion will be reviewed by users with global editing privileges or more and, if accepted, will grant you &lt;strong&gt;2 reputation&lt;/strong&gt; points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="3" LastEditDate="2013-01-07T21:16:00.770" LastActivityDate="2013-01-07T21:16:00.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14505" CreationDate="2013-01-08T00:17:19.857" Score="8" ViewCount="833" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across an absurd title on MailOnline, &quot;Did the MOON sink the Titanic? Freak tides caused icebergs to fill shipping lanes 100 years ago,&quot; where a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2110842/Did-MOON-sink-Titanic-New-study-suggests-freak-tidal-event-caused-icebergs-shipping-lanes-100-years-ago.html&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt; is made:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 'once-in-many-lifetimes' event brought together the Moon's closest approach to the Earth for 1,400 years, a near encounter between the Earth and the Sun, and a spring tide.&#xA;  All these factors contributed to abnormally high sea levels which helped dislodge grounded icebergs and send them into the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic, [...] .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the moon's tidal effect sick the Titanic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="22504" LastEditDate="2016-05-19T17:39:09.510" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T17:39:09.510" Title="Did the moon's tidal effect sink the Titanic?" Tags="|moon|oceanography|titanic|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14504" CreationDate="2013-01-08T00:47:35.700" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not directly, but there was an unusual tidal event in the preceding months that may have contributed to the unusual number of icebergs in the shipping lanes in Spring 1912. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Of course, the ultimate cause of the accident was that the ship struck an iceberg. The Titanic failed to slow down, even after having received several wireless messages warning of ice ahead,” Olson said. “They went full speed into a region with icebergs—that’s really what sank the ship, but the lunar connection may explain how an unusually large number of icebergs got into the path of the Titanic.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.txstate.edu/news/news_releases/news_archive/2012/March-2012/Titanic030512.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Donald Olson, Physics faculty of Texas State University, San Marcos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Olson and others wrote an article detailing this theory that was published as the lead feature in the April 2012 issue of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skyandtelescope.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sky &amp;amp; Telescope&lt;/a&gt;, a non-peer-reviewed but well-respected magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially the article makes the case that an unusual combination of forces would have led to particularly high tides and that these incrementally higher tides may have floated some icebergs that otherwise have stayed grounded and perhaps, but for this, Leo and Kate would have lived happily ever after. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine that the only way one could prove this theory would be to examine the iceberg in question and see if it had signs of having been shallowly grounded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have the article in question and could answer specific questions. I believe that Sky &amp;amp; Telescope makes their back-issues available for purchase on iOS devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This illustration, taken from the article, shows the tidal forces: a combination of spring tides (when the Moon, Earth, and Sun are aligned), perigean ides (when the Moon is nearest Earth in its elliptical orbit), and perihelion (when the Earth is closest to the Sun). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zJSRe.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2013-01-08T18:46:13.593" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T18:46:13.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14506" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-08T05:20:59.027" Score="1" ViewCount="117" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7854/do-dairy-products-cause-phlegm-to-build-or-thicken&quot;&gt;Do dairy products cause phlegm to build or thicken?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's commonly told that one shouldn't drink milk before singing because it causes him to produce more mucus and therefore phlegm and disrupt his singing. I've heard conflicting things about whether this is true or not though. Is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="930" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T05:20:59.027" Title="Does drinking milk make people produce more phlegm?" Tags="|milk|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-01-16T22:17:22.043" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14507" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14510" CreationDate="2013-01-08T05:47:59.237" Score="46" ViewCount="19096" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cut myself recently and used superglue to seal the wound. I thought it was normal but when I tell people that act like I'm crazy. Then I tell them this story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Superglue was invented during the Vietnam war to quickly seal bullet wounds without bandages. That's why it's in an &quot;injector&quot; shape and a single bullet hole serving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UyGLw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Liquid Bandaid&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been telling the story so long I don't even know if its true anymore and I can't remember where I first heard it. But I'm pretty sure it's based on fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is superglue safe for sealing wounds?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was invented specifically for this purpose?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has it ever been used as such?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2018-08-28T00:32:46.030" LastActivityDate="2018-08-28T00:32:46.030" Title="Was superglue invented to seal bullet injuries in Vietnam?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|consumer-products|war|vietnam-war|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14507" CreationDate="2013-01-08T08:55:46.033" Score="65" Body="&lt;h3&gt;2. Was invented specifically for this purpose?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;3. Has it ever been used as such?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Short answer: No, Yes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2187/was-super-glue-invented-to-seal-battle-wounds-in-vietnam&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article written by Una/Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; the following is stated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Super glue, Krazy glue, Eastman 910 and similar glues are all a&#xA;special type of glue called cyanoacrylates. Cyanoacrylates were&#xA;invented in 1942 by Dr. Harry Coover of Kodak Laboratories during&#xA;experiments to make a special extra-clear plastic suitable for gun&#xA;sights. [...] Seeing possibilities for a new adhesive, Kodak developed&#xA;&amp;quot;Eastman #910&amp;quot; (later &amp;quot;Eastman 910&amp;quot;) a few years later as the first&#xA;true &amp;quot;super glue.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of cyanoacrylate glues in medicine was considered fairly early&#xA;on. Eastman Kodak and Ethicon began studying whether the glues could&#xA;be used to hold human tissue together for surgery. In 1964 Eastman&#xA;submitted an application to use cyanoacrylate glues to seal wounds to&#xA;the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Soon afterward&#xA;Dr. Coover's glue did find use in Vietnam--reportedly in 1966&#xA;cyanoacrylates were tested on-site by a specially trained surgical&#xA;team, with impressive results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;1. Is superglue safe for sealing wounds?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to current status of the component for surgical use (in USA):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] an improved cyanoacrylate glue was developed for medical&#xA;applications called &amp;quot;2-octyl-cyanoacrylate.&amp;quot; This compound causes less&#xA;skin irritation and has improved flexibility and strength--at least&#xA;three times the strength of the butyl-based compound (reference 2). As&#xA;a result, in 1998 the FDA approved 2-octyl cyanoacrylate for use in&#xA;closing wounds and surgical incisions, and in 2001 approved it for use&#xA;as a &amp;quot;barrier against common bacterial microbes including certain&#xA;staphylococci, pseudomonads, and Escherichia coli&amp;quot; (reference 2). This&#xA;latest incarnation was marketed under the name Traumaseal as well as&#xA;the more popular Dermabond.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole article is an interesting read, just follow the link at the top.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of future availability I include the references used in the article here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hayes, Sharon Caskey. &amp;quot;Discovery of Super Glue helped land Coover in National Inventors Hall of Fame,&amp;quot; Kingsport Times-News, July 11, 2004.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(2) Schwade, Nathan D. &amp;quot;Wound Adhesives, 2-Octyl Cyanoacrylate&amp;quot;, eMedicine article, Apr. 10, 2002&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vinters HV, Galil KA, Lundie MJ, Kaufmann JC: The histotoxicity of cyanoacrylates. A selective review. Neuroradiology 1985; 27(4): 279-91&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fernandez, Tania (Dr) and Bliskovsky, Val (Dr). &amp;quot;Cyanoacrylate Technology: Stay Glued,&amp;quot; Pharmbiz.com, Jan. 2, 2003&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perry LC: An evaluation of acute incisional strength with Traumaseal surgical tissue adhesive wound closure. Dimensional Analysis Systems Inc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jueneman, F, &amp;quot;Stick it to um,&amp;quot; Industrial Research &amp;amp; Development, Aug. 1981, p. 19.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Quinn, J., &amp;amp; Kissack, J., &amp;quot;Tissue Adhesives for Laceration Repair During Sporting Events,&amp;quot; Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine, Vol. 4 No. 4, 1994, p. 245&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8690" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T01:42:38.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14511" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14512" CreationDate="2013-01-08T11:22:26.923" Score="8" ViewCount="2124" Body="&lt;p&gt;Air humidifiers are broadly sold and marking points to &quot;healthy&quot; relative humidity levels as (accordingly to different sources) is 30-50% and during artificial heating (normally, winter) seasons we need to use humidifiers at home. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But was it ever asserted, that in-house relative humidity level &amp;lt;30% can have any negative health effects? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6181" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-08T19:51:16.843" LastActivityDate="2015-11-26T08:52:45.343" Title="Are air humidifiers necessary, does low humidity have negative heath effects?" Tags="|consumer-products|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14511" CreationDate="2013-01-08T13:01:34.910" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1474709/&quot;&gt;&quot;Indirect health effects of relative humidity in indoor environments.&quot; by Arundel et al, 1986&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;mid-range humidities (40-60%) are more lethal to airborne nonpathogenic bacteria than low or high humidities&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Measles, influenza, herpesvirus varicellae, and rubella viruses survive longer during exposure to relative humidities below 50%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  influenza infection rates are highest in environments with relative humidities below 40%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The majority of adverse health effects caused by relative humidity would be minimized by maintaining indoor levels between 40 and 60%. This would require humidification during winter in areas with cold winter climates. Humidification should preferably use evaporative or steam humidifiers, as cool mist humidifiers can disseminate aerosols contaminated with allergens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="6236" LastEditDate="2013-01-08T15:25:58.893" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T15:25:58.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14513" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14523" CreationDate="2013-01-08T14:51:27.000" Score="46" ViewCount="13621" Body="&lt;p&gt;A popular conspiracy theory holds that Tesla invented a free energy device, but that the powers that be prevented him from publishing it, because it would hurt their investments. Of course, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/155/5337&quot;&gt;free energy as such does not exist&lt;/a&gt;, and literally speaking, this conspiracy theory is easy to refute, although one might still claim he referred to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_Electrodynamics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;something else&lt;/a&gt; and the energy is not literally free, just very abundant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One element of those conspiracy theories, however, is the claim that his documents were confiscated and classified shortly after his death. My question is not about free energy, but rather:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does or did the US government, CIA, FBI, or some other agency, confiscate documents by Nikola Tesla and keep those classified to this date?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sources where related claims are made. Only the 2nd source below (PBS) is remotely reliable, but that one too cites no sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/groups/teslarelease/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Facebook group Tesla Release &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_mispapers.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PBS - Tesla Life and Legacy - The Missing Papers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any reliable source confirming or refuting this claim? If true, one element of the conspiracy theory — &lt;em&gt;they're hiding something&lt;/em&gt; — is actually true, and even if the thing being hidden is not &lt;em&gt;free energy&lt;/em&gt;, it might be something else that harms powers that be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T10:11:22.303" Title="Did/does the US government keep secret papers by Nikola Tesla?" Tags="|united-states|physics|energy|nikola-tesla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14514" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14511" CreationDate="2013-01-08T15:29:58.320" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is at least asserted that air humidity affects health relevant environmental factors, but if you are interested in marketing for a humidifier or dehumidifier, you can freely pick arguments both in favour of dry and humid indoor environments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recent research shows that the &lt;em&gt;absolute&lt;/em&gt; air humidity has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-02/osu-lfb020509.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;strong impact on the survival rate of air-born flue virus&lt;/a&gt;. Cold air (which is dry in absolute terms, although relatively humid) or dry air increase the flue virus' life span. Increasing the air humidity will reduce the risk of a flue infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dry air on the other side, will however prevent other factors with negative health impact. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1056928/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Most fungi spores will only thrive under high humidity&lt;/a&gt;, so keeping a dry climate will avoid mold growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are of course only two examples allowing opposite argumentation for a dry or humid climate. There are endless other examples of germs or e.g. pest carrying insects, which presence or amount can be controlled by manipulating air humidity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue is the vaporization of toxic solvents from building materials, which increases in dry air, but the &quot;real&quot; solution to that problem is probably to avoid such building materials completely instead of minimizing the risk by increasing air humidity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T15:29:58.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1244" CreationDate="2013-01-08T15:44:57.963" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is LSD more harmful than Alcohol?&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;Seeming as though a lot of people can't see how Active Dose and Lethal Dose are directly correlated, lets look at the stats:&#xA;Lets take, for example, Scotland:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rSqeg.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/statistics/theme/vital-events/deaths/drug-related/2011/tables-and-figures.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/statistics/theme/vital-events/deaths/drug-related/2011/tables-and-figures.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there are 0 listed deaths from LSD between 1996 - 2011. However - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scotsman.com/news/health/scotland-is-europe-s-new-drug-capital-as-nearly-one-in-ten-admit-to-taking-ecstasy-1-2426064&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;5.8% of Scots have admitted to taking LSD&lt;/a&gt; - meaning that 305,000 Scots have taken LSD. There are no hard figures as to when, but even if its only half of them that have done it in that 15 year span, that's still a death per user % of 0. However, looking at evidence from ISD Scotland, we can see only an average of 21019 (0.4%) Scots took LSD in between 2008-2009: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugmisuse.isdscotland.org/publications/09dmss/09dmss.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.drugmisuse.isdscotland.org/publications/09dmss/09dmss.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the alcohol stats&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;All deaths attributed to alcohol:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WR9U5.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/files2/stats/alcohol-related-deaths/ard-2011-table1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/files2/stats/alcohol-related-deaths/ard-2011-table1.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alcohol users in Scotland 2008-2009:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zJLIx.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alcoholinformation.isdscotland.org/alcohol_misuse/files/alcohol_stats_bulletin_2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.alcoholinformation.isdscotland.org/alcohol_misuse/files/alcohol_stats_bulletin_2011.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So 13,915 adults drank regularly between 2008-2009, and in 2008 there were 1,411 deaths from alcohol. This in itself is damning evidence of the health implications caused by Alcohol. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Around 0.05% of drinkers over 30 in Scotland in 2008 died from Alcohol related illnesses, and we aren't even touching the physical, psychological and social harms caused by alcohol, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/nov/01/alcohol-more-harmful-than-heroin-crack&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the most dangerous drug.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17297714&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ironically, studies have shown LSD to have very good success in treating alcoholics, with a 58% success rate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately there is little statistics from Scotland regarding LSD health implications as it is practically non-existent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The unweighted base from the table titled &lt;strong&gt;Alcohol users in Scotland 2008-2009:&lt;/strong&gt; indicates 13,915 adults &lt;em&gt;participated&lt;/em&gt; in the study; this is not the number of adults who drank regularly in Scotland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;General Registrar Office for Scotland - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/press/news2009/2008-based-projected-population-news-release.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scotland’s Population to Top 5.5 Million&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scotland Census Results Online - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrol.gov.uk/scrol/browser/profile.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Population Profile for Scotland&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combining this census and news-release data, indicates a population over 30 in Scotland somewhere around 3.27 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extrapolating data from &quot;Alcohol users in Scotland 2008-2009&quot;, the population of adult Scots over 30 who drank &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt; in 2008 is 89% or 2.9 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at Table 1: Alcohol related deaths. By sex and age group, Scotland, 1979-2011. This table indicates 1,399 alcohol related deaths in the population over 30 years of age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1399 / 2900000 = 0.000482414 (0.05%)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8857" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-08-26T13:25:31.417" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T13:25:31.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14517" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14518" CreationDate="2013-01-08T16:14:43.677" Score="21" ViewCount="10461" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several chewing gum commercials advertise chewing their gum after meals to help clean the teeth. I was chewing today and realized that there is never a point when I am chewing that it actually touches the surfaces of my teeth, only the actually chewing faces touch it, so are the advertisements accurate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10760" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-08T19:46:05.670" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T19:15:20.650" Title="Does chewing on gum help clean your teeth?" Tags="|dentistry|chewing-gum|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14517" CreationDate="2013-01-08T16:35:10.400" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ada.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Dental Association&lt;/a&gt;, chewing suger-free gum does have the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ada.org/5097.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;benefit of increasing saliva  flow&lt;/a&gt; which helps to neutralize and wash way acids that may be generated by bacteria in plaque on your teeth. Additionally, some chewing gum also has additives that also assist in building up your teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uFeXv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Package of gum with ADA seal&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this &lt;em&gt;does not&lt;/em&gt; apply to all chewing gum and may apply to some that have not been approved by the ADA. However, if they have the seal shown above then they have been proven to meet the following requirements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A company earns the ADA Seal for its product by showing with&#xA;  scientific evidence that the chewing gum is effective for one or more&#xA;  specific indications, such as reducing plaque acids, promoting&#xA;  remineralization of tooth enamel, reducing cavities and/or reducing&#xA;  gingivitis.  Studies must also show that the gum is safe to oral&#xA;  tissues.  The manufacturer must provide the results of both laboratory&#xA;  studies and clinical studies in humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-14T19:15:20.650" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T19:15:20.650" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14517" CreationDate="2013-01-08T16:36:32.187" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not the gum itself that cleans your teeth (unless you have something stuck between your teeth I suppose) it's the increased saliva. The increase in saliva  washes away some of the plaque that's stuck to your teeth. By chewing your brain thinks you are eating and therefore need increased levels of saliva. This dilutes any acid (e.g. from fruit juice). By chewing sugar free gum you get this increase without leaving anything behind e.g. sugar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My brother was born without enamel on his teeth and chewing gum was recommended to him by the dentist when he was so young that most parents wouldn't have allowed him gum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11007" LastEditorUserId="6996" LastEditDate="2013-01-14T11:10:15.360" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T11:10:15.360" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14513" CreationDate="2013-01-08T19:59:06.563" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is indeed a fact, based on the documents released by the FOIA, that both FBI and OSS (the precursor to CIA - CIA didn't exist at that time) obtained papers from Nikola Tesla after his death in 1943.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the released material show that the Department of Defense (DoD), among others, was interested in these papers because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;SUBJECT: Papers recovered on the Death of Nicola Tesla (U).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(U) We understand that FBI may have possession of a number of papers&#xA;  found after the death of Nicola Tesla in 1943. [...] (C) We believe&#xA;  that certain of Tesla's papers may contain basic principles which&#xA;  could be of considerable value to certain ongoing research within the&#xA;  DoD. [...]&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/a1Igs.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;letter written to FBI by LtCol. Allen J. MacLaren, 8. Feb 1981&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another document dated 12 Jan 1943 shows that a vast amount of material including papers was seized from the hotel:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;[...] On Saturday afternoon, Jan nine, Corsuch and -- Fitzgerald of&#xA;  Alien Property Control went to hotel and seized all the property of&#xA;  Tesla, consisting of about two truckloads of material, sealed all&#xA;  articles and transferred them to the Manhattan storage and warehouse&#xA;  Co. NY, where they are now located. [...]&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NQFlq.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Page 1 (scan)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/staRd.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Page 2 (scan)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another letter to FBI dated April 20, 1976, shows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;[...] After Tesla's death, scientists from the Navy and OSS performed&#xA;  a cursory examination of the diary and notes [...]&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gl2LK.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Page 1 (scan)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There exist other released documents as well, not included here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there is doubt about the confiscation itself. The speculations are more about what information the papers contained as well as what items where found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also a fact that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;J.P. Morgan wanted to finance Tesla (see Unsuccessful ventures / Energy)&lt;/a&gt; as he was researching if he could utilize the ionosphere - where the idea of &quot;free energy&quot; comes from. If the experiments were successful or not is unknown, but eventually Morgan pulled his financial backing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, the speculations refer to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program&lt;/a&gt; (or &quot;HAARP&quot; which you find in Alaska) as they also utilize the ionosphere - this is the basis of  suspicion of HAARP because their research is based on Tesla's work. Considering the letter above from the DoD/USAF this is perhaps not so out of the blue (pun intended). From the official HAARP page they answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;[...] Because the DoD operates numerous communication and navigation&#xA;  systems whose signals either depend on reflection from the ionosphere&#xA;  or must pass through the ionosphere to satellites, there is obvious&#xA;  DoD interest in understanding the ionosphere's effect on these systems&#xA;  to improve their reliability and performance. [...]&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/faq.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAQ, HAARP official page (see last question)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part that brings in the &quot;conspiracy&quot; element is what HAARP is being used for, and there is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/979/can-haarp-affect-weather-or-earthquakes/&quot;&gt;question about it&lt;/a&gt; on this site. This however is not related to Tesla.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing is for sure, Tesla was a great genius almost &quot;forgotten&quot; in history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE 10/2016&lt;/strong&gt; FBI recently released (by FOIA) a batch of related documents that can be read here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://vault.fbi.gov/nikola-tesla&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://vault.fbi.gov/nikola-tesla&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8690" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-08-26T10:11:22.303" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T10:11:22.303" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14524" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14651" CreationDate="2013-01-08T21:42:56.933" Score="17" ViewCount="1037" Body="&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/03/why-silicon-valley-is-losing-its-luster/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CNN Global Public Square&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A new book caught my eye this week. It’s called &lt;em&gt;The Immigrant Exodus&lt;/em&gt; by Vivek Wadhwa, a former tech entrepreneur who now studies and lectures on immigration. He has some fascinating findings. Wadhwa says between 1995 and 2005, more than a half of all Silicon Valley tech companies were founded by immigrants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were  more than a half of all Silicon Valley tech companies founded by immigrants between 1995 and 2005?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="8702" LastEditDate="2013-11-04T07:58:24.010" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T07:58:24.010" Title="Were more than a half of all Silicon Valley tech companies founded by immigrants between 1995 and 2005?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14318" CreationDate="2013-01-08T21:43:03.803" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it may be impossible to prove that &lt;strong&gt;EVP is not paranormal&lt;/strong&gt;. Current evidence suggests so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voice_phenomenon&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; has a comprehensive article on EVP with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voice_phenomenon#Natural_explanations&quot;&gt;list of natural explanations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To just quote one&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Auditory pareidolia is a situation created when the brain incorrectly interprets random patterns as being familiar patterns. In the case of EVP it could result in an observer interpreting random noise on an audio recording as being the familiar sound of a human voice. The propensity for an apparent voice heard in white noise recordings to be in a language understood well by those researching it, rather than in an unfamiliar language, has been cited as evidence of this, and a broad class of phenomena referred to by author Joe Banks as Rorschach Audio has been described as a global explanation for all manifestations of EVP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/evp.html%20has%20another%20article%20on%20EVP&quot;&gt;The Sceptics Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote(emphasis mine): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perception is a very complex process, and when our brains try to find&#xA;  patterns, they are guided in part by what we expect to hear. If you&#xA;  are trying to hear your friend while conversing in a noisy room, your&#xA;  brain automatically takes snippets of sound and compares them against&#xA;  possible corresponding words, and guided by context, we can often&#xA;  “hear” more clearly than the sound patterns reaching our ears could&#xA;  account for. Indeed, it is relatively easy to demonstrate in a&#xA;  psychology laboratory that people can readily come to hear “clearly”&#xA;  even very muffled voices, so long as they have a printed version in&#xA;  front of them that tells them what words are being spoken. The brain&#xA;  puts together the visual cue and the auditory input, and we actually&#xA;  “hear” what we are informed is being said, even though without that&#xA;  information, we could discern nothing. Going one step further, and we&#xA;  can demonstrate that people can clearly “hear” voices and words not&#xA;  just in the context of muddled voices, but in a pattern of white&#xA;  noise, a pattern in which there are no voices or words at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Given that we can routinely demonstrate this effect, it is only parsimonious to suggest that what people hear with EVP is also the&#xA;  product of their own brains, and their expectations, rather than the&#xA;  voices of the dearly departed&lt;/strong&gt;. (Alcock 2004)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://wikisynergy.com/~wikisyne/w/index.php?title=Controversy%3a_Electronic_Voice_Phenomena&quot;&gt;article on wikisynergy&lt;/a&gt; (it seems old, half finished and with plenty of link rot) quotes David Federlein (a sound Engineer?) Emphasis mine again&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Often EVP proponents have pointed to the fact that digital recordings&#xA;  also pick up EVP as proof they are from beyond the grave. What is not&#xA;  noted however is that the actual microphone recording to the digital&#xA;  device is an analog piece of equipment subject to cross modulation in&#xA;  cases of cheap engineering. Poor analog to digital converters,&#xA;  fragmented ram, and faulty programming of lower quality digital&#xA;  devices either compound a cross modulated source, or create new&#xA;  splices of previous recordings added in to the new recordings.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Interestingly enough when EVP proponents are explaining how to capture&#xA;  an EVP, often using high quality and properly grounded and shielded&#xA;  equipment is discouraged in favor of cheap and low quality recorders.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  While it is suggested to use a new tape every time (in the case of&#xA;  tape recordings) the recorders themselves are low quality and often&#xA;  inexpensive units that most likely are not up to the tolerance&#xA;  standards of professional sound engineers. &lt;strong&gt;This seems to suggest that&#xA;  EVP proponents may not understand the workings of radio broadcasting&#xA;  and its effect on poorly engineered equipment all that well, and are&#xA;  actually engaging in a controlled misuse of their electronics. Given&#xA;  that there are billions of radio transmissions filling our airwaves a&#xA;  device that is engineered poorly or has a faulty ground is almost&#xA;  assuredly going to produce strange combinations of human voice&#xA;  recordings that are somewhat mangled and in poor quality.&lt;/strong&gt; Conversely&#xA;  the very human need to hear what we want to when looking for meaning&#xA;  in things would imply the physics of EVP alone is not to blame. Often&#xA;  ghost hunters and EVP believers want to connect with someone as proof&#xA;  of an afterlife, and may read into whatever recordings are captured&#xA;  something that isn't there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/electronic_voice_phenomena_voices_of_the_dead/&quot;&gt;CSI&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Alcock&quot;&gt;James Alcock&lt;/a&gt; (the one referenced above) says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Serious parapsychologists today show virtually no interest in EVP, and modern reports in the parapsychological literature find no evidence of anything paranormal in such recordings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and from the Sceptics Dictionary article&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite widespread belief in EVP, scientists have shown about as much interest in the phenomenon as they have in John Oates's reverse speech theory, and probably for the same reason. We already understand priming and the power of suggestion. As Alcock says, the simplest explanation for EVP is that it is the product of our own wonderfully complex brain, aided by the strong emotional desire to make contact with the dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And noone so far has claimed the million dollar prize from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge.html&quot;&gt;James Randi Foundation&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course there is fraud. An &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=34177&quot;&gt;entry on the James Randi Forums&lt;/a&gt; lists &lt;em&gt;a number of malicious hoaxers who need to be seriously investigated.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7716" LastEditorUserId="7716" LastEditDate="2013-01-08T21:56:39.593" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T21:56:39.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7918" CreationDate="2013-01-08T22:31:34.343" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lead in paint was banned from household paint from 1978 (16 Code of Federal Regulations 1303) in the US (other years for other countries).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For lead in plumbing - California enacted laws in January 2009 that increase public protection from exposure to lead in drinking water. The laws reduce the amount of lead allowed in plumbing components intended to convey or dispense water for human consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dtsc.ca.gov/PollutionPrevention/LeadInPlumbing.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dtsc.ca.gov/PollutionPrevention/LeadInPlumbing.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, EPA writes the following regarding lead in drinking water:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lead is rarely found in source water, but enters tap water through&#xA;  corrosion of plumbing materials. Homes built before 1986 are more&#xA;  likely to have lead pipes, fixtures and solder. &lt;strong&gt;However, new homes are&#xA;  also at risk: even legally “lead-free” plumbing may contain up to 8&#xA;  percent lead&lt;/strong&gt;. The most common problem is with brass or chrome-plated&#xA;  brass faucets and fixtures which can leach significant amounts of lead&#xA;  into the water, especially hot water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://water.epa.gov/drink/info/lead/index.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://water.epa.gov/drink/info/lead/index.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Washing floors with water would therefor increase the chances of finding lead on the floor material despite it use lead free paint (if painted) and new plumbing system (that still can contain up to 8% lead).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting too: The risk of lead poisoning in houses built before 1978 is large enough for EPA to require the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In January 2011 the US Environmental Protection Agency required that&#xA;  all renovators working in homes built before 1978 and containing more&#xA;  than six square-feet of lead paint be RRP-certified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://epaleadtraining.com/rrp-in-a-nutshell/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://epaleadtraining.com/rrp-in-a-nutshell/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in conclusion, based on probability, the risk of lead poisoning (running barefoot) is very low in houses of newer date ( &gt;1986) (USA) but existing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An absolute conclusion is impossible without actually physically measuring the materials and environment for the house in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To reduce the risk further, EPA provides the following tip:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HEALTH TIP: To help block the storage of lead in your child’s body,&#xA;  serve your family meals that are low in fat and high in calcium and&#xA;  iron, including dairy products and green vegetables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://water.epa.gov/drink/info/lead/leadfactsheet.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://water.epa.gov/drink/info/lead/leadfactsheet.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8690" LastEditorUserId="8690" LastEditDate="2013-01-08T22:37:47.280" LastActivityDate="2013-01-08T22:37:47.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14529" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-09T05:20:14.550" Score="6" ViewCount="500" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the performance brakes world, there is a small amount of debate about the benefits of cryogenically treating rotors, with most people believing that cryo treating rotors greatly improves their durability.  An example from Frozen Rotors (one of the leading suppliers) states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does cryogenic treating do for my rotors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cryogenic treating will increase the useable life of your rotors by 100% to 300% and typically increase the life of your brake pads by 10% - 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make a long story short, the debate in automotive forums is mainly over exactly what cryo treating does, not even if it has an effect at all.  One popular example is that many people believe that cryo treating greatly extends rotor life at the expense of pad life, which is directly counter to the manufacturer claims as above.  Another popular claim is that there is no difference for the stresses introduced in daily driving and is not worth the cost, while others quickly counter; swearing it extended their life greatly on a daily driver and is worth the premium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding hard evidence for any claims at all is incredibly difficult.  Is there any data out there that will shed some light on this topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11018" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-10-08T16:52:01.243" Title="Does cryogenic treatment of automobile rotors increase performance?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14533" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14535" CreationDate="2013-01-09T16:20:03.590" Score="6" ViewCount="1217" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible Duplicate:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3189/mobile-phones-are-the-cause-of-the-demise-of-the-bees&quot;&gt;Mobile phones are the cause of the demise of the bees?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard from my biology teacher that mobile phones interfere with bees communication. The claim is that the signals bees are sending are identical to mobile phones' signals. Is that really the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11011" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T00:12:07.640" Title="Do mobile phones interfere with bees communication?" Tags="|mobile-phones|bees|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-01-16T22:18:20.417" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14306" CreationDate="2013-01-09T17:06:29.977" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/E3hTV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Rumsfeld and Saddam&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Shaking Hands: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein greets Donald Rumsfeld, then special envoy of President Ronald Reagan, in Baghdad on December 20, 1983.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By mid-1982, Iraq was on the defensive against Iranian human-wave attacks. The U.S., having decided that an Iranian victory would not serve its interests, began supporting Iraq: measures already underway to upgrade U.S.-Iraq relations were accelerated, high-level officials exchanged visits, and in February 1982 the State Department removed Iraq from its list of states supporting international terrorism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iraq received massive external financial support from the Gulf states, and assistance through loan programs from the U.S. The White House and State Department pressured the Export-Import Bank to provide Iraq with financing, to enhance its credit standing and enable it to obtain loans from other international financial institutions. The U.S. Agriculture Department provided taxpayer-guaranteed loans for purchases of American commodities, to the satisfaction of U.S. grain exporters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The U.S. restored formal relations with Iraq in November 1984, but the U.S. had begun, several years earlier, to provide it with intelligence and military support (in secret and contrary to this country's official neutrality) in accordance with policy directives from President Ronald Reagan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Donald Rumsfeld  was dispatched to the Middle East as a presidential envoy. His December 1983 tour of regional capitals included Baghdad, where he was to establish &lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;direct contact between an envoy of President Reagan and President Saddam Hussein,&amp;quot; while emphasizing &amp;quot;his close relationship&amp;quot; with the president.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Shaking Hands with Saddam Hussein: The U.S. Tilts toward Iraq, 1980-1984&amp;quot;, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 82&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T17:22:46.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14533" CreationDate="2013-01-09T17:47:36.183" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a claim (more frequently worded as &amp;quot;Cell phones kill honey bees&amp;quot;) that has actually been debunked, but has a grain of truth. (Src: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/12/are-cell-phone-killing-bees-how-the-false-meme-spread/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/12/are-cell-phone-killing-bees-how-the-false-meme-spread/&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The original claim was based on incorrect interpretation of the findings of Dr Daniel Favre, the study can be found here&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13592-011-0016-x&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13592-011-0016-x&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The study's abstract:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... In the present study, electromagnetic waves originating from mobile phones were tested for potential effects on honeybee behavior. Mobile phone handsets were placed in the close vicinity of honeybees. The sound made by the bees was recorded and analyzed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The audiograms and spectrograms revealed that active mobile phone handsets have a dramatic impact on the behavior of the bees, namely by inducing the worker piping signal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In natural conditions, worker piping either announces the swarming process of the bee colony or is a signal of a disturbed bee colony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that your biology teacher &lt;strong&gt;got the causation all wrong&lt;/strong&gt;: the cell phone signals are &lt;strong&gt;EM&lt;/strong&gt; (electromagnetic) signals, and the signals produced by the bees are &lt;strong&gt;sound waves&lt;/strong&gt;, which are in no way related to EM signals, never mind being &amp;quot;identical&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-09T17:47:36.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14537" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-09T18:16:24.987" Score="4" ViewCount="1115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been seeing this scary letter making the rounds on Facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3G5Lt.png&quot; alt=&quot;Doctors letter warning about the dangers of so called &amp;quot;Strawberry Quick or strawberry meth&amp;quot; that looks like pop rocks and is basically candy.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite simply, is this a real thing? Is the letter authentic? Is there candy flavored meth floating around elementary schools? Is the phenomena real? Should parents really be concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is this yet another example of annoying Facebook chain-maily crap floating around?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1139" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T14:51:47.023" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T14:51:47.023" Title="Is &quot;strawberry quik&quot; and chocolate flavored meth going around schools?" Tags="|children|recreational-drugs|school|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14553" CreationDate="2013-01-10T02:28:07.803" Score="21" ViewCount="5005" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/1994-04-18/news/mn-47358_1_j-robert-oppenheimer&quot;&gt;Los Angeles Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Soviet spy chief's memoirs published here today claim that the late J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the U.S. atomic bomb project during and after World War II, passed nuclear secrets to Soviet agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was Oppenheimer a spy passing nuclear secrets to Soviet agents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-2237826/The-life-J-Robert-Oppenheimer-The-unstable-A-bomb-know-self-destructed.html&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-2237826/The-life-J-Robert-Oppenheimer-The-unstable-A-bomb-know-self-destructed.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="34347" LastEditDate="2020-07-29T14:40:21.137" LastActivityDate="2020-07-29T14:40:21.137" Title="Was Oppenheimer a spy passing nuclear secrets to Soviet agents?" Tags="|united-states|history|world-war-ii|soviet-union|espionage|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14542" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14652" CreationDate="2013-01-10T04:46:25.990" Score="2" ViewCount="6550" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/musclesgrowLK.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;, the number of myofibrils in a muscle can increase with exercise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus, the muscle cells’ myofibrils will increase in thickness and&#xA;  number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a look on google scholar and I could find very limited evidence confirming this.  Is it true that exercise can increase the number of myofibrils in a human (I found one article, but it referenced rats not humans)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T06:43:44.907" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T13:22:47.480" Title="Do the number of myofibrils increase with exercise?" Tags="|physiology|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14478" CreationDate="2013-01-10T13:22:33.377" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am no scientist, but have worked as an EMT for a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a manual defibrillator on a person with a healthy heart is very dangerous. Aside from burns and other effects of an electrical shock, it is very likely to stop the heartbeat or cause ventricular fibrillation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, a defibrillator is not used to start a heart but to get it out of  ventricular fibrillation by either stopping it or bringing it back to a regular pulse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11033" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T13:22:33.377" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14545" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-10T14:03:37.833" Score="6" ViewCount="1359" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the website I was perusing, found &lt;a href=&quot;http://factsdir.com/abraham-de-moivre-a-french-mathematician-successfully-predicted-the-date-of-his-own-death-in-1754.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, it stated that a mathematician named Abraham de Moivre, predicted the date of his own death (using some nonsensical method of when he had slept for 24 hours more than usual).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the last point of his life, he noted that he slept 15 minutes extra&#xA;  every night then he calculated that he would die on the day that the&#xA;  extra 15 minutes a night accumulated to 24 hours. That day was&#xA;  November 27, 1754, the actual day of his death. He died in London and&#xA;  was buried at St. Martin-in-the-Fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe this at all.  Is it true that he predicted his own death, or is this just a myth, invented to make maths seem more interesting to little kiddies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T18:23:59.120" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T18:23:59.120" Title="Did Abraham de Moivre Predict His Own Death?" Tags="|mathematics|divination|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10579" CreationDate="2013-01-10T17:18:43.007" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;See &quot;Relatedness&quot; article on &quot;The Tech Museum of Innovation&quot; site, part of &quot;Stanford at The Tech Understanding Genetics&quot; where this question is answered by a Geneticist.  Here's the pertinent excerpt from the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So is the bottom line that men and male chimps have more in common than men and women? Of course not. If we take a closer look, we see some of the dangers of looking at raw percentages instead of individual changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask38&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to think about this is the 55 million or so differences between men and women are all concentrated on one chromosome and 78 genes. For chimps, the 42-150 million differences are spread out all over the chromosomes over many, many more genes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, while the quantity of changes may be the same, the quality is different. Even though we share most of our genes with a chimpanzee, lots of the chimp's genes have changed in ways not seen in people. These changes make a chimp a chimp and a human a human.&quot;*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11039" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T21:45:57.153" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T21:45:57.153" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14547" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-10T18:17:27.577" Score="2" ViewCount="491" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/10/pop_vs_coffee/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;news report in The Register&lt;/a&gt;, people who drink coffee are substantially less at risk from depression than those who drink sweetened drinks. The article reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Cutting out or down on sweetened diet drinks or replacing them with unsweetened coffee may naturally help lower your depression risk,&quot; says Dr Honglei Chen of the US National Institutes of Health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They further report a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aan.com/press/index.cfm?fuseaction=release.view&amp;amp;release=1128&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;statement from the American Academy of Neurology&lt;/a&gt; on the research (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People who drank more than four cans or cups per day of soda were 30 percent more likely to develop depression than those who drank no soda. Those who drank four cans of fruit punch per day were about 38 percent more likely to develop depression than those who did not drink sweetened drinks. &lt;strong&gt;People who drank four cups of coffee per day were about 10 percent less likely to develop depression than those who drank no coffee.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a pretty big relationship (though the direction of cause and effect is unclear). So the question is: is this a reliable result? Is there a significant relationship between coffee consumption and depression, or, in slightly populist language, does coffee make you saner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-13T14:24:22.920" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T07:11:23.827" Title="Does replacing sweet drinks with coffee make you less depressed?" Tags="|medical-science|coffee|depression|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14548" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14660" CreationDate="2013-01-10T19:30:18.230" Score="7" ViewCount="1839" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people claim that lyme disease can last for months or even years, and that they require long term medical treatment (usually antibiotics).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any medical evidence for this?  Or is it snake oil?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11041" LastActivityDate="2020-12-21T13:48:08.447" Title="Does Chronic Lyme exist?" Tags="|disease|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14537" CreationDate="2013-01-10T23:14:15.690" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt; is this a real thing? &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably not&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/7279002.stm&quot;&gt;Police duped over fictional drug, 5 March 2008&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Last year, the charity DrugScope said it believed the hoax e-mail originated in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &quot;This is happening all over the country&quot; in the USA since 2008, we ought to reasonably expect it to be well-reported in mainstream media and medical reports/studies by now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justice.gov/dea/pr/micrograms/2008/mg0708.pdf&quot;&gt;MICROGRAM BULLETIN, VOLUME 41, NUMBER 7, JULY 2008&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The DEA Western Laboratory (San&#xA;  Francisco, California) recently received&#xA;  an exhibit consisting of 13 tied, clear&#xA;  plastic bags containing pink, off-white,&#xA;  and white powders, all with a generic,&#xA;  sweet, fruity odor, purported strawberry,&#xA;  lemon, and coconut flavored cocaines&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Editor’s Notes:  Although flavored “hard” drugs (notably “strawberry meth”) have received extensive press in the mass media, to date very few such exhibits have been submitted to the DEA Laboratories.  This is the first report of “flavored cocaine” to Microgram Bulletin.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justice.gov/dea/pr/micrograms/2009/mg0109.pdf&quot;&gt;MICROGRAM BULLETIN, VOLUME 42, NUMBER 1, JANUARY 2009&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is possible&#xA;  that the tiny purple specks in the exhibit were bits of a grape flavored candy or lollipop, but this was not formally determined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Editor’s Notes:  “Flavored methamphetamine” (most notably “strawberry meth”) has received extensive and often alarmist coverage in the mass media over the past two years.  However, this is the first confirmed sample of “flavored methamphetamine” submitted to a DEA laboratory, and is also the first such report by any laboratory to Microgram.  A small number of exhibits with unusual colors have been submitted to the South Central Laboratory (Dallas, Texas) over the past two years; however, none of the latter samples had any noticeable fruit or candy-like odors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither of the above examples look like pop rocks (follow links to see photos).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost entirely false. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is grossly exaggerated, alarmist and does not cite supporting evidence or refer to verifiable reports from any official healthcare, law enforcement or other bodies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-01-10T23:43:01.597" LastActivityDate="2013-01-10T23:43:01.597" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14551" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14552" CreationDate="2013-01-10T23:40:12.980" Score="7" ViewCount="1515" Body="&lt;p&gt;This picture is circulating the internet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xBCPo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;HMNH sign behind glass&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text on the sign reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This object has been&#xA;temporarily removed as we&#xA;revise its facial expression,&#xA;which was deemed zoologically improbable and/or&#xA;terrifying to small children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newlightmanchester.wordpress.com/2011/08/29/honesty-illusion-museums/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This blog&lt;/a&gt; identifies the HMNH label as the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Did they in fact put this label on their display?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-10-03T13:55:05.040" LastActivityDate="2022-10-03T13:55:05.040" Title="Did the Harvard Museum of Natural History have a sign saying a removed exhibit was &quot;zoologically improbable and/or terrifying to small children&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|museums|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14551" CreationDate="2013-01-11T00:31:19.017" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, but as a joke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Christina Davis and Jen Bervin created a series of them, in conjuction with poets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Davis's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/csdavis/sets/72157626335833539/&quot;&gt;Flickr page&lt;/a&gt; explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In conjunction with &quot;Bizarre Animals&quot; at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, Jen Bervin and I (with the instrumental and ingenious assistance of poets from Harvard and the community at large) created &quot;This Object....&quot; which opened on April 8, 2011. Graphic design by me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jocorbettceramics.blogspot.com.au/2011_09_01_archive.html&quot;&gt;Jo Corbett&lt;/a&gt; quotes a personal communication from Blue Magruder, Director of Communications at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nothing was moved…there was space next to the Pangolin in the Asia gallery. That sign was written by a poet as part of an innovative art event at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  More on the event here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mixbook.com/photo-books/events/bizarre-animals-2-0-5419059&quot;&gt;http://www.mixbook.com/photo-books/events/bizarre-animals-2-0-5419059&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  All best, Blue&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corbett goes on to give more context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other signs in the art event included &quot;This object was voted off the island&quot; and &quot;This object has been temporarily consumed&quot;, the latter placed in the open mouth of a hippopotamus. There were souvenirs to be had too ...eggs with endangered bird species written on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I acknowledge Corbett's blog isn't a terribly definitive source. I couldn't find direct confirmation on the HMNH site except that there was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hmnh.harvard.edu/press-room/bizarre-animals.html&quot;&gt;Bizarre Animals event&lt;/a&gt; and that Blue Magruder is the Director of Communications and Marketing in their &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.directory.harvard.edu/phonebook/&quot;&gt;phone book&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-11T00:43:21.143" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T00:43:21.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14540" CreationDate="2013-01-11T01:35:27.743" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a (secret at the time) &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer#Private_and_political_life&quot;&gt;member of the Communist Party in USA&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.conservapedia.com/J._Robert_Oppenheimer#Communist_Party_membership&quot;&gt;other references here&lt;/a&gt;) and considering his scientific platform, it is highly likely that he at least was being approached by recruiters from KGB (GRU).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he eventually passed secrets to the Russians and became a spy, only the Russians would know as there exist no available evidence of such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A letter from Boris Merkulov (USSR People’s Commissar for State Security) to Lavrenty Beria (USSR People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs), 2 October 1944 states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1942 one of the leaders of scientific work on [uranium] in the USA,&#xA;  Professor Oppenheimer while being an unlisted (nglastny) member of the&#xA;  apparat of Comrade Browder informed us about the beginning of work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://legacy.wilsoncenter.org/va2/index.cfm?topic_id=1409&amp;amp;fuseaction=home.document&amp;amp;identifier=5034E2FB-96B6-175C-967BCF8290DD3AD9&quot;&gt;Cold War International History Project / Wilson Center&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Analytics &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/e-dossier-no-11-was-oppenheimer-soviet-spy-roundtable-discussion&quot;&gt;says the following&lt;/a&gt; about the letter and Oppenheimer -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jerrold Schecter, a historian and journalist, writes this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why did the NKVD begin an effort to recruit Oppenheimer in 1944 if&#xA;  Oppenheimer had already been working for the NKVD since 1942? The&#xA;  answer is simple. Oppenheimer was never formally recruited as a Soviet&#xA;  agent. He was asked, as a friend of the Soviet Union, to help the&#xA;  American Communist Party obtain information on nuclear secrets.&#xA;  Oppenheimer's role was that of a facilitator, which the document from&#xA;  Merkulov to Beria notes in detail. (&quot;provided cooperation in access to&#xA;  research for several of our tested sources including a relative of&#xA;  Comrade Browder.&quot; Sacred Secrets, pp.315-317). Soviet intelligence's&#xA;  appeal to Oppenheimer and other Manhattan Project scientists was to&#xA;  aid a wartime ally to build an atomic bomb before the Germans could&#xA;  build their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both the GRU and the NKVD wanted to recruit Oppenheimer after Kheifetz&#xA;  and the Zarubins were recalled. However, their contacts were broken&#xA;  when Earl Browder and the Communist underground, through Comintern&#xA;  agent Steve Nelson, no longer could work directly with Zarubin and&#xA;  Kheifetz. Kheifetz had served both as the NKVD and the Comintern&#xA;  coordinator for Soviet espionage. When the Comintern was disbanded in&#xA;  1943 Soviet intelligence was looking for a new channel to contact&#xA;  Oppenheimer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And he concludes with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does Oppenheimer's cooperation make him a spy under American law? Yes,&#xA;  if there is documentary evidence or testimony to back the assertion of&#xA;  Oppenheimer's cooperation in Merkulov's letter to Beria. The Soviets&#xA;  say Oppenheimer was helping a wartime ally, but they knew the&#xA;  materials to which he provided access would make him guilty of&#xA;  espionage if revealed and prosecuted. The Russians are still&#xA;  protecting Oppenheimer's reputation. [...] President Putin admitted on&#xA;  CNN's Larry King Live (September 8, 2000) that American scientists&#xA;  cooperated in Soviet atomic espionage , but he did not name names.&#xA;  Russian intelligence still protects its assets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Haunted Wood, by Allan Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev. Weinstein, president of the Center for Democracy, and Vassiliev, a former Soviet agent who had access to KGB archives, write (p. 184):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fact that station chief Grigory Heifetz was recalled to Moscow in&#xA;  1944 because of his failure to bring any of 'Enormoz's' scientists&#xA;  into the fold suggests, however, that Oppenheimer never agreed to&#xA;  become a source of information for the Soviets, as some recent writers&#xA;  have asserted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a footnote, Weinstein and Vassiliev cite an unpublished KGB document as the source for their conclusion: &quot;File 25748, Vol. 2, pp. 116, 148&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gregg Herken, a historian and curator at the Smithsonian Institution and author of &quot;Brotherhood of the Bomb, conclude in his comment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] the case for Oppenheimer as a traitor and a spy is not&#xA;  convincing. Absent additional and better evidence, the question raised&#xA;  by the Schecters deserves only a Scotch verdict: not proven. But if&#xA;  the Schecters and their allies are indeed interested in pursuing the&#xA;  truth about Kheifets and Oppenheimer, the KGB file cited by Weinstein&#xA;  and Vassiliev might be a good place to start, the next time they are&#xA;  in Moscow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hayden Peake, formerly with U.S. Army intelligence, writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The authenticity of the so-called Merkulov letter in Scared Secrets&#xA;  (reproduced on pp. 315-7) has been challenged by analysts who have&#xA;  accepted as authentic another Merkulov letter cited in Weinstein's&#xA;  Haunted Wood (pp. 183-84) which is neither reproduced nor scheduled to&#xA;  available at any time for independent authentication. This may be&#xA;  convenient but it is inconsistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further he writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the point of whether Oppenheimer was a source for the NKGB, the&#xA;  letter states he was if one accepts that antecedent of the &quot;he&quot; in 4th&#xA;  paragraph is Oppenheimer. Providing &quot;cooperation in access to the&#xA;  research&quot; of &quot;tested sources&quot; to a man he knows to be a Soviet agent&#xA;  or officer, makes Oppenheimer a knowing NKGB source. Whether one&#xA;  wishes to call him an agent is semantic quibbling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He close his comment with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In short, I accept the letter and its implications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in conclusion: until the Russians choose to reveal if Oppenheimer actually worked for them, or informed them, there is no evidence that he did so. Are there indications? yes, was he interesting for the Russians? definitely, could Oppenheimer sympathies with Soviet? As member of the Communist Party it's likely he did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But nevertheless, without solid evidence one remain innocent until proven guilty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New papers has been declassified (3. Oct 2014) and may ad nuances to the story. They do not seem to provide solid evidence for the topic itself, but can be an interesting read by itself:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.osti.gov/opennet/hearing.jsp&quot;&gt;https://www.osti.gov/opennet/hearing.jsp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8690" LastEditorUserId="8690" LastEditDate="2014-10-12T19:00:20.087" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T19:00:20.087" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14556" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-11T05:13:23.527" Score="27" ViewCount="11710" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Japan there is quite a fad about LCD blue light filtering and how they might help reduce eyestrain, etc. The web site of a major computer accessory manufacturer has an English-language &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elecom.co.jp/global/release/201206/tb-a12flblg/index.html&quot;&gt;press release on iPad blue light filter&lt;/a&gt; with a nice graph showing how blue wavelength gets reduced, and has this claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blue light is a color that is also found within natural light. However, its wavelength is extremely close to ultra-violet rays, which are harmful to the eyes and body, and it also has a high amount of energy. Hence, it is said that blue light is able to pass the cornea and crystalline lens of the eye without being absorbed, and can end up reaching the retina, which can cause it to deteriorate. There also concerns that exposure to blue light for long periods of time can have a detrimental effect on the eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence to suggest that &quot;exposure to blue light for long periods of time can have a detrimental effect&quot;, specifically at the levels emitted by a typical LCD panel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-11T07:14:41.727" LastActivityDate="2015-12-09T07:42:47.733" Title="Can blue light from LCD panels cause damage to the eyes?" Tags="|medical-science|computers|ophthalmology|light|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14558" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-11T10:45:13.207" Score="11" ViewCount="844" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2013/01/10/we-probably-wouldnt-even-see-a-doomsday-asteroid-until-it-was-too-late/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt; : We Probably Wouldn't Even See A Doomsday Asteroid Until It Was Too Late&#xA;  [...] So how much warning will we really have if an asteroid is about to hit Earth? The answer is pretty grim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With so many of even the larger Near Earth Objects remaining undiscovered, the most likely warning today would be zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an accurate description? Are we unlikely to see an asteroid that does serious damage to our civilisation beforehand if it were to strike earth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-13T17:26:15.643" LastActivityDate="2019-03-20T11:21:32.130" Title="Would we see a doomsday asteroid beforehand?" Tags="|astronomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14561" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14563" CreationDate="2013-01-11T11:35:36.877" Score="10" ViewCount="1319" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleve_Backster&quot;&gt;Cleve Backster&lt;/a&gt;'s experiments on the ability of plants (and even microbes) to react to human thought have been popularized by the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060915870&quot;&gt;The Secret Life of Plants&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a very interesting interview with Backster in &lt;a href=&quot;http://thesunmagazine.org/archives/1882?page=2&quot;&gt;The Sun Magazine&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I thought that if I put the galvanic-skin-response detector of the polygraph at the end of the leaf, a drop in resistance would be recorded on the paper as the moisture arrived between the electrodes. [...] I noticed something on the chart that resembled a human response on a polygraph: not at all what I would have expected from water entering a leaf. Lie detectors work on the principle that when people perceive a threat to their well-being, they respond physiologically in predictable ways. [...] at thirteen minutes, fifty-five seconds chart time, the thought entered my mind to burn the leaf. I didn't verbalize the idea; I didn't touch the plant; I didn't touch the equipment. Yet the plant went wild. The pen jumped right off the top of the chart. The only thing it could have been reacting to was the mental change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If true, the implications are staggering. Yet, I've not been able to find conclusive rebuttal of his experiments. Considering the implication, you'd expect this question to be resolved conclusively one way or the other by now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone provide links to results of independent experiments? Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4212" LastEditorUserId="10261" LastEditDate="2013-01-11T15:55:51.433" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T18:05:22.657" Title="Can plants sense human intentions?" Tags="|plants|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14562" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14605" CreationDate="2013-01-11T11:40:37.093" Score="9" ViewCount="712" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is claimed in Sweden's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/darfor-korttidsfastar-jag_7808440.svd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;second-biggest newspaper&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My translation:&#xA;  &quot;I have started to short-term fast.[...] The reason is that lots of world leading scientists that study aging and the brain has implanted in me that this is the best and cheapest method apart from exercise to maintain a good health.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is to stop eating for 16-20 hours &quot;a few times per week&quot;. Water is ok, no nutrition is allowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is claimed to increase the brains production of BDNF. Decreasing overall intake of calories with 20-40% of current rates supposed to be beneficial against dementia, cancer and heart-disease. The reason is claimed to be that our cells go into survival mode when we lack energy, this in turn executes a bunch bodily functions that are beneficial to us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also claim nothing can go wrong because our ancestors did this for millions of years. And the reason nobody talks about this is that drug companies are evil and greedy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim 700 scientific articles support the claim. No sources though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone point me to any scientific sources that support this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5625" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-01-14T11:13:58.480" LastActivityDate="2013-03-03T13:29:09.447" Title="Is a short-term fast beneficial for maintaining good health and extending life expectancy?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|biology|life-expectancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14561" CreationDate="2013-01-11T13:38:35.193" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cleve Backster's work was unreproducible by himself or others, and has been discarded as a working hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kenneth A. Horowitz, Donald C. Lewis and Edgar L. Gasteiger, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/1740499&quot;&gt;Plant &quot;Primary Perception&quot;: Electrophysiological Unresponsiveness to Brine Shrimp Killing&lt;/a&gt;, Science New Series, Vol. 189, No. 4201 (Aug. 8, 1975), pp. 478-480, DOI: 10.2307/1740499&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors tested Backster's hypothesis, by killing brine shrimp in the presence of philodenrons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Test conditions conformed to those published by Backster or communicated in personal exchanges. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Inspection of the data and analysis by two statistical methods revealed no relationship between brine shrimp killing and electrical &quot;responsiveness&quot; of philodendron.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/plants.html&quot;&gt;Skeptics Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; gives more background, including a reference to another similar failed reproduction. They quote the author of that paper, Kmetz, as saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is unfortunate that the popular press has taken Backster's experiments and presented the results to the public in such a way that many people now believe plants can do something that, in fact, they cannot. The press, for the most part, never mentions that articles on the Backster effect are based on observations of only seven plants. Perhaps they need to be reminded, again, that they are making exaggerated claims from an experiment that no one, including Backster, by his own refusal to do so, has been able to replicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cecil Adams, of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1077/do-plants-have-esp&quot;&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; makes some similar claims denying reproducibility, but offers no references to support his position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T13:38:35.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14564" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-11T14:26:50.937" Score="32" ViewCount="12276" Body="&lt;p&gt;After getting into an argument with a friend about the use/existence of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Sans&quot;&gt;Comic Sans font&lt;/a&gt;, he said that it is one of the few typefaces that virtually eliminates confusion among dyslexics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears others have the same opinion. Many sources present anecdotal evidence such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most significant of all, it has become highly regarded by those who work with dyslexic children - one of the better uses for which it was never intended. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11582548&quot;&gt;BBC News Magazine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Comic Sans really fix the problem dyslexics have reading printed material?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11051" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-12T18:52:25.210" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T16:46:56.230" Title="Is the Comic Sans font easier to read for dyslexics?" Tags="|technology|reading|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14564" CreationDate="2013-01-11T16:16:56.490" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know any specific research regarding &quot;Comic Sans&quot; and dyslexics, but there are at least a few fonts designed by and for dyslexics to ease reading. Two examples are the free &lt;a href=&quot;http://dyslexicfonts.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OpenDyslexic font&lt;/a&gt; by Abelardo Gonzalez or the commercial &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.studiostudio.nl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dyslexie font&lt;/a&gt; by Christian Boer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Christian Boer is a dyslexic, Dutch graphics designer, who has used his own experiences as a dyslexic and feedback from dyslexic friends to create a font, which tries to avoid typical problems. On his web page, he has &lt;a href=&quot;http://studiostudio.nl/?portfolio=item-14-4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;summarized many of his design decisions&lt;/a&gt; and at least a few of these design principles can be found in &quot;Comic Sans&quot; as well, e.g:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The letters have a &quot;hand written&quot; appearance, to make otherwise similar letters more distinct. The letters n and m are e.g. very different, since the vertical strokes of the m are slanted.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Letters, which are often mirrored or flipped in other fonts (e.g. b, d, p, q), have distinct features, making them easier to distinguish.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastEditorUserId="8188" LastEditDate="2015-12-19T16:46:56.230" LastActivityDate="2015-12-19T16:46:56.230" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14568" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-11T17:51:44.660" Score="7" ViewCount="730" Body="&lt;p&gt;Light boxes are &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0009MFUWC&quot;&gt;sold&lt;/a&gt; as a treatment for seasonal affective disorder (SAD) and seasonal mood swings. The claims listed are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Helps to ease seasonal mood swings and winter depression, and help improve sleeping patterns&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Can ease symptoms of SAD within one to two weeks of regular use&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/health/policy/light-boxes-may-help-melt-those-winter-blues.html&quot;&gt;A Portable Glow to Help Melt Those Winter Blues&lt;/a&gt; from the New York Times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've recently moved north where the days are much shorter than I'm used to in the winter, and I've found it a little oppressive. Is there any reason to think that using a one of these light boxes on short gray days will improve my mood? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3292" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-12T19:44:29.833" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T22:06:30.850" Title="Do light boxes help Seasonal Affective Disorder?" Tags="|psychology|psychiatry|light|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14569" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14570" CreationDate="2013-01-11T18:04:54.270" Score="15" ViewCount="9882" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economistsdoitwithmodels.com/2013/01/10/turning-an-absurd-situation-into-a-teachable-moment-platinum-coin-edition/?utm_source=dlvr.it&amp;amp;utm_medium=twitter&amp;amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3a%20economistsdoitwithmodels%20%28Economists%20Do%20It%20With%20Models%29&amp;amp;utm_content=Google%20Reader&quot;&gt;this blog&lt;/a&gt; explaining how money works as a response to the debate about the USA's proposal to mint a trillion dollar platinum coin, the author quotes two estimates. One is the amount of platinum ever mined; the other is the amount required to make a trillion dollars if the value equalled the current price of platinum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author is making the point that money's value isn't intrinsic via an comic, exaggerated metaphor. But his estimate of world platinum production feels ridiculously low at 16 tonnes (this would fit into a cube less that 1 meter (about 3 feet) on each side). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is his estimate even approximately right? How much platinum have we mined since the element was discovered about 200 years ago?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="2563" LastEditDate="2013-01-14T20:22:28.523" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T20:22:28.523" Title="Have we only mined 16 tonnes of platinum in the whole of history?" Tags="|geology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14569" CreationDate="2013-01-11T18:23:29.907" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;minted&quot; was a misprint. It was supposed to be &quot;mined&quot; in the original claim.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Original claim used incorrect &quot;ever&quot; weight of 16 tonnes ever mined, should be 9490 tonnes if we can trust the non-proven fact of &quot;fits into 25ft^3 cube&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yearly production is ~150-200 tonnes (confirmed)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Thus, 16 tons is ~600 times too small compared to real #&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;But even if we take the real #, we have 2x less than necessary Platinum ever produced to create such a $1T coin (~20,000 tons needed at today's spot price).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wait, did you mean &quot;minted&quot; or &quot;mined/produced&quot;? Your question mentions both words. No the world didn't &lt;strong&gt;produce&lt;/strong&gt; 16 tons of platinum, but much more. See below for details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, the &quot;16 ton&quot; figure you cited was from that blog's copy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-01-04/putting-trillion-dollars-platinum-perspective&quot;&gt;ZeroHedge's graph&lt;/a&gt;, and the graph had &quot;16 tons&quot; as &quot;&lt;strong&gt;All Platinum ever MINED&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, not &quot;minted&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, let's look at the production of Platinum worldwide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: For extra credit, I think I dug up where they got 16 tons from at ZeroHedge (thanks to commenters there):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All of the Platinum ever mined would barely fill a 25 cubic foot (7.6 cubic meter) box. The block would weigh over 16 tons. (src &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gold-traders.co.uk/blog/interesting-facts-about-platinum/&quot;&gt;http://www.gold-traders.co.uk/blog/interesting-facts-about-platinum/&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their calculations are all wrong though: such a box (if the size is true, which I don't have a good proof of) would have a volume of 442 cubic meters; with Platinum &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum&quot;&gt;density being 21.45&lt;/a&gt; g/cm3, we get the box &lt;strong&gt;weight at 9490 tonnes, not 16.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An authoritative source seems to be the following publication by USGS:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2004/1224/2004-1224.pdf&quot;&gt;Platinum-Group Metals—World Supply and Demand&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;By David R. Wilburn and Donald I. Bleiwas ; &#xA;U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2004&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Russian Platinum production is ~30 tonnes in 2001 (Figure 3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;South Africa at ~125 tonnes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Canada at 9 tonnes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US at ~3 tonnes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TOTAL: 167 tonnes of Platinum produced worldwide in 2001.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source was found by following a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.ca/imgres?q=global%20annual%20platinum%20production%202012&amp;amp;um=1&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;tbo=d&amp;amp;biw=1280&amp;amp;bih=661&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;tbnid&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; in comments to that ZeroHedge post, listing 180 tons as average annual production (6Mil oz).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, the estimate of &lt;em&gt;world's platinum mining&lt;/em&gt; at 16 tonnes &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; is definitely wrong, since we produced 10 times that in just 2001, and pretty much on the same level in the years since&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, with the Platinum price per kilo being ~$50,000 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://platinumprice.org/platinum-price-per-kilo.html&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;), we get &lt;strong&gt;20,000 tons required to have $1 Trillion worth of Platinum&lt;/strong&gt;. I can very well buy that we haven't mined enough in the history of humankind, even if 16 tons is a gross underestimate - we have non-authoritatively pegged the &quot;ever&quot; # at 9490 tonnes, 2 times less than needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, just ONE source (Russia's Norilsk) had:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peak production at the Norilsk-Talnakh mines was reached in the late 1980s, at around 4 million oz of palladium and 1 million oz of platinum annually. The decline and fall of the Soviet Union led to a period of falling output, with reductions in essential investment biting deep into productive capability. However, since the late 1990s, Norilsk Nickel has succeeded in reversing this decline, and in 2005 the company reported production of 751,000 oz of platinum...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Side note: 751k oz = &lt;strong&gt;23.5 tons&lt;/strong&gt; as per Google :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The company plans to increase ore throughput &lt;strong&gt;by over 20 per cent to 26 million tonnes annually by 2015.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Src: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.platinum.matthey.com/production/russia/&quot;&gt;http://www.platinum.matthey.com/production/russia/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tracks pretty closely with USGS #s as far as orders of magnitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum#Production_and_trade&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; indicates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;245 tonnes of platinum sold in 2010&lt;/strong&gt; (src: Loferski, P. J. (October 2011). &quot;2010 Minerals Yearbook; Platinum-group metals&quot; (PDF). USGS Mineral Resources Program. Retrieved 2012-07-17)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... but that includes resale/recycle of what was produced previously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2013-01-11T19:07:18.977" LastActivityDate="2013-01-11T19:07:18.977" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14558" CreationDate="2013-01-11T20:22:06.597" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4dmgf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Don&amp;#39;t Panic&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article in question has the correct answer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any NEO that is going to hit the Earth will swing near our planet many times before it hits, and it should be discovered by comprehensive sky searches like Spaceguard. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many all-sky survey projects that would &lt;em&gt;likely&lt;/em&gt; detect any civilization-damaging asteroid. And if the survey projects detect such an asteroid, it is &lt;em&gt;almost certainly&lt;/em&gt; the case that they would discover it many years prior to impact. &lt;em&gt;More&lt;/em&gt; all-sky surveys with better and better detection techniques will be coming online in the next decade and increase our chances of spotting a potential impactor. As surveys increase, we can anticipate a rise in reports of &quot;near misses&quot; and &quot;potential impact&quot; stories, even though what will really happen is that our chance of being caught unawares is reduced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to put some numbers and references to the previous paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/torino_scale.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Torino Scale&lt;/a&gt; describes asteroid impact hazards. To achieve &quot;serious damage to our civilization,&quot; as specified in the question, would require a Torino Scale 9 or 10 impact. Such impacts occur on average every 10,000-100,000 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We already have all-sky surveys that are specifically trying to trace &quot;Near Earth Objects&quot; and potential impactors. These are finding NEOs at an increasing rate (and this is likely to continue), &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; most &lt;em&gt;large&lt;/em&gt; NEOs have probably been found, as shown in this image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tGcnd.png&quot; alt=&quot;large NEO discovery rate&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/A73XZ.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/A73XZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;total NEO discoveries&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/images/site_all.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;nasa.gov&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're discovering fewer and fewer large NEOs even as we're discovering more and more total NEOs. This indicates that the chances of us having missed a &quot;sneak&quot; Torino Scale 9 or 10 asteroid are increasingly slim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In combination with being an undiscovered large NEO, the doomsday asteroid would additionally need to be in an orbit that hits us quickly. That's highly unlikely: of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;almost 10,000 NEOs detected to date&lt;/a&gt;, none has ever impacted. None is even anywhere near likely to impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The probability of a doomsday asteroid sneaking up on us is the product of small probabilities: the odds of us having missed a large NEO * the odds of it having a bulls-eye course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, although there are many, many asteroids out there, the vast majority of which are undiscovered, we benefit from an important fact: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/14434-space-is-big-you-just-won-t-believe-how-vastly-hugely?auto_login_attempted=true&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Douglas Adams&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-03-20T11:21:32.130" LastActivityDate="2019-03-20T11:21:32.130" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14575" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-12T01:53:41.190" Score="18" ViewCount="831" Body="&lt;p&gt;The video &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/p1VzKb7IUGk?t=21s&quot;&gt;The Truthseeker: Schools, Guns &amp;amp; Drugs&lt;/a&gt; claims that over 90% of &quot;school shooters&quot; were on presciption drugs (voice-over) or anti-psychotics (subtitles). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that it would be hard to provide backing for such claim. They also do not state whether this statistic is only for schools in US or in the entire world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if this is even remotely true and how did they come to their conclusion. It's just online media, so I'm highly skeptical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8106" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-12T06:32:09.897" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T22:19:30.077" Title="Are over 90% of school shooters on anti-psychotics?" Tags="|psychology|guns|medications|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14575" CreationDate="2013-01-12T15:56:51.807" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A German science blogger has been trying to collect some data regarding world wide school shootings (or killing sprees on schools in general, not necessarily with guns) [1]. He makes a very interesting point in that he says, that there are (luckily) not enough school shootings to make a statistical statement of any significance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Regarding the Answer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say 90% of school shooters have been on anti-psychotics, until now there is not enough data to say, that it is not a coincidence. And another red flag would be if there had been made no distinction between causation vs. correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe most school shooters are unhappy and that's why they get prescription drugs/anti-psychotics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maybe prescription drugs/anti-psychotics lead to school shootings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a statement without putting it into context is highly suspicious in any case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Regarding the Data&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual Data of mentioned science Blogger, Marcus Anhäuser, consists of, to this point, 65 entries [2]. Most of the data comes from different Wikipedia articles some more from articles and sites about school shootings and violence at school. Check out link [1] for more details, try Google &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;amp;sl=auto&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;prev=_dd&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fscienceblogs.de%2Fplazeboalarm%2Findex.php%2Feine-weltkarte-der-amoklaufe%2F&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;translate&lt;/a&gt; if you can't read German.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anhäuser doesn't make any conclusions at this point, just pointing to some emerging patterns. (I summarize his statements, this is not specifically targeted against the statement that anti-psychotics are a reason for school shootings)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Almost all killing sprees seem to happen in the USA, Germany and China.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In China less people get killed, maybe because the actors use melee weapons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It seems like this is a recent phenomena (starting in the 70s), but maybe that's just because data from earlier incidents is missing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally he emphasizes, that this data is definitively not conclusive, since his list is incomplete. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Google Maps visualization gives an overview over the different incidents [3], generated from the data in [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.de/plazeboalarm/index.php/eine-weltkarte-der-amoklaufe/?utm_source=rss&amp;amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;amp;utm_campaign=eine-weltkarte-der-amoklaufe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://scienceblogs.de/plazeboalarm/index.php/eine-weltkarte-der-amoklaufe/?utm_source=rss&amp;amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;amp;utm_campaign=eine-weltkarte-der-amoklaufe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1yHpJyYkcMI4ChKUxlRsnTTSlyKcuW0FGRF6rjz4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1yHpJyYkcMI4ChKUxlRsnTTSlyKcuW0FGRF6rjz4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/fusiontables/embedviz?viz=MAP&amp;amp;q=select+col1+from+1yHpJyYkcMI4ChKUxlRsnTTSlyKcuW0FGRF6rjz4&amp;amp;h=false&amp;amp;lat=27.215295657144157&amp;amp;lng=-23.855386250000038&amp;amp;z=3&amp;amp;t=1&amp;amp;l=col1&amp;amp;y=2&amp;amp;tmplt=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/fusiontables/embedviz?viz=MAP&amp;amp;q=select+col1+from+1yHpJyYkcMI4ChKUxlRsnTTSlyKcuW0FGRF6rjz4&amp;amp;h=false&amp;amp;lat=27.215295657144157&amp;amp;lng=-23.855386250000038&amp;amp;z=3&amp;amp;t=1&amp;amp;l=col1&amp;amp;y=2&amp;amp;tmplt=2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7752" LastEditorUserId="7752" LastEditDate="2013-03-29T22:19:30.077" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T22:19:30.077" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14581" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="41414" CreationDate="2013-01-12T20:43:37.173" Score="7" ViewCount="3754" Body="&lt;p&gt;Uniqlo sells &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uniqlo.com/ht_w/us/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HEATTECH&lt;/a&gt; heat-generating clothing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jGsbD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Advertising claims&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When HEATTECH absorbs body moisture, tiny droplets generate heat. Thermographs clearly show that HEATTECH maintains more warmth, more evenly over your body, than 100% cotton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just a marketing gimmick or does this fabric generate heat as advertise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6507" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T13:36:09.640" LastActivityDate="2018-06-07T05:00:37.553" Title="Does Heattech clothing generate heat?" Tags="|physics|marketing|clothing|materials|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14582" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-12T21:05:50.527" Score="9" ViewCount="1572" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mesh lingerie bags are widely sold to protect lingerie and other delicate fabrics from damage in the washing machine. They are also known as wash bags. An example of such a product &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B001GNPTT2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Protects delicate bras, panties, slips, hosiery and sleep-wear from snags, tangles and tears&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been using them with my lingerie for the last two years or so, and I haven't noticed any protective value in using the bags. My lingerie seems to get damaged at the same rate as before using the bags and sometimes bras snag on the bag itself. I was wondering if there is any evidence &lt;strong&gt;at all&lt;/strong&gt; that they do what they are advertised to do, or are just a gimmick device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-10T07:13:20.807" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T02:02:50.440" Title="Do lingerie bags protect delicates from damage in washing machines?" Tags="|consumer-products|clothing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14583" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-12T22:03:57.320" Score="5" ViewCount="936" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen (not read) the book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Bypassing_Bypass_Surgery.html?id=2eF8j-jlTwAC&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bypassing Bypass Surgery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Elmer Cranton, which claims that infusions of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylenediaminetetraacetic_acid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid&lt;/a&gt; (EDTA) can apparently clean out the arteries for cholesterol and calcifications, and hereby reduce need for bypass-surgery and reducing risk of amputations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More than one million Americans undergo heart bypass surgery and balloon angioplasty every year at a cost of fifty billion dollars. But there is a simple, nonsurgical method to open clogged arteries that is administered in the doctor's office. Chelation therapy works in all the arteries at once, it's much safer, and is much less expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to prove that this actually works?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11068" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T15:31:40.713" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T20:08:11.313" Title="Does chelation therapy for artherosclerosis, clogging of our arteries, work?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|cardiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14583" CreationDate="2013-01-13T01:19:15.390" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Chelation does not work to unclog arteries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were enough advertised claims, without evidence, that the FDA wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm229320.htm&quot;&gt;warning&lt;/a&gt; in 2010. (via the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelation_therapy&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on Chelation therapy&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today warned eight companies that their over-the-counter (OTC) chelation products are unapproved drugs and devices and that it is a violation of federal law to make unproven claims about these products. There are no FDA-approved OTC chelation products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The companies that received the warning letters claim that their products treat a range of diseases by removing toxic metals from the body. Some also claim to treat autism spectrum disorder, cardiovascular diseases, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, macular degeneration, and other serious conditions. Some companies that received the warning letters also claim their products will detect the presence of heavy metals to justify the need for chelation therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The drug products involved have not been evaluated by the FDA for treatment of these diseases, and violate the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA). &lt;strong&gt;Despite the claims of the companies that received warning letters, the effectiveness in treating any of the diseases listed is unsubstantiated.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/ethylenediaminetetraacetic-acid-000302.htm&quot;&gt;University of Maryland Medical Center&lt;/a&gt; summarises the evidence for EDTA treatment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So far, there is no good evidence that EDTA chelation therapy is effective for heart disease.&lt;/strong&gt; Proponents believe it may help people with atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) or peripheral vascular disease (decreased blood flow to the legs) by clearing clogged arteries and improving blood flow. However, the few studies that show it may help have been poorly designed, making the results questionable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The theory that EDTA clears clogged arteries and improves blood flow is based on an outdated model about what causes heart disease. Other newer theories include the possibility that EDTA functions like an antioxidant, preventing damaging molecules known as free radicals from injuring blood vessel walls and allowing plaque to build up. These ideas are just theories, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most good clinical studies examining EDTA chelation therapy for heart disease and vascular disorders have found that it is no better than placebo. For example, one scientifically rigorous study comparing EDTA chelation therapy to placebo in 84 people with heart disease concluded that those receiving EDTA chelation did no better than those receiving placebo in terms of changes in exercise capacity and quality of life. Several studies evaluating EDTA chelation therapy for peripheral vascular disease did not find any difference between those receiving EDTA and those receiving placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References are provided on that page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/chelation.html&quot;&gt;Quackwatch&lt;/a&gt; gives a detailed overview of the history of this pseudoscience, some of the proposed mechanisms and their rebuttals, and more information on how the hypothesis was tested and rejected, and the work done by authorities to stop the propagation of the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-13T11:36:42.270" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T11:36:42.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14591" CreationDate="2013-01-13T14:00:41.923" Score="4" ViewCount="1331" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Daily Mail says that the average weight of both males and females in Europe is UN 70.8kg in this article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2160934/Overweight-obese-threaten-world-food-security-study-warns.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2160934/Overweight-obese-threaten-world-food-security-study-warns.html&lt;/a&gt; giving no sources, but mentioning the WHO about other statistics in the previous paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I try finding backing for these sources I run into a dead end: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.no/search?q=average+european+weight+70.8&amp;amp;oq=average+european+weight+70.8&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.google.no/search?q=average+european+weight+70.8&amp;amp;oq=average+european+weight+70.8&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;All of the sources of this information seem to come from newspapers reporting the same story, and so I'm afraid this circular referencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any backing for this fact, or any alternative statistic? Can we trust this source? Are there reliable sources for this statistic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10975" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:05:19.857" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:05:19.857" Title="Does the average European adult weigh 71kg?" Tags="|physiology|obesity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14589" CreationDate="2013-01-13T14:18:24.750" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question was published in the original article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study, The weight of nations: An estimation of adult human biomass, is to be published in the open-access journal BMC Public Health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is that study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sarah C Walpole, David Prieto-Merino, Phil Edwards, John Cleland, Gretchen Stevens and Ian Roberts, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/12/439&quot;&gt;The weight of nations: an estimation of adult human biomass&lt;/a&gt;, BMC Public Health 2012, 12:439 doi:10.1186/1471-2458-12-439&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For each country, we obtained estimates of the population in 2005 by age and sex from the United Nations population database [6]. We obtained estimates of mean (and SD) body mass index (BMI) from the WHO SURF2 report [7] and estimates of mean height (and SD) for 190 countries from national health examination surveys, primarily the Demographic and Health Surveys[5]. Because surveys were not conducted in every country, height data were not available by age and sex in some countries. To estimate mean height (and SD) by age and sex in every country using the available data, we built a linear regression model (of age-sex group, average height, WHO region and sub-region) using R open access statistical software. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Table 3 contains the quoted statistic for Europeans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T14:18:24.750" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14592" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-13T15:15:19.453" Score="3" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;Despite being one of the earliest metals exploited by man, lead is an environmental poison. If it gets into the body it causes a variety of acute and chronic symptoms and even low levels are thought to have noticeable effects especially on children (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;see the wikipedia article on lead poisoning&lt;/a&gt;). Lead poisoning has even been proposed as a cause for the decline or the Roman Empire (who &lt;em&gt;inter alia&lt;/em&gt; used lead acetate as a wine sweetener. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://corrosion-doctors.org/Elements-Toxic/Lead-history.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; for some references).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But lead and many lead containing substances are fairly inert. Lead paint won't poison you because your house is painted with it unless you strip it using unsafe methods or your children eat it (which is the real hazard and the real reason it is now mostly prohibited). The large amounts of lead in CRTs is mostly there as an inert glass. Lead in electronic solder is not readily ingested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are now worldwide bans on most uses of lead in the electronics industry. According to The book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Scared_to_death.html?id=lwRGAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scared To Death&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Richard North and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Booker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Christopher Booker&lt;/a&gt; (who seem to see themselves as debunkers of almost any modern environmental trend), the reason for the (very expensive and disruptive) ban was a dramatic overestimation of the amount of lead that would leach into the environment for landfill sites where electronics were dumped. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;North and Booker are not the most unbiased or reliable sources for environmental facts. They criticise the original analysis (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ees.ufl.edu/homepp/townsend/Research/CRT/CRTDec99.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Townsend paper here&lt;/a&gt; as a pdf: a lab study of how fast lead in CRTs would leach into the environment) by quoting real world studies of landfill sites which fail to show the actual danger in the real world. &lt;a href=&quot;http://cei.org/pdf/4386.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A summary&lt;/a&gt; of some of this research says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hence, it is highly likely that actual landfill releases of these heavy metals are far lower than EPA estimates. These differences are far from minimal. As Townsend concludes: “For those state and local governmental agencies wrestling with whether to ban discarded electronics from landfills, the results of this work suggest that lead leaching from [computer circuit boards] and [TV and computer monitors] will be less than might be estimated using EPA’s TCLP results.” Even more importantly, concentrations from his landfill samples were comfortably below EPA’s standards of 5.0 mg/L. Yet it is important to note that these materials would not even enter the environment, since landfill operators collect and dispose of it in a safe manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So did we overreact to the presence of lead in electronics? Did the world bad lead because laboratory experiments dramatically overestimated the real-world impact of lead components in  electrical waste? Do other studies show the ban was justified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-13T15:31:57.770" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T15:31:57.770" Title="Does lead used in electronics leach into the environment via landfill at detrimental levels?" Tags="|environment|lead|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14593" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14677" CreationDate="2013-01-13T15:29:06.587" Score="24" ViewCount="5162" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Roman Empire used a lot of lead. It was important component of their plumbing (the english word itself is derived from the latin word for lead). They even used it to sweeten wine and in food (&lt;a href=&quot;http://corrosion-doctors.org/Elements-Toxic/Lead-history.htm&quot;&gt;reference&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lead's sweet overtones ... were thought to add complementary flavors to wine and to food as well. The metal enhanced one-fifth of the 450 recipes in the Roman Apician Cookbook, a collection of first through fifth century recipes attributed to gastrophiles associated with Apicius, the famous Roman gourmet. From the Middle Ages on, people put lead acetate or &quot;sugar of lead&quot; into wine and other foods to make them sweeter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article quoted above continues: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...some historians believe that many among the Roman aristocracy suffered from lead poisoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there other evidence that lead poisoning made a significant contribution to roman decline? Can we verify or refute this speculative theory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T19:59:49.830" Title="Did lead poisoning contribute to the fall of the Roman Empire?" Tags="|history|lead|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14595" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-01-13T17:16:34.773" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-01-13T17:16:34.773" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T17:16:34.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14596" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-01-13T17:16:34.773" Score="0" Body="Lead is a metallic element with atomic number 82. It is a dense, soft, malleable, ductile metal. Known for several thousand years, it has been widely used through history for example in plumbing by the Romans and many other societies since. Compounds are poisonous on ingestion." OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-13T17:19:41.793" LastActivityDate="2013-01-13T17:19:41.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7008" CreationDate="2013-01-13T17:56:13.540" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Moderately overweight people have significantly lower mortality than those with &quot;normal&quot; BMI's; the really thin and the really fat do worse&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1555137&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt; in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) concluded that the moderately fat by current standards (BMI 25-30) had significantly lower mortality than people in other standard weight categories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The meta-analysis was very careful to exclude the normal confounding factors (e.g. ill people may well have low BMI's &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; of their illness). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key conclusions were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Relative to normal weight, both obesity (all grades) and grades 2 and 3 obesity were associated with significantly higher all-cause mortality. Grade 1 obesity overall was not associated with higher mortality, and overweight was associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key numbers from the study are the definitions of the weight categories and the resulting mortality risk. These are given below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Normal, BMI 18.5-25, mortality risk 1&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;overweight, BMI 25-30, mortality risk 0.94&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;obese grade 1, BMI 30-35, mortality 0.95&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;obese grade 2 and 3, BMI &gt;35, mortality 1.29&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, moderately overweight seems to (slightly) associated with lower risk of death compared to the thin, but if you get &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; fat the risk of (technically association with as true causality is hard to &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt;) death goes up a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2017-01-24T22:53:46.113" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T22:53:46.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9604" CreationDate="2013-01-13T19:12:30.113" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dslreports.com/faq/1331&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AT&amp;amp;T Southeast FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can weather affect my DSL connection?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer: Yes, it can. The primary cause of poor connections due to&#xA;weather are moisture related. Since ADSL technology is electrical in&#xA;nature, all of the exposed equipment can be affected by moisture which&#xA;is an excellent conductor of electrical current. This, combined with&#xA;the fact that the properties of water allow for &amp;quot;seepage&amp;quot;, gives&#xA;greater exposure to equipment that would, otherwise, be impervious to&#xA;other weather conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it isn't a research article, it is an answer provide by a company who provides DSL service on their FAQ page, so I would think that there is some credibility behind the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, I have programmed ADSL modem device drivers in the past and I do know that ADSL does self adjust its transmission rate in order to maintain reliable communications. So if the weather is causing communication errors, then the ADSL modem will try slower data rates until it reaches a rate where reliable communications can be maintained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="932" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-05-04T20:22:23.537" LastActivityDate="2022-05-04T20:22:23.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14601" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14606" CreationDate="2013-01-13T23:53:06.167" Score="7" ViewCount="2064" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this image circulating on Facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FVRn7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Genetically Modified Food&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testicles of a rat fed normal food/FM fed/Normal fed/Monsanto GM fed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laboratoy tests by the Russian National Academy of Sciences reported more than half the babies from mother rats fed GM soy died within three weeks. The babies in the GM group were also smaller and could not reproduce. Rats fed a commercial rat chow using GM soy within two months had infant mortality facility-wide reaching 55%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deesillustration.com/artwork.asp?item=643&amp;amp;cat=politics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Original image source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I note that most of the claims have no controls: did the babies of non-GM soy-fed mothers have mortality &amp;gt; 55%? Could any of the babies reproduce?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the &amp;quot;smaller&amp;quot; claim involves a control, and hence is the one I am interested in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, was this a legitimate study? If so, were these the conclusions? (Double points if the result was reproduced.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T20:58:50.337" Title="When fed to rats, does GM Soy cause smaller babies?" Tags="|gmo|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14381" CreationDate="2013-01-14T03:28:29.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc1361287/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt; indicates that short term stress improves immune response, whereas chronic stress significantly reduces immune response. I suspect that people just &quot;notice&quot; their sicknesses more when they have the leisure to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11074" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T03:28:29.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14381" CreationDate="2013-01-14T07:08:00.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leisure sickness appears to be loosely defined. Migraines could be considered to fit the profile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Migraines have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0004-282X2008000400011&amp;amp;script=sci_arttext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;large number of trigger factors&lt;/a&gt; that are different per patient, but include &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/030439599390057V&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sleep patterns and alcohol usage&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, the incidence of migraines varies by day of the week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;F.Y. Khan, F. Fiessler, D. Cochrane, B. Eskin, J.R. Allegra, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196064404007917&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Does the incidence of headaches and migraines in the emergency department vary with day of week or month of year?&lt;/a&gt;, Annals of Emergency Medicine&#xA;Volume 44, Issue 4, Supplement, October 2004, Pages S21, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annemergmed.2004.07.068&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.annemergmed.2004.07.068&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For migraine headaches, there were statistically significant differences only by day of week. Compared with the overall average, for the highest day, Sunday, there was a proportional increase of 11% (95% CI 4% to 18%; P&amp;lt;.001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just for comparison: Strokes have an inverted relationship - &lt;a href=&quot;http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/37/4/951.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;they are more likely on a workday&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T07:08:00.007" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14605" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14562" CreationDate="2013-01-14T13:14:47.973" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe what you're referring to is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Intermittent Fasting&lt;/a&gt; (Wikipedia):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Intermittent fasting (IF) is a pattern of eating that alternates&#xA;  between periods of fasting (usually meaning consumption of water and&#xA;  sometimes low-calorie drinks such as black coffee) and non-fasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is evidence suggesting that intermittent fasting may have&#xA;  beneficial effects on the health and longevity of animals—including&#xA;  humans—that are similar to the effects of caloric restriction (CR).&#xA;  There is currently no consensus as to the degree to which this is&#xA;  simply due to fasting or due to an (often) concomitant overall&#xA;  decrease in calories, but recent studies have shown support for the&#xA;  former. Alternate-day calorie restriction may prolong life span.&#xA;  Intermittent fasting and caloric restriction are forms of dietary&#xA;  restriction (DR), which is sometimes referred to as dietary energy&#xA;  restriction (DER).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientific study of intermittent fasting in rats (and anecdotally in&#xA;  humans) was carried out at least as early as 1943.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/1/7.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/85/4/981.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for studies that have been performed on the subject. If you need more sources/studies have a look through the sources at the end of the Wikipedia article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11077" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-01-14T13:43:33.110" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T13:43:33.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14601" CreationDate="2013-01-14T13:37:57.087" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the information from the RationalWiki article that Konrad found, the study in question seems to be one performed by Irina Ermakova and only published in the conference proceedings of the &quot;Epigenetics, Transgenic Plants &amp;amp; Risk Assessment&quot; conference in 2005 in Germany, partly sponsored by Greenpeace (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oeko.de/oekodoc/277/2006-002-en.pdf&quot;&gt;Conference proceedings&lt;/a&gt;, the study in question starts on page 41).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v25/n12/full/nbt1207-1356b.html&quot;&gt;In a correspondence on that article in Nature Biotechnology&lt;/a&gt; the following criticism of the study are listed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although Ermakova states that she received &quot;soy clearly labeled as GM&#xA;  and non-GM soy,&quot; she still has not established the identity of the&#xA;  material tested, which is of paramount importance to an animal feeding&#xA;  study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) catalog states and B.C. contacted ADM&#xA;  on October 20 and November 5, 2007, to verify that they do not&#xA;  sell—and have never sold—a 100% GM-soy product containing the&#xA;  RR-40-3-2 line to which Ermakova refers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The identity of the soy was not tested in the study, it was not verified if the GM and the non-GM soy were actually comparable. The company that the GM soy was allegedly procured from even states that they never sold such a pure GM-soy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors are also state that the weight and number of pups are indicative of diet or environmental problems. They also criticize that the cause of death was not determined in the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors also cite three studies that contradict the results obtained by Ermakova and found no negative effect of the transgenic soy on rats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691503002370&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691503002370&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/shokueishi/41/3/41_3_188/_article&quot;&gt;https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/shokueishi/41/3/41_3_188/_article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00039420412331273277&quot;&gt;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00039420412331273277&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We conclude then, that Ermakova's research relied on experimental&#xA;  designs that fall short of internationally accepted norms, with&#xA;  animals handled in such a way that even control lines were negatively&#xA;  affected. The feeding studies used materials that were characterized&#xA;  inadequately, incorrectly or not at all. Thus, no scientific&#xA;  conclusions can be drawn from the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-01-14T20:58:50.337" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T20:58:50.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14607" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-14T14:09:42.963" Score="8" ViewCount="491" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Larry Summers&lt;/a&gt;, got into a little trouble when at a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harvard.edu/president/speeches/summers_2005/nber.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;speech in 2005 at a National Bureau of Economic Research&lt;/a&gt; he said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are three broad hypotheses about the sources of the very substantial disparities that this conference's papers document and have been documented before with respect to the presence of women in high-end scientific professions. One is what I would call the-I'll explain each of these in a few moments and comment on how important I think they are-the first is what I call the high-powered job hypothesis. &lt;strong&gt;The second is what I would call different availability of aptitude at the high end&lt;/strong&gt;, and the third is what I would call different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search. And in my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there studies that put forth the lack of &quot;availability of aptitude&quot; of women at the high end in the sciences hypothesis?&lt;/strong&gt; (what if any conclusions did those studies draw?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:44:56.353" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:44:56.353" Title="Are there fewer women available at the higher end of aptitude in the sciences?" Tags="|gender|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8447" CreationDate="2013-01-14T14:50:43.947" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Introduction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually a tougher question to answer than you might think as we need to look at each of the claims (i.e. treatment of constipation, tummy aches, fevers and immunity) individually. I've tried to check to see what the most common treatment recommendations are by alternative medicine practitioners so that we aren't just randomly coming up with treatments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, we must remind ourselves exactly what an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_oil&quot;&gt;essential oil&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An essential oil is a concentrated hydrophobic liquid containing&#xA;  volatile aroma compounds from plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with that in mind, I'm going to write this from the standpoint that a naturally produced essential oil may contain some difference that a synthetic fragrance oil may or may not have due to the chemistry of the oil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Constipation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, searching seems to imply that there are several different oils that are recommended for use (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jeannerose.net/articles/digestive_disorders.html&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aworldofaromatherapy.com/essential-oils-constipation.htm&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.essentialoils.co.za/treatment/constipation.htm&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;) and a common means of application for all of them, namely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Application should be twice a day, once in the evening and then first&#xA;  thing in the morning.  Each session should last 5 to 7 minutes. &#xA;  Massage should follow the direction of peristalsis following the&#xA;  movement of food - clockwise start and the lower right part of the&#xA;  lower abdomen where the appendix might me and up the ascending colon,&#xA;  across the transverse colon and down the descending colon ending at&#xA;  the top of the pubis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is very interesting as massage is actually mentioned as an alternative treatment by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/constipation/DS00063/DSECTION=alternative-medicine&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic&lt;/a&gt; and following up on this I find that it appears that massage in and of itself may be effective at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nursingtimes.net/nursing-practice/clinical-zones/continence/does-abdominal-massage-relieve-constipation/5027718.article&quot;&gt;reliving the symptoms of constipation&lt;/a&gt;. If this is the case than it is highly possible that the essential oils themselves have no effect but the means of applying them might be the actual cause of the relief of symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Tummy Aches&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Tummy aches&quot;, or stomach aches, or the much more generic abdominal pain is quite broad and turning to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/guide/abdominal-pain-causes-treatments&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic&lt;/a&gt; again we get this list of potential causes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Indigestion &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Constipation &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stomach &quot;flu&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Menstrual cramps &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Food poisoning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Food allergies &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Gas &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Lactose intolerance &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ulcers &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Pelvic inflammatory disease &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Hernia &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Gallstones &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Kidney stones &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Endometriosis &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Crohn's disease&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Urinary tract infection &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Appendicitis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the interesting things about this list is that there are a number of cases where an stomach ache might be a temporary or transitive symptom. In which case the use of essential oils might just be coincidence as the symptom is going to go away regardless meaning that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&quot;&gt;confirmation bias&lt;/a&gt; can play role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fevers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fever&quot;&gt;Fevers&lt;/a&gt; are another tough one to follow-up on as they can fluctuate throughout the day which means that confirmation bias can play a role again if someone sees a fever break following the application of an essential oil. Also, if other forms of fever management are being used in additional to essential oils then the other treatments may play a larger role as well. Lavender commonly gets &lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/treating-childhood-fevers-aromatherapy-essential-654162.html?cat=25&quot;&gt;mentioned&lt;/a&gt; as a treatment for fever, but it has the problem of being combined with other common treatments for fever and it's effects, if any, are not easy to isolate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Immunity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a very interesting as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_tree_oil&quot;&gt;Tea Tree Oil&lt;/a&gt; is known to be an effective treatment as an antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal. It has even been shown to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://bastyrcenter.org/content/view/972/&amp;amp;page=&quot;&gt;effective&lt;/a&gt; against &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRSA&quot;&gt;MRSA&lt;/a&gt;. So this is an area were we can give a firm &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; to the effectiveness of an essential oil; however, this applies to a specific oil in much the same way that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow#Medicine&quot;&gt;willow bark&lt;/a&gt; can be effective for aches and pains: individual oils may be effective, but as a whole you cannot just randomly select one and expect it to be effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is already well know that various scents can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200711/the-hidden-force-fragrance&quot;&gt;have an effect upon a person&lt;/a&gt; by siring up memories or having an affect upon your mood. This means that some essential oils may help in some situations just by virtue of changing your mood giving you a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/15409-overcoming-depression-positive-thinking.html&quot;&gt;more positive outlook&lt;/a&gt;. As shown though, some essential oils can have effects; however, in most cases they are unlikely to have an effect or their application might have a greater effect than the oils themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T14:50:43.947" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14609" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2013-01-14T16:59:13.343" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Skeptics&lt;/strong&gt; is a question and answer site for applying scientific skepticism. It's built and run &lt;em&gt;by you&lt;/em&gt; as part of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; network of Q&amp;amp;A sites. With your help, we're working together to build a library of detailed answers challenging unreferenced notable claims, pseudoscience and biased results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What do I need to know?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are familiar with Stack Exchange, but a new user on Skeptics.SE, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/welcome-to-new-users&quot;&gt;we have an exhaustive introduction for you on meta&lt;/a&gt;, otherwise read on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="25597" LastEditDate="2022-01-17T07:41:09.793" LastActivityDate="2022-01-17T07:41:09.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14610" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2013-01-14T17:03:59.067" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the accuracy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/864/faq-must-all-questions-be-notable&quot;&gt;public claims&lt;/a&gt; made in the media or elsewhere&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="1034" LastEditDate="2013-01-14T17:03:59.067" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T17:03:59.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14611" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2013-01-14T17:07:17.570" Score="0" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Anything not directly related to a specific, notable claim&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Questions that are primarily opinion-based&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Research-level science, discussions of skepticism as a philosophy or movement, rants or personal speculation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="1034" LastEditDate="2013-01-14T17:07:17.570" LastActivityDate="2013-01-14T17:07:17.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="907" CreationDate="2013-01-15T13:35:27.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know I'm contributing to this answer late, but I think something needs to be stated here by the definition of deterrent. As a general deterrent (one which has an effect on the population at large), the death penalty has never been shown to be an active deterrent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a specific deterrent, one relative to the individual, the death penalty is highly effective. One could quickly argue that the death penalty has an effect on murder rates in this paradigm even if in a small capacity. When combined with the murder rates of a nation as a whole, becomes statistically insignificant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a widely held belief in the field of Criminology, that the death penalty has no effect on crime rates or murder rates when viewed as a general deterrent, and for the most part throughout history, never has been correlated with a reduction in crime or murder. This is not to say that the need for a death penalty is in question, which is another topic entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RADELET, M. L., &amp;amp; LACOCK, T. L. (2009). DO EXECUTIONS LOWER HOMICIDE RATES?: THE VIEWS OF LEADING CRIMINOLOGISTS. Journal Of Criminal Law &amp;amp; Criminology, 99(2), 489-508&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The question of whether the death penalty is a more effective&#xA;  deterrent than long-term imprisonment has been debated for decades or&#xA;  longer by scholars, policy makers, and the general public. In this&#xA;  Article we report results from a survey of the world's leading&#xA;  criminologists that asked their expert opinions on whether the&#xA;  empirical research supports the contention that the death penalty is a&#xA;  superior deterrent. The findings demonstrate an overwhelming consensus&#xA;  among these criminologists that the empirical research conducted on&#xA;  the deterrence question strongly supports the conclusion that the&#xA;  death penalty does not add deterrent effects to those already achieved&#xA;  by long imprisonment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Choe, J. (2010). ANOTHER LOOK AT THE DETERRENT EFFECT OF DEATH PENALTY. Journal Of Advanced Research In Law &amp;amp; Economics, 1(1), 12-15.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a question whether the execution rate is appropriate to&#xA;  examine the deterrent effect of death penalty. Instead of using&#xA;  execution rate, this paper uses dummy variables to categorize states&#xA;  into different groups and to compare the group mean homicide rates.&#xA;  With US state-level panel data for the period 1995 - 2006, this paper&#xA;  fails to find a significant homicide-reducing effect of death penalty.&#xA;  [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LAND, K. C., TESKE, R. C., &amp;amp; ZHENG, H. (2009). THE SHORT-TERM EFFECTS OF EXECUTIONS ON HOMICIDES: DETERRENCE, DISPLACEMENT, OR BOTH?. Criminology, 47(4), 1009-1043. doi:10.1111/j.1745-9125.2009.00168.x&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on time-series analyses and independent-validation tests, our&#xA;  best-fitting model shows that, from January 1994 through December&#xA;  2005, evidence exists of modest, short-term reductions in homicides in&#xA;  Texas in the first and fourth months that follow an execution—about&#xA;  2.5 fewer homicides total. Another model suggests, however, that in addition to homicide reductions, some displacement of homicides may be&#xA;  possible from one month to another in the months after an execution,&#xA;  which reduces the total reduction in homicides after an execution to&#xA;  about .5 during a 12-month period. Implications for additional&#xA;  research and the need for future analysis and replication are&#xA;  discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11084" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-01-15T16:59:13.670" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T16:59:13.670" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14623" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-15T19:21:00.610" Score="21" ViewCount="4111" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Coulter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ann Coulter&lt;/a&gt; recently made the &lt;a href=&quot;https://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ann-coulter-if-you-compare-white-populations-u-s-has-same-murder-rate-as-belgium-video&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;following claim&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.foxnews.com/shows/hannity#/v/2094237717001/cbs-news-anchor-asks-why-gop-is-opposed-to-cabinet-nominees/?playlist_id=86924&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FOX News show &lt;em&gt;'Hannity'&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;On the gun crimes, we keep hearing how low they are in Europe, and oh, they're so low, and they have no guns. &lt;strong&gt;If you compare white populations, we have the same murder rate as Belgium.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJFUhAb74oY#t=0m19s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Watch video clip&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm not asking about her following conclusion (which I purposely haven't quoted here). I am merely interested in knowing whether that particular statistic is correct, made up or cited wrongly.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-07-02T12:19:50.047" LastActivityDate="2022-07-02T12:19:50.047" Title="If comparing white populations, does the U.S. have the same murder rate as Belgium?" Tags="|united-states|guns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14623" CreationDate="2013-01-15T19:43:20.740" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, the murder rate in the US is higher. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/safety/&quot;&gt;Murder rate in Belgium in 2007 was 1.7 per 100,000 of population&lt;/a&gt; while the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf&quot;&gt;murder rate by white perpetrators in the U.S. in 2008 was 3.3 per 100,000 of population&lt;/a&gt;. That is, white Americans kill people at almost twice the rate of Belgians of all races (and no, surprisingly, not everyone in Belgium is white). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9074" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T20:38:03.840" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T20:38:03.840" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14301" CreationDate="2013-01-15T20:29:18.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the part of the book about stressors and brain damage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effects of fear are important to understand if you want to get out of the quicksand. As soon as you feel fear, the amygdala (a small almond-shaped organ in the center of your brain) sends signals to your autonomic nervous system, which then has a wide range of effects. Your heart rate increases, your blood pressure goes up, your breathing gets quicker, and stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol are released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robert Sapolsky, a Professor of neuroendocrinology at Stanford University, has focused his research on issues of stress and neural degeneration. He has won many honors for his papers that show links between long-term stressful life experiences, long-term exposure to hormones such as cortisol produced during stress, and shrinking of the hippocampus area of the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hippocampus is a mass of neurons each with multiple branch-like extensions (dendrites and axons), which make connections (synapses) with other neurons all across the brain. The hippocampus is also one of the few regions of the brain known to be able to produce new neurons, a process called neurogenesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor Sapolsky has shown that enduring a high stressor for more than 30 minutes negatively impacts the hippocampus in various ways. To begin, sustained exposure to higher than normal levels of cortisol results in the pruning back of the number of branches and synaptic connections of hippocampal neurons. By a variety of mechanisms, these conditions also increase the rate of cell death in this region of the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As if this wasn’t bad enough, recent research is also demonstrating that sustained increases in glucocorticoid levels also has negative effects, impairing the hippocampus’s ability to create new neurons. Over a period of time, all of this results in the shrinking in size of the hippocampus with associated declines in cognitive function, including the ability to retain new information and adapt to new situations, which is exactly what you don’t want when you are attempting to reinvent your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The challenge we face with regard to the news media is that the brain does not distinguish between that which is real and that which is imagined. Watching a scene of carnage in a warzone causes some of the same detrimental effects as if we were actually there ourselves. The fear response we have in front of the TV is the same we would have in the real situation. Of course, it is diluted somewhat by the safety net of our home, but people addicted to the news are subjecting themselves to chronic stress every time they tune in. Day after day they take their dose of news and induce a cascade of destruction in their neurons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, according to Sapolsky, the negative effects of excessive stress can not only be stopped but also reversed “once the source, psychological or physical, is removed or sufficiently reduced.” Simple! Change a little, change a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PjXKKPtEW-0C&amp;amp;pg=PT57&amp;amp;lpg=PT57&amp;amp;dq=%22The+effects+of+fear+are+important+to+understand+if+you+want+to+get+out+of+the+quicksand%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=BRQHWl8dtp&amp;amp;sig=cQzJDjwljBBTcF5wihowZlb2z1M&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=rbz1UJ2rAo6X0QXe3IHoAQ&amp;amp;ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Three Simple Steps: A Map to Success in Business and Life&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11089" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-15T20:33:27.140" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14626" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14627" CreationDate="2013-01-15T21:29:03.183" Score="7" ViewCount="975" Body="&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=single-brain-cell-stores-single-concept&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=single-brain-cell-stores-single-concept&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once a brilliant Russian Neurosurgeon named Akakhi Akakhievitch had a patient who wanted to forget his overbearing, impossible mother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eager to oblige, Akakhievitch opened up the patient's brain and, one by one, ablated several thousand neurons, each of which related to the concept of his mother. When the patient woke up from anesthesia, he had lost all notion of his mother. All memories of her, good and bad, were gone. Jubilant with his success, Akakhievitch turned his attention to the next endeavor—the search for cells linked to the memory of “grandmother.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T06:17:22.937" Title="Did Akakhievitch open up the patient's brain and, one by one, ablate several thousand neurons, each of which related to the concept of his mother?" Tags="|neurology|experiments|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14626" CreationDate="2013-01-15T22:20:59.587" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;A History of Neuroscience article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.princeton.edu/~cggross/Neuroscientist_10_02.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Genealogy of the &quot;Grandmother Cell&quot;&lt;/a&gt; by Charles G. Gross (Princeton University) says that it's fictional, a tall tale: told by Jerry Letvin in 1969 as part of an M.I.T. course he gave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The patient in the story was called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portnoy%27s_Complaint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Portnoy, whose Complaint was about his mother&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="6523" LastEditDate="2015-04-30T02:25:00.797" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T02:25:00.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14629" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-16T01:13:27.820" Score="10" ViewCount="852" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just watched &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQzFjac1A1M&quot;&gt;The illuminati Exposed By Muammar Gaddafi&lt;/a&gt; on YouTube. It was very interesting, but at one point they said that there was a pro-Gaddafi rally in the Tripoli with 1.7 million people or 95% of Tripoli. This rally occured during the civil war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did this rally really happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was there a large percent support for Gaddafi during the civil war?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T19:22:04.000" Title="Did Muammar al-Gaddafi have 95% popular support even when he was being overthrown" Tags="|africa|gaddafi|democracy|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14630" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14638" CreationDate="2013-01-16T01:22:14.400" Score="9" ViewCount="2961" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just watched &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQzFjac1A1M&quot;&gt;The illuminati Exposed By Muammar Gaddafi&lt;/a&gt;. It's a really good watch (especially for us skeptics), but at one point they said that the reason Muammar al-Gaddafi was &lt;strong&gt;overthrown&lt;/strong&gt; was, &lt;strong&gt;not because he was a bad, unpopular or corrupt leader&lt;/strong&gt; but because he lead Libya to a &quot;golden age&quot; where the Libyan Central Bank offered &lt;strong&gt;loans at 0% interest&lt;/strong&gt;. Apparently, the Illuminati, lead by the Rothschild banking empire, couldn't allow 0% interest loans because that would undermine their primary income (after world domination).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, we can't prove or disprove the illuminati here, but did the Libyan Central Bank offer loans at 0% interest?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="5487" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T05:02:08.993" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T01:23:18.580" Title="Did Libya's Central Bank offer loans at 0% interest?" Tags="|africa|banking|gaddafi|democracy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14633" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27919" CreationDate="2013-01-16T09:21:31.067" Score="21" ViewCount="2420" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Japanese friend of mine claimed that Allied forces used poisonous gas during the Battle of Okinawa. I asked for a link to such a claim, and got a link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B2%96%E7%B8%84%E6%88%A6%E4%BA%89#.E9.80.A3.E5.90.88.E8.BB.8D.E3.81.AB.E3.82.88.E3.82.8B.E4.BD.8F.E6.B0.91.E6.AE.BA.E5.AE.B3&quot;&gt;this section&lt;/a&gt; of the Japanese language Wikipedia article on the Battle of Okinawa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paragraph that mentions chemical weapons is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;長周新聞によると、「沖縄本島に上陸した米軍は宜野湾市の嘉数で激しく抵抗された。ここは丘陵が重なり天然の防塁だったため毒ガスを使用。壕に潜む非戦闘員まで殺害した。嘉数では住民の半数以上を殺し、浦添村の前田、南部の島尻などは人口の3分の2を殺した。前田丘陵四日間の戦斗は「ありったけの地獄を1つにまとめた」と米陸軍省が表現するほどすさまじいものだった。国吉では470人前後の住民のうち210人以上が戦死。ここは米軍司令官バックナーが戦死した報復として猛攻撃を加えた。国吉で捕虜になった住民のうち男子は全員銃殺された。南部の東風平村の小城（こぐすく）は戦前の人口が約750人だが戦死者は440人以上で全住民の約6割にのぼった。」[76]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paragraph in question mentions Kakazu (嘉数) and that poison gas 毒ガス (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ja.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%AF%92%E3%82%AC%E3%82%B9&quot;&gt;Japanese language Wiktionary entry&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://jisho.org/words?jap=%E6%AF%92%E3%82%AC%E3%82%B9&amp;amp;eng=&amp;amp;dict=edict&quot;&gt;jisho.org translation&lt;/a&gt; - neither entry mentions flamethrowers) was used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Allied forces use chemical weapons in Okinawa during World War II?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical because I hadn't heard about Allied forces (especially non Soviet Union Allied forces) using chemical warfare in World War II, and because denial of Japanese atrocities, and false claims of Allied atrocities, is fairly mainstream in Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While searching for information on this, I came across pages stating that after the war, the United States &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Red_Hat&quot;&gt;stored chemical weapons in Okinawa&lt;/a&gt;. I am not asking about this in this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2017-06-17T05:08:22.583" Title="Did Allied forces use chemical weapons in Okinawa during World War II?" Tags="|united-states|japan|world-war-ii|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14633" CreationDate="2013-01-16T12:46:52.530" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is unclear and may depend on how you define chemical weapons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Battle of Okinawa, 1945&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The weapons used include&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;flame-throwers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;chemical smoke mortar rounds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;white phosphorus grenades&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An hour later another infantry assault was attempted, supported by 105-mm. artillery, light tank fire, antitank guns, heavy machine guns, 60-mm. and 81-mm. mortars, &lt;strong&gt;4.2-inch chemical mortars&lt;/strong&gt;, and bazookas; but the attack was again stopped by Japanese who hid underground during the heavy fire and then rushed back to their firing positions to meet the oncoming Americans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-P-Okinawa/USA-P-Okinawa-5.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Okinawa: The Last Battle, Appleman, Burns, Gugeler and Stevens&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unclear whether the chemical mortar rounds were designed merely to produce smoke to hide troop advances or were intended to harm enemy troops. From the text it seems they were probably intended to produce smoke through which US troops could move without being seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;4.2-inch chemical smoke&lt;/strong&gt; on the south side of Kakazu West was interspersed with high explosive artillery shells to keep the enemy pinned down. &lt;strong&gt;Under cover of the smoke&lt;/strong&gt; the survivors of Company L pulled back off the hill to the gorge, carrying their wounded with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well as flamethrowers and &amp;quot;chemical smoke&amp;quot;, according to this account, the US army used phosphorus grenades&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Colonel Maybury directed supporting fire in front of Company C, which quickly moved to the top without losing a man. It then proceeded leisurely and methodically to destroy the remaining Japanese with &lt;strong&gt;white phosphorus grenades&lt;/strong&gt; and flame throwers. Only 20 of the 110 defenders escaped to the south.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't 100% clear but this account can be interpreted as meaning that  phosophorus grenades were used in an anti-personnel role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The account doesn't identify the type of grenade, A more recent type is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m15.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;described as&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The M15 White Phosphorous grenade is a bursting type grenade used for signaling, screening, and incendiary purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.modernforces.com/weapon_m34.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;and&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The M34 chemical smoke grenade is the most versatile of all hand grenades. The grenade can be used for signaling, screening, or incendiary missions, &lt;strong&gt;or for producing casualties&lt;/strong&gt; ... The filler has 15 ounces of white phosphorous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Geneva Protocol, 1925&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to several sources &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ehsp/geneva.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.un.org/disarmament/WMD/Bio/1925GenevaProtocol.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibits the use of chemical and biological weapons in war. The Protocol was drawn up and signed at a conference which was held in Geneva under the auspices of the League of Nations from 4 May to 17 June 1925, and it entered into force on 8 February 1928.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a sizeable fraction of its parties have reserved to themselves a right to retaliate in kind if chemical and/or biological weapons should ever be used against them by enemies or allies of enemies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.un.org/disarmament/WMD/Bio/pdf/Status_Protocol.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;protocol&lt;/a&gt; states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and of all&#xA;analogous liquids, materials or devices, has been justly condemned by the&#xA;general opinion of the civilized world; and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this prohibition shall be universally accepted as a part of&#xA;International Law, binding alike the conscience and the practice of nations;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;extend this&#xA;prohibition to the use of bacteriological methods of warfare and agree to be&#xA;bound as between themselves according to the terms of this declaration&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Chemical Weapon&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opcw.org/about-chemical-weapons/what-is-a-chemical-weapon/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ORGANISATION FOR THE PROHIBITION OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general and traditional definition of a chemical weapon is a toxic chemical contained in a delivery system, such as a bomb or shell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Convention defines chemical weapons much more generally. The term chemical weapon is applied to any toxic chemical or its precursor that can cause death, injury, temporary incapacitation or sensory irritation &lt;strong&gt;through its chemical action&lt;/strong&gt;. Munitions or other delivery devices designed to deliver chemical weapons, whether filled or unfilled, are also considered weapons themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The toxic chemicals that have been used as chemical weapons, or have been developed for use as chemical weapons, can be categorised as choking, blister, blood, or nerve agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this is a modern definition and the Convention referred to is a more recent one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Chemical Weapons Convention 1992&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although produced 47 years after the date of the events in the question, this convention defines chemical weapons and so has some relevance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;White phosphorus does not appear in schedule one of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opcw.org/index.php?eID=dam_frontend_push&amp;amp;docID=6357&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CWC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;1991 US View re phosphorus&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/declassdocs/dia/19950901/950901_22431050_91r.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Declassified report&lt;/a&gt; mentions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;POSSIBLE USE OF &lt;strong&gt;PHOSPHOROUS CHEMICAL WEAPONS&lt;/strong&gt; BY IRAQ IN KURDISH AREAS ALONG THE IRAQI-TURKISH-IRANIAN&#xA;BORDERS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some commentators have suggested that this phrase illustrates that WP is regarded as a chemical weapon by US intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the account given above, the US army did use flamethrowers, chemical smoke and white phosphorus grenades. These were probably not considered chemical weapons by the standards of the time. Nor by a strict interpretation of current conventions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speculation: A soldier defending his homeland against foreign invaders might take a different view if the invaders are using flamethrowers and white phosphorus grenades against him or her. Perhaps, literally in the fog of war, the unpleasant and potentially harmful smoke from white phosphorus grenades was described by Japanese soldiers as &amp;quot;poison gas&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(my emphasis throughout)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T17:26:30.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7092" CreationDate="2013-01-16T14:18:15.743" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short: No, it is not possible to give a hypnotic suggestion (post-hypnotic or during the hypnosis session) to convince someone to kill another person... except to the extent that it is possible to convince people to perform remarkably antisocial, dangerous or objectionable activities stuff even &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; hypnosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are three summaries of the evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2001 report from the British Psychological Society,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://academyll.org/files/The%20Nature%20of%20Hypnosis_0.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Nature of Hypnosis&lt;/a&gt; summarised:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Hypnosis and will&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hypnotic procedures are not in themselves able to cause people to commit acts against their will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the demands of the context in which the procedures take place may exert pressure on the&#xA;subject to comply with the hypnotist’s instructions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from studies on the coercive nature of the psychological experiment itself, evidence for the above assertions&#xA;comes from studies on hypnosis by Levitt et al. (1975), O’Brian &amp;amp; Rabuck (1976) and Orne &amp;amp; Evans (1965).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It follows that any allegation that hypnosis caused a person to engage in activities against his or her will must be assessed&#xA;from a careful consideration of non-hypnotic influences present in the context (Heap, 1995a; Hoëncamp, 1989; Orne, 1972).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=ZsHEwNW6gTEC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=The+Oxford+Handbook+of+Hypnosis:Theory,+Research,+and+Practice&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=O6z2UMKaAbDwmAWU1YEQ&amp;amp;ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oxford Handbook of Hypnosis: Theory, Research and Practice&lt;/a&gt; introduces the term &amp;quot;hyperobedience&amp;quot;  and draws similar conclusions from similar sources (page 748):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a modern theoretical perspective, it is difficult to make the case that hyperobedience is a property of hypnosis, even in highly hypnotizable people. The modern theory that may be most relevant to this issue is the dissociated control model due to Woody and Bowers (1994). This theory proposes that during hypnosis the influence of the supervisory attention system of the frontal lobes is suppressed and the subject's responding is governed by 'contention scheduling' in the same manner as other behaviour that is habitually executed in an automatic fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, laboratory studies (e.g. Orne and Evans, 1965; Coe et al., 1972, Levit et al, 1975; O'Brian and Rabuck, 1976) have compared hypnotic and control subjects in their willingness, amongst other things, to make slanderous statements, plunge their hands in a beaker containing 'acid' and throw 'acid' at the experimenter, mutilate the bible, cut up the national flag, make homosexual advances, steal, and deal in heroin, and no convincing evidence has emerged to indicate that hypnotic subjects are more likely to obey such instructions than control subjects who are subjected to the same demands and pressures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The experiments of Milgram (1974) may be particularly apposite here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The American Society of Clinical Hypnosis provides no references, but concur in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://asch.net/Public/GeneralInfoonHypnosis/FAQsAboutHypnosis/tabid/161/Default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;website's FAQ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are in control and cannot be made to do anything against your will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One common misconsception is that a hypnotized person loses their will and is partially or completely under the command of the hypnotist. Nothing could be further from the truth. This unfortunate belief is reinforced by many stage hypnotists. You are in control of yourself, and cannot be made to do anything that is against your will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above references were a bit theoretical and high-level - I want to see some experimental data, so I tried chasing down some of the references they provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Orne, M. T., &amp;amp; Evans, F. J. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psych.upenn.edu/history/orne/orneetal1965jpsp189200.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Social control in the psychological experiment: Antisocial behavior and hypnosis.&lt;/a&gt; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1965, 1, 189-200.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper does not attempt to &amp;quot;answer the question whether antisocial behavior can be elicited under hypnosis&amp;quot;. However, it demonstrates that previous experiments suggesting they could were flawed, due to lack of controls. That is the control groups were also likely to reach into pick up (apparently) dangerous snakes or throw 'acid' in people's faces, if they were subject to equivalent social pressures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;we still have not found an aspect of behavior which is sufficiently safe to request of a subject, and which a subject will refuse to carry out if the expectation of compliance is communicated to him. In the present study the experimenter could virtually predetermine the nature of the resulting behavior by deciding in advance whether he would consciously, but subtly, communicate to a subject an expectation either of failure or of compliance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: This is about hypnotic suggestion rather than post-hypnotic suggestion. I am assuming that hypnotic suggestions are stronger, making the post-hypnotic case moot.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the authors explores this issue further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Orne, M.T. (1972). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psych.upenn.edu/history/orne/orneijceh19722101117.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Can a hypnotized subject be compelled to carry out otherwise unacceptable behavior?: A discussion.&lt;/a&gt; International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 20, 101-117.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would appear that attempts to answer the question whether an individual can or cannot be compelled to carry out antisocial actions or, for that matter, actions against his will, transcend the limitations of the experimental situation. Very subtle factors in the manner in which the experiments are conducted will yield different and contradictory results. Ecologically valid answers to these basic questions can be obtained only in contexts that are not perceived to be experimental, since the subject's awareness that he is participating in the study drastically alters his perception of the situation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, no authority has seriously maintained that such a total control fantasy could be translated into real life with the help of hypnosis. Fortunately, the Manchurian Candidate still remains fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, he goes on to list cases of hypnotists being accused of triggering unacceptable behaviour from patients. Again, these anecdotes don't prove the same behaviour wouldn't have been also conjured up by a non-hypnotic suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be a good point to introduce:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Michael Heap, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hypnosisaustralia.org.au/wp-content/uploads/journal/AJCEH_Vol34_No1_MAY06.pdf#page=41&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Assessing Allegations of Sexual Assault During Hypnosis and Related Procedures&lt;/a&gt; Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis&#xA;Vol. 34, No. 1, 2006, 41–54&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This author lists case studies of times that hypnotists have been accused of using hypnosis to take advantage of their patients (including for sexual assault). He explains the processes that should be used to evaluate these cases. In general, the question of whether this same behaviour would have been elicited with hypnosis remains critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to look up some more studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Levitt, E.E. Aronoff, G., Morgan, C.D., Overly, T.M., &amp;amp; Parrish, M.J. (1975). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207147508416173&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Testing the coercive&#xA;power of hypnosis: Committing objectionable acts.&lt;/a&gt; International Journal of Clinical and Experimental&#xA;Hypnosis, 23, 59-67, DOI:10.1080/00207147508416173&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This wasn't terribly useful, just showing that you could measure objectionable, rather than criminal or dangerous, acts to measure the power of hypnosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;O’Brian, R.M. &amp;amp; Rabuck, S.J. (1976). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1258812&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Experimentally produced self-repugnant behavior as a function of hypnosis and waking&#xA;suggestion: A pilot study.&lt;/a&gt; American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 18, 272–276&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Parrish, M.J. (1974). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/233284133_Moral_Predisposition_and_Hypnotic_Influence_of_Immoral_Behavior_An_Exploratory_Study&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Moral predisposition and hypnotic influence of &amp;quot;immoral&amp;quot; behavior: An exploratory study.&lt;/a&gt; American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 17, 115-124.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't even find an abstract of these two papers not hidden behind a paywall. Shame. Anyone with access want to summarise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to prove that negative post-hypnotic suggestions couldn't exist, but well-controlled experimental attempts to show that they exist have failed. A key way that they have failed is that control groups of non-hypnotised people people trust experimenters, and follow their suggestions even when it would seem objectionable or dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes particular anecdotes difficult to assess (whether it is allegations of sexual assault under hypnosis, or the apparent willingness of a participant to shoot a gun at another person, as reported by the CIA) as they may well have been willing to comply with an authority to commit such acts without being hypnotised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T14:18:15.743" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14630" CreationDate="2013-01-16T15:28:59.087" Score="18" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Libya's entire GDP in 2000s fluctuated between $30B and $100B. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&amp;amp;met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&amp;amp;idim=country:LBY&amp;amp;dl=en&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;q=libya%20gdp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Libya's Central Bank assets in 2011 were estimated to be $25bn (since then, doubled due to finding another $20 odd billion in assets - &lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:_POATqKrA0MJ:www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8a34f66e-e474-11e0-92a3-00144feabdc0.html%20&amp;amp;cd=4&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ct=clnk&amp;amp;gl=us#axzz2I9UM61KV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world banking system that has many trillions of assets. A list of private banks' assets is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.relbanks.com/worlds-top-banks/assets&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, just the biggest ones add up to ~$80 Trillion; major central banks seem to add up to $10 Trillion (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cumber.com/content/misc/G4_Charts.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to imagine that the ability to loan out a paltry $50bn at 0% has any measurable effect on said world banking system, one would need some very very very good imagination and not even a rudimentary knowledge of finance.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Japan had a ZIRP (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_interest-rate_policy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zero interest-rate policy&lt;/a&gt; ) for the better part of 2 decades during &quot;Lost decade&quot; period. Japanese GDP is $4-6Trillion (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&amp;amp;met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&amp;amp;idim=country:JPN&amp;amp;dl=en&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;q=japan%20gdp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have somehow failed to notice a coalition of Illuminati Bankers invading Japan in the last 20 years. I clearly need better drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside the drug induced conspiracy ravings, Libya did, indeed offer loans for house purchasing or construction in Islamic loan's conditions, that is zero interest rate. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://businessafrica.net/africabiz/arcvol2/email123.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;). This is not surprising given that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sharia prohibits usury&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="14582" LastEditDate="2015-09-06T01:23:18.580" LastActivityDate="2015-09-06T01:23:18.580" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14639" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-16T15:38:37.323" Score="26" ViewCount="4553" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.damninteresting.com/you-can-pick-your-doctor-and-you-can-pick-your-nose/#more-271&quot;&gt;Damn Interesting&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is an Austrian doctor who has gained notoriety by advocating the picking of one's nose and the consumption of the resulting bounty, particularly in children. Dr. Friedrich Bischinger, a lung specialist working in Innsbruck, would have us believe that people who pick their noses with their fingers are healthier, happier, and more in tune with their bodies. His argument stems from the notion that exposing the body to the dried germ corpses helps to reinforce the immune system. The good doctor feels that society should adopt a new approach to nose-picking, and encourage children to take up the habit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A doctor claims that eating your nose harvest strengthens your immune system and makes you more healthy. Is there any truth to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10975" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-03-01T23:26:02.450" LastActivityDate="2015-09-20T23:23:10.363" Title="Is eating boogers good for you?" Tags="|environmental-health|immune-system|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14623" CreationDate="2013-01-16T16:23:51.490" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Actually, Coulter was right. But for a specific year - 2002, to be specific.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The murder rate in Belgium in 2002 was higher, because there were 318 murders there, (compare to 215 in 2000). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to that jump, the average murder rate in Belgium was ~2.2 per 100,000 in 2000 and &lt;strong&gt;3.1 in 2002&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US data for 2002 was: 6,200 white murder offenders (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezashr/asp/off_display.asp&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;), total whites 194,822,000 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dof.ca.gov/research/demographic/reports/census-surveys/documents/USCPS-2002.pdf%29&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;), so average per 100,000 was 3.1 as well. &lt;strong&gt;Same rate as Belgium.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See my below original answer for 2011 figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ORIGINAL ANSWER:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;methodMan's answer uses BJS statistics. However, using FBI's statistics, the numbers are &lt;strong&gt;significantly&lt;/strong&gt; different, as is the conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3&quot;&gt;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded/expanded-homicide-data&quot;&gt;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded/expanded-homicide-data&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total murder offenders: 14,548, of them 4,729 white. Total white population in USA is ~225mil as of 2010 census (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_American#Current_U.S._Census_definition&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total white firearm murder offenders: this is hard, since no table exists for offenders by race by firearms. But pretty much ALL tables showing murder weapons (e.g. Table 7) have firearm murder rate around 66-70%, so we can reasonably approximate as 3121 white murder offenders via firearms (4,729 * 0.66).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This amounts to 3121/2250 = 1.39 per 100,000 population - white-offender firearms murder rate, and  4,729/2250 = 2.1 per 100,000 population - white-offender total murder rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are way lower than &quot;whites only&quot; BJS figures stated by methodMan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The murder rate total (2.1) is &lt;strong&gt;25% higher&lt;/strong&gt; than cited 1.7 in Belgium; however the firearm murder rate (1.4) is &lt;em&gt;three times higher&lt;/em&gt; than &lt;a href=&quot;http://gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/belgium&quot;&gt;that of Belgium&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T18:11:02.897" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T18:11:02.897" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14542" CreationDate="2013-01-16T17:10:25.327" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Text before &quot;Thus, the muscle cells’ myofibrils will increase in thickness and number.&quot; is talking about satellite cells fuse with myofibrils, and nothing relates to the number of myofibrils increased is mentioned. No relevance citation support his statement so we should ignore it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your reference, excerpt from an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unm.edu/~lkravitz/Article%20folder/hypertrophy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; of the same research group says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is important to emphasize the point that this process is not&#xA;  creating more skeletal muscle fibers (in humans), but increasing the&#xA;  size and number of contractile proteins (actin and myosin) within the&#xA;  muscle fiber.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is sad that no evidence for human's myofibrils can divide. Even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hhmi.org/news/keating8.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rat's heart muscle cells divide&lt;/a&gt; but it only occur &lt;em&gt;in vitro&lt;/em&gt;, not &lt;em&gt;in vivo&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11062" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-01-16T18:39:06.613" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T18:39:06.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14645" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-16T20:36:43.010" Score="9" ViewCount="623" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are weight scales that additionally claim to measure body fat by electrical resistance. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sport-fitness-advisor.com/bodyfatscales.html&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, body-fat scales are &quot;absolutely&quot; superior to just-weight scales, although the article ads the reasonable caveat that one should simply expect consistency, not a number that's precisely what one would get from an immersion test. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the article then goes on to list so many steps to get consistent results (clean the pads with alcohol) that I wonder if it's just making excuses for a technique that just has too many variables for a consumer to control. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there good evidence that consumer-grade body-fat scales can produce consistent results that highly correlate with body-fat percentage? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T19:13:49.303" Title="Do consumer-grade body-fat scales provide consistent results?" Tags="|consumer-products|weight-loss|obesity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14646" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14649" CreationDate="2013-01-16T21:47:47.860" Score="9" ViewCount="8190" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2011, Monsanto &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9Q1M0UO0.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;acquired a company specialised in bees&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Claims are circulating on the internet about an alleged Monsanto bee patent. In its most radical form, the claim is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OcTKT.png&quot; alt=&quot;Montanto bee claim&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monsanto is killing off the world's bee population to make way for their genetically modified frankenbees&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After being blamed by massive amounts of bee keepers for the Honey Bee collapse, Monsanto purchased the largest bee research firm called Beeologics back in September of 2011. They now also want to own the means of pollinating the food. Their frankenfoods that produce pesticides are killing the honey bees. Monsanto's solution to the colony collapse disorder is to replace God's honeybees with Monsanto's GM bees that are resistant to all the pesticide producing food they make. Monsanto is the #1 enemy to mankind, yet the gun grabbing politicians support them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this contains a number of allegations and claims, some quite wild, but it contains some truths if other sources are to be trusted. To quote a source that appears more reliable, although not objective, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.disinfo.com/2012/02/what-is-monsanto-doing-to-our-bees/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;investigative journalist Maryam Henein writes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering that the honey bee genome has been sequenced, how long before we bear witness to a genetically modified bee? If seeds are any indication, Apis melifera may also soon belong to Monsanto. Kill the bees with GMO plants and pesticides, offer a band-aid solution by creating a bee that is resistant to all the crap peddled on the market and then “persuade” beekeepers to buy Monsanto bees or else. It’s wicked genius.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I am sure Monsanto and many others would call all of this paranoid phooey. Take one well known scientist and beekeeper’s opinion on the subject: “Honeybees aren’t an organism that anyone who understands anything about their molecular biology would advise as a subject for genetic modification,” he recently told colleagues on the online Bee List. “Do you really think that Monsanto envisions that there would be any substantive return on investment on a patented bee?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I certainly don't trust information coming straight from Monsanto. However, information from GMO-critical activists has also been mixing facts with semi-truths and disinformation. Googling for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=patent+2457842149&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;patent 2457842149&lt;/a&gt; is not very helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a &amp;quot;bee patent&amp;quot;? If yes, what does this mean? If no, is there any truth is the story by Maryam Henein?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T15:32:39.700" Title="Does Monsanto have a bee patent?" Tags="|gmo|bees|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3189" CreationDate="2013-01-16T22:12:01.010" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim that the mobile phone signals lead to bee or hive death has been debunked (and the meme's progress tracked) by &lt;a href=&quot;http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/12/are-cell-phone-killing-bees-how-the-false-meme-spread/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clean Technica&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The claim was based on incorrect interpretation of the original findings of Dr Daniel Favre.&lt;/strong&gt; The study can be found here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Favre, Daniel, &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13592-011-0016-x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mobile phone-induced honeybee worker piping&lt;/a&gt;, Apidologie, 42:3 (270-279), 2011&#xA;DOI: 10.1007/s13592-011-0016-x&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... In the present study, electromagnetic waves originating from mobile phones were tested for potential effects on honeybee behavior. Mobile phone handsets were placed in the close vicinity of honeybees. The sound made by the bees was recorded and analyzed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The audiograms and spectrograms revealed that active mobile phone handsets have a dramatic impact on the behavior of the bees, namely by inducing the worker piping signal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In natural conditions, worker piping either announces the swarming process of the bee colony or is a signal of a disturbed bee colony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Please note that the bees did NOT die, nor did the colony collapse.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study itself says so: (paragraph 17)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The study did not show that mobile phones were deadly for bees”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T23:12:50.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14646" CreationDate="2013-01-16T22:26:50.650" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the Beelogics website, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beeologics.com/2011/09/monsanto-acquires-targeted-pest-control-technology-start-up/&quot;&gt;Monsanto bought Beelogics in 2011&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beelogics holds various patents and patent applications related to bees.  For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&amp;amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;amp;d=PALL&amp;amp;p=1&amp;amp;u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm&amp;amp;r=1&amp;amp;f=G&amp;amp;l=50&amp;amp;s1=8,097,712.PN.&amp;amp;OS=PN/8,097,712&amp;amp;RS=PN/8,097,712&quot;&gt;US patent 8,097,712&lt;/a&gt; covers claims for: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compositions and methods for reducing susceptibility to infectious&#xA;  disease in bees using RNA interference technology, and more&#xA;  particularly, prevention and treatment of viral infections in&#xA;  honeybees such as Israel acute paralysis virus (IAPV) by feeding of&#xA;  pathogen-specific dsRNA. Further, multiple-pathogen specific dsRNA is&#xA;  disclosed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since 2457842149 is not a &lt;a href=&quot;http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm&quot;&gt;seven character number&lt;/a&gt;, it is not a US patent.  Since it does not start with a date format it is not a US patent application.  Perhaps it comes from somewhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2013-01-16T22:26:50.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14646" CreationDate="2013-01-16T22:28:17.513" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I'm not convinced this is a complete answer, but I am not sure what else to add.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://il.linkedin.com/pub/nitzan-paldi/10/36a/729&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nitzan Paldi&lt;/a&gt; is a (random) researcher at Monsanto, who was formerly part of Beeologics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paldi is one of the inventors on a US Patent &lt;a href=&quot;http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&amp;amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;amp;d=PALL&amp;amp;p=1&amp;amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&amp;amp;r=1&amp;amp;f=G&amp;amp;l=50&amp;amp;s1=8,097,712.PN.&amp;amp;OS=PN/8,097,712&amp;amp;RS=PN/8,097,712&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;8,097,712&lt;/a&gt;, which is assigned to &quot;Beelogics&quot;. (Note the misspelling on the name, which is why I took the detour to show it is the same company, not a similar sounding one.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract of the patent is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compositions and methods for reducing susceptibility to infectious disease in bees using RNA interference technology, and more particularly, prevention and treatment of viral infections in honeybees such as Israel acute paralysis virus (IAPV) by feeding of pathogen-specific dsRNA. Further, multiple-pathogen specific dsRNA is disclosed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The patent appears to be proposing a form of innoculating existing bees against virus by feeding them innocuous strands of RNA. It isn't replacing the bees with GM versions, but trying to prevent their hive collapse by being infected by viruses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As will all discussions about patents, it is important to understand that there is a big difference between applying for a patent and having firm plans to produce a product. It does not even prove that an implementation has been made - patents can be speculative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-27T13:13:02.693" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T13:13:02.693" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2215" CreationDate="2013-01-16T23:07:56.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question needs to be answered on a case-by-case basis.  Certainly, not all GMO food is toxic, and the process of GMO does not &lt;em&gt;inherently&lt;/em&gt; lead to toxicity.  On the other hand, there is no guarantee that novel gene combinations can never lead to increased toxicity for individual organisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below I have collected some sources, either neutral ones, or focussing on the risks.  I did not include information from sources with a commercial interest in GMO, such as Monsanto, as I am of the opinion that information from corporate sources &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whale.to/v/images/ddt.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;deserves to be distrusted&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A recent review study&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412011000055&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Domingo et. al. (2011)&lt;/a&gt;, who did an overview of studies into this question, &lt;em&gt;the number of references concerning human and animal toxicological/health risks studies on GM foods/plants was very limited&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Domingo, J. L. &amp;amp; Giné Bordonaba, J. Environ. Int. 37, 734–742 (2011). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412011000055&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Weblink&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article is behind a paywall, but the abstract summarises:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An equilibrium in the number research groups suggesting, on the basis of their studies, that a number of varieties of GM products (mainly maize and soybeans) are as safe and nutritious as the respective conventional non-GM plant, and those raising still serious concerns, was currently observed. Nevertheless, it should be noted that most of these studies have been conducted by biotechnology companies responsible of commercializing these GM plants&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This review was from 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;United Nations Environmental Programme assessment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Assessment_of_Agricultural_Knowledge,_Science_and_Technology_for_Development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development&lt;/a&gt;, an international effort co-sponsored by FAO, GEF, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, the World Bank and WHO, issued a lengthy report assessing what the title says.  This includes (but is not limited to) issues related to GMO.&#xA;Several reports, as well as summaries, are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unep.org/dewa/Assessments/Ecosystems/IAASTD/tabid/105853/Default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;linked from the United Stations Environmental Programme IAASTD page&lt;/a&gt;.  Specifically on the &lt;em&gt;safe to consume for humans&lt;/em&gt; issue, they write on page 200 in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unep.org/dewa/agassessment/reports/IAASTD/EN/Agriculture%20at%20a%20Crossroads_Global%20Report%20%28English%29.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the global report&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis theirs): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The safety of GMO foods and feed is controversial due to&#xA;  limited available data, particularly for long-term nutritional consumption and chronic exposure.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Food safety is a major issue in the GMO debate. Potential&#xA;  concerns include alteration in nutritional quality of foods,&#xA;  toxicity, antibiotic resistance, and allergenicity from consuming GM foods. The concepts and techniques used for&#xA;  evaluating food and feed safety have been outlined (WHO,&#xA;  2005b), but the approval process of GM crops is considered&#xA;  inadequate (Spök et al., 2004). Under current practice, data&#xA;  are provided by the companies owning the genetic materials, making independent verification difficult or impossible.&#xA;  Recently, the data for regulatory approval of a new Bt-maize&#xA;  variety (Mon863) was challenged. Significant effects have&#xA;  been found on a number of measured parameters and a call&#xA;  has been made for more research to establish their safety&#xA;  (Seralini et al., 2007). For example, the systemic broad spectrum herbicide glyphosate is increasingly used on herbicide&#xA;  resistant soybean, resulting in the presence of measurable&#xA;  concentrations of residues and metabolites of glyphosate&#xA;  in soybean products (Arregui et al., 2004). In 1996, EPA&#xA;  reestablished pesticide thresholds for glyphosate in various&#xA;  soybean products setting standards for the presence of such&#xA;  residues in herbicide resistant crop plants (EPA, 1996ab).&#xA;  However, no data on long-term consumption of low doses&#xA;  of glyphosate metabolites have been collected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of completion, they define GMO (Genetically Modified Organism) as &lt;em&gt;An organism in which the genetic material has been altered anthropogenically by means of gene or cell technologies.&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Union of Concerned Scientists point of view&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Union of Concerned Scientists is a an advocacy organisation, and not necessarily objective.  However, I do think their assessments are evidence-based, so I think &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/genetic-engineering/risks-of-genetic-engineering.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;their point of view is worth quoting&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So far, scientists know of no inherent, generic harms associated with GE organisms. For example, it is not true that all GE foods are toxic or that all engineered organisms are likely to proliferate if released into the environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But specific enginereed organisms may have specific harmful effects by virtue of the novel gene combinations they possess. This means that the risks of genetically engineered organisms may vary widely, and therefore must be assessed on a case-by-case basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically about toxins, they write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Production of New Toxins&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many organisms have the ability to produce toxic substances, which help to defend them from predators. Some plants contain inactive genetic pathways leading to toxic substances, and new genetic material introduced through GE could reactivate these pathways or otherwise increase the plant's production of toxic substances. This might happen, for instance, if on/off signals associated with an introduced gene are located on the genome in places where they could turn on the previously inactive genes for producing the toxins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Other studies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently, Séralini et. al (2012) conclude that a particular kind of genetically modified food is harmful &lt;em&gt;to rats&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;but only on timescales similar to the rats lifetime&lt;/em&gt;, which would suggest that effects in humans may only become visible on a timescale of decades.  The work by Séralini is highly controversial.  He has been accused of fraud and his articles have been described as debunked; whether this is true or a sign of the debate itself being toxic, I don't know.  Wikipedia has a whole article &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seralini_affair&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Séralini affair&lt;/a&gt;, which links further to himself and his articles.  They're too controversial to base any conclusions upon, really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An advocacy group called &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthopensource.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Earth Open Source&lt;/a&gt; has published a report &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthopensource.org/files/pdfs/GMO_Myths_and_Truths/GMO_Myths_and_Truths_1.3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GMO Myths and Truths&lt;/a&gt;, where &lt;em&gt;GMO&lt;/em&gt; is understood as genetically engineered crops.  This document &lt;em&gt;specifically&lt;/em&gt; collects material critical of GMO, and is therefore not objective by itself, but it does build upon peer-reviewed publications and the authors have PhDs in relevant fields (molecular genetics and biochemistry).  They list a number of studies linking how GMO's &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be toxic, similarly to the note by the Union of Concerned Scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Concluding note&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Safe to consume&quot; or &quot;harmful to humans&quot; can relate to direct or indirect effects.  Not all GMO food is automatically unsafe, but there exist secondary effects.  For example, some GMO adoption leads to increased pesticide use, and there exist ecological risks which can indirectly affect human health.  For further reading, these issues are addressed by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the UNEP, and the Earth Open Source report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scientific debate continues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2013-08-30T23:38:41.750" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T23:38:41.750" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14524" CreationDate="2013-01-17T01:22:51.917" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Were more than a half of all Silicon Valley tech companies founded by immigrants between 1995 and 2005?&quot; Yes, it seems so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Over half (52.4%) of Silicon Valley startups had one or more&#xA;  immigrants as a key  founder, compared with the California average of&#xA;  38.8%.&quot; (p. 5)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, however, much higher than the average in the U.S:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 25.3% of these companies [average of all U.S. states], at least one&#xA;  key founder was foreign-born. States  with an above-average rate of&#xA;  immigrant-founded companies include California  (39%), New Jersey&#xA;  (38%), Georgia (30%), and Massachusetts (29%). Belowaverage states&#xA;  include Washington (11%), Ohio (14%), North Carolina (14%),  and Texas&#xA;  (18%).  (p.4)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notes below probably explains the peak in Silicon Valley:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Almost 80% of immigrant-founded companies in the US were within just two &#xA;  industry fields: software and innovation/manufacturing-related services. (p.4)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;!&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vqjhu.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chart 6: Breakdown of Engineering and Technology Companies Founded by &#xA;Immigrants from 1995 to 2005 by Industry&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is noteworthy that immigrants from China and India both constitute much less than 1% &#xA;  of the total U.S. population. (p.6)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... Indians account for more than 25% of engineering and technology immigrant founders.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IqOym.png&quot; alt=&quot;Chart 1: Birthplace of Engineering and Technology Immigrant Founders&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also seem to have their fair share in PCT applications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;!&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/g7cOJ.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chart 10: Intellectual Property Contributions of U.S. Immigrant Non-citizens – &#xA;PCT Applications by Nationality – 1998 to 2006&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sites.kauffman.org/pdf/entrep_immigrants_1_61207.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://sites.kauffman.org/pdf/entrep_immigrants_1_61207.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10622" LastEditorUserId="10622" LastEditDate="2013-01-17T23:10:54.800" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T23:10:54.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14542" CreationDate="2013-01-17T03:48:39.573" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the well respected Medical Textbook &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1416045740&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Guyton and Hall, Textbook of Medical Physiology&lt;/a&gt;, Unit XV, &quot;Sports Physiology&quot;, under the subheading &quot;Muscle Hypertrophy&quot;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The changes that occur inside the hypertrophied muscle fibers&#xA;  themselves include (1) increased numbers of myofibrils, proportionate&#xA;  to the degree of hypertrophy, (2) up to 120 per cent increase in&#xA;  mitochondrial enzymes ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would therefore say that the number of myofibrils do increase due to resistance training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastActivityDate="2013-01-17T03:48:39.573" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14654" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20726" CreationDate="2013-01-17T18:50:46.047" Score="10" ViewCount="2391" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard lots of extraordinary claims about coconut oil, but I've seen very littleresearch to back it up. Most of what I've heard is based on anecdotal evidence, so that's not really convincing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the claims I've heard from &lt;a href=&quot;http://CoconutOil.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CoconutOil.com&lt;/a&gt; include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://coconutoil.com/coconut-oil-offers-hope-for-antibiotic-resistant-germs/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Coconut oil offers hope for antibiotic-resistant germs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The antiviral, antibacterial, and antifungal properties of the medium chain fatty acids/triglycerides (MCTs) found in coconut oil have been known to researchers since the 1960s. Research has shown that microorganisms that are inactivated include bacteria, yeast, fungi, and enveloped viruses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coconutoil.com/Dayrit.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Coconut Oil in Health and Disease: Its and Monolaurin's Potential as a Cure for HIV/AIDS&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/article10526.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alternate version&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the 3rd month, 7 of the patients (50%) showed reduced viral load and by the 6th&#xA;month 8 patients (2 receiving 7.2h ML, 4 receiving 2.4 g ML and 3 receiving, coconut oil had a lowered viral count. The CD4/CD8 counts showed a favorable increase in 5 patients. There were no serious side effects observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is: &lt;strong&gt;is there any research from independent organizations that backs up these claims?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10622" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T02:14:12.510" Title="Does coconut oil work as an antibiotic and as a treatment for AIDS?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|hiv-aids|antibiotic-resistance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10618" CreationDate="2013-01-18T02:54:27.750" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, he did.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-18/live-lance-armstrong-oprah-winfrey-interview/4469666&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;admitted this in his interview with Oprah Winfrey.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Oprah:&lt;/strong&gt; Did you ever take banned substances to enhance your cycling performance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lance:&lt;/strong&gt; Yes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Oprah:&lt;/strong&gt; Yes or no, was one of those banned substances EPO?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lance:&lt;/strong&gt; Yes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T02:54:27.750" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14548" CreationDate="2013-01-18T05:12:04.723" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chronic Lyme disease or also the &lt;strong&gt;Post-Lyme disease syndrome&lt;/strong&gt; is regarded the third and last stage following an infection with &lt;em&gt;Borrelia burgdorferi&lt;/em&gt; bacteria [1], usually acquired through tick bites. It is not hard to get Lyme disease, especially not if you're in New England (incidence is over 30 in 100,000 in New England according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/lyme/stats/chartstables/reportedcases_statelocality.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC&lt;/a&gt;, around 8 for all of the US).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to read up on Lyme disease, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyme_disease&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia Article&lt;/a&gt; is well written and documented, so I'm only going to address the original question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Late-stage Lyme disease usually occurs months after the bite in unsuccessfully treated patients. It may cause symptoms such as arthritis, neurologic symptoms or even encephalitis, from mild to very severe [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What may have caused your &lt;em&gt;hoax&lt;/em&gt; thought is that in some patients with chronic Lyme the Borrelia bacteria are undetectable, meaning neither live bacteria, nor antibodies against Borrelia antigens nor Borrelia DNA (via PCR) can be found. This means that there may be no hard evidence that Borrelia bacteria are still in the body, which is called &lt;strong&gt;lack of a biologic marker&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been &lt;strong&gt;a lot&lt;/strong&gt; of studies about this issue, you can find a lengthy review of references in [3] (&lt;a href=&quot;http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/43/9/1089.long#sec-36&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), I'm not going to list them here again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To synthesize (and no, I'm &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; an expert in this matter), &lt;strong&gt;the symptoms of the Post-Lyme disease are very real&lt;/strong&gt; and occur in a few percent of Lyme disease patients. There is some uncertainty because in some patients it may be impossible to detect Borrelia or Borrelia markers, which has lead to numerous studies and the proposal of naming the condition &lt;strong&gt;Post-Lyme disease syndrome&lt;/strong&gt;, acknowledging that the symptoms follow a Lyme disease even if the Borrelia are no longer detectable [3], &lt;a href=&quot;http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/43/9/1089.long#sec-36&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this section specifically&lt;/a&gt;. As you can glance from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ilads.org/lyme_research/chronic_lyme.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this extensive presentation&lt;/a&gt; not everyone is happy with that name, however, because there is a lot of evidence pointing to a connection to Borrelia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ryan KJ; Ray CG, ed. (2004). Sherris Medical Microbiology (4th ed.). McGraw Hill. pp. 434–37. ISBN 0-8385-8529-9.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nau R, Christen HJ, Eiffert H. Dtsch Arztebl Int. 2009 Jan;106(5):72-81; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562015&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMID 19562015&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wormser GP et al. Clin Infect Dis. 2006 Nov 1;43(9):1089-134. Epub 2006 Oct 2.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17029130&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PMID 17029130&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="175" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2020-12-21T13:48:08.447" LastActivityDate="2020-12-21T13:48:08.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14663" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18200" CreationDate="2013-01-18T08:59:50.107" Score="10" ViewCount="3450" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard a claim on an AM radio talk show that in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Aurora_shooting&quot;&gt;July 2012 Aurora, CO movie theater mass shooting rampage&lt;/a&gt; (also known as the Batman shooting), the killer chose the only local theater that was a &quot;gun free zone&quot; to carry out his crime -- knowing the customers would be defenseless.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is repeated in an opinion piece published by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/09/10/did-colorado-shooter-single-out-cinemark-theater/&quot;&gt;Fox News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So why did the killer pick the Cinemark theater? You might think that it was the one closest to the killer’s apartment. Or, that it was the one with the largest audience.&#xA;  Yet, neither explanation is right. Instead, out of all the movie theaters within 20 minutes of his apartment showing the new Batman movie that night, it was the only one where guns were banned. In Colorado, individuals with permits can carry concealed handgun in most malls, stores, movie theaters, and restaurants. But private businesses can determine whether permit holders can carry guns on their private property.&#xA;  Most movie theaters allow permit holders carrying guns. But the Cinemark movie theater was the only one with a sign posted at the theater’s entrance...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article cites a blog by John Lott, which carries an entry for 8/15/2012 entitled: &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2012/08/so-are-movie-theaters-in-aurora.html&quot;&gt;&quot;So are movie theaters near where the Aurora, Colorado killer lived posted to prevent concealed carry?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Below is the list of theaters that I obtained from the above link.  Of the seven theaters showing The Dark Knight Rises on July 20th that were within a 20 minute drive of the movie theater, six allowed permitted concealed handguns and only one denied them at the time of the attack.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rocky Mountain Gun Owners has a website where they have collected information on whether movie theaters have been posted as not allowing concealed carry available here.  The only theater that they note to where the killer lived that was posted was the Century Cinemark Theater.  However, I did not rely on their listing for any of the information provided below as it is based on permit holders reporting that information to the RMGO group.  Though it is interesting to note, that for movie theaters within 20 minutes of where the killer lived and showing The Dark Knight Rises, this source only lists the Century Cinemark Theater as the only place that posted a &quot;no weapons&quot; sign. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the impassioned political arguments surrounding guns in the USA, it is difficult to know if the facts presented are accurate.  There could be many other reasons for selecting a target theater besides whether some of the customers or workers are likely to be armed (e.g. familiarity, who works there, ease of using fire exit to bring in guns)... but we may never know the motivations unless the killer made notes or admits to his motivations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what about the claim that this was the only local theater banning legal carry of guns? Are the facts given in these articles accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T14:58:59.967" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T22:31:24.690" Title="Did the Aurora, Colorado movie theater killer select the only nearby theater where guns were prohibited?" Tags="|guns|violence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14665" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14669" CreationDate="2013-01-18T12:59:57.980" Score="1" ViewCount="669" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtrboPeilCk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video on YouTube&lt;/a&gt; that clearly shows corn kernels popping when a certain iPhone app is used and the kernels are placed on the iPhone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine at work said it is fake.  Now, I don't usually fall for things like this but the footage is pretty undesputable.  So, the question is, what is going on here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11117" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-18T14:34:44.530" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T16:37:48.417" Title="Is there an iPhone app that can make corn kernels pop?" Tags="|physics|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14665" CreationDate="2013-01-18T14:28:38.673" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A trivial Google search reveals &lt;a href=&quot;http://urbanlegends.about.com/b/2008/06/10/cell-phone-popcorn.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Urban Legends: Cell Phone Popcorn&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update #1: It turns out the video was indeed part of a viral marketing campaign for [REDACTED] Systems, makers of Bluetooth headsets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update #2: [REDACTED] Systems CEO Abraham [REDACTED] reveals how the cell phone popcorn trick was done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Stuff redacted because I don't like being a stooge for corporate marketing weasels&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: In a comment below, Oddthinking points out that the video referred to in my answer is not the video referred to in the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One explanation of the video in the claim is that the makers of the video in the claim may have simply used the description of methods provided by the makers of the video referred to in this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would delete this answer but it may have some tiny value in illustrating that Youtube videos are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;indisputable&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; sources of truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/underwire/2008/06/cellphones-cant/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Physicist Debunks Cellphone Popcorn Viral Videos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The clever parlor trick (see embedded clip) looks amazing enough, but there’s a hitch: It’s not physically possible, according to University of Virginia physics professor Louis Bloomfield.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/science/cookegg.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes: Cooking eggs with cellphones&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In October 2005 the television program  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.g4tv.com/brainiac/episodes/4558/Episode_14_Micro_Waves.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brainiac&lt;/a&gt;, a UK-based science show, aired an episode in which they tried cooking an egg by placing it under a pile of &lt;strong&gt;100 cell phones&lt;/strong&gt;.  All they ended up with was an unwarmed, uncooked egg:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This joke is 13 years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T14:57:52.297" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14672" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14673" CreationDate="2013-01-18T18:04:57.680" Score="9" ViewCount="1572" Body="&lt;p&gt;Source: USA Today, &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.usatoday.com/article/news/1773473?articlePage=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Opposing view: Eliminate 'gun-free zone' regulations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America, made a claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the decade of the Clinton ban on semiautomatic rifles (the so-called assault weapons) and high-capacity magazines, crime did not go down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question is, during the decade of the Clinton ban on semiautomatic rifles (the so-called assault weapons) and high-capacity magazines, did crime not go down?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="8702" LastEditDate="2013-10-20T08:58:30.580" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T08:58:30.580" Title="During the decade of the Clinton ban on semiautomatic rifles and high-capacity magazines, did crime not go down?" Tags="|united-states|weapons|criminology|guns|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14672" CreationDate="2013-01-18T18:39:48.813" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Claiming that &quot;crime&quot; (presumably violent crime, since that's the sort of crime in which banning assault weapons would matter) did not go down in the period between 1994 and 2004 (the time of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Assault_Weapons_Ban&quot;&gt;Federal Assault Weapons Ban&lt;/a&gt;, the &quot;Clinton ban&quot;) is flat out wrong. That's easily seen by looking on the FBI or DOJ websites, because they freely host &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl01.xls&quot;&gt;tables of crime statistics&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comparing the FBI's listing of the violent crime rate between the two time points, we find that the violent crime rate in 1994 was 713.6, and by 2004 it was 463.2. That is definitely a motion in a downward direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, crime rates did go down between 1994 and 2004. However, this probably has very little to do with the Federal Assault Weapons Ban; looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Crime_in_the_United_States&amp;amp;oldid=533449601&quot;&gt;almost any graph of crime rates&lt;/a&gt; will show that general crime rates peaked in the early '90s before the ban, and have continued to fall even after the ban was lifted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastEditorUserId="5973" LastEditDate="2013-01-18T22:07:41.277" LastActivityDate="2013-01-18T22:07:41.277" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14676" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14693" CreationDate="2013-01-18T23:22:00.990" Score="16" ViewCount="1098" Body="&lt;p&gt;A came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/06/24/louisiana-schools-teach-that-existence-of-loch-ness-monster-proves-creationism/&quot;&gt;this article on addictinginfo.org&lt;/a&gt;. It quotes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/education/how-american-fundamentalist-schools-are-using-nessie-to-disprove-evolution.17918511&quot;&gt;this article in the Scotland Herald&lt;/a&gt;, describing &lt;em&gt;Accelerated Christian Education&lt;/em&gt; in Louisiana. I quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One ACE textbook – Biology 1099, Accelerated Christian Education Inc – reads: &quot;Are dinosaurs alive today? Scientists are becoming more convinced of their existence. Have you heard of the 'Loch Ness Monster' in Scotland? 'Nessie' for short has been recorded on sonar from a small submarine, described by eyewitnesses, and photographed by others. Nessie appears to be a plesiosaur.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other sources on the web, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/25/louisiana-students-loch-ness-monster-disprove-evolution_n_1624643.html&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;, but ultimately they all seem to echo the same source from the Scotland Herald, and it wouldn't be the first time that a worldwide media buzz all echo an initially incorrect source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;strong&gt;want&lt;/strong&gt; to disbelieve this. Is this really taught to schoolchildren in Louisiana?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T15:13:06.257" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T15:13:06.257" Title="Do (some) Louisiana schools teach the Loch Ness Monster as evidence for creationism?" Tags="|education|evolution|cryptozoology|loch-ness-monster|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14593" CreationDate="2013-01-19T01:34:42.730" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think it contributed (significantly) to the fall of the Roman empire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract of my source for this answer says the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lead was known to the ancients from at least the 4&#xA;  th&#xA;  millennium BC, but its use increased markedly during Roman times, to the extent that it became a health hazard.&#xA;  Mines and foundry furnaces caused air pollution; lead was extensively used in plumbing; domestic utensils were made of lead and pewter, and lead salts were used in cosmetics, medicines and paints. As a microbicide, lead was also used to preserve food.&#xA;  A grape juice concentrate (sapa) commonly used as a sweetener was prepared by preference in lead containers. Although Roman writers commented on the toxicity of&#xA;  lead, classic chronic lead poisoning was first described only in the 7&#xA;  th&#xA;  century AD. Skeletal lead content increased significantly in the Roman era, but peaked at a level only&#xA;  41-47% of that of modern Europeans. The authors thus suggest that chronic lead&#xA;  poisoning did not contribute significantly to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West. (p.1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me expand a little. First of all, the dangers of lead poisoning were known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ancient writers were aware of the dangers of lead compounds.&#xA;  Dioscorides (v.9.103) writes that ceruse, taken internally, could be fatal,&#xA;  and that certain sweet wines could adversely affect the abdomen and&#xA;  the nerves; Pliny the Elder (H.N. xxxiv.50.167; 54.175; xiv.22) notes&#xA;  the poisonous nature of lead fumes, the toxicity of certain lead compounds, and the diverse effects of wine containing sapa on different&#xA;  people; Celsus (De Medicina v.27.10-12) refers to the poisonous nature&#xA;  of white lead; Vitruvius (viii.6, 10, 11) writes that lead pipes cause&#xA;  disease (but as an architect continues to prescribe lead plumbing).&#xA;  Nicander, the Greek physician-poet of the 2&#xA;  nd&#xA;  century BC, is generally credited with the first description of lead poisoning. His poem&#xA;  about a disease caused by ceruse (lead carbonate), translated by Major&#xA;  (1959:312), describes what could well be acute lead poisoning, with&#xA;  acute symptoms of abdominal discomfort, vomiting, a sore mouth with&#xA;  an acrid taste, painful muscles and progressive paralysis, involuntary&#xA;  eye movement, disturbance of balance, hallucination and finally death&#xA;  (if untreated). It is noteworthy, however, that the clinical picture of chronic lead&#xA;  poisoning as we know it was not recognisably described in the period&#xA;  under discussion. (p.157)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in a nutshell, they did know one should be careful with lead. However, lead played a major role in the Graeco-Roman era. The main sources of pollution include (pp.155-156):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lead pipes and lead-lined canals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lead-containing paints and lead compounds in medicines and cosmetics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The pollution of food, wine and olive oil as a result of their preparation in pewter or lead containers and the addition of sugar of lead or sapa&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Workers in lead mines, foundries and lead production plants were&#xA;most exposed to lead pollution. It has been estimated that approximately 80 000 workers could have been involved annually at lead&#xA;mines or foundries, and a further 60 000 in the manufacturing&#xA;industry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, none of this proves (nor disproves) actual lead poisoning and its potential role in the decline of the Roman Empire. For that, we should look at archeological findings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The determination of bone lead levels relevant to this study has been&#xA;  performed by Grandjean (1978:304-6); there are extant Sudanese skeletons dating back as far as 3 300 BC, prehistoric Danish remains&#xA;  (Waldron &amp;amp; Wells 1979:102-15); skeletons from Britain, from the&#xA;  Roman occupation era (Aufderheide et al. 1981:285-91), remains from&#xA;  the North American colonial period (Drasch 1982:199-231), and skeletons from Peru (500-1 000 AD) and Europe (18&#xA;  th&#xA;  century BC to 20&#xA;  th&#xA;  century AD).&#xA;  The findings may be summarised as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the Sudanese and Peruvian data are taken as providing “zero&#xA;  values” for lead pollution, then the levels of lead in bone from&#xA;  that time to the modern period may be described as having multiplied from twenty-fold (Drasch 1982:199) to a hundred-fold&#xA;  (Grandjean 1978:305).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Despite wide intra-group variation, well-to-do communities demonstrate higher lead levels than the less well-off, and urban communities higher levels than rural populations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In occupied areas during the late Roman era, lead levels were at&#xA;  41-47% of present-day European levels. After AD 500 the levels&#xA;  dropped to 13% of modern levels, but during the Middle Ages they&#xA;  increased again to approximately the same levels as those of ancient&#xA;  Rome.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lead levels in the Roman capital were not significantly higher than&#xA;  in European legionary cities such as the present-day Augsburg. (p.158)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the final chapter, the authors mention several authors who have written on the topic (and also mention some of their own thoughts). A very strong argument against the lead-poisoning hypothesis, is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If lead pollution was indeed a serious problem in ancient Rome,&#xA;  the question arises as to why the typical clinical picture of chronic lead&#xA;  poisoning was not described, while the toxicity of lead compounds was&#xA;  apparently realised. (p.160)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Archaeological evidence based on the determination of lead&#xA;  in skeletons confirms that the average lead burden of the population&#xA;  of ancient Rome was less than half that of modern Europeans. (p.160)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In conclusion, it could be argued that the increased lead production which began in the 2&#xA;  nd&#xA;  millennium BC reached its zenith in ancient Rome. The accompanying lead pollution led to a drastic increase&#xA;  in the lead burden of the population, and in well-to-do communities&#xA;  in particular. Although clinical lead poisoning may well have occurred&#xA;  from time to time in certain areas and certain population groups,&#xA;  archaeological findings indicate that the average lead burden in the&#xA;  population was less than half that of a modern European living in the&#xA;  same area. The typical picture of chronic lead poisoning was not described until the 7&#xA;  th&#xA;  century AD. It is thus unlikely that lead poisoning&#xA;  could have had enough impact to have played any significant role in the&#xA;  decline of the Roman Empire in the West or its eventual fall towards&#xA;  the end of the 5&#xA;  th&#xA;  century AD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source (by Francois Retief and Louise P. Cilliers): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajol.info/index.php/actat/article/viewFile/52570/41176&quot;&gt;http://www.ajol.info/index.php/actat/article/viewFile/52570/41176&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10622" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T01:34:42.730" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14678" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-19T02:06:54.067" Score="6" ViewCount="8601" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people are claiming a semi-automatic rifle was not used in the Sandy Hook Massacre? Is this true, &lt;em&gt;was a semi-automatic rifle used in the Sandy Hook massacre?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/50208495&quot;&gt;NBC citing &quot;federal officials, and state officials&quot; the day after the shooting (Dec 15):&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There were actually four handguns recovered inside the school not just two as we were initially told. Four handguns. And, aparently &lt;em&gt;only handguns&lt;/em&gt;. [...] We knew that Adam Lanza, the man said to be the gunman here, also had an &lt;em&gt;assault style&lt;/em&gt; AR-15 style rifle that he had taken to the school that was in the car he drove there -- his mother's car. But, we've been told by several officials that he left that in the car.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;v=51NbmI94RLo&quot;&gt;MSNBC video&lt;/a&gt; shows the cops finding a &lt;em&gt;long gun&lt;/em&gt; in the trunk of his mother's car loaded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-23T23:14:38.417" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T02:39:28.630" Title="Was a semi-automatic rifle used in the Sandy Hook massacre?" Tags="|weapons|guns|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14679" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14687" CreationDate="2013-01-19T02:21:51.527" Score="10" ViewCount="10250" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Armstrong&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In October 1996, he was diagnosed with testicular cancer that had&#xA;  spread to his brain and lungs. His cancer treatments included brain&#xA;  and testicular surgery and extensive chemotherapy. In February 1997,&#xA;  he was declared cancer-free and the same year he founded the Lance&#xA;  Armstrong Foundation for cancer support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that Lance Armstrong really did have cancer, or was this a lie as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-01-20T20:32:03.330" LastActivityDate="2016-05-23T22:20:04.457" Title="Did Lance Armstrong Have Cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14680" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14688" CreationDate="2013-01-19T02:55:02.333" Score="13" ViewCount="12944" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.spiegel.de/international/world/a-853915.html#spRedirectedFrom=www&amp;amp;referrrer=http://www.google.com/search?q=kalashnikov+better+than+m16&amp;amp;hl=it&amp;amp;client=ms-rim&amp;amp;channel=browser&amp;amp;prmd=ivns&amp;amp;ei=nQb6UIiWHY7BtAbaxIGYAQ&amp;amp;start=10&amp;amp;sa=N&quot;&gt;Spiegel&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This automatic weapon [Kalashnikov], known in Russian simply as an &quot;avtomat,&quot; even receives the highest praise from Americans, Rogozin reported. Elite US military units use it, he added, even though the US Congress generally prefers to purchase only American-made weapons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do Elite US military units use Kalashnikov weapons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-19T08:51:39.373" LastActivityDate="2018-08-27T01:20:45.820" Title="Do Elite US military units use Kalashnikov weapons?" Tags="|united-states|weapons|military|army|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14678" CreationDate="2013-01-19T03:28:37.553" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Connecticut State Police have just released &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ct.gov/despp/cwp/view.asp?Q=517284&quot;&gt;a statement to settle the matter&lt;/a&gt;. They confirm what the media has been reporting since the dust of confusion settled the day after the event:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seized inside the school:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;#1. Bushmaster .223 caliber-- model XM15-E2S rifle with high capacity 30 round clips&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;#2. Glock 10 mm handgun&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;#3. Sig-Sauer P226   9mm handgun&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seized from suspect’s car in parking lot:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;#4. Izhmash Canta-12   12 gauge Shotgun    (seized from car in parking lot)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bushmaster.com/firearms/XM-15.asp&quot;&gt;Bushmaster XM15&lt;/a&gt; is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gandermountain.com/modperl/product/details.cgi?pdesc=Bushmaster_XM15_E2S_A3_Centerfire_Rifle&amp;amp;i=UF101041804&amp;amp;merchID=4004&amp;amp;r=view&amp;amp;uf=true&quot;&gt;semi-automatic&lt;/a&gt; rifle based on the AR-15 design that Armalite sold to Colt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11125" LastEditorUserId="11188" LastEditDate="2013-01-23T12:09:08.683" LastActivityDate="2013-01-23T12:09:08.683" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14683" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-19T04:59:30.670" Score="9" ViewCount="4067" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems there are at least a few contenders for the title of oldest known pyramids, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Egypt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bosnia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brazil&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Peru&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramids&quot;&gt;Egypt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The earliest known Egyptian pyramids are found at Saqqara, northwest of Memphis. The earliest among these is the Pyramid of Djoser (constructed 2630 BCE–2611 BCE) which was built during the third dynasty. This pyramid and its surrounding complex were designed by the architect Imhotep, and are &lt;strong&gt;generally considered to be the world's oldest monumental structures constructed of dressed masonry&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(strictly speaking, Egyptian pyramids are claiming to be the oldest &quot;monumental structures constructed of dressed masonry&quot;, and it is not clear - to me as a layperson - that the other pyramids compete in this category)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eutimes.net/2010/08/scientists-confirm-pyramids-in-bosnia-are-oldest-known-pyramids-in-the-world/&quot;&gt;Bosnia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition, &lt;strong&gt;90% of all these experts said that the the Bosnian pyramids are by far the world’s largest and oldest pyramids.&lt;/strong&gt; There are five (5) pyramids in Bosnia and it is said that they are 12000-26000 years old. In 2010 UNESCO added the Bosnian pyramids into their World Heritage sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I note that the UNESCO site &lt;a href=&quot;http://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/ba&quot;&gt;does not seem to list any Bosnian pyramids&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/worlds-oldest-pyramids-are-discovered-1353095.html&quot;&gt;Brazil&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dating from 3000BC, &lt;strong&gt;the oldest of the Brazilian pyramids predate the earliest Egyptian example by several hundred years&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral&quot;&gt;Peru&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Archaeologist Ruth Shady further explored the &lt;strong&gt;5,000 year-old city of pyramids&lt;/strong&gt; in the Peruvian desert, with its elaborate complex of temples, an amphitheater and ordinary houses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is fair to define &quot;pyramid&quot; as: &lt;em&gt;a monumental structure with a square or triangular base and sloping sides that meet at the top in a point&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which pyramids take the prize for being the first built?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T14:11:13.047" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T22:31:31.603" Title="Which are the oldest pyramids?" Tags="|history|pyramids|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14679" CreationDate="2013-01-19T12:18:55.293" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) produced a &lt;a href=&quot;http://d3epuodzu3wuis.cloudfront.net/ReasonedDecision.pdf&quot;&gt;report on its decisions&lt;/a&gt; against Armstrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the key pieces of evidence against Armstrong was the testimonial of fellow cyclist Frankie Andreu about what he heard in an Indiana hospital room, while Armstrong was being treated for cancer. That testimony was initially challenged by Armstrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, one of Armstrong’s doctors, Craig Nichols, confirmed that the &#xA;  very next day, October 28, 1996, Armstrong was set to begin chemotherapy consisting of the  intravenous administration of “an aggressive combination of cisplatin, etoposide, and infosfamide.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a doctor testified in an affadavit that Armstrong was receiving chemotherapy, providing strong evidence that Armstrong was indeed sick with cancer as claimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Side note: Armstrong later confessed that Andreu's testimony was accurate during the recent Oprah interview.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T12:18:55.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14680" CreationDate="2013-01-19T13:09:58.357" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most commonly known &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalashnikov&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kalashnikov&lt;/a&gt; weapon, so called because of the designer &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Kalashnikov&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mikhail Kalashnikov&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AK-47&lt;/a&gt; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47#Users&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; used&lt;/a&gt; as a matter of course by US Special Forces. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_carbine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;M4 carbine&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M16_rifle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;M16 rifle&lt;/a&gt; is currently the preferred choice, although it is on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_individual_weapons_of_the_U.S._Armed_Forces#In_active_service_3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;long&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanspecialops.com/special-ops-weapons/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;list&lt;/a&gt; of weapons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that is not to say that special forces are not trained in the use of the AK-47 or may pick it up as the circumstances dictate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ua9W0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;US Special Forces, AK-47 Training&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Special Forces training includes becoming familiar with the various&#xA;  weapons used by the enemy, including the ubiquitous Kalashnikov.&#xA;  U.S. Army Photo by Specialist David Gunn&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanspecialops.com/special-ops-weapons/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Special Ops&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-19T14:41:08.890" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T14:41:08.890" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14689" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-19T13:56:17.577" Score="15" ViewCount="806" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been a renewed interest recently in the effects of low doses of lead especially in children (see this question, for example: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14449/is-lead-exposure-responsible-for-the-rise-and-fall-of-violent-crime-in-the-us&quot;&gt;Is lead exposure responsible for the rise and fall of violent crime in the US?&lt;/a&gt;). Or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/made-in-britain-the-toxic-tetraethyl-lead-used-in-fuel-sold-to-worlds-poorest-8449967.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (slightly overblown) report about the continuing sale of lead additives to a small group of countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are several significant sources of lead exposure. Lead paint was once common in homes and toys, lead plumbing contributed significantly, several foodstuffs and especially canned products with lead-solder and many industrial sources all add to lead exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is essentially no argument that lead is dangerous. But Booker and North in their 2007 book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scared-Death-Global-Warming-Costing/dp/0826476201&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scared to Death&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (a sustained rant arguing the modern world has dramatically overreacted to safety and environmental concerns) argue that lead from petrol was not a major contribution to blood-lead levels. For example, they claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...epidemiologists published a study based on lead levels in maternal blood samples in south Wales. These had shown a fall of around 20% during a period when there had been no change in petrol sales in the area or in air lead levels. The researchers concluded that &lt;strong&gt;'petrol lead was at most a minor contributor to blood lead.'&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[the article referred to is &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01782988?LI=true&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; but paywalled]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the authors had &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/highwire/filestream/297044/field_highwire_article_pdf/0/291.1.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;previously argued&lt;/a&gt; that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we will probably never know the relevance of  petrol lead to blood lead despite the confidence expressed by many commentators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blood-lead levels were falling at significant rates (see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/313/7061/883.5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1996 BMJ article&lt;/a&gt;) before the bans on lead in petrol (which were driven as much by the incompatibility with catalytic converters as the lead exposure argument). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most commentators today seem to assume that petrol was the major contributor to lower lead in the environment and in people. The consensus view is summed up well by this quote from an editorial in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/bulletin/archives/80%2810%29768.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bulletin of the World Health Organisation in 2002&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The use of lead as a petrol additive has been a catastrophe for public health. Leaded petrol has caused more exposure to lead than any other source worldwide. By contaminating air, dust, soil, drinking- water and food crops, it has caused harmfully high human blood lead levels around the world, especially in children&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But do we have any clear evidence that this is true? Was petrol the big source of lead in our bodies or was it only a minor one, less important, for example, than banning leaded paint?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T00:24:29.367" Title="Did banning lead additives in petrol (gasoline) make a large contribution to lowering lead levels in people's blood?" Tags="|environmental-health|lead|gasoline|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14680" CreationDate="2013-01-19T16:16:59.500" Score="9" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Kalashnikov AK47&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The subject of Spiegel article is the AK47 designed in 1947 and, as that article suggests, now considered somewhat obsolete and inaccurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Calibre: 7.62 vs 5.56&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The AK47 uses a 7.62×39mm round.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under US influence, NATO switched from 7.62x51mm to 5.56×45mm to reduce recoil and improve rates of fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently this policy has been reversed somewhat as the 7.62 round is considered &lt;a href=&quot;http://defensetech.org/2010/01/08/brits-getting-into-the-7-62-vs-5-56-debate/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;more effective in current conflicts&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, some US military units would prefer to go back to using the older heavier calibre that is effective at longer ranges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there are a very large number of US and European made assault rifles that take the larger calibre ammunition - so this by itself is not a reason for using AK47s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;US Elite Units&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US armed forces include a large number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_special_operations_forces&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;units&lt;/a&gt; that have been described as elite. The Spiegel claim is therefore extremely vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Navy Seals&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.militaryfactory.com/smallarms/navy-seal-weapons.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Navy Seals&lt;/a&gt; use a huge variety of assault weapons including&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Colt M4 Carbine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fabrique Nationale FN Minimi&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fabrique Nationale FN SCAR (Mk 16 / Mk 17)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Heckler &amp;amp; Koch HK 416&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Heckler &amp;amp; Koch HK 417&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Heckler &amp;amp; Koch HK MP5 (and many variants)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Chinese Type 56 AR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last of these is an AK47 clone. There are reports of the Seals having purchased Chinese made AK47 clones (but not the Kalashnikov manufactured units).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ak47world.com/images/rifles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AK47World&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BOTH THE U.S. NAVY SEALS &amp;amp; FINLAND CHOSE NORINCO stamped type 56 AKM rifles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sofrep.com/navy-seals/weapons-gear/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sofrep&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The AK 47 is a selective-fire, gas-operated 7.62×39mm assault rifle, first developed in the Soviet Union by Mikhail Kalashnikov. The SEALs have the AK 47 in the inventory for a variety of missions. It is one of the most reliable weapons ever made and makes for a great choice when having to swim a weapon over the beach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't too surprising that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some special forces units may be trained to be able to pick up and use weapons dropped by their enemies. Therefore they may buy such weapons for training purposes at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some special forces units have access to an enormous range of weapons which they select from according to mission type. The AK47 may be just one of dozens (if not hundreds) of different types of rifle available to them, and may be used occasionally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T16:16:59.500" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14691" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-19T17:06:47.990" Score="19" ViewCount="966" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5974745/know-which-ingredients-in-lip-balm-actually-cause-dry-lips?post=56050586&quot;&gt;this LifeHacker article&lt;/a&gt;, some brands of lip balms actually cause the problem of dry lips rather than solve it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;America News Now spoke to dermatologist Gary Slaughter, who found&#xA;  camphor, phenol and menthol were the ingredients in bad lip balm. When&#xA;  you spread it on it seems to soothe at first, but quickly dries up and&#xA;  requires reapplication. Additionally, OL (which indicates alcohol) and&#xA;  salicylic acid are two more ingredients that may cause some people&#xA;  irritation. Look for these ingredients before buying. If you don't see&#xA;  them, you should be good to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, is applying &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_jelly&quot;&gt;petroleum jelly&lt;/a&gt; on your skin harmful? It seems to be a widespread belief even though the Wikipedia article claims otherwise. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5974745/?post=56050586&quot;&gt;this discussion&lt;/a&gt; on the above article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That article actually suggests that people use petroleum&#xA;  jelly on their lips. Are you SERIOUS? I get funny looks at the dentist&#xA;  when I refuse it, but you are not putting a byproduct of gasoline on&#xA;  my body. NOT HAPPENING.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4196" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T23:42:48.250" LastActivityDate="2015-03-21T17:29:30.707" Title="Do some ingredients in lip balm cause dry lips?" Tags="|consumer-products|environmental-health|dermatology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14955" CreationDate="2013-01-19T17:07:43.900" Score="11" ViewCount="24789" Body="&lt;p&gt;This diet is meant to be an updated version of the paleo diet, and it promises to give you killer abs with no exercise, eating 4,000+ KCal per day and sleeping 5 hours per night. It is also supposedly &amp;quot;based on science&amp;quot; (whereas paleo &amp;quot;isn't&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bulletproofexec.com/the-complete-illustrated-one-page-bulletproof-diet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.bulletproofexec.com/the-complete-illustrated-one-page-bulletproof-diet/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8CVAx.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8CVAx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;six pack dude&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bulletproofexec.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/dave_abs_manila-217x300.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bulletproofexec.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The photo in this post is taken under these conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have slept less than 5 hours per night on average for 2 continuous years, on purpose, because I am busy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I took the photo after I landed, following 20 hours in transit from Victoria, BC to the Philippines, by way of Narita, Japan, with no sleep along the way. The Crowne Plaza bathtub is behind me!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My grand total exercise in the last 2 years is 4 soft yoga classes completed 6 months ago, plus two five-minute kettelbell swing sessions two weeks before the photo. That’s it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have eaten between 4,000 and 4,500 calories per day on average of The Bulletproof Diet for 2 years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I used to weigh 300 lbs when I was obese&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's say that I am very, very skeptical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a revolutionary diet, a scam, a bad joke or what else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2022-12-31T09:31:39.350" LastActivityDate="2022-12-31T09:31:39.350" Title="Does the bulletproof diet work?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14676" CreationDate="2013-01-19T17:52:29.970" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without being able to scan in the page (or pages) in question I don't know if I can give you a definitive answer.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product_slideshow?sku=6011848&amp;amp;actual_sku=6011848&amp;amp;slide=1&amp;amp;action=Next&quot;&gt;The Table of contents of the book does list that dinosaurs are discussed on page 28&lt;/a&gt;.  If you page through the book, it is a very, very skewed view of pretty much everything in there, slanted towards the creationist viewpoint (the preview only goes to page 5).  I suppose I could waste the $3.30 to find out, but this level of silliness is not worthy of a single penny from me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christianpost.com/news/loch-ness-monsters-existence-being-taught-at-christian-schools-77287/&quot;&gt;A christian site itself repeats this story&lt;/a&gt;.  Remember, the level of absolute denial of evidence and (I will opine) crazy required to accept literal creationism is probably foreign to most people.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/2012/06/19/shocking_christian_school_textbooks_salpart/singleton/&quot;&gt;The lengths of the lies they will go to to promote their bronze age fairy tales sadly do not surprise me in the slightest.  Sadly, there are kids in Louisiana (and other places) that do get lied to on such a grand and gross scale&lt;/a&gt; (yes, they even deny nuclear fusion is happening in the sun...).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/creationism_accelerated_christian_education_and_the_loch_ness_monster&quot;&gt;This interview discusses some of the &quot;finer&quot; points of this type of education&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the students have to work in silence in these cubicles that they make for them, and there’s no social interaction. I think that educationally it’s quite damaging. They’re not allowed to question anything. I think that the purpose of education has to be to learn how to find stuff out for yourself. You can’t do that if you’re telling children, “No, this is all that you’re allowed to know, and this is all that you’re allowed to think.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christianbook.com/grade-9-biology-pace-1099/pd/6011848&quot;&gt;these books are specifically marketed to homeschooling christians, and christian schools&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;em&gt;currently&lt;/em&gt; are not part of the publicly funded education system.  As such, they should not be in the public schools, although given the behaviour of legislators in Louisiana, I think many wish these books were in there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, these books are not only in Louisiana.  As the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/creationism_accelerated_christian_education_and_the_loch_ness_monster&quot;&gt;interview link&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Accelerated Christian Education is a fundamentalist curriculum that started in Texas, and now it’s used in more than 5,000 schools around the world. Australia is one of the bigger, busier clients for accelerated Christian education outside of the U.S. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I weep for the poor children that are getting cheated of a reality based education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-01-19T20:49:55.530" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T20:49:55.530" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14694" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14697" CreationDate="2013-01-19T17:54:21.603" Score="2" ViewCount="1544" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been having this discussion with a friend. He has been suggesting that I try goat's milk as it would help with my stomach problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After looking around, I found some claims about how goat's milk has anti-inflammatory properties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few red flags were raised because he showed me a bottle powdered goat's milk with a brand of all natural supplement products. All the claims that I found were either on forums and websites that are proponents of the whole all natural eating woo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything to goats milk as an anti-inflammatory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10266" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T15:27:22.017" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T15:27:22.017" Title="Goat's milk as an anti-inflammatory?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|milk|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14696" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-19T18:46:05.277" Score="12" ViewCount="1017" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read in various news sites (&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3112170.stm&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/9617122/What-does-your-sleeping-position-say-about-you.html&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2219448/Your-sleeping-secrets-How-personality-traits-revealed-bodys-position-bed.html&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;) that sleeping position correlates with personality. Most go as far as describing what personality traits are linked to each different position but no mentions on the methodologies of the studies or how each trait was quantified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How credible are these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11131" LastActivityDate="2018-02-10T12:02:39.147" Title="Is there any correlation between sleeping position and personality?" Tags="|psychology|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14697" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14694" CreationDate="2013-01-19T19:36:22.240" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He has been suggesting that I try goats milk as it would help with my stomach problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would suggest visiting a doctor first and finding out whether you actually suffer from inflammation (and if so, what treatment he or she suggest). Stomach problems can have a huge variety of causes, inflammation only being one (and often a rather serious one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there anything to goats milk as an anti-inflamatory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It seems so, but much more research is needed to confirm this.&lt;/strong&gt; This &lt;a href=&quot;http://jn.nutrition.org/content/136/3/672.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://hera.ugr.es/doi/16516941.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;similar research&lt;/a&gt;) (both on rats, not on humans!) says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Goat milk OSs [Oligosaccharides] are good candidates to serve as effective prebiotic anti-inflammatory agents in IBD. They have been shown to 1) inhibit the adhesion of bacteria to the epithelial membrane, 2) reduce bacterial translocation in cell models, and 3) promote the selective growth of lactobacillus and bifidobacteria (1,2,6). Goat milk was initially selected as a source because of its relatively high concentration (as compared with cow milk) and the presence of branched OSs (14). Because of its presence in milk, these compounds are generally considered nontoxic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their conclusion mentions the potential of goat milk, but they also say that further studies are needed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In conclusion, goat milk OSs are anti-inflammatory when administered as a pretreatment in the TNBS model of rat colitis, a widely used preclinical model of IBD. Therefore, these compounds may be a valuable alternative to current therapies to treat IBD. Further studies are warranted to validate this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't been able to find any research conducted on humans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10622" LastActivityDate="2013-01-19T19:36:22.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10540" CreationDate="2013-01-20T02:37:59.473" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The OP is clearly not asking about the sort of entanglement effects seen in EPR-type experiments, so the gloves analogy is not relevant. He wants to know whether 'spooky action at a distance' is possible, ie whether FTL or even instantaneous communications are possible, ie whether the relativistic conception of a light cone is mistaken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/mathematical-breakthrough-sets-out-rules-for-more-effective-teleportation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cambridge University page&lt;/a&gt; says in relevant part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once considered impossible, in 1993 a team of scientists calculated&#xA;  that teleportation could work in principle using quantum laws. Quantum&#xA;  teleportation harnesses the ‘entanglement’ law to transmit&#xA;  particle-sized bites of information across potentially vast distances&#xA;  in an instant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that page does not further identify the 1993 'team of scientists', and I was unable to find anything further on them by Googling.&#xA;I suspect that this is poor reporting, and that causality remains inviolate.&#xA;I cannot see any claims to the contrary in the paper linked to on that Cambridge page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11136" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-01-20T14:36:30.620" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T14:36:30.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14665" CreationDate="2013-01-20T16:37:48.417" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the upper right corner of the video there a link to GAPFILMS.com . &#xA;If you go on that website you see that it's a company who produces viral videos. There no reason to assume that there a real iPhone app involved. It's just a company showing off their skills at video editing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T16:37:48.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14707" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15242" CreationDate="2013-01-20T16:41:50.277" Score="13" ViewCount="11087" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seriouslyfacts.me/the-ear-ringing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tinnitus (or ear ringing) is proven by scientists to be the result of&#xA;  an alerting loss of hearing ability. The reasons behind this might be&#xA;  varying from the normal process of growing old to an incident or a&#xA;  proximity to a loud noise. What happens in this case is that the brain&#xA;  tries to compensate for the lost sound frequencies and to create new&#xA;  noise. This is what our ears hear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Basically, every time you’re experiencing ear ringing, that means your&#xA;  limbic system (the brain section that deals with emotions and&#xA;  behavior) could not stop your auditory system from registering a sound&#xA;  it shouldn’t have been catching. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that ringing ears after a concert is a sign of permanent hearing loss, of a particular sound frequency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T13:08:26.960" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T13:08:26.960" Title="Does ringing ears after a concert mean hearing loss?" Tags="|music|ear|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-06-01T02:04:17.493" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14645" CreationDate="2013-01-20T19:13:49.303" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clinicalnutritionjournal.com/article/S0261-5614%2807%2900132-X/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2007 study&lt;/a&gt; published in the journal &lt;em&gt;Clinical Nutrition&lt;/em&gt; compared measurements obtained from a Tanita body-fat scale and DEXA scanning (which has replaced hydrostatic weighing as the most accurate way of measuring body-fat percentage). It reported a better than 96 percent level of agreement between the two methods (Thomson et al. 2007).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &quot;Racing Weight&quot;, by Matt Fitzgerald, 2009 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11147" LastActivityDate="2013-01-20T19:13:49.303" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13891" CreationDate="2013-01-20T20:05:05.177" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;A typical blue light therapy product such as the Philips goLITE is advertised as having the wavelength 460-485 nm, with an indicated peak wavelength of 468 nm ± 8 nm. While even exposure to normal daylight [1] increases the risk of such degeneration, blue light [2] is most likely to do this. Lipofuscin [2] and chronic inflammation [3] play roles. As far as I could tell, while the risk is still theoretical and not definitively proven in humans, it may very well exist. [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This affects older people more, as they are unable to prevent or repair everyday macular damage as younger people can. [2][6] There exist numerous controllable factors for macular degeneration and lipofuscin. Read the associated Wikipedia articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Persons with lighter eyes might be at a higher risk due to their limited melanin. I say &quot;might&quot; because they may require less therapeutic blue light to begin with than their dark eyed peers, potentially canceling the effect of eye color.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a dietary supplementation pov, you can supplement balanced-natural-carotenes (especially beta carotene [see note 1]), xanthophylls (lutein, zeaxanthin, astaxanthin, etc.), vitamin C (at least twice daily), vitamin E (full-spectrum only), fish oil (providing omega-3s including DHA, DPA, and EPA) (only if it's embedded w/ diverse antioxidants), and also zinc. [3–5]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion is to supplement all of the above [see note 2] if you use blue light therapy, and also review and prevent the other general risk factors for macular degeneration. If you're older than age 40, it may not be safe for you to try. [6] Finally, limit your usage, and avoid excessive usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Beta carotene supplementation is associated with increased mortality. I personally think this might be due to an imbalance of carotenoids caused by heavy supplementation of beta carotene, or potentially due to a difference in the stereoisomer distribution of synthetic beta carotene. Note also that alpha carotene, even though it's a half as effective source of vitamin A, is a more health promoting carotene. Various dietary carotenoids exist, and supplementation of only mostly beta carotene is likely to lead to an imbalance. I recommend using foods to obtain your carotenoids. Concurrent monounsatured fat intake is important for substantially boosting absorption of carotenes. Carrot juice and other such juices with organic extra virgin olive oil or organic avocado oil, if consumed daily, might make for a more efficient and effective source of large amounts of diverse carotenes - more than you can ever get from a pill. If, however, you are restricted to supplements only, &quot;Solgar Advanced Carotenoid Complex&quot; provides a balanced 1:2 ratio of natural palm-derived non-synthetic (alpha+gamma):beta carotenes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a general precaution, do not introduce more than one new supplement per one to two weeks. Take them daily.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Visible light and risk of age-related macular degeneration. (1990)&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1298584/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1298584/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do blue light filters confer protection against age-related macular degeneration? (2004)&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1350946204000412&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1350946204000412&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Age-related maculopathy and the impact of blue light hazard (2006)&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0420.2005.00627.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0420.2005.00627.x/full&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The role of oxidative stress in the pathogenesis of age-related macular degeneration. (2000)&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/11033038/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/11033038/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Evidence for protection against age-related macular degeneration by carotenoids and antioxidant vitamins. (1995)&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/62/6/1448S.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/62/6/1448S.short&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Retinal photodamage by endogenous and xenobiotic agents. (2010)&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22582903&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22582903&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11142" LastEditorUserId="11142" LastEditDate="2018-12-17T14:03:45.880" LastActivityDate="2018-12-17T14:03:45.880" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-02-05T12:23:35.187" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14715" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-21T10:33:27.583" Score="4" ViewCount="629" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2013/01/10/2003552175&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Police investigate claims of gambling with dying patients - Taipei Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Greater Taichung police on Tuesday said they have launched an&#xA;  investigation into a report that gamblers are betting tens of millions&#xA;  of dollars on the life expectancy of terminally ill cancer patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The investigation comes after the Chinese-language Next Magazine&#xA;  reported that gamblers in Greater Taichung — including the families&#xA;  and doctors of cancer patients — are placing bets as high as NT$1&#xA;  billion (US$34.5 million) on when a patient will die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Punters are allowed to visit cancer patients before placing their&#xA;  bets, which start at a minimum of NT$2,000, losing to the bookies if&#xA;  their selected patients die within a month, the magazine said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chinasmack.com/2013/stories/underground-gambling-on-when-cancer-patients-will-die-exposed.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Underground Gambling on When Cancer Patients Will Die Exposed - China Smack&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among the details mentioned in the above report, one is the payout. If&#xA;  the patient dies between 1 and 6 months, the bettor is paid 3x their&#xA;  wager. Government officials and family members can also get 10%&#xA;  dividend/share. However, if the patient dies within one month, there&#xA;  is no payout. After 6 months, the payout is decreased and if after a&#xA;  year, the bettor may lose money. “Even more ridiculous” is that&#xA;  doctors provided consultation for bettors on a patient’s condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is any underground activity happening at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is economic activity, was most of it gambling in the accepted meaning of the word?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that relatives of cancer sufferers may be worried about medical bills, and would be willing to pay a certain amount of money to ensure that if their relative survived for a few months and therefore got more of a medical bill, that they'd have some extra money to pay for it. Maybe the decreased payouts after 6 months or more is to ensure that only genuinely terminally ill people are bet upon, rather than elderly relatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By contrast, if someone (other than the bookie) is betting on an individual they have no financial interest in, then that would be seen as gambling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-11-17T04:36:00.867" Title="Are Taiwanese people gambling on when cancer sufferers will die?" Tags="|medical-science|economics|gambling|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14718" CreationDate="2013-01-21T13:24:22.733" Score="8" ViewCount="4494" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a story about a scientist who wanted to know what Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN, Prussic Acid) tasted like, but couldn't because he died before he could write it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it requires at least 25-30 seconds even in large doses, according to most resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if I were to put a tiny bit of cyanide on my tongue and spit it out, would I die?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/suicide-note-reveals-taste-of-cyanide/2006/07/08/1152240534587.html&quot;&gt;Reference&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8564" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T15:25:07.433" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T09:12:55.917" Title="Does anyone know what cyanide tastes like?" Tags="|environmental-health|toxicology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14717" CreationDate="2013-01-21T13:51:15.063" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN) has the odor/taste of bitter almonds. Exposure to 10-30 ppm HCN in air can result in a metallic taste being reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=PyUSgdZUGr4C&amp;amp;pg=PA711&amp;amp;lpg=PA711&amp;amp;dq=%22HCN%22%20taste%20concentration&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=IKUWbawUkZ&amp;amp;sig=kgz73QCwZkFND1Vk13Haho3sVCA&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=CUT9UNNwj8KzBtvngaAI&amp;amp;ved=0CDoQ6AEwAQ#v=snippet&amp;amp;q=taste&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Clinical Environmental Health and Toxic Exposures&lt;/a&gt;, by John Burke Sullivan and Gary R. Kreiger, page 711.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HCN can be detected at levels from as low as 1ppm and the fatal dose, depending on the time of exposure, is much higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some people can detect hydrogen cyanide by odor or taste sensation at a concentration of 1 ppm in air while most people can detect 5 ppm. OSHA has set 4.7 ppm as the maximum, average safe exposure limit for a 15 min period. [...] A small concentration of cyanide always exists in a person's body, and the body has a mechanism to continuously remove small amounts of cyanide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=j3AwCqvqIzEC&amp;amp;pg=PA1221&amp;amp;lpg=PA1221&amp;amp;dq=%22HCN%22%20taste%20concentration&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=3UbxQxnTaQ&amp;amp;sig=Epe0YXuzbteWaYrD1BsKul5B-Qw&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=CUT9UNNwj8KzBtvngaAI&amp;amp;ved=0CEoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22HCN%22%20taste%20concentration&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Riegel's Handbook of Industrial Chemistry&lt;/a&gt; by von Emil Raymond Riegel, James Albert Kent, page 1221.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hpa.org.uk/webc/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1202487078453&quot;&gt;toxicological overview&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10701" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T16:23:51.537" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T16:23:51.537" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14721" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-21T15:51:04.900" Score="3" ViewCount="494" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got the cold, and my mother who is a physician told me to drink lots of chicken soup as it helps relieve the symptoms of the disease. When I asked her if it really helps more than other hot beverages, she claimed that it contains anti inflammatory properties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same claim is shared about chicken soup as a &quot;folk remedy&quot; for the common cold by many, from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_soup&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chicken soup has also acquired the reputation of a folk remedy for colds and flus, and in many countries is considered a comfort food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T15:51:04.900" Title="Does chicken soup helps fight the common cold more than other hot beverages?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14721" CreationDate="2013-01-21T15:51:04.900" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The results are not conclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two main studies that regard that Issue. The study &lt;a href=&quot;http://journal.publications.chestnet.org/article.aspx?articleid=1079188&quot;&gt;Chicken Soup Inhibits Neutrophil Chemotaxis In Vitro&lt;/a&gt;, suggest that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The present study, therefore, suggests that chicken soup may contain a number of substances with beneficial medicinal activity. A mild anti-inflammatory effect could be one mechanism by which the soup could result in the mitigation of symptomatic upper respiratory tract infections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/359266&quot;&gt;Effects of drinking hot water, cold water, and chicken soup on nasal mucus velocity and nasal airflow resistance&lt;/a&gt; compares chicken soup to hot water and concludes that chicken soup is better that hot water:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We conclude that drinking hot fluids transiently increases nasal mucus velocity in part or totally through the nasal inhalation of water vapor. Hot chicken soup, either through the aroma sensed at the posterior nares or through a mechanism related to taste, appears to possess an additional substance for increasing nasal mucus velocity. Finally, hot liquid might be superior to cold liquids in the management of fluids in upper respiratory tract infections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/12/the-science-of-chicken-soup/&quot;&gt;this NYT article&lt;/a&gt; points out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;None of the research is conclusive, and it’s not known whether the changes measured in the laboratory really have a meaningful effect on people with cold symptoms&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One additional factor that should be taken in, is that the symptoms of flu and the common cold include &lt;a href=&quot;http://symptom.healthline.com/symptomsearch?addterm=Fatigue&amp;amp;addterm=Loss%20Of%20Appetite&quot;&gt;fatigue and loss of appetite&lt;/a&gt;, which may cause a sick person to not want to eat any food and by thus preventing the intake of important nutrients. Chicken soup, which is made primarily from chicken and vegetables, contains many nutritious substances that can be digested through drinking and by that help the recovery process. As the NYT article states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, at the very least, chicken soup with vegetables contains lots of healthy nutrients, increases hydration and tastes good, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastActivityDate="2013-01-21T15:51:04.900" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14723" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14725" CreationDate="2013-01-21T16:32:27.830" Score="10" ViewCount="12163" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1u5niWYA3Tw&quot;&gt;this interview&lt;/a&gt; (0:35 mark) Ann Coulter argues that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... home invasions are 10 times higher in Britain than they are in this country [US]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any evidence to support this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-01-21T17:06:59.417" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T10:13:31.217" Title="Are there 10 time more home invasions in the UK than the USA?" Tags="|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14723" CreationDate="2013-01-21T17:57:33.570" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=%22home+invasions%22+site%3Awww.anncoulter.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;search for &quot;home invasions&quot; at www.anncoulter.com&lt;/a&gt; there are currently no hits. So it seems she does not care to provide there any evidence for her claim. Perhaps she views it as a throwaway remark of no importance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can find no references that Ann Coulter gives to the sources for this number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other people, who do appear to have good references, give a much different number, and give several reasons why the data should be treated with caution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are differences in reporting terms (&quot;home invasion&quot; vs &quot;hot burglary&quot; - which may not be exactly equivalent), differences in the way police categorise crimes and demographic differences which may need to be taken into account)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://definitions.uslegal.com/h/home-invasion/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Home invasion is generally an unauthorized and forceful entry into a dwelling. It is a crime governed by state laws, which vary by state.&lt;/a&gt;. The fact that the term's definition varies makes it hard to compare numbers meaningfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems Ann Coulter's number is both exaggerated and careless of the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://home.uchicago.edu/~ludwigj/papers/Brookings-Burglary-Policing-Ch3-2003.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evaluating &#xA;Gun Policy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the prevalence of household gun possession is much higher in the United&#xA;  States than in Canada, Britain, and other wealthy nations, one common test of&#xA;  the “deterrence” hypothesis has been to compare residential burglary rates and&#xA;  patterns across these nations. As it turns out, relevant data are hard to come by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One obvious problem with these comparisons is that the hot burglary&#xA;  rate for each country or city is measured at a different point in time. For two&#xA;  countries—the United States and Great Britain—survey measures of hot&#xA;  burglary rates are available for a common year, 1998. When we standardize&#xA;  for period effects in this way, the difference across the two countries in the hot&#xA;  burglary rate is reduced from the factor of 4 or 5 to 1 reported by Kleck and&#xA;  Kopel (top panel) to &lt;strong&gt;a factor of about 2 to 1&lt;/strong&gt; (bottom panel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 28 percent of American burglaries NCVS respondents &#xA;  did not know their whereabouts at the time of the burglary, a category that is &#xA;  not included in the British Crime Survey (BCS). Judging from the open-ended &#xA;  narratives provided by BCS burglary victims, a number of cases in which the respondent  apparently did not know whether anyone was at home at the time of &#xA;  the burglary are classiﬁed as “respondent home, unaware of the burglary.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More important,even if we had comparable data there would remain the fact&#xA;  that a variety of potential explanations are plausible for an observed difference&#xA;  in the percentage of residential burglaries that involve occupied dwellings. For&#xA;  example, when burglars are arrested, the punishment is more certain and severe&#xA;  in the United States than in England and Wales (table 3-2). The difference in&#xA;  penalties provides an alternative explanation for why American burglars take&#xA;  extra care to avoid contact with victims. American and British households differ in several other ways that are also likely to affect the cost-beneﬁt calculus facing burglars, including substantial differences in the proportion of households&#xA;  that have dogs or lack men. Without controlling for the other differences that&#xA;  may be important, &lt;strong&gt;attributing the disparity in hot burglary rates to one particular difference—gun prevalence—is entirely unpersuasive&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My emphasis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also another side to this, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/usa/news/florida-door-to-door-house-roop-265/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;door to door salesmen&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/21/us/defense-depicts-japanese-boy-as-scary.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lost partygoers&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1994/01/08/us/homeowner-shoots-tourist-by-mistake-in-texas-police-say.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;drunk tourists seeking help&lt;/a&gt; might be more likely to be shot dead by householders in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;one would much rather that twenty guilty persons should escape the punishment of death, than that one innocent person should be condemned and suffer capitally.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; - Sir John Fortescue's De Laudibus Legum Angliae (c. 1470)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-01-24T10:13:31.217" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T10:13:31.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6686" CreationDate="2013-01-21T21:04:32.523" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is possible, but many modern Remote Start units have safety features that prevent this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an automatic transmission vehicle, the safety mechanism is simpler in that it only needs to check if the car is in &lt;code&gt;Park&lt;/code&gt;. If it is not, it simply won't start the vehicle. In fact, most cars do no allow the starter to turn if the transmission is not in &lt;code&gt;Park&lt;/code&gt; or the brake is not depressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a manual, things get a little more complicated. I have installed two units similar to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.viper.com/P-5204V/Viper-5204-Responder-Le-2-way-Security-And-Remote-Start-System&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;(older model) in manual transmission vehicles. In the installation manual, you will see several additional components that need to be installed for a manual vehicle. The full installation manual is hard to come by online as it is usually shipped only to certified installers (Best Buy, Car Toys, etc). You can usually find these guides on car forums if you search hard enough. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.directeddealers.com/manuals/OG/Viper/G5204V%202011-08%20web2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is the owners manual. On page 31 under the header &lt;code&gt;Manual Transmission Start (MTS mode)&lt;/code&gt; are instructions on how to use the remote start feature on a manual transmission vehicle. The short version is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bring the vehicle to a stop with the engine running and foot still on brake&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engage the hand brake&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Release the foot brake&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Within 20 seconds, press the remote start button on your remote&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exit the vehicle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lock vehicle. This will also turn the vehicle off&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind this is that if you can leave your vehicle while it is still running, then it will be safe when the car is remote started. If the car is ever opened (detected via door sensors), the parking brake is disengaged, brake is depressed, or in more advanced units, the transmission has been moved into gear after the remote start sequence has been performed (above), the remote start functionality will be deactivated until it is properly set up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I suppose it's possible to be a funny man and shift the car into gear after the process above has been complete; open window, not actually leaving the car, etc. The root of the answer then lies in the configuration of the remote start and the car itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the units I have installed, you can configure the time the starter is engage in two different ways. These options will dictate how long the car will try to start for; how long the car will move for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Auto-Detect&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 1 usually requires a wire to be connected to the car's tachometer. After installation, you must &lt;code&gt;Learn the tach&lt;/code&gt;, meaning make the remote start unit recognize what the output of the tach wire is when the car is on. Using this method, the remote start will engage the starter until a similar tach reading is found. There is usually a top end time limit for this as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Option 2 is simple. You pick a length in time to have the starter engaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The starter is also an important component. As your car ages, your starter will not crank as well. The stronger your starter, the more force it can apply to the engine and thus the wheels (if transmission is engaged). It would be possible for a car to be started in gear, but not be strong enough to defeat the friction of the parking brake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, if you manage to bypass all the safety mechanisms and happen to have a strong starter, it is quite possible for a vehicle to &quot;Come alive&quot; and start rolling forward, though, the actual reaction would be more accurately described as jumping forward. In fact, I used to work at a mall where someone accidentally activated their remote starter (not properly installed). Their car ended up in a dental office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Someone mentioned that the clutch need to be engaged to start a manual transmission. This is not the case if viper alarms (sort of). There is a wire that becomes active when the remote start is activated. This wire is connected to a relay which connects to the wires behind the clutch pedal. When the remote start is activated, this setup simulates the clutch pedal being pressed, allowing the car to be started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11169" LastEditorUserId="11169" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T21:22:03.003" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T21:22:03.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14730" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-21T23:08:43.933" Score="22" ViewCount="1226" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard this story repeated by various news sites about a software developer in the US who outsourced his own job to China, without his employer's knowledge&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original source is is &lt;a href=&quot;https://securityblog.verizonbusiness.com/2013/01/14/case-study-pro-active-log-review-might-be-a-good-idea/&quot;&gt;Verizon's Security Blog&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story has been reported widely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourcommunity/2013/01/developer-outsources-his-own-job-to-china-watches-cat-videos-instead.html&quot;&gt;CBC&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/17/business/us-outsource-job-china/&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21043693&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=employee%20outsources%20own%20job%20to%20china&quot;&gt;Google&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Verizon has no hard details at all and the story sounds like the half-baked plans my friends and I had when we were young to get by with doing no work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone verified or debunked this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7682" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:05:04.043" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:05:04.043" Title="Did a US software developer outsource his own job to China?" Tags="|work|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13792" CreationDate="2013-01-22T01:47:14.880" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seem to be a two studies that tested the ability of practioners of that method and it found that they can substantially influence their body temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lib.semi.ac.cn:8080/tsh/dzzy/wsqk/Nature/295-234.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Benson et al 1982). Body temperature changes during the practice of g Tum-mo (heat) yoga. Nature, 295, 234-236.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;: We report here that in a study performed there in February 1981, we found that these subjects exhibit the capacity to increase the temperature of their fingers and toes by as much as 8.3°&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/04.18/09-tummo.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cromie 2002&lt;/a&gt;: In a monastery in northern India, thinly clad Tibetan monks sat quietly in a room where the temperature was a chilly 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Using a yoga technique known as g Tum-mo, they entered a state of deep meditation. Other monks soaked 3-by-6-foot sheets in cold water (49 degrees) and placed them over the meditators' shoulders. For untrained people, such frigid wrappings would produce uncontrolled shivering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If body temperatures continue to drop under these conditions, death can result. But it was not long before steam began rising from the sheets. As a result of body heat produced by the monks during meditation, the sheets dried in about an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally don't find it surprising that trained monks can produce a lot of heat during meditation. I personally have been able to produce enough warmth during meditation to feel warm without in a room with an open window during winter. At the same time I did freeze with clothes. I didn't even have to do anything to intentionally raise my body temperature. At the time I had less than 250 hours of practice. You don't need any mysterious secrets to produce heat during mediation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-22T01:47:14.880" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14730" CreationDate="2013-01-22T02:25:55.077" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;While there have certainly been stories widely reported in the news that turned out to be untrue, this doesn't read like one of them. The key is the entry on the Verizon security blog. Whereas 'urban legend' stories are usually short on specifics, and often cite unnamed 'friends of friends', the Verizon report claims that it was actually them who dealt with this incident. It is entirely understandable that they don't name either the person or the company. Given the widespread attention given this story it is highly likely that Verizon would have taken this story down if it had been a prank or an early April Fool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The poster is named (another thing that tends not to happen with urban legends) and exists and is a security professional according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG4L1zLzKc8&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tmforum.org/TuesdayNovember8/KnowledgeisPowerto/47229/article.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. He claims that he has personal knowledge of the incident - something that would probably get him fired if Verizon knew he was lying. According to several reports &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Business/us-software-developer-busted-employer-outsourcing-job-china/story?id=18230346&quot;&gt;he spoke to ABC News about it&lt;/a&gt;. Some reports have details that are not in the original security blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all I see no reason to doubt the truth of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2015-08-13T09:48:04.690" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T09:48:04.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14736" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14771" CreationDate="2013-01-22T10:23:06.237" Score="17" ViewCount="1779" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Sweden at least you were always told growing up that girls matured a lot quicker than boys did. Back then I bought that statement as it was, seeing that girls the same age were more interested in older boys and that their overall persona/behaviour generally was a lot more calm/down to earth/stable compared to most boys in my social environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, growing up I've begun to question this statement. I believe the assumption more resides to the gender specific roles that we apply to our children depending on which sex they happen to be born with. A boy is usually encouraged to be impulsive/reactionary/risk taking where as a girl is encouraged to be more laid-back/reasoning/responsibility-taking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if there is any credible research on the subject that can prove my reasoning right or wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10655" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2013-01-22T16:36:37.400" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T17:51:39.850" Title="Do girls mature more quickly than boys?" Tags="|sweden|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14738" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14895" CreationDate="2013-01-22T15:22:26.417" Score="22" ViewCount="1562" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/21/vatican-secret-property-empire-mussolini&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Guardian, 21 January 2013&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But these office blocks in one of London's most expensive districts&#xA;  are part of a surprising secret commercial property empire owned by&#xA;  the Vatican.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Behind a disguised offshore company structure, the church's&#xA;  international portfolio has been built up over the years, using cash&#xA;  originally handed over by Mussolini in return for papal recognition of&#xA;  the Italian fascist regime in 1929.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The surprising aspect for some will be the lengths to which the Vatican has gone to preserve secrecy about the Mussolini millions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the Vatican receive millions from Mussolini and use it to built a secret property empire, and, also, tried to hide the ownership of all those properties?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="8702" LastEditDate="2014-06-07T12:18:18.893" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T12:18:18.893" Title="Did the Vatican build a secret property empire using Mussolini's millions?" Tags="|history|italy|vatican|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14739" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-22T17:35:22.037" Score="21" ViewCount="2249" Body="&lt;p&gt;Memory foam and related products have claims like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.tempur.com/Tempur-material/material,default,pg.html&quot;&gt;TEMPUR Mattresses create a custom fit for your body, virtually eliminating painful pressure points and reducing your body’s need to toss and turn in search of a comfortable, pain-free sleeping position.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ergoflex.co.uk/&quot;&gt;Visco-Elastic memory foam mattresses are commended by medical professionals across Scandinavia and used in the health sector throughout mainland Europe due to their widely recognised therapeutic benefits.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of these mattresses are also sold as &quot;orthopedic&quot;, implying some kind of beneficial effects. There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rcn.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/109843/002444.pdf&quot;&gt;some notes&lt;/a&gt; about memory foam and pressure ulcers, but little about back pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have only been able to find two very small, potentially relevant studies, and I can't even tell what the &quot;selected bedding system&quot; is in the second article without access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20579971&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20579971&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11896375&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11896375&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: Is there any evidence that memory foam mattresses help reduce back pain? Either during night-time or during the day after sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11159" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T00:05:53.173" LastActivityDate="2017-08-17T10:18:23.167" Title="Do memory foam mattresses help reduce back pain?" Tags="|environmental-health|sleep|memory-foam|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14742" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14749" CreationDate="2013-01-22T18:21:57.380" Score="18" ViewCount="12248" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several movies and tv shows in which a character attempts to use a credit card, only to find that it's been cancelled.  This usually results in the card being cut up.  In the trailer for the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2024432/&quot;&gt;Identity Thief&lt;/a&gt;, they even went so far as to state that they are required to cut up the card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this actually happen in real life?  Do businesses actually require denied cards to be cut up?  Or is this just a trope that's been passed along in movies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4683" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:24:28.230" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:24:28.230" Title="Are businesses required to cut up credit cards?" Tags="|banking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14745" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-22T21:26:26.427" Score="25" ViewCount="7057" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across the following list. &quot;Top 10 biggest brain damaging habits&quot;. Although they're all interesting &quot;food&quot; for skepticism, I will focus on #1, because I find this a peculiar claim. Some other claims are already on this site, e.g. about &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/7081/5337&quot;&gt;working your brain during illness&lt;/a&gt; (unanswered though!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iORKV.png&quot; alt=&quot;&amp;quot;Top 10 biggest brain damaging habits&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;No breakfast. People who do not take breakfast are going to have a lower blood sugar level. This leads to an insufficient supply of nutrients to the brain causing brain degeneration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/755/5337&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; is also about breakfast, but does not specifically address the issue of the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T01:39:08.590" Title="Is a lack of breakfast the #1 brain damaging habit?" Tags="|nutrition|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10127" CreationDate="2013-01-22T22:51:58.057" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The study below &lt;strong&gt;suggests that it is true&lt;/strong&gt;. Whether the evidence is sufficiently conclusive for the question about easier running is debatable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bestaven E, Guillaud E, Cazalets J-R (2012) Is “Circling” Behavior in Humans Related to Postural Asymmetry? PLoS ONE 7(9): e43861. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0043861.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0043861&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Available online, open-access&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this study, they led blindfolded people attempt to walk straight in a room without any clues. They found that, for the total number of trials, 50% trajectories terminated on the left side, 39% on the right side and 11% were defined as “straight”. Quoting from the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results were considered statistically significant for P&amp;lt;0.05. (...) One striking characteristic is the wide variability of the trajectories; some of them reached the edge of the area (Y axis) in less than 30 m (in the X direction) while other trajectories still remained straight at 140 m. The majority (50%) of the trajectories ended on the left side, 39% on the right side and 11% were defined as “straight”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This result shows that statistically speaking, on average, people do tend to turn left more easily than right, although the variability is large. This may suggest that &lt;em&gt;running&lt;/em&gt; in a left-hand turn (counter-clockwise) is easier than in a right-hand turn (clockwise), because the left-hand turn would — statistically speaking — be the most likely to happen among the three alternatives left, straight, or right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;, this may not be strictly on-topic on Skeptics.SE, but quoting from the abstract (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Posturographic analysis, used to assess if there was a relationship between functional postural asymmetry and veering revealed that &lt;strong&gt;the mean position of the center of foot pressure during balance tests was correlated with the turning score&lt;/strong&gt;. Finally, we established that the mean position of the center of pressure was correlated with perceived verticality assessed by a subjective verticality test. Together, our results suggest that &lt;strong&gt;veering is related to a “sense of straight ahead” that could be shaped by vestibular inputs&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if we believe this article, neither of the reasons you quoted is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thanks go to my secondary school Biology teacher for his claim (some time around 2002) that when people cross over a field of grass in a park (e.g. to cut off a corner), the resulting path is not straight, but slightly curved, as can be easily seen by looking at the trail; he said that this was due to the asymmetry of the human body. I found the above article by his merit.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2017-05-16T19:00:12.217" LastActivityDate="2017-05-16T19:00:12.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14742" CreationDate="2013-01-23T00:05:42.167" Score="20" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Do businesses actually require denied cards to be cut up?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not &lt;em&gt;required&lt;/em&gt;, but some credit-card providers do &lt;em&gt;advise&lt;/em&gt; merchants to cut up fraudulently-used cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.streamline.com/customer-zone/operating-instructions/merchant-operating-instructions-reducing-fraud/&quot;&gt;Merchant Operating Instructions for reducing Fraud&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If the Authorisation Centre asks you to retain the card&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Explain politely that the card issuer has asked you to hold onto the card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Preserving evidence&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Preserve the card:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Don't cut the card in half!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Handle it by the edges so as to preserve fingerprints. &lt;strong&gt;Cut off the bottom left-hand corner&lt;/strong&gt; (as seen from the front).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Don't damage any other part of the card.  Handle it as little as possible and place it in a plastic bag or envelope until you can give it to the Police.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/card-acceptance-guidelines-for-visa-merchants.pdf&quot;&gt;Card Acceptance Guidelines for Visa Merchants&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tell the cardholder you have been instructed to keep the card, and that he or &#xA;  she may call the card issuer for more information .    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• &lt;strong&gt;Cut the card&lt;/strong&gt; according to acquirer procedures &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other Business just require merchants to retain the card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mastercard.com/us/merchant/pdf/BM-Entire_Manual_public.pdf&quot;&gt;MasterCard Rules&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the Merchant receives a “capture card” or “pick-up-card” response to an&#xA;  authorization request, the Merchant must not complete the Transaction. &lt;strong&gt;The&#xA;  Merchant must retain the Card&lt;/strong&gt; by reasonable and peaceful means,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have any ownership rights to the card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-01-24T17:41:53.083" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T17:41:53.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14756" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-23T14:52:07.280" Score="11" ViewCount="445" Body="&lt;p&gt;A morning talk radio program was discussing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotopic_sensitivity_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scotopic sensitivity syndrome&lt;/a&gt; and made the claim that in schools where fluorescent lighting had been replaced with indirect non-fluorescent lighting had more than 30% less absences due to illness and significantly less incidence of misbehavior requiring formal disciplinary actions.  However I am not finding any documentation to back up the claims.  Is there any or is this just a case of a statistic being made up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2017-03-21T16:23:56.800" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T16:23:56.800" Title="Does fluorescent lighting in schools correlate to increased illness and behavior problems?" Tags="|environmental-health|children|behavior|light|school|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14760" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14768" CreationDate="2013-01-23T17:53:59.923" Score="12" ViewCount="3189" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of articles like &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.sejalvora.com/2010/10/25/the-truth-about-refined-cooking-oil/&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; which say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Refining [of oils] is accomplished with the addition of sodium hydroxide and&#xA;  temperatures around 450 degrees. The refined oil is not considered&#xA;  edible without further processing, such as filtration, deodorization,&#xA;  bleaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The process of refining oils is equivalent to the refining of whole&#xA;  wheat and whole sugar into white ones. In all cases, &lt;strong&gt;one takes a&#xA;  product full of natural vitamins, minerals, enzymes and other food&#xA;  factors and reduces the original natural food into a relative&#xA;  “nonfood”—devitalized, stripped.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do oils become less nutritional or harmful after refining?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, why are supermarket shelves full of refined oils (at least&#xA;here in India)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are unrefined oils harmful in other ways?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4212" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T19:58:57.510" Title="Are refined edible oils unhealthy compared to unrefined ones?" Tags="|nutrition|oil|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14739" CreationDate="2013-01-24T00:33:33.453" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170117154511/http://www.chiroaccess.com/Articles/The-Effect-of-Sleep-Surfaces-on-Shoulder-and-Back-Pain.aspx?id=0000186&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;another list of studies&lt;/a&gt;, crosschecked with a PubMed search that yielded only a few relevant hits (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17549199&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; for example). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In review, the results appear mixed and sometimes contradictory. The sample sizes are small and lack controls. The field of chiropractics where such research is often published itself borders on being a pseudo-science. In addition, I would want to make sure that none of these studies are sponsored by the mattress companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question, then, is ultimately: no, there is no good evidence that memory foam mattresses help reduce back pain.&lt;sup&gt;†&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies are few, the terms are ill-defined, and the results are inconclusive. Much depends on the type of back pain, its underlying cause, the preferred sleeping position, sleeping habits, age, weight, and medical history of the subject. In short, it looks like a messy (and unprofitable) thing to study (too many variables), which would perhaps explain the lack of convincing results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;†&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Please note that this answer does not constitute medical advice. It is only meant to summarize published research related to the topic and limited to the cited sources. Consult your physician about what these results may mean for your health.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2017-01-17T15:46:37.280" LastActivityDate="2017-01-17T15:46:37.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14766" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14773" CreationDate="2013-01-24T01:37:25.110" Score="8" ViewCount="1155" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/iraq-records-huge-rise-in-birth-defects-8210444.html&quot;&gt;a few&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/30/faulluja-birth-defects-iraq&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; on depleted uranium rounds possibly causing birth defects in the last few years, but most of the articles have a 'doubter'.  From what I can tell, the numbers aren't conclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehjournal.net/content/4/1/17&quot;&gt;This environmental health site's paper&lt;/a&gt; seems to suggest it's a real thing, but I don't know how much to trust the site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would someone with better science and google-fu be able to shed some light on this please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10510" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T17:05:29.773" Title="Do depleted uranium shells cause birth defects?" Tags="|radiation|war|birth|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14766" CreationDate="2013-01-24T02:58:53.510" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would expect so, but not from a radiological standpoint. Depleted uranium is a heavy metal, like lead and mercury, and so I would expect similar toxic effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are well aware of the dangers lead and mercury pose with regards to birth defects, and we also know uranium is very similar to lead chemically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing a bit of searching, seems most studies focus in on the radiological effects, but I did find &lt;a href=&quot;http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q746.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q746.html&lt;/a&gt; which concludes confirming my expectations: &lt;strong&gt;uranium is about as dangerous as lead.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="824" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T02:58:53.510" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14760" CreationDate="2013-01-24T05:28:56.787" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few things first to clear the air. (1) &quot;Refined&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02662990&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;can mean many things&lt;/a&gt; from simple filtration of foreign particles to a complicated process involving many steps, techniques, and chemicals. (2) The blog you link is not a reputable source, and neither are most &quot;health food&quot; sites that pop up when doing a search on this subject. As good skeptics, we want some measure of science, and even then we need to examine the evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that out of the way, let's just understand the basic bargain. Unrefined oil contains &quot;impurities&quot; some of them good for you, like nutrients or plant proteins, and some bad, like plant carcinogens or rat feces. Good and bad, these &quot;adulterants&quot; may taste bad, burn, or spoil easily. In general, unrefined oil will &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02605721&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;burn at a lower temperature&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://lipidlibrary.aocs.org/processing/degum-intro/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;spoil faster than refined&lt;/a&gt;. Conversely, refined oil can withstand higher heat and will keep longer. That is the big picture here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to your questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do oils become less nutritional after refining? A definite yes. The refining process &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02582328&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;removes iron, calcium, and magnesium among other things&lt;/a&gt;. Less harmful? That is a much more difficult question. &lt;a href=&quot;http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/87/11/836.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt;, for example, finds that &quot;epidemiologic investigations of lung cancer among Chinese women have implicated exposure to indoor air pollution from wok cooking, where the volatile emissions from unrefined cooking oils are mutagenic.&quot; In other words, if you are going to burn things over a fire, you better burn the pure stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Why are refined oils popular in India, and elsewhere? In the words of Roy A. Carr in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02605721&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal of the American Oil Chemists’ Society&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Crude vegetable oil contain variable amounts of non-glyceride impurities, such as free fatty acids, non fatty materials generally classified as &quot;gums&quot; or phosphatides, color pigments, moisture, and dirt. Most of these materials are detrimental to the finished product color, flavor, and smoking ability, and must be removed by purification step. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are unrefined oils harmful in other ways? The answer is again, unclear. Unrefined oils by definition contain stuff that is unaccounted for, some bad and some good. Refining produces a uniform product with known and controlled contaminants (hence journals with appetizing titles like &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/journal/11746&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oil and Soap&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Please note that this answer does not constitute medical advice. It is only meant to summarize published research related to the original claim and limited to the cited sources. Consult your physician about what these results may mean for your health.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-08-28T19:58:57.510" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T19:58:57.510" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14756" CreationDate="2013-01-24T05:50:56.180" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have the rep to comment yet, but I think the general answer to your question was covered &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7510/do-fluorescent-lights-cause-stress&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, I am not sure how Scotopic sensitivity syndrome (SSS) is connected to Florescent lighting and school performance. PubMed has exactly 26 articles on the syndrome, with only one possibly relevant to this discussion. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7995893&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Comparison of Irlen scotopic sensitivity syndrome test results to academic and visual performance data&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, Lopes et. al. conclude that &quot;no significant relationships were found between academic classification and degree of SSS.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that in mind, I am inclined to agree with you in suspecting vague, pseudo-scientific radio fear mongering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that this answer does not constitute medical advice. It is only meant to summarize published research related to the topic and limited the cited sources. Consult your physician about what these results may mean for your health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2015-05-24T18:53:15.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14766" CreationDate="2013-01-24T06:49:15.930" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERmabAyg4X0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;documentary on public german TV&lt;/a&gt; on this specific subject, given the footage and claims in there that'd be a clear yes, depending on the level exposure to radiation. In the film, the film maker visits a physician in Basra, Iraq, who clearly confirms this hypothesis from his empirical perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you happen to come across such a used shell, pick it up and bring it to Germany, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERmabAyg4X0#14m03s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; will happen. You will get charged with a felony for setting free radiation. &lt;em&gt;Notable fact:&lt;/em&gt; The (otherwise renowned) film-maker went to court to get the documentary broadcasted on the public TV channel that had initially ordered it and won. It then was broadcasted only once, very late at night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't wanna sound like a conspiracy-nut, but the effort displayed here to keep this issue out of the average citizen's awareness is a clear indicator it's no good at all. Thus, i find it conclusive you're having a hard time getting your hands on some hard facts and/or research on this specific issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11210" LastEditorUserId="11210" LastEditDate="2013-01-24T07:14:44.520" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T07:14:44.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14736" CreationDate="2013-01-24T08:24:23.093" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recommend the following two articles that go a ways towards answering your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0033850&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sex Matters during Adolescence: Testosterone-Related Cortical Thickness Maturation Differs between Boys and Girls&lt;/a&gt; by Bramen, Hranilovich, et.al. Relevant quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Studies have shown sex differences in hormone-related brain maturation when boys and girls are age-matched, however, because girls mature 1–2 years earlier than boys, these sex differences could be confounded by pubertal maturation.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The age-related developmental trajectories of male and female adolescents are different, and modified by androgen-receptor genetic subtypes, confirming results from recent studies of sex-differences in hormone/puberty-correlated maturation.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Because frontal lobes are important for impulse control and risk/reward assessments, are known to functionally mature during puberty, and have important functional connections with medial temporal lobe structures, such as the amygdala, we expected to extend our findings to this report where we focus on cortical thickness.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of literature for review here, but the gist is that girls reach sexual maturity earlier, which corresponds to the development of certain brain structures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Two:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boysadrift.com/2007Giedd.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sexual dimorphism of brain developmental trajectories during&#xA;childhood and adolescence&lt;/a&gt; by Lenroot, Gogtay, et. al. Relevant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Both cortical and subcortical gray matter trajectories follow an inverted U shaped path with peak sizes 1 to 2 years earlier in females.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary and in (partial) answer to your question, with many caveats outlined in the above to papers, &lt;strong&gt;girl brains develop faster than boy brains&lt;/strong&gt;. This may correspond to earlier &amp;quot;maturation&amp;quot; in the colloquial sense, if that sense is understood, for example, as the development of the frontal lobe, which is responsible for impulse control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue of whether such differences are affected by nurture is not addressed in these studies. There is however &lt;strong&gt;strong evidence for significant physiological differences&lt;/strong&gt; in the rate of brain development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T17:51:39.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14798" CreationDate="2013-01-24T08:37:56.163" Score="22" ViewCount="13796" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a common belief that married people live longer than single people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9796903/Stay-single-die-younger-say-scientists.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Men and women who are married or in long-term relationships are more likely to survive to old age than singletons, research suggests&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So stark was the difference in outcomes that those who never married or settled down with a long-term companion were more than twice as likely to die in middle age than those who had been in a stable relationship throughout their adult life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides the fact that married people are involved in mandatory tasks which single people do not and these tasks shorten their real lives significantly, I was wondering do married people really live longer? If some statics confirm this, I was wondering does marriage (or having a partner) affect the life expectancy of a person, and how does marriage do that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11212" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T12:46:52.133" Title="Do married people live longer than single people?" Tags="|life-expectancy|marriage|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14766" CreationDate="2013-01-24T08:44:47.437" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that wikipedia pretty much answer the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are some controversies, but it seems that the majority of the studies points toward a correlation between exposure to DU and the risk of birth defects in children.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium#Gulf_War_syndrome_and_soldier_complaints&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Depleted uranium - Gulf War syndrome and soldier complaints&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human epidemiological evidence is consistent with increased risk of&#xA;birth defects in the offspring of persons exposed to DU.[10] A 2001&#xA;study of 15,000 February 1991 U.S. Gulf War combat veterans and 15,000&#xA;control veterans found that the Gulf War veterans were 1.8 (fathers)&#xA;to 2.8 (mothers) times more likely to have children with birth&#xA;defects.[97] After examination of children's medical records two years&#xA;later, the birth defect rate increased by more than 20%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I would like to point out that the primary hazard is chemical and not radioactive (from the same page)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary radiation danger from depleted uranium is due to alpha&#xA;particles, which do not travel far through air, and do not penetrate&#xA;clothing. Thus, the primary concern is internal exposure, due to&#xA;inhalation, ingestion or shrapnel contamination. Available evidence&#xA;suggests that this risk is small relative to the chemical hazard&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ewh-semt/pubs/radiation/uranium-eng.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Environmental and Workplace Health : Depleted Uranium&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insoluble depleted uranium is considered the most hazardous form for&#xA;inhalation as it remains in the lungs. A dose of 1 millisievert would&#xA;be received from inhaling 8 milligrams of insoluble depleted uranium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soluble depleted uranium is the most hazardous form for ingestion as&#xA;it is absorbed into the body. A dose of 1 millisievert would be&#xA;received from ingesting about 1400 milligrams of soluble depleted&#xA;uranium. This route of exposure presents only a small fraction of the&#xA;potential radiological risk of inhalation for the same amount of&#xA;intake. The relative radiological risks for ingestion and inhalation&#xA;are 1:200, if the depleted uranium contains equal amounts of soluble&#xA;and insoluble forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;External exposure to depleted uranium presents&#xA;the least hazard. A person could be completely surrounded by depleted&#xA;uranium 24 hours a day for a week before receiving a 1 millisievert&#xA;dose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T08:44:47.437" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14772" CreationDate="2013-01-24T12:13:20.113" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150568/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The main article I could find on this is a 2008 article&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150568/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; This study actually measures &quot;self-rated health&quot; which is then used by news agencies as a surrogate for life expectancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the link between life expectancy and being married depends on the quality of this surrogate variable. (I can't find the sample size anywhere, which makes interpreting that a little tricky).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key finding is that married people do rate themselves as healthier than single people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be because married life is happier than single life, so people of the same health are likely to rate themselves as healthier due to a kind of mental illusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be that the benefits of being married - regular sex, more regular home cooked food, perhaps even trying to stay in shape for your partner - do lead to a real effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this were Mythbusters, I'd go with &quot;Plausable&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150568/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; The Times They Are a Changin’: Marital Status and Health Differentials from 1972 to 2003 by Hui Liu and Debra J. Umberson; J Health Soc Behav. 2008 September; 49(3): 239–253. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150568/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3150568/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5961" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2013-01-24T18:06:42.827" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T18:06:42.827" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14777" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14783" CreationDate="2013-01-24T15:55:58.820" Score="1" ViewCount="10614" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Expressionless&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The story goes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In June of 1972, a woman appeared in Cedar Senai hospital in nothing but a white, blood-covered gown. Now this, in itself, should not be too surprising as people often have accidents nearby and come to the nearest hospital for medical attention, but there were two things that caused people who saw her to vomit and flee in terror.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;The first being that she wasn't exactly human. she resembled something close to a mannequin, but had the dexterity and fluidity of a normal human being. Her face, was as flawless as a mannequins, devoid of eyebrows and smeared in make-up.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was a kitten clamped in her jaws so unnaturally tight that no teeth could be seen, and the blood was still squirting out over her gown and onto the floor. She then pulled it out of her mouth, tossed it aside and collapsed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From the moment she stepped through the entrance to when she was taken to a hospital room and cleaned up before being prepped for sedation, she was completely calm, expressionless and motionless. The doctors thought it best to restrain her until the authorities could arrive and she did not protest. They were unable to get any kind of response from her and most staff members felt too uncomfortable to look directly at her for more than a few seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the second the staff tried to sedate her, she fought back with extreme force. Two members of staff had to hold her down as her body rose up on the bed with that same, blank expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She turned her emotionless eyes towards the male doctor and did something unusual. She smiled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As she did, the female doctor screamed and let go out of shock. In the woman's mouth were not human teeth, but long, sharp spikes. Too long for her mouth to close fully without causing any damage…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The male doctor stared back at her for a moment before asking &quot;What in the hell are you?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She cracked her neck down to her shoulder to observe him, still smiling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was a long pause, the security had been alerted and could be heard coming down the hallway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As he heard them approach, she darted forward, sinking her teeth into the front of his throat, ripping out his jugular and letting him fall to the floor, gasping for air as he choked on his own blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She stood up and leaned over him, her face coming dangerously close to his as the life faded from his eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She leaned closer and whispered in his ear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I...am....God....&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The doctor's eyes filled with fear as he watched her calmly walk away to greet the security men. His last ever sight would be watching her feast on them one by one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The female doctor who survived the incident named her &quot;The Expressionless&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There was never a sighting of her again.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be an urban legend, usually accompanied by the following photo:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GNksT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;the expressionless woman&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that any of the above actually occurred, and that the photo has any relation to a woman of the sort described in the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:40:22.410" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:40:22.410" Title="Was there an &quot;expressionless&quot; woman admitted to Cedar Senai hospital in LA in 1972?" Tags="|history|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14780" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-24T21:09:37.063" Score="7" ViewCount="855" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard many times that if you keep a pet, you tend to live longer. I have many friends and family members whom have pets and no pets, and I can't seem to see a pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could the environmental, cultural and ethnicity have a bigger impact on longevity than having a pet?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11232" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-01-24T21:10:15.910" LastActivityDate="2024-02-20T08:01:10.130" Title="Do folks who live with a pet have a longer life?" Tags="|life-expectancy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2057" CreationDate="2013-01-24T21:50:05.750" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From stackexchange.biology &lt;a href=&quot;https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/5529/evolution-in-37-years-is-it-possible&quot;&gt;Evolution in 37 Years, is it possible?&lt;/a&gt; is quite an example for this question. It investigates the speciation of two lizard groups in 37 years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1971, biologists moved five adult pairs of Italian wall lizards&#xA;  from their home island of Pod Kopiste, in the South Adriatic Sea, to&#xA;  the neighboring island of Pod Mrcaru. Now, an international team of&#xA;  researchers has shown that introducing these small, green-backed&#xA;  lizards, Podarcis sicula, to a new environment caused them to undergo&#xA;  rapid and large-scale evolutionary changes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3087" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:10.240" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T21:50:05.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14777" CreationDate="2013-01-24T23:12:51.633" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, this story is a good example of how an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_legend&quot;&gt;urban legend&lt;/a&gt; can spread and get reported as true. While there is the interesting coincidence that the Cedar Senai hospital in the story is similar &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedars-Sinai_Medical_Center&quot;&gt;Cedars-Sinai Medical Center&lt;/a&gt; in Los Angeles, California, the actual story itself is fictional and reported as such by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/User%3aIvysir&quot;&gt;author Ivysir&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I write a lot of mediocore [sic] CreepyPasta, best known (so far) for &quot;The&#xA;  Expressionless&quot; which has since gone viral on several forums, which&#xA;  i'm [sic] eternally grateful for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Expressionless&quot;&gt;original story&lt;/a&gt; can be found to contain the code &quot;OC&quot; which indicates &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/User_Submissions&quot;&gt;Original Content&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2013-01-24T23:12:51.633" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-01-24T23:12:51.633" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14784" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14840" CreationDate="2013-01-24T23:33:13.183" Score="49" ViewCount="17474" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is commonly heard that murderers (or other criminals) &quot;always return to the scene of the crime&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, that's certainly false for &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; murderers. However, it is suggested that murderers do have a tendency to return to the scene of the crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do a significant number of murderers pay another visit to the scene of the crime shortly after committing the crime?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10354" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T21:24:34.507" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T01:43:37.087" Title="Do murderers tend to return to the scene of the crime?" Tags="|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14791" CreationDate="2013-01-25T00:25:05.220" Score="4" ViewCount="967" Body="&lt;p&gt;I been reading some articles online that claim that scientists have discovered a way to live without breathing for up to 30 minutes by injecting a lipid solution into a bloodstream. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/5921868/scientists-invent-particles-that-will-let-you-live-without-breathing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scientists Invent Particles That Will Let You Live Without Breathing&lt;/a&gt; (Gizmodo)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The articles seem quite convincing and promising but I just want to make sure if this is true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8106" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T15:08:21.163" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T16:27:03.930" Title="Did scientists discover a way to live without breathing for 30 minutes?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1558" CreationDate="2013-01-25T04:53:51.013" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to an article published in Prescriber’s Letter, a&#xA;  prescribing journal for medical doctors, the benefits of gargling for&#xA;  the prevention of colds and flu is still unclear. A small study&#xA;  published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine conducted by&#xA;  Japanese researchers showed that gargling with water was not only&#xA;  effective in reducing the incidence of the common cold, but it was&#xA;  also superior to gargling with an iodine solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://healthmad.com/health/benefits-of-gargling-does-it-prevent-the-common-cold/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Benefits of Gargling: Does It Prevent the Common Cold?&lt;/a&gt; by Kristie Leong MD&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11255" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T13:36:12.537" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T13:36:12.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14780" CreationDate="2013-01-25T14:35:35.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some health benefits but the extent of these benefits is under some doubt. I can find no research into whether this lengthens human life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CDC &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/healthypets/health-benefits/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;say&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pets can decrease your:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Blood pressure &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Cholesterol levels&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Triglyceride levels&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Feelings of loneliness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pets can increase your:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Opportunities for exercise and outdoor activities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Opportunities for socialization&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/331/7527/1252&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pet ownership and human health: a brief review of evidence and issues&lt;/a&gt; the BMJ say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Similarly, recent research has failed to support earlier findings that pet ownership is associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, a reduced use of general practitioner services, or any psychological or physical benefits on health for community dwelling older people. Research has, however, pointed to significantly less absenteeism from school through sickness among children who live with pets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-11-10T00:08:09.807" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T00:08:09.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14785" CreationDate="2013-01-25T15:54:44.723" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The source of the articles is &lt;em&gt;Science Translational Medicine&lt;/em&gt;, which is a peer reviewed journal under the auspices of the AAAS. Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/4/140/140ra88.abstract?sid=4b0da906-01ac-4276-9e44-b1c38c4236e6&quot;&gt;abstract of the article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have developed an injectable foam suspension containing self-assembling, lipid-based microparticles encapsulating a core of pure oxygen gas for intravenous injection. Prototype suspensions were manufactured to contain between 50 and 90 ml of oxygen gas per deciliter of suspension. Particle size was polydisperse, with a mean particle diameter between 2 and 4 μm. When mixed with human blood ex vivo, oxygen transfer from 70 volume % microparticles was complete within 4 s. When the microparticles were infused by intravenous injection into hypoxemic rabbits, arterial saturations increased within seconds to near-normal levels; this was followed by a decrease in oxygen tensions after stopping the infusions. The particles were also infused into rabbits undergoing 15 min of complete tracheal occlusion. Oxygen microparticles significantly decreased the degree of hypoxemia in these rabbits, and the incidence of cardiac arrest and organ injury was reduced compared to controls. The ability to administer oxygen and other gases directly to the bloodstream may represent a technique for short-term rescue of profoundly hypoxemic patients, to selectively augment oxygen delivery to at-risk organs, or for novel diagnostic techniques. Furthermore, the ability to titrate gas infusions rapidly may minimize oxygen-related toxicity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the Gizmodo article is more news than science, I know of no reason to doubt the underlying truth of the original journal article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-01-25T20:24:23.660" LastActivityDate="2013-01-25T20:24:23.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14792" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-25T17:02:33.413" Score="10" ViewCount="2239" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-extend-the-life-of-your-Razor-Blade-keeping/&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjSkgz3-2Ig&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;, amongst others, claim that you can extend the useful lifespan of razor blades for a substantial amount (months), if you regularly stroke them over jeans, immediately after using them. Aforementioned article states that this is also known as the Blue Jean Sharpening Method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence for this claim? And if so, how does it work? And lastly, is this supposed to work with other types of fabric and/or cloth as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1170" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T10:45:34.173" Title="Can the useful lifespan of razor blades be extended by stroking them over jeans?" Tags="|physics|consumer-products|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14797" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14800" CreationDate="2013-01-26T17:53:45.560" Score="3" ViewCount="1768" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohemian_Grove&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; : The membership list has included every Republican and some Democratic U.S. presidents since 1923, many cabinet officials, directors and CEOs of large corporations including major financial institutions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true that every Republican president since 1923 was a member of the Bohemian Grove?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="4212" LastEditDate="2013-01-27T10:09:13.117" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T10:09:13.117" Title="Was every Republican President since 1923 a Member of the Bohemian Grove?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14772" CreationDate="2013-01-26T21:33:34.487" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, married people seem to live longer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The apparent pattern that marriage seems to be good for you was first noted in the 19th century. But it has been confirmed in many studies since, though many of those suffer because they don't adequately adjust for other risk factors and, therefore, failt to &lt;em&gt;isolate&lt;/em&gt; the effect of being married.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are several accessible (ish, some are paywalled) modern studies. The &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1059766/pdf/jepicomh00204-0042.pdf&quot;&gt;Ben-Shlomo Et. Al.&lt;/em&gt; study&lt;/a&gt; in 1993 concluded (my emphasis in all quotes):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overall mortality&#xA;  was greater for all groups of unmarried  men.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Patterns of mortality were different in the&#xA;  subgroups of unmarried men. Widowed men&#xA;  had a significantly greater risk of dying from&#xA;  ischaemic heart disease (relative risk(RR)&#xA;  1.46,95% confidence interval (CI) 1.08, 1.97)&#xA;  which persisted after exclusion of deaths that&#xA;  occurred in the first two years. Divorced men&#xA;  had greater cancer mortality (RR 1.49. 95%&#xA;  that could not be explained simply by their greater consumption of cigarettes. The initial increased mortality for &#xA;  single men was no longer evident after adjustment for other risk factors, suggesting  that single status in itself may not increase the risk.The risk for single men may have  been underestimated, however, by over adjustment for possible intermediary factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So men seem to benefit from marriage (this study didn't look at female mortality). But it is worth noting that quite a lot of the risk seems to explained by known lifestyle differences between married and unmarried people. The trouble with many of these adjustments is that they are intended to estimate the &lt;em&gt;independent&lt;/em&gt; effect of marriage. But marriage may directly lower people's desire to smoke, eat unhealthy diets and live with little exercise, so adjusting for these factors may underestimate the benefits of marriage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more &lt;a href=&quot;http://jech.bmj.com/content/60/9/760.abstract&quot;&gt;recent review by Kaplan and Kronick&lt;/a&gt; in 2006 (paywalled, unfortunately) supports those conclusions. The abstract summarises: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Controlling for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, &lt;strong&gt;the death rate for people who were unmarried was significantly higher than it was for those who were married and living with their spouses.&lt;/strong&gt; Although the effect was significant for all categories of unmarried, it was strongest for those who had never married. The never married effect was seen for both sexes, and was significantly stronger for men than for women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many studies show that the benefit of marriage seems to be larger for men than women (which is only fair as women already live significantly longer ;-) ). A &lt;a href=&quot;http://jech.bmj.com/content/66/7/e22.abstract&quot;&gt;recent (2011) Swiss study&lt;/a&gt; (also paywalled) concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The benefit of being married was stronger for men than for women&lt;/strong&gt;; however, mortality patterns were similar, with higher mortality in divorced and single individuals compared with widowed individuals (&amp;lt;80 years). After adjustment for living arrangements, the gender difference by marital status disappeared. Stratification by living arrangement revealed that mortality risks were highest for 45–64-year-old divorced (HR 1.72 (95% CI 1.67 to 1.76)) and single men (HR 1.67 (95% CI 1.63 to 1.71)) who lived alone. In women of the same age, the highest mortality risk was observed for those who were single and living with a partner (HR 1.70 (95% CI 1.58 to 1.82)). In older age groups, the impact of marital status decreased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there appears to be some benefit to women of marriage, though not as much as for men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4779267.stm&quot;&gt;BBC news story&lt;/a&gt; summarised much of the evidence thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Those who had never married were at greater risk than those who were separated or divorced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indeed, the risks of being never married, in terms of odds, rival the risks of having increased blood pressure or high cholesterol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Never marrieds were 58% more likely to have died than peers who were married and living with their spouse in 1989.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Those who had been widowed were almost 40% more likely to die, and those who had been divorced or separated were 27% more likely to die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you have to be careful using those numbers, as the BBC don't report the underlying mortality rate for the groups (a group having a 2% chance of death per year when married might have a 3% change when unmarried giving a 50% higher mortality). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So current evidence suggests being married is good for you, perhaps partially because married people behave in more healthy ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB I expect the literature should contain some good quality meta-analyses and reviews, but I have not yet found any. I will add references if and when I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T21:33:34.487" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14797" CreationDate="2013-01-26T22:31:31.980" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 'source' for the Wikipedia statement was a 'conspiracy theory' page of the Sonoma County Free Press. This isn't a reliable source for the claim by Wikipedia's standards, and the statement has since been removed from Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://conspiracies.skepticproject.com/articles/alex-jones/dark-secrets-inside-bohemian-grove/page/2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; is a pretty thorough debunking of claims about Bohemian Grove made by Alex Jones (gun nut and conspiracy theorist), which points out that Calvin Coolidge (Republican President 1923-29) was not a member. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T22:31:31.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14797" CreationDate="2013-01-26T22:39:49.877" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;One little inconstancy: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/bohos/insidebohogrove.html&quot;&gt;elsewhere on that same site&lt;/a&gt; it specifies that it's every Republican president since Coolidge (1923-1929 has been a member. I'd normally include 1923-1929 in &quot;since 1923&quot;. I can't find any basis for claiming Coolidge as a member. A small matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best source of information I could find on the Bohemian Club was Peter Phillip's doctoral dissertation &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://library.sonoma.edu/regional/faculty/phillips/bohemian.pdf&quot;&gt;A Relative Advantage: Sociology of the San Francisco Bohemian Club&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. According to that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Bohemian Grove has long been a political networking point for Republicans.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Dewey, Hoover, Wilkie, Eisenhower, Taft, Goldwater, Nixon, Bush, Ford, and Reagan &#xA;  have all been members or guests at the Grove along with significant numbers of cabinet &#xA;  members and White House officials (Van der Zee, Domhoff 1974).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This list does, indeed, include every Republican president since Coolidge (excluding GW Bush, who was elected after the thesis was written). However, that list is members and guests, not just members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For Hoover, Wikipedia cites the book &quot;The Greatest Men's Party on Earth: Inside the Bohemian Grove&quot; as stating that Hoover had joined in 1913. Phillip's thesis attests that Hoover gave lakeside chats every year from 1932 until his 1964 death.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phillip's thesis describes an incident of fellow-member geniality between President Eisenhower and John Howell.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nixon and Ford are described as members in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCDs9Vs2iYM&quot;&gt;1981 news report&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reagan: Mentioned as a guest in 1971, at which point he was the governor of California. He is described as a member in that news report as well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GHW Bush: Bush Sr was confirmed as a member by a White House press aide to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/01/us/bush-belongs-to-3-men-s-clubs.html&quot;&gt;NY Times reporter&lt;/a&gt;. In Phillips' thesis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In book shelves along the river road wall are camp scrap books, showing pictures of Mandalay Camp members  going back fifty years.  George Bush's picture along with Henry Kissinger and George Schultz was in the 1991 album. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Although many conspiracy theory websites claim that George W Bush is a member, the few reputable sources I can find which mention such give no indication of how they might have discerned it - other than look at all the conspiracy theory websites that claim it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  Most other sources do not claim Coolidge as a member, and I can't confirm George W. Bush's membership (though it's certainly plausible). It does seem fairly reasonable to believe that all Republican presidents between those two were members, however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="143" LastActivityDate="2013-01-26T22:39:49.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14803" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-27T02:20:56.340" Score="6" ViewCount="328" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently came across a journal entry, written in December 2012, about racial violence in Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entry mentioned an incident against a woman targeted for singing in French. I assume this refers to an alleged incident against Fanny Desaintjores involving racist abuse and attempted violence: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/i-realised-he-wasnt-kidding--i-stopped-laughing-20121122-29r48.html&quot;&gt;I realised he wasn't kidding ... I stopped laughing&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entry also mentioned an alleged spate of racial violence against Koreans. The entry didn't have any links, but I assume &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/2012/11/27/09/32/korean-media-report-racist-attacks-in-australia&quot;&gt;Aussies accused of 'racist violence' in Korean press&lt;/a&gt; is the kind of thing the blogger was referring to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the entry also mentioned an alleged spate of violence against Indians a couple of years ago. I assume the author is referring to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_Indians_in_Australia_controversy&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. The author mentioned that the Australian government denied that the violence was racially motivated, but she didn't believe the government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought the idea of a spate of racially motivated violence against Indians was debunked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard that most of the high profile assault cases that made international headlines turned out to either be violence done by Indians against other Indians, or some Indians trying to commit insurance fraud via arson, and injuring themselves and trying to attribute the arson to racially motivated violence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also heard Indian students were highly represented in being victims of robberies, but that they involved Indian students merely because they were working in late night shifts (due to their studies), and therefore more vulnerable to robbery, and that race didn't play a role in the robberies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Australia, during the late 2000s, and the early 2010s, was there a major spate of violence, committed by people who were not of Indian or related nationality, where the victims were Indian? If so, was the victims' ethnicity or nationality a factor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T02:20:56.340" Title="Was there a recent spate of violence against Indians in Australia?" Tags="|criminology|australia|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14804" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14807" CreationDate="2013-01-27T07:01:25.230" Score="26" ViewCount="3115" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some claims on anti-death penalty sites that death penalty (in USA) costs are significantly more then costs of long-time imprisonment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=42&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;For example&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The death penalty is much more expensive than life without parole because the Constitution requires a long and complex judicial process for capital cases. This process is needed in order to ensure that innocent men and woman are not executed for crimes they did not commit, and even with these protections the risk of executing an innocent person can not be completely eliminated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the death penalty was replaced with a sentence of Life Without the Possibility of Parole*, which costs millions less and also ensures that the public is protected while eliminating the risk of an irreversible mistake, the money saved could be spent on programs that actually improve the communities in which we live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this calculation accurate? Or does life-long imprisonment include almost all same costs? e.g. appeals, careful investigations, higher costs to house, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-01-12T01:45:03.770" Title="Do death penalty cases cost the state more than life-long imprisonment?" Tags="|united-states|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14805" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14808" CreationDate="2013-01-27T08:00:47.040" Score="6" ViewCount="4161" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often heard people saying that instant noodles are bad for our bodies, because they contain a wax coating and wax causes Cancer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First: do noodles contain a wax coating?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: Is it true that wax causes Cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8279" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-01-27T12:58:33.920" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T02:27:03.887" Title="Are Instant Noodles bad for people's health?" Tags="|nutrition|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14804" CreationDate="2013-01-27T08:21:17.933" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=42&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The source that you provided&lt;/a&gt; does a very good job in citing its credible sources and should suffice alone. But it touches only California, and it's not the only source out there and there are many others (although some cite the same sources). There are news reports about the high costs of execution in different US states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesrepublican.com/page/content.detail/id/283968/Lawmaker-says-he-ll-introduce-death-penalty-bill-.html?isap=1&amp;amp;nav=5013&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In Illinois&lt;/a&gt; (In an article about Iowa):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost of prosecuting death penalty cases makes them difficult for governments, said Andrea Lyon, an Illinois death penalty defense lawyer. She noted that one reason Illinois abolished capital punishment two years ago was because it cost the state so much to prosecute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The cost to try, convict and imprison someone for life is a quarter of what it costs to give them the death penalty,” she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/the-high-cost-of-the-death-penalty/Content?oid=1216304&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In North Carolina&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In North Carolina, Sen. Floyd McKissick, D-Durham, recently told the House Ways and Means Committee, &amp;quot;We might want to, at some point, revisit whether the death penalty ought to be imposed, or whether we ought to impose a life sentence without parole, because it's a strong, persuasive and convincing argument when you talk about the astronomical expense of capital cases.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In California:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R88AHtXmIKA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R88AHtXmIKA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since 1978 Tax payers have spent more than 4B dollars on capital punishment in California alone, or about 308M dollars for each of the 13 executions carried out since then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Death Penalty Information Center also has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/costs-death-penalty&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;page with the costs of execution in different states&lt;/a&gt;, and while they are an organisation that apposes the death penalty they cite credible sources for their information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The counter argument to the cost is that the capital punishment is a moral choice that the American/each state's public wants and they are willing to pay the appropriate price, as cited in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57547053/despite-cost-calif-votes-to-keep-death-penalty/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article about the failure of prop 34 in California&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The people of California sent a clear message that the death penalty should still be implemented for those who commit the most heinous and unthinkable crimes,&amp;quot; said McGregor Scott, the former U.S. attorney for Sacramento who served as the opposition's co-chairman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HOWEVER&lt;/strong&gt;, it should be noted that it's not the process of the execution itself that costs all that money (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/the-high-cost-of-the-death-penalty/Content?oid=1216304&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The process costs only around 500$&lt;/a&gt;), but the process of lengthy litigation, multiple appeals and the fact that a prisoner sits on Death Row for a long time, in 2010 the average was 178 months, which is almost 15 years (according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/cp10st.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Bureau of Justice&lt;/a&gt;) contribute to the high costs of the capital panishment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1jEPq.png&quot; alt=&quot;Graph&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2012/09/25/why-death-row-inmates-oppose-life-without-parole/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;at least in California&lt;/a&gt;) inmates on the death row prefer to stay on death row rather than get Life without Parole:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is so counter-intuitive to what most people believe about capital punishment that its worth repeating.  People on death row, not just folks in an abstract all night dorm room discussion about whether death or LWOP is worst, but folks actually condemned to die, prefer to continue with their death sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many prisoners hold out the hope that their conviction will be overturned and they will be able to go home.  Ending their right to court appointed lawyer on habeas would close that door forever to most if not all of them (a handful might find lawyers to voluntarily continue their appeal).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Voters who support the death penalty should think carefully this November before they vote “No.” If you defeat Proposition 34, you will be continuing to give people convicted of capital murder exactly what they most desperately want — a lawyer that will help them get out of prison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This lengthy process is in place to minimize the number of innocent people that will get executed as well as making sure that the defendant/inmate has exhausted all possible legal options to prove their innocence. In China, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amnesty.org/en/death-penalty/top-5-executioners-in-2011&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3 of the other 4 world &amp;quot;leaders&amp;quot; in executions in the year 2011, together with the US&lt;/a&gt;), it's easier, quicker and cheaper to execute a person:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;China:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All trials in China are fundamentally flawed – with courts routinely relying on evidence extracted through torture or other ill-treatment, and defendants frequently denied the right to choose their own lawyers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saudi Arabia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of those executed over the past years were foreign nationals, mostly migrant workers from developing countries in Africa and Asia. They are disproportionately affected by the secretive and summary nature of the criminal justice process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Iraq:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The accused were often condemned to death after trials lasting just a few minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-01-12T01:45:03.770" CommentCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14805" CreationDate="2013-01-27T08:29:13.827" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Instant noodles contain Palm Oil, not wax, to prevent sticking - but even if wax were used, it wouldn't really be a problem for us (in &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; doses - everything can be unhealthy in high quantities; some candies are, in fact, coated with wax and nobody panics about those ;-) ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;snopes.com has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/noodles.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a very good article about this claim&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] coating with wax [...] would be rather pointless, because heat will melt wax, thus incorporating what was supposed to be part of the package into the foodstuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if wax were used in the styrofoam containers, and even if some of it did get into the food, it wouldn't adversely affect the average person. (It might possibly cause a problem for infants or those with damaged or impaired digestive systems, but not ordinary, healthy adults.)  Though it's not generally known, a number of candies routinely contain wax products. (Rowntree's &amp;quot;Smarties&amp;quot; and Just Born's &amp;quot;Peeps&amp;quot; immediately come to mind: carnauba wax is used in these products, as it is in candy corn.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-27T08:29:13.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14811" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9316" CreationDate="2013-01-28T08:28:18.770" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;There some additional photos of this round hole at &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencevsnonsense.narod2.ru/istinnie_prichini_gibeli_apl_kursk/&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; (in russian):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good quality shoot from unknown source. Text in russian is: &quot;А что значит это отверстие в правом боку подводной лодки&quot; - &quot;And what is meaning of this hole in right side of the submarine&quot;. It is clearly seen that hole has very sharp edges on its top and left sides. Also we can see that hole is not round in its low-right side (as it was required in comments, taken from other angle):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gX35i.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Text says: &amp;quot;And what is meaning of this hole in right side of the submarine&amp;quot;; unknown source&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a copy from the TV-film discussed (&quot;Kursk: a Submarine in Troubled Waters&quot;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zUjGF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Frame from TV-film &amp;quot;Kursk: a Submarine in Troubled Waters&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This photo is labelled: &quot;пресс-центр ГП РФ&quot;; &quot;ГП РФ&quot; is abbreviation for &quot;Генеральная Прокуратура Российской Федерации&quot;, so &quot;Press-center of Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation&quot; (press center of Federal Attorney of Russia):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hLRbt.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Text says: &amp;quot;Press-center of Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This photo has date mark on it &quot;24' 4'02&quot; = 24.04.2002 and text &quot;район прочного корпуса напротив которого отверстие в легком корпусе. никаких пробоин нет&quot; = &quot;region of strong hull (=inner hull=pressure hull) opposite of which hole in  light hull (=external hull) /is located/. There are no any breaches&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Grx00.png&quot; alt=&quot;&amp;quot;район прочного корпуса напротив которого отверстие в легком корпусе. никаких пробоин нет. 24.04.2002&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally is frame with labels &quot;росляково. мурманская область. РТР&quot;. It has label of Russian federal channel RTR. According to the page, Carre says that this hole was not shown on TV, but it was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WvtF7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Frame from TV program aired on Russian Federal channel RTR&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vif2ne.ru/nvk/forum/archive/180/180510&quot;&gt;interesting phrase&lt;/a&gt; on military history forum &quot;vif2ne&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;От  tevolga &#xA;К    All    &#xA;Дата    31.10.2001 11:06:44 &#xA;Рубрики Современность; Флот;    &#xA;Круглая дырка на Курске&#xA;&#xA;Главком пояснил, что ее вырезали водолазы еще в прошлом году, никакого &#xA;отношения ни к возможному столкновению, ни к торпедированию не имеет. Ее&#xA;теперь заварят, что бы не было более досужих вымыслов:-)))&#xA;&#xA;C уважением к сообществу.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From: tevolga; To: All; Date: 31.10.2001 11:06:44; Rubrics: Modernity, Fleet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subject: Round hole on Kursk&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Commander-in-chief /of the Navy/ clarified that hole was cut by divers early as in previous year /2000/, no any relation is possible to hypothetical collision or to torpedo attack. The hole will be welded now to limit more of myths :-)))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With respect to the community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other phrase is on federal newspaper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.novayagazeta.ru/inquests/53911.html?p=4&quot;&gt;forum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Александр _Покровский, 11 август 2012 в 09:24&#xA;В &quot;Рубине&quot; мне сказали насчет того отверстия: был технологический разрез.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9,_%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B4%D1%80_%D0%9C%D0%B8%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87&quot;&gt;Alexander Pokrovsky&lt;/a&gt;, 11 August, 2012 at 09:24&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In &quot;Rubin&quot; (=&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_Design_Bureau&quot;&gt;Rubin Design Bureau&lt;/a&gt;, operator of the Raising operation of Kursk) I was told about this hole: was technological incision&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The newspaper &quot;Независимая Газета&quot; directly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ng.ru/events/2001-11-01/7_kursk.html&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt; in 2001-11-01:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Круглое отверстие на стыке первого и второго отсеков, которое наблюдали &#xA;миллионы телезрителей во время демонстрации видеофильма Главной военной &#xA;прокуратуры, оказывается, имеет искусственное происхождение: часть корпуса &#xA;по просьбе главкома вырезали еще в прошлом году. Когда ее в интересах &#xA;следствия поставят на место, многое прояснится, намекнул Владимир Куроедов.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Round hole between first and second compartments, which was seen by millions of TV viewers at the time of airing of film by Chief Military Prosecutor Office, turns out to have artificial origin: part of hull was cut in previous year (=2000) at the request of the Commander-in-chief /of the Navy/ (=&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Kuroyedov&quot;&gt;Vladimir Kuroedov&lt;/a&gt;). When it will be returned in place  for investigative purposes, much may become clearer, Kuroedov hinted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10996" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T08:28:18.770" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14813" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22738" CreationDate="2013-01-28T15:18:33.620" Score="49" ViewCount="7299" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://politics.stackexchange.com/q/902/130&quot;&gt;This questions on Politics SE&lt;/a&gt; introduced me to the concept of the &lt;em&gt;red shift&lt;/em&gt;. In short, the claim of a &lt;em&gt;red shift&lt;/em&gt; boils down to a statistically significant difference between outcome of final exit polls and results of elections, which would then imply fraud. Some quotes of (effectively identical) claims from different sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://truth-out.org/news/item/12213-americas-media-just-made-vote-rigging-easier&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;America's Media Just Made Vote-Rigging Easier. By Victoria Collier, Truthout&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Red Shift has been detected in both state and federal American elections, where computerized vote totals have consistently &quot;shifted&quot; - often by a 5 percent to 7 percent margin disparity (sometimes less, but sometimes much greater) - in comparison to hand-counts and polling data. This mysterious seismic lurch invariably pushes votes to the right, and when the dust settles, it has inordinately benefitted GOP candidates and ballot issues&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/3/2012/1936&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wisconsin: None dare call it vote rigging. By Bob Fitrakis, The Free Press&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of my favorite mathematicians is Richard Charnin, who on his website using readily available public information, calculates the odds of the so-called ‘red shift&quot; occurring from the 1988 to 2008 presidential elections. The red shift refers to the overwhelming pick up of votes by the Republican Party in recorded votes over what actual voters report to exit pollsters. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And perhaps the strongest claim of all, one used as a source for many others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/election-fraud-an-introduction-to-exit-poll-probability-analysis/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Election Fraud: An Introduction to Exit Poll Probability Analysis , Richard Charnin&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;123 of the 126 exit polls in which the MoE was exceeded moved to the recorded vote in favor of the Republican (the “red shift”). Just 3 moved in favor of the Democrat (” the blue shift”). There is a ZERO probability that this one-sided shift was due to chance. It is powerful evidence beyond any doubt of pervasive systemic election fraud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The titles of the three posts all state this implies fraud or vote-rigging, but a comment in the third link begs to differ:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The statistical analysis here is impressive, but it fails to address one major flaw in almost all statistics that involve exit polling and polling in general; there is an inherent demographic of individuals who willingly choose to take polls and that same demographic tend to lean more Republican/Conservative in nature. That factor alone can account for everything in your model suggesting fraud. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question therefore consists of two parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there such a &quot;red shift&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, can this only be explained by fraud, or is there any evidence suggesting that this can be explained by other, such as demographic, factors? Studies addressing this question could look if such a &quot;red shift&quot;, if measurable at all, depends on voter demographics, voting method (paper vs. machine), or other factors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:54:43.033" LastActivityDate="2018-09-01T08:01:59.400" Title="Is there a &quot;red shift&quot; in U.S. elections — a significant shift to republican votes between polls and voting? Does this imply fraud?" Tags="|united-states|politics|voting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14028" CreationDate="2013-01-28T16:42:07.833" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question seems to be more scientific, but also comes with a lot of personal opinions and experience, since we probably all work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;40 hours of working might be too much already. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been numerous studies that working more than 8 hours a day may literally kill you. So, we can rest assure that this surely won't increase your productivity in the long run. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2012/09/12/why-working-more-than-8-hours-a-day-can-kill-you/&quot;&gt;Forbes Article&lt;/a&gt; has some links to actual studies in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/why-the-9-to-5-office-worker-will-become-a-thing-of-the-past/&quot;&gt;article in Pick the Brain&lt;/a&gt; discusses how 8 hours, and 9 to 5, does not go together with a natural productivity cycle. The author claims that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;only 3-4 hours a day could be classified as highly productive.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though this is his personal opinion, when you start searching for more resources about this claim they will back it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a fact that flexible working hours are becoming more popular. Where the focus does not lie on being at an office for 8 hours a day, but that you do your tasks and assignments in a given period of time. Be it in the morning in the evening.&#xA;Many Studies and articles can be found on this issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencenewsline.com/articles/2011040713000017.html&quot;&gt;Flexible Schedules, Results-oriented Workplaces Reduce Work-family Conflict And Turnover&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theskooloflife.com/wordpress/8-hour-work-day/&quot;&gt;Why the 8 hour work day doesn't make sense&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124705801&quot;&gt;The End Of 9-To-5: When Work Time Is Anytime&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gigaom.com/2011/09/02/do-we-need-defined-hours-of-work-any-more/&quot;&gt;Do we need defined hours of work any more?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a basic &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iamexpat.nl/read-and-discuss/expat-page/news/eu-working-hours-and-productivity&quot;&gt;chart&lt;/a&gt; of European countries where hours worked is compared against productivity. Note how the Dutch are low in hours, but high in productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a nice link to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/5190.html&quot;&gt;Harvard Business School Article&lt;/a&gt; which in short says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Forget multitasking and long hours. The best way&#xA;  to increase personal productivity is to work faster, look for parallel&#xA;  opportunities, and focus on the big wins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: 40+ will definitely NOT be more productive when they are spent non-stop in a working place. 40 hours spread out over 8 hours a day might already not be efficient. The future will be not so much working less, but more efficient, with more room for personal/family time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;EDIT: Removed double reference and got rid of some personal opinions.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7202" LastEditorUserId="7202" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T13:00:16.533" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T13:00:16.533" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9164" CreationDate="2013-01-28T18:40:06.203" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It highly depends how to count. Black Book of Communism is good example. Should you count famines, civil war deaths, second world war deportations deaths? Should be this considered as killed by communist governments? Should you consider tens millions died in British India as victims of constitutional monarchy? Should you consider lifes saved by communist governments? Life expectancy on Cuba, for example, is still one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://esa.un.org/wpp/Documentation/pdf/WPP2010_Highlights.pdf&quot;&gt;highest in Latin America&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example if we take numbers for USSR from &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0674076087&quot;&gt;Black Book&lt;/a&gt; as true and remove deaths  related to wars, revolutions, famine remain number will be in order of magnitude lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if by killed by communist governments you mean actually killed civil people - &lt;strong&gt;no, it's not true&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean died in wars, famines, revolutions - &lt;strong&gt;it's close to true&lt;/strong&gt; (see @Muro answer for details). For comparison - i doesn't have accurate sources, but I'm pretty sure that if you counts victims of other types of governments (like parliamentary democracy or monarchy) in that way you will got also very big numbers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastActivityDate="2013-01-28T18:40:06.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14816" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14819" CreationDate="2013-01-28T22:56:18.167" Score="33" ViewCount="10519" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a long time, I have been aware of a historical anecdote about the attempt to convert Russia to Islam. I don’t know where I first heard the anecdote: I’m pretty sure it was oral, so I had to dig a bit to find notable claims. The anecdote goes something like this: A Muslim emissary visited the czar to talk about Islam. He talked about the religion, the rites, the position of women, etc., etc., and the czar sounded quite interested. He had almost succeeded in convincing the czar when he mentioned the ban on the consumption of alcohol. Then the czar pointed out that Islam could not be an option in Russia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholism_in_Russia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alcoholism in Russia&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Legend holds that the tenth-century Russian prince Vladimir the Great rejected Islam as a state religion for the country because of its prohibition of alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is sourced from &lt;em&gt;Primary Chronicle, year 6494 (986)&lt;/em&gt;. (I have no idea what that means.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A semi-quoted reference on the Wikipedia page &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27#Reign_of_Vladimir_and_Christianisation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kievan Rus&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Primary Chronicle states that when Vladimir had decided to accept a new faith instead of the traditional idol-worship (paganism) of the Slavs, he sent out some of his most valued advisors and warriors as emissaries to different parts of Europe. The emissaries visited the Christians of the Latin Rite, the Jews and the Muslims, they finally arrived in Constantinople. &lt;strong&gt;They rejected Islam because&lt;/strong&gt;, among other things, &lt;strong&gt;it prohibited the consumption of alcohol&lt;/strong&gt;, and Judaism because the god of the Jews had permitted his chosen people to be deprived of their country. They found the ceremonies in the Roman church to be dull. But, at Constantinople, they were so astounded by the beauty of the cathedral of Hagia Sophia and the liturgical service held there, that they made up their minds there and then about the faith they would like to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is entirely sourced from&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Janet Martin, Medieval Russia, 980–1584, (Cambridge, 1995), p. 6-7&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first source calls it a legend, and I’m not sure whether the second source is meant to be historical or also more like a story. Historically, is it likely that the Russian czar did reject Islam because of its prohibition on the consumption of alcohol?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="34347" LastEditDate="2020-07-26T15:02:44.177" LastActivityDate="2020-07-26T15:02:44.177" Title="Did medieval Russia reject Islam because of its prohibition against alcohol?" Tags="|history|islam|russia|alcohol|ukraine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14818" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14821" CreationDate="2013-01-29T13:08:19.323" Score="14" ViewCount="3934" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icebreaker_%28Suvorov%29&quot;&gt;Icebreaker&lt;/a&gt; series by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Suvorov&quot;&gt;Viktor Suvorov&lt;/a&gt;, he says that at the beginning of World War 2, the Soviet Union had &lt;strong&gt;roughly 7 times as many tanks&lt;/strong&gt; as Nazi Germany, which had 3000-4000 tanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't remember the exact figures, but according to him the Soviet Union had between 20,000-30,000 tanks (I will edit if someone can point out the exact figures in his claim).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4974" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T04:34:21.043" LastActivityDate="2016-06-08T09:12:15.227" Title="Did the USSR have 21 thousand tanks at the beginning of WW2?" Tags="|world-war-ii|soviet-union|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14816" CreationDate="2013-01-29T13:26:44.360" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_Chronicle&quot;&gt;Primary Chronicle&lt;/a&gt; is the only written document we have of the early Kievan Rus, and is the primary text used by scholars of early Russian history to understand the founding of the Russian state, and more particularly, the history of the early Varangian dynasty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific quote often cited from the story of Vladimir is &lt;strong&gt;“Drinking is the Joy of the Rus, we cannot exist without that pleasure”&lt;/strong&gt; — something he told an Islamic representative as he was evaluating various religions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Early Russian history is a somewhat difficult subject to study — there really are no sources other than the Primary Chronicle for the early Kievan state, but what’s found in the archaeological record does not, for the most part, contradict it, so it is generally regarded as accurate. However, as with most medieval histories, much of the &lt;em&gt;detail&lt;/em&gt; it presents is probably to some degree fanciful or revisionist, with an eye towards satisfying the political aims of its writer and his contemporary era. Which is to say, much of the nonsense about having &lt;em&gt;invited&lt;/em&gt; the Vikings to come in and rule Russia is probably just a little bit fanciful, as are, most likely, any direct quotes such as the alcohol line. What’s important to note here, however, is not the historical veracity of the specific reason given for choosing Byzantine Christianity over Islam, but rather the cultural pedestal upon which the Chronicle places Alcohol. In that respect, the story is still &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; relevant and important to a modern historical scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6766" LastEditorUserId="2974" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T21:52:53.053" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T21:52:53.053" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14818" CreationDate="2013-01-29T14:09:51.647" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answer: Yes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure that all references count the exact same type of vehicle (tank is loosly defined). But they are all in the same area of about 20000 tanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanks_in_World_War_II#Soviet_Union&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Soviet Union began and ended the war with more tanks than the rest of the world combined (18,000-22,000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_combat_vehicle_production_during_World_War_II&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; cites numbers of over 25000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Figures are up until the first half of 1945 and only include new production. The Soviet Union had 25,664 or 25,481 armoured fighting vehicles on 1 June 1941 before it entered the war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia references the second number with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;amp;sl=ru&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.teatrskazka.com%2FRaznoe%2FBiChSostavVS%2FBiChSostavVS.html&quot;&gt;website in Russian&lt;/a&gt; (google translate)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A much lower number is mentioned in the article about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa#Order_of_battle&quot;&gt;Operation Barbarossa&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tanks (incl assault guns)     15,687&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However &lt;a href=&quot;http://operationbarbarossa.net/Myth-Busters/Pak-36.html#an_2&quot;&gt;operationbarbarossa.net&lt;/a&gt; says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a case in point let us examine the Red Army’s tank park in June 1941. On 22nd June 1941 the Soviets had 23 295 tanks in service (including non-operational tanks in various states of repair in rear areas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;of the rather incredible 20 500 tanks lost by the Soviets in 1941, the large majority were destroyed by PaK 36s&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means to loose that many tanks you have to have these in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They list references at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://operationbarbarossa.net/Myth-Busters/MythBusters2.html#an_3&quot;&gt;bottom&lt;/a&gt;, but i have not been able to verify those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(5) T. Bean, W. Fowler, Russian Tanks of WWII-Stalin’s Armoured Might, Ian Allan Publishing, London, 2002, appendix, p170. Also, S. J. Zaloga, L.S. Ness, Red Army Handbook 1939-1945, Sutton Publishing, Stroud, UK, 1998, p. 181, table 6.3. &lt;strong&gt;20 500 Soviet tanks lost vs. 2 758 German tanks lost in 1941.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7716" LastEditorUserId="7716" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T14:16:31.820" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T14:16:31.820" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14827" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14829" CreationDate="2013-01-29T20:10:13.923" Score="1" ViewCount="350" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_v._Wade&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Roe v Wade&lt;/a&gt; case (please try to leave your opinions about abortion aside).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is well known that Norma McCorvey  (&quot;Roe&quot;) lied about having been raped. It is also seems clear to me that the case verdict does not touch upon the issue (rape). What is less clear to me is whether the alleged rape was used in the arguments of the case, and to which amount one can suppose to have influenced the result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, these two quotes from the lawyer (quotes not exceedingly reliable I'd say) seem conflicting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I never touched the issue of rape and only emphasized the question&#xA;  of whether the Constitution gives to the state or leaves to a woman&#xA;  the questions of what she can or must do with her body.” (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0474_Roe__v._Wade.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;My behavior may not have been totally ethical, But I did it for what&#xA;  I thought were the right reasons.&quot;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?no=subj&amp;amp;articleid=390185&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The later has been quoted as implying that she was referring to the rape allegation, though the context does not help much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2834" LastEditorUserId="6876" LastEditDate="2013-01-29T20:55:47.103" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T22:20:52.700" Title="Roe v. Wade: was the rape claim used or influential in the case?" Tags="|law|abortion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-01-29T23:16:45.067" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14827" CreationDate="2013-01-29T22:20:52.700" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may have come up in argument in lower courts, but, at least by the time the question reached the supreme court, it seems to have been a negligible factor, if one at all. If you read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0410_0113_ZC.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;original decision of the court&lt;/a&gt;, the word 'Rape' only appears twice - both times in quotations of existing laws restricting abortion. Meanwhile, the subject was only broached briefly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oyez.org/cases/1970-1979/1971/1971_70_18/argument&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;during the courts oral arguments&lt;/a&gt; - and never with respect to the specific case of Roe, but rather, again, to inquire as to the status of general exemptions to existing laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, Supreme Court cases and decisions are based upon questions of &lt;em&gt;law&lt;/em&gt;, not of &lt;em&gt;fact&lt;/em&gt;. So the allegation is largely irrelevant, especially given the specific legal finding of the court in Roe V. Wade, that the 5th amendment guarantees an implicit right to privacy, which in turn protects the right of a woman to have a medical procedure performed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6766" LastActivityDate="2013-01-29T22:20:52.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14832" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14833" CreationDate="2013-01-30T06:23:54.780" Score="22" ViewCount="3579" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/recount-election/ZQmy0Mlv&quot;&gt;&quot;Recount the election!&quot;&lt;/a&gt; is the 4th most popular petition at whitehouse.gov. It has 69,588 signatures (as of Jan 30, 2012).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As justification for the petition, the creator writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In one county alone in Ohio, which was a battleground state, President Obama received 106,258 votes...but there were only 98,213 eligible voters. It's not humanly possible to get 108% of the vote!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T06:44:11.943" Title="Did Barack Obama receive 108% of the vote in one Ohio county?" Tags="|politics|barack-obama|democracy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14832" CreationDate="2013-01-30T06:44:11.943" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2012/nov/19/we-people-petition/online-petition-claims-obama-got-more-votes-one-co/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Politifact Ohio&lt;/a&gt; claims that the 106,258 was the amount of registered voters&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The posting's count of registered voters, 106,258, &lt;strong&gt;matches a Plain Dealer tally of Sept. 17&lt;/strong&gt;. The latest number of registered voters in Wood County is 108,014, Board of Elections director Terry Burton told PolitiFact Ohio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of those, only 80,433 are active voters, he said -- &amp;quot;and the difference between those numbers is the inactive voters.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas the Obama votes were much lower:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wood County's total on Nov. 6 was 62,338 votes, he said, for a turnout of about 57 percent of registered voters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obama's total in Wood County -- 31,596 votes, or about 51 percent of those cast -- was lower than his 2008 tally, according election night totals from the secretary of state. Mitt Romney received 28,997 votes, or about 47 percent -- less than John McCain's 2008 total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't double check their #s from primary sources, caveat emptor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T06:44:11.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13814" CreationDate="2013-01-30T08:53:44.120" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It appears that the research on the subject is still quite active, and pretty much inconclusive.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, I present the case of the studies regarding the Tribulus terrestris : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024320502018581&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aphrodisiac properties of Tribulus Terrestris extract (Protodioscin) in normal and castrated rats - &#xA;K Gauthaman, P.G Adaikan, R.N.V Prasad  - 9 August 2002&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, this study provides additional information as regards to&#xA;  androgens and its regulation of penile erection and that the plant&#xA;  Tribulus terrestris is found to exert similar properties to that of&#xA;  androgens. Results of this study provide evidence for the claimed role&#xA;  of this plant as an aphrodisiac in the traditional medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378874105003314&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The aphrodisiac herb Tribulus terrestris does not influence the androgen production in young men&#xA;V.K. Neychev, V.I. Mitev - 3 October 2005&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Altogether, the findings in the current study anticipate that chronic&#xA;  ingestion of either 10 or 20 mg/kg body weight of Tribulus terrestris&#xA;  extract influence neither directly nor indirectly androgen production&#xA;  in young males.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1875686711600274&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aphrodisiac activity of Tribulus terrestris Linn. in experimental models in rats Surender Singh, Y.K. Gupta - April 2011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oral administration of 100 mg/kg of test drug has proven anabolic&#xA;  effect as evidenced by body weight gain in the body and reproductive&#xA;  organs. Improvement in sexual behavior of male rats was characterized&#xA;  by increased amount and intromission frequency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, the most comprehensive study I was able to find is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apjtb.com/zz/2011S1/30.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pharmacologically screened aphrodisiac plant-A review of current &#xA;scientific literature Patel DK, Kumar R, Prasad SK, Hemalatha S - 28 June 2011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which reviews the studies about 30+ plants a and concludes with : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many of the plant materials showed positive aphrodisiac activities in&#xA;  animals. For the determination of the safety and effectiveness of&#xA;  these substances for sexual enhancement it is necessary to test&#xA;  pre-clinically in animals and clinically in human being before&#xA;  consuming the drug. Further studies are also needed to check the&#xA;  mechanism that underlie behind such activity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T08:53:44.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14836" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14838" CreationDate="2013-01-30T09:41:21.597" Score="7" ViewCount="2668" Body="&lt;p&gt;In southern climes one can see many such reflective screens on cars in parking lots. Not all drivers use them, but many do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a meaningful impact on the internal temperature of your car? Does the length of time the car is parked in sunlight matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8419" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T15:03:27.503" Title="Does putting a reflective screen inside your car against the windshield have a meaningful impact on internal temperature?" Tags="|road-vehicles|sun-exposure|sun|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14837" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14844" CreationDate="2013-01-30T10:47:28.323" Score="22" ViewCount="4108" Body="&lt;p&gt;My dad has always told me not to read things (just books/papers inside the car) while the car was moving. When I asked why, he said that it puts too much strain on your eyes because the book/paper is moving around. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same for reading a book while walking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10456" LastEditorUserId="34405" LastEditDate="2017-06-16T21:32:46.903" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T21:32:46.903" Title="Is it harmful to read while moving?" Tags="|ophthalmology|reading|books|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14836" CreationDate="2013-01-30T12:41:04.990" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cars have matt black dashboards to prevent &lt;a href=&quot;http://probaway.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/black-velvet-on-you-cars-dashboard-prevents-reflections/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;internal reflection&lt;/a&gt; into your line of vision (an image of the top of the dashboard reflected in the windscreen).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Matt black surfaces absorb light and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gcsescience.com/pen10-matt-black.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;re-emit the energy as heat&lt;/a&gt;. Reflective surfaces don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/print_project_1438_91&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/66Qzp.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Undesirable effects that may be alleviated by a sunshade include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Heating of car interior above a comfortable level&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Heating of car steering wheel (e.g. too hot to hold)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accelerated degradation of plastics - outgassing of plasticizer.&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;consequent deposition on windscreen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shelby F. Thames, professor of polymer science and president of the University of Southern Mississippi is reported as saying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Car owners can see the results of outgassing on their windshield, particularly during hot weather. Outgassing forms a waxy film on the glass that hampers visibility and is difficult to remove. ... plasticizers make the vinyl dashboard soft and allow manufacturers to shape it. ...&#xA;  It would take years and years to lose the plasticizer at room temperature,But the rays of the sun are magnified as they go through the windshield, and the dashboard can get extremely hot&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A review of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monash.edu.au/miri/research/reports/muarc183.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Windscreens and safety&quot;&lt;/a&gt; at Monash University Accident Research Center says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Almost all cars have a dashboard made from a polymeric plastics material. When the vehicle is left out in the sun the plasticiser is liberated from the dashboard and forms a thin film on the inside of the windscreen.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the inside of the windscreen is not cleaned regularly this film could build up and cause dispersion of light through the window. This can affect the driver's vision through distortion of the light from the sun or from the headlights of oncoming vehicles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the reports I've read quantify these effects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The severity of the effect obviously varies enormously depending on geographic location, time of year, weather conditions (cloud cover, smog, ambient temperature), orientation of vehicle, size, slope and composition of windscreen, material and age of dashboard, time left in the sun and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-01-30T15:03:27.503" LastActivityDate="2013-01-30T15:03:27.503" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14784" CreationDate="2013-01-30T14:05:10.643" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer will only be partial, i.e. about serial killers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FBI &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0787938858&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crime Classification Manual&lt;/a&gt;&quot; roughly divide serial killers in 3 categories: organized, disorganized and mixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the organized serial killers are usually smart, plan their crimes beforehand, follow a precise and thorough ritual (and especially, use equipment they brought with them) and feel no regrets, the disorganized serial killer obey an uncontrollable urge, use weapons found on the scene and usually have regrets in the aftermath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of afterthoughts, like regrets or fear to be discovered, the disorganized serial killers can return to the crime scene, hiding in the crowd. And an investigation method is to take pictures of the crowd on each crime scene, in order to search for persons appearing on several ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote of the indicated book, 2nd edition, page 220:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Postoffense behavior exhibited may be a change in eating habits and&#xA;  drinking habits (more alcohol consumption) and nervousness. He may&#xA;  also have an inappropriate interest in the crime, for example, by&#xA;  frequently engaging in conversation about it. Disorganized behavior&#xA;  may be evident in victim selection, crime scene, and forensics due to&#xA;  youthfulness, drug or alcohol impairment, external stressors (for&#xA;  example, fear of discovery), or lack of criminal sophistication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="627" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-10-12T01:43:37.087" LastActivityDate="2017-10-12T01:43:37.087" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14841" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="36719" CreationDate="2013-01-30T16:32:13.123" Score="15" ViewCount="1224" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://journalstar.com/news/local/education/article_bd4c13ee-e85c-11df-b271-001cc4c002e0.html#ixzz1boaMb4wV&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article based on an interview&lt;/a&gt; with University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor Roger Mandingo, the reason McDonalds' infamous McRib sandwich is only available periodically, and for limited duration, is because the popularity of the sandwich drives up the prices of the ingredients:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to this day, the McRib comes and goes from the McDonald's menu for reasons that have to do with its intense popularity and a national supply of pork trimmings that's typically a lot more limited than the supply of beef trimmings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If you suddenly start to buy a large amount of that material,&amp;quot; said Mandigo, &amp;quot;the price starts to rise.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the cost to McDonald's rises, the McRib tends to go out of circulation again. And then the same parts of a hog tend to flow back into the processing lines for Spam, Vienna sausages and other specialized products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the release of the McRib really trigger a surge in pork trimming prices, and does the removal of the McRib from the menu correspond to the prices rising past a certain point?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-01-13T15:23:53.120" Title="Does McDonald's periodic release of the McRib sandwich drive up market prices for pork trimmings?" Tags="|economics|marketing|mcdonalds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14837" CreationDate="2013-01-30T21:25:19.187" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this is correct. Your eye muscles might get 'tired' but there's no reason for damage to the eye to occur in terms of vision. Our eyes have evolved to compensate for motion very well. There is a similar myth that reading in low light damages the eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're more likely to have a problem with car sickness. This is thought to be caused by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brooksidepress.org/Products/OperationalMedicine/DATA/operationalmed/Manuals/GMOManual/clinical/Motion%20sickness.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a conflict in stimulus signals between your eyes and ears&lt;/a&gt;. Your eyes, focused on a relatively static object a few inches away, are telling your brain that you're still. Your inner ear, however, is sensing the forward motion of the car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thinking is that the brain assumes that the conflict is caused by something you've eaten; in evolutionary terms eating poison berries (etc.) that caused disorientation would have happened a lot more often than travelling at 70mph. So the brain tries to induce vomiting by causing intense nausea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why it is a good idea to look up every so often and look out the window, so your eyes 'agree' with your inner ear.&#xA;Read Here : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/science/15qna.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/science/15qna.html?_r=0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11313" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-02-27T19:08:47.310" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T19:08:47.310" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3805" CreationDate="2013-01-31T00:27:10.703" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some additonal points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is fluoride in water an industry waste product?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;it is an &quot;industry waste product&quot; of the fertilizer industry just as platinum, gold and silver are industrial waste products from  copper electro refining they are by-products in the anode sludge. (Not all industrial &quot;waste&quot; is bad!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Main product: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;copper (15.8 million t/a or ca. 125 billion US$)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;By-products:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gold (2700 t/a (total production world wide - not only from anode sludges) or ca. 145 billion US$), &#xA;( silver (22500 t/a total or ca. 23 billion US$)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Wikipedia and today'ss gold/silver prices&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes, fertilizer production slurries are used for CaF&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; production. [Source: a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pjoes.com/pdf/8.2/125-128.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; suggesting utilization of old waste. Note that the paper puts the annual need of Poland to 4000 - 5000 t. Note also that the CaF&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; needed in metallurgy (not alumninum production) does not need to be as pure as for other uses.]  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No, F⁻ is not a waste product in chemical industry. In fact, huge amounts of CaF&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; are mined for their fluoride. I didn't see world wide numbers, but here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp11-c5.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;USGS report&lt;/a&gt; which states the:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;apparent consumption of fluorspar [CaF2 mineral] (excluding fluorspar equivalents of fluorosilicic acid, hydrofluoric acid, and cryolite) in the United States was 601,000 metric tons in 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In aluminum production, F⁻ may be lost from the process if SiO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; is present (the reverse of the hydrolysis below takes place, there is no water around). The aluminum works usually do call this a waste of fluoride: they either have to &lt;em&gt;buy&lt;/em&gt; new fluorite, or recover the F⁻ from the fluorosilicate (difficult, expensive). Source: lectures in inorganic and technical chemistry.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A quick glance through the Internet suggests that you pay something in the order of magnitude of &lt;a href=&quot;http://sjzbcchem.en.alibaba.com/product/485311261-0/calcium_fluoride_powder.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;several hundred US$ / t&lt;/a&gt; (varies of course a lot depending on how many tons you are willing to buy, and the purity). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why not add Calcium fluoride to drinking water?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because is is insoluble: it would be inefficient. The solubility product of CaF&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_fluoride&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3.9 x 10⁻¹¹&lt;/a&gt;, meaning that even if no other Ca²⁺ is around, you don't get above 6.5 mg/l. This is technically not feasible: you'd need to leave one-sixth of the total drinking water in contact with CaF&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; long enough to reach equilibrium and then mix it with the remaining five parts. Instead, you need higher concentrated stock solutions of which small parts are dosed into the drinking water.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, this also means that if appreciable amounts of Ca²⁺ is present in the drinking water, your F⁻ uptake will basically be zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The &quot;natural&quot; form of Fluoride&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;CaF2 (fluorite) is the most important F⁻ mineral since the kryolith reserves were finished (in the 1980s). &#xA;This is because CaF&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; is very insoluble, and Ca²⁺ is common. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, sea water contains approx. 1 mg/l F⁻ - that is much more in total, so after all, one may argue that the &quot;natural&quot; form or F⁻ is in the sea... &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Hydrofluorosilicic Acid and Sodium Silicofluoride do not occur in nature&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... because they immediately hydrolyze when in contact with water:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SiF&lt;sub&gt;6&lt;/sub&gt;²⁻ + 2 H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O → 6 F⁻ + SiO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; + 4 H⁺ (hydrofluorosilicic acid is this plus 2 H⁺ on each side of the equation, sodium siliciofluoride instead has 2 Na⁺ on each side) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SiO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silica&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;silica&lt;/a&gt; (as in quartz sand or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;produced by algae&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 4 H⁺ react acidic, but remember that it is just about 0.04 mg/l (H: 1 g/mol, F: 19 g/mol) and the pH may be adjusted anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Amount of F⁻ in drinking water&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I missed in the discussion so far the levels of F⁻ in drinking water that are recommended for fluoridation and that are the upper allowed limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another link to very detailed explanations from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/MMWr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5014a1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CDC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CDC recommendation is ca. 1 mg/l F⁻ (there are corrections according to how much water people drink per day in warmer or cooler regions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/fluoride.cfm#four&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EPA&lt;/a&gt; sets an upper level of 4 mg/l, and a &quot;secondary limit&quot; (should be below, but isn't legally required) at 2 mg/l.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Basel (Switzerland) stopped drinking water fluoridation in 2003.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fluoridationqueensland.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/FluoridBSTW.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's a German language pdf&lt;/a&gt; from a lab report controlling F⁻ levels afterwards that cites the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The arguments are interesting,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they had an insular position, no one around had drinking water fluoridation any longer&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(meaning also, that if everyone around gets appropriate levels of F⁻ e.g. from fluorinated table salt and tooth paste, the Basel population may run a risk of overdoses as they probably also use fluorinated salt and tooth paste) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;waste of F⁻: only 1 % of the water actually gets drunken (meaning that the remaining 99% are technically an environmental pollutant)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;lack of evidence that fluoridation of drinking water is more efficient than the widespread use of fluorinated table salt (which is nowadays available everywhere) &#xA;This point is a nice example of how different statements about the same thing can leave very different impressions: This other &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.ch/Basel+Stadt+schafft+umstrittene+Trinkwasserfluoridierung+ab/136556/detail.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;news article&lt;/a&gt; just speaks of &quot;lack of evidence of efficiency&quot;, not mentioning that &quot;over other measures like use of fluoridated table salt&quot;. (more below)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The second article also mentions that fluoridation did cost 120000 SFR per year (the article ends saying that several voters asked that this money should be directly put into caries prophylactic measures).  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Efficiency of drinking water fluoridation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/MMWr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5014a1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CDC documentation&lt;/a&gt; gives further insight, which may also help to judge point 3 of the Basel list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;they cite that &quot;80% of the dental caries in permanent teeth of U.S. children aged 5--17 years occurs among 25% of those children&quot;, and it is associated with low socio-economic status.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Judging from the abstract (pay-wall) &lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/000163599428607&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; argues that drinking water fluorination is not necessary any more in many regions as oral hygiene habits (including use of fluorinated toothpaste) are good.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/fluoridation/benefits.htm#3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CDC&lt;/a&gt; estimates  that every $ for drinking water fluoridation saved something around at least $ 5 (they say typically for larger communities $ 38) of caries treatment (about $ 0,5 - 3 per person and year for fluoridation vs. $ 15 for avoided caries repair, they link studies). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;CDC also states, that the effects seem to get lower, but attribute it to the fact that fluorinated water is also consumed by people living outside fluoridating communities (e.g. beverages shipped, ...)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastEditorUserId="8014" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T13:41:40.967" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T13:41:40.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14848" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14849" CreationDate="2013-01-31T07:25:05.823" Score="15" ViewCount="2663" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jewishpreppers.com/2012/12/are-causalities-of-war-acceptable-to-israel/&quot;&gt;This site claims&lt;/a&gt; that, in modern warfare, about 3 civilians are killed for every combatant killed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This concept can be scientifically proven by understand (sic) the basic concept of “civilian casualty ratio”, that is in every conflict you need to look at the number of civilian causalities versus the number of combatant causalities. This ratio obviously differs from conflict to conflict, but the average in modern day warfare is between 3-4:1. Estimated ratios in NATO operations in Afghanistan were 3:1, western campaigns in Iraq and Kosovo were believed to be 4:1, and the conflicts in Chechnya and Serbia were much higher than 4:1. That is to say that for each combatant that is killed 3-4 or more civilians are killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They then compare this statistic favorably to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_War&quot;&gt;Operation Cast Lead&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pillar_of_Defense&quot;&gt;Operation Pillar of Defense&lt;/a&gt;, in which the civilian casualty ratio was about 1:1 (i.e. much more focussed on avoiding civilian deaths). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a bit of trouble finding the specific UN statement to which they referred. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anybody here please determine whether that statement is accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T19:51:35.620" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T19:51:35.620" Title="Is the the &quot;civilian casualty ratio&quot; in modern day warfare about 3-4:1?" Tags="|war|israel|iraq|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14848" CreationDate="2013-01-31T10:04:44.393" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, just looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio#Israeli.E2.80.93Palestinian_conflict&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page for Civilian Casualty Ratio&lt;/a&gt; there is a special section for the Israel-Palestine conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where it gets murky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2006 and 2007 according to the government this Ratio was 1:4 (one civilian for each militant), according to Haaretz this was closer to 1:2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But with airstrikes by the Israeli airforce in 2002-2003 this was 1:1, but improved to 1:30 by 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The official Israeli ration for the war in Gaza was 1:3, a more critical Israeli organization &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%27tselem&quot;&gt;B'Tselem (NGO)&lt;/a&gt; claimes 3:2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So these figures are hard to call truly reliable, but they won't be of that much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, the page ends with a UN figure, which supports the 3:1 claim, and makes it &quot;official&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The UN estimate that there has been an average three-to-one ratio of&#xA;  civilian to combatant deaths in such conflicts worldwide. Three&#xA;  civilians for every combatant killed. That is the estimated ratio in&#xA;  Afghanistan: three to one. In Iraq, and in Kosovo, it was worse: the&#xA;  ratio is believed to be four-to-one. Anecdotal evidence suggests the&#xA;  ratios were very much higher in Chechnya and Serbia. In Gaza, it was&#xA;  less than one-to-one.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7202" LastEditorUserId="7202" LastEditDate="2013-01-31T11:13:33.177" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T11:13:33.177" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14855" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-01-31T15:58:13.657" Score="4" ViewCount="398" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the discussion threads of one of the answers to this meta question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2125/how-much-can-we-trust-peer-reviewed-scientific-literature&quot;&gt;How much can we trust peer reviewed scientific literature?&lt;/a&gt; EnergyNumbers alleged that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;James Lovelock&lt;/a&gt; had originally denied that ozone was destroyed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CFCs&lt;/a&gt; and was now trying to backtrack:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James Lovelock is a good example here: his work in popularising the ecosystem &amp;amp; symbiosis research of Lynn Margulis in the late 1960s was very good pop science. However, he has frequently gone outside that speciality, and written an awful lot of tosh, which, at various times subsequently, he has admitted he was very wrong on, such as his 1970s refusal to accept the science of how CFCs were damaging the ozone layer, creating a major hazard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My memory was different and I thought that the supposed denial that CFCs were harmful came before any serious work on their effect on ozone. Lovelock had, after all, invented the key analysis technique that allowed us to track the low levels of CFCs in the atmosphere so he was talking about them a long time before worries about ozone depletion started.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my memory isn't perfect. So the question is did Lovelock resist the science suggesting that CFCs were bad for the ozone layer? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T16:38:42.083" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T11:51:43.910" Title="Did James Lovelock deny that CFCs destroyed ozone?" Tags="|history|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14856" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14866" CreationDate="2013-01-31T16:43:43.970" Score="18" ViewCount="1368" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2010, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_crash&quot;&gt;plane crash&lt;/a&gt; killed many top Polish officials. It occurred over Russian soil, and involved an aircraft carrying many politicians and military officials with a strong opposition towards the Russian government, which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/russian-elections-the-end-era-6219&quot;&gt;known to be dishonest at times&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the crash, the Russian government along with their answer to the NTSB, have been very secretive about the details, frequently recalling evidence, and giving inconsistent explanations. More interestingly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pl&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;js=n&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;eotf=1&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fakt.pl%2Fswiadkowie-ze-Smolenska-nie-zyja%2Cartykuly%2C184251%2C1.html&amp;amp;act=url&quot;&gt;many of the crash's witnesses have passed away&lt;/a&gt;, and others still have gone missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there's a fair amount of evidence suggesting that the Russian government was involved in the crash, this model of aircraft — produced when Russia was still the USSR — has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-154#Incidents_and_accidents&quot;&gt;significant history of crashes under similar circumstances&lt;/a&gt;, which could suggest that the crash was routine, if unfortunate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any conclusive evidence proving/disproving that the Russian government was involved in this, or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11329" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T16:57:34.303" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T23:48:27.003" Title="Was the 2010 Polish presidential Tu-154 plane crash set up?" Tags="|aviation|russia|democracy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14848" CreationDate="2013-01-31T17:39:26.693" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The statistics for the IDF missions are only favorable if you agree with IDF's definition of a combatant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case of &quot;Operation Cast Lead&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=137286&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IDF&lt;/a&gt; operates with 1166 casualties, of which at least 709 were combatants (appr. 0.5 civilian per combatant). The numbers from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20090612193512/http://www.pchrgaza.org/files/PressR/English/2008/36-2009.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Palestinian Centre for Human Rights&lt;/a&gt; are very different: They count 1417 casualties, of which 236 were combatants (appr. 5 civilians per combatant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastActivityDate="2013-01-31T17:39:26.693" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14865" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14876" CreationDate="2013-02-01T10:09:38.643" Score="1" ViewCount="331" Body="&lt;p&gt;A discussion paper published at the University of East Anglia holds that due to the cap-and-trade scheme, a decisions to fly or not has no impact inside the European Union.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from the press release, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2013/January/emissions-trading-schemes-green-consumerism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Emissions trading schemes limit green consumerism&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The decision to fly or not no longer has any substantial impact on total GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions because emissions from aviation within the EU are included in the EU ETS. Any additional emissions caused have to be reduced elsewhere and vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uea.ac.uk/documents/166500/0/CBESS-13-01/bb866dfc-ce62-4d3b-8142-5252120f4e2f&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;full paper&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;entitled Private provision of public goods in a second-best world: cap and trade schemes limit green consumerism, by Dr Grischa Perino will be published by the Centre for Behavioural and Experimental Social Science on Wednesday, January 30&lt;/em&gt;. As far as I can see, it does not appear to be peer-reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An blog post by Leo Hickman on The Guardian website responds: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/jan/31/flying-environmental-impact-stop-worrying?intcmp=122&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Should we stop worrying about the environmental impact of flying?&lt;/a&gt;. Hickman writes: &lt;em&gt;Perino appears to adopt a theoretical, idealised vision of the ETS, one that doesn't account for the system's very real flaws, not least its vulnerability to turbulence caused by vested interests and political pressure.&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other economists and anti-aviation activists by Hickman do not really contest the point. He does quote Chris Goodall as saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Actually, people don't behave like economists expect them to do. Choosing an ethical lifestyle or a 'green' lifestyle has two effects simply not captured by economists. First, it demonstrates a willingness to pay some price to achieve what one considers a social good. (Sorry, I'm talking like an economist here). If I say I won't fly, it demonstrates to others that their might (just might) be an issue with flying. In other words, there may be (in fact, probably is) a demonstration effect. We are all strongly guided by the ethical actions of those around us.&#xA;  Second, the choice of lifestyle/consumption habits shows elected governments that there is popular support for action. If, say, a substantial number of people said that they were reducing their flying for environmental reasons it allows governments to impose tighter caps on flying emissions, knowing that they have some popular support. (Frankly, I think this is the most important effect of ethical actions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a significant amount of travellers decide to take the train rather than the flight, inside the EU, I would expect this to reduce carbon emissions, because there are less flights. But is this true in practice? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2017-03-31T10:11:22.580" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T10:11:22.580" Title="Does the decision to fly or not have no impact on GHG emissions inside the EU?" Tags="|environment|transportation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14856" CreationDate="2013-02-01T10:19:46.327" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, there is no evidence to support &quot;a setup&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There where two independent official investigations, one by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Aviation_Committee&quot;&gt;Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC; Russian: Межгосударственный авиационный комитет, МАК)&lt;/a&gt;, one by Polish Ministry of Defense's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_Investigation_of_National_Aviation_Accidents&quot;&gt;Committee for Investigation of National Aviation Accidents (Polish: Komisja Badania Wypadków Lotniczych Lotnictwa Państwowego; KBWLLP)&lt;/a&gt;. Also participating in IAC's investigation were numerous accredited experts from Poland, and in some parts of investigation, regarding US made avionics, included two experts from US (one from FAA and one from NTSB).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While reports differed slightly on who's more to blame, both concluded that causes where thick fog, pilot errors, ill prepared airfield and errors in  communication between control tower and pilot. Two big points of discrepancy are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;whether there was pressure from President or Air Force Commander-in-Chief to land. Russian report states that there was such a pressure, Polish report does not address the issue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;errors committed by control tower: Russian report clears them of responsibility, as they did not give permission to land, OTOH Polish report points out their failures (see points relating to &quot;Approach Control&quot; and &quot;LZC&quot; in report below); &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mswia.datacenter-poland.pl/FinalReportTu-154M.pdf&quot;&gt;Polish final report (in English)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.2. Cause and Circumstances of the Accident &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.2.1. Cause of Accident  The immediate cause of the accident was the descent below the minimum descent  altitude at an excessive rate of&#xA;  descent in weather conditions which prevented visual contact  with the&#xA;  ground, as well as a delayed execution of the go-around procedure.&#xA;  Those  circumstances led to an impact on a terrain obstacle resulting&#xA;  in separation of a part of the left  wing with aileron and&#xA;  consequently to the loss of aircraft control and eventual ground&#xA;  impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.2.2. Circumstances Contributing to the Accident &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; 1) Failure to monitor altitude by means of a pressure altimeter during a&#xA;  non-precision  approach; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;2) failure by the crew to respond to the&#xA;  PULL UP warning generated by the TAWS;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; 3) attempt to execute the&#xA;  go-around maneuver under the control of ABSU (automatic goaround);  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; 4)&#xA;  Approach Control confirming to the crew the correct position of the&#xA;  airplane in  relation to the RWY threshold, glide slope, and course&#xA;  which might have affirmed the  crew's belief that the approach was&#xA;  proceeding correctly although the airplane was  actually outside the&#xA;  permissible deviation margin;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; 5) failure by LZC to inform the crew&#xA;  about descending below the glide slope and delayed  issuance of the&#xA;  level-out command; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; 6) incorrect training of the Tu-154M flight crews&#xA;  in the 36 Regiment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.2.3. Conducive circumstances  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; 1) incorrect coordination of the crew's work, which placed an excessive burden on the  aircraft&#xA;  commander in the final phase of the flight;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; 2) insufficient flight&#xA;  preparation of the crew;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; 3) the crew‘s insufficient knowledge of the&#xA;  airplane's systems and their limitations;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; 4) inadequate&#xA;  cross-monitoring among the crew members and failure to respond to the &#xA;  mistakes committed;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; 5) crew composition inadequate for the task;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; 6)&#xA;  ineffective immediate supervision of the 36 Regiment's flight training&#xA;  process by the  Air Force Command; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; 7) failure by the 36 Regiment to&#xA;  develop procedures governing the crew's actions in the  event of:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; a)&#xA;  failure to meet the established approach criteria;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; b) using radio&#xA;  altimeter for establishing alarm altitude values for various types of &#xA;  approach;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; &amp;nbsp; c) distribution of duties in a multi-crew flight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; 8)&#xA;  sporadic performance of flight support duties by LZC over the last 12&#xA;  months, in  particular under difficult WC, and lack of practical&#xA;  experience as LZC at the  SMOLENSK NORTH airfield.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other circumstantial evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The captain of the 2010 flight was co-pilot on infamous 2008 presidential trip to Tibilisi, Georgia, where pilots refused president's &quot;order&quot; to change flight plan and fly into a war zone (original flight plan was to fly to Baku, Azerbaijan and get to Tibilisi by ground transport). President Kaczyński later called them cowards (exact quote: &quot;an officer should be less fearful&quot;), and demanded their prosecution. (see eg. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/2983110/Polish-defence-minister-honours-pilot-who-defied-President-Kaczynski.html&quot;&gt;Telegraph article&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 2008 there was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miros%C5%82awiec_air_accident&quot;&gt;crash in Mirosławiec&lt;/a&gt;, which bears lot of similarities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Air Force transport, pilots with similar training as PLF 101 pilots&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;crashed attempting to land in thick fog&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ignored procedures&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ignored EGPWS/TAWS warnings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;top brass on board, which might have added pressure to land&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Polish_Air_Force_Tu-154_crash#Law_and_Justice_investigation&quot;&gt;alternative &quot;investigation&quot; by conspiracy theorists&lt;/a&gt;, it's based on opinions of 3 &quot;experts&quot;, all of them academic scientist, neither of them directly specializing in aviation (their specialization is: civil engineering, spectroscopy and explosives). All of them are friends (from the 1980's opposition times) of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoni_Macierewicz&quot;&gt;Antoni Macierewicz&lt;/a&gt;, the man behind the conspiracy theory. These scientist did not visit the crash site, they had no access to any physical evidence. The opinion of the &quot;explosives expert&quot; is based on allegedly holding a small piece of metal (allegedly plane fragment) in his hand for a few seconds. Other &quot;expert&quot; based his opinions on the model he created using software to simulate... car crashes. Opinion on plane's aerodynamics was given by... spectroscopy expert. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more &quot;mainstream&quot; conspiracy theory points, and why they are not true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The fog was artificial&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; allegedly created with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQF8hsitxvY&quot;&gt;TMC-65 machine&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;According to KBWLLP experts, plane does not behave any differently in natural or artificial fog, it's just as safe or unsafe to land in either one, so it wouldn't be the cause of the accident. Also, it's not physically possible to create 200km² of artificial fog. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There where two explosions on board&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; KBWLLP checked the wreck and bodies for any signs of explosion. None were found. Nor was it recorded by CVR or any other recording device.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Landing Zone Controller &lt;em&gt;intentionally&lt;/em&gt; fed crew false data&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;mdash; KBWLLP report found that approach radars in disrepair, one of them wasn't properly attached and had up to 10 degrees of vertical sway. The hardware was never intended for precision landings in zero visibility. So while data was inaccurate, it could not be attributed to malice. KBWLLP also notes, that in such situation LZC is only providing additional information, while it's the aircraft's crew, who is fully responsible for verifying aircraft's position. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T17:35:15.647" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T17:35:15.647" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14869" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-01T15:31:20.767" Score="29" ViewCount="12073" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's widely believed that Nikola Tesla not only demonstrated wireless power transmission but his works in this field were very successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wireless_power&amp;amp;oldid=535828950&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; only says this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The electric energy transmitted by means of electrostatic induction can be utilized by a receiving device, such as a wireless lamp. Tesla demonstrated the illumination of wireless lamps by energy that was coupled to them through an alternating electric field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but there's a lot of statements &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maximumpc.com/article/columns/future_proof_how_wireless_energy_transfer_will_kill_power_cable&quot;&gt;as in here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nikola Tesla started the wireless energy transfer revolution almost 120 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and there're lots of fanatic claims about Tesla being able to transmit power wirelessly and later generations having lost his achievements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now wireless power transfer is possible but the efficiency is rather low. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inductive_charging&amp;amp;oldid=466319860&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; has this statement (not backed up though)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, the Magne Charge system employed high-frequency induction to deliver high power at an efficiency of 86% (6.6 kW power delivery from a 7.68 kW power draw).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and Magne Charge charges an electric vehicle via a pad placed inside the slot on the car, so transmitter and receiver coils are very close to each other. Efficiency goes down quickly as distance increases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, okay, let's just agree we've lost Tesla's secrets. Also I realize that if there was a detailed enough description of a machine for efficient wireless transmission of electricity someone would make use of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't hope to find anything like that. I'd be happy to just find trustworthy evidence of actual fact of transmission taking place with specific (hopefully miles) distance and specific efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that Tesla was actually able to transmit power wirelessly with commercially reasonable efficiency?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="666" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-11-06T17:06:55.413" LastActivityDate="2016-11-08T04:04:45.067" Title="Is there any data on how efficient Tesla wireless power transmission was?" Tags="|physics|energy|nikola-tesla|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14870" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14869" CreationDate="2013-02-01T15:56:35.557" Score="25" Body="&lt;h1&gt;TL;DR;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tesla's Patents and notebooks are available. Tesla was often interviewed and gave public demonstrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no convincing evidence that he had really discovered a means of transmitting power that could be commercially implemented in the way he envisaged in his &quot;World System&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no evidence (that I can find) which proves his system could achieve the 99.5% efficiency he claimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Tesla's Secrets&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;we've lost Tesla's secrets.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition, that's impossible to answer, we've also lost Newton's secrets and Edison's secrets. If any. But we know that Tesla's US patent 1119732 for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents/US1119732?printsec=drawing#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apparatus for transmitting electrical energy&lt;/a&gt; is on public record.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tesla &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1927-10-16.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wrote&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I obtained convincing evidence of the feasibility of wireless power transmission on a vast scale for all industrial purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The chief discovery, which satisfied me thoroughly as to the practicability of my plan, was made in &lt;strong&gt;1899 at Colorado Springs&lt;/strong&gt;, where I carried on tests with a generator of fifteen hundred kilowatt capacity and ascertained that under certain conditions the current was capable of passing across the entire globe and returning from the antipodes to its origin with undiminished strength. It was a result so unbelievable that the revelation at first almost stunned me. I saw in a flash that by properly organized apparatus at sending and receiving stations, power virtually in unlimited amounts could be conveyed through the earth at any distance, limited only by the physical dimensions of the globe, with an efficiency as high as ninety-nine and one-half per cent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/335469/Nikola-Teslas-Colorado-Springs-Notes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nikola Tesla's Colorado Springs Notes&lt;/a&gt; were published as a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Wireless Transmission of Power&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Is there any proof that Tesla was actually able to transmit power wirelessly with commercially reasonable efficiency?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judging from the number of web-sites that cover this topic, a large number of people have looked for this. None of them seem to have found anything commercially exploitable so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Colorado Springs. 1899-1900.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tesla had a lab in Colorado at which he is said to have demonstrated illuminating light bulbs at a distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;illuminating light at a few hundred feet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;illuminating light bulbs at a range of five miles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not yet found any reliable primary sources for these stories. The reports are brief and certainly contain no data concerning efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_colspr.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8gpc8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;(from PBS)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Caption in Century Magazine, June 1900, reads: &quot;The photograph shows three ordinary incandescent lamps lighted to full candle-power by currents induced in a local loop consisting of a single wire forming a square of fifty feet each side, which includes the lamps, and which is at a distance of one hundred feet from the primary circuit energized by the oscillator.&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems Tesla's focus was on demonstrating feasibility. It seems unlikely he was especially concerned about efficiency at this stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tesla envisaged that his &quot;World System&quot; would be able to transmit power across thousands of miles, point to point, through the earth, with negligible power losses. It would also be able to power aircraft and ships.†&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Wardenclyffe. 1900-1917&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tesla's backers provided funds for a long-range communication system, but Tesla was mainly interested in demonstrating the feasibility of his &quot;World System&quot; for wireless power distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Tesla's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wardenclyffe Tower&lt;/a&gt; never became operational, Tesla was unable to demonstrate the system of power transmission he planned for his &quot;World System&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The failure of this project suggests that Tesla was unable to provide his financial backers with convincing proof that the idea was commercially exploitable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Efficiency&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Is there any data on how efficient Tesla wireless power transmission was?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've seen above that Tesla claimed 99.5% efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read much of the Colorado Springs notes, I have the impression that his demonstrations didn't measure efficiency of power transfer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe his &quot;World System&quot; was intended to work on slightly different principles. In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1927-10-16.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1927 article&lt;/a&gt; Tesla contrasts his system with power transmission by short wave broadcasting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For all the reasons given above it seems unlikely that Tesla provided experimental results that demonstrated commercial feasibility with the technology of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/d6jL8.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;(Tesla wireless power - but not his &quot;World System&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/d5bJK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;(also not Tesla's &quot;World System&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Miscellaneous references&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teslasociety.com/teslarec.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/ll_colspr.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1927-10-16.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/contents.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tesla.stumblers.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/335469-Nikola-Teslas-Colorado-Springs-Notes.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Footnotes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;†&lt;em&gt;(Frankly I find his writings and reported interviews somewhat confusing, but I'll try to provide references for this paragraph in a later edit)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-02-03T00:04:12.853" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T00:04:12.853" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14855" CreationDate="2013-02-02T11:51:43.910" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, Lovelock continued well after the damage was known, denying the significant damage to the Ozone layer from CFCs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Lo4CJCyzONkC&amp;amp;pg=PA94&amp;amp;lpg=PA94&amp;amp;dq=lovelock%20new-scientist%20ozone%20cfc&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=Q3aOTsMSnB&amp;amp;sig=AmTLDWElf_u9d9jYGwsbUlJy5E8&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=YvkMUbiqIIjK0QWvzoHIDQ&amp;amp;ved=0CGgQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=lovelock%20new-scientist%20ozone%20cfc&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;he is in 1978&lt;/a&gt;, at Fluorostrat 78, a conference sponsored by the chemical industry: (New Scientist, 12 October 1978, p94)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Professor Jim Lovelock ... commented that already observations of stratospheric ozone show that as yet no detachable [sic] influence of CFCs on the ozone layer had been found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AbVKW9H2XCUC&amp;amp;pg=PA64&amp;amp;lpg=PA64&amp;amp;dq=lovelock+%22new+scientist%22+ozone+1987&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=9rm7VSiOlU&amp;amp;sig=WZySulXdZZfgdpUx20_cUzYX9Wk&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=o_wMUZ32L83B0gWH94HACQ&amp;amp;ved=0CFAQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=lovelock%20%22new%20scientist%22%20ozone%201987&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here he is again in 1989&lt;/a&gt; (New Scientist, 23 September 1989, p64 )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... how about the ozone layer? Most of the world believes that CFCs from aerosol cans, refrigerators and the like are causing a hole to form in the ozone layer over Antarctica (and perhaps the Arctic too) each spring. But not Lovelock. He believes that the giant volcanic eruption of El Chichon in Mexico in 1982 threw so much dust into the stratosphere that chemical reactions involving these particles were primarily to blame for the opening of the ozone hole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T11:51:43.910" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14865" CreationDate="2013-02-02T12:36:30.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR &lt;strong&gt;yes, decisions to fly do contribute to GHG emissions from regulated sources within the EU, and decisions to not fly contribute to GHG reductions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper is based on a set of assumptions. The paper is internally consistent - that is to say, if the assumptions hold, the conclusions hold. If they do not, there is no basis to accept the conclusion, particularly if the conclusion defies known science &amp;amp; economics (more flying = more emissions, &lt;em&gt;ceteris paribus&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at some of the assumptions in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uea.ac.uk/documents/166500/0/CBESS-13-01/bb866dfc-ce62-4d3b-8142-5252120f4e2f&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CBESS Discussion Paper 13-01&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The government sets a binding upper bound on&#xA;  negative contributions to the public good ...  The&#xA;  immediate implication of cap-and-trade is therefore that any change in emissions by one regulated source is perfectly oset by one or more other regulated sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several implicit assumptions here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the binding upper bound is always reached - that within such a scheme we never undershoot; and therefore&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;that the binding limit for the following period does not take any account of undershoot of any previous caps.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at those two, within the context of the EU ETS, the cap &amp;amp; trade scheme under discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edie.net/news/6/EU-ETS-250m-compensation-scheme-needs-tightening-warn-MPs/23782/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Edie Energy&lt;/a&gt;, reporting on the UK Parliament's Environmental Audit Committee: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a surplus of emission allowances in the EU ETS worth €4.1bn (£3.3bn) had been accrued by large industrial companies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2013/january/carbon-price-crash-shows-urgent-reform-needed-to-eu-emissions-trading-says-expert/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pinsent Mason, environmental lawyers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The dramatic drop in the EU carbon price reinforces the fact that urgent action is required, backed by clear legislative support, to structurally reform the EU ETS and to rebalance the supply and demand of allowances in the EU ETS market ...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   In its &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets/reform/docs/com_2012_652_en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;first report on the carbon market&lt;/a&gt; (12-page / 225KB PDF), published last month, the Commission proposed six longer-term structural changes to the EU ETS. These could include increasing the EU's carbon reduction target from the current 20% to 30% by 2020, the permanent cancellation of a number of allowances or extending the scheme to cover additional sectors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it looks like neither of those implicit assumptions in the report in the question withstand scrutiny, and so its conclusions are unsafe. Which means we fall back to the basic science and economics, which is that reducing those activities that are known to release greenhouse gases, reduces the emissions of greenhouse gases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So decisions to not fly can contribute to reduced GHG emissions from regulated sources in the EU.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastActivityDate="2013-02-02T12:36:30.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14877" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-02T13:05:00.943" Score="8" ViewCount="1373" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a popular hair cleaning regime circulating in the 'green' blogs called the &quot;no 'poo method.&quot; Rather than using shampoo, one rinses the hair with a tablespoon of baking soda in a cup of water, rinses with clean water, then does the same again, only with a tablespoon of vinegar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.care2.com/greenliving/no-poo-get-beautiful-hair-with-just-baking-soda-vinegar.html#ixzz2JkdG8pyK&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It might sounds like the recipe for a hair volcano, but baking soda and vinegar work great as shampoo and conditioner substitutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does this method clean hair? There's a more common cleaning routine that only uses vinegar. What is the purpose of rinsing with both baking soda AND vinegar? I'm curious as to whether the baking soda cleans, or whether it simply neutralized the acidity of the vinegar. Is there real chemistry behind it, or is this just an old wives' tale?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I tried it last night, and it worked pretty well. My hair feels clean and silky, for what it's worth.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11352" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T17:45:08.797" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T17:45:08.797" Title="Would baking soda and vinegar clean hair, and how?" Tags="|chemistry|cleaning|vinegar|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15199" CreationDate="2013-02-03T06:06:46.950" Score="4" ViewCount="1509" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21303599&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent BBC article&lt;/a&gt; discussed the use of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing) therapy for treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It makes the claim, &quot;Some are still sceptical about the treatment, although studies have shown that it works as well as, if not better than, many other therapies available for dealing with trauma. EMDR therapists now work in every defence community mental health centre.&quot; While the phrase &quot;studies show..&quot; is not refutable, the implication that EMDR is more effective than other therapies seems to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_movement_desensitization_and_reprocessing#Controversy_over_mechanisms_and_effectiveness&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on EMDR&lt;/a&gt; lists studies that refute the effectiveness of EMDR, with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19957280&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2009 review study&lt;/a&gt; concluding &quot;Trauma-focused CBT and to a lesser extent EMDR (due to fewer studies having been conducted and many having had a mixed trauma sample) are the psychological treatments of choice for PTSD, but further research of these and other therapies with different populations is needed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to claim CBT is a more effective treatment, further backed by a &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/ebmh.5.1.13&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2002 review&lt;/a&gt; titled &quot;Review: eye movement desensitization and reprocessing is not better than exposure therapies for anxiety or trauma.&quot; This 2002 review makes the claim I am most interested in: that the eye movement is irrelevant to the effectiveness. I would very much appreciate more evidence regarding the effectiveness EMDR and, more specifically, of the eye-movement aspect, as I lack the expertise to do a proper literature review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10745" LastActivityDate="2023-03-27T08:17:24.070" Title="Is the eye-movement aspect of EMDR therapy more effective than other available therapies for treating trauma survivors?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3439" CreationDate="2013-02-03T14:48:20.680" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several hadith state that Aisha was 6 when she married and 9 when the marriage was consumated. These hadith are narrated by Aisha herself and are considered strong hadith:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bukhari vol. 7, #65:&#xA;&quot;Narrated Aisha that the prophet wrote the marriage contract with her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sunan of Abu Dawud, volume 2, #2116&quot;Aisha said, &quot;The Apostle of Allah married me when I﻿ was six years old. He had intercourse with me when I was 9 years old.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the hadith state that Aisha was still playing with dolls when she moved in with Muhammed. According to this Islamic scholor, that would not be allowed if Aisha had her first menses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Al-Khattaabee said: From this Hadeeth it is understood that playing with dolls (al-banaat) is not like the amusement from other images (suwar) concerning which the threat (wa'eed) of punishment is mentioned. The only reason why permission in this was given to 'Aa'isha (may Allah be pleased with her) is because SHE HAD NOT, AT THAT TIME, REACHED THE AGE OF PUBERTY.&quot;&#xA;Source: The Beneficial Response Concerning the Islamic Ruling of Pictures/Images &#xA;by:  Shaykh Abdul-Azeez Ibn Abdullah Ibn Baaz &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A further reading of the hadiths narrated by Aisha show a child that was still swinging withher playmates and playing with her dolls moving, as a wife, into muhammed's house when she was 9 and having sex with Muhammed at that time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bukhari, volume 5, #234&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sahih Muslim, Book 008, Number 3311&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sahih Muslim, Book 031, Number 5981&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 41, Number 4914&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The History of Tabari&quot;, volume 9, page 131&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Encyclopedia of Islam, under &quot;Aisha&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the question of climate, the main factors that influence start of menses seem to be home environment and nutrition. For example, the worse the nutrition, the older the onset of menses. Climate does not seem to be a factor. For girls in Bagdad the average age of first menses is 13.6. For girls in The Netherlands it is 13.3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mum.org/menarage.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mum.org/menarage.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not done extensive research on this topic, but whenever I have asked a Muslim for evidence of this popular claim I get nothing at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11368" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T14:48:20.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14886" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-03T16:58:36.337" Score="7" ViewCount="6671" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prompted by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14818/did-the-ussr-have-21-thousand-tanks-at-the-beginning-of-ww2&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; and a comment by matt_black. The T-34 is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=best%20tank%20of%20ww2&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;client=firefox-beta&amp;amp;channel=fflb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;often&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debate.org/debates/The-T-34-was-the-greatest-tank-of-World-War-II/1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cited&lt;/a&gt; as the best tank of WW2. However some articles paint a very different picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/2012/07/wwii-myths-t-34-best-tank-of-war.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quote&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the head of the Armored Directorate of the Red Army N.Fedorenko, the average mileage of the T-34 to overhaul during the war, did not exceed 200 kilometers. This was considered adequate since the T-34’s service life at the front was considerably less. For example in 1942 only 66km.&#xA;  In that sense the T-34 was indeed ‘reliable’ because it was destroyed before it had a chance to break down on its own! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://operationbarbarossa.net/Myth-Busters/MythBusters2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quote&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The T-34 is possibly the only weapon system in history to be rated by most commentators as the finest all round weapon in a century of warfare, and yet never consistently achieved anything better than a one to three kill-loss ratio against its enemies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't necessarily just limit this question to the T-34. But the overall effectiveness/performance of Soviet tanks in WW2. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7716" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T15:21:09.373" Title="Did the USSR have better tanks than Germany in WW2?" Tags="|world-war-ii|soviet-union|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14881" CreationDate="2013-02-03T20:09:21.333" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;EMDR has a lower drop-out rate in PTSD than the other two evidence-based treatments recommended by ISTSS. Unlike Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), there's no homework. Unlike Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE), one is not forced to relive the horrors of bad events without relief. There is excellent research now proving EMDR's efficacy and it is considered one of the three treatments of choice for trauma (along with CBT and PE) by organizations such as ISTSS (International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation), American Psychiatric Assoc, American Psychological Assoc, Dept of Veteran Affairs, Dept of Defense, Departments of Health in Northern Ireland, UK, Israel, the Netherlands, France, and other countries and organizations.  EMDR is a treatment approach which has been empirically validated in over 24 randomized studies of trauma victims.  An additional 24 studies have demonstrated positive effects for the eye movement component used in EMDR therapy. For further information, please see the cited research &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emdr.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=12&amp;amp;Itemid=18&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.emdr.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=12&amp;amp;Itemid=18&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11374" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T20:09:21.333" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14886" CreationDate="2013-02-03T20:29:51.343" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The USSR had a better military than Germany in WWII, the proof for this is the second part of the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Third_Reich&quot;&gt;The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich&lt;/a&gt;, in other words, &lt;strong&gt;the Nazis lost and the USSR won&lt;/strong&gt;, in a conflict that was mostly decided by Armor clashes, like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kursk&quot;&gt;Battle of Kursk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tanks are made to win battles and wars and the T-34 was successful while the German Tiger and the Panzer IV weren't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However to choose which tank is better would need a definition of quality, or &quot;what do you mean by better&quot;. To do a comparison to anther losing German vehicle, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maybach&quot;&gt;Maybach&lt;/a&gt; brand, while having more luxurious and better engineered cars than Toyota, it was closed, while Toyota is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue&quot;&gt;12th-largest company in the world by revenue&lt;/a&gt;. Maybach, while having better engineered and more comfortable cars, had a price tag that was so high that (almost) nobody wanted to buy them, at the same time Toyota cars are selling like condoms in a cheap Motel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same happened with the German Tanks, While being superior engineer-wise they weren't easy to manufacture, and not suitable for war time economics. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-34#Production_figures&quot;&gt;USSR produced&lt;/a&gt; 35119 T-34 tanks and 29430 T-34-85 tanks in the period between 1941-1945, it's a total of 64549 T-34 Tanks produced in 5 years, while the Germans managed to produce only &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_%28tank%29&quot;&gt;1347 Tiger I tanks&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_IV&quot;&gt;approxematly 8800 Panzer IV tanks&lt;/a&gt; which is a total 10147 tanks in a period longer than what the Russian had. So the soviets had the sheer number advantage, on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maybach&quot;&gt;Battle of Kursk&lt;/a&gt; The Soviets had 2.7 times more tanks than the German and on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moscow&quot;&gt;Battle of Moscow&lt;/a&gt; the Soviets had 1.9 times more tanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://military.discovery.com/tv-shows/greatest-tank-battles/top-10-tanks.htm&quot;&gt;Military Channel&lt;/a&gt; did a &quot;Top 10 Tanks&quot; article, that named the T-34 as the best tank ever, while the Tiger and Panzer IV got the 3rd and 6th places respectivly, the reasons are the same as I explaned. You can watch these video clips where they explain in more detail that while the German Tanks were exactly what you would expect from german engeneering, their cost and manufacturing time were just too high to fight in an all out war that lasted for 5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The T-34:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVg6gFmuRlE&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVg6gFmuRlE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Tiger:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoyW83fdJi4&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoyW83fdJi4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Panzer IV:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfZE_IUjwGM&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfZE_IUjwGM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no &quot;Best tank&quot;, there is the more suitable tank and &lt;strong&gt;army&lt;/strong&gt;. While the Panzer and the German war machine were probably the more suitable Army for short engagements in relatively small areas like Poland, France, the Netherlands and Belgium, The T-34, the Red Army and the Russian People were more suitable for an attrition war in the largest country in the world during one of the harshest winters of that decade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Many of the sources are Wikipedia, but only because they do such a good job, of summing all the numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have nothing against Toyota, they make great cars, they were given as an example for a &lt;strong&gt;smart and successful&lt;/strong&gt; operation in contrast to the unsuccessful endeavor of the Maibach brand.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-02-03T20:48:19.623" LastActivityDate="2013-02-03T20:48:19.623" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14889" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-03T21:59:27.670" Score="13" ViewCount="1158" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/01/25/norwegian_co2_warming_shocker/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent report&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;em&gt;The Register&lt;/em&gt; suggests that we might be currently overestimating the degree to which the world will warm with increasing carbon dioxide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Climate sensitivity&lt;/a&gt; is, crudely, the slope of the relationship between CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels and average world temperature. It is usually expressed as the number of degrees Celsius that will result from a doubling of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; concentration. If everything else were equal and the only effect was driven by the properties of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; then the sensitivity would be about 1°C. But many other factors also change in the real atmosphere, for example the concentration of water vapour, also a powerful greenhouse gas. So scientists have to find ways to estimate those other effects based on models or observations of the real, very complicated, atmosphere. The current consensus seems to centre around 3°C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forskningsradet.no/en/Newsarticle/Global_warming_less_extreme_than_feared/1253983344535/p1177315753918&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;science reported&lt;/a&gt; by The Register reports a recent estimate much lower than the consensus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When [the] researchers instead calculate a probability interval of what will occur, including observations and data up to 2010, they determine with 90% probability that global warming from a doubling of CO2 concentration would lie between 1.2°C and 2.9°C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This maximum of 2.9°C global warming is substantially lower than many previous calculations have estimated. Thus, when the researchers factor in the observations of temperature trends from 2000 to 2010, they significantly reduce the probability of our experiencing the most dramatic climate change forecast up to now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Register reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Berntsen and his colleagues' results derive in large part from &lt;strong&gt;taking account of the way that global temperatures have remained flat for the last fourteen years or thereabouts&lt;/strong&gt;, instead of climbing as they ought to have done with increased carbon levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity,&amp;quot; explains the prof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two interrelated questions arise: is this new estimate plausible? and is the lack of recent warming enough to force a reassessment of climate models?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-10-11T07:22:56.977" Title="Are the IPCC climate change models overestimating sensitivity to carbon dioxide?" Tags="|climate-change|climatology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14889" CreationDate="2013-02-04T05:12:29.027" Score="27" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Could sensitivity it be lower than 3&amp;deg;C for a doubling of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_equivalent&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;e&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, it could, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-5.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as the IPCC have said in their assessment reports&lt;/a&gt;, and as the science has said for decades. This single new study suggests a range of 1-2.9&amp;deg;C, which has huge overlap with the IPCC range. It is therefore consistent with IPCC estimates, and while it adds new data and new analysis to the existing large body of studies, it does not overturn them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is their method sound?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result declared in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forskningsradet.no/en/Newsarticle/Global_warming_less_extreme_than_feared/1253983344535/p1177315753918&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;press release&lt;/a&gt; should give a scientific sceptic &lt;strong&gt;some cause for concern&lt;/strong&gt; as to their method:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the researchers at CICERO and the Norwegian Computing Center applied their model and statistics to analyse temperature readings from the air and ocean for the period ending in 2000, they found that climate sensitivity to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration will most likely be 3.7&amp;deg;C, which is somewhat higher than the IPCC prognosis. But the researchers were surprised when they entered temperatures and other data from the decade 2000-2010 into the model; climate sensitivity was greatly reduced to a “mere” 1.9&amp;deg;C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If 10 years of data causes that much of a change to the result obtained from 250 years of data, it's quite possible that their method is over-weighting the most recent data. It's giving too much weight to a small number of recent years. Because the number of years is small, weather noise will dominate climate trends. It's worth noting at this point that some of the Cicero work behind this press release was unpublished at the time of the press release, and none of it has yet been confirmed by other studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Are we OK if forcing is, say, only 1&amp;deg;C rather than 3&amp;deg;C?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, because even in that incredibly optimistic scenario which is not supported by the vast majority of empirical data and studies, we're &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg3/index.php?idp=346#fig8-12&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on course&lt;/a&gt; to raise CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;e from pre-industrial levels of ~280ppm to ~1000ppm, which would lead to a raising of temperature of 3-4&amp;deg;C, which puts us into very dangerous territory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Cf0Ly.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is it a safe bet to assume that sensitivity is much less?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, it's an insane gamble. And that's because the stakes are so high - this is an asymmetric bet. Let's take an extremely optimistic case, one that is so optimistic that it defies the known science, that there's only a 5% chance that forcing is 3&amp;deg;C, and a 95% chance that forcing is 1&amp;deg;C.  The cost of decarbonising the economy is uncertain - it may be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg3/en/spmsspm-d.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a net positive, or around 1% of GDP, and almost certainly below 5.5% of GDP&lt;/a&gt;. So, even in this extreme case where the vast bulk of climate science is wrong, the bet offered is at 95%:5%; the stake is human civilisation, and the potential value of a win is &lt;a href=&quot;http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;-1% to 5.5%&lt;/a&gt; of global GDP. That's not a sane one-off bet, it's an insane gamble. If we were going to average it out over tens of thousands of cases, then statistics would be on our side. But this is a one-shot gamble, the odds are for a high forcing, and the stakes are way way in favour of decarbonisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Has there been a lack of warming over the last 14 years?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, not unless the laws of physics have changed. And we've got no reason to believe they have.  We know the sun has continued to irradiate the Earth, at the levels it has for many years. And we know that the Earth's insulation, from greenhouse gases, has increased - we know that from huge amounts of empirical observation. So we know that the global heat content has continued to rise - that much is basic thermodynamics. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/05/ocean-heat-content-increases-update/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lot of heat&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/09/why-greenhouse-gases-heat-the-ocean/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;gets&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/10/global-warming-and-ocean-heat-content/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;stored in oceans&lt;/a&gt;; that means that it doesn't show up in surface temperatures, until we get one of those periodic releases of heat from oceans, which then boost global surface temperatures thereafter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/10/03/335022/organized-climate-change-denial/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FUD&lt;/a&gt; meme that has confused some non-scientists, that there has been a lack of warming over the last 14 years, has come about because there is no clear trend in surface temperatures over the last 14 years. Now, &lt;strong&gt;no clear trend&lt;/strong&gt; is not the same as a &lt;strong&gt;flat horizontal trend&lt;/strong&gt;, any more than it's the same as a rising trend or a falling trend. It's &lt;strong&gt;no clear trend&lt;/strong&gt;. No clear trend doesn't mean you get to pick and choose the trend that suits your fancy; it means that there's insufficient evidence for what the trend is, in that particular dataset. That shouldn't be surprising: the surface temperatures of a small number of years are more likely to indicate the noise of weather, rather than trends in climate. Trends in climate tend to show up at the scale of 30 years or so, and over that timescale, the warming trend is unambiguous:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/best/from:1981/to:2011/offset:-0.60/mean:60/plot/gistemp-dts/from:1981/to:2011/offset:-0.44/mean:60/plot/crutem3vgl/from:1981/to:2011/offset:-0.40/mean:60/plot/rss-land/from:1981/to:2011/offset:-0.14/mean:60/plot/uah-land/from:1981/to:2011/mean:60/plot/best/from:1981/to:2011/offset:-0.60/trend/plot/gistemp-dts/from:1981/to:2011/offset:-0.44/trend/plot/crutem3vgl/from:1981/to:2011/offset:-0.40/trend/plot/rss-land/from:1981/to:2011/offset:-0.14/trend/plot/uah-land/from:1981/to:2011/trend&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UbB8n.png&quot; alt=&quot;Warming trend&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="46077" LastEditDate="2018-10-11T07:22:56.977" LastActivityDate="2018-10-11T07:22:56.977" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14738" CreationDate="2013-02-04T09:57:43.120" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is &quot;No&quot;. The Vatican did not build a secret property empire, they did this openly, and they did use the millions they received from Mussolini.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/9818781/Vatican-denies-it-built-property-empire-on-back-of-Mussolinis-money.html&quot;&gt;official Vatican reaction in the Telegraph.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; to the secret property article in the Guardian.co.uk, the Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi explaines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The money was compensation, issued under the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateran_Treaty&quot;&gt;Lateran Accords of&#xA;  1929&lt;/a&gt;, for the properties the Vatican lost in the Papal States,&#xA;  such as the Quirinal Palace in Rome, which has since become the&#xA;  residence of the Italian President.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This article reveals nothing that was not known already,&quot; he&#xA;  commented. &quot;The fact that Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy&#xA;  See has a special section [for real estate] is even recorded in the&#xA;  Vatican telephone exchange.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the money was received by the Italian state, which was under control by the fascist regime of Mussolini at the time. But, there was a lot more than just money involved in this deal. This deal made the Vatican an official country again, catholicism the official Italian religion and much more. Here is a great article about &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.concordatwatch.eu/topic-841.843&quot;&gt;How the Lateran Treaty made the Catholic Church into a state&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar deals (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concordat&quot;&gt;Concordats&lt;/a&gt;) were made around the world between countries and the Vatican. The Italian &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateran_Treaty&quot;&gt;Lateran Treaty (1929)&lt;/a&gt; was controversial, but even more so was the deal with Germany in 1933 with the Nazi regime known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskonkordat&quot;&gt;Reichskonkordat (1933)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both deals pretty much gave moral support and legitimacy to the fascists party in Europe in the 1930's and all the horrors that happened the following 15 years. Though, never official of course, but pope Pius XII's (and the Vatican's) role during, and the years leading up to, WWII remains controversial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7202" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T09:57:43.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3737" CreationDate="2013-02-04T09:57:59.287" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue is not simple and straightforward. This strange desire to eat tiger body parts has deep roots in our prehistory. Eating body parts of good fighters was believed to give courage and power in many tribes. Ainus from North Japan worship bears, and on a bear festival (their central festival) they ritually kill a bear and eat it as sign of great respect and love. If you disgusted by this idea, think of millions of Catholics who participate in Eucharist, which is a ritual of eating the body and drinking the blood of the Savior. In cultures where people had connections with tigers, these majestic animals were universally revered and perceived as gods. So today, when many Chinese believe tiger body parts have some mysterious qualities, this comes from this ancient religious belief, and unfortunately, explaining that eating tiger body parts cannot help health problems is as fruitless as bringing atheistic arguments to the believers. So what to do about the tiger farms? Elimination of all tiger farms will drive the tiger poaching at the National Parks, where tigers are free, at much higher level, as the price for tiger bodies will soar. One possibility would be to have a capital punishment for tiger poachers and those in this trade, not the small penalty which is 1000 times less than the price for the tiger body. Are we ready for this? If we are not ready to put to death all poachers and all illegal trade participants, and if we still want wild tigers to roam free on our planet, I think we should allow tiger farming. At the same time we must make sure that tigers have decent living conditions on the farms. Do not forget, people involved in tiger poaching will be voting for tiger farm closure, as closing tiger farms will drive up the demand and prices on their “product.” It is truly horrible that we are facing such a problem, which makes any decision very difficult…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11384" LastActivityDate="2013-02-04T09:57:59.287" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14903" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-05T02:43:54.520" Score="14" ViewCount="3196" Body="&lt;p&gt;Who can debunk or prove the claim: &quot;Milk is dangerous for your health, because of &lt;a href=&quot;http://milk.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000826&quot;&gt;heart attacks&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/QAA400175/Does-Milk-Cause-Cancer.html&quot;&gt;higher risks of cancer&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about curd?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7662" LastEditorUserId="7662" LastEditDate="2013-02-05T07:34:17.830" LastActivityDate="2016-02-01T01:41:27.443" Title="Does milk cause heart attacks and cancer?" Tags="|nutrition|milk|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13874" CreationDate="2013-02-05T06:05:56.863" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurya_Empire&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Maurya Dynasty&lt;/a&gt; (322BCE - 185BCE) was an empire that controlled most of the Indian peninsula and extended as far East as modern day Myanmar and as far West as modern day Iran.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Empire was founded in 322 BCE by Chandragupta Maurya, who had overthrown the Nanda Dynasty and rapidly expanded his power westwards across central and western India taking advantage of the disruptions of local powers in the wake of the withdrawal westward by Alexander the Great's Greek and Persian armies. By 320 BCE the empire had fully occupied Northwestern India, &lt;strong&gt;defeating and conquering&lt;/strong&gt; the satraps left by Alexander.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under Chandragupta, the Mauryan Empire &lt;strong&gt;conquered the trans-Indus region&lt;/strong&gt;, which was under Macedonian rule. Chandragupta then defeated the invasion led by Seleucus I, a Greek general from Alexander's army. Under Chandragupta and his successors, internal and external trade, agriculture and economic activities, all thrived and expanded across India thanks to the creation of a single and efficient system of finance, administration, and security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are maps of their conquests through the years.(from Wikipedia)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Magadha.GIF/120px-Magadha.GIF&quot; alt=&quot;pic&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/52/Nanda_Empire.gif/120px-Nanda_Empire.gif&quot; alt=&quot;pic&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7XlHF.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7XlHF.gif&quot; alt=&quot;pic&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Chandragupta_Empire_320_BC.gif/120px-Chandragupta_Empire_320_BC.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikimedia.org&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dOT4G.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dOT4G.gif&quot; alt=&quot;pic&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Chandragupta_mauryan_empire_305_BC.gif/120px-Chandragupta_mauryan_empire_305_BC.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikimedia.org&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1YOzd.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1YOzd.gif&quot; alt=&quot;pic&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Chandragupta_Maurya_Empire.gif/120px-Chandragupta_Maurya_Empire.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikimedia.org&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maurya Empire at its maximum extent (Dark Blue), including its vassals (Light Blue):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3d/Maurya_Dynasty_in_265_BCE.jpg/250px-Maurya_Dynasty_in_265_BCE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;pic&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11396" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-03-21T22:13:58.100" LastActivityDate="2019-03-21T22:13:58.100" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14903" CreationDate="2013-02-05T10:11:10.673" Score="14" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Cancer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eps1.comlink.ne.jp/~mayus/eng/IJCTP.html&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/people/ganmaa-davaasambuu&quot;&gt;Dr Ganmaa Davaasambuu&lt;/a&gt; et al at Harvard dated 2002 which links hormones in milk with increased risk of certain cancers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among the food items examined, milk (1961-90) was most closely correlated with prostate cancer incidence (r = 0.711), followed by meat (0.642) and coffee (0.606) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr Davaasambuu's study cites &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8761386&quot;&gt; Davies TW, Palmer CR, Ruja E, et al. Adolescent milk, dairy product and fruit consumption and testicular cancer. Br J Cancer 1996;74:657-60. &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Heart disease&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Milk is a source of cholesterol which is said to come in two forms: high density lipoproteins (HDL), which help reduce your risk of stroke &amp;amp; heart disease and low density lipoproteins (LDL) which is deposited in arteries and increases risk of heart disease. It is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucsfhealth.org/education/cholesterol_content_of_foods/index.html&quot;&gt;recommended&lt;/a&gt; that you consume no more than 300g of cholesterol per day (about 9 cups of milk).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a relevant listing of studies at &lt;a href=&quot;http://milk.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000826&quot;&gt;pro-Con&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Health Benefits of Milk&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2001 the BBC &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1321000.stm&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A] Bristol University study revealed that even drinking full fat milk, more common a couple of decades ago, was not linked to an increase in deaths from coronary heart disease.&#xA;  In fact heart disease death rates among regular milk drinkers were even found to be lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 25-year study of 5,700 Scottish men found that heart disease death rates among men drinking more than a third of a pint of milk each day were 8% lower than those who drank less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Deaths from cancer and strokes were 10% lower among the regular milk drinkers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The research team said the benefits of milk could be linked to its high calcium levels and that this might counteract the adverse effects of the saturated fat content of milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Oddthinking noted in a comment: &quot;dairy (low-fat, in moderation) or calcium-fortified soy milk is actually recommended by, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eatwell_plate&quot;&gt;EatWell&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyPlate&quot;&gt;MyPlate&lt;/a&gt; guidelines.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be no evidence that avoiding milk altogether is warranted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-02-05T17:12:44.327" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T17:12:44.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13874" CreationDate="2013-02-05T16:00:11.740" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;RedGrittyBrick's excellent answer misses a spot. Goa. In 1961, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Indian_annexation_of_Goa&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;India annexed Portuguese India&lt;/a&gt; which included the enclaves of Goa, Daman and Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. All three elements of the Indian military were utilised in the invasion and successful capture of these three enclaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Portuguese PM, Salazar, ordered the Governor General of Goa, Vassalo e Silva, to fight to the last man or to hold out for eight days while he drummed up support against the invasion. Silva managed to hold out for a brief period after which he was forced to surrender as the Portuguese forces were unable to combat the aerial threat of the Indian Air Force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The war lasted two days. India suffered 34 dead and 51 wounded. Portugal lost 31 killed, 57 wounded, and 4668 captured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Indian_annexation_of_Goa#United_States_of_America&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reaction of the United States&lt;/a&gt; was as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Referring to the perception, especially in the West, that India had previously been lecturing the world about the virtues of non-violence, US President Kennedy told the Indian ambassador to the US, “&lt;em&gt;You spend the last fifteen years preaching morality to us, and then you go ahead and act the way any normal country would behave&lt;/em&gt;.... &lt;strong&gt;People are saying, the preacher has been caught coming out of the brothel&lt;/strong&gt;.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an article titled &amp;quot;India, The Aggressor&amp;quot;, The New York Times on 19 December 1961, stated &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;With his invasion of Goa&lt;/strong&gt; Prime Minister Nehru has done irreparable damage to India's good name and to the principles of international morality.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;India tried to give the invasion a different spin by calling it a &lt;em&gt;police action&lt;/em&gt; rather than a war. So, to answer the OP's question, yes, India has invaded at least one country in the last &lt;strike&gt;10,000&lt;/strike&gt; 60 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T16:06:20.057" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14903" CreationDate="2013-02-05T21:41:23.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Harvard School of Public Health says this about milk.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/calcium-full-story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/calcium-full-story/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding heart disease:&#xA;&quot;Many dairy products are high in saturated fats, and a high saturated fat intake is a risk factor for heart disease.&quot;&#xA;About low-fat dairy products, it says, &quot;Strangely, it’s often the same people who purchase these higher fat products [butter, ice cream] who also purchase the low-fat dairy products, so it’s not clear that they’re making great strides in cutting back on their saturated fat consumption.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding cancer:&#xA;&quot;A diet high in calcium has been implicated as a probable risk factor for prostate cancer.&quot;&#xA;&quot;High levels of galactose, a sugar released by the digestion of lactose in milk, have been studied as possibly damaging to the ovaries and leading to ovarian cancer.&quot;&#xA;&quot;At moderate levels, though, consumption of calcium and dairy products has benefits beyond bone health, including possibly lowering the risk of high blood pressure and colon cancer. While the blood pressure benefits appear fairly small, the protection against colon cancer seems somewhat larger, and most of the latter benefit comes from having just one or maybe two glasses of milk per day in addition to what we get from other foods in our diet. Getting more than this doesn’t seem to lower risk further.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line:&#xA;High intake of calcium in general possibly lowers the risk of colon cancer but raises the risk of prostate cancer. Lactose in general possibly raises the risk of ovarian cancer.&#xA;Saturated fat in milk is a risk factor for heart disease. That risk is reduced by substituting low-fat dairy products, as long as one doesn't compensate by consuming more high-fat dairy products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11400" LastEditorUserId="11400" LastEditDate="2013-02-05T22:29:10.703" LastActivityDate="2013-02-05T22:29:10.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14910" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-05T22:08:00.437" Score="15" ViewCount="1070" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chron.com/news/politics/article/Monkey-business-US-unsure-of-Iran-s-space-claims-4249556.php&quot;&gt;http://www.chron.com/news/politics/article/Monkey-business-US-unsure-of-Iran-s-space-claims-4249556.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The United States expressed doubt on Monday about Iran's claim that&#xA;  it safely returned a monkey from space, saying it is questionable that&#xA;  the monkey survived — or if the flight happened at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doesn't the U.S. monitor rocket launches, especially from a place like Iran? How can they not know if the flight happened at all? NORAD confirmed that North Korea's satellite launch was successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11400" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:32:07.253" LastActivityDate="2018-11-05T01:56:50.460" Title="Did Iran launch a monkey into space and safely return it to Earth?" Tags="|history|weapons|iran|space-flight|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14912" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-05T22:29:34.337" Score="0" ViewCount="791" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reasons.org/articles/creation-timeline&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this timeline&lt;/a&gt;, loosely based on the Bible,  conflict with what the Bible or  modern science teach about the age and order of the universe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Creation Timeline Table&#xA;From the Moment of Creation to Man&#xA;First Posted 02-28-2000&#xA;&#xA;Updated 07-11-2006&#xA;&#xA;Time From Creation Event&#xA;&#xA;Event&#xA;&#xA;0   moment of creation (some kind of singularity)&#xA;0 to 10-43 seconds  release of space curvature&#xA;10-43 seconds   loss of dimensions&#xA;10-43 seconds   superforce separates into gravity and the strong electroweak force&#xA;10-35 seconds   strong electroweak separates into the strong and electroweak forces&#xA;10-35 seconds   photons and leptons appear&#xA;10-11 seconds   electroweak force separates into the weak and electromagnetic forces&#xA;10-10 seconds   quarks appear&#xA;10-5 to 10-4 seconds    baryons and anti-baryons appear&#xA;0.001 seconds   annihilation of anti-matter occurs&#xA;3 minutes   nuclei appear&#xA;300,000 years   atoms appear; light separates from darkness (outer space becomes black)&#xA;365 million years   first stars form&#xA;500 million years   first galaxies appear&#xA;2 billion years all manner of quasars and galaxies appear&#xA;9 billion years solar system appears&#xA;10 billion years    life created on Earth&#xA;13 billion years    creation of dozens of new phyla (Cambrian explosion)&#xA;13.5 billion years  creation of dinosaurs&#xA;13.73 billion years creation of man&#xA;13.73 billion years the present&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11402" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:20:19.617" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:20:19.617" Title="Does this creation model conflict with modern science?" Tags="|religion|bible|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2013-02-06T20:35:08.050" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14913" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-05T23:11:27.030" Score="14" ViewCount="7606" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.listerine.com/products/zero-mouthwash&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Case in point:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No other alcohol-free mouthwash has been proven more effective at&#xA;  killing bad breath germs. Contains signature 4 Essential Oils found in&#xA;  LISTERINE® Antiseptic for bad breath protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many germs can it possibly kill with essential oils and no alcohol?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the mouthwash with alcohol lists the essential oils like eucalyptol and menthol as active ingredients, and relegates alcohol to inactive ingredients, which raises the question why the alcohol is even needed. Also, the alcohol is usually around 20%. In contrast, hand sanitizers have over 60% alcohol, but mouthwash can't use over 40% alcohol because it raises the risk of oral cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11400" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T14:51:23.800" LastActivityDate="2022-10-25T14:28:59.377" Title="Does alcohol-free &quot;essential oil&quot; mouthwash kill bacteria in your mouth?" Tags="|medical-science|hygiene|dentistry|medications|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14912" CreationDate="2013-02-05T23:18:42.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR Essentially, there is no conflict.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_bigbang_timeline.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pretty normal summary of major events in the universe&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_the_universe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is another.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/cosmology/hotbb.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;And another&lt;/a&gt;. There are some discrepancies, but given the level of uncertainty we have in the timing of these events, nothing that is a major disagreement. However it should be said that the events listed are not explicitly mentioned in the Bible. The article is more of a reconciliation of the scientific description with the Biblical story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would quote from the references, but I would end up having to quote much of each reference to show agreement. Instead it is left as an exercise for the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2013-02-06T14:01:48.290" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T14:01:48.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14912" CreationDate="2013-02-05T23:53:55.023" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think this is a biblical timeline. It does use the word 'creation' a fair bit which doesn't fit current scientific thinking.&#xA;Firstly it's important to note that the scientific opinion of the history of the universe is not finalised and probably never will be, it merely represents the best bet we can make with our current knowledge. It might get closer to the truth in the future, but the nature of truth in the theory of science is a whole other discussion that is too long to go into here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest equivalent in the Bible is the parable using a week to represent the creation of everything. To be fair it's probably a useful construct to think of the history of the universe in a simpler way that is easy for the human mind to comprehend. I personally can't picture what 13 billion years looks like, but a week is easy to comprehend. Except that if the history of the universe were a week then humans wouldn't have been created on the 6th day, it's more like the last microsecond that we've been around. But again, thinking of a week as being a long time and humans as only being around very recently is a good way to think about it. However there is even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecclesia.org/truth/1-2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;contradiction between genesis 1 &amp;amp; 2&lt;/a&gt; regarding exactly when man was created.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the timeline you've posted, the units for the first few are wrong, it wasn't seconds it was nanoseconds or even smaller. Physicists use the concept of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Planck time&lt;/a&gt;, which more closely represents the time scale those events took place in. &#xA;[Edit] The units are fine, as noted by oddThinking the units are 10^-43 which is not an error.[/Edit]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, the prevailing scientific opinion is based on the majority consensus of physicists and cosmologists using extremely complex models to try to extrapolate back in time to estimate the timeline. You could read about the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/redshf.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;red shift&lt;/a&gt;&quot; to learn why scientists know the universe is expanding and how we estimate the age of the universe and the timing of the big bang (or &lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/redshf.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the big bounce&lt;/a&gt; if you are one of the scientists that think the big bang wasn't the beginning). You could spend years studying &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/elegant-universe.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;string theory&lt;/a&gt; or M theory in all its variations and unifying theories that still don't explain how all the 4 forces came from a single force if indeed that is what happened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to the religion angle. I had an interesting lecturer in chemistry once, who neatly explained a link between the metaphorical notion of creationism and the idea of causality in science, specifically the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k-12/airplane/thermo2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;second law of thermodynamics&lt;/a&gt;. The 2nd law relates to the idea of entropy and the &quot;arrow of time&quot; but could be explained simply as being about cause and effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Edit] The second law of thermodynamics is very related to cause and effect; due to the always increasing entropy of a closed system the law suggests an end to the universe and necessarily implies a begininning to the universe. This is well established in the scientific literature&#xA;&quot;Entropic Creation : Religious Contexts of Thermodynamics and Cosmology Kragh, Heige S. p279 Ashgate Publishing Group 2008&quot;&#xA;&quot;Entropy Demystified : The Second Law Reduced to Plain Common Sense Ben-Naim, Arieh, 2007 p46 - chapter 2.4.2 Conditional probability and cause and effect'&quot;&#xA;[/edit]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the effect is the big bang and expansion and consequent evolution of the universe, then what is the cause? Perhaps a creator? Science can't and does not attempt to disprove that. Scientists don't know and shouldn't speculate on that as scientists because it is pure conjecture. Not that hypothesising is bad, but it is pointless when you can't do the experiments or research. There is no means for us to peer back before the big bang with present knowledge, so that leaves that explanation neatly in the realm of religion, and personally I don't see any conflict of interest in 'believing' that or even the basic premise of science and religion coexisting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is why &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.richarddawkins.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dawkins&lt;/a&gt; and the late &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailyhitchens.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hitchens&lt;/a&gt; are considered extreme, not that they aren't brilliant, but their position of Atheism is too extreme, how could they know for sure? Agnostic is then a more reasonable position to take, but that discussion is beyond this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the use of the word 'Creation' in the timeline above is something that the pushers of intelligent design might use to try and more closely integrate religious gospel with pseudo-scientific explanations. A reasonable scientific melding of religion and the big back might come from a field like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stsci.edu/~lbradley/seminar/butterfly.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;chaos theory&lt;/a&gt; and specifically the idea of iterative algorithms such as those used in the generation of fractal images. The key there is that it is very difficult for us to predict the state of a random system although knowing the initial state can often lead to the same patterns being generated. If you run a &lt;a href=&quot;http://home.olympus.net/~dewey/mandelbrot.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mandelbrot set&lt;/a&gt; generation for example, the formula that drives the generation of what appears to be infinitely complex is itself extremely simple. zn+1 = zn^ 2 + c. People often have difficulty looking at the complexity of life on Earth and believing that it is not the work of a designer. Look at the interleaved nature of life such as symbiotic organisms and imagine how that could have come about by random evolution. The key is that modern evolutionary theory is not the same as Darwinism. Modern thinking is that the evolution is not slow and gradual and random at all but quite a bit more complicated than that so I won't go in to it here in case of not doing it justice, but back to how complexity can arise from simplicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps a creator set the initial state of the universe and let it run, however, the idea of intricate centralised design of every system and organism in the universe is not a good strategy and has some parallels with the idea of &lt;a href=&quot;http://business.baylor.edu/Steve_Gardner/cesch15.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;central planning&lt;/a&gt; which doesn't work no matter how much effort or intelligence you throw at it. Most scientists won't accept that a creator is intimately involved in their daily existence so I can't agree with the use of the word 'Creation' in your timeline. I would replace it with the word 'Appearance' because that more closely represents the extent of our knowledge of those events. We think they occured, roughly at those times but that's all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11405" LastEditorUserId="11405" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T01:05:07.833" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T01:05:07.833" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14918" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-06T04:23:42.657" Score="13" ViewCount="62525" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seemingly legitimate camouflage design company says it invented an invisibility cloak called Quantum Stealth that works by bending light &quot;without cameras, batteries, lights or mirrors.&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hyperstealth.com/Quantum-Stealth/index.html&quot;&gt;http://www.hyperstealth.com/Quantum-Stealth/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the pictures on the website make no sense. They show a person holding the simulated material like a flat screen. If the material bends light around the person, shouldn't the material be wrapped around the person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company dismisses skeptics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do I care that people remain skeptical? Nope, the people that need to know that it works have seen it and verified it and their opinions are the only ones that matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then why talk about it at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those who have supposedly seen it didn't sound very thrilled about it.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mapleridgenews.com/news/183440961.html&quot;&gt;http://www.mapleridgenews.com/news/183440961.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maj. Doug MacNair, with Canadian Special Operations Forces Command, confirmed that Cramer made a presentation to special operations within the last few years.&#xA;  &quot;We didn't pursue it further, at least not at this time anyway. It wasn't something we were interested in pursuing at the time. It doesn't mean we wouldn't in the future, necessarily. We're aware of the company, we have the information. But we don't have a contract in place at the time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it work or not? If not, then why would they make this up? Just for free publicity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11400" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T20:03:04.883" Title="Did Canadian company HyperStealth invent an invisibility cloak?" Tags="|physics|technology|military|canada|materials|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2202" CreationDate="2013-02-06T07:09:12.373" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, there is no credible risk of cancer or other adverse effects from oral consumption of BPA.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies that claim BPA might pose a danger have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stats.org/stories/2009/Science%20Suppressed_%20America%27s%20Obsession%20with%20BPA_June30_09.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;methodological issues&lt;/a&gt;. STATS.org of George Mason University notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The European Food Safety Authority (ERAS) - said that the amount considered safe to ingest on a daily basis for life should be raised by a factor of five.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the studies that show adverse effects in rodents given small doses of bisphenol A subcutaneous injections. Most of the studies in rodents that did not show adverse effects even in high doses used the oral route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;there is &amp;quot;a 500,000 fold difference between the lowest oral exposures in animals associated with any adverse effects and the oral human exposure,&amp;quot; [...] By any measure, this does not constitute a health risk. We get vastly more estrogenic chemicals from eating nuts, cereals and bread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T07:09:12.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14478" CreationDate="2013-02-06T08:01:36.760" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depending on the type of the defibrillator. The &lt;strong&gt;Automated external defibrillator&lt;/strong&gt; (AED) units that are commonly available in airports, railway stations, government agencies, shopping centers and other places with lots of people, these are not dangerous to apply. The principle is that these &quot;to-be-used-by-non-professionals&quot; devices are &quot;clever&quot;: they detect the conditions of the victim, and apply the shock only when fibrillation is happening, and in coordination with the specific detected fibrillation waveform.  This means that they cannot operate on dead bodies, or on people with normal cardiac activity. For more information on these see: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_external_defibrillator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_external_defibrillator&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not the case of the medical defibrillators that do not detect the victim's conditions and apply the shock as the medic orders.  In this case, the assumption is that the medic is watching the electrocardiogram continuously and selecting the timing and parameters of intervention in a similar (but more flexible) way to what an AED unit does automatically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11345" LastEditorUserId="11421" LastEditDate="2013-02-07T08:16:04.310" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T08:16:04.310" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14921" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14926" CreationDate="2013-02-06T09:07:48.457" Score="4" ViewCount="1556" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without getting in too much details and going off-topic, I just want to say I personally find that the idea of time travel is ridiculous, at least in the current frame of physics and our understanding of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The case&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I was on Facebook I stumbled upon a page called &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/pages/Time-Travel-is-100-Real/134050586658505&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Time Travel is 100% Real&lt;/a&gt;, they claim that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Actual, 3D Time Travel (As in Back to the Future). It is achieved and&#xA;  suppressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They go on about theories by a scientist called Dr. David Lewis Anderson and videos were he claims that he has built equipments and has done research that proves the possibility of time travel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked into the articles and the videos and they provide no actual data or real accessible references, they (the page and some of the videos/articles/books) justify that by saying that those are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;for anyone still living in the mainstream (media, textbooks etc)&#xA;  illusion of lies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Question&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence of time travel discovery?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11409" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:48:04.913" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T00:48:04.913" Title="Was time travel achieved and then hidden from the public?" Tags="|physics|media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" ClosedDate="2013-02-06T20:33:37.753" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14918" CreationDate="2013-02-06T11:06:56.667" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt; Does it work or not? &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far Hyperstealth Biotechnology Corpy have not made public any clear evidence that &quot;Quantum Stealth&quot; material bends light or even exists. The product appears to be no more than a marketing concept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unrelated researchers have been working on &quot;invisibility cloaks&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-how-to-make-anything-disappear#.URI9raWphok&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.technologyreview.com/news/421574/a-bendable-light-bending-material/&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, but these seem to be far from practical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can speculate that Hyperstealth have read about this and may be hoping to develop their current business in that direction once some other company engages in commercial manufacture of such materials and makes them available for sale to other businesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;If not, then why would they make this up?  Just for free publicity?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can only speculate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ic.gc.ca/app/ccc/srch/bscSrch.do&quot;&gt;Industry Canada&lt;/a&gt; for &quot;Hyperstealth&quot; and got no hits (It works for Canadian businesses like &quot;Bombardier&quot;) so Hyperstealth may be too small to be a registered company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Hyperstealth Biotechnology Corp appears to mainly consist of a camouflage pattern designer Guy Cramer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He’d been interested in camo since the ‘80s, when he wore it as a professional paintballer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... in 2003, when Cramer was selling plumbing supplies and working on science projects in his free time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... Eight years later, Cramer is running his own design shop&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/design/2012/06/how-hyperstealths-algorithms-build-better-camo/&quot;&gt;Wired&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems Mr Cramer's break into the world of camouflage design may have come when someone with money read something Mr Cramer wrote in a blog or discussion forum about paintball camouflage he had designed. Perhaps this demonstration of the effectiveness of publicity made the sort of impression on Mr Cramer that I imagine it would on me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hyperstealth sell a small range of ordinary camouflage clothing on their website. They have partnered with a US military equipment and camouflage clothing supplier ADS Inc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr Cramer's company may be one of several camouflage pattern designers that have been used by ADS. It seems reasonable to assume that Mr Cramer is paid royalties for the use of his designs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All publicity is good publicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hyperstealth don't seem to be the sort of company that would employ physicists and materials engineers to work on meta-materials in a large corporate research facility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-02-17T00:54:48.280" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T00:54:48.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14923" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-06T15:49:22.257" Score="5" ViewCount="810" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep hearing about &quot;ideal&quot; number of direct subordinates, which is 5 to 7.&#xA;It's also called &quot;Span of control&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Span of control&lt;/strong&gt;, also known as span of management, is a human resources management term that refers to the number of subordinates a supervisor can effectively manage. [Source]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concept and the number dated back to 1922:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In studies of British military leaders, Hamilton found that they could&#xA;  not effectively control more than three to six people directly. These&#xA;  figures have been generally accepted as the &quot;rule of thumb&quot; for span&#xA;  of control ever since. [Source]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it tested or topic additionally researched in Information Technologies era ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6181" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-02-06T20:35:54.413" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T20:35:54.413" Title="Span of Control: 5-7 direct subordinates of one manager" Tags="|psychology|work|management|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14912" CreationDate="2013-02-06T19:28:17.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR The timeline contradicts the biblical text&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As DJClayworth's answer notes, there is almost no conflict between the timeline presented and the current scientific understating of the creation of the Universe. However there is a great deal of conflict between the &lt;strong&gt;Bible&lt;/strong&gt; and the presented timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reference that will be used here is the bible itself, I'll use the original &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mechon-mamre.org/i/t/t0101.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hebrew bible&lt;/a&gt;, for this reason I'll not quote the bible, but just put the number of the passage so that the reader could go to their preferred translation and read the passage for themselves. Also, I'll only look on the first chapter of Genesis. Although the second chapter also depicts the creation, it's contradictory to the first chapter, and the first chapter is the more famous of the two (the story with the 6 days of creation). There is plenty of material on-line about the contradiction from both sides, and I'll not touch on this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first contradiction is the amount of data presented in the time line. The time-line includes anti-matter, quarks, photons and leptons, the 4 fundamental forces, atoms, nuclei, dimensions, galaxies and quasars, non of which is present in the biblical text. In order to put those things in the timeline, including the very precise times at which each of these events happens (the time scale of the bible is days, not 10 in the power of -45 seconds) you must have modern scientific knowledge that isn't found in the bible or in any other Judeo-Christian religious text. So while it doesn't contradict the bible on this issue it clearly uses non biblical sources, so the time line can't truly be called a religious time line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The timeline puts the creation of stars and galaxies before the creation of the solar system, and the creation of the moon after the creation of the Earth, and while it's not said so in the text timeline itself, in order to be on par with science it must put the creation of our sun before the creation of the Earth (see sources in DJClayworth's answer). However the bible puts the creation of the stars, Sun and Moon in the forth day (14-19) after the plants were created on the third day (9-13). And specificly the Moon and the Sun are described as being created on the 4th day in passage 16.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The timlene puts the creation of the oceans and water circulation systems (&lt;code&gt;Oceans become permanent (~3.8bya)&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Stable water cycle established (3.0-3.8 bya)&lt;/code&gt;) on the first day after the creation of the moon and the ocean are created before the water circulation. The Bible puts the creation of the water circulation on the second day in the suppuration of the Water above the sky and the water below the sky and the creation of the sky (6-8) and the creation of oceans and seas in the third day by pooling the water into one place and exposing the land (9-10). Both happening in the wrong order and before the creation of the Sun, Moon and stars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finaly, the timeline puts the creation of the living creatures (on the picture) as fallowing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3.85 bya: Isotopic evidence for life (1st day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3.5 bya: Stromatolites and microfossils (1st day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2.7 bya: Cyanobacteria and other phototrophs (2nd day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.9 bya: Microscopic eukaryotes (3rd day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;650 mya: Some scientists believe first land plants arrive (4th day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;546 mya: First fish and shelly invertebrates, Cambrian Explosion (Tomootian and Atdbanian periods) (4th day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;520 mya: Earliest fossil land plant spores (4th day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;425 mya: Vascular plant fossils (4th day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;346 mya: Earliest terrestrial animal fossil (4th day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;340 mya: Oldest reptile fossil (5th day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;230 mya: Oldest reptile fossil (5th day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;155 mya: Earliest winged birds (5th day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;125 mya: Earliest mammal fossil (5th day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;0.05 mya: Modern humans (6th day)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bible doesn't put it like this. The bible doesn't mention any life forming before the 3rd day, or before the formation of the Oceans, also the bible never mentions micro organisms, bacteria and such, so once again there is knowledge that isn't taken from the religious text, but from the science text books.&#xA;According to the bible, all the plants were created on the 3rd day (9-13), including fruit giving trees, grass and seed baring plants. On the forth day (14-19) no animals were created, only the stars, the moon and the sun. On the fifth day (20-23) god created the animals of the sea, the birds and the great crocodiles. Only on the sixth day (24-30) god created the animals that live on the earth and the insects (24-25) and finally man (27). This is in contrast to the timeline that puts fishes before plants, and birds after earth dwelling animals and insects. Also, if you chose to translate the great crocodiles as Dinosaurs, then on the 5th day Dinosaurs were the only land dwelling animals on earth, before other reptiles and insects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T19:28:17.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14925" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14933" CreationDate="2013-02-06T20:10:34.853" Score="51" ViewCount="32671" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a popular story that describes a programmer having altered a program at a bank so it diverted fractions of a cent from every transaction to another account (or some variation like multiple accounts) so he could collect it later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story has been so popular that variations have been referenced in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman_III&quot;&gt;a Superman movie&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Space&quot;&gt;Office Space&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was this based on an actual story, or is it simply a myth? If it did happen, what happened to the programmer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5750" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:55:56.547" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T04:12:54.560" Title="Has a programmer ever embezzled money by shaving fractions of a cent from many bank transactions?" Tags="|computers|criminology|programming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14921" CreationDate="2013-02-06T20:21:59.070" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Viral marketing alert! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Googling around for this name shows that while there are several cross-referencing Websites there is no indication of external original material or reporting. There are claims that are prima facie bogus (&quot;USAF credits him with discovering time-travel...&quot;) and claims that associate &quot;Anderson&quot; with highly-dubious existing claims (&quot;the Philadelphia Experiment&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An easy claim to refute:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&amp;amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;amp;p=1&amp;amp;u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&amp;amp;r=0&amp;amp;f=S&amp;amp;l=50&amp;amp;TERM1=David%20Lewis%20Anderson&amp;amp;FIELD1=INNM&amp;amp;co1=AND&amp;amp;TERM2=&amp;amp;FIELD2=&amp;amp;d=PTXT&quot;&gt;there are no USPTO patents (much less time-travel-related ones) issued to &quot;David Lewis Anderson.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T20:21:59.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="510" CreationDate="2013-02-06T23:31:25.650" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Antioxidant supplements have either no measurable effect or actually increase mortality&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Vitamin C and selenium seem harmless but don't reduce mortality; Vitamins A, E and beta-carotene increase mortality&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been many studies of the effects of antioxidant supplements on health. Some of these studies use fairly dubious techniques and study designs but others are better. The best summary of the collective literature is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD007176.pub2/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cochrane&lt;/a&gt; review published in 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have found no convincing evidence that antioxidant supplements decrease mortality. Even more, beta‐carotene and perhaps, vitamin E and vitamin A seem to increase mortality. Therefore, we cannot recommend the use of antioxidant supplements as a primary and secondary preventive measure in the population groups studied in the present review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result comes from about 75 trials with good designs that reported all cause mortality selected from nearly 600 with bias, poor design or inadequate reporting of the mortality. The studies covered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We considered for inclusion trials that compared antioxidant supplements (that is, beta-carotene, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, and selenium) at any dose, duration of treatment, and route of administration versus placebo or no intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our systematic review contains a number of findings. &lt;em&gt;Beta-carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E given singly or combined with other antioxidant supplements significantly increased mortality.&lt;/em&gt; There is no evidence that vitamin C or selenium may increase longevity. We confirmed that trials with inadequate bias control significantly overestimate intervention effects. The detrimental effect of antioxidant supplements became significantly more pronounced when we excluded all trials with potential confounding. Our findings support and extend our previous findings...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the trials done well suggest either no obvious effect for some supplements or a small bad effect for others. And as more evidence arrives the results become clearer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarification for context&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The normal context for claims about supplements and for trials is &lt;em&gt;normal people eating a normal diet&lt;/em&gt;. These people do not, mostly, have any deficiencies in their dietary intake of key vitamins, mineral or antioxidants (these categories overlap). The claims made for supplements usually argue that &lt;em&gt;extra&lt;/em&gt; intake of the compounds over and above the normal dietary levels provide &lt;em&gt;extra&lt;/em&gt; benefits. There is no argument that supplements are useful &lt;em&gt;if your diet is deficient&lt;/em&gt;. So the referenced studies don't address the benefits of the compounds in general, just the benefits over and above the normal intake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the high quality studies are clear: extra intake of some supplements seems harmless but some are actively harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that the accepted answer for this question provides some theoretical justification for why some supplements &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; work but completely fails to address the question of whether they &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; work which makes the answer not just useless but actively misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2019-12-19T13:18:04.793" LastActivityDate="2019-12-19T13:18:04.793" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="14929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6114" CreationDate="2013-02-06T23:45:53.390" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the examples given so far of animals outrunning humans over long distances, the animals have been human trained and controlled. The situation may be different if the animals are allowed to operate themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is widely reported that the San (Kalahari bushmen) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;can outrun antelopes&lt;/a&gt;. They do it by having the animal run away from them, catching up with it before it has a chance to regain its breath, and continuing this until the antelope gives up. In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/nature/Fair-Chase.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;test in New Mexico&lt;/a&gt;, marathon runners managed to get close enough to a pronghorn for a kill. Pronghorns are capable of more than 80 km/h over short distances and 50km/h over several km.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will admit though that wolves will probably beat even the best humans, especially in snow. I can't see anyone volunteering to test it though!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastActivityDate="2013-02-06T23:45:53.390" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14925" CreationDate="2013-02-07T05:05:49.010" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Snopes entry on the &quot;Salami Technique&quot; calls it a &quot;legend,&quot; which doesn't say whether it's true or false.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/salami.asp&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/salami.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It references stories from the 1978 book &lt;i&gt;Computer Capers&lt;/i&gt;, whose description says it's &quot;incredible but true.&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/sources/business/computer.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/sources/business/computer.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One story is about a &quot;programmer working at a mail-order sales company&quot; who was caught and fired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11400" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T05:05:49.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14933" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14925" CreationDate="2013-02-07T05:13:57.517" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a significant amount of anecdotal evidence that supports the claim that, not only did this happen once, but that it happens rather frequently. Unfortunately, most of these claims appear to come from members of the security industry, which may have a vested interest in convincing people that this type of activity is taking place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The type of theft you're talking about is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing&quot;&gt;salami slicing&lt;/a&gt;. There have been a number of papers published on this attack by security researchers (not peer reviewed, mind you), such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.all.net/CID/Attack/papers/Salami.html&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://all.net/CID/Attack/papers/Salami2.html&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;. This second paper repeats a variation of what is probably the most famous claim: a former bank employee in Canada who stole $70,000 using this type of attack. Unfortunately, the papers are lacking in details, and the references don't match the contents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most often quoted (and not cited) source for these claims seems to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/sec/2002/01467137.html&quot;&gt;this Network World article&lt;/a&gt;, which recites a list of supposed convictions based on salami-slicing techniques. Again, it's lacking in details, though it does give dates and jurisdictions for several purported cases of salami slicing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, my intuition tells me that micro-theft of this sort has certainly occurred &lt;em&gt;at some point&lt;/em&gt; in the past. It's really nothing more than a modernized version of clipping coins, which certainly happened on a regular basis. However, I cannot find any evidence of any single, famous, and verifiable case of salami slicing that matches the circumstances usually supplied in the anecdotes you mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a related note, there's much better evidence regarding &lt;em&gt;similar kinds&lt;/em&gt; of salami attacks, just not ones involving bank employees. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2008/05/man-allegedly-b/&quot;&gt;this Wired article&lt;/a&gt; describes a man who allegedly defrauded E*Trade using a variation of a salami attack (related to how the brokerage firm verified that it could deposit money into your account), including links to a Dept. of Justice affidavit describing the attack. There was also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/10/us/car-rental-company-s-ex-owners-charged-with-cheating-customers.html&quot;&gt;case in Florida&lt;/a&gt; of a rental car firm overcharging customer for tiny amounts of gasoline on returns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7998" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T05:13:57.517" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14935" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14937" CreationDate="2013-02-07T15:55:48.197" Score="19" ViewCount="3667" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Russia Today article &lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/news/us-prescription-drugs-abuse-715/&quot;&gt;Pharmageddon: America’s bitter pill&lt;/a&gt; claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The pharmaceutical industry remains the most profitable business in the US&lt;/strong&gt;. More success and financial gain for the companies will always remain possible as long as more Americans are encouraged to take drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this pretty hard to believe, so is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T14:50:55.030" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T14:50:55.030" Title="Is the pharmaceutical industry the most profitable business in the United States?" Tags="|united-states|economics|pharmaceutical|corporate-finance|medications|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14935" CreationDate="2013-02-07T17:55:03.177" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on how you define &quot;profitable&quot;. But either way it's not the top one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find more recent data, but in 2008 pharmaceutical industry wasn't the most profitable, although it was high in various rankings, not so high in others (&lt;a href=&quot;http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2008/performers/industries/profits/&quot;&gt;source CNN&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Profit as percentage of revenue&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Network and Other Communications Equipment  28.8%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mining, Crude-Oil Production    23.8%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pharmaceuticals   15.8%&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Medical Products and Equipment  15.2%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oil and Gas Equipment, Services 13.7%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Commercial Banks    12.6%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Railroads   12.4%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Entertainment   12.4%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Insurance: Life, Health (stock) 10.6%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Household and Personal Products 10.2% &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Profit as percentage of assets&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Network and Other Communications Equipment  13.9%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Medical Products and Equipment  12.1%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oil and Gas Equipment, Services 11.0%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Household and Personal Products 10.4%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Food Services   10.4%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pharmaceuticals   9.1%&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specialty Retailers 8.5%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wholesalers: Diversified    8.4%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Petroleum Refining  8.3%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mining, Crude-Oil Production    7.8%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Revenue per $ of asset&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wholesalers: Health Care    3.91&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Food and Drug Stores    2.78&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wholesalers: Electronics and Office Equipment   2.63&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Automotive Retailing, Services  2.62&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wholesalers: Diversified    2.10&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Specialty Retailers 2.03&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Engineering, Construction   1.93&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Petroleum Refining  1.90&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Health Care: Pharmacy and Other Services    1.78&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Food Production 1.75&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;40 .    &lt;strong&gt;Pharmaceuticals   0.52&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T17:55:03.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14938" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14944" CreationDate="2013-02-07T21:58:51.197" Score="6" ViewCount="930" Body="&lt;p&gt;My anthropology professor claimed that certain genetic simulations showed that the Australian Aborigines could have descended from a population of only one man and two women. Those three people and their offspring could have sustained a genetically health population that's lasted tens of thousands of years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not really able to find the study she was referencing. Is it possible that a genetically healthy population, in this case the Indigenous Australians, could descend from just one man and two women? I know that the Samaritans are in a genetic crisis and their population never dropped lower than about 100.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2013-02-11T13:29:34.600" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T13:29:34.600" Title="Could the Australian Aborigines have Descended from Three People?" Tags="|genetics|anthropology|australia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14939" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-07T22:27:48.657" Score="3" ViewCount="4002" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this picture now a few times, is it legit? It's supposed to be &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beyonc%E9_Knowles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beyoncé Knowles&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wOkT5m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Alleged picture of Beyoncé Knowles&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://solsticevisuals.com/post/42487903272/this-is-why-your-photographer-never-sends-all-the&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a claim that assumes it is legit.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-02-08T23:14:34.827" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T00:58:46.333" Title="Is this picture of Beyoncé Knowles real?" Tags="|celebrities|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14939" CreationDate="2013-02-07T23:16:50.500" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most likely &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; as the outfit and background are consistent with her appearance at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-beyonce-superbowl-20130204,0,947429.story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Super Bowl XLVII half time show&lt;/a&gt;. A minor caveat due to the fact that I can't find an official source of the image although &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/02/07/bad-day-at-the-office-for_n_2639183.html?just_reloaded=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huffington Post UK is using it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar pictures have actually been turning up due to their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzfeed.com/lyapalater/the-fiercest-moments-from-beyonces-halftime-show&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;unflattering nature&lt;/a&gt; and this has allegedly led to &lt;a href=&quot;http://gawker.com/5981957/beyonces-publicist-wants-to-erase-these-six-unflattering-photos-from-the-internet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beyoncé’s publicist allegedly wanting some unflattering pictures removed from the internet&lt;/a&gt; which has caused them to &lt;a href=&quot;http://now.msn.com/beyonce-pr-team-asks-websites-to-remove-unflattering-pictures&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;spread&lt;/a&gt; a bit &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.msn.com/rumors/rumor-beyonc%C3%A9s-publicist-wants-unflattering-super-bowl-photos-gone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;more&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found the picture in question with the background removed provided for &lt;a href=&quot;http://deadspin.com/5982561/photoshop-contest-unflattering-beyonce-pictures&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;stock for a Photoshop Contest&lt;/a&gt;, as shown below. This to me also backs up it being an original as opposed to manipulated already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/H5ciD.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2013-02-07T23:16:50.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14942" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-08T01:10:09.683" Score="4" ViewCount="663" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hard water is drinking water that is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_water&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;high in minerals&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_water#Health_considerations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The World Health Organization says that &quot;there does not appear to be any convincing evidence that water hardness causes adverse health effects in humans&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but it also says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other studies have shown weak correlations between cardiovascular health and water hardness&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Softened-Water Eczema Trial (SWET), a multicenter randomized controlled trial of ion-exchange softeners for treating childhood eczema, was undertaken in 2008. However, no meaningful difference in symptom relief was found between children with access to a home water softener and those without.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some studies correlate domestic hard water usage with increased eczema in children&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is hard water safe to consume?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8840" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-02-08T03:39:10.017" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T08:47:26.777" Title="Does &quot;hard water&quot; cause eczema?" Tags="|environmental-health|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14938" CreationDate="2013-02-08T06:34:11.607" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Max Ingman and Ulf Gyllensten, &lt;a href=&quot;http://genome.cshlp.org/content/13/7/1600.full&quot;&gt;Mitochondrial Genome Variation and Evolutionary History of Australian and New Guinean Aborigines&lt;/a&gt;, Genome Res. 2003. 13: 1600-1606, doi: 10.1101/gr.686603 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper looked at the genetic diversity of Australian Aborigines and other indigenous populations in the area. It concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The proposed genetic separation among Aboriginal populations could have occurred after a single large population movement to Australia or as the result of multiple migrations over the course of generations from a heterogeneous source population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they are vague about how many people are included in a &quot;large&quot; population movement, they quote another researcher with a similar, more precise figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kayser et al. (2001) proposed that the high frequency of a unique haplotype in Australia is the result of a population expansion that started from a few hundred individuals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they argue that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there does not appear to be a corresponding loss of genetic diversity resulting from a bottleneck seen among mitochondrial lineages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the number may be higher than just a few hundred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T06:34:11.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14945" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-08T08:59:26.887" Score="2" ViewCount="1044" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Slim&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mickey Slim&lt;/a&gt; is a cocktail made by combining gin with &quot;a pinch of DDT&quot; which provided an experience similar to (the original) absinthe. The source appears to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/dec/15/historybooks.highereducation2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Dedalus Book of Absinthe&lt;/a&gt;. Did such a cocktail really exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also seen references (can't find them now) which show people inhaling DDT to get a cheap high like in this picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MOfej.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:27:12.283" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:27:12.283" Title="Was there a cocktail named 'Mickey Slim' that used DDT as an ingredient?" Tags="|chemistry|drinks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14946" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14949" CreationDate="2013-02-08T10:05:21.023" Score="3" ViewCount="3506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard a claim from a guy in my class during high school, which was like 6 years ago or so, saying that the three 'biggest markets' in the world are drugs, sex and weapons.&#xA;It of course implied quite a bit about human nature, and the state of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious if there was any truth in that statement? Is it those three that have most revenue, most users, or most money circling about in, or in any other interpretable way being 'three biggest'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saleschase.com/blog/2012/04/12/10-unbelievable-black-markets-that-you-never-knew-existed/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SaleChase blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not an overly trustworthy site, but it claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wildlife trade, as many of you may know, is the third largest black&#xA;  market after drugs and guns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.voxeu.org/article/shadow-economies-around-world-model-based-estimates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vox&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There they make an estimate on how big the 'shadow markets' are. Which is related to the topic as well as drugs, weapons and sex usually are illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Region World  Minimum 18.54  Maximum 27.74&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The black market is assumed to be somewhere between 18% to 28% of GPD.&#xA;How would that compare to legal market then?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T14:50:28.423" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T14:50:28.423" Title="Are drugs, sex and weapons the largest three markets?" Tags="|weapons|recreational-drugs|prostitution|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14945" CreationDate="2013-02-08T12:28:12.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR : &lt;strong&gt;Apparently there is no concrete proof of the drink existence.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the references go around to The Dedalus Book of Absinthe or a citation in BBC1 documentary called ‘The Rise and Fall of DDT’ from 1974.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone did most the work for me, apparently : &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microkhan.com/2010/06/09/the-myth-of-the-mickey-slim/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the myth of the mickey slim&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and this what I think may be the origin of the mith:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;George Campbell, who helped initiate DDT production in Britain, said:&#xA;  ‘In American bars, there was a drink, called Mickey Slim. If [sic] was&#xA;  a good gin with a spot of DDT in it, and this was supposed to give you&#xA;  a feeling of happiness and merriment. You can see this in the&#xA;  behaviour of flies if they are subjected to DDT. Their first effort is&#xA;  to fly about, as though they were full of the joys of the spring, and&#xA;  then they gradually die off.’”&#xA;  - “Out of the Air.” Listener [London, England] 12 Sept. 1974: 332.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as a sidenote, I would like to point you to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1615/la-fee-verte-is-absinthe-hallucinogenic&quot;&gt;is absinthe hallucinogenic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T12:28:12.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14946" CreationDate="2013-02-08T22:34:13.133" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even though the source is a &quot;I heard from a guy that...&quot; I still enjoyed looking up what is the truth behind such a claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businesspundit.com/the-worlds-most-lucrative-business-markets&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BusinessPundit&lt;/a&gt; article, which mixes legal and illegal profits into one big list: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their top 3 are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Illicit Drugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defense&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prostitution (in which they separated human trafficking, which usually goes hand in hand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Noteworthy other candidates are: Oil, Counterfeiting, Banking, Sports, Gambling&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://247wallst.com/2011/02/10/the-12-most-profitable-international-crimes/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;24/7 Wall St&lt;/a&gt; article just specifies the top international &lt;strong&gt;criminal&lt;/strong&gt; businesses: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their top 3 are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Illicit Drugs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Human Trafficking (including trafficking for prostitution)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wildlife&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with other noteworthy runner-ups being: Counterfeiting, human organs, diamonds, timber, fish &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems your old buddy was right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unodc.org/toc/en/crimes/organized-crime.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime states&lt;/a&gt; states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In 2009 it was estimated to generate $870 billion - an amount equal&#xA;  to 1.5 per cent of global GDP.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &quot;funny&quot; anecdote I found about how profitable the drugs trade on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/drugs/special/math.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this PBS&lt;/a&gt; article: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The average drug trafficking organization, meaning from Medellin to&#xA;  the streets of New York, could afford to lose 90% of its profit and&#xA;  still be profitable,&quot; says Robert Stutman, a former DEA Agent. &quot;Now&#xA;  think of the analogy. GM builds a million Chevrolets a year. Doesn't&#xA;  sell 900,000 of them and still comes out profitable. That is a hell of&#xA;  a business, man. That is the dope business.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7202" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-02-08T22:58:29.690" LastActivityDate="2013-02-08T22:58:29.690" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14953" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-09T12:07:10.753" Score="32" ViewCount="5157" Body="&lt;p&gt;The South Park episode &lt;em&gt;Trapped in the Closet&lt;/em&gt; contained &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/104274/what-scientologist-actually-believe&quot;&gt;a dramatized explanation&lt;/a&gt; (you can skip the first 50 seconds) of the beliefs of Scientology. The video contains in the bottom the disclaimer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;THIS IS WHAT SCIENTOLOGISTS ACTUALLY BELIEVE&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1326" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-02-10T10:57:47.293" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T23:15:36.877" Title="Does the South Park episode &quot;Trapped in the Closet&quot; accurately depict the beliefs of Scientology?" Tags="|religion|scientology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14692" CreationDate="2013-02-09T16:18:22.187" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll not delve into the whole &amp;quot;debate&amp;quot; between people who think significant amounts of weight loss can occur from other things than diet modification and exercise. Instead there's some simple proof on his own website that the picture isn't coming from his low-sleep &amp;quot;Paleo+&amp;quot; diet alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bulletproofexec.com/photo-abs-after-2-years-of-4500-calories-no-exercise/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;his article discussing his 4500 Calorie diet&lt;/a&gt; comments section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Donna Clements&lt;/strong&gt;: are you kiddingme? Those are your abs WITHOUT exercise? How in the world can that be so&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dave Asprey&lt;/strong&gt;: I am entirely serious. It’s because &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I stack mTOR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by using &lt;em&gt;coffee&lt;/em&gt; with Bulletproof Intermittent fasting. mTOR builds muscle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's confirmed that the diet outlined in your question didn't result in his abs by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And no, I wouldn't trust him about that either. He drinks his BulletProof coffee to &amp;quot;stack&amp;quot; mTOR even though &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20812900&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Caffeine is an mTOR &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;inhibitor&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a bunch of other red flags in the link provided in your question, but aside from the usual extremely biased or non-peer-reviewed websites he links to and unpublished studies, I found this one particularly hypocritical:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A diet high in saturated fat improves blood vessel function (don’t be fooled by the title of this study, read Chris Masterjohn’s take on what this study actually showed). (35, 36)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What was the name of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16904539?dopt=AbstractPlus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the study&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Consumption of saturated fat impairs the anti-inflammatory properties of high-density lipoproteins and endothelial function.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a quick term definition: &amp;quot;Endothelium&amp;quot; is your vascular tissue. Your blood vessels. The study concluded that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consumption of a saturated fat reduces the anti-inflammatory potential of HDL and impairs arterial endothelial function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what does Chris Masterjohn (who is apparently a PhD student at the University of Connecticut) say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is, of course, a hypothesis. I have not shown conclusively that the effects observed in the study must have been due to vitamin E [instead of saturated fats]...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Dave Asprey is taking a hypothetical refutation of a study over the study itself as evidence that it's perfectly fine to high levels of saturated fats while still claiming the diet itself is based on science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveat emptor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T16:18:22.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14953" CreationDate="2013-02-09T16:37:19.640" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, it's true. Most of this information is available on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xenu.net/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Operation Clambake&lt;/a&gt; which isn't fully indexed because the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xenu.net/google_censoring.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cult of Scientology sued Google.&lt;/a&gt; You can download the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xenu.net/archive/leaflet/Xenu-Letter.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Xenu leaflet put out by Operation Clambake&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia also covers the Xenu mythology&lt;/a&gt; which is also called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera_in_Scientology_scripture&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Space Opera (mythological event covered in South Park)&lt;/a&gt; and other &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incident_(Scientology)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Incidents&quot;&lt;/a&gt; which is the term used to denote the Cult's doctrinal teaching. The Space Opera is also called &quot;Incident 2&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's pretty well established at this point to be true. The volcano symbolism is even found in Dianetics, the precursor to Scientology and L Ron commented on it saying saying the cover would &quot;key in&quot; the submerged memories of Incident II:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qXqhh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Notice the volcano&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd highly suggest you check out both of the sources I've given, Operation Clambake, and the Wikipedia article. They're chock full of information and the mythology is too detailed and the status of the story too intricate to include all of it in this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2013-02-09T22:38:36.960" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T22:38:36.960" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9050" CreationDate="2013-02-09T17:17:11.993" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gaatw.org/publications/WhatstheCostofaRumour.11.15.2011.pdf&quot;&gt;What's The Cost Of A Rumour? A guide to sorting out the myths and the facts and sporting events and trafficking.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The estimated numbers of 10,000 - 100,000 prostitutes travelling to the SuperBowl aren't plausible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the total number of visitors to the Super Bowl is estimated between 150,000 to 200,000 and that at these figures, “&lt;em&gt;it meant that every man, woman&#xA;  and child holding a ticket would have their own personal hooker, from the vice presidential wing of FedEx to Little Timmy from Green Bay&lt;/em&gt;”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Post event assessments of previous Super Bowls showed no spike in prostitution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Phoenix hosted the big game three years ago [2008]. Police there told News 8 they&#xA;  received similar warnings about an increase in prostitution and prepared for it, but&#xA;  never uncovered any evidence of a spike in illegal sexual activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tampa hosted the&#xA;  Super Bowl in 2009. A police spokeswoman there said officers there made 11&#xA;  prostitution arrests during the entire week leading up to the game. And last year&#xA;  [2010], Miami police told News 8 they arrested 14 for prostitution. Those figures are&#xA;  not uncommon for large cities during a seven-day period, experts said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report also found that similar rumours about large numbers of prostitutes at the 2006 World Cup in Germany (where prostitution is legal) were false:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The German Government reported to the Council of the European Union that the number of sex&#xA;  workers only increased in the city of Munich (from 500 sex workers to 800 sex workers) as a result&#xA;  of the World Cup, but trafficking did not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers for the International Organisation for Migration (intergovernmental organisation) found&#xA;  that at the time of the 2006 World Cup, 33 investigation cases of human trafficking for the purposes of&#xA;  prostitution and/or promotion of human trafficking were reported to the Federal Criminal Police Office.&#xA;  Of these, only 5 cases were thought to be linked to the 2006 World Cup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2013-02-09T17:17:11.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14958" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15036" CreationDate="2013-02-09T22:28:21.497" Score="37" ViewCount="98168" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/186svk/til_in_the_entire_state_of_ohio_in_1895_there/&quot;&gt;Today I Learned, Reddit&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TIL [Today I Learned] In the entire state of Ohio in 1895, there were only two cars on the road, and the drivers of these two cars crashed into each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source provided is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allfunandgames.ca/facts/transportation.shtml&quot;&gt;All Fun and Games&lt;/a&gt; which itself cites&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;M. Hirsh Goldberg, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0688077579&quot;&gt;The Blunder Book: Colossal Errors, Minor Mistakes and Surprising Slipups That Have Changed the Course of History&lt;/a&gt; (William Morrow and Co., New York, NY, 1984).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story appears there on page 234, but it doesn't seem like a reliable source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim also appears in an advert in &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=eEkEAAAAMBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA19-IA11&amp;amp;lpg=PA19-IA11&amp;amp;dq=ohio+two+cars&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=vH5b1GK1e7&amp;amp;sig=wcEUh8ohjrgR81exFfFreMdRgr8&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=F94WUd3HF6aPiAe_kIAY&amp;amp;ved=0CGUQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=ohio%20two%20cars&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Life Magazine, 24 Nov 1967&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were there exactly two cars in Ohio in 1895 and did they crash into each other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-02-09T23:57:40.763" LastActivityDate="2019-03-22T14:34:49.600" Title="Were there only two cars in Ohio in 1895, and they managed to crash into each other?" Tags="|history|united-states|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14961" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14971" CreationDate="2013-02-10T04:27:56.740" Score="13" ViewCount="5106" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://energyfanatics.com/2008/10/13/best-time-eat-meals/&quot;&gt;Best Time to Eat Meals&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Skipping meals or eating meals on a random schedule can drain your body of energy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to eat whenever I feel like it. I pretty much ignore breakfast, lunch, and dinner times. Is this unhealthy, as opposed to eating a set number of times per day at set times, and why? My parents tell me &quot;it's healthier&quot; to eat during set times of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10456" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-02-10T10:50:57.067" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T01:55:17.270" Title="Is eating meals at irregular times unhealthy?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9599" CreationDate="2013-02-10T15:45:49.550" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;For starters, like almost every question that begins &quot;is it illegal&quot;, the real answers are &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It depends on where you live, so&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask an actual lawyer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, it is not illegal to sell a used mattress in any United States jurisdiction that I know of. However, most states have &lt;em&gt;restrictions&lt;/em&gt; on what you can and can't do when selling used mattresses, primarily involving fraud or health concerns. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people who sell bedding &lt;em&gt;as a business&lt;/em&gt;, the rules are rather strict, frequently requiring licensing from the Health Department, among other things. Many states (20 as of 2/10/2013) are part of a national cooperative, the International Association of Bedding and Furniture Law Officials, that attempts to synchronize bedding laws. You can read all the various requirements that member states adhere to &lt;a href=&quot;http://abflo.info/usa_labels/bedding_furniture.htm&quot;&gt;on their site&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a consumer selling bedding to another consumer, you avoid many of the regulations. What's left typically boils down to two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In some states, it may be a legal requirement that the bed include a label stating that it includes second-hand materials. Often this requirement only applies to retail or wholesale sellers, as in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&amp;amp;group=19001-20000&amp;amp;file=19120-19132&quot;&gt;California's Business and Professional Codes, Section 19123&lt;/a&gt;, but other states, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/100/2095&quot;&gt;Wisconsin Statues, Section 100.2095&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2011/501.145&quot;&gt;Florida Statues, Title XXXIII, Chapter 501, Section 145&lt;/a&gt;, the law can be read as applying this requirement to &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; sales. If you haven't already ripped it off, your mattress probably has a label that says &lt;em&gt;exactly the opposite&lt;/em&gt;, so you will need to be careful and See #2 Above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;You may need to have the mattress officially sanitized. For example, in Delaware,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://delcode.delaware.gov/title16/c021/index.shtml&quot;&gt;Title 16, Chap. 21&lt;/a&gt;, § 2105. Selling or leasing used mattresses; sterilization and disinfection, says:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) Any secondhand mattress, pillow, bolster, featherbed or comfortable, unless since last used it has been thoroughly sterilized and disinfected by a reasonable process approved by the Department of Health and Social Services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7998" LastActivityDate="2013-02-10T15:45:49.550" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14449" CreationDate="2013-02-11T19:15:43.153" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree, what kind of evidence do you need?  There are studies demonstrating changes in the brains (MRI's included) of Cincinnati Lead Study participants that were monitored over a twenty year or so period to prove exactly what areas of the brain are being affected.  There are studies documenting areas most affected by lead and corrosponding crime.  How many studies are needed to prove causation?  What type of study could be done in this case safely?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in terms of other health hazards, where are studies proving causation?  It is accepted that aspartame contributes to degenerative disease, but show me studies that are any more decisive than the handfuls of studies done on various aspects of lead and its contribution to criminality.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pic.plover.com/Nevin/Nevin2007.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://pic.plover.com/Nevin/Nevin2007.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w13097.pdf?new_window=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nber.org/papers/w13097.pdf?new_window=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2000_Env_Res_Author_Manuscript.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/Nevin_2000_Env_Res_Author_Manuscript.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/4-6_Prevent_Childhood_Lead_Poisoning.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ricknevin.com/uploads/4-6_Prevent_Childhood_Lead_Poisoning.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0050112&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.0050112&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2013/01/lead-and-crime&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ksj.mit.edu/tracker/2013/01/lead-and-crime&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11476" LastActivityDate="2013-02-11T19:15:43.153" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14961" CreationDate="2013-02-12T01:55:17.270" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought that we would have evolved with irregular meal-times, and the evidence would demonstrate the desire for regular meal-times was an &quot;old wive's tale&quot;. I was surprised by the evidence, which does support the idea of regular meal-times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Energy after Eating&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;H R Farshchi, M A Taylor and I A Macdonald,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v28/n5/abs/0802616a.html&quot;&gt;Decreased thermic effect of food after an irregular compared with a regular meal pattern in healthy lean women&lt;/a&gt;, International Journal of Obesity (2004) 28, 653–660. doi:10.1038/sj.ijo.0802616&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nine lean women were given regular meals and irregular diet with up to 9 meals per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSION: Irregular meal frequency led to a lower postprandial energy expenditure compared with the regular meal frequency, while the mean energy intake was not significantly different between the two. The reduced TEF with the irregular meal frequency may lead to weight gain in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: The last sentence is speculation. They did not observe weight-gain during the trial.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same authors tried it again with obese women:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hamid R Farshchi, Moira A Taylor, and Ian A Macdonald, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/81/1/16.short&quot;&gt;Beneficial metabolic effects of regular meal frequency on dietary thermogenesis, insulin sensitivity, and fasting lipid profiles in healthy obese women&lt;/a&gt;, Am J Clin Nutr January 2005 vol. 81 no. 1 16-24.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ten obese women were put on regular and irregular meal times for two weeks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusion: Regular eating has beneficial effects on fasting lipid and postprandial insulin profiles and thermogenesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other studies show some less directly related, but still interesting, results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;In Your Head&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/10/2/98/&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; shows that &quot;dinner time&quot; hunger may be more about what time your head thinks it is, rather than the state of your stomach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Regular &lt;em&gt;Family&lt;/em&gt; Meals&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Related to the idea of regular meals, is the idea of regular &lt;em&gt;family&lt;/em&gt; meals. There are a &lt;a href=&quot;http://dev.srcprojecth.org/articles/family_table.pdf&quot;&gt;number of positive social effects&lt;/a&gt; related to regular family meals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Finnish children, not having a regular family dinner  &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/10/2/98/&quot;&gt;is correlated&lt;/a&gt; to eating more sweets, more problematic behaviour and a lower socio-economic class. I would tentatively suggest the causation is more likely to flow from the socio-economic class towards the other items.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Minnesotan children, regular family meal times &lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/19304252&quot;&gt;was associated&lt;/a&gt; with healthier eating five years later. Again, I suspect socio-economic class and education to be a confounding factor. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1054139X04000503&quot;&gt;Same authors&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Meal Frequency - Nibbling versus Gorging&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because you have regular meal times, doesn't mean there aren't a lot of them throughout the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Increased frequency (with the same total intake) &lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/2674713&quot;&gt;may reduce cholesterol&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Increased frequency &lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/2674713&quot;&gt;may affect insulin secretion&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=879792&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; argues some of the weight-loss claims associated with increased frequency eating may be experimental artefacts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Increased frequency eating &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=879828&quot;&gt;helps athletes consume high-calory diets&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T01:55:17.270" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14972" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14973" CreationDate="2013-02-12T07:05:37.440" Score="3" ViewCount="988" Body="&lt;p&gt;When Prophet Muhammad compared men and women as follows in one of the hadith, which says women are weaker in reason and religious. While it is difficult to understand deficiency in religion I would like to know more about deficiency in reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I have not seen anyone more deficient in ability to reason and deen&#xA;  than you. A cautious sensible man can be led astray by some of you.”&#xA;  It was said: “O Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him)! What is the&#xA;  deficiency in our reasoning and deen?” He said: “Is not the testimony&#xA;  of two women equal to the witness of one man?” It was said: &quot;What is&#xA;  deficient in her deen?&quot; The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: &quot;Is not&#xA;  it true that a woman can neither pray nor fast during her menses?”&#xA;  [Al-Bukhari]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there studies which can prove or disprove this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10447" LastEditorUserId="10447" LastEditDate="2013-02-12T07:54:46.167" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T14:24:13.607" Title="Are women weak in religion and reasoning as compared to men?" Tags="|physiology|gender|intelligence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ClosedDate="2013-02-12T14:33:27.807" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14972" CreationDate="2013-02-12T14:24:13.607" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Are women weak in religion&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No idea, other than to note that some religions deny women the opportunity to become priests or theologians. Some cultures deny women the right to an education, which might make it difficult for them to demonstrate religious knowledge or expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Are women weak in reasoning&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9401241/IQ-tests-women-score-higher-than-men.html&quot;&gt;IQ tests: women score higher than men&#xA;  Women have scored higher than men in intelligence testing for the first time since records began.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Are all women weaker (at some chosen measure) than  the weakest man?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is certainly very foolish to make generalizations about a group of people and then apply those generalizations to individuals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T14:24:13.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14974" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14975" CreationDate="2013-02-12T15:27:08.207" Score="9" ViewCount="1543" Body="&lt;p&gt;The internet is full of this claim, most of them (it seems) use the same picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://i0.wp.com/sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/531725_187710854686438_106265486_n.jpg?resize=553%2C749&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mKsvmm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;lightning striking the vatican&quot; title=&quot;lightning striking the vatican&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://topekasnews.com/god-proves-his-existance-strikes-saint-peters-basilica-with-lightning/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2013/feb/11/picture-desk-live-the-best-news-pictures-of-the-day&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraphtv/9865538/Lightning-strikes-Vatican-hours-after-Pope-resigns.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;other&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/02/12/lightning-bolt-strikes-vatican-pope-benedict-resignation/1913095/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;major&lt;/a&gt; news agencies reporting the same event, but by reading their articles, they seem very careful to use weasel words, like &quot;it is said&quot;, &quot;some assume&quot;, etc. &#xA;This event did not happen thousands of years ago. It happened just recently at a place which is densely inhabited and full of tourists and reporters with cameras. So why are the reports of the event express uncertainty?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this verified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8692" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:04:14.417" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:04:14.417" Title="Did lightning strike the St. Peter basilica the night the Pope resigned?" Tags="|vatican|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14974" CreationDate="2013-02-12T16:13:18.247" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;How can the news that lightning struck the St. Peter basilica the night the Pope resigned be verified?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By contacting the &lt;a href=&quot;http://alessandrodimeo.viewbook.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;photographer&lt;/a&gt; and asking him to confirm his whereabouts at the time?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;By looking for independent corroboration.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Photographer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agency which employs him†  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ansa.it/web/notizie/rubriche/cronaca/2013/02/12/Papa-foto-simbolo-giornata-spiegata-autore_8232764.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cover the story&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'He was a storm coming - says Alessandro Di Meo, the photojournalist ANSA author of the click -. When I saw the first lightning I had the idea and I immediately moved under the colonnade. I was almost forty minutes to fight with the camera and weather to try to make the photos I had thought.'' A race against time but also against misfortune:'' While I was cleaning the lens from raindrops, a first lightning struck the cupola. And I could not help but watch helplessly, as well as very angry.'' The misfortune, however, 'is not enough to discourage Di Meo, who has persevered in an attempt to try to make the photo so' as he had imagined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'I tried again several times - adds the photographer - until 'a bolt of lightning struck the cupola just as I was taking.'' For lovers of photography, Di Meo also revealed the shooting data of the picture:'' The camera was sitting on a fence, and not on a tripod. The exposure time was eight seconds, 9 aperture and ISO 50 sensitivity '. Of course, the machine was set to manual and I mounted a wide angle lens that allowed me to include the whole church in the frame.''&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The photo did not fail to provoke heated discussions, bounced especially on the web and social networks. Many voices in the network have questioned the veracity 'of the photo, suspecting a montage intervention or some photo editing. The denial of Di Meo and 'categorical:'' I understand that the picture may seem incredible. But photos of lightning if they have always been done - replica firmly reporter -. The only difference, in this case, and 'that is the lightning right, in the right place and at the right time. I succeeded in obstinacy, 'and because' no, even with a bit of luck.''&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;(mis)translation by Google&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IPTC info in the photo's JPEG metadata &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2013/feb/11/picture-desk-live-the-best-news-pictures-of-the-day&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Document title:&lt;/strong&gt;  VATICAN WEATHER POPE ABDICATION&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Author(byline):&lt;/strong&gt;  ALESSANDRO DI MEO&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Caption (description):&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;epa03579544 A lighting strikes the basilica of St.Peter's dome during a storm, the same day Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation, Vatican City, 11 February 2013. Pope Benedict XVI announced 11 February 2013 plans to step down on February 28, citing the job's pressures and advanced age. 'After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry,' he said. The announcement came during a Latin-language ceremony. He said he had long thought about his decision, which he said was for the good of the church.  EPA/ALESSANDRO DI MEO&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Headline:&lt;/strong&gt; A lighting strikes the basilica of St.Peter's dome during a storm&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Credits:&lt;/strong&gt; EPA&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt; ANSA&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Date created:&lt;/strong&gt; 20130211&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;City:&lt;/strong&gt; VATICAN CITY&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Country:&lt;/strong&gt; Vatican City State (Holy See)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IPTC info can be forged of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Independent reports&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BBC has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21421810&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; which looks like the same lightning strike from a slightly different angle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Significance&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=-mwbAsxpRr0C&amp;amp;pg=PA452&amp;amp;hl=en#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NOAA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lightning strikes 40–50 times a second worldwide, for a total of nearly 1.4 billion flashes per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there were probably around 4 million lightning strikes on that day. If every lightning strike represents Zeus passing judgement on someone who was within a few hundred meters earlier the day - we can't be sure the bolt was not aimed at the tourist who dropped a piece of litter in St Peter's square a few hours before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;† The photographer, not the Pope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-02-12T17:19:06.573" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14983" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14990" CreationDate="2013-02-13T08:35:00.573" Score="29" ViewCount="6296" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common prejudice in my social environment, but is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are educated people more likely to vote for a social/left wing party?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2011/02/18/why-are-scientists-so-often-liberal-in-political-outlook/#.URuyLhFSSBo&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.datamasher.org/mash-ups/uneducated-and-conservative&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10582" LastEditorUserId="1434" LastEditDate="2013-02-13T17:04:33.537" LastActivityDate="2015-11-02T15:16:03.620" Title="Do non-educated people tend more to the right/conservative political wing?" Tags="|politics|education|intelligence|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14984" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14987" CreationDate="2013-02-13T09:09:05.863" Score="15" ViewCount="13870" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ship-Breaker-Paolo-Bacigalupi/dp/1907411100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ship Breaker&lt;/a&gt; by Paolo Bacigalupi, one of the characters falls into crude oil and state that one cannot swim in crude oil.  The character can swim in water. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If true, why would you not be able to swim in crude oil?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11507" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2019-08-02T04:05:05.057" LastActivityDate="2019-08-02T04:05:05.057" Title="Is it not possible to swim in crude oil?" Tags="|physics|oil|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14984" CreationDate="2013-02-13T10:19:06.573" Score="24" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Density and Buoyancy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/liquids-densities-d_743.html&quot;&gt;Density of Fluids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Dead Sea†                    1240 kg/m3&#xA;Sea Water                    1025 kg/m3&#xA;Water                        1000 kg/m3&#xA;Crude oil, Mexican            973 kg/m3&#xA;Crude oil, 48° API            790 kg/m3&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Human body has an average density of 1062 kg/m3 ‡ This is why (most) humans float in the Dead Sea without any swimming effort and do not sink. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lighter forms of crude oil would support the human body less, this can make staying afloat difficult or impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buoyancy depends on the weight of the volume of displaced fluid compared to the weight of the object displacing the fluid. To stay afloat you have to provide a swimming force that is equal to the force of gravity on the mass difference. The greater the deficit in density, the greater force you have to provide, at some point this force exceeds that which a human can provide for any significant time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Oxygen&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lighter forms of crude oil should have a greater proportion of volatile hydrocarbons. The vapours of these hydrocarbons will displace air at the surface of the oil and make it difficult or impossible to obtain oxygen by breathing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reports&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, oil on seawater (for example) quickly spreads into a thin film, so buoyance may not be an issue. But the difficulties in swimming and breathing can be potentially fatal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/7901320/Man-rescued-from-drowning-in-China-oil-spill.html&quot;&gt;Man rescued from drowning in China oil spill&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ghananewsagency.org/details/Economics/Engineer-drowns-in-crude-oil-storage-tank/?ci=3&amp;amp;ai=30890&quot;&gt;Engineer drowns in crude oil storage tank&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;† &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea&quot;&gt;Wikipedia:Dead Sea&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;‡ &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28density%29&quot;&gt;Wikipedia:Orders of Magnitude&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-02-13T10:51:13.597" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T10:51:13.597" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14988" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="14989" CreationDate="2013-02-13T14:41:51.077" Score="6" ViewCount="710" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently became aware of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.travelband.com/about-travelband.htm&quot;&gt;Travel Wristbands&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TRAVELBAND provides effective control of motion sickness, travel sickness, morning sickness and all forms of nausea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find any serious studies that show that they work, or that they don't, or any reasonable explanation of the science behind them (if any?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have they been shown to work? How do they &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-02-13T14:50:33.907" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T15:07:01.407" Title="Do Acupressure Wristbands help with nausea?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14988" CreationDate="2013-02-13T15:07:01.407" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;These bands work according to the principles of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acupressure&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Accupressure&lt;/a&gt;, which is derived from Accupuncture. For the alleged mechanism you can look up any source on those techniques, it is generally based on the concept of meridians and balancing ying, yang and qi. But I don't know of any explanation for these effects that I would call &lt;em&gt;scientific&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a study called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/asma/asem/2004/00000075/00000003/art00006?crawler=true&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Efficacy of Acupressure and Acustimulation Bands for the Prevention of Motion Sickness&lt;/a&gt;&quot; which investigated two similar products: Acuband and ReliefBand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study used 77 subjects in 5 categories. They concluded&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neither band nor placebo prevented the development of motion sickness,&#xA;  regardless of whether the bands were used correctly or incorrectly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study contains a rather uncritical description of accupressure, and the sample size is rather low, so I would not consider it very reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T15:07:01.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14983" CreationDate="2013-02-13T15:26:30.330" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question title, people with no higher education at all in USA voted 51%/47% (+4% margin for Obama) for D/R in 2012 Presidential election. So no, they are not tending &quot;more&quot; to conservative based on Exit Polls in US Presidential election. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For educated (college+postgrad), they voted virtually identical with total population averages (51% D/ 48.8% R), with college education being slightly correlated to be pro-R (-4% margin, 47%D/51%R) and postgrad education more so (but not overwhelmingly) with pro-D (13% margin, 42R/55%D)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we do restrict ourselves to people who were mostly educated in the West?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There, there is some &lt;strong&gt;correlation&lt;/strong&gt; at postgraduate level, and no correlation at all below it, but nowhere as strong as a typical &quot;common prejudice&quot; among liberals would have you believe. Stolen shamelessly from Sven Clement's &lt;a href=&quot;https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/508/115&quot;&gt;Politics.SE answer&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/results/president/exit-polls?ref=politics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NY Times demo breakdown from 2012 election exit polls&lt;/a&gt; shows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;| Who                                    | % Population | Obama | Romney | Obama's Margin |&#xA;===========================================================================================&#xA;| People with no higher education at all | 53%          | 51%   | 47%    | 4%             |&#xA;| People with some college               | 29%          | 49%   | 48%    | 1%             |&#xA;| College educated                       | 29%          | 47%   | 51%    | -4%            |&#xA;| Postgraduate                           | 18%          | 55%   | 42%    | 13%            |&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that while Postgraduates did break for Obama, they did not do so in an overwhelming manner - 42% postgrads voted &quot;R&quot;; and people with a college degree voted &quot;R&quot; at slightly over 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;In my defense of stealing, I contributed significantly to helping format that answer :)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more significantly, &quot;education&quot; by itself doesn't mean much without taking a major/concentration into account. Courtesty of SamIAm's &lt;a href=&quot;https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/632/115&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; on Politics.SE:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This looks like a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psych.umn.edu/sentience/files/Gage_2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pretty decent study as far as studies found on the internet go&lt;/a&gt;. It measures liberalism vs conservatism as opposed to Democrat/Republican, but it's close to what you're looking for. (pdf)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It suggests that &lt;strong&gt;Engineering and Business&lt;/strong&gt; majors tend to hold more conservative views on both social and economic stances, and that Bio/Lab, social sciences, and fine arts majors have more liberal views.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, merely &quot;a level of education&quot; does NOT make one vote for a social/left wing party. There's a correlation (see the second part of the answer) with &quot;education obtained at liberal-leaning Western universities&quot;, but not &quot;a level of education&quot; per se.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very clear experiment showing this to be true has been historically run in USA since 1990s, with a large demographics of highly educated people who have NOT been subjected to Western universities immigrated to USA, as part of 4th wave of Russian/Soviet emigration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's see how that demographic breaks out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;60% of the demographics holds 5+ years of higher education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This compares to 27% US overall and ~60% of all American Jews (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;) (the latter  serve as a good control group since 4th wave of USSR immigrants are similar in ethnic/religious composition - being overwhelmingly Jewish - AND similar education level).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;American Jews tend to vote 70-90% Democrat in Presidential elections.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An overwhelming majority of educated immigrants from former Soviet Union are hard-anti-liberal (technically speaking, they usually vote &quot;R&quot;, but if you go into nuance, most are libertarianish politically - most of them not so much as vote &quot;for Republicans&quot;, as &quot;against Democrats&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;2004: &lt;strong&gt;77% of Russian-speaking Jews in New York voted for the Republican incumbent GW Bush over his Democratic challenger John Kerry who got 9%&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcrussian.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=chLMK3PKLsF&amp;amp;b=7718799&amp;amp;ct=11713359&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Similar pattern in 2008: McCain 65%, Obama 10%&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 2011, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Weiner_sexting_scandal#Special_election&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;special Congressional election to replace Anthony Wiener&lt;/a&gt; (NY Congressman who resigned prematurely due to a sex scandal), Russian Jews voted 90% for the Republican candidate (Note: &quot;D&quot; candidate was Jewish; &quot;R&quot; candidate was not). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This clearly shows that mere &quot;level of education&quot; is in no way predictive of political leanings, although the source of education is a different story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:54:43.033" LastActivityDate="2015-11-02T15:16:03.620" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14983" CreationDate="2013-02-13T15:37:36.390" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard the claim often myself, but it is not easy to find any backing research or statistics and I would assume that there will be great variations in the answers, depending on which country or geographic region you look at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I managed to find &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssb.no/emner/00/01/rapp_valg/notat_201129/notat_201129.pdf&quot;&gt;statistics from the last parliament election in Norway (2009)&lt;/a&gt;, where voter's education and political preference is examined closer. The relevant data is found in the second block of table A.1, page 28 (Utdanning). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The level of education has been split into three groups:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grunnskole - 9 or 10 years of compulsory primary school&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Videregående - additional 3-4 years of secondary school, can also partially include an apprenticeship or professional training&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Universitet/høgskole - university degree or similar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The political parties (R, SV, Ap, ..., H, FrP, Andre = others) are roughly arranged from left to right in the same order you would arrange them on a political left/right wing scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we first take a look at the most leftish and rightish parties, your claim first seem to be backed up by the statistics. At the far-left, we find &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Party_%28Norway%29&quot;&gt;The Red Party (R)&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Left_Party_%28Norway%29&quot;&gt;Socialist Left Party (SV)&lt;/a&gt; with a much higher support among the better educated voters (0/1/2% and 4/5/12% for the three education level groups). At the far right, we find the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_Party_%28Norway%29&quot;&gt;Progress Party (FrP)&lt;/a&gt; with a much higher support among the less educated voters (31/26/9%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we however look at the two larger &quot;traditional&quot; left/right wing parties in Norway, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_%28Norway%29&quot;&gt;Labour Party (Ap)&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Party_%28Norway%29&quot;&gt;Conservative Party (H)&lt;/a&gt;, the distribution is opposite (46/35/32% for the Labour Party and 7/17/27% for the Conservative Party).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last three parties, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venstre_%28Norway%29&quot;&gt;Liberal Party (V)&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristelig_Folkeparti&quot;&gt;Christian Democratic Party (KrF)&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senterpartiet&quot;&gt;Centre Party (Sp)&lt;/a&gt; are usually categorized as centrist parties without any clear left/right wing classification. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we group the parties as well in left wing (R, SV, Ap), centrist (V, KrF, Sp) and right wing (H, FrP), the support cross-referenced with the education level group adds up to 50/41/46% (left wing), 11/16/18% (centrist) and 38/43/36% (right wing). Even if these numbers indicate a slight skew in one or another direction, they can at least not be used to backup your original claim. If at all, they seem to indicate the well-educated people tend to prefer centrist parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastActivityDate="2013-02-13T15:37:36.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14994" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-13T19:05:29.543" Score="17" ViewCount="1282" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb&quot;&gt;Nicholas Nassem Taleb&lt;/a&gt; makes the following passing statement in his latest meditation on the nature and management of risk (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Antifragile-Live-World-Dont-Understand/dp/1846141567/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1360781951&amp;amp;sr=8-1&quot;&gt;Antifragile&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...businesses with negative optionality (that is, the opposite of having optionality) such as banking have had a horrible performance through history: banks lose periodically every penny made in their history thanks to blowups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He makes the statement in passing and doesn't make a big issue of it but, as a result, doesn't seem to reference the evidence behind the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is: while banks often seem to make a lot of money when things are going well, do they typically lose just as much in banking &quot;blowups&quot; or downturns?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T12:14:22.610" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T12:14:22.610" Title="Do banks typically lose as much money as they make in the long term?" Tags="|economics|finance|banking|corporate-finance|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1586" CreationDate="2013-02-14T01:49:14.620" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a fairly detailed scientifically reviewed article which describes how light therapy can help with sleep and awakeness &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2670336/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Illuminating Rationale and Uses for Light Therapy.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blue light around 460nm promotes wakefullness. It works by resetting the human circadian rhythm. Originally light therapy used high intensity white light but blue light at 460nm was found to more effective and at much lower lux levels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11515" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2013-02-14T05:26:11.233" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T05:26:11.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="14999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-14T09:53:40.367" Score="2" ViewCount="8850" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yomeishu is a medicinal tonic from Japan. According to this the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yomeishu.co.jp/english/about/feature/indications.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yomeishu web-site&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yomeishu improves the following symptoms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Physical fatigue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people with the trouble of physical fatigue such as feeling tiredness, continuation of fatigue, etc. Yomeishu, as a health tonic, relieves fatigue while strengthening physical power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Chilliness of tip of fingers, hands, hips and legs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people with severe chilliness of hands, feet and hips caused by air conditioners. Active medicinal ingredients contained in Yomeishu widely circulate throughout the body with blood circulation to regulate the functions of metabolism, and as a result, chilliness is improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Continuation of gastrointestinal trouble after meal&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people with weak digestive organs, gastrointestinal disorders or susceptible to weakened stomach and intestines. Drinking Yomeishu before meals will regulate gastrointestinal activities and strengthen them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4 Recovery of physical strength during and after illness&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people requiring physical strength during and after illness, and people with delayed recovery of physical conditions after illness. Active ingredients of Yomeishu will regulate principal activities of the body and lead to an original healthy condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5 Poor appetite&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people with poor appetite, or incapable of eating despite of appetite. Drinking Yomeishu before meals activates gastrointestinal workings due to the active ingredients and one is capable of recovering to normal appetite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6 Susceptible to be tired or a weak body constitution&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people with a weak body or feeling a lack of strength. Yomeishu, as a health tonic with a moderate action, strengthens the body and steadily enhances physical power while alleviating physical fatigue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;7 Always look sick&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For people with who are of little color due to the chilliness of the tips of the fingers caused by the accumulation of fatigue. The active ingredients of Yomeishu circulate throughout the body with the blood circulation, activate the whole body metabolism and improve the trouble of little color.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8840" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T20:32:22.613" Title="Does the Japanese medicinal tonic, Yomeishu, help with fatigue, poor circulation and gastrointestinal illnesses?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|herbalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14994" CreationDate="2013-02-14T16:50:43.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &quot;The Black Swan&quot; Nassim Taleb writes on page 314 his evidence for the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Banks losing all their past profits: Money center banks (around eight banks) had a capital base of around $22bm in 1982. They carried on their books around $54bn of loans to emerging markets, the bulk of which just four countries: Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Venezuela. The default precipitated the &quot;paper&quot; value down markedly (I estimated at least about $30 billon, with a minimum of $25 billon based on traded &quot;paper&quot;). The banks did not reflect the market value on their books. We saw in the early 80s paper trading at 25 cents while banks marked it at 1 dollar with a small reserve (net at about 90 cents to the dollar). How did I infer that it exceeds their lifetime cumulative profits? I looked at their record and noticed that they made around $12 billion in the previous 8 years and had 10 billion capital base earlier. Details from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation at http:/www.fdic.gov/bank/historical/history/contents.html, Chapter 5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It would be nice to have the position of someone besides Nassim on the topic, but the excerpt is to long for a simple comment so I put it into an answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2013-02-15T00:23:43.940" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T00:23:43.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15004" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16307" CreationDate="2013-02-14T21:24:22.633" Score="57" ViewCount="13074" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does being in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anechoic_Chamber&quot;&gt;anechoic chamber&lt;/a&gt; cause hallucinations? According to several blogs (that likely copy each other), it does. The Orfield Laboratory in Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States is reported to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://tcbmag.com/Industries/Technology/The-Quietest-Room-in-the-World-September-2008&quot;&gt;the quietest room in the world&lt;/a&gt; with a rating of -9.4 dB &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure#Sound_pressure_level&quot;&gt;sound pressure level (SPL)&lt;/a&gt;. Several sources on the internet claim that this causes hallucinations and that nobody can stay there for long. It seems the blogs just copy each other. A selection:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.incredible-pictures.com/2013/01/worlds-quietest-room-orfield.html&quot;&gt;incredible-pictures.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apparently it's so quiet, staying in there for a time will drive you insane.&#xA;  Nobody has been able to be in the room for more than forty five minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://geekslop.com/2013/orfield-laboratories-quietest-sound-proof-chamber-on-earth&quot;&gt;geekslop.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even Mr. Oldfield, the owner of the sound chamber, admits that he can stay in the room for no more than 30 minutes.  The sound of his heart valve drives him crazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Geekslop goes on to quote Mr. Oldfield, but do not provide any real citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://tcbmag.com/Industries/Technology/The-Quietest-Room-in-the-World-September-2008&quot;&gt;an article in TCB Magazine&lt;/a&gt;, Patricia Kelly, September 2008:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With no reverberation in the room, you have no spatial orientation cues. After about half an hour in the dark, you can become disoriented. Eventually, you might experience visual and aural hallucinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/04/worlds-quietest-room-the-anechoic-chamber-minnesota-minneapolis_n_1403476.html&quot;&gt;Huffington post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The quiet chamber amplifies even the slightest noise, making people accurately aware of anything, including the sound of their heart beating. In fact, the sensation is so intense -- including the possibility of hallucinations -- that no one has been able to stay in the room longer than 45 minutes, according to the Deccan Chronicle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This news has a link to the Deccan Chronicle which is now dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence for those claims? Does being in such a quiet room cause hallucinations, to such a degree that nobody is able to be there for long?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:04:03.100" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:04:03.100" Title="Does a -9 dB room cause hallucinations?" Tags="|cognitive-science|sound|hallucinations|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15006" CreationDate="2013-02-14T21:57:08.183" Score="19" ViewCount="4117" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are door locks as easy to pick as in the movies? They seem to only take around 2-3 seconds to pick be it with a credit card or a hairpin. Is this realistic? Or is it simply Hollywood being Hollywood?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How long would it take an expert to open a random door lock of a house or that of a hotel room?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:24:16.287" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:24:16.287" Title="Are locks as easy to pick as in the movies?" Tags="|security|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15005" CreationDate="2013-02-14T22:10:14.177" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is way too generic, because there is a variety of locks and they can differ quite a lot in what principle they're based on. However one thing &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be said: most depictions of lock picking in movies and TV are inaccurate to say the least. They look more like the actors are handling a padlock (from the way they move the tools :)) than one in a door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should perhaps check out the Wikipedia entry on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locksport&quot;&gt;locksport&lt;/a&gt; to form your own opinion. Especially skim or read through &quot;The MIT Guide to Lock Picking&quot; linked from the Wikipedia article. This will give you a basic understanding for at least one lock type which is in widespread use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skilled people are indeed able to &lt;em&gt;pick&lt;/em&gt; many a lock in under a minute, but most certainly not in 2-3 seconds. And keep in mind that lockpicking refers to non-destructive opening of a lock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for hotel room doors the situation is slightly different, because in some cases the access cards are prone to special attacks. So for them it is more likely. And some of the technology shown in spy movies has actually seen real successors. But that's a completely different league from mechanical locks. Which was also the reason for my initial remark of this being a (too) broad question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1408" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T22:10:14.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14983" CreationDate="2013-02-14T22:11:33.057" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The simple answer is: no they don't&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Andrew Gelman has addressed this issue several times in his blog and his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/State-Blue-Rich-Poor-ebook/dp/B004MPRDW2/ref=kinw_dp_ke&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Red State, Blue State,&lt;/a&gt; also has a lot of related electoral statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In responding to statements like this (in William Saletan's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/the-righteous-mind-by-jonathan-haidt.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;review&lt;/a&gt; of Jonathan Haidt's book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/1846141818&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Righteous Mind&lt;/a&gt;), my emphasis :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You’re smart. You’re liberal. You’re well informed. You think conservatives are narrow-minded. &lt;strong&gt;You can’t understand why working-class Americans vote Republican.&lt;/strong&gt; You figure they’re being duped. You’re wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;he &lt;a href=&quot;http://andrewgelman.com/2012/03/same-old-story/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;responds&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...So, without disagreeing with Haidt (whose book I have not seen) or with Saletan (who may simply be reacting to things he read in Haidt’s book), let me just point out two facts that might clarify the above-quoted discussion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most working-class American voters vote for Democrats, not Republicans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Richer people are more likely to vote Republican, in the country as a whole, within each racial group, and, among whites, within each level of education (except possibly at the lowest education level, where low sample sizes leave the pattern unclear).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He gives a more detailed answer in &lt;a href=&quot;http://andrewgelman.com/2012/03/voting-patterns-of-americas-whites-from-the-masses-to-the-elites/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;another post&lt;/a&gt; (where he was addressing the sort of inverse fallacy that educated people are a liberal elite that vote democrat):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within any education category, richer people vote more Republican. In contrast, the pattern of education and voting is nonlinear. High school graduates are more Republican than non-HS grads, but after that, the groups with more education tend to vote more Democratic. At the very highest education level tabulated in the survey, voters with post-graduate degrees lean toward the Democrats. Except for the rich post-graduates; they are split 50-50 between the parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does this say about America’s elites? If you define elites as high-income non-Hispanic whites, the elites vote strongly Republican. If you define elites as college-educated high-income whites, they vote moderately Republican...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...The patterns are consistent for all three of the past presidential elections. (The differences in the higher-income low-education category should not be taken seriously, as the estimates are based on small samples, as can be seen from the large standard errors for those subgroups.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These charts clarify some of the patterns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jMNck.png&quot; alt=&quot;Gelman's charts of voting patterns in US elections&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key point here is that &lt;em&gt;even the poor uneducated are more likely to vote democrat.&lt;/em&gt; Education may have some tendency to make people more democrat-voting, but this pattern is dominated by wealth, where the wealthy are much more likely to vote republican. Education makes you more democrat-leaning; wealth makes you more republican. But, while postgraduates may be more strongly democrat, the working classes (defined by education and wealth) are not a republican block.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As comments have raised this issue is different in different countries. The following chart (also based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://andrewgelman.com/2012/06/stop-me-before-i-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Andrew Gelman's analysis&lt;/a&gt;) summarises the situation for many. The chart y-axis is the difference between rich and poor conservative vote share (that is, the higher up the axis the larger the conservative voting is skewed to the rich). The US shows the most pronounced tendency for the rich to be more conservative than the poor, but it is far from alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/x8k5X.png&quot; alt=&quot;Gelman's analysis of country voting patterns&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T13:07:14.597" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15008" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15013" CreationDate="2013-02-14T22:31:47.893" Score="18" ViewCount="2149" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the greatest respect for the work of the Rocky Mountain Institute, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2013_02_14_when_a_LEAF_Falls&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this recent blog post&lt;/a&gt; triggered my general scepticism towards electric cars, or more specifically, their fuel efficiency. This is how the RMI calculates the payback for a Nissan LEAF:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4gWJD.png&quot; alt=&quot;RMI comparison e-cars&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming their numbers for mpg and kWh/mi as well as the respective fuel prices are sound. Then, an almost 75% cost saving on the fuel indicates a vastly superior fuel efficiency of the electric car. This seems very counterintuitive to me, as I would think producing the electricity, transporting and storing it and then using it to drive the wheels loses a lot of energy along the way, compared to going from thermal directly to kinetic energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if we used the same kind of fuel to drive the shaft at the power plant and the one in the car's motor, I guess the large motor at the power plant can be built more efficiently, but I have a hard time imagining that this outweighs all the losses of distributing the power plant's energy via wires and batteries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, if we took the electric car and replaced only its motor with the most efficient combustion engine we have, would that show the same superiority over conventional cars, meaning the electrical car's advantage is not the motor technology but that it's generally more efficient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intuitively, I would think that distributing the fuel and generating the power in the car makes more thermodynamic sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm well aware of the fact that there might be other reasons for electric cars (less pollution locally, ability to use things like wind turbines as the energy source etc.). But just focussing on the fuel-to-motion analysis, aren't electric cars much less efficient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the comparison is a financial one, what might be reasons for the great price difference, if the electric really is less efficient thermodynamically?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10502" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T18:12:10.307" Title="Shouldn't an electric car be thermodynamically at a disadvantage towards one with a combustion engine?" Tags="|road-vehicles|environment|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15004" CreationDate="2013-02-14T23:39:39.903" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_deprivation&quot;&gt;Sensory Deprivation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently if you block or disrupt any of the senses for long enough it can cause hallucinations.  So the answer would be yes for some people hallucinations are a possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question reminded me of floatation tanks, otherwise known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_tank&quot;&gt;isolation chambers&lt;/a&gt;, where you float yourself in highly concentrated saltwater in a light and sound proof chamber.  The very purpose of which is to deprive your senses in order to achieve a high meditative state.  Some people use psychedelics in combination to enhance the hallucinatory effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11529" LastActivityDate="2013-02-14T23:39:39.903" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15008" CreationDate="2013-02-15T08:01:37.070" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is that &lt;strong&gt;no, electric cars are most definitely not at a thermodynamic disadvantage compared to a combustion engine&lt;/strong&gt;. Quite the reverse, they have the advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electric cars are about 4x as efficient as fossil-fuelled combustion engines, tank-to-wheel: &lt;a href=&quot;http://courses.washington.edu/me341/oct22v2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ICE engine efficiency&lt;/a&gt; is around 20%. Electric engines tend to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teslamotors.com/goelectric/efficiency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;around 80-90%&lt;/a&gt;.  And the fuel prices in the article are tank prices, so tank-to-wheel is the right measure in this case. If you were interested in the whole-cycle energy efficiency (which is not what your linked claim refers to), then well-to-wheel would be the efficiency you were after, and then it would be very sensitive to how your electricity would be generated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the nitty-gritty of the energy consumption of electric, fossil and hydrogen cars, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.claverton-energy.com/?dl_name=nazisharks1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper from George Wallis of the Claverton Energy Group&lt;/a&gt; (pdf, 317kb). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that pretty much all electric cars benefit from regenerative braking, and very few fossil-cars do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Efficiencies do depend on the drive cycle: and whereas ICEs tend to be optimised for speeds around 85km/h, the efficiency of electric cars decreases with increasing speed, just as the core physics would lead you to expect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9tHTr.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teslamotors.com/goelectric/efficiency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information on efficiencies power-station to wheel of electric vehicles, which you ask about, but which is not what the claim you've cited refers to, see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/evtech.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Gov Fuel Economy&lt;/a&gt; site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And please do come over to the new &lt;a href=&quot;https://sustainability.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;Sustainability Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; where we take this sort of question too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:28.103" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T19:04:14.620" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15017" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15026" CreationDate="2013-02-15T15:56:25.200" Score="4" ViewCount="624" Body="&lt;p&gt;A large meteor or meteors &lt;a href=&quot;http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/15/16969092-hundreds-injured-as-meteor-fireball-screams-across-the-sky-in-russia?lite&quot;&gt;entered the atmosphere near Russia's Chelyabinsk region&lt;/a&gt; hours before closest approach of asteroid 2012 DA14. Initial claims are that the two are unrelated; the above link says &quot;The European Space Agency posted a message on its Twitter account saying that there was no link between the Russian meteor and asteroid 2012 DA14.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The coincidence of what appears to be a once-in-a-few-decades meteor and the closest known passing of a significant asteroid is curious. Were there characteristics of the Russian event that definitively rule out a connection with 2012DA14?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2013-02-15T20:07:56.377" LastActivityDate="2014-02-15T20:58:43.610" Title="Is there no link between the meteor that affected Russia and the asteroid 2012 DA14?" Tags="|astronomy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15005" CreationDate="2013-02-15T20:39:01.040" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Common door locks can be opened in 2-3 seconds with a bump key.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_bumping&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_bumping&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr23tpWX8lM&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr23tpWX8lM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11400" LastActivityDate="2013-02-15T20:39:01.040" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11187" CreationDate="2013-02-15T21:02:59.893" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reflexology is a pseudoscience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/reflex.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/reflex.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;Reflexology is based on an absurd theory and has not been demonstrated to influence the course of any illness. Done gently, reflexology is a form of foot massage that may help people relax temporarily. Whether that is worth $35 to $100 per session or is more effective than ordinary (noncommercial) foot massage is a matter of individual choice. Claims that reflexology is effective for diagnosing or treating disease should be ignored. Such claims could lead to delay of necessary medical care or to unnecessary medical testing of people who are worried about reflexology findings.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/reflexology-insert-nancy-sinatra-reference-here/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/reflexology-insert-nancy-sinatra-reference-here/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The great majority of studies demonstrate reflexology had no effects that could not be replicated by beyond picking fleas off your mate (am I over sharing?). And it has no anatomic or physiologic justification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edzard Ernst published the following systematic review of reflexology in 2009.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Is reflexology an effective intervention? A systematic review of randomised controlled trials&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19740047&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19740047&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The studies examined a range of conditions: anovulation, asthma, back pain, dementia, diabetes, cancer, foot oedema in pregnancy, &lt;b&gt;headache&lt;/b&gt;, irritable bowel syndrome, menopause, multiple sclerosis, the postoperative state and premenstrual syndrome. There were &gt; 1 studies for asthma, the postoperative state, cancer palliation and multiple sclerosis. Five RCTs yielded positive results. Methodological quality was evaluated using the Jadad scale. The methodological quality was often poor, and sample sizes were generally low. Most higher-quality trials did not generate positive findings.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  CONCLUSION: The best evidence available to date does not demonstrate convincingly that reflexology is an effective treatment for any medical condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Livestrong page mentioned when to contact a doctor, so it may have referenced University of Maryland Medicine just for that.&#xA;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umm.edu/ency/article/003024trt.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Maryland Medical Reference&lt;/a&gt; does say that, &quot;A massage or heat applied to the back of the upper neck can help relieve tension headaches,&quot; so it doesn't dismiss home remedies, but it doesn't say anything about pressure points in the hands and feet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more effective way to take your mind off your headache is to hit your thumb or toe with a hammer :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11400" LastEditorUserId="11400" LastEditDate="2013-02-17T08:06:49.093" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T08:06:49.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15024" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-16T00:36:51.843" Score="8" ViewCount="546" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kernelmag.com/yiannopoulos/4115/put-a-sock-in-it-you-dickless-wonders/&quot;&gt;PUT A SOCK IN IT, YOU DICKLESS WONDERS&lt;/a&gt;, Milo Yiannopoulos claims that women in the tech industry are more likely to be speakers or panellists than men are, because there aren't many women in the tech industry, and since organizers want to have women on their panels, those women have a higher probability to be speakers or panellists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because, actually, women have it easy in tech: there are so few of&#xA;  them that conference organisers &lt;strong&gt;are desperate to put them on stage&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  Feature writers are unendingly enthusiastic about trailing glossy pics&#xA;  of them in newspapers and magazines. Prime Ministers are anxious to&#xA;  meet them and be photographed alongside these trailblazing digital&#xA;  divas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, Avdi Grimm said in &lt;a href=&quot;http://devblog.avdi.org/2012/11/19/on-britruby/&quot;&gt;On BritRuby&lt;/a&gt; (which was talking about women and non-white speakers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I mentioned, 15 speakers were invited. Now, given that there is&#xA;  still a big disparity between men and women in the community, not to&#xA;  mention between white folks and other races, I figured it was possible&#xA;  that they had indeed invited a diverse representation of the&#xA;  community. Let’s say 15-25% non-white-dudes, given that it’s still&#xA;  harder to find prominent women and minorities in the Ruby field. And&#xA;  then, in a stroke of rotten luck, every single one of non-white-dude&#xA;  invitees turned them down. This scenario is definitely within the&#xA;  realm of the possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So I started asking around. I thought of all the prominent&#xA;  non-white-dude Ruby conference speakers I could in the space of a&#xA;  couple minutes. Just people who came easily to mind, nobody too&#xA;  obscure. I wanted to know if they had been invited to be part of that&#xA;  initial group of 15, and had said no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sandi Metz. Bryan Liles. Reg Braithwaite. Angela Harms. Sarah Mei.&#xA;  Katrina Owen (Norway). Keavy McMinn (Scotland). None of these people&#xA;  were invited to be part of the initial line-up. In fact, I couldn’t&#xA;  find a single woman or minority Rubyist who had been invited to be&#xA;  part of that 15.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are women who are in the tech industry more likely to be a speaker or panellist at conferences than men?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T00:36:51.843" Title="Are women more likely to be speakers at tech conferences than men?" Tags="|technology|gender|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15017" CreationDate="2013-02-16T08:18:16.303" Score="5" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Coincidence or related?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/russian-meteor-largest-in-a-century-1.12438&quot;&gt;Nature&lt;/a&gt; a Canadian astronomer agrees with ESA's conclusions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It was a very, very powerful event,&quot; says Margaret Campbell-Brown, an astronomer at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, who has studied data from two infrasound stations near the impact site. Her calculations show that the meteoroid was approximately 15 metres across when it entered the atmosphere, and put its mass at around 7,000 metric tonnes. &quot;That would make it the biggest object recorded to hit the Earth since Tunguska,&quot; she says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The European Space Agency does not think that the meteor is related to a much larger asteroid known as 2012 DA14, which will be passing within about 20,000 kilometres of Earth later today. Both the timing of the meteor's appearance and its location indicate that it came from a different direction, Klinkrad says. &lt;strong&gt;Campbell-Brown agrees: &quot;We happened to have close approaches to two of them, and one of them got us,&quot; she says.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(my emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/asteroidflyby.html&quot;&gt;NASA agree&lt;/a&gt; with the ESA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Editor's Note: NASA statement on Russia meteor: &#xA;  &quot;According to NASA scientists, the trajectory of the Russia meteor was significantly different than the trajectory of the asteroid 2012 DA14, &lt;strong&gt;making it a completely unrelated object&lt;/strong&gt;. Information is still being collected about the Russia meteor and analysis is preliminary at this point. In videos of the meteor, it is seen to pass from left to right in front of the rising sun, which means it was traveling from north to south. Asteroid DA14's trajectory is in the opposite direction, from south to north.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What is a meteor?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A small body of matter from outer space that enters the earth's atmosphere, appearing as a streak of light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;How common are meteors?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Chelyabinsk meteor was the largest for 104 years, but meteors in general are commonplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imo.net/data&quot;&gt;International Meteor Organisation&lt;/a&gt; says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The VMDB contains about 3,000,000 meteors obtained by standardized observing methods which were collected during the last ~25 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-02-16T09:24:19.397" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T09:24:19.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15027" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-16T10:09:17.610" Score="1" ViewCount="627" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assume that you go to sleep at 0:00 am and wake up at 3:00 am.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why do you feel more tired (compared to your tiredness at 23:59) when you wake up at 3:00 am? Why does sleep makes us more tired in this case? Is there a critical sleeping period for a person, below which makes him/her more tired instead. Also it is confusing that day time sleep doesn't make the same effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11549" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T13:07:08.350" Title="Why does small amount of night time sleep makes a person more tired when he wakes up?" Tags="|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-02-16T10:16:17.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15027" CreationDate="2013-02-16T10:48:36.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sleep proceeds in cycles of REM and NREM, usually four or five of them per night, the order normally being N1 → N2 → N3 → N2 → REM. There is a greater amount of deep sleep (stage N3) earlier in the night, while the proportion of REM sleep increases in the two cycles just before natural awakening. (Wikipedia)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sleep follows a certain cycle which repeats throughout the night. Being forced to wake up when in the deep sleep stage (N3) usually leads to you being more tired for the rest of the day (although usually it only last for an hour at most). This is known as  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_inertia#section_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sleep inertia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Day time short nap doesn't work the same because you woke up before you reach the deep sleep stage. This kind of short nap is called power napping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sleep cycle is not considered controversial among people who studied sleep, and is backed by EEG scans which shows that the different stages have different brain wave pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some relevant researches showing sleep inertia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21167917&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21167917&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sleep inertia (SI) denotes a period of hypovigilance, confusion and impaired cognitive and behavioral performance that immediately follows awakening. Based on the observation that the reactivation of some cortical areas is faster than other upon awakening, here we examined regional differences between presleep and postsleep waking period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22734577&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22734577&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Twenty-four healthy young men (Protocol 1: n = 12, mean age = 25.1 yrs; Protocol 2: n = 12, mean age = 23.2 yrs) were provided with nap opportunities of 20-, 40-, and 60-min (and a control condition of no nap) ending at 02:00 h after ∼20 h of wakefulness (Protocol 1 [P1]: simulated night work) or ending at 12:00 h after ∼30 h of wakefulness (Protocol 2 [P2]: simulated extended operations). A 6-min test battery, including the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale (KSS) and the 4-min 2-Back Working Memory Task (WMT), was repeated every 15 min the first hour after waking. [...] WMT [Working Memory Task] performance was impaired (slower reaction time, fewer correct responses, and increased omissions) on the first test post-nap, primarily after a 40- or 60-min nap&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21075238&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21075238&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The benefits of brief (5-15 min) naps are almost immediate after the nap and last a limited period (1-3h). Longer naps (&gt; 30 min) can produce impairment from sleep inertia for a short period after waking but then produce improved cognitive performance for a longer period (up to many hours).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20636214&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20636214&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, one potential disadvantage of napping is that awakening from naps is disturbed by sleep inertia, which has also been found to impair performance and/or mood, transiently. The authors examined the effects of the timing and length of a night-shift nap on sleep inertia in a laboratory setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="542" LastEditorUserId="542" LastEditDate="2013-02-17T13:07:08.350" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T13:07:08.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14983" CreationDate="2013-02-16T15:18:35.493" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to DVK's numbers, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brandpointcontent.com/printsite/Default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ARAcontent&lt;/a&gt; list about 25% of graduate degrees are in education (170K out of 700K) - those are going overwhelmingly liberal.  And about 20% MBA's (150K out of 700K) - those are going conservative, but much less powerfully so. ARAcontent is renamed since the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ozarkcountytimes.com/online_features/business_and_careers/article_172d21b0-6bfc-51e2-94b2-25db44921e32.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2010 article in Ozark County Times&lt;/a&gt;. I added the 77K professional/doc degrees to the 605K Masters.  That's only two years, and I'm sure there are trends, but that breakdown is a start. You will note that &lt;a href=&quot;http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/11/chart-of-day-gre-scores-by-academic.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Education grad students have considerably lower GRE's.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11551" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T02:37:41.237" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T02:37:41.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15031" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15035" CreationDate="2013-02-16T18:11:37.070" Score="20" ViewCount="1935" Body="&lt;p&gt;From time to time, we heard about spine-chilling stories of kidney theft in various forms. There's some competing views out there, but I don't know which one to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One negative point of view is that kidney theft is nothing more than an urban legend. For a determined criminal, compared to the benefit that correlates with the market price of a kidney, the cost of preforming such an operation is prohibitively high. Moreover, no victim has ever been confirmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there's also some supporting views. The estimated black market price of kidney may not be reliable. How much is a desperate patient is willing to pay to extend his or her life for 20 years or even longer? Probably no victim will survive after their kidney is stolen and that's why we have no confirmed victim. It's rare, but did it happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11553" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-02-17T06:19:47.593" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T05:37:00.400" Title="Is kidney theft happening in real life?" Tags="|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15034" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15068" CreationDate="2013-02-16T20:00:53.320" Score="19" ViewCount="41272" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you look at the nutrition facts on a bag of popcorn, they sometimes list &quot;popped&quot; and &quot;unpopped&quot; separately:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DF2Vc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Example labels&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;(images above shamelessly stolen from the current answers :)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, when you calculate the total calories in the entire bag, the two don't match.  I've seen a number of dubious claims online for why this is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzle.com/articles/popcorn-calories-popped-vs-unpopped.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;It's because popped popcorn has less kernels&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(Then where does the missing energy go?)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/27/AR2005092700428.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;It's because the figures listed on the package are approximate&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(I find this very hard to believe, the difference between popped and unpopped can be 25% or more)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080422001329AAjQ9kY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;It's because popped popcorn takes up more space&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(....what!?)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/forums/foods/popped-popcorn-less-calories-unpopped&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;It's because the oils in the kernels explode and soak into the bag&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I believe it's because there's usually so much butter left at the bottom of the bag, but this doesn't explain why there would be a difference for non-buttered popcorn &lt;em&gt;(which I &lt;strong&gt;think&lt;/strong&gt; there is...)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, which one of these claims, if any, are correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastEditorUserId="249" LastEditDate="2013-02-20T13:28:24.733" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T03:19:23.880" Title="Does popped popcorn have less calories than unpopped?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15031" CreationDate="2013-02-16T20:35:27.763" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The NY Times reported on it in 2008&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;Kidney Thefts Shock India&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/world/asia/30kidney.html&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/world/asia/30kidney.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. Mohammed was the last of about 500 Indians whose kidneys were removed by a team of doctors running an illegal transplant operation, supplying kidneys to rich Indians and foreigners, police officials said. A few hours after his operation last Thursday, the police raided the clinic and moved him to a government hospital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many of the donors were day laborers, like Mr. Mohammed, picked up from the streets with the offer of work, driven to a well-equipped private clinic, and duped or forced at gunpoint to undergo operations. Others were bicycle rickshaw drivers and impoverished farmers who were persuaded to sell their organs, which is illegal in India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11400" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T20:35:27.763" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14958" CreationDate="2013-02-16T23:04:23.227" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt you will find a definitive answer to this question, as Ohio did not even require vehicles to be registered &lt;a href=&quot;http://simson.net/ref/1970/Fink_America_Adopts_the_Automobile_Car_Registrations.pdf&quot;&gt;until 1905&lt;/a&gt;, so there would be no way to know definitively how many operating motor vehicles there were in 1895.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if anything, I would suspect that there were &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; operating motor vehicles in Ohio in 1895.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckeye_gasoline_buggy&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; cites a study by L. Scott Bailey which includes extensive research into early motor vehicles. What is likely to be the first American-made gasoline powered vehicle was being driven around Ohio in 1891, but there was only one; no one else wanted to buy one. By 1895, the car was no longer being used on the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lambert was convinced that he had a workable engine to power his three-wheel carriage and he set forth specifications and a price of $550 in a sales brochure which was mailed during the first part of February of 1891. Later that month, the automobile was running with the new stirrup-type steering on the main street of Ohio City. ... Although the letters of inquiry continued, no sales contracts were signed for the Lambert. Lambert soon realized that there was no sales potential for his automobile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Originally quoted from Bailey, L. Scott, &quot;Historic Discovery: 1891 Lambert, New Claim for America's First Car&quot;, &lt;em&gt;Antique Automobile&lt;/em&gt; magazine, Vol. 24, No. 5, Oct–Nov 1960, p. 343).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first sales of commercially available cars were made by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ausbcomp.com/~bbott/cars/carhist.htm&quot;&gt;Duryeas Brothers, in 1896&lt;/a&gt;. As such, it seems unlikely that one, let alone two, people owned motor vehicles in Ohio in 1895.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Ohio History Central web site, Lambert's vehicle &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; involved in an automobile accident, in Ohio City, which they claim is the first recorded auto accident in history. However, the vehicle &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=2596&quot;&gt;collided with a tree&lt;/a&gt;, not another car, and happened in 1891, when Lambert was still driving around Ohio City trying to sell his prototype. It's possible that the claim in question is a misrepresentation of this earlier accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7998" LastActivityDate="2013-02-16T23:04:23.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15040" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-17T02:27:38.337" Score="6" ViewCount="160" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously the music industry has gone to great lengths to try and ingrain the message that illegal downloads of music have significantly damaged their bottom line, but is there any irrefutable evidence that declines in sales for major labels are as a direct result of illegal downloads?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, growth in other media (such as video games) will have obviously eaten into the amount of money available teenagers have to spend on music. Also, the prevalence of the internet means that distribution is cheap and affordable for even smaller labels now (meaning there's less reason for artists to jump to bigger labels).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ask especially in regard to today's marketplace, where there are plenty of online stores making music available to legally download (such as iTunes, Zune Marketplace, and eMusic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1835" LastEditorUserId="1835" LastEditDate="2013-02-17T14:35:29.500" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T14:35:29.500" Title="Does illegal downloading of music significantly damage sales?" Tags="|music|copyright|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-02-17T09:18:16.373" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8179" CreationDate="2013-02-17T12:36:30.853" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The practice of giving up meat for Lent has been part of the Christian tradition since before the fourth century and before the schism between East and West. In some traditions this means a completely vegan diet. Check out this site for more information: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09152a.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Catholic Encyclopedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relevant parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Nature of the fast&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neither was there originally less divergence regarding the nature of&#xA;  the fast. For example, &lt;strong&gt;the historian Socrates (Church History V.22)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  tells of the &lt;strong&gt;practice of the fifth century&lt;/strong&gt;: &quot;Some abstain from every&#xA;  sort of creature that has life, while &lt;strong&gt;others of all the living&#xA;  creatures eat of fish only.&lt;/strong&gt; Others eat birds as well as fish, because,&#xA;  according to the Mosaic account of the Creation, they too sprang from&#xA;  the water; others abstain from fruit covered by a hard shell and from&#xA;  eggs. Some eat dry bread only, others not even that; others again when&#xA;  they have fasted to the ninth hour (three o'clock) partake of various&#xA;  kinds of food&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] &lt;strong&gt;Theodulphus of Orleans in the eighth century&lt;/strong&gt; regarded abstinence from eggs, cheese, and &lt;strong&gt;fish&lt;/strong&gt; as a mark of exceptional virtue. None the less St. Gregory writing to St. Augustine of England laid down the rule, &quot;We abstain from flesh meat, and from all things that come from flesh, as milk, cheese, and eggs.&quot; This decision was afterwards enshrined in the &quot;Corpus Juris&quot;, and must be regarded as the common law of the Church. Still exceptions were admitted, and dispensations to eat &quot;lacticinia&quot; were often granted upon condition of making a contribution to some pious work. These dispensations were known in Germany as Butterbriefe, and several churches are said to have been partly built by the proceeds of such exceptions. One of the steeples of Rouen cathedral was for this reason formerly known as the Butter Tower. This general prohibition of eggs and milk during Lent is perpetuated in the popular custom of blessing or making gifts of eggs at Easter, and in the English usage of eating pancakes on Shrove Tuesday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The practice was tied to the three days Jesus spent in the tomb and/or the 40 days of fasting by Jesus and is a preparation for Easter.  Fish were allowed because they were not considered to be meat and provided necessary protein for hard working people.  There is no evidence that any pope was entreated to act to save the economy, nor that it was in need of saving near the time the tradition is credited with having begun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11567" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2018-02-23T19:18:58.150" LastActivityDate="2018-02-23T19:18:58.150" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9015" CreationDate="2013-02-17T18:32:02.470" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;While scambaiting itself may only affect scammers on an individual level, the other activities at scambaiting communities do curb the overall success of scammers.  Scammers set up fake sites, which scambaiters systematically work to catalog and report.  Many scambaiters work with &lt;a href=&quot;http://aa419.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://aa419.org&lt;/a&gt;, which keeps a public database of all scammer-created websites used for advance fee fraud.  This information will show up in internet searches and likely alerts many victims to the fraud.&#xA;Scambaiters also take steps to try to attract more than their fair share of scam spams, and list the information on their anti scam sites.  Having engaged in the scam as a fictitious victim, many scambaiters are quite expert at how the scams work, and often uncover the latest versions of scams and scammer techniques.  These scambaiters run associated victim support and education sites, spending countless hours providing free, real-time advice to thousands of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the best proof, however, that scambaiting is making a difference is that these sites are targeted, repeatedly, by DDOS attacks.   Anti fraud sites have high hosting costs because they need DDOS mitigation.  Scammers wouldn't spend time and money on attacks like this if the scambaiters weren't making a difference. &#xA;See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/12/anti_scam_sites_ddos_blitz/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/12/anti_scam_sites_ddos_blitz/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;And Online Thugs Assault Sites That Specialize in Security Help &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/PCWorld/story?id=3589073&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/PCWorld/story?id=3589073&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11571" LastActivityDate="2013-02-17T18:32:02.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15048" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15050" CreationDate="2013-02-18T01:33:24.837" Score="17" ViewCount="1547" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Job_%28film%29&quot;&gt;Inside Job&lt;/a&gt;, Matt Damon makes the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the first time in history, average Americans have less education and are less prosperous than their parents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true? What measurements of prosperity support his point and which measurements disagree? If it's true that Americans are now less prosperous and educated than their parents, is this the first time in history that has ever been the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T05:39:28.100" Title="Are Americans less prosperous and less educated than their parents for the first time?" Tags="|economics|education|wealth|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15054" CreationDate="2013-02-18T03:20:18.327" Score="23" ViewCount="10236" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;husband's knot&quot; or &quot;husband's stitch&quot; is supposedly a medical procedure that involves adding an extra suture when performing an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episiotomy&quot;&gt;episiotomy&lt;/a&gt; in order to make a woman's vagina tighter, resulting more pleasurable sexual intercourse for her husband at her expense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Numerous discussion boards mention anecdotes of this happening, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080520215942AAP3gqa&quot;&gt;this Yahoo Answer&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mothering.com/community/t/264611/can-someone-explain-what-the-happy-husband-stitch-is&quot;&gt;this Mothering thread&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=CyNhanSwH-gC&amp;amp;pg=PA89&amp;amp;lpg=PA89&amp;amp;dq=husband%27s+knot&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=joC_sHdFnW&amp;amp;sig=vXwSpIqg90USFZsbRvDKKZEbS28&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=iZwhUc3zBsixiwKG2ICoDw&amp;amp;ved=0CC0Q6AEwADgK#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=husband%27s%20knot&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt; describes the procedure. A Psychology Today &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200806/the-delivery-room-the-bedroom&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; repeats the anecdote but claims it is no longer common practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a common perception that this was or is common practice. Did doctors ever perform this surgery? Do they still today? How prevalent was/is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8323" LastEditorUserId="8323" LastEditDate="2013-02-18T14:04:09.570" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T15:40:07.630" Title="Is or was the husband's knot/stitch a medical procedure?" Tags="|medical-science|sexuality|birth|surgery|sexism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15048" CreationDate="2013-02-18T05:39:28.100" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/historical/fig2.jpg&quot;&gt;second graph&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/education/data/cps/historical/index.html&quot;&gt;on this U.S. Census page&lt;/a&gt; negates the claim that Americans are less educated than their parents. Americans are more educated than ever in history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/people/&quot;&gt;Per capita income has also increased significantly in the past fifty years&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Matt Damon is talking about &quot;average Americans&quot; in this claim, so we would need to dig a little deeper to evaluate it. Let's assume that he means &quot;the middle 20%&quot; -- those people in the 40th-59th percentile of income. This is closer to the concept of a median than average, but who says &quot;median American&quot; these days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Table A-2 beginning on page 38 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42400.pdf&quot;&gt;this US Census report&lt;/a&gt;, the following numbers are shown for the middle 20% (third quintile):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1967 - $41,670 (17.3% of income)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2011 - $49,842 (14.3% of income)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice how income has increased for this group while its share of the country's income has decreased. This means that while &quot;average&quot; Americans make less than wealthier Americans today than they did in 1967, they also have more purchasing power than they did in 1967. They can buy nicer stuff and more of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim benefits from being vague, though. &quot;Prosperous&quot; could measured in other ways, since it's roughly synonymous with &quot;success,&quot; and success can be interpreted many ways. Were I arguing with someone about this in person, I would ask them to define &quot;average American&quot; and &quot;prosperous&quot; for the purposes of their argument before running around the Internet to gather answers. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11577" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T05:39:28.100" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15052" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15057" CreationDate="2013-02-18T11:45:23.890" Score="4" ViewCount="457" Body="&lt;p&gt;... but couldn't tell until recently that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Apophis&lt;/a&gt; won't hit Earth around 2030?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the catch in these calculations? Are the numbers just so incredibly big that the 28,000 km distance in which 2012 DA14 passed Earth on Friday last week are already amounting to a precision that you just cannot achieve over longer time frames?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When looking at the Wikipedia article &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palermo_Technical_Impact_Hazard_Scale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale&lt;/a&gt; one oddity is that (29075) 1950 DA has the highest likelihood to hit Earth around 2880. So over a very long time frame they can tell there's a high probability but over a shorter time frame they can't? Or is it because all forecasters will have died by 2880 and therefore won't get taunted? ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; how can they calculate one with seemingly utter precision over a very long time frame (2012 DA14 for the remainder of this century or (29075) 1950 DA in the year 2880) but cannot for another case (ruling out Apophis will hit Earth around 2030)? &lt;em&gt;Note:&lt;/em&gt; they only established it for Apophis last year!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1408" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T09:52:18.010" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T09:52:18.010" Title="Can they calculate how close 2012 DA14 comes to Earth for the remainder of this century" Tags="|astronomy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2013-02-25T01:15:00.697" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15034" CreationDate="2013-02-18T15:16:13.007" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dAgA4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Popcorn Nutrition Label&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2*130) = &lt;strong&gt;Unpopped&lt;/strong&gt; 260 Calories&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(13*15) = &lt;strong&gt;Popped&lt;/strong&gt; 195 Calories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is at least true that popcorn nutrition labels show a difference between popped and unpopped (here: &lt;strong&gt;25% difference&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we're to take &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/04/050415112829.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Micah's article&lt;/a&gt;, the average percentage of unpopped kernels after microwaving is between 4% and 47%, or &lt;strong&gt;25.5%&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it fits very well with the data available. I'd say it's perfectly reasonable to think that the difference is due to the average number of unpopped kernels after cooking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8380" LastEditorUserId="8380" LastEditDate="2013-02-18T15:22:52.107" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T15:22:52.107" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15049" CreationDate="2013-02-18T16:15:09.017" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3312147/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to an article&lt;/a&gt; by doctors &lt;em&gt;Julie M.L.C.L. Dobbeleir, Koenraad Van Landuyt, and Stan J. Monstrey&lt;/em&gt;, titled &lt;em&gt;Aesthetic Surgery of the Female Genitalia&lt;/em&gt;, and published&#xA;in the journal, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thieme.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&amp;amp;flypage=flypage.tpl&amp;amp;product_id=913&amp;amp;category_id=19&amp;amp;option=com_virtuemart&amp;amp;Itemid=53&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Seminars in Plastic Surgery&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (May 2011):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vaginal tightening surgery has been &lt;strong&gt;around since the mid fifties&lt;/strong&gt;, where gynecologists used to tighten the entrance of a woman's vagina with an extra stitch while repairing vaginal and perineum tears or episiotomies after giving birth. At that time it was notoriously known as the “&lt;strong&gt;husband's stitch&lt;/strong&gt;,” the “&lt;strong&gt;husband's knot&lt;/strong&gt;,” or the “&lt;strong&gt;vaginal tuck&lt;/strong&gt;,” and doctors discreetly referred to this procedure as “improving a woman's well-being.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal of these procedures is to reconstruct (or to narrow) the lower third of the vagina, which includes “the orgasmic platform, internal and external vaginal diameter (introitus) and the perineal body.” The procedure enhances vaginal muscle tone strength and control, and decreases internal and external vaginal diameters. Women choosing to have their vaginas tightened are generally healthy women without true functional disorders. In vaginal tightening procedures, portions of mucosa are excised from the vaginal fornices (via scalpel, needle electrode, or laser) to surgically “tighten” the lower third of the vagina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article cites &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Green F. From clitoridectomies to ‘designer vaginas’: The medical construction of heteronormative female bodies and sexuality through female genital cutting&lt;/em&gt;. Sexualities Evolution and Gender. 2005;7(2):153–187&amp;quot; as a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2004 (and 2011 edition of a) book titled, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=-RXeyvX7j-cC&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pregnancy Sucks: What to do when your miracle makes you miserable&lt;/a&gt;, by &lt;em&gt;Joanne Kimes&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Leslie Young&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;MD&lt;/strong&gt;, notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do have a secret to let you in on. Some doctors suture your abdominal muscles together again after delivery if you need a C-section. I've also heard that doctors can add an extra stitch if you tear during delivery to tighten yo your vagina (&lt;strong&gt;known as a &amp;quot;husband stitch&amp;quot;!&lt;/strong&gt;). I guess having a baby is as good an excuse as any to have a little work done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Episiotomy#Controversy_about_common_usage_and_history_of_the_technique&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;episiotomy during childbirth appears to still be prevalent&lt;/a&gt; which &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; indicate that &lt;em&gt;husband stitches&lt;/em&gt; might also still be around. A &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.compleatmother.com/arch_blessings.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;birth log&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; from the '90s (via &lt;a href=&quot;http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=35;t=001781;p=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;) suggests that the practice was perhaps—based on the tone of the article—routinely in use then. Furthermore, the fact that techniques such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaginoplasty#Vaginal_rejuvenation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;vaginal rejuvenation&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drkarenboyle.com/vaginal_rejuvenation_vaginoplasty.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;) and other solutions such as &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;vaginal tightening creams&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot; (an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.womenhealthcenter.org/vaginal-tightening/good-reasons-to-consider-a-vaginal-tightening-cream/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;astroturfing example&lt;/a&gt;) exist, suggest that a corresponding market also exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T18:14:08.720" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15055" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15058" CreationDate="2013-02-18T17:35:28.360" Score="6" ViewCount="3838" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infowars.com/action-to-arrest-wanted-war-criminal-kissinger-in-ireland/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Infowars in 2010&lt;/a&gt;: It seems that Henry Kissinger as Rockefeller’s right hand man had to be at the meeting even though there existed an International arrest warrant from France and Spain who wish to charge him with war crimes from the Chile war. The Spanish and French say Henry Kissinger is implicated in the death of French and Spanish in the war in Chile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an accurate discription of the situation. Is there an international arrest warrant from Spain and France against Henry Kissinger out there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T21:41:07.067" Title="Is there an active international arrest warrant against Henry Kissinger?" Tags="|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15052" CreationDate="2013-02-18T19:29:54.603" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;First off NASA thought it might hit in 2029, but it was a 1:233 chance that it would.  They do know now that Apophis will not, or is extremely unlikely to impact Earth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first announcement of Apophis was on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis#History_of_impact_estimates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;December 24, 2004&lt;/a&gt;.  So it only took 3 days for them to conclude that the original calculations were off because of the incomplete/inaccurate information that they had at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On December 27, 2004, in the afternoon, a precovery increased the span&#xA;  of observations to 287 days which eliminated the 2029 impact threat.&#xA;  The cumulative impact probability was estimated to be around 0.004%, a&#xA;  lower risk than asteroid 2004 VD17, which once again became the&#xA;  greatest risk object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing the calculations without all of the correct information is what led to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis#History_of_impact_estimates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;inaccuracies&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Criticism of older published impact probabilities rests on the fact&#xA;  that important physical parameters such as mass and spin that affect&#xA;  its precise trajectory have not yet been accurately measured and hence&#xA;  there are no associated probability distributions....Small uncertainties in the masses and positions of the planets and Sun&#xA;  can cause up to a 23 Earth radii of prediction error for Apophis by&#xA;  2036.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to why astronomers/scientists can roughly calculate &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2829075%29_1950_DA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DA 1950&lt;/a&gt; so far out there...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That 1950 DA has one of the best-determined asteroid orbital solutions&#xA;  is due to a combination of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;an orbit moderately inclined (12 degrees) to the ecliptic plane (reducing in-plane perturbations)&#xA;high-precision radar astrometry that is more accurate than visual-wavelength measurements&#xA;a 60-year observation arc&#xA;an uncertainty region controlled by resonance&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It as been seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%2829075%29_1950_DA#Observations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;twice&lt;/a&gt; (1950 &amp;amp; 2001) and been able to record how it moved.  We will see it again in 2032 and be able to more accurately calculate if it may hit or not.  As of right now the uncertainty is caused by several things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If 1950 DA continues on its present orbit, it will approach near to&#xA;  the Earth on March 16, 2880. However, over the intervening time,&#xA;  its rotation will cause its orbit to slightly change as a result of&#xA;  the Yarkovsky effect. Available radar and optical data suggest two&#xA;  possible pole directions; one trajectory misses the Earth by tens&#xA;  of millions of kilometers, while the other has an impact probability&#xA;  of roughly 1 in 300&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it continues uninterrupted there are two paths that they think it will take.  One will miss earth by millions of kilometers and the other only has ~ a 1:300 chance of striking Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a much more detailed description you can check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/1950da/1950da.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this NASA PDF&lt;/a&gt; detailing the probabilities of the DA 1950 collision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8691" LastEditorUserId="8691" LastEditDate="2013-02-19T22:54:05.210" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T22:54:05.210" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15052" CreationDate="2013-02-18T20:55:06.113" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nasa has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/1997xf11.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;excellent page on 1997 XF11&lt;/a&gt; which contains two diagrams which show this really well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This diagram is from early calculations, so only a few data points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DLFTB.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the &quot;uncertainty ellipse&quot; - as there were only a few data points, and the measurement of these points is subject to some uncertainty, it is a very large ellipse, indicating there could be a risk of collision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now when they include pre-discovery observations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yAFoa.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The error margin is dramatically reduced, because all the extra data points help to accurately pinpoint the orbital path, so the uncertainty ellipse no longer comes close to the Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The web page also offers the data points and analysis for download if you want to review it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastEditorUserId="619" LastEditDate="2013-02-19T08:54:45.693" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T08:54:45.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15055" CreationDate="2013-02-18T21:41:07.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't find evidence of an arrest warrant. It sounds like an exaggeration of Kissinger's 2001 visit to Paris. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/1332441/Kissinger-shuns-summons.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;He was summoned then by a French judge&lt;/a&gt; to explain the events of the 1973 coup, but the US Secretary of State intervened and he left the country. It was just a court summons, not an arrest warrant. Wikipedia has a well-cited section of other similar events &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Condor#Henry_Kissinger&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kissinger was certainly worried about a real arrest happening, however. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment_and_arrest_of_Augusto_Pinochet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pinochet had been arrested several years earlier in the United Kingdom for his admittedly less covert involvement same events&lt;/a&gt;, and even though he was eventually released, he had still been interned for several years. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/Pitfalls_Univ_Juris_Kis.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kissinger even wrote a paper condemning the &quot;judicial tyranny&quot; of international courts&lt;/a&gt; a few months after his departure from Paris.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But no, no arrest warrant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11577" LastActivityDate="2013-02-18T21:41:07.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15064" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-19T16:12:47.777" Score="5" ViewCount="300" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the statistical relationship between gun ownership and mass homicides has been discussed on Skeptics.SE, I have not seen any questions or answers on the following claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The policy of the National Rifle Association includes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/12/21/167785169/live-blog-nra-news-conference&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;statements such as&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&quot;The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,&quot;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;em&gt;— Wayne LaPierre, NRA's executive vice president.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and, specifically the following hypothetical,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What if when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School&quot; he had been confronted by a trained, armed security guard, asks [LaPierre]? He calls for all schools to have at least one police officer on site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arguably the presence of someone with a gun at a prospective target would act as a deterrent, but the claim seems to be that use of the guns by a &quot;good guy&quot; prevents mass killings, which (perhaps incorrectly) I take to mean that the &quot;good guy&quot; with a gun used it to kill a potential mass murderer before the killing began.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the use of firearms has certainly stopped a number of mass murderers from continuing a killing spree that had already begun, are there any examples or records of statistics on the number of mass murderers having been prevented because there a &quot;good guy used a gun&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastActivityDate="2013-02-19T16:12:47.777" Title="Has a mass murder ever been prevented by a good guy with a firearm?" Tags="|criminology|guns|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2013-02-19T20:02:26.610" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15067" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-20T08:53:51.000" Score="6" ViewCount="326" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some manufacturers make big claims for insulating paint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://thermilate.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thermilate&lt;/a&gt; is claimed to be capable of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;reducing energy-loss through walls and ceilings by up to 25% with just two coats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm no physicist but it seems like snake oil to me.  Having worked with conventional insulation, I can't see how it could work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any independent studies on the subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4549" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-02-21T15:33:59.933" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T15:33:59.933" Title="How well does &quot;insulating paint&quot; insulate (if at all)?" Tags="|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15034" CreationDate="2013-02-20T12:30:46.607" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Popcorns expand when they pop, because of the moist inner of the pop corn, depending on the corn, the number of unpopped kernels varies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;P225 exhibited the highest (47%) number of unpopped kernels, whereas&#xA;  AP416 (27%) was higher than P615, P612, P415, and EXP92233 (around&#xA;  16%). AP414 was the best hybrid as it had the least number (4%),&#xA;  whereas the remaining hybrids had 9-12% unpopped kernels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken from the paper &quot;Role of the Pericarp Cellulose Matrix as a Moisture Barrier in Microwaveable Popcorn&quot; by &quot;Agung S. Tandjung&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Number is usually around 10-20% was how I took it from that paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bm049220l&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bm049220l&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is not any crazy reasons why the numbers doesn't match. On popcorn packages they estimate how much popped popcorns the end result will turn into. I thus assume they take in consideration that not all kernels pop. &#xA;In the estimation on the amount of popped popcorns you will get they the number thus is lower than if all kernels popped, and if you multiply estimation with their energy value you will fall short of the unpopped's energy value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is simply math, not some magical phenomena or butter being stuck inside the bag. 15% of kernels doesn't pop in their estimation, most probably, which is why if you multiply estimation with popped energy value only get to 85% of the energy value of the unpopped kernels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/udS06.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;popcorns label&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Popped Vs. Unpopped: Calorie Comparison&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many people wonder why unpopped popcorn has more calories in&#xA;  comparison to popped ones. The answer lies in popcorn kernels, popped&#xA;  popcorn has less kernels, therefore less calories. What I mean to say&#xA;  is, a cup of unpopped popcorn will have more calories because of the&#xA;  large number of kernels that are present. On the other hand, popped&#xA;  popcorn of the same measure will have less calories because of the&#xA;  absence of kernels. Moreover, a cup of unpopped popcorn will give you&#xA;  around four cups of popped popcorn. Therefore, the former has more&#xA;  calories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The popped popcorns have less kernels. Why? Because not all kernels pops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzle.com/articles/popcorn-calories-popped-vs-unpopped.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.buzzle.com/articles/popcorn-calories-popped-vs-unpopped.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked &quot;Garret Popcorn Shop&quot; if my assumption was correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From: C193181 Daniel Hambraeus Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2013&#xA;  07:26 am CST (GMT-06:00) Subject: Nutrition&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hello. On popcorn packages it's listed that X amount of unpopped&#xA;  popcorns turns into Y amount of popped popcorns. In the energy&#xA;  listings there is values for popped popcorns and unpopped popcorns. If&#xA;  you multiply the popped popcorn value with the estimated amount of&#xA;  popped popcorns you'll get, the energy value is lower than for the&#xA;  unpopped ones. Does this mean in the estimation that you take in&#xA;  consideration not all pop corn kernels pop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is my original mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Mr. Hambraeus, Thank you for contacting Garrett Popcorn Shops. We&#xA;  appreciate your inquiry. You are correct, we do take into&#xA;  consideration the ratio of unpoped popcorn kernels and it is for this&#xA;  reason the energry value is lower. Please let us know if you have any&#xA;  further questions or concerns!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Best Wishes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lauren Wilk, Garrett Popcorn Shops&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the answer I got from Garrett Popcorn Shops. They gave an answer directly. The reason the values doesn't add up is because they take in consideration the ratio of unpoped popcorn kernels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-02-20T15:29:17.203" LastActivityDate="2013-02-20T15:29:17.203" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15078" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15085" CreationDate="2013-02-21T00:22:39.007" Score="8" ViewCount="11874" Body="&lt;p&gt;A colleague has a family story that if confronted by a skunk, if you can get its rear feet off the ground, it's unable to release its foul-smelling spray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidence for or to the contrary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5933" LastActivityDate="2022-03-21T22:34:47.653" Title="Can a skunk spray with its feet off the ground?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="399" CreationDate="2013-02-21T04:59:15.033" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you take the approach used for races and sub-species in other animal species then there are human races.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Jerry Coyne notes, in evolutionary biology, races of animals (also called “subspecies” or “ecotypes”) are morphologically distinguishable populations that live in allopatry (i.e. are geographically separated). And, as we all know, there are morphologically different groups of people who live in different areas, though those differences are blurring due to recent innovations in transportation that have led to more admixture between human groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, self idenfitied ethnicity matches genetic clusters almost perfectly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/are-there-human-races/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/are-there-human-races/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11627" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T04:59:15.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15078" CreationDate="2013-02-21T09:05:32.933" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a couple of sources indicating that skunks &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; spray with their feet off the ground:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.georgiawildlife.com/node/936&quot;&gt;Skunk Fact Sheet&lt;/a&gt; from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrary to popular myth, skunks can spray even when being held off&#xA;  the ground by its tail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ianrpubs.unl.edu/epublic/pages/publicationD.jsp?publicationId=864&quot;&gt;Dealing with Skunks&lt;/a&gt;, produced by the University of Nebraska:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[S]kunks can spray when their feet are on the ground or not...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would consider them reliable.  Both are produced by reputable organizations that deal directly with wildlife.  This isn't a very hard thing to ascertain, since all you need is one counterexample.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you search the internet, you will also find lots of anecdotal evidence of people personally attesting that they have been sprayed by skunks in just such a position.  These sources may not meet the evidence standards of this site, but they are definitely enough to stop me from picking up a skunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, an acquaintance of our family believed a related myth: &quot;a skunk can't spray in a trap because it can't put its tail up.&quot;  He personally discovered that this was untrue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11522" LastEditorDisplayName="user11522" LastEditDate="2013-02-21T09:12:00.627" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T09:12:00.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15086" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15099" CreationDate="2013-02-21T17:28:46.400" Score="34" ViewCount="9290" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vice.com/vice-news/colombian-devil-s-breath-1-of-2&quot;&gt;Vice did a report&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scopolamine&amp;amp;oldid=537614307#Criminal_use&quot;&gt;scopolamine&lt;/a&gt; dubbing it as the world's scariest drug. The story is that people being given that drug can be told to do &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt;, similar to some popular claims about hypnosis and the zombie myths in the Caribbean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I mentioned this report to someone with a medical background he debunked it on the basis of it being impossible in the physiological sense and that the interviewed scientist from the report hadn't published a paper in English. The latter I found rather biased, but the former is something I have no formal education in, so I'm turning to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1408" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T14:49:22.473" LastActivityDate="2016-12-25T19:56:05.927" Title="Can Scopolamine turn people into mindless &quot;zombies&quot;?" Tags="|physiology|medications|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15087" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-21T17:30:13.320" Score="3" ViewCount="1332" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rd.com/home/13-common-items-for-getting-rid-of-ants/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;13 Common Items for Getting Rid of Ants&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lemons&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don’t need insecticides or ant traps to ant-proof your kitchen. Just give it the lemon treatment. First squirt some lemon juice on door thresholds and windowsills. Then squeeze lemon juice into any holes or cracks where the ants are getting in. Finally, scatter small slices of lemon peel around the outdoor entrance. &lt;strong&gt;The ants will get the message that they aren’t welcome.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm highly skeptical of this specific piece of advice, having actually tried it (ants swarmed all over both the lemon slices and the places where puddles of lemon juice were).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific research that either backs up or refutes this advice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T21:45:33.763" Title="Are ants afraid of the smell of lemon?" Tags="|entomology|pesticides|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15088" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-21T17:41:52.817" Score="8" ViewCount="6231" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chalk&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep ants at bay by drawing a line around home entry points. The ants will be repelled by the calcium carbonate in the chalk, which is actually made up of ground-up and compressed shells of marine animals. Scatter powdered chalk around garden plants to repel ants and slugs.  (src: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rd.com/home/13-common-items-for-getting-rid-of-ants/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;13 Common Items for Getting Rid of Ants&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there scientific research refuting or backing up the &amp;quot;The ants will be repelled by the calcium carbonate in the chalk&amp;quot; part, or the whole approach of pest control via chalk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T15:03:18.353" Title="Are ants afraid of chalk and won't cross a chalk line?" Tags="|entomology|pesticides|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15090" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15091" CreationDate="2013-02-21T18:14:15.493" Score="8" ViewCount="3364" Body="&lt;p&gt;Common opinion seems to believe that the most popular female porn stars are blonds with big boobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://listverse.com/2010/06/20/top-10-most-famous-adult-film-stars/&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; from 2010 has Jenna Jameson as the most popular and she fits the description. So is the stereotype true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS I know that the internet is awash with stories about this right now (feb 2013) but I couldn't resist posing the question so the answer can be recorded here. I'm happy if someone else posts the definitive answer before I do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2015-03-29T10:26:28.310" Title="Is the typical female porn star a big-boobed blonde?" Tags="|physiology|pornography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15090" CreationDate="2013-02-21T18:29:16.380" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/18/the-big-data-of-porn-what-number-crunching-teaches-us-about-adult-films/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/18/the-big-data-of-porn-what-number-crunching-teaches-us-about-adult-films/&lt;/a&gt; (original source is this study: &lt;a href=&quot;http://jonmillward.com/blog/studies/deep-inside-a-study-of-10000-porn-stars/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://jonmillward.com/blog/studies/deep-inside-a-study-of-10000-porn-stars/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on his review of about 8.6 percent of the database’s profiles, the average porn star has a bra cup size of 34B. Double-D bra sizes were fourth, behind B, C, and D. The most common set of measurements for women was 34-24-34.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And dark-haired porn stars outnumbered blondes by two to one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study was based on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The porn industry never got such penetrating look as in a report today by blogger Jon Millward, who reviewed data from more than 10,000 profiles of porn stars in the Internet Adult Film Database. The result is the big data of porn, a set of facts that would surprise you and your perceptions about sex films on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that I'm somewhat skeptical of the findings based on &amp;quot;review of about 8.6 percent of the database’s profiles&amp;quot;. There's plenty of data NOT reviewed, unless he fully randomized the profiles to obtain true sampling (the story didn't say).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-02-21T18:29:16.380" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15092" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-21T20:11:13.763" Score="3" ViewCount="1129" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's common to hear that garlic should be eaten in the morning and should not be eaten in the evening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people even use the following saying for garlic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Medicine in the morning, poison in the evening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the old saying in the Czech republic. People refer to it as the wisdom of the ancestors. But nobody is able to say the reason.The exact translation is in my question. You can try google with &quot;cesnek jed vecer&quot; = &quot;garlic poison evening&quot;. You will find many links with it, but no explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this saying true? What are the rational reasons for not eating garlic in the evening? Or is this saying only a myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2103" LastEditorUserId="2103" LastEditDate="2013-03-03T15:31:00.677" LastActivityDate="2013-03-03T15:31:00.677" Title="Do not eat garlic in the evening" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15094" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-22T02:35:37.293" Score="6" ViewCount="1538" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nearly 45 years ago, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis Tennessee. James Earl Ray, a fugitive on the run, was arrested in London and extradited to Tennessee. He confessed to MLK's murder and was sentenced to 99 years in Tennessee state penitentiary where he died in 1998.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three days after his confession he recanted, spending the rest of his life trying to clear his name and obtain a retrial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Martin Luther King's son, Dexter King met with James Earl Ray and publicly supported his efforts to obtain retrial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The King family and others believe that the assassination was carried out by a conspiracy involving the US government, and that James Earl Ray was a scapegoat. This conclusion was affirmed by a jury in a 1999 civil trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jesse Jackson, who was with King at the time of his death noted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;…I will never believe that James Earl Ray had the motive, the money and the mobility to have done it himself. Our government was very involved in setting the stage for and I think the escape route for James Earl Ray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;King's wife made a similar claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At a 1999 press conference following the verdict, Coretta Scott King stated that &amp;quot;there is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband, Martin Luther King, Jr... the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband. The jury also affirmed overwhelming evidence that identified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Loyd Jowers, a business owner close to the Lorraine Motel, made a similar claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In December 1993, Loyd Jowers appeared on ABC's Prime Time Live and related the details of an alleged conspiracy involving the Mafia and the U.S. government to kill King. According to Jowers, James Earl Ray was a scapegoat, and not involved in the assassination. Jowers believed that Memphis police officer Lieutenant Earl Clark fired the fatal shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following statements by Dexter King and other family members, Dexter was subsequently asked by a reporter, &amp;quot;there are many people out there who feel that as long as these conspirators remain nameless and faceless there is no true closure, and no justice.&amp;quot; He replied:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No, he [Mr. Lloyd Jowers] named the shooter. The shooter was the&#xA;Memphis Police Department Officer, Lt. Earl Clark who he named as the&#xA;killer. Once again, beyond that you had credible witnesses that named&#xA;members of a Special Forces team who didn't have to act because the&#xA;contract killer succeeded, with plausible denial, a Mafia contracted&#xA;killer&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone (Ray, the King family, witnesses and those close-by) claims James Earl Ray was a scapegoat. Most point to government (police or special forces) or mafia (hitman) involvement, and possibly both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So who actually killed MLK?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T01:41:59.193" Title="Who killed Martin Luther King Jr?" Tags="|united-states|law-enforcement|martin-luther-king|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15095" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25184" CreationDate="2013-02-22T07:50:51.597" Score="10" ViewCount="18194" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his phenomenally thorough &lt;a href=&quot;http://jonmillward.com/blog/studies/deep-inside-a-study-of-10000-porn-stars/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; of what the typical porn star looks like (see  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15090/is-the-typical-female-porn-star-a-big-boobed-blonde&quot;&gt;Is the typical female porn star a big-boobed blonde?&lt;/a&gt;) John Millward mentions in passing that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;only 5% of Americans are naturally blonde&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the reference he gives is incorrect. It seems like a low estimate and it isn't obvious how to estimate the correct statistic when people can choose to change their hair colour at will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there good sources that give a reliable, believable estimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-12-20T16:55:31.357" Title="Are only 5% of Americans naturally blonde?" Tags="|united-states|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15096" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-22T08:12:40.360" Score="3" ViewCount="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;Health food shops usually stock a range of products based on ecinacea extracts that are claimed to be effective against colds and flu-like diseases. The Holland &amp;amp; Barrett &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hollandandbarrett.com/pages/categories.asp?cid=16&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; lists 15, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The products typically claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HRI Cold &amp;amp; Flu Echinacea is a traditional herbal medicinal product used to relieve the symptoms of colds and influenza (flu) type infections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are popular products and many people clearly believe they work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there any reliable evidence that they do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2013-02-22T08:12:40.360" Title="Are ecinacea-based products effective against a colds and flu-like illnesses?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|common-cold|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-02-25T01:13:02.820" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15098" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-22T12:23:24.207" Score="27" ViewCount="11058" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all know this from cartoons and stuff and off course it doesn't make sense today but are there any evidence that the dogs really carried barrels of brandy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bernard_%28dog%29#In_media&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; is saying a resounding NO:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;St. Bernards are often portrayed, especially in old live action comedies such as Swiss Miss, the TV series Topper, and classic cartoons, wearing small barrels of brandy around their necks. Avalanche victims supposedly drank the brandy to stay warm while awaiting rescue, although this is medically unsound. The monks of the St. Bernard Hospice deny that any St. Bernard has ever carried casks or small barrels around their necks; they attribute the image to an 1820 painting by Edwin Landseer, perhaps Alpine Mastiffs Reanimating a Distressed Traveler (which became a popular engraving in 1831 by Charles Landseer). The monks did keep casks around for photographs by tourists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11637" LastEditorUserId="11637" LastEditDate="2013-02-22T13:01:51.070" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T20:08:13.747" Title="Did rescue St. Bernard dogs carry barrels of brandy around their necks?" Tags="|history|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15086" CreationDate="2013-02-22T17:22:23.663" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done some research on the drug. I find the drug extremely scary. The video in the question was of fairly low quality when it came to science, for shock value it was high quality though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://digitaljournal.com/article/324779&quot;&gt;Digital Journal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That may be why in more recent years, the U.S. State Department issued&#xA;  a warning telling travelers to beware of &quot;criminals in Colombia using&#xA;  disabling drugs to temporarily incapacitate tourists and others.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning its disabling properties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The CIA says: Enthusiastic at this success, House concluded that a&#xA;  patient under the influence of scopolamine &quot;cannot create a lie&quot;&#xA;  Because he said the drug ‘will depress the cerebrum to such a degree&#xA;  as to destroy the power of reasoning’. ... there is no power to think&#xA;  or reason.&quot; His experiment and this conclusion attracted wide&#xA;  attention, and the idea of a &quot;truth&quot; drug was thus launched upon the&#xA;  public consciousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consering its use as a truth serum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link is fairly dubious as well, I have looked up some of its claims though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a much more secure source about the drug. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol5no2/html/v05i2a09p_0001.htm&quot;&gt;CIA historical review program&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Early in this century physicians began to employ scopolamine, along&#xA;  with morphine and chloroform, to induce a state of &quot;twilight sleep&quot;&#xA;  during childbirth. A constituent of henbane, scopolamine was known to&#xA;  produce sedation and drowsiness, confusion and disorientation,&#xA;  incoordination, and amnesia for events experienced during&#xA;  intoxication. Yet physicians noted that women in twilight sleep&#xA;  answered questions accurately and often volunteered exceedingly candid&#xA;  remarks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here it makes claims about truth telling part of the drug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because of a number of undesirable side effects, scopolamine was&#xA;  shortly disqualified as a &quot;truth&quot; drug. Among the most disabling of&#xA;  the side effects are hallucinations, disturbed perception, somnolence,&#xA;  and physiological phenomena such as headache, rapid heart, and blurred&#xA;  vision, which distract the subject from the central purpose of the&#xA;  interview. Furthermore, the physical action is long, far outlasting&#xA;  the psychological effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are further claims about that, and why they dismissed it as a truth serum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems little research have been done on the truth telling/zombie state part of the drug, since that time. Main usage of the drug seems to be others in medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1090.html&quot;&gt;US Department of Travel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use of disabling drugs: The Embassy continues to receive reports of&#xA;  criminals in Colombia using disabling drugs to temporarily&#xA;  incapacitate tourists and others. At bars, restaurants, and other&#xA;  public areas, perpetrators may offer tainted drinks, cigarettes, or&#xA;  gum. Typically, victims become disoriented or unconscious, and are&#xA;  thus vulnerable to robbery, sexual assault, and other crimes. Avoid&#xA;  leaving food or drinks unattended at a bar or restaurant, and be&#xA;  suspicious if a stranger offers you something to eat or drink. Certain&#xA;  areas of Bogota are off-limits to U.S. Embassy personnel due to the&#xA;  prevalence of the use of disabling drugs. See map below for specific&#xA;  areas that U.S. citizens are encouraged to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims of usage of 'disabling drugs' seems to be true as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Robberies of taxi passengers: Robbery of taxi passengers is a serious&#xA;  problem in Bogota, as well as in Cali and Medellin. Typically, the&#xA;  driver – who is one of the conspirators – will pick up the passenger&#xA;  and then stop to pick up two or more armed cohorts, who enter the cab,&#xA;  overpower the passenger, and take his/her belongings. If the passenger&#xA;  has an ATM card, the perpetrators may force the passenger to withdraw&#xA;  money from various ATM locations. Such ordeals can last for hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Withdrawal from an ATM seems to be common criminal practice as well in the area. The anecdotal claims made in the video, was that they were like put into zombie state and took out all their money from an ATM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What truth can be found about the drug is that it induces memory loss, drowsiness and overall make the victim of it offer less resistant. It also seems to work to some extent as making victim tell the truth. I didn't manage to find any real proofs of turning into &quot;zombie&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I am allowed to do some speculations, I think the video over hypes the drug and the drugs effect have been hyperbolic over-exaggerated. The drug seems to give heavy memory loss, some level of truth telling, and overall weaken the victim physically.&#xA;Criminals probably use it more for weakening the victim, and because of the memory loss than actually turning them into zombies that listen to everything they say. With a bit of force, and time, they can probably get their will anyways, and since the victim doesn't remember anything, it's hard for him to tell if he put up resistance or went with their will because he was forced to.&#xA;I have no proof of it, but I am very dubious about the claims of turning people into 'zombies'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-17T18:41:58.067" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T18:41:58.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15098" CreationDate="2013-02-22T19:09:10.000" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be indeed a myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.barry.museum/index_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Barry-Museum&lt;/a&gt;, the museum in Bern where the most famous of the St. Bernhard dogs is exhibited, states in its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.barry.museum/press/A5_NMBE_Barry_brochure_14_E_web.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;English brochure&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the best-known Barry legends is that of the small barrel of&#xA;  ‘eau-de-vie’ that the dogs were believed to have carried around their&#xA;  necks so that exhausted travellers &lt;em&gt;(sic!)&lt;/em&gt; could revive themselves&#xA;  with a stiff drink. All over the world, the famous barrel is firmly&#xA;  embedded in the public imagination, and virtually every Saint Bernard&#xA;  featured in advertising or tourist brochures is seen with this&#xA;  accessory around its neck. However, the barrels belong to the realm of&#xA;  fantasy. Some dogs were probably accustomed to carrying provisions in&#xA;  small ‘packsaddles’ from time to time, but the &lt;strong&gt;first appearance of the&#xA;  barrels in pictures was not until the end of the 19th century&lt;/strong&gt;. The&#xA;  barrel became a recognized symbol, the use of which was a success&#xA;  story in the early days of marketing. &lt;strong&gt;In 1956 a chaplain at the&#xA;  hospice put the story straight regarding the small barrels of rum: ‘At&#xA;  no point in time did the dogs carry such barrels’.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess this is a bit more authoritative than Wikipedia or the other sources given so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.barry.museum/press/A5_NMBE_Barry_Broschuere_14_D_web.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;German version here&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernhardiner&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;German Wikipedia claims&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bernhardiner&amp;amp;oldid=114355846&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;permalink&lt;/a&gt;) explains its likely origin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Viele der mythischen Geschichten um den Hund sind denn auch frei&#xA;  erfunden, wurden aber so oft weitererzählt und umgeschrieben, dass es&#xA;  schwierig ist, Wahrheit von Legende zu trennen. Dazu zählt auch das&#xA;  berühmte Schnapsfässchen, das die Hunde auf jeder Abbildung um den&#xA;  Hals tragen, angeblich um den Lawinenopfern einen Schluck daraus zur&#xA;  Aufwärmung zu geben. Die Legende entstammt vermutlich einem Brief, den&#xA;  einer der Soldaten Napoleons beim Zug über den St. Bernhard schrieb.&#xA;  Die völlig überforderten Chorherren hatten die Hunde als&#xA;  Transporttiere eingesetzt, um den erschöpften Soldaten Verpflegung zu&#xA;  bringen. In diesem Brief stand: «Wir staunen darüber, dass es in&#xA;  diesem Kloster sehr große Hunde gibt, die Reisende aufspüren, die im&#xA;  Schnee verloren gingen. Sie richten sie auf, bieten ihnen Branntwein&#xA;  dar, den sie um den Hals gebunden mitführen und führen sie ins Haus.»&#xA;  Die Geschichte wurde mündlich weitererzählt und in verschiedenen&#xA;  Filmen als Motiv aufgenommen, ihr Wahrheitsgehalt ist jedoch höchst&#xA;  umstritten. Einige der erhalten gebliebenen Fässchen zeigen, dass es&#xA;  sich wohl nur um ein Schmuckstück handelte, denn diese Fässer haben&#xA;  keine Öffnung. Dazu wäre das Fass für die Hunde bei der Suche nach&#xA;  Verschütteten im tiefen Schnee sehr hinderlich – ganz abgesehen von&#xA;  der Tatsache, dass der Konsum von Alkohol bei Unterkühlung&#xA;  kontraproduktiv ist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In English:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many of the mythical stories surrounding the dog (race) are simply&#xA;  invented but were passed on and changed so many times that it is&#xA;  hard to separate truth from legend. Within this scope lies the famous&#xA;  schnapps casks some of the dogs carry around their necks on pictures,&#xA;  allegedly to offer avalanche victims (&lt;em&gt;literal transl.&lt;/em&gt;) a gulp from it to warm up.&#xA;  The legend likely originates from a letter one of Napoleons soldiers wrote&#xA;  during their move across &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_St_Bernard_Pass&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;St. Bernhard&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;  Some clerics used the dogs for transport to provide the exhausted soldiers with&#xA;  supplies.&#xA;  This letter said: &quot;We are amazed that this monastery has huge dogs that are able&#xA;  to find travelers who got lost in the snow. They spirit them (&lt;em&gt;i.e. the lost travelers&lt;/em&gt;)&#xA;  up and offer them brandy which they carry bound around their necks and lead them into&#xA;  a house.&quot;&#xA;  The story was passed on orally and was picked up as motif by several movies,&#xA;  its truth however is highly controversial.&#xA;  Some remaining barrels show that these were likely just trinkets because these barrels&#xA;  have no openings.&#xA;  Additionally the barrel would be very cumbersome in deep snow - not to mention the fact&#xA;  that the consumption of alcohol in a state of hypothermia is counterproductive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to stay as true as possible to the original content in my translation. The &lt;em&gt;italic&lt;/em&gt; parts in parentheses are my comments and the link to St. Bernhard is for informational purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mentioned &quot;type&quot; of clerics seems to be specific to German-speaking regions, at least I couldn't find anything coming close enough to it, so I was stuck with the generic term here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source, Swiss-German (website of a newspaper) &lt;a href=&quot;http://bazonline.ch/wirtschaft/dossier/die-frage/Wer-dichtete-dem-Bernhardiner-sein-Faesschen-an/story/28323502&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims a different, but also French origin&lt;/a&gt; - translation of the contents to English:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who imputed the St. Bernhard its cask?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] In actuality the dogs of the (&lt;em&gt;St. Bernard&lt;/em&gt;) Hospice never&#xA;  carried such barrels. Creator of the legend is likely Anne François&#xA;  Joachim Fréville (&lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne-Fran%C3%A7ois-Joachim_Fr%C3%A9ville&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;French Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;), a French pedagogue,&#xA;  historian and writer. Towards the end of the 18th century he published&#xA;  other than &quot;Les Enfants célèbres&quot; his &quot;Histoire des chiens célèbres&quot;&#xA;  with a chapter about Swiss avalanche dogs with their survival water&#xA;  (&lt;em&gt;literally &quot;Überlebenswasser&quot;&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1408" LastEditorUserId="1408" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T20:08:13.747" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T20:08:13.747" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15103" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-22T20:56:06.787" Score="4" ViewCount="314" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/11/25/15-minute-writing-exercise-closes-the-gender-gap-in-university-level-physics#.USePaKU4WSd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;15-minute writing exercise closes the gender gap in university-level physics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the article the gender gap in an otherwise very male dominated field, is easy to overcome, all that is needed is to do is a 15 minute writing exercise to help the ones with low self-esteem to find their values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sound a little bit too easy to overcome the barriers that causes the field to become male dominated in the first place, by just doing a simple self-esteem exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there really any truth to this? Does it really work?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6008/1234&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reducing the Gender Achievement Gap in College Science: A Classroom Study of Values Affirmation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-04T14:19:57.257" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T14:19:57.257" Title="Is the gender gap in male dominated areas possible to overcome by a simple self-esteem exercise?" Tags="|gender|school|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15106" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15146" CreationDate="2013-02-23T18:06:38.070" Score="8" ViewCount="1952" Body="&lt;p&gt;This graphic is doing the rounds on the Internet (found on Facebook):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/V1xCo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;House GOP claim&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;House GOP: 46 abortion bills, 113 religion bills, 73 family relationship bills, 36 marriage bills, 72 gun bills, 0 jobs bills&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://facebook.com/ProgressiveDefendersofAmerica&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Progressive Defenders of America&lt;/a&gt; do not cite any sources, nor do they define exactly what they mean by &lt;em&gt;bills&lt;/em&gt; (supported? proposed? something else?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, is this a claim &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/13628/5337&quot;&gt;made up of thin air&lt;/a&gt;, or is it (partly) true for a reasonable interpretation of what they might mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T21:33:03.800" Title="Did the Republican Party in the House of Representatives recently propose not a single job bill, but many morality and gun-related bills?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15106" CreationDate="2013-02-23T18:21:03.950" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;House Republicans sponsored 3 Labor and Employment bills up to now (February 23) in 2013, and 55 such bills since 2011.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/subjects/labor_and_employment/6235#sponsor_party=Republican&amp;amp;bill_type=3&quot;&gt;http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/subjects/labor_and_employment/6235#sponsor_party=Republican&amp;amp;bill_type=3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11400" LastActivityDate="2013-02-23T18:21:03.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4498" CreationDate="2013-02-24T06:14:19.030" Score="175" Body="&lt;p&gt;Counter-argument: One of the most successful interrogators of Nazi Germany did not use torture. Quite the opposite really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanns_Scharff#Technique&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hanns Scharff&lt;/a&gt;, &amp;quot;Master Interrogator&amp;quot; of the Luftwaffe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scharff was opposed to physically abusing prisoners to obtain information. Learning on the job, Scharff instead relied upon the Luftwaffe's approved list of techniques, &lt;strong&gt;which mostly involved making the interrogator seem as if he is his prisoner's greatest advocate while in captivity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scharff described various experiences with new POWs, outlining the procedure most of his fellow interrogators were instructed to use. Initially, the POW's fear and sense of disorientation, combined with isolation while not in interrogation, were exploited to gain as much initial biographical information as possible. A prisoner was frequently warned that unless he could produce information beyond name, rank, and serial number, such as the name of his unit and airbase, the Luftwaffe would have no choice but to assume he was a spy and turn him over to the Gestapo for questioning. For Scharff, this technique apparently worked quite well. In addition to initially preying upon his prisoner's fears of the infamous Gestapo, he portrayed himself as their closest ally in their predicament, telling them that while he would like nothing more than to see them safely deposited in a POW camp, his hands were tied unless the prisoner gave him the few details that he requested to help him properly identify the prisoner as a true POW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a prisoner's fear had been allayed, Scharff continued to act as a good friend, including sharing jokes, homemade food items, and occasionally alcoholic beverages. Scharff was fluent in English and knowledgeable about British customs and some American ones, which helped him to gain the trust and friendship of many of his prisoners. Some high profile prisoners were treated to outings to German airfields (one POW was even allowed to take a German aircraft for a trial run), tea with German fighter aces, swimming pool excursions, and luncheons, among other things. Prisoners were treated well medically at the nearby Hone Mark Hospital, and some POWs were occasionally allowed to visit their comrades at this hospital for company's sake, as well as the better meals provided there. Scharff was best known for taking his prisoners on strolls through the nearby woods, first having them swear an oath of honor that they would not attempt to escape during their walk. Scharff chose not to use these nature walks as a time to directly ask his prisoners obvious military-related questions, but instead relied on the POWs' desire to speak to anyone outside of isolated captivity about informal, generalized topics. &lt;strong&gt;Prisoners often volunteered information the Luftwaffe had instructed Scharff to acquire, frequently without realizing they had done so.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good detail on the tale and methods used by Hanns Scharff is &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0764302612&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Interrogator: The Story of Hanns Joachim Scharff&lt;/a&gt;, by Raymond Toliver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1416573151&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How To Break a Terrorist&lt;/a&gt;, by Matthew Alexander also describes how the US switched from harsher methods to more persuasive methods after their attempts to squeeze information through torture had failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7871" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T06:14:19.030" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4462" CreationDate="2013-02-24T11:53:24.037" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the Red Terror, the Cheka reputedly used a method similar to this as torture, involving placing rats in heated metal tubes held against a prisoner. This is detailed in &lt;em&gt;The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police&lt;/em&gt;, by George Leggett as referenced on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror#Atrocities&quot;&gt;this Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;warning: this page contains a photograph of a mass grave&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4060" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T11:53:24.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15123" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15125" CreationDate="2013-02-24T16:06:51.163" Score="10" ViewCount="2337" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a huge array of stories relating to Coca Cola (and other similar soft drinks) stating its nefarious properties and health risks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just one example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://killercoke.org/health_issues.php&quot;&gt;http://killercoke.org/health_issues.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of these stories look to me like ranting and propagation of anecdotes without enough (if any) backing evidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: does the consumption of &lt;em&gt;classic&lt;/em&gt; Coke (not &lt;em&gt;Light&lt;/em&gt;), i.e. the one that is sweetened using sugar*, cause any health issues?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If so, in what quantity? (Harmful daily dose for an adult)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And how does it compare in terms of health risks to other common foods/drinks that don't get similar amounts of hype (e.g. sweets, coffee)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;* at least in Romania, where I live; in the US they use corn syrup and the US Coke tasted (subjectively) sweeter to me&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full disclosure:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There isn't any. I just happen to like Coke and am tired of people nagging me for my &quot;reckless&quot; Coca-Cola drinking habit (I drink on average a 500 ml/17 oz bottle every day; probably a lot more when I was a student)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11655" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:26:08.493" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:26:08.493" Title="Is Coca Cola harmful for one's health?" Tags="|environmental-health|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-02-25T01:11:09.933" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15123" CreationDate="2013-02-24T17:13:01.107" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/sugary-vs-diet-drinks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's what the Harvard School of Public Health says:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drunk every now and then, these beverages wouldn’t raise an eyebrow among most nutrition experts, any more than does the occasional candy bar or bowl of ice cream. But few people see them as treats. Instead, we drink rivers of the stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were to drink just one [12 oz] can of a sugar-sweetened soft drink every day, and not cut back on calories elsewhere, you could gain up to 15 pounds in a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies consistently show that increased consumption of soft drinks is associated with increased energy intake. In a meta-analysis of 30 studies in this area, 10 of 12 cross-sectional studies, five of five longitudinal studies, and four of four long-term experimental studies showed this positive association.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over time, though, a diet rich in easily digested carbohydrates may lead to type 2 diabetes. Strong evidence indicates that sugar-sweetened soft drinks contribute to the development of this potentially disabling disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Nurses’ Health Study, which tracked the health of nearly 90,000 women over two decades, found that women who drank more than two servings of sugary beverage each day had a 40 percent higher risk of heart attacks or death from heart disease than women who rarely drank sugary beverages.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[Researchers]  found that having an otherwise healthy diet, or being at a healthy weight, only slightly diminished the risk associated with drinking sugary beverages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/06/050616060426.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sugary, acidic beverages like Cola also cause tooth decay.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A dentist can tell when a patient gets cavities from drinking acidic beverages, such as soft drinks, since the decayed areas are often darker in color and takes up more space on the tooth. The cavities also often appear near the gumline.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&amp;quot;Enjoying an occasional soft drink in moderation will likely not cause significant damage,&amp;quot; says Dr. Bassiouny. &amp;quot;However, substituting these beverages as a replacement for water may cause significant, irreversible long-term problems and damage.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11400" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T01:08:22.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15130" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15138" CreationDate="2013-02-24T22:36:40.767" Score="27" ViewCount="6996" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CD4QFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/&amp;amp;ei=hZUqUej4Ks7J0AX3s4HgBw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGc0qCG1gsSrIKKnDXK69yuK5Ig3g&amp;amp;sig2=rFNv5rZpGgFfghT_O8ekTg&amp;amp;bvm=bv.42768644,d.d2k&quot;&gt;Nicholas Nassem Taleb's&lt;/a&gt; latest book (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1400067820&quot;&gt;Antifragile&lt;/a&gt;) continues to provide fascinating unreferenced claims. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the middle of an argument that much of the important knowledge in the world is practical, not theoretical, in which he argues that the mediaeval architects responsible for some of Europe's great cathedrals did not gain their knowledge from &lt;em&gt;theory&lt;/em&gt;, he makes the following assertion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...according to the medieval historian Guy Beaujouan, before the thirteenth century no more than five persons in the whole of Europe knew how to perform a division.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His general argument, that theory frequently postdates successful practice, probably deserves a separate question (which I will submit when I can formulate it carefully). But that specific assertion, imperfectly referenced, that only a handful of people in Europe, had mastered the mathematics of division by 1200 AD seems to be surprising. &lt;strong&gt;Is it true?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T02:32:43.780" Title="Did only a handful of people in Europe know how to do division before the 13th century?" Tags="|history|mathematics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15131" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-02-24T23:03:47.627" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-02-24T23:03:47.627" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T23:03:47.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15132" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-02-24T23:03:47.627" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-02-24T23:03:47.627" LastActivityDate="2013-02-24T23:03:47.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15133" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-24T23:08:12.773" Score="10" ViewCount="1501" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com&quot;&gt;Taleb&lt;/a&gt; provides yet more fodder for skeptical enquiry. In the middle of Chapter 16 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1400067820&quot;&gt;Antifragile&lt;/a&gt; (&quot;A lesson in disorder&quot;) where he is arguing that science isn't the source of practical applications of technology but the product of it, he argues: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An extraordinary proportion of work came out of the rector, the English parish priest with no worries, erudition, a large or at least comfortable house, domestic help, a reliable supply of tea and scones with clotted cream, and an abundance of free time ... The enlightened amateur, that is. The Reverends Thomas Bayes (as in Bayesian probability) and Thomas Malthus (Malthusian over-population) are the most famous. But there are many more surprises, cataloged in Bill Bryson’s Home, in which the author found &lt;strong&gt;ten times more vicars and clergymen leaving recorded traces for posterity than scientists, physicists, economists, and even inventors&lt;/strong&gt;. In addition to the previous two giants, I randomly list contributions by country clergymen: Rev. Edmund Cartwright invented the power loom, contributing to the Industrial Revolution; Rev. Jack Russell bred the terrier; Rev. William Buckland was the first authority on dinosaurs; Rev. William Greenwell invented modern archaeology; Rev. Octavius Pickard-Cambridge was the foremost authority on spiders; Rev. George Garrett invented the submarine; Rev. Gilbert White was the most esteemed naturalist of his day; Rev. M. J. Berkeley was the top expert on fungi; Rev. John Michell helped discover Uranus; and many more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, his general argument deserves a well developed question of its own, but this specific claim, that the &lt;em&gt;amateur clergyman contributed more science and technology to posterity than those employed or recognised as scientists&lt;/em&gt; seems to demand proof. Is his claim right? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:45:43.493" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T19:45:01.543" Title="Did clergymen contribute more to science than scientists in the 19th century?" Tags="|history|religion|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15135" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15137" CreationDate="2013-02-25T00:16:43.880" Score="4" ViewCount="25424" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard somewhere that people have tried to get high by smoking oregano. Is that true? If so, did it work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11610" LastEditorUserId="29741" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T22:57:50.943" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T22:57:50.943" Title="Can you get high by smoking oregano?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|herbalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14689" CreationDate="2013-02-25T00:40:05.733" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an experiment which has been conducted many times in different places around the world, with strikingly similar results.  The US was probably first, driven both by a desire to reduce lead exposure, but also because lead poisons the catalytic converters which were required to reduce CO and NOx emissions.  There are many studies documenting the results at different times, in different places, but here are four examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Journal of the American Medical Association published an article showing a 78% drop in blood levels among Americans from 1976 to 1991.  Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=376894&quot;&gt;abstract&lt;/a&gt;, access to the full paper requires payment.  The authors attribute the drop primarily to the removal of lead from gasoline.  From the abstract: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The mean blood lead level of persons aged 1 to 74 years dropped 78%, from 0.62 to 0.14 μmol/L (12.8 to 2.8 μg/dL).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusions.  —The results demonstrate a substantial decline in blood lead levels of the entire US population and within selected subgroups of the population. The major cause of the observed decline in blood lead levels is most likely the removal of 99.8% of lead from gasoline and the removal of lead from soldered cans. Although these data indicate major progress in reducing lead exposure, they also show that the same sociodemographic factors continue to be associated with higher blood lead levels, including younger age, male sex, non-Hispanic black race/ ethnicity, and low income level. Future efforts to remove other lead sources (eg, paint, dust, and soil) are needed but will be more difficult than removing lead from gasoline and soldered cans.(JAMA. 1994;272:284-291)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chemcases.com/converter/converter-20.htm&quot;&gt;Here's&lt;/a&gt; an article that's not on a pay site which cites the same information, and describes a very strong correlation between the dropping blood lead levels and the reduction in use of leaded gasoline.  It states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The phaseout  had striking results in the U.S. Before it took place, 88 percent of children had blood lead levels higher than 10 mcg/dl. Afterwards, only 9 percent had elevated blood lead levels. The blood lead levels of all Americans declined 78 percent between 1978 and 1991, falling in exact proportion to the declining levels of lead in the overall gasoline supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent study found a significant drop in infant blood lead levels in Santiago, Chile, which began phasing out leaded gasoline in 1993.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16189990&quot;&gt;Here is the abstract.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abstract&#xA;  This study was conducted to relate blood lead levels in infants to changes in lead emissions in Santiago, Chile, a heavily polluted setting where leaded gasoline began to be replaced with unleaded gasoline in 1993. Over an 18-mo period, 422 infants had blood lead levels, cotinine, and iron status determined at 12 mo. Blood lead levels fell at an average rate of 0.5 microg/dl every 2 mo, from 8.3 to 5.9 microg/dl, as the city experienced a net fall of 30% in the quantity of leaded gasoline sold. Time progression, car ownership, serum cotinine, and type of housing were significantly associated with a blood lead level &gt; or = 10 microg/dl. In this study, the authors demonstrated that infant blood lead levels, even if relatively low, can drop very rapidly in conjunction with decreases in environmental lead exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another more recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/epidem/Abstract/2003/09001/Unleaded_Gasoline_and_Lead_Level_in_Human_Blood_.171.aspx&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; was done in Korea, and again showed very significant drops in blood levels correlated with the phaseout of leaded gasoline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Totally 4,967 samples in target areas were used to review the trend of blood lead level in this paper. Average lead concentrations by areas were from 15.2 to 21.0 ug/dl in 1981 and 22.3 to 34.3 ug/dl in 1988, but were 8.8 to 11.1 ug/dl in 1992 and 4.4 to 4.8 ug/dl in 1995. On the other hand, the consumption of leaded gasoline was at a peak in 1988. Blood lead level showed a very close relationship with the consumption of leaded gasoline in the change pattern (p &amp;lt; 0.01) and showed a rapid declining trend since the use of unleaded gasoline, especially from 1988 when Seoul held the olympic games. For example, the blood lead levels were 15.2 ug/dl in 1981, 20.2 ug/dl in 1985, 24.3 ug/dl in 1988 and 3.9 ug/dl in 1993 in Yochon area&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastEditorUserId="8436" LastEditDate="2013-02-26T00:24:29.367" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T00:24:29.367" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15135" CreationDate="2013-02-25T00:43:46.590" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A cursory search finds no supporting (non-anecdotal) evidence for or against smoking oregano for recreational usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0046817772800510&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1972 article from &lt;em&gt;Human Pathology&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; mentions oregano as a substance that can be passed off as pot to fool the buyer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Occasionally the buyer is &quot;burned&quot; and finds that he may be smoking oregano, catnip, or even grass clippings.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US Food and Drug administration does not regulate oregano beyond checking it for &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150527180219/http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/ComplianceManuals/CompliancePolicyGuidanceManual/ucm074472.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;insects, filth, or mold&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is a bunch of stuff that oregano might do medicinally, but it seems like it would relate mostly to its anti-fungal or anti-bacterial properties. A list of articles on that topic can be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150527180308/http://www.greenmedinfo.com/substance/oregano&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GreenMedInfo&lt;/a&gt;, a site that &quot;provide convenient and open access to the biomedical research available today on the therapeutic value of natural substances in disease prevention and treatment.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0046817772800510&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0046817772800510&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150527180219/http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/ComplianceManuals/CompliancePolicyGuidanceManual/ucm074472.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20150527180219/http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/ComplianceManuals/CompliancePolicyGuidanceManual/ucm074472.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150527180308/http://www.greenmedinfo.com/substance/oregano&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20150527180308/http://www.greenmedinfo.com/substance/oregano&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Please note that this answer does not constitute medical advice. It is only meant to summarize published research related to the topic and limited to the cited sources. Consult your physician about what these results may mean for your health.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-10-20T04:46:40.153" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T04:46:40.153" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-02-25T00:43:46.590" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15130" CreationDate="2013-02-25T01:33:48.920" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not my field, but I have taken graduate-level courses on Andalusian history and the history of mathematics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I can tell, the claim is at best imprecise and at worst an outright misrepresentation of history. For example, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=2917352&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; published by the British Society for the History of Science, &quot;From Abacus to Algorism: Theory and Practice in Medieval Arithmetic,&quot; Gillian Evans writes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The treatises on the abacus that seem to have proliferated in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries comprise more or less extended preliminaries on the nature of number and the usefulness of knowing how to calculate upon the abacus. They usually give the Arabic numerals and their names, along with the names and symbols for the Roman duodecimal fractions, but they prefer, for the most part, to use Roman figures for the integers in their worked examples and in their multiplication tables. They confine themselves, typically, to multiplication, &lt;strong&gt;division and fractions&lt;/strong&gt;, and, strictly, to the mechanics of the abacus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/27957550&quot;&gt;Arithmetic of the Medieval Universities&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; an article published by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Dorothy V. Schrader writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The outstanding mathematical genius of the period was Gerbert, who taught the quadrivium with marked success in the cathedral school at Rheims from 972 to 982. Gerbert improved the &#xA;  abacus by placing symbols at the top of each column, and so extended its use. He &#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;developed a method of division&lt;/strong&gt;, making possible all four fundamental operations &#xA;  on the abacus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sources I quote here suggest that even before the widespread introduction of Arabic numerals in Christian Europe, division was widely known, routinely performed on the abacus (and using hands), attested to in the literature of the period, and taught in the universities--all well before the 13th century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, for even more examples of the above consult the freely-available &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/details/67224711&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rara Arithmetica&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T02:32:43.780" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T02:32:43.780" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14792" CreationDate="2013-02-25T08:27:18.780" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a knifemaker in New Zealand so I have some experience with blades. I can tell you that with a normal knife stropping is commonly used to prolong the edge of the knife as Rob Z stated before me. &#xA;It is also used to get the burr off a freshly sharpened blade. This is achieved by stroking the blade at a low angle with the spine leading along a soft material. The palm of your hand is a common one and is suprisingly effective. Canvas, denim and leather are a few others. This does not sharpen the blade but re-aligns the edge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt you could achieve much on the multi bladed shaving razors as you need to have access to both edges but the theory is there. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the guy in the instructable is talking about is based on what I have mentioned above but will not work, jeans will never sharpen razor blades no matter how many times you stroke them. His tips about keeping them dry and clean is very true though. &#xA;Stopping blades from rusting is my biggest concern. Even if they say they are stainless they will still rust enough to destroy the edge very quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stropping your kitchen knives (a knife steel is a form of strop) and straight razors is a very good idea, trying to strop your shaving razor is waste of time.&#xA;Keep them clean and dry and you will get more life out of them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11670" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T10:45:34.173" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T10:45:34.173" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15143" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-25T10:38:42.900" Score="21" ViewCount="213017" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a common belief that one can reduce tummy fat by drinking honey and lemon juice mixed in warm water the first thing in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benefits-of-honey.com/honey-and-lemon.html&quot;&gt;This questionable website&lt;/a&gt;, for example, makes this claim without citing research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fasting on honey and lemon-juice, an alkaline food, is highly&#xA;  beneficial in the treatment of obesity without the loss of energy and&#xA;  appetite. For this natural cure , mix one teaspoon of raw honey&#xA;  (unheated) with the juice of two teaspoons of lime or lemon juice in a&#xA;  glass of room temperature or lukewarm water (not boiling water!). Take&#xA;  this remedy as a wake-up drink once in the morning on a empty stomach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fitho.in/does-hot-water-and-lemon-help-weight-loss/&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; refutes the claim, again without citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4212" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T07:58:26.503" LastActivityDate="2023-04-27T12:27:49.353" Title="Does honey with warm water and lemon reduce tummy fat?" Tags="|nutrition|weight-loss|honey|alkaline-diet|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15144" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-25T12:51:27.827" Score="20" ViewCount="3081" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_Party_movement&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Wikipedia article on the United States Tea Party movement&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine), &lt;em&gt;TeaParty.org defines the Tea Party as &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;a grassroots movement&lt;/strong&gt; that calls awareness to any issue which challenges the security, sovereignty, or domestic tranquility of our the United States of America.&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A grassroots movement &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grassroots&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as defined by Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A grassroots movement (often referenced in the context of a political movement) is one driven by the politics of a community. The term implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures. Grassroots movements are often at the local level, as many volunteers in the community give their time to support the local party, which can lead to helping the national party. For instance, a grassroots movement can lead to significant voter registration for a political party, which in turn helps the state and national parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;astroturfing is described as&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Astroturfing refers to political, advertising or public relations campaigns that are designed to mask the sponsors of the message to give the appearance of coming from a disinterested, grassroots participant. Astroturfing is intended to give the statements the credibility of an independent entity by withholding information about the source's financial connection. The term is a derivation of AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Through &lt;a href=&quot;http://climatecrocks.com/2013/02/19/study-links-tobacco-tea-party-climate-denial-and-fox-news/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this blog article on climaterocks.com&lt;/a&gt; a study was brought to my attention that claims that the Tea Party is rather astroturf than grassroots:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2013/02/07/tobaccocontrol-2012-050815.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amanda Fallin, Rachel Grana, and Stanton A Glantz, &lt;em&gt;To quarterback behind the scenes, third-party efforts’: the tobacco industry and the Tea Party&lt;/em&gt;. Tobacco Control, doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2012-050815.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than being a purely grassroots movement that spontaneously developed in 2009, the Tea Party has developed over time, in part through decades of work by the tobacco industry and other corporate interests. It is important for tobacco control advocates in the USA and internationally, to anticipate and counter Tea Party opposition to tobacco control policies and ensure that policymakers, the media and the public understand the longstanding connection between the tobacco industry, the Tea Party and its associated organisations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study documents &lt;a href=&quot;http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2013/02/07/tobaccocontrol-2012-050815.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in detail&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Connections between the tobacco industry, third-party allies and the Tea Party&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/15/taxpayer-dollars-used-to-fund-study-tying-tea-party-to-tobacco-lobby/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article on Fox News&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tea Party leaders, though, roundly rejected the findings. They argued that the groups the study focused on do not compose the entirety of the movement, and that the tobacco issue is a relatively minor aspect of the present-day small-government agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and quotes &lt;em&gt;Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If you're going to have a conspiracy theory, at least try to make it pass the laugh test ... and this one doesn't even do that,&amp;quot; AFP President Tim Phillips told FoxNews.com. Further, he said opposing tobacco taxes is &amp;quot;probably point-00001 percent of the effort&amp;quot; today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aforementioned &lt;a href=&quot;http://climatecrocks.com/2013/02/19/study-links-tobacco-tea-party-climate-denial-and-fox-news/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog article on climaterocks.com&lt;/a&gt; summarises the story from a Tea Party-critical perspective, whereas the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/02/15/taxpayer-dollars-used-to-fund-study-tying-tea-party-to-tobacco-lobby&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fox News article&lt;/a&gt; (perhaps unsurprisingly) has some focus on defending the claim that the Tea Party, is, in fact, a grassroots movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not the first time the claim is being made.  From this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/opinion/13krugman.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paul Krugman column&lt;/a&gt;, New York Times, 13 April 2009:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last but not least: it turns out that the tea parties don’t represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They’re AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey, the former House majority leader, and supported by the usual group of right-wing billionaires. And the parties are, of course, being promoted heavily by Fox News.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that’s nothing new, and AstroTurf has worked well for Republicans in the past. The most notable example was the “spontaneous” riot back in 2000 — actually orchestrated by G.O.P. strategists — that shut down the presidential vote recount in Florida’s Miami-Dade County.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I consider that these sources are not really authoritative, nor is the Tea Party itself, because they will have an interest in presenting themselves as a grassroots movement whether they are or not.  Considering historical evidence, what can we say about the claim? &lt;strong&gt;Is the US Tea Party a grassroots or an astroturf movement?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T15:34:35.323" Title="Is the U.S. Tea Party astroturf or a genuine grassroots movement?" Tags="|history|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15106" CreationDate="2013-02-25T19:22:52.883" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;As is usual with political claims, it really depends on your viewpoint and your definitions. As Max says in his answer, there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/subjects/labor_and_employment/6235#sponsor_party=Republican&amp;amp;bill_type=3&quot;&gt;three House Republican sponsored bills that claim to be related to jobs&lt;/a&gt;. On closer inspection what they actually mandate is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a change in the allocation of Federal training funds to focus on employability. Somewhat related to jobs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a change to the way unemployment statistics are calculated. Almost certainly not a job-creating bill&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;control of the deduction of labour union dues. Again, almost certainly not a bill that will directly create any jobs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can of course also check the other statements, and here govtrack lets us check &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/subjects/families/6053&quot;&gt;the number of House Republican Family resolutions&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;it appears to be one&lt;/strong&gt; (1). Religion doesn't even appear as a topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to be honest, &lt;strong&gt;this question isn't answerable without a strict definition of what constitutes a &quot;jobs bill&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2013-02-25T21:33:03.800" LastActivityDate="2013-02-25T21:33:03.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6060" CreationDate="2013-02-26T03:17:36.670" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick overview of the available literature supports the stated claims, if we assume that the popular image of the Inquisition involves routine torture and execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/20839001?uid=3739832&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;uid=3739256&amp;amp;sid=21101700927553&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; on &quot;Inquisition Proceedings against Muslims in 16th Century Latin America&quot; published in &lt;em&gt;Islamic Studies&lt;/em&gt;, Rukhasana Qamber writes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a comprehensive study of the Mexican Inquisition [in the 16th century], Richard Greenleaf found that 95 out of 100 Mexicans during the colonial period had no contact with the Inquisition. Of the five who did, one sixth were not tried by the Holy Office and perhaps two out of 100 were condemned, 0.5 out of 100 underwent judicial torture, and less than 0.1 out of 100 were executed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the subject of &quot;The Repression of Sexual Behavior by the Aragonese Inquisition between 1560 and 1700&quot; in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of the History of Sexuality&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/3704158&quot;&gt;Andre Fernandez writes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is important to note that for 2.5 percent of solicitants, that is, six out of the&#xA;  245 reported cases the council voted for torture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/3168207&quot;&gt;Inquisition and the Prosecution of Heresy: Misconceptions and Abuses&lt;/a&gt;&quot; published in &lt;em&gt;Church History&lt;/em&gt;, Henry Ansgar Kelly writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I dismiss without further ado the modern notion that defendants in any canonical process, inquisitorial or not, were presumed guilty until proven innocent. No one could be legally convicted of a crime without adequate proof [...] Huguccio in the twelfth century formulated the rule that ecclesiastical judges should employ only moderate forms of torture, which John Andrew in the fourteenth century interpreted to mean rods or switches or leather whips rather than the rack or claws and cords. Eventually, restrictions were placed on the use of torture by papally appointed heresy inquisitors because of reported abuses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most fitting one-sentence answer to your question comes from an article by Ruth Behar, an anthropologist form University of Michigan, who begins &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/645632&quot;&gt;an article on the subject&lt;/a&gt; by writing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Mexico, as in Spain, the Inquisition was far less severe than legend would have it, showing little concern to eradicate magic and witchcraft among common people or to convict and burn them for their heterodox beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results of the report you quote seem to fit the general consensus of contemporary scholars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T03:17:36.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7589" CreationDate="2013-02-26T03:36:39.520" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The publicity that Rossi's ecat demos engendered certainly contributed to the current follow-up research in LENR.  The old NASA experiments were inconclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If been following Rossi for some time now.  While the initial demos were somewhat promising and convinced some Swedish physicist in attendance, every subsequent demonstrations was more scripted and less convincing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site ecatnews.com started out optimistically covering this story but the admin there recently threw in the towel after concluding that Rossi's ecat is a scam.  You can follow the entire story in detail perusing the old post: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecantnews.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ecantnews.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently the Swedish defence forces tried to replicate a Rossi like LENR reaction but came up empty: &lt;a href=&quot;http://wp.me/p3cfMd-5Q&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wp.me/p3cfMd-5Q&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is much LENR research out there, but very little is top notch.  NASA's involvement will hopefully settle the question once and for all if there may be a subtle real nuclear effect there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11681" LastEditorUserId="11681" LastEditDate="2013-02-26T03:44:38.867" LastActivityDate="2013-02-26T03:44:38.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="641" CreationDate="2013-02-26T04:02:15.520" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The seminal review on graphology is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~dkoehler/reprints/graphology.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Illusory Correlations in Graphological Inference&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Roy N. King and Derek J. Koehler, published in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Experimental Psychology&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study supports two major conclusions. (1) A meta-review of the literature finds &lt;strong&gt;&quot;overwhelming evidence&quot; against the predictive validity of graphology&lt;/strong&gt;. (2) &quot;Semantic association between words used to describe handwriting features and personality traits was the source of biases in perceived correlation&quot; between hand-writing and personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: the science of graphology is junk, but people continue to believe it because words used to describe handwriting (e.g. messy, unclear, neat, confused, meticulous) can so easily be used to pass judgement on the person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why the French in particular disregard the science for superstition is a topic for another question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2013-03-04T14:44:59.333" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T14:44:59.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15159" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-26T12:18:55.617" Score="18" ViewCount="3776" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw the following claim in several places:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rawglow.com/cookedfood.htm&quot;&gt;Raw Glow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cooking meat changes the molecular structure of some of its proteins,&#xA;  rendering them unusable by the body and making cellular healing,&#xA;  reproduction and regeneration difficult. The protein molecules become&#xA;  bound, making them harder to digest. Up to 50% of cooked proteins that&#xA;  one eats will coagulate and cross-link. Cross-linking of proteins is&#xA;  associated with Alzheimer’s disease. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because of coagulation, the protein is 50% less assimilable, as&#xA;  research showed at the Max Planck Institute for National Research in&#xA;  Germany. This means that a person needs to eat twice as much protein&#xA;  if it is cooked as opposed to raw.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At &lt;a href=&quot;http://sacredsourcenutrition.com/cooked-protein-vs-raw-protein/#_edn2&quot;&gt;Sacred Source Nutrition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the Max Planck Institute, cooking foods coagulates at&#xA;  least 50% of the protein[ii], making them less bio-available to the&#xA;  body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also heard this in the film &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodmatters.tv/&quot;&gt;&quot;Food Matters&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm having a very hard time believing this, as I would expect denaturation of proteins to &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; with digestion, as it makes it easier for proteases to cut them up into amino acids. The idea that cooking proteins hinders their digestion sounds rather far-fetched to me. But I was unable to find the study from the Max-Planck Institute that is referenced, none of the articles directly link it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this study exist and does it support the claim? Is there any other data on the effect of cooking on the digestibility and bioavailibity of proteins?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T14:11:43.283" LastActivityDate="2014-11-08T01:51:59.860" Title="Is cooked protein less digestible than raw protein?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15165" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-27T05:40:46.153" Score="5" ViewCount="1532" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-law-of-attraction-will-improve-your-life-2012-7?op=1&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; while reading about the 'Law of Attraction'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whether or not you believe in the power of the universe, there is scientific research that proves the effects of positive thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Is there any scientific research that proves the effects of positive thinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10452" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:47:03.667" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T00:47:03.667" Title="Does positive thinking have any effect?" Tags="|psychology|cognitive-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2013-07-22T13:00:22.637" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-27T07:39:47.593" Score="4" ViewCount="10236" Body="&lt;p&gt;The egg nutrition website doesn't mention docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in its list of egg ingredients:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eggnutritioncenter.org/egg-facts/nutrition-information-for-the-egg/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.eggnutritioncenter.org/egg-facts/nutrition-information-for-the-egg/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/Egg_Yolk.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cholesterol-and-health.com/Egg_Yolk.html&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DHA and AA - 94 mg (yolk)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://wholefoodcatalog.info/nutrient/docosahexaenoic_acid%28dha%29/eggs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wholefoodcatalog.info/nutrient/docosahexaenoic_acid%28dha%29/eggs/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;68 mg (per 18g edible portion) Hen's egg(yolk, raw)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Do eggs have DHA? If yes, then how much on an average?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5341" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-02-27T09:23:49.823" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T18:20:14.343" Title="Do eggs have DHA? If yes, then how much on an average?" Tags="|nutrition|egg|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15319" CreationDate="2013-02-27T08:41:38.123" Score="12" ViewCount="2066" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some prominent medical sources even claim that there are over &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120314152705/https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/2010/consumer_booklet/chemicals_smoke/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;7000 chemicals in tobacco smoke&lt;/a&gt;. The rumor seems to be passed around with no reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarettes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; makes a more believable claim that &quot;[m]ore than 4,000 chemical compounds are created by burning a cigarette.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the list of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_additives_in_cigarettes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;additives to cigarettes&lt;/a&gt;, many of them, like maple syrup, basil oil, cocoa, are safe elsewhere and probably not present in most cigarettes. &#xA;However, my question is what the claimed 4,000 compounds really mean. Does it mean that if you burn every type of cigarette in the world, you'll get over 4,000 different possibilities of chemical? Or does it mean that the average cigarette, when burned, contains over 4,000 compounds?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it even unusual for 4,000 different chemicals to be in smoke? Would a grilling steak subject to the same methods produce as many carcinogenic compounds in its smoke? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7871" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-06-01T02:56:31.927" LastActivityDate="2019-06-01T02:56:31.927" Title="Are there over 4000 chemicals in tobacco smoke?" Tags="|medical-science|smoking|cigarettes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15168" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15165" CreationDate="2013-02-27T08:45:47.293" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Positive thinking does have effects, but they're not necessarily positive, according to Professor Richard Wiseman.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jun/30/self-help-positive-thinking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jun/30/self-help-positive-thinking&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In one study led by Lien Pham at the University of California, students were asked to spend a few moments each day visualising themselves getting a high grade in an upcoming exam. Even though the daydreaming exercise only lasted a few minutes, it caused the students to study less and obtain lower marks. In another experiment led by Gabriele Oettingen from New York University, graduates were asked to note down how often they fantasised about getting their dream job after leaving college. The students who reported that they frequently fantasised about such success received fewer job offers and ended up with significantly smaller salaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wiseman recommends positive actions, like forcing yourself to smile.&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HAPPINESS: Smile&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  This is the granddaddy of them all. As Laird's study demonstrated, smile and you will feel happier. To get the most out of this exercise, make the smile as wide as possible, extend your eyebrow muscles slightly upward, and hold the resulting expression for about 20 seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A previous &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15103/is-the-gender-gap-in-male-dominated-areas-so-easy-to-overcome&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; here pointed to a study on values affirmation, where having physics students write about their most important values raised the exam scores of female students, but seemed to lower the scores of male students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11702" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T08:45:47.293" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15166" CreationDate="2013-02-27T18:20:14.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The content of DHA depends on food consumed by the hens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Omega-3 or DHA eggs are from chickens that have been fed a diet supplemented by a source of omega-3 fatty acids as green algae , seaweed , flax and canola seeds&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega-3_fatty_acid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Omega-3_fatty_acid&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12848286&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The study High-DHA eggs: feasibility as a means to enhance circulating DHA in mother and infant.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;mentions the difference between ordinary  (18 mg DHA/egg)&#xA;and  high-DHA hen eggs  (135 mg DHA/egg) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10701" LastActivityDate="2013-02-27T18:20:14.343" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15176" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-02-27T22:38:27.040" Score="20" ViewCount="2021" Body="&lt;p&gt;The concept of &quot;peak oil&quot; has been bandied about for some time (see this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2241/is-peak-oil-still-set-for-2013&quot;&gt;Is peak oil still set for 2013?&lt;/a&gt;) by people who believe the world hydrocarbon stocks will soon be so depleted that annual production will soon decline whatever we do about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/26/oh_no_its_peak_wind/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent article in The Register&lt;/a&gt; suggest that a similar problem might arise sooner than expected with wind energy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gist of the argument is that environmentalist proponents of the use of wind power as a way of generating electricity and avoiding carbon dioxide emissions have been far too optimistic in their forecasts of the potential of wind power. As the &lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/1/015021/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source article&lt;/a&gt; for the Register story says in its summary (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Estimates of the global wind power resource over land range from 56 to 400 TW. Most estimates have implicitly assumed that extraction of wind energy does not alter large-scale winds enough to significantly limit wind power production. Estimates that ignore the effect of wind turbine drag on local winds have assumed that wind power production of 2–4 W m−2 can be sustained over large areas. New results from a mesoscale model suggest that wind power production is limited to about 1 W m−2 at wind farm scales larger than about 100 km2. We find that the mesoscale model results are quantitatively consistent with results from global models that simulated the climate response to much larger wind power capacities. &lt;strong&gt;Wind resource estimates that ignore the effect of wind turbines in slowing large-scale winds may therefore substantially overestimate the wind power resource.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this argument plausible? Have believers in the potential of wind power significantly overestimated its potential?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2017-09-30T07:38:57.600" Title="Is &quot;peak wind&quot; coming?" Tags="|environment|power-generation|wind-power|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14639" CreationDate="2013-02-28T04:27:18.550" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A search of PubMed articles using keywords &quot;booger,&quot; &quot;muchoid,&quot; &quot;nasal discharges,&quot; and even &quot;rhinotillexis&quot; yields absolutely zero results that could support the cited blog post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reputable medical research does however caution against nose picking. In an article in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of the National Medical Association&lt;/em&gt; by Albert Seltzer, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14049564&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;who writes that&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The physician is frequently concerned with the harmful effects of meddling with the nose. Into the office of the general practitioner, the pediatrician, and the nose and throat specialist come literally countless patients with disease and injury to the delicate tissues of the nose resulting from injudicious probing with the tip of the fingernail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more seriously, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1615110&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a study&lt;/a&gt; in the 1992 issue of &lt;em&gt;Psychological Medicine&lt;/em&gt; concludes that &quot;Later-onset AD [Alzheimers Disease] was found to be positively associated with starvation/malnutrition and with nose-picking.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, Dr. Bischinger (mentioned in the linked article) has provided us with zero evidence for his assertions. He has not published his findings in a peer review journal, nor do other studies support his conclusions. The eating part is therefore dubious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By contrast the dangers of nose-picking are well-documented, and must outweigh any supposed gastrointestinal benefits of ingesting mucus.&lt;sup&gt;†&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;†&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Please note that this answer does not constitute medical advice. It is only meant to summarize published research related to the topic and limited the cited sources. Consult your physician about what these results may mean for your health.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-09-20T23:23:10.363" LastActivityDate="2015-09-20T23:23:10.363" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15176" CreationDate="2013-02-28T10:26:32.837" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, The Register has misrepresented the story.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several parts to this question. The summary is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Peak Wind&amp;quot; is a myth&lt;/strong&gt;: there is nothing similar in wind to how hydrocarbon stocks will get to such a depletion point that annual production will decline inexorably thereafter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The modelling methodology smackdown&lt;/strong&gt; - Have previous estimates over-estimated the global onshore wind resource? This is currently unanswerable. There are two conflicting modelling methods - the aggregated micro-scale; and the meso-scale. The meso-scale modelling in this new Adams &amp;amp; Keith paper (and in the other related papers by Lee &amp;amp; Keith, and the Lee &amp;amp; Kleidon paper in Davephd's answer) cannot yet be validated, because there is insufficient information about the performance of wind farms greater than 100km&lt;Sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; in area - we haven't built them yet. Until we have real-world data on very large wind farms, we cannot say which modelling method is more accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does it matter?&lt;/strong&gt; No, it doesn't.  There is a wide range of different estimates of global onshore wind resource, that are derived using different modelling methods. They all agree that the global onshore wind resource way exceeds global electricity demand, many times over. And in the absence of validation of meso-scale modelling, it will not get used for wind-farm design, which will continue to use micro-scale modelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&amp;quot;Peak Wind&amp;quot; is a myth&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/015021&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;original journal article is here&lt;/a&gt;. The concept of Peak Oil, which Peak Wind is being held analagous to, is the simple notion that when depleting a finite non-renewed resource, there comes a time when the extraction rate reaches a maximum, and thereafter declines year on year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper by Adams &amp;amp; Keith that The Register claims to be reporting on, makes no such claim for wind: &lt;strong&gt;there is no claim in the paper that there is a wind resource which will become exhausted&lt;/strong&gt;. That's because wind is constantly renewed by incoming solar radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A typical Peak Oil peaks then depletes. Whereas global wind generation continues to increase as global capacity increases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Asymptotic wind production&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper in question models the output of power per unit area, and predicts that it will level out at around 1.2W/m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;. Which means that with increasing wind capacity installed, wind output would continue to be a rising curve, and would not show a peak and a down-turn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, the paper is claiming that there are diminishing returns: that is, that building more wind will continue to yield more electricity, but at a declining rate.  This is something that has been known for a long time. The difference is that Adams &amp;amp; Keith are claiming that it will happen faster than previously modelled, and that the global potential onshore wind resource is only a few times global electricity demand, rather than many times it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their specific testable claim is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;wind power production is limited to about 1 W/m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; at wind farm scales larger than about 100 km&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As yet, we have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_onshore_wind_farms#Largest_operational_onshore_wind_farms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;very few windfarms larger than that&lt;/a&gt;, so this remain a theoretical exercise. There are plans to build windfarms substantially bigger than that over the next 10 years, so we will find out soon enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The modelling methodology smackdown&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper is part of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/september/wind-world-demand-091012.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;long on-going discussion&lt;/a&gt; in the literature about the most appropriate way to model the wake effects of large onshore wind farms. The difference boils down to whether one models from the wake of an individual turbine upwards (the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jacobson&lt;/a&gt; method of aggregating from the micro-scale), or whether one uses&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a parameterization of the atmospheric effects of wind turbine arrays&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as Adams and Keith do in the paper in question (and as Keith &amp;amp; Lee do, and Lee and Kleidon do).  This is to a degree a question of faith, as to whether the parameterization, in throwing away the detail of the individual turbine, adds to, or detracts from, the usefulness of the model. It's a question of faith, because as yet we don't have enough data from wind farms over 100 square kilometres to validate the meso models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's an interesting discussion about the fundamentals of atmospheric modelling, not least because Mark Z Jacobson is the man who literally &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/FAMbook2dEd/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wrote the book on it&lt;/a&gt;. His &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/windfarms.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;papers on the subject are listed here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Does it matter for (inter-)national policy?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no implications for (inter-)national policy. Earlier estimates are of a global wind resource at least an order of magnitude greater than global electricity demand, so a quartering of that resource (as Adams &amp;amp; Keith predict) still results in potential global onshore wind production exceeding global electricity demand. That is to say. there is still no meaningful limit on the onshore wind resource. And that's ignoring the massive potential in the offshore wind resource.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Does it matter for wind-farm design?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of now, no it does not: individual wind farms still get designed using wake-modelling at the level of individual turbines, rather than relying only on Adams &amp;amp; Keith meso-scale modelling. If there comes a time where empirical evidence supports their parameterised meso-scale modelling, then that may get used, because it's computationally simpler, faster and requires fewer inputs. Onshore wind farms larger than 100km&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; will get built in the coming decade, so the testable hypothesis I mentioned above will get tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-09-30T07:38:57.600" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15179" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15181" CreationDate="2013-02-28T17:32:10.950" Score="13" ViewCount="2983" Body="&lt;p&gt;As an urban legend, I've heard this claim  many times. Allegedly, in the 1970s, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGB&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;KGB&lt;/a&gt; sponsored various Western &amp;quot;anti-war&amp;quot; movements, especially the ones that could hinder Western nuclear tests. As a matter of fact, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpeace&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Greenpeace&lt;/a&gt; was one such movement, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/campaigns/history/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;created in response to nuclear testing in Alaska&lt;/a&gt;, which allegedly earned them the help of the KGB. Quite vague claims. However, recently, I've seen political discussion where more concrete claims were made. Allegedly, the original &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Warrior_(1955)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rainbow Warrior&lt;/a&gt;, after being bought by Greenpeace, was refurbished in a shipyard in Tallinn at the KGB's expense. Allegedly, the information comes from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitrokhin_Archive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mitrokhin Archive&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to any of these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="34347" LastEditDate="2023-10-09T21:26:51.833" LastActivityDate="2023-10-09T21:26:51.833" Title="Was Greenpeace ever sponsored by the KGB?" Tags="|history|environment|soviet-union|kgb|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15179" CreationDate="2013-03-01T00:41:35.243" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's impossible to prove that no money from the KGB, or any other source, ever reached Greenpeace (and if it did it might have been without the knowledge of Greenpeace). However we can answer the specific question about the Rainbow Warrior's conversion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rainbow Warrior (formerly 'Sir William Hardy) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.socialphy.com/posts/off-topic/11993/The-Rainbow-Warrior.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;was acquired by Greenpeace in 1977 and refitted in London.&lt;/a&gt; (See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=0wq9fFBP0X4C&amp;amp;pg=PA319&amp;amp;lpg=PA319&amp;amp;dq=%22rainbow%20warrior%22%201977%20refit%20london&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=6NgPi05Mb_&amp;amp;sig=rpuOQKysdmPbfEwldkVnHPUkfig&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=2vcvUbjyJOaBywH7lYHACw&amp;amp;sqi=2&amp;amp;ved=0CGQQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22rainbow%20warrior%22%201977%20refit%20london&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/ships/the-rainbow-warrior/rainbow-warrior-I/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2013-03-01T16:23:13.607" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T16:23:13.607" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15184" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15185" CreationDate="2013-03-01T10:06:27.507" Score="6" ViewCount="624" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that if you sneeze with your eyes open they could pop out from your head? Or at least be pushed out slightly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10500" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-01T11:32:56.237" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T11:56:26.630" Title="Will your eyes pop out if you sneeze with your eyes open?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15184" CreationDate="2013-03-01T10:10:10.703" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Its a myth among the 5 year old's im afraid...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You're 5 years old, and word on the playground is that if you sneeze with your eyes open, they'll pop right out of your head. Given that you've got a nasty cold, this rumor is relatively terrifying for you. After all, what could be worse than your eyeballs shooting out of your face like bullets?&#xA;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now let's fast-forward to adulthood, a time in which you're no longer terrified of eyeball expulsion but nevertheless still wonder about that sneezing myth of yore. Does it have any truth to it? Exactly how securely are your eyeballs attached to your head?&#xA;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To debunk this myth, let's first take a look at what's going on inside the body during a sneeze. Sneezing is a protective mechanism that the body uses to expel dust, pollen, pet hair and other allergens. Some people sneeze when they're exposed to cold air. It's common to sneeze when you have a cold because the inside of the nasal cavity becomes swollen and more sensitive than usual. This sensitivity triggers sneezing at the slightest irritation.&#xA;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The act of sneezing is involuntary, but the body goes through a very systematic process during the act. When an irritant comes in contact with the nasal lining, the nerves in the area send a message to the lower portion of the brain, known as the medulla. The brain then triggers the activity necessary for the body to sneeze:&#xA;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The muscles in the chest expand, the diaphragm contracts, and the lungs fill with air. The muscles that are in the back of the throat and vocal cords also contract, and then the stomach and chest muscles follow suit. Finally, the sneeze is expelled through the mouth, sending between 2,000 and 5,000 droplets of mucus and air flying away from the body at between 70 and 100 miles per hour (112.6 and 160 kph) [source: Washington Post]. The spray from a sneeze can extend 5 feet (152.4 centimeters) from the sneezer [source: Library of Congress]. This spray is made up of saliva and mucus. Expelling the mixture through the mouth clears the nasal cavity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt; &#xA;  One other thing happens during this process: Your eyes squeeze shut. But why? There's got to be some legitimate reason, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/sneeze-with-eyes-open.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/sneeze-with-eyes-open.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10760" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2013-03-01T11:56:26.630" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T11:56:26.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15179" CreationDate="2013-03-01T12:00:02.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;USSR state recording company &lt;em&gt;Melodia&lt;/em&gt; helped Greenpeace raise money via co-sponsoring a jointly release album (U2 et al).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.musicstack.com/item/206504892&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.musicstack.com/item/206504892&lt;/a&gt; /&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://music70-80.narod.ru/katalog/sbor/greenpeace.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://music70-80.narod.ru/katalog/sbor/greenpeace.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there's no explicit mention of KGB, given the timeline, and the way USSR worked, it was 100% impossible that KGB wasn't in full explicit approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The album was heavily promoted (I remember that myself), and Soviet press was quoted in 1989: “Everyone who buys the album can consider himself a member of Greenpeace, which means it will soon have millions of new members here in the Soviet Union.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from Russian Wiki (&lt;em&gt;all quotes from that are sourced from Greenpeace itself - &amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenpeace.org/russia/ru/about/history/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;История Гринпис&lt;/a&gt;  (рус.). Greanpease.org. Архивировано из первоисточника 3 февраля 2012. Проверено 13 мая 2011&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;В СССР Гринпис появился в 1989 году благодаря средствам от продажи альбома «Гринпис. Прорыв» (Greenpeace Breakthrough). В его записи участвовали U2, Eurythmics, R.E.M., INXS, Шаде, Брайан Ферри и другие рок-звезды.[8]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Альбом во всём мире вышел тиражом около 10 миллионов экземпляров, очередь за пластинкой в Москве вошла в книгу рекордов Гиннесса. В течение первых часов с момента выхода пластинки было продано полмиллиона экземпляров. К 15 мая 1989 года общее количество проданных альбомов достигло миллиона.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Again from Russian Wiki (same source):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;В июле 1989 года на пресс-конференции на борту корабля Гринпис «Воин радуги» Алексей Яблоков (в то время председатель комитета по охране окружающей среды СССР), официально объявил отделение Гринпис в СССР «первой независимой организацией в Советском Союзе»&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In July 1989, during press conference on board &amp;quot;Rainbow Warrior&amp;quot; shop, Alexej Yablokov (President of USSR State Committee for Preservation of the Environment) declared Greenpeace the &amp;quot;first independent organization in USSR&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, given that it was 1989, this was fully State approved and like any interface with the foreigners, fully curated by KGB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T17:14:23.197" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9643" CreationDate="2013-03-01T14:22:58.640" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE 2013-Jan-21:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just received my developer unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NFpJt.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4430" LastActivityDate="2013-03-01T14:22:58.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15191" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15195" CreationDate="2013-03-02T01:27:32.270" Score="3" ViewCount="1735" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.professorshouse.com/Health-Beauty/Nutrition/Articles/What-It-Takes-To-Burn-Off-A-Big-Mac/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;, one needs about 1 hour and 5 minutes to burn off the weight gain from a Big Mac.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I've eaten about two Big Macs a night, with two similar sized meals during the day. All without jogging for hours, and yet I've never been overweight. Is this a miscalculation or some poor assumptions of how calories are translated into fat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7871" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T19:39:14.477" Title="Does a burger require an hour of jogging to burn off?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15191" CreationDate="2013-03-02T12:58:52.703" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are basically 2 parts to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How Many Calories Are In a Big Mac®?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of calories in a Big Mac® &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac#Fat_and_other_contents_according_to_geographical_location&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;varies by country&lt;/a&gt;, but the figure given of 540 calories is accurate for a US Big Mac®.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How Many Calories Does Running Burn?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of calories burnt per minute when running depends on how much you weigh and how fast you run. The following table (found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/weight-loss/how-many-calories-do-you-burn/259.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Runner's World&lt;/a&gt;, data taken from Compendium of Physical Activities, January 1993 issue of Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise) gives the number of calories burnt per 10 minutes of running.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SjyGr.png&quot; alt=&quot;calories burnt per 10 minutes of running&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no precise definition for jogging, but it's usually taken to mean &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;running slowly&lt;/a&gt;, so I'm going to take numbers from the 12 min/mile column.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The average weight for a woman in the US is 74.7 kg (164.7 lb), so that gives a figure of around 97 calories per 10 minutes of jogging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting these 2 answers together, I'd estimate that it would take around 55 minutes of jogging to burn off the calories in a Big Mac®. This is fairly close to the figure of 1 hour 5 minutes given in the article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This figure will vary considerably depending on your weight and how fast you run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is This Type Of Information Useful?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2964072/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Providing Calorie Information on Fast-Food Restaurant Menu Boards: Consumer Views&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above study compared different approaches to nutritional labelling of fast food. It found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When asked to compare a menu that provided calorie information for each menu item with a menu that provided the number of minutes of running that would be required to burn the calories contained in each menu item, 71.0% of participants preferred the calorie information over the physical activity information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many of those who preferred calorie information viewed the physical activity information as discouraging, a scare tactic, or not generalizable to everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T12:58:52.703" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14881" CreationDate="2013-03-02T19:09:20.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;After reviewing this further, it seems the 2002 study cited in the question does a good job of answering the question. Essentially, the eye-movement portion of the EMDR therapy is irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most insightful to me is a commentary on this study by Dr. Paul Salkovskis. I'm going to quote it here in its entirety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EMDR had controversial origins as eye movement desensitisation (EMD). Early reports on EMD suggested that 1 session of treatment produced complete remission in PTSD. The treatment was trademarked. “Approved” training required participants to sign an undertaking that they would not train others. The treatment was elaborated to include 8 elements (mostly recognisable from CBT) and rebranded as EMDR. Longer treatments were advocated (a reversal of the trend in CBT). Unusual marketing strategies merged with apparently irregular scientific practices.[1] Notably, EMDR has no coherent theoretical basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Controversy has continued with apparently conflicting meta-analyses and commentary.[2] Davidson and Parker's well done meta-analysis manages convincingly to address 3 of the 4 key issues relevant to clinical science. (1) EMDR is found to be better than no treatment or placebo but no different than exposure. As a bonus, they found that the early reports of large effect sizes probably resulted from the use of process variables targeted directly in treatment sessions being used as primary outcome variables. (2) The training of therapists (whether or not it is approved by the EMDR franchising organisation) had no effect. It had previously been asserted that “treatment fidelity” was compromised in those studies that did not find positive results for EMDR. (3) The all important element of eye movements was found to be completely unimportant. The fourth question (whether evidence exists of specificity of treatment effects to disorders) was addressed, but unconvincingly given the number of studies and the way in which the analysis is conducted (in 4 categories rather than by specific disorder). If eye movements are not relevant to EMDR, then what remains is desensitisation and reprocessing—that is, CBT. EMDR has been assiduously marketed as a novel and effective treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This meta-analysis, which is notable for the care with which it seeks to address the likely critique of those who advocate EMDR, firmly establishes that what is novel is not effective, and what is effective is not novel. Clinicians may wish to consider that the impressive paraphernalia of treatments such as EMDR is not, in the long run, a substitute for rapidly developing empirically grounded clinical interventions.[3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ebmh.bmj.com/external-ref?access_num=10.1016/S0887-6185%2898%2900049-8&amp;amp;link_type=DOI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[1] &#xA;  McNally RJ. EMDR and Mesmerism: a comparative historical analysis. J Anxiety Disord 1999;13:225–36.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[2] Rosen GM, Lohr JM, McNally RJ, et al. Power therapies, miraculous claims, and the cures that fail. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy 1998;26:99–101.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ebmh.bmj.com/external-ref?access_num=10.1016/S0005-7967%2899%2900123-0&amp;amp;link_type=DOI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[3] &#xA;  Ehlers A, Clark DM. A cognitive model of posttraumatic stress disorder. Behav Res Ther 2000;38:319–45.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ebmh.bmj.com/content/5/1/13.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Commentary on Evid Based Mental Health 2002;5:13 doi:10.1136/ebmh.5.1.13 by Paul Salkovskis, MPhil, PhD, C Clin Psychol, FBPsS&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10745" LastActivityDate="2013-03-02T19:09:20.773" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15200" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-02T20:53:05.217" Score="24" ViewCount="6862" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some sites claim that people with higher intelligence tend to go to bed later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People with higher IQs are more apt to be nocturnal night-owls. Those with lower IQs tend to restrict their activities primarily to daytime.&#xA;  People who prefer to go to bed early, and who are early-risers, demonstrate &quot;morningness,&quot; whereas those whose sleep patterns are shifted later demonstrate &quot;eveningness.&quot; Researchers say eveningness tends to be a characteristic of those with higher IQs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: Dr Juliette Faraco of Stanford University, via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/smart-people-sleep-late-82486792.html&quot;&gt;Winnipeg Free Press&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recently, scientists discovered a quirky side effect to having a high IQ: You tend to stay up until later hours and get up later in the morning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_19174_5-unexpected-downsides-high-intelligence.html&quot;&gt;Cracked&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With marginal 'evidence' and no reason why this is like this (except for a nonsense reason along the lines that &lt;em&gt;humans are not nocturnal; so to change that habit you must have some intelligence&lt;/em&gt;. To me, this sounds like a terrible explanation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own circle of acquaintances, I've noticed that the more intelligent people tend sleep later than other people. The most common reason I heard is something along the lines of &quot;I think too much at night.&quot; Of course it's well known that people with problems/depression have more trouble sleeping, because of this reason (they think about the problems too much).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do intelligent people sleep later; and why?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11543" LastEditorUserId="11543" LastEditDate="2013-03-03T14:42:59.700" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T16:41:45.360" Title="Are intelligent people more nocturnal than people not considered intelligent?" Tags="|sleep|intelligence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15221" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15234" CreationDate="2013-03-03T22:44:18.033" Score="12" ViewCount="20992" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been told in person, and seen repeated on many a forum, that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welding_helmet#SpeedGlas&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;auto-darkening welding helmets&lt;/a&gt; are dangerous and that anyone who uses one eventually needs glasses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have been unable to find any studies that conclude for or against auto-darkening welding helmets. They're incredibly popular, it seems, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything about their effect on your health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies that provide more information, either about auto-darkening helmets, or the duration and amount of light you can view before sustaining damage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1283" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-03-04T09:45:08.563" LastActivityDate="2019-04-26T05:37:21.997" Title="Will using auto-darkening welding helmets damage your vision?" Tags="|safety|ophthalmology|work|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="525" CreationDate="2013-03-04T00:37:48.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Meat production is highly resource intensive. A non-vegetarian meal will use several times more land, water and labour to produce than its vegetarian counterpart. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To produce 1kg of Beef approx &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.savewater.com.au/research-and-resources/why-save-water/embodied-water&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;16,000 litres of water is needed&lt;/a&gt;. Compare that to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/downloads/WWD2012_VW_LIST1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;130 litres of water needed to produce 1kg of lettuce&lt;/a&gt;. Agriculture uses 60% of all the freshwater on the planet. So water is quite a scarce resource and meat production uses a LOT of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For every 1kg of meat produced several kilograms of grain have to be fed to the slaughtered animal. The land used for producing those several kilograms of grain can satisfy far more vegetarian people than non-vegetarians. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-06-30/report-links-beef-production-deforestation-threats-climate-and-health&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Meat production is causing deforestation&lt;/a&gt; as we have not enough land to satisfy our needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these resources were diverted to vegetable and fruit production, we could be feeding many billions of people better than we are right now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11772" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T00:37:48.527" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15088" CreationDate="2013-03-04T15:45:31.243" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be a bastardization rumor referencing &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/health/illegalproducts/chalk.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chinese Chalk&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (or &quot;Miraculous Chalk&quot;), special insecticide-laced chalk which can be used to block the paths of insects. I have heard of overseas restaurants using this chalk to draw lines on the legs of tables, preventing bugs from climbing up the table legs. It is a banned substance in the United States due to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;potentially unknown insecticide used in the chalk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people using it barehanded when it is potentially unsafe to do so&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;children mistaking it for actual chalk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase &quot;&lt;em&gt;made up of ground-up and compressed shells of marine animals&lt;/em&gt;&quot; definitely describes the chalky, white powder commonly referred to as &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatomaceous_earth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;diatomaceous earth&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  Diatomaceous earth sticks to the carapace of insects and is as sharp as broken glass at their microscopic level; it is frequently used to get rid of bed bugs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chinese Chalk may be made of a combination of diatomaceous earth and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deltamethrin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;deltamethrin&lt;/a&gt;, a combination which is marketed in powder form as the insecticide &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B002Y6B4A8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Delta Dust&lt;/a&gt;.  I've used it effectively (with a duster) to stop existing / prevent further white-footed ants, but diatomaceous earth itself might be sufficient alone.  While I have never tried to compress them into stick form, both Delta Dust and diatomaceous earth are chalky, white powders, and may be applied with a paint brush, the results of which could appear to emulate a chalk line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11783" LastEditorUserId="11783" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T15:03:18.353" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T15:03:18.353" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15231" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15675" CreationDate="2013-03-04T18:03:00.563" Score="46" ViewCount="361670" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard (multiple times) that your finger is as easy to bite through as a carrot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some places I've seen it proposed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kgbanswers.com/does-it-take-the-same-amount-of-pressure-to-bite-a-finger-off-as-it-does-to-bite-a-carrot/10874781&quot;&gt;KGBAnswers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Can_you_bite_your_finger_of_as_easy_as_a_carrot&quot;&gt;WikiAnswers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, it is a popular question on Yahoo! answers. None of these have particularly definitive, well-referenced answers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard stories of people biting off fingers/toes of other people. I've also heard your brain knows it would hurt and won't let you do it to yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that fingers and carrots are relatively equivalent when it comes to biting force?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11722" LastEditorUserId="11765" LastEditDate="2013-03-05T04:51:52.053" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T16:24:53.187" Title="Does it take the same force to bite through a finger as a carrot?" Tags="|physiology|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15221" CreationDate="2013-03-04T22:12:22.960" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This should really be a comment, as I have only partial information and am neither able to conclusively strengthen or refute the claim, however I can throw some information into the debate.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll start with the part of the claim that &quot;specifies&quot; what happens:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;eventually needs glasses&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides the (trivial) fact that almost everyone eventually needs glasses I think that glasses help only in very special cases of welding-related eye damage:&lt;br&gt;&#xA; AFAIK types of eye damage are typical for welding are (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dguv.de/ifa/en/fac/strahl/pdf/augen_e.pdf&quot;&gt;eye damage info by the Institute for Occupational Safety and Health of the German Social Accident Insurance&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photokeratitis&quot;&gt;arc eye (photo-keratitis)&lt;/a&gt; is a damage of the cornea  that is usually reversible (though very painful) and heals within a few days.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Possible link to glasses: I could imagine that scarring can occur with bad burns (as it can happen with other &quot;normal&quot; burns of the cornea). Scars of the cornea can lead to a wrong curvature which may be corrected by glasses.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataract&quot;&gt;cataracts&lt;/a&gt;: long-term exposure of the eyes to UV can lead to cataracts, this damage is irreversible.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Here's a link to glasses: cataracts surgery removes the lens of the eye. Nowadays in industrialized countries, the lens is replaced by a plastic lens. Before these were available, people had to use very thick glasses after the surgery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) VIS light can lead to retinal damage (thermal or photo damage), which is also irreversible.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Glasses don't help against this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for the main claim: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;auto-darkening welding helmets are dangerous&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The possible mechanisms of danger compared to conventional masks can be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;not all dangerous radiation is filtered (see below)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the automatic masks have a reaction time of 0,1 ms &lt;a href=&quot;http://3m.richfx.com.edgesuite.net/catalog/media/GE_OHES_Speedglas_Katalog_2012/&quot;&gt;claims 3M on p. 38&lt;/a&gt;, and during this time dangerous radiation may flash the eye. For coparison: this is about 1000 times faster than the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneal_reflex&quot;&gt;Corneal reflex&lt;/a&gt;[which however is too slow for eye protection against the arc].&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, if I read their table correctly, that applies to the VIS part, the UV filter is permanent of class 13. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A pubmed search did not turn up useful material.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;However, I found out that in the EU, EN379 regulates automatic welding filters (behind paywall, I don't have access).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two things that are for sure dangerous with the automatic filters are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;using too low filter class: depending on the welding application, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berufsgenossenschaft&quot;&gt;German Berufsgenossenschaft&lt;/a&gt;  [&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_Safety_and_Health_Administration&quot;&gt;something comparable to the OSHA&lt;/a&gt;] recommends filter classes 4 - 15 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sitech.meb.uni-bonn.de/su/arbeitsschutz/psa/text/bgr_192.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.sitech.meb.uni-bonn.de/su/arbeitsschutz/psa/text/bgr_192.pdf&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(applies for &quot;normal&quot; welding shields as well)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Battery check is required before starting to work. If the batteries are low, the LCD doesn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personal experience (no long time experience with automatic mask but with a conventional helmet, and only hobby welding, though): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;it is far easer to flash your eyes with a conventional mask, either by accidentally looking through a low filter class area, or by nodding a bit too late/accidentally starting the arc on the wrong place/too early.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;I was particularly interested to find any working safety studies on this aspect, but I didn't find anything, so for now this remains anecdotal.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have far more &quot;events&quot; of getting flashed by someone else welding than by my own, but the latter is of course more dangerous because of the closer distance. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastActivityDate="2013-03-04T22:12:22.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15235" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15246" CreationDate="2013-03-05T00:16:41.477" Score="31" ViewCount="15238" Body="&lt;p&gt;In several places I've seen the claim that some people have at some point in history paid more than 100% taxes in Sweden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21571136-politicians-both-right-and-left-could-learn-nordic-countries-next-supermodel&quot;&gt;The Economist on the Nordic Countries&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Astrid Lindgren, the inventor of Pippi Longstocking, was forced to pay more than 100% of her income in taxes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/528.245700-Swedens-102-tax-rate&quot;&gt;Escapist Magazine webforum&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For a few years, Sweden had a 102% tax rate on its highest income bracket. Everyone got so pissed off at the government that they were voted out of power the next election. Any socialists want to defend this nonsense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=304500&quot;&gt;Straight Dope thread&lt;/a&gt; quotes a South African &lt;em&gt;Business Report&lt;/em&gt; magazine that is unfortunately a broken link, but the quote is claimed to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lobbying really started taking off when Astrid Lindgren, author of the world famous Pippi Longstocking books, pointed out that it was ridiculous for her to be paying accumulative tax to the tune of 105 percent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the quotes are really convincing to me. Considering the ludicrosity of the idea of paying more than 100% taxes, I wonder — is this really true? Did anyone in Sweden ever pay more than 100% in income tax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastActivityDate="2018-02-13T20:09:11.697" Title="Did Swedish tax rate ever exceed 100%?" Tags="|history|taxes|sweden|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15236" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-05T02:52:30.603" Score="14" ViewCount="13944" Body="&lt;p&gt;So while our cat was acting &quot;crazy&quot; this evening tearing from room to room and pouncing on on nothing, my wife and I were laughing at its behaviour.  During discussions she mentioned hearing that cats have a chemical in their brains that acts much like LSD.  Sure enough, &lt;a href=&quot;http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=25447&quot;&gt;someone on the Snopes forum asked the same question&lt;/a&gt; (the thread relates other humorous cat stories but no answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, do cats (normally) have any chemicals in their brains that causes them to &quot;hallucinate&quot;? (or cause this rather erratic behaviour)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T16:16:55.150" Title="Do cats have a chemical in their brains that resembles LSD?" Tags="|zoology|behavior|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15238" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-05T05:20:53.217" Score="3" ViewCount="1624" Body="&lt;p&gt;My doctor, and numerous medical students and residents* I know, have told me recently that most doctors, and especially radiologists, are going to be negatively impacted by the Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare, as its assorted provisions go into effect over the next few years. (I have no graduate-level medical training myself.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically, they say that salaries will decrease while hours will increase. They also claim that flexibility will decrease for less tangible things like being able to choose which regions/cities to work in. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've done a bit of searching on the topic, but all I've found are random people shouting unsourced &amp;#8212; and probably more politically motivated than fact-based &amp;#8212; opinions at each other. I also attempted to read the actual law to find out what will happen to things like Medicare reimbursements and costs of X-rays, but I'm not a lawyer and I couldn't get very far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;* Residents are basically doctors at the beginnings of their careers, completing the final stages of training.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3714" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-25T04:25:41.263" LastActivityDate="2013-05-26T09:42:28.390" Title="Will the Affordable Care Act negatively impact radiologists in America?" Tags="|medical-science|united-states|economics|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15241" CreationDate="2013-03-05T10:13:16.677" Score="18" ViewCount="1246" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today, the local newspaper breathlessly reported on an unusual development in Tehran:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TEHRAN has deployed snipers to fight an invasion of hyper-evolved &quot;mutant rats&quot;, which officials say grew freakishly big after being exposed to radiation and chemicals.&#xA;  The cat-sized rats now outnumber humans in the Iranian capital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;City official and university professor Ismail Kahram said the physically changes in the rats would normally have taken &quot;millions of years of evolution&quot;, according to io9.com.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.com.au/world-news/snipers-deployed-in-war-on-mutant-rats/story-fndir2ev-1226590560751&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few elements of this story don't ring true: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that rats have grown to the size of cats (no actual measurements are given)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that the growth is due to &quot;radiation and chemicals&quot;, which is right out of a comic book.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that &quot;hyper-evolved&quot; has any meaning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that using sniper rifles to kill rats is cost-effective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll settle for an answer to the first item. Is Tehran suffering a plague of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Rodents%20of%20Unusual%20Size&quot;&gt;R.O.U.S.&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T20:42:16.670" Title="Is Tehran suffering from a plague of mutant cat-sized rats?" Tags="|evolution|iran|pests|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15239" CreationDate="2013-03-05T11:17:31.023" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rats are probably a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/747275.stm&quot;&gt;long term problem in Tehran&lt;/a&gt;, but reports of their size are probably exaggerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A news source closer to Iran is Dubai based &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/iran-deploys-sniper-teams-in-tehran-to-battle-mutant-rats&quot;&gt;The National&lt;/a&gt; which reports&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ismail Kahram, an environmental adviser to the city council ... said cats are now smaller than some of Tehran's rats, which can weigh up to &lt;strong&gt;5kg&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some versions of this story and in some unrelated reports, Ismail Kahram is described as a professor at Tehran Azad University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia isn't a great source but claims of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_rat&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rattus Norvegicus&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (brown rat)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adult body weight averages &lt;strong&gt;550 g&lt;/strong&gt; (19 oz) in males and about 350 g (12 oz) in females, but a very large individual can reach &lt;strong&gt;900 g&lt;/strong&gt; (32 oz). Rats weighing over 1 kg (2.2 lb) are exceptional, and stories of rats as big as cats are exaggerations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and of &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_rat&quot;&gt;Rattus Rattus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (black rat)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A typical adult black rat is 12.75–18.25 in (32.4–46.4 cm) long, including a 6.5–10 in (17–25 cm) tail, and weighs 4–12 oz (&lt;strong&gt;110–340 g&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;my emphasis&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/accounts/Rattus_norvegicus/&quot;&gt;University of Michigan Museum of Zoology&lt;/a&gt; says &#xA;of &lt;em&gt;Rattus Norvegicus&lt;/em&gt; (brown rats)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On average, these rats reach nearly 400 mm nose-to-tail, and weigh &lt;strong&gt;140 to 500 g&lt;/strong&gt;. Males are usually larger than females.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brown rats (&lt;em&gt;R. norvegicus&lt;/em&gt;) raised in captivity &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ratbehavior.org/maleratweight.htm&quot;&gt;can reach 800g&lt;/a&gt; but it seems unlikely that large numbers of wild rats do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://jmums.mazums.ac.ir/browse.php?a_id=627&amp;amp;sid=1&amp;amp;slc_lang=en&quot;&gt;Investigation of Contamination of Wild Rats (Rattus rattus) from Tehran City to Antibiotic Resistant Enterobacteriaceae in 2009&lt;/a&gt;  says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Background and purpose: Wild rats are considered as an important spreading factor of contamination in urban areas. During recent years, the wild rats were extensively distributed in Tehran&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Materials and methods: Forty wild rats were trapped in the North, South, East, West and Central areas of Tehran and transferred to the laboratory alive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the species prevalent in Tehran is &lt;em&gt;Rattus Rattus&lt;/em&gt; - the black rat, which is normally significantly &lt;strong&gt;smaller&lt;/strong&gt; than the brown rat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Google translation of the Persian language report doesn't reveal any suggestion that the rats were over ten times bigger than &quot;normal&quot; specimens in 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The origin of the story is unclear. It seems a bit circular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Huffington Post &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/04/tehran-rats-iran-giant-mutant-rodents-photo_n_2807145.html&quot;&gt;cites International Business Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;International Business Times &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/437326/20130220/iran-rats-tehran-snipers-mutated.htm&quot;&gt;cites qudsonline.ir&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Qudsonline.ir &lt;a href=&quot;http://qudsonline.ir/NSite/FullStory/News/?Id=108666&quot;&gt;cites Huffingon Post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-03-05T20:42:16.670" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T20:42:16.670" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14707" CreationDate="2013-03-05T14:36:42.037" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ringing after a concert is not a sign of permanent hearing loss, hence the recovery. However repeated exposure to the very high noise levels greatly increases your chances of causing permanent tinnitus and generally dulling your hearing. From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/hearing-problems/Pages/tips-to-protect-hearing.aspx&quot;&gt;NHS guide to protecting hearing&lt;/a&gt; I have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Experts agree that continued exposure to noise at or above 85dB over time can cause hearing loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A loud concert is typically rated at around 120dB, so certainly sufficient to cause damage over time. In general, overloading any sense organ tends to result in desensitisation and hearing is no different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without wanting to be all preachy in what should be a primarily factual answer, having found myself subject to permanent tinnitus as a result of playing music ( exactly the same as the ringing in the ears you get from a loud concert, only it is now constant in my right ear ) I would advocate strongly that anyone who is regularly going to concerts, gigs or clubs or performing amplified music should get hold of some good quality earplugs. Even the most expensive ones are pretty cheap compared with value of working hearing for the rest of your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/pages/noise.aspx&quot;&gt;General overview of noise-related hearing loss.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11795" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T14:36:42.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15243" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-05T15:06:14.103" Score="4" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to be a common belief (i.e. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heartwiseministries.org/10-simple-steps-to-a-healthy-brain/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) that in order for our brain to rest and grow properly, we need to have regular, maintained sleeping regimes. While there seems to be no doubt that sleeping less than usual, or going to sleep on a very different time than usual can throw us off, I am wondering about what happens when you sleep good hours, but constantly shift your sleeping schedule. In particular, are there any permanent developmental issues that can be caused by a gradual, constant shift of sleeping times?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9984/can-jet-lag-give-you-permanent-memory-and-learning-problems&quot;&gt;Can jet lag give you permanent memory and learning problems?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; partly discusses this, except that jet lag would usually involve big, irregular jumps in sleeping schedules, as opposed to say moving your sleeping time one hour forward every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11796" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T15:06:14.103" Title="Can irregular sleeping hours cause developmental issues for the brain?" Tags="|neurology|sleep|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1367" CreationDate="2013-03-05T16:28:07.517" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would recommend the book &quot;Circumcision, and American health fallacy&quot; by Edward Wallerstein, published in 1980. It shows clearly that evidence has always been skewed, misused or misinterpreted to promote circumcision even as the rationale changed. It's a book that explores all the medical evidence used from 1870 to 1980. (1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no such thing as unbiased information about routine infant circumcision. People either promote it or are against it. This is different from medically needed surgeries, even medically needed circumcisions (where it was performed to correct a condition or pathology of the penis).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those who promote infant circumcision are based on interpreting statistics to suggest benefits while dismissing any discussion of the functions and value of the foreskin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those who are against it interpret the statistics as well, but are also based on the discussion of the sexual functions of the foreskin, and also on the ethical value of self-determination. These structures have been documented by John Taylor (1996-1999)(2), and the sexual effects of circumcision have been documented by Sorrells (2007)(3), Frisch (2011)(4), and more recently Bronselaer (2013)(5)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important point is that there are adults today who wish they had not been circumcised in infancy. This has been documented by Tim Hammond since 1999(6). This is important because circumcision is not essential for prevention as vaccines are, but it is an irreversible procedure that removes structures that cannot be re-generated. In absence of absolute medical necessity, the removal of this tissue in infancy constitutes a violation of that right to self-determination, and an injury that cannot be repaired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is important because we don't see patients complaining from life-saving surgeries. The fact that some circumcised men resent that they were subjected to this surgery shows that it shouldn't be someone else's right to alter a person's body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that we look for &quot;medical benefits&quot; to justify perpetrating that injury shows that there is something wrong in the thought process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Circumcision has serious risks and harms. Some of the harm is not the result of a risk, but a normal result of the procedure, as has been documented by the Global Survey of Circumcision Harm (2012) &lt;a href=&quot;http://circumcisionharm.org/&quot;&gt;http://circumcisionharm.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Wallerstein, E. Circumcision, an American health fallacy. Springer series. Published 1980. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0826132413&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Circumcision-American-Health-Fallacy-Springer/dp/0826132413/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1362500156&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=circumcision+an+american+health+fallacy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Taylor, JR. The prepuce: Specialized mucosa of the penis and its loss to circumcision. BJU, Volume 77, Pages 291-295, February 1996.   &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/taylor/&quot;&gt;http://www.cirp.org/library/anatomy/taylor/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Sorrells ML. Fine-touch pressure thresholds in the adult penis. BJU Int. 2007 Apr;99(4):864-9. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17378847&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17378847&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) Frisch M. Male circumcision and sexual function in men and women: a survey-based, cross-sectional study in Denmark. Int J Epidemiol. 2011 Oct;40(5):1367-81. doi: 10.1093/ije/dyr104. Epub 2011 Jun 14. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21672947&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21672947&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(5) Bronselaer GA. Male circumcision decreases penile sensitivity as measured in a large cohort. BJU Int. 2013 Feb 4. doi: 10.1111/j.1464-410X.2012.11761.x. [Epub ahead of print] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23374102?dopt=Abstract&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23374102?dopt=Abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(6) Hammond T. A preliminary poll of men circumcised in infancy or childhood. BJU Int. 1999 Jan;83 Suppl 1:85-92. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10349419&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10349419&lt;/a&gt; Full text &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.noharmm.org/bju.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.noharmm.org/bju.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11798" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T16:28:07.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15235" CreationDate="2013-03-05T17:51:53.307" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;In her essay &lt;a href=&quot;http://expressen.se/noje/pomperipossa-i-monismanien&quot;&gt;&quot;Pomperipossa i Monismanien&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, Astrid Lindgren writes about a marginal tax rate of 102%. She does not claim an effective tax rate &gt;100%, but gets quite close (99.75%) as she describes how only 5,000 kroner are left from a 2,000,000 income. The relevant part of the essay roughly translated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From the first 150,000, you can keep 42,000. The rest, 108,000 goes to&#xA;  the welfare cake. 100% of the rest is 1,850,000 and then the 2% you&#xA;  did not believe existed, that is 37,000, all in all 1,995,000. Left to&#xA;  Pomperipossa ... 5,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no references in her essay to where these numbers come from, but she claims that the 102% comes from adding her income tax to the social fees, which have to be paid by the employer, but due to how these taxes are calculated, it is actually impossible to exceed 100% effective taxation. The employer tax is paid &quot;on top&quot; of the regular income (and not deducted from it) and the income tax is only calculated from the regular income. Let's assume a Swedish employer has an income of 100,000 kroner, the employer tax is 20% and the income tax is 40%. In this fictional case, the employer has to pay 20,000 kroner tax on top of the 100,000 kroner income and the employee has to pay 40,000 in income tax out of the 100,000 kroner income. The employer pays effectively 120,000 for the employee, which is left with 60,000 after paying income tax. The effective tax rate is hence 50% and not 60%, as it might seem by adding 20% employer tax and 40% income tax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-03-06T23:46:23.647" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T23:46:23.647" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3506" CreationDate="2013-03-05T21:18:08.603" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the recent Landtagswahl (state-wide election) in Kärnten, Austria, one vote took the mandate of the city St. Veit an der Glan away from the party &quot;BZÖ&quot; and gave it to the &quot;Grüne&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very ballot paper, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nachrichten.at/nachrichten/politik/innenpolitik/BZOe-Mandatsverlust-in-Kaernten-wegen-nicht-jugendfreier-Karikatur;art385,1077171&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this report&lt;/a&gt;, was counted valid even though the candidate of the Green party was not marked by a cross or a check mark, but by a crudely drawn, not-safe-for-minors sketch referring to a certain part of the male anatomy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9060" LastActivityDate="2013-03-05T21:18:08.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15251" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15260" CreationDate="2013-03-05T22:00:20.623" Score="13" ViewCount="1194" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nicholas Taleb's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Antifragile-Live-World-Dont-Understand/dp/1846141567/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1362520761&amp;amp;sr=1-1&quot;&gt;Antifragile&lt;/a&gt; continues to surprise me with interesting claims made as asides during bigger arguments. The following statement appears late in the book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The great historian Paul Veyne has recently shown that it is a big myth that gladiators were forced labor. &lt;strong&gt;Most were volunteers who wanted the chance to become heroes&lt;/strong&gt; by risking their lives and winning, or, when failing, to show in front of the largest crowd in the world how they were able to die honorably, without cowering—when a gladiator loses the fight the crowd decides whether he should be spared or put to death by the opponent. And spectators did not care for nonvolunteers, as these did not have their soul in the fight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim right? Were the majority of Roman Gladiators volunteers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-03-10T10:13:34.080" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T10:13:34.080" Title="Were most gladiators volunteers?" Tags="|history|ancient-rome|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15252" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-05T22:19:41.517" Score="11" ViewCount="2768" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Lindy effect is the observation that, contrary to the pattern with perishable things like people, the longevity &lt;em&gt;so far&lt;/em&gt; is a good predictor of the &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt; longevity. In other words, technologies that have already survived a long time can be expected to continue to survive for a long time (whereas people who are old are likely to die soon).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taleb argues thus in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/12/worlds-not-ending-but-technologys-aging-backwards/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent Wired article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a perishable human, every year that elapses reduces his life expectancy by a little less than a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The opposite applies to non-perishables like technology and information. If a book has been in print for 40 years, I can expect it to be in print for at least another 40 years. But – and this is the main difference – if it survives another decade, then it will be expected to be in print another 50 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He isn't arguing that this is a perfect rule, just a good statistical estimate (so don't be too quick to provide single examples as answers!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that this is a statistical generalization, is the weight of evidence in favour of the idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T14:52:17.340" Title="Is the Lindy effect well supported by evidence?" Tags="|history|technology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15253" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-05T22:28:48.290" Score="15" ViewCount="1368" Body="&lt;p&gt;Big projects (software, engineering, architecture etc.) are plagued by cost and time overruns, or so it is widely thought. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nicholas Taleb argues in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Antifragile-Live-World-Dont-Understand/dp/1846141567/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1362520761&amp;amp;sr=1-1&quot;&gt;Antifragile&lt;/a&gt; that this is a modern phenomenon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the puzzle was that such underestimation did not seem to exist in the past century or so, though we were dealing with the very same humans, endowed with the same biases. &lt;strong&gt;Many large-scale projects a century and a half ago were completed on time; many of the tall buildings and monuments we see today are not just more elegant than modernistic structures but were completed within, and often ahead of, schedule.&lt;/strong&gt; These include not just the Empire State Building (still standing in New York), but the London Crystal Palace, erected for the Great Exhibition of 1851, the hallmark of the Victorian reign, based on the inventive ideas of a gardener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just because we remember the successful ones are is his generalization right? Did we used to do a better job of delivering big projects on time and on budget?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2021-03-12T13:45:39.553" Title="Did big projects used to get finished on time and on budget?" Tags="|history|engineering|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15252" CreationDate="2013-03-05T23:11:43.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of two major flaws in the Lindy effect concerning the longevity of non-perishable things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have witnessed a rapid (almost exponential) rate for advances and developments in technology and sciences in the last century (or in even in the last 50 years). This prevents us from suggesting any rules concerning what kind of technology or theory will last more.&#xA;(Edit: As a reference to the above claim, one can consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Moore's law&lt;/a&gt;, proposed by Gordon E. Moore one of the co-founders of Intel, which asserts the advancements in electronic,specifically chip, industry is too fast that the number of chips doubles every two years. It is now so acceptable in the industry that experts use his theory for their forward-looking planning. See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vinge's theory about exponentially accelerating changes&lt;/a&gt; for other evidences for the above point.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Lindy effect (and in some extent your question) rely on the assumption that the future can be predicted by the past events. There is certainly no scientific evidence or logical justification for this assumption about general events and consequently for the Lindy effect. Although induction is an accepted logic for scientific theories it is hardly acceptable for predicting future, as a philosopher (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._D._Broad&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;C. D. Broad&lt;/a&gt;) says &quot;induction is the glory of science and the scandal of philosophy&quot;, see also the page &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Problem of Induction in wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11212" LastEditorDisplayName="user11212" LastEditDate="2013-03-06T11:38:14.137" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T11:38:14.137" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15253" CreationDate="2013-03-06T09:29:09.897" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fact almost all projects will fail to meet some of the criteria they originally started with. Sometimes they don't make it on time or others fall short on budget. That is the idea most engineers have, and many times they do plan knowing that at some point they won't be able to deliver what was originally intended. Now the reason that they do fail is due to unrealistic expectations from the executive management, or in general people who make the calls without actually having any expertise on the subject, unrealistic planing (sometimes due to pressure), human errors (accidents etc), and a a rather huge reason according to myself is the lack of proper communication (the requirements are not stated clearly so we end up with many time consuming errors). In fact only a third of all projects were successfully completed on time and on budget over the past year according to CHAOS. Please read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umsl.edu/~sauterv/analysis/6840_f03_papers/frese/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; for a better analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also have a look at some notable project failures &lt;a href=&quot;http://lessons-from-history.com/node/89&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuing on you question on if things are getting worst or not we can safely assume that in fact project success rates are rising rather than falling, according to surveys at least (Have a look &lt;a href=&quot;http://lessons-from-history.com/node/21/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). Personally i do believe this is the case if we exclude IT project. All the factors stated before do apply here as well, and there are just so many project with unrealistic expectations that are deemed to fail in some way (Have a look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cio.com/article/495306/Recession_Causes_Rising_IT_Project_Failure_Rates_&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article too). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarizing i have to say that project failure rates were dropping over the period from 1994 until 2011, with a high rise last year. Have a look at the tables below for more info.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Standish Findings By Year. Updated for 2009 report.&#xA;&#xA;(Project outcome)   1994    1996    1998    2000    2002    2004    2009&#xA;&#xA;Succeeded           16%     27%     26%     28%     34%     29%     32%&#xA;&#xA;Challenged          53%     33%     46%     49%     51%     53%     44%&#xA;&#xA;Failed              31%     40%     28%     23%     15%     18%     24% &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IT Project Success Factors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. User Involvement    (15.9%)&#xA;&#xA;2. Executive Management Support    (13.9%)&#xA;&#xA;3. Clear Statement of Requirements    (13.0%)&#xA;&#xA;4. Proper Planning    (9.6%)&#xA;&#xA;5. Realistic Expectations    (8.2%)&#xA;&#xA;6. Smaller Project Milestones    (7.7%)&#xA;&#xA;7. Competent Staff    (7.2%)&#xA;&#xA;8. Ownership    (5.3%)&#xA;&#xA;9. Clear Vision &amp;amp; Objectives    (2.9%)&#xA;&#xA;10. Hard-Working, Focused Staff    (2.4%)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Challenged Factors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Lack of User Input    (12.8%)&#xA;&#xA;2. Incomplete Requirements &amp;amp; Specifications    (12.3%)&#xA;&#xA;3. Changing Requirements &amp;amp; Specifications    (11.8%)&#xA;&#xA;4. Lack of Executive Support    (7.5%)&#xA;&#xA;5. Technology Incompetence    (7.0%)&#xA;&#xA;6. Lack of Resources    (6.4%)&#xA;&#xA;7. Unrealistic Expectations    (5.9%)&#xA;&#xA;8. Unclear Objectives    (5.3%)&#xA;&#xA;9. Unrealistic Time Frames    (4.3%)&#xA;&#xA;10. New Technology    (3.7%)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Project Impaired Factors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1. Incomplete Requirements    (13.1%)&#xA;&#xA;2. Lack of User Involvement    (12.4%)&#xA;&#xA;3. Lack of Resources    (10.6%)&#xA;&#xA;4. Unrealistic Expectations    (9.9%)&#xA;&#xA;5. Lack of Executive Support    (9.3%)&#xA;&#xA;6. Changing Requirements &amp;amp; Specifications    (8.7%)&#xA;&#xA;7. Lack of Planning    (8.1%)&#xA;&#xA;8. Didn't Need It Any Longer    (7.5%)&#xA;&#xA;9. Lack of IT Management    (6.2%)&#xA;&#xA;10. Technology Illiteracy    (4.3%)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kinzz.com/resources/articles/91-project-failures-rise-study-shows?start=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11816" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T09:29:09.897" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15252" CreationDate="2013-03-06T12:19:05.717" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a model or approximation: which can be applied, more or less usefully, to some (a subset of) things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's supported by, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn-in&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn-in&lt;/a&gt; means that an older/tested component, when it passes its short burn-in period, then has a longer subsequent life expectancy than a young/untested component which has not.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve&lt;/a&gt; suggests that the effect would be  applicable to components which &quot;don't wear out&quot; ... or for which, the magnitude of the &quot;wear out failures&quot; is insignificant compared to the magnitude of the &quot;infant mortality&quot; failures.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read his book (Black Swan) but from the article you cited Mr. Taleb isn't even talking about &quot;things&quot;, necessarily: for example it's about software, which doesn't &quot;wear out&quot; in a conventional way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T12:19:05.717" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15251" CreationDate="2013-03-06T14:13:43.953" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the time frame involved, and it is generally accepted that initially most of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator&quot;&gt;gladiators&lt;/a&gt; that competed were slaves by virtue of being &lt;a href=&quot;http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/gladiators/gladiators.html&quot;&gt;prisoners of war, criminals, or slaves bought for the proposes of being sent a gladiatorial school&lt;/a&gt;. However, it is estimated that by the end of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Republic&quot;&gt;Republic&lt;/a&gt; that about half of the gladiators were free men that volunteered, primary for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/romans/gladiators_01.shtml&quot;&gt;money&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/empires/romans/empire/gladiators.html&quot;&gt;glory&lt;/a&gt; involved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, while the claim might not be entirely accurate, it is possible that at some point there were more volunteers than not; however, over the the history of the gladiatorial games, the volunteers were in the minority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T14:13:43.953" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15263" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15264" CreationDate="2013-03-06T21:05:11.667" Score="8" ViewCount="1785" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM&amp;amp;feature=player_embedded&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;viral video&lt;/a&gt; going around about the wealth inequality in the US. It claims the US has $54 trillion. It &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cites&lt;/a&gt; economists from Harvard Business school, but I didn't see where that particular number came from. As I understand is there are a &lt;a href=&quot;http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=m0,-m1,-m2,-m3,-m4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;number of ways&lt;/a&gt; to measure money, and I can't find which measurement the video is using. Through my internet search of unreliable data (I couldn't find much besides Yahoo answers :/) I didn't see any numbers that were nearly as high as the ones he posits. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moneyhowmuch.com/2011/10/how-much-money-is-in-world.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The highest I saw&lt;/a&gt; said the combined GDP of the &lt;em&gt;world&lt;/em&gt; converted to US dollars is $58 trillion. [&lt;em&gt;EDIT: The other sites I looked at measured the wealth using M3, but their numbers were much lower. The site I linked to said GDP was a different measure of wealth albeit a poor one.&lt;/em&gt;] That leaves $4 trillion for the rest of the world. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_GDP_%28nominal%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;No one seems to have told Europe&lt;/a&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a measurement of money supply available that backs this video's claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11823" LastEditorUserId="11823" LastEditDate="2013-03-08T03:35:47.053" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T03:35:47.053" Title="Does the US have $54 trillion?" Tags="|united-states|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15263" CreationDate="2013-03-06T21:21:42.063" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wealth and GDP are not the same thing. So comparing the two is not going to produce useful results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10574/would-the-united-states-lose-its-title-as-the-richest-country-if-we-exclude-top&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; gives some estimates for wealth of various nations in 2010. As you see, the &lt;strong&gt;US owns about $58 trillion&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. the combined wealth of all its citizens and corporations, not just the government). By the same estimate &lt;strong&gt;world wealth is about $200 trillion&lt;/strong&gt;, so you will see there is plenty left over for the rest of the world (kind of - the US still owns a huge fraction of world wealth relative to its population).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to compare GDP, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US GDP is about $15 trillion out of a world GDP of about $70 trillion&lt;/a&gt; (this being nominal GDP, which generally needs to be adjusted in some way to be useful). So still enough left over for the rest of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2013-03-06T21:21:42.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15266" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20773" CreationDate="2013-03-07T00:41:02.840" Score="1" ViewCount="338" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The prestigious Mayo Clinic resulted from the results of hypnotic anesthesia trance. A nurse named “Alice Magaw” was the nurse-anesthetist who assisted at all of the Mayo Brothers surgical procedures.  At the time, the death rate from incorrect dosing of chemical anesthetics was higher than the death rate from the basic surgery. [...] However, after over 14,000 successful operations in which there was not one death from the hypnotic anesthetic, the Mayo Clinic had established itself as the safest hospital in America and possibly in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://phoenixtransformational.wordpress.com/2011/01/25/a-little-history-regarding-dave-elman-medical-hypnosis/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Phoenix Healing Blog&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an accurate recounting of the history of hypnosis use in the Mayo clinic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-31T04:18:53.980" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T04:18:53.980" Title="Was the Mayo clinic one of the safest due to hypnotic anaesthesia in its early days?" Tags="|medical-science|pain|hypnotism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13798" CreationDate="2013-03-07T05:59:06.710" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getcited.org/pub/101646962&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;widely-cited study on the English lexicon&lt;/a&gt;, close to 60% of English words are of French or Latin origin. At the very least, a knowledge of Latin would increase your comprehension of the English language, particularly when it comes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.classics.uiuc.edu/programs/latin/why/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;words that are longer than two syllables&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The National Committee for Latin and Greek maintains that students who study Latin in high school do &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.promotelatin.org/why-latin-and-greek/facts-figures-resources&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;significantly better on their SAT scores&lt;/a&gt;, especially in the areas of reading and composition. (However, that could also be because Latin is not usually taught in your average public high school.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, bilingualism of any sort has all kinds of beneficial cognitive effects. A good summary of the critical literature on that topic &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=39638#_ENREF_4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2013-03-07T13:49:22.353" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T13:49:22.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5642" CreationDate="2013-03-07T07:04:26.197" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://intelreport.mandiant.com/Mandiant_APT1_Report.pdf&quot;&gt;report released in February 2013 by Mandiant&lt;/a&gt; (an American cyber security firm) states that in a previous report investigating computer security breaches at hundreds of organizations around the world, the company's position was that “The Chinese government may authorize this activity, but there’s no way to determine the  extent of its involvement.” It continues to say that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now, three years later, we have the evidence required to change our assessment. The details we have analyzed during hundreds of investigations convince us that the groups conducting these activities are based primarily in China and that the Chinese Government is aware of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In analyzing the activities of APT1, &quot;a single organization of operators that has conducted a cyber espionage campaign against a broad range of victims&quot; and &quot;one of the most prolific cyber espionage groups in terms of the sheer quantity of information stolen,&quot; Mandiant posits that &quot;that APT1 is &lt;strong&gt;likely government-sponsored&lt;/strong&gt; and one of the most persistent of China’s cyber threat actors.&quot; In their opinion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;APT1 is able to wage such a long-running and extensive cyber espionage campaign in large part &lt;strong&gt;because it receives direct government support&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The report finally implicates People’s Liberation Army (PLA’s) Unit 61398&lt;/strong&gt;, as the likely organization behind APT1, &quot;located in precisely the same area from which APT1 activity appears to originate.&quot; In making that connection their research finds that &quot;People’s Liberation Army (PLA’s) Unit 61398 is similar to APT1 in its mission, capabilities, and resources.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report concludes to say that the only possible but unlikely alternative explanation to government involvement would be to imagine a large secret organization of Chinese hackers &quot;with direct access to Shanghai-based telecommunications infrastructure&quot; able to engage &quot;in a multi-year, enterprise scale computer espionage campaign,&quot; in the immediate vicinity Army Unit 61398, &quot;performing tasks similar to Unit 61398’s known mission,&quot; and that in a country which strictly regulates internet usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2013-03-07T13:46:04.027" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T13:46:04.027" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13551" CreationDate="2013-03-07T07:18:32.347" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Oxford English Dictionary elaborates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Etymology: German Nazi (c1920), shortened &lt;em&gt;Nationalsozialist&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Nationalsozialistisch&lt;/em&gt; (see National Socialist adj. and n.). Compare French &lt;em&gt;Nazi&lt;/em&gt; (1930).&#xA;  The spelling with z probably arose by analogy with &lt;em&gt;Sozi&lt;/em&gt; (shortened &lt;em&gt;Sozialist&lt;/em&gt; socialist n. and adj.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The term was originally used by opponents of the National Socialist German Workers' Party and may have been influenced by Bavarian &lt;em&gt;Nazi&lt;/em&gt;, a familiar form of the proper name Ignatius and used to refer to or characterize an awkward or clumsy person. The German form &lt;em&gt;Inter-Nazi&lt;/em&gt; (shortened &lt;em&gt;Internationale&lt;/em&gt; n.) which is attested much earlier may also have contributed to the adoption of the term Nazi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T07:18:32.347" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15276" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-07T13:49:01.870" Score="1" ViewCount="586" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did you know that plain and simple, over-masturbation will lead to&#xA;  sexual under performance by way of premature ejaculation, as well as&#xA;  other sexual problems. “Over-production of sex hormones”  Normally,&#xA;  masturbation is a healthy sexual behavior. But like other behaviors,&#xA;  when over practiced it (maximum 2 times a week) can lead to both&#xA;  psychological and physiological imbalances. Frequent masturbation and&#xA;  ejaculation will stimulate the acetylcholine/parasympathetic nervous&#xA;  functions. Excessive masturbation and ejaculation can, and often times&#xA;  will, result in over-production of sex hormones and neurotransmitters&#xA;  such as acetylcholine, dopamine and serotonin. An unnatural abundance&#xA;  of these hormones and neurotransmitters can cause the brain and&#xA;  adrenal glands to perform excessive&#xA;  dopamine-norepinephrine-epinephrine conversion, in turn, making the&#xA;  brain and bodily functions perform at an extreme level. In other&#xA;  words, there is a huge change in body chemistry when one masturbates&#xA;  excessively.&lt;a href=&quot;http://abchomeopathy.com/forum2.php/48321/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abchomeopathy.com/forum2.php/48321/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Article about risks of masturbating from ABC Homeopathy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10452" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-10-26T14:10:35.770" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T14:10:35.770" Title="Does masturbating everynight cause problems in the future?" Tags="|medical-science|sexuality|healthcare|masturbation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-03-14T13:24:44.603" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15278" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15281" CreationDate="2013-03-07T14:26:52.833" Score="7" ViewCount="5463" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this now numerious times, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Analysts say Leftist leader had &lt;strong&gt;'amassed private fortune of $2 billion'&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dailymail.co.uk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, that's a pretty sly way to say that &lt;em&gt;&quot;someone said&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. But, is it true,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;According to Jerry Brewer, president of Criminal Justice International Associates (CJIA), Hugo Chavez’s net worth might have been bolstered by absconding money from the people of Venezuela: &lt;strong&gt;“The personal fortune of the Castro brothers has been estimated at a combined value of around $2 billion. The Chávez Frías family in Venezuela has amassed a fortune of a similar scale since the arrival of Chávez&lt;/strong&gt; to the presidency in 1999 We believe that organized bolivarian criminal groups within the Chávez administration have subtracted around $100 billion out of the nearly $1 trillion in oil income made by PDVSA since 1999.”&quot;&lt;/em&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inquisitr.com/558917/hugo-chavez-dead-net-worth-2-billion-venezuela-dictator/#uP22SEkl2HUwsQjH.99&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Inquisitr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the CJIA reliable, or a partisan think tank? How did they come to this guess?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-03-17T01:09:38.643" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T11:41:51.273" Title="Did Hugo Chávez have a net worth of 2 billion dollars at the time of his death?" Tags="|politics|criminology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15280" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-07T16:37:51.503" Score="7" ViewCount="571" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daveelmaninduction.com/NGH_Notes.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Colonel H.L. Elman (Dave's son):&lt;/a&gt; Among my father's many accomplishments,  one that I treasure is the story of the man who was too weak for ANY of the many kinds of anesthesia drugs available in the 1950's.  This man required open heart surgery immediately.  His surgeon and his anesthesiologist conferred.  At least one,  perhaps both,  was a student of Dad's.  They called to say their only course would be to use hypnosis,  but could Dad come into the operating room as their 'coach?'   He did,  and it was the start of a large number of similar cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did that open heart surgery without conventional anesthetics happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T17:14:04.823" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T17:14:04.823" Title="Did Dave Elman contribute to an open heart surgery with hypnosis as the only anesthetic?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|hypnotism|pain|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15278" CreationDate="2013-03-07T17:28:43.727" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to be that this claim originated from Criminal Justice International Associates (CJIA). They seem to have one person affiliated with their organization, the same person cited in the source, &amp;quot;Jerry Brewer&amp;quot;. In the comments to the question, someone found their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cjiausa.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;. On it was a phone number which &lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/a/cjiausa.info/criminal-justice-international-associates/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;helped me find this site which they had made with Google&lt;/a&gt;. CJIA refers to itself as a &lt;em&gt;A Global Threat Mitigation Firm&lt;/em&gt;, which seems vague and Stratfor-ish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linked on CJIA's Google Site, I was able to find Brewer's bio. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lunchinars.ca/author/jerry-brewer/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jerry Brewer however does claim a lot of experience&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Brewer is a U.S. Government-trained counterterrorism specialist and senior trainer, with extensive operational activity in Latin America and the Middle East as an intelligence community operative. Fluency in Spanish (Castilian).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has over thirty years of professional managerial and leadership experience in the field of Criminal Justice; fifteen (15) years as Chief of Police (3 states)- U.S. Congressional and State Senate and House, honors for: “…bravery and salient actions; quick and unflinching response, and exemplary citizenship he has manifested in going above and beyond the call of duty to assure the safety of others.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He works as an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lawyerfindonline.com/fe_expert.php?sid=25843&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;expert witness&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;complex law enforcement operational issues including death/homicide,&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; needless to say at this point it seemed like making a claim about the wealth of the president of a foreign nation is out of his paygrade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also on his Google Site was &lt;a href=&quot;http://cjiausa.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a link to his WordPress blog&lt;/a&gt;. On that blog, you can find &lt;a href=&quot;http://cjiausa.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/73935696-hugo-chavezc3a2e282ace284a2s-abuse-of-power-and-corruption.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brewer's paper authored in November 27, 2011 about Chávez entitled &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Hugo Chavez's Abuse of Power and Corruption&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Venezuela#2012_Presidential_election&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Writing about the 2012 Venezuela elections, he said,&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A freedom loving Venezuelan populace is determined to take back their country in the 2012 elections and restore a “true democracy.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, that's untrue. In the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Venezuela#2012_Presidential_election&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2012 Venezuela elections&lt;/a&gt;, Chávez won with an 11% margin. That's an electoral landslide. Aside from being disconnected from facts, Brewer's bias is abundantly apparent in the document,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a devout &lt;strong&gt;worshipper&lt;/strong&gt; and follower of his hero and mentor Fidel Castro, he took up the banner of Cuba's failed &lt;strong&gt;revolution of atrocities, human rights abuses, and Cuba‟s shameful misery&lt;/strong&gt;; and essentially claimed the dubious honor of leading the blind- through corruptive influences, hidden motives and opportunities, and much impunity of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alas though the 2011 PDF isn't the only one authored by CJIA on Venezeula, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/128924770/The-Death-of-Hugo-Chavez-Surrounded-in-Veil-of-Concealment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brewer published the four page &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;The Death of Hugo Chavez Surrounded in Veil of Concealment&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; on March 6, 2013&lt;/a&gt;. In it, the only mention of any estate of Chávez is assumed from this,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Little was done to curb Venezuela’s safety from homicides and related violent crime that are setting world records. Gifts and significant discounts of oil to Cuba and others, severely crippled the Venezuelan economy with essentially no paper or record of this massively squandered Venezuelan oil revenue. He consistently refused to explain how such an oil-rich country had fallen financially and failed the people. The squandering and unaccountability of Venezuela's vast oil revenues remains a mystery to the Venezuelan populace.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no further mention in even this most recent document of Chávez's wealth. It is worth explicitly mentioning that it's pretty naive and shortsighted to say that an oil subsidy to Cuba resulted in a severe crippling of the Venezuela's economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brewer seems to be eccentric character that doesn't like citing his facts. It seems consistent with his character and anti-Chávez positions to make such a statement, and also consistent not to cite that statement. I wouldn't put any weight in Brewer's authority and the statement is otherwise unsubstantiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd like to read some other not-so-interesting articles written by Brewer you can check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/jbrewer31&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brewer's Scribd page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-07T20:55:46.437" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15282" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-07T17:59:57.487" Score="15" ViewCount="666" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard many times that someone's &quot;slow metabolism&quot; is responsible for their obesity. Many times I've also heard that it &lt;em&gt;isn't&lt;/em&gt; to blame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example of a source claiming that slow metabolism isn't to blame:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to be overweight because of a slow metabolism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Answer&#xA;  from Donald Hensrud, M.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Probably not. There is such a thing as a slow metabolism. But slow metabolism is rare, and it's usually not what's behind being overweight or obese — that's usually a matter of diet and exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/slow-metabolism/AN00618&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10975" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-07T22:46:20.037" LastActivityDate="2017-03-21T16:03:43.343" Title="Are slow metabolisms to blame for obesity?" Tags="|weight-loss|healthcare|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15285" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-07T21:33:12.723" Score="6" ViewCount="1029" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Japanese Scientific Research, full ripe banana with dark patches on yellow skin produces a substance called TNF (Tumor Necrosis Factor) which has the ability to combat abnormal cells. The more darker patches it has the higher will be its immunity enhancement quality; Hence, the riper the banana the better the anti-cancer quality. Yellow skin banana with dark spots on it is 8x more effective in enhancing the property of white blood cells than green skin version.&#xA;  Eating 1-2 banana/s a day increases immunity.&#xA;  Please pass/share and stay healthy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hoax or Fact:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fact.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hoaxorfact.com/Health/full-ripe-banana-with-dark-patches-combats-abnormal-cells-and-cancer.html&quot;&gt;Hoax or Fact&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While many Internet sites state that it is a myth, it is weird to see some hoax-slaying websites supporting it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How true is the article? Does Tumor Necrosis Factor(TNF-α) really matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11837" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-07T22:23:03.000" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T12:22:31.060" Title="Do ripe bananas combat abnormal cells and cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|fruit|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15289" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15290" CreationDate="2013-03-08T08:59:37.907" Score="6" ViewCount="1148" Body="&lt;p&gt;From an upvoted &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14101/are-all-the-citizens-of-uae-very-rich#comment51274_14101&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Size of an apartment isn't very good measure of how rich some is.&#xA;  Let's say a house that would make you filthy rich in Tokyo might be&#xA;  considered tiny rathole in Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It's comparing a capital city against a country, which isn't a fair comparison)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the same size, and for for a vaguely comparable city population (comparing Tokyo against Sydney, rather than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Out%20the%20back%20of%20Bourke&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bourke&lt;/a&gt;), is residential real estate in Australia significantly cheaper than real estate in Japan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasons why I'm skeptical about this claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People have stereotypes about asian people living in very crowded conditions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People have a stereotype about the &quot;real Australia&quot; being the outback, even though Australia is a very urbanized country. By contrast, people's stereotypes about Japan usually feature metropolises such as Tokyo.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People have a stereotype about prices in general in Japan being very high, probably based on reports about Japan during the bubble economy. Including the oft-cited claim that the land under the Imperial Palace had an estimated value greater than all the real estate in California.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My experience with real estate in Sydney! (That, and the experience of a Japanese person also living in Sydney, who mentioned that she'd also heard westerners claim that Japan real estate is very expensive)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another examples of people claiming Japan real estate prices are expensive: &lt;a href=&quot;http://japanpropertycentral.com/real-estate-faq/popular-myths-about-japanese-real-estate/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T06:48:42.087" Title="For the same size, is real estate cheaper in Australia than Japan?" Tags="|economics|japan|australia|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15289" CreationDate="2013-03-08T09:36:26.443" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the city, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Australia&amp;amp;country2=Japan&amp;amp;city1=Adelaide&amp;amp;city2=Tokyo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Numbeo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Price per Square Meter to Buy Apartment (8th March 2013)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                      Adelaide        Tokyo            Difference&#xA; in City Centre       3,200.00 A$     6,154.31 A$       +92.32 %&#xA; Outside of Centre    3,000.00 A$     7,180.02 A$      +139.33 %&#xA; Contributors               70              86    &#xA; (past 18 months) &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends which cities you pick, here's the two capital cities (8th March 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                      Canberra        Tokyo&#xA; City Centre          6,000.00 A$     6,154.31 A$       +2.57 %&#xA; Outside of Centre    4,500.00 A$     7,180.02 A$      +59.56 %&#xA; Contributors               69              86    &#xA; (past 18 months)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly is Sydney which is largest city in Australia (4th June 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                     Sydney           Tokyo&#xA; City Centre         10,000.00 A$     6,179.78 A$      -38.20 % &#xA; Outside of Centre    6,000.00 A$     5,149.82 A$      -14.17 %&#xA; Contributors              306              98&#xA; (past 18 months)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;em&gt;Global property guide&lt;/em&gt; for &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Pacific/Australia/Country-Statistics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Australia&lt;/a&gt; and &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Asia/Japan/Country-Statistics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Japan&lt;/a&gt; (8th Mars 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                          Australia   Japan&#xA; Square Metre Prices      $8,717      $15,122&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-06-04T06:48:42.087" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T06:48:42.087" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15289" CreationDate="2013-03-08T11:20:50.193" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While &lt;em&gt;&quot;For the same size, is real estate cheaper in Australia than Japan?&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is valid question which has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/15290/3790&quot;&gt;pretty much answered&lt;/a&gt;, I don't quite agree that it's what the comment was about. I was about sizes of houses. So how do these compare?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_in_Japan#Housing_statistics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Housing and Land Survey conducted in 2003 by Japanese the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications&lt;/a&gt; concluded that the average total floor area in was &lt;strong&gt;94.85m²&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/1301.0Feature%20Article262005?opendocument&amp;amp;tabname=Summary&amp;amp;prodno=1301.0&amp;amp;issue=2005&amp;amp;num=&amp;amp;view=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to Australian Bureau of Statistics&lt;/a&gt; average total floor area of a new residence in years 2002-2003 in Australia has &lt;strong&gt;205.7m²&lt;/strong&gt; (227.6 m for houses). Of course that's just new buildings. So to make comparison fair, lets also take look at averages from 20 years ago &amp;mdash; it was &lt;strong&gt;149.7m²&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/business/property/australian-homes-still-the-worlds-biggest-20110822-1j5ev.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Australian homes still the world's biggest&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; in The Sydney Morning Herald.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T11:20:50.193" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15293" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-08T13:37:48.423" Score="22" ViewCount="7291" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adam Carolla, from the popular radio show Loveline, and in the Guiness Records for the most downloaded podcast of all time &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtube.com/#/watch?v=gBjIXCKtIxk&quot;&gt;made the following claim&lt;/a&gt; (1 min mark):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;rape is not a sexual crime, you understand. Its a violent crime, where you come at the end.&lt;/strong&gt; But not sexual. It's brutally violent, but you orgasm. Often times on the victim and let me say this too. And don't laugh, lets just say Drew was going out to his car tonight. I came leaping out of the bushes, came and then beat the crap out of him. It is no ... violent, violent, not sexual. But you ejaculate. But, not sexual. Like many other things where you ejaculate that are not sexual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He continues &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=Yi4SRnHcVDw&quot;&gt;to make this claim&lt;/a&gt;, which may have come from the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Our_Will%3a_Men,_Women,_and_Rape&quot;&gt;Against Our Will&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The book, which is widely credited with changing public outlooks and attitudes about rape, promoted the concept that rape was not the victim's fault. Brownmiller described rape as &quot;a conscious process of intimidation by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.&quot; In short, Brownmiller asserts that &quot;&lt;strong&gt;rape is a crime not of lust, but of violence and power.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is widely repeated, on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aftersilence.org/date-rape.php&quot;&gt;different&lt;/a&gt; rape support groups, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncjrs.gov/ovc_archives/reports/clergy/rape.htm&quot;&gt;advocacy groups&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Rape Myths] &lt;strong&gt;Rape is a crime of passion.&lt;/strong&gt; - The notion that the rapist is controlled by overwhelming lust is far removed from the reality. Psychologists have found that the motivation behind sexual assault is most often the need to dominate and control, rather than the inability to control sexual urges. &lt;strong&gt;Rape is primarily an act of power and aggression, with the sexual aspects taking secondary role.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What percentage of rapists say their primary motivation was sexual release?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; This question is not about statutory rape. It is about forced sexual intercourse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T13:58:18.173" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T13:26:24.543" Title="Is rape a crime about violence and power, or a crime of passion?" Tags="|psychology|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13798" CreationDate="2013-03-08T16:25:39.637" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Latin defininitely improves English vocabulary.  The higher SAT scores on the verbal part of the test can be explained by that fact&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11849" LastActivityDate="2013-03-08T16:25:39.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15298" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15306" CreationDate="2013-03-08T21:34:35.833" Score="15" ViewCount="1789" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4922607541846&amp;amp;set=a.1179512966821.2027844.1198055355&amp;amp;type=1&quot;&gt;a post&lt;/a&gt; going around on Facebook containing a list of &quot;facts&quot; about Walmart. Two of them seem like very large claims: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wal-Mart employs 1.6 million people, is the world's largest private&#xA;employer, and most speak English.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wal-Mart is the largest company in the history of the world.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are either of those two claims true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update addressing the questions in the comments&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For employment let's assume this does not include any military, or non profits. My thoughts around this are 1) Militaries are more of a branch of government and not really &quot;private&quot;, and for non-profits, where do you draw the line on employment? Are members considered employees? Only those who receive paychecks? So for simplicity, let's stick to corporations where employees are considered to be people paid for their services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not 100% sure what measurement to use for largest company, but I think revenue can be a good starting point. If you feel there is a better one feel free to comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user6204" LastEditorDisplayName="user6204" LastEditDate="2013-03-09T06:53:10.573" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T23:41:09.923" Title="Is Walmart the largest company in history?" Tags="|united-states|economics|employment|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15278" CreationDate="2013-03-09T04:16:43.667" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;When researching I found this :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://m.newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2013/03/06/ap-sanitizes-joseph-kennedy-iis-quote-chavezs-death-avoids-noting-dictat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;News Busters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Criminal Justice International Associates (CJIA), a risk assessment and global analysis firm in Miami, estimated in a recent report that the Chávez Frías family in Venezuela has “amassed a fortune” similar to that of the Castro brothers in Cuba.&#xA;  According to Jerry Brewer, president of CJIA, “the personal fortune of the Castro brothers has been estimated at a combined value of around $2 billion.”&lt;a href=&quot;http://m.newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2013/03/06/ap-sanitizes-joseph-kennedy-iis-quote-chavezs-death-avoids-noting-dictat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which cites as 'corroborating non-numeral evidence':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16727303&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NPR&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During his eight years in office, Chavez's family members have managed to increase their personal power and wealth.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16727303&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/world/americas/21venez.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Politicians once loyal to the president who have broken with him and his family here contend that Mr. Chávez’s family has amassed wealth and landholdings through a series of deals carried out by front men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11854" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-01T11:41:51.273" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T11:41:51.273" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15298" CreationDate="2013-03-09T05:00:42.533" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; provides several  lists from different sources about the corporations with the largest number of employees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/09/employment?fsrc=scn/tw/te/dc/defending&quot;&gt;The Economist (2010)&lt;/a&gt; put Walmart after only the US and Chinese armies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17429786&quot;&gt;BBC (2012)&lt;/a&gt; agreed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2012/performers/companies/biggest/&quot;&gt;Fortune (2012)&lt;/a&gt; excludes non-corporate employers, and has Walmart first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So these three sources agree that Walmart is the current largest corporate employer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their estimates vary between 2.1 and 2.2 million employees, higher than the Facebook claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-10T23:41:09.923" LastActivityDate="2013-03-10T23:41:09.923" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15298" CreationDate="2013-03-09T16:43:54.520" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Walmart's website states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With fiscal year 2013 sales of approximately $466 billion, Walmart employs &lt;strong&gt;2.2 million &lt;em&gt;associates&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; worldwide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that associates means employees, they're comfortably ahead of the rest of the world's private employers as per &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers&quot;&gt;this Wikipedia table&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the claim that it is the largest company ever in history, it might well be true in terms of the above statistic for private employers. But it certainly is not true even &lt;em&gt;right now&lt;/em&gt; in terms of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue&quot;&gt;revenue&lt;/a&gt; (where a couple of oil companies trump it by a relatively narrow margin) or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_capitalization&quot;&gt;market capitalisation&lt;/a&gt; (where it lags well behind Apple, for one). In terms of all of history, the pole position is apparently held by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company&quot;&gt;Dutch East India Company&lt;/a&gt; which &lt;a href=&quot;http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/photos/most-valuable-companies-ever-adjusted-for-inflation-1351801906-slideshow/most-valuable-companies-in-history-adjusted-for-inflation-photo--1113431046.html&quot;&gt;when adjusted for inflation&lt;/a&gt; would now be worth something in the range of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/08/22/a-history-of-ridiculously-big-companies.aspx&quot;&gt;USD 7.4 &lt;em&gt;Trillion&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastActivityDate="2013-03-09T16:43:54.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10625" CreationDate="2013-03-10T15:21:08.520" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dolphins don't rape humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Raping a human requires the dolphin to be able to physically subdue a human and &lt;strong&gt;taking off the human's clothes&lt;/strong&gt; the lack of opposable thumbs and hands really make it hard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can, however, &quot;hump&quot; a human and conduct in a way that if was made by another human being would constitute sexual harassment and molestation. Here are two videos as an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A dolphin with an erection shoving its snout to a woman's crouch:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvpJdNiqZJc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvpJdNiqZJc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A dolphin dry humping a visitor in a water park:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGB8_bWkOA8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGB8_bWkOA8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the claims about dolphins raping humans, seem to be from &lt;a href=&quot;http://emtoast.com/?p=1925&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this source&lt;/a&gt; which includes as its sources this picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MxKYZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;dolphin rape&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is obviously a very bad Photoshop. They also mention Scott Randleston of the Dolphin Research Institute of Boca Raton as a source, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dolphins.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the website for the institute&lt;/a&gt; doesn't mention Scott Randleston, and searching for his name just brings up this claim repeating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This behavior is not limited only to humans, or even living creatures, as mentioned In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aquaticmammalsjournal.org/share/AquaticMammalsIssueArchives/1985/Aquatic_Mammals_11_2/Sylvestre.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; by Jean-Pierre Sylvestre:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's noted in Pilleri et al. (1980) when 3 toninas were kept at Duisburg Zoo in 1978 that the adult male 'Vater' once tried to rub its erect penis against a large brush lying on the tank floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2020-03-17T17:12:13.393" LastActivityDate="2020-03-17T17:12:13.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15314" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15329" CreationDate="2013-03-10T21:20:14.977" Score="4" ViewCount="1889" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to know if there is any research on the issue Daniel Vitalis raises on bottling water &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lMs7iuY704&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (5th minute and on). He claims that if one drinks water bottled in plastic bottles one will eventually have plastic in his blood. Another claim is that the superior way to transport your water is in a glass bottle ideally sealed with cork. Why cork?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the same note, I've been told to sprout my seeds in a glass container. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All those may be true but with no further explanation, they are but empty claims. Could what he says about plastic bottles hold for glass bottles as well? Is it true for any clean, non-rusty bottle material? I wondered if anyone wants to address the issue, even if they wouldn't cite their sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p.s. Daniel Vitalis is a health food guru, specifically a water expert. He started the website &quot;find a spring,&quot; and has countless of videos on water. He looks like no sort of a credible expert to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11711" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-12T09:01:07.963" LastActivityDate="2013-03-12T09:01:07.963" Title="Does drinking water from plastic bottles contaminate your blood?" Tags="|chemistry|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2013-03-12T10:23:06.617" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12328" CreationDate="2013-03-10T21:56:39.197" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is little hard evidence for planetary tipping points and plenty of reasons they are unlikely to exist&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a good summary of the case against tipping points in a recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21729070.200-time-to-forget-global-tipping-points.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New Scientist&lt;/a&gt; (by the author of a more technical paper on the topic available &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Erle_Ellis/publication/259043819_Does_the_terrestrial_biosphere_have_planetary_tipping_points/links/54cbcb6c0cf29ca810f43d8b.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument is summarised by New Scientist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;..no theoretical or empirical evidence exists for such a claim, and that a widespread belief in the existence of such a point of no return threatens to push ecological science and its application in the wrong direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or, in more technical terms in the academic article (my highlights):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tipping points – where systems shift radically and potentially irreversibly into a different state – have received considerable attention in ecology. Although there is convincing evidence that human drivers can cause regime shifts at local and regional scales, &lt;strong&gt;the increasingly invoked concept of planetary scale tipping points in the terrestrial biosphere remains unconfirmed.&lt;/strong&gt; By evaluating potential mechanisms and drivers, we conclude that spatial heterogeneity in drivers and responses, and lack of strong continental interconnectivity, probably induce relatively smooth changes at the global scale, without an expectation of marked tipping patterns. This implies that identifying critical points along global continua of drivers might be unfeasible and that characterizing global biotic change with single aggregates is inapt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His argument admits that ecological tipping points can exist in many ecosystems but that the characteristics necessary for a tipping point to exist don't apply to the whole planet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tipping points happen when the components of a system respond gradually to an external force until a level of change is reached at which the response becomes non-linear and synergistic. This amplifies the effect of the force and rapidly drives the system into a new state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To respond in this way, systems must meet certain requirements. Either external forces are applied uniformly and each part of the system responds in the same way, or the system must be highly interconnected to allow synergistic responses to emerge. Or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these criteria apply to the biosphere as a whole? I think not. For planetary tipping points to exist, the forces of humanity would need to act uniformly across the planet, all ecosystems would need to respond to them in the same way, and the response would need to be transmitted rapidly across Earth's many ecosystems and continents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This even applies to climate change:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the force of human-induced climate change, so evident across the planet, does not meet these requirements. For example, it warms and dries some regions while cooling and moistening others...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...So there is little chance of anthropogenic climate change leading to a global tipping point in the biosphere. When it comes to other changes, including land use, habitat fragmentation and extinction, the case for a global tipping point is even weaker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't that the author doesn't think there is a world problem. He does think man is changing the world and often for the worse. But talking in terms of tipping points is neither helpful to the debate not backed by reliable evidence. He argues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To deny the likelihood of an impending global tipping point is not to deny that we are transforming the biosphere profoundly and permanently in ways that are likely to disgrace us in the eyes of future generations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We should try to avoid ecological damage by our actions. We should feel as guilty for allowing local ecosystems to degrade as we should about the whole planet. But we should not feel compelled to create poorly evidenced myths of global catastrophe to drive our actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-02-12T21:38:51.343" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15331" CreationDate="2013-03-11T03:51:59.830" Score="30" ViewCount="2514" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/05/ireland-magdalene-laundry-system-apology&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; covers the topic well, but is more about the Irish government admitting collusion with the supposed slave holders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Labelled the &amp;quot;Maggies&amp;quot;, the women and girls were stripped of their names and dumped in Irish Catholic church-run laundries where nuns treated them as slaves, simply because they were unmarried mothers, orphans or regarded as somehow morally wayward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over 74 years, 10,000 women were put to work in de facto detention, mostly in laundries run by nuns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were people really held as slaves? What was their treatment like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clarification:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What is a slave?&lt;/em&gt; Obviously, they were not actually considered property by anyone and it must have been underground because slavery is illegal in Ireland. But were these people basically slaves in that they were prevented from leaving at their own will and were they forced to do labor or suffer consequences (beating, no food, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am asking the question because when google searching I see people saying things like &amp;quot;In 1996, Bill Clinton was president, Yahoo’s search-engine was two years old, and the Roman Catholic Church had slaves.&amp;quot; I would think that in the least the statement is misleading because the Church as a whole did not do anything of that kind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T03:03:57.707" Title="Did the Irish Catholic church have slaves in Ireland as recently as 1996?" Tags="|catholic-church|slavery|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15167" CreationDate="2013-03-11T04:07:57.630" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the latest (Jan 2013) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23427113&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;studies on this topic&lt;/a&gt;&quot; published by the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Separation Science&lt;/em&gt; begins by writing that &quot;smoke is an extremely complex and dynamic aerosol&quot; which forms from &quot;a series of complex processes including combustion, pyrolysis, pyrosynthesis, distillation, sublimation, condensation, filtration, and elution.&quot; The same study isolates &quot;&lt;strong&gt;almost 2,500 individual compounds&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; from cigarette smoke (by using comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An earlier and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?num=50&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;q=%22A%20half%20century%20of%20advances%20in%20analytical%20methodology%20of%20tobacco%20and%20its%20products%22&amp;amp;oq=%22A%20half%20century%20of%20advances%20in%20analytical%20methodology%20of%20tobacco%20and%20its%20products%22&amp;amp;gs_l=serp.3...4261.12212.0.12493.2.2.0.0.0.0.70.113.2.2.0.les;..0.0...1c.1.5.serp.6V_ZYsJwHkc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;widely-cited&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com/record/display.url?eid=2-s2.0-84858081764&amp;amp;origin=inward&amp;amp;txGid=57468A449D2E188B4BE59AC5FA2FBC52.zQKnzAySRvJOZYcdfIziQ:5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study by Green and Rodgman&lt;/a&gt; puts that number at 4,800, using a different method. Other studies (which I saw cited, but have not reviewed myself) range from 900 to 10,000 compounds. The important thing to note here is that &quot;cigarette smoke composition is known to be sensitive to cigarette construction and the way the cigarette is smoked&quot; and that the results of divergent findings &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17915724&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cannot be compared with other studies&lt;/a&gt;&quot; directly when the methodologies differ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17915724&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2007 study by a group of Chinese scientists&lt;/a&gt; isolates 141 compounds in burning straw, but they again use a different methodology from the studies cited above. &quot;The carcinogenic compounds in oil smoke particulates from Chinese cooking practice have not yet been characterized,&quot; concludes another research paper in the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=cooking%20smoke%20particulates%20spectrometry&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chemical Research in Toxicology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, circa 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some tentative conclusions after reviewing the literature:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the range of numbers in the original claim are reasonable and depend on the methodology used,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;claimed numbers are not unusual in burning organic matter,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;smoke is generally bad for you, including smoke from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21787716&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cooking oils, incense, and candles&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;burning things is different from eating them, because combustion sets off many complex chemical reactions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2013-03-11T15:39:36.913" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T15:39:36.913" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7960" CreationDate="2013-03-11T21:54:32.893" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am somewhat surprised by the findings, but there is a lot of published research on this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/959834&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; published in &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; in 1976 maintains that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is convincing evidence that both negative and positive ions (i) inhibit growth of bacteria and fungi on solid media; (ii) exert a lethal effect on vegetative forms of bacteria suspended in water when opportunity is provided for contact of cells and ions; and (iii) reduce the viable count of bacterial aerosols&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the same paper concludes that &quot;in the case of mice infected with influenza virus, ion-deprivation increases the cumulative mortality rate&quot; and &quot;since ion depletion is a constant concomitant of modern urban life, one reasonably may speculate about comparable inimical effects on humans.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19486210&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; published in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Applied Microbiology&lt;/em&gt; in 2009 finds ionization &quot;to be an effective method for reduction in surface and airborne bacteria.&quot; In this study ionizers were installed inside refrigerators, and although effective the amount of reduction depended &quot;the constructional layout and material properties of the ionizer housing, air circulation within the refrigerator and the interior volume&quot; or the refrigerator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11198431&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;earlier study&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Food Protection&lt;/em&gt; concludes that &quot;high levels of negative air ions can have a significant impact on the airborne microbial load, and that most of this effect is through direct killing of the organisms.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By contrast, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17439657&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a study done in 2007&lt;/a&gt; by the School of Civil Engineering, University of Leeds suggests that &quot;the bactericidal action attributed to negative air ions by previous researchers may have been overestimated.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize then, &lt;strong&gt;it seems that ionizers can indeed reduce the airborne bacterial load but could also be bad for humans&lt;/strong&gt;. A reasonable piece of advice comes from the same &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/193/4259/1209.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1976 article in Science&lt;/a&gt; quoted above, which recommends to &quot;maintain air ion concentrations and ratios approximating those existing in nature&quot; and expresses hope that &quot;air ion levels of urban air will approach those of clean rural air.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Please note that this answer does not constitute medical advice. It is only meant to summarize published research related to the original claim and limited to the cited sources. Consult your physician about what these results may mean for your health.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-09-14T18:57:59.620" LastActivityDate="2015-09-14T18:57:59.620" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15314" CreationDate="2013-03-11T23:00:59.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is still a little broad:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He claims that if one drinks water bottled in plastic bottles one will eventually have plastic in his blood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This issue has already been addressed on this site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2202/does-regularly-drinking-from-a-plastic-container-cause-cancer/&quot;&gt;Does regularly drinking from a plastic container cause cancer?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3000/does-the-container-that-soda-is-in-affect-the-flavour/&quot;&gt;Does the container that soda is in affect the flavour?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8671/do-harmful-chemicals-migrate-from-the-container-into-the-food-if-you-microwave-t&quot;&gt;Do harmful chemicals migrate from the container into the food if you microwave the food in a plastic container?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another claim is that the superior way to transport your water is in a glass bottle ideally sealed with cork. Why cork?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He doesn't explain (in the snippet I watched) what &quot;superior&quot; means or why it is superior. Without a scientific claim, he could be as simple as a fashion statement. (He seems to be proud of his unique glass bottle, and admits that glass bottles break all the time, but tries to turn that into a positive.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the same note, I've been told to sprout my seeds in a glass container.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have provided insufficient information about this claim to take a position. For example, the claim could be nothing to do with contaminants. It could be because the glass filters light differently, and (allegedly) promotes germination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-03-11T23:00:59.520" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15318" CreationDate="2013-03-12T11:21:59.863" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's use the 1926 Slavery Convention (Geneva) definition of slavery. I'm using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_Slavery_Convention&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; as a reference, but the contents of this convention aren't under debate here, so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If taking someone prisoner indefinitely is considered taking ownership of them, this condition is met. This is somewhat subjective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The accompanying definition of the slave trade:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;all acts involved in the capture, acquisition or disposal of a person with intent to reduce him to slavery; all acts involved in the acquisition of a slave with a view to selling or exchanging him; all acts of disposal by sale or exchange of a slave acquired with a view to being sold or exchanged, and, in general, every act of trade or transport in slaves.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The women were indeed captured, acquired and reduced to slavery, so their situation seems to meet this condition, perhaps moreso than the first instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UN Committee Against Torture made the following statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Committee has said that it is “gravely concerned at the failure of the State to protect girls and women who were involuntarily confined between 1922 and 1996 in the Magdalene Laundries”. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thejournal.ie/un-committee-against-torture-recommends-inquiry-into-magdalene-laundries-149691-Jun2011/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;News article from thejournal.ie&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 20 of the Magdalen Final Report (more below) details the financials of some of the laundries. These demonstrate that the Laundries were being paid for work carried out by the women, for which no wages were given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;. They can be considered slaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also weren't allowed keep any children they had, which while not a distinct facet of slavery, gives an idea of the level of dehumanisation we're talking about. The Margaret Bullen article is one example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The incarceration and forced labour was in no way underground. About 25% of hostages were delivered to the laundries by the state. I refuse to call them inmates, as I don't consider any of them criminals, and most of them weren't criminals in law either. The Gardai colluded in returning escapees and delivering hostages. The courts were also comlplicit. For your verification, I'm referring largely to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idcmagdalen.ie/en/MLW/Magdalen%20Rpt%20full.pdf/Files/Magdalen%20Rpt%20full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Magdalen Final Report&lt;/a&gt; which was released in February 2013 by the Irish Government after an extensive study. I encourage you to check it, but it is over 1,200 pages long. From the report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;This Report has established that approximately 10,000 women are known to&#xA;have entered a Magdalen Laundry from the foundation of the State in 1922&#xA;until the closure of the last Laundry in 1996. Of the cases in which routes of&#xA;entry are known, 26.5% were referrals made or facilitated by the State. &amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The women who were put into the laundries were made to work, and their work was profited from, in a way which would be illegal in &amp;quot;official&amp;quot; Irish prisons, where it would be deemed a human rights violation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The laundries were subject to the same inspections as regular workplaces. From Chapter 12 of the report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;This Chapter confirms that the Magdalen Laundries were inspected by the Factories Inspectorate in the same manner as commercial (non-religious operated) laundries, again both before and after enactment of the Factories Act 1955.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their imprisonment was also illegal for many years, though the church had the support of the Garda Siochana (Irish Police Force) who would both deliver hostages to them and return escapees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the date of 1996, by this stage, admissions to Magdalene laundries were no longer part of Irish life. On one hand, we had become more enlightened and liberated as a society. On the other hand, washing machines were cheaper to use. However, up to this date there were still older women who had been taken hostage years previous. They may have been somewhat institutionalised, or otherwise had nowhere else to go, but they were still being deprived of a number of their human rights. The laundries stopped working in 1996, but some of the women had become inmates, not knowing who to integrate into society. At this point, their prison was more mental than physical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the treatment of the women over the years, it was bad. They were de-humanised and subject to abuse and exploitation you wouldn't give an animal. We're talking about a combination of psychological, and often physical torture and hard labour. Some were literally worked to death. Some died later on from kidney and liver failure, as a direct result of sustained exposure to the laundry chemicals. One example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/9878223/Irelands-Magdalene-Laundries-I-hope-my-birth-mother-can-now-rest-in-peace.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Margaret Bullen&lt;/a&gt;, who entered the laundries when she was 5, because her mother was unable to take care of her, and died when she was 51, still inside a convent, from &lt;code&gt;&amp;quot;Goodpasture Syndrome, a disease caused by inhalation of chemicals over many years resulting in end stage kidney and liver failure.&amp;quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that many entered into the laundries when they were children, it is relevant to consider the findings of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_to_Inquire_into_Child_Abuse&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse&lt;/a&gt;. This was an investigation into the living conditions of children in state care, almost always run by monks, priests, and nuns. It doesn't particularly apply to the Laundries, but it should give you some idea of what the church in Ireland were capable of. The Ryan Report, published in 2009, came to these conclusions, among others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overall.&lt;/strong&gt; Physical and emotional abuse and neglect were features of the institutions. Sexual abuse occurred in many of them, particularly boys’ institutions. Schools were run in a severe, regimented manner that imposed unreasonable and oppressive discipline on children and even on staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Physical abuse.&lt;/strong&gt; The Reformatory and Industrial Schools depended on rigid control by means of severe corporal punishment and the fear of such punishment. A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys. Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sexual abuse.&lt;/strong&gt; Sexual abuse was endemic in boys’ institutions. The schools investigated revealed a substantial level of sexual abuse of boys in care that extended over a range from improper touching and fondling to rape with violence. Perpetrators of abuse were able to operate undetected for long periods at the core of institutions. When confronted with evidence of sexual abuse, the response of the religious authorities was to transfer the offender to another location where, in many instances, he was free to abuse again. The safety of children in general was not a consideration. The situation in girls’ institutions was different. Although girls were subjected to predatory sexual abuse by male employees or visitors or in outside placements, sexual abuse was not systemic in girls’ schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Neglect.&lt;/strong&gt; Poor standards of physical care were reported by most male and female complainants. Children were frequently hungry and food was inadequate, inedible and badly prepared in many schools. Accommodation was cold, spartan and bleak. Sanitary provision was primitive in most boys’ schools and general hygiene facilities were poor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Emotional abuse.&lt;/strong&gt; Witnesses spoke of being belittled and ridiculed on a daily basis. Private matters such as bodily functions and personal hygiene were used as opportunities for degradation and humiliation. Personal and family denigration was widespread. There was constant criticism and verbal abuse and children were told they were worthless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Supervision by the Department of Education&lt;/strong&gt;. The system of inspection by the Department was fundamentally flawed and incapable of being effective. Complaints by parents and others made to the Department were not properly investigated. The Department did not apply the standards in the rules and their own guidelines when investigating complaints, but sought to protect and defend the religious Congregations and the schools. The Department dealt inadequately with complaints about sexual abuse, which were generally dismissed or ignored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The group, Justice for Magdalenes (here Magdalenes, which is sometimes shortened to Maggies, refers to victims), created the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/name.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Name Project&lt;/a&gt; an attempt to document all the women who died in the Laundries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same organisation submitted a report, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/Magdalene_Laundries_state_interaction_section_Final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;State Involvement in the Magdalene Laundries&lt;/a&gt;, which details from point 88 on how 155 bodies of women were moved from one unmarked grave in Drumcondra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.magdalenesurvivorstogether.net/#/survivor-testimony/4562712580&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Selection of survivor testimony&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also an hour-long documentary featuring interviews with survivors.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSZ9i9NaUU4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sex in a Cold Climate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: in this context, &amp;quot;girls institutions&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;laundries&amp;quot; mean the same thing. The laundries were the workshop component of girls institutions. However, in Ireland, these are colloquially referred to as Magdalen Laundries or &amp;quot;the Laundries&amp;quot;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_Slavery_Convention&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_Slavery_Convention&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thejournal.ie/un-committee-against-torture-recommends-inquiry-into-magdalene-laundries-149691-Jun2011/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.thejournal.ie/un-committee-against-torture-recommends-inquiry-into-magdalene-laundries-149691-Jun2011/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idcmagdalen.ie/en/MLW/Magdalen%20Rpt%20full.pdf/Files/Magdalen%20Rpt%20full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.idcmagdalen.ie/en/MLW/Magdalen%20Rpt%20full.pdf/Files/Magdalen%20Rpt%20full.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/9878223/Irelands-Magdalene-Laundries-I-hope-my-birth-mother-can-now-rest-in-peace.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/9878223/Irelands-Magdalene-Laundries-I-hope-my-birth-mother-can-now-rest-in-peace.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_to_Inquire_into_Child_Abuse&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commission_to_Inquire_into_Child_Abuse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/name.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/name.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/Magdalene_Laundries_state_interaction_section_Final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.magdalenelaundries.com/Magdalene_Laundries_state_interaction_section_Final.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1659" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T15:49:46.760" CommentCount="9" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-03-12T16:08:07.683" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15333" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-12T14:36:18.673" Score="14" ViewCount="1032" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was taught in school that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thomas Paine&lt;/a&gt; was so hated that cobblers of the time nailed heels with a T and P (representing his initials, and as a sign of scorn and disrespect). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37702/37702-h/37702-h.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Life of Thomas Paine, volume II&lt;/a&gt; by Moncure Daniel Conway (1893) makes the unreferenced claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A symbol of how they were trampled out is discoverable in the &quot;T. P.&quot; shoenails. These nails, with heads so lettered, were in great request among the gentry, who had only to hold up their boot-soles to show how they were trampling on Tom Paine and his principles. This at any rate was accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thomas-paine-friends.org/chiu-frances_colloquium-2009-02.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Graham Dean's poem &lt;em&gt;Come Home Tom Paine&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; repeats the claim in a verse:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A cobbler in London stamped your initials on boot nails&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is even a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STJcZr8HHMw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; of British children doing a &quot;Shoe Nail Dance&quot; (SND) , based on this belief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In memory of Thomas Paine 200 year anniversary of his death.&#xA;  SND is a legacy of a cobbler that made shoe nails with TP initials in so people could stamp him into the ground.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find any information if it was true or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11896" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2016-03-21T20:42:31.090" LastActivityDate="2016-03-23T18:08:04.857" Title="Did cobblers nail Thomas Paine's initials into shoes to scorn him?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15336" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-12T19:08:31.420" Score="9" ViewCount="9515" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that painting radiators in your central heating circuit black can make your heating more efficient. The 'scientific' basis being that black, whilst absorbing light in the visible spectrum, radiates infra-red (i.e. heat) better than the usual colour white of radiators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11899" LastEditorUserId="11899" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T13:38:42.993" LastActivityDate="2016-01-10T19:25:06.843" Title="Does painting your radiators black make your heating more efficient?" Tags="|energy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15338" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17135" CreationDate="2013-03-12T23:01:57.220" Score="24" ViewCount="1115" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/03/11/130311fa_fact_kolbert?currentPage=2&quot;&gt;Newyorker&lt;/a&gt;: Research studies consistently find … that adults “sleep better when given their own bed.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that an accurate assessment? Do adult sleep better when they sleep alone rather than with their significant other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T21:07:34.930" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T21:07:34.930" Title="Do adults sleep better when they sleep alone?" Tags="|medical-science|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13652" CreationDate="2013-03-13T07:27:44.107" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lots of comments above are rather useless. Texas legally renounced the right to secede. It is now law, nothing vague about it.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ref/abouttx/secession/15march1866.html&quot;&gt;https://www.tsl.state.tx.us/ref/abouttx/secession/15march1866.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;March 15, 1866, The Texas Legislature settled the question. If you call Texas Legislative Library, you won't get an update on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Be it ordained by the people of Texas in Convention assembled, That we&#xA;  acknowledge the supremacy of the Constitution of the United States,&#xA;  and the laws passed in pursuance thereof; and that an Ordinance&#xA;  adopted by a former Convention of the people of Texas on the 1st day&#xA;  of February, A.D. 1861, entitled &quot;An Ordinance to Dissolve the Union&#xA;  between the State of Texas and the other States, united under the&#xA;  compact styled 'Constitution of the United States of America,'&quot; be and&#xA;  the same is hereby declared null and void; and the right heretofore&#xA;  claimed by the State of Texas to secede from the Union, is hereby&#xA;  distinctly renounced. Passed 15th March, 1866.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, those above who say: &quot;So it really depends on your interpretation of the law,&quot;&#xA;or &quot;A. No... but yes, not explicitly&quot;...are guessing, when they don't have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The language above is VERY SPECIFIC - &quot;is hereby distinctly renounced&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11905" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T07:27:44.107" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15344" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-13T07:28:30.393" Score="17" ViewCount="1986" Body="&lt;p&gt;Republicans argue that those that benefit more from capitalism and want the government to do less to help others would be more likely to give that money away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2682730&amp;amp;page=1&amp;amp;page=1&quot;&gt;ABC's 2020 is one source of this claim&lt;/a&gt;. They claim that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It turns out that this idea that liberals give more…is a myth. Of the top 25 states where people give an above average percent of their income, 24 were red states in the last presidential election.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, from that they reason that Republicans give more. Is this good reasoning and is it in line with other data-points on this subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt; I've refined the question as advised in the comments to be about Republicans and Democrats in the United States: I'd rather the question be broad about conservatives and non-conservatives, but I think it'd be extremely hard to answer it otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2013-03-19T15:39:34.353" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T04:04:59.880" Title="In the USA, do supporters of the Republican party make more charitable donations than supporters of the Democrats?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15345" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-13T12:08:23.877" Score="12" ViewCount="627" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across the Huffington post article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/fukushima-navy-health-problems_n_2855529.html&quot;&gt;Fukushima And The Navy: Sailors Sue Japan Nuclear Plant Owner, Saying Disaster Made Them Sick&lt;/a&gt;. It's talking about a lawsuit against the operators of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_I_Nuclear_Power_Plant&quot;&gt;Fukushima Daiichi&lt;/a&gt; by the crew of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Ronald_Reagan_%28CVN-76%29&quot;&gt;USS Ronald Reagan&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amongst the injuries alleged to have resulted from the radiation is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Plym has a new diagnosis of asthma and her menstrual cycle is severely&#xA;  out of whack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm somewhat skeptical, because I assume that the ill-effects of nuclear radiation would be comparatively simple to research compared to the ill-effects of chemicals or other pollutants, and I hadn't heard about radiation potentially causing asthma or menstrual irregularities. (However, I haven't read much about this topic, so this could be my own ignorance)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also skeptical because I think people may be biased towards blaming radioactivity for health problems when other forms of environmental contamination could be caused by an earthquake and tsunami of this scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible for radiation, at the levels experienced by USS Ronald Reagan crew, to cause the injuries described?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-03-14T11:46:04.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-06T14:19:13.807" Title="Could Fukushima daiichi cause the health problems suffered by the USS Ronald Reagan crew?" Tags="|environmental-health|radiation|fukushima-daiichi|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15349" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-13T14:15:37.533" Score="2" ViewCount="463" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is hidden in a long article about some other ... uhm delicate ... myths surrounding Hitler &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1087380/Did-Hitler-really-ONE-testicle-A-historian-sorts-extraordinary-truth-far-flung-myths-Fuhrer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;according to a former comrade of Hitler's from the trenches, Hans&#xA;  Mend, his comrades used to put boot blacking on the future Fuhrer's&#xA;  penis when he was asleep in the trenches, which Dr Machtan describes&#xA;  as 'evidently a common occurrence' in the German army in the Great&#xA;  War.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1408" LastActivityDate="2013-03-15T05:53:46.030" Title="Was it common among soldiers to put boot blacking on other soldiers' private parts during WW I?" Tags="|history|adolf-hitler|world-war-i|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15351" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15353" CreationDate="2013-03-13T15:41:36.153" Score="11" ViewCount="1418" Body="&lt;p&gt;The performance artist Marina Abramović has said the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/av/transcripts/LIVEDamasioAbramovic_11-2.12TranscriptQUERY.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in a forum&lt;/a&gt; at the New York Public Library:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Africa you have Dogon tribes who worship Trans-Pluto, which is you know a small satellite around Pluto, which had been developed only maybe forty years ago when telescopes and technology developed so strong that they can actually see there is a Trans-Pluto. These people for hundreds of years worshiped, in their ceremonies worshiped this Trans-Pluto, because they knew it all the way it existed, which is not possible to perceive with naked eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She has recently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/2013/mar/13/neuroscience-and-art/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mentioned the same on NPR's Brian Lehrer Show&lt;/a&gt;, in a conversation with a neuroscientist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any legitimate research speaking to these claims? Is Trans-Pluto real and was it discovered a few decades ago? Did the Dogon tribes worship the same object?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:29:30.747" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:29:30.747" Title="Did the Dogon tribes discover &quot;Trans-Pluto&quot;?" Tags="|astronomy|anthropology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15351" CreationDate="2013-03-13T17:26:35.050" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This appears to be a metastasization of a hoary old myth originating with the anthropologist &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_Griaule&quot;&gt;Marcel Griaule&lt;/a&gt;. The original claim was that the Dogon cosmology included information about the Sirius star system not obtainable without advanced technology. In fact, it is not clear that they had this knowledge &amp;ndash; Griaule seems to have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.michaelsheiser.com/PaleoBabble/Grialle%20Sirius%20Dogon.pdf&quot;&gt;severely over-intepreted Dogon cosmology&lt;/a&gt; &amp;ndash; and if they had it, it is not clear that they could not have acquired it from a passing European.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim was popularized in the 1976 book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirius_Mystery&quot;&gt;The Sirius Mystery&lt;/a&gt; and entered the woo literature, where I assume it has been repeated and embellished ever since, leading to Ambramović's confusion. I first learned of it from an essay in Carl Sagan's 1979 collection &lt;em&gt;Broca's Brain&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Dogon have knowledge impossible to acquire without the telescope. The straightforward conclusion is that they had contact with an advanced technical civilization. The only question is, which civilization—extraterrestrial or European? Far more credible than an ancient extraterrestrial educational foray among the Dogon might be a comparatively recent contact with scientifically literate Europeans who conveyed to the Dogon the remarkable European myth of Sirius and its white dwarf companion, a myth that has all the superficial earmarks of a splendidly inventive tall story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7646" LastEditorUserId="7646" LastEditDate="2013-03-14T02:03:48.360" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T02:03:48.360" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15351" CreationDate="2013-03-13T17:31:54.670" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Evan Harper gave a great answer, but I'll supply an alternative one from the astronomy angle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trans-pluto isn't an astronomical term. The closest is &quot;Trans-Neptunian object&quot;, which is any object orbiting outside Neptune (Pluto is one, by the way). By extension you could say that a &quot;Trans-plutonian object&quot; orbited outside of Pluto, but it's not a normally used term. It certainly isn't an object orbiting Pluto. Pluto has &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moons_of_Pluto&quot;&gt;five satellites&lt;/a&gt; (as far as we know) and none are called Trans-Pluto.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR This is astronomical rubbish.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2013-03-13T17:31:54.670" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15356" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15413" CreationDate="2013-03-13T20:56:07.280" Score="14" ViewCount="676" Body="&lt;p&gt;Now that the head of the Catholic Church has been announced to be Jorge Bergoglio, ex-Archbishop of Buenos Aires, the word has been spreading that he played a significant role in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reorganization_Process&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Reorganization Process&lt;/a&gt; also known as the &lt;strong&gt;Last Military Junta&lt;/strong&gt; or the &lt;strong&gt;Last Dictatorship&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main charge against Bergoglio involves the kidnapping of two Jesuit priests, Orland Yorio and Francisco Jalics, who were taken by Navy officers in May 1976 and held under inhumane conditions for the missionary work they conducted in the country's slums, a politically risky activity at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His chief accuser is journalist Horacio Verbitsky, the author of a book on the church called &amp;quot;El Silencio&amp;quot; (&amp;quot;The Silence&amp;quot;), which claims that &lt;strong&gt;Bergoglio withdrew his order's protection from the two priests,&lt;/strong&gt; effectively giving the military a green light for their abduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/14/pope-francis-argentina-military-junta&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence supporting this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11840" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T04:47:09.197" Title="Did the newly elected pope, Jorge Bergoglio (Francis), play any role in the 1976-1983 military regime in Argentina?" Tags="|military|vatican|pope|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6577" CreationDate="2013-03-13T23:35:38.373" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/ER/detail/hkul/3633599&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ph.D. thesis on this topic&lt;/a&gt;, written by Marian Newsome Moorhead in 2005, titled &quot;The Suzuki Method: A comparative analysis of the perceptual/cognitive listening development in third grade students trained in the Suzuki, traditional, and modified Suzuki music methods.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, a bunch of students taught in the Suzuki (which emphasizes rote learning over theory) and some other methods were asked to complete specific musical games. Their performance was then analyzed and compared. The Suzuki students did the same or less well overall compared to some of the other groups. The author tentatively suggests that &quot;cognitive scaffolding&quot; (music theory and such as absent in the Suzuki method) is important for early music acquisition, concluding that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although nonsignificant when compared to Suzuki and Crossover samples, Traditional students had the highest means on three of the five Games. It is possible that by this age, the note reading training provided for Traditional students for longer lengths of time may give these students an edge on cognitive understanding and its application to music listening. However, it would take additional research to support that possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This generally &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=2546788&amp;amp;fulltextType=BR&amp;amp;fileId=S027226310000752X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;coincides with research&lt;/a&gt; on second-language acquisition (which is in some way similar to learning music). The pragmatic consensus is that theory and practice are both important in acquiring new skills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2013-03-14T18:02:18.967" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T18:02:18.967" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15361" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15362" CreationDate="2013-03-14T05:02:39.817" Score="35" ViewCount="265967" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was at lunch today and the conversation turned to almonds and their &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanide_poisoning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cyanide&lt;/a&gt; content. One co-worker said almonds contain a lot of cyancide and the number of almonds that can kill you surprisingly low. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wRJWI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Caution almonds&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is &quot;how low&quot;? They couldn't answer, except to say it's low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a quick google search I found &lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/104963750998969812773/posts/aAK8wwN5hwU&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; link that says the number is 15. &lt;strong&gt;FIFTEEN&lt;/strong&gt;!!! I've had about that many almonds today... so that can't be right. And that link is from a questionable source (google+) but I've heard this urban legend before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many almonds will it take to kill a human? I'm looking for LD50 of a 70kg person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T07:43:30.160" Title="How many almonds does it take to get cyanide poisoning?" Tags="|nutrition|toxicology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15361" CreationDate="2013-03-14T06:00:57.003" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;With bitter almonds, 8 - 32 almonds will give you the lethal dosage of cyanide. Bitter almonds yield &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1273391/?page=3&quot;&gt;about 6.2 mg of cyanide per almond&lt;/a&gt; and the LD50 for cyanide is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cyanidecode.org/cyanide-facts/environmental-health-effects&quot;&gt;50 mg - 200 mg.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This applies only to bitter wild almonds: considering that you're not dead, you most likely ate domesticated sweet almonds, which &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1008690409554&quot;&gt;apparently do not have this problem.&lt;/a&gt; The sale of wild almonds may be illegal, in fact, though I can only find blogs and internet comments alluding to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Almond&amp;amp;oldid=543886153#Origin_and_history&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wild almonds are bitter, the kernel produces deadly cyanide upon mechanical handling, and eating even a few dozen at one sitting can be fatal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While wild almond species are toxic, domesticated almonds are not; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastEditorUserId="8532" LastEditDate="2013-03-14T06:07:14.933" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T06:07:14.933" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15364" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15367" CreationDate="2013-03-14T11:04:57.370" Score="15" ViewCount="1652" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a small kid, I was told that fish don't feel any pain when they bite into a fishing hook. I'm not sure if this was just something made up so I didn't feel sorry for the fishies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that the controversy is quite widespread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/green_room/2009/05/frying_nemo.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slate&lt;/a&gt; even had a piece on it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a new study out that contends fish feel pain. A professor at Purdue and his Norwegian graduate student attached small foil heaters to goldfish. Half of the goldfish were injected with morphine, half with saline, and then the researchers turned on the attached micro-toasters. After the heat was gone, the fish without painkillers &amp;quot;acted with defensive behaviors, indicating wariness, or fear and anxiety.&amp;quot; They had also developed a lovely brown crust. These results echo a 2003 study by researchers from the University of Edinburgh who shot bee venom into the lips of trout. The bee-stung fish rubbed their lips in the gravel of their tank and generally seemed pissed off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2003 Edinburgh study confirmed that trout have polymodal nociceptors around their face and head—i.e., they have the ability to detect painful stimuli with their nervous system. But, according to some definitions of pain, the detection of painful stimuli is not enough. The animal must have the ability to understand it is in pain to really feel pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldfishingnetwork.com/news/is-fishing-cruel-do-fish-feel-pain-95785.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WFN(World Fishing Network) has an article&lt;/a&gt; that contradicts the findings on Slate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do fish feel pain when we hook them?  Well, not according to Dr. James D. Rose.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;[...]&#xA;“Fish have the simplest types of brains of any vertebrates,” he says, “while humans, have the most complex brains of any species. Conscious awareness of sensations, emotions and pain in humans depends on our massively developed neocortex and other specialized brain regions in the cerebral hemispheres. If the cerebral hemispheres of a human are destroyed, a comatose, vegetative state results. Fish, in contrast, have very small cerebral hemispheres that lack neocortex. If the cerebral hemispheres of a fish are destroyed, the fish’s behavior is quite normal, because the simple behaviors of which a fish is capable (including all of its reactions to nociceptive stimuli) depend mainly on the brainstem and spinal cord.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11921" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2022-07-07T20:24:28.743" Title="Do fish feel pain?" Tags="|zoology|pain|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15364" CreationDate="2013-03-14T12:18:35.380" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study has found that, even when caught on a hook and wriggling, the fish is impervious to pain because it does not have the necessary brain power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research, &lt;a href=&quot;http://vre2.upei.ca/scholartest/fedora/repository/ir%3A1100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;conducted by a team of seven scientists and published in the journal Fish and Fisheries&lt;/a&gt;*, concluded that the fish’s reaction to being hooked is in fact just an unconscious reaction, rather than a response to pain.&#xA; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fish have already been found to have “nociceptors” - sensory receptors that in humans respond to potentially damaging stimuli by sending signals to the brain, allowing them to feel pain.&#xA; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the latest research concluded that the mere presence of the receptors did not mean the animals felt pain, but only triggered a unconscious reaction to the threat.&#xA;The latest findings contradict previous research, which suggested that these nociceptors enabled the creatures to feel reflexive and cognitive pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*&lt;sub&gt;Newby, N.C. and Stevens, E.D. (2008) The effects of the acetic acid “pain” test on feeding, swimming and respiratory responses of rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss). Applied Animal Behavior Science 114, 260–269&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source : &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/9797948/Fish-cannot-feel-pain-say-scientists.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;telegraph&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11684" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-07-05T07:24:01.703" LastActivityDate="2022-07-05T07:24:01.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15373" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15374" CreationDate="2013-03-14T17:41:59.400" Score="6" ViewCount="3560" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question came up at lunch today, and I didn't believe my friend when he said someone had a pine tree growing in his lungs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found several sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1169861/Shocked-Russian-surgeons-open-man-thought-tumour--FIR-TREE-inside-lung.html&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/5152953/Surgeons-find-fir-tree-growing-inside-patients-lung.html&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,514955,00.html&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source #2 has a key note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was no independent verification of the surgeon's claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sources state that it was green, which is hard for me to believe. How could a plant grow with no light inside a lung? Is this actually possible, or just a news report that has been widely circulated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11722" LastActivityDate="2022-05-06T09:46:12.127" Title="Is it possible for a pine tree to grow in your lungs?" Tags="|plants|anatomy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15373" CreationDate="2013-03-14T18:07:05.073" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a well known urban legend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This letter published on Chest Journal addresses the issue&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journal.publications.chestnet.org/article.aspx?articleid=1090121&quot;&gt;Trees Don't Grow in the Lungs!&lt;/a&gt; - Chua and Mehta, 2009&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We would like to bring to the attention of readers that trees do not grow in humans. To the best of our knowledge, there has never been a single report in the medical literature of seeds and/or plants growing in humans. If they did, watermelon seeds and peanuts,&lt;sup&gt;4,5&lt;/sup&gt; which are the most commonly aspirated foreign bodies, would be growing out of control from our lungs. Moreover, it makes no biological sense that in the absence of sunlight and appropriate nutrient medium, photosynthesis and germination of a seed can take place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; - Mahafza  T, Khader  Y;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17385621&quot;&gt;Aspirated tracheobronchial foreign bodies: a Jordanian experience&lt;/a&gt;, Ear Nose Throat J 2007&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; Chik  KK, Miu  TY, Chan  CW;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19197090&quot;&gt;Foreign body aspiration in Hong Kong Chinese children&lt;/a&gt;, Hong Kong Med J 2009 [PubMed]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T18:07:05.073" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15361" CreationDate="2013-03-14T19:48:00.910" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an addition to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/15362/8865&quot;&gt;Avi's answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The varieties are sweet and bitter almond (the latter is the one with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdalin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;amygdalin which is the source of the cyanide as well as the aroma (benzaldehyde)&lt;/a&gt;) almonds, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almond#Sweet_and_bitter_almonds&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almond#Sweet_and_bitter_almonds&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here (Germany) bitter almonds are sold only in small amounts for baking which are labelled that they are not for raw consumption, and are to be kept away from children. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-46176140.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's a newspaper article&lt;/a&gt; from 1964 about a discussion whether the allowed package size should be reduced to 50 g (which is AFAIK the currently available package size). The article argues that till then the opinion was the awful taste provides enough safety. For the counter argument they cite a number of studies that conclude many people are really bad at smelling and tasting, and that the knowledge about the bitter almonds in the population was decreasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, smelling of cyanides has been studied a lot in the 1950s and 60s, and huge differences in the human &quot;limit of detection&quot; and substantial numbers of people who do not smell cyanide have been found (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%28cyanide[Title]%29+and+%28smell+[Title]%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Literature list 1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://omim.org/entry/304300&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Literature list 2&lt;/a&gt;). Also how people describe the smell of cyanides differs a lot (not surprisingly, as at least in western cultures, smells are hardly described at all, so talking about smells is difficult, and also considering the huge differences in smelling sense between people). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I smell cyanide, and I perceive the smell of the cyanide as very different from the smell of the benzaldehyde (almond aroma, amaretto, ...) which are both released by hydrolysis of the amygdalin. I never tried tasting bitter almonds (only smelling, e.g. mashing them with water, and if you like to separate the cyanide smell from the benzaldehyde smell, with a small amount of an odorless acid)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Even if you happen not to be able to smell cyanide, the benzaldehyde content is very remarkable compared to sweet almonds. So if the almonds you ate tasted and smelled like &quot;normal&quot; almonds, you ate sweet almonds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2013-03-14T19:48:00.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15376" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15433" CreationDate="2013-03-15T02:02:17.907" Score="15" ViewCount="2307" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not a question about &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5927/is-washing-your-hair-too-often-bad/5929#5929&quot;&gt;washing your hair&lt;/a&gt;. It's about taking a shower too often - i.e. several times a day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember I read somewhere that, in this case, your skin lost good bacteria that could be useful for health of your skin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I can't find these links, but I just found &lt;a href=&quot;http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120122001415AAVFpqJ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this question on another Q&amp;amp;A site&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is taking a shower once a day okay, too often or not enough? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7701" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T11:02:29.690" Title="Is washing your body too often bad for your skin?" Tags="|hygiene|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15382" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-15T06:28:44.107" Score="25" ViewCount="19490" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia's page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Goujian_of_Yue&quot;&gt;King Goujian of Yue&lt;/a&gt;, a king in Ancient China (~500BCE):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;King Goujian's army was known for scaring its enemies before battle by forcing its front line, composed of criminals sentenced to death, to commit suicide by decapitating themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia cites &lt;em&gt;Sima Qian, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiji&quot;&gt;Shiji&lt;/a&gt; (史記), Ch. 41, 中華書局, 2006, p. 272&lt;/em&gt; as a reference. The panel show, QI, also appears to have made this claim in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QI_%28D_series%29#Episode_1_.22Danger.22&quot;&gt;Series D&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, did something like this actually occur?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T19:34:56.187" Title="Did ancient Chinese frontline troops decapitate themselves to scare their foes?" Tags="|history|military|war|china|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15386" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-15T14:52:29.690" Score="31" ViewCount="14316" Body="&lt;p&gt;A popular &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=460045794065638&amp;amp;set=a.108977109172510.11644.107846889285532&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;image&lt;/a&gt; going around Facebook claims it to be true. The image was found on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/Antitheists&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anti-Theists blog&lt;/a&gt; page, currently with 65,000+ followers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lgLMo.png&quot; alt=&quot;Pope Francis quote&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The picture reads,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Women are naturally unfit for political office. Both the natural order and facts show us that the political being par excellence is male; that Scripture shows us that woman has always been the helper of man who thinks and does, but nothing more. - Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sources goes on to say,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This was said in a speech against Argentina presidential candidate Cristina Kirchner given in 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another one reads much the same,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TewBd.png&quot; alt=&quot;Spanish Pope Francis quote&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;las mujeres son naturalmente ineptas para ejercer cargos políticos&quot;, refiriéndose a la candidatura presidencial de la Senadora Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. &quot;El orden natural y los hechos nos enseñan que el hombre es el ser político por excelencia; las Escrituras nos demuestran que la mujer siempre es el apoyo del hombre pensador y hacedor, pero nada más que eso&quot;. - Jorge Bergoglio &quot;Francisco I&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-11T02:34:01.410" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T02:34:01.410" Title="Did Pope Francis say that women are &quot;unfit for political office&quot;, and merely the &quot;helper of men&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|pope|christianity|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15386" CreationDate="2013-03-15T17:17:17.477" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;These statements were not made by Cardinal Bergoglio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.outono.net/elentir/2013/03/14/difunden-en-la-red-un-bulo-misogino-para-desprestigiar-al-papa-francisco/comment-page-1/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spanish-speaking blogger&lt;/a&gt; identified this hoax. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forosperu.net/showthread.php?t=441037&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;via&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://fatherangel.tumblr.com/post/45353964464/pope-francis-a-misogynist&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;English version&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote above begins with: “Women are naturally inept to exercise political office..the order of nature and human activity teach us that a man is superior in the realm of politics…” [...] the quote was invented out of thin air and posted in a “Yahoo Answers” by an Argentinian who went by the name “Bumper Crop” and who at the time did not cite a link because the entire phrase was posted to smear Cardinal Bergoglio and make him look like he was attacking Cristina Kirchner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the phrase completely contradicts Bergoglio known friendship and admiration for various Argentine women who have held political office and who were congratulated by him upon election.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, these statements contradict Catholic teaching that &amp;quot;women have the same right as men to perform various public functions&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_jp-ii_exh_19811122_familiaris-consortio_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Paul II, Familiaris Consortio, par. 23&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11942" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T00:05:54.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15389" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-15T17:57:28.813" Score="15" ViewCount="698" Body="&lt;p&gt;The VHA is the integrated health system providing healthcare to US military veterans managed by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.va.gov/directory/guide/division_flsh.asp?dnum=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Department of Veteran Affairs&lt;/a&gt;. It is currently regarded by by some other health systems as a model to learn from (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.2020health.org/2020health/Press/latest-news/Making-Connections.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for a recent report about how the UK's NHS could learn how to implement integrated electronic health records effectively, something it has spent a lot of money on without producing useful results).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Philip Longman's book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1609945174&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Best Care Anywhere&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; argues that the VHA offers its members some of the highest quality care available anywhere in the US while doing so within a very frugal budget. To quote from the Amazon summary (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This important book describes the turnaround of the VA health-care system—&lt;strong&gt;now widely recognized as leading the nation in terms of both quality and costs&lt;/strong&gt;—and offers insights that will be useful to patients and policymakers alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Better quality and cheaper care: is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a recent (2018) article on infighting among Trump officials running the VHA, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21737525-window-trump-administrations-special-brand-chaos-what-going-va&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Economist&lt;/a&gt; reports an explanation of why many Americans find it so hard to believe the VHA does a good job (counter to the widespread belief in the USA that &quot;socialised&quot; medicine is always bad). My emphasis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For many Americans, the phrase “veterans’ health care” conjures images of scandal and ineptitude. Much of this is because of a crisis in 2014, when it was discovered that hospital officials had falsified records to avoid reporting delays in appointments. Heads rolled when it appeared that 40 ex-servicemen had died while waiting for appointments. &lt;em&gt;Less coverage was given to later investigations, which have been largely unable to blame the deaths on the extended waiting times.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the reality is different:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most Americans would be shocked to learn that the VA health system &lt;em&gt;actually seems to provide higher-quality care than its competitors.&lt;/em&gt; A review by the RAND Corporation showed that the VA outperformed non-VA care on 45 of 47 outpatient quality measures. More than 80% of new primary care patients are able to get an appointment within two weeks. Annual surveys show satisfaction levels with treatment close to 80%. In-patient care was more mixed, however, and performance tends to vary greatly between hospitals. Clearly the system needs fixing, but fundamentally broken it does not appear to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2018-03-04T14:33:10.287" LastActivityDate="2018-03-05T23:32:49.307" Title="Does the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) provide higher quality, cheaper care than most other US health systems?" Tags="|united-states|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15386" CreationDate="2013-03-16T08:04:10.337" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/politics/quotes/francis.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes just did this, they found it to be &lt;strong&gt;FALSE&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;This quote about Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio's stating that &quot;Women are naturally unfit for political office&quot; was circulated in the immediate aftermath of his selection as pope in March 2013 and was supposedly voiced by him in 2007 in reference to Cristina Fern&amp;aacute;ndez de Kirchner's successful candidacy for the presidency of Argentina that year.  However, no documentation or reference for this quote antedating March 2013 has been found other than a single source of dubious veracity, as noted in an article denouncing the statement as an &quot;urban legend&quot; on Foros Per&amp;uacute;&quot;&lt;/em&gt; - Snopes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T08:04:10.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15402" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-16T15:06:16.260" Score="10" ViewCount="1032" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is well known that the USA spends more of its national wealth on healthcare than other countries (see, for example, some of the analysis in this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10020/is-more-than-30-of-us-healthcare-spending-waste&quot;&gt;Is more than 30% of US healthcare spending waste?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this extraordinary claim appeared in a recently reprinted article in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/15/why-an-mri-costs-1080-in-america-and-280-in-france/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Washington Post&lt;/a&gt; (which I quote with some context and my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a simple reason health care in the United States costs more than it does anywhere else: The prices are higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That may sound obvious. But it is, in fact, key to understanding one of the most pressing problems facing our economy. In 2009, Americans spent $7,960 per person on health care. Our neighbors in Canada spent $4,808. The Germans spent $4,218. The French, $3,978. &lt;strong&gt;If we had the per-person costs of any of those countries, America’s deficits would vanish.&lt;/strong&gt; Workers would have much more money in their pockets. Our economy would grow more quickly, as our exports would be more competitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two claims here: one is that the primary reason the US spends so much is the &lt;em&gt;prices&lt;/em&gt; of healthcare activities, drugs and devices. I'm actually skeptical of this as the sole cause, but it probably deserves a separate question. The second claim, and the focus of this question, is that if US prices were more &lt;em&gt;normal&lt;/em&gt; by world standards, the US government deficit would disappear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it true that the deficit would be gone if the US had more typical healthcare prices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T04:11:17.247" Title="Would the US deficit disappear if the costs of medical activity were more like the rest of the world?" Tags="|united-states|healthcare|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15402" CreationDate="2013-03-16T15:45:48.380" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is borderline true in terms of relative magnitude. Such a reduction &quot;woild help&quot;, but that does not mean that the defecit is the &quot;fault&quot; of excessive health costs. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Total US debt&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; [Wikipedia] is about 16 trillion dollars, and the additional annual US cost over the cost of health care in Canada is just under 1 trillion dollars per year. So health care &quot;excess costs&quot; are about 6% of US debt per annum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any number examples of human nature at work indicates that &quot;living outside one's means&quot; is unlikely to be set to rights by a one time 6% reduction in total debt - and an annual reduction of that magnitude would easily be swallowed up by a bit more partying, buying a few more imported goods or any number of ways of not setting one's house in order. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ie The figures are very large and would have a significant effect but they are not so dominant as to guarantee the elimination of the deficit if they were reduced, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the last day or so I have seen an article suggesting that the real-world all up cost of the war in Iraq is several trillion dollars and all included is liable to be closer to $5 Trillion dollars. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Here are the costs of a wide range of income and expenditure streams from XKCD. The level of detail is immense and far beyond what can be usefully portrayed here.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Poring over this page will allow the question to be usefully examined from a range of perspectives.&lt;/strong&gt; It can be seen that health care was absolutely not the dominant expenditure.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/980/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;XKCD money flow analysis -&#xA; superb&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) A look at the magnitudes of the expenditures concerned show them not be be so much 'out of kilter' with those from other countries as to justify the claim.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comparing the claimed US rates with those claimed for eg Canada gives $7,960 and $4,808 per capita per annum for a difference of $3152 pcpa. With a US population of about 315 million that's just under 1 trillion dollars per year (assuming that their $7960 pppa is for every person including children). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4566" LastEditorUserId="4566" LastEditDate="2017-10-23T04:11:17.247" LastActivityDate="2017-10-23T04:11:17.247" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15405" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-03-16T18:04:40.573" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-03-16T18:04:40.573" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T18:04:40.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15406" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-03-16T18:04:40.573" Score="0" Body="Computer programming is the process of creating computer software. Use this tag if you have any questions relating to this area." OwnerUserId="10492" LastEditorUserId="10492" LastEditDate="2013-03-16T19:54:04.603" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T19:54:04.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15407" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-03-16T18:09:05.880" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-03-16T18:09:05.880" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T18:09:05.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15408" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-03-16T18:09:05.880" Score="0" Body="Programming is the process of writing computer code in order to create software. Use this tag for questions relating to the efficiency and productivity of programming." OwnerUserId="10492" LastEditorUserId="10492" LastEditDate="2013-03-16T19:53:51.717" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T19:53:51.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15409" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-03-16T18:19:50.367" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-03-16T18:19:50.367" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T18:19:50.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15410" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-03-16T18:19:50.367" Score="0" Body="Largest country in South America and the 7th largest economy in the world with a population of 193 million." OwnerUserId="11363" LastEditorUserId="11363" LastEditDate="2013-03-16T19:53:58.690" LastActivityDate="2013-03-16T19:53:58.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15412" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15420" CreationDate="2013-03-17T04:26:04.213" Score="17" ViewCount="6352" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;God is not Great&lt;/em&gt; Christopher Hitchens makes a claim that firefighters do not like eating pork because human flesh smells/tastes like pork. Seeing as this has the look and feel of an urban legend (and the fact that his book has other statements of similar pedigree which have proven to be contrafactual), I tried looking this up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I have found that human beings, as a rule, &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_does_human_flesh_taste_like&quot;&gt;do not taste like pork&lt;/a&gt;. And I have also found a number of firefighter associations which have pig roasts and the like. But I have also found the belief that &quot;firefighters don't like pork&quot; restated with some regularity. I was wondering if there have ever been any studies which have actually demonstrated this (or even &quot;suggested but within the margin of error&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt; Are firefighters less likely to eat pork?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5105" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-05-29T09:47:20.483" LastActivityDate="2018-05-29T09:47:20.483" Title="Do firefighters avoid eating pork?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15356" CreationDate="2013-03-17T04:47:09.197" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://gawker.com/orlando-yorio/&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; and the language, I think, is telling. First, Bergoglio told them to leave what they were doing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Verbitsky's reporting claims that Bergoglio ordered Yorio and Jalics to stop their work with the poor in Argentina's slums. When the men refused, the military government imprisoned them for a period of five months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, the priests say that they were imprisoned because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yorio accused Bergoglio of effectively handing them over to the death squads by declining to tell the regime that he endorsed their work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it sounds like the priest's complaint is that after he disobeyed a direct order and put himself in harm's way, the priest wanted Bergoglio to say that his actions were endorsed. Well, they weren't endorsed (actually, it is a rather serious matter to disobey one's superior in a religious order, in other circumstances they might have been punished). They were in disobedience, which means their actions specifically were &lt;em&gt;forbidden&lt;/em&gt;. Now, the priest could be complaining that Bergoglio did not lie to cover their tracks, but that is a very, very different complaint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5105" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T04:47:09.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15416" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15417" CreationDate="2013-03-17T11:43:31.457" Score="64" ViewCount="12674" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always thought that &amp;quot;women are weaker&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; than men in general&amp;quot; was a biological fact (supposedly stemming/evolving from the social structure of prehistoric humans)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any reputable research done which demonstrates (or disproves) that the average woman has the same strength as the average man?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1 In this post, &amp;quot;weaker&amp;quot; means &amp;quot;physically weaker&amp;quot;, and refers only to cis women (not transgender women)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6035" LastEditorUserId="41815" LastEditDate="2020-07-03T09:59:38.613" LastActivityDate="2020-07-03T09:59:38.613" Title="Are women physically weaker?" Tags="|physiology|gender|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15416" CreationDate="2013-03-17T12:02:36.440" Score="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;What do we mean by weaker, or by stronger?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&amp;quot;Women really are stronger than men, according to study&amp;quot;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the title of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/article/7b6484fb-3b00-46d6-a557-ac2a0b6f8591&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC article&lt;/a&gt; which says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent academic study has shown that under extreme conditions such as famines, epidemics and enslavement, women are able to survive for longer than men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Across modern populations, women outlive men in almost all instances&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/01/03/1701535115.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; says this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Abstract&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women in almost all modern populations live longer than men. Research to date provides evidence for both biological and social factors influencing this gender gap. Conditions when both men and women experience extremely high levels of mortality risk are unexplored sources of information. We investigate the survival of both sexes in seven populations under extreme conditions from famines, epidemics, and slavery. Women survived better than men: In all populations, they had lower mortality across almost all ages, and, with the exception of one slave population, they lived longer on average than men. Gender differences in infant mortality contributed the most to the gender gap in life expectancy, indicating that newborn girls were able to survive extreme mortality hazards better than newborn boys. Our results confirm the ubiquity of a female survival advantage even when mortality is extraordinarily high. The hypothesis that the survival advantage of women has fundamental biological underpinnings is supported by the fact that under very harsh conditions females survive better than males even at infant ages when behavioral and social differences may be minimal or favor males. Our findings also indicate that the female advantage differs across environments and is modulated by social factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this type of strength might not be what the question refers to. Perhaps some people might prefer to label this attribute as (biological) toughness rather than strength?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the very least, we should be aware that when one person says group A is stronger than group B or another person disputes that statement, we should consider carefully what type of strength is being referred to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Types of Strength/Weakness&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question quotes a video as saying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The belief that women are somehow a naturally weaker gender ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but it may be that the author of the video is, perhaps in part, perhaps mostly, referring to other kinds of historically perceived weakness: emotional and intellectual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer doesn't address that but we probably shouldn't assume the author was only referring to muscle size and not to strengths like toughness, determination, perseverance and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can put the above concerns to one side and consider muscular strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Sexual dimorphism in primates&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jap.physiology.org/content/83/5/1581.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Age and gender comparisons of muscle strength in 654 women and men aged 20–93 yr&lt;/a&gt; in the Journal of Applied Physiology  contains this graph&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/w4u8b.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Regression analysis of age and gender-related differences&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Fig. 1.&#xA;Regression analysis of age- and gender-related differences in concentric (Con; A) and eccentric (Ecc; B) peak torque of knee extensors at slow (0.52 rad/s) velocity. Both Con and Ecc peak torque declined significantly (all P &amp;lt; 0.001) for men (r 2 = 0.30 for Con and 0.19 for Ecc) and women (r 2 = 0.28 for Con and 0.11 for Ecc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can see that &lt;strong&gt;many women are stronger than many men&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. there is considerable overlap in the data) but that the average strength for women is lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sexual dimorphism in Humans is relatively small according to anthropologist Clark Spencer Larsen of Ohio State University &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/100/16/9103.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;writing in PNAS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humans today display relatively limited sexual dimorphism (≈15%), whereas&#xA;some of the other hominoids (gorillas and orangutans) are highly dimorphic&#xA;(&amp;gt;50%)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Causation&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24818443&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kirchengast S.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although sexual size dimorphism has a clear evolutionary basis and is caused by genetic and hormonal factors, socio-cultural factors such as gender role in society and gender typical workload influence the degree of sexual size dimorphism too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So some of the differences we perceive may be the result of cultural forces of the sort which change over time and from place to place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;When is using averages (mean or median) useful and when inappropriate&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question asks about the strength of the &lt;strong&gt;average&lt;/strong&gt; woman vs the &lt;strong&gt;average&lt;/strong&gt; male but in most situations (e.g. interviewing job candidates) we are not interacting with the average person we are more likely interacting with a person whose physical characteristics may be anywhere on the spectrum above. If you select two people at random, one male, one female, there is a significant probability (less than .5 but far higher than 0) that the female is stronger than the male. Focussing on small differences in overall averages for a large population is inappropriate for most situations which involve only a few individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be bizarre to say to a candidate, you are strong enough to do this job but you are ineligible because you are a member of a group whose average strength is lower than the average of some other group. However this is exactly the sort of discrimination that has occurred in the past and that is part of the context for the video which stimulated the question above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We should note that the quotation in the question doesn't use the word &amp;quot;average&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Social implications&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be that the video referenced in the question is concerned whether this perception (true or not) contributes to an unreasonable bias against one part of our population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The better question may be what do we do with this information. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Haye&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;David Haye&lt;/a&gt; may be stronger than Stephen Hawking. Should we skew society to benefit people with large muscles at the expense of the others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-02-09T22:44:33.783" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15412" CreationDate="2013-03-17T16:31:39.440" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;No doubt, firefighters are big eaters. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fs.fed.us/t-d/pubs/htmlpubs/htm06512833/page01.htm&quot;&gt;Active firefighting can require three times normal daily calories&lt;/a&gt;. It would appear that firefighters are not generally getting their calories in the healthiest way, either. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ohsu.edu/xd/education/schools/school-of-medicine/departments/clinical-departments/medicine/divisions/hpsm/research/upload/PHLAME-Study.pdf&quot;&gt;Firefighters have elevated rates of &quot;obesity, hypertension, dyslipidemia&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, that is, bad fat and cholesterol blood counts. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/26/national/26vegan.html&quot;&gt;Firefighters are &quot;dinosaurs, they're big meat eaters&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chef John Sineno has plenty of pork in &lt;em&gt;The New Firefighter's Cookbook&lt;/em&gt; including &quot;Polish farewell to Lent&quot;: ingredients, 5 pounds fresh kielbasa and 5 pounds sauerkraut. Although &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.egullet.org/index.php?title=Polska_kielbasa_w%C4%99dzona&quot;&gt;some modern kielbasa is made without any pork&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wedlinydomowe.com/sausages-by-country/polish-sausages/kielbasa&quot;&gt;pork is very much typical of kielbasa&lt;/a&gt;. More recently WABC-TV has &lt;a href=&quot;http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=resources/lifestyle_community&amp;amp;id=7216524&quot;&gt;FDNY firefighter John Sierp's recipe for pork meatloaf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I suppose that in general firefighters don't avoid pork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And does human flesh taste like pork? &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/05/human-meat-taste-cannibal&quot;&gt;Martin Robbins examines the rare testimonies of cannibalistic murderers&lt;/a&gt; and finds that, for all that the rest of us know, it may.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about the firefighters? Does seared human flesh smell like seared pork or pork products?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not really.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2007/03/barbyou.html&quot;&gt;Michelle Tsai for &lt;em&gt;Slate&lt;/em&gt; gathered the experiences of firefighters and witnesses to atrocities&lt;/a&gt;. They said that burned human flesh has a repulsive fragrance like no other, something like steak and also like tanning leather. People sustain burn injuries to their intact bodies, topped with sulfurous hair, full of metallic-smelling blood and other fragrant fluids. In contrast, pigs are butchered and perhaps drained and salted before cooking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11977" LastEditorUserId="11977" LastEditDate="2013-03-17T17:01:08.620" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T17:01:08.620" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15422" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-17T18:14:42.783" Score="2" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see moderate alcohol shows (supposed) benefits for health and long life. I am 42 and experienced a mid life crisis 4 months ago (initially a nervous breakdown). I am slowly getting better but stil have anxiety bouts. My life is now moving forward including skiing with my son, going out to restaurants, traveling, etc.; all of which I was not able to do the first month after my breakdown. I am doing ALL the right things now but just have small anxiety bouts of spinning thoughts of &quot;when will I get 100% healed&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My life now includes:&#xA;Eating very healthy.&#xA;Running on a regular basis.&#xA;Instead of working on my business 12-15 hours a day/7 days a week, I am working 5 days a week, maybe 6-8 hours a day.&#xA;Taking all kinds of vitamins/herbs etc.&#xA;Working with some small Cognitive Behavioral Therapies.&#xA;Meditation.&#xA;I am going to be seeing a hypnotherapist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So . . . . I have always enjoyed a regular glass or two of port wine each night for many years. Will this prevent me from getting healed from my nervous breakdown symptoms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11981" LastActivityDate="2013-03-17T18:14:42.783" Title="Alcohol good or bad?" Tags="|psychology|physiology|alcohol|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-03-17T18:24:55.320" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15423" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15430" CreationDate="2013-03-17T18:36:56.237" Score="10" ViewCount="1890" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19796224&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC news article&lt;/a&gt; reports that a farmer was eaten by his pig:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authorities are investigating how a farmer in the US state of Oregon was devoured by his pigs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terry Vance Garner, 69, went to feed his animals last Wednesday on his farm by the coast, but never returned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His dentures and pieces of his body were found by a family member in the pig enclosure, but the rest of his remains had been consumed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do know that hogs are omnivorous animals, but I doubt if there are any such behavioural traits/instincts that would make a pig eat a person. It is unnatural for an animal, which has been domesticated for centuries, to exhibit such behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support or disprove this? For example, any other documented reference of a pig actually eating a person? Also are there any other cases apart from pigs, where unexpected domestic animals have preyed or scavenged on human beings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11934" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:01:21.580" Title="Are pigs man-eaters?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15424" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-17T18:45:50.143" Score="12" ViewCount="2588" Body="&lt;p&gt;The popular understanding (at least among those who are not climate skeptics) of global warming is that it is likely to create environmental catastrophe for reasons such as spreading deserts and environmental degradation (for example, the following quote is from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/coal-and-other-fossil-fuels/the-hidden-cost-of-fossil.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Union of Concerned Scientists&lt;/a&gt; with my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Climate scientists predict that if carbon dioxide levels continue to increase, the planet will become warmer in the next century. Projected temperature increases will most likely result in a variety of impacts. In coastal areas, sea-level rise due to the warming of the oceans and the melting of glaciers may lead to the inundation of wetlands, river deltas, and even populated areas. Altered weather patterns may result in more extreme weather events. &lt;strong&gt;And inland agricultural zones could suffer an increase in the frequency of droughts.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-nsU_DaIZE&amp;amp;feature=player_embedded&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Matt Ridley on How Fossil Fuels are Greening the Planet&lt;/a&gt; (YouTube video) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Matt Ridley&lt;/a&gt; makes the claim that fossil fuel use has had great positive environmental impact including preventing deforestation and making the world greener. Specifically, about 1:30 into the video he claims the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Between 1982 and 2011 20.5% of the world's vegetated area got greener while just 3% got browner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim that I specifically want to question: Ridley claims that recent research has shown that the world is, literally, getting greener. The cause of this is increased forestation, higher rates of plant growth, and the rolling back of deserts such as the Sahel in Africa. These changes can be traced to more rainfall and higher carbon dioxide levels. Both are good for plants and both are a consequence of the human production of carbon dioxide (rainfall increases in a warmer world through more evaporation). His claim is &lt;a href=&quot;http://sites.bu.edu/cliveg/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;based on work by Professor Ranga Myneni at Boston University&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the world getting greener? Is the effect a consequence of higher carbon dioxide levels and the knock-on effects of global warming?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2021-11-29T06:58:32.343" LastActivityDate="2021-11-29T07:01:27.190" Title="Are fossil fuels making the world greener?" Tags="|climate-change|environment|weather|fossil-fuel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15416" CreationDate="2013-03-18T02:02:21.333" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is one clue. Visit the IAAF's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iaaf.org/records/toplists/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;page of athletic records&lt;/a&gt; and compare the men's and women's, category by category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No woman on record has cracked the 10 second barrier for 100 meters.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No woman on record has yet cracked the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-minute_mile&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;four minute mile&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Male high school students regularly beat the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.iaaf.org/records/by-category/world-records&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;female world record mile run time of just under 4:13&lt;/a&gt;. 4 American male high school students &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.runnersworld.com/high-school/four-reasons-why-more-high-schoolers-are-running-sub-400&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recently ran sub-4-minute miles within a year of each other&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6844" LastEditorUserId="21543" LastEditDate="2018-02-10T01:25:55.187" LastActivityDate="2018-02-10T01:25:55.187" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15423" CreationDate="2013-03-18T04:41:16.503" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The interesting thing about pigs is that we greatly overestimate what &quot;tame&quot; or &quot;domesticate&quot; means. It only takes a few generations of breeding to make a domesticated farm pig into a completely feral-looking (and acting) wild animal. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.feral.org.au/pest-species/faq/feral-pig-faqs/&quot;&gt;Australian Feral Pig FAQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The natural instinct here is kind of like a goat, that is to say &quot;eat anything that you don't think will immediately kill you&quot;. One of their evolutionary strategies is size - they will pretty well get as big as their food sources allow, and the bigger they are the fewer natural predators they have. It's one of the reasons we use them as a food source - they grow FAST!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to their actually eating people, it isn't common, and they don't exactly hunt humans - but when hungry they may develop somewhat of a feeding frenzy. Every news story paints them as weird, uncommon, but they happen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hey, if there are real stories of regular house cats or dogs eating pieces of human corpses, why not 500-1000lb pigs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another instance, a really weird one:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pickton&quot;&gt;Robert Pickton, The Pig Farmer Killer&lt;/a&gt; - who fed his victims to pigs, and then ate the pigs...and fed the pigs to others, too. This was even featured on a Criminal Minds TV episode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yeah, never trust anything that is physically capable of eating you to...well, not eat you. that's just not how nature works :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Also found this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/119779/2/the-hogs-of-cold-harbor-the-civil-war-saga-of-john-henry-hess-pvt-csa-29th-virginia-infantry-co-g-corses-brigade-picketts-division-longstreets-corps-1862-1864&quot;&gt;The Hogs of cold Harbor&lt;/a&gt; - the book is claimed to be a fictionalized history based on a real civil war soldiers diary, which is the source of many claims of pigs eating dead soldiers. Take it with a grain of salt, naturally&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11957" LastEditorUserId="11957" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T04:47:50.603" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T04:47:50.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15376" CreationDate="2013-03-18T07:11:50.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only information I could find is that washing your skin too often not only takes away the dirt, but also takes away the good oils, which then makes your skin dry out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skinhelp.co.uk/can-you-wash-your-skin-too-often.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.skinhelp.co.uk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Washing is not only good for the skin, it’s also good for the soul. A warm bath at the end of the day helps recharge our batteries and relax us at the same time, and prepares us to face what lies ahead.&#xA;  Washing too often, however, strips the body of essential oils and can dry out our skin. As with everything, moderation is the key!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drbaileyskincare.com/blog/dermatologist-explains-what-causes-dry-skin/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.drbaileyskincare.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Harsh weather ‘pulls’ water out of your skin into the dehumidified wind.  Soaps seep into chapped skin  ‘cleaning-out’ more of your skin’s natural oils.  Unless you intervene, your skin gets drier and drier and its barrier weaker and weaker.&#xA;  The intervention is actually simple – stop exposing the skin to situations that decrease its water and oil content, and instead do something to increase these important components of healthy skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So basically Washing too often, however, strips the body of essential oils and can dry out our skin. As with everything, moderation is the key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11684" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T07:11:50.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15376" CreationDate="2013-03-18T09:31:42.693" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Unfortunately, this doesn't directly answer the &quot;showers per day&quot; question, but does address the more general issue of over-washing.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Repetitive washing can cause &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transepidermal_water_loss&quot;&gt;Transepidermal Water Loss (TEWL)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All skin function parameters already showed a marked change after a single wash (e.g., the median of TEWL values increased by more than 0.5 g/m2 h). Repetitive washing for 1 week led to a further deterioration of TEWL and corneometry values (e.g., TEWL increased for about 2.9 g/m2 h after repetitive washing with sodium lauryl sulfate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-5945/6/1&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-5945/6/1&quot;&gt;another experiment&lt;/a&gt; (intended to test hand-creams) they reproduced this effect to act as a control:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Twenty-five subjects washed hands and forearms with a neutral soap four times per day, for 2 minutes each time, for a total of two weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They measured skin roughness and hydration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Washing hands lead to a gradual increase of skin roughness from 100 (baseline) to a maximum of 108.5 after 9 days. [...] Skin hydration was gradually decreased after washing hands from 79 (baseline) to 65.5 after 14 days. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of their conclusion was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Repetitive and frequent hand washing increases skin dryness and roughness.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-18T11:02:29.690" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T11:02:29.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15402" CreationDate="2013-03-18T09:50:52.553" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The US is champion in litigating health-care which directly and indirectly increases costs.&#xA;Directly because prescription and treatment is more expensive because companies and docters have to set aside a lot of money or get expensive insurance in case they get sued.&#xA;Indirectly because patients get lots of mostly unneeded tests just so practitioners can say they have done everything for the safety of the client.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2006/01/01/litigation-raising-health-care-costs-study-says&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2006/01/01/litigation-raising-health-care-costs-study-says&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10778" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T09:50:52.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8080" CreationDate="2013-03-18T09:55:38.967" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a passage written by 'Psychology Today' explaining Aspergers Syndrome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interests/Obsessions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a young age, most people with Asperger’s develop a specific “pet subject,” which they will throw all their energy and time into learning. Most frequently, a person with Asperger’s will choose only one at a time (or as many people with Asperger’s will say, it chooses them), and it will become the core of their lives. The special interest often fall in to the areas of science, mathematics, engineering, or mechanics, but there are also many people who develop interests in art, writing, or other creative pursuits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As adults, we will often be drawn by that special interest into our careers. Many scientists, computer programmers, and academics are believed to have Asperger’s. We typically have prodigious memories, which allow us to catalog and store large amounts of information, and a laser focus to acquire all possible information on a subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to keep order in our world, and cope with our other challenges, many people with Asperger’s develop a very rigid “rules based” way of doing things. Many struggle with change, and prefer, and almost obsessively maintain “sameness” in their world. Because of the lack of certain instincts, and our “script based” way of relating to the world, we have trouble varying routines. We have to rely on rote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/aspergers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/aspergers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also have a look at this video here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBXZWB_dNsw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBXZWB_dNsw&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T12:54:28.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15382" CreationDate="2013-03-18T13:52:32.190" Score="23" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;King Goujian's army was known for scaring its enemies before battle by forcing its front line, composed of criminals sentenced to death, to commit suicide by decapitating themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, Wikipedia did a poor job in translating Shiji. As pointed out by the OP and Wikipedia, the exact corresponding sentence in Chinese (second sentence of second paragraph in Chapter 41, Shiji - see image below) is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;越王句践使死士挑战，三行，至吴陈，呼而自刭。&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two inaccuracies in the translation. &quot;死士&quot; means soldiers  willing to die (for Goujian), instead of &quot;criminals sentenced to death&quot;. &quot;自刭&quot; literally means to commit suicide by cutting one's throat, which is a fairly common way to end one's own life in Ancient China. (The most famous man who slit his own throat is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiang_Yu#Death&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Xiang Yu&lt;/a&gt;)  &quot;cutting your own head off&quot; or &quot;decapitating themselves&quot; is at best not accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be fair, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sima_Qian&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sima Qian&lt;/a&gt;, possibly the most famous historian in the history of China, sometimes stretches the truth to make the story more dramatic. But personally, I'm more inclined to believe his account:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goujian's strategy can be rationalized by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_(game)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the game of chicken&lt;/a&gt;. It could be rational to make your opponent believe that you're irrational (making your men kill themselves).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People's view towards death in Chunqiu period is very different from today's mainstream view. Those soldiers  willing to die (for Goujian) may have believed that their sacrifices can be compensated in life after death. In fact, some stories in approximately the same period suggest belief in life after death was quite popular, e.g. Wu zixu whipping the Dead body of King Ping of Chu and the phrase “Never see each other again before seeing the yellow fountain [the equivalent of River Styx]”, which is about a seemingly sad story of a mother and a son. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further examination reveals that the problem may lie in the choice of reference rather than the cited claim. Another source, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/zuozhuan&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zuozhuan&lt;/a&gt;(左传) (Chapter 51, the second sentence of the third paragraph), is supportive to claim that &lt;strong&gt;At least some criminals sentenced to death are involved in that battle&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;勾践患吴之整也。使死士，再禽焉。不动。使罪人三行，属剑于颈。而辞曰：‘二君有治，臣奸旗鼓。不敏于君子行前，不敢逃刑，敢归死。’遂自刭也。师属之目，越子因而伐之，大败之。灵姑浮以戈击阖庐，阖庐伤将指，取其一屦。还，卒于陉，去檇李七里。&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;使罪人三行&quot;, assigning criminals into three rows, explicitly shows that some criminals cut their throats in the faces of army of Wu. But I'm not sure whether &quot;死士&quot;，soldiers willing to die and those criminals are the same person. It's possible they have different jobs. One is to commit suicide conspicuously and another is to implement the surprise attack. There is yet another possibility that the suicide is a trick, as shown in the TV episode(see the bottom).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are screenshots of the beginning of second paragraph of Chapter 41 of Shiji and the third paragraph of Chapter 51 of Zuozhuan(They actually depicts the same event that marked the death of Helv(阖闾), the king of Wu).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xjMbh.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;               &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/n0RS5.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My translation: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Goujian, the King of Yue, assigned warriors who were willing to die for him to launch a surprise attack on their enemy, the army of kingdom of Wu. Those soldiers lined up into three rows. When they rushed into the front of army of kingdom Wu, these men cut their throats, roaring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A depiction of this event in a Chinese TV series, States of Eastern Zhou Dynasty:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTAzNjg2Njg=.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiping out of Wu by Goujian&lt;/a&gt;.(from 2'30'' to 4' 30'')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caution: As pointed out by a youku user 雪拥蓝关马不前, a glaring error is that it's Ling Gufu(灵姑浮),rather than Goujian who maimed Helv in that battle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;种伤阖闾的不是勾践而是勾践的大将灵姑浮&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, it's highly possible, the primary goal of that TV series is not historical accuracy, which means I'm doubtful about the depiction that these criminals don't actually kill themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11553" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T19:34:56.187" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T19:34:56.187" CommentCount="13" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-03-19T09:20:23.517" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8080" CreationDate="2013-03-18T15:23:46.877" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This area has recently received a good deal of attention, with conflicting results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oro.open.ac.uk/28986/5/Roelfsema_et_al__ASC_prevalence_NL_JADD_in_press.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This recent study&lt;/a&gt; compared the prevalence of ASD in technical and non-technical students in the Netherlands. They found a statistically significant difference between the two groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19606466&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;One interesting study&lt;/a&gt; examined whether the &lt;em&gt;children&lt;/em&gt; of engineers are more likely to have Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The researchers reported that there was a non-significant trend (p ≤ 0.07) towards ASD in children whose mothers work in &quot;hi-tech occupations&quot;, and that no such trend was found for fathers.&lt;sup&gt;1,2&lt;/sup&gt; Note that this finding conflicts with &lt;a href=&quot;http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/ethics/when-engineers-genes-collide/0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;other studies examining the exact same phenomenon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1750946713000275&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another interesting study&lt;/a&gt; coming out in May 2013 examines correlations between individuals with ASD and technical proficiency. The study showed some correlation between ASD and technical proficiency, but I'm not really sure what you can conclude given that data about ASD and technical field employment; just because you're good at something doesn't mean you do it. Also, correlation ≠ causality and all that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; This particular researcher has done other work examining links between ASD and other factors (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23361991&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;environmental&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21264681&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;location &amp;amp; SES factors&lt;/a&gt;) as well, which may be interesting to examine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; I found many of these by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=prevalence+autism+spectrum+disorders+computer&amp;amp;cmd=DetailsSearch&amp;amp;log%24=activity&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;searching Pubmed&lt;/a&gt; and then examining the &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aur.84/citedby&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Cited By&quot; page for the relevant Pubmed articles&lt;/a&gt;. There's a bunch of stuff I didn't cite, mainly due to time contraints; hopefully someone else can pick up where I left off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11998" LastEditorUserId="11998" LastEditDate="2013-03-19T00:42:26.710" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T00:42:26.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-18T17:19:07.857" Score="30" ViewCount="3772" Body="&lt;p&gt;This caught my eye and seems like powerful statement, if true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;WARREN: During my Senate campaign, I ate a number 11 at McDonald’s many, many times a week. I know the price on that. $7.19. According to the data on the analysis of what would happen &lt;strong&gt;if we raised the minimum wage to $10.10 over three years, the price increase on that item would be about four cents. So instead of being $7.19 it would be $7.23. Are you telling me that’s unsustainable?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://thecontributor.com/economy/watch-elizabeth-warren-dismantle-right-wing-talking-points-about-minimum-wage&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;v=ABM0_L_5vLw&quot;&gt;video of it here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T16:39:48.397" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T15:34:59.363" Title="Could McDonald's pay a $10.10 minimum wage with an increase of only 4¢ per meal?" Tags="|united-states|economics|politics|mcdonalds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15424" CreationDate="2013-03-18T19:49:51.337" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your answer is pretty much entirely contained in the IPCC's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/contents.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fourth Assesment Report&lt;/a&gt;, section &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch1s1-3-6-2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1.3.6.2 (Forestry)&lt;/a&gt;, except for the part about the Sahel in Africa. It's pretty short and concise, so I recommend reading it for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some quotes, with my emphasis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thus, the overall trend towards longer growing seasons is consistent with an increase in the ‘greenness’ of vegetation&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;for broadly continuous regions in Eurasia and in a more fragmented way in North America&lt;/em&gt;, reflecting changes in biological activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the humid evergreen tropical forest in Costa Rica, &lt;strong&gt;annual growth from 1984 to 2000 was shown to vary inversely with the annual mean of daily minimum temperature&lt;/strong&gt;, because of increased respiration at night (Clark et al., 2003). &lt;strong&gt;For southern Europe, a trend towards a reduction in biomass production has been detected in relation to rainfall decrease (Maselli, 2004)&lt;/strong&gt;, especially after the severe drought of 2003 (Gobron et al., 2005; Lobo and Maisongrande, 2006). A recent study in the mountains of north-east Spain (Jump et al., 2006) shows significantly lower growth of mature beech trees at the lower limit of this species compared with those at higher altitudes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For North America, recent observations from satellite imagery (for the period 1982 to 2003) document a decline for a substantial portion of northern forest, possibly related to warmer and longer summers&lt;/strong&gt;, whereas tundra productivity is continuing to increase (Goetz et al., 2005). They also confirm other results about the effects of droughts (Lotsch et al., 2005), as well those made by ground measurements (D’Arrigo et al., 2004; Wilmking et al., 2004).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus: Yes, the world is overall getting greener by a couple of tens of percents. This seems to be largely because areas of Eurasia and North America that were previously very cold are now getting warmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;em&gt;despite&lt;/em&gt; this overall &amp;quot;greening&amp;quot;, some areas of the world (and particularly, areas that humans like living in) seem to be experiencing a reduction in biomass. This is where your quote from the Union of Concerned Scientists comes in. They are worried that the areas people &lt;em&gt;actually farm in&lt;/em&gt; will become less productive due to global warming, and an overall increase in net primary productivity due to an Eurasian bloom doesn't exactly assuage that fear. If you want more information as to why they would be okay signing on to that quote, section &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch1s1-3-6-1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1.3.6.1 (Crops and livestock)&lt;/a&gt; more directly addresses it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5973" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2021-11-29T07:01:27.190" LastActivityDate="2021-11-29T07:01:27.190" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15442" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15636" CreationDate="2013-03-18T20:20:58.457" Score="11" ViewCount="8663" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/14/185880/millions-went-to-war-in-iraq-afghanistan.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; quotes a man who says that it was millions! That sounds way off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, about 2.5 million members of the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard and related Reserve and National Guard units have been deployed in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, according to Department of Defense data. Of those, more than a third were deployed more than once.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In fact, as of last year nearly 37,000 Americans had been deployed more than five times, among them 10,000 members of guard or Reserve units. Records also show that 400,000 service members have done three or more deployments.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&#xA;  “When I say 2.5 million people have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, jaws drop,” said Paul Rieckhoff, the chief executive officer of the advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “I know which lines are going to get gasps, and that’s one of them. I don’t think they appreciate how many people have served, and particularly the number who have had repeated deployments. You’ve had an unprecedented demand on a small population. The general public has been incredibly isolated from those who served.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these numbers are correct how are they being counted? Is there double counting, where a soldier deployed twice is counted twice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2015-12-06T15:07:48.757" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T15:07:48.757" Title="Did 2.5 million Americans serve in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars from 2001 to 2013?" Tags="|united-states|war|iraq|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10828" CreationDate="2013-03-18T21:32:13.343" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Starting towards an answer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cells in the taste buds actually renew far more often &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2106718/&quot;&gt;RENEWAL OF CELLS WITHIN TASTE BUDS&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The life span of the average cell is about 250 ± 50 hours&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So cells in the taste buds change &lt;strong&gt;much faster&lt;/strong&gt; than the claimed change in taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are known examples of tastes that change over the lifespan, e.g. the perception of sweetness (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10549887&quot;&gt;Sweetness intensity and pleasantness in children, adolescents, and adults.&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &quot;complete change every 7 years&quot; is too simplistic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, not every taste perception changes for everyone (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3087510/&quot;&gt;Age modifies the genotype-phenotype relationship for the bitter receptor TAS2R38&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;They looked at variations of a particular bitter reception, and found  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the change in PROP bitter sensitivity which occurs over the lifespan (from bitter sensitive to less so) is more common in people with a particular haplotype combination, i.e., AVI/PAV heterozygotes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these people do not change their genes with age, but the perception of the bitter substance is markedly different. (AFAIK it is in general not clear whether the change comes from the signal from the taste buds or from the perceived quality, i.e. the processing of the signal in the brain - but I don't have literature on that.)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The AVI/AVI had a low bitter sensitivity throughout the studied age (3 groups around 7, 15 and 34 years), and the PAV/PAV maintained high sensitivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2966960/&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; has whole sections on how taste likes and dislikes develop. Particularly dislikes can develop very fast, and also erraneously (e.g. childen can learn to dislike a food if they fall ill soon after eating it - also if the illness was completely unrelated to the food). They also cite &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12781165/&quot;&gt;this other paper&lt;/a&gt; saying that  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some research suggests that children need to taste a new food at least ten times before they change their preference (Wardle et al, 2003a), especially if its initial palatability is low. Mothers typically cease to offer foods that have been rejected on three or more occasions (Carruth et al, 2004) and as a result the necessary level of exposure required to create acceptance might not be reached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if those 10 exposures take 6 months, there you are...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About carrots: Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tumb1.biblio.tu-muenchen.de/publ/diss/ch/2004/czepa.pdf&quot;&gt;PhD thesis about bitter taste in carrots (in German)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fei-bonn.de/download/projekte/projektdatenbank.html/fv_12226/&quot;&gt;This leaflet about the project&lt;/a&gt; said that rather freuently intense bitter taste in carrot-based baby food leads to reclamations, and the project identified some substances but concludes that still not all precursors are known, so it is still difficult to measure the potential of the carrots for developing bitter taste. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastActivityDate="2013-03-18T21:32:13.343" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15445" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-19T02:34:38.517" Score="8" ViewCount="2547" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MStOZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlyourhealth.com/1/archives/hurtful-food-unrefined-plant-food-consumption-vs-the-killer-diseases.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Unrefined Plant Food Consumption vs. The Killer Diseases&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I insist that our low consumption of unrefined plant foods is largely responsible for our dismal mortality statistics. Most of us perish prematurely as a result of our dietary folly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Populations with low death rates from the major killer diseases—populations that almost never have overweight members—consume more than 75 percent of their calories from unrefined plant substances. This is at least ten times more than what the average American consumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical that they only included 12 out of the ~196 countries that exist (and &quot;Korea&quot; does not have a &quot;North&quot; or &quot;South&quot; in front of it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="155" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2017-06-07T17:35:32.403" LastActivityDate="2017-10-09T05:06:30.793" Title="How legit is this graph of heart disease and cancer vs unrefined plant foods?" Tags="|vegetarianism|cardiology|vegetables|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15449" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27312" CreationDate="2013-03-19T17:23:04.380" Score="15" ViewCount="1281" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been rumors that North Korea is famine-plagued to such an extent that people even resort to cannibalism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reports from inside the secretive famine-hit pariah state, North Korea, claim a man has been executed after murdering his two children for food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/north-korean-cannibalism-fears-amid-claims-starving-people-forced-to-desperate-measures-8468781.html&quot;&gt;North Korean cannibalism fears amid claims starving people forced to desperate measures&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any of these rumors have been verified as reliable claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-03-19T18:21:05.257" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T20:41:51.487" Title="Do North Koreans resort to cannibalism?" Tags="|cannibalism|north-korea|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9220" CreationDate="2013-03-19T17:32:03.960" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The publication &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=O7GzmPy6uqEC&amp;amp;pg=PA53&amp;amp;lpg=PA53&amp;amp;dq=handgun%20%22head%20wounds%22%20%22wound%20ballistics%22&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;ots=cJ_lCOEq45&amp;amp;sig=fb_MEJh0uUynupkDjpEYpSB_huQ#PPA45,M1&quot;&gt;Missile Wounds of the Head and Neck&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; states the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a bullet is fired straight-on into the head, bullet deflection is unlikely; however, if the bullet is fired at an angle or hits a curved portion of the skull, deflection will usually result. In some cases, the bullet will form a wound track as it follows the curved bone, and may even exit without perforating the skull.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Therefore, is it possible?  Yes.  Is it likely?  No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6673" LastActivityDate="2013-03-19T17:32:03.960" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15452" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18535" CreationDate="2013-03-19T20:54:27.250" Score="65" ViewCount="9828" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bill Bryson in his book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_Tongue&quot;&gt;The Mother Tongue: English And How It Got That Way&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, on page 110, writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An equally useful advantage of written Chinese is that people can read the literature of 2,500 years ago as easly as yesterday's newspapers, even though the spoken language has changed beyond recognition. If Confucius were to come back to life today, no one apart from scholars would understand what he was saying, but if he scribbled a message people could read it as easily as they could a shopping list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that a modern Chinese can read texts written 2,500 year ago &quot;&lt;em&gt;as easily as they could a shopping list&lt;/em&gt;&quot; seems rather surprising, at least to me. In my language, and &amp;mdash; as far as I know &amp;mdash; also in English, that would be impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I'm skeptical of that claim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Is it true?&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="8702" LastEditDate="2015-03-31T16:35:12.183" LastActivityDate="2016-04-07T13:50:58.700" Title="Can Chinese people read the literature of 2,500 years ago as easily as yesterday's newspapers" Tags="|language|china|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15445" CreationDate="2013-03-20T06:40:42.200" Score="2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Heart Disease&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are multiple peer reviewed studies that point the link between meat-eating and heart disease, as well as meat consumption causing people to die earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/97/3/597&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Risk of hospitalization or death from ischemic heart disease among British vegetarians and nonvegetarians: results from the EPIC-Oxford cohort study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was an experiment that followed up 44,561 UK men and women for around 11 years, and concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consuming a vegetarian diet was associated with lower IHD [ischemic heart disease] risk, a finding that is probably mediated by differences in non-HDL cholesterol, and systolic blood pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/70/3/500s.abstract?sid=61562efb-7064-43a2-ae7a-152c1264acab&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nut consumption, vegetarian diets, ischemic heart disease risk, and all-cause mortality: evidence from epidemiologic studies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This review looked at nut consumption:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;nut consumption seems to protect against ischemic heart disease (IHD). Frequency and quantity of nut consumption have been documented to be higher in vegetarian than in nonvegetarian populations. [...] Importantly, nuts have similar associations in both vegetarians and nonvegetarians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Cancer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thing about unrefined (raw) plant foods and cancer is rates for some types of cancer are lowered by eating your veggies, while other types of cancer don't seem as influenced by diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But overall, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.karger.com/Article/Pdf/337301&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cardiovascular Disease Mortality and&#xA;Cancer Incidence in Vegetarians:&#xA;A Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our results suggest that vegetarians have a significantly lower ischemic heart disease mortality (29%) and overall cancer&#xA;incidence (18%) than nonvegetarians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note however, they also say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, the overall cancer incidence and mortality from ischemic heart disease were significantly lower, but there were no associations of a vegetarian diet with&#xA;all-cause mortality and mortality from circulatory and&#xA;cerebrovascular diseases&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/cancer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vegan Health&lt;/a&gt; have summaries of studies looking at cancer rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/complementaryandalternativemedicine/dietandnutrition/vegetarianism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Cancer Org's summary of Vegetarianism&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This looks at some studies, and discusses the strength of the evidence and the criticism of it - particularly warning of confounding factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;General Mortality&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/03/06/study-links-processed-meats-with-early-death&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US News article about a study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study, published in the European journal BMC Medicine, comes on the heels of a 2012 Harvard University study that found people who ate just 1.5 ounces of red meat daily were more likely to die early deaths than people who ate less than that. The latest study, which chronicled more than 500,000 people from 10 European countries, found those who ate the most processed meats (including ham, bacon, sausages, and ready-to-eat packaged meats) were most likely to die prematurely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/dxrates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vegan Health: Disease Rates&lt;/a&gt; page cites many meta-analyses looking at both mortality rates and heart disease rates of vegetarians compared to omnivores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12021" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T07:13:19.417" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15460" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15472" CreationDate="2013-03-20T07:11:22.017" Score="1" ViewCount="361" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read a news about an organization for &lt;a href=&quot;http://finance.yahoo.com/news/scientists-want-to-bring-some-animals-back-from-extinction-211102151.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;de-extinction of extincted animals&lt;/a&gt;, see also &lt;a href=&quot;http://longnow.org/revive/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/03/19/your-de-extinction-questions-answered/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. I searched internet to see if it is really a possible project, but i haven't found any estimate about its costs and its time frame. Of course, it may be possible in the next 2000 years. But my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is de-extinction possible in the near future (so we can see the result in our life)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11212" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T09:49:30.853" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T09:49:30.853" Title="Is de-extinction possible in the near future?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-03-21T13:41:13.877" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15445" CreationDate="2013-03-20T10:09:13.643" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been unable to find too much clear and believable data...  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; looks thorough but not entirely trustworthy, though if you trust it you can easily see that the cancer and heart disease numbers in this graph are completely made up.&#xA;You can find more formal-looking sources, for example, for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;USA&lt;/a&gt; and for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2885317/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thailand&lt;/a&gt;, which agree with the previous conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the whole claim is ridiculous. The phrase &quot;Most of us perish prematurely&quot; is meaningless; when exactly is the correct time to die? Is death by suicide, car accident, diabetes or Alzheimer's any less premature than death from leukemia? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And speaking of premature death, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;life expectancy&lt;/a&gt; in Hungary is significantly higher than in Laos... although the rest of the countries in the graph don't show much correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11870" LastEditorUserId="11870" LastEditDate="2013-03-20T10:22:09.733" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T10:22:09.733" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15452" CreationDate="2013-03-20T10:20:50.433" Score="43" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Can Chinese people read the literature of 2,500 years ago as easily as yesterday's newspaper?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Simplified Chinese&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The communist government of China changed the writing system to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Chinese_characters&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;simplified form&lt;/a&gt;. Consequently, Chinese people educated in communist china cannot easily read Chinese material written in pre-communist times or in non-communist regions†.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stated goal of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cultural Revolution&lt;/a&gt; was&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to enforce communism in the country by removing capitalist, traditional and cultural elements from Chinese society&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The change did not have a beneficial effect‡ on literacy as literacy rates are similar to territories that teach traditional Chinese (Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc). &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_administrative_divisions_by_illiteracy_rate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=152196&amp;amp;CtNode=413&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Context of claim&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst Bryson's assertion seems overly simplistic, we should take it in context. He is writing a book about English. Here is a text written in England sometime between 8th and 11th C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ctgG0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Beowulf&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that Bryson's point may be that literate Chinese people who can read Modern Traditional Chinese can also instantly recognize (most of) the Chinese characters written thousands of years earlier. In England, people cannot instantly recognize words written thousands of years ago in (what is now) England. Mainly because English isn't Old-English isn't Saxon, isn't Latin and isn't Brythonic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recognition vs comprehension&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over thousands of years, languages change, merge, split and are replaced. There are a number of factors that have to be considered when discussing the readability of ancient texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changes in writing system. Particularly the shape of &amp;quot;characters&amp;quot; (smallest independent graphemes).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changes in words. Archaic words are often replaced by modern equivalents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changes in grammar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changes in modes of expression.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other structural changes (I'm not a linguist, cut me a little slack)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cultural changes (We don't live in a feudal society, our language reflects that)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bryson seems to be ignoring many of these. Even if a Chinese person recognises all the Chinese characters in a passage, they may not comprehend it's meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;WHAN that Aprille with his shoures soote&#xA;The droghte of Marche hath perced to the roote,&#xA;And bathed every veyne in swich licour,&#xA;Of which vertu engendred is the flour;&#xA;Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth&#xA;Inspired hath in every holt and heeth&#xA;The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne&#xA;Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,&#xA;And smale fowles maken melodye,&#xA;That slepen al the night with open ye,&#xA;So priketh hem nature in hir corages:&#xA;Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,&#xA;And palmers for to seken straunge strondes,&#xA;To ferne halwes, couthe in sondry londes;&#xA;And specially, from every shires ende&#xA;Of Engelond, to Caunterbury they wende,&#xA;The holy blisful martir for to seke,&#xA;That hem hath holpen, whan that they were seke.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can read all the letters as easily as those in my shopping list. I can read many of the words (with somewhat more effort), I'm not entirely sure of it's meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From comments, I expect many of these sorts of difficulties apply to reading and understanding ancient Chinese texts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Chinese people&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of assessing the claim is working out what Bryson means by &amp;quot;Chinese people&amp;quot;. Some possibilities (some unlikely, some likely) might include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New York professors of ancient Chinese literature who are also of Chinese ancestry.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A bunch of friends of Bryson who he sees as &amp;quot;Chinese&amp;quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The majority of people of PRC nationality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The majority of people who consider themselves as Chinese (ethnicity) regardless of where they were born.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we assume the first or second groups the answer might well be Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have my copy of the Bryson's book to hand but I suspect it is probably fairest to assume the last group in my list. I suspect that communist-educated Chinese still predominate and so it is the reading abilities of the bulk of PRC citizens we should be considering when answering this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Evidence of difficulties in comprehension&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eileen Cheng-yin Chow is an associate professor of Chinese literary and cultural studies at Harvard University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I grew up in Taiwan, where reading and writing in traditional characters is the norm, simplified characters were a novelty and a bit of a challenge, and perhaps, something to be sniffed at. But when my first job after college led me to Beijing to work as a literary translator, I spent the first week furtively consulting a little manual of “Simplified/Traditional Character Conversion” before I became fully comfortable with the new system, including &lt;strong&gt;learning to write my name in a way that was comprehensible to desk clerks&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hsuan Meng writes a column for World Journal Weekly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of traditional characters is that they offer a stronger and richer connection with the history of the Chinese language. The simplified writing system has reduced the variety and changed the nature of many character shapes, &lt;strong&gt;making it more difficult for people to access classical texts in their full richness&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/chinese-language-ever-evolving/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writer Ba Jin, in his essay &amp;quot;Thoughts: Reform of Chinese characters&amp;quot; (simplified Chinese: 随想录·汉字改革; traditional Chinese: 隨想錄漢字改革; pinyin: Suí xiǎng lù hàn​zì gǎi​gé), urged caution in any reforms to the written Chinese language. He cited &lt;strong&gt;the inability of those educated in Hong Kong or Taiwan to read material published on the mainland, and vice versa&lt;/strong&gt;, as a great disadvantage of simplified Chinese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ref:  Ba Jin. (1999) &amp;quot;随想录·汉字改革&amp;quot;.《汉字文化》.Issue 4, 1999. Beijing.&#xA;(via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_on_traditional_and_simplified_Chinese_characters#cite_note-3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: most sources I've read seem to agree that those fluent in either traditional or simplified characters can learn the other relatively easily. However a learning process is involved. It is not like reading your shopping list if you have not already made the effort to learn both systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‡ It is probably more accurate to say that the end result can be achieved despite the additional complexity. It's hard to argue simplifying had no beneficial effect. Making a clear break with the past and rendering your political opponents incomprehensible may not have been an overt goal - but I can't help feeling this idea may have been attractive to senior communists and helped smooth the path for the project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T18:01:39.503" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15467" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15469" CreationDate="2013-03-20T17:51:26.393" Score="13" ViewCount="6498" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a chain post making the rounds in my social networks. It asserts that gasoline vapors can affect how much fuel you actually get. To minimize the amount of vapor passed through the nozzle/meter you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pump gas at the slow setting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pump gas when the cars tank is half full or more&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not pump gas when the delivery truck is refilling the big station tanks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The post reeks of a chain letter and unverified science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the premise that gasoline vapors impact the metering of fuel? In other words will a gas pump measure liquid fuel volume or any fluid fuel volume?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the premise is true, do the 3 behaviors actually reduce fuel vapors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much does gasoline expand and contract when temperatures change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TIPS ON PUMPING GAS&#xA;I don't know what you guys are paying for gasoline.... but here in&#xA;California we are paying up to $3.75 to $4.10 per gallon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My line of work is in petroleum for about 31 years now, so here are some tricks&#xA;to get more of your money's worth for every gallon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here at the Kinder Morgan Pipeline where I work in San Jose , CA we deliver about 4&#xA;million gallons in a 24-hour period thru the pipeline.. One day is&#xA;diesel the next day is jet fuel, and gasoline, regular and premium&#xA;grades. We have 34-storage tanks here with a total capacity of&#xA;16,800,000 gallons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only buy or fill up your car or truck in the early&#xA;morning when the ground temperature is still cold. Remember that all&#xA;service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground. The&#xA;colder the ground the more dense the gasoline, when it gets warmer&#xA;gasoline expands, so buying in the afternoon or in the evening....your&#xA;gallon is not exactly a gallon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the petroleum business, the specific gravity and the temperature of the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, ethanol and other petroleum products plays an important role. A&#xA;1-degree rise in temperature is a big deal for this business. But the&#xA;service stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you're filling up do not squeeze the trigger of the nozzle to a&#xA;fast mode If you look you will see that the trigger has three (3)&#xA;stages: low, middle, and high. You should be pumping on low mode,&#xA;thereby minimizing the vapors that are created while you are pumping.&#xA;All hoses at the pump have a vapor return. If you are pumping on the&#xA;fast rate, some of the liquid that goes to your tank becomes vapor.&#xA;Those vapors are being sucked up and back into the underground storage&#xA;tank so you're getting less worth for your money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most important tips is to fill up when your gas tank is HALF FULL. The&#xA;reason for this is the more gas you have in your tank the less air&#xA;occupying its empty space. Gasoline evaporates faster than you can&#xA;imagine. Gasoline storage tanks have an internal floating roof. This&#xA;roof serves as zero clearance between the gas and the atmosphere, so&#xA;it minimizes the evaporation. Unlike service stations, here where I&#xA;work, every truck that we load is temperature compensated so that&#xA;every gallon is actually the exact amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reminder, if there is a gasoline truck pumping into the storage tanks when you stop to buy gas, DO NOT fill up; most likely the gasoline is being stirred up&#xA;as the gas is being delivered, and you might pick up some of the dirt&#xA;that normally settles on the bottom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of gas buyers. It's really simple to do. I'm sending this note to about thirty people. If each of you send it to at&#xA;least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)...and those 300 send it to at least ten&#xA;more (300 x 10 = 3,000) and so on, by the time the message reaches the&#xA;sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION&#xA;consumers !!!!!!! If those three million get excited and pass this on&#xA;to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted!&#xA;If It goes one level further, you guessed it..... THREE HUNDRED&#xA;MILLION PEOPLE!!! Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people.&#xA;How long would it take?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5897" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2022-12-20T12:33:54.300" Title="Does pumping gas when the tank is half full and on the low flow setting provide an economic benefit?" Tags="|economics|gasoline|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15467" CreationDate="2013-03-20T21:17:50.443" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Verbatim debunked here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20201111200006/https://www.liveabout.com/tips-on-pumping-gas-3298901&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tips on Pumping Gas&#xA;(Netlore Archive)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The physical view:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slow tanking claim and half full tanking claim have the same fallacy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While driving, the fuel/air system in your tank will be thorougly agitated from the vibrations of driving. We can assume the air inside the tank is fully saturated. Vapor pressure of gasoline at 20 °C is about 60 kPa - this means the air contains up to 6% volume of gasoline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter on what setting you fill up, what escapes is fully saturated air - it cannot take more fumes with it than its limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One might argue that the fuel we are tanking emits pure fumes, but it doesn't. It does not emit fumes if it is in a saturated environment, that's the magic of vapor pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_pump#Metrology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's section on the metrology of gas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now from yachts I know that there are bacteria that thrive in diesel tanks. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160304003339/http://www.hpcdfuel.com/pdf/DOWfuel_training.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microbial Contamination of Diesel Fuel:&#xA;Impact, Causes and Prevention&lt;/a&gt;, but it takes a serious storm to shake it loose. I would not assume filling up a tank shakes the sediment loose. The tanker trucks get cleaned regularly, so they cannot bring sediment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12033" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-12-20T02:45:55.943" LastActivityDate="2022-12-20T02:45:55.943" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15460" CreationDate="2013-03-20T21:28:03.157" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been done recently: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://inhabitat.com/scientists-bring-extinct-mouth-brooding-frog-back-to-life-after-30-years/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://inhabitat.com/scientists-bring-extinct-mouth-brooding-frog-back-to-life-after-30-years/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be more difficult the longer a species has been extinct. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12033" LastActivityDate="2013-03-20T21:28:03.157" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15467" CreationDate="2013-03-20T22:51:19.100" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember that all service stations have their storage tanks buried below ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means they have approximately constant temperature over the day (&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20131126064254/http://ktisis.cut.ac.cy:80/bitstream/10488/870/1/C55-PRT020-SET3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;see table in Georgios Florides and Soteris Kalogirou: Measurements of Ground Temperature at&#xA;Various Depths&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the economic loss by due to the vapor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The strategy of &lt;strong&gt;tanking half full doesn't save you anything&lt;/strong&gt; - it is true that you'd lose only half as much during each tanking as only half of tank's volume of saturated gasoline vapor is pushed out by the inflowing gasoline, but you need to tank twice as often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much do you actually lose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A general rule of thumb is that evaporation of a liquid will increase the volume by a factor of 1000 (calculate more exactly from density of liquid, molar mass, temperature/partial pressure.)&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;So assuming an empty 60 l tank still saturated with gasoline vapor.&#xA;The DVPE is the vapor pressure at 38°C, which is &lt;a href=&quot;https://connect.snv.ch/de/sn-en-228-a1-2018&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;specified in norms&lt;/a&gt;. E.g. for &amp;quot;summer blends&amp;quot; of gasoline, it can be 60 kPa (see below). Normal pressure is 101.325 kPa. So at +38°C air temperature, roughly 36 ml of gasoline would be in the vapor.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;This is the equivalent of driving something between 250 and 1200m.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Todays gas price here in Germany is 1,529 €/l, so the loss would be 5.5 €ct (if it was +38°C instead of snowing.) You could also save 5.5 €ct by getting 30 l of gasoline for 0.2 €ct/l less, i.e. buying gasoline if it is about 0.1% cheaper. I'm calculating this on 30 l, because if you manage to get a full tank of gasoline for 1 €ct/l less by not tanking when the tank is still half full, you'd save 60 €ct, i.e. 10 times as much (FYI daily differences in gas price can easily be 5 - 7 €ct/l here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: since the original link to the DVPE data is dead, and the norm is expensive, here's a screen shot of a spec sheet for motor (car) gasoline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BoWDx.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BoWDx.png&quot; alt=&quot;spec sheet for gasoline with summer blend DVPE: between 45 and 60 kPa&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-12-20T12:33:54.300" LastActivityDate="2022-12-20T12:33:54.300" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15476" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15479" CreationDate="2013-03-21T08:59:26.803" Score="44" ViewCount="17799" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received a rather intriguing email. It says that if I am at an ATM and I'm in the process of getting robbed, I just enter my PIN in reverse order e.g. 4321 instead of 1234. The ATM will still give me the cash but it will notify the police. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other examples of this claim can be seen here, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1816655728601073&amp;amp;set=a.1421666948099955.1073741828.100007699893512&amp;amp;type=3&amp;amp;permPage=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pjNU1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image claim&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image reads&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a thief forces you to take money out of an ATM, do not argue or resist. What you do is &lt;strong&gt;punch in your pin # backwards.&lt;/strong&gt; EX: if its 1234, you'll type 4321. When you do that, the money will come out but will be stuck in the slot. &lt;strong&gt;The machine will immediately alert the local police without the robbers knowledge &amp;amp; begin taking photos of the suspect. Every ATM has this feature.&lt;/strong&gt; Stay safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11908" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2017-06-20T10:13:19.053" LastActivityDate="2021-09-27T14:11:01.080" Title="Will entering the ATM's PIN in reverse notify the police?" Tags="|technology|security|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15476" CreationDate="2013-03-21T09:23:42.963" Score="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can find information about this on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATM_SafetyPIN_software&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ATM SafetyPIN software is a software application that would allow users of automated teller machines (ATMs) to alert the police of a forced cash withdrawal by entering their personal identification number (PIN) in reverse order. The system was invented and patented by Illinois lawyer Joseph Zingher (U.S. Patent 5,731,575). Contrary to a widely circulated hoax (see below), the system is not implemented in ATMs presently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same information can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hoax-slayer.com/reverse-pin-ATM.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hoax Slayer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brief Analysis&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The claims in the message are false. Reverse PIN technology does exist. However, it has not yet been implemented by any banks. At this time, entering your PIN in reverse will NOT call police.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/pinalert.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; also covers this, with a history of failed attempts to make it law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10701" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-09-25T16:33:40.440" LastActivityDate="2021-09-25T16:33:40.440" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15480" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-21T10:17:02.950" Score="11" ViewCount="710" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bitcoin&lt;/a&gt; is an Internet currency with no centralized bank or agency underpinning it. I only recently heard about it and I've been trying to understand how it works and if it is safe, however this is a huge question well beyond my expertise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of websites that make a lot of claims about Bitcoin, some for, some against. In this question I'd like to focus on &lt;a href=&quot;http://nerdr.com/bitcoin-exchange-scam-bitcoins-are-worthless/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this claim&lt;/a&gt; putatively from a BitCoin exchange:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to make more money.  The number on the exchange.  A number.  I could change it in the programming.  Not too much, because their are other exchanges to balance, but a little would be okay to do.  So I did it.  I increased the Bitcoin value a little.  Say from $1 to $1.05.  No one noticed and many were happy to see it go up.  I was making people happy and the forum enjoyed the fun times with many dreaming big money! haha.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I change the Bitcoin price by hand nearly everyday now.  I increase the number and more people give me money.  Sometimes I let the files do this.  It is a miracle like I have a bank haha.  I give them numbers and they give me money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it possible for someone running a Bitcoin Exchange to change the exchange rate at will, in order to steal money from its users, with no consequences?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original source of the claim is somewhat unreliable, as that site indicates, however the general conclusion of that article, and others on the site, along with many of the comments is that it is Plausible. Additionally I have not been able to come up with any mechanism in the Bitcoin system that would prevent this from happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;N.B If this claim doesn't seem notable enough I could change it to address the whole issue of Trust regarding the use of Bitcoin - for which there is more than enough notability - however, I'm concerned that the question might be too broad. Thoughts?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10499" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T17:14:43.060" Title="Can a Bitcoin Exchange manipulate the exchange rate in a way that defrauds its users without consequence?" Tags="|criminology|corporate-finance|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2014-07-23T16:48:00.160" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15483" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15485" CreationDate="2013-03-21T15:09:47.680" Score="10" ViewCount="1378" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the 18th of September 2014 the Scottish people will vote in a Referendum. The question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Should Scotland be an independent country?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you might expect the magnitude of this event has dredged up a whole load of wild claims from both sides of the argument. One of the most common is the question of tax revenue vs public funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that the percentage of all UK public spending that goes to Scotland is greater than the percentage of all UK tax revenue that Scotland contributes. And therefore the rest of the UK would have more money if Scotland were to become independent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim can be seen all over the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-21828424&quot;&gt;comments section of any BBC news article on the issue&lt;/a&gt;. Along with people claiming the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10499" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-21T15:47:57.170" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T21:10:54.697" Title="Does Scotland receive more public funding than its tax-payers contribute?" Tags="|united-kingdom|taxes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15483" CreationDate="2013-03-21T15:37:43.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;the percentage of all UK public spending that goes to Scotland is greater than the percentage of all UK tax revenue that Scotland contributes.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_formula&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Barnett Formula&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;no account is made of the amounts raised by taxation in each of the home nations&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is true that public funding is not proportionate to tax revenue. It was never intended to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this question grossly oversimplifies a very complex situation and is likely to solicit debate, arguments and continued discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T15:37:43.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15485" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15483" CreationDate="2013-03-21T16:00:57.407" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The BBC's Economics Editor, Stephanie Flanders, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16477990&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;summarised&lt;/a&gt; the situation in January.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her article makes several points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, the coarse claim is correct:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scotland 'got' £16.5bn more in UK public spending in 2009-10 than it contributed to total UK revenues - or a 'subsidy' of around £3,150 per head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in line with a number of factors that give Scotland greater spending needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, citizens in the &lt;strong&gt;whole of the UK&lt;/strong&gt;, not just Scotland, are also being subsidised to a slightly smaller extent. The money is coming from the Budget Deficit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Namely, that Scotland is not the only part of the UK that is currently spending more than it raises in revenues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you apply the same kind calculation to the UK as a whole, the net 'subsidy' for the average person was well over £2,000 last year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, these figures ignore the North Sea oil, which is not normally considered part of  Scotland's contribution. If this were challenged and assigned based on geography, the Scotland would be contributing more income to the UK Government than it spends.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T21:10:54.697" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15476" CreationDate="2013-03-21T16:39:54.757" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a similar question over on IT Security. I answer here as I answered there, based on my job experience in the alarm monitoring industry. The short answer is that the reverse-PIN system is documented as a possibility, but is not currently in use by any ATM network or manufacturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of the reverse PIN is the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duress_code&quot;&gt;duress code&lt;/a&gt;&quot;; something that appears to allow access and let the assailant do what they will, but in fact also trips a silent alarm. These exist in home and commercial alarm systems, allowing a person being forced to disarm the system at gunpoint to signal for help in a way that's not obvious to their assailant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In ATMs, however, there are two fundamental problems with the idea of a duress code PIN, no matter how it's implemented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, and foremost, is that ATMs are designed to be fast. You get the cash and you're gone. The average traditional bank robbery (getting the money from the human tellers in the office) takes about 3 minutes, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.policemag.com/channel/patrol/articles/2008/01/bank-robberies.aspx&quot;&gt;an article in Police Magazine&lt;/a&gt;, and those include the amateur note-passers that only want one teller's tray; professional armed gangs posing a serious threat to life take longer because they want more money from more places. A home invasion or jewelry-store robbery normally takes much longer than that; the assailant needs the extra time to gather up the things of value they want to take, giving the police the time they need to respond. My company, which as I mentioned primarily does video verification of alarm signals, has documented smash-and-grabs and armed robberies of stores we monitor lasting upwards of 10 minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The average ATM cash-out transaction? Less than one minute, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infocash.co.uk/menus/main.asp?PN=ATM-News-Article&amp;amp;ID=387&quot;&gt;according to InfoCash&lt;/a&gt; (an ATM manufacturer whose latest generation claims to reduce that average time to 28 seconds). This makes a duress code for an ATM nearly useless, because a patrolman would pretty much have to be in visual range of the ATM in the first place in order to respond fast enough to catch the robber fleeing the site. Keep in mind that several seconds can pass before the monitoring center even receives the alarm signal (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fmglobal.com/assets/pdf/fmapprovals/3010.pdf&quot;&gt;the NFPA mandates a maximum of 10 seconds&lt;/a&gt; for fire alarms, which we often also monitor and so our entire system has to be that fast), and then the monitoring center must call the police dispatcher and the dispatcher must relay to the patrolman. Most ATM robbers are instead caught hours or days later using evidence from the scene, primarily recorded video from the CCTV system (which is, in addition to false alarm reduction, a primary service of our company; review the video, produce the stills, assist the police).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second is that, because ATMs and their function are so widely known and used, a common, easy-to-remember duress PIN is not an option (as it would be for all users of a single alarm panel, or even for multiple panels of a chain store's various locations), because if there was one duress code for all ATMs of a particular bank, it's very likely the robber will know it. That means that each user must choose a unique duress PIN on top of a unique &quot;normal&quot; PIN. With many users having trouble remembering their normal PIN that they use regularly with only the pressure of the person behind them in line, how many would you expect to remember a duress PIN they've never used before when held at gunpoint? We have problems with alarm system keyholders remembering the common duress code to their own alarm panels, which is why we put human eyes on every opening and closing in our monitoring center.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reverse PIN mechanism, which has been documented and patented as other answers stated, but is not currently in use with any ATM system &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/pinalert.asp&quot;&gt;according to Snopes&lt;/a&gt;, is designed to mitigate this second shortcoming by allowing the user to remember one number and simply enter it backwards. This however produces another problem; the resulting system will not tolerate palindrome PINs. The documented system apparently has additional methods to derive a &quot;panic PIN&quot; from the normal one in the case of palindromes, but that's an additional complexity which would make it that much harder for someone to remember under stress, and given that there are only 10,000 possible four-digit values, from a security perspective you want as many of them to be potentially valid as possible, to prevent a lucky guess at the PIN from someone who's stolen the card (which is, from raw numbers of losses to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.criminal-law-lawyer-source.com/terms/bank_robbery.html&quot;&gt;bank robberies&lt;/a&gt; versus &lt;a href=&quot;http://searchfinancialsecurity.techtarget.com/news/1378913/Payment-card-fraud-costs-86-billion-per-year-Aite-Group-says&quot;&gt;card fraud&lt;/a&gt;, a much greater financial concern to banks). Making any of them invalid for any reason, including not being able to derive a duress PIN from it, works at cross-purposes to the greater problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5997" LastEditorUserId="5997" LastEditDate="2013-03-21T17:45:40.660" LastActivityDate="2013-03-21T17:45:40.660" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15476" CreationDate="2013-03-21T22:55:53.000" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the technique is possible, and as noted, the time it would take for a response to an alert to the nearest public safety office would probably be beyond a relevant response time. There would be the additional risk of failure in getting the response - who becomes responsible for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would expose the bank to liability that they can externalise by simply not implementing the approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In San Bernadino county a &lt;a href=&quot;http://pleaserespond.org/CSUSBReport.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; shows that response to burglar alarms have a mean duration of just over 17 minutes. A major manufacturer of ATMs &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diebold.com/atmsecurity/securityupdate.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;indicates&lt;/a&gt; that they await demand from customers (presumably the banks) to implement a solution. A US public safety response is mandatory (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popcenter.org/problems/robbery_atms/PDFs/HR3662.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ATM Consumer Protection Act 15 U.S.C. 1693 918 (b)&lt;/a&gt;) if activated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12048" LastEditorUserId="12048" LastEditDate="2013-03-23T12:22:17.027" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T12:22:17.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15494" CreationDate="2013-03-22T01:54:20.513" Score="9" ViewCount="5689" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvME_EylPXU&quot;&gt;98.7% Proven Meditation Technique Open Your Third Eye&lt;/a&gt; YouTube video claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What you are about to hear is a short audio track designed and prepared by Professor Jeffery Marlon Harris along with researchers at the University of Pembridgeshire, of whom worked closely with three of the top audiologists in Europe to produce this soundtrack. After taking a little over 4 years to compose by teams of experts, along with tireless research and accuracy this finely tuned 'work of art' as it has been referred to by many is now available to people to hear worldwide. It somewhat 'guarantees' to influence positivity throughout the mind, creating a bond between the brain and the central nervous system whilst stimulating the pineal gland. Research is still being carried out but to date 98.7% of people tested have reported a very noticeable or drastic increase in confidence and positivity after only listening to this track once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just a hoax? Do humans have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_eye&quot;&gt;third eye&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10867" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-22T02:03:44.670" LastActivityDate="2013-06-25T00:38:30.923" Title="Does this audio track create a bond between the brain and the central nervous system whilst stimulating the pineal gland?" Tags="|meditation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8614" CreationDate="2013-03-22T04:01:39.903" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on what you mean by &quot;better&quot;, and what you mean by electronic cigarette.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FDA report that Oddthinking links to addresses the question of whether e-cigarrettes are useful as an aid to kicking nicotine, and I think that the fair answer to that is probably not: e-cig marketing doesn't  &lt;a href=&quot;http://electroniccigarettesreviewed.org/&quot;&gt;seem to focus&lt;/a&gt; on ceasing to inhale nicotine into your lungs, it focuses on ceasing to inhale &lt;em&gt;smoke&lt;/em&gt; into your lungs. These are products marketed towards addicts, and the manufacturers have every reason to want their customers to remain addicts.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what the FDA report does not address at all is a comparison between the long term health effects of smoking vs. vaping, for the very simple reason that there isn't any data on that. So if by &quot;better&quot; you mean &quot;has fewer long term health effects&quot; the answer is &quot;insufficient data.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mean better for your health in the short term than the answer seems to be yes, although the media claims that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cspnet.com/news/tobacco/articles/two-studies-clash-over-potential-harm-electronic-cigarettes&quot;&gt;studies differ&lt;/a&gt;. In the article linked, we see references to two studies, one of which found that lung irritation occurs and remains for ten minutes after five minutes of e-cig use. That study did not compare air flow impedance from cigarettes with e-cigs, though, so from the point of view of &quot;better&quot; it contains no information at all. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273230010000413&quot;&gt;a study that compared the effects&lt;/a&gt; of smoking conventional versus electrically heated tobacco (not e-cigs), smoking had more adverse effects on lung capacity. The study on e-cigs saw indications of lung irritation, but not decreased lung capacity. They also didn't analyze the ingredients of the e-cigs they studied or compare more than one type. They do mention that the e-cigs they used contained propylene glycol, a known lung irritant, which they mention may have been responsible for the lung irritation. So in terms of pulmonary function the indication is that short term, e-cigs are not harmless but are &quot;better&quot;. The second study compared cardiac effects of cigs and e-cigs, and found that e-cigs are definitely &quot;better&quot; in regards to cardiac health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another key point is that not all e-cigs are equal. Some e-cigs are sold with sealed cartridges, others are refillable. A consumer using a refillable cartridge has more control over what goes in the e-cig, and can opt not to use propylene glycol, and substitute vegetable glycerin, ethyl alcohol, or even water. No studies have been done to compare the short term effects of various ingredients in an e-cig, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the PG is what gives an e-cig &quot;throat hit&quot;, that is, the subjective experience of vaping is different without PG than it is with it, so if &quot;better&quot; includes the visceral pleasure of feeling like you are smoking, this may be less satisfying and therefore not better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7164" LastEditorUserId="8702" LastEditDate="2013-09-26T01:20:00.903" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T01:20:00.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7941" CreationDate="2013-03-22T05:31:54.597" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070715000000%2a/http://danwebb.com/humor/&quot;&gt;archive.org&lt;/a&gt;, this statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thought for the day: There is more money being spent on breast&#xA;  implants and Viagra today than on Alzheimer's research. This means&#xA;  that by 2040, there should be a large elderly population with perky&#xA;  boobs and huge erections and absolutely no recollection of what to do&#xA;  with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...appeared between : &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20071202073754/http://danwebb.com/humor/&quot;&gt;2 dec. 2007&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20081119141035/http://danwebb.com/humor&quot;&gt;19 nov. 2008&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://danwebb.com/humor&quot;&gt;http://danwebb.com/humor&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: Case solved ; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.e-farsas.com/frase-do-dr-drauzio-varella-sobre-alzheimer-e-silicone.html&quot;&gt;his website&lt;/a&gt;, Gilmar Lopes said he asked by email &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drauzio_Varella&quot;&gt;Drauzio Varella&lt;/a&gt; about the authorship of the statement. The answer was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Não! Essa frase não é do Dr. Drauzio!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can be translated as « No! This is not a statement of PhD Drauzio! »&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12052" LastEditorUserId="12052" LastEditDate="2013-03-22T06:19:30.670" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T06:19:30.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15490" CreationDate="2013-03-22T10:37:00.050" Score="27" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Does this audio track create a bond between the brain and the central nervous system whilst stimulating the pineal gland?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The brain is part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_nervous_system&quot;&gt;CNS&lt;/a&gt; so it is nonsensical to write of creating a bond between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pineal gland's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/otherendo/pineal.html&quot;&gt;activity&lt;/a&gt; is primarily affected by light not by sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Is this just a hoax?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no Jeffery Marlon Harris FRCS registered as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/patients/find-your-surgeon?searchableText=Harris&amp;amp;membership_type=FRCS&amp;amp;name_type=surname&quot;&gt;Fellow at the Royal College of Surgeons&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no county of Pembridgeshire in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counties_of_England&quot;&gt;England&lt;/a&gt; or in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_of_the_United_Kingdom&quot;&gt;UK&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no University of Pembridgeshire in England (as Oddthinking observed in a comment to the question)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pineal gland produces &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/melatonin-000315.htm&quot;&gt;melatonin&lt;/a&gt;. If you want extra melatonin in your bloodstream, you can eat &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/279680-food-containing-melatonin/&quot;&gt;plants that contain it&lt;/a&gt;, such as cherries. There is no need to use roundabout methods to stimulate your pineal gland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any video containing these falsehoods has no credibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Do humans have a third eye?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crystalinks.com/thirdeyepineal.html&quot;&gt;third eye&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is a somewhat mystical name given to the pineal gland by somewhat mystical people. It's activity is affected by light levels which are sensed via photoreceptors in your eyes (the real ones). It doesn't provide any sensory capability itself (in the normally accepted meaning of &quot;sense&quot;). I could equally assert that humans have a second nose if I chose that as an alternative name for the appendix. Calling something an eye doesn't make it in any way like the two eyes in the front of your head. So yes humans have a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16771606&quot;&gt;third eye&lt;/a&gt;&quot; if you accept that name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-03-22T15:01:24.933" LastActivityDate="2013-03-22T15:01:24.933" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2150" CreationDate="2013-03-23T07:49:49.000" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01542377?LI=true&quot;&gt;Adult Sexual Orientation and Attraction to Underage Persons&lt;/a&gt; (1978), a random sample  was made of 175 males &lt;em&gt;convicted&lt;/em&gt; of sexual assault, looking at their adult sexual orientation and the sex of their victims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sample divided fairly evenly into two groups based on whether they were sexually fixated exclusively on children or had regressed from peer relationships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This first group already provides evidence that half of the &lt;em&gt;convicted&lt;/em&gt; male sexual assaulters do not come from a simple binary pool of &quot;heterosexuals&quot; or &quot;homosexuals&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All regressed offenders, whether their victims were male or female children were heterosexual in the adult orientation. There were no examples of regression to child victims among peer-oriented, homosexual males.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, it is &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt; to conclude that if a man sexually assault a boy, then he would normally be attracted to men. There is a good chance he had never been seriously attracted to adults at all, but if he he had, it was adult women he had been attracted to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper suggests:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The possibility emerges that homosexuality and homosexual pedophilia may be mutually exclusive and that the adult heterosexual male constitutes a greater risk to the underage child than does the adult homosexual male.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't completely trust this old sample of &lt;em&gt;convicted&lt;/em&gt; males (a subset of a subset) to exclude the chance that any homosexual men are guilty of child sexual assault. However, it becomes clear that a naive Bayesian analysis, that assumes that boys assaulted by men are being assaulted by homosexual men, is going to lead to false conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bias doesn't stop there though. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://anp.sagepub.com/content/32/2/252.short&quot;&gt;1996 review&lt;/a&gt; mentions another source of bias, which contradicts the claim that &quot;male children are not so well protected as female children&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Current pro-active procedures to identify paedophiles detect those who victimise boys but do not detect the much greater number of paedophiles who victimise girls. Perpetrators are known to the majority of their female and male victims, and those reported are almost all male; most boys do not consider their prepubertal experiences with older women abusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, it is difficult to get precise figures, due to a number of sources of biases and unknowns. (Even the binary dichotomy of homosexual versus heterosexual is clearly dubious.) However, studying the people who are caught suggests that &lt;strong&gt;men who are attracted to adult men are not at all in the highest risk of offending&lt;/strong&gt;, even when the victims are boys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-02T15:16:05.420" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T15:16:05.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15505" CreationDate="2013-03-23T07:57:31.180" Score="6" ViewCount="665" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Australian earth hour web site &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthhour.org.au/about/renewables/&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that Australia is the highest greenhouse gas emitter per capita in the OECD. I've also heard this claim elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DID YOU KNOW… Australia is the highest greenhouse gas polluter, on a&#xA;  per capita basis, among the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and&#xA;  Development (OECD) countries? This is because most of our electricity&#xA;  is currently produced by coal-fired power stations, making coal the&#xA;  number one source of carbon pollution in our country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ABS &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/1370.0~2010~Chapter~International%20comparisons%20%286.5.6%29&quot;&gt;talks&lt;/a&gt; about Luxembourg and the United States having higher per capita carbon dioxide emissions (which is different from all greenhouse gases).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita&quot;&gt;list of countries by greenhouse gas emissions per capita&lt;/a&gt;, but the data there is slightly out-dated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Australia the highest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the OECD?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T09:45:59.047" Title="Is Australia the highest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the OECD?" Tags="|energy|australia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15504" CreationDate="2013-03-23T09:03:08.020" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is going to be something of a sideways answer. I'm going to explain why it's possible to find a &quot;yes&quot; and a &quot;no&quot; to the question, and for them both to be justifiable, and both to be supported by good references!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no single unique calculation of total greenhouse gases emitted. One has to specify a particular boundary for the calculation; and the boundary one chooses, affects the answer.  As your sources show: with one boundary, Australia will have the highest per-capita emissions; with another, it will not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular there are three dimensions to the boundary that each make a &lt;strong&gt;big&lt;/strong&gt; difference: the &lt;strong&gt;what&lt;/strong&gt;, the &lt;strong&gt;where&lt;/strong&gt;, and the &lt;strong&gt;when&lt;/strong&gt; of emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What&lt;/strong&gt;: The first is which emissions one includes: just CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/3145.php&quot;&gt;Kyoto basket&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://unfccc.int/ghg_data/items/3825.php&quot;&gt;all significant greenhouse gases&lt;/a&gt;. And how thorough one is in measuring emissions from land use, land use-changes and forestry (&lt;a href=&quot;http://unfccc.int/methods_and_science/lulucf/items/1084.php&quot;&gt;LULUCF&lt;/a&gt;), and of &lt;a href=&quot;http://cdm.unfccc.int/filestorage/C/D/M/CDMWF_AM_ABW0MV68J52WU370MUI9G0ESQHZOWG/EB35_repan07_ACM0008_ver04.pdf?t=SVZ8bWszdmhifDB9X6Oz1XfE_9ojCvd-SfuW&quot;&gt;fugitive emissions from extraction, transmission and distribution systems, and flaring&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where&lt;/strong&gt;: Whether one attributes fossil fuels emissions at the point of extraction (rare, but not unprecedented), or the point of combustion.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When&lt;/strong&gt;: What time horizon one selects: and that's because the ratio of greenhouse gases, and in particular the ratio of methane to CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, varies between countries; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://unfccc.int/ghg_data/items/3825.php&quot;&gt;global warming potential of methane&lt;/a&gt;, relative to CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, varies significantly, depending on whether one uses a 20-year horizon (56:1), 100 years (20:1), 500 years (6.5:1), or whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Australia, as your own references indicate, is &lt;strong&gt;one of&lt;/strong&gt; the highest per-capita emitters in the world. It's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.australiancoal.com.au/coal-production.html&quot;&gt;major coal miner&lt;/a&gt;, so has high fugitive methane emissions. Given those relatively high methane emissions, there are at least three ways that changing the system boundary would also increase Australia's calculated per-capita greenhouse=gas emissions, and thus potentially push it up the rankings: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;counting methane as well as CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, particularly if we include fugitive methane emissions from coal mining.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;attributing by extraction rather than combustion; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;using a shorter time horizon (NB this only works if methane is included in the calculation.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="6236" LastEditDate="2013-03-23T09:45:59.047" LastActivityDate="2013-03-23T09:45:59.047" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15508" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-23T12:23:27.260" Score="13" ViewCount="669" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read about the concept of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menstrual_leave&quot;&gt;menstrual leave&lt;/a&gt;. The Wikipedia article says it originated in Japan, and applies in a couple of asian countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2005, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union secretary Doug Cameron &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/news/Breaking-News/AMWU-promotes-menstrual-leave/2005/02/11/1108061833151.html?oneclick=true&quot;&gt;asked&lt;/a&gt; for menstrual leave to be available for women working at Toyota (in Australia):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Many women have excessive cramps, many women have headaches, many&#xA;  women have nausea, many women can't concentrate and they're on a&#xA;  production line,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's a tough, hot dangerous job and we believe that this is a&#xA;  sensible claim that's good for the company because it will improve&#xA;  productivity, it will improve quality and it will improve health and&#xA;  safety.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does menstruation affect the ability of a significant number of women to do blue-collar work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-02-03T22:01:31.150" LastActivityDate="2018-02-03T22:01:31.150" Title="Does menstruation affect the ability of women to do blue-collar work?" Tags="|physiology|gender|productivity|menstrual-cycle|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15512" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28511" CreationDate="2013-03-23T23:56:07.060" Score="19" ViewCount="2767" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0386588/trivia?tab=qt&amp;amp;item=qt0363792&quot;&gt;60&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aipc.net.au/articles/?p=308&quot;&gt;80&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=6VJGXS7cl2EC&amp;amp;pg=PA47&amp;amp;lpg=PA47&amp;amp;dq=%2290%20percent%22%20%20communication%20nonverbal&quot;&gt;90&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salisbury.edu/careerservices/Students/Interviews/NonVerbal.html&quot;&gt;93&lt;/a&gt; percent of all communication is non-verbal is endlessly repeated, not only in pop culture but in the professional worlds of education, business, and in some less rigorous social science disciplines like communication studies and cultural anthropology. It is often buttressed by vague references to &quot;studies&quot; or &quot;experts.&quot; It's even &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonverbal_communication#Importance&quot;&gt;in Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best one-line rejoinder I can think of is &quot;then why do foreign movies have subtitles?&quot;, but is there good data on this question either way? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming it isn't true, which seems likely, is there &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt; to it? Is there a more specific and defensible claim underneath that's being misinterpreted, or is it just pure bunk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we even have a respectable way to account for &quot;how much communication&quot; occurs in a given exchange, outside of the rarefied case of mathematical information theory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7646" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-03-24T01:07:00.450" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T05:24:42.153" Title="Is a large percentage of human communication non-verbal?" Tags="|language|anthropology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15516" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-24T11:15:18.363" Score="10" ViewCount="1797" Body="&lt;p&gt;An article at gnolls.org claims that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gnolls.org/3374/there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-calorie-to-your-body/&quot;&gt;there is no such thing as a calorie to our body&lt;/a&gt;, and our stomachs aren't steam engines and therefore the concept of calories and our way of measuring them is unhelpful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The concept of the “calorie”, as applied to nutrition, is an oversimplification so extreme as to be untrue in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://the-healthy-omnivore.com/calorie-in-calorie-out-myth/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; at The Healthy Omnivore claims that CICO (calories in, calories out) is a myth, because of biochemical individuality. Quoting the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Genetics: What is your ancestry?  Are you from a cold climate or warm climate?  How does your body handle starchy carbohydrates?  How does your body handle fatty proteins?   How do you do with the sun?  Etc. Etc. Etc.&#xA;  Secondly, physiologically, how have we handled our environment and time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sleep  (Are you allowing your body to recover?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Toxins (Tobacco, Alcohol, Sugar, Artificial Sweeteners)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Food Sensitivities  (Gluten, Soy, Dairy, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Medications (Over The Counter, Prescription)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stress  (Chronic and Acute)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Quality of Health (Recent Illnesses, Immune System Health, Degenerative Disease, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Hormonal Health (Insulin, Cortisol, Glucagon, Leptin, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Age (Menopause, Andropause, Accelerated Aging)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Past Caloric Restriction History (Dieting, Bulimia, Anorexia, etc.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Common sense would tell me that all the above factors do play a role, but that this role has limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12" LastEditorUserId="12" LastEditDate="2013-03-24T12:06:00.113" LastActivityDate="2020-01-25T16:13:12.903" Title="Is CICO (calories in, calories out) a useful concept in diets?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15517" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15519" CreationDate="2013-03-24T13:38:07.977" Score="10" ViewCount="11095" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you watch this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/embed/uENITui5_jU&quot;&gt;Amazing Water &amp;amp; Sound Experiment #2&lt;/a&gt; YouTube video, you can see an amazing effect with water, a sinusoidal signal and a woofer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a true effect due to vibration of the pipe generated by the sine wave? Is it just a hoax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11547" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-24T13:45:56.663" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T14:12:56.007" Title="Can a loudspeaker make water stream form a zig-zag flow?" Tags="|physics|water|video|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15517" CreationDate="2013-03-24T19:33:47.860" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, what you see is real&lt;/strong&gt;. However, as @Oddthinking points out, this happens because of the sync between the frequency of the camera and the frequency of the sound wave. If you make this experiment at your home without a camera that is shooting at the same frames per second (fps) rate as the frequency of the sound wave you'll not see the same effect with your naked eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The drops don't flow in a sinus form. There is a drop of water at the same place every 1/24 second due to the frequency of the wave sound. Each drop goes in a straight line, but the stream of water returns to the same position every 1/24. When looking at this at a frequency of 24 frames per sec, you see as if there is a stream that is &amp;quot;suspended&amp;quot; in air in a shape corresponding to the wave. If the water source is allowed to move then you get a &amp;quot;sinus wave&amp;quot;, if you hold the water hose and change the flow strength at 24 Hz, you will see droplets &amp;quot;suspended&amp;quot; in air, as shown in some of the videos below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same phenomena can be seen on the following videos as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mODqQvlrgIQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cool Sound and Water Experiment!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCtH-FPRL48&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FREEZING TIME: Static Water Flow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAS3D1EsMXs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cool Water and Sound Effect - Water Drop&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_bahl9k_GQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_bahl9k_GQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIjBRnHbTr0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Disturbing the flow of water - Ivan Ramadan way&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRbI3Xzv-Z0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazing Water &amp;amp; Sound Experiment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phenomena was explained by @RedGrittyBrick on &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/56802/can-someone-explain-how-is-this-working&quot;&gt;Physics.SE&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a visual illusion akin to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagon-wheel_effect&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wagon Wheel effect&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stream of water is being waggled back and forth by a 25 Hz audio signal and being filmed at 25 frames per second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T13:13:36.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7985" CreationDate="2013-03-25T03:59:08.637" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, the 21-day habit rule is pseudo-scientific.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it can take much longer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phillippa Lally, Cornelia H. M. van Jaarsveld, Henry W. W. Potts, Jane Wardle. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ejsp.674/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world&lt;/a&gt;, European Journal of Social Psychology, Volume 40, Issue 6, pages 998–1009, October 2010, DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.674&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These researchers asked 96 volunteers to form a daily habit, over a 12 week period, and record their progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The majority (82) of participants provided sufficient data for analysis, and increases in automaticity (calculated with a sub-set of SRHI items) were examined over the study period. Nonlinear regressions fitted an asymptotic curve to each individual's automaticity scores over the 84 days. The model fitted for 62 individuals, of whom 39 showed a good fit. Performing the behaviour more consistently was associated with better model fit. &lt;strong&gt;The time it took participants to reach 95% of their asymptote of automaticity ranged from 18 to 254 days; indicating considerable variation in how long it takes people to reach their limit of automaticity and highlighting that it can take a very long time.&lt;/strong&gt; Missing one opportunity to perform the behaviour did not materially affect the habit formation process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source of the myth has been traced by Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman who &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/10/change-your-life-habit-28-day-rule&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;writes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We probably owe this particular example of pop-psychology wisdom to Maxwell Maltz, the plastic surgeon who wrote the 60s bestseller Psycho-Cybernetics. He claimed to have observed that amputees took an average of only 21 days to adjust to the loss of a limb. Therefore, he reasoned – deploying the copper-bottomed logic we've come to expect from self-help – the same must be true of all big changes. And therefore it must take 21 days to change a habit, maybe, perhaps!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-03-25T03:59:08.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15527" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15553" CreationDate="2013-03-25T15:48:24.397" Score="15" ViewCount="37165" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen claimed that whether a pepper has 3 lobes or bumps at the bottom or 4 can indicate whether that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_pepper&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bell pepper&lt;/a&gt; is &quot;sweeter, and better for eating, or firmer, and better for cooking&quot;.  I've seen this repeated a couple of times on Facebook, as well as on a couple of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getyvonne.com/bell-peppers-green-red-or-yellow/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;different&lt;/a&gt; cooking &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ragingbearranch.com/2010/11/3-bumps-or-4-bumps/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blogs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also seen the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sarahkoszyk.com/wordpress/?p=408&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt; that the number of lobes indicates the gender of the pepper, and that male peppers have 3 bumps, and are seedless. The claim was repeated on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=304008749736228&amp;amp;set=a.232968730173564.57399.232967203507050&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;July 5, 2013&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/FoodiesNetwork.TV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Foodies TV Facebook Page which has 500,000 likes.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EOwMn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Bell pepper bumps&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this claim?  Does the number of lobes provide a clear indication of flavor, firmness, gender, or number of seeds inside?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2014-01-26T04:35:06.047" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T04:35:06.047" Title="Does the number of lobes on a green pepper indicate any specific culinary traits about the individual pepper?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15531" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2013-03-26T01:47:20.877" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's me again.  :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been an honor and pleasure to serve as a moderator for the past year, and I would like to continue in that capacity.  I am passionate about the skeptical community, and maintaining the highest possible standards.  I know that in the past year, my questions, and answers have fallen off, but that is mostly to allow the rest of the community to do their thing.  My main objective is to make moderation appear totally transparent (almost non-existent) to an outside observer.  Granted, that isn't always possible, but I do make sure that I visit the site daily, and respond to things that the community has flagged.  (As a mater of fact, they should have an OCD badge since I have managed to check in 735 consecutive days and counting!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all seriousness, I love what I am able to do for the community, and hope that we can continue to keep the standards high.  I would be honored to continue to serve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-03-26T01:47:20.877" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T01:47:20.877" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-03-26T01:47:20.877" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15532" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2013-03-26T02:39:31.990" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Greetings Peasants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to nominate myself to be the next moderator of Skeptics.SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe my superior intellect, and superior emotional quotient will allow me to serve the community as a moderator more effectively than any other possible candidate.  Going hand in hand with my superior intellect, I possess superior skills of deduction and wisdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an expert in identifying questions that are off and on-topic.  In saying that, I believe stack exchange should be more liberal orientated, and I will promote a reduction in the number of questions to be closed as off-topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you my dear peasants,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I look forward to being your future King!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="10784" LastEditDate="2013-03-26T02:39:31.990" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T02:39:31.990" CommentCount="19" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-03-26T02:39:31.990" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15533" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-26T04:39:33.127" Score="23" ViewCount="34523" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the claim the a dry towel can actually speed up the drying process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are numerous different sources that I've heard claim this, here is one on &lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/how-dry-clothes-faster-dryer-save-more-719663.html&quot;&gt;voices.yahoo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few months back when I was in a hurry to dry a load of jeans I had forgotten the night before, my friend shared a trick that would help dry the clothes faster. She said to add a dry absorbent bath towel to the load of wet clothes in the dryer. &lt;strong&gt;Adding the dry towel to the load of clothes cut several minutes off the usual drying time&lt;/strong&gt;, and now I add a dry towel each and every time I dry a load of clothes. I have one towel that I use exclusively for this purpose, and it's a very soft and very absorbent full-size bath towel. The dry towel helps absorb the moisture, and as a result it seems to disperse and evaporate faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can again see the claim mirrored in &lt;a href=&quot;http://tipnut.com/quick-tip-laundry-drying-tips/&quot;&gt;Tipnut&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you’re in a rush for a load of laundry to dry–try tossing a clean, thick cotton towel in the dryer with the wet clothes. &lt;strong&gt;The towel will absorb some of the moisture and clothes will dry faster.&lt;/strong&gt; If it’s a large load of laundry, throw in two or three towels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_7741742_put-towel-dryer-aid-drying.html&quot;&gt;eHow also repeats the claim.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here's an energy-saving laundry tip for you: Placing a dry towel in the clothes dryer with a load of wet laundry reduces drying time, cutting down on energy usage and utility bills. The idea is that by adding a dry and absorbent material, some of the moisture from the wet fabrics is wicked away by the dry towel. &lt;strong&gt;This reduces the moisture inside the dryer, allowing each item to dry out more quickly.&lt;/strong&gt; Experiment at home to see how much you can reduce the drying time in your dryer with this method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, it seems counter-intuitive on both the science, and the likelyhood of oversight. I imagine if a dry-towel was an energy efficient drying mechanism (lowered dry time) then dryer manufacturers would be building fabric into the agitators and compartments. Further, while I can understand the wet towel absorbing moisture, it seems unlikely that getting that moisture out of more mass would be quicker. Unless we're just just re-defining a completed dry load as simply &quot;nominally wet with less concentration.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="5889" LastEditDate="2017-02-12T01:45:55.130" LastActivityDate="2022-07-13T14:15:10.007" Title="Does adding a dry towel to a load in the dryer make it dry faster?" Tags="|water|household|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9555" CreationDate="2013-03-26T04:45:01.883" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the context of the scenario you describe, yes. &quot;Splashing onto the floor&quot; is reduced because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Splash-back lands on you instead, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.verber.com/mark/outdoors/gear/clothing-waterabsorption.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;is absorbed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_guidance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many things&lt;/a&gt;, your aim &quot;becomes more accurate with decreasing distance to the target&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T04:45:01.883" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15536" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2013-03-26T06:12:01.757" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A year ago, I stood down as one of the Pro Tem (beta) moderators, and did not run in the first election.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;thought&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I wanted to focus on answering questions. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I trusted the other mod candidates to do a good job. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My interest in Skeptics.SE was likely to wane over the next 6 months. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;happened&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More time on answers gave me the rep to rise from fourth to first position in the rankings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The existing mods have been doing an excellent job. I endorse them over me.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My interest in Skeptics.SE hasn't waned. Although, I tend to spend more periods of short time on the site, which is slowing my ability to answer, but better suits editing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two right out of three ain't bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'd like to stand for election - not to bring change to the site, but just to bring back my ability to immediately deal with spam and non-answers. The ability to clean up the inevitable messes caused by naive users efficiently is motivation enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll continue to contribute to this site, which I think has grown to be a tremendous resource for the Internet and the Skeptical Community, but with a black diamond next to my name, I hope to contribute more effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-26T10:32:33.797" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T10:32:33.797" CommentCount="25" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-03-26T06:12:01.757" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15537" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2013-03-26T08:27:31.617" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Greetings,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My name is Jamie, and I would very much like to help moderate and organise Skeptics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some very interesting* bullet points about me&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am active every day on Skeptics. I don't answer all that many questions, but I enjoy reading and learning about all kinds subjects often seen on skeptics such as popular science, conspiracies, &quot;old wives tale&quot;-like beliefs to name but a few.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I attempt to help new users in as polite way as possible regarding the usage and requirements specific to skeptics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I raise as many moderator flags as I can, all have been deemed helpful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am a programmer and am very active on SO, and therefore used to many of the moderator tools available on SE sites. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From the number of s's instead of z's in this post, you'll deduce I'm from the UK. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am of the very strong opinion that Skeptics should remain very strict with its need for proper referencing of questions and answers, and a strong notable claim for questions. I think that this is what distinguishes Skeptics from other QA sites covering similar subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that I can make a positive contribution to this site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;* Bullet points not guaranteed to be interesting.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2013-03-26T08:56:01.580" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T08:56:01.580" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-03-26T08:27:31.617" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15538" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-26T11:48:59.400" Score="11" ViewCount="1074" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people claim urine cures everything from colds to cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read these claims &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/urine-the-bodys-own-health-drink-467303.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Advocates claim it has antibacterial, antifungal, antiviral and anticancer properties.&#xA;  [...]   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Research in the 1990s claimed that drinking urine could cure jet lag.&#xA;  [...]       &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It is highly sterile. The Aztecs used it to prevent wounds becoming infected.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: &lt;strong&gt;Does urine have genuine health benefits?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10452" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:25:53.923" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T02:31:37.270" Title="Does urine have health benefits?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|urine|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15539" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2013-03-26T11:58:47.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hello!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am fairly new to the site, I have only answered a few questions, but I am active on the page. I am not the one which constantly cleans the page though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My belief is though that there needs to be a counter-pole to the more conservative thinking mods. I am quite liberal, and want a less alienating and open community. The power of mods is great, and I think it would be bad if only the ones with a conservative unaccepting mindset held all that power.&#xA;Liberal in the sense that I am more for a bit looser way, not as strict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal would be to be the political counter part of the mods, to have diversity. I am young and new, with all which that brings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mindset to modding is to clean up complete trash, but try to salvage everything possible. Main target group of skeptics is experts within their specific areas, and skeptics is VERY wide, you can make pretty much anything under the sun fit with the right wording. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said not all experts are well-versed in scientific methods, instead of chasing them away with pitchforks, I believe they should be welcomed, and helped out with that part. They have the expertise, someone else can provide the writing, editing and referencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-03-26T14:47:48.227" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T14:47:48.227" CommentCount="14" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-03-26T11:58:47.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15540" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-26T12:06:34.257" Score="1" ViewCount="784" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the universe is just a Matrix-like simulation, how could we ever know? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a sample from reading I have done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All we have to do to identify what these constraints would be is to build our own simulation of the universe, which is close to what many researchers are trying to do on an incredibly miniscule scale.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Computer simulations have been run to recreate quantum chromodynamics - the theory that describes the nuclear forced that binds quarks and gluons into protons and neutrons, which then bind to form atomic nuclei.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is believed that simulating physics on this fundamental level is equivalent, more or less, to simulating the workings of the universe itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we have an exact way to know whether it's a simulation or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2216189/Do-live-Matrix-researchers-say-way-prove-do.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mail Online article about the Matrix&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tomshardware.com/news/computer-simulation-matrix-science-research,19694.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tom's Hardware article about if we live in a computer simulation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21628950.300-the-idea-we-live-in-a-simulation-isnt-science-fiction.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NewScientist article about if the Matrix is real&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10452" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-08T08:46:20.413" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T08:46:20.413" Title="If the universe is just a Matrix-like simulation, how could we ever know?" Tags="|technology|lifestyle|superstition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-03-29T14:45:11.313" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15541" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="42590" CreationDate="2013-03-26T12:16:34.777" Score="6" ViewCount="1725" Body="&lt;p&gt;During a recent radio show, at approximately &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wbur.org/npr/175273122/in-first-of-2-gay-marriage-cases-court-turns-to-proposition-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2 minutes and 30 seconds into the broadcast&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_J._Cooper&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Charles Cooper&lt;/a&gt; is quoted as saying the following in federal appeals court arguments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key reason that marriage has existed at all in any society and at&#xA;any time is that sexual relationships between men and women naturally&#xA;produce children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is quoted again in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120227182948/http://xpress.sfsu.edu/archives/news/015928.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;student newspaper&lt;/a&gt;. This is being used in part as the basis for the legal argument against same-sex marriage in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This same argument was then used by Mr. Cooper to argue before the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Supreme Court of the United States&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/annotated-transcript-prop-8-oral-arguments/316946/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;case 12-144 on 26 March 2013&lt;/a&gt; (see also &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170201092105/https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/12-144.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JUSTICE KAGAN: Mr. Cooper, could I just understand your argument. In reading the briefs, it seems as though your principal argument is that same-sex and opposite — opposite-sex couples are not similarly situated because opposite-sex couples can procreate, same-sex couples cannot, and the State's principal interest in marriage is in regulating procreation. Is that basically correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MR. COOPER: I — Your Honor, that's the essential thrust of our — our position, yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My issue is with the first part of the argument, namely that the &lt;em&gt;key legal reason&lt;/em&gt; that marriage exists is due to procreation given the very wide brush that is used (i.e. all societies at any time in history). Is this in fact definitely the case or did Mr. Cooper in fact use too broad of a brush and there are notable historical exceptions to his claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-10-22T16:33:40.797" Title="Is the key legal, historical reason that marriage exists in the United States to regulate procreation?" Tags="|united-states|history|law|marriage|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15542" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-26T12:21:48.507" Score="9" ViewCount="658" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I have read an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificpsychic.com/blogentries/can-tomatoes-cause-prostate-cancer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; online claiming that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Canadian study has found an association between tomato intake and prostate cancer risk.Not only that, vegetable juices and ketchup were also associated with prostate cancer. According to the study, &quot;Tomato intake had a significant positive association with prostate cancer risk for highest versus lowest quartiles (OR=1.6; 95 percent CI: 1.2-2.0).&quot; The abbreviations OR and CI stand for odds ratio and confidence index, respectively. Ninety five percent confidence index is very high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any other studies to validate this or any truth to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12099" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-16T10:34:28.610" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T11:12:11.373" Title="Are tomatoes associated with increased risk of prostate cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15543" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15546" CreationDate="2013-03-26T12:41:40.390" Score="11" ViewCount="3240" Body="&lt;p&gt;My well-meaning mom keeps sending me stuff like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aspartame has been found to “eat” tiny holes in our cellular membrane.&#xA;  When this happens, things like Multiple Sclerosis (MS), cancer, mood&#xA;  disorders and many other serious issues will show up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of my clients LOVED her diet Coke. She drank 6 cans a day. As an&#xA;  adult, she developed MS; which became so severe she was bound to a&#xA;  wheelchair. Once I explained to her just what aspartame was doing to&#xA;  her cells she decided to kick her addiction to soda. Guess what? Her&#xA;  body started to heal. She is no longer in a wheelchair. She still has&#xA;  symptoms, but her diagnosis went from “extreme MS” to “moderate!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The anecdote doesn't prove anything, as even if we assume it to be factual, there could be any number of more probable reasons why her MS improved (e.g. medication, changes in activity, diet, season, whatever.) Ignoring the supposed link between holes in cellular membranes and every disease known to man, has aspartame really been found to do anything of the sort, or is this just a fictional claim? I've not been able to find any studies that could have been the claimed findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other instances of similar claims specify that Aspartame &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/035195_aspartame_brain_tumors_seizures.html&quot;&gt;&quot;eats holes in brain tissue&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Early tests of aspartame showed it produced microscopic holes and tumors in the brains of experimental mice, epileptic seizures in monkeys, and was converted by animals into dangerous substances, including formaldehyde. In 1974, however, in spite of the information in its files, the FDA approved aspartame as a dry-foods additive. The approval to market was short lived.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://urbangardenmagazine.com/2010/04/aspartame-the-politics-of-food/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8560" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-10-16T13:01:06.343" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T13:01:06.343" Title="Does aspartame &quot;eat&quot; holes in your cellular membranes" Tags="|nutrition|aspartame|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15544" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15540" CreationDate="2013-03-26T13:08:05.750" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a paper on that topic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.1847&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Observable consequences of the hypothesis that the observed universe is a numerical simulation performed on a cubic space-time lattice or grid are explored. The simulation scenario is first motivated by extrapolating current trends in computational resource requirements for lattice QCD into the future. Using the historical development of lattice gauge theory technology as a guide, we assume that our universe is an early numerical simulation with unimproved Wilson fermion discretization and investigate potentially-observable consequences. Among the observables that are considered are the muon g-2 and the current differences between determinations of alpha, but the most stringent bound on the inverse lattice spacing of the universe, b^(-1) &gt;~ 10^(11) GeV, is derived from the high-energy cut off of the cosmic ray spectrum. &lt;strong&gt;The numerical simulation scenario could reveal itself in the distributions of the highest energy cosmic rays exhibiting a degree of rotational symmetry breaking that reflects the structure of the underlying lattice.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all bases on the assumption that mathematic is truly universal. Even outside our universe. This paper shows that we would live in a simulation &lt;strong&gt;IF&lt;/strong&gt; there is a really special pattern in the &quot;Four-momentum&quot; of energy and impuls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the others. This is not a philosophical question per se. Research is going on. This paper is from 9 Nov 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10582" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T13:08:05.750" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15545" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17260" CreationDate="2013-03-26T14:49:08.773" Score="17" ViewCount="3455" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read a claim that not only is blood donation safe, it actually boosts the immune system. As the source (a Red Cross-affiliated blood donation drive) is not neutral, I'm skeptical of this. Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim, translated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Donating blood is good for you. It stimulates the blood cell replenishment process and reinforces the defense mechanisms of your body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevant bit is underlined in green:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/N8LlF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10765" LastEditorDisplayName="user10765" LastEditDate="2013-03-26T15:39:13.007" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T05:31:46.127" Title="Does donating blood boost the immune system?" Tags="|medical-science|blood|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15543" CreationDate="2013-03-26T15:41:33.403" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no compelling scientific evidence that normal use of Aspartame as a sweetener in foods causes problems of the kinds suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allegations against Aspartame have been made since the 1970s. Scientific investigations of the evidence in total do not support claims that Aspartame is demonstrably harmful in the way suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2013 EU&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;. In this re-evaluation of the safety of aspartame, EFSA’s scientific experts have drawn upon &lt;strong&gt;all available information on aspartame and its breakdown products&lt;/strong&gt; and, following a detailed and methodical analysis, have concluded in this draft opinion that they pose &lt;strong&gt;no toxicity concern&lt;/strong&gt; for consumers at current levels of exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/press/news/130108.htm&quot;&gt;European Food Safety Authority: Aspartame: EFSA consults on its first full risk assessment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2002 EU&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The metabolism of aspartame and its metabolic breakdown products in animals,&#xA;  healthy individuals and in PKU subjects has been comprehensively reviewed by&#xA;  Lajtha et al. (1994). Aspartame is metabolised by gut esterases and peptidases to&#xA;  three &lt;strong&gt;common dietary components&lt;/strong&gt; - two amino acids (aspartic acid and Phe) and&#xA;  methanol. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(my emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Committee concluded that on the basis of its &lt;strong&gt;review of all the data in animals and&#xA;  humans available to date&lt;/strong&gt;, there is no evidence to suggest that there is a need to revise&#xA;  the outcome of the earlier risk assessment or the ADI previously established for&#xA;  aspartame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/food/fs/sc/scf/out155_en.pdf&quot;&gt;Opinion of the Scientific Committee on Food:&#xA;Update on the Safety of Aspartame&#xA;(expressed on 4 December 2002)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1987 USA&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;GAO found that the: (1) firm that developed aspartame submitted nearly 170 studies supporting its safety; and (2) studies that CFSAN considered crucial for approval met FDA requirements. GAO also found that CFSAN: (1) adequately followed its food additive approval process by reviewing all of the manufacturer's aspartame studies, holding a public board of inquiry to discuss safety issues, and forming an advisory panel; (2) had an outside group of pathologists review the crucial studies; and (3) used the studies to establish a safe level for long-term consumption before approving aspartame for marketing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gao.gov/products/HRD-87-46&quot;&gt;US Government Accountability Office - Food Additive Approval Process Followed for Aspartame&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report contains information about notable dissenting opinions. It appears that from these, various well-known hoaxes and conspiracy theories have been constructed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-03-26T17:01:45.147" LastActivityDate="2013-03-26T17:01:45.147" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15548" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-26T16:58:59.200" Score="5" ViewCount="1075" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could an eruption of El Hierro in the Canary Islands lead to a megatsunami that would threaten the eastern coast of the United States or elsewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12103" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2013-03-27T06:52:56.987" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T18:56:54.360" Title="Could El Hierro eruption cause a mega-tsunami?" Tags="|geology|natural-disasters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15549" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15548" CreationDate="2013-03-26T17:30:47.803" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Islands of volcanic origin, such as the Canaries, have an especially&#xA;  large potential for triggering a tsunami. That the Canaries constitute&#xA;  a danger was shown 300 000 years ago when a part of the island El&#xA;  Hierro slid into the sea, triggering a mega-tsunami which carried&#xA;  rocks as high as a house for many hundreds of metres into the interior&#xA;  of the east coast of what is today the USA. The danger of a similar&#xA;  island collapse is seen by scientists particularly at the island of La&#xA;  Palma in the Canaries. Here, following a volcanic eruption in 1949&#xA;  almost half of the mountain range of 20 km moved westwards towards the&#xA;  sea, leaving a large tear in the volcanic basalt. In the event of a&#xA;  fresh eruption, a huge part of the volcano could loosen itself due to&#xA;  differences in the types of rock and diverse water deposits within the&#xA;  now active volcano. As a result, the densely populated east coast of&#xA;  America would be massively threatened. According to a computer&#xA;  simulation by Stephen N. Ward and Simon Day, a tsunami (purple-red on&#xA;  the graphics) would rush across the Atlantic if the slopes of the&#xA;  Cumbre Vieja.volcano were to collapse into the sea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and further&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Knowing that the recent major tsunami in Japan traveled 4.000 miles&#xA;  across the Pacific to produce an approximate 3 foot tsunami on some&#xA;  areas of the US west coast, the approximate ratio was 10:1 as the wave&#xA;  reached the US coastline. There are many factors that are at work to&#xA;  determine tsunami height, and this is highly over-simplifying the&#xA;  formula – the point is that if this were to be a similar case on the&#xA;  US east coast, which is 3,000 miles from the Canary Islands, the&#xA;  tsunami height could be 30 to 40 feet – while some suggest even&#xA;  higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tsunami-alarm-system.com/en/phenomenon-tsunami/occurrences-atlantic-ocean.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref 1&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://modernsurvivalblog.com/volcano/300-foot-tsunami-and-east-coast-destruction/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Second Ref.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are voices talking about an 'over-hyped' thread:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But researchers taking part in a three-week research cruise aboard&#xA;  Southampton Oceanography Centre's research ship, the RRS Charles&#xA;  Darwin, say the threat is far lower than previous warnings would&#xA;  suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doug Masson, who has been researching Canary Islands landslides for 20&#xA;  years, says the models are a worst-case scenario.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3963563.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10701" LastEditorUserId="10701" LastEditDate="2013-03-27T18:56:54.360" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T18:56:54.360" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15552" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2013-03-26T23:33:39.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&#xA;    On Stack Exchange, we believe the core moderators should come &lt;i&gt;from&lt;/i&gt; the community, and be elected by the community&#xA;    itself through popular vote. We hold regular elections to determine who these community moderators will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;    Community moderators are &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation/&quot;&gt;accorded the highest level of &#xA;    privilege on our community&lt;/a&gt;, and should themselves be exemplars of positive behavior and leaders within the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;    Our general criteria for moderators is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;patient and fair&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;leads by example&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;shows respect for their fellow community members in their actions and words&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;open to some light but firm moderation to keep the community on track and resolve (hopefully) uncommon disputes and exceptions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;    Every election has three phases:&#xA;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Nomination&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Primary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Election&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&#xA;    Please participate in the moderator elections by voting, and perhaps even by nominating yourself to be a community moderator!&#xA;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="25620" LastEditDate="2022-02-15T15:40:04.770" LastActivityDate="2022-02-15T15:40:04.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15527" CreationDate="2013-03-26T23:37:47.950" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did share this on facebook, and got some interesting replies.  In particular, this paper: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academicjournals.org/jhf/pdf/pdf2010/March/Sharma%20et%20al..pdf&quot;&gt;Genetic Variability and Character Association Analysis in Bell Pepper&lt;/a&gt;.  (I tried to copy some text, but every letter has a carriage return...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short bell pepper lobe number doesn't affect taste, but positively correlates with number of branches of plant and length of the harvest (i.e. the more branches or the longer the harvest period, the more the lobes).  That's about it.  Feel free to buy any shaped bell peppers you want. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind, &lt;a href=&quot;http://labs.eeb.utoronto.ca/barrett/pdf/schb_189.pdf&quot;&gt;fruit are not the gender determinant of plants, it's the flower that is gender specific&lt;/a&gt;.  Self pollinating plants have &quot;perfect flowers&quot; meaning they contain both male and female reproductive organs.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/archives/parsons/fruit/orange.html&quot;&gt;Such as oranges&lt;/a&gt;.  The fruit are basically the &quot;fertilized egg&quot; if we want to carry the analogy forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, the page that I saw this make the rounds on is called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=637353102948015&amp;amp;set=a.221479154535414.74491.220533814629948&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;theater&amp;amp;notif_t=like&quot;&gt;Whole Lifestyle Nutrition&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, and it bears many hallmarks of woo woo and sloppy repeating of someone's cousin's best friend's brother said.  My baloney detection kit almost overloaded when I visited the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-03-27T02:51:52.077" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T02:51:52.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15554" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15557" CreationDate="2013-03-27T03:48:25.847" Score="15" ViewCount="1212" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2008, California citizens passed a controversial amendment to the state constitution,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8&quot;&gt;Proposition 8&lt;/a&gt;, defining marriage as between one man and one woman.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, the US Supreme Court has begun hearings on Prop 8, and for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324105204578383130230471720.html&quot;&gt;article &quot;Court Weighs Gay Marriage&quot; in the Wall Street Journal Online&lt;/a&gt; Justice Kennedy is cited as being concerned about the children of gay partners:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Justice Kennedy showed sympathy for the argument that it was too early to know whether gay marriage could be harmful. No state authorized same-sex marriage until Massachusetts in 2004. &quot;We have five years of information to weigh against 2,000 years of history or more,&quot; he said. At the same time, he continued, denying marital status to gay couples potentially harmed at least one group: their children, of whom there are nearly 40,000 in California. &quot;They want their parents to have full recognition and full status. The voice of those children is important in this case, don't you think?&quot; Justice Kennedy said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question:  Are there 40,000 children of gay couples in California?  Is there a census of this sort of thing, is it taken from school records, how do we know?  Or is this just a statistic pulled out of thin air?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Political arguments involving children seem automatically suspicious because the occasional use of children to make emotion based political arguments in the USA is well known.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964/peace-little-girl-daisy&quot;&gt;Daisy girl ad of the 1964 presidential campaign&lt;/a&gt; is an excellent example -- vote for us or this little girl might get nuked.  Another more recent example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_Online_Protection_Act&quot;&gt;Child Online Protection Act&lt;/a&gt; was a bill unpopular among internet activists who claimed it would have hobbled the internet in order to make it safer for children.  Proponents argued, of course, that children shouldn't have to be exposed to all the garbage that is online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect in this case the Justice is repeating something brought to him in court, and if so, it should be possible to trace this claim to its proponents and perhaps some references that can be evaluated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-03-27T13:33:35.867" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T12:20:47.800" Title="Are there 40,000 children of same-sex couples in California?" Tags="|sexuality|children|marriage|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15554" CreationDate="2013-03-27T12:00:32.970" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on my research, I have not shown that there are 40,000 children living with same-sex couples in California.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am able to show that figure is consistent with US census data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-14.pdf&quot;&gt;2010 US Census&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;0.1% of 116,716,292 households have a same-sex partner with their own children.&lt;/strong&gt; [Table 3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, this is an estimate to account for believed mistakes by householders in filling in the form.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;California accounts for 11,506,870 of all US households.&lt;/strong&gt; [Table 4]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it has disproportionate number of same-sex households. &lt;strong&gt;0.8% of CA households have a same-sex couple compared to the national average of 0.6%&lt;/strong&gt;. [Table 6]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if we make the entirely unsubstantiated assumption that same-sex couple with children households  are spread evenly amongst the same-sex couple households, independent of state, we can estimate that California will have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;11,506,870 Households in CA &#xA;* (0.1% Same-Sex-With-Child-Households) &#xA;* (0.8%/0.6% same-sex bias in California) &#xA;= 15,342 same-sex-with-children households in CA.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, 0.1% is the smallest increment they show, and many of these estimates are close to that, introducing significant error. We need to be careful with precision. We can't go past the first significant digit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the estimate produced is 10,000-20,000 CA same-sex-with-children households.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is an significant underestimate of the number of children, as each household may have more than one child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: I have not proven that the number of children to same-sex couples is 40,000 in California.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, back-of-the-envelope calculations, coming direct from US Census data, suggests that the number 40,000 is not an unreasonable figure. It is likely to be in the ball-park.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-03-27T12:00:32.970" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15554" CreationDate="2013-03-27T13:31:21.417" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe but very unlikely&lt;/strong&gt; as that estimate is dependent upon the what data you are using to make the estimate. Based upon newer data that number is likely invalid though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/&quot;&gt;United States Census Bureau&lt;/a&gt; can help us in answering this question as they provide a break out of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/hhes/samesex/&quot;&gt;data on same-sex couples&lt;/a&gt;. In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/acsbr10-03.pdf&quot;&gt;2010 ACS Brief on Same-sex couple households&lt;/a&gt; reported that nationwide, 115,064 same-sex couple households of which 94,627 households had only their own biological children present. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While interesting this does not furnish us with definitive information. This is where the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/hhes/samesex/files/supp-table-AFF.xls&quot;&gt;Supplemental Tables&lt;/a&gt; from the 2010 Census come into play. Here we find the following data for California:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;2010 Census summary file counts &#xA;Total:                                  125,516&#xA;  Male householder:                      64,625&#xA;    Same-sex unmarried partner:          39,901&#xA;      With own children under 18 years    2,504&#xA;      No own children under 18 years     37,397&#xA;    Reported same-sex spouse:            24,724&#xA;      With own children under 18 years    7,812&#xA;      No own children under 18 years     16,912&#xA;  Female householder:                    60,891&#xA;    Same-sex unmarried partner:          34,159&#xA;      With own children under 18 years    7,121&#xA;      No own children under 18 years     27,038&#xA;    Reported same-sex spouse:            26,732&#xA;      With own children under 18 years   10,392&#xA;      No own children under 18 years     16,340&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which gives us a total of 27,829 same-sex households in California with their own biological children present. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This raises a problem though since 27,829 is less than the 40,000 claimed. However you will note that this is being reported as households which implies that there are at least three people present (both spouses plus at least one child). In this case we can get a fair estimate of how many children there are by finding out the average children per household. Here I had to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/hhes/families/data/states.html&quot;&gt;Families and Living Arrangements&lt;/a&gt; data from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/hhes/families/files/tabST-F1-2000.xls&quot;&gt;2010&lt;/a&gt; where California is listed as having an average of 1.95 children per household which now gives us an estimate of 54,266.6 children in same-sex households.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This number leaves us in an awkward situation though because we have a fairly wide range of 27,829 to 54,266.6 children that are in same sex households. If we split that down the middle we end up with 41,047.8 which is close enough to the claimed 40,000 that I would speculate is how that number came about. If we wanted to be strict about the numbers than 27,829 would be the safest number o use; however, it is reasonable to assume that some of those households will contain more than one child. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On 27 September 2011 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/hhes/samesex/files/ss-report.doc&quot;&gt;released a report&lt;/a&gt; which called into question the results of the 2010 Census and thus the data reported there in. In the report it was found that as many as 28% of the same-sex couple households are likely to be opposite-sex households. The report indicates that that the form design for the 2010 Census is likely to blame for some invalid data collection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that the 2010 American Community Survey is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/2010_census/cb11-cn181.html&quot;&gt;being recommended&lt;/a&gt; for use as a source of data instead of the original 2010 Census data. The updated figures look like the following for California:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;American Community Survey 2010 estimates tabulated as reported&#xA;Total:                                   90,023&#xA;  Male householder:                      47,691&#xA;    Same-sex unmarried partner:          33,115&#xA;      With own children under 18 years    1,383&#xA;      No own children under 18 years     31,732&#xA;    Reported same-sex spouse:            14,576&#xA;      With own children under 18 years    2,231&#xA;      No own children under 18 years     12,345&#xA;  Female householder:                    42,332&#xA;    Same-sex unmarried partner:          28,014&#xA;      With own children under 18 years    5,685&#xA;      No own children under 18 years     22,329&#xA;    Reported same-sex spouse:            14,318&#xA;      With own children under 18 years    4,037&#xA;      No own children under 18 years     10,281&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we add this up we come up with 13,336 households with children and if we use the 1.95 children per household from before that gives us an estimate of 26,005.2 children in same-sex households. This is a substantially lower estimate than the previous high estimate of 54,266.6 children in same-sex households.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, our conclusions are largely driven by the data that we are looking at. While the 40,000 children in same-sex households appears to be an extremely fair estimate based upon the 2010 Census data, when the estimate is updated based upon the revised 2010 American Community Survey data the estimate is quite high. A better estimate using the revised data would be somewhere around 20,000 children in same-sex households.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T12:20:47.800" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T12:20:47.800" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-27T14:31:29.397" Score="3" ViewCount="540" Body="&lt;p&gt;Michael Moss certainly claims a lot in his new book. I have only read an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2013/02/food-industry-michael-moss-junk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;online article&lt;/a&gt; about it, and I'm highly suspicious of the claims made there, especially terms like &quot;vanishing caloric density&quot; and &quot;designer sodium&quot;. Is there any truth to his claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5304" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T02:01:21.877" Title="Are &quot;vanishing caloric density&quot; and &quot;designer sodium&quot; real?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15559" CreationDate="2013-03-28T02:01:21.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is currently too broad, so I am addressing only following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Frito-Lay executives also spoke of the company’s ongoing pursuit of a &amp;quot;designer sodium,&amp;quot; which they hoped, in the near future, would take their sodium loads down by 40 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Designer Sodium&amp;quot; doesn't appear to be a widely used jargon term (based on Google searches) but clearly refers to coming up with new ways of presenting table salt (i.e. Sodium Chloride) in their products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fritolay.com/your-health/less-salt-than-you-might-think.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;web-site&lt;/a&gt; explains that their Frito-Lay chips contain less salt than the taste would suggest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the salt in a Frito-Lay chip is sprinkled on the surface, rather than baked in, so it is one of the first tastes your tongue detects.  This is why Frito-Lay chips taste saltier than some other common foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 40% figure is more ambitious, but consistent with other public messages from Frito-Lay, where they use the term &amp;quot;designer salt&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://consumerist.com/2010/03/22/pepsico-aims-to-reduce-sodium-with-sexy-new-designer-salt/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the mad scientists at PepsiCo are trying to do them one better. They’re about to start making a new “designer salt” for their Lay’s brand potato chips that they claim will reduce the amount of sodium you consume without losing any of that great sodium taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new salt, which is still in the test and development stages, is probably two years away from hitting the nationwide market. It’s just one portion of PepsiCo’s long-term plan to make healthier products. They announced today that they hope to reduce sodium by an average of 25% over the range of their products in the next five years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they actually researching this stuff? Well, if patents are a measure, yes. Here is just a sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents/EP2252166A1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Food product containing table salt formulation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents/EP2517576A2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The use of soluble tomato solids for reducing the salt content of food products&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents/US8273401&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Phytosterol/salt composition for topical application to food products&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents/US5098723&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Low sodium salt composition and method of preparing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Michael Moss (as cited by Mother Jones) &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; have got the jargon slightly wrong, and &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; have exaggerated the figure by a bit (or he might have got it 100% correct, and the Frito-Lay story has changed slightly), but essentially his reporting was consistent with the Frito-Lay press-releases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frito-Lay have evidence that they are researching the areas that they are claiming, and some of the &amp;quot;designer salt&amp;quot; products are already in the marketplace. Whether they &lt;em&gt;achieve&lt;/em&gt; their 40% reduction goals is something that time will tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T02:01:21.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15573" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15574" CreationDate="2013-03-28T13:07:12.850" Score="3" ViewCount="9957" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banzai_skydive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, Banzai skydiving is a form of skydiving where the parachute is thrown out first and the jumper tries to catch up with it, put it on and then deploy. I tried searching the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/Search.aspx?q=Yasuhiro%20Kubo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Guinness World Records website&lt;/a&gt; (don't have access to the book) and it came up blank. Is this a real sport and does Yashuhiro own the world record for Banzai Skydiving?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2021-02-05T10:55:50.893" Title="Does Yasuhiro Kubo own the world record for Banzai Sky diving?" Tags="|sport|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15573" CreationDate="2013-03-28T13:30:56.410" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR&lt;/strong&gt; : &lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, he does hold the record, &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt; it's not a real sport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=470020&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this discussion&lt;/a&gt; from the Straight Dope forums.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They contacted Kubo directly, who said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How are you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for being interested in my record&#xA;I do not know that other people challenged it after me (like same a way)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My record still appears in the Guinness Book of Records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The record is not changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will be difficult to change this record from now on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a video is my thing, there is it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was on air by TVshow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for a question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yours sincerely,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;久保安宏 YASUHIRO KUBO&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;URL &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skydiving.jp/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.skydiving.jp/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also contacted the Guinness World Record people:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you for contacting Guinness World Records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The record for “longest banzai skydive” is indeed monitored in our&#xA;database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The existing record is held by Yasuhiro Kubo (Japan), who jumped from&#xA;a plane at an altitude of 3,000 m. (9,842 ft) without a parachute and&#xA;in 50 seconds hooked onto a parachute which was thrown out prior to&#xA;his jump on 2 September 2000 in Davis, California, USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thank you again for your interest in Guinness World Records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sincerely,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a significative difference with the only working reference in the wikipedia article (and most of the stories about this on the net). He did not wait for 50 seconds before launching, but he caught (and deployed?) the parachute 50 seconds after the launch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Trupa, a former skydiver said (conversions in square brackets mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skydiver's rule of thumb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;15 seconds to terminal velocity covering 1500 feet [457m] of altitude. Then&#xA;at 120 mph [193kM/h] terminal velocity, 6 seconds per thousand feet [304m].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for 50 seconds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;50 = 15 + 35 (let's say 36 to make life easy)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;= 1500 feet [457m] + 6x1000 feet [304m]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;= 7500 feet [2286m]. From 10,000 [3048m] you're at 2500 feet [762m], and minimum allowed opening altitude is 2200 feet [670m].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the rig free-falling alone won't fall as fast as a man, so the&#xA;chaser won't have to fall for 50 seconds to catch it. but given the&#xA;time required to put on the harness (2 thigh straps, the shoulder&#xA;straps, and 1 chest strap) let alone the time to chase &amp;amp; catch it, and&#xA;I say you run out of time more often than not from 10000 feet [3048m]. From&#xA;14000 [4267m], maybe you have an even chance. It's still heads you die, tails&#xA;you live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T14:02:40.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15575" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2013-03-28T13:40:02.867" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm nominating myself simply because I believe that the community needs more candidates to choose from, and I'm willing to put in the time and effort to be an active voice for the community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll freely admit: I haven't been terribly active on skeptics, at least compared to the other stackexchange sites I'm active in (mostly the &lt;a href=&quot;http://parenting.stackexchange.com/users/420/beofett&quot;&gt;parenting beta&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://scifi.stackexchange.com/users/1359/beofett&quot;&gt;Science Fiction &amp;amp; Fantasy stackexchange&lt;/a&gt;).  However, I take the position and responsibility of moderator very seriously, and, if elected, I would make sure that I made skeptics my top priority for the SE platform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My qualifications are that I'm very familiar with both the stackexchange platform in general, the roles of a moderator (I've been a &lt;em&gt;pro tem&lt;/em&gt; moderator on Parenting for almost 2 years), and the Skeptics community (while I haven't been that active, I've been here for over a year, and have watched the community grow and develop since beta).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My style of moderation is to push anything that isn't clearly defined to meta discussion, and for any borderline cases I tend to wait and see how the community reacts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="3451" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T13:46:21.850" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T13:46:21.850" CommentCount="8" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-03-28T13:40:02.867" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6746" CreationDate="2013-03-28T14:03:12.473" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's at least possible for the police (or anyone else) to do this in Sweden, since the documents pertaining to the building permit include a complete building plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All documents filed with a government agency (local or national) in Sweden by default becomes parts of the public record, freely available for everyone (citizen as well as foreign), unless another law specificity puts them under secrecy. No such law protects building plans, which are handled by a branch of the municipality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under Swedish law, a request for such public documents must be met ASAP, i.e. if the police, or even a private citizen, comes in person to request a building plan it must be fetched and copied for them right away. Some municipalities make building permits available at public computer terminals for easy access by the public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry to say, I have no knowledge about if the Swedish police usually uses this possibility in the manner specified by the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Swedish constitution. This question is regulated in The Freedom of Press Act: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.riksdagen.se/en/Documents-and-laws/Laws/The-Constitution/&quot;&gt;http://www.riksdagen.se/en/Documents-and-laws/Laws/The-Constitution/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.government.se/sb/d/574/a/131397&quot;&gt;http://www.government.se/sb/d/574/a/131397&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13129" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-03-28T16:30:26.807" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T16:30:26.807" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15577" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-28T16:23:03.193" Score="10" ViewCount="746" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read in some sources (sorry, can't remember which), and also been told by my employer-assigned doctor (I can find the doctor again if needed), that it is &quot;important&quot; for people who work at desks in front of computer screens turn their eyes away from the monitor for five minutes every hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is so disruptive to my type of work pattern, I would like to verify if it really helps my eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2269" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2018-11-12T08:39:24.520" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T08:39:24.520" Title="Does turning your eyes away from your monitor once an hour help your eyes' health?" Tags="|ophthalmology|monitor|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15577" CreationDate="2013-03-28T17:19:45.300" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are more problems which can occur from &quot;staring&quot; on screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eye discomfort&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Headaches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Itchy eyes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dry or watering eyes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Burning sensations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changes in color perception&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blurred vision&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Difficulty focussing (1, 2, 3)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ways to minimise damage to your eyes caused by computer screens There&#xA;  are several ways you can minimise the potential damage to your eyes&#xA;  caused by looking at computer screens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Firstly, it is important to set up your computer screen so that it is&#xA;  in the correct position in relation to your eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As previously mentioned, the top of the screen should be in line with&#xA;  your eye level. In addition, the screen should be placed approximately&#xA;  18-30 inches from you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The screen should also be tilted slightly back – between 10 to 15&#xA;  degrees depending on the person’s particular preference. This is so&#xA;  that you do not receive glare from lights in the ceiling. (3, 7)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Glare can also be avoided by placing blinds over nearby windows, or&#xA;  using a glare screen. (2, 5)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition to adjusting the position of your screen, you can also&#xA;  minimise eye problems by simply blinking more frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many people don’t realise that they actually blink less when they look&#xA;  at a screen. (2)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blinking is important, however, as it washes your eyes in their&#xA;  naturally therapeutic fluids. (5)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is also important to take breaks from looking at your screen. One&#xA;  easy way to remember this is to think of 20-20-20. This reminds you&#xA;  that every 20 minutes you should try to look at something 20 feet away&#xA;  for a minimum of 20 seconds. (5)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is also recommended to take breaks from your screen altogether, in&#xA;  particular every 2 hours. (2)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news-medical.net/health/Does-looking-at-a-computer-damage-your-eyes.aspx&quot;&gt;Does looking at a computer damage your eyes?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;there are many links to find mentioning a &quot;20-20-20 rule.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutvision.com/cvs/irritated.htm&quot;&gt;Computer Eye Strain: 10 Steps for Relief&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/09/how-to-keep-computer-screens-from-destroying-your-eyes/263005/&quot;&gt;How to Keep Computer Screens From Destroying Your Eyes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10701" LastActivityDate="2013-03-28T17:19:45.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2839" CreationDate="2013-03-29T09:34:11.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reports say that the claim is a misunderstanding of the user manual for an early survival suit. If your body is well wrapped, then the head becomes the main vector of heat loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But not overwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/dec/17/medicalresearch-humanbehaviour&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/dec/17/medicalresearch-humanbehaviour&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13140" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T09:34:11.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15582" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-29T14:22:08.690" Score="11" ViewCount="39096" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been looking into relative size/volume/surface area of the circulatory system in different species e.g. mouse &amp;amp; man. The only estimates that I could find all quote the same number (60,000 miles) without a primary reference or a plausible way of estimation. This leads me to believe that this is likely to be an urban myth, even though I can imagine the numbers could be quite high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/C/Circulation2.html&quot;&gt;Personal Biology web-site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An adult human has been estimated to have some 60,000 miles (96,560 km) of capillaries with a total surface area of some 800–1000 m2 (an area greater than three tennis courts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fi.edu/learn/heart/vessels/vessels.html&quot;&gt;Franklin Institute&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/1999-01/916069852.An.r.html&quot;&gt;Robert Houska, Faculty, Natural Sciences, Fullerton College&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.mit.edu/hst527/www/readings/Lecture%2012/JTH%20EC%20DYNAMICS.pdf&quot;&gt;Aird, W.C., 2005. Spatial and temporal dynamics of the endothelium. Journal of thrombosis and haemostasis : JTH, 3(7), pp.1392–1406. Table 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13143" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T15:06:15.070" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T03:16:15.920" Title="Are there 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12513" CreationDate="2013-03-29T15:53:44.963" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are details, with a list of more than 250 references/citations, at &lt;code&gt;Information for Health Care Professionals: Marihuana (marijuana, cannabis) [Health Canada, 2010]&lt;/code&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/marihuana/med/infoprof-eng.php#a4_0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hyperlink&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It talks about the following clinical uses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;4.1 Nausea and vomiting&#xA;4.2 Wasting syndrome and loss of appetite in AIDS and cancer patients&#xA;4.2.1 To stimulate appetite and produce weight gain in AIDS patients&#xA;4.2.2 To stimulate appetite and produce weight gain in cancer patients&#xA;4.2.3 Anorexia nervosa&#xA;4.3 Multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, spinal cord injury&#xA;4.3.1 Multiple sclerosis&#xA;4.3.2 Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis&#xA;4.3.3 Spinal cord injury&#xA;4.4 Epilepsy&#xA;4.5 Pain&#xA;4.5.1 Cancer pain&#xA;4.5.2 Non-cancer pain&#xA;4.5.2.1 Postoperative pain&#xA;4.5.2.2 Neuropathic pain&#xA;4.5.2.3 Rheumatoid arthritis&#xA;4.5.2.4 Headache&#xA;4.5.2.5 Fibromyalgia&#xA;4.6 Other diseases and symptoms&#xA;4.6.1 Movement disorders&#xA;4.6.1.1 Dystonia&#xA;4.6.1.2 Huntington's disease&#xA;4.6.1.3 Parkinson's disease&#xA;4.6.1.4 Tourette's syndrome&#xA;4.6.2 Glaucoma&#xA;4.6.3 Asthma&#xA;4.6.4 Hypertension&#xA;4.6.5 Psychiatric disorders&#xA;4.6.6 Alzheimer's disease&#xA;4.6.7 Inflammation&#xA;4.6.7.1 Inflammatory bowel disease&#xA;4.6.7.2 Inflammatory skin diseases&#xA;4.6.8 Bladder dysfunction&#xA;4.6.9 Anti-neoplastic properties&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't quote it all, but to pick one sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While cannabinoids present clear advantages over placebo in the control of CINV, the evidence from randomized trials shows cannabinoids to be clinically only slightly better than conventional dopamine D2-receptor antagonist anti-emetics (114,115).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is yes to the first two parts of our question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is comparably effective&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For cancer (e.g. for controlling chemotherapy-induced nausea)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third part of your question was, &quot;marijuana means any unpurified parts of cannabis plants (as opposed to purified extracts such as THC)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It says things like,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ability of marihuana to stimulate appetite and food intake has been applied to clinical situations where weight gain is deemed beneficial such as in HIV-associated muscle wasting and weight loss. One study showed that experienced HIV+ marihuana smokers with clinically significant muscle mass loss benefited from both dronabinol (4-8 times the standard 2.5 mg b.i.d dose or 10-20 mg daily) and smoked marihuana (3 puffs at 40 sec intervals, 1.3-3.9% THC). Both drugs produced substantial and comparable increases in food intake and body weight, as well as improvements in mood and sleep (130,131). The marihuana-associated increase in body weight appeared to result from an increase in body fat rather than lean muscle mass (132,133).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to say,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oral synthetic THC, dronabinol, administered as capsules (Marinol®) is an approved indication in Canada for AIDS-related anorexia associated with weight loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They previously said that smoked marijuana is effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect that synthetics (purified extracts) are prescribed, not because they're more effective but because they have fewer adverse side-effects, for example  smoking tar etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-03-29T18:51:00.503" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T18:51:00.503" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15541" CreationDate="2013-03-29T15:54:43.103" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No it isn't&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wbur.org/npr/175273122/in-first-of-2-gay-marriage-cases-court-turns-to-proposition-8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;first source&lt;/a&gt; states by itself that in the state of California any two people can get married, as long as they are of the opposite sex, even if they can't bring forth children, such as elderly couples and even prisoners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More over, &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the Jewish law&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, on which the Judeo-Christian marriage is based says the following things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inability to bring children after 10 years of marriage is a reason to force divorce, but only for the man, and only if he doesn't have children already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, through history this was not enforced for couples that didn't want to get a divorce, even if their community wanted them to divorce. On the other hand, other couples used this as an excuse, even though they had &lt;strong&gt;other&lt;/strong&gt; reasons to get a divorce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source tells about two separate occasions, one that was brought before &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonides&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Maimonides&lt;/a&gt;, where the community wanted to force a divorce on a childless couple, even though the couple didn't want to, and they were allowed to stay together if they wanted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other case, was in Tunis, where a case was presented to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/toshba/biyograf/ribash.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rabi Itzhak Bar Sheshet Parpat&lt;/a&gt; (1326-1408), where a man with no children wanted to marry a 90 year old woman. The community wanted to stop the marriage on this cause, because they claimed that he was only after her money. The marriage however was allowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source summarizes by saying that by law a couple must separate if they didn't have children after 10 years of marriage; however this was not enforced by Rabbis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also I want to add that it only valid for men with no children, so women and men that already have children can marry into a childless marriage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source for it is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.biu.ac.il/JH/Parasha/eng/toledot/shi.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; (also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biu.ac.il/jh/parasha/toldot/shi.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hebrew Version&lt;/a&gt;) written by Dr. Yoel Shiloh of Ashkelon College. The page shows its sources for each and every claim it makes, including citations from the sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Catholic Church&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, also, doesn't see infertility as impediment to marriage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Infertility (the inability to procreate children) is not an impediment to marriage&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.catholic.com/qa/if-a-person-is-infertile-through-no-fault-of-his-own-can-he-get-married-in-the-catholic-church&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-10-20T15:51:45.287" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15541" CreationDate="2013-03-29T16:42:16.370" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the quote,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The key reason that marriage has existed at all in any society and at any time is that sexual relationships between men and women naturally produce children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read that as true as far as it goes, if you mean &quot;key &lt;em&gt;biological&lt;/em&gt; reason&quot; and not &quot;key &lt;em&gt;legal&lt;/em&gt; reason&quot;: &#xA;I think we can agree than &quot;men and women producing children&quot; is a sine qua non of anything to do with multi-generational or historic human society ... without it there would be no human race, no society, no human customs (and no marriages).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;people would have no reason to get married if not for kids&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree that societies require people who may have children (e.g. men and women) to marry: partly so they'd know who would look after the children and the wife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who couldn't have children (e.g. homosexuals) were not required to &quot;marry&quot; in the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My issue is with the first part of the argument, namely that the &lt;em&gt;key legal reason&lt;/em&gt; that marriage exists&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to concentrate on &lt;em&gt;legal&lt;/em&gt; reasons, marriage has evolved over millennia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would argue that the key and immediate reason is property: real estate, money, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;labour&lt;/a&gt;. There's evidence for my theory, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dowry&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bride_price&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bride price&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Children (if they are born of the marriage) become part of that financial interconnection. I suggest that children are secondary in importance to property (i.e. that property is closer to being the &quot;key legal reason&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't see how to prove that: because what you consider to be &quot;the key&quot; to a complex issue is perhaps subjective or a matter of opinion, or too narrow (because there's more than one 'key' reason), or too ill-defined (what does &quot;key&quot; mean in this context?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A further, important (but perhaps more recent) reason why people choose to legally marry (as opposed to having a marriage forced on them by society) is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_(love)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;romantic love&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-10-20T15:37:45.110" LastActivityDate="2018-10-20T15:37:45.110" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14327" CreationDate="2013-03-29T17:43:48.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thestar.com/business/2013/03/29/in_toronto_casino_debate_its_time_to_walk_away_from_the_table_olive.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article in the Toronto Star&lt;/a&gt; speaks against a casino, saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the MPI’s research, which is peer-reviewed in contrast to the unverified numbers the casino advocates throw around, show that depending on the size of the gambling facility (and the proposed GTA one would be huge), costs to cities in policing and other taxpayer-funded services run between two to seven times the casino advocates’ claimed civic benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The MPI paper which they talk about is available here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinprosperity.org/2013/03/12/economic-impact-casino-toronto/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Economic “Impact” of a Downtown Casino in Toronto&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T17:43:48.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15588" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2013-03-29T20:09:56.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hi everyone,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slightly over two years ago, I was nominated as Pro Tempore moderator along with Sklivvz and Fabian. Together, with the aid of Oddthinking, we guided the site to maturity. Once the election date came, I saw that great candidates were running and I decided not to run, so I could use the time for other activities. Among them, I moderated the /r/CanadaPolitics where I applied the skills that I had developed on Skeptics Stack Exchange to foster civil and high level debate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, it's time for me to come back to Skeptics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not running to offer change. I think the current moderators have done a great job over the past year and wouldn't seek radical change in policy. I'm running to offer my experience and to fix the problems I see on-sight, rather than by flagging. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="45" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2013-03-29T20:15:09.777" LastActivityDate="2013-03-29T20:15:09.777" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-03-29T20:09:56.363" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15993" CreationDate="2013-03-30T02:19:43.657" Score="18" ViewCount="991" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the primary claims of neuro-linguistic programming is that people possess a particular language system (visual, auditory, or kinesthetic representational).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/fbi/nlp_interviewing.htm&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, a person whose predominant representational system is&#xA;  visual will say phrases, such as “I see what you mean,” “that looks&#xA;  good to me,” “we see eye to eye,” or “I get the picture.” On the other&#xA;  hand, a person whose preference is auditory will use language, such as&#xA;  “something tells me...,” “that rings a bell,” “we’re on the same wave&#xA;  length,” or “that sounds okay to me.” Finally, a person who is&#xA;  kinesthetic or “feeling” oriented will make statements, such as “I’ll&#xA;  get in touch with you,” “how does that grab you?,” “you don’t have to&#xA;  get pushy,” or “how do you think I feel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that you will be able to increase your rapport by matching the persons language system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do people tend to speak using a particular language system?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any evidence that matching will increase rapport with people who do use a particular system?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not looking for a general debunking for NLP, but for this specific claim&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="188" LastEditDate="2013-04-26T05:30:34.657" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T14:47:38.167" Title="Do people tend to have a particular language representational system (visual, auditory, or kinesthetic representational)?" Tags="|language|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15594" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-30T09:37:18.450" Score="2" ViewCount="11058" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend recently went on a trek where his guides suggested he drink Coca Cola to kill any germs in his stomach, so that he didn't get sick. It's given me a skeptical itch. Is there any truth to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4718" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-03-30T10:05:41.313" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T23:27:52.257" Title="Does Coca-Cola kill germs in the stomach?" Tags="|hygiene|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15595" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-30T13:44:24.200" Score="10" ViewCount="718" Body="&lt;p&gt;It started a few years ago.  The first one I remember seeing was Little Caesars $5 Hot-And-Ready pizzas.  I don't know if this was the source, but it was the first symptom...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/X9seB.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/X9seBb.png&quot; alt=&quot;Guy with a square sign for $5.99 Hot-N-Ready Little Caesars Large Pizza&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mantecabulletin.com/news/sign-wavers-beggars-the-same/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sign wavers, beggars the same?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... And then the plague spread.  To every street corner and business in America ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ALexX.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ALexX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Great Clips sign waver&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.revivingworkethic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/sign-waver.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;revivingworkethic.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any legitimate marketing studies or results that show that this technique is actually worth it?  Everyone I know who I've ever asked just says basically, &quot;Yeah, I know, I see them.  They're amusing and a little annoying.&quot;  I've never met a single person who was actually affected (or at least, who admitted to being affected) by these human advertisements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence the question: is this actually worth the investment and having this person on payroll?  Or is this a useless gesture that companies copy under the guise of &quot;more exposure is better!!!!!!!!!11111&quot; without any actual studies to back up this particular technique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7907" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-03-27T00:27:23.680" LastActivityDate="2019-03-27T00:27:23.680" Title="Is having a &quot;sign waver&quot; an effective marketing strategy?" Tags="|economics|marketing|advertising|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15596" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-30T14:34:41.670" Score="2" ViewCount="513" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are numerous beauty sites that &lt;a href=&quot;http://beautyblitz.com/hair/hair-how-tos/beauty-daredevil-will-beer-make-my-hair-shiny&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claim that&lt;/a&gt; applying beer on my hair will make it shiny and lustrous. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:25:40.797" LastActivityDate="2017-08-03T15:59:28.870" Title="Will applying beer on my hair make it appear shiny and lustrous?" Tags="|natural-remedies|hair|beauty|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15597" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-30T14:41:53.480" Score="16" ViewCount="2741" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijama&quot;&gt;Hijama&lt;/a&gt; is, as I understand it, an Islamic and traditional Chinese technique somewhat similar to bloodletting wherein the patient receives multiple minor perforations to his back after which suction cups suck and expel the blood. This is supposed to alleviate pain, among other ailments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anybody provide some objective, unbiased sources or references for Hijama? Most of the links I have been able to find including Wikipedia's sources are Islamic pro-hijama websites. Have any third party studies been done or reports published that critically examine it's effectiveness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example of the claim, here is one&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2042-7166.2010.01060.x/abstract;jsessionid=BE2689DA9952ADB02A26AE7897A0A5A4.d03t01?systemMessage=Wiley+Online+Library+will+be+disrupted+on+23+February+from+10%3A00-12%3A00+BST+%2805%3A00-07%3A00+EDT%29+for+essential+maintenance&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&amp;amp;deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; that claims Hijama is effective in alleviating rheumatoid arthritis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8125" LastEditorUserId="933" LastEditDate="2013-04-04T12:20:52.230" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T14:32:15.927" Title="Does Hijama (cupping) alleviate pain and other ailments?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|islam|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15598" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15670" CreationDate="2013-03-30T17:35:26.417" Score="5" ViewCount="6112" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard and read on the Internet the disputed claim that &lt;em&gt;mixed blood&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; children are smarter than their (non-mixed blood) parents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general idea of &quot;hybrid vigour&quot; is known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;heterosis&lt;/a&gt; and Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis#Humans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;explains&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been suggested that many beneficial effects on average health, intelligence, and height have resulted from an increased heterosis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other examples of discussion of the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081129023736AAc3VP6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yahoo Answer&lt;/a&gt; claiming it is false.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/pos/summary/v014/14.1teng.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Discussion of the claim for China&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acls.org/news/10-1-2012/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dismissal of the claim as relying on false premises&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These sources couldn't convince me about the matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support the claim, to falsify it, or to demonstrate that it is an unscientific claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;I interpret &quot;mixed-blood&quot; to mean an offspring of parents of different &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_%28human_classification%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;races&lt;/a&gt;; i.e. having different ethnicity, skin color and geographical roots in general. For example, having a Japanese mother and African father.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related question&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/399/is-race-a-discredited-scientific-concept-in-biology&quot;&gt;Is race a discredited scientific concept in biology?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11740" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2016-05-13T09:37:59.147" Title="Are mixed-blood children smarter than their non mixed-blood parents?" Tags="|intelligence|race|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15605" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20792" CreationDate="2013-03-31T19:13:56.897" Score="14" ViewCount="5463" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a diet called &amp;quot;fasting two times a week diet&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;the 5:2 diet&amp;quot;. You eat only 25% of your normal intake two times per week, and the rest of the week you eat extra to make up for it. It claims to make you healthier, help protect against Alzheimers and cancer, and make your body get &amp;quot;younger&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Horizon: Eat, Fast And Live Longer is the BBC documentary about the 5:2 diet.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/54089463&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://vimeo.com/54089463&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With five feast days and two fast days, you can have normal food for&#xA;most of the week and only cut down for 48 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, best of all, you only have to calorie count for two days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those days aren’t total fasts but do involve eating a lot less than&#xA;usual – 25% of what you’d eat to maintain your weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/dieting/52-diet-kate-harrison-revolutionary-1712393&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/dieting/52-diet-kate-harrison-revolutionary-1712393&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any substantial proof of this being true, or wrong? Are there any other studies of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am most curious about is if the &amp;quot;fasting&amp;quot; improves health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies conducted by the Baltimore National Institute on Aging reveal&#xA;that fasting once or twice a week lowers Insulin-like growth factor 1&#xA;( IGF-1 ) levels; a lower IGF-1 level encourages fat burning and can&#xA;protect the brain against diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and&#xA;Parkinson's disease.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5:2_diet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; Tests conducted on mice have revealed that&#xA;controlling the levels of IGF-1 through fasting can promote longevity;&#xA;high levels of IGF-1 in later life promote aging, although it is&#xA;needed in youth for growth.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/dieting/52-diet-kate-harrison-revolutionary-1712393&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; However, the general medical consensus&#xA;is that fasting has not been researched extensively enough to&#xA;determine if there are benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5:2_diet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5:2_diet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the wiki link, and according to the documentary it increases life length. It has been tested on rats and they live longer when they fast 2 days a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am looking for is not &amp;quot;I think it's bad because I have heard balanced diet is good&amp;quot;. What I am looking for is some substantial proofs, some other research than what I have sent preferably done on humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are claims of 5:2 being &lt;a href=&quot;http://metro.co.uk/2013/07/18/fast-or-feast-is-the-52-diet-all-its-cracked-up-to-be-3886259/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;unsubstantial and untested.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the NHS says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence surrounding the benefits of the 5:2 diet and intermittent fasting (IF) are limited when compared with other types of weight-loss techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:41:07.137" Title="Does the fasting two times a week diet (the 5:2 diet) provide health benefits?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|fasting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15606" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-03-31T19:54:17.000" Score="26" ViewCount="3472" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_game#Playing_cards&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia says&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After the French Revolution some games started to use the ace or 1 as&#xA;  the highest card which symbolized the lowest in society rising above&#xA;  the King.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A discussion forum recently indicated that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1bcpgz/til_that_after_the_french_revolution_some_card/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this reference is unverified&lt;/a&gt;, and that original sources were &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1bcpgz/til_that_after_the_french_revolution_some_card/c95qnz8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;not easily found&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources showing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ace&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;French sculpture venerating the Aces&lt;/a&gt;, provides anecdotal evidence, as well with the history of French cards being &lt;a href=&quot;http://i-p-c-s.org/faq/history_7.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;stripped of noble symbol, and then reinstated by Napoleon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The practice of 'aces high' could have come before the French Revolution, however, and been adopted then due to the alignment with situation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there are usage of 'aces high' that predates the French Revolution? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any evidence that the practice of aces high has wide renown principally due to the French Revolution?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8735" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-09-08T01:05:11.763" LastActivityDate="2022-09-28T00:26:34.583" Title="Did the French Revolution cause people to give the Ace (in a deck of cards) rank above a King?" Tags="|history|politics|culture|games|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15607" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="976" CreationDate="2013-03-31T21:05:48.123" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is some evidence from state to state comparisons that gun control laws and gun ownership show some relationship to deaths from firearm use&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For many observers outside the USA it seems obvious that the lax US attitude to gun control is a major contributor to the high rate of death from gun use in the USA (the USA is an outlier in death rates at least among developed countries). But these international comparisons are always going to be subject to many confounding factors. However, different states inside the US have very different rules about firearm ownership and control so this might offer better, less confounded an more relevant, evidence for whether tighter control is useful in the US context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent piece of research in the journal &lt;a href=&quot;http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1661390&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;JAMA Internal Medicine&lt;/a&gt; analyses the internal state by state legislation and its relationship to death rates. The study concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A higher number of firearm laws in a state are associated with a lower rate of firearm fatalities in the state, overall and for suicides and homicides individually. As our study could not determine cause-and-effect relationships, further studies are necessary to define the nature of this association.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two visualizations of their data are worth repeating. The first is a map of death rates and legislative &quot;strength&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gDpbK.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second image contains some scatter plots of the data, state by state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GrIUr.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting the limitations of the study. In the authors own words (i've highlighted some of the key issues):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our study has limitations. First, &lt;em&gt;the legislative strength score, which tallies a single point per law, has not been validated&lt;/em&gt;. Neither has the weighted Brady scoring system, and we are unaware of any such scoring systems that have been validated. Our results, which divided states into quartiles of legislative strength, were essentially the same with either of these scoring systems. Second, we examined only deaths by firearms, not nonfatal firearm injuries; fatality was our primary outcome. Approximately 2.6 nonfatal firearm injuries are treated for every fatal firearm injury. Third, we were unable to control for the enforcement of firearm laws or the exploitation of loopholes, which may vary between states. Fourth, although we adjusted for many state-based factors associated with firearm fatalities, there may be additional factors not considered in our model that are relevant (eg, city laws and police enforcement). However, we included nonfirearm suicides and nonfirearm homicides in some of our analyses to control for the potential role of additional factors. We found little evidence of substitution—rates of firearm-related deaths were not correlated with rates of nonfirearm violent death in the multivariable model. Fifth, although we found that states with more legislation have lower fatality rates, ie, are “safer” states, in a cross-sectional ecological study &lt;em&gt;we could not determine if the greater number of laws were the reason for the reduced fatality rates.&lt;/em&gt; The association could have been confounded by firearm ownership rates or other unaccounted factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in conclusion, there appears to be some relationship between tighter gun control and gun deaths (for both suicides and homicides). But the quality of evidence required to demonstrate causality is not yet available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2013-03-31T21:05:48.123" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15608" PostTypeId="6" CreationDate="2013-03-31T21:18:09.680" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to nominate the great &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/3835/evan-carroll&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evan Carroll&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. His reputation stands for itself. Firstly, Evan is very skeptical; this is evidenced by his high level. He has leveled up his skepticism to 1,477. After careful consideration, 37 bronze medals and 8 silver medals were automatically awarded to him by the server farm that runs this site. All of these medals were awarded for outstanding service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evan has been a productive and prominent member of many SEs. His charm, wit, fairness, and sheer intellect may leave other ops feeling woefully inadequate to uphold the same duties that Evan will handle with stunning grace. If elected, you should expect out of Evan a fairness and transparency never before seen on StackExchange. Evan stands up for the many, and in doing so he stands up for knowledge -- which is pretty much just what skepticism is all about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's improve SE.Skeptics together. Let's improve skepticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Viva la revolución.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2013-04-01T02:18:16.697" LastActivityDate="2013-04-01T02:18:16.697" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-03-31T21:18:09.680" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15609" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15619" CreationDate="2013-03-31T21:24:08.187" Score="74" ViewCount="8141" Body="&lt;p&gt;About 30,000 Americans die every year from gun-related deaths (a number likely to exceed those dying from automobile-related accidents very soon if trends continue). About 1 in 3 of those are homicides and the remainder suicides. Together this totals more than 300,000 since the world Trade Centre attacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent editorial in the journal &lt;a href=&quot;http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1661391&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;JAMA Internal Medicine&lt;/a&gt; claimed that the NRA had used its legislative clout to block public funding for research to find out what measures might reduce the death rate. In their words (but my highlights):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, with almost no funding for firearm violence research, there are almost no researchers. Counting all academic disciplines together, no more than a dozen active, experienced investigators in the United States have focused their careers primarily on firearm violence. Only 2 are physicians. Only 1 has evaluated the effectiveness of an assault weapons ban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why did this happen? In the early 1990s, scientists were producing evidence that might have been used to reform the nation’s firearm policies. &lt;strong&gt;To those whose interests were threatened by such reforms, it made perfect sense to choke off the production of the evidence. This effort was led by Congressman Jay Dickey, self-described “point person for the NRA.” It succeeded&lt;/strong&gt;. When rates of firearm violence were at historic highs and appeared to be increasing, the government abandoned its commitment to understanding the problem and devising evidence-based solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the poverty of good statistics on the topic and the relevance of such statistics for policy (see the difficulty of finding good statistics in this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/976/is-gun-control-effective&quot;&gt;Is gun control effective?&lt;/a&gt; ) , this seems strange. But is it true? Did the NRA successfully lobby to block research funding related to gun control and gun violence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2022-02-12T07:03:12.140" Title="Did the National Rifle Association (NRA) block research into statistics related to gun control?" Tags="|united-states|politics|guns|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15610" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15609" CreationDate="2013-03-31T21:57:57.147" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The specific legislation you're interested is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Tiahrt#Tiahrt_Amendment&quot;&gt;Tiahrt Amendment&lt;/a&gt;. It is quite contentious because it was designed to block a lot of data collected by the ATF from being used academically. The motivation behind this is that past releases of such information were used for political purposes rather than objective academic or scientific pursuits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The worry from groups who support the right to keep and bear arms is that showing &quot;firearms correlate to X&quot; would lead to further gun control legislation. Knowing something scientifically is good, using that knowledge to justify political goals is where it gets contentious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original question may help highlight these concerns. A journal about internal medicine has a clear interest in knowing more about firearm injuries and how to treat. Should a group of medical experts be advising for gun control or solely focused on the clinical treatment and care of firearm injuries? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5897" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-04T13:58:20.383" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T13:58:20.383" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15611" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15655" CreationDate="2013-03-31T23:15:52.667" Score="7" ViewCount="2493" Body="&lt;p&gt;Edwin Robinson was claimed to have &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1755&amp;amp;dat=19800607&amp;amp;id=rZwcAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=02cEAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=2574,3417482&quot;&gt;regained his sight&lt;/a&gt; after being struck by lightning. Can this really happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T22:18:16.300" Title="Can lightning restore sight?" Tags="|lightning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15650" CreationDate="2013-04-01T08:34:41.810" Score="10" ViewCount="7112" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a home-remedy for &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blackheads&lt;/a&gt;, using egg white. Does this truly work to remove black heads? Is there any proof of this being a successful remedy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crunchybetty.com/5-natural-ways-to-remove-blackheads&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;crunchybetty.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Use Egg Whites to Pull Out the Gunk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Frankly, this is one of my least favorite ways to get rid of&#xA;  blackheads (I don’t particularly like the way eggs on my face smell,&#xA;  and it hasn’t been as effective as the other ways for me). However,&#xA;  hundreds of other people swear by this method, thus I include it for&#xA;  your consideration. It’s a prime example of how one crunchy remedy may&#xA;  work for one person, and not at all for another. You never, ever, ever&#xA;  know until you try.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13149" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2019-01-29T15:14:51.253" LastActivityDate="2020-02-20T11:37:07.687" Title="Can blackheads be removed with egg white?" Tags="|natural-remedies|dermatology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9195" CreationDate="2013-04-01T09:53:37.500" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, here's one scientific study that says that forskolin causes weight loss in humans:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16129715&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16129715&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that a single study of 30 people is not sufficient to conclude that forskolin is effective and safe from side-effects. Readers are advised to consult a doctor before taking forskolin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13176" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-10-20T08:53:16.807" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T08:53:16.807" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15609" CreationDate="2013-04-01T13:21:14.280" Score="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes they did.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Tiahrt#Tiahrt_Amendment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tiahrt amendment&lt;/a&gt; prevents firearms data from being released to anyone other than law enforcement - including gun ownership statistics and many gun-related crime statistics. This effectively prevents most academic research into gun ownership, gun crime, gun violence and even some gun accidents, by denying researchers access to the necessary raw data. The ban applies to all research, public and private, except law enforcement (who are ill-equipped or not mandated to carry out academic research). The amendment was promoted heavily by the NRA who made large campaign contributions specifically to legislators who supported the ban. They also arranged for the passage of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment_(1996)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dickey Amendment&lt;/a&gt; which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/26253-government-stifled-gun-research.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;prevents the Centre for Disease Control spending any money at all on research &quot;that might advocate or promote gun control&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (the CDC is tasked with research into other non-disease causes of death and injury such as traffic and domestic accident). The restriction was later extended to other publicly funded bodies. The definition of what might &quot;advocate or promote gun control&quot; was left deliberately vague, and given the possibility of criminal prosecution if your research was found to do so, virtually everyone abandoned the area of research. A small amount of research has continued despite the restrictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/12/gun_violence_research_nra_and_congress_blocked_gun_control_studies_at_cdc.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slate Magazine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/26253-government-stifled-gun-research.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Live Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/10/us-usa-guns-scientists-idUSBRE90915F20130110&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reuters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/16/obama-gun-research-violence/1840367/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;USA Today&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/robwaters/2012/12/17/gun-violence-americas-secret-health-crisis/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2018-03-22T13:43:21.697" LastActivityDate="2018-03-22T13:43:21.697" CommentCount="31" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9484" CreationDate="2013-04-01T22:35:15.363" Score="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite simply, &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;. The claim in the video series you linked is patently ridiculous.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What is being claimed?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument presented in your videos is based entirely on the following passage in the Old Testament book of Song of Solomon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=son%205:16&amp;amp;version=ASV&quot;&gt;Song of Solomon 5:16&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (ASV)&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;sup&gt;16&amp;nbsp;&lt;/sup&gt; His mouth is most sweet; Yea, he is &lt;strong&gt;altogether lovely&lt;/strong&gt;. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Jerusalem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have highlighted the phrase in question here. The claim in the video is that the phrase translated here as &lt;code&gt;altogether lovely&lt;/code&gt; is actually the proper name &quot;Mohammed&quot; with a respectful plural ending and is incorrectly translated to its meaning. The video (and several other sites on the net) suggest taking the root Hebrew word &lt;code&gt;מחמד&lt;/code&gt; into an online translator. The results they show have two machine translation sites returning &quot;Mohamed&quot; as the result.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Why doesn't this mean anything?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flaw in this argument is that it proves absolutely nothing. To show why, I will give some translation examples from a language I know well. While it is relatively rare in English with our mish-mash of nationalities, in many languages even today (and even more so through history) it is common for proper names to be based words with straight forward meanings in their native tongues.  I have Turkish friends with names like Güven, Gül, Nehir and Pınar. In the previous sentences I capitalized them and from the context it is clear that those words refer to people, but these are the ordinary everyday words for trust, rose, river and spring respectively. In fact most of the people I know have names with similar ordinary meanings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to say &quot;Güven çiçekçiden bir gül aldı,&quot; (Güven bought a rose from the florist) there is absolutely no question from the context that I am using Güven as a proper name and gül as a type of flower. You don't even need the capitalization or know my friends names. The immediate context of the words makes it clear how they are being used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to your videos. The accusation is raised that &quot;we have no right to translate names&quot;. This is, in itself, true. You will note that in the English translation I provided for the Turkish sentence above, I have done the work of interpreting it for you and retained the proper names but translated the words with ordinary meanings. If I had given the translation as &quot;Trust bought a Gül from the florist&quot;, my competence with the language must be called into question. The issue before us is when to translate a word as a name and when to give the meaning. For this, we need the context and to understand the thing we're translating in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What does the context tell us?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Song of Solomon is a notoriously difficult book to translate. The Hebrew is difficult and sometimes obscure. Even when you sort out the words, it is difficult to interpret what it is all supposed to mean. Jews and Christians differ widely on what to &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; with the passage, and even among Christian traditions there is some debate as to what the imagery refers to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, those interpretation difficulties do not concern us here. Whether or not the passage was intended as an allegory or a plain description, it is clear that the immediate context of the passage is a woman addressing her lover. Even with two different religions claiming this as a holy text and vast differences in interpretation, the simple translation of these particular words has never really been in doubt because the face value translation of &lt;code&gt;מחמד&lt;/code&gt; to mean lovely fits the context of both the sentence and the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The verses leading up to this are in the voice of the woman describing the physical characteristics of her man. His hair, his eyes, his legs, etc. are all described in terms of appeal and desire. Verse 16 starts out talking about how sweet his mouth is and then says that he is desirable as a whole. Given the context and the time it was written, there is not a shred of evidence this should be translated any other way than it has been in every one of hundreds of languages by thousands of translators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;And the Hebrew?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the basic claims in the video is that the &lt;code&gt;-im&lt;/code&gt; suffix used on the Hebrew root word should be seen as a respectful plural just as it is in Arabic, where saying &quot;Mohammed-im&quot; does apparently&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; have that effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Gesenius (the standard Hebrew Grammar), the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Gesenius%27_Hebrew_Grammar/124._The_Various_Uses_of_the_Plural-form#cite_ref-5&quot;&gt;respectful plural&lt;/a&gt; is quite foreign to Hebrew. The &quot;let us&quot; passages of Genesis, which many take as plural of majesty, Gesenius takes as self deliberation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the verse above, the word &lt;code&gt;מַחְמַד&lt;/code&gt; is &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/stream/hebrewenglishlex00geseuoft#page/326/mode/1up&quot;&gt;correctly being  translated&lt;/a&gt; 'lovely' and the suffix that makes the contextual form of &lt;code&gt;מַחֲמַדִּים&lt;/code&gt; is a plural that intensifies the meaning, rendering the final translation  'altogether lovely'. This is not out of place. In fact the entire poem has similar constructs, including the previous line of the same verse. 'Very sweet' is one word, &lt;code&gt;ממתקים&lt;/code&gt;, the root &lt;code&gt;ממתק&lt;/code&gt; means 'sweet' and the plural makes it 'exceedingly sweet' or 'very sweet'.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; It is utterly irresponsible to take this standard grammar form that translates consistently as an intensifier on a series of adjective and render the final instance as a proper name just because it sounds like one in a later language and translate the suffix as a respectful plural according to the later language rather than the one in which it was written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;But why does it sound the same?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of words in one language might be combined as a series of sounds and understood as something entirely different in another language. The videos include the sound of a Jewish Rabbi reading Hebrew text in question. To an ear that does not speak Hebrew, the combination of sounds making up the name Mohammed are clearly in there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linguistically, this is just as absurd as the other line of reasoning. Just because a combination of sounds appearing in the normal course of a language sounds like something else in another language doesn't make it so. If I asked somebody on the street in Turkey &quot;Where can I find a peach?&quot; (in English), they might look at me strange because they only word they heard in their own language was &quot;bastard&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because what used to be a root word in one language ends up sounding like a proper name in a later language does not mean that every instance of the original root word is a reference to a famous figure with the later name. The connection simply doesn't mean anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;And Jesus?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your question includes a one liner concerning a claim not actually found in your video:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does Jesus predict the coming of Muhammad in the Bible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simple answer to this is no. It is difficult to debunk this &quot;claim&quot; since you haven't even established in the question what the claim is, but let me do your homework for you. The Islamic Research Foundation &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irf.net/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=205&amp;amp;Itemid=101&quot;&gt;makes the following claim&lt;/a&gt; which you will hear echoed throughout the Muslim world in various forms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Ahmed&quot; or &quot;Muhammad&quot; meaning &quot;the one who praises&quot; or &quot;the praised one&quot; is almost the translation of the Greek word Periclytos. In the Gospel of John 14:16, 15:26, and 16:7. The word 'Comforter' is used in the English      translation for the Greek word Paracletos which means advocate or a kind friend rather than a comforter. Paracletos is the warped reading for Periclytos. Jesus (pbuh) actually prophesised Ahmed by name. Even the Greek word Paraclete refers to the Prophet (pbuh) who is a mercy for all creatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, this is the only place the NT or Jesus is commonly claimed to mention Mohamed. I presume is is the subject of your inquiry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim, like the one above, is also patently ridiculous. There are several other variants of this, but they all hinge on really poor linguistics. Determining the meaning of the Greek word &lt;code&gt;παράκλητος&lt;/code&gt; in context is not easy. Greek scholar Raymond Brown is often cited by Muslim apologists on this issue because his translation of John keeps a transliteration of the Greek as a sort of name instead of translating the meaning (as most other English translations have done) and rendering it as helper, advocate, comforter or counselor. However, his intention was to clear up the usage and understand it better in context. His understanding of who/what fills the role referred to can be clearly seen from this quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus the basic function of the Paraclete are twofold: he comes to the disciples and dwells within them, guiding and teaching them about Jesus; but he is hostile to the world and puts the world on trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether Christian or secular, Greek scholars investigating this passage all conclude that this passage must be understood in context with the related passages from the same authors and time period that describe the coming of the Holy Spirit. Whether you believe in such a thing at all, it is clear that the disciples did based on Jesus words, and that Jesus words as recorded in Greek fit with their contemporary understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only a series of linguistic flying-leaps can connect this usage with another word in another language that doesn't sound the same but happens to have a similar meaning. Here is a similar series of connections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My name is derived from a Hebrew name having a connotation of &quot;faithful&quot;. The Turkish for faithful is &quot;sadık&quot; which sounds a lot like &quot;sağdıç&quot; meaning groomsmen. Ergo my parents predicted that their son would be somebody's faithful best man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are just too many unsupported jumps for this claim to hold water. Even the text from the IRF is worded with tentative phases such as &quot;almost the translation of&quot;. They are making the jump from two words in two unrelated languages that have similar meanings to one being a prophecy of the other -- in spite of other solid contextual evidence about the intended meaning being to the contrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Footnotes&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Frankly this particular claim is one of the weaker ones made. There are several other verses more commonly cited as &quot;proof&quot; that hold more water than this one. There is an Isaiah verse with a similar translation issue. The case holds &quot;more&quot; water because at least it happens to be a prophecy, but still sinks because of the translation issue explained above.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;The usage of the ASV translation here was selected at random, the English translation used makes absolutely no difference to the argument. No serious translation work has translated this passage in any other way.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;While legitimate as far as it goes, I think it's somewhat telling that given the same input Google translator returns a clue in the form of the noun roots loveliness, delight, desire or charm.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;I didn't research the Arabic here, I'm only going off of the popular claim.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Thanks to &lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8795231#8795231&quot;&gt;Frank Luke for some help&lt;/a&gt; with the Hebrew grammar here.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastEditorUserId="29395" LastEditDate="2015-10-15T13:04:42.710" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T13:04:42.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15626" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15629" CreationDate="2013-04-02T04:13:24.347" Score="1" ViewCount="757" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://beforeitsnews.com/science-and-technology/2012/05/physicist-haarp-manipulates-time-2167703.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A brilliant physicist published a &lt;a href=&quot;http://vixra.org/pdf/1202.0044v1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;revolutionary paper citing 30 other scientific papers&lt;/a&gt; that reveal &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HAARP&lt;/a&gt; has incredible powers far beyond what most investigators of the high frequency energy technology suspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dr. Fran De Aquino asserts a fully functional HAARP network, activated globally, can not only affect weather and geophysical events, but influence space and gravity…even time itself!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the network is almost complete with the activation of the newest HAARP facilities at the bottom of the world: the desolate and alien Antarctic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can HAARP influence space, gravity and time as suggested by the article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8636" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T13:15:09.300" Title="Can HAARP warp space-time?" Tags="|physics|electromagnetism|haarp|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-04-02T13:06:42.003" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15627" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32120" CreationDate="2013-04-02T04:23:05.097" Score="10" ViewCount="1167" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a quote from Hans Zinsser's &lt;em&gt;Rats, Lice and History&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lice have even been important in politics. Cowan tells the story of the custom prevailing in Hurdenburg in Sweden, where in the Middle Ages a mayor was elected in the following manner. The persons eligible sat around a table, with their heads bowed forward, allowing their beards to rest on the table. A louse was then put in the middle of the table. The one into whose beard the louse first adventured was the mayor for the ensuing year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.kz/books?id=crD-P3fJ4NQC&amp;amp;lpg=PA184&amp;amp;ots=hxpXBBfRWX&amp;amp;dq=The%20one%20into%20whose%20beard%20the%20louse%20first%20adventured%20was%20the%20mayor%20for%20the%20ensuing%20year&amp;amp;pg=PA184#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=The%20one%20into%20whose%20beard%20the%20louse%20first%20adventured%20was%20the%20mayor%20for%20the%20ensuing%20year&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Rats, Lice and History on google books.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard this story numerous times as an anecdote. Recently I've seen this quote from Zinsser in &lt;a href=&quot;http://laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com/2004/05/proposal-for-electoral-reform.html&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any historical evidence behind this electoral procedure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4790" LastActivityDate="2016-03-09T20:20:41.513" Title="Were lice used for election in medieval Sweden?" Tags="|history|quotes|sweden|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4409" CreationDate="2013-04-02T07:16:06.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886913000020&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A recent study&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rug.nl/?lang=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Groningen&lt;/a&gt; suggests that there is a preference for taller male partner among women. Equally, men prefer a shorter female partner. The effect becomes more pronounced upon studying the exact terms how much height difference correlates with the perceived satisfaction with partner's height: with male subjects the perceived satisfaction peaks when the female is 8 cm shorter than the male, while female subjects tend to be most satisfied with a partner that is 21 cm taller than the female.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13190" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-04-02T11:52:25.407" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T11:52:25.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15629" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15626" CreationDate="2013-04-02T11:04:33.850" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Can HAARP influence space, gravity and time as suggested by the article?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the paper cited, &lt;em&gt;&quot;High-power ELF radiation generated by modulated HF heating of the ionosphere can cause Earthquakes, Cyclones and localized heating&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, HAARP's power is 3.6 x 10^9 W&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.universetoday.com/73693/what-is-solar-energy/#gsc.tab=0&quot;&gt;HAARP&lt;/a&gt; the actual power is 1000 times smaller than this - 3.6 x 10^6 W.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sun radiates 174 x 10^15 W onto the planet. Of this 35 x 10^15 W is absorbed by the atmosphere. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.universetoday.com/73693/what-is-solar-energy/#gsc.tab=0&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the Sun's radiation absorbed in the atmosphere is 10^9 times larger than HAARP, of course it is also over a much larger volume, so this needs to be taken into account ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/tech.html&quot;&gt;HAARP&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The intensity of the HF signal in the ionosphere is less than 3 microwatts per cm2, tens of thousands of times less than the Sun's natural electromagnetic radiation reaching the earth and hundreds of times less than even the normal random variations in intensity of the Sun's natural ultraviolet (UV) energy which creates the ionosphere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is consistent with the known facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It therefore seems unlikely that HAARP has sufficient energy to cause significant earthquakes or cyclones. Nor to influence space, gravity or time in any novel or unusual ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Fran De Aquino's paper goes on to discuss his theory of gravitational shielding whereby a couple of people can render heavy rock monoliths weightless by draping them with a &quot;gravitational shielding mantle&quot; that multiplies the Sun's gravity. In my view, this confusion of topics rather undermines the credibility of the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever harmful effects HAARP may be capable of, this paper does not seem a credible account of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-04-02T13:15:09.300" LastActivityDate="2013-04-02T13:15:09.300" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15632" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-02T12:45:28.050" Score="12" ViewCount="574" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have the strong suspicion that workplace performance appraisals and the act of setting employee goals do little to improve the employee performance and often serve to hurt the employee morale, which can have a negative effect on performance.  My intuition on this practice is shared, below are some notable claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1576752003&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Abolishing Performance Appraisals: Why They Backfire and What to Do&#xA;Instead&lt;/a&gt; (Tom Coens, Mary Jenkins M.D)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tlnt.com/2011/01/31/the-top-50-problems-with-performance-appraisals/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Top 50 Problems With Performance Appraisals&lt;/a&gt; (Dr. John Sullivan; TLNT)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6114.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Goals Gone Wild: The Systematic Side Effects of Over-Prescribing Goal Setting&lt;/a&gt; (Lisa D. Ordóñez, Maurice E. Schweitzer, Adam D.&#xA;Galinsky, and Max H. Bazerman; Harvard Business School)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB122426318874844933&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Get Rid of the Performance Review!&lt;/a&gt; (Samuel A. Culbert)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do there exist any studies or peer reviewed journal articles that can back up these claims or potentially disprove them as crackpot ideas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there exists legitimate proof of these claims then is there any notable provable reasons that companies ignore such studies and continue a practice that is possibly running counter to their stated intentions, perhaps a deeper reason for performance appraisals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6794" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2016-07-05T15:56:18.943" LastActivityDate="2016-07-05T15:56:18.943" Title="Do workplace performance appraisals and workplace goal-setting exercises hurt morale?" Tags="|productivity|work|management|goal-setting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15442" CreationDate="2013-04-02T21:50:53.340" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's an accurate count of actual individuals that were deployed, not the number of deployments. Many of that 2.5 million were deployed more than once. The stats at &lt;a href=&quot;http://veteransforcommonsense.org/2011/12/02/vcs-releases-updated-war-statistics/&quot;&gt;Veterans for Common Sense&lt;/a&gt; are from 2011, and support Paul's numbers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2,226,056 Total Service Members Deployed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;941,743 Deployed Twice or More (42%)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I know Paul although you'd have to jog his memory for him to remember me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13196" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-12-06T14:01:01.300" LastActivityDate="2015-12-06T14:01:01.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15637" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15646" CreationDate="2013-04-02T22:28:33.383" Score="21" ViewCount="9307" Body="&lt;p&gt;A famous story that has made the rounds in the anime circles is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Disney/Miramax were in talks to dub and release Studio Ghibli's &lt;em&gt;Princess Mononoke&lt;/em&gt; in the states, it was suggested that a few cuts be made. In response, Studio Ghibli sent a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katana&quot;&gt;katana&lt;/a&gt; (a Japanese sword) to Disney with the words &quot;no cuts.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onlineghibli.com/spe/disney-tokuma.php&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the story is definitely amusing, it does ring of hyperbole. Is there any truth to this story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1301" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T02:45:49.033" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T07:35:45.440" Title="Did Studio Ghibli send a katana to Disney that said &quot;no cuts?&quot;" Tags="|movies|japan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15638" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-02T23:02:53.500" Score="7" ViewCount="427" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2012 Australian psychologist Stephen Lewandowsky (and others) published a paper claiming to show that there was a significant correlation between beliefs in free market economics and the rejection of scientific claims (examples given include rejecting the reality of climate change or that smoking causes cancer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The draft text of Lewandowsky's paper is &lt;a href=&quot;http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu.au/labs/cogscience/documents/LskyetalPsychScienceinPressClimateConspiracy.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. And the results have been discussed in this skeptics question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10793/does-being-a-strong-free-market-supporter-correlate-with-rejection-of-scientific&quot;&gt;Does being a strong free market supporter correlate with rejection of scientific claims?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some critics have, however, questioned the quality of his results and the provenance of his data. For a review of such evidence see Steve McIntyre's commentary &lt;a href=&quot;http://climateaudit.org/2013/03/28/lewandowsky-doubles-down/#more-17385&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Lewandowsky claimed to have posted his survey on 8 &amp;quot;pro-science&amp;quot; blogs the most prominent of which was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skeptical Science&lt;/a&gt;. McIntyre claims the link never appeared but that Lewandowsky has continued to claim it did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most prominent of the eight were SKS [skeptical science], Deltoid, and Tamino. Chambers, Woods, and others sharply criticized the idea of trying a survey of skeptics at stridently anti-skeptic blogs, a criticism that has remains unrefuted.&#xA;Chambers and Woods quickly located referring blogposts at all of the blogs except SKS. They were able to locate a contemporary tweet from John Cook, but no SKS blogpost. &lt;strong&gt;Close examination of the Wayback machine archive showed beyond any doubt that there was no SKS blogpost on the Lewandowsky survey in August/September 2010&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are two allegations of a slapdash attitude to data. Surveying &amp;quot;skeptical&amp;quot; opinion (skeptical in the climate-skeptic sense) on a pro-science group of blogs and not keeping good enough track of the responses to know which blogs posted the link and therefore contributed to the results (made worse because the readership of SKS is discussed in the full paper).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joseduarte.com/blog/more-fraud&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent blog entry&lt;/a&gt; analyses some of the raw data used in the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at the whole picture. This was a scattered online study posted at political climate-related websites. Here's the endorsement count for each of the conspiracies in their conspiracy variable, and the rejection count for the HIV and smoking facts. This is out of 1145 participants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oklahoma City bombing conspiracy: 289&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JFK assassination conspiracy: 247&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coca-Cola conspiracy (don't ask): 151&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pearl Harbor attack conspiracy: 146&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MLK assassination conspiracy: 90&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New World Order conspiracy: 70&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;9-11 attacks conspiracy: 69&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roswell UFO conspiracy: 47&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SARS disease conspiracy: 42&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Area 51 UFO conspiracy: 35&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Princess Diana assassination conspiracy: 25&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reject HIV-AIDS link: 16&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reject smoking-lung cancer link: 11&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moon landing hoax conspiracy: 10&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of 1145 participants, only 11 reject the idea that smoking causes cancer. Out of 176 people who endorsed free markets, only 7 rejected the claim that smoking causes cancer. 96% of them agreed that smoking causes lung cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...When only 11 out of 1145, and 7 out 176 in an online study rejected the item, and you know several of those have to be thrown out, it's just fraud to proclaim that a person's politics predicts rejection of these basic scientific facts. That's a scam. There's nobody there, no data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very small numbers of believers in the key conspiracies mentioned in the original article's headline should cause some twitching of people's statistical number sense. The vast majority of climate skeptics in the survey &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; believe in those conspiracy theories and removing small numbers of implausible responses totally destroys the relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar criticism of the original paper also appeared in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1540#84398&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SkepticalScience&lt;/a&gt; (a mainstream climate blog) from Tom Curtis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combined, these respondents account for 2 of the strongly agree results in almost every conspiracy theory question; and the other potential scammers also have a noticable number of strong agreements to conspiracy theories. For most conspiracy theory questions, &amp;quot;skeptics&amp;quot; only had two respondents that strongly agreed, the two scammed results. Given the low number of &amp;quot;skeptical&amp;quot; respondents overall; these two scammed responses significantly affect the results regarding conspiracy theory ideation. Indeed, given the dubious interpretation of weakly agreed responses (see previous post), this paper has no data worth interpreting with regard to conspiracy theory ideation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;McIntyre is a well know climate skeptic and therefore one of the group targeted by Lewandowsky's original analysis. So skepticism of his claims is likely warranted. On the other hand the evidence he assembles seems thorough. But has he (and the other associated critics he references) produced enough analysis to raise serious questions about Lewandowsky's methods and data quality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB McIntyre &lt;em&gt;et. al.&lt;/em&gt; have also argued that Lewandowsky and his associates have lied to cover up their mistakes. This isn't what I'm asking. I want to focus on whether critics have demonstrated that the basic methods used to gather and process data for the paper were poor enough to cast doubt on its conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS The analysis above is not from peer reviewed sources, but the statistical facts have not been challenged. They sound like entirely valid criticisms to me. That's why I'm including them in this question so, if there are strong, reliable sources that can rescue Lewandowski's big claims from what look to be really dubious statistics then let's get them in an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T21:16:19.573" Title="Did Lewandowsky use dodgy data in his paper showing correlation between free market and anti-science views?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15641" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1990" CreationDate="2013-04-03T04:34:33.053" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think Mr. Brainwash makes much more sense as satire than as a real person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mr. Brainwash, supposedly a hack artist who successfully plagiarize his way to instant fame, represents several of Banksy's favorite targets -- shallow media, fame-seekers, sell-out artists, dumb fans -- rolled into one unappealing character.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additionally, in the movie, the character serves as a vehicle for weaving all those years of amateur footage with the film's present-day documentary footage. In the real world, the character's &lt;em&gt;very limited number of public appearances&lt;/em&gt; (ahem) afford Bansky some opportunity to operate in public while still not revealing himself.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The website mrbrainwash.com seems real at first glance, but is largely &quot;under construction&quot;. Several months ago, the site's store had a non-functioning shopping cart feature. Today the site's store says all items are sold out. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mrbrainwash.com/store/store.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mrbrainwash.com/store/store.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13133" LastEditorUserId="13133" LastEditDate="2013-04-05T15:23:25.427" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T15:23:25.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15637" CreationDate="2013-04-03T07:28:04.100" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt there is any scientifically valid information on this, you have to believe the tales or not. There are quite a lot of people that tell those tales however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia Article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Weinstein&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harvey Weinstein&lt;/a&gt;, who received the sword, mentions it too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Weinstein was charged with handling the US release of Princess Mononoke, he received a samurai sword in the mail with an attached note that read, &amp;quot;No cuts.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Directly from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/sep/14/japan.awardsandprizes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Interview (The Guardian)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a rumour that when Harvey Weinstein was charged with handling the US release of Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki sent him a samurai sword in the post. Attached to the blade was a stark message: &amp;quot;No cuts.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The director [Miyazaki] chortles. &amp;quot;Actually, my producer did that. Although I did go to New York to meet this man, this Harvey Weinstein, and I was bombarded with this aggressive attack, all these demands for cuts.&amp;quot; He smiles. &amp;quot;I defeated him.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least one person that was involved told the Guardian Reporter, that it happened. This is definitely not a clear case, without any statement of Mr. Weinstein it will be a one-sided story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5638" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T07:35:45.440" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15649" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15651" CreationDate="2013-04-03T11:51:18.863" Score="9" ViewCount="3004" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm seeing a lot of this being posted and re-posted on facebook. The original poster appears to be a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/dr.malik20&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;chiropractor&lt;/a&gt; with homeopathic training (the post is public and can be found by scrolling down on his page). The claim is that &lt;em&gt;you can keep your heart beating for a while by inhaling and then coughing&lt;/em&gt;, if you happen to have a heart attack. Here is the original post: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rtyug.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN YOU ARE ALONE??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, without&#xA;  help,the person whose heart is beating improperly and who begins to&#xA;  feel faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing&#xA;  consciousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However,&lt;strong&gt;these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and&#xA;  very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and&#xA;  the cough must be deep and prolonged,&lt;/strong&gt; as when producing sputum from&#xA;  deep inside the chest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without&#xA;  let-up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating&#xA;  normally again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze&#xA;  the heart and keep the blood circulating&lt;/strong&gt;. The squeezing pressure on&#xA;  the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart&#xA;  attack victims can get to a hospital. Tell as many other people as&#xA;  possible about this. It could save their lives!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source itself is certanly unreputable enough for me to not take it seriously, but still, I'm left wondering whether there is actually any truth to the claim that coughing helps the heart to continue beating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5696" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T12:12:40.713" Title="Can coughing help you survive a heart attack?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-04-04T15:55:47.547" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15613" CreationDate="2013-04-03T12:01:58.057" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No proofs of it working, but several examples of it working.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching around the net a bit, I am not finding much else than reviews of people trying it out. The reviews are mixed, but overall positive. If anyone can find something more conclusive feel free to post it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reviews varies from things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this made my skin look irritated and red raw and gave me a few really&#xA;nasty pimples! it has however made me realise i might have a mild egg&#xA;allergy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a great DIY mask that lightens your scars, tightens your skin,&#xA;and soaks up the oil in your pores. The greatest benefit from this&#xA;mask is, it makes you less oily if you use it every day! Like, you&#xA;will get less oily during the day!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall are the reviews positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makeupalley.com/product/showreview.asp/ItemId=105144/Egg_White_Mask_for_Acne_Skin/0/Masks&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.makeupalley.com/product/showreview.asp/ItemId=105144/Egg_White_Mask_for_Acne_Skin/0/Masks&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A four part youtube video with a girl testing it out over a longer period. She starts using other things than just egg white for the 4th video. This is by no means any proof, just that she tested it with positive result.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PtVYab4SNw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PtVYab4SNw&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact I can't really find any conclusive proof. I can find examples of people testing it and for some they claim it to work, and others have problems with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who should use and how often&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Planetgreen.discovery.com says that an egg white mask is perfect for adolescents. It works best on oily or&#xA;combination skin. An egg white acne mask can be used once or twice a&#xA;week. Those with sensitive skin should test a small area of skin&#xA;before applying the mask all over the face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avoid consuming or using this egg mask if you are allergic to eggs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/79620-egg-white-acne-treatment/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.livestrong.com/article/79620-egg-white-acne-treatment/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the most serious page I can find about the topic. And for anyone trying it out they give out some guidelines, and how to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step by step explanation how to utilize it, to remove blackheads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Blackheads-Using-an-Egg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Blackheads-Using-an-Egg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T14:40:00.110" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15649" CreationDate="2013-04-03T12:12:40.713" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pro and Contra are widespread &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cough_CPR&quot;&gt;wikipedia.org/wiki/Cough_CPR&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cough CPR is a resuscitation technique described in an email that&#xA;  began circulating around 1999,[citation needed] which claims that&#xA;  through prolonged coughing and deep breathing every 2 seconds, a&#xA;  person suffering a cardiac dysrhythmia immediately before cardiac&#xA;  arrest can keep conscious until help arrives (or until the person can&#xA;  get to the nearest hospital). Neither the American Heart Association&#xA;  nor the American Red Cross endorses cough CPR during a heart&#xA;  attack.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cough_CPR&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://urbanlegends.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3077018/ns/health-heart_health&quot;&gt;Cough may help during heart attack&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Petelenz presented results from a study he conducted on 115 people who&#xA;  had previously fainted or come close to losing consciousness because&#xA;  of various heart problems. They were taught how to recognize the&#xA;  symptoms — sudden dizziness and weakness, shortness of breath, sudden&#xA;  sweating and blurred vision — and then taught the proper coughing&#xA;  technique. The patients used the cough in 365 instances where they&#xA;  thought they were about to faint. The symptoms disappeared in 292&#xA;  cases and medical attention was required in only 73 cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/More/CardiacArrest/Cough-CPR_UCM_432380_Article.jsp&quot;&gt;Cough CPR&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The American Heart Association does not endorse &quot;cough CPR,&quot; a&#xA;  coughing procedure widely publicized on the Internet. As noted in the&#xA;  2010 American Heart Association Guidelines for Cardiopulmonary&#xA;  Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care, “cough CPR” is not&#xA;  useful for unresponsive victims and should not be taught to lay&#xA;  rescuers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10701" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T12:12:40.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2543" CreationDate="2013-04-03T12:44:24.653" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;At best, the answer to this question will be an apples and oranges comparison. Comparing the distribution of a static book to that of a constantly fluctuating periodical is unlikely to produce anything very meaningful. However it is amusing and I like both apples and oranges. So what can we do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Start with the easy apples&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IKEA side of things is relatively easy. Because of their corporate business structure, the figures are centralized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Last year 198 million copies of the catalog were printed in 56 editions and 27 languages. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/about_ikea/facts_and_figures/index.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unclear what &quot;last year&quot; refers to. Other reports on the page run through 2009, so &quot;last year&quot; may refer to 2008 or 2009. On the other hand the charts might be old and the numbers might be newer. Either way, this is enough to ball park the number, which is more than we will be able to do for the second half of this comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One extra note before we move on is that this number is measured at the press. This is not a number of copies distributed into hands that read them. Pure business sense demands that they have some percentage of over-printing so that stock in stores doesn't run out during the year. Additionally large numbers of copies end up being put to uses other than distribution for reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to extrapolate some percentage of growth but also account for the number being print rather than received distribution, I think it's fair to ballpark a current figure in the 150-200 million copies per year range for 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Now what do we do about the oranges?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bible printing numbers are much harder to come by. There is no centralized organization that controls or that can even track production and distribution of printed Bibles. At best, we can identify some of the major players and extrapolate from there to arrive at an order of magnitude figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seem that the media is fond of throwing around the &quot;over 100 million Bibles per year&quot; number, but I was unable to locate a source for it. It seems somebody pulled this out of their sleeve and it stuck. On examining some of the pieces, I think I would pull the same number out of my sleeve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The 1000 pound gorilla&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the world of Bible printing and distribution, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unitedbiblesocieties.org/&quot;&gt;United Bible Societies&lt;/a&gt; is undoubtedly one of the largest players. The group is made up of 146 national Bible Societies working in cooperation to pull off large scale translation, publishing and other logistical projects. There are many printing and publishing operations around the world that are completely independent, but UBS certainly has their hands in a lot of pies. There might be more important players when it comes to translation, but as far as printing and distribution go, they are heavy weight players.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one entirely confusing piece of journalism, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/1989-03-25/news/ss-567_1_bible-society&quot;&gt;LA Times reported in 1989&lt;/a&gt; that the 1988 numbers for world wide Bible distribution through the UBS alone crossed the half a billion mark to hit 692,754,925. Exactly. What the article fails to do is identify the difference between &quot;Bibles&quot; and &quot;Scriptures&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bizarrely, their &lt;a href=&quot;http://digital.unitedbiblesocieties.org/&quot;&gt;fancy annual report for 2012&lt;/a&gt; includes no useful data on distribution. There is information on training events, book fairs, translation efforts, printing and distribution centers, but no distribution numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More focused reports from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.svetopismo.si/kdo_smo/SDR2009.pdf&quot;&gt;2009&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unitedbiblesocieties.org/news/2119-bible-distribution-grows-by-11-in-2011/&quot;&gt;2011&lt;/a&gt; shed some light on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2009, 29M full Bibles and 11M New Testaments were distributed. For the sake of this question, I think it's reasonable to lump New Testaments and full Bibles together. This makes something on the order of 40 million copies distributed by UBS during 2009. The 2011 numbers were 32M for Bibles, so there is some growth but only a percentage that won't make or break our comparison either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What isn't lumped into that number is &quot;Scripture&quot; printings that are not full Bibles or even full New Testaments. It is quite common to print and distribute large numbers of selections such as &lt;em&gt;The Gospel of John&lt;/em&gt; or the &lt;em&gt;Psalms&lt;/em&gt;. The distribution numbers for these printed materials is easily an order of magnitude larger than full Bibles. Using the same UBS report for 2009, approximately 400 million such resources were distributed in the same year as the 40 million Bibles through UBS alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is still oddly less than the LA Times report two decades earlier. I think the difference is accounted for by including other non print media. By any accounting, &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; number is likely massively higher now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Its 950 pound cousin&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UBS may be big, but they aren't the only ones in their class&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gideons.org/?HP=USA&amp;amp;sc_lang=en&quot;&gt;The Gideons International&lt;/a&gt; prints and distributes massive quantities of Bibles. Again, &quot;last year&quot; isn't clearly identified, here is what they currently report about themselves:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Approximately 1.7 billion Bibles and New Testaments have been distributed worldwide since 1908, and more than 700 million Bibles and New Testaments were distributed in just the last 10 years. More than 84 million copies of God's Word were distributed last year. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gideons.org/AboutUs/WorldwideImpact.aspx&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again I think it's fair to lump NT and full Bibles together, but for reference the overall ratio for the Gideons appears to be about 8 to 1 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gideons.org/AboutUs/~/media/PDFs/General/309-11.ashx&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;, only USA distribution break down available). That would put The Gideons at about 10 million full Bibles and 70 million New Testaments per year. For ideological reasons, as an organization they are pretty focused on Bibles rather than partial printings. They do a lot more NT's than even all of UBS combined, but they don't do as many excerpt printings such as &lt;em&gt;Gospel of John&lt;/em&gt; tracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;And some smaller fish to fry&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other players as well. Several other large Bible producers including the International Bible Society, The Catholic Bible Federation and The Trinitarian Bible Society are not part of UBS. I was unable to find concrete numbers for many of these. I think there are a couple 5 million range players. Dozens of smaller ones appear to distribute in the 0.5-2 million Bibles per year range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An oddball I couldn't place above is Zondervan publishing who sells a lot of English and some other language Bibles, but it's hard to get a breakdown of Bibles vs. other materials. The NIV translation which they own the publishing rights to used to be the highest selling translation in English, but I don't know to translate that to Bibles per year worldwide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to put a number on it, but realistically I think counting UBS and Gideons as the lions share at a total of 120 Million per year is a reasonable baseline. Those two alone do put current numbers in the &quot;over 100M per year&quot; ball park thrown around by the media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to add up numbers for all the small fish is harder, but in order to beat out the IKEA catalog, all the small guys would need to add up to at least 60 million/year. In adding up onezyes and twozies, I got to a possible 25 million more, but was running low on sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can only account for up to about 150 million Bibles distributed per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosaceae&quot;&gt;Rosaceae&lt;/a&gt; vs. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutaceae&quot;&gt;Rutaceae&lt;/a&gt;, or &quot;How about them apples?&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly 150-200 million IKEA catalogs beats out a max of about 150 million print Bibles distributed per year. Just as clearly, if you include partial printings that are portions of Scripture such as &lt;em&gt;The Gospel of John&lt;/em&gt; booklets, the catalog figure is dwarfed by the 500+ million number of the UBS alone. If you include such partial printings from all sources, the number might be pushing a billion and IKEA catalogs aren't in the same order of magnitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Why the question is flawed&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end it isn't the apples to oranges nature of the numbers that is this question's achiles heel. It is the implication that the numbers point to something else. Note this quote from the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is IKEA being overmodest with their statement? Has a furniture catalogue actually become more prevalent than the Bible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end it is not yearly printing or distribution numbers that determine &quot;prevalence&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] it does seem to imply that the catalogue now reaches more people than any religious (or scientific) publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, it does not. &quot;Reaching people&quot; with a message is not defined by, or even directly correlated to, yearly print run numbers. Even the number comparison you asked for in your question does not equate to &quot;reaching people with a publication&quot;. Any measurement of &quot;reaching people with a publication&quot; must include all forms of that publication and the publications longevity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Print media is not the only way Bibles are distributed these days. Digital media formats including websites, eBooks, phone apps, audio versions, etc add up to a substantial number of Bible resources that are in peoples hands and giving them access to the same material, just in a different format. By comparison, IKEA's advertising channels don't have nearly the coverage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While we're on the subject of &quot;reach&quot;, another relevant metric is available languages. The IKEA catalog is at 27. The full Bible is currently published in over 450 languages, with portions (including hundreds more full New Testaments) being available in over 2,400 others.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bibles are valid for more than 1 year terms. While IKEA has to get the same catalog into the hands of the same potential customers over and over, each individual print Bible goes on serving its purpose year after year, often for decades. A much higher percentage of Bibles distributed go into &lt;em&gt;new hands&lt;/em&gt; ear year, making it's effective footprint on the ground each year much larger (and it's impact on landfills much less) than IKEA's catalog.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastEditorUserId="933" LastEditDate="2013-04-03T21:43:11.623" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T21:43:11.623" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15653" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-03T13:21:03.003" Score="0" ViewCount="688" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very common in infographics such as the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bxhVi.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to make a point about wealth inequality by showing a disproportionate amount of&#xA;money owned by the richest people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am slightly skeptical that this is a good measurement of a skewed wealth distribution. In particular, the &quot;what they would like it to be&quot; almost looks paradoxical -- how can the third 20% own the same amount of wealth as the second 20% when by definition the second group earns more income?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm particularly curious what such a distribution with a stereotypically &quot;utopian&quot; income distribution, such a normal distribution with identical mean, median, and mode. How about a uniform distribution, with 1 person earning $1000, 1 person earning $2000, up to 1 person earning $10000?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, would a distribution graph with wealth on the horizontal axis and percentage of people on the vertical axis give a better picture of income skew?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry if this question belongs more on Math StackExchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source &lt;a href=&quot;http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/11/michael-norton-wealth-inequality-survey-results&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11852" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:35:01.097" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:35:01.097" Title="x percent of people own y percent of the wealth" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15653" CreationDate="2013-04-03T13:54:41.597" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you're referring to is defined as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gini coefficient&lt;/a&gt;, which measures how far the income distribution curve is from the utopian &quot;line of equality&quot; (uniform distribution). Value of Gini coefficient ranges from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (perfect inequality as in one person would earn all of country's money). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xmfU8.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not that in countries with progressive tax scheme, there is significant difference between pre-tax and post-tax Gini coefficient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/c2wX7.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T13:54:41.597" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15611" CreationDate="2013-04-03T14:50:58.803" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt; Can lightning restore sight?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, if the cause of the blindness is &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1928&amp;amp;dat=19800715&amp;amp;id=gQYgAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=lGQFAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=5871,2337096&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;hysterical&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a detached retina, cataracts, nerve damage, missing occipital lobe, eyeball trauma or other causes, lightning may be unlikely to effect a cure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;hysterical blindness&amp;quot; is an old term for what is now called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;conversion disorder&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000954.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;typical description&lt;/a&gt; is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversion disorder is a mental health condition in which a person has blindness, paralysis, or other nervous system (neurologic) symptoms that cannot be explained by medical evaluation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Causes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversion disorder symptoms may occur because of a psychological conflict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Symptoms usually begin suddenly after a stressful experience. People are at risk of conversion disorder if they also have a medical illness, or the other mental health problem of dissociative disorder (escape from reality that is not on purpose) or a personality disorder (inability to manage feelings and behaviors that are expected in certain social situations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Persons who have conversion disorder are not making up their symptoms (malingering).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T22:18:16.300" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15653" CreationDate="2013-04-03T16:38:01.630" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is some confusion about the question, so I'll try to answer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am slightly skeptical that this is a good measurement of a skewed wealth distribution. In particular, the &quot;what they would like it to be&quot; almost looks paradoxical -- how can the third 20% own the same amount of wealth as the second 20% when by definition the second group earns more income?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or in other words, Are wealth distribution graphs a good measure for wealth distribution inequality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, they are wealth distribution graphs, show exactly what you want to look at when you talk about wealth distribution. If you want to know how much wealth does the X percent have, look at the graph. The graph also shows the &quot;ideal&quot; wealth distribution, which is taken from a peer reviewed article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pps.sagepub.com/content/6/1/9.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://pps.sagepub.com/content/6/1/9.short&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graphs doesn't show that the bottom and second bottom 20% percentiles have the same amount of wealth, but very close amounts of wealth, where the second bottom has slightly more the the bottom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Beware&lt;/strong&gt;, Here starts the ranty part of the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With all due respect to wealth inequality, it doesn't give a good picture of a person's status, because it doesn't translate the wealth into commodities or services. People don't need money to live, they need food, shelter, education, medical care, safety and so on. Wealth inequality however doesn't tell us if the people in the bottom have those things or not. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/economies/Africa/Uganda-POVERTY-AND-WEALTH.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Uganda&lt;/a&gt;'s wealth is more evenly distributed that the USA's, but where are the people of the lowest percentiles better off, in Uganda or the USA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on income inequality&lt;/a&gt; (which is sourced well, and organizes everything in a nice table with several different criterion to choose from) that countries like Ukraine, Belarus, Albania and Afghanistan all have more equal wealth distribution than the USA. The question that should be asked is where are people better off, not where are people more equal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wealth distribution doesn't tell us if the poorest have food, shelter, medical care etc. and can't really tell us anything about the quality of life of the people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if the poorest people have food, housing, education medical care and opportunities in life, why should anyone care the the richest people are pooping in golden toilets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastActivityDate="2013-04-03T16:38:01.630" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15658" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-03T18:05:10.200" Score="15" ViewCount="704" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a recent paper in &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3051197?journalCode=esthag&quot;&gt;Environmental Science and Technology&lt;/a&gt;, Kharecha and Hansen argue that, by avoiding the airborne pollution that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning, millions of lives have been saved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using historical production data, we calculate that global nuclear power has prevented about 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes (Gt) CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are their assumptions, numbers and results credible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T13:08:00.993" Title="Has nuclear power generation saved millions of lives from avoided air pollution?" Tags="|environmental-health|nuclear-energy|power-generation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15663" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15667" CreationDate="2013-04-04T11:31:48.910" Score="10" ViewCount="1815" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to various news articles, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.com.au/world-news/north-korea-gives-final-approval-for-nuclear-attack-on-united-states/story-fndir2ev-1226612136732&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;such as this&lt;/a&gt;, North Korea is threatening to mercilessly attack the USA or it's allies.  This is a quote from the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;North Korea's supreme military command said in a statement this morning that The White House and Pentagon had been notified that &quot;reckless operations'' using nuclear weapons had been approved&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However other sources claim that North Korea's threats are only threats of retaliation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, on this site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/world/asia/north-korean-missile-moved-to-coast.html?pagewanted=all&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/world/asia/north-korean-missile-moved-to-coast.html?pagewanted=all&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is stated that North Korea has authorized its army to&#xA;“take powerful practical military counteractions”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it true that North Korea is threatening the USA with preemptive strikes, or is North Korea merely threatening that they will retaliate with nuclear weapons if attacked by the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-04-06T09:26:27.307" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T09:26:27.307" Title="Has North Korea threatened a preemptive strike on the USA or its allies?" Tags="|united-states|war|north-korea|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-04-04T20:17:16.133" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15658" CreationDate="2013-04-04T12:08:50.693" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This blog post&lt;/a&gt; has a detailed analysis of the deaths from various forms of energy. It would seem to agree with the result of a large number of deaths saved from the use of nuclear energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For just air pollution it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The World Health Organization and other sources attribute about 1 million deaths/year to coal air pollution. Coal generates about 6200 TWh out of the world total of 15500 TWh of electricity. This would be 161 deaths per TWh. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So 1 million deaths per year from coal air pollution. Nuclear power provides ~6% of the worlds energy, and so over 20 years over a million lives will be saved. This seems to make the claim in the original paper seem feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other forms of energy are also compared for total deaths per TwH:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Energy Source              Death Rate (deaths per TWh) CORRECTED&#xA;Coal (elect, heat,cook –world avg) 100 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)&#xA;Coal electricity – world avg        60 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity)&#xA;Coal (elect,heat,cook)– China      170&#xA;Coal electricity-  China            90 &#xA;Coal – USA                          15&#xA;Oil                                 36  (36% of world energy)&#xA;Natural Gas                          4  (21% of world energy)&#xA;Biofuel/Biomass                     12&#xA;Peat                                12&#xA;Solar (rooftop)                      0.44 (0.2% of world energy for all solar)&#xA;Wind                                 0.15 (1.6% of world energy)&#xA;Hydro                                0.10 (europe death rate, 2.2% of world energy)&#xA;Hydro - world including Banqiao)     1.4 (about 2500 TWh/yr and 171,000 Banqiao dead)&#xA;Nuclear                              0.04 (5.9% of world energy)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also shown visually:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pzSDZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Death rates of Nuclear, oil and coal per watt produced&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastEditorUserId="7188" LastEditDate="2013-04-04T12:19:49.047" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T12:19:49.047" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15663" CreationDate="2013-04-04T13:04:20.493" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/07/north-korea-threatens-nuclear-strike-us&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; newspaper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An unidentified spokesman for Pyongyang's foreign ministry said the North will exercise its right for &amp;quot;pre-emptive nuclear strikes on the headquarters of the aggressors&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://onecoreanetwork.blogspot.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;North Korean government blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The U.S. and its followers kicked off again the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle joint military exercises to stifle the DPRK by force of arms by mobilizing huge armed forces of aggression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the unshakable stand of the army and people of the DPRK and the mode of counteraction of Mt. Paektu style to counter enemies coming in attack with a dagger with a sword, a rifle with an artillery piece and &lt;strong&gt;nukes with precision nuclear strike means of Korean style more powerful than them&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The KPA warned the U.S. and south Korean bellicose force to stop the joint military exercises. &lt;strong&gt;If you ignite a war of aggression by staging the reckless joint military exercises against the DPRK, from that moment your fate will be hung by a thread with every hour&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(my emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no obvious mention of preemptive strikes as such, but one interpretation is that the N Korean government regards US military participation in military exercises in and around the Korean peninsula as an act of war warranting a military response. As you can see, their policy is that their response should always represent a major escalation (artillery response to rifles etc)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The N Korean state news agency KCNA &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2013/201304/news03/20130403-13ee.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pyongyang, &lt;strong&gt;April 3 (KCNA) -- The dear respected Marshal Kim Jong Un issued an order&lt;/strong&gt; for action at an operation meeting on the performance of duty of the Strategic Rocket Force of the Korean People's Army on firepower strike. This is the final decision of justice prompted by the matchless grit of the brilliant commander of Mt. Paektu to put a definite end to the long-standing history of showdown with the U.S. imperialists and &lt;strong&gt;blow up the dens of evils&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(my emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T13:17:34.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15658" CreationDate="2013-04-04T13:08:00.993" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Their claim is that currently nuclear power saves close to 80,000 lives annually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/R8Vj8.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's true, that WHO attributes 1.2 mln deaths to outdoor air pollution. So at first glance numbers makes sense. Nuclear power is 6% of total, 6% of 1.2mln is 72,000. Close enough... or not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their fallacy seems to be believe that all pollution is equal, and all pollution comes from energy production. However, WHO mainly attributes deaths by outdoor air pollution to transportation sector. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the year 2004, outdoor air pollution in urban areas was responsible for almost 1.2  million deaths (2% of all deaths) and 0.6%&#xA;  of the global burden of disease.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Transportation-related air pollution&lt;/strong&gt;, which is a significant contributor to total urban  air pollution, increases the risks of&#xA;  cardiopulmonary-related deaths and non-allergic  respiratory disease.&#xA;  Some evidence supports an association of transportation-related  air&#xA;  pollution with increased  risks of lung cancer, myocardial infarction,&#xA;  increased  inflammatory response and adverse pregnancy outcomes (e.g.&#xA;  premature birth and low  birth weight).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Exposure to particulate matter, including metals, has been linked to a range of adverse  health outcomes, including modest transient&#xA;  changes in the respiratory tract and  impaired pulmonary function,&#xA;  increased risk of symptoms requiring emergency room  or hospital&#xA;  treatment, and increased risk of death from cardiovascular and&#xA;  respiratory  diseases or lung cancer. Particulate matter is estimated&#xA;  to cause about 8% of deaths  from lung cancer, 5% of deaths from&#xA;  cardiopulmonary disease and about 3% of deaths  from respiratory&#xA;  infections.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;(sidenote: this point is mainly about leaded gasoline)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Short-term exposures to ozone are linked with effects on pulmonary function and the  respiratory system, lung inflammation, increased&#xA;  medication usage, hospitalization  and mortality. Reduced lung&#xA;  function has been associated with long-term ozone  exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Short-term exposures to nitrogen dioxide, an  indicator for a complex mixture of &#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;mainly traffic-related chemicals&lt;/strong&gt;, have been associated with effects on pulmonary  function, increased allergic airway inflammation&#xA;  reactions, hospital admissions and  mortality. Reduced lung function&#xA;  and increased probability of respiratory symptoms  are associated with&#xA;  long-term exposure to nitrogen dioxide.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: WHO report &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/ipcs/features/air_pollution.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Exposure to Air Pollution: a Major Public Health Concern&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We're not in Fallout universe, there are no nuclear powered cars. On the other hand electric cars do not pollute urban areas regardless what kind of fuel is used to generate electricity. While nuclear power does help reduce carbon footprint and reduce air pollution to some extent, it cannot claim saving 80,000 lives annually. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T13:08:00.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15663" CreationDate="2013-04-04T13:08:14.440" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, at least according to the North Koreans.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are enough reasons for the North Koreans to pronounce this threat as a retaliation to specific recent western actions taken against DPRK, even if the West might not agree on the definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;all the data in this answer is based on news reports and articles published until the time of the original posting (2013-04-04 13:08:14Z). If there are updates on the issue that happened after that time, they will not appear here.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The news articles that you cited and many others (&lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/03/world/asia/koreas-tensions/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/03/us-missile-defence-system-guam-north-korea&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-holds-mass-rally--soldiers-and-students-chant-death-to-us-imperialists-2013-3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BI&lt;/a&gt; for example) tell the same story &amp;quot;North Korea threatens to attack US main land&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who is the provoker?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the North Koreans they do this as a retaliation to US diplomatic and military steps, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2013/03/koreas&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source from the Economist&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are not normal times. The North Korean leadership has reacted bitterly to the latest round of UN sanctions, imposed after its third nuclear test of February 12th. China’s support of the sanctions, which target financial transactions suspected of supporting the North’s nuclear programme, may have increased Pyongyang’s sense of isolation. This week, America singled out North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank for sanctions, because of its suspected role in nuclear armament.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add to the tensions, annual joint military exercises between America and South Korea, known as Key Resolve, started on March 11th, involving troop manoeuvres near the demilitarized zone that divides the two countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Complicating the situation is the fact of new leadership in South Korea, which threatens to raise the stakes if there is an attack. A spokesman for the defence ministry said on March 12th that any provocation would be met with a response that ensured the North will “suffer far more”. The former president, Lee Myung-bak, faced criticism for failing to order vigorous punishment of the North in November 2010, following a deadly attack on Yeonpyeong, another border island held by the South. The new president, Park Geun-hye, will want to be careful to avoid making a similar impression of weakness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there was the 2 B-2 Bombers that flew from the US to South Korea and back, just to show to the North Korean Leadership who has the bigger bomb. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/28/us-korea-north-stealth-idUSBRE92R0DX20130328&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source from Reuters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are they serious?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to all the western media sources, North Korea doesn't have missiles that can reach the US main land. From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/world/asia/north-korean-missile-moved-to-coast.html?pagewanted=all&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NYT source&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most analysts do not believe that North Korea has a missile powerful enough to deliver a nuclear warhead to the United States mainland or that it is reckless enough to strike the American military in the Pacific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are even pictures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2013/4/4/1365071846164/Map-North-Korean-missile--001.png&quot; alt=&quot;NK missiles&quot; /&gt;&#xA;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/03/us-missile-defence-system-guam-north-korea&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, North Korea have published a picture with an attack plan on US main land:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://static5.businessinsider.com/image/515560c1ecad040c0c000011-900-677/northkoreastrike.png&quot; alt=&quot;Attack Plan&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text apparently reads &amp;quot;U.S. Mainland Strike Plan&amp;quot; (which is not subtle). The four cities that are targeted are Austin, San Diego, Honolulu, and Washington DC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/north-korea-releases-strike-plan-photos-2013-3#ixzz2PV0cUr3Z&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Business Insider&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the USA takes at least some precautions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the United States announced Wednesday that it was speeding the deployment of an advanced missile defense system to Guam in the next few weeks, two years ahead of schedule in what the Pentagon said was “a precautionary move” to protect American naval and air forces from the threat of a North Korean missile attack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/world/asia/north-korean-missile-moved-to-coast.html?pagewanted=all&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NYT article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139091/keir-a-lieber-and-daryl-g-press/the-next-korean-war&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article by Foreign Affairs&lt;/a&gt;, which I found very interesting, that say that &lt;strong&gt;if&lt;/strong&gt; a conflict breaks out, it'll quickly escalate to a nuclear conflict by the North Korean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T00:16:14.803" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15598" CreationDate="2013-04-04T15:08:55.647" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR: Not satisfactorily answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;: A new interesting study on this topic found &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929713002723?np=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;runs of homozygosity to be associated with intellectual disability in autistic cases&lt;/a&gt;. It is to be seen whether this finding generalises to intelligence variation in the general population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heterosis (outbreeding elevation) has been proposed as a reason for the Flynn effect (secular rise in IQ scores) by Mingroni in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289603000588&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2004&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://acdlaonline.com/zoomdocs/presentations/Resolving%20the%20IQ%20paradox%20-%20Mingioni%202007.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2007&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the most-accepted principal cause for the Flynn effect may be that it is on measurement specifics (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028960400056X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wichert et al., 2004&lt;/a&gt;) and thus does not reflect a &quot;real&quot; latent increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been some studies on inbreeding depression that found decreases of intelligence. &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/07/cousin-marriage-can-reduce-i-q-a-lot/#.UV2Ft6spaV4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;As this blogger says&lt;/a&gt; the field is not sexy, lots of the studies are old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;because it's hard to find good data&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there's lot of stuff to control for (for example people with a certain degree of genetic relatedness are excluded and the first sixteen+ principal components/population stratification are usually controlled in molecular genetic studies on quantitative traits like intelligence when trying to identify related genetic variants. One reason they do this, among others, is that they don't want to pick up on confounds such as culture, differences in education between families or ethnic groups etc.). There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://hmg.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/2/233.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;molecular studies that explicitly look at heterozygosity though&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;because it's politically hot territory, that has been claimed by self-styled &quot;race realists&quot; (JP Rushton, S Sailer etc.). Reading my opinion on these people would likely not be good for the eyes of children, but I think it's safe to say that their work is not held in high regard by the wider scientific community and they tend to cite disingenuously and jump to politically incorrect conclusions possibly for the sake of contrarianism.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I didn't really get why they are so interested in inbreeding depression and outbreeding elevation, because it might, after all, prompt people to marry non-Whites to have smarter kids, but I think they're mostly using it to pile invective on cultures where first-cousin marriages are still more common.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="2722" LastEditDate="2013-08-03T17:50:35.250" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T17:50:35.250" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7670" CreationDate="2013-04-04T16:06:51.657" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am just going to describe what the Monsanto quotation means in terms of molecular genetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically every &quot;segment&quot; of DNA (DNA segments can have varying lengths until the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_codon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stop codon&lt;/a&gt;) codes for a protein.  GMO is all about inserting new base pairs into the DNA, so that the protein coded for is somehow altered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quotation says &lt;strong&gt;&quot;So long as the introduced protein is determined safe, food from GM crops determined to be substantially equivalent is not expected to pose any health risks.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amino_acid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;proteins that result can be studied&lt;/a&gt;, if they know the proteins that result from the DNA, then they claim they know enough about the makeup of the food to determine that the food is safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3704" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T16:06:51.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15672" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15674" CreationDate="2013-04-04T16:19:38.457" Score="4" ViewCount="3050" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone is saying that Wi-Fi is more power-efficient than 3G on smartphones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I don't think so, because two radios are turned on at the same time, the 3G radio is still active when enabling Wi-Fi&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some reliable proof to support this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2624" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-04-04T20:34:04.530" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T20:58:02.400" Title="Wi-fi is more power-efficient than 3G?" Tags="|consumer-products|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15673" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15714" CreationDate="2013-04-04T16:19:58.713" Score="5" ViewCount="19042" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen quite a few articles written on subject, mainly based on anecdotal evidence and with generally alarmistic tone. Allegedly modern turbo-diesel engines used in popular cars are much less durable than equivalent gasoline engines. Allegedly injection system frequently clogs up, turbine is easily overheated, DPF filter clogs up, even though it shouldn't. All ending in very expensive repairs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of such claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/mar/02/turbo-charged-cost-of-diesel-cars&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Turbo-charged cost of diesel cars&quot; in The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the past diesel cars had a reputation for dependability – they were&#xA;  slow but economical – and the engines went on seemingly for ever with&#xA;  basic, regular maintenance. High pressure engine systems, dual mass&#xA;  flywheels and diesel particulate filters have all improved their&#xA;  performance or cleanliness, but the technology has also made them much&#xA;  more expensive to fix when they go wrong. Modern diesels appear to be&#xA;  more problematic if servicing is not carried out exactly as specified,&#xA;  with the correct grade of oil, interval etc … and they don't like a&#xA;  diet of short journeys, which can often be a feature of modern life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Mazda 6 is a perfect case in point. The petrol-engined cars are&#xA;  highly praised by owners for their excellent reliability. The 2.0&#xA;  litre diesel models though have suffered a spate of expensive&#xA;  problems, including engine failures. Mazda are by no means alone in&#xA;  this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how does it look from evidence based point of view? Is there statistical data which would corroborate these claims? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-04-04T18:43:15.073" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T02:02:43.253" Title="Do modern turbo-diesel car engines fail significantly more often than gasoline ones?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15672" CreationDate="2013-04-04T16:31:22.717" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, WiFi is significantly more efficient, as the protocol is completely different. Once association with access point is established, WiFi only uses energy for actual transmission of data. On the other hand 3G remains in high-power state even after transmission is done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WQCKd.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.cs.umass.edu/~arun/papers/TailEnder.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Energy Consumption in Mobile Phones: A Measurement&#xA;Study and Implications for Network Applications&quot; Niranjan Balasubramanian, Aruna Balasubramanian, Arun Venkataramani, Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth mentioning, that WiFi has legal limit of power output of 200mW (0.2W), while 3G devices legal power limit is 2W.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-04-04T16:40:08.893" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T16:40:08.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15231" CreationDate="2013-04-04T16:32:48.933" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;A “newton” is the international unit of force. A human adult’s maximum biting force ranges from 520-1,178 newtons depending on factors such as age and gender. It requires less than 200 newtons to bite through a raw carrot. This is well within the normal limits of the average person. Biting through a finger requires so much force that attempts often lead to partial-amputation; a bite that doesn't completely sever the finger. There are cases of fingers being bitten entirely off, but such an act requires extraordinary force, far greater than 200 newtons of carrot-cutting power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll still have to bite through skin, tendons, and some flesh.&#xA;Skin, unlike &quot;meat&quot;, is very elastic. It's similar to trying to bite a rubber band instead of a carrot.&#xA;There are a lot of factors that contribute to mechanical failure, applied force is only one :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[EDIT] According to this study done in 1956 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/bmte.2013.58.issue-1/bmt-2012-0004/bmt-2012-0004.xml&quot;&gt;Jamming of fingers: an experimental study to determine force and deflection in participants and human cadaver specimens for development of a new bionic test device for validation of power-operated motor vehicle side door windows&lt;/a&gt;) cadavers bones were tested at maximum applied force of 1886 N for the index finger and 1833 N for the little finger. In 200 jam positions, 25 fractures were observed on radiographs; fractures occurred at an average force of 1485 N. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if it takes 1485 newtons to cause &lt;strong&gt;fractures&lt;/strong&gt; (obviously greater force is required to completely sever through the entire fingers) then it does not take the same force to bite through a finger as a carrot. [/EDIT]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[EDIT 2]&#xA;Was wondering if you were waiting to mark this as the answer. I re-read your comment and realized you may have been waiting on a hard number for human bite force as well as the force required to sever the finger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For human bite force: the Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_%28force%29&quot;&gt;Orders of Magnitude&lt;/a&gt; tells us that human bite force, measured at the molars is averaged at 720 N. As far as understanding what it would take to sever a finger you must understand how measurements of hardness are taken (and the different scales used, but I won't go into that.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardness&quot;&gt;Hardness&lt;/a&gt;: Hardness is a measure of how resistant solid matter is to various kinds of permanent shape change when a force is applied. Hardness is dependent on ductility, elastic stiffness, plasticity, strain, strength, toughness, viscoelasticity, and viscosity. There are three main types of hardness measurements: scratch, indentation, and rebound. Within each of these classes of measurement there are individual measurement scales. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scratch hardness is the measure of how resistant a sample is to fracture or permanent plastic deformation due to friction from a sharp object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indentation hardness measures the resistance of a sample to material deformation due to a constant compression load from a sharp object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rebound hardness, also known as dynamic hardness, measures the height of the &quot;bounce&quot; of a diamond-tipped hammer dropped from a fixed height onto a material. This type of hardness is related to elasticity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, the manner in which the finger is severed, be it stripping of the flesh from the bone vs. a clean cut vs. blunt force crushing/obliterating, makes answering the question of 'how much' force is required to 'sever' a finger from the body difficult. I hope this answers your question in enough detail to dispel any skepticism that the human finger can be severed as easily as a carrot by the human mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For purposes of this answer I have not researched specific data regarding macroscopic molecular bonding of the biological materials that make up the human finger. Perhaps a thesis is in order?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[/EDIT 2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13231" LastEditorUserId="13231" LastEditDate="2016-01-04T16:24:53.187" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T16:24:53.187" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15679" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-04T17:52:58.017" Score="13" ViewCount="2847" Body="&lt;p&gt;The so-called &lt;strong&gt;wind turbine syndrome&lt;/strong&gt; has received quite a bit of attention of late. For example, on &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/wind-turbines-health.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Stuff Works&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until recently, there were three main issues regarding the possible downsides of wind power: bird and­ bat deaths, cost, and disrupting the appearance of natural landscapes. But a new objection to wind power has popped up in the past few years, resting on the research of a few scientists. &lt;strong&gt;The latest argument states that wind power endangers the health of people who live near windmills.&lt;/strong&gt; Some people call this theory &amp;quot;wind-turbine syndrome.&amp;quot; Although the extent of the phenomenon is unknown, there does seem to be something to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The explanation includes harm from infrasound and noise-related sleep loss, as discussed here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's understood that some people who live in close proximity to wind turbines experience sleep disturbances, headaches and concentration problems. These symptoms and others could be explained as the effects of infrasound as well as constant humming and vibrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others argue that there is no evidence of any harm, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canwea.ca/pdf/talkwind/Wind_Turbine_Sound_and_Health_Effects-Executive_Summary.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wind Turbine Sound and Health Effects&lt;/a&gt;, was conducted in 2009 by a panel of medical professionals from the US, Canada, Denmark, and UK. The study concluded, “There is no evidence that the audible or sub-audible sounds [including infrasound] emitted by wind turbines have any direct adverse physiological effects.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lfu.bayern.de/umweltwissen/doc/uw_117_windkraftanlagen_infraschall_gesundheit.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;new study published by the Bavarian Environment Agency&lt;/a&gt; in Germany in 2012 has concluded similarly to the previous. The study – ‘Wind turbines: does infrasound affect health?’ concludes that wind turbines do not generate infrasound at a level that would damage human health. Wind energy structures generate infrasound that is far below normal human hearing and perception; this is why it does not cause any damage to people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any merit to the complaint that wind turbines harm health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T11:09:50.737" Title="Are wind turbines harmful to human health?" Tags="|medical-science|environmental-health|energy|wind-power|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15679" CreationDate="2013-04-04T18:49:15.617" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wind turbines are perfectly safe for Humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You your self brought two credible sources. And there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/much-angst-over-wind-turbines-is-just-hot-air-20111220-1p3sb.html#ixzz1hAXpQb9z&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simon Chapman is professor of public health at the University of Sydney. He has no financial associations with any wind energy company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;who references the British Acoustics Bulletin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The British Acoustics Bulletin has just published what is now the 10th independent review of the evidence on wind farms causing annoyance and ill health in people. And for the 10th time it has emphasised that annoyance has far more to do with social and psychological factors in those complaining than any direct effect from sound or inaudible infrasound emanating from wind turbines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few extracts give the flavour: &quot;the degree of annoyance is only slightly related to noise level&quot;; &quot;the fact that someone was complaining was mainly determined by the personality of the individual&quot;; &quot;fear of the noise source can increase annoyance&quot;; and &quot;adverse feelings . . . were influenced by feelings of lacking control, being subjected to injustice, lacking influence, and not being believed&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two factors repeatedly stand out. The first is being able to see wind turbines, which increases annoyance particularly in those who dislike or fear them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second factor is whether people derive income from hosting turbines, which miraculously appears to be a highly effective antidote to feelings of annoyance and symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Complaining about wind farms appears confined largely to parts of Australia, Canada, the US, Britain and New Zealand. And these complaints have accelerated in the past five years, despite turbines having been operational in many locations for more than 20 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This contagious &quot;wind turbine syndrome&quot; - a condition not recognised by any international disease classification system and which appears not once in any title or abstract in the massive US National Library of Medicine's PubMed database - appears to be spread by the vector of anti-wind farm activist groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&amp;amp;article_id=3577&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the South Australia's Environment Protection Authority has released a report showing infrasound levels at homes near wind turbines is no greater than what is experienced elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study can be read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.sa.gov.au/xstd_files/Noise/Report/infrasound.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and a direct quote from it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is clear from the results that the infrasound levels measured at the two residential&#xA;  locations near wind farms (Location 8 near the Bluff Wind Farm and Location 9 near&#xA;  Clements Gap Wind Farm) are within the range of infrasound levels measured at&#xA;  comparable locations away from wind farms. Of particular note, the results at one of the&#xA;  houses near a wind farm (Location 8) are the lowest infrasound levels measured at any of&#xA;  the 11 locations included in this study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study concludes that the level of infrasound at houses near the wind turbines&#xA;  assessed is no greater than that experienced in other urban and rural environments, and&#xA;  that the contribution of wind turbines to the measured infrasound levels is insignificant in comparison with the background level of infrasound in the environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="1792" LastEditDate="2013-04-04T19:24:28.133" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T19:24:28.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15681" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-04T19:02:33.717" Score="5" ViewCount="4434" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some places on the Internet that claim that The Americas were (at least at the start) colonized by criminals and unwanted populations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/289466&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Answerbag.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;North America was first colonized with criminals and the poor (Roanoke and The Jamestown Colonies-first attempt).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/How-extensively-were-the-American-colonies-used-to-displace-criminals-as-is-the-history-of-Australia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A question on Quora&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How extensively were the American colonies used to displace criminals as is the history of Australia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/non_aviation/read.main/1151790/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The same claim about Latin America&lt;/a&gt;, but contradicts the claim about North America:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets discuss the colonization of the Americas. In a thread in Civil Av I said that one important cause for Latin America &amp;quot;developing&amp;quot; status was that it was colonized by criminals freed from jails in the Iberian Peninsula and there were never families like what the British did in North America. Then a Spanish a.netter backfired saying that the USA was a penal colony for Great Britain... I don't think the USA was a penal colony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth in those claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13236" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2021-06-11T17:08:48.077" LastActivityDate="2021-06-11T17:08:48.077" Title="Was the USA colonized by criminals?" Tags="|united-states|history|latin-america|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4409" CreationDate="2013-04-04T19:35:01.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quoting David Buss (2005): The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 10: Lawrence S. Sugiyama - Physical Attractiveness in Adaptationist Perspective. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Men tend to have partners who are shorter than themselves and vice&#xA;  versa (Gillis &amp;amp; Avis, 1980). In modern populations, there is generally a positive as-&#xA;  sociation between male height and health (Kuh &amp;amp; Ben Shlomo, 1997; Kuh &amp;amp;&#xA;  Wadsworth, 1993; Macintyre &amp;amp; West, 1991; Silventoinen, Lahelma, &amp;amp; Rahkonen,&#xA;  1999) and reproductive success (RS; Mueller &amp;amp; Mazur, 2001; Nettle, 2002;&#xA;  Pawlowski, Dunbar, &amp;amp; Lipowicz, 2000). As noted earlier, relative height provides&#xA;  some information about phenotypic quality. Height is associated with the rated attractiveness of men (e.g.,Feingold, 1982; Gillis &amp;amp; Avos, 1980; Hensley, 1994), with American women rating short men undesirable for either long- or short-term mates. Tall, strong, athletic men are strongly desired as marriage partners (Buss &amp;amp; Schmitt, 1993), and taller-&#xA;  than-average men are preferred to men of short or average stature as dates and&#xA;  mating partners (Ellis, 1992). In analyses of personal ads, 80% of women who&#xA;  stated height preferences wanted men 6 feet tall or taller (Cameron, Oskamp, &amp;amp;&#xA;  Sparks, 1977). Ads placed by taller men receive more responses (Lynn &amp;amp; Shurgot,&#xA;  1984; Pawlowski &amp;amp; Koziel, 2002). Women even seem to take height into considera-&#xA;  tion in sperm donors (Scheib, Kristiansen, &amp;amp; Wara, 1997).&#xA;  Further,  there  appears  to  be  a  positive  association  between&#xA;  height  and  socioeconomic  success  (Bielicki  &amp;amp;  Szklarska,  1999;  Frieze,  Olson,  &amp;amp;&#xA;  Good,  1990;  Frieze,  Olson,  &amp;amp;  Russell,  1991;  Hensley  &amp;amp;  Cooper,  1987;  Jackson,&#xA;  1992). In an experimental study, 72% of recruiters for sales positions preferred&#xA;  the taller of two job applicants, but only one recruiter preferred the shorter candidate (the remainder had no preference; Kurtz, 1969). Among a large sample of&#xA;  British men, taller-than-average men had higher numbers of live-in partners and&#xA;  lower chance of either being childless or having had no significant mating rela-&#xA;  tionship (Nettle, 2002). However, Nettle found no significant association between&#xA;  total number of offspring and height, although the men had not yet completed&#xA;  fertility: They were not yet of the age where they were likely to have had all children from a second marriage, and they had ready access to contraceptives.&#xA;  Intensity of&#xA;  preference for taller males is also expected to vary with resource stress: Be-&#xA;  cause taller males are those who could better afford the costs of growing larger,&#xA;  relative height provides a costly signal of phenotypic quality, amplified under&#xA;  resource and pathogen stress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13240" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-04-04T20:39:49.717" LastActivityDate="2013-04-04T20:39:49.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15681" CreationDate="2013-04-04T19:49:16.213" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes and No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least some of the original colonists were not convicts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The colony of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americaslibrary.gov/jb/colonial/jb_colonial_subj.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jamestown&lt;/a&gt; was founded as a business venture by the Virginia company.  Earlier, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/hidden-history-excerpt.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;French colonists fleeing persecution for being Protestants&lt;/a&gt; attempted to colonize America (and were then slaughtered by Spanish soldiers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Britain's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/piracy-act-1717-frederic-p-miller/1030435200&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Piracy Act of 1717&lt;/a&gt; included provisions for sending criminals to North America as a penal transportation option:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Piracy Act 1717 was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain long title An Act for the further preventing Robbery, Burglary, and other Felonies, and for the more effectual Transportation of Felons, and unlawful Exporters of Wool; and for declaring the Law upon some Points relating to Pirates.) that established a seven-year penal transportation to North America as a possible punishment for those convicted of lesser felonies, or as a possible sentence that capital punishment might be commuted to by royal pardon. Transportation of criminals to North America continued from 1718-1776. When the American revolution made it unfeasible to carry out transportation, those sentenced to it were punished with imprisonment or hard labour instead. From 1787-1868, criminals were transported to the British colonies in Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, some criminals were deliberately transported to the colonies in the Americas, but that was far from all of the colonists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="3451" LastEditDate="2019-01-09T17:56:15.873" LastActivityDate="2019-01-09T17:56:15.873" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15684" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-05T05:47:28.777" Score="1" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did aliens contact humans before, and did we respond back? Or is it not disclosed to the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1037471/Apollo-14-astronaut-claims-aliens-HAVE-contact--covered-60-years.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;According to Edgar Mitchell&lt;/a&gt;, alien contact have been covered up and hidden away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aliens have contacted humans several times but governments have hidden&#xA;  the truth for 60 years, the sixth man to walk on the moon has claimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10867" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-04-05T22:11:26.017" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T05:50:22.337" Title="Have extra-terrestrials ever been in contact with humans?" Tags="|aliens|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2013-04-06T08:53:31.603" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15685" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-05T05:53:10.113" Score="10" ViewCount="23084" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you search on Google &quot;5000 year old flying machine discovery&quot;, there are lot of article and YouTube videos available claiming 5000 year old flying machine called &quot;Vimana&quot; discovered in Afghanistan. When US soldiers try to remove the flying machine they just vanish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does the flying machine really exist? Did soldiers really disappear when trying to remove the flying machine?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Youtube &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBlwhVyZxmQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; conversation about this flying machine discovery in Afghanistan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Article &lt;a href=&quot;http://beforeitsnews.com/unexplained-phenomena/2012/10/secret-5000-year-old-flying-machine-discovered-2430726.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; about this flying machine discovery&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quotes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What caused the sudden rush of these most powerful leaders of the&#xA;  Western World to go to Afghanistan, this report continues, was to&#xA;  directly view the discovery by US Military scientists of what is&#xA;  described as a &quot;Vimana&quot; entrapped in a &quot;Time Well&quot;  that has already&#xA;  caused the &quot;disappearance&quot; of at least 8 American Soldiers trying to&#xA;  remove it from the cave it has been hidden in for the past estimated&#xA;  5,000 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10867" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-12T02:07:07.137" LastActivityDate="2016-05-14T21:06:32.107" Title="Was a 5000 year old flying machine discovered in Afghanistan?" Tags="|history|machines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15686" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15687" CreationDate="2013-04-05T08:07:00.170" Score="40" ViewCount="6472" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw the following claim in &lt;a href=&quot;http://b3ta.com/newsletter/issue574/&quot;&gt;B3ta newsletter #574&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;possibly NSFW&lt;/strong&gt;), under &quot;US Postal Service hates Atheists&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Awful, but then Atheists are not allowed to hold&#xA;    public office in six US states, including&#xA;    Texas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that Atheists can't hold public office in Texas? I would have thought that &lt;em&gt;separation of church and state&lt;/em&gt; would prevent any such rule being enacted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T06:47:35.847" Title="Are atheists barred from holding public office in Texas?" Tags="|united-states|politics|religion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15686" CreationDate="2013-04-05T08:26:49.350" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/CN/htm/CN.1.htm#1.4&quot;&gt;From article 1, section 4 of the Texas Constitution&lt;/a&gt;, bolding mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sec. 4.  RELIGIOUS TESTS.  No religious test shall ever be required as&#xA;  a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor&#xA;  shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his&#xA;  religious sentiments, &lt;strong&gt;provided he acknowledge the existence of a&#xA;  Supreme Being&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html&quot;&gt;From article VI of the US constitution&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of&#xA;  the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial&#xA;  Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall&#xA;  be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no&#xA;  religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office&#xA;  or public Trust under the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The clause in the Texas consitution seems to violate the relevant clause in the US constitution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torcaso_v._Watkins&quot;&gt;Torcaso v. Watkins case&lt;/a&gt; before the Supreme Court. The Court decided:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is, and can be, no dispute about the purpose or effect of the&#xA;  Maryland Declaration of Rights requirement before us - it sets up a&#xA;  religious test which was designed to and, if valid, does bar every&#xA;  person who refuses to declare a belief in God from holding a public&#xA;  &quot;office of profit or trust&quot; in Maryland. ... We repeat and again&#xA;  reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government can&#xA;  constitutionally force a person &quot;to profess a belief or disbelief in&#xA;  any religion.&quot; Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose&#xA;  requirements which aid all religions as against non-believers, and&#xA;  neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of&#xA;  God as against those religions founded on different beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though this argument is not based on article VI of the constitution I cited, the court made no decision on whether such clauses in state constutitions would violate this article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2013-04-05T15:56:07.697" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T15:56:07.697" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15681" CreationDate="2013-04-05T10:41:25.737" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;when America was discovered by the Europeans, they sent criminals to colonize it.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this (unreferenced) claim has a tiny grain of truth in it, it is grossly misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Numbers of convicts compared to non-convicts&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/098367440X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one author&lt;/a&gt; around 50,000 convicts were transported to North America over a 58-year period before independence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1776 the US population was estimated at 2.5 million. Most of these were not convicts nor the offspring of convicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is misleading to say that &amp;quot;convicts were sent to colonise [north America]&amp;quot; as most of the people that travelled from Europe to north America were not convicts sentenced to transportation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Europe&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only Britain transported convicts to north America. So it is misleading to say that Europeans did so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;You too are criminal offspring&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost all Europeans are &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2010/03/you-are-probably-descended-from-charlemagne-and-other-royalty.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;descendents of Charlemagne&lt;/a&gt; and of almost everyone else alive 500 or more years ago. The reason is &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dgmweb.net/Ancillary/OnE/NumberAncestors.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;if you go back 40 generations, you have over two trillion ancestors!&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;. This also applies to other regions of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nature.com/news/most-europeans-share-recent-ancestors-1.12950&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Most Europeans share recent ancestors (Nature, 2013)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;any two Europeans are likely to have many common ancestors who lived around 1,000 years ago. A genomic survey of 2,257 people from 40 populations finds that people of European ancestry are more closely related to one another than previously thought&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19331938&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tracing the world's ancestor, Dr Yan Wong, 2012 (reported by BBC)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... imagine the simplest case of a population of a constant size - say a million ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If people in this population meet and breed at random, it turns out that you only need to go back an average of 20 generations before you find an individual who is a common ancestor of everyone in the population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go back on average 1.77 times further again (35 generations) everyone in the population will have exactly the same set of common ancestors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact about 80% of the people at that time in the past will be the ancestors of everyone in the present. The remaining 20% are those who have had no children&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is almost certain that every person on earth is a descendent of a criminal many generations ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-01-09T14:51:59.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8157" CreationDate="2013-04-05T11:36:27.100" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR: YES&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Warning:&lt;/strong&gt; Ancient depiction of sex ahead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very hard to define what an instinctive behavior in humans is. Oral sex is not a reflex, and since babies don't do it it's very hard to find two people today that haven't heard about oral sex at all and test if when they have sex they reach this conclusion alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that animals do it isn't enough. Apes are eating each other's lice, dogs communicate by butt sniffing and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9042/do-dolphins-have-homosexual-blowhole-sex/9528#9528&quot;&gt;dolphins have nasal homosexual sex&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to check this hypothesis is to check whether oral sex existed in different unrelated cultures, like Europe, Asia, America, Africa and Oceania, before they reconnected. This will show that ether this custom developed naturally in several different places, or that it's so ancient that it predates the spread and separation of humans through the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The easiest is to find evidence to it in ancient European culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Greek vase depicting oral sex:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://25.media.tumblr.com/fd674aed6790fa691c0c7f8036c9ed91/tumblr_mffq9yMVeE1r0ttw3o1_1280.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;greek sex&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://myancientworld.tumblr.com/post/38541387962/attic-red-figure-kylix-dish-dated-510bc-louvre)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;, image of this vase also appears in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellatio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fellatio also appears in the Kama Sutra:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/KamaSutra08.jpg/150px-KamaSutra08.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Indian sex&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source is in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fellatio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;same Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;, or the Kama Sutra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In ancient Egypt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MVcx7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Egypt Sex&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Book_of_the_Dead_of_Ani,_sheet_6,_Detail_right.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And an Egyptian self-fellatio (for the win!):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FKeyW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;If I could do this, I wouldn&amp;#39;t leave home ever&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antinopolis.org/hernestus/antinoushieroglyphs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This covers Eurasia, and shows that oral sex was popular all throughout Eurasia in Ancient times. The problem is that those places had indirect trade relations even back then. (Source: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lucky for the answer, it also existed in other societies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pottery of fellatio from the Mochica culture in Peru, from around 14th Century AD (before European contact):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PyPqs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;pic 1&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heritage-images.com/Preview/PreviewPage.aspx?id=2368428&amp;amp;pricing=true&amp;amp;licenseType=RM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NUnhT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;pic 2&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heritage-images.com/Preview/PreviewPage.aspx?id=2567274&amp;amp;licenseType=(RM)&amp;amp;from=search&amp;amp;back=2567274&amp;amp;orntn=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BZNsh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;pic 3&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bridgemanartondemand.com/image/956439/stirrup-spouted-vessel-depicting-fellatio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the Wikipedia article about Homosexuality cites&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Herdt, Gilbert H. (1984), Ritualized Homosexuality in Melanesia, University of California Press, pp. 128–136&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In many societies of Melanesia, especially in Papua New Guinea, same-sex relationships were an integral part of the culture until the middle of the last century. The Etoro and Marind-anim for example, even viewed heterosexuality as sinful and celebrated homosexuality instead. In many traditional Melanesian cultures a prepubertal boy would be paired with an older adolescent who would become his mentor and who would &quot;inseminate&quot; him (&lt;strong&gt;orally&lt;/strong&gt;, anally, or topically, depending on the tribe) over a number of years in order for the younger to also reach puberty. Many Melanesian societies, however, have become hostile towards same-sex relationships since the introduction of Christianity by European missionaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems that oral sex (at least on men), both heterosexual and homosexual was common place all throughout the ancient world in different isolated societies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, a joke: according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z-OLG0KyR4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ray Comfort&lt;/a&gt;, the penis was designed to be perfectly compatible for the mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2017-08-20T08:06:07.620" LastActivityDate="2017-08-20T08:06:07.620" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15694" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15695" CreationDate="2013-04-05T16:22:19.517" Score="6" ViewCount="3507" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got a recent junk mail with the photo attached &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xk5Ex.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xk5Ex.png&lt;/a&gt; (Warning: graphic images of the alleged injuries)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the danger in pooping standing position and its result. This claim is for real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10867" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:57:53.963" LastActivityDate="2015-07-31T07:02:49.383" Title="Is it dangerous to stand or squat on a toilet seat?" Tags="|safety|toilets|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15694" CreationDate="2013-04-05T16:36:58.900" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of links on wikipedia regarding this topic ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Furthermore, injuries are frequently sustained by people who stand on&#xA;  toilet seats to reach a height, and slip  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet-related_injuries_and_deaths&quot;&gt;Toilet-related injuries and deaths&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10701" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T16:36:58.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15686" CreationDate="2013-04-05T17:03:56.507" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, that is not technically true.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[From article 1, section 4 of the Texas Constitution][1], bolding mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sec. 4.  RELIGIOUS TESTS.  No religious test shall ever be required as&#xA;  a qualification to any office, or public trust, in this State; nor&#xA;  shall any one be excluded from holding office on account of his&#xA;  religious sentiments, &lt;strong&gt;provided he acknowledge the existence of a&#xA;  Supreme Being&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Texas constitution gives protection against religious discrimintation for public office, but that protection does not extend to atheists. However that is long way from saying that atheists can't hold office. It means that under the Texas constitution someone 'could' choose to exclude atheists: but in fact that does not happen. One of the reasons that it does not happen is that it would be illegal under the US constitution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[From article VI of the US constitution][2]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of&#xA;  the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial&#xA;  Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall&#xA;  be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no&#xA;  religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office&#xA;  or public Trust under the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this clause in the constitution discriminates against atheists - but it is not a ban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2013-04-13T17:26:27.957" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T17:26:27.957" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15697" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15712" CreationDate="2013-04-05T17:43:08.137" Score="11" ViewCount="1086" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a sensational &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/04/wormwood_tea_to_treat_malaria_the_who_is_opposed_to_an_effective_preventive.html&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; in slate that says there's an herbal tea containing Artemisia that will prevent malaria that is being discouraged by the establishment because it could cause resistance to future drugs.  Does this tea actually work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8410" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2021-02-08T16:46:36.987" LastActivityDate="2021-02-08T16:46:36.987" Title="Is there an herbal tea malaria cure that the World Health Organization is discouraging" Tags="|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|malaria|world-health-organization|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5291" CreationDate="2013-04-05T18:40:46.320" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there have been several cases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1988 Vaclav Jelinek, a Czech StB spy who operated under the false&#xA;  identity of Erwin van Haarlem, was arrested by British Special Branch&#xA;  detectives while receiving a numbers message on a shortwave radio in&#xA;  his London apartment. One-time pads were found on microfilm, hidden in&#xA;  bars of soap. The pads enabled the detectives to decipher some of the&#xA;  received messages, which were later used in court. Jelinek was&#xA;  sentenced to ten years of imprisonment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More recently, there were several spy cases in the United States,&#xA;  related to Cuban numbers stations . In the 1998, the so-called Cuban&#xA;  Five from the Wasp Network spy ring, agents of the Cuban DGI&#xA;  (Dirección General de Inteligencia), received instructions by&#xA;  encrypted messages that were sent each day by the Cuban HF numbers&#xA;  station &quot;Atencion&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another one was the Ana Belen Montes case, a senior US Defense&#xA;  Intelligence Agency analyst, spying for Cuba. She was arrested in 2001&#xA;  and the federal prosecutors stated: &quot;Montes communicated with the&#xA;  Cuban Intelligence Service through encrypted messages and received her&#xA;  instructions through encrypted shortwave transmissions from Cuba&quot;.&#xA;  More on the Belen Montes case in this FBI affidavit (pdf).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2006, Florida International University professor Carlos Alvarez and&#xA;  his wife Elsa Alvarez were charged with espionage and acting as agents&#xA;  for Cuba. The US District Court Florida stated: &quot;Defendants would&#xA;  receive assignments via shortwave radio transmissions. These messages&#xA;  were encoded in five-digit groupings. Once received, Defendants would&#xA;  input these coded messages into their home computer, which was&#xA;  equipped with decryption technology contained on a diskette&quot; More in&#xA;  the Alvarez sentencing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/numbers.htm&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the most definitive proof - a Cuban spy known as Carlos Alvarez. He was prosecuted as being a spy in 2006 and a crucial piece of information in his prosecution was the fact he listened to coded shortwave radio stations - ie numbers stations. Here is the full indictment. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/espionage/alvarez-prosecution.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/espionage/alvarez-prosecution.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13257" LastEditorUserId="13257" LastEditDate="2013-04-05T18:51:28.390" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T18:51:28.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15697" CreationDate="2013-04-05T20:45:54.640" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although thought-provoking, the article doesn't claim either that the tea &quot;will prevent malaria&quot; or that the WHO is &quot;trying to hide&quot; it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/04/wormwood_tea_to_treat_malaria_the_who_is_opposed_to_an_effective_preventive.html&quot;&gt;it says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A] randomized controlled trial on this farm showed that workers who drank it regularly reduced their risk of suffering from multiple episodes of malaria by one-third. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[M]alaria experts worry that unregulated use of this tea could cause the malaria parasite to develop resistance to artemisinin drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest thing to &quot;hiding&quot; the drug is this troubling paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When Ogwang tried to publish the results in Malaria Journal, a reviewer largely praised the quality of the science but nixed publication out of concern that use of the tea could render ACTs ineffective. It’s a remarkably patronizing recommendation: that a scientific journal should keep the latest evidence out of the hands of Africans, lest they begin treating themselves. Marcel Hommel, editor in chief of the journal, defends the decision, saying, “It is the responsibility of an editor to avoid publishing papers that promote interventions which could potentially put patients at risk.” Ogwang eventually published his results in a less prestigious journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2013-04-05T20:45:54.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15701" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15703" CreationDate="2013-04-05T22:04:58.013" Score="15" ViewCount="891" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to be a very wide spread claim that Australia was started as a British penal colony. When I first heard of it as a young kid, I envisioned some crime infested dystopia like in the movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116225/&quot;&gt;Escape from L.A&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From those claim it seems that the &lt;strong&gt;main&lt;/strong&gt; reason for the initial British colonization of Australia was not territorial gain, mercantile (creating new markets for British goods), resource excavation or military, like in the colonization of Africa, America and the conquest of east Asia, but the creation of a Penal colony. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was the main reason for the colonization of Australia the creation of penal colonies, or was it only a side affect of the vast unexploited areas that the already established Australian colonies had?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of the claim online:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Was_Australia_originally_a_penal_colony&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/articles/australia/australian-penal-colonies/4526&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091112043148AAxBJye&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-05T23:04:02.630" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T00:46:52.003" Title="Was Australian colonisation started as a penal colony?" Tags="|australia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15701" CreationDate="2013-04-06T00:46:52.003" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, a vast majority of the people aboard first European ships to settle Australia were convicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first European settlers arrived in Australia in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Fleet&quot;&gt;First Fleet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Fleet&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The total number of free people was 348 and the total number of prisoners was 696, coming to a total of 1044 persons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is supported by a quote from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/60569425&quot;&gt;Empire Newspaper of 1850&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The founders of the colony therefore&#xA;  consisted of one free person to every two prisoners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Your childhood vision was inaccurate though. The same sources indicate over 200 marines were also sent. The convicts were still under the control of the British military.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Fleet_%28Australia%29&quot;&gt;Second Fleet&lt;/a&gt; was predominantly  convicts. Over 1000 convicts left England, but there were many hundreds of deaths on the voyage or shortly afterwards. &lt;a href=&quot;http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/11268800&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://search.ancestry.com.au/search/db.aspx?dbid=1178&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that not all British Settlements were penal settlements. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelaide#19th_century&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T00:46:52.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15704" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15706" CreationDate="2013-04-06T03:45:04.483" Score="26" ViewCount="2723" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone was telling me that lower-price or lower-spec computer parts such as graphics cards and central processing units are actually just higher-spec, higher-price units that have manufacturing faults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So instead of the manufacturer throwing them out, they simply disable the faulty bits and sell it as something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example if a CPU is made with 6 cores, but 2 cores are faulty (or don't meet quality control standards), they will disable access to the 2 cores and simply sell it as a quad-core processor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this? Could this person have meant something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13262" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T16:45:12.920" Title="Are low-spec computer parts just faulty high-spec computer parts?" Tags="|technology|computers|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15704" CreationDate="2013-04-06T05:56:44.280" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is true. I'm not sure it is true in all the examples you gave, but it is true for some multi-core processors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/373185/amd-phenom-x3-triple-core-processors-are-crippled-quad-cores-in-disguise&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gizmodo&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of AMD's multi-core Phenom blast today is the Phenom X3 8000, &amp;quot;the world's only triple-core x86 processor,&amp;quot; which we heard about a few months ago. They're supposed to bargain chips for budget consumers, but they're a nicer bargain for AMD, actually, since &lt;strong&gt;it lets them dump bug-plagued quad-core Phenoms by disabling a core.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-phenom-athlon-cpu,8012.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; says the practice is used by Intel as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for this is that the disabled cores are turned off for a reason: they failed factory tests. Cores can fail for any number of reasons, including defects in the silicon, problems running at full frequency, or a bug introduced during manufacturing. &lt;strong&gt;Both AMD and Intel disable CPU cores for this very reason.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anandtech.com/show/2721&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; shows the practice is also used by AMD with L3 cache:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When AMD produces a Phenom II die &lt;strong&gt;if part of the L3 is bad, it gets disabled and is sold as an 800 series chip&lt;/strong&gt;. If one of the cores is bad, it gets disabled and is sold as a 700 series chip. If everything is in working order, then we've got a 900.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intel has done this with entire on-board graphics processors (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Processors/Intel-Core-i5-3350P-Ivy-Bridge-Processor-Review-No-Integrated-Graphics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reference&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intel recently released a couple of Ivy Bridge based processors that have disabled the integrated graphics completely, the 3350P being one of them. &lt;strong&gt;This allows Intel to sell processor die that might have a defect on the GPU portion&lt;/strong&gt; to increase the relative yield rate of their 22nm process and also gives them another weapon to fight off any pricing competition from AMD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IBM holds a patent (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents/US7610537&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US7610437&lt;/a&gt;) on a particular method for doing this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a defect is detected in a single functional unit, such as a synergistic processor core, the defective synergistic processor core can be disabled and the multiprocessor can still be used with the remaining functional unit(s) as a partial good multiprocessor chip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if a single processing unit is defective, the defective processing core can be disabled and the multiprocessor can still be used with the remaining functional processing unit(s). Such a multiprocessor chip is a partial good multiprocessor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of their claims points to the mechanism for doing this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;blowing a fuse associated with each defective processor core to disable each defective processor core&lt;/strong&gt; if the number of defective processor cores does not exceed the threshold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://isca09.cs.columbia.edu/pres/09.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;presentation by Intel and University of Michigan&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defective core options: disable or salvage. Disabling wastes entire core even for minor defect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a common enough practice that some hardware research focuses on making use of those faulty cores: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cccp.eecs.umich.edu/papers/ansari-ieeemicro10.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Putting Faulty Cores to Work&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. In that article, they make a statement about how common disabling is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the inherent irregularity of the non-cache parts of the core, it is well known that handling defects in these parts is challenging. &lt;strong&gt;A common solution is to disable the faulty core&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T21:45:00.220" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8764" CreationDate="2013-04-06T11:40:09.923" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a letter to the editors of Hearing Journal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The description of the Aftershokz bone-conduction earphones included the statement, “Because the headphones do not use the eardrums to transmit sound, they allow users to listen to music without risk of eardrum damage.” MP3 player earphones are not capable of producing levels great enough to cause an eardrum perforation, so users would not be at risk of eardrum damage from any type of earphone. Rather, listeners are at risk of cochlear damage from overuse of any type of earphone. The fact that these earphones use bone-conduction transducers does not inherently make them any safer than any other earphone, as bone-conducted sound is transduced by the cochlea similarly to air-conducted sound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hearing Journal:&#xA;June 2012 - Volume 65 - Issue 6 - p 4&#xA;doi: 10.1097/01.HJ.0000415192.03538.d6&#xA;Departments: Letters to the Editor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Letters: The Truth about Bone-Conduction Earphones&quot;&#xA;Portnuff, Cory AuD, PhD; Berger, Elliott MS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13265" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T11:40:09.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15709" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-06T13:38:57.397" Score="14" ViewCount="1062" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Japanese person wrote in her diary today that her English tutor told her that a lot of people in Japan have got cancer due to the Fukushima daiichi nuclear accident, and were already dead last year (2012) because of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="1246" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T15:02:38.997" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T15:02:38.997" Title="Have people died of cancer from the Fukushima daiichi nuclear accident?" Tags="|environmental-health|radiation|nuclear-energy|fukushima-daiichi|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15709" CreationDate="2013-04-06T15:55:09.960" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't seem that any cancer victims have yet been identified. The probabilities are low and are assessed over the whole lifetime of people in the worst affected areas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It won't be possible to identify specific people whose cancer is attributable to the Fukushima Daiichi accident. At best, large scale studies may be able to measure the small increase in the actual numbers of cancer victims compared to the numbers who would normally develop cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/78218/1/9789241505130_eng.pdf&quot;&gt;World Health Organisation report&lt;/a&gt; in 2013 on the 2011 accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Outside the geographical areas most affected by radiation, even in locations within Fukushima prefecture, the predicted risks remain low and no observable increases in cancer &#xA;  above natural variation in baseline rates are anticipated ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the two most affected locations of Fukushima prefecture, the preliminary estimated &#xA;  radiation effective doses for the first year ranged from 12 to 25 mSv. In the highest dose &#xA;  location, the estimated additional lifetime risks for the development of leukaemia, breast &#xA;  cancer, thyroid cancer and all solid cancers over baseline rates are likely to represent &#xA;  an upper bound of the risk as methodological options were consciously chosen to avoid &#xA;  underestimation of risks. For leukaemia, the lifetime risks are predicted to increase &#xA;  by up to around 7% over baseline cancer rates in males exposed as infants; for breast &#xA;  cancer, the estimated lifetime risks increase by up to around 6% over baseline rates in &#xA;  females exposed as infants; for all solid cancers, the estimated lifetime risks increase &#xA;  by up to around 4% over baseline rates in females exposed as infants; and for thyroid &#xA;  cancer, the estimated lifetime risk increases by up to around 70% over baseline rates &#xA;  in females exposed as infants. These percentages represent estimated relative increases &#xA;  over the baseline rates and are not estimated absolute risks for developing such cancers. &#xA;  It is important to note that due to the low baseline rates of thyroid cancer, even a large &#xA;  relative increase represents a small absolute increase in risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the 70% increase for thyroid cancer risks for women means that for every 100,000 young girls in the most exposed areas, instead of say 5 getting thyroid cancer sometime in their lives, there would be around 8. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/types/thyroid/incidence/uk-thyroid-cancer-incidence-statistics#geog&quot;&gt;Cancer Research UK&lt;/a&gt; for variations in rates between countries/regions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something of the order of 170,000 people were evacuated (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/12/AR2011031205493.html&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;) from around the plant (the number of people displaced by the earthquake and tsunami was more). Not all those 170,000 were from the most affected areas (the initial evacuations were around 5,800 people) and, of course, not all of them were young girls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not everyone who gets thyroid cancer dies, the five year survival rates vary from 100% to 51% (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/cancer/thyroidcancer/detailedguide/thyroid-cancer-survival-rates&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;) depending at which stage it is detected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only deaths in the WHO report are of seven workers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;None of the seven reported deaths among workers is attributable &#xA;  to radiation exposure. The causes of these deaths have been reported as disaster-related (two cases), heart attack (three cases), sepsis (one case) and leukaemia (one case for which the time of the onset was shorter than the minimum latency period for radiation-induced leukaemia).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequently, it is unlikely that any additional deaths have yet occurred in the wider population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: Three years after the Fukushima disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BBC &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26483945&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; that 33 cases of thyroid cancer have been confirmed in 260,000 children studied. The report does not make clear how many cases would have been expected normally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Professor Shinichi Suzuki leads the team studying the children of Fukushima.  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In Japan there has never been a survey on this scale done before,&quot; he said. &quot;Once you start using very sensitive equipment to check for thyroid cancer in a very large group of children then you will inevitably find an increase in the number of cases. That is why we are seeing the increase now. These cases are not related to the nuclear disaster.&quot; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;he and other experts now say they think there will be very few, or even zero, extra childhood cancers because of Fukushima.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still no deaths reported (that I can find).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tally so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deaths from earthquake and tsunami: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-17219008&quot;&gt;15853&lt;/a&gt;-&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/21/japan-earthquake-death-toll-18000&quot;&gt;18000&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deaths from subsequent stress: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/02/20/national/post-quake-illnesses-kill-more-in-fukushima-than-2011-disaster/#.Ux7bZ_neW30&quot;&gt;1656&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deaths from radiation: 0.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-03-11T09:54:35.063" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T09:54:35.063" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15697" CreationDate="2013-04-06T16:04:35.143" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with Larry at the crucial parts of the article. To explain a bit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The WHO is nowhere near hiding Artemisia for anti-malaria medication. In fact, four drugs prepared from the plant are on their &lt;a href=&quot;http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2011/a95053_eng.pdf&quot;&gt;list of essential medicines&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But: these are to be used in drug combinations. What the WHO is very much concerned about is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/malaria/diagnosis_treatment/arcp/en/&quot;&gt;drug resistance&lt;/a&gt;, which is also mentioned in the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[M]alaria experts worry that unregulated use of this tea could cause the malaria parasite to develop resistance to artemisinin drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now about the arguments the article has in favor of the home-grown tea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A] randomized controlled trial on this farm showed that workers who drank it regularly reduced their risk of suffering from multiple episodes of malaria by one-third. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meaning that 2/3 of people run around with a dosage of the artemisinin that is too low to prevent malaria. And not only 2/3 of the patients, but 2/3 of the population and all the time. This is a very promising condition for breeding resistance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in Wagagai, after years of preventive use, resistance has not sprung up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;just means that they have been lucky so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither can the fact that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;artemisinin resistance is [found] on the Thai-Cambodian border, where conventional artemisinin drugs are used&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;be an excuse for advertising a practice that increases the risk of resistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, finding resistance where the conventional drugs are used is not entirely unexpected. For one thing, also with the proper medication, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irinnews.org/report/95059/KENYA-Malaria-drug-effectiveness-hit-by-under-dosage&quot;&gt;underdosage is not uncommon&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.malariajournal.com/content/10/1/352&quot;&gt;there are low quality/dosage counterfeit drugs&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/091201_malaria&quot;&gt;This post&lt;/a&gt; gives a similar discussion for the region in Cambodia where the resistance came up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their statement &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/atoz/position_statement_herbal_remedy_artemisia_annua_l/en/index.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Effectiveness of Non-Pharmaceutical Forms of Artemisia annua L. against malaria&quot;&lt;/a&gt; the WHO explains that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Total recovery of artemisinin from plant leaves was found to &lt;strong&gt;vary by a factor of 150&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This prevents any practicable recommendation for dosing the tea. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the leaves need to be stored cool and dry to prevent loss in artemisinin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the prepared tea has too low artemisinin concentration:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to receive a dose equivalent to a 500 mg artemisinin tablet or capsule, patients would be required to drink as much as 5 litres of A. annua tea per day [...] In practice malaria patients are drinking only 1 litre&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the result of the tea is currently a severe underdosage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They also cite studies who found eating plant material more effective than drinking the tea, but nevertheless a high recurrence rate was observed, to that is still not an effective treatment. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a newspaper article in German about a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zeit.de/2011/14/M-Artemisinin/seite-2&quot;&gt;desastrous failure of establishing Artemisia farms in east africa&lt;/a&gt;. Among other interesting details, there is a sentence  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Growing Artemisa plants is not as easy as the aid and development agencies thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, the plants did grow, but the small farmers didn't get the drug content that was achieved in the test beds, and the extraction of the artemisinin yielded only half of the content (plus possibly other quality issues).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I understand the WHO is not against the use of Artemisia, but it is strictly opposed to advertising a &quot;use&quot; of the plant in ways that are ineffective and  create a severe risk of worsening the situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastEditorUserId="8865" LastEditDate="2013-04-06T17:43:06.463" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T17:43:06.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15673" CreationDate="2013-04-06T21:57:42.973" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, unfortunately, I don't have scientific papers or statistics about this (I found statistics on age, on mileage and on % diesels, but not age and mileage wrt. diesel or gasoline) - and googling isn't very effective because tons of non-scientific stuff comes up. But I hope I can contribute a few hints of evidence, and I want to point out a number of confounding factors which have a large influence on the lifetime of an engine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And one important consideration is what &quot;more freqently&quot; means. Per 100.000 km? Per year (difficult for new cars)? Per engine (i.e. which percentage of engines &quot;dies&quot; by engine failure - in my experience: very few of both sorts)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; a search on car sales pages indicates that gasoline cars can reach a mileage of several 100.000 km nowadays, like diesel cars. Though (at least here in Germany) diesel cars are preferred by the long distance drivers. While such preference is probably not only based on expected lifetime, and that may have a lag from the long-lasting reputation of the diesel even if this is not true any longer, it also isn't evidence in favour of diesels being dramatically worse than gasoline engines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across two more newspaper articles in German language with claims roughly along the cited one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zeit.de/auto/2012-06/diesel-zukunft/seite-2&quot;&gt;first one&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;points out that the old &quot;everlasting&quot; diesel engines had low power both compared to gasoline engines and compared to modern (turbo) diesel engines.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This factor may be particularly important for German cars makes, because taxes are calculated here not from the engine power but from engine volume. This poses a constraint that works towards high power per volume, and high rpm, thus also towards higher mechanical demands. &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laufleistung&quot;&gt;German Wiki agrees with me that this causes shorter lifetime of the engine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/preisrekord-wieso-der-diesel-boom-zu-ende-ist-a-554399.html&quot;&gt;2nd newspaper article&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;claims that the gasoline engines got much better, and also mentions that the higher power of the diesel engines (with comparable volume) essentially costs lifetime. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A rumour I've heard which goes into this direction concerns diesel engines which are/were available both with and without turbo, the turbo version is said to be far more prone to engine failure. This was attributed to the higher power of the turbo version of otherwise equal engines.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Anecdata in this direction is that I've seen more &quot;car to be sold with engine failure&quot; ads of the VW Type II T3 turbo than the SD at ages of 15 - 20 years. But I don't know in which proportions they were sold (but when those were new, the SD was the &quot;normal&quot; one). And they are not what one would call a modern diesel today.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kown factors for the longevity of car engines are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the higher the specific power (power / engine volume) the shorter the engine life &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;driving habits/profiles are very important as well&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laufleistung&quot;&gt;German Wiki&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_longevity&quot;&gt;(the English one merely says &quot;Drive with habits that don't take years off the car&quot;)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Diesel engines used to be not only lower specific power but also slower max speed and lower power / car weight.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This means that preferred driving style could pretty much decide the type of engine. Gasoline for &quot;sportive&quot; driving style (which is much more demanding on the car, lots of load-cycle changes), diesel for calm/slow driving style. &#xA;The &quot;long-lasting&quot; was an important sales argument, aiming at people who drive a lot. This means, that those cars were more likely to end up far more in long-distance driving than gasoline cars at the time. While the question is about modern diesel engines, I think this historic situation needs to be taken into account because that is where the long-lasting reputation of the diesel comes from. Note for judging the OP's article that it was also not a &quot;cheaper&quot; but a &quot;more economic if you go long distances&quot; reputation. And it was no &quot;cheaper repair&quot; reputation.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Meanwhile diesel car engines have much higher specific and total power. Look e.g. at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_N57&quot;&gt;BMW N57 engines (e.g. 242 kW, 4.4 l)&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_W221&quot;&gt;Mercedes-Benz W221 (235 kW, 4 l)&lt;/a&gt; Those BMW 7 series and Mercedes S class diesel cars are restricted to vmax 250 km/h, just like the gasoline ones (though these series have gasoline engines with still more power).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hints about the lifetime of modern diesel engines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Searching at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mobile.de&quot;&gt;this used car sale platform&lt;/a&gt; for cars &gt; 150.000 km (highest low limit I can set there), I get roughly&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;41000 diesel vs. 12000 gasoline cars for the 5 - 10 year old and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;14000 diesel vs. 1000 gasoline cars for the less than 5 year old.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for comparison, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.handelsblatt.com/auto/nachrichten/neuwagen-zulassungen-dieselanteil-erreicht-rekordhoch/7068596.html&quot;&gt;48% of the new cars in Germany are currently diesels&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;for older cars , the percentage of diesel cars drops to about 10%.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But other things change as well. The higher price segment of the ca. 15 - 20 year old cars is dominated by Porsche (gasoline), with a few armoured Mercedes and other &quot;specials&quot;. The low price segment is full of old gasoline cars. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.handelsblatt.com/auto/nachrichten/neuwagen-zulassungen-dieselanteil-erreicht-rekordhoch/7068596.html&quot;&gt;In 1995, only 1/6th of the new cars were diesels&lt;/a&gt;. And it is more difficult to sell a Diesel car of this age, because of the tax laws. A comparable diesel to one of the low-price gasoline cars of that age easily costs 3x as much taxes as the gasoline - and hundreds € difference in taxes are taken into account for a market where 40% of the cars are sold for &amp;lt; 1000 €.  This also shows the limits of trying to pick evidence this way: obviously, if diesel cars basically break down earlier than gasoline ones, the picture would be the same.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion of this search: long distance drivers certainly prefer diesel (the &amp;lt; 5 year olds). Nowadays, gasoline cars &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; reach the same mileage of several 100.000 km (inspecting the higher mileages of the &amp;lt; 5 and 5 - 10 year old cars - disregarding &gt; 999.999 km, as one needs to carefully look for typos that add a digit and obviously meaningless mileages like the 999999). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;However, there are other engine segments, where modern diesel engines last much longer. Have a look at trucks and omnibuses. The truck search at mobile.de the median of the &amp;lt; 5 year old trucks on sale made 600.000 km till now. These engines have much lower specific power, and long-distance driving profiles.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Side note: there is a trend to turbos for modern gasoline engines as well. So one more expensive part that can fail for gasoline cars as well.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastActivityDate="2013-04-06T21:57:42.973" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6415" CreationDate="2013-04-07T00:18:21.237" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a pretty good QA here on skeptics that is directly concerned with Aspartame. It talks more about its relation with cancer, but it seemed relevant to your question as you were concerned with other implications it can have on health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/369/does-the-artificial-sweetener-aspartame-cause-cancer&quot;&gt;Does the artificial sweetener aspartame cause cancer?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that aluminum is a neurotoxin and while aluminum aluminum is not a direct ingredient, it should be of concern when discussing neural dysfunction symptoms. Remember that it still contains what your are ingesting. It may seep into your drink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aluminum neurotoxicity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11130287&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11130287&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should also be noted that aluminum cans are lined with BPA and that can have neural implications as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two 2004 studies demonstrating BPA and it's possible effects on cognition&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1247475/?rendertype=abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1247475/?rendertype=abstract&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15079872&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15079872&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is important because any Neural condition can produce MS like syptoms because MS is a Neural condition which involves degeneration of the Myelin sheaths surrounding the Axon of the neuron, impairing transmission and symptoms can be vast as the Nervous System pretty much controls everything in the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to note that MS can be very easy to misdiagnose and difficult to diagnose MS. In order to have a definitive diagnosis for MS, several other nervous system conditions need to be eliminated. There's at least 12 other conditions that need to be eliminated before you can safely assume MS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would not be outrageous to think that yes, it diet sodas may have the potential produce MS like symptoms depending on the individual and concentration of ingested drinks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the other implications it can have on ones health, break down the ingredient list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hopefully this was helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13275" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-04-07T02:03:25.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15724" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-07T23:15:40.920" Score="4" ViewCount="231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read the following claim on &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.durhamdentistry.com/should-you-have-ortho-treatment/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a commercial dentistry&lt;/a&gt; website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some estimates suggest that 75% of all headaches are muscle-contraction headaches that could be tied to a poor bite. Wow!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What research is there to back this claim up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10622" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T18:12:56.337" Title="75% of headaches due to poor bite?" Tags="|medical-science|dentistry|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15725" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-07T23:58:03.233" Score="9" ViewCount="523" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/34985/title/Q-A--The-Cancer-Tradeoff/&quot;&gt;interview&lt;/a&gt; on pop-sci magazine &quot;The Scientist&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://austingroup.princeton.edu/group-members&quot;&gt;Dr. Robert Austin&lt;/a&gt; from Princeton is asserting that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s a tradeoff, he says, for the rapid evolution our species has leveraged to become the dominant force on the planet. He also suggests that cancer might act as a form of global population control, possibly serving to increase species fitness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not seem sound reasoning to me - first one would need to demonstrate there is such a thing as a &quot;speed&quot; of evolution, and then that humans are &quot;rapid&quot; in some form, and finally that the cancer is somewhat related to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, people are also skeptical in the comments, for example I read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The type of group selection advanced by  V. C. Wynne-Edwards and discussed above was discredited decades ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the facts here? Is he passing random speculation and just-so stories as facts? Is the journalist &quot;misinterpreting&quot;? Or he's got valid published studies behind his assertions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:47:06.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:47:06.730" Title="Is cancer a trade off to enable faster evolution?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|evolution|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15727" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19004" CreationDate="2013-04-08T03:16:37.113" Score="6" ViewCount="908" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent paper entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=28599&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elevated airborne beta levels in Pacific/West Coast US States and trends in hypothyroidism among newborns after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown&lt;/a&gt; has been published and the abstract says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The number of congenital hypothyroid cases in these five states from March 17-December 31, 2011 was 16% greater than for the same period in 2010, compared to a 3% decline in 36 other US States (p &amp;lt; 0.03). The greatest divergence in these two groups (+28%) occurred in the period March 17-June 30 (p &amp;lt; 0.04).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study is the basis for &lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/usa/fukushima-us-children-thyroid-291/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims in the media&lt;/a&gt; such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers have discovered that &lt;em&gt;the Fukushima nuclear disaster has had far-reaching health effects&lt;/em&gt; more drastic than previously thought: young children born on the US West Coast are 28 percent more likely to develop congenital hyperthyroidism. [Emphasis mine]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could argue that the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5205/is-the-fukushima-disaster-causing-an-increase-in-infant-mortality-on-the-west-co&quot;&gt;authors have form for dodgy data&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2919/experiences-with-scientific-research-publishing-scirp-journals&quot;&gt;publisher is of low quality&lt;/a&gt;, and that it doesn't pass my sniff test, namely that if there was such an effect in the US, we'd surely be seeing a massive amount of abnormalities in Tohoku and Tokyo, but I'd like to get an answer more grounded in facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:58.930" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T07:14:24.937" Title="Did Fukushima cause babies on the US West Coast to be more at risk from hypothyroidism?" Tags="|medical-science|united-states|fukushima-daiichi|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15728" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15729" CreationDate="2013-04-08T04:19:35.593" Score="9" ViewCount="4729" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen the following sort of blurb on a lot of milk products, saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Our pledge: Milk comes from cows not treated with the rBST growth hormone&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they indicate this, does that mean there's some sort of downside with treating a cow with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_somatotropin&quot;&gt;recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST) growth hormones&lt;/a&gt;? Are there any reported instances where non-rBST treated cow's milk are better than rBST treated cow's milk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11227" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-06-18T07:13:49.817" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T07:13:49.817" Title="Is there any difference between milk from rBST treated cows and non-rBST treated cows?" Tags="|nutrition|milk|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15728" CreationDate="2013-04-08T05:00:13.303" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.calsunshine.com/faq.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;calsunshine.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) determined that because rBST is a species-specific growth hormone, milk from rBST treated cows is identical to that of cows not injected with the hormone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit has held in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/10a0322p-06.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Int’l Dairy Foods Ass’n et al. v. Boggs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (pp. 9-10):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A] compositional difference does exist between milk from untreated cows and conventional milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As detailed by the amici parties seeking to strike down&#xA;  the Rule, the use of rbST in milk production has been shown to elevate the levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), a naturally-occurring hormone that in high levels is linked to several types of cancers, among other things&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to these studies, milk produced during this&#xA;  stage is considered to be low quality due to its increased fat content and its decreased level of proteins. The amici further note that milk from treated cows contains higher somatic cell counts, which makes the milk turn sour more quickly and is another indicator of poor milk quality. This evidence precludes us from agreeing with the district court’s conclusion that there is no compositional difference between the two types of milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T05:29:21.490" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T05:29:21.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15730" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15747" CreationDate="2013-04-08T05:26:20.303" Score="1" ViewCount="3512" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this YouTube &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opfi5aRqiuE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt;, viruses are actually man-made nano-technology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author clearly understands biology and the traditional understandings of viruses and the immune system, yet he still claims that viruses are not natural, but products of human technology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I however think that perhaps viruses really are natural.  Are viruses just forms of man-made nano-technology or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T06:46:52.067" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T05:56:17.353" Title="Are viruses man-made nano-technology?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15730" CreationDate="2013-04-08T05:48:18.170" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are artificial (man-made) engineered viruses but, by and large, viruses are natural, pre-dating humans by eons: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-origins-of-viruses-14398218&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Origins of Viruses&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4795" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T06:49:00.963" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T06:49:00.963" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15732" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15743" CreationDate="2013-04-08T06:01:34.650" Score="6" ViewCount="2211" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to several articles, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yowie&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;yowies&lt;/a&gt; (i.e. wild, unidentified, hominids, reputed to live in Australia) have been allegedly observed by many.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/the-truth-is-out-there/story-e6frf92f-1225929427680&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Herald Sun article&lt;/a&gt; about a man in Canberra:  , it is stated &quot;The creature, according to James, was a juvenile covered in hair, with long arms that almost touched the ground&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, it was claimed that a different cameraman in Canberra &lt;a href=&quot;http://rense.com/general3/yowie.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;spotted and filmed&lt;/a&gt; a yowie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical of these two claims, as I would have thought such a yowie, if it existed, would be well known in the community already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these claims true that Yowies exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="3451" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T12:40:22.280" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T07:43:57.403" Title="Are yowies real?" Tags="|zoology|australia|cryptozoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3112" CreationDate="2013-04-08T08:58:57.997" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before the rain begins, one of the first odors you may notice as winds&#xA;  pick up and clouds roll in is a sweet, pungent zing in your nostrils.&#xA;  That's the sharp, fresh aroma of ozone—a form of oxygen whose name&#xA;  comes from the Greek word ozein (to smell). Tropospheric chemist&#xA;  Louisa Emmons at the National Center for Atmospheric Research explains&#xA;  that ozone emanates from fertilizers and pollutants as well as natural&#xA;  sources. An electrical charge—from lightning or a man-made source such&#xA;  as an electrical generator—splits atmospheric nitrogen and oxygen&#xA;  molecules into separate atoms. Some of these recombine into nitric&#xA;  oxide, and this in turn reacts with other atmospheric chemicals,&#xA;  occasionally producing a molecule made up of three oxygen atoms—ozone,&#xA;  or O&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt;. (Most atmospheric oxygen is made up of two atoms—O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;.) The scent&#xA;  of ozone heralds stormy weather because a thunderstorm's downdrafts&#xA;  carry O&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt; from higher altitudes to nose level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=storm-scents-smell-rain&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Storm Scents: It's True, You Can Smell Oncoming Summer Rain&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in Scientific American.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you at that point you won't be &quot;predicting&quot; the rain on the smell alone. A that point most likely you'll see other indications that the storm is coming: big dark cumulonimbus, gusty winds, drop in pressure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note in picture below (storm supercell) warm updraft passes through the storm cell and comes down well in front of it. Also the cold downdraft precedes the rain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sBp1q.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source of the graphic: &lt;a href=&quot;http://tornado.sfsu.edu/geosciences/classes/m302/m302_01_sp04.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Meteorology 302 course, Department of Geosciences, SFSU&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T15:50:36.110" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T15:50:36.110" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15734" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23878" CreationDate="2013-04-08T09:36:08.230" Score="10" ViewCount="4174" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Facebook friend was concerned by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.resultsforlifeproject.com/is-your-belly-button-piercing-making-you-fat/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don’t get pierced! Body piercings can raise cortisol levels and lead to fat gain, and no site is as susceptible to fat gain as your abs! If you have a navel piercing, remove it and chances are you’ll lose fat in the abdominal area. I’ve seen it numerous times, and anyone who has been to my Biosignature classes has probably had the benefit of witnessing the dramatic drop in belly and total body fat over just five days when attendees remove their navel piercings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The justifications include some pretty abysmal references, relying on acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, but there are are a few sources in there that look legitimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any experimental evidence to suggest that a (typical) body piercing may lead to fat gain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2014-11-24T13:31:21.227" LastActivityDate="2014-11-24T13:31:21.227" Title="Do body piercings lead to fat gain?" Tags="|physiology|obesity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15735" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-08T09:44:52.673" Score="0" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does any one know &quot;Limitless&quot; pill is real? or anyone is conducting research in inventing one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Question is based on a the movie &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitless&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Limitless&lt;/a&gt;&quot; Where the hero will get extream power mentally after having a magic pill. Basically, normal humans will access only 5 or less than 5% of brain and once we consume this pill the hero can able to access 100% of this brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10867" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:45:53.190" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T00:45:53.190" Title="Is &quot;Limitless&quot; pill is for real?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-04-08T10:59:28.760" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15738" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-08T15:43:50.657" Score="10" ViewCount="1930" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Men's Rights organization, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mgtow.com/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Men Going Their Own Way&lt;/em&gt; (MGTOW)&lt;/a&gt; have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mgtow.com/four-levels-of-mgtow/&quot;&gt;claimed&lt;/a&gt; (quoting &lt;a href=&quot;http://theobserverwatches.blogspot.sg/2012/12/the-four-levels-of-mgtow-betas-shrug.html&quot;&gt;The Observer Watches Blog&lt;/a&gt;) that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consumption in the modern world today is driven overwhelmingly by women (80-91%, depending on which economist you ask).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site is obviously biased, and doesn't cite any economist despite making the allusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are women responsible for driving 80% or more of society's consumption?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user10765" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T23:46:44.013" LastActivityDate="2023-05-28T09:09:07.217" Title="Do women drive 80% of consumption?" Tags="|economics|gender|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15738" CreationDate="2013-04-08T17:39:26.673" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim that MGTOW makes is a bit different than the more widely made claim that women &quot;control&quot; 80% of spending. Drive means something different than control, but I'll answer this question based on the widely known claim about women controlling 80% of spending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703521304576278964279316994.html&quot;&gt;Who Makes the Call at the Mall, Men or Women?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (Carl Bialik - Wall Street Journal):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several recent surveys suggest that men have nearly equal say on spending, and that when men and women live together, both participate in spending decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 80% figure is often repeated and is &quot;ubiquitous&quot;, but it lacks a source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many marketing gurus who rely on the 80% figure cite the work of Marti Barletta. [...] Ms. Barletta concedes that she has no specific source for the figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One survey asked women the percentage of household spending they control or influence. The average answer was 73%. When men were asked what percentage of household spending they (men) control or influence, the average answer was 61%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-04-08T17:47:01.260" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T17:47:01.260" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15740" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15758" CreationDate="2013-04-08T18:28:47.477" Score="15" ViewCount="795" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently watched the trailer for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com/&quot;&gt;The Business of Being Born&lt;/a&gt;, which included the following quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The presence of Doulas; using water during labor; these things have been scientifically shown to generate better outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did some looking around, and found some surprising claims about water therapy as pertains to delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whattoexpect.com/pregnancy-and-hydrotherapy.aspx&quot;&gt;Whattoexpect.com&lt;/a&gt; claims that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One reason that water works so well is that floating eases pressure on your spine, helping the pelvis to open. Once you're in the tub (or a special birthing pool, if you're lucky) you no longer need to concentrate on your posture — your body is decompressed, which helps minimize the pain of contractions. Plus, if you give birth underwater, there's less stress on your perineum, even if tearing occurs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://americanpregnancy.org/labornbirth/waterbirth.html&quot;&gt;Other sources repeat the claim about stress on the perineum&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Water causes the perineum to become more elastic and relaxed, reducing the incidence and severity of tearing and the need for an episiotomy and stitches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other specific claims include &quot;increasing the woman's energy&quot;, making it easier to reposition the body due to the buoyancy, improved blood circulation, more effective uterine contractions, lower incidents of high blood pressure due to anxiety, and a reduction in stress-related hormones, allowing the mother’s body to produce endorphins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there measurable benefits backed by scientific research for water therapy (anything ranging from showers or sponge baths to full immersion)?  Are any of the above claims, particularly a reduction in perineum tearing or episiotomy rates, backed by research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastActivityDate="2020-09-17T05:20:16.417" Title="Does water therapy provide measurable benefits to childbirth?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|water|pregnancy|birth|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15732" CreationDate="2013-04-08T23:37:35.227" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Probably not&lt;/strong&gt;, but also likely unfalsifiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As your second source states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A researcher, says it is the most conclusive evidence to date that a Bigfoot creature may be roaming the Australian wilderness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Wikipedia article states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As is the case with the North American Sasquatch, many people discount the existence of the Yowie considering it more likely to be a combination of misidentification, folklore and hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in fact the same story as with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sasquatch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bigfoot&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeti&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yeti&lt;/a&gt;, only even less plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before we start, it must be noted that like any other mythical creature we can't prove a negative. Meaning we can't prove that there is a 100% certainty that this creature doesn't exist. We can just say that it is extremely improbable for such a creature to exist and that in order to prove that there is such a creature irrefutable proofs are needed. For example, a alive specimen, or at least a tissue that can't be checked to not come from any other animal known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Why is the Yowie is even less probable than the Yeti or Bigfoot?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because there is generally no &quot;evidence&quot; whatever to collaborate their existence. Bigfoot advocates at least have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterson-Gimlin_film&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;low quality movies&lt;/a&gt; that suppose to depict it, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bigfoot-lives.com/html/bigfoot_footprints.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;foot prints&lt;/a&gt;. The Yeti has supposed tissue remains (whose DNA wasn't checked) and other evidence. All the Yowie has as proof is eye witness accounts as no bones, food, droppings, living places or even blurry pictures are generally found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Carl Sagan said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but here we have no evidence at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Why Australia is the less likely place for an undiscovered ape or ape-like creature to exist?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because Australia is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/funny-163-australia/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a giant death trap&lt;/a&gt;. It's a giant desert with almost no sources of water, and even if you come with enough supplies, almost every animal that you'll come across will try to kill you and probably succeed. It didn't get the title &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badassoftheweek.com/australia.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Badass of the Week&lt;/a&gt; for nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted, that a previously unknown specie of apes have already been discovered, namely the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gorilla&lt;/a&gt;, that wasn't discovered by the western world until the middle of the 19th century. The difference is that they lived in an area that was hard to reach, lush jungles and mountains, but hospitable for life, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Australia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Australia&lt;/a&gt; is the complete opposite, it's mostly a desert which means that most of Australia doesn't have lush vegetation but is comparable easily traversable when using modern technology, so the number of unexplored places in Australia is much smaller than, the amazonian Jungles, or the Jungles of nearby  Papua New Guinea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*-As noted in the comments, Australia is a very harsh living environment for Humans and Apes, but sustains thriving ecosystems of animals of different types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FyfeQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Australia will kill you&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-01-15T07:43:57.403" LastActivityDate="2019-01-15T07:43:57.403" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15728" CreationDate="2013-04-08T23:49:46.713" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;There are differences, but none which ought to have or have been shown to have a meaningful impact on health.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relatively current research indicates that fatty acid composition &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20412905&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;varies a small amount&lt;/a&gt; between cows treated with rBST and those that are not (and note that this study was on produced milk, so other practices that correlate with rBST usage may actually be causal).  The differences are of a few percentage points at most, and are quite unlikely to be significant factors in health.  A broader look at various compounds found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18589029&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;very little difference&lt;/a&gt; in practice between the composition of milk (on average) from sources that used rBST and those that did not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, most of the rBST itself that made it into the milk &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20579488&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;is destroyed during pasteurization&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is tentatively &quot;yes there are detectable differences, but not any that ought to impact health&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note however that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14620861&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rBST causes health complications in cows&lt;/a&gt;.  So you might want to avoid rBST milk because you prefer not to obtain milk from cows that are even less comfortable than normal, but it is probably not rational to avoid it for health reasons unless you habitually alter behavior to avoid even low-risk events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1039" LastActivityDate="2013-04-08T23:49:46.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16515" CreationDate="2013-04-09T03:33:00.473" Score="10" ViewCount="7657" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my friends recently told me he previously had lazy eye. He said the way he cured it was to cover his good eye with an eyepatch for about a week; this caused his other eye's muscles to strengthen by necessity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also told me that his correction decreased slightly from the experience, because his eye had to compensate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found sources like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Use-an-Eye-Patch-to-Improve-Night-Vision&quot;&gt;these&lt;/a&gt;, though that effect seems temporary at best. &lt;a href=&quot;http://videogameseizures.wordpress.com/2011/09/03/one-eye-at-a-time-prevent-seizures-with-an-eye-patch/&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; seems more like pseudoscience, and I don't consider it reputable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any definitive evidence for or against this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13259" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-06-04T17:42:30.563" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T17:59:08.087" Title="Does covering one eye for an extended period of time increase the other eye's function?" Tags="|medical-science|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15725" CreationDate="2013-04-09T04:20:01.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This whole interview conveys some very strange ideas about evolution. So while I am not able to answer the question directly, I'll hope to make clear why the presented argument is on shaky grounds and hence one does not need to accept Austin's conclusion because of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's begin with Robin Austin defining what cancer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have two answers. One is it may be due to a fundamental, general instability in any&#xA;  system which has mutations going on where you’re reproducing yourself.&#xA;  There’s a fundamental danger there. It’s the risk that the system is&#xA;  willing to accept in order to evolve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A system is not willing to &quot;accept&quot; anything in order to do anything, let alone &quot;to evolve&quot;. There is no need for livings being to evolve, no goal to be achieved. All we know is that they do, hence the variations of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's true that due to the imperfect replicating process errors can lead to sicknesses, yet a necessity for such a system to be prone to cancer does not follow. There are multiple different genetic defects, why should cancer be special and intrinsic to the process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Austin continues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It may also be plan B in the sense that we’re supposed to age and die.&#xA;  It’s very important that we die. If you take good care of yourself so&#xA;  the normal ways of death don’t happen, the system will go ahead and&#xA;  turn something else on to make sure that individual ceases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are not supposed to do anything. Living beings simply are. We humans tend to search for meaning where there is none to be found and this seems to be one example of that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's neither important nor unimportant that we die. Importance is quite a strange concept to apply here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Living beings are until they die. If they procreate before death, then their offsprings simply are, too. And what stays around, stays around. No need to die, unless you assume that evolution must happen, and that there never could occur a constant state, like a planet only being inhabited by one big immortal plant covering its entire surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no evolutionary pressure that forces livings beings to gain immortality, but that doesn't mean the individual must die within a certain time frame. (In fact, Turritopsos Nutricula might as well have evolved into something that can be deemed de-facto immortal.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to say that cancer is our body's mean to ensure that we die because we must die does not follow. It sounds like an ad-hoc rationalization to make sense out of a (meaningless) sickness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like saying we were supposed to die of bacteria. And by that logic, the invention of antibiotics would have been a bad thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, we eliminated a lot of other threats which would have killed us in the past, so there isn't much left to kill us. One remaining candidate happens to be cancer. And car accidents. And smoking. Would anybody claim that driving a car and smoking would be &quot;the system's&quot; means to ensure that we die someday?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TS: So, cancer is a way of killing off individuals to support survival&#xA;  of the species, like programmed cell death kills off certain cells&#xA;  within the body to support survival of the organism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RA: Yeah, it’s apoptosis on a large scale. That’s why the immune&#xA;  system gives it a pass. In fact, the body might even fight your&#xA;  attempts to reverse the process, because it actually wants it to&#xA;  happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evolution does not work on the species scale. Quite frankly, the individuals of the same species are their own worst enemies as they primarily compete against each other for living space, food, and mating partners. Think about a lion killing the cubs of a lonesome lioness. If evolution would favor the species, how would that have evolved? If we only look on the individual case instead, there would be no paradox.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the individual is the agent in evolution (or more precise, as Dawkins famously argued, the selfish gene. Yet genes do not occur lonesome on this planet anymore).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Natural selection determines if the individual is fit enough to procreate in a given environment. Each living being has to procreate for their genes to &quot;live on&quot; or where that is not possible, (e.g. a working bee), ensure its closest relatives to live on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TS: Are you saying that cancer is ultimately good for us?&#xA;  RA: Yeah, on a species level. We all know that to evolve, we must have mutations. Cancer is more prevalent in humans, because that is the mechanism driving our rapid evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To say cancer is good for us on a species level is as valid as to say &quot;the wolf that caught a slower deer is helping the deers as a species&quot;. By that logic, the caught deer must be thankful for being caught and eaten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet the wolf has no intent of helping the deers as a species. It needs food to survive and does so by hunting. It happens that while hunting the wolf most likely will only catch slow and sick animals, while the others more often will escape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same with the cancer. It most likely &quot;wants&quot; nothing. It simply occurs due to &quot;defective&quot; genetics. Would anyone shout at the diagnosis of cancer: &quot;Oh joy, I have cancer. My body wants to kill me to enhance the human species. How nice of my body!&quot; I do not think so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The damning thing about cancer is that there is no evolutionary pressure against it, as we develop its fatal symptoms mostly in our adulthood and it kills its host in relative old age long after it most likely has reproduced. (Or to say it differently: We humans did not evolve a resistance against cancer for the same reasons dinosaurs did not evolve resistance against big comets hitting the earth.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is cancer a trade-off to allow for faster mutations? I do not know. Yet it is just as well conceivable that cancer occurs because of harmful mutations without any benefit from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(That isn't to say that there aren't some mutations that hinder old age, yet can be deemed beneficial in the sense that they allow humans to live long enough to procreate in the first place, like sickle cell anemia that lowers the risk of Malaria.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5296" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T04:20:01.000" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15730" CreationDate="2013-04-09T04:24:19.433" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The tobacco mosaic virus was discovered in 1898. That was long before nano-technology was even imagined. Also, as we still do not have any real nano-tech capability, I doubt very much that anyone could have done it then. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know the closest we have come to creating artificial life is the bacterium that Craig Venter's team created. They took a &lt;em&gt;Mycoplasma mycoides&lt;/em&gt; cell, removed its DNA and then inserted an artificially built DNA and let the cell reproduce again. The DNA was essentially the same as the bacterium's, but with some minor changes, including a &quot;watermark&quot; to prove that the reproducing DNA was indeed the artificial one. Note that it still needed the rest of the cell to work. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jcvi.org/cms/research/projects/first-self-replicating-synthetic-bacterial-cell/overview/?chocaid=397&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; shows more details and also mentioned that the first artificial virus was created in 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T04:24:19.433" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15748" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-09T05:58:49.197" Score="8" ViewCount="383" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/29/world/meast/vice-gaza/&quot;&gt;CNN VICE documentary&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We visited Gaza's central prison, where drug users and drug smugglers alike are locked in a communal cell, their sentences ranging anywhere from one month, to &lt;em&gt;death by hanging.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/world/middleeast/hamas-executes-3-palestinians-in-gaza.html?_r=0&quot;&gt;The New York Times&lt;/a&gt; goes on to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Palestinian law allows for the death penalty for people convicted of collaboration with Israel, murder or drug trafficking.&lt;/strong&gt; Execution orders are supposed to be approved by the president of the Palestinian Authority, but Hamas does not recognize Mr. Abbas’s presidency and did not seek his approval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Hamas execute drug users? Just traffickers? And, are there any examples of this law being enforced? Is it routine to execute people for drug offenses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-08-30T11:59:41.083" LastActivityDate="2014-08-30T11:59:41.083" Title="Does Hamas execute drug offenders?" Tags="|law-enforcement|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2014-08-30T13:50:57.690" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15753" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15766" CreationDate="2013-04-09T16:10:56.737" Score="11" ViewCount="3272" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the claims repeated very often lately is that North Korea has largest special forces in the World (such a claim can be found for example in &lt;a href=&quot;http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/pdf/CS_North-Korea.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;North Korea &#xA;a country study&quot; by Federal Research Division, Library of Congress)&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I have little doubt that they have a lot of soldiers that they call &quot;special forces&quot; (180,000 man strong NKSOF - North Korean Special Operation Force), my doubt is, do they have a lot of (if any) units, which would be called special forces by modern western standards? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clarification: I mean units, would have similar level of training, armament and operational capabilities as their special ops counterparts in countries they consider enemies (South Korea, USA, Japan), rather than self-proclaimed &quot;special forces&quot;. Particularly by level of training, I mean combat training, not ability to break cement blocks with bare hands. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-13T00:07:44.043" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T19:46:54.983" Title="Does North Korea have largest special forces in the World?" Tags="|military|north-korea|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4771" CreationDate="2013-04-09T16:49:04.503" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It cannot be done safely, or with more than limited success. Your results may vary.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, we need to understand how batteries work. Two chemicals with opposite charges are separated in a cell. When a circuit is completed from the cathode (+) to the anode (-), electromagnetism happens and the two chemicals react with each other, releasing electricity, until they are in equilibrium and the battery is dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to recharge a battery, an opposite electric charge needs to be applied to the battery in attempt to reverse the reaction and restore the two chemicals to their original state. However, this is not possible with all materials. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-do-rechargeable-that&quot;&gt;The professor&lt;/a&gt; states that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;nonrechargeable, or primary, batteries can be based on irreversible chemical changes. For example, the carbon-fluoride-lithium primary batteries often used in cameras generate energy by converting (CF)n and Li metal to carbon and LiF. But the starting material at the battery's cathode, (CF)n, is not reformed when a reverse potential is applied. Instead the cell electrolyte decomposes, and eventually the fluoride is oxidized to form fluorine gas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The professor goes on to say that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A reversible chemical change is not the only requirement for rechargeable batteries, however. To be classified as rechargeable, the battery must be able to undergo the reverse reaction &lt;strong&gt;efficiently&lt;/strong&gt;, so that hundreds or even thousands of recharging cycles are possible. In addition, there must often be provisions to ensure that the recharging process can occur &lt;strong&gt;safely&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reference to alkaline batteries specifically...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The alkaline batteries (which are generally based on the conversion of MnO2 and Zn to Mn3O4 and ZnO) offer an excellent example of this last point. Although the chemical changes at the electrodes can be reversed, until recently alkaline batteries were manufactured only to function as primary cells. Recharging one of these primary cells could allow the battery to be reused, but the possible number of recharging cycles for such a cell is very limited--it performs more poorly with each recharge. More important, recharging an old-fashioned alkaline battery is not safe. During or after a recharge, the battery might generate enough hydrogen gas to cause an explosion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why there are so few products available on the market, and why the ones that &lt;a href=&quot;http://the-gadgeteer.com/2005/09/14/battery_xtender_alkaline_battery_recharger/&quot;&gt;do exist&lt;/a&gt; often get poor ratings due to battery leakage (see the comments). While the chemical reaction can technically be reversed, the basic construction of a cheap, single-use battery does not provide for handling of any hydrogen buildup (which causes leaks) or protection against the degradation of the cell's contents (which limits their rechargeability).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7040" LastEditorDisplayName="user13387" LastEditDate="2013-04-15T06:13:53.073" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T06:13:53.073" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15740" CreationDate="2013-04-09T17:30:22.260" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There does seem to be quite a bit of information regarding water birth online. My mother happens to be a midwife practicing home/birth-center birth and uses tubs in both locations. A cursory search across Google found the following:  Immersion in Water During Labour and Birth &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rcog.org.uk/womens-health/clinical-guidance/immersion-water-during-labour-and-birth&quot;&gt;(Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists/Royal College of Midwives Joint Statement No. 1)&lt;/a&gt; (U.K.) Specifically #5 under 'Labouring in water':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5.) Most of the available evidence, both randomised and observational,&#xA;  is restricted to healthy women with uncomplicated pregnancy at term,&#xA;  although induction of labour and previous caesarean section have been&#xA;  managed using water for labour and birth without reported problems. A&#xA;  randomised trial by Cluett et al. on women with prolonged labour&#xA;  found reduction in obstetric intervention following immersion in water&#xA;  but a higher number of babies who needed admission to the neonatal&#xA;  unit. Although there is clearly a need for more research, the&#xA;  currently available evidence does not justify discouraging women from&#xA;  choosing immersion in water during labour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, according to a U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health publication: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22884894&quot;&gt;Maternal and perinatal outcomes amongst low risk women giving birth in water compared to six birth positions on land. A descriptive cross sectional study in a birth centre over 12 years.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The aim of this study was to determine rates of perineal trauma,&#xA;  postpartum haemorrhage and five-minute Apgar scores amongst low risk&#xA;  women in a birth centre who gave birth in water compared to six birth&#xA;  positions on land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[...]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FINDINGS: waterbirth (13%) and six main birth positions on land were&#xA;  identified: kneeling/all fours (48%), semi-recumbent (12%), lateral&#xA;  (5%), standing (8%), birth stool (10%) and squatting (3%). Compared to&#xA;  waterbirth, birth on a birth stool led to a higher rate of major&#xA;  perineal trauma (second, third, fourth degree tear and episiotomy) (OR&#xA;  1.40 [1.12-1.75]) and postpartum haemorrhage (OR 2.04 [1.44-2.90]). Compared to waterbirth, babies born in a semi-recumbent position had a&#xA;  significantly greater incidence of five-minute Apgar scores &amp;lt;7 (OR&#xA;  4.61 [1.29-16.52]).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSIONS: waterbirth does not lead to more infants born with Apgar&#xA;  score &amp;lt;7 at 5mins when compared to other birth positions. Waterbirth&#xA;  provides advantages over the birth stool for maternal outcomes of&#xA;  major perineal trauma and postpartum haemorrhage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your questions: &#xA;1. Are there measurable benefits backed by scientific research for water therapy (anything ranging from showers or sponge baths to full immersion)? - I would say that there is. According to the first source there is evidence that labouring in water can provide some of the benefits you mention.&#xA;2. Are any of the above claims, particularly a reduction in perineum tearing or episiotomy rates, backed by research? - It would appear that the issue is becoming more studied and that there are some positive indications that Water Birth can provide lower risk of perineal trauma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13231" LastActivityDate="2013-04-09T17:30:22.260" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15740" CreationDate="2013-04-10T02:11:11.087" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Cochrane Collaboration very recently a systematic review on the subject, where they look at all of the published evidence, weigh it up and explain what it says. (I don't believe in appeals to authority, but the Cochrane Collaboration make me think twice about my position...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cluett ER, Burns E. &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD000111/immersion-in-water-in-labour-and-birth&quot;&gt;Immersion in water in labour and birth.&lt;/a&gt; Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2009, Issue 2. Art. No.: CD000111. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD000111.pub3&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review looked at 12 different studies, involving over 3000 women. While that was insufficient for robust conclusions in all areas, they found that water immersion in the first stage of labour:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Positive effects :&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a significant reduction in the epidural/spinal/paracervical analgesia/anaesthesia rate &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a reduction in duration of the first stage of labour by about 30 minutes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;No Difference&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assisted vaginal deliveries &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;caesarean sections&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use of oxytocin infusion &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;perineal trauma &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;maternal infection&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apgar score less than seven at five minutes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;neonatal unit admissions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;neonatal infection rates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They reached more limited conclusions (e.g. higher levels of satisfaction) about water immersion in the second stage of labour, and found no studies about the third stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence suggests that water immersion during the first stage of labour reduces the use of epidural/spinal analgesia and duration of the first stage of labour. There is limited information for other outcomes related to water use during the first and second stages of labour, due to intervention and outcome variability. There is no evidence of increased adverse effects to the fetus/neonate or woman from labouring in water or waterbirth. However, the studies are very variable and considerable heterogeneity was detected for some outcomes. Further research is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I went into this with a particular expectation, and was happy to see it overturned by the evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T08:27:17.963" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T08:27:17.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15759" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15765" CreationDate="2013-04-10T03:13:56.500" Score="6" ViewCount="487" Body="&lt;p&gt;Last week I stumbled upon an article which stated that vaccination from polio is totally unnecessary for infants in first world countries. The article cited a bunch of questionable sources like mercola.com, but also had some references to information provided by WHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I decided to check what WHO says about it. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/topics/poliomyelitis/en/&quot;&gt;WHO page about polio&lt;/a&gt; has a link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.polioeradication.org/Dataandmonitoring/Poliothisweek.aspx&quot;&gt;Data and statistics&lt;/a&gt;, which states, that in past couple of years there have been very few cases of polio (100-200 cases a year - all of them in Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I wonder: are claims, that vaccination from polio is not necessary, reasonable?&#xA;It looks like they are fighting a disease that's almost non existent (as opposed to influenza for example, of which there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza#Epidemic_and_pandemic_spread&quot;&gt;3 to 5 million cases of serious illness&lt;/a&gt; each year).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10376" LastEditorUserId="10376" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T21:24:45.763" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T21:24:45.763" Title="Is vaccination from polio necessary in first world countries?" Tags="|children|vaccines|disease|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15762" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-10T03:24:33.710" Score="10" ViewCount="3559" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-20/golf-world-mourns-kim-jong-il/3739452&quot;&gt;http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-20/golf-world-mourns-kim-jong-il/3739452&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kim Jong-il scored 11 holes in one in golf in 1994, when he first&#xA;  picked up a golf club.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Reports hailed Kim's 38-under par 34 over 18 holes at the 7,700-yard&#xA;  (7,041m) Pyongyang Golf Course in his first try at golf, a feat&#xA;  watched purportedly by 17 security guards protecting the man hailed as&#xA;  'Dear Leader'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kim, who died on Saturday of a heart attack at age 69, was 52 at the&#xA;  time he purportedly fired a round where birdie was his worst score on&#xA;  any hole.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true?  It is hard to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="2240" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T05:42:24.670" LastActivityDate="2018-07-20T16:30:05.323" Title="Did Kim Jong-il Score 11 holes in one in golf?" Tags="|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15764" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="33195" CreationDate="2013-04-10T07:12:49.923" Score="7" ViewCount="666" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a press release &lt;a href=&quot;http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-technology/china%E2%80%99s-pilot-carbon-trading-market-taps-unsw-expertise&quot;&gt;China’s pilot carbon trading market taps UNSW expertise&lt;/a&gt; (press release is by the UNSW, which is my employer)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Minister Combet highlighted the benefits to date of Australia’s carbon&#xA;  price, including an 8.6 per cent drop in demand for electricity in the&#xA;  first six months of operation and increased investment in renewable&#xA;  energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm slightly doubtful that a price on carbon is primarily responsible for reducing demand for electricity by that extent in just six months. I would have thought that electricity usage was something that most Australians would have thought about even before the introduction of a price on carbon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Climate change has been a major point of discussion in the more &quot;upmarket&quot; media, and rising electricity prices has been a major topic in the more &quot;tabloid&quot; media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has electricity demand dropped by 8.6 percent in six months in Australia? And is that drop largely attributable to the introduction of a price of carbon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For the purposes of this question, &quot;a price on carbon&quot; should be treated as prices specifically designed to prevent the production of greenhouse gases, as opposed to the market price of fossil fuels)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2016-06-06T01:56:29.533" Title="Has a carbon price lead to a 8.6 percent drop in electricity demand in Australia?" Tags="|economics|energy|australia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15759" CreationDate="2013-04-10T09:55:40.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt; due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.immunizationinfo.org/issues/general/community-immunity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;community immunity&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unimmunized persons are protected—indirectly—against some infectious&#xA;  diseases by being surrounded by immunized persons. This is known as&#xA;  community (or “herd”) immunity.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.immunizationinfo.org/issues/general/community-immunity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a 'community immunity' where the more people have the vaccine, the harder it is for the disease to spread.   Conversely, vaccines have a rate of effectiveness - they don't work perfectly 100% of the time; between that and people with compromised immune systems, even if most people get the vaccine, there is always a small segment of the community that is vulnerable.   So, people who choose not to get the vaccine put themselves and the whole community at risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reason why it's important with community immunity, is that no vaccine is 100% working, so on top of the vaccine preventing the disease, the community need to be as clean as possible from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reaching the thresholds for these diseases is important for the public&#xA;  health because no vaccine is 100% effective. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.immunizationinfo.org/issues/general/community-immunity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One small note though, as far as I know the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/12/how-dangerous-is-thiomersal-thimerosal&quot;&gt;'anti-vax'&lt;/a&gt; movement is not particularly a religious thing, although they are clearly unscientific. They are also not limited to the US (there are similar groups in the UK, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also, separately, religious groups (i.e. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_science&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Christian Scientists&lt;/a&gt;) who object to most/all medicine on religious grounds, without denying any of the science involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13321" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T12:57:52.900" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15753" CreationDate="2013-04-10T14:22:31.317" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe&lt;/strong&gt; with major caveats that mean that the answer could be &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it is important to define exactly what we mean when we refer to special forces since the first thing that most people will think of is a well known organization such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_SEALs&quot;&gt;US Navy SEALs&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Forces_%28United_States_Army%29&quot;&gt;US Army Special Forces&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Air_Service&quot;&gt;British Special Air Service&lt;/a&gt;. However, in a much more &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_forces&quot;&gt;general sense&lt;/a&gt; they are a part of the military that are trained to conduct unconventional or high-risk missions (i.e. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_operations&quot;&gt;special operations&lt;/a&gt;) related to reconnaissance, offensive action, sabotage and demolition, and so forth.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; So from this stand point if the North Korea Special Operation Force (NKSOF) is being trained to perform those missions and the remainder of the North Korean military is not, then in a broad sense we could at least consider them to be special forces due to their intended operational capacities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, we must also remember that North Korea is an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kn.html&quot;&gt;extremely secretive state&lt;/a&gt; and is known to publish &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/27/north-korea-marine-landing-photoshop_n_2963348.html&quot;&gt;falsified information&lt;/a&gt; for apparent propaganda purposes so anything from them must be verified by third parties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this in mind it does appear that the claims of 180,000 do not appear to be overly inflated since &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2010/12/31/2010123100850.html&quot;&gt;most&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/spf.htm&quot;&gt;estimates&lt;/a&gt; are in line with that number and historical data has been showing that the forces were trending in that direction. This means that &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; they likely do have the largest special forces in the world since the US military (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel&quot;&gt;second largest standing army&lt;/a&gt;) has about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS21048.pdf&quot;&gt;67,000 personnel&lt;/a&gt; &lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; while China's (first largest standing army) is estimated to have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Liberation_Army_Special_Operations_Forces&quot;&gt;between 7,000 - 14,000&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the second aspect of this question with regards to capacity, quite simply the answer is &lt;strong&gt;unknown&lt;/strong&gt; due to lack of data. While there are reports of North Korean forces that are likely NKSOF &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-dossiers/north-korean-dossier/north-koreas-weapons-programmes-a-net-asses/the-conventional-military-balance-on-the-kore/&quot;&gt;harassing the South Korean borders&lt;/a&gt;, their actual capabilities have not been tested in a manner that would allow for an easy comparison to other forces. In short, even though the North Korean intent might be to train the NKSOF to engage in special operations, their actual capacity to do so might in fact be deficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is one of the first points at which this answer can go either way. If the full scope of missions that are done by an organization such as the SEALs where applied to the NKSOF then the answer would likely be no since they don't appear to be engaged in training and development of other state's military and special forces.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The actual number of personnel that are engaged in operations might actually be lower since this number appears to also include support personnel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T14:22:31.317" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15767" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-10T16:47:52.163" Score="4" ViewCount="419" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently saw &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ihealthtube.com/aspx/viewvideo.aspx?v=97f4bd533d084ad0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; featuring Robert Scott Bell, where he basically says that the flu shot is not terribly effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under the video is this description, in part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reports in 2013 state that flu shots were only 9% effective for the elderly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;9% sounds dismal. Is that actually the case? Do the reports show that in early 2013 the flu shot was only 9% effective in the elderly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2013-04-10T18:40:52.770" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T19:50:25.727" Title="Were flu vaccines 9% effective for the elderly in 2013?" Tags="|vaccines|flu|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15768" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15769" CreationDate="2013-04-10T17:02:55.043" Score="5" ViewCount="394" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was watching &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ihealthtube.com/aspx/viewvideo.aspx?v=97f4bd533d084ad0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; featuring Robert Scott Bell. It is about the flu vaccine being ineffective, but he makes this quick statement about the human papillomavirus (HPV):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If we can't vaccinate you for the flu how about we vaccinate you for the human papillomavirus that we claim causes cervical cancer 20 or 30 years down the road, which is also another &lt;em&gt;lie&lt;/em&gt;: It's an official story there to protect the official profits of Big Pharma. [Transcribed by me starting at 40 seconds in]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He seems to be claiming that the HPV does not cause cervical cancer at all. He calls it a &lt;em&gt;lie&lt;/em&gt;. What are the studies that show the HPV does cause cervical cancer? Are they &lt;em&gt;lies&lt;/em&gt;, inflated or exaggerated or are they credible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;I was thinking that it is possible that he was saying that the vaccine for HPV is ineffective but I don't think so.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T17:26:15.190" Title="Does the HPV cause cervical cancer?" Tags="|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15768" CreationDate="2013-04-10T17:26:15.190" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this paper: &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291096-9896%28199909%29189:1%3C12::AID-PATH431%3E3.0.CO;2-F/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Human papillomavirus is a necessary cause of invasive cervical cancer worldwide&lt;/a&gt; the authors analysed samples which had previously tested negative for HPV with more advanced methods and found them positive, raising the rate (of HPV in cervical cancers) from 93% to 99.7%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They state in the abstract that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combining the data from this and the previous study and excluding inadequate specimens, the worldwide HPV prevalence in cervical carcinomas is 99·7 per cent.&lt;strong&gt;The presence of HPV in virtually all cervical cancers&lt;/strong&gt; implies the highest worldwide attributable fraction so far reported for a specific cause of any major human cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that nearly all cervical cancer cells contain HPV DNA. I don't know if any studies have been done to infect animals with an HPV equivalent to see if they develop cervical cancer. But a correlation of 100% is pretty compelling evidence by itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T17:26:15.190" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15767" CreationDate="2013-04-10T18:29:25.573" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is that actually the case?&lt;/em&gt; : Maybe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do the reports show that in early 2013 the flu shot was only 9% effective in the elderly?&lt;/em&gt; : No&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be the case that the flu shot's effectiveness was only 9% in the elderly, but the analysis that the CDC does isn't able to support a statement as strong as &amp;quot;the flu shot's effectiveness in group X is Y%&amp;quot;. They can only give  ranges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; true is that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu-season-2012-2013.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC's point estimate for the flu vaccine effectiveness against the 2013 flu A (H3N2)&lt;/a&gt; in people aged 65 or older is 9%, with a 95% confidence interval that spans from -84% to 55%. They suggest interpreting these results with caution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In more general terms, the CDC says the following things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CDC's vaccine effectiveness study measured lower vaccine effectiveness among people 65 and older against flu A this season than it did among other age groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One possible explanation for this is that some older people did not mount an effective immune response to the flu A (H3N2) component of this season’s vaccine; however, it’s not possible to say this for certain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Against flu B, effectiveness in the 65 and older age group was found to be similar to that in other age groups: 67% with a 95% confidence interval that spans from 51% to 78%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-10T19:50:25.727" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15771" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-10T19:16:57.467" Score="18" ViewCount="1750" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rape survivor Amanda Collins spoke during a legislative hearing concerning Colorado’s proposed ban on concealed firearms on college campuses. She explained how she wished she would’ve had a firearm to defend herself from her rapist, which could have possibly prevented the attack from occurring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/03/05/colorado-dem-to-rape-survivor-a-gun-wouldnt-have-helped-you-against-rapist-because-statistics-are-not-on-your-side/&quot;&gt;Sen. Evie Hudak&lt;/a&gt; claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“actually, statistics are not on your side, even if you had a gun. you said that you were a martial arts student, I mean person, experienced in Tae Kwon Do, and yet because this individual was so large, was able to overcome you even with your skills, and &lt;strong&gt;chances are that if you had had a gun, then he would have been able to get that from you&lt;/strong&gt; and possibly use it against you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnbvr9dcs4Y&quot;&gt;Hudak video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are her statistics reliable? They do not appear to be part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/hvfsdaft.txt&quot;&gt;FBI Uniform Crime Statistics&lt;/a&gt;, but may be from the Colorado Coalition Against Gun Violence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While she doesn't define what she means by &quot;you&quot; (all people/women/CCW carriers/attempted violent crime victims/etc.), but are there any sets of individuals for which it is true that having a handgun increases your chances of being injured by their attacker rather than if they didn't have a handgun?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-04-12T01:44:56.620" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T05:57:20.857" Title="If attacked, does having a handgun increase your chance of injury?" Tags="|united-states|guns|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15773" CreationDate="2013-04-10T19:44:43.977" Score="14" ViewCount="398" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&amp;amp;gl=uk&amp;amp;tbm=nws&amp;amp;q=bitcoin%20cyprus&quot;&gt;numerous stories&lt;/a&gt; out there linking the rise in bitcoin prices seen in the last few weeks with events in Cyprus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://betabeat.com/2013/04/the-cyprus-bitcoin-bubble-is-getting-ridiculous/&quot;&gt;Some stories&lt;/a&gt; go as far as claiming that Cypriots are buying the things themselves as an &quot;alternative store of value&quot; e.g:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Looking for a way to transfer their finances into something more&#xA;  stable, Cypriots have flooded the Bitcoin market, dumping millions of&#xA;  Euros into the fledgling online market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any actual concrete evidence that Cypriots (or I've also seen Greeks and Spaniards mentioned as buyers) are really doing this?  (All I can find is speculation apparently based on the timing of events).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8497" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T15:32:00.430" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T15:32:00.430" Title="Is the recent surge in bitcoin prices driven by Cypriot investors?" Tags="|economics|europe|cyprus|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15772" CreationDate="2013-04-10T19:55:54.077" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aha: In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/boom-of-digital-currency-bitcoin-raises-questions-of-stability-a-893342.html&quot;&gt;Der Spiegel article&lt;/a&gt; I find&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because the current boom began during the Cyprus crisis, there was&#xA;  much speculation that it was primarily anxious Cypriots and Spaniards&#xA;  who were using bitcoin as an inflation-proof, safe-haven currency. Jon&#xA;  Matonis of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://bitcoinfoundation.org/&quot;&gt;Bitcoin Foundation&lt;/a&gt;, which sees itself as an advocacy&#xA;  group for fans of the alternative currency, disagrees. &quot;Most&#xA;  transactions are still coming from affluent regions, like the United&#xA;  States and Northern Europe,&quot; he says. &quot;What we are seeing is not a&#xA;  Cyprus bubble.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in fact Ars had this well covered &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/03/experts-pour-cold-water-on-claim-that-cyprus-crisis-caused-bitcoin-boom/&quot;&gt;in an article a couple of weeks ago&lt;/a&gt; too which concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But there's still no hard evidence to suggest ordinary investors in&#xA;  Spain, Russia, or anywhere else have been driving Bitcoin's recent&#xA;  rise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8497" LastEditorUserId="8497" LastEditDate="2013-04-12T18:47:05.187" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T18:47:05.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15774" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15775" CreationDate="2013-04-10T21:51:44.007" Score="6" ViewCount="479" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just wondering if this claim is true,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OIC8U.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Picture substantiating claim&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Picture reads,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;There are fewer AMERICANS in the labor force today than anytime since 1979!! LIKE and SHARE this if Americans need more OPPORTUNITY!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T11:42:30.543" Title="Are there fewer Americans in the labor force than in 1979?" Tags="|economics|labor|unemployment|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15774" CreationDate="2013-04-10T22:18:52.817" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get historical labor force numbers from here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.bls.gov/webapps/legacy/cpsatab1.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you request the total civilian labor force, not seasonally adjusted, from 1979 to 2013, you get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Highest value from 1979 (July): 107,096,000&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lowest value from 2010 (January): 152,957,000&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lowest value from 2013 (March): 154,512,000&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graph looks like this (y-axis is in 1000s of people):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/45xgI.gif&quot; alt=&quot;(Unadj) Civilian Labor Force Level (in 1000s) age 16 and over&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the claim is from any time later than 1980, it is false. The image is stamped with &quot;Generation Opportunity&quot;, which didn't exist before 2010, so we can assume this is a recent claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one possible shortcoming of this analysis is that the claim says &quot;Americans&quot; but these numbers represent the total US civilian workforce, including non-Americans. However, in 2011, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ois_lpr_pe_2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Department of Homeland Security reported&lt;/a&gt; that there were approximately 13.1 million legal permanent residents (&quot;green card&quot; recipients) living in the United States. Subtracting those 13.1 million non-Americans from the 2010 or 2013 counts, that would still leave more Americans in the labor force today than the total labor force in 1979.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-04-11T00:24:25.497" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T00:24:25.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15278" CreationDate="2013-04-11T01:40:46.420" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As for the unsubstantiate accusations about Chavez accumulation of a fortune of $1 billion, this &quot;information&quot;, increasingly repeated across the internet, comes from a Jerry Brewer who self-describes himself on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lunchinars.ca/author/jerry-brewer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;his CJIA website&lt;/a&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. Brewer is a U.S. Government-trained counterterrorism specialist and senior trainer, with extensive operational activity in Latin America and the Middle East as an intelligence community operative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A credible source indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13333" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-11T02:28:32.787" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T02:28:32.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15779" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15804" CreationDate="2013-04-11T08:07:43.593" Score="3" ViewCount="3260" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amasci.com/miscon/eleca.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Electric misconceptions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a fairly big question, and is divided into three parts. One part is a separate question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site lists several common misconceptions, and what the correct way of things really are, but doesn't list any references. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q1. Is what is written on the site correct?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I quoted in the 7 &quot;main misconceptions&quot; from the site, and also brought another one from it that I found interesting. The quotes are shortened down, to not take up too much space. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;I recommend going to the site and read it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All electric currents are flows of electrons?&lt;/strong&gt; Wrong. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Electric currents are not always flows of electrons, they are flows of any type&#xA;  of electric charge. Both protons and electrons possess exactly the&#xA;  same amount of 'electricity.'&lt;a href=&quot;http://amasci.com/miscon/eleca.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Electricity&quot; is made of electrons, not protons?&lt;/strong&gt; Nope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Charges of &quot;electricity&quot; are carried both by electrons and protons.&lt;a href=&quot;http://amasci.com/miscon/eleca.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Electrons are a kind of energy particle?&lt;/strong&gt; Wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Electrons and protons are matter, not energy.&lt;a href=&quot;http://amasci.com/miscon/eleca.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Electricity&quot; carries zero mass because electrons have little mass?&lt;/strong&gt; No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quantities of &quot;Electricity&quot; (meaning charge) have weight because&#xA;  charge is part of matter particles.&lt;a href=&quot;http://amasci.com/miscon/eleca.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Positive charge is really just a loss of electrons?&lt;/strong&gt; Wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Positive charge is not made of &quot;missing electrons.&quot; Positive charge is&#xA;  a genuine type of charge in its own right.&lt;a href=&quot;http://amasci.com/miscon/eleca.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Positive charge cannot flow?&lt;/strong&gt; Totally wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Electric currents in a metal wire are flows of electrons, but in many&#xA;  other materials both the positive and negative charges can flow.&lt;a href=&quot;http://amasci.com/miscon/eleca.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To create &quot;static&quot; charge, we transfer the electrons?&lt;/strong&gt; Not always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Static&quot; or imbalanced charges can be created by removing electrons&#xA;  from a neutral atom.&lt;a href=&quot;http://amasci.com/miscon/eleca.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;THE &quot;ELECTRICITY&quot; INSIDE OF WIRES MOVES AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT?&lt;/strong&gt; Wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In metals, electric current is a flow of electrons. Many books claim that these electrons flow at the speed of light. This is incorrect. Electrons in an electric current actually flow quite slowly, at speeds on the order of centimeters per minute. &lt;a href=&quot;http://amasci.com/miscon/eleca.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First part of the question is just trustworthiness of the page. Second part is about the teaching. Teaching is tricky, and what the page goes against is teaching misconceptions to kids in school, which then stick till when they are older, and they struggle to learn the right things, because they was taught wrong to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q2. Is teaching misconceptions a bad idea or is it unavoidable?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third part of the question is too big to include here, I will provide a link to its own question.&#xA;The third part is about how spread out the misconcepts are, how commonly they are taught. It's a too big question to have here, so take that part over to that question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q3. &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15855/how-spread-out-are-the-misconceptions-about-electric-theory&quot;&gt;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15855/how-spread-out-are-the-misconceptions-about-electric-theory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit the third part of the question is deleted, it was not very interesting afterall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T10:03:58.087" Title="Misconceptions about electric theory" Tags="|physics|electromagnetism|education|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15779" CreationDate="2013-04-11T08:50:07.713" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the theory commonly taught in school, as untrue as the page claims?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may be slightly fuzzy because it has been many years. However, when I was in school (high school and some electrical engineering) we learned that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;electrical charge was transfer (build-up) of electrons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Protons are part of the atoms and when there are a lack of electrons&#xA;you have a positive charge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Electric current is the flow of electrons and measured in Amperes&#xA;(Coulombs/second).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Electricity can flow through non-metals in different ways like Ions in water&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He almost seems to be saying most of this is wrong. But then goes on to explain that it is not wrong, but there is more to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, from the website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ELECTRICITY IS MADE OF ELECTRONS? Wrong.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Other things flow besides electrons. It's true that electric current in metals is a flow of electrons.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key word in this is &lt;code&gt;*in metals.*&lt;/code&gt; So really, what we are taught in school wasn't incorrect but applies to the electricity we typically use and study, which is circuits consisting of metallic conductors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampere&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on Amperes&lt;/a&gt; (measure of electric current) states the units in electrons per second: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In practical terms, the ampere is a measure of the amount of electric&#xA;  charge passing a point in an electric circuit per unit time with&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;6.241 × 10^18 electrons&lt;/strong&gt;, or one coulomb &lt;strong&gt;per second&lt;/strong&gt; constituting one ampere.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we are taught is not &lt;em&gt;incorrect&lt;/em&gt;, I think it is just &lt;em&gt;incomplete&lt;/em&gt; i.e. oversimplified as you said. You can go into more specialised studies and expand upon the things you learned previously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So to answer your question, from the little I have been reading through the site it seems the site is correct. Just misleading at first, telling everyone they are &quot;wrong&quot;, when really what they were taught is just &quot;oversimplified&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nothing ground-breaking in this site and he almost seems like someone ranting against the education system for not teaching elementary grade children advanced topics of study (high school and university).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My wife teaches grade K/1. Everything is very oversimplified. Teaching them how to measure is basically &quot;Is this bigger than this?&quot; No units or anything... Every step you learn is probably easy to think &quot;this is all there is to it&quot; until you get to the next level... it's human nature to be curious about everything, but also I find human nature to think you know everything about a subject once you learn a little about it. It's not until you really get into it that you find out you know nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11499" LastEditorUserId="11499" LastEditDate="2013-04-11T10:01:23.513" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T10:01:23.513" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15779" CreationDate="2013-04-11T11:05:43.577" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. We are talking here about 5-13 years old kids. The concepts that the source talks about are very sophisticated. When we are talking about little children, a level of simplification is needed. I studied (now finishing) a double degree in Physics, and Electrical Eng. and what I've seen is that even in undergraduate and graduate courses in the university, courses that are intended to Electrical or Software Engineers often simplify the physics involved ,to a degree that wouldn't be in physics courses, for better understanding of the general more important principal. For example, you don't need to learn quantum physics, only to know that an electron can only be in discrete levels in an atom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll touch on the 8 claims that you provide here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the claims that the source makes are plain false. For example, the first and the &quot;static charge&quot; statements. Other statements that the source &quot;falsifies&quot; are right inside a solid materials, and others are right inside metal, since semiconductors, plasma, and Ion currents are quite complicated materials, and that children don't often get to see plasma streams or semiconductors, but most of them associate electricity only with electric wires and maybe simple electric instruments, like light bulbs switches and ovens it's safe to assume that when you talk about electricity to children, even if you don't state so explicitly, you are assuming current inside metal conductors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets look over the statements provided here, and see if they are right. My sources is what I was taught during my physics Bsc. For references you can see the book that was the course book when I studies the basics of Electricity and Magnetism, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0070049084&quot;&gt;Electricity and Magnetism from Berkley&lt;/a&gt;, or you can watch the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/physics/8-02-electricity-and-magnetism-spring-2002/video-lectures/&quot;&gt;course filmed at MIT by Professor Walter Lewin&lt;/a&gt;. Some of the answer include some complex material from more advanced courses or subjects, at the end I'll give a list of the books which were the course books when I took those subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All electric currents are flows of electrons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, they are. There is the concept of positive charge flow, where the charge carriers are holes, however, at the micro level, it is still a flow of electrons, on the opposite side that creates a lack of electrons which &quot;moves&quot;. However this is &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; intro level physics, but taught at solid state courses or semiconductors courses. Just to clarify, holes are positive charge carriers, however, holes are not a real particle, they are a representation of a lack of electrons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: after consulting a physics professor and doing some more research into this, I realize I was wrong here. Here is the fixed version:&#xA;Protons are ionized hydrogen atoms,  Ion conductance is present in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_%28physics%29&quot;&gt;Plasma&lt;/a&gt;, liquids, and can be present in some solids. But this isn't present in metals and wires, or any &quot;classic&quot; electrical appliance. since we assume that we are talking to a 13 years old kid, we don't talk about plasma, neurotransmitters, or semiconductors, so yes, inside a metal wire all electric current is due to the displacement of electrons.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Electricity&quot; is made of electrons, not protons? Nope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Charges of &quot;electricity&quot; are carried both by electrons and protons&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not sure what &quot;Electricity is made of electrons, not protons?&quot; means, because Electricity is a concept, not a real things, just like saying that gravity is made of mass, and relativity is made of light.&#xA;If they mean that both protons and electrons can form electric current, then see previous answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Electrons are a kind of energy particle? Wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Electrons and protons are matter, not energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electrons and protons are matter and not energy, photons are energy particles. However, when we talk to a 13 years old kid about transferring energy from the power station to their home, then saying that the powerstation is providing energy in the form of a current that moves electrons, it's a completely reasonable simplification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Electricity&quot; carries zero mass because electrons have little mass? No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quantities of &quot;Electricity&quot; (meaning charge) have weight because charge is part of matter particles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only thing I have to say is WTF?!, electrons have mass, and so do protons, but charge is a property, it doesn't &quot;carry mass&quot; it's like saying that because things have length and color, then &quot;length carries a color&quot;. There are 2 types of particles that have charge: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepton&quot;&gt;leptons&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron&quot;&gt;electron&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon&quot;&gt;muon&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tau_%28particle%29&quot;&gt;tau&lt;/a&gt;) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark&quot;&gt;quarks&lt;/a&gt;, each of those particles has mass and charge, but charge and mass are properties of the particle, not a particle by itself (protons and neutrons are made of quarks). This is particle physics material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the meaning is that electrons have no mass, then yes, they don't have mass. Electrons have ~10^3 less mass than a proton, for all practical purposes, an electron doesn't contribute any mass to the mass of the atom. Since, again, we are talking with kids, and we don't calculate the mobility of different materials (Solid state physics), or about movement of individual electrons (Quantum Physics), then the approximation that electrons have no mass is good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Positive charge is really just a loss of electrons? Wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Positive charge is not made of &quot;missing electrons.&quot; Positive charge is a genuine type of charge in its own right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True, a proton has a positive charge by itself. However since most subjects in nature come with a neutral charge, then in order to have a positive one you will need to take a way a negative charge (electron) and get an Ionized atom with a positive charge. Since kids are taught what is in nature, and nature doesn't have free positive charge without taking away an electron, again, acceptable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Positive charge cannot flow? Totally wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Electric currents in a metal wire are flows of electrons, but in many other materials both the positive and negative charges can flow&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Positive charged particles, i.e. protons &lt;strong&gt;can't&lt;/strong&gt; flow inside a solid matter, only electrons can, in some instances, we will say that there are &quot;holes&quot; that hold a positive charge and they are flowing inside a material, but holes are but a real particle, only a representation for a lack of electrons, protons don't move from their place inside a solid (they can vibrate in place). See first point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To create &quot;static&quot; charge, we transfer the electrons? Not always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Static&quot; or imbalanced charges can be created by removing electrons from a neutral atom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the first sentence they say &quot;To create &quot;static&quot; charge, we transfer the electrons&quot; but then they say &quot;created by removing electrons from a neutral atom&quot;, which is the same as transferring an electron. You will get static charge if you just &quot;remove&quot; the electron, but the electron has to go somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;THE &quot;ELECTRICITY&quot; INSIDE OF WIRES MOVES AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT? Wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In metals, electric current is a flow of electrons. Many books claim that these electrons flow at the speed of light. This is incorrect. Electrons in an electric current actually flow quite slowly, at speeds on the order of centimeters per minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electricity doesn't move at the speed of light, only light (photons) moves at the speed of light, and the speed of light changes in different materials. This is the only point where I agree with the source. While electrons move at very high speeds, the &quot;current&quot; is their drift speed, which is much slower (I don't know if they are right as to the speed is several cm per sec, but it changes with the magnitude of the applied field, so obviously, the current speed will change, whether you apply 1.5V of 1e5V on the conductor). If there is a text book saying that electrons move at speeds close to the speed of light without saying that the current doesn't flow at that speed, than that textbook is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Explanation on drift speed vs. speed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electrons move in random directions in very high speeds. When we talk about the current speed, we are talking about drift speed. The electron moves in different random directions inside the material, then collides with another particle, loses all it's speed and starts moving in a new random direction. When an electric field is applied, then the electron will move slightly more to a single direction, and thus drift in that direction. This is also why the current speed and not acceleration is relative to the force applied. &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtube.com/watch?v=TfIUI-bVbus&quot;&gt;A good video explaining this subject&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Final conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we have here is a post (and I would even go so far as call it a rant) that kids smaller than 14 aren't taught university undergraduate and graduate level physics, with all the fine nuances. While in some cases the source may have merit and a viable point if it was addressing that non-physics students (like EE, CS, MEC and others) are taught over simplified physics, the source doesn't address them, but, instead addresses small children in elementary school. Even if to claim that this is addressed to grown people who don't work at physics related jobs, or have physics related occupations would be, it would still be way too petty, as people who don't need the exact details, could be left very well with a basic understanding of the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can't explain physics at the level that the source demands without a lot of time being spent at explaining and learning all the subjects that are needed for a full and real understanding, including high level math, basic (university basic = high-school advanced) chemistry, and the physics that is at the core of those laws, including, particle physics, relativity theory, quantum mechanics, statistical physics, thermodynamics, EM theory and maybe even more, go to any college or university web site, look at the list of courses needed to be taken by students before they take the solid state physics course, this all you need to know to understand, why certain particles can conduct in certain material and other in other materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because a full explanation is a very very very long and hard explanation, it's better to leave people and especially kids with some basic knowledge of the principals behind the phenomenons that they see every day, than to leave then with no explanation at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see from the source material at the undergraduate level that I provide here, that all those nuances and fine details are taught to students that learn the subject at the university, and that there isn't a fear of a physicist who thinks that protons don't have a charge associated with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources for other subjects touched on here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Particle physics: No course book, but you can see a full Stanford course on this subject on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F363FFF951EC0673&quot;&gt;You Tube&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Semiconductors and Solid State Physics: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0030839939&quot;&gt;Solid State Physics /Ashcroft &amp;amp; Mermin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*- Electromagnetic theory also knows to deal with magnetic currents, i.e. the displacement of magnetic charge. But since magnetic charge carriers were never found in nature, this is a purely theoretical aspect of the EM theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-04-13T14:33:40.170" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T14:33:40.170" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14006" CreationDate="2013-04-11T14:30:31.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/0971-6866.64934&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mary Petrou : Screening for beta thalassaemia:&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Soon after, confidential premarital screening was made mandatory among Greek Cypriots by the Greek Orthodox Church and among Turkish Cypriots by the civil authorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cyprus indeed has a form of mandatory screening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2002/a74580.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WHO - Genomics and World Health - Page 150 :&lt;/a&gt; When countries implement genetic screening programmes, which by definition are directed at a specific population, individuals should not be included in these programmes without having given their free and&#xA;informed consent. Even when the screening is only to establish epidemiological data, the informed consent of participants must be obtained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Cyprus policy doesn't include informed consent, but instead mandatory screening, they seem to be in violation of the WHO policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuffieldbioethics.org/sites/default/files/files/Genetic%20Screening%20-%20a%20Supplement%20to%20the%201993%20Report%20%282006%29%281%29.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nuffield Council on Bioethics&lt;/a&gt; Consent&#xA;5.3 The 1993 Report recommended that adequately informed consent should be a requirement&#xA;for all genetic screening programmes (see also Appendix A). In this section we consider subsequent developments relating to consent. The Council has concluded in reports published since 1993 that the ethically significant requirement of consent is not that it should be complete, but rather that it should be genuine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So people who think about the issues of ethics also value consent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/en/Treaties/Html/164.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with regard to the Application of Biology and Medicine: Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter II – Consent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Article 5 – General rule&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An intervention in the health field may only be carried out after the person concerned has given free and informed consent to it.&#xA;This person shall beforehand be given appropriate information as to the purpose and nature of the intervention as well as on its consequences and risks.&#xA;The person concerned may freely withdraw consent at any time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Northern Cyprus, where the Turkish civil authorities operate, isn't recognized as a country by the international community and thus not easily bound by treaties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EU-Cyprus seems to get around that treaty by letting the requirement of consent be made by the church.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/0971-6866.64934&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mary Petrou : Screening for beta thalassaemia:&lt;/a&gt; It was then found that 98% of at-risk couples detected just prior to marriage proceed to marry. Nevertheless, the annual number of new births of children with thalassaemia major has decreased almost to zero in Cyprus, because couples use the information on genetic risk in a variety of ways to obtain a healthy family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like we have a Christian church who pushes its members to abort some of their children in ways that would probably not be possible if done by a secular organisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a church that uses their freedom of religion to address a modern issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T14:45:49.223" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15790" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15796" CreationDate="2013-04-11T15:32:17.083" Score="34" ViewCount="51262" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a widely spread news about Australia banning pornography featuring actresses with A-cup breasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/28/australian_censors/&quot;&gt;Aussie censor balks at bijou boobs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theweek.com/article/index/105766/australias-small-breast-ban&quot;&gt;Australia's 'small breast' ban&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sodahead.com/united-states/australia-bans-small-breasted-pornography/blog-247835/&quot;&gt;Australia Bans Small Breasted Pornography&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason behind:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Senator Joyce claimed that publications featuring small-breasted women were encouraging paedophilia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true that this legislation exists in Australia? Is such a law legally feasible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5132" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2013-04-11T19:33:31.453" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T00:49:42.947" Title="Did Australia ban small-breasts pornography?" Tags="|law|australia|pornography|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15791" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15792" CreationDate="2013-04-11T15:39:32.013" Score="11" ViewCount="39882" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have come across a Facebook post from an unverified and unreliable source, which claims that a fire was started using heat as a source alone. Here is the exact post which is the subject of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LAPTOP USERS: BE AWARE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A couple lost their 25 year old son in a fire at home on June 4th. The&#xA;  son who had graduated with MBA from the University of&#xA;  Wisconsin-Madison two weeks earlier had come home for a while. He had&#xA;  lunch with his dad at home and decided to go back to clean up his&#xA;  hostel room. His father told him to wait, to meet his mother, before&#xA;  he went back for a few days. He decided to take a nap while waiting&#xA;  for his mom to come back home from work. Some time later their&#xA;  neighbors called 911 when they saw black smoke coming out of the&#xA;  house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the 25 years old died in the three year old house. It&#xA;  took several days of investigation to find out the cause of the fire.&#xA;  It was determined that the fire was caused by the laptop resting on&#xA;  the bed. When the laptop was on the bed cooling fan did not get the&#xA;  air to cool the computer and that is what caused the fire. He did not&#xA;  even wake up to get out of the bed because he died of breathing in&#xA;  carbon monoxide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reason I am writing this to all of you is that I have seen many of&#xA;  us and also our brothers&amp;amp; sisters sons&amp;amp;daughters friends&amp;amp;family using&#xA;  the laptop while in bed. Let us all decide and make it a practice not&#xA;  to do that. The risk is real. Let us make it a rule not to use the&#xA;  laptop on bed with blankets and pillows around. Please educate as many&#xA;  people as you can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have dismissed this post as an average everyday hoax, but on searching a little further, i came across another news article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/08/26/bc-overheating-laptop-fire-death-vancouver.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Laptop fire blamed for Vancouver death&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, which claims a similar but not the exact case of the facebook post. This is the relevant quote from the article&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fire started after the computer was left on a couch, plugged in&#xA;  and turned on. Because of the lack of ventilation under the laptop,&#xA;  less than an hour later the lithium-ion battery overheated and burst&#xA;  into flames, sparking the fire that eventually killed the man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my questions are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scientifically, I feel this is not possible to happen, &#xA;since all laptops have a thermal sensor, which when crosses a certain threshold, just turns the laptop off, and I feel just the heat is not sufficient to start a fire, without any actual source of fire like a spark of some kind,an electrical short or a chemical reaction. Is my understanding correct?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any more information about  similar events from trusted sources to support the claim?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any arguments that can falsify or justify the claim beyond any doubt.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11934" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-22T00:00:36.637" LastActivityDate="2018-07-22T00:00:36.637" Title="Can overheating laptops cause fire?" Tags="|computers|fire|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15791" CreationDate="2013-04-11T16:39:34.323" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/88Gny.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientifically, i feel this is not possible to happen, since all&#xA;  laptops have a thermal sensor, which when crosses a certain threshold,&#xA;  just turns the laptop off, and i feel just the heat is not sufficient&#xA;  to start a fire, without any actual source of fire like a spark of&#xA;  some kind,an electrical short or a chemical reaction. Is my&#xA;  understanding correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking you're right, but it's not completely implausible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lithium-ion cells with cobalt cathodes (same as the recalled laptop&#xA;  batteries) &lt;strong&gt;should never rise above 130°C (265°F). At 150°C (302°F) the&#xA;  cell becomes thermally unstable&lt;/strong&gt;, a condition that can lead to a&#xA;  thermal runaway in which flaming gases are vented. &lt;a href=&quot;http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/lithium_ion_safety_concerns&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of mobile CPU with highest critical temperature (in other words temperature at which it'll shut down the computer) was &lt;a href=&quot;http://ark.intel.com/products/33918/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mobile Core 2 Duo with &lt;strong&gt;105°C&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, while for some mobile GPUs it used to go as high as &lt;strong&gt;120-125°C&lt;/strong&gt; (Nvidia 8400M GS). Both of which were popular combo in laptops about 5 years ago. And in some laptops is possible to do some overclocking and actually rise these thresholds a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with current generation of mobile CPUs, there are some that still have 105°C critical temperature (for example Ivy Bridge mobile i7). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T16:39:34.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15753" CreationDate="2013-04-11T20:17:11.403" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclaimer: I don't like answering my own question, so this is marked as community wiki. Feel free to improve.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found a paper Maintaining a Rogue Military: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icks.org/publication/pdf/2012-SPRING-SUMMER/8.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;North Korea's Military Capabilities  and Strategy at the End of the Kim Jong-il Era&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Bruce E. Bechtol Jr., Angelo State University&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpts seem to partially confirm number of NK SOF:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The third and perhaps most ominous (to South Korea) tripod of the &#xA;  North Korean asymmetric threat is Special Operations Forces (SOF).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  North Korean SOF are the best trained, best fed, and easily the most &#xA;  indoctrinated of all DPRK military forces. North Korean SOF has a &#xA;  variety of missions - and thus a wide variety of units. These units&#xA;  can be  organized by brigade or battalion, all the way down to special&#xA;  two or  three man &quot;teams.&quot;  Most of the SOF units fall under a variety&#xA;  of  commands  - who often work closely together during exercises or&#xA;  live  operations.  There are units subordinate to the Light Infantry&#xA;  Training  Guidance Bureau (sometimes called the &quot;11th Corps), the &#xA;  Reconnaissance General Bureau, Army Corps’ and Divisions, or Korean &#xA;  People's Navy/Air Force.  Most official estimates place their strength&#xA;  at  more than 25 brigades and five independent reconnaissance&#xA;  battalions,  though those numbers have probably grown significantly&#xA;  since 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The South Korean  Ministry of National Defense now places the numbers&#xA;  for SOF in North  Korea at around 200,000 men.  General Lee also&#xA;  stated that North  Korean SOF “have been trained to conduct composite&#xA;  operations, such as  major target strikes, assassinations of important&#xA;  figures and disruptions  of rear areas in South Korea.&quot; High&#xA;  ranking North Korean defector  Hwang Jang-yop stated in testimony that&#xA;  &quot;Each North Korean special  forces unit has been assigned a specific&#xA;  target in South Korea, usually  strategic objectives such as missile&#xA;  bases and airfields. The units will be  delivered to their targets by&#xA;  parachute or hovercraft.&quot; Military training  by SOF during the&#xA;  winter of 2010-2011 was at typical high levels.   According to press&#xA;  reports, &quot;Light infantry soldiers march 20 km for 10  hours with a 35&#xA;  kg gear bag. On the way to the mountains, they train  attacking,&#xA;  ambushing, infiltrating and camping.  When they arrive at the &#xA;  assembly place, they would have a martial arts match between units to &#xA;  have actual experience.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this paper as well as sources it references seems to be using &quot;special operation forces&quot; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_infantry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;light infantry&quot;&lt;/a&gt; interchangeably. See last quote above and also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;North Korea has also been able to augment the troop strength of its &#xA;  SOF by converting several conventional divisions to light infantry &#xA;  divisions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the role of NK SOF is described as infiltration and opening &quot;second front&quot; behind enemy lines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if NK SOF is just light infantry trained for opening front behind enemy lines, on US side as units with equivalent role one would have to count besides 67,000 strong USSOCOM, also 2 Airborne divisions, 2 Mountain divisions and 7 Marine Expeditionary Units. Which would put total into 170,000-200,000 not counting supporting units. Thus the part about NKSOF being largest force doesn't seem so obvious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for level of training there are huge discrepancies between reports, but seem that reports of &quot;highly trained&quot; special forces talk mostly about endurance training and hand-to-hand combat (see above). On the other hand other reports say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;North Korean soldiers are poorly fed, according to analysts and&#xA;  reports from defectors, and rarely train due to scarcity of fuel and&#xA;  ammunition &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/11/24/north.korea.capability/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source, Master thesis: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA416159&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Can North Korean Special Purpose Forces Successfully Conduct Military Operations Against the United States and South Korea?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Major Samuel M. Allmond, Faculty of the U.S. Army&#xA;Command and General Staff College &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The research and analysis would indicate that the quality of NK&#xA;  airborne SPF training and mission preparation runs parallel with any&#xA;  of the top military powers in the world to include the United States,&#xA;  the former Soviet Union, China, and South Korea. Because of the&#xA;  importance of their mission, research revealed the soldier of today’s&#xA;  NKPA are better fed, educated, motivated, and equipped than their&#xA;  predecessors who fought in the Fatherland Liberation War. NK SPF&#xA;  training lasts from 12 to 24 weeks or longer depending skills being&#xA;  acquired. In general, the NKPA soldier is wiry, well muscled and kept&#xA;  in top physical condition by constant, strenuous physical training.&#xA;  The KPA soldier is taught to be a revolutionary combatant. They are to&#xA;  be strong in ideology, combat strength and determination. Above all&#xA;  else, the NK SPF soldier is taught not to surrender to enemy forces&#xA;  under any condition. Because of their mental and physical&#xA;  conditioning, the NKPA soldier is noted for his stamina and&#xA;  capabilities in all terrain and weather. Those soldiers who excel in&#xA;  all aspects of their training are considered for SPF membership. &#xA;  These soldiers equate to the best of the best that the NKPA has to&#xA;  offer. Important to note, during research it was determined that what&#xA;  they may lack in technical advantage, they appear to make up for in&#xA;  stamina, commitment, and determination. The net result of the NKPA’s&#xA;  SPF training system is tough, intensively trained fighter who can&#xA;  travel farther and faster with more equipment and less food than&#xA;  almost any other soldier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-04-14T19:46:54.983" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T19:46:54.983" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-04-11T20:17:11.403" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8905" CreationDate="2013-04-11T20:27:37.027" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our understanding of how climate change will human health is still poorly understood. One thing is how humans are affected by climate variability; the variability in weather from one year to another. Climate change will take place over several decades, and this &quot;slow&quot; change is different from year-to-year variability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For malaria, it was until recently believed transmission would increase up to 32 degrees C, while recent studies has shown that in Africa transmission peaks at 25 C. As temperatures increase beyond 25 C, the potential malaria transmission will decrease rapidly. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parasitesandvectors.com/content/6/1/20/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lunde et al., Parasites &amp;amp; Vectors 2013, 6:20&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13343" LastActivityDate="2013-04-11T20:27:37.027" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15790" CreationDate="2013-04-11T20:34:40.020" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, this legislation does not exist in Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The classification of video games, movies, and publications is handled by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Classification_Board&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Australian Classification Board&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Australian Classification Board is a decision making body, created by statue in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2013C00001&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is only one type of material that the statute expressly instructs the board to give a Refused Classification to, and that is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2013C00001/Html/Text#_Toc343852603&quot;&gt;material that advocates terrorist acts&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The board &lt;em&gt;has discretion&lt;/em&gt; over classification of all other types of material, with decisions reviewable by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2013C00001/Html/Text#_Toc343852700&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Australian Classification Review Board&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The factors that must be considered during classification are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the literary, artistic or educational merit (if any) of the publication, film or computer game; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the general character of the publication, film or computer game, including whether it is of a medical, legal or scientific character; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the persons or class of persons to or amongst whom it is published or is intended or likely to be published.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These decisions are made on a case-by-case basis. In applying this discretion, the board has in the past refused classification &quot;&lt;em&gt;because of the sexual depictions of characters who appear to be under 18&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.classification.gov.au/Public/Resources/Documents/2008%20media%20releases/1057%20-%20Media%20Release%20-%2013%20August%202008%20-%20Four%20anime%20films%20classified%20upon%20review.pdf&quot;&gt;Classification Review Board media release&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2009, the director &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.classification.gov.au/Public/Resources/Documents/2009%20media%20releases/Director_speech_-_Bibiographical_Society_Conferenc%20Monash%20University%20-13%20July%20%282%29.pdf&quot;&gt;said in a speech&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With titles such as Purely 18 and Finally Legal, it is safe to assume and I can indeed confirm, that such publications contain images of young persons who are depicted to be on the borderline of 18 years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Classification &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alrc.gov.au/sites/default/files/pdfs/publications/10_refused_classification_category.pdf&quot;&gt;guidelines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; in Australia expressly state that exploitative or offensive depictions or descriptions involving someone who is or appears to be under the age of 18 years, must be Refused Classification. [Emphasis and link added]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Interestingly and perhaps the most ‘scandalous’ accusation recently directed at the Board ­likely to have been prompted  by the Boards attention to the breaches I have just discussed above is that we display a bias against &lt;strong&gt;small breasted women&lt;/strong&gt;…and on this basis… are banning material! [Emphasis added]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Criticisms have been levelled at the Board regarding the factors it considers when determining the age of persons depicted in publications, particularly &lt;strong&gt;the accusation that small breasted women are determined by the Board to appear to be children. This is categorically untrue.&lt;/strong&gt; [Emphasis added]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Board members take their responsibilities seriously and &#xA;  consider the overall appearance of persons and the context in which they are depicted, including text, props and poses when making classification decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Depicting small­breasted women is not grounds for a publication to be Refused Classification, nor do the classification guidelines refer to the size of a woman's breasts&lt;/strong&gt;! [Emphasis added]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-04-17T15:20:26.920" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T15:20:26.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15798" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-11T21:15:48.190" Score="20" ViewCount="2133" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://prostitution.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000122&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;debate&lt;/a&gt; about legalizing prostitution, yes or no, one claim is the legalization will decrease sexual violence against all women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example from answers of pros in the link provided: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It is estimated that if prostitution were legalized in the United States, the rape rate would decrease by roughly 25% for a decrease of approximately 25,000 rapes per year....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any valid evidence to support these? If so, in which countries according to which research in which periods of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is related question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3579/does-legalizing-prostitution-lead-to-an-increase-in-human-trafficking&quot;&gt;Does legalizing prostitution lead to an increase in human trafficking?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;but this question is about sexual violence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11740" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T23:23:33.267" Title="Does legalizing prostitution decrease sexual violence against all women?" Tags="|law|sexual-abuse|prostitution|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15799" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31913" CreationDate="2013-04-11T23:32:34.157" Score="12" ViewCount="1017" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_swine_flu&quot;&gt;From Wikipedia:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 1976 swine flu outbreak, also known as the swine flu fiasco, or&#xA;  the swine flu debacle, was a strain of H1N1 influenza virus that&#xA;  appeared in 1976. Infections were only detected from January 19 to&#xA;  February 9, and were not found outside Fort Dix. The outbreak is most&#xA;  remembered for the mass immunization that it prompted in the United&#xA;  States. The strain itself killed one person and hospitalized 13.&#xA;  However, side-effects from the vaccine are thought to have caused five&#xA;  hundred cases of Guillain–Barré syndrome and 25 deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, allegedly this has been recently revisited and contested. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whether or not any of the antecedents had a causal relationship to GBS&#xA;  was, and remains, unclear. When cases of GBS were identified among&#xA;  recipients of the swine flu vaccines, they were, of course, well&#xA;  covered by the press. Because GBS cases are always present in the&#xA;  population, the necessary public health questions concerning the cases&#xA;  among vaccine recipients were &quot;Is the number of cases of GBS among&#xA;  vaccine recipients higher than would be expected? And if so, are the&#xA;  increased cases the result of increased surveillance or a true&#xA;  increase?&quot; Leading epidemiologists debated these points, but the&#xA;  consensus, based on the intensified surveillance for GBS (and other&#xA;  conditions) in recipients of the vaccines, was that the number of&#xA;  cases of GBS appeared to be an excess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3291400/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Reflections on the 1976 Swine Flu Vaccination Program&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; in Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although Wikipedia provides some references, to prevent getting an answer that simply repeats them, let me clarify that I am not happy with them because they are press articles, rather than peer reviewed papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-04-12T11:11:59.557" LastActivityDate="2016-02-18T16:45:08.090" Title="Did 25 people die because of H1N1 vaccine of 1976?" Tags="|vaccines|flu|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15798" CreationDate="2013-04-12T00:49:05.660" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;On your linked page only one of the answers [weakly] cites a source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linda M. Rio Reichmann, JD, an undergraduate student at the time of the quote, who later became Director of the American Bar Association's (ABA) Child Custody Pro Bono Project, stated in an Apr. 1991 Archives of Sexual Behavior article titled &quot;Psychological and Sociological Research and the Decriminalization or Legalization of Prostitution&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A study conducted in Queensland... show[ed] a 149% increase in the&#xA;  rate of rape when legal brothels were closed in 1959, while other&#xA;  offenses against the person by males increased only 49%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there are no details of the citation, I'm inclined to lend slightly more weight to that answer than to any of the others that are just predictions and assertions with no data behind them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6575" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-04-12T02:17:25.683" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T02:17:25.683" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15801" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-12T02:34:18.480" Score="9" ViewCount="12572" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that mobile phones send signals to the tower even when the mobile goes off so your location can be detected. Is this possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13348" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-12-24T12:57:46.973" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T12:57:46.973" Title="Does a mobile phone send signals when it's off?" Tags="|mobile-phones|electronics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15802" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15815" CreationDate="2013-04-12T03:26:14.147" Score="7" ViewCount="1940" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the English language Wikipedia article on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recreation_and_Amusement_Association&quot;&gt;Recreation and Amusement Association&lt;/a&gt;, an organization for prostitution to Allied troops occupying Japan after World War II, it's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recreation_and_Amusement_Association#GHQ_and_disease_control&quot;&gt;claimed&lt;/a&gt; that sexually transmitted disease was rampant amongst the troops occupying Japan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From the beginning of the Occupation, some Allied military officials&#xA;  cooperated with the Japanese government's system. According to the&#xA;  governors of Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures, American commanders&#xA;  contacted them in September 1945 and requested the establishment of&#xA;  brothels for their troops, offering US military police help if&#xA;  necessary. American medical officers established prophylactic stations&#xA;  in red-light districts and inside the larger brothels that distributed&#xA;  tens of thousands of condoms a week.[29][30]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite these precautions, the problem of sexually transmitted&#xA;  diseases (STDs; primarily gonorrhea and syphilis) became a serious&#xA;  public health issue. By early 1946, nearly a &lt;strong&gt;quarter of all US&#xA;  occupation forces&lt;/strong&gt; were estimated to be infected, and &lt;strong&gt;nearly half of&#xA;  some units&lt;/strong&gt;. The Australian 34th Infantry Brigade had a rate of &lt;strong&gt;55%&#xA;  infection&lt;/strong&gt;.[31] [emphasis added]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In response, GHQ imposed strict STD check procedures for prostitutes,&#xA;  placed certain brothels with high rates of infection off-limits to&#xA;  troops, and helped re-establish clinics and laboratories (many of&#xA;  which had been destroyed during the war) to diagnose infections. Most&#xA;  importantly, the 8th Army authorized the free dispersal of penicillin&#xA;  to infected prostitutes despite a serious shortage of the drug in the&#xA;  US and orders from Washington that it only be given to Japanese &quot;as a&#xA;  life saving measure.&quot;[32]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citation 31 is &quot;Tanaka Yuki (2002). Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During World War II and the U.S. Occupation. Routledge.&quot;. This book received a mixed review at &lt;a href=&quot;http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue9/morris_review.html&quot;&gt;http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue9/morris_review.html&lt;/a&gt; . Not universally bad, not universally good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical that infection rates were as high as was claimed. (This is regarding allied troops from western countries such as Australia and the United States, not the Soviet Union)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the high rates to occur, a very high proportion of soldiers would be having sex with someone who they weren't married to, and either not be using condoms, or have had their condoms fail on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sex outside of marriage, let alone sex with a prostitute, would go against the Christian or Jewish religious norms of most western allied troops of that era. In addition, unless condoms were failing at a massive rate, a high infection rate would indicate that a lot of soldiers were choosing not to use sexual protection even with women who have a lot of partners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The motivation I suspect for inflated numbers is to make western countries look bad, and also to make Japan's actions during World War II seem not so bad in comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was the rate of sexually transmitted disease as high as 55% in allied troops from western countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2013-04-12T04:38:37.023" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T09:04:12.400" Title="Was sexually transmitted disease rampant amongst troops occupying Japan?" Tags="|japan|disease|prostitution|army|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15779" CreationDate="2013-04-12T08:04:35.530" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Author here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is all that stuff correct?  Certainly.  It comes right out of physics texts and this list has been discussed by educators (mostly on PHYS-L, in the net's early days.)  For many years I was updating it with numerous slight corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you find that the material conflicts with what you were taught  ...then there's a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That list of common misconceptions was collected from numerous sources, including textbooks, pop articles, and many adult experts (electrical engineers on many forums.)  It's not only a list of K-6 textbook problems, since the same problems appear in the general public's understanding of Electricity.  The article grew out of a central question during my exhibits design work at Museum of Science in Boston:  how should we teach &quot;electricity&quot; in our new exhibit?   The K-6 texts we inspected were full of basic factual errors as well as misleading oversimplifications, so we couldn't use them as a basis for teaching.  Our goal became: explain classic E&amp;amp;M to little kids and grandparents, but done in a way so as not to breed the numerous barriers which halt further learning.   (See &quot;Textbooks Flunk Out&quot;, 1999 Boston Globe &lt;a href=&quot;http://virus.lucifer.com/virus.2Q99/1096.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://virus.lucifer.com/virus.2Q99/1096.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And yes, non-electron currents are common: that's how nerves work, that's how electric currents can exist in dirt and in oceans, and exclusively proton currents are common in battery electrolyte (where they're usually called positive hydrogen ions.)  It's a widespread misconception that &quot;electric current&quot; means &quot;electron flow&quot; and nothing else.   Perhaps if we were only teaching future repair technicians, then it might be acceptable to avoid non-metal conductors while pretending that all currents were electron flows.  But kids who are future engineers and scientists need a wider understanding.   (Me, I think the general public would love such a wider understanding.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's acceptable to teach &quot;lies to children,&quot; as long as those simplifications don't lead to persistent misconceptions and learning-barriers.   E.g. atoms are like little solar systems with electrons orbiting the nucleus?  No problem.  Those simplifications get updated later, so they're far more useful than harmful.  Chemistry techs don't angrily resist the QM concepts of orbitals/clouds, and forever after cling tenaciously to the solar-system model over the rest of their careers.  But in electronics, such things are common.  The serious problems arise when those oversimplified concepts are never questioned, and they become long-lasting learning barriers which persist into adulthood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this all something new?   No, the list was from the late 1980s, and the deeper issue of textbook errors is a major decades-long problem and still being battled by hundreds of people, see for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.textbookleague.org/ttlindex.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.textbookleague.org/ttlindex.htm&lt;/a&gt;.   Even Richard Feynman brings it up in &quot;Judging Books By Their Covers.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm&lt;/a&gt;  Note that Feynman found he could make no headway, and had to give up.  That should tell us something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the listed misconceptions an unavoidable consequence of simplifying E&amp;amp;M physics for children?  Definitely not, and since I wrote my articles, several grade-school textbooks have appeared which completely avoid the mistakes.  A few publishers actually listened to the critics and made major changes.  That, or the critics themselves authored new books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By explaining EM physics at the grade-school level while removing all the typical misleading/wrong explanations, these texts demonstrate that the concepts involved &lt;em&gt;aren't&lt;/em&gt; overly sophisticated or fit only for college level.  They demonstrate that the problems in earlier books were genuine errors easily removed.  And obviously they show that an entire community is working on this problem, not just me alone.  And so, more references...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;MS Steinberg's C.A.S.T.L.E. electricity curriculum.  This was the end result of a 1980s project to redesign high-school material to treat the known student electricity misconceptions via direct hands-on experiments using supercapacitors, bulbs, and hand-crank DC generators.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ptec.org/items/detail.cfm?ID=4438&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ptec.org/items/detail.cfm?ID=4438&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Smithsonian/National Academies 2002 &quot;Electrical Energy and Circuit Design.&quot;  The authors built an entire middle-school electricity curriculum from scratch, and avoided every single problem on my list, even including the separate 'static electricity' list.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0892788968&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Electrical-~Science-Technology-Concepts-schools~/dp/0892788968&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Prentice Hall's 2007 &quot;Science Explorer&quot; series, &quot;Electricity and Magnetism.&quot;  Again, no misconceptions from my list.  This text is by Dr. C Wainwright of the &quot;castle&quot; capacitor project.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0133651150&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Electricity-Magnetism-Ph-D-Camille-Wainwright/dp/0133651150&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;G. McWhorter's 1987 &quot;Basic Electricity JE-101,&quot; Radio Shack.  An electrical engineer simplifies E&amp;amp;M physics while avoiding all the &quot;infectious misconceptions.&quot;  Interesting that he apparently did this independently before the rise of electricity-misconceptions research, and of course long before I was able to post my own work online.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00071OWRE&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Electricity-JE-101-Science-Junior-Engineering/dp/B00071OWRE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that except for Prentice-Hall, the major K-12 education publishers haven't followed suit.  To find this 'repaired' curriculum material, a school district has to obtain their products from outside the conventional channels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about all the engineering students who acquired a headful of misconceptions in grade school?  Darren Ashby is now (2005) selling a &quot;textbook&quot; which carefully goes through point-by-point and repairs all the damage.  So, now I won't have to write one myself!  &quot;Electrical Engineering 101: Everything You Should Have Learned in School...but Probably Didn't&quot;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0123860016&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Electrical-Engineering-101-Third-School-but/dp/0123860016&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And don't miss that 2002 Sefton paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding Electricity and Circuits: What the Text Books Don’t Tell You&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.uniserve.edu.au/school/curric/stage6/phys/stw2002/sefton.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://science.uniserve.edu.au/school/curric/stage6/phys/stw2002/sefton.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13350" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2013-04-16T09:43:45.217" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T09:43:45.217" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15808" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-10T08:53:59.007" Score="5" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the National Geographic article &lt;a href=&quot;http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/09/can-we-fake-leaves-that-stab-bed-bugs-in-the-feet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Can We Fake Leaves That Stab Bed Bugs in the Feet?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But in the Balkan countries of southeastern Europe, there’s an old folk&#xA;  remedy that might be the insects’ undoing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before nightfall, people would scatter the leaves of &lt;strong&gt;bean plants&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  on the floor by their beds. In the morning, the leaves would be full&#xA;  of immobilised bed bugs, which could then be taken outside and burned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its hot science news. But is it something I can try out for myself? Should I start sprouting beans and spreading the leaves around? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody have experience with this? Also what kind of beans/grams are ideal, since I live in India, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vigna_unguiculata_subsp._sesquipedalis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Asparagus beans&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_beans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Green beans&lt;/a&gt; and related species are the most common. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" OwnerDisplayName="aitchnyu" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-04-12T13:11:22.610" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T13:11:22.610" Title="Are the leaves of bean plants effective for controlling bed bugs?" Tags="|natural-remedies|herbalism|entomology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15809" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15828" CreationDate="2013-04-12T13:12:33.210" Score="32" ViewCount="31576" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my conspiracy theorist friends on Facebook recently linked &lt;a href=&quot;http://beforeitsnews.com/blogging-citizen-journalism/2012/10/cnn-exposed-emmy-winning-former-cnn-journalist-amber-lyon-blows-the-whistle-2444190.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; claiming that Amber Lyon was fired from CNN for blowing the whistle on the Obama administration paying CNN to not air certain story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Associated with the article was the following &amp;quot;infographic&amp;quot;:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kVgrH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article linked above makes this specific claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She says she was ordered to report fake stories, delete unfriendly stories adverse to the Obama administration (like the Nick Robertson report), and construct stories in specific manners while working for the left-wing network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CNN is paid by foreign and domestic Government agencies for specific content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Let me repeat that.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CNN is paid by the US government for reporting on some events, and not reporting on others. The Obama Administration pays for CNN content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find any mention of these allegations on &lt;a href=&quot;http://amberlyonlive.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amber Lyon's own website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/04/cnn-international-documentary-bahrain-arab-spring-repression?INTCMP=SRCH&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article referenced as a primary source for the claim&lt;/a&gt; makes no mention of anything besides the suspicion that the government of Bahrain influenced CNNi's decision to not air a specific documentary of Lyon's in its entirety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A unverified &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1lxXzaxIu3h6nmJnit0oHb_LEVgOdfrypn_B0VDVm1cA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;google document&lt;/a&gt; is cited as the back-and-forth between Lyon and CNN, but it seems limited to the discussion of Bahrain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Lyon &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFDC7zmJgQg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;has stated during at least one interview&lt;/a&gt; that she believes CNN runs featured news pieces that are financially sponsored by various foreign governments, including Bahrain, Georgia, Lebanon and Kazakhstan.  These pieces are purportedly paid propaganda pieces, funded directly by the foreign governments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support this claim? Lyon claimed to have found this out through research; has she ever detailed this research, or provided supporting evidence?  Did she also claim the United States government was also paying CNN for specific content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2022-06-17T18:16:14.210" Title="Did journalist Amber Lyon claim that the US Government paid CNN to control content?" Tags="|united-states|media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15814" CreationDate="2013-04-12T15:54:33.297" Score="4" ViewCount="1366" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yesterday a &lt;a href=&quot;http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/04/time-machine-invented-by-iranian-scientist-the-aryayek-time-traveling-machine-2617834.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;news report&lt;/a&gt; said that an Iranian scientist claims to have invented a 'time machine' that will allow one to 'travel' up to 8 years into the future to predict with 98% accuracy the future for any individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this machine truly work? If so, how does it work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8636" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2015-04-08T10:07:37.257" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T10:07:37.257" Title="Time traveling machine invented?" Tags="|physics|machines|time|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15812" CreationDate="2013-04-12T17:42:37.070" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the links in the comments (particularly the Wired one), I'm saying &quot;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iran has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/9577497/Irans-news-agency-apologises-for-fake-story-gaffe.html&quot;&gt;history&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/irans-laughable-fighter-jet-caught-out-in-photoshop-blunder-20130213-2ebwb.html&quot;&gt;publishing&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/iran-accused-of-monkey-business-in-space-20130203-2ds5e.html&quot;&gt;fake&lt;/a&gt; news &lt;a href=&quot;http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/in-an-iranian-image-a-missile-too-many/&quot;&gt;stories&lt;/a&gt; on its state-run news website.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Predicting chaotic systems &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scn.org/~bm733/infaq.html&quot;&gt;such as the weather&lt;/a&gt; has a long history of scientific improvement and scientists have found that you need to feed a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of data into your model and that the accuracy gets exponentially worse the further into the future you try to predict.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's no evidence of the device existing.  There wasn't one supplied in the question or the article linked in the question and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/04/11/what-time-machine-iranian-state-media-quietly-deletes-a-report-that-iran-had-built-one/&quot;&gt;original source article has been deleted&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No specific, testable claims have been made, such as &quot;Iran will have a new leader within two years&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11387" LastEditorUserId="11387" LastEditDate="2013-04-12T18:10:29.827" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T18:10:29.827" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15802" CreationDate="2013-04-12T18:52:16.303" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story is plausible for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Most enlisted military personnel at a time of war up to the 1950's were young sexually-active males. This has long been the case and applies to the military of many countries, not just the USA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) In some cities in Japan, prostitution was legalised and the prostitutes had rates of STD infection of up to 95%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2253585/&quot;&gt;Promoting Health During the American Occupation of Japan The Public Health Section, Kyoto Military Government Team, 1945-1949&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prostitution in Kyoto had been supervised by the prefectural government, which licensed organized brothels in several delineated districts. Prostitutes were registered and required to report for weekly venereal disease examinations. If they were found to be infected they received treatment, but contact tracing was not required. The examination, conducted by prefecture-registered gynecologists, was hardly rigorous; more than 90% of those examined were released with a health certificate. The postwar culture of sexual abandon led to the &lt;strong&gt;swift spread of sexually transmitted infections to the occupation forces&lt;/strong&gt;. &#xA;  ...&#xA;  although the weekly examinations revealed a 5% to 8% infection rate, &lt;strong&gt;the actual infection rate [in registered prostitutes] was 75% to 95%&lt;/strong&gt;, according to worldwide research by the US Public Health Service&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/orgadmin/org_admin_wwii_chpt11.htm&quot;&gt;US Army medical Department - The Pacific: August 1944 Through 1946&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A base venereal disease control officer was particularly necessary, for in the early days of the occupation the rise in incidence of venereal disease among American troops in Japan presented a major problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stripes.com/news/stds-and-the-military-busting-the-myths-1.72420&quot;&gt;Stars and Stripes - STDs and the military: Busting the myths&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today, gonorrhea and syphilis barely cause blips in lost duty time, unlike World War I days when &lt;strong&gt;the Army alone lost 7 million person days to what was then commonly called venereal disease&lt;/strong&gt;, according to a 2005 report on military contributions to the study of STDs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.defense.gov/News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=45172&quot;&gt;Department of Defense - STDs Still a Real Threat, Even at Home&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;A large percentage of the military population is sexually active young adults&lt;/strong&gt;,&quot; said Bill Calvert, chairman of the DoD's STD Prevention Committee. &quot;With 333 million new cases of STDs globally and 15.3 million new cases in the United States each year, our service members are certainly at risk for exposure to STDs.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Calvert said younger adults are at higher risk of being exposed to STDs, placing the military population at higher risk than the general public -- two to five times higher, according to the Navy Environmental Center, Norfolk, Va., in its recent paper on condom availability in the Navy and Marine Corps. &quot;&lt;strong&gt;In time of military conflict the difference can be 50 times higher or more&lt;/strong&gt;,&quot; the report said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Calvert also said military culture makes people more susceptible to risky behavior, noting that risk-taking is a common thread among successful service members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We want young service members who are risk takers. They work hard and they play hard,&quot; he said. &quot;We're talking about people who jump out of planes for a living. We're dealing with young adults, many of whom are away from home for the first time, and you can't put chastity belts on them.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(my emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-04-12T19:18:44.003" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T19:18:44.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15774" CreationDate="2013-04-12T21:17:13.230" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer, as Sancho writes, is &quot;No&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statistic that's being referenced here (to some degree) is the labor force participation rate, which seems to be the percentage of Americans in the labor force, not the absolute number.  So it could be correct if&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There are fewer AMERICANS in the labor force today than anytime since 1979!!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;were changed to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There is a smaller percentage of AMERICANS in the labor force today than anytime since 1979!!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To see a graph of this, throw &quot;labor participation rate of usa&quot; into Wolfram Alpha.  And I'm sure there are plenty of caveats to go around about how the labor participation rate deals with infants and the infirm, for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13364" LastActivityDate="2013-04-12T21:17:13.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15819" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15821" CreationDate="2013-04-13T03:42:46.037" Score="14" ViewCount="1147" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the documentary &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_size_me&quot;&gt;&quot;Super Size Me&quot;&lt;/a&gt; an interviewee of Morgan Spurlock says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you look at the menu at a fast food restaurant, they use all of the addicting&#xA;  components.&#xA;  They'll take a slab of meat, cover it with cheese - cheese of course, which is filled&#xA;  with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casomorphin&quot;&gt;casomorphins&lt;/a&gt; the opiates that are found in the cheese protein [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this I understand that he &lt;em&gt;implies&lt;/em&gt; that casomorphins in cheese are addictive. Are they truly addictive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from this my actual question follows &lt;strong&gt;can one get addicted to cheese as a result of that?&lt;/strong&gt; And back to the subject line: can one get addicted to cheese in general?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1408" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:39:06.683" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:39:06.683" Title="Can you get addicted to cheese?" Tags="|nutrition|addiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15774" CreationDate="2013-04-13T06:46:13.277" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may refer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/04/07/march-labor-force-participation/2057887/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the following&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The portion of Americans working and looking for work fell in March&#xA;  to 63.3% from 63.5%, lowest since 1979&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since &quot;a portion of&quot; is not the same as &quot;the number of&quot;, the claim is not true, but may be based on a related true claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4795" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-01T11:42:30.543" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T11:42:30.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15819" CreationDate="2013-04-13T07:06:09.880" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/231r.pdf&quot;&gt;The European Food Safety Authority investigated the health impact of casomorphins in their report &quot;Review of the potential health impact of β-casomorphins and related peptides&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;β-casomorphins can act on opioid receptors, but their effect is much weaker than that of your own opioids or opioid drugs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Animal data clearly indicate that BCMs, including BCM7, can act as&#xA;  opioid receptor agonists,  probably acting via μ-type opioid&#xA;  receptors. However, in most if not all animal studies to date,  in&#xA;  vivo opioid effects for BCM7 and related milk-derived peptides have&#xA;  only been observed  following intra-peritoneal (i.p.) or&#xA;  intra-cerebro-ventricular (i.c.v.) administration. In  comparison to&#xA;  medicinal and endogenous opioids, bovine BCM7 does not seem to be a&#xA;  very  potent opioid ligand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the BCMs to act on our opioid receptors they first have to get there. Peptides are digested in the intestine, and they have to cross the intestinal epithelial barrier and the blood brain barrier to get to the opioid receptors. Those are significant barriers, and we don't know if BCMs can cross them in significant amounts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Relatively little is known on the mechanisms of transfer of intact&#xA;  peptides longer than  3 amino acids across the intestinal barrier. If&#xA;  this transport occurs, then the extent is very low  and passive&#xA;  diffusion is the most likely transfer mechanism&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also don't know how much BCMs are actually in cheese. They are generated by proteolysis of casein, but they can also be degraded themselves by further proteolysis. There have been some studies trying to find out how much BCMs are in cheese with unclear or contradictory results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Therefore, to date no data  concerning the actual amounts of BCM7 in&#xA;  cheeses can be obtained from the literature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a conclusion the report states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on the present review of available scientific literature, a&#xA;  cause-effect relationship  between the oral intake of BCM7 or related&#xA;  peptides and aetiology or course of any suggested  non-communicable&#xA;  diseases cannot be established&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for an addictive effect of casomorphins, at least rats don't get addicted to it. In the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030294769988&quot;&gt;&quot;An Assessment of the Addiction Potential of the Opioid Associated with Milk&quot;&lt;/a&gt; the authors investigated the possible addictive effect of β-casomorphin on rats: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consequently, systemically administered β-casomorphin has very limited&#xA;  or no reinforcing properties similar to those of morphine. Ingestion&#xA;  of milk products containing β-casomorphin is not likely to become the&#xA;  focus of an addiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study was the only result for &quot;casomorphin addiction&quot; in Pubmed. There does not seem to be any data on possible effects in humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the limited data that exists we can't conclude that casomorphins are actually addictive in practise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T07:06:09.880" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15856" CreationDate="2013-04-13T11:06:52.563" Score="9" ViewCount="5956" Body="&lt;p&gt;Intel have posted a twitter pic depicting a rhinoceros beetle carrying 8 ultrabooks (of an unrecognizable brand) with the tagline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;#FACT The Rhinoceros Beetle can lift up to 100x its own weight. That means it could carry 8 Ultrabooks on its back &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Intelanz/status/321524670300057600&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This tweet appeared on Intel Australia/New Zealand's&lt;/a&gt; twitter feed, as well as appearing in other place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RME0K.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the beetle somehow ended up under a pile of ultrabooks, is it possible for the beetle to actually walk away with them, or to just not get crushed by them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, is it possible for a rhinoceros beetle to carry 8 ultrabooks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11813" LastEditorUserId="3451" LastEditDate="2013-04-15T17:42:03.263" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T11:28:19.403" Title="Can the rhinoceros beetle carry 100x its own weight?" Tags="|biology|entomology|biophysics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15791" CreationDate="2013-04-13T11:39:19.763" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it happens.  Here are some cases where a laptop was identified as the cause of a fire by officials:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://milford-ma.patch.com/articles/overheated-laptop-cause-of-water-street-fire&quot;&gt;House burns down; laptop left on cardboard to recharge overheats, catches fire&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/04/laptop_goes_up_in_flames&quot;&gt;Laptop starts fire in dorm; 90 students displaced&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lubbockonline.com/local-news/2013-03-27/laptop-left-bed-blamed-tuesday-house-fire#.UWlDcKCtF2M&quot;&gt;Laptop left charging on bed starts fire&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's more.  Search Google News for 'fire was caused by laptop computer'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastActivityDate="2013-04-13T11:39:19.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15809" CreationDate="2013-04-13T20:53:51.440" Score="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;The meme is completely false.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ironically, the article and the infographic are both spreading the same type of propaganda they accuse CNN of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some background: Firstly, &lt;strong&gt;CNN&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;CNN International&lt;/strong&gt; are separate organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amber Lyon became concerned about the credibility of &lt;strong&gt;CNN International&lt;/strong&gt; (ie, not &lt;strong&gt;CNN&lt;/strong&gt; -- which is US only), because of their handling of a documentary she made called &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRevolution:_Online_Warriors_of_the_Arab_Spring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;iRevolution: Online Warriors of the Arab Spring&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; for &lt;strong&gt;CNN&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;CNN International&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know, it's a little confusing. Bear with me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;13 minutes of her hour long documentary was about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahrain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bahrain&lt;/a&gt; and its corrupt government. She says she wondered why her CNN documentary wasn't going to be aired on CNN International -- even though it was actually made specifically for CNN -- because she believed it was of direct interest to CNN International's audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So confused was she by this, that she decided to dig a little deeper, and that's when she discovered what she claims were &amp;quot;financial connections&amp;quot; between &lt;strong&gt;CNN International&lt;/strong&gt; (not CNN) and the Bahrain government that showed the country had paid for pro-Bahrain content to be aired on CNN International. (She also claims she found similar connections with Lebanon, Georgia and Kazakhstan.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the basis for saying that Lyon made accusations about governments paying for content on &amp;quot;CNN&amp;quot; -- it was actually &lt;strong&gt;CNN International&lt;/strong&gt; she was accusing, &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the US arm, CNN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/article/former-cnn-reporter-alleges-cnn-accepted-money-from-bahrain-to-ignore-oppression&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN International issued a response&lt;/a&gt; to her claims, which stated,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“[The documentary] was never intended to air on CNN International. It was an hour-long program about the impact of social media on the Arab Spring that was commissioned for CNN US, where it ran in June of 2011 ... There is nothing unusual about this programming decision [to not air the documentary on CNN International].”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, CNN aired her documentary in the US in June 2011, they just didn't show it on CNN International. Now given that &lt;a href=&quot;http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/21/cnn-is-undisputed-1-international-news-channel-in-ems-middle-east-survey/?iref=allsearch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN International is the most watched English speaking news outlet in the Middle East&lt;/a&gt;, you might think that Lyon's were justified, but CNN maintains that they had already aired similar Bahrain programming that was critical of Bahrain... including some of Lyon's other work!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to Lyon's accusation that CNN International aired &amp;quot;sponsored&amp;quot; content from corrupt regimes, they also stated that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CNN International has carried advertising and sponsored content since the 1990s. The critical issue is that our editorial operations and our commercial operations are completely separate. &lt;strong&gt;No deal ever buys any editorial influence.&lt;/strong&gt; (emphasis added)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CNN International was investigated in 2015 regarding their &amp;quot;sponsored content&amp;quot; by UK body OFCOM. They concluded that CNN International had produced a small number of sponsored &amp;quot;current affairs&amp;quot; programs (which, incidentally, is against UK law), but did not take issue that such content was not transparently labelled &amp;quot;sponsored&amp;quot;. They also did not find evidence of editorial bias. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/aug/18/bbc-world-news-cnn-international-cnbc-sponsorship-rules&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where a gray area appears... You can read their back-and-forth debate here, and decide for yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/04/cnn-international-documentary-bahrain-arab-spring-repression&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lyon's initial claims&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;The Guardian&lt;/em&gt;, 4 September 2012)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/05/cnn-internationals-response-to-the-guardian/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN International's response&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;CNN International Press Release&lt;/em&gt;, 5 September 2012)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://boingboing.net/2012/09/07/glenn-greenwald-replies-to-cnn.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Glenn Greenwald's (author of the original Guardian article) counter-claims&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;His own Google Doc&lt;/em&gt;, 6 September 2012) (Updated with BoingBoing version)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1lxXzaxIu3h6nmJnit0oHb_LEVgOdfrypn_B0VDVm1cA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lyon's own counter-claims&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Her own Google doc&lt;/em&gt;, 6 November, 2012)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The infographic also is focused solely on CNN (US) and the Obama Administration, neither of which have anything to do with the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's recap:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did Amber Lyon claim she was ordered to report fake stories? &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did she claim she was ordered to delete stories that were unfriendly to the Obama Administration? &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Has she made any claims that the US Government pays for content on CNN or any other news outlet? &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Has she specifically accused the Obama Administration of paying for stories or propaganda pieces? &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, she was also never &amp;quot;fired&amp;quot; from CNN for blowing any whistles either. She was laid off (along with 60 other people) as they closed a whole division down as part of restructuring. And if you need further proof of this, consider the fact that it was only &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; she was laid off that she started talking publicly about her concerns... so it certainly wasn't connected with &amp;quot;whistleblowing&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than this, she also &lt;em&gt;specifically&lt;/em&gt; says that she never saw any evidence of US Government officials controlling the news during her time at CNN. (You can hear her talk about both of these things in her own words &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDVzJNMKs8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, with regards to Amber Lyon's &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; concerns with &lt;em&gt;US&lt;/em&gt; news outlets (including CNN) and its relationship with the US government, Amber Lyon is very clear about what they are -- and they have nothing to do with the claims of the infographic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She believes that all major US news outlets seem to be pushing &amp;quot;anti-Iran&amp;quot; messages, much like they pushed the phrase &amp;quot;weapons of mass destruction&amp;quot; prior to the invasion of Iraq (that's the example she uses). She says that, due to the earlier messages preceding the Iraq War, she feels that the US government may be gearing up to war with Iran in the same deceitful manner. (You can hear her talk about this in her own words &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFDC7zmJgQg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Update: Eight years after she voiced her concerns, we can see that her fears of a US war with Iran amounted to nothing.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;She considers ALL US news outlets suspect, and she uses news outlets that were FOR the Iraq War (and who reported about &amp;quot;weapons of mass destruction&amp;quot;) as prime examples of this sort of propaganda. In other words, her concerns on this matter have nothing to do with CNN or the Obama Administration specifically, and actually she implies large accusations towards other networks (eg. Fox) and other administrations (eg. Bush's).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now, to be fair, Lyon &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have some issues with the Obama Administration -- even though they have nothing to do with them paying for news content or CNN. In her interview with (ahem) Alex Jones, she talks about how she feels the present Administration has made all news outlets afraid of publishing stories that include sources they've deemed as &amp;quot;terrorists&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, she says, has put the government in control of what gets reported, because journalists don't want to be indicted to reveal their sources. She says the government should not be in control of who is deemed a terrorist, and who is not, and that journalists shouldn't be threatened with indictment to reveal their sources, even if the government considers those sources to be threats to national security. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDVzJNMKs8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is an interesting claim, and it's a shame that &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; isn't what's being spread around in infographics and overwrought websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to know where the truth lies and the conspiracy theories begin with regards to CNN International's ties to corrupt regimes. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGDVzJNMKs8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;She talked with Alex Jones&lt;/a&gt; in September 2012, but it's worth watching for what &lt;em&gt;she&lt;/em&gt; says (you have to ignore what Alex Jones says) and that you're aware that she's referring to the &lt;em&gt;Bahrain&lt;/em&gt; government and &lt;em&gt;CNN International&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her claims that the US Government's attempts to crack down on terrorism is negatively affecting the free press is troubling, but she's never claimed they paid CNN (or anyone else) for content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, regardless of all of this, one thing is for sure; both the infographic and article are absolute nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1835" LastEditorUserId="1835" LastEditDate="2022-06-17T18:16:14.210" LastActivityDate="2022-06-17T18:16:14.210" CommentCount="28" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15831" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-14T11:34:50.227" Score="13" ViewCount="1342" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that there are no mobile phones in North Korea? I have heard opposing views saying that there is a working mobile network that many people use and views that say there isn't any of them in the whole country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10728" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-03T13:12:47.033" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T13:12:47.033" Title="Are there mobile phones in North Korea?" Tags="|economics|mobile-phones|geography|north-korea|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15833" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15831" CreationDate="2013-04-14T17:27:06.403" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems clear from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_in_North_Korea#Mobile_phones&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; that there are plenty of mobile phones. The issue of being able to make international calls is a different matter, but my original question seems answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10728" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T17:27:06.403" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15834" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-14T17:31:07.037" Score="2" ViewCount="549" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife suggested that we should use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epino.de/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EPI-NO&lt;/a&gt;, a muscle training device to prevent perineal injury during childbirth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody has data on the device? Is it effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The web-site has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epino.de/en/studies-epino.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;studies section&lt;/a&gt;, that I can not read well, unfortunately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13383" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-14T23:37:12.373" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T23:40:11.027" Title="Does the EPI-NO device prevent perineal injury during childbirth?" Tags="|medical-science|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15835" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15836" CreationDate="2013-04-14T20:03:45.180" Score="6" ViewCount="546" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cass R. Sunstein, a former head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and the author, most recently, of &quot;Simpler: The Future of Government.&quot;, has made this claim (The New York Times):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is measured not in the millions of hours, but in the billions - 9.14 of them, to be exact. Suppose that we value one hour at $20 (a conservative estimate). If so, the government imposes an annual reporting cost of more than $180 billion on the American people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that 9.14 billion hours are spent by Americans on government paperwork every year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-04-14T20:18:24.927" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T20:51:54.070" Title="Do Americans spend 9.14 billion hours on government paperwork every year?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15835" CreationDate="2013-04-14T20:25:50.997" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Office of Information and Budget has presented that number as their &lt;em&gt;estimate&lt;/em&gt; for 2011. See their report: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/inforeg/icb/icb_2012.pdf&quot;&gt;Information Collection Budget for FY 2011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (page 2, and throughout).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to agency estimates of paperwork burden in FY 2011, the public spent 9.14 billion hours responding to or complying with Federal information collections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-04-14T20:51:54.070" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T20:51:54.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15801" CreationDate="2013-04-14T20:28:53.053" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can, if someone with the needed technology, like the FBI, wants it to and installs the needed device or software without your knowledge. This can be avoided by cutting off the power supply to the device, i.e. remove the battery from the device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cell phones can be taped and used as a listening device as long as their buttery is in, even if they are powered off. &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029-6140191.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;As this article by cnet&lt;/a&gt; demonstrates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The surveillance technique came to light in an opinion published this week by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kaplan's opinion said that the eavesdropping technique &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;functioned whether the phone was powered on or off&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;quot; Some handsets can't be fully powered down without removing the battery; for instance, some Nokia models will wake up when turned off if an alarm is set.&#xA;While the Genovese crime family prosecution appears to be the first time a remote-eavesdropping mechanism has been used in a criminal case, the technique has been discussed in security circles for years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Countermeasures against it are taken in the IDF (Israeli Army). I have experienced in first hand that to classes, briefings or meetings where confidential material is talked about or revealed, all participants must &lt;strong&gt;suppurate&lt;/strong&gt; their phone from its buttery, and if your phone doesn't allow this, e.g., the Iphone, then you leave it outside of the room. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mako.co.il/pzm-recruits/guides/Article-f9a0e6d2ff0d031006.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is an article&lt;/a&gt; (in Hebrew) talking about information safety in the IDF that tells the same thing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;בדיונים חשובים משאירים [...] את הסלולרי אצל הפקידה בחוץ (בהתאם לפקודה האוסרת שימוש בטלפונים סלולריים, למעט &amp;quot;ורד הרים&amp;quot;, במהלך אימונים, פעילות מבצעית ודיונים מסווגים)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which translates to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During important discussions, cellular phones are left with the secretary outside (With compliance with the order that prohibits the use of cellular phones, except for &amp;quot;mountain roses&amp;quot;*,  during training, operations and classified discussions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*: &lt;a href=&quot;http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%98%22%D7%9D#.D7.9E.D7.99.D7.96.D7.9E.D7.99.D7.9D&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Mountain Rose&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; is a secure IDF cellular network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T13:16:01.647" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15838" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-14T21:15:47.380" Score="20" ViewCount="39061" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across a story on Facebook about David Latimer, who put spiderwort plants into a bottle garden (&amp;quot;terrarium&amp;quot;) in 1960, watered it in 1972, and then sealed the bung. The plants have been living, thriving even, in their own ecosystem since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story was reported in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2267504/The-sealed-bottle-garden-thriving-40-years-fresh-air-water.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thriving since 1960, my garden in a bottle: Seedling sealed in its own ecosystem and watered just once in 53 years&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;David Latimer first planted his bottle garden in 1960 and last watered it in 1972 before tightly sealing it shut 'as an experiment'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The hardy spiderworts plant inside has grown to fill the 10-gallon container by surviving entirely on recycled air, nutrients and water&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/biology/article3667780.ece&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;again&lt;/a&gt; in The Times. There are a few more places this article can be found in various forms on the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find myself extremely skeptical of this notion, however. I'm no zoologist or expert in plant sciences, but I am an engineer and the principle of energy conservation in a closed system already doesn't sit well here in my mind. Also, the article being mostly on websites such as The Daily Mail (the only exception being The Times), most of which have a reputation for posting spoof / exaggerated articles already makes me even more skeptical. I also noticed that most of the articles I found, including the mention on Facebook, state that this plant has been growing for different time periods. Some say 50 years, some 53. The Facebook one says it's been growing for 40 years. This kind of inconsistency also brings up red flags in my book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, my brother is doing his Masters degree in Plant Sciences and he had the following to say in a nutshell (paraphrased from a phone conversation):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is pure BS. That bottle would have very little CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; in it. In order for that plant to grow like that it would need to have thousands times time CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;. Even if you were to open the bottle from time to time, it's not a matter of fresh air, it's a matter of the amount of molecules available in the bottle. Because it's a 'nearly' isolated system, the amount of nutrients and water that is able to circulate would limit the growth at some point, regardless of how much sun it gets. In any case, random fungi and plant sicknesses would grow faster in there and cause everything to rot and die before it got the chance to get anywhere near that kind of growth. It happens all the time in my greenhouses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I ask is this article accurate? Is my brother with his Master's degree (whom I'm inclined to believe) right that it is impossible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2439" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T10:52:32.953" Title="Can a plant survive bottled in its own ecosystem for 50 years?" Tags="|biology|plants|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15834" CreationDate="2013-04-14T22:07:59.063" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm suspicious of their claims, but can find no concrete evidence to debunk or prove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two medical papers that relate to the product were written by the exact same people, and both read like advertisements in places, going to unusual efforts to include a &amp;reg; symbol with every mention of the product name. It also seems significantly odd that they'd submit both to the Australian / New Zealand OBGYN journal when both the company and the writers of the paper are German.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the statistics makes me even more suspicious. They measure the number of injuries sustained during different types of birth procedure for both users and non-users of EPI-NO. Each statistic is provided along with a p-value, which is a simple way of saying how statistically significant the observation is. However, they don't state their null hypothesis (it's implied but never explicitly stated), nor do they explain what their basis for the p-value was. The only two p-values that meet their &lt;em&gt;exact&lt;/em&gt; threshold for significance are the two that show the product in a positive light. The other statistics show either very minor differences (well within random variance) or demonstrate that there was a higher incidence of injury when the device was used, but these are dismissed via spurious high p-values. The sample size of one of the studies was also only ~275 people, which isn't very high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary promoter of the product, Dr. Eugen Ruckhäberle, is identified as an OBGYN expert, yet (as far as I can tell) he no longer works as a practising surgeon or doctor. He doesn't seem to be on staff at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sanktgeorg.de/aerzteteam.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OBGYN department at St. Georg Hospital, Leipzig&lt;/a&gt; any more. This isn't evidence of anything dodgy, but it may well mean that he is directly involved with the company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd hoped to discover more about the company via the domain WHOIS registrant details, but it looks like a marketing company set up the domain for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, it makes me suspicious as hell, but I sadly can't give you anything concrete to work on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5495" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-14T23:40:11.027" LastActivityDate="2013-04-14T23:40:11.027" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10674" CreationDate="2013-04-15T05:29:41.897" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. It's unlikely to happen in the same way that most wounds don't lead to devastating infections. However, places where it might be more dangerous to get an infection include the 'danger triangle' of the face and the area around the eyes, simply because of more direct venous connections to the brain. I'm a physician, and we didn't call this the 'dangerous triangle' in med school. It was simply part of the many things one learns in anatomy class. And yes, it is mentioned in textbooks. Yes, I've known a dermatologist whose patient developed meningitis, and where the most likely source of infection was presumed by everybody on the team to have come from the popped pimple on the bridge of her nose, right between her eyes. However, yes, it is pretty rare, and one is NOT likely to develop meningitis from just popping a pimple. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A example of such a textbook is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.inkling.com/read/gray-anatomy-students-drake-vogl-mitchell-2nd/chapter-8/regional-anatomy-face&quot;&gt;Gray's Anatomy for Students&lt;/a&gt; (2010), by Drake, Vogl and Mitchell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All these venous channels have interconnections with the intracranial cavernous sinus through emissary veins that connect intracranial with extracranial veins. There are no valves in the facial vein or any other venous channels in the head, so blood can move in any direction. Because of the interconnections between the veins, &lt;strong&gt;infections of the face, primarily above the mouth (i.e., the “danger area”) should be handled with great care&lt;/strong&gt; to prevent the dissemination of infectious material in an intracranial direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13388" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-09-29T06:45:44.757" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T06:45:44.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15844" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15845" CreationDate="2013-04-15T09:53:56.303" Score="1" ViewCount="4678" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does over consumption of menthol cause sleepiness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found no substantial sources either to suport or refute this argument. I have heard it from a few sources not perfectly reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do know that consumption of cough drops does cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By over comsumption I mean taking 3/4 tablets per hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am consuming &quot;fishermen's friend&quot; &quot;extra stark&quot; and want to check if it is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13391" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:25:16.740" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:25:16.740" Title="Does excessive menthol cause sleepiness?" Tags="|biology|sleep|herbalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15844" CreationDate="2013-04-15T10:08:17.733" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At typical dosages, Menthol's side effects do not include drowsiness. They do include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Severe allergic reactions (rash; hives; itching; difficulty breathing; tightness in the chest; swelling of the mouth, face, lips, or tongue); redness or irritation at the application site.  [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugs.com/sfx/menthol-side-effects.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At overdose levels, Menthol's side-effects do not include drowsiness. They do include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bladder and kidneys&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blood in the urine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No urine output&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lungs&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rapid breathing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shallow breathing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gastrointestinal&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abdominal pain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diarrhea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nausea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vomiting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Heart and blood&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rapid heartbeat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nervous system&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Convulsions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dizziness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tremor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unconsciousness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unsteady walking&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002673.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use medications according to the instructions. On average, they are more reliable than the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T10:08:17.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10977" CreationDate="2013-04-15T13:39:58.817" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the potential reasons for the confusion from positive, negative and mixed reports available may be due to the simple fact that they may not all be looking at the same thing anyway:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Garlic obviously contains a number of different compounds - concentrations may vary with variety, 'ripeness', harvest conditions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The compound most often linked to its activity is probably allicin. This compound is not normally present in high concentrations in garlic but is only produced once the enzyme alliinase comes in contact with the allicin precursor aliin.  This happens when garlic is crushed or otherwise injured mechanically. Therefore the way garlic is processed may be relevant here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in garlic extract products the release of allicin is problematic &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11368641&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(Low allicin release from garlic supplements: a major problem due to the sensitivities of alliinase activity)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition allicin is a highly labile compound - chemical and thermostability is relatively low so that alllicin concentrations may change rapidly once produced. The stability also depends on the medium it is in  - water and food in general is probably not ideal. It is not clear what the relative activity of the breakdown products and metabolites may be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good overview with references can be found here &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allicin.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;web site&lt;/a&gt; Although I have not checked out all the references personally the information broadly reflects other scientific publications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has also been suggested that the activity of garlic may actually be related to the presence of a range of compounds which may work together &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11238796&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(Intake of garlic and its bioactive components)&lt;/a&gt;. It is easy to see how this would increase the complexity of the problem of standardisation mentioned above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13143" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T13:39:58.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15838" CreationDate="2013-04-15T15:07:45.323" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in the comments, the fact that The Times published this story, with a photograph of said plant, is already compelling evidence that it happened, but of course it's possible they have been fooled. If we're not willing to take The Times nor Mr. Latimer's word as evidence, we really have no way to &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; that he's telling the truth, as we haven't been there for 40 years to watch the plant grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is no reason, &lt;em&gt;in theory&lt;/em&gt;, the a plant like this could not survive in a bottled environment. The key element missing form your brother's argument is that bacteria in the soil will break down the dead leaves that fall from the plant and release CO2 back into the bottle. (Plants also release a tiny amount of CO2 on their own, though nowhere near as much as they consume during photosynthesis.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, most of the actual published articles I can find on the &lt;em&gt;quantity&lt;/em&gt; of CO2 released by bacteria are written from the perspective of &amp;quot;global climate change&amp;quot;, so I'm always bit skeptical of their numbers. The most accessible one I could find on short notice was &lt;a href=&quot;http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_microbe_factor_and_its_role_in_our_climate_future/2279/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; from Yale's E360 magazine, which is &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; fairly even-handed. Among other things, it notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Together, microbes lock up — and release — a huge amount of carbon. The world’s soils — the product of bacteria and fungi breaking down plant matter — contain more than 2.5 trillion tons of carbon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, the microbes that break plant matter into soil release 55 billion tons a year of carbon dioxide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the bottle containing the plant in question appears to be almost 1/2 filled with soil, I would &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; be too skeptical of its ability to survive in a sealed environment for a long period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, note that of the four seeds he planted, only the spiderwort survived. It doesn't mention which species of &lt;em&gt;Tradescantia&lt;/em&gt; he planted, but members of that genus are known for being particularly &amp;quot;hardy&amp;quot; plants. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagobotanic.org/downloads/planteval_notes/no34_tradescantia.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;botanical comparison&lt;/a&gt; of them mentions that they actually thrive in conditions when they are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; watered regularly (though they won't flower nearly as often, something that is evident from the article's photographs):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spiderworts prefer moist, well-drained soils, but do not like their roots to be overly wet or dry. [...] Foliar diseases are exacerbated by frequent overhead irrigation. Garden spiderworts are winter hardy in USDA Zones 4-9.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7998" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-15T15:07:45.323" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15825" CreationDate="2013-04-16T09:00:51.413" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking around on the internet, the claim is actually that the rhinoceros beetle can carry 850 times its own weight, not just 100 times its own weight. The type of rhinoceros beetle in question is the &quot;Hercules beetle&quot; (Dynastes hercules)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adults of some species can lift objects 850 times their weight! That&#xA;  would be equivalent to a human lifting 9 fully grown male elephants!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nwf.org/Wildlife/Wildlife-Library/Invertebrates/Rhinoceros-Beetles.aspx&quot;&gt;One such claim&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compared to an elephant, the rhinoceros beetle looks minuscule. But&#xA;  ounce for ounce, this insect is considered the world's strongest&#xA;  creature Rhinoceros beetles, which get their name from the hornlike&#xA;  structure on a male's head, are capable of carrying up to 850 times&#xA;  their own body weight. A human with this relative strength would be&#xA;  able to lift some 65 tons (59 metric tons).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/photos/animal-records-gallery/#/rhinoceros-beetle_5819_600x450.jpg&quot;&gt;Another such claim&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds really crazy, what is it the beetles actually does, and how heavy things is it they have lifted? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Male Hercules beetles can be up to 17cm long, and weigh up to 120g.&#xA;  The species exhibits ‘sexual dimorphism’, which means that females and&#xA;  males are very different in appearance. For a long time, scientists&#xA;  thought that they were actually separate species; only the males have&#xA;  horns (which make up to half of their body length). These horns are&#xA;  used to fight other males, burrow into wood and move obstacles (like&#xA;  sticks, rocks and small logs) out of its way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://societyofbiology.blogspot.se/2011/09/species-of-week-rhinoceros-beetle.html&quot;&gt;Weight of the beetle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The beetle seems to push around rocks, sticks and logs using its large horns.&#xA;The beetle's weight is in other words 120g, and can lift things 850 times its own weight.&#xA;0.12kg * 850 = 102 kg. The beetle have apparently been shown to lift things weighting 102 kilos. This sounds pretty fantastic. How have those tests been done? Did the beetle really just grab a 102 kilo rock, and move it about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;v=f8neGzNvpfg#t=1m11s&quot;&gt;Youtube link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the video, it shows the tests done by scientists in University of California, Berkeley, CA. &lt;strong&gt;And the beetle was shown to carry 100 times its own weight ON ITS BACK. The video says they tested that.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details about the tests can be found in the paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://jeb.biologists.org/content/199/3/609.full.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;INEXPENSIVE LOAD CARRYING BY RHINOCEROS BEETLES&quot;&lt;/a&gt; from 1995, from Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, CA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There they tested how much the beetles energy consumption changed with carrying 30 times its body weight. And in the paper it's depicted the tests shown in the youtube video as well. The beetle could move pretty much unhindered with 30 times its weight. The paper didn't say anything about 100 times it's weight, but it wasn't completely related to the topic.&#xA;Where the number 850 times its weight comes from that is the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Females of the species will dig a tunnel into a pile of dung and males&#xA;  will enter the tunnel looking to mate. If a male encounters another&#xA;  male in the tunnel they will battle each other, each trying to remove&#xA;  the other. The scientists tested the beetle's ability to resist rivals&#xA;  by measuring how much weight was needed to pull a male beetle out of&#xA;  his hole. That's how they know that it would take 1,141 other beetles&#xA;  to pull a determined male dung beetle out of 'love tunnel'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremescience.com/strongest-animal.htm&quot;&gt;Idea to where that idea might come from&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably a similar test was done to the Hercules beetle. That means the 850 times number is not for amount it carries on its back, but how strong it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes the beetle can carry 100 times its weight, on its back&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-04-16T11:28:19.403" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T11:28:19.403" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7796" CreationDate="2013-04-16T12:04:17.297" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this, is &lt;strong&gt;Yes, It does appear that elephants are typically restrained using a chain tied around the leg between the foot and carpus (wrist)&lt;/strong&gt; however &lt;strong&gt;No, they are not incapable of breaking free&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story of the elephant and the breakable peg, which the elephant does not break crops up repeatedly in life coaching/positive attitude works a great deal. It is used as an analogy to people who are &amp;quot;set in their ways&amp;quot; (bad job, unhappy marriage etc). The teaching goes &amp;quot;If only we could break that 'peg' that we long thought we were unable/unwilling to, we could make our life better&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/1025563/Circus-Elephant-Syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Are you suffering from &amp;quot;Circus elephant syndrome&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://betterlifecoachingblog.com/2010/08/16/the-elephant-and-the-chain-whats-holding-you-back/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Elephant and the Chain – What’s Holding You Back?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it appears that this is the way that elephant handlers, both in zoos and circus' restrain their keep's in order to interact with them in a safe manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tethering keeps the elephant from wandering, provides security for other animals and people, provides order and routine for elephants, and enables conducting routine procedures, such as toe nail clipping, administration of medicine and cleaning the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Source &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=oCpiZA61tyQC&amp;amp;pg=PA79&amp;amp;lpg=PA79&amp;amp;dq=elephant+chain+leg&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=2JJeFag579&amp;amp;sig=3te9hBFgUbKUMn-QxFGZUS5f3Nc&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=ajZtUZrmDYG0O5ztgKAJ&amp;amp;ved=0CHwQ6AEwDA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=elephant%20chain%20leg&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Biology, Medicine, and Surgery of Elephants pp.79&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another widely quoted website on the matter belongs to an experienced german zoo kepper. &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?sl=auto&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;js=n&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;eotf=1&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.upali.ch%2Fautor.html&amp;amp;act=url&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is the about page - Translated to English&lt;/a&gt;. He has this to say about training young elephants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the age of about one year it is time for the little elephant to let itself chain for washing like the other elephants. This step takes about 2 months. First the little elephant gets a little foot chain put on. It has to learn to stand patiently while the keeper ties the chain around its foot. This is already quite difficult and requires everybody’s patience and sensitivity. The consistent training with the little elephant is also important. That means, once you have started, you have to continue this training every day.&#xA;When the little elephant lets itself put on a chain, it is tied up at the forefoot for a short time. After this is going off smoothly and reliably, the same exercise is started with the hind leg. Now the elephant knows what the keeper wants and the keeper knows that the little elephant has learned e.g. being tied up. Now the elephant has also to obey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it appears that the conjecture that elephants are trained to accept tethering is a commonly used method among zoo keepers, and by extension, circus handlers (who fulfill the same role outside of a zoo setting).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, to the crux of the question. Could they break free from a weak teather? They almost certainly could. This is evidenced by the fact that elephants on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;musth&lt;/a&gt; must be secured:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Domesticated elephants on musth in India are traditionally tied to a strong tree, or two strong trees, and denied food and water, or put on a starvation diet, for several days, after which the musth passes. Mahouts are often able to greatly shorten the duration of their elephants' musth, typically to five to eight days; xylazine is also used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since denial of food and water is considered animal cruelty in most Western nations, the approved method in these countries is to strictly isolate the elephant in a highly-fortified secure pen for a period ranging from 1 to 2 months until the elephant emerges from musth on its own&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The above quote is from the wikipedia article linked above - not the best source, but a good description nontheless)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another fairly good indication that Elephants do, on occasion, break free of a tether is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fao.org/docrep/008/ae943e/ae943e08.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;advice given to Mahouts by the Food &amp;amp; Agriculture organisation of the UN&lt;/a&gt;, in summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many elephants like to repeatedly try to break their chains in an attempt to get free. Some elephants which fight their chains are harmless but a sizeable majority, not surprisingly, are aggressive and dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such attempts are an understandable try for freedom, but all mahouts will try to stop them because a loose elephant can cause huge damage to property, to crops, and to human beings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T14:42:07.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10368" CreationDate="2013-04-16T13:42:44.263" Score="-1" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;T. Aminian Razavi, F. Shabkhiz, F. Amirshaghaghi and R. Abdollahi, &lt;a href=&quot;http://idosi.org/wjss/6(4)12/7.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Comparing the Effect of Faradic and Aerobic Exercise on Circumference, % Fat and Endurance of Abdomen in Non-Athlete Women&lt;/a&gt;, World J. Sport Sci., 6 (4): 367-371, 2012&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of this research was to consider and compare the effect of faradic and aerobic exercise on circumference, % fat and endurance of abdomen in non-athlete women. 20 non-athlete women participated randomly in this research (K-S test used). They were divided into two groups: Faradic (F) and Aerobic (A). Before the research, their circumference was measured by a tape measure, % fat by caliper and endurance of abdomen by digital equipment for 30 seconds. After 24 sessions, those tests were repeated (after two months).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Results indicated that circumference of abdomen decreased only in faradic group (p=0.000) while %fat decreased (faradic: p=0.018, aerobic exercise: p=0.004) and muscular endurance of abdomen increased in both groups (faradic: p=0.004, aerobic exercise: p=0.024) significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Independent t test showed a significant difference in endurance (p=0.001) but no significant difference in %fat (p=0.851) and circumference of abdomen (p=0.765) between the two groups. Also, the results showed that both protocols of training (faradic and aerobic) decreased circumference and %fat of abdomen but the significant effect of aerobic exercise on muscular endurance of abdomen was observed compared with faradic group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13411" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T14:33:07.813" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15860" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-16T17:59:29.697" Score="15" ViewCount="40045" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thinkexist.com/quotation/wild_animals_never_kill_for_sport-man_is_the_only/10823.html&quot;&gt;“Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the&#xA;  torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.”&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;James Anthony Froude&lt;/strong&gt; (British historian, 1818-1894)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this statement factually correct? Have there been any research conducted which help support or disprove this statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find a few answers via &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=Are+Humans+the+only+animal+that+kills+for+pleasure%3F&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla%3aen-US%3aofficial&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&quot;&gt;google&lt;/a&gt;, but they're mostly from different internet forums and feel insubstantial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading the comments, I realized that it's difficult to define precisely what &quot;pleasure&quot; means. So, I'm going to rephrase my question to: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Are humans the only animals that kill for purposes other then food, survival, or other basic necessities?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I understand correctly, the quote at the top of this question is assuming that animals kill only for survival (obtaining food, self defense, etc). I would like to know if there are any specific counter-examples where animals do appear to kill for reasons other then survival.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13414" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T14:18:07.723" LastActivityDate="2015-08-27T14:48:21.297" Title="Are humans the only animals that kill for pleasure or no purpose?" Tags="|biology|morality|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15860" CreationDate="2013-04-16T19:56:00.193" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Elephants have been known to &lt;a href=&quot;http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19941023&amp;amp;slug=1937416&quot;&gt;murder rhinoceroses&lt;/a&gt;, apparently for no better reason that &quot;to test their strength&quot; (although the exact reason isn't known for certain).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rhino killings stopped, and the case appears closed. But&#xA;  scientists are left to figure out the most baffling question of all:&#xA;  What motivated these elephants to behave in such a savage and&#xA;  uncharacteristic fashion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The answers they are coming up with would not surprise criminology&#xA;  students in the United States. They also offer no real assurances that&#xA;  the rhinos are out of danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the late 1970s Pilanesberg became a pioneer in the restocking of&#xA;  animals. Baby elephants that would have been marked for slaughter in&#xA;  other parks (as part of the annual cull to keep elephant populations&#xA;  manageable) were moved instead to Pilanesberg along with two adult&#xA;  females to care for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mothers normally drive male elephants from the herd once they reach&#xA;  adulthood. Males start drifting away around age 15, eventually linking&#xA;  up with other groups of male elephants led by a patriarch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But now that Pilanesberg's elephants are reaching adolescence, there&#xA;  are no adult males for them to follow. Thus, they have become juvenile&#xA;  delinquents deprived of adult supervision or role models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There are no adult bulls around to keep them in check,&quot; Stuart-Hill&#xA;  said. &quot;So they're highly aggressive and are testing their strength on&#xA;  other animals.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He prefers a biological explanation: the sudden surge of hormones in&#xA;  adolescent elephants that produces aggressive behavior normally&#xA;  controlled by older males.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If he is right, the killings might have stopped only because the&#xA;  mating season ended. He conceded that three innocent elephants might&#xA;  have been killed and that the problem could resurface next year when&#xA;  the mating season resumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The white rhino, hunted to the brink of extinction earlier this&#xA;  century by humans, then would be facing a new threat to its existence&#xA;  from bands of unruly, juvenile-delinquent elephants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastActivityDate="2013-04-16T19:56:00.193" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15860" CreationDate="2013-04-16T20:25:52.403" Score="17" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dolphins&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blogiversity.org/blogs/cstanton/archive/2010/01/29/mommy-no-that-s-a-dolphin.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;From&lt;/a&gt; a National Geographic Special on Dolphins:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But beneath the harmony lies a darker side of dolphins. Gangs of strong males pick on younger or smaller dolphins. Bottlenose dolphins are even known to kill for reasons other than hunger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a caveat, I was NOT able to find that quote directly from NG online, only other sites quoting it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chimps&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their reasons for such killings have long been a source of debate among zoologists, but the aftermath of the Ngogo murders reveals an important clue. After the chimps picked off their neighbours, they eventually took over their territory. It seems that chimps kill for land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/06/21/chimpanzees-murder-for-land/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/06/21/chimpanzees-murder-for-land/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T16:54:02.627" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15860" CreationDate="2013-04-17T00:10:24.290" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dogs are said to sometimes kill for &quot;fun&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2015273676_wilddogs10m.html&quot;&gt;http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2015273676_wilddogs10m.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A pack of dogs has killed about 100 animals in the past three months&#xA;  in northeastern Washington state while eluding law enforcement and&#xA;  volunteers. ... Authorities are warning residents to take whatever&#xA;  steps are necessary to protect their families and animals because the&#xA;  dogs appear to be killing for fun rather than food. No humans have&#xA;  been attacked, but officers fear that could happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2009/11/do_wolves_kill_for_sport.html&quot;&gt;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2009/11/do_wolves_kill_for_sport.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dogs are the only animal that definitely kills for sport, but that's&#xA;  only because humans taught them to do so. When a farmer finds a few&#xA;  dead chickens killed during the daylight hours with no missing body&#xA;  parts, the neighbor's dog is almost always the culprit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, they could be doing this entirely because their innate prey drive tells them to, perhaps to stay in good practice for hunting. So it's difficult to say if it's really just &quot;for fun&quot; or if staying in practice when food is plentiful helps hone their hunting skills for when food is scarce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13418" LastEditorUserId="13418" LastEditDate="2013-04-17T00:31:28.257" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T00:31:28.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15831" CreationDate="2013-04-17T05:18:21.840" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;More clarification of international calls from North-Korea is given &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.northkoreatech.org/2013/03/27/mobile-internet-service-reportedly-stopped-for-tourists/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, dated March 27, 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“3G access is no longer available for tourists to the DPRK. Sim cards can still be purchased to make international calls but no internet access is available,” the Beijing-based North Korean tourism specialist said in a short notice on its website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10452" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-17T06:32:45.483" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T06:32:45.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15790" CreationDate="2013-04-17T13:25:46.377" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to add to Sancho's answer. His answer is very correct, there is no ban on small-breasted porn models, but there is an &quot;in practice&quot; reality to the claim due to how the censors categorise and interpret the classification systems in Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no specific rule stating that small breasts are bad, but in practice many complaints are registered and material is refused classification due to models not looking &quot;adult&quot; enough and can thus be categorized as either child sexual abuse or offensive sexual fetishes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alrc.gov.au/sites/default/files/pdfs/publications/10_refused_classification_category.pdf&quot;&gt;Publications will be classified ‘RC’:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(a) if they promote or provide instruction in paedophile activity; or if they contain:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(b) descriptions or depictions of child sexual abuse or any other exploitative or offensive descriptions or depictions involving a person who is, &lt;strong&gt;or appears to be&lt;/strong&gt;, a child under 18;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(c) detailed instruction in:&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(i) matters of crime or violence,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(ii) the use of proscribed drugs;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(d) realistic depictions of bestiality; or if they contain gratuitous, exploitative or offensive descriptions or depictions of:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(e) violence with a very high degree of impact which are excessively frequent, emphasised or detailed;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(f) cruelty or real violence which are very detailed or which have a high impact;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(g) sexual violence;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(h) sexualised nudity involving minors;&#xA;(i) sexual activity involving minors;  or of they contain&#xA;exploitative descriptions of:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(j) violence in a sexual context;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(k) sexual activity accompanied by fetishes or practices which are revolting or abhorrent;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(l) incest fantasies or other fantasies which are offensive or revolting or abhorrent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you see, this list is quite open to interpretation. Thus the review board for published materials and the complaints board for online material often do classify materials as RC, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/40072.html&quot;&gt;regardless of their legality&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is illegal to sell RC material in, say, a newsagent. It’s also&#xA;  illegal to make it available for viewing publicly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But it’s not by any means illegal for me to own or possess these&#xA;  things myself and view them in the comfort of my own lounge room. It’s&#xA;  quite legal, for example, for me to own and view (or read, or listen&#xA;  to):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An RC film, TV program or other video such as Ken Park or Baise Moi;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Material on euthanasia such as The Peaceful Pill Handbook;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Material that instructs on bomb-making, theft or any other crime.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now, sure, some of these things are distasteful to many people. Even&#xA;  offensive. Or morally problematic. And they are all refused&#xA;  classification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But they are not illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the RC classification often has material on its list despite that material being perfectly legal. This list includes &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_banned_in_Australia&quot;&gt;movies&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/special/exhibitions/bannedbooks/exhibition/australia.html&quot;&gt;books&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy&quot;&gt;video games&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Australian_government_secret_ACMA_internet_censorship_blacklist,_18_Mar_2009&quot;&gt;internet sites&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how do small breasted models fall under this classification system? Well, in practice, many RC classifications have been passed against many magazines, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.refused-classification.com/censorship/books-magazines/h.html#hustler-barely-legal&quot;&gt;Hustler Barely Legal series&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.refused-classification.com/censorship/books-magazines/j.html#just-18&quot;&gt;Just 18&lt;/a&gt; magazine, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.refused-classification.com/censorship/books-magazines/n.html#new-climax&quot;&gt;New Climax&lt;/a&gt;, and of course, various DVDs like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.refused-classification.com/censorship/adult-films/h.html#hi-teen-club-2&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.refused-classification.com/censorship/adult-films/h.html#hustlers-barely-legal-18th-birthday&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. The TV show Hungry Beast did several segments on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/tv/hungrybeast/stories/internet-filter-survey-results/index.html&quot;&gt;censorship of porn in Australia&lt;/a&gt;, including covering the issue of small breasts and exposed labia lips, which was leading to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/tv/hungrybeast/node/1448/index.html&quot;&gt;photoshopping&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/tv/hungrybeast/stories/labiaplasty/index.html&quot;&gt;of models&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best example of the bias against small breasts is from the leaked Australian &lt;a href=&quot;http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Leaked_Australian_blacklist_reveals_banned_sites&quot;&gt;Internet Filter Blacklist&lt;/a&gt; compiled by ACMA. This list of sites was not only a disgrace, as legitimate sites were being blacklisted and didn't realise, but many of the supposed &quot;illegal&quot; or RC sites were perfectly legal. &lt;a href=&quot;http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Australian_government_secret_ACMA_internet_censorship_blacklist,_18_Mar_2009&quot;&gt;The problem was that they featured small breasted women&lt;/a&gt;. For example, Abby Winters, Just Teen, Teens Naked and Tube8, all legal, all acceptable, all models over 18, are on the blacklist. The common theme to many of the banned porn sites is that there are small breasted women or women who &quot;appear to be&quot; too young. The distinction of &quot;too young&quot; is obviously ambiguous and thus many models are RC'd because small breasts is a sign of &quot;young&quot; women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth reading the list to see the sort of sites that were being RC'd, because you will see many perfectly legal sites on the list. I suspect, as is outlined in the Wikileaks article, that complaints are lodged for any hardcore sex sites that a complainant comes across &quot;by accident&quot; and it is duly listed regardless of whether content ticks the points I outlined above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5775" LastEditorUserId="5775" LastEditDate="2013-04-18T00:57:21.670" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T00:57:21.670" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15876" CreationDate="2013-04-17T13:53:57.710" Score="4" ViewCount="5104" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the supermarket trolley, a notice says that the trolley will stop if you try to take it outside the precincts of the shop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is so, how does it work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example sign from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/2012/12/02/for-your-convenience/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hyperorg.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9JJ4nl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7539" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-17T14:56:37.020" LastActivityDate="2022-12-25T07:17:29.473" Title="Is there a mechanism to stop theft of supermarket trolleys?" Tags="|security|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15876" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15875" CreationDate="2013-04-17T14:25:08.727" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, there are actually a number of systems that can be used with &lt;a href=&quot;http://cartmanagement.hubpages.com/hub/Effective-Ways-2-Prevent-Shopping-Cart-Theft&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;electronic wheel locking systems&lt;/a&gt; apparently being the most common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O6FjG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sign in parking lot for electronic wheel locking system&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.squidoo.com/shoppingcartcontainment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;number of different systems&lt;/a&gt; that might be used, they all operate on the same basic principle, to quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gatekeepersystems.com/sol_cc_cc_faq.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one of the manufactures&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A: The CartControl shopping cart retention systems are patented&#xA;  electronic systems that comprehensively prevent the removal of&#xA;  shopping carts from store premises. The CartControl shopping cart&#xA;  retention systems combine a digitally-encoded locking signal, embedded&#xA;  perimeter antenna, and our patented self-braking shopping cart wheel.&#xA;  A digital locking signal is transmitted via an embedded cable. The&#xA;  path of the cable establishes a perimeter boundary. An&#xA;  electronically-activated, self-braking wheel installed on each cart is&#xA;  designed to lock when it comes within range of the perimeter boundary&#xA;  signal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JrUBv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Shopping cart wheel that can be locked&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is done primarily to prevent loss of the shopping carts &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/sectionfront/life/retailers-employ-technology-to-cut-down-on-loss-of-carts-258892/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;through theft&lt;/a&gt; although it does have the added benefit of saving companies money since they can be fined for the &quot;litter&quot; if the shopping carts leave their property.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T14:25:08.727" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15875" CreationDate="2013-04-17T19:50:41.453" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the product page from the manufacturer of the CAPS system noted in the sign you posted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.carttronics.com/CAPS.asp&quot;&gt;http://www.carttronics.com/CAPS.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Carttronics CAPS® is a highly effective cart and trolley loss&#xA;  prevention solution with the lowest lifetime cost of ownership. CAPS&#xA;  is operating on thousands of store sites in dozens of countries around&#xA;  the world, including independents, regional chains and sites owned and&#xA;  operated by 15 of the top 20 global retail chains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The CAPS system consists of a small gauge antenna wire located in a&#xA;  narrow saw-cut around the site perimeter, a small electronic signal&#xA;  transmitter located in a secure location in the store, and one&#xA;  Carttronics’ locking CAPS caster on each cart. When someone tries to&#xA;  leave the store property the CAPS caster automatically releases a&#xA;  durable yellow braking shell that rotates down to separate the wheel&#xA;  from the ground and stop the cart. The braking shell is readily reset&#xA;  by store personnel using Carttronics’ hand held reset controller,&#xA;  placing the cart back in service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13418" LastActivityDate="2013-04-17T19:50:41.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15881" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-17T20:31:53.770" Score="1" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.context.org/iclib/ic27/orr/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;What Is Education For&quot;&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_W._Orr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;David Orr&lt;/a&gt; and the author makes the following statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is a matter of no small consequence that the only people who have lived sustainably on the planet for any length of time could not read, or, like the Amish, do not make a fetish of reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know much about sustainability or sustainable living (and I am sure there are many levels of such) but that statement just seems wrong to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anybody have any thoughts or references I could look at that support/refute that statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13432" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-18T00:10:15.803" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T00:10:15.803" Title="Have all sustainable cultures been illiterate (or not made a fetish of reading)?" Tags="|culture|sustainability|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15882" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-17T20:51:17.297" Score="9" ViewCount="802" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both the EU and the USA have programmes to encourage the use of biofuels in gasoline and diesel. This is supposed to help reduce oil imports and help the environment at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But government subsidies and mandates have been criticised (see this from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/18200668&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Economist&lt;/a&gt;) and have even been accused of causing damaging distortions in world food prices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, a new analysis of policy in the EU suggests they are both expensive and not even any good for helping the environment. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/17/biofuels_bad/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This report in The Register&lt;/a&gt; summarises:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The craze for biofuels - a part of EU legislation for a decade now - is costing Europeans a fortune and isn't even environmentally friendly, a new report by renowned British think-tank Chatham House argues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original report is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/Energy,%20Environment%20and%20Development/0413pp_biofuels.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here as a pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Register suggests the consequences of biofuel mandates include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the poor starve, food prices are more volatile, and they don't contribute to greenhouse gas emission reductions...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2013/03/biofuels&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Economist&lt;/a&gt; concurs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ethanol mandate is clearly wasteful, does environmental damage, contributes to higher food prices at home and abroad through the misallocation of agricultural resources, and is a needless tax on everyone who drives in America. Time for it to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is, are biofuels an expensive bad idea that don't even help the environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another calculation on the carbon neutrality of biofuels has been released. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-016-1764-4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;original paper is here&lt;/a&gt;. It concludes they are not as carbon neutral as thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A news story on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2016/08/biofuels-worse-for-global-warming-than-petrol-say-academics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gizmodo&lt;/a&gt;, headlined &quot;Biofuels Worse for Global Warming Than Petrol&quot;, reports the new study but also notes that it is controversial:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Renewable Fuels Association obviously thinks this stinks as much as a trillion Argentinian cow farts, with RFA's Geoff Cooper saying: &quot;He has been making these arguments for years, and for years they have been rejected by climate scientists, regulatory bodies and governments around the world, and reputable life-cycle analysis experts. Just like Professor DeCicco’s last study, this work was funded by the American Petroleum Institute, which obviously has a vested interest in obscuring and confusing accepted bioenergy carbon accounting practices.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So they disagree and choose an &lt;em&gt;ad hominem&lt;/em&gt; attack rather than pointing out where the calculations are wrong. This leaves the question of whether the calculations are any good open to skeptical analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarification&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some comments have suggested that the question is too broad. I disagree but for the sake of argument let us agree that we should judge the question of environmental friendliness purely in terms of the effect on CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; production. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the metric of carbon mitigation, are the major biofuels used in transport fuel environmentally friendly compared to the fossil fuels they replace?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2016-08-29T18:26:34.947" LastActivityDate="2016-08-29T18:26:34.947" Title="Are biofuels environmentally friendly?" Tags="|environment|transportation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15791" CreationDate="2013-04-17T22:41:42.417" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/overheated-laptop-blamed-for-p-e-i-house-fire-1.1241809&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Overheated laptop blamed for P.E.I. house fire&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MONTAGUE, P.E.I. -- An overheated laptop computer sitting on a bed is&#xA;  believed to have started a fire in P.E.I. that has left a mother and&#xA;  her two children homeless. RCMP say the fire started just before 6&#xA;  a.m. at a residence in Montague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;April 17, 2013&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13436" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-18T17:10:15.620" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T17:10:15.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15886" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15900" CreationDate="2013-04-18T02:27:58.680" Score="11" ViewCount="2920" Body="&lt;p&gt;In late 2011 the prime minister of Ukraine said the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But it is impossible to predict what will happen in 20 years. I will&#xA;  tell you a story: I just got back from a plant in Dnipropetrovsk. Only&#xA;  20 years ago, it was a highly classified facility that produced&#xA;  missiles and satellites for the Soviet Union. Today, I saw with my own&#xA;  eyes: it is producing the first stage of parts for the US-designed&#xA;  Stanford Torus space station in collaboration with scientists from the&#xA;  United States. You cannot imagine the level of cooperation and trust&#xA;  this requires. Who could have imagined that 20 years ago, during the&#xA;  Cold War?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/nov/7/ukraine-leader-defends-straddling-east-west-in-int/?page=all&quot;&gt;Washington Times, November 7th 2011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What on Earth was he talking about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11268" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:30:53.307" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:30:53.307" Title="Are United States scientists building a Stanford Torus space station in the Ukraine?" Tags="|united-states|space-flight|ukraine|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15889" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15897" CreationDate="2013-04-18T03:16:35.590" Score="9" ViewCount="2510" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an enlightening article on the dollars and cents of the band Phish at &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/48216173465/the-business-of-phish&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Priceonomics.com&lt;/a&gt;. In the article, the author cites spontanaeity as a big reason for the band's success, and repeats a myth often told in Phish circles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The band has never played the same set list twice...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A setlist, by the way, is a record of the songs played in chronological order at a single performance. Find a (complete?) record of Phish setlists at &lt;a href=&quot;http://phish.net/setlists/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;phish.net&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After Googling around a little bit, it appears there is little consensus about whether or not Phish has ever performed the same setlist twice, though fans seem apt to perpetuate the myth that they have not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the phish.net forum, &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.phish.net/thread.php?thread=1298780249&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one user rejects the possibility&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;simple answer, no. thread closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence he presents (none) is less than convincing, and other answerers at that thread are less sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At another fansite, phantasytour.com, a user answers &lt;a href=&quot;http://phantasytour.com/bands/1/topics/2962479/posts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the question&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'd say no, but I agree, 88-91 are probably the years where you might find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, some unofficial stats on Phish:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The band has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ihoz.com/raw.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reportedly&lt;/a&gt; performed &lt;strong&gt;1428 shows&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The band has &lt;a href=&quot;http://phish.net/song/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reportedly&lt;/a&gt; performed more than &lt;strong&gt;800 songs&lt;/strong&gt;, including nearly 300 original songs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fans have had at it. But what do the skeptics say? Has Phish really never played the same setlist twice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T20:03:22.793" LastActivityDate="2016-10-05T02:14:23.863" Title="Has Phish &quot;never played the same setlist twice&quot;?" Tags="|music|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15893" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15894" CreationDate="2013-04-18T12:42:44.593" Score="21" ViewCount="2059" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was told that smoking 'menthol' cigarettes could cause erectile dysfunction. But I don't know how much of this is true so I wanted to know how much of this is true...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aTEo3.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Tobacco Free Florida, via: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutsofaburglar.com/sledgehammer-advertising/observations&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guts of a Burglar blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Does smoking any type of Cigarettes cause ED or is it just some types or brands like 'Menthol' , 'Black' etc...???&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13445" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2018-04-25T23:05:09.037" LastActivityDate="2018-08-10T06:51:34.610" Title="Could smoking cause erectile dysfunction?" Tags="|physiology|sexuality|smoking|tobacco|erectile-dysfunction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15893" CreationDate="2013-04-18T13:22:18.890" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the information on this subject appears to come from the work of Pourmand G, Alidaee MR, Rasuli S, Maleki A, Mehrsai A. at the Urology Research Center, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tums.ac.ir/?lang=en&quot;&gt;Tehran University of Medical Sciences&lt;/a&gt;, Tehran, Iran&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The severity of ED correlated significantly with the level of exposure to smoking&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1464-410X.2004.05162.x/abstract&quot;&gt;Do cigarette smokers with erectile dysfunction benefit from stopping?: a prospective study.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a strong association between the intensity of cigarette smoking and degree of ED. Stopping cigarette smoking can improve ED in a considerable proportion of smokers. Age and the severity of ED before stopping are inversely related to the chance of improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Authors of the study make no reference to the &lt;em&gt;type&lt;/em&gt; of cigarette smoked, they used the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pack_year&quot;&gt;pack-years&lt;/a&gt; measure to estimate the level of exposure to smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We assessed whether there was a significant correlation between pack-years and the severity of ED&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2013-04-19T15:23:16.560" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T15:23:16.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15886" CreationDate="2013-04-18T18:18:07.390" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's impossible to prove a negative, but it is possible to show that it's very unlikely, and a secret Stanford Torus project is not likely for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Constructing any sizable space station would involve thousands of people working for many years. While you could argue that the Ukraine may be able to keep people on-site and off the grid and unable to leak information about the project, it's unlikely that the Nasa side would be so air tight. This is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories#Number_of_conspirators_involved&quot;&gt;common argument against faking the moon landings&lt;/a&gt; - it's unlikely that thousands of people could work on a project and not let something leak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are exceptions, of course, the work at England's Bletchley Park during WWII was so secretive that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/bletchley_park.htm&quot;&gt;there is a story of a husband and wife&lt;/a&gt; that worked at the facility at the same time, but they didn't reveal it to each other until some of the secrecy of the site was lifted in the 1970's, decades after they worked there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Bletchly Park only had around 9000 employees, many of them military and all of them believing that the secrecy of their work was important to their country's survival. And it was well before today's social media that makes sharing private information easy to do inadvertantly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Constructing a full-size Torus spacestation along with associated heavy lift capability would be on-par with the Apollo project - that project involved over 400,000 workers including NASA employees and contractors. Even the much smaller Mars Rover project &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/06/news/companies/mars-curiosity-jobs/index.htm&quot;&gt;employed 700 NASA workers, but involved 7000 other workers at various subcontractors over 8 years.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also the issue of money -- the ISS (much smaller than the proposed Torus) was built by an international coalition of nations for an estimated total cost of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#Program_cost_in_United_States_dollars&quot;&gt;$150B&lt;/a&gt; including the cost of spaceflights to build it and and for ongoing missions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;small&quot; Stanford Torus housing only 10,000 people would have to cost at least 100 times as much (likely much more), probably well into the trillions of dollars. Nasa's annual budget is around $18B, so it's not like they could fund it out of their spare change, and the Ukraine's entire GDP is only around $150B so they aren't going to have a lot of money to fund it. Even the USA's GDP is &quot;only&quot; $15T, so it would be hard to secretly fund a project costing trillions of dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 1.8 km Torus would need around &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_torus#Construction&quot;&gt;10M tons of material&lt;/a&gt;. The Saturn V rocket used for Apollo missions could launch around &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_orbital_launch_systems&quot;&gt;130 tons&lt;/a&gt; into Low Earth Orbit, so it would take 76,000 launches to get 10M tons of materials in orbit. This many launches is practically impossible, so any large scale space development would need to obtain materials from the moon or asteroids. And there's no evidence that any country is able to do so at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's really no way to hide a project of this size (large in terms of workers, cost, and physical scale).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13418" LastEditorUserId="13418" LastEditDate="2013-04-18T18:55:03.917" LastActivityDate="2013-04-18T18:55:03.917" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15889" CreationDate="2013-04-18T19:10:18.167" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is, at best, speculative, and, at worst, incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current records for Phish setlists are incomplete, and the earliest sets may never be recovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phish.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Phish.net&lt;/a&gt; is widely regarded as one of the most comprehensive resources for Phish setlists (if not &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; most comprehensive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was able to find one pair of seemingly identical sets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://phish.net/setlists/?d=1985-02-01&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Feb 1st 1985&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Slave to the Traffic Light, Mike's Song &amp;gt; Dave's Energy Guide, You Enjoy Myself, Alumni Blues &amp;gt; Letter to Jimmy Page &amp;gt; Alumni Blues, Prep School Hippie, Run Like an Antelope&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://phish.net/setlists/1986.html#1986-02-03&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Feb 3rd 1986&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Slave to the Traffic Light, Mike's Song &amp;gt; Dave's Energy Guide, You Enjoy Myself, Alumni Blues &amp;gt; Letter to Jimmy Page &amp;gt; Alumni Blues, Prep School Hippie, Run Like an Antelope&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Tonight, The Pendulum, Babylon is Burning, Dec 1661&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to note that the information on Phish.net indicates that it is uncertain whether the Feb 1st 1985 setlist is correct, citing the Feb 3rd 1986 setlist as reason to suspect that it may be a case of it simply being incorrectly labeled.  It also contains a suspicious number of first performances, one of which then did not appear again until the seemingly identical set a full year later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This uncertainty highlights the main issue with the basic claim: there is no authoritative and comprehensive record of phish setlists known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the difficulty is that the band itself did not keep detailed records of their early setlists, and instead fans are relied upon to fill in the information.  In their formative years (the mid 80's), the fan base was small, and not nearly as... dedicated, for lack of a better term... as later fans were.  Additionally, the venues for many of their early concerts were extremely informal, ranging from &lt;a href=&quot;http://phish.net/setlists/?showid=1251595629&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fraternity parties&lt;/a&gt; (three in one day, plus a forth show on the same day!), to &lt;a href=&quot;http://phish.net/setlists/?d=1983-12-03&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dormitories&lt;/a&gt;, and even &lt;a href=&quot;http://phish.net/setlists/?d=1983-12-03&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;college cafeterias&lt;/a&gt;.  Yet it is these early years that a duplication seems most likely, as the 800+ repertoire was developed over several decades, and therefore the pool of potential songs was at its smallest in their first years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author who stated that they have never played the same setlist twice almost certainly was basing that claim strictly on hearsay.  No one seems to know for certain what all the setlists are, so therefore no one can say with certainty that there has never been a duplication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T14:36:17.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15886" CreationDate="2013-04-18T21:46:26.473" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no traces anywhere of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Torus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stanford torus&lt;/a&gt; being built by NASA, and such undertaking is highly unlikely. However, what was built in cooperation between NASA and Ukraine in the Yuzhmash in 2011 was the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antares_%28rocket%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Antares&lt;/a&gt; project:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://usa.mfa.gov.ua/en/ukraine-us/science&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://usa.mfa.gov.ua/en/ukraine-us/science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The signing on March 31, 2008 of the Framework Agreement between the Government of Ukraine and the Government of the United States of America for Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a successful Ukrainian-American cooperation in the space sector is a realization of  &amp;quot;Antares” project . As part of the project Ukrainian State Enterprise “Pivdenne” in cooperation with American &amp;quot;Orbital Sciences Corporation&amp;quot; develops a new space launch system &amp;quot;Antares&amp;quot;, basing on “Mayak” launch vehicle of its own design. The project also involves Ukrainian enterprises “Makarov Southern Machine-Building Plant”, “Khartron-Arcos &amp;quot;and American &amp;quot;Aerojet&amp;quot;company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The National Space Agency of Ukraine provides scientific and technical support for the development, manufacturing and testing of the Ukrainian units and systems of &amp;quot;Antares&amp;quot; project. As of November 2010  all basic components and systems for future launch vehicles were manufactured and shipped from Ukraine to the customer (Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia, USA).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The design office of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuzhmash&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yuzhmash&lt;/a&gt; is located in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mycities.co/ukraine/city_pivdenne_53265.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pivdenne city in the Dnipropetrovsk area&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The design bureau is currently known as Pivdenne Design Bureau&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project was called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/12/taurus-ii-changes-name-to-the-antares-ahead-of-debut-launch/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Taurus II at that time&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;has changed its name from Taurus II to the Antares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rocket is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/taurus2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;intended to transport cargo to the ISS&lt;/a&gt; besides other things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taurus II and Cygnus would be developed to perform a demonstration of commercial cargo delivery to the International Space Station (ISS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: the Stanford Torus is not a part of the direct quote in the questioned article, the interview referred to in the Washington Times was done by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/111219/will-ukraine-tilt-east-or-west?page=0,1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Global Post&lt;/a&gt; and the quote in the question seems to come from this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just got back from a plant in Dnipropetrovsk. Only 20 years ago, it was a highly classified facility that produced missiles and satellites for the Soviet Union. Today, I saw with my own eyes: it is producing the first stage of parts for the US-designed Stanford Torus space station in collaboration with scientists from the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How it happened that Taurus II was confused with Stanford Torus is something which we will probably never learn, but it seems quite possible for such confusion to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, the core of the Azarov's message was the amazing collaboration, which was real, only the object of the collaboration was a bit different, and it is quite possible Azarov was not very careful about learning what exactly is the object of the collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A speculation: english pronunciation of Taurus and Torus is very close. (Merriam Webster transcribes both words as \ˈtȯr-əs\  - see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/taurus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Taurus&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/torus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Torus&lt;/a&gt;). Perhaps Ukrainian personnel used an English pronunciation for the Taurus name, as they adopted it from their NASA colleagues. If the PM was told \ˈtȯr-əs\ is built there, and later tried to inform on the web what Torus is in NASA terminology, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.cz/search?noj=1&amp;amp;site=webhp&amp;amp;source=hp&amp;amp;q=torus%20nasa&amp;amp;oq=torus%20nasa&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;first few hits for the &lt;code&gt;Torus NASA&lt;/code&gt; query were about Stanford Torus&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T09:53:59.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15903" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15905" CreationDate="2013-04-19T03:02:41.823" Score="8" ViewCount="945" Body="&lt;p&gt;Concerning Evolution and Creation being taught in public schools, is there a disparity between the majority opinion and the extent that each is taught?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/tj/v13/n2/teaching&quot;&gt;This web site&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fifty studies were reviewed that surveyed opinions on teaching origins in public schools. The vast majority found about 90% of the public desired that both creation and evolution or creation only be taught in the public schools ... In America, about 15 % of high school teachers teach both evolution and creation ... &lt;strong&gt;Although the vast majority of Americans desire both creation and evolution taught in school, the evolutionary naturalism worldview dominates, revealing a major disparity between the population and the ruling élite.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article quotes a number of polls and makes the claim directly and indirectly that the majority of Americans are creationists of some sort and that the majority of Americans would prefer that both creation and evolution be taught in schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these polls accurate and is it reasonable to make the conclusion that there is a disparity between the majority opinion and what is actually being done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-19T06:01:29.460" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T09:10:16.947" Title="Is there a disparity between the number of US schools teaching creationism and the population's desire?" Tags="|biology|united-states|evolution|school|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15903" CreationDate="2013-04-19T06:23:01.550" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no shortage of polls more recent than that 1999 article showing that a majority of people from North American would support creationism being taught in school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a couple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gallup.com/poll/16462/Americans-Weigh-Evolution-vs-Creationism-Schools.aspx&quot;&gt;Gallup, Aug 2005&lt;/a&gt; showed 54% thought creationism should be taught in school science classes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.people-press.org/2005/08/30/religion-a-strength-and-weakness-for-both-parties/&quot;&gt;Pew, 2005&lt;/a&gt; showed 64% were in favour of teaching it along with evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that part of the claim is accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is not necessarily an area where a simple majority wins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are legal implications, including from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution&quot;&gt;First Amendment to the US Constitution&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is general ignorance around the subject. For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.people-press.org/2005/08/30/religion-a-strength-and-weakness-for-both-parties/&quot;&gt;Pew poll&lt;/a&gt; shows that 33% of people do not believe that scientists agree on evolution. Asking experts in biology to teach mistruths about their subject, because of the population's ignorance of science, would put them in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/lying/lying_1.shtml&quot;&gt;unethical position&lt;/a&gt;. [See esp. St Augustine's view.]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teachers in history, English, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insidemathematics.org/index.php/video-tours-of-inside-mathematics/school-principals/166-principal-jaguanana-lathan-on-the-role-that-misconceptions-play-in-mathematics-teaching-and-learning&quot;&gt;math&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=5287&amp;amp;page=27&quot;&gt;other subjects&lt;/a&gt; are expected to correct popular misconceptions and errors about their fields, not bow to ignorance over evidence. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.actionbioscience.org/education/hershey.html&quot;&gt;Biology is no different&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teachers in general are expected to &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.adl.org/religion_ps_2004/expression.asp&quot;&gt;not enforce their religious views&lt;/a&gt; upon students. Biology is no different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-19T09:10:16.947" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T09:10:16.947" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-19T11:37:36.983" Score="6" ViewCount="574" Body="&lt;p&gt;The LCD of my $700 smartphone has a stuck subpixel (blue, almost invisible due to the high screen resolution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are literally dozens of apps that claim to fix stuck pixels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ismashphone.com/2010/05/iphone-stuck-pixel-fixer.html&quot;&gt;video that apparently fixes them&lt;/a&gt; by flashing multiple colours rapidly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really possible to fix stuck pixels in this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2624" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-19T14:56:06.417" LastActivityDate="2013-04-19T14:56:06.417" Title="Is it possible to fix stuck LCD pixels using flashing colours?" Tags="|electronics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15909" CreationDate="2013-04-19T12:31:40.707" Score="39" ViewCount="9402" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just came across this info-graphic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nftOi.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nftOi.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://adsoftheworld.com/sites/default/files/styles/media_retina/public/moms-demand-action-for-gun-sense-in-america-kinder-egg.jpg?itok=igGnIzyd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;adsoftheworld.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder_Surprise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kinder Surprise&lt;/a&gt; eggs are currently, or previously, banned in the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-03-28T10:06:47.823" LastActivityDate="2019-03-28T10:06:47.823" Title="Are Kinder Surprise eggs banned in the US?" Tags="|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15908" CreationDate="2013-04-19T13:47:25.983" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since 1938 US law has banned such items and adults have been arrested for being in posession of Kinder surprise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which prohibits any “non-nutritive component” (for example, a toy) from being embedded in a confectionary product&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://travel.cnn.com/explorations/life/10-things-not-bring-your-holiday-396838&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2013/03/toy-filled-chocolate-eggs-legal-in-us/&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2010-title21/html/USCODE-2010-title21-chap9-subchapIV-sec342.htm&quot;&gt;The specific law is codified in the United States Code, Title 21, Section 342(d)(1)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In total, six children worldwide have choked to death on Kinder surprise toys since 1991. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Mother+calls+for+ban+after+girl+chokes+on+Kinder+egg.-a060703736&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On average, a child will die every 5 days in the United States from choking on food. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100226212559.htm&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;. That equates to around 1,600 deaths since 1991. So, the measure &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; save the life of one US child every twenty or thirty years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="13967" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T20:55:51.737" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T20:55:51.737" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15910" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15918" CreationDate="2013-04-19T16:35:58.053" Score="35" ViewCount="4665" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2372125/Wild-dogs-that-commute-from-suburbs-to-scavenge-in-city.html&quot;&gt;article in &lt;em&gt;The Sun&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; describes how wild dogs near Moscow have been living in the suburbs, yet commuting daily to the city via trains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These complexes were used by homeless dogs as shelters, so the dogs had to move together with their houses. Because the best scavenging for food is in the city centre, the dogs had to learn how to travel on the subway — to get to the centre in the morning, then back home in the evening, just like people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article does not contain any references, aside from mentioning and quoting &quot;Dr. Andrei Poiarkov, of the Moscow Ecology and Evolution Institute&quot;.  Yet googling for Dr. Poiarkov simply returns dozens of sites that all share the same article as &lt;em&gt;The Sun&lt;/em&gt; (most seem to be word-for-word copies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this story true?  Have the same specific dogs been observed getting onto a train, and then disembarking at the same stop day after day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For bonus points, is there any truth to these two other claims made by the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Moscow mutts are not the first animals to use public transport. In 2006 a Jack Russell in Dunnington, North Yorks, began taking the bus to his local pub in search of sausages.&#xA;  And two years ago passengers in Wolverhampton were stunned when a cat called Macavity started catching the 331 bus to a fish and chip shop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T18:58:03.060" Title="Do wild dogs use trains to commute to and from Moscow?" Tags="|zoology|transportation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15911" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15912" CreationDate="2013-04-20T03:39:05.143" Score="0" ViewCount="391" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was just watching Bill Maher on HBO and he was commenting on the US Senate bill on gun control that failed recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was saying that 90% of Americans &quot;support background checks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I highly doubt this, but I live in redneck country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-20T07:33:33.383" LastActivityDate="2013-04-20T07:33:33.383" Title="How many Americans support background checks for person-to-person gun purchases?" Tags="|united-states|guns|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15911" CreationDate="2013-04-20T07:29:03.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Politifact.com's &amp;quot;Truth-o-meter&amp;quot; has looked at this - or at least Gabby Gifford's softer variant, which answers the question here too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/apr/18/gabrielle-giffords/gabby-giffords-says-americans-overwhelmingly-suppo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;found recent polls support that a large majority in favour of an expansion of the background checks&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giffords’ claim is well-founded, in part because it’s not overly specific: In four polls over the prior month, between 83 percent and 91 percent of respondents said they would favor an expansion of the current background check regime. We think any reasonable person would conclude that those percentages qualify as &amp;quot;overwhelming.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they weren't willing to give other claims similar to Bill Maher's the same green-light:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giffords would have had more trouble finding support for her claim had she either set a numerical threshold or had she been more specific about the kind of background checks Americans are comfortable with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, when Obama spoke shortly after the amendment’s failure in the Senate, he cited 90 percent support for an expansion of background checks not once but five times in fairly brief remarks. In the survey results we found, half of the polls crossed that threshold and half did not (though those that didn’t are fairly close).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given Maher's claim is the same as Obama's we can conclude that it is supported by some polls (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes--centers/polling-institute/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=1877&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Qunnipiac&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/132495181?access_key=key-k62k9rxtcut2v7lia80&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CBS&lt;/a&gt;, but not quite supported by others (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/polling/national-postabc-poll-april-1114-2013/2013/04/16/e33bddb0-a681-11e2-9e1c-bb0fb0c2edd9_page.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Washington Post&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pollingreport.com/guns.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt; - depending on the question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-20T07:29:03.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15913" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15916" CreationDate="2013-04-20T13:00:53.440" Score="29" ViewCount="4498" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Jennyjinx/status/325382482851688448&quot;&gt;Jenny Jinx&lt;/a&gt; tweeted (244 retweets, 31 favorites)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Seriously, the Czech Republic released a statement to correct stupid&#xA;  Americans. I am so ashamed. Good grief. &lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/11mROu5&quot;&gt;http://bit.ly/11mROu5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The linked press release states that the Czech Republic is not the same as Chechnya, though it doesn't state that Americans in particular were confused about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard this kind of claim before, about Americans being ignorant about the rest of the world, and of its geography. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/events/department-news/883/americans-geographical-ignorance-and-disinclination-to-travel-abroad/&quot;&gt;Americans’ Geographical Ignorance and Disinclination to Travel Abroad&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://historymike.blogspot.com.au/2006/05/study-finds-young-americans-ignorant.html&quot;&gt;Study Finds Young Americans Ignorant of Geography&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are Americans more likely than the worldwide average to be ignorant about the geography of the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-04-20T13:24:17.853" LastActivityDate="2013-04-20T17:12:49.287" Title="Are Americans ignorant about the geography of the world?" Tags="|united-states|education|geography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1050" CreationDate="2013-04-20T14:20:38.480" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several claims here. Let’s unravel them one by one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;First claim&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a deep, hot biosphere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1050/is-there-a-deep-hot-biosphere#1111&quot;&gt;Russell has answered this&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt;, there is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Second claim&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thomas Gold claims that oil is not aging vegetal or animal matter, but rather made continously from bacteria deep in the Earth's mantle (a 'deep hot biosphere')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, Thomas Gold made no such claim. This is probably just a misunderstanding of his argument. In fact, here is what Gold said in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/89/13/6045.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;“Deep, Hot Biosphere” paper&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Such microbial life may account for the presence of biological molecules in all carbonaceous materials in the outer crust&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; mean that the carbonaceous material is formed &lt;em&gt;by&lt;/em&gt; microbial life but rather that microbes from the deep, hot biosphere &lt;em&gt;contaminate&lt;/em&gt; the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text goes on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;and the inference that these materials must have derived from biological deposits accumulated at the surface is therefore not necessarily valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thomas Gold was a follower of the theory of an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;abiogenic petrolium origin&lt;/a&gt; – i.e. that petrolium is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; derived by biological processes but rather from “materials of primordial origin” (quotation from the same paper) – meaning, from before life existed on Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You actually noted that yourself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gold's theory is that the methane is from the Earth's interior, and cooks into oil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But you seem to think that Gold claimed the methane came from biological processes. There are in fact &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_origin#Proposed_mechanisms_of_abiogenic_petroleum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;several proposed origins of abiogenic petroleum&lt;/a&gt; but even though bacteria from the deep, hot biosphere &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; produce methane, I cannot find any claims that this contributes significantly to petroleum production, and Gold himself certainly never made this claim [1, p 89].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Third claim&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;… [consequently] we would effectively never have to worry about running out [of petroleum].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;False.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thomas Gold indeed made this claim, albeit for reasons unrelated to the deep, hot biosphere. It’s hard to track down sources since they’re not online [e.g. 2, 3] but it seems that Gold’s assumptions are based on the fact that more petroleum was found in some oil reserves than was predicted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, modern research has effectively disproved this: there is no limitless supply of petroleum [1–3].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://static.scribd.com/docs/j79lhbgbjbqrb.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Geoffrey P. Glasby, &lt;em&gt;Abiogenic Origin of Hydrocarbons: An Historical Overview&lt;/em&gt; , Resource Geology RESOURCE GEOLOGY, vol. 56(1), 2006&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;em&gt;Earth's &quot;limitless&quot; oil and gas reservoirs are a myth, says study&lt;/em&gt;, AFP, April 3, 2002&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] Vielvoye, Roger, &lt;em&gt;Gold's gas theory&lt;/em&gt;, Oil &amp;amp; Gas Journal vol. 30, February 5, 1979&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-04-20T14:20:38.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15913" CreationDate="2013-04-20T16:26:47.063" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2002, the National Geographic Society gave over 300 in-home interviews per country for a selection of nine countries, and gave a geography quiz testing knowledge of&#xA;current events, international issues, map-reading skills, and world geography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;American young people were ranked eighth out of the nine countries, (up from worst in previous studies), beating Mexico.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/geosurvey2002/download/RoperSurvey.pdf&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;, via &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2496427.stm&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2006, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/roper2006/pdf/FINALReport2006GeogLitsurvey.pdf&quot;&gt;the study was followed up&lt;/a&gt;, but in the USA only, making it interesting but not useful for this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-04-20T16:26:47.063" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15910" CreationDate="2013-04-20T18:43:46.007" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TY2M3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;A Moscow stray on the subway.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sun piece is likely to be lifted form The Financial Times article written by Susanne Sternthal&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; on January 16th, 2010. The FT article is well researched and, we assume, fact checked, citing Andrei Poyarkov (note the different transliteration) and Andrei Neuronov as primary sources. Both are published writers, and Poyarkov a respected scientist. Sternthal quotes Neuronov, who says that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there are some 500 strays that live in the metro stations, especially during the colder months, but only about 20 have learned how to ride the trains. This happened gradually, first as a way to broaden their territory. Later, it became a way of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number 20 appears to be a guesstimate, but the phenomenon of dogs riding the Moscow metro is documented extensively. There is even a website which collects photos and little anecdotes of the encounters at metrodog.ru.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; More photos can be found in a blog post on socialphy.com,&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; also a source for the image in the header. Video footage and reportage shot by ABC News in 2010, can be found on the network's site.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The earliest English language reference I could find appears on darknessatnoon.blogspot.com, in 2007.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; In Russian, an article by N.N. Meshkova titled &quot;Homeless Dogs in Moscow Metro&quot; appeared in &lt;em&gt;Biology&lt;/em&gt; bulletin #47, in 2000.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; Meshkova, who is a psychologist on the faculty of the Moscow State University, confirms the canine ability to take &quot;goal-oriented subway rides.&quot; Having followed several individual dogs through the city, she observes one that rides back and forth from station to station begging for food, dogs that change trains to reach a specific destination, and dogs that visit the same above ground location regularly, using the subway (true commuting). In one instance, she writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A dog was observed riding from station &quot;Lenin's Library&quot; to &quot;University&quot; (5 stops, about 15 minutes), taking the central stairs and then an escalator to the street, where it headed to the nearby farmer's market. At the market, it approached the tent of a sausage vendor, and sat in front of it. The seller was not in, and so the dog, after waiting a few minutes, began to bark. A woman poked her head out from the adjacent tent, saw the dog, and said: &quot;You came? Well, you'll have to wait. Lyuda (the name of the absent seller) will be back shortly.&quot; Having returned, the sausage vendor fed the dog and explained to the observer that it has been appearing regularly at this market for about half a year. (Translation mine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, let me note that I personally saw lone dogs ride the subway in Moscow and in Bucharest on several occasions. It seemed to be a normal enough occurrence for people to ignore it completely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=Susanne+Sternthal+moscow+metro+dogs+financial+times&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/search?q=Susanne+Sternthal+moscow+metro+dogs+financial+times&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150518183512/http://metrodog.ru/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20150518183512/http://metrodog.ru/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150518183022/http://www.socialphy.com/posts/off-topic/13644/Moscow-Subway_s-Stray-Dogs.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20150518183022/http://www.socialphy.com/posts/off-topic/13644/Moscow-Subway_s-Stray-Dogs.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150518183217/http://russian.rt.com/inotv/2010-03-16/Bezdomnie-passazhiri-moskovskogo-metro&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20150518183217/http://russian.rt.com/inotv/2010-03-16/Bezdomnie-passazhiri-moskovskogo-metro&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150518183337/http://darknessatnoon.blogspot.com/2007/03/metro-dogs.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20150518183337/http://darknessatnoon.blogspot.com/2007/03/metro-dogs.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150518183421/http://bio.1september.ru/article.php?ID=200004711&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20150518183421/http://bio.1september.ru/article.php?ID=200004711&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T18:58:03.060" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T18:58:03.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15919" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15922" CreationDate="2013-04-20T18:45:48.010" Score="6" ViewCount="1530" Body="&lt;p&gt;While there is little doubt that some Twitter users are not the brightest bunch (see: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15913/are-americans-ignorant-about-the-geography-of-the-world&quot;&gt;Are Americans ignorant about the geography of the world?&lt;/a&gt; ), there are claims that same misinformation has been repeated by CNN journalist in a live broadcast. He allegedly said &lt;em&gt;&quot;Islamist Czech Republic&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2016-04-12T20:24:25.823" Title="Did CNN journalist say that Chechens are from Czech republic?" Tags="|united-states|geography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15920" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-20T18:46:24.800" Score="7" ViewCount="656" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a claim that adverts sometimes include animations, which requires more energy to display, and that, hence, ad blockers save significant energy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informationweek.com/internet/ebusiness/blocking-online-ads-may-save-energy/212201818&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blocking Online Ads May Save Energy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Firefox 3.04, with AdBlock Plus and NoScript, a browser add-on that blocks client-side scripts, Hansen realized a power savings of 11 watts, based on average readings taken at the ten Web sites that, thanks to their use of rich media, draw the most power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These power-hungry sites, according to Hansen's numbers, include: 1.) myspace.com, 2.) gamespot.com, 3.) go.com, 4.) espn.go.com, 5.) bestbuy.com, 6.) disney.go.com, 7.) weather.com, 8.) gamefaqs.com, 9.) tribalfusion.com, and 10.) amazon.com.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13472" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T18:11:52.450" Title="Do ad blockers in browsers save significant energy?" Tags="|computers|energy|advertising|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15919" CreationDate="2013-04-20T21:11:24.210" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not a CNN journalist but an expert CNN were interviewing according to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rferl.org/content/boston-chechen-czech-twitter-marathon-bombing-suspects/24963035.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;page&lt;/a&gt; with a video capture of the CNN interview&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The transcript of the CNN video includes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...and also, you know, the young brother, Dzhokhar, named after -- the similar name, anyhow, to the first president of the Czech Republic, the Islamic republic, that was formed there. So I don't know if there's anything about identity there, when you're given a name like that as a youth, um, what kind of, uh, what does that do to your mindset and your identity and what's expected of you. It'd be interesting to hear the profilers talk about that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comment on the Radio Free Europe page notes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All three of the CNN anchors standing next to the man making the statement (who is identified by &quot;tilna65,&quot; who posted the video, as a &quot;former CIA agent&quot; but whom we have not identified) appear to visibly shudder at the comment. But whether they actually failed to catch the mistake or simply regarded it as inessential or impolitic to set the record straight, none offers a correction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1132" LastEditorUserId="1132" LastEditDate="2013-04-21T19:28:31.140" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T19:28:31.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15923" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-20T22:16:25.663" Score="9" ViewCount="476" Body="&lt;p&gt;The are some fir tree forests in Mexico that are reputed to have butterfly populations so dense that their collective weight is sufficient to occasionally break off tree branches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://insects.about.com/od/coolandunusualinsects/p/monarchsmigrate.htm&quot;&gt;An example of this claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Monarchs living east of the Rocky Mountains in North America fly south each fall, gathering in central Mexico's Oyamel fir forest for the winter. Millions of Monarchs gather in the this forest area, &lt;strong&gt;covering the trees so densely that branches break from their weight&lt;/strong&gt;. Scientists aren’t sure how the butterflies navigate to a place they have never been. No other population of Monarchs migrates this far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this ever actually happened? If so, has it ever been photographed or captured on video?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="849" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T01:20:05.670" Title="Can butterflies break off tree branches?" Tags="|entomology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15923" CreationDate="2013-04-21T01:20:05.670" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a first-person account from 1976, from Dr. Fred A. Urquhart, part of a small team that found the wintering site of the Monarch butterflies after many years searching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While we stared in wonder, a pine branch three inches thick broke under its burden of languid butterflies and crashed to earth, spilling its living cargo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/1976/08/monarch-butterflies/urquhart-text/5&quot;&gt;National Geographic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a corresponding article in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://images.peabody.yale.edu/lepsoc/jls/1970s/1976/1976-30%283%29153-Urquhart.pdf&quot;&gt;Journal of the Ledpidopterists's Society&lt;/a&gt;, the authors describe a primitive means used to estimate the weight of the butterflies on a branch - by noting how much a branch bowed by the weight of the butterflies, removing the butterflies and trying to weigh it down equivalently with stones. Their system sounds to me rather inaccurate as it depends on matching the the centre of gravity of the butterflies, but they came up with an estimate of 3.8kg on a 1.5m branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That makes the idea that a small and weak branch could break under the additional weight of the butterflies seem plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-04-21T01:20:05.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15927" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19519" CreationDate="2013-04-21T04:58:43.110" Score="4" ViewCount="5524" Body="&lt;p&gt;From twitter user &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Earth_Pics/status/325782247196217344&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;@Earth_Pics&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Firefighter in Denmark rescues cat from burning house.The way he hugs&#xA;  cat and the expressions of cat says it all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bfoVV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Fireman holding a cat&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: the white stuff is probably snow, not ash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An image of this was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1cqaek/firefighter_in_denmark_rescues_a_cat_from_a/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;posted to Reddit&lt;/a&gt;, and has received at least 1699 upvotes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no news of this incident in English on Google News. (Searched using firefighter cat Denmark)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lovemeow.com/2013/01/kitty-saved-from-fire-happy-reunion/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kitty Saved from Fire, Happy Reunion&lt;/a&gt; cites a reddit commenter mentioning an article from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jv.dk/artikel/1512551:Aabenraa--To-paa-sygehus-efter-brand-i-etageejendom-ved-Forstalle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;JV.dk&lt;/a&gt;. Unfortunately, I can't read Danish, but the sentence mentioning cats is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;På grund af den kraftige røgudvikling måtte flere katte hjælpes ud af&#xA;  brandmændene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did a firefighter rescue cats from a house while it was still burning? Or was it more a case of helping them out after the fire had been extinguished?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T16:49:53.127" Title="Did a firefighter rescue a cat from a still-burning house?" Tags="|government|fire|denmark|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15928" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15930" CreationDate="2013-04-21T08:17:12.027" Score="67" ViewCount="309347" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=582655081755507&amp;amp;set=a.456449604376056.98921.367116489976035&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Popular facebook group&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nature isn’t always kind and cuddly. A study showed that sea otters&#xA;  will restrain baby seals and then begin copulation; sometimes drowning&#xA;  it during the 105-minute-long process. Even after the seal is dead,&#xA;  the otter will hang on to the carcass and continue to mate with it for&#xA;  up to a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/u5ajX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Otter raping baby seals&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I read this post on &quot;I fucking love science&quot;-group on facebook. Is it really true sea otter rape baby seals to the death?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T11:09:56.663" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T11:09:56.663" Title="Do sea otters rape baby seals to death?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15928" CreationDate="2013-04-21T10:36:42.727" Score="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;The very next line of the quote you included, from the site you linked was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More info: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/XLKKXb&quot;&gt;http://bit.ly/XLKKXb&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That redirects you to a 2011 news article in Discovery.com called &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/animals/the-other-side-of-otters.htm&quot;&gt;The Other Side of Otters&lt;/a&gt;, which includes&#xA;a witness account:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A weaned harbor seal pup was resting onshore when an untagged male sea otter approached it, grasped it with its teeth and forepaws, bit it on the nose, and flipped it over. The harbor seal moved toward the water with the sea otter following closely. Once in the water, the sea otter gripped the harbor seal’s head with its forepaws and repeatedly bit it on the nose, causing a deep laceration. The sea otter and pup rolled violently in the water for approximately 15 min, while the pup struggled to free itself from the sea otter’s grasp. Finally, the sea otter positioned itself dorsal to the pup’s smaller body while grasping it by the head and holding it underwater in a position typical of mating sea otters. As the sea otter thrust his pelvis, his penis was extruded and intromission was observed. At 105 min into the encounter, the sea otter released the pup, now dead, and began grooming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new article explains this was just one of  at least nineteen occurrences documented in an article in the journal &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aquaticmammalsjournal.org/&quot;&gt;Aquatic Mammals&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick search in Google Scholar produces the actual article. Note: contains photographs that some people may find distressing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Heather S. Harris, Stori C. Oates, Michelle M. Staedler, M. Tim Tinker, David A. Jessup,  James T. Harvey,  and Melissa A. Miller, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aquaticmammalsjournal.org/attachments/article/505/36_4_Harris.pdf&quot;&gt;Lesions and Behavior Associated with Forced Copulation of &#xA;Juvenile Pacific Harbor Seals (Phoca vitulina richardsi) by &#xA;Southern Sea Otters (Enhydra lutris nereis)&lt;/a&gt; Aquatic Mammals 2010, 36(4), 331-341, DOI 10.1578/AM.36.4.2010.331&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion: Yes, it happens. There are detailed descriptions documented by marine biologists, including photos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="86" LastEditDate="2013-05-31T15:59:09.493" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T15:59:09.493" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2578" CreationDate="2013-04-21T17:46:50.510" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the onlookers will see, noone here actually read the papers in question.&#xA;Here they are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_14_2_sheldrake.pdf&quot;&gt;A Dog That Seems to Know When His Owner Is Coming Home: Videotaped Experiments and Observations&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;: Rupert Sheldrake &amp;amp; Pamela Smart, Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 233–255&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://uhra.herts.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/2299/2285/1/902380.pdf&quot;&gt;CAN ANIMALS DETECT WHEN THEIR OWNERS  ARE RETURNING HOME? &#xA;AN EXPERIMENTAL TEST OF THE ‘PSYCHIC PET’ PHENOMENON&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;: Richard Wiseman, Matthew Smith, Julie Milton, British Journal of Psychology Vol. 89, 1998, p.453-462&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that Jaytee, the terrier of Pam Smart, is able to detect when owner Pamela Smart is on her return journey by waiting in his porch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;It happens on a schedule&quot;: Both experimenters started on an random timepoint unknown to the ower&#xA;Pam Smart. Ruled out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Dogs have excellent hearing&quot;: Both experimentersstarted the journey at least 13 minutes apart and&#xA;used different, non-identifiable means of transportation (bike, taxi, experimenter car)&#xA;Ruled out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Confirmation bias&quot;: Both experimenters videotaped the dog and tabulated the occurences of the porch&#xA;with an observer who did not know the return time.&#xA;Ruled out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Separation anxiety&quot;: Both authors took precautions to record how Jaytee behaves and&#xA;if it is normal. Was taken care of and is therefore irrelevant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What Sheldrake did&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sheldrake recorded ca. 100 experiments, 12 under controlled conditions above, 10 control experiments and the rest under more natural conditions. Before the videotaped sessions, they analyzed written data recorded by Pam Smart over longer timeperiods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sheldrake tabulated Jaytees position and used two statistical methods. Sheldrake's main method divided the data in three categories, return period (Pam is on the way home), prereturn period (10 minutes before departure) and main&#xA;period (all else). Jaytee was according to Sheldrake 55% the time at the window at the return period, 23% at the prereturn period and 4% average for the same 10 minute period at the main period. (The main period is much longer than return/prereturn so the missing 22% indicates that the main period was in average nearly 5 times longer ~ 50 min). Sheldrake used the repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) and a paired-sample t-test to test if the differences were significant and they were according to Sheldrake highly significant (p &amp;lt; 0.0001, p. 239). The increased percentage of time was statistically significant for the prereturn period (p = 0.04) and highly significant for the difference between prereturn and return (p = 0.0009).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What Wiseman did&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wiseman did 4 experiments. They divided the experiment time into 10 minute time blocks, Jaytee is only counted as success if&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Jaytee goes to his porch only 10 minutes &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the return signal.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;b) Jaytee goes to his porch the &lt;em&gt;first time&lt;/em&gt; for &lt;em&gt;no apparent reason&lt;/em&gt; (must be decided by a judge).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;c) In three cases, Jaytee must remain for at least 2 minutes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leaving time: 21:00. Jaytee remains 53 seconds on 19:57, 134 seconds on 20:09 and&#xA;over 600 seconds between 20:58 and 21:04 because a car pulls up. Fail. &#xA;c) is introduced.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leaving time: 14:18.Jaytee remains 140 seconds on 13:59, and 169 seconds because&#xA;the fish delivery van comes up. Fail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leaving time: 21:39. Jaytee remains 1233 seconds after 21:31, but as this is too soon,&#xA;it counts as fail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leaving time: 10:45. Jaytee goes at 10:44, but as the terrier needs to vomit, he must&#xA;leave the porch. Fail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I leave it to the reader to decide it for themselves because I think it is such an extremely charged issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13486" LastEditorDisplayName="user13486" LastEditDate="2013-04-22T11:11:40.373" LastActivityDate="2013-04-22T11:11:40.373" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15936" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15947" CreationDate="2013-04-21T19:01:14.070" Score="10" ViewCount="16633" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toothbrush_moustache#cite_note-rosenbaum-3&quot;&gt;toothbrush mustache&lt;/a&gt; quotes the journalist and historian Ron Rosenbaum about the speculation that Hitler modeled his mustache on Charlie Chaplin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adolf Hitler was a fan of Chaplin, but &quot;there is no evidence (though some speculation) that Hitler modeled his 'stache on [Charlie Chaplin].&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The speculation is often repeated, for example on &lt;a href=&quot;http://thehistorysquirrel.wordpress.com/tag/german-history/&quot;&gt;this history blog&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hitler’s favorite actresses were Shirley Temple and Greta Garbo [...] And he may have borrowed his infamous mustache from none other than Charlie Chaplin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any solid evidence for or against this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2013-04-22T15:23:02.787" LastActivityDate="2018-10-10T14:31:46.703" Title="Did Hitler borrow his mustache from Chaplin?" Tags="|history|adolf-hitler|charlie-chaplin|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-22T01:04:37.337" Score="6" ViewCount="1424" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2124212/Is-sugar-actually-poisonous-Researchers-say-sweet-stuff-fatal-health.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Mail article&lt;/a&gt;, it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A spoonful of sugar may have helped the medicine go down for Mary Poppins but research claims that it is actually a toxin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sugar in all its disguises, whether the refined stuff, honey or fructose syrup, is responsible for obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and cancer, according to Dr. Robert Lustig, a professor at the University of California.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The American Heart Association recommends up to 100 calories (25 grams) per day of added sugar for women and only slightly more for men - 150 calories (about 38 grams).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is more than 38 grams per day of sugar for men or 25 grams of sugar per day for women that harmful? (How did they derived those figures?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8840" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-01-03T06:21:52.147" Title="Is more than 25g or 38g of sugar per day harmful?" Tags="|sugar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15939" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-22T02:50:19.350" Score="7" ViewCount="956" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been led to believe by expert testimonies that juggling may lead to an increase in brain depth and size. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the moment I am not able to draw on much evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is a myth, I would appreciate clarification, thank you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;A new study published in the journal Nature finds that learning to juggle may cause certain areas of your brain to grow.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/5615.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/5615.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prior to conducting the tests, the subjects were scanned, measuring the size of their brains. After, the researchers told half of the subjects to teach themselves the 3-ball cascade variation of juggling for atleast 60 seconds. The subjects were also given three months of practicing time. The other half did nothing. After the period had passed, the researchers took scans of the 24 people again. The 12 people who did not juggle had no brain mass changes, but the 12 who learned to juggle showed an increase in brain matter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/benefits-juggling-2588348.html?cat=68&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Benefits of Juggling, Yahoo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a study published by PLoS one Science Journal (July 2008) suggests that juggling may alter gray matter in the occipito-temporal cortex as early as after seven days of training. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to the study for those of you that may be interested: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002669&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002669&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13426" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-05-15T10:36:39.127" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T10:36:39.127" Title="Does juggling increase gray matter/size of the occipito-temporal cortex?" Tags="|neurology|intelligence|cognitive-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15941" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15943" CreationDate="2013-04-22T06:25:52.673" Score="19" ViewCount="11367" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bLiMw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Arr I before E&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are 923 words that break the &quot;i before e&quot; rule.  Only 44 words actually follow that rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a picture circulating right now, claiming that a huge majority of the words break the &quot;i before e&quot; rule, and that only a few actually follow it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the rule as often incorrect as the picture claims?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I before E, except after C&quot; is a mnemonic rule of thumb for English&#xA;  spelling. If one is unsure whether a word is spelled with the sequence&#xA;  ei or ie, the rhyme suggests that the correct order is ie unless the&#xA;  preceding letter is c, in which case it is ei.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_before_E_except_after_C&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia link that explains the rule&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-07-31T17:17:10.143" LastActivityDate="2017-07-31T17:17:10.143" Title="Is the &quot;I before E&quot; English spelling rule wrong more than it is right?" Tags="|language|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15941" CreationDate="2013-04-22T07:03:50.393" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;It won't be possible to skeptically analyze whether or not the rule is useful. I will stick to analysis of the factual claim. I'm assuming that the &quot;i before e&quot; rule is exactly as you've quoted from the Wikipedia article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The claim in the image is false.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oed.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oxford English Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;, there are 8161 words that involve the letters &lt;em&gt;i&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;e&lt;/em&gt; adjacent to each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To &lt;strong&gt;follow the rule&lt;/strong&gt;, they would have to occur in the order &quot;ie&quot;, unless they are preceded by the letter &quot;c&quot;, in which case they must occur in the order &quot;ei&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Words that have &lt;em&gt;ie&lt;/em&gt;, not after &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt; (ambience, achieved): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oed.com/search?browseType=sortAlpha&amp;amp;case-insensitive=true&amp;amp;f_0=Headword&amp;amp;f_1=Headword&amp;amp;nearDistance=1&amp;amp;o_1=NOT&amp;amp;ordered=false&amp;amp;page=53&amp;amp;pageSize=100&amp;amp;q_0=*ie*&amp;amp;q_1=*cie*&amp;amp;scope=ENTRY&amp;amp;sort=entry&amp;amp;type=dictionarysearch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5232&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Words that have &lt;em&gt;cei&lt;/em&gt; (apperceive, ceiling): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oed.com/search?browseType=sortAlpha&amp;amp;case-insensitive=true&amp;amp;f_0=Headword&amp;amp;nearDistance=1&amp;amp;ordered=false&amp;amp;page=2&amp;amp;pageSize=100&amp;amp;q_0=*cei*&amp;amp;scope=ENTRY&amp;amp;sort=entry&amp;amp;type=dictionarysearch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;182&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To &lt;strong&gt;break the rule&lt;/strong&gt;, they would have to occur in the order &quot;ei&quot; without being preceded by a &quot;c&quot; or appear in the order &quot;ie&quot; while being preceded by a &quot;c&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Words that have &lt;em&gt;ei&lt;/em&gt;, not after a &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt; (abaeile, abeigh): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oed.com/search?browseType=sortAlpha&amp;amp;case-insensitive=true&amp;amp;f_0=Headword&amp;amp;f_1=Headword&amp;amp;nearDistance=1&amp;amp;o_1=NOT&amp;amp;ordered=false&amp;amp;page=25&amp;amp;pageSize=100&amp;amp;q_0=*ei*&amp;amp;q_1=*cei*&amp;amp;scope=ENTRY&amp;amp;sort=entry&amp;amp;type=dictionarysearch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2423&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Words that have &lt;em&gt;cie&lt;/em&gt; (abortifacient, ancient): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oed.com/search?browseType=sortAlpha&amp;amp;case-insensitive=true&amp;amp;f_0=Headword&amp;amp;nearDistance=1&amp;amp;ordered=false&amp;amp;page=4&amp;amp;pageSize=100&amp;amp;q_0=*cie*&amp;amp;scope=ENTRY&amp;amp;sort=entry&amp;amp;type=dictionarysearch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;384&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, among all &lt;em&gt;ei&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;ie&lt;/em&gt; words in the Oxford English Dictionary, &lt;strong&gt;5414 words follow the rule of thumb, and 2807 break the rule&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The picture is similar when taking word frequency in to account. In a list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordfrequency.info/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;the top 5,000 words in American English&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those that &lt;strong&gt;follow the rule&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Words that have &lt;em&gt;ie&lt;/em&gt;, not after &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt;: 72&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Words that have &lt;em&gt;cei&lt;/em&gt; : 6&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those that &lt;strong&gt;break the rule&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Words that have &lt;em&gt;ei&lt;/em&gt;, not after a &lt;em&gt;c&lt;/em&gt;: 19&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Words that have &lt;em&gt;cie&lt;/em&gt;: 10&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, among these most frequent words there are &lt;strong&gt;78 supporting the rule, and 29 against&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="21768" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T14:08:37.823" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T14:08:37.823" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15945" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16151" CreationDate="2013-04-22T13:11:24.133" Score="26" ViewCount="5445" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lumosity.com&quot;&gt;Lumosity&lt;/a&gt; is a popular website that claims to help you become a more intellectually capable individual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Harness your brain's neuroplasticity and train your way to a brighter life&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it truly possible to improve your IQ?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is IQ a good measure of Intelligence?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Are they actually onto something, like PositScience? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some studies I have found that Lumosity use to support their claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cdn.beacon.lumosity.com/assets/hcp/Ng-2012-L&amp;amp;B_poster_revised-ab5be2fb53ea918f0a1fa6e413be884d.pdf&quot;&gt;New Approaches to Learning Using Neuroscience and Gaming:&#xA;A large scale, multi-site implementation of a web-based cognitive training program in academic settings&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://static.sl.lumosity.com/pdf/hardy_drescher_sarkar_kellet_scanlon_2011.pdf&quot;&gt;Enhancing visual attention and working memory with a Web-based cognitive training program&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21714745?dopt=Abstract&quot;&gt;Changes in frontal-parietal activation and math skills performance following adaptive number sense training: preliminary results from a pilot study.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lumosity has a user-community of over 35 million. There are likely to be duplicates and bots though but that is quite surprising. They seem to be amassing great profits and there are testimonies but those are only anecdotal evidence and not part of a well researched statistical study, and may even be fabricated. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13426" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-04-22T16:55:16.750" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T16:15:41.710" Title="Does Lumosity increase your intelligence?" Tags="|neurology|intelligence|cognitive-fitness|cognitive-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15936" CreationDate="2013-04-22T16:36:44.203" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence, the author admits it himself. In the first source of the Wikipedia page, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/11/cohen200711&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article about Hitler's mustache in Vanity Fair&lt;/a&gt;, the author (Ron Rosenbaum) is quoted to write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was Chaplin's first, before Hitler's,&quot; he writes in an essay from The Secret Parts of Fortune. &quot;Chaplin adopted a little black crepe blot beneath the nose for his Mack Sennett silent comedies after 1915, Hitler didn't adopt his until late 1919, and &lt;strong&gt;there's no evidence&lt;/strong&gt; (though some speculation) that Hitler modeled his 'stache on that other actor's.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; emphasis mine&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Serious part of answer ends here, the following is just me being bored and trying to make some &quot;mass murdering dictators with mustaches&quot; jokes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wiki article itself says that the style was popular in Germany during that time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By 1907 enough Germans were wearing the new trimmed down and simple toothbrush moustache to elicit notice by The New York Times under the headline &quot;'TOOTHBRUSH' MUSTACHE; German Women Resent Its Usurpation of the 'Kaiserbart'&quot;. The toothbrush was taken up by German folk hero Hans Koeppen in the famous 1908 New York to Paris Race, cementing its popularity among young gentry. Koeppen was described as &quot;Six-feet in height, slim, and athletic, with a toothbrush mustache characteristic of his class, he looks the ideal type of the young Prussian guardsman.&quot; By the end of World War I even some of the German royals were sporting the toothbrush; William Hohenzollern (son of the Kaiser) can be seen with a toothbrush moustache in an 1918 photograph that shows him about to be sent into exile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's completely possible that Hitler was just succumbing to peer pressure and to the fashions of his time in his quest to be &quot;the best stached dictator&quot;, a race he lost to Stalin and his glorious lip warmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, despite what the Wikipedia page says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After World War II, the style fell from favor in the West due to its strong association with Hitler earning it the nickname &quot;Hitler moustache&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 Israeli prime ministers and one president sported the good old toothbrush mustache. This is in no way to imply that they were &quot;mass murdering dictators&quot; only to say that they were the heads of the Jewish state and had the &quot;Hitler mustache&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moshe_Sharett&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Moshe Sharet&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.palestineremembered.com/images/MosheSharett-1894-1965.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lmPjM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Eshkol&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Levi Eshkol&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Levi_Eshkol.jpg/401px-Levi_Eshkol.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;stach 2&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitzhak_Shamir&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Itzhak Shamir&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Yitzhak_Shamir.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;stach 1&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zalman_Shazar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zalman Shazar&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/he/thumb/7/77/Shazar.jpg/200px-Shazar.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;stach 4&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-10-09T23:59:41.120" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T23:59:41.120" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15974" CreationDate="2013-04-22T17:51:01.693" Score="17" ViewCount="2062" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am often confronted with statistics that show immigrants are much more involved in crime than the native citizens. This seems to be common in Western countries. Here are some examples, however, these might not be in English:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rijnmond.nl/nieuws/04-06-2009/veel-jonge-criminele-allochtonen-rotterdam&quot;&gt;Netherlands&lt;/a&gt; : This one says that more than 50% of Moroccans between the ages of 16 and 24 have been in contact with the police, as the suspect of a crime. Under native citizens this is 18%. Under Surinamese and Antillian people from the city of Rotterdam, this is 40%. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelocal.se/article.php?ID=2683&amp;amp;date=20051214#.UXV_qUpWp8E&quot;&gt;Sweden&lt;/a&gt; : Immigrants in Sweden are four times more likely to be investigated for lethal violence and robbery than persons born in Sweden to Swedish parents.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.optula.om.fi/36249.htm&quot;&gt;Finland&lt;/a&gt; : 21% of rapes have been committed by foreigners, who comprise just 2.2% of the total population.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dw.de/identifying-the-roots-of-immigrant-crime/a-1953916-1&quot;&gt;Germany&lt;/a&gt; : In Berlin, young male immigrants are three times more likely to commit violent crimes than their German peers. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can go on and on with this list, if I tried I'm probably sure that I could find  these shocking statistics for each country in Western Europe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I myself however, believe this is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; just because of failed integration/immigration, but mainly because immigrants tend to be less wealthly than the average native citizen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question:  &lt;strong&gt;Are there studies/statistics which show a strong correlation between wealth and crime irrespective of immigration status, in Western European countries? In other words, studies/statistics showing that underpriviliged/less wealthy people are (much) more likely to commit a crime as opposed to immigrants?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11543" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-24T01:59:05.963" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T01:59:05.963" Title="Is the immigrant/crime correlation simply explained by lower wealth?" Tags="|criminology|immigration|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15949" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-22T18:07:30.323" Score="1" ViewCount="595" Body="&lt;p&gt;The President of Eden Foods, a natural and organic food distributor, recently wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exemptions under the Act are illogical, inconsistent, and contributing factors to our lawsuit. For instance, McDonald's Inc. and 166 unions are exempt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edenfoods.com/articles/view.php?articles_id=219&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Statement from the President of Eden Foods - April 17th 2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csnews.com/top-story-foodservice-nacs_clarifies_what_mcdonald_s_health_care_exemption_means_-57377.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; but it predates the letter by 3 years and might not be applicable since the final rules were only recently finalized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is McDonald's exempt from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraceptive_mandate_%28United_States%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;HHS Contraception Mandate&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T03:04:12.007" Title="Is McDonald's exempt from the HHS Contraception Mandate?" Tags="|united-states|contraception|healthcare|mcdonalds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-22T22:56:46.340" Score="4" ViewCount="993" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/news/letters/21576051-climate-change-north-korea-tibet-india-cyprus-egypt-tax-avoidance-europe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;letter to the editor of the Economist&lt;/a&gt; from Professor Anders Levermann of the&#xA;Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research stated the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The IPCC’s range on sensitivity is supported by, but not merely based on, models. It is deeply rooted in physics. Quantum physics and thermodynamics, the same physical laws that underlie the functioning of our computers and power plants, yield a baseline climate sensitivity of about 3&amp;deg;C. This is based on the facts that carbon dioxide, water vapour and methane absorb infra-red; a warmer atmosphere holds more water; and ice and snow melt under warming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do quantum physics and thermodynamics yield a baseline climate sensitivity of about 3&amp;deg;C?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2019-01-29T08:49:15.240" LastActivityDate="2019-01-29T08:49:15.240" Title="Does physics give a climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide of about 3°C?" Tags="|physics|environment|climate-change|modelling|thermodynamics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15952" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-23T00:00:26.050" Score="2" ViewCount="1874" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the best-selling book Think And Grow Rich, author Napoleon Hill claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This secret was extensively used by President Woodrow Wilson, during the World War. It was passed on to every soldier who fought in the war...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one of the first and best selling personal success books, and Napoleon Hill has become very famous within the genre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been looking for some external verification of his claim that the contents of his work were used by president Woodrow Wilson, and so far I have managed to turn up nothing but sources directly quoting his book. Can anyone help me verify this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10203" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T10:36:05.497" LastActivityDate="2016-09-27T04:31:19.097" Title="Did former president Woodrow Wilson extensively rely on Napoleon Hill's work during the World War?" Tags="|united-states|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15951" CreationDate="2013-04-23T01:12:01.277" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been reading more and more climate denialists pointing to the lack of rise in the past ten years, and claiming it as evidence that the theory of climate change is flawed and previous 100+ years of trend is a fluke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This real meaning of this temperature plateau is explained in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/global-warming-deep-oceans-could-delay-effects-decade-long-periods-315598&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2011 articel from the International Business Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, these periods would likely last only about a decade or so,&#xA;  and warming would then resume. This study illustrates one reason why&#xA;  global temperatures do not simply rise in a straight line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www2.ucar.edu/climate/faq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University Corporation for Atmospheric Research&lt;/a&gt; gives a good summary of various issues. In particular, their &lt;a href=&quot;https://www2.ucar.edu/climate/faq#t2507n1344&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FAQ directly addresses&lt;/a&gt; the ten year plateau:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s important to note that models are not the only reason why&#xA;  scientists are concerned about climate change.  For more than a&#xA;  century—long before many recent advances in science, and long before&#xA;  computer models—we’ve known that increased greenhouse gases could&#xA;  produce a global temperature increase.  Observations of the last&#xA;  century of climate, including those from instruments and from the&#xA;  behavior of ice and plants, concur that the planet is warming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/04/warming-hole-delayed-climate-change/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harvard News&lt;/a&gt; also explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The primary driver of the warming hole is the aerosol pollution —&#xA;  these small particles,” says Leibensperger. “What they do is reflect&#xA;  incoming sunlight, so we see a cooling effect at the&#xA;  surface.”-climate-change/:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of the articles is that the ten year period of non-warming is a direct result of various atmospheric emissions associated with global warming.  The result of this is that if in the future emissions are reduced, global warming trend lines will continue to increase for a lengthy period of time, and in fact increase much faster once those &quot;blocking&quot; factors created by emissions are curtailed.  Additionally, it means that this 'hidden' warming value will result in a larger temperature overall increase than current temperatures are measuring would indicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13502" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-23T03:42:04.603" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T03:42:04.603" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15957" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-23T10:59:18.730" Score="6" ViewCount="220" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anchor New Zealand has just released a milk bottle with a black plastic layer to protect the milk from exposure to light, and thus from loss of &quot;taste and goodness&quot;. Their chart:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SP2Gl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anchor.co.nz/#lightproof/lib-goodness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;their website&lt;/a&gt; specifically shows test results relating to vitamin B2 loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, their testing is based on 2000 Lux of light, which apparently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toplightco.com/acatalog/How_Much_Light_Do_I_need_.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;is excessive for a supermarket&lt;/a&gt;. Secondly, milk is unlikely to be exposed to the full brightness of light for very long unless it's perhaps a variety of milk that doesn't sell quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How much vitamin B2 is lost under typical conditions (ie a high-turnover product, quickly put into the fridge at home)? Has anyone actually measured the level of vitamin B2 remaining after, say, half the milk has been consumed under normal circumstances?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I note that they clearly label their graph as &quot;an example&quot;, which is probably intended to avoid law suits while still aiming for an emotional response from the consumer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5343" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T10:59:18.730" Title="Does milk sold in a store with good product turnover lose a significant amount of Vitamin B2 from light exposure?" Tags="|marketing|milk|vitamins|light|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15958" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15978" CreationDate="2013-04-23T11:27:43.260" Score="15" ViewCount="15521" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2313303/Dzhokhar-Tsarnaev-innocent-Facebook-page-attracts-11-000-fans-worldwide.html#ixzz2RHhlTORU&quot;&gt;'Disgusting' Facebook group called 'Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is innocent' attracts more than 11,000 fans worldwide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Others believe the iconic image of Jeff Bauman in a wheelchair,&#xA;  bloodied with his femur protruding through what was left of his thigh,&#xA;  actually shows double-amputee soldier Nick Vogt, who survived an&#xA;  encounter with an IED in Afghanistan a few years after his graduation&#xA;  from the U.S. military Academy at West Point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bauman and Vogt share certain resemblances, and on that basis the&#xA;  conspiracy theorists conclude they are one and the same, with Vogt&#xA;  playing the role of volunteer 'victim,' complete with a bottle of fake&#xA;  blood discarded at his feet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Was Nick Vogt acting?' one asked in a note attached to a photo too&#xA;  grisly to show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'You think that's enough blood for 2 lost legs?' came a reply. 'When&#xA;  they took another photo he was lying on the ground, pretending he was&#xA;  badly injured.' 'I want to believe it's real,' chimed in a third, 'but&#xA;  damn, that blood just looks like someone spilled a can of red paint.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Jeff Bauman actually Nick Vogt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T20:04:17.143" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T14:09:33.490" Title="Is Boston bombing victim Jeff Bauman double-amputee soldier Nick Vogt?" Tags="|terrorism|boston-marathon-bombings|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15959" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-04-23T11:28:42.547" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-04-23T11:28:42.547" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T11:28:42.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15960" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-04-23T11:28:42.547" Score="0" Body="The Boston bombing on April 15, 2013." OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2013-04-23T12:57:42.320" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T12:57:42.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15962" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15980" CreationDate="2013-04-23T12:57:09.193" Score="16" ViewCount="2045" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/opinion/sunday/luhrmann-why-going-to-church-is-good-for-you.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ONE of the most striking scientific discoveries about religion in recent years is that going to church weekly is good for you. Religious attendance — at least, religiosity — boosts the immune system and decreases blood pressure. It may add as much as two to three years to your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every time I read &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/42/is-it-possible-to-boost-your-immune-system&quot;&gt;boost your immune system&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, I am highly suspicious and we &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3191/are-human-beings-naturally-predisposed-to-believe-in-god&quot;&gt;did debunk a fake study on religion before&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this op-ed based on decent studies conducted by unbiased researchers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T23:57:15.260" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T23:57:15.260" Title="Does going to church add up to 3 years of life expectancy?" Tags="|medical-science|religion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15949" CreationDate="2013-04-23T19:04:02.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csnews.com/top-story-foodservice-nacs_clarifies_what_mcdonald_s_health_care_exemption_means_-57377.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; from the National Association of Convenience Stores (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_of_Convenience_Stores&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NACS&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In simple terms these companies and unions applied for and received a&#xA;  waiver that would allow them to continue offering 'limited benefit&#xA;  plans' to their part-time, seasonal and temporary employees. The&#xA;  waiver is for one year and only waives the portion of the law that&#xA;  phases out annual limits. Waivers must be applied for each year until&#xA;  2014 when the new health care exchanges are set up and these employers&#xA;  and workers will have other insurance options,&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, McDonald's &quot;exemption&quot; is a temporary waiver, and not specific to the birth control part of the bill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13518" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-24T03:04:12.007" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T03:04:12.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15967" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-23T19:28:50.460" Score="10" ViewCount="1415" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oil (and other carbon based fuels like Coal, but for this question, I'm more interested in Oil) is widely regarded as a &quot;Fossil Fuel&quot; because its origin was ancient flora and fauna, buried deep below the surface for millions of years while being transformed into oil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really the case? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was there enough ancient plant and animal life trapped beneath the surface to account for known oil reserves? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People often say they are &quot;filling their tank with dinosaurs&quot; -- how much oil actually comes from dinosaurs or other animals versus other sources? A commenter asked for references for this claim, I thought the dinosaur gas tank connection was well known, here are a few references to dinosaurs in the gas tank:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gei3gpG2IYU&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chevron Dinosaur ad&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=mURTAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=eoUDAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=6613,3306315&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Just a Few Dinosaurs Short of a Full Tank&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tshirtvortex.net/dinosaur-fossil-fuels-t-shirt/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dinosaur Fossil Fuels T-shirt&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfenvironmentkids.org/resources/energy2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;What's a dinosaur doing in my gas tank?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordforge.net/showthread.php?t=57809&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Put another dinosaur in the gas tank&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How did this ancient life come to be buried thousands of feet below the current surface of the earth and oceans? Continental drift and other plate tectonics shifting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was this transformation process 100% complete? Are there any cases where ancient plant matter, fossils, etc were pumped to the surface from an oil well? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13418" LastEditorUserId="13418" LastEditDate="2013-04-24T15:38:10.593" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T15:38:10.593" Title="Did oil come from Dinosaurs?" Tags="|biology|geology|fossil-fuel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15967" CreationDate="2013-04-23T20:00:47.077" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fossil fuels are fuels formed by natural processes such as anaerobic decomposition of buried dead organisms including phytoplankton and zooplankton that settled to the sea (or lake) bottom in large quantities under anoxic conditions. (Giant Oil and Gas Fields of the Decade, 1990–1999, Tulsa, Okla.: American Association of Petroleum Geologists, p.50) The age of the organisms and their resulting fossil fuels is typically millions of years, and sometimes exceeds 650 million years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over geological time, this organic matter, mixed with mud, got buried under heavy layers of sediment. The resulting high levels of heat and pressure caused the organic matter to chemically alter, first into a waxy material known as kerogen which is found in oil shales, and then with more heat into liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons in a process known as catagenesis. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whoi.edu/science/MCG/dept/education/MOG_course_djr_tie/Fate%20of%20Organic%20Matter%20over%20Geologic%20Time%205-03-05.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;-source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not expect plant material to be found included in the oil. The organic material is compressed into kerogen during the formation process... oil is formed from &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; material (which is, in turn, imbeded in rock). As it turns into oil, it slowly seeps out of the source rock. The oil migrates until it is trapped in a reservoir rock layer (usually sandstone) that has an impenetrable seal layer (usually shale) above it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this constitutes &quot;dinosaurs&quot; depends on your definition. If you are discussing therapods, sauropods, and the various reptiles collectively referred to as &quot;dinosaurs&quot; in common culture then, with some statistically insignifigant exceptions, &quot;no&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13519" LastEditorUserId="13519" LastEditDate="2013-04-24T13:33:59.617" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T13:33:59.617" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6594" CreationDate="2013-04-23T20:16:46.530" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Better&quot; is a vague term which could be &quot;more accurate&quot;, &quot;more often preferred&quot;, or a number of other things. For simplicity: I will assume the question is one of fidelity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A CD has a lower minimum frequency at volume and a greater &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_range&quot;&gt;dynamic range&lt;/a&gt; (Fries, Bruce; Marty Fries (2005). Digital Audio Essentials. O'Reilly Media. p. 147. ISBN 0-596-00856-2) than exsiting &quot;record&quot; recording processes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It is true that the more low frequency you mix on the sides, the more vertical up-and-down movement will be required of the cutter to make that sound. And with more vertical movement, the groove will use more space on the disc. Significant amounts of low end panned hard left and/or right can also cause a record to skip during playback. For the record to have fewer problems, you should try to keep most of the low end near, or in, the center of the mix, especially percussive sounds like the kick drum and bass guitar.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emusician.com/techniques/0768/mastering-vinyl/134677&quot;&gt;-source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An album does have the theroetic ability to output past 30khz &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramophone_record#Frequency_response_and_noise&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eC6L3_k_48&quot;&gt;youtube&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diamondcut.com/vforum/showthread.php/2152-Theoretical-Record-Frequency-Response&quot;&gt;diamondcut&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.endino.com/graphs/&quot;&gt;endino&lt;/a&gt;, but human hearing drops off below 20khz &lt;a href=&quot;http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/ChrisDAmbrose.shtml&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sibilance, the high-frequency noise burst that you get when the letters s, f, and t are emphasized, is a major issue that mastering engineers encounter. “Problematic sibilants typically fall in the 6 to 12 kHz range,” Golden observes. “Because a CD can reproduce it without trouble, it isn't recognized as a problem area until you decide to make a vinyl record.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emusician.com/techniques/0768/mastering-vinyl/134677&quot;&gt;-source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A CD reproduces sound with accuracy up to just over half the samplying rate and with a dynamic range determined by bit-depth (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-code_modulation&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-code_modulation&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJmUkNTBa8s&quot;&gt;youtube&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.uic.edu/stud_orgs/prof/pesc/part_3_rev_F.pdf&quot;&gt;University of Illinois&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CDs are also not vunerable to Rumble, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow_and_flutter_measurement&quot;&gt;Wow and Flutter&lt;/a&gt;, and degredation of sound quality from play. Records are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13519" LastEditorUserId="13519" LastEditDate="2013-04-24T12:54:39.400" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T12:54:39.400" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15972" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15977" CreationDate="2013-04-23T21:38:18.003" Score="17" ViewCount="34113" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just watched the Vice video &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INAlUGn0RYg&quot;&gt;Hunting the Radioactive Beasts of Chernobyl&lt;/a&gt; where they claim that drinking alcohol would prevent (or at least reduce) radiation poisoning effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I've been unable to find any credible material online that would support this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6036" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T01:06:39.210" Title="Does alcohol consumption have an effect on radiation poisoning?" Tags="|radiation|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15948" CreationDate="2013-04-23T22:17:23.447" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to find the required numbers to answer your question as asked, but I've made an attempt. The raw data I've used is from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://ssb.no/en/statistikkbanken&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;statistical database from &quot;Statistics Norway&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. The charts and numbers are not deep-linkable but available in the sections &quot;Immigration and immigrants&quot;, &quot;Population&quot;, &quot;Labour market and earnings&quot; and &quot;Social conditions, welfare and crime&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Statistics Norway&quot; offer a lot of raw data from their database, but not all numbers are broken down by citizenship. I've tried to find a few datasources, from which at least a partial conclution can be drawn (all numbers from 2010):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Population count broken down by citizenship. These numbers do not account for immigrants, which have obtained a Norwegian citizenship.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of persons charged with at least one criminal offence, broken down by citizenship. The number only includes more serious crimes and not less serious delicts. As already pointed out, these numbers may be skewed if the law enforcement tend to pursuit crimes committed by specific ethnic groups more eagerly than crimes committed by the native population. They also include criminal charges against foreigners, which are not permanent residents of Norway.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The absolute number of unemployed persons broken down by citizenship. This is the closest I can get to a measurement of wealth, but I think it is pretty safe to assume a correlation between unemployment ratio and wealth. However, only the total number of unemployed is counted and not the fraction of the relevant labour force. I would assume that the age distribution varies between different groups of immigrants and hence also the labour force ratio may differ.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The numbers are only available for 44 different citizenships. For the rest of the origin countries, either the population, number of criminal charges or number of unemployments is too low for these to be accounted for separately.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on these numbers, I've calculated the following ratios by citizenship:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of charged persons per population count, scaled so that Norway = 1. In the following text, I'll refer to this number as &quot;crime ratio&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Number of unemployed persons per population count, scaled so that Norway = 1. In the following text, I'll refer to this number as &quot;unemployment ratio&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6 of the 44 countries have rather extreme ratios and fall outside this diagram, but plotting the crime ratio on the X axis and the unemployment ratio on the Y axis gives the following plot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vxenP.png&quot; alt=&quot;data plot&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the crime and unemployment ratios separately, there is a very large variance in the numbers. Here is a list of countries, where at least one of the ratios are &gt;10:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;          crime unemployment&#xA;Romania     14   4&#xA;Algeria     54  19&#xA;Gambia      23  18&#xA;Morocco     12  21&#xA;Nigeria     35   8&#xA;Sri Lanka    3  15&#xA;Iraq         4  10&#xA;Iran         5  14&#xA;Pakistan     2  10&#xA;Vietnam      4  36&#xA;Chile        4  13&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, these ratios are actually correct. The number of Algerians charged with a criminal offence is relative to the population count 54 times higher than the number of charged Norwegians. 29,516 of roughly 4.5 million Norwegian citizens were charged with a criminal offence in 2010, while 128 Algerians faced the same faith of a population of 362. Likewise, 700 of the 1561 Vietnamese citizens living in Norway were reported unemployed, making the unemployment ratio 36 times higher than among the Norwegian citizens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worth to notice is perhaps also, that only immigrants from three countries show a crime ratio &amp;lt;1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Thailand   0.75&#xA;Germany    0.90&#xA;USA        0.95&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All countries show an unemployment ratio &gt;1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The crime ratios may also contradict the early assumption that the law enforcement may more strictly pursuit crimes committed by specific ethnic groups. The crime rates for immigrants from Sweden and UK are e.g. higher than for the immigrants from Poland, Turkey, Ukraine, Bosnia, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Pakistan - immigrant groups which undoubtedly have a reputation of being &quot;more criminal&quot; than other foreigners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I now try to correlate these ratios (crime ratio divided by unemployment ratio, Norway still being fixed to 1), we get a number where a high value indicate a high criminal ratio despite low unemployment, while a low number indicate a low criminal ratio, despite high unemployment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Immigrants from only six countries score a crime per unemployment ratio &gt;1.5:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Netherlands  1.52&#xA;Lithuania    1.58&#xA;Liberia      1.66&#xA;Algeria      2.83&#xA;Romania      3.47&#xA;Nigeria      4.18&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've made all the data used in these calculations available in an unfortunately rather chaotic &lt;a href=&quot;http://jarnbjo.de/Crime-Norway.ods&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;OO Calc Spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt;. Source of the data: Statistisk Sentralbyrå, Statistics Norway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to draw your own conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastActivityDate="2013-04-23T22:17:23.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15972" CreationDate="2013-04-24T12:56:46.747" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alcohol may in fact make radiation poisoning worse. Though red wine specifically may give a slight boost that can be further improved by removing the alcohol entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0027510705002848&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consumption of dealcoholised red wine significantly decreased the gamma radiation-induced DNA damage at 1 and 2 h post-consumption by 20%. In contrast alcohol tended to increase radiation-induced genome damage and complete wine protected against radiation-induced genome damage relative to alcohol. The observed effects were only weakly correlated with the concentration of total plasma catechin (R = −0.23).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study was extremely small though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0278691512007508&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; looking at the effects of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resveratrol&quot;&gt;resveratrol&lt;/a&gt;, which is belived to be the compound in red wine responsible for the protective effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our aim was to evaluate the radioprotective efficacy, in vitro, of trans-resveratrol against radiation-induced chromosomal damage and to study the genotoxicity and cytotoxicity of this polyphenol in cell cultures without irradiation. The study was carried out by the pre-treatment of human lymphocytes at concentrations from 0 to 219 μM of trans-resveratrol. The results showed that all concentrations tested reduced radiation-induced chromosomal damage compared with cells with any treatment. Maximum damage protection was observed at the concentration of 2.19 μM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study used 2Gy of gamma radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6876" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T12:56:46.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15958" CreationDate="2013-04-24T13:14:25.430" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nick Vogt is missing his left pinky finger, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7zdgmfQUMs&amp;amp;sns=fb&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here is a video&lt;/a&gt; where he's doing pushups and it's clearly seen that he has only 4 fingers on his left hand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5PljB.png&quot; alt=&quot;screen shot&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jeff Bauman has all his fingers on the left hand. Here is a picture from a visit by Bradly Cooper, Jeff is holding a ball with his left hand, and it's clearly seen that he has all 5 fingers (one of them is white because of medical instrument):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JDLFY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;pic&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/showbiz/news/a474503/bradley-cooper-visits-boston-bombing-survivor-in-hospital-picture.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13534" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-01-16T14:09:33.490" LastActivityDate="2019-01-16T14:09:33.490" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="15979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15962" CreationDate="2013-04-24T14:12:10.463" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe&lt;/strong&gt;, but church attendance per se may not be the cause. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an extremely complicated topic that since there are many variables involved and as the as the author even noted &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/opinion/sunday/luhrmann-why-going-to-church-is-good-for-you.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in the article&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eventually, this may teach us how to harness the “placebo” effect — a&#xA;  terrible word, because it suggests an absence of intervention rather&#xA;  than the presence of a healing mechanism that depends neither on&#xA;  pharmaceuticals nor on surgery. We do not understand the placebo&#xA;  effect, but we know it is real. That is, we have increasingly better&#xA;  evidence that what anthropologists would call “symbolic healing” has&#xA;  real physical effects on the body. At the heart of some of these&#xA;  mysterious effects may be the capacity to trust that what can only be&#xA;  imagined may be real, and be good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finding a direct correlation between &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;religiosity&lt;/a&gt; and life expectancy can be difficult largely due to the number of variables involved. For example, it is sometimes speculated that religious people are less likely to fear death; however, &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00300459&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;studies of cancer patients&lt;/a&gt; have shown that while there is a connection between the strength of a person's conventions and their anxiety towards dying,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He found that patients with strong religious faith, and those with&#xA;  none, were least distressed about dying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same study when on to find that religiosity had no statistical impact upon the patient outcomes or life expectancy. So while strong convictions may help your mental state, it doesn't appear to do much to help your life expectancy when you have an illness such as cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coming at things differently, the author cites a number of anecdotes about regular church attendee and the social support networks that grow up around them. This has been studied and it has been shown that strong social support carries over into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3090238?uid=3739696&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;uid=3739256&amp;amp;sid=21102190749437&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;subjective life expectancy&lt;/a&gt; and overall quality of life. Having adequate emotional support through stressful events has also been shown to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1679147/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;been tied to ones ability to survive&lt;/a&gt; those events as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this same vein of thought the articles author notes the following anecdote,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One evening, a young woman in a group I joined began to cry. Her&#xA;  dentist had told her that she needed a $1,500 procedure, and she&#xA;  didn’t have the money. To my amazement, our small group — most of them&#xA;  students — simply covered the cost, by anonymous donation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads to the possibility that the social networks involved with churches might also assist members through stressful periods in their life. Stress and lower life expectancies &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bps.org.uk/news/stress-and-lower-life-expectancy-linked&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;have been linked&lt;/a&gt; and even modest amounts of stress relief from the social network, or even just through the weekly ritual of attending church services&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is also important to note that literature reviews have found that studies involving religion and health effects can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1207/S15324796ABM2401_03&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;methodologically unsound&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of the 266 articles published in the year 2000 and identified by the&#xA;  Medline search, only 17% were relevant to claims of health benefits&#xA;  associated with religious involvement. About half of the articles&#xA;  cited in the comprehensive reviews were irrelevant to these claims. Of&#xA;  those that actually were relevant, many either had significant&#xA;  methodological flaws or were misrepresented, leaving only a few&#xA;  articles that could truly be described as demonstrating beneficial&#xA;  effects of religious involvement. We conclude that there is little&#xA;  empirical basis for assertions that religious involvement or activity&#xA;  is associated with beneficial health outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in someways this brings back to the authors comments on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;placebo effect&lt;/a&gt; and the difficulty in determining exactly why a correlation between church attendance and life expectancy may exist. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Correlation does not imply causation&lt;/a&gt; it it may not be the church attendance but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/2158336.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;positive attitude&lt;/a&gt; of a group of attendees could be affecting the overall life expectancy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, while there do appear to be links between church attendance and overall life expectancy, we don't know why this link exists and it may not be possible to isolate church attendance in and of itself enough to determine the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is some speculation on my part since I didn't have time to search for studies; however, just the regular ritual of church services may allow people to &quot;decompress&quot; and relieve some of their stress which could improve their overall health.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T14:12:10.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15962" CreationDate="2013-04-24T15:10:42.973" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, going to church can influence your health according to scientific studies. However, this doesn't say that the same effect can't be achieved by other means, or that the religious part of church going is the determining factor, and not the social or psychological. In other words, all the scientific articles on the subject are merely describing phenomenons and don't analyze them, but saying that more research is needed, which means that the &lt;strong&gt;real&lt;/strong&gt; reasons and factors that affect the health of church goers are yet unknown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of the article seems to suggest this as well, but less willingly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Social support is no doubt part of the story. At the evangelical churches I’ve studied as an anthropologist, people really did seem to look out for one another. They showed up with dinner when friends were sick and sat to talk with them when they were unhappy. The help was sometimes surprisingly concrete. Perhaps a third of the church members belonged to small groups that met weekly to talk about the Bible and their lives ... A study conducted in North Carolina found that frequent churchgoers had larger social networks, with more contact with, more affection for, and more kinds of social support from those people than their unchurched counterparts. And we know that social support is directly tied to better health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Healthy behavior is no doubt another part. Certainly many churchgoers struggle with behaviors they would like to change, but on average, regular church attendees drink less, smoke less, use fewer recreational drugs and are less sexually promiscuous than others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And at the end of the article she calls it placebo and suggests that studying this phenomena would help up use this effect to better people's life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, this may teach us how to harness the “placebo” effect ...  We do not understand the placebo effect, but we know it is real. That is, we have increasingly better evidence that what anthropologists would call “symbolic healing” has real physical effects on the body. At the heart of some of these mysterious effects may be the capacity to trust that what can only be imagined may be real, and be good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Studies:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, the author doesn't provide the references to all the studies she cites in the article, which makes our job harder, and her arguments less persuasive. And she is a professor in Stanford, she really should know better that this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main article on which it's all based is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jabfm.org/content/19/2/103.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this meta-study by Daniel E. Hall, MD&lt;/a&gt;. However the study itself is not too enthusiastic as to the results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background: A recent meta-analysis demonstrates a robust but small association between weekly religious attendance and longer life. However, the practical significance of this finding remains controversial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: The real-world, practical significance of regular religious attendance is comparable to commonly recommended therapies, and rough estimates even suggest that religious attendance may be more cost-effective than statins. Religious attendance is not a mode of medical therapy, but these findings warrant more and better quality research designed to examine the associations between religion and health, and the potential relevance such associations might have for medical practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author doesn't suggest that churchgoing is the cure, but that there is something in it that should be studied further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the July issue of the same magazine &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jabfm.org/content/19/4/431.1.full?sid=cf0fcb14-9446-4071-ac47-b3f2dd796038&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a letter was published by Peter S. Millard, MD, PhD&lt;/a&gt;, which says that the study wasn't really good because it disregarded all the other factors that sarround the issue, I really liked it, so I'm citing it fully here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Hall bases his analysis on observational data that are of questionable validity. The fact that churchgoers live longer than people who do not attend church may very well have nothing to do with churchgoing but may result from uncontrolled confounding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Observational studies that showed a benefit of exogenous estrogens in postmenopausal women were debunked by the Women’s Health Initiative Randomized Controlled Trial.1 The accepted explanation for the discrepancy between the observational findings and the experimental results is that women who took estrogens were systematically different from non-users in ways which resulted in improved outcomes (eg, reduced coronary disease).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barrett-Connor referred to this as the “healthy user effect.”2 The inability to control for the healthy user effect resulted in the biased findings of many observational studies of estrogen use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, churchgoers are systematically different from non-churchgoers in ways that are difficult to measure but are likely to result in improved health outcomes that may have nothing to do with churchgoing. Churchgoers are more likely to be employed, have intact families, and are less likely to be homebound by illness or disability. Until the healthy attender effect can be controlled for, it is unwise to attempt to make any inferences about the effect that churchgoing has on health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study that claims that churchgoers have a greater social network is probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/1386636&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frequent churchgoers report larger social networks, more contact with network members, more types of social support received, and more favorable perception of the quality of their social relationships than do their unchurched counterparts. Farther, most of these empirical patterns withstand statistical controls for a wide range of covariates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/(SICI)1520-6629(199811)26:6%3C597::AID-JCOP6%3E3.0.CO;2-M/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; suggest that church going can relieve stress, but the more interesting part is that it depends on the church and denomination you go to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this study we examined the stress-buffering effect of an intrinsic religious orientation for a community sample of adult Protestant churchgoers. At time 1, participants completed measures of intrinsic religiousness, religious activity, and dysphoria. At time 2, 8 months later, they completed measures of negative life events and dysphoria. For participants from liberal Protestant churches (e.g., Methodist), intrinsic religiousness served as a stress-buffer in the prediction of time 1–time 2 residual change in dysphoria. This effect was nonsignificant for participants from more conservative Protestant churches (e.g., Baptist). Similarly, single-item measures of religion's importance, frequency of prayer, and frequency of church attendance served as stress-buffers for liberal participants, but not for conservative participants. The nonsignificant effects for the latter participants are attributable to their restricted range on the religion variables. The results for the former participants suggest that religious “commitment” is an individual difference variable that influences adjustment to negative life events&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the immune system, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022399998000786&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; that suggest that male gay HIV-positive churchgoers have a higher &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_cell&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;T-cell&lt;/a&gt; count, which shows that church going affects positively on the immune system&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study examines the relationship between religiosity and the affective and immune status of 106 HIV-seropositive mildly symptomatic gay men (CDC stage B). All men completed an intake interview, a set of psychosocial questionnaires, and provided a venous blood sample. Factor analysis of 12 religiously oriented response items revealed two distinct aspects to religiosity: religious coping and religious behavior. Religious coping (e.g., placing trust in God, seeking comfort in religion) was significantly associated with lower scores on the Beck Depression Inventory, but not with specific immune markers. On the other hand, religious behavior (e.g., service attendance, prayer, spiritual discussion, reading religious literature) was significantly associated with higher T-helper-inducer cell (CD4+) counts and higher CD4+ percentages, but not with depression. Regression analyses indicated that religiosity’s associations with affective and immune status was not mediated by the subjects’ sense of self-efficacy or ability to actively cope with their health situation. The associations between religiosity and affective and immune status also appear to be independent of symptom status. Self-efficacy, however, did appear to contribute uniquely and significantly to lower depression scores. Our results show that an examination considering both subject religiosity as well as sense of self-efficacy may predict depressive symptoms in HIV-infected gay men better than an examination that considers either variable in isolation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study however has a very small sample size (try to find a lot of HIV positive gay men that go to church), and should be taken with caution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953608005339&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; shows that churchgoing doesn't affect blood pressure, and hypertension, but that prayer increases hypertension, and spirituality increases diastolic blood pressure. This study may contradict the article in some aspects, but it shows that religiosity can affect a persons physical status and health, which &lt;sub&gt;(in my opinion)&lt;/sub&gt; is the main point of the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers have established the role of heredity and lifestyle in the occurrence of hypertension, but the potential role of psychosocial factors, especially religiosity, is less understood. This paper analyzes the relationship between multiple dimensions of religiosity and systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and hypertension using data taken from the Chicago Community Adult Health Study, a probability sample of adults (N = 3105) aged 18 and over living in the city of Chicago, USA. Of the primary religiosity variables examined here, attendance and public participation were not significantly related to the outcomes. Prayer was associated with an increased likelihood of hypertension, and spirituality was associated with increased diastolic blood pressure. The addition of several other religiosity variables to the models did not appear to affect these findings. However, variables for meaning and forgiveness were associated with lower diastolic blood pressure and a decreased likelihood of hypertension outcomes. These findings emphasize the importance of analyzing religiosity as a multidimensional phenomenon. This study should be regarded as a first step toward systematically analyzing a complex relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are some some studies, all show that there can be and is correlation between churchgoing and religiosity and a person's health:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953603002831&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is going to church good or bad for you? Denomination, attendance and mental health of children in West Scotland&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/png/ajhb/2005/00000029/00000006/art00005&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is Church Attendance Associated With Latinas' Health Practices and Self-reported Health?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;In conclusion:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like every aspect of human life, churchgoing and religion may have affect on our health, but the mechanism behind it, the reasons and what aspects of our health are affected are still unknown, and require much more high quality research. All the study that available today, don't try to explain the phenomenon only to describe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A serious study, which will be able to make the right differentiation of the elements that are unique to religion and churchgoing, is still needed, and until it's done, we can't say what is the aspect of this particular activity that has affect on us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T15:10:42.973" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15981" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15983" CreationDate="2013-04-24T16:44:03.137" Score="24" ViewCount="36724" Body="&lt;p&gt;The latest gun advocacy rhetoric I've seen includes this quote, attributed to George Washington:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When any nation mistrusts its citizens with guns it is sending a clear message. It no longer trusts its citizens because such a government has evil plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fb4X8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;As seen on Facebook&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did George Washington really say this?  I can find plenty of people citing him with this quotation, but nothing that looks like a legitimate source (mostly personal blogs and opinion pieces).  It doesn't really sound like the phrasing I would expect him to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T05:34:25.380" Title="Was George Washington the source of this quote equating government gun control with evil intentions?" Tags="|quotes|guns|george-washington|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15920" CreationDate="2013-04-24T17:04:26.817" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Significant may be in the eye of the beholder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On modern CPUs (and motherboards), power draw varies based on load.  Successfully preventing ads that require CPU cycles to display (compared to a page of text with no ads) would vary the CPU load (and presumably other motherboard loads as well).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article gives an idea of power requirements comparing idle and busy CPUs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i5-2500t-2390t-i3-2100t-pentium-g620t_8.html#sect0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/core-i5-2500t-2390t-i3-2100t-pentium-g620t_8.html#sect0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in my hasty testing, on espn.go.com, my Intel Core i5 tower draws 63 watts while the 'ad' is 'playing' and settles to 56 watts when the 'ad' finishes.&#xA;(It initially draws up to 70 watts while refreshing the contents of the page, then clearly settles at 63 watts while the ad plays)  If ads are constantly refreshing and displaying motion and sound, that is most certainly creating CPU load.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Measured with: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.p3international.com/products/p4460.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.p3international.com/products/p4460.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13233" LastEditorUserId="13233" LastEditDate="2013-04-24T17:55:47.620" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T17:55:47.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15981" CreationDate="2013-04-24T17:32:51.977" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;The evidence clearly suggests current-day pamphleteer Joe Spenner is the author of this quotation, not George Washington.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Author of the quotation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of the quote appears to be someone named Joe Spenner who authored a &lt;a href=&quot;http://americanwisdomseries.com/230.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pamphlet&lt;/a&gt; in which there is an introduction by Spenner (note the absence of quote marks - he isn't quoting) containing the phrase in question, below this a horizontal dividing line, below the line are a series of quotations (in quote marks) attributed to George Washington. It seems clear that the quotation in question is part of Spenner's introductory remarks and Spenner is the original author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;A Facebook comment from an Eric Gustafson identified this source&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Author of the image&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of the image isn't sure if it's a Washington quote and doesn't care:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sN9Xx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I added the rectangle to highlight the author's view of the reliability of the attribution. Other than my added rectangle, this is a straight clip from the facebook page from which the image in the question originated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Washington's archive&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase &amp;quot;evil plans&amp;quot; does not appear in George Washington's written works 1745-1799 as collected by &lt;a href=&quot;http://etext.virginia.edu/washington/fitzpatrick/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;John C Fitzpatrick&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The preservation of his papers was a subject never far from the mind of George Washington. In fact, his deathbed instructions to his secretary Tobias Lear in December 1799, to &amp;quot;arrange and record all my late military letters and papers . . . and other letters,&amp;quot; were only the continuation of a practice that Washington had begun as a young man when he began saving his incoming letters as well as copies of most of his outgoing correspondence. A half-century of farm management, land speculation, business enterprise, and public service eventually came to be represented in the mass of written material that comprise his public and private papers, some 135,000 surviving documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comprised of more than 17,400 letters and documents in thirty-seven volumes (plus a two-volume index), Fitzpatrick's Writings was a monumental achievement by any standard. His experience in the Library of Congress, which owns the single largest collection of Washington manuscripts (more than 60,000 documents) ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if he did say it (or write it), it wasn't in what were regarded as his most important writings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Earliest occurrence of key words&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=a+government+has+evil+plans&amp;amp;year_start=1732&amp;amp;year_end=1799&amp;amp;corpus=15&amp;amp;smoothing=3&amp;amp;share=&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google ngrams&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;a government has evil plans&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; finds nothing between 1732 and 1799. (it can find other phrases in that period so it's not due to a complete lack of data in that period)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first occurrence of &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;evil plans&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; in Google's collection of 40 million books is in 1810 - long after Washington was laid to rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The attribution to Washington is most likely an error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T10:34:10.567" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15920" CreationDate="2013-04-24T18:11:52.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it is true that everything has a price (and CPU calculations cost electricity, with none being available for no additional energy cost), the issue is one of scale and whether or not the results are *&lt;em&gt;material&lt;/em&gt; - that is to say, if it is significant enough to warrant anyone to choose to use or not use ad blockers based upon it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the claim itself, the informal study itself is here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sectheory.com/browser-power-consumption.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Browser Power Consumption&lt;/a&gt; Quite frankly, it seems perfectly reasonable as Flash especially can really draw lots of CPU cycles (and thus power) due to the nature of how such animations work (often using vectors, numerous floating point calculations of multiple complex objects, layers, view-port culling which is not always optimal, video card tie-ins to assist in some of the processing...). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that every system is different, and the more energy hungry the device the more this is an issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if we take the case of 11 watts, as an individual this is extremely small even if you browse 24 hours a day, all month long - then it would add up to maybe half a kilowatt hour. Given how people actually use their devices, it's probably more like 0.1 or 0.05/kwh. Here's some source information on calculating cost of energy and kwh: &lt;a href=&quot;http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/cost.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cost of Electricity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, on the other hand, this is something that an individual needs to only do maybe once a year or even less (thanks to auto-update software), and it does not even bother to even try to calculate savings in network bandwidth, or in the time savings of faster page loads and less time wasted on ads that are only rarely of any value to the individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, on the aggregate this is a bit more compelling, and could be considered a material factor to consider for IT departments on large campuses, government agencies, software vendors (like Mozilla including the plugin by default...), etc. On a campus of 10,000 people with thousands of workstations, a 0.05/kwh/user/month savings could shave 500/kwh off an electric bill, save lots of download bandwidth, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back on the other hand, note that is all only considering a desktop PC, which is the most power hungry internet-consuming device in existence today. The iPad 2, by comparison, has a battery rated at a maximum capacity of 25-watt-hours &lt;a href=&quot;http://9to5mac.com/2012/03/08/at-42-5-watt-hours-capacity-the-new-ipad-is-almost-all-battery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;, and makes an end run on all this by simply not supporting Flash in the first place - though it still supports AJAX and other types of animations, of course, so is still somewhat served by ad blockers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors themselves say there are far more potent ways of saving energy, but it seems to validly be another small - but measurable and real - benefit of ad blockers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11957" LastActivityDate="2013-04-24T18:11:52.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15985" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="15988" CreationDate="2013-04-24T19:44:24.403" Score="5" ViewCount="1783" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120215191119AAzXGPD&quot;&gt;Here is a claim&lt;/a&gt; that says the mafia still exist in Italy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes, sadly it does, and will ever does. I'm Italian.&#xA;  and it's not called mob.. or whatever.&#xA;  there are many clans, in several Italian cities.. and you could call all them &quot;Mafia&quot;&#xA;  Source(s):&#xA;  italian&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support or deny this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11740" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T02:52:39.023" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T07:49:52.460" Title="Does the 'Mafia' still exist in Italy?" Tags="|criminology|italy|organized-crime|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15986" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-25T03:33:00.103" Score="5" ViewCount="1461" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naet.com/&quot;&gt;Nambudripad's Allergy Elimination Techniques&lt;/a&gt; seems to claim to be able to heal almost anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It primarily focuses on allergies as the core of all issues. It seems to talk of meridians in human body that get blocked and can be the cause of almost all illness.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From their website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For our purposes, an allergy is defined in terms of what a substance does to the energy flow in the body. When contact is made with an allergen, it causes blockages in the energy pathways called meridians, or we can say, it disrupts the normal flow of energy through the body's electrical circuits. This energy blockage causes interference in communication between the brain and body via the nervous system. This blocked energy flow is the first step in a chain of events that can develop into an allergic response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naet.com/Patients/media.aspx&quot;&gt;watched proponents&lt;/a&gt; take a substance they are supposedly allergic to and place it in a glass, hold it up in one hand, and have another person grab their other hand as the surrogate, then the &quot;doctor&quot; pushes on that persons back in just the right spots on the surrogate's back in order to open the channels.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This seems as bad as voodoo to me but there are some die hard people who believe in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any proof one way or the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13541" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T07:15:49.623" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T07:15:49.623" Title="NAET - is it a hoax or does it have any merit?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|homeopathy|allergies|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15987" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-25T04:21:18.523" Score="12" ViewCount="5264" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arabianbusiness.com/uae-men-too-handsome-for-saudi-festival-498216.html#.UXiuguPZ9z1&quot;&gt;Several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emirates247.com/crime/region/uae-says-female-artists-sparked-police-incident-in-saudi-2013-04-15-1.502650&quot;&gt;news&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://gawker.com/5994825/men-deemed-too-handsome-deported-from-saudi-arabia-for-fear-they-would-be-irresistible-to-women&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt; reported that 3 men were deported from Saudi Arabia in early April because they were &quot;too handsome.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now &quot;fashion photographer, actor, and poet&quot; Omar Borkan Al Gala is &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.asiantown.net/-/17945/ladies--for-your-treat--the-man-who-is-deported-from-saudi-arabia-for-being-too-handsome&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; to have been one of the individuals kicked out of the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was he really deported for his good looks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T16:48:07.747" Title="Was Omar Borkan Al Gala removed from Saudi Arabia for being &quot;too handsome&quot;?" Tags="|saudi-arabia|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15985" CreationDate="2013-04-25T07:49:52.460" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes it does exist.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 10-year investigation by Italian authorities earlier this year&#xA;  revealed ties between Italian groups and Mexican drug traffickers to&#xA;  move shipments of cocaine across the Atlantic Ocean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/06/21/mexico-drug-cartels-supply-italian-mafia-with-cocaine-for-europe/&quot;&gt;Italian mafia smuggles cocaine for europe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Italian mafia, have its ups and downs. The bosses and high-ups get caught, their business broken down, when the government makes a major crackdown on the mafia. What usually seems to be the case is that not all of the mafia is arrested, and then with the void left by the mafia bosses, others takes the chance to rise to power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By the late 1990s, the weakened Cosa Nostra had to yield most of the&#xA;  illegal drug trade to the 'Ndrangheta crime organization from&#xA;  Calabria. In 2006, the latter was estimated to control 80% of the&#xA;  cocaine imported to Europe. In 2012, it's been reported that Mafia&#xA;  have joined forces with the Mexican drug cartels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosa_Nostra&quot;&gt;Wikipedia about ups and downs of Sicilian Mafia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What seems to be the case is that there always is some sort of illegal source of money, which maintains the mafia. Cocaine, Heroin, protection racketeering etc. This leads to a slow rise back, with the mafia slowly growing up in power, even after major crackdowns when majority of the mafia have been taken care of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As with all business, as long as it is doing well it keeps on growing. Sadly it's true for criminal business as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastActivityDate="2013-04-25T07:49:52.460" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15990" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-25T09:41:39.053" Score="8" ViewCount="288" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/dec/05/italy.philipwillan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Berlusconi implicated in deal with godfathers&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;em&gt;The guardian&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, was in personal contact&#xA;  with some of the mafia's most senior bosses, a major mafia turncoat&#xA;  has told investigators in a deposition revealed yesterday. Antonino&#xA;  Giuffre, a powerful boss who began collaborating with magistrates in&#xA;  the summer, said the mafia decided to back Mr Berlusconi's Forza&#xA;  Italia party from its foundation in 1993, in exchange for help in&#xA;  resolving the mafia's judicial problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/jan/12/italy.philipwillan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Explaining the rise of Forza Italia&lt;/a&gt;  - &lt;em&gt;The guardian&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Courtroom testimony of Cosa Nostra's No. 2 explains sudden demise of&#xA;  Christian Democrats and mysterious rise to power of Forza Italia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this? Was Berlusconi aiding the mafia, and in return getting aid from them, or was he even their puppet? Is this a 'trend' and have other prime ministers of Italy also been linked to the mafia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="8702" LastEditDate="2013-04-25T16:46:28.070" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T16:17:57.053" Title="Was Silvio Berlusconi working together with the Italian mafia?" Tags="|politics|italy|organized-crime|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15590" CreationDate="2013-04-25T17:38:03.613" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is a somewhat controversial area of research, often relegated to journals like &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NLP paradigm as a whole is generally discredited in the more mainstream scientific literature. A widely cited text on the topic concludes to say that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We found little if any evidence to support NLP’s assumptions or to indicate that it &#xA;  is effective as a strategy for social influence. It assumes that by tracking another’s &#xA;  eye movements and language, an NLP trainer can shape the person’s thoughts, &#xA;  feelings, and opinions (Dilts, 1983). There is no scientific support for these &#xA;  assumptions.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This directly contradicts the main premises of NLP and #2 specifically.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tomasz Witkowski of the Polish Skeptics Club published an article in &lt;em&gt;Polish Psychological Bulletin&lt;/em&gt;, reviewing the literature on this subject.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; His conclusions although mixed, are also unambiguous:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The qualitative analysis indicates the greater weight of the non-supportive studies and their greater methodological worth against the ones supporting the tenets. Results contradict the claim of an empirical basis of NLP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among many reputable sources, Witkowski cites an article in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Counseling Psychology&lt;/em&gt;, which concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They were unable to find any support for the NLP-derived hypothesis that subjects showing differential ability across sensory modes would choose word phrases reflecting their preferred sensory mode.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Polish study further undermines the scientific basis for NLP and for #1 specifically.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See for example, &quot;Rapport Building for Salespeople: A Neuro-Linguistic Approach&quot; by William G. Nickels, Robert F. Everett and Ronald Klein, &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management&lt;/em&gt; , Vol. 3, No. 2 (Nov., 1983), pp. 1-7.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Be All That You Can Be: Enhancing Human Performance&quot; by D. Druckman in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Applied Social Psychology&lt;/em&gt; Vol 34, No 11 (2004), pp. 2234-2266&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150525143628/http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ppb.2010.41.issue-2/v10059-010-0008-0/v10059-010-0008-0.xml&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20150525143628/http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/ppb.2010.41.issue-2/v10059-010-0008-0/v10059-010-0008-0.xml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fromme, D. K., &amp;amp; Daniell, J. (1984). &quot;Neurolinguistic Programming examined: imagery, sensory mode, and communication.&quot; &lt;em&gt;Journal of Counseling Psychology&lt;/em&gt;, 31.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T14:47:38.167" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T14:47:38.167" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15994" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-25T21:08:12.373" Score="12" ViewCount="660" Body="&lt;p&gt;Despite comparative evidence that US healthcare is very expensive and not particularly good by international standards, Americans seem to love it as evidenced by the debate on Obamacare and questions like this: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6001/is-the-us-newborn-mortality-rate-higher-than-40-countries&quot;&gt;Is the US Newborn Mortality Rate higher than 40 Countries?&lt;/a&gt; and this: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10020/is-more-than-30-of-us-healthcare-spending-waste&quot;&gt;Is more than 30% of US healthcare spending waste?&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jopm.org/opinion/commentary/2013/04/24/it%E2%80%99s-time-to-account-for-medical-error-in-%E2%80%9Ctop-ten-causes-of-death-charts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A recent paper&lt;/a&gt; points out that, despite their extent, medical errors are not listed alongside other major causes of death in &quot;top ten&quot; tables of mortality. As the article summarises:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Medical error has been reliably identified as among America’s leading causes of death. &lt;strong&gt;Yet it never appears in “top ten causes of death” charts&lt;/strong&gt; that periodically appear in the literature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Accounting for medical error as among the leading causes of death would require these data sets be integrated in a way that would force error to appear in causal compilations. Including fatal medical error in “top ten causes of death” charts and disclosing it during public end-of-life informational presentations would be an act of participatory medicine on several counts: for medicine, ownership, transparency, and disclosure; which would offer citizens the opportunity to factor error into our risk/benefit calculations as we ponder what we must do to increase our likelihood of dying in peace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two interlinked questions, one direct and one implied by the article: Is the key claim correct in saying that medical error is rarely reported alongside other causes of death?  and would including it alter the US perception that they have an excellent healthcare system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T15:48:07.277" Title="Does ignoring the extent of death caused by medical error distort the public perception of the quality of US healthcare?" Tags="|united-states|healthcare|mortality|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="15996" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-26T03:15:40.277" Score="31" ViewCount="28288" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whoownstheworld.com/about-the-book/largest-landowner&quot;&gt;WhoOwnsTheWorld.com&lt;/a&gt;, Queen Elizabeth II owns 6,600 million acres. They claim,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Largest five personal landowners on Earth&#xA;Queen Elizabeth II               6,600 million acres&#xA;King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia    553 million acres&#xA;King Bhumibol of Thailand        126 million acres&#xA;King Mohammed IV of Morocco      113 million acres&#xA;Sultan Quaboos of Oman           76 million acres&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these numbers seem superficial. Does the Queen really &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; that much land, even if only in a trivial legal sense? What power would she have over that land? &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/03/queen-state-territories&quot;&gt;The &lt;em&gt;New Statesman&lt;/em&gt; corroborates this here, but I can't find any further explanation&lt;/a&gt;. It's quite possible the number comes from the &lt;em&gt;New Statesman&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="15002" LastEditDate="2014-12-11T21:58:57.703" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T16:42:55.847" Title="Does Queen Elizabeth II own 6,600 million acres of land?" Tags="|united-kingdom|wealth|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6217" CreationDate="2013-04-26T10:59:47.013" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well it all depends on the initial stages of the car. An engine that is well run in will be more efficient comparably to the one which is driven slow all the time. Even rash and high RPMs are not advised on a new engine. Careful running in procedures ensure better performance as well as longevity of an engine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.automotix.net/autorepair/engine_repair_guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.automotix.net/autorepair/engine_repair_guide.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13559" LastEditorUserId="36842" LastEditDate="2016-11-19T22:32:29.927" LastActivityDate="2016-11-19T22:32:29.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16002" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15996" CreationDate="2013-04-26T12:46:43.067" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;: Thanks to @Ian, I re-read the original source more clearly and the exact claim is &lt;strong&gt;false&lt;/strong&gt;. The 6.6 billion is &lt;strong&gt;too high&lt;/strong&gt;. Almost all of the Queen's ownership of land is a purely technical one, in which she represents the governments of the country. However, if you accept the technicality of the Queen being the owner of government owned land, the Queen is still the largest landowner on Earth by a large margin, just not nearly the margin that article claims. See below for details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In British commonwealth legal tradition, land owned by the state is called  &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_land&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crown lands&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. It is nominally titled to 'the Crown' of that country, but that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/crown-land/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;actually means the government&lt;/a&gt;. This is still the case, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/land_tenures/documents/publications/crownland_factsheet.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in Canada&lt;/a&gt;, by far the largest of the Crown holdings, where about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/articles/crown-land&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;89% of the land is crown land&lt;/a&gt;. Approximately 23% of Australia is Crown land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much crown land is used for government purposes. Some generates income from leasing it, but she doesn't actually receive this money personally. Legally speaking, the land is held by the government &quot;in the name of the Crown&quot;, and it uses the income from the lands to actually operate the government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example (thanks to @Brian M. Hunt pointing this out): The &lt;a href=&quot;http://laws.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-4.html#h-18&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Canadian Constitution&lt;/a&gt; (specifically, the Constitution Act of 1867) enumerates the rights given to the provinces and those kept by the federal government. One of the rights delegated to the provinces is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Property and Civil Rights in the Province. (Section 92(13))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;meaning that the provinces have the right to make laws regarding property rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mostly, this ownership is a legal fiction meant to allow land ownership and transfers to continue to operate as it always has. It would require an act of the respective Parliaments to change the status quo, and no one has felt the need to do so in Canada. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 6.6 billion acre number quoted in the article is too high, because it includes land that is not even &lt;em&gt;technically&lt;/em&gt; owned by Queen Elizabeth II. For example, the article includes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Australia, the 7th largest country on earth with 1,900 million acres, the Papua New Guinea with 114 million acres, New Zealand with 66 million acres and the UK with 60 million acres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Queen does not own any of the land in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ga.gov.au/education/geoscience-basics/land-tenure.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Australia&lt;/a&gt;; though they still follow the Commonwealth land tenure laws, &quot;The Crown&quot; in Australian law is specifically defined as the governments of the state or territory, and &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the person of the monarch, so none of that 1.9 billion acres belongs to The Queen. Similarly, most of the crown lands in the UK were ceded by George III in 1760, and are held in an independent public trust called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/about-us/faqs/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Crown Estate&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; owned by Queen Elizabeth II. In New Zealand, only a small portion of the Crown Lands are still held in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linz.govt.nz/crown-property/find-out/linz-role-crown-property&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;name of the monarch&lt;/a&gt; (about 8% or ~7 million acres). The situation is Papua New Guinea is complicated, but it appears that as much as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lands.gov.pg/Services/Land_Administration/LA_Services/Land_Acquisition/Land_Tenure.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;97% of the land is Customary Land&lt;/a&gt;, which is owned in the indigenous people of the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I would estimate that Her Majesty's purely technical holdings are probably closer to about 2.5 billion acres, most of which is Canada and Australia, but that still puts her 5 times higher than the next largest land owner. The actual amount of land she owns in any meaningful sense is much smaller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7998" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2016-06-23T16:42:55.847" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T16:42:55.847" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16003" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15996" CreationDate="2013-04-26T14:04:01.600" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;Michael's answer is largely correct, however there is one small technicality that changes the answer:&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Michael's answer is now, as far as I know, as correct as we could hope to get. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Queen is not the same as The Crown, and the Crown does not own much of the land that it rules over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example taken from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.royal.gov.uk/FrequentlyAskedQuestions/20%20most%20asked%20questions.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;official website of the British Monarchy&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Q12. Does The Queen own Buckingham Palace?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A. Occupied Royal Palaces, such as Buckingham Palace, are not the private property of The   Queen. They are occupied by the Sovereign and held in trust for future generations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Queen privately owns two properties, Balmoral Castle and Sandringham House, which are not publicly funded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also fairly sure that there are areas of the commonwealth which consider the Crown to be the institute, not the individual (&lt;em&gt;I was researching this but since Michael's beaten me to the punch with Australia I'll not pursue it any further&lt;/em&gt;). Thus, while technically the British Crown might be the head of state for 6.6 Billion acres the Queen does not own most of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10499" LastEditorUserId="10499" LastEditDate="2013-04-26T15:26:35.213" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T15:26:35.213" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13994" CreationDate="2013-04-26T14:33:51.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, but partial-rotations have more severe effects when transitioning between one perceptual mode and the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://wearcam.org/vmp/node12.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this wonderful exposition by Steve Mann&lt;/a&gt; who spent many years immersed in a virtualized perceptual environment.  He found that using a 90 degree rotation of the visual field eased transition from normal vision into the apparatus-space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pic of Mann on the left of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://n1nlf-1.eecg.toronto.edu/personaltechnologies/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;group photo in this page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8735" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T14:33:51.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15987" CreationDate="2013-04-26T14:46:47.277" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://alhayat.com/Details/503060&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's an article&lt;/a&gt; (Arabic) from the Saudi edition of &lt;em&gt;Al Hayat&lt;/em&gt; newspaper. Here's the relevant part translated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Al Hayat&quot; has learned that the officials in the Emirates pavilion in&#xA;  the National Culture and Folklore Festival &quot;Al Janadiriyah&quot; have&#xA;  removed three young men who were participants in folkloric bands, in&#xA;  fear that they might mesmerize the female visitors of the pavilion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A festival official has explained that Islamic extremists had&#xA;  requested from the pavilion's officials that they remove three young&#xA;  men who were participating in the activities in fear that they might&#xA;  mesmerize the female visitors of the pavilion. He noted that his&#xA;  department had expedited the young men's travel arrangements to Abu&#xA;  Dhabi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He added: &quot;I don't know which organization these extremists who&#xA;  requested the young men be removed belonged to, but we sent them back&#xA;  home in fear of creating problems in the festival.&quot; noting that one of&#xA;  the folklore bands seemed obviously deficient after three of its&#xA;  members exited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Officials have declined to comment on the issue. &lt;em&gt;Al Hayat&lt;/em&gt; is a well respected newspaper in Saudi Arabia, and since the story was not censored that leads me to believe that the story has some truth in it. Although it is clear that the deportation was not done by the Saudi government, but by the Emirati delegation themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1301" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T14:46:47.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16007" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16009" CreationDate="2013-04-26T15:28:02.427" Score="15" ViewCount="10682" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/agentGav/status/324792135943593984&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a sign&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://gotgreentechnology.blogspot.nl/2012/03/tree-is-worth.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;at the Eden Nature Park &amp;amp; Resort in City of Davao, Philippines&lt;/a&gt;, that says this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of concern to all!&#xA;A tree is worth $193,250&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Professor T.M.Das of the&#xA;University of Calcutta. A tree living&#xA;for 50 years will generate $31,250 worth&#xA;of oxygen, provide $62,000 worth of air&#xA;pollution control, control soil erosion and&#xA;increase soil fertility to the tune of $31,250,&#xA;recycle $37,500 worth of water and provide&#xA;a home for animals worth $31,250. This&#xA;figure does not include the value of fruits,&#xA;lumber or beauty derived from trees.&#xA;Just another sensible reason to take&#xA;care of our forests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Update Forestry&#xA;Michigan State University&#xA;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ajZ4u.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The figure, &lt;a href=&quot;http://douglascountylibraries.org/AboutUs/LaRuesViews/1997/040907&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sometimes incorrectly quoted as $196,250&lt;/a&gt;, is cited at various green blogs, and sold on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.nl/books?id=DFo1yl5AGokC&amp;amp;lpg=PA50&amp;amp;ots=cWvq78MZUd&amp;amp;dq=Update%20Forestry%20Michigan%20State%20University%20tm%20das&amp;amp;hl=nl&amp;amp;pg=PA50#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Update%20Forestry%20Michigan%20State%20University%20tm%20das&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;bright red poster&lt;/a&gt; at &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.nl/books?id=Qpgr_HHNgkMC&amp;amp;lpg=PA468&amp;amp;ots=XPdQdzw0iU&amp;amp;dq=Update%20Forestry%20Michigan%20State%20University%20tm%20das&amp;amp;hl=nl&amp;amp;pg=PA468#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Update%20Forestry%20Michigan%20State%20University%20tm%20das&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Singapore Zoological Gardens&lt;/a&gt;, but i haven't been able to find the study behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is a tree living for 50 years worth $193,250?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T23:29:59.020" Title="Is the value of a tree $193,250?" Tags="|economics|ecology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16007" CreationDate="2013-04-26T17:13:22.600" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nancy Beckham explains in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uow.edu.au/~sharonb/STS300/valuing/price/pricingarticles.html&quot;&gt;Trees: finding their true value&lt;/a&gt; about how the valuation was done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was published in Indian Biologist, Vol XI, No. 1-2, 1979, by T.M. Das, a journal which is edited by... &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.connectjournals.com/subscription_info.php?bookmark=CJ-000941&quot;&gt;T.M. Das&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prof Das's system looked at a number of factors, one of which was oxygen production. The net accumulation of one gram of carbon in a tree was compared with the net production' of 2.66 g of oxygen. This oxygen production was related to the weight of a tree, using a correction factor for the amount of leaf shed every year and the age of the tree. The oxygen was valued at the prevailing Indian market rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, what its components would be worth (or rather what its outputs are worth) in its purest form is a nonsense method of valuing anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various ways of defining &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_%28economics%29&quot;&gt;economic worth&lt;/a&gt;, but it is clear that none of them are going to value a average, unspecified tree at $193,250, when its replacement and market price cost is so much lower.  On the other hand, particular trees may be valued at higher than that price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T17:13:22.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16007" CreationDate="2013-04-26T17:42:30.230" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;David Bennett from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=Qpgr_HHNgkMC&amp;amp;pg=PA468&amp;amp;lpg=PA468&amp;amp;dq=tm%20das%20calcutta%20value%20ofa%20tree&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=XPdQdAt7dS&amp;amp;sig=1p03mGN7u5tL8g0jgR6yPJ-OSOc&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=Wrd6UbuXFMfb4AOvw4GoBg&amp;amp;ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=tm%20das%20calcutta%20value%20ofa%20tree&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;great article&lt;/a&gt; on this topic in &lt;em&gt;Tropical Rainforest Research&lt;/em&gt;, under the title of &quot;Valuing a Tree: The Ethics of Environmental Evaluation.&quot; The gist of it is that converting trees to currency is not an exact science. A number of assumptions could go into such a calculation, producing a range of values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bennett quotes the exact number from T.M. Das (in Singapore dollars by the way, which converted to US currency comes out to &lt;strong&gt;$158,739 / 50 years&lt;/strong&gt;). About this metric he writes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This method is crude, of course. It indicates only an average functional value for a hypothetical tree. The functional value of a given tree of a given species may be more or less than this amount. The point remains that the economic value of a tree cannot be reduced to its materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By comparison, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.treesearch.fs.fed.us/pubs/48727&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Arboriculture&lt;/em&gt; 29(2): March 2003 indicates that the city of Davis, California&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;maintained nearly 24,000 public street trees that provided $1.2 million in net annual environmental and property value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By this measure, a tree brings 50$ per year, and &lt;strong&gt;$2,500 over 50 years&lt;/strong&gt;. The value in this study includes: &quot;electricity (kWh/tree) and natural gas savings (kBtu/tree), atmospheric CO2 reductions (kg/tree), air quality improvement [NO2, PM10, and VOCs (kg/tree)], stormwater runoff reductions [precipitation interception (m3 /tree)], and property value increases [∆ LSA (m2 /tree)].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I was wanting to be precise about the numbers, I would at least quote a range between these two estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2017-02-09T22:04:06.347" LastActivityDate="2017-02-09T22:04:06.347" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16010" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-26T17:43:04.933" Score="6" ViewCount="992" Body="&lt;p&gt;During a Press release today Senators Inhofe and Lucas accused the Department of Homeland Security of  &quot;limiting what’s available in the market with federal agencies purchasing unnecessary stockpiles of ammunition.&quot;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inhofe.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/inhofe-lucas-introduce-bill-limiting-federal-agencies-from-stockpiling-ammunition&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that this is actually the intent of the DHS as the press release indicates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that this question is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; about are the stockpiles unnecessary?  Rather it is  &quot;Is the government building the stockpiles with the intent of limiting the availability of ammunition on the market?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those saying that Inhofe is not accusing the administration of this &lt;a href=&quot;http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/06/inhofe-obama-administration-trying-to-dry-up-ammo-supply-audio/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here is a more direct accusation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;[O]ur president, Obama, has been doing everything he could to stop&#xA;  the private ownership of guns in America,” Inhofe said. “You know&#xA;  that, everyone knows that. And yet he’s been voted down in a big way&#xA;  by a large majority. And so my feeling is that &lt;strong&gt;he’s doing this&lt;/strong&gt; to buy&#xA;  up [ammunition] &lt;strong&gt;so that we can’t buy&lt;/strong&gt;: Honest, law-abiding citizens&#xA;  here in the United States, like my son, can’t even buy &lt;strong&gt;ammunition&#xA;  because government is purchasing so much&lt;/strong&gt;.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The bolding is mine to point out the direct accusation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2013-05-07T12:34:18.073" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T12:34:18.073" Title="Is the US Government buying extra ammunition in order to deny it the Civilian Population" Tags="|united-states|politics|guns|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16010" CreationDate="2013-04-26T17:56:24.847" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Department of Homeland Security responded in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/03/22/dhs-denies-massive-ammunition-purchase&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a statement&lt;/a&gt; released to the U.S. News and World Report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DHS told Whispers it regularly fills all of its goods and services requirements at one time because it's cheaper for the agency, and that the 1.6 billion number was misleading because the language of DHS's purchase said it would need &amp;quot;up to&amp;quot; a certain amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;DHS routinely establishes strategic sourcing contracts that combine the requirements of all its components for commonly purchased goods and services such as ammunition,&amp;quot; a DHS legislative affairs person wrote to Coburn. &amp;quot;These strategic sourcing contracts help leverage the purchasing power of DHS to efficiently procure equipment and supplies at significantly lower costs,&amp;quot; the department told Coburn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A detailed breakdown of the purchases can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coburn.senate.gov/public//index.cfm?a=Files.Serve&amp;amp;File_id=9cde768f-bb3a-4fd9-8176-1745c21519c2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The report breaks down utility and purchases by department, which appear to be in line with previous years. The number of rounds purchased was 150mil in 2010, and around 100mil in 2011 and 2012. If anything, the number of purchased rounds is going down. The requested budget allows for 320 million rounds 2013, but that does not mean that the DHS will actually purchase the rounds. The agency has spent $36mil on ammo in 2012, and approximates spending $37mil in 2013, an estimated increase of 2.7% (not adjusted for inflation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I refer you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.militarytimes.com/gearscout/2013/03/15/homeland-securitys-ammunition-purchases-should-not-worry-you/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; in the Military Times that discusses these numbers in greater detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note also that according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nraila.org/news-issues/fact-sheets/2012/federalammunitionregulation2012.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Shooting Sports Foundation&lt;/a&gt;, 10-12 billion rounds are produced domestically per year, with &amp;quot;many more billions&amp;quot; of foreign imports. Which would mean that the government is approved (and not guaranteed) to buy up to 2.6% of the national production per year, and a smaller number if we account for foreign imports. Mr. Nayak and Bert Medina, director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement National Firearms and Tactical Training Unit &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/apr/25/sequester-tight-budgets-means-dhs-buying-less-ammu/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;put that number closer to 1%&lt;/a&gt;. Given that these estimates don't account for the existing inventory or unused manufacturing capacity, it seems the effects of the purchase are at best modest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, note that the conspiracy theories about the government stockpiling ammo surface yearly around the budget time, and are propagated by conspiracy blogs that don't bother to read the released documentation. See for example the note on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticblog.org/2012/09/20/homeland-security-buying-ammunition-again/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skeptic Blog by Brian Donning&lt;/a&gt; from 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To conclude: (1) The documentary evidence speaks to the government's explicit intent of &amp;quot;procuring supplies&amp;quot; for the arms-bearing departments under the umbrella of the department of homeland security. These procurements are coordinated among multiple agencies, and at levels consistent with their purchases in the past few years. There is no mandate or evidence of collusion between these agencies to limit the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) By conservative estimates, the government is approved to purchase between 1% and 2.6% of only the domestic supply of ammunition per year, constraining the potential impact on the market to these numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T20:43:22.730" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15402" CreationDate="2013-04-26T18:23:06.980" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Federal deficits are caused by federal spending, not by personal or corporate spending, nor by spending  by state or local governments. The only way the federal deficit could be eliminated due to a reduction in health care costs would be if the reduction in health-care spending by the federal government exceeded the amount of the deficit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to OMB (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals&quot;&gt;http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals&lt;/a&gt;), the following 2012 federal expenses might be classified as direct health care costs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;551 Health care services $308,160 M&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;571 Medicare             $471,793 M&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;703 Veteran health care  $ 50,588 M&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total health care:       $830,541 M&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2012 On-budget deficit: $1,148,876&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the annual deficit is more than the government spends on health care, it is mathematically impossible for the federal deficit to be eliminated by any reduction in health care costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What was most likely intended by the original statement is that the total across-the-board amount of money that could be saved by a reduction in health care costs would equal the annual federal deficit. But it could not eliminate the deficit unless it were actually applied to the deficit (e.g., private savings confiscated by the federal government and applied to the deficit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13566" LastActivityDate="2013-04-26T18:23:06.980" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16016" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-27T01:10:03.173" Score="18" ViewCount="1514" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you still feel tired after a good night's sleep, you're probably dehydrated. Drink some water after you wake up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— Just So You Know (@Know) &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Know/status/326482092676493312&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;April 22, 2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some quick searching unsurprisingly indicates &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/ss/slideshow-fatigue-causes-and-remedies&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dehydration is a potential source of fatigue (see #10)&lt;/a&gt;, but is there any medical evidence that dehydration causes fatigue despite proper sleep and that drinking water after waking up will improve wakefulness—as the tweet implies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4055" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2021-12-23T01:33:51.803" Title="Is sleepiness after a goods night's sleep a sign of dehydration?" Tags="|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16020" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="36784" CreationDate="2013-04-27T21:11:53.653" Score="9" ViewCount="872" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freeenterprise.com/regulations/raisin-farmers-take-their-case-us-supreme-court?utm_source=Outbrain&amp;amp;utm_medium=Article_RSS&amp;amp;utm_content=Profiles&amp;amp;utm_campaign=OngoingPaid&quot;&gt;insight on this article&lt;/a&gt;, as I have not been to this website before and the claims seem over the top to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;64-year-old federal raisin-marketing program that can require raisin farmers, as a condition to selling their raisins in interstate commerce, to fork over to the government a portion of their crops—as much as 47% in some years—often for no payment or below the cost of producing the raisins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can buy this, historically it made sense with some products to reduce what was sold to keep more farmers in the market, or pay farmers to destroy crops. Generally the laws meant to prevent a flood of crops and keep the farmers in business for the more harsh years. So why are raisin farmers not reimbursed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where I really start to feel things are not accurate though is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It wasn't long before the Department of Agriculture (USDA) began monitoring and harassing the Hornes, their staff, and their buyers, according to Marvin. “They stopped my employees’ children and scared them. They stopped the trucks hauling our products and asked the drivers if they knew they were hauling contraband,” he says. “They also harassed our buyers, subpoenaed their records, and asked how many raisins they bought. I don’t think any businessman in America has ever been as harassed as we were.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the USDA really have this much power? And are they not acting at least partially outside of the law? It seems as though if there were a real violation the USDA would be able to shut the operations down. Harassment as described is never legal or allowable within the US government, is it? Or is there some sort of &quot;perfect storm&quot; allowances here with raisin farmers being a small group?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cfr.vlex.com/vid/989-67-disposal-reserve-raisins-19910049&quot;&gt;Skimming through this,&lt;/a&gt; it appears the raisin reserves are sold in a way that is supposed to bring fair returns to the farmers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(d)(1) Reserve tonnage raisins shall be sold to handlers at prices and in a manner intended to maximum producer returns and achieve maximum disposition of such raisins by the time reserve tonnage raisins from the subsequent crop year are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what the heck is going on here? How much truth is there to the original article and is this applicable anywhere else? I knew the US government paid to keep a surplus of food out of the stores, but do they also bully producers as a standard practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13521" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-28T02:12:10.633" LastActivityDate="2018-10-20T15:54:50.973" Title="Have the USDA bullied (allegedly criminal) raisin-marketers?" Tags="|united-states|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16022" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-28T02:42:17.690" Score="5" ViewCount="2074" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-205050/X-rays-lower-intelligence.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Daily Mail reports&lt;/a&gt; that X-rays and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_computed_tomography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CT scans&lt;/a&gt; performed on a child's head could lower their IQ:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study is the first to suggest that medical X-rays to the head could harm the development of the brain in later life.&#xA;  It found that adults whose brains were exposed to ionising radiation during infancy grew up to be less intelligent with fewer educational achievements than those who had not.&#xA;  The study also has implications for children today, who are increasingly given CT scans to check for injury after a minor head trauma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was also told this by a nurse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13580" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-04-28T08:55:18.860" LastActivityDate="2020-05-30T10:07:34.347" Title="Can CT scans performed on a child's head lower his or her intelligence?" Tags="|medical-science|radiation|intelligence|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16022" CreationDate="2013-04-28T08:32:00.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;: As noted by @Oddthinking, I missed the report referenced by @redgrittybrick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find a link between CT scans and intellectual development in children. I searched &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt; using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_Subject_Headings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MeSH&lt;/a&gt; terms such as &quot;tomography, x-ray computed&quot; (technical term for &quot;CT&quot;), risk, intelligence and various terms for youth (child, infant or fetus).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, not finding something doesn't disprove it but it does suggest that it isn't well-studied or generally accepted in the medical community ... if you accept that I made an adequate search of the scientific literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, there's plenty of information on CT scans and an increased risk of cancer for infants/children (eg, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3418594/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recent article in Lancet&lt;/a&gt;). An important note here is that the risks need to be balanced against the dangers of not running CT scans (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831681/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Catch study&lt;/a&gt; and a recent review in &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2012.07.018&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;J Pediatrics&lt;/a&gt;). In other words, NOT running a CT scan (for high-risk cases) is more likely to lead to lowered &quot;IQ&quot;, due to improperly diagnosed/treated head trauma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11771" LastEditorUserId="11771" LastEditDate="2013-04-28T09:39:29.737" LastActivityDate="2013-04-28T09:39:29.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16022" CreationDate="2013-04-28T09:15:06.560" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The British Medical Journal published Professor Per Hall's research paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/328/7430/19&quot;&gt;BMJ 2004;328:19&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;strong&gt;January 2004&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It claims &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Low doses of ionising radiation to the brain in infancy influence cognitive abilities in adulthood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/CT-scan/Pages/Risks.aspx&quot;&gt;NHS&lt;/a&gt; advice (last reviewed January 2012) says that a typical CT-scan of a head uses and x-Ray dose of &lt;strong&gt;1.4 millisieverts&lt;/strong&gt; and that the diagnostics benefits outweigh the risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The average annual dose that a person in the UK receives from natural sources is &lt;strong&gt;2.2 millisieverts&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, if you do not have any symptoms, the benefits of having a CT scan may not outweigh the risks, particularly if it leads to further unnecessary testing and added anxiety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems that other medical experts do not share Professor Per Hall's alarm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BMJ published several &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/328/7430/19?tab=responses&quot;&gt;responses&lt;/a&gt; to this paper. For example, one containing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The relationship between head CT and adulthood intellect as established by the authors was based on the fact that some sources reported head CT doses in infants as high as 100 mGy (1, 2). Indeed, in their study, adverse effects on high school attendance was evident for groups at radiation doses higher than 100mGy. No such effects was evidenced in groups with lower doses (1-20 mGy). However, the doses discussed in the paper of Brenner et al. (2) resulted from a national trial in Britain, that taken in account adult scanning protocols. Current, paediatric head CT effective doses as recently measured in a Belgian multicentre study ranged from 0.4 to 2.3 mSv*(3). These values are dramatically lower than those cited by Hall et al (1). Moreover, the authors did not discuss important points that could alter the credibility of their caculated doses. The bias related to retrospective dosimetry, which I suppose (considering both the administration method and the ancillary equipment used) was high, was not taken in account. Also, the differences between administered doses and absorbed doses were not discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-04-28T09:20:35.817" LastActivityDate="2013-04-28T09:20:35.817" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16027" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-28T12:45:06.123" Score="14" ViewCount="2152" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Olympic cyclist, Chris Boardman, recently made the claim that people are more likely to suffer a head injury walking, rather than cycling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] cycling is safe. You would have to wear a helmet walking, you are statistically more likely to have a head injury walking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22297750&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11001" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T14:08:15.957" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T16:57:51.183" Title="Are you more likely to suffer a head injury walking than cycling?" Tags="|safety|bicycles|transportation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16022" CreationDate="2013-04-28T18:04:24.100" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a (too long) comment about the Swedish study, in addition to particularly @igelkott's link about balancing the risks of death by head trauma and death by cancer due to the unnecessary CT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering how much can be skeptically concluded from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1083849-overview#aw2aab6b2b4aa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Swedish study&lt;/a&gt;. They list as participants&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Participants&lt;/strong&gt; 3094 men who had received radiation for cutaneous haemangioma before age 18 months during 1930-59.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the studies population are boys who got radiotherapy because of tumours on the skin of the head or somewhere else. I assume (though I did not find that clearly stated in the text!) that the controls are boys that got radiation therapy for this type of tumour somewhere else than the head and neck region. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMHO the more interesting control group would have been boys who had the hemangiomas on head and neck but did not get radiation therapy (stratified for severity of the tumour / the radiation dose they &quot;should&quot; have gotten). Or at least, one would need to establish that high school attendance of people with untreated infantile hemangiomas was the same compared to boys without hemangiomas (probably not, if &quot;only&quot; because of the psychosocial difficulties in school).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1083849-overview#showall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;according to this webpage&lt;/a&gt; these hemangioma are benign tumours, 60% of them appear on head and neck. But a particular form of these hemangioma appears within the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chw.org/display/PPF/DocID/28483/router.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PHACE syndrome&lt;/a&gt;, which also includes brain malformations and other problems. I have no information about the frequency of this, but it would have been good if the Swedish study had explained if any/how many such patients were in their patient population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other point that needs to be kept in mind is that according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11159059&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Benner 2001&lt;/a&gt; the cancer risk decreases with the age of the child when the CT takes place. The Swedish boys were less than 1 1/2 years old when they got radiotherapy. Now cancer isn't the same as not attending high school, but this tells something about how sensitive the brain reacts to radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastActivityDate="2013-04-28T18:04:24.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16035" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16036" CreationDate="2013-04-29T08:33:39.063" Score="37" ViewCount="2809" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of companies around that let you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.star-registration.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;purchase&lt;/a&gt; a &lt;a href=&quot;http://starlistings.co.uk/shop/?gclid=COOAjuW577YCFerHtAodi3MAJw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;star&lt;/a&gt;. They claim that the star will be named as you direct and they issue you a certificate of ownership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that the T&amp;amp;C's for a lot of these deals have disclaimers within them, however there is still a public perception that you can buy a star.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it possible to purchase, or name, a star in a way that is legally recognized?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This question inspired by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15996/does-queen-elizabeth-ii-own-6-600-million-acres-of-land#comment59787_15996&quot;&gt;Flimzy's comment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10499" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2021-05-16T01:36:28.070" Title="Is it possible to officially Buy A Star?" Tags="|marketing|astronomy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16035" CreationDate="2013-04-29T09:33:03.950" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Astronomical_Union&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;International Astronomical Union&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;acts as the internationally recognized authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies&lt;/strong&gt; (stars, planets, asteroids, etc.) and any surface features on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iau.org/public/buying_star_names/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;they say&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IAU frequently receives requests from individuals who want to buy stars or name stars after other persons.  &lt;strong&gt;Some commercial enterprises purport to offer such services for a fee.  However, such &amp;quot;names&amp;quot; have no formal or official validity whatever.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an international scientific organization, &lt;strong&gt;the IAU dissociates itself entirely from the commercial practice of &amp;quot;selling&amp;quot; fictitious star names&lt;/strong&gt; or &amp;quot;real estate&amp;quot; on other planets or moons in the Solar System.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accordingly, &lt;strong&gt;the IAU maintains no list of the (several competing) enterprises in this business in individual countries of the world.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;From  &lt;a href=&quot;http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=64&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ask an Astronomer at &lt;em&gt;Cornell University&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately &lt;strong&gt;it's not really possible to officially &amp;quot;purchase&amp;quot; a star for someone,&lt;/strong&gt; although many people think so and there are companies that advertise this service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The &lt;em&gt;International Astronomical Union&lt;/em&gt; (IAU) is the organization that is responsible for naming celestial objects&lt;/strong&gt;, and they don't take requests from anyone (even astronomers) for star names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are places where you can &amp;quot;buy a star&amp;quot;, and you will get a certificate and star maps, but these names are not official and are not used in astronomy. In fact, the companies that do this don't even make an effort to communicate with real astronomers on the subject, they just keep a big book or spreadsheet with everyone's name in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most people in astronomy, especially the IAU, consider the &amp;quot;star purchasing&amp;quot; idea to be a huge scam&lt;/strong&gt; that is taking advantage of people's love of the sky to make a lot of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="454" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-29T09:33:03.950" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16039" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="43516" CreationDate="2013-04-29T13:24:44.040" Score="18" ViewCount="18066" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=KQ4rLiAbHQQC&amp;amp;lpg=PR7&amp;amp;ots=IsqRuv83lX&amp;amp;dq=Lynn%2C%20R.%2C%20%26%20Vanhanen%2C%20T.%20(2002).%20IQ%20and%20the%20wealth%20of%20nations.%20Westport%2C%20CT%3A%20Praeger&amp;amp;lr&amp;amp;pg=PR7#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IQ and the wealth of nations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, the authors Lynn &amp;amp; Vanhanen published a list of measured average IQs for 81 countries (Table 6.1, base-lined on the UK), and another longer list (Table 6.5) which included estimated IQs for several countries. North Korea appears on this second list, with an estimate based on the average IQ for South Korea, Japan and China. (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ev6Iq.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;excerpt&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This list (from the 2002 and the 2006 editions of the book) was collated into a sorted table, with additional columns, and inserted into the Wikipedia page for the book, where it has been the subject of an edit war: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=IQ_and_Global_Inequality&amp;amp;oldid=479557930&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Old version with it&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=IQ_and_Global_Inequality&amp;amp;oldid=549192571&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Recent version without it&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a copy of that table:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XNJbR.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/national-iqs-calculated-and-validated.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2010 publication&lt;/a&gt; by one of the co-authors includes an updated list that excludes North Korea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Wikipedia ranking, as of 2006, North Korea is ranked 3rd/4th in terms of average IQ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that North Korea is the 3rd/4th most intelligent nation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="45" LastEditDate="2013-05-01T13:27:42.823" LastActivityDate="2019-02-26T10:54:30.960" Title="Does North Korea have the third highest IQ?" Tags="|intelligence|north-korea|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16039" CreationDate="2013-04-30T01:33:38.100" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the Wiki actually gives you your answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;National IQ and QHC values&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lynn and Vanhanen base their analysis on data gathered from a&#xA;  literature review. They selected IQ data from studies which covered&#xA;  113 nations. For another 79 nations, they estimated the mean IQs on&#xA;  the basis of the arithmetic means of the measured IQs of neighboring&#xA;  countries. They justify this method of estimation by pointing out that&#xA;  the correlation between the estimated national IQs they reported in IQ&#xA;  and the Wealth of Nations and the measured national IQs since obtained&#xA;  is very high (0.913). In the chart below, these estimates have been&#xA;  marked with an asterisk (*). The chart also includes the measured and&#xA;  estimated IQs from IQ and the Wealth of Nations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lynn and Vanhanen calculated the national IQs in relation to a British&#xA;  mean of 100, with a standard deviation of 15. They adjusted all test&#xA;  results to account for the Flynn effect: adjustments were 2 points per&#xA;  decade for Raven's Progressive Matrices and 3 points per decade for&#xA;  all other types of tests. When two IQ studies were used from one&#xA;  country, their mean was calculated, whereas when three or more were&#xA;  available, the median was used.[1] Lynn and Vanhanen recommend the&#xA;  provision of iodine and other micronutrients as a way to increase&#xA;  cognitive functioning in the Third World.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The asterisk next to North Korea means they &quot;guestimated&quot; based of neighboring countries, i.e. South Korea, Japan and China.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you average out the neighbors, as Oddthinking pointed out from the excerpt 106+105+100 and the &lt;em&gt;median&lt;/em&gt; is taken then the score for North Korea is in fact 105.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13521" LastEditorUserId="13521" LastEditDate="2013-05-02T00:21:29.523" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T00:21:29.523" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16067" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-30T11:02:59.880" Score="6" ViewCount="12391" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-07-03/beauty/31330949_1_juice-skin-aloe-vera&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-07-03/beauty/31330949_1_juice-skin-aloe-vera&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mixing together some gram flour, lime juice and some curd on the affected area on a regular basis gives best results against tanning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Note from me:) Read curd as yogurt. Indians tend to think that curd and yogurt are synonyms.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knowabouthealth.com/6-quick-natural-tips-to-treat-sun-tanning/1524/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.knowabouthealth.com/6-quick-natural-tips-to-treat-sun-tanning/1524/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yoghurt + lemon bleach:  Mix yoghurt with lemon juice and apply it on your skin daily before bath. This is one of the best remedy for reducing sun tan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://naturalremediesforcure.blogspot.in/2012/12/natural-ways-to-remove-sun-tan.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://naturalremediesforcure.blogspot.in/2012/12/natural-ways-to-remove-sun-tan.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lemon juice is citric acid that helps remove the tan and the cucumber and rose water are cooling agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apply yogurt on the areas affected by sun tan. Yogurt is very effective in reducing sun tan. You can apply yogurt on your skin daily. For better results add tomato juice in yogurt. Tomato juice can be also applied alone to treat sun tan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.speedyremedies.com/tips-and-homemade-recipes-for-removing-sun-tan.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.speedyremedies.com/tips-and-homemade-recipes-for-removing-sun-tan.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prepare a face mask by mixing a tablespoon of gram flour, two teaspoons of yogurt (preferably sour) and a few drops of lime juice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apply this paste on your face and wash it off with lukewarm water after 20 minutes. Follow this therapy two to three times in a day. In case you do not have yogurt, use raw milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it true that lemon and yogurt have something to do with the tan removal?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Have any studies been done on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5341" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T11:13:29.030" Title="Do lemon and yogurt remove tan when applied on the skin?" Tags="|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15831" CreationDate="2013-04-30T14:08:23.633" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22308353&quot;&gt;recent BBC article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the start of 2012 Koryolink claimed to have one million 3G subscribers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koryolink&quot;&gt;Koryolink &lt;/a&gt; being North Koreas only 3G operator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the same BBC article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The service can only be used to make voice calls, and all international calls are banned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However tourists and visitors can use mobile data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/+EricSchmidt/posts/UZnAUzpszHX#+EricSchmidt/posts/UZnAUzpszHX&quot;&gt;This blog post from Google's Eric Schmidt&lt;/a&gt; also supports the view that while North Korea's mobile infrastructure is extremely limited, it does exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10499" LastActivityDate="2013-04-30T14:08:23.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16071" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16095" CreationDate="2013-04-30T17:27:03.547" Score="2" ViewCount="1599" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a Malaysian. A few days ago, one of my country's political speakers claimed he didn't eat anything for 10 days, and he just survived by drinking water. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This phenomenon really make me interested in how human can do that just by using the spiritual strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, humans will die if they don't eat anything in 7 days. All this knowledge comes from my primary school. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13642" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T14:16:47.100" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T14:23:50.537" Title="How many days can you live without food?" Tags="|nutrition|physiology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2013-05-10T18:04:27.403" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16072" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-04-30T18:20:27.757" Score="5" ViewCount="2525" Body="&lt;p&gt;An Indian News article says one of India's states suspended the Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson license for its products contain Ethylene oxide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has suspended the licence for manufacturing cosmetics of Johnson and Johnson after residues of carcinogenic substances were found in baby talcum powder produced by it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The licence has been suspended as the FDA expressed serious concern over the presence of ethylene oxide in a batch of baby powder produced in 2007. Ethylene oxide was used to bring down microbial load in the powder by sterilisation. Consumers need not worry as the shelf life of the batch ended in July 2010 and it would not be available for sale in the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene_oxide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, Ethylene Oxide is a known class 1 carcinogenic element.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions is: Do any of Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson's products contain Ethylene oxide outside of allowed level? (If there is no Indian standard, a reference to US standard is  fine)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7695" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-19T13:47:29.310" Title="Did some Johnson &amp; Johnson's cosmetics contain Ethylene oxide?" Tags="|environmental-health|india|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16075" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="41364" CreationDate="2013-04-30T21:04:50.233" Score="4" ViewCount="1431" Body="&lt;p&gt;For children who attend pre-school between the ages 2 and 4, do they tend to have better immunities (and therefore get sick less often) than elementary-school children who did not attend pre-school, as was stated by this &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2010/12/06/daycare-helps-build-immunity/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article on the Wall Street Journal&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/164/12/1132&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;new study&lt;/a&gt; promises to ease some of those fears: While children placed in daycare early do tend to get sick more often, they also stay healthier than other kids later in elementary school, apparently because their daycare experience has built up their immunity against colds and other infections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study, released today in the Archives of Pediatrics &amp;amp; Adolescent Medicine, found a higher illness rate mainly in children who are placed before age 2-1/2 in child-care centers with relatively large groups of 8 to 12 children. Compared with children who were cared for in their homes, these kids had more respiratory and ear inflections during early preschool and the same risk of infection between ages 3-1/2 and 4-1/2, based on the eight-year study of 1,238 families with newborns in 1998. However, they had lower rates of infection between ages 5 and 8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What studies show the relationship between pre-school attendance and school-age through long-term immunity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-05-30T08:40:33.343" Title="Do children who attend pre-school get sick less often when they start kindergarten?" Tags="|medical-science|children|immune-system|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16081" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-01T01:40:12.747" Score="5" ViewCount="374" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm having difficulty finding statistics comparing the recidivism rates of regular prisoners and the ones that worked while serving the sentence. I can't remember where but I've read that &quot;specialists believe working in prisons can reduce recidivism from 70% to 20%&quot; in several different publications and I never really questioned how they got the number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claims:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following graph was made by CALPIA itself and evalutes the recidivism rate of a very limited sample space.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.calpia.ca.gov/pdf/Public_Affairs/PIB_CTEducation_Assessment_Report_Nov12.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.calpia.ca.gov/pdf/Public_Affairs/PIB_CTEducation_Assessment_Report_Nov12.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RLBkq.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Detailed table about CTE:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MvBcT.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3518" LastEditorUserId="3518" LastEditDate="2013-05-01T03:04:31.943" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T03:04:31.943" Title="Does prison work reduce recidivism?" Tags="|criminology|work|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16082" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16083" CreationDate="2013-05-01T02:33:43.207" Score="9" ViewCount="2491" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the start of reporting the Boston bombing, there was an estimate of 3 dead, and 170 wounded. The death toll hasn't changed, but it seems like the number of wounded has increased as time has gone on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of April 22nd, one week after the attack: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/21/17848814-badly-wounded-boston-marathon-bombing-suspect-responding-to-questions?lite&quot;&gt;Third major paragraph&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...killed three people and injured more than 170...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of April 30th, more than 2 weeks after the attack):&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.yahoo.com/accused-bombers-defense-team-gets-renowned-death-penalty-164746673--abc-news-topstories.html&quot;&gt;About a quarter way through the article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...killed three people and left more than 260 wounded...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the actual number of wounded victims in the Boston bombings?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even assuming they didn't count everyone the day of the attack, they couldn't have miscounted by 90 victims a two weeks after the attack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13144" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T23:41:45.603" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T23:41:45.603" Title="Were the reported number of injured people at the Boston bombing accurate?" Tags="|boston-marathon-bombings|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16082" CreationDate="2013-05-01T02:47:01.333" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As of April 23rd, 2013, the official number is 264.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Boston public health officials said Tuesday that they have revised downward their estimate of the number of people injured in the Marathon ­attacks, to 264.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Estimates last week placed the number of injured at about 170, but that figure rose because dozens of victims delayed seeking medical care for minor wounds or symptoms that they thought would go away on their own, including hearing ­problems and embedded shrapnel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/health-wellness/2013/04/23/number-injured-marathon-bombing-revised-downward/NRpaz5mmvGquP7KMA6XsIK/story.html&quot;&gt;Boston Globe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T02:47:01.333" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16071" CreationDate="2013-05-01T03:25:12.247" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2004/06/how_long_can_you_go_without_food.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Slate&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;Sixty days, give or take, is the rule of thumb, though results vary depending on the faster's body fat and striking strategy. Physiologists generally agree that no human being can survive losing more than 40 percent of his body mass.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article seems well researched, so I see little value quoting more of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2417" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T03:25:12.247" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4972" CreationDate="2013-05-01T03:37:56.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As was suggested in the comment to the above answer, the premise &quot;Clearly fats increase the amount of cholesterol in our blood&quot; is not all that clear when you look at the literature. I'm hesitant to make this answer on a skeptics site, because ... well ... you &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; be skeptical when someone challenges such a long held scientific consensus. Before beginning &quot;Plasma lipid and lipoprotein responses to dietary fat and cholesterol: a meta-analysis&quot; in the &lt;em&gt;American Journal of Clinical Nutrition&lt;/em&gt; (1997) &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/65/6/1747.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[ref]&lt;/a&gt; is a meta-analysis supporting the idea that we should be skeptical of the OP's claim. It points out that because of the biochemistry of the body, how much cholesterol we eat has little effect on the amount in the blood (more on this later):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The existence of precise feedback mechanisms balancing the input of exogenous dietary cholesterol and endogenous synthesis of cholesterol in the majority of individuals (139) is a primary reason why a reduction in dietary cholesterol has a relatively small effect on plasma cholesterol concentrations in most patients who are diet-sensitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus I don't plan to convince anyone that the consensus is wrong, because this would take thousands of pages of going through every single study on this issue. Instead, I'll give you a starting point to see that eating (saturated) fat does not seem to add (negatively) to the amount of cholesterol in the blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be three main sources one could be getting this information from: large scale observational epidemiological studies claiming a correlation, basic theory of biochemistry, and controlled studies attempting to identify a causal relation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book &lt;em&gt;Good Calories, Bad Calories&lt;/em&gt; by Gary Taubes spends hundreds of pages examining what all the main large scale observational studies claim. These include studies (but are not limited to) such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.framingham.com/heart/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Framingham Nurses Study&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/946311?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MRFIT&lt;/a&gt;. There are problems with whether or not correlations are significant, meaningful, causal. There are more confounding variables than imaginable. In general, you just can't use the weak correlations found in these studies to draw any conclusions. You need something better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most persuasive argument should come from biochemistry itself. If we know some biological pathway, then we are essentially done. &lt;a href=&quot;http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/the-straight-dope-on-cholesterol-part-i&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Peter Attia&lt;/a&gt; has done a huge series on what cholesterol is, whether or not it is bad, and how it gets in our bodies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here we run into a subtlety. In the original assumption it is unclear whether the poster thinks that eating fat causes an increase in blood cholesterol because you are eating saturated fat or because you are eating cholesterol. Most cholesterol we eat can't be absorbed to the blood stream because it is in esterified form (it is too large to be absorbed). Most cholesterol in our body is made inside the body (Attia cites &quot;New insights into the genetic regulation of intestinal cholesterol absorption&quot; published in &lt;em&gt;Gastroenterology&lt;/em&gt; (2005) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mendeley.com/research/new-insights-genetic-regulation-intestinal-cholesterol-absorption/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[ref]&lt;/a&gt;). Attia makes his point as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eating cholesterol has very little impact on the cholesterol levels in your body. This is a fact, not my opinion.  Anyone who tells you different is, at best, ignorant of this topic.  At worst, they are a deliberate charlatan. Years ago the Canadian Guidelines removed the limitation of dietary cholesterol. The rest of the world, especially the United States, needs to catch up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even basic texts such as Lehninger's &lt;em&gt;Principles of Biochemistry&lt;/em&gt; contain how this &quot;de novo&quot; cholesterol production works (5th edition, pg 838) and points out that &quot;Excess carbohydrate in the diet can also be converted to triacylglycerols in the liver and exported as VLDLs&quot; (carbs not fat!) which as a later part of the series by Attia points out is actually a better predictor for cardiovascular disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a word on eating fat. On p35 of &lt;em&gt;The Great Cholesterol Con&lt;/em&gt;, Kendrick says: “How can eating saturated fat raise LDL levels? It is not merely biologically implausible, it is biologically impossible.&quot; Maybe this is an fallacious argument from authority, but hold off judgment until after the next paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving on to specific studies. Supposing that eating lots of saturated fat causes a worse cholesterol profile it would be essentially impossible to observe results such as in &quot;Comparison of the Atkins, Zone, Ornish, and LEARN Diets for Change in Weight and Related Risk Factors Among Overweight Premenopausal Women&#xA;The A TO Z Weight Loss Study: A Randomized Trial&quot; published in &lt;em&gt;JAMA&lt;/em&gt; (2007) &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=205916&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[ref]&lt;/a&gt; (colloquially called &quot;A TO Z&quot;). The study found that the higher fat diet the participants ate, the &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; their heart risk lipid profile got. Essentially every study of this kind observes the same trend, and really points to the lack of a link between dietary fat and (&quot;bad&quot;) cholesterol. The authors say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many concerns have been expressed that low-carbohydrate weight-loss diets, high in total and saturated fat, will adversely affect blood lipid levels and cardiovascular risk. These concerns have not been substantiated in recent weight-loss diet trials. The recent trials, like the current study, have consistently reported that triglycerides, HDL-C, blood pressure, and measures of insulin resistance either were not significantly different or were more favorable for the very-low-carbohydrate groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the study points out in other places, if you are eating a &quot;very-low-carbohydrate diet&quot; then you are necessarily eating a high fat diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the original question, in a meta-analysis of 16 studies involving high-fat dairy foods (which is what the question was about) called &quot;The relationship between high-fat dairy consumption and obesity, cardiovascular, and metabolic disease&quot; published in the &lt;em&gt;European Journal of Nutrition&lt;/em&gt; (2013) &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00394-012-0418-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[ref]&lt;/a&gt; it was found that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The observational evidence does not support the hypothesis that dairy fat or high-fat dairy foods contribute to obesity or cardiometabolic risk, and suggests that high-fat dairy consumption within typical dietary patterns is inversely associated with obesity risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are lots of other studies such as &quot;Saturated fat and cardiometabolic risk factors, coronary heart disease, stroke, and diabetes: a fresh look at the evidence&quot; in &lt;em&gt;Lipids&lt;/em&gt; (2010) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20354806&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[ref]&lt;/a&gt; where it is found that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most individual prospective cohort studies have not observed an independent relationship between SFA [saturated fatty acid] consumption and incident CHD [coronary heart disease] ... Two recent systematic reviews and meta-analyses, the first including 9 cohorts (11 estimates) evaluating 160,673 individuals [64], and the second including 16 cohorts among 214,182 individuals [68], found no significant association between SFA intake and CHD risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and even the unambiguous conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These meta-analyses suggest no overall effect of SFA consumption on CHD events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many more, but we'll end here because this is already too long. My answer to the question is No! Excessive intake of butter would probably not result in a heart attack at all, yet alone before the age of 21.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13630" LastEditorUserId="13630" LastEditDate="2013-05-01T16:33:51.370" LastActivityDate="2013-05-01T16:33:51.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16071" CreationDate="2013-05-01T10:38:18.240" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There must be a great range of values depending on the individual's condition and on the circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;20 to 40 days is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-can-a-person-sur&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the age of 74 and already slight of build, Mahatma Gandhi, the famous nonviolent campaigner for India's independence, survived 21 days of total starvation while only allowing himself sips of water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a 1997 article in the &lt;em&gt;British Medical Journal&lt;/em&gt;, Michael Peel, senior medical examiner at the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, cites well-documented studies reporting survivals of other hunger strikers for 28, 36, 38 and 40 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off-topic digression:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether politicians making unusual claims should be believed perhaps depends on whether they have reliable corroboration from truly independent and impartial observers. Perhaps he  sleepwalked to the kitchen fridge? Is alleged willingness and ability to endure starvation in any way correlated to sound judgement to honesty, integrity or to any other desirable trait in politicians?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T14:23:50.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16087" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-01T14:41:35.550" Score="4" ViewCount="1048" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim states that some of the foodstuff that leaves Japan is deemed unsafe there because of the radioactivity levels, and is exported to places with more lax restrictions, like the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tWxqy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Japan exports food that surpasses its own safety levels.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2013-05-01T21:55:00.220" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T03:34:33.710" Title="Does Japan export food that is unsafe to eat in Japan?" Tags="|nutrition|radiation|japan|fukushima-daiichi|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16088" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16091" CreationDate="2013-05-01T14:58:23.577" Score="19" ViewCount="3672" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend just told me a lovely story about a mosque in Turkey. It needed some maintenance, but the stone-masonry skills required to repair an arch had been lost. They found a letter from the architect, hidden in the archway, with detailed instructions of what was required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found &lt;a href=&quot;http://gruart2010.edublogs.org/files/2010/09/Turkish_Interior_Design.docx&quot;&gt;a re-telling of this story here&lt;/a&gt; (Microsoft Word document).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Şehzadebaşı Mosque&lt;/strong&gt;: Architect Sinan -known all over the world especially with his mosques and his interior architecture works - was a far-sighted artist who could see 400 years later. A civil engineer who worked on the restoration of the mosque has talked about an interesting event on T.V. He said that: There were some rottings on the stones that form the a rches over the doors. But they wouldn’t know exactly how to restore the arch .And they had to find a way to work. During the work they found a glass bottle between two stones.  Here by they found a note in the bottle which was written by the architect Sinan. The note was about how arch can be restored. Architect Sinan wrote these things: The lives of the stones are 400 years old. These stones are eroded in 400 years…You will need to restore the arches. And probably you will not know how to restore. I have written this letter for you to explain how to restore the arch. At the same time, Architect Sinan told us where these stones that used in the construction of the arch come from. Architect Sinan has left a letter which explains the construction of the arch. Architect Sinan knew how long the life of a stone last. He used a paper and ink which remain stable for 400 years. This shows us that Architect Sinan was a very intelligent man and excellent architect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this story is true, but there are elements of urban myth about it. Are there any reliable accounts of the discovery? When did it occur?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="3087" LastEditDate="2014-08-17T13:45:12.083" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T13:45:12.083" Title="Did mosque restorers find a 400-year-old letter from the architect with instructions?" Tags="|history|turkey|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16088" CreationDate="2013-05-01T19:20:57.910" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;This appears to be an urban legend. Using some keywords &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/30173238/Message-in-a-Bottle&quot;&gt;in the story&lt;/a&gt; I searched for the following string:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Şehzade Camii 1.990 restorasyon&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which returns a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?source=ig&amp;amp;rlz=1G1LENP_ENUS494&amp;amp;q=%C5%9Eehzade%20Camii%201.990%20restorasyon&quot;&gt;number of hits&lt;/a&gt; (about 122,000 results); however, it also appears that most of the pages were written between 2010 and 2012 which is a hint that this might be a recent occurrence as opposed to an older story since we would expect to see much older pages if this really happened over two decades ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading through the pages brought a lot that restated the original claim but didn't provide any backing evidence, until one titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zaman.com.tr/ahmet-turan-alkan/efsaneler-zombi-gibidir-kolay-oldurulemezler_1254109.html&quot;&gt;Efsaneler zombi gibidir kolay öldürülemezler!&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (&quot;Legends are like zombies, they can not be killed easily!&quot;) which was also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samanyoluhaber.com/kultur/400-yillik-mektup-efsanesi-coktu/737470/&quot;&gt;republished on another site&lt;/a&gt;. The article approaches the story from a skeptical angle and looks to confirm the sources by getting in touch with one of the architects that worked on the restoration project in the 1970s who said the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Mektubu bulsaydım elbette bunu yayınlayacaktım' dedi bana, ne var ki&#xA;  işin gerisi gelmemiş [Yani ortada böyle bir mektup da yok!].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/?hl=en&amp;amp;tab=wT#tr/en/Mektubu%20bulsayd%C4%B1m%20elbette%20bunu%20yay%C4%B1nlayacakt%C4%B1m%27%20dedi%20bana,%20ne%20var%20ki%20i%C5%9Fin%20gerisi%20gelmemi%C5%9F%20%5BYani%20ortada%20b%C3%B6yle%20bir%20mektup%20da%20yok!%5D.&quot;&gt;loosely translated&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If I had found the letter, I was going to publish it&quot; he -foreman of the restoration job- said to me, alas that was the end of it. [In other words, there is&#xA;  no such a letter!].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, given the evidence at hand it appears that this is an urban legend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="13663" LastEditDate="2013-05-02T10:56:06.063" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T10:56:06.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16093" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16098" CreationDate="2013-05-01T20:40:50.423" Score="3" ViewCount="1989" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_health#Precautionary_measures_and_health_advisories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some national radiation advisory authorities... have recommended measures to minimize exposure to their citizens... &lt;strong&gt;Do not use telephone in a car without an external antenna&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd wager most people take this advice to mean &lt;em&gt;don't talk on the phone while inside the car&lt;/em&gt;. However, to me it sounds like the above also implies &lt;em&gt;don't use GPS navigation apps&lt;/em&gt;, at least not apps that constantly communicate with the server (e.g. for traffic reports).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this make sense? I guess it depends on the amount of data sent to and from the server?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13656" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-05-01T22:06:42.057" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T06:19:44.577" Title="Radiation dangers with GPS/navigation cellphone apps" Tags="|road-vehicles|radiation|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ClosedDate="2013-05-05T23:40:46.800" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16071" CreationDate="2013-05-02T07:27:09.380" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR&lt;/strong&gt; : at least 94 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think science can directly answer the question, because there are too many variables, but I can partially answer by referencing to how long someone &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; survive without food. The Guinnes World Record states that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... the world record in hunger strike without force-feeding as 94&#xA;  days, which was set from August 11 to November 12, 1920 by John and&#xA;  Peter Crowley, Thomas Donovan, Michael Burke, Michael O'Reilly,&#xA;  Christopher Upton, John Power, Joseph Kenny and Seán Hennessy at the&#xA;  prison of Cork.[5][6] Arthur Griffith called off the strikes after the&#xA;  deaths of MacSwiney, Murphy and Fitzgerald.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_strike#cite_ref-6&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page on Hunger Strikes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T07:27:09.380" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16096" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-02T09:12:25.600" Score="10" ViewCount="13283" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at several 'fun facts' pages, the claim of the Bible being the most shoplifted book appears on several of them. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=125930337601109&amp;amp;set=a.121125554748254.1073741828.120709694789840&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chacha.com/question/what-is-the-most-shoplifted-book-in-the-world&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example 2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omg-facts.com/History/The-1-Most-Shoplifted-Book-Of-All-Time-T/4568&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example 3&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/books/review/Rabb-t.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example 4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Bible, the world's best-selling book, is also the world's most shoplifted book. Most are taken from hotel rooms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not found any real sources to it, that the bible actually is the most stolen book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_store_shoplifting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article about shoplifting books&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ron Rosenbaum, an author and New York Observer columnist, wrote in 1999 that Barnes &amp;amp; Noble had a list of these authors whose books are the most frequently stolen from that book-store chain (or perhaps the Union Square store in the chain, where his source, &amp;quot;a helpful clerk&amp;quot;, worked): Martin Amis, Paul Auster, Georges Bataille, William S. Burroughs, Italo Calvino, Raymond Chandler, Michel Foucault, Dashiell Hammett, Jack Kerouac, Jeanette Winterson, but none more frequently than books by Charles Bukowski.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nowhere in the article is the Bible mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is it, IS the Bible the most shoplifted book? Is there any research done on the topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2022-12-10T22:46:34.577" LastActivityDate="2022-12-10T22:46:34.577" Title="Is the Bible the most shoplifted book?" Tags="|criminology|bible|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16096" CreationDate="2013-05-02T10:10:28.813" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, or one of the most shoplifted books. As your forth example, the NYT article says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At BookPeople in Austin, Tex., the rate of theft has increased to approximately one book per hour. I asked Steve Bercu, BookPeople’s owner, what the most frequently stolen title was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The Bible,” he said, without pausing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As it turns out, Bibles are snatched even at the Parable Christian Store in Springfield, Ore., the manager told me, despite the fact that if a person asks for a Bible, they’ll be given a copy without charge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1999/06/19/books/think-tank-steal-this-book-what-the-bible-and-the-beats-have-in-common.html?fta=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;earlier article&lt;/a&gt; by the NYT sevral small bookshop owners asked what are their most shoplifted books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On both East Coast and West, the Beat poets Jack Kerouac, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs kept popping up as favorites among shoplifters. (In Britain, The Economist surveyed booksellers on thievery and found that the Beat poet Jack Kerouac was No. 1 choice.) Right behind the Beats comes the Bible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and particular examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At Ventura Bookstore in Ventura, Calif., Kerouac's ''On the Road'' and Ginsberg's ''Howl!'' are at the top of the most-wanted lists as well as that old favorite, Abbie Hoffman's ''Steal This Book,'' said Ed Elrod, the owner. Tarot cards and how-to books, particularly sex manuals, are also popular. Even Bibles get taken, probably for use in marriage ceremonies, Mr. Elrod said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At Powell's Book Store, in Portland, Ore., one of the largest chain stores, the general manager, Miriam Sontz, said that people who take books fall into two categories: those who steal on impulse and those who take books to sell for money. She said that people take books they would be ashamed to buy: books on cocaine cultivation, sex dysfunction or ''racy'' books for teen-agers. Bibles are also a favorite, she added, saying she does not know why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At Green Apple Books and Music in San Francisco, the general manager, Pete Mulvihill, reports that current favorites for shoplifters included Bibles and books on philosophy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other stores in that article that don't mention the bible as one of their best-stealer but there are a lot of stores where it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also happens in libraries, as shown in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onthemedia.org/2005/dec/23/stealing-books/transcript/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; transcript of a segment from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Media&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;On the Media&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BROOKE GLADSTONE: One place where the book thief is more likely to read what he hath took is the public library, and library theft tends to lean toward the practical more than the popular; news you can use, so to speak - how-to books ranging from auto repair to divorce, how to ace the GEDs and The Joy of Sex, also anything - and this is from libraries across the country - anything to do with witchcraft, the occult, UFOs or astrology. And there are some other popular choices for the kleptomaniacally-inclined - the Bible, for instance. [SOUND OF RON ROSENBAUM LAUGHING]] Ron Rosenbaum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LARRA CLARK: They do, actually. A couple of librarians, including one in Salt Lake City, she said that the Bible was their most frequently stolen book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in hotels the phenomenon is less frequent, as shows &lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.travel.yahoo.com/ideas/things-people-steal-hotels-070000850.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Article&lt;/a&gt; by Yahoo Travel, that lists the top 10 stolen items from Novotel hotels. The bible is not among them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Towels&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Cushions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Bathrobes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;TV remote controls&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Light bulbs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Mini-bar contents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Clothes hangers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Bathroom display trays&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Coffee sachets&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Plastic tissue boxes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; I couldn't find any information on whether the Novotel hotels chain has Bibles in their hotels, if you have knowledge that they don't please comment it.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article doesn't say they are not stolen, it says that they are, but only by 1% of the guest&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A survey from last year found that 86% of hotel guests had taken toiletries, as opposed to a mere 3% who admitted to stashing away bathrobes in their suitcase... and then there's the hard-core 1% who confessed to stealing electronics, silverware, and most worryingly, bibles!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a lot less than Towels and Bathrobes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T10:10:28.813" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16093" CreationDate="2013-05-02T11:01:25.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is some logic here, but there is nothing definitive: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any phone application that uses data connectivity which include many GPS apps. will cause the phone to communicate with the cell tower, and since the car is essentially a faraday cage, that will be in a relatively high wattage when an external antenna is not used.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The type of radiation is non-ionizing, and there is little evidance that that type of radiation is harmful - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/faqs-wireless-phones#evidence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/faqs-wireless-phones#evidence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4795" LastEditorUserId="4795" LastEditDate="2013-05-05T06:19:44.577" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T06:19:44.577" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16096" CreationDate="2013-05-02T13:25:41.813" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your quote actually contains the explanation for the discrepancy. What is happening is that some of the examples are taking a slightly wider definition of 'shoplifting' than the clerk in the Wikipedia quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In many hotels throughout the world, you will find a copy of the Bible placed somewhere in the room. They are mostly placed by an organization called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gideons_International&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gideons International&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, whose intention is to make the Bible as widely available as possible, without cost. The first examples you are looking at are simply including Bibles taken from hotel rooms (of which there are, unsurprisingly,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/picturegalleries/9894546/Top-10-items-stolen-from-hotels.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt;) in the numbers of 'shoplifted' bibles. It's stretching the definition a little because the bibles aren't for sale, and Gideons are in fact happy for anyone who wants one to take one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other examples that don't include the Bible in the frequently shoplifted list exclude the ones taken from hotel rooms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2013-05-02T13:39:06.843" LastActivityDate="2013-05-02T13:39:06.843" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16104" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16115" CreationDate="2013-05-02T18:41:46.593" Score="12" ViewCount="1341" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Erdogan-Assad-using-chemical-weapons-in-Syria-311868%3a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Erdogan: Assad using chemical weapons in Syria&lt;/a&gt; at The Jerusalem Post: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Turkish Prime Minster Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Thursday that the regime of Syrian President Basher Assad has used chemical weapons in his fight against opposition forces, Turkish daily Hurriyet reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim that &quot;the regime of Syrian President Basher Assad has used chemical weapons in his fight against opposition forces&quot; based on decent evidence from unbiased sources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean chemical weapons as in weapons of mass destruction, not tear gas and pepper spray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2017-04-14T15:27:53.210" LastActivityDate="2017-04-15T17:58:28.640" Title="Were chemical weapons used in the civil war in Syria by the Assad regime before 2014?" Tags="|war|weapons|syria|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16108" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-03T07:09:11.923" Score="7" ViewCount="16107" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently had one of my car tires punctured by a screw. It lost pressure only very slowly, it probably took a couple of days before I noticed the tire was below pressure. The guys from the tire company removed the screw, and then somehow &quot;fixed&quot; the tire. They claim it is as good and reliable as a new tire. I don't know on what that claim is based. My question is: is this indeed true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tire was actually very new, I bought it just 2 weeks ago. It's s Continental Premium Contact 2 if that would matter...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I refuse to save money on tires because I believe they play a crucial role in road safety. I am now a bit worried that this fixed tire can cause a blowout more easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking for something a little more substantial than your own experience or just &quot;common knowledge&quot;. Have any tests or scientific studies been done about this subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4603" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-05-08T07:42:15.017" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T16:06:20.373" Title="Is a repaired car tire as good as a new one?" Tags="|road-vehicles|safety|road|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16110" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16111" CreationDate="2013-05-03T11:30:08.900" Score="1" ViewCount="1142" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just happened to stumble across a phrase that says so, is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mpemba_effect&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13680" LastActivityDate="2013-05-03T11:50:17.163" Title="Does warm water freeze faster than cool water?" Tags="|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-05-03T11:54:00.560" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16111" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16110" CreationDate="2013-05-03T11:41:30.917" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer taken from a link to a paper in the Wikipedia link provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Mpemba effect-warm water freezes faster than &#xA;  cool-was first described in this magazine ten years &#xA;  ago in an article entitled ‘Cool’ by E B Mpemba and &#xA;  D G Osborne (Phys. Educ. I969 4 172-5)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/0031-9120/14/7/312/pdf/pev14i7p410.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Link to paper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PVpeb.png&quot; alt=&quot;Image taken from the paper&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image taken from the paper show a plot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-03T11:50:17.163" LastActivityDate="2013-05-03T11:50:17.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16112" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16146" CreationDate="2013-05-03T14:44:25.663" Score="25" ViewCount="1721" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dwavesys.com/&quot;&gt;D-Wave Systems&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dwavesys.com/en/pressreleases.htm&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt; to have produced the first commercial &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer&quot;&gt;quantum computer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The company's flagship product, the D-Wave One, is built around a novel type of superconducting processor that uses quantum mechanics to massively accelerate computation.  In 2010 Lockheed Martin purchased serial number 1, completing the historic world's first sale of a quantum computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there have been several articles written that call into question the claim that it is a quantum computer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/loser-dwave-does-not-quantum-compute&quot;&gt;IEEE Spectrum Magazine, Jan 2010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But experts are skeptical that D-Wave's quantum computer is really, well, quantum.&#xA;  &quot;If this were the real thing, we would know about it,&quot; says Christopher Monroe, a quantum-computing researcher at the University of Maryland, in College Park. He says D-Wave hasn't demonstrated &quot;signatures&quot; believed to be essential to quantum computers, such as entanglement, a coupling between qubits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremetech.com/computing/150394-first-ever-commercial-quantum-computer-may-not-be-quantum&quot;&gt;ExtremeTech, Match 2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At a recent computing workshop the company claimed to have also found evidence for entanglement with systems of two and eight qubits. Entanglement is a requirement for its machine to truly operate as a quantum computer, but not proof that it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are D-Wave Systems's claims that their machine is a quantum computer actually true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13684" LastEditorUserId="13684" LastEditDate="2013-05-04T08:08:26.420" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T14:16:33.527" Title="Is D-Wave Systems's &quot;D-Wave One&quot; a quantum computer?" Tags="|physics|computers|quantum-mechanics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16108" CreationDate="2013-05-03T15:24:58.460" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the UK (for example), tyre repairs must, by law, conform to British Standard &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btmauk.com/data/files/Minor_repairs_to_passenger_car_and_light_van_tyres_31_May_2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BSAU159f:1990&lt;/a&gt;. It is likely that equivalent standards exist in your locale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/90u52.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Provided that the repair is made to the standard, the tyre will be safe to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I imagine the standards apply to normal road use, not when the vehicle is to be used for motorsport or under extreme conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a bit of searching you can find the results of testing by standards bodies of commercial repair products. For &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.safetyseal.eu/pdf/TUV-ECE-R-30-car-tyre-with-Safety-Seal-repair-plug.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt; one tested for 70 minutes at up to 320 KPH (200 MPH) by TUV at the manufacturer's request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-05-03T17:49:39.163" LastActivityDate="2013-05-03T17:49:39.163" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16114" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-03T17:32:11.490" Score="1" ViewCount="112" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the human body need alcohol intake? I would like to question the common wide-spread belief that that the healthiest amount of etanol intake is 0 mg/year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13685" LastActivityDate="2013-05-03T17:32:11.490" Title="Does the human body need alcohol?" Tags="|alcohol|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-05-03T17:44:57.207" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16104" CreationDate="2013-05-03T17:55:30.940" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short: The press was relatively cautious in reporting on this story. Finally (by June, 2013), limited (&amp;quot;small scale&amp;quot;) use of sarin by the Assad regime against the rebels was &lt;strong&gt;confirmed&lt;/strong&gt; by the US intelligence community. A lot is riding on the answer to this question at the moment (Western support for Syrian rebels for example), and I suspect it will be difficult to extricate facts from politics going forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dan Roberts from the &lt;em&gt;Guradian&lt;/em&gt; filed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/02/us-uk-syria-chemical-weapons-claims&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the following report&lt;/a&gt; on May 2, 2013:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Western intelligence agencies fear they can no longer prove for certain whether the Syrian government was responsible for alleged chemical weapon attacks, because initial samples and evidence trails have degraded over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, Britain and the US are likely to have to wait for fresh evidence from further attacks before deciding whether to take a military response against the Assad government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On May 6th, 2013 BBC &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22424188&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UN's Del Ponte says evidence Syria rebels 'used sarin.' Testimony from victims of the conflict in Syria suggests rebels have used the nerve agent, sarin, a leading member of a UN commission of inquiry has said. Carla Del Ponte told Swiss TV that there were &amp;quot;strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BBC &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-22266212&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; (April 23, 2013):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A senior Israeli military official has said Syrian forces have used chemical weapons against rebels several times. [...] He said photographs of victims foaming at the mouth and with constricted pupils and other unspecified symptoms &amp;quot;provide evidence that deadly chemical weapons have been used&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has so far not been any confirmation that chemical weapons have been used during Syria's two-year-old conflict although there have been numerous accusations. [...] A UN team is waiting for permission from Syria to enter the country to investigate the claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On June 4th, 2013 Reuters &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/04/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE9530VE20130604&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The U.N. commission said it examined four reported toxic attacks in Syria in March and April but could not determine which side was behind them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There are reasonable grounds to believe that limited quantities of toxic chemicals were used. It has not been possible, on the evidence available, to determine the precise chemical agents used, their delivery systems or the perpetrator,&amp;quot; Paulo Pinheiro, who chairs the U.N. commission of inquiry, told a news conference in Geneva.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On June 13th, NPR &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/06/13/191395435/report-u-s-europe-conclude-syria-used-chemical-weapons&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said that an estimated 100 to 150 Syrians have been killed in attacks using sarin gas, although the figure &amp;quot;is likely incomplete.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Following a deliberative review, our intelligence community assesses that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons, including the nerve agent sarin, on a small scale against the opposition multiple times in the last year,&amp;quot; Rhodes said in a statement. &amp;quot;Our intelligence community has high confidence in that assessment given multiple, independent streams of information.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barring further major developments contradicting the above, I consider this question resolved in the affirmative: &lt;strong&gt;according to reputable (American) sources Assad used chemical weapons against his opposition in 2013&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-04-15T17:58:28.640" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10103" CreationDate="2013-05-04T17:22:12.197" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Shangri-La diet depends on two theories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Set-Point Theory, that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shangri-La_Diet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims the brain&lt;/a&gt; - in particular the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothalamus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hypothalamus&lt;/a&gt; - has a target weight, and it adjusts the body's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;resting metabolic rate&lt;/a&gt; (RMR) to ensure that the target weight is achieved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The brain's target weight is set by one parameter that can be adjusted lower through the use of bland foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Set-Point Theory is controversial, in that it is popular, but lacks scientific evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreelibrary.com/New+data+challenge+popular+set+point+theory+of+obesity.-a0107275677&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bruce Jancin of International Medical News&lt;/a&gt; writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's high time to toss out the long-popular set point theory of obesity, according to speakers at an international conference of the Academy for Eating Disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The set point theory holds that obesity entails a metabolic defect that functions as a homeostatic mechanism. This defect is supposed to result in a slowdown of resting metabolic rate in an overweight or obese individual who has lost weight. The resultant reduction in energy expenditure is said to be responsible for the often-observed scenario in which the individual regains the weight that was lost and thereby returns to his or her set point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The set point theory enjoys widespread popularity among the overweight public, in whom it fosters a fatalism regarding the condition of obesity. The theory also holds sway among many physicians who work with obese patients and/or those with eating disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But scientific support for the set point theory is limited to old data derived from outdated methods of physiologic measurement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 1990 study published in FASEB, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fasebj.org/content/4/15/3310.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Role of set-point theory in regulation of body weight&lt;/a&gt;, is an example of research contradicting set-point theory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current working hypotheses include roles for nutrients, dietary composition and organoleptic properties, hormones, neural pathways, various brain nuclei, and many neurotransmitters in the regulation of food intake. It is concluded that regulation of body weight in relation to one specific parameter related to energy balance is unrealistic. It seems appropriate to assume that the level at which body weight and body fat content are maintained represents the equilibria achieved by regulation of many parameters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it isn't one point in your brain deciding on your target weight, but lots of different factors throughout the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about the research that supports it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, the article quoted in the question is this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lomangino, Kevin, &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/clinnutrinsight/Citation/2007/04000/Shangri_La_in_a_Bottle__of_Olive_Oil__.5.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shangri-La in a Bottle (of Olive Oil)?&lt;/a&gt;, Nutrition &amp;amp; the M.D.: April 2007 - Volume 33 - Issue 4 - p 6 doi: 10.1097/01.NMD.0000265129.09365.bd&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this looks like a journal article, in fact, it is just a few paragraphs (less than a page) explaining what the diet is and nothing else. There is no evidence here to support it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There do seem to be legitimate researchers out there who take the complicated version of set-point theory seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a 2007 article published in &lt;em&gt;Diabetes Spectrum&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://spectrum.diabetesjournals.org/content/20/3/166.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Physiology of Body Weight Regulation: Are We Too Efficient for Our Own Good?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This so-called set-point theory of body weight regulation has been slowly developed over a number of years and backed by a plethora of experimental approaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They go on to cite at least five studies they claim support the set-point theory hypothesis. One of which was the first one I listed above. Some of which are rodent studies, which may not apply to humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They make the case that the best evidence for the set-point theory is that it is ubiquitous among weight-loss studies that the participants regain the weight, going back to their original point. They claim the main mechanism here is a change in the resting metabolic rate (RMR):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the body being more metabolically efficient than before, a return to the original feeding level after a period of weight loss through decreased caloric intake would regain the lost weight. For individuals who are particularly efficient, it may even lead to net weight gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one of their cited papers, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/72/5/1088.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Do adaptive changes in metabolic rate favor weight regain in weight-reduced individuals? An examination of the set-point theory&lt;/a&gt; (2000, AJCN) refutes this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results also suggest that adaptive down-regulation of RMR is not a characteristic of weight-reduced individuals and does not explain their weight-regain tendency. The weight-gain tendency of obesity-prone persons appears to be caused by factors other than variations in metabolic rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other factors, not RMR, explains why dieters tend to return to their original weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion: There are some complex versions of set-point theory that researchers are still working on, involving many (rather than a single) biological feedback loops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roberts vastly oversimplifies the theory by reducing it to a single parameter. His version of set-point theory is not supported by the scientific research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13630" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T08:44:06.463" CommentCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16122" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-04T20:47:52.563" Score="17" ViewCount="1342" Body="&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8701024/Revealed-sex-hormone-plan-to-feminise-Hitler.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agents planned to smuggle doses of oestrogen into his food to make him less aggressive and more like his docile younger sister Paula, who worked as a secretary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spies working for the British were close enough to Hitler to have access to his food, said Professor Brian Ford, who discovered the plot&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He explained that oestrogen was chosen because it was tasteless and would have a slow and subtle effect, meaning it would pass Hitler's food testers unnoticed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking about the scheme, Prof Ford, a science writer and fellow of Cardiff University, said: &amp;quot;There was an Allied plan that they would smuggle oestrogen into Hitler's food and change his sex so he would become more feminine and less aggressive.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Their research had showed the importance of sex hormones - they were beginning to be used in sex therapy in London.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He went on: &lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;There were agents who would be able to get it into his food - it would have been entirely possible.&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was there a sex hormone plan to feminise Hitler? Were there agents who would be able to get oestrogen into Hitler's food?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T00:42:40.490" Title="Was there a sex hormone plan to feminise Hitler?" Tags="|history|adolf-hitler|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15597" CreationDate="2013-05-05T00:47:38.457" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are studies on cupping, but many are of poor quality, published in alternative medicine journals, and mostly done in East Asia--which can influence the results. The short version, is that there is &lt;strong&gt;some evidence for efficacy&lt;/strong&gt; of cupping for specific conditions. But the results are &lt;strong&gt;not very rigourous&lt;/strong&gt;. For example, &lt;em&gt;Zhen Jiu Lin Chuang Za Zhi&lt;/em&gt; (Clinical Journal of Acupuncture &amp;amp; Moxibustion) publishes studies like &lt;a href=&quot;http://bluepoppy.com/cfwebstore/index.cfm/feature/1003&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;these&lt;/a&gt;, which look like science, but have conclusions like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bleeding the tips of the ears clears heat and resolves toxins, frees the flow of the channels and quickens the blood. Bleeding Da Zhui followed by cupping disperses welling abscesses and scatters binding or nodulation, quickens the blood and stops pain, dispels stasis and eliminates evils. As the authors point out, Da Zhui is a transport point on the governing vessel as well as a meeting point of the governing vessel and the hand and foot three yang channels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more reasonable examples see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;J Occup Health&lt;/em&gt;. 2012;54(6):416-26. Epub 2012 Sep 1. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22971528&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cupping for treating neck pain in video display terminal (VDT) users: a randomized controlled pilot trial&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Kim TH, Kang JW, et.al.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This was a randomized controlled pilot trial to evaluate the effectiveness of cupping therapy for neck pain in video display terminal (VDT) workers [...] Two weeks of cupping therapy and an exercise program may be effective in reducing pain and improving neck function in VDT workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Am J Chin Med&lt;/em&gt;. 2012;40(2):269-77. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22419422&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The effects of wet cupping on coronary risk factors in patients with metabolic syndrome: a randomized controlled trial&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; By Farahmand SK, Gang LZ, et.al.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study aimed to determine the effects of wet cupping on lipid profiles and anthropometric characteristics of patients with metabolic syndrome [...] Wet cupping does not have a significant effect on anthropometric or biochemical indices compared to the effect of dietary advice alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the &lt;strong&gt;most comprehensive review&lt;/strong&gt; on the subject is &lt;em&gt;PLoS One&lt;/em&gt;. 2012;7(2):e31793. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0031793. Epub 2012 Feb 28. &quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0031793&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An updated review of the efficacy of cupping therapy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; By Cao H, Li X, Liu J.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Six databases were searched for articles published through 2010. RCTs (Randomized Control Trials) on cupping therapy for various diseases were included [...] 35 RCTs published from 1992 through 2010 were identified. The studies were generally of low methodological quality. Diseases for which cupping therapy was commonly applied were herpes zoster, facial paralysis (Bell palsy), cough and dyspnea, acne, lumbar disc herniation, and cervical spondylosis [...] Meta-analysis showed cupping therapy combined with other TCM treatments was significantly superior to other treatments alone in increasing the number of cured patients with herpes zoster, facial paralysis, acne, and cervical spondylosis [...] This review showed that cupping has potential effect in the treatment of herpes zoster and other specific conditions. However, further rigorously designed trials on its use for other conditions are warranted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Based on this literature review, I would conclude that cupping research is dangerously close to being a pseudo-science. I was not able to find any studies in mainstream journals like the &lt;em&gt;New England Journal of Medicine&lt;/em&gt; or the &lt;em&gt;British Medical Journal&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;†&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Please note that this answer does not constitute medical advice. It is only meant to summarize published research related to the original claim and limited to the cited sources. Consult your physician about what these results may mean for your health.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-09-11T14:32:15.927" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T14:32:15.927" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16071" CreationDate="2013-05-05T12:05:16.987" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;They can go on for a &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a documented medical example of a (admittedly very obese) person who stopped eating for 382 days under medical supervision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Patient A.B. aged 27 years, weighed on admission&#xA;  456 lb (207 kg). During the 382 days of his fast,&#xA;  vitamin supplements were given daily as 'Multivite'&#xA;  (BDH), vitamin C and yeast for the first 10 months&#xA;  and as 'Paladac' (Parke Davis), for the last 3 months.&#xA;  Non-caloric fluids were allowed ad libitum. From&#xA;  Day 93 to Day 162 only, he was given potassium&#xA;  supplements (two effervescent potassium tablets&#xA;  BPC supplying 13 mEq daily) and from Day 345 to&#xA;  Day 355 only he was given sodium supplements (2 5 g&#xA;  sodium chloride daily). No other drug treatment was&#xA;  given. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Features of a successful therapeutic fast of 382 days' duration&lt;/a&gt; W. K. Stewart and Laura W. Fleming&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fasting is very well studied and there is a complete review on &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2006.00266.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiley&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-05-05T12:05:16.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16072" CreationDate="2013-05-06T00:13:15.050" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem is a bit more subtle than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In 2007, J&amp;amp;J India sterilized a batch of talcum powder with ethylene oxide instead of steam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;J&amp;amp;J India was not allowed to perform the procedure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;J&amp;amp;J India did not test the talcum powder to make sure no residue of ethylene oxide was present&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ethylene oxide is a &lt;em&gt;poisonous&lt;/em&gt; substance so clearly it can't be sold by J&amp;amp;J&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the reasons why the license to produce and sell cosmetics was revoked (canceled, not suspended). It is unlikely that any product contained traces of the poison, however the company has apparently been grossly negligent and endangered its customer's babies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The matter in question as cited by the FDA order relates to a limited number of batches produced in 2007. FDA raised concern about ethylene oxide treatment, which was not included as part of the manufacturing process submitted to FDA. This method is widely used for medical devices around the world. This was followed as an exception and all internal safety protocols were followed to ensure that safety of the consumer was not compromised. In addition, we have ascertained that there were no complaints or unexpected/undesirable effects reported concerning any of the batches in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/fda-cancels-j-j-s-licence-to-make-cosmetics-at-mulund-plant-113042400562_1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/fda-cancels-j-j-s-licence-to-make-cosmetics-at-mulund-plant-113042400562_1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An investigation by the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration revealed that J&amp;amp;J, at its plant in Mulund, had used ethylene oxide - a substance used to produce industrial chemicals and to sterilize medical equipment - to kill bacteria in its baby powder and had not conducted mandatory tests to make sure there were no remaining traces in the powder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the U.S. Department of Labor, acute exposure to ethylene oxide can cause lung damage, nausea, vomiting and cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/03/us-johnsonandjohnson-india-babypowder-idUSBRE9420ZG20130503&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/03/us-johnsonandjohnson-india-babypowder-idUSBRE9420ZG20130503&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T02:17:09.457" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15951" CreationDate="2013-05-06T00:36:52.710" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very few people disagree with the basic fact that the greenhouse gas CO2 warms the climate, but without some kind of positive feedback mechanism, it doesn’t add very much: around 1°C-1.2°C per doubling of CO2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statement is correct, but very misleading.  In the absence of the climate system's feedbacks, the climate sensitivity is 1 to 1.2 deg C for each doubling of CO2 (per the IPCC).  However, the impact of feedbacks is greater than the direct impact of increased CO2.  This can be seen without relying on climate models by looking at the powerful temperature cycles of historical ice ages (or &lt;em&gt;glacial-to-interglacial transitions&lt;/em&gt;).  These cycles are caused by variations in the Earth's orbit, which only produce a small change in incident radiation.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiana.edu/%7Egeol105/images/gaia_chapter_4/milankovitch.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here for example&lt;/a&gt;.  Without climate feedbacks, it would take a much greater change in solar output, or an enormous change in CO2 concentration, to cause an ice age.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/09/introduction-to-feedbacks/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chris Colose of Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison provides a good explanation of feedback effects:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put this in perspective, it would take about five doublings of CO2 or a 7% increase in the total solar radiation hitting the Earth to produce the magnitude of climate change typical of glacial-to-interglacial transitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus it is clear - without relying on models - that the feedback effect must be greater than the direct effect, or else there could never have been ice ages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase &amp;quot;without some kind of positive feedback mechanism&amp;quot; gives the impression that scientists think there's an alternate mechanism that drives their projected temperatures higher.  Climate sensitivity without feedbacks can be calculated fairly accurately on a single sheet of paper, (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/11/more-on-feedbacks/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for example) and the result will be approximately 1 deg C.  But the result is not relevant to anything, because the real world has many feedbacks; that's why the focus in climate science over the past several decades has been understanding the feedbacks and quantifying their effects.  Most of them are well understood, their net effect is overwhelmingly positive (i.e. they amplify temperature fluctuations), and of course they are all based on physics, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/09/introduction-to-feedbacks/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as demonstrated by Chris Colose&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/vc/arxiv/papers/1105/1105.0968v2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;James Hansen,&lt;/a&gt; the best source of information about feedbacks is not models, but paleoclimate data:s&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Models are imperfect and we will never be sure that they include all important processes. Fortunately, Earth's history provides a remarkably rich record of how our planet responded to climate forcings in the past. Paleoclimate records yield, by far, our most accurate assessment of climate sensitivity and climate feedbacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hansen calculates the climate sensitivity in various units, and expresses it as 2 to 4 degrees C for a doubling of CO2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The empirical fast-feedback climate sensitivity that we infer from the LGM-Holocene comparison is thus 5°C/6.5 W/m2 ~ 3⁄4 ± 1⁄4 °C per W/m2 or 3 ± 1°C for doubled CO2. The fact that ice sheet and GHG boundary conditions are actually slow climate feedbacks is irrelevant for the purpose of evaluating the fast-feedback climate sensitivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This empirical climate sensitivity incorporates all fast response feedbacks in the real- world climate system, including changes of water vapor, clouds, aerosols, aerosol effects on clouds, and sea ice. In contrast to climate models, which can only approximate the physical processes and may exclude important processes, the empirical result includes all processes that exist in the real world – and the physics is exact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Water vapor provides a great example of climate feedbacks.  Because it absorbs infrared radiation very well, water vapor is a very powerful greenhouse gas.  Also, warmer air holds more water vapor.  So, suppose temperature increases because of higher CO2; the atmosphere will hold more water vapor, which will cause it to absorb more solar radiation, causing it to heat up still further.  Calculating the impact of the CO2 while disregarding the water vapor feedback would be a significant underestimation for no good reason.  Other positive climate feedbacks are also well known to climatologists, such as changes in reflectivity due to melting of snow and ice, release of CO2 from ocean water because of increasing ocean temperatures, and release of methane from melting permafrost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-01-28T23:24:07.840" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16140" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16143" CreationDate="2013-05-06T10:31:52.280" Score="21" ViewCount="11635" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of cockroaches in my wardrobe where I keep my clothes. I have noticed that the cockroaches haven't done any damage to my clothes. I haven't seen the need to get rid of the cockroaches. There is a common perception that living with cockroaches is unhealthy/harmful (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100515110718AAytsHH&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071202203923AACFyMw&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=1395&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13617" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:24:18.113" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T15:42:16.517" Title="Is it unhealthy to live with cockroaches?" Tags="|environmental-health|entomology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16142" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-06T11:34:36.830" Score="5" ViewCount="1159" Body="&lt;p&gt;The announcement of the german ISP Deutsche Telekom to throttle flatrates in the future, with the lowest limit being 75 GB per month, caused quite a media echo in Germany. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One claim from a small router company was repeated by several media sources (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.golem.de/news/drosselung-1-gbyte-kostet-die-telekom-unter-1-cent-1305-99058.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Golem&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ich würde aktuell also von realen Kosten von deutlich unter&#xA;  1 Cent pro GByte ausgehen.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roughly translated they claim that they assume that the Telekom pays significantly less than 1 cent per gigabyte for traffic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it doesn't sound implausible to me that any additional traffic is so cheap for an ISP, the source seems a bit suspect to me as the company Viprinet that claims this is pretty much unkown to the wider public and the whole thing looks a bit like a way to get their name into the news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the exact costs for the Telekom are probably not available, but it should be possible to find out if the cost for backbone traffic is roughly in the area that is claimed here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:31:46.020" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:31:46.020" Title="How much does an ISP pay for traffic?" Tags="|economics|internet|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16140" CreationDate="2013-05-06T11:42:30.157" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;YES it's unhealthy to live with cockroaches.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bugbustersegypt.com/cockroaches&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;About cockroaches&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cockroach disease is something that many people are worried about when&#xA;  they see a cockroach in their home.  Cockroaches are known to carry&#xA;  disease because they can live on just about anything, meaning they&#xA;  often live on unsanitary substances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cockroaches are potential carriers of disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cockroach disease can affect humans.  Cockroaches are known to carry&#xA;  diseases like dysentery, typhoid and poliomyelitis, as well as&#xA;  gastroenteritis.  Cockroaches can live just about anywhere, and can&#xA;  live on fermenting products, septic dressings, hair, leather,&#xA;  wallpaper, feces, rotting food, and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because many of the products that cockroaches feed on are spoiled or&#xA;  simply unsanitary, it's easy to see where cockroach disease comes&#xA;  from.  Many of the substances that they feed on are already&#xA;  contaminated, and as the cockroach moves from one location to another&#xA;  it spreads the disease along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not only can people get sick from the diseases that cockroaches&#xA;  contaminate human living space with, many humans are allergic to&#xA;  cockroach feces.  Of course, no one exposes themselves to cockroach&#xA;  disease and feces on purpose, but it can happen by inhaling particles&#xA;  of dust in the air that has been left behind by the cockroach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reason why they carry disease is that they eat all sorts of unsanitary things. This can then spread to humans, if they are living together with them. some people are also allergic to cockroach feces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-09-20T09:28:17.773" LastActivityDate="2016-09-20T09:28:17.773" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16144" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-06T11:58:36.363" Score="7" ViewCount="3277" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a decent amount of anecdotal evidence about manual transmissions being a good anti-theft device - but are there any statistics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a statistic-less article from &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.msn.com/auto-insurance/is-stick-shift-an-anti-theft-device.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MSN.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's folk wisdom: If no one really drives a manual transmission anymore, then no one's going to want to steal one, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Makes sense. It makes good sense, in fact. That little stick on the floor might as well come with a big car-insurance discount; one look down and any thief with an ounce of sense is going to move right along.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or will he? Does the evidence back up this bit of wishful thinking on the part of manual enthusiasts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone find any proper statistics to back or refute the claim? How about percentage of people that can drive stick? Anything?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6775" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T08:32:54.380" Title="Are manual transmission cars stolen less?" Tags="|united-states|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16142" CreationDate="2013-05-06T12:07:16.390" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not possible to easily find out the cost for backbone traffic, because it's done almost exclusively via barter, which in particular case of IP traffic is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering&quot;&gt;peering&lt;/a&gt;. Also, typically peering isn't even formalized in any document.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpt from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pch.net/resources/papers/peering-survey/PCH-Peering-Survey-2011.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Survey of Characteristics of Internet Carrier Interconnection Agreements&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Informal Agreements&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of the total analyzed agreements, 698 (0.49%) were formalized in&#xA;  written contracts. The remaining &lt;strong&gt;141,512 (99.51%) were “handshake”&#xA;  agreements in which the parties agreed to informal or  commonly&#xA;  understood terms without creating a written document&lt;/strong&gt;.  The common&#xA;  understanding is  that only routes to customer networks are exchanged,&#xA;  that BGP version 4 is used to communicate those routes, and that each&#xA;  network will exercise a reasonable duty of care in cooperating to &#xA;  prevent abusive or criminal misuse of the network.  This huge number&#xA;  of informal agreements are  arrived at by the “peering coordinators”&#xA;  or carrier-interconnection negotiation staff of the networks, often at&#xA;  self-organized regional or global “peering forums” that take place&#xA;  many times each  year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Symmetric Terms&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of the agreements we analyzed, &lt;strong&gt;141,836 (99.73%) had symmetric terms,&#xA;  in which each party  gave and received the same conditions as the&#xA;  other;&lt;/strong&gt; only 374 (0.27%) had asymmetric terms, in  which the parties&#xA;  gave and received conditions with speciﬁcally deﬁned differences.&#xA;  Typical examples of asymmetric agreements are ones in which one of the&#xA;  parties compensates the other  for routes that it would not otherwise&#xA;  receive (known as “paid peering”),   or in which one party is &#xA;  required to meet terms or requirements imposed by the other (“minimum&#xA;  peering requirements”).  &lt;strong&gt;In the more common symmetric relationship,&#xA;  the parties to the agreement simply exchange customer routes with each&#xA;  other, without settlements or other requirements.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides that, &lt;em&gt;&quot;how much does it costs to sent X GBs of data?&quot;&lt;/em&gt; isn't good question, as total amount of traffic sent is just one measure, hardly ever used by higher tier operators. Peak traffic or allocated capacity are more common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, so being that being said, what it costs  Deutsche Telekom to send it's clients traffic would be the cost of operating it's backbone and lower tier networks connecting to the customers. Problem is, that it's again hard to calculate what the cost &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; be if you get more traffic, more clients etc. &#xA;Calculating these cost has been studied for example in paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tid.es/es/Lists/Scientific_Publications/Attachments/243/imc2012.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Sharing the Cost of Backbone Networks&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What contributes to the cost of a backbone?&lt;/strong&gt;  The cost of a network consists of CAPEX and OPEX for all devices and Points-of-Presence&#xA;  (PoPs). The CAPEX is the one-time cost paid whenever equipment is&#xA;  bought and installed. It depends on the amount of traﬃc the device&#xA;  must carry at a speciﬁc level of Quality-ofService (QoS). A key&#xA;  observation is that the capacity needed to guarantee a certain QoS&#xA;  depends on the peak traﬃc that needs to be carried. This is because&#xA;  for a given capacity, QoS is minimized when the traﬃc peaks. The OPEX&#xA;  corresponds to operational costs such as real estate, energy, and&#xA;  personnel. It also depends on the amount of traﬃc and the QoS;&#xA;  however, that dependence is more elastic. The cost sharing policies we&#xA;  discuss are generic enough to capture both CAPEX and OPEX with&#xA;  appropriate parameterization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why is it diﬃcult to split cost among&#xA;  customers?&lt;/strong&gt; From the above discussion, one may conclude that splitting&#xA;  the cost among customers is straightforward: for each device of the&#xA;  network each customer should pay in proportion to his contribution to&#xA;  the peak traﬃc carried by the device and then sum up over all devices.&#xA;  Things, however, are not that simple:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Accounting complications.&lt;/strong&gt; It&#xA;  is diﬃcult to know for each network device the contribution of each&#xA;  customer to its peak. This is because backbone operators need to&#xA;  measure and keep state at many points in the network, which requires&#xA;  costly monitoring equipments. In addition, computing traﬃc rates&#xA;  introduces the problem of identifying the appropriate time-scale for&#xA;  the computation owing to the limited resources of the monitoring&#xA;  tools.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Liability complications.&lt;/strong&gt; If we were to build from scratch a&#xA;  new network for a ﬁxed set of customers of known demand, then the cost&#xA;  attributed to each customer should be proportional to the sum of its&#xA;  contributions to the peaks of individual devices. Splitting costs&#xA;  based on the contribution to the peak is indeed exact, but only for&#xA;  this “oﬄine problem”. In reality, however, networks are not built in&#xA;  one-shot but are rather organically grown with the addition of new&#xA;  customers and the ramping up of their traﬃc. Under this more realistic&#xA;  case, peak-based cost-sharing is not guaranteed to be fair. Consider&#xA;  for example the case in which a network is already operating at the&#xA;  maximum utilization allowed by QoS constraints and a small new&#xA;  customer triggers an expensive upgrade that leads to a new network&#xA;  with plentiful unallocated capacity (upgrades typically involve large&#xA;  jumps, e.g., 1Gbps to 2.5Gbps, to 10Gbps, etc.). Peak-based cost&#xA;  sharing would attribute to the new customer only a small fraction of&#xA;  the overall cost. Is that fair? The answer depends on what happens&#xA;  with the unallocated capacity. If the network can easily sell it to&#xA;  new or existing customers then indeed it is fair. If, however, selling&#xA;  this leftover capacity is not guaranteed, then the new customer should&#xA;  have a larger liability for the upgrade costs. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have access to detailed Deutsche Telekom financial report, but from the global one you can see that in 2012 their operating expenses were 18.3 billion euros, and they've &lt;strong&gt;closed they year with net loss of 5.3 billion euros&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-05-06T12:25:10.373" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T12:25:10.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16112" CreationDate="2013-05-06T15:00:11.507" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt; in the sense that it uses quantum properties to perform computations, but &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; in the more general case since it is not a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine&quot;&gt;Turing machine&lt;/a&gt; (i.e. universal computer). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer is somewhat complicated by the fact that what the general public thinks of as a computer and what computer scientists formally define as a Turing machine. Turing machines are interesting from a mathematical standpoint since any computer algorithm can be run on a Turning machine and Turing machines can simulate one another which gives rise to the concept of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness&quot;&gt;Turing completeness&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quantum equivalent to a conventional Turing machine (i.e. a desktop computer) requires the use of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_circuit&quot;&gt;quantum circuits&lt;/a&gt; that allow for general algorithms to be run on it. In keeping with Turing completeness, conventional computers can actually &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-quant/index.html&quot;&gt;simulate quantum computers&lt;/a&gt; that make use of quantum circuits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with that in mind we can now turn to the D-Wave device for closer examination. D-Wave Systems &lt;a href=&quot;http://dwave.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/learning-to-program-the-d-wave-one/&quot;&gt;own documentation for developers&lt;/a&gt; tells us the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The processor in the D-Wave One – codenamed Rainier – is designed to&#xA;  perform a single mathematical operation called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrete_optimization&quot;&gt;discrete optimization&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along with,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rainier solves optimization problems using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7346/full/nature10012.html&quot;&gt;quantum annealing (QA)&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;  which is a class of problem solving approaches that use quantum&#xA;  effects to help get better solutions, faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right off the bat we know that the D-Wave is not going to be Turing complete since it can only perform a single mathematical operations which means that it is not a quantum computer in the general sense; however, what about the specific case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When first introduced there was quite a &lt;a href=&quot;http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/loser-dwave-does-not-quantum-compute&quot;&gt;bit of controversy&lt;/a&gt; that D-Wave was not taking advantage of quantum effects to actually solve problems. However, this partly resolved with their 2011 publication of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7346/full/nature10012.html&quot;&gt;Quantum annealing with manufactured spins&lt;/a&gt;&quot; in Nature which contains the following point of interest in the abstract,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here we use quantum annealing to find the ground state of an&#xA;  artificial Ising spin system comprising an array of eight&#xA;  superconducting flux quantum bits with programmable spin–spin&#xA;  couplings. We observe a clear signature of quantum annealing,&#xA;  distinguishable from classical thermal annealing through the&#xA;  temperature dependence of the time at which the system dynamics&#xA;  freezes. Our implementation can be configured in situ to realize a&#xA;  wide variety of different spin networks, each of which can be&#xA;  monitored as it moves towards a low-energy configuration&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper is quite interesting but the mathematics can be quite heavy at times as well though. The key point of the paper is summarized in the conclusion,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This brings us to our main conclusion: a programmable artificial spin&#xA;  system manufactured as an integrated circuit can be used to implement&#xA;  a quantum algorithm. The experiments presented here constitute a step&#xA;  between understanding single-qubit annealing and understanding the&#xA;  multi-qubit processes that could be used to find low-energy&#xA;  configurations in a realistic adiabatic quantum processor. In addition&#xA;  to its problem-solving potential, a system such as this also provides&#xA;  an interesting test bed for investigating the physics of interacting&#xA;  quantum spins, and is an important step in an ongoing investigation&#xA;  into much more complex spin systems realized using this type of&#xA;  architecture. Although our manufactured spin system is not yet a&#xA;  universal quantum computer, by adding a new type of coupler between&#xA;  the qubits, universal quantum computation would become possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the paper explains the implementation of a means of doing &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adiabatic_quantum_computation&quot;&gt;adiabatic quantum computation&lt;/a&gt;. This paper was part of what ultimately lead some of D-Waves critics to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=954&quot;&gt;back off their previous positions&lt;/a&gt; and look more favorably on the company. This in turn has lead to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/04/further-proof-for-controversial-quantum-computer.html&quot;&gt;general warming&lt;/a&gt; of the scientific communities options towards the company. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This position that the D-Wave is in fact using quantum effects was further reinforced by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usc.edu/&quot;&gt;University of Southern California&lt;/a&gt; who in 2013 &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.usc.edu/#!/article/52818/large-scale-quantum-chip-validated/&quot;&gt;released an article&lt;/a&gt; validating the use of quantum effects in the processor,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Our work seems to show that, from a purely physical point of view,&#xA;  quantum effects play a functional role in information processing in&#xA;  the D-Wave processor,” said Sergio Boixo, first author of the research&#xA;  paper, who conducted the research while he was a computer scientist at&#xA;  ISI and research assistant professor at USC Viterbi&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2013 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preprint&quot;&gt;pre-print&lt;/a&gt; article up titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.4595&quot;&gt;Quantum annealing with more than one hundred qubits&lt;/a&gt;&quot; also raises a very interesting point, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Considering the pure annealing time, the performance for typical&#xA;  (median) instances matches that of a highly optimised classical&#xA;  annealing code on a high-end Intel CPU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meaning that as of right now, there might not be much advantage in using their device over a conventional computer. However, they go on to note that, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quantum speedup can then be detected by comparing the scaling results&#xA;  of the simulated classical and quantum annealers to experiments, as we&#xA;  discuss in detail in the supplementary material. Going to even larger&#xA;  problem sizes we soon approach the limits of classical computers.&#xA;  Optimistically extrapolating using the observed scaling, the median&#xA;  time to find the best solution for our test problem will increase&#xA;  from milliseconds to minutes for 2048 variables, and months for 4096&#xA;  variables, and the scaling might be much worse if fat tailed&#xA;  distributions start to dominate, as we had previously observed for&#xA;  other Monte Carlo algorithms [28, 29]. A quantum annealer showing&#xA;  better scaling than classical algorithms for these problem sizes would&#xA;  be an exciting breakthrough, validating the potential of quantum&#xA;  information processing to outperform its classical counterpart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meaning that they still feel that for larger data sets their device is likely to be a superior performer over a standard computer for these types of problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to summarize, in the general sense of the D-Wave One being a Turing machine, it is not which means that it is not a quantum computer in the strictest sense of the meaning. However, in the more general sense that the D-Wave One is using quantum effects to perform calculations, the answer appears to be yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2015-12-14T14:16:33.527" LastActivityDate="2015-12-14T14:16:33.527" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16140" CreationDate="2013-05-06T16:50:45.737" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cockroaches are a potential risk because they act as a vector for a number of diseases, bacteria, and other pathogens:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cockroaches are arthropod transmitters of disease, acting both as mechanical vectors and as reservoirs of pathogenic agents. It has been shown that cockroaches harbor and transmit, both in nature and under experimental conditions, about 40 species of bacteria, including at least 25 from the Enterobacteriaceae group that cause gastroenteritis in man. In addition, it has been established that these insects are intermediate hosts of pathogenic helminths, viruses, fungi, and protozoa. It is possible that cockroaches contribute to the transmission of Chagas' disease by feeding on triatomine vectors of that disease. There also are signs that substances produced by cockroaches are involved in certain allergic processes. The foregoing facts are sufficient to justify the immediate control and eradication of these insects whenever and wherever they constitute a threat to public health.&#xA;  - Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2529868&quot;&gt;US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They eat just about anything, including carrion, feces, or box of cereal you didn't quite seal up, and in a household setting will likely find and feed upon any food items available.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/kunkel/cockroach_faq.html#Q12&quot;&gt;They frequently defecate near their food sources&lt;/a&gt;, so if you leave food out overnight (cockroaches are most active in the dark), and then handle or eat it, chances are good that you will come into contact with any pathogens that cockroach may have been exposed to.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have any sores, it is even possible that cockroaches &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/kunkel/cockroach_faq.html#Q28&quot;&gt;could nibble on you while you're asleep&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T16:50:45.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1570" CreationDate="2013-05-06T18:43:51.380" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took this questions to mean &quot;Are good programmers more likely to be good musicians than non-programmers?&quot; because the real question is a bit trivial (as one comment indicates) and I thought I could tell that this was what Sklivvz wanted to know from his own answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most parsimonious explanation for this is likely to be the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_%28psychometrics%29&quot;&gt;general factor of mental ability&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a study by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289606000171&quot;&gt;Deary, Strand, Smith, Fernandes (2007)&lt;/a&gt; on the relation of IQ tests to achievement in different school subjects in &gt;70000 English school children.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The correlation of &lt;em&gt;g&lt;/em&gt; with music was &lt;strong&gt;.54&lt;/strong&gt;, with Information Technology it was &lt;strong&gt;.48&lt;/strong&gt;, with math it was &lt;strong&gt;.77&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://jrm.sagepub.com/content/30/1/61.short&quot;&gt;another much smaller study&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Multiple regression analysis revealed that the best single predictor of music achievement was the academic achievement test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, smart people are good at music, maths, programming and other complicated stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no specific reason to believe that there is a correlation between programming and music that goes beyond the one expected on the basis of the general factor underlying both, if experience with other abilities is any guide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also no basis to recommend to guitarists to start programming or to programmers to start playing the guitar, at least not if they want to do this to improve on their &quot;main game&quot; -&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/acad/psyb/2010/00000050/f0020003/art00007&quot;&gt;cognitive training is usually highly specific&lt;/a&gt; (practicing the guitar makes you good with the guitar, not with git) and it's unlikely that this relationship is the exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is why the Jaeggi study is the one that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychfiledrawer.org/top-20/&quot;&gt;most researchers want to see replicated at Psychfiledrawer.com&lt;/a&gt; (in fact there have been several nonreplications already).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="2722" LastEditDate="2013-05-06T18:55:30.740" LastActivityDate="2013-05-06T18:55:30.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15945" CreationDate="2013-05-06T21:20:42.030" Score="26" Body="&lt;h3&gt;The Scientific Consensus: No evidence they reduce cognitive decline&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In October 2014, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://longevity3.stanford.edu/blog/2014/10/15/the-consensus-on-the-brain-training-industry-from-the-scientific-community/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;consensus statement&lt;/a&gt; was produced that rejected the key claims about brain games. The list of signatories include Susanne Jaeggi, Michael Kane, Randy Engle, Hal Pashler and a number of other people who can be considered eminent in this field (and who you'll find cited below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We object to the claim that brain games offer consumers a scientifically grounded avenue to reduce or reverse cognitive decline when there is no compelling scientific evidence to date that they do. The promise of a magic bullet detracts from the best evidence to date, which is that cognitive health in old age reflects the long-term effects of healthy, engaged lifestyles. In the judgment of the signatories below, exaggerated and misleading claims exploit the anxieties of older adults about impending cognitive decline. We encourage continued careful research and validation in this field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Is it truly possible to improve your IQ?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, all brain and IQ training games we know are bogus. Here's what's been discussed on this platform so far: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1032/does-solving-sudoku-puzzles-improve-your-mental-abilities&quot;&gt;Sudoku&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8233/does-playing-popular-video-games-improve-a-childs-iq&quot;&gt;video games&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's reflected in the fact that the Jaeggi et al. study, purportedly showing a transfer effect from dual N-back working memory training to fluid IQ, (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychfiledrawer.org/top-20/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.psychfiledrawer.org/top-20/&lt;/a&gt;) is the number one of studies that researchers on Psychfiledrawer.com want to see replicated. Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/acad/psyb/2010/00000050/f0020003/art00007&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;takedown by Engle et al.&lt;/a&gt;. Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/09/nice-results-but-what-did-you-expect/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;great blog post by Ed Yong&lt;/a&gt; on some of the trouble with these studies (it's not the only big problem though, don't believe Schubert for one minute). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transfer effects have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychology.gatech.edu/renglelab/publications/2012/Redicketal2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;found not to replicate&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frontiersin.org/cognition/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00031/abstract?utm_source=newsletter&amp;amp;utm_medium=email&amp;amp;utm_campaign=Psychology-w6-2013&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;several times&lt;/a&gt;. Here's the most &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xge/142/2/359/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent failure to replicate and a critical review&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's an old topic, obviously many people tried to raise IQ and failed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There have been numerous clones of the same idea, the ones with the most profile are Lumosity, Cogmed and Jaeggi's program (I think this is marketed the least but best-known to academics, Lumosity may be the opposite, I think they don't have ambitions for peer review).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://thestochasticman.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/why-brain-training-doesnt-work/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;takedown of Lumosity's &quot;research&lt;/a&gt;. 23 people are in that sample. Thirty-five million users, you say? Don't know what happened there... He also links to reports of Lumosity using scammy invoicing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For good measure, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ironmanmode.com/archives/5736&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;funny secondhand blogpost on the topic&lt;/a&gt;, an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/04/brain-games-are-bogus.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article in the New Yorker&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2012/06/05/the-new-snake-oil-brain-training-brain-fitness/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;another takedown titled &quot;The new Snakeoil&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Is IQ a good measure of Intelligence?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Reliability_and_validity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yes, pretty good&lt;/a&gt;, but many people outside intelligence research don't think so. They're wrong, but this is such a bone of contention that you can find debates about the debate. I don't want to stray too much. Here's the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2758/are-iq-tests-reliable&quot;&gt;question asked on this site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Are they actually onto something, like PositScience?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, they're &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; onto something, &lt;strong&gt;like&lt;/strong&gt; PositScience.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;PositScience is most likely the same, but geared towards the elderly from what I can tell from a cursory glance. They're a bit better at scientific street cred. ie. actually publishing peer-reviewed studies and responding to criticism.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But their studies don't support the strength of their marketing claims and, of course, they selectively leave out studies showing no benefit (by other researchers, but probably they also their own shock-full file drawer) and they have a huge conflict of interest.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/search?q=%40hpashler%20positscience&amp;amp;src=typd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hal Pashler calling them out&lt;/a&gt; and here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.sethroberts.net/2013/02/22/questions-for-posit-science/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Seth Roberts calling them out&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The company's responses to those two callouts have been weak, but here's an affiliated author (got only a little money on the side) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/comments/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0061624&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dealing well with criticism&lt;/a&gt; of a fairly weak study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T16:15:41.710" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16160" CreationDate="2013-05-07T09:38:06.833" Score="4" ViewCount="718" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whale.to/b/rifat.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; last night on the communications system used by UK police. They use earpieces and there is skepticism about how they could be used to control the police or subdue them.&#xA;Is this possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Microwave weapons that turn people into stressed, confused, submissive&#xA;  zombies are being used in Britain's inner cities. Developed by the&#xA;  communists, microwave weapons similar to microwave ovens have since&#xA;  the 1980s, been targeted on inner city council estates. These weapons&#xA;  transmit extremely low frequency (ELF) signals which mimic natural&#xA;  brain waves; at the flick of a switch, all the people around these&#xA;  microwave transmitters are turned into submissive zombies who cannot&#xA;  think clearly, become depressed, apathetic and want to lounge around&#xA;  all day doing nothing: the inner city malaise found on Britain's&#xA;  streets.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whale.to/b/rifat.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13646" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-07T10:59:35.023" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T15:37:38.530" Title="Can certain broadcast frequencies be used for mind control?" Tags="|united-kingdom|mind-control|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16162" CreationDate="2013-05-07T15:21:16.860" Score="5" ViewCount="496" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I encountered a person who asks for money donation. She suffers from non-Hodgkin lymphoma and claims that there is a very promising way to be cured - to use the drug named laetril (or laetrile), also known as vitamin B17. She claims that this drug was shown to be an efficient anti-cancer drug, but due to the huge pharmaceutic companies lobby, it is not put in use in most countries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there indeed the claimed efficiency of the drug? Are there any known positive or negative effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10224" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T16:52:24.177" Title="Is laetrile an efficient drug against cancer?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16156" CreationDate="2013-05-07T15:30:22.350" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt; They use earpieces [...] they could be used to control the police or subdue them. Is &#xA;  this possible? &lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Control as in &quot;Command and Control&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, police radios are used to control police officers in the sense of communicating with them to direct them to incidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Subdue as in &quot;incapacitate&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Avon-trial-reveals-limits-of-29bn-police-Tetra-network&quot;&gt;UK Police&lt;/a&gt; use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.motorolasolutions.com/XU-EN/Product+Lines/Dimetra+TETRA/TETRA+Terminals/TETRA+Hand+Portables&quot;&gt;Tetra&lt;/a&gt; radios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears some police officers are or were &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tetrawatch.net/contact/feedback.php?id=police&quot;&gt;concerned&lt;/a&gt; about the health of these systems but not that they are used for covert mind control. To be of much use, I assume any form of covert mind control would ideally need to act within minutes, rather than the weeks, months or years that these alleged health effects take to become manifest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Earpieces&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least some of the earpieces don't transmit radio waves, they are typically &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enforce-logic.co.uk/re03.php&quot;&gt;accoustic&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally wired earpieces would obvious operate at audio frequencies (20-20000 Hz) rather than at ELF or Microwave frequencies. Normally these would not transmit radio waves either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Studies of ELF/Microwave/Radio effects on the mind&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not found any studies that show that radio waves can be used to control the mind. There are one or two low-quality studies in alternative journals that suggest that some brainwaves (e.g. the alpha rhythm) can be synchronised to en external source of magnetic waves - but these studies concluded that they had no effect on people's moods or thoughts. &lt;a href=&quot;http://journal.borderlands.com/1999/effects-of-6-10-hz-elf-on-brain-waves/&quot;&gt;Reference&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-05-07T15:37:38.530" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T15:37:38.530" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16159" CreationDate="2013-05-07T16:52:24.177" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The American Cancer Society has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/complementaryandalternativemedicine/pharmacologicalandbiologicaltreatment/laetrile&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;good overview of the scientific evidence&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Available scientific evidence does not support claims that Laetrile or amygdalin is effective in treating cancer or any other disease. Both contain a small amount of a substance that can be converted to cyanide in the body, and several cases of cyanide poisoning have been linked to the use of Laetrile. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved Laetrile as a medical treatment in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[A] 1991 review notes that, beginning in 1957, Laetrile was repeatedly tested against tumor cells implanted in animals. At least a dozen separate sets of experiments were done at seven institutions. Targets included several different types of cancer. The conclusion was that Laetrile did not have any anti-tumor activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FDA placed sanctions against the sale of Laetrile. In 1977, the FDA commissioner stated that there was no evidence for the safety or effectiveness of Laetrile. Because of the risk of cyanide poisoning, the government has banned the transport of Laetrile into the United States or across state lines, as well as the use of Laetrile in states without laws specifically allowing it. Since 2000, there have been several instances of prosecution because of Laetrile transport across state lines. Nonetheless, products advertised as Laetrile and amygdalin can still be purchased via many websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T16:52:24.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16144" CreationDate="2013-05-07T18:10:39.090" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the USA, it certainly makes at least a minor difference. There is a running theme on Jalopnik of stories like &lt;a href=&quot;http://jalopnik.com/5980922/corvette-thieves-thwarted-by-stick-shift&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They apparently couldn't start it. I had to tell him four different&#xA;  times to push in the clutch, because it's a standard transmission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My first thought was I guess we don't have driver's ed in school&#xA;  anymore because no one knows how to drive a stick. And my second thing&#xA;  was, don't shoot me because you can't start the car. I'm trying to&#xA;  help you out here. You know. Thankfully they didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously not scientific, as it is only one of many stories like this. But even if only a handful of thieves can not drive stick that is at least a tiny bit safer for American manuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not a single event either, maybe not common but it does happen somewhat frequently and here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/sep/03/deputies-carjacking-failed-car-was-stick-shift/&quot;&gt;another example&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Swahn says one of them pulled out a gun, got in the car, and tried to&#xA;  take off. Deputies say neither of them knew how to drive a car with a&#xA;  manual transmission. They got out and fled on foot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this story has been reused dozens of times, Carinsurance.com, MSN, and here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2011/03/28/stick-shift-anti-theft-device/&quot;&gt;FOX&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best information I can see is anecdotal from the police force:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;800,000 vehicles were reported stolen in the U.S., one every 40&#xA;  seconds), but police say that only a tiny percentage of stolen cars&#xA;  have manual transmissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe that &quot;tiny fraction&quot; means %.001 or ~5% inline with the manual sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the best we can do for an answer though is either it depends or it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/five-myths-about-stick-shifts.html&quot;&gt;unknown&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Frank Scafidi, director of public affairs for the National Insurance&#xA;  Crime Bureau, which tracks car-theft trends, says he's not aware of&#xA;  any data to support or refute that idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read more: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2011/03/28/stick-shift-anti-theft-device/#ixzz2SdCjZyrl&quot;&gt;http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2011/03/28/stick-shift-anti-theft-device/#ixzz2SdCjZyrl&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13521" LastActivityDate="2013-05-07T18:10:39.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16165" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-07T19:54:59.440" Score="12" ViewCount="2286" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evolutionists generally believe that although the spontaneous generation of life from non-living matter was a highly improbable event, the amount of time available is long enough to overcome this problem. This fallacy is because they (and most of us, really) just haven’t gotten around to some actual calculating on some of these problems&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/cm/v1/n1/look-at-some-figures&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Answers in Genesis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did life happen by chance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If life could spontaneously exist by chance, then why have scientists not been able to create life in the laboratory with controlled experiments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, if scientists cannot succeed in creating life in the laboratory, then what evidence is there that life could create itself by chance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/406/can-scientists-create-totally-synthetic-life/&quot;&gt;Can scientists create totally synthetic life?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6942/can-scientists-create-a-life-form-yet&quot;&gt;Can scientists create a life-form yet&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13671" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-01-15T02:51:15.353" Title="Could life begin by chance?" Tags="|biology|young-earth-creationism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16166" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16202" CreationDate="2013-05-07T21:25:06.060" Score="7" ViewCount="2072" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://smallmedia.org.uk/sites/default/files/Satellite%20Jamming.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;satellite jamming in Iran, a war over airwaves&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Satellite jamming is a form of censorship akin to Internet censorship, whereby the Iranian government prohibits access to and inhibits the free flow of information. Referred to as ‘intentional interference’ in technical literature, satellite jamming is a violation of Article 15 of the Radio Regulations of the International Telecommunications Union. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QVtnO.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Satellite Jamming&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotal evidence claims that some Iranians are feeling the effects of jamming. As an article published in the reformist newspaper Mardom Salari in 2009 stated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While no officials are responding to questions posed about satellite jamming, civilians are suffering from the negative health impacts caused by jamming: dizziness, chronic deafness, different kinds of cancer such as skin cancer, blood cancer, and marrow cancer. These interfering signals can also impact human hormones and lead to infertility for both men and women.41&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research about a similar matter in the other parts of the world to prove these kinds of waves can effect on health and cause disease?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11740" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-01-14T01:27:55.673" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T01:27:55.673" Title="Can satellite jamming by Iranian authorities cause medical side effects on the Iranians health?" Tags="|medical-science|environmental-health|iran|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16165" CreationDate="2013-05-08T00:47:33.120" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the fundamental flaw in the entire premise is an understanding of the word &quot;chance&quot; as well as what scientists have done in the field of abiogenesis...  The entire &quot;answers in genesis&quot; argument is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Straw_man&quot;&gt;strawman&lt;/a&gt; (amongst many other logical fallacies), so I really don't think it's worth addressing.  However, abiogenesis itself is a NEW and exciting field of study.  Several strides have been made in that field, but we're in the same stage of understanding as we were on evolution prior to the discovery and understanding of DNA.  Also, there is the constant confusion of abiogenesis and evolution that creationists conflate.  Again, it's a strawman and disingenuous at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/may/20/craig-venter-synthetic-life-form&quot;&gt;in 2010, Dr. Craig Venter actually used a bacterial shell and wrote DNA for it&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientists have created the world's first synthetic life form in a landmark experiment that paves the way for designer organisms that are built rather than evolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Snip)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The new organism is based on an existing bacterium that causes mastitis in goats, but at its core is an entirely synthetic genome that was constructed from chemicals in the laboratory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jcvi.org/cms/research/%20projects/synthetic-bacterial-genome/press-release/&quot;&gt;Another variation on the same report&lt;/a&gt;.) Interestingly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2002/07/11/science.1072266/suppl/DC1&quot;&gt;Venter's work was derived from an earlier 2002 effort to work with viruses and cDNA fragments&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.cnn.com/2010-05-21/health/venter.qa_1_synthetic-chromosome-genetic-code-synthetic-life?_s=PM%3aHEALTH&quot;&gt;Keep in mind, this is only a synthetic genome, not a truly unique organism created from scratch&lt;/a&gt;.  Although I am confident that the technology will become available in the future.  As has been pointed out, the entire genome wasn't built &lt;em&gt;de novo&lt;/em&gt;, but rather most of it was copied from a baseline which was built up from the base chemicals with no biological processes, and then the watermarks were added &lt;strong&gt;(still damn impressive since they took inorganic matter and made a living cell function with it)&lt;/strong&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bu.edu/abl/files/nature_synthetic_genome.pdf&quot;&gt;But they are working at building a totally unique genome from scratch&lt;/a&gt; (PDF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/artl&quot;&gt;This is actually quite an emerging field, so much so that the MIT press has set up an entire series of journals for this&lt;/a&gt;.  As far as to the purpose of these artificial organisms, &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/27/news/newsmakers/venter_artificial_life.fortune/index.htm&quot;&gt;most research funded by companies are meant to be for specific purposes that biology hasn't solved yet&lt;/a&gt; (such as a bacteria that eats a toxic waste or something).  Although, a lot of people are concerned about scientists venturing into the domain of theology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of abiogenesis, there are many resources to learn more about this.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factsnotfantasy.com/abiogenesis.php&quot;&gt;Here is a list of 88 papers that discuss the natural mechanisms of abiogenesis&lt;/a&gt; (this list is a little old, so I am sure that there are many, many more papers at this time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alcyone.com/max/links/alife.html&quot;&gt;I also found this list of links and resources for artificial life&lt;/a&gt;.  I cannot verify the usefulness of this since the field is a bit outside my area of expertise.  However, it does seem quite extensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT TO ADD&lt;/strong&gt;:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/04/synthetic-dna-substitute-gets-its-own-enzymes-undergoes-evolution.ars?clicked=related_right&quot;&gt;Now we have &quot;XNA&quot; (a totally synthetic genome) on the way.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can argue that no one has managed to just let an experiment &quot;sit and stew&quot; resulting in abiogenesis.  To the best of my knowledge, that is indeed true.  However, since we don't know what really led to abiogenesis yet, the list of 88 papers (and many more) are the best framework we have towards understanding that.  In the meantime, letting something &quot;sit and stew&quot; may be an experiment beyond the scope of human endeavours.  Hence why we accelerate our understanding with the  various other experiments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though I said I wouldn't address the strawman, I guess I must since it's so central to the caricature you seem to have in your mind of abiogenesis and evolution.  Consider the below &quot;supplemental material&quot; not central to the answer, but still important to understand if you have any hope of actually &lt;em&gt;understanding&lt;/em&gt; the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://factsnotfantasy.com/creationists.php&quot;&gt;A bit of an essay about &quot;chance&quot; because I have it handy.&lt;/a&gt;  I have been informed that quoting it here is not appropriate, so the two specific items are #9 and #11 on the list. (The page may sound somewhat rude and insulting, so keep in mind it was written for a different audience and purpose. And the author is British, and they do have a way with words.)  Additionally, it addresses &quot;figures&quot; and &quot;calculations&quot; that creationists frequently use.  By the way, it should be telling that all the creationist arguments are the same &lt;em&gt;predictable&lt;/em&gt; ones that show up repeatedly with no new information.  It's so telling that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factsnotfantasy.com/15.php&quot;&gt;many individuals have written extensive replies&lt;/a&gt;, to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factsnotfantasy.com/25.php&quot;&gt;common and asinine objections of creationists&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/default.htm&quot;&gt;more reading for your education&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abiogenesis is the field of science dedicated to studying how life might have arisen for the first time on the primordial young Earth. Despite the enormous progress that has been made since the Miller-Urey experiment, abiogenesis is under constant attack from creationists, who continually claim that the origin of life by random natural processes is so unlikely as to be, for all practical purposes, impossible. Following are some articles that challenge this claim and demonstrate the fundamental misconception at the core of the creationists' arguments. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html&quot;&gt;Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics, and Probability of Abiogenesis Calculations&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;      How likely is it that even a single bacterium could form by chance in the primordial sea? Not very likely, that's for sure, and creationists have been only too happy to provide ludicrously huge numbers purporting to be the odds against such a thing. However, even if these calculations are correct, they are irrelevant, as modern theories of abiogenesis require nothing of the kind to happen. This article briefly illustrates what abiogenesis really is and shows why the creationists' probability calculations do not matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/borelfaq.html&quot;&gt;Borel's Law and the Origin of Many Creationist Probability Assertions&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;      Creationists have asserted that a statistical principle called &quot;Borel's Law&quot; mathematically demonstrates that abiogenesis is impossible. This article explains what Borel's Law is and shows that Borel himself clearly understood that his law was not relevant to the probability of the origin of life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-05-08T22:29:31.247" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T22:29:31.247" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16168" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16177" CreationDate="2013-05-08T00:52:28.870" Score="3" ViewCount="997" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.albawaba.com/news/new-earthquake-hits-iran-khatami-denies-bam-disaster-caused-nuclear-test&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New earthquake hits Iran as Khatami denies Bam disaster caused by nuclear test&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, the Iranian President, Mohammad Khatami on Tuesady brushed&#xA;  aside rumors that a nuclear test in Bam area was the trigger for the&#xA;  killer quake, saying &quot;although these assertions have swirled around&#xA;  they are totally useless.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was the 2003 Bam earthquake caused by nuclear testing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T19:06:33.680" Title="Was the 2003 Bam earthquake caused by nuclear testing?" Tags="|nuclear-weapons|geology|iran|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16165" CreationDate="2013-05-08T01:41:14.777" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tackling the &quot;what evidence is there that life could create itself by chance?&quot; element:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that many important complex &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space.com/1686-life-building-blocks-abundant-space.html&quot;&gt;chemicals exist in space, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PANHs)&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090421080506.htm&quot;&gt;organic&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.science20.com/florilegium/life_deep_space_organic_molecules_found_orion_nebula&quot;&gt;molecules&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that some complex chemicals can form &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autocatalytic_reaction&quot;&gt;autocatalytic networks&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; which can sustain the creation of (local) order given the proper inputs. (This is not a violation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that &lt;a href=&quot;http://exploringorigins.org/fattyacids.html&quot;&gt;fatty acids can form vesicles&lt;/a&gt; (containers) that may trap other chemicals and provide a reactor for complex chemical reactions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that &lt;a href=&quot;http://astrobiology2.arc.nasa.gov/focus-groups/current/origins-of-life/articles/energy-transduction-inside-of-amphiphilic-vesicles/&quot;&gt;vesicles can absorb radiative energy&lt;/a&gt; and drive chemical reactions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, what we &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; falls a long way short of an existence proof, but it's evidence that some of the complex prerequisites exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, one can see &lt;a href=&quot;http://molbio.mgh.harvard.edu/szostakweb/&quot;&gt;interesting research&lt;/a&gt; from Nobel Laureate Jack Szostok on topics such as self-replicating vesicles and Craig Venter's work creating a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jcvi.org/cms/press/press-releases/full-text/article/first-self-replicating-synthetic-bacterial-cell-constructed-by-j-craig-venter-institute-researcher/home/&quot;&gt;self-replicating synthetic bacterial cell&lt;/a&gt;, which demonstrates, at the least, that a non-natural &quot;spark&quot; is not necessary. (I don't understand the logic in your comment in which you dismiss this with &quot;[despite] decades of failed efforts they are still no closer to doing what 'mother nature' supposedly did by accident.&quot; Surely Venter and Szostok are closing in on &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt;. Would your skepticism vanish if Venter showed a built-from-scratch bacterium? Or do you have a notable claim or evidence that they will never succeed?) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T01:41:14.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16171" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-08T03:38:41.800" Score="7" ViewCount="1889" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading an interview with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2998973.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jake Adelstein&lt;/a&gt;, a Yakuza expert, who says this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also the tattoos. Like, you can see on the cover of this book and the back of this book - see, one of the things they tend to do is get these full-body tattoos which mark them as members of the Yakuza. And &lt;strong&gt;the tattoos themselves are carcinogenic and they prevent your skin from sweating&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;stopping the skin from sweating&quot; sounds like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/201/if-you-were-painted-gold-as-in-the-movie-goldfinger-would-you-die&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Goldfinger gold paint/skin breathing Urban Legend&lt;/a&gt;, but is there any truth in the claims, particularly regarding Japanese ink and any potential nasties it might contain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-05-08T07:37:29.077" LastActivityDate="2013-07-07T08:49:46.917" Title="Are tattoos (particularly Japanese) carcinogenic and do they prevent sweating?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16173" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16171" CreationDate="2013-05-08T07:17:29.750" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a detailed explanation in Velo News about the connection between Tattoo and Sweating&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So to answer your question, I have to wager that some sweat gland&#xA;  damage may occur and it’s a matter of speculation just how much. A&#xA;  “full suit” tattoo would be more likely to have significant impact on&#xA;  the sweat glands’ ability to maintain body temperature. I would&#xA;  recommend having major work done in the off-season to allow the skin&#xA;  ample time to heal and train back up to maximum sweat-gland function&#xA;  before race season. Even with a full suit, there are many bare areas&#xA;  that have no ink at all and are completely undamaged.&lt;a href=&quot;http://velonews.competitor.com/2006/01/training-center/ask-the-doctor-tattoos-and-beauty-are-skin-deep-2_9344&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://velonews.competitor.com/2006/01/training-center/ask-the-doctor-tattoos-and-beauty-are-skin-deep-2_9344&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Velo News article about tattoos and sweating&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10452" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-08T07:30:25.847" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T07:30:25.847" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13643" CreationDate="2013-05-08T08:09:18.367" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, cheese is high in tryptophan which increases chance of dreaming, and red wine contains alcohol, which is related to causing nightmares&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nightbusiness.wordpress.com/2009/07/10/does-cheese-cause-nightmares/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Article called 'Does Cheese Cause Nightmares?'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does Cheese affect our dreams? The answer is a BIG “yes”. Cheese&#xA;  contains tryptophan – an amino acid which has been found to lower and&#xA;  relieve stress and also acts as a mild sedative that induces sleep.&#xA;  People who eat food high in tryptophan yield a higher dream&#xA;  recollection rate and more vivid dreams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tryptophan on wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clinical research has shown mixed results with respect to tryptophan's effectiveness as a sleep aid, especially in normal patients.[20][21][22] Tryptophan has shown some effectiveness for treatment of a variety of other conditions typically associated with low serotonin levels in the brain.[23] In particular, tryptophan has shown some promise as an antidepressant alone[24] and as an &quot;augmenter&quot; of antidepressant drugs.[24][25] However, the reliability of these clinical trials has been questioned because of lack of formal controls and repeatability.[26][27][28] In addition, tryptophan itself may not be useful in the treatment of depression or other serotonin-dependent moods, but may be useful in understanding the chemical pathways that will give new research directions for pharmaceuticals.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cheddar cheese contains 0.32g Tryptophan per 100g cheese.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; Cheese, mozzarella, part skim milk, low moisture Tryptophan: &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-001079000000000000000-w.html?maxCount=58&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;603mg&lt;/a&gt; Different types of cheese contains different amounts of it, but overall cheese is high in tryptophan amounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022395682900127&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1g is enough to show effect&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The weight of evidence indicates that L-tryptophan in doses of 1 g or more produces an increase in rated subjective sleepiness and a decrease in sleep latency (time to sleep).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20130318-908367.html?mod=crnews&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Good sleep positive dreams&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. Servin Díaz notes that when tryptophan is digested through food or beverages, it is converted into the sleep-inducing substances serotonin and melatonin. Together, serotonin and melatonin both help slow down the nervous system, helping the body relax and prepare the body for sleep. People who lack proper sleep suffer from sleepiness, irritability and have shorter attention spans throughout the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect of tryptophan seems to be fairly well documented. And cheese contains fairly high amounts of tryptophan. This does help to sleep, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tryptophan is remade into melatonin&lt;/a&gt; which increases &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin#Dreaming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;chance of dreaming.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Serotonin (a neurotransmitter), synthesized via tryptophan&#xA;  hydroxylase. Serotonin, in turn, can be converted to melatonin&#xA;  (a neurohormone), via N-acetyltransferase and&#xA;  5-hydroxyindole-O-methyltransferase activities&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tryptophan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Tryptophan can be turned into melatonin, which then makes you dream more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some supplemental melatonin users report an increase in vivid dreaming. Extremely high doses of melatonin (50 mg) dramatically increased REM sleep time and dream activity in people both with and without narcolepsy.[57] It has been suggested that nonpolar (lipid-soluble) indolic hallucinogenic drugs emulate melatonin activity in the awakened state and that both act on the same areas of the brain.[57]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On to the part about alcohol increasing chance of nightmares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/553877-does-red-wine-affect-dreams/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Article called 'Does red wine affect dreams?'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drinking red wine and other alcohol not only disrupts the second half&#xA;  of your sleep time, it may cause you to have bad or unusual dreams.&#xA;  You cannot experience deep quality sleep until the alcohol leaves your&#xA;  body. Therefore, you may have strange dreams as the alcohol leaves&#xA;  your body and the REM dream state interferes with the deep sleep state&#xA;  that the alcohol was preventing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pms.1986.62.3.717?journalCode=pms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paper about alcoholics and nightmare&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Summary. - In a sample of 78 female alcohol and drug addicts 24.4% marked True the Item 31(&quot;I have nightmares every few nights&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is for both drug users and alcohol users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only 19 women(24.4%) responded True to Item 31. The proportion is similar to that of the  proceeding study (2) of male alcoholics(25.6%) and is significant higher than in a representative sample of 147 normal US Midwest women between 30- and 39-yr-old: only 8.2% of the normals indicated having &quot;nightmares every few nights&quot; in respones to Item 31&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While alcoholics MIGHT have nightmares of other reasons like post traumatic stress disorder which is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1023/A:1011152405048/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;common reason to turn into alcoholics&lt;/a&gt; in first place, the number is so much significantly higher, at least as circumstantial evidence it's of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1452468/pdf/cmaj00227-0078.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Early Identification of alcohol problems&lt;/a&gt; have nightmares as a symptom of high usage of alcohol. &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6wWom.png&quot; alt=&quot;Signs of alcoholism&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later on it lists Insomnia and nightmares as indications of alcohol problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alcohol seems to have effect on nightmares, but what about red wine specifically? Red wine will increase risk of nightmares if it's drunk in high amounts, near sleep time, but what about just drinking red wine in moderate amounts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except for anecdotal evidence I found nothing proving that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eating cheese seems to increase chance of you having dreams, since it contains high amounts of tryptophan, which is an amino acid that is sleep inducing, and increases chance of remember the dreams. &#xA;Alcohol seems to increase chance of having a bad dream as the alcohol leaves your body. But mainly if drunk in greater amounts.&#xA;This mix means you have higher chance of having a vivid and strong dream, and higher chance of having a nightmare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-11T12:16:10.610" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T12:16:10.610" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="34725" CreationDate="2013-05-08T08:12:39.477" Score="11" ViewCount="8876" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/229.Abraham_Lincoln?page=2&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; and 2800+ others, Abraham Lincoln said: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.” (sic)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find a source. Did Abraham Lincoln say it, or is it just someone that attributed it to him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-08T08:46:34.147" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T18:40:44.203" Title="Did Abraham Lincoln say &quot;I would rather be a little nobody, then to be a evil somebody.&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16168" CreationDate="2013-05-08T11:03:49.043" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 2003 Bam earthquake was (almost certainly) &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; caused by a nuclear test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The US in 2013 don't think Iran yet has this capability&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very unlikely that, ten years ago, Iran already had a viable nuclear weapon and was able to carry out full-scale test explosions without other countries being able to positively confirm it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A senior U.S. official told The New York Times, &quot;It's very possible that the North Koreans are testing for two countries.&quot; It would be foolish for Iran to test a nuclear weapon on its own soil. &lt;strong&gt;Nuclear weapons cannot be detonated in secret; they leave unique seismic markers that can be traced back to their source&lt;/strong&gt;. An in-country test would simply confirm the existence of a program that for years Iran has denied.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/02/27/iran-north-korea-nuclear-bomb/1952273/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;USA Today, February 28, 2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My emphasis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Israeli reporters in 2013 don't think Iran yet has the capability&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Western assessments, the capacity to assemble a nuclear warhead that can be delivered via Shahab missile technology is one of the last remaining obstacles to an Iranian nuclear strike capability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesofisrael.com/iranian-nuke-chief-was-in-n-korea-for-atomic-test/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Times of Israel, February 17, 2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems unlikely that either source would be motivated to underestimate Iran's capabilities to the extent that Iran could in fact have detonated a nuclear warhead ten years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Seismic signatures and other ways to tell earthquakes from nukes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/military/how-to-find-a-nuclear-explosion-in-north-korea&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IEEE article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it’s interesting to ponder how the seismologists can tell the difference between a nuclear bomb and a run-of-the-mill earthquake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you set off a big bomb underground, you would generate seismic waves. As with an earthquake, these waves would go zooming out all over the world if the energy released is large enough. The pattern of first motions is, however, quite different from what happens after an earthquake. It won’t show that one side of a fault went one way while the other side went the opposite. Rather, the set of seismic measurements would show that the initial motion was uniformly outward all around the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite these complications, seismic measurements are pretty reliable for monitoring nuclear tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Depth&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to distinguish the two may be the depth of the seismic event, as detected by seismographs. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/seismology/determining_depth.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Determining depth&lt;/a&gt;. Normal earthquakes have a depth of 0 to 700 Km. I believe nuclear tests are not so deep. The Bam earthquake was at &lt;a href=&quot;http://trs-new.jpl.nasa.gov/dspace/bitstream/2014/6195/1/04-0923.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;5 km&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iiees.ac.ir/iiees/english/bank/bam/bam_report_english_geo.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;8 km depth&lt;/a&gt; (quite shallow), Nuclear tests are usually at depths &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/tests/hob.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;less than 1 Km&lt;/a&gt;, The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.damninteresting.com/the-deepest-hole/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;deepest borehole&lt;/a&gt; ever dug was 12 km and took 24 years to dig (it was not related to nuclear testing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-05-09T19:06:33.680" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T19:06:33.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16178" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16181" CreationDate="2013-05-08T11:30:59.570" Score="20" ViewCount="5025" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia's page on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Israel and weapons of mass destructioni&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Israel is widely believed to possess weapons of mass destruction, and to be one of four nuclear-armed countries not recognized as a Nuclear Weapons State by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The US Congress Office of Technology Assessment has recorded Israel as a country generally reported as having undeclared chemical warfare capabilities, and an offensive biological warfare program. Officially Israel neither confirms nor denies possessing nuclear weapons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is believed that Israel had possessed an operational nuclear weapons capability by 1967, with the mass production of nuclear warheads occurring immediately after the Six-Day War. Although no official statistics exist, it has been estimated that Israel possesses from 75 to as many as 400 nuclear weapons, which are reported to include thermonuclear weapons in the megaton range. Israel is also reported to possess a wide range of different systems, including neutron bombs, tactical nuclear weapons, and suitcase nukes. Israel is believed to manufacture its nuclear weapons at the Negev Nuclear Research Center.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Israeli government maintains a policy of deliberate ambiguity on whether it has nuclear weapons, saying only that it would &amp;quot;not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East.&amp;quot; Former International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei regarded Israel as a state possessing nuclear weapons. Much of what is known about Israel's nuclear program comes from revelations in 1986 by Mordechai Vanunu, a technician at the Negev Nuclear Research Center who served an 18-year prison sentence as a result. Israel has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, but supports establishment of a Middle East Zone free of weapons of mass destruction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It puzzles me that there is no concern in the world over whether Israel has nuclear weapons or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11740" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T09:11:15.240" Title="Does Israel have nuclear weapons?" Tags="|nuclear-weapons|israel|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16178" CreationDate="2013-05-08T12:08:52.200" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesofisrael.com/only-the-nuclear-option-can-work-against-iran-former-idf-chief-says/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Article in The Times of Israel&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;well, if a senior IDFAF officer states it, I'd seriously consider it to be true :) (never mind the standard anti Semitic rants in the comments section to the article)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, Israel has always had an official policy to neither confirm nor deny the existence of nuclear weapons in their arsenal, so unless they actually use one there's no way to ever be certain. But they are known to have the capability to produce them (the technology, reactors, etc.) and certainly a clear incentive, being surrounded by hostile nations (including at a distance Iran) who would like nothing better than to wipe out the Jewish state and its population, several of which countries are known or strongly suspected of having extensive stockpiles of chemical weapons and/or to be working on their own nuclear weapons (like Iran).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rense.com/general26/historw.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;History Of Nuclear Weapons - Israel&lt;/a&gt; has a timeline and some estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course with so much about Israel on the web being seriously questionable because of the anti-Israeli and anti Semitic propaganda which is so rampant, it's very hard to get objective data (a Google search found mostly sources that were little more than rants about &quot;evil Jews wanting to destroy the world&quot; and such, one source even claimed even Israel has used nuclear in combat against civilians, clearly bogus but makes for great propaganda if your audience are illiterate peasants in Syria or Iran).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/421827/nuclear-weapon/275665/Israel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Britannica&lt;/a&gt; lists the existence as fact, and can usually be relied on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to it being no concern, remember that Israel is a peaceful nation that doesn't threaten its neighbors, employs its armed forces only in self defense, and even then uses great restraint to prevent civilian casualties where possible. They have also publicly stated they will not be the first to use weapons of mass destruction in the region, though you might take that as being meaningless as within the larger region chemical weapons have already been used in prolific amounts albeit not against Israel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main concern therefore becomes ensuring that Israel never comes into a situation where they have to choose between using nuclear weapons or being destroyed themselves, exactly the reason why Israel has a nuclear arsenal in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2013-05-09T05:51:40.157" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T05:51:40.157" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16178" CreationDate="2013-05-08T14:11:56.303" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;It's officially unknown.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what is known to be true for sure (those, and only those, are the facts):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Israel has two atomic reactors, &lt;a href=&quot;http://iaec.gov.il/English/Soreq/Pages/default.aspx&quot;&gt;one in Soreq&lt;/a&gt;, near the city of Yavne, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://iaec.gov.il/English/NRCN/Pages/default.aspx&quot;&gt;one in the Negev&lt;/a&gt;, near the city of Dimona. (Wiki articles for both: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soreq_Nuclear_Research_Center&quot;&gt;Soreq&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negev_Nuclear_Research_Center&quot;&gt;Negev (AKA Dimona)&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The one in Sorek is open to visits, and will be closed by 2018. While the Negev reactor is highly classified and guarded by various means, the airspace above it is a no fly zone, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://iaf.org.il/3567-12812-HE/IAF.aspx&quot;&gt;during the 6-days war, an Israeli fighter plane that accidentally entered that airspace was shot down&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;According to Israel, the nuclear reactors are used for science, education and disposal of radioactive materials. (See links in the first bullet).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Israel government, or any official body, have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel#Policy&quot;&gt;never officially&lt;/a&gt; confirmed nor denied Israel's Nuclear capabilities. This policy even has a special name in Hebrew &lt;a href=&quot;http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%93%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%92%D7%A8%D7%A2%D7%99%D7%9F_%D7%A9%D7%9C_%D7%99%D7%A9%D7%A8%D7%90%D7%9C&quot;&gt; &quot;עמימות גרעינית&quot;&lt;/a&gt; or &quot;Nuclear Ambiguity&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No other government (which isn't in war with Israel) has ever publicly and oficialy acknowledged that Israel has Nuclear weapons.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;During an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3338783,00.html&quot;&gt;interview&lt;/a&gt; to a German TV station in 2006 Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister at the time said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel and Russia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, however, is not a full official acknowledgment. At the same interview Olmert said twice that Israel never claimed to have Nuclear Weapons, and on the next day said that there is no change in Israel's ambiguity policy, and that Israel will not be the first to introduce Nuclear weapons to the area.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of speculation on the matter, most of it is presented very well in the wiki page that the question cites (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;), and in the wiki about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Israel&quot;&gt;Israel's nuclear weapons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why is Iran under sanctions while Israel gets a free pass?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, there is a lot more evidence for supposed Israeli nuclear capabilities than there are for Iran. Yet Iran is under international sanctions because of this suspicion and Israel isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference is that Israel together with India ,Pakistan and South Sudan are the only nations in the world that have not signed the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Nonproliferation_Treaty&quot;&gt;Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons&lt;/a&gt; (North Korea has signed but later withdrawn from it) which says that only the U.S., USSR (now-days The Russian Federation), France, Britain and China will have nuclear weapons and will not proliferate them. Iran, unlike Israel, Pakistan and India has signed the treaty, which means that it has agreed to use Nuclear Energy only in a peaceful manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the difference between Iran and Israel, Pakistan and India, countries which are in a constant state of war for more than 60 years and have either admitted to have Nuclear weapons, or are suspecting of having them, &lt;strong&gt;but have never made a public obligation to not have them&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-09-19T09:11:15.240" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T09:11:15.240" CommentCount="29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16178" CreationDate="2013-05-08T14:15:08.577" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, Israel has been known to have nuclear capability since the late 1960s.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As recently declassified documents show, they've reached secret agreement with US administration, which'd turn the blind eye. On the other hand Israel would maintain it's policy of deliberate ambiguity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/&quot;&gt;National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 189&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Israel Crosses the Threshold&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Senior Nixon Administration Officials Considered Confronting Israel over Nuclear Weapons in 1969 but President Nixon Declined, Deciding&#xA;  that Washington Could Live with an Undeclared Israeli Bomb, According&#xA;  to Newly Declassified Documents and a Study in the Bulletin of the&#xA;  Atomic Scientists Posted Today&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Washington, DC, April 28, 2006 - Today the National Security Archive&#xA;  publishes for the first time 30 recently declassified U.S. government&#xA;  documents disclosing the existence of a highly secret policy debate,&#xA;  during the first year of the Nixon administration, over the Israeli&#xA;  nuclear weapons program. Broadly speaking, the debate was over whether&#xA;  it was feasible--either politically or technically--for the Nixon&#xA;  administration to try to prevent Israel from crossing the nuclear&#xA;  threshold, or whether the U.S. should find some &quot;ground rules&quot; which&#xA;  would allow it to live with a nuclear Israel. The documents published&#xA;  by the Archive are the primary sources for an article by Avner Cohen&#xA;  and William Burr, &quot;Israel crosses the threshold,&quot; that appears in the&#xA;  May-June 2006 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.&#xA;  [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among the key findings in the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1969 was a turning point in the U.S.-Israeli nuclear relationship.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Israel already had a nuclear device by 1967, but it was not until 1968-1969 that U.S. officials concluded that an Israeli bomb was about&#xA;  to become a physical and political reality. U.S. government officials&#xA;  believed that Israel was reaching a state &quot;whereby all the components&#xA;  for a weapon are at hand, awaiting only final assembly and testing.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;By 1975, in keeping with the understanding with Israel, the State Department refused to tell Congress that it was certain that Israel had the bomb, &lt;strong&gt;even though U.S. intelligence was convinced that it did&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-05-08T14:26:33.993" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T14:26:33.993" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16185" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-08T18:54:03.000" Score="10" ViewCount="3210" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many antibiotics have a warning that they can reduce the effect of hormonal birth control pills for the duration of the treatment + up to 7 days after. But I have heard many claims that this is an &quot;old wives' tale&quot;, or at the very least that there is no scientific correlation. Is there any truth in it? Is it a case of &quot;better safe than sorry&quot;, or is there no reason to assume that taking antibiotics should have any effect whatsoever on bc pills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13731" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T13:53:29.727" Title="Do antibiotics reduce the efficacy of birth control?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16185" CreationDate="2013-05-08T21:11:39.973" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is only one specific class of antibiotics that has a well understood mechanism for interfering with birth control. For the majority of antibiotics, however, there are very few studies showing an effect on birth control, except in a relatively small population of women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/drugs/mono-295-AMOXICILLIN+SUSPENSION+-+ORAL.aspx?drugid=1531&amp;amp;drugname=amoxicillin%20oral&quot;&gt;webmd.com (Amoxicillin oral interactions)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although most antibiotics probably do not affect hormonal birth control such as pills, patch, or ring, some antibiotics may decrease their effectiveness. This could cause pregnancy. Examples include rifamycins such as rifampin or rifabutin. Be sure to ask your doctor or pharmacist if you should use additional reliable birth control methods while using this antibiotic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/drugs/drug-1744-rifampin+oral.aspx?drugid=1744&amp;amp;drugname=rifampin%20oral&quot;&gt;webmd.com (Rifampin oral interactions)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This medication may decrease the effectiveness of hormonal birth control such as pills, patch, or ring. This could cause pregnancy. Discuss with your doctor or pharmacist if you should use additional reliable birth control methods while using this medication. Also tell your doctor if you have any new spotting or breakthrough bleeding, because these may be signs that your birth control is not working well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010782499000098&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Interaction between broad-spectrum antibiotics and the combined oral contraceptive pill: A literature review&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rifampicin and griseofulvin induce hepatic enzymes and do appear to have a genuine interaction with the [combined oral contraceptive pill], leading to reduced efficacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from the same article, but about broad-spectrum antibiotics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given the serious consequences of unwanted pregnancy, the cautious approach of using additional or alternative contraception during short courses of broad-spectrum antibiotics and the initial weeks of long-term antibiotic administration may be justified to safeguard the few unidentifiable women who may be at risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is not an old wives' tale. There is truth in it. It is a case of &quot;better safe than sorry&quot; regarding broad-spectrum antibiotics. It is false that there is no reason to assume that taking antibiotics should have any effect whatsoever on birth control pills. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-05-08T21:32:28.313" LastActivityDate="2013-05-08T21:32:28.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16188" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16189" CreationDate="2013-05-09T08:06:24.113" Score="13" ViewCount="5724" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Barack Obama say the following?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dt0i4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image posted on twitter&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;They'll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.&#xA;  You should reject those voices.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is contrasted to Jefferson saying &quot;When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(There's a logo of &quot;Gun Owners of America&quot; in the top left hand corner)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2022-08-17T19:11:37.033" Title="Did Obama tell people to ignore those warning against tyranny?" Tags="|quotes|government|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16188" CreationDate="2013-05-09T08:09:36.630" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes he did. It may have been taken &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/05/05/remarks-president-ohio-state-university-commencement&quot;&gt;a bit out of context&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of&#xA;  government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s&#xA;  at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing&#xA;  their best to gum up the works.  They’ll warn that tyranny is always&#xA;  lurking just around the corner.  You should reject these voices. &#xA;  Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique&#xA;  experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be&#xA;  trusted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2013-05-09T08:09:36.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16192" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16209" CreationDate="2013-05-09T13:30:22.997" Score="9" ViewCount="5863" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many churches around the world claim to hold pieces of the True Cross, the cross upon which Jesus was actually crucified. However, I doubt that any of their claims are valid. Two thousand years is a long time, and I doubt that the Romans (or anyone else for that matter) were like &quot;oh, let's save this cross and keep track of it because we killed the son of God on it&quot;. Death by crucifixion wasn't an uncommon punishment at the time, is there any historical evidence to indicate that Jesus was a notable prisoner at the time and was worth having his related artifacts kept track of? For a more contemporary example, the table on which the Japanese Instrument of Surrender was signed was lost mere minutes after the signing ceremony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A notable church that claims to hold a piece of the True Cross is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional evidence against claims of the True Cross come from a statement by John Calvin, who noted the exceedingly large quantity of cross fragments throughout Europe after the middle ages and snarked that it was enough to fill a boat,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There is no abbey so poor as not to have a specimen. In some places there are large fragments, as at the Holy Chapel in Paris, at Poitiers, and at Rome, where a good-sized crucifix is said to have been made of it. In brief, if all the pieces that could be found were collected together, they would make a big ship-load. Yet the Gospel testifies that a single man was able to carry it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the conflicting claims from various churches, and lineages contaminated with religious bias, is there any historical or empirical evidence that may indicate which fragments are authentic, if any?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(of course, this all begs the questions of &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1624/is-there-any-verifiable-historical-and-or-scientific-evidence-that-jesus-lived&quot;&gt;whether Jesus existed&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9106/was-jesus-crucified?rq=1&quot;&gt;whether he was crucified&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7040" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T02:40:07.650" Title="Are any fragments of the True Cross authentic?" Tags="|jesus-christ|christianity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16194" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16212" CreationDate="2013-05-09T16:27:58.043" Score="17" ViewCount="5747" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across this &lt;a href=&quot;http://americangunfacts.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Gun Facts&lt;/a&gt; web-site recently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every year, guns are used over 80x more often to protect a life than to take one!*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Based upon Kleck &amp;amp; Gertz estimates of 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year (see source #2). A similar study in 1994 under President Clinton (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=dcdetail&amp;amp;iid=245&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;) found this number to be 1.5 million, which would result in guns being used over 47x more often to defend a life than to take one.&#xA;According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, about 436,000 crimes were committed with a firearm in 2008 (Source). This would mean guns are used 5.7 or 3.4 times (using Kleck or Clinton respectively) more often to defend against a crime than to commit one.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder how truthful it really is? Even if the numbers presented are correct, it seems that they present it in a way that is not completely honest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The principal claim (among many other related claims arguing that gun ownership is a net positive for american society) is that, for every incident where a gun is used in a suicide or assault, 80 or more incidents occur where a gun protects someone from harm (assault, rape, burglary...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims being made do not seem entirely trustworthy as they frequently don't quote relevant context and mix and match unrelated statistics from non-comparable sources to produce a propaganda message rather than quoting comparable statistics that might enlighten a disinterested observer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is the principal claim even remotely verifiable with reliable and relevant statistics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13740" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T14:37:04.800" Title="Are guns in the USA used 80 times more often to protect life than to take it?" Tags="|united-states|guns|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16108" CreationDate="2013-05-09T18:36:02.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;(too long for a comment)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;are, supposing the fix has been done properly, repaired tires in general &lt;strong&gt;as good as new ones&lt;/strong&gt;. If the answer is no, then I know for sure that my specific tire at least has a chance of being &lt;strong&gt;unsafe&lt;/strong&gt;, and I can have it &lt;strong&gt;replaced by a new one&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You are asking three different things, and I think that is the cause of the confusion here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As good as new&quot; is something quite different from &quot;safe&quot;, and still different from whether replacing the tire it is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A repaired tire is usually not as good as a new one&lt;/strong&gt;. If only for the fact that is has already been a &lt;strong&gt;used&lt;/strong&gt; one before the repair was done. Here's one property that severely suffers by the fact that there has been a damage (although repaired): the price you can get when trying to sell it. Unfortunately, I don't have literature substantiate this claim, but here's an experiment you can conduct: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buy new tires, and sell them (providing the original bill) in order to determine the market value. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buy new tires. Drive them for a while. Sell  (providing the original bill) to determine the market value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buy new tires. Drive them for the same while. Take them off, puncture them with a small hole in the repairable area and have the puncture repaired. This way, the repair does not interfere with safety, and no other damage can have happened.  Sell  (providing the original bill and the repair bill) to determine the market value.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surrogate experiment: call a few tire companies and ask them about the price  for these 3 categories. Ask also for rationales of how they arrive at their price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not forget to tell us the outcome of your experiment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, all this doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the actual safety of the tire. It is like asking wheter a rather new car is as good as a new one after it had an accident and the damage was properly repaired.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, while I have been buying and driving used tires, I wouldn't buy repaired car/truck tires: In order to be OK with a repaired tire,  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'd insist on personally inspecting the inside of the tire.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'd insist on know the history of the damage and repair&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A tire that slowly goes flat is no option. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Points 2 and 3 I cannot possibly check when buying a tire. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As for the &lt;strong&gt;safety&lt;/strong&gt;, let me add to @RedGrittyBrick's excellent answer some further points about tire repair in Germany (which I consider equivalent to the linked UK rules). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tyresystem.de/Reifen/Information/Richtlinie-Instandsetzung&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;repair instructions&lt;/a&gt; (the UK ones linked by @RedGrittyBrick, do, too!) include that the person doing the repair has to check the interior of the tire for signs of other damage (as e.g. due to low pressure driving). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is even possible to repair high-speed tires in certain cases &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adac.de/infotestrat/reifen/profil-kauf-und-montage/Reifenreparatur/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[Ref: no restrictions on type of tire]&lt;/a&gt;. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://reifenunion.de/html/reparatur.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the possibilities are restricted&lt;/a&gt;: only few repair kit manufacturers offer this and only for certain makes of tires (the repair kit has a specification of allowed use). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://reifenunion.de/html/reparatur.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The person/company who does the repair is responsible for the safety.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the tire workshop, selling a new tire probably means more profit earned in less time. Together with the liability question this is a strong incentive to accept the repair order only if they are absolutely certain that the repair is safe. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reifendefekt#Pkw-Reifen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;your &lt;em&gt;insurance&lt;/em&gt; may pose further restrictions on driving repaired tires.&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;it is possible to repair cretain tire damages safely.&lt;/strong&gt; @RedGrittyBrick showed that before already. IMHO you cannot possibly get any further answer to the safety question.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easy to find evidence about the danger of improper tire repair, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tirereview.com/Article/85680/228_million_faulty_tire_repair_entirely_avoidable.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;like this&lt;/a&gt;. However, I did not find any statistics on the reliability of properly done repair.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add 3 more data points to the discussion: I've personally been driving 3 tires (light truck 2.8 t, vmax 110 km/h) that had been punctured (by something leaving &amp;lt; 1mm hole) on a parking and have been repaired. I never drove them at too low pressure. I've been driving then something between 25000 and 50000 km thereafter. I have to double-check but I think one of them is still &quot;in service&quot;. The others meanwhile were replaced, but their &quot;end&quot; had nothing to do with that puncture or repair.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;That is 0 repair-related failures out of 3 cases, which translates to a 95% confidence interval for the true probability of a failure after properly done repair between 0 and 70%. This illustrates that 3 data points do not allow much conclusions. But they are a starting point for collecting more evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, but not least, for the third question you ask &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Should I buy a new tire?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, I recommend quickly calculating how much a new tire costs, and balance that againt the hours you're still going to spend on worrying about the repaired tire. Could it be that the hourly wage for your worries is very low? In that case, you may want decide to buy a new tire regardless of the technical condition of the repaired tire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastEditorUserId="8865" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T12:30:40.593" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T12:30:40.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16198" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16210" CreationDate="2013-05-09T22:40:37.390" Score="8" ViewCount="5609" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard it a lot and read somewhere that he was homosexual like one of answers under the same question &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130328130002AALWIqq&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's rather possible. He had been charged sometime in the late 1400's with sodomy as well as three other men. With the exception of Beatrice and Isabella Este, {two sisters, one of whom he painted, Isabella} it has been said that Leonardo had no close relationships with women and kept his private life rather to himself. In the 16th century many speculated about Leonardo de Vinci's sexuality and possible sexual encounters with his pupils, Salai and Melzi. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found it doubtful as there is not any accurate reference in the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11740" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-05-09T23:52:33.287" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T22:15:39.843" Title="Was Leonardo da Vinci homosexual?" Tags="|sexuality|italy|leonardo-da-vinci|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16199" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-10T01:15:03.550" Score="4" ViewCount="487" Body="&lt;p&gt;Psychic-Medium &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kimberlybunch.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kimbery Bunch&lt;/a&gt; claims in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oKnOo9kGY8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a video&lt;/a&gt; meditation can help you to astral travel, remote view or to have bilocation abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Video claims that she can &quot;astral travel&quot; spiritually come out of the body see her own body from outside, &quot;remote view&quot; She can &quot;spiritually&quot; see exactly what her husband (or boy friend) do when he is physically away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it all real or possible to do?  Has anyone researched it or do we have any proof? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10867" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-10T13:39:44.517" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T20:28:58.590" Title="Is it possible to do astral travel?" Tags="|esp|psychics|meditation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2014-05-05T22:34:26.437" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16166" CreationDate="2013-05-10T12:21:48.767" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The jammers described in your &lt;a href=&quot;http://smallmedia.org.uk/sites/default/files/Satellite%20Jamming.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;, are standard ones manufactured by Chinese manufacturer WLT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Established in 2002 with  Chinese government  shareholdings, WLT is a &#xA;  high-tech Chinese manufacturer and exporter that  specialises in&#xA;  security and  ‘protection projects’.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://tiny.cc/nr4zmw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://tiny.cc/nr4zmw&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The offer &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wonderlandtec.com/viewphoto.php?tid=21&amp;amp;fenlei=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3 types of satellite jammers&lt;/a&gt;, C-band, K&lt;sub&gt;u&lt;/sub&gt; -band and dual C- &amp;amp; K&lt;sub&gt;u&lt;/sub&gt;-band. The dual-band one is most powerful of the 3. It's output is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Frequency: 3.7-4.2GHz(C Band) and 11.7–12.2Ghz(Ku Band)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Output power: 10Watt each band(20Watt optional)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If low-intensity microwave radiation causes any health problems is an open issue. It has been addressed here for example in this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1178/are-wifi-waves-harmful&quot;&gt;Are WiFi waves harmful?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are studies suggesting biological effects beyond thermal effect. See for example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/peh-emf/meetings/archive/en/paper03nageswari.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Biological Effects of Microwaves and Mobile Telephony&lt;/a&gt;, however later studies did not confirm that, rather the opposite, found this to be nocebo effect (for example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2072835/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does Short-Term Exposure to Mobile Phone Base Station Signals Increase Symptoms in Individuals Who Report Sensitivity to Electromagnetic Fields? A Double-Blind Randomized Provocation Study&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two 20W antennas might be a health risk, while standing next to it, just from the thermal effects alone. This kind of output power is in line with  typical cell phone tower. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt; satellite jamming might be unhealthy, but most likely not any more than exposure to cell phone towers. On the other hand, since it's done in secrecy, there is no way of knowing if the placement of antennas conforms to any safety guidelines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T12:21:48.767" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10623" CreationDate="2013-05-10T13:00:59.430" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No it was most probably not made by Muhammad Ali&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching the web, and I haven't been able to find anywhere he actually said it. Only things I find is the adidas ad. Looking at the words &quot;Impossible is nothing&quot; through books it only appeared &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adidas-group.com/en/investorrelations/assets/pdf/annual_reports/2004/gb04_englisch_boerse.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;after 2004&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Impossible%20is%20nothing&amp;amp;year_start=1900&amp;amp;year_end=2008&amp;amp;corpus=15&amp;amp;smoothing=0&amp;amp;share=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Ngrams search for Impossible is nothing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Muhammad_Ali&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikiquotes&lt;/a&gt; and the impossible quote is not listed there. When looking at the web, it's probably the most famous quote &quot;by him&quot;, so it's very surprising it's not listed by wikiquotes, if he actually said it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Impossible is Nothing&quot; was the previous mainstream marketing slogan for Adidas. This campaign was developed by 180/TBWA based in Amsterdam but also with significant work being done by TBWA/Chiat/Day in San Francisco – particularly for its basketball campaign &quot;Believe in Five&quot;.TBWA\Chiat\Day commissioned Zane Peach[41] to produce images for 2007 international ad campaign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adidas#Marketing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia link about adidas marketing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://quotevadis.com/post/4046940916/impossible-is-nothing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;QuoteVadis: Impossible is nothing&lt;/a&gt; gives the credit for the quote to &quot;&lt;em&gt;— Anonymous for Adidas advertisement campaign.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote is probably made by Adidas and not Muhammad Ali, but I don't have conclusive proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote might have been made by John C. Maxwell in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brian-rossi.com/branded_pdf/THE%20DIFFERENCE%20MAKER.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;THE DIFFERENCE MAKER; page 53&lt;/a&gt;(Credits to Urthone), I haven't found the full quote in use before that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the &#xA;  world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not &#xA;  a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. &#xA;  Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” Page: 53&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-06T11:33:36.220" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T11:33:36.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6615" CreationDate="2013-05-10T19:27:02.530" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I could not find any academic studies on this topic, but there is a good discussion of grinders in November 1, 2001 issue of &lt;em&gt;Cook's Illustrated&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;em&gt;Cook's Illustrated&lt;/em&gt; is not science, but they do provide empirically-based and often experimentally-informed opinions (in contrast with other cooking / kitchen equipment review outfits).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20141106005055/http://www.cooksillustrated.com/equipment_reviews/638-coffee-grinders?&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cook's&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The burr grinders produced a more even grind, but tasters didn’t find that more evenly ground coffee translated into improved flavor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasters did prefer the rich body of burr-ground coffee, but they also noticed the tendency of this coffee to taste slightly bitter, owing in part, no doubt, to the more fine and even grind, which made for the coffee’s greater exposure to and prolonged contact with the water in the coffee maker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were surprised to discover that the coffee brewed with blade-ground beans was less likely to turn out bitter. The tasters did note that coffee from blade-ground beans had less body than coffee from burr-ground beans, but we were happy to sacrifice a little body for the reduced risk of brewing bitter coffee.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as John Manzo reminds us in &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150525142748/http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10746-010-9159-4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Coffee, Connoisseurship, and an Ethnomethodologically-Informed Sociology of Taste&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Hum Stud&lt;/em&gt;, 2010 33:141–155)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘‘taste’’ evinced by the coffee geek is ‘‘social,’’ [...] it is shared, understood, delineated, deﬁned, made sense of, and generally appreciated as and oriented to as an aspect of the social groups and networks that constitute the subculture itself.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, buying expensive burr grinders and talking about them online or with your friends will help you get &amp;quot;props&amp;quot; from fellow coffee geeks. The coffee may even taste better to you, because taste is not wholly objective, and is, in part, a socially-constructed thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20141106005055/http://www.cooksillustrated.com/equipment_reviews/638-coffee-grinders&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20141106005055/http://www.cooksillustrated.com/equipment_reviews/638-coffee-grinders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150525142748/http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10746-010-9159-4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20150525142748/http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10746-010-9159-4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T17:50:03.270" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16192" CreationDate="2013-05-10T22:06:42.183" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;: probably not, but we can't really tell for sure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Prologue: This is a hard question, and unanswerable at this point&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a problematic question to answer. It's a very hard question to answer, even if the relics were given for scientific examination, which doesn't happen. More over, the answer to this question relies on the answers to several other question, like &quot;Was there a real person that would match the description of Jesus&quot;, &quot;Was this man crucified&quot; and &quot;Was he crucifies on a cross, and not on another Crucifixion devise, like a T shaped stand or a pole?&quot; Questions to which we do not have a proven scientific answer as of this date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously if Jesus didn't exist, or if he wasn't crucified on a cross a &quot;True Cross&quot; can not exist. And those are question which we can't answer with a positive &quot;Yes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First part: what question can we answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously that the best way to examine the claims is to take each piece of alleged wood and check from what time it is, and from what wood. Pieces that would be to young or made of wood that wasn't used by the Romans for crucifiction would immediately be rejected and proven as forgery. But the relics aren't put under this test, and even if some will pass this, this doesn't mean that they are of the true cross, it would just mean that they were cut before 30 AD and are of the same wood that the Romans used for crucifictions&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can look at the &quot;evidence&quot; that are presented to us, mainly the story of how the true cross was found, and judge if the evidence present at that occasion were enough to assume that the cross that was found is indeed the true cross.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second Part: How the &quot;True Cross&quot; was found&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The true cross doesn't have a well documented chain of custody. Here is what the catholic church says about its origin (Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04517a.htm&quot;&gt;The Catholic Encyclopedia&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second event was of even greater importance. In the year 326 the mother of Constantine, Helena, then about 80 years old, having journeyed to Jerusalem, undertook to rid the Holy Sepulchre of the mound of earth heaped upon and around it, and to destroy the pagan buildings that profaned its site, Some revelations which she had received gave her confidence that she would discover the Saviour's Tomb and His Cross. The work was carried on diligently, with the co-operation of St. Macarius, bishop of the city. The Jews had hidden the Cross in a ditch or well, and covered it over with stones, so that the faithful might not come and venerate it. Only a chosen few among the Jews knew the exact spot where it had been hidden, and one of them, named Judas, touched by Divine inspiration, pointed it out to the excavators, for which act he was highly praised by St. Helena. Judas afterwards became a Christian saint, and is honoured under the name of Cyriacus. During the excavation three crosses were found, but because the titulus was detached from the Cross of Christ, there was no means of identifying it. Following an inspiration from on high, Macarius caused the three crosses to be carried, one after the other, to the bedside of a worthy woman who was at the point of death. The touch of the other two was of no avail; but on touching that upon which Christ had died the woman got suddenly well again. From a letter of St. Paulinus to Severus inserted in the Breviary of Paris it would appear that St. Helena. herself had sought by means of a miracle to discover which was the True Cross and that she caused a man already dead and buried to be carried to the spot, whereupon, by contact with the third cross, he came to life. &lt;strong&gt;From yet another tradition, related by St. Ambrose, it would seem that the titulus, or inscription, had remained fastened to the Cross.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See that bolded part (bolded by me)? Even the Catholic church isn't sure of how the true cross was identified. If we look in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Cross#Finding_the_True_Cross&quot;&gt;Wikipedia Page&lt;/a&gt; we see that there are several different descriotion of the erection of the Church, stories that differ by important details including whether the cross was found, the artifacts found with it, and who found it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;According to Eusebius&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eusebius of Caesarea, in his Life of Constantine,[8] describes how the site of the Holy Sepulchre, originally a site of veneration for the Christian community in Jerusalem, had been covered with earth and a temple of Venus had been built on top — although Eusebius does not say as much, this would probably have been done as part of Hadrian's reconstruction of Jerusalem as Aelia Capitolina in 135, following the destruction during the Jewish Revolt of 70 and Bar Kokhba's revolt of 132–135. Following his conversion to Christianity, Emperor Constantine ordered in about 325–326 that the site be uncovered and instructed Saint Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem, to build a church on the site. In his Life of Constantine, Eusebius does not mention the finding of the True Cross.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;According to Socrates Scholasticus&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Socrates Scholasticus (born c. 380), in his Ecclesiastical History, gives a full description of the discovery[9] that was repeated later by Sozomen and by Theodoret. In it he describes how Saint Helena, Constantine's aged mother, had the temple destroyed and the Sepulchre uncovered, whereupon three crosses and the titulus from Jesus's crucifixion were uncovered as well. In Socrates's version of the story, Macarius had the three crosses placed in turn on a deathly ill woman. This woman recovered at the touch of the third cross, which was taken as a sign that this was the cross of Christ, the new Christian symbol. Socrates also reports that, having also found the nails with which Christ had been fastened to the cross, Helena sent these to Constantinople, where they were incorporated into the emperor's helmet and the bridle of his horse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;According to Sozomen&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sozomen (died c. 450), in his Ecclesiastical History, gives essentially the same version as Socrates. He also adds that it was said (by whom he does not say) that the location of the Sepulchre was &quot;disclosed by a Hebrew who dwelt in the East, and who derived his information from some documents which had come to him by paternal inheritance&quot; (although Sozomen himself disputes this account) and that a dead person was also revived by the touch of the Cross. Later popular versions of this story state that the Jew who assisted Helena was named Jude or Judas, but later converted to Christianity and took the name Kyriakos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;According to Theodoret&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The proving of the True Cross, Jean Colombe in the Très Riches Heures.&#xA;  Theodoret (died c. 457) in his Ecclesiastical History Chapter xvii gives what had become the standard version of the finding of the True Cross:&#xA;  When the empress beheld the place where the Saviour suffered, she immediately ordered the idolatrous temple, which had been there erected, to be destroyed, and the very earth on which it stood to be removed. When the tomb, which had been so long concealed, was discovered, three crosses were seen buried near the Lord's sepulchre. All held it as certain that one of these crosses was that of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that the other two were those of the thieves who were crucified with Him. Yet they could not discern to which of the three the Body of the Lord had been brought nigh, and which had received the outpouring of His precious Blood. But the wise and holy Macarius, the president of the city, resolved this question in the following manner. He caused a lady of rank, who had been long suffering from disease, to be touched by each of the crosses, with earnest prayer, and thus discerned the virtue residing in that of the Saviour. For the instant this cross was brought near the lady, it expelled the sore disease, and made her whole.&#xA;  With the Cross were also found the Holy Nails, which Helena took with her back to Constantinople. According to Theodoret, &quot;She had part of the cross of our Saviour conveyed to the palace. The rest was enclosed in a covering of silver, and committed to the care of the bishop of the city, whom she exhorted to preserve it carefully, in order that it might be transmitted uninjured to posterity.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another popular ancient version from the Syriac tradition replaced Helena with a fictitious first-century empress named Protonike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Historians consider these versions to be apocryphal in varying degrees. It is certain, however, that the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre was completed by 335 and that alleged relics of the Cross were being venerated there by the 340s, as they are mentioned in the Catecheses of Cyril of Jerusalem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some problems with the story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One version of the story claims that the Jews hid the true cross to prevent christian from worshiping it. If you want to destroy the relics of another religion, you just destroy it, if the Jews did get hold of the true cross and wanted to prevent the christian from worshiping it, they would have simply burn it, not hide it. Just like the many times that this happen through history, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan&quot;&gt;by the Taliban&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=3141&quot;&gt;by Christians&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple#Destruction_of_the_Temple&quot;&gt;Romans&lt;/a&gt; and many others.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The cross was supposedly dug out of the ground approximately 300 years after its use, and the only proof for its authenticity was a miracle, that wasn't recorded in any other contemporary source.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even though the cross could allegedly heal the dying it was never recorded to be used for this purpose except for the one time when it was identified.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A contemporary source describing the building of the church and destroying of the temple that stood in its place, doesn't bother to include that a very important relic was found, and it completely healed a dying person.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion: the available &quot;proofs&quot; for the relics to be real are not enough&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After examining the origin story, a skeptic must admit that the proofs presented for the validity of the relic are very slim, and do not hold under scientific scrutiny. However this isn't conclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to truly falsify each relic, each of them needs to be examined, firstly to be of the right parameters of age type and origin, and secondly for its miraculous healing powers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;: Unless that piece of wood could raise the dead or heal the sick (like cure AIDS and terminal stage cancer, or regrow limbs, not relieve mild headache), then it's (in my eyes at least) a sufficient evidence that Jesus's story is true, he was/is the son of God, and this is a piece of the true cross.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-05-11T08:05:02.623" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T08:05:02.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16198" CreationDate="2013-05-10T22:15:39.843" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although there is a lot of speculation, we will never know for sure. What evidence there is, is pure speculation, but it does make a decent circumstantial case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bnl.gov/bera/activities/globe/leonardo_da_vinci.htm&quot;&gt;I think this is a good setup:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second major implication of the sodomy case is, of course, the&#xA;  question of Leonardo's sexuality. Homosexuality was common in&#xA;  quatrocento Florence, and several things indicate that Leonardo was&#xA;  probably gay. He never married or showed any (recorded) interest in&#xA;  women; indeed, he wrote in his notebooks that male-female intercourse&#xA;  disgusted him. His anatomical drawings naturally include the sexual&#xA;  organs of both genders, but those of the male exhibit much more&#xA;  extensive attention. Finally, Leonardo surrounded himself with&#xA;  beautiful young male assistants, such as Salai and Melzi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sodomy case does not appear to be disputed, but why Leonardo was arrested for it is. Perhaps it was as much about politics as it was about his sexuality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Freud also believed Da Vinci was homosexual, and although he tended to think every man and woman had an obsession with phallic objects, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bartleby.com/277/2.html&quot;&gt;it is worth reading some of his reasoning.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The situation contained in the phantasy, that a vulture opened the&#xA;  mouth of the child and forcefully belabored it with its tail,&#xA;  corresponds to the idea of fellatio, a sexual act in which the member&#xA;  is placed into the mouth of the other person. Strangely enough this&#xA;  phantasy is altogether of a passive character; it resembles certain&#xA;  dreams and phantasies of women and of passive homosexuals who play the&#xA;  feminine part in sexual relations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13521" LastActivityDate="2013-05-10T22:15:39.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16194" CreationDate="2013-05-11T01:39:55.670" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL:DR Most studies find figures ten times lower than this one.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;80 times more often&quot; figure comes from a single study: &quot;Kleck and Gertz:Armed resistance to crime: The prevalence and nature of self defense with a gun. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 1995 (Fall); 86:150–187&quot;, in which the authors estimated that there were 2.5 million occasions per year in which a gun was used in self-defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmsg.org/pdfs/myths.pdf&quot;&gt;brief summary of the methodology&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kleck and Gertz’s claim of 2.5 million defensive gun uses per year is derived from a telephone survey of 5,000 American adults conducted in 1992. Fifty-six respondents to this survey reported that they had used a gun in self-defense during the past year. Kleck and Gertz multiply the proportion of respondents in their survey who report a defensive gun use (X /5,000 = Y percent) by the number of adults in the U.S. (around 200 million) and the number of defensive gun uses equals 2.5 million per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although published in a reputable journal, the figure has been &lt;strong&gt;widely criticised by other researchers on many grounds&lt;/strong&gt;: statistical, methodological, and by comparison with other known figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmsg.org/pdfs/myths.pdf&quot;&gt;typical criticism&lt;/a&gt;::&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The primary problem is that, even if the Kleck and Gertz’s estimates were accurate, defensive gun use is a relatively rare occurrence in that only 1% of respondents reported a defensive gun use during the previous 12 months. As David Hemenway of Harvard University has pointed out, inaccurate reporting of these events by a relatively small number of respondents could lead to population projections that are orders of magnitude different from the true incidence.14 For example, if one-half of one percent of the survey respondents incorrectly reported that they had used a gun to defend themselves against a criminal attack during the past year, the estimated number of defensive gun uses would be twice as high the true number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other researchers find that attempts to cross-reference these figures with other better-established ones lead to contradictions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[According to Kleck and Gletz] Guns were reportedly used by defenders for self-defense in approximately 845,000 burglaries. We know that there were 6 million burglaries in the year of the survey and in only 22% of these cases was someone certainly at home.Since only 42% of American households own guns, and since the victims in 2/3 of the occupied dwellings were asleep, the 2.5 million figure requires us to believe that burglary victims use their guns in self-defence more than 100% of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://home.uchicago.edu/~ludwigj/papers/JPAM_Cook_Ludwig_Hemenway_2007.pdf&quot;&gt;Other researchers&lt;/a&gt; conducted a similar survey (obtining compatible figures) and then checked on the credibility of the reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our closer examination of the [Defensive Gun Use] reports in the [out survey] suggests that almost  half of the incidents appear to contain some internal inconsistency, or other- &#xA;  wise do not make sense. We are persuaded that surveys of this sort generate estimates that grossly exaggerate the true number of DGUs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-27/how-often-do-we-use-guns-in-self-defense&quot;&gt;This overview&lt;/a&gt; cites the National Crime Victimization Survey which places the number of defensive gun uses at 100,000, and other estimates come it at about 250,000 - ten times less than the figure quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: while there is much disagreement over the true figure, &lt;strong&gt;the &quot;80 times&quot; figures is very much at the top end of the range of estimates. Most estimates are ten times lower.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2016-05-11T14:37:04.800" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T14:37:04.800" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16213" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16215" CreationDate="2013-05-11T07:03:26.060" Score="16" ViewCount="1985" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a discourse to his staff in 1943, Hitler made this claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In peacetime Germany, about 18,000 or 20,000 people a year chose to commit suicide, [...] &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Paulus&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of this claim because 18,000 seems to be a very large number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="8702" LastEditDate="2013-05-24T15:47:21.897" LastActivityDate="2016-06-12T21:51:46.213" Title="In Pre-WWII peacetime Germany, were there about 18,000-20,000 suicides per year?" Tags="|adolf-hitler|suicide|germany|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16213" CreationDate="2013-05-11T07:48:38.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number may or may not be correct. But it is plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you view the Wikipedia article &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;List of countries by suicide rate&lt;/a&gt;, there are several countries that nowadays have a suicide rate above 20 per 100,000 people per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Statistics_since_1900&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says that for 1930, there were 65,130,000 people in Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;65,130,000 * 20 / 100,000 gives 13,026, which is over half of Hitler's number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-11T08:24:36.717" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T08:24:36.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16213" CreationDate="2013-05-11T07:58:34.893" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, suicide rates was that high!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.se/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=EkGS6UUHr6QC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PR5&amp;amp;dq=Goeschel%20nazi&amp;amp;ots=O2ZTMwySFH&amp;amp;sig=FlrqA8nPnial9OS2vyaFGwP2KnM&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Goeschel%20nazi&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Suicide in Nazi Germany by Christian Goeschel&lt;/a&gt; referenced in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.se/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=9&amp;amp;ved=0CG4QFjAI&amp;amp;url=http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/media/Media,269621,en.doc&amp;amp;ei=ZfaNUaHwCYSr4ATTt4HgAg&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNG4NOACkclstisKCmdsLUqcWPCDuA&amp;amp;sig2=Ml_NIFrysOcdRGNAfw5Q7g&amp;amp;bvm=bv.46340616,d.bGE&amp;amp;cad=rja&quot;&gt;this essay&lt;/a&gt; says that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Goeschel’s study of suicide in Nazi Germany (2009) shows that the number of suicides varied greatly as the War progressed, as far as can be determined. Following the First World War the German suicide rate climbed steadily from just under 16 per 100,000 to 29 by the early 1930s&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Statistics_since_1900&quot;&gt;Wikilink about demographics in Germany&lt;/a&gt; (Kudos to Andrew Grimm) say that in the 1930s there were about 65M-69M people living in Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking the extremes of 29 per 100,000, and 70M gives a number around 20K. What Hitler said does not seem farfetched thus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mass suicides during the loss of the war probably were even higher though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_suicides_in_1945_Nazi_Germany&quot;&gt;The Mass suicides&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just over 7,000 suicides were reported in Berlin during the year 1945,&#xA;  but it is thought that many suicides went unreported due to the chaos&#xA;  of the post-war period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably that year the number was EVEN higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-05-11T20:18:31.023" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T20:18:31.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16217" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16279" CreationDate="2013-05-11T12:18:27.307" Score="7" ViewCount="4365" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_humanoid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Atacama Humanoid&lt;/a&gt; is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the skeletal remains of a 6-inch (150 mm) humanoid found in the Atacama Desert of Chile in 2003&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been many different claims as to its origin, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a dessicated aborted foetus&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a hoax&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;an extra-terrestrial&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a non-human primate&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a 6-8 year old boy with &quot;an apparently severe form of dwarfism and other anomalies.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/04/24/sirius-ufo-documentary-space-alien-atacama-humanoid-pictures_n_3144661.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atacama_humanoid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the last theory, that has been recently mooted in a documentary and a yet-to-be-published paper, really hard to believe. Are there any comparable cases of dysfunctional human growth known to the public?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which theory is correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13758" LastEditorUserId="13758" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T15:59:27.743" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T04:15:50.197" Title="What is the Atacama Humanoid?" Tags="|physiology|aliens|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15685" CreationDate="2013-05-11T15:02:41.440" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Vimanas&quot; are a recurring myth based on a mixture of total lies and modern ignorance. This video does a good job explaining why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ancientaliensdebunked.com/references-and-transcripts/vimanas/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ancient Aliens Debunked&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote from the video:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Vimanika Shastra is not an actual ancient text. It was channeled, or dictated, to the author from the spirit world in 1918.&#xA;  The spirit who supposedly dictated the text claimed to be and ancient seer named Bharadvada, who is prominent in some ancient writings, so I guess that is what is supposed to give this text credibility – that is, the idea that the ghost of someone ancient supposedly dictated it.&#xA;  But they’re not even sure if that version of the story is true, because the first mention of any of this is in 1952 by the guy who supposedly found and translated this text from 1918, so as far as anyone knows he could have made the whole channelled by a famous ghost story up in 1952.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't float your boat, there's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaim%C4%81nika_Sh%C4%81stra&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a whole Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for Merkel, Obama and Cameron making visits to Afghanistan, that's hardly surprising or rare. There is a war going on there, after all, and leaders have made &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/01/barack-obama-afghanistan_n_1468525.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;diplomatic visits, while also visiting their troops&lt;/a&gt;. (Merkel did the same again &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/world/angela-merkel-makes-surprise-visit-to-afghanistan/article4702237.ece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;just yesterday&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These visits are always kept under wraps until the last minute for reasons of safety. Again, nothing unusual about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe there's any other claim in the video based on any evidence. The rest is just rumours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1835" LastEditorUserId="1835" LastEditDate="2016-05-14T21:06:32.107" LastActivityDate="2016-05-14T21:06:32.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7942" CreationDate="2013-05-11T15:15:29.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This (very compelling) lecture by Robert H. Lustig (MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology) backs up the idea that Type 2 diabetes can be reversed by changes in diet, but the focus is on increase roughage (and exercise) and reducing refined sugar. I believe he makes reference to several studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll note it has nothing to do with the magical power of raw vegetables, just the vast increase in fibre intake which helps the body deal with sugar better (and other simple health changes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This BBC news article, also backs up the same understanding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13887909&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13887909&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1835" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T15:15:29.260" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7780" CreationDate="2013-05-11T16:13:29.613" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Spontaneous sex change does not occur in humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;External genitalia are often ambiguous, the degree depending mainly on the amount of testosterone produced by the testicular tissue &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9244110&quot;&gt;between 9 and 13 weeks of gestation&lt;/a&gt;. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermaphrodite&quot;&gt;there are multiple classifications of hermaphroditism&lt;/a&gt; including simultaneous and sequential. Simultaneous hermaphroditism is when an adult organism has both male and female sexual organs at the same time. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism&quot;&gt;Sequential hermaphroditism&lt;/a&gt;, as described in the Taipei Times article, is when the individual is born one sex and changes sex at some point in their life. Protogynous hermaphrodites (as opposed to protandrous hermaphrodites) refer to organisms that are born female and at some point in their lifespan change sex to male. As the animal ages, based on internal or external triggers, it shifts sex to become a male animal. It is generally triggered based on mating opportunities related to reproductive success. It is observed in fish, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.pone.0037976&quot;&gt;almost exclusively&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sequential hermaphroditism, especially of the kind described in this article, cannot occur in humans because the genitalia are formed in utero between 9 to 13 weeks gestation. The kind of sequential hermaphroditism described in the article has never been observed in humans. &lt;a href=&quot;http://suite101.com/article/sequential-hermaphrodites-a173981&quot;&gt;This condition can be found among a few species of vertebrates, mostly fish; and some species of crustaceans, including barnacles and shrimps.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13231" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-05-11T19:10:06.977" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T19:10:06.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16223" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-11T16:18:29.273" Score="4" ViewCount="529" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that Italian men live with their parents as a racial stereotype joke and from some Italian friends. They say that this is true because they have seen these people in their environments or neighborhood. But really I want to know if there are trustworthy statistics to prove this famous claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/why-italian-men-wont-leave-nest&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;another one&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; who has asked the question in an interview:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scott Jagow: In Italy, men stay at home. And by that, I mean they live with their parents. A third of Italian men over 30 still live with mama and papa.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The country's economic minister wants them out of the house. He's proposing a $1,500 tax break for young Italians who rent. But he's taking some serious heat for calling these men &amp;quot;big babies.&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scott Jaglow claims that it is true that many Italian men live with their parents but without giving any exact statistics unless saying &amp;quot;a third&amp;quot;! Is there any research to prove this statistics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11740" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-10-23T00:39:52.473" Title="Do a third of Italian men live with their parents?" Tags="|sociology|culture|italy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16096" CreationDate="2013-05-11T16:53:09.550" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently, it depends upon where you are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-08-31/features/9203190453_1_people-shoplifting-books-publishers-weekly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lynn Van Matre. Chicago Tribune&lt;/a&gt; (pre-1997) Chicago, Ill 31 Aug 1992&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the well-read thief is swiping these days&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Bibles are our No. 1 shoplifted book,&amp;quot; lamented a spokesman for an independent Chicago chain. &amp;quot;Shoplifters can resell them right away on the street or `L' platforms.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12034" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T19:45:36.857" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7780" CreationDate="2013-05-11T19:35:21.553" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wartickler's answer sums up why a sudden over night sex change can't happen. I want to address a possible explanation to the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only evince we have that the change has happened is that Than Sein's (the person in question) birth certificate states he was born a female. This can be easily attributed to him being an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;intersex&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; person, as the article implies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People privately concede Than Sein is a hermaphrodite. Several medical experts have examined him, and he awaits test results from the central women's hospital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some cases intersex people have ambiguous genitalia, even as adults, so a &quot;mix up&quot; on the birth certificate of an intersex person,  especially one written in Myanmar 21 years ago, is very plausible. The same happened for example with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir_Ewan_Forbes,_11th_Baronet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sir Ewan Forbes&lt;/a&gt;, who was registered at birth as a female, but later formally re-registered his birth as male and married.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1: I realize that the issue of how to call people with sexual anatomy that doesn’t seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male, is still going on, to the best of my knowledge &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isna.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;intersex&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is the most appropriate and accepted term.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-05-11T19:41:41.767" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T19:41:41.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16235" CreationDate="2013-05-11T20:57:28.500" Score="-3" ViewCount="12794" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard from my friends who are students of The Netherlands universities or are immigrants and live there with their families that this country is more welcoming to different people than the other countries in the Europe. I have searched and found a site which seems claim the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.top20lists.com/2010/11/top-5-least-racist-counties.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Top 5 least racist countries&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a lot of racism around us. There are countries who wouldn't want a Muslim, a Jew or an immigrant as a neighbor (e.g. Northern Ireland, Greece and Italy don't like any of the above), but then again, there are people who don't judge you based on your cast, creed, religion or skin color. Here we have a list of the top 5 least racist countries in the world:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Netherlands&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Finland&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Norway&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sweden&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Canada&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research to prove this claim or is it just a joke and is not raised from real stories and statistics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S: Racism in the context mean: Any distinction, exclusion, restriction, or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin that has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11740" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-08-15T21:34:34.443" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T16:59:16.913" Title="Is Netherlands the least racist country in the world?" Tags="|sociology|racism|netherlands|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16228" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16230" CreationDate="2013-05-11T21:41:53.367" Score="6" ViewCount="1889" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came accross one of those top 10 video today on youtube (while I remember trying to learn more about particle filter...) and it was about the longest living creatures. I already knew lobster and tortoise were amongst the top ten, but to my great surprise the number one was a jellyfish. The video claims that they can live forever. I did find some other websites claiming that scientists agree with that, but I would like to see a proof (if there is any).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Video: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1g7arWBsh0&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1g7arWBsh0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastEditorUserId="7569" LastEditDate="2013-05-11T21:52:33.990" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T22:26:26.740" Title="Can some species of jellyfish live forever?" Tags="|biology|life-expectancy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16228" CreationDate="2013-05-11T22:15:42.613" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One study suggests that for one species this is hypothetically possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1543022?uid=3738032&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21102272409587&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reversing the Life Cycle: Medusae Transforming into Polyps and Cell Transdifferentiation in Turritopsis nutricula (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa). Stefano Piraino, Ferdinando Boero, Brigitte Aeschbach and Volker Schmid&#xA;Biological Bulletin&#xA;Vol. 190, No. 3 (Jun., 1996), pp. 302-312&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Organisms develop through a series of stages leading to sexually mature adults. In a few cases ontogeny reversal is possible, but it does not occur typically after the onset of sexual reproduction. All stages of the medusa Turritopsis nutricula, from newly liberated to fully mature individuals, can transform back into colonial hydroids, either directly or through a resting period, thus escaping death and &lt;strong&gt;achieving potential immortality&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T22:15:42.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16228" CreationDate="2013-05-11T22:20:59.653" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes they can, as long as they are not eaten, or killed in other ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/01/090130-immortal-jellyfish-swarm.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article at National Geographic&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like the Brad Pitt movie character, the immortal jellyfish transforms from an adult back into a baby, but with an added bonus: Unlike Benjamin Button, the jellyfish can do it over and over again—though apparently only as an emergency measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turritopsis_nutricula&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;its Wiki page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The medusa of Turritopsis nutricula is the only form known to have developed the ability to return to a polyp state, by a specific transformation process that requires the presence of certain cell types (tissue from both the jellyfish bell surface and the circulatory canal system). Careful laboratory experiments have revealed that all stages of the medusae, from newly released to fully mature individuals, can transform back into polyps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;sourced to :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Piraino, Stefano; F. Boero, B. Aeschbach, V. Schmid (1996). &quot;Reversing the life cycle: medusae transforming into polyps and cell transdifferentiation in Turritopsis nutricula (Cnidaria, Hydrozoa)&quot;. Biological Bulletin (Biological Bulletin, vol. 190, no. 3) 190 (3): 302–312. doi:&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/1543022&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.2307/1543022&lt;/a&gt;. JSTOR &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/1543022&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1543022&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears on the source, but there is no option to copy-paste it and I'm too lazy to transcibe it at the moment, so here is a screen capture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PUWqd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kLSiE-eNjw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a very nice video&lt;/a&gt; by the vlogbrothers, on their YouTube show &quot;Scishow&quot; explaining this (with sources).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-05-11T22:26:26.740" LastActivityDate="2013-05-11T22:26:26.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16232" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-12T07:15:00.827" Score="1" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somewhat popular idea in media (say movie &quot;Idiocracy&quot;) and general perception of older generation is that people and society are getting dumber. It seems that even real studies show that &quot;stupid&quot; people have more children, than &quot;smart&quot;. Does this mean that in some time &quot;stupid&quot; people will greatly outnumber &quot;smart&quot; whose part in population would decline? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If IQ is herediatary, does that mean that people in society are really getting dumber and modern society is doomed to fail, because of decline in intelligence or that is exaggerated myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know Flynn effect, but if genetical basis of inteligence will decline, would it cease to work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS. I have nothing to do and do not suggest idea of Eugenics, just wondering is this perception of declining intelligence is true and are the effects exaggerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13767" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-12-29T10:55:02.460" LastActivityDate="2014-12-29T10:55:02.460" Title="Is the intelligence of people going down?" Tags="|biology|intelligence|society|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-05-12T07:50:27.663" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16233" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-12T10:27:06.077" Score="9" ViewCount="1264" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read about this on a question on Quora, and found a source for the fact below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a pin is dropped, the sound reaching the human ear causes the eardrum to move by a distance less than the diameter of a hydrogen atom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.quora.com/Facts-and-Trivia/Off-the-top-of-your-head-what-is-the-most-interesting-fact-you-know/answer/Vivek-Na&quot;&gt;Link to Quora Answer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sensitivity of the ear is remarkable.  The movement of the eardrum in response to the minimum audible sound at a frequency of 1000 Hz is about a thousand millionth of a centimeter: considerably less than the diameter of a hydrogen atom.  The movement of the basilar membrane in response to the same sound is about a hundred times smaller - about the diameter of an atomic nucleus!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.universalunity.net/ear.htm&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13768" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T13:06:45.210" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T13:06:45.210" Title="How sensitive are human ears?" Tags="|physiology|ear|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16234" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-12T12:03:44.647" Score="10" ViewCount="2015" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across the following anecdote from the Judaism Stack Exchange: &lt;a href=&quot;https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/5940/jewish-community-in-china-around-ww2/5942&quot;&gt;https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/5940/jewish-community-in-china-around-ww2/5942&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the questions portion of the lecture someone asked Professor&#xA;  Xin why the Japanese, allies of the Nazis tolerated Jewish emigration&#xA;  from Europe to China during WW2 if the Japanese knew of the Nazi's&#xA;  plans with the Jews? Professor Xin offered an anecdote about how the&#xA;  Japanese, who were not fully understanding of the Nazi animosity&#xA;  towards Jews, gathered some prominent Jews that were in the area and&#xA;  asked them why the Nazis hated them so much. The Jews told the&#xA;  japanese &quot;it's because we are Asian&quot;. That got a laugh from the crowd,&#xA;  since Professor Xin had framed the lecture earlier by mentioning that&#xA;  Israel could geographically be considered part of Asia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(I am not sure if the humor comes across well in writing so I will&#xA;  explain it:) The joke was that the Jews understood that the Japanese,&#xA;  the ones asking them the question, were Asian. So by linking the Jews&#xA;  to Asia they would be suggesting that perhaps the Nazis might have it&#xA;  out for the Japanese as well, and as a result the Japanese would not&#xA;  be so keen on helping the Nazis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an answer with a citation, but it was somewhat qualified:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can't vouch for the reliability of this source, but the story is&#xA;  found in Warren Kozak, The Rabbi of 84th Street: The Extraordinary&#xA;  Life of Haskel Besser (HarperCollins, 2004), pp. 176-7 (cited in the&#xA;  Wikipedia article on the Shanghai Ghetto):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the Germans pressed the Japanese to turn over the entire Jewish&#xA;  community [in Shanghai], the Japanese military governor sent for its&#xA;  leaders. Fearing the worst, the community sent a small delegation&#xA;  including the Amshinover Rebbe, Shimon [Shalom] Kalish, along with&#xA;  someone who could translate through English...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Japanese governor was curious. He did not understand why these&#xA;  Jews were singled out from all other Europeans... Finally the governor&#xA;  broke his silence, speaking in Japanese with a quick, terse question,&#xA;  which was translated by one of his lieutenants into English. The&#xA;  English-Yiddish interpreter then translated it into Yiddish. &quot;Farvoos&#xA;  hoben di Daitschen aich azoy feint - Why do the Germans hate you so&#xA;  much?&quot; Without hesitation and knowing the fate of his community hung&#xA;  on his answer, Reb Kalish told the translator, &quot;Zugim weil mir senen&#xA;  orientalim - Tell him the Germans hate us because we are Oriental.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Japanese governor, whose face had been stern throughout the&#xA;  confrontation, broke into a slight smile. In spite of the military&#xA;  alliance, he did not accede to the German demand and the Shanghai Jews&#xA;  were never handed over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, it's an amusing anecdote about how easily governments can be manipulated if you fit their ideology, and how arbitrary race is, but it sounds like the kind of thing someone would make up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did this exchange, or something similar to it, happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2019-11-12T07:13:22.117" LastActivityDate="2019-11-12T07:13:22.117" Title="Did Jews claim to be asians to Imperial Japan?" Tags="|japan|world-war-ii|germany|jews|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16227" CreationDate="2013-05-12T13:53:04.510" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I will explain, this isn't an ideal answer, but provides empirical evidence that The Netherlands is not necessarily the least racist country, and that the very question isn't precise enough to answer meaningfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of &quot;least racist&quot; isn't clearly defined here, and there are a number of measures that could be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One suitable measure might be &quot;the highest proportion of people who strongly agree or somewhat agree with the statement 'the presence of foreigners is good for the country'&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I do not have statistics for that question. I do have a close proxy, which is a &lt;em&gt;city-wide&lt;/em&gt; rather than a &lt;em&gt;country-wide&lt;/em&gt; survey asking for level of agreement with the question 'the presence of foreigners is good for the &lt;em&gt;city&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It isn't available for every country in the world, but instead for 75 cities around Europe, 500 respondents per city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_277_en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Perception survey on quality of life in European cities&lt;/a&gt;, Flash Eurobarometer 277 - The Gallup Organisation, November 2009&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3KHXw.png&quot; alt=&quot;Figure from report&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this chart we can draw some conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The city of Luxembourg (which is probably a reasonable proxy for the entire country) tops the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first Dutch city comes ninth. Other Dutch cities appear in the 12th and 53rd positions. (The absolute positions of these numbers a largely meaningless - other, unpolled, cities may rank higher.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the Netherlands does not have any clear standing higher than many other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can draw some other conclusions that throw the original question into doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, consider the ranking of Swedish versus Dutch cities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stockholm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amsterdam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Groningen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Malmö&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rotterdam&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make much sense to declare one country less racist than another when they mingle in rankings like this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that matter, if you declared the least racist city to be the one with the smallest proportion of respondents who &lt;em&gt;strongly disagree&lt;/em&gt; with the statement, we can see from the red bars in the histogram that this would give quite different results, with Gdansk and Luxembourg vying for the lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, not only can't you say that the Netherlands is the least racist country, the question is too ill-defined to give that position to any country - we can't even give Luxembourg the European crown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-12T17:02:14.430" LastActivityDate="2013-05-12T17:02:14.430" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16241" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-13T03:52:01.450" Score="6" ViewCount="3663" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thanko.jp/product/4563.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This product&lt;/a&gt; (Japanese language) is claimed to cool down your smartphone, etc, battery by two degrees centigrade - see the photo a little way down the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It claims to be a graphene-based material, and looking on the web I see lots of articles about how graphene is an excellent heat conductor, and would work well for CPU cooling fins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, reading the small print, it suggests sticking it directly on top of your battery, underneath the cover, if you have one - this would appear to negate any cooling effect as there is nowhere for the hot air to escape to, and furthermore outside the case, your hand is going to be on top of the sticker, so if anything it would transfer heat from your hand to the device!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.japantoday.com/category/new-products/view/cool-down-your-devices-with-this-tiny-sticker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;referred to on this English page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanko has released a sticker they call the “Mobile Heat Sink” for cooling down a heated smartphone, PC battery, tablet, game device etc. Just by attaching it on a device, it can make it cool down by about -2 C degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it isn't clear that this English site has any direct knowledge of the product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I get the impression that this is a variant on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2693/can-products-that-claim-to-to-reduce-electromagnetic-radiation-from-mobile-phone&quot;&gt;EMR-eating sticker scam&lt;/a&gt;. Is my skepticism justified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T03:57:37.650" Title="Graphene &quot;heat sink&quot; sticker for your mobile phone battery" Tags="|physics|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16247" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-13T19:44:57.473" Score="11" ViewCount="2436" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Iran (as a neighbor of these countries from the north of Persian Gulf) it is common to hear claims that sex slavery is active in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. You can find some samples of these news &lt;a href=&quot;http://bikyanews.com/84888/kenya-men-suffer-as-sex-slaves-in-arab-gulf/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;such as the following&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A report published in late 2011 by Identity, a gay magazine in Kenya, said that a number of gay Kenyan men are being trafficked into the Gulf countries to work as sex slaves for the wealthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Qatar is a transit and destination country for men and women subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically forced labor and, to a much lesser extent, forced prostitution,” the US State Department stated in a recent report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Men and women from Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Sudan, Thailand, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and China voluntarily travel to Qatar as laborers and domestic servants, but some subsequently face conditions indicative of involuntary servitude. These conditions include threats of serious physical or financial harm; job switching; the withholding of pay; charging workers for benefits for which the employer is responsible; restrictions on freedom of movement, including the confiscation of passports and travel documents and the withholding of exit permits; arbitrary detention; threats of legal action and deportation; false charges; and physical, mental, and sexual abuse.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this actually the case? Are there any collaborating reports showing more evidence of this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11740" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T12:51:48.720" Title="Is sex slavery active in the Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates?" Tags="|sexual-abuse|saudi-arabia|slavery|united-arab-emirates|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16249" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16082" CreationDate="2013-05-13T22:09:49.397" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Check out this article:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-boston-marathon-bombings-inflated-injury-tallies/5334725&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-boston-marathon-bombings-inflated-injury-tallies/5334725&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;The original 170 was almost an instantaneous stat. Maybe it was based on how many people were wheeled off, but later found not to have sustained injuries. But the record seems to show only 55, and some of them either have no age or no injury recorded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13786" LastActivityDate="2013-05-13T22:09:49.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16382" CreationDate="2013-05-14T14:53:28.637" Score="36" ViewCount="64649" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw the following photo on my Facebook news feed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3ztCd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked my friend who posted it for a source, and he gave me a link to a hemp manufacturer. I'm pretty sure it's not a reputable source. I'm interested to see if there is any independent study, patent, manufacturing process, etc, that shows this claim to be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4173" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2013-05-22T22:38:53.013" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T01:25:21.887" Title="Does one acre of hemp yield as much paper as 4 acres of trees?" Tags="|environment|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16253" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-14T16:28:09.783" Score="9" ViewCount="2437" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some web-sites advocating that eating fruits separately to other foods is healthier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-4970/The-Major-Rule-for-Eating-Fruit.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mind Body Green&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When fruits are eaten alone, your stomach can more easily process all of the nutrients, fibre and the simple sugars contained in the fruit. This is the optimal 'proper way' to benefit from the fruit you eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=dailytip&amp;amp;dbid=100&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WH Foods&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Advocates of food combining also focus upon not including fruit as part of a meal. For example, a common recommendation is to wait at least an hour after consumption of any non-fruit foods before eating a piece of fruit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They suggest dubious mechanisms - for example, from Mind Body Green:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you eat fruit close to a meal, especially right after a larger meal and combine with other foods, it's held in the stomach too long along with other foods and will rot and ferment in the gut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the mechanism, they claim benefits, such as from WH Foods:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;many people do report better overall digestion when they follow this procedure and a large number of healthcare practitioners advocate fruit consumption separate from meals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/fruit.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes has an article on the subject.&lt;/a&gt;. It is is not very helpful, as it only quotes a few dieticians who disagree with the practice &lt;em&gt;(none of whom cite any studies)&lt;/em&gt;, which is no better than the sites that support it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do the studies say? Are there health benefits to eating fruits as a separate meal, rather than consuming the same amount with other foods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-06-20T19:38:25.937" LastActivityDate="2019-01-26T00:45:45.117" Title="Is eating fruits separately/on an empty stomach healthier?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16255" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-14T17:47:39.317" Score="2" ViewCount="417" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm 24 and for some undetermined reason, I have hearing loss exclusively from the left ear and this, from my childhood. Nothing (treatment, surgery, etc) can be done to cure my ear so I decided to see if a hearing aid could help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My audiologist told me that little difference can be perceived from the first days of wearing the hearing aid; it's not like glasses where you can directly see the difference. However, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;the most you will wear it, the most you will find it useful thanks to brain plasticity; especially at your young age&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;. &quot;This will wake your left ear nerves up and you'll ear more distinctly&quot;, she continued. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This should then improve my left ear performance, with or without the hearing aid. Therefore, that would mean that it can &quot;repair&quot; my ear through brain plasticity. Is that true/possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13652" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T13:09:28.920" LastActivityDate="2019-09-11T21:18:26.313" Title="Can hearing aids &quot;repair&quot; hearing issues thanks to brain plasticity?" Tags="|neurology|ear|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16257" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-14T22:05:55.633" Score="8" ViewCount="958" Body="&lt;p&gt;A claim was made by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Atwood&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Margaret Atwood&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://castroller.com/podcasts/SlateMagazineDaily/3553968&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stranger Than Fiction&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; podcast that the British had a strategy to colonise Australia via the penal system. That is, their motivation for sending criminals to the Australian penal colony in order to force a large number of people to move to a yet-to-be established colony. When the male-to-female balance became problematic, they simply lowered to bar for women to be sent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15701/was-australian-colonisation-started-as-a-penal-colony&quot;&gt;This question&lt;/a&gt; asks if Australia was established as a penal colony. My question is whether the penitentiary system was simply part of a larger scheme to force early colonists to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that one of my ancestors was sent to Australia for the crime of stealing buttons, it seems that there may be some truth to it. The cost of punishing this crime seems discordant with its petty nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2417" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T14:32:15.603" Title="Was the penal system used to colonise Australia?" Tags="|history|australia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16258" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-14T23:23:48.447" Score="35" ViewCount="3159" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/experts/gary-wilson&quot;&gt;Gary Wilson&lt;/a&gt;'s talk, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;v=vTD_itXrR6E&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Great Porn Experiment&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, which states that pornography causes arousal addiction which in turn is supposed to have a lot of negative effects like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ADHD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Social anxiety&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Depression&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Performance anxiety&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;OCD&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this talk, Gary Wilson makes quite a few bold statements about pornography. He often implies that everything he says is based on scientific findings. But he doesn't go into much detail and makes typical logical fallacies like argumentation from authority or popularity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the use of pornography known to cause addiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-20T09:32:47.793" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T21:49:52.643" Title="Is pornography addictive?" Tags="|medical-science|pornography|addiction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16265" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16266" CreationDate="2013-05-15T11:51:03.267" Score="10" ViewCount="3724" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Adria Richards (known for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/staff/2013/03/donglegate-is-classic-overreaction-and-everyone-pays/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;donglegate&quot;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;similar incidents&lt;/a&gt;) ever tweet the following?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Black people CANNOT be racist against White poeple. Racist is a&#xA;  position of the opressor who has the power&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source of the claim is alleged screenshot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ONeBa.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/donglegate-adria-richards/photos&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source: KnowYourMeme&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-05-17T08:18:50.250" LastActivityDate="2021-01-23T02:33:00.153" Title="Did Adria Richards tweet &quot;Black people CANNOT be racist...&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|racism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16265" CreationDate="2013-05-15T12:03:39.043" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes she did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/6039856858&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Link to that Twitter-post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/E08KZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot of the quote, indicating it was posted &amp;quot;2:56PM 25 Nov 09&amp;quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case the tweet is removed here's the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20131211160718/https://twitter.com/adriarichards/status/6039856858&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Archive.org copy of it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-01-23T02:33:00.153" LastActivityDate="2021-01-23T02:33:00.153" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16227" CreationDate="2013-05-15T12:14:40.143" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Things to consider:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Netherlands officially segregates it's citizens into two categories: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allochtoon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;autochtoon and allochtoon&lt;/a&gt; (ethnic Dutch and others);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is also officially defined group called &quot;non-Western allochtoon&quot;, which is basically very elaborate way of saying &quot;non-White&quot; (&lt;em&gt;&quot;non-Western allochtoon is someone whose 'country of origin' is or lies in Turkey, Africa, Latin America and Asia&quot;&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;schools are semi-officially segregated into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/680&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;white-schools&quot; and &quot;black-schools&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;current government is in de facto coalition with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_for_Freedom&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PVV (Party for Freedom)&lt;/a&gt;, which is build around xenophobia. Their party program includes stuff like &lt;em&gt;&quot;forbid Poles, Bulgarians, Romanians from entering the Netherlands&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;&quot;Constitutional protection of the dominance of the Judeo-Christian and humanistic culture of the Netherlands&quot;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;&quot;Closing of Islamic schools&quot;&lt;/em&gt; etc. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Wilders&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PVV's leader&lt;/a&gt; was for example considered &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geertwilders.nl/images/images/letter-denying-geert-wilders-entry-into-uk.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;persona non grata by Home Office&lt;/a&gt; and denied entry into UK.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T12:14:40.143" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9383" CreationDate="2013-05-15T14:14:44.913" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nitrogen is used in aircraft tyres because the brakes operate at very high temperatures. Thus removing the oxygen from the inflation medium helps prevent oxidation of the tyre and wheel, and in the event of a brake fire does not provide oxygen to feed it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A fatal accident involving cabin decompression and fire has highlighted another mode&#xA;  of tyre failure in flight where a tyre may fail explosively without any significant prior&#xA;  degradation. A tyre inflated with air and subjected to excessive heating, possibly&#xA;  caused by a dragging brake, can experience a chemical reaction resulting in release&#xA;  of volatile gases. Such a chemical reaction in the presence of the oxygen in the&#xA;  contained air may result in a tyre explosion in a landing gear bay and/or an in-flight fire&#xA;  since it appears that the protection normally afforded by conventional pressure relief&#xA;  devices in the wheel would be incapable of responding adequately to the rapid&#xA;  increases in temperature and gas pressure associated with auto-ignition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] all braked wheels of retractable landing gear units on&#xA;  [a subset of aeroplanes] will be required to have tyres inflated with&#xA;  Nitrogen, or other suitable inert gas, and maintained such as to limit the Oxygen&#xA;  content of the compressed gases to not greater than 5% by volume&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP747.pdf&quot;&gt;CAA publication CAP747 generic requirement GR-16&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However air is approximately 80% nitrogen so the properties of the pure and mixed gases in tyres are similar enough to make no difference for road vehicles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13803" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-15T14:21:50.690" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T14:21:50.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16270" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16271" CreationDate="2013-05-15T15:48:22.050" Score="18" ViewCount="5499" Body="&lt;p&gt;This image is circulating on Facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NVauo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The message accompanying it is calling for a boycott of Heineken for sponsoring the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The message is as follows (warning: horrific grammar, spelling, and some profanity):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are u serious? NEVER will I drink this beer again and u can be damn sure I will post this on every site I can find and show to anyone I see drinking the beer. U want to kill brain cells that's fine we are adults its our own fault but u sponcer an event to make money off of defencless dogs having to fight eachother I say f--k u. Sorry about the language but to some scum there just isn't pretty words. Please share please put them out of business there's no reason enough to support this beer company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Heineken sponsor dog fights?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T06:52:27.353" Title="Did Heineken knowingly sponsor a dog fighting event?" Tags="|marketing|dogs|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16270" CreationDate="2013-05-15T15:57:18.173" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;Heineken &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/heineken/app_280969485324020&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;have addressed this rumour&lt;/a&gt; years ago, explaining that they did &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; sponsor the event, and have ceased their relationship with the venue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A two year old image continues to circulate in social media channels showing a dog fight, with Heineken banners clearly in the background. As a company and a brand owner, we do not and would never knowingly support any event, outlet or individual involved in this type of activity. It is against our company and brand rules and - more&#xA;important - against our company values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this matter was brought to our attention via Facebook we have conducted an investigation and now know that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The venue is a nightclub in Mongolia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The venue hosted a dog fight of which we had no knowledge and were not involved in any way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The venue owner has formally confirmed that Heineken banners are visible in the pictures because the previous evening the club had been decorated for a promotional event and he had failed to remove the banners once it was over. This event was in no way related to the dog fight. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://secure.cdn.vellance.com/heineken/press/statement-from-bar-owner.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Click to see document&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this we have taken the following immediate actions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Removed all remaining promotional materials from the venue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Withdrawn all current product stock from the club&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ceased our relationship, ensuring our brands will not be available in the club again&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instructed our distributor to check every location where our brands can be enjoyed to ensure such illegal activities are not taking place. If there is any suggestion that they are, we will take the same action and remove our products&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continue to ensure our strict advertising and promotion guidelines are enforced both to the letter and the spirit of their intent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T15:57:18.173" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16270" CreationDate="2013-05-15T15:57:22.863" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, Heineken did not knowingly sponsor the event, and has made a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heinekeninternational.com/homepage.aspx&quot;&gt;public response&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Images continue to circulate in social media channels showing a dog fight, with Heineken® banners clearly visible in the background. This is very distressing and totally unacceptable. As a company and a brand owner, we do not and would never knowingly support any event, outlet or individual involved in this type of activity. It is against our company and brand rules and - more important - against our company values.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Since this matter was brought to our attention via Facebook we have conducted an investigation and now know that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The venue is a nightclub in Mongolia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The venue hosted a dog fight of which we had no knowledge and were not involved in any way&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The venue owner has verbally confirmed that Heineken® banners are visible in the pictures because the previous evening the club had been decorated for a promotional event and he had failed to remove the banners once it was over. This event was in no way related to the dog fight&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on this we have taken the following immediate actions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Removed all remaining promotional materials from the venue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Withdrawn all current product stock from the club&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ceased our relationship, ensuring our brands will not be available in the club again&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Instructed our distributor to check every location where our brands can be enjoyed to ensure such illegal activities are not taking place. If there is any suggestion that they are, we will take the same action and remove our products&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Continue to ensure our strict advertising and promotion guidelines are enforced both to the letter and the spirit of their intent&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We want to thank our consumers on-line for bringing this issue to our attention. We are shocked and disappointed by these images. We fully understand the level of negative feeling amongst consumers based on what they have seen. We appreciate that the vast majority have asked for our point of view before making a judgment. We encourage our consumers to continue to use social media channels to alert us to any situation where they feel our brands are being misrepresented, so that we can take the appropriate actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For more information please contact john.g.clarke@heineken.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company has also posted the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heinekeninternational.com/Content/files/Statement-from-bar-owner.pdf&quot;&gt;original letter of confirmation&lt;/a&gt; from the venue owner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="3451" LastEditDate="2013-05-15T19:44:56.850" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T19:44:56.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16275" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-15T20:59:00.510" Score="8" ViewCount="2154" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snpp.com/episodes/3F20.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;episode 3F20&lt;/a&gt;, &amp;quot;Much Apu About Nothing&amp;quot; of &lt;em&gt;The Simpsons&lt;/em&gt;, a proctor is administering an American citizenship test to Apu Nahasapeemapetilon and the following exchange occurs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Proctor:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All right, here's your last question.  What was the cause of the Civil War?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Apu:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, there were numerous causes.  Aside from the obvious schism between the abolitionists and the anti-abolitionists, there were economic factors, both domestic and inter--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Proctor:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wait, wait... just say slavery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Apu:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slavery it is, sir.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/of-course-the-civil-war-was-about-slavery-26265/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;It has been argued&lt;/a&gt; that slavery was not the cause of the American Civil War and that more specifically, essential differences between the Federalists and anti-Federalists were the true cause.  My question is: with the full power of hindsight at our disposal, and keeping in mind that there was clearly not one single cause, was slavery the &lt;strong&gt;principal&lt;/strong&gt; cause of the American Civil War?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13807" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-27T03:56:53.140" Title="Was slavery the principal cause of the American Civil War?" Tags="|united-states|war|slavery|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16276" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16275" CreationDate="2013-05-15T22:24:27.693" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether the following qualifies slavery as the &quot;principal&quot; cause of the Civil War is a matter of some subjectivity, but we &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; determine that slavery was the primary reason for the South's secession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his book  &lt;em&gt;The creation of Confederate nationalism: ideology and identity in the Civil War South&lt;/em&gt;, historian Drew Gilpin Faust explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;leaders of the secession movement across the South cited slavery as the most compelling reason for southern independence. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confederate_States_of_America#A_revolution_in_disunion&quot;&gt;(Source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Vice-President of the Confederacy considered inequality of races and the institution of slavery to be the foundational principle of the confederacy. In what is now called the &quot;Cornerstone Speech&quot;, given a few weeks after the secession of several states, he said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. &lt;a href=&quot;http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/cornerstone-speech/&quot;&gt;(Source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several states that seceded, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_texsec.asp&quot;&gt;Texas&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.asp&quot;&gt;South Carolina&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp&quot;&gt;Mississippi&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_geosec.asp&quot;&gt;Georgia&lt;/a&gt; issued declarations of secession, citing disagreement over slavery as the primary cause or a major cause of secession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that disagreement over slavery was the primary cause of the secession, it seems reasonable to conclude that it was the principal cause of the civil war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T22:24:27.693" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16277" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-15T22:25:46.317" Score="9" ViewCount="9499" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are products on ther market that claim to spread a thin layer of proprietary &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cheappoolproducts.com/images/docs/AP73_MSDS_solarpil.pdf&quot;&gt;transparent liquid&lt;/a&gt; over the surface of your pool to reduce evaporation and thus retain heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One product is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poolsupplyworld.com/SmartPool-AP72-SolarPill-Liquid-Ball-Solar-Blanket-Cover-for-Pools-up-to-30000-Gallons/AP72.htm&quot;&gt;Solarpills&lt;/a&gt; (a.k.a. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poolsuppliessuperstore.com/poolsupplies/Solar-Ball-4-Pack-1297.html&quot;&gt;Solarballs&lt;/a&gt;, but not to be confused with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solarball&quot;&gt;the water purifier&lt;/a&gt;) work? The vendor claims that one ball helps retain heat for 12,000 gallons, works all day, and will last for one month. Solarpills were manufactured by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smartpool.com/&quot;&gt;SmartPool&lt;/a&gt;, but are no longer mentioned on their list of products. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another similar product is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heatsavertenerife.com/liquid-swimming-pool-cover/&quot;&gt;Heatsavr&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Energy savings of up to 50%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Reduces water and chemicals lost via evaporation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Helps to lower your carbon emissions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Biodegradable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Non toxic – Independently safety tested&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Tasteless, odourless and undetectable by pool users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13808" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-16T05:42:48.213" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T00:17:42.970" Title="Do &quot;liquid solar blankets&quot; work to stop heat from escaping a swimming pool?" Tags="|physics|household|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16217" CreationDate="2013-05-15T22:56:51.527" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/human/alien-looking-skeleton-poses-medical-mystery-1304301.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Alien-Looking Skeleton Poses Medical Mystery&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DNA and other tests suggest the individual was a human and was 6 to 8 years of age when he or she died. Even so, the remains were just 6 inches (15 centimeters) long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... every nucleotide I've been able to look at is human&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data from the mitochondrial DNA alleles point toward &amp;quot;the mother being an indigenous woman from the Chilean area of South America,&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The jury is still out on the mutations that caused the deformities, and the researchers aren't certain how old the bones are, though they estimate the individual died at least a few decades ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There is no known form of dwarfism that accounts for all of the anomalies seen in this specimen,&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is Dr. Nolan's preliminary report on his analysis of the body: &lt;a href=&quot;http://siriusdisclosure.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Chile-Specimen_GPN-Summary.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chile Specimen&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As represented by a specialist in pediatric human bone and growth disorders (see attached report), the 6 inch specimen is a human that was likely 6-8 years of age at the time of death (age based on epiphyseal plate X-Ray density standards).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The DNA was of high quality, showing little to no serious degradation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reconstruction of the mitochondrial DNA sequence and analysis shows an allele frequency consistent with a B2 haplotype group found on the west coast of South America, supporting the claimed origination of the specimen from the Atacama Desert region of Chile. Sequence analysis definitively rules out the specimen as an example of a New World primate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I]f there is a genetic basis for the symptoms observed in the specimen the casual mutation(s) are not apparent at this level of resolution and at this stage of the analysis. As the current list of human disorders is far from complete and many human disorders are polygenic, there might remain to be found a combination of mutations working in concert that lead to the observed defect(s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-15T23:04:39.460" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16282" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-16T12:17:21.223" Score="5" ViewCount="734" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruen_transfer&quot;&gt;Gruen Transfer&lt;/a&gt; describes an effect that shopping malls are said to have on shoppers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a 1992 essay, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=-mk5rOctXtEC&amp;amp;lpg=RA4-PA30&amp;amp;ots=JYcYRJM730&amp;amp;dq=%22determined+stride+to+an+erratic+and+meandering+gait%22&amp;amp;pg=RA4-PA31&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22gruen%20transfer%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The World in a Shopping Mall&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ced.berkeley.edu/ced/faculty-staff/margaret-crawford&quot;&gt;Dr. Margaret Crawford&lt;/a&gt; explains, in a discussion on the deliberately confusing architecture of malls:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Gruen Transfer (named after architect Victor Gruen) designates the moment when a &quot;destination buyer,&quot; with a specific purchase in mind, is transformed into an impulse shopper, a crucial point immediately visible in the shift from a determined stride to an erratic meandering gait.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the Gruen Transfer a reasonable model of shopper behaviour? Have other, more prosaic, models been discounted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I perceive a number of predictions from this model:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That &quot;destination buyer&quot; and &quot;impulse shopper&quot; are different modes, distinguishable by actual shopping/spending patterns.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That these modes are highly correlated with walking style.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That the modes typically change, within the same individual, from destination to impulse buyer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That the speed or frequency of these changes are affected by mall design.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect that, to be taken seriously, this model should be more predictive than the simpler models: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that people get tired while shopping, independent of the mall design.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that people spend a fixed amount of effort looking for an item that they need, and then relax and look at other items, independent of the mall design.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research to demonstrate the Gruen Transfer is a real thing? Is it just pseudoscience from architects and mall-designers, claiming tired and frustrated customers as a success criteria?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T12:17:21.223" Title="Does the Gruen Transfer exist?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="242" CreationDate="2013-05-16T15:43:31.760" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of (anedoctical) empirical evidence that the systems as a whole work. But there is no research among users of the method.&#xA;On the other hand if you pick the single parts of which the methods are composed, there has been a lot of research in this respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let’s assume the methods would work if the single parts work, then yes, there is evidence that the system work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can read in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP10899909.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Dating Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Emerging Science of Human Courtship&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it would seem clear that there is in fact a substantive degree of &#xA;  psychological research to support many claims made by the Community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2731" LastEditorUserId="2731" LastEditDate="2013-11-28T10:23:03.623" LastActivityDate="2013-11-28T10:23:03.623" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16290" CreationDate="2013-05-16T18:07:19.767" Score="4" ViewCount="315" Body="&lt;p&gt;The CDC (the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/parasites/bedbugs/faqs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;asserts that&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bed bugs should not be considered as a medical or public health hazard. Bed bugs are not known to spread disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the risk of disease transmission be categorically ruled out, considering that, after all, bed bugs feed on people's and animals' blood?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13758" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-17T02:15:29.610" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T02:15:29.610" Title="Do bedbugs spread disease?" Tags="|zoology|pests|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16286" CreationDate="2013-05-16T19:17:35.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can the risk of disease transmission be categorically ruled out, considering that, after all, bedbugs feed on people's and animals' blood?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.  More research is needed before such a statement could be made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it stands now, despite investigations of transmissibility of numerous infectious agents, including transmissible blood-borne pathogens such as HIV and hepatitis B and C viruses, to our knowledge, no conclusive evidence has demonstrated disease transmission by bedbugs &lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?cmd=Retrieve&amp;amp;list_uids=19336711&amp;amp;dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;][&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?cmd=Retrieve&amp;amp;list_uids=21288844&amp;amp;dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some reasons for concern regarding the possibility of bedbugs being a vector for drug-resistant bacteria, or commensal bacteria that are themselves vectors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/17/6/10-1978_article.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Three residents&lt;/a&gt; of an impoverished community in Vancouver were hospitalized, and found to be infested with bedbugs.  The bedbugs were tested for the presence of drug-resistant bacteria, and bedbugs from each of the three patients were found to be carriers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For 2 patients, VRE was isolated from 1 bedbug each. These bacterial isolates were also resistant to ampicillin, teicoplanin, and aminoglycosides but susceptible to linezolid, quinupristin/dalfopristin, and tetracycline. For 1 other patient, MRSA was isolated from 3 bedbugs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusions drawn from the incident are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bedbugs carrying MRSA and/or VRE may have the potential to act as vectors for transmission. Further studies are needed to characterize the association between S. aureus and bedbugs. Bedbug carriage of MRSA, and the portal of entry provided through feeding, suggests a plausible potential mechanism for passive transmission of bacteria during a blood meal. Because of the insect’s ability to compromise the skin integrity of its host, and the propensity for S. aureus to invade damaged skin, bedbugs may serve to amplify MRSA infections in impoverished urban communities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, a study of an outbreak of bedbugs on French warships in the Mediterranean found that 13 of the 18 insects collected carried bacteria of the genus &lt;em&gt;Wolbachia&lt;/em&gt;, which is suspected as a pathogenic vector for hepatitis B and American trypanosomiasis (Chagas disease).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?hl=en&amp;amp;q=http://www.researchgate.net/publication/24423909_Detection_of_a_new_bacterium_related_to_%27Candidatus_Midichloria_mitochondrii%27_in_bed_bugs/file/79e4150732d39f2db9.pdf&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;scisig=AAGBfm2VDpzfRRI5keeIsBwuRK7-T4ZfIA&amp;amp;oi=scholarr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Link to the PDF abstract&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="3451" LastEditDate="2013-05-16T19:24:32.797" LastActivityDate="2013-05-16T19:24:32.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16291" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16292" CreationDate="2013-05-17T02:48:36.713" Score="12" ViewCount="23757" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/SncapPrTusA&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; shows Bruce Lee playing table-tennis with nunchucks instead of a racket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The description says something about Lee doing the commercial to promote cell phones for Nokia which makes me think it's fake but I don't know enough about all the timelines to say that for sure. Could this be real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13825" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-17T03:32:04.090" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T00:07:07.023" Title="Is this video of Bruce Lee playing ping pong with nunchucks real?" Tags="|video|bruce-lee|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16291" CreationDate="2013-05-17T03:30:03.047" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/photos/advertisements/pingpong.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; have done the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This video clip purportedly showing actor and martial arts master Bruce &#xA;  Lee playing ping-pong with nunchaku (also called &quot;nunchucks&quot; or &quot;nunchuks&quot;) is a digital creation intended as a viral advertisement for the Nokia N96 Limited Edition Bruce Lee cell phone, produced in 2008 (thirty-five years after Lee's death) [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article goes on to quote the Chief Creative Officer responsible for the advert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T03:30:03.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16294" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-17T06:55:16.393" Score="2" ViewCount="598" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Legend, Cleopatra wore a magnetic amulet on her forehead&#xA;  to preserve her youth; this placement put it near the brain’s&#xA;  magnetically sensitive pineal gland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healingtherapies.info/magnetic_healing.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Healing therapies&lt;/a&gt; claimed that through &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_therapy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Magnet therapy&lt;/a&gt;, it's possible to preserve youth and Cleopatra achieved that already. &#xA;Is there any studies conducted on preserving your youth using magnet? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10867" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-05-17T07:20:06.323" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T17:54:14.187" Title="Can we preserve youth wearing a magnet?" Tags="|medical-science|magnets|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16294" CreationDate="2013-05-17T07:38:28.887" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I didn't found any study regarding the &quot;youth preserving effect&quot; of magnets, but in general :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;there isn't any proof that Magnetotherapy is better than a placebo.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most of the many testimonials to the effectiveness of magnetic therapy&#xA;  devices can be attributed to placebo effects and to other effects&#xA;  accompanying their use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csicop.org/si/show/magnetic_therapy_plausible_attraction/&quot;&gt;magnetic therapy plausible attraction/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and wikipedia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_therapy&quot;&gt;Magnet therapy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T07:38:28.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15987" CreationDate="2013-05-17T16:06:27.513" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No he was not.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Berkman Buzz&lt;/em&gt; reports (via Islawmix):&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You have most probably heard by now that three Emirati men were allegedly thrown out of a cultural Janadriyah Festival by the Saudi religious police (pl. mutawaeen) for “being too handsome.” Most reports, however, have claimed the three men were actually deported from the Kingdom, itself, for their ‘seductive' lure that was apparently going to send the attending women into an incontrollable hormonal flux [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, no one in the English press bothered to actually fact check the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it turns out, three men were not, in fact, deported from Saudi Arabia. Actually, no one was deported from Saudi Arabia and certainly not for being too handsome. And, actually, no one was even kicked out of the heritage and cultural festival except for a member of the religious police for protesting against the presence of a Gulf female singer [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was, indeed, an incident involving Al Gala (and apparently him alone): according to the head of the mutawaeen, Sheikh Abdullatif Al-Sheikh, Al Gala had made his way into the family section of the event and was dancing inappropriately.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Several complaints were made against him and he was taken aside by members of the national guard, questioned and that was it. He was not asked to leave the event, let alone the country. It turns out his uncomfortable dancing and not his uncomfortably good looks were the reason for some cause for concern and discomfort at the festival.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150525141759/https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/95558&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20150525141759/https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/95558&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150525142036/http://www.alquds.co.uk/?p=39096&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20150525142036/http://www.alquds.co.uk/?p=39096&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T14:22:04.690" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10172" CreationDate="2013-05-17T17:04:40.503" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;For fiscal year 2013, it will cost an estimated $5.9 billion to operate Congress and the rest of the legislative branch. Salaries and benefits alone account for more than $2.5 billion of that sum.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1,2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That number has been revised downward for 2013 to $5.64 billion, and is estimated for 2014 to be $5.8 billion.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll look at the revised 2013 numbers for this analysis. Of the $5.64 billion, approximately $1 billion were &quot;reimbursable expenses&quot;, leaving $4.585 billion in total direct obligations due to the legislative branch.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dividing that $4.585 billion evenly across all 365 days gives an average cost of &lt;strong&gt;$12.6 million per day&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that analysis may be too simplistic. In 2013, the house is in session 126 days.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; The senate is in session 195 days.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; Some expenses (for example: salary, rent) should be accounted for evenly across all days. Other expenses (for example: communication, advisory services, printing), should be accounted for more heavily on the days in session. This is a very crude division. Communication, printing, etc. can happen on out-of-session days, but I'll assume that it all happens on in-session days. Because of this, my estimates are something like upper bounds on what a single day could cost congress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allotting the following lines&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; ($2,812 million) across all 365 days evenly results in $7.7 million per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;11.1-13.0 All Personnel Compensation and Benefits: $2,480 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;23.1 Rental Payments to GSA: $47 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;23.2 Rental Payments to others: $21 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;31.0 Equipment: $139 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;32.0 Land and Structure: $102 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;33.0 Investments and Loans: $2 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;41.0 Grants Subsidies and Contributions: $11 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;94.0 Financial Transfers: $10 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allotting the remaining lines ($1,773 million in costs like supplies and materials, operation, advisory services, printing, communications, transport)&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; across only days in session results in an additional 14 million per day (if we divide across the 126 days that the house is in session), or an additional 9 million per day (if we divide across the 195 days that the senate is in session).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Costs per day that are due to expenses spread across the year: $7.7 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Additional cost per in-session day: $9-14 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost per day that the US congress is in session: &lt;strong&gt;$16.7 - $21.7 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;1. Carolina Miranda. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ideas.time.com/2012/07/25/should-we-outsource-congress/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Should we outsource congress?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. TIME. July 25, 2012.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;2. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/objclass.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Object Class Analysis: Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2013&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Office of  Management and Budget. 2012. p.4&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;3. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2014/assets/objclass.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Object Class Analysis: Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2014&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Office of  Management and Budget. 2013. p.4&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;4. Eric Cantor. &lt;a href=&quot;http://majorityleader.gov/calendar/113thCongressFirstSession.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;House Calendar for the First Session of the 113th Congress&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. 2012.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;5. Dick Durbin and John Cornyn. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.senate.gov/legislative/resources/pdf/2013_calendar.pdf&quot;&gt;Tentative Schedule for the First Session of the 113th Congress&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. 2012.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-05-17T18:21:45.627" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T18:21:45.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16233" CreationDate="2013-05-17T19:55:12.510" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took a &quot;Physics of Sound&quot; class when at college, and remember similar statements being made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This page on the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/sound/earsens.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sensitivity of Human Ear&lt;/a&gt;&quot; indicates that the threshold of hearing is 0 decibels. The threshold of pain is 130 decibels (10&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; stronger signal) - or about the volume of a rock concert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MakeItLouder.com has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.makeitlouder.com/Decibel%20Level%20Chart.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;chart&lt;/a&gt; saying that a mosquito buzzing 10 feet away (where &lt;code&gt;N&lt;/code&gt; is normalized, and the leading number is the decibel measure):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;0 (N) BEGINNING OF HEARING, A MOSQUITO 10 FEET AWAY, THE EAR DRUM MOVES LESS              -REF.1.1990&#xA;       THAN 1 / 100 THE LENGTH OF AN AIR MOLECULE (N)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That same chart indicates that a pin drop from a height of 1cm at a distance of 1m is 15dB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that chart also has a gross misstatement about Krakatoa exploding in 1883 that it &quot;CREATED A 3000 FOOT TIDAL WAVE&quot; - at no point was the tsunami measured (above mean sea level) at higher than a couple hundred feet. They also reference an absurdly high ejection maximal distance (34 miles), when it was more along the lines of 17-20 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060838590&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) (not that this is an indicator of other misinformation, but it's a warning).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, to quote Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Decibel&lt;/a&gt; article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The decibel is commonly used in acoustics to quantify sound levels relative to a 0 dB reference which has been defined as a sound pressure level of .0002 microbar, or 20 micropascals. The reference level is set at the typical threshold of perception of an average human and there are common comparisons used to illustrate different levels of sound pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also example of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_pressure#Examples_of_sound_pressure_and_sound_pressure_levels&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pressure&lt;/a&gt;. The bottom end of the range is in the neighborhood of 2x10&lt;sup&gt;-5&lt;/sup&gt; Pa, or about 2.9x10&lt;sup&gt;-9&lt;/sup&gt; psi. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the size of the ear drum alone, less than &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081216172027AAIG0Ru&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1 cm&lt;/a&gt; in diameter, it &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; be extremely sensitive - there's not much place for it to move to start with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="637" LastActivityDate="2013-05-17T19:55:12.510" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15004" CreationDate="2013-05-18T00:07:22.967" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first reports of hallucinations during perceptual isolation were in 1953, by Heron, Bexton, and Hebb.&lt;sup&gt;3,4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1960, Vosberg et al. found that an anechoic chamber produced a high incidence of auditory and visual hallucinations even within an hour.&lt;sup&gt;1,2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brady and Mason&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; aimed to &quot;establish whether brief sensory deprivation in an anechoic chamber can elicit psychotic-like experiences, and perceptual distortions in particular, and whether these are related to hallucination proneness&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their procedure was to have a subject spend &quot;15 minutes in the chamber in complete darkness&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They concluded that &quot;short-term sensory deprivation was found to lead to increases in several aspects of psychotic-like experience including perceptual disturbances, anhedonia, and paranoia. Hallucination prone participants experienced greater perceptual disturbances than nonprone participants&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A meta-study by Zuckerman and Cohen analyzed the experiments on perceptual isolation pre-1964.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; In my opinion, this was a very thorough review, examining &quot;methods of confinement and restriction, conditions&#xA;of illumination, duration of isolation, set, instructions and suggestions,&#xA;reporting or verbalization instructions, sleep, subject populations,&#xA;prior knowledge and expectations, intelligence and personality characteristics&#xA;of subject's, stress response, and methods of obtaining reported visual and&#xA;auditory sensations&quot;. Anechoic chambers and auditory restriction were not the focus of this study but were covered briefly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zuckerman and Cohen reviewed the wide range of reported visual sensations and argued that the term &quot;hallucinations&quot; should only be applied to visual sensations that are &quot;meaningful&quot; (people, objects, scenes) as opposed to idioretinal responses (light flashes, spots, shapes). Auditory hallucinations have been obtained in both darkness and diffuse light settings. Their review also showed several studies that reported the highest incidence of reported visual sensations during the first hour of isolation, with incidence dropping off after that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'll add more to this answer later.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1. OJ Mason, F Brady. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/jonmd/Abstract/2009/10000/The_Psychotomimetic_Effects_of_Short_Term_Sensory.11.aspx&quot;&gt;The Psychotomimetic Effects of Short-Term Sensory Deprivation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. The Journal of nervous and mental disease, 2009&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2. R. Vosberg, N. Fraser, J. Guehl. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=487763&quot;&gt;Imagery Sequence in Sensory Deprivation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. AMA Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1960; 2(3):356-357&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3. M. Zuckerman, N. Cohen. &lt;a href=&quot;http://wexler.free.fr/library/files/zuckerman%20%281964%29%20sources%20of%20reports%20of%20visual%20and%20auditory%20sensations%20in%20perceptual-isolation%20experiments.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sources of Reports of Visual and Auditory Sensations in Perceptual Isolation Experiences&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4. W. Heron, W.H. Bexton, and D.O. Hebb &lt;em&gt;Cognitive effects of a decreased variation to the sensory environment.&lt;/em&gt;. Amer. Psychologist, 1953, 8, 366.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-05-18T22:12:50.780" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T22:12:50.780" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16311" CreationDate="2013-05-18T02:37:45.903" Score="6" ViewCount="1599" Body="&lt;p&gt;NaturalNews.com has an article entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/040349_Angelina_Jolie_breast_cancer_surgery.html#ixzz2TbjXEKVg&quot;&gt;How Angelina Jolie was duped by cancer doctors into self mutilation for breast cancer she never had&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis in original)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the really sad part about all this is that Angelina Jolie was lied&#xA;  to. She didn't have an 87% risk of breast cancer in the first place.&#xA;  All the women reading her NYT op-ed piece are also being lied to.&#xA;  Here's why...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;**  How cancer doctors lie with statistics and use fear to scare women&#xA;  into high-profit procedures**&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The very idea that breast cancer is a &quot;percent risk&quot; is a complete&#xA;  lie. In reality, &lt;strong&gt;everyone has cancer micro-tumors in their bodies,&#xA;  including myself&lt;/strong&gt;. Cancer is not a disease you just &quot;get&quot; like being&#xA;  randomly struck by lightning. It's something you must &quot;manage&quot; or&#xA;  &quot;prevent&quot; day by day, meal by meal, through a lifestyle choice that&#xA;  involves vitamin D supplementation, nutrition, superfoods, vegetable&#xA;  juices and avoidance of cancer-causing chemicals and radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So when a doctor says you have a &quot;chance&quot; of getting cancer, what he's&#xA;  implying is that you have no control over cancer, and that's an&#xA;  outright lie. Cancer quackery, in other words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even Jolie with her BRCA1 gene that's linked to breast cancer can&#xA;  quite easily follow a dietary and lifestyle plan that &lt;strong&gt;suppresses BRCA1&#xA;  gene expression&lt;/strong&gt;. It's not rocket science. It's not even difficult. It&#xA;  can be done with simple foods that cost a few dollars a day. Those&#xA;  foods include raw citrus, resveratrol (red grapes or red wine), raw&#xA;  cruciferous vegetables, omega-3 oils and much more. Those same foods&#xA;  also help prevent heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's and other&#xA;  chronic diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can eating the right foods avoid BRCA1 breast cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2015-10-29T12:40:57.197" Title="Can eating the right foods avoid BRCA1 breast cancer?" Tags="|nutrition|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16309" CreationDate="2013-05-18T10:44:06.033" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;In Brief&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot reduce cancer risk to zero by any strategy, including nutritional choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article contains several major errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The article is wrong about BRCA1 gene expression&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The article is wrong about risk factors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The article is wrong to say everyone has micro-tumors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The article is wrong to suggest cancer causing chemicals and radiation can be avoided&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;BRCA1 gene and cancer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase &lt;em&gt;&quot;can easily follow a dietary and lifestyle plan that suppresses BRCA1 gene expression.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is inconsistent with the current understanding of the medical condition under discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase suggests that you need to suppress BRCA1 gene expression to avoid cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc2981135/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;In search of the tumour-suppressor functions of BRCA1 and BRCA2&lt;/a&gt; says that the opposite is the case. The medical condition is one where the &lt;strong&gt;tumour-suppressor genes&lt;/strong&gt; BRCA1 and BRCA2 are NOT being expressed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hereditary breast and ovarian cancer syndromes can be caused by loss-of-function germline mutations in one of two tumour-suppressor genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC150734/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Negative Regulation of BRCA1 Gene Expression by HMGA1 Proteins Accounts for the Reduced BRCA1 Protein Levels in Sporadic Breast Carcinoma&lt;/a&gt; also says the opposite of the quotation in the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A drastic reduction in BRCA1 gene expression is a characteristic feature of aggressive sporadic breast carcinoma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is the case, the article is wrong. The last thing anyone should do is suppress BRCA1 gene expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Percent risk&quot; or &quot;avoidable&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article alleges that breast cancer is not a &quot;percent risk&quot;, that it is avoidable and that doctors lie when discussing risks with patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breastcancercampaign.org/breast-cancer-risk-factors?gclid=COmY0ceupLcCFcXItAodTzsAkA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Breast Cancer Campaign&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anything that increases a person’s chances of developing a disease is called a risk factor. Having many risk factors does not mean you will develop breast cancer, whilst &lt;strong&gt;having fewer risk factors will not definitely prevent the disease&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Nutrition and Cancer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The link between diet and cancer is complex and difficult to unravel. This is because our diet is made up of lots of different foods and nutrients. Most of these affect our &lt;strong&gt;risk of cancer&lt;/strong&gt;, often in combination with one another. The genes you inherit also affect the way diet influences your &lt;strong&gt;cancer risk&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advise from cancer research organisations is fairly simple and straightforward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try to get plenty of fruit and vegetables in your diet.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eat smaller and fewer portions of red and processed meat. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try not to eat too many salt-preserved or high-salt foods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Boost the fibre in your diet by choosing wholegrain varieties of starchy foods wherever possible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try not to eat too many fatty foods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Try eating more fish instead of red or processed meat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(summarised from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/healthyliving/dietandhealthyeating/foodnutrientsandcancer/diet-and-cancer-different-foods-and-nutrients&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Diet and Cancer - Cancer Research UK&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Microtumors&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article suggests we all have microtumors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We don't know much about micro-tumors in people without cancer symptoms. They are difficult to detect. What we do know suggests they are the initial stages of cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://carcin.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/04/22/carcin.bgr076.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Distinct Contributions of Angiogenesis and Vascular Co-option during &#xA;the Initiation of Primary Microtumors and Micrometastases &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Primary microtumors and micrometastases are the initial stages of primary tumor and distal metastases, respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tumor-induced angiogenesis and tumor cell vessel interactions are &#xA;  one of the most important events during these stages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the smallest microtumors and &#xA;  micrometastatic clones are very difficult to detect in cancer patients and traditional animal &#xA;  models [1,2]. Most of our understanding of the initial formation of microtumors is deduced &#xA;  from static images captured from late stage tumors，&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Avoidance of cancer causing chemicals and radiation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article suggests you can prevent cancer by (among other things) avoiding cancer causing chemicals and radiation. The tone of the article suggests you can totally prevent cancer thus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sunlight causes skin cancers. Avoiding sunlight is not a sensible option. We also need sunlight for Vitamin D production and for other positive health reasons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our planet is naturally radioactive, radiation cannot be totally avoided. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our bodies and everything we eat, drink and breathe is composed of chemicals. It is not currently possible to completely avoid all chemicals that have been linked with increased risk of cancer. For example read the nutritional advice (referred to above) about the chemical sodium-chloride, an essential part of our diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T10:05:36.273" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T10:05:36.273" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16313" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-18T17:44:04.820" Score="31" ViewCount="4955" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent spate of newspaper headlines reported that 97% of scientists agreed with the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). The UK's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10061285/Scientific-consensus-that-humans-to-blame-for-climate-change.html&quot;&gt;Daily telegraph&lt;/a&gt; reported:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A review of 12,000 scientific papers has found the consensus among scientists that humans are to blame for climate change is “overwhelming” and the dissenting view was held by less than two per cent of scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/strong-scientific-consensus-on-global-warming-130516.htm&quot;&gt;Discovery&lt;/a&gt; reported:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;97.2 percent of the papers that took a position on the subject being rated by their own authors as supporting the notion of human-caused global warming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus&quot;&gt;NASA&lt;/a&gt; used the headline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consensus: 97% of climate scientists agree&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was struck, though, by this statement in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article&quot;&gt;original paper&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which suggests that the 97% headline is not a &lt;em&gt;strictly&lt;/em&gt; accurate summary of the findings as about 2 in 3 papers didn't seem to take a clear position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are the headlines a fair summary? Was the study itself a useful way to judge either consensus or truth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:33:55.880" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:33:55.880" Title="Is it accurate to say that 97% of experts agree that global warming is anthropogenic?" Tags="|climate-change|sociology|climatology|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16313" CreationDate="2013-05-18T18:24:18.803" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;The paper does not claim that that 97% of scientists endorse AGW.  The study was conducted to evaluate the consensus within the published literature, and it found that an overwhelming percentage of published papers expressing a view on the question do endorse the premise that human activity is causing global warming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When scientific findings are summarized in the popular press, things often get a bit distorted.  The key finding of the referenced paper is given as the last sentence of the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the papers that did not endorse or deny the existence of AGW, the paper offers this explanation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of note is the large proportion of abstracts that state no position on AGW. This result is expected in consensus situations where scientists '...generally focus their discussions on questions that are still disputed or unanswered rather than on matters about which everyone agrees' (Oreskes 2007, p 72). This explanation is also consistent with a description of consensus as a 'spiral trajectory' in which 'initially intense contestation generates rapid settlement and induces a spiral of new questions' (Shwed and Bearman 2010); the fundamental science of AGW is no longer controversial among the publishing science community and the remaining debate in the field has moved to other topics. This is supported by the fact that more than half of the self-rated endorsement papers did not express a position on AGW in their abstracts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these papers may have stated a position within the body of the paper, but the study only looked at the abstract.  Many others may not have stated a position at all, as the purpose of the paper was to report on some particular new finding in the climate science field, rather than to point out that the climate is changing due to human activities.  New papers published in the thermal sciences field don't include an explicit endorsement of the laws of thermodynamics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastEditorUserId="8436" LastEditDate="2013-05-18T20:23:34.473" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T20:23:34.473" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16316" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16318" CreationDate="2013-05-18T20:27:15.433" Score="9" ViewCount="3949" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been watching to some videos on Youtube to see if I should be a vegan. One of the thing that popped out during a discussion was the fact that soy contains a lot of oestrogen which could cause undesirable side effects. However, to my great surprise, the speaker answered by claiming that &quot;meat and cow's milk have twice the amount of oestrogen that's found in soy&quot;. I searched rapidly on Google and saw many website claiming the same thing. Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claim found in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeHLGnDz_0g&amp;amp;t=10m05s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastEditorUserId="7569" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T19:17:36.187" LastActivityDate="2016-05-22T03:58:10.007" Title="Does beef meat have twice the amount of oestrogen as soy?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16317" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16035" CreationDate="2013-05-18T20:33:11.233" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's distinguish between the two concepts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Naming a star. To name a star, or buy a name of a star, does not mean a person owns the star, or gives a person, corporation, or state the right to that star or its real land as property. Regarding 'naming a star', please review @Oliver_c answer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Owning a star. No Individual, country, or corporation has legal right of ownership of a star, planet, or &quot;extraterrestrial&quot; or &quot;celestial&quot; body. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty forbade states from claiming terrestrial sovereignty.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unoosa.org/pdf/publications/STSPACE11E.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Link to United Nations Treaty and Principles on Outer Space&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be argued that, just as the United Nations forbids any party to own a planet or star, the United Nations has no right to manage or establish laws on property beyond Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6660" LastEditorUserId="757" LastEditDate="2014-07-16T18:12:45.527" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T18:12:45.527" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16316" CreationDate="2013-05-18T21:18:16.277" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Soy contains isoflavones which are said to mimic oestrogen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many cattle are given growth promoting hormones - including oestrogen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the sources below are to be believed, the daily amount consumed in soya may be thousands of times greater than that consumed in beef.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Soy: 30000 ng&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beef: 4 ng or 20 ng.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two sources are not great and the products, quantities and consumers in them are not comparable. However I think they are at least indicative of the magnitude of the likely quantities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2004/nov/07/foodanddrink.features7&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been estimated that infants who are fed soya formula exclusively receive an amount of oestrogen equivalent to five birth control pills every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One birth control pill contains 30 to 35 micrograms (mcg) of EE (ethinyl estradiol - a synthetic oestrogen).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://beefmyths.org/beefmyths/cattlegrowthhormones/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BeefMyths&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3-ounce serving of beef from a steer treated with growth promotants contains 1.9 nanograms of estrogen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3-ounce serving of beef from a steer raised without growth promotants, such as certified organic beef contains 1.3 nanograms of estrogen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sources: Food and Drug Administration; Hoffman and Evers; Scanga et al.; FSIS-USDA; Dr. Harlan Ritchie, Michigan State University; NCBA&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://humupd.oxfordjournals.org/content/7/3/340.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Possible health impact of animal oestrogens in food&lt;/a&gt; it says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theoretical maximum daily intake (TMDI) of oestradiol-17β by consumption of cattle meat is calculated to be 4.3 ng. Following the use of oestradiol-containing growth-promoting agents TMDI is increased by a factor of 4.6 to 20 ng.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-18T21:27:38.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16313" CreationDate="2013-05-18T22:27:06.493" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you do the arithmetic, the statement that struck you: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6%&#xA;  endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the&#xA;  cause of global warming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;gives the 97%. You throw out the 66.4% that did not take a position since they provide no data on the question.  32.6 / (32.6 + 0.3 + 0.7) = 0.97.  Of the papers that took a position, 97% endorsed AGW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the 66.4% did not say they were unsure about AGW.  They said &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; about AGW (in the abstract).  0.3% actually said that they were unsure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether this is a good experiment to determine whether &quot;97% of climate scientists agree&quot;, it was not intended to answer that question.  They sampled those climate scientists that made a statement about AGW, which might bias the result in one direction or another since the sampling was not random.  The 66.4% might not have the same distribution as the 33.6%.  A small random sample of the positions of the authors of those 8,000 papers would let you know if there's anything surprising there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors didn't do exactly that, but they did something like it, which was to ask the authors of some of those 8,000 papers if they thought their paper expressed a position, and if so, what that position was.  About half said that there was a position, and with that new data, the bottom line number changed from 97.1% to 97.2%.  So the result seems to be robust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would conclude from this that the consensus on AGW among scientists who publish on the subject is well north of 90%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6959" LastEditorUserId="6959" LastEditDate="2013-05-19T01:14:54.797" LastActivityDate="2013-05-19T01:14:54.797" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16320" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-18T22:51:26.060" Score="19" ViewCount="10255" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyone has probably seen a car stereo head unit with a removable face plate; the idea being you can take the faceplate with you to deter theft.  The claim is specifically made in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00337WLN6&quot;&gt;this product description&lt;/a&gt;, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Removable Faceplate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The faceplate of this model can be removed and taken with you, to help deter theft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is very trivial to buy a faceplate for the majority of car stereos these days, at least for any model made recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any crime statistics or other research that shows that these removable faceplates do actually reduce theft?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-05-18T23:25:07.640" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T07:41:43.777" Title="Do removable faceplates on car stereos deter theft?" Tags="|technology|criminology|security|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16324" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22932" CreationDate="2013-05-19T05:54:36.607" Score="13" ViewCount="4299" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hueyatlaco&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hueyatlaco is an archeological site in Valsequillo, Mexico. After excavations in the 1960s, the site became notorious due to geochronologists' analyses that indicated human habitation at Hueyatlaco was dated to ca. 250,000 years before the present.&#xA;  These controversial findings are orders of magnitude older than the scientific consensus for habitation of the New World (which generally traces widespread human migration to the New World to 13,000 to 16,000 ybp). The findings at Hueyatlaco have mostly been repudiated by the larger scientific community, and have seen only occasional discussion in the literature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be persistent claims, based on radioactive dating, and some claims of a cover-up, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4795" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-19T09:06:18.377" LastActivityDate="2022-02-19T01:51:45.910" Title="Does the Hueyatlaco site show human habitation in Mexico &gt;50,000 years ago?" Tags="|archeology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16412" CreationDate="2013-05-19T11:57:20.397" Score="5" ViewCount="1208" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a debate in England, as the government is changing the way the NHS works, to introduce more competition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NHS will still operate as a single payer, covering the whole population: but providers such as hospitals will face more competition to attract patients, and the money that follows them. This policy is very controversial, and many believers in a centrally planned NHS claim these changes will destroy the system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent Head to Head in the BMJ gave two experts the opportunity to express their sides of the argument. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f1975&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Julian LeGrand&lt;/a&gt; was in favour of competition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fear of competition itself is misplaced. We now have considerable evidence that increasing competitive pressure does indeed provide the challenge that NHS hospitals apparently need if they are to improve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was opposed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d3760&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;David Hunter&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gradually, the ethos of the NHS as a public service will be eroded and replaced with a different set of values. Whether this is motivated by naked greed...or neoliberal dogma permeating the political system, the end result will be largely the same and not in the public interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other countries have competition between hospitals, and their experience should be relevant to the NHS proposals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often the experience of the US is quoted as definitive proof that markets are a catastrophe. Here is one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d3760&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;contributor&lt;/a&gt; to the debate in England:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The government has failed to explain why the NHS, ranked overall second in health outcomes and first in cost effectiveness among seven developed countries (United Kingdom, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia, and the United States... needs to involve profit making providers...The US produced the worst scores on these measures in this 2010 comparison and was ranked consistently lowest overall in previous Commonwealth Fund studies, in 2004, 2006, and 2007. The US achieves worse health outcomes than not only these developed countries but even impoverished Cuba ..., and at an annual per capita cost ($7410, 2009, ... more than double the UK’s ($3285) and 10 times Cuba’s ($707). The changes brought by the passage of the bill [to introduce more competition] would be to a more expensive system that will deliver worse quality of care: the worst of both worlds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: is there evidence for the theory that implementing competition between hospitals will help quality or cost or both? What is the experience from other countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-05-25T18:21:10.377" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T21:59:08.947" Title="Is there evidence that competition between hospitals creates better quality and lower cost healthcare?" Tags="|politics|healthcare|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="44" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16320" CreationDate="2013-05-19T20:20:03.197" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The theft deterrence afforded by a removable faceplate is mentioned in many patent applications. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Typically, the purpose of the removable faceplate is to prevent theft of the base unit, and associated damage to the vehicle, by minimizing the economic gain that is realizable by the theft. That is, because the resale value of a base unit without a faceplate is minimal, a thief has little incentive to break into the vehicle to steal the base unit.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theft deterrence can be found as part of the actual claims of several patents on removable faceplates. For example, see Claim 10 of EP1992076: &quot;&lt;em&gt;The method for listening of Claim 1 wherein said removing the car security face plate assembly provides a theft protection for the car stereo system&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; If this invention did not actually deliver the promised result (theft protection), then this claim would be invalid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't found a study that presents statistics on thefts of stereos with removable faceplates vs thefts of stereos without removable faceplates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I did find was that &quot;FBI reports indicate that car stereo theft decreased by more than 50 per cent between 1994 and 2009&quot;,&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; and &quot;the removable faceplates on many units also help to discourage theft.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Police reported that the introduction of a detachable faceplate &quot;effectively prevented theft&quot;.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Detective Sgt. Gary Jackson (Vandallia, OH) said, &quot;both of these features are good theft preventive measures only if the owners use them&quot;, when talking about removable stereos and removable faceplates.&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor Andrew Karmen said that the detachable faceplates on cars have made a big difference.&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1. Epstein, Michael and Pasieka, Michael. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/patents/WO2001058062A2&quot;&gt;A multi-function removable faceplate for an entertainment system, such as a broadcast receiver&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. WO2001058062 A2, 2001&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2. Will, Joanne. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/car-tips/how-to-reset-your-car-stereo-code/article4601665/&quot;&gt;How to reset your car stereo code&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. The Globe and Mail. October 11, 2012&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3. Hovden, Gunnar. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/patents/EP1992076A2&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;A stereo security face plate assembly and method&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. EP 1992076 A2, 2007&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;4. Thölke, Jürg M., Hultinka, Erik Jan, and Robbenb, Henry S. J. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1540-5885.1810003/abstract&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Launching new product features: a multiple case examination&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Journal of Product Innovation Management. 18(1), January 2001.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;5. Babcock, Jim. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc&amp;amp;p_docid=0F7725FC70B43C90&amp;amp;p_docnum=1&quot;&gt;THEFT FROM VEHICLES PREVENTABLE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Dayton Daily News. November 14, 2002.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;6. Friedman, Naparstek, and Taussig-Rubbo. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.transalt.org/files/newsroom/reports/caralarms/report.pdf&quot;&gt;Audible Car Alarms Don't Work&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Transportation Alternatives. 2003.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T01:38:28.707" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T01:38:28.707" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10253" CreationDate="2013-05-19T22:06:49.977" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't post comments here as I don't have the required repution (50) for the 'privilege' to post comments on other questions. I was made aware of these two videos by Chris Robinson which features two detectives and a former RAF serviceman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctt6aIbOPWE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Strange But True? 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ljvJnm3OI4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Strange But True? 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a Detective Sergeant Richard McGregor in video one and (retired) Detective Chief Inspector Alex Hall of Regional Crime Squad, they mention &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bedfordshire.police.uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bedfordshire police&lt;/a&gt;. Chris Robinson quite possibly still lives in Dunstable, Bedfordshire so that tallies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Detective Sergeant Richard McGregor in video one says: &amp;quot;he is designated a contact and then really we act as a filter to see what he is saying and try and make something of it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In video two the narrator Michael Aspel says: &amp;quot;for six years Regional Crime Squad Detective Chief Inspector Alex Hall was allocated to be his police contact.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the question is a bit narrow in scope as it should include the other police constabularies (they don't regard themselves as a 'police force' but 'police service'). In addition we didn't start using police commissioners until November 2012, before then their role was carried out by a police authority (made of local councillors, independent members of the community and magistrates).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a few things about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rationalinquiry.org.uk/do-the-police-use-psychics.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UK Skeptics article&lt;/a&gt; (Rational Inquiry?)(&lt;strong&gt;2&lt;/strong&gt;) I'll focus on as it has a number of caveats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not all forces responded&lt;/strong&gt;; however, there are enough replies to conclude that &lt;strong&gt;the police do not systematically&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;actively&lt;/strong&gt; make use of psychics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question the article asks is &amp;quot;Do &lt;s&gt;the&lt;/s&gt; UK police use psychics?&amp;quot; not whether they &amp;quot;systemically&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;actively&amp;quot; use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the letter written by the article's author Eddie Silence to the police authorities, he said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ms. Blears responded, saying &lt;strong&gt;records are not kept centrally&lt;/strong&gt;, and that &lt;strong&gt;the use of ‘psychics’ was a matter solely for the commissioners (1) of respective police forces in the UK.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some interesting responses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NORFOLK POLICE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mon, 27 Feb 2006 12:54&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge, there would be no way of keeping records on matters of this nature as they would be individual policy decisions made by individual Senior Investigating Officers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DYFED-POWYS POLICE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;16 Mar 2006&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am informed that Dyfed Powys Police has never used psychics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though the author appends a link from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1225417/Police-spend-thousands-investigating-suicide-murder-psychics-claim-spoken-dead-mans-ghost.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Mail article&lt;/a&gt; in which detectives from Dyfed-Powys Police had acted upon information provided by psychic mediums. Although Eddie Silence states &amp;quot;This instance seems to have been the action of individual officers rather than being official policy of Dyfed Powys Police&amp;quot;. Right, which means that police have worked with psychics then. Whether or not its policy is irrelevant, particularly when Chief Constables and their detectives are given discretion on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dyfed-powys.police.uk/archive/documents/FoIDisclosure/Misc/2010/427.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FOI document&lt;/a&gt; by Dyfed-Powys Police.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BEDFORDSHIRE POLICE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;16th March 2006&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following your request, searches were conducted at Bedfordshire Police. These searches failed to locate any records relating to your request &lt;strong&gt;based on the information you provided&lt;/strong&gt;. Accordingly &lt;strong&gt;I have determined that the information to which you seek access is not held by Bedfordshire Police&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend reading this &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8369369.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC article&lt;/a&gt; which explores the subject a little.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's important to be sceptical of everything, not just people who claim to have psychic abilities but also those that 'cross-examine' them. Do your own research and come to your own conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1.&lt;/strong&gt; again we had no police commissioners at the time, he meant chief constables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2&lt;/strong&gt; all the correspondances from the police constabularies were dated 2006 not 2003&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13831" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T14:39:53.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16330" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-19T23:56:07.727" Score="4" ViewCount="871" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are technologies for sale, especially in Germany, to drill holes in the walls of a cellar, and inject into the concrete or masonry a liquid, such as Sodium Silicate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The manufacturers promise these chemicals will make walls waterproof and sell it as damp-proofing for cellars and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these products are used in combination with other methods, like plastering the wall. Hence, one can not see the individual effect. Some people complain that after a few years the injections must be repeated. Some manufacturers explain that the user can see the benefits only after a few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I have not found any independent and trustworthy publications supporting the injection method. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems this method is heavily advertised in Germany, but rather unknown in most other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not know if it is fair to write the companies' names here, hence I link to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontalsperre#Injektionsverfahren&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;German Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; article describing the method. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been any scientific investigations into the effectiveness of liquid-injection damp-proofing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advertised German injection products are for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mem.de/projekte/trockene_haeuser/aufsteigende_feuchtigkeit.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mem.de/projekte/trockene_haeuser/aufsteigende_feuchtigkeit.html&lt;/a&gt; (using potassium silicate waterglas)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sg-weber.de/bautenschutz-systeme/innovationen/mauerwerkssanierung.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sg-weber.de/bautenschutz-systeme/innovationen/mauerwerkssanierung.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Remmers KIESOL waterproofing&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10319" LastEditorUserId="10319" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T13:25:53.967" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T13:25:53.967" Title="Does &quot;liquid-injection damp-proofing&quot; work to water-proof walls?" Tags="|chemistry|engineering|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16331" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-20T04:42:53.987" Score="14" ViewCount="925" Body="&lt;p&gt;You often hear stories about fathers lifting cars or heavy trees off their sons when an accident happens, but is there any truth to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can people suddenly lift more or run faster than they normally can under dire situations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a runner myself, I've often been curious if my fastest 5K (15:42) would drop drastically if my life depended on it.  I wouldn't think it would change much, because I am &lt;em&gt;exhausted&lt;/em&gt; after a race, but who knows?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13853" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T09:50:55.500" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T09:50:55.500" Title="Can people lift hundreds of pounds or run faster due to adrenaline?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16335" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16336" CreationDate="2013-05-20T12:11:38.877" Score="25" ViewCount="6389" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was in school, my teacher always told me &amp;quot;Sit up straight stop slouching!&amp;quot;. I am sure many others have heard this too, the thing is though, sitting up with straight back is very uncomfortable, and your back gets tired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not always are you told WHY you should do it either. But sometimes it's because you look lazy, and it's improper to slouch, sometimes you're told because it's better for your back to sit straight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I focus this question on the health aspect of sitting up straight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jointventurespt.com/_blog/Joint_Ventures%27_Blog/post/Stop_slouching_and_Sit_Up_Straight!/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blog: &amp;quot;Stop slouching and Sit Up Straight!&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know, I sound like your second grade teacher, or your mother at the dinner table with those constant, nagging phrases that used to drive us nuts, “Sit up straight!”&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jointventurespt.com/_blog/Joint_Ventures%27_Blog/post/Stop_slouching_and_Sit_Up_Straight!/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I hear patients coming into the clinic complaining of their spouses getting on their last nerve because they’re not standing up straight.  But, if your spouse is telling you to sit up straight, he/she could be saving your body from many issues.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jointventurespt.com/_blog/Joint_Ventures%27_Blog/post/Stop_slouching_and_Sit_Up_Straight!/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://my.clevelandclinic.org/healthy_living/back_health/hic_posture_for_a_healthy_back.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sit straight up&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is good posture?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Posture is the position in which you hold your&#xA;body upright against gravity while standing, sitting or lying down.&#xA;Good posture involves training your body to stand, walk, sit and lie&#xA;in positions where the least strain is placed on supporting muscles&#xA;and ligaments during movement or weight-bearing activities.&lt;a href=&quot;http://my.clevelandclinic.org/healthy_living/back_health/hic_posture_for_a_healthy_back.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Correct sitting position&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sit up with your back straight and your shoulders back. Your buttocks should touch the back of your chair.&lt;a href=&quot;http://my.clevelandclinic.org/healthy_living/back_health/hic_posture_for_a_healthy_back.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rsba5.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Man sitting straight&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sitting with back at 90 degree, is not comfortable at all, even if you're being told so. And also you're told it's the best way for your back. But if something is uncomfortable, it might be a warning from your body. Is sitting straight really good for the health of your back?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T02:59:23.097" Title="Is sitting straight up the healthiest way to sit?" Tags="|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16335" CreationDate="2013-05-20T12:11:38.877" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, sitting straight is bad for your back.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rsna2006.rsna.org/rsna2006/V2006/conference/event_display.cfm?em_id=4435870&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Medical paper about sitting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RESULTS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We found IVD height showed a tendency to decrease as lumbar lordosis&#xA;  decreased in variable sitting positions from reclining to forward&#xA;  flexion. The NP [nucleus pulposus] showed movement within a limited range in normal IVDs [intervertebral disc]&#xA;  without change of its overall area. The optimal sitting position was&#xA;  with a trunk-thigh angle of 135 degrees. This position was shown to&#xA;  cause least 'strain' on the lumbar spine, most significantly when&#xA;  compared with an upright 90 degree sitting posture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sitting up straight causes unnecessary extra strain to your back, best way to sit is in a 135 degree position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6187080.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC article about sitting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Spinal disk movement occurs when weight-bearing strain is placed on the spine, causing the disk to move out of place.&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6187080.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Disk movement was found to be most pronounced with a 90-degree upright sitting posture.&#xA;  It was least pronounced with the 135-degree posture, suggesting less strain is placed on the spinal disks and associated muscles and tendons in a more relaxed sitting position.&#xA;  The &quot;slouch&quot; position revealed a reduction in spinal disk height, signifying a high rate of wear and tear on the lowest two spinal levels.&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6187080.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When they looked at all test results, the researchers said the 135-degree position was the best for backs, and say this is how people should sit.&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6187080.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8OueV.gif&quot; alt=&quot;How to sit&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said there is several things that might make sitting like that difficult. First of all you might slide off leaning that much back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As to what is the best angle between thigh and torso when seated,&#xA;  reclining at 135 degrees can make sitting more difficult as there is a&#xA;  tendency to slide off the seat: 120 degrees or less may be better.&quot;.&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6187080.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other problem is culture. You're supposed to sit straight since that is what is considered the proper way. Health is not always taken into consideration then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tonipet.hubpages.com/hub/Sitting-Gracefully-The-Most-Envied-Poise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How ladies should sit gracefully&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sit up straight with legs together and heels slightly to the rear. You&#xA;  can sit with legs in front of you, angle your knees to either left or&#xA;  right side, or cross your ankles, but never sit with legs apart, it's&#xA;  a mortal sin to poise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/body-language-and-business-etiquette.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;For dummies advice about Business Etiquette&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Take care in the way you sit, for no other position connotes so much&#xA;  on its own. Think of the diversity of sitting positions that you've&#xA;  seen in business meetings, from practically horizontal to alert and&#xA;  upright. Sit with a straight back and with your legs together in front&#xA;  of you or crossed, either at the knee or at the ankle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.askmen.com/money/career_60/87_career.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ask men about Office Etiquette&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sit up straight: When you slouch, you seem lazy and apathetic. Good&#xA;  luck with that promotion if you keep it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if it's better for your health to NOT sit with your back straight it's considered lazy, to lean back as much as 135 degrees. And people around you might even complain if you sit like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The best way for your health is to lean back a bit more though, 'slouch' a bit, and sit comfortably.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="14191" LastEditDate="2013-06-18T02:59:23.097" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T02:59:23.097" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8377" CreationDate="2013-05-20T12:30:40.620" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;NO, it's unsubstantiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I can't definitively debunk it, because no experiments were made, or published that debunk this claim, there were also no supporting scientific publications, neither experiments nor theoretical. There is simply no scientific background for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's all based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solfeggio_frequencies&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Solfeggio frequencies&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Solfeggio frequencies] referring to a belief that a set of nine frequencies derived from numerology were used centuries ago in Gregorian and Sanskrit chants&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;first introduced in a 1999 book published by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Horowitz&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a person&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; who also claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AIDS and Ebola were engineered by the U.S. government with biological warfare and genocide in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his self published book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0923550127&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola: Nature, Accident, or Intentional?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's based on speculation and Numerology, non of which is a scientific proven theory. The specific numbers for the frequencies are derived by some strange and unexplained numerologic calculation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The numerical values of the Solfeggio Frequences are generated by starting with the vector (1, 7, 4) and adding the vector (1, 1, 1) MOD (9). Each higher frequency is found by adding (1, 1, 1) MOD (9) to the previous lower frequency. The final frequency, when (1, 1, 1) is added to is, returns the frequency to the lowest tone (1, 7, 4).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ut = 396 Hz which reduces to 9 [reducing numbers: 3+9 = 12 = 1 + 2 = 3 ; 3+ 6 = 9]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re = 417 Hz which reduces to 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mi = 528 Hz which reduces to 6&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fa = 639 Hz which reduces to 9&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sol = 741 Hz which reduces to 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;La = 852 Hz which reduces to 6&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; - It should be noted that the author is a dentist and has published some articles regarding Dental Health (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22Horowitz+LG%22%5BAuthor%5D&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt; &amp;quot;Horowitz LG&amp;quot; (Author) – PubMed Results&lt;/a&gt;), But he has no formal training, published papers or published research on DNA, DNA repair or any other related topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vibrations within the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_range&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hearing range&lt;/a&gt; or close to it might help humans heal (research in the area is not conclusive), but it's in different frequencies and with different illnesses, some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22210985&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Whole-body vibration to treat low back pain: fact or fad?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22254186&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Acute exercise with whole-body vibration decreases wave reflection and leg arterial stiffness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23671546&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The effect of whole body vibration exposure on muscle function in children with cystic fibrosis: a pilot efficacy trial.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14652479&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Transmissibility of 15-hertz to 35-hertz vibrations to the human hip and lumbar spine: determining the physiologic feasibility of delivering low-level anabolic mechanical stimuli to skeletal regions at greatest risk of fracture because of osteoporosis.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T11:08:36.127" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16341" CreationDate="2013-05-20T13:33:09.647" Score="9" ViewCount="933" Body="&lt;p&gt;President Obama has come under considerable criticism for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2013/01/23/169922171/obamas-promise-to-close-guantanamo-prison-falls-short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;failing to uphold his campaign promises to close Guantanamo Bay&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each detainee can leave that limbo through one of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/04/30/obama-just-gave-a-powerful-speech-about-the-need-to-close-gitmo-so-why-hasnt-he/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;four different routes&lt;/a&gt;): a civilian trial, a military tribunal, a foreign country’s prison system or freedom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third route, to send the detainees to a foreign country’s prison system, is only legal if the U.S. can be sure that the detainees will not be tortured there. Given some of the countries from which the detainees originate, this is not always an easy guarantee to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;86 out of 166 detainees are apparently already cleared to be released.  However, they are still being held because apparently there is no where to send them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fourth route, freedom, actually already applies to 86 of the 166 detainees. The U.S. government believes they can be safely released back into the world, but it has nowhere to send them. For many of these individuals, their home country will not take them or might torture them, meaning the U.S. has to find an entirely different country to release them to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/08/martha-rayner-guantanamo_n_3238653.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fordham University Law Professor Martha Raynor&lt;/a&gt; claims that Obama &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have the ability to transfer detainees from Guantanamo to other countries:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obama has the power, Raynor explained, to transfer detainees from Guantanamo to other countries -- albeit after he has made &amp;quot;certain security assurances to Congress.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &amp;quot;every day Mr. Obama fails to start the transfer process is another day that he affirmatively decides to keep these men locked up,&amp;quot; Raynor wrote. &amp;quot;Mr. Obama must accept that the men held at Guantanamo are his prisoners, not George W. Bush's.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this accurate?  Are there prisoners for whom an appropriate destination country (i.e. &lt;em&gt;a country that has stated that they will accept the transfer, and which has provided some form of assurance that the prisoner will not be tortured&lt;/em&gt;) has been identified, yet are not being transferred because the Obama administration has simply failed to start the process (i.e. &lt;em&gt;there are no other known factors preventing such a transfer, such as legal or diplomatic obstacles&lt;/em&gt;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T21:46:29.193" Title="Is President Obama or his administration responsible for failing to transfer some prisoners out of Guantanamo?" Tags="|united-states|politics|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16339" CreationDate="2013-05-20T16:22:44.437" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;President Obama has failed to transfer 166 detainees out of Guantanamo. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/us/guantanamo-prison-revolt-driven-by-inmates-despair.html&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is he responsible for this failure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the President responsible for the constraints in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr4310/text&quot;&gt;National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2013&lt;/a&gt; (preventing transfer of detainees to the U.S. and introducing conditions for transfer to foreign countries)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bill passed 98-0 in the senate and 299-120 in the house. The President expressed his disagreement with the constraints against transfer of detainees to the U.S. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/03/statement-president-hr-4310&quot;&gt;in a signing statement&lt;/a&gt;. If the President had exercised his veto, the house and senate would have had to re-vote and affirm by 2/3 supermajority their support for the bill in order to have the bill become law without the President's signature. (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html&quot;&gt;Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution&lt;/a&gt;.) It is a mixed question of law and fact, and out of the scope of this site, as to whether the President's failure to veto this bill is the cause of the constraints contained in it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Given those constraints, is the President responsible for failing to transfer detainees to other countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NDAA 2013 contains exceptions to the constraints prohibiting transfer of detainees. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr4310/text&quot;&gt;§1028(a)(2)&lt;/a&gt; provides that release can happen when ordered by a court. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr4310/text&quot;&gt;§1028(b)&lt;/a&gt; describes the certification that must be made by the Secretary of Defense with respect to the foreign state and detention facility. The certification must be that the foreign state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(A) is not a designated state sponsor of terrorism or a designated foreign terrorist organization;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(B) maintains control over each detention facility in which the individual is to be detained if the individual is to be housed in a detention facility;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(C) is not, as of the date of the certification, facing a threat that is likely to substantially affect its ability to exercise control over the individual;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(D) has taken or agreed to take effective actions to ensure that the individual cannot take action to threaten the United States, its citizens, or its allies in the future;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(E) has taken or agreed to take such actions as the Secretary of Defense determines are necessary to ensure that the individual cannot engage or reengage in any terrorist activity; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(F) has agreed to share with the United States any information that--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(i) is related to the individual or any associates of the individual; and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(ii) could affect the security of the United States, its citizens, or its allies; and&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;§1028(c) additionally prohibits transfer of detainees to countries with confirmed recidivism of terrorist activities of previous Guantanamo transfers to that country. §1028(d) provides for a &lt;em&gt;waiver&lt;/em&gt; of conditions (D) and (E) of this certification, but only if &lt;em&gt;alternative actions&lt;/em&gt; are taken to the same ends. The other conditions are not waivable.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not known whether or not the US has been able to have another foreign state satisfy and agree to the requirements of the §1028(b) certification. The Secretary of Defense has not made such a certification. It is out of the scope and ability of this site to make a finding of fact with respect to whether or not such a certification &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; be made about any particular country.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-05-20T17:11:00.137" LastActivityDate="2013-05-20T17:11:00.137" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14367" CreationDate="2013-05-20T21:35:05.450" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer would be no, but it is not clearly proved nor provable (I don't see how it could ever be proven). I wanted to take a different angle than the other answers and I hope it will help the readers to draw their own conclusions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a correlation between population control and homosexuality, there should also be a correlation between the homosxuality rate through the ages. Sadly, we were not there to poll the population in ancient times even though it is known that homosexuality was present and accepted in ancient Greece [1] for instance. However, we do have surveys from the early 50's when the world population was only 2.5 billions compared to today 7 billions. So, looking to the research papers, can we see a correlation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The surveys in scientific literature&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1948 [2] (World pop.: around 2.4 billions)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Had homosexual experience: 37%&#xA;&lt;br&gt;More or less homosexual: 10%&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Exclusively homosexual: 4%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1974 [3] (World pop.: around 4 billions)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Had homosexual experience: 27%&#xA;&lt;br&gt;More or less homosexual: 7%&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Exclusively homosexual: 2-3%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1977 [4] (World pop.: around 4.1 billions)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;More or less homosexual: 3.1%&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Exclusively homosexual: 1.3%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1989 [5] (World pop.: around 5.3 billions)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Had homosexual experience: 20.3%&#xA;&lt;br&gt;More or less homosexual: 3.3%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1990 to 1995 [6-12] (World pop.: around 5.3-5.7billions)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Had homosexual experience: 9-20.8%&#xA;&lt;br&gt;More or less homosexual: 2-9%&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Exclusively homosexual: 1-4%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2002 [13] (World pop.: around 6.5billions)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Bisexual: 1.8% (including bisexual)&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Exclusively homosexual: 2.3%&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Other: 4%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2006-2008 [14] (World pop.: around 6.8billions)&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Had homosexual experience: 4-6%&#xA;&lt;br&gt;Exclusively homosexual: 2-4%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the scientific surveys, if there is any correlation to make between homosexuality rate and population, it would be that it is &lt;strong&gt;decreasing as population grow&lt;/strong&gt;. However, it is widely accepted that the decrease after early research by Alfred Kinsey is more related to wrong estimates in the first place [15]. Moreover, we can see that the rate vary a lot between different surveys reflecting inherent uncertainty of the sexual orientation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Per country&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We could also look into the census done by different countries to see if the densily populated ones show higher homosexuality rate. &lt;strong&gt;Warning!&lt;/strong&gt; depending on the country, the statistics are more or less accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Canada&lt;/strong&gt; [16] - Density: 3.41/km^2 - Homosexuality rate: 1.1% - Bisexual: 0.9%&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;United States&lt;/strong&gt; [17] - Density: 34.2/km^2 - LGBT rate: 3.4%&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;China&lt;/strong&gt; [18] - Density: 139.6/km^2 - Homosexuality rate: 0.8-4%&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;United Kingdom&lt;/strong&gt; [19] - Density: 255.6/km^2 - Homosexuality rate: 1.1% - Bisexual: 0.4%&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;French Republic&lt;/strong&gt; [20] - Density: 116/km^2 - Homosexual couples: 0.6% (no data on homosexuality)&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Norway&lt;/strong&gt; [21] - Density: 255.6/km^2 - Not Hetero: 1.1% - Do not wish to answer: 5.9% &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In conclusion, from the statistics, there does not seem to be any link between the popuplation number and density and the homosexuality rate. Therefore, it does seem to contradict the claim that homosexuality exist to control the population growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;References&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Davidson, J. (2007). The Greeks and Greek love: a radical reappraisal of homosexuality in Ancient Greece. Weidenfeld &amp;amp; Nicolson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Kinsey, A., Pomeroy, W., and Martin, C. (1948). Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] Hunt, M. (1974). Sexual Behavior in the 1970's. New York: Dell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[4] Pietropinto, A., and Simenauer, J. (1977). Beyond the Male Myth. New York: Times Books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[5] Fay, R., Turner, C., Klassen, A., and Gagnon, J. (January 1989). Prevalence and patterns of same-gender sexual contact among men. Science 243, 338-348.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[6] Harry, J. (1990). A probability sample of gay males. Journal of Homosexuality 19(1), 89-104. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[7] Smith, T.W. (1991). Adult sexual behavior in 1989: Number of partners, frequency of intercourse and risk of AIDS. Family Planning Perspectives 23(3), 102-107. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[8] Janus, S., and Janus, C. (1993). The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior. New York: John Wiley &amp;amp; Sons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[9] Billy, J., Tanfer, K., Grady, W., and Klepinger, D. (1993). The sexual behavior of men in the United States. Family Planning Perspectives 25(2), 52-60.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[10] Taylor, H. (1993). Number of gay men more than four times higher than the 1 percent reported in a recent survey. The Harris Poll #20. New York, NY: Louis Harris &amp;amp; Associates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[11] Laumann, E., Gagnon, J.H., Michael, R.T., and Michaels, S. (1994). The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[12] Sell, R. L., Wells, J. A., and Wypij, D. (1995). The prevalence of homosexual behavior and attraction in the United States, the United Kingdom and France: Results of national population-based samples. Archives of Sexual Behavior 24(3), 235-248. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[13] Mosher WD, Chandra A, Jones J. Sexual behavior and selected health measures: Men and women 15–44 years of age, United States, 2002. Advance data from vital and health statistics; no 362. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics. 2005.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[14] Chandra A, Mosher WD, Copen C, Sionean C. (2011)Sexual behavior, sexual attraction, and sexual identity in the United States: Data from the 2006–2008 National Survey of Family Growth. National health statistics reports; no 36. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[15] McWhirter, D., Sanders, S., and Reinisch, J. (Eds.). (1990). Homosexuality/Heterosexuality. The Kinsey Institute Series. New York: Oxford University Press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[16] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www42.statcan.gc.ca/smr08/2011/smr08_158_2011-eng.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www42.statcan.gc.ca/smr08/2011/smr08_158_2011-eng.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[17] Gates, Gary J.; Newport, Frank (October 18, 2012). &quot;Special Report: 3.4% of U.S. Adults Identify as LGBT&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[18] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-12/02/content_396559.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-12/02/content_396559.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[19] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/integrated-household-survey/integrated-household-survey/april-2011-to-march-2012/stb-integrated-household-survey-april-2011-to-march-2012.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/integrated-household-survey/integrated-household-survey/april-2011-to-march-2012/stb-integrated-household-survey-april-2011-to-march-2012.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[20] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insee.fr/fr/themes/document.asp?ref_id=ip1435&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.insee.fr/fr/themes/document.asp?ref_id=ip1435&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[21] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssb.no/a/english/publikasjoner/pdf/rapp_201038_en/rapp_201038_en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ssb.no/a/english/publikasjoner/pdf/rapp_201038_en/rapp_201038_en.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastEditorUserId="7569" LastEditDate="2013-05-21T04:33:41.743" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T04:33:41.743" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16347" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16348" CreationDate="2013-05-20T22:10:45.973" Score="42" ViewCount="44841" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed some people posting and reposting bold &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindujagruti.org/news/13946.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;statements&lt;/a&gt; online that Japan is (the only) country that banned Islam. I searched a bit and found out that there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.masjid.jp/list.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some mosques&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/hajj/2009/11/2009111011825150196.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Muslim societies&lt;/a&gt; in Japan, so it cannot be entirely true. Also, their constitution apparently provides for freedom of religion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However - can someone confirm or disprove if Muslims indeed cannot get permanent residency and citizenship? Is it true that there is a strong ban on the propagation of Islam in Japan? Are Arabic languages taught at Japanese universities? Is halal slaughter legal in Japan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware that although Japanese culture is rooted in Shinto and Buddhism, the majority of people declare themselves to be nonreligious. It is conceivable that it is not the best ground for any new religion to grow. However, I am curious to what extent it is a cultural thing and what is actually protected by law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13863" LastEditorUserId="36598" LastEditDate="2016-11-05T20:57:18.540" LastActivityDate="2016-12-14T13:31:43.553" Title="Is Islam banned in Japan?" Tags="|law|religion|islam|japan|" AnswerCount="7" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16347" CreationDate="2013-05-20T23:51:45.120" Score="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the US State Department's evaluation of Japan in its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm?year=2012&amp;amp;dlid=208234&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2012 International Religious Freedom Report&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The [Japanese] constitution provides for freedom of religion, and other laws and policies contributed to the generally free practice of religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The government generally respected religious freedom in practice. There was no change in the status of respect for religious freedom by the government during the reporting period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were some reports of societal abuse or discrimination based on religious affiliation, belief, or practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no governmental statistics on the number of Muslims in the country. The Islamic Center estimates there are approximately 100,000 to 110,000 Muslims of whom 10,000 are citizens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T17:49:18.620" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6605" CreationDate="2013-05-21T00:40:23.970" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The death of Hitler is extensively documented, with copious source material summarized in the Wikipedia article on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Adolf_Hitler#cite_note-14&quot;&gt;Death of Adolf Hitler&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors' claim of being &quot;unable to unearth one bit of tangible evidence of Hitler's death&quot; in light of that bibliography is utter sensationalist bunk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A cursory look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1402781393&quot;&gt;book reviews on Amazon&lt;/a&gt; confirms numerous errors, the fabrication of facts, and a general lack of supporting evidence for the authors' claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this could have been gleaned from a basic, third-grade book report, internet search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2013-05-22T17:43:39.097" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T17:43:39.097" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4150" CreationDate="2013-05-21T02:49:00.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been some changes since the OP asked this question and at least one relevant research paper has tried to provide a new answer to this question. According to  study &lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/24/4/514.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (Mäntylä T. 2013) published in one of the top ten peer reviewed journal of psychology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Yes there is evidence... but men seems better at it&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis is from me)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second main finding of Experiment 1 was that males (mean&#xA;  proportion correct = .85) outperformed females (mean proportion&#xA;  correct =  .74) at multitasking, as indexed by accuracy in the counter&#xA;  task, F(1, 70) = 6.25, ηp 2  = .08, p &amp;lt; .01. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As shown in Figure 1, &lt;strong&gt;the gender difference in accuracy favored men by about 10%&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  across the three counter tasks. This  difference was not due to a trade-off&#xA;  between accuracy in the counter tasks and in the background&#xA;  (name-back) task, given that &lt;strong&gt;both men and women identified about 38%&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;   &lt;strong&gt;of the targets&lt;/strong&gt; in the name-back task (with no differences in false&#xA;  alarms). Furthermore, gender differences in counter-task accuracy &#xA;  were not related to differences in monitoring frequency (F &amp;lt;  1).&#xA;  Females (mean proportion correct = .52) performed somewhat better than&#xA;  men (mean proportion correct = .48) in the  letter-memory task, but&#xA;  this difference was not reliable (F &amp;lt; 1). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The second experiment demonstrated another interesting fact:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Experiment 2 provided additional support for this hypothesis by&#xA;  showing that gender differences in multitasking (and spatial ability)&#xA;  were eliminated among females who were in the menstrual, but not the&#xA;  luteal, phase of their menstrual cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Limitations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author is aware of some limit of his experiments. Most of them are related to the assumption that multitasking involve spatial abilities. I extracted the most interesting part of the discussion, but refer to the original paper for better understanding of their impacts. (again, emphasis is from me)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] it was necessary to use (gender-fair) test conditions in which&#xA;  the role of &lt;strong&gt;domain-specific skills and experiences were minimized&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  Furthermore, although most everyday multitasking may involve a great&#xA;  deal of spatiotemporal processing, it is reasonable to assume that&#xA;  these demands are domain specific. A central assumption of the&#xA;  spatiotemporal hypothesis introduced here is that gender differences&#xA;  in multitasking are expected when the demands on temporal coordination&#xA;  are relatively high. In most dual-task conditions, &lt;strong&gt;these demands are&#xA;  low and less dependent on spatial abilities&lt;/strong&gt; than are multiple tasks&#xA;  that may require coordination of a complex pattern of temporal&#xA;  contingencies. This &lt;em&gt;line of reasoning is also consistent with&#xA;  evidence from earlier studies showing &lt;strong&gt;no gender-related differences&lt;/strong&gt; in&#xA;  dual-task conditions&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] Another limitation of the study is that both experiments&#xA;  involved relatively &lt;strong&gt;restricted time frames&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;predictable&#xA;  target events&lt;/strong&gt; (in the counter tasks). The term multitasking is a&#xA;  loosely defined construct that covers a wide spectrum of activities&#xA;  and time frames. Multitasking in some conditions may require very&#xA;  narrow deadlines (e.g., air traffic control), whereas other types of&#xA;  multitasking (e.g., household activities) may impose &lt;strong&gt;lower demands&#xA;  on spatiotemporal&lt;/strong&gt; processing because of more-generous time windows.&#xA;  It is reasonable to assume that, like most goal-directed tasks,&#xA;  everyday multitasking reflects different mixtures of task-independent&#xA;  cognitive functions (e.g., components of executive functioning and&#xA;  spatial processing) and more domain-specific skills and strategies.&#xA;  From this perspective, individual differences in multitasking should&#xA;  be considered in relative terms, given that &lt;strong&gt;some conditions may show&#xA;  reduced  or even reversed gender differences because of task-specific &#xA;  constraints and strategies&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mäntylä T., &lt;em&gt;Gender Differences in Multitasking Reflect Spatial Ability&lt;/em&gt;,&#xA;Psychological Science, April 1, 2013 24: 514-520&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastEditorUserId="7569" LastEditDate="2013-05-21T02:54:01.070" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T02:54:01.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16347" CreationDate="2013-05-21T09:58:30.080" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's possible Japan may discriminate against Muslims, but not to the extent claimed in the posts quoted in the question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Halal food is available in Japan. This doesn't mean that it gets slaughtered there, though. The 5th edition of the Lonely Planet Guidebook for Japanese, page 173, says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Halal and kosher food might be hard to come by, even in the big smoke [Australian English slang for large cities],&#xA;  but you might want to try your luck with these phrases&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also groups such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/pages/Halal-Japan/503821533010825?directed_target_id=0&quot;&gt;Halal Japan&lt;/a&gt;, which indicate which foods you can or can't eat in Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Muslims, or at least Turkey, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Turkey&quot;&gt;97% Muslim&lt;/a&gt; country, have been able to influence Japan. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soapland&quot;&gt;Soaplands&lt;/a&gt; (link is work safe, but the concept being described isn't) used to be called &quot;toruko-buro&quot; (literally &quot;Turkish bath&quot;). In 1984, a Turkish scholar named Nusret Sancaklı lead a campaign to stop using that name, and henceforth they were called soaplands. A native &lt;a href=&quot;http://lang-8.com/424295/journals/142466281330890615157250167068257028542&quot;&gt;speaker&lt;/a&gt; of Japanese states that using &quot;toruko-buro&quot; as a euphemism has stopped, and nowadays is only used for genuine Turkish baths:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Japanese people over 40-50 years [of age] including me might think the special&#xA;  places where they provide prostitution from the word [toruko-buro]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, the word was banned to use, because it might be offensive to&#xA;  [Turkish] people. And the name has changed to [soapland] for more than 30&#xA;  years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So I think younger generations might not think too much of the word,&#xA;  [toruko-buro].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-05-23T21:12:33.787" LastActivityDate="2013-05-23T21:12:33.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16347" CreationDate="2013-05-21T12:32:38.300" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindujagruti.org/news/13946.html&quot;&gt;statements referred to&lt;/a&gt; include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;g) Japan is the only country in the world having negligible number of&#xA;  embassies of Islamic countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diplomatic_missions_of_Japan&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, Japan has embassies in many Muslim countries, including Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and many more.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I'm not sure what is meant by &quot;Islamic&quot; countries, but Iran and Saudi Arabia surely qualify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't find such clear reference to contradict other claims, but this example clearly shows that the author didn't bother to check his claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13870" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T12:32:38.300" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13988" CreationDate="2013-05-21T12:36:00.463" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the overall evidence that I found suggested that, yes, intelligence and humor are related, there have been some conflicting reports, which makes the situation not  crystal clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/20157303?uid=3737536&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21102244733961&quot;&gt;The Relationship of humor to intelligence, creativity, and intentional and incidental learning&lt;/a&gt; (1972) reported that in 80 school children, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;sense of humour correlated highly with both creativity (r = .89) and intelligence (r = .91).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors also report that another study reported low correlation between sense of humor and intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.1962.9710912#preview&quot;&gt;Relation of sense of humor to intelligence&lt;/a&gt; (1962) reports on a number of earlier (1920-1939) studies, most of which reported intelligent school children laughed at more humourous opportunities presented to them, and for longer. However, one finding was that college entrance examination scores don't indicate sense of humor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 1994, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0937445940050203#.UZtoY7VTB8E&quot;&gt;Psychological studies of the relationship of sense of humor to creativity and intelligence: A review&lt;/a&gt; covered this issue:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although it is widely assumed that sense of humor is closely related to intelligence and creativity, the empirical studies of these relationships, which are reviewed in this article, have yielded conflicting findings. On the basis of the present review and a consideration of other relevant literature, it is suggested that the nature of such relationships might be affected by how the variables are operationalized, several characteristics of the experimental participants, as well as various aspects of the broader experimental context As the extant studies have investigated only a restricted number of the empirical issues to do with those characteristics, it is evident that a considerable amount of research remains to be conducted The more informative characterization provided by such research would clearly provide the basis for more accurate analyses of the nature of intelligence and creativity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In 2011, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289611000523&quot;&gt;Humor ability reveals intelligence, predicts mating success, and is higher in males&lt;/a&gt; looked at the ability of 400 university students to write funny captions. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Structural equation models showed that general and verbal intelligence both predict humor production ability&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There does appear to be a relationship between humor and intelligence, but, perhaps unsurprisingly due to the slipperiness of the concepts, it depends on how and when you measure it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T12:36:00.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8437" CreationDate="2013-05-21T15:04:17.380" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do we have &quot;secret&quot; &quot;bundles of nerves&quot; — pressure points — which, when struck with a particular Karate move, kill us?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer appears to be &quot;no&quot;, although the research is inconclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dimmak.net/dr_michael_kelly.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Michael Kelly&lt;/a&gt; has researched the legendary &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dimmak.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dim Mak&lt;/a&gt;&quot; martial arts death touch, and, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1-4LqEIP0o&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;, it appears that his primary theories are that the supposed &quot;death touch&quot; effects were likely applications of pressure upon the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carotid_sinus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;carotid sinus&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible explanation presented in the video (Death Weapons of the East, part of the History Channel's &lt;em&gt;Ancient Discoveries&lt;/em&gt; series) is an attack on the spleen.  If the spleen is damaged, it would undergo internal bleeding, until it ruptured, at which point it would potentially lead to rapid death, possibly days after the initial injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastActivityDate="2013-05-21T15:04:17.380" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16365" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-21T21:07:50.607" Score="4" ViewCount="23704" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general consensus on the internet (if you Google around, visit forums, Yahoo! answers, some from people who claim to work in the laundering business) is that high dryer heat causes clothes to shrink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I recently came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28623-2004Nov5.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Washington Post article&lt;/a&gt; from an 'expert' that got me wondering if that's true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first myth debunked: Dryer heat does not shrink garments. After&#xA;  all, as Ottusch pointed out, a hot iron does not shrink clothes; in&#xA;  fact, the heat and pressure of the iron cause the garment to stretch&#xA;  out. Rather, she said, shrinkage is caused by the tumbling action as&#xA;  the garments hit the sides of the dryer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could anybody verify which is true? It seems like someone with some science knowledge might know the answer to this, since there may not be many articles studying the effects of heat on clothing shrinkage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10456" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T23:56:59.643" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T23:56:59.643" Title="Does high dryer heat shrink clothes?" Tags="|consumer-products|clothing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16368" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-22T05:47:37.697" Score="7" ViewCount="781" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_pulling&quot;&gt;Oil Pulling&lt;/a&gt; is apparently an ancient practice, but is seeing a recent surge in popularity.  It is claimed it can cure almost anything, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://pforlife.com/oil-pulling-therapy.html&quot;&gt;bad breath to AIDS&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process apparently involves swishing oil around in your mouth for 10-20 minutes, to collect bacteria, and toxins, which your body expunges through the saliva:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The oil pulls all mucous, bacteria and toxins from your body through your saliva. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pforlife.com/oil-pulling-therapy.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google will show you many claims related to &quot;miracle&quot; cures related to Oil Pulling.  But for the purpose of this question, I want to focus specifically on one claim.  I can imagine how something like this might help with gum disease or other oral health issues.  And I'm pretty skeptical of the claim that this can cure AIDS.  So I've chosen one of the &quot;mid-range&quot; claims for my focus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oil Pulling (&quot;OP&quot;) is reported to cure: Mouth &amp;amp; Gum Disease; Stiff Joints; Allergies; Asthma; High Blood Sugar; Constipation; Migraines; Bronchitis; Eczema; Heart, Kidney, Lung Diseases; Leukemia; &lt;strong&gt;Arthritis&lt;/strong&gt;; Meningitis; Insomnia; Menopause (hormonal issues); Cancer; AIDS; Chronic Infections; Varicose Veins; High Blood Pressure; Diabetes; Polio; Cracked Heels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that Oil Pulling can cure Arthritis, whether completely, or even simply to help with the severity of symptoms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T05:47:37.697" Title="Is &quot;Oil Pulling&quot; an effective treatment for arthritis or other chronic diseases?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16369" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16372" CreationDate="2013-05-22T08:14:51.057" Score="16" ViewCount="52301" Body="&lt;p&gt;From XKCD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jXHit.png&quot; alt=&quot;Contents of XKCD comic 1211&quot; title=&quot;Sure, T. rex is closer in height to Stegosaurus than a sparrow. But that doesn&amp;#39;t tell you much; &amp;#39;Dinosaur Comics&amp;#39; author Ryan North is closer in height to certain dinosaurs than to the average human.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://xkcd.com/1211/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;XKCD comic 1211&lt;/a&gt; claims that the anatomy of sparrows and &lt;em&gt;T. Rex&lt;/em&gt; are more similar than those of &lt;em&gt;T. rex&lt;/em&gt; and stegosaurus. While it looks like neither &lt;em&gt;T. rex&lt;/em&gt; nor sparrows would be any good at boxing (unless they used the Mike Tyson approach), I'm still skeptical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1211:_Birds_and_Dinosaurs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Explain XKCD&lt;/a&gt; has an article on this comic, linking to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6133/690&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science article&lt;/a&gt; published that week, which says within the full text [emphasis added by me]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the most transformative ideas to affect understanding of living&#xA;  birds has been the recognition of their perch within the tree of life&#xA;  on branches crowded with their extinct dinosaurian cousins. &lt;strong&gt;This&#xA;  insight came first from comparisons of bones&lt;/strong&gt;, the most commonly&#xA;  preserved part of a fossil vertebrate. Fossilized soft tissues are&#xA;  only preserved in a few exceptional places (Lagerstätten). The Chinese&#xA;  deposits provide one such unique snapshot, where over a thousand&#xA;  specimens with fine details of soft tissues such as feathers, hair,&#xA;  and skin are preserved in ash-rich lake deposits ranging from the Late&#xA;  Jurassic (∼150 million years ago) to the Early Cretaceous (∼120&#xA;  million years ago). Fossils from these deposits have revealed that&#xA;  dinosaurs that were inferred from bone characteristics to be closely&#xA;  related to living birds also share more features of feather structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the Science article states that they're more anatomically similar, and it states that using that knowledge has made a prediction that has been confirmed. But it doesn't provide any citations in that paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is &lt;em&gt;T. Rex&lt;/em&gt; more anatomically similar to sparrows than stegosaurus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-01-20T04:39:03.923" LastActivityDate="2019-01-20T04:50:08.230" Title="Is T. Rex more similar to sparrows than to stegosaurus?" Tags="|evolution|anatomy|birds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16369" CreationDate="2013-05-22T10:33:18.510" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;The T.Rex is more closely related to birds than to Stegosaurus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comic shows it in 3 different aspects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Time:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaurus_rex&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;T.Rex Wiki page&lt;/a&gt;, it lived during:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fossils are found in a variety of rock formations dating to the Maastrichtian age of the upper Cretaceous Period, 67 to 65.5 million years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stegosaurus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stegosaurus&lt;/a&gt; lived:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They lived during the Late Jurassic period (Kimmeridgian to early Tithonian), some 155 to 150 million years ago in what is now western North America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means that the time period between the T.Rex and the Stego (83 million years) is longer than the time period between the T.Rex's existence and the sparrow (65.5 million years)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Phylogenetic Distance:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_birds&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki article for Origin of Birds&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;most researchers now support the view that birds are a group of theropod dinosaurs that evolved during the Mesozoic Era.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also from &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.is/aUsfC&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; at Discovery:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The evolution of the many characteristics of birds –- things like feathers, flight, and wishbones -– has traditionally been a difficult problem for biologists,&amp;quot; Mark Norell, chair of the division of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History and one of the paper's co-authors, added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;By analyzing fossil evidence from skeletons, eggs, and soft tissue of bird-like dinosaurs and primitive birds, we've learned that birds are living theropod dinosaurs, a group of carnivorous animals that include Velociraptor,&amp;quot; Norell continued. &amp;quot;This new work advances our knowledge by providing a powerful example of how developmental changes played a major role in the origin and evolution of birds.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also this chart from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dino-web.com/classification-eng.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dino-web&lt;/a&gt; (The T.Rex is part of the coelurosauria):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MM70B.gif&quot; alt=&quot;birds are dino too&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The T.Rex is a part of the coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs, while the Stegosaurus isn't, which supports the claim that birds and the T.Rex are on a common phylogenetic branch, later than the T.Rex and Stegosaurus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bone Structure:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6133/690&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; linked to by explain XKCD which says that (as the question quotes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.is/aUsfC&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on Discovery which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern birds retain the physical characteristics of baby dinosaurs, according to a new Nature study that found birds are even more closely related to dinos than previously thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the non-avian dinosaur and bird compared, that might be hard to believe. A toothy, angry reconstruction of Tyrannosaurus rex, for example, on first glance looks little like a common garden blue jay.&#xA;Also, look at the bone structure yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at their bone structures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sparrow:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m27na3UmVt1qa28d3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;dead sparrow&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A T.Rex:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2009/08/t-rexskeleton2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;dead trex&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Stegosaurus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RRORB.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;dead stego&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bone structures of the sparrow and T.Rex are a lot more similar to one another than to the bone structure of the Stegosaurus. They are both bipedal, upright, have small &amp;quot;hands&amp;quot; and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a list of similarities between birds and dinosaurs (from &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20060823213556/http://www.dino-web.com:80/birds.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dino-web&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The British palaeontologist Thomas Huxley presented a theory in 1868, which claimed that birds are descended from dinosaurs. His theory stated these reasons for it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only dinosaurs had the same sort of ankle joint as birds&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only dinosaurs had the same sort of ilium as birds&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some dinosaurs had the same sort of rear foot as birds with a rear-pointing fourth toe (phalanx)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advanced dinosaurs had the same sort of build as birds with a short torso, stable hips, long and very flexible neck and long rear limbs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only dinosaurs and pterosaurs had hollow bones or the air sacks which are connected to a bird-like lung. Pterosaurs are in every other aspect a lot less bird-like than advanced dinosaurs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some dinosaurs had the same sort of hip as birds (ornithischian dinosaurs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also from same source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theory of the common ancestor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because birdlike dinosaurs had only very small collar bones and birds have very large ones, the theory that birds are descended from dinosaurs was rejected. It was belived that, Dinosaurs had the same ancestors as birds, until the following was proven scientifically: there are genes which are suppressed but exist nevertheless. They can be reactivated in situations when they are needed. Chickens, for example, have a suppressed gene which would allow them to develop teeth if they needed them. Scientists transplanted this gene into another part of the chicken's body where it could be reactivated and the chickens developed teeth. Dinosaurs probably had a suppressed gene which allowed them to develop larger collar bones. This is what deinonychus did, which had a collar bone very similar to that of archäopteryx. Deinonychus also had a hand very like that of archaeopteryx. It is therefore very likely that birds are descended from dinosaurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only &amp;quot;major difference&amp;quot; between the sparrow and the T.Rex is their size, but this is not a good measure for relation, one of many examples is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elephant&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyrax&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hyrax&lt;/a&gt; which are closely related to each other much more than the elephant and giraffe, rhino or hippo, or the hyrax and guinea pigs and rabbits. &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180417210319/http://www.tfcg.org:80/pdf/article_afrotheria.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arkinspace.com/2012/02/hyrax-elephants-cousin.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source2&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a picture of a dino-bird being awesome:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yrwFF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;It'll kill you, and eat your body. Fear me, I'm the awesomely frightening dino-bird!&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.is/aUsfC&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Discovery&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-01-20T04:50:08.230" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16313" CreationDate="2013-05-22T12:53:23.660" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, 97% of peer reviewed studies do not endorse that global warming is human caused&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study found that 97% of abstracts about 'global climate' or 'global climate change', at least &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Implied humans are causing global warming&lt;/strong&gt;. E.g., research assumes greenhouse gas emissions cause warming without explicitly stating humans are the cause.&quot; versus abstracts that &lt;strong&gt;rejected humans as the main cause of global warming&lt;/strong&gt;. This eliminated 2/3rds of the abstracts that either stated that the extent of human contributions are undefined/uncertain, or expressed no opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is vitally important to &lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article#erl460291t4fn1&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;, is that they excluded self-rated papers that rated themselves as a (4). They pretended that this wasn't a position on AGW, which allowed them to increase their endorsement from 62.7% to 96.4%. (see Table 4)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Endorse AGW[a]      62.7% (1342)    97.2    62.7% (746)     96.4&#xA;&#xA;No AGW position[b]  35.5% (761)     —       34.9% (415)     —&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[b]Undecided self-rated papers have an &lt;strong&gt;average rating equal to 4&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Table 2), we know what a 4 rating represents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(4b) Uncertain - Expresses position that human's role on recent global warming is uncertain/undefined - 'While the extent of human-induced global warming is inconclusive...'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is even more telling, is that the papers were only reporting as either endorsing, expressing on opinion, or rejecting AGW. They did not choose to report the level of endorsement which the peer-reviewed studies were classified. So, from this study it is impossible to know what percentage of study abstracts/respondent authors endorse the position the humans are the &lt;strong&gt;primary&lt;/strong&gt; cause of recent global warming. There have been other studies that put that &lt;a href=&quot;http://stats.org/stories/2008/global_warming_survey_apr23_08.html&quot;&gt;figure around 54% (+/-4%)&lt;/a&gt;. Which interestingly enough, matches the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/10-15-12%20Global%20Warming%20Release.pdf&quot;&gt;public's perception&lt;/a&gt; on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Explicit endorsements were divided into non-quantified (e.g., humans are contributing to global warming without quantifying the contribution) and quantified (e.g., humans are contributing more than 50% of global warming, consistent with the 2007 IPCC statement that most of the global warming since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2013-05-22T14:04:54.423" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T14:04:54.423" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16313" CreationDate="2013-05-22T14:20:24.153" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Christopher Monckton wrote an essay called &lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/22/the-collapsing-consensus/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Collapsing ‘Consensus’&lt;/a&gt; concerning the Cook, et al. unscientific survey: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It did not discuss, still less refute, the principle that the scientific method is not in any way informed by argument from consensus, which thinkers from Aristotle via Alhazen to Huxley and Popper have rejected as logically fallacious.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Its definition of the “consensus” it claimed to have found was imprecise: that “human activity is very likely causing most of the current anthropogenic global warming”.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It did not put a quantitative value on the term “very likely”, and it did not define what it meant by “current” warming. There has been none for at least 18 years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It cited as authoritative the unscientifically-sampled surveys of “consensus” by Doran &amp;amp; Zimmerman (2009) and Anderegg et al. (2010).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It inaccurately represented the views of scientists whose abstracts it analysed.&#xA;  It disregarded two-thirds of the 12,000 abstracts it examined, on the unscientific ground that those abstracts had expressed no opinion on Man’s climatic influence.&#xA;  It declared that the one-third of all papers alleged to have endorsed the “consensus” really amounted to 97% of the sample, not 33%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;It suggested that the “consensus” that most recent warming is manmade is equivalent to the distinct and far less widely-supported notion that urgent action to prevent future warming is essential to avert catastrophe. Obama fell for this, twittering that 97% found global warming not only real and manmade but also dangerous.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13882" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-22T14:37:03.250" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T14:37:03.250" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15791" CreationDate="2013-05-22T18:22:10.733" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A close friend of mine's father lost his home the other day from careless placement of a laptop on a bed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://manassas.patch.com/articles/fire-causes-40-000-in-damages-to-manassas-home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://manassas.patch.com/articles/fire-causes-40-000-in-damages-to-manassas-home&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13898" LastActivityDate="2013-05-22T18:22:10.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16380" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16252" CreationDate="2013-05-23T10:33:11.187" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No it doesn't.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several reasons why hemp is not used to make paper. Biggest one is that it's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp#Paper&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;more expensive&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hemp has never been used for commercial high-volume paper production due to its relatively high processing cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost of hemp pulp is approximately six times that of wood pulp, mostly because of the small size and outdated equipment of the few hemp processing plants in the Western world, and because hemp is harvested once a year (during August) and needs to be stored to feed the mill the whole year through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the wood products industry uses nearly 100% of the fiber from harvested trees, only about 25% of the dried hemp stem — the bark, called bast — contains the long, strong fibers desirable for paper production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hemp is only harvested &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/008129_hemp_oil_food.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;once per year&lt;/a&gt;. And the hemp need to be stored for quite a while. Storing costs together with the fact that only a small part of the hemp can be used for paper, makes hemp not overly suitable for paper, economically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/sb/sb681/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yields of hemp farming&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cultural requirements and production costs are quite similar to those of corn. Reported hemp yields range from 2.5 to 8.7 tons of dry stems per acre.&lt;a href=&quot;http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/sb/sb681/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forestry.uga.edu/outreach/pubs/pdf/forestry/SRWB_Growth_and_Yield_Paper_6_July_2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yields of wood&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the paper they use fast growing types of wood, and get a yearly yield of between 6 and 12 tons per year per acre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://secleanenergy.gatech.edu/files/forest-bioenergy.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Other paper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Production Rate per Acre: 6.9 green tons&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wood uses much higher efficiency converting wood to paper than hemp to paper. 1/4th vs close to 100%. Yields of wood per acre per year, is similar and sometimes more than the ones of hemp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The picture is wrong, seeded forest is more efficient for paper than seeded hemp. Hemp is less efficient than wood, and doesn't give substantial better yield per acre per year, and is not as economically favorable as wood either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, wood and foresting is most efficient way to gain paper, per acre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T01:25:21.887" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16252" CreationDate="2013-05-23T13:37:19.470" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;This quote apparently comes from a 1916 USDA study on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17855/17855-h/17855-h.htm&quot;&gt;Hemp Hurds as a Paper-Making Material&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most important point derived from this calculation is in regard to&#xA;  areas required for a sustained supply, which are in the ratio of 4 to&#xA;  1. Every tract of 10,000 acres which is devoted to hemp raising year by year is equivalent to a sustained pulp-producing capacity of 40,500&#xA;  acres of average pulp-wood lands. In other words, in order to secure&#xA;  additional raw material for the production of 25 tons of fiber per day&#xA;  there exists the possibility of utilizing the agricultural waste&#xA;  already produced on 10,000 acres of hemp lands instead of securing,&#xA;  holding, reforesting, and protecting 40,500 acres of pulp-wood land&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, this quote would have pre-dated modern manufacturing techniques for paper production as well as modern tree-farming techniques. This means that this is actually a difficult question to answer in part because tree farms and traditional farming techniques are completely different from each other and modern technology means that the techniques involved have likely changed greatly in the almost 100 years since the study was conducted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To begin looking at things from a modern standpoint, tree farms typically thin a stand at 15 and 24 years with a final clear-cut harvest every 33 years (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://secleanenergy.gatech.edu/files/forest-bioenergy.pdf&quot;&gt;slide 5 of 15&lt;/a&gt;). However, hemp can be harvested on an annual basis which puts it in line with traditional farm techniques&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. This would imply that on a very simplistic level the hemp could come out ahead just because no thinning or harvest of a tree stand was done in a given year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to give a bit more of a fair comparison we are going to need to look at aggregate data and and look at the average yield per year. As with traditional farming &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mfc.ms.gov/pdf/Pubs/80-07%20How%20Much%20Is%20Your%20Pine%20Plantation%20Worth.pdf&quot;&gt;different stands can result in different yields&lt;/a&gt; and in general harvesting &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawlog&quot;&gt;sawlogs&lt;/a&gt; is more desirable than &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulpwood&quot;&gt;pulpwood&lt;/a&gt; (which is used to produce paper) since sawlogs are more valuable and therefore more profitable. This in turn means that stands tend to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfrc.ufl.edu/Extension/FFSnl/ffsnl34e.htm&quot;&gt;managed with maximizing the amount&lt;/a&gt; of sawlogs produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most commonly farmed trees for pulpwood appear to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinus_taeda&quot;&gt;Loblolly Pine&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acacia&quot;&gt;Acacia&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus&quot;&gt;Eucalyptus&lt;/a&gt; with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus&quot;&gt;Eucalyptus&lt;/a&gt; being the most common. Based on my research, Loblolly Pine and Eucalyptus productions seem to be as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Loblolly Pine - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uaex.edu/Other_Areas/publications/PDF/FSA-5023.pdf&quot;&gt;0.9 to 2.5 tons/acre/year&lt;/a&gt;, although &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extension.org/pages/28321/eucalyptus-as-a-short-rotation-woody-crop&quot;&gt;yields up to 8 tons/acre/year&lt;/a&gt; are also reported.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eucalyptus - &lt;a href=&quot;http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fr013&quot;&gt;&quot;Up to 16&quot; tons/acre/year&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extension.org/pages/28321/eucalyptus-as-a-short-rotation-woody-crop&quot;&gt;20 green tons&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;/acre/year&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The yields for hemp fiber&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; on the other hand tend to be based more on historical data and tend to place the yields at 2 to 12.5 tons/acre/year with &lt;a href=&quot;http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/html/sb/sb681/&quot;&gt;5 tons/acre/year&lt;/a&gt; being the average on a good year. A modern report from a Kentucky farm put the yields at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/328230/ages001ei_1_.pdf&quot;&gt;2.8 to 6.1 metric tons/acre/year&lt;/a&gt; with other sites getting worse yields. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, to return to the original claim, if we assume that only paper production is considered (i.e. fiber production in the case of hemp and wood pulp production in the case of trees) then the claim appears to be &lt;strong&gt;false&lt;/strong&gt; with hemp yields only appearing comparable to Loblolly Pine per acre/year wood pulp yields although it is possible for hemp to out produce Loblolly Pine production when it is not grown for pulpwood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if other trees are considered then well managed tree farms appear to greatly outproduce hemp farms in terms of per acre yields. The only way this claim is true is only if year-by-year data is examined due to the way tree farms are thinned and harvested due to the significant number of years of no production. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For our purposes this is being defined as mechanically assisted farming with harvest being done at the ideal time to maximize yield.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biology-online.org/dictionary/Green_ton&quot;&gt;Green ton&lt;/a&gt; - 2,000 pounds of undried biomass material.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is also assuming the fiber is only used for paper production as opposed to other &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp#Uses&quot;&gt;usage in clothing or rope production&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some useful timber &lt;a href=&quot;http://msucares.com/pubs/publications/p2244.pdf&quot;&gt;volume-to-weight conversions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-05-24T04:37:12.350" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T04:37:12.350" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16385" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-23T20:15:43.827" Score="8" ViewCount="3544" Body="&lt;p&gt;French anthropologist &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Vacher_de_Lapouge&quot;&gt;Georges Vacher de Lapouge&lt;/a&gt; (1854 - 1936) reported in 1890 the discovery of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_of_Castelnau&quot;&gt;the Giant of Castelnau&lt;/a&gt;&quot; - giant bones in neolithic tombs, in southern France. According to Mr. de Lapouge, these human bones were those of normal humans (not some case of abnormal growth due to growth hormone disorder).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These discoveries were reported in &lt;a href=&quot;http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/browser/1892/10/03/&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83016758/1894-10-11/ed-1/seq-2/#words=skulls+Montpellier+France&amp;amp;date1=1894&amp;amp;date2=1896&amp;amp;searchType=advanced&amp;amp;lccn=&amp;amp;proxdistance=5&amp;amp;state=&amp;amp;rows=20&amp;amp;ortext=&amp;amp;proxtext=&amp;amp;phrasetext=&amp;amp;andtext=montpellier+france+skulls&amp;amp;dateFilterType=yearRange&amp;amp;index=1&quot;&gt;newspapers&lt;/a&gt; and science reviews (&lt;a href=&quot;http://cnum.cnam.fr/CGI/fpage.cgi?4KY28.35/15/70/536/0/0&quot;&gt;french official archive of &quot;La Nature&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, n° 888, 1890). They were taken to the nearest big city, Montpellier, where the University harbours France's oldest and most prestigious medicine school. The bones found by Lapouge where reportedly analyzed by medicine, zoology and paleontology specialists (MM. Sabatier and Delage) who confirmed his early findings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lapouge concluded that a race of giant humans had lived in southern France at the time of the glaciations (and that they were contemporaries of the Neanderthal men). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this conclusion (still) supported by any scientific evidence today?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8511" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2013-05-24T15:43:15.013" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T16:50:31.367" Title="Were giant human bones discovered in Castelnau?" Tags="|history|physiology|anthropology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16392" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-24T04:38:19.353" Score="15" ViewCount="711" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://thepartialview.blogspot.de/2013/01/closing-age-gap-on-shidduchim-goes-back.html&quot;&gt;popular opinion&lt;/a&gt; in the Orthodox Jewish world that there is such a thing nowadays as a &quot;Shidduch (Marriage) Crisis&quot;, and that a major contributor to it is something known as the &quot;Age Gap.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This theory has been repeated many times in printed and online sources, including this &lt;a href=&quot;http://5tjt.com/the-shidduch-crisis-explained/&quot;&gt;Five Towns Jewish Times &quot;Shidduch Island&quot; article&lt;/a&gt; and this &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/RVHQhTb9_q0&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt; which was apparently presented at the 2009 Agudah convention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that since there is population growth in the Orthodox community (many families have 5-10 children in addition to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal_teshuva_movement&quot;&gt;Baalei Teshuva/Repetents&lt;/a&gt; and since men get married older (by at least 4-5 years) than women, there are more women than men at a marriageable age. This results in some girls getting stuck in a &quot;musical chairs&quot; scenario (called the Age Gap Theory), and are unable to find a boyfriend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the difference in marriageable age would be 40/50 years I could see this theory to be true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, other (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vosizneias.com/40117/2009/10/21/new-york-linking-shidduch-crisis-to-boys-preference-for-younger-age-is-ludicrous/&quot;&gt;Chananya Weismann&lt;/a&gt;) write that an age difference of 3-5 years shouldn't result in a statistically significant amount of women &quot;left behind&quot; due to the Shidduch Crisis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is right? Are there more 23-year-old Orthodox Jewish men than 18-year-old Orthodox Jewish women, and does this lead some women to be left without an eligible match within the community?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13916" LastEditorUserId="21963" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T10:56:54.117" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T10:56:54.117" Title="Are Orthodox Jewish women suffering from a Shidduch (Marriage) Crisis due to an &quot;Age Gap&quot;?" Tags="|marriage|judaism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16397" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="44788" CreationDate="2013-05-24T15:04:59.203" Score="9" ViewCount="404" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alice Roberts published an article in the Guardian newspaper, titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/aug/19/alice-roberts-vitamin-d-health&quot;&gt;shining a fresh light on vitamin D&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She makes the point that the prevailing theory is that skin lightened in regions away from the equator so that skin was sensitive enough to make vitamin D. But she also cited a paper which appeared to show that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19812604&quot;&gt;vitamin D production isn't dependent upon skin pigmentation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Vitamin D production related to skin pigmentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13919" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-24T16:16:29.467" LastActivityDate="2019-08-23T14:57:44.387" Title="Is Vitamin D production related to skin pigmentation?" Tags="|dermatology|race|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16398" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16399" CreationDate="2013-05-24T15:59:01.123" Score="-6" ViewCount="1337" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've often heard people, including my own mother, tell me that treating a burn with ice is beneficial: presumably, to the pain level, and swelling. Is that so? Does it really make a difference?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-24T16:08:49.360" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T14:02:34.160" Title="Is it beneficial to treat a burn with ice?" Tags="|ice|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16398" CreationDate="2013-05-24T16:06:20.930" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/first-aid-burns/FA00022&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic's burn first aid&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cool the burn&lt;/strong&gt;. Hold the burned area under &lt;strong&gt;cool (not cold) running water&lt;/strong&gt; for 10 or 15 minutes or until the pain subsides. If this is impractical, immerse the burn in cool water or cool it with cold compresses. Cooling the burn reduces swelling by conducting heat away from the skin. &lt;strong&gt;Don't put ice on the burn&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don't use ice&lt;/strong&gt;. Putting ice directly on a burn can cause a person's body to become too cold and cause further damage to the wound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://firstaid.webmd.com/tc/burns-home-treatment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WebMD&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not use ice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not put ice or butter on the burned area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aafp.org/afp/2000/1101/p2015.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ambulatory Management of Burns&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; in American Family Physician:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ice application should be avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T16:15:33.377" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-05-24T16:23:50.487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16400" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16402" CreationDate="2013-05-24T19:13:17.490" Score="11" ViewCount="6865" Body="&lt;p&gt;A viral image is being passed around Facebook claiming that two FBI agents who fell from a helicopter to their deaths during a training accident were the same two who killed Tamerlan Tsarnaev (of the Boston Marathon bombing incident):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pLjmN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is being claimed as &quot;too coincidental to be an accident&quot; by conspiracists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The post references a &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.pravda.ru/news/world/24-05-2013/124656-boston_terrorist_fbi_agents_killed-0/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pravda&lt;/a&gt; article that calls the accident &quot;mysterious&quot;.  The Pravda article cites itself as the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A google returns a ton of matches on this story, but every one I've seen is either from a blog, or a website that is popular for unreferenced, speculative conspiracy &quot;news&quot; (beforeitsnews.com, info-wars.org, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were there two FBI agents killed in a training accident due to a fall from a helicopter, and were those two agents the same ones who killed Tamerlan Tsarnaev? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastActivityDate="2019-01-21T07:26:03.430" Title="Did the FBI agents responsible for killing Tamerlan Tsarnaev die together during a FBI training exercise?" Tags="|boston-marathon-bombings|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16401" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-24T19:41:01.253" Score="4" ViewCount="1132" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a kid, I was taught during my summer camp that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impatiens_capensis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;jewelweed&lt;/a&gt;, a plant commonly found throughout North America, is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2wNhs9s5Wo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;effective treatment&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poison_ivy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;poison ivy&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stinging_nettle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;stinging nettle&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, I've used it myself after touching stinging nettle, and felt immediate relief.  However, I now wonder if I simply experienced a placebo effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/036190_poison_ivy_remedies_jewelweed.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;other claims&lt;/a&gt; of its effectiveness as a cure-all, however I am hesitant to take an unreferenced claim of the results of a 1958 study at face value:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It apparently contains chemicals that neutralize the components responsible for the skin-irritating effects of poison oak, poison ivy and other irritants including stinging nettle, insect bites and ringworm. Folk remedies also recommend jewelweed poultices as treatment for minor injuries such as bruises, cuts, burns, sores, sprains and warts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Varro Tyler in his book Herbs of Choice, a 1958 study compared jewelweed to &amp;quot;standard poison ivy dermatitis treatments,&amp;quot; including corticosteroids. The researchers found that the plant was effective in treating 108 out of 115 patients, leading to complete symptom relief within two to three days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific support to the claim of this plant providing relief from skin irritants, particularly those caused by poison ivy or stinging nettle (although research showing benefits against other irritants would be acceptable substitute data)?  Is the 1958 study referenced above legitimate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T13:46:14.593" Title="Does Impatiens capensis (a.k.a. jewelweed) relieve symptoms caused by poison ivy or other irritants?" Tags="|natural-remedies|plants|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16400" CreationDate="2013-05-24T20:03:55.903" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two members of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, part of the Critical Response Group, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-mourns-the-loss-of-two-special-agents-killed-in-training-exercise&quot;&gt;died in a training accident in May 2013&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two FBI special agents were tragically killed Friday during a training exercise off the coast of Virginia Beach, Virginia. Special Agent Christopher Lorek and Special Agent Stephen Shaw were members of the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, part of the Critical Incident Response Group based at Quantico, Virginia. The cause of the incident is under review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.federaltimes.com/mobile/article/305160007&quot;&gt;Critical Response Group&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;was recently involved in the FBI's efforts to catch the Boston Marathon bombers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cirg&quot;&gt;The Critical Response Group is not a small unit&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/tamerlan-tsarnaev-death-certificate-read-boston-bombing-suspects-burial-details-cause-death-document#&quot;&gt;Tamerlan Tsarnaev's death certificate&lt;/a&gt; disagrees with a simplistic &quot;agents who eliminated&quot; statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;shot by police and then run over and dragged by [a] motor vehicle&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is consistent with the rumor that Tamerlan was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/boston-bombings-dzhokhar-tsarnaev-probably-killed-his-elder-brother-says-police-357149&quot;&gt;run over by his brother&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm fairly confident that law enforcement wouldn't specify the names of those who &quot;eliminated&quot; the suspect. I cannot find a reference, but I believe the Watertown gunfight occurred between the Tsarnaev's and local law enforcement, not Federal officers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2013-05-24T20:10:03.880" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T20:10:03.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16400" CreationDate="2013-05-24T20:09:36.583" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Christopher Lorek and Stephen Shaw, members of the FBI's Critical Incident Response Group, were indeed killed in a training accident on 17 May. But Pravda's claim that they &quot;eliminated Boston terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev&quot; is poorly sourced; the Pravda article appears to be single-sourced to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/fbi-mourns-the-loss-of-two-special-agents-killed-in-training-exercise&quot;&gt;an FBI press release&lt;/a&gt; that does not mention Tsarnaev. (Note that &quot;Source: Pravda.ru&quot; just means that it's written by Pravda, not picked up from an agency.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not clear how Pravda.ru decided that these men were responsible for killing Tsarnaev. Neither of their names are mentioned in connection with Tsarnaev in any news source in Google's archive.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://hamptonroads.com/2013/05/fbi-agents-died-fall-helicopter-va-coast&quot;&gt;This long local newspaper story&lt;/a&gt; about the incident does mention that the group was involved in the capture of the other Tsarnaev brother, but that's all I've got. I can't prove it but I'd be willing to bet that they simply made the connection up, probably based on the Virginian-Pilot story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laying aside the Hollywood-style idea of &quot;covering your tracks,&quot; it is difficult to construct a scenario in which getting two FBI guys to murder a fake terrorist patsy (while inexplicably letting the other patsy survive), and then murdering the FBI guys, actually accomplishes anything. Do they now have to push out of a helicopter the guy who pushed &lt;em&gt;these&lt;/em&gt; guys out of a helicopter? And then the guy who pushed the guy who pushed the guy...?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, Pravda.ru lacks the credibility and respectability of the old Soviet Pravda. (!) Past Pravda.ru headlines include &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/10-12-2009/111031-nostradamus-0/&quot;&gt;Nostradamus Predicted World War III for 2010&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/03-10-2007/98123-moon-0/&quot;&gt;Aliens forced Americans out from the Moon&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7646" LastActivityDate="2013-05-24T20:09:36.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16400" CreationDate="2013-05-24T20:16:03.153" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not true, or at least the sources are lying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what the &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.pravda.ru/news/world/24-05-2013/124656-boston_terrorist_fbi_agents_killed-0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pravda article&lt;/a&gt; linked in the question says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FBI agents, who eliminated Boston terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died as they fell out of a helicopter, the press service of the FBI said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How ever, when checked against other sources, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10067822/Two-FBI-agents-killed-in-training-accident-in-Virginia.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-19/two-fbi-agents-killed-in-virginia-beach-training-exercise.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bloomberg&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://swampland.time.com/2013/05/19/2-fbi-agents-killed-in-training-accident-in-va/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Time&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-05-23/news/ct-met-glen-ellyn-fbi-agent-20130522_1_special-agent-training-accident-glen-ellyn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chicago Tribune&lt;/a&gt; and others never mention the  Boston bombing. Not just this, but, the agents were part of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team and all the sources reference to the same event back in February, as the last major event in the unit took part in (the bombings were Apr. 15&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In February, members of the team rescued a 5-year-old boy from a small underground bunker where he was being held hostage by a 65-year-old man. The kidnapper was killed by agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/05/christopher-lorek-and-stephen-shaw-fbi-agents-killed-89074.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; from ABC7 news lists the some of the unit's actions and doesn't list the Boston Bombings or the man hunt after the Tsarnaev brothers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2011, two team members helped apprehend a Somali man who prosecutors say is the highest-ranking pirate whom federal officials have ever captured. Mohammad Saaili Shibin was the chief negotiator for a group of pirates who took four Americans hostage aboard their yacht and later killed them. Unlike the other pirates in the case, Shibin was arrested in Somalia. In August, a federal judge sentenced Shibin to a dozen life sentences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team members also responded to the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa and have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Domestically, their resume includes rescuing nine hostages held at a federal prison in Talladega, Ala. in 1991 by Cuban inmates who were rioting to prevent their return to Cuba. In February, members of the team rescued a 5-year-old boy from a small underground bunker where he was being held hostage by a 65-year-old man. The kidnapper was killed by agents&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, it seems that the FBI wasn't involved in the shooting of Tamerlan, and that he was killed ether by Boston Police or by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2312643/Boston-bomb-suspect-Commissioner-Ed-Davis-says-Dzhokhar-Tsarnaev-killed-brother.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;his brother&lt;/a&gt;. All reports talk about police and none of them mentions the FBI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamerlan_Tsarnaev#Death&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki page&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wwl.com/pages/16093472.php?contentType=4&amp;amp;contentId=12840287&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An eye witness report&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://metro.co.uk/2013/04/19/police-officer-shot-dead-mit-campus-boston-3653586/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;News report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/20/us/boston-details&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another news report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here are some pictures from the manhunt clearly showing SWAT and police forces, and not the FBI:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/1000x6907.jpg?w=650&amp;amp;h=448&amp;amp;crop=1#038;h=690&quot; alt=&quot;SWAT&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JQMgT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;more swat&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/ay_108224497.jpg?w=650&amp;amp;h=0&amp;amp;crop=1&quot; alt=&quot;pic&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/ay_108223341.jpg?w=650&amp;amp;h=0&amp;amp;crop=1&quot; alt=&quot;picpic&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/04/21/article-2312387-19683C2C000005DC-195_964x767.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here is a picture&lt;/a&gt; from the arrest of the second brother (possibly NSFW), the FBI agent in the photo doesn't wear any protective gear, while the ATF/Police officer does, which means that the FBI agent wasn't part of the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, and probably wasn't doing the shooting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-01-21T07:26:03.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16408" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22447" CreationDate="2013-05-25T01:47:25.840" Score="5" ViewCount="558" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a claim that different patches of the galaxy have different climate effects due to variations in cosmic ray strength. I've occasionally heard this used to explain global warming but more often ice ages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; is an example of both claims via the cosmic ray mechanism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If [solar cycles affect temperature], then one should expect climatic variations while we roam the galaxy. This is because the density of cosmic ray sources in the galaxy is not uniform. In fact, it is concentrated in the galactic spiral arms (it arises from supernovae, which in our galaxy are predominantly the end product of massive stars, which in turn form and die primarily in spiral arms). Thus, each time we cross a galactic arm, we should expect a colder climate. Current data for the spiral arm passages gives a crossing once every 135 ± 25 Million years. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A record of the long term variations of the galactic cosmic ray flux can be extracted from Iron meteorites. It was found in the present work that the cosmic ray flux varied periodically (with flux variations greater than a factor of 2.5) with an average period of 143 ± 10 Million years. This is consistent with the expected spiral arm crossing period and with the picture that the cosmic ray flux should be variable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what's the current state of our scientific knowledge on the subject? Is there an effect? Is it of comparable magnitude to atmospheric gas composition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8323" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T14:06:40.223" Title="Is global temperature significantly affected by time of galactic year?" Tags="|climate-change|astronomy|climatology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16409" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-25T02:40:00.790" Score="2" ViewCount="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pretty much every natural hair blogger out there (eg. Naptural85, CurlyNikki) has talked about how &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bentonite&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bentonite&lt;/a&gt; clays get rid of lint and product buildup. However, I also see other bloggers using the same clays as a hair conditioner. There's a lot of bad science and conflicting beliefs in the community, so I'm wondering if anyone can help me get my facts straight. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13929" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-05-25T03:11:37.700" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T08:47:55.210" Title="Is bentonite a hair clarifier?" Tags="|natural-remedies|hair|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16326" CreationDate="2013-05-25T18:13:24.687" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is evidence that competition between hospitals can drive quality and cost improvements if the market is carefully designed.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of whether competition has any role in healthcare provision is highly contentious. Many participants start with strong ideological positions and are more concerned with justifying their position by any means than in taking a skeptical and dispassionate view of the evidence. This encourages many debaters to make arguments based on economic theory rather than actual real world evidence. It is worth reviewing some of the theory if only to emphasise the importance of real world evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In this argument, theory is just a distraction&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the more vocal objectors to competition in the NHS is Lucy Reynolds. She frequently uses arguments from economic theory to show why competition can't work in healthcare (frequently quoting a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/top20/53.5.941-973.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;famous paper&lt;/a&gt; from Kenneth Arrow in 1963). The most concise summary of her position is &lt;a href=&quot;http://bevansrun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/guest-blog-competition-in-healthcare.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.First, the assumptions underlying the market model really don’t fit at all well. These include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No barriers to market entry or exit: but doctors need to be trained for years and hospitals need expensive facilities which aren’t easily converted to alternative uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Product homogeneity: but any clinician will tell you that for most conditions, there is great individual variation in the treatments needed for different patients, even those who have the same diagnosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No transaction costs, meaning no costs to provider or patient of&#xA;getting to the point where a treatment is sold: but clearly either the&#xA;patient must visit the doctor or vice versa, and the costs of&#xA;consultations and diagnostic tests are well above zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perfect information about the healthcare transaction between doctor&#xA;and patient so that they can strike a fair price for the services&#xA;purchased: but of course patients don’t go to medical school or&#xA;receive clinical training in hospitals so they often have very little&#xA;comprehension of what is wrong with them. A substantial minority of&#xA;people in this country believe in homeopathy, crystal healing and&#xA;suchlike: they lack even a basic grasp of the science underlying&#xA;medicine, so how can they be considered to have enough understanding&#xA;to know if the doctor’s prescription is the best thing for them or&#xA;whether it is based on the best interests of the hospital’s profit&#xA;and loss account?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She summarises the anti-market case well. But there is a fatal flaw in the argument: &lt;em&gt;no other real world market even comes close to satisfying those assumptions either.&lt;/em&gt; Apparently economic theory isn't that useful at telling us whether markets work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Kay makes a powerful argument for looking to the real world for evidence in his book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Truth-About-Markets-Follies/dp/0713994894/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Truth About Markets: Their Genius, Their Limits, their Follies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. He rejects fundamentalist theory and focusses on what happens in the real world. He characterises the keys to market success as being akin to the forces driving biological evolution: variety and selection. These two factors drive improvement over time. But markets often need outside intervention to preserve these two key drivers, so getting social benefits from market activity may require careful government intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of this theoretical interlude is that it explains why we have to interpret the evidence carefully: badly designed markets won't show benefits; well designed markets might.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The NHS has tried two ways of introducing competition: the evidence so far shows that only one worked&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Competition was first introduced by John Major's Conservative government between 1991 and 1997, abolished when Tony Blair's Labour party won in 1997, but then tried again in a different form from 2002 as Blair realised the NHS needed stronger incentives to improve. There is a good summary in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d6470&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gwyn Bevan's 2011 review of NHS competition in the BMJ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During 1991–97, a period of limited growth in NHS funding, an “internal market” was introduced throughout the United Kingdom. It changed health authorities’ responsibilities by separating the roles of purchaser and provider of healthcare. Hospitals were made independent of health authorities, typically as directly managed units, which became NHS trusts regulated by the Department of Health. Health authorities contracted selectively with providers and constrained general practitioners’ referral options. However, general practitioners who opted for various forms of general practice fundholding were allocated cash budgets to contract for elective care and could choose where to refer their patients. Competition was between NHS trusts and private providers. NHS trusts were expected to avoid financial deficits but could not retain financial surpluses and hence arguably lacked strong incentives to increase market shares. There was little information on, and no external regulatory oversight of, quality of care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From 1997, the new Labour government abolished general practice fundholding and strongly discouraged competition in favour of a more cooperative model. Nevertheless, the distinction between purchasers and providers was retained, thus preserving scope for competition via selective contracting by purchasers (primary care trusts or PCTs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The “New Labour” hospital market, which applied only to England, was developed from 2002 onwards, a period of sustained increases in NHS funding (about 5% per year). Under this model PCTs contracted selectively with providers. Within the PCTs, practice based commissioners, which could be thought of as an extension of the general practice fundholding model, also contracted with providers but had indicative budgets only. Competition was again between providers, but there were more of them: NHS trusts, private providers, independent sector treatment centres, and NHS foundation trusts. Foundation trusts were high performing trusts that met Department of Health criteria for autonomy and were subject to approval and oversight by a new regulator, Monitor. They were allowed to retain financial surpluses and hence arguably had incentives to increase market shares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the key differences between the two exeriments are worth emphaising before looking at the actual evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first experiment allowed price competition but had poor availability of information about or regulation of quality or performance of hospitals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The second experiment started with much better information about performance and quality and did not allow providers to compete on price (national prices were set per Healthcare Resource Group (HRG) [similar to the US DRG]); providers could compete on quality and other factors to attract more patients.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One factor common to both experiments was that the buyers were not &lt;em&gt;patients&lt;/em&gt; but other professionals (often medics) who were well equipped to judge the quality and effectiveness of the clinical care on offer. This goes a long way to making Kenneth Arrow's objection to healthcare competition irrelevant: patients may be ill-equipped to judge the quality or effectiveness of treatment when faced with a doctor or hospital who is, but the actual purchasers are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NHS is also distinct from many other health systems in that the patients do not pay either directly or via competing insurers: the Government acts as the universal insurer for the population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The evidence so far suggests that well-designed competition can save lives and lower costs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results from the first experiment in the NHS were mixed. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/papers/2005/wp133.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carol Propper summarises in this review&lt;/a&gt; (which also contains many references to other analysis, some from the US market so is a useful source for further reading and more detailed evidence):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence suggests that greater competition was associated with lower costs (Söderlund et al, 1997). The bargaining power of district health authorities was lower than that of GP fundholders, and hospitals that had greater business from fundholders had lower posted prices (Propper et al, 1998; Propper, 1996). On the other hand, two large-scale studies of the&#xA;association between competition and quality suggest that quality – as measured by&#xA;deaths of patients admitted to hospitals with heart attacks – fell during the internal&#xA;market (Propper et al, 2004, Propper, Burgess and Abraham, 2002). This combination&#xA;of falls in price and quality fits with the predictions of economic theory: where&#xA;demanders are sensitive to price and quality information is weak, &lt;em&gt;both prices and&#xA;quality are likely to fall as competition increases.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, a market with poor information and weak purchasers led to some gains in costs, but compromised clinical quality. This is not regarded by many as a good tradeoff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently, evidence has started to emerge about the second NHS experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://cep.lse.ac.uk/textonly/_new/research/productivity/management/PDF/Management_in_Healthcare_Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;review&lt;/a&gt; by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cep.lse.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Centre for Economic Performance&lt;/a&gt; (at the London School of Economics) and McKinsey summarised the evidence linking good management practices to both hospital outcomes and costs. And it also concluded that hospital competition improved the quality of management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2011 two groups independently reached the conclusion that more competition both improved mortality by significant amounts and improved efficiency. Zack Cooper's team published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0297.2011.02449.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Economic Journal&lt;/a&gt; (paywalled but their discussion paper is &lt;a href=&quot;http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/28584/1/WP16.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). They conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...we find that mortality fell more quickly (i.e. quality improved) for patients living in more competitive markets after the introduction of hospital competition in January 2006. Our results suggest that hospital competition in markets with fixed prices can lead to improvements in clinical quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1125.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Other papers&lt;/a&gt; from the same team concluded that efficiency also improves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile Propper's team had independently reached a similar result (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/papers/2010/wp242.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;working paper here&lt;/a&gt;). Propper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.voxeu.org/article/healthcare-competition-saves-lives&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;summarises&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In recent research along with Rodrigo Moreno-Serra (Gaynor et al. 2010), we look at all admissions to hospitals in the National Health Service – around 13 million admissions – pre- and post-policy. We find that hospitals located in areas where patients have more choice are of a higher clinical quality – as measured by lower death rates following admissions – and their patients stay in hospital for shorter periods compared with hospitals located in less competitive areas. What’s more, the hospitals in competitive markets have achieved this without increasing total operating costs or shedding staff. These findings suggest that the policy of choice and competition in healthcare can have benefits – quality in English hospitals in areas in which more competition is possible has risen without a commensurate increase in costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and warns:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These results suggest that the details of the policy matter. &lt;strong&gt;Competition under fixed prices appears to have beneficial results while competition where hospitals bargain over price and quality does not.&lt;/strong&gt; This in turn has policy implications for governments who are keen on introducing market forces to healthcare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise: competition among hospitals can have quality and cost benefits, but governments have to get the design of the market right to see those benefits. This goes some way to explaining why the historic evidence is so mixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best evidence we have from the NHS suggests that even the relatively timid introduction of competition can have benefits from both patients (improved clinical quality) and governments (improved efficiency). But getting this required careful design of the system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Endnote&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should note that the results presented above are controversial. But they show that many of the theoretical objections raised in response to the original question &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; be addressed and actual experimental evidence can be brought to bear on a difficult and controversial area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T18:13:24.687" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16326" CreationDate="2013-05-25T21:07:21.810" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The NHS has tried two ways of introducing competition: the evidence so far shows that only one worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Competition was first introduced between 1991 and 1997.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Competition was tried again in a different form from 2002 onward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Summary of trials&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A summary of these trials is in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d6470&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gwyn Bevan's 2011 review of NHS competition in the BMJ&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During 1991–97, a period of limited growth in NHS funding, an “internal market” was introduced throughout the United Kingdom. It changed health authorities’ responsibilities by separating the roles of purchaser and provider of healthcare. Hospitals were made independent of health authorities, typically as directly managed units, which became NHS trusts regulated by the Department of Health. Health authorities contracted selectively with providers and constrained general practitioners’ referral options. However, general practitioners who opted for various forms of general practice fundholding were allocated cash budgets to contract for elective care and could choose where to refer their patients. Competition was between NHS trusts and private providers. NHS trusts were expected to avoid financial deficits but could not retain financial surpluses and hence arguably lacked strong incentives to increase market shares. There was little information on, and no external regulatory oversight of, quality of care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From 1997, the new Labour government abolished general practice fundholding and strongly discouraged competition in favour of a more cooperative model. Nevertheless, the distinction between purchasers and providers was retained, thus preserving scope for competition via selective contracting by purchasers (primary care trusts or PCTs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The “New Labour” hospital market, which applied only to England, was developed from 2002 onwards, a period of sustained increases in NHS funding (about 5% per year). Under this model PCTs contracted selectively with providers. Within the PCTs, practice based commissioners, which could be thought of as an extension of the general practice fundholding model, also contracted with providers but had indicative budgets only. Competition was again between providers, but there were more of them: NHS trusts, private providers, independent sector treatment centres, and NHS foundation trusts. Foundation trusts were high performing trusts that met Department of Health criteria for autonomy and were subject to approval and oversight by a new regulator, Monitor. They were allowed to retain financial surpluses and hence arguably had incentives to increase market shares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The 1991-1997 experiment allowed price competition but had poor availability of information about or regulation of quality or performance of hospitals. [Looking for a reference for this]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The 2002-onwards experiment started with better information about performance and quality and national prices were set per Healthcare Resource Group (HRG) [similar to the US DRG]; providers could compete on quality and other factors to attract more patients. [Looking for a reference for this]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The 1991-1997 experiment&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bris.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/papers/2005/wp133.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carol Propper summarises the results of the 1991-1997 experiment in this review&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence suggests that greater competition was associated with lower costs (Söderlund et al, 1997). The bargaining power of district health authorities was lower than that of GP fundholders, and hospitals that had greater business from fundholders had lower posted prices (Propper et al, 1998; Propper, 1996). On the other hand, two large-scale studies of the&#xA;association between competition and quality suggest that quality – as measured by&#xA;deaths of patients admitted to hospitals with heart attacks – fell during the internal&#xA;market (Propper et al, 2004, Propper, Burgess and Abraham, 2002). This combination&#xA;of falls in price and quality fits with the predictions of economic theory: where&#xA;demanders are sensitive to price and quality information is weak, &lt;em&gt;both prices and&#xA;quality are likely to fall as competition increases.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The 2002-onwards experiment&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://cep.lse.ac.uk/textonly/_new/research/productivity/management/PDF/Management_in_Healthcare_Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;review&lt;/a&gt; by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cep.lse.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Centre for Economic Performance&lt;/a&gt; (at the London School of Economics) and McKinsey summarised the evidence linking good management practices to both hospital outcomes and costs. And it also &lt;strong&gt;concluded that hospital competition improved the quality of management&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2011 two groups independently reached the conclusion that &lt;strong&gt;more competition both improved mortality by significant amounts and improved efficiency&lt;/strong&gt;. Zack Cooper's team published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0297.2011.02449.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Economic Journal&lt;/a&gt; (paywalled but their discussion paper is &lt;a href=&quot;http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/28584/1/WP16.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). They conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...we find that mortality fell more quickly (i.e. quality improved) for patients living in more competitive markets after the introduction of hospital competition in January 2006. Our results suggest that hospital competition in markets with fixed prices can lead to improvements in clinical quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/dp1125.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Other papers&lt;/a&gt; from the same team concluded that efficiency also improves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Propper's team independently reached a similar result (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmpo/publications/papers/2010/wp242.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;working paper here&lt;/a&gt;). Propper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.voxeu.org/article/healthcare-competition-saves-lives&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;summarises&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In recent research along with Rodrigo Moreno-Serra (Gaynor et al. 2010), we look at all admissions to hospitals in the National Health Service – around 13 million admissions – pre- and post-policy. We find that hospitals located in areas where patients have more choice are of a higher clinical quality – as measured by lower death rates following admissions – and their patients stay in hospital for shorter periods compared with hospitals located in less competitive areas. What’s more, the hospitals in competitive markets have achieved this without increasing total operating costs or shedding staff. These findings suggest that the policy of choice and competition in healthcare can have benefits – &lt;strong&gt;quality in English hospitals in areas in which more competition is possible has risen without a commensurate increase in costs&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These results suggest that the details of the policy matter. &lt;strong&gt;Competition under fixed prices appears to have beneficial results while competition where hospitals bargain over price and quality does not.&lt;/strong&gt; This in turn has policy implications for governments who are keen on introducing market forces to healthcare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidence from the NHS (the 2002-onwards implementation) suggests that introduction of competition can have benefits for both patients (improved clinical quality) and governments (improved efficiency).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;This answer is based on content that was originally contributed by matt_black.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-25T21:59:08.947" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-05-25T21:07:21.810" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16414" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16415" CreationDate="2013-05-26T00:49:40.410" Score="27" ViewCount="4139" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his 2007 video &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&amp;amp;v=KnJX68ELbAY&amp;amp;feature=endscreen&quot;&gt;1st Foundational Falsehood of Creationism&lt;/a&gt; the YouTuber AronRa claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Catholicism and Orthodoxy] have stated support of evolution and denounced creationism. Pope Benedict recently described evolution as an enriching reality and described creationist contest against it as absurd. Both of the popes before him advised Christians around the world to consider evolution to be more than a hypothesis and not to fear and not t fear acceptance of that is being any challenge to their faith in Christ&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4:56-5:16)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other members of the Catholic church speak against evolution (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://catholicism.org/a-sermon-against-evolution.html&quot;&gt;this example&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that the official position of the Catholic church is acceptance of evolution? Or is it opposed to evolution? Or has it not taken an official position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-05-26T08:59:18.533" LastActivityDate="2019-06-11T11:55:04.263" Title="Does the Catholic church accept evolution?" Tags="|evolution|catholic-church|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16414" CreationDate="2013-05-26T01:13:09.130" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution#Catholic_teaching_and_evolution&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WikiPedia&lt;/a&gt; on that subject quotes &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0401bt.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, which alleges that Catholic teaching accepts but doesn't require the theory of evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or a more authoritative answer about Catholic teaching is for example this from Pope Benedict in 2007, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2007/july/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20070724_clero-cadore_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quoted on the Vatican web site as follows&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently, I see in Germany, but also in the United States, a somewhat fierce debate raging between so-called &quot;creationism&quot; and evolutionism, presented as though they were mutually exclusive alternatives: those who believe in the Creator would not be able to conceive of evolution, and those who instead support evolution would have to exclude God. This antithesis is absurd because, on the one hand, there are so many scientific proofs in favour of evolution which appears to be a reality we can see and which enriches our knowledge of life and being as such. But on the other, the doctrine of evolution does not answer every query, especially the great philosophical question: where does everything come from? And how did everything start which ultimately led to man?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example is at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/alpha/data/aud19860129en.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In Creation God Calls the World into Existence from Nothingness&lt;/a&gt; by John Paul II in 1986, which reads like a sermon about Genesis. In it, the Pope says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Above all, this text has a religious and theological importance. It doesn't contain significant elements from the point of view of the natural sciences. Research on the origin and development of the individual species in nature does not find in this description any definitive norm or positive contributions of substantial interest. Indeed, the theory of natural evolution, understood in a sense that does not exclude divine causality, is not in principle opposed to the truth about the creation of the visible world, as presented in the Book of Genesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I interpret this as saying that the Book of Genesis is a product of its time and is not scientific, and that the theory of natural evolution is not incompatible with Catholic theology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same goes on to list the various things which (unlike evolution) are important articles of faith, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) The one, true God is Creator and Lord &quot;of visible and invisible&#xA;  things&quot; (DS 3021).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) It is contrary to faith to affirm that only matter exists&#xA;  (materialism) (DS 3022).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) It is contrary to faith to assert that God is essentially&#xA;  identified with the world (pantheism) (DS 3023).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4) It is contrary to faith to maintain that creatures, even spiritual&#xA;  ones, are an emanation of the divine substance, or to affirm that the&#xA;  divine Being by its manifestation or evolution becomes everything (DS&#xA;  3024).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5) Also contrary to faith is the idea that God is the universal or&#xA;  indefinite being which in becoming determinate constitutes the&#xA;  universe divided into genera, species and individuals (DS 3024).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;6) It is likewise contrary to faith to deny that the world and all&#xA;  things contained in it, whether spiritual or material, in their entire&#xA;  substance have been created by God out of nothing (DS 3025).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found it interesting to compare Benedict's statement quoted above, with the following paragraph from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Humanis Generis&lt;/a&gt; from Pope Pius XII in 1950 (emphases are mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[36.] For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church &lt;strong&gt;does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body&lt;/strong&gt; as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that &lt;strong&gt;the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church&lt;/strong&gt;, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith. Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compared with Pius, who 'doesn't forbid men who are experienced in human sciences and theology to research and discuss evolution, both for and against, while submitting to the judgement of the Church which has the Christ-given mission to interpret Scripture and defend dogmas of faith', Benedict seems more sure that there's some merit to the theory of evolution, when he opined, 'the antithesis [between believing in God the Creator and believing in evolution] is absurd because, on the one hand, there are so many scientific proofs in favour of evolution which appears to be a reality we can see and which enriches our knowledge of life and being as such'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IIRC Benedict had a reputation for being well-versed in and supportive of the traditional Church doctrines; so I infer that Benedict's view is the result of the 57 years-worth of &quot;opinions, favorable and unfavorable to evolution, weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness&quot;, to quote Pius.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Replying to a comment below,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What I'm missing from the answer is the church's stance on creationism. Is it correct to say that the &quot;literal&quot; interpretation of the bible, and specifically the book of genesis, is not accepted by the catholic church?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't define &quot;creationism&quot;, but the Catholic Church's teachings include more than a merely &quot;literal&quot; interpretation of the Bible: for example, there's the historical text (different languages and versions); the literal meaning of the text; and the spiritual meaning of the text. Some of it is &quot;allegorical&quot;. The Church would want people to understand it with what may casually be called 'a grain of salt', or more formally, &quot;the Holy Spirit&quot;, as well as the &quot;Magisterium&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't extract quotes from the following references, because quoting sentences and phrases out of context might not give a true view of Catholic teaching; but if you want to see how well I paraphrased it in my previous paragraph above, I invite you to read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20070425_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Origen of Alexandria: life and work&lt;/a&gt; by Benedict XVI in 2007&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paragraphs 34 through 44 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_ben-xvi_exh_20100930_verbum-domini_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini&lt;/a&gt; by Benedict XVI in 2010&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't believe that the Pope's comments in a meeting are considered authoritative decision on Catholic doctrine, just an opinion. Compare that to an Encyclical like &quot;Humani Generis&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's article on &quot;Encyclical&quot; in fact quotes from Humani Generis, which says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[19.] Although these things seem well said, still they are not free form error. It is true that Popes generally leave theologians free in those matters which are disputed in various ways by men of very high authority in this field; but history teaches that many matters that formerly were open to discussion, no longer now admit of discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[20.] Nor must it be thought that what is expounded in Encyclical Letters does not of itself demand consent, since in writing such Letters the Popes do not exercise the supreme power of their Teaching Authority. For these matters are taught with the ordinary teaching authority, of which it is true to say: &quot;He who heareth you, heareth me&quot;;[3] and generally what is expounded and inculcated in Encyclical Letters already for other reasons appertains to Catholic doctrine. But if the Supreme Pontiffs in their official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter up to that time under dispute, it is obvious that that matter, according to the mind and will of the Pontiffs, cannot be any longer considered a question open to discussion among theologians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using this to interpret paragraph 36 which I quoted above, I think I understand that (the rest of this paragraph is in my own words and I may be using some words such as 'heresy' inaccurately) whereas Darwin's theories used to be ridiculed and dismissed as incompatible with religious belief, Pius was carefully and deliberately saying that the theory of evolution is not necessarily a heresy (but neither should it be taken atheist). I think I therefore agree with the following summary from Wikipedia about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species#Religious_attitudes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Religious attitudes to On The Origin of Species&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By the early 20th century, four noted authors of The Fundamentals were explicitly open to the possibility that God created through evolution, but fundamentalism inspired the American creation–evolution controversy that began in the 1920s. Some conservative Roman Catholic writers and influential Jesuits opposed evolution in the late 19th and early 20th century, but other Catholic writers, starting with Mivart, pointed out that &lt;strong&gt;early Church Fathers had not interpreted Genesis literally in this area&lt;/strong&gt;. The Vatican stated its official position in a 1950 papal encyclical, which held that &lt;strong&gt;evolution was not inconsistent with Catholic teaching&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fundamentalism seems to be centred in the USA&lt;/a&gt;. Ad Hominem isn't an argument, however it doesn't surprise me that the &quot;dissenting view&quot; which is cited in the OP comes from the USA. I'm surprised that a person takes this sermon as very authoritative, given that it starts with &quot;By the authority invested in my own mind, etc.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of that sermon seems to be his own opinion of or summary from the many things he has read. I won't debate its every statement in detail. The only or most reliable source in the sermon that he quotes is paragraph 37 of Humanis Generis (the next one after the paragraph 36 which I quoted above), saying,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The faithful cannot embrace that opinion that men came from someone other than Adam and Eve or that Adam and Eve represent a collection of many first parents. Thus God created one man and from that one man, woman was created and all of mankind was created from them.” (Paragraph 37)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full, original text is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[37.] When, however, there is question of another conjectural opinion, namely polygenism, the children of the Church by no means enjoy such liberty. For the faithful cannot embrace that opinion which maintains that either after Adam there existed on this earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from him as from the first parent of all, or that Adam represents a certain number of first parents. Now it is in no way apparent how such an opinion can be reconciled with that which the sources of revealed truth and the documents of the Teaching Authority of the Church propose with regard to original sin, which proceeds from a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to all and is in everyone as his own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal synthesis or explanation of the Church's position (I am not an expert nor authoritative, so you might instead want to ask someone who is, to explain this) is therefore:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evolution explains the evolution of the human body, more or less successfully&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;God creates human souls&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first human (with a soul) was Adam; Adam had original sin; all humans descend from and inherit original sin from Adam; Christ came to save us from original sin; etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-08-16T21:34:25.433" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T21:34:25.433" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16416" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-26T05:31:19.500" Score="7" ViewCount="463" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/article/hangover_starr&quot;&gt;Training With a Hangover&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, Bill Starr says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first thing I taught them when they stumbled into the weight room with giant hangovers was that the alcohol was nothing more than expensive carbohydrates. Which means it can be used as fuel for physical activities. I also advanced the rather foreign notion that just because they feel terrible that doesn’t mean that they can’t get in a solid workout. &lt;em&gt;Their muscular and skeletal systems and all their organs are still going to operate exactly the same&lt;/em&gt;. All they needed to do was override the splitting headaches and upset stomachs and they could still get stronger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I interpret this to mean that the only barriers to successfully completing a prescribed strength training workout during a hangover are headache and nausea and that force production is unaffected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, he claims &quot;their muscular [...] systems [...] are still going to operate exactly the same&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-05-31T16:35:06.373" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T16:31:39.543" Title="Do muscle systems operate exactly the same during a hangover?" Tags="|biology|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15238" CreationDate="2013-05-26T09:42:28.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is unquestionable that doctors generally, and radiologists specifically, will be effected by the ACA going forward. But the question here is what the net effect will be. What makes this difficult to really answer is that there are a number of provisions that come into play, and some can be deemed negative while others are positive. No one knows for sure what the ultimate net effect will be, but we can try by looking at a few to get an idea of what the bottom line might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1) A decrease in insurance payments made for imaging.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/alizotte/how-healthcare-reform-is-affecting-radiology-pam-kassing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How Healthcare Reform Is Affecting Radiology&lt;/a&gt;, slide 11 (and others), there is a decrease in pay for various imaging work of up to 50%, both directly for procedures such as an MRI and in a policy that groups together certain procedures that were performed at the same time into one single payable service. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stated goal of this is that these sorts of common expenses are much more expensive in the US than other comparable countries, and the rationale that two sets of images done during one visit to one patient should not cost the same as if they were done at entirely different times, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rationale aside, one could easily consider this a negative for radiological &lt;em&gt;businesses&lt;/em&gt;, but radiologists are largely salaried staff and are not paid per procedure or even per hour. But the economic value provided by radiologists is reduced, so this could provide a negative pressure on pay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons this is a concern for some radiologists is that that they are already very highly paid positions (both in general and compared to general  care doctors), with salaries in the US ranging from $160,000-500,000+ per year, and a very high predicted job growth rate in the coming years. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/radiologist-salary-SRCH_KO0,11.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Glassdoor Survey of Salaries&lt;/a&gt;. One can thus reason that if anyone is going to be targeted for a pay cut, radiologists could be at the front of that line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2) A major increase in potential demand for healthcare&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the major increases in healthcare coverage that are a central goal of the ACA are likely to provide far more demand (paying customers) looking for healthcare. Those who were previously unable to pay for services performed in an emergency care environment would now be covered, which is another positive effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be viewed as a mixed impact, however, as many/most medical professionals are salaried now and would be called upon to work more. The increase in demand for nurses and doctors would provide an upwards pressure on salary and increased bargaining power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems odd to claim that an increased demand for ones services is harmful. If you are already highly paid and work long hours, I suppose you could reasonably think that there is no benefit to you directly of having more people waiting in line for your services. But it would provide more opportunities for people seeking to be radiologists and provide additional justification for pay 2-4 times higher than other medical doctors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;3) An increase in pay for some physicians and regional incentives&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://npalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/NPA-ACA.Quick_.Guide_.for_.Physicians.041311.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Physicians Alliance&lt;/a&gt; (and many other sources) there will be a 10% boost in payments for primary care services, a 10% boost for surgeons and other personnel working in under-served communities, an increase in Medicaid payments so they match Medicare payments, and incentives/pay/loan forgiveness for working in under-served communities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the claim that there will be less flexibility to choose where to work, I can only assume this is what is being referenced - but to claim reduced flexibility when payments/incentives are offered to work in rural and under-served areas seems like a backwards way to look at things. If there is a shortage of doctors this should tend to increase the flexibility of choosing where one lives and works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;4) Insurance stability, availability, limit elimination&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ACA will be removing lifetime/yearly limits on healthcare coverage, make insurance companies unable to drop people who are getting ill, etc. This effects physicians, too, as they need insurance too. It also means doctors don't suddenly lose patients because of bureaucratic nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;5) Digital medical records requirements&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is billed as an upside, but I heard an NPR report the other day (sorry, no citation - radio program) that many older private practice physicians say that the cost of going digital is just too expensive and they're just going to work until the penalties are too much and then they'll retire from their practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost of systems and converting records is considerable, and for small practices the advantages of digital patient records are vastly reduced while the out of pocket costs are still high. For some doctors this is a negative, though for many its a benefit. YMMV&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Uncertainty&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is just a natural downside, as if nothing else the ACA signals changes in physician pay, work environments, insurance, and a real or perceived move towards a pay-for-performance or packaged-payment system. People naturally fear change, and this can be perfectly rational. Who trusts the government not to screw things up, really? But the present system is untenable, so it is inevitable and scary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as you can see, even this partial treatment reveals the situation is mixed. Some physicians will make more money, find more flexibility, more bargaining power, and have better work environments. Upcoming physicians may find better pay, modernized systems, and more opportunities and options to pay for their (already prohibitively expensive) education. Older physicians, and those in highly paid specialties (such as radiology), may find the ACA costs them more than it helps them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to remember that the Affordable Care Act is a monolithic piece of legislation, and as such it inevitable contains pros and cons for everyone involved. How you judge the net result depends on who you are, how well the current system suits you, and how a variety of provisions and interpreted and implemented in the future. The NPA link provided earlier has many additional readings/links/citations that may provide further reading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; Some physicians love Obamacare, some hate it, some are ambivalent, and some have such a mixed bag that its hard to evaluate whether its ultimately good or bad. And for some, only time will tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11957" LastActivityDate="2013-05-26T09:42:28.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16419" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-26T10:56:39.527" Score="9" ViewCount="386" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChiRunning&quot;&gt;Chi Running&lt;/a&gt; style of running &lt;a href=&quot;http://running.competitor.com/2009/05/training/can-running-technique-be-taught_298&quot;&gt;is said&lt;/a&gt; to significantly reduce number of injuries experienced while running:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The top-selling running book of the last several years is Chi Running, by Danny Dreyer, which teaches a quasi-yoga-based style of running that is purported to reduce injury risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chi Running supporters &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chirunning.com/about/for-the-press/&quot;&gt;published results of surveys&lt;/a&gt; between Chi Runners, which contain claims like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;92 % feel Chi Running / Chi Walking has played a role in preventing running/walking injuires&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Chi Running really reduce the number of injuries caused by (or experienced during) running?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T04:59:45.470" Title="Does ChiRunning reduce number of injuries experienced while running?" Tags="|medical-science|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16420" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32073" CreationDate="2013-05-26T15:41:10.667" Score="18" ViewCount="729" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example as claimed &lt;a href=&quot;http://britishpakistanichristian.blogspot.de/2012/08/hate-speech-in-state-text-books.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A study by the National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP) on all ages  of state textbooks in Punjab revealed that the instances of hate-speech and indoctrination in such allegedly 'moderate' texts has risen by over 270% in just three years since 2009&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefridaytimes.com/14012011/page5.shtml&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hindu pundits were jealous of Al-Beruni” ( Social Studies , Class VIII, Punjab Textbook Board, page 82). Another textbook reads, “The Hindus who had always been opportunists” ( Social Studies , Class VI, Punjab Textbook Board, page 141). Still another one reads, “The Hindus had always been an enemy of Islam” ( Urdu , Class V, Punjab Textbook Board, page 108).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that Punjab Board of Pakistan textbooks contain hate speech against non-muslims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10176" LastEditorUserId="10176" LastEditDate="2013-05-29T09:38:39.157" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T16:35:24.417" Title="Do Punjab Board of Pakistan textbooks contain hate speech against non muslims?" Tags="|education|pakistan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16313" CreationDate="2013-05-26T23:34:14.117" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There certainly seems to be a strong scientific consensus on climate change. Here are some figures showing scientific concurrence with Anthropogenic Global Warming, or that unprecedented warming is occurring in the earliest studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;67% from a 1992 Gallup poll of 400 members of AGU and AMS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;•  Gallup Poll, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fair.org/blog/2009/02/19/george-will-bringing-you-climate-data-disinformation-since-1992/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;No direct online link but discussed here and elsewhere&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, 1992.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;80% from Bray &amp;amp; von Storch 1999 survey of 1000 German, US &amp;amp; Canadian climate scientists&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;•  Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0477%281999%29080%3C0439%3ACSAEEO%3E2.0.CO%3B2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Climate Science: An Empirical Example of Postnormal Science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, 1999.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;100% from Oreskes 2004 from articles by 928 scientists (75% agree with IPCC, 25% took no position, 0% opposed)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;•  Naomi Oreskes, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/306/5702/1686.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, 2004.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;97% from Harris Interactive 2007 surveyed 489 randomly selected members of AGU&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;•  Harris Interactive Poll, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usnews.com/news/national/articles/2008/04/23/survey-tracks-scientists-growing-climate-concern&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Survey Tracks Scientists' Growing Climate Concern&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;100% from IPCC 2007, by definition this is the consensus of the 2000 scientists that contributed to this work – “anthropogenic (human-sourced) greenhouse gases are responsible for most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the twentieth century”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;•  Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-understanding-and.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Understanding and Attributing Climate Change&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;83.5% from Bray and von Storch, 2008 from just 373 climate scientists worldwide (AGW: 34.6% very much agree, 48.9% agreeing to a large extent, 15.1% to a small extent, and 1.35% not agreeing at all)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;•  Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu/2365610/A_Survey_of_Climate_Scientists_Concerning_Climate_Science_and_Climate_Change&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CliSci2008: A Survey of the Perspectives of Climate Scientists Concerning Climate Science and Climate Change&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;97% from Doran and Zimmerman 2009 from a data set of 79 top climatologists (GW: 90% agreed and AGW: 82% agreed of 3,146 general scientists surveyed)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;•  Peter T . Doran and Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tigger.uic.edu/~pdoran/012009_Doran_final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;97.5% from Anderegg et al 2010 surveyed publications by 1,372 climate researchers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;•  William R. L. Anderegg et al, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Expert credibility in climate change&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;84% from Farnsworth and Lichter 2011 from 489 members of AGU and AMS (AGW: just 5% disagreed)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;•  Stephen J. Farnsworth &amp;amp; S. Robert Lichter, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ijpor.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/10/27/ijpor.edr033.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Structure of Scientific Opinion on Climate Change&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;98.5% from Cook et al 2013 from published literature of 10306 scientists and direct contact with a subset to ensure correct interpretation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;•  Cook et al, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Every national or respected scientific organization in the world endorses the IPCC conclusions about the human causes of the present climate change (about 45 agencies at my last count). This is notable because it takes a lot of convincing to get even one group of scientists to agree on a major topic.  When every single group agrees, I’d call that a consensus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;•  A list of 45 links can be provided if I receive enough requests (I beg you not to).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13949" LastEditorUserId="13949" LastEditDate="2013-05-27T06:54:15.747" LastActivityDate="2013-05-27T06:54:15.747" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16439" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16440" CreationDate="2013-05-28T21:21:19.460" Score="13" ViewCount="9249" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just read about this orangutan called Fu Manchu who allegedly crafted a self made key for his zoo cage, kept it hidden in his mouth all day and regularly escaped during the night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/photos/hairy-houdinis-6-animal-escape-artists/fu-manchu-the-orangutan&quot;&gt;Mother Nature Network - Hairy Houdinis: 6 animal escape artists&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High-tech surveillance was the only way that zookeepers were able to&#xA;  keep up. Long after zoo employees had left for the night, Fu would&#xA;  climb into the air vents connected to his enclosure and follow them to&#xA;  a dry moat surrounding the orangutan exhibit. Inside the moat was a&#xA;  locked door that employees often used. The clever ape would pull out a&#xA;  small piece of metal wiring that he kept hidden under his cheek&#xA;  throughout the day, and proceed to pick the door's lock!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13971" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-05-28T23:57:03.040" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T11:09:28.750" Title="Did an orangutan learn to pick locks?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16440" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16439" CreationDate="2013-05-28T21:55:14.967" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many links can be found related to Fu Manchu's jailbreak.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fu Manchu's jailbreaks made headlines in 1968, but his clever tricks&#xA;  didn't make a big impression on the scientists who specialize in&#xA;  looking for signs of higher mental processes in animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a short excerpt ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,30198,00.html&quot;&gt;Can Animals Think?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_18702_5-greatest-escape-artists-ever-were-animals.html&quot;&gt;5 Of The Greatest Escape Artists Ever &lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13690551.html&quot;&gt;Der Spiegel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10701" LastActivityDate="2013-05-28T21:55:14.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16441" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16444" CreationDate="2013-05-28T23:54:25.310" Score="31" ViewCount="6397" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rupert Sheldrake&lt;/a&gt; recently had a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TerTgDEgUE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TEDx presentation&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/19/the-debate-about-rupert-sheldrakes-talk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;removed from the TEDx web-site, for making various controversial claims&lt;/a&gt;, basically calling all of science into doubt. I am highly skeptical about nearly all of them, most seem particularly cranky and mystical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most interesting to me is the claim that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constant&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;gravitational constant&lt;/a&gt; (G) changes over time, or space. In particular, he claims that the estimate is obtained by different labs making measurements on different days, and taking the average, and then the International Committee on Metrology takes an average of averages to decide the &quot;value of big G&quot; (I imagine that they actually just make an estimate of the value). Sheldrake argues that if we looked at the raw data, we might begin seeing patterns (e.g. correlations between changes at different labs indicating that the errors in G are not actually measurement errors, but real, meaningful fluctuations (on a daily or annual scale), but that &quot;no one has done this ... because G is a constant&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is: is there any strong evidence for or against G being a difficult-to-measure constant, rather than being a fluctuating value?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6123" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2017-08-10T13:21:55.210" LastActivityDate="2017-08-11T16:59:44.877" Title="Does the Gravitational constant fluctuate?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16443" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-29T05:47:58.443" Score="6" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep being told that exercises like touching your left knee with your right hand help stimulate the brain hemispheres and the &quot;balance&quot; between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a random example I found on Google from &lt;a href=&quot;http://q.b5z.net/i/u/10104152/f/brain_hemisphere_connections.pdf&quot;&gt;BrainAdvance&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone provide evidence for either side of this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10975" LastEditorUserId="10975" LastEditDate="2013-05-29T13:59:40.330" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T13:59:40.330" Title="Can exercises be used to balance the brain's hemispheres?" Tags="|neurology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16441" CreationDate="2013-05-29T08:26:51.673" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;At this time the Gravitational Constant is regarded as a constant with problematic/low accuracy by physicists. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/Stephen.Merkowitz/G/Big_G.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Washington Big G Measurement&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Cavendish first measured Newton's Gravitational constant 200 years ago, &lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Big G&amp;quot; remains one of the most elusive constants in physics&lt;/strong&gt;. The value of big G tells us how much gravitational force acts between two masses separated by a known distance. In Einstein's language of general relativity, it tells us the amount of space-time curvature due to a given mass. Together with Planck's constant and the speed of light it is considered to be one of the most fundamental constants in nature. Big G is a necessary ingredient in determining the mass of the earth, the moon, the sun and the other planets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Several measurements in the past decade did not succeed in improving our knowledge of big G's value. To the contrary, the variation between different measurements forced the CODATA committee, which determines the internationally accepted standard values, to increase the uncertainty from 0.013% for the value quoted in 1987 to the twelve times larger uncertainty of 0.15% for the 1998 &amp;quot;official&amp;quot; value. This situation is an embarrassment to modern physics&lt;/strong&gt;, considering that the intrinsic strength of electromagnetism, for instance, is known 2.5 million times more precisely and is steadily being improved. (The situation of G becomes more understandable if one considers the weakness of gravity: the total gravitational force twisting on the pendulum of a typical Cavendish torsion balance is only equivalent to the weight of a bacteria and that small force must be measured very precisely.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since we are talking about physics, this is true to the best of our current understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of how/why do we know that G (and other constants) are indeed constant was addressed in Physics.SE: &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/21721/what-is-the-proof-that-the-universal-constants-g-hbar-ldots-are-real&quot;&gt;What is the proof that the universal constants (G, ℏ, …) are really constant in time and space?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the claim that the data isn't made public. I couldn't find any evidence that labs are constantly remeasuring and updating G and I couldn't find that this data is hidden. The data is made public through journal articles. Also, the value is not updated constantly as the National Institute of Standards and Technology published a figure that was &lt;a href=&quot;http://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Value?bg%7Csearch_for=gravitation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;last updated at 2010&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are 4 different values for G from different sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v100/i5/e050801&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Physical Review Letters Article&lt;/a&gt;: 6.667e-11 0.011e-11&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/315/5808/74.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Science Article&lt;/a&gt;: 6.693e-11 0.027e-11&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Value?bg%7Csearch_for=gravitation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NIST&lt;/a&gt;: 6.67384e-11  0.00080e-11&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/Stephen.Merkowitz/G/Big_G.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Washington&lt;/a&gt;: 6.674215e-11 0.000092e-11&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When plotted in a graph with error bars, we have the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pi3Uj.png&quot; alt=&quot;Graph of Gravitational Constant Measurements&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So measurements are not constantly done, the &amp;quot;official&amp;quot; value is not updated regularly, and the results of the measurements are published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-08-11T16:59:44.877" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16445" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-29T12:28:09.513" Score="4" ViewCount="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cigarette packs in various countries contain warnings on them, some of them contain only text, some contain text and pictures that suppose to ditter the user, and the most extreme are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cigarette_packets_in_Australia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Australian packs&lt;/a&gt; that not only contain text warning and pictures, but also removed all branding from the packets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any of those methods was proven to &lt;strong&gt;reduce&lt;/strong&gt; smoking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples (I've blurred the brands from the pictures)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just textual warning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q5SDc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Australian pack:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rFWGM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some anecdotal data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I knew some (male) people in the army who wouldn't buy pacs that have an impotency warning on them, they would ask the salesperson for another pack. But they said that they would smoke cigarettes from such a pack, and if no other pack was available, they would buy it. So it didn't seem to discourage them from smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T13:18:06.097" Title="Does putting warning on Cigarette packs reduce consumption?" Tags="|marketing|smoking|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-05-29T14:20:29.763" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2694" CreationDate="2013-05-29T13:18:06.097" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Warning labels on Cigarette packs do seem to work to some degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results:   Of smokers, 14% became less inclined to purchase cigarettes&#xA;  because of the new warnings, 31.8% said they prefer to purchase a pack&#xA;  without the new warnings, 17.9% reported that warnings increased their&#xA;  motivated to quit and 10.3% said they smoked less. A strong&#xA;  dose-response relationship was observed between these effects and&#xA;  intention to quit.   CONCLUSIONS:    The new warnings made cigarette&#xA;  packs less attractive, especially to smokers who already intended to&#xA;  stop smoking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15975953&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pubmed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A survey of 8,836 people 15 and older in the Netherlands in 2002 found&#xA;  that 16% of the 2,812 smokers surveyed said that new, larger health&#xA;  warnings made them more motivated to quit, (this was 26% among smokers&#xA;  who intend to quit at some point); 8.7% said they were already smoking&#xA;  less as a result of the new warnings. Surveys find that a high&#xA;  proportion of smokers (for example, 70% in Canada) want to quit.&#xA;  Strong health warnings and information about where to turn for help in&#xA;  quitting help reinforce this attitude (Mahood 1995).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/9733/536570BRI0ENGL10Box345621B01PUBLIC1.txt?sequence=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.worldbank.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10701" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-05-29T16:24:14.273" LastActivityDate="2013-05-29T16:24:14.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16401" CreationDate="2013-05-30T13:29:42.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Summary:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stems of &lt;em&gt;impatiens capensis&lt;/em&gt; has been shown to have no measurable benefit over plain water in treating poison ivy or poison oak rash.  However, the seed fruit do contain compounds with significant anti-itching activity, and likely help relieve the itch of poison ivy, if not the rash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sources&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found several references to the 1958 study, apparently conducted by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/13583762&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;R.A. Lipton&lt;/a&gt;.  However, I could not find a copy of the study itself (no doubt due at least in part to its age).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consensus appears to be that Lipton's study involved treating 115 patients with an existing poison ivy rash with &quot;jewelweed preparations&quot;, and that 108 of the 115 patients &quot;responded most dramatically to the topical application of [jewelweed]&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Countering this claim is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9249283&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1997 study by Long, Ballentine, and Marks&lt;/a&gt; that found no discernable difference in the treatment of urushiol (the allergic resin of poison ivy/oak) rash between crushed jewelweed stem and distilled water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a biology student at Wilkes University by the name of Sarah Becker did &lt;a href=&quot;http://klemow.wilkes.edu/Impatiens.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an analysis of the existing research&lt;/a&gt; in 2001, and found that a possible explanation for the disparity is that the part of the plant used may be relevant to the effectiveness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perhaps the reason for the varying investigative results lies in what part of the plant is used. Researchers in Japan showed that the pericarp of Impatiens balsamina contained three dinaphthofuran-7,12-dione derivatives (Ishiguro et .al. 1998). These three compounds all had significant anti-itching activity. However two of the three studies described above used stem extracts (Guin &amp;amp; Reynolds 1980, Long et. al. 1997), while only one used the entire plant (Lipton 1958). Also these compounds only serve to reduce itching, not the rash. This may, however, be significant since poison ivy rash can be spread by itching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T13:29:42.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8909" CreationDate="2013-05-30T14:48:01.250" Score="20" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Origins&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found that the story of underwater pyramids actually predates the &lt;em&gt;Weekly World News&lt;/em&gt; article. Its origins begin with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unsolvedrealm.com/2011/02/17/atlantis-crystal-sphere-and-dr-ray-brown-real-or-hoax/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Ray Brown&lt;/a&gt;, a &quot;naturopathic practitioner&quot; from Mesa, Arizona,  who claims to have discovered a submerged pyramid in the 1960's/1970's while looking for sunken galleons near the Bahamas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Brown claims to have retrieved a crystal sphere from within the pyramid that exhibits &quot;mysterious powers&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YkPJ6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Dr. Ray Brown&amp;#39;s mysterious &amp;quot;Atlantis Crystal Sphere&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His account, along with some video of the crystal sphere, were featured in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0894212/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;episode of &lt;em&gt;In Search Of...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  The relevant clip is available on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;v=K_Ohu5PLKwM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Youtube.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The details of Brown's account seem to vary somewhat from telling to telling, but his claims of entering the pyramid (which appears to range from 80 feet to 400 feet in height, depending upon which version of Brown's story is told), finding two golden hands which he could not move, retrieving the crystal sphere from within those hands, hiding the sphere from his fellow treasure hunters, and the loss of most of his photographic equipment due to a storm (which is used to explain why there is no photographic evidence of his dive) are generally consistent.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A rather decent skeptical analysis of Dr. Brown's story and the mysterious crystal sphere (which is apparently in the possession of Arthur Fanning in Sedona, Arizona) can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mysterious-america.net/brown&amp;#39;scrystal.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  The author of this article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coasttocoastam.com/guest/little-gregory/5704&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Gregory Little&lt;/a&gt;, a &quot;psychologist turned explorer and documentary maker&quot; devoted to investigating archaeological ruins that might be linked to Atlantis, provides this conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While I tend to lean toward the hoax explanation, the truth is that no one will probably ever disprove Brown’s story and it’ll be used time and again to support various ideas. I also confess that while the story seems very far-fetched, it’s also possibly true. The crystal does exist and many people swear that it has some sort of mystical power. As with all incredible reports, all of us can and will believe whatever we are predisposed to believe. I’m happy with ending by saying that I don’t think it’s true but I don’t really know. I’ll never know for certain and I’m okay with that. And with 5 divers supposedly seeing a mass of marble ruins spread across a vast area of sea floor I have to wonder why none of them went back or at least left some sort of written account of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also related his correspondences with a man claiming to have been a long-time friend of Brown, who stated that Brown confided in him that the whole thing was a hoax:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After being a guest on the George Noory (Coast-to-Coast) show over a year ago I received an email from an elderly man who said he had been a friend of Brown since childhood. After exchanging a few emails he related that Brown confided to him that the entire affair was a hoax Brown concocted to take advantage of all of the media controversy that had been stirred up by the 1968 discovery of the Bimini Road. He explained that Brown simply wanted to be a part of it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The More Recent Story&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the more recent claim of verification of the &quot;crystal pyramids&quot;, there seems to be no actual evidence supporting the claims available.  It does seem likely that they are merely fabrications built upon the earlier story by Dr. Brown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.fr/books?id=8vMDAAAAMBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA4&amp;amp;lpg=PA4&amp;amp;dq=weekly%20world%20news%20pyrmaids&amp;amp;source#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=weekly%20world%20news%20pyrmaids&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;original WWN story&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; cites only &quot;Oceanographer Dr. Verlag Meyer&quot;.  Other versions of this story exist, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://video.us.msn.com/watch/video/crystal-pyramid-in-the-bermuda-triangle/1jvhf4n&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one that claims &quot;American and French&quot; research teams found the pyramids in 2012&lt;/a&gt; (this video actually references the WWN story that predates it by 20 years).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No other identification is offered in any of the versions I found, and I could find no reference to either oceanographer &quot;Dr. Verlag Meyer&quot; or the French and American research teams.  The name &quot;Dr. Verlag Meyer&quot; itself seems rather strange, as I found a couple of people speculating that it was fictitious due to &quot;Verlag&quot; apparently meaning &quot;publisher&quot; in German.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One enterprising skeptic raised some good technical questions in the comments of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unsolvedrealm.com/2011/02/17/atlantis-crystal-sphere-and-dr-ray-brown-real-or-hoax/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this version of the story&lt;/a&gt;, inviting anyone to provide answers in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/underwater-treasures/454371-where-submerged-giant-glass-pyramids.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a thread he dedicated to the topic&lt;/a&gt; in a SCUBA forum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, he points out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The original ‘Ray Brown’ stories of the 1970s are false. There is no part of that area that a 1970s scuba diver could reach that we couldn’t find. He couldn’t go below a hundred feet for more that a couple of minutes with the equipment described in the story. Also, treasure salvors have no problem scouring an area that is shallow enough for sport scuba gear. There would be no hiding giant glass pyramids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The current stories of French and American divers finding something in the Bermuda triangle are equally false and no one has been able to cite who these divers are. Because the exact location is never documented, we don’t even know if the depths involved can be dove without submarines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When you look at the search and recovery technology of today, we could find these things. Read the stories of finding the Titanic or the treasure wreck S.S. Central America.&#xA;  We have been unable to document the quotes from experts in these stories and cannot even document the existence of the named experts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While he does not cite references or proof, I must admit that his arguments seem more likely than the equally unfounded claims of multiple, conflicting variations of these mysterious discoveries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/photos/supernatural/crystalpyramid.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes.com&lt;/a&gt; has recently addressed this story, as well.  They have labeled this &quot;false&quot;, citing similar rationale (primarily that there's no evidence to support the research, or even the identities of the personnel supposedly involved in the teams).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Link taken from &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/8914/6629&quot;&gt;Oliver_C's answer&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T14:10:27.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16457" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-30T15:16:10.890" Score="2" ViewCount="1109" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boironusa.com/products/calendula-cream/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.boironusa.com/products/calendula-cream/&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USES&lt;/strong&gt;: Helps promote healing of minor burns and cuts, scrapes, skin irritations and sunburn&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ACTIVE INGREDIENT&lt;/strong&gt;: Calendula officinalis 1X HPUS-10% - Healing agent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;INACTIVE INGREDIENTS&lt;/strong&gt;: Caprylyl glycol; Carbomer; Cetyl palmitate; EDTA disodium; Glycerin; Lauroyl macrogolglycerides; Pegoxol-7 stearate; Purified water; Sodium hydroxide; Sorbic acid&#xA;1,2-hexanediol&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boironusa.com/products/calendula-ointment/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.boironusa.com/products/calendula-ointment/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;USES&lt;/strong&gt;: ... Helps promote healing of minor burns, scrapes and cuts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ACTIVE INGREDIENT&lt;/strong&gt;: Calendula officinalis 1X HPUS-4% - Healing agent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;INACTIVE INGREDIENTS&lt;/strong&gt;: White petrolatum USP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;evidence&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; that this creme and/or ointment: &amp;quot;Helps promote healing of minor burns and cuts, scrapes, skin irritations and sunburn&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, is there any &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;testing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; showing whether:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;there is efficacy compared to no treatment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;there is efficacy compared to creme/ointment made from identical inactive ingredients only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NOTES&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for answers related to results of &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;testing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; of this specific product(s), NOT general discussion of &amp;quot;this can't work because homeopathy was proven to not work&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In case the text and the company name aren't a dead giveaway, &amp;quot; 1X HPUS&amp;quot; is supposed to mean that the active ingredient is a homeopathic remedy (&lt;em&gt;but see @Fabian's comment below&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I lumped them together since they seem to have the similar active ingredients; I will accept the answer which pertains to testing either one of those, or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Preference is double-blind randomized testing. Duh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T17:39:41.587" Title="Does Calendula ointment or cream promote healing of scrapes/cuts/burns?" Tags="|natural-remedies|homeopathy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16459" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-30T16:14:58.220" Score="23" ViewCount="5716" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per the title. This claim was made in the book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0865714487&quot;&gt;Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by John Taylor Gatto. He makes numerous dubious claims, however this one interested me most (p. 67): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Massachusetts Senator said a while ago that his state had a higher literacy rate before it adopted com- pulsory schooling than after. It’s certainly an idea worth considering: schools reached their maximum efficiency long ago, meaning that “more” for schools will make things worse, instead of better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He repeats a similar claim several times; i.e. that literacy before compulsory schooling was actually almost as high (at least, among those who weren't slaves/servants) as after compulsory schooling -  to further his thesis about the negatives of schooling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply; is the claim in the title/quote true? Is it true/false in other instances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13985" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-05-30T17:41:55.910" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T15:38:55.613" Title="Did Massachusetts have a higher literacy rate before compulsory schooling?" Tags="|education|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8095" CreationDate="2013-05-30T16:29:17.010" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;at least in italy, the definition of legally drinkable tap water is crushingly tight: bottled &quot;mineral&quot; water can get away with much more minerals and metals. In particular, some &lt;em&gt;mineral waters&lt;/em&gt; would have too many dissolved minerals in them to be ok as tap water. Recent tests show that tap water is just as good as bottled water &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ilfattoalimentare.it/acqua-test-altroconsumo.html&quot;&gt;http://www.ilfattoalimentare.it/acqua-test-altroconsumo.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13794" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T16:29:17.010" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16457" CreationDate="2013-05-30T17:39:41.587" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you are looking for results on a specific product the best that can be said is that the efficacy is &lt;strong&gt;unknown with some positive evidence&lt;/strong&gt;, since there has been at least one study that used this specific product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/22/8/1447.full#ref-15&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Phase III Randomized Trial of Calendula Officinalis Compared With Trolamine for the Prevention of Acute Dermatitis During Irradiation for Breast Cancer&lt;/a&gt; was published in 2004 by American Society of Clinical Oncology and had the following to say,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Calendula (Pommade au Calendula par Digestion; calendula extract&#xA;  ointment; Boiron Ltd, Levallois-Perret, France) is fabricated from a&#xA;  plant of the marigold family, Calendula officinalis. The digest is&#xA;  obtained by incubation at 75°C in petroleum jelly to extract the&#xA;  liposoluble components of the plant. Calendula is commercialized in&#xA;  France for adjuvant treatment of irritant dermatitis, skin lesions,&#xA;  and superficial burns. In a randomized, open, parallel study with 156&#xA;  patients of the effectiveness of calendula for the local management of&#xA;  second- and third-degree burns, it was significantly better tolerated&#xA;  than Elase (a proteolytic ointment; Pfizer, New York, NY) and&#xA;  petroleum jelly, and marginally significantly better than petroleum&#xA;  jelly alone for healing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concluding that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This large randomized study demonstrated that a nonsteroid topical&#xA;  agent was significantly effective in preventing mild to severe&#xA;  radiation-induced dermatitis during radiotherapy for breast cancer.&#xA;  Calendula was statistically significantly superior to trolamine for&#xA;  the primary end point, prevention of skin toxicity of RTOG grade 2 or&#xA;  higher, and for all the secondary end points (including allergy,&#xA;  interruption of treatment, patient satisfaction for relief of pain,&#xA;  and dermatitis), with the exception of ease of application, which was&#xA;  considered by the patients to be more difficult with calendula than&#xA;  with trolamine. The quantity of agent used was significantly smaller&#xA;  with calendula than with trolamine, although this would not lead to a&#xA;  cost reduction, given that the price of calendula is at present twice&#xA;  that of trolamine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_review&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;systematic reviews&lt;/a&gt; citing the above article (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2913836/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00520-006-0063-4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2133.2011.10457.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;) seem to have mixed at best feelings at best although the search I did didn't seem to have many that called out &lt;em&gt;Calendula officinalis&lt;/em&gt; as a category on its own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T17:39:41.587" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16459" CreationDate="2013-05-30T20:42:01.293" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Massachusetts passed its compulsory education law in 1852 (the first in the country). (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www3.nd.edu/~rbarger/www7/compulso.html&quot;&gt;reference&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremeintellect.com/ei2009/educationhistory/historyofeducation.html&quot;&gt;reference&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://lawhighereducation.com/228-compulsory-attendance.html&quot;&gt;reference&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mhla.org/information/massdocuments/mglhistory.htm&quot;&gt;text of the act&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1840, the literacy rate in Massachusetts was 99%. (Table 14.1, Page 301, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=dqIBqiNoB9wC&quot;&gt;Civil War America, 1850 To 1875&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;State / Percentage of Literate Residents&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;N.C / 72&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Tenn. / 76&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ark. / 78&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;[...]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Maine / 99&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Mass. / 99&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;N.H. / 99.4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Conn. / 99.7&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note: The Census Bureau counted both slave and free, male and female, in this statistic, making no distinctions. The effect of this statistical methodology was to lower the literacy rate significantly in southern states with large slave populations and to lower it across the board in every state since females were typically less educated than males at this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The total number of illiterate in Massachusetts in 1850 was 28,345. (&lt;em&gt;Id&lt;/em&gt;, Table 14.2, Page 302).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The total number of illiterate in Massachusetts in 1860 was 46,921. (&lt;em&gt;Id&lt;/em&gt;, Table 14.3, Page 303).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The total number of illiterate in Massachusetts in 1870 was 97,742. (&lt;em&gt;Id&lt;/em&gt;, Table 14.4, Page 304).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The population in Massachusetts in 1850 was 994,514. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/population/censusdata/table-16.pdf&quot;&gt;US Census data 1790-1990, Table 16&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The population in Massachusetts in 1860 was 1,231,066. (&lt;em&gt;Id.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The population in Massachusetts in 1870 was 1,457,351. (&lt;em&gt;Id.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dividing the illiterate count with the population numbers gives literacy rates of 97.1% in 1850, 96.1% in 1860, and 93.2% in 1870.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, Massachusetts had a higher literacy rate before 1852 than after 1852.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-05-30T22:15:38.197" LastActivityDate="2013-05-30T22:15:38.197" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16467" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-31T09:13:13.513" Score="2" ViewCount="3858" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sergeiboutenko.com/sergei-boutenko-diabetes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sergei Boutenko&lt;/a&gt; is an author who promotes &amp;quot;wild edibles&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He claims, at age 9, to have been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Some time later, he started a raw food diet and regular exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day, about a month into raw foods, when I was doing a routine blood sugar test, I charted the lowest figures I had observed since my diagnosis. Instead of reading 200 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL), as it had weeks prior, my blood sugar was in the normal range at 85 mg/dL. This excited me very much! Not only was I  experiencing a physical calmness that was impossible when there was too much sugar in my blood stream, but now I  saw actual scientific data showing progress in reversing diabetes. I monitored this phenomenon over the next few weeks and found that while my blood sugar fluctuated at times, overall it was stable and in a normal range. I felt drastically better! This level of health continuously increased until I was getting perfect blood glucose readings every time! For me, this was sure indication that eating a raw plant based diet worked!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to eating a diet of predominately fresh fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, greens, and grains, I also changed my exercise regime. That is to say I started one! From the age of 9 I began jogging at least 3 miles per day or fitting in some form of exercise that requires my whole body to work and sweat. I have read a plethora of literature describing how excess sugar get used up through vigorous exercise. I believe that if you truly want to get rid of diabetes naturally, then a fitness routine is a MUST!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on to say &amp;quot;I &lt;strong&gt;cured&lt;/strong&gt; myself of diabetes&amp;quot; (my emphasis), so it seems he is claiming more than just managing the symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a scientifically-recognized nutrition study where a raw food diet was tested to actually cure Type 1 diabetes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related Questions&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7278/does-physical-exercise-control-diabetes&quot;&gt;Does physical exercise control diabetes?&lt;/a&gt; - About Type 2 diabetes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4978/can-a-600-calorie-diet-cure-type-2-diabetes&quot;&gt;Can a 600-calorie diet cure Type 2 diabetes?&lt;/a&gt; - About Type 2 diabetes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7942/simply-raw-can-you-reverse-diabetes-in-30-days-by-eating-raw-food&quot;&gt;Simply Raw: Can you reverse diabetes in 30 days by eating raw food?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2192" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-10-09T20:08:27.820" Title="Can Type I diabetes be cured with a raw food diet and exercise?" Tags="|nutrition|diabetes|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2019-10-10T02:16:17.200" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16468" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-31T12:01:16.780" Score="15" ViewCount="794" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/gesundheit/diagnose/tk-innovationsreport-2013-selten-innovationen-bei-neuen-arzneimitteln-a-902975.html&quot;&gt;An article in the german online newspaper Spiegel Online starts with the headline&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;90 Prozent aller neuen Medikamente taugen nichts (90 percent of new drugs are no good)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article is a about a new report from the government-run insurance TK, the article states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nicht einmal jedes zehnte 2010 neu zugelassene Medikament verbessert die Behandlung der Patienten. (Less than 1/10th of drugs approved in 2010 improve the treatment of patients)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The accusation is that most new drugs are just &quot;commercial innovations&quot; and don't provide a significant benefit over older and cheaper drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an accurate overview over the state of pharmaceutical innovations? Are such a large number of new drugs approved that provide no significant benefits to patients? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T14:48:30.880" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T05:39:39.010" Title="Do 90% of new drugs not improve over previous drugs?" Tags="|medical-science|pharmaceutical|drug-development|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8095" CreationDate="2013-05-31T14:33:26.510" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Speaking about Germany, the health regulations &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/trinkwv_2001/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;for tap water&lt;/a&gt; are somewhat tighter than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/min_tafelwv/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;for bottled water&lt;/a&gt; - specifically, they cover more contaminants. But of course both are intended to be perfectly safe to consume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the tap water regulations are tighter for non-health-related reasons, e.g. the Sodium limit is lower to prevent the water from corroding pipes (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/trinkwv_2001/anlage_3_35.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Das Trinkwasser sollte nicht korrosiv wirken&quot;&lt;/a&gt;), and the limit for Iron because it could stain washed clothes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it doesn't mean that tap water is necessarily superior - apart from the mineral content of mineral water (which is irrelevant if your diet isn't very deficient), sometimes the only way tap water can meet bacteriological limits is through added Chlorine - the amounts are harmless &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umweltbundesamt.de/wasser/themen/downloads/trinkwasser/17_aenderung_aufbereitungsstoffe_desinfektionsverfahren_11_trinkwv_11_2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(max. 1.2mg/l&lt;/a&gt;) but can have a negative impact on the taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14002" LastEditorUserId="14002" LastEditDate="2013-05-31T15:27:32.607" LastActivityDate="2013-05-31T15:27:32.607" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16472" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-05-31T21:22:40.620" Score="24" ViewCount="2139" Body="&lt;p&gt;Developing new drugs is an expensive process. As a result the pharmaceutical industry spends a lot on R&amp;amp;D (15% of turnover is not unusual and is higher than most other major industries: see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.efpia.eu/sites/www.efpia.eu/files/EFPIA%20Figures%202012%20Final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report from the EFPIA&lt;/a&gt;). But the industries critics point out that they also spend a lot on marketing their products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pharmageddon-David-Healy/dp/0520275764/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1370035154&amp;amp;sr=1-1-catcorr&amp;amp;keywords=pharmageddon&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pharmageddon&lt;/a&gt;, for example, David Healey (a leading critic of the modern pharmaceutical industry) alleges the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where the research and development budgets of large pharmaceutical companies like Lilly and Pfizer were once much greater than their marketing budgets, the reverse is now true. The pharmaceutical industry, for example, now spends $30 billion annually on marketing in the United States alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true for most firms? How much do the big world-wide pharma firms spend on marketing compared to R&amp;amp;D?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the issues with the claim has been that public disclosure of the amounts spent on marketing and R&amp;amp;D are somewhat opaque. But this article in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-pharmaceutical-companies-are-spending-far-more-on-marketing-than-research/?utm_term=.5b2a1205a56d&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Washington Post&lt;/a&gt; reproduces an analysis by León Markovitz that claims to unpick the numbers. His (not very good dataviz) chart is shown below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MUTwg.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MUTwg.png&quot; alt=&quot;dadaviz graphic sourced from Washington post &quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately the links to the original analysis no longer seem to work. So we have an analysis that seems to reinforce the claim, but is it reliable or reproducible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2018-03-20T14:06:03.040" LastActivityDate="2018-03-20T14:06:03.040" Title="Do typical modern pharmaceutical firms spend more on marketing than on R&amp;D?" Tags="|economics|pharmaceutical|drug-development|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16472" CreationDate="2013-05-31T22:57:46.453" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the inconsistant use of the term &amp;quot;marketing&amp;quot; and the broad categories under which marketing activities are reported by pharmaceutical companies makes it difficult to conclude whether or not they spend more on marketing than on R&amp;amp;D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest I have found to a certain answer is the case of Novartis, who spends more on marketing &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; sales than on R&amp;amp;D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Financial statements&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Pfizer&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pfizer spent $7,870 million on R&amp;amp;D in 2012. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pfizer.com/files/annualreport/2012/financial/financial2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pfizer's 2012 financial statement&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, p. 25, 29)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pfizer spent $16,616 million on &amp;quot;Selling, Informational, and Administrative&amp;quot; expenses in 2012. (&lt;em&gt;Id.&lt;/em&gt; p. 29)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pfizer says, &amp;quot;Among other things, these expenses include the internal and external costs of marketing, advertising, shipping and handling, information technology and legal defense. &lt;strong&gt;Advertising expenses totaled approximately $2.9 billion&lt;/strong&gt; in 2012...&amp;quot; (&lt;em&gt;Id.&lt;/em&gt; p. 61)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you only count &amp;quot;advertising&amp;quot; as marketing, Pfizer is not spending more on marketing than R&amp;amp;D. If you allow other expenses to count as marketing, it is possible that the amount exceeds the amount spent on R&amp;amp;D. Given how this is reported by Pfizer, you can't answer this question by looking at the financial report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Lilly&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lilly spent $5,278 million on R&amp;amp;D in 2012. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/LLY/2507539312x0x648089/D3A84E25-2AE1-4E41-8E25-A1AE41DA09BB/English.PDF&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lilly's 2012 financial statement&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, p. 40)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lilly spent $7,513 million on &amp;quot;Marketing, Selling, and Administrative&amp;quot; in 2012. (&lt;em&gt;Id&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the ambiguity within the &amp;quot;Marketing, Selling and Administrative&amp;quot; category leaves it unknown if Lilly spends more on marketing than on R&amp;amp;D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Bristol-Myers-Squibb&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BMS spent $3,904 million on R&amp;amp;D in 2012. (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9NDk4MjQ1fENoaWxkSUQ9NTM3Njk0fFR5cGU9MQ==&amp;amp;t=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMS 2012 Annual Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, p. 14)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BMS spent $794 million on &amp;quot;Advertising and Product Promotion&amp;quot; in 2012. (&lt;em&gt;Id.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BMS spent $4,220 million on &amp;quot;Marketing, Selling, and Administrative&amp;quot; in 2012. (&lt;em&gt;Id.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the ambiguity in the &amp;quot;Marketing, Selling, and Administrative&amp;quot; category leaves it unknown if Bristol-Myers-Squibb spends more on marketing than on R&amp;amp;D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Novartis&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Novartis spent $9,332 million on R&amp;amp;D in 2012. (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.novartis.com/downloads/investors/reports/novartis-annual-report-2012-en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Novartis 2012 Annual Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, p. 184)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Novartis spent $14,353 million on &amp;quot;Marketing and Sales&amp;quot; in 2012. (&lt;em&gt;Id.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Novartis spends more on marketing and sales than on R&amp;amp;D.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Bayer&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bayer spends €2,932 million on R&amp;amp;D. (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annualreport2012.bayer.com/en/bayer-annual-report-2012.pdfx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bayer's 2012 Annual Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, p. 166)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bayer spends €8,958 million on &amp;quot;Selling Expenses&amp;quot;. (&lt;em&gt;Id.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Selling expenses is Bayer's category that includes &amp;quot;all expenses incurred in the reporting period for the sale, storage and transportation of saleable products, advertising, the provision of advice to customers, and market research&amp;quot;. (&lt;em&gt;Id.&lt;/em&gt;, p. 213)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They break this down: €4,600 million in internal and external sales force, €2,273 million in advertising and customer advice, €1,322 million in warehousing and distribution, €680 million in commission and licencing expenses, and €1,112 on other selling expenses. (&lt;em&gt;Id.&lt;/em&gt;, p. 213)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2012, Bayer employed 12,992 people (full-time equivalents) classified as R&amp;amp;D, and 42,590 classified as &amp;quot;Marketing and distribution&amp;quot;. (&lt;em&gt;Id.&lt;/em&gt;, p. 217)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this still results in ambiguity in the &amp;quot;Selling expenses&amp;quot; category, leaving it unknown if Bayer spends more on marketing than on R&amp;amp;D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson spent $7,665 million on R&amp;amp;D in 2012. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.2012annualreport.jnj.com/sites/default/files/2012_Johnson_Johnson_Annual_Report_Full%20Report_030613.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson 2012 Annual Report&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. p. 21)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson spent $20,869 million on &amp;quot;Selling, marketing, and administrative&amp;quot; in 2012. (&lt;em&gt;Id.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson's &amp;quot;Selling, marketing, and administrative&amp;quot; category includes $1,051 million in shipping and handling and $2.3 billion in advertising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this still results in ambiguity in the &amp;quot;Selling, marketing, and administrative&amp;quot; category, leaving it unknown if Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson spends more on marketing than on R&amp;amp;D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Third party claims&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sufrin, Carolyn B. MD, MA *; Ross, Joseph S. MD, MHS. &lt;em&gt;Pharmaceutical Industry Marketing: Understanding Its Impact on Women’s Health&lt;/em&gt;. Obstetrical &amp;amp; Gynecological Survey. 63(9):585-596, September 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pfizer, Merck, and Bristol-Myers-Squibb all spent a greater proportion of their total sales on marketing than they did on research and development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brezis, M. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://doctorsonly.co.il/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/2008_2_3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Big Pharma and Health Care: Unsolvable Conflict of Interests between Private Enterprise and Public Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Isr J Psychiatry Relat Sci Vol 45 No. 2 (2008) 83–94&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Budget for marketing is by far greater than for research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proportion of the budget spent on marketing is estimated at 36%, by far higher than the 11% devoted to research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Analysis of the third party claims&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sufrin and Ross supported their statement by reference to the financial statements of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pfizer.com/files/annualreport/2006/financial/financial2006.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pfizer&lt;/a&gt;, Merck, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/10/106664/reports/bmy06arlow.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bristol-Myers-Squibb&lt;/a&gt; from 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how they came to this conclusion because neither Pfizer, Merck, nor Bristol-Myers-Squibb report &amp;quot;marketing&amp;quot; expenses. Pfizer reports &amp;quot;Selling, Informational, and Administrative&amp;quot; (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pfizer.com/files/annualreport/2006/financial/financial2006.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pfizer's 2006 Financial Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; p. 37, 42). Merck reports &amp;quot;Marketing and Administrative&amp;quot; (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/73/73184/MRKForm10K2008final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Merck's 2008 Form 10-K&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; p. 86, 142). Bristol-Myers-Squibb reports &amp;quot;Marketing, Selling, and Administrative&amp;quot; (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/10/106664/reports/bmy06arlow.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bristol-Myers-Squibb's 2006 Annual Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; p. 53). Bristol-Myers-Squibb also report a separate expense category called &amp;quot;Advertising and Product Promotion&amp;quot; (&lt;em&gt;Id.&lt;/em&gt; p. 25, 26, 53).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statements I quoted from Brezis's paper were not supported by any references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T16:06:29.650" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16277" CreationDate="2013-06-01T04:37:07.440" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not having actually related test data to back it up, I can't say for certain. Some studies have been performed on irrigation water saving, especially in Australia.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrm.qld.gov.au/water/regulation/pdf/reports/urban_wateruse/evapinstorages.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This cost-based study&lt;/a&gt; with similarly operating chemical films cites Witting (1998) as stating that evaporation losses (mass) could be reduced by up to 50% in small storages.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://irrigation.org.au/documents/publications-resources/irrigation_publications/Irrigation_Insights-Water_Use_Efficiency.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This report&lt;/a&gt; would indicate that the disadvantage of chemical based methods in large water storage is their inability to reduce convective losses (unlike a pool cover). However the study of heat transfer methods would indicate that some reduction in heat losses is possible. Check the wikipedia page for the basic elements of heat transfer &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_transfer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evaporation is fundamentally a cooling process like sweating.  Heated molecules get enough energy to move into the air, reducing the total energy in the pool.  If you can find a chemical that can stop this (most oils would probably work) and that would be practical to put in your pool without killing you or ruining any equipment (and won't break down with your chlorine), then logically that chemical would stop the heat that would go with it, (with the caveat that the consequential temperature increase could allow other methods of heat transfer to compensate partially.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &quot;Heat Transfer&quot; wikipedia page you can see that conduction and convection are proportional to the temperature difference while radiation is proportional to the difference of the fourth powers of temperature (so it becomes more significant at higher temperature difference.  Evaporative cooling is slightly more complex however its potential is proportional to the difference between dry bulb and wet bulb temperatures (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evaporative_cooler#Physical_principles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important question is how effective would it be and that depends on various factors that will influence the temperature: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the depth of your pool (how hot it gets sitting in the sun), &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the surface area, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how hot you like it etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance if you like your pool to be 25C and you live in a tropical (high humidity) environment then it won't take much to stop evaporation.  If you live in Alaska and you like your pool at 30C then evaporation might be a big part of the losses of heat, but so might convective losses too (from air) as well as radiative losses.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your question, and interpreting the above references, I imagine that something like this could be effective in a special case of moderate, dry climates for people who like their pool 'moderately' warm.  This may be where they get their &quot;50%&quot; energy saving (although I'd like to see it!). If you like your pool really warm then the other components of heat transfer would become bigger players in the total losses of heat and evaporation would be less significant.  I imagine that convective heat transfer from the air plays a pretty big part in cool and more humid climates which means your product would be less effective. Evaporation would play a bigger part in any dry climate, which your product may reduce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, if you estimate that evaporative losses are significant to you (in absolute non-relative terms) it is probably because your pool is in a either a low humidity climate, or you like it warm, or it is exposed to high winds.  Most low humidity climates are cold and those that aren't cold are often so hot that you wouldn't care about heating your pool.  So in just about all the cases mentioned a 20% to 50% reduction in evaporation losses would only represent a small portion of your total heat losses.  The old proven technology of the physical cover, according to references cited, appears to be the most effective at total loss reduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14008" LastEditorUserId="14008" LastEditDate="2013-06-05T00:17:42.970" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T00:17:42.970" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16439" CreationDate="2013-06-01T11:09:28.750" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The phrases &lt;em&gt;pick the door's lock&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;a self made key&lt;/em&gt; are not accurate however it does appear that an orangutan called Fu Manchu did use a tool to unlock a door and escape at least twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In lock-picking circles, the technique of using a credit card to push the bolt out of the way is known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itstactical.com/skillcom/lock-picking/how-to-open-a-padlock-with-a-coke-can/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;shimming&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; a lock.  The tool used to fit through the small gap is known as the &lt;em&gt;shim&lt;/em&gt;.  I'm not really sure if using a wire to unhook a latch could be considered shimming, but it's certainly not &lt;em&gt;picking&lt;/em&gt;, which is a technique used for pin-and-tumbler locks and the tool was not a &lt;em&gt;key&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20000929&amp;amp;slug=4045165&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An article linked from the page&lt;/a&gt; you supplied in the question describes his actions like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Fu Manchu pulled the door back from its frame. Taking a piece of wire from his cheek, he then tripped the latch, much the way a thief might slip a credit card between a door and its frame.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keepers confiscated the wire. But the escapes earned Fu Manchu honorary membership in the American Association of Locksmiths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,30198,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Time article&lt;/a&gt; describes it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the young ape climbed down some air-vent louvers into a dry moat. Then, taking hold of the bottom of the furnace door, he used brute force to pull it back just far enough to slide a wire into the gap, slip a latch and pop the door open. The next day, Stones noticed something shiny sticking out of Fu's mouth. It was the wire lock pick, bent to fit between his lip and gum and stowed there between escapes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11387" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-01T11:09:28.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16478" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-01T12:20:39.860" Score="15" ViewCount="4828" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many purveyors of bamboo cutting boards make a point to advertise that the cutting board is made from formaldehyde-free glues. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be fairly widespread advise to avoid formaldehyde in bamboo cutting boards, such as from the following two examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thekitchn.com/which-kind-of-cutting-board-is-51821&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Kitchn&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When shopping for a bamboo board, look for ones that use&#xA;  formaldehyde-free glues, such as those from Totally Bamboo or Bambu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://purehealthguide.com/2012/04/hygienic-chopping-board/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pure Health Guide&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shopping tips: Look for a bamboo cutting boards made with food-grade glue (formaldehyde free)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any credible evidence that there is practical danger from formaldehyde containing glues in bamboo cutting boards?   Are they on the market, and are the levels of formaldehyde sufficiently high as to cause dangerous doses of this chemical to migrate into food prepared on the cutting board?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: this question is prompted by a question asked over on &lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/34323/how-does-the-glue-of-bamboo-cutting-boards-get-in-the-food-and-how-to-prevent-th&quot;&gt;Seasoned Advice&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14012" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:33:29.713" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T06:34:18.513" Title="Is there formaldehyde in the glue of bamboo cutting boards? Is it dangerous?" Tags="|chemistry|consumer-products|safety|cooking|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16479" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16482" CreationDate="2013-06-01T17:12:26.437" Score="19" ViewCount="4984" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple of weeks ago there were reports of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Andre_sprog/English/2013/05/17/130946.htm&quot;&gt;an experiment by schoolchildren that appears to demonstrate that wifi router radiation adversely affects cress&lt;/a&gt;. There's been time now for the &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;leading researchers from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Sweden [who] have shown great interest in the girls’ project&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;to have reproduced the experiment, but I cannot find any follow-up story amidst a Google-load of conspiracy-theory sites. Has this experiment been reproduced, or indeed debunked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T00:18:01.467" LastActivityDate="2017-04-05T16:44:31.450" Title="Does wifi stunt cress growth?" Tags="|biology|radiation|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16479" CreationDate="2013-06-01T23:10:38.033" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Norwegian science journalist Gunnar Tjomlid published &lt;a href=&quot;http://tjomlid.com/2013/05/19/om-karse-wifi-straling-og-en-snurt-naturfagslaerer/&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; [Norwegian language] in the online newspaper Nettavisen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blogger Pepijn van Erp &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pepijnvanerp.nl/2013/05/danish-school-experiment-with-wifi-routers-and-garden-cress-good-example-of-bad-science/&quot;&gt;summarised it in English&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In brief, the experiment was not properly controlled, not blinded, had publication bias, was misreported, had faulty statistical analysis, had bias in the methodology and relied on a cherry-picked hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The WiFi and control group were not just different because of the presence of the routers. On the pictures in the report it can be seen that also the laptops in the WiFi group were placed quite near to the plates. It’s very likely that this had an effect on airflow and temperature around the plates and that could have an effect on germination, which has nothing to do with the presence of EM-fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A second experiment in which the laptops had been ‘pinging’ each other constantly did not show the dramatic difference in germination. Only the first experiment was used in the report &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14018" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2013-06-03T13:16:23.847" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T13:16:23.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1878" CreationDate="2013-06-02T01:26:12.953" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a scientific basis for it, in the form of a 1973 paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, which showed that for several hours after a person ingests sugar, neutrophils, a form of white blood cells, were less effective at engulfing bacteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/26/11/1180.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/26/11/1180.full.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that leaves open the question of just how important that loss in neutrophil activity is to disease resistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14021" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T01:26:12.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16485" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-02T07:42:41.363" Score="9" ViewCount="19163" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I see a lot of links to Ed Macy's book &quot;Apache&quot; (related from Google glass articles' comments). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It took me two years to learn how to &quot;see&quot; properly -- how to see in an Apache World. I once filmed my face during a sortie with a video camera as an experiment. My eyes whirled independently of each other throughout, like a man possessed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I doubt that that is the real case, it sound more logical to me that Apache pilots just learn to switch their concentration easily from one eye to another, but they don't actually move their eyes like a chameleon. Can humans even move their eyeballs independently of each other and if so, are pilots more prone to doing this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13191" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2015-02-03T23:04:54.680" LastActivityDate="2020-04-12T07:51:38.510" Title="Can humans functionally move their eyeballs independently of one another?" Tags="|physiology|anatomy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1669" CreationDate="2013-06-02T08:33:42.000" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Definitely, there is a lot of strong genetic evidence for evolution! The amount of genetic evidence we've been able to collect over even the past few years has increased in an astronomical rate, and we keep on receiving more and more data confirming evolution. Perhaps one of my favourite pieces of evidence is the fusing of chromosome 2 in humans. I'm just gonna quote the wikipedia section here, it gives a good general over-view: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence for the evolution of Homo sapiens from a common ancestor with chimpanzees is found in the number of chromosomes in humans as compared to all other members of Hominidae. All hominidae have 24 pairs of chromosomes, except humans, who have only 23 pairs. Human chromosome 2 is a result of an end-to-end fusion of two ancestral chromosomes.[17][18]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The evidence for this includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The correspondence of chromosome 2 to two ape chromosomes. The closest human relative, the common chimpanzee, has near-identical DNA sequences to human chromosome 2, but they are found in two separate chromosomes. The same is true of the more distant gorilla and orangutan.[19][20]&#xA;      The presence of a vestigial centromere. Normally a chromosome has just one centromere, but in chromosome 2 there are remnants of a second centromere.[21]&#xA;      The presence of vestigial telomeres. These are normally found only at the ends of a chromosome, but in chromosome 2 there are additional telomere sequences in the middle.[22]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chromosome 2 thus presents very strong evidence in favour of the common descent of humans and other apes. According to J. W. IJdo, &quot;We conclude that the locus cloned in cosmids c8.1 and c29B is the relic of an ancient telomere-telomere fusion and marks the point at which two ancestral ape chromosomes fused to give rise to human chromosome 2.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent#DNA_sequencing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent#DNA_sequencing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The rest of that article is well worth reading too, if you have the time. Well obviously not an in depth technical work in the classic sense, wikipedia is excellent for getting a broad-scope overview of a topic, and often provides many useful, credible references at the bottom for further research) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14022" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T08:33:42.000" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16313" CreationDate="2013-06-02T14:50:39.393" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, it is not accurate to say (based on that study) that 97% of experts agree that global warming is anthropogenic.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One problem is that there are two different definitions of &quot;consensus&quot; being used. The original consensus claim used by the IPCC was that it was very likely that &lt;em&gt;most&lt;/em&gt; of the recent warming (&gt;50%) was caused by humans. When we say that &quot;global warming is anthropogenic&quot; that is the common-sense definition people have in mind. Not simply that CO2 is a greenhouse gas that causes &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; unquantified amount of warming, but also that the &lt;em&gt;amount&lt;/em&gt; of this warming is highly significant - that the biggest cause &lt;em&gt;of&lt;/em&gt; warming is human activity in the form of releasing CO2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article&quot;&gt;Cook study&lt;/a&gt; did &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; find 97% support for &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; proposition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study counted an article as &quot;supporting the consensus&quot; if it merely implicitly accepted that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Since most skeptics accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that doesn't tell us much we didn't already know - it uses too weak a definition of &quot;consensus&quot; to be useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, the Cook et al database of rated abstracts is available to be searched on line. So we can check how many abstracts were in each sub-category, even though that info wasn't reported in the paper proper. (I've added links to queries that should return the actual abstract lists, so long as the database sticks around)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Cook study gave papers a numeric rating. Rating #1 was &quot;explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as &gt;50%&quot;. Out of 12,464 papers considered, only &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&amp;amp;s=%20&amp;amp;a=&amp;amp;c=&amp;amp;e=1&amp;amp;yf=&amp;amp;yt=&quot;&gt;65 papers&lt;/a&gt;  were in this category (note: this was just based on study participants reading the abstracts, not the full paper).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on that statistic alone, one could defend the claim that one half of one percent of papers on AGW clearly claim humans are the chief cause of it. That headline finding would be &lt;strong&gt;&quot;less than one percent of expert papers &lt;em&gt;explicitly&lt;/em&gt; agree that global warming is anthropogenic.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But maybe it's not fair to include the &quot;no position&quot; papers. Let's exclude those. In that case, the headline finding is &lt;strong&gt;&quot;1.5% (65/4215) of expert papers that took some position on global warming explicitly agree that global warming is anthropogenic.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full list of endorsement categories were as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as &gt;50% (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&amp;amp;s=%20&amp;amp;a=&amp;amp;c=&amp;amp;e=1&amp;amp;yf=&amp;amp;yt=&quot;&gt;65 articles&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimize (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&amp;amp;s=%20&amp;amp;a=&amp;amp;c=&amp;amp;e=2&amp;amp;yf=&amp;amp;yt=&quot;&gt;934 articles&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implicitly endorses AGW without minimizing it (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&amp;amp;s=%20&amp;amp;a=&amp;amp;c=&amp;amp;e=3&amp;amp;yf=&amp;amp;yt=&quot;&gt;2934 articles&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No position (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&amp;amp;s=%20&amp;amp;a=&amp;amp;c=&amp;amp;e=4&amp;amp;yf=&amp;amp;yt=&quot;&gt;8269 articles&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Implicitly minimizes or rejects AGW (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&amp;amp;s=%20&amp;amp;a=&amp;amp;c=&amp;amp;e=5&amp;amp;yf=&amp;amp;yt=&quot;&gt;53 articles&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly minimizes or rejects AGW but does not quantify (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&amp;amp;s=%20&amp;amp;a=&amp;amp;c=&amp;amp;e=6&amp;amp;yf=&amp;amp;yt=&quot;&gt;15 articles&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explicitly minimizes or rejects AGW as less than 50% (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/tcp.php?t=search&amp;amp;s=%20&amp;amp;a=&amp;amp;c=&amp;amp;e=7&amp;amp;yf=&amp;amp;yt=&quot;&gt;10 articles&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we sum the rejection categories 5-7 together, there were 78 articles rejecting AGW, versus only 65 explicitly supporting the consensus. So another defensible headline finding is: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;More articles implicitly or explicitly reject AGW than claim more than half of AGW is anthropogenic.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or we could look at JUST the papers that give an explicit numeric percentage estimate. Comparing category 1 with category 7, we get this defensible headline: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;87% of scientific articles &lt;em&gt;that give a percentage estimate&lt;/em&gt; claim more than half of warming is anthropogenic&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt; (though it would be important to note the actual number of articles in that case isn't much of a sample: 65 for versus 10 against).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or if we want to rescue the original Cook number, that can be accomplished by adding a few caveats. Like so: &lt;strong&gt;&quot;97% of articles on global warming that take a position on the matter either implicitly or explicitly endorse that human activity is causing &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; global warming&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the vast majority (98.5%) of these papers don't quantify &lt;em&gt;how much&lt;/em&gt; warming, that's about as far as we can go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14029" LastEditorUserId="14029" LastEditDate="2013-06-03T04:47:14.433" LastActivityDate="2013-06-03T04:47:14.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26515" CreationDate="2013-06-02T17:44:39.097" Score="20" ViewCount="35338" Body="&lt;p&gt;As I attempt to kill ants in my yard, I've been reading various claims about how to kill ants without common consumer chemical pesticides like &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEET&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DEET&lt;/a&gt;.  One claim that I've heard repeatedly is that rice, corn meal or flour can make an ant's stomach explode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Wikihow, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Kill-Ants-Without-Pesticides&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Kill Ants Without Pesticides&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wheat flour and dried rice (any kind) also work. Like corn meal, it&#xA;  expands in their stomach and bursts them, resulting in a death&#xA;  slightly less nasty than being boiled alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another post, someone suggests the same method with Grits.&#xA;From Yahoo Answers &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070603161616AAIckqd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Will pouring boiling water on an ant hill kill the ants?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Also another way to kill ants is... grits. I'm not lying! Just&#xA;  sprinkle some grits over the hill and the ants eat it and something in&#xA;  grits makes the ants stomach expand and explode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that people are really attracted to the dramatic idea of having a pest creature explode, so I have to wonder if these are true statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can rice or flour actually kill ants, and does it really make their stomachs explode?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="49" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2015-06-24T13:49:22.307" LastActivityDate="2015-12-12T14:28:59.127" Title="Does flour or rice make an ant's stomach explode?" Tags="|natural-remedies|entomology|pesticides|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16339" CreationDate="2013-06-02T21:46:29.193" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you want to decide whether President Obama is responsible, you have to look at what the responsiblity of a president entails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US president swears an oath: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_office_of_the_President_of_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means he has to primarily follow the US constitution. Where congress passes a law that violates the constitution the president isn't excused to follow the constitution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext90/bill11h.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bill of rights&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't use the word citizen but person. That means that the prisioners at guantanamo are protected by that clause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It becomes more tricky when you ask whether those persons are &quot;in actual service in time of War&quot;. Members of al-Qaida would qualify under that provision. The provision however doesn't allow the imprisionment of people who are found to be innocent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the US government however believes that it can safely release them the public danger clause doesn't apply either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If congress wanted to excempt the president from the legal obligations to free the prisioners they would have to change the US constiution. Passing a law is not enough to overrule the constitutional obligation of releasing the prisioners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even when we look beyond the constiutional obligation against holding people against their will, the case of Libya should make quite clear that Obama claims that he can do things in war related matters that defy congressional authorisation.&#xA;If he can wage a whole war &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/2011/05/19/libya_7/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;without&lt;/a&gt; congressional approval it's very unclear why he shouldn't have the power to be able to release military prisoners on the same grounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2013-06-02T21:46:29.193" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16500" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-03T11:07:39.123" Score="15" ViewCount="10609" Body="&lt;p&gt;My dad uses Fun Light (a brand of Light Lemonade), which contains aspartame and acefulfam K, to kill ants. He claims that the human body can't process the artificial sweeteners and they just pass through, but that they actually are quite toxic to ants, and that ants bodies actually take it up. Trying to find out if what he said is true, I researched it a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking around the web I have found &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucralose&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this story in several versions&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sucralose was discovered in 1976 by scientists from Tate &amp;amp; Lyle, working with researchers Leslie Hough and Shashikant Phadnis at Queen Elizabeth College (now part of King's College London).&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doityourself.com/stry/how-to-make-homemade-ant-killer#b&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; While researching ways to use sucrose and its synthetic derivatives, Phadnis was told to test a chlorinated sugar compound. Phadnis thought Hough asked him to 'taste' it, so he did.&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.younglivingcircle.com/2010/07/08/when-natural-ant-poisons-are-unhealthy-to-humans-too/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt; He found the compound to be exceptionally sweet.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucralose&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthwantednow.com/2009/09/sweet-deception-about-splenda-the-insecticide-that-is-600-times-sweeter-than-sugar/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; is a fairly common version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like telling this true story since my wife is from India, and because the “discovery” of Splenda originates back to London in 1975 and a young Indian student who was doing graduate work in chemistry while studying insecticides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The young fellow was helping on a project of looking for ways to kill insects, when one day he mis-understood the instructions from his boss, who said to be sure to “test” his efforts. He thought the instructions were to “taste” the product, and when he did as told, imagine the surprise when he reported that this highly toxic liquid was 600 times sweeter than plain old sugar.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthwantednow.com/2009/09/sweet-deception-about-splenda-the-insecticide-that-is-600-times-sweeter-than-sugar/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doityourself.com/stry/how-to-make-homemade-ant-killer#b&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Do it yourself&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Saccharine and Aspartame&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Artificial sweeteners are great systemic ant killers. Saccharine was discovered while research was being done to get rid of ants. Aspartame is also very effective. Because these sweeteners are soon destroyed by damp it is best to leave them powered up at various points around the house. The ants will take the sweeteners back to the nest and the nest will literally starve to death because there is no nutrition in the sweeteners but they can’t resist eating them.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doityourself.com/stry/how-to-make-homemade-ant-killer#b&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/humor/iftrue/antpoison.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes says it's wrong&lt;/a&gt; but there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/another-nontoxi-121670&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;counter-claims in the comments&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;User &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.younglivingcircle.com/2010/07/08/when-natural-ant-poisons-are-unhealthy-to-humans-too/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EvelynVincent&lt;/a&gt; says the snope article is wrong, and cites &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/08/03/just-how-bad-is-aspartame.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr Mercola&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen several different claims about artificial sweeteners, and how they affect ants. Some against, some for, and they are not uncommonly saying each other is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which is it? Does any of the artificial sweeteners work as insecticide against ants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T04:24:54.613" Title="Are artificial sweeteners useful as insecticides against ants?" Tags="|entomology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16503" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-03T16:50:35.200" Score="1" ViewCount="922" Body="&lt;p&gt;Edgar Cayce was an American psychic who was famous during the early 20th century. He was notorious for giving readings during an alleged trance state he entered while sleeping. There’s a foundation that stores the readings that were recorded later in his “career” and they have been a topic of debate among his followers and skeptics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the documentary; &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2eNVgjQ9-g&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Edgar Cayce - An American Prophet&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhne.com/misc/edgarcayce.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New Heaven&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhne.com/misc/edgarcayce.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Barnes &amp;amp; Noble&lt;/a&gt;, it is mentioned that among his visitors were some important figures of the era like Nelson Rockefeller. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth in these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13360" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-06T00:44:44.480" LastActivityDate="2013-06-06T00:44:44.480" Title="Was Edgar Cayce visited by Rockefeller and other important figures from that era?" Tags="|history|psychics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16506" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16507" CreationDate="2013-06-03T22:27:02.703" Score="10" ViewCount="3252" Body="&lt;p&gt;US Patent 6470214 was recently mentioned on a Jesse Ventura's television program, &quot;Conspiracy Theory&quot;, in relation to government mind control experiments and weapons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now normally, the whole point of a TV show like &quot;Conspiracy Theory&quot; is to have a laugh at the crazy things some people believe, in this case that the US Government was sending signals and interference to the victims' head, and have a gawk at the countermeasures (magnetic boots, tin foil hats, etc).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since a patent was mentioned, I looked it up.  And apparently, the US Air Force claims to have invented the means to send voice signals to someone's head.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this in fact the case?  Does this invention really work?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am fairly skeptical of this.  It seems like it couldn't possibly be a thermal effect as described in the patent without damaging tissue in the recipients brain.  One can speculate an electrical effect in neurons, because all one needs to build a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_radio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;crystal radio&lt;/a&gt; is a tuned filter and a non linear junction that acts like a diode or crystal for the demodulator.  If the signal is strong enough, you don't need the tuned filter — that's the phenomena at work with RFI — Radio Frequency Interference — to consumer devices from amateur radio equipment.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might convince me that a specified microwave frequency could be heard in the brain as a click or tone, and that might have military or espionage command and control or emergency applications, because it could be a signal to attack or be used to send a message in morse code or even perhaps used for harassment. But I don't see how one could target individuals for messages that couldn't also be heard by others nearby... which is what is claimed by the victims on the TV program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://patents.google.com/patent/US6470214&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google patents for US6470214&lt;/a&gt; indicates that this patent was issued to the US Air Force in 1996 and has this summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A modulation process with a fully suppressed carrier and input&#xA;  preprocessor filtering to produce an encoded output; for amplitude&#xA;  modulation (AM) and audio speech preprocessor filtering, intelligible&#xA;  subjective sound is produced when the encoded signal is demodulated&#xA;  using the RF Hearing Effect. Suitable forms of carrier suppressed&#xA;  modulation include single sideband (SSB) and carrier suppressed&#xA;  amplitude modulation (CSAM), with both sidebands present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text of the patent refers to a RF Hearing Effect discovered during World War 2 and confirms that the radio demodulator is the brain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2nd-3rd paragraph of Background of Invention)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Radio Frequency (“RF”) Hearing Effect was first noticed during&#xA;  World War II as a subjective “click” produced by a pulsed radar signal&#xA;  when the transmitted power is above a “threshold” level. Below the&#xA;  threshold level, the click cannot be heard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The discovery of the Radio Frequency Hearing Effect suggested that a&#xA;  pulsed RF carrier could be encoded with an amplitude modulated (“AM”)&#xA;  envelope. In one approach to pulsed carrier modulation, it was assumed&#xA;  that the “click” of the pulsed carrier was similar to a data sample&#xA;  and could be used to synthesize both simple and complex tones such as&#xA;  speech. Although pulsed carrier modulation can induce a subjective&#xA;  sensation for simple tones, it severely distorts the complex waveforms&#xA;  of speech, as has been confirmed experimentally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BRS2E.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BRS2Em.png&quot; alt=&quot;US Patent 6470214 Figs.1-2&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These figures and text below are provided to show that in the invention being patented, the receiver is the human brain and not some electronic device or implant, and this supposedly works by converting thermal  heating by the radio signal to an acoustic vibration picked up in the inner ear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally the Spherical Demodulator 45 is the brain as discussed above,&#xA;  or an equivalent mass that provides uniform expansion and contraction&#xA;  due to thermal effects of R.F energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The invention provides a new and useful encoding for speech on an RF&#xA;  carrier such that the speech will be intelligible to a human subject&#xA;  by means of the RF hearing demodulation phenomena. Features of the&#xA;  invention include the use of AM fully suppressed carrier modulation,&#xA;  the preprocessing of an input speech signal be a compensation filter&#xA;  to de-emphasize the high frequency content by 40 dB per decade and the&#xA;  further processing of the audio signal by adding a bias terms to&#xA;  permit the taking of the square root of the signal before the AM&#xA;  suppressed carrier modulation process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The invention may also be implemented using the same audio signal&#xA;  processing and Single Sideband (SSB) modulation in place of AM&#xA;  suppressed carrier modulation. The same signal processing may also be&#xA;  used on Conventional AM modulation containing both sideband and the&#xA;  carrier; however, there is a serious disadvantage. The carrier is&#xA;  always present with AM modulation, even when there is no signal. The&#xA;  carrier power does not contain any information but contributes&#xA;  substantially to the heating of the thermalacoustic demodulator, i.e.&#xA;  the brain, which is undesirable. The degree of this extraneous heating&#xA;  is more than twice the heating caused by the signal or information&#xA;  power in the RF signal. Therefore conventional AM modulation is an&#xA;  inefficient and poor choice compared to the double side-band&#xA;  suppressed carrier and the SSB types of transmissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could also have commercial applications, e.g., imagine bluetooth directly to the brain.  The absence of any such applications leads me to suspect this is either a dangerous effect or non-existent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any other evidence that this invention actually works?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related, but acoustic effects from fillings — not in the brain:  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3638/is-it-possible-to-pick-up-radio-signals-from-dental-fillings&quot;&gt;Is it possible to pick up radio signals from dental fillings?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T16:59:31.533" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T16:59:31.533" Title="Can voice signals be radio-transmitted to a human head acting as a radio receiver?" Tags="|electromagnetism|radio|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16506" CreationDate="2013-06-03T23:14:41.603" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;&quot;Radio Frequency Hearing&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some studies that suggest this is a real phenomenon (or at least taken seriously by some researchers):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bem.10163&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Auditory response to pulsed radiofrequency energy; Chou and Elder; 2003&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b510/d94c76859e21aebb11d5e561b42d3cebc5fb.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ultrasonic Hearing in Humans: Applications for Tinnitus Treatment; Lenhardt; 2003&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4121631?tp=&amp;amp;arnumber=4121631&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microwave-Induced Pressure Waves in Mammalian Brains; Olsen and Lin; 1983&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/bem.2250090205&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microwave-induced thermoelastic pressure wave propagation in the cat brain; Lin, Su &amp;amp; Wang; 2005&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one of the researchers is reported as expressing some skepticism that this could be used to communicate audible speech in non-ideal conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/devices/why-microwave-auditory-effect-crowdcontrol-gun-wont-work&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why Microwave Auditory Effect Crowd-Control Gun Won't Work&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Guy says that experiments have demonstrated that radiation at 40 microjoules per pulse per square centimeter produces sound at zero decibels, which is just barely in hearing range. To produce sound at 60 decibels, or the sound of normal conversation, requires 40 watts per square centimeter of radiation. ”That would kill you pretty fast,” Guy says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T16:57:13.160" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T16:57:13.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16508" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-04T01:58:05.120" Score="5" ViewCount="6424" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently completing a corporate challenge where you count steps and head to different world destinations to find out interesting &quot;facts&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today we had a fact or fiction quiz at Machu Picchu, something along the lines of &quot;Did ancient Incas use potatoes as a measure of time?&quot;. With the &quot;correct&quot; answer being that it was a true fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some other links making the same claim, I'm not providing quotes because they are essentially the same: &quot;Incas used the time it took to cook a potato as a measure of time&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oregonspuds.com/history.shtml&quot;&gt;Source 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1997/03/meet-potato&quot;&gt;Source 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nppga.org/consumers/funfacts.php&quot;&gt;Source 3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find any reliable sources and nothing on Snopes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-06-04T06:18:44.047" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T06:18:44.047" Title="Did Incas use potatoes as a measure of time?" Tags="|history|time|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16510" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17106" CreationDate="2013-06-04T07:04:57.827" Score="16" ViewCount="1509" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dn.se/ekonomi/dyrt-anstalla-rokare-visar-studie&quot;&gt;DN.se&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Det kostar nära 6.000 dollar (knappt 40.000 kronor) mer per år att ha&#xA;  en rökare anställd än någon som inte röker, visar en studie i USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Skälet är rökares större sjukfrånvaro, dyrare hälsovård och lägre&#xA;  produktivitet på grund av rökpauser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studien har tagit med i beräkningen att rökare har kortare livslängd&#xA;  och får ut mindre pension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Smokers cost close to 6000 dollars more per year than non-smokers, according to an american study.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The reason is that smokers have higher amount of sick days, more expensive health care and lower productivity because of smoke pauses.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The study have included into the calculation, the fact that smokers have shorter lifespan, and get lower pension.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any truth to the study?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it really that big difference between smokers and non-smokers?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is a study from the US, does it apply to rest of the world as well?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there is a HUGE difference in work situation between Sweden and the US. In Sweden everyone is allowed to take pauses from work, to eat, drink coffee etc. It's written down in a nationwide contract every employer is supposed to follow. If you don't follow it, you get workers union, media and in some cases even the government breathing down your neck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I am looking for is not anecdotes, but something more substantial. Smoking is harmful, and the effects of smoking is fairly well documented. While details on that might be used as circumstantial evidence, this question is about if it's more expensive to hire a smoker than a non-smoker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-07T12:47:37.803" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T14:50:52.930" Title="Is it more expensive to employ a smoker than a non-smoker?" Tags="|united-states|smoking|employment|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15745" CreationDate="2013-06-04T17:41:38.357" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming you are talking about what is commonly know as &quot;lazy eye&quot; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amblyopia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;amblyopia&lt;/a&gt; from a medical standpoint, then &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; patching the dominate eye is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aapos.org/terms/conditions/21&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;common treatment that is used&lt;/a&gt; (see also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pedseye.com/topics_amblyopia.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/eye-health/how-to-help-your-child-wear-an-eye-patch-to-treat-amblyopia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutvision.com/conditions/amblyopia.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patient.co.uk/health/amblyopia.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;). However, other treatments such as eye drops may be used to force the weaker eye to get stronger by blurring the vision in the dominate eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When should patching be used for amblyopia treatment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Patching should only be done if an ophthalmologist recommends it. An&#xA;  ophthalmologist should regularly check how the patch is affecting the&#xA;  child’s vision. Although it can be hard to do, patching usually works&#xA;  very well if started early enough and if the parents and child follow&#xA;  the patching instructions carefully. It is important to patch the&#xA;  dominant eye to allow the weak eye to get stronger. [See figure 2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gVzbJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Medical diagram of patched eye&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2013-06-04T17:41:38.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16516" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-04T19:38:26.750" Score="32" ViewCount="1835" Body="&lt;p&gt;(somebody had to ask this)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Micheal Douglas, who was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2010, said in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/jun/02/michael-douglas-oral-sex-cancer&quot;&gt;recent interview with the Guardian&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Asked whether he now regretted his years of smoking and drinking, usually thought to be the cause of the disease, Douglas replied: “No. Because without wanting to get too specific, this particular cancer is caused by HPV [human papillomavirus], which actually comes about from cunnilingus.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question arises: does it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be slightly more specific, to nail several possible variants on his claim with a single question and to put the results in context let me ask the question this way: Does oral sex (cunnilingus or fellatio) contribute to the risk of oral cancer? Is the risk significant in the context of other causes of this class of cancers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T11:55:41.460" Title="Can oral sex cause throat cancer?" Tags="|sexuality|cancer|epidemiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16516" CreationDate="2013-06-04T20:36:36.760" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_and_neck_cancer#Human_papillomavirus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_and_neck_cancer#Human_papillomavirus&lt;/a&gt;, retrieved 2013-06-04 (Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License) says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recent evidence is accumulating pointing to a viral origin for some head and neck cancers. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.am/cr/head-and-neck-cancer/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(ref)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human papillomavirus (HPV), in particular HPV16, is a causal factor for some head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC).(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.la-press.com/redirect_file.php?fileId=1510&amp;amp;filename=CMENT-Moss-et-al&amp;amp;fileType=pdf%29%28http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa065497&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;) Approximately 15 to 25% of HNSCC contain genomic DNA from HPV,(&lt;a href=&quot;http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/pmidlookup?view=long&amp;amp;pmid=15734974&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;) and the association varies based on the site of the tumor, especially HPV-positive oropharyngeal cancer, with highest distribution in the tonsils, where HPV DNA is found in (45 to 67%) of the cases,(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1860277&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;) less often in the hypopharynx (13%–25%), and least often in the oral cavity (12%–18%) and larynx (3%–7%).(&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/%28SICI%291097-0142%2819970201%2979:3%3C595::AID-CNCR24%3E3.0.CO;2-Y&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some experts estimate that while up to 50% of cancers of the tonsil may be infected with HPV, only 50% of these are likely to be caused by HPV (as opposed to the usual tobacco and alcohol causes). The role of HPV in the remaining 25-30% is not yet clear.(&lt;a href=&quot;http://jco.ascopubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/JCO.2004.00.3335v1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;strong&gt;Oral sex is not risk free and can result in HPV-related cancer.&lt;/strong&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oralcancerfoundation.org/facts/pdf/hpv_Infection.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T11:55:41.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16519" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-04T23:52:28.653" Score="4" ViewCount="427" Body="&lt;p&gt;I’ve read in the news that a majority of earth’s population might run out of drinking water.  As with many of these kind of predictions it’s difficult to judge the urgency and correctness of it without spending a huge amount of time on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/gwsp-amo052313.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bonn Declaration&lt;/a&gt; from the &quot;Water in the Anthropocene&quot; conference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A conference of 500 leading water scientists from around the world today issued a stark warning that, without major reforms, &quot;in the short span of one or two generations, the majority of the 9 billion people on Earth will be living under the handicap of severe pressure on fresh water, an absolutely essential natural resource for which there is no substitute. This handicap will be self-inflicted and is, we believe, entirely avoidable.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m wondering if the situation is urgent enough so that it is necessary for everyone to be frugal with water or whether this can only be solved by regulatory means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4994" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-06-11T02:44:41.120" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T02:44:51.590" Title="Are we running out of drinking water so that we need to be frugal with it?" Tags="|environmental-health|water|environment|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16414" CreationDate="2013-06-05T10:37:35.933" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Catholic stance on evolution was first officially declared in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humani_generis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Humani Generis&lt;/a&gt; encyclical by Pius XII:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If anyone examines the state of affairs outside the Christian fold,&#xA;  he will easily discover the principle trends that not a few learned&#xA;  men are following. Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that&#xA;  evolution, which has not been fully proved even in the domain of&#xA;  natural sciences, explains the origin of all things, and audaciously&#xA;  support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in&#xA;  continual evolution. Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so&#xA;  that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a&#xA;  personal God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate&#xA;  their dialectical materialism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paragraph basically states that evolution is not fully proven and should not be taken as a source of all there is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Such fictitious tenets of evolution which repudiate all that is absolute, firm and immutable, have paved the way for the new erroneous&#xA;  philosophy which, rivaling idealism, immanentism and pragmatism, has&#xA;  assumed the name of existentialism, since it concerns itself only with&#xA;  existence of individual things and neglects all consideration of their&#xA;  immutable essences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, there is something that is not changeable, and not evolved and materialistic (aiming at the human soul).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid&#xA;  that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and&#xA;  sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men&#xA;  experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of&#xA;  evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body&#xA;  as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith&#xA;  obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However,&#xA;  this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions,&#xA;  that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be&#xA;  weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and&#xA;  measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment&#xA;  of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting&#xA;  authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of&#xA;  faith.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, material body can be a result of evolution, but a soul is created by God and not evolved or materialistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Paul II &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/jp961022.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;addressed the Pontifical Academy of Science on 22 October 1996 with a following message&lt;/a&gt; which contained the following excerpts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has&#xA;  already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the&#xA;  doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation, provided that we&#xA;  do not lose sight of certain fixed points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;explaining what fixed points are a bit later:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a result, the theories of evolution which, because of the&#xA;  philosophies which inspire them, regard the spirit either as emerging&#xA;  from the forces of living matter, or as a simple epiphenomenon of that&#xA;  matter, are incompatible with the truth about man. They are therefore&#xA;  unable to serve as the basis for the dignity of the human person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He concludes with restating the position of the Catholic church that faith and reason cannot be in disagreement - faith should give answers to &quot;why?&quot; and not &quot;how?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With man, we find ourselves facing a different ontological order—an&#xA;  ontological leap, we could say. But in posing such a great ontological&#xA;  discontinuity, are we not breaking up the physical continuity which&#xA;  seems to be the main line of research about evolution in the fields of&#xA;  physics and chemistry? An appreciation for the different methods used&#xA;  in different fields of scholarship allows us to bring together two&#xA;  points of view which at first might seem irreconcilable. The sciences&#xA;  of observation describe and measure, with ever greater precision, the&#xA;  many manifestations of life, and write them down along the time-line.&#xA;  The moment of passage into the spiritual realm is not something that&#xA;  can be observed in this way—although we can nevertheless discern,&#xA;  through experimental research, a series of very valuable signs of what&#xA;  is specifically human life. But the experience of metaphysical&#xA;  knowledge, of self-consciousness and self-awareness, of moral&#xA;  conscience, of liberty, or of aesthetic and religious experience—these&#xA;  must be analyzed through philosophical reflection, while theology&#xA;  seeks to clarify the ultimate meaning of the Creator's designs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same point is a doctrine of the Catholic church, stated in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__PX.HTM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Catechism of the Catholic church&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Though faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy&#xA;  between faith and reason. Since the same God who reveals mysteries and&#xA;  infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind, God&#xA;  cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth.&quot;37&#xA;  &quot;Consequently, methodical research in all branches of knowledge,&#xA;  provided it is carried out in a truly scientific manner and does not&#xA;  override moral laws, can never conflict with the faith, because the&#xA;  things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To conclude&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The official position of the Catholic church is not generally against evolution, but it does reject positions that human spirit (or soul) is just a byproduct of the evolution of living matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1993" LastEditorUserId="1993" LastEditDate="2019-06-10T10:55:48.980" LastActivityDate="2019-06-10T10:55:48.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10864" CreationDate="2013-06-05T11:21:58.290" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://gulfnews.com/news/gulf/saudi-arabia/husband-to-be-flogged-for-slapping-wife-in-saudi-arabia-1.1192906&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this case&lt;/a&gt; A husband was sentenced 10 days in prison and 30 lashes just for slapping his wife. The wife is allowed to be present to see his husband go through the punishments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manama: A man in Saudi Arabia charged with slapping his wife was sentenced to 10 days in prison and 30 lashes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The court in Al Qateef in the Eastern Province said that the wife could witness the flogging in retribution for the physical pain her husband caused her, Saudi daily Al Sharq reported on Wednesday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The husband will also have to take part in special sessions on marriage counseling and on how to treat and deal with spouses, the judge ruled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the court documents, the wife, in her 30s, filed the case after her husband slapped her on the face during an argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He admitted the act, arguing that she had been impolite with his relatives, the daily said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.express.pk/story/135393/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another source&lt;/a&gt;, in Urdu, depicting the same case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14064" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T12:54:21.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16522" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-05T13:20:38.847" Score="12" ViewCount="1078" Body="&lt;p&gt;One common question among runners is when to replace your shoes, with the popular advice ranging anywhere from 300 to 600 miles (482 to 966 kilometers). The justification for doing so is not that the shoe are worn through, &lt;a href=&quot;http://running.about.com/od/shoesapparelandgear/f/replaceshoes.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;but rather&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't use the treads of your running shoes to determine whether you&#xA;  should replace your shoes. The midsole, which provides the cushioning&#xA;  and stability, usually breaks down before the bottom shows major signs&#xA;  of wear. If you've been feeling muscle fatigue, shin splints, or some&#xA;  pain in your joints -- especially your knees -- you may be wearing&#xA;  running shoes that no longer have adequate cushioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which means that a lot of runners will replace shoes that look to be in fairly good condition in hopes of avoiding injuries. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16715/has-the-endurance-running-hypothisis-of-human-evolution-been-accepted-as-scienti&quot;&gt;many claims&lt;/a&gt; that the book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0307279189&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Born to Run&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_McDougall&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Christopher McDougall&lt;/a&gt; makes is that there is &lt;em&gt;no evidence that running shoes prevent injury&lt;/em&gt;. Specifically the book says the following,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a 2008 research paper for the &lt;em&gt;British Journal of Sports Medicine&lt;/em&gt;,&#xA;  Dr. Craig Richards, a researcher at the University of Newcastle in&#xA;  Austria, revealed that there are &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; evidence-based studies - not one&#xA;  - that demonstrate that running shoes make you less prone to injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where injury is generally defined as conditions such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantar_fasciitis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Plantar Fasciitis&lt;/a&gt; as opposed to minor cuts and scrapes to the foot due to the running surface or hazards on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim accurate? Is there no evidence that running shoes prevent injury?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2018-05-28T00:01:29.103" Title="Do running shoes prevent injury?" Tags="|medical-science|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16522" CreationDate="2013-06-05T13:53:15.827" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The contrary is in part true, in that running barefoot rather than wearing shoes with thick padding and cushioning tends to decrease injury and strengthen the foot and leg muscles.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot_running&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot_running&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The running shoe itself has also been examined as a possible cause of many injuries associated with shod running. One 1991 study found that wearers of expensive running shoes that are promoted as having special features, such as added cushioning or pronation correction, were injured significantly more frequently than runners wearing inexpensive shoes.[10] It has also been found that running in conventional running shoes increases stress on the knee joints up to 38%, although it is still unclear if this leads to a higher rate of heel injuries or not.[32][33][34] One study suggests that there is no evidence that cushioning or pronation control in shoes reduces injury rates or reduces performance.[35] It was also found that the belief that one's shoes have increased cushioning had no effect on increasing or decreasing ground reaction forces during walking.[36] Modern running shoes can also increase joint torque at the hip, knee, and ankle, and the authors of the study even suggest that running in high heels might be better than modern running shoes.[37] Improperly fitting shoes may also result in injuries such as a subungual hematoma – a collection of blood underneath the toenail. This may also be known as &quot;runner's toe&quot; or &quot;tennis toe&quot;.[38]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(references in the original).&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sportsci.org/jour/0103/mw.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sportsci.org/jour/0103/mw.htm&lt;/a&gt; says basically the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Running barefoot is associated with a substantially lower prevalence of acute injuries of the ankle and chronic injuries of the lower leg in developing countries, but well-designed studies of the effects of barefoot and shod running on injury are lacking. Laboratory studies show that the energy cost of running is reduced by about 4% when the feet are not shod. In spite of these apparent benefits, barefoot running is rare in competition, and there are no published controlled trials of the effects of running barefoot on simulated or real competitive performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And again here &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127134241.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100127134241.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;That said, it seems logical to assume that having a worn out shoe with damaged support structures and sole will yield to a higher chance of injury than a fresh one (IF they were properly fitted in the first place of course). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T13:53:15.827" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10864" CreationDate="2013-06-05T13:57:41.883" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of this week (written on September 1&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt;, 2013), Domestic Abuse has officially been outlawed in Saudi Arabia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/29/saudi-arabia-domestic-abuse-ban_n_3836591.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huffington post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a historic move, Saudi Arabia banned domestic abuse this week, outlawing any form of abuse at home or in the workplace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Council of Ministers' approval of the law Monday marks the first time the country has officially recognized domestic violence as a punishable crime. Offenders may face up to a year in prison and a maximum fine of 50,000 Saudi riyal (about $13,300), the Saudi Gazette reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The law will also provide shelter for victims of abuse and ensure the identities of those who report it are kept confidential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/30/saudi-arabia-ban-domestic-violence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The legislation makes sexual violence in the home and the workplace a punishable crime. Moreover, it provides for shelter for victims of abuse and places the onus on law enforcement agencies to follow up on reports of abuse. It is backed up by a jail sentence and hefty fines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-cabinet-passes-ban-on-domestic-violence-8789358.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Independant&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saudi Arabia's cabinet has passed a ban on domestic violence and other forms of abuse against women for the first time in the Kingdom's history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cabinet approved the ban on physical or sexual violence earlier this week, which applies both at home or within the work place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The legislation makes domestic violence a punishable crime for the first time. It also provides treatment and shelter for victims of abuse and holds law enforcement agencies accountable for investigating and prosecuting allegations of abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ban includes penalties of a maximum12 month jail sentence and fines of up to $13,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“All civilian or military employees and all workers in the private sector who learn of a case of abuse — by virtue of their work — shall report the case to their employers when they know it,” Alnbawaba reported the cabinet as saying in a statement. “The employers shall report the case to the Ministry of Social Affairs or police when they know it.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.regcon&amp;amp;contentid=20130827178367&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Saudi Gazette&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h33YFk434Ck&amp;amp;list=UU1yBKRuGpC1tSM73A0ZjYjQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;video done on this in the Young Turks&lt;/a&gt; it's also said that there is an anonymous hot-line, I wasn't able to find it mentioned in other sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Partially Outdated Information:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's legal in Saudi Arabia, but the situation seems to be improving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.msn.com/world/saudi-arabia-runs-its-1st-ad-against-domestic-violence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source at MSN News&lt;/a&gt; which depicts an anti domestic violence campaign:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are currently no laws in Saudi Arabia that protect domestic violence victims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.albawaba.com/news/saudi-domestic-violence-491970&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this source&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is not one law in Saudi Arabia that regards violence toward women as an illegal activity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of law, there is not one law in Saudi Arabia that regards violence toward women as an illegal activity. As a matter of fact, women in Saudi Arabia are minors under law until their death, making it impossible for a woman to make any decision on her own without the permission of her guardian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that even if a woman is “radical” enough to disobey her guardian or reject his abuse or decisions, she has got nowhere to go. She cannot file a complaint or leave the country or do practically anything without her guardian’s permission, which in most cases, ironically, is the abuser himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“In May, Jeddah’s Summary Court convicted a man for physically abusing his wife to the point of hospitalization, but sentenced him to learning by heart five parts of the Quran and 100 sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The legal system in Saudi Arabia does not have the sufficient tools and laws that would deter men from domestic violence. In case of drugs and murder, the punishment is death penalty, which makes people think twice before committing such crimes because of the consequences.  Yet, when it comes to domestic violence the punishment is learning parts of the Quran and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and just recently a national campaign was started by an NGO of the Royal Family to stop domestic violence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in addition to the cases depicted in @non-Saudi man and @user1873 answers, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Khalid_Foundation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;King Khalid Foundation&lt;/a&gt; started a national campaign in Saudi Arabia aimed at stopping domestic abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are sources describing the campaign:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=59251&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Middle East online&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stream.aljazeera.com/story/201305292050-0022792&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Al Jazeera&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kkfeng.org/no-more-abuse.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;site of the KKF&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;KKF did a research on “Women and Child Abuse Prevention Law” which has been adopted by the Government of Saudi&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://transitions.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/05/30/the_surprising_new_fight_against_domestic_violence_in_saudi_arabiahttp://transitions.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/05/30/the_surprising_new_fight_against_domestic_violence_in_saudi_arabia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Foreign Policy article&lt;/a&gt; on the campaign mentions another recent campaign, the &amp;quot;White Ribbon Campaign&amp;quot; which is part of the global White Ribbon Campaign against domestic violence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The launch of this initiative is all the more striking considering the start of another campaign that preceded it by just a few days. This is the &amp;quot;White Ribbon campaign,&amp;quot; the Saudi version of the international campaign of the same name, which aims to involve men more actively in efforts to stop violence against women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the events of husbands being criminally prosecuted and punished for domestic abuse do start to happen, and a national campaign by a Royal Family NGO, that claims to affect the government, It can be said that Domestic Violence in Saudi Arabia will, hopefully, be on the decline, and its prosecution on the rise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T06:21:22.177" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16416" CreationDate="2013-06-05T16:31:39.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this scientific &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4615-9038-5_28#&quot;&gt;review&lt;/a&gt; [1] I found a list of changes provoked by a hangover.&#xA;[...] Significant changes in the blood concentrations of acetaldehyde, glucose, lactate, ketone bodies and free fatty acids were found during hangover [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking toward the effect of each of these elements on the muscular system we know that &lt;a href=&quot;http://alcalc.oxfordjournals.org/content/39/5/450.full&quot;&gt;acetaldehyde causes abnormal muscle development&lt;/a&gt; as it binds to proteins [2]. Moreover, glucose , lactate and ketone are all known to have effects on sustained exercises [3]. I suggest to read more about each of these elements to understand exactly how it work on Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the short answer is &lt;strong&gt;no, the muscular system does not exactly work the same&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Ylikahri, R. H., &amp;amp; Huttunen, M. O. (1977). Metabolic and endocrine pathology during hangover. In Alcohol Intoxication and Withdrawal—IIIb (pp. 423-442). Springer US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Nicholas S. Aberle, II, Larry Burd, Bonnie H. Zhao and Jun Ren (2004). &quot;Acetaldehyde-induced cardiac contractile dysfunction may be alleviated by vitamin B1 but not by vitamins B6 or B12&quot;. Alcohol &amp;amp; Alcoholism 39 (5): 450–454.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] McArdle, W. D., Katch, F. I., &amp;amp; Katch, V. L. (2010). Exercise physiology: Energy, nutrition, and human performance. Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott Williams &amp;amp; Wilkins Health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T16:31:39.543" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16528" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16529" CreationDate="2013-06-05T17:39:49.960" Score="10" ViewCount="629" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore&quot;&gt;Al Gore&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/algore/status/342317878827180033&quot;&gt;tweeted&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ferocious wildfire in California forces evacuation of ~3,000 [...] &lt;strong&gt;Rising temperatures are making fires worse&lt;/strong&gt;. (Emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2019-05-08T14:38:17.453" LastActivityDate="2019-05-08T14:38:17.453" Title="Are rising temperatures making fires worse?" Tags="|climate-change|fire|natural-disasters|al-gore|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16529" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16528" CreationDate="2013-06-05T18:19:00.450" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=fU8I89WM9UEC&amp;amp;pg=PA39&amp;amp;lpg=PA39&amp;amp;dq=Fire%20correlation%20temperatures&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=tZqHgnjHU8&amp;amp;sig=DdbG4VCDdHSVMgqoQmc7q1bWgq4&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=Un2vUdzlB6eF4ASxqYG4CQ&amp;amp;ved=0CIQBEOgBMAg4Cg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Fire%20correlation%20temperatures&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Measuring forest-fire danger in northern Idaho&lt;/a&gt; mentioned a study made in Finland, which found a correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hyds8.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10701" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T18:19:00.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16528" CreationDate="2013-06-05T18:19:16.507" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, higher temperatures leads to more wild fires.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/313/5789/927.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Article from a journal&lt;/a&gt; says so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On page 940 of this issue, Westerling et al. (4) come to a similarly discomforting conclusion for wildfires. They show that warmer temperatures appear to be increasing the duration and intensity of the wildfire season in the western United States.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/313/5789/927.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/313/5789/940.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The paper it refers to&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Spatial variability in the wildfire response to an earlier spring.&#xA;  Vulnerability of western U.S. forests to more frequent wildfires due&#xA;  to warmer temperatures is a function of the spatial distribution of&#xA;  forest area and the sensitivity of the local water balance to changes&#xA;  in the timing of spring.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/313/5789/940.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Al Gore says thus have some back-up from the scientific community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/313/5789/927.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;: Science 18 August 2006: Vol. 313, no. 5789, pp. 927-928 &lt;em&gt;Published Online July 6 2006&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Is Global Warming Causing More, Larger Wildfires?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/313/5789/940.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;: Science 18 August 2006: Vol. 313, no. 5789, pp. 940-943 &lt;em&gt;Published Online July 6 2006&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Warming and Earlier Spring Increase Western U.S. Forest Wildfire Activity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-05T18:26:37.100" LastActivityDate="2013-06-05T18:26:37.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15424" CreationDate="2013-06-05T19:59:56.843" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the world is literally getting greener, largely thanks to anthropogenically-elevated atmospheric CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Is the world getting greener?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a map:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sealevel.info/greening_earth_spatial_patterns_Myneni.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mYz3W.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Map showing how the Earth is greening thanks to higher CO&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt; levels&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nina.no/Portals/NINA/Bilder%20og%20dokumenter/Prosjekter/ArcticBiomass/Myneni_greening-earth-svalbard.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Greening Earth: Spatial patterns&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, by Prof. Ranga B. Myneni, Boston U. (2015)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This excerpt is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/090731-green-sahara.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a 2009 National Geographic article&lt;/a&gt; about how even the &quot;Sahara&quot; desert (really the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sahel&lt;/a&gt;) is greening:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Images taken between 1982 and 2002 revealed extensive regreening&#xA;  throughout the Sahel, according to a new study in the journal&#xA;  Biogeosciences. / The study suggests &lt;strong&gt;huge increases in vegetation&lt;/strong&gt; in&#xA;  areas including central Chad and western Sudan. ... &lt;em&gt;&quot;Before, there was&#xA;  not a single scorpion, not a single blade of grass,&quot;&lt;/em&gt; he said. &lt;em&gt;&quot;Now you&#xA;  have people grazing their camels in areas which may not have been used&#xA;  for hundreds or even thousands of years. You see birds, ostriches,&#xA;  gazelles coming back, even sorts of amphibians coming back... The&#xA;  trend has continued for more than 20 years. &lt;strong&gt;It is indisputable&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Why is it getting greener?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An effect called the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2_fertilization_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; fertilization effect&lt;/a&gt; leads to healthier, faster-growing plants. Higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere cause increased plant growth. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50563/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study published in 2013&lt;/a&gt; found that in warm and arid environments over a 28 year period (1982-2010), as CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels increased by 14%, foliage cover increased by 11%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here are the results of an experiment of elevated CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels on pine trees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FWXlP.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FWXlP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Dr. Sherwood Idso showing the effect of CO&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt; on pine trees&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that elevated CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; is very beneficial for plants has been known to science for a century. The first &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-air_concentration_enrichment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;F.A.C.E. (free air carbon enrichment)&lt;/a&gt; study that I'm aware of was done nearly a century ago, in Germany. &lt;em&gt;Scientific American&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://sealevel.info/ScientificAmerican_1920-11-27_CO2_fertilization.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wrote about it in 1920&lt;/a&gt;. In that article &lt;em&gt;Scientific American&lt;/em&gt; called anthropogenic CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; &lt;strong&gt;“the precious air fertilizer,”&lt;/strong&gt; and from this photo, which accompanied the article, it is easy to see why. It shows potatoes grown with and without the benefit of extra CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qkBC4m.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qkBC4m.png&quot; alt=&quot;potatoes grown with and without anthropogenic CO&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt; supplementation (&amp;quot;the precious air fertilizer&amp;quot;)&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theoretical physicist, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prof. Freeman Dyson&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://pages.citebite.com/n1v3s5u9a2fex&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;about 15 percent of agricultural yields are due to CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; we put in the atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/plantgrowth.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;plant growth rates&lt;/a&gt; in response to CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; enrichment &amp;amp; depletion, that conclusion is inescapable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet 15% is really a conservative estimate, a lower bound. The agricultural yield enhancement from anthropogenic CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;  is really &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; 15%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.co2science.org/articles/V16/N2/B3.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bunce (2012)&lt;/a&gt; finds that the widely-used FACE methodology for measuring plant response to elevated CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;  results in an underestimate of the agricultural productivity improvement from higher CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels (as also &lt;a href=&quot;http://pages.citebite.com/d1r3n6l1c4vft&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;explained by Prof. George Hendrey&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2qVNK6zFgE&amp;amp;rel=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt; compares legume seedlings grown at two different CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; concentration levels&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/8614#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article about a 12-year-long University of Michigan F.A.C.E. study&lt;/a&gt; which found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;-soaked [birch, aspen &amp;amp; maple] trees grew 26 percent more than those exposed to normal levels of carbon dioxide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; is a more stable, less reactive molecule than O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;. Venus and Mars both have atmospheres which consist mostly of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, with almost no free oxygen. But on Earth the opposite is true. There are more than 500 times as many O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; molecules in the Earth's atmosphere as CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;  molecules. Why is there so little carbon dioxide, and so much free oxygen, in the Earth's atmosphere? The answer is that Venus &amp;amp; Mars are dead planets, and the Earth is not. Its plants use CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; and produce O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;, and its animals use O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; and produce CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;. In the tug-of-war between plants and animals, the plants won. Plants have tugged the CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;-O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; tug-of-war rope all the way to the end. (Some carbon also ends up sequestered by animals in calcium carbonate shells, etc.) Animals are relatively scarce, compared to photosynthetic plants, and the plants have used up nearly all the CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;. The outnumbered animals just can't produce enough CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; to keep up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why, on Earth, O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; is plentiful, and CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; is measured in parts-per-million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://plantsneedco2.org/default.aspx/MenuItemID/103/MenuGroup/Home.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Higher CO2 levels are very beneficial for agriculture&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C3_carbon_fixation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;C3 photosynthesis plants&lt;/a&gt;, like wheat, rice, all vegetables, all nuts, and nearly all fruits, benefit the most from additional CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;. But even &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C4_carbon_fixation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;C4 plants&lt;/a&gt;, like corn and sorghum, grow better with higher CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels, &lt;a href=&quot;https://phys.org/news/2015-11-high-co2-sorghum-drought-seeds.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;especially when under drought stress&lt;/a&gt;. Thousands of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/dry_subject.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt; have found that nearly all plants benefit from additional CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's why &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/search?q=co2%20generators%20for%20greenhouses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;commercial greenhouse operators use CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; generators&lt;/a&gt; to artificially boost the CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels in their greenhouses to 2.5x to 4x normal levels: because higher CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels result in much faster-growing, healthier plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IPCC's AR5 estimate is that 45% of anthropogenic CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;  emissions remain in the atmosphere each year. They estimate that 55% of total emissions are taken up by oceans and biosphere, and they think over half of that is probably taken up by the biosphere, through greening. AR5 estimates that the terrestrial biosphere removes about (2.5/9.2) = 27% [p. 6-3] or 29% [Fig. 6.1] of anthropogenic CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emissions from the atmosphere, each year, and that the oceans remove another 26% [Fig 6.1]. (There are wide error bars on those numbers, but the 55% sum has narrower error bars than the two addends.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, I also recommend to you Matt Ridley's 2011 Angus Millar lecture at the RSA, entitled, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/11/1/scientific-heresy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific Heresy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14071" LastEditorUserId="14071" LastEditDate="2017-12-07T20:28:46.257" LastActivityDate="2017-12-07T20:28:46.257" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16546" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-06T20:55:09.373" Score="8" ViewCount="489" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Sun newspaper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4957677/Bikinis-axed-from-Miss-World-in-bid-to-avoid-Muslim-threats.html#ixzz2VTINVIJr&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The pageant is taking place in the Far East country for the first time and organisers are wary of upsetting Muslim fanatics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the pageant's chairwoman Julia Morley said: &quot;I do not want to upset or get anyone in a situation where we are being disrespectful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We treasure respect for all the countries that take part in the pageant,&quot; she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14087" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-06-07T01:22:02.330" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T06:32:30.393" Title="Are bikinis banned from the 2013 Miss World competition in Indonesia?" Tags="|culture|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16546" CreationDate="2013-06-06T22:21:21.423" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, bikinis are banned from the 2013 Miss World contest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/world/asia/a-more-wholesome-miss-world-pageant-this-year.html&quot;&gt;The New York Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]he billionaire organizer of the Miss World pageant declared Thursday that there would be no bikinis this year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-06-07T06:32:30.393" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T06:32:30.393" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16555" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9772" CreationDate="2013-06-07T15:56:49.183" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Paul Hardcastle single &lt;em&gt;19&lt;/em&gt; contains many samples from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_Requiem&quot;&gt;1982 ABC TV documentary Vietnam Requiem&lt;/a&gt; - and the statement that the average age of a Vietnam &quot;combat soldier&quot; was 19, is one of those samples. We can assume that the ABC journalists sourced the claim somewhere - but where?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was able to find the same claim elsewhere, with a claimed source. The New Jersey State Council of the Vietnam Veterans of America repeats the claim in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.njscvva.org/vietnam_war_statistics.htm&quot;&gt;Vietnam War Statistics page&lt;/a&gt;. They also repeat the claim that the average age of a WWII soldier was 26.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their stated source for the claim is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vietnam Veterans of America, Speakers Bureau Handbook provided by the Public Affairs Committee&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a handbook produced by the VVA, as a resource for its members. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several other sources refute the claim, based on the average age of soldiers killed in action. I'm not sure that it's reasonable to assume that deaths were evenly distributed among ages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4887" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T15:56:49.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16557" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-07T16:09:37.507" Score="3" ViewCount="404" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yalsa.ala.org/thehub/2012/12/10/it-matters-if-youre-black-or-white-the-racism-of-ya-book-covers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a YA book features a white, female protagonist ..., it seems inevitable that the book cover will display an idealized and airbrushed masterpiece of her on the cover. And when a YA book actually does have a protagonist of color, too often one of three things seems to happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The cover is “whitewashed” and shows a Caucasian model instead of a person of color;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The cover depicts someone whose race seems purposefully ambiguous or difficult to discern; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The character is shown in silhouette&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It often seems like white characters are spotlighted front and center on a book cover, while non-white characters are hidden in shadow, have their face obscured, or are distorted in some other way that allows people to assume that the character is white.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Notability:&lt;/strong&gt; It's one blog post of many. It's a blog post which has been mentioned on some famous social justice blogs, including Shakesville. It's a blog post which received a reply from one of the mentioned authors; that author gave her response the title &amp;quot;Whitwashing covers, part eleventy&amp;quot;, indicating that this was part of a long ongoing conversation in the bloggosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blog post quoted gives many many examples, but I'm not aware of any statistical evidence that ambiguous covers are &amp;quot;overwhelming[ly] used for books with non-white protagonists&amp;quot;. (To be clear, this wouldn't surprise me, in the least, but it would be nice to see some evidence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2974" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-12T13:02:39.900" Title="Is there a trend in western publishing to obscure depictions of ethnic minorities on the covers of Young Adult literature?" Tags="|racism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15582" CreationDate="2013-06-07T18:37:03.767" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, approximately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cabin, Henry S., &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eglobalmed.com/books/HeartBook/1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Heart and Circulation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. 1992&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stretched end to end, the vessels of the circulatory system-arteries, arterioles, capillaries, venules, and veins-would measure about 60,000 miles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jones, Robert T., &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.fl.01.010169.001255&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blood Flow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics. Vol 1. 1969. 223-244.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Zweifach the collective length of capillaries in the human body amounts to about 60,000 miles. (Internal reference removed)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zweifach, B.W., &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;The Microcirculation of the Blood&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;. Scientific American. Volume 200, Issue 1. 1959&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The total length of the capillaries in the body is almost 60,000 miles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Loe, Matthew J. and Edwards, William D. &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1054880704006593&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;A light-hearted look at a lion-hearted organ (or, a perspective from three standard deviations beyond the norm) Part 1 (of two parts)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;. Cardiovascular Pathology. Volume 13, Issue 5, September–October 2004, Pages 282–292.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blood vessels (arteries, capillaries, and veins), laid end-to-end, would measure about 100,000 km (60,000 miles), or approximately 2.5 times the circumference of the earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Capillaries account for about 80,000 km (50,000 miles) of vasculature in an adult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-07T18:43:41.930" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="361" CreationDate="2013-06-08T21:16:58.973" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since this question is about telepathy, I'll focus on just that and also use the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telepathy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;definition&lt;/a&gt; that it is,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... the transmission of information from one person to another without&#xA;using any of our known sensory channels or physical interaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the major scientific criticisms generally boil down issues with the following points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skepdic.com/telepath.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Experimental design&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skepdic.com/esp.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lack of a model of how it works&lt;/a&gt;, or would work&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address the first point, experimental design is a major concern when any tests for telepathy are examined since they must be controlled in such a way that the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer-expectancy_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;observer-expectancy effect&lt;/a&gt; is controlled for. Any tests also need to be conducted in such a way that subconscious cues to the subject are controlled for to prevent the &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clever Hans effect&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_reading&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cold reading&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lack of a model as to how telepathy would work is actually a major problem for any proper study for telepathy since it exposes the experimenter to criticism if you try to explain &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_results&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;null results&lt;/a&gt; as being due to the subject being in the wrong state of mind or out growing their abilities (Horn, 2009). This exposes testing to major issues with reproducibility and lack of reproducibility previously positive results can easily be explained as problems with the experimenter or attempts to defraud the experiment as opposed a potential explanation for why telepathy might not present on a consistent basis in laboratory conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Banks_Rhine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joseph Banks Rhine&lt;/a&gt; is likely one of the few scientists to have studied telepathy in controlled environments that might have presented some evidence of an effect (Rhine, 1964); however, even his work has been subject to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.williamjames.com/Science/ESP.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;major criticism&lt;/a&gt; and generally his work is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/encyclopedia/Rhine,%20Dr.%20Joseph%20Banks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dismissed by most skeptics&lt;/a&gt;. The extent of his research does raise an interesting point though that relates back to the lack of a working model: namely, is it even possible to dismiss unreproducible experiments on the basis of a single experiment or are multiples needed before results can safely be dismissed? This does raise the issue of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;publication basis&lt;/a&gt; though since a researcher can be accused to not publishing null results while someone that is seeking to reproduce the results could be accused of the same by not publishing positive results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion the best we can really say is that there is weak evidence that there might be telepathy; however, there is a lack of explanation of how it could occur or that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littlewood%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Littlewood's law&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; isn't at play during experiments and lack of reproducibility ensures that the current scientific consensus is that telepathy likely does not exist. However, this is not to say that &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbcnews.com/id/27162401/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/army-developing-synthetic-telepathy/#.UbOespyGXoQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;synthetic telepathy&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; is not possible since &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;brain-computer interfaces&lt;/a&gt; are in development that mimic what people generally think of when they define telepathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, one of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1214/ss/1177011577&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;statistical meta studies linked&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/368/6629&quot;&gt;accepted &amp;quot;No&amp;quot; answer&lt;/a&gt; had the following to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recent focus on meta-studies in parapsychology has revealed that&#xA;there are small but constantly non-zero effects around studies,&#xA;experimenters and laboratories. The sizes of the effects in&#xA;forced-choice studies appear to be comparable to those reported in&#xA;some medical studies that had been herald as breakthroughs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which can be taken to imply many different things; however, their conclusion also serves as a good one for this answer as well,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If ESP does not exist, there is little to be lost by erring in the&#xA;direction of further research, which may in fact uncover other&#xA;anomalies. If ESP does exist, there is much to be lost by not doing&#xA;process-oriented research and much to be gained by discovering how to&#xA;enhance and apply these abilities to important world problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Horn, Stacy (2009). &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B004JZWMAS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Unbelievable: Investigations into Ghosts, Poltergeists, Telepathy, and Other Unseen Phenomena, from the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. New York, NY: HaperCollins Publishers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rhine, J.B. (1964). &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=a_vi-L5eN6gC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PR11&amp;amp;dq=Joseph%20Banks%20Rhine&amp;amp;ots=2V0GWRpR4r&amp;amp;sig=olwFM-AphzgkpLm0cmN8l3Mb5rs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Extra Sensory Perception&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Boston, MA: Branden Publishing Company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rhine, J.B., Pratt, J.G., Stuart, C.E., Smith, B.M., Greenwood, J.A. (2011). &lt;em&gt;Extra Sensory Perception After Sixty Years: A Critical Appraisal Of The Research In Extra Sensory Perception&lt;/em&gt;. New York, NY: Henry Holt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Littlewood's law, or adage, states that an individual can expect to experience &amp;quot;miracles&amp;quot; at the rate of about one per month.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="7606" LastEditDate="2022-04-14T19:19:54.533" LastActivityDate="2022-04-14T19:19:54.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6698" CreationDate="2013-06-09T10:59:10.033" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Heavier cars are safer than light cars. Larger cars are safer than small cars. This applies to SUV's as well especially since rollover is not a factor in late model SUV's with standard stability control. Crash rates from both types of vehicles are similar, with the heavier/bigger vehicle having a major safety advantage.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iihs.org/externaldata/srdata/docs/sr4404.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;IIHS Status Report, Special Issue: Car Size, Weight and Safety, Vol. 44, No. 4, April 14, 2009&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; exploring mini vehicles and mid-sized vehicles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The heavier car will push the lighter car backward during the impact, which means the velocity change of the heavier car will be much less than that of the lighter car. If the lighter car weighs half as much as the heavier car, the forces on its occupants will be twice as great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also from that report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...vehicle size, specifically the dis￼￼￼￼￼￼tance from the front of a vehicle to its occupant compartment. The longer this is, the lower the forces on the occupants, provided vehicle designers take advantage of the extra length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The safety advantage isn't just in collisions with lighter cars, either &lt;em&gt;Single vehicle&lt;/em&gt; (solo) crash death rates in in small cars like the Honda Fit are as high in single- as well as multiple-vehicle crashes. The death rate in mini cars (as the report describes the Fit and Toyota Yaris) during 2007 was 35 per million, compared with 11 per million for very large cars - three times as high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NHTSA performed a study examining all vehicles up to SUV's, vans, and pickup trucks titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/2003/NHTSA+Releases+Study+on+Vehicle+Weight,+Safety&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Vehicle Weight, Fatality Risk and Crash Compatibility of Model Year 1991-99 Passenger Cars and Light Trucks&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  This study showed that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Weight reductions in passenger cars, lighter vans, pickup trucks, and sport utility vehicles (SUVs) increased the risk of fatal crash involvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NHTSA did say that the slightly heavier &quot;Mid-Sized SUV's&quot; lost some of their safety advantage because of their increased rollover risk. But don't forget, these were older SUV's without stability control. In pure collisions however, they retained an advantage over lighter mid-sized cars because of their higher weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which leads us to rollover risk as it stands today,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;SUVs now least likely for rollover crashes&lt;/em&gt; From an IIHS &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.cnn.com/2011/06/09/autos/suv_rollover/index.htm&quot;&gt;report reported&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each year, from 2006 through 2009, drivers of newer SUVs suffered an average of 28 deaths per million vehicles, according to the Institute. That's about half the average driver death rate for cars, which was 56.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the same IIHS report, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://wot.motortrend.com/report-new-suvs-safer-cars-drivers-nissan-350z-titan-highest-death-risk-85525.html&quot;&gt;Motor Trend, from 2011&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rollover risk in SUVs used to outweigh their size/weight advantage, but that’s no longer the case, thanks to [stability control],” said Anne McCartt, IIHS senior vice president for research, in a statement announcing the report’s findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also from that report: the IIHS says minivans were safest (25 fatalities per million registered vehicle years), followed by SUVs (28 per million), then pickup trucks (52 per million), with the broad “cars” class rated most deadly (56 deaths per million.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stability control was required in 2006 and phased in completely by 2009. When stability control is ubiquitous in passenger cars then this statistic may change. Nevertheless, that the is situation today - SUV's all have stability control and not every car has it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On rollovers, if you buckle up then the risk is greatly reduced for you, and the rollover risk is largely mitigated. There is also a large variation of risk between specific models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.safercar.gov/Vehicle+Shoppers/Rollover/Fatalities&quot;&gt;2% of crashes involved a rollover&lt;/a&gt;, but that 2% were responsible for 35% of the fatalities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2010 alone, more than 7,600 people died in rollover crashes. The majority of them (69%) were not wearing safety belts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to buckle up rollovers are far less of a worry. And don't forget in any case that &lt;em&gt;a rollover less likely to happen now in a SUV than it is to happen in a passenger car!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8163" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-06-10T01:40:16.927" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T01:40:16.927" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16568" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-09T13:01:41.977" Score="7" ViewCount="2641" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a common claim on &amp;quot;natural&amp;quot; living websites as well as a folk wisdom I repeatedly heard from people I know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vinegarandwater.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/apple-cider-vinegar-for-dandruff-the-yuck/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/kitchen-cures-your-doctor-can-not-live-without&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Dr. Oz website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mix a quarter-cup apple cider vinegar with a quarter-cup water. Pour this mixture into a spray bottle and spritz it on to your hair and scalp, being careful to avoid the eye and ear area. Wrap your head in a towel. Leave on for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, then remove the towel and wash your hair. Try this treatment twice a week as a natural alternative to anti-dandruff shampoos that contain harsh chemicals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/kitchen-cures-your-doctor-can-not-live-without&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Apple Cider Vinegar for Dandruff&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One cause of dandruff is excess yeast growth on the scalp. The acidity of apple cider vinegar changes the pH of your scalp, so it’s not an ideal environment for yeast to grow. Mix a quarter-cup apple cider vinegar with a quarter-cup water. Pour this mixture into a spray bottle and spritz it on to your hair and scalp, being careful to avoid the eye and ear area. Wrap your head in a towel. Leave on for anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, then remove the towel and wash your hair. Try this treatment twice a week as a natural alternative to anti-dandruff shampoos that contain harsh chemicals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-11T05:04:05.697" Title="Does apple cider vinegar help with dandruff" Tags="|natural-remedies|vinegar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6798" CreationDate="2013-06-09T22:31:01.060" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Al osbou' assahafi is (or was, I think it might have closed) a satirical publication. Not unlike le Canard Enchainé in France and Private Eye in the UK. This was obviously not news but satire and treated as such in Morocco. Atlas Monkeys are an endangered species in Morocco and I doubt there would be 2000 in the wild to begin with, let alone to train as kamikaze landmine detonators. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ps: In French, you always send a communiqué pour clarifier (to clarify). I gives the parties the possibility to shelve the situation as a misunderstanding. Denial (nier) is reserved to direct accusations and conveys a significant enough outrage for confrontation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14114" LastActivityDate="2013-06-09T22:31:01.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16578" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16579" CreationDate="2013-06-10T16:49:02.160" Score="32" ViewCount="8998" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57547697-1/ancient-d20-die-emerges-from-the-ashes-of-time/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ancient d20 die emerges from the ashes of time&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many centuries before Dungeons &amp;amp; Dragons was even a glimmer in the eye of Gary Gygax, ancient Egyptians were rolling a d20 die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/search-the-collections/100008377?img=0&quot;&gt;Metropolitan Museum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Twenty-sided die (icosahedron) with faces inscribed with Greek letters&#xA;  Period: Ptolemaic Period–Roman Period Date: 2nd century B.C.–4th century A.D. Geography: Country of Origin Egypt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the Ancient Egyptians really use 20-sided dice, or was this just a one time thing or a fake?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2013-06-10T20:27:53.550" LastActivityDate="2016-12-06T11:57:54.660" Title="Did the Ancient Egyptians use twenty-sided dice?" Tags="|history|religion|mathematics|egypt|archeology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16578" CreationDate="2013-06-10T17:35:28.950" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Egyptians and other cultures really did use twenty-sided dice as evidenced by studies and artifacts, such as the one at the Met.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/t6yU6.png&quot; alt=&quot;Kharga d20&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &quot;A Demotic Inscribed Icosahedron from Dakhleh Oasis&quot; by Martina Minas-Nerpel&#xA;published in the &lt;em&gt;The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology&lt;/em&gt; in 2007 (Vol. 93, pp. 137-148), describes &quot;a unique icosahedron found at Qaret el-Muzzawaqa in the 1980s and now housed in the New Valley Museum at Kharga&quot; (pictured above). Mina-Nerpel writes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It probably dates to the first century ad. In contrast to other icosahedra &#xA;  known from Graeco-Roman Egypt, this one is not inscribed with Greek or Latin letters or numbers,  but with 20 Egyptian divine names in Demotic, thus adapting Egyptian concepts to a Greek form [...] The polyhedron was presumably used in an oracular procedure intended to establish  which deity would provide help to the petitioner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She goes on to cite examples of Egyptian icosahedra including: three &quot;made of steatite or faience, inscribed with Greek letters&quot; in Cairo and Paris museums, &quot;four polyhedra  from Egypt with Greek letters made of faience, serpentine, steatite, or calcite&quot; housed in the British Museum, &quot;a faience icosahedron inscribed with Greek letters&quot; sold on the art market, and a rock crystal icosahedron &quot;inscribed with Latin letters and Roman &#xA;numerals&quot; at the Louvre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are described (or &quot;published&quot; in other words) in the literature and regarded as authentic by scholars and collectors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information you can begin with a chapter by W.J. Tait called &quot;Dicing with the Gods&quot; in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldcat.org/title/egyptian-religion-the-last-thousand-years-studies-dedicated-to-the-memory-of-jan-quaegebeur/oclc/40366235&amp;amp;referer=brief_results&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Egyptian Religion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, edited by W. Clarysse, A. Schoors, and H. Willems (Leuven: Peeters, 1998).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth mentioning that Platonic solids (of which icosahedron is one) were also known to the Greeks, at least as far back as 300 BC. Euclid attributes the discovery of the icosahedron to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theaetetus_%28mathematician%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Theaetetus&lt;/a&gt;. (See &quot;The Discovery of Regular Solids&quot; by William C. Waterhouse in &lt;em&gt;Archive for History of Exact Sciences&lt;/em&gt;,  Vol. 9, No. 3, 30.XII.1972).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2013-06-10T20:17:25.210" LastActivityDate="2013-06-10T20:17:25.210" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16582" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-10T21:19:33.420" Score="2" ViewCount="360" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a reasonably strong relationship between high blood pressure (hypertension) and cardiovascular events such s strokes and heart attacks. As a result, conventional wisdom (as expressed &lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/14597836/reload=0;jsessionid=PZZw4N32Sbh3EESfqwVo.6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; by WHO) suggests preventative treatment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since publication of the WHO/ISH Guidelines for the Management of Hypertension in 1999, more evidence has become available to support a systolic blood pressure threshold of 140 mmHg for even 'low-risk' patients. ... There is evidence that specific agents have benefits for patients with particular compelling indications, and that monotherapy is inadequate for the majority of patients. For patients without a compelling indication for a particular drug class, on the basis of comparative trial data, availability, and cost, a low dose of diuretic should be considered for initiation of therapy. In most places a thiazide diuretic is the cheapest option and thus most cost effective, but for compelling indications where other classes provide additional benefits, even if more expensive, they may be more cost effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1687525&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recent opinion piece&lt;/a&gt;, British GP Iona Heath suggests that we are currently overtreating low risk patients and actually making their health worse:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...antihypertensive drugs used in the treatment of otherwise healthy adults with mild hypertension (systolic blood pressure [BP], 140–159 mm Hg, and/or diastolic BP, 90–99 mm Hg) have &lt;strong&gt;not been shown to reduce mortality or morbidity in randomized clinical trials.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The controversy is discussed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://onforb.es/17DahrE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt; concluding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While Dr. Heath raises some interesting points, her call for significantly raising the treatment threshold (to 160/100) should be discarded until stronger evidence supports her ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is right? Do we have good evidence that preventative treatment to lower blood pressure improves health outcomes? What is the balance of benefit and harm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T04:45:52.463" Title="Does treating people with mild hypertension improve their outcomes?" Tags="|medical-science|epidemiology|medications|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16583" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-11T00:09:19.720" Score="7" ViewCount="3214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read an &lt;a href=&quot;http://antigonexxi.com/recettes/a-la-table-du-petit-dejeuner/nutella-is-dead/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; stating that Nutella was dangerous (and addictive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Terribly addicting indeed… but not surprising, because because the truth is that Nutella contains monosodium glutamate , aka E621 &lt;a href=&quot;http://antigonexxi.com/recettes/a-la-table-du-petit-dejeuner/nutella-is-dead/&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; deeply hidden in the famous word ‘flavorings’. [2] You know, glutamate, the flavor enhancer that would stimulate appetite and maliciously destroy neurons[3]… To this is added –  wait for it – a small dose of … plastic ! And yes, our famous spread contains DEHP , one of the most dangerous phthalates [4], which is usually used to produce packaging and has the nasty tendency to migrate into the product. Be aware that this unwelcome guest is banned in toys and cosmetics because it is considered a carcinogen and induces, uh … testicular atrophy. Nice, huh?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The references are quite shabby in my opinion (even if there is one from Nature). What I doubt, is that there is such substance in the Nutella. I also think that if there really is such substance in the product it would be in quantities that are safe for human consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is Nutella causing destruction of human neurons?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-06-11T01:01:03.413" LastActivityDate="2013-06-11T01:01:03.413" Title="Does Nutella contains subtances that destroy neurons?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16584" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-11T01:58:21.557" Score="18" ViewCount="10248" Body="&lt;p&gt;Claim from Facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/R2Gtj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did you know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A smartphone microwaves for just one minute will fully charge the battery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/06/ask-lh-can-you-recharge-a-mobile-battery-in-the-microwave/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lifehacker insists it's fake&lt;/a&gt;, and I know it is, but I figured it'd be a useful one to have someone explain the scientific basis or describe what will &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; happen, and why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5933" LastEditorUserId="14201" LastEditDate="2013-06-18T21:11:34.860" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T01:09:00.663" Title="Can you recharge a phone battery in the microwave?" Tags="|microwaves|battery|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16584" CreationDate="2013-06-11T07:58:55.570" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is plenty of people trying ad hoc experiments about what happens to phones put in a microwave:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_Gd4zARl_I&quot;&gt;Cell Phone In A Microwave!&lt;/a&gt; video&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5vOHwRZjXE&quot;&gt;Cell Phone In The Microwave&lt;/a&gt; video&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_z1QcytwsA&quot;&gt;Is It A Good Idea To Microwave A Cell Phone?&lt;/a&gt; video - excludes battery&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without peer-review and a proper literature search, there is a limit to how much we can trust these anecdotes. Further, these phones are old - not modern cell-phones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in each video, the phone is completely destroyed - the the microwave is sometimes damaged. It should be sufficient evidence to convince people that this claim is a hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-06-18T11:59:35.903" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T11:59:35.903" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16589" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-11T11:03:56.360" Score="16" ViewCount="2786" Body="&lt;p&gt;Universities and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychometrics-uk.com/page26.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;companies&lt;/a&gt; conduct, administer, or provide programmer aptitude tests. A number of people have expressed both &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160220065429/http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alfredth/archive/2006/08/04/can-you-learn-to-program.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;skepticism&lt;/a&gt; as well as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;agreement&lt;/a&gt; that they may be useful with the hiring process as &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20110407034331/http://www.waldentesting.com/about/article10.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claimed by one company&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a practical point of view, the PAAT definitely identifies those&#xA;people with a high aptitude for programming and for systems analysis.&#xA;It also identifies those individuals who are high-risk hires (low&#xA;scores). This is the true value of the test. It minimizes the costs&#xA;associated with a poor employment decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that this is a reliable mechanism for selection?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14127" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2020-12-31T10:50:07.037" LastActivityDate="2020-12-31T10:50:07.037" Title="Do programming aptitude tests provide a reliable measurement of skills?" Tags="|programming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16589" CreationDate="2013-06-11T23:21:29.270" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is actually a very interesting question since we need to look at this from at least two standpoints: the ability for an aptitude test accurately predict if the test taker is suited to leaning the skill set and the ability for  such tests to accurately predict employee performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the use of such tests to predict academic success (i.e. leaning the skill set), it appears that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ppig.org/papers/14th-tukiainen.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IBM lead the way&lt;/a&gt; in this department with their development of the IBM Programmer Aptitude Test (PAT)&lt;sup&gt;1, 2, 3&lt;/sup&gt; in the 1960's. However, in 1980 a &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358811&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study was published&lt;/a&gt; that followed 2,000 students, 1,350 of whom finished and concluded that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results indicate that future programming skill is not predictable&#xA;by the most commonly used written test (IBM's Programming Aptitude&#xA;Test). The suggestion is that this type of test should not be&#xA;administered to college level people as the results are unreliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1984 &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=358288&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;another study&lt;/a&gt; was published that examined the more traditional means of student section to programs (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SAT scores&lt;/a&gt;, class rank, high school courses, etc.) which found that there was a positive correlation between these variables and academic success. However, it is important to note that in this situation a aptitude test specific to programming was not administered though. In fact, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08993401003612167#.UbehmpyGXoR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2010 survey paper&lt;/a&gt; concluded that, with regards to aptitude tests predicting academic success,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aptitude tests are not reliable predictors of success, and have not&#xA;identified any cognitive capacity which is especially significant for&#xA;learning to program. Evidence relating to predictors such as&#xA;educational or demographic background, cognitive development or style,&#xA;or a range of other factors, is also ambiguous or weak. On balance&#xA;some factors (such as mathematical background/ability, or self-ratings&#xA;of confidence/comfort as the course progresses) emerge as moderately&#xA;correlated with success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The apparent working draft &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dehnadi and Bornat paper&lt;/a&gt; that was referred to by the articles (&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160220065429/http://blogs.msdn.com/b/alfredth/archive/2006/08/04/can-you-learn-to-program.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;) in the question had it's hypothesis rejected &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madalgo.au.dk/%7Elarsen/papers/mental_models.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;by another paper&lt;/a&gt; and in fact the Dehnadi and Bornat &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1379253&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;later presented&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://crpit.com/confpapers/CRPITV78Bornat.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;direct link&lt;/a&gt;) revised findings where the concluded that their orginal working paper was incorrect, concluding,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We cannot claim to be separating the programming goats from the&#xA;non-programming sheep: experiment 3 demolishes the notion that&#xA;consistent subjects will for the most part learn well, and others for&#xA;the most part won't. And even in the most encouraging of our results,&#xA;we find a 50% success rate in those who don't score C0 or CM2.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;None the less, some of our results indicate that there may be something&#xA;going on with consistency. There is a case for continuing our&#xA;investigations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So with regards to aptitude tests indicating academic success, there doesn't appear to be strong evidence that programming aptitude tests are useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This brings us to the question of the use of aptitude tests as a prediction of employee success. For the purposes of this answer, I'm going to assume that you are not referring to tests such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Certification_Program&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oracle Certification Program&lt;/a&gt; which tests candidates on a specific topic, but rather more generic ones such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.waldentesting.com/about/article10.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Walden Programmer Analyst Aptitude Test&lt;/a&gt; which attempts to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... simulate what the job applicant is required to do on the job, as&#xA;well as to determine who is likely to be successful in technical&#xA;training courses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this situation I couldn't find much in the way of recent research that definitively showed a correlation between aptitude tests and employee performance. Much of the literature specific to programmer aptitude tests is either focused on predicting academic success which has already been discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/IBM-ProgApti-120-6762-2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some early examples&lt;/a&gt; of which can be found with great difficultly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Incidentally at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1138436&amp;amp;dl=ACM&amp;amp;coll=DL&amp;amp;CFID=338269699&amp;amp;CFTOKEN=17853827&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one journal article&lt;/a&gt; claims that that IBM no longer endorses the use of PAT and I was unable to find any mention of it being used any later than about the 1980's. A new version of the PAT could not be found when searching the IBM website.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It appears that IBM is using a new test in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-05.ibm.com/employment/uk/graduates/apply_selection.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;United Kingdom for recruitment&lt;/a&gt; that goes by the name IPAT or IPATO which is short for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://brunelpccblog.wordpress.com/tag/aptitude-tests/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Information Processing Aptitude Test On-line&lt;/a&gt;. There doesn't appear to be any relation between the IPAT and the original PAT nor does it appear to test a candidates &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.practiceshltests.com/companies-using-shl/ibm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ability to acquire programming skills&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2020-12-28T20:26:02.737" LastActivityDate="2020-12-28T20:26:02.737" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16347" CreationDate="2013-06-12T16:00:59.750" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Islam is not forbidden in Japan. here is a link to a video about Japanese pilgrims to Mecca:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/hajj/2009/11/2009111011825150196.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.aljazeera.com/focus/hajj/2009/11/2009111011825150196.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A local Japanese Muslim website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dokidoki.ne.jp/home2/islam/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.dokidoki.ne.jp/home2/islam/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were some contacts between Muslims (Islam not being a race as there has been a sizeable Muslim community in China since the 8th century AD) and the Japanese in the Middle Ages. But the kernel of the modern Muslim community in Japan dates back to the beginning of the 20th century when Muslims of central Asia were banned from practicing their religion according to Soviet measures and some landed in Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_China&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_China&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.checksandbalances.nl/World.html#!/asia/a-muslim-in-japan/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.checksandbalances.nl/World.html#!/asia/a-muslim-in-japan/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14146" LastEditorUserId="36598" LastEditDate="2016-11-05T20:57:10.227" LastActivityDate="2016-11-05T20:57:10.227" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16608" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-13T10:09:47.773" Score="5" ViewCount="1252" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://drmarkgriffiths.wordpress.com/2012/10/03/bust-a-move-can-hypnosis-increase-breast-size/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr Mark Griffiths Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also in 1977, Dr. Richard Willard published a study in the American&#xA;  Journal of Clinical Hypnosis. Using a slightly different technique to&#xA;  the previously published studies with a sample of 22 women (aged 19 to&#xA;  54 years), Willard reported an average increase in breast size of&#xA;  nearly one and a half inches following a 12-week program. In this&#xA;  study, the women practiced self-hypnosis and visual imagery (rather&#xA;  than being hypnotized by a practitioner). Those who could best&#xA;  visualize their breasts getting bigger were the ones who showed the&#xA;  greatest increases in breast size. Other main findings reported were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;85% reported a significant breast enlargement before they had been measured&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;46% had to buy larger bras after the study&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The average increase in breast circumference was 1.37 inches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The average increase in the vertical breast measurement was 0.67 inches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The average increase in horizontal breast measurement was 1.01 inches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Only two women who (subjectively) felt there was no significant increase, did (objectively) have a measurable increase in breast size&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4603" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-08-20T09:34:13.957" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T09:34:13.957" Title="Can hypnosis increase breast size?" Tags="|psychology|hypnotism|breast|breast-enlargement|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16609" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-13T12:32:28.007" Score="9" ViewCount="1124" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dn.se/ekonomi/invandrare-betalar-mer-till-samhallet-an-de-far-tillbaka/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DN.se&lt;/a&gt; made an article(2013-06-13) about immigrants contributing economically more than the cost.&#xA;Immigration is a very hot topic in Sweden, and Sweden have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Sweden&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;very high number of refugees&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2009, Sweden had the fourth largest number of asylum applications in the EU and the largest number per capita after Cyprus and Malta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is, does this study take into calculation all costs related to immigration, or is it just parts of it? Is there any difference between work-immigrants and refugees in the contributions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like the stats is too good to be true, and it's commonly said that immigration is breaking down the welfare of Sweden, and that Sweden is going downhill. It's popular stance enough for a racist discontent-party to get voted into the government. I would be interested in an objective and statistics based critical examination of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data the article in DN is based off is from OECD, and the short version is in a picture below, while the full report is linked to bottom of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oecd.org/els/mig/imo2013.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Immigration - OECD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hw1Fu.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/social-issues-migration-health/international-migration-outlook-2013_migr_outlook-2013-en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Full report&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(Page 147 is where the picture above is based on, 173 and 174 compares immigrants to non-immigrants)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-13T13:57:11.930" LastActivityDate="2013-06-13T13:57:11.930" Title="Does immigration have a positive economical impact on Sweden?" Tags="|economics|immigration|sweden|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16313" CreationDate="2013-06-13T19:21:33.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.  I'll try to answer in order of strength of argument (this is re Cook 2013).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, many of the authors of the papers counted as &quot;endorsing&quot; AGW have publicly debunked the claim that their papers supported AGW.  That fact alone invalidates the study.  You can easily verify this at WUWT where scientists' refutations are posted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/21/cooks-97-consensus-study-falsely-classifies-scientists-papers-according-to-the-scientists-that-published-them/&quot;&gt;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/21/cooks-97-consensus-study-falsely-classifies-scientists-papers-according-to-the-scientists-that-published-them/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-study-falsely-classifies-scientists.html#Update2&quot;&gt;http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/05/97-study-falsely-classifies-scientists.html#Update2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/RichardTol/statuses/337126632080957441&quot;&gt;https://twitter.com/RichardTol/statuses/337126632080957441&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, the definition of &quot;endorsement&quot; was extremely vague.  If a study assumed AGW, that's counted as an endorsement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, the definition of &quot;AGW&quot; is extremely vague.  Nearly all prominent skeptics agree &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; amount of warming is anthropogenic -- this study would count them as supporters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fourth, the methodology is beyond awful.  The study was done by AGW proponents from a website promoting AGW, no pretense of objectivity was attempted (e.g. by inviting skeptics to participate).  The referees were not independent as was claimed (they openly discussed the refereeing on the site). They ignored hundreds of papers from highly respected journals that explicitly questioned AGW, on the basis the authors were not &quot;climatology experts&quot; even though that definition is practically synonymous with &quot;AGW supporter&quot; because skeptics are prevented from publishing in climate journals by the pal review process.  Again, easily verifiable on WUWT.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/5/27/landmark-consensus-study-is-incomplete.html&quot;&gt;http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/5/27/landmark-consensus-study-is-incomplete.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/15/skeptical-science-kidz-channel-inigo-montoya-in-new-consensus-paper/&quot;&gt;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/15/skeptical-science-kidz-channel-inigo-montoya-in-new-consensus-paper/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Anderegg and Lewandosky studies have similar problems.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/05/lewandowsky-et-al-2013-surveying-peter-to-report-on-paul/&quot;&gt;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/05/lewandowsky-et-al-2013-surveying-peter-to-report-on-paul/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/&quot;&gt;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, 97% is a hard number to support, even if you mean things that AGW skeptics generally agree with too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistical problems&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/01/tol-statistically-deconstructs-the-97-consensus/&quot;&gt;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/01/tol-statistically-deconstructs-the-97-consensus/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Approval process issues&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/04/self-admitted-cyber-thief-peter-gleick-is-still-on-the-iop-board-that-approved-the-cook-97-consensus-paper/&quot;&gt;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/04/self-admitted-cyber-thief-peter-gleick-is-still-on-the-iop-board-that-approved-the-cook-97-consensus-paper/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couold cite many more, but I assume I'll get the usual &quot;can't cite WUWT&quot; complaint, the last refuge of those who can't deal with facts, even though relatively little of what WUWT posts is even original research.  Sigh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And not strictly on topic, but this is a good list of problems with AGW theories generally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/05/global-warming-theory-has-failed-all-tests-so-alarmists-return-to-the-97-consensus-hoax/&quot;&gt;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/05/global-warming-theory-has-failed-all-tests-so-alarmists-return-to-the-97-consensus-hoax/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14160" LastEditorUserId="14160" LastEditDate="2013-06-14T15:51:08.927" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T15:51:08.927" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16614" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="53007" CreationDate="2013-06-14T08:19:42.140" Score="12" ViewCount="847" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you've seen the movie Zero Dark Thirty, you've seen how the CIA tried to ascertain the identity of Osama bin Laden by sending a doctor to the compound where bin Laden was suspected to be hiding. The doctor represented a sham vaccination program (against Hepatitis B), asking for permission to vaccinate the children in the compound, with the intention of running DNA analyses on the syringes afterwards to determine whether any of the children were bin Laden's. The effort failed because the doctor didn't get a chance to vaccinate any of the children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.startalkradio.net/show/zombie-apocalypse-part-2/&quot;&gt;recent episode of Star Talk Radio&lt;/a&gt;, Lori Garrett (sp?) asserted that this caused a violent backlash against healthcare workers, including numerous assassinations of volunteer helpers to the Polio eradication campaign. An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-cia-fake-vaccination-campaign-endangers-us-all&quot;&gt;article in Scientific American&lt;/a&gt; seems to corroborate this. (The doctor himself appears to have been sentenced to 33 years in a Pakistani prison for his actions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moral issues with using healthcare workers for non-healthcare purposes aside, is that really true? Did the Taliban (or other Muslim groups) start or increase their anti-vaccination actions after this became public? I was under the impression that religious &quot;aversion&quot; to vaccination campaigns (together with all sorts of conspiracy theories) has been around much longer than this incident. Are there any studies on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastActivityDate="2022-02-06T05:42:56.843" Title="Is the hunt for Osama bin Laden responsible for the setback(s) in Polio eradication?" Tags="|vaccines|terrorism|osama-bin-laden|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1569" CreationDate="2013-06-14T14:43:55.077" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, although the circumstances are a bit unusual, and outside of them &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/1592/6629&quot;&gt;SophieMonster’s response&lt;/a&gt; covers situations that are more likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary situation in which it could be agreed that biological death occurred instantly would be vaporization of the body if someone were close enough to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocenter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hypocenter&lt;/a&gt; of an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;nuclear weapon&lt;/a&gt; detonation, which is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/peopleevents/pandeAMEX63.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;well&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/effects.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;documented&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_nuclear_explosions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;effect&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most elements of the Japanese 2nd General Army were at physical&#xA;  training on the grounds of Hiroshima Castle when the bomb exploded.&#xA;  Barely 900 yards from the explosion’s epicenter, the castle and its&#xA;  residents were vaporized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does however require that you are close enough to the hypocenter to be exposed to the appropriate temperatures, which are estimated to &lt;a href=&quot;http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/SimonFung.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;be around 10&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; K&lt;/a&gt;; otherwise you are likely to die of the secondary effects of the blast instead. Recalling the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, most did not die of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;immediate effects&lt;/a&gt; but rather the longer term effects of radiation or injuries caused by the bombings, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://nuclearsecrecy.com/blog/2013/03/22/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-in-color/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;most things are not vaporized&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomb_disposal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bomb disposal technicians&lt;/a&gt; make reference to being turned into &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stripes.com/news/marine-bomb-expert-shaken-but-not-deterred-by-ied-1.43618&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pink mist&lt;/a&gt;&quot; which could also qualify; however, without knowing what the yield of a given device is, there is no way to ensure that it would be instantaneous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2014-05-11T07:45:48.623" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16618" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16104" CreationDate="2013-06-14T15:09:14.010" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's confirmed by the US government&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is only true to the time of writing (June 14&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt;). At this point in time, the US government has acknowledged that the &lt;strong&gt;Syrian Regime&lt;/strong&gt; is using chemical weapons in a limited way, and, because of this, will be arming the rebels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US has said it will provide military support to the Syrian rebels after confirming it believes there is concrete evidence of nerve gas attacks by government forces against rebel groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The assessment that limited attacks have taken place, based on CIA tests on blood, urine and hair samples from dead or wounded rebel fighters, is the first time Washington has supported claims made by British and French intelligence services in recent weeks. Assad has repeatedly denied using any chemical weapons in the bitter civil war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/13/syria-chemical-weapons-us-confirm%5D&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/13/18940169-us-offers-syrian-rebels-military-support-alleges-assad-used-chemical-weapons?lite&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NBC&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the reported source for the data is the CIA, I doubt that we will see the original data in the near future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Russians, on the other hand claim that they have seen the evidence and don't find it convincing enough:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, an aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin said Moscow is unconvinced that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against rebels in the country's civil war, according to Russia's state-run news agency RIA Novosti.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Presidential aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters in Moscow that the United States had shown Russian officials data and information on this score but that it was &amp;quot;unconvincing,&amp;quot; according to the news agency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The Americans tried to show us information about the Assad's regime using chemical weapons. But if I have to be direct, what we saw does not look convincing to us,&amp;quot; Ushakov is quoted as saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/14/world/meast/syria-civil-war/?hpt=wo_c1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course one should remember that Russia still has active trade relations with the Syrian and is still, even in this time, selling them weapon systems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/05/31/russian-arms-manufacturer-signs-contract-to-sell-at-least-10-mig-fighter-jets/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Russian arms manufacturer to sell at least 10 MiG fighter jets to Syria&lt;/a&gt;, FOX news&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/middle-east-live/2013/may/28/eu-lifts-arms-embargo-on-syrian-rebels-live-updates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US calls Russian arms sales to Syrian government a 'mistake'&lt;/a&gt;, The Guardian&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-228636/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;U.S. Is Warned Russia Plans Syria Arms Sale&lt;/a&gt;, The Wall Street Journal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4385517,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US to Russia: Selling S-300 missiles to Syria – mistake&lt;/a&gt;, YNet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the Russians have a strong incentive to not acknowledge that chemical weapons are used so as to not enforce an embargo of weapons on Syria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-14T15:13:06.597" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16623" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-16T07:54:41.747" Score="3" ViewCount="1571" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201306120069&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;In polite Japan, vulgarities rise as hate speech spreads&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, it brings up anti-Korean sentiment in Japan. A Japanese person who was a member of a protest organized by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaitokukai&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zaitokukai&lt;/a&gt; portrayed Koreans as having narrow eyes, and assumed that others have the same perception of Koreans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To show why he thought the woman on the street was Korean, the speech&#xA;  reader pulled on the sides of his eyes to form narrow slits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compared to Japanese people, do Koreans have narrow eyes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-16T08:21:27.990" LastActivityDate="2013-06-16T09:06:26.443" Title="Compared to Japanese people, do Koreans have narrow eyes?" Tags="|japan|anatomy|race|korea|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16623" CreationDate="2013-06-16T08:15:56.367" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, &amp;quot;It is assumed that Korean (sic) had narrower eye fissure [...] than what Japanese craved during that era.&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/jcraniofacialsurgery/Abstract/2005/09000/Anthropometric_Comparison_of_Portraits_of_Korean.10.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anthropometric Comparison of Portraits of Korean and Japanese Beauty in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a small-sample study comparing &lt;em&gt;Chinese&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Korean&lt;/em&gt; eyes, there was no significant difference in height, width, or inclination between the two populations. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1524-4725.2009.01285.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anatomic Properties of the Upper Eyelid in Asian Americans&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A larger scale study 594 Koreans (273 male, 321 female) obtained the following values for height, width, and inclination of the eyes (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1748681506004335&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Asymmetry of the palpebral fissure and upper eyelid crease in Koreans&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Sex     Inclination (°)         Height*,** (mm)         Width*,** (mm)&#xA;        Right       Left        Right       Left        Right       Left&#xA;Male    8.5 ± 2.5   8.4 ± 2.4   10.0 ± 1.6  9.9 ± 1.6   28.2 ± 3.1  29.0 ± 3.0&#xA;Female  9.2 ± 2.5   9.3 ± 2.5   10.2 ± 1.6  10.0 ± 1.7  26.8 ± 3.6  27.6 ± 3.5&#xA;Total   8.9 ± 2.5   8.9 ± 2.5   10.1 ± 1.6  9.9 ± 1.6   27.5 ± 3.5  28.2 ± 3.4&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study analyzing the eye height and width of Japanese (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2694016/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oriental oculopalpebral dimensions: Quantitative comparison between Orientals from Japan and Brazil&lt;/a&gt;) reported:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Eye width           Age group&#xA;                    20 to 29 years  30 to 39 years  40 to 49 years  ≥50 years&#xA;Male                25.21 ± 1.27    25.72 ± 1.73    27.26 ± 1.12    23.14 ± 2.51&#xA;Female              24.99 ± 1.68    24.63 ± 1.42    24.26 ± 1.40    22.52 ± 2.11&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;Eye height          Age group&#xA;                    20 to 29 years  30 to 39 years  40 to 49 years  ≥50 years&#xA;Male                9.23 ± 0.96 9.06 ± 1.80 9.10 ± 0.92 7.32 ± 1.33&#xA;Female              9.10 ± 1.65 9.08 ± 1.74 8.65 ± 1.11 7.33 ± 1.29&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.koreamed.org/SearchBasic.php?RID=0099JKCPCA/2002.3.2.185&amp;amp;DT=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anthropometric Analysis of Slant of Palpebral Fissure in Koreans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, 996 Koreans including 468 males and 528 females were measured. The slant was reported to be 8.5+/-2.0° in males and 8.8+/-2.5° in females.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubmedcentralcanada.ca/pmcc/articles/PMC3562989/;jsessionid=03503A6C87D8783CD0CAA6EDB275DA94.eider?lang=en-ca&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anthropometric Analysis of Palpebral Fissure Dimensions and its Position in South Indian Ethnic Adults&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, the authors report that the palpebral fissure inclination for Koreans was higher compared to other racial groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00266-012-9937-7/fulltext.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Biometric Study of Eyelid Shape and Dimensions of Different Races with References to Beauty&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, the authors reported measurements for average and attractive female Korean and Asian faces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The median eye fissure height (EFH) for an average Korean face was 8.62 mm, for an attractive Korean face it was 10.88 mm, and for an attractive Asian face it was 12.49 mm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The eye fissure width (EFW) in an average Korean face was 24.81 mm, in an attractive Korean face it was 26.78 mm, and in an attractive Asian face it was 28.10 mm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-16T09:06:26.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16625" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16627" CreationDate="2013-06-16T13:04:56.970" Score="22" ViewCount="1587" Body="&lt;p&gt;In popular culture there is a claim that Native American used a ritual dance in order to encourage rains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the &lt;em&gt;How I Met Your Mother&lt;/em&gt; episode &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Come_On_%28How_I_Met_Your_Mother%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Come On&quot;&lt;/a&gt; Ted does a rain dance in order to make rain fall (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idzIGOCrtV0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;video clip&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQjqxayxwt4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tim Minchin uses rain dancing&lt;/a&gt; to explain logic fallacies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to it? Did Native Americans perform a dancing ritual whose purpose was to encourage more rains or to stop droughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2018-07-02T18:52:57.730" LastActivityDate="2018-07-02T18:52:57.730" Title="Did native americans ever used the practice of a &quot;Rain Dance&quot; in order to encourage rains?" Tags="|anthropology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16625" CreationDate="2013-06-16T14:04:28.780" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indians.org/articles/rain-dance.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.indians.org/articles/rain-dance.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This rain dance was meant to bring rain for the entire year or for a specific season.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other main points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Usually in late August&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Still performed today&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Special clothing made just for the rain dances&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More common in Native American tribes in the dry, Southwestern United States&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elsie Clews Parsons. &lt;em&gt;Some Aztec and Pueblo Parallels&lt;/em&gt;. American Anthropologist , New Series, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1933), pp. 611-631&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an Aztec rain dance held every eight years [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was the Aztec belief that in this rain ceremony all the gods were dancing, and therefore the dancers were dressed in diverse fancy costume [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gertrude P. Kurath. &lt;em&gt;Calling the Rain Gods&lt;/em&gt;. The Journal of American Folklore , Vol. 73, No. 290 (Oct. - Dec., 1960), pp. 312-316&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In winter and spring [the rain gods] are also called in unmasked rain dances by men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dance is described:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To lure the rain gods and clouds he beckons with a circling of the wrist&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-16T14:43:40.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5291" CreationDate="2013-06-17T16:03:28.177" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is plenty of proof that these stations are used specifically for intel and espionage purposes. Plenty of official documents acknowledge them as spy stations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/papers/cuban_agent_communications.pdf&quot;&gt;personal paper&lt;/a&gt;, some years ago, based on FBI and court documents. The paper is fully referenced and all sources, documents and FBI affidavit, from government and court trials are publicly available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It describes how some agents were caught by the FBI using numbers stations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on general information provided by the FBI, Diplomatic Security (DS) started in 2006 a &#xA;  comprehensive internal investigation that resulted in the identification of Kendall Myers as a &#xA;  probable Cuban agent. In 2009, the FBI started an undercover operation. The Myers were &#xA;  both retired at that time. An FBI undercover source approached the Myers and told them he &#xA;  was sent by a known Cuban Intelligence officer to contact them and get some information. &#xA;  Walter Kendall Myers agreed to meet the undercover source and to provide the requested &#xA;  information. During a series of personal meetings, and believing they were talking to a &#xA;  genuine CuIS officer, they revealed their 30 years of espionage activities for Cuba and &#xA;  various operational details. Among the operational details were the use of a shortwave &#xA;  radio53, e-mail communications with their handlers and their own code names. &#xA;  According to the affidavit, the FBI collected enciphered messages that were sent by &#xA;  shortwave broadcasts from the CuIS in Cuba to CuIS officers and agents abroad. The FBI &#xA;  identified that some of these messages, in de period 1996 – 1997, were broadcast to a CuIS &#xA;  handler of the Myers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14188" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-06-17T16:22:43.117" LastActivityDate="2013-06-17T16:22:43.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16634" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-06-17T23:32:07.990" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;About Korea as a whole, as opposed to North or South Korea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2013-06-18T02:59:36.177" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T02:59:36.177" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16635" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-06-17T23:32:07.990" Score="0" Body="About Korea as a whole, as opposed to North or South Korea." OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2013-06-18T02:59:32.160" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T02:59:32.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8444" CreationDate="2013-06-18T06:56:30.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL/DR: There are no quality studies supporting the Pentoxyverine. The class of drugs that Pentoxyverine belongs to does not have strong support either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our good friends at the Cochrane Collaboration, who do high-quality meta-analyses, looked at over-the-counter cough medicines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smith, S. M., Schroeder, K. and Fahey, T. (2009), &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ebch.314/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cochrane review: Over-the-counter medications for acute cough in children and adults in ambulatory settings.&lt;/a&gt; Evid.-Based Child Health, 4: 65–95. doi: 10.1002/ebch.314&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambulatory_care&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ambulatory settings&lt;/a&gt; roughly means medical care not in a hospital ward.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They looked at twenty-five trials involving 3492 people (separating adults and children), and they looked at expectorants, antihistamines, antihistamine decongestants, antitussives, bronchodilators and guaifenesin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The evidence for effectiveness of oral over-the-counter cough medicines is weak&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Acute cough is a common and troublesome symptom in people who suffer from acute upper respiratory tract infection (URTI). Many people self-prescribe over-the-counter (OTC) cough preparations and health practitioners often recommend their use for the initial treatment of cough. The results of this review suggest that there is &lt;strong&gt;no good evidence for or against the effectiveness of OTC medications in acute cough&lt;/strong&gt;. The results of this review have to be &lt;strong&gt;interpreted with caution&lt;/strong&gt; because the number of studies in each category of cough preparations was small. Many studies were of low quality and very different from each other, making evaluation of overall efficacy difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there were &lt;em&gt;no trials included that covered Pentoxyverine&lt;/em&gt;. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentoxyverine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pentoxyverine&lt;/a&gt; is an antitussive, and there were a total of 8 trials that covered antitussives. So the &lt;em&gt;class&lt;/em&gt; of drugs was tested, and did not provide clear evidence for or against, but the individual drug wasn't covered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, looking at their selection criteria, any high-quality studies of Pentoxyverine should have been found and included. We can conclude that a careful search by these researchers for quality trials of Pentoxyverine found none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-18T06:56:30.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16642" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16646" CreationDate="2013-06-18T15:26:32.637" Score="5" ViewCount="1582" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am often confronted with arguments for or against &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_determinism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;biological&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_determinism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;social determinism&lt;/a&gt; versus free will. One of the arguments I hear regularly is that determinism is bad for society because denying the possibility &quot;to have done otherwise&quot; undermines the foundation of our moral system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final point, I heard people name the case of an defendant being exculpated in front of a U.S. court because the judge has been convinced that there is a biological/social determinism that didn't allow the defendant to do otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I am not interested in a discussion on the topic of guilt and determinism, I would love to know if such a case has ever taken place. I don't mean cases where clinically verifiable impairment, like alcoholism or a environmentally induced lack of empathy, has been used to &lt;em&gt;explain&lt;/em&gt; the deed, but a case where the &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; explanation of the act is the argument that a person isn't free to do otherwise as she did &lt;em&gt;because of determinism&lt;/em&gt; in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there ever been a U.S. case where the defendant has been found not guilty, despite committing an otherwise criminal act, because it was argued that it wasn't their fault due to social constructs or biological reasons outside of their control?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14198" LastEditorUserId="14198" LastEditDate="2013-06-19T07:44:18.877" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T09:02:33.507" Title="Have US judges ever declared someone not guilty due to determinism?" Tags="|united-states|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" ClosedDate="2013-06-20T19:52:07.473" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16645" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-18T19:51:59.160" Score="12" ViewCount="1239" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a mathematics major and I constantly hear people (including my professors) saying that when you are not actively thinking about a given problem and playing tennis for instance your subconscious keeps thinking about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I take a rest after hours of thinking and come back a couple of hours later to solve the problem I do not really notice major differences in my understanding. Here are some people that claim this is possible though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130130014123/http://www.care2.com/greenliving/solve-problems-while-you-sleep.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;care2 - How to Solve Problems While You Sleep&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://medium.com/better-humans/dfb12da75a3d&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Medium.com - How to Solve Problems in your Sleep (Literally)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter of which links to the article &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180518061915/http://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/IJoDR/article/viewFile/9505/pdf_31&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Applications of lucid dreams: An online study&lt;/a&gt; in a journal on dream research as scientific basis for the claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, is this actually possible, can you confirm that this actually happens?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14202" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-11-02T01:51:31.910" LastActivityDate="2022-12-03T00:02:25.440" Title="Is it possible to solve problems without active thinking?" Tags="|neurology|sleep|mathematics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16642" CreationDate="2013-06-18T21:10:56.093" Score="13" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Soft determinism and addiction&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, a case that could be considered an example of this is &lt;em&gt;Robinson v. California&lt;/em&gt; 370 U.S. 660 (1962). (&lt;a href=&quot;http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/370/660/case.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The opinion&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oyez.org/cases/1960-1969/1961/1961_554&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oral argument audio&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oyez.org/cases/1960-1969/1961/1961_554&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oyez.org&lt;/a&gt; summarizes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A California statute made it a criminal offense for a person to &amp;quot;be addicted to the use of narcotics.&amp;quot; Lawrence Robinson was convicted under the law, which required a sentence of at least ninety days in jail. A state appellate court affirmed Robinson's conviction on appeal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Supreme Court overturned the conviction, holding that that law is unconstitutional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Court likened the law to one making it a criminal offense &amp;quot;to be mentally ill, or a leper, or to be afflicted with a venereal disease,&amp;quot; and argued that the state could not punish persons merely because of their &amp;quot;status&amp;quot; of addiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cite this as an example because the court held that a law that punishes somebody for something that is beyond their control is &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;an infliction of cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;. (&lt;em&gt;Robinson v. California&lt;/em&gt;, at 666)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The court says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this Court, counsel for the State recognized that narcotic addiction is an illness. Indeed, it is apparently an illness which may be contracted innocently or involuntarily. (&lt;em&gt;Ibid.&lt;/em&gt; at 667)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only may addiction innocently result from the use of medically prescribed narcotics, but a person may even be a narcotics addict from the moment of his birth. (&lt;em&gt;Ibid&lt;/em&gt;. at footnote 9)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;[D]ecisions expanding the Robinson rationale to&#xA;reach addiction-related acts, such as narcotics possession, extract from the language of Robinson a second holding, that punishment of involuntary acts&#xA;caused by defendant's illness, drug addiction, is unconstitutional.&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv2/groups/public/@nyu_law_website__journals__review_of_law_and_social_change/documents/documents/ecm_pro_072689.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Determinism and the Drug Addiction Defence to Criminal Prosecution&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, at 365)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section VI of &lt;em&gt;Determinism and Drug Addiction Defence to Criminal Prosecution&lt;/em&gt; is a review of a line of cases stemming from the &lt;em&gt;Robinson&lt;/em&gt; decision. (&lt;em&gt;Ibid&lt;/em&gt;., at 370)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Close reading of the cases in the Robinson line reveals one or both&#xA;of these theories in every case. Explicitly or implicitly, courts have relied on&#xA;the in-dwelling agent or soft determinist theories or, in the of cases,&#xA;combinations of both. (&lt;em&gt;Ibid&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to describe &lt;em&gt;Easter v. District of Columbia&lt;/em&gt; 361 F. 2d 50 (D.C. Cir. 1966):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;because the alcoholic &amp;quot;could not have done otherwise,&amp;quot; he failed to meet the soft determinist criterion of moral responsibility. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv2/groups/public/@nyu_law_website__journals__review_of_law_and_social_change/documents/documents/ecm_pro_072689.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Determinism and the Drug Addiction Defence to Criminal Prosecution&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, at 371)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Directly quoting &lt;em&gt;Easter v. District of Columbia&lt;/em&gt; 361 F. 2d 50 (D.C. Cir. 1966):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The alcoholic's presence in public is not his act, for he did not will it&lt;/strong&gt;. (at para 1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also describes, &lt;em&gt;Driver v. Hinant&lt;/em&gt; 356 F.2d 761 (4th Cir. 1966):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Since the disease has driven the will out of the body&lt;/strong&gt;, moral responsibility becomes impossible. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.nyu.edu/ecm_dlv2/groups/public/@nyu_law_website__journals__review_of_law_and_social_change/documents/documents/ecm_pro_072689.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Determinism and the Drug Addiction Defence to Criminal Prosecution&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, at 372)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Directly from &lt;em&gt;Driver v. Hinant&lt;/em&gt; 356 F.2d 761 (4th Cir. 1966), at para 12:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This addiction-- chronic alcoholism-- is now almost universally accepted medically as a disease. &lt;strong&gt;Obviously, this includes appearances in public, as here, unwilled and ungovernable by the victim&lt;/strong&gt;. Although his misdoing objectively comprises the physical elements of a crime, nevertheless no crime has been perpetrated because the conduct was neither actuated by an evil intent nor accompanied with a consciousness of wrongdoing, indispensable ingredients of a crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Determinism and Drug Addiction Defence to Criminal Prosecution&lt;/em&gt; goes on to summarize several other cases with similar reliance on soft determinism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Social determinism&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Battered woman/person syndrome has been argued as a defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;State v. Kelly&lt;/em&gt; 22 Ill.97 N.J. 178, 478 A.2d 364 (1984), it was held that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The testimony of the expert witness would have shown that the Defendant suffered from battered-woman’s syndrome. Evidence of this affliction was relevant to the Defendant’s case insomuch as it arose out of a history of physical abuse from her husband and both explained why she had never left her husband and why her fear that her husband was going to kill her was reasonable for someone in an abusive relationship. (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.casebriefs.com/blog/law/criminal-law/criminal-law-keyed-to-kadish/exculpation/state-v-kelly/2/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;casebriefs.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Harder determinism&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're looking for examples of harder determinism as defenses, you're not going to find them. The above examples of impaired mental states and related diminished capacity defenses (that I didn't review) are as close as you will get. Even &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; have been reigned in by the courts' desires to refrain from adopting a theory of determinism. (Michele Cotton, &lt;em&gt;A Foolish Consistency: Keeping Determinism out of the Criminal Law&lt;/em&gt;, 15 B.U. Pub. Int. L.J. 1 (2005-2006))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in &lt;em&gt;United States v. Brawner&lt;/em&gt; 471 F.2d 969 (1972), while accepting the diminished capacity defense, the court added that it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;does not permit the receipt of psychiatric testimony based on the conception&#xA;that mental disorder is only a relative concept and that the behavior of every&#xA;individual is dictated by forces—ultimately, his genes and lifelong&#xA;environment—that are unconscious and beyond his control. . . . &lt;strong&gt;[W]e are not&#xA;embarked on enquiry that must yield to tenets of the philosophy of&#xA;determinism. The law accepts free will and blame-worthiness as a general&#xA;premise.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The U.S. Supreme Court has said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is as universal and persistent in mature systems of law as belief in freedom of the human will and a consequent ability and duty of the normal individual to choose between good and evil. (In &lt;em&gt;Morissette v. United States.&lt;/em&gt; 342 U.S. 246 (72 S.Ct. 240, 96 L.Ed. 288) (1952))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also has called a &amp;quot;deterministic view of human conduct&amp;quot; &amp;quot;inconsistent with the underlying precepts of our criminal justice system&amp;quot;. (&lt;em&gt;United States v. Grayson&lt;/em&gt; 438 U.S. 41 (1978))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;em&gt;Steward Machine Co. v. Davis&lt;/em&gt;, 301 U.S. 548, 590 (1937) (at 589-590):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to hold that motive or temptation is equivalent to coercion is to plunge the law in endless difficulties. The outcome of such a doctrine is the acceptance of a philosophical determinism by which choice becomes impossible. Till now, the law has been guided by a robust common sense which assumes the freedom of the will as a working hypothesis in the solution of its problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the strongest rejection of a deterministic theory of law is from &lt;em&gt;Bethea v. United States&lt;/em&gt;, 365 A.2d 64, 83 n.39 (D.C. 1976):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Implicit in our treatment of these issues is our recognition that the law rejects the deterministic theory of individual behavior. See United States v. Brawner, supra, at 27, 471 F.2d at 995. While that theory has some adherents, the notion that a person's conduct is a simple function of extrinsic forces and circumstances over which he has no control is an unacceptable contradiction of the concept of free will, which is the &lt;em&gt;sine qua non&lt;/em&gt; of our criminal justice system. See United States v. Chandler, supra, 393 F.2d at 929. We reaffirm the law's fundamental presumption that regardless of possible environmental misfortune or deprivation, each person is possessed of the capacity to choose his course of conduct. As expressed in United States v. Currens, supra, at 773:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is only through [the assumption that each individual has the capacity of choice or control over his behavior] that society has found it possible to impose duties and create liabilities designed to safeguard persons and property.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T09:02:33.507" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6572" CreationDate="2013-06-19T01:11:00.870" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I copied &lt;a href=&quot;https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/6444/what-is-the-recommended-type-of-tire-for-riding-on-wet-pavement/12958#12958&quot;&gt;my answer&lt;/a&gt; to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/6444/what-is-the-recommended-type-of-tire-for-riding-on-wet-pavement/&quot;&gt;Bikes.SE question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to add on to what Wilka said about hydroplaning, people involved&#xA;with the physics of planes landing are particularly interested in&#xA;hydroplaning. &lt;a href=&quot;http://sheldonbrown.com/tires.html#hydroplaning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sheldon Brown of course talks about this.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even with automobiles, actual hydroplaning is very rare. It is a much more real problem for aircraft landing on wet runways. The&#xA;   aviation industry has studied this problem very carefully, and has&#xA;   come up with a general guideline as to when hydroplaning is a risk.&#xA;   The formula used in the aviation industry is: Speed (in knots) = 9 X&#xA;   the square root of the tire pressure (in psi.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found a chart &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlr-atsi.nl/downloads/hydroplaning-of-modern-aircraft-tires.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; which on page 9 includes this plot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yuS85.png&quot; alt=&quot;Hydroplaning&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see that at the pressures we operate at ones risk of&#xA; hydroplaning is negligible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your concerns about flipping, Sheldon Brown has a very&#xA; informative page, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sheldonbrown.com/brakturn.html#overthebars&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Won't I Go Over The&#xA; Bars?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, which&#xA; details why you should not be concerned with flipping over the&#xA; handlebars if you are using your front brake appropriately, and shows&#xA; that when traction is not an issue using &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; your front brake is&#xA; the &lt;em&gt;fastest&lt;/em&gt; way you can stop. He also speaks about braking in the&#xA; conditions your asking about (traction impaired).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As long as I am not braking on a manhole cover I have never had issues&#xA; stopping in the rain on 23C slick tires using just my front brake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14204" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:40.750" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T08:29:15.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16649" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-19T01:30:01.510" Score="21" ViewCount="8803" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is easy to find on google, but here are a few specific examples (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soda, which is loaded with sugar primarily in the form of high fructose corn syrup, is a leading contributor to the rising rates of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other chronic diseases facing Americans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So when I say that &lt;strong&gt;drinking a can of soda is just as bad for you as smoking a cigarette&lt;/strong&gt; (and maybe even worse) it is not an exaggeration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/11/21/soda-linked-to-health-problems.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.care2.com/greenliving/is-drinking-soda-worse-than-smoking.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research on the health effects of drinking soda have been popping up everywhere in past few years.  &lt;strong&gt;Some even claim that drinking soda could be as dangerous to our health as smoking cigarettes.&lt;/strong&gt;  Is soda the new cigarette?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.voxxi.com/is-soda-as-bad-as-cigarettes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subtitle of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prevention.com/health/diabetes/drinking-soda-4-reasons-stop-soda-consumption&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Case Against Soda&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Why the sweet stuff might be as bad for your health as smoking or drinking excessive alcohol.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the title of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prevention.com/health/diabetes/drinking-soda-4-reasons-stop-soda-consumption#ixzz2WcYTLANL&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Drinking Soda Is Now as Bad as Smoking&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears to me that the first links are looking at aggregate statistics, and from this drawing the conclusion that the overall harm to our society's health is greater from sodas than from smoking. I am willing to accept that this may indeed be true.  But the articles all appear to be making a much different claim, that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;em&gt;On an individual basis&lt;/em&gt;, or perhaps on a &lt;em&gt;per-serving basis&lt;/em&gt;, drinking a soda is more harmful than smoking a cigarette.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any validity in this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering that the types of harm inflicted by each substance is different, I'm open to suggestions on how to best compare the two.  Two proxies I can imagine for comparing the two might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Given a habitual smoker who smokes N cigarettes per day, compared to a soda drinker who also consumes N fizzy drinks per day, who is likely to have the higher medical bills from chronic disease?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Drinking N sodas reduces a person's life expectancy by an amount equal or greater than the smoking of N cigarettes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-08-06T07:21:09.610" Title="Is drinking a soda as bad or more harmful than smoking a cigarette?" Tags="|nutrition|smoking|soda|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16650" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16667" CreationDate="2013-06-19T02:29:45.993" Score="25" ViewCount="8817" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia defines &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_water_torture&quot;&gt;Chinese Water Torture&lt;/a&gt; as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a process in which water&#xA;  is slowly dripped onto a&#xA;  person's forehead,&#xA;  allegedly driving the&#xA;  restrained victim insane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was this type of torture was ever applied?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, it's often stated (at least in Spain) that water drops would finally penetrate through the skin and bone. Some sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/16/t573624-does-chinese-water-torture-work/&quot;&gt;Neoseeker's Forum&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.ebaumsworld.com/showthread.php?33286-Chinese-Water-Torture&quot;&gt;Ebaumsworld's Forum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Wikipedia article says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Victims were strapped down so that they could not move, and cold or warm water was then dripped slowly on to a small area of the body; usually the forehead. The forehead was found to be the most suitable point for this form of torture because of its sensitivity: prisoners could see each drop coming, and after long durations were gradually driven frantic as a perceived &lt;strong&gt;hollow would form in the center of the forehead&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Wikipedia article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gota_china&quot;&gt;Spanish&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After a few hours, the continuous dripping caused &lt;strong&gt;physical damage to the skin&lt;/strong&gt; (similar to the fingertips after a bath).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in &lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplice_de_la_goutte_d%27eau&quot;&gt;French&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... a drop of water falls in a given interval and steady always in the same place on the front or top of the head, the death is caused by the &lt;strong&gt;erosion of the skin&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own speculation, not based off data, is that this is false. Drops won't have much pressure and skin would be able to regenerate, although the water wouldn't be very good to skin. Moreover, the bone would be much harder and it should take many years. Is my speculations correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13743" LastEditorUserId="13743" LastEditDate="2013-06-19T18:50:24.127" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T05:57:18.013" Title="Was Chinese water torture ever used as a torture method?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15004" CreationDate="2013-06-19T03:54:35.170" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a least one article written by someone who enjoyed their time in the Orfield anechoic chamber.   He mentioned that the human body itself produces a substantial amount of noise (heart beating, lungs breathing, digestive tract rumbling), and the absolute quiet of the chamber highlights these sounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/may/18/experience-quietest-place-on-earth&quot;&gt;The Guardian - Experience the quietest place on earth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that the hallucinations people refer to are in fact routed in their unfamiliarity with the sounds of their own bodies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14205" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-19T09:57:38.137" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T09:57:38.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16649" CreationDate="2013-06-19T04:30:29.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/14/5/315.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The BMJ says&lt;/a&gt; that even one to four ciggies a day almost triples your heart disease risk, and adds 50% to your chance of dying of anything (not sure exactly how express that correctly!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For being obese, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wvdhhr.org/bph/oehp/obesity/mortality.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the West Virginia Health Statistic Center says&lt;/a&gt; that obesity increased cardiovascular death risk by a factor of almost three, and overall the &quot;relative risk (RR) was 2.68 among men and 1.89 among women.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, that would suggest that obesity is more dangerous than light smoking. To tie up to the drinking soda risk, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23488503&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this paper's abstract says&lt;/a&gt; that &quot;A 1% rise in soft drink consumption was associated with an additional 4.8 overweight adults per 100 (adjusted B; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 3.1, 6.5) [and] &lt;strong&gt;2.3 obese adults per 100&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that overall the evidence suggests that obesity is worse than light smoking, and consumption of soda (or other empty calories) contributes significantly to obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T04:30:29.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16662" CreationDate="2013-06-19T12:31:40.883" Score="9" ViewCount="3861" Body="&lt;p&gt;During a recent local &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR&quot;&gt;NPR&lt;/a&gt; broadcast &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atul_Gawande&quot;&gt;Atul Gawande&lt;/a&gt; claimed that Americans have on average seven operations during their life, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wbur.org/2013/06/19/ariadne-labs&quot;&gt;stating&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“We think in the course of a person’s life, that you will turn to the&#xA;  health system for a few high risk, high failure moments, and also some&#xA;  of the highest cost moments in that system. Childbirth. Surgery. The&#xA;  average American has 7 [sic] operations in their lifetime, all the way to&#xA;  the end of life.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This same claim has also been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122226184&quot;&gt;repeated&lt;/a&gt; in earlier interviews. However, this number seems high or at minimum is lacking a great deal of context. As such, this this an accurate number or is it inaccurate or misleading in some way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T19:58:51.220" Title="Do Americans have on average seven operations in their lifetime?" Tags="|medical-science|united-states|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16658" CreationDate="2013-06-19T14:09:23.597" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In October 2008, at the annual meeting of the American College of Surgeons, a presentation called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalacs.org/article/S1072-7515%2808%2900774-6/abstract&quot;&gt;The number of surgical procedures in an American lifetime in 3 states&lt;/a&gt; was given by Dr. Peter Lee and Dr. Atul Gawande.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I have been unable to find an original source, and am relying on &lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/92-average-number-surgeries-americans-will-undergo-2859591.html&quot;&gt;Yahoo Voices as a secondary source&lt;/a&gt;, which is not optimal.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a study of the 2002 data from three representative US states, they concluded that an American will have, on average, &lt;strong&gt;9.2 surgeries&lt;/strong&gt; in his or her 85-year lifespan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gawande (who made the original claim in the question, and who was a copresenter on the above paper),  was also a coauthor of a similar paper looking at surgery rates across the world. While it doesn't directly answer the question, it offers useful context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thomas G Weiser, Scott E Regenbogen, Katherine D Thompson, Alex B Haynes, Stuart R Lipsitz, William R Berry, Atul A Gawande, &lt;a href=&quot;http://gawande.com/documents/2008Lancet--GlobalVolumeofSurgery.pdf&quot;&gt;An estimation of the global volume of surgery: a modelling &#xA;strategy based on available data&lt;/a&gt; The Lancet, June 25, 2008&#xA;DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(08)60878-8&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-06-19T14:59:51.853" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T14:59:51.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16658" CreationDate="2013-06-19T14:23:30.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim looks plausible, but it would depend on how you define &quot;operation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/insurg.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CDC data&lt;/a&gt; shows that there were 51.4 million inpatient procedures in 2010. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;population of the US&lt;/a&gt; was 309 million and life expectancy was 78.11 years. So the average American can expect to have 51.4 / 309 * 78.11 = 13 inpatient procedures in their lifetime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think there's a clear definition of which inpatient procedures are considered &quot;an operation&quot;, but this does at least give a rough idea of how common surgery is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T14:23:30.693" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16658" CreationDate="2013-06-19T15:05:29.960" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the original source of that claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the state of medical and surgical practice in 2002, the average American has 3.41 inpatient, 2.56 outpatient, and 3.20 non-OR, for an overall total of 9.17 surgical procedures in an 85-year lifespan.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The method behind those number was also described. They counted the number of surgical procedures in an 85-year lifespan by summing the rates of surgery for each year between 0 and 84 in Colorado, Florida, and New Jersey based on state databases.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citing this work 4 years later, Gawande said, &amp;quot;At the present rate, the average American can expect to undergo seven operations during his or her lifetime.&amp;quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Perhaps he did not count the 2.56 outpatient procedures when he claimed &amp;quot;seven operations&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1. Peter H.U. Lee and Atul A. Gawande, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jamcollsurg.2008.06.186&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The number of surgical procedures in an American lifetime in 3 states&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, Journal of the American College of Surgeons, Volume 207, Issue 3, Supplement, September 2008, Pages S75&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2. Atul Gawande, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMra1202392&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Two Hundred Years of Surgery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, N Engl J Med 2012; 366:1716-1723, May 3, 2012&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T15:30:47.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16664" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-19T18:59:56.780" Score="1" ViewCount="563" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rolfing is a &quot;form of bodywork&quot; that &quot;enables the body to regain the natural integrity of its form&quot; and can &quot;dramatically alter a person's posture and structure&quot;, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rolf.org/about&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.rolf.org/about&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of the language they use to describe it is also used by proponents of what I consider to be scams (homeopathy, for example). Thus, while I'm sure that Rolfing has some positive benefits (most people react positively to massages and the like) I'm skeptical about their claims on posture specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11894" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T19:18:38.060" Title="Is Rolfing an effective treatment for bad posture?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16665" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-19T19:36:51.387" Score="12" ViewCount="9484" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jared Diamond writes in one of his bestseller books that native North Americans had cities before the colonist times but by the time European settlers arrived diseases killed most of the population and thus the cities they had disappeared or became empty. I think it was in Guns, Germs, and Steel and he must have used some source from it. If I remember correctly it might have been a tent city but still resembling a city as they had high density. Is it true? Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14218" LastActivityDate="2018-08-12T17:37:13.107" Title="Did native North Americans have cities before colonist times?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16665" CreationDate="2013-06-19T19:47:26.883" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think that Guns Germs and Steel is a good credible source, at least for the facts presented, like the presence of cities, historical timelines etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But besides this, here are some examples for Native American cities/&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pueblo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pueblas&lt;/a&gt; in North America:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cahokia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cahokia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cahokia was the largest and most influential urban settlement in the Mississippian culture which developed advanced societies across much of what is now the Southeastern United States, beginning more than 500 years before European contact. Cahokia's population at its peak in the 1200s was among the largest cities in the world, and its ancient population would not be surpassed by any city in the United States until the late 18th century. Today, Cahokia Mounds is considered the largest and most complex archaeological site north of the great Pre-Columbian cities in Mexico.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_Verde_National_Park&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mesa Verde&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puye_Cliff_Dwellings&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Puye Cliff Dwellings&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taos_Pueblo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Taos Pueblo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoma_Pueblo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Acoma Pueblo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  Wikipedia has &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dwellings_of_Pueblo_peoples&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a page with a list&lt;/a&gt;, that includes some more, and some explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his following book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Collapse&lt;/a&gt;, Jared Diamond dedicates the 4&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; chapter to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anasazi&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anasazi&lt;/a&gt; people, and their settlements in Mesa Verde and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaco_Culture_National_Historical_Park&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chaco&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Between AD 900 and 1150, Chaco Canyon was a major center of culture for the Ancient Pueblo Peoples. Chacoans quarried sandstone blocks and hauled timber from great distances, assembling fifteen major complexes which remained the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century. Evidence of archaeoastronomy at Chaco has been proposed, with the &quot;Sun Dagger&quot; petroglyph at Fajada Butte a popular example. Many Chacoan buildings may have been aligned to capture the solar and lunar cycles, requiring generations of astronomical observations and centuries of skillfully coordinated construction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="19548" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T11:27:08.953" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T11:27:08.953" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16650" CreationDate="2013-06-19T19:58:54.120" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt; Was this type of torture ever applied&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2373/whats-the-story-on-that-weird-medieval-cult-the-flatulents&quot;&gt;world's smartest man&lt;/a&gt; it was invented many centuries ago (the name is more recent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the drip-drip-drip method of torture, not referred to as &quot;Chinese,&quot; is described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1897884303&quot;&gt;Brian Innes's The History of Torture (1998)&lt;/a&gt; as having been invented by one Hippolytus de Marsiliis in 16th-century Italy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have access to that book but it appears to be intended to be a record of actual torture techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1699661/Australian-artist-recreates-Chinese-water-torture&quot;&gt;An Australian artist forced herself to endure this for seven hours&lt;/a&gt; - but that doesn't really count as torture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Slow dripping of water onto the head&quot; is listed in a report of an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ian.org.rs/publikacije/tortura/english/06.pdf&quot;&gt;International Aid Network Centre for Rehabilitation of Torture Victims.&lt;/a&gt; This seems to say that this form of torture has been used on people in relatively recent conflicts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've no other evidence but over the centuries many many people must have heard of the technique. It seems inconceivable that there has not been at least one sadist (or gang of small boys) who have succumbed to the temptation to try it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can find no easily accessible evidence that it has ever been a widespread, popular or effective  method of torture routinely employed by the sort of agencies that are known to have used torture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes - but it probably ranks pretty low on the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-06-19T20:09:52.570" LastActivityDate="2013-06-19T20:09:52.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16500" CreationDate="2013-06-19T21:42:30.373" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://users.utu.fi/jousor/reprints/sorvari&amp;amp;haatanen_sociobiology2012.pdf&quot;&gt;Aspartame-based Sweetener as a Strong Ant Poison: Falsifying an Urban Legend?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This scientific article suggests that it is a hoax, at least for aspartane. Ants are not attracted to it, and when forced to eat the mortality is not significantly different from the control group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14219" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-20T06:44:45.980" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T06:44:45.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16665" CreationDate="2013-06-20T01:52:44.283" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't forget the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenochtitlan&quot;&gt;Aztecs and Tenochtitlan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most common estimates put the population at over 200,000 people.&#xA;  One of the few comprehensive academic surveys of Mesoamerican city and&#xA;  town sizes arrived at a population of 212,500 living on 13.5 km2 (5.2&#xA;  sq mi),although some popular sources put the number as high as&#xA;  350,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6263" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T01:52:44.283" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16665" CreationDate="2013-06-20T02:17:34.133" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is some data from Canada (emphasis mine), quoting from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/prehistory/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prehistory - The Canadian Encyclopedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first crop to appear was maize, which began to be cultivated in&#xA;  southern Ontario about 1500 years ago and was a major supplement to a&#xA;  hunting and gathering economy. The early maize farmers occupied&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;relatively permanent villages of multifamily wood and bark houses,&#xA;  often fortified with palisades as protection from the warfare that&#xA;  appears to have intensified&lt;/strong&gt; with the introduction of agriculture. By&#xA;  1350 AD beans and SQUASH were added to local agriculture, providing a&#xA;  nutritionally balanced diet that led to a decrease in the importance&#xA;  of hunting and gathering of wild foods (see PALYNOLOGY; PLANTS, NATIVE&#xA;  USES). At the time of European contact this agricultural lifestyle was&#xA;  characteristic of the Iroquoian peoples who occupied the region from&#xA;  southwestern Ontario to the middle St Lawrence Valley. &lt;strong&gt;It is the only&#xA;  region of Canada in which prehistoric agriculture was established as&#xA;  the local economic base, and was the area of greatest aboriginal&#xA;  population density&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The late prehistoric Iroquoians lived in villages composed of large&#xA;  multifamily LONGHOUSES, with some of the larger communities containing&#xA;  more than 2000 people&lt;/strong&gt;. Wide-ranging social, trade and political&#xA;  connections spanned their area of occupation, as a complement to the&#xA;  warfare which occupied much of their attention. These patterns&#xA;  intensified with the appearance of Europeans and European trade goods&#xA;  during the 17th century, and eventually led to the destruction of the&#xA;  Canadian Iroquoians during the mid-17th century at the hands of their&#xA;  IROQUOIS neighbours to the south of Lake Ontario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A size of 2000 might count as a city -- for example most of the cities in England were about that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_towns_and_cities_in_England_by_historical_population#Medieval_England&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;size of population, in the 14th century&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2018-08-12T17:37:13.107" LastActivityDate="2018-08-12T17:37:13.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16671" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16684" CreationDate="2013-06-20T04:28:30.723" Score="4" ViewCount="312" Body="&lt;p&gt;Marketed under a variety of names in different countries are infant 'wind drops' which have as the active ingredient Simeticone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infacol.co.uk/treat-colic-with-infacol&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claimed to work&lt;/a&gt; by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;helping small trapped gas bubbles join into bigger bubbles, which your baby can easily bring up as wind. - helping to relieve  their pain and discomfort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In various places, these products are claimed to be 'clinically proven'. Is there any un-biased (i.e. research not performed or funded by the vendor) evidence that these products have any efficacy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8036" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T10:04:32.970" Title="Are 'wind drops' (active ingredient Simeticone) effective in relieveing wind and colic symptoms?" Tags="|medical-science|pharmaceutical|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16672" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16673" CreationDate="2013-06-20T13:35:45.603" Score="18" ViewCount="930" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine came across an article about the Tokyo Waterworks Bureau, saying that during a football match that was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/preliminaries/asia/matches/round=257777/match=300191842/report.html&quot;&gt;major qualifier&lt;/a&gt; between Australia and Japan, staff had to monitor the match. During breaks in play, they had to increase water flow due to increased use of the bathroom, and they had to decrease water flow when play was happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also once saw on a documentary that electricity usage spiked in the UK just after the end of a popular soap opera, because people put on a kettle for a cup of tea. Again, staff working for the UK's electricity grid had to monitor when the soap opera ended, and adjust electricity production accordingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm accepting of the claim that spikes in water usage and electricity usage can occur. But are they major enough, as claimed, to require monitoring by staff?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T14:58:41.137" Title="Do major events on tv have the potential to wreak havoc on utilities such as water and electricity?" Tags="|television|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16672" CreationDate="2013-06-20T14:33:06.713" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;The phenomenon is known as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup&quot;&gt;&quot;TV Pickup&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a sufficiently large effect that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/pumped.htm&quot;&gt;&quot;pumped storage&quot; reservoirs&lt;/a&gt; are built, which can deliver over 1GW to the grid at a few seconds' notice, used in conjunction with other direct generation sources, which are slower to ramp-up, but can generate for longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even on a typical evening, spikes of around 800MW can be expected - during the ad breaks for the big soaps, for example. Among the largest recorded in the UK is &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6981356.stm&quot;&gt;2.8GW following an England/Germany penalty shootout in 1990&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whole teams are dedicated to both predicting the demand fluctuations based on historic form, and actively monitoring the live system. From the horse's mouth, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalgrid.com/NR/rdonlyres/49736B61-06E4-4241-AF0B-8E7D84053AF7/1227/Nick_Easton_A_day_In_The_Life_Of_.pdf&quot;&gt;these slides from a presentation by a National Grid operational energy manager&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4887" LastEditorUserId="4887" LastEditDate="2013-06-20T14:58:41.137" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T14:58:41.137" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16672" CreationDate="2013-06-20T14:45:56.650" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;For electricity, yes.  A million or so people putting on their kettles (Also note that UK electric kettles draw about twice as much power as American ones) to make tea during commercial breaks (or after the show) can result in quite large (gigawatts) swings in demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalgrid.com/NR/rdonlyres/1C4B1304-ED58-4631-8A84-3859FB8B4B38/17136/demand.pdf&quot;&gt;For example, at the end of the 1990 World Cup Semi-final match between England and Germany, electricity demand in England surged by about 2.8GW over the space of about 20 minutes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastEditorUserId="13967" LastEditDate="2013-06-20T14:52:05.597" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T14:52:05.597" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16698" CreationDate="2013-06-20T15:40:36.223" Score="10" ViewCount="6640" Body="&lt;p&gt;Various news outlets are claiming that people suffered from poisoning after &#xA;liquid nitrogen was poured into a swimming pool.  The intended effect&#xA;was to produce mist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/mexico/10130042/Jagermeister-pool-party-guest-in-coma-after-liquid-nitrogen-reacts-with-chlorine.html&quot;&gt;the telegraph&lt;/a&gt; reported (text directly below the headline, above the video):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&quot;21-year-old man was in a coma in Mexico and eight other people &#xA;were treated in hospital after liquid nitrogen reacted &#xA;with chlorine at a pool party ...&quot;,&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't jive with my high-school level knowledge of chemistry, but I can't be 100% sure that there isn't some reaction to produce something toxic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I totally expect that the cause of the injuries is due to asphyxiation, but I have not found a reputable source to rule out the possibility of a significant chemical reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9094" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-06-20T20:27:16.310" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T01:38:27.947" Title="Does (liquid) nitrogen react with chlorine or other chemicals in a swimming pool?" Tags="|chemistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16675" CreationDate="2013-06-20T19:44:44.477" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;While Nitrogen will react with Chlorine to form &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_trichloride&quot;&gt;Nitrogen Trichloride (NCl&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt;)&lt;/a&gt;, this reaction commonly comes from Urea in the pool reacting with the Chlorine disinfectant resulting in relatively low levels of NCl&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt; (which may still be hazardous to humans, but not immediately fatal). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is made clear in this Chemistry blog post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chembark.com/2013/06/18/awful-idea-liquid-nitrogen-at-a-pool-party/&quot;&gt;http://blog.chembark.com/2013/06/18/awful-idea-liquid-nitrogen-at-a-pool-party/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Updated note to media: Many outlets have reported that liquid nitrogen&#xA;  will react with chemicals in swimming pools to generate a poisonous&#xA;  gas. This is almost certainly incorrect. Molecular nitrogen is&#xA;  relatively inert and should not react with anything present in the&#xA;  pool, like “chlorine” (mostly, NaOCl) or water. The danger of adding&#xA;  liquid nitrogen to the pool stems simply from the nitrogen’s boiling&#xA;  and pushing away all of the oxygen around, leaving none for the&#xA;  swimmers to breathe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13418" LastActivityDate="2013-06-20T19:44:44.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16680" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-20T23:21:46.807" Score="4" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the source of the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ow.ly/i/2oset&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mediamatter for America climate statistics graph&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/ClimateReality/status/347116690229825536&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tweeted, and re-tweeted by Al Gore&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The source that the image refers to: &lt;a href=&quot;http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/06/18/report-cnbcs-climate-denial-is-bad-for-business/194483&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;REPORT: CNBC's Climate Denial Is Bad For Business&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/06/18/report-cnbcs-climate-denial-is-bad-for-business/194483&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;image&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;51% of CNBC climate coverage denies that climate change is caused by man-made pollution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://ow.ly/i/2oset&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;text&lt;/a&gt; from Media Matters for America says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Twenty-four out of the 47 substantial mentions or segments on climate change on CNBC, or just over 51 percent of coverage, cast doubt on whether manmade climate change existed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-05-08T15:55:21.900" LastActivityDate="2019-05-08T15:55:21.900" Title="Does 51% of CNBC climate coverage deny that climate change is caused by man-made pollution?" Tags="|climate-change|media|al-gore|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16682" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-21T06:48:32.577" Score="6" ViewCount="520" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/06/20/the-cdc-is-lying-to-you-again-flu-fiction-vs-flu-reality/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This blog post&lt;/a&gt; claims that the CDC over-reports annual flu deaths in the U.S. by 1000x or more, in an effort to sell flu vaccinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, their own numbers show 500 deaths in 2010, not 36,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on further to explain how even the low number isn't &amp;quot;confirmed flu deaths.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim that many pneumonia deaths stem from the flu. They use a computer model to make the calculations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in conventional medical literature, there are at least 10 different types of pneumonia. Trying to model which ones stem from flu cases is a fool’s errand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also says the CDC claims between 3,000 and 49,000 deaths annually, depending on severity of the flu season, a claim I found on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC web site&lt;/a&gt;, too:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CDC estimates that ... flu-associated deaths ranged from a low of about 3,000 to a high of about 49,000 people&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the CDC over-stating the danger of the flu?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:23:40.920" Title="Does the CDC over-report annual flu deaths in the U.S.?" Tags="|epidemiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4886" CreationDate="2013-06-21T08:01:40.197" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, generic drugs are equivalent to brand name drugs. All chemical constituents of generic drugs are same as brand drugs. Only the manufacturer company is different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/drugs/resourcesforyou/consumers/buyingusingmedicinesafely/understandinggenericdrugs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FDA - Understanding Generic Drugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medxpower.com/news/Generic-drugs-vs-Branded-drugs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Generic Drugs vs Branded Drugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A generic drug is a drug that is similar to a branded drug but uses a&#xA;  different name. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA)&#xA;  contemplates that a generic drug is similar to a branded or pioneer&#xA;  drug in quality, intended use, mode of administration and strength.&#xA;  Generic drugs are usually less expensive compared to branded drugs.&#xA;  The cost of branded drugs is very high and most people tend to buy&#xA;  generic drugs due to their low cost. Both the generic and branded&#xA;  drugs are bio-equivalent meaning they are chemically the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14232" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-21T13:33:24.370" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T13:33:24.370" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16671" CreationDate="2013-06-21T10:04:32.970" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since you mention &quot;infant&quot; in the question, the most relevant systematic review I was able to find, is &quot;Effectiveness of treatments for infantile colic: systematic review&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/316/7144/1563&quot;&gt;BMJ 1998;316:1563&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This evaluates 27 clinical trials, and among the conclusions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No benefit was shown for simethicone&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that &quot;infant colic&quot; refers to babies crying, or showing symptoms of distress, for no discernible reason -- since they can't talk, we don't know where their pain is. It could be a headache, in which case gut treatments aren't going to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In adults, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2036.2002.01322.x/full&quot;&gt;Holtmann, G., Gschossmann, J., Mayr, P. and Talley, N. J. (2002), A randomized placebo-controlled trial of simethicone and cisapride for the treatment of patients with functional dyspepsia. Alimentary Pharmacology &amp;amp; Therapeutics, 16: 1641–1648. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2036.2002.01322.x&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simethicone and cisapride were significantly better than placebo for symptom control in patients with functional dyspepsia after 2, 4 and 8 weeks of treatment. Simethicone was also superior to the prokinetic cisapride in the first 2 weeks of treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study is funded by Asche AG, and you have asked for studies &quot;not funded by the vendor&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugs.com/monograph/simethicone.html&quot;&gt;Drugs.com&lt;/a&gt; (credible with good onward referencing) states that simethicone is effective for flatulence, functional gastric bloating, and postoperative gas pain;  &quot;not recommended&quot; for infant colic, and that its efficacy has not been demonstrated for intestinal distress and &quot;immediate post-prandial upper abdominal distress&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my conclusion is that simethicone is effective at relieving trapped gas in the adult gut, but that trapped gas in the gut is not typically the cause of baby colic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4887" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T10:04:32.970" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13803" CreationDate="2013-06-21T17:05:33.923" Score="9" Body="&lt;h3&gt;The working hypothesis&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is scientific consensus that the human appendix has a purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the 2007 work of &lt;em&gt;Bollinger et al.&lt;/em&gt;, the community has proceded under the working hypothesis that the appendix plays an important role in immune system function via maintenance of gut bacteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pre-2007, the appendix was &quot;thought to have some immune function based on its association with substantial lymphatic tissue, although the specific nature of that putative function is unknown&quot;. (Bollinger)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bollinger et al.&lt;/em&gt; proposed that &quot;that the human appendix is well suited as a “safe house” for commensal bacteria, providing support for bacterial growth and potentially facilitating re-inoculation of the colon in the event that the contents of the intestinal tract are purged following exposure to a pathogen&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After 2007, the work of &lt;em&gt;Bollinger et al.&lt;/em&gt; has been cited as the starting point for more recent understanding of appendix function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting &lt;em&gt;Barlow et al.&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The physiological function of the human appendix has long been a topic of debates, with the organ often considered by many a vestige of evolutionary development. However, comparative primate anatomy and new findings regarding a possible immune function give evidence to the contrary. The substantial amount of lymphatic tissue within the appendix is believed to allow for growth of the various beneficial bacterial colonies of the gut, while its long slender shape may assist in the prevention of the loss of these colonies because of diarrheal disease (Bollinger et al., 2007).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The survey paper by &lt;em&gt;Barlow et al.&lt;/em&gt; goes on to summarize post-2007 studies that add to the hypothesis of &lt;em&gt;Bollinger et al.&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[W]ith its substantial amount of lymphoid tissue, termed gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT), it has been postulated that the appendix may serve sort of immune function (Smith et al., 2009) Recent studies have shown that such immune tissues support the growth of beneficial bacteria in the gut (Bollinger et al., 2007). It has been found that immunoglobulin A (IgA) and mucin, proteins found in abundance in GALT, aid in the growth of bacterial colonies in the form of biofilms. More surprisingly, some groups have found that biofilms were found in higher concentrations in the appendix than any other area of the human colon (Bollinger et al., 2007; Smith et al., 2009; Im et al., 2011). From these findings, it has since been concluded that the appendix may serve as a sort of bacterial “safe house,” allowing for the survival of symbiotic flora during severe bouts of diarrhea (Bollinger et al., 2007; Laurin et al., 2011).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Guinane et al.&lt;/em&gt; say (internal references removed):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a role for the microbiota of the human appendix in gut health? The function of the appendix as a microbial reservoir for the gut has recently received much attention. Based on this study, the appendix appears to harbors a large diversity of gut microbes, including significant amounts of “beneficial bacteria” or indicators of gut health, including the genera &lt;em&gt;Bacteroides&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Lactobacillus&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;Bifidobacterium&lt;/em&gt;. It is plausible that these bacteria are present in biofilms on the epithelial layer of the appendix and may serve as a reservoir for replenishing populations that have been eradicated from the gut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bollinger et al.&lt;/em&gt; say that despite their theory, &quot;absolute proof of such a function may be difficult to obtain since the unique nature of the human appendix may preclude the use of animals to study the issue.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Vestigiality&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bollinger et al.&lt;/em&gt; mention that the appendix may be effectively unnecessary in industrialized countries with modern medical care and sanitation practices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]o the extent that the primary function of the appendix is the one proposed herein, it might be argued that the human appendix is not important in industrialized countries with modern medical care and sanitation practices. Indeed, maintenance of a reserve supply of commensal bacteria in the event of infection by pathogens may be unnecessary in areas where outbreaks of enteric pathogens do not affect the vast majority of the population at any one time. Certainly, this idea is consistent with the well-known observation that appendectomy is without currently discernable long-term side effects in societies with modern medical and sanitation practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barlow, A., Muhleman, M., Gielecki, J., Matusz, P., Tubbs, R. S. and Loukas, M. (2013), &lt;em&gt;The vermiform appendix: A review&lt;/em&gt;. Clin. Anat.. doi: 10.1002/ca.22269&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;R. Randal Bollinger, Andrew S. Barbas, Errol L. Bush, Shu S. Lin, William Parker, &lt;em&gt;Biofilms in the large bowel suggest an apparent function of the human vermiform appendix, Journal of Theoretical Biology&lt;/em&gt;, Volume 249, Issue 4, 21 December 2007, Pages 826-831, ISSN 0022-5193, doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2007.08.032.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caitriona M. Guinane, Amany Tadrous, Fiona Fouhy, C. Anthony Ryan, Eugene M. Dempsey, Brendan Murphy, Emmet Andrews, Paul D. Cotter, Catherine Stanton, and R. Paul Ross, &lt;em&gt;Microbial Composition of Human Appendices from Patients following Appendectomy&lt;/em&gt;, mBio, 4:1 e00366-12; Published 15 January 2013, doi: 10.1128/mBio.00366-12&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-06-21T17:23:35.140" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T17:23:35.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12319" CreationDate="2013-06-21T19:08:44.253" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, strategic redistricting (gerrymandering) can make incumbents more secure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm basing my answer on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.propublica.org/series/redistricting&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Redistricting series by ProPublica&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;District boundaries can have an effect on election outcomes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The maps used in Texas’ next elections could impact the balance of power in Congress. They will likely determine whether the four new congressional seats awarded Texas via the census will be held by Democrats or Republicans. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.propublica.org/article/actual-winner-unclear-in-supreme-courts-ruling-on-texas-redistricting&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Actual Winner Unclear in Supreme Court’s Ruling on Texas Redistricting&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[H]ow the district lines are drawn is likely to determine whether those additional seats will be won by Democrats or Republicans -- and how big an impact minority voters will have in deciding who the new representatives will be. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.propublica.org/article/will-the-supreme-court-strike-down-part-of-the-voting-rights-act&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Will the Supreme Court Strike Down Part of the Voting Rights Act?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The line drawing can be done in a way so as to intentionally benefit a particular party or individual:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it has done before, the Republican-dominated state legislature drew maps that heavily favor Republicans. (&lt;em&gt;Ibid.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[P]oliticians have been drawing district lines for their own advantage since the days of the founding fathers, when Patrick Henry gerrymandered a Virginia district to try to keep James Madison out of Congress. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.propublica.org/article/is-partisan-gerrymandering-unconstitutional&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is Partisan Gerrymandering Unconstitutional?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The right lines can all but guarantee an incumbent a decade's worth of electoral success, or alternatively can help send others into retirement. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.propublica.org/article/redistricting-a-devils-dictionary/single&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Redistricting, A Devil's Dictionary&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T19:08:44.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10693" CreationDate="2013-06-21T19:38:55.393" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It isn't known if 5000 noncitizens voted in Colorado in 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is likely true that 154 of the 645,775 voters in the 2010 Tennessee primaries failed to produce photo ID.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Did 5000 noncitizens vote in Colorado in 2010?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These numbers come from &lt;a href=&quot;http://cha.house.gov/sites/republicans.cha.house.gov/files/documents/hearing_docs/co_non_citizen_report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a study from the Colorado Secretary of State&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarizing this study, the Committee of House Administration said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chairman of House Subcommittee on Elections Pledges Review of Voter Registration Processes After a Recent Study by Colorado Secretary of State Revealed 12,000 Non-Citizens Registered to Vote in 2010 Elections and 5,000 Likely Voted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the study conducted by the Colorado Secretary of State in conjunction with the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, 11,805 non-citizens registered to vote in the 2010 elections and 4,947 likely voted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, quoting directly from the Secretary of State report, &lt;a href=&quot;http://cha.house.gov/sites/republicans.cha.house.gov/files/documents/hearing_docs/co_non_citizen_report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Comparison of Colorado's Voter Rolls With Department of Revenue Non-Citizen Records&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As discussed below, the Department of State is nearly certain that 106 individuals are improperly registered to vote. And potentially many of the remaining 11,805 individuals are also improperly registered to vote. It is impossible to provide a precise number, however, because voter registration data are inconclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the reasons discussed above, however, it is likely that many of the 4,947 voters were not citizens when they cast their vote in 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Tennessee primary&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That Tennessee blocked 154 voters from participating in its primary is supported by other sources (for example, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bigstory.ap.org/article/many-voters-may-be-deterred-tough-id-laws&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Many voters may be deterred by tough ID laws&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tennessee had 154 blocked ballots in its March primary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NPR (which has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy) repeated Mitchell's claim that 645,775 people cast votes in the Tennessee primary (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2012/08/25/160042523/voting-as-a-responsibility-how-hard-should-it-be&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Voting As A 'Responsibility': How Hard Should It Be?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't found a primary source for the 645,755 number, but I don't believe this is in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T20:03:24.153" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16682" CreationDate="2013-06-21T20:39:35.913" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The CDC reports 500 deaths from influenza. (Table 10 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/deaths_2010_release.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/deaths_2010_release.pdf&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CDC reports flu-&lt;em&gt;associated&lt;/em&gt; deaths ranging from from a low of about 3,000 to a high of about 49,000 people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CDC says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It has been recognized for many years that influenza is infrequently listed on death certificates&lt;/strong&gt; and testing for seasonal influenza infections is usually not done, particularly among the elderly who are at greatest risk of seasonal influenza complications and death. Some deaths — particularly in the elderly — are associated with secondary complications of seasonal influenza (including bacterial pneumonias).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thompson et al.&lt;/em&gt; review the CDC's methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because a broad range of respiratory and cardiac diagnoses have been associated with influenza virus infections and these infections are often not confirmed by virologic testing, statistical models based on vital statistics data have been used for decades to estimate the overall burden of influenza in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the estimates from each of these models suggest that seasonal influenza epidemics from 1976 through 2000 were associated with substantial morbidity, including &amp;gt;200,000 annual hospitalizations and an annual average of &amp;gt;30,000 influenza-associated all-cause US deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They review the range of statistical models that have been used to estimate the mortality caused by influenza.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report mentions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a linear-regression approach,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Serfling-type models, using Poisson regression techniques, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;simpler models, based on rate differences, [that] have been used for many years to estimate influenza-associated morbidity and mortality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the CDC is making a sincere attempt to accurately estimate the number of deaths attributable to influenza.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could find no evidence that the CDC is intentionally over-reporting annual flu deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thompson, William W. and Comanor, Lorraine and Shay, David K., &lt;em&gt;Epidemiology of Seasonal Influenza: Use of Surveillance Data and Statistical Models to Estimate the Burden of Disease&lt;/em&gt; J Infect Dis. (2006) 194 (Supplement 2): S82-S91 doi:10.1086/507558&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T21:01:08.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16693" CreationDate="2013-06-21T21:46:11.477" Score="9" ViewCount="5507" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vitamin D (Calciferol) is frequently used in rat poison and very toxic when consumed by cats and dogs: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/poison/cholecalciferol/&quot;&gt;Pet Poison Helpline&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is one of the most dangerous mouse and rat poisons on the market&#xA;  and unfortunately, seems to be gaining in popularity. Cholecalciferol,&#xA;  or activated vitamin D3, causes a life-threateningly high calcium and&#xA;  phosphorus level in the body, resulting in severe, acute kidney&#xA;  failure. This can progress to chronic kidney failure and have&#xA;  long-term repercussions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vitamin D seems to be beneficial if consumed by humans according to some sources: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thepeopleschemist.com/about/&quot;&gt;Shane Ellison&lt;/a&gt;, who calls himself &quot;The People's Chemist&quot;, says &lt;a href=&quot;http://thepeopleschemist.com/stinky-sulfur-award-unapproved-drug-disguised-vitamin/&quot;&gt;Vitamin D toxicity builds up in the body&lt;/a&gt; and will eventually kill a human the same way a rat is killed when consuming it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nutritionists are unaware. Male cheerleader turned nutrition guru,&#xA;  Johnny Bowden (Whoops, I spelled his name wrong.), proves it. Vitamin&#xA;  D pills are his crown jewels, and he likes “bromancing the Dr. Cannell&#xA;  stone.” He often uses statistical contortionism to push it as a&#xA;  non-toxic cure-all, akin to water! He doesn’t understand that, unlike&#xA;  water, it’ s a “cumulative poison;” meaning that it’s absorbed by fat&#xA;  cells and festers internally for months. It’s called bio-accumulation.&#xA;  And that’s where small, daily ingestion becomes dangerous, the&#xA;  repeated use over time gives way to side effects – death in slow&#xA;  motion. Water on the other hand gets passed through readily after&#xA;  used, and doesn’t snuggle into the far away corners of our fat cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newswithviews.com/Ellison/shane158.htm&quot;&gt;Another article by him&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The “rickets rationale” for supporting the use of synthetic vitamin D&#xA;  is the most frustrating. It purports that “vitamin D” cured the&#xA;  paralyzing disease, which is prima facie evidence of its healing&#xA;  qualities. Not true. The plethora of “sunshine hormones” produced by&#xA;  the skin, and those found naturally in cod liver oil, cured rickets,&#xA;  not vitamin D pills made in the stinky labs of Big Pharma. Purveyors&#xA;  of this myth have the Big Pharma marketing noose firmly around their&#xA;  neck, and probably don’t even know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the rickets rationale didn’t win you over, the “cancer cure con”&#xA;  probably did. You’ve seen it plastered on the headlines of every paper&#xA;  in the U.S and even on well known, natural health websites: Vitamin D&#xA;  fights cancer. The redundancy itself should be your first clue that&#xA;  “something fishy” is going on. The anti-cancer statements come direct&#xA;  from short term trials performed by “advisors” to Big Pharma and&#xA;  published in the top nutrition journals! Worse, the trials only show a&#xA;  small statistical association of low cancer rates among vitamin D&#xA;  users over about a 5 year period. This is plain silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cancer takes more than 5 years to develop. Even heavy smokers can&#xA;  survive 5 years without a cancer diagnosis, but we know cigarettes are&#xA;  a real threat. Thus, any study on cancer lasting five years has very&#xA;  little value. This same scheme was used by the cigarette industry to&#xA;  erroneously thwart off the cancer claims in the early 1970’s. Now it’s&#xA;  being used to pretend vitamin D staves off cancer. It’s a con, and&#xA;  long term vitamin D studies (which are being ignored) show just the&#xA;  opposite (just like they did with cigarettes, of course).&#xA;  In conclusion, I’m sounding the alarm that a slow vitamin D poisoning&#xA;  is happening worldwide. Vitamin D supplements and fortified foods are&#xA;  attacking the body from numerous sources, where it’s behaving like the&#xA;  rat poison it is. You choose, sunshine or vitamin D pills (D2, D3 or&#xA;  otherwise)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia on supplementation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Supplements The effects of vitamin D supplementation on health are&#xA;  uncertain.[10] A United States Institute of Medicine, (IOM) report&#xA;  states: &quot;Outcomes related to cancer, cardiovascular disease and&#xA;  hypertension, diabetes and metabolic syndrome, falls and physical&#xA;  performance, immune functioning and autoimmune disorders, infections,&#xA;  neuropsychological functioning, and preeclampsia could not be linked&#xA;  reliably with calcium or vitamin D intake and were often&#xA;  conflicting.&quot;[11]:5 Some researchers claim the IOM was too definitive&#xA;  in its recommendations and made a mathematical mistake when&#xA;  calculating the blood level of vitamin D associated with bone&#xA;  health.[97] Members of the IOM panel maintain that they used a&#xA;  &quot;standard procedure for dietary recommendations&quot; and that the report&#xA;  is solidly based on the data. Research on vitamin D supplements,&#xA;  including large scale clinical trials, is continuing&#xA;  Maxmen A (2011). &quot;Nutrition advice: the vitamin D-lemma&quot;. Nature 475 (7354): 23–5. doi:10.1038/475023a. PMID 21734684.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are vitamin D pills safe in the long run?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14234" LastEditorUserId="14234" LastEditDate="2013-06-26T15:02:08.860" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T01:47:30.017" Title="Are Vitamin D pills toxic for humans in the long term?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16692" CreationDate="2013-06-21T22:22:57.913" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is possible to take daily vitamin D supplementation and avoid possible adverse effects if you keep your dosage below the Tolerable Upper Intake Level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This level has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/nutrition/vitamin/vita-d-eng.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;published by Health Canada&lt;/a&gt; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Age group             Recommended Dietary Allowance  Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL)&#xA;0-6 months            400 IU  (10 mcg)           1000 IU (25 mcg)&#xA;7-12 months           400 IU  (10 mcg)           1500 IU (38 mcg)&#xA;1-3 years             600 IU (15 mcg)            2500 IU (63 mcg)&#xA;4-8 years             600 IU (15 mcg)            3000 IU (75 mcg)&#xA;9-70 years            600 IU (15 mcg)            4000 IU (100 mcg)&#xA;Adults &amp;gt; 70 years     800 IU (20 mcg)            4000 IU (100 mcg)&#xA;Pregnancy &amp;amp; Lactation 600 IU (15 mcg)            4000 IU (100 mcg)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IOM expert committee reviewed a number of health outcomes that could potentially be related to calcium and vitamin D, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and immunity, and found that &lt;strong&gt;the evidence existing to date is inconsistent and does not demonstrate a cause-and-effect relationship&lt;/strong&gt;. Consequently, these health outcomes could not be used for the purposes of determining nutrient requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence surrounding the role of calcium and vitamin D in bone health was judged to be convincing, and was used as the basis for determining requirements for calcium and vitamin D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a review article on Vitamin D:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vitamin D intoxication is extremely rare but can be caused by inadvertent or intentional ingestion of excessively high doses. Doses of more than 50,000 IU per day raise levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D to more than 150 ng per milliliter (374 nmol per liter) and are associated with hypercalcemia and hyperphosphatemia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doses of 10,000 IU of vitamin D3 per day for up to 5 months, however, do not cause toxicity. (Holick, 2007)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much evidence suggests that the recommended adequate intakes are actually inadequate and need to be increased to at least 800 IU of vitamin D3 per day. Unless a person eats oily fish frequently, it is very difficult to obtain that much vitamin D3 on a daily basis from dietary sources. Excessive exposure to sunlight, especially sunlight that causes sunburn, will increase the risk of skin cancer. Thus, sensible sun exposure (or ultraviolet B irradiation) and the use of supplements are needed to fulfill the body's vitamin D requirement. (Holick, 2007)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except in those with conditions causing hypersensitivity, &lt;strong&gt;there is no evidence of adverse effects&lt;/strong&gt; with serum 25(OH)D concentrations &amp;lt;140 nmol/L, which require a total vitamin D supply of 250 mg (10000 IU)/d to attain. (Vieth, 1999)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Published cases of vitamin D toxicity with hypercalcemia, for which the 25(OH)D concentration and vitamin D dose are known, all involve intake of ≥1000 mg (40000 IU)/day. (Vieth, 1999)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epidemiologic studies show that higher serum 25(OH)D concentrations or environmental ultraviolet light exposure are associated with &lt;strong&gt;lower&lt;/strong&gt; rates of breast, ovarian, prostate, and colorectal cancers. (Vieth, 1999)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, one of the studies found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I]mproving vitamin D nutritional status substantially reduced all-cancer risk in postmenopausal women. (Lappe, 2007)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated above, Health Canada did not believe that there is yet enough evidence to deem this a cause-and-effect relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Michael F. Holick, M.D., Ph.D., &lt;em&gt;Vitamin D Deficiency&lt;/em&gt;, N Engl J Med 2007; 357:266-281, July 19, 2007, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMra070553&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joan M Lappe, Dianne Travers-Gustafson, K Michael Davies, Robert R Recker, and Robert P Heaney, &lt;em&gt;Vitamin D and calcium supplementation reduces cancer risk: results of a randomized trial&lt;/em&gt;, Am J Clin Nutr June 2007 vol. 85 no. 6 1586-1591&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reinhold Vieth, &lt;em&gt;Vitamin D supplementation, 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations,&#xA;and safety&lt;/em&gt;, Am J Clin Nutr 1999;69:842–56.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-21T22:49:41.053" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16694" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16695" CreationDate="2013-06-22T04:08:33.433" Score="5" ViewCount="1401" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=404773949631282&amp;amp;set=a.223064071135605.45905.222272341214778&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;ref=nf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;facebook&lt;/a&gt; photo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What Labeling of US food looks like in Australia... &lt;a href=&quot;http://rawforbeauty.com/blog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Raw for beauty blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XHGxB.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Facebook image, relevant text below&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The picture contains a purported list of ingredients for frosting in Australia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;INGREDIENTS: SUGAR, CORN SYRUP (GENETICALLY MODIFIED), [lots of other&#xA;  ingredients, with many saying &quot;(GENETICALLY MODIFIED)&quot; after them]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Near the bottom, is &quot;Made in the U.S.A.&quot;, and overlaid text of &quot;EVERYONE DESERVES THE RIGHT TO KNOW WHAT IS IN THEIR FOOD!&quot;, and in the top right corner is &quot;U.S.A .LABELS GMOS.. exported to other countries like Australia&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are GMO ingredients labelled this way in Australia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-23T08:40:42.130" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T00:39:43.977" Title="Does Australia label GMO foods?" Tags="|nutrition|australia|gmo|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16694" CreationDate="2013-06-22T04:16:45.453" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.foodstandards.gov.au/consumerinformation/gmfoods/gmlabelling.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Food Standards Australia New Zealand&lt;/a&gt; (the body that has been delegated the authority to develop standards to ensure a high standard of public health protection throughout Australia and New Zealand):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GM foods, ingredients, additives, or processing aids that contain novel DNA or protein must be labelled with the words ‘genetically modified’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting directly from the standards (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/F2014C00036&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Australia New Zealand Food Standards Code - Standard 1.5.2 - Food Produced Using Gene Technology&lt;/a&gt;), at paragraph 5:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5 Labelling of genetically modified food&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The label on a package of genetically modified food must include the statement ‘genetically modified’ in conjunction with the name of that food or ingredient or processing aid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T00:39:43.977" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16675" CreationDate="2013-06-22T10:47:37.760" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, gaseous nitrogen (N&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;) does not react with chlorine. You can even buy &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/supelco/501352?lang=de&amp;amp;region=DE&quot;&gt;chlorine in nitrogen&lt;/a&gt;, which is used for analytical purposes. If chlorine and nitrogen gas reacted, then it would be useless as an analytical standard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A likely source of confusion is probably the reaction of chlorine with ammonia and related substances, which can result in the creation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_trichloride&quot;&gt;nitrogen trichloride&lt;/a&gt;. But nitrogen gas and ammonia are very different molecules with completely different reactivities. This is nicely illustrated by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process&quot;&gt;Haber-Bosch process&lt;/a&gt;, which is how ammonia is commercially produced from nitrogen gas for the use in fertilizers. This uses extremely reactive hydrogen gas, and then it still requires 150-200 bar pressure and temperatures of 350-550 °C. This should illustrate just how non-reactive nitrogen is under most conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2013-06-22T10:47:37.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16705" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-23T13:03:12.313" Score="5" ViewCount="1411" Body="&lt;p&gt;The nutritionist &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jonnybowden.com/&quot;&gt;Dr Jonny Bowden&lt;/a&gt; claims that some foods &lt;em&gt;inflate&lt;/em&gt; fat cells, while others &lt;em&gt;shrink&lt;/em&gt; fat cells. His promotional material talks about most people suffering &lt;em&gt;carbohydrate intolerance&lt;/em&gt; and that most people who are fat are fat because of an &lt;em&gt;allergic reaction&lt;/em&gt; to carbohydrates. He talks about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucagon&quot;&gt;glucagon&lt;/a&gt; and the &quot;&lt;em&gt;Fat burning switch&lt;/em&gt;&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormone-sensitive_lipase&quot;&gt;HSL&lt;/a&gt; being turned off by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulin&quot;&gt;Insulin&lt;/a&gt; causing carbohydrates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, Bowdens claims on &lt;a href=&quot;http://jonnyb.unleashyourthin.com/burnfat/homepage&quot;&gt;Unleash Your Thin&lt;/a&gt; that foods such as pasta &lt;em&gt;turn off your fat burning switch&lt;/em&gt; while foods such as organic beef &lt;em&gt;turn on your fat burning switch&lt;/em&gt; and that his weight loss program will &quot;&lt;em&gt;Show you exactly WHAT foods to eat and which to AVOID...&lt;/em&gt;&quot; and how to &quot;&lt;em&gt;Dissolve body fat everywhere...&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all feels to me like &lt;em&gt;bad science&lt;/em&gt;, yet another fad diet with a rather expensive (but heavily discounted, to promote it) &lt;em&gt;programme&lt;/em&gt;. But I would prefer to know if there is a scientific basis to these claims before I dismiss it entirely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there any scientific evidence to support the claims of &lt;em&gt;fat-burning foods&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2772" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-10-15T23:26:49.620" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T04:09:24.620" Title="Do some foods burn fat?" Tags="|nutrition|weight-loss|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16709" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-23T18:16:45.460" Score="2" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;The documentary movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inside-Job-DVD-Matt-Damon/dp/B003LPUMHM/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1372009994&amp;amp;sr=1-1&amp;amp;keywords=inside%20job&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Inside Job&lt;/a&gt; is a polemical attack on and analysis of the policies and people who contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. It doesn't pretend to be a balanced view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the most squirm-inducing and uncomfortable moments occur when leading academic economists are asked whether they disclosed any conflicts of interest when publishing on topics where they had also been paid to offer related advice. Mostly they don't seem to think there is any conflict or any need to disclose possible conflict in their academic writings. As one Amazon reviewer says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More shocking is revelation of how the study of Economics at major US academic centres like Harvard/ Berkeley / Columbia are being corrupted to meet the diktats of powerful banking industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The documentary claims that it is uncommon for university departments or journals in economics to mandate the disclosure of conflicts. Medical journals, in contrast, mostly mandate explicit disclosure of all potential conflicts or they won't even review a paper (see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/about-bmj/resources-authors/forms-policies-and-checklists/declaration-competing-interests&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BMJ explanation&lt;/a&gt;). So it strikes me as surprising that something similar does not exist in Economics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, John Campbell, Chairman of the Harvard Ecomonics Department was asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does Harvard require disclosures of financial conflict of &#xA;  interest in publications?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And he said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is the claim made in Inside Job correct? Are there no standard rules in Academic Journals or institutions to mandate disclosure of potential conflicts? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB. I suspect this might not be a simple yes/no. If some institutions or journals have tight rules and others do not, it would be useful to have examples in an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-06-23T18:40:33.433" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T17:02:13.263" Title="Are there no rules mandating disclosure of conflicts of interest for academic economists?" Tags="|economics|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16710" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-23T18:37:46.140" Score="4" ViewCount="957" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &quot;Cat's in the Bag...&quot; episode of Season 1 of &quot;Breaking Bad,&quot; characters are shown with 4 gallon-jugs of Hydrofluoric Acid that they use to dissolve 2 adult corpses. Chemistry is a major plot device in the show and it seems like they go to some effort to keep those elements based in reality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scriptphd.com/chemistry/2009/06/02/from-the-lab-breaking-bad-chemistry-good/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, hydrofluoric acid is a good choice for your body-melting needs. But if &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.ask.com/reference/dictionaries/how_many_gallons_does_a_bathtub_hold&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a bath is usually around 200 liters (50 gallons)&lt;/a&gt;, could you really do it with just a few (5-10 liters, 2-4 gallons) of acid? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth pointing out that for the purposes of this question, &quot;dissolve&quot; is defined as &quot;creating a toilet-flushable slurry.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-03-22T12:45:47.710" LastActivityDate="2015-03-22T12:45:47.710" Title="Can a body be dissolved by a few liters or gallons of Hydrofluoric acid?" Tags="|chemistry|criminology|television|mathematics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16711" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-23T19:07:28.647" Score="36" ViewCount="27325" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard several times as I've grown up that you can flex your muscles to make mosquitos get stuck and explode. Looking around &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chacha.com/question/if-you-flex-your-muscle-while-a-mosquito-is-biting-you,-will-the-mosquito-explode&quot;&gt;the web&lt;/a&gt;, I find &lt;a href=&quot;http://mentalfloss.com/article/30791/defense-mosquito-10-things-know-about-summer%E2%80%99s-biggest-annoyance&quot;&gt;several sources claiming the same&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q: If you flex your muscle while a mosquito is biting you, will the&#xA;  mosquito explode?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A: Yes, it's true. If you trap a mosquito's proboscis (sucker) in your&#xA;  skin, then it will suck until it explodes. Try it! ChaCha!&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chacha.com/question/if-you-flex-your-muscle-while-a-mosquito-is-biting-you,-will-the-mosquito-explode&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other site called it a urban legend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;10. They can go out with a bang&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blood pressure makes a mosquito's meal easier by helping to fill its stomach faster, but urban legend says it can also lead to their doom. Story goes, you can flex a muscle close to the bite site or stretch your skin taut so the mosquito can’t pull out its proboscis and your blood pressure will fill the bug until it bursts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this urban legend? Can mosquitoes really suck till they explode?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:40:47.887" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T02:02:33.820" Title="Can you cause mosquitos to explode from drinking too much blood by flexing your muscles?" Tags="|biology|physiology|entomology|blood|biophysics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16712" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16711" CreationDate="2013-06-23T20:00:04.413" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is false. Mosquitos &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; suck until they explode, but not by simply flexing a muscle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;May Berenbaum, professor and head of the Department of Entomology, University of Illinois says this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can trust me, too; it doesn’t work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]he general scientific consensus is &#xA;  that it is indeed possible to cause a mosquito&#xA;  to explode, but &lt;strong&gt;doing so requires severing &#xA;  its ventral nerve cord&lt;/strong&gt; (Klowden 1995). The &#xA;  ventral nerve cord transmits information &#xA;  regarding satiety to the mosquito’s brain; &#xA;  when the cord is severed, the mosquito has no &#xA;  sense of consuming its fill, so it will continues &#xA;  to suck until it quadruples its body weight,&#xA;  whereupon it explodes. Moreover, even after &#xA;  the abdomen bursts,a mosquito will continue&#xA;  to suck blood, which spills freely out of what&#xA;  remains of the back end (Gwadz 1969).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(From &lt;em&gt;Berenbaum 2009&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.entsoc.org/PDF/Pubs/Periodicals/AE/AE-2009/Spring/Buzz.pdf&quot;&gt;Berenbaum, M. (2009). Mosquito myth exploded?. &lt;em&gt;American Entomologist&lt;/em&gt;, 55(1), 4-5.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-10T13:36:48.537" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T13:36:48.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16709" CreationDate="2013-06-23T21:28:52.983" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll address solely the specific claim that was made in the movie: that &lt;em&gt;Harvard&lt;/em&gt; economists are not required to disclose financial conflicts of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(There were two other claims in the movie about particular scientists that failed to disclose conflicts of interest, but the question doesn't ask about those, and I don't see those as claims about a systemic problem. Whether or not those two researchers failed to disclose their conflicts of interest could be determined by examining their papers.)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is false. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/07/addressing-conflicts-of-interest&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Addressing Conflicts of Interest&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The [American Economic Association] and [National Bureau of Economic Research] now require disclosure of authors’ potential financial conflicts of interest in journal articles and working papers, following the practice in the medical profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Harvard Faculty of Arts and Science] faculty members by this June 30 must report annually all financial interests (income or equity) in excess of $5,000 (down from $10,000 previously) from outside entities that may be related to their Harvard responsibilities, including such interests accruing to a spouse and dependent children. (Any equity in a private, for-profit entity has to be reported.) This broadens reporting compared to past practice, when it was up to faculty members’ judgment whether a financial interest represented a potential conflict with their Harvard activities, and so had to be reported; comprehensive reporting is now the default.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-06-23T21:28:52.983" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16714" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16720" CreationDate="2013-06-23T22:29:59.767" Score="1" ViewCount="2494" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read in &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130411214313AAXcwum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many forums&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.self.com/blogs/flash/2013/01/3-reasons-to-drink-water-before-each-meal.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;diet advisories&lt;/a&gt; that one recommends to drink a glass of mineral water (without gas) about half an hour before every meal. Even though most sources provide no explanation for this recommendation, some mention the effect on gastric juice production or that the fullness/satiety feel that comes with meal can be then achieved with less amount of food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that would support this recommendation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5649" LastEditorUserId="5649" LastEditDate="2013-06-24T06:42:13.937" LastActivityDate="2016-07-10T15:21:39.733" Title="Does drinking a glass of water 30 minutes before meal have any positive effect on your health?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16714" CreationDate="2013-06-24T00:38:10.717" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/health/16really.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A New York Times article in November 2010&lt;/a&gt; reviewed the scientific literature and concluded &quot;Drinking water before a meal can reduce calorie intake, though the effect seems most prominent in older people.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do note that the studies involved regular [tap] water. I doubt very much that anyone has studied the effect of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineral_water&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mineral water&lt;/a&gt; versus regular water with regard to drinking before meals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2114" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T00:38:10.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16584" CreationDate="2013-06-24T01:09:00.663" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Snopes.com &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/phonecharge.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;debunks this claim&lt;/a&gt;; the analysis even includes the graphic in the question above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2114" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T01:09:00.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8560" CreationDate="2013-06-24T01:33:36.240" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;You'll find some information in the Wikipedia article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_span&quot;&gt;Attention span&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. But really, why do you think that &quot;concentration&quot; is an on/off state of mind? Some people can read a book and barely remember that they've even read it (if it's uninteresting); someone playing a computer game can be &quot;on&quot; for hours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If &quot;concentration&quot; were an on/off state, then there would be a lot of experimenting with how to extend it. But it's not: see, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/18/7/614.short&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &quot;since there are people with jobs that require much more concentration than [45 minutes] (also, exams usually last longer than that, requiring people to concentrate for a few hours straight)&quot;, no job - or exam - prevents someone from finishing a small task (say, responding to an email or answering a question) and then relaxing for 30 seconds or so (no concentration whatsoever) before continuing on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2114" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T01:33:36.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16714" CreationDate="2013-06-24T07:50:37.643" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In certain populations, drinking a glass of water 30 minutes before your meal can have a positive effect on health. These studies didn't consider mineral water (but others may have).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2007, &lt;em&gt;Walleghen et al.&lt;/em&gt; found that pre-meal water consumption reduces meal energy intake in older subjects, but not in younger subjects. (Walleghen 2007)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not this decrease in energy intake is a &quot;positive effect on health&quot; is a different question, not addressed by the study. They suggest one circumstance that it could be considered a positive effect on health: &quot;older adults, [that] are at increased risk for overweight and obesity&quot;. However, they also say that &quot;intervention studies are needed to determine whether pre-meal water consumption is an effective long-term weight management strategy for the aging population&quot;. (Walleghen 2007)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2008, &lt;em&gt;Davy et al.&lt;/em&gt; repeated this study, but focussing on overweight and obese older adults. (Davy 2008) They found that &quot;meal energy intake was significantly less in the water preload condition as compared with the no-preload condition&quot;. (Davy 2008) Like &lt;em&gt;Walleghen et al&lt;/em&gt;, they also say that &quot;given the high prevalence of overweight and obesity among older adults, future studies should determine whether premeal water consumption is an effective long-term weight control strategy for older adults&quot;. (Davy 2008)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dennis et al.&lt;/em&gt; performed a longer term study in 2010. (Dennis 2010) They found that pre-meal water consumption increases weight loss during a hypocaloric diet intervention in middle-aged and older adults. (Dennis 2010) Regarding the health benefit of this result, they say that &quot;identifying successful weight management strategies for middle-aged and older adults has significant public health implications&quot;. (Dennis 2010)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Son et al.&lt;/em&gt; recommend drinking water before a meal in elderly people who suffer postprandial hypotension (after-eating low blood pressure). (Son 2010)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Daniels, M. C., &amp;amp; Popkin, B. M. (2010). Impact of water intake on energy intake and weight status: a systematic review. Nutrition reviews, 68(9), 505-521.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Davy, B. M., Dennis, E. A., Dengo, A. L., Wilson, K. L., &amp;amp; Davy, K. P. (2008). Water consumption reduces energy intake at a breakfast meal in obese older adults. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, 108(7), 1236-1239.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dennis, E. A., Dengo, A. L., Comber, D. L., Flack, K. D., Savla, J., Davy, K. P., &amp;amp; Davy, B. M. (2010). Water Consumption Increases Weight Loss During a Hypocaloric Diet Intervention in Middle‐aged and Older Adults. Obesity, 18(2), 300-307.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Son, J. T., &amp;amp; Lee, E. (2010). Effect of Water Drinking on the Postprandial Fall of Blood Pressure in the Elderly. Journal of Korean Academy of Fundamentals of Nursing, 17(3), 304-313.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Walleghen, E. L., Orr, J. S., Gentile, C. L., &amp;amp; Davy, B. M. (2007). Pre‐meal Water Consumption Reduces Meal Energy Intake in Older but Not Younger Subjects. Obesity, 15(1), 93-99.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-06-24T08:22:55.450" LastActivityDate="2013-06-24T08:22:55.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16722" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="41981" CreationDate="2013-06-24T09:31:57.613" Score="25" ViewCount="14909" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine in Australia has heard from several of her friends that it's unsafe to pour boiling water on car windows in order to defrost them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Online examples of people claiming it's unsafe include &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2013/06/spray-your-windscreen-with-vinegar-to-avoid-frost/&quot;&gt;Lifehacker&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Remember to never pour boiling water on your windscreen as the thermal&#xA;  shock from the change in temperatures might result in cracks in the&#xA;  glass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and this article / press release (not sure which it is) from the Central Western Daily: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.centralwesterndaily.com.au/story/753465/hot-water-may-shatter-windscreens/&quot;&gt;Hot water may shatter windscreens&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;THE NRMA has warned Orange motorists to take care when attempting to&#xA;  remove ice from their windscreens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the region experiencing night-time temperatures well below zero,&#xA;  many residents have a daily battle dealing with frozen windscreens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some people opt to pour hot water over their windscreen, but this&#xA;  could result in cracking or shattering, according to NRMA chief&#xA;  executive Rob Carter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr Carter also warned motorists of the danger of existing chips in the&#xA;  windscreen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A seemingly insignificant chip in the glass can cause significant&#xA;  damage if hot or boiling water is poured onto the windscreen when it&#xA;  is covered in a layer of ice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In very cold weather, putting the air conditioner on hot can also&#xA;  crack the windscreen if there is a chip in the glass,” Mr Carter said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To reduce the risk, the NRMA recommends a slow defrost or the use of a&#xA;  plastic card, such as a credit card, to scrape off ice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRMA&quot;&gt;NRMA&lt;/a&gt;'s website, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mynrma.com.au/motoring/road-safety/safer-driving/country/snow.htm&quot;&gt;Driving in the snow&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You should also lift wipers from the screen. Warm water may be used to&#xA;  remove ice from the windscreen and windows. Never use hot water as it&#xA;  may cause the windscreen to crack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it unsafe to pour hot or boiling water on car windows?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2023-05-13T18:37:21.650" Title="Can boiling water break car windows?" Tags="|road-vehicles|water|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16723" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18467" CreationDate="2013-06-24T12:07:47.320" Score="14" ViewCount="1131" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently in the Manchester museum, an Egyptian statue turns around while in a sealed display case. &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.orange.co.uk/article/quirkies/Ancient_statue_turns_around_by_itself&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;There is time-lapse footage of the statue&lt;/a&gt;, and in the article, Brian Cox is quoted as saying that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brian thinks it's differential friction, where two surfaces - the serpentine stone of the statuette and glass shelf it is on - cause a subtle vibration which is making the statuette turn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that possible? Watching the video it seems that the statue doesn't have a constant rate of turning; it seems to turn only during the day, and it stops turning once it has completed a half-turn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only references to differential friction I could find were in the context of a moving vehicle braking when the left and right tyres were on different road surfaces, resulting in differential friction which could cause the car to swerve to one side. How can it function on a stationary object?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastEditorUserId="15002" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T11:08:42.563" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T11:08:42.563" Title="Can differential friction explain a statue turning around?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5059" CreationDate="2013-06-26T00:12:05.587" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been intensely researching this subject, and I have found several of the same claims from several different places. The fact is that Polonium 210 (210Po) is a very radioactive agent. The tobacco plant readily absorbs the 210Po because it mistakes it for a nutrient that it needs. Phosphate fertilizers, which are used by all of the major commercial cigarette manufactures because they are cheaper to use, contain 210Po. 210Po causes up to 97% of cancer-related smoking deaths. Organic cigarettes cannot use phosphate fertilizers, only natural fertilizers. Therefore they do not contain 210Po, and hence - they are a lot better for you, if you must smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;EPA - Becoming Aware of Radiation Sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/radiation/sources/tobacco.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tobacco Smoke&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/smokerspoison.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SMOKERS – YOU ARE INHALING THE SAME RADIOACTIVE POISON THAT KILLED Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cancer Research UK &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Science Update blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8850254%E2%80%8E&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cancer risk in relation to radioactivity in tobacco&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14315" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2013-06-26T15:45:18.023" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T15:45:18.023" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16740" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16744" CreationDate="2013-06-26T11:16:51.903" Score="10" ViewCount="995" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the claims related to the PRISM scandal is that, regardless what NSA and other agencies assert, leaks are inevitable because of sheer number of people with access to secrets. According to this claim, 1.4 million Americans hold Top Secret clearance. Is that number accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of such a claim: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Snowden had &quot;top-secret&quot; security clearance, which, somewhat&#xA;  stunningly, is something that more than 1.4 million people have&#xA;  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.noticebrd.com/latest/almost-a-half-a-million-contractors-like-nsa-leaker-edward-snowden-have-top-secret-government-clearance&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-06-26T17:29:30.930" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T17:29:30.930" Title="Do 1.4 million Americans have Top Secret clearance?" Tags="|united-states|government|security|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16742" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-26T12:03:24.433" Score="10" ViewCount="11926" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I know the answer is no, I was baffled to see this posted on a friends Facebook page and figured this would be the best place to find the facts, that and I suck at research. I feel fallacies like this need to be fought with facts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that drug companies don't want you to know that simply making a mixture of honey and cinnamon can cure virtually anything including cancer, heart disease and arthritis, please help me dispel this!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/039963_cinnamon_honey_healing.html#ixzz2XKEK2JgX&quot;&gt;Quoting the terrible science&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please allow me to preface this article with a bit of information unbeknown to the writer and virtually everyone else: cinnamon is 26 percent sulfur based and honey is 33 percent sulfur based, making their combination 59 percent sulfur based and the reason why their combination is so effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14325" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T11:32:41.823" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T11:32:41.823" Title="Does honey and cinnamon cure any diseases?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|cancer|honey|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-01-15T09:53:24.810" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16743" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20758" CreationDate="2013-06-26T12:06:04.543" Score="9" ViewCount="934" Body="&lt;p&gt;All over the internet we can see reference to anti-inflammatory diets and anti-inflammatory property of general food. Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/anti-inflammatory-diet-road-to-good-health&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Web MD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Experts discuss the potential disease-fighting benefits of diets that&#xA;  try to reduce inflammation. [...] &#xA;  The average American diet, Greenfield says, includes far too many foods rich in omega-6 fatty acids, found in processed and fast foods, and far too few rich in omega-3 fatty acids, such as those found in cold-water fish or supplements. When that balance is out of whack, inflammation can set in, Sears explains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/06/13/new-science-weight-loss-introducing-anti-inflammatory-diet/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fox News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eating high levels of saturated fats, trans fats, and refined sugars (read: the modern American diet) sets off a series of reactions: The &quot;bad fat&quot; triggers the liver to release chemicals to fight the toxins, which causes inflammation. Meanwhile, the glucose in food can't be transported to your cells while the body is inflamed, which means that your brain isn't registering the intake. The result: You're left feeling foggy, hungry, and more prone to cravings, which then restarts the cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0071464719&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Inflammation-Free Diet Plan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the heart of the program is the revolutionary IF Rating system that, for the first time, tells you the inflammatory or anti-inflammatory effects of all of the foods you eat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do saturated fats and refined sugars trigger inflammation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wkipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-inflammatory#Anti-inflammatory_foods&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mentions anti-inflammatory food in relation to some Prostaglandins &quot;hormones&quot;&lt;/a&gt; but how relevant is this? More interestingly some food has been labeled as having pro-inflammatory property like &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/111/2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;eggs&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question is: Is there a measurable effect for a regular food or diet? And have any real medical studies been conducted?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="97" LastEditorUserId="97" LastEditDate="2013-06-28T11:29:06.160" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T03:22:07.133" Title="Anti-inflammatory property of food" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16740" CreationDate="2013-06-26T12:12:40.163" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, the number comes direct from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/2012%20Report%20on%20Security%20Clearance%20Determinations%20Final.pdf&quot;&gt;2012 Report on Security Clearance Determinations&lt;/a&gt; that was released by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dni.gov/index.php&quot;&gt;Office of the Director of National Intelligence&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Director_of_National_Intelligence&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;). Table one on page three breaks things down as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;As of 10/1/12:&#xA;              Conf/Secret   Top Secret&#xA;Government:     2,757,333      791,200&#xA;Contractor:       582,524      483,263&#xA;Other:            167,925      135,506&#xA;Sub-Total:      3,507,782    1,409,969&#xA;&#xA;Total:          4,917,751&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report does not indicate if the clearance are active or inactive so the figures doesn't necessarily imply that the given number of people are actively working with classified materials and these figures do not appear to include military personnel. The report also notes that there may be some duplicate data, although steps have been taken to control for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-06-26T12:22:51.323" LastActivityDate="2013-06-26T12:22:51.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16762" CreationDate="2013-06-26T13:05:46.717" Score="17" ViewCount="62954" Body="&lt;p&gt;A post circulating Facebook and elsewhere reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nelson Mandela will die soon. Today, tomorrow, this week, next week. It won't be long. Remember this, he out-lived Thatcher. When he does die, and David Cameron jumps on the Mandela bandwagon, remember that in 1985 he was a top member of the Federation of Conservative Students, which produced the &quot;Hang Mandela&quot; posters. In 1989, Cameron worked in the Tory Policy Unit at Central Office and went on an anti-sanctions fact-finding mission to South Africa with a pro-apartheid lobby firm sponsored by PW Botha. Remember this when he tells the world he was inspired by Madiba.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=355483481246368&amp;amp;set=a.202990219829029.43264.142324329228952&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example Facebook link&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text I pasted is subtly different from the photo captured here - both are in circulation, but the former is privately shared, and I imagine susceptible to link rot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TeN0o.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1989 trip to South Africa, and its sponsorship by an anti-sanctions lobby firm is well documented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found plenty of corroboration for the existence of the poster in question, produced by the Foundation of Conservative Students, but not the exact year it was produced, nor evidence that Cameron was a member of the organisation, and it so, when.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, was David Cameron a &quot;top member&quot; of the FCS at the time these posters were produced? Is there evidence that he was instrumental in, or sympathetic to, the production of these posters?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4887" LastEditorUserId="15980" LastEditDate="2013-12-16T10:03:10.283" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T10:03:10.283" Title="Was David Cameron linked to &quot;Hang Nelson Mandela&quot; posters in the 1980s?" Tags="|history|politics|united-kingdom|nelson-mandela|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6085" CreationDate="2013-06-26T15:06:19.020" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe&lt;/strong&gt; but heavily leaning towards yes, a newly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0066344&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;published article&lt;/a&gt; (as of June 21, 2013) in the peer-reviewed open-access &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLOS_ONE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PLOS ONE&lt;/a&gt; journal. The article itself is actually quite in depth and includes the math that was involved with the analysis, but the follow section from the discussion is the crux of their argument,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the strongest clues in this puzzle is the fact that the&#xA;  frequency of words in the Voynich text obeys Zipf’s law. Despite&#xA;  that it has been shown that long random texts exhibit an approximate&#xA;  form of this law, the profile of frequency-rank distributions in human&#xA;  languages differs significantly from that of random symbolic sequences. &#xA;  Precise features of Zipf’s law in languages do not emerge&#xA;  in simple random sequences and generally require interplay between&#xA;  multiplicative and additive processes. Moreover, Zipf’s law was&#xA;  discovered centuries after the accepted date of creation of the&#xA;  Voynich text. Thus, proposed solutions like the use of&#xA;  sixteenth-century cipher methods, although not impossible, can&#xA;  hardly account for the presence of Zipf’s law in the Voynich text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zipf%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zipf's law&lt;/a&gt; plays a major role in their argument, it bares noting that, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://xlinux.nist.gov/dads/HTML/zipfslaw.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;succinctly defined by the NIST&lt;/a&gt;, Zipf's law is,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The probability of occurrence of words or other items starts high and&#xA;  tapers off. Thus, a few occur very often while many others occur&#xA;  rarely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, a significant amount of the argument by the authors that there is likely a genuine message in the book is due to the fact that the &quot;words&quot; behave in this manner which would be difficult to accomplish using a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_process&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stochastic process&lt;/a&gt; unless you were already aware of Zipf's law. Furthermore the authors also note in other parts of the article that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The word distribution in the manuscript is consistent with information bearing symbols.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The information density (in bits/word) is constant with other human languages. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is an affinity between the words in the manuscript and the section that they appear. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which also factor into their conclusion that there is &quot;support to the presence of a genuine message inside the book.&quot; So it appears that more research is needed into the Voynich manuscript as there isn't definitive proof that it is an encoded document and that there is mathematical evidence to support that it is not a hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2015-04-08T00:11:19.460" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T00:11:19.460" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16750" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16755" CreationDate="2013-06-26T19:36:58.263" Score="1" ViewCount="590" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several animals are commonly considered to be '&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;nocturnal&lt;/a&gt;' by nature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nocturnality is an animal behavior characterized by activity during the night and sleeping during the day. The common adjective is &quot;nocturnal&quot;.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocturnal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples include &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;owls&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hedgehog&lt;/a&gt;. Indeed, the very existence of such a word implies it is used to describe some observed behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some quotes from wikipedia on owls:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most owls are nocturnal, actively hunting their prey only in darkness.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And on Hedgehog&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hedgehogs are primarily nocturnal, although, depending on the species, they may be more or less active during the day.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedgehog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, isn't it more likely that they simply follow a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;polyphasic sleep schedule&lt;/a&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Polyphasic sleep, a term coined by early 20th-century psychologist J.S. Szymanski, refers to the practice of sleeping multiple times in a 24-hour period—usually more than two, in contrast to biphasic sleep (twice per day) or monophasic sleep (once per day).&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems rare for any animals to sleep for particularly long periods of time, such as a full night.  Even some house cats in a safe controlled environment will usually not sleep for more than a few hours at a time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it unlikely that most animals could survive in the wild if they were truly &quot;nocturnal&quot;. Is it possible that their classification as such is simply a result of seeing them active at night, when in fact they may sleep equally during the day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14331" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-06-29T08:45:01.163" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T08:45:01.163" Title="Are any animals nocturnal?" Tags="|zoology|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ClosedDate="2013-07-01T04:31:14.703" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16750" CreationDate="2013-06-27T01:44:43.377" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This boils down to an argument about definitions. You argue that brief awakenings during the day means an animal is not truly nocturnal. Turning that around, that would mean awakening during the night would mean an animal is not truly diurnal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I am going to restrict the discussion to mammals only. I think the point about definitions still applies to other animal classes that sleep.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, it is typical for &lt;em&gt;mammals&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/101/50/17545.short&quot;&gt;to have brief awakenings during the sleep cycle&lt;/a&gt; no matter when it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although mammals of different species have different sleep patterns, brief sleep–wake transitions commonly are observed across species and appear to occur randomly throughout the sleeping period. [...] We analyze sleep recordings from mice, rats, cats, and humans, and we compare the distributions of sleep and wake episode durations. For all four species, we find that durations of brief wake episodes during the sleep period exhibit a scale-free power-law behavior with an exponent α that remains the same for all species (α ≈ 2.2). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could conclude that all mammals are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathemeral&quot;&gt;cathemeral&lt;/a&gt;, but such a strict definition removes the useful distinctions that nocturnal, diurnal and crepuscular offer. So, it is reasonable to use a looser definition and describe a species of bat as nocturnal, even though they are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gLVh3ihRZw&quot;&gt;sometimes awaken during the day&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-06-27T01:50:39.043" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T01:50:39.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16757" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16774" CreationDate="2013-06-27T09:43:11.207" Score="24" ViewCount="12829" Body="&lt;p&gt;My mother used to tell me that I shouldn't give our kitten cow milk, even if she seemed to enjoy it. Since I loved my kitten, and was quite disobedient at that time, I did it fairly often, and never observed any unwelcome consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did a little bit of research and found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cat-world.com.au/can-cats-drink-milk&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.petside.com/article/milk-bad-cats&quot;&gt;topic-related&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pawnation.com/2013/01/11/7-facts-about-cats-and-milk/&quot;&gt;links&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, no, cats shouldn't drink milk. Most cats are lactose (which refers to the sugars in milk) intolerant, and drinking milk may result in an upset tummy or cause diarrhoea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once cats mature, many become lactose intolerant. This makes cow's milk a poor choice to use as a treat for your cat. Milk can cause your pet to have stomach ailments and indigestion since they are not used to it. In some cases milk can actually make your cat very ill and cause vomiting and/or diarrhea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, these articles seem, scientifically speaking, poorly documented. Some of them recommend a special brand of milk designed for cats, which makes me suspect they might have commercial interests in warning people against generic cow milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what's the truth in it? Is there a solid, biological reason why cats shouldn't drink cows' milk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14065" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-06-18T07:11:06.830" LastActivityDate="2018-07-07T17:04:09.610" Title="Is cows' milk bad for cats?" Tags="|biology|zoology|milk|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16760" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16770" CreationDate="2013-06-27T13:50:29.847" Score="7" ViewCount="668" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a long held belief with some electricians that turning on an electric device requires a &quot;startup&quot; cost, or an overhead in the amount of power needed for it to start functioning normally.  I have known people who make sure to only turn devices on or off when they feel they really must because they want to avoid this cost.  Is this a misunderstanding of how a capacitor works or a real phenomenon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: By electric device I mean anything that uses electricity.  A good example to answer my question would be a lightbulb since you don't have to think about a complex system.  Does it take some extra amount of electricity to get the lightbulb lit, or is it simply on when the circuit is closed and off when the circuit is open?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14340" LastEditorDisplayName="user14340" LastEditDate="2013-06-27T14:45:38.030" LastActivityDate="2016-02-16T09:25:49.567" Title="Do electronics have a startup cost?" Tags="|electronics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16745" CreationDate="2013-06-27T14:17:00.173" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can find no evidence that David Cameron was a member of the Foundation of Conservative Students. According to biographies of David Cameron he wasn't politically active while he was a student and his political views were not extreme:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New Statesman - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/politics/2012/07/what-does-david-cameron-want&quot;&gt;What Does David Cameron Want?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unlike Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, Cameron stayed clear of student politics and of the Oxford Union.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BBC - &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8661964.stm&quot;&gt;David Cameron: Life and times of new UK prime minister&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;School friends say Mr Cameron was never seen as a great academic - or noted for his interest in politics, beyond the &quot;mainstream Conservative&quot; views held by most of his classmates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At Oxford, he avoided student politics because, according to one friend from the time, Steve Rathbone, &quot;he wanted to have a good time&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Francis Elliott, James Hanning - &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SgK940c6AF0C&amp;amp;pg=PA66&amp;amp;lpg=PA66&amp;amp;dq=%22david%20cameron%22%20%22student%20politics%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=3XjsxtXU-S&amp;amp;sig=dUwHZH8ZZgbwFejdMJEOiBVnPRk&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=Kj7MUbm5IZCYhQe6-oHwDQ&amp;amp;ved=0CCwQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22david%20cameron%22%20%22student%20politics%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Cameron: The Rise Of The New Conservative&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While future Tory stars ... threw themselves into student politics either at the Oxford Union or in the Oxford University Conservative Association, Cameron stayed on the sidelines, rather as he had at Eton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Dave's politics were very much centrist Tory', says Rathbone. 'He was always very mistrustful of the Monday Club types who were always banging on about how Mandela [then still in prison] was a terrorist.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T14:17:00.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27616" CreationDate="2013-06-27T14:18:40.933" Score="19" ViewCount="2341" Body="&lt;p&gt;The government claims that these security programs are necessary for our safety, and have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/06/18/nsa-director-says-spy-programs-helped-stop-50-potential-terrorist-attacks-and-gives-two-new-examples/&quot;&gt;cited&lt;/a&gt; over 50 examples wherein terrorist plots were discovered and stopped due to this surveillance. However, opponents have debunked at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/06/no-nsa-spying-did-not-prevent-a-terror-attack-on-wall-street.html&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; of these claims, which have been either exaggerated, or were primarily stopped via traditional law enforcement methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any publicly known cases of a credible terrorist attack that was discovered or stopped because of large-scale wiretapping/traffic analysis/etc. playing an essential role, without which the plot would not have been discovered or stopped?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the purposes of answering, if a plot was initially discovered by one of these surveillance programs, it will be assumed that it would not have been discovered otherwise, unless there is other evidence indicating that there was another lead from elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7040" LastEditorUserId="7040" LastEditDate="2013-06-28T15:37:29.263" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T03:03:18.240" Title="Have the NSA spying programs stopped any terrorist attacks?" Tags="|united-states|terrorism|surveillance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-05-07T07:30:46.050" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16757" CreationDate="2013-06-27T14:37:56.203" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's bad for most cats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To digest lactose, mammals require the enzyme lactase. As mammals grow to adults, lactase production decreases (as you would expect after weaning).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cow's milk contains much more lactose than cat's milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Undigested lactose leads to diarrhea. Severe diarrhea can be fatal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cats and Dairy Fact 1: Lactose Intolerance Is the Norm&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like people, cats can be lactose intolerant. And although we tend to think that’s a problem, it’s actually completely normal, says &lt;strong&gt;Linda P. Case, MS, adjunct assistant professor at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine and author of The Cat: Its Behavior, Nutrition, and Health.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The only time animals are exposed to lactose is when they’re babies — in their mother’s milk,&amp;quot; Case says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To digest lactose, a milk sugar, the human and feline digestive systems must contain the enzyme lactase. We have plenty of this enzyme in our systems at birth, and it helps us thrive on our mother’s milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as we grow up, it’s normal for people and cats to begin producing less lactase. Less lactase means less ability to digest lactose. The result may eventually be lactose intolerance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though kittens have lactase in their system, there’s just not enough of it to tackle the lactose overload found in cow’s milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://pets.webmd.com/cats/guide/cats-and-dairy-get-the-facts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://pets.webmd.com/cats/guide/cats-and-dairy-get-the-facts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the lactose content of cow's milk is nearly three times that found in bitch's milk, For this reason, puppies that are fed straight cow's milk will develop sever diarrhea&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Canine and Feline Nutrition: A Resource for Companion Animal Professionals&#xA;By Linda P. Case, Leighann Daristotle, Michael G. Hayek, Melody Foess Raasch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpts show this book quotes scientific studies in its references section but I don't have access to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-11-07T12:21:03.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16771" CreationDate="2013-06-27T14:50:59.940" Score="9" ViewCount="2487" Body="&lt;p&gt;I consume a lot of cholesterol.  For three months straight, I consumed around 6-8 eggs a day with Feta cheese, and about a third of a gallon of milk each day.  I got my cholesterol tested before and after this regime, and my overall cholesterol decreased, and my ratio of HDL/LDL became more favorable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there is serious debate about the Lipid Hypothesis, with research on both sides claiming statistical significance one way or another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats-and-cholesterol/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harvard Public Health repository&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the biggest influence on blood cholesterol level is the mix of&#xA;fats and carbohydrates in your diet—not the amount of cholesterol you&#xA;eat from food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An aggressive, competing claim on &lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/cardiovascular/cholesterol/cholesterol2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HowStuffWorks&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's because the level of cholesterol already present in your blood&#xA;can be increased by high consumption of cholesterol and saturated fat&#xA;in your diet. This increase in dietary cholesterol has been associated&#xA;with atherosclerosis, the build-up of plaques that can narrow or block&#xA;blood vessels. (Think about what happens to your kitchen drain pipes&#xA;when you pour chicken fat down the sink.) If the coronary arteries of&#xA;the heart become blocked, a heart attack can occur. The blocked artery&#xA;can also develop rough edges. This can cause plaques to break off and&#xA;travel, obstructing blood vessels elsewhere in the body. A blocked&#xA;blood vessel in the brain can trigger a stroke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to people arguing that the HowStuffWorks link is outdated, here is an academic source, from J.D. Spence, D.J. Jenkins, J. Davignon, &amp;quot;Dietary cholesterol and egg yolks: not for patients at risk of vascular disease&amp;quot;, Can J Cardiol, 26 (2010), pp. e336–e339&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also no doubt that cholesterol feeding is a causal factor in&#xA;animal models of atherosclerosis. Such models include rhesus monkeys&#xA;fed a diet rich in egg yolks that developed hypercholesterolemia,&#xA;xanthomatosis and atherosclerosis (46,47). In 1908, Ignatowski showed&#xA;that meat – containing the pro-oxidant iron – fed to adult rabbits, or&#xA;milk and egg yolks fed to weanling rabbits, induced atherosclerosis&#xA;(48). In 1913, Anitschkov established the cholesterol-fed rabbit as a&#xA;model for dietary atherosclerosis (49). Cholesterol feeding in rabbits&#xA;not only causes cholesterol accumulation in plasma and the arterial&#xA;wall but also promotes inflammation and cell proliferation, which may&#xA;be blocked by the anti-inflammatory agent cortisone to prevent the&#xA;formation of raised atherosclerotic lesions (50).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dietary cholesterol increased coronary risk in both the Ireland Boston&#xA;Diet-Heart Study (53) and the Western Electric study (54).  These&#xA;results showed good agreement between the Keys dietary score,  which&#xA;emphasized saturated fat, and the Hegsted score, which emphasized&#xA;dietary cholesterol.  Possible confounding of cholesterol intake from&#xA;eggs with other risk factors, such as smoking, have been raised as a&#xA;concern. However,  the careful work of Markus et al (55) showed that&#xA;cholesterol intake, independent of smoking and other risk factors,&#xA;increased carotid intima-media thickness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the best scientific understanding of the relationship&#xA;between dietary cholesterol and blood-level cholesterol?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How, exactly, does the mix of fats and carbohydrates affect&#xA;cholesterol?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14342" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T10:13:26.153" Title="Is dietary cholesterol related to blood serum cholesterol?" Tags="|nutrition|cholesterol|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8630" CreationDate="2013-06-27T17:51:39.390" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem with stylometric analysis is that you can make it show just about whatever you want to make it show if you pick and choose the works to be compared.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In comparing Marlowe and Shakespeare, there's no point in comparing &quot;Edward II&quot; to &quot;The Tempest.&quot;  They were written two decades apart.  One would want to compare &quot;Edward II&quot; to &quot;Richard III.&quot;  And the bulk of the stylometric evidence shows that it is virtually impossible to distinguish early Shakesperean plays from Marlowe.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, when any such comparison is done, &quot;The Massacre at Paris&quot; should be excluded from Marlowe's works, as it is known to exist in two versions, neither of which is thought to reflect the original version of the play.  Many of the extant plays of Shakespeare also exist only in so-called &quot;bad quartos.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The stylometric evidence doesn't prove that Marlowe wrote Shakespeare, but it doesn't exclude the possibility.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14347" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-06-27T18:16:22.430" LastActivityDate="2013-06-27T18:16:22.430" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16760" CreationDate="2013-06-27T18:21:08.083" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, some electronics do have a startup cost (ie. when the power draw is higher during startup than during normal operation). This is observable in PCs, particularly from hard disk drives. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_caviar_green_3tb_review_wd30ezrsdtl&quot;&gt;Specs&lt;/a&gt; from your typical run-of-the-mill desktop hard drive are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;WD Caviar Green 5th Generation Specs&#xA;&#xA;2.5TB and 3TB capacities&#xA;5400 RPM&#xA;64MB cache&#xA;3Gb/s SATA&#xA;Power Consumption&#xA;Spin Up - 10.75W&#xA;Seek - 6.25W&#xA;Idle - 5.5W&#xA;Standby - 1W&#xA;Average Read Seek - 15ms&#xA;Average Latency - 5.5ms&#xA;Spindle Start Time - 17s&#xA;Error Rate - &amp;lt;1 in 1015&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the spinup, which is typically in the 5-15 second range, the drive will draw a larger amount of power (nearly 11 watts in this case) than while in normal operation (from 5.5-6.25W). However, this is only for a brief period of time, and the amount of extra power used is negligible compared to the power needed to keep it running for an extended period. In short, you'll save much more electricity by turning your devices off than by trying to avoid startups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7040" LastEditorUserId="7040" LastEditDate="2013-06-28T18:47:08.757" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T18:47:08.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16765" CreationDate="2013-06-27T20:34:41.460" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=8297185&quot;&gt;Cambridge journals - &quot;Dietary cholesterol: from physiology to cardiovascular risk&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dietary cholesterol comes exclusively from animal sources, thus it is naturally present in our diet and tissues. It is an important component of cell membranes and a precursor of bile acids, steroid hormones and vitamin D. Contrary to phytosterols (originated from plants), cholesterol is synthesised in the human body in order to maintain a stable pool when dietary intake is low. Given the necessity for cholesterol, very effective intestinal uptake mechanisms and enterohepatic bile acid and cholesterol reabsorption cycles exist; conversely, phytosterols are poorly absorbed and, indeed, rapidly excreted. &lt;strong&gt;Dietary cholesterol content does not significantly influence plasma cholesterol values&lt;/strong&gt;, which are regulated by different genetic and nutritional factors that influence cholesterol absorption or synthesis. Some subjects are hyper-absorbers and others are hyper-responders, which implies new therapeutic issues. Epidemiological data do not support a link between dietary cholesterol and CVD. Recent biological data concerning the effect of dietary cholesterol on LDL receptor-related protein may explain the complexity of the effect of cholesterol on CVD risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesterol&quot;&gt;Wikipedia on Cholestorol&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most ingested cholesterol is esterified, and esterified cholesterol is poorly absorbed. The body also compensates for any absorption of additional cholesterol by reducing cholesterol synthesis.[8] For these reasons, cholesterol intake in food has little, if any, effect on total body cholesterol content or concentrations of cholesterol in the blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesterol&quot;&gt;Wikipedia on Cholestorol&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Isocalorically replacing dietary carbohydrates with monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats has been shown to lower serum LDL and total cholesterol levels and increase serum HDL levels, while replacing carbohydrates with saturated fat was shown to increase HDL, LDL, and total cholesterol levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dietary cholesterol has &quot;no significant&quot; or &quot;little if any&quot; effect on blood serum cholesterol (except, for &quot;some subjects who are hyper-absorbers or hyper-responders&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increasing monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats in the diet decreases blood serum cholesterol.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat&quot;&gt;saturated fats&lt;/a&gt; increase cholesterol (saturated fats include animals fats like butter, cheese, cream, and fatty meats; some vegetable oils including coconut, palm, and cottonseed; and various prepared foods).&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://atvb.ahajournals.org/content/12/8/911.short&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14352" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-08-13T15:36:10.183" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T15:36:10.183" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16757" CreationDate="2013-06-28T01:56:19.493" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR&lt;/strong&gt; It depends. Evidence suggests that many cats at least, can drink milk in some forms, particularly unpasteurized milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a famous series of studies done on, among other things, cats and milk consumption, by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_M._Pottenger,_Jr.#Pottenger.27s_cats&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Francis Pottinger&lt;/a&gt;, in the 1930s and 1940s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the study has been around so long, the results have been analyzed time and again, and you can find much on &lt;a href=&quot;http://google.com/search?q=Pottinger+cat+study&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;google&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_M._Pottenger,_Jr.#Milk_Study&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;summarizes the findings of the study&lt;/a&gt; quite well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In ... the &quot;Milk Study,&quot; the cats were fed 2/3 milk and 1/3 meat. All groups were fed raw meat with different groups getting raw, pasteurized, evaporated, sweetened condensed or raw metabolized vitamin D milk. The cats on raw milk were the healthiest while &lt;strong&gt;the rest exhibited varying degrees of health problems&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this we can see that some forms of milk are indeed bad for cats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am searching for the original text of the study to cite here, which I would expect to be public domain by now, and so far have not found it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of attributed differences between pasteurized and unpasteurized milk, which may affect the health of a cat&lt;strike&gt;, but the simplest to recognize is that of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lactase&lt;/a&gt; (note the distinction from lactose: Lact&lt;i&gt;ose&lt;/i&gt; is a sugar, lact&lt;i&gt;ase&lt;/i&gt; is the enzyme which helps digest lactose).  This is the simplest to recognize, due to the nearly immediate symptoms associated with its absence, as well as the well understood mechanism by which it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main culprit is milk’s lactose, which many cats have trouble digesting. The result: diarrhea or stomach upset. Not exactly romantic.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://pets.webmd.com/cats/guide/cats-and-dairy-get-the-facts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lactase is an enzyme naturally present in cow's milk, which is essential for the complete digestion of lactose (milk sugar).  The process of milk pasteurization destroys this enzyme, thus leaving the consumer of the milk (a cat in this case) to his own devices to digest the lactose, and many cats (and other animals) don't have the gut flora necessary to digest it, thus leading to digestive problems.&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above part of my answer appears to be incorrect (thanks to @Scott for raising the question); although that doesn't change the results of the above quoted study; only the mechanism by which these results can be explained.  I will try to edit this question as I find additional information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-10-22T00:31:13.283" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T00:31:13.283" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16775" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16776" CreationDate="2013-06-28T02:23:32.673" Score="25" ViewCount="11357" Body="&lt;p&gt;A meme from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=172814582892536&amp;amp;set=a.106837326156929.12280.100004919860924&amp;amp;type=1&quot;&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; with 62,000+ shares: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Excellent Driving Tip: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 36 year old female had an accident several weeks ago. It was raining, though not excessively when her car suddenly began to hydro-planeand literally flew through the air. She was not seriously injured but very stunned at the sudden occurrence!When she explained to the Police Officer what had happened, he told her something that every driver should know - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NEVER DRIVE IN THE RAIN WITH YOUR CRUISE CONTROL ON.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She thought she was being cautious by setting the cruise control and maintaining a safe consistent speed in the rain.... &#xA;  But the Police Officer told her that if the cruise control is on,your car will begin to hydro-plane when the tyres lose contact with the road, and your car will accelerate to a higher rate of speed making you take off like an aeroplane. She told the Officer that was exactly what had occurred. The Officer said this warning should be listed, on the driver's seat sun-visor - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NEVER USE THE CRUISE CONTROL WHEN THE ROAD IS WET OR ICY, &#xA;  Along with the airbag warning. We tell our teenagers to set the cruise control and drive a safe speed – but we don't tell them to use the cruise control only when the road is dry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only person the accident victim found who knew this, (besides the Officer), was a man who'd had a similar accident, totaled his car and sustained severe injuries.. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NOTE: Some vehicles (like the Toyota Sienna Limited XLE) will not allow you to set the cruise control when the windshield wipers are on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even if you send this to 15 people and only one of them doesn't know about it, it's still worth it. You may have saved a life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that cruise-control increases risk of dangerous accidents when the road is wet or icy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess I will accept evidence of manufacturer's warnings, although I would rather actual studies that include all risks rather than the single risk of hydroplaning. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'm aware that car safety systems have improved, so I am open to answers that say 'It used to be true, but not any more.')&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T21:23:54.213" Title="Is using cruise-control dangerous in the rain?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16775" CreationDate="2013-06-28T03:36:34.570" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alright, this is actually a tough one as it seems to be fairly universally agreed (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icbc.com/news/nov20-08&quot;&gt;insurance companies&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://alerts.nationalsafetycommission.com/2009/03/hazards-of-driving-in-rain-with-cruise.php&quot;&gt;safety commissions&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maine.gov/bgs/riskmanage/tipofthemonth/tip46.htm&quot;&gt;state governments&lt;/a&gt;, etc.) that cruise control should not be used in the rain or in icy conditions. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icbc.com/news/nov20-08&quot;&gt;ICBC&lt;/a&gt; summarizes what most of the arguments against using it are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Turn off the cruise control&lt;/strong&gt;: Wet roads can cause wheels to spin and&#xA;  lose control. The only way to stop wheels from spinning and maintain&#xA;  control is to immediately reduce power. An activated cruise control&#xA;  system applies continuous power, keeping the wheels spinning. By the&#xA;  time you disengage the cruise control it may be too late – you may&#xA;  have already lost control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough though, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raa.com.au/media_news.asp?TerID=83&amp;amp;RefID=363&quot;&gt;RAA&lt;/a&gt; acutely says this is a myth for effectively the same reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RAA Technical Manager Mark Borlace, said the potential for this&#xA;  condition to exist in cruise control systems had been investigated,&#xA;  but the claims were unfounded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Cruise control is a device used to keep the speed of the vehicle&#xA;  constant, by measuring the speed of the wheels and feeding this&#xA;  information into the cruise control system that regulates the engine’s&#xA;  output,” Mr Borlace said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Should the car’s tyres break traction with the road, such as in an&#xA;  aquaplane situation, the increase in wheel speed would be sensed and&#xA;  the cruise control system would then reduce the amount of throttle and&#xA;  maintain the set speed.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CarPoint.com.au has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.carpoint.com.au/advice/2006/cruise-control-and-aquaplaning-the-facts-7413&quot;&gt;extremely good write up&lt;/a&gt; on this issue and directly contradicts one of the key-points in the email,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is the key that makes a nonsense of the email. Modern cars take&#xA;  their speedo reading from the driveshaft or transmission. This means&#xA;  the cruise control bases its responses on the speed of the driven&#xA;  wheels, not the car itself. This is an important distinction and fail&#xA;  safe position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the driven wheels skid because they lose grip, the spinning wheels&#xA;  will cause the speedo to show a higher reading which will force the&#xA;  cruise control to release the throttle faster than most drivers.&#xA;  Regardless of whether the car itself slows down or speeds up, the&#xA;  cruise control will always reduce the throttle no matter what until&#xA;  the driven wheels slow down back to the pre-set speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the wheels continue to slip under this scenario, this will always&#xA;  leave the car travelling more slowly relative to the road, not faster&#xA;  as described in the email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the internet hoax repositories include this story (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hoax-slayer.com/cruise-control-warning.html&quot;&gt;Hoax Slayer&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/autos/techno/wetroad.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/c/cruisecontrol.htm#.Ucz6eW1NqZQ&quot;&gt;Truth or Fiction&lt;/a&gt;) and have some additional sources that are much harder to verify but they also don't say much beyond what the quoted material does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, it seems though that while the email is correct in that the universal advice is to not use cruise control in wet or icy conditions, but the cruise control itself will not cause the car to speed up as claimed in the email. However, cruise control may cause the driver to practice unsafe habits and since the cruise control cannot register the loss of traction on the road, if you lose control of your steering it may cause you to accelerate in an undesirable direction once you gain traction again. As noted by the CarPoint.com.au article,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What has cruise control got to do with aquaplaning?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt; Not much, but it’s&#xA;  how most drivers react while the cruise control is on that will almost&#xA;  certainly decide whether a nasty aquaplaning situation turns into&#xA;  anything more than a scare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here are some examples you should consider...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After drivers engage the cruise control and no longer have contact with the accelerator pedal, they can no longer feel if the wheels are&#xA;  losing traction until it is too late.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When something does go wrong while the cruise control is engaged, most drivers stab the brake pedal to disengage the cruise control. If&#xA;  the car is starting to aquaplane, hitting the brakes could be enough&#xA;  to lock up the wheels completely. Even with the wheels locked-up under&#xA;  brakes and the cruise control disengaged, the car would continue on at&#xA;  speed. ABS-equipped cars could save most drivers in this situation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As some drivers move their feet well away from the accelerator pedal when the cruise control is engaged, experts suggest that the&#xA;  above scenario is just as likely to be caused by the driver stabbing&#xA;  the accelerator instead of the brake as they tried to disengage the&#xA;  cruise control.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A car with cruise control engaged does not know to slow down before a corner nor does it know when to reapply the power as you&#xA;  leave the corner. A cruise control forces the car to rely totally on&#xA;  its front wheels to steer through a corner when good drivers would&#xA;  normally use a strategic sequence of brakes, accelerator and steering.&#xA;  If the front wheels start aquaplaning in the middle of a corner, the&#xA;  cruise control cannot register the loss of grip unless the car is&#xA;  front-drive. The cruise control would then keep pushing the car&#xA;  straight ahead off the road or across oncoming traffic. Applying the&#xA;  brakes to stop this could make an already dangerous situation worse.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cruise control can make you inattentive. By the time you wake up to a problem situation and work out what to do, it can be too late.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to summarize, the email is correct in that using cruise control in wet or icy conditions is not recommended; however, it will not cause to you speed up as described in the email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-06-28T15:23:17.023" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T15:23:17.023" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16781" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-28T10:26:12.673" Score="21" ViewCount="6649" Body="&lt;p&gt;Japanese author and doctor of alternative medicine, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Masaru Emoto&lt;/a&gt; claims that water can react to intentions. Talk nice to water and you get nice looking ice crystals from it. Mention Adolf Hitler near water and the ice crystals are all distorted and ugly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lVLag.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;emoto water&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Let's not discuss theoretical objections to this. I'm interested in experiments that tried to test this. Do you know any?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only studies I could find were conducted by the Emoto and his colleagues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Wikipedia mentions the &lt;a href=&quot;http://unconv-association.org/sites/unconventional/files/publications/jse_22_4_radin.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;following experiment&lt;/a&gt; as a criticism:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A better-controlled &quot;triple-blind&quot; follow-up study published in the Journal of Scientific Exploration did not yield positive results.[10] More than 1,900 of Mr. Emoto's followers focused gratitude on water bottles in a vault over a period of three days. The water was then frozen and compared to two different sets of controls. Crystals from all three groups were not considered to be particularly beautiful (scoring 1.7 on a scale of 0 to 6, where 6 was very beautiful). An objective comparison of contrast did not reveal any significant differences among the samples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a beauty rating graph of 3 sets of water:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yogG1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the paper they reduce the result set (use beauty &gt; 1 ratings) to prove them right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even if results do not really support Emoto claims, why is there a difference in beauty ratings of different sets of water at all? Shouldn't the ratings be about equal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14363" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-10-26T00:58:59.523" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T00:58:59.523" Title="Does Masaru Emoto's experiment show human consciousness affects the aesthetics of water crystals?" Tags="|water|masuru-emoto|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16783" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-28T14:05:55.733" Score="16" ViewCount="1091" Body="&lt;p&gt;A couple months ago, I consumed around 8 eggs a day for several months.  This was largely based on research from the Paleo Diet arguing that saturated fats and cholesterol wasn't nearly as bad for you as nutritional advice would suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study, however, came out recently claiming that eggs were as bad for you as smoking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prevention.com/food/healthy-eating-tips/study-claims-eggs-are-unhealthy-smoking#ixzz2XW7k7xrv&quot;&gt;From Prevention.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers from Western University in Canada  examined over 1,200 men&#xA;  and women to come to the conclusion that regularly eating egg yolks&#xA;  was two-thirds as bad as smoking when it comes to carotid plaque in&#xA;  the arteries, a known risk factor for stroke and heart attack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some aggressive lines from a paper by J.D. Spence, D.J. Jenkins, J. Davignon, &quot;Dietary cholesterol and egg yolks: not for patients at risk of vascular disease&quot;, Can J Cardiol, 26 (2010), pp. e336–e339&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although some studies showed no harm from consumption of eggs in&#xA;  healthy people, this outcome may have been due to lack of power to&#xA;  detect clinically relevant increases in a low-risk population.&#xA;  Moreover, the same studies showed that among participants who became&#xA;  diabetic during observation, consumption of one egg a day doubled&#xA;  their risk compared with less than one egg a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the research say on the health impacts of consuming several eggs a day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14342" LastActivityDate="2017-07-19T18:03:55.550" Title="What health impacts, if any, does consuming a large number of eggs each day have?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16784" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23987" CreationDate="2013-06-28T15:49:59.420" Score="2" ViewCount="459" Body="&lt;p&gt;Barack Obama has said following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My continued expectation is that Russia or other countries that have&#xA;  talked about potentially providing Mr Snowden asylum recognise that&#xA;  they are a part of an international community and they should be&#xA;  abiding by international law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there in fact any &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;international law&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaties#Bilateral_and_multilateral_treaties&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;multilateral treaty&lt;/a&gt;, which would require countries to detain and extradite other countries' suspects? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, does any of mentioned countries have any bilateral treaties with US regarding the subject? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-02T23:27:06.593" LastActivityDate="2014-12-04T10:07:28.553" Title="Do international laws require the detention and extradition of suspects?" Tags="|united-states|politics|law|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16784" CreationDate="2013-06-28T17:13:33.300" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether or not someone is a dissident is an extremely broad question; however, the United States does have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_extradition_treaties&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sizable number&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;extradition&lt;/a&gt; treaties that are in place that require the signatory countries to detain and extradite individuals. In general the United States requires the standard of &lt;a href=&quot;http://definitions.uslegal.com/d/double-criminality/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dual criminality&lt;/a&gt; in the treaties and as per the &lt;a href=&quot;http://london.usembassy.gov/gb140.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fact sheet&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statewatch.org/news/2003/jul/UK_USA_extradition.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US-UK Extradition Treaty&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The standards are the same in practice:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All extradition requests between the U.S. and UK must meet the same evidentiary standard:  probable cause.  All requests from the&#xA;  U.S. must meet the standard of “reasonable suspicion” required under&#xA;  UK law.    However, all requests from the U.S. must also be based on a&#xA;  charging document that meets the “probable cause” standard required&#xA;  under U.S. law.  This is the same standard that the U.S. requires of&#xA;  extradition requests from the UK.  The panel reviewed the evidence and&#xA;  concluded:  “There is no practical difference between the information&#xA;  submitted to and from the United States.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The relationship is one of parity:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The treaty is a “dual criminality” treaty.  No one can be extradited by either country unless the offense for which extradition&#xA;  is requested is a crime in both countries and carries a prison&#xA;  sentence of at least one year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2013-06-28T17:13:33.300" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16789" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-06-28T20:35:46.827" Score="13" ViewCount="3564" Body="&lt;p&gt;I been told that spelling ability (good orthography) is correlated with intelligence (which is a nice way to say: if you are bad with orthography, you are stupid). So far I have been unable to find a conclusive evidence based answer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.le.ac.uk/psychology/jrb/PDF80/Beech&amp;amp;Black84.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;, that says there is a correlation between personality and orthography (if you are more confident, you are more likely to make mistakes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/3019/are-poor-spellers-stupid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article at the Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; which says that if your spelling mistakes are from dyslexia you are not necessary stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But neither of them answers my question. Is there a correlation with adult intelligence? (I do not believe so, because I have met smart people that are bad at spelling, but they might be an anomaly.) So I would really like to know if that is the way it works in the majority of the cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14372" LastEditorUserId="14372" LastEditDate="2015-11-22T01:03:45.907" LastActivityDate="2015-11-22T20:16:01.197" Title="Is spelling (orthography) correlated with adult intelligence?" Tags="|intelligence|cognitive-fitness|cognitive-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16784" CreationDate="2013-06-29T00:08:48.593" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tangentially relevant is that even when there are &quot;international laws&quot;, they are subject to dispute and interpretation. Here's one well-documented example of that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/people/2010-07-12-polanski-extradition-decision_N.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;USA Today: Swiss free Roman Polanski; won't extradite director to U.S.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Swiss mostly blamed U.S. authorities for failing to provide&#xA;  confidential testimony...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The stunning decision could end the United States' three-decade&#xA;  pursuit of Polanski, unless he travels to another country that would&#xA;  be willing to apprehend him and weigh sending him to Los Angeles.&#xA;  France, where he has spent much of his time, does not extradite its&#xA;  own citizens, and the public scrutiny over Switzerland's deliberations&#xA;  may dissuade other nations from making such a spectacular arrest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The [Swiss] Justice Ministry also said that [Swiss] national interests&#xA;  were taken into consideration in the [Swiss] decision...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Switzerland handles about 200 extradition requests a year and only&#xA;  about 5% are rejected...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The government said extradition had to be rejected &quot;considering the&#xA;  persisting doubts concerning the presentation of the facts of the&#xA;  case.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beyond the legal confusion, Polanski's extradition is a complicated&#xA;  and diplomatically sensitive because of Polanski's status as a&#xA;  cultural icon in France and Poland...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-06-29T00:08:48.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16791" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16794" CreationDate="2013-06-29T01:22:06.433" Score="6" ViewCount="1580" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/tea/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;r/tea&lt;/a&gt; suggested updating the Celestial Seasonings (a tea brand) wikipedia page &quot;to include the pesticide thing.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Google search finds a response of Celestial Seasonings to these accusation, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.celestialseasonings.com/safety-assurance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;saying that the reports were &quot;false and misleading.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Second, the only sites that came up aside from their page were &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/article/dangerously-high-pesticide-levels-found-celestial-seasonings-teas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Examiner&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/040972_Celestial_Seasonings_pesticides_tea.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Natural News&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know Natural News is full of woo, but I do not know whether The Examiner is a reliable source?&#xA;For what it is worth, &lt;a href=&quot;https://glaucusresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/02/GlaucusResearch-The_Hain_Celestial_Group_Inc-NasdaqHAIN-Strong_Sell_Febuary_21_2013.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is the original claim from Glaucus Research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do the Celestial Seasonings teas contain dangerously high pesticide levels?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14375" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T14:05:23.780" LastActivityDate="2015-12-10T11:12:24.340" Title="Do the Celestial Seasonings teas contain dangerously high pesticide levels?" Tags="|environmental-health|tea|pesticides|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16791" CreationDate="2013-06-29T04:59:22.750" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; This answers the original question of whether &lt;em&gt;Examiner.com&lt;/em&gt; is a reliable news source. Based on remarks made by an executive editor of &lt;em&gt;The Examiner,&lt;/em&gt; the website is a less reliable source than a newspaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, that is not a valid reason to reject a claim published by the source.&lt;/strong&gt; Judging an article by the company it keeps is a fallacy and in this case is probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;poisoning the well&lt;/a&gt;. As always, we can only judge the soundness of an argument according to its reasoning, premises, and evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Examiner.com&lt;/em&gt; published the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/article/dangerously-high-pesticide-levels-found-celestial-seasonings-teas&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“‘Dangerously high pesticide levels’ found in Celestial Seasonings teas”&lt;/a&gt; by Roger Ziegler on March 22, 2013. Their front page currently features celebrity news, emphasizing legal and drug abuse scandals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia describes &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examiner.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Examiner.com&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; as a fast-growing news network with a blog-like platform:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Examiner.com&lt;/em&gt; is a media company based in Denver, Colorado, that operates a network of local news websites, allowing &amp;quot;pro–am contributors&amp;quot; to share their city-based knowledge on a blog-like platform, in 238 markets throughout the United States and parts of Canada with two national editions, one for each country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The domain was previously owned by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Examiner&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The San Francisco Examiner&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, a daily newspaper that was the “longtime ‘Monarch of the Dailies’ and flagship of the Hearst Corporation chain.” Philip Anschutz of Clarity Media Group acquired the newspaper and domain in 2004, transforming both:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under Clarity ownership, the Examiner pioneered a new business model for the newspaper industry. Designed to be read quickly, the Examiner is presented in a compact, tabloid size without story jumps. . . . By February 2008, the company had transformed the newspaper's examiner.com domain into a national hyperlocal brand with local websites throughout the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clarity Media Group sold the newspaper in 2011 but still owns the website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia notes several issues with &lt;em&gt;Examiner.com,&lt;/em&gt; especially:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;accusations of plagiarism and poor editorial oversight in 2007,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;substandard pay for some contributors, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a 79% drop in search traffic credited to Google tuning out “content farms” in 2011.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these criticisms predate the website's current incarnation. For example, the plagiarism claims stem from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-12-05/news/blogos-free/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an investigation by Matt Smith of SF Weekly&lt;/a&gt; in 2007, when Clarity still ran the website as an online companion to the newspaper (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“They're blogs. They don't get edited,” explained &lt;em&gt;Examiner&lt;/em&gt; executive editor Jim Pimentel. “We don't give any direction to people on what to write in their blogs. And that's standard operating procedure.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pimentel was unaware of [plagiarism] when I spoke with him Friday, but he told me &lt;strong&gt;the Examiner has a less-strict standard for accuracy and attribution in stories that appear on the Web.&lt;/strong&gt; That's because online stories can be changed as journalistic problems emerge, while printed stories require publishing corrections, he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &lt;em&gt;Examiner.com&lt;/em&gt; did address the specific plagiarism concerns that Smith expressed, they still emphasize semi-professional blogging, and the impact of Google's search tuning suggests that the site is weak in original content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14359" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T08:21:22.070" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16799" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16809" CreationDate="2013-06-29T22:09:44.313" Score="17" ViewCount="3427" Body="&lt;p&gt;The UK National Health Service &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/homehygiene/Pages/how-to-store-food-safely.aspx&quot;&gt;advises&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;never put open cans in the fridge, as the metal may transfer to the&#xA;  can's contents – place the contents in a storage container or covered&#xA;  bowl instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence supporting the assertion that metal may &quot;transfer&quot; into the food (for modern cans)? And if the metal &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; transfer is there any evidence that &#xA;it would be a health risk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2638" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T05:58:14.290" Title="Is storing food in opened tin cans dangerous?" Tags="|nutrition|environmental-health|safety|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16807" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13800" CreationDate="2013-07-01T01:04:37.720" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutvision.com/cvs/irritated.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Computer Eye Strain: 10 Steps for Relief&lt;/a&gt; says, &quot;Choose a display with a dot pitch of .28 mm or smaller.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apple.com/macbook-air/specs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MacBook Air - Technical Specifications&lt;/a&gt; (with the help of &lt;a href=&quot;http://thirdculture.com/joel/shumi/computer/hardware/ppicalc.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Display PPI (Pixels Per Inch) Calculator&lt;/a&gt;), the 13-Inch MacBook Air's dot pitch is 0.1989 mm (127.68 PPI), smaller than 0.28 mm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14393" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T01:04:37.720" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16799" CreationDate="2013-07-01T05:58:14.290" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;First you have to figure out what cans are made of. There's many metals used, and then there's alloys of those metals.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Tin (or rather tin plated steel alloy), and aluminium seem the most common. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_can&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_can&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Wikipedia has this to say about tin poisoning from cans: &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tin has no known natural biological role in living organisms. It is not easily absorbed by animals and humans. The low toxicity is relevant to the widespread use of tin in dinnerware and canned food.[1] Nausea, vomiting and diarrhea have been reported after ingesting canned food containing 200 mg/kg of tin.[2] This observation led, for example, the Food Standards Agency in the UK to propose upper limits of 200 mg/kg.[3] A study showed that 99.5% of the controlled food cans contain tin in an amount below that level.[4]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_poisoning&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_poisoning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;For aluminium, toxicity is even less apparently:&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite its natural abundance, aluminium has no known function in biology. It is remarkably nontoxic, aluminium sulfate having an LD50 of 6207 mg/kg (oral, mouse), which corresponds to 500 grams for a 80 kg person.[6] The extremely low acute toxicity notwithstanding, the health effects of aluminium are of interest in view of the widespread occurrence of the element in the environment and in commerce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_poisoning#Health_concerns&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_poisoning#Health_concerns&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Thus, it's highly unlikely you'll suffer any ill effects from food exposed to the metal of your can.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;In the past lead solder was used to seal the cans, which did lead to poisoning as lead of course is rather toxic (which was not well understood at the time):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Early cans were sealed with lead soldering, which led to lead poisoning. Famously, in the 1845 Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin, crew members suffered from severe lead poisoning thought to be caused by eating canned food. More recent research suggests the lead poisoning was more likely to have been caused by the internal pipe system on the ships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_can&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_can&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;This could well be the origin of this myth, however the poisoning could happen with sealed as well as opened cans.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Now, with the scare about BPA poisoning, the internal coating/liner of modern cans is blamed by some for all kinds of scary diseases as well, but as mentioned in other questions there is no real scientific evidence to back up the claims that BPA is toxic in the concentrations found in those linings except maybe for infants.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;For example a recent US government study indicates that:&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;For infants and children the Expert Panel has the following levels of concern for biological processes that might be altered by Bisphenol A, as follows:&#xA;  • some concern for neural and behavioral effects&#xA;  • minimal concern for the effect of accelerated puberty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;For adults, the Expert Panel has negligible concern for adverse reproductive effects following exposures in the general population to Bisphenol A. For highly exposed subgroups, such as occupationally exposed populations, the level of concern is elevated to minimal.[8]:382-383[61]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol-A&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol-A&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Ergo, I can only conclude that there is no reason to assume that having open cans in the fridge as storage containers would cause any adverse effects on your health, as long as the same precautions are taken as with any other food container. Any effects that might ensue would be no different from having the sealed can in there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T05:58:14.290" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16810" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16814" CreationDate="2013-07-01T06:56:07.933" Score="7" ViewCount="693" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yarnell_Hill_fire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;19 wildfire firefighters died in Arizona today&lt;/a&gt;, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.azcentral.com/news/arizona/articles/20130630crews-fighting-small-fires-around-Arizona.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;articles mention&lt;/a&gt; that they appear to have used their fire shelters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the 19 firefighters were found in an area that also had 19 fire shelters deployed. Some of those found were inside a shelter, which is typically used as a last resort to withstand the fire as it blows over. Some of the crew members were found outside the shelters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read other cases of firefighters deploying their shelters and still dying. I cannot recall a case where the shelter is said to have saved the life of the user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_shelter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia entry&lt;/a&gt; tellingly describes them as a &lt;em&gt;safety device of last resort&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, my question is, do these fire shelters save lives?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can think of several possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes they do, but acts thereof are underreported for whatever reason.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes they can, but because they are viewed as a tool of last resort they tend to be deployed in situations that are already beyond all hope. If used in less extreme fires they would be highly effective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No, they are ineffective.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nifc.gov/fireShelt/fshelt_main.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;USGovt fire shelter summary&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE - in addition to the answer below, the following quote comes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323936404578579600222810048.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a new article on the event by the Wall Street Journal&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Wally Covington, professor of fire ecology at Northern Arizona University] added that the fire shelters used by firefighters offer limited protection—usually no more than 10 minutes or so under what he called moderate fire conditions. &quot;But under an extreme condition, they may not work,&quot; he said, adding suffocation from smoke is often the cause of fatalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8419" LastEditorUserId="8419" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T03:22:34.030" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T05:17:20.300" Title="Do fire shelters save lives?" Tags="|safety|fire|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16813" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-01T10:18:41.537" Score="1" ViewCount="470" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is commonly &lt;a href=&quot;http://hoopermuseum.earthsci.carleton.ca/stromatolites/OXYGEN.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;believed&lt;/a&gt; (or based on few &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=origin-of-oxygen-in-atmosphere&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;evidences&lt;/a&gt;) that atmospheric oxygen built up because of extensive photosynthesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical about this theory that biotic factors are solely responsible for creating 21% of atmosphere (around 40 million moles of oxygen) and I couldn't find any research articles which tried to model this process; the theory itself doesn't seem complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The present theory doesn't take into consideration the possibility that aerobic respiration would have co-evolved with oxygenic-photosynthesis and how the atmospheric oxygen levels stabilized at 21%. It is not illogical to assume that because cellular concentrations of oxygen will be high in cyanobacteria; it is possible that using oxygen as electron acceptor is a mechanism of preventing oxidative damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another point, though it is not a logical justification to doubt the theory; it just seems too astoundingly unbelievable that life on earth was dependent on an organism? How did cyanobacteria flourish so much? How did photosynthesis overtake oxygen production by abiotic reactions such as UV photolysis of water (which seems plausible)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that population of cyanobacteria is limited by total available water (which will always be less than the total sea surface area x ~2m [limnetic zone]  ), 12 hours of available light, and possibility of coevolution of aerobic respiration, how much time would it take to produce this much of oxygen. Is there any study which quantitatively proves this hypothesis ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14395" LastEditorUserId="14395" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T11:25:57.017" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T11:25:57.017" Title="Oxygen buildup in the atmosphere" Tags="|biology|evolution|geology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16810" CreationDate="2013-07-01T10:30:01.787" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;A report from 1987 had 4/5 firefighters &lt;a href=&quot;http://wildfirelessons.net/documents/Lauder_Shelter_PPE_Review_1987.pdf&quot;&gt;surviving entrapment by using a fire shelter&lt;/a&gt;. This report was found at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wildfirelessons.net/Home.aspx&quot;&gt;Wildfire Lessons Learned Center&lt;/a&gt;, when searching for events with deployed fire shelters. In this case shortly after they deployed their shelters water and fire retardant was dropped on their position by helicopter, and they were rescued at 45mins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The heat was so intense they reportedly rolled around on the ground to avoid burning from conduction from the hot ground. The firefighter who died was found half out of his shelter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 25 incidents listed on the search page where fire shelters were deployed, with a total of 374 people involved and 2 fatalities. Due to the interface for searching I only totalled results with a Yes for fire shelters being deployed. Some of the entries had a specific number entered instead of a yes/no and I didn't include them in the count as I didn't have time to search through all the different terms separately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, it looks like fire shelters save lives, but their use to save lives is common enough that it isn't reported on by the mainstream media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T01:42:47.790" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T01:42:47.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16813" CreationDate="2013-07-01T12:37:22.863" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There wasn't initially a problem with the Oxygen being released as the quantity of Iron on earth reacted with the Oxygen forming Fe2+ and Fe3+ compounds first. Only once all the available Iron had reacted with Oxygen did the Oxygen start building up in the atmosphere, but the rate of Oxygen production from all the Cyanobacteria on the planet by that stage was rather large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There evidence for this is oxidised Iron compounds appearing sometime after the evolution of cyanobacteria, and pre-dating the free oxygen in the atmosphere which is given in the article you linked to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to do a rough estimate, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2876029/#!po=5.55556&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; claims 25 Giga tons of carbon from CO2 are fixed each year. This is 2.1e+12 moles of Carbon, which should then liberate the same number of moles of O2. The atmosphere contains &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth&quot;&gt;5.1480×1018 kg&lt;/a&gt; , of which Oxygen makes up 21% by volume, or 23% by weight. So 1.6e+20 moles of Oxygen. The ratio then means that it would take approximately 7,600,000 years for the current rate of production of Oxygen to take the atmosphere from 0% Oxygen to the current 21% Oxygen. This is consistent with the ~50 million years proposed for the timing from Oxygen starting to build up in the atmosphere to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event&quot;&gt;Great Oxygenation Event&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T12:37:22.863" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13800" CreationDate="2013-07-01T14:48:23.333" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Retina Display is unhealthy, but it's unrelated to the resolution. It's the fact, that it's offered only as glossy display, no matte option. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Queensland University of Technology page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hrd.qut.edu.au/healthsafety/workplace/highGloss.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;High gloss computer screens&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This web page contains health and safety considerations for Macintosh&#xA;  – Apple ‘glass’ or high gloss monitor screens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reflections and glare on high gloss monitor screens and their relation&#xA;  to the angle of the monitor screen, could cause the operator to adopt&#xA;  awkward postures when viewing the monitor screen and using related&#xA;  equipment. These reflections on the screen can be from internal and&#xA;  external sources such as the overhead lighting and/or position of&#xA;  windows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Awkward postures adopted by the operator may in turn lead to an injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glare is also mentioned by American Optometric Association in their description of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aoa.org/patients-and-public/caring-for-your-vision/protecting-your-vision/computer-vision-syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Computer Vision Syndrome&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;symptoms may be caused by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;poor lighting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;glare on the computer screen&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;improper viewing distances&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;poor seating posture&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;uncorrected vision problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;a combination of these factors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, that they &lt;em&gt;do not&lt;/em&gt; mention resolution as one of the factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merrimackvision.com/blog/how-to-avoid-computer-vision-syndrome/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Popular guidelines&lt;/a&gt; talk about &lt;em&gt;&quot;.28mm dot pitch or less&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, which is equivalent to 90+ dpi. For comparison, really low end laptop displays: 1280&amp;times;720 at 13.3&quot; is .23mm dot pitch (116 dpi), 1336&amp;times;768 at 15&quot; is .25mm dot pitch (103dpi). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, these guidelines suggest that bigger screen is better, MBP Retinas are offered only as 13&quot; and 15&quot; sizes. That of course isn't a factor if you're comparing eye strain with other similarly sized laptops, but implies that much bigger external displays are better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not seen a single scientific study, which would suggest any particular resolution threshold, much less study suggesting going below .28mm would reduce eye-strain further. Which of course doesn't rule out that it might be the case. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the question why would Retina appear to be &lt;em&gt;&quot;so much better&quot;&lt;/em&gt; than 135dpi screen...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there haven't been any serious studies for Retina in particular, in the past it has been shown that there is kind of &quot;placebo effect&quot; when it comes to screens or content in with higher resolution. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techhive.com/article/154428/HDTV.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2008 survey&lt;/a&gt; showed, that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;survey by the Leichtman Research Group (LRG) shows that &lt;strong&gt;18 percent of&#xA;  HDTV owners think they're watching high-definition shows, when in fact&#xA;  they're viewing standard definition programming&lt;/strong&gt;. The findings are&#xA;  based on a telephone survey of 1302 U.S. households. This is LRG's&#xA;  sixth annual study on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given the general consumer confusion surrounding HDTV-all those&#xA;  mind-numbing specs like 1080p and HDMI aren't easy to grasp-it's no&#xA;  surprise that many buyers are still clueless. Standard content that's&#xA;  stretched to fill the entire screen may look funny, but at least the&#xA;  picture's big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Retina vs standard res&lt;/strong&gt;: There have been multiple a bit tongue-in-cheek &quot;studies&quot;, where people would be tricked into believing they are using iPad 3 (with Retina display), while in fact they were using iPad 2. Still, they would describe image as much more crisp and higher res than on iPad 2 (sic!). For example one of such a &lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/5894094/we-people-an-ipad-2-told-them-it-was-the-new-ipad-and-they-loved-it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;experiments was conducted by Gizmondo&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-07-01T21:21:46.157" LastActivityDate="2013-07-01T21:21:46.157" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16820" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16821" CreationDate="2013-07-02T05:09:08.607" Score="16" ViewCount="574" Body="&lt;p&gt;CBS SF Bay Area &lt;a href=&quot;http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/06/25/california-red-light-camera-critics-say-yellow-lights-too-short/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;published an article&lt;/a&gt; about the debate surrounding &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/13-14/bill/asm/ab_0601-0650/ab_612_cfa_20130426_125348_asm_comm.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CA Assembly Bill 612&lt;/a&gt;, which would increase the duration of yellow signals for intersections with red-light cameras.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An opponent of the bill argues that it's dangerous to lengthen yellow lights:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“This bill would put millions of California drivers at risk for increased crashes,” said Richard Retting, a consultant for Redflex. The company supplies most red light cameras in California. . . . Retting points to a study by the American Academy of Sciences. “That study shows that when yellow timing is increased, crashes go up,” he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Redflex offers a rationale for this claim in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://cbssanfran.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/ab612-letter.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;letter to Sen. Mark DeSaulnier&lt;/a&gt; opposing AB 612:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Retting concludes that, &amp;quot;Providing excessive yellow signal timing as mandated under&#xA;Assembly Bill No. 612 violates established engineering practice. This would encourage&#xA;drivers to enter intersections further into the yellow phase and could disrupt the flow of&#xA;vehicles from intersection to intersection, ultimately creating a risk of increased crashes.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bill's sponsor counters that the claim is not credible, noting bias and counterevidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jay Beeber with Safer Streets L.A. disagrees. “He is a scientist who has been bought and paid for by the red light camera companies,” he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beeber, who sponsored the bill, told KPIX 5 that data in the study is too limited. “Georgia increased yellow light times by a full second. They had a reduction in red light running and have had no ill effects,” he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the article does not provide any verifiable evidence for or against the opposition's claim. Neither the article nor the letter to the senator actually cite the “study by the American Academy of Sciences,” so I cannot judge its validity. I personally find the claim dubious, but I could be convinced by solid evidence. What are the facts here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14359" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T20:23:40.787" Title="Do longer yellow lights increase traffic hazards?" Tags="|safety|law-enforcement|traffic|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16821" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16820" CreationDate="2013-07-02T05:27:44.653" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is some evidence to suggest that increasing yellow light timing creates fewer accidents. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=3&amp;amp;ved=0CEMQFjAC&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stopredlightrunning.com%2Fpdfs%2FReduceRedLt_IIHS_.pdf&amp;amp;ei=pmHSUe2AJeSKjAKnkoDgBA&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGmUD_3QX7LyhieGtLpLFN4b0OcjA&amp;amp;sig2=ThBMRomZl1t6Vc_Ezoz_ig&amp;amp;bvm=bv.48705608,d.cGE&amp;amp;cad=rja&quot;&gt;Here (PDF)&lt;/a&gt; is a study on yellow light timing. They measured the number of red light violations at six intersections in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania over the course of a year, before and after increasing the yellow light duration by one second. Here are a couple excerpts taken from their results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After yellow signal timing changes, violation rates at the&#xA;  experimental sites declined at each location, with reductions ranging from 21 to 63 percent. (p6)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, at different comparison sites, they note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After accounting for these changes in driver&#xA;  behavior at the comparison sites, the changes to yellow signal timing at the experimental sites were associated with a 36 percent decline in the odds of a red light violation... (p6)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would say the evidence points towards a correlation between fewer accidents and longer timings. Additionally, there's a logical argument here: A longer yellow light timing means more warning when a light is about to turn red, means a better chance that people will stop in time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea why increasing yellow light times could possibly increase accidents; that is a logical leap which does not make sense to me. The argument given has a logical flaw: While yes, they would be entering later in the yellow light phase, they would still be entering with the same amount of time to spare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Some more details. Apparently I need to read the paper more thoroughly! Thanks to OP for pointing these out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a quote from the same person (Retting) who argues against the longer yellow-light periods, arguing for them, cited in the paper; a classical hipocrisy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A study of modified traffic signal change interval timing at urban intersections reported that injury crashes were reduced by 12 percent at experimental sites relative to control sites (Retting et al., 2002). (pg. 9)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, from the same paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stimpson et al. (1980) reported that increases in yellow signal timing duration of 1.3 seconds significantly reduced potential intersection conflicts. (pg. 9)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would seem this argument has been rather destroyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13259" LastEditorDisplayName="user13259" LastEditDate="2013-07-02T06:47:06.270" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T06:47:06.270" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8967" CreationDate="2013-07-02T13:35:22.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Brian Hunt´s answer is completely correct, but let me add some important facts regarding &quot;And finally the meat of the whole thing. The results of the study show only that T-Cells who had short Telomeres benefited significantly, and that if you've never contracted CMV - your T-Cells might not benefit at all&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are papers published that indicate that the percentage of short telomeres is correlated with aging and disease, such &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23022483&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;as in this one.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that &quot;only short telomeres benefited significantly&quot; has an incorrect negative connotation.  On the other hand, according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/cmv/overview.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), USA&lt;/a&gt;, between 50% and 80% of all adults in the USA are infected with cytomegalovirus.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what we have here is lengthening of short telomeres for more than 50% of the population which is quite a promising result.  This being said, the lengthening seems to be far from perfect right now, and I guess that a person taking TA-65 would barely feel the difference.  There is research being done by people like Bill Andrews to make these compounds more effective, so we'll see what they come up with in the next couple of years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14430" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-02T13:59:08.800" LastActivityDate="2013-07-02T13:59:08.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16839" CreationDate="2013-07-02T16:05:51.613" Score="19" ViewCount="17574" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://act.watchdog.net/petitions/3322?share_ref=0rR_NXXgX0o&quot;&gt;This petition&lt;/a&gt; claims that, having begun by building internment camps for migrants, the Greek government has gone on to &quot;round up&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drug users&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sex workers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Transgender people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and is imprisoning them &quot;simply for existing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are links in the petition text to corroborating web sites, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.2ndcouncilhouse.co.uk/blog/2013/06/05/and-then-they-came-for-the-trans-people/&quot;&gt;Second Council House of Virgo&lt;/a&gt;. I don't know how reliable a source this is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://saevitas.tumblr.com/post/53939066623/clearing-up-the-rumors-about-greece&quot;&gt;rebuttal&lt;/a&gt;, but again I don't know how reliable it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching for &quot;Greece internment camps&quot; corroborates the claim about internment camps for immigrants, with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/03/greece-detain-migrants-indefinitely&quot;&gt;articles in mainstream newspapers&lt;/a&gt;. However, I did not find anything about the other categories of &quot;undesirable&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching for &quot;Greece operation Zeus&quot; brings results from dozens of activism web sites, but none from mainstream news sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much truth is in these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4887" LastEditorUserId="4887" LastEditDate="2013-07-02T16:17:03.573" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T01:34:35.877" Title="Is the Greek government rounding up &quot;undesirables&quot; into internment camps?" Tags="|politics|greece|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16829" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16837" CreationDate="2013-07-03T05:10:02.717" Score="8" ViewCount="1537" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim I want to have examined is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The NSA's Utah Data Center will be able to handle and process five zettabytes of data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that &quot;zettabytes&quot; is much too big. Even one Exabyte might be to much to store (not even to speak about the possibility to process such an amount of data).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Sources&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Utah Data Center, also known as the Intelligence Community&#xA;  Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center, is a&#xA;  data storage facility for the United States Intelligence Community&#xA;  that is designed to store extremely large amounts of data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The National Security Agency is building a data centre that could&#xA;  potentially hold &lt;strong&gt;yottabytes&lt;/strong&gt; of data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/nsa-to-store-yottabytes-in-utah-data-centre-49304118/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cnet.co.uk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The estimated power of those computing resources in Utah is so massive&#xA;  it requires use of a little-known unit of storage space: the&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;zettabyte&lt;/strong&gt;. Cisco quantifies a zettabyte as the amount of data that&#xA;  would fill 250 billion DVDs.&#xA;  [...] The NSA's Utah Data Center will be able to handle and process&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;five zettabytes&lt;/strong&gt; of data, according to William Binney, a former NSA&#xA;  technical director turned whistleblower. Binney's calculation is an&#xA;  estimate. An NSA spokeswoman says the actual data capacity of the&#xA;  center is classified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2013/06/10/190160772/amid-data-controversy-nsa-builds-its-biggest-data-farm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;npr.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Space(1 DVD) = 4.7 GB&#xA;Space(250 * 10^9 DVDs) = 250*10^9*4.7 GB = 1175 EB = 1.175 ZB&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As those numbers roughly match, I guess it's not a simple typo on npr.org.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But 1 YB = 1000 ZB, so this doesn't match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also: The biggest storage device I could find on Amazon with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st?bbn=1292110011&amp;amp;qid=1372827317&amp;amp;rh=n:172282,n%3a!493964,n:541966,n:1292110011&amp;amp;sort=-price&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this search&lt;/a&gt; was &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B006M2QHL6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quantum StorNext AEL500 Archive&lt;/a&gt; for $143,918.20. It can store 399 TB. This means &lt;code&gt;399 TB / $143,918.20 = $0.36 per GigaByte&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for &lt;code&gt;5 ZB&lt;/code&gt; we would need &lt;code&gt;(5 * 10^21 Byte) / (399 * 10^12 Byte) = 1.253*10^7&lt;/code&gt;. That would mean you would have to pay about &lt;code&gt;$143,918.20*1.253*10^7 = $1.803 trillion  (US dollars)&lt;/code&gt;. But:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers broke ground this week on a massive&#xA;  new National Security Agency cyber intelligence center in Utah.&#xA;  Located at Camp Williams, 25 miles south of Salt Lake City, the &lt;strong&gt;$1.2&#xA;  billion facility&lt;/strong&gt; — officially known as the Utah Data Center — will be&#xA;  responsible for collecting and aggregating incoming intelligence data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://defensesystems.com/Articles/2011/01/07/NSA-spy-cyber-intelligence-data-center-Utah.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;defensesystems.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Estimates&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even after searching for a device with lowest dollar-per-gigabyte ratio, I didn't find anything cheaper than $0.05/GB. This means you could come down to 250 billion US-$, which is still much too much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more problematic might be the power consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Questions that might lead to an answer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did I make any mistake? Could this eventually be true (Whats hot in science about data storages?) Which capacity do big companies like Google / Facebook / Dropbox have? How much can Wikipedia (especially commons) store?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Storage systems&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Provide up to 900 PB of automated, low-cost storage&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/tape/ts3500/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IBM System Storage TS3500 Tape Library&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Problems of this question&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I thought &quot;handle and process&quot; would mean they have to store this amount of information, but the source doesn't say that &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's not clear what &quot;handle and process&quot; exactly means. Especially throughput should be mentioned.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1201" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T02:08:10.950" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T02:08:10.950" Title="Will NSA's Utah Data Center be able to handle and process five zettabytes of data?" Tags="|computers|nsa|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16825" CreationDate="2013-07-03T06:31:16.987" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;At present, the Greek government is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/29/greece-detention-centres-migrants&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;preparing detention centers for illegal migrants&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Greece will open the first of up to 30 camps for illegal immigrants within weeks, in what some describe as a &quot;desperate bid&quot; to contain the social chaos prompted by the economic crisis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current Greek government has not threatened to arrest other groups. Greek far right parties do make those kinds of threats, and the economic crisis has boosted these groups' popularity. But those parties are still out of power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14436" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T07:07:52.417" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T07:07:52.417" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2450" CreationDate="2013-07-03T09:32:48.300" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Himmler started a major operation called H-Sonderauftrag (H = Hexen = witches) or Hexenkartothek researching into the early-modern witch hunt in Europe. He interpreted the witch hunt as an attempt by the Catholic church to expunge some Germanic heritage. There was even a family legend that one of Himmlers ancestors had been burnt as a witch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexenkartothek&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;German Wikipedia - Hexkartothek&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14440" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T14:59:02.110" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T14:59:02.110" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16829" CreationDate="2013-07-03T17:05:01.313" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is highly speculative since the NSA has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2013/06/10/190160772/amid-data-controversy-nsa-builds-its-biggest-data-farm&quot;&gt;not given any indication&lt;/a&gt; as to the capacity of the facility. Also, this is a very difficult question to digest because we have no indication of how much data they are seeking to actually store.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To examine the first claim that they process up to five zettabytes of data, this seems to be plausible. We know that the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider&quot;&gt;Large Hadron Collider (LHC)&lt;/a&gt; is generating &lt;a href=&quot;http://cacm.acm.org/news/110048-cern-experiments-generating-one-petabyte-of-data-every-second/fulltext&quot;&gt;one petabyte data per second&lt;/a&gt; and storing twenty-five petabytes of data per year&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. Using some simple math,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1 zettabyte = 1,048,576 petabytes&#xA;1,048,576 seconds = 12.1363 days&#xA;&#xA;1 zettabyte every 12.1363 days &#xA;or about 30 zettabytes of data a year&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns341/ns525/ns537/ns705/ns827/white_paper_c11-481360_ns827_Networking_Solutions_White_Paper.html&quot;&gt;Cisco's forecasting&lt;/a&gt;, the world is on track to have 1.4 zettabytes of global &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol&quot;&gt;IP&lt;/a&gt; traffic per year by the end of 2017. So anyone that is engaged in processing that data data would need to have zettabyte processing capability and given that the LHC already has it, we can conclude that it is likely that an agency such as the NSA would design that into the system. Also, that just includes the IP traffic and other voice and data communications that travel via other systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to storage of data, the common number seems to be five zettabytes so we will examine that. The capability for exabyte storage system already exists commercially. IBM manufactures the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/tape/ts3500/index.html&quot;&gt;System Storage TS3500 Tape Library&lt;/a&gt; offers up to 2.7 exabytes of data, specifically,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Up to 180 PB compressed with 3592 extended capacity cartridges per&#xA;  library, up to 2.7 EB compressed per complex&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The physical footprint of a single frame is 70.9 in. H × 30.8 in. W × 47.7 in. D (1,800 mm × 782 mm × 1,212 mm) or a footprint of about 10.2 sq.ft. (0.9 sq.m.) which puts it in range of most &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.42u.com/42U-cabinets.htm&quot;&gt;42U rack dimensions&lt;/a&gt;. In order to reach the full 2.7 exabytes, 15 libraries are needed, each of which would need 16 frames which gives us 2,448 sq.ft (227.4 sq.m.). The amount of additional space needed due to airflow and system access is &lt;a href=&quot;http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ts3500tl/v1r0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.storage.ts3500.doc/ipg_3584_sc1specs.html&quot;&gt;fairly complex&lt;/a&gt;, so excluding that from the equation,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;2.7 exabytes per complex with a footprint of 2,448 sq.ft.&#xA;1 zettabyte = 1024 exabytes&#xA;1024 / 2.7 = 379.2 systems, so say 380 systems&#xA;380 * 2,448 sq.ft = 930,240 sq.ft per zettabyte&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives us about 4,651,200 sq.ft. (432,110.62 sq.m) for the 5 zettabytes figure normally given. Even storage of a single zettabyte using the systems appears to be outside of the bounds of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1&quot;&gt;100,000 sq.ft. for the data halls&lt;/a&gt; that the Utah Data Center will have let alone the 1 to 1.5 million sq.ft. size given for the complex as a whole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based upon this, the claims that it will be storing five zettabytes of data is dubious; however, these calculations are based upon a commercially available system so it is possible that they have a smaller footprint for what they are using. That said though, even storage of a single zettabyte is likely an extreme stretch given what is on the commercial market. However, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zurich.ibm.com/news/10/storage.html&quot;&gt;2010 IBM Research announced a new record&lt;/a&gt; in tape storage with a potential capacity of 35 terabytes of uncompressed storage per cartridge. The current high-end offering from IBM is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/media/3592/index.html&quot;&gt;3592 Tape Cartridge&lt;/a&gt; which stores up to 4 terabytes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aforementioned TS3500 Tape Library holds up to 225,000 tape cartridges so if each of the cartridges was capable of 35 terabytes the total TS3500 complex storage would be about 7.51 exabytes of storage. If we apply these updated values to the previous calculations,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;7.51 exabytes per complex with a footprint of 2,448 sq.ft.&#xA;1 zettabyte = 1024 exabytes&#xA;1024 / 7.51 = 136.4 systems, so say 137 systems&#xA;137 * 2,448 sq.ft = 335,376 sq.ft per zettabyte&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even with that the data halls are still too small to store a single zettabyte although we are now into the range where the complex as a whole might be capable of storing one to two zettabytes under ideal conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted does require the use of tape data storage &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape_drive&quot;&gt;which is very slow&lt;/a&gt;; however, without knowing exactly what the NSA is doing with the data we can't speculate if they are concerned with access speeds or not. Furthermore, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metadata&quot;&gt;metadata&lt;/a&gt; indexing techniques mean that the raw data may not be needed for most processing so the latency involved with tape storage may not be a concern for the NSA. We already know that they have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAINWAY&quot;&gt;large scale metadata databases&lt;/a&gt; so it is quite likely that they could be using such techniques for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAINWAY&quot;&gt;working with tape data&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, the claims as to the amount of data that could be stored and processed are &lt;strong&gt;currently implausible&lt;/strong&gt; given the size of the facility and the currently know state of the art and commercially available systems. However, the claim that the could be processing five zettabytes of data is &lt;strong&gt;plausible&lt;/strong&gt; given the shear amount of data traffic that exists in the world and we don't know how they are processing the data. If they use curiosity examination followed by discarding of uninteresting data like the LHC then it is possible and their actual data storage requirements would be reduced as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the case of the LHC, they discard most of the data as &quot;uninteresting&quot; as opposed to actually storing it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if the data halls are only 100,000 sq.ft. there still should be sufficient space although it might be less likely given that we don't know the configuration of the buildings.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T19:13:52.257" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T19:13:52.257" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16825" CreationDate="2013-07-03T19:50:26.553" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, there is a lot of truth to the claim. I wouldn't call it entirely accurate, but I wouldn't call it false either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Xenios Zeus&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Xenios Zeus&amp;quot; is a large scale police operation, targeting illegal immigrants in Attica. It started on August 4, 2012, is ongoing, and has not extended to the rest of Greece. The Ministry of Public Order &amp;amp; Citizen Protection published regular reports for the operation until February 22, 2013 when they abruptly stopped (without - as far as I know - any explanation). Up until that point the operation's statistics where:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Police operation was officially launched in August 2012 and the Ministry of Public Order stopped publishing data in February. The report states that of the 84,792 people investigated as part of the Police operation, 4,811 (about 6%) were found to be in Greece illegally and only 59 were arrested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tovima.gr/en/article/?aid=517586&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Human Rights Watch condemns Greek Police and ‘Xenios Zeus’&lt;/a&gt;, Το Βήμα, June 12, 2013. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tovima.gr/society/article/?aid=517579&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Greek version of the article&lt;/a&gt; goes into a bit more detail.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a different source, the numbers are much higher:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Greek police force says its crackdown on illegal immigration, which has led to almost 6,700 people being detained and just over 1,500 arrested since last Saturday, is already producing results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authorities said the number of migrants entering Greece via the country’s Evros border with Turkey has fallen dramatically. According to figures released by the police, 447 undocumented migrants were caught crossing into Greece illegally on August 2, before the Xenios Zeus operation began, but on Wednesday and Thursday this week that figure had fallen to 12 and 15 respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_wsite1_1_10/08/2012_456497&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Police claim Xenios Zeus operation a success&lt;/a&gt;, Καθημερινή, Jul 3, 2013.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both sources are major - and generally reliable - newspapers. The discrepancy in the numbers is not surprising, the first source quotes official data up until February 2013, the second reports estimates for the whole operation. The numbers skyrocketing after a certain point is not surprising either, the operation intensified significantly once the first detention centers for illegal immigrants were completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Detention centers for illegal immigrants&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first - and larger one - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/29/us-greece-camp-idUSBRE83S0GB20120429&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;opened in Amygdaleza in late April, 2012&lt;/a&gt;. There are at least four more, in Corinth, Evros, Rodopi and Lesvos. The Amygdaleza camp was build specifically to host illegal immigrants, the others are probably retrofitted military or police buildings (can't find reliable sources). The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/29/greece-detention-centres-migrants&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;original plan for 30 camps in total&lt;/a&gt; is currently on hold, due to protests of the local populations and lack of funds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to non official sources, Amygdaleza currently hosts 2.300 illegal immigrants. Since the Ministry of Public Order &amp;amp; Citizen Protection stopped publishing data, it's not possible to verify that number. Reports suggest conditions in the camp rapidly deteriorated after April, 2013, when several services were cut due to lack of funds. Surprisingly, a private security firm was hired recently to guard the camp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvxs.gr/news/ellada/stasi-toy-metanasteytikoy-stin-amygdaleza&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;«Στάση» του Μεταναστευτικού στην Αμυγδαλέζα&lt;/a&gt; (news site)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&amp;amp;id=356706&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Καταγγελία για ξυλοδαρμό μεταναστών-απεργών πείνας στην Αμυγδαλέζα&lt;/a&gt; (news site)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.in.gr/greece/article/?aid=1231240011&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Εικόνα ντροπής στο κέντρο κράτησης στην Αμυγδαλέζα διαπίστωσε ο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ&lt;/a&gt; (news site, quotes Alexis Tsipras, leader of the opposition)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acharnes-news.gr/topika-nea/3379/amugdaleza-basileio-bromias,-parabatikotitas-kai-ekmetalleusis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Αμυγδαλέζα: Βασίλειο βρωμιάς, παραβατικότητας και εκμετάλλευσης&lt;/a&gt; (news site)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tvxs.gr/news/%CE%B5%CE%BB%CE%BB%CE%AC%CE%B4%CE%B1/%CE%B5%CF%84%CE%B1%CE%B9%CF%81%CE%B5%CE%AF%CE%B1-%CF%83%CE%B5%CE%BA%CE%BF%CF%8D%CF%81%CE%B9%CF%84%CE%B9-%CF%83%CF%84%CE%B7-%CF%86%CF%8D%CE%BB%CE%B1%CE%BE%CE%B7-%CE%BA%CE%AD%CE%BD%CF%84%CF%81%CF%89%CE%BD-%CE%BA%CF%81%CE%AC%CF%84%CE%B7%CF%83%CE%B7%CF%82-%CE%BC%CE%B5%CF%84%CE%B1%CE%BD%CE%B1%CF%83%CF%84%CF%8E%CE%BD&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Εταιρεία σεκούριτι στη φύλαξη κέντρων κράτησης μεταναστών&lt;/a&gt; (news site, exposes the story about the private security firm)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thesalaminians.com/2013/06/07/%CE%B1%CE%BC%CF%85%CE%B3%CE%B4%CE%B1%CE%BB%CE%AD%CE%B6%CE%B1-%CE%B7-%CE%B1%CF%80%CE%BF%CF%84%CF%85%CF%87%CE%AF%CE%B1-%CE%B5%CE%BD%CF%8C%CF%82-%CE%BA%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%B1%CE%B4%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%B1%CF%83/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Αμυγδαλέζα: η αποτυχία ενός καταδικασμένου πειράματος&lt;/a&gt; (news site)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sex workers&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prostitution is legal in Greece, and sex workers are required to get tested for STDs once a month. The tests are free and available in most hospitals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the incident the claim refers to is most likely the April 2012 arrest of 11 female sex workers. All of them were operating illegally and failed to produce proof they had been recently tested for STDs. Consequently, they were tested and - according to reports - found to be HIV positive. In an unprecedented move of dubious legality, their names, their parents names and their photographs were released to the public. A few days later, on May 5, the Ministry of Health released a report, claiming a total of 85 HIV positive sex workers have been found in 1180 random tests since September 2011. The legal framework for these checks has not been clarified (or challenged).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the issue was and remains highly controversial. There are conflicting reports that suggest none or only some of the women were HIV positive, and that the arrests and the release of the photos were a publicity stunt, designed to boost the ruling party's popularity for the upcoming &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_legislative_election,_May_2012&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;May 2012 election&lt;/a&gt;. Andreas Loverdos, then Minister of Public Health, had promised a new legal framework that would have allowed a lot more flexibility for random searches to the police, and would legalize forced HIV tests during detention. Interestingly and although the government changed, Mr. Loverdos' framework forms the basis of a law currently in consideration. The draft of the proposal for this new law is not currently available, it will &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; be available next Monday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.protothema.gr/greece/article/194116/aytes-einai-oi-11-ierodoyles-poy-skorpizan-ton-io-toy-aids/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aυτές είναι οι 11 ιερόδουλες που σκόρπιζαν τον ιό του AIDS&lt;/a&gt; (mainstream newspaper)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fimes.gr/2012/05/ierodoules-aids-5/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Φωτογραφίες σοκ από άλλες 7 ιερόδουλες με AIDS&lt;/a&gt; (news site)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newsbeast.gr/society/arthro/343774/autes-einai-oi-ierodoules-pou-pashoun-apo-aids/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Αυτές είναι οι ιερόδουλες που πάσχουν από AIDS&lt;/a&gt; (news site)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iatropedia.com/articles/read/4446&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Υπουργείο Υγείας: «Βρέθηκαν 85 ιερόδουλες με Aids σε 1180 αιμοληψίες”!&lt;/a&gt; (medical news site, includes the Ministry of Health's report)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zougla.gr/greece/article/apokalipsi-o-epanaliptikos-elegxos-edikse-oti-den-ixan-oles-i-ierodoules-aids&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Αποκάλυψη: Διασύρθηκαν χωρίς να έχουν AIDS όλες οι ιερόδουλες&lt;/a&gt; (news site)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infospoudes.gr/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=14607:ipothesi-ierodoules-me-aids-i-megali-ipokrisia-ton-mme-kai-tis-ellinikis-koinonias&amp;amp;catid=24620:ellada&amp;amp;Itemid=1035&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Υπόθεση ιερόδουλες με AIDS| Η μεγάλη υποκρισία των ΜΜΕ και της ελληνικής κοινωνίας&lt;/a&gt; (news site, opinion piece)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.protothema.gr/greece/article/202364/oi-ierodoyles-allazoyn-to-nomo-gia-ta-prosopika-dedomena/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Οι …ιερόδουλες αλλάζουν το νόμο για τα προσωπικά δεδομένα&lt;/a&gt; (mainstream newspaper, comments on the legality of releasing the names and photos)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Drug users &amp;amp; operation Thetis&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Operation &amp;quot;Thetis&amp;quot; was a March 6, 2013 police operation that targeted drug users in Attica, and more specifically Athens' historic city center. According to news reports, 132 drug users were detained and moved to Amygdaleza, where they were cataloged (!?) and released (!?). The operation was met with contempt and ridicule in local media, and its legality and usefulness have been strongly disputed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kethea.gr/en-us/whoweare.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;KETHEA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The day after the operation, an official statement verified it. According to the statement the operation was in collaboration with medical professionals from the Ministry of Health, and the detainees were collected from various places in Athens' center and were in need of medical attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astynomia.gr/index.php?option=ozo_content&amp;amp;lang&amp;amp;perform=view&amp;amp;id=25366&amp;amp;Itemid=1073&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ανακοίνωση της Γ.Α.Δ. Αττικής σχετικά με τη χθεσινή μεταφορά και υγειονομική περίθαλψη ατόμων σε συνεργασία με υγειονομικές Υπηρεσίες του Υπουργείου Υγείας στις αστυνομικές εγκαταστάσεις της Αμυγδαλέζας&lt;/a&gt; (Greek police, Athens Directorate)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.efsyn.gr/?p=30584&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Αντιδράσεις στην επιχείρηση «Θέτις»&lt;/a&gt; (news site)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news247.gr/eidiseis/koinonia/kethea_h_epixeirhsh_thetis_paraviazei_ta_anthrwpina_dikaiwmata_kai_thn_aksioprepeia_twn_toksikomanwn.2157436.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ΚΕΘΕΑ: Η επιχείρηση &amp;quot;ΘΕΤΙΣ&amp;quot; παραβιάζει τα ανθρώπινα δικαιώματα και την αξιοπρέπεια των τοξικομανών&lt;/a&gt; (news site, quotes KETHEA)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news247.gr/eidiseis/koinonia/epixeirhsh_thetis_h_el_as_mazeuei_xrhstes_narkwtikwn_kai_toys_odhgei_sthn_amygdaleza.2197514.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Επιχείρηση &amp;quot;Θέτις&amp;quot;: Η ΕΛ.ΑΣ. μαζεύει χρήστες ναρκωτικών και τους οδηγεί στην Αμυγδαλέζα&lt;/a&gt; (news site)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://aristotelous17.wordpress.com/2013/03/09/%CF%8C%CF%87%CE%B9-%CF%83%CF%84%CE%BF%CE%BD-%CF%85%CE%B3%CE%B5%CE%B9%CE%BF%CE%BD%CE%BF%CE%BC%CE%B9%CE%BA%CF%8C-%CF%86%CE%B1%CF%83%CE%B9%CF%83%CE%BC%CF%8C-%CF%84%CE%B7%CF%82-%CE%B5%CF%80%CE%B9%CF%87/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Όχι στον υγειονομικό φασισμό της επιχείρησης “Θέτις”&lt;/a&gt; (news site, opinion piece)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&amp;amp;id=349150&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ΣΥΡΙΖΑ: «Άθλια η επιχείρηση Θέτις»&lt;/a&gt; (mainstream newspaper, quoting SYRIZA politicians)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.avgi.gr/ArticleActionshow.action?articleID=760220&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Κατακραυγή για τις αθλιότητες κατά των χρηστών ναρκωτικών!&lt;/a&gt; (newspaper)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nooz.gr/greece/epixeirisi-metaforas-narkomanon-stin-amugdaleza&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Μεταφορά τοξικομανών στην Αμυγδαλέζα;&lt;/a&gt; (news site)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Transgender people&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.transgender-association.gr/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Transgender Association&lt;/a&gt; claims that transgender people were regularly harassed and detained without cause in Thessaloniki, from 30 May 2013 and onwards. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grreporter.info/en/transgender_persons_thessaloniki_become_victims_police_violence/9400&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report on GRReporter&lt;/a&gt; translates parts of the association's complaint and matches similar Greek language reports in local media:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The police in Thessaloniki has been carrying out a series of ungrounded arrests of transgender persons as stated by the Greek Transgender Support Association. &amp;quot;According to written complaints filed by our members who live in Thessaloniki, it is clear that from 30 May 2013 onwards, the police have been carrying out purges and arrests of transgender citizens on a daily basis. The same complaints state that those arrested are being taken to the police headquarters in Thessaloniki in Dimokratia Square, where the victims are waiting for at least three or four hours to be identified under the pretext that the authorities should establish whether the particular person was not a prostitute,&amp;quot; reads an address of the non-governmental organization (NGO).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Association stresses that the police behaviour during the arrests was offensive, humiliating and that it was intended to undermine the dignity of transgender persons. In three of the complaints, the victims note that traffic policemen had stopped transgender women while they were driving their cars without any proof or suspicion of any fault or violation of the law. Later, they were taken to the police station in order for their identity to be verified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The testimonies of a large number of victims suggest that before being released from custody, the policemen threatened transgender women, warning them that if they did not &amp;quot;return to normal&amp;quot;, legal proceedings against them would be initiated for indecent behaviour in public places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Greek Transgender Support Association connects the campaign against transgender persons with the recent actions of some municipal representatives and the church against the forthcoming gay festival Thessaloniki Pride, which will take place on 14 and 15 June this year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One notable event was the detainment without cause of Ms. Electra-Leda Koutra, a lawyer visiting transgender clients held in a police station. The Thessaloniki Bar Association corroborates Ms. Koutra's story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A response to the complaints by Nikos Dendias, Minister of Public Order &amp;amp; Citizen Protection, acknowledges 720 searches that lead to 271 detainments, from June 1 to June 9. It also mentions that the officers responsible for Ms. Koutra's detainment are under investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hellenicparliament.gr/UserFiles/67715b2c-ec81-4f0c-ad6a-476a34d732bd/8126234.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mr. Dendias' response&lt;/a&gt; (Hellenic Parliament, PDF)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsth.gr/web/guest/news/announcements?p_p_id=bs_news&amp;amp;p_p_action=0&amp;amp;p_p_state=normal&amp;amp;p_p_mode=view&amp;amp;p_p_col_id=column-2&amp;amp;p_p_col_pos=4&amp;amp;p_p_col_count=5&amp;amp;_bs_news_struts_action=%2Fext%2Fnews%2Fload&amp;amp;_bs_news_mainid=2121&amp;amp;_bs_news_loadaction=view&amp;amp;_bs_news_redirect=%2Fweb%2Fguest%2Fnews&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Συμπεριφορά αστυνομικών οργάνων προς τη δικηγόρο Αθηνών, κα Ηλέκτρα Λήδα Κούτρα&lt;/a&gt; (Thessaloniki Bar Association)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.koutipandoras.gr/37439/%CE%B1%CE%BD%CE%B1%CE%AF%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%B5%CF%82-%CF%80%CF%81%CE%BF%CF%83%CE%B1%CE%B3%CF%89%CE%B3%CE%AD%CF%82-%CF%84%CF%81%CE%B1%CE%BD%CF%83%CE%AD%CE%BE%CE%BF%CF%85%CE%B1%CE%BB-%CE%BA%CE%B1%CF%84.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Αναίτιες προσαγωγές τρανσέξουαλ καταγγέλλονται στη Θεσσαλονίκη&lt;/a&gt; (news site)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tovima.gr/society/article/?aid=516619&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Θεσσαλονίκη: Στο κρατητήριο δικηγόρος, επειδή υπερασπίστηκε τρανσέξουαλ&lt;/a&gt; (mainstream newspaper)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5142" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T16:20:00.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16829" CreationDate="2013-07-03T21:35:25.753" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the interpretation of what &lt;em&gt;handle and process five zettabytes of data&lt;/em&gt; really means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;having 5ZB readily available for online processing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;having 5ZB in off-line archive, while having only meta-data readily available for on-line processing?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;having 5ZB incoming traffic, discharging most of it, storing and processing only interesting stuff?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;On-line storage&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're going to build something as big as NSA datacenter, instead of buying readily available hardware, you might go for custom builds using big data industry standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Facebook's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opencompute.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open Compute Storage&lt;/a&gt; specifies &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opencompute.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Open-Vault-Storage-Specification-v0.5.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open Vault storage&lt;/a&gt;, which is designed to house 30 3.5&quot; HDDs in 2U case. Which with currently available HDDs would mean density of 120TB per 2U.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can put 21 of these in one standard &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19-inch_rack&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;42U high 19&quot; rack&lt;/a&gt;, meaning you'd have 2520TB per rack. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each rack having a base of about 0.62m². Adding some very minimum clearance, 1m² per rack would be the very lowball estimate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's assuming that you'd be willing to have machines custom build for your datacenter. Otherwise it's off the shelf hardware. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/powervault-md1200/fs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dell PowerVault MD1200&lt;/a&gt; configured with &lt;a href=&quot;http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=bvcwlk4&amp;amp;model_id=powervault-md1200&amp;amp;c=us&amp;amp;l=en&amp;amp;s=bsd&amp;amp;cs=04&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;12 4TB SATA drives costs $11,254.21;&lt;/a&gt; That of course is retail price, which bulk orders you get hefty discounts. Similarly, you could get a cloud server such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/poweredge-c6145/pd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PowerEdge C6145&lt;/a&gt;, which can also be equipped with 12 4TB SATA drives. They don't provide they pricing on-line, but if I remember correctly, that kind of setup it'd be around $15-20K. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of above give you density of 48TB per 2U. Which means 1004TB per rack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Data_Center&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NSA Utah datacenter is reported&lt;/a&gt; to have 10,000m² dedicated to servers (100,000m² including administrative and support buildings). So really, really high ball estimate would be that they could theoretically squeeze 25EB of cloud storage in there.&#xA;That's only 0.5% of 5ZB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Off-line storage&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're considering offline archiving of data, you might use tape libraries. It's not typically used in Big Data, but then again, NSA isn't typical Big Data company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is, that even with highest density &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/tape/ts3500/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IBM System Storage TS3500 Tape Library&lt;/a&gt;, you can store 180PB per library, which has footprint of at least 15m². Which means about 420,000m² would be needed just for the tape libraries. Whole NSA Utah complex is estimated to have &quot;1 million or 1.5 million square feet&quot; (93,000m²-149,000m²), but it's also been said that it's &lt;em&gt;&quot;100,000 square feet (9,300m²) of data center space and greater than 900,000 square feet (83,600m²) of technical support and administrative space&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;). Purpose of the buildings might be kept secret or intentionally misleading, external dimensions cannot. So clearly there is no way to squeeze 5ZB of tape archive there, even if buildings said to be administrative are actually purposed for tape archive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Meta-data&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's assume that even if you'd manage to somehow archive 5ZB of raw data, as I've calculated above even if you'd use all your datacenter space for on-line processing, that would mean you're storing only 5KB of metadata for each 1MB of data. While for media files that seems more than enough, I really doubt you can achieve ratio anywhere near that for emails, chats, text messages, tweets etc. Of course they might filter out information they've not interested in and not store any metadata related to that information. But in that case there is no point in archiving that information off-line, because you don't have path of access &amp;mdash; you don't have metadata pointing to it, nor can you mine the data that is archived on tapes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Throughput&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that it's 5ZB per year, that's a sustained throughput of 570PB per day, or 160TB per second. Leaving apart computing power needed to process that, question is how that data would be transported there? Current internet infrastructure isn't anywhere nearly ready for that kind of traffic. Three of the biggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_exchange_points_by_size&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;internet exchange points&lt;/a&gt; are located in Europe having maximum throughput of 2.2TBps, 2.1TBps and 1.6TBps respectively. US is trailing way behind with top US only exchanges having only 0.28TBps and 0.25TBps, another one, Equinix has total of 1.4TBps across 12 countries on 4 continents. In other words it's completely infeasible to push 5ZB per year into a datacenter, especially in such a remote location. Nor, as you can see, necessary, even if you'd want to process all of Internet traffic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;having 5ZB readily available for online processing? &lt;br&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Physically impossible&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;having 5ZB in off-line archive, while having only meta-data readily available for on-line processing? &lt;strong&gt;Not possible with current technology and sizes of the buildings as reported&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;having 5ZB incoming traffic, discharging most of it, storing and processing only interesting stuff? &lt;strong&gt;Regardless of processing, it's just not possible to have that amount of incoming traffic&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HighScalability.com has a guest post &lt;a href=&quot;http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/7/1/prism-the-amazingly-low-cost-of-using-bigdata-to-know-more-a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;PRISM: The Amazingly Low Cost Of ­Using BigData To Know More About You In Under A Minute&quot;&lt;/a&gt; by BugSense Founder/CTO Jon Vlachogiannis and Head of Infrastructure at BugSense Panagiotis Papadomitsos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They calculate for storage needed as 3.75EB. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;DATA&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Facebook: 500 TB/day * 30 = 1.5 PT/month (&lt;a href=&quot;http://gigaom.com/2012/08/22/facebook-is-collecting-your-data-500-terabytes-a-day/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Twitter: 8 TB/day * 30 = 240 TB/month 8 TB/day (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slideshare.net/raffikrikorian/twitter-by-the-numbers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Email/Other info: 193PT/month Google says 24 PB per day (2008). Five&#xA;  years later lets assume this is 8 times bigger = 192 PB. Now, real&#xA;  user information is 1/3 = 64 PT/day (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1327452.1327492&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mobile traffic/machine­to­machine exchanges/vehicles etc: 4000 TB per&#xA;  day = 117 PB/month (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1327452.1327492&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Total Data =~312PB month&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Hardware Costs&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The prices below correspond to renting off­the­shelf servers from&#xA;  commercial high­end datacenters (considering the data will be stored&#xA;  in a distributed filesystem architecture such as HDFS). This is a&#xA;  worst case scenario that does not include potential discounts due to&#xA;  renting such a high volume of hardware and traffic or acquiring the&#xA;  aforementioned hardware (which incurs a higher initial investment but&#xA;  lower recurring costs) . The hardware configuration used for&#xA;  calculating costs in this case study is comprised of a 2U chassis,&#xA;  dual Intel Hexa­core processors, 16 GB of RAM, 30 TB of usable space&#xA;  combined with hardware­level redundancy (RAID5).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We’ll be needing about 20K servers, put into 320 46U racks. Cost for&#xA;  the server hardware is calculated to be about €7.5M / month (including&#xA;  servers for auxiliary services). Cost for the racks, electricity and&#xA;  traffic is calculated to be about €0.5M / month (including auxiliary&#xA;  devices and networking equipment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Total hardware cost per year for 3.75 EB of data storage: €168M&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And comparison with Facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s no secret that Facebook stores a &lt;strong&gt;lot of data — 100 petabytes&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://gigaom.com/2012/06/13/how-facebook-keeps-100-petabytes-of-hadoop-data-online/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-07-03T21:42:38.220" LastActivityDate="2013-07-03T21:42:38.220" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16829" CreationDate="2013-07-04T01:25:36.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on rough calculations done by Brewster Kahle who knows about storage from the Internet Archive, about 270 Petabytes (and $27M) is needed to store all US phone calls for a year. So, these numbers may be more in the order of magnitude for expectations of the Utah data center in the near term.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.archive.org/2013/06/15/cost-to-store-all-us-phonecalls-made-in-a-year-in-cloud-storage-so-it-could-be-datamined/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://blog.archive.org/2013/06/15/cost-to-store-all-us-phonecalls-made-in-a-year-in-cloud-storage-so-it-could-be-datamined/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14448" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T01:25:36.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16842" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16844" CreationDate="2013-07-04T02:49:23.213" Score="19" ViewCount="42437" Body="&lt;p&gt;One common recommendation for watering house plants with tap water is to allow the water to sit overnight before watering, so that the fluorine and chlorine that are commonly added to tap water (which can be harmful to certain plants) will dissipate. I've seen this advice repeated many times, but never an original source or an explanation of the process behind it. So, does this actually work? And if so, how?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of claim, for fluoride, found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/quickref/houseplants/watering.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tap water is acceptable for watering most plants. Some plants are susceptible to fluoride injury from treated water. Many susceptible plants have long slender leaves such as dracaena and spider plant. Injury is characterized by brown spots along the margin or leaf tip. Fluoridated water should be allowed to sit at room temperature over night before using. Potting soils containing perlite can also cause fluoride injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14449" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-06-17T10:52:36.330" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T10:52:36.330" Title="Will fluoride and chlorine dissipate from tap water left to sit overnight?" Tags="|chemistry|water|plants|fluoride|chlorine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1959" CreationDate="2013-07-04T07:05:51.273" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some&lt;/strong&gt; abortions definitely increase the risk of breast cancer; whether &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; abortions do so is disputed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no real dispute about the link between the mother's age when she has her first full-term pregnancy (FFTP) and her likelihood of being diagnosed with breast cancer later in life. The older a woman was when she had her FFTP, the greater her risk of breast cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means that abortions prior to FFTP almost certainly increase a woman's risk of breast cancer, because they increase the age of FFTP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read the ACS statement on abortion and breast cancer, and just skip to the conclusion at the end, you'll find that it says, &quot;at this time&quot; the scientific evidence does not support a link between abortion and breast cancer. Obviously that's more nuanced than the paraphrase of it which abortion proponents use, that flatly denies any link. But, even so, it is a biased claim, which severely overstates their certainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's not the biggest problem with the ACS statement. Earlier on the same ACS page you'll repeatedly find &lt;a href=&quot;http://pages.citebite.com/k1i8e4y3s8uhb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this phrase&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;&quot;After adjusting for known breast cancer risk factors...&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the ACS inexcusably fails to mention is that among those &quot;known risk factors&quot; is the increased chance of breast cancer associated with delayed FFTP -- which is very often &lt;em&gt;caused&lt;/em&gt; by one or more abortions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Widespread acceptance of elective abortion has caused an increase in the average age at which American women begin bearing children, which is undoubtedly responsible for part of the concurrent increase in the incidence of breast cancer among these women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only dispute is whether an abortion done &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; a woman's FFTP also increases the risk of breast cancer. Many studies have found that it does, but those findings are hotly disputed. You can learn much more about that question here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/index/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com/index/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14071" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T07:05:51.273" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16844" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16842" CreationDate="2013-07-04T07:06:02.413" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chlorine does evaporate, so if exposed to air (e.g. in a bucket) in warm water (especially under UV light or sunlight) it will probably mostly dissipate overnight. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both fluoride and chloramine will not similarly dissipate, if you want them removed you need to filter them out (e.g. with activated carbon) or distill the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chemistry.about.com/b/2013/04/04/can-you-remove-fluoride-by-boiling-water.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Can You Remove Fluoride By Boiling Water?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150125044736/http://www.netplaces.com/home-brewing/water-ninety-five-percent-of-your-beer/what-you-must-absolutely-know-about-water.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;What You Must Absolutely Know About Water&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4795" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T14:22:05.887" LastActivityDate="2017-03-16T14:22:05.887" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16862" CreationDate="2013-07-04T09:19:49.507" Score="1" ViewCount="2676" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is known as the Maldekian crop circle&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Kf68m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Maldekian crop circle&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which (according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://yowusa.com/et/2003/et-2003-05a/3.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;) contains a message:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beware the bearers of FALSE gifts &amp;amp; their BROKEN PROMISES.Much PAIN But Still time.(unclear word).There is GOOD out there.We oppose DECEPTION.COnduit CLOSING\&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the RedGrittyBrick's comment, &lt;em&gt;It seems to be a genuine 2002 cornfield art-work by anonymous fun-loving Hampshire artists.&lt;/em&gt; Can any human technology available to common people create this (probably) overnight during reduced visibility? How?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia says&lt;/a&gt; that these images usually appear overnight (it seems this is the case since there is no evidence about its creation; during the day somebody would probably notice). Some similar crop circles are beautiful and seemingly difficult to create &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/650/are-crop-circles-man-made&quot;&gt;like this&lt;/a&gt;, but they mostly consist of simple circles ind lines, maybe even some GPS tracking points. Here the width of the lines requires great deal of precision, so the difference from other crop circles is the complexity: note well shaped spiral on the disc, the end of its track and the exact width of the lines on the face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7347" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-02-04T05:18:22.743" LastActivityDate="2019-02-04T05:22:14.120" Title="Is the Maldekian crop circle a hoax?" Tags="|aliens|crop-circles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16846" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16847" CreationDate="2013-07-04T10:34:34.503" Score="24" ViewCount="22369" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.&quot; --&#xA;  Martin Luther King, Jr.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Martin Luther King right? Was Hitler &quot;clean&quot; (cannot be charged under the then-law) in the eyes of the law?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question is too broad (if &quot;everything&quot; includes reckless youth behaviour) , were his actions perfectly legal while he was the ruler of Germany? Were his schemes of acquiring power afoul of any law?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-10-05T01:40:34.550" LastActivityDate="2015-10-05T01:40:34.550" Title="Was everything Hitler did in Germany legal?" Tags="|history|quotes|adolf-hitler|martin-luther-king|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16847" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16846" CreationDate="2013-07-04T11:07:31.300" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given that he &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hitler-sent-to-landsberg-jail&quot;&gt;spent time in prison&lt;/a&gt;, for the Nazi's unsuccessful &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch&quot;&gt;&quot;Beer Hall Putsch&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in the German state of Bavaria. During his time in jail he famously wrote Mein Kampf, it is known that not everything he did was legal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course that's not the period during Mr. Hitler's life that Dr. King intended to refe :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You'll also have to define under which law. Under the terms of surrender of the Versaille Accords, the remilitarisation of Germany was certainly not legal, though it was intended to as much as possible be performed within the letter of the surrender document (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.battleofbritain1940.net/0017.html&quot;&gt;the He-111 bomber&lt;/a&gt; was nominally a passenger and cargo &lt;a href=&quot;http://109lair.hobbyvista.com/111/luft/111_lufthansa.htm&quot;&gt;aircraft for Lufthansa&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As we know, Germany was not allowed to have a military air force under the terms of the Versialles Treaty, so many aircraft were being built under strict secrecy, often under the guise of Lufthansa Airlines. The He 111 was no exception. The Luftwaffe had requested that a large commercial airliner be constructed way back in 1934, but it should be designed in such a way that it could be easily and cheaply converted into a bomber adhering to German military specifications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same was true with other systems, like tanks, which were explicitly designed to stay within &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.achtungpanzer.com/panzerkampfwagen-i.htm&quot;&gt;the letter of the treaty text.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1933, the Heereswaffenamt ordered the development of Kleintraktor – an armored vehicle between 4 and 7 tons in weight. It was designated La.S (Landwirtschaftlicher Schlepper / LaS – agricultural tractor) to hide its true purpose from the Treaty of Versailles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, a military system officially designed as a civilian one to circumvent the treaty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest is from memory, based on my reading of &lt;em&gt;The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich&lt;/em&gt; by William Shirer (good book)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hitler and the NSDAP gained power legally, then used subterfuge to force a situation in which they could institute emergency measures (think Reichstag fire), effectively meaning an end to the Weimar Republic and its laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that moment on of course, they made the law so anything they did was effectively legal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's no doubt what Dr. King meant. When someone with absolute power wants to do harm, whatever he does is by definition legal as there is no law left under which he can be held liable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-10-14T22:13:22.113" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T22:13:22.113" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4864" CreationDate="2013-07-04T15:15:20.103" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The gold standard for measuring or monitoring sleep is Polysomnography (PSG for short).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However as Catherine says it's quite a cumbersome procedure. It monitors many vitals like EEG, EMG, Oronasal respiratory rhythms. Researchers have that's why tried a lot to analyse sleep using other easily available human vital signs. Accelerometry or Actigraphy (measuring body movement) gives valuable information on the depth of sleep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was the essence of all first generation research starting from 1960's until almost 2004. But now-a-days, few researchers have showed that it's possible to analyse sleep into 4 NREM (Non Rapid Eye Movement) and REM and a wake phase using the Heart Rate Variability (HRV). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are numerous devices in the market that claim to analyse sleep. Most or all of them output various measures related to sleep efficiency. I'm currently doing a literature survey on the topic. In near future, we intend to devise our own algorithm that can do this in an effective way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Btw, I'm a bio-medical algorithm developer.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14454" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-04T16:30:17.823" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T16:30:17.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16820" CreationDate="2013-07-04T18:52:00.740" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Richard Retting is perhaps the most skillful salesman for red light camera companies we have ever seen.  He is employed by the camera company Brexford and has worked for others. He has worked for the IIHS whose member insurance companies make money with surcharges in some states when their policyholders get camera tickets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is interesting that anyone concerned with their reputation would agree to work with Redflex after they were thrown out of Chicago in a $2 million dollar bribery scandal.  And please note that it takes a LOT to get thrown out of Chicago for bribery and corruption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a long list of studies and investigative reporters articles on our website showing drastic reductions in violation rates with longer yellows, rates that stay down over time.  Increasing the yellows by 0.7 to 1.0 seconds typically drops violation rates by 60% to 90%.  Anyone objecting to huge reductions in violations with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.motorists.org/red-light-cameras/yellow-lights&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;longer yellows is likely in the camera revenue stream.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;James C. Walker, Life Member-National Motorists Association, www.motorists.org&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14456" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-04T20:23:40.787" LastActivityDate="2013-07-04T20:23:40.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16852" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16973" CreationDate="2013-07-04T22:15:51.843" Score="24" ViewCount="5562" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a claim, made by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kelemen&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen&lt;/a&gt; in his books (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/257834.Permission_to_Receive&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Permission to Receive&lt;/a&gt;) and lectures (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.torahcafe.com/rabbi-lawrence-kelemen/the-veracity-of-torah-video_8b16ff3c4.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this &quot;The Veracity of Torah&quot; lecture on TorahCafé&lt;/a&gt;), &lt;strong&gt;that the story of a divine miracle at Mt. Sinai (the revelation of God) taking place before the entire &quot;nation of Israel&quot; is unique among cultures and religions&lt;/strong&gt;. He says that the Jews claim that at the founding of their religion, God personally spoke the Ten Commandments to each of the millions of Jewish people. He posits if it were naturally possible for false national revelation claims to be made, at least one other religion, nation, or culture should also claim that all of their ancestors witnessed divine miracles. (A non-sequitor, I know, but that's besides the point.) Instead he says that all other religions start up with a divine revelation to only one or two people. Kelemen asks, &quot;If it's so normal for an entire people to think that their ancestors heard God speak, why didn't it happen more than once in recorded history?&quot; (Permission to Receive p.70).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, Kelemen appears to claim that there has been no other religion or culture that claims that their ancestors witnessed a deity or other supernatural miracles on a national scale. &quot;National scale&quot; means that all, or at least enough, members of the culture or religion directly witnessed the miraculous (divine, supernatural) occurrence such that the claim that their &lt;em&gt;ancestors&lt;/em&gt; witnessed such an event became a continuous national tradition.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this in fact so? &lt;strong&gt;Are there no other cultures, nations, or religions other than Judaism that have a tradition that their ancestors all directly witnessed a divine miracle(s)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;Although Kelemen also says that no other religion was founded with a revelation of God speaking to more than two people, he does appear to acknowledge claims of Jesus performing public miracles. He apparently does not consider this as a counterexample though, saying that people wouldn't necessarily have known where the people who saw his miracles were, and they and later generations therefore may not have had the ability to check the claim. So  this is why I'm asking about the &quot;national&quot; claim rather than an easier to challenge public miracle claim.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The point of &quot;tradition&quot; is also important to the claim. Kelemen seems to require that the revelation story doesn't involve the people forgetting and being re-told by a smaller group or prophet. In Permission to Receive and some of his lectures, he mentions a Hindu story where Krishna is revealed to millions of people, but since they almost all die out shortly thereafter, there wouldn't be a nation of people who could check this story with their ancestors. And so he dismisses this sort of counterexample.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14458" LastEditorUserId="14458" LastEditDate="2017-01-04T03:53:15.760" LastActivityDate="2020-01-22T21:56:05.163" Title="Is the story of a divine miracle at Mt. Sinai, witnessed by a national audience, unique among cultures or religions?" Tags="|history|religion|anthropology|judaism|mythology|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14913" CreationDate="2013-07-04T22:27:15.013" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;According them them, their 4 essential oils are &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eucalyptol&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Menthol&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Methyl salicylate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thymol&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://aac.asm.org/content/49/6/2474.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Menthol, Thymol&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ijp-online.com/article.asp?issn=0253-7613;year=2004;volume=36;issue=2;spage=93;epage=94;aulast=Trivedi&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eucalyptol&lt;/a&gt; do have known antibacterial effects.  I'm having difficulty finding anything specifically on Methyl salicylate (wintergreen oil), but their claims of efficacy against plaque seem plausible.  Additionally, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2133450&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a Japanese study&lt;/a&gt; comparing Listerine's effectiveness with and without the essential oils did find that they have a significant effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, looking at the ingredients list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Water, sorbitol solution, propylene glycol, &lt;strong&gt;sodium lauryl sulfate, benzoic acid, sodium benzoate&lt;/strong&gt;, poloxamer 407, sodium saccharin, flavor, sucralose, FD&amp;amp;C green no. 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We find 3 other ingredients that may also contribute to the anti-plaque action.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11899262&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sodium lauryl sulfate is a microbiocide&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=cs3mAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;dq=beef%20extract%20analgesic&amp;amp;pg=PA25&amp;amp;lpg=PA25&amp;amp;sig=ACfU3U1--T5tUU-6ez-EcXebomXCfstcdA&amp;amp;q=benzoic#search_anchor&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Benzioc acid is an antiseptic&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zxchemusa.com/File_Upload/2012112165931928.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sodium benzoate is a bacteriostatic&lt;/a&gt;.  Depending on the concentrations, these may contribute further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastEditorUserId="1680" LastEditDate="2013-10-20T22:21:27.893" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T22:21:27.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7646" CreationDate="2013-07-05T12:48:17.593" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sources that I found for this were in regards to this method being used to repel flies, and not specifically mosquitos, but at least one source mentioned that most claims of the theoretical effectiveness were based off of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/zoology/insects-arachnids/water-bags-repel-flies1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;interaction of the light refraction with insects with compound eyes&lt;/a&gt;.  As mosquitos &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;also have compound eyes&lt;/a&gt;, it seems feasible that the method would be just as effective (or ineffective) on mosquitos as the houseflies and biting flies that are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tnfarmbureau.org/content/pennies-bags-water-make-flies-flee&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;more commonly referenced&lt;/a&gt; in conjunction with this method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most proponents of this theory agree that light refraction is the key:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In theory, refraction can be just as confusing for some species of insect, especially the housefly. It boasts a highly sensitive array of eyes which allow it to see in multiple directions at once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The insect's head mostly consists of a pair of large complex eyes, each of which is composed of 3,000 to 6,000 simple eyes. These eyes can't move or focus on objects like human eyes, but they provide the fly with a mosaic view of the world around them. Each simple eye provides one small piece of the puzzle, much like the way a screen's pixel delivers one detail of the larger picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A housefly bases its sense of direction on the direction sunlight comes from. Some entomologists believe that when these complex, sensitive eyes experience refracted light, the insect becomes confused and flies away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this actually work, though?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to several sources (the howstuffworks.com article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gardensalive.com/article.asp?ai=1004&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this gardensalive.com article&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/flies.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;snopes.com&lt;/a&gt;), in 2007 a researcher named Mike Stringham ran a 13 week study on the effectiveness of this method at one or two egg farms (the accounts differ on the details of the study, which causes me some concern as to how accurately the study's results are reported).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fly populations at each location were measured by placing cards that allowed the capture and measure of fly droppings.  Some cards were placed in control rooms, others in rooms with bags of water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results purportedly showed that there was an actual &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; in fly population in the rooms with the water bags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/flies.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;snopes.com&lt;/a&gt; labeled this claim as &amp;quot;undetermined&amp;quot;, due to the fact thtat Stringham's experiment was conducted in an environment that was &amp;quot;indoors with flourescent and incandescent lighting, a factor which may limit its applicability: it's possible the effects of direct sunlight on the bags may produce different results&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The popular show &lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/bug-special&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MythBusters&lt;/a&gt; also tested this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bags of water hung from the ceiling can repel flies.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BUSTED&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This myth is based in the theory that refracted light in water confused flies’ compound eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Build Team made a rig consisting of three chambers separated by trap doors. The first chamber would hold the flies, the second would hold some rotten meat, and the third would hold both rotten meat and a bag of water. They then released over 5,000 flies from the first chamber and waited to see how many flies would go into each of the other two. After the chambers were sealed off, they let all the flies die and collected the corpses to weigh for comparison. The chambers with and without the water contained 35 and 20 grams of flies, respectively, busting the myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen the MythBusters episode, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbuNpAX63Iw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this preview&lt;/a&gt; does show a quick scene where Kari Byron appears to be lifting a bag of rotting meat out of the fly enclosure, which is outdoors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems unlikely that this is effective.  However, many of the versions of this claim include mention of a few pennies in the water, so, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.life123.com/home-garden/home-pest-control/other-pests/does-plastic-bag-water-keep-flies-away.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article points out&lt;/a&gt;, it doesn't appear to be fully tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T14:46:33.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16845" CreationDate="2013-07-05T15:45:33.033" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Can any human technology available to common people create this (probably) over night during reduced visibility? How?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Maldekian&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A better name for this artwork is the &quot;Crabwood Formation&quot; as it is a corn-drawing revealed on August 15, 2002 at Crabwood near Winchester in Hampshire, England.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Human technology&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To flatten crops in circles, you just need stone-age technology such as ropes and planks. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/05/ruralaffairs&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To make complex designs you can make use of a few additional items such as laser pointers, night vision goggles etc. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Crop-Circle&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Common People&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Common people can do this but you should note that commercial enterprises do this too, they can afford better tools. &lt;a href=&quot;http://circlemakers.org/totc2007.html&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt; They have made examples of complex &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.circlemakers.org/natgeo.html&quot;&gt;spiral forms&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Over night&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To some extent, adding more people makes the job faster. Careful planning and practice must also be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason some designs are not adjacent to roads (and therefore have to be signalled to the press by an anonymous phone call) are so that they can be constructed over several days (and/or nights)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the alleged witnesses of the Crabwood formation state that it was created over several nights &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lucypringle.co.uk/articles/crabwood/&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T15:45:33.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16864" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16868" CreationDate="2013-07-05T17:21:03.633" Score="15" ViewCount="10078" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://southweb.org/lifewise/the-lead-vaccine-developer-comes-clean-so-she-can-sleep-at-night-gardasil-and-cervarix-dont-work-are-dangerous-and-werent-tested/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;LifeWise&lt;/a&gt;, “Dr. Diane Harper was the lead researcher in the development of the human papilloma virus vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix. &lt;strong&gt;She is the latest to come forward and question the safety and effectiveness of these vaccines.&lt;/strong&gt;”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article cited above states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Harper explained in her presentation that the cervical cancer risk in the U.S. is already extremely low, and that vaccinations are unlikely to have any effect upon the rate of cervical cancer in the United States. In fact, 70% of all H.P.V. infections resolve themselves without treatment in a year, and the number rises to well over 90% in two years. Harper also mentioned the safety angle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, there is &lt;strong&gt;no actual evidence that the vaccine can prevent any cancer&lt;/strong&gt;. From the manufacturers own admissions, the vaccine only works on 4 strains out of 40 for a specific venereal disease that dies on its own in a relatively short period, so the chance of it actually helping an individual is about about the same as the chance of him being struck by a meteorite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article mentions the reaction of some who were at a talk she gave in 2008, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Her speech was supposed to promote the Gardasil and Cervarix vaccines, but she instead turned on her corporate bosses in a very public way.&lt;/strong&gt; When questioned about the presentation, audience members remarked that they came away feeling that the vaccines should not be used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I came away from the talk with the perception that the risk of adverse side effects is so much greater than the risk of cervical cancer, I couldn’t help but question why we need the vaccine at all.”  – Joan Robinson&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only direct quote to Dr. Harper is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“About eight in every ten women who have been sexually active will have H.P.V. at some stage of their life. Normally there are no symptoms, and in 98 per cent of cases it clears itself. But in those cases where it doesn’t, and isn’t treated, it can lead to pre-cancerous cells which may develop into cervical cancer.”  - Dr. Diane Harper&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was Dr. Diane Harper the lead researcher for these vaccines, and do her comments amount to a refutation of the (unmentioned) evidence that the HPV vaccines reduce the risk of cervical cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T13:09:04.747" Title="Did the lead developer of the HPV vaccine come out against it?" Tags="|medical-science|vaccines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7259" CreationDate="2013-07-05T19:29:57.947" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there is not currently an epidemic of cancer. Instead, cancer rates appear to be holding steady over the long term while other causes of death are dropping dramatically. This appears to be the reason that cancer is now the leading cause of death in developed countries, rather than because cancer rates are rising significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In searching for better historical data than the first reply, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.demogr.mpg.de/papers/working/wp-1999-006.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I found this paper&lt;/a&gt; from the Max Planck institute for Demographic Research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NqH0g.gif&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here we have an illustration showing &quot;Annual death rates from all causes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer from 1900 to 1980 for U.S. women aged 60 - 65&quot;. This data eliminates the other usual early causes of death like childhood disease, so focuses on later-life causes of death instead. This graph shows that &quot;other causes&quot; has dramatically decreased since 1900 (which is expected - medical science had advanced greatly in the 20th century), that deaths from heart disease have decreased dramatically since about 1950, but cancer has continued to be largely incurable, while the rate at which we contract it has neither increased nor declined significantly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find these results satisfy my own criticism of the previous data as well as covering other causes of cancer that might have more to do with modern life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edited to add: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistics Canada just released a nice graph showing all causes of death since 1950. We see that around 2005, Canada's death rate due to diseases of the circulatory system has dropped below all cancers. And that all cancers has not significantly changed since 1950, although there's been a bit of a dip since about 2003. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rHKxQ.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rHKxQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3458" LastEditorUserId="3458" LastEditDate="2016-03-21T20:41:25.660" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T20:41:25.660" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10301" CreationDate="2013-07-05T19:36:38.363" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In contrast to vartec's answer, and the comment to that answer which reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But anyway, $10,000 to every single Somalian is more than $100bn. Doesn't look good for claim that $175bn can eliminate poverty everywhere, if you'd need $100bn for one small country.`&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world's poorest have approximately $400/year/person:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Percentage_population_living_on_less_than_1_dollar_day_2007-2008.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Map&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/4499/wber_23_2_163.pdf?sequence=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Definition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, a new international&#xA;poverty line of $1.25 a day is proposed for 2005 (equivalent to $1.00 a day in&#xA;1996 U.S. prices), which is the mean of the lines in the poorest 15 countries in&#xA;consumption per capita, based on the new compilation of national poverty&#xA;lines. This new poverty line is fairly robust to different estimation methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.visionofearth.org/news/how-do-we-define-poverty/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;definition of &amp;quot;extreme poverty&amp;quot; which is used in the OP&lt;/a&gt; is slightly smaller than that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Extreme Poverty&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People in extreme poverty are the poorest people in the world. They have a total income that is calculated to be less than around $1 United States Dollars (USD) per day2. The actual meaning of this number and term is that these are people who can at best barely meet their minimal needs for survival. These people often have the ability to feed themselves minimally and have some chance of surviving from year to year. This is termed subsistence living. Those people that earn more than $1 a day are generally able to meet their basic needs and are considered to be in moderate poverty, not extreme poverty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A mere $2000 (equivalent to 5 year's income) might arguably/plausibly be enough to give everyone food security, and therefore other security: less desperation/need for theft and war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A problem though is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the new international poverty line proposed in this article, Chen and&#xA;Ravallion (2008b) ﬁnd that 1.4 billion people in 2005—25 percent of&#xA;the population of the developing world—lived in poverty. That share was&#xA;52 percent 25 years earlier (in 1981) and 42 percent in 1990.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is good that the number has halved, from 52% to 25%: but naively dividing $175 billion between 1.4 billion people means only $100 per person -- not apparently enough just from figures, i.e. it would have to be spent cleverly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Noting that the amount is $175 billion per year (not just once), it would (theoretically) increase the amount of money available to the world's poorest by 25%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it plausible that a 25% increase/input might be significant or 'sufficient':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It allows for some investment where there was none before (potentially, huge gains)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It could hire a huge amount of local labour (a significant percentage of the national workforce)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-23159706&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;In other news, India&lt;/a&gt; is hoping to &amp;quot;make food a legal right&amp;quot;, which may cost them $23 billion/year:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bill - which was passed by ordinance but needs to be ratified by parliament - proposes to make food a legal right. It seeks to cover two-thirds of the country's population and provide 5kg of subsidised food grain per person per month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one, some critics argue that the scheme could upset the budget with subsidies on food doubling to a whopping $23bn (£15.5bn). This will not help India, they say, to cut its fiscal deficit to 4.1% of GDP by 2012-2013 from an uncomfortable 5.5% expected this fiscal year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plans for spending the money are very different -- but the amounts of money, i.e. $23bn for India versus $175bn for the whole world, are the same (given how large the population of India is).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The total assets of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bill &amp;amp; Melinda Gates Foundation is said to be $32bn total&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare that with $175bn/year over perhaps 20 years: it amounts to $3500bn, or 100 times of the amount of money in the Gates Foundation -- which already has a budget comparable to the UN WHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to me more evidence is $175bn/year is a relatively large amount of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$3500bn divided by 1.4bn people is in fact the $2000/person or the &amp;quot;5 times an annual income in savings&amp;quot; which I guessed might seem enough for food security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OP says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand this is just extreme poverty but I am skeptical that this expense would actually be enough to take care of the extremely poor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize/conclude: there are many confounding factors (changes in money and climate and population and trade), and many ways in which this or any plan could fail -- but the amount of money being talked about seems useful, and if the plan did fail it might not be for lack of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T00:05:02.710" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16864" CreationDate="2013-07-05T21:58:11.827" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/19/cbsnews_investigates/main5253431.shtml&quot;&gt;2009 CBS interview&lt;/a&gt;, Dr. Harper's concerns about HPV vaccines are over the lack of data about the duration of protection and the way the vaccines are being advertised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Available data shows the vaccines are effective for at least 5 years, but effectiveness beyond that is unknown, and Dr. Harper's opinion is that to have a meaningful effect on cervical cancer rates, the vaccine would need to be effective for at least 15 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If we vaccinate 11 year olds and the protection doesn't last... we've put them at harm from side effects, small but real, for no benefit,&quot; says Dr. Harper. &quot;The benefit to public health is nothing, there is no reduction in cervical cancers, they are just postponed, &lt;strong&gt;unless the protection lasts for at least 15 years, and over 70% of all sexually active females of all ages are vaccinated&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She also expresses concern that Merck's marketing of the vaccine could provoke a false sense of security and cause women to forgo pap smears and other screening tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The future expectations women hold because they have received free doses of Gardasil purchased by philanthropic foundations, by public health agencies or covered by insurance is the true threat to cervical cancer in the future. Should women stop Pap screening after vaccination, the cervical cancer rate will actually increase per year. Should women believe this is preventive for all cancers - something never stated, but often inferred by many in the population-- a reduction in all health care will compound our current health crisis. Should Gardasil not be effective for more than 15 years, the most costly public health experiment in cancer control will have failed miserably.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not seeing anything she says that would reasonably constitute &quot;coming out against it&quot; or declaring it to be &quot;dangerous and untested&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=184421&quot;&gt;analysis of adverse effect reports&lt;/a&gt; suggests that Gardasil's rate of  adverse effects isn't much different than other vaccines, though they did note increased rates of syncope (fainting) and venous thromboembolic events, though further analysis of the latter suggests that the vast majority of those cases had other risk factors in play, such as tobacco and birth control use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastEditorUserId="13967" LastEditDate="2013-07-05T22:04:36.590" LastActivityDate="2013-07-05T22:04:36.590" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16890" CreationDate="2013-07-06T06:37:24.167" Score="16" ViewCount="2147" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a 2011 Vanity Fair article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://relooney.info/0_New_10646.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nobel-Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise: &lt;strong&gt;the chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These terms aren't well defined, but we can make some assumptions about what he means. A household in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=330&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bottom income quintile&lt;/a&gt; makes at most about $20k, and on average $11k, which is below the &lt;a href=&quot;http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/12poverty.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;poverty guideline&lt;/a&gt; for a family of four. This seems to be a reasonable division for a poor individual. A middle-class household in the middle income quintile makes between $38k-$62k, and about $50k on average, so that should suffice. The trickiest part of the statement is what is meant by the &quot;top&quot;. The article goes to great lengths talking about the &lt;strong&gt;Top 1%&lt;/strong&gt;, so I assume that is what he is referring to by top. In 2009, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://taxfoundation.org/article_ns/summary-2009-federal-individual-income-tax-data&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bottom cut-off&lt;/a&gt; for the Top 1% Adjusted Gross Income was $343,927. Another possible point of contention is the differences between wealth and income. The article uses both terms, but appears to mostly be concerned with income inequality, so for the purposes of this question I am concerned with income. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9836/do-the-rich-get-richer-and-the-poor-get-poorer/9844#9844&quot;&gt;previous studies&lt;/a&gt;, we know what the chances are for someone from the bottom/middle income quintile to make it into the Top 1%. It is about 0.2%/0.3% from 1996-2005 in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are their any nations in Europe whose citizens have a greater than 0.2%/0.3% chance of going from a bottom/middle income quintile for their country to the top 1% for their country?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T04:57:19.743" Title="Do Europeans have a greater chance of making it into the top 1% of income earners than Americans?" Tags="|united-states|economics|europe|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10301" CreationDate="2013-07-06T17:51:20.880" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not the money and it is not the societal relationships. The primary issues in the poorest parts of the world are casteism, tribalism and corruption. Consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20465752&quot;&gt;this article from the BBC&lt;/a&gt;, discussing tribalism in Kenya with some implications for the continent as a whole. Or consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://allafrica.com/stories/201305120058.html&quot;&gt;this article about poverty in Nigeria; an oil state&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.salvationist.org/poverty.nsf/09a1dc2154b8115380256af000467ae0/9e0722d1ce330ebf80256afc004c369d?OpenDocument&quot;&gt;India is working hard to breakdown the relics of the caste system&lt;/a&gt; - much to the chagrin of some upper caste Indians I met who did not get the educational preferences granted to untouchables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the entities through which the $175 billion per year would flow are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09578819808426705#.UdhYJW0gEng&quot;&gt;hopelessly corrupt.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not the money, and it is not the guns - it is the ability and willingness of the society to change. The breakthrough will be in social science. We need to figure out a way to help the poor societies learn how stop killing and stealing from each other. If they would learn to cooperate with integrity, they would not need any of our money - they would create wealth on their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14473" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-06T19:40:45.337" LastActivityDate="2013-07-06T19:40:45.337" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16852" CreationDate="2013-07-07T16:48:16.647" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You might find that many royal or imperial dynasties have claimed themselves to be divine descendents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know of specific examples but for example Google suggested these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/shinto/history/emperor_1.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shinto -- Divinity of the Emperor&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the 6th century onwards it was accepted that the Emperor was descended from the kami (in this context gods), was in contact with them, and often inspired by them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[After the Imperial rescript, January 1, 1946] The Emperor continued to claim direct descent from Amaterasu and the priestly status that this inheritance gave him, but his ritual functions ceased being National tasks and became (as they had been through most of Japanese history) private Shinto devotions designed to preserve the good fortune of Japan, and the continuity of the Imperial line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_cult_(ancient_Rome)#Divus_Julius&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Divus Julius&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caesar had personal ties to the gods, both by descent and by office. He was descended from Aeneas and his mother Venus; more doubtfully, from Ancus Marcius and the kings of Rome, and so from Mars. When he was a teenager, Marius had named him flamen Dialis, the special priest of Jupiter. Sulla had cancelled this appointment; however, relatively early in his career, Caesar had become pontifex maximus, the chief priest of Rome, who fulfilled most of the religious duties of the ancient kings.[35] He had spent his twenties in the divine monarchies of the eastern Mediterranean, and was intimately familiar with Bithynia.[36]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited to answer a comment from the OP below&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Now, a small group of leaders claiming divinity is not the same as a whole nation witnessing a miracle. If ChrisW can make a stronger case like &amp;quot;Everyone believed him to be divine and there were national traditions where lots of people saw proof of this&amp;quot; it would be a better answer.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I may say this without being rude, there's no proof of &amp;quot;a whole nation witnessing a miracle&amp;quot; in the Jewish tradition: instead, what you have is a whole nation who insist that their ancestors saw a miracle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO this could be analogous to the foundation myths/miracles which accompany the foundation of other nations or cities: which include gods doing battle, granting gifts and patronage, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether &amp;quot;everyone believed&amp;quot; is a bit off-topic on skeptics: because personal beliefs are unknowable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From what I remember being told of history, it was the State religion. If people were executed for non-compliance, then yes it probably was &amp;quot;the whole nation&amp;quot; that &amp;quot;believed&amp;quot; it. Statements on Wikipedia such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_cult&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Imperial cult&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cult spread over the whole Empire within a few decades, more strongly in the east than in the west. Emperor Diocletian further reinforced it when he demanded the proskynesis and adopted the adjective sacrum for all things pertaining to the imperial person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Roman_Empire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many followed Pliny's formula: they asked if the accused individuals were Christians, gave those who answered in the affirmative a chance to recant, and offered those who denied or recanted a chance to prove their sincerity by making a sacrifice to the Roman gods and swearing by the emperor's genius. Those who persisted were executed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you do get into what people believed, you may find that miracles used to be common-place: in the Dark and Middle Ages of Europe for example there were relics of saints (which had miraculous powers) everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T20:50:47.880" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16852" CreationDate="2013-07-08T01:48:32.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's another mass apparition, which even happened on multiple occasions. In Coogee, NSW Australia, an alleged image of the virgin Mary appeared on a fence in 2003. It was only seen from the right viewpoint and if the light was just right, but hundreds of people claimed to see her, and some came to pray to her. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there are as yet no people descended from those who saw the miracle, but consider this: any future descendants of the viewers will be able to say that they're descended from people who saw Mary in Coogee. Also, of course, Mary is not a god, but to Catholics she is as important as, and prayed to as often as any deity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details are on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coogee,_New_South_Wales&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; and various other sites. &lt;a href=&quot;http://coogeebeach.net.au/561/virgin-mary-sighted-at-coogee-beach/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This one&lt;/a&gt; has a good photo of the &quot;apparition&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T01:48:32.340" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5848" CreationDate="2013-07-08T22:09:34.537" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;An engineer and instructor from NASA posting on Quora had this to say about maximal height of mountains on Earth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gravity has a direct inverse proportional relationship.  So a planet&#xA;  with a gravitational acceleration twice that of Earth could have a&#xA;  mountain half as tall as one on Earth and a planet with a&#xA;  gravitational acceleration half that of Earth could have a mountain&#xA;  twice as tall as one on Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are three more significant constraints and they all relate to&#xA;  the geology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1)  What is the mountain made of?  Put enough rocks on top of other&#xA;  rocks and the ones at the bottom will fail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) What is the shear strength of the mountain?  No structure is&#xA;  perfect and given enough shear, a fracture will cause the mountain to&#xA;  break and the top to slide off.  The wider the mountain the greater&#xA;  the impact of shear, the thinner the lesser impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3) What is below the mountain?  Make the mountain massive enough and&#xA;  it will subside (sink) into the structure below.  On Earth, we have&#xA;  floating tectonic plates.  Mountains are limited by this - not&#xA;  coincidentally, it is believed that Mt. Everest sits atop two&#xA;  overlapping plates so it doesn't sink into the liquid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the equations I've seen that attempts to solve this problem is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hmax = Compressive strength of rock/(density of rock times&#xA;  gravitational acceleration)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, we can see that gravity is certainly a player, many mountains will&#xA;  be limited by their components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer would seem to confirm Jonas's explanation. However, it does not address some exogeological formations, such as Olympus Mons on Mars, which is approximately three times larger than similar formations found on Earth even though Martian gravity is about 53% that of Earth's. This seems to indicate that the relationship between gravity, geology, and maximal height may be too complex to be accurately summarized in a single rule of thumb or simple equation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original post on Quora can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Planetary-Science/What-is-the-relation-between-maximal-mountain-height-and-g-for-a-planet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but a Quora account is necessary in order to view it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14503" LastActivityDate="2013-07-08T22:09:34.537" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16872" CreationDate="2013-07-09T04:57:19.743" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Shorrocks#Shorrocks_index&quot;&gt;Shorrocks' Index&lt;/a&gt; is one mechanism used to compare the economic mobility of households within an economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2002 working paper from the European Economy Group, titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://pendientedemigracion.ucm.es/info/econeuro/documentos/documentos/dt192002.pdf&quot;&gt;Europe vs. The United States:&#xA;Is There a Trade-Off Between Mobility and Inequality?&lt;/a&gt; uses Shorrocks' Index and other measures to conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most of the indicators present Italy and France as the countries with the highest and &#xA;  lowest mobility, respectively. &lt;strong&gt;Contrary to general belief, the USA is shown to have &#xA;  intermediate levels of mobility within an international context.&lt;/strong&gt; Whatever the case, the &#xA;  most significant result is the absence of any clear relationship between inequality and &#xA;  mobility. Examples of greater than average inequality and mobility have been seen, as &#xA;  have examples of low inequality and high mobility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is supported by a bilateral comparison from the last century: &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=s7Nkma-kLlEC&amp;amp;lpg=PA322&amp;amp;ots=ccKUgCdQLf&amp;amp;dq=Shorrocks%20Index%20UNited%20States&amp;amp;pg=PA322#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Shorrocks%20Index%20UNited%20States&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Wealth Dynamics in the 1980s and 1990s: Sweden and the United States&lt;/a&gt;, which says in its abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition to less inequality and a higher median wealth, we also show that wealth quintile mobility in the 1990s has been 25.7 percent higher in Sweden [than the USA], as measured by Shorrocks' Index.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While these figures do not, unfortunately, focus directly on the OP's formulation of the question, which limits itself to the top 1%, it does provide strong evidence that the mobility of households from the lower quintiles to the upper ones is both lower and higher in European countries than the United States of America, as suggested by the original quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-07-09T04:57:19.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16893" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16894" CreationDate="2013-07-09T07:59:21.343" Score="4" ViewCount="2794" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/041014_Monsanto_seed_patents_GMOs.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An article on Natural News&lt;/a&gt; claims that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EPO granted Monsanto a patent on conventionally-bred broccoli, which includes not only broccoli seeds but also the &quot;severed broccoli head&quot; and the &quot;plurality of broccoli plants ... grown in a field of broccoli&quot; - in other words, broccoli in all of its natural forms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this accurate - has such a wide patent on broccoli (e.g. including forms of natural broccoli not developed by Monstanto) been granted, and is it accurate to summarize it as a patent on broccoli &quot;in all of its natural forms&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="154" LastActivityDate="2020-03-17T16:16:37.530" Title="Has European Patent Office granted Monsanto a patent on natural broccoli seeds and florets?" Tags="|gmo|patents|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16893" CreationDate="2013-07-09T10:19:05.040" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using the &lt;a href=&quot;https://register.epo.org/regviewer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EPO patent search&lt;/a&gt;, it is relatively easy to reject that such a patent has been granted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EPO has not granted &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; patents directly to Montsano containing the word &quot;broccoli&quot; (search term: &quot;Brocolli ia=Monsanto&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The patent you are linking to in your comment &lt;a href=&quot;https://data.epo.org/publication-server/pdf-document?PN=EP1597965%20EP%201597965&amp;amp;iDocId=7994889&amp;amp;iepatch=.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EP 1 597 965 B1&lt;/a&gt; is the only patent granted by the EPO containing the word &quot;broccoli&quot;. The patent proprietor &quot;Seminis Vegetable Seeds, Inc.&quot; is owned by Monsanto, so even if it was not granted to Monsanto, it is indeed owned by Monsanto.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The patent does however not cover conventionally bred broccoli, but a modified variety, basically with a longer stalk with less leaves than conventional varieties, making it easier to mechanically harvest the crop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A patent grant is not confirmation of the patent's validity. Patent offices do examine the patent application, but it is not possible for a patent office to perform a complete search for prior art. I believe that conventionally bred broccoli would be found to be prior art, making a granted patent invalid IMHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-03-17T16:16:37.530" LastActivityDate="2020-03-17T16:16:37.530" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16895" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16906" CreationDate="2013-07-09T13:55:44.887" Score="19" ViewCount="3319" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a story around that Bill Gates tampered with his school's (or college's) scheduling system to get in class with all the 'hot' girls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did this in fact happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References I've found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://technology.ezinemark.com/top-ten-crazy-stories-about-bill-gates-7736b3f4a051.html&quot;&gt;10 crazy stories about bill gates&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://officeforward.com/slick-bill-gates-smoothly-switches-class-to-study-with-girls.html#sthash.ZtG1iJhA.dpuf&quot;&gt;Slick Bill Gates Smoothly Switches Class To Study With Girls&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14509" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-12-31T00:44:23.130" LastActivityDate="2016-12-31T00:44:23.130" Title="Did Bill Gates tamper with his school's computer system?" Tags="|computers|bill-gates|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13720" CreationDate="2013-07-10T12:18:25.700" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychoneuroimmunology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Psychoneuroimmunology&lt;/a&gt; is the research field relevant for your question, where &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.therapyhub.com/articles/therapy-tips/five-ways-increase-optimism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;research indicates that the feeling of optimism is good for work success, financial success, and good health&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://joshuawiley.com/pres/optimism_immune.html#title-slide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Optimism and the Immune System&lt;/a&gt; give you an overview of the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889159104001205?np=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Optimism and immunity: Do positive thoughts always lead to positive effects?&lt;/a&gt; says that &quot;empirical evidence suggests that [the effects of dispositional optimism] is more likely to be a consequence of optimists’ greater engagement during difficult stressors&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14508" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-10T16:01:50.497" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T16:01:50.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5227" CreationDate="2013-07-10T13:11:45.777" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hypertropin.com/howhghworks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;human growth is an hormonal regulated process&lt;/a&gt;. So taking some hormons would allow one to grow &quot;forever&quot;. Actualy, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wadlow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Robert Wadlow&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-3000/tallest-man-ever/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the tallest man in guiness records&lt;/a&gt; was a man who continued growth in adulthood were due to hyperplasia of his pituitary gland, which results in an abnormally high level of human growth hormone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/431962-does-stretching-cause-damage/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stretching&lt;/a&gt; may lead &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.endalldisease.com/the-myth-of-stretching-for-flexibility-and-the-damage-it-causes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;to damages&lt;/a&gt;,  be careful that here too you should respect your body and its limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14508" LastEditorUserId="11430" LastEditDate="2013-07-10T16:07:05.893" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T16:07:05.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16895" CreationDate="2013-07-10T15:10:31.833" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story with regards Bill Gates scheduling classes is  true, although if this would be considered &quot;tampering&quot; is best left to the reader. According to Bill Gates, he actually wrote a computerized class scheduler for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakeside_School&quot;&gt;Lackside School&lt;/a&gt; in which he &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gatesfoundation.org/media-center/speeches/2005/09/bill-gates-lakeside-school&quot;&gt;included an extra feature&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course, a whole new dimension of relevance came when I was asked to&#xA;  do a computerized class schedule for the high school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was complex, but ultimately very rewarding. By the time I was done,&#xA;  I found that I had no classes at all on Fridays. And even better,&#xA;  there was a disproportionate number of interesting girls in all my&#xA;  classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also corroborated in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7464074.stm&quot;&gt;interview with the BBC&lt;/a&gt;. According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-06/st_billgates&quot;&gt;Wired time line on Bill Gates&lt;/a&gt;, this took place in 1971 so he would have been 15 to 16 years old at the time and was already engaged in &lt;a href=&quot;http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/gates.htm#tc5&quot;&gt;quite a bit of work at the time&lt;/a&gt; that he was being paid for as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one sense the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undocumented_feature&quot;&gt;undocumented feature&lt;/a&gt; that he added could be considered anything ranging from an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_egg_%28media%29&quot;&gt;Easter egg&lt;/a&gt; to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backdoor_%28computing%29&quot;&gt;backdoor&lt;/a&gt;. However, since he was asked to write the software it wasn't tampering per se even though it is against the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics&quot;&gt;code of ethics&lt;/a&gt; of most professional societies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-07-10T19:33:03.607" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T19:33:03.607" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11054" CreationDate="2013-07-10T15:23:43.743" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2001, a review of the literature tried to answer this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rod A. Martin, &lt;a href=&quot;http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/11/6/216.short&quot;&gt;Is Laughter the Best Medicine? Humor, Laughter, and Physical Health&lt;/a&gt;, Psychological Bulletin 2001, Vol 127, No 4, 504-519, DOI: 10.1037//0033-2909.127.4.504,  [&lt;a href=&quot;http://users.skynet.be/bs939021/artikels/humor%20laughter%20physical%20health.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study looked at many previous efforts to link laughter and good humour to analgesic effects, immune response and self-reported health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it found the results inconclusive, inconsistent or negative and the methodology lacking. It makes recommendations into how future trials could be better run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Empirical evidence for beneficial effects of humor and laughter on immunity, pain tolerance, blood pressure, longevity, and illness symptoms is then summarized. &lt;strong&gt;Overall, the evidence for health benefits of humor and laughter is less conclusive than commonly believed.&lt;/strong&gt; Future research in this area needs to be more theoretically driven and methodologically rigorous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taken together, the empirical studies reviewed above provide little evidence for unique positive effects of humor and laughter on health-related variables. [...] In conclusion, despite the popularity of the idea that humor and laughter have significant health benefits, the current empircal evidence is generally weak and inconclusive. [...] this review does indicate that attempts to promote the therapeutic use of humor for purposes of improving physical health are premature and unwarranted by the current research evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T15:23:43.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16910" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-10T18:10:27.663" Score="18" ViewCount="1614" Body="&lt;p&gt;It’s commonly known that early Christians were prosecuted for centuries in the Roman empire, up to execution via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_ad_bestias&quot;&gt;damnatio ad bestias&lt;/a&gt;, meaning they were made to fight lions and other beasts in deadly competitions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/07/10/tales-of-roman-emperors-feeding-christians-to-the-lions-are-titillating-to-christians-and-wholly-made-up/&quot;&gt;an article on the &lt;em&gt;Friendly Atheist&lt;/em&gt; blog&lt;/a&gt; which, echoing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_20536_5-ridiculous-lies-you-believe-about-ancient-civilizations.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cracked&lt;/em&gt; article&lt;/a&gt;, claims that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are zero authentic accounts of Christian martyrdom in the Colosseum until over a century after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. In fact, not a single legitimate record exists of the Romans executing any Christians in the Colosseum. Zip. Zilch. Nada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the &lt;em&gt;Friendly Atheist&lt;/em&gt; articles are generally well researched and thus believable, but this one is less so. For one thing, most of its references are to entirely unspecific (or not accessible) “Google Books” searches that prove nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the claim that there are no legitimate records is directly contradicted by the Wikipedia article above, which cites several references by contemporaries, such as Tacitus and Tertullian. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians#Persecution_of_early_Christians_in_the_Roman_Empire&quot;&gt;Another article&lt;/a&gt; claims that the persecution lasted three centuries and was witnessed by several historians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this directly contradicts the claim that “there are zero authentic accounts … until over a century after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire”, because that happened &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; the three centuries of persecution. It also contradicts a quote taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0062104527&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (by Candida Moss, published in 2013):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;… the prosecution of Christians was rare, and the persecution of Christians was limited to no more than a handful of years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T19:00:55.857" Title="Were Christians ever publicly executed for their faith in Ancient Rome?" Tags="|history|christianity|ancient-rome|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16911" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16910" CreationDate="2013-07-10T19:00:55.857" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the &quot;...in the Colosseum&quot; part is crucial to the claim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/world_civ/worldcivreader/world_civ_reader_1/tacitus.html&quot;&gt;Tacitus' description of Nero's persecution of Christians&lt;/a&gt; says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And perishing [Christians] were additionally made into sports: they were killed by dogs by having the hides of beasts attached to them, or they were nailed to crosses or set aflame, and, when the daylight passed away, they were used as nighttime lamps. Nero gave his own gardens for this spectacle....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nero's gardens were not part of the Colosseum. (There's some controversy about Tacitus' accuracy, but I think the quote speaks to the &quot;...in the Colosseum&quot; aspect.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2013-07-10T19:00:55.857" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14232" CreationDate="2013-07-11T16:20:21.437" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;ADHD is associated with problems in both math and peer-relations according to, among others, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/04/27_adhd.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a Berkeley news report&lt;/a&gt;. If there is a common core component to ADHD, one might &lt;em&gt;speculate&lt;/em&gt; that numerical working memory capacity and social working memory overlap to some extent. There is evidence for an overlap between these functions in terms of a non-specific neural correlate for working memory: activity in medial frontoparietal cortex decreases with increased working memory loads (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/19/1121077109&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PNAS 2011&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a single factor underlies both computation and social skills and if the factor can be extrapolated to the normal-cognitive population, it is possible that social and computational capacities depend on a shared cognitive element. However, further research would be needed to support this hypothesis. If this holds true, one would expect mathematicians with greater working memory capacity to be more social.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_number&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Erdős number anyone&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6933" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T16:20:21.437" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16919" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16921" CreationDate="2013-07-11T16:44:43.273" Score="12" ViewCount="1525" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://io9.com/1954-film-claims-a-well-kept-house-could-survive-a-nucl-623393428&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; links to a film that claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a clean, nicely painted house is more likely to survive a nuclear attack than its dirty, run-down neighbors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this claim, or were the National Paint, Varnish and Lacquer Association and National Clean Up-Paint Up-Fix Up Bureau giving people a false sense of security?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14341" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-07-11T17:12:40.147" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T21:40:03.103" Title="Is a clean, well painted house more likely to survive a nuclear attack than a dirty, unkempt one?" Tags="|history|nuclear-weapons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16920" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16925" CreationDate="2013-07-11T19:03:31.223" Score="31" ViewCount="4698" Body="&lt;p&gt;This morning, I stumbled across a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realfarmacy.com/why-80-of-people-worldwide-will-soon-stop-eating-wheat/&quot;&gt;realfarmacy article&lt;/a&gt; which poses the question [&lt;em&gt;Note: the linked page breaks in Chrome but worked in Firefox&lt;/em&gt;]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why is there such a strong emphasis on the development of wheat products all over the world when there are so many adverse and crippling effects such as &lt;strong&gt;neurological impairment&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;dementia&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;heart disease&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;cataracts&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;diabetes&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;arthritis&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;visceral fat accumulation&lt;/strong&gt;, not to mention the full range of intolerances and bloating now experienced by millions of people? [Emphasis mine]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to provide rationale [citation needed] such as the following for its claims that wheat is bad for people:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;100% whole wheat products are based on modern wheat strains created by irradiation of wheat seeds and embryos with chemicals, gamma rays, and high-dose X-rays to induce mutations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specific explanations are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each grain of wheat contains about one microgram of Wheat Germ Agglutinin (WGA). Even in small quantities, WGA can have profoundly adverse effects. It may be pro-inflammatory, immunotoxic, cardiotoxic … and neurotoxic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr William Davis has documented several hundred clinical studies on the adverse effects of wheat. These are studies that document the neurologic impairments unique to wheat, including cerebellar ataxia and dementia; heart disease; visceral fat accumulation and all its attendant health consequences; the process of glycation via amylopectin A of wheat that leads to cataracts, diabetes, and arthritis; among others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to the unique properties of amylopectin A, two slices of whole wheat bread increase blood sugar higher than many candy bars. High blood glucose leads to the process of glycation that, in turn, causes arthritis (cartilage glycation), cataracts (lens protein glycation), diabetes (glycotoxicity of pancreatic beta cells), hepatic de novo lipogenesis that increases triglycerides and, thereby, increases expression of atherogenic (heart disease-causing) small LDL particles, leading to heart attacks. Repetitive high blood sugars that develop from a grain-rich diet are, in my view, very destructive and lead to weight gain (specifically visceral fat), insulin resistance, leptin resistance (leading to obesity), and many of the health struggles that many now experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, when discussing people with &quot;wheat related&quot; health issues, a doctor claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;...Once we remove wheat from their diets, most of their symptoms disappear within three to six months&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't the first time I've heard such claims. In fact, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=is%20wheat%20toxic&quot;&gt;quick search for &quot;Is wheat toxic&quot;&lt;/a&gt; brings up a number of supporting results.  I can't say that I read them all, but from the summaries, it seems that they all have doctors making statements about how wheat is, in effect, poisonous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it all sounds more like correlation than causality (100% of people who drink water die!), I was wondering if there is a grain of truth to the article.  Is there something in wheat (even 100% whole wheat products) that makes it innately &quot;bad&quot; for human consumption?  The second part is whether or not this bad stuff can legitimately be considered a cause for many health issues?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14543" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T09:49:49.997" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T15:31:15.700" Title="Is wheat the cause of numerous, serious health problems?" Tags="|nutrition|environmental-health|toxicology|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16919" CreationDate="2013-07-11T21:26:24.473" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is true but possibly only applicable to a very small range of situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Upshot Knothole&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1953, as part of Operation Upshot Knothole, tests were carried out on miniature buildings to test the effects of extreme heat on the buildings. They did find that wooden buildings surrounded by dry combustible material were more likely to catch fire than clean white-painted buildings lacking any large quantities of loose combustible material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Project 8.11a, Incendiary Effects on Building and Interior &#xA;  Kindling Fuels, was fielded by the Forest Products Laboratory, &#xA;  Forest Service, Department of Agriculture. The project was &#xA;  designed to study the vulnerability of urban structures to &#xA;  primary fires produced by nuclear detonations. The study focused &#xA;  on materials that were either part of a building or were found &#xA;  within a building. Before Shot ENCORE, personnel placed &#xA;  furniture in two block houses and materials outside of three &#xA;  small frame houses specially constructed for the project. For &#xA;  both Shots ENCORE and GRABLE, personnel placed wooden racks with &#xA;  materials such as newspapers, weeds, and rags at various &#xA;  distances from ground zero. They returned after each shot to &#xA;  inspect damage (52)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dtra.mil/documents/ntpr/historical/1953%20-%20DNA%206014F%20-%20Operation%20UPSHOT-KNOTHOLE%20-%20Shot%20BADGER.pdf&quot;&gt;Report DNA 6014F - OPERATION UPSHOT-KNOTHOLE 1953&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Effects of Nuclear Weapons&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was &lt;a href=&quot;http://glasstone.blogspot.co.uk/2006/04/ignition-of-fires-by-thermal-radiation.html&quot;&gt;allegedly&lt;/a&gt; the title of a 1957 book published by the DoD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;only 12 cal/cm2 was needed at the 1953 Encore nuclear test to ignite houses made of rotted wood or surrounded by a trash filled yard and wooden fence (the whitewashed wooden house with a clear yard survived). Two wooden houses were also constructed for that test, exposing 4 x 6 foot windows with a line-of-sight exposure to ground zero. Both were subjected to the same 17 cal/cm2 thermal flash from the Encore nuclear test, and the one full of inflammables ignited with immediate flash-over to the entire room, while the one with modern fire-resistant furnishings survived with just minor smouldering which was extinguished by the recovery party when they entered the house an hour after the test.&#xA;  So yes, if you paint your wooden house white and remove nearby combustible materials it is less likely to catch fire if there is a nuclear strike on a nearby city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;National Paint ... Association&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;National Clean Up-Paint Up-Fix Up Bureau&quot; were an arm of the &quot;National Paint, Varnish, and Lacquer Association&quot;. They used information from the nuclear tests to promote their products. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is notable that they avoided any analysis of how narrow the range of distances from epicentre might be where such differences in household tidiness would affect the outcome. Any closer, and the houses would be knocked over by blast. Much further and the dried grass around the untidy houses might fail to ignite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-07-11T21:40:03.103" LastActivityDate="2013-07-11T21:40:03.103" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16920" CreationDate="2013-07-12T19:36:41.637" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would call this one a falsehood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting with something &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19335713&quot;&gt;peer reviewed and accountable:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Individuals with high intakes of dietary fiber appear to be at&#xA;  significantly lower risk for developing coronary heart disease,&#xA;  stroke, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, and certain gastrointestinal&#xA;  diseases. Increasing fiber intake lowers blood pressure and serum&#xA;  cholesterol levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seeing as that information seems more substantial and credible, lets look at the article you originally saw, and where the claim came from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The expert from the article is Dr. Marcia Alvarez. Searching for her, she appears to be making the wheat circuit only, and I am not finding good peer reviewed articles from her or on &lt;em&gt;wheat toxic&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried the Tripdatabase and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tripdatabase.com/search?categoryid=1&amp;amp;criteria=wheat%20toxic&quot;&gt;found nothing.&lt;/a&gt; The results were no better on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=wheat%20toxic&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, all searches on Google appear to circle back to Alvarez, or the Paleo diet (Meat only).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Realfarmacy, also appears to be a pseudo-medicine site. Most articles are anti-vaccine, anti-wheat, or other anti-established good health practices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly times when wheat or gluten are bad, such as with celiac disease. But I see no reason to give this idea any further attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13521" LastEditorUserId="1765" LastEditDate="2013-07-13T04:42:54.763" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T04:42:54.763" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4923" CreationDate="2013-07-13T03:05:40.337" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to forward this link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/22/world-end/&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It indicates an older source from 1908 which has a different variant of the quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the museum at Constantinople the writer saw an inscription upon an old stone. It was by King Naram Sin of Chaldea, 3800 years B.C., and it said,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have fallen upon evil times&#xA;and the world has waxed very old and wicked.&#xA;Politics are very corrupt.&#xA;Children are no longer respectful to their parents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This old and ever-recurring complaint does not depend upon any actual deterioration of the times, for the times are constantly growing better. It comes usually from older people whose outlook may be biased by subjective conditions due to decaying powers and by the tendency to regard all changes as changes for the worse, the only really good times being the bright days of our own youth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14560" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T03:05:40.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16920" CreationDate="2013-07-13T05:19:01.180" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The principle authority, whose writings are being cited in the OP, seems to be &quot;Dr William Davis&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a paper titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaccnet.org/publications/plexus/cfw/pastissues/2012/OpenDocuments/CFW-57-4-0177.pdf&quot;&gt;Wheat Belly—An Analysis of Selected Statements and Basic Theses from the Book&lt;/a&gt; which appears to analyze all of Dr Davis' points against wheat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PDF document settings prevent me from copy/pasting relevent extracts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The paper analyzes 50 of Dr Davis's points, and is 9 pages of printed text (not easy to summarize)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaccnet.org&quot;&gt;http://www.aaccnet.org&lt;/a&gt; is a pro-wheat advocacy site&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My summary of the paper's summary is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Removing wheat may be part of a low-calorie/low-carbohydrate diet: useful (only) for people who want to use lose weight (and a better weight-loss strategy is eating less of everything, keeping a balanced diet, and exercising)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something vague about celiac disease and genetic engineering &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my attempt to summarize the paper itself. The paper groups Dr Davis' points into the following cateories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Obesity and Weight Loss&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Glycemic Index and Starches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Addiction and Mental Function&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wheat Breeding and Genetics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Celiac Disease&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other Diseases and Allergens&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nutrition Considerations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you know already what the points/claims were in each category, my summary of the paper's analysis/refutation of each category is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obesity and Weight Loss:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;corresponds more with low-carb than specifically low-wheat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glycemic Index and Starches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;50g sugar is like 145g of wheat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a lot of chemistry (more than I understand)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Davis statements about GI are &quot;inaccurate and misleading&quot; in four defined ways&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addiction and Mental Function:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's like other foods, e.g. milk and rice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Foods (except coffee) aren't addictive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There' little data showing an effect on mood&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wheat Breeding and Genetics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Waffle (not a cogent answer, but not cogent points to begin with)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Celiac disease:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A wheat-free diet can cause higher BMI, because &quot;starches in potatoes etc are highly available&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It seems to be true that the incidence of Celiac disease (in the population of US Air Force recruits) has increased e.g. from 0.2% in 1950 to 0.9% recently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other Diseases and Allergens:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes of course &quot;baker's athsma&quot; is well-known&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Removing wheat does alleviate schizophrenia, &quot;in a small subset of schizophrenia sufferers&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Data are scarce w.r.t. wheat and autism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc. (it's late at night so I don't want to finish this now)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-07-13T06:25:43.153" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T06:25:43.153" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16934" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-13T15:16:34.357" Score="17" ViewCount="2741" Body="&lt;p&gt;From an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forwardprogressives.com/texas-officially-loses-it-bans-tampons-and-diabetic-supplies-from-senate-chamber-guns-ok/&quot;&gt;article on Forward Progressives&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Texas Department of Public Safety forced women to hand over their&#xA;  tampons and pads before entering the Senate chamber today. Not only&#xA;  that, but they were also forcing diabetics to hand over sugar packets&#xA;  and other diabetes supplies which are lifelines when dealing with low&#xA;  blood glucose levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also claims that guns were allowed in the Senate Chambers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the kicker — those with concealed handgun licenses who wanted to&#xA;  enter the Senate chamber were not only allowed to keep their handguns,&#xA;  but they were allowed to bypass the long lines and enter through a&#xA;  “special” CHL (concealed handgun license) line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole thing sounds a bit too bizarre, and the source is certainly partisan. So what did actually happen? Did they confiscate diabetes supplies and tampons while allowing anyone with a concealed carry permit to bring a handgun inside?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2013-07-16T03:16:53.860" Title="Did Texas ban tampons and diabetes supplies from the Senate Chamber while allowing guns?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16934" CreationDate="2013-07-13T15:26:47.273" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tampons were confiscated from spectators wishing to enter the galley area. (Alexandra Petri. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2013/07/12/security-at-texas-legislature-confiscated-tampons-let-guns-go/&quot;&gt;Security at Texas legislature confiscated tampons, let guns go&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, FoxNews.com &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/13/texas-dems-vow-to-fight-abortion-bill-passed-by-republican-led-senate/&quot;&gt;Texas Dems vow to fight abortion bill passed by Republican-led Senate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also confiscated were feminine pads, suspected urine, feces, and paint. (&lt;em&gt;FoxNews.com&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, sugar packets, condoms — &quot;anything that could be thrown at legislators&quot;. (The Atlantic Wire. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/07/tampons-banned-texas-senate-gallery-guns-are-ok/67137/&quot;&gt;Tampons Confiscated, Guns Allowed as Texas Senate Debates Abortion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Guns were allowed for those with concealed carry licenses. (&lt;em&gt;Petri&lt;/em&gt;) (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/09/us/guns-get-a-pass-at-texas-capitol.html?pagewanted=all&quot;&gt;An Entry Reserved for Those With Guns&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eventually, State Sen. Kirk Watson had the guards stop the confiscations. (&lt;em&gt;Petri&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find a reliable source regarding the claim about diabetic supplies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-07-13T16:09:29.967" LastActivityDate="2013-07-13T16:09:29.967" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16945" CreationDate="2013-07-14T03:43:09.127" Score="28" ViewCount="4223" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the wake of the recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zimmerman trial&lt;/a&gt;, Shan Diddy (&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/shannycat81&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;@shannycat81&lt;/a&gt;) posted a &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/shannycat81/status/356232607287095296&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tweet&lt;/a&gt; that was retweeted over 7,000 times, including by noted skeptic, Paul Provenza.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, ALSO in Florida, a Black single mother gets 20 years in jail for firing &amp;quot;warning shots&amp;quot; into the AIR. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57433184/fla-mom-gets-20-years-for-firing-warning-shots/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cbsnews&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The linked news article states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Florida woman who fired warning shots against her allegedly abusive husband has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She was recently denied a new trial after appealing to the judge to reconsider her case based on Florida's controversial &amp;quot;Stand Your Ground&amp;quot; law. The law states that the victim of a crime does not have to attempt to run for safety and can immediately retaliate in self-defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the Florida court system jail Marissa Alexander for 20 years merely for firing warning shots in the air, in self-defense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T15:33:07.280" Title="Did a Florida woman get 20 years jail for firing warning shots in the air?" Tags="|united-states|law|guns|discrimination|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16944" CreationDate="2013-07-14T07:33:01.433" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, she was found guilty of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and sentenced to 20 years prison.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes, there was testimonial from a witness that she fired &amp;quot;in the air&amp;quot; (while inside the house).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57433184/fla-mom-gets-20-years-for-firing-warning-shots/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;news article in question says:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(CBS News) JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A Florida woman who fired warning shots against her allegedly abusive husband has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked into &lt;a href=&quot;https://core.duvalclerk.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Duval County public records&lt;/a&gt;. Duval County is the county which &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacksonville,_Florida&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jacksonville is in&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xifNa.png&quot; alt=&quot;From Duval Public Records&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the picture above. Judge name: Daniel James. It's the same as is credited to in the news article. Her name is the same too. The incident happened August 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/291k0.png&quot; alt=&quot;More from Duval Public Records&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Date of her being sentenced to prison is correct too, it's 11th May 2012. And she is sentenced to 20 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Article also state she had earlier run-ins with the law. Which also is true, according to picture below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hAqUP.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All side data is correct. Do notice she asked for a divorce in 2011, and the name of her husband. Now onto the claim of her being sentenced 20 years to prison for firing warning shots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4QXxZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Aggravated+Assault&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aggravated Assault - Deadly weapon.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A person is guilty of aggravated assault if he or she attempts to cause serious bodily injury to another or causes such injury purposely, knowingly, or recklessly under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life; or attempts to cause or purposely or knowingly causes bodily injury to another with a deadly weapon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia on Assault&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At Common Law, an intentional act by one person that creates an apprehension in another of an imminent harmful or offensive contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An assault is carried out by a threat of bodily harm coupled with an apparent, present ability to cause the harm. It is both a crime and a tort and, therefore, may result in either criminal or civil liability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A threat of bodily harm is enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault#Aggravated_assault&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aggravated Assault&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aggravated assault is, in some jurisdictions, a stronger form of&#xA;assault, usually using a deadly weapon. A person has committed an&#xA;aggravated assault when that person attempts to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cause serious bodily injury to another person with a deadly weapon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's enough to be considered to ATTEMPT to cause serious bodily injury, or even just use threats about it. Shooting a warning shot can easily be considered as aggravated assault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her husband had been to court for domestic violence earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WeHd0.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Florida also have the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10-20-Life&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;10-20-Life law&lt;/a&gt; when it comes to guns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The law's name comes from three main mandatory sentences: 1) producing&#xA;a firearm during the commission of certain felonies mandates at least&#xA;a 10-year prison sentence; 2) firing one mandates at least a 20-year&#xA;prison sentence; and 3) shooting someone mandates a minimum sentence&#xA;of 25 years to life regardless of whether a victim is killed or simply&#xA;injured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second part of the question is whether she fired &amp;quot;in the air&amp;quot; in &amp;quot;self-defense&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/90595503/Marissa-Alexander-Alleged-Victim-Disposition&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This document&lt;/a&gt; reasonable purports to the witness deposition statement from her second husband. (&lt;strong&gt;Warning&lt;/strong&gt;: Contains disturbing descriptions of domestic violence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the deposition, the husband several times uses the term &amp;quot;in the air&amp;quot; to describe Alexander firing away from him, while inside their home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And she shot in the air one time. And when she shot in the air, that's when I grabbed the boys and I pushed the out the door.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gun was never actually pointed at me. When she raised the gun down and raised it up, you know, the gun was never pointed at me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this context, &amp;quot;in the air&amp;quot; just seems to mean firing up - not pointed at him or the children - rather than meaning firing into the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also describes (prior to the shooting) physically and verbally threatening her, physically blocking her exit, and her getting past him, and running to the garage (where she got the gun from a car).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;she ran through the laundry room into the garage, but I knew she -- I didn't know she was going to get a gun but I knew that she couldn't leave out the garage because the garage door was locked, because when I came home that morning my garage door wan't working because we was having problems with the garage and it wouldn't go up, you know, it wouldn't go up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In relation to a question hinting at the self-defense angle, he stated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I honestly think she just didn't want me to put my hands on her anymore so she did what she feel she have to do to make sure she wouldn't get hurt, you know. You know, she did what she had to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might reasonably be argued that, in this statement, he is attempting to make Alexander sound innocent and diminish any criminal act she may have committed. He contradicts his previous police report (saying he was originally lying) and may not have been considered a reliable witness. Nonetheless, it seems reasonable for a newspaper reporter to use this witness testimony to describe the crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, any tweet is too short to contain a full context, but it is a reasonable summary of the husband testimonial as to what happened, and is accurate about the outcome - with an understanding that &amp;quot;in the air&amp;quot; is used to mean &amp;quot;into the ceiling&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T13:24:23.297" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16946" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-14T10:09:20.990" Score="10" ViewCount="996" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several Chinese news sources are reporting that at some time in the last 24 hours an air hostess was electrocuted when she was talking on her iPhone 5 at the same time it was charging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hk.news.yahoo.com/video/%E4%B8%80%E9%82%8A%E5%8F%89%E9%9B%BB%E4%B8%80%E9%82%8A%E5%82%BE%E9%9B%BB%E8%A9%B1-%E7%A9%BA%E5%A7%90%E7%96%91%E8%A7%B8%E9%9B%BB%E4%BA%A1-160000673.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hong Kong News Yahoo Video report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.singtao.com/yesterday/loc/0714ao14.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sing Tao Daily - Charging iPhone 5 electrocuted pretty stewardess&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English version now in Reuters story linked in update below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: Reuters is now claiming that Apple has stated that it will investigate the claims made. &lt;a href=&quot;http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE96E08P20130715?irpc=932&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="374" LastEditorUserId="15980" LastEditDate="2013-11-27T17:28:57.303" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T17:28:57.303" Title="Was an air hostess electrocuted by her iPhone 5" Tags="|mortality|apple-inc|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16947" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16948" CreationDate="2013-07-14T15:54:11.330" Score="15" ViewCount="1869" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nate Silver's popular book on the art and science of prediction, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/159420411X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Signal and the Noise&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; has a chapter on financial markets called &lt;em&gt;If you can't beat em...&lt;/em&gt;. The chapter spends some time discussing the statistics of market movements and the implications of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Efficient Market Hypothesis&lt;/a&gt; (EMH) on investment performance and its usefulness in predicting &lt;em&gt;future&lt;/em&gt; investment performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Silver is not pointing out anything new when he argues that the short runs of past success investment managers use to persuade us they have skill are actually useless in predicting their future performance. It is almost a definition of the EMH that analysis of past trends and public information &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; be used to beat the market (more subtle versions admit some possibility to beat the market but not by large enough amounts to profit after transaction costs). See this related question on investment skill: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/11226/do-investment-managers-pick-stock-portfolios-better-on-average-than-monkeys-th&quot;&gt;Do investment managers pick stock portfolios better, on average, than monkeys throwing darts?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, of course, some people have &lt;em&gt;inside&lt;/em&gt; information not known to the public, though most markets prohibit profiting from such insider knowledge. In discussing the possibility of insider trading Silver makes the following assertion (p342 in my hardback edition):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One disturbing example is that members of Congress, who often gain access to inside information about a company as they are lobbied and who also have some ability to influence the fate of companies through legislation, return a profit on their investments that beats market averages  by 5 to 10 percent &lt;em&gt;per year&lt;/em&gt;, a remarkable rate  that would make even Bernie Madoff blush.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is Silver right? Is there strong evidence that members of Congress make excess trading profits that look like exploitation of insider knowledge?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: the key issue is not whether some profits are made some of the time. The statistics of markets can generate large profits over several years for participants that are merely statistical runs of luck and not evidence of either skill or insider knowledge. Evidence for skill or inside knowledge requires strong statistical evidence that profits are higher than the market return over an extended period of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T15:33:14.017" Title="Do US senators and congressmen make abnormally high returns on their stock market investments?" Tags="|united-states|politics|corporate-finance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16947" CreationDate="2013-07-14T18:53:29.073" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pre-2004, there was &quot;no academic literature dealing with Congressional stock returns&quot; (Ziobrowski 2004).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only related literature is Boller (1995), who investigated a random&#xA;  sample of Congressional delegates (both Senators and Members of the U.S. House&#xA;  of Representatives) and found that 25% of them invested in companies that could&#xA;  be directly affected by ongoing legislative activity. However, this result merely suggests a potential conflict of interest. (Ziobrowski 2004)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Ziobrowski 2004):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We document that a portfolio that mimics the purchases of U.S. Senators beats the market by 85 basis points per month, while a portfolio that mimics the sales of Senators lags the market by 12 basis points per month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also from (Ziobrowski 2004):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After acquisition, the cumulative abnormal return rises over 25% within one calendar year after the purchase date. The cumulative abnormal returns for the portfolio of stocks sold by the Senators are near zero for the calendar year after the date of sale. However, these same stocks saw a cumulative abnormal positive return of 25% during the year immediately preceding the event date. These results suggest that Senators knew appropriate times to both buy and sell their common stocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ziobrowski applied this same methodology to members of the US House of Representatives with similar results (Ziobrowski 2011):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A portfolio that mimics the purchases of House Members beats the market by 55 basis points per month (approximately 6% annually).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Bainbridge 2010) cited (Ziobrowski 2004), saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“trading with an informational advantage is common among Senators.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Bainbridge 2010) calls it a &quot;reasonable inference&quot; that some senators &quot;were using material nonpublic information about companies in whose stock they trade&quot;, but doesn't claim that it has been proven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bainbridge, Stephen M., Insider Trading Inside the Beltway (June 30, 2010). UCLA School of Law, Law-Econ Research Paper No. 10-08. Available at SSRN: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ssrn.com/abstract=1633123&quot;&gt;http://ssrn.com/abstract=1633123&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alan J. Ziobrowski, Ping Cheng, James W. Boyd and Brigitte J. Ziobrowski (2004). Abnormal Returns from the Common Stock Investments of the U.S. Senate. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 39, pp 661-676. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022109000003161&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022109000003161&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ziobrowski, A., Boyd, J., Cheng, P., et al. (2011). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yousue.org/app/download/6751833204/56564266-Abnormal-Returns.pdf&quot;&gt;Abnormal Returns From the Common Stock Investments of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives&lt;/a&gt;. Business and Politics, 13(1), pp. -. Retrieved 14 Jul. 2013, from doi:10.2202/1469-3569.1308&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T23:52:22.223" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T23:52:22.223" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-07-14T21:48:17.043" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16946" CreationDate="2013-07-15T10:00:40.557" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Was an air hostess electrocuted by her iPhone 5&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, she was electrocuted by her cheap Chinese charger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Chinese woman was electrocuted whilst holding an iPhone. However  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The phone was an iPhone 4 not an iPhone 5&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She had just stepped out of a bath (so may have been wet and dripping water)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The charger was not an Apple product but a cheap Chinese fake. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gqHRQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moral here is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When wet, don't handle electrical goods that are connected to wall outlets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cheap shoddily-made unbranded or fake-brand wall-warts are notoriously unsafe and can kill.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Allegations in English language Media&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are reports in English language news media of an allegation that a Chinese woman was electrocuted whilst using an iPhone connected to a charger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The allegations were made by the woman's sister using social media website Sina Weibo &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/796073.shtml#.UePHCkFThok&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Woman claims sister died after electric shock from iPhone5 charger&quot; - China Global Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/490127/20130715/china-iphone-5-apple-volt.htm#.UePIcEFThok&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;23-Year-Old Chinese Woman Dies Allegedly After Getting Electrocuted by Own iPhone 5, Apple to Investigate&quot; - International Business Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bangkokpost.com/breakingnews/359928/apple-to-investigate-electrocution-case&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Apple to probe iPhone 5 'electrocution'&quot; - Bangkok Post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/15/china_woman_electrocuted_iphone/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Chinese police probe iPhone user's death by electrocution&quot; - The Register&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/China/Woman-dies-of-electrocution-while-using-iPhone-in-China-Apple-to-launch-probe/Article1-1092712.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Chinese woman dies of electrocution while using iPhone; Apple to launch probe&quot; - Hindustan Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be that these early reports are all based on a single initial Xinhua report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23317338&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Apple investigates electrocution-by-iPhone report&quot; - BBC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1283818/woman-electrocuted-while-answering-iphone-may-have-been-using-fake&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Woman electrocuted while answering iPhone may have been using shoddy charger&quot; - South China Morning Post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Other possible factors&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/07/15/apple-iphone-electrocuted-charging/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a CNN report&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;em&gt;&quot;The family told @Stewardess network that she had left a bath to answer a call.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No Corroboration (yet?)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far there has been no report of a police statement or coroner's verdict confirming the details of the allegation - that I can find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Police in Changji, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where the victim and her family reside, confirmed with the Global Times on Sunday that they have received reports from the victim's family and started an investigation, but declined to disclose further details.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23317338&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;News agency Xinhua has confirmed police are investigating the death of Ma Ailun in the north-western city of Xinjiang. But it said &lt;strong&gt;they had not verified if a mobile phone was the cause&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fake iPhone chargers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been previous reports of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/west-bromwich-man-given-electric-367534&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;electric shocks from fake iPhone chargers&lt;/a&gt; and the safety of fake iPhone chargers is notorious &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/2151&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.righto.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger-and-why-you.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;. The sister claims it was original equipment from an Apple store but it look like she was wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BBC report, referred to above, says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Xinhua said the China Consumers Associations had previously reported a man had been killed in 2010 while making a phone call using a handset connected to the mains with an unauthorised charger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.righto.com/2012/03/inside-cheap-phone-charger-and-why-you.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;teardown of a fake charger&lt;/a&gt; shows why these can be dangerous. &lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;As pointed out by Rob in a comment below&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HcupI.png&quot; alt=&quot;Fake charger PCB&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-07-25T16:00:46.070" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T16:00:46.070" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="16958" CreationDate="2013-07-15T21:49:51.643" Score="8" ViewCount="3168" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Howard Phillips Lovecraft the book is entirely fiction. Nevertheless, there are hoaxes available and many random references over the internet claiming that the book actually existed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;em&gt;official&lt;/em&gt; website dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hplovecraft.com/creation/necron/&quot;&gt;page&lt;/a&gt; that explicitly says that all versions available of the Necronomicon are hoaxes. Amongst all these things that are told about the supposed veracity of the book, there are even alleged connections with the welsh mathematician and astronomer &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Dee&quot;&gt;John Dee&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be a silly one, but that's my skeptic question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the Necronomicon historically real?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://booksforsatanspeople.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/necronomicon1586-dr-john-dee.pdf&quot;&gt;Here's a direct link&lt;/a&gt; to the supposedly &quot;John Dee Version&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14589" LastEditorUserId="14589" LastEditDate="2013-07-15T22:30:46.177" LastActivityDate="2016-01-07T17:12:38.667" Title="Is the &quot;Necronomicon&quot; book historically real?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16957" CreationDate="2013-07-15T22:37:55.927" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Evidence suggests that the Necronomicon was a fictional invention of novelist H.P. Lovecraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the references in the question it appears that Lovecraft himself was quite unambiguous about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Necronomicon&amp;amp;year_start=1500&amp;amp;year_end=2008&amp;amp;corpus=15&amp;amp;smoothing=3&amp;amp;share=&quot;&gt;Google ngrams&lt;/a&gt; there is no mention of &quot;Necronomicon&quot; between 1500 and 1922.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1934/was-h-p-lovecrafts-necronomicon-for-real&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OK, cut to the punchline. Once and for all: the Necronomicon is fiction, pure fiction, invented by H. P. Lovecraft in his stories in the 1920s. There never was such a book, not nowhere, not no-how, before that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is the &quot;Necronomicon of George Hay&quot; (first published in 1978), claiming to be the English translation by John Dee, taken from a copy in the British Museum. Joshi calls it &quot;one of the most exquisite hoaxes of modern times.&quot; Critic Colin Wilson (who wrote the intro to the Hay Necronomicon) admitted in a 1984 fanzine that it was a joke, concocted by him and a few friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="5973" LastEditDate="2013-07-17T16:28:22.610" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T16:28:22.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16957" CreationDate="2013-07-15T22:39:08.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lovecraft made it up as part of his fictional universe. He says the name for it came to him in a dream:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The name Necronomicon...occurred to me in the course of a dream. (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hplovecraft.com/creation/necron/letters.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.hplovecraft.com/creation/necron/letters.aspx&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a book predating lovecraft also went by the name &quot;Necromicon&quot;, that was not the source of Lovecraft's fictional invention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-07-15T22:39:08.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16960" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-16T00:37:56.040" Score="7" ViewCount="500" Body="&lt;p&gt;Example of the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=42;t=000244;p=0&quot;&gt;Users on the Snopes forums&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've been told that if you see cows lying down in the field, that means it's going to rain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pretty much &quot;common knowledge&quot; among the PA Dutch but that doesn't mean it's true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14579" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-07-16T01:18:42.510" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T21:24:52.273" Title="Do cows lie down before rain or thunderstorms?" Tags="|zoology|meteorology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16962" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-16T03:32:47.253" Score="8" ViewCount="2893" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a quote from The New Oxford Annotated Bible, NRSV, with Apocrypha, discussing Genesis 3:1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This characterization of the snake emphasizes his wise craftiness, a&#xA;  characteristic that contrasts with the innocent nakedness of the man&#xA;  and woman. Snakes were a symbol in the ancient world of wisdom,&#xA;  fertility, and immortality. Only later was the snake in this story&#xA;  seen by interpreters as the devil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that snakes were a symbol of wisdom, fertility, and immortality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14593" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:20:45.330" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T11:11:53.433" Title="Were snakes an ancient symbol of wisdom, fertility, and immortality?" Tags="|history|religion|bible|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16971" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-16T22:35:09.087" Score="31" ViewCount="21604" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Iran, there is a wide-spread belief that the USA throws extra wheat it produces into the ocean to keep the prices high. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140404141208/http://www.president.ir/fa/28210&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;official website for the Iranian presidential office&lt;/a&gt; [Persian] quotes Mohammad Reza Rahimi, former First Vice President, in 2008 or 2009 as claiming that a country threw its wheat into the ocean to increase the international price. He doesn't name the country here, but because everyone has heard this story before, the US is the country that comes to mind. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aviny.com/occasion/enghelab_jang/fajr/86/enqelab/chaleshha/02.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; [Persian] is from a less famous person that claims that the &lt;strong&gt;US&lt;/strong&gt; throws wheat into the ocean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does the US government or any US-based company currently destroy agricultural products to keep prices high?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did the US government or any US-based company destroy agricultural products to keep prices high at any point in history?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Has the US government or any US-based company destroyed agricultural products in a large scale for any other reason that could have been falsely attributed to keeping the prices high?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13159" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-09-27T01:12:58.103" LastActivityDate="2019-09-27T01:12:58.103" Title="Does the United States throw wheat in the ocean to keep the prices high?" Tags="|history|united-states|economics|agriculture|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16852" CreationDate="2013-07-17T03:17:33.487" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seem to be two claims here. One is that there are no counterexamples of other cultures with a national tradition of a national divine revelation or miracle. The other is an implicit claim that Judaism itself does have such a tradition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Claim that Judaism has an unbroken national revelation tradition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of whether Judaism itself has such an uninterrupted nation-wide tradition of the entire nation hearing God directly speak the Ten Commandments, as Kelemen claims, it seems only &lt;strong&gt;partially true&lt;/strong&gt; going by the biblical narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;National revelation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it &lt;strong&gt;does&lt;/strong&gt; appear as he says that the biblical narrative includes the Jewish nation experiencing national miracles and at Mt. Sinai hearing God speak, though this latter detail is not obvious from the narrative. Some verses do say that the Jewish people heard God directly, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Face to face, the Lord spoke with you at the mountain out of the midst of the fire. (Deuteronomy 5:4)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For who is there of all flesh, that hath heard the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we have, and lived? (Deuteronomy 5:22)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at the same time, other verses may conflict with this. For example, Exodus 19:21-25 has God allowing only Moses and Aaron up the mountain to see God and receive the commandments, but nobody else could even touch the bottom of the mountain. The people, according to Exodus 19:18-19, simply saw fire, heard loud noise, and possibly heard the voice Moses was conversing with. Deuteronomy 5:5 appears to make Moses the intermediary when God delivers the Ten Commandments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that the view that all Jews directly heard God did become the accepted position among rabbinic leaders, however. For an example, Rashi on Exodus 20:2 says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...Alternatively, [God mentions the Exodus] since they [the Israelites] heard many voices [during the revelation], as it is said: “And all the people saw the voices” (verse 15), [meaning that] voices came from four directions and from the heavens and from the earth...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if it's not clear whether the people were supposed to have heard God speak directly, Deuteronomy 11:2-7 does describe various national miracles, such as the splitting of the Red Sea. Kelemen may have been better served using one of those other miracles as his main example. It is clear that according to the Torah the Jewish people &lt;strong&gt;did&lt;/strong&gt; witness at least some nation-wide miracles, but whether the people were supposed to have all heard God speak directly in the way Kelemen says is not as clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nation-wide unbroken tradition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether the biblical narrative includes an unbroken chain of tradition about Mt. Sinai is a different story. There are various places in the Hebrew Bible that describe periods of time when the Jewish people apparently rejected and/or forgot their religion for Canaanite religion en masse, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers; and there arose another generation after them, that knew not the LORD, nor yet the work which He had wrought for Israel. And the children of Israel did that which was evil in the sight of the LORD, and served the Baalim. And they forsook the LORD, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, of the gods of the peoples that were round about them, and worshipped them; and they provoked the LORD. And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and the Ashtaroth. (Judges 2:10-13)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, a reading of II Kings chapters 21-23 describes a 75 year period where Canaanite religion was national and Torah was apparently unknown before being discovered under King Josiah who implemented major religious reforms and restored monotheism (known to scholars as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.britannica.com/event/Deuteronomic-Reform&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deuteronomic Reform&lt;/a&gt;). Medieval Jewish commentator Rabbi David Kimhi (RaDaK) describes the state to which the Jewish people were unfamiliar with the Torah and its contents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manasseh had systematically destroyed all the Torah Scrolls and alienated the nation so thoroughly from the Torah that the people were completely unfamiliar with its contents. Sixty-seven [sic] years had elapsed since the beginning of Manasseh's reign, so that this discovery was a surprising revelation to everyone. (The Stone Edition Tanach, The Artscroll Series, citing RaDaK on II Kings 22:8)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the biblical narrative does include later reintroduction of the Torah to the Jewish nation, and there appears no reason to say that the Mt. Sinai story was excluded from what the people had forgotten. It may be arguable whether an elite few always held on to tradition, but this is not Kelemen's claim. Going by the Hebrew Bible, Judaism does &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; seem to claim an unbroken nation-wide tradition of the Mt. Sinai events as Kelemen says and his implicit claim in this regard is &lt;strong&gt;false&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: This is not to say anything of the actual authorship of the Torah and origin of the the Mt. Sinai story. Whether a king made it up as part of a religious reform and told people it had been forgotten, whether it was the product of natural mythological development and embellishment over centuries, whether the Biblical narrative is completely accurate, or whether it is from some combination of the above, it does not change the reality of the resulting biblical narrative and Jewish beliefs. Whatever the history regarding the Egyptian exodus and Mt. Sinai, the biblical narrative does involve the Jewish people forgetting and being re-introduced to monotheism and the Torah.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Claim of no counterexamples&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim that there is no other example of a culture with mythology of a national supernatural experience is quite an ambitious one as it would require an analysis of a huge range of beliefs of present and past cultures to verify that there were no other examples. However, there indeed &lt;strong&gt;are&lt;/strong&gt; examples of cultures with myths comparable to the Mt. Sinai tradition, in the sense that these people believed all of their ancestors experienced supernatural events or witnessed their deity speaking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Aztec Huitzilopochtli Myth and revelation of Huitzilopochtli:&lt;/strong&gt; The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aztecs&lt;/a&gt;, who settled in Lake Texcoco, believed themselves to be descended from tribes of immortal people from Aztlan until they had to leave as instructed by their god &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huitzilopochtli&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huitzilopochtli&lt;/a&gt; who took the form of a white eagle. The journey took 200 years and the ultimate destination of the lake on which they built an artificial island was prophesied in advance and in detail. Whether the Aztecs believed their god to have spoken to all the people or just a prophet is not clear from what I've seen. However, the story does involve  all Aztec ancestors experiencing supernatural events, that is, the supernaturally long lifespans. Additionally, this story is an important aspect of the origin of Aztec religion. &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=sOjxMSXbY8QC&amp;amp;pg=PT29&amp;amp;lpg=PT29&amp;amp;dq=white%20eagle%20aztecs%20Huitzilopochtli&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=q2H_xob3Gn&amp;amp;sig=3ueq5daI9XRnokb-TgaZDYnw-v0&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=6AfmUeeZBuTbigLb24DACA&amp;amp;ved=0CFwQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=white%20eagle%20aztecs%20Huitzilopochtli&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fifth Creation of the World by Marumda and the Pomo tribes:&lt;/strong&gt; The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomo_people&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pomo people&lt;/a&gt;, a group of tribes in California that exists today and had settlements dating back several thousand years, have an oral tradition that their god, Marumda, created the world five times (the first four destroyed due to sin), and that they were created the fifth time. They believe all of the Pomo villages were planted by Marumda and that he revealed themselves to their ancestors, sometimes accompanied with miracles, and taught them how to survive and behave and taught them dances that are still performed today. This story does involve national miracles as their god Marumda created their villages, it does have Marumda performing public miracles, it does have their god speaking to the people, and it does tell the story of the origin of their religious beliefs. What the size of the initial population that Marumda created and was revealed to was, and whether Marumda spoke to the entire nation at once or only to individual groups, is less clear. &lt;a href=&quot;http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=kt1r29q2ct&amp;amp;chunk.id=ss2.53&amp;amp;toc.id=ch16&amp;amp;brand=ucpresswhite&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Revelation of Gitche Manitou at Pipestone, Minnesota:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sioux&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sioux&lt;/a&gt; Indians have an oral tradition of a majestic, direct, divine revelation of their god and creator &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitche_manito&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gitche Manitou&lt;/a&gt; or the Great Spirit at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/pipestone/pnm.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pipestone National Monument&lt;/a&gt; to all the Native American tribes or to all the tribes in the region. In one account, in the form of a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow based on legends, Gitche Manitou breathed into a peace pipe he formed and made a large smoke signal that beckoned all the tribes to gather. They had spite between them, but Gitche Manitou chided them to do away with their weapons, behave properly, and make peace. After this, before all the nations, Gitche Manitou ascended to heaven amidst the smoke. In another, less embellished account recorded by George Catlin from the Dakota Sioux, a detail is included that the Great Spirit was in the form of a large bird, smoke signals are not specified (instead smoke is described as rolling over the multitude), and the description of his ascent to heaven is not included. In both accounts though, the fundamental points of the revelation are consistent. This story does have a lot of similarities with the Mt. Sinai story, though details in the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may imply that it was only all the men or warriors as opposed to &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; member of the tribes. (Although, certain details in the Biblical accounts of Mt. Sinai also are directed only to men.) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.classicreader.com/book/147/2/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(source 1)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nps.gov/articles/blood-and-stone-the-many-stories-of-the-pipestone-quarries.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(source 2)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Lakota legend of White Buffalo Calf Woman:&lt;/strong&gt; The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakota_people&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lakota People&lt;/a&gt; are a subset of the Sioux. In 1805 their population was estimated to be about 8,500 (and today there are tens of thousands of their people who speak the language). The people have an oral tradition of an event that took place one summer between year 12 and 10 BCE (&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/ezNKgRbnVPY&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;according to this retelling&lt;/a&gt;) when their god &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wakan_Tanka&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wakan Tanka&lt;/a&gt; (same as Gitchie Manitou) revealed itself to all seven tribes of the Lakota as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Buffalo_Calf_Woman&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;White Buffalo Calf Woman&lt;/a&gt;. The story goes that there was famine, so all seven Lakota tribes gathered together, and they sent out two hunters to look for food. The first part of the miracles was only witnessed by one survivor, but for context, they saw a beautiful woman, with clothes and an appearance than no ordinary human could fashion, floating towards them. One of the hunters desired the woman and was turned into a pile of bones amidst a cloud. The other hunter became afraid and prepared to shoot the woman, but she couldn't be harmed. She informed the hunter to return and have the Lakota prepare for her arrival. When she arrived, she taught the Lakota how to behave and perform all the sacred rituals. She gave them seven religious practices, including the sun dance and fasting. She talked to all the people and gave them advice, and gave them a sacred living pipe that is &lt;strong&gt;still guarded to this day&lt;/strong&gt;. As she left, the people saw her turn into a black buffalo, then brown, then red, and then white, which is sacred. As she disappeared, large herds of buffalo appeared where she was and allowed themselves to be killed for the Lakota to live. This story also meets a lot of Kelemen's criterion, it does tell the story of the origin of their religious beliefs, and the tradition is very strong. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kstrom.net/isk/arvol/lamedeer.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Samaritans:&lt;/strong&gt; The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Samaritans&lt;/a&gt; are a small ethnic religious group living in the Levant. They practice &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritanism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Samaritanism&lt;/a&gt;, a religion related to Judaism which is based off of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritan_Pentateuch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Samaritan Pentateuch&lt;/a&gt; as the sole holy book, which is an alternate version of the Five Books of Moses that includes some textual differences from the Torah, including the unique command within the 10 commandments to build an alter on Mount Gerizim. While Jewish sources consider the Samaritans to be foreign settlers from the Assyrians, Samaritans believe that they, and not the Jews, have the authentic Pentateuch and the authentic lineage tracing to Mount Sinai. Of course, the national miracle and revelation traditions Samaritans hold traces back to the same traditions held by Judaism. However, they nevertheless constitute a different people with a different religion having a tradition of a national revelation starting their religion. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may be additional counterexamples too, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Epic of Gilgamesh (and related flood myths)&lt;/a&gt; or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greeka.com/greece-myths/cadmus.htm5:2219:18-192:10-13&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Founding of Thebes by Cadmus&lt;/a&gt; if you say that Rabbi Kelemen's claim does not necessitate that a sizable group experienced the miracles (just that all of the people's ancestors experienced it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether these counterexamples do disprove his claim may depend on how narrow Rabbi Kelemen's claim is understood to be. If he argues that other peoples should have all their ancestors experience miracles or interaction with their god, then it is easy to see these as counterexamples, and his claim would be &lt;strong&gt;false&lt;/strong&gt;. If, however, he requires that the peoples must have experienced something that matches his understanding of a national prophesy of a large population as the start of a religion with a continuous chain of tradition to the verifiably known believers, then some counterexamples become more arguable. But by the same token the claim would be far less meaningful, and as discussed above it would even be doubtful that the stories in the Hebrew Bible actually meet such a threshold. With the less narrow understanding of Kelemen's claim, though, the Mt. Sinai story would &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; be unique in the way he says and the claim would &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; be true on those grounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14458" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-01-22T21:56:05.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16974" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-17T05:51:38.260" Score="1" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Japan, a traditional summer illness is &lt;em&gt;natsubate&lt;/em&gt;, summer fatigue, and the traditional way of relieving symptoms is &lt;a href=&quot;http://japanese.about.com/od/namikosbloglessons/a/lesson29.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;to eat eel&lt;/a&gt; for &quot;stamina&quot;. Is there any science behind this tradition?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T05:47:44.537" Title="Does eel help relieve symptoms of summer fatigue?" Tags="|nutrition|japan|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16957" CreationDate="2013-07-17T10:35:07.023" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Necronomicon&lt;/em&gt; of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred is a fictional grimoire.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Afterall, the author of the most enduring and &lt;strong&gt;fictional grimoire&lt;/strong&gt;, the &lt;em&gt;Necronomicon&lt;/em&gt;, likewise had little initial knowledge of the subject.&quot; (p. 263)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term first appeared in the story &quot;The Hound&quot;, written in 1922 and published in 1924.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The Neronomicon may have been inspired by another fictional grimoire called the Sigsand manuscript, which was created by W.H. Hodgson sometimes between 1910 and 1914. H.P. Lovecraft was a reputed fan of Hodgson's work. (p. 264-265)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Citation:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Owen, Davies (2009). &lt;em&gt;Grimoires: A History of Magic Books&lt;/em&gt;.  New York: Oxford University Press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14613" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T10:35:07.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16852" CreationDate="2013-07-17T10:41:02.777" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, there's the death and ascension of Romulus, founder of Rome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, &quot;Romulus mysteriously disappeared in a storm or whirlwind, during or shortly after offering &lt;strong&gt;public&lt;/strong&gt; sacrifice at or near the Quirinal Hill.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Livy, &quot;Then a few voices began to proclaim Romulus's divinity; the cry was taken up, and at last every man present hailed him as a god and son of a god, and prayed to him to be forever gracious and to protect his children.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_and_Remus#Death_of_Romulus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Link: section &quot;Death of Romulus&quot; in the Wikipedia article on Romulus and Remus&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I note two things:&#xA;1) the people of Israel &lt;strong&gt;don't&lt;/strong&gt; appear to have directly witnessed any miracle. They witnessed Moses going up the hill and coming down again with some stone tablets.&#xA;2) the Romans appear to have been more skeptical regarding miracles than the Israelites :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14614" LastEditorUserId="14458" LastEditDate="2013-07-17T19:32:18.220" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T19:32:18.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-17T11:14:05.970" Score="14" ViewCount="653" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.upworthy.com/take-two-normal-people-add-money-to-just-one-of-them-and-watch-what-happens-next?g=3&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; video on upworthy.com which is based on the study &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/02/21/1118373109&quot;&gt;Higher social class predicts unethical behavior&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; from Berkeley university. It basically argues, that being rich makes people behave more unethically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study is a review article of seven separate studies which concluded the following points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals (2 studies).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take valued goods from others, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lie in a negotiation,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;upper-class individuals were more likely to endorse unethical behavior at work than were lower-class individuals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What is &lt;em&gt;unethical behavior&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study does not give a definition of what it deems to be unethical but it certainly understands the above given points as being unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Correlation versus Causation&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion sounds very harsh to me. I always see the problem, that there might have been some confusion with what is the actual cause and what is just correlation. My first thought was, that maybe greedy/unethical people are just more effective in becoming rich.&#xA;But this issue seems to have been addressed. In one part of the study participants played a skewed game of Monopoly where one person had significant advantage compared to the other. One player was &quot;rich&quot; the other &quot;poor&quot;. The rich player started off with more funds and was allowed to play with two dice, the poor person only got to role one die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;rich&quot; player started to behave like someone who is of more value. He started to talk in a harsher voice, being more commanding, using less polite language, grabbing more of the provided snacks. The researchers defined this behavior to be more unethical and hence concluded not only correlation but also causation between being rich and unethical behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is the conclusion valid?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless I am Skeptical that there is such a clear cut conclusion that being rich means being more unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the conclusion of the study valid, have there been more studies confirming or contradicting the results, are there other follow-ups?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7752" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:49:16.497" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T06:46:52.163" Title="Does being rich increase unethical behavior?" Tags="|ethics|personal-finance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16982" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-17T13:26:43.500" Score="7" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/07/what-the-naacp-can-learn-from-george-zimmerman/#ixzz2ZJ80qIwv&quot;&gt;What the NAACP can learn from George Zimmerman&lt;/a&gt;, George Zimmerman's brother Robert Zimmerman Jr. claimed that the organization was slow to act on the beating of homeless African-American Sherman Ware by Justin Collison, the son of a policeman:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My brother George Zimmerman, who lived in Sanford at the time, fought&#xA;  for justice on Ware’s behalf. George tried to enlist the help of the&#xA;  local chapter of the NAACP. He called their office, but they told him&#xA;  that they didn’t have the resources to help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Collison turned himself in on January 3, 2011. That’s when the NAACP&#xA;  suddenly entered the fray. The same organization that days before&#xA;  hadn’t had the resources to help George announced plans to meet with&#xA;  the new police chief and ask why Collison hadn’t been charged with a&#xA;  hate crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Robert's description of what the NAACP did and didn't do correct, and the full story, or are there inaccuracies or omissions from this description?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across a &lt;a href=&quot;http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/08/daily-caller-gives-zimmermans-brother-who-sent/193972&quot;&gt;Media Matters for America&lt;/a&gt; blog post mentioning this piece, but it doesn't try to directly rebut the claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T13:26:43.500" Title="Was the NAACP slow in acting for the rights of Sherman Ware?" Tags="|united-states|criminology|discrimination|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16960" CreationDate="2013-07-17T21:17:56.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is doubtful that there is much correlation. Cows lie down too often for other reasons to be a useful predictor of rain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cows lie down a lot&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cows are ruminants and lie down to chew their cud. They also lie down for other reasons including sleep. Cows lie down perhaps up to sixteen times a day. At any given time there is a 50% chance a cow will be lying down but they tend to stand up more in hot weather and perhaps tend to lie down more in cold weather. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Confirmation Bias&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We humans tend to find significance in coincidences and, if primed by knowledge of this adage, might have stronger recall of occasions when cows were seen lying down prior to rain than for occasions when cows were seen lying down prior to no rain or when cows were seen standing up prior to rain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;We like our old adages&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some frivolous media have speculated that air temperatures often drop before rain and that this therefore supports the old adage. It is notable that the study they cite says no such thing and is more focused on heat-stress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;References&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/asoa-hcs031213.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Heat-stressed cows spend more time standing&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dairybusiness.com/seo/printable.php?table=slider_articles&amp;amp;id=80&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Unproductive behavior: Heat-stressed cows&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/22445-do-cows-really-lie-down-when-it-s-about-to-rain.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Do Cows Really Lie Down When It's About to Rain?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://animals.pawnation.com/cows-lie-down-4355.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Do cows lie down&quot; - Pawnation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skepdic.com/confirmbias.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Confirmation Bias&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2293053/Cows-really-predict-rain-Scientists-prove-likely-lie-weather-cold.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Cows really can predict the rain. Scientists prove they are more likely to lie down when the weather is cold&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-07-17T21:24:52.273" LastActivityDate="2013-07-17T21:24:52.273" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16971" CreationDate="2013-07-17T21:18:16.560" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is some evidence regarding the practice of destroying agricultural commodities in order to control the price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the hearings before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Labor during the 91st session of congress, on the topic of senate bills 8 and 1808, occurring on April 16, 17, May 6, 16, and June 18, 1969, Harry Graham, from the National Farmers Organization &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=A4ESAAAAIAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA238&amp;amp;lpg=PA238&amp;amp;dq=%22Two+things+were+done+with+the+milk.%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;addressed the subcommittee&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Graham: Two things were done with the milk. One is: it was diverted. Where it was fluid milk, it was diverted into manufacturing plants; and the other was, it was dumped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senator Bellmon: Dumped; you mean down the sewer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Graham: Yes. Well, most farmers don't have sewers. It was dumped somewhere on the farm, generally, although there was some dumping in the cities, where there were sewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senator Bellmon: Do you feel that Congress should write legislation that encourages, or allows, farmers to band together and destroy food in that way in order to get a better price?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Graham: I don't see why not. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-09-26T21:59:49.167" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="16989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16957" CreationDate="2013-07-17T21:21:30.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Current evidence leads us to conclude that: no, the Necronomicon is not in fact a real book. First things first, it was allegedly written by the &quot;mad Arab&quot; Abdul Alhazred, which just so happens to be  a &lt;em&gt;nom de plume&lt;/em&gt; or pseudonym adopted by H.P. Lovecraft in his early years of writing, even before he started publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A perhaps famous version (which is now certainly seen as a hoax) is the one written and published by L. Sprague de Camp in 1973 by the Owlswick press, which due to its limited number of editions (378), came to be known as a rare book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope I was able to help,&#xA;&lt;em&gt;- Wulf&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The H.P. Podcraft Literary Podcast, episode 1: &lt;a href=&quot;http://hppodcraft.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://hppodcraft.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's article on the Necronomicon: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necronomicon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necronomicon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Owlswick Press bibliography: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?974&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?974&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14623" LastEditorUserId="14623" LastEditDate="2013-07-18T09:33:52.017" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T09:33:52.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16996" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-18T06:38:08.117" Score="5" ViewCount="856" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article on &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wickard v. Filburn&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Filburn was ordered to destroy his crops...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Numerous other sources also claim this, including two that I would normally consider reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/can-government-make-you-buy-health-insurance/article4252484/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Globe and Mail&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The U.S. Department of Agriculture ordered the unauthorized wheat destroyed and fined him 49 cents a bushel for his illegal production: $117.11.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/health/policy/23legal.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The New York Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That is why Roscoe Filburn, a small farmer in Ohio, had to destroy wheat that exceeded production quotas in a 1942 case, even though he was growing the wheat for his own use and had no intention to sell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't see anything in the record establishing that Filburn was ordered to destroy his crops, but rather, from my reading of the case, he was given the choice of paying a fine, delivery up to the Secretary, or storage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim was added to the Wikipedia article on October 22, 2009, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wickard_v._Filburn&amp;amp;diff=321358065&amp;amp;oldid=320721478&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this edit&lt;/a&gt;. I can't find any source that makes this same claim before October 22, 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where I've looked for evidence that he was ordered to destroy his crops and found none:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Wickard v. Filburn&lt;/em&gt;, 317 U.S. 111 (1942)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Filburn v. Helke&lt;/em&gt;, 43 F. Supp. 1017 (S.D. Ohio 1942)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;27 Minn. L. Rev. 575 (1942-1943)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New York Times &quot;The Power to Regulate&quot; [New York, N.Y] 13 Nov 1942: 22.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first volume of &lt;em&gt;&quot;Agriculture Decisions: Decisions of the Secretary of Agriculture Under the Regulatory Laws of the United States Department of Agriculture&quot;&lt;/em&gt; was in 1942, so it doesn't reach far enough back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Was Roscoe Filburn ordered to destroy his crops?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence I have doesn't satisfy my needs because the New York Times and the Globe and Mail may have independently verified the claim or they may be repeating an unsourced wikipedia edit, and I haven't been able to examine the full record to confirm whether there was or was not an order to destroy the crops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-20T17:02:17.877" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T23:05:31.360" Title="Was Roscoe Filburn ordered to destroy his crops?" Tags="|history|united-states|law|agriculture|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="16998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2168" CreationDate="2013-07-18T08:48:43.723" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: (In response to comment)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attention span is a popular science construct. Related cognitive constructs include time-on-task and working memory capacity. The latter topic is often studied in a field called cognitive neuroscience. However, the former construct, time-on-task, is a difficult measure to study attention with because one may have to take into account motivation. Time-on-task or TOT is often used as a measure for motivation. In contrast, working memory requires the online updating of information and is associated with an individual capacity limit. Thus there is talk of &quot;working memory span&quot;, the number of items a person is able to hold and maintain in memory for briefer intervals of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In popular science working memory has become associated with multitasking, and there are quite a few studies that explore the relevance of working memory for &quot;dual-tasks&quot; or more complex tasks, which require shifts of attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Memory has been one of the most studied aspects to understand our brains flexibility and malleability to change, neuroplasticity. Recent studies have demonstrated that it is possible to increase working memory capacity in certain domains, for example, in visuospatial tasks. This cognitive change has been found to change structures in the brain. Hence, plasticity is relevant for successful adaption to the environment - where the information and technologies are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A cognitively demanding environment requires that humans adapt. To a certain degree, we successfully adapt, but the scientific literature has proposed laws suggesting that there can be too much of adaptation or sometimes not enough (see Figure 2 in Pascual-Leone et al., 2011), with consequences for whether we cope adequately with an increase of information. The goal is to reach optimal plasticity and thus optimal information coping. When it comes to selecting an appropriate information load, moderation appears to be key and gradual increases facilitate adaptive mechanisms (see Olesen, Westerberg, &amp;amp; Klingberg, 2004).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, an increased use of technology can have both positive or negative effects on our ability to sustain attention as indicated by a stable maintenance required for working memory capacity. The way we approach technology decides the outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Olesen P., Westerberg H., &amp;amp; Klingberg, T. (2004). Increased prefrontal and parietal brain activity after training of working memory. &lt;em&gt;Nature Neuroscience,&lt;/em&gt; 7(1), 75-79. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v7/n1/full/nn1165.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v7/n1/full/nn1165.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pascual-Leone, A. et al. (2011). Characterizing brain cortical plasticity and network dynamics across the age-span in health and disease with TMS-EEG and TMS-fMRI, &lt;em&gt;Brain Topography,&lt;/em&gt; 24(3-4), 302-315. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3374641/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3374641/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6933" LastEditorUserId="6933" LastEditDate="2013-07-18T18:43:00.630" LastActivityDate="2013-07-18T18:43:00.630" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17013" CreationDate="2013-07-19T03:54:37.850" Score="31" ViewCount="193627" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's commonly believed that the idiom &quot;rubbing salt into the wound&quot; is derived from a literal action of making things worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wiktionary &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rub_salt_in_the_wound&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; the literal act was done for torture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Derived from the stingingly painful sensation of table salt&#xA;  deliberately being rubbed into an open, bleeding wound, as for&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;torture, interrogation&lt;/strong&gt;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A high reputation user at English stack exchange &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/117493/is-there-english-counterparts-to-japanese-old-saying-present-salt-to-your-en?rq=1#comment240084_117493&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's also the more &lt;strong&gt;mean spirited&lt;/strong&gt; rub salt into the wounds, where&#xA;  the one who's currently winning (or has won) does take advantage of&#xA;  his enemy's weakness to inflict an even more crushing victory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However a blog post titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://theironyofphrases.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/the-irony-of-rubbing-salt-into-wounds/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Irony of Rubbing Salt Into Wounds&lt;/a&gt; disputes this. It claims that salt in wounds is painful, but that it makes the wound better from a health perspective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That is because when you have an open wound on your skin, it already&#xA;  hurts. When you add salt, it would sting so bad and hurt even more.&#xA;  ... Then I remembered the only the reason why I added salt to my wound&#xA;  was that it would actually help the skin heal faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In eras before modern hygiene, did putting salt into a wound make the wound worse overall, either by making the wound more severe, or by having no health effects, but increasing the pain of a wound?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:10.210" LastActivityDate="2015-11-27T11:37:16.387" Title="Does putting salt into a wound make the wound worse?" Tags="|medical-science|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17008" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17009" CreationDate="2013-07-19T12:47:13.800" Score="9" ViewCount="839" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had always thought that the fingers were getting wrinkled when I left them within the water for a long time due to swelling of the outer layers of skin but I just read in several places that it is a nervous system response. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Digit puckering was long thought to be caused by a swelling of the outer layers of skin on the fingertips and toes, but recent research showed it was actually a nervous system response to immersion in water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/science-gets-a-grip-on-finger-wrinkles-20130110-2chgv.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sydney Morning Herald, Jan 10 2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14597" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:54:28.930" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:54:28.930" Title="Do fingers in water get wrinkled due to a nervous system response?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17008" CreationDate="2013-07-19T13:21:46.010" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;While we patiently wait for the day when journalists will learn that they should add references to original sources, here is the work they are speaking about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23302867&quot;&gt;Water-induced finger wrinkles improve handling of wet objects.&lt;/a&gt; - Kareklas et al., &lt;em&gt;Biol Lett.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;2013&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also read the press report from Newcastle University:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ion/news/news/item/get-a-grip-why-we-get-wrinkly-fingers-and-toes1&quot;&gt;Get a grip - why we get wrinkly fingers and toes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An older study study from another group, analysed the morphology of the wrinkles, reporting that it &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;has the signature properties of drainage networks, enabling efficient removal of water from the gripped surface. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21701145&quot;&gt;Are wet-induced wrinkled fingers primate rain treads?&lt;/a&gt; - Changizi et al. , &lt;em&gt;Brain Behav Evol.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;2011&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, getting to your question, yes it appears to be an autonomic nervous system response, rather than a result of osmosis.&#xA;The second paper I linked has a few references regarding the fact that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it has long been known that cuts to sympathetic innervation to a finger abolish the wrinkling response to wetness,  which has led to suggestions to use the wrinkling response as a simple test for sympathetic integrity in unresponsive patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, they cite this 1936 paper, which unfortunately I cannot seem to find&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Circulatory changes in fingers in some diseases of the nervous system, with special reference to digital atrophy of peripheral nerve lesions. - Lewis and Pickering - &lt;em&gt;Clin Sci&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;1936&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more recent work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1605221/&quot;&gt;Finger wrinkling: a test of autonomic function. Bull and Henry&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;em&gt;Br Med J&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;1977&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10696945&quot;&gt;Skin wrinkling for the assessment of sympathetic function in the limbs.&lt;/a&gt; - Vasudevan et al. - &lt;em&gt;Aust NZ J Surg&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;2000&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2464382/&quot;&gt;Case of the month: the skin wrinkle test – a simple nerve injury test for paediatric and uncooperative patients.&lt;/a&gt; - Tindall et al. - &lt;em&gt;Emerg Med J&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;2006&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2013-07-19T14:38:58.087" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T14:38:58.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="102" CreationDate="2013-07-19T15:17:55.750" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;AIDS and / or HIV denialaists continuously spew out the same re-iteretd nonsense time and time again, even when presented with strong evidence to the contrary. Some examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retroviruses do not kill the cells they infect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answwer: a+Agreed, many retroviruses do not kill the cells they infect but some do, including HIV as well as FIV. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are just two of myriads of scientific studies showing that HIV killd T-lymphocytes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laurent-Crawford AG, Krust B, Muller S, Rivière Y, Rey-Cuillé MA, Béchet JM, Montagnier L, Hovanessian AG.&#xA;Virology. 1991 Dec;185(The cytopathic effect of HIV is associated with apoptosis.2):829-39.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apoptosis as a mechanism of cell death in cultured T lymphoblasts acutely infected with HIV-1.&#xA;Terai C, Kornbluth RS, Pauza CD, Richman DD, Carson DA.&#xA;J Clin Invest. 1991 May;87(5):1710-5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Histol Histopathol. 1986 Jan;1(1):43-7.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Denilaist often claim there are no Electron Micrographs of HIV. Again, nonsense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Morphologic and immunoelectronmicroscopic identification of human T-cell lymphotropic virus type III (HTLV-III).&#xA;Timár J, Nagy K, Lapis K.&#xA;1st Inst. of Pathol. and Exptl. Canc. Res., Semmelweis Med. Univ., Budapest, Hungary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Virus isolation from and identification of HTLV-III/LAV-producing cells in brain tissue from a patient with AIDS.&#xA;Gartner S, Markovits P, Markovitz DM, Betts RF, Popovic M.&#xA;JAMA. 1986 Nov 7;256(17):2365-71.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The morphology of human immunodeficiency virus particles by negative staining electron microscopy.&#xA;Stannard LM, van der Riet FD, Moodie JW.&#xA;J Gen Virol. 1987 Mar;68 ( Pt 3):919-23.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their other arguments are just as spurious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14643" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T15:17:55.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17013" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17005" CreationDate="2013-07-19T15:49:00.077" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a spectrum of saline solutions that can be applied to a wound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At one end, water is 0% saline. &quot;Water is a hypotonic solution, which means it can cause cellular oedema and rupture under the influence of osmotic pressure (Cunliffe and Fawcett, 2002).&quot; (Gannon)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;0.9% saline is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotonicity#Isotonicity&quot;&gt;isotonic&lt;/a&gt;. &quot;It neither donates fluid nor draws it away from the wound bed&quot;. (Gannon)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seawater is approximately 3.5% saline. (Shoseyov 1998)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Bogart, 1993)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hypertonic gels containing greater than about 0.9% salt up to about 15% of salt are non-cytotoxic and generally non-bactericidal. &lt;strong&gt;At salt concentrations of 16% or more, hypertonic gels of the invention can kill cells and bacteria in a wound and are preferred for that purpose.&lt;/strong&gt; For extremely heavy-draining infected wounds, hypertonic gels of the invention containing 40% or more of salt may be preferred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bogart, Larry, et al. &quot;Wound gel compositions containing sodium chloride and method of using them.&quot; U.S. Patent No. 5,271,943. 21 Dec. 1993.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nursingtimes.net/nursing-practice/clinical-zones/wound-care/fact-file-wound-cleansing-sterile-water-or-saline/201829.article&quot;&gt;Gannon, Robert. &quot;Fact file: Wound cleansing: sterile water or saline?.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shoseyov, David, et al. &quot;Treatment with hypertonic saline versus normal saline nasal wash of pediatric chronic sinusitis.&quot; Journal of allergy and clinical immunology 101.5 (1998): 602-605.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-07-19T15:49:00.077" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17014" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17017" CreationDate="2013-07-19T19:47:14.690" Score="8" ViewCount="14974" Body="&lt;p&gt;This Youtube video depicts a Sami woman castrating a reindeer by biting off the testicles (although the &lt;em&gt;moment suprême&lt;/em&gt; is not shown explicitly): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fftnExG-WFg&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Laplander Reindeer Castration&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;warning&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;video depicts animal suffering, and could be not safe for work unless you work in an abattoir&lt;/em&gt;).  The video description states it is a &lt;em&gt;Traditional Laplander reindeer castration from a film on the Laplander reindeer herding ritual.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a textual description in the book &lt;em&gt;People of eight seasons: The story of the Lapps, by Ernst Mankel, Nordbok AB, 1975&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the stranger who has accompanied the sita through thick and thin thinks that what is happening now looks more barbaric than any ancient historian could depict it — the manner, that is, not the actual principle, which in ancient times was practiced on many a male child.  The great, tough animal lies helpless on its back or side with its head pressed against the earth and held fast by the herdsman's foot on the front branches of the antlers and a firm grip on the long main branches — levers in the herdsman's hands to counteract the strength in the animal's neck.  &lt;strong&gt;While one man thus holds the bull fast, another&lt;/strong&gt; — the operator — &lt;strong&gt;gets down on his knees behind it and&lt;/strong&gt; puts his hands and head between its back legs, grasps the testicles firmly between his fingers and — &lt;strong&gt;bites, first one, and then the other&lt;/strong&gt;.  They snip off like a large gooseberry or a plum, one snip each and then the pouch is massaged a little.  And a härk, an ox, is released and trots off to the other animals.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The skeptic that I am, I searched on.  I couldn't find anything related to reindeer, but I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=375251&quot;&gt;this Google Answers thread about sheep&lt;/a&gt;, which states (with sources) that shepherds do hold the testicles with their teeth, but then use a knife to cut off the testicles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They would hold the&#xA;  testicles tight underneath, slit the skin holding the testicle in, put&#xA;  their mouth down and get hold of the testicle with their teeth, lift&#xA;  it up a bit, slice it off with the knife in their other hand and then&#xA;  spit the testicle on the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I doubt it was done differently, as in literally biting them off&#xA;  without the aid of a knife, since a human's teeth are not nearly&#xA;  adequate enough to make that kind quick amputation necessary to keep&#xA;  from crippling an animal or preventing it from bleeding to death&#xA;  before the task was completed (not to mention the enormous infection&#xA;  and mortality rate this would have created).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In summary, it does appear that some farm animal castrations were&#xA;  &quot;teeth assisted&quot;, if that makes sense, but quite unlikely, for obvious&#xA;  reasons, dependent upon human teeth alone&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the Google Answers link is inconclusive, as are other sources I have been able to find online.  Sheep are not reindeer, although I would be surprised if a reindeer's testicles are easier to bite off than a sheep ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it possible for a human to bite off a reindeer's testicles?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-07-20T17:34:25.780" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T13:10:18.183" Title="Can people castrate reindeer by biting off the testicles?" Tags="|physiology|anthropology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17017" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17014" CreationDate="2013-07-20T11:45:48.787" Score="7" Body="&lt;h1&gt;1. Did or do (Sami) reindeer herders castrate reindeer by biting off the testicles?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No they don't and (probably) never did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They used to half-castrate reindeer by crushing their testicles without breaking the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any claim in a video that testicles are being bitten off (removed) in traditional Sami practice is likely to be either an ignorant interpretation of what is shown or a sensationalist attempt to exploit the squeamishness of potential viewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Norwegian Animal-Welfare Law&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IPY Oslo Science Conference 2010 included a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ipy-osc.no/abstract/385802?lightbox&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; which says the biting method was used but is no longer allowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the last decades in Norway, the reindeer managers have reduced the number of castrates for several reasons. One was introduced by the Norwegian Animal Welfare Act. Accordingly, castration of reindeer bulls was only allowed with anaesthesia performed by a veterinarian. In the field, only the bloodless method using castrating forceps, e.g. the Burdizzo instrument, can be practised. The spermatic cord and blood-vessels to the testicles together with the sensible nerves are crushed and damaged. This is considered painful, and anaesthesia is required. The procedure is costly and time consuming, and in addition to other reasons, the practice has been reduced.  The Sami castration method “gaskit”, was traditionally performed with the teeth, without anaesthesia, and is not allowed any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://reindeerherding.org/blog/reindeer-blog/traditional-castration-still-banned-in-norway/&quot;&gt;Traditional Castration – Still Banned in Norway&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Traditional Technique and it's purpose&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best description of the traditional technique I have found so far is from a rather lightweight and unreliable source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The nomadic Sami reindeer herders of Siberia traditionally half-castrate their male stock for practical reasons that surely must have existed at some point. Half-castration is when you don't actually remove the testicles, but merely pulp them within the scrotum,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_20121_the-6-manliest-ways-people-still-hunt-food_p2.html#ixzz2Zay18xBl&quot;&gt;The Sami Castrate Reindeer With Their Teeth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/31/reindeers-castration-climate-change_n_815450.html&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt; explains :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The traditional Sami biting technique aims for &quot;half-castration&quot; -- under which the animals become sterile but still produce some of the male hormone testosterone that promotes muscle growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://library.arcticportal.org/550/1/Eira_127801.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;The Challenges of Arctic reindeer Herding&quot; - Arctic Portal Library&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1732, Carl Linnè, described castration of reindeer: One person keeps the 2.5 years old male in the antlers 14 day before Michaels m[a]ss, while the herder use his teeth to bite across the reindeer balls, and subsequently use his finger to carefully massage the epidermi[s], avoiding to harm the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note &quot;Carl Linnè&quot; refers to the man now known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://dpc.uba.uva.nl/cgi/t/text/get-pdf?c=tvs;idno=2901a04&quot;&gt;Carl Linnaeus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;2. Is it possible for a human to bite off a reindeer's testicles?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not possible to do this lawfully in Norway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that not many scientists have thought this worth constructing a research grant proposal for. In any case I don't have an answer for this additional question. Since it seems the Sami don't attempt this, it is probably irrelevant to the main thrust of your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-07-20T14:55:39.487" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T14:55:39.487" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17021" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17022" CreationDate="2013-07-20T20:47:00.973" Score="12" ViewCount="5273" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a frequent trope in movies and television where audiences throw rotten tomatoes at performers they don't like (for instance, the Onceler in the Lorax has tomatoes thrown at him). This goes back quite a ways in fiction; I seem to remember &lt;em&gt;Huckleberry Finn&lt;/em&gt; containing a scene where people planned on throwing rotten vegetables at performers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is claimed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/fresh-ideas/dinner-food-facts/why-do-people-throw-tomatoes.htm&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pelting unlucky victims with rotten produce is one of our oldest forms of expression, older even than tomato cultivation. Rotten tomatoes are often associated with Shakespeare's Globe Theater in Elizabethan London, but in actuality, tomatoes were still uncommon and weren't even mentioned in the first English cookbook until 1752, nearly 150 years later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there published, factual accounts of audiences throwing tomatoes at performers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14237" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-07-20T22:16:46.167" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T17:27:41.980" Title="Did audiences throw tomatoes at performers they disliked?" Tags="|history|vegetables|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17021" CreationDate="2013-07-20T22:12:53.257" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, this is a case of art imitating life since early theater patrons were &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.cedarcrest.edu/academic/eng/lfletcher/henry4/papers/mthomas.htm&quot;&gt;quite rambunctious&lt;/a&gt;. An &lt;a href=&quot;http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&amp;amp;res=9D0DE1DD1538E033A2575BC2A9669D94629FD7CF&amp;amp;oref=slogin&quot;&gt;article from October 28, 1883&lt;/a&gt; that was published in The New York Times describes an incident as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He probably would have succeeded had not a great many tomatoes struck&#xA;  him, throwing him off his balance and demoralizing him. It was some&#xA;  time before the audience could induce him to go on with the&#xA;  performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The New York Times also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/15/weekinreview/gentlemen-choose-your-sausage.html&quot;&gt;summarizes some more recent incidents&lt;/a&gt; in a 1998 article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2013-07-20T22:12:53.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17021" CreationDate="2013-07-20T22:27:35.320" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Magda Romanska, &lt;em&gt;The Post-traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor: History and Holocaust in Akropolis and The Dead Class&lt;/em&gt;, Anthem Press, 2012 (p. 110), regarding performances of precursors to Grotowski's &lt;em&gt;Akropolis&lt;/em&gt; in 1963:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once the audience members understood the real — ironic — sub-context of the speeches and the intentions of the actors, they began throwing tomatoes onto the stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Mario d'Angelo, &lt;em&gt;Cultural Policies in Europe: Local Issues&lt;/em&gt;, Council of Europe, 2000 (p. 109):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In October 1969, a number of students from the Amsterdam Theatre School disrupted a performance given by the prestigious theatrical company, the Netherlands Comedy Theatre (Nederlandse Comedie), by throwing tomatoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Doris Kearns Goodwin, &lt;em&gt;The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys&lt;/em&gt;, Macmillan, 1991 (p. 206), regarding Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy's feelings during the opening night of &lt;em&gt;The Playboy of the Western World&lt;/em&gt; in Boston in October 1911:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If she felt quietly offended by some parts of the play, however, she was far more embarrassed by the tasteless response of many of her kinsmen in the audience who, in their anger, began throwing tomatoes and eggs at the stage and hissing and booing loudly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Paul Binnerts, &lt;em&gt;Acting in Real Time&lt;/em&gt;, University of Michigan Press, 2012 (p. 266):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1969, audiences in Dutch theaters revived the ancient tradition of loudly voiding their displeasure with what they saw on stage. When they began to throw tomatoes at performances in Amsterdam, their &quot;Tomato Action&quot; marked the beginning of many changes in the theater system in the Netherlands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-07-21T17:27:41.980" LastActivityDate="2013-07-21T17:27:41.980" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2167" CreationDate="2013-07-21T23:43:38.803" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Update : This is an excerpt from &lt;a href=&quot;http://cbl.abuseat.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://cbl.abuseat.org&lt;/a&gt; , when look up information about a infected computer that had AV software installed on it:&#xA;&quot;Pay very close attention: Most of these trojans have extremely poor detection rates in current Anti-Virus software. For example, Ponmocup is only detected by 3 out of 49 AV tools queried at Virus Total.&lt;strong&gt;Thus: having your anti-virus software doesn't find anything doesn't prove that you're not infected.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MgfI4.png&quot; alt=&quot;cbl.abuseat.org&quot;&gt;&#xA;Once a program is executed there is no way of having any guarantee that is not a virus, This is a mathematical fact that is thought in Introductory Computer Science courses. c.f.  : &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computingbook.org/ch12-computability.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.computingbook.org/ch12-computability.pdf&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;, Exploration 12.1: Virus Detection&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of AV is outdated, and they are no longer effective:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://codeinsecurity.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/the-anti-virus-age-is-over/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://codeinsecurity.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/the-anti-virus-age-is-over/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1708" LastEditorUserId="1708" LastEditDate="2013-08-07T23:14:15.287" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T23:14:15.287" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16365" CreationDate="2013-07-22T04:39:16.767" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. Heat in the dryer can cause clothing to shrink. This answer is based completely on an NPR story from December 27, 2008, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=98759520&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why Clothes Shrink&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Wool&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When wool fibres are warmed, their scales extend. During agitation, these scales lock against the scales of nearby fibres. The fibres bundle up and the fabric becomes thicker, and shorter. When done intentionally, this process is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;felting&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Cotton and other fabrics&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shrinkage in other fabrics is due to stress relaxation. High temperatures can cause the stress within long drawn-out fabrics to relax, shrinking them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T04:39:16.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17042" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22473" CreationDate="2013-07-22T08:28:26.590" Score="21" ViewCount="16562" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading a Batman comic where the Joker claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://78.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lr6ajvxK6U1qz4ymjo1_500.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5oqsYm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Batman comic image&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know what triggered the last World War? An argument over how many telegraph poles Germany owed its war debt creditors!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This piqued my interest, and I looked it up to see if there was any truth to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_reparations&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia - WW1 Reparations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been argued by some[by whom?] that it is a fallacy to consider the reparations as the primary source of the economic condition in Germany from 1919 to 1939. This perspective argues that Germany paid a small portion of the reparations and the hyper-inflation of the early 1920s was a result of the political and economic instability of the Weimar Republic. In fact, the occupation of the Ruhr by the French (which began when Germany failed to supply a required delivery of telegraph poles) did more damage to the economy than the reparations payments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webanswers.com/social-sciences/history/world-war-2/how-did-telegraph-poles-cause-world-war-2-73c8f4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Webanswers - telegraph poles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's something of an oversimplification, but the short answer is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After World War I, the Allied forced imposed enormous reparations on Germany which virtually bankrupted the nation. In the early 1920s, a dispute over how many telegraph poles Germany owed France as part of the reparations ended with France militarily occupying part of western Germany, and killing over 100 German civilians for protesting against them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Outrage over the killings and the damage done to Germany's economy greatly destabilized the German Republic (Weimar Republic). Hitler's initial popularity was almost entirely based on attacking the post-WW1 reparations as unfairly punitive (which was a fair point) and it is fair to say that political support for the Nazis and other nationalist factions was greatly increased by the Poincaré government's overreaction to Germany's refusal to give them more telegraph poles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't found any reliable source for or against it, can it even be considered in a away that the argument about telegraph poles was a cause for World War 2?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-06-04T13:19:22.043" Title="Was an argument over how many telegraph poles Germany needed to deliver cause to WW2?" Tags="|war|world-war-ii|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17047" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-22T13:46:27.273" Score="3" ViewCount="1011" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard claims, that there is a strong correlation between the end of the Apartheid in South Africa, and an economic decline there. Does this have any factual basis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More concretely, did any or more of the following happen at, or very shortly after the end of the Apartheid:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;falling GDP, either in an absolute way, or compared to other countries in the region&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;significantly increasing crime rates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;increasing poverty rates&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;I know this is a sensitive topic, so please, remain at the cold, hard numbers. No political or ideological monologuing from ANY side, please.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8692" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-07-22T18:30:10.363" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T21:29:07.523" Title="Was there a downturn in the South African economy after the end of apartheid?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17048" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-22T13:59:26.723" Score="24" ViewCount="1865" Body="&lt;p&gt;UK government advisor John Carr, of the Council on Child Internet Safety, claims in a radio interview:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr Carr said there was &amp;quot;no question&amp;quot; that some men who look at child sex abuse images go on to carry out abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earlier, speaking to BBC Radio 5 live he said: &amp;quot;There is enough evidence to suggest that if we can put more barriers towards guys getting to child abuse images, fewer of them will do it and more children will be safe.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He said between 15 and 50 per cent of men who previously had no involvement with child abuse images would go on to physically harm children once they accessed them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22726004&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Search engines urged to block more online porn sites&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sentence claims correlation, not necessarily causation. But let's ask the question twice: once for correlation, once for the implied causation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there evidence that &amp;gt;15% of men exposed to child pornography, physically harm children?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there evidence that exposure to child pornography &lt;em&gt;leads to&lt;/em&gt; this harm being committed (that is, is there evidence that these assaults would not have happened if the culprit had not consumed child pornography)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4887" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-06-09T14:47:00.703" LastActivityDate="2022-11-30T04:59:09.643" Title="Do men with no prior exposure to child pornography go on to harm children once exposed?" Tags="|politics|criminology|pornography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17049" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-22T15:20:01.343" Score="10" ViewCount="2335" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a lot of posts on Facebook lately linking to various blogs and &quot;news&quot; sites mentioning that Monsanto purchased and/or hired Blackwater (aka Xe - search for &quot;Monsanto Blackwater&quot; with your favorite search engine for dozens of sites). As far as I could find, they all link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://politicalblindspot.org/yes-monsanto-actually-did-buy-the-blackwater-mercenary-group/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt;, which makes a lot of assumptions and has few sources to back up many of the claims (such as &quot;Gates is also engaged in trying to destroy rural farming worldwide&quot;, etc.), however this bit (with sources) is interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/17/xe-international-blackwater-sold/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Xe (now Academi) has, indeed, been purchased&lt;/a&gt;, and while there’s no way&#xA;  of DOCUMENTING who the new owners really are, the logical conclusion&#xA;  would be that Monsanto, who had been employing them prior to the sale&#xA;  are the new owners. This, of course, would also make sense of the&#xA;  secrecy surrounding the deal and the identity of the new owners. The&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iv14RnpjJqraPQCs5aVH9PUXN9Jw?docId=CNG.ee663915284de0064f72d69189fad44d.71&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;company was bought out&lt;/a&gt; by private investors via private equity&#xA;  companies that don’t have to divulge any of their dealings, with Bank&#xA;  of America providing much of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/blackwater-founder-in-deal-to-sell-company/?partner=rss&amp;amp;emc=rss&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;$200 million in financing&lt;/a&gt; for the&#xA;  deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023146763&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This post&lt;/a&gt; refutes that Monsanto actually made any such acquisition, but I can't vouch for the validity of any of the sources &lt;a href=&quot;http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&amp;amp;key=b716156ab5ecd7182fdbf9e72d749dcb&amp;amp;loc=http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023146763&amp;amp;v=1&amp;amp;libId=eb4b190e-68e5-4a67-a399-dc45ef5d3eb6&amp;amp;out=http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Academi#Leadership_and_Ownership&amp;amp;ref=https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/ask&amp;amp;title=No,%20Monsanto%20actually%20DIDN%27T%20buy%20Blackwater.%20-%20Democratic%20Underground&amp;amp;txt=http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Academi#Leadership_and_Ownership&amp;amp;jsonp=vglnk_jsonp_13745063685547&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&amp;amp;key=b716156ab5ecd7182fdbf9e72d749dcb&amp;amp;loc=http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023146763&amp;amp;v=1&amp;amp;libId=eb4b190e-68e5-4a67-a399-dc45ef5d3eb6&amp;amp;out=http://redgreenandblue.org/2010/10/16/too-much-of-a-bad-thing-monsanto-did-not-buy-blackwater/&amp;amp;ref=https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/ask&amp;amp;title=No,%20Monsanto%20actually%20DIDN%27T%20buy%20Blackwater.%20-%20Democratic%20Underground&amp;amp;txt=http://redgreenandblue.org/2010/10/16/too-much-of-a-bad-thing-monsanto-did-not-buy-blackwater/&amp;amp;jsonp=vglnk_jsonp_13745063839508&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023138368#post29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Otherwise, Monsanto has denied hiring them in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/Pages/monsanto-blackwater-black-ops.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an 2010 article on their website&lt;/a&gt; which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Monsanto did not hire Blackwater nor did we approve of the firm&#xA;  infiltrating any groups as was suggested in the Nation article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10613" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T06:52:48.483" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T06:52:48.483" Title="Did Monsanto buy and/or hire Xe/Blackwater/Academi?" Tags="|commerce|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17049" CreationDate="2013-07-22T16:15:29.510" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Monsanto did not buy Blackwater.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The acquisition is not reported in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monsanto.com/investors/Pages/archived-annual-reports.aspx&quot;&gt;2012 annual report&lt;/a&gt; nor in any report from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monsanto.com/investors/Pages/archived-annual-reports.aspx&quot;&gt;2005 to 2011&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding hiring, I can find no evidence that Monsanto lied when they said they did not hire them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-07-22T18:14:44.433" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T18:14:44.433" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17047" CreationDate="2013-07-22T18:53:39.557" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;GDP&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easy to find the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.ca/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&amp;amp;met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;dl=en&amp;amp;idim=country%3aZAF%3aNGA%3aEGY#!ctype=l&amp;amp;strail=false&amp;amp;bcs=d&amp;amp;nselm=h&amp;amp;met_y=ny_gdp_mktp_cd&amp;amp;scale_y=lin&amp;amp;ind_y=false&amp;amp;rdim=region&amp;amp;idim=country%3aZAF%3aNGA%3aMOZ%3aNAM%3aZMB%3aZWE%3aUGA%3aTZA%3aKEN&amp;amp;ifdim=region&amp;amp;hl=en_US&amp;amp;dl=en&amp;amp;ind=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;figures for South African GDP&lt;/a&gt;. As you can see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GDP for 1994 (the year of the end of Apartheid) rose compared with 1993&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GDP for 1995 rose compared with 1994&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GDP generally declined from 1995 to 2002&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GDP rose very strongly from 2002 to the present (with one year of decline coinciding with the general world recession)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be remembered that there was extreme turmoil in South Africa in the years leading up to the end of Apartheid, and was being boycotted by many nations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what conclusions you are attempting to draw from these figures. But unquestionably the end of Apartheid has not negatively impacted South African growth, either immediately after or in the long term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Crime&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The figures quoted &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_south_africa#Murder&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; show significant decreases in the murder rate from 1994 to the present. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The murder rate [...] has fallen from 66.9 per 100,000 people in 1994–95 to 37.3 in 2008–09.[8] From 2003–2009, crime decreased significantly according to official police data. Between 1994 and 2009, the murder rate reduced by 50% to 34 murders per 100,000 people. The annual crime statistics released in 2011 show a continuing downward trend, except for rape, which went up by 2.1%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T18:24:22.863" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T18:24:22.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1059" CreationDate="2013-07-22T19:56:16.570" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've &lt;a href=&quot;http://graehl.org/tag/alcohol&quot;&gt;written about this&lt;/a&gt; for years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2013/07/18/cu-study-illuminates-mortality-differences-between-nondrinkers-and-light&quot;&gt;CU analysis&lt;/a&gt; slices non-drinkers-now by past-heavy-drinking vs. not, and finds that the never-heavy-drinking non-drinkers are equally healthy to light-drinkers-now. This doesn't exactly seem fair given that they don't slice light-drinkers-now in the same way (so they don't really prove absence of benefit from light drinking), but I think that coupled with the lack of a plausible mechanism (hormesis? feeling less stressed or more rewarded by social encounters while buzzed?), you may as well act as though being the least drunk you can get away with, socially, is the healthiest choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to imagine plausible factors that &quot;explain away&quot; the advantage of light/moderate drinkers over non; it's nice that these Colorado U. folks found one that could be tested against existing survey data. Some others: sick people tend to stop drinking alcohol (medication interactions, or just wanting to sleep well and avoiding painful hangovers), people who are more social and active tend to drink w/ friends (people who have good encounters with friends are healthier, causality probably in both directions), extremely poor people may avoid alcohol in favor of necessities, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1624" LastActivityDate="2013-07-22T19:56:16.570" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17053" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18938" CreationDate="2013-07-22T20:45:25.917" Score="28" ViewCount="22833" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seeing as mobile phones &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15801/does-mobile-send-signals-when-its-off&quot;&gt;aren't sending signals when switched off&lt;/a&gt;, is it possible to track a mobile phone when it's switched off?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-growth-fueled-by-need-to-target-terrorists/2013/07/21/24c93cf4-f0b1-11e2-bed3-b9b6fe264871_story.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NSA growth fueled by need to target terrorists&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By September 2004, a &lt;strong&gt;new NSA technique&lt;/strong&gt; enabled the agency to &lt;strong&gt;find cellphones even when they were turned off&lt;/strong&gt;. JSOC troops called this &lt;strong&gt;“The Find,”&lt;/strong&gt; and it gave them thousands of new targets, including members of a burgeoning al-Qaeda-sponsored insurgency in Iraq, according to members of the unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, the NSA developed a new computer linkup called the Real Time Regional Gateway into which the military and intelligence officers could feed every bit of data or seized documents and get back a phone number or list of potential targets. It also allowed commanders to see, on a screen, every type of surveillance available in a given territory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14234" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-12-13T21:55:35.883" Title="Can mobile phones be tracked when they're switched off?" Tags="|mobile-phones|security|espionage|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17054" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17066" CreationDate="2013-07-22T21:09:50.700" Score="3" ViewCount="704" Body="&lt;p&gt;At &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gero.uni-heidelberg.de/forschung/hd100.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gero.uni-heidelberg.de/forschung/hd100.html&lt;/a&gt; I read - in German - that among the (western) girls born after 1970 50% will reach the age of 100. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this plausible? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My wife is born in 1969 - and we never thought that the probability that she will be 100 years old is almost 50%.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14674" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T14:23:28.343" Title="Life expectancy of girls born after 1970" Tags="|life-expectancy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17054" CreationDate="2013-07-22T21:41:14.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The life expectancy in the United States at birth for females born between 1970 and 2007 is given in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5936a9.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this report by the CDC&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1970, the life expectancy at birth for white females born in the United States was approximately 76 years. By 2007, that had increased to approximately 80 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1970, the life expectancy at birth for black females born in the United States was approximately 68 years. By 2007, that had increased to approximately 75 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life expectancy is just an arithmetic mean, so it is mathematically possible that the actual survival distribution is such that the life expectancy is is in the 75-80 range, but 50% of the people will still live for more than 100 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By looking at what the survival curves actually look like: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fis.org/public/survivalcurve-2020.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fis.org/public/survivalcurve-2020.html&lt;/a&gt;, I don't believe this is the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-07-23T01:03:07.313" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T01:03:07.313" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17057" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17061" CreationDate="2013-07-23T01:51:12.847" Score="62" ViewCount="7785" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately, social media has been flooded with all sorts of &amp;quot;facts&amp;quot; about abortion. This one in particular caught my attention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gxwS3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;42% of all yearly deaths in the world are from abortion&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;42% of yearly deaths in the world are from abortion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A worldwide crisis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want this to degrade into an argument about what &amp;quot;death&amp;quot; is, so for the sake of the clarity assume abortion is death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this statistic correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:44:28.273" Title="Are 42% of human deaths worldwide from abortion?" Tags="|mortality|pregnancy|abortion|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17057" CreationDate="2013-07-23T02:31:47.400" Score="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;The global death rate was &lt;a href=&quot;http://kff.org/global-indicator/death-rate/&quot;&gt;7.99 per thousand people&lt;/a&gt; per year. The world population is about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/popclock/&quot;&gt;7.1 billion people&lt;/a&gt;. This means that about 56 million people die a year, excluding abortions. This approximately aligns with the estimate for the number of postnatal deaths in the image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Guttmacher Institute estimates that there were &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_IAW.html&quot;&gt;43.8 million abortions&lt;/a&gt; in 2008. This data is a little older than the rest, but it's what I could find. assuming the same number of deaths in 2008 as in 2012, That means that abortions comprise about 43% of all deaths (if we define death to include abortions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we define deaths to include abortions (but to not include miscarriages), this image is approximately accurate as far as I can tell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T02:31:47.400" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17057" CreationDate="2013-07-23T09:10:53.213" Score="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, the picture is not accurate. No, “42% of yearly deaths in the world” are &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; from abortion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Avi’s answer shows, the raw numbers are about right, &lt;a href=&quot;http://jezebel.com/5991351/theres-no-way-to-know-how-many-abortions-happen-each-year&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;albeit with a big uncertainty attached&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the &lt;em&gt;percentages&lt;/em&gt; are wrong because the 42% implies that the “total number of deaths” = “number of deaths after birth” + “number of abortions”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is inaccurate. There is at least one additional factor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/infertility-and-reproduction/guide/pregnancy-miscarriage&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;As many as 50% of all pregnancies are miscarried&lt;/a&gt; before coming to full term – &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0001-6349.2005.00882.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;most (about 60%) due to chromosomal aberrations&lt;/a&gt;. If we count pre-birth deaths in our statistic, then we also need to count those miscarriages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2054.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to the CIA World Factbook&lt;/a&gt;, the birth rate in 2012 was 19.15 per 1000, that’s 135.97 million births, and consequently about 135.97 million miscarriages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we add the numbers, we find that &lt;strong&gt;abortions account for 20% yearly deaths in the world&lt;/strong&gt;, not 42% as claimed (and this isn’t even accounting for the fact that of those 20%, some would have miscarried anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this is assuming that we count prenatal deaths as “deaths” at all, and as can be seen from the statistics on mortality rate, &lt;em&gt;this is not normally done&lt;/em&gt;. The most we can honestly say is that “there are 0.72 as many abortions as there are (postnatal) deaths (= 72%)”. But presenting these 42% as &lt;em&gt;part&lt;/em&gt; of the overall deaths is wrong, as I’ve shown above. In statistics, presentation matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here’s a summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/c8n96.png&quot; alt=&quot;Comparison of a correct plot with an incorrect plot of the data&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The numbers differ slightly from those in Avi’s answer since I’m using the “42%” number from the question to calculate abortions but the principle doesn’t change.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="82" LastEditDate="2013-07-24T08:57:40.987" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T08:57:40.987" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17063" CreationDate="2013-07-23T10:27:01.110" Score="3" ViewCount="1417" Body="&lt;p&gt;All JPGS, pngs etc are basically just sequences of bits. Is it possible to generate these by making a program that generates random sequences of bits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example say that the sequence 100010111 is all the bits used to store a picture of mona lisa taken by a tourist on a disk. This sequence would be easy for a computer to randomly generate by trying all the alternatives from with the given bit sequence. If you had a extremely powerful CPU you could generate images longer than this as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it theoretically possible to generate all photos taken, and all that ever will be taken using this method? With Moores law, how long is it till we get a computer that can generate photos of a somewhat low quality &amp;lt; 1mpixel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14688" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T12:52:56.520" Title="Is it possible to generate all photos ever taken by random sequencing of bits?" Tags="|computers|mathematics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2013-07-23T12:57:06.107" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17062" CreationDate="2013-07-23T10:35:14.813" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. But let's keep PNG or JPG out of the picture since they're quite complex formats. If we'd talk about a simple bitmap it's much easier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you keep increasing one number (1, 2, 3, 4) and then another number everytime from 1 up to that number you get a sequence like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1 1&#xA;2 1&#xA;2 2&#xA;3 1&#xA;3 2&#xA;3 3&#xA;4 1&#xA;...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is respectively the width and height of your picture. If you then loop through all of those pictures with every pixel set to black, and go through every possible color for every pixel combination until you get an all-white picture you will eventually generate &lt;strong&gt;every&lt;/strong&gt; picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this will take an extremely long time. Say we want to generate every picture with one megapixel. Let's say a pixel has a bit-depth of 8 bits for each RGB channel so a total of 24 bits per pixel. That means one pixel has 2&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; possible colours. Two pixels have 2&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; &amp;times; 2&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; combinations. One megapixel has 2&lt;sup&gt;24000000&lt;/sup&gt; possible combinations (excluding different width/height combinations). If we would generate a million images per second on a computer, one person has one million computers, one country has one million persons, a planet has one million countries, a sun has one million planets, a galaxy has one million suns and the universe has a million galaxies it would still take 10&lt;sup&gt;7224567&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;strong&gt;googol centuries&lt;/strong&gt; to generate every megapixel image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2838" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-07-23T12:52:56.520" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T12:52:56.520" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17054" CreationDate="2013-07-23T14:23:28.343" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Claims such as this about future life expectancy are based on the assumption that recent trends in increasing life expectancy continue. It is impossible to say for certain whether these trends will continue, and there is some evidence to suggest they won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CDQQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.demogr.mpg.de/publications%255Cfiles%255C3444_1264435180_1_Christensen%2520et%2520al%2520Lancet%2520374%25209696%25202009.pdf&amp;amp;ei=3X3uUafWC6mL0AWnpIGADg&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGGgStzYm_jt50HJFqwlWOMalF89w&amp;amp;sig2=jvZFDvQBZjwY8PQwytWbJw&amp;amp;bvm=bv.49478099,d.d2k&amp;amp;cad=rja&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ageing populations: the challenges ahead&lt;/a&gt; published in The Lancet presents this forecast of life expectancy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SIAAj.png&quot; alt=&quot;life expectancy forecast&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This forecast is based on the assumption that&#xA;  mortality before age 50 years will remain at 2006 levels. At&#xA;  age 50 years and older, probability of dying decreases by a&#xA;  rate that yields yearly improvements in period life&#xA;  expectancy of 0·2 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2962177-2/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This response&lt;/a&gt; in The Lancet to the above article raises a number of objections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Consider that published period life tables for Japanese women, the longest-lived population in the world, indicate that only 4·6% of the cohort born in 2000 are expected to live to 100 years. In the USA, this expectation is 2·0%. In other words, the 50% survival assertion by Christensen and colleagues is 11 times and 25 times greater than estimates for Japan or the USA, respectively, for the year 2000—implying that period mortality underestimates cohort life expectancy by decades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Christensen and colleagues state that life expectancy is lengthening almost linearly in most developed countries, with no signs of deceleration. On the contrary, in England and Wales, Germany, the Netherlands, and the USA, life expectancy at age 65 years for women has converged to about 19·5 years, and has stagnated at that level in the USA and the Netherlands for most of the past 20 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmsr043743#t=article&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; in The New England Journal of Medicine suggests that life expectancy may level off or even decline due to the effects of obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From our analysis of the effect of obesity on longevity, we conclude that the steady rise in life expectancy during the past two centuries may soon come to an end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T14:23:28.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17068" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-23T17:56:05.623" Score="5" ViewCount="1280" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ursula Le Guin's 1986 essay, &quot;Prospects for Women in Writing&quot;, opens with the sentence,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's only been about two hundred years since women gained access to literacy and began to empower themselves with that great power, the written word.&lt;/strong&gt; And they have written. The works of women acknowledged as &quot;great&quot; -- Austen, the Brontës, Dickinson, Eliot, Woolf -- make a high road for other women writers to follow, so wide and clear that... [etc.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this 'claim' is true then I think it may be relevant to topics such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17000/are-men-more-creative-than-women&quot;&gt;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17000/are-men-more-creative-than-women&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to what extent is it true? If this topic needs to be narrower, perhaps restrict it to &quot;English-speaking women&quot; (Le Guin is American).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To provide context, the essay ends with,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... Wolf knew that and said it in the 1930. Most of us forgot it and had to rediscover it all over again in the sixties. But for a whole generation now, women have been writing, publishing, and reading one another, in artistic and scholarly and feminist fellowship. I we go on doing that, by the year 2000 we will -- &lt;em&gt;for the first time ever&lt;/em&gt; -- have kept the perception, ideas, and judgments of women alive in consciousness as an active, creative force in society for more than one generation. And our daughters and granddaughters won't have to start from zero the way we did. To keep women's words, women's works, alive and power -- that's what I see our job as writers and readers for the next fifteen years, and the next fifty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The context of the question makes it clear that &quot;women gaining access to literacy&quot; means women being able to write/publish works which will be read by other women --  so, please ignore examples of women who can read when all the authors are men, and/or women who can write when all the readers are men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A now-deleted answer said that the answerer didn't know what was especially significant about the &quot;200 year&quot; number. I note that most the authors in the quote (i.e. Austen, the Brontës, Dickinson, and Eliot) all worked approximately 200 years ago: and so I guess that the existence of those authors was the reason for LeGuin's saying &quot;200 years&quot;. The author of the same deleted answer then said something to the effect that that the existence of those specific authors was remarkable or unprecedented in some way: but I don't know in what way, or why it was such authors came to be, then and not before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that the cause was two-fold: women being educated less than men were; and a social bias which kept women (especially aristocratic women) from any 'commercial' activity including publishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T18:38:09.157" Title="Has it only been about two hundred years since women gained access to literacy?" Tags="|history|gender|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17069" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17057" CreationDate="2013-07-23T17:58:51.007" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The numbers are correct. The definitions, and thus the argument, are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in both Avi's and Konrad's answers, the number of postnatal deaths and the number of abortions in this poster are correct, given the latest information on world population, mortality rate, and number of abortions. However, they were arrived at by ignoring the fact that the mortality rate, which is the number per hundred of deaths as defined by the WHO, &lt;em&gt;does not include abortions&lt;/em&gt;, because an abortion is not a &quot;death&quot;. It also, as both answers have said, does not include miscarriages, or the grey area of stillbirths (the definition varies by jurisdiction, with some measurements including them as miscarriages, others including them as postnatal mortalities, and still others differentiating them entirely). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These four results - live birth, stillbirth, miscarriage or abortion - are the only possibilities for an implanted egg and a viable pregnancy. I cannot find a worldwide stillbirth rate, but the U.S. rate is one in 115 pregnancies&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stillbirth#Prevalence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;. With the U.S. pregnancy rate at an average of 105.5 per 1,000 women (so 10.55% of women are pregnant at any given time)&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.usa.gov/post/28642487883/pregnancy-rates-on-the-decline&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;, if we extrapolate these out to the world female population of 3.402 billion&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/broker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;, the number of stillbirths annually is 3,402,096,414 * .1055 * .008696 = 3.12 million. That is a very low estimate considering that both the U.S. pregnancy rate (due to economic factors both positive and negative) and stillbirth rate (due mainly to healthcare) are relatively low compared to the rest of the world. The annual number of miscarriages worldwide, borrowing from Konrad's answer, is 135.97 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a fertilized egg, which for many pro-life advocates is where life begins, there is a fifth option; non-implantation, which is the case for up to one-half of all fertilized human eggs according to some estimates&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/tgr/08/2/gr080207.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;. Given this estimate, the number of non-implantations annually can be as high as the total number of pregnancies itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the U.S. pregnancy rate were extrapolated to the world female population, then over a nine-month period, there would be on the order of 358 million non-implantations of a fertilized egg, which would become nonviable (die) and the woman would continue her monthly cycle. Pushed out to the full year, that's 478.5 million women per year who, in the eyes of those for whom life begins at fertilization, are murderers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, the OP's chart ignores medically-necessary abortions (because the position of most pro-life advocates is that there are no such situations, which is a position that is patently false given medical knowledge to date). A large contributor, though not the only one, is ectopic pregnancy (the egg implants in the fallopian tube instead of the uterine wall). That occurs at a rate of 19.7 per 1000 pregnancies&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aafp.org/afp/2000/0215/p1080.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;, which if we extrapolate from the U.S. pregnancy rate of 10.55% of women and the total world female population of 3.4 billion, is 3402096414 * .1055 * .0197 ~= 7.1 million ectopic pregnancies annually worldwide (and likely more as the pregnancy rate I used is U.S.-specific and thought to be lower than the world average; unfortunately I can't find a good figure for overall world pregnancy rates). Ectopic pregnancies are 100% fatal for the embryo with or without treatment, and without medical treatment, a ruptured ectopic pregnancy is 100% fatal for the mother, so when an ectopic pregnancy is detected prior to rupture, the treatment is a drug-induced abortion using methotrexate, and if a rupture has occured, the fetus is removed as a natural consequence of repairing the damage. Either way, the insurance billing codes that document the medical procedures performed (and are the primary source of statistical data on such things) will include a code for a medical abortion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not the only such indication for a &quot;therapeutic&quot; abortion. Toxcemia/eclampsia calls for immediate delivery of the baby as soon as the mother is stable, whether the baby would be expected to survive or not. Jurisdictions differ as to when such a delivery, resulting in the death of the baby, is a live birth and infant mortality (resulting in filing of a birth and death certificate for the baby), or an abortion by preterm induction (in which case neither a birth certificate nor a death certificate would be issued). Miscarriages, placental abruptions, and other complications of pregnancy often do not result in the woman's body naturally expelling the pregnancy; these situations require medical intervention to &quot;evacuate the pregnancy&quot;, and are indistinguishable in terms of the procedure from a surgical abortion of a viable pregnancy and so would include nearly identical procedural codes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5997" LastEditorUserId="5997" LastEditDate="2013-09-10T16:21:49.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T16:21:49.730" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-23T18:07:13.593" Score="1" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read several claims in all kinds of literature (both scientific, less scientific and downwards anti-scientific) about golden ratio and its &quot;aesthetics&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, all the &quot;proofs&quot; I have seen seemed to me like arbitrarily chosen and ignored all kind of aesthetically pleasing ratios, like 1:2, 2:3 etc., that appear in various art, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is - was the claim that &quot;golden ratio is the most aesthetically pleasing ratio&quot; ever really proved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(note: I have seen other claims about golden ratio, that seemed unfounded, but I will leave that for later. Right now I want to focus on the claim of aesthetics.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4445" LastActivityDate="2013-07-23T22:13:26.413" Title="Is golden ratio the most aesthetically pleasing ratio?" Tags="|mathematics|art|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-07-24T01:03:30.673" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17077" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-24T02:13:55.897" Score="15" ViewCount="10424" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard and read this one in various places, in many variations: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a radio DJ gets (disgruntled)/(drunk)/(fired), and as a response&#xA;  (locks)/(barricades) (himself)/(herself) alone in the&#xA;  (studio)/(broadcast station) and plays (the same song over and&#xA;  over)/(as many offensive songs as he/she can find) as an act of&#xA;  rebellion and defiance for several hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical that such an event could actually occur, since the other radio station employees could kill the power to the station, transmitter or studio with relative ease. One possibility is that the station owner did the deed, considered it harmless and allowed it to occur, or refused to allow the station to go off air. I have read reports of specific anecdotes, but they seem indistinguishable from publicity stunts playing off the popular legend. I would think that a story where there is no punitive action against the DJ is just a staged stunt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any evidence to indicate a renegade DJ actually managed to lock himself in the station to broadcast material against the will of the station owner for an extended period of time?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; From a &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20190520182251/http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RrSddMKemN0J:message.snopes.com/showthread.php%3Ft%3D34096+&amp;amp;cd=4&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ct=clnk&amp;amp;gl=us&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes discussion board&lt;/a&gt; I found, &quot;In 1972, KHJ Los Angeles deejay Robert W. Morgan spun Donny Osmond's &quot;Puppy Love&quot; over and over for 90 continuous minutes, leading LAPD to mistakenly raid the station studios after receiving numerous calls from listeners. The perplexed officers left without making any arrests.&quot; The board links to &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160505095857/http://www.triplearadio.com/show_prep/index.php#3/15&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;. Wikipedia also cites that link. But I can't find any reliable source about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14609" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-05-20T18:29:56.050" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T18:31:06.857" Title="Did a radio DJ lock himself in the studio and play the same song on repeat?" Tags="|history|music|radio|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17078" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14312" CreationDate="2013-07-24T02:52:30.670" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While partial fipronil resistance in feline fleas &lt;a href=&quot;http://cel.webofknowledge.com/InboundService.do?SID=2ABia6@Pmn4Jm5LIKJF&amp;amp;product=CEL&amp;amp;UT=A1996VH35100003&amp;amp;SrcApp=Highwire&amp;amp;Init=Yes&amp;amp;action=retrieve&amp;amp;Func=Frame&amp;amp;customersID=Highwire&amp;amp;SrcAuth=Highwire&amp;amp;IsProductCode=Yes&amp;amp;mode=FullRecord&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;has been reported&lt;/a&gt;, this resistance does not appear to be widespread, according to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304401712005894?np=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; which found fipronil to be effective against feline fleas (this study used dogs as subjects, though I don't think that should make much difference as feline fleas were one of the parasites that was investigated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jfm.sagepub.com/content/15/1/31.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This review&lt;/a&gt; suggests that most reports of resistance are the result of improper use and misunderstanding of flea biology and life cycle.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, given the potential for resistance, they recommend an integrated approach to flea control, using both medication (including the use of both adulticides and insect growth regulators (some products such as Frontline Plus (which contains fipronil and (S)-methoprene) combine these in one treatment) in multiple-pet households) and treatment of the environment (vacuuming, insecticides, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastEditorUserId="13967" LastEditDate="2013-07-24T03:38:20.200" LastActivityDate="2013-07-24T03:38:20.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17077" CreationDate="2013-07-24T05:36:04.853" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;The radio station &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_J&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Triple J&lt;/a&gt; in Australia did this in 1989. Triple J is a government-funded and government-owned youth radio station that does does not have any commercial interests, and is controlled by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (and thus, nothing to gain through self-promotion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1989, they had been playing N.W.A's song &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck_tha_Police&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fuck Tha Police&lt;/a&gt; in their regular cycle for up to 6 months, before the song came the attention of the government and the owners of the station, the ABC. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130528120450/http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/30years/stories/s1286179.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ABC ordered the station to stop playing the song&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a protest, the station played &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Express_Yourself_%28N.W.A_song%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;N.W.A's Express Yourself&lt;/a&gt; on repeat for 24 hours, playing it approximately 360 times, and also included a portion of Fuck Tha Police in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuck_tha_Police#Censorship&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;their news theme music&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2240" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-05-20T18:31:06.857" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T18:31:06.857" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17085" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-24T14:53:33.490" Score="13" ViewCount="597" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately  I've been thrilled by the interesting phenomenon of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stone&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sliding stones&lt;/a&gt; (also known as sailing stones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oQL1v.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image of sliding rocks&quot;&gt;&#xA;Photo credit: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/4882084693/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA/GSFC/Maggie McAdam&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The stones move only every two or three years and most tracks develop&#xA;  over three or four years. Stones with rough bottoms leave straight&#xA;  striated tracks while those with smooth bottoms tend to wander. Stones&#xA;  sometimes turn over, exposing another edge to the ground and leaving a&#xA;  different track in the stone's wake&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several theories that explain how does this happen. Supposedly even the &lt;a href=&quot;http://geology.com/nasa/racetrack-playa/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA&lt;/a&gt; has researched this. The most accepted &lt;a href=&quot;http://geology.com/articles/racetrack-playa-sliding-rocks.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;theory&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few people have reported seeing Racetrack Playa covered by a thin&#xA;  layer of ice. One idea is that water freezes around the rocks and then&#xA;  wind, blowing across the top of the ice, drags the ice sheet with its&#xA;  embedded rocks across the surface of the playa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there are records of rocks up to 700 pounds (300 kg)! I find this very hard to believe. There are some tracks that records that show 90 degree turns which also seems very unlikely to be due to wind movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this phenomenon been reproduced to show wind could move a rock in these patterns? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8930" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:10:20.367" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T16:02:27.647" Title="Can a combination of wind and ice move a 700 lb (300 kg) rock?" Tags="|geology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17085" CreationDate="2013-07-24T15:37:58.453" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In (Lorenz 2011), they argue that yes, a combination of wind and ice can account for the movement of the rocks in the Racetrack Playa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They review the physical mechanics of rock movement, and calculate the necessary wind speeds to move rocks of varying sizes, with varying sizes of ice rafts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also demonstrate the plausibility of this mechanism with a tabletop experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They review other examples of bouyant rocks. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sainsbury noted tracks in sediments of the Thorne River Delta at Wales Island, Alaska. Here, the rocks, which are up to 1 kg, were rafted not by ice, but by kelp, which has air sacs that allow the seaweed to float (presumably an evolutionary adaptation to facilitate dispersion by wind). He noted that the trails were roughly at right angles to the tidal currents, suggesting that force due to wind was the likely cause of motion. Although the source of buoyancy and the appearance is different from the playa, the physics is fundamentally the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the caveat that no single set of criteria may define the conditions under which all rocks may move (that is, although ice facilitates their motion, motion may sometimes occur in its absence), we have argued that ice rafting provides a mechanism that requires only circumstances at the playa that have been observed to occur, both there and elsewhere, and allows motion to be driven by modest winds. This mechanism avoids the problem that the exceptional winds or large ice sails, which would otherwise be required, would lead to effects that are not observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, they don't claim that their argument applies to all rocks on the playa (for example, the 700lb rock you mention in the question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Observations&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Norris &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; (Norris 2014) report the first observations of this wind-and-ice effect. The observations happened in December 2013 and January 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A time-lapse video of one of the rocks in motion is here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCiBhmwAkGk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MT1iF.png&quot; width=&quot;300&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They observed that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;moving sheets of ice tens of meters in extent but only a few millimeters thick are clearly effective at moving rocks in their path&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A necessary condition for the rock motion we observed is the existence of a playa pool deep enough to submerge the southern section of the playa, yet shallow enough to leave many rocks partly exposed at the pond surface. Other repeating features of rock movement events that we observed include the presence of floating ice, temperatures and sunlight sufficient to create melt pools in the ice, and light breezes that are steady enough to drive floating ice. Although the ice breaks up around rocks, even thin moving ice sheets can generate sufficient force to drive rocks across the pool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The 700 lb rock&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The heaviest rock that Norris &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; instrumented with GPS was 16.6 kg, and they observed many more without recording their weight. However, I have not found any evidence that a 700lb rock was moved this way. They did not report observations of stones this heavy being moved this way, nor did they speculate about the maximum mass that could be moved by the wind and ice method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the original 7-year observation of Sharp and Carey (Sharp and Carey 1976), the most massive stone that moved was 25.4 kg. The 320 kg stone was an outlier, and the only the only rock that they catalogued that was greater than 25.4 kg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It lay at the north end of a nearly straight track bearing N20°W and extending 174 m directly outward from a point within 25 ft of the southshore. (Sharp and Carey 1976)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its position on the playa never changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question claims that &amp;quot;there are records of rocks up to 700 pounds (300 kg)&amp;quot;. Based on my research, that is better stated as &amp;quot;there is record of one rock that was 320 kg, and no record of it moving&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tim Cahill. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/11/death-valley/cahill-text/1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Raising Heaven: Where rocks go wandering&lt;/a&gt;. National Geographic. November, 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ralph D. Lorenz, Brian K. Jackson, Jason W. Barnes, Joe Spitale, and John M. Keller. &lt;em&gt;Ice rafts not sails: Floating the rocks at Racetrack Playa&lt;/em&gt;, Am. J. Phys. 79, 37 (2011), DOI:10.1119/1.3490645&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Norris RD, Norris JM, Lorenz RD, Ray J, Jackson B (2014) Sliding Rocks on Racetrack Playa, Death Valley National Park: First Observation of Rocks in Motion. PLoS ONE 9(8): e105948. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0105948&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sharp, Robert P., and Dwight L. Carey. &amp;quot;Sliding stones, Racetrack Playa, California.&amp;quot; Geological Society of America Bulletin 87, no. 12 (1976): 1704-1717.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T16:02:27.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2013-07-25T06:20:32.027" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been an &lt;a href=&quot;https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/ive-been-prescribed-an-antibiotic-should-i-take-a-probiotic/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article about probiotics on sciencebasedmedicine.org&lt;/a&gt;, that was (quite surprisingly given the sites record) cautiously positive. The article contains references for most if not all claims it does make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scott Gavura concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There’s reasonably good evidence that probiotics, when taken with antibiotics, will reduce the risk of antibiotic-associated diarrhea. There is still much to be learned about how these products can be used most effectively, which means it’s unlikely we will see routine use recommended for some time. However, the reassuring lack of side effects, and potential to reduce potentially serious complications of antibiotic treatment, suggests that probiotics may become a valuable addition to antibiotic therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6489" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T17:11:35.043" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T17:11:35.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17091" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17094" CreationDate="2013-07-25T07:12:17.023" Score="6" ViewCount="966" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to: &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_can%27t_japan_have_a_navy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wiki.answers.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under the rules of occupation in 1945, Japan was ordered to comply&#xA;  with US/Allied restrictions: War is illegal for Japan to engage in;&#xA;  other than self defense. That is why the Armed Forces of Japan are now&#xA;  called &quot;SELF DEFENSE FORCES.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Actually it is simply a NAME CHANGE; The Self Defense Air Force can&#xA;  still fight; the Self Defense Ground Force can still fight; and the&#xA;  Maritime Self Defense Force has warships. Added to the NAME CHANGE is&#xA;  Japan's Law (Ordered by the Occupation Forces): These Forces CANNOT&#xA;  engage in &quot;Combat&quot; (other than in self-defense); such as Operation&#xA;  Desert Storm in January to February 1991. Japan could send NON-COMBAT&#xA;  units to Iraq, but not Fighter Planes, tanks, Infantrymen, and&#xA;  Warships. They could send Engineer Units, Medical Units,&#xA;  Administrative Support Units, Transportation Units, etc. These&#xA;  restrictions were similar to that applied to Germany after WW1.&#xA;  Germany was not allowed a Large Army, Air Force, or Navy (especially&#xA;  submarines). Only enough armed forces to defend themselves. However,&#xA;  history has shown that Germany got around these restrictions, as they&#xA;  did re-arm and end up fighting in WW2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this still valid? Does it mean that Japan cannot fight a war except in self defense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In answer to some comments below: &#xA;I read about this from a Facebook post, did not believe it and did a Google search. Found this article BUT, since this is a wiki article we cannot be entirely sure about its genuinity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13680" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2013-07-25T22:57:55.660" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T22:57:55.660" Title="Why can't Japan have a navy?" Tags="|war|japan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2013-07-25T15:32:44.717" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13887" CreationDate="2013-07-25T08:51:36.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, unless the operation is necessary and doesn't directly kill the fetus.&lt;/strong&gt; (Some Catholics might consider that these cases do not constitute abortions. I haven't found clear official declarations one way or the other on this semantics issue.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;In-depth&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Church teaches that the unborn are human persons like you and I. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a5.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Catechism&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the unborn are human persons, deliberate killing is almost always wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some cases in which killing is not immoral. The principle of double effect explains why killing in self-defense is often not immoral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. &amp;quot;The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one's own life; and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended, the other is not.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2269] Unintentional killing is not morally imputable. But one is not exonerated from grave offense if, without proportionate reasons, he has acted in a way that brings about someone's death, even without the intention to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are some cases in which letting someone die can be a moral choice. Again, the principle of double effect explains this. &lt;strong&gt;For example, if the lives of two people are in danger, and only one can be saved.&lt;/strong&gt; This applies in the case of abortion. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01046b.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Catholic Encyclopedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if medical treatment or surgical operation, necessary to save a mother's life, is applied to her organism (though the child's death would, or at least might, follow as a regretted but unavoidable consequence), it should not be maintained that the fetal life is thereby directly attacked. [...] The death of the child is not intended, and every reasonable precaution is taken to save its life; the immediate effect intended, the mother's life, is good — no harm is done to the child in order to save the mother — the saving of the mother's life is in itself as good as the saving of the child's life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, the Church teaches that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The unborn have &amp;quot;the rights of a person&amp;quot;, including the right to live.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is morally permissible to let one person die to save another, &lt;em&gt;if necessary&lt;/em&gt;. This includes life-saving operations on the mother that cause the fetus to die, as long as the fetus is not directly killed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is morally permissible to kill an attacker to save another's life, &lt;em&gt;if necessary&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But it is not morally permissible to kill one non-attacker to save another.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10608" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T04:28:42.890" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17091" CreationDate="2013-07-25T10:44:52.863" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Legal status&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Japanese Constitution, despite recent attempts to change that, still contains Article 9, renouncing war:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ARTICLE 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on&#xA;  justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a&#xA;  sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means&#xA;  of settling international disputes. (2) To accomplish the aim of the&#xA;  preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war&#xA;  potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the&#xA;  state will not be recognized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been two recent attempts to modify the constitution, including above mentioned article&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2005 constitution draft:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First paragraph of Article 9, renouncing war, is retained. The second&#xA;  paragraph, forbidding the maintenance of &quot;land, sea, and air forces,&#xA;  as well as other war potential&quot; is replaced by an Article 9-2 which&#xA;  permits a &quot;defence force&quot;, under control of the Prime Minister, which&#xA;  defends the nation and may participate in international activities.&#xA;  This new section uses the term &quot;軍&quot; (gun, army or military), which has&#xA;  been avoided under the current constitution. Also, addition in Article&#xA;  76 of military courts. Members of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces are&#xA;  currently tried as civilians by civilian courts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2012 draft (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;National Security:&lt;/em&gt; The LDP draft &lt;strong&gt;deletes the current provision declaring that armed forces and other war potential shall never be&#xA;  maintained&lt;/strong&gt;, and adds new Articles 9-2 and 9-3 stating that the&#xA;  &quot;National Defense Force&quot; shall be set up and the Prime Minister shall&#xA;  be its commander-in-chief. According to the papagraph (3) of the new&#xA;  Article 9-2, the National Defense Force not only can defend the&#xA;  territory from a foreign attack and can participate in international&#xA;  peacekeeping operations, but also can operate in order to either&#xA;  maintain domestic public order or to protect individual rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, that this is only a draft and there is long way from this draft to actually changing the constitution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Draft changes can be submitted to the Lower House with the support of&#xA;  100 or more lawmakers, while Upper House lawmakers need the support of&#xA;  at least 50 members. The proposals must be made item by item in&#xA;  accordance to each individual theme and not as a whole package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Article 96 stipulates that the draft must ultimately be approved with&#xA;  a two-thirds vote in both chambers before being put to a public&#xA;  referendum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the 2010 referendum law, all Japanese citizens aged 18&#xA;  and older can participate in the referendum and the bid must win a&#xA;  majority in order to actually take effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Experts said there are many hurdles in the technical process, making&#xA;  it difficult to amend the Constitution — a fact that is criticized by&#xA;  those in favor of change and welcomed by opponents. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/05/01/news/constitution-again-faces-calls-for-revision-to-meet-reality/&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Military strength&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Japan is anything but weak militarily:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite calling its troops the &quot;Self-Defense Forces,&quot; Japan has one of&#xA;  the world's biggest military budgets at 4.81 trillion yen (41.6&#xA;  billion dollars) a year. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Breaking_Taboo_Japan_Votes_To_Create_Defense_Ministry_999.html&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Japanese navy is one of the most powerful in the world, with numerous very modern and powerful ships such as for example 6 AEGIS destroyers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/japan/ship.htm&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt; (4 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kong%C5%8D-class_destroyer&quot;&gt;Kongō class&lt;/a&gt; and 2 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atago_class_destroyer&quot;&gt;Atago class&lt;/a&gt;). In fact their navy ranks 4th, behind USA, Russia and China, but ahead of UK, France and India &lt;a href=&quot;http://military-navy-army-airforce.blogspot.nl/2012/10/list-of-top-10-largest-navies-in-world.html&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Recent changes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart of aforementioned draft changes to the constitution, there have been some changes to Japanese military structure. For example in 2006 Ministry of Defense was created, before there have been only Defense Agency with much lower status, than fully-fledged ministry &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Breaking_Taboo_Japan_Votes_To_Create_Defense_Ministry_999.html&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;. One of the consequences of that is that overseas deployments no longer need approval of the parliament (source as above). Another consequence of that was changing prefix of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Maritime_Self-Defense_Force&quot;&gt;JMSDF&lt;/a&gt;'s ships from JDS (Japanese Defense Ship) to JS (Japanese Ship). Seems like a minor name change, but shows direction of the changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-07-25T15:32:21.903" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T15:32:21.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17095" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-25T20:14:43.037" Score="1" ViewCount="72" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this article that says males and females feel pain &quot;differently&quot;, but doesn't suggest one necessarily feels &quot;more&quot; pain from the same impacted force/stimuli:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://healthyliving.msn.com/health-wellness/do-women-have-a-higher-pain-threshold-1?pageart=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://healthyliving.msn.com/health-wellness/do-women-have-a-higher-pain-threshold-1?pageart=2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, MythBusters performed the ice water hand hold test:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/04/23/mythbusters-confirms-whether-women-tolerate-pain-better-than-men/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/04/23/mythbusters-confirms-whether-women-tolerate-pain-better-than-men/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there's debates on whether holding your hand longer in ice actually constitutes more pain threshold in its entirety, as environmental and hereditary factors can take place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many U.S. military sergeants, Marines, and others have debated that women do not have the capability to fight in a battle field and endure the effects of war as a man can, due to being too physically taxing and strenous on their bodies. However, in the U.S., females can join infantry; there's no longer a law against it, that is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in conclusion, has it been verified in any way that men/women can feel more pain than men/women?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14732" LastActivityDate="2013-07-25T20:14:43.037" Title="Evidence that girls/women feel pain greater than boys/men?" Tags="|pain|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-07-26T00:26:22.800" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5063" CreationDate="2013-07-26T09:17:56.840" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read about a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/DownloadFile.ashx?pdf=1&amp;amp;FileId=7946&amp;amp;articleId=52016&amp;amp;Version=1&amp;amp;ContentTypeId=21&amp;amp;FileName=fpsyg-04-00453.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;new study that appeared in Frontiers in Psychology&lt;/a&gt; yesterday that is relevant to this question. It is open access, fairly readable and short, so I encourage you to check it out yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors let German students construct a 9/11 narrative using a card deck with story elements. When they included more extreme statements, the number of official statements used dropped. This might be seen as evidence for shifting the Overton window by using extreme statements.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The authors also make the case that this mechanism may have been at work during the debate about Sarrazin's book &quot;Deutschland schafft sich ab&quot; (basically a German version of the Bell curve debate I talked about in my other answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper also has some general relevance for skeptics.SE because it's about how conspiracy theories form in people's minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Abstract&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reptile prime ministers and flying Nazi saucers—extreme and sometimes off-wall conclusion are typical ingredients of conspiracy theories. While individual differences are a common research topic concerning conspiracy theories, the role of extreme statements in the process of acquiring and passing on conspiratorial stories has not been regarded in an experimental design so far. We identified six morphological components of conspiracy theories empirically. On the basis of these content categories a set of narrative elements for a 9/11 story was compiled. These elements varied systematically in terms of conspiratorial allegation, i.e., they contained official statements concerning the events of 9/11, statements alleging to a conspiracy limited in time and space as well as extreme statements indicating an all-encompassing cover-up. Using the method of narrative construction, 30 people were given a set of cards with these statements and asked to construct the course of events of 9/11 they deem most plausible. When extreme statements were present in the set, the resulting stories were more conspiratorial; the number of official statements included in the narrative dropped significantly, whereas the self-assessment of the story’s plausibility did not differ between conditions. This indicates that blatant statements in a pool of information foster the synthesis of conspiracy theories on an individual level. By relating these findings to one of Germany’s most successful (and controversial) non-fiction books, we refer to the real-world dangers of this effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Limitations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study had a very small sample (30 in total). The study was vulnerable to expectancy effects from both researchers (scored card decks, knew condition) and students (they might have guessed the objective and helped along, manipulation was not subtle) and several outcomes were used, several of which could have been interpreted as supporting the hypothesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, I wouldn't place too much trust in their findings until they're replicated in a much larger sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T09:17:56.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17102" CreationDate="2013-07-26T14:29:39.493" Score="11" ViewCount="1534" Body="&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://abstrusegoose.com/525&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;there is a nice webcomic&lt;/a&gt;  with a similar theme, I'm talking about a hopefully more reliable claim: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Science_of_Discworld&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Science of Discworld&lt;/a&gt; alternates between chapters written by fantasy author &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Pratchett&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Terry Pratchett&lt;/a&gt; about the fantasy setting of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld_(world)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Discworld's&lt;/a&gt; wizards having (accidentally) created Earth inside a glass bowl and observing its evolution fast forwarded, and chapters written by mathematician &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Stewart_(mathematician)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ian Stewart&lt;/a&gt; and biologist &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Cohen_(scientist)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jack Cohen&lt;/a&gt; trying to elaborate on the scientific part of the respective epoch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now while one of the fantasy chapters describes a pre-human (in fact, some large lizards, you know, dinosaurs) civilization that is then extinguished by a meteor (and was made-up for all we know), the following scientific chapter states the following (bold emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order not to mislead you, we should point out at once that there is no scientific evidence for the existence of any dinosaur &lt;em&gt;civ­ilization&lt;/em&gt;, no matter what events are going on in the Roundworld Project. But... whenever a scientist says 'there is no scientific evi­dence for', there are three important questions you should ask -especially if it's a government scientist. These are: 'Is there any evi­dence &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt;?, 'Has anyone looked?', and 'If they did, would they expect to find anything?'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answers here are 'no,' 'no', and 'no'. Deep Time hides a lot, especially when it's assisted by continental movement, the bulldoz­ing ice sheets, volcanic action and the occasional doomed asteroid. &lt;strong&gt;There are few surviving &lt;em&gt;human&lt;/em&gt; artefacts more than ten thousand years old, and if we died out today, the only evidence of our civi­lization that might survive for a million years would be a few dead probes in deep space and various bits of debris on the Moon.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Sixty-five&lt;/em&gt; million? Not a chance. So although a dinosaurian civilization is pure fantasy, or, rather, pure speculation, we can't rule it out &lt;em&gt;absolutely&lt;/em&gt;. As for dinosaurs who were sufficiently advanced to use tools, herd other dinosaurs ... well, Deep Time would wash over them without a ripple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is that true? Would the civilization of mankind, once perished for a million years, leave no traces more noticeable than the dinosaurs' bones are to us nowadays?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1197" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-07T17:52:18.073" Title="How much traces lasting a million years would human civilization leave after perishing?" Tags="|history|evolution|intelligence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17100" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-26T16:05:50.667" Score="8" ViewCount="1989" Body="&lt;p&gt;By &quot;cracking your neck&quot; I mean tilting your head sideways down to the shoulder (and maybe using your hand to pull it further), producing a cracking/popping sound. Many people tell me it's &quot;dangerous&quot;. I've heard completely conflicting opinions from different doctors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14748" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T18:39:57.737" Title="Is &quot;cracking your neck&quot; harmful?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16027" CreationDate="2013-07-26T16:57:51.183" Score="8" Body="&lt;h3&gt;1. Caveat&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is going to be an unsatisfactory answer, for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Boardman's claim is ambiguous: how are we to interpret the &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; in &quot;you are statistically more likely to have a head injury walking&quot;? A statistically average person in the country, considered over some period of time such as a year? Someone considering making a particular journey and wondering which mode is riskier? Or someone else?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I could find no official statistics which break down casualties by location of injury, so we're going to have to put up with &quot;killed&quot; and &quot;killed or injured&quot; as proxies for head injury figures in what follows.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;These statistics seem likely to undercount injuries to pedestrians (relative to cyclists), because they only include road casualties that have been reported to the police. Many (perhaps most) injuries to pedestrians will not be reported as road casualties (either because they did not occur on a road, or because no vehicle was involved).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(No doubt you can think of more problems. Point them out in the comments, but please see if you can find relevant statistics. The difficulty here is not in spotting biases, but in finding data to address them.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2. Absolute figures&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Great Britain in 2012, the average person was about 3.5 times as likely to be killed in a road traffic accident when walking as when cycling (and about 1.8 times as likely to be killed or seriously injured).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/ras30-reported-casualties-in-road-accidents&quot;&gt;Road Accident Statistics - Table RAS30001 - Reported road casualties by road user type and severity, Great Britain&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                          2008    2009    2010    2011    2012&#xA;PEDESTRIANS&#xA;==============================================================&#xA;Killed                     572     500     405     453     420&#xA;Seriously injured        6,070   5,545   5,200   5,454   5,559&#xA;KSI                      6,642   6,045   5,605   5,907   5,979&#xA;Slightly injured        21,840  20,842  20,240  20,291  19,239&#xA;All casualties          28,482  26,887  25,845  26,198  25,218&#xA;==============================================================&#xA;&#xA;PEDAL CYCLISTS&#xA;==============================================================&#xA;Killed                     115     104     111     107     118&#xA;Seriously injured        2,450   2,606   2,660   3,085   3,222&#xA;KSI                      2,565   2,710   2,771   3,192   3,340&#xA;Slightly injured        13,732  14,354  14,414  16,023  15,751&#xA;All casualties          16,297  17,064  17,185  19,215  19,091&#xA;==============================================================&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;3. By distance&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Great Britain in 2012, per kilometre travelled, the average person was about as likely to be killed in a road traffic accident when walking as when cycling, but about half as likely to be seriously injured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/35599/nts0305.xls&quot;&gt;National Travel Survey - Table NTS0305 - Average distance travelled by mode, Great Britain&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                          2008    2009    2010    2011    2012&#xA;==============================================================&#xA;Kilometres walked          311     316     294     301     290&#xA;Kilometres cycled           68      73      68      79      85&#xA;==============================================================&#xA;&#xA;PEDESTRIANS (per 100 million kilometres walked)&#xA;==============================================================&#xA;Killed                     3.0     2.6     2.2     2.5     2.4&#xA;Seriously injured         31.8    28.6    28.8    29.5    31.2&#xA;KSI                       34.8    31.2    31.0    31.9    33.5&#xA;Slightly injured         114.4   107.6   112.0   109.7   107.9&#xA;All casualties           149.2   138.8   143.0   141.7   141.5&#xA;==============================================================&#xA;&#xA;PEDAL CYCLISTS  (per 100 million kilometres cycled)&#xA;==============================================================&#xA;Killed                     2.8     2.3     2.6     2.2     2.3&#xA;Seriously injured         59.0    57.9    63.5    63.9    61.9&#xA;KSI                       61.8    60.2    66.1    66.2    64.2&#xA;Slightly injured         330.9   319.1   343.9   332.1   302.8&#xA;All casualties           392.7   379.4   410.0   398.3   367.0&#xA;==============================================================&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;4. Summary&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Boardman is likely correct when considering a statistically average person in the country, and likely wrong when considering which transport mode to use for a particular journey. But I think his broader point is a fair one: the difference in casualty rates between the two modes of transport is not big enough to justify treating them differently in law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14749" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T16:57:51.183" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17099" CreationDate="2013-07-26T17:24:43.087" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The concept of the &quot;anthropocene&quot; answers your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene&quot;&gt;Wikipedia — The Anthropocene&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/Quirks+and+Quarks/Full+Episodes/2010/ID/1580124639/&quot;&gt;Quirks and Quarks — The Anthropocene: The epoch of humans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term was coined &quot;because a growing number of geologists think that human activity is having such an impact on our world that we're inaugurating a new geological interval. It's signature will be detectable &lt;em&gt;many millions of years from now.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (Quirks and Quarks)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proposed marks we'll leave in the geological record:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &quot;building&quot; strata: the materials that makes up our cities will add an identifiable strata to the record in the right parts of Earth (Quirks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sea level increases will cover red soils with black mud (Quirks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Changes to the isotopic composition of soils reflecting environmental change (Quirks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Plastic (Quirks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Biostratigraphic changes: changes in distributions of animal fossils due to climate-caused migration, extinctions, and physical translocation of species by humans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increased acidity in the oceans will cause reef coral deaths, and will dissolve away lime sediments (this type of effect is quite clear in previous global warming periods) (Quirks)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The impact that humanity has had is geologically quite abrupt, and may be difficult to distinguish from a meteorite impact. (Quirks)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-07-26T17:57:17.077" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T17:57:17.077" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16510" CreationDate="2013-07-26T18:30:33.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's generally accepted by most employers (certainly in the UK) that smokers on average will take more time off due to associated illnesses than those who don't smoke (tobacco).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is information relating to a recent study into this subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/9644859/Smokers-extra-sick-days-cost-UK-businesses-1.4bn-a-year.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/9644859/Smokers-extra-sick-days-cost-UK-businesses-1.4bn-a-year.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately the actual research findings don't appear to be available online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also it's a legal requirement in the UK that workers get regular breaks but the exact length and frequency of the break depends on the type of work undertaken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, according to the above research it is more expensive on average to hire a smoker than a non-smoker if you pay sick pay.  If not then there's the inconvenience of lost productivity when they're sick etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7004" LastActivityDate="2013-07-26T18:30:33.610" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17105" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17128" CreationDate="2013-07-27T02:48:15.210" Score="4" ViewCount="1566" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a &lt;a href=&quot;http://boingboing.net/2008/08/01/blind-painter-esref.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;number&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://paintingperceptions.com/uncategorized/esref-armagan-painter-born-without-eyes-is-it-perceptual&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; online about a blind, Turkish painter, Eşref Armağan. born without eyes, including a short &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E%C5%9Fref_Arma%C4%9Fan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia entry&lt;/a&gt;. Purportedly, he's able to create paintings with color and perspective, representing real-world images in a way that's recognizable to sighted people. One of these includes a painting of Bill Clinton:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WPpHD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Painting of Bill Clinton by Eşref Armağan&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The explanations of his ability seem overly simplistic. They tend to state something along the lines of the visual center of his brain becoming active when he paints, using his sense of touch, smell, and knowledge gained from other people to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not convinced that description and practice, along with activity in the visual center of the brain, could allow a person who was blind from birth to create images with recognizably correct shape, color. light and shadow that are easily recognizable to a sighted person. The paintings aren't especially abstract. This seems very fishy to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any scientifically rigorous sources backing up his claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14758" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-07-27T02:56:01.847" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T04:15:06.023" Title="Is Eşref Armağan an eyeless painter?" Tags="|physiology|art|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16510" CreationDate="2013-07-27T03:33:32.880" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Swedish summary appears to refer to this paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2013/05/25/tobaccocontrol-2012-050888.abstract&quot;&gt;Estimating the cost of a smoking employee&lt;/a&gt;, Micah Berman, Rob Crane, Eric Seiber, Mehmet Munur&#xA;Tob Control, doi:10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2012-050888&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was an economic analysis based on existing literature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We examined absenteeism, presenteesim, smoking breaks, healthcare costs and pension benefits for smokers. [...] Our best estimate of the annual excess cost to employ a smoker is $5816. This estimate should be taken as a general indicator of the extent of excess costs, not as a predictive point value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the Daygens Nyheter summary seems reasonable. There was a study that did draw these conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether the study itself is accurate is more difficult to assess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was published in a prestigious, peer-reviewed scientific journal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was only published recently, so it is a bit early to check whether the scientific community has cited it approvingly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I checked on one author, and it was within their area of expertise.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is consistent with similar approaches/findings from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6963/13/278&quot;&gt;Germany&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.12015/abstract&quot;&gt;the UK&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They document potential biases, and discuss how they have attempted to minimise them.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems reasonable to provisionally accept these findings until counter-evidence is found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It almost goes without saying: Correlation does not imply causation. It may not be the tobacco alone that account for the increased costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-07-27T06:17:45.707" LastActivityDate="2013-07-27T06:17:45.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17107" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-27T03:36:47.290" Score="25" ViewCount="3477" Body="&lt;p&gt;Islamic scholars claim that Quran's preservation is the one of the most miraculous aspects of Quran. In fact, a major reason for muslims to believe in the Quran was the preservation of Quran, which is a promise from God.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whyislam.org/submission/the-holy-quran/the-preservation/&quot;&gt;For example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is an incontrovertible historical truth that the text of the Glorious Qur’an extant today is, syllable for syllable, exactly the same as the Prophet (p) had offered to the world as the Word of God.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia describes the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Quran#Oldest_surviving_copy&quot;&gt;oldest surviving copies of the Quran&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the current Quran the same as the oldest surviving copy? (I accept script style difference and vowel marking difference, for the vowel markings were added later for pronunciation. Therefore I would consider them to be the same if every letter is unchanged.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If so, what evidence is there that they are the same as it was at Muhammad's time?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please try to stick to the history side rather than the religion side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14754" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2016-12-05T07:21:03.383" LastActivityDate="2018-04-09T07:25:29.710" Title="Has the Quran (the recitation) been preserved since Muhammad?" Tags="|history|religion|islam|religious-texts|quran|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17110" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-27T10:56:58.033" Score="2" ViewCount="8505" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avclub.com/articles/kumail-nanjiani-on-why-he-hates-rems-everybody-hur,100572/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kumail Nanjiani on why he hates R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above article on the A.V. Club website makes the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This might not be true, but the legend is that this is the song that Kurt Cobain had cued up in his CD player when he was found dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FeelNumb website makes a similar claim - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.feelnumb.com/2011/02/27/kurt-cobain-was-listening-to-r-e-m-s-automatic-for-the-people-before-he-took-his-life/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kurt Cobain Was Listening To R.E.M.’s “Automatic For The People” Before He Took His Life&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Everybody Hurts is on the album Automatic For The People)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are these claims true?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Kurt_Cobain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Death of Kurt Cobain&lt;/a&gt; makes no mention of these claims, neither does the article for &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everybody_Hurts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Everybody Hurts&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-07-27T20:18:25.267" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T14:15:13.307" Title="Was Kurt Cobain listening to R.E.M.'s Everybody Hurts when he killed himself?" Tags="|history|music|musicians|suicide|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17110" CreationDate="2013-07-28T14:15:13.307" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Was Kurt Cobain listening to R.E.M.'s Everybody Hurts when he killed himself?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody can answer this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are no known witnesses to Cobain's death. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justiceforkurt.com/investigation/documents/major_investigation_summary.shtml&quot;&gt;Investigation summary&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cobain did not document that he was listening to or intended to listen to this song when he died. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/00/Kurt%27sNote.jpg&quot;&gt;Suicide note&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The time of death estimate is broad: April 5, 1994. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justiceforkurt.com/investigation/documents/death_certificate.shtml&quot;&gt;Death certificate&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justiceforkurt.com/investigation/documents/major_investigation_summary.shtml&quot;&gt;Investigation summary&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Cobain had been dead for several days&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.) This prevents any attempt to determine what would have been playing on any radio or TV when he died.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The evidence log does not contain a CD or player. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justiceforkurt.com/investigation/documents/crime_scene_evidence.shtml&quot;&gt;Evidence log&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The incident report has no mention of a CD or player. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justiceforkurt.com/investigation/documents/incident_report.shtml&quot;&gt;Incident report&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The follow-up report describing the room has no mention of a CD or player. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justiceforkurt.com/investigation/documents/follow_up_report.shtml&quot;&gt;Follow-up report&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-07-28T14:15:13.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15801" CreationDate="2013-07-29T00:33:42.233" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;These articles state it can be done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-growth-fueled-by-need-to-target-terrorists/2013/07/21/24c93cf4-f0b1-11e2-bed3-b9b6fe264871_story.html&quot;&gt;Washington Post - NSA growth fueled by need to target terrorists&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/07/how-nsa-using-cell-phone-data-drone-civilians-pakistan/67436/&quot;&gt;The Atlantic Wire - How the NSA Is Using Cell Phone Data to Drone Civilians (In Pakistan)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By September 2004, a new NSA technique enabled the agency to find&#xA;  cellphones even when they were turned off. JSOC troops called this&#xA;  “The Find,” and it gave them thousands of new targets, including&#xA;  members of a burgeoning al-Qaeda-sponsored insurgency in Iraq,&#xA;  according to members of the unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.erratasec.com/2013/07/no-nsa-cant-track-phones-even-when-off.html&quot;&gt;Errata Security (blog) - Depends on what &quot;off&quot; is&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A secondary, ulta low power &quot;baseband&quot; processor remains &quot;on&quot; to&#xA;  listen to the cell tower. When the baseband processor detects an&#xA;  incoming call, it turns the rest of the phone back &quot;on&quot;. Especially&#xA;  with older &quot;feature phones&quot;, turning the phone &quot;completely off&quot;&#xA;  would sometimes leave the baseband processor still &quot;on&quot;, thus allowing&#xA;  you to be tracked. For example, sometimes the phone had a timing circuit&#xA;  that will occasionally turn on the baseband to grab SMS messages every 10 minutes &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On most Nokia phones, the alarm still rings even when the phone is turned &quot;off.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wright.edu/rsp/Security/V2comint/Cellular.htm&quot;&gt;Wright State University - Cellular Security&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter&#xA;  for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the&#xA;  phone. This is done by transmitting to the cell phone a maintenance&#xA;  command on the control channel. This command places the cellular&#xA;  telephone in the &quot;diagnostic mode.&quot; When this is done, conversations&#xA;  in the immediate area of the telephone can be monitored over the voice&#xA;  channel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nplusonemag.com/leave-your-cellphone-at-home&quot;&gt;n+1 - Leave Your Cellphone at Home&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the police can potentially push updates onto your phone that&#xA;  backdoor it and allow it to be turned into a microphone remotely, and&#xA;  do other stuff like that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brighthub.com/electronics/gps/articles/51103.aspx&quot;&gt;Bright Hub - Cell Phone Tracking With The Power Off&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simply put, yes, it can be done. Technical details aside, your cell&#xA;  phone can be remotely powered on and off without either your consent&#xA;  or your knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14780" LastEditorUserId="14780" LastEditDate="2013-07-29T14:10:20.430" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T14:10:20.430" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17125" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-29T01:44:10.023" Score="19" ViewCount="1586" Body="&lt;p&gt;Members of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;intelligent design (ID)&lt;/a&gt; movement, when responding to arguments that journal articles don't support ID, &lt;strong&gt;claim that peer-reviewed scientific journals typically reject articles critical of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;theory of evolution&lt;/a&gt; which propose some form of ID, regardless of the papers' scientific merit&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Spetner&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Lee Spetner&lt;/a&gt;, a physicist known for arguing against the theory of evolution saying mutations must be guided by an outside intelligence, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trueorigin.org/spetner2.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;made the claim thus&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since they [evolutionists] control the literature in evolution, they reject papers that seriously criticize it. Many authors have attempted to publish such papers and they have been rejected, not because they are flawed, but for tangential reasons. I have submitted such papers; one was rejected for &quot;not being of sufficient interest&quot;, and another was rejected for &quot;not being sufficiently focused.&quot; So they love to use the catch that objections such as mine to neo-Darwinian theory &quot;have not been published in peer refereed journals.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, there was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sternberg_peer_review_controversy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;controversy surrounding an ID journal article&lt;/a&gt; written by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_C._Meyer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Stephen Meyer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.discovery.org/a/2640&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;even according to the Discovery Institute&lt;/a&gt; there are several peer-reviewed journal articles that offer various criticisms of the theory of evolution in favor of ID, this doesn't necessarily speak to the proportion of such articles that were rejected, and even among those, the biological science journal articles don't explicitly propose ID and typically just question a particular aspect of current evolutionary theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there in fact an unfair standard imposed upon ID proponents to keep them out of the peer-reviewed scientific literature?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14458" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-08-18T08:18:20.797" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T15:49:54.667" Title="Do peer-reviewed scientific journals reject articles that propose intelligent design, regardless of merit?" Tags="|evolution|scientific-papers|intelligent-design|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17126" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17131" CreationDate="2013-07-29T02:08:33.827" Score="22" ViewCount="24044" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some anti-microwave evangelists make the claim that the USSR banned microwave ovens in 1976 following a study which raised health concerns. Sometimes an additional claim is made that the ban lasted into the 90s. This sounds like an urban legend to me; I'm having difficulty finding an authoritative source verifying any of it. Did the ban actually happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1385" LastActivityDate="2015-01-01T13:43:19.203" Title="Did the Soviet Union ban microwave ovens in 1976?" Tags="|history|microwaves|soviet-union|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17105" CreationDate="2013-07-29T04:15:06.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, Eşref Armağan is a painter without properly developed eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://rense.com/general62/see.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://rense.com/general62/see.htm&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524841.700&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524841.700&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Armagan was born 51 years ago in one of Istanbul's poorer neighbourhoods. One of his eyes failed to develop beyond a rudimentary bud, the other is stunted and scarred. It is impossible to know if he had some vision as an infant, but he certainly never saw normally and his brain detects no light now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T04:15:06.023" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17130" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-29T06:43:26.487" Score="2" ViewCount="2400" Body="&lt;p&gt;Jacob Barnett is a young prodigy that is currently pursuing a Master's degree in a quantum physics related field at the age of 15. A couple of months ago, I spotted a number of special interest stories on the internet claiming that he was a candidate (or likely to be a candidate) for the Nobel prize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what I make out to be the earliest instance of this claim, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22477958&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an interview by BBC of the boy and his mother on a morning show&lt;/a&gt;. The interview and accompanying writeup is entitled, &quot;Autistic teenager tipped for Nobel Prize&quot;. Here is a (by no means exhaustive) list of similar writeups found on the internet: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Autistic kid 'smarter than Einstein' predicted to win Nobel Prize&quot; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://now.msn.com/jacob-barnett-autistic-teen-predicted-to-possibly-win-nobel-prize&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MSN&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Autistic Teen Favored To Win Nobel Prize: Jacob Barnett, 14, Is Studying For A Masters In Quantum Physics&quot; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/15412/20130510/jacob-barnett-autism-nobel-prize-genius-iq.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Medical Daily&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Jacob Barnett, 14-Year-Old With Asperger's Syndrome, May Be Smarter Than Einstein&quot; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/11/jacob-barnett-autistic-14-year-old-nobel-prize_n_3254920.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt; (see third paragraph)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now as we all know, the Nobel prize is not awarded for being prodigiously smart, but for groundbreaking advancements or findings in a particular scientific field. Unfortunately, most of these articles seem to focus on the human interest angle, rather that what Jacob is actually working on. None of them elaborate on the claim that he is a (potential?) Nobel nominee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is this: is there evidence that Jacob has published work that adds to our current model or forces us to significantly reconsider it, and that such work has been noted by the Nobel committee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: Is there any merit to the claim that Jacob Barnett has been &quot;tipped for the Nobel Prize&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11677" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-04-26T08:15:42.657" LastActivityDate="2019-04-26T08:15:42.657" Title="What is Jacob Barnett predicted to win the Nobel prize for?" Tags="|physics|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2013-07-29T23:48:38.897" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17131" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17126" CreationDate="2013-07-29T09:36:03.290" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there was no such ban. Several sources:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://impiorg.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/did-russia-ban-microwave-ovens-at-some-point-in-the-past/&quot;&gt;http://impiorg.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/did-russia-ban-microwave-ovens-at-some-point-in-the-past/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One such rumor that has been lighting up the internet is the claim that, in the past, Russia had banned microwave ovens. Within IMPI we could not find a source for this assertion, though one of our members, the eminent engineer and scientist Dr. John Osepchuk wrote the rebuttal, below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_were_microwaves_banned_in_Russia&quot;&gt;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_were_microwaves_banned_in_Russia&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was no law that banned microwave ovens in the old Soviet Union, William Kopp made this up for his article many years ago. Several debunkers have trawled the USSR legal code without success trying to find the law - or the law that repealed it during perestroika. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://itsaweirdweirdworld.blogspot.nl/2010/05/are-microwave-ovens-safe.html&quot;&gt;http://itsaweirdweirdworld.blogspot.nl/2010/05/are-microwave-ovens-safe.html&lt;/a&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A number of internet sites will tell you that Russia banned microwave ovens in 1976 -- and yet these web authors always offer this claim without footnotes and without any hyperlink to a reliable source. The Wikipedia discussion here offers convincing details about the types of microwave ovens produced in Russia during the 1980s -- including model numbers and the names of the factories where the product was manufactured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If the former Soviet Union really had banned microwave ovens in 1976, Western propagandists would have discussed the matter endlessly in the 1980s and late 1970s. They didn't. Similarly, Soviet propagandists would have scored the U.S. for promoting a dangerous device. They didn't.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4080&quot;&gt;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4080&lt;/a&gt; asserts that the claim may related to the fact that microwave ovens were simply not available in the USSR for economic reasons, turned by conspiracy theorists into a non-existent ban.&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Microwave Militia also makes claims such as microwave ovens are illegal in Russia or other parts of Europe. This is just a straight-up lie. Microwaves are perfectly legal in Russia and everywhere else in Europe. In fact I was not able to find a single country in the world that bans microwave ovens. They're regulated, of course, like all electric appliances; but regulation should not be mischaracterized as a ban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T09:36:03.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17130" CreationDate="2013-07-29T12:30:37.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being &quot;tipped&quot; to win the Nobel prize means somebody has predicted that he will win the Nobel prize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=tip&amp;amp;tbs=dfn:1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tipped&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;Predict as likely to win or achieve something.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is one person making the prediction: &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldtravaillers.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/jacob-barnett/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://worldtravaillers.wordpress.com/2013/07/08/jacob-barnett/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jacob is well on his way to winning a Nobel Prize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T12:30:37.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17134" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15159" CreationDate="2013-07-29T19:45:09.473" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the particular protease and cooking temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Santé-Lhoutellier 2008):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meat cooking affected myofibrillar protein susceptibility to proteases, with increased or decreased rates, depending on the nature of the protease and the time/temperature parameters. Results showed a direct and quantitative relationship between protein carbonylation (p &amp;lt; 0.01) and aggregation (p &amp;lt; 0.05) induced by cooking and proteolytic susceptibility to pepsin. However, no such correlations have been observed with trypsin and α-chymotrypsin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The change of an amino group by a carbonyl group can modify the redox properties of proteins and so can disturb the recognition of proteins by proteases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Bax 2012), an &lt;em&gt;in vitro&lt;/em&gt; study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At 70 °C, the proteins underwent denaturation that enhanced the speed of pepsin digestion by increasing enzyme accessibility to protein cleavage sites. Above 100 °C, oxidation-related protein aggregation slowed pepsin digestion but improved meat protein overall digestibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Bax 2013), an &lt;em&gt;in vivo&lt;/em&gt; study on &amp;quot;the effect of meat cooking temperature on the parameters of protein digestion in the small intestine, using the minipig as a model animal&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An in vitro approach has revealed that cooking temperature is one of the key determinants of digestion speed.  Relative to raw meat, the speed of digestion was increased at a cooking temperature of 70°C, and decreased at a cooking temperature above 100°C. (Summarizing the previous study.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This effect was explained by a progressive denaturation of proteins, which exposes cleavage sites to digestive enzymes, at low temperatures, and oxidation leading to protein aggregation, which hides cleavage sites, at high temperatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I]n the present study, very similar variations to those recorded in vitro were observed, with the highest speed of digestion observed at a cooking temperature of 75°C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study shows that the speed of protein digestion, a parameter of increasing interest in nutrition, can be modulated by meat preparation, a slower digestion being observed with high cooking temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marie-Laure Bax, Laurent Aubry, Claude Ferreira, Jean-Dominique Daudin, Philippe Gatellier, Didier Rémond, and Véronique Santé-Lhoutellier. &lt;em&gt;Cooking Temperature Is a Key Determinant of in Vitro Meat Protein Digestion Rate: Investigation of Underlying Mechanisms&lt;/em&gt;. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2012 60 (10), 2569-2576&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bax M-L, Buffière C, Hafnaoui N, Gaudichon C, Savary-Auzeloux I, et al. (2013) Effects of Meat Cooking, and of Ingested Amount, on Protein Digestion Speed and Entry of Residual Proteins into the Colon: A Study in Minipigs. PLoS ONE 8(4): e61252. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0061252&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Veronique Santé-Lhoutellier, Thierry Astruc, Penka Marinova, Eleonore Greve, and Philippe Gatellier. &lt;em&gt;Effect of Meat Cooking on Physicochemical State and in Vitro Digestibility of Myofibrillar Proteins&lt;/em&gt;. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2008 56 (4), 1488-1494&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T19:45:09.473" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15338" CreationDate="2013-07-29T20:18:55.583" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;A limited study (Dittami 2007) concluded the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Sharing a sleeping space with a partner had negative effects on sleep in women&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;The sleep efficiency in men was not reduced by the presence of their partner unless sexual contact occurred&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study was limited because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Participants involved in the study had not been in couples for long periods of time&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DITTAMI, J., KECKEIS, M., MACHATSCHKE, I., KATINA, S., ZEITLHOFER, J. and KLOESCH, G. (2007), Sex differences in the reactions to sleeping in pairs versus sleeping alone in humans. Sleep and Biological Rhythms, 5: 271–276. doi: 10.1111/j.1479-8425.2007.00320.x&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-07-29T20:18:55.583" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17136" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-29T22:22:58.723" Score="11" ViewCount="532" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent post on the climate skeptic blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://climateaudit.org/2013/07/26/guy-callendar-vs-the-gcms/#more-18244&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;climateaudit.org&lt;/a&gt; showed some comparisons of the relationship between world temperature and CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; over the 20th century from a simple model originally published in the 1930s and a recent complex model from the UK Met Office. The simple model seemed to do a better job of predicting temperature given the CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comparison chart is shown below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xqhT7.png&quot; alt=&quot;climateaudit comparison chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Climateaudit then compared the results from many other models using a measure of predictive skill and concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition to calculating the skill score of HadGEM2, I also calculated skill scores for the 12 CMIP5 RCP4.5 averages on file at KNMI. ...&#xA;  Remarkably, none of the 12 CMIP5 have any “skill” in reconstructing GLB temperature relative to the simple GCM-Q formula. Indeed, 10 of 12 do dramatically worse....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this comparison is not being used here to &lt;em&gt;deny&lt;/em&gt; climate change: the simple model predicts significant warming in the world climate (though with a lower sensitivity than typical modern models). The issue is whether complicated models of climate change do a better job than simple models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is climateaudit right? Are, as many (non-climate) modellers might intuit, simple models better than complex ones in predicting average climate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-09-20T21:27:53.900" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T02:37:46.723" Title="Can some simple, old models of the effect of CO₂ predict temperature better than complex modern climate simulations?" Tags="|climate-change|modelling|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26" CreationDate="2013-07-30T12:08:34.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thoughts clearly have an effect on your body. But maybe not thoughts themselves, but rather moods and emotions that thoughts are capable of inducing which in turn can have physiological effects on different body systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ruminative response to negative mood and other depressive symptoms are thoughts and behaviors that repetitively focus the individual's attention on his or her negative feelings and the nature and implications of those feelings. Although many people feel compelled to ruminate about themselves and their problems when experiencing dysphoria and depression, converging empirical evidence suggests that such a coping style is associated with numerous deleterious outcomes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Negative emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety, even sadness and crying, arouse people's autonomic nervous systems, producing increases in heart rate, vasoconstriction, and blood pressure, as well as other changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, positive thinking will often produce positive emotions which can be beneficial to your body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Positive emotions, positive moods, and positive sentiments carry multiple, inter-related benefits. &amp;lt;...&gt; Second, good feelings alter people's bodily systems. Experiments have shown that induced positive affect, not only speeds the recovery from cardiovascular accidents following the effects of a negative effect, but also alters frontal brain asymmetry, and increases immune function. Third, good feelings predict salubrious mental and physical health outcomes. Prospective studies have shown that frequent positive affects predict (a) resilience to adversity, (b) increased happiness, (c) psychological growth, (d) lower levels of cortisol, (e) reduced inflammatory responses to stress, (f) reductions in subsequent-day physical pain, (g) resistance to rhinoviruses, and (h) reductions in stroke, and fourth, perhaps due to reflecting these effects in combination, good feelings may predict people's longevity. Several well-controlled longitudinal studies document a clear link between frequent positive affect and longevity, which is at least partially mediated by positive emotions, downregulating the effect of excessive or inappropriate sympathetic activation (stress, anxiety, or anger).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3278874/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3278874/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking and imagination have a medical application as well. One of the techniques that rely on them is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;autogenic training&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Autogenic training refers to a series of mental exercises involving&#xA;  relaxation and autosuggestion practice regularly. The aim is to teach&#xA;  individuals to switch off the 'fith/flight/fight' stress response at&#xA;  will. The resulting passive state is believed to allow the brain and&#xA;  body to tap into its own spontaneous self-regulatory mechanisms,&#xA;  which, in turn can encourage an awareness of the origin of certain&#xA;  mental and physical disorders. In the US, the term 'autogenic' often&#xA;  refers to any method that involves patients using their own resources&#xA;  to help themselves, usually involving relaxation, visualisation or&#xA;  autosuggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During a 'classical' autogenic session, the patient should &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;think about heaviness and warmth in the limbs. These constitute the&#xA;  first two exercises of atogenic training. Four other instructions,&#xA;  relating to heart rate, breathing, warmth in the abdomen and coolness&#xA;  of the forehead, were added to form the six standard exercises. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Later Sshultz and Thomas developed the personal and motivational&#xA;  formulae (at first known as 'intentional formulae'), which are&#xA;  tailored to the individual experience, and involve repitition of&#xA;  therapeutic suggestions, designed, for example, to correct negative&#xA;  patterns of thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CLINICAL EVIDENCE &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recent RCTs or systematic reviews suggest that&#xA;  autogenic training can alleviate headaches in a variety of clinical&#xA;  situations. A meta-analysis of all controlled trials reached positive&#xA;  conclusions for some conditions (hypertension, asthma, intestinal&#xA;  diseases, glaucoma and eczema) but made no assessment of the quality&#xA;  of the studies. One RCT (n=18) suggested that autogenic training may&#xA;  be a useful adjunctive therapy for complex regional pain syndrome. A&#xA;  systematic review of CCTs suggested that autogenic training is equally&#xA;  effective in controlling chronic pain as hypnotherapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books/about/Complementary_Therapies_for_Pain_Managem.html?id=M9oES85plfgC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Complementary Therapies for Pain Management: An Evidence-based Approach&lt;/a&gt;, Elsevier Health Sciences, 2007 p.106-108&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14765" LastEditorUserId="14765" LastEditDate="2013-07-31T05:50:51.363" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T05:50:51.363" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17125" CreationDate="2013-07-30T14:59:08.843" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://aas.org/&quot;&gt;American Astronomical Society&lt;/a&gt; says, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20061206093237/http://www.aas.org/governance/council/teachevolution.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;intelligent design is not science&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, and &quot;&lt;em&gt;it fails to meet the basic definition of a scientific idea: its proponents do not &#xA;present testable hypotheses&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org&quot;&gt;American Psychological Association&lt;/a&gt; &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/about/policy/intelligent-design.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;rejects intelligent design as scientific&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, saying it lacks &quot;&lt;em&gt;a means of testing it that passes scientific &#xA;muster&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agu.org&quot;&gt;American Geophysical Union&lt;/a&gt; calls it an &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2005/prrl0528.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;untestable belief and, therefore, cannot qualify as a scientific theory&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasonline.org/&quot;&gt;United States National Academy of Science&lt;/a&gt; says, &quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6024&amp;amp;page=25&quot;&gt;creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaas.org/&quot;&gt;American Association for the Advancement of Science&lt;/a&gt; says that &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/evolution/qanda.shtml&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;whether there is an intelligent designer is a matter of religious faith rather than a scientifically testable question&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An editorial from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com&quot;&gt;Nature&lt;/a&gt; says, &quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v4/n12/full/nmeth1207-983.html&quot;&gt;Because it invokes a supernatural origin for something one cannot yet explain, and because it does not generate testable hypotheses and cannot be subjected to empirical inquiry, ID is not science&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This characterization of intelligent design as &quot;not science&quot;, or &quot;not scientific&quot; is widespread amongst the scientific community. Here is a more &lt;a href=&quot;http://ncse.com/media/voices/science&quot;&gt;complete list of this rejection&lt;/a&gt; by scientific societies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science journals tend to not include papers on non-scientific topics. This is their agenda. This is one factor directing their control over the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Articles in Nature must be &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/authors/policies/peer_review.html&quot;&gt;&quot;of extreme importance to scientists in the specific field&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Science says that they are &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/site/help/authors/publishing.xhtml&quot;&gt;&quot;committed to bringing the best peer-reviewed scientific work to publication as quickly as possible&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PLOS ONE requires that &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/static/reviewerGuidelines#criteria&quot;&gt;&quot;the study presents the results of primary scientific research&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Royal Society allows &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/site/misc/referees.xhtml&quot;&gt;&quot;articles in any area of the physical sciences&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not these standards are fair is a question of opinion, and off-topic for this site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not found evidence that exclusion of intelligent design in scientific journals is due to dislike or that dislike of a topic is a criteria for exclusion by any journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-07-30T17:51:28.383" LastActivityDate="2013-07-30T17:51:28.383" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17140" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-30T20:38:03.770" Score="39" ViewCount="6592" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has often been said that people can speak in languages that were not formerly known to them. Arguably the most often recited example of this is in the context of demonic possession. For example, those supposedly possessed by malevolent spirits apparently can and regularly do speak in languages they do not know — so often has this happened that it is evidently one of the four criteria &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demonic_possession&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;typical for &amp;quot;demonic possession&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True demonic or satanic possession has been characterized since the Middle Ages, in the Rituale Romanum, by the following four typical characteristics:[9][10][11]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Manifestation of superhuman strength.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Speaking in tongues or languages that the victim cannot know.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Revelation of knowledge, distant or hidden, that the victim cannot know.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blasphemous rage and an aversion to holy symbols or relics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For whatever reason, it is usually Latin. In any case, the key feature is that it is a language unknown to the supposedly possessed speaker, and the phenomenon is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenoglossy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;xenoglossia&lt;/a&gt; (not to be mistaken for glossolalia, or speaking in tongues, or bilingual aphasia being the transposition of linguistic competence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ability to speak in languages previously unknown to a speaker seems to be a testable hypothesis, particularly with modern day recording technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just for clarity, here is a citations defining the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://isisinvestigations.com/demonarticles/signs_of_possession.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Xenoglossia: Xenoglossia is the sudden and abrupt ability to speak in multiple languages (2).&lt;/a&gt; It is imperative that the demonologist look for signs that back up the fact that the suspected victim of demonic possession did not have prior knowledge of such languages or any kind of fluency in the languages exhibited before denoting the appearance of multiple language usage as an indication of possession. It should be noted that in some reported cases of mental illness, an individual can present the ability to suddenly speak in previously unlearned languages. Instances of savantism and genius should also be ruled out before xenoglossia is deemed a sign or symptom of demonic possession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence regarding the existence of this phenomenon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-07-29T15:02:18.287" Title="Is xenoglossy a scientifically verified phenomenon?" Tags="|medical-science|religion|language|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17148" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17149" CreationDate="2013-07-31T11:06:01.127" Score="11" ViewCount="14632" Body="&lt;p&gt;Documentary Lovers claims that coconut oil has a natural &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_protection_factor#Sun_Protection_Factor&quot;&gt;SPF&lt;/a&gt; factor in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://documentarylovers.com/news/ditch-those-toxic-sunscreens-go-natural-with-coconut-oil/&quot;&gt;Ditch those Toxic Sunscreens; Go Natural with Coconut Oil&lt;/a&gt; article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coconut oil has an SPF of 10 which means 90% of beneficial vitamin D&#xA;  creating UB-V rays are blocked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not an isolated source as &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=coconut%20oil%20spf%204&quot;&gt;coconut oil spf 4&lt;/a&gt;&quot; returns 244,000 results. So people attribute an SPF to coconut oil when ingested or applied externally. I know that coconut oil can relieve sunburn and otherwise irritated skin, but how does it fare in the sunscreen metric?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="11722" LastEditDate="2013-07-31T21:58:38.863" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T01:49:46.780" Title="Can coconut oil work as a natural sunscreen?" Tags="|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17148" CreationDate="2013-07-31T14:04:05.290" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3140123/#!po=62.5000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;In vitro sun protection factor determination of herbal oils used in cosmetics&lt;/a&gt;&quot; which was published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=19700175096&amp;amp;tip=sid&amp;amp;clean=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pharmacognosy Journal&lt;/a&gt; it was found that coconut oil does offer protection from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_violet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ultra violet&lt;/a&gt; radiations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WnKSQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Table of measured SPF values&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the purpose of the study was to measure &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_protection_factor#Sun_Protection_Factor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sun protection factor&lt;/a&gt; (SPF) of herbal oils that are commonly used in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunscreen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sunscreen&lt;/a&gt; formulations using a proposed technique. So the study really can't be used as evidence of its effectiveness as a sunscreen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecoholic.ca/spf-coconut/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;as done in some articles&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the measured values are accurate then it is &lt;em&gt;plausible&lt;/em&gt; that coconut oil could be used as an extremely light sun screen with appropriate usage. However, it should be noted that the measured SPF of 7.119 of coconut oil is significantly below the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.melanomafoundation.org/prevention/facts.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dermatologist recommended SPF 15 or greater&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-07-31T14:20:25.230" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T14:20:25.230" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17153" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-31T16:15:41.983" Score="3" ViewCount="647" Body="&lt;p&gt;My child is one of those people who is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2891/do-mosquitoes-prefer-certain-blood-types-plus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;really attractive to mosquitoes&lt;/a&gt;, and she tends to obsess and itch them open — gross. This has prompted much well-meaning folk advice about itches, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Vrhgz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&amp;quot;natural relief&amp;quot; infographic&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in text form:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;inside of banana peel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;paste of baking soda&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;apple cider vinegar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lavender essential oil&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tea tree oil&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;lemon slice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;slice of onion (this one often recommended as particularly effective)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, not in the picture, but basil has also been suggested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do these remedies relieve the itching of mosquito bites?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I found a number of questions here about natural mosquito &lt;em&gt;repellents&lt;/em&gt; — let's assume it's too late for that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T17:43:34.867" Title="Any science behind folk remedies for mosquito bites?" Tags="|natural-remedies|entomology|vinegar|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17154" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17415" CreationDate="2013-07-31T18:02:49.593" Score="11" ViewCount="872" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Idaho Stop rule for bicycles (&lt;a href=&quot;http://legislature.idaho.gov/idstat/Title49/T49CH7SECT49-720.htm&quot;&gt;Idaho Code 49-720&lt;/a&gt;) allows bicyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs. Its practical application is described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/4140910&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://bclu.org/jmeggs-TRB-IDAHO-AUG10.pdf&quot;&gt;study by Jason Meggs&lt;/a&gt; if often cited (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thewashcycle.com/2011/02/compounded-public-cobenefits-of-the-idaho-law.html&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meggsreport.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/the-idaho-law-allowing-safer-choice-and-happier-travel/&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bicycletimesmag.com/node/80229&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://theathleteslawyer.com/2009/07/06/bicycle-injuries-145-lower-a-year-after-the-idaho-stop-law/&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;) as establishing that allowing rolling stops for bicycles is safer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;allowing safer choice&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;Best evidence strongly supports the universal adoption of the Idaho Law in pursuit of numerous public policy objectives including safety of all roadway users&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;Bicycle injuries 14.5% lower a year after the “Idaho Stop Law”&lt;/em&gt; (directly stating a result from Meggs's study)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;the decline in injuries is consistent with the strong indication that the law actually improves overall roadway safety&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (quoting from Meggs's study)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that allowing rolling stops as per I.C. 49-720 would increase the safety of all roadway users? (Or even just bicyclists, as this weaker claim has also been made.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-07-31T18:21:31.983" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T23:14:52.907" Title="Is it safer for bicyclists to be allowed to roll through stop signs?" Tags="|law|safety|bicycles|traffic|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17156" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-07-31T20:23:29.787" Score="9" ViewCount="2622" Body="&lt;p&gt;The context is the film &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0265086/&quot;&gt;Black Hawk Down&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The film portrays most of the US Rangers as young men, often with no or little combat experience. Furthermore, some of them are chalk commanders, even with no combat experience at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Private Blackburn, 18, no combat experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Private Grimes, 30-ish, no combat experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sergeant Eversmann, 20-ish, no combat experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sergeant Yutek, 20, little combat experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is apparent from several film quotes, the most obvious being the conversation between Eversmann and Blackburn before the beginning on the mission:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Eversmann: You okay?&#xA;Todd Blackburn: Excited. In a good way. I've been training my whole life for this.&#xA;Eversmann: You ever shot at anybody before?&#xA;Todd Blackburn: No Sergeant.&#xA;Eversmann: Me neither.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was under the impression that the US Rangers were some of the best men the US Army had. I'm referring mostly to the 75th Ranger Regiment here, the one that fought in the Battle of Mogadishu. This is also reinforced by portrayal in video games, the obvious examples being Company of Heroes and Call of Duty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Eversmann: Remember, we're Rangers not some sorry-ass JROTC. We're Elite. Let's act like it out there. Hoo-ah?&#xA;Rangers: Hoo-ah!&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the film's depiction accurate? Is the 75th Ranger Regiment nothing special, just another army division with a fancy name? Or is it one of the better army divisions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This confusion is further reinforced by the portrayal of Delta Force in Black Hawk Down and the Delta Force series of video games. While not as pronounced in the movie, the Delta Force soldiers still appear inexperienced, which seems contradictory for arguably the Special Forces' best men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5368" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-08-01T00:51:55.577" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T15:12:09.807" Title="Are many US Army Rangers young people with no combat experience?" Tags="|united-states|military|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17156" CreationDate="2013-07-31T21:25:31.867" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;None of the conditions for membership in the 75th Ranger Regiment involve combat experience (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/75th_Ranger_Regiment_(United_States)#Modern_Ranger_selection_and_training&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/75th_Ranger_Regiment_(United_States)#Modern_Ranger_selection_and_training&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that combat experience is not a criteria for selection into the 75th Ranger Regiment, it is possible that many of the members do not have combat experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The average age of Ranger School students is 23. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benning.army.mil/infantry/rtb/content/PDF/Ranger%20School%20web11.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stripes.com/news/is-combat-experience-making-ranger-school-unnecessary-1.129472&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Army’s celebrated Ranger School, once coveted by young soldiers eager to prove their mettle by surviving two months of grueling simulated combat, is finding it hard to compete with another alternative: actual combat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But others, including some who are Ranger qualified, believe that combat trumps training, that the hard-earned Ranger tab worn on the left shoulder after completing a brutal 61-day regimen through mountains, woods and swamps, on minimal food and sleep, is no substitute for years spent fighting real-life enemies in Afghanistan or Iraq.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that, it seems to me that most people would be entering the 75th Ranger Regiment (after completing Ranger School) without combat experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-07-31T21:40:11.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17156" CreationDate="2013-07-31T22:37:08.993" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Rangers that fought in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_%281993%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Battle of Mogadishu&lt;/a&gt; in 1993 were part of company B of the 3rd Ranger Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment. This unit was formed in 1984 and its only previous combat experience was during the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Panama&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;U.S. invasion of Panama&lt;/a&gt; in 1989 (Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.benning.army.mil/tenant/75thRanger/3rdBtn.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;75th Ranger Regiment history&lt;/a&gt;) where it took part in the battle for Rio Hato airfield on December 20. (Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/Just%20Cause/JustCause.htm#OpDec2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The U.S. Army Center of Military History: Operation Just Cause&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in 1993, any soldiers who had been recruited since 1989 would have seen no combat. (And even soldiers who had been serving in the battalion longer than four years could have fought at most that one day at Rio Hato.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A soldier can only gain combat experience in war, and sometimes there aren't enough wars to go round.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[A clarification since a couple of commenters seem to have misunderstood: the question title says &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt;, not &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt;. Some members of company B had combat experience; for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Struecker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jeff Struecker&lt;/a&gt; was at Rio Hato. But the general point is that soldiers can't get combat experience unless their unit is involved in a battle, and in 1993, the only recent battles were those in the invasion of Panama and the first Gulf War.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14749" LastEditorUserId="14749" LastEditDate="2013-08-01T15:58:30.080" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T15:58:30.080" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17161" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17174" CreationDate="2013-08-01T09:39:42.813" Score="13" ViewCount="20601" Body="&lt;p&gt;An answerer at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Why-is-looking-at-greens-supposed-to-be-good-for-your-eyes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quora&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Colour vision is a result of cone cells. People with normal vision have 3 cone cell types: red, green blue. Of the 6-7million you have, 45% are green.&#xA;  Therefore, your eyes need to work less to perceive colour. Dark greens (pine tree green) are one of the most relaxing colours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answerers at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/536115#ixzz2ai9u3i2P&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AnswerBag&lt;/a&gt; have similar claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Green has great healing power. It is the most restful color for the human eye; it can improve vision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Green is very restful to the eye and it's at the opposite end of the spectrum to red, which is also the most emotionally charged colour. So looking at green not gives your eyes a break, it calms you emotoinally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these provide verifiable evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is distinct from the claim that &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2482/strange-way-of-improving-eyesight-could-it-work/4793&quot;&gt;looking outside&lt;/a&gt; might be good exercise for your eye muscles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does looking at the colour green relax your eyes more than other colours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14826" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2016-08-21T18:43:05.417" Title="Does green cause less eye-strain?" Tags="|ophthalmology|colors|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16485" CreationDate="2013-08-01T15:24:53.617" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, humans can move their eyes independently... just watch these videos (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTQvYu2cF48&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link 1&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myvideo.de/watch/8362532/Unabhaengige_Augenbewegung&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link 2&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, how much use is that? What can you see if you cross your eyes? I know when I do it that crossing eyes serves very little purpose other than to help with pulling faces :) Everything just goes blurry and my eyes start to hurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One reason our eyes have evolved to work in harmony is because of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binocular_vision&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;binocular vision&lt;/a&gt;, it's why they are on the front of our heads, not the sides. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_perception#Binocular_cues&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Depth perception&lt;/a&gt; is difficult with one eye; put on an eye-patch, go play catch, see how you do compared to normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A chameleon has evolved independent movement of their eyes. The eyes are mounted on the sides of their heads, this is because some of the time they need 360 vision to spot danger. However, because they are also predators using a highly precise method of capture (requiring good eye-tongue coordination) the ability to point both in the same direction, giving them binocular vision, is also highly advantageous, thus they can move them independently to face the same direction. For more info see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chameleon_vision&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wiki page&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22460630&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the quote above, you might want to read the answer to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Helicopters/Do-Apache-helicopter-pilots-eyeballs-move-independently&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quora post&lt;/a&gt;, one guy says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I flew the AH-64s for over 12 years. &lt;strong&gt;There's no single Apache pilot I&#xA;  know who can move his eyeballs independently, nor who is required to&#xA;  do so.&lt;/strong&gt; Similar to what Steve mentioned, the trick is to learn how to&#xA;  ignore input from one eye and refer only to the input coming from the&#xA;  other eye, then switch between them and do this every few seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9029" LastEditorUserId="9029" LastEditDate="2013-08-01T16:48:31.823" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T16:48:31.823" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17165" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-01T15:56:32.257" Score="0" ViewCount="1097" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have &lt;a href=&quot;https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/ghost-detector-pro-free-evp/id398023035?mt=8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ghost Detector Pro&lt;/a&gt; on my iPhone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It claims there is a ghost detected, and it can take a photo. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a photo is taken, there are always strange, orbs, globs, and things in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've experimented with dust and I've made orb-like things. My questions are, how does the detector know there is this anomaly floating around, and what are these things in the photos?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14831" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-08-01T16:16:21.827" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T17:39:59.740" Title="Is this &quot;Ghost Detector App&quot; photographing paranormal phenomena?" Tags="|ghosts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17156" CreationDate="2013-08-01T17:05:13.877" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Best of ...&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So first thing first, as for &quot;best of Army&quot; or &quot;best of special forces&quot;, significant units portrayed in the movie are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/75th_Ranger_Regiment&quot;&gt;75th Ranger Regiment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_Force&quot;&gt;1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/160th_Special_Operations_Aviation_Regiment_%28Airborne%29&quot;&gt;160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of which are US Army units, all 3 are part of US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC). However only Delta and SOAR are classified as Tier One and are part of Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), while Ranges are not. Thus arguably Delta, rather than Ranges could be considered &quot;the very best of Army&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &quot;the very best of special forces&quot;. I'm not going to do pointless exercise of without trying to argue if Delta is better that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEVGRU&quot;&gt;DEVGRU&lt;/a&gt; or vice-versa. There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Activities_Division&quot;&gt;CIA's Special Activities Division (SAD&lt;/a&gt;) which recruits the best of special Deltas, DEVGRU and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24th_Special_Tactics_Squadron&quot;&gt;STS 24th&lt;/a&gt;, of which the best are recruited for Special Operations Group (SOG) (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1004145-1,00.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/030126-cia01.htm&quot;&gt;mirrored here&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Combat experience&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in years prior to Battle of Mogadishu (1993) there where two significant conflicts in which US Army soldiers might have gotten combat experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Panama&quot;&gt;1989 Invasion of Panama&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rangers, Deltas and SOAR all participated in the invasion of Panama. However that doesn't mean they've actually had contact with enemy, other than accepting their surrender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The entire 75th Ranger Regiment participated in Operation Just Cause.&#xA;  Rangers spearheaded the action by conducting two important operations.&#xA;  Simultaneous parachute assaults were conducted onto Torrijos/Tocumen&#xA;  International Airport, Rio Hato Airfield and General Manuel Noriega’s&#xA;  beach house, to neutralize Panamanian Defense Forces. The Rangers&#xA;  captured 1,014 Enemy Prisoners of War (EPW), and over 18,000 arms of&#xA;  various types. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goarmy.com/ranger/heritage.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also in the entire operation Just Cause only 200-300 enemies were killed, while 27,684 U.S. troops and over 300 aircraft were used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_storm&quot;&gt;1991 Operation Desert Storm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SOAR inserted Delta units inserted into Iraq for purpose designating Scuds during Scud hunting operation (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanspecialops.com/operations/scud-hunting/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;). This consisted primarily in staying undetected and laser-designating the targets, rather than firing small arms at the enemy. On rare occasion that did however occur:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The book, Delta, by Terry Griswold and D.M. Giangreco, describes a&#xA;  Delta Force operation in which a team inserted by parachute into the&#xA;  desert. Due to a shortage of helicopters, a small Delta Force team&#xA;  performed a High Altitude High Opening (HAHO) jump from a USAF C-141b&#xA;  Starlifter aircraft. Once on the ground, the unit set up a OP close to&#xA;  a MSR. When they spotted a suspected SCUD convoy the Delta team called&#xA;  in a series of air strikes by US and UK attack aircraft. Later, as the&#xA;  Delta team attempted to covertly exfil the area, they bump into an&#xA;  Iraqi foot patrol. A brief firefight ensued, resulting in one Delta&#xA;  KIA and another with serious injuries. With extraction by helicopter&#xA;  unavailable, a MC-130 was called in to carry our a surface-to-air&#xA;  recovery (STAR) of the wounded trooper via the Fulton recovery system.&#xA;  This goes ahead successfully and the rest of the unit are later&#xA;  extracted by MH-60. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanspecialops.com/operations/scud-hunting/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rangers participation in Desert Storm was very limited, their only deployment was to observation posts on Kuwait-Saudi Arabia border prior to ground assault. Their only combat experience was one of the observation posts being overrun in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khafji&quot;&gt;battle of Khafji&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were numerous Army infantry divisions participating, so it's possible that someone who later became Ranger or Delta had combat experience as regular grunt. However, unlike 2003 Invasion of Iraq and following occupation, Desert Storm was mostly fought on open desert, mostly by air assets and armor and mechanized infantry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The definition of &quot;combat experience&quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is assumption in the question, that combat experience means actually engaging enemy with direct fire weapons. In case of special forces such as Rangers or Deltas it's most often neither their mission nor even secondary objective. In fact more often avoiding detection is priority. Thus special forces which would infiltrate, carry out their mission and exfiltrate enemy territory w/o firing single shot from their weapons would still be considered to have gained combat experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Now &lt;em&gt;vs&lt;/em&gt; then&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Are&lt;/strong&gt; many US Army Rangers young people with no combat experience?&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, however Battle of Mogadishu occurred in 1993. So past tense would be more appropriate. The answer above addresses implied question &lt;em&gt;&quot;In 1993, were many US Army Rangers young people with no combat experience?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. What could have been the case in 1993 most likely is not be the case at all currently. For the last 12 years US has been engaged in one major war (Afghanistan) and for 9 of these years in another one (Iraq). &lt;strong&gt;2.5 million soldiers&lt;/strong&gt; have at one point in time been deployed to either of these war zones (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/14/185880/millions-went-to-war-in-iraq-afghanistan.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-08-02T15:12:09.807" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T15:12:09.807" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17165" CreationDate="2013-08-01T17:39:59.740" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The App description includes this disclaimer: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/ghost-detector-pro-free-evp/id398023035?mt=8&quot;&gt;&quot;This application is intended for novelty purposes only.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; so it is clearly not intended to be taken seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt; how does the detector know there is this anomaly floating around&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no evidence to suggest anything other than a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudorandom_number_generator&quot;&gt;pseudo-random number generator (PRNG)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;what are these things in the photos?&lt;/B&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other Purple Penguin apps include &quot;Zombie My Face&quot;. You should not conclude that zombies are present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T17:39:59.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17168" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-01T18:27:44.280" Score="2" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a multi-engine propellor-driven aircraft, propellor synchronization occurs when the two propellors are turning at the same RPM. Propellor synchronization eliminates &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_%28acoustics%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;beating&lt;/a&gt;. The purpose is for comfort of the crew and passengers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim I'd like examined is that out-of-sync propellors increases the likelihood of airsick passengers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;that god awful sound is enough to make passengers and pilots alike very ill after 15-20 minutes&quot; (from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/125820/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;airliners.net forum&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;I don't have passengers to make sick&quot; (from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.jetcareers.com/threads/syncing-props-on-the-takeoff-roll-yes-or-no.109725/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;jetcareers.com forum&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;If it doesn't work it can either be slightly annoying or bad enough to make passengers sick&quot; (from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/tech_ops/read.main/303214&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;airliners.net forum&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that un-synced props would be annoying or distracting, but I am doubtful that they can cause airsickness. I can imagine several mechanisms for how this could be true, but I haven't found any evidence other than anecdotes in forums.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-01T18:32:50.913" LastActivityDate="2013-08-01T18:32:50.913" Title="Do out of sync propellors make passengers more likely to be airsick?" Tags="|physiology|aviation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17171" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17172" CreationDate="2013-08-02T04:06:05.533" Score="25" ViewCount="23564" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question of whether MMR vaccines cause autism has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/607/are-there-any-other-studies-besides-the-discredited-wakefield-studies-that-hav&quot;&gt;addressed already&lt;/a&gt; on Skeptics.SE, and then again when &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4108/do-new-documents-change-anything-about-the-wakefield-mmr-vaccine-paper-retract&quot;&gt;new documents came to light&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is not about rehashing those facts, but is about a July 2013 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whiteoutpress.com/timeless/courts-quietly-confirm-mmr-vaccine-causes-autism/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Whiteout Press report&lt;/a&gt; claiming the US Courts have confirmed that the MMR vaccine causes autism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They cite a June 2013 report from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelibertybeacon.com/2013/06/21/new-published-study-verifies-andrew-wakefields-research-on-autism-again-mmr-vaccine-causes-autism/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Liberty Beacon&lt;/a&gt; who link to a court ruling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a recently published &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/CAMPBELL-SMITH.MOJABI-PROFFER.12.13.2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;December 13, 2012 vaccine court ruling&lt;/a&gt;, hundreds of thousands of dollars were awarded to Ryan Mojabi, whose parents described how “MMR vaccinations,” caused a “severe and debilitating injury to his brain, diagnosed as Autism Spectrum Disorder (‘ASD’).”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I haven't read the ruling; I am too ignorant of the US vaccine court to understand the context.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not asking if MMR causes autism - we've covered that. I am asking if this ruling in the US vaccine courts have &quot;confirmed&quot; that it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T01:50:25.483" Title="Did a US court rule that the MMR vaccine causes autism?" Tags="|united-states|law|vaccines|autism|andrew-wakefield|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17171" CreationDate="2013-08-02T04:44:20.383" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt; with regards to the specific ruling cited, and &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; in the broader sense since the U.S. Courts have previously ruled against the link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The legalese can be tough to parse but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/CAMPBELL-SMITH.MOJABI-PROFFER.12.13.2012.pdf&quot;&gt;the ruling&lt;/a&gt; is pretty clear that the respondent, in this case the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hhs.gov/secretary/&quot;&gt;Secretary of Health and Human Services&lt;/a&gt; agreed with the petitioners' claim that Ryan Mojabi suffered &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalitis&quot;&gt;encephalitis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; as a result of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MMR_vaccine&quot;&gt;MMR vaccination&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On June 9, 2011, respondent filed a supplemental report pursuant to&#xA;  Vaccine Rule 4(c) stating it was respondent’s view that Ryan suffered&#xA;  a Table injury under the Vaccine Act – namely, an encephalitis within&#xA;  five to fifteen days following receipt of the December 19, 2003 MMR&#xA;  vaccine, see 42 C.F.R. § 100.3(a)(III)(B), and that this case is&#xA;  appropriate for compensation under the term s of the Vaccine Program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like the petitioners originally claimed that an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_spectrum&quot;&gt;Autism Spectrum&#xA;Disorder&lt;/a&gt; was caused by the vaccination,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Petitioners alleged that as a result of “all the vaccinations&#xA;  administered to [Ryan] from March 25, 2003, through February 22, 2005,&#xA;  and more specifically, measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccinations&#xA;  administered to him on December 19, 2003 and May 10, 2004,” Ryan&#xA;  suffered “a severe and debilitating injury to his brain, described as&#xA;  Autism Spectrum Disorder (‘ASD’).”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the specific injury was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalopathy&quot;&gt;encephalopathy&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Petitioners specifically asserted that Ryan “suffered a Vaccine Table&#xA;  Injury, namely, an encephalopathy” as a result of his receipt of the&#xA;  MMR vaccination on December 19, 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the broader question, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/index.html&quot;&gt;National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program&lt;/a&gt; (NVICP) has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine_court&quot;&gt;vaccine court&lt;/a&gt; that requires that the petitioners demonstrate by a  preponderance of the evidence that the vaccine caused an injury that they would not have otherwise suffered. In the event that a causal connection is found, a no-fault ruling allows for compensation to cover medical expenses, legal expenses, loss of future earning capability, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to all of the autism claims, an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/omnibusautism.html&quot;&gt;Omnibus Autism Proceeding&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autism_omnibus_trial&quot;&gt;Wikipedia summary&lt;/a&gt;) took place that ruled against a link between the MMR vaccination and autism. All of the relevant rulings can be found at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/&quot;&gt;U.S. Court of Federal Claims&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/node/5026&quot;&gt;Autism Decisions and Background Information&lt;/a&gt;. In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/vaccine_files/Vowell.Snyder.pdf&quot;&gt;first omnibus ruling&lt;/a&gt; the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_master&quot;&gt;special master&lt;/a&gt; make the following ruling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After considering the record as a whole, I hold that petitioners have&#xA;  failed to establish by preponderant evidence that Colten’s condition&#xA;  was caused or significantly aggravated by a vaccine or any component&#xA;  thereof. The evidence presented was both voluminous and&#xA;  extraordinarily complex. After careful consideration of all of the&#xA;  evidence, it was abundantly clear that petitioners’ theories of&#xA;  causation were speculative and unpersuasive. Respondent’s experts were&#xA;  far more qualified, better supported by the weight of scientific&#xA;  research and authority, and simply more persuasive on nearly every&#xA;  point in contention. Because of pervasive quality control problems at&#xA;  a now-defunct laboratory that tested a key piece of evidence,&#xA;  petitioners could not reliably demonstrate the presence of a&#xA;  persistent measles virus in Colten’s central nervous system.&#xA;  Petitioners failed to establish that measles virus can cause autism or&#xA;  that it did so in Colten. They failed to demonstrate that amount of&#xA;  ethylmercury in TCVs causes immune system suppression or&#xA;  dysregulation. They failed to show that Colten’s immune system was&#xA;  dysregulated. Although Colten’s condition markedly improved between&#xA;  his diagnosis and the hearing, the experimental treatments he received&#xA;  cannot be  logically or scientifically linked to the theories of&#xA;  causation. Given the advice that petitioners received from a treating&#xA;  physician, Colten’s parents brought this action in good faith and upon&#xA;  a reasonable basis. However, they have failed to demonstrate vaccine&#xA;  causation of Colten’s condition by a preponderance of the evidence.&#xA;  Therefore, I deny their petition for compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ruling of which was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/SWEENEY.Snyder081109a_0.pdf&quot;&gt;upheld upon review&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-08-02T13:27:45.147" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T13:27:45.147" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17161" CreationDate="2013-08-02T08:58:16.187" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim at Quora is close to the mark, although not exactly for the reason claimed. All lenses (including our eyes) suffer from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromatic_aberration&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;chromatic aberration&lt;/a&gt;, a kind of distortion that occurs because different colors have different refractive indexes. In photographs, this distortion results in fringes of color in high-contrast areas. In eyesight, it can increase the difficulty of focusing on certain colors and color combinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The textbook &lt;em&gt;Basic Sciences for Opthalmology&lt;/em&gt; (Bye, Modi, Stanford, 2013) relates this to the construction and mechanics of the eye:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chromatic aberration in the eye&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the eye, the dioptric difference between the dispersion of red versus blue light is approximately 2D (Fig. 8.23). Remembering that the human eye's peak spectral sensitivity lies at 550 nm (green), the human retina is deliberately placed such that it is in between the dispersion of white light, i.e., between red and blue. This optimizes the best level of focus specifically for its peak spectral sensitivity. The pupil and the nucleus of the lens also help to minimize chromatic aberration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the eye is constructed such that it is easiest to focus on green light, which is in the middle of the visible spectrum and has the strongest receptors. Normally, blue light focuses slightly in front of the retina, red light slightly behind. When red and blue patterns are mixed in an image, this chromatic aberration can create an illusion of depth called &lt;a href=&quot;http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/chromatic+stereopsis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;chromosteropsis&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;Dictionary of Optometry and Visual Science,&lt;/em&gt; Millodot, 2009). In extreme cases, it can cause eyestrain as the eye shifts rapidly in an attempt to focus on the red and blue light at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a couple of other effects that may contribute to the perception that green is a less strenuous color, one physical and one psychological. Blue objects are less visually distinct than red and green, partly because of chromatic aberration, but also because blue cones are located outside the fovea, the best-focused part of the retina with the best resolution (&lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/vision/rodcone.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paraphrased&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;em&gt;Optics,&lt;/em&gt; Hecht, 1987). Meanwhile, the color red signals dominance, aggression, and danger psychologically. While this does make red objects easier to spot, the emotional loading may cause nervous system arousal and stress. (This is a widely-held belief, alluded to in the AnswerBag post, but I should note that it's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theassc.org/files/assc/2598.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;disputed&lt;/a&gt; in a 2004 paper by Robinson, and I don't have the necessary background to evaluate it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14359" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T08:58:16.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17100" CreationDate="2013-08-02T17:41:01.313" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neck manipulation can cause a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/stroke/news/20030512/neck-cracking-raises-stroke-risk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;risk of stroke&lt;/a&gt;, but chiropractic neck adjustment is significantly more vigorous than the kind most people give themselves. Whipping your neck around can tear an artery, but simply bending it until you get a satisfying pop is unlikely to do so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is certainly possible that there is an enhanced risk of stroke, but it is very unlikely. See the related question about knuckle cracking &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1325/is-popping-your-knuckles-bad-for-you?rq=1&quot;&gt;mentioned by oddthinking&lt;/a&gt; for any other effects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason people tell you not to do it, in my personal experience, has more to do with their personal dislike of the noise than any medical information, as there have certainly not been conclusive studies proving that popping of any knuckle is bad for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14736" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2013-08-02T17:41:01.313" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16485" CreationDate="2013-08-02T18:04:46.767" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chameleons are the only vertebrates that can focus monocularly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, unlike other vertebrates, chameleons can focus targets monocularly, using lens effort so that, in theory, they can fixate and focus an approaching threat with one eye, while the other scans in the opposite direction. (From &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-012-0489-7#&quot;&gt;Threat perception in the chameleon (Chamaeleo chameleon): evidence for lateralized eye use&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some evidence that the above conclusion isn't so absolute:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This&#xA;  paper&#xA;  will&#xA;  present&#xA;  observations&#xA;  from&#xA;  both&#xA;  normal&#xA;  and&#xA;  abnormal&#xA;  eye&#xA;  movement&#xA;  data&#xA;  that&#xA;  suggest&#xA;  a&#xA;  more&#xA;  complex&#xA;  ocular&#xA;  mo­tor&#xA;  control architecture -&#xA;  independent&#xA;  control&#xA;  of&#xA;  each&#xA;  eye.&#xA;  Because&#xA;  of&#xA;  the&#xA;  inherent&#xA;  bilateral&#xA;  nature&#xA;  of&#xA;  brain&#xA;  stem&#xA;  organization,&#xA;  the&#xA;  latter&#xA;  directly&#xA;  implies&#xA;  independent&#xA;  control&#xA;  of&#xA;  each&#xA;  eye&#xA;  muscle.&#xA;  Taken&#xA;  individually,&#xA;  some&#xA;  of&#xA;  the&#xA;  observations&#xA;  are&#xA;  only&#xA;  mildly&#xA;  suggestive&#xA;  of&#xA;  in­&#xA;  dependent&#xA;  control;&#xA;  others&#xA;  are&#xA;  strongly&#xA;  sugges­tive.&#xA;  None&#xA;  may,&#xA;  by&#xA;  itself, provide&#xA;  conclusive&#xA;  proof&#xA;  of&#xA;  independent&#xA;  control,&#xA;  although&#xA;  some&#xA;  appear&#xA;  to.&#xA;  However,&#xA;  taken&#xA;  together,&#xA;  they sup­port&#xA;  a&#xA;  strong&#xA;  case&#xA;  for&#xA;  the&#xA;  hypothesis&#xA;  that&#xA;  the&#xA;  neuroanatomy&#xA;  of&#xA;  our&#xA;  ocular&#xA;  motor&#xA;  systems&#xA;  is&#xA;  basically&#xA;  configured&#xA;  for&#xA;  independent&#xA;  control&#xA;  of&#xA;  each&#xA;  eye&#xA;  (muscle)&#xA;  and&#xA;  it&#xA;  is&#xA;  binocularity&#xA;  that&#xA;  imposes&#xA;  the&#xA;  yoking&#xA;  normally&#xA;  seen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In&#xA;  2&#xA;  of&#xA;  the&#xA;  earlier&#xA;  studies&#xA;  of&#xA;  human&#xA;  saccadic&#xA;  metrics,&#xA;  it&#xA;  was found that&#xA;  the&#xA;  saccadic&#xA;  trajec­tories&#xA;  of&#xA;  each&#xA;  eye&#xA;  might&#xA;  independently&#xA;  over­&#xA;  shoot&#xA;  or&#xA;  undershoot&#xA;  the&#xA;  target during the&#xA;  pulse&#xA;  portion&#xA;  of&#xA;  the&#xA;  response,&#xA;  and&#xA;  the&#xA;  result­ing&#xA;  &quot;glissade&quot;&#xA;  to&#xA;  the&#xA;  target&#xA;  was&#xA;  specific&#xA;  for&#xA;  the&#xA;  metrics&#xA;  of&#xA;  that&#xA;  eye's&#xA;  saccade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The&#xA;  occurrence&#xA;  of&#xA;  uni-ocular&#xA;  dynamic&#xA;  over­&#xA;  shoots&#xA;  (5)&#xA;  in&#xA;  normals&#xA;  is&#xA;  another&#xA;  instance&#xA;  of&#xA;  disconjugacy&#xA;  that&#xA;  suggests&#xA;  independent&#xA;  neu­ral&#xA;  control&#xA;  signals&#xA;  to&#xA;  each&#xA;  eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is from (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omlab.org/Personnel/lfd/Jrnl_Arts/087_Ev_Sugg_Indv_OM_Control_1994.pdf&quot;&gt;Dell'Osso, L. F. (1994). Evidence suggesting individual ocular motor control of each eye (muscle). J Vestib Res, 4(5), 335-45&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-09-01T18:29:12.080" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T18:29:12.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17183" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13976" CreationDate="2013-08-02T18:14:27.520" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Boneset cannot 'cure' dengue fever, but it can certainly help. The Eupatorium genus is enormous, and a matter of some debate, but definitely contains the plants commonly known as boneset and feverwort, among other names. Boneset was probably never used to cure broken bones, as the literature supporting its use by indigenous peoples shows its use as an anti-fever agent. The plants themselves have shown &lt;a href=&quot;http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0031942211000525/1-s2.0-S0031942211000525-main.pdf?_tid=ada55eea-06a5-11e3-a79d-00000aab0f01&amp;amp;acdnat=1376679620_65aafcf6995fac691b68ccbae53cf099&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;anti-inflammatory&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com/record/display.url?eid=2-s2.0-0021838110&amp;amp;origin=inward&amp;amp;txGid=7EC5AAC394804508D6A4640CDFBD90D2.kqQeWtawXauCyC8ghhRGJg:1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;anti-pyretic&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0031942211000525/1-s2.0-S0031942211000525-main.pdf?_tid=ada55eea-06a5-11e3-a79d-00000aab0f01&amp;amp;acdnat=1376679620_65aafcf6995fac691b68ccbae53cf099&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;anti-plasmodial effects.&lt;/a&gt; The name boneset itself almost certainly comes from its use to treat &quot;bonebreak fever&quot;, or dengue fever. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When colonists arrived in the new world, boneset/feverwort was used to treat rheumatism and malaria, as well as the common cold and high fevers. The evidence conclusively supports use by colonists to treat dengue fever, but I cannot find specific evidence to support indigenous use to treat dengue fever. It is probable, but I cannot prove it. (Check D.A. Moerman- Native American Ethnobotany for more information)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Boneset does not require homeopathic administration, although homeopathic administrations have no side effects whatsoever, and there is no evidence for their efficacy. A (relatively) complete summary of compounds and their effects &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037887411100729X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot find any chemical approved by the FDA sourced from Eupatorium, but a complete pharmacological inventory is, if it exists, proprietary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetters/2005/ucm075237.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This letter&lt;/a&gt; suggests that Eupatorium extracts are registered only under the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia of the United States(HPUS), and furthermore &quot;the HPUS does not establish that it has been shown by appropriate means to be safe, effective, and not misbranded for its intended use.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note also, that Eupatorium and related species can cause &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_sickness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;'milk sickness'&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14736" LastEditorUserId="14736" LastEditDate="2013-08-16T18:59:41.177" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T18:59:41.177" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17189" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17197" CreationDate="2013-08-02T22:40:32.423" Score="18" ViewCount="23302" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen reports that a 19 year old Egyptian student has invented a new space propulsion system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2148877/The-latest-entrant-space-race--Egypt-19-year-old-student-invents-futuristic-warp-drive-satellites.html&quot;&gt;The Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Two mirrors used to generate power using weird quantum physics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Leapfrogs Nasa research into same subject&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;19-year-old Egyptian hopes to test her invention on future space missions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for science, I do not consider The Daily Mail to be a reputable source.  Googling &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=aisha+mustafa+space+drive&quot;&gt;Aisha Mustafa Space Drive&lt;/a&gt; brings up many hits, but none from reputable sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fastcompany.com/1837966/mustafas-space-drive-egyptian-students-quantum-physics-invention&quot;&gt;fastcompany.com&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://inhabitat.com/an-egyptian-teenager-has-created-a-next-generation-quantum-space-propulsion-system/&quot;&gt;inhabitat.com&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://digitaljournal.com/article/325785&quot;&gt;digitaljournal.com&lt;/a&gt;.  I For such a major invention, there's suspiciously little coverage in reputable news sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I don't believe it.  But, is there a core of truth?  Does this person even exist?  Or is it all one big hoax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:27:33.033" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:27:33.033" Title="Did a 19 year old Egyptian student invent a new space propulsion system?" Tags="|technology|space-flight|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17190" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-03T00:37:08.943" Score="4" ViewCount="351" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is often claimed that Japanese are mostly doing incremental innovation as opposed to disruptive innovation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/199&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/199&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asiancenturyinstitute.com/economy/167-asia-s-innovation-cities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.asiancenturyinstitute.com/economy/167-asia-s-innovation-cities&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is why innovation in Asia rarely involves disruptive, major breakthroughs, and tends to be &quot;incremental innovation&quot; which adapts and perfects innovations coming from elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How true is this claim, and does that mean Japan is less technologically innovative than the U.S.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14847" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T01:49:01.820" Title="Is Japanese technological innovation less ground-breaking than Western technological innovation?" Tags="|technology|japan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-08-07T15:05:37.703" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17192" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-03T01:23:36.037" Score="2" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is often claimed that Ashkenazi Jews in the U.S. and the UK are the smartest ethnic group in the world:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028960600033X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028960600033X&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886903000795&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886903000795&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4098351,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4098351,00.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/131053&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/131053&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://harpending.humanevo.utah.edu/Documents/ashkiq.webpub.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://harpending.humanevo.utah.edu/Documents/ashkiq.webpub.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14847" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2019-11-12T07:17:48.487" LastActivityDate="2019-11-12T07:17:48.487" Title="Do Ashkenazi Jews have the highest IQ in the world?" Tags="|intelligence|jews|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2013-08-03T05:56:39.280" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17190" CreationDate="2013-08-03T01:49:01.820" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;INSEAD publishes the &lt;a href=&quot;http://strat-staging.com/content.aspx?page=data-analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Global Innovation Index&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the average rankings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;5 United States of America 60.3&#xA;22 Japan 52.2&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ranked by &quot;Innovation output&quot;, the result is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;12  United States of America 51.4&#xA;33  Japan 41.6&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ranked by &quot;Knowledge impact&quot;, the result is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;11  United States of America 54.1   &#xA;61  Japan 35.8&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T01:49:01.820" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17194" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17241" CreationDate="2013-08-03T02:40:44.880" Score="37" ViewCount="52277" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard of stories where, while giving injection to patient, a doctor forgot to remove all the air from the syringe. The patient died when the air reached to brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can injecting air into a vein with a syringe cause death?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8838" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-08-03T05:22:06.123" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T04:58:23.517" Title="Can an air-bubble in a syringe kill the patient?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17194" CreationDate="2013-08-03T10:32:48.380" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a well referenced Straight Dope article on this - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2866/can-air-injected-into-the-bloodstream-really-kill-you&quot;&gt;Can air injected into the bloodstream really kill you?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brief summary - small bubbles can do serious harm but are unlikely to kill someone, large amounts of air are often fatal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Small bubbles can block capillaries in vital organs, most urgently the brain, causing anything from pain and inflammation to neurological damage and paralysis. A small bubble impedes blood flow the same way a solid obstruction would — the bubble's surface tension relative to its size is too great for the force of blood to break it up or shove it along. Bad? Yes. Fatal? Probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2013-08-03T10:32:48.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17197" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17189" CreationDate="2013-08-03T16:53:32.023" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim appears to be false or exaggerated. I can't find any patents in the name of the alleged inventor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onislam.net/english/health-and-science/science/457096-egyptian-student-invents-a-new-propulsion-method.html&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; identified by Rob in comments above states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mustafa’s supervisor, &lt;strong&gt;Dr. Ahmed Fikry, who heads the physics&#xA;  department in Sohag University&lt;/strong&gt;, has shown great interest in his&#xA;  student’s invention and helped her patent it in the ASRT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a record of &quot;Staff Member&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://sci.sohag-univ.edu.eg/English/StaffMembers/Pages/StaffMemberData.aspx?StaffMemberID=JLk%2bvnh%2f4DLDqF82f3KH6Q%3d%3d&quot;&gt;Ahmed Mohamed Ahmed Ali Fikry&lt;/a&gt; which gives his &quot;Qualification Degree&quot; as &quot;BSC&quot; - it does not explicitly state he is the head of the Physics department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article reports&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aisha Mustafa, who has entered the active research area of spacecraft&#xA;  propulsion by her newly invented device, told the governmental EGYNews&#xA;  agency that &lt;strong&gt;she patented her invention&lt;/strong&gt; last February in the Egyptian&#xA;  Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.test.asrt.sci.eg/en/home.aspx&quot;&gt;ASRT&lt;/a&gt; website there is a link to the Egyptian Patent Office, I couldn't find anything relevant using their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.egypo.gov.eg/Search.aspx&quot;&gt;search form&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching for Patent Title: &quot;propulsion&quot; and dates forom 1950 to today only returned one hit from 1987. So it may be that you need to search in Arabic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Egypt patent office also links to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.egpto.eg.wipo.net/intro.html&quot;&gt;WIPO&lt;/a&gt; and using their &lt;a href=&quot;http://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/search.jsf&quot;&gt;search page&lt;/a&gt;, searching there for name &quot;aisha&quot; or name &quot;mustafa&quot; I didn't find any such patent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T00:29:08.407" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T00:29:08.407" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15679" CreationDate="2013-08-03T21:39:31.040" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This issue is currently being debated in Denmark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some &lt;strong&gt;possible&lt;/strong&gt; [1] health risks regarding &lt;strong&gt;low-frequency&lt;/strong&gt; sounds generated by wind turbines. (&lt;em&gt;Possible&lt;/em&gt; meaning that there is no scientific report yet to prove a casual link between symptoms reported by the neighbours to big wind turbines and the generated noise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(More references can be found at the last page of the petition [2] made by Danish Society for Work and Environment medicine (sorry for the bad translation - in Danish its: &quot;Dansk Selskab for Arbejds- og Miljømedicin&quot;) - in which they ask the goverment for more inquiry into the official noise-limits that are deemed as &quot;safe&quot; for people. )&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that the noise-problem is related to the big wind-turbines (2MW+) that produce more low-frequency sounds then smaller turbines. We are talking about frequencies from 20 to 200 Hz. Those are the frequencies that most houses are not sufficiently insulated from. If the level exceeds 20 dB(A) (inside the house) it can induce several (stress-related) symptoms [3][4]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;headaches&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;dizziness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;nausea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;palpitations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;irritability&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;concentration problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;memory problems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;other symptoms, like irregularities in female menstrual cycle, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the sound level above the safety threshold are only seen in houses less then 3KM from BIG wind turbines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is currently a report contracted by the Danish ministry of Health [5]. (I will update this answer when there are any new developments in the matter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ft.dk/samling/20101/almdel/epu/bilag/227/987243.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ft.dk/samling/20101/almdel/epu/bilag/227/987243.pdf&lt;/a&gt; - a report made &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; Danish Health Ministry for the Danish Parliment - in Danish&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dr.dk/NR/rdonlyres/909F351F-914A-4F21-869F-35CA11143EF6/3729341/Dasam_hoeringssvarvindmoellernov2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dr.dk/NR/rdonlyres/909F351F-914A-4F21-869F-35CA11143EF6/3729341/Dasam_hoeringssvarvindmoellernov2011.pdf&lt;/a&gt; (in Danish)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://foens.dk/megamoeller/?page_id=77&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://foens.dk/megamoeller/?page_id=77&lt;/a&gt; (in Danish)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wind Turbine syndrom: a book by Nina Pierpont MD, ph.d&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(Danish) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tvsyd.dk/artikel/205008:Er-vindmoeller-sundhedsskadelige&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.tvsyd.dk/artikel/205008:Er-vindmoeller-sundhedsskadelige&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14861" LastEditorUserId="14861" LastEditDate="2013-08-07T00:11:05.407" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T00:11:05.407" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17202" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17204" CreationDate="2013-08-04T08:56:56.597" Score="10" ViewCount="2700" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-ford/job-automation-is-a-futur_b_832146.html&quot;&gt;Huffington Post opinion piece&lt;/a&gt;, it's possible that in the future the ongoing process of automation will lead to less job opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It quotes economist Paul Krugman arguing one way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;information technology would end up reducing, not increasing, the demand for highly educated workers, because a lot of what highly educated workers do could actually be replaced by sophisticated information processing -- indeed, replaced more easily than a lot of manual labor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also quotes (and tries to refute) economist Brad DeLong arguing another:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't see a problem with the number of jobs: I don't see any reason that technological unemployment should be any more in our future than it has been in our past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the automation and increasing productivity leading to job losses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user8333" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-08-04T13:36:26.317" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T20:31:03.263" Title="Does the increase of automation lead to unemployment?" Tags="|economics|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ClosedDate="2013-08-06T00:41:55.703" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17204" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17202" CreationDate="2013-08-04T17:48:13.483" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Looking forward from 1983&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Leontief, Wassily; Duchin, Faye. &lt;a href=&quot;http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED241743&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Impacts of Automation on Employment, 1963-2000. Final Report&lt;/a&gt;, 1984):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[T]he intensive use of automation over the next 20 years will make it possible to conserve about 10 percent of the labor that would have been required to produce the same bills of goods in the absence of increased automation. The impact of automation is specific to different types of work and will involve a significant increase in professionals as a proportion of the labor force and a steep decline in the relative number of clerical workers. Because the direct displacement of production workers by specific items of automated equipment will, at least in the initial stages, be offset by increased investment demand for capital goods, production workers can be expected to maintain their share of the labor force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Looking back&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Kile, F. (2013). Artificial intelligence and society: a furtive transformation. AI &amp;amp; society, 28(1), 107-115.):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A steady decline of less-skilled jobs began with automation. Employment opportunities gradually declined around the globe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two recent agricultural developments illustrate this point: (1) One manufacturer announced development of a driverless tractor. (2) Some farms have attached a chip to their cows. The chip monitors milk production, quality, etc. The cows remain in a pasture until they feel the urge to be milked. At that point, each cow goes to a gate which then opens and from that point on, every aspect of milking is automated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As computing advanced, the need for workers per unit of output declined, though initially output grew fast enough to mask this phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Autor, D. (2010). The polarization of job opportunities in the US labor market: Implications for employment and earnings. Center for American Progress and The Hamilton Project):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The  job opportunities available to males displaced from manufacturing jobs, particularly those displaced at midcareer, are likely to be primarily found in lower-paying service occupations. While these job losses may be primarily attributable to automation of routine production work and growing international competition in manufactured goods rather than to de-unionization per se, the magnitude of the income losses for males is surely magnified by the fact that the job losses are in union-intensive industries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Freeman, R. (2012). Non-nano effects of nanotechnology on the economy. Nanotechnology: Societal Implications—Individual Perspectives, 68.):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the past 50 years or so, the displacement effect of technological change has exceeded the employment-increasing effect of expansion of production. Employment declined in manufacturing and agriculture, where technological change is most rapid, and shifted toward services, where technological change is modest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Hayes, B. (2009). Automation on the job. Am Sci, 97(1), 10.):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for economic consequences, worries about unemployment have certainly not gone away—not with job losses in the current recession approaching 2 million workers in the U.S. alone. But recent job losses are commonly attributed to causes other than automation, such as competition from overseas or a roller-coaster financial system. In any case, the vision of a world where machines do all the work and people stand idly by has simply not come to pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Predictions about the future&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are too many predictions to list, but I'll pick a few from just one of the above references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We’ll automate medicine. I don’t mean robot surgeons, although they’re in the works too. What I have in mind is Internet-enabled, do-it-yourself diagnostics. (Hayes, 2009)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We'll automate driving. (Hayes, 2009)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We'll automate warfare. (Hayes, 2009)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-04T17:48:13.483" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-08-05T21:28:55.460" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17205" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-05T00:30:01.333" Score="4" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;I consume high quantities of whole milk (probably a third-gallon a day), and I'm concerned with the potentially negative cancer-causing effects of this consumption.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found the following claims on this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tcolincampbell.org/courses-resources/article/milk-and-prostate-cancer-the-evidence-mounts/?tx_ttnews&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers are looking, not only at whether milk increases cancer&#xA;  risk, but how. The answer, apparently, is in the way milk affects a&#xA;  man's hormones. Dairy products boost the amount of insulin-like growth&#xA;  factor (IGF-I) in the blood. In turn, IGF-I promotes cancer cell&#xA;  growth.3-5 A small amount is normally in the bloodstream, but several&#xA;  recent studies have linked increased IGF-I levels to prostate cancer&#xA;  and possibly to breast cancer as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Milk does other mischief. Its load of calcium depletes the body's&#xA;  vitamin D, which, in turn, may add to cancer risk. Most dairy products&#xA;  are also high in fat, which affects the activity of sex hormones that&#xA;  play a major role in cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the research suggest is the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14342" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T02:23:08.427" Title="Is there is a significant association between (whole) milk consumption and cancer" Tags="|cancer|milk|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-08-06T06:37:38.847" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17209" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-05T03:27:39.393" Score="26" ViewCount="1823" Body="&lt;p&gt;In answering a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17161/does-green-cause-less-eye-strain/&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; about the effects of viewing different colors, I wanted to make a claim about the psychological effects of the color red – specifically the popular belief that it causes neurological &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arousal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;arousal&lt;/a&gt; or stress. However, not only did I have difficulty finding a source to back up the belief, I actually found one that attempted to refute it (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theassc.org/files/assc/2598.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;“Colors, Arousal, Functionalism, and Individual Differences,” Robinson, 2004&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the measurable psychological effects of the color red? Does it actually cause arousal or stress as widely believed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14359" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T23:48:22.310" Title="Does the color red have measurable psychological effects?" Tags="|psychology|colors|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2015-05-27T08:37:21.493" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17209" CreationDate="2013-08-05T20:48:12.837" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone made a test and found that orange and red would increase blood pressure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2008/Projects/J1131.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My hypothesis was correct, that color can affect a person's blood pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone also tested that some colors (red, for example) have influence on how someone evaluates the time that a page takes to download. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/30162328?uid=3737664&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21102528620627&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A final experiment reveals that color not only affects perceived download quickness but also has consequences for users' evaluations of the Web site and their likelihood of recommending it to others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4146" LastActivityDate="2013-08-05T20:48:12.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17224" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-06T09:12:16.717" Score="51" ViewCount="28563" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the 1975 software project management book, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, Fred Brooks states that, no matter the programming language chosen, a professional developer will write an average 10 lines of code (LoC) per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Productivities in [the] range of 600-800 debugged instructions per man-year were experienced by control program groups. Productivities in the [range of] 2000-3000 debugged instructions per man-year were achieved by [OS/360] language translator groups.  These include planning done by the group, coding component test, system test, and some support activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-&lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/stream/mythicalmanmonth00fred#page/92/mode/2up&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Page 93&lt;/a&gt; of &quot;&lt;em&gt;The Mythical Man Month&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (1975)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book quotes other numbers too for other projects, saying e.g. that an O/S is more complicated and therefore slower to write than other types of software.  However, a 2000 statements/year figure is virtually identical to the often-claimed 10 LoC/day.  Further, it is on the nearly same page as the other part of the claim, which is that LoC/day seems independent of the programming language being used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Productivity [in LoC] seems constant [across languages] in terms of elementary statements [so it's better to use a higher-level language if you can], a conclusion that is reasonable in terms of the thought a statement requires and the errors it may include.&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-&lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/stream/mythicalmanmonth00fred#page/94/mode/2up&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Page 94&lt;/a&gt; of &quot;&lt;em&gt;The Mythical Man Month&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (1975)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is still being made today (in 2006, at least). From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/diseconomies-of-scale-and-lines-of-code.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jeff Atwood's blog, &lt;em&gt;Coding Horror&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Project Size         Lines of code (per year)     COCOMO average&#xA;    10,000 LOC           2,000 - 25,000               3,200&#xA;   100,000 LOC           1,000 - 20,000               2,600&#xA; 1,000,000 LOC             700 - 10,000               2,000&#xA;10,000,000 LOC             300 -  5,000               1,600&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The COCOMO averages divided across 250 work days per year results in 6.4 to 12.8 LoC/day, encompassing the 10 LoC/day claim from the 1975 book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that professional programmers produce code at around 10 LoC/day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14609" LastEditorUserId="37939" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2017-12-17T00:22:52.220" LastActivityDate="2017-12-21T19:35:15.123" Title="Do professional software developers write an average of 10 lines of code per day?" Tags="|software|programming-productivity|programming|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17225" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-06T10:12:55.907" Score="17" ViewCount="2719" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a popular belief that the human body can't absorb more than 30 grams of protein per meal. Some also believe that the limit is 25 or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/470546-maximum-amount-of-protein-the-body-can-absorb/&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; states that &quot;According to Dr. Helen Kollias, Ph.D. of Johns Hopkins Hospital, your body can absorb about 8 g to 10 g of whey protein per hour.&quot; This implies that there may be a limit for a single meal. On the other hand, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liftbigeatbig.com/2011/10/protein-absorption-myth-of-30-grams.html&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;  states the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific consensuses of the protein limit in a single meal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14892" LastEditorUserId="15178" LastEditDate="2013-09-17T08:05:40.650" LastActivityDate="2016-01-12T19:46:34.497" Title="What is the largest amount of protein the body can absorb in a single meal?" Tags="|nutrition|bodybuilding|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17229" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-06T17:52:49.857" Score="10" ViewCount="794" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1995/09/26/science/geochemist-says-oil-fieldsmay-be-refilled-naturally.html?pagewanted=all&amp;amp;src=pm&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt;, that have reported on &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/02/17/337289/&quot;&gt;people saying this&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The increase in reserve estimates is fueling the offbeat theories of maverick scientists who believe that the expression &quot;fossil fuels&quot; is a misnomer and that the earth contains a virtually endless supply of oil. Their ideas fly in the face of the conventional wisdom that oil and natural gas come from the remains of animals and plants buried millions of years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I haven't found anything to support the thesis. Have their been studies that actually suggest that oil supplies are endless?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14845" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-06T18:24:36.213" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T05:00:21.837" Title="Are oil supplies virtually endless?" Tags="|oil|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17234" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-06T22:56:55.583" Score="-3" ViewCount="357" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Chinese#Education&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Chinese#Education&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The proportion of British Chinese achieving 5 or more good GCSEs stood at 70%, where it remained the highest out of all ethnic groups in the UK.[30]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the study include all ethnic groups?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14847" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-07T16:28:55.907" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T21:37:14.240" Title="Did this study on British pupil intelligence include all ethnic groups?" Tags="|intelligence|race|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17224" CreationDate="2013-08-06T23:51:39.343" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Capers Jones, productivity across programming languages is not as constant as the claim, but the evidence supports the claim &quot;it's better to use a higher-level language if you can.&quot; As you note in your question, productivity varies dramatically depending on project size, so it's probably not helpful to try to pin down &quot;average LoC / engineer / month&quot; averaged across all different project sizes. But for projects of similar size...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following tables from &quot;The Economics of Software Quality&quot; show productivity on 10 PBX systems of approximately the same size:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;None of the projects were exactly 1,500 function points in size, and the original sizes ranged from about 1,300 to 1,750 function points in size. Here, too, the data normalization feature was used to make all 10 versions identical in factors that would conceal the underlying similarities of the examples. --  Capers Jones; Olivier Bonsignour. The Economics of Software Quality (Kindle Locations 2251-2253). Addison-Wesley Professional. Published 2011. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ewJpV.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data show Lines-of-Code productivity decreasing in higher-level languages (ranging from 480 LoC/Developer-Month with Assembly to 162 LoC/Developer-Month with Smalltalk) but &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_point&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Function Point&lt;/a&gt; productivity increasing with higher-level languages (1.92 FP / Developer-Month with Assembly to 7.71 FP / Developer-Month with Smalltalk). This is a chart of the data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LsffK.png&quot; alt=&quot;chart&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2013-08-08T20:47:48.427" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T20:47:48.427" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12358" CreationDate="2013-08-07T00:12:41.603" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/27/as-swing-districts-dwindle-can-a-divided-house-stand/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nate Silver article&lt;/a&gt; on the subject. He talks about the dwindling number of swing districts. When congressman are in landslide districts, they don't face an electoral threat in general elections, but still have to worry about primary elections. Some of the decline in the number of swing districts can be attributed to redistricting, according to the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some of this was because of the redistricting that took place after the 2010 elections. Republicans were in charge of the redistricting process in many states, and they made efforts to shore up their incumbents, while packing Democrats into a few overwhelmingly Democratic districts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, gerrymandering is insufficient to explain all of the increased partisanship in Congress. Increased polarization exceeded the polarization caused just by gerrymandering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, a more careful look at the chart reveals increasing polarization. The slope of the black regression line in the chart is greater than one (specifically, it is about 1.08). In plain English, this means that polarization increased by about 8 percent from 2008 to 2012 — above and beyond any changes brought about by redistricting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't mean that gerrymandering doesn't affect elections. Gerrymandering helped Republicans win a majority in the House of Representatives in 2012, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/11/09/house-democrats-got-more-votes-than-house-republicans-yet-boehner-says-hes-got-a-mandate/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;even though Democrats won more votes&lt;/a&gt;. However, the effects of gerrymandering are insufficient to fully explain the increase in partisanship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastEditorUserId="8532" LastEditDate="2017-12-25T05:01:05.343" LastActivityDate="2017-12-25T05:01:05.343" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17194" CreationDate="2013-08-07T06:30:56.613" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you have described is an air embolism. Incidences and cases of this happening has been recorded in several different procedures with some like seated posterior fossa surgery with a rate as high as 80%. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9172037&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;variability in amount&lt;/em&gt; of air is because of the possible mechanisms by which it can cause death. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9172037&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If a small amount of air is injected it forms micro emboli which can&#xA;now either cause gradual obstruction to blood flow &lt;em&gt;or spontaneous&#xA;resorption&lt;/em&gt;, which again depends upon rate and volume of air&#xA;entrained, comorbid conditions causing ventilation-perfusion defect. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A larger amount of air but remaining in venous circulation can&#xA;cause obstruction of right ventricular outflow tract leading to&#xA;cardiac arrest.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But when a large amount of air gets trapped on the right side it can&#xA;increase the pressure in right atrium causing right to left shunting&#xA;through foramen ovale giving access to arterial circulation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the last point its important to know that upto 35% of adults have been reported having undiagnosed patent foramen ovale. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6694427&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; As for arterial embolism,  experimental procedure on dogs showed injecting 1 to 1 1/4 ml/kg of air in cerebral arterial circulation can cause mortality in 50%. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1465558/&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; Rukstinant reported ventricular fibrillation on injecting 0.25 ml of air in coronary arteries. &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=245941&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientific literature on the amount of air for air embolism (venous). A case report in 2001 discussing the volume of air required stated that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;THE morbidity and mortality rates from venous air embolism is&#xA;  determined by the volume of air entrained, the rate of entrainment,&#xA;  and the position and the cardiac status of the patient. As early as&#xA;  1809, Nysten estimated the lethal dose of air to be 40–50 ml in a&#xA;  small dog and 100–120 ml in a large dog. The exact amount, 7.5 ml/kg,&#xA;  however, was not determined in dogs until 1953 by Oppenheimer et al.&#xA;  In l963, Munson et al. demonstrated a lethal volume of only 0.55&#xA;  ml/kg in rabbits. The lethal volume of air in an adult human is&#xA;  unknown but is estimated to range from 200 to 300 ml. These numbers&#xA;  are derived from the cases of fatalities reported by Martland, Yeakel,&#xA;  and Flanagan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This case reported the volume as 200 ml and note Flanagal had reported around the same in 1969.&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/anesthesiology/Citation/2001/02000/Volume_of_Air_in_a_Lethal_Venous_Air_Embolism.31.aspx&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, coming to the case air-bubble in syringe. (Because your question also had injecting air in vein, so that was first).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2013 nobody (without a malicious intent) would deliberately inject air. Accidental injecting instead of contrast has been reported. Some syringes which come with prefilled air has been asked to expel them during manufacturing prior to packaging to avoid this rare adverse event, although this can be expelled manually prior to injecting by the healthcare personals. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2044.2007.05245.x/full&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Palmon, S. C., Moore, L. E., Lundberg, J., &amp;amp; Toung, T. (1997). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9172037&quot;&gt;Venous air embolism: a review&lt;/a&gt;. Journal of clinical anesthesia, 9(3), 251-257.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hagen, P. T., Scholz, D. G., &amp;amp; Edwards, W. D. (1984, January). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6694427&quot;&gt;Incidence and size of patent foramen ovale during the first 10 decades of life: an autopsy study of 965 normal hearts.&lt;/a&gt; In Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Vol. 59, No. 1, pp. 17-20). Elsevier.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fries, C. C., Levowitz, B., Adler, S., Cook, A. W., Karlson, K. E., &amp;amp; Dennis, C. (1957). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1465558/&quot;&gt;Experimental cerebral gas embolism.&lt;/a&gt; Annals of Surgery, 145(4), 461.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rukstinat, G. (1931). &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=245941&quot;&gt;Experimental air embolism of the coronary arteries&lt;/a&gt;. Journal of the American Medical Association, 96(1), 26-28.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Toung, T. J., Rossberg, M. I., &amp;amp; Hutchins, G. M. (2001). &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/anesthesiology/Citation/2001/02000/Volume_of_Air_in_a_Lethal_Venous_Air_Embolism.31.aspx&quot;&gt;Volume of air in a lethal venous air embolism.&lt;/a&gt; Anesthesiology, 94(2), 360-361.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marsh, M. (2007), &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2044.2007.05245.x/full&quot;&gt;Risk of air embolism from prefilled syringes&lt;/a&gt;. Anaesthesia, 62: 973. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2044.2007.05245.x&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10572" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T06:30:56.613" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14984" CreationDate="2013-08-07T09:05:43.260" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To followup a comment to RedGrittyBrick's question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'd +1 this answer if you were to include figures on whether a typical human swimmer could provide that additional force (could an Olympic gold-medallist?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/liquids-densities-d_743.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;RedGrittyBrick's reference data&lt;/a&gt; the density of crude oil varies from 0.79 to 0.97. The second-highest density of all the oils listed is 0.915.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The density of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/639241.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fit young man is about 1.08&lt;/a&gt; (very close to 1). A 70kg man swimming in oil whose density is 0.915 would therefore experience negative buoyancy of about &lt;code&gt;(1 - 0.915) x 70 =&lt;/code&gt; 6 kg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This weight increases to 12 kg if you choose the 2nd-lightest crude (density 0.825) instead of the 2nd-heaviest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These numbers imply that it would be like swimming in water with a 6..12 kg weight attached, which may be feasible for some but is not easy: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.safeswim.com/Lifeguard_Training_Facts.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lifeguard Certification FAQs&lt;/a&gt; says that the hardest part of the test to become a lifeguard is the lifting a 10 pound (approx 4.4 kg) brick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of swim force you could theoretically (assuming for example that you can breathe in the fumes) generate is IMO slightly greater in oil than water, because oil has a higher &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/dynamic-absolute-kinematic-viscosity-d_412.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;kinetic viscosity&lt;/a&gt; ... but not very much more: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/dynamic-absolute-kinematic-viscosity-d_412.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;approximately 50 SSU for crude compared with 38 SSU for water&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A simple numerical analysis, to @Sklivvz's pont, would be off-topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experimentation would be dangerous/unethical so the theory is all there is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming (based on common sense) that the metabolic differences work against and not in favour of swimming in crude oil as opposed to water, the 6..12 kg of negative buoyancy would not be compensated for by any increased metabolic capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-08-07T09:43:47.273" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T09:43:47.273" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2013-08-07T12:33:57.897" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In terms of the probiotic Yakult, which has &amp;quot;6.5 billion healthy bacteria in every serve&amp;quot; there was a 2010 review conducted by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/1860&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;European Food Safety Authority&lt;/a&gt;. This was a separate study called to support those made on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/1767&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;intestinal health claims&lt;/a&gt; (which have been &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/6183/5775&quot;&gt;covered by Johan&lt;/a&gt; already).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The EFSA panel concluded that a cause and effect relationship had not been established between the consumption of the &lt;em&gt;Lactobacillus casei&lt;/em&gt; strain &lt;em&gt;Shirota&lt;/em&gt; and maintenance of the upper respiratory tract defence against pathogens by maintaining immune defences. This shouldn't be that surprising considering that 6.5 billion bacteria is 0.0065% of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/health/human-microbiome-project-decodes-our-100-trillion-good-bacteria.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;100 trillion&lt;/a&gt; or so bacteria in the intestines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The food constituent, Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota, which is the subject of the health claim,&#xA;is sufficiently characterised. The Panel considers that maintenance of&#xA;the upper respiratory tract defence against pathogens by maintaining&#xA;immune defences is a beneficial physiological effect. The applicant&#xA;identified a total of 12 references as being pertinent to the health&#xA;claim. These included nine human intervention trials and three animal&#xA;studies. In weighing the evidence, the Panel took into account that&#xA;there was no human study from which conclusions could be drawn for an&#xA;effect of Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota consumption on upper respiratory tract infections, that&#xA;one human study did not support an effect of Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota consumption on the&#xA;immune response to influenza vaccination, and that there was a lack of&#xA;evidence for an effect of Lactobacillus casei strain Shirota consumption on the immune system that&#xA;could relate to the defence of the upper respiratory tract against&#xA;pathogens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yakult is supposedly backed by a significant body of science. The number of scientific papers is certainly large, however, most of them are related to in vitro and in vivo experiments, with some human clinical trials done on cohorts (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/137/3/791S/4664752&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743504004177?via%3Dihub&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nature.com/articles/1600663&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;). The trials also tended to use much larger daily consumptions of bacteria, in the order of 40–100 billions of probiotic L. casei Shirota (sorry, links are now behind a paywall in the UK), far above the single bottle concentration of approximately 6.5 billion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of the studies performed shows that the claims are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rima.org/web/medline_pdf/can%20j%20gastroenterol_655.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;borderline&lt;/a&gt;, with both placebo and Yakult treated constipation groups showing improvements (improved constipation 56% vs. 89%, p=0.003) in the second week, or the claims are based on &lt;a href=&quot;https://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/9881885/reload=0;jsessionid=4fMhw5rsTL2WNXHTtLQa.24&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;small sample sizes&lt;/a&gt; (n=20). This shows why the EFSA concluded as they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5775" LastEditorUserId="26893" LastEditDate="2022-10-12T18:46:04.603" LastActivityDate="2022-10-12T18:46:04.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2839" CreationDate="2013-08-07T13:55:50.567" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are real life consequences to cold water immersion, such as in the sea. The head is the only part of the body exposed, so what happens is waves continually wet the head and then the wind evaporates the water thereby cooling the head far more effectively than if the head remained dry and free from wind. In this case the head does lose a lot more heat than other parts of the body which will typically have clothing on which acts in some way as an insulator. This is why some life jackets have built in wind proof hoods. Couple that with a thermal hat and the head is no longer a major heat loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14911" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T13:55:50.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8263" CreationDate="2013-08-07T14:29:29.233" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;We don't know the long term effects that it might have. Feeding studies are generally 90 days long (and most are done by Monsanto, if you trust in the first place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You also can't simply look at the specific protein produced by the transgene, as introducing a transgene affects the entire phenotype.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Monitoring the pattern of gene expression using microarray technology showed that mRNA levels for 5% of the genes were significantly upregulated or downregulated. Recent studies in transgenic plants showed that the over-expression of a gene involved in pectin synthesis had no effect in tobacco, but caused major structural changes and premature leaf shedding in apple trees [4]. Although these sorts of unpredicted changes in gene expression and function are frequently observed, they have received very little attention. Furthermore, they are not unexpected. The maintenance of a specific cell phenotype involves a very precise balancing act of gene regulation, and any perturbation might be expected to change the overall patterns of gene expression. The problem, as with secondary modifications, is that there is currently no way to predict the resultant changes in protein synthesis.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;- Source:  Commentary, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v20/n10/full/nbt1002-969.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A different perspective on GM food&lt;/a&gt;, &#xA;David Schubert, Nature Biotechnology 20, 969 (2002) doi:10.1038/nbt1002-969 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14912" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-08-07T14:39:55.763" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T14:39:55.763" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6180" CreationDate="2013-08-07T14:44:25.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Numerous meta-analyses show various benefits in addition to the effects on digestive health and diarrhea that were posted before.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18461650&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Meta-analysis of probiotics for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While our analyses suggest that probiotic use may be associated with improvement in IBS   methodological limitations of contributing studies. Probiotics warrant further study as a potential therapy for IBS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK77387/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A systematic review and meta-analysis: probiotics in the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Probiotics may have a role in alleviating some of the symptoms of IBS, a condition for which currently evidence of efficacy of drug therapies is weak. However, as IBS is a condition that is chronic and usually intermittent longer term trials are recommended. Such research should focus on the type, optimal dose of probiotics and the subgroups of patients who are likely to benefit the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18465170&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Efficacy of probiotics in irritable bowel syndrome: a meta-analysis of randomized, controlled trials&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Probiotics may improve symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome and can be used as supplement to standard therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21039671&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Meta-analysis: the effects of Saccharomyces boulardii supplementation on Helicobacter pylori eradication rates and side effects during treatment&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In patients with H. pylori infection, there is evidence to recommend the use of S. boulardii along with standard triple therapy as an option for increasing the eradication rates and decreasing overall therapy-related side effects, particularly diarrhoea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19751434&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Meta-analysis: Lactobacillus containing quadruple therapy versus standard triple first-line therapy for Helicobacter pylori eradication&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our review suggests that supplementation with Lactobacilli could be effective in increasing eradication rates of anti-H. pylori therapy for first-treated patients. Furthermore, Lactobacilli showed a positive impact on some H. pylori therapy-related side effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21251030&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Meta-analysis: the effects of gut flora modulation using prebiotics, probiotics and synbiotics on minimal hepatic encephalopathy&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The use of prebiotics, probiotics and synbiotics was associated with significant improvement in minimal hepatic encephalopathy. Among individual agents, lactulose appears to have the most beneficial effect, followed closely by probiotics and synbiotics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21930366&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Influence of consumption of probiotics on the plasma lipid profile: a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These results indicate that a diet rich in probiotics decreases total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol concentration in plasma for participants with high, borderline high and normal cholesterol levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20543719&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effect of Bifidobacterium animalis subsp lactis supplementation in preterm infants: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence regarding the potential beneficial effects of B lactis supplementation in preterm infants is encouraging. Further studies to assess clinically relevant outcomes are needed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/125/5/921&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Updated Meta-analysis of Probiotics for Preventing Necrotizing Enterocolitis in Preterm Neonates&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results confirm the significant benefits of probiotic supplements in reducing death and disease in preterm neonates. The dramatic effect sizes, tight confidence intervals, extremely low P values, and overall evidence indicate that additional placebo-controlled trials are unnecessary if a suitable probiotic product is available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14912" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T17:17:38.670" LastActivityDate="2019-10-27T17:17:38.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17100" CreationDate="2013-08-07T18:39:57.737" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;  (probably if you are young adult).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chiropractic neck manipulation is known to positively associated with dissection and occlusion of vertebral artery, this is especially true for young adults. &lt;a href=&quot;http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/32/5/1054.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you have asked is cervical self manipulation. Yes there has been cases reported with patients having vertebral artery strokes due to cervical self manipulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two such cases were reported in October 1991 edition of Neurolgy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cook and Sanstead reported Wallenberg syndrome (lateral medullary&#xA;    infarction) in a 33 year old woman. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurology.org/content/41/10/1695.extract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rothrock et al reported a similiar case of vertebral artery&#xA;occlusion in a 35 year old man. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurology.org/content/41/10/1696.extract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In February 1991, Johnson et al reported another case in 26 year old&#xA;    male in The Australian Medical Journal. &lt;a href=&quot;http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10686&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last paper also made some strong observations that this practice of cervical self manipulation should be strongly discouraged and neck manipulation (self maipulation) should be considered a cause of stroke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another observation one can make from all these three cases is that apart from being young,  all three went for chiropractic neck manipulation in their past. In the first two cases although it all appears experimental self manipulation gone wrong, in the last case the chiropractor had actually instructed how to self manipulate, making the whole exercise more hazardous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rothwell, D. M., Bondy, S. J., &amp;amp; Williams, J. I. (2001). &lt;a href=&quot;http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/32/5/1054.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chiropractic manipulation and stroke a population-based case-control study&lt;/a&gt;. Stroke, 32(5), 1054-1060.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cook, J. W., &amp;amp; Sanstead, J. K. (1991). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurology.org/content/41/10/1695.extract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wallenberg's syndrome following self‐induced manipulation&lt;/a&gt;. Neurology, 41(10), 1695-1695.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rothrock, J. F., Hesselink, J. R., &amp;amp; Teacher, T. M. (1991). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurology.org/content/41/10/1696.extract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vertebral artery occlusion and stroke from cervical self‐manipulation&lt;/a&gt;. Neurology, 41(10), 1696-1696.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Johnson, D. W., Whiting, G., &amp;amp; Pender, M. P. (1993). &lt;a href=&quot;http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:10686&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cervical self-manipulation and stroke&lt;/a&gt;. Medical Journal of Australia, 158(4), 290.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10572" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T18:39:57.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17234" CreationDate="2013-08-07T21:29:08.517" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Did the study include all ethnic groups?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the original dataset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Included. Not necessarily distinguished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article referenced in the question publishes this chart which came from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/in_depth/uk/2002/race/educational_achievement.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC Article on Educational Achievement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/14PNi.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graph source is shown as the Department for Education and Skills. This was discontinued in 2007 I believe and it's successor is the Department For Education (DfE).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The DfE publish information on how they go about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/pupilsupport/inclusionandlearnersupport/mea/a0077022/ethnic-monitoring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ethnic Monitoring&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Schools and local authorities are required to collect and record data on pupils' ethnic background - both for local purposes and to supply data to the Department. The data enables the careers and experiences of children from different backgrounds to be monitored, and helps schools and Local Authorities to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;identify barriers to achievement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;establish strategies to raise standards&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;comply with equal opportunities legislation and the Race Relations Amendment Act&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;ensure effective allocation and targeting of funding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So any data reported by the DfE (and presumably by it's predecessor) would have included all ethnic groups. Since parents and pupils have the right to refuse to provide this information, one ethnic group category is &quot;refused&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The department's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.education.gov.uk/researchandstatistics/datatdatam/cbds/a0058744/cbds&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Common Basic Codeset&lt;/a&gt; currently includes the following ethnic groups (as well as a code to indicate the source of the information).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;White - British&#xA;White - Cornish&#xA;White - English &#xA;White - Scottish&#xA;White - Welsh&#xA;Other White British&#xA;White - Irish&#xA;Traveller of Irish Heritage&#xA;Any Other White Background&#xA;Albanian &#xA;Bosnian- Herzegovinian&#xA;Croatian&#xA;Greek/ Greek Cypriot&#xA;Greek&#xA;Greek Cypriot&#xA;Italian&#xA;Kosovan&#xA;Portuguese&#xA;Serbian&#xA;Turkish/ Turkish Cypriot&#xA;Turkish&#xA;Turkish Cypriot&#xA;White European&#xA;White Eastern European &#xA;White Western European &#xA;White Other &#xA;Gypsy / Roma&#xA;White and Asian&#xA;White and Pakistani&#xA;White and Indian&#xA;White and Any Other Asian Background&#xA;Any Other Mixed Background&#xA;Asian and Any Other Ethnic Group&#xA;Asian and Black&#xA;Asian and Chinese&#xA;Black and Any Other Ethnic Group&#xA;Black and Chinese &#xA;Chinese and Any Other Ethnic Group&#xA;White and Any Other Ethnic Group&#xA;White and Chinese&#xA;Other Mixed Background&#xA;Indian&#xA;Pakistani&#xA;Mirpuri Pakistani&#xA;Kashmiri Pakistani&#xA;Other Pakistani&#xA;Bangladeshi&#xA;Any Other Asian Background&#xA;African Asian &#xA;Kashmiri Other&#xA;Nepali&#xA;Sri Lankan Sinhalese&#xA;Sri Lankan Tamil&#xA;Sri Lankan Other&#xA;Other Asian&#xA;Black Caribbean&#xA;Black - African&#xA;Black - Angolan&#xA;Black - Congolese&#xA;Black - Ghanaian&#xA;Black - Nigerian&#xA;Black - Sierra Leonean&#xA;Black - Somali&#xA;Black - Sudanese&#xA;Other Black African &#xA;Any Other Black Background&#xA;Black European&#xA;Black North American &#xA;Other Black&#xA;Chinese&#xA;Hong Kong Chinese&#xA;Malaysian Chinese&#xA;Singaporean Chinese&#xA;Taiwanese&#xA;Other Chinese&#xA;Any Other Ethnic Group&#xA;Afghan&#xA;Arab Other&#xA;Egyptian&#xA;Filipino&#xA;Iranian&#xA;Iraqi&#xA;Japanese&#xA;Korean&#xA;Kurdish &#xA;Latin/ South/ Central American &#xA;Lebanese&#xA;Libyan&#xA;Malay&#xA;Moroccan&#xA;Polynesian &#xA;Thai&#xA;Vietnamese&#xA;Yemeni&#xA;Other Ethnic Group&#xA;Refused &#xA;Information Not Yet Obtained&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, some people may make finer distinctions in which case the educational attainment of their ethnic group &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; still included in the report, although it will not be separately reported, it will be included as part of one of the above ethnic groups. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-08-07T21:37:14.240" LastActivityDate="2013-08-07T21:37:14.240" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17255" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17258" CreationDate="2013-08-08T02:34:21.087" Score="9" ViewCount="1000" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://capitalismmagazine.com/2013/08/busybody-politics/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; from Capitalism Magazine,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ObamaCare is perhaps the ultimate in busybody politics. People who have never even run a drugstore, much less a hospital, blithely prescribe what must be done by the entire medical system, from doctors to hospitals to producers of pharmaceutical drugs to health insurance companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This includes federal laws requiring the turning over of patients’ confidential medical records to the federal government, where these records can be looked at by politicians, bureaucrats and whoever can hack into the government’s computers. Neither you nor your doctor has a right to keep this information confidential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never heard this before, it's unreferenced, and is from a political source; this combination makes me rather skeptical that such laws exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8323" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T04:05:42.513" Title="Does &quot;Obamacare&quot; require the disclosure of medical records to the government?" Tags="|government|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17255" CreationDate="2013-08-08T04:05:42.513" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/may/20/michele-bachmann/michele-bachmann-decries-huge-national-database-ru/&quot;&gt;This Politifact.com page&lt;/a&gt; examines a similar claim made by Michelle Bachmann. It gives her claim their worst rating: &quot;Pants on Fire&quot;. Bachmann claimed that the government was going to be collecting intimate details about people as a result of Obamacare, and in fact, the government is not. This claim is a misinterpretation of a &quot;Hub&quot; that the government is creating, which will allow appropriate government agencies to look up data &lt;em&gt;that it already has&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/mythbusters-obamacare-edition-94886.html&quot;&gt;This Politico page&lt;/a&gt; discusses claims that Obamacare would expose your medical tests and other medical data to the government. The government would access and request some data indicating eligibility for subsidies, but, as you can see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.takepart.com/sites/default/files/ObamacareIndividualForm.pdf&quot;&gt;from this Obamacare application form&lt;/a&gt;, no medical information is requested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notion that the Affordable Care Act will expose sensitive data to the government appears to be nothing but a hyperbolic misinterpretation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T04:05:42.513" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17068" CreationDate="2013-08-08T04:46:16.870" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can think of a pretty good example that disproves the theory. Women in Classical Japan (c. 900-1000AD) were famous for their literary art. To choose two famous examples, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murasaki_Shikibu&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Murasaki Shikibu&lt;/a&gt; wrote &quot;The Tale of Genji&quot; (once called &quot;the world's first novel&quot;) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sei_Shonagon&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sei Shonagon&lt;/a&gt; wrote a famous diary called &quot;The Pillow Book.&quot; &quot;The Tale of Genji&quot; is probably one of the most (if not THE most) influential books in Japanese history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it happens, while the men of the Japanese court were slogging through epic poems in &quot;official&quot; Chinese, women were building the foundations of native Japanese literature. Pretty cool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11352" LastEditorUserId="5296" LastEditDate="2016-03-04T14:56:27.953" LastActivityDate="2016-03-04T14:56:27.953" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15545" CreationDate="2013-08-08T05:31:46.127" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Probably not.&lt;/strong&gt; (atleast not boost)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The terms used in this claim are like weasel words which from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;..for equivocating words and phrases aimed at creating an impression&#xA;that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact&#xA;only a vague or ambiguous claim, or even a refutation has been&#xA;communicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyways, coming to the question. A research question would not try to assess whether blood donation boosts/improves specifically immune system of blood donors as blood donation from the donors behalf isn't a therapeutic modality for them, although it may be for recipients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1992 Lewis et al reported in their article &amp;quot;Investigation of the effect of long-term whole blood donation on immunologic parameters&amp;quot; published in &lt;em&gt;Transfusion&lt;/em&gt;. It was done on  blood samples were obtained from 27 whole blood donors who had been donating on a regular basis for at least 4 years and from 21 nondonor controls. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A panel of single- and dual-labeled monoclonal antibodies was used to&#xA;characterize peripheral white cells, and then the cells were analyzed&#xA;by flow cytometry. Lymphocyte subsets included T (CD3) cells, helper T&#xA;(CD4) cells, suppressor T (CD8) cells, B (CD19) cells, natural killer&#xA;(NK) (CD56) cells, and subpopulations of T cells defined by the&#xA;coexpression of markers for CD3/HLA-DR, CD3/CD56, and CD8/CD11b.&#xA;Monocyte and neutrophil analysis included quantitation of receptors&#xA;for C5a, formyl-met-leu-phe, and C3bi (CR3). Monocytes were also&#xA;analyzed for expression of HLA-DR and CD14 antigens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No significant differences were observed in the whole blood donors and nondonor&#xA;controls for any of these factors used to assess immunologic status,&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;except for an increase in C3bi receptors on both neutrophils and&#xA;monocytes from whole blood donors.&lt;/strong&gt; These findings indicate that the&#xA;lymphocyte parameters analyzed in this study are unaltered by&#xA;long-term whole blood donation. &lt;strong&gt;Further research is necessary to&#xA;determine the significance of complement receptor upregulation in&#xA;whole blood donors and to identify any changes in the &lt;em&gt;functional&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;characteristics&lt;/strong&gt; of peripheral white cells from whole blood donors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As rightly pointed out this study only measured the counts but not activity of the immunological lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now we will have look at work of Lasek et al, who had done quite a lot of work understanding this. All the references are from Pubmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1987, In &lt;em&gt;Journal of clinical &amp;amp; laboratory immunology&lt;/em&gt; under the article &amp;quot;The effect of blood donation on natural killer activity in man&amp;quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1537-2995.1992.32192116433.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Natural killer (NK) activity by peripheral blood mononuclear cells was&#xA;determined in 122 male blood bank donors and 51 age-matched normal&#xA;individuals. The results of a 4 hr 51Cr specific release assay&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;demonstrated that NK activity was significantly decreased in blood&#xA;donors and was dependent on the total volume of blood donated&lt;/strong&gt;--the&#xA;lowest values were observed in active long-term blood donors. It was&#xA;shown also that depression of NK activity was &lt;strong&gt;accompanied by a&#xA;decrease in total lymphocyte count in blood.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1988 in &lt;em&gt;Archivum immunologiae et therapiae experimentalis&lt;/em&gt; in the article &amp;quot;The influence of blood donation on antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) in voluntary blood bank donors&amp;quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3612753&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;K cell activity by peripheral blood lymphocytes was found to be&#xA;significantly decreased in voluntary blood bank donors, this decrease&#xA;being particularly evident when cytotoxicity was expressed in lytic&#xA;units. When blood donors were divided into groups in relation to the&#xA;total amount of blood donated, the deepest decline of ADCC was found&#xA;in the group of &amp;quot;moderate&amp;quot; (3-6 l of blood withdrawn) donors. &lt;strong&gt;A single&#xA;blood donation was followed by a transient decrease in the K cell&#xA;activity and returned to normal values in about two months.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, In 1992 again in the same journal in the article &amp;quot;Two patterns of NK activity changes following blood donation: decrease in the beginners and restoration in regular blood bank donors&amp;quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3233062&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NK cell activity of peripheral blood lymphocytes was determined in&#xA;voluntary blood bank donors in a standard 4-hr 51Cr-release&#xA;cytotoxicity assay. When blood donors were divided into groups&#xA;according to the total amount of blood they had donated in the past,&#xA;decreased NK activity was found in &amp;quot;moderate&amp;quot; donors who had donated&#xA;between 3 and 9 l of blood, but not in those who had donated &amp;lt; or = 3&#xA;or more than 9 l of blood before testing. This observation was the&#xA;rationale for a study on the effects of regular blood donations on NK&#xA;activity in randomly selected voluntary blood bank donors re-tested&#xA;over a period of time. &lt;strong&gt;The study demonstrated decreased NK activity in&#xA;the second measurement in donors who had donated up to 6 l of blood&#xA;before the study, and an increase in NK activity between the first and&#xA;the second testing in those who had donated more than 6 l of blood.&#xA;This result, together with data obtained at the population level,&#xA;suggests that some compensatory mechanism(s) regulate NK activity in&#xA;the course of regular blood donation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other studies also which has demonstrated decrease in NK cell&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flow cytometric analysis revealed that blood donation by normal donors&#xA;and cancer patients had no effect on the proportion of B, T, and&#xA;natural killer (NK) cells. Only the total number of lymphocytes was&#xA;significantly decreased in the normal donors on Day 12 after donation.&#xA;Blood donation had &lt;strong&gt;no significant effect on T-cell function assessed&#xA;by phytohemagglutinin stimulation in normal donors or in cancer&#xA;patients donating 2 units of blood. A significant depression of NK&#xA;cell function (88% and 74% of predonation levels) was observed in&#xA;normal donors on Days 2 and 5 after donation; on Day 12, the activity&#xA;was again normal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but only to reiterate that the activity becomes normal. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1300983&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, we can only say even though transfusion may cause a transient decrease in quantitative immunological parameters (if measuring activity), body has its mechanism by which it restores the immunolgical status over a period of time. Although increase in complement levels have been reported, the claim that its boosts (or whatever) seems probably not true and needs to be substantiated with further studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lewis, S., Kutvirt, S. G. and Simon, T. L. (1992), &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1537-2995.1992.32192116433.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Investigation of the effect of long-term whole blood donation on immunologic parameters&lt;/a&gt;. Transfusion, 32: 51–56. doi: 10.1046/j.1537-2995.1992.32192116433.x&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lasek, W., Plodziszewska, M., &amp;amp; Jakobisiak, M. (1987). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3612753&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The effect of blood donation on natural killer activity in man.&lt;/a&gt; Journal of clinical &amp;amp; laboratory immunology, 22(4), 165-168.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lasek, W., Jakobisiak, M., Płodziszewska, M., &amp;amp; Gorecki, D. (1987). T&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3233062&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;he influence of blood donation on antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity (ADCC) in voluntary blood bank donors&lt;/a&gt;. Archivum immunologiae et therapiae experimentalis, 36(1), 37-43.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lasek, W., Jakobisiak, M., Grochowska, M., Płodziszewska, M., &amp;amp; Szczytnicki, W. (1992). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1300983&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Two patterns of NK activity changes following blood donation: decrease in the beginners and restoration in regular blood bank donors&lt;/a&gt;. Archivum immunologiae et therapiae experimentalis, 40(3-4), 191.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marquet, R.L., van Papendrecht, M.A. H., Busch, O.R. and Jeekel, J. (1993), &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1537-2995.1993.33593255594.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blood donation leads to a decrease in natural killer cell activity: a study in normal blood donors and cancer patients&lt;/a&gt;. Transfusion, 33: 368–373. doi: 10.1046/j.1537-2995.1993.33593255594.x&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10572" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T05:31:46.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17262" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-08T13:06:09.390" Score="6" ViewCount="690" Body="&lt;p&gt;CBC News &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2013/08/07/garlic-cancer-prevention.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; a study by the journal “Cancer Prevention Research” that eating raw garlic cuts the “risk of lung cancer by 44 per cent”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven’t heard of this journal, but the methodology reported in the news story states the results are from “face-to-face interviews with 1,424 lung cancer patients with 4,500 healthy adults”. Presumably the healthy adults ate much more raw garlic than the cancer patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this been corroborated by any other studies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4971" LastEditorUserId="4971" LastEditDate="2013-08-10T16:11:34.000" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T08:51:28.093" Title="Does eating raw garlic prevent lung cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8338" CreationDate="2013-08-08T17:46:51.143" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding question 2, I think there is no clear evidence that sunglasses will reduce eye problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, direct sun exposition (eg. solar eclipses, mountain sports, etc.)  without protection can cause retina and cornea damage (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/eye/journal/v16/n2/full/6700067a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;), for those cases protection is recommended, but I mean long term exposition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many problems have been associated to UV light: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pterygium_%28conjunctiva%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pterygium&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cataract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cataracts&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macular_degeneration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AMD&lt;/a&gt; and some more.   (&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1444-0938.2003.tb03066.x/abstract;jsessionid=E6DC6743CDE6388550C7F308F0A887EA.d01t01&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/optvissci/abstract/1994/02000/the_family_of_sunlight_related_eye_diseases.13.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are still totally different positions like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The studies on the link between UV exposure&#xA;  and cataract have been many and varied.&#xA;  The acute induction of lens opacities&#xA;  was demonstrated many years ago by Pitts&#xA;  and his colleagues2.5~b-9u9t the dose required&#xA;  was very much greater than that for&#xA;  photokeratoconjunctivitis and much&#xA;  greater than that incurred from a day in&#xA;  the sun. &lt;strong&gt;The role of UV in the chronic&#xA;  development of cataract took longer to&#xA;  demonstrate but is now universally accepted&lt;/strong&gt;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1444-0938.2003.tb03066.x/abstract;jsessionid=E6DC6743CDE6388550C7F308F0A887EA.d01t01&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Despite the large body of laboratory evidence that ultraviolet radiation (uvr) is cataractogenic, epidemiological studies of the relationship between age-related cataract and chronic uvr exposure have provided apparently conflicting results&lt;/strong&gt;. An explanation for these conflicting results could be related to errors in dosimetry. Failure to account for the biophysical, physiological and behavioral factors, as well as ground reflectance, which determine the level of uvr exposure of the lens can lead to completely wrong assignments of lifetime exposure. It is argued that by overlooking these factors, past epidemiological studies of uvr and cataract could readily be expected to produce conflicting results. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09286589409052366&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although most health scientists now agree that health risks to the skin (e.g., skin cancer) exist from exposure to the ultraviolet radiation in sunlight, &lt;strong&gt;a scientific consensus has not really been achieved vis-à-vis sunlight and ocular health&lt;/strong&gt;. A growing number of scientists warn of hazards to the eye if ultraviolet radiation — and perhaps even shorter wavelength visible radiation also — is not filtered by lenses. Despite a substantial literature on the adverse effects of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) and intense light upon ocular structures, particularly upon the retina, controversy still surrounds the question of whether the levels of natural and man-made light sources are damaging when encountered under normal viewing conditions. Although scientific evidence accumulates to indicate that chronic exposure conditions may accelerate ageing processes in ocular tissues, the quantitative question of “How much is safe?” remains to be answered conclusively. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1011-1344%2801%2900229-9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for question 1, I presume that genuine sunglasess in the EEA with the CE marking are pretty safe. Possibly even cheap plastic sunglasess won't be harmful under normal conditions (at least I haven't found any research that supports the &quot;pupil dilation&quot; argument).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The supposition that, because of pupil dilation, there are greater influxes of solar UV and short-wavelength visibile radiation when some sunglasses are worn is wrong.&lt;/strong&gt; It is based on an incomplete and, therefore, misleading analysis. That analysis is particularly defective in ignoring the attenuation of the more highly actinic shorter wavelengths. This paper provides the most nearly complete analysis that is now possible. It treats both the geometric and radiometric aspects of ocular irradiation. A survey of over 400 retail sunglass lenses of all types showed that all would reduce UV radiation densities in all parts of the crystalline lens and on the retina. With spectral actinic weighting, the effective reductions would be even greater. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ao/abstract.cfm?id=30096&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/eye/journal/v16/n2/full/6700067a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Solar retinopathy after the 1999 solar eclipse in East Sussex&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1444-0938.2003.tb03066.x/abstract;jsessionid=E6DC6743CDE6388550C7F308F0A887EA.d01t01&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dain, S. J. (2003), Sunglasses and sunglass standards. Clinical and Experimental Optometry, 86: 77–90&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/optvissci/abstract/1994/02000/the_family_of_sunlight_related_eye_diseases.13.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Family of Sunlight-Related Eye Diseases&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/09286589409052366&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Epidemiological studies of sunlight and cataract: the critical factor of ultraviolet exposure geometry&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1011-1344%2801%2900229-9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Photoprotection of the eye – UV radiation and sunglasses&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ao/abstract.cfm?id=30096&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sunglasses, pupil dilation, and solar ultraviolet irradiation of the human lens and retina&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13743" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T17:46:51.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17268" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-08T17:52:50.370" Score="0" ViewCount="471" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2386627/The-riddle-angel-priest-Holy-man-appeared-pray-trapped-girl-rescuers-traffic-accident-told-OK-vanished.html#ixzz2bOw6m6zK&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Daily Mail: The riddle of the 'angel priest'&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Holy man appeared from nowhere to pray with trapped girl and rescuers in traffic accident, told them she would be OK and then vanished&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Katie Lentz was hit head-on by a drunk driver on Sunday morning on an isolated stretch of Missouri highway&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Emergency workers battled for over an hour to rescue her but they couldn't free her from the car wreck&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lentz requested a moment of prayer and a priest appeared - even though the road was blocked off&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He prayed and told the rescuers that Lentz would now be freed - and she was&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They turned to thank him - but he was gone&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What logical explanation could there be for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14934" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T15:54:08.260" Title="Did an 'angel priest' pray for a Missouri woman trapped in a car crash?" Tags="|religion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6177" CreationDate="2013-08-08T22:46:30.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Storing Li-ion batteries at low temperatures does appear to reduce the rate of capacity loss (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.che.sc.edu/faculty/popov/drbnp/WebSite/publications_pdfs/web21.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;page 4, figure 5&lt;/a&gt;).  They only compared two storage temperatures (5C and 35C), but the batteries stored in the former displayed substantially less loss in capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastActivityDate="2013-08-08T22:46:30.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17272" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-09T03:37:18.713" Score="4" ViewCount="7881" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many sites on the web that claim that lemon juice is effective in removing warts (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=lemon%20wart%20OR%20warts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Google search&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Information varies. Some sites say that &lt;a href=&quot;https://naturallydaily.com/home-remedies-for-wart/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;application several times a day is enough&lt;/a&gt;, and results are fairly rapid. &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150516060956/http://wart-treatment.org/common-warts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Others suggest overnight soaking is necessary&lt;/a&gt; and the result could take weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the application of lemon juice to a wart result in the wart's disappearance at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14938" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-07-25T02:57:38.607" LastActivityDate="2021-07-25T03:00:20.157" Title="Does lemon juice help remove warts?" Tags="|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17273" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17274" CreationDate="2013-08-09T05:01:07.917" Score="59" ViewCount="6148" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in&#xA;  the article text not in parenthesis or italics, and then repeat, you&#xA;  will eventually end up at &quot;Philosophy&quot;. - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randall_Munroe&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Randall Munroe&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/903/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;XKCD 903: Extended Mind&lt;/a&gt; (mouse-over text)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried this for several different articles and was surprised to find that it worked, but it seems highly improbable that this could be true for all 4,301,123 articles. Is the claim true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14609" LastEditorUserId="16860" LastEditDate="2016-06-21T18:35:13.777" LastActivityDate="2016-06-21T18:35:13.777" Title="Do all Wikipedia articles lead to Philosophy?" Tags="|internet|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17273" CreationDate="2013-08-09T05:10:02.027" Score="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, many do. This was first reported by a Wikipedia user, Mark J, when he created the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3aGetting_to_Philosophy&amp;amp;oldid=215744293&quot;&gt;first version of Wikipedia:Getting to Philosophy&lt;/a&gt; on May 29, 2008. It was later popularized by xkcd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3aGetting_to_Philosophy&quot;&gt;Wikipedia:Getting to Philosophy&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As of May 26, 2011, 94.52% of all articles in Wikipedia lead&#xA;  eventually to the article Philosophy. The rest lead to an article with&#xA;  no wikilinks or with links to pages that do not exist, or get stuck in&#xA;  loops. There have been some theories on this phenomenon, with the most&#xA;  prevalent being the tendency for Wikipedia pages to move up a&#xA;  &quot;classification chain.&quot; According to this theory, the Wikipedia Manual&#xA;  of Style guidelines on how to write the lead section of an article&#xA;  recommend that the article should start by defining the topic of the&#xA;  article, so that the first link of each page will naturally take the&#xA;  reader into a broader subject, eventually ending in wide-reaching&#xA;  pages such as Mathematics, Science, Language, and of course,&#xA;  Philosophy, nicknamed the &quot;mother of all sciences&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://matpalm.com/blog/2011/08/13/wikipedia-philosophy/&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is another analysis. And &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User%3aIlmari_Karonen/First_link&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The failure cases are split fairly evenly between closed loops not containing Philosophy and chains ending in dead-ends (articles that don't exist, or have been deleted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example loop is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_management&quot;&gt;Waste management&lt;/a&gt; -&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_collection&quot;&gt;Waste collection&lt;/a&gt; -&gt; Waste management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Philosophy article itself is part of a loop: &lt;code&gt;Philosophy -&amp;gt; Reality -&amp;gt;Existence -&amp;gt; Definition -&amp;gt; Meaning_(Linguistic) -&amp;gt; Linguistics -&amp;gt; Science -&amp;gt; Knowledge -&amp;gt; Fact -&amp;gt; Proof_(truth) -&amp;gt; Necessity_and_Sufficiency -&amp;gt; Logic -&amp;gt; Reason -&amp;gt; Consciousness -&amp;gt; Quality_(philosophy) -&amp;gt; Property_(Philosophy) -&amp;gt; Modern Philosophy -&amp;gt; Philosophy&lt;/code&gt;. Any of these articles would be equally good choices for highlighting this attraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-10T22:42:35.180" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T22:42:35.180" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17272" CreationDate="2013-08-09T09:52:23.337" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.e-ijd.org/article.asp?issn=0019-5154;year=2007;volume=52;issue=2;spage=96;epage=98;aulast=Vali&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evaluation of the efficacy of 50% citric acid solution in plane wart treatment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After six weeks 64.4% of the lesions in citric acid treated group disappeared versus 53.7% of the lesions in tretinoin treated group. This difference was significant ( P value Conclusion: On the basis of this study, the treatment of plane warts by 50% citric acid is strongly suggested. This modality is superior to tretinoin lotion due to higher efficacy and low incidence of side-effects and lower cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In each patient, lesions of one side of the body were treated by application of 50% citric acid aqueous solution and the other side by 0.05% tretinoin lotion, twice daily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, lemons are only about 4% citric acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2637791/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quantitative Assessment of Citric Acid in Lemon Juice, Lime Juice, and Commercially-Available Fruit Juice Products&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14912" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-07-25T03:00:20.157" LastActivityDate="2021-07-25T03:00:20.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17283" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22163" CreationDate="2013-08-09T12:44:54.240" Score="16" ViewCount="2433" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen following claims made by pro-legalization lobby:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SWATs are used more often for drug warrants than to deal with any violent crimes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;most of these warrants are for marijuana&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;significant number of people are killed during these SWAT raids&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How true are these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for reference, some of such claims are contained in this article by Gawker: &lt;a href=&quot;http://gawker.com/5532226/swat-team-raids-house-shoots-dogs-over-small-amount-of-marijuana&quot;&gt;&quot;SWAT Team Raids House, Shoots Dogs over 'Small Amount of Marijuana'&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As Balko points out, there are as many as 100 of these terrifying&#xA;  paramilitary raids per day in the U.S., conducted under the aegis of&#xA;  &quot;the war on drugs,&quot; theoretically targeting drug traffickers and other&#xA;  &quot;enemies.&quot; Some of the raids turn up significant amounts of illegal&#xA;  substances; others turn up even less than the &quot;small amount of&#xA;  marijuana&quot; the police were able to find at Whitworth's house. Many&#xA;  wind up targeted innocent people. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cato.org/raidmap/&quot;&gt;This map&lt;/a&gt; of &quot;botched raids&quot;&#xA;  gives some indication of the disturbing frequency not just of the&#xA;  operations themselves, but the mistakes, often fatal, that occur&#xA;  during their execution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address some of the doubts expressed in the comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;definition of violent crime (according to FBI UCR): &lt;em&gt;&quot;composed of four offenses: murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Violent crimes are defined in the UCR Program as those offenses which involve force or threat of force.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/violent-crime/violent-crime&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;as for significant number of people killed: comparison with number of people killed by criminals in home invasions would be great.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T14:47:17.023" LastActivityDate="2021-12-14T20:57:41.633" Title="Are SWATs in the US mostly used for serving marijuana warrants?" Tags="|united-states|law-enforcement|recreational-drugs|marijuana|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="20" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17272" CreationDate="2013-08-09T14:52:33.290" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: No, lemon juice has not been shown to work. Other treatments have been shown to be more efficacious and safe, making them better candidates for initial treatment of (non-genital) warts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wart treatments have had a lot of research - much of it poor - and a number of meta-analyses have been written to evaluate the information. We can see the medical literature progressing over the past decade in this area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2002, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC119440/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Local treatments for cutaneous warts: systematic review&lt;/a&gt; complained that the 50 included trials &amp;quot;provided generally weak evidence&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High quality research on the efficacy of various local treatments for warts is lacking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidence, which is generally of a poor quality, shows a beneficial effect of topical salicylic acid and contact immunotherapy with dinitrochlorobenzene&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Little evidence exists for the efficacy of cryotherapy and no consistent evidence for the efficacy of all the other treatments reviewed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It did not include citric acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2005, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aafp.org/afp/2005/0815/p647.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cutaneous Warts: An Evidence-Based Approach to Therapy&lt;/a&gt; looked at the existing research, but did NOT include citric acid as a potential treatment. It recommended  topical salicylic acid and physician-administered cryotherapy, with intralesional immunotherapy for large or recalcitrant (non-genital) warts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2012, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22292461&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Treatment of cutaneous warts: an evidence-based review&lt;/a&gt; recommended salicylic acid, silver nitrate and glutaraldehyde first or for mild cases; cryotherapy if that doesn't work, and then if none of the above work, &amp;quot;a variety of alternative therapeutic options (topical, intralesional, systemic, and physical destruction) that are generally off-label (not US FDA approved), and whose use is limited by drawbacks or adverse effects.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't been able to read the entire paper, but they &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; cite &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.e-ijd.org/article.asp?issn=0019-5154;year=2007;volume=52;issue=2;spage=96;epage=98;aulast=Vali&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evaluation of the efficacy of 50% citric acid solution in plane wart treatment&lt;/a&gt;. (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/17282/6629&quot;&gt;@JamesChristopher's answer&lt;/a&gt; for more.) Thus it appears they did consider citric acid as one of these alternative topical treatments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they don't hold much hope for this third line of attack:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From pooled evidence-based medicine data, it is possible to conclude that significantly higher remission rates may be expected only with cryotherapy and salicylic acid used in combination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2013, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/779253_4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Topical Treatments for Cutaneous Wart: An update&lt;/a&gt;, explained:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Little has changed in the field over the past 8 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It did not explicitly look at citric acid, but looked at other topical acids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It recommended cryotherapy and salicylic acid, and complained:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good quality data for most of the other treatments are still lacking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but admitted that topical immunotherapy with dinitrochlorobenzene has some evidence to support it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was fairly generous about other treatments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treatment decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis, according to evidence-based medicine criteria, but also considering patient preference and physician experience. So far, the use of nonconventional approaches in selected cases of relapsing and refractory warts seems justified, although scientific evidence is still low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As James Christopher explains, even if 50% citric acid was effective, lemon juice holds a much lower concentration. Without proper studies of lemon juice, it is an inappropriate treatment - especially when better treatments have proven to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T05:11:11.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7705" CreationDate="2013-08-09T15:46:46.900" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, this is hardly definitive; however, I have not been able to find any quote that was attributed to Einstein concerning him sleeping 10-11 hours a day.  Also, I have found no reference to it that gives any sort of citation as to where they arrived at that information.  One example of this sort of behavior is the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=hS0pl0AJe2IC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=Power+Sleep&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=2BUFUuHYFomMyQHsuYHYAQ&amp;amp;ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Power%20Sleep&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Power Sleep&lt;/a&gt;.  While it makes the claim that &quot;Albert Einstein claimed he needed ten hours of sleep to function well,&quot; no citation or reference is given as to when Einstein claimed this.  This book, however, is listed as a citation on at least one website: &lt;a href=&quot;http://library.thinkquest.org/25553/english/basics/need/amount.shtml&quot;&gt;http://library.thinkquest.org/25553/english/basics/need/amount.shtml&lt;/a&gt;.  Various other news outlets use the same information without citation like the linked BBC story in the question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only quote that I have found concerning sleep that is attributed to Einstein is on that goes, &quot;We sleep 1/3 of our lives away.&quot;  This would imply that he accepted the idea of sleeping 8 hours a day (8=24/3), but again, there is no citation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, what I can say with certainty is that the majority of references to Einstein's sleep are drawn from other secondary sources that themselves do not give any evidence for this being the case.  Many of Einstein's letters are available, but I have not had the opportunity to pore through those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14845" LastEditorUserId="14845" LastEditDate="2013-08-09T17:05:30.517" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T17:05:30.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17283" CreationDate="2013-08-09T17:25:12.373" Score="7" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Are SWATs use more often for drug warrants than for violent crimes?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following evidence shows that during felony drug investigations, no-knock warrants are sought by law enforcement, and that the dichotomy between drug warrants and violence is not universally accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, the type of warrant that SWAT is best suited for is a no-knock warrant. A no-knock search is reasonable when officials have a reasonable suspicion that announcement of their presence would result in destruction of evidence or threat to the officer(s) executing the warrant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Brief for Americans for Effective Law Enforcement, Inc as Amicus Curiae&lt;/em&gt;, Richards v. Wisconsin, 520 U.S. 385 (1997), Americans for Effective Law Enforcement argued that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in search warrant cases involving felonious drug charges, the risk of injury or death to the executing officers is so great that in this class of cases the officers are constitutionally excused from the knock and announce requirement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this argument for a blanket exception was rejected by the United States Supreme Court in &lt;em&gt;Richards v. Wisconsin&lt;/em&gt;, who held that warrants must be obtained on a case-by-case basis. The fourth amendment &quot;does not permit a blanket exception to the knock-and-announce requirement in the case of all warrants executed in felony drug investigations&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, the argument of American for Effective Law Enforcement highlights the standard practice of seeking a no-knock warrant when executing a search or seizure related to felony drug charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amicus brief and the decision also show that not everybody agrees with the dichotomy between felony drug charges and violence that you present in your premise. The United States Supreme Court has recognized &quot;the fact that felony drug investigations may frequently present [circumstances presenting a threat of physical violence or where officers believe that evidence would be destroyed if advance notice were given]&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Are most drug-related no-knock search warrants for marijuana?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Are a significant number of people killed during the execution of no-knock search warrants?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-09T17:30:26.430" LastActivityDate="2013-08-09T17:30:26.430" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17298" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-10T14:29:19.610" Score="13" ViewCount="1263" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading this story about lightning that stuck a vehicle while the family was still inside: &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-buzz/utah-family-films-car-struck-lightning-162519853.html&quot;&gt;Utah family films car as it’s struck by lightning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About halfway through the article is the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;However, the family's cell phones and other electronics, many of which had dead batteries, were all charged after the jolt of electricity, according to KSL.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to summarize: a family is riding in their car with dead batteries on their cell phones and electronics, the car gets struck by lightning, nobody is injured, but all their electronic devices are suddenly charged up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm extremely skeptical that this could happen.  It sounds far-fetched/made up.  Perhaps somebody could prove or disprove the family's claim with science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="12043" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-08-12T03:30:16.327" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T14:56:48.117" Title="Could phone and electronics batteries be recharged by a lightning strike?" Tags="|electronics|lightning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17299" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17305" CreationDate="2013-08-10T15:26:26.667" Score="27" ViewCount="69214" Body="&lt;p&gt;I discovered today that there are a lot of pictures of spiders &quot;wearing&quot; water drops as hats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3vNXb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=spider%20water%20drop%20hat&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;tbo=u&amp;amp;source=univ&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=RDsGUrjdLqbM2QXg5oHQCw&amp;amp;ved=0CC8QsAQ&amp;amp;biw=1360&amp;amp;bih=649#imgdii=_&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(More research: Warning -- Spiders!)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I can't find anything related to &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; they might do this. Is this some beneficial behavior common to some families of spiders? Is this a case of the internet taking a natural occurrence (spiders being rained on) and ascribing a greater meaning to it? Or is it an unnatural occurrence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14964" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T19:40:05.197" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T19:40:05.197" Title="Do spiders intentionally wear water droplets on their heads?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|entomology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17301" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-08-10T19:47:52.910" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This tag is explicitly for questions relating to the large hypothetical animal (or species of animals) that may live in Loch Ness. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unmuseum.org/nesshoax.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;most famous photo&lt;/a&gt; of this creature has been shown to be a hoax; this does not disprove the creature's existence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14956" LastEditorUserId="14956" LastEditDate="2013-08-11T01:50:16.083" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T01:50:16.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17302" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-08-10T19:47:52.910" Score="0" Body="&quot;Nessie&quot; is a hypothetical animal that in the Loch Ness lake in the Scottish Highlands. It is a cryptid, an animal for which no solid evidence has yet been found to prove its existence. " OwnerUserId="14956" LastEditorUserId="14956" LastEditDate="2013-08-11T01:50:04.693" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T01:50:04.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17304" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-10T20:32:24.823" Score="6" ViewCount="427" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read that forests are important because they absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen to the atmoshpere &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.ontrac.com/bid/63022/Forests-Earth-s-Lungs&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;. But other places say that this is false for a mature forest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;On average, then, this mature forest has &lt;strong&gt;no net flux of carbon dioxide or oxygen&lt;/strong&gt; to or from the atmosphere, unless we cut it all down for logging,&quot; Sarmiento said. &quot;The ocean works the same way. Most of the photosynthesis is counterbalanced by an equal and opposite amount of respiration.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0607_040607_phytoplankton_2.html&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that phytoplakton are the responsibles of carbon dioxide fixing and oxygen emission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tiny ocean plants called phytoplankton contribute 50 to 85 percent of the oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere.&lt;a href=&quot;http://earthsky.org/earth/how-much-do-oceans-add-to-worlds-oxygen&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are there any solid studies that show what are the &quot;lungs&quot; of the planet, if any?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13743" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T09:20:32.957" Title="Do forests increase atmosphere's oxygen?" Tags="|environment|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17299" CreationDate="2013-08-10T23:12:44.417" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no suggestion from the original photographers that spiders place water droplets on their heads. Web pages that re-post these photos don't have any references to support the notion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are at least two photographers who stage these photographs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://reinshtein.com/macro_life&quot;&gt;Dmitriy Yoav Reinshtein &lt;/a&gt; whose gallery includes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mantis with water droplet &quot;hat&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;housefly with water droplet &quot;hat&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;spider with water droplet &quot;hat&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;spider on flat blue surface with artfully placed water droplets.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This last example shows that the photographer carefully places droplets to stage the photographs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another photographer is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/uda-dennie-spider-waterdrop-hats&quot;&gt;Uda Dennie&lt;/a&gt; who stages pictures with water droplets on the heads of jumping spiders. The droplets in Dennie's photos act as lenses to bring into focus backgrounds that consist of prints of other macro photographs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These photos are real but highly staged. In particular, water droplets don't stay on the heads of jumping spiders for very long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2013-08-10T23:12:44.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17309" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17315" CreationDate="2013-08-11T17:10:03.180" Score="22" ViewCount="4169" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cimwellness.com/western-medicine-will-treat-your-symptoms-acupuncture-will-not/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Modern Western Medicine is all about chasing symptoms, rarely addressing causes&lt;/em&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/000448_bad_medicine_Western.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Western medicine misses the point and attacks symptoms, not root causes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Western medicine focuses on the symptoms&lt;/em&gt;. [...] &lt;em&gt;Very rarely does Western medicine (allopathic medicine) actually seek or treat the root cause of disease&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14975" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-12-15T18:25:09.103" Title="Does conventional medicine only treat the symptoms?" Tags="|medical-science|philosophy-of-ebm|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17309" CreationDate="2013-08-11T18:05:57.713" Score="71" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume by conventional medicine, you mean medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are examples of medicine treating more than symptoms, but actually treating the underlying causes or preventing the disease/illness/addiction/etc. altogether:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibacterial&quot;&gt;Antibiotics&lt;/a&gt; kill the bacteria causing the infection; they don't just stop your cough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the case of recurrent infections (urinary tract infections, for example), medicine &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/urinary-tract-infection/DS00286/DSECTION=risk-factors&quot;&gt;considers the underlying causes&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/urinary-tract-infection/DS00286/DSECTION=prevention&quot;&gt;recommends lifestyle and diet changes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthopedic_surgery&quot;&gt;Orthopaedic surgery&lt;/a&gt; fixes the broken bone or soft tissue; it doesn't just take the pain away.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sports_medicine&quot;&gt;Sports medicine&lt;/a&gt; necessarily considers the sports-related causes of morbidity to help the athlete maintain fitness, return to activity, and avoid recurrent injury.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preventive_medicine&quot;&gt;Preventive medicine&lt;/a&gt; includes public policy decisions to help lessen abuse of alcohol, drugs, or tobacco, to increase food safety, and to decrease malnutrition, among other things.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epidemiology.ch/history/PDF%20bg/Smith,%20Rodrigues%20and%20Fine%201984%20assessment%20of%20the%20protective%20efficacy%20of%20vaccines.pdf&quot;&gt;Vaccines&lt;/a&gt; are given to a healthy body with no symptoms making it immune or more resistant to specific diseases.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-08-15T13:32:56.933" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T13:32:56.933" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10734" CreationDate="2013-08-11T19:53:35.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the author of Sentinel I can confirm that in the summer of 1990 Supermac tech support did receive a call from someone claiming to be a representative of the government of Trinidad. The story largely matches my recollection including the notion that the keys to the armory were encrypted. I was skeptical at first but took it a little more seriously when I listened to the BBC world service later that evening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14977" LastActivityDate="2013-08-11T19:53:35.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17313" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17411" CreationDate="2013-08-11T20:22:16.447" Score="29" ViewCount="6663" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the United States, it is a widely-held belief that an invasion of the Japanese main islands would have been necessary were it not for the use of atomic bombs (putting aside the question of whether a demonstration in an unpopulated area may have been sufficient to cause surrender). For instance: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A] massive Allied (largely American) invasion of the Japanese home islands that was being actively planned....there was virtually no inclination toward an unconditional surrender. -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/henrymiller/2012/08/01/the-nuking-of-japan-was-a-tactical-and-moral-imperative/&quot;&gt;The Nuking Of Japan Was A Tactical And Moral Imperative&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://mises.org/daily/4217/The-Hiroshima-Myth&quot;&gt;this article by John Denson&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]he Japanese leaders, both military and civilian, including the Emperor, were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the Emperor could remain in place and not be subjected to a war crimes trial after the war. This fact became known to President Truman as early as May of 1945. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and quotes Allen Dulles as saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On July 20, 1945 ... [I] reported there to Secretary [of War] Stimson on what I had learned from Tokyo — they desired to surrender if they could retain the Emperor and their constitution as a basis for maintaining discipline and order in Japan after the devastating news of surrender became known to the Japanese people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Denson's article portray the situation in May-Jul 1945 accurately? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-07-16T00:41:28.083" LastActivityDate="2017-07-16T00:41:28.083" Title="Were the Japanese suing for peace prior to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?" Tags="|united-states|history|japan|world-war-ii|hiroshima-nagasaki|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17309" CreationDate="2013-08-11T22:08:18.590" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's worth looking at the context of the quotes, to understand why they say that, and what they recommend instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cimwellness.com/western-medicine-will-treat-your-symptoms-acupuncture-will-not/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;first citation&lt;/a&gt; is from an article which recommends acupuncture (and more generally &quot;Doctors of Oriental Medicine and Acupuncture Physicians&quot;). There seems to be &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/405/2703&quot;&gt;some legitimate doubt&lt;/a&gt; about Acupuncture ... therefore (because it doesn't suggest an effective alternative) I would discount its (somewhat vague) criticism of western medicine (I would argue that anyone can be a critic, but the criticism is meaningless or not constructive unless there's a better alternative).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/000448_bad_medicine_Western.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;second citation&lt;/a&gt; has exactly one concrete example of its thesis: which is, treating atherosclerosis using &quot;heroic/interventionist&quot; pharmaceuticals, instead of by &quot;addressing the source of the problem: the patient's lifestyle&quot;. I'm not sure what source you consider a credible reference on the subject of Western medicine; there are many of them. I will choose the Mayo Clinic as an exemplar: the opening sentences/paragraph in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/arteriosclerosis-atherosclerosis/DS00525/DSECTION=treatments-and-drugs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Treatment and drugs&quot; section of its atherosclerosis article&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lifestyle changes, such as eating a healthy diet and exercising, are often the best treatment for atherosclerosis. But sometimes, medication or surgical procedures may be recommended as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its next section recommends &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/arteriosclerosis-atherosclerosis/DS00525/DSECTION=lifestyle-and-home-remedies&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lifestyle and home remedies&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is somewhat true, if [only if] you define &quot;Western medicine&quot; as &quot;prescribing medications&quot;. In practice, Western doctors (perhaps especially &quot;Family doctors&quot; aka &quot;General Practitioners&quot;) routinely do more than prescribe medications: for example they also talk with patients, ask them questions, and give lifestyle advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, Western doctors /also/ prescribe medications: they don't /only/ prescribe medications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term &quot;medicine&quot;, used in the OP, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Amedicine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;has two meanings&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;med·i·cine&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  /ˈmedisən/&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Noun&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   1. The science or practice of the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention&#xA;      of disease (in technical use often taken to exclude surgery).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   2. A drug or other preparation used for the treatment or prevention of&#xA;      disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Untrue per the first meaning of the term (and IMO the first meaning is implied when it is spelled with a capital-M: &quot;Western Medicine&quot;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Truer per the second meaning of the term.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_practitioner&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;General Practitioner&lt;/a&gt; article starts with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A general practitioner (GP) is a medical practitioner who treats acute and chronic illnesses and provides preventive care and health education to patients. &quot;The good GP will treat patients both as people and as a population&quot;.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a difference to medical or surgical specialized doctors they intend to practice a holistic approach that takes into consideration the biological, psychological and social environment in which patients live. Their duties are not confined to specific organs of the body, and they have particular skills in treating people with multiple health issues. They are trained to treat patients of any age and sex to levels of complexity that are defined by each country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO this shows that the theory is false, at least according to the opinion of &quot;Western Medicine&quot; itself!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is of course some difference between theory and practice. For example, the British &lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC1245358/pdf/bmjcred00006-0029.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;What is a good GP?&lt;/a&gt; (from 1987) opens with,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Treating patients as people&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  It has been said that &quot;though sometimes 'what is the illness' is the&#xA;  question dominating the doctor's task, 'who is ill' is what is usually&#xA;  crucial to patient care.&quot;' What this implies for good practice falls&#xA;  under the following four headings.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Assessing patients' problems realistically&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Making a precise diagnosis is not always necessary or always sufficient. It is all too easy to&#xA;  focus on a disease process in one part of the body and to neglect the&#xA;  &quot;owner&quot; of the body and his or her physical, psychological, and&#xA;  social circumstances in their entirety. Unless these aspects are&#xA;  considered, not only may many factors that affect the aetiology and&#xA;  natural history of the disease and the choice and effectiveness of&#xA;  treatment go unnoticed, but so may the patient's real reasons for&#xA;  consulting the GP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO this shows that Western Medicine isn't supposed to only treat symptoms, and that if (but only if) best practices like these are followed then it won't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it is (sometimes, or, often) less true in practice, for example because of time+money constraints (see for example &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/17325/2703&quot;&gt;rob's answer&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect that it is also less true of various Western medical specialists, for example, a surgeon, to whom a GP will refer you iff s/he thinks that's appropriate for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T14:41:52.333" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17324" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-12T11:34:52.307" Score="29" ViewCount="4989" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been told anecdotes like this several times on the interviews. Interviewers used this story as an argument in favor of defensive software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an explanation from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_world.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one of the numerous occurrences&lt;/a&gt; on the web:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story was told by people from Motorola and is supposedly included in every microcontroller training course Motorola gives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Test flights of F-16's were being conducted in Israel. The F-16's were doing low height rounds. On approach to the Dead Sea, the whole navigation system suddenly reset itself. The daring pilot landed the bird. HQ called up Motorola and ordered a team on the spot ASAP. The ground tests went perfectly, but every time the bird went airborn, it rebooted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pilots were getting restless. Flying on the border of hostile territory without navcom, with the Arabs pointing their earth-to-air missiles at anything that moves, wasn't that pleasant. Neither was debugging the whole navcom in-flight. Then someone figured it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The height of the Dead Sea relative to world sea level is -400 meters. As soon as the F-16 reached sea level, the navcom did a divide by zero, crashed, and rebooted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I tried to search for information on this topic I couldn't find out any references to mentioned Motorola training courses. I also failed to find any references to real-life events (dates, places, crash reports).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: &lt;strong&gt;Were there any documented cases of aircraft navigation system crashes due to zero/negative height level?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional question that emerges from the quote above: Are there any Motorola microcontroller training courses that mention &amp;quot;Dead Sea case&amp;quot; as an example?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=79859&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Related discussion on snopes forums&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2023-05-13T18:38:17.127" Title="Airplane software crash caused by zero/negative altitude at Dead Sea" Tags="|aviation|software|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17309" CreationDate="2013-08-12T12:09:22.010" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question can be looked at from two directions: what is supposed to be done and what is actually done. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to general practice, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;medicine&lt;/a&gt; strives to actually identify the cause of the problem, i.e the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etiology_%28medicine%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;etiology&lt;/a&gt;,  and not the symptoms whenever possible. The &quot;gold standard&quot; practice is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence-based_medicine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;evidence-based&lt;/a&gt; which requires that there is strong scientific evidence for a given cause and course of treatment. An example of this would be a test for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streptococcal_pharyngitis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;streptococcal pharyngitis&lt;/a&gt; when a patient presents with a sore throat and a prescription for antibiotics if the test comes back positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another more detailed example of the link between &quot;etiology&quot; and &quot;evidence-based medicine&quot; can be found in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16428713&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Uncommon causes of cough: ACCP evidence-based clinical practice guidelines&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RESULTS:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A substantial number of uncommon or rare pulmonary and nonpulmonary disorders were identified. The uncommon occurrence of these diseases made it difficult to develop a meaningful evidence-based guideline to the diagnosis and therapy of many of the uncommon causes of cough. As cough was the major or presenting symptom, it was usually initially attributed to common respiratory diseases (eg, asthma or bronchitis). As a result, a substantial time lag existed from the onset of cough to the diagnosis of the etiologic entity. Diagnostic tests limited to the respiratory system did not always provide clues to the diagnosis of uncommon causes of cough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CONCLUSIONS:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Cough is the major or presenting symptom in many uncommon pulmonary and nonpulmonary disorders. A strong index of suspicion is essential to consider and diagnose the uncommon causes of cough. The diagnosis and management of cough in patients with uncommon causes of cough is dependent on the underlying etiology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the first quote shows that, in practice, some practitioners did initially fail to diagnose the underlying cause. The second quote shows that diagnosing (and then treating) the underlying cause is a 'best practice': the ambition or goal, even though practitioners sometimes fail to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding, there are situations where &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symptomatic_treatment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;symptomatic treatment&lt;/a&gt; may be appropriate due to a variety of reasons which means that there are cases where only the symptoms may be treated while the underlying root cause is not. For example, the cause of major depression &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000945.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;is not known&lt;/a&gt; so treatment is necessary focused on the symptoms rather than the root cause. Likewise, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospice_care&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hospice care&lt;/a&gt; decisions might focus solely on the symptoms of an illness as opposed to the actual treatment of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the perspective of what is actually done, this claim may come about due to the fact that the opinions that many people hold with regards to medical practice are closely tied to how it is delivered to the patients, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Managed_care&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;managed care&lt;/a&gt; in the United States, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Health_Service&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Health Service&lt;/a&gt; in the United Kingdom, and so forth. In these systems, one of the most common complaints about the practice of medicine is that doctors don't spend much &lt;a href=&quot;http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/30/for-new-doctors-8-minutes-per-patient/?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;time with their patients&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130423135716.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;nor do interns&lt;/a&gt;. Indeed, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1496869/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;studies have shown&lt;/a&gt; that the time spent with the patient is tied to prescription rates and malpractice rates as well as patient satisfaction with their care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Patient satisfaction is important since patient perceptions can drive the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;placebo effect&lt;/a&gt; as well as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/46615.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recovery time&lt;/a&gt; for treatments. Given that whether or not a &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthland.time.com/2010/04/08/patients-more-content-confident-when-doctors-sit-to-talk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;doctor stands or sits&lt;/a&gt; during a conversation can affect patient satisfaction so it can be argued that less time being spent with the patient could cause the perception that doctors are merely treating the symptoms as well. In fact, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=w2IFcHJYTSYC&amp;amp;pg=PA20&amp;amp;lpg=PA20&amp;amp;dq=homeopaths%20time%20spent%20with%20patients&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=zbmosye5S-&amp;amp;sig=nWLu8MGmvW7OWPcZWIfZkv0aSVo&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=sMkIUp2YC8WGyAGD14H4Dw&amp;amp;ved=0CFEQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=homeopaths%20time%20spent%20with%20patients&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;time patients spend during homeopathic consultations&lt;/a&gt; drives part of the patients attitudes towards its efficacy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been suggested that homeopathy appeals to patients who like the&#xA;  feeling that attention is being paid to more aspects of themselves&#xA;  than just the symptoms (English, 1986). In a survey of 161 CAM&#xA;  practitioners cared out by White et al. (1997) it was found that the&#xA;  mean time spent with patients for a first consultation was 75 minutes&#xA;  (Acupuncture), 90 minutes (Homeopathy) and 40 minutes (Chiropractic).&#xA;  Subsequent consultations were between a third and a half less. There&#xA;  is substantial interpractice variation in consultation length of&#xA;  allopathic GPs in the Uk, from a  mean of 5.7 minutes to one of 8.5&#xA;  minutes (Carr-hill et al., 1998).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to summarize, in general medical practices strive to treat the etiology of a problem as opposed to the symptoms where possible when practical. In terms of actual practice, there is some very mild support for the claim since patients might perceive that practitioners are engaged in the treatment of the symptoms alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-08-14T13:43:17.930" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T13:43:17.930" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17327" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-12T16:43:52.390" Score="6" ViewCount="534" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/08/06/gay-teenager-kidnapped-and-tortured-by-russian-homophobes-believed-to-have-died-from-injuries/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pink News&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gay teenager who was kidnapped and tortured by Russian neo-Nazis has died from his injuries it has been claimed [by Spectrum Human Rights].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... PinkNews is unable to verify the claims ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spectrumhr.org/hot-news-1/recentneonazivictimdiesanti-naziactivistsindanger&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spectrum Human Rights&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the human right activist, Dr. Valentin Degterev, MD, who closely monitors infamous Neo Nazi group &amp;quot;Occupy Pedofilyaj&amp;quot;, the Uzbek victim [...] died as a result of numerous tortures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spectrum Human Rights was not able to obtain any official confirmation of the Uzbek victim's death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Valentin Degterev's &lt;a href=&quot;http://degterew-ww.livejournal.com/12383.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;livejournal account&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After terrible tortures Muslim Uzbek died in the Sverdlovsk region!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the victim die?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T06:51:27.783" Title="Did the victim of neo-Nazi violence as reported in Pink News die?" Tags="|criminology|mortality|russia|violence|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17324" CreationDate="2013-08-12T16:46:20.257" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found two similar cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_%28CG-48%29&quot;&gt;USS Yorktown (CG-48)&lt;/a&gt; suffered a divide-by-zero error that brought down its entire network and caused its propulsion to fail. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/1998/07/13987&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20071213201037/http:/www.gcn.com/print/17_17/33727-1.html?topic=news&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A group of 8 F-22 fighters had their systems fail when they crossed the international date line. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/f22-squadron-shot-down-by-the-international-date-line-03087/&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0702/24/tww.01.html&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could find no evidence that a 0 foot altitude has caused a system failure at the dead sea or anywhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-08-12T16:46:20.257" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14159" CreationDate="2013-08-12T23:29:30.683" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't yet found any jurisdiction that has such a rule. I'll complete this search, but until now, I've searched in many of the states, especially the most populous, and some of the larger cities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Alabama&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Code of Alabama has only a no-coasting on a downgrade law (&lt;a href=&quot;http://alisondb.legislature.state.al.us/acas/codeofalabama/1975/32-5A-57.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;32-5A-57&lt;/a&gt;). It doesn't have any law about being in neutral at a red light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Alaska&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legis.state.ak.us/basis/folio.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alaska Statutes&lt;/a&gt; don't have any laws regarding being in neutral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Arizona&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.azleg.state.az.us/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/ars/28/00895.htm&amp;amp;Title=28&amp;amp;DocType=ARS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Section 28-895 of the Arizona Statutes&lt;/a&gt; is the only mention of &quot;neutral&quot; in the Transportation title, and it's a no-coasting on a downgrade law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Arkansas&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arkansas has a no-coasting on a downgrade law: A.C.A. § 27-51-1404  (2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;California&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/dl600.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;California 2013 driver handbook&lt;/a&gt; makes no mention of such a rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codesTextSearch.xhtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Searching through the California statutes&lt;/a&gt; for the terms &quot;neutral&quot; or &quot;gear&quot; did not return any relevant statutes, only a no-coasting rule at Section 21710:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The driver of a motor vehicle when traveling on down grade upon any highway shall not coast with the gears of such vehicle in neutral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Colorado&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Colorado only has a no-coasting on a downgrade law: C.R.S. 42-4-1009 (2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Connecticut&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Connecticut General Statutes, Chapter 248, Section 14-222 (2013)]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statute prohibits coasting only for vehicles with commercial registrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Delaware&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Delaware statutes only have a no-coasting on a downgrade law at &lt;a href=&quot;http://delcode.delaware.gov/title21/c041/sc11/index.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;§ 4187&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Florida&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&amp;amp;URL=0300-0399/0316/0316.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Florida statutes&lt;/a&gt; make no mention of the word &quot;neutral&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flhsmv.gov/handbooks/EnglishDriverHandbook.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Florida Driver's Handbook&lt;/a&gt; doesn't mention such a rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.miamidade.gov/parks/about-parks-rules_traffic.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Miami-Dade county&lt;/a&gt; doesn't have such a rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Georgia&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/gacode/Default.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Georgia Code&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;only has a no-coasting on a downgrade rule (§ 40-6-246), and no restrictions about&#xA;being neutral at a red light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Hawaii&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Idaho&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Illinois&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?DocName=062500050HCh%2E+11&amp;amp;ActID=1815&amp;amp;ChapterID=49&amp;amp;SeqStart=107000000&amp;amp;SeqEnd=131300000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;625 ILCS 5/Ch. 11 (Illinois Vehicle Code: Rules of the Road)&lt;/a&gt; doesn't mention such a rule. It does have a no-coasting on a downgrade rule, though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sec. 11-1410. Coasting prohibited. (a) The driver of any motor vehicle when traveling upon a down grade shall not coast with the gears or transmission of such vehicle in neutral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Indiana&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Iowa&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Kansas&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Kentucky&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Louisiana&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Maine&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Maryland&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Massachusetts&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/Search&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Massachusetts&lt;/a&gt; doesn't have any laws about the use of neutral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Michigan&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislature.mi.gov/(S(n1tyfk45ipxlijjfjp0zjanc))/mileg.aspx?page=getObject&amp;amp;objectName=mcl-257-678&amp;amp;highlight=neutral&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michigan Vehicle Code&lt;/a&gt; only has a no-coasting on a downgrade statute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Minnesota&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Mississippi&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Missouri&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Montana&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Montana code only has a no-coasting on a downgrade law: &lt;a href=&quot;http://leg.mt.gov/bills/mca/61/8/61-8-362.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;61-8-362&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Nebraska&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nebraska Statutes only have a no-coasting on a downgrade law: &lt;a href=&quot;http://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/statutes.php?statute=60-6,182&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;60-6,182&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Nevada&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevada statutes only have a no-coasting on a downgrade law: &lt;a href=&quot;http://leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-484B.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NRS 484B.123&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;New Hampshire&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;New Jersey&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New Jersey Statutes only have a no-coasting on a downgrade law at Section &lt;a href=&quot;http://lis.njleg.state.nj.us/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;39:4-55&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;New Mexico&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;New York&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[New York Statues, Vehicle and Traffic Law, Section 1216]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coasting  prohibited.  The  driver  of  any motor vehicle when&#xA;    traveling upon a down grade shall not  coast  with  the  gears  of  such&#xA;    vehicle in neutral, nor with the clutch disengaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The code does not mention anything about coasting while approaching a red light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dmv.ny.gov/broch/MV21.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York State's Driver's Manual&lt;/a&gt; doesn't mention such a rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/trafrule.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York City's traffic rules&lt;/a&gt; make no mention of such a rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;North Carolina&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncleg.net/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/PDF/ByChapter/Chapter_20.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;North Carolina Statutes Chapter 20 (Motor Vehicles)&lt;/a&gt; does not mention the word &quot;neutral&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;North Dakota&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Ohio&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/4511&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ohio statutes&lt;/a&gt; don't have such a rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Oklahoma&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Oregon&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Oregon Revised Statutes, Chapter 811, Section 811.495]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unlawful coasting on downgrade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) A person commits the offense of unlawful coasting on a downgrade if the person is the driver of a vehicle on a downgrade and the person coasts with the gears or transmission of the motor vehicle in neutral or with the clutch disengaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) This section does not apply to the driver of a motorized bicycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(3) The offense described in this section, unlawful coasting on a downgrade, is a Class D traffic violation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Pennsylvania&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/CT/PDF/75/75.PDF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pennsylvania Statutes Title 75 (Vehicles)&lt;/a&gt; doesn't mention such a rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Rhode Island&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Rhode Island General Laws, Section 31-22-6.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coasting prohibited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(a) The driver of any motor vehicle when traveling upon a down grade shall not coast with the gears of the vehicle in neutral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(b) The driver of a commercial motor vehicle, when traveling upon a down grade, shall not coast with the clutch disengaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(c) Violations of this section are subject to fines enumerated in § 31-41.1-4. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;South Carolina&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;South Dakota&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Tennessee&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/tncode/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tennessee Code Annotated 55-8-167&lt;/a&gt; has a no-coasting rule (either in neutral or clutch disengaged,) but no rule regarding a vehicle stopped at an intersection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(a) The driver of any motor vehicle, when traveling upon a down grade, shall not coast with the gears of the vehicle in neutral.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (b) The driver of a commercial motor vehicle, when traveling upon a down grade, shall not coast with the clutch disengaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This rule is also mentioned in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tn.gov/safety/dlhandbook/DL_Manual2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tennessee Comprehensive Driver License Manual&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Texas&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/TN/htm/TN.545.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Texas Statutes Transportation Code Title 7 Chapter 545&lt;/a&gt; has a no coasting rule at section 406:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An operator moving on a downgrade may not coast with the gears or transmission of the vehicle in neutral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't have any rule about being in neutral approaching a red light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/internetforms/Forms/DL-7.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Texas Driver's Handbook&lt;/a&gt; only mentions the no-coasting on a downgrade rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Utah&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Vermont&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Virginia&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Code of Virginia only has a no-coasting on a downgrade law at section &lt;a href=&quot;http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+46.2-811&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;46.2-811&lt;/a&gt;. There is no red-light neutral rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Washington&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Washington only has a no-coasting on a downgrade rule at Section &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=46.61&amp;amp;full=true#46.61.630&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;46.61.630&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;West Virginia&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legis.state.wv.us/WVCODE/Code.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;West Virginia statutes&lt;/a&gt; don't have any laws about being in neutral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Wisconsin&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/prefaces/toc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wisconsin statutes&lt;/a&gt; don't have any laws about being in neutral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Wyoming&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;District of Columbia&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2018-12-23T03:54:30.800" LastActivityDate="2018-12-23T03:54:30.800" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17335" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-13T00:44:30.857" Score="31" ViewCount="3454" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today, Elon Musk revealed the long-awaited open source plans for the Hyperloop. In those plans &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-20130812.pdf&quot;&gt;[pdf]&lt;/a&gt;, Musk states that the passenger version of the Hyperloop can be built for $6 billion, while the passenger plus vehicle version can be built for $7.5 billion. In either case, according to Musk, the Hyperloop will cost just a fraction of the proposed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/18/us-usa-california-rail-idUSBRE86H1K820120718&quot;&gt;$68 billion&lt;/a&gt; passenger-only rail system planned for Los Angeles to San Francisco.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Musk's estimate realistic? Should cost overruns be anticipated? And if so, can we use previous cost overrun rates on novel megaprojects to project true costs for the Hyperloop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2024-01-11T21:53:08.227" LastActivityDate="2024-01-11T21:53:08.227" Title="Would Elon Musk's Hyperloop be cheaper than high speed rail?" Tags="|elon-musk|hyperloop|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17336" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17390" CreationDate="2013-08-13T01:37:11.087" Score="10" ViewCount="1160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was just reading the &quot;news&quot;. There's a story going around about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perthnow.com.au/lifestyle/health-fitness/baby-rahul-bursts-into-flames-for-fourth-time-in-india/story-fnhqg9bs-1226695969223&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a baby&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://gulfnews.com/news/world/india/three-month-old-fire-baby-rahul-stable-doctors-1.1218817&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in India&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/498108/20130810/spontaneous-human-combustion-indian-baby-fire-chennai.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;who has spontaneously combusted&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2389972/Three-month-old-baby-boy-suffers-horrifying-burns-spontaneously-bursting-flames-fourth-time.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;4 times&lt;/a&gt;. The story has turned up in numerous &quot;news&quot; sites around the globe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A THREE-MONTH-OLD boy has reportedly burst into flames four times&#xA;  during his young life as doctors order tests to work out if it is due&#xA;  to his sweat.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Previously, skeptics has &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2594/spontaneous-human-combustion-is-it-possible&quot;&gt;debunked spontaneous combustion&lt;/a&gt;, but the story specifically says &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;His mother... rushed him to hospital in disbelief, after watching her son burst into flames &lt;em&gt;without any source of combustion in the vicinity&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis added)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this real or a hoax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T06:51:10.007" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T06:51:10.007" Title="Did an Indian baby spontaneously combust 4 times?" Tags="|physiology|india|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17268" CreationDate="2013-08-13T06:38:23.367" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The priest has identified himself as Rev. Patrick Dowling of the Jefferson City Diocese. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/12/mystery-solved-angel-priest-identified/&quot;&gt;FoxNews.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the full comment he had posted at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/mysterious-priest-showed-up-to-pray-with-missouri-crash-victim/#blogComments&quot;&gt;National Catholic Register's original story on the incident&lt;/a&gt; (text taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/13/us/missouri-mystery-priest/index.html&quot;&gt;cnn.com&lt;/a&gt; since the comment has since been deleted) (broken into paragraphs by me):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why he wasn't recognized:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had Mass in Ewing MO as the regular priest was sick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His arrival at the scene:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I was returning, I arrived at the scene. The authorities were redirecting traffic. I waited till it was possible to drive up closer. I parked behind a large vehicle about 150 yards from the scene. I asked the Sheriff’s permission and approached the scene of the accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What he did:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I absolved and anointed Katie, and, at her request, prayed that her leg would not hurt. Then I stepped aside to where some rescue personnel and the pilot were waiting, and prayed the rosary silently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How he left:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I left when the helicopter was about to take off, and before I got to my car it was on its way to Quincy. [...] I gave my name to one of the authorities, perhaps to the sergeant of Highway Patrol, explaining that I was returning having celebrated Mass at Ewing. It was the sergeant who, at the Sheriff’s request, gave me Katie’s name as I was leaving, so I could visit her in hospital—I assumed she would be taken to Columbia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comment has since been removed at his request, but he discussed the incident with the National Catholic Register for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/mystery-priest-in-missouri-rescue-revealed/&quot;&gt;another story&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the claim that the preist said &quot;Lentz would now be freed&quot;, Dowling says that he did not say that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I didn't say another word,” he said. “I did not say anything like the machinery would begin to work or they would succeed in getting her out of the car.” “That did not come from my lips, though two people heard it.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T15:54:08.260" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T15:54:08.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17339" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-08-13T08:18:02.310" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Musk envisioned the system as a 'fifth mode' of transportation, an alternative to boats, planes, automobiles, and trains. The system would, according to Musk, enable travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in under 30 minutes, or 343 miles (552 km) at an average speed of more than 685 mph (1,102 km/h).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On August 12, 2013, Musk published a fifty-seven page long &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacex.com/sites/spacex/files/hyperloop_alpha-20130812.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Alpha&lt;/em&gt; proposal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2086" LastEditorUserId="2086" LastEditDate="2013-08-13T13:46:17.387" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T13:46:17.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17340" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-08-13T08:18:02.310" Score="0" Body="The Hyperloop is a hypothetical mode of high-speed transportation proposed by the entrepreneur and SpaceX founder Elon Musk." OwnerUserId="2086" LastEditorUserId="2086" LastEditDate="2013-08-13T08:24:09.423" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T08:24:09.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17335" CreationDate="2013-08-13T10:03:26.300" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fabian said in a comment,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My personal suspicion is that those two numbers compare apples with oranges, and if that is so it would make a fine answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An explanation of the capital cost of the high-speed rail proposal is available here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/about/business_plans/BPlan_2012Ch3_Cap_Cost.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;California High-Speed Rail Authority | Revised 2012 Business Plan | Chapter 3&lt;/a&gt;, found via &lt;a href=&quot;http://hsr.ca.gov/About/Business_Plans/2012_Business_Plan.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Business Plan website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As shown in exhibit 3-2 on page 3-7, the largest cost is viaducts and tunnels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0G7jb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Route optimization (pages 40 and 41) of SpaceX's PDF says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The proposed route considers a combination of 20, 50, and 100 ft (6, 15, and 30 &#xA;  m, respectively) pylon heights to raise and lower the Hyperloop tube over &#xA;  geographical obstacles. A total tunnel length of 15.2 miles (24.5 km) has been included in this optimization where extreme local gradients (&gt;6%) would &#xA;  preclude the use of pylons. Tunneling cost estimations are estimated at $50 &#xA;  million per mile ($31 million per km). The small diameter of the Hyperloop &#xA;  tube should keep tunneling costs to a far more reasonable level than traditional &#xA;  automotive and rail tunnels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another difference is the complexity of the network: the SpaceX proposal is high-speed point-to-point; in contrast, the railway document says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The new development landscape has necessitated adding many miles of elevated structures, tunnels,&#xA;  and other infrastructure. The new designs permit access to major downtown population centers with &#xA;  reduced community impacts and disruption. Approximately 30 to 36 percent of the Phase 1 Blended&#xA;  system may be built on elevated structure or in tunnels, depending on alignment alternatives. The &#xA;  possible length of elevated structures increased from 77 miles in 2009 to between 113 and 140 miles, &#xA;  and tunnels increased from 32 miles to between 44 and 48 miles(with the ranges based on different &#xA;  alternatives still under consideration).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the track, the next biggest cost of the rail proposal seems to be land-related:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zV0ZG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A analogous section of the Hyperloop document (titled &quot;Making the Economics Work&quot; on pages 4 and 5) says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The pods and linear motors are relatively minor expenses compared to the tube &#xA;  itself – several hundred million dollars at most, compared with several billion &#xA;  dollars for the tube. Even several billion is a low number when compared with &#xA;  several tens of billion proposed for the track of the California rail project.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The key advantages of a tube vs. a railway track are that it can be built above &#xA;  the ground on pylons and it can be built in prefabricated sections that are &#xA;  dropped in place and joined with an orbital seam welder. By building it on &#xA;  pylons, you can almost entirely avoid the need to buy land by following &#xA;  alongside the mostly very straight California Interstate 5 highway, with only &#xA;  minor deviations when the highway makes a sharp turn.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even when the Hyperloop path deviates from the highway, it will cause minimal &#xA;  disruption to farmland roughly comparable to a tree or telephone pole, which &#xA;  farmers deal with all the time. A ground based high speed rail system by &#xA;  comparison needs up to a 100 ft wide swath of dedicated land to build up &#xA;  foundations for both directions, forcing people to travel for several miles just &#xA;  to get to the other side of their property. It is also noisy, with nothing to &#xA;  contain the sound, and needs unsightly protective fencing to prevent animals, &#xA;  people or vehicles from getting on to the track. Risk of derailment is also not &#xA;  to be taken lightly, as demonstrated by several recent fatal train accidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.navigantresearch.com/blog/hyperloop-faces-technical-hurdles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one critic says&lt;/a&gt; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Musk’s paper does an excellent job of detailing exact pricing of each element of the project so that there’s no magical thinking involved in the pricing expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and then goes on the criticize other aspects of the project's feasibility, i.e. heat (from compressing the air), and wind shear on the elevated tube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is Musk's estimate realistic? Should cost overruns be anticipated? And if so, can we use previous cost overrun rates on novel megaprojects to project true costs for the Hyperloop?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By definition it is difficult to predict unexpected cost overruns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people (e.g. the conclusion to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/17342/2703&quot;&gt;EnergyNumbers's answer&lt;/a&gt;) predict overruns because it is novel technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The expected cost are shown on pages 55 and 56 of the SpaceX PDF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10% of the total projected cost is for the capsule, and 90% is for the tube (so perhaps even large overruns on the capsule side may be relatively insignificant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The projected cost for the tube breaks down as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Tube Construction 650&#xA;Pylon Construction 2,550&#xA;Tunnel Construction 600&#xA;Propulsion 140&#xA;Solar Panels &amp;amp; Batteries 210&#xA;Station &amp;amp; Vacuum Pumps 260&#xA;Permits &amp;amp; Land 1,000&#xA;Cost Margin 536&#xA;Total 6,000&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Building things such as concrete pylons (&quot;Due to the sheer quantity of pillars required, reinforced concrete was selected as the construction material due to its very low cost per volume&quot;), drilling tunnels, and buying lands and permits, are all fairly well-known technologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the risks is that Elon himself will not be involved in the project: I would guess this project needs good management including risk mitigation strategies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T17:28:35.920" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17335" CreationDate="2013-08-13T12:53:02.627" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr: No, it is not cheaper. The unit cost of the Hyperloop is higher.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And to understand why, we need to take a step back, and think about what the proposed infrastructure is for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is for moving people about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the costs can only make sense, if we bear in mind how many people will be moved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://hsr.ca.gov/docs/about/business_plans/BPlan_2012CompareEquivalentCapacity.pdf&quot;&gt;2012 Business Plan&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;strong&gt;high-speed train&lt;/strong&gt; capacity would be 12,000 people per hour in each direction (p6). They derate this for a 70% occupancy to &lt;strong&gt;8,400 people per hour in each direction&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, the Hyperloop would, &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/08/hyperloop-a-theoretical-760-mph-transit-system-made-of-sun-air-and-magnets/&quot;&gt;according to Ars Technica&lt;/a&gt;, move 28 passengers at 2-minute intervals, which would be 840 people per hour in each direction. If we derate by the same 70% occupancy factor, that's &lt;strong&gt;588 people per hour in each direction&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So although the capital costs are about one-tenth of the costs of high-speed rail, the ridership would be much less than one-tenth of the high-speed train. &lt;strong&gt;So the unit costs of the Hyperloop are higher.&lt;/strong&gt; Essentially, the nub of it comes down to the Hyperloop being super-fast low-capacity infrastructure; the train is fast higher-capacity infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there's a lot of assumptions in those calculations: the high-speed train works on the basis of trains every 5 minutes, but they could be more frequent. The hyperloop claims to be able to work at 30-second intervals at peak, but given the speeds and stopping times, that looks completely unrealistic. But one could tweak the numbers to make the Hyperloop look better, at a cost per passenger basis. However, the world has quite a lot of experience of building and operating high-speed trains. It has very little experience of bulding and runnning anything like the Hyperloop. Therefore, cost overruns are much more probable, and more likely to be much higher, for the Hyperloop than for the train.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T12:53:02.627" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3506" CreationDate="2013-08-13T16:30:25.217" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends on what &quot;difference&quot; means in the question text. As you further elaborated, it can mean a very close election decided by just one vote. Of course, statistically and factually this is rare but it is probable and other users gave some examples. The important thing is the vote that made the difference in such an election is not a particular person's vote. For instance, in an election that resulted in 100000 to 999999 all the 1000000 votes cast is responsible of the election result not just 1 particular vote. Without the other 999999 similar votes such a vote would mean nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So election result is an emergent property of all the votes cast. As some commenters said, an election result is also not just about who the winner is or how close it is. If that was the case there would be no analysis of elections in newspapers or academia. They will just report the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if you interpret &quot;difference&quot; in another sense, every vote makes a difference. You can read about the following topics in Wikipedia for further examples of this phenomena:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_small_decisions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tyranny of small decisions&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_trap&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Social trap&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tragedy of the commons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15007" LastActivityDate="2013-08-13T16:30:25.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17347" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17378" CreationDate="2013-08-13T20:56:23.720" Score="11" ViewCount="3276" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_%28food_substitute%29&quot;&gt;Soylent&lt;/a&gt; is a &quot;food substitute&quot; - a shake including starches, vitamins, dietary fibre, minerals and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from the Vice review at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://campaign.soylent.me/soylent-free-your-body&quot;&gt;Soylent financing campaign&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Soylent contains all the nutritive components of a balanced diet but just a third of the calories and none of the toxins or cancer-causing stuff you'd usually find in your lunch of processed foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it contain all the nutrition needed for a healthy existence without other food?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15016" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-08-15T19:06:12.463" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T00:21:18.947" Title="Is Soylent a nutritionally complete shake?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17353" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-14T13:23:59.047" Score="7" ViewCount="8576" Body="&lt;p&gt;The documentary &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iamthedoc.com/&quot;&gt;I Am&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_(2010_American_documentary_film)&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;) (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8EGwlnygOc&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt;) makes a number of claims, including that more signals are sent from the heart to the brain than vice-versa, and that the your emotion or mood can have an effect on objects around you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, a test is shown measuring signals sent out by yogurt, and showing it is affected by emotions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems far-fetched. Does this test demonstrate yogurt is directly affected by the emotions of people around it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14999" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2015-08-24T17:22:01.347" LastActivityDate="2015-08-24T17:22:01.347" Title="Is yogurt affected by human emotions?" Tags="|physiology|experiments|emotions|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17356" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-14T15:40:47.393" Score="6" ViewCount="9640" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is that two magnets dropped into the tank of a toilet can help prevent staining and scaling due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_water&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hard water&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lehmans.com/p-4177-set-of-four-toilet-magnets.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;products such as the following&lt;/a&gt; are sold for this purpose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yxdsH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Picture of two &amp;quot;Toilet Magnets&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://e3living.com/news/1111/chemical-free-and-non-toxic-toilet-cleaning-really-does-exist.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one site&lt;/a&gt; that provides a &quot;scientific explanation&quot; as to how they work, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The water inside your toilet tank either consists of potable drinking&#xA;  potable or non-potable water.  These waters contain the ions of ferric&#xA;  and non-ferrous iron oxides, as well as calcium and magnesium sulfates&#xA;  and carbonates (commonly referred to as &quot;minerals in the water&quot;).&#xA;  These are in solution and consist of positive ions of iron, magnesium&#xA;  and calcium, as well as negatively charged ions of carbonate, sulfate&#xA;  and oxides.The positively charged and negatively charged ions attract&#xA;  each other forming molecules that stick together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, given the lack of efficacy of &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4290/do-magnetic-water-softeners-work&quot;&gt;magnet based water softeners&lt;/a&gt;, I'm skeptical that they can work on even as limited a circumstance. Is there any evidence to support the claim that they help prevent scaling or staining in any sort of noticeable way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T15:05:06.487" Title="Do &quot;Toilet Magnets&quot; help prevent staining due to hard water build-up?" Tags="|water|cleaning|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17357" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-08-14T15:45:00.603" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-08-14T15:45:00.603" LastActivityDate="2013-08-14T15:45:00.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17358" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-08-14T15:45:00.603" Score="0" Body="Cleaning is the act or process of removing dirt and other unwanted build-up from an object with the goal of restoring it to its original state." OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-08-15T02:18:43.633" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T02:18:43.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17360" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17361" CreationDate="2013-08-15T00:30:16.397" Score="8" ViewCount="1986" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's already been &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/4864/10468&quot;&gt;a question about devices that can help you monitor your sleep and their possible benefits&lt;/a&gt;, but I'm interested specifically in the apps for mobile devices that claim to be able to do this. For this question, I'm not actually interested in if it can be used to benefit your health or make you less &quot;groggy&quot;. I'm just interested in whether these apps can actually monitor your sleep cycles to any reliable degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These mobile device apps (such as Sleep Time by Azumio or Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock by Maciek Drejak Labs) claim that by placing the phone on your bed near you, they can measure your movement and make some estimates about when you are in a lighter sleep and when you go into deep/REM sleep. I can see how this wold be possible, but I'm doubtful if the results would be at all reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any sources with some data that show that kinds of apps have some merit? Are there any that show they are completely useless? Thank you much!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:21:55.077" Title="Can mobile apps monitor your sleep cycles?" Tags="|physiology|technology|sleep|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17360" CreationDate="2013-08-15T02:27:15.477" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/5691410_Body_movements_during_night_sleep_and_their_relationship_with_sleep_stages_are_further_modified_in_very_old_subjects/file/79e415041afa0eb0c7.pdf&quot;&gt;In this study on body movement during sleep&lt;/a&gt; there's a quote that says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(...) in both infants and young adults body movements occur&#xA;  preferentially in REM sleep&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So apparently there's a relation between the sleep cycle and body movement, with movement occuring during the lightest stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~stankovic/psfiles/sleep.pdf&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; tried different methods of detecting body movement during the night -- iPhone's Sleep Cycle, something called WISP (a wireless accelerometer) and Dance Dance Revolution pads (which is by far the most awesome) -- to find out if they could correctly report the sleep phase of a subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They provide a small comparison between the methods and even though they didn't go into much detail, the iPhone captured two transitions that both the WISP system and the DDR pads failed to notice. There's no clarification on whether they confirmed these cycles with any other method, but they did say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Therefore, we can say that, by training our system with the&#xA;  transitions detected by the iPhone application, it is possible to&#xA;  detect all the transitions between sleep cycles by our system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This credits the iPhone app with a better tuned sleep cycle detection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; W.B. Webb, L.M. Dreblow, A modified method for scoring slow wave sleep of older subjects, Sleep 5 (1982) 195–199.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15016" LastActivityDate="2013-08-15T02:27:15.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17366" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-15T19:57:41.657" Score="6" ViewCount="1308" Body="&lt;p&gt;A co-worker of mine is a born-again health nut, and I recently overheard him espousing to other co-workers that all their cooking should be done with coconut oil as it's full of &quot;good&quot; fats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0432.html&quot;&gt;couple&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconut_oil&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt; that coconut oil's fat content is, by weight, more than 90% saturated fats, which are most definitely &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; &quot;good&quot;, I raised my voice in dissent. Saturated fats and cardiovascular disease have been linked in multiple health studies, and so the FDA, USDHHS, and counterpart ministries of the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore and India all recommend minimizing saturated fat intake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As backup for his claims, my co-worker referenced, wonder of wonders, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/surprising-health-benefits-coconut-oil&quot;&gt;Dr Oz&lt;/a&gt;. I have generally taken anything the good doctor says with more than one grain of salt, and I'm not alone: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-01/dr-oz-bad-science&quot;&gt;Popular Science&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/2013/03/20/the_end_of_the_rainbow_for_dr_oz/&quot;&gt;Salon&lt;/a&gt; (covering different extremes of magazine readership demographics) have both run columns with much the same conclusion; following Dr. Oz can be harmful to your health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be able to agree with the claim that coconut oil, because its saturated fats are by definition not &lt;em&gt;trans&lt;/em&gt;-fatty acids (only unsaturated fats can have a double C=C bond in the &quot;tail&quot; of the fatty acid, and thus exhibit &lt;em&gt;cis-trans&lt;/em&gt; isomerism), might be better than partially-hydrogenated vegetable oils (such as margarine) which exhibit unnaturally high trans-isomer content. But to say unequivocally that coconut oil is good for you and you should replace as much of your fat intake as possible (such as from cooking fats) with coconut, when coconut oil has &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; highest saturated fat content of any vegetable oil, worse than butter, &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; worse than olive or canola, I just can't see eye to eye with this guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting the question to you, &lt;strong&gt;What studies, other than ones Dr Oz has authored or peer-reviewed, say that coconut oil is a healthy thing to be eating in lieu of other forms of fats, and have any of them been debunked, retracted or discredited by studies showing the exact opposite?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5997" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T13:33:08.257" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T04:11:23.873" Title="Is coconut oil better for your heart than typical vegetable oils?" Tags="|nutrition|mehmet-oz|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3729" CreationDate="2013-08-16T02:14:46.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, efficient left-foot braking does typically require that you're not also on the clutch. In F1 cars, the clutch is controlled by either of two paddles under the &quot;gear up&quot; and &quot;gear down&quot; paddles, and so it's more natural to give the left foot responsibility for braking. As an aside, the average F1 steering wheel, with multiple electronic linkages to the transmission and powertrain, fuel injection system, brake balance system, front and rear wing adjustments, communications system, various LCD readouts including upshift and pit cues, and the fact that like everything in the cockpit it's custom-made for the driver out of the most lightweight materials, &lt;a href=&quot;http://kotaku.com/5785331/the-70000-steering-wheels-of-formula-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;costs in the neighborhood of US$50k&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a clutch pedal on the floor, you typically have to press both clutch and brake at the same time as you're both slowing and downshifting for a corner. The GT and rally drivers, who start with production vehicles and can't make extensive control setup mods like paddle shifters, do put in aftermarket clutches and make very precise adjustments to the pedal throws, giving the clutch, brakes and accelerator the same throw length (short). The pedals are also placed very closely together, allowing drivers to use an &quot;overlap&quot; position of their feet on the pedals; press the outside of the right foot for gas, press the outside of the left foot for clutch, press the inside of &lt;em&gt;either&lt;/em&gt; for brake. This in turn more or less allows the driver to use whatever foot's handy to brake, left or right. If they're off the accelerator and downshifting for a hairpin, right foot. If they're slowing for a chicane or a drift turn but still under power, left foot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the average civilian vehicle, these adjustments aren't available; the pedals are spaced further apart (especially for large American clod-stompers), differently-shaped and differently-placed, and have different weights and throw lengths. Despite this, Rally Racing News &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rallyracingnews.com/lfb.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recommends left-foot braking&lt;/a&gt; when driving a front-wheel drive car in a racing scenario. The basic idea in a FWD is that when both brake and accelerator are applied, the front wheels keep turning despite the braking, because they're under power, but the rear wheels slow, and so lose some of their traction, causing the rear end to kick out (oversteer; a hard thing to do in most American FWDs, which are strongly biased for understeer for safety reasons).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a rear-wheel-drive car, this effect is even more pronounced but for the opposite reason; the car slows, transferring weight to the front wheels, and with the rear wheels still under power from the accelerator they will lose traction, kicking out the rear end. This in fact makes RWD cars really sensitive to applying brakes, accelerator and steering wheel at the same time; the general strategy in a RWD is to brake before beginning to turn, shifting weight to the turning wheels, then turn and accelerate through the corner as you straighten out. Braking while turning hard will cause the rear tires to lose too much traction, putting the car sideways in the corner, and when you add accelerator to try to power out of it, the car will swap ends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5997" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T02:14:46.510" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="59" CreationDate="2013-08-16T05:37:48.507" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 10% statistic is a myth. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-database/ten-percent-brain.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mythbusters tested&lt;/a&gt;, and it is closer to 30% at a given instant, although all parts of the brain are used over a longer time period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While hooked up to a magnetoencephalogram (MEG), a neuroimaging device that measures magnetic fields produced by the brain's electrical currents, Tory exercised four different neurological regions with memory drills, math calculations, word associations and image comparisons. Over the course of the MEG exam, around 35 percent of Tory's brain jumped into action, busting the brain myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cognitive enhancing drugs similar to &quot;NZT-48&quot; are quite real though, an example being a drug called PRL-8-53.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user15048" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T23:36:01.017" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T23:36:01.017" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17347" CreationDate="2013-08-16T09:20:09.307" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Is Soylent a nutritionally complete shake?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one knows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one can know this because we collectively don't know &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the essential nutrients in food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“My short answer is that I don’t know any more about this product than the limited information provided on the product website,” says Diane Stadler, PhD, RD — a registered dietitian and assistant professor of medicine at Oregon Health &amp;amp; Science University. Stadler warns that although we know many of the essential nutrients in food, we don’t know everything and there’s a strong possibility that an elemental diet like this could miss something critically important. “I would not promote this type of diet to the general public, as there are many ways that it can go wrong, especially if consumed long-term,”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/03/silicon-valley-tries-to-reinvent-food-literally/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Silicon valley tries to reinvent food - literally&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The inventor of Soylent isn't sure that the product is nutritionally complete&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am reticent to provide exact brand names and instructions because I am not fully convinced of the diet's safety for a physiology different than mine. What if I missed something that's essential for someone of a different race or age group?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://robrhinehart.com/?p=424&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What's in Soylent?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-08-16T09:28:15.390" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T09:28:15.390" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16414" CreationDate="2013-08-16T13:16:51.940" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Pope Pius XII support evolutionary theory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is the extract from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_evolution&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Catholic Church and evolution&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; Wikipedia page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 1950 encyclical Humani Generis, Pope Pius XII confirmed that there is no intrinsic conflict between Christianity and the theory of evolution, provided that Christians believe that the individual soul is a direct creation by God and not the product of purely material forces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let’s analyze the above paragraph as below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrase, Christians believe that the individual soul is a direct creation by God, as mentioned above gives us the truth of God’s direct involvement in creation of individual soul.  As the phrase, there is no intrinsic conflict between Christianity and the theory of evolution, is mentioned before the phrase, PROVIDED that Christians believe that the individual soul is a direct creation of God, it gives us the conclusion that Paul Pius XII only supported evolutionary theory provided that it supports individual soul was a direct creation of God.  However, evolutionary theory does not support individual soul was the direct creation of God.  Instead, it supports that God only assisted in the evolution instead of He created individual soul by Himself directly.  Indeed, evolution assumes material force, i.e. natural selection, that causes one animal to be transformed into another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the phrase, provided that, has been stressed before the phrase, Christians believe that the individual soul is a direct creation by God and not the product of purely material forces (natural selection), it gives us a conclusion that Paul only encourages Christians to believe in evolution on the condition if it supports that God was a direct creator of individual soul, and that each of the creation was not the result of the product or the end-result of purely material force, such as, natural selection that drove the animals to be transformed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As evolutionary theory does not support a direct creation from God and that it supports that it was the end-result of purely material force, such as, natural selection that drove animals to transform, Paul Pius XII did not call Christians to support evolutionary theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paul Pius XII only called Christians to support evolutionary theory only if the teaching supports that it was God that created individual soul.  Besides, they have to support that the existence of individual soul was not the product of material force but God’s direct creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, Paul Pius XII did not support evolutionary theory since this teaching does not support God’s direct creation.  Besides, this teaching supports the end-result of evolution was the product of material force, such as, natural selection, that drove animals to transform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following quotes are all the paragraphs in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Humani Generis&lt;/a&gt; which include the word &amp;quot;evolution&amp;quot; so that you can assess whether Wikipedia's summary, above, is accurate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[5.] If anyone examines the state of affairs outside the Christian fold, he will easily discover the principle trends that not a few learned men are following. Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that &lt;strong&gt;evolution&lt;/strong&gt;, which has not been fully proved even in the domain of natural sciences, explains the origin of all things, and audaciously support the monistic and pantheistic opinion that the world is in continual &lt;strong&gt;evolution&lt;/strong&gt;. Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so that, when the souls of men have been deprived of every idea of a personal God, they may the more efficaciously defend and propagate their dialectical materialism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[6.] Such fictitious tenets of &lt;strong&gt;evolution&lt;/strong&gt; which repudiate all that is absolute, firm and immutable, have paved the way for the new erroneous philosophy which, rivaling idealism, immanentism and pragmatism, has assumed the name of existentialism, since it concerns itself only with existence of individual things and neglects all consideration of their immutable essences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[36.] For these reasons the Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of &lt;strong&gt;evolution&lt;/strong&gt;, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter - for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God. However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those favorable and those unfavorable to &lt;strong&gt;evolution&lt;/strong&gt;, be weighed and judged with the necessary seriousness, moderation and measure, and provided that all are prepared to submit to the judgment of the Church, to whom Christ has given the mission of interpreting authentically the Sacred Scriptures and of defending the dogmas of faith.[11] Some however, rashly transgress this liberty of discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15040" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-16T15:16:44.767" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17377" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-16T18:40:41.507" Score="10" ViewCount="20895" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttlecock&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's entry for shuttlecock&lt;/a&gt; reads thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A shuttlecock (also called a bird or birdie) is a high-drag projectile used in the sport of badminton. It has an open conical shape: &lt;em&gt;the cone is formed from 16 or so overlapping feathers, &lt;strong&gt;usually goose or duck and from the left wing only&lt;/strong&gt;, embedded into a rounded cork base.&lt;/em&gt; The cork is covered with thin leather. The shuttlecock's shape makes it extremely aerodynamically stable. Regardless of initial orientation, it will turn to fly cork first, and remain in the cork-first orientation. The name shuttlecock is frequently shortened to shuttle. The &quot;shuttle&quot; part of the name was probably derived from its back-and-forth motion during the game, resembling the shuttle of a loom; the &quot;cock&quot; part of the name was probably derived from the resemblance of the feathers to those on a cockerel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I suppose that there might be some logic to using feathers from the &lt;em&gt;same&lt;/em&gt; wing for each shuttlecock, I find it hard to believe that the wing &lt;em&gt;always has to be the left one&lt;/em&gt;. How true is Wikipedia's (reference-less) claim? If true, why is this the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2013-08-16T18:48:18.880" LastActivityDate="2016-08-17T15:22:20.047" Title="Are badminton shuttlecocks made using feathers from only the left wing of a duck or goose?" Tags="|sport|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17347" CreationDate="2013-08-16T23:53:02.680" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, probably not, for example because he seems to be developing it via trial and error and an FDA list of nutrients -- the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://robrhinehart.com/?p=570&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Soylent Month Three&lt;/a&gt; is dated April 25, 2013 (i.e. recently) and starts with,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After three months I should be finding deficiencies, and I did. I started having joint pain and found I fit the symptoms of a sulfur deficiency. This makes perfect sense as I consume almost none, and sulfur is a component of every living cell. Sulfur is hard to miss in a typical diet so the FDA would have little reason to recommend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same post ends with,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I promised that if I was still healthy after three months of soylent I would launch a Kickstarter campaign to bring it to the world. That time has come. The project is currently being reviewed and if approved I will post the link here, and tweet about it as soon as it is up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next blog post titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://robrhinehart.com/?p=507&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;In Defense of New Food&lt;/a&gt; dated May 21, 2013 starts with,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the past few months I've gotten to engage with a lot of picky thinkers regarding soylent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will cherry-pick some extracts from that article to explain why my opinion was &amp;quot;probably not&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My net enjoyment of food is far higher than it has ever been. Being in excellent health, never eating poorly, and still enjoying good food socially is a win-win-win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... so he doesn't eat only Soylent (one newspaper article said that he eats or ate &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; food on weekends).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was a concern that nutrients can affect each others' absorption, but there have been no deficiency symptoms, and if this becomes a problem the amounts can be changed to compensate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... however saying that &amp;quot;if we discover a problem then we'll fix it&amp;quot; isn't the same as saying &amp;quot;there is not and will not be a problem&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some say this experiment makes no sense because we do not understand everything about the body. I think this is backwards thinking. If we do not understand something that is all the more reason to experiment with it in the pursuit of greater understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... so it is still experimental -- the current version of the recipe is labelled &amp;quot;version 0.8&amp;quot; (i.e. not even the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versioning#Change_significance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;first 'version 1.0' release&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next and last blog post titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://robrhinehart.com/?p=572&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nothing to Fear&lt;/a&gt; is content-free, i.e. it hardly mentions Soylent at all. Previous blog posts talked about his diet's effect on his mood, his experimenting with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nootropic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;nootropics&lt;/a&gt;, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OP makes and questions a very strong claim for the product, i.e., &amp;quot;all the nutrition needed for a healthy existence without other food&amp;quot;. Soylent's developer might be making weaker claims, for example (and these are my impressions, not direct quotes):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have tried it for some months, 5 days out of 7; it's a fascinating experiment and I feel better than before&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many people have a very unhealthy diet of regular/normal food: Soylent isn't perfect, but it's better than that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This is a great idea in theory, and R&amp;amp;D is worth pursuing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Complete&amp;quot; is presumably a matter of degree: perhaps it is relatively complete and is presumably not absolutely complete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To illustrate what I mean by &amp;quot;a matter of degree&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He is young, has been testing for months, thinks his new diet is better for him than his previous one, and doesn't like to bother with preparing food&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I am not so young, have 30 years as an adult of learning to be a vegetarian, and hope to live for decades more&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My opinion (&amp;quot;probably not&amp;quot;) is influenced by the time-scales involved: the length of the test period, the number of self-selected test subjects, and the quality of the testing and documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://discourse.soylent.me/t/whole-foods-versus-soylent/4272&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://discourse.soylent.me/t/whole-foods-versus-soylent/4272&lt;/a&gt; is a discussion with the authors on the topic &amp;quot;Whole foods versus Soylent&amp;quot; ... the last entry in that discussion says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the implications for long term health effects for people that consume soylent for an extended period of time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do not know, but we are going to find out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soylent, for me, is an experiment, an adventure! I am certain it is healthier than smoking or being obese, so the long term effects can not be that bad. If something does pop up, I will fix it or stop soylent. But for now, we will see :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T00:21:18.947" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17366" CreationDate="2013-08-17T14:16:43.917" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do not consider the name of the fat but rather its effect on cholesterol. Lauric acid, a saturated fat and the major constituent in coconut fat, raises serum cholesterol considerably. However, it almost entirely raises HDL cholesterol, meaning the net effect is a higher total cholesterol, but a much &quot;healthier&quot; cholesterol composition. They don't know if this is good or bad yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effects of dietary fatty acids and carbohydrates on the ratio of serum total to HDL cholesterol and on serum lipids and apolipoproteins: a meta-analysis of 60 controlled trials - &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/77/5/1146.short&quot;&gt;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/77/5/1146.short&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15063" LastEditorUserId="15063" LastEditDate="2013-08-17T20:23:50.547" LastActivityDate="2013-08-17T20:23:50.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17387" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17399" CreationDate="2013-08-18T11:22:27.640" Score="2" ViewCount="970" Body="&lt;p&gt;warning, minor spoilers for the HBO series True Blood...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 9&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; episode at the 6&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; season of True Blood, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2821726/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Life Matters&lt;/a&gt;, one of the characters is buried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The character buried was a US marine with a rank of &quot;private&quot; who served in Iraq and has finished his service. He was killed as a civilian. His family is holding for him a full military service, including him being berried in his uniform, a firing salute and a US flag that lays on the coffin, and then is folded to a triangle and handed to his wife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the family of a deceased US veteran get a military funeral ceremony with full honors, even if the veteran didn't die during their military service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-08-19T05:21:13.133" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T17:47:45.163" Title="Can a US veteran who died after their discharge from the service be buried in full military honors?" Tags="|united-states|military|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17336" CreationDate="2013-08-18T17:55:41.500" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/422&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/422&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spontaneous human combustion is a phenonmenon that has no plausibility — no scientific evidence whatsoever showing that anything like this actually exists in nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only other plausible theory is that there is some form of child abuse going on here unless there was just some source of flame in the house near the crib or something that they weren't aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-18T17:55:41.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17391" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17421" CreationDate="2013-08-18T18:03:17.860" Score="4" ViewCount="1059" Body="&lt;p&gt;From The Economist - &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21582241-people-do-not-sleep-easy-nights-when-there-full-moon-lunacy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lunacy? People do not sleep easy on nights when there is a full Moon&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the answer was &lt;strong&gt;“yes”, the phase of the Moon does affect human sleep patterns&lt;/strong&gt;, even when the human involved cannot possibly see the Moon. Electroencephalography showed that the volunteers slept, on average, 20 minutes less around the time of the full Moon. It also took them five minutes longer to get to sleep, their delta activity (a measure of how deeply they were sleeping) was 30% lower than at other times, their level of melatonin, a sleep-related hormone, was reduced, and they reported, subjectively, that they had not slept as well as usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The referenced study doesn't meet my needs because I don't believe the data supports the conclusion attributed to it by the Economist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that the phase of the Moon affects human sleep patterns?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-19T18:34:04.843" LastActivityDate="2023-06-23T17:10:37.347" Title="Does the phase of the Moon affect human sleep patterns?" Tags="|sleep|moon|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17392" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-18T20:18:52.637" Score="3" ViewCount="550" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/business/trash-into-gas-efficiently-an-army-test-may-tell.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this NYT article&lt;/a&gt; about using blast furnaces to turn garbage into burnable gas, yielding a net energy output. The article suggests that the company, Sierra Energy, is very close to building a commercial system. The article also states that the technology has been in use for years and is relatively proven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is really commercially viable and uses old technology, then why hasn't it been done before? What new breakthrough made garbage gasification possible and/or economical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15068" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T17:05:44.123" Title="Is Gasification of Garbage a Viable Energy Solution?" Tags="|environment|energy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8263" CreationDate="2013-08-19T03:12:35.350" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is there is no simple answer.  It is not appropriate to unequivocally say &quot;no&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FDA has stated they are not in the business of policing; rather, they put the onus on the seed corporations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One only needs to look at history to have some serious questions and concerns. Sure genetic engineering hasn't been around very long so one would need to look at the biggest players in the Genetic Engineering Industry.  Monsanto &amp;amp; Dow Chemical two chemical companies with an awful track record.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes Monsanto IS a big part of GE Food and wields power and influence like Big Tobacco in the 1970s.  They do patent seeds and they now own an estimated 25% of the world seeds due to acquisitions.  If you don't know about Monsanto's history check out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/448-farm-and-food-policy/17091-monsanto-controls-your-diet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Monsanto Controls Your Diet&lt;/a&gt;  article in Salon Magazine's April 2013 issue. Since 1901 they have been making chemicals that poison.  Here is a link to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationofchange.org/groundbreaking-new-study-links-gmo-leukemia-when-will-monsanto-stop-lying-us-1373984961&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;latest study showing a link of GMO food to leukemia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, each study such as this is refuted by 100 Monsanto, Sygenta, etc. supported/funded studies. It is tough to put trust into studies from Univ. of Florida for instance that receives so much from Sygenta.  I do not consider any such studies objective.  For decades the tobacco industry did the same thing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whenever something is so one-sided (and the power and future profits are on that side) I often find myself skeptical. I am by no means against genetic engineering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14906" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-08-19T05:18:43.990" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T05:18:43.990" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17398" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28399" CreationDate="2013-08-19T03:53:04.430" Score="4" ViewCount="668" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm fairly certain that decades ago I read an interview in a computer magazine where someone (one of the Steves?) claimed that after the Apple II case was designed, there was some kind of problem with paying for the die (or mold), so Steve Jobs (with perhaps one other person) broke into a vendor's facility and stole the die/mold!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I now cannot find any reference to any such incident.  Am I full of baloney?  Is there any truth to the story in any form?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note:  I have found web posts indicating poor quality reaction-injection molding was used for the initial cases.  By December 1977, tooling was completed for cases made out of the more durable and smooth ABS [acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene].  I don't know which system the original interviewee might have been referring to.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15071" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-11T02:35:04.960" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T02:37:27.567" Title="Did Steve Jobs steal the die for the Apple II case from a vendor?" Tags="|apple-inc|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17387" CreationDate="2013-08-19T04:37:51.497" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the United States there are different types of military honors that are rendered at a funeral service and they are governed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/1491&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;section 1491 of title 10, United States Code&lt;/a&gt; which mandates that upon request the following be provided for all veterans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;c) Ceremony.--A funeral honors detail shall, at a minimum,  perform at&#xA;  the funeral a ceremony that includes the folding of a United  States&#xA;  flag and presentation of the flag to the veteran's family and the &#xA;  playing of Taps. Unless a bugler is a member of the detail, the&#xA;  funeral  honors detail shall play a recorded version of Taps using&#xA;  audio  equipment which the detail shall provide if adequate audio&#xA;  equipment is  not otherwise available for use at the funeral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/mfh/getLinks.do?tab=Eligible&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;veteran is defined&lt;/a&gt; a former member of the armed services who were discharged under other than dishonorable circumstances, as well as former members of the Commissioned Officer Corps of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usphs.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Public Health Service&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.noaa.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration&lt;/a&gt; whose funeral honors are performed by the Coast Guard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the general public there is some confusion as to what military honors actually entails. As per Public Law 106-65 Sec. 578 the minimal standard is defined as the folding of the flag, presentation of the flag to the veterans family, and the playing of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taps&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Taps&lt;/a&gt;; however, each branch is responsible for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/mfh/getLinks.do?tab=DoD&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;setting their own standards&lt;/a&gt; above and beyond that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Army is quite specific about the type of funeral honors and details them in &lt;a href=&quot;https://rdl.train.army.mil/catalog/view/100.ATSC/36E2FF6E-6A92-4FCE-A25F-09B684EEAA3C-1327075372265/toc.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TC 3-21.5 (FM 3-21.5)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://rdl.train.army.mil/catalog/view/100.ATSC/36E2FF6E-6A92-4FCE-A25F-09B684EEAA3C-1327075372265/chap14.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chapter 14&lt;/a&gt; where &quot;full&quot; honors are defined as the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a.   A fullmilitary [sic] funeral honors normally consist of, or is&#xA;  supported by, a 9-person funeral detail, with the following elements.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  ·      Casualty assistance officer (CAO). &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  ·      Officer in charge (OIC) or noncommissioned officer in charge (NCOIC) (appropriate for the rank of the deceased). &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  ·      One bugler to play &quot;Taps&quot; (or electronic recording). &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  ·      Six active duty pallbearers/firing party (dual function, the pallbearers also serve as the firing party and  will render these honors). &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  ·      Military clergy (if available and requested).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;b.   If resources permit, a larger funeral detail may be provided, which is composed of all the elements of the nine-person funeral detail, and may also include ... [etc.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;c. A two-man military funeral honors detail consists of the following elements.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ·      OIC/NCOIC (appropriate for the rank of the deceased).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ·      Enlisted Soldier.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ·      One bugler to play &quot;Taps&quot; (or electronic recording).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://armypubs.army.mil/epubs/pdf/r600_25.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AR 600–25&lt;/a&gt; they are also very specific that only Active Duty Soldiers, retirees, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medal_of_Honor&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Medal of Honor&lt;/a&gt; recipients are eligible for full honors, although in the case of restricted resources, retirees may not be rendered full honors. Veterans are eligible for the service detail as previously discussed. The Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard follow the standards that are set by the Army.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that the character was a veteran of the Marines raises an interesting difference between the services in the United States though since according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marines.mil/Portals/59/Publications/MCO%203040.4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MCO 3040.4&lt;/a&gt; Chapter 6 Section 7:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a. Marine Corps policy and tradition has been to provide the maximum&#xA;  number of personnel when rendering MFH [Military Funeral Honors] at any burial/inurnment. Marine Corps activities will provide MFH support within the constraints of  available resources; however, MFH support consisting of the minimum  two persons, as required by Reference (k), must be the exception  rather than the norm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, if the &lt;a href=&quot;http://trueblood.wikia.com/wiki/Life_Matters&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;plot summary&lt;/a&gt; is correct in indicating that full honors were rendered and the character was a veteran of the Marines then the scene is actually &lt;strong&gt;correct&lt;/strong&gt; given their branch of service. Had the character been a member of any other branch then the scene would have been incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T17:47:45.163" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T17:47:45.163" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17400" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-19T05:11:47.280" Score="7" ViewCount="729" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/marcsiegel/2013/07/24/does-fish-oil-increase-ones-risk-of-getting-prostate-cancer/&quot;&gt;retrospective study&lt;/a&gt; came out that found a correlation between increased blood levels of omega-3 fatty acids and increased incidence of prostate cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The skeptical &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/omega-3s-prostate-cancer_b_3659735.html/&quot;&gt;responses&lt;/a&gt; I've seen come from those who tend to promote dietary supplements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could the correlation really be due to prostate cancer patients taking omega-3 supplements or replacing red meat with fish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15073" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T04:09:30.623" Title="Do fish oil or omega-3 fatty acids increase the risk of cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|cancer|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17392" CreationDate="2013-08-19T09:32:55.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;If [gasification of garbage] is really commercially viable and uses old technology, then why hasn't it been done before?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is viable, it is old technology and it has been done before (but perhaps not in exactly the way referred to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is existing technology for extracting energy from garbage. Sometimes the process is described as gasification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gasification was allegedly developed in the 1800s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Existing gasification technology may not be the same technology as described in the NYT article - which may represent an improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gasification is the process of converting carbon based products such as coal, biomass, and petrol into carbon monoxide and hydrogen. This is done by causing a chemical reaction between the product and an amount of oxygen in a gasifier to produces a gas mixture known as synthetic gas, or syngas. Gasification is a highly efficient method for obtaining energy from organic materials, and can be used as a method for disposing of waste. Gasification was developed in the 1800s and was previously used to produce gas for lighting and cooking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomass.uk.com/gasification.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Biomass Engineering&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oslo, Norway burns rubbish to power and heat homes, and they’ve run out. The city imports trash from Sweden, Ireland, England—and they wouldn’t mind taking on a few tons from the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it’s not just Oslo. Northern Europe’s trash burning capacity outstrips its trash producing capacity by 550 million tons. Neighboring Sweden imports 800,000 tons of trash annually to make energy. Norway, Austria, and Germany are also getting in on the game. In total, 40 countries worldwide burn trash for energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://singularityhub.com/2013/06/10/oslo-burns-so-much-trash-for-energy-theyre-importing-rubbish/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some random web site of unknown reliability&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first Energos facility is a 27MW gasification plant owned by Østfold Energi and is operating since 2002. It has been supplying 185Gwh a year of steam. The two facilities can process a total of 156,000t of waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.power-technology.com/projects/energosgasification/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Power Technology - Gasification Plant, Norway&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Energy-from-Waste (EfW), or Waste-to-Energy (WTE) is a process that takes post-recycled municipal solid waste – including plain old household rubbish – and burns it at a high temperature to reduce its weight and volume, and to produce heat and/or electricity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.covantaenergy.co.uk/en/what-we-do/energy-from-waste.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Covanta - Energy from waste&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waste and recycling company, AmeyCespa has received planning permission for its Milton Keynes Waste Recovery Park, which will utilise gasification technology from Manchester based Energos to recover energy from waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.waste-management-world.com/articles/2013/07/go-ahead-for-7-mw-waste-to-energy-gasification-facility-in-milton-keynes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Waste Management World&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike today's modern facilities, a number of plants that were developed during the late 1960s and 70s simply burnt or incinerated waste, using mains gas or other fossil fuels. However, modern facilities recover energy from the process and are therefore classed as ERF facilities, as opposed to being simply an incineration plant.ENERGOS ERF plants utilise Advanced Conversion Technology (ACT) and only use a small amount of natural gas to kick start the gasification process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.energ-group.com/energos/information-centre/faqs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Energos FAQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-19T10:45:27.717" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17404" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-19T11:10:29.547" Score="10" ViewCount="270" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read from this link (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ada.org/1887.aspx&quot;&gt;http://www.ada.org/1887.aspx&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It says to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Replace toothbrushes at least every 3–4 months. The bristles become frayed and worn with use and cleaning effectiveness will decrease. Toothbrushes will wear out more rapidly depending on factors unique to each patient. Check brushes often for this type of wear and replace them more frequently if needed. Children’s toothbrushes often need replacing more frequently than adult brushes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a question was that is this replacement require if the bristles were not frayed and worn even after 6 months of usage? Or are there scientific evidence showing that it is a must to replace the tooth brush every 3 to 4 months?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8840" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T18:53:00.070" LastActivityDate="2013-08-22T18:53:00.070" Title="Replace toothbrush every 3 to 4 months" Tags="|dentistry|cleaning|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-19T11:21:15.317" Score="7" ViewCount="897" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read a 2011 paper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21938555&quot;&gt;Low-intensity pulsed ultrasound reduces the inflammatory activity of synovitis.&lt;/a&gt; that mention that ultrasound can help reduce inflammation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://saveyourself.ca/articles/ultrasound.php&quot;&gt;Save Yourself article&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately — although there are some interesting exceptions and tantalizing hopes for some conditions — ultrasound is not a promising therapy for most musculoskeletal conditions. There is a jarring, bizarre lack of research for such a popular therapy. What little research is available paints an overwhelmingly bland picture. And the principle of US itself is, at best, much more complicated and unpredictable than most therapists believe. At worst, there is no rational basis for US at all. Ultrasound therapy is almost certainly useful for some patients, some of the time — but it is not a reliable or evidence-based therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does ultrasound work to reduce inflammation (e.g. treat musculoskeletal problems, especially inflammation such as tendonitis and bursitis)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8840" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-08-19T11:38:44.427" LastActivityDate="2023-05-11T03:09:36.107" Title="Does ultrasound reduce joint inflammation?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20310" CreationDate="2013-08-19T13:49:18.747" Score="23" ViewCount="3921" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the use of cannabis/marijuana/THC associated with risks when driving a motor vehicle, similar to impairment from the use of alcohol?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusions of public studies seem inconsistent. For example, norml.org's &lt;a href=&quot;http://norml.org/library/item/marijuana-and-driving-a-review-of-the-scientific-evidence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marijuana and Driving: A Review of the Scientific Evidence&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although cannabis intoxication has been shown to mildly impair psychomotor skills, this impairment does not appear to be severe or long lasting. In driving simulator tests, this impairment is typically manifested by subjects decreasing their driving speed and requiring greater time to respond to emergency situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, this &lt;strong&gt;impairment does not appear to play a significant role in on-road traffic accidents&lt;/strong&gt;. A 2002 review of seven separate studies involving 7,934 drivers reported, “Crash culpability studies have failed to demonstrate that drivers with cannabinoids in the blood are significantly more likely than drug-free drivers to be culpable in road crashes.” This result is likely because subject under the influence of marijuana are aware of their impairment and compensate for it accordingly, such as by slowing down and by focusing their attention when they know a response will be required. This reaction is just the opposite of that exhibited by drivers under the influence of alcohol, who tend to drive in a more risky manner proportional to their intoxication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This appears to be well supported by a number of studies including the well reputed Canadian Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs. 2002. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parl.gc.ca/content/sen/committee/371/ille/rep/summary-e.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cannabis: Summary Report: Our Position for a Canadian Public Policy. Ottawa.&lt;/a&gt; Chapter 8: Driving Under the Influence of Cannabis, which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cannabis alone, particularly in low doses, has little effect on the skills involved in&#xA;automobile driving.&lt;/strong&gt; Cannabis leads to a more cautious style of driving. However it&#xA;has a negative impact on decision time and trajectory. This in itself does not mean&#xA;that drivers under the influence of cannabis represent a traffic safety risk;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UK Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions (Road Safety Division). 2000. Cannabis and Driving: A Review of the Literature and Commentary. Crowthorne, Berks: TRL Limited, which according to norml.org states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no evidence that consumption of cannabis alone increases the risk of culpability for traffic crash fatalities or injuries for which hospitalization occurs, and may reduce those risks.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a golden oldie by the US DOT in 1993 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ntl.bts.gov/lib/25000/25800/25867/DOT-HS-808-078.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Marijuana and Actual Driving Performance&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;THC's adverse effects on driving performance appear relatively small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, other studies have found otherwise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17278669&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;The impact of cannabis on driving.&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; Bédard M, Dubois S, Weaver B., Public Health Program, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, ON. michel.bedard@lake-headu.ca states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cannabis had a negative effect on driving&lt;/strong&gt;, as would be predicted from human performance studies. This finding supports the need for interventions to decrease the prevalence of driving under the influence of cannabis, and indicates that further studies should be conducted to investigate the dose-response relationship between cannabis and safe driving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science Daily &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130301122256.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;New Study Shows Cannabis Effects On Driving Skills&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; (Mar 1, 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cannabis is second only to alcohol for causing impaired driving and motor vehicle accidents&lt;/strong&gt;. ... These cannabis smokers had a 10-fold increase in car crash injury compared with infrequent or nonusers after adjustment for blood alcohol concentration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science Daily &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120210111254.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Cannabis Use Doubles Chances of Vehicle Crash, Review Finds&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; (Feb 10, 2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Drivers who consume cannabis within three hours of driving are nearly twice as likely to cause a vehicle collision&lt;/strong&gt; as those who are not under the influence of drugs or alcohol, claims a paper published recently on the British Medical Journal website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that the conclusions of the above studies are consistent, perhaps because although THC only slightly impairs motor skills that slight impairment leads to a significant increase in the risk of a motor vehicle accident. Otherwise it would be helpful to understand the nature of the inconsistency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2022-12-02T02:21:15.040" Title="Does marijuana impair driving?" Tags="|medical-science|road-vehicles|safety|recreational-drugs|marijuana|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17409" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17410" CreationDate="2013-08-20T02:01:35.123" Score="16" ViewCount="49551" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ronsonwriter.com/content/view/69/9/&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; has been going around social media being touted as news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Husband Convicted Of Manslaughter After Dutch Oven Goes &quot;Horribly Wrong&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The case for the prosecution argued for the charge of Murder, putting it to the court that, ... Mrs Flannery was ... in bed and unwinding for sleep, she was suddenly and forcibly pinned under the duvet by Mr Flannery, who sealed the edges with his weight while simultaneously releasing an enormous bolus of flatulence, which displaced all the available oxygen so that Mrs Flannery passed out nearly instantly, and was dead within 30 seconds&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to kill someone with a fart? Did this event actually happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T06:50:48.903" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T06:50:48.903" Title="Did someone die in a dutch oven?" Tags="|mortality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17409" CreationDate="2013-08-20T04:22:09.920" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, this is satire. But, it's possible that it happened and hasn't been reported anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to look at the source of the original article. In this case, it's a site called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ronsonwriter.com/&quot;&gt;The Ronson Writer&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are a spoof news site along the lines of The Onion and The Shovel. Their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ronsonwriter.com/content/view/15/22/&quot;&gt;About&lt;/a&gt; page says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Ronson Writer is an online newspaper and collective blog about the absurd state of modern popular culture. &lt;strong&gt;Part satire&lt;/strong&gt;, part opinion and part vaguely-verified factual reporting, but always (we hope) at least mildly amusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Emphasis mine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other &quot;news&quot; articles include other obviously fictional stories &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ronsonwriter.com/content/view/77/9/&quot;&gt;like&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A study released today reveals that the London Metropolitan Police are 7 times more likely to arrest a black cloud of smoke, such as the one that loomed over London last week, than a common white or gray smokestack from, say, a middle-class suburban house-fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15080" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-21T20:19:14.800" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T20:19:14.800" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17313" CreationDate="2013-08-20T14:29:58.540" Score="25" Body="&lt;h2&gt;No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Japanese were &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;suing for peace&quot; prior to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does &lt;a href=&quot;http://mises.org/daily/4217/The-Hiroshima-Myth&quot;&gt;Denson's article&lt;/a&gt; portray the situation in May-Jul 1945 accurately?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, Dulles' contacts had limited support and did not represent the Japanese government...  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In early 1945 Japanese navy circles in Berlin tried to begin peace&#xA;  negotiations with the United States. Using their contacts with the&#xA;  arms trader Friedrich Wilhelm Hack, they sent Commander Fujimura&#xA;  Yoshikazu to Switzerland, where he opened talks with Allen W. Dulles&#xA;  of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services. Though the Japanese navy and&#xA;  Foreign Ministry showed some interest, the peace attempts finally&#xA;  failed since neither side took the initiative to an official level.&#xA;  Fujimura confused his government by claiming that the Americans had&#xA;  made the first step, while the U.S. side waited for proof that the&#xA;  administration in Tokyo was backing the navy officer's initiative. -&#xA;  (Krebs 2005, see pp. 1108-1112)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most often repeated condemnation of American diplomacy in the&#xA;  summer of 1945 is that policy makers understood that a promise to&#xA;  retain the Imperial institution was essential to end the war, and that&#xA;  had the United States communicated such a promise, the Suzuki cabinet&#xA;  would likely have promptly surrendered. The answer to this assertion&#xA;  is enshrined in black and white in the &lt;strong&gt;July 22&lt;/strong&gt; edition of the&#xA;  Magic Diplomatic Summary. There, American policy makers could read for&#xA;  themselves that &lt;strong&gt;Ambassador Sato had advised Foreign Minister Togo&#xA;  that the best terms Japan could hope to secure were unconditional&#xA;  surrender, modified only to the extent that the Imperial institution&#xA;  could be retained. Presented by his own ambassador with this offer,&#xA;  Togo expressly rejected it.&lt;/strong&gt; Given this, there is no rational&#xA;  prospect that such an offer would have won support from any of the&#xA;  other live members of the Supreme Council for the Direction of the&#xA;  War. - (Frank 1999, p. 239)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I would like at least a sketch of the elements within the Japanese government who were in a position to control the surrender and an understanding of those elements' position on surrender.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As historian Robert Butow pointed out in 1954, the fate of Japan&#xA;  rested in the hands of only eight men. These were the emperor, his&#xA;  principal advisor Marquis Koichi Kido, and an inner cabinet of the&#xA;  government of Admiral Kantaro Suzuki called the &quot;Big Six&quot;: Prime&#xA;  Minister Suzuki, Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo, Army Minister&#xA;  General Korechika Anami, Navy Minister Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai, Chief&#xA;  of the Army General Staff General Yoshijiro Umezu, and Chief of the&#xA;  Navy General Staff Admiral Soemu Toyoda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no record whatsoever that any of these eight men proposed a&#xA;  set of terms or circumstances in which Japan would capitulate prior to&#xA;  Hiroshima. More significantly, none of these men even after the war&#xA;  claimed that there was any set of terms of circumstances that would&#xA;  have prompted Japan to surrender prior to Hiroshima.&lt;/strong&gt; The evidence&#xA;  available shows that in June, a memorandum from Kido to the emperor&#xA;  proposed that the emperor intervene not to surrender, but to initiate&#xA;  mediation by a third party. The mediation would look to settle the war&#xA;  on terms that echoed the Treaty of Versailles: Japan might have to&#xA;  give up its overseas conquests and experience disarmament for a time,&#xA;  but the old order in Japan would remain in charge. Certainly there&#xA;  would be no occupation and no internal reform. - (Frank 2009)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sources&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frank, R.B. (1999). &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books/about/Downfall.html?id=cJXtAAAAMAAJ&quot;&gt;Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frank, R.B. (2009). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fpri.org/footnotes/1404.200904.frank.trumanbomb.html&quot;&gt;Ending the Pacific War: Harry Truman and the&#xA;Decision To Drop the Bomb&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Krebs, G. (2005). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/3397180&quot;&gt;Operation Super Sunrise? Japanese-United States&#xA;Peace Feelers in Switzerland, 1945&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;See also&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Giangreco, D. M. (2009). &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=lb_YRhdQrsgC&quot;&gt;Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the&#xA;Invasion of Japan, 1945-47&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kort, M. (2006). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bu.edu/historic/hs/kort.html&quot;&gt;Racing the Enemy: A Critical Look&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kort, M. (2007). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fairbanksonline.net/Fairbanks_Online/Atomic_Bomb_Trials_Research_files/truman_bomb.pdf&quot;&gt;The Historiography of Hiroshima: The Rise and Fall&#xA;of Revisionism&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dulles OSS Reports, CIA (1993). &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol9no3/html/v09i3a06p_0001.htm&quot;&gt;Memoranda for the President: Japanese&#xA;Feelers, 1945&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Maddox, R. J., Ed. (2007). &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=PjFnAAAAMAAJ&quot;&gt;Hiroshima in History: The Myths of&#xA;Revisionism&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T14:29:58.540" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16996" CreationDate="2013-08-20T16:47:12.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. While it's possible that he was ordered to destroy his crops, no record of that order was published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See Chen, James Ming, The Story of Wickard v. Filburn: Agriculture, Aggregation, and Commerce (September 15, 2008). CONSTITUTIONAL LAW STORIES, Michael C. Dorf, ed., 2d ed., Foundation Press, 2008; University of Louisville School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper Series No. 2008-40. Available at SSRN: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ssrn.com/abstract=1268162&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ssrn.com/abstract=1268162&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Officials charged with administering the Agricultural Adjustment Act in&#xA;  Montgomery County assessed a penalty of 49 cents on each of Filburn's 239 excess&#xA;  bushels and imposed a lien on his entire wheat crop against the $117.11 penalty.&#xA;  Pending payment, the county committee also withheld Filburn's marketing card,&#xA;  which he needed in order to sell his wheat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, Chen's work is a comprehensive summary of the story of &lt;em&gt;Wickard v. Filburn&lt;/em&gt;. Based on his footnotes, it seems he had access to the merit briefs during the writing of this article. If Filburn had been ordered to destroy his crops, I believe Chen would have mentioned it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-04-18T23:05:31.360" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T23:05:31.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17154" CreationDate="2013-08-20T18:07:21.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not much research has been done into this topic, although the statistics published in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://itd.idaho.gov/ohs/SHSP.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;State of Idaho Highway Safety Plan&lt;/a&gt;, Fiscal Years 1981-1984 where &lt;a href=&quot;http://biketothefuture.org/attachments/0000/1207/oregonlaw_meggs.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;used in an open letter&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://jasonmeggs.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jason N. Meggs&lt;/a&gt; to argue the following point:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no evidence of any long-term change in injury or fatality rates as a result of the adoption of the original Idaho Law in 1982.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;State of Idaho Highway Safety Plan, Fiscal Years 1981-1984&lt;/em&gt;,&#xA;  which encompasses the period before and after the law was passed and&#xA;  implemented, stated that the injury rate for bicycles was constant&#xA;  overall and that “there is no evidence that [bicycle] fatality rates&#xA;  differ from the national level.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moreover, in the year following its introduction, &lt;strong&gt;bicycle injury&#xA;  rates in the state actually declined by a substantial 14.5%&lt;/strong&gt; with no&#xA;  change in the number of bicyclist fatalities. While aggregate injury&#xA;  rates include numerous types of collisions, &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; the decline&#xA;  in injuries is consistent with the strong indication that the law&#xA;  actually improves roadway safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since that open letter was not peer-reviewed, it cannot be used as definitive evidence one way or another. Meggs has &lt;a href=&quot;http://meggsreport.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/the-idaho-law-allowing-safer-choice-and-happier-travel/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;posted a blog entry&lt;/a&gt; discussing the issue in some more depth as well as an &lt;a href=&quot;http://bclu.org/jmeggs-TRB-IDAHO-AUG10.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article pre-print&lt;/a&gt; and is assoicated with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecf.com/wp-content/uploads/Meggs-J-Stops-as-yields.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;slide-deck presentation&lt;/a&gt;, but again, none of this appears to have been peer-reviewed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue of vehicles and bicycles interacting on roadways is fairly well researched (&lt;a href=&quot;http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=506426&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://trb.metapress.com/content/417817g81q337p42/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://trb.metapress.com/content/r3w1n50063368068/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;three&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022437598000620&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;four&lt;/a&gt;). One article that is focused on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457598000074&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;attention and expectation problems in bicycle-car collisions the&lt;/a&gt; had the following points to make:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A widely known problem is that cycle tracks are safe on road sections&#xA;  but dangerous at intersections. Most serious bicycle accidents occur&#xA;  at intersections and involve collisions with motor vehicles (Gårder et&#xA;  al., 1994).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are specific problems in research on bicycle–car accidents,&#xA;  however. National accident statistics and hospital records are quite&#xA;  limited in relevant variables (Thom and Clayton, 1993).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the following was observed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 37% of collisions, neither driver nor cyclist realized the danger&#xA;  or had time to yield. In the remaining collisions, the driver (27%),&#xA;  the cyclist (24%) or both (12%) did something to avert the accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not directly applicable to the question of it being safer for bicyclists roll through stop signs, it does present an interesting observation for those examining such laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paris has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/transportation-nation/2012/feb/09/european-cities-allowing-bikes-to-run-red-lights/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;updated&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paris-update.com/fr/hot-topics/cest-ironique/21969-traffic-in-paris-the-city-of-light-lets-bikes-ignore-red-lights&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;their laws&lt;/a&gt; to allow for cyclists to yield on stoplights as opposed to coming to a full stop so it is reasonable to speculate that more research may be coming in the near future at which point firmer conclusions may be drawn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T18:07:21.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17154" CreationDate="2013-08-20T23:14:52.907" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be difficult to answer this question using statistics. For example, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457598000074&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;abstract to the article which rob cites in his answer&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most frequent accident type among collisions between cyclists and cars at bicycle crossings was a driver turning right and a bicycle coming from the driver's right along a cycle track.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This type of accident may be frequent but &lt;a href=&quot;https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/11301/must-cyclist-yield-to-car-turning-right-across-a-bike-lane-into-driveway/11304#11304&quot;&gt;it ought to be avoidable&lt;/a&gt; (however actually avoiding them might need better education for casual cyclists, which might be difficult to achieve).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My a priori guess was that most accidents are caused by someone doing something silly (legal, perhaps, but imprudent, such as betting your life that a turning-right driver will see you or expect to find you on their right), i.e. something other than this cautious law adopted by Idaho (I call the law cautious because it still requires a yield or stop), and that therefore the effect on statistics, which aggregate all accidents for all causes, would be small. IMO my initial guess is supported by the following statements from Meggs' article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Microfilm archives of police incident reports from 1966 to 1992 were consulted over a&#xA;  period of days, and deemed too difficult to analyze; archival copies of statewide yearly summaries of&#xA;  traffic injuries and fatalities, including summaries of fatalities and injuries by county and by mode, were&#xA;  located instead as best available data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Data for 1974-1975 showed that “Passed Stop Sign” was a contributing circumstance in only&#xA;  5.4% and 4.2 % of injury/fatality collisions respectively in Ada County (Boise).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of effort that Meggs put into research and analysis may make his article unique, i.e. the only data which we have on this subject. To answer your question I will therefore only read/critique his article: as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Comparison Cities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am inclined the discount/ignore the comparison between cities, i.e. that evidence is too weak to prove anything, because IMO there are too many variables: driving habits, available routes, qualities of the roadways, numbers of cyclists, etc. He has cherry-picked to find cities which he thinks are comparable, but he only picked two cities, so there is sampling bias and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;law of small numbers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bicycle Route Impairment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this a plausible mechanism, which could explain why it's safer. The law means that cyclists can choose lightly-vehicled residential roads which have many stop signs (which deter cars and prevent high-speed cars), instead of travelling on main roads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps (there's no data) this (cyclists changing their regular routes) was a cause of the &quot;14% drop in accidents&quot; which he alleges happened in the year after the law was introduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;14% drop&quot; a semi-impressively-large drop. It would be more convincing iff we knew the variance (standard deviation) between years; or a detailed analysis of the individual accident reports from those two years only (if &quot;1966 to 1992&quot; is too much data to analyze)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stops Hurt Bicyclists and Bicycling: Safety in Numbers, Pollution, and Shifting to Arterials&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this plausible, concurring with my own experience (except that including a &quot;Pollution&quot; argument is IMO an out-of-place red herring).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Collision Avoidance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand what he's arguing about signals. He seems to be saying that a cyclist shouldn't attempt to communicate with other drivers, e.g. using hand-signals, which seems counter-intuitive and contrary to my experience; however he cites supporting literature for his points, for what that's worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compliance Kills&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree. There may be some advantage to setting off first, e.g. just before your light turns green when there's no cross-traffic; but that may increase risk from cross-traffic running a yellow. If he wants to make that argument, there are safer solutions than allowing people to jump off before green light, e.g. the use of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toronto.ca/cycling/network/bikebox_faq.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bike boxes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading indirect reports of the cited &quot;A 2007 report by Transport for London&quot; suggest that many of &quot;accidents affecting women&quot; are caused by their being next to lorries turning left (equivalent to &quot;turning right&quot; in American right-hand-side roads), which is an IMO too dangerous place for a cyclist to be in the first place: instead of jumping the light, I would &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_cycling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;get in lane in front of or behind the truck&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, IMO this part of the argument is weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Predictability Reduces Risk&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again the supporting data is a one city to one city comparison, which I find very weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Injurious Falls at Stops&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I disagree: the cyclist must be ready to stop, even if (in Idaho) they end up deciding they don't need to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone falls when they first learn to use toe-clips (or &quot;clipless&quot; cleats): the solution is to practice away from traffic until you know how to use that equipment, or, don't use that equipment if you can't use it safely. Inability to come to a stop without falling over isn't fixed by letting people run stop signs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a difference between de facto and de jure: in that a cyclist can obey the spirit if not the letter of the law, by coming to &quot;virtual&quot; stop of about one mile per hour, without unclipping but being ready to unclip if necessary, before proceeding. &lt;a href=&quot;http://bicycles.blogoverflow.com/2011/07/stop/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;anecdote&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overuse Injuries&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual fix is to ride on roads with fewer stops, which are more arterial. I'd guess that's to go faster rather than to avoid injury. It's obviously true that you can't go as fast if you keep stopping, except with much more effort and therefore injury; but I'm not sure this argument (&quot;avoiding injury&quot;) would change his opponents' opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Criminal Antagonism: Cultural Deterrents&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that plausible; when a Toronto paper publishes an article about cycling, my impression/memory is that many or most of people's complaints about cyclists (in their comments to the article) are about cyclists lack of stopping: through jealousy perhaps (&quot;I have to stop in my car, they should stop too&quot;). Other IMO fewer complaints include &quot;ninja cyclists&quot; wearing black with no bike lights, and cycling on the sidewalks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My chief hypothesis is therefore that letting cyclists roll through stop signs would make it more likely that cyclists wouldn't so much avoid residential roads with stop signs. Doing this could make those cyclists safer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, cyclists still need to be able to yield at stop signs, which they can't if they don't slow down from their 20+ mph cruising speed, so they might still choose the same arterial roads as cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A way to test this hypothesis would have been to see whether introducing the Idaho law caused cyclists to change their routes. I guess that survey hasn't been done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that is the primary reason, then there may be other more effective things that legislators could do: for example bike lanes along arterial roads, sharrows, bike boxes, and multi-use paths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A secondary hypothesis is that having a different law for cyclists might encourage more cycling (eventually resulting in increased safety after new cyclists become experienced and drivers get more accustomed to watching out for cyclists); and possibly reduce anger which drivers feel towards cyclists, who are mostly scoff-laws who bend and break the existing &quot;come to a complete stop&quot; laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I note that he seems to be cyclist who is advocating for the law, so I expect he would have some personal bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a final note I'd suggest that a law which restricts people's actions shouldn't exist without good reason. If that's so then perhaps the question shouldn't be, &quot;Does not-stopping make cycling safer?&quot;, but rather, &quot;Does not-stopping make cycling more dangerous?&quot; The Idaho law still puts a burden of responsibility on the cyclist: to stop and/or to be willing to yield, to proceed only when safe, and (laws of physics) to be personally injured or killed if they're careless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:40.750" LastActivityDate="2013-08-20T23:14:52.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17416" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17417" CreationDate="2013-08-20T23:22:28.613" Score="38" ViewCount="3969" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a meme that is going around that states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The German government has been storing about half of its gold supply&#xA;  with the US FED, apparently in the NYC FED vaults. Germany decided to&#xA;  bring home all its gold, but the FED has said that isn’t possible to&#xA;  do, and it would need until 2020 to be able to accomplish the&#xA;  transfer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The German government then asked to visit the FED vaults to inventory&#xA;  the gold and determine its actual existence, but the FED refused to&#xA;  permit Germany to examine its own gold. The reasons given were&#xA;  “security” and “no room for visitors”. And nothing else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nsnbc.me/2013/04/18/federal-reserve-refuses-to-submit-to-an-audit-of-germanys-gold-held-in-u-s-vaults-2/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;news&quot; article is posted with out any credible sources.  So my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does Germany actually store ~50% of its physical gold reserves in the US Federal Reserve?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has Germany requested that the US Return the Gold it has entrusted the the US Federal Reserve?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so has the US refused to honor the request?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has Germany requested an audit of the actual gold in the reserves?  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has the US refused the Audit Request?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="2992" LastEditDate="2019-01-22T15:31:03.523" LastActivityDate="2019-01-22T15:31:03.523" Title="Does Germany want their gold back?" Tags="|politics|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17416" CreationDate="2013-08-20T23:39:35.110" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does Germany actually store ~50% of its physical gold reserves in the US Federal Reserve? &lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has Germany requested that the US Return the Gold it has entrusted the the US Federal Reserve? &lt;strong&gt;Yes, but only part of it, and all the gold they store in Paris&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has Germany requested an audit of the actual gold in the reserves? Has the US refused the Audit Request? &lt;strong&gt;Yes and yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will the transfer only finish at 2020? &lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are more credible news source telling the same story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2013/01/19/the-germans-want-their-gold-reserves-back-in-germany/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The startling news that Germany is repatriating its gold reserves from the United States and France&lt;/strong&gt; has got precious metals speculators worried that this is the first major sign that trust between central banks across the globe could be deteriorating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, it is momentous that the New York Fed has the largest known depositary of monetary gold– some 23% of the globe’s gold bars, including half the hoard of the Netherlands and considerable holdings from other nations. Germany will feel a lot more secure counting its own gold bards, rather than depending on an audit from the central banks of France and the U.S. Mark it down as the strongest European power flexing its perfect right– and setting off a wave of speculation. Are foreign gold reserves safe in New York- or could they be expropriated? Very doubtful. Could the the New York Fed be lending out gold bars as security for sovereign loans? I reckon that’s illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/big-picture-behind-germany-taking-half-its-gold-home-1042254&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Business Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bundesbank announced last week that they’ll repatriate 674 metric tons of their total 3,391 metric tonne gold reserves from vaults in Paris and New York to restore public confidence in the safety of Germany’s gold reserves. &lt;strong&gt;The transfer from the Federal Reserve is set to take place slowly over a seven year period and will only be completed in 2020.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QdH5f.png&quot; alt=&quot;pic&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see that currently 45% of Germany's gold is stored in New York, and ~20% of it will be moved to Germany. Also, at the end of the process Germany will be holding 50% of its own gold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-dollar-collapse-where-is-germanys-gold/5321894&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Global Research&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The financial world was shocked this month by a demand from Germany’s Bundesbank to repatriate a large portion of its gold reserves held abroad. By 2020, Germany wants 50% of its total gold reserves back in Frankfurt – including 300 tons from the Federal Reserve. &lt;strong&gt;The Bundesbank’s announcement comes just three months after the Fed refused to submit to an audit of its holdings on Germany’s behalf&lt;/strong&gt;. One cannot help but wonder if the refusal triggered the demand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-politicians-demand-to-see-gold-in-us-federal-reserve-a-864068.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Der Spiegel&lt;/a&gt;, a report from Oct. 2012 telling about Germany's plan of inspecting and returning gold from abroad:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For decades, almost half of Germany's gold has been stored deep below the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Now, with the euro crisis swirling, German politicians are asking their central bankers to take stock of the reserves. Some even say that the gold should be shipped home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-01-22T10:50:04.437" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17391" CreationDate="2013-08-21T10:18:06.207" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several very good reasons to doubt the results in the study you quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First: It is a very small study. Only about 30 people took part, two nights per person. So the result was evaluated from only 64 datapoints. Even if the participants could not see the moon during the night, the author of the study himself says, he cannot be sure that they had not known about the fact, that the moon was full. Such knowledge can influence the result, when only one or two of the participants were expecting to sleep not very well, because they believe in these myths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: There exist much larger studies in the same manner, that do not find any effects at all. As these studies are statistically much more significant, this is a very stron argument against the small study of Cajochen. There is for example the study of Klösch and Zeitlhofer evaluating more than 5000 nights (between 1997 and 2002) of about 400 participants. Not the least lunar effect was found in these data. It is highly unrealistic to assume, that the small study of Cajochen found an effect, that would not also have been significant in the larger study as larger studies have much better statistics than small ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third: The result of the Cajochen study is by no means, what myths tell us about sleepless nights at full moon. Hey, the participants slept 5 minutes less. Who would even notice that in real life? Even if you believe the study has measured a real effect (what we can savely doubt, see above), your sleep quality is still much more depending on other effects. When you are troubled, this may keep you awake for much more than 5 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15095" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2023-06-23T17:10:37.347" LastActivityDate="2023-06-23T17:10:37.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17422" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-21T11:01:01.997" Score="13" ViewCount="1365" Body="&lt;p&gt;This morning I read an article on Facebook (in German) about the huge health benefits of lemons - and not just the juice, but the whole lemon, especially the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several other sites make similar claims. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://dynamichealthnow.com/lemon-benefits/#&quot;&gt;Dynamic Health Now&lt;/a&gt; site recommends freezing lemons, grating the whole fruit, and sprinkling the result in your food to protect against cancer cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it comes from one of the largest drug manufacturers in the world, says that after more than 20 laboratory tests since 1970, the extracts revealed that It destroys the malignant cells in 12 cancers, including colon, breast, prostate, lung and pancreas …The compounds of this tree showed 10,000 times better than the product Adriamycin, a drug normally used chemotherapeutic in the world, slowing the growth of cancer cells. And what is even more astonishing: this type of therapy with lemon extract only destroys malignant cancer cells and it does not affect healthy cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/ygxFYIuGWPs?t=5m&quot;&gt;Youtube video&lt;/a&gt; also makes these claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does eating lemons cure cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15097" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-08-21T12:52:41.957" LastActivityDate="2017-03-09T15:18:28.253" Title="Do lemons help cure cancer?" Tags="|nutrition|cancer|fruit|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17423" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-21T13:15:10.623" Score="10" ViewCount="14676" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've learned that some people take vinegar to treat arthritis. It's a well known folk cure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Natural News: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/026715_apple_pain_vinegar.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.naturalnews.com/026715_apple_pain_vinegar.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Learn How to Relieve Arthritis and Joint Pain with Apple Cider Vinegar&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simplest way to incorporate apple cider vinegar into your diet is to mix 1-3 teaspoons in eight ounces of water three times per day, preferably just before meals. You can sweeten the drink with a small amount of honey or stevia if you like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Daily Mail: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1241303/Vinegar-honey-cured-crippling-arthritis-says-delighted-organist.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1241303/Vinegar-honey-cured-crippling-arthritis-says-delighted-organist.html&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Vinegar and honey cured my crippling arthritis, says delighted organist&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet the 55-year-old church organist now claims to be completely pain-free thanks to a simple but startlingly effective cure she found in her kitchen cupboard  -  vinegar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mrs Gall said: 'It suggested drinking cider vinegar mixed with honey and hot water. After only a week I started to feel much better. I didn't need to see the specialist any more. Eventually the arthritis had disappeared. My doctor was flabbergasted.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the medical literature say about vinegar for arthritis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-10-24T21:17:25.573" Title="Is vinegar an effective treatment for arthritis?" Tags="|physiology|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|alkaline-diet|vinegar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17422" CreationDate="2013-08-21T13:44:01.373" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D-limonene is one of the most common terpenes in nature. It is a major&#xA;constituent in several citrus oils (orange, lemon, mandarin, lime, and&#xA;grapefruit).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D-limonene has well-established chemopreventive activity against many&#xA;types of cancer. Evidence from a phase I clinical trial demonstrated a&#xA;partial response in a patient with breast cancer and stable disease&#xA;for more than six months in three patients with colorectal cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18072821&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18072821&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15099" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T14:14:05.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17425" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-21T13:50:49.683" Score="12" ViewCount="774" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education&quot;&gt;Montessori curriculum&lt;/a&gt; contains these elements as essential elements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Mixed age classrooms, with classrooms for children aged 2½ or 3 to 6 years old by far the most common&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Student choice of activity from within a prescribed range of options&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Uninterrupted blocks of work time, ideally three hours&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A Constructivist or &quot;discovery&quot; model, where students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by direct instruction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Specialized educational materials developed by Montessori and her collaborators&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Freedom of movement within the classroom&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A trained Montessori teacher&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have often seen the claim being made that the Montessori curriculum better prepares children for school and that the children tend to do better. Where I live, that perception definitely holds amongst the parents in the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, Montessori daycares are more expensive and are therefore attended by children of more wealthy and involved parents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any good, verifiable sources that avoid selection biases and can either verify or dispute that claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15039" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2013-08-21T13:56:49.897" LastActivityDate="2024-01-03T08:03:55.493" Title="Does Montessori daycare lead to higher educational achievement?" Tags="|education|children|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17427" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17431" CreationDate="2013-08-21T17:35:37.583" Score="7" ViewCount="8158" Body="&lt;p&gt;Somebody told me that the UK cannot fire its nuclear weapons without the agreement and support from US. Is this true?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is made in the following locations:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Morrison - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.david-morrison.org.uk/nuclear-weapons/deterrent-dependent.htm&quot;&gt;Britain’s “dependent” nuclear deterrent&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is some doubt about the degree of “operational” independence&#xA;  that Britain enjoys in respect of its nuclear weapons system.  But&#xA;  there is no doubt that Britain is dependent on the US for the&#xA;  manufacture and maintenance of a key element of the system.  So, to&#xA;  call it an “independent” nuclear deterrent, as the Government does all&#xA;  the time, is fraudulent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Guardian - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/jul/16/debate-alternatives-replacing-trident&quot;&gt;Time to debate the alternatives to replacing Trident&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The financial albatross called Trident is neither independent nor&#xA;  credible. Control was handed to Washington when the decision was made&#xA;  to use a missile delivery system designed, manufactured and overhauled&#xA;  in the US. Even submarine-launched test firings are conducted in US&#xA;  waters near Cape Canaveral under, needless to say, US Navy&#xA;  supervision. It is inconceivable that No 10 would fire Trident in&#xA;  anger without prior approval from the White House.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;House of Commons Report on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmdfence/986/98607.htm&quot;&gt;The independence of the UK's Strategic Nuclear Deterrent&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the UK would, in practice, not be able to use its nuclear deterrent&#xA;  in circumstances in which the US was either neutral or actively&#xA;  opposed to UK policy, or where the US was an adversary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2307" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T15:57:52.447" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T09:36:42.960" Title="Can the UK fire its nuclear weapons without US agreement?" Tags="|united-states|united-kingdom|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14994" CreationDate="2013-08-21T18:31:06.627" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing that needs to be mentioned is that the regulatory environment is very different across (otherwise) similar countries. For example, USA has thousands of registered banks, some of which go bust every year. Meanhile, Canada has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cba.ca/en/banks-in-canada/61-banks-operating-in-canada/110-schedule-i-banks&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a very limiated number of 'Schedule I' banks &lt;/a&gt;. So, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1521015&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;bankruptcy rates in Canada&lt;/a&gt; are much lower. Given that, blanket statments like that by Nicholas Nassem Taleb do not make much sence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But more broadly, Nicholas Nassem Taleb seems to suggest that banking is some sort of a zero-sum game - that is not so. Banks have different lines of businesses, the vast majority of which do not deal with 'speculative' trading but rather with mundane things like accounts, loans, mortgages, money transfers, etc where revenue is made up of service charges and premiums on prime rates which they earn by making business transactions more efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15039" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T18:31:06.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17427" CreationDate="2013-08-21T20:29:22.437" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia talks at length about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United_Kingdom&quot;&gt;the UK's &quot;independent&quot; nuclear deterrent&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/27378/DefenceWhitePaper2006_Cm6994.pdf&quot;&gt;This paper from 2006&lt;/a&gt; ends with,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The plans set out in this White Paper &#xA;  will enable the UK to maintain an effective &#xA;  and operationally independent nuclear &#xA;  deterrent until the early 2040s, when the &#xA;  Trident D5 missile is due to be withdrawn from &#xA;  service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/maintaining-an-effective-independent-nuclear-deterrent&quot;&gt;This paper from 2012&lt;/a&gt; is titled &quot;Maintaining an effective, independent nuclear deterrent&quot;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/maintaining-an-effective-independent-nuclear-deterrent/supporting-pages/uk-nuclear-deterrence&quot;&gt;this page of it says&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the UK deterrent is operationally independent, and the UK does not require US or NATO authorisation to use its deterrent - UK nuclear weapons remain under political control at all times; only the Prime Minister can authorise the firing of UK nuclear weapons&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-08-21T20:29:22.437" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17438" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-22T19:59:30.967" Score="14" ViewCount="949" Body="&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyc.gov/html/om/html/2013b/pr275-13.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;August 12, 2013, Mayor Bloomberg said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our crime strategies and tools – including Stop-Question-Frisk – have made New York City the safest big city in America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result, today we have fewer guns, fewer shootings, and fewer homicides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, we have the lowest percentage of teenagers carrying guns of any major city across our country – and the possibility of being stopped acts a vital deterrent, which is a critically important byproduct of Stop-Question-Frisk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is just no question that Stop-Question-Frisk has saved countless lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stop-Question-Frisk has helped us prevent those and other crimes from occurring – which has not only saved lives, it has helped us to reduce incarceration rates by 30 percent, even as incarceration rates in the rest of the nation have gone up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_stop-and-frisk_program&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stop-Question-Frisk&lt;/a&gt; (also known as Stop and Frisk) has helped to make New York City the safest big city in America?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that as a &lt;em&gt;result&lt;/em&gt; Stop-Question-Frisk, New York has fewer guns, fewer shootings, and fewer homicides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T13:49:07.560" Title="Has New York City's Stop and Frisk program resulted in a reduction in crime?" Tags="|united-states|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-22T23:31:25.500" Score="3" ViewCount="3311" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence behind the assertion I see on diet websites and in books that restricting a food for a set period of time will allow your tastebuds to be more sensitive to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/way_5656351_diet-reset-taste-buds.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ehow.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taste buds acclimate to our diet. They respond to what they are used to. Known as neuron-adaptation, less sensitivity to flavor results. As our taste receptors become saturated with high doses of sugar, salt and fat they become less effective. Most people respond by revving up their fat, salt and sugar intake. However, resetting your taste buds is a better response. Resetting cuts down cravings and restores flavor's original impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=sugar%20detox%20reset%20tastebuds&amp;amp;oq=sugar%20detox%20reset%20tastebuds&amp;amp;aqs=chrome.0.69i57j0.7492j0&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sugar&lt;/a&gt;, with the idea that foods will taste more sweet with less sugar at the restriction period. But I've seen it for salt and fat as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5278" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-22T23:34:49.300" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T23:54:06.720" Title="Can you &quot;reset&quot; your taste buds?" Tags="|nutrition|sugar|taste|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8531" CreationDate="2013-08-23T01:18:50.253" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like it was Australian psychologist Alan Richardson confirmed the reality of the phenomenon. See below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Richardson chose three groups of students at random. None had ever practiced visualization. The first group practiced free throws every day for twentieth days. The second made free throws on the first day and the twentieth day, as did the third group. But members of the third group spent 20 minutes every day visualizing free throws. If they &amp;quot;missed,&amp;quot; they &amp;quot;practiced&amp;quot; getting the next shot right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the twentieth day Richardson measured the percentage of improvement in each group. The group that practiced daily improved 24 percent. The second group, unsurprisingly, improved not at all. The third group, which had physically practiced no more than the second, did twenty-three percent better—almost as well as the first group!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In his paper on the experiment, published in Research Quarterly,&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; Richardson wrote that the most effective visualization occurs when the visualizer feels and sees what he is doing. In other words, the visualizers in the basketball experiment &amp;quot;felt&amp;quot; the ball in their hands and &amp;quot;heard&amp;quot; it bounce, in addition to &amp;quot;seeing&amp;quot; it go through the hoop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15118" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T01:47:10.690" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17443" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-23T05:58:02.257" Score="1" ViewCount="98" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been reading some articles about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fan Death&lt;/a&gt; as a commonly held belief in Korea, although these days the younger generation seem to be dismissing it now for the myth that it had always been. I have not had any experience in the past of Korean people mentioning about this when they have been overseas, so is this something that is only commonly believed by South Korean people of the older generation and not the younger people that I would have met as overseas students in foreign countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19631" OwnerDisplayName="Michael Lai" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:21:41.340" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:21:41.340" Title="Fan death in Korean and outside Korean" Tags="|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-08-23T08:59:44.323" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17445" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17447" CreationDate="2013-08-23T16:11:15.447" Score="5" ViewCount="931" Body="&lt;p&gt;350.org has posted following image on FB&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;341 months is a long time. If you're 28 or younger, you haven't experienced a &#xA;  full month of average global temperatures ever in your lifetime. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HdoeO.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are claiming that's the conclusion from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NOAA Global Analysis - July 2013&lt;/a&gt;. However, the NOAA Global Analysis — July 2013 only mentions global average:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This marks the 341st consecutive month, since February 1985, that &lt;strong&gt;the global monthly temperature has been higher than the long-term average for its respective month&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is broad statement by 350.org true (for everybody everywhere)? I remember multiple news such as &quot;month &lt;em&gt;X&lt;/em&gt; was the coldest in 1&lt;i&gt;xx&lt;/i&gt; years&quot; in last decade. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not, would it be true if you'd only take global average over land? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lastly, is the NOAA's statement quoted above accurate?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-08-24T20:48:37.023" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T20:48:37.023" Title="Have there been 28 years of &quot;above average temperatures&quot;?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17448" CreationDate="2013-08-23T16:24:11.113" Score="5" ViewCount="831" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not the most respectable source, nevertheless mainstream newspaper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released--chart-prove-it.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Mail claimed&lt;/a&gt; that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report&#xA;  quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The figures reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;This&#xA;  means that the ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the&#xA;  same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/R4HVv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T21:40:54.967" Title="Did UK Met Office claim in 2012 that global warming stopped 16 years ago?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17445" CreationDate="2013-08-23T16:56:04.443" Score="5" Body="&lt;h1&gt;What's being compared&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2013/7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NOAA Global Analysis — July 2013&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This marks the 341st consecutive month, since February 1985, that the global monthly temperature has been higher than the long-term average for its respective month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;global monthly temperature&quot; means the &quot;combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces&quot;. (NOAA Global Analysis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/anomalies.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; explains how the combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces is calculated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The global time series is produced from the Smith and Reynolds blended land and ocean data set (Smith et al., 2008). This data set consists of monthly average temperature anomalies on a 5° x 5° grid across land and ocean surfaces. These grid boxes are then averaged to provide an average global temperature anomaly. An area-weighted scheme is used to reflect the reality that the boxes are smaller near the poles and larger near the equator. Global-average anomalies are calculated on a monthly and annual time scale. Average temperature anomalies are also available for land and ocean surfaces separately, and the Northern and Southern Hemispheres separately. The global and hemispheric anomalies are provided with respect to the period 1901-2000, the 20th century average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see no reason to doubt the NOAA conclusion that the global monthly temperature for the previous 341 months each was higher than the month's long-term average temperature. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the Earth is warming or has warmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The data&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The combined mean surface temperature (°C) based on the years 1901-2000:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Jan: 12.0&#xA;Feb: 12.1&#xA;Mar: 12.7&#xA;Apr: 13.7&#xA;May: 14.8&#xA;Jun: 15.5&#xA;Jul: 15.8&#xA;Aug: 15.6&#xA;Sep: 15.0&#xA;Oct: 14.0&#xA;Nov: 12.9&#xA;Dec: 12.2&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces from 1880-present, reported as units of 0.01°C change from the average global mean from 1950-1980 (14.0°C): &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v3/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that dataset, February 1994 was the most recent month where the average global temperature was lower than the global mean from 1950-1980.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that the &quot;long-term average for its respective month&quot; quoted in the study is not simply the period between 1950-1980, because the claim is false if that is the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you include a longer period of history before 1950, that pulls the &quot;long-term average for its respective month&quot; downward. &lt;strong&gt;Whether or not the question's claim is true turns on the definition of &quot;long-term average for its respective month&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Pedantry&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you're 28 or younger, you haven't experienced a full month of average global temperatures ever in your lifetime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nobody has &quot;experienced a full month of average global temperatures&quot;, ever. An global average is just an average, and it's totally consistent that the Earth itself has not experienced a full month of average global temperatures, and even more certain that no one person has experienced a full year of temperature that happens to match the global average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-23T21:01:06.420" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T21:01:06.420" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17448" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17446" CreationDate="2013-08-23T17:35:23.370" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, the &quot;No warming in 16 years&quot; claim is cherrypicking.  1997 was an exceptionally warm year and 2012 was especially cool, due to strong El Nino and La Nina effects respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/met-office-in-the-media-14-october-2012/&quot;&gt;The Met Office made a specific refutation of this claim on their official blog the day after it was published&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author making the claim also made a similar one earlier in the year, &lt;a href=&quot;http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2012/01/29/met-office-in-the-media-29-january-2012/&quot;&gt;which was also the subject of a refutation by the Met Office&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T17:35:23.370" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17446" CreationDate="2013-08-23T17:39:06.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to the question in the title is no. The article is not completely nonsense, but probably a very creative interpretation of the data the journalist is trying to analyze.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All data sets from the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre (which the Daily Mail article refers to) are available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The data set with deviations in the global average land temperature sets 0 to the average temperate in the years 1961 through 1990. The smoothed average deviations for the years after 1990 are as follows (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/crutem3/diagnostics/global/nh+sh/annual_s21&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1991  0.276&#xA;1992  0.279&#xA;1993  0.292&#xA;1994  0.321&#xA;1995  0.364&#xA;1996  0.413&#xA;1997  0.460&#xA;1998  0.498&#xA;1999  0.525&#xA;2000  0.548&#xA;2001  0.571&#xA;2002  0.598&#xA;2003  0.625&#xA;2004  0.646&#xA;2005  0.657&#xA;2006  0.659&#xA;2007  0.655&#xA;2008  0.649&#xA;2009  0.645&#xA;2010  0.642&#xA;2011  0.640&#xA;2012  0.638&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The average global land temperature has indeed been relatively stable for the last 10 years or so, but I cannot explain how the journalist claims this to be true for the period 1997 to 2003/2004. Perhaps if you play enough with the smoothing algorithm and the confidence intervals, you might be able to get similar results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The numbers from the Hadley Centre are relatively consistent with other regularly published data sets, e.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GISS Surface Temperature Analysis from NASA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T17:39:06.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17452" CreationDate="2013-08-23T21:28:03.420" Score="-2" ViewCount="869" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sagmart.com/news/Automobiles/honda-is-going-to-reveal-its-new-bike-cbr-600rr-this-december&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sagmart.com/news/Automobiles/honda-is-going-to-reveal-its-new-bike-cbr-600rr-this-december&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The design of this new CBR is awesome; you surely skip a beat when it&#xA;  passes through the way. With its stylish aerodynamic design, this bike&#xA;  shows all its power and what it is capable of. &lt;strong&gt;CBR 600RR&lt;/strong&gt; has &lt;strong&gt;12 spoke&#xA;  alloy wheels&lt;/strong&gt; which add a perfect sporty look that was missing from its&#xA;  previous version. New CBR has advanced and power braking system that&#xA;  can help you to stop the bike in no time even at high speed. &lt;strong&gt;CBR 660RR&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  sports bike has &lt;strong&gt;599cc&lt;/strong&gt; liquid cooled inline engine with four valves&#xA;  that churns the power output of &lt;strong&gt;102bhp&lt;/strong&gt;. With its comfortable seating&#xA;  and superior handling you can enjoy long drive without any break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on link above is there such a model called HONDA CBR 660RR? or is it a fail project? or is it just a fake? When you google for it you can find some other 660RR references but most of them actually refers to CBR 600RR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(little note: couldnt find a 'bikes' or 'motorbikes' tag and couldnt create one so i used cars tag instead)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6533" LastEditorUserId="6533" LastEditDate="2013-08-23T21:43:13.647" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T21:57:31.753" Title="Does HONDA have a model called CBR 660RR?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17451" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17456" CreationDate="2013-08-23T21:31:44.283" Score="25" ViewCount="24849" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_and_Ladies_%28novel%29&quot;&gt;Lords and Ladies&lt;/a&gt;, fantasy author Terry Pratchett repeatedly states that chain-mails are not a good protection against arrows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;chain-mail from the point of view of an arrow can be thought of as a series of loosely connected holes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chain-mail isn't much defence against an arrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the chain-mails I've seen seemed to be rather dense and I would guess that they might provide some protection against arrows. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_%28armour%29&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, it states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the mail was not riveted, a well placed thrust from a spear or thin sword could penetrate, and a pollaxe or halberd blow could break through the armour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This implies that it requires precision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much protection against arrows did chain-mail offer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7856" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-08-24T08:34:54.120" LastActivityDate="2019-10-05T23:23:43.340" Title="Does chain mail protect against arrows?" Tags="|history|weapons|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17450" CreationDate="2013-08-23T21:57:31.753" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears to be a typo.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://powersports.honda.com/search.aspx?q=660RR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A search of the Honda Powersports site finds no results for 660RR&lt;/a&gt; and the claimed specs (599cc, 102hp) are the same those of 2013 model of the CBR600RR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T21:57:31.753" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17451" CreationDate="2013-08-23T22:30:37.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, historical accounts throughout history suggest that it did not. It mainly served to provide protection against slashing blows (which would stop it because the force was distributed more widely) and glancing blows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earlier chainmail was penetrated by bows of that time, and later mail was penetrated by longbows at the battles of Poiters and Agincourt (where both plate and chain mail were used)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20120107001307/http://www.capnmac.com/archery/maille/Chapter3.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20120107001307/http://www.capnmac.com/archery/maille/Chapter3.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a video demonstration vs 16 gauge chainmail. Yes, it is at point blank range -- however medieval longbows were much stronger than the ones people pull today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAJPoFL6fLw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAJPoFL6fLw&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14912" LastActivityDate="2013-08-23T22:30:37.977" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17451" CreationDate="2013-08-24T00:11:16.667" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://crofters.org/personal%20essays/Maille%20Construction%20in%20Renaissance%20Europe.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Maille Construction in Renaissance&#xA;Europe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another weakness of maille armor is its&#xA;vulnerability to thrusts from pointed weapons,&#xA;arrows, and crossbow bolts, which could easily split butted rings. Riveted rings of course&#xA;were significantly more resistant but could still be pierced if the projectile hit with&#xA;sufficient force. (Note: Modern day tests made by various reenactment groups have&#xA;demonstrated that a bow fired arrow will punch holes through maille constructed of&#xA;butted steel rings while maille made with riveted steel rings will resist the same arrow.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myarmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=11131&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This seems like an attempt at an accurate test&lt;/a&gt; and although the test is imperfect I hope you find it informative:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: Good maille is very effective against arrows and is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to cut with a sword. However, it is no match for heavy polearms such as the poleaxe, and swords with very acute points can at the very least draw blood without much effort. A good thrust from such a sword can kill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part which begins with, &amp;quot;This part of the tests focuses on a combination of maille armor over a padded gambeson&amp;quot; has photos to show the difference between very good compared with mediocre riveted mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;very effective&amp;quot;, which he says is the conclusion, is relative: his best (for the arrows) test result was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;70lbs, 15 feet: 2 out of three arrows pierced the maille/gambeson and imbedded themselves in the pell. The third arrow broke two links but bounced off, stopped by the gambeson underneath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Youtube videos may only be demonstrating the ineffectiveness of modern, butted mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, Pratchett may have been wrong when he wrote, &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;a series of loosely connected holes&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;. Instead it's a tightly-connected weave of riveted rings, supplemented by multi-layer cloth padding underneath and/or on top; apparently, cloth armour resists arrows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bow Against 10x Jack&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not test the bow vs. the thicker jacks, because the 10 layer jack stopped the 70lb compound bow at 20 feet 3 out of 3 times. I believe that a sharp arrow such as a medieval broadhead (which would have no chance of defeating maille) would be able to penetrate a jack, but the arrows I had just bounced off.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;[...]&#xA;Where the jack rally shines is against arrows. Even a 10 layer jack stopped my arrows cold, and I believe medieval bodkins wouldn’t fare any better. These tests have gone a long way towards convincing me that the jack was used primarily as a defense against arrows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-24T08:30:42.007" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17461" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-24T23:16:59.877" Score="5" ViewCount="20159" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read about this &lt;a href=&quot;http://conspiracy.wikia.com/wiki/Nehru_Gandhi_family&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Nehru–Gandhi family is a political dynasty, that has been dominant in Indian politics through the Indian National Congress party for almost the entirety of India's history since independence. The surname &quot;Gandhi&quot; comes from Feroze Khan changing his surname to Gandhi after marriage with Indra Nehru. Having it's roots in the Mughal empire, this dynasty has manipulated Indian public opinion through name changes, censorship, and lies. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty starts with the Mughal man named Ghiyasuddin Ghazi (word means &quot;kafir-killer&quot;). He was the Delhi City Kotwal (police officer) prior to the uprising of 1857, in the Mughal empire. After the uprising of 1857, British were slaughtering Mughals, to eliminate any chance of Mughal ascendancy to the throne. In fear of execution, Ghiyasuddin Ghazi took up a new name: Gangadhar Nehru. And so the Nehru dynasty started..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even class 11th's history textbook of CBSE mentions that Grandfather of Nehru was city kotwal of Delhi. I would like to know if there are ant references of any people with surname Nehru before 1857. Ofcourse there might not be official account of all the surnames but given important position in which Nehru family was, finding such reference should not be difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10447" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-08-25T00:05:31.860" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T17:50:16.173" Title="Was &quot;Gangadhar Nehru&quot; a pseudonym, which he adopted after 1857?" Tags="|history|india|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17461" CreationDate="2013-08-25T00:45:52.287" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;An explanation is found in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.koausa.org/Vitasta/3.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jawaharlal Nehru's autobiography&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were Kashmiris. Over two hundred years ago, early in the eighteenth century, our ancestor came down from that mountain valley to seek fame and fortune in the rich plains below. Those were the days of the decline of the Moghal Empire after the death of Aurungzeb, and Farrukhsiar was the Emperor. Raj Kaul was the name of that ancestor of ours and he had gained eminence as a Sanskrit and Persian scholar in Kashmir. He attracted the notice of Farrukhsiar during the latter's visit to Kashmir, and, probably at the Emperor's instance, the family migrated to Delhi, the imperial capital, about the year 1716. A jagir with a house situated on the banks of a canal had been granted to Raj Kaul, and, from the fact of this residence, 'Nehru' (from nahar, a canal) came to be attached to his name. Kaul had been the family name; this changed to Kaul-Nehru; and, in later years, Kaul dropped out and we became simply Nehrus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The family experienced many vicissitudes of fortune during the unsettled times that followed and the jagir dwindled and vanished away. My great grandfather, Lakshmi Narayan Nehru, became the first Vakil of the 'Sarkar Company' at the shadow court of the Emperor of Delhi. My grandfather, Ganga Dhar Nehru, was Kotwal of Delhi for some time before the great Revolt of 1857. He died at the early age of 34 in 1861.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The revolt of 1857 put an end to our family's connection with Delhi, and all our old family papers and documents were destroyed in the course of it. The family, having lost nearly all it possessed, joined the numerous fugitives who were leaving the old imperial city and went to Agra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, according to Jawaharlal Nehru's autobiography:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their ancestor, Raj Kaul, came from Kashmir&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nehru was originally a nickname&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ganga Dhar Nehru's father was named &lt;strong&gt;Lakshmi Narayan Nehru&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Family papers and documents were destroyed when they fled from Delhi to Agra&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, it says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a little painting that we have of my grandfather, he wears the Moghal court dress with a curved sword in his hand, and might well be taken for a Moghal nobleman, although his features are distinctly Kashmiri.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some conspiracy-theorists claim that he must have been Mughal, in order to have been appointed Kotwal. I don't find that argument convincing (not necessarily true), for example because Wikipedia says of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahadur_Shah_II&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bahadur Shah II&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zafar consciously saw his role as a protector of his Hindu subjects, and a moderator of extreme Muslim demands and the intense puritanism of many of the Orthodox Muslim sheikhs of the Ulema. In one of his verses, Zafar explicitly stated that both Hinduism and Islam shared the same essence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[The children of the Hindu elite], especially those belonging to the administrative Khatri and Kayastha castes studied under maulvis and attended the more liberal madrasas, bringing food offerings for their teachers on Hindu festivals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khatri&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the article about Khatri&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Khatris played an important role in India's transregional trade under the Mughal Empire. With the Mughal patronage, they adopted administrative and military roles outside the Punjab region as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of the &amp;quot;conspiracy theory&amp;quot; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://creative.sulekha.com/motilal-nehru-muslim-ancestry_593311_blog&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears from the Moghul records that there was no Hindu Kotwal then but a Muslim Kotwal called Ghiyasuddin Ghasi who had to flee to Agra to save himself from the British who were after the lives of the Delhi Muslims following the Moghul Emperor’s challenge to the British. This Muslim Kotwal, while fleeing, changed his name/identity to the Hindu name Ganga Dhar, the father of Motilal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To test that theory, you would need to look into the Moghul records (and/or find evidence for the existence of Lakshmi Narayan Nehru).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T00:58:01.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17423" CreationDate="2013-08-25T01:28:32.280" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no scientific evidence that vinegar - apple cider vinegar (ACV), specifically, since that's what is often claimed to be an effective treatment for a number of conditions - is an effective treatment for arthritis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/06/02/apple-cider-vinegar-hype.aspx&quot;&gt;Some of the claimed effects of ACV:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some proponents of apple cider vinegar claim it can cure everything&#xA;  from diabetes to acid reflux, to warts, cancer, arthritis, athlete’s&#xA;  foot, halitosis, high cholesterol, gout, poison oak, urinary tract&#xA;  infections, and even head lice!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not a direct answer to your question, but it's worth looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://jdc325.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/apple-cider-vinegar/&quot;&gt;the necessary minerals that proponents claim ACV is a good source of&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let’s see, what else do we have? Hmm, composition… “Apple Cider&#xA;  Vinegar contains cholesterol-reducing pectin and the perfect balance&#xA;  of 19 minerals, including potassium, phosphorus, chlorine, sodium,&#xA;  magnesium, calcium, sulfur, iron, fluorine and silicon.” (From&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parrothouse.com/acv.html&quot;&gt;http://www.parrothouse.com/acv.html&lt;/a&gt;). This should be easy to check, as&#xA;  USDA (the United States Department of Agriculture) provides an online&#xA;  database of nutrient values:&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/&quot;&gt;http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/&lt;/a&gt;. I typed in Cider&#xA;  Vinegar and found that Cider Vinegar contains the following minerals&#xA;  (amounts per 100 grams):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Minerals Calcium, Ca  mg  7 Iron, Fe  mg  0.20 Magnesium, Mg  mg  5&#xA;  Phosphorus, P mg  8 Potassium, K  mg  73 Sodium, Na   mg  5 Zinc, Zn  mg  0.04&#xA;  Copper, Cu    mg  0.008 Manganese, Mn mg  0.249 Selenium, Se  mcg 0.1 These&#xA;  minerals are present in miniscule amounts. To put this in some kind of&#xA;  context, the attached PDF ‘K in food’ shows levels of potassium in&#xA;  common foods. How much Cider Vinegar do you need to consume in order&#xA;  to get 300mg of Potassium? 410 grams.  How much baked potato would you&#xA;  have to eat in order to obtian the same amount of potassium? 56 grams&#xA;  (about one third of a baked potato according to the PDF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To put it another way - the Zinc present is 0.04mg, or 40 micrograms.&#xA;  This is 0.2% of the EU Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for Zinc. How&#xA;  significant an amount is 0.2% of your RDA? Two thousandths of the&#xA;  amount you require daily. Great, now I just need to find some way of&#xA;  getting the other 99.8 of my RDA.  (See PDF for foods rich in Zinc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the claimed benefits of ACV, there has been little research into its use as a treatment for various disorders - but in the research that has been done, no evidence has been presented that suggests it is an effective treatment for arthritis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There doesn’t seem to be much evidence for the safety and efficacy of&#xA;  Cider Vinegar on Pubmed, so I had a look around. Maybe there are some&#xA;  scholarly articles not published on Pubmed that look at Cider Vinegar?&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0GCU/is_n6_v14/ai_20152545/pg_1&quot;&gt;http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0GCU/is_n6_v14/ai_20152545/pg_1&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  seems to be sceptical regarding the much vaunted benefits of Apple&#xA;  Cider Vinegar. Two quotes stand out for me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“There is no scientific evidence that apple cider vinegar has any&#xA;  medicinal properties. While the folksy anecdotes from those who claim&#xA;  to have benefited from apple cider vinegar tonics may be amusing to&#xA;  read, they are simply that — anecdotes.“&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The Arthritis Foundation calls vinegar a harmless, but unproven,&#xA;  arthritis remedy. It points out that arthritis symptoms come and go,&#xA;  and that a person using an unproven remedy may think a remedy worked&#xA;  simply because they used it at a time when symptoms were going into&#xA;  natural remission. Such is undoubtedly the case for many of the&#xA;  “cures” connected to vinegar.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, consuming ACV in sufficiently large quantities may actually worsen one's health:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EDIT: Spotted this –&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://content.karger.com/produktedb/produkte.asp?typ=fulltext&amp;amp;file=nef80242&quot;&gt;http://content.karger.com/produktedb/produkte.asp?typ=fulltext&amp;amp;file=nef80242&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;  Quote: “Regular ingestion of cider vinegar is becoming an increasingly&#xA;  popular habit in Austria and Germany. Cider vinegar is described as a&#xA;  prophylaxis and cure for almost any disease or complaint. Doses from&#xA;  one teaspoon to six soupspoons per day have been recommended. A local&#xA;  bookshop offered nine different specialist books on the benefits of&#xA;  cider vinegar. Here we describe the case of a woman, in whom chronic&#xA;  ingestion of excessive amounts of cider vinegar caused serious health&#xA;  problems.” What kind of health problems? Well, the article is entitled&#xA;  ‘Hypokalemia, Hyperreninemia and Osteoporosis in a Patient Ingesting&#xA;  Large Amounts of Cider Vinegar’. Authors: Karl Lhotta, Günther Höfle,&#xA;  Rudolf Gasser, Gerd Finkenstedt. Ref: Nephron 1998;80:242-243 (DOI:&#xA;  10.1159/000045180).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary: There is no scientific evidence to support apple cider vinegar as a treatment for arthritis. (The linked post goes on to address the conclusions of various studies that test its use as a treatment for other conditions such as diabetes, if you're interested. It also contains links to the PDFs mentioned in the section about minerals.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15139" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T01:28:32.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9737" CreationDate="2013-08-25T02:14:54.190" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2012/5/the-truth-behind-the-native-american-discovery-of-america-in-60-bce.html&quot;&gt;Jason Colavito&lt;/a&gt; essentially tracks down all possible sources of the claim and takes them apart, piece by piece.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;O’Brien and Alley’s immediate source is James W. Loewen’s 1995 book&#xA;  Lies My Teacher Told Me. On page 39, Loewen writes, “Two American&#xA;  Indians shipwrecked in Holland around 60 BC became major curiosities&#xA;  in Europe.” One would think that such cut-and-dried evidence of&#xA;  trans-oceanic contact should warrant a primary source, but Loewen&#xA;  never identifies exactly where he derived this tidbit, citing instead&#xA;  a plethora of diffusionist, Afrocentrist, and Native American activist&#xA;  texts for his paragraph without specifying which was his source for&#xA;  this claim. No primary sources are cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, I tracked down the offending passage by searching sources&#xA;  systematically. The direct source appears to be the late Native&#xA;  American scholar-activist Jack D. Forbes’ (d. 2011) Africans and&#xA;  Native Americans (1993), cited under a different title by Loewen.&#xA;  There, Forbes claims that the following passage from Pliny the Elder&#xA;  (Natural History 2.67), citing a lost work of the earlier Cornelius&#xA;  Nepos (c.100 BCE-c. 25 BCE), proves that Native Americans reached&#xA;  Europe. I have substituted a standard translation for Forbes’ partial&#xA;  and incomplete one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“The same Cornelius Nepos, when speaking of the northern&#xA;    circumnavigation, tells us that Q. Metellus Celer, the colleague of L.&#xA;    Afranius in the consulship, but then a proconsul in Gaul, had a&#xA;    present made to him by the king of the Suevi, of certain Indians, who&#xA;    sailing from India for the purpose of commerce, had been driven by&#xA;    tempests into Germany.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Forbes then “interprets” the text by first arguing that Germany, in&#xA;  Roman times, included Belgium and the Netherlands, which must&#xA;  therefore have been the coast referenced (not true; Belgium and the&#xA;  southern Netherlands were Gallia Belgica, not Germania, in 60 BCE,&#xA;  though the province was renamed Germania Inferior in 83 CE. The area&#xA;  now Holland was, though, always part of Germania). Second, Pliny next&#xA;  states “Thus it appears, that the seas which flow completely round the&#xA;  globe, and divide it, as it were, into two parts, exclude us from one&#xA;  part of it, as there is no way open to it on either side.” This,&#xA;  Forbes claims, proves that Pliny thought there was a water connection&#xA;  between India and the Baltic, thus deceiving him about the true&#xA;  origins of the Indians who were not from India but rather America, the&#xA;  only possible place people with dark skin could have traveled from in&#xA;  order to reach Germany by ship. These, Forbes said, must have been&#xA;  either the Olmec (c. 1500-400 BCE) or Teotihuacan people (c. 100-700&#xA;  CE), whom he mistakes for contemporaries of Nepos. And he leaves it at&#xA;  that, with nary another thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are asked to assume that Cornelius Nepos was wrong about the&#xA;  sailors being Indos (from India) while also apparently accepting that&#xA;  they had no difficulty communicating with the Suevi of the Rhineland.&#xA;  Did German tribes speak Mexican languages?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This communication is made plain by the parallel passage recorded by&#xA;  Pomponius Mela in De Situ Orbis (3.45, written c. 43 CE), also&#xA;  referencing the same lost work of Nepos: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“When he [Celer] was proconsul in Gaul, he was presented with&#xA;    certain Indians as a present by the king of the Boti; asking whence&#xA;    they had come to these lands, he learned they had been seized by a&#xA;    storm from Indian waters, that they had traveled across the regions&#xA;    between, and at last landed on the German shores” (my translation). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clearly, whoever they were, they spoke a language known to Europeans.&#xA;  (The difference in accounts between the Boti and the Suevi is due to&#xA;  Mela using the specific name of an otherwise unattested tribe and&#xA;  Pliny using the generic term for central Germans.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first obvious hint for Loewen should have been that apparently it was not the Indians' first trip to the region, since they were able to communicate with those in the region (assuming, of course, that Nepos didn't just make the whole thing up). Even if they were not Indians, the Europeans did not find their language particularly incomprehensible (or if they did, they did not mention it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forbes wasn't the first one to interpret the passage in this way, either; the article recounts other secondary sources who make the same claim, including Peter de Roo (1900) and, ultimately, Francisco López de Gómara:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But de Roo didn’t originate the claim, either. The claim derives,&#xA;  ultimately, from the work of the Spanish historian Francisco López de&#xA;  Gómara, who in his Historia de las Indias (chapter 10), suggested that&#xA;  the Romans had been “deceived by the color” of Native Americans from&#xA;  Labrador who had been carried across the North Atlantic. Gómara, of&#xA;  course, was merely speculating; he is the same man who in the same&#xA;  book argued that the Americas were identical to Atlantis because the&#xA;  Aztecs had words that used the letters “atl”: “But there is no dispute&#xA;  or doubt what was the island of Atlantis, for the discovery and&#xA;  conquest of the Indies simply clarify what Plato wrote of those lands,&#xA;  and in Mexico they call water atl, a word that seems like, if it is&#xA;  not already, from the island” (chapter 220; my translation). He did&#xA;  not write from evidence, merely speculation, in order to provide&#xA;  Classical antecedents to justify the Spanish conquest of the Americas.&#xA;  He was criticized even in his own lifetime for the inaccuracy of his&#xA;  work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, even Pliny's original quote was merely a repetition of an earlier claim (which may itself have contained a number of errors):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, the Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York&#xA;  noted in 1891 that Pliny, writing in 77-79 CE, merely repeated the&#xA;  statement of Mela from 43 CE, and Mela in turn has a notoriously&#xA;  error-ridden manuscript tradition. It may well be, the Journal argued,&#xA;  that a copyist’s error transformed into “Indos” the original word&#xA;  “Irenos” (Irish) or even “Iberos” (Spanish), making this a perfectly&#xA;  plausible story of a Celtic shipwreck on German shores that Mela and&#xA;  then Pliny misunderstood. Earlier scholars, recognizing the clear&#xA;  evidence for Roman contact with India and vice versa, argued that&#xA;  Nepos’ account was garbled and that the Indians had arrived in Germany&#xA;  not by sea but by a different route. Rabelais differed, suggesting&#xA;  that the Indians had circumnavigated Africa, while Vivien de St.&#xA;  Martin argued that they were Wends, a Slavonian people from the Baltic&#xA;  who could have been mistaken for Indians because the Romans believed&#xA;  in a nonexistent water route between the Baltic and India. Quaintly,&#xA;  the Late Antique writer Martianus Capella (The Marriage of Philology&#xA;  and Mercury 6.621) completely misunderstood the entire textual&#xA;  tradition and transmitted to the Middle Ages the false notion that&#xA;  Nepos had kidnapped Indians and sailed with them past Germany!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, there is no actual evidence to support Loewen's claim - only repetitions of speculation and guesswork. Regardless of whether or not the shipwrecked individuals were, in fact, Indian, no historical fact supports the idea that they were Native American.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you are interested in reading the original sources Colavito references, he links to them in his post where available.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15139" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T02:14:54.190" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17468" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8020" CreationDate="2013-08-25T10:25:47.737" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;traditional understanding&lt;/strong&gt; of a disease tend to blur our understanding of this word. There's really little we can do about it, other than observe the semantic evolution of this word as our societies move through the ages. In past times witchcraft was a disease and in modern times a relevant percentage of our society regards homosexuality as a disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile the so-called &lt;strong&gt;official definitions&lt;/strong&gt;, as noted for instance by WHO's classification, while useful in a professional sense, should probably only be considered as convenient scoped definitions with the purpose of facilitating the understanding and handling of a phenomena in a given context (on this case of a medical analysis). Scientific understanding tends it too to evolve; Epilepsy used to be a concern of priests and medical doctors used to try and find a cure for ugly laughter. But more to the point, not every professional agrees with WHO's classification of obesity. It in fact received some backlash from some professionals and medical organizations (like AMA).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally &lt;strong&gt;dictionary definitions&lt;/strong&gt; tend to be the more dangerous, due to their tendency for generic abridged definitions. An important skill while looking at a Dictionary is remembering this much. Especially when trying to use it as a way to find answer to questions like yours. Point in case, the dictionary definitions given by other answers here would also mean someone without one hand is a person suffering from a disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only possible answer to your question is Obesity is a disease if you choose to think so. Some want to support the idea it is a symptom, not a disease. Others that it is a collection of diseases, others that it is not a disease, others yet (my personal camp) that we have yet little to hold on in order to properly classify it either way and should consider it a worrying social phenomena that requires more study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4011" LastEditorUserId="4011" LastEditDate="2013-08-25T10:36:28.987" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T10:36:28.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17471" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17472" CreationDate="2013-08-25T16:16:53.500" Score="20" ViewCount="21160" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/magazine/06suicide-t.html?pagewanted=all&amp;amp;_r=0&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt;: Those methods that require forethought or exertion on the actor’s part (taking an overdose of pills, say, or &lt;em&gt;cutting your wrists&lt;/em&gt;), and thus most strongly suggest premeditation, happen to be the methods with the least chance of “success.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do many people who attempt to end their life and leave their loved ones behind via cutting their wrists stay alive as the New York Times article suggests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(If you are thinking about committing suicide, you are not alone. Get help. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines&quot;&gt;Here are some people you can contact&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7871" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T22:40:28.000" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T22:47:04.577" Title="Are suicide attempts via wrist cutting likely fatal?" Tags="|medical-science|mortality|suicide|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17471" CreationDate="2013-08-25T16:38:51.547" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people have died by cutting their wrist or forearm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When suicide victims choose this method [suicidal incision], they use an easily accessible area and clearly prefer the wrist or the antecubital fossa. (Riviello, 2009. p. 18)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wrist cutting is rarely lethal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is nearly impossible to kill oneself by sanguination secondary to lacerated wrists. The arteries lie deep, protected by muscle, bone, and tendon. in order to get the razor blade deep enough to sever the artery, the suicide must cut through skin, tendons, and muscle. [...] As he becomes unconscious, there is always the chance the blood will coagulate and the bleeding cease before death. (Williams, 2009. p. 40)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has long been established that overdoses of medication and wrist cutting are low lethality methods. (Rhyne et al. 2010)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has also been studied in jails, and it is relatively non-lethal, but it &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; lead to death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mortality rates of inmates' attempts by hanging (52 deaths in 602 attempts) was 19 times greater than inmates who cut themselves (1 death in 275 attempts). (McKEE 1988)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Suicidal intent&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most wrist cutting is not done with the intent of killing oneself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interviews with 139 suicidal patients indicate a tendency for suicide attempters using wrist cutting to score low on the Suicidal Intent Scale. (Nielsen et al. 1993)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GEOFFREY R. McKEE (1998) LETHAL VS NONLETHAL SUICIDE ATTEMPTS IN JAIL. Psychological Reports: Volume 82, Issue , pp. 611-614.&#xA;doi: 10.2466/pr0.1998.82.2.611&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ralph Riviello. Manual of Forensic Emergency Medicine. Jones &amp;amp; Bartlett Learning, 2009&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reuel Williams. The Art of Suicide. AuthorHouse, 2009&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clinton Ernest Rhyne PhD, Donald I. Templer PhD*, Lillian G. Brown PhD, Noel B. Peters PhD. Dimensions of Suicide: Perceptions of Lethality, Time, and Agony. 30 DEC 2010. DOI: 10.1111/j.1943-278X.1995.tb00959.x&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nielsen, Anette S.; Stenager, Elsebeth; Brahe, Unni B. Attempted suicide, suicidal intent, and alcohol. Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention, Vol 14(1), 1993, 32-38.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T22:47:04.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17440" CreationDate="2013-08-25T23:50:14.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the 2013 book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://michaelmossbooks.com/books/salt-sugar-fat/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Salt, Sugar, Fat&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Michael Moss, while humans are born with tastes for fat and sugar (they provoke pleasurable responses in newborns), the taste for salt is acquired (newborns do not enjoy it, but virtually all other humans in the First World do). If a person abstains from consuming salt for a time, they will regain their original sensitivity to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a &lt;a href=&quot;http://depts.washington.edu/pemplab/pdfs/jjc2006-01.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2004 University of Washington Study&lt;/a&gt; shows, the relationship between humans and salt is much less similar to that with sugar, and much more like the relationship with addictive substances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15148" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-08-25T23:54:06.720" LastActivityDate="2013-08-25T23:54:06.720" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17438" CreationDate="2013-08-26T12:55:51.013" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to detail the of the failures of stop and frisk over the past decade that are not so readily publicized, but still can be quoted from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyclu.org/node/1598&quot;&gt;NYCLU's Stop and Frisk Facts&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Shootings&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2002, there were 1,892 victims of gunfire and 97,296 stops. In 2011, there were still 1,821 victims of gunfire but a record 685,724 stops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Illegal Weapons&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Guns are found in less than 0.2 percent of stops. That is an unbelievably poor yield rate for such an intrusive, wasteful and humiliating police action. Yet, stop-and-frisk has increased more than 600 percent under Bloomberg and Kelly. And the rate of finding guns is worsening as the NYPD stops more innocent people each year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The footnotes on the NYCLU's Stop and Frisk Facts page say,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1 All crime data are from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  2 Data on shooting victims obtained by Murray Weiss of DNAinfo and reported on June 5, 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about falling rates of crime?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New York City is not alone in having far lower rates of violent crime than in the year 2000. Since 2000, rates of violent crime have fallen in NYC by 29%. However, in New Orleans (no stop and frisk) they fell 56%, in Los Angeles (no stop and frisk) they fell 59%, in Dallas (no stop and frisk) they fell 49%, and in Baltimore (no stop and frisk) they fell 37%. (these cities respective police departments)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this data is seems quite apparent that stop and frisk has accomplished very little, with the reduction in crime rates caused by other factors, as it was in the above mentioned cities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15148" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-08-26T14:28:25.123" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T14:28:25.123" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17480" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2069" CreationDate="2013-08-26T16:03:58.537" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks that most of the information of the past were deliberately silenced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a recent article about the disaster:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/op-edge/chernobyl-fukushima-crisis-catastrophe-715/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://rt.com/op-edge/chernobyl-fukushima-crisis-catastrophe-715/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14249" LastActivityDate="2013-08-26T16:03:58.537" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17481" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-26T16:27:52.300" Score="3" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;A reaction with Thorium is a nuclear reaction and Thorium seems to be getting good press as of late. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/kirk_sorensen_thorium_an_alternative_nuclear_fuel.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the descriptions given by Kirk Sorensen in his TED talk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could Thorium reactor accidents occur?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the waste products?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can Thorium be weaponized?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so much energy can be extracted from it for electricity, I am confused as to what makes it different from Uranium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15148" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-26T16:34:29.963" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T21:32:32.407" Title="Are liquid Thorium reactors safe?" Tags="|nuclear-energy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2013-08-28T22:15:01.710" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17483" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-26T18:55:01.730" Score="13" ViewCount="4760" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this claim several places:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a shark stops swimming it will die. (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_happens_to_Sharks_when_they_stop_swimming&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikianswers&lt;/a&gt;, alongside contradictory text)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I]f they do not swim, then they will have no oxygen and they will drown. (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ask.com/question/can-sharks-drown&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ask.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do sharks drown and die if they stop swimming?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T12:43:53.053" Title="Do sharks die if they stop swimming?" Tags="|zoology|sharks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17483" CreationDate="2013-08-26T19:45:47.500" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, but there are some species of sharks that require movement to circulate water over their gills. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sharks/masters/myths2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NOVA had this question&lt;/a&gt; addressed to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rsmas.miami.edu/people/faculty-index/?p=samuel-h.-gruber&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Samuel &quot;Sonny&quot; Gruber&lt;/a&gt; who responded as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NOVA: Do sharks have to keep swimming to breathe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gruber: Several species do, including hammerheads and mackerel sharks.&#xA;  Typically, pelagic sharks that never encounter the bottom are adapted&#xA;  to swim all their lives. But the vast majority of sharks have a buccal&#xA;  (mouth) pump and are not so-called &quot;obligate ram ventilators.&quot; (Ram&#xA;  ventilators like hammerheads and great whites must swim to pass water&#xA;  over their gills.) So the answer is no, emphatically. There are even&#xA;  some sharks with spiracles, holes on the top of their head that allow&#xA;  water to enter their gill chambers when the mouth is on the bottom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is corroborated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://dsc.discovery.com/tv-shows/shark-week/about-this-show/can-sharks-drown.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;science&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/zoology/marine-life/shark-drown.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;educational&lt;/a&gt; websites online as well as in the biology textbooks such as &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1439839247&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Biology of Sharks and Their Relatives, Second Edition&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LCNgZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Wobbegong shark lying on the bottom of the ocean&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wobbegong&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wobbegong shark&lt;/a&gt;, a member of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpet_shark&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;carpet sharks&lt;/a&gt; family. As an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambush_predator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ambush predator&lt;/a&gt;, the Wobbegong shark demonstrates this behavior by lying in wait on the ocean floor among rocks and other materials waiting for smaller fish to swim closer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T17:27:33.273" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T17:27:33.273" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17336" CreationDate="2013-08-27T03:42:25.437" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, the baby did not. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/3632/20130824/doctors-unable-detect-evidence-spontaneous-human-combustion-burned-baby.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Latest report&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;tests to determine whether the baby emits inflammable gases that could be triggering combustion have all returned normal, prompting doctors to rule out SHC. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I pity the child. Someone(s) clearly in need of either parental training or mental assistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8419" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T03:42:25.437" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17488" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-27T11:37:42.413" Score="11" ViewCount="1039" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several sources claim that eating soy has an effect on estrogen levels (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/264891-does-soy-protein-increase-estrogen-levels/&quot;&gt;Livestrong&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/cancer/news/expertvoices/post/2012/08/02/the-bottom-line-on-soy-and-breast-cancer-risk.aspx&quot;&gt;American Cancer Society&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/eating-soy-increase-estrogen-production-2870.html&quot;&gt;sfgate&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sources go further and say eating soy affects men's sex-drives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Soy foods lower your sex drive (Japanese housewives would feed more soy to their husbands to reduce their virility when they feared infidelity or pregnancy) Soy’s has also been proven to lead to infertility in males.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthlevelup.com/soy-milk-protein-estrogen-weight-loss/&quot;&gt;HealthLevelUp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does soy affect sex drive (via estrogen levels or otherwise)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15167" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T14:46:21.657" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:46:21.657" Title="Does eating soy affect men's virility?" Tags="|nutrition|sexuality|livestrong|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17488" CreationDate="2013-08-27T12:22:19.980" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This appears to be the subject of active study, but so far the results do not seem to indicate a significant effect - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoestrogens#Health_risks_and_benefits&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytoestrogens#Health_risks_and_benefits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4795" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T12:22:19.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16742" CreationDate="2013-08-27T15:24:34.483" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=diabetese+cinnamon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;several allegations and studies&lt;/a&gt; which suggest that cinnamon does or may help regulate insulin levels in diabetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diabetes.org/news-research/research/access-diabetes-research/baker-cinnamon-has-no-benefit-for-people-with-diabetes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Diabetes Society disagrees&lt;/a&gt;, saying,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cinnamon cannot replace medication, a healthy diet, and exercise for people with diabetes who are trying to prevent serious heart problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A balanced summary might be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/cinnamon-for-diabetes-the-consequences-of-natural-alternatives/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But look closer. &lt;strong&gt;The results may be statistically significant, but they’re not that impressive compared to medication.&lt;/strong&gt; Cinnamon lowered A1C by 0.09%, versus the usual 1% with medication. Give [sic] A1c reflects overall glucose trends, cinnamon doesn’t look that impressive. Even at the extreme of the confidence interval, cinnamon has, at best, 10% of the efficacy of drug treatments. At worst, it’s completely ineffective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-08-27T15:24:34.483" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17492" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-27T17:25:47.747" Score="15" ViewCount="6152" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_pinky.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_pinky.html&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emacs makes frequent use of the Control key. On a conventional keyboard, the Control Key is at the lower left corner of the keyboard, usually not very large and is pressed by the pinky finger. &lt;strong&gt;For those who use Emacs all day, this will result in Repetitive Strain Injury.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_hand_pain_celebrity.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_hand_pain_celebrity.html&lt;/a&gt;, I can't see enough evidence that Emacs is what caused the RSI in these individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does &amp;quot;Emacs pinky&amp;quot; exist&lt;/strong&gt;? Are Emacs users more likely to develop RSI of the pinky compared to non-Emacs users?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More references for notability as per nico's request. People do not think this is a joke:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52492/what-is-the-best-way-to-avoid-getting-emacs-pinky&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52492/what-is-the-best-way-to-avoid-getting-emacs-pinky&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?EmacsPinky&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?EmacsPinky&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2610467&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2610467&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lixo.org/archives/2005/06/01/get-rid-of-the-emacs-pinky/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.lixo.org/archives/2005/06/01/get-rid-of-the-emacs-pinky/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MovingTheCtrlKey&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/MovingTheCtrlKey&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For clarity, &amp;quot;Emacs pinky&amp;quot; is not a neologism for RSI in general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52492/what-is-the-best-way-to-avoid-getting-emacs-pinky&quot;&gt;I am concerned about getting afflicted with &amp;quot;Emacs Pinky&amp;quot; by having to constantly press the control key with my pinky finger as is required when using Emacs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lixo.org/archives/2005/06/01/get-rid-of-the-emacs-pinky/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I had completely forgotten what happens to your left pinky when you use Emacs too much.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlineslangdictionary.com/meaning-definition-of/emacs-pinky&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pinky pain associated with use of the Emacs text editing program and frequent pressing of the &amp;quot;Control&amp;quot; key with the pinky&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bc.tech.coop/blog/060131.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Almost all of the keys in the thumb keypads are keys that I had to use my pinky finger to press previously, contributing to the Emacs pinky symptoms I had been experiencing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-09T02:02:49.630" Title="Does Emacs cause &quot;Emacs pinky&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|programming|ergonomics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17492" CreationDate="2013-08-27T19:47:16.273" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple issues that need to be addressed when attempting to answer this question, namely,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the use of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs&quot;&gt;Emacs&lt;/a&gt; cause &quot;Emacs pinky?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If &quot;Emacs pinky&quot; is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repetitive_strain_injury&quot;&gt;repetitive strain injury&lt;/a&gt; (RSI), then is it plausible that Emacs may cause RSI?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it is important to note that Emacs is a text editor is used by software developers so this answer should be considered in the context of users who may use Emacs as their primary tool for their job, i.e. several hours a day for several days a week. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the question of if Emacs causes &quot;Emacs pinky&quot;, I could find no scholarly articles on &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; when looking specifically for &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22emacs%20pinky%22%20RSI%20OR%20%22repetitive%20strain%20injury%22&quot;&gt;emacs pinky&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and the search results when &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&amp;amp;q=emacs%20%22repetitive%20strain%20injury%22&quot;&gt;pinky&lt;/a&gt;&quot; was dropped as a search term were also of limited usefulness. Similar searches using &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ebscohost.com/academic/academic-search-premier&quot;&gt;Academic Search Premier&lt;/a&gt; at a well known &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_research_universities_in_the_United_States&quot;&gt;research university&lt;/a&gt; also resulted in no results being returned. As such, it is reasonable to conclude that as of August 2013 no studies have been published that link Emacs and RSI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a number of neologisms exist for RSI such as &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackberry_thumb&quot;&gt;BlackBerry thumb&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, &quot;gamer's thumb&quot;, and so forth. So if we consider &quot;Emacs pinky&quot; to be a neologism for any RSI that is encountered by Emacs users then the question changes to if heavy use of Emacs may lead to an RSI. As shown in the body of the question, it appears fairly well established that Emacs users refer to RSIs as &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_pinky.html&quot;&gt;Emacs pinky&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and this also supported by such sites as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/RepeatedStrainInjury&quot;&gt;EmacsWiki&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Links between typing and repetitive strain injuries is fairly well established and &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/1990-06-06/business/fi-723_1_computer-terminals&quot;&gt;has been reported&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a preliminary report issued earlier this year, NIOSH-Michigan&#xA;  researchers found that 40% of more than 800 employees surveyed&#xA;  reported symptoms of RSI, including pain experienced in hands, wrists,&#xA;  elbows, shoulders or neck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study was jointly requested and paid for by Newsday and the&#xA;  Graphics Communication International Union Local 406, which represents&#xA;  about half of Newsday's and New York Newsday's 3,100 full-time&#xA;  employees. The study, the first comprehensive survey of RSI in the&#xA;  newspaper industry, concluded that computer-terminal use at a&#xA;  newspaper office presented &quot;a hazard&quot; to workers' health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20030610/typing-rarely-cause-of-carpal-tunnel&quot;&gt;might not be linked&lt;/a&gt; to specific types of RSIs like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpal_tunnel_syndrome&quot;&gt;Carpal Tunnel Syndrome&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, we must also address the situation in which &quot;Emacs pinky&quot; is not a neologism, but a very specific type of injury. In that case we must again defer to the lack of studies that have been conducted to determine if Emacs is linked specifically to RSI in a users pinky. However, it is difficult to conclude if &quot;Emacs pinky&quot; is supposed to refer to a specific injury to the pinky since most &lt;a href=&quot;http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/emacs_hand_pain_celebrity.html&quot;&gt;anecdotes&lt;/a&gt; refer to general RSIs of the hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of reports on the internet (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lixo.org/archives/2005/06/01/get-rid-of-the-emacs-pinky/&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://bc.tech.coop/blog/060131.html&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt;) that indicate that users of Emacs experience pain in their left pinky that they attribute to their use of Emacs due to the use of the &lt;kbd&gt;Ctrl&lt;/kbd&gt; key for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.keyxl.com/aaa8773/92/Emacs-emac-text-editor-software-keyboard-shortcuts.htm&quot;&gt;number of commands&lt;/a&gt;. Assuming that these users are being honest in their reporting then these reports do provide us with a body of evidence that something is happening. In this case the hypothesis that the heavy use of the &lt;kbd&gt;Ctrl&lt;/kbd&gt; by heavy users of Emacs causing pain in the left pinky is not unreasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to summarize, no studies have been conducted into Emacs use to determine if it causes a specific RSI that affects the pinky. It has been established that typing can cause RSI in which case the claim is valid if &quot;Emacs pinky&quot; is a neologism for RSI in general. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T18:07:26.277" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T18:07:26.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17494" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17518" CreationDate="2013-08-27T21:18:19.270" Score="5" ViewCount="698" Body="&lt;p&gt;Leon Rappaport claims in his book &lt;em&gt;How We Eat&lt;/em&gt; that people judge each other based on what food they eat. From the book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Social psychology studies have demonstrated that people will make fairly consistent judgments of others based on their grocery shopping lists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More generally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Food preferences can play a substantial role in how people judge the social class status of themselves and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our food habits are an important element of [...] how we judge others&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the first quote, I don't know what study he's referencing, and had difficulty finding studies relevant to the claim. Does the scientific evidence support the notion that we judge people based on what they eat, and that we do so with consistent results? To clarify, I'm looking for a study that demonstrates (or refutes) that people judge each others' personalities the same way if they're eating or buying the same food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-29T01:17:16.917" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T00:32:23.593" Title="Do we judge people consistently based on what they eat?" Tags="|psychology|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17495" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17496" CreationDate="2013-08-28T01:00:32.407" Score="1" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just stumbled upon &lt;a href=&quot;http://politichicks.tv/column/nightmare-obamacare-one-womans-struggle-survive/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, which details an alleged Obamacare-induced horror story of a particular cancer patient.  The particular claim of which I am skeptical is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Within one hour of signing the bill into law, Jes was told that she could no longer receive her treatments “due to recent legislation.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The implication, in the context of the entire article, is that as an immediate result of Obama signing the ACA, her regular cancer treatments were stopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical of this for a number of reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As the article itself goes to lengths to point out, very few people, including law makers, understood the entire contents of the ACA when they voted for it.  So how would cancer-care providers have known so immediately that the new law would have allowed or required them to stop treatment?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most, if not all, laws take effect at some future date, in part, precisely to allow time that those affected by the new law can be informed of the changes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note&lt;/em&gt; I realize there are at least three alternate explanations for the statements made in the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was some other legislation (perhaps even state legislation) which did take effect on or about March 23, 2010, which actually did affect the patient in the article, and the signing of ACA was coincidental.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The patient's health providers were incredibly mis-informed, and denied her treatment without cause.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The patient's health providers did actually understand ACA, and informed her that she would be denied treatment once the law took effect in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not interested in discussing these possibilities, since these, while technically within the bounds of the claim, are clearly not what the article intended to &lt;em&gt;convey&lt;/em&gt; to the reader.  Further, investigating whether any of these things occurred is quite a separate question, and answering it would require interviewing the patient and/or her health-care providers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T01:53:44.727" Title="Did any aspect of the Affordable Care Act take effect March 23, 2010?" Tags="|law|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17495" CreationDate="2013-08-28T01:53:44.727" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has a list of provision of the Affordable Cart Act &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Protection_and_Affordable_Care_Act#Effective_at_enactment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;and the dates at which they come into effect.&lt;/a&gt; While some provisions of the Affordable Care Act did come into effect immediately, I don't see how any of those provisions would have affected Jes' ability to receive treatment on medicaid. The provisions that came into effect on March 23rd, 2010 were as follows (copied from the wikipedia article):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- The Food and Drug Administration is now authorized to approve generic versions of biologic drugs and grant biologics manufacturers 12 years of exclusive use before generics can be developed.[50]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- The Medicaid drug rebate for brand name drugs, paid by drug manufacturers to the states, is increased to 23.1% (except for the rebate for clotting factors and drugs approved exclusively for pediatric use, which increases to 17.1%), and the rebate is extended to Medicaid managed care plans; the Medicaid rebate for non-innovator, multiple source drugs is increased to 13% of average manufacturer price.[50]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- A non-profit Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute is established, independent from government, to undertake comparative effectiveness research.[50] This is charged with examining the &amp;quot;relative health outcomes, clinical effectiveness, and appropriateness&amp;quot; of different medical treatments by evaluating existing studies and conducting its own. Its 19-member board is to include patients, doctors, hospitals, drug makers, device manufacturers, insurers, payers, government officials and health experts. It will not have the power to mandate or even endorse coverage rules or reimbursement for any particular treatment. Medicare may take the Institute's research into account when deciding what procedures it will cover, so long as the new research is not the sole justification and the agency allows for public input.[51] The bill prohibits the Institute from developing or employing &amp;quot;a dollars per quality adjusted life year&amp;quot; (or any similar measure that discounts the value of a life because of an individual's disability) as a threshold to establish what type of health care is cost effective or recommended. This makes it different from the UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which determines cost-effectiveness directly based on quality-adjusted life year valuations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- The Prevention and Public Health Fund was created to fund programs and research designed to increase chronic disease prevention.[52][53][54]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- A National Prevention, Health Promotion and Public Health Council (National Prevention Council) was created to develop a national strategy on prevention, health promotion and public health; by, for example, disseminating evidenced-based recommendations on the use of clinical and community prevention services.[50]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- The Indian Health Care Improvement Act was reauthorized and amended.[50]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Chain restaurants and food vendors with 20 or more locations are required to display the caloric content of their foods on menus, drive-through menus, and vending machines. Additional information, such as saturated fat, carbohydrate, and sodium content, must also be made available upon request.[55] But first, the Food and Drug Administration has to come up with regulations.[55][56] Two regulations - one applicable to restaurants and another to vending machines - have been proposed, but have not yet been made final.[57]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- States can apply for a &amp;quot;State Plan Amendment&amp;quot; to expand family planning eligibility to the same eligibility as pregnancy related care through a state option rather than having to apply for a federal waiver.[58][59][60]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T01:53:44.727" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17497" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-28T06:00:10.650" Score="1" ViewCount="818" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work at a gas station and a man brought in a coin that was so defaced that you could no longer see a picture on either side but because of it size you could tell what it was but is this type of money still considered legal tender?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15172" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T11:36:51.447" Title="are defaced coins considered legal tender?" Tags="|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-08-28T22:16:12.153" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17498" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17497" CreationDate="2013-08-28T07:02:14.593" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even if it is legal tender - you are under no obligation to accept it - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages/legal-tender.aspx&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The pertinent portion of law that applies to your question is the&#xA;  Coinage Act of 1965, specifically Section 31 U.S.C. 5103, entitled&#xA;  &quot;Legal tender,&quot; which states: &quot;United States coins and currency&#xA;  (including Federal reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal&#xA;  reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts,&#xA;  public charges, taxes, and dues.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This statute means that all United States money as identified above&#xA;  are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a&#xA;  creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a&#xA;  private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or&#xA;  coins as for payment for goods and/or services. Private businesses are&#xA;  free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash&#xA;  unless there is a State law which says otherwise. For example, a bus&#xA;  line may prohibit payment of fares in pennies or dollar bills. In&#xA;  addition, movie theaters, convenience stores and gas stations may&#xA;  refuse to accept large denomination currency (usually notes above $20)&#xA;  as a matter of policy.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to mutilated coins criteria, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usmint.gov/email/MUTILATEDCOIN.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.usmint.gov/email/MUTILATEDCOIN.pdf&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What is the difference between Uncurrent and Mutilated coins?&#xA;  UNCURRENT : U.S. coins which are merely worn or reduced in weight by&#xA;  natural abrasion yet are readily and clearly recognizable and machine&#xA;  countable, are classified as Uncurrent Coins. MUTILATED : All coins&#xA;  that are bent, broken, corroded, not whole, melted together and not&#xA;  machine countable, are classified as Mutilated Coins. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Are there any mutilated coins that the U.S. Mint will not redeem? The&#xA;  following will not be redeemed by the U.S. Mint: Fused material&#xA;  unrecognizable as U.S. currency. Foreign coins. Counterfeit coins and&#xA;  slugs. Altered coins, changed to pass as another denomination. Coins&#xA;  or lumps of coins, which contain lead, solder or other substances,&#xA;  which would make them unsuitable for use as coinage metal. Precious&#xA;  coins (gold or silver). &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4795" LastEditorUserId="4795" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T11:36:51.447" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T11:36:51.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17499" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-28T12:51:00.887" Score="0" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;BBC News has been running a story on how Broccoli can slow or stop osteoarthritis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23847632&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-23847632&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eating lots of broccoli may slow down and even prevent osteoarthritis,&#xA;  UK researchers believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The University of East Anglia team is starting human trials following&#xA;  on from successful lab studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tests on cells and mice showed that a broccoli compound - which humans&#xA;  can also get from Brussels sprouts and cabbage - blocked a key&#xA;  destructive enzyme that damages cartilage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They are asking 20 patients to eat a daily dose of &quot;super-charged&quot;&#xA;  broccoli.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I'm sure that sales of broccoli have soared today amongst the elderly, but can this really work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5139" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T13:28:27.073" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T13:28:27.073" Title="Can Broccoli stop or slow Osteoarthritis?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17499" CreationDate="2013-08-28T13:27:14.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the researchers, it 'can' or might work; and that is why they're running a human trial: to determine whether it is even plausible that it does work. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2013/August/broccoli-osteoarthritis-research-sulforaphane&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The University of East Anglia article on the subject&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The researchers found that mice fed a diet rich in the compound had significantly less cartilage damage and osteoarthritis than those that were not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] Researchers from the School of Biological Sciences and Norwich Medical School are now embarking on a small scale trial in osteoarthritis patients due to have knee replacement surgery, to see if eating broccoli has similar effects on the human joint. If successful, they hope it will lead to funding for a large scale clinical trial to show the effect of broccoli on osteoarthritis, joint function and pain itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] This study is important because it is about how diet might work in osteoarthritis. Once you know that you can look at other dietary compounds which could protect the joint and ultimately you can advise people what they should be eating for joint health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] For the small scale trial, funded by DRINC, half the 40 patients will be given ‘super broccoli’ - bred to be high in sulforaphane - to eat for two weeks before their operation. Once the surgery has taken place the researchers will look at whether the compound has altered joint metabolism and if it can be detected in the replaced joints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They decided that a testing shows that it works in mice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They decided that sulforaphane is the mechanism/cause&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They're testing on humans (who were about to have joint surgery anyway) to see whether eating brocolli affects the level of sulforaphane in the joints ... because, they find plausible that it could or does work, if and only if they find that when humans eat broccoli then that affects the level of sulforaphane in the humans' joints.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T13:27:14.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17503" CreationDate="2013-08-28T16:07:05.903" Score="1" ViewCount="1414" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just saw this and I was wondering if it was a legit quote. I've seen similar claims about Biden too, here the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mic.com/articles/61321/joe-biden-wanted-bush-impeached-for-the-very-thing-obama-is-about-to-do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PolicyMic headline states&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;&quot;Joe Biden Wanted Bush Impeached For the Very Thing Obama is About to Do&quot;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/od6Ex.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Biden Quote&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above graphic reads,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Founding Fathers were, as in most things, profoundly right. That's why I want to be very clear: if the President takes us to [war] without Congressional approval, I will call for his impeachment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do not say this lightly or to be provocative. I am dead serious. I have chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee. I still teach constitutional law. I've consulted with leading constitutional scholars. The Constitution is clear. And so am I.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;- Joe Biden, 2007&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="35731" LastEditDate="2019-09-25T15:46:19.407" LastActivityDate="2019-09-25T15:46:19.407" Title="Did Biden ever threaten to impeach any president who went to war without congressional approval?" Tags="|quotes|joe-biden|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17501" CreationDate="2013-08-28T16:27:42.267" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;He says something very like that in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dRFJ6CF2Mw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Youtube video&lt;/a&gt;, which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/obama-and-biden-have-said-military-action-without-congressio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this BuzzFeed article&lt;/a&gt; says was &quot;speaking at a campaign event in Davenport, Iowa in December 2007&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same BuzzFeed article cites this &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20071219202602/http://www.joebiden.com/issues/?id=0028&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; which contains the text you quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One nit-pick: he said &quot;the&quot; president (not the &quot;any&quot; president which you ask in the title to your question) -- and he was referring to President Bush, w.r.t. Iran:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I’m saying this now to put the administration on notice and hopefully to deter the President from taking unilateral action in the last year of his administration.  If war is warranted with a nation of 70 million people, it warrants coming to Congress and the American people first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T20:48:07.083" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T20:48:07.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17501" CreationDate="2013-08-28T16:30:57.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This quote actually comes from an Iowa City Public Library speech in 2007. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfr.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Council on Foreign Relations&lt;/a&gt; has the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfr.org/iran/joe-bidens-speech-iran/p14976&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;contents of this speech on this website.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;War Powers &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is precisely because the consequences of war – intended or&#xA;  otherwise – can be so profound and complicated that our Founding&#xA;  Fathers vested in Congress, not the President, the power to initiate&#xA;  war, except to repel an imminent attack on the United States or its&#xA;  citizens.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They reasoned that requiring the President to come to Congress first&#xA;  would slow things down… allow for more careful decision making before&#xA;  sending Americans to fight and die… and ensure broader public support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Founding Fathers were, as in most things, profoundly right.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That’s why I want to be very clear:  if the President takes us to war&#xA;  with Iran without Congressional approval, I will call for his&#xA;  impeachment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I do not say this lightly or to be provocative.  I am dead serious.  I&#xA;  have chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee.  I still teach&#xA;  constitutional law.  I’ve consulted with some of our leading&#xA;  constitutional scholars.  The Constitution is clear.  And so am I.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I’m saying this now to put the administration on notice and hopefully&#xA;  to deter the President from taking unilateral action in the last year&#xA;  of his administration.      &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If war is warranted with a nation of 70 million people, it warrants&#xA;  coming to Congress and the American people first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's clearly excluded from the first quote is that this was specific to &lt;em&gt;Iran&lt;/em&gt;. Not that all of the same conditions (stated in the speech) aren't true with other targets of the Obama administration, but it is clear he was talking specifically about Iran.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He makes similar comments in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;amp;v=B4sOjcWDfhg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If you're going to impeach George Bush you better impeach Cheney first. Not a joke. [...] The president has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran and I want to make it clear. I want it on the record, and I want to make it clear. If he does as Chairmen of the Foreign Relations Committee and former chair of the Judicial Committee I will move to impeach him.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a video with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;amp;v=p0gDGO2GzHM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Biden on Chris Mathews&lt;/a&gt; where he defends the use of the term &lt;em&gt;&quot;impeach&quot;&lt;/em&gt; regarding Iran. As the &lt;a href=&quot;http://theatlantic.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Atlantic&lt;/a&gt; writes about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/08/joe-bidens-case-that-waging-war-without-congress-is-an-impeachable-offense/279160/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this same question.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chris Matthews:&lt;/strong&gt; You said that if the United States had launched at&#xA;  attack on Iran without Congressional approval, that would've been an&#xA;  impeachable offense. Do you want to review that comment you made?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Joe Biden:&lt;/strong&gt; Absolutely. I want to stand by that comment I made. The&#xA;  reason I made the comment was as a warning. I don't say those things&#xA;  lightly, Chris. you've known me for a long time. I was Chairman of the&#xA;  Judiciary Committee for 17 years. I teach separation of powers in&#xA;  Constitutional law. This is something I know. So I brought a group of&#xA;  Constitutional scholars together to write a piece that I'm going to&#xA;  deliver to the whole United States Senate pointing out that &lt;strong&gt;the&#xA;  president HAS NO CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY to take this country to war&#xA;  against a country of 70 million people unless we're attacked or unless&#xA;  there is proof that we are about to be attacked. And if he does, I&#xA;  would move to impeach him.&lt;/strong&gt; The House obviously has to do that, but I&#xA;  would lead an effort to impeach him. The reason for my doing that --&#xA;  and I don't say it lightly, I don't say it lightly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;So in essence, &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt; he did make this threat,&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tldr; Biden originally made the claim specifically about Iran, but in defense of that comment he made it more principled about the president's constitutional authority and the punishment for unconstitutionally broadening that authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2013-08-29T21:41:19.027" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T21:41:19.027" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17505" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-28T19:31:50.190" Score="1" ViewCount="334" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hear this on radio talk shows every now and then (mostly republican) that congress has exempted themselves from Obama care, that is how good it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324522504578654193173779414.html?mod=trending_now_1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;For example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How the White House is weaseling Congress out of ObamaCare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have searched online and there are articles that seem to say that congress opted themselves out and their staff from Obama care from fear of high cost may be or poor coverage etc I don't really know. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/07/usa-health-congress-idUSL1N0G820F20130807&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reuter article throws some light on this&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When Congress passed the health reform law known as Obamacare in 2010,&#xA;  an amendment required that lawmakers and their staff members purchase&#xA;  health insurance through the online exchanges that the law created.&#xA;  They would lose generous coverage under the Federal Employees Health&#xA;  Benefits Program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The amendment's author, Republican Senator Charles Grassley, argued&#xA;  that if Obamacare plans were good enough for the American public, they&#xA;  were good enough for Congress. Democrats, eager to pass the reforms,&#xA;  went along with it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But it soon became apparent the provision contained no language that&#xA;  allowed federal contributions toward their health plans that cover&#xA;  about 75 percent of the premium costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical that it can be true. If it is so good and good for every one, why would they opt out. Did they really opt out of ObamaCare or may be I am missing something?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T20:01:40.183" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T20:11:17.550" Title="Has the congress opted out of Obama care?" Tags="|politics|law|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17505" CreationDate="2013-08-28T19:44:01.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/07/usa-health-congress-idUSL1N0G820F20130807&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/07/usa-health-congress-idUSL1N0G820F20130807&lt;/a&gt; (I know this is the same article referenced in the question. It seems the asker doesn't doubt its accuracy, but is just not sure how to interpret it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congress members &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; required to purchase insurance through the online exchanges. Other federal employees are not, and can stay on their current plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the act failed to allow for federal employer contributions to the congress members' premiums (something they'd been receiving until now, and that other federal employees staying on their current, non-exchange policies will continue to receive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until now, most federal employees, including congress members and their staff, receive contributions towards their health insurance premiums under the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Employees_Health_Benefits_Program&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Federal Employees Health Benefits Program&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latest ruling by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the federal contributions will be allowed to continue for exchange-purchased plans for lawmakers and their staffs, ensuring that those working on Capitol Hill will effectively get the same health contributions as millions of other federal workers who keep their current plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before the Affordable Care Act (ACA):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most federal employees, including congress members and staff received employer contributions towards their health insurance premiums&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After ACA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Federal employees that are not congress members or staff can continue using their current health insurance, and continue receiving the employer contributions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Congress members and their staff &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; switch to an exchange provided plan, and are not (save for the exception granted by the OPM) eligible for employer contributions to cover those premiums&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After OPM ruling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Congress members and their staff still must switch to an exchange provided plan, and will continue to receive the employer contributions they received until now, like all other federal employees&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-28T20:11:17.550" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T20:11:17.550" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17507" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28738" CreationDate="2013-08-28T20:41:19.363" Score="21" ViewCount="20780" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to pinch someone's nerve (on the shoulder) in a manner similar to the way Spock would do on Star Trek such that the person would either pass-out or result in being temporarily paralyzed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proponents of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryukyu_Kempo&quot;&gt;Ryukyu Kempo&lt;/a&gt; martial arts claim it is possible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Does_the_vulcan_nerve_pinch_have_any_real_counterparts&quot;&gt;Does the vulcan nerve pinch have any real counterparts?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes. If you were to study the art of Ryukyu-Kempo, you would discover&#xA;  that the body is full of pressure points that can be exploited to&#xA;  immobilize, knock-out and even kill a person. There are two points&#xA;  that correspond to the position of the fingers in the nerve pinch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I do not understand this style of martial arts I can't determine if it's &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2717" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-08-29T01:16:07.867" LastActivityDate="2016-08-18T07:53:23.043" Title="Can you knock someone out with pressure points, in the style of a Vulcan nerve pinch?" Tags="|physiology|martial-arts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17481" CreationDate="2013-08-28T21:32:32.407" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Thorium itself cannot be used as nuclear fuel, in the same way as Uranium-238 can't. This is because it absorbs neutrons instead of undergoing fission. However, it can absorb neutrons and become Uranium-233 which is fissile, in the same way as Uranium-238 can become Plutonium-239. If you have a neutron source, or some Uranium to jump start the process, you can builder a breeder reactor that uses Thorium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything that can go wrong with Uranium breeder reactors can go wrong with your Thorium reactor, e.g. criticality accidents, having your facility hit by a tsunami, etc. The reaction still produces nuclear waste, and the US has successfully weaponized Uranium-233 in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thorium fuel cycle&lt;/a&gt; on Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6228" LastActivityDate="2013-08-28T21:32:32.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8370" CreationDate="2013-08-29T05:37:09.717" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earlightswindle.com/story.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the device is a complete hoax&lt;/a&gt;, and it was awarded the &quot;Huuhaa&quot; (&quot;Humbug&quot;) prize as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepsis.fi/Toiminta/HuuhaajaSokratespalkinnot/Huuhaapalkinto2012.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;worst sham of 2012&lt;/a&gt; by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepsis.fi/Yhdistys/MikaSkepsisOn/SkepsisinEnglish.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skeptic Society of Finland&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first &lt;a href=&quot;http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01293409&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;controlled clinical trial&lt;/a&gt; of the device in 2011 showed that a placebo works better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MZzm4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a second test also failed, the company blatantly falsified the results and &lt;a href=&quot;http://tv1.yle.fi/juttuarkisto/ajankohtaisohjelmien-aiheita/mot-taru-korvavalosta&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;was caught red-handed doing it&lt;/a&gt; (sorry, Finnish only, but YLE is the Finnish equivalent of the BBC).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather unbelievably, the device is still on sale and nobody has been charged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15184" LastActivityDate="2013-08-29T05:37:09.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17514" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-29T11:08:13.833" Score="14" ViewCount="1378" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea that certain fragrances can attract women is often used as a marketing tool to sell deodorants or perfumes for men. The same goes for women and men. They claim that if this product is used, the object of their desire will be attracted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is pretty obvious that the advertisements do not match with reality, but I want to know if there is some truth in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course everybody has an individual taste, but, &lt;strong&gt;are there specific scents which have a statistically-proven attraction effect on either gender?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9tWZB7OUSU&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Advert for AXE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3icGdPG0uw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Advert for AXE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/scents-colors-attract-opposite-sex-6925050.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yahoo! Voices article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In University of Vienna, Austria, a similar research attempted to find out whether males could sense ovulation by smelling &amp;quot;copulins&amp;quot; [...]  The results showed that males' testosterone levels increased when they smelled the copulins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] Scents that attract women include concentrated sprays with ingredients such as roots, wild grasses, exotic barks, rare wine resins, and the like. These not only attract the opposite sex, but also increase their sexual desires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Truth-About-Pheromones.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Smithsonian Magazine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers (as well as fragrance companies) have been hoping to find a human sex pheromone for decades, but so far the search has failed, says George Preti of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. “That doesn’t mean a human sex pheromone doesn’t exist,” Preti is quick to add. “It just means we haven’t found one yet.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15097" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T14:16:03.470" Title="Are specific scents sexually attractive to women or men?" Tags="|physiology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17516" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17523" CreationDate="2013-08-29T16:27:49.487" Score="16" ViewCount="2879" Body="&lt;p&gt;A rumor has circulated on the internet for quite some time that there were many animal cruelty violations in the process of making the movie, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097050/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1&quot;&gt;The Adventures of Milo and Otis&lt;/a&gt;, including the deaths of over 30 animals.  Unfortunately, it seems like information to prove/disprove this is lacking.  Is there any definitive evidence to support or refute this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://subversify.com/2013/01/17/no-country-for-dead-dogs/&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; highlights the rumor, but fails to provide any real evidence one way or the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5847" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-08-30T06:03:51.727" LastActivityDate="2013-09-07T12:04:53.267" Title="Did production of &quot;The Adventures of Milo and Otis&quot; involve a dramatically high rate of animal deaths?" Tags="|zoology|movies|japan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17517" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-29T17:59:06.687" Score="30" ViewCount="28556" Body="&lt;p&gt;A number of sources &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#The_Prussian_rocketeer_and_working_under_the_Nazis&quot;&gt;including Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; state that when the first V-2 hit London, Wernher von Braun apparently said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds entirely too dramatic and rehearsed. It doesn't help that Wikipedia does not provide a source for this quote. How true is this account? Presumably, the statement was made in German. What is the original quote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T02:41:22.257" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T19:02:45.183" Title="Did von Braun say &quot;The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|war|germany|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17494" CreationDate="2013-08-30T00:32:23.593" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Saher et al. 2004) evaluated the impressions people developed based on &lt;strong&gt;shopping lists&lt;/strong&gt; that had &quot;either healthy or neutral background items, conventional or functional target items&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Buyers with healthy background items were perceived as more disciplined than those having neutral items on the list, users of functional foods were rated as more disciplined than users of conventional target items only when the background list consisted of neutral items. Buyers of functional foods were regarded as more innovative and less gentle, but gender affected the ratings on gentle dimension. The impressions of functional food users clearly differ from those formed of users of conventional foods with a healthy image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar study by (Stein et al. 1995) used food lists rather than grocery lists. They had participants &quot;read a profile of either a female or male target including information about the target's preferred foods&quot;. They found that &quot;[r]egardless of whether the target was male or female, targets described as preferring “good” foods were rated as more feminine and less masculine than were targets described as preferring “bad” foods.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Barker et al. 1999) also used food lists rather than grocery lists. &quot;Subjects were&#xA;then asked to recall systematically and describe everything they consumed the day&#xA;before, starting with when they got up.&quot; Subjects were then split into a high-fat or low-fat group. &quot;For the assessment of stereotypes, subjects were presented with lists of one&#xA;high-fat diet (A) and one low-fat diet (B)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subjects were then&#xA;  given a list of adjectives and descriptors presented as sets of antonyms, and asked&#xA;  to select appropriate adjective/descriptors from the list to describe consumers of&#xA;  diets A and B. There were 27 sets of antonyms: attractive/unattractive, interesting/&#xA;  boring, intelligent/unintelligent, easy-going/highly strung, happy/unhappy, healthy/&#xA;  unhealthy, sociable/antisocial, friendly/unfriendly, prim and proper/unconventional,&#xA;  outgoing/shy, energetic/lazy, outdoorsy/couch-potato, sporty/inactive, physically ﬁt/&#xA;  unﬁt, fun-loving/serious, modern/old-fashioned, generous/selﬁsh, ambitious/unambitious, politically correct/outspoken, slim/overweight, male/female, young/old,&#xA;  employed/unemployed, single/married, non-smoking/smoking, non-drinking/drinking, working/middle/upper class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Barker et al. 1999) reached several conclusions. I'll quote two that I found interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall, subjects were signiﬁcantly more likely to choose negative descriptors to&#xA;  describe a follower of the high-fat diet and positive descriptors for a follower of the&#xA;  low-fat diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It seems that people with high-fat intakes&#xA;  characterize high-fat consumers using positive and negative stereotypes, while people&#xA;  with low-fat intakes characterize high-fat consumers using negative stereotypes only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also not about grocery lists, but about consumption stereotypes in general, (Vartanian et al. 2007) is a comprehensive review paper on &quot;empirical research on stereotypes based on what and how much people eat&quot;. That paper provides myriad references to other work showing consumption stereotypes along the line of &quot;you are what you eat&quot; and &quot;you are how much you eat&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The meta-conclusion they made about stereotypes associated with &quot;what you eat&quot; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall, it appears that trait attributions emerge independent of target or rater sex, such that, for example, women and men are judged as being more feminine and less masculine when they eat low-fat foods than when they eat high-fat foods. In addition, there are somewhat mixed perceptions of low-fat-food consumers: On the one hand, they are seen as being intelligent and moral; on the other hand, they are also seen as boring and not particularly fun to be with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barker, M. E., Tandy, M., &amp;amp; Stookey, J. D. (1999). How are consumers of low-fat and high-fat diets perceived by those with lower and higher fat intake?. Appetite, 33(3), 309-317.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saher, M., Arvola, A., Lindeman, M., &amp;amp; Lähteenmäki, L. (2004). Impressions of functional food consumers. Appetite, 42(1), 79-89.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stein, R. I., &amp;amp; Nemeroff, C. J. (1995). Moral overtones of food: Judgments of others based on what they eat. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21(5), 480-490.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vartanian, L. R., Herman, C. P., &amp;amp; Polivy, J. (2007). Consumption stereotypes and impression management: How you are what you eat. Appetite, 48(3), 265-277.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-08-30T00:32:23.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17519" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17520" CreationDate="2013-08-30T02:14:09.390" Score="34" ViewCount="43959" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;WARNING: DON'T VISIT THE LINK BELOW ON AN IPHONE&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A colleague of mine, who works in the technology field, told me that there is a specific text string that can crash any iPhone (specifically iOS 6) which tries to display it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He alleges that the string will crash Safari if it's on a web page. But of greater impact, if it is messaged to an iPhone it will cause the messaging app to crash every time it's opened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also sent me &lt;a href=&quot;https://zhovner.com/tmp/killwebkit.html&quot;&gt;a link that is supposed to make iPhones crash&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The colleague who told me about this is a reasonably smart guy, with a degree in computer science specialising in security (among other things), so I consider him a trustworthy source. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this string in the above link crash iPhones?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="15980" LastEditDate="2013-11-27T17:28:53.867" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T09:32:46.987" Title="Is there a text string that crashes iPhones?" Tags="|technology|apple-inc|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17519" CreationDate="2013-08-30T02:42:15.230" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, but this is a newly reported bug on OS X 10.8.4 and iOS 6.1.3 that affects &lt;a href=&quot;https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/StringsTextFonts/Conceptual/CoreText_Programming/Introduction/Introduction.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CoreText API&lt;/a&gt; so it will likely be fixed in the near future. The text linked to is the same as appears in a screen shot on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/08/rendering-bug-crashes-os-x-and-ios-apps-with-string-of-arabic-characters/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ars Technica article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ftuhf.png&quot; alt=&quot;Arabic unicode string that causes CoreText API to crash&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article then goes on to explain the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's a new bug in town, and it's here to crash your Mac and iPhone&#xA;  applications. Posters in a HackerNews thread from late yesterday have&#xA;  discovered that it's possible to crash Web browsers and other apps&#xA;  running on current versions of iOS and OS X by making them render a&#xA;  specific, nonsensical string of Arabic characters. The title of the&#xA;  HackerNews thread implies that the issue is with the WebKit browser&#xA;  engine, but it actually affects any browser or application that uses&#xA;  Apple's CoreText API to render text. Ars Microsoft Editor Peter Bright&#xA;  has taken great pleasure in sending the text string to his co-workers,&#xA;  which has crashed the Limechat IRC client and Adium chat client, among&#xA;  other programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also mentions that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apple.com/ios/messages/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;iMessage&lt;/a&gt; uses the CoreText API so it is also affected by the bug. MacLife also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maclife.com/article/news/apple_coretext_rendering_bug_causes_crashes_ios_6_os_x_108&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported on the problem&lt;/a&gt; and mentions that this error also affects the system when Wi-Fi hotspot names are displayed as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-09-01T00:48:25.597" LastActivityDate="2013-09-01T00:48:25.597" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17516" CreationDate="2013-08-30T08:01:11.287" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The rumours have never been able to be confirmed. &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20010531234131/http://www.ahafilm.org/oldmovies1/theadventures/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Humane Association&lt;/a&gt; have tried though, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Milo_and_Otis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;without luck&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have tried through humane people in Japan, and through another Japanese producer to determine if these rumors are true or not but everything has led to a dead end.&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20010531234131/http://www.ahafilm.org/oldmovies1/theadventures/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;v=goix8a6xMok#t=80&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here are some of the deleted clips&lt;/a&gt; that were removed from the American release of the movie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I linked to a specific time when a black bear attacks the little pug. In other clips the cat is being thrown off a cliff, and being attacked by a snake. Many of the scenes just looks too brutal, too real, to have been faked. Some can be done with well trained animals etc, but this is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Milo_and_Otis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;concern many other have had about the movie as well&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kent said her organization had a number of complaints from people who had seen the film and were concerned that it could not have been made without cruelty. [ 1 ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[ 1 ] &lt;em&gt;Gillespie, P. (April 15, 1990). &quot;Cat Cruelty Claim Over Kids' Movie&quot; The Sunday Mail&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastEditorUserId="15285" LastEditDate="2013-09-05T14:44:00.233" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T14:44:00.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17524" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-30T09:16:37.717" Score="6" ViewCount="933" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_purifier&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Air purifiers&lt;/a&gt; that use glass-fiber HEPA material are said to reduce contaminant in the air that can cause illness, including cold and flu viruses, cigarette smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example is, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airpurifierreviews.com/are-air-purifiers-beneficial-for-good-health/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Are Air Purifiers Beneficial for Good health? &amp;lt;&amp;lt; Air Purifier Reviews, Guides and Ratings&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;These days, the air we breathe is dirtier and more polluted than ever before. After all, the factors that have contributed to global&#xA;  warming are of course destructive to the environment, but can also be&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;hazardous to the health of everyday people&lt;/strong&gt;. [...] One of the most&#xA;  important things one can do to improve their air quality is to use an&#xA;  air purifier.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since &lt;strong&gt;many of the common illnesses (cold, flu) are airborne&lt;/strong&gt;, improving the quality of the air you live in can ultimately lower the&#xA;  chances of getting sick.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are many silent, invisible contaminants floating around the air that most people don’t even think about. The fact is, they can be&#xA;  harmful, especially if one lives amongst them. Household contaminants&#xA;  are extremely common, and avoiding them can be impossible without an&#xA;  air purifier. Common household contaminants include cigarette smoke,&#xA;  dust, aerosols and pet dander/odors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;While household contaminants are certainly one of the main reasons to use an air purifier, they are equally useful in eliminating harmful&#xA;  microorganisms that float through the air. &lt;strong&gt;Mold, pathogens and viruses&#xA;  are all airborne hazards&lt;/strong&gt; that many people come into contact with on a&#xA;  daily basis. Continual exposure to these and other hazards can have a&#xA;  very negative affect on one’s health, which is why it is wise to take&#xA;  any and all necessary measures to ensure that your air is as clean as&#xA;  it could possibly be.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I am excluding any improvements in reducing allergens, such as pet dander, which presumably only affect people with specific allergies, and special cases such as industrial/construction&#xA; settings.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there scientific evidence that air purifiers reduce the risk of illness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-10-26T22:55:59.483" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T22:56:04.093" Title="Do household air purifiers prevent illness?" Tags="|environmental-health|technology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17525" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17536" CreationDate="2013-08-30T19:58:58.503" Score="5" ViewCount="5934" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does high doses of vitamin B3 treat or stop psychosis effectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The DOCTOR YOURSELF NEWSLETTER (Vol. 3, No 12) May 5, 2003&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;VITAMIN CURE FOR PSYCHOSIS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simply put, it is niacin, and plenty of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the film &quot;Masks of Madness; Science of Healing,&quot; psychiatrist Abram&#xA;  Hoffer, MD, PhD says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Mental illness is usually biochemical illness. Mental illness is a&#xA;  disorder of brain dysfunction. Schizophrenia is vitamin B-3 (niacin)&#xA;  dependency.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://rawfoodinfo.com/articles/art_niacinforpsychosis.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://rawfoodinfo.com/articles/art_niacinforpsychosis.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somebody claiming it works for them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hi, I am 27 and have had been hearing voices off and on (but fairly&#xA;  consistently) for the past few years. I used to have bipolar symptoms&#xA;  starting at 19, but the symptoms began to become more like&#xA;  schizophrenia after a few years. I also recently stumbled upon the dr.&#xA;  hoffer niacin therapy. I slowly have been raising the niacin dose and&#xA;  am up to 1.5grams a day and the voices seem to have gone. I still get&#xA;  them a little, but they now seem to be more like thoughts than voices.&#xA;  I have been reducing the seroquel every two weeks to no detrimental&#xA;  effect. I now take around 50mg/day  Why isn't this treatment given to&#xA;  everyone!?&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://ehealthforum.com/health/niacin-treatment-for-schizophrenia-t314742.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ehealthforum.com/health/niacin-treatment-for-schizophrenia-t314742.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14234" LastActivityDate="2017-03-27T11:11:56.840" Title="Can high doses of niacin (B3) effectively treat psychosis?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|medications|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2215" CreationDate="2013-08-31T00:46:19.587" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are safe to consume.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2012/1025gm_statement.shtml&quot;&gt;American Association for the Advancement of Science&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ama-assn.org/resources/doc/csaph/a12-csaph2-bioengineeredfoods.pdf&quot;&gt;American Medical Association&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/biotech/20questions/en/&quot;&gt;World Health Organization&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodScienceResearch/Biotechnology/ucm346030.htm&quot;&gt;Food and Drug Administration&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/research/biosociety/pdf/a_decade_of_eu-funded_gmo_research.pdf&quot;&gt;EU researchers&lt;/a&gt; all agree that GMOs are safe to eat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the American Medical Association:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bioengineered foods have been consumed for close to 20 years, and during that time, no &#xA;  overt consequences on human health have been reported and/or substantiated in the peer-reviewed literature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and from the World Health Organization:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;GM foods currently available on the international market have passed risk assessments and are not likely to present risks for human health. In addition, no effects on human health have been shown as a result of the consumption of such foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though some sources admit the possibility of risk from unexpected allergic reactions or gene transfer, they note that required testing for GMOs has meant that no GMOs on the market pose a risk to consumers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may see people reference one study by a scientist named Séralini, which found that GMOs cause cancer in rats, but that study has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seralini_affair#Scientific_evaluation&quot;&gt;thoroughly debunked&lt;/a&gt;. Séralini had an insufficient sample size, used a strain of rats likely to develop cancer anyway, and released his paper to the press before he released it to peer review. His results do not match the scientific consensus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: the scientific consensus is that GMOs are safe to consume, and not a single health problem has ever been attributed to genetically modified foods in the decades we've been eating them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; The aforementioned debunked Séralini study has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/research-and-journals/elsevier-announces-article-retraction-from-journal-food-and-chemical-toxicology&quot;&gt;retracted&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastEditorUserId="8532" LastEditDate="2013-12-08T21:02:57.333" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T21:02:57.333" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17530" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-08-31T06:40:33.267" Score="9" ViewCount="1275" Body="&lt;p&gt;The blog, &lt;a href=&quot;https://seyisanchez.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/new-medical-breakthrough-on-reviving-the-dead-within-24-hours-after-death-revealed-by-heart-specialist/&quot;&gt;Seyisanchez, claims that&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the latest available statistics, nearly twice as many&#xA;  patients are resuscitated [at Stony Brook University Hospital in New York] every year compared to other U.S.&#xA;  hospitals — the average resuscitation rate at Stony Brook is an&#xA;  astounding 33 percent, which contrasts sharply with the 18 percent&#xA;  average elsewhere. So how does it all work? The techniques [Dr. Sam Parnia] advocates&#xA;  are not cryogenics – freezing the body immediately after death – but&#xA;  cooling it down to best preserve brain cells while keeping up the&#xA;  level of oxygen in the blood. This buys time to fix the underlying&#xA;  problem and restart the heart, he claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/doctor-sam-parnia-believes-resurrection-is-a-medical-possibility-a-913075.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, the Dr. Parnia restates his claim (along with more detailed explanation of the cooling process):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With today's medicine, we can bring people back to life up to one, maybe two hours, sometimes even longer, after their heart stopped beating and they have thus died by circulatory failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14234" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-08-31T19:55:40.277" LastActivityDate="2022-09-11T23:38:36.123" Title="Can a clinically dead person be revived several hours later if the body was cooled?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17525" CreationDate="2013-08-31T16:37:04.263" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't found a credible source which says that it is effective, by looking at the types of web sites returned by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=psychosis+niacin&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/search?q=psychosis+niacin&lt;/a&gt; search and similar searches for related terms (i.e. &quot;B3&quot; and &quot;schizophrenia&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Hoffer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia on Abram Hoffer&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hoffer's theories on schizophrenia and nutrition were generally discredited because of methodological flaws and negative findings by scientists who tried to replicate his work.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...]Though Hoffer and Osmond reported nicotinic acid could help with the treatment of schizophrenia, these results could not be replicated by others. Despite the apparent face validity of Hoffer's &quot;transmethylation hypothesis&quot; (in which it was thought that the production of catecholamines could sometimes go awry and produce a hallucinogenic neurotoxin), it was ultimately rejected for two reasons: the alleged neurotoxins were never identified and the cause of schizophrenia became attributed to dysfunctions in neurotransmitters.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [...] In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association reported methodological flaws in Hoffer's work on niacin as a schizophrenia treatment and referred to follow-up studies that did not confirm any benefits of the treatment,[22] prompting at least two responses.[23][24] Multiple additional studies in the United States,[25] Canada,[26] and Australia[27] similarly failed to find benefits of megavitamin therapy to treat schizophrenia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/niacin/NS_patient-niacin/DSECTION=evidence&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic lists several uses for Niacin&lt;/a&gt;, none of which are for psychosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly its list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/schizophrenia/DS00196/DSECTION=treatments-and-drugs&quot;&gt;medications for schizophrenia&lt;/a&gt; doesn't include Niacin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extreme &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra&quot;&gt;Niacin deficiency causes Pellagra&lt;/a&gt;, some whose symptoms include, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aggression, &#xA;  Insomnia,&#xA;  Mental confusion,&#xA;  Eventually dementia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clinical pellagra has obvious symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hoffer et. al. had a theory that psychosis may be caused by &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1970/pdf/1970-v02n02&amp;amp;03-p070.pdf&quot;&gt;subclinical pellagra&lt;/a&gt;&quot; but again &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=subclinical%2Bpellagra&quot;&gt;Google doesn't find&lt;/a&gt; reputable-looking (i.e. academic or government) web sites using that search term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest I've come to finding (using Google) its being used by orthodox practitioners is that they are still investigating (haven't proven) whether a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=niacin+skin+test&quot;&gt;niacin skin test&lt;/a&gt; a.k.a. &quot;flush test&quot; may be useful in diagnosing schizophrenia. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20305586&quot;&gt;a study from 2010&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Heritability estimates established in several studies support niacin skin flush response as a vulnerability trait for the development of psychosis. However, the exact mechanism of a reduced skin flush, the possible influence of the long-term use of antipsychotics, and the usefulness of the test for diagnostic purpose are not clear yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-08-31T16:37:04.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17539" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27335" CreationDate="2013-08-31T20:25:00.180" Score="13" ViewCount="2131" Body="&lt;p&gt;The risk of a cigarette smoking person developing cancer is much higher than a the risk of a non-smoker developing cancer (can I assume that this is common knowledge?) - this website claims that adding marijuana to the mix will reduce the risk due to the mechanism of how marijuana helps remove the cigarette toxins from the lungs. &#xA;They don't mention by how much the risk is reduced, for which types of cancers it is beneficial and since they have financial interests, I'm skeptical about their claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a Costa Rican study, it was found that chronic marijuana smokers&#xA;  who also smoked cigarettes were less likely to develop cancer than&#xA;  cigarette smokers who didn’t use marijuana. Since marijuana (smoking,&#xA;  as well as ingestion by other methods) dilates the alveoli, toxins are&#xA;  more easily eliminated with cannabis use regardless of its method of&#xA;  application. Nicotine, on the other hand, constricts the alveoli, so&#xA;  it is likely that the use of cannabis neutralizes, or even overwhelms&#xA;  the constriction, by its own tendency to dilation&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benefitsofmarijuana.com/benefits.php&quot;&gt;http://www.benefitsofmarijuana.com/benefits.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does cigarette smokers lower their risk of some cancers by also smoking cannabis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14234" LastActivityDate="2019-04-21T14:59:39.347" Title="Can smoking marijuana reduce the risk of cancer in cigarette smokers?" Tags="|cancer|marijuana|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17541" CreationDate="2013-08-31T21:07:14.153" Score="16" ViewCount="2052" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see several websites claiming that without bees, mankind will be extinct in four years. Does human survival depend on bees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citing Albert Einstein's saying to the effect that mankind would&#xA;become extinct four years after honey bees disappeared from the face&#xA;of the earth, Haim Efrat, head of the Beekeeping Division, said he'd&#xA;rather sound the alarm than be complacent. &amp;quot;I don't mind if I turn out&#xA;to be wrong and I say it clearly: We have Colony Collapse Disorder&#xA;here in Israel. Though we are not even close to the problem they face&#xA;in the US and Canada, tomorrow morning we could wake up to a severe&#xA;case of the phenomenon.&amp;quot;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150910122409/http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/will-mankind-be-extinct-in-four-years-if-we-lose-our-honeybees.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Will Mankind Be Extinct In Four Years If We Lose Our Honeybees?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14234" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2022-06-04T16:28:14.193" LastActivityDate="2022-06-04T16:28:14.193" Title="Does human survival depend on bees?" Tags="|agriculture|extinction-event|bees|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17540" CreationDate="2013-08-31T22:05:12.953" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ent.uga.edu/bees/OnEinsteinBeesandSurvivaloftheHumanRaceHoneyBeeProgramCAESEntomologyUGA.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Keith S. Delaplane, Professor, Dept. Entomology,&#xA;University of Georgia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did Einstein say this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[T]here is no good evidence that Albert Einstein actually said this. In fact he most assuredly did not. All you have to do is google “Einstein bees,” and you’ll get the whole story: how this quote surfaced for the first time in the early 1990s, long after Einstein’s death, and in contexts far removed from the possibility of verification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it true, nonetheless?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to summarize the latest answers to the questions above, it would be something like this: Does human life depend on bee pollination? No. To what extent does the quality of human life depend on bee pollination? Well, it depends on where you live and what crops we’re talking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How much of our food is dependent on bees?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors of the [United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization data] analysis concluded that the proportion of global food production attributable to animal pollination ranges from 5% in industrialized nations to 8% in the developing world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Do bees matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think bee advocates do their cause a disservice when they stoke the flames of hyperbole and sensationalism. Much better to pose the question as a quality of life issue. To the extent that we value a diverse food supply with minimized trauma to the environments where it is produced, we will place a high value indeed on honey bees and other pollinators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the curious, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2009/04/01/aob.mcp076&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study of the FAO data&lt;/a&gt; categorized crops into one of 5 categories, based on their level of pollinator dependence. 0: no dependence; 1: 0-10% reduction without pollinators; 2: 10-40% reduction without pollinators; 3: 40-90% reduction without pollinators; and 4: &amp;gt;90% reduction without pollinators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;div class=&quot;s-table-container&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;table class=&quot;s-table&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;th style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Crop&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Category&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Okra, Gumbo&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;2&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Kiwifruit&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;4&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Onion, Shallot, Welsh onion&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;0†&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Garlic&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;0‡&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Almond&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;3&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Cashew nut, and Cashew-apple&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;3&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Pineapple&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;0‡&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Groundnut, Peanut&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;1&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Asparagus&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;0†&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Oat&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;0&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Brazil nut, Para nut, Cream nut&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;4&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Sugar beet&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;0&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Mustard Seed&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;2&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Cabbage, Cauliflower&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;0†&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Rapeseed, Oilseed rape, Canola&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;2&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Pigeon pea, Cajan pea, Congo bean&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;1&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Chile pepper, Red pepper, Bell pepper, Green pepper, Allspice, Pimento&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;1&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;Papaya&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td style=&quot;text-align: left;&quot;&gt;1&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;/table&gt;&#xA;&lt;/div&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;† Pollinators increase seed production to produce the vegetative parts that we consume.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;‡ Pollinators increase seed production in plant breeding, but the plants reproduce vegetatively and we consume the vegetative parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2022-06-04T16:24:09.437" LastActivityDate="2022-06-04T16:24:09.437" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17542" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-01T03:32:54.187" Score="3" ViewCount="225" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psoriatic_arthritis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Psoriatic arthritis&lt;/a&gt; is an auto-immune disease that is often treated with &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methotrexate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;methotrexate&lt;/a&gt; (MTX).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my case, my doctors assure me that MTX is the right medication for this sickness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the German wikipedia entry on &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuppenflechte&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;psoriasis&lt;/a&gt;, it says that a recent placebo-controlled study couldn't confirm this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lange galt, dass MTX besonders gut bei Psoriasisarthritis wirksam ist, allerdings konnte eine in 2012 publizierte randomisierte Placebo-kontrollierte Studie keinen solchen Effekt zeigen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It cites Reich, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22356630&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The concept of psoriasis as a systemic inflammation: implications for disease management&lt;/a&gt; J Eur Acad Dermatol Venereol. 2012 Mar;26 Suppl 2:3-11. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-3083.2011.04410.x&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that study accepted, valid and/or otherwise trustworthy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15212" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-09-01T03:38:46.287" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T15:24:16.807" Title="Does MTX treat Psoriatic arthritis?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17544" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17563" CreationDate="2013-09-01T10:45:38.283" Score="5" ViewCount="1482" Body="&lt;p&gt;In South Africa a &quot;geyser&quot; is a type of water heater that typically consists of a cylindrical water tank of 100 to 200 Litres capacity heated by an electric heating element of 2kW to 4kW capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A geyser blanket is an insulator that is wrapped around a geyser to reduce wasted heat loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insulating the outlet pipes makes sense since there will be heat losses there, but does insulating the whole geyser actually make any difference to your electricity bill if the geyser feels cold on the outside (in other words, the geyser is insulated by design)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Geyser blankets are said to make significant savings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iamchangingtheworld.org.za/install-a-geyser-blanket/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I am changing the world&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A geyser blanket is proven to save up to 1 800kw/h per year!&#xA;  (depending on the size of your geyser)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homeinsulations.co.za/geyser.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Home Insulations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wrapping your geyser and hot water pipes with think pink aerolite or isotherm is a practical and efficient solution is to minimize thermal energy loss. The result will be a monthly electricity saving of up to 21 percent!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.25degrees.net/index.php/component/option,com_zine/Itemid,81/id,571/lang,en/view,article/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2006 article&lt;/a&gt; claims that a well-designed geyser doesn't need a geyser blanket:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This test indicates the energy losses incurred by an electric geyser&#xA;  over a 24-hour period. SunTank’s outstanding energy efficiency&#xA;  performance in this test gives hope that other industry players will&#xA;  follow the lead and save the water heating industry the embarrassment&#xA;  of having to retrofit geyser blankets.  SunTank’s managing director&#xA;  Yoram Gur Arie says, “We have set certain integrity guidelines for the&#xA;  company that enable us to face customers with pride. How can anyone&#xA;  sell a new geyser and expect the customer to immediately pay&#xA;  additional fees for an installation of a geyser blanket in order to&#xA;  achieve the desired performance? I call on the geyser manufacturing&#xA;  industry to rewrite performance standards and regain some lost&#xA;  reputation.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming all modern geysers follow the same standards of being insulated by design, does a geyser blanket save the consumer any electricity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14234" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-09-01T21:40:58.650" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T13:01:39.297" Title="Does a Geyser Blanket save electricity?" Tags="|energy-efficiency|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5271" CreationDate="2013-09-01T14:35:29.040" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;What Spain was really interested in was to find a sea route to the orient (Asia) and principally India. At that time, all the various spices, silk and many other items came from Asia and were extremely valuable. The existing trade route was by land and it was long, arduous and dangerous. Spain wanted to compete with other European countries in this highly profitable market &lt;em&gt;(Abernethy, David (2000). The Dynamics of Global Dominance, European Overseas Empires 1415–1980. Yale University Press&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that time Portugal had asserted itself as a dominant sea power so Columbus first approached the Portuguese monarch suggesting that he could reach India by sailing west rather than southeast (around Africa) as was the Portuguese plan. The Portuguese already knew that there were other lands that could be found by sailing west - they had already begun colonization of the Azores archipelago in the North Atlantic and there were reports of other lands much further out west by fisherman and other Portuguese explorers (&lt;em&gt;Boxer, Charles Ralph (1969). The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415–1825. Hutchinson&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Portuguese were excellent sailors and cartographers and were skeptical that these lands were any part of Asia so they were dismissive of Columbus plan -The king submitted Columbus's proposal to his experts, who rejected it. It was their considered opinion that Columbus's estimation of a travel distance of 2,400 miles (3,860 km) was, in fact, far too low &lt;em&gt;(Samuel Eliot Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea: The Life of Christopher Columbus,(Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1942). Reissued by the Morison Press, 2007&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1488, Columbus appealed to the court of Portugal once again, and once again, John II invited him to an audience. That meeting also proved unsuccessful, in part because not long afterwards Bartolomeu Dias returned to Portugal with news of his successful rounding of the southern tip of Africa (near the Cape of Good Hope). With an eastern sea route to Asia apparently at hand, King John was no longer interested in Columbus's far-fetched project, but offered him a captain-ship in their fleet. Columbus declined and approached Spain with his proposal and plan which after much deliberation was eventually accepted.&#xA;Columbus sailed west and reached the Caribbean Islands and thought that he had landed in some islands off the coast of Asia. He held to this belief until the day he died. &lt;em&gt;( Davidson, Miles H. (1997)&lt;/em&gt;, Columbus then and now: a life reexamined, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He simply underestimated the size of the earth. In theory he was right. By heading west from Spain all around the globe he could have reached India, but he would have to have crossed all of the Atlantic and all of the Pacific Ocean and would have perished at sea. Columbus landed in the Caribbean in 1492. By 1498 the Portuguese had already arrived in India following their planned route by sailing southeast. Over time they established several colonies in Asia and overwhelmingly dominated the trade route with Asia for over one hundred years &gt;&lt;em&gt;(Russell-Wood, A.J.R. (1998). The Portuguese Empire 1415–1808. Johns Hopkins University Press).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15217" LastEditorUserId="4146" LastEditDate="2013-09-23T12:27:44.963" LastActivityDate="2013-09-23T12:27:44.963" CommentCount="10" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-09-06T03:11:57.677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17547" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17558" CreationDate="2013-09-01T14:50:02.623" Score="38" ViewCount="3616" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a popular meme, &lt;em&gt;&quot;in Australia everything tries to kill you&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, often backed up by the list of dangerous animals, such as box jellyfish, variety of spiders, salt water crocodiles and sharks. However it's purely anecdotal, and one could imagine similar list for example for US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do statistics actually confirm that Australians are more likely to be hurt or killed by animals, than people in the other regions of the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it's not clear how one would measure &quot;more danger&quot;. I'd say attacks per capita and fatalities per capita would be good metrics for comparison. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T10:11:17.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T10:11:17.730" Title="Is Australian fauna more dangerous?" Tags="|zoology|mortality|australia|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17548" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-01T19:22:10.220" Score="29" ViewCount="2756" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/butter-vs-margarine/AN00835&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article at MayoClinic by an R.D.&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Margarine usually tops butter when it comes to heart health. [...] So skip the stick and opt for soft or liquid margarine instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/Cholesterol/PreventionTreatmentofHighCholesterol/Know-Your-Fats_UCM_305628_Article.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Heart Association&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recent studies on the potential cholesterol-raising effects of TFA have raised public concern about the use of margarine and whether other options, including butter, might be a better choice. Some stick margarines contribute more TFA than unhydrogenated oils or other fats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because butter is rich in both saturated fat and cholesterol, it's potentially a highly atherogenic food (a food that causes the arteries to be blocked). Most margarine is made from vegetable fat and provides no dietary cholesterol. The more liquid the margarine, i.e., tub or liquid forms, the less hydrogenated it is and the less TFA it contains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/GettingHealthy/WeightManagement/LosingWeight/Use-Olive-Canola-Corn-or-Safflower-Oil-as-Your-Main-Kitchen-Fats_UCM_320268_Article.jsp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;And&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best choice for your health is a liquid margarine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other research (summarized in &lt;a href=&quot;http://group.bmj.com/group/media/latest-news/study-raises-questions-about-dietary-fats-and-heart-disease-guidance&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this editorial from the British Medical Journal&lt;/a&gt;) says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calder says the findings argue against the &amp;quot;saturated fat bad, omega 6 PUFA good&amp;quot; dogma and suggest that the American Heart Association guidelines on omega-6 PUFAs may be misguided. They also &amp;quot;underscore the need to properly align dietary advice and recommendations with the scientific evidence base.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That quote refers to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.e8707&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[C]linical benefits of the most abundant polyunsaturated fatty acid, omega 6 linoleic acid, have not been established. In this cohort, substituting dietary linoleic acid in place of saturated fats increased the rates of death from all causes, coronary heart disease, and cardiovascular disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think these quotes establish two mutually exclusive claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Margarine (especially soft or liquid margarine that is low in TFA) is better for heart health than butter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Death rate due to all causes, coronary heart disease, and cardiovascular disease increases when substituting liquid margarines in place of butter.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T05:36:22.200" Title="Is margarine healthier for you than butter?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-02T06:10:59.077" Score="6" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;One aspect of the latest reveal of the US budget for intelligence agencies that has been reported in the media is the alleged budget for a program to break encryption. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/08/feds-plow-10-billion-into-groundbreaking-crypto-cracking-program/&quot;&gt;an Ars Technica article on the subject&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The federal government is pouring almost $11 billion per year into a&#xA;  35,000-employee program dedicated to &quot;groundbreaking&quot; methods to&#xA;  decode encrypted messages such as e-mails&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen the same statement repeated in the german media. The reason I'm skeptical is that this budget is around the same size as the reported budget for the CIA and NSA each. This seems to be an extraordinary amount for a single program, and I'm wondering if it is a misinterpretation of the leaked documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This program is referred to as the &quot;Consolidated Cryptologic Program&quot; in the articles, what is the evidence that this is a program to crack encryption? And is the claim in the article that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of the $11 billion are spend on cracking encryption supported by the leaked documents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T07:45:18.640" Title="Does the US spend 10 billions per year to crack encryption algorithms?" Tags="|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17553" CreationDate="2013-09-02T07:45:18.640" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's a huge overstatement. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a Consolidated Cryptologic Program, which receives 21% of $52.5 billion &quot;black&quot; budget (&lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/inside-the-2013-us-intelligence-black-budget/420/#document/p13&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;). However, this is an umbrella program, which includes &lt;em&gt;whole&lt;/em&gt; NSA budget. Only 4% (circa $440 mln) of CCP budget is allocated to Research &amp;amp; Technology (&lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/inside-the-2013-us-intelligence-black-budget/420/#document/p16&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;). It's not disclosed how big a part of these $440 mln is allocated to cryptoanalisis research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T07:45:18.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17547" CreationDate="2013-09-02T07:50:50.133" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR&lt;/strong&gt;: No. Australia's most deadly animals are in fact foreign. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below is a break down of animal deaths in Australia. First native animals and then non-native animals. Where discrepancies exist in the data, both values are stated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Native Animals&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Snakes&lt;/strong&gt;: With 41 recorded deaths between 1980 and 2009 (source 1) (or 53 from 1979-1998(source 2)), snake deaths in Australia average out at less than two per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spiders&lt;/strong&gt;: Nobody in Australia has died from a spider bite since 1981 after the successful introduction of antivenom for all native species. (source 4)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sharks&lt;/strong&gt;: Accounted for 25 deaths between 2000 and (March) 2012 in Australia, about 2 a year. (source 1) Or 216 in 227 years (source 6).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Crocodiles&lt;/strong&gt;: Historically, crocodiles account for less than one death per year here in Australia, although that is increasing slightly as the crocodile population rises following the ban on crocodile hunting in 1971.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Blue Ringed Octopus&lt;/strong&gt;: Just 3 recorded deaths in the last century (source 1). Or 2 (source 7).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stonefish&lt;/strong&gt;: One unconfirmed death by stonefish in 1915. (source 5)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cone Snails&lt;/strong&gt;: 0 deaths - ever (source 1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Killer Jellyfish&lt;/strong&gt;: Jellyfish account for (at time of writing) 66 deaths since records began in 1883. The box jellyfish was responsible for 64 deaths, and the Irukandji the other two. It sounds a lot, but still less than one death per year, more like just half a death per year. (source 1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dingo&lt;/strong&gt;: 3 deaths between 1980 and 2012. All children. (source 9)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Non - Native Animals&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Horses&lt;/strong&gt;: Around 20 people a year die from horse riding accidents (source 1). Or 40 over 6 years (source 8)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cows and Bulls&lt;/strong&gt;: 20 in 6 years or 3 per year. (source 8)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bees&lt;/strong&gt;: Around 2-10 people per year in Australia die from European Honey Bee stings after going into anaphylactic shock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Domesticated Dogs&lt;/strong&gt;: 12 over 6 years or 2 per year. (source 8)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1).&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bobinoz.com/migration-advice/australias-killer-creatures-the-truth-about-deaths/&quot;&gt;http://www.bobinoz.com/migration-advice/australias-killer-creatures-the-truth-about-deaths/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2). &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_snake_bites_in_Australia&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatal_snake_bites_in_Australia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avru.org/general/general_fatals.html&quot;&gt;http://www.avru.org/general/general_fatals.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4). &lt;a href=&quot;http://australianmuseum.net.au/Spider-facts&quot;&gt;http://australianmuseum.net.au/Spider-facts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(5). &lt;a href=&quot;http://australianmuseum.net.au/Reef-Stonefish-Synanceia-verrucosa-Bloch-Schneider-1801&quot;&gt;http://australianmuseum.net.au/Reef-Stonefish-Synanceia-verrucosa-Bloch-Schneider-1801&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(6). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/shark-attacks-in-australia-timeline.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/shark-attacks-in-australia-timeline.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(7). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aims.gov.au/docs/projectnet/blue-ringed-octopus.html&quot;&gt;http://www.aims.gov.au/docs/projectnet/blue-ringed-octopus.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(8). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/dangerous-wildlife/2008/07/04/1214951042706.html&quot;&gt;http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/dangerous-wildlife/2008/07/04/1214951042706.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(9). &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo_attack&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingo_attack&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="5487" LastEditDate="2013-09-02T08:18:37.427" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T08:18:37.427" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17544" CreationDate="2013-09-02T21:39:31.647" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, by simple physics, it will save the customer some electricity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rate at which heat is lost by a hot water tank is proportional to the difference between water temperature and air temperature. And it's also proportional to the U-value of the covering. Adding insulation will decrease the U-value, and so will decrease the rate at which heat is lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hot water tanks are typically controlled by a thermostat. So sufficient electricity is used, to replace the energy lost by heat loss from the tank, and the energy used by drawing off hot water from the tank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, by reducing the heat loss from the tank, thermal insulation reduces the electricity consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt; For details of the calculation, see for example the UK government's Standard Assessment Procedure for Energy Use in Dwellings, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uea.ac.uk/~e680/energy/energy_links/building_regs/SAP-2009_9-90.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SAP2009 (pdf)&lt;/a&gt; - here's Table 2, showing how the rate of energy loss typically decreases, with increasing thickness of insulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FYsqa.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(reproduced under fair use, Crown copyright 2010)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that your quote says &lt;strong&gt;up to&lt;/strong&gt; 1800 kWh/y will be saved: for a very large, very badly insulated tank, the savings can be very high: 6 kWh/d is certainly plausible, and that's a rate of heat loss of 250W.  Let's take a large, really badly insulated hot water tank with a surface area of 5 square metres, and base U-value of 2.0, a water temperature of 70&amp;deg; Celsius, and an air temperature of 20&amp;deg; Celsius. That gives a heat loss rate of 5 x 2 x (70 - 20) = 500 W. So if the insulation halves that (and it should do better than that), that's more than 1800 kWh saved per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The energy savings = energy loss before - energy loss after&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In each case, the energy loss = (water temp - air temp) x surface area x U-value x duration&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insulation will slightly increase the surface area. And it may also change the time-profile of water temperature and air temperature around it. So the specific number is hard to calculate accurately in advance - it can be approximated, with fair accuracy, by making some simplifying assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The U-value changes according to the following equation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;( 1 / new U-value ) = ( 1 / old U-value ) + ( 1 / U-value of insulation )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. if the old U-value was 2.0, and the U-value of the insulation is 1.0, then&lt;br&gt;&#xA;the new U-value = 1 / ( 1 / 2.0 + 1 / 1.0) = 1 / 1.5 = 0.67&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(source - as above, SAP2009)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="6236" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T13:01:39.297" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T13:01:39.297" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17547" CreationDate="2013-09-02T22:42:40.287" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without a specific, notable version of this claim to address, we're just in the realm of speculation about what the meme actually means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a list of the world's deadliest animals, confirmed by two sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/11325-top-10-deadliest-animals.html&quot;&gt;http://www.livescience.com/11325-top-10-deadliest-animals.html&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/5149977/Top-10-deadliest-animals-on-the-planet.html&quot;&gt;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/5149977/Top-10-deadliest-animals-on-the-planet.html&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mosquito (all regions) (Also see Achille et al. 2010: &quot;&lt;em&gt;In terms of morbidity and mortality caused by vector-borne diseases, mosquitoes are the most dangerous animals confronting mankind&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, and Wilson 2007: &quot;&lt;em&gt;The most dangerous animals on Earth are in fact mosquitoes&lt;/em&gt;&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Asian Cobra (Asia)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Australian Box Jellyfish (Australia)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Great White Shark (all regions)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;African Lion (Africa)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Crocodile (Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Elephant (Africa, Asia) (See Henja et al. 2012: &quot;&lt;em&gt;elephants are among the world's most dangerous&#xA;animals&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Polar Bear (North America, Asia)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cape Buffalo (Africa)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poison Dart Frog (Central/South America)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of these 10, counting roughly, there 4 are present in Australia, 6 are present in Africa, 4 in South America, 4 in North America, 6 in Asia, 2 in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most dangerous species in the world are not more present in Australia than elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To properly answer the question &quot;Is australian fauna more dangerous?&quot;, we'd need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a ranking of all fauna by dangerousness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the list of fauna in Australia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the list of fauna elsewhere in the world&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, we could compare the average dangerousness rank of Australian fauna vs the average rank of fauna elsewhere in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Achille, G. N., Christophe, H. S., &amp;amp; Yilian, L. (2010). Effect of Bacillus thuringiensis var. israelensis (H-14) on Culex, Aedes and Anopheles larvae (Cotonou; Benin). Stem Cell, 1(1), 60-8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wilson, R. I. (2007). Neurobiology: Scent secrets of insects. Nature, 445(7123), 30-31.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hejna, P., Zátopková, L., &amp;amp; Šafr, M. (2012). A fatal elephant attack. Journal of forensic sciences, 57(1), 267-269.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-09-02T22:48:51.043" LastActivityDate="2013-09-02T22:48:51.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17566" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7239" CreationDate="2013-09-02T23:38:03.697" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both silver and copper are used in swimming pools to prevent algae growth, and in combination with lower-than-usual levels of chlorine, to control bacteria.  In some of those applications, an electric current is applied to drive silver (or copper) ions into solution where they destroy algae cells.  Other applications use a solution of &quot;colloidal silver&quot;, which is silver in extremely fine particulate form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2014/chapter-2-the-pre-travel-consultation/water-disinfection-for-travelers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;online&lt;/a&gt; publication titled &quot;Water Disinfection for Travelers&quot; which indicates that silver can be used for disinfection, though it's not effective against all potential contaminants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Silver ion has bactericidal effects in low doses and some attractive features, including absence of color, taste, and odor. The use of silver as a drinking water disinfectant is popular in Europe, but it is not approved for this purpose in the United States, because silver concentration in water is strongly affected by adsorption onto the surface of the container, and there has been limited testing on viruses and cysts. In the United States, silver is approved for maintaining microbiologic quality of stored water. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://aem.asm.org/content/74/5/1639.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology&lt;/a&gt; contains an article titled &quot;Silver as a Residual Disinfectant To Prevent Biofilm Formation in Water Distribution Systems&quot; The article states that silver has known antimicrobial effects, and presents a mechanism of action: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Silver's antimicrobial effect has been demonstrated in numerous applications against different types of microorganisms (7, 10). The bactericidal efficacy of silver is through its binding to disulfide or sulfhydryl groups in cell wall proteins (11, 35). Silver also binds to DNA (38). Through these binding events, metabolic processes are disrupted, leading to cell death (21).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also cites its use in Europe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Silver is effective against planktonic bacteria (34) and has been used for water disinfection in Europe (18, 31). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/asktoh/question/0,,401167,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; is a link to a This Old House recommendation to use copper strips, or shingles containing copper granules to prevent algae growth on roofs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastEditorUserId="8436" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T10:16:01.397" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T10:16:01.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17568" CreationDate="2013-09-03T00:50:53.353" Score="12" ViewCount="455" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzfeed.com/ashleyperez/8-foods-we-eat-in-the-us-that-are-banned-in-other-countries&quot;&gt;post on Buzzfeed&lt;/a&gt; recently claimed that chicken feed has arsenic added to it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Used in some chicken feed to make meat appear pinker and fresher&lt;/em&gt;, arsenic is poison, which will kill you if you ingest enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that food manufacturers add arsenic to feed to make chicken appear pink?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11001" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T02:34:41.983" Title="Are chickens fed arsenic?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17568" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17567" CreationDate="2013-09-03T01:12:34.653" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2010, 88% of chickens raised in the United States received roxarsone, an arsenic-based drug. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/05/130513095030.htm&quot;&gt;Science Daily&lt;/a&gt;) The reasons include &quot;promot[ing] growth, treat[ing] disease and improv[ing] meat pigmentation.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-hunt/arsenic-in-chicken_b_3267334.html&quot;&gt;Huffington Post - The Arsenic in Your Chicken&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arsenic is a poison to humans (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic_poisoning&quot;&gt;Wikipedia:Arsenic poisoning&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is sufficient to address the quoted claim, but I'll add that &lt;a href=&quot;http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/1206245/?utm_source=rss&amp;amp;utm_medium=rss&amp;amp;utm_campaign=1206245&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; found that &quot;the use of arsenic-based drugs contributes to dietary [inorganic arsenic] exposure in consumers of conventionally produced chickens&quot;, and that &quot;this increase in arsenic exposure could result in 3.7 additional lifetime bladder and lung cancer cases per 100,000 exposed persons&quot;, under certain assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T02:34:41.983" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T02:34:41.983" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7033" CreationDate="2013-09-03T09:48:56.007" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Being a Russian myself I read the article, you quoted, with curiosity. I never heard anything about throwing passengers from troikas to wolves. And there is a major error there: aristocrats never rode together with peasants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality wolves rarely attack people. When riding through wolf dangerous places, Russians took firearms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mMvLt.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to answer your last question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;If not, where is the story originating from? Is there any core of truth?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is. There is a Russian idiom: &quot;to throw to the wolves&quot;. In the times of famine, peasants left their little children, whom they couldn't feed, in the wood, where they were eaten by wolves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This situation is also described in the German folklore. In the fairy tale &quot;Hansel and Gretel&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a great famine settles over the land, the woodcutter's second,&#xA;  abusive wife decides to take the children into the woods and leave&#xA;  them there to be by themselves, so that she and her husband will not&#xA;  starve to death&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansel_and_Gretel&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansel_and_Gretel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15237" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T09:48:56.007" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17572" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-03T12:20:58.563" Score="17" ViewCount="7997" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a Daily Mail article from May 2013:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do 'environmentally friendly' LED lights cause BLINDNESS?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the article, they specifically focus on blue LED lights and the wavelength of this light as being the problem and that it can damage your retina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Celia Sánchez-Ramos, of Complutense University in Madrid and who led the study said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;prolonged, continuous exposure to this light may be enough to damage a person's retina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have blue LED lights in my en-suite bathroom. I find they are actually quite gentle on my eyes which is great for first thing in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I be worried? Should I replace my LED lights with something else?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the specific wavelength problem that LED lights cause that damages the retina? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will filtering out blue light from LEDs actually eliminate the problem? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also mention in the article that LED lights have been blamed for damaging art works in galleries but no proof given - any truth to this too?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What damage, if any, can LED lights really cause?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2324325/Do-environmentally-friendly-LED-lights-cause-BLINDNESS.html&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2324325/Do-environmentally-friendly-LED-lights-cause-BLINDNESS.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10899" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T23:43:58.583" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T18:37:57.530" Title="Do LED lights of any colour damage your eyes?" Tags="|consumer-products|light|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17573" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-03T13:49:49.087" Score="4" ViewCount="309" Body="&lt;p&gt;A study by Robert McCraty at the &quot;HeartMath Institute&quot; investigates electromagnetic fields created by the human heart and claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Particular emphasis will be devoted to evidence demonstrating that this energy is not only transmitted internally to the brain but is also detectable by others within its range of communication [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can electromagnetc fields generated by a human heart lead to measurable changes in body or brain functions of other people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heartmath.org/research/research-publications/energetic-heart-bioelectromagnetic-communication-within-and-between-people.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Energetic Heart: Bioelectromagnetic Communication Within and Between People&lt;/a&gt; - unfortunately, the full text is not freely available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7894" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T13:49:49.087" Title="Can people detect &quot;heart waves&quot;?" Tags="|psychology|biophysics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17572" CreationDate="2013-09-03T15:29:22.963" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The conclusion comes from research published in Mapfre's trade journal &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mapfre.com/fundacion/html/revistas/seguridad/n128/en/about-the-journal.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Seguridad y Medio Ambiente&lt;/a&gt; (Security and Environment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mapfre.com/fundacion/html/revistas/seguridad/n128/en/article3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Personal risks posed by LEDs used in everyday devices&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The use of LEDs as lighting sources is growing exponentially, not only&#xA;  as domestic lighting but also in terms of personal devices such as&#xA;  smartphones, computer screens, household appliances, etc. The main&#xA;  drawback of white-light emitting LEDs, however, is their high content&#xA;  of blue wavelength radiation, which is harmful to the visual system.&#xA;  This project involves the design of a lighting device formed by LEDs&#xA;  of different spectral characteristics to check if they cause retina&#xA;  damage, especially in retinal pigment epithelium cells. Our&#xA;  experiments have shown that light exposure from all LED sources&#xA;  increases the percentage of light-induced cell death, especially in&#xA;  cells exposed to white and blue light, which record a 92% and 94%&#xA;  cell-death increase, respectively, in comparison to a non-exposed&#xA;  control group. The study concludes that exposure to high intensity LED&#xA;  light during light/dark cycles harms retina cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, seems that in this experiment control group was not exposed to any light at all, thus this really says very little about how bad is LED compared to other sources of artificial light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T15:45:07.940" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T15:45:07.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17578" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17579" CreationDate="2013-09-03T16:55:29.190" Score="32" ViewCount="4846" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well-renowned security expert &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Schneier&quot;&gt;Bruce Schneier&lt;/a&gt; claims that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the months after 9/11, so many people chose to drive instead of fly that the resulting deaths dwarfed the deaths from the terrorist attack itself, because cars are much more dangerous than airplanes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/our_newfound_fe.html&quot;&gt;Our Newfound Fear of Risk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this backed up by hard data anywhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T17:38:40.067" Title="Did 9/11 lead to many deaths due to car accidents &quot;dwarfing&quot; the attacks themselves?" Tags="|united-states|road-vehicles|9-11|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17578" CreationDate="2013-09-03T17:17:12.163" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/TSF2005.PDF&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2005 report&lt;/a&gt; from National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oaQjN.png&quot; alt=&quot;Table 1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of billions of miles driven and the number of fatalities on US roads increased slowly [data from Table 1 and Table 2]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2000: 41,945 fatalities over 2,747 billion miles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2001: 42,196 fatalities over 2,797 billion miles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2002: 43,005 fatalities over 2,856 billion miles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the entire increase in fatalities could be attributed to increased driving due to the fear/unavailability of flying, and the entire increase in 2001 was September or later, that is &amp;quot;only&amp;quot; an increase of 1,311 fatalities over a period of 15 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare that to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_September_11_attacks&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;number of casualties in the 9/11 attacks&lt;/a&gt; which is generally placed just shy of 3,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examining the graph, the trend for increasing fatalities extends further back than 2001. Even as fatality rates per mile travelled has improved, the distances travelled has increased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To convince myself there wasn't a spike in the distance travelled data that i wasn't seeing in the column of numbers, I plotted it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/78OWf.png&quot; alt=&quot;Graph of distance travelled&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't perform any advanced statistical analysis on this - it was sufficient to persuade me that there was no noticeable spike after 2001.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T17:38:40.067" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17572" CreationDate="2013-09-03T18:48:47.560" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;@Compro01 said in a comment,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is an assessment by ANSES (Basically the French OHSA in this respect) regarding &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anses.fr/fr/content/led-diodes-%C3%A9lectroluminescentes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;health effects of lighting systems using LEDs&lt;/a&gt; that mentions something about blue light, however, I don't understand French and I'm not sure google translate is giving me an accurate translation of the important bits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is my translation/paraphrase of important bits of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Last updated 27 Feburary 2013&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  À ce jour, la méthode la plus rentable économiquement pour fabriquer des LED consiste à combiner une diode émettant une longueur d'onde courte (dans le bleu) avec un luminophore jaune, pour produire de la lumière blanche. Des composantes intenses dans la partie bleue du spectre de la lumière émise par les LED, ainsi que les intensités de rayonnement associées posent la question de nouveaux risques sanitaires liés à ces sources d’éclairage. Dans ce contexte, l’Anses a publié en octobre 2010 un rapport sur les effets sanitaires des systèmes d'éclairage utilisant des LED, assorti de recommandations visant notamment à mieux encadrer la mise sur le marché de ces produits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently the cheapest way to make LEDs is to combine a diode which emits a short wavelength (in the blue) with a luminescent yellow, to make a white light. The intense emissions in the blue part of the spectrum combined with the intensity of the light  pose new health risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;La technologie des LED, qui présente certains avantages par rapport aux autres types d’éclairage (efficacité énergétique, durée de vie), est en pleine évolution. Ses domaines d’application sont larges : éclairage public, domestique et professionnel, installations sportives, voyants lumineux (jouets, signalétique, etc.), éclairage des véhicules, produits à visée thérapeutique (luminothérapie). Néanmoins, la qualité de la lumière (température de couleur[2], indice de rendu decouleur[3]) émise par ces lampes ne présente pas toujours le même niveau de performance que pour les autres sources d’éclairage.&#xA;  Des composantes intenses dans la partie bleue du spectre de la lumière émise par certaines LED, ainsi que les intensités de rayonnement associées posent la question de nouveaux risques sanitaires liés à ces sources d’éclairage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LEDs have various advantages compared with other forms of lighting, and are used in many places, but the quality of the light (the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;color temperature&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_rendering_index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;color accuracy&lt;/a&gt;) doesn't always have the same performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The intense emissions in the blue part of the spectrum raise health questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dans le cadre de l’expertise réalisée par l’Anses, les risques identifiés comme les plus préoccupants, tant par la gravité des dangers associés que par la probabilité d’occurrence dans le cadre d’une généralisation de l’emploi des LED, sont liés aux effets photochimiques de la lumière bleue et à l’éblouissement. Ils résultent :  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;du déséquilibre spectral des LED (forte proportion de lumière bleue&#xA;  dans les LED blanches) ;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;des très fortes luminances4 des LED&#xA;  (fortes densités surfaciques d’intensité lumineuse émises par ces sources de taille très faible).  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Le risque d’effet photochimique est associé à la lumière bleue et son niveau dépend de la dose cumulée de lumière bleue à laquelle la personne a été exposée. Il résulte généralement d’expositions peu intenses répétées sur de longues durées. Le niveau de preuve associé à ce risque est important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risks we identified as the most worrying (because of the gravity of the danger as well as the likelihood of occurrence) are linked to photo-chemical effects of blue light, and dazzling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From the unbalanced spectrum (a lot of blue in a white LED)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From the strong brightness (a lot of light from a small-surface-area point-like light)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risk of photo-chemical effects is linked to blue light and its level depends on accumulated dose. It usually comes from repeated long-duration exposure to not very intense exposures. &quot;The level of proof associated with this risk is high.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Des populations plus particulièrement sensibles au risque ou particulièrement exposées à la lumière bleue ont été identifiées, comme les enfants, les personnes atteintes de certaines maladies oculaires ou encore certaines populations de professionnels soumis à des éclairages de forte intensité.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Populations who are most at risk include children, people with certain eye diseases, and some professionals subjected to high intensity lighting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Il existe actuellement peu de données d’exposition des personnes relatives à un éclairage, qu’il s’agisse des systèmes utilisant des LED ou d’autres types de sources lumineuses. L’Anses n’a ainsi pu présenter des évaluations des risques chiffrées que dans le cas de l’exposition à la lumière bleue, selon les principes développés par la norme NF EN 62471. Cette norme relative à la sécurité photobiologique des lampes propose un classement en groupes de risque liés à la durée d’exposition maximale admissible de l’œil à la lumière.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's currently little data on the effect on people of lighting, whether LEDs or other light sources. We've been able to give numeric risk data only for the case of exposure to blue light, according to the principles developed in standard &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boutique.afnor.org/norme/nf-en-62471/securite-photobiologique-des-lampes-et-des-appareils-utilisant-des-lampes/article/710877/fa151858&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NF EN 62471&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sur la base de ces différents constats, l’Anses, a considéré qu’il est nécessaire de restreindre la mise sur le marché « grand public » des systèmes d’éclairage à LED pour n’autoriser que des LED ne présentant pas plus de risques liés à la lumière bleue que les éclairages traditionnels. Par ailleurs, l’Anses recommande d’adapter la norme NF EN 62 471 relative à la sécurité photobiologique des lampes aux spécificités des LED et de prendre en compte les populations sensibles et les personnes particulièrement exposées (certaines populations de travailleurs : installateurs éclairagistes, métiers du spectacle, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on these observations we have considered it necessary to restrict sales of LEDs to the general public, to LEDs which don't present more of a blue-light risk than other traditional lighting. We also recommend adapting standard NF EN 62 471 for LED specifications, to take into account sensitive populations [as listed above] and people who are especially exposed (certain professionals including lighting specialists, live entertainers, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's another web site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.les-ampoules-a-leds.org/les-leds-sont-elles-dangereuses.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.les-ampoules-a-leds.org/les-leds-sont-elles-dangereuses.php&lt;/a&gt; whose author is an LED manufacturer, which criticizes the above standard. It says not to use &quot;cold&quot; (aka blue) light whose color is above 5200°K, for example 7000°K, when there are children around, unless the glass of the lighting sufficiently filters the short-wavelength blue light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It criticizes the alleged risk of dazzling associated with LEDs, because the risk depends on the intensity of the light which depends on the angle of diffusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to answer the questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&quot;Should I be worried? Should I replace my LED lights with something else?&quot;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-energy_visible_light&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;High-energy visible light&lt;/a&gt; article says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In ophthalmology, high-energy visible light (HEV light) is high-frequency light in the violet/blue band from 400 to 500 nm in the visible spectrum.[1] HEV light has been implicated as a cause of age-related macular degeneration.[2][3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some sunglasses are now designed specifically to block HEV.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blue-light hazard is defined as the potential for a photochemical induced retinal injury resulting from electromagnetic radiation exposure at wavelengths primarily between 400 - 500 nm. This has not been shown to occur in humans, only inconclusively in some rodent and primate studies.[4] The mechanisms for photochemical induced retinal injury are caused by the absorption of light by photoreceptors in the eye. Under normal conditions when light hits a photoreceptor, the cell bleaches and becomes useless until it has recovered through a metabolic process called the visual cycle.[5][6]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Absorption of blue light, however, has been shown in rats and a susceptible strain of mice to cause a reversal of the process where cells become unbleached and responsive again to light before they are ready. At wavelengths of blue light below 430 nm this greatly increases the potential for oxidative damage.[7] For blue-light circadian therapy, harm is minimized by employing blue light at the near-green end of the blue spectrum. &quot;1-2 min of 408 nm and 25 minutes of 430 nm are sufficient to cause irreversible death of photoreceptors and lesions of the retinal pigment epithelium. ... The action spectrum of light-sensitive retinal ganglion cells was found to peak at 470-480 nm, a range with lower damage potential, yet not completely outside the damaging range.&quot;[8]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&quot;What is the specific wavelength problem that LED lights cause that damages the retina?&quot;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The shorter wavelengths. According to the above, 500nm and below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&quot;Will filtering out blue light from LEDs actually eliminate the problem?&quot;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect so, if the filter effectively filters. That's what it says on the web site authored by the LED manufacturer referenced above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&quot;They also mention in the article that LED lights have been blamed for damaging art works in galleries but no proof given - any truth to this too?&quot;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect so: for example flash photography is typically banned in galleries, and always has been in my lifetime. Some old-fashioned pigments are photo-sensitive and fade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&quot;What damage, if any, can LED lights really cause?&quot;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The may depend (on dosage etc.): but the Wikipedia article mentions &quot;age-related macular degeneration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age-related_macular_degeneration#Causes_and_risk_factors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age-related_macular_degeneration#Causes_and_risk_factors&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Exposure to sunlight, especially blue light&lt;/strong&gt;: Evidence is conflicting as to whether exposure to sunlight contributes to the development of macular degeneration. A recent study on 446 subjects found it does not.[27] Other research, however, has shown high-energy visible light may contribute to AMD.[28][29][30]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't access &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boutique.afnor.org/norme/nf-en-62471/securite-photobiologique-des-lampes-et-des-appareils-utilisant-des-lampes/article/710877/fa151858&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NF EN 62471&lt;/a&gt; at a cost of 100 euros: which may contain or reference what ANSES described as &quot;a high level of proof&quot; that blue light can be harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also the answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/14712/2703&quot;&gt;Can blue light therapy contribute to Age-related Macular Degeneration?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T09:02:29.530" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14568" CreationDate="2013-09-03T18:52:49.993" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, light therapy does appear to be an effective treatment for Seasonal Affective Disorder.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleID=96561&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A study&lt;/a&gt; published in the American Journal of Psychiatry compared light therapy to fluoxetine (an SSRI antidepressant) in a double-blind trial.  Each participant was given either a dim placebo light and the fluoxetine or a placebo pill and the actual (bright) therapy light.  The study found that each was about as effective, though the light had a significantly greater effect in the first week of the trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/ccp/75/3/489/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Another study&lt;/a&gt; published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology compared light therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, and a combination of the two against an untreated control.  Both light therapy and CBT were found to be effective and the combination therapy was found to be far more effective than either alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastEditorUserId="13967" LastEditDate="2013-09-03T22:06:30.850" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T22:06:30.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10845" CreationDate="2013-09-03T19:58:57.680" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research supports the hypothesis that the mother's diet during pregnancy and lactation can influence a child's future food preferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Crystal and Bernstein, 1998):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;maternal dehydration, induced by moderate to severe vomiting during pregnancy, can lead to enhanced salt preference in offspring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Mennella and Beauchamp, 1996), summarized by (Birch, 1999):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recent research indicates that what the mother eats during pregnancy and&#xA;lactation can affect a human infant’s very early ﬂavor experience, which in turn&#xA;shapes the formation of ﬂavor preferences and ingestive behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Bayol et al., 2007):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Results showed that 10 week-old rats born to mothers fed the junk&#xA;food diet during gestation and lactation developed an exacerbated preference for fatty, sugary and salty foods at the expense of protein-rich&#xA;foods when compared with offspring fed a balanced chow diet prior to weaning or during lactation alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Mennella et al., 2001):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only those infants who were exposed to carrot flavor either prenatally (CW) or postnatally (WC) displayed fewer negative facial responses while eating the carrot-flavored cereal relative to the plain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We demonstrated earlier that at least 1 flavor consumed by pregnant women, garlic, does enter amniotic fluid to levels detectable by the adult human nose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bayol, S. A., Farrington, S. J., &amp;amp; Stickland, N. C. (2007). A maternal'junk food'diet in pregnancy and lactation promotes an exacerbated taste for'junk food'and a greater propensity for obesity in rat offspring. British Journal of Nutrition, 98(4), 843-851.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Birch, L. L. (1999). Development of food preferences. Annual review of nutrition, 19(1), 41-62.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crystal, S. R., &amp;amp; Bernstein, I. L. (1998). Infant salt preference and mother's morning sickness. Appetite, 30(3), 297-307.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mennella, J. A., &amp;amp; Beauchamp, G. K. (1996). The early development of human flavor preferences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mennella, J. A., Jagnow, C. P., &amp;amp; Beauchamp, G. K. (2001). Prenatal and postnatal flavor learning by human infants. Pediatrics, 107(6), e88-e88.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-03T20:06:39.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4871" CreationDate="2013-09-03T20:00:14.607" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shortly - it seems like characteristic description and not a scientific condition, biologically, genetically or psychologically based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;After investigating and even participating in a HSP meeting (as an HSP candidate), I couldn't find any resource or paper that claims it has scientific, neurological or genetic evidence for HSP. The only diagnosis is based on a self-test composed by PhD.  Elaine Aron at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsperson.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.hsperson.com/&lt;/a&gt;  who wrote the book(s) and wrote most of the research papers published about this subject. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/05/14/scientists-find-genetic-difference-in-highly-sensitive-people/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper coloumn&lt;/a&gt; does not reference any scientific research.&#xA;The Wikipedia page &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_sensitive_person&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Highly_sensitive_person&lt;/a&gt; also sheds some light on this trait comparing it to common psychological theories like Dabrowski's over-excitability and Jeffrey E. Young's Schema Therapy character with &quot;Self Sacrifice Schema&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So lacking any evidence, my feeling is that it is one more psychological description of a character rather than innate genetic or biological difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15242" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T12:12:38.810" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T12:12:38.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17584" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17585" CreationDate="2013-09-03T20:49:07.913" Score="10" ViewCount="1759" Body="&lt;p&gt;Political activist &lt;a href=&quot;http://topher.com.au/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Topher&lt;/a&gt; has created the &lt;a href=&quot;http://topher.com.au/50-to-1-video-project/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;50-to-1&quot; project&lt;/a&gt;. In the explanatory &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw5Lda06iK0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt;, he claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's 50 times more expensive to try to stop climate change than it is to adapt to climate change as and if it happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasoning and references behind the video are available &lt;a href=&quot;http://topher.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/50-to-1-sources-and-maths.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here (pdf)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to avoid futile arguments about the &lt;em&gt;existence&lt;/em&gt; of climate change, it is worth highlighting the claim I'm interested in testing. The issue is, assuming IPCC forecasts about future CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; levels and the resulting impact on temperature are correct, is it better to spend now to avoid warming or spend to mitigate its impact? The issue is economics, not climate change itself which the video &lt;em&gt;does not challenge.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific claim is that mitigation is 50 time cheaper than avoidance, even on current, widely agreed assumptions. Are their sources correct? are the calculations reasonable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar, but much vaguer question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13789/is-avoiding-global-warming-by-preventing-co-emissions-far-too-expensive-compare&quot;&gt;Is avoiding global warming by preventing CO₂ emissions far too expensive compared to geoengineering or adapting to a warmer world?&lt;/a&gt; has been asked before without attracting any answers. This question is much more specific and narrow in scope in the hope of generating some more focussed skeptical analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T16:15:03.707" Title="Is the cost of preventing climate change 50 times higher than the cost of adapting to it?" Tags="|economics|climate-change|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17584" CreationDate="2013-09-03T21:26:34.970" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Is the cost of preventing climate change 50 times higher than the cost of adapting to it?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be, but Topher's argument doesn't establish that, and one of his references directly contradicts it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He assumes that the cost of climate change is summed up solely in the damage that a 3°C increase in temperature would cause. He assumes that &amp;quot;climate change will cost us roughly 1.5% of global GDP if we simply adapt to it as required&amp;quot;. For this figure, Topher cites (&lt;a href=&quot;http://mudancasclimaticas.cptec.inpe.br/%7Ermclima/pdfs/destaques/sternreview_report_complete.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stern, 2006&lt;/a&gt;, p. vi).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the report actually says on p. vi:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least&#xA;5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts&#xA;is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That report also says on the same page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the&#xA;worst impacts of climate change – can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each&#xA;year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report that he uses to establish the 1.5% of GDP actually says 5-20% of GDP. It also argues that the cost of avoiding the worst impacts can be limited to under 1% of global GDP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Topher picks the 1.5% figure from page ix, where the Stern report says (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most formal modelling &lt;em&gt;in the past&lt;/em&gt; has used as a starting point a scenario of 2-3°C warming. In this temperature range, the cost of climate change could be equivalent to a permanent loss of around 0-3% [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;em&gt;those earlier models were too optimistic&lt;/em&gt; about warming. [And goes on to argue for their 5-10+% cost estimate.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Stern report doesn't support a 1.5% cost estimate. It establishes itself as counter to that position, yet Topher cites the report as supporting this estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Topher has incorrectly interpreted the Stern report &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; cherry-picked from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Stern report is reliable, then Topher Field is incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the Stern report is not reliable, Topher Field no longer has a basis for the &amp;quot;cost of adapting to climate change&amp;quot; portion of the ratio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above should be sufficient to show Topher has cherry-picked the numbers he's using, but I'll give one more example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He assumes the cost of preventing climate change can be estimated by looking at the cost of Australia's carbon tax system. (See minutes 0-5 of the video.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if he is correct in his analysis of the effectiveness of Australia's carbon tax, there are many other &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_mitigation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;methods of mitigating climate change&lt;/a&gt;, and he doesn't consider those.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T16:15:03.707" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14745" CreationDate="2013-09-03T23:33:49.363" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is hard to answer because it includes the wrong assumption that dietary calorie restriction damages the brain. This assumption forms the basis for the assertion that &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;lack of breakfast&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; is &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;brain damaging&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I would answer it in two steps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Step 1. Is dietary calorie restriction detrimental?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much to the contrary, there is ample evidence suggesting that &lt;strong&gt;calorie restriction (CR) increases general health&lt;/strong&gt;, and lengthens life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I quote the paper below on studies with humans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This evidence consists of the finding that &lt;strong&gt;risk factors for atherosclerosis&lt;/strong&gt; and diabetes &lt;strong&gt;are markedly reduced in humans on CR&lt;/strong&gt;. Humans on CR also show some of the same adaptations that are thought to be involved in slowing primary aging in rats and mice. These include a very low level of inflammation as evidenced by low circulatory levels of c-reactive protein and TNFα, serum triiodothyronine levels at the low end of the normal range, and a more elastic “younger” left ventricle (LV), as evaluated by echo-doppler measures of LV stiffness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the same paper, some anedoctal evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okinawans, because of poverty, were so severely calorie restricted that their growth was stunted. However, public health measures and quality of the diet on Okinawa were sufficiently good to prevent the high prevalence of nutritional deficiencies and infectious diseases present among the poor in many third world countries. It is interesting, relative to the possible effects of CR on human longevity, that there are more centenarians per 100,000 people in Okinawa than in other parts of the world including the USA and Western Europe (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9176829&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chan et al., 1997&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from the one on brain effects of CR:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These beneficial effects also extend to the maintenance of brain cognitive functions at later age and to the prevention, at least in rodents, of brain senescence and associated neurodegenerative disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2020845/?report=reader&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Caloric restriction in humans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3299887/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dietary restriction in rats and mice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23269433&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brain response to calorie restriction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Step 2. Is skipping breakfast detrimental?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, but not because calorie restriction is generally bad. Some studies (see below) suggest that skipping breakfast might lead people to overeat later in the day, which in turn would cause obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20112150&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Do we all eat breakfast and is it important?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21925535&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skipping breakfast and obesity: Comparing Eastern and Western populations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On whether this is bad for the brain,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence indicates that breakfast consumption is more beneficial than skipping breakfast, but this effect is more apparent in children whose nutritional status is compromised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19930787&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cognitive performance after skipping breakfast&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this evidence, I believe there is no direct causal relationship between skipping breakfast, low blood sugar and brain degeneration (as the original statements implied).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T01:39:08.590" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17584" CreationDate="2013-09-04T07:57:49.113" Score="-4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most formal modeling in the past has used as a starting point a scenario of 2-3 ºC warming. In this temperature range, the cost of climate change could be equivalent to a permanent loss of around 0-3% in global world output compared with what could have been achieved in a world without climate change. Developing countries will suffer even higher costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stern, 2006, p. ix (the relevant discussion of the effects of climate change begins on p. vi).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Topher's analysis shows the cost of mitigating all global warming over the decade-long intended lifetime of the Australian carbon tax to be &amp;gt;80% of GDP. Taking Stern's mid-range estimate of 1.5% of GDP, it would indeed be 80/1.5, or more than 50 times, costlier to mitigate today than to adapt the day after tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even at the 5-20% of GDP adaptation cost that Stern determines on the basis of his mid-range estimate 5-6 Cº of global warming, it would still be 4-16 times costlier to mitigate today than to adapt later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15272" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T10:40:01.070" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17584" CreationDate="2013-09-04T09:49:00.143" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/5582/sancho&quot;&gt;Sancho&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/17585/6236&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; does a very good job of dealing with what the &lt;a href=&quot;http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http:/www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/sternreview_index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stern Review&lt;/a&gt; actually says, which is that mitigation would cost the equivalent of around 1% of global GDP each and every year, whereas without mitigation, the cost would be 5-20% each and every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another half to the question, which is Topher's analysis of the Australian Carbon Tax. This makes a basic economic mistake: it assumes that the revenue from a tax is part of its cost to the world. This is a nonsense, as the revenue from a tax is an &lt;strong&gt;internal&lt;/strong&gt; transfer within the world economy (unless someone thinks we're paying tax to martians).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The net cost of a tax can be calculated from its net detrimental effect on economic efficiency, plus the net cost of collection and enforcement over and above the costs of collecting the same tax revenue by other means. Neither Topher nor Monckton (on whose calculations Topher relies) make any effort to calculate the relative net cost of collection, and both ignore the overall effect of the tax on economic efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is an economics truth established almost a century ago (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.econlib.org/library/NPDBooks/Pigou/pgEW.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pigou, 1920&lt;/a&gt;) that a tax that prices in an uncosted exernality, increases economic efficiency, rather than decreasing it. That is, whereas other taxes have a &quot;dead weight&quot; effect, pricing in an externality by taxing it, actually &lt;strong&gt;corrects&lt;/strong&gt; a market distortion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very well established by &lt;a href=&quot;http://ipcc.ch/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an overwhelming body of scientific literature&lt;/a&gt; that anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are an uncosted externality. The Australian carbon tax, by pricing in a small part of the damage (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/research/faculty/hopecpub.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent publications by Chris Hope for estimates of the marginal cost of damage&lt;/a&gt;), correct part of that market distortion, &lt;strong&gt;thus increasing overall economic efficiency&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several other misrepresentations in the calculations too, e.g. about the climate sensitivity, and these stock falsehoods have been dealt with &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/climate-change&quot;&gt;elsewhere on this site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T09:49:00.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17594" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="40539" CreationDate="2013-09-04T13:35:11.637" Score="9" ViewCount="2208" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember watching a documentary about some people who used to take nettle baths - i.e. lie down in a bed of nettles - and claim that it was good for the cardiovascular system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any scientific facts under this assumption?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.herballegacy.com/Vance_Medicinal.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Herbal Legacy web-site&lt;/a&gt; says topical use of the nettle sting can be therapeutic as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubefacient&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;rubefacient&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a group of eighteen patients with joint pain treated with the topical use of the nettle sting, all except one respondent were sure that the therapy had been very helpful, and several considered themselves cured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubefacient&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;lists nettle&lt;/a&gt; as a rubefacient and says without citation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is done as a folk remedy for rheumatism, providing temporary relief from pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15283" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-01-29T11:39:55.207" LastActivityDate="2018-01-29T12:29:29.343" Title="Do nettle stings help reduce joint pain?" Tags="|medical-science|herbalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17596" CreationDate="2013-09-04T14:46:12.767" Score="29" ViewCount="1969" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-23948811&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC reports&lt;/a&gt; that a building with curved glass in London appears to have caused damage nearby as a result of the architecture focusing the sun's rays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1vuOr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems plausible enough to me, but is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An aside: this made me think of Charles Dryfus' threat to destroy the world in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075066/?ref_=tt_rec_tt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Pink Panther Strikes Again&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (because the doomsday weapon was powered by the sun, IIRC):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DuSak.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15285" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:46:51.980" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:46:51.980" Title="Did this building cause carpet to burn and cars to melt?" Tags="|physics|united-kingdom|architecture|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17595" CreationDate="2013-09-04T15:08:55.697" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the story has been confirmed by many reliable sources and the developers have taken responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23944679&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This story from the BBC&lt;/a&gt; explains how:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's like starting a fire with a parabolic mirror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wq0y3.png&quot; alt=&quot;Parabolic mirror&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The location of the focal point, F, depends on the curvature of the parabola. A shallow curve, like that of the building, places the focal point further away from the mirror.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/03/walkie-talkie-skyscraper&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; mentions that same architect's work &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbcnews.com/id/39403349/ns/travel-news/t/death-ray-vegas-hotel-pool-heats-guests/#.UidQXGTTVc0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;has done this before&lt;/a&gt;, in Las Vegas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it has happened before – in a project by the very same architect... they realised this special glass was in fact burning their guests as they lounged by the swimming pool beneath the soaring mirrored facades&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/03/world/europe/uk-london-building-melts-car/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN confirms&lt;/a&gt; the burning happened:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A skyscraper whose reflected rays have the power to melt cars... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/03/world/europe/uk-london-building-melts-car/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;developers have taken responsibility&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Canary Wharf Construction and Land Securities have been very good and agreed to pay for the damage, and accept that there is an issue which they will resolve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-09-04T15:19:40.920" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T15:19:40.920" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6986" CreationDate="2013-09-04T16:46:23.997" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this study&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3609170/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3609170/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;they checked 1969 removed appendices and in eight cases they found plant residuals and fruit seeds. No sunflower seeds are mentioned there, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, in several occasions, like this one&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20838186&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20838186&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;rectal bezoars (clumps of undigested food) caused by eating large amounts of sunflower seeds were found in the rectum (the abstract does not say were they hulls or not; other articles usually mention hulls).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15288" LastActivityDate="2013-09-04T16:46:23.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17602" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-04T22:50:34.753" Score="16" ViewCount="684" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been a long-running boycott against Nestlé (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://info.babymilkaction.org&quot;&gt;http://info.babymilkaction.org&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main complaint is that their promotion of formula milk in developing countries is irresponsible because there is not always clean water to dilute it with, and because parents may overdilute it due to poverty and/or inadequate instruction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The impact of this boycott has been acknowledged by Nestlé PR in the past and is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/09/04/google-might-have-walked-into-a-nestle-boycott-problem-with-android-kitkat/&quot;&gt;still considered significant&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there adequate evidence to support or refute the accusation that Nestlé's current business practices result in the deaths of children in developing countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this boycott has been running for over 30 years, has the situation changed in that time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15307" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:21:26.960" LastActivityDate="2016-02-12T09:52:54.760" Title="Does Nestlé contribute to infant mortality in developing countries?" Tags="|medical-science|milk|africa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17603" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-04T23:37:22.943" Score="16" ViewCount="8300" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard numerous times (especially in connection with Italian dishes) that you shouldn't cut basil with a knife, but rather tear it with your hands. I've heard two different reasons for this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the steel knife oxidizes the basil causing the edges to turn black (which is visually unappealing); &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the tearing bruises the basil and releases more oil from the leaf than simply cutting it would.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I'm skeptical of (1) and don't particularly care about the color issue anyway (I consider this a negligible issue; additionally, you could use a plastic knife if the steel knife is really the cause of the supposed oxidation). Also, with (2) you could simply bruise the leaves before cutting and still save time especially if you need to cut/tear a lot of basil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/24378/to-achieve-maximum-flavour-is-it-better-to-cut-or-tear-basil-leaves&quot;&gt;Seasoned Advice&lt;/a&gt; - Denies claim (2), makes claim (1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080413072026AAMIR9E&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yahoo Answers&lt;/a&gt; - Claims (1) and (2).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taste.com.au/how+to/articles/1933/how+to+store+prepare+fresh+basil&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Taste.com.au&lt;/a&gt; - Makes claim (1)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kitchen-myths.com/2012/08/21/myth-tear-basil-rather-than-cutting-it-for-best-flavor/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kitchen Myths&lt;/a&gt; - Denies claim (2).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are there any non-negligible reasons to tear basil instead of cutting it (or vice versa)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15308" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:33:29.713" LastActivityDate="2017-01-18T14:59:10.243" Title="Is there any reason to tear basil instead of cutting it with a knife?" Tags="|cooking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17604" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-05T06:40:07.370" Score="2" ViewCount="1445" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.attainable-sustainable.net/water/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; claims that both chlorine, and chloramine, which are added to many municipal water supplies to kill harmful bacteria, can also harm the good bacteria in soil, necessary for a healthy garden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It stands to reason that water that’s been treated to kill off bacteria in our drinking water might also kill off the good bacteria in our soil, making it harder and harder to maintain healthy soil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it’s &lt;em&gt;chlorine&lt;/em&gt;, consider adding a water barrel or two to your garden area that you can fill with municipal water. Let it sit and the chlorine can dissipate before you use it to water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm willing to accept, for the moment, that this may well be true of chloramine, which apparently does not dissipate on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my understanding of &lt;em&gt;chlorinated water&lt;/em&gt;, is that the chlorine will evaporate from the water pretty quickly--the only reason a &amp;quot;few hours&amp;quot; is necessary, is due to the large volume of water... but that chlorine in water droplets--such as in a shower, or in a typical garden watering--will dissipate practically instantaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even if not all the chlorine dissipates before hitting the ground, I would expect it to dissipate pretty quickly, perhaps having a harmful effect on the &amp;quot;good bacteria&amp;quot; present on leaves, and the top layer of soil.  (And I suspect most of this bacteria would be killed by direct sunlight anyway).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this article's claim that &lt;em&gt;chlorinated water&lt;/em&gt; is harmful for household gardens accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T10:50:56.423" Title="Does chlorine in water harm soil bacteria?" Tags="|biology|chemistry|water|chlorine|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17606" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-05T08:32:04.240" Score="13" ViewCount="336" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, a disclaimer: this is my first question here, so please point out any deficiency so I can amend it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here in Italy, the Government has a recurring policy (it is happening every 2/3 years now) of rejuvenating the traveling cars by issuing so-called &quot;Eco funds&quot;: you get between 2000 and 5000 euros to give in your car and buy a new one. Cars with more than 10 years must be scrapped; more recent cars (up to 5 years, IIRC) can be sold as used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been a debate in the local newspapers, highlighting the fact that this practice is not Ecological at all. The rumor is that scraping a 10 year old working car and manufacturing a new one produces more pollution overall than maintaining the old car.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any study that can back-up this rumor? If so, what is the break-even point? I.e. is it possible to find at which &quot;age&quot; running an old car is not &quot;good&quot; anymore, from an environmental point of view?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15315" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-09-05T16:33:49.753" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T16:33:49.753" Title="Is there a high ecological impact from buying a new car?" Tags="|road-vehicles|ecology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17608" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-05T11:14:18.103" Score="9" ViewCount="616" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does being the victim of abuse make someone more likely to commit abuse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is sometimes called the &quot;Vampire theory&quot;, with the analogy that being bitten turns you into a vampire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, Ariel Castro &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-04/ohio-child-rapist-ariel-castro-found-dead-in-prison-cell/4935370&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blamed&lt;/a&gt; his abuse of women on being sexually abused himself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He said he had himself been sexually abused as a child and had grown&#xA;  up obsessed with sex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the abuse that Castro claimed he had was sexual, and some of the abuse he committed was sexual, I'm open to research talking about any kind of abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related questions: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1931/does-sexual-abuse-lead-to-homosexuality&quot;&gt;Does sexual abuse lead to homosexuality?&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1121/did-most-sex-workers-experience-abuse-as-a-child&quot;&gt;Did most sex workers experience abuse as a child?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T22:01:47.300" Title="Does being abused make someone more likely to be an abuser?" Tags="|psychology|sexual-abuse|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17610" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17614" CreationDate="2013-09-05T14:27:58.963" Score="14" ViewCount="3108" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getnymi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nymi&lt;/a&gt;, claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Like a fingerprint, your heartbeat is unique&quot;, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Your Nymi lets you use your unique cardiac rhythm to authenticate your identity&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that heartbeats are unique, like fingerprints?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that Nymi can use your unique cardiac rhythm to authenticate your identity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Now, I can imagine that using an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocardiography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ECG&lt;/a&gt; for this might be plausible, but to produce one you need 6-10 contact points (some at very specific locations on the body) and the person shouldn't be moving.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;With the wearable device being on the wrist, it only has one contact point so can't produce an ECG.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;This is without going into issues of people suffering from arrhythmia and other heart conditions or even the day to day changes in heart rate (resting, active etc...).&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13352" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-09-05T20:18:36.087" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T20:45:03.363" Title="Can cardiac rhythms be used to uniquely identify a person?" Tags="|medical-science|security|cardiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-05T14:30:18.090" Score="1" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia page on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_viewing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Remote Viewing&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A variety of scientific studies of remote viewing have been conducted. Some earlier, less sophisticated experiments produced positive results but they had invalidating flaws.[24] None of the more recent experiments have shown positive results when conducted under properly controlled conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not found any Remote Viewing research results with negative results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15327" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-09-05T14:37:21.783" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T14:37:21.783" Title="Are there scientific studies of remote-viewing with negative results?" Tags="|esp|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17610" CreationDate="2013-09-05T20:05:55.587" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;The technology&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are actually two points of contact when Nymi is in use. You push the top of the sensor (the side that's like the face of the watch) with a finger from the opposite hand. The underside of the sensor touches your wrist. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getnymi.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.getnymi.com/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears the technology behind this device is &quot;HeartID&quot;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bionym.com/news/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bionym.com/news/&lt;/a&gt; - &quot;See HeartID in action, enabling finger-touch based user authentication.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technology is described in (Fatemian et al. 2010) and in (Agrafioti, 2011).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One patent describing this technology is (Agrafioti, 2012).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Uniqueness of heartbeats&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from the patent application (Agrafioti, 2012):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Uniqueness - while different signals may appear to conform to the same patterns, there is large inter-individual variability, resulting from different physiological parameters controlling the waveforms, and physiological factors (e.g., heart mass orientation, conductivity of various cardiac muscles, and cardiac activation order) can introduce significant variability among subjects (in fact, significant medical research had long sought to reduce this variability for universal diagnostic standards)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the dissertation (Agrafioti, 2011):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Uniqueness is guaranteed in the ECG signal because of its physiological origin.&#xA;  While ECG signals of diﬀerent individuals conform to approximately the same pattern, there is large inter-individual variability due to the various electrophysiological parameters that control the generation of this waveform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The patent describes collecting the ECG signal from both wrists, but using one wrist and the opposite finger should have similar effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Authentication accuracy&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Agrafioti, 2010 at p. 91, Table 4.2), the error rate of their identification method at that time is shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the individual, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometrics#Performance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;equal error rates&lt;/a&gt; between 0 and 23% were achieved. The strictness of the classifier can be tuned depending on the target application to either be more lenient and allow more false authentications or be more strict and fail to authenticate the true individual more often. How they will choose this threshold for the production device, or if they will improve their classifier is not public knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agrafioti, F. (2011). ECG in Biometric Recognition: Time Dependency and Application Challenges (Doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AGRAFIOTI, F., BUI, F., &amp;amp; HATZINAKOS, D. (2012). WIPO Patent No. 2012151680. Geneva, Switzerland: World Intellectual Property Organization.&#xA;Chicago &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fatemian, S. Z., Agrafioti, F., &amp;amp; Hatzinakos, D. (2010, September). Heartid: Cardiac biometric recognition. In Biometrics: Theory Applications and Systems (BTAS), 2010 Fourth IEEE International Conference on (pp. 1-5). IEEE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-09-05T20:43:44.427" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T20:43:44.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17617" CreationDate="2013-09-05T20:23:11.030" Score="8" ViewCount="406" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've heard the stories at Thanksgiving that turkey causes drowsiness because it contains tryptophan.  Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15337" LastEditorUserId="15337" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T18:02:56.623" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T18:23:45.407" Title="Can the amount of tryptophan one might consume in a turkey dinner cause drowsiness?" Tags="|turkey|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17610" CreationDate="2013-09-05T20:45:03.363" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Is it true that heartbeats are unique, like fingerprints?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24141-wristband-unlocks-your-devices-with-your-heartbeat.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NewScientist article&lt;/a&gt; quotes Bionym's CEO as,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bionym claims it has initial performance data, which it will release later this year, showing that its ECG system outperformed face recognition technologies, but that ECG was still not as accurate as the very top-of-the-line fingerprint systems. But for those concerned about identity theft, Martin points out that a three-tier system protects them: a person would have to steal the Nymi, replicate a user's unique heart rhythm and have access to their device. &amp;quot;In practical situations, the false positive rate of the system is effectively zero,&amp;quot; he says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a user is stressed or exercises, the band should continue to function, Martin says. Although if you had just run a marathon, then immediately put the band on, the Nymi may struggle for a few minutes to get an accurate reading, he admits. &amp;quot;The system tolerates regular variation. It doesn't require your heartbeat to be exactly the same every time.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-05T20:45:03.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17615" CreationDate="2013-09-05T21:39:58.720" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's possible, but unless you have an &lt;em&gt;incredible&lt;/em&gt; appetite, there's little evidence that it would have any effect.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Large amounts&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; of tryptophan have been shown&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022395682900127?np=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00175180&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; to reduce sleep latency (the time it takes to fall asleep), however the data is less clear on whether it causes drowsiness or has any effect on the length or quality of sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though tryptophan is one of the 9 essential amino acids and, as such, is found in any source of complete protein (i.e. eggs, soy, dairy, or any meat) and several incomplete sources (potatoes, rice, wheat, etc.).  Turkey meat doesn't contain an especially great amount of it (about 0.24g/100g), being comparable to chicken or beef.  Egg whites, soy, and cod contain far more typtophan, yet those foods seem to have avoided any association with sleepiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More than 1 gram, which would require over 400 grams (nearly 1 pound) of turkey meat to get.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastEditorUserId="7590" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T18:23:45.407" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T18:23:45.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17548" CreationDate="2013-09-06T08:54:23.450" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one 1997 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9180239&quot;&gt;review of 20 studies&lt;/a&gt; they compared the effect of margarine and butter on blood cholesterol levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Replacing butter with margarine with no trans fats reduced total and LDL cholesterol levels.&#xA;Replacing butter with hard margarine high in trans fats also reduced total and LDL cholesterol levels, but for a lesser extent than non-trans fat margarine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the study, &lt;em&gt;theoretically&lt;/em&gt;, replacing butter with non-trans fat margarine could reduce the risk for coronary heart disease for 10%, but replacing with trans-fat margarine would have no effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect of saturated fats on the blood cholesterol levels &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2943062/&quot;&gt;may vary greatly from person to person&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some researchers think that the study about a harmful effect of margarine (the second claim in the question) was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ausfoodnews.com.au/2013/02/11/heart-foundation-takes-swipe-at-butter-and-new-study-on-margarine.html&quot;&gt;not performed properly&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Australia’s National Heart Foundation has claimed a recent study&#xA;  published in the British Medical Journal is “misguided.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr Robert Grenfell, National Cardiovascular Health Director at the&#xA;  Heart Foundation, said that the new research from the 1966-1973 study is&#xA;  “misguided” because it is not based on a healthy group of people...but&#xA;  a study in a small group of unhealthy middle aged men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When this study began, Miracle margarine (used in the study) contained&#xA;  approximately 15 per cent trans fatty acids, ...the study was not&#xA;  objective because margarine no longer contains the trans fatty acids&#xA;  it did at the time of the trials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.e8707/rr/629609&quot;&gt;the answer to the article about the study published in February 2013&lt;/a&gt;, professor Jean Gutierrez also mentioned this issue with &quot;miracle margarine.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is true that &quot;miracle margarine&quot; used in the study contained 15% trans fats, the conclusion that margarine is more harmful than butter is probably irrelevant, because soft (tub) margarines today may contains as low as &lt;a href=&quot;http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/768?fg=&amp;amp;man=&amp;amp;lfacet=&amp;amp;format=Full&amp;amp;count=&amp;amp;max=25&amp;amp;offset=&amp;amp;sort=&amp;amp;qlookup=margarine&quot;&gt;0.3% trans fats&lt;/a&gt; (0.3 g/100 g margarine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second claim (liquid margarine more harmful than butter) in the question may be false because a margarine high in trans fats was used. This does not automatically mean that the first claim (butter more harmful than liquid margarine) is true, because neither the harmful effects of saturated fats (in butter) neither &lt;a href=&quot;http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/othernuts/omega3fa/&quot;&gt;beneficial effects of polyunsaturated fats&lt;/a&gt; (in margarine) have been firmly proven until now (most, but not all, studies show substitution of polyunsaturated fats in place of saturated fats can help to prevent coronary heart disease, though). Additionally, there seems to be no other studies that would compare the harmful or beneficial effects of butter and margarine on health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15288" LastEditorUserId="15288" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T08:55:45.460" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T08:55:45.460" CommentCount="5" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-09-12T08:47:49.443" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6217" CreationDate="2013-09-06T13:11:24.133" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Foka answer is spot-on for diesel engines with DPF. The same reasoning, to a lesser degree, apply to gasoline engines too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You won't gain power or torque, not in a perceptible way.&#xA;But driving a car in a &quot;spirited&quot; way make it run smoother. How, and how much this is relevant, depends on the age of the car. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course, as Glen Jaron pointed out, the car needs to be &quot;ready&quot;, which means run-in AND also ready for hard driving (which means that the OIL must be warm; warm coolant is not enough).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A car not running as it should may be partly due to &lt;strong&gt;carbon deposits&lt;/strong&gt;, that will be cleared and burned by the higher temperatures reached &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_tuneup&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;when running at higher revs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons (probably, the prominent reason) of carbon deposits is linked to the stoichiometric ratio, especially in older cars. In fact, this gets more important as the car gets older. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stoichiometric ratio is the ideal mixture of fuel to air link, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air%E2%80%93fuel_ratio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carburetors on older cars (and ECUs in newer injection systems, with or without lambda sensors) have the purpose of reaching this mix in which there is just enough air present in order to burn off all of the fuel, although it’s never 100%  achieved. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The typical stoichiometric mixture ratio a carburetor (or fuel injection) has to achieve when mixing fuel and air is 14.7 of air mass to 1 of fuel mass – 14.7 : 1. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the stoichiometric mixture is lower then this means the engine will be running fuel rich which means fuel is wasted, engine emissions will be higher and &quot;dirt&quot; (carbon residues) will accumulate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the stoichiometric ratio is higher then this means that the engine will be running lean and will struggle to give a smoother running performance, struggle to maintain combustion and possibly (in extreme cases) permanent damage to the piston's heads. (Lean mixture -&gt; detonation -&gt; Chamber too hot -&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enginebuildermag.com/Article/77966/uncovering_the_causes_of_burned_or_scuffed_pistons.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hole in piston&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the engine is &quot;cold&quot; (at start, or if it run very conservatively)&#xA;the mixture is richer, to prevent engine hesitation and damage (for multiple reasons: the oxygen sensor (MAF, IAF, or whichever sensor you have) operates in a good reliable way only when temperatures are high, a richer mixture helps protect the engine, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In older ECUs this is quite important (see for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?1430281-Bosch-Motronic-1-1-1-3-BMW&amp;amp;s=a196b46c336433506ce486f918e63849&amp;amp;p=19082438#post19082438&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bosch Motronic&lt;/a&gt;); in modern ECUs this is far less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is believed (by ECUs reverse engineers) that ECUs do not learn the driving style. However, they have still to prepare the right mix, and they do learn &quot;fuel quality&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, modern engines also suffer from carbon deposit due to a different injection mechanism &lt;a href=&quot;http://backfires.caranddriver.com/forums/125/posts/391037&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;direct injection&lt;/a&gt;. Getting the combustion chamber hot (higher revs) helps in this situation as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15315" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T13:11:24.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17624" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-06T14:32:37.883" Score="12" ViewCount="1135" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goldengatexpress.org/2013/04/07/true-organic-food-benefits-environment-sustainability/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.goldengatexpress.org/2013/04/07/true-organic-food-benefits-environment-sustainability/&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason to choose organic products is that &lt;strong&gt;the environmental footprint attached to organic food is smaller than that of conventionally grown food&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Organic farming also helps provide a safer and healthier environment by not polluting groundwater, rivers, lakes and oceans with pesticides and chemical fertilizers. There is a reduction in soil erosion and soil quality is improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that organic food results in a smaller environmental footprint than conventionally grown food?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15358" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-12-03T08:51:31.333" Title="Is buying organic vs. conventional products better for the environment?" Tags="|environment|agriculture|organic-food|sustainability|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2139" CreationDate="2013-09-06T16:57:39.637" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be &quot;common sense&quot; to assume that drinking milk will improve the mass and strength of your bones (as we are told repeatedly by the dairy industry). Unfortunately, scientific research concludes that dairy consumption is associated with higher levels of osteoporosis. To a lesser extent, cola consumption is connected with loss of bone mass - specifically in women. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medpagetoday.com/Endocrinology/Osteoporosis/4247&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.medpagetoday.com/Endocrinology/Osteoporosis/4247&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15362" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T16:57:39.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17624" CreationDate="2013-09-06T18:20:46.030" Score="5" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Yield per acre&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Palmer, 2012) reviews (Seufert et al., 2012). (Seufert et al., 2012) is a meta-analysis examining 66 previous studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Palmer, 2012) describes the strength of a meta-analysis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a meta-analysis, a researcher compiles all of the studies on a particular issue, usually discarding those that are methodologically unsound, then finds a statistical method with which to combine them. Ultimately, a meta-analysis turns a series of smaller studies into a large study, which, if done right, carries more persuasive heft and can bring real clarity to disputed scientific issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Seufert et al., 2012) say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although several studies have suggested that organic agriculture can have a reduced environmental impact compared to conventional agriculture, the environmental performance of organic agriculture per unit output or per unit input may not always be advantageous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many factors to consider in balancing the benefits of organic and conventional agriculture, and there are no simple ways to determine a clear ‘winner’ for all possible farming situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, with respect to the question about yield, the conclusions are clearer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our analysis of available data shows that, overall, organic yields are typically lower than conventional yields. But these yield differences are highly contextual, depending on system and site characteristics, and range from 5% lower organic yields (rain-fed legumes and perennials on weak-acidic to weak-alkaline soils), 13% lower yields (when best organic practices are used), to 34% lower yields (when the conventional and organic systems are most comparable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, these results suggest that today’s organic systems may nearly rival conventional yields in some cases—with particular crop types, growing conditions and management practices—but often they do not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Palmer, 2012) rephrases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among wheat, corn and other cereals, organic farms were 26 percent less productive, while organic vegetable growers turned out 33 percent less food per acre than those who used pesticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilizer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T22:05:54.167" CommentCount="10" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-09-06T19:37:16.000" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17632" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17673" CreationDate="2013-09-06T21:43:40.267" Score="17" ViewCount="2585" Body="&lt;p&gt;Caitlin Heller posted a video on Youtube titled &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CddMD3QqTFs&quot;&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Worst Twerk Fail EVER - Girl Catches Fire!&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been many articles about it, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/viral-video/10291366/Is-Miley-Cyrus-to-blame-Girl-catches-fire-making-sexy-twerk-video.html&quot;&gt;Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/watch-blond-girl-twerk-video-horribly-wrong-ends-fire-article-1.1447810&quot;&gt;NY Daily News&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajc.com/news/news/twerk-fail-girls-hot-dance-boyfriend-turns-fiery/nZpSz/&quot;&gt;AJC&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it staged? I watched it over 10 times in a row nonstop, and I'm still not sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be real because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Glass table broke, and her leg caught on fire &amp;ndash; a lot of effort for a staged stunt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Her friend's surprised reaction appears genuine&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's suspicious because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The video surfaced right as &quot;twerking&quot; gained mainstream attention&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's framed perfectly and cuts prematurely&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2" LastEditorUserId="2" LastEditDate="2013-09-06T21:57:05.220" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T06:38:15.593" Title="Was the &quot;Worst Twerk Fail EVER - Girl Catches Fire!&quot; video staged?" Tags="|video|fire|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17548" CreationDate="2013-09-06T23:52:33.493" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Harvard School of Public Health recommends: &quot;Switch from butter to soft tub margarine. Choose a product that has zero grams of trans fat, and scan the ingredient list to make sure it does not contain partially hydrogenated oils. Even better, use a liquid plant oil whenever possible; refrigerated extra virgin olive oil makes a great spread for toast.&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats-and-cholesterol/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats-and-cholesterol/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the full story.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats-full-story/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/fats-full-story/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, trans fats, or partially hydrogenated oils, are the worst fats because they raise bad cholesterol (LDL) and lower good cholesterol (HDL). That's pretty much what stick margarine is.&#xA;&quot;The Nurses’ Health Study found that women who ate 4 teaspoons of stick margarine a day had a 50 percent greater risk of heart disease than women who ate margarine only rarely.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monounsaturated fats and polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acids are the best fats, because they raise HDL and lower LDL.&#xA;A large recent study found that &quot;Among persons at high cardiovascular risk, a Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or nuts reduced the incidence of major cardiovascular events.&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In between, you have saturated fats like butter, which raise both LDL and HDL (but not as much), and polyunsaturated omega-6 fatty acids. The latter is basically what's in corn oil, which is used to fry fast food. When it's heated, it creates trans fats, which are especially bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Margarine is an emulsion of oil and water, and depending on the fat content and the amount of partially hydrogenated oil, or trans fat, it can be better or worse than butter. That's why the Mayo Clinic, the Harvard School of Public Health, and also the &lt;a href=&quot;http://my.clevelandclinic.org/heart/prevention/askdietician/margarine.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cleveland Clinic&lt;/a&gt; recommend the softer trans fat-free margarine over butter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15073" LastActivityDate="2013-09-06T23:52:33.493" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17636" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-07T11:02:51.483" Score="3" ViewCount="1278" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does removing phlegm from your body help your body get rid of bad bugs (virus) or does it just relieve your congestion symptoms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relatedly if clearing your body does help, then do decongestants prolong sickness at the expense of relieving symptoms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="162" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:20:29.053" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:20:29.053" Title="Does blowing your nose and clearing lungs help you get better?" Tags="|medical-science|common-cold|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17640" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-07T17:39:52.900" Score="15" ViewCount="5035" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://everylastdrop.co.uk/&quot;&gt;http://everylastdrop.co.uk/&lt;/a&gt; says &quot;When you consider the water required to produce all the stuff we consume, we actually guzzle a massive 4,645 litres every day&quot;. It then lists several specific cases, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 kg cotton = 20,000 litres, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 cup of coffee. 130 litres&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these two claims true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10975" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-09-07T22:50:11.440" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T00:34:37.237" Title="Does it take 20000 L of water to produce 1 kg of cotton and 130 L to produce 1 cup of coffee?" Tags="|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17641" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-07T17:48:18.997" Score="3" ViewCount="167" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you probably know, the James Randi educational foundation &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/1m-challenge/challenge-application.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;offers 1 000 000$&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;em&gt;&quot;any psychic, supernatural, or paranormal ability under satisfactory observation&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But sometimes such claimed ability is said to be &quot;not working all the time&quot;. Like in, say, dowsing or astrology -- it just increases the probability (compared to random guessing) of getting something right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, such claims can be tested using statistical &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significance_testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;significance testing&lt;/a&gt; techniques. The &quot;confidence&quot; in the results of such statistical tests is  called &quot;the statistical significance&quot; -- a probability that the claimant does not have any supernatural abilities and just guessed the right answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The probability that one have to beat in the &quot;one million challenge&quot; seems to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/169-swift-february-29-2008.html#i9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;equal to 1 in 100000&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But some opponents of James Randi say that in order to start using the supernatural  effects in practice (&quot;for the benefit of Mankind&quot; so to say) such significance is too high. &quot;Some researchers&quot;, they say, &quot;are using significances of 5%. And still making progress.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm working in particle physics, and in my field in order to establish a discovery we require &quot;5 sigma&quot;, which amounts to significance of about 1 in two million. So, for me Randi's requirement is too soft. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about other fields? Like medicine or biology?  Or even sociology and psychology? Is there any overview of the significances for these disciplines and what is considered &quot;a discovery&quot; for them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="108" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:33:19.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:33:19.730" Title="What significance levels are usually required to accept a phenomenon as real?" Tags="|esp|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2013-09-08T01:47:14.187" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17642" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15606" CreationDate="2013-09-07T20:10:12.080" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The game &amp;quot;Three card brag&amp;quot; is a 16th century game (pre-dating the French revolution) that treated the ace as the highest card. (Source: Bathe 1988, at p. 22)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rise of the Ace to pre-eminence had it beginnings in the 14th century. [...] The practice was only further popularized in the republican fervor of the French Revolution (1789-1799) where many more games began to be played ‘Ace high’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Source: White Knucklehead Cards)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;References&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20220411152610/http://whiteknucklecards.com/history/briefhistory.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;White Knucklehead Cards&lt;/a&gt;, Retrieved September 7, 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bathe, N.A.C., Card games. Robert Frederick Ltd., 1998&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-09-27T18:53:45.390" LastActivityDate="2022-09-27T18:53:45.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17646" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-08T07:20:37.793" Score="5" ViewCount="587" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a recent television interview, Australian mining magnate and political candidate &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Palmer_%28businessman%29&quot;&gt;Clive Palmer&lt;/a&gt; declared that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch&quot;&gt;Rupert Murdoch&lt;/a&gt;'s ex-wife &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendi_Deng_Murdoch&quot;&gt;Wendi Deng&lt;/a&gt; (Palmer called her Murdoch's wife) is a spy, and that is why he filed for divorce. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of this claim and wonder whether it is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88deEGm-uVE&quot;&gt;Clive Palmer interview on The Today Show&lt;/a&gt; - see from 3.25 onwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-09-08T11:16:03.180" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T05:26:25.003" Title="Was Wendi Deng, Rupert Murdoch's ex-wife, a spy?" Tags="|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17647" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17649" CreationDate="2013-09-08T09:03:29.230" Score="4" ViewCount="1224" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been told that green (unripe) potatoes are poisonous and that this is &quot;common knowledge&quot;. I doubt there are any chemical properties in these potatoes that could cause any harm. AFAIK, potatoes are only a tuber that grows over time, gaining size to store greater amounts of (the same types of) nutrients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With fruits, the maturation process makes sense because it's a &quot;strategy&quot; to spread the seeds (&lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt; they are ready and &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; before). Tubers are hidden in the ground, they are meant to store nutrients (as seeds) and not to be eaten to spread any seed (as fruits). However, as a part of the &quot;intention&quot; of not being eaten they may contain chemicals and their density may decrease as the tuber grows, so this could be possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15142" LastEditorUserId="15142" LastEditDate="2013-09-09T00:19:45.243" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T00:19:45.243" Title="Are green potatoes unhealthy to eat?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|agriculture|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17648" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-08T11:56:00.927" Score="3" ViewCount="503" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://herblore.com/overviews/list-of-galactagogues-herbs-that-increase-breastmilk-production&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://herblore.com/overviews/list-of-galactagogues-herbs-that-increase-breastmilk-production&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fenugreek - one of the best and strongest herbs for increasing milk production. When taken in very large amounts, Fenugreek is also used for lowering blood sugar levels, and is, therefore, not recommended for use by diabetics or those who are on strict insulin regimens to regulate their blood sugar levels. It also works on the digestive system, and in a small percentage of people, it may cause gas in either the mother or baby. Many mothers of adopted babies have successfully used this herb to help establish a breastmilk supply to feed their adopted babies. Fenugreek is not recommended for use during pregnancy as it can cause uterine activity.  Fenugreek must be used with consistency for best results, otherwise it can negatively affect or decrease milk production.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have some researches been done on this claim?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5341" LastActivityDate="2013-09-08T15:47:37.163" Title="Does Fenugreek increase breastmilk?" Tags="|medical-science|herbalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17647" CreationDate="2013-09-08T14:38:22.577" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanine#Solanine_in_potatoes&quot;&gt;Solanine in potatoes&lt;/a&gt; explains why some potatoes become green, and what the poison is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When potato tubers are exposed to light, they turn green and increase glycoalkaloid production. This is a natural defense to help prevent the uncovered tuber from being eaten. The green colour is from chlorophyll, and is itself harmless. However, it is an indication that increased level of solanine and chaconine may be present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not that the potatoes are &quot;unripe&quot;; for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/glossary/new-potatoes&quot;&gt;new potatoes&lt;/a&gt; are edible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;New potatoes have thin, wispy skins and a crisp, waxy texture. They are young potatoes and unlike their fully grown counterparts, they keep their shape once cooked and cut. They are also sweeter because their sugar has not yet converted into starch, and are therefore particularly suited to salads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-09-08T14:38:22.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17648" CreationDate="2013-09-08T15:47:37.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Al-Shaikh et al. 1999) examined the &quot;effect of feeding fenugreek seed, as part of a dairy goat ration.&quot; They used &quot;twenty-one, 2-3 years old, lactating local goats [that] were divided into three groups (A, B and C), [...] fed on concentrate mixtures containing 0, 25 or 50% fenugreek, respectively. [...] Group A reached peak (1890 ± 130ml) at the third week of the experiment, group B reached peak yield &#xA;(2890 ± 130ml) at the second week, while in group C the maximum daily &#xA;milk yield (1740 ± 170ml) was attained at sixth week.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Gabay 2002) says: &quot;In a clinical practice setting, Huggins&#xA;describes the anecdotal use of the herb in at least 1200&#xA;women. Generally, all the women who consumed fenugreek&#xA;reported an increase in milk production within 24&#xA;to 72 hours after initiation of therapy.&quot; (Gabay 2002) also suggests a mechanism related to sweat production (the breasts being modified sweat glands), and mentions a lack of clinical data as of 2002.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another study on goats, (Alamer et al. 2005) had similar results &quot;initiation of fenugreek feeding produced a clear effect on milk yield from the first week, which continued throughout the treatment period.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a human study, (Turkyılmaz et al. 2011) found the &quot;mean measured breast milk volume of the mothers who received [herbal tea containing fenugreek every day] tea was significantly higher than the placebo and control groups&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alamer, M. A., &amp;amp; Basiouni, G. F. (2005). Feeding Effects of Fenugreek Seeds {Trigonella foenum-graecum L.) on Lactation Performance, Some Plasma Constituents and Growth Hormone Level in Goats. Pakistan Journal of Biological Sciences, 8(11), 1553-1556.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Al-Shaikh, M. A., Al-Mufarrej, S. I., &amp;amp; Mogawer, H. H. (1999). Effect of fenugreek seeds (Trigonella foenumgraecum L) on lactational performance of dairy goat. Journal of applied animal research, 16(2), 177-183.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gabay, M. P. (2002). Galactogogues: medications that induce lactation. Journal of Human Lactation, 18(3), 274-279.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turkyılmaz, C., Onal, E., Hirfanoglu, I. M., Turan, O., Koç, E., Ergenekon, E., &amp;amp; Atalay, Y. (2011). The effect of galactagogue herbal tea on breast milk production and short-term catch-up of birth weight in the first week of life. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 17(2), 139-142.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-09-08T15:47:37.163" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17655" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17734" CreationDate="2013-09-09T01:38:55.857" Score="31" ViewCount="4300" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_%28scientist%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Roy Spencer&lt;/a&gt;, a climate change contrarian, posted &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic-fail-73-climate-models-vs-measurements-running-5-year-means/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this graph on his blog&lt;/a&gt; claiming that observed temperature trends are much lower than what climate models predict:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KT60Z.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is Spencer misrepresenting what the mainstream models predict? If so, how?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the observed temperature trend on the graph representative of the data sets used by climate scientists? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Climate Data Center&lt;/a&gt; web-site, but there are so many different data sets, and I hardly know enough about climate science to know which ones to look at and how to interpret them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/Roy_Spencer_arg.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skeptical Science's article about Roy Spencer&lt;/a&gt;, and found plenty of articles concerning his arguments and his 2010 paper in Remote Sensing, but found nothing concerning this more recent post. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2013/06/06/dr-roy-spencer-is-sad-and-lonely-and-wrong-part-ii/#comment-31515&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This blog comment&lt;/a&gt; says RCP 8.5 -- the highest RCP -- was used. But I have no idea what this means or how it invalidates or misrepresents the output. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/aug/30/climate-change-rcp-handy-summary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;I found this here&lt;/a&gt; which makes it look like there is little difference in end CO2 concentration for the different RCPs at least till 2025.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is Spencer doing to get this graph? Is he cherry picking climate data? Misrepresenting the model's predictions, or is it accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14912" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2019-02-12T21:11:13.743" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T23:14:24.547" Title="Does this graph show climate-change predictions don't meet observations?" Tags="|climate-change|climatology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17656" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17668" CreationDate="2013-09-09T03:06:33.313" Score="8" ViewCount="8425" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came to know about the extended mind from the following presentation by Rupert Sheldrake who presented his research at Google TechTalk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnA8GUtXpXY&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;amp;t=18m5s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The link to the video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sheldrake claims that the horizon of power of our brain is not limited to the physical brain which we see and observe but its extended outside also. This is like a invisible radius of power like electromagnetic field; when we are very close to some person, we can feel and get sense of their action, no matter what is the distance they are away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just after the 18m mark he states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another way of thinking about this is through quantum entanglement and Dean Radin who gave &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw_O9Qiwqew&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a talk here at Google&lt;/a&gt; some time ago -a few months ago  - has written a book called &lt;em&gt;Entangled Minds&lt;/em&gt; suggesting that when people have close social relationships and interactions their minds become entangled so that when they separate there is a still an entanglement between them and so a change in one is reflected by a change in another. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quantum non-locality - entanglement of quantum particles - is well known, well documented and is in fact the basis of now &#xA;  technological applications in quantum cryptography and quantum computing. And what that shows is that particles that are part of the same system when they move apart, a change in one is immediately associated with a change in the other. This is independent of distance unlike many other physical phenomena. It doesn't matter if it is an inch apart or a mile apart; it's distance independent entanglement or non-local connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am suggesting something like that happens in the case of animal groups, and in social groups in general, including human groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do our minds get quantum entangled?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15260" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T13:39:48.223" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T13:39:48.223" Title="Are our minds quantum entangled with people we are (emotionally) close to?" Tags="|neurology|quantum-mechanics|dean-radin|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17657" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-09T06:45:13.127" Score="3" ViewCount="1310" Body="&lt;p&gt;My father-in-law is diagnosed with Osteo-arthritis. As per doctors' advice, we are now planning for his knee replacement surgery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, I came to hear about a procedure that claims to use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cytotrontreatment.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quantum Magnetic Resonance Cytotron&lt;/a&gt;  to regenerate cells. The procedure is co-developed by The Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM) of the Indian Air Force and the Bangalore-based Centre for Advanced Research and Development (CARD)  some years ago. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindu.com/2005/07/12/stories/2005071214360200.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(news report)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These seems to be no real medical references to this treatment of procedure. Google results some links to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.safehealth.in/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;inventors links&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this really work? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osteoarthritis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia entry&lt;/a&gt; looks like advertisement than article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Treatment of Osteoarthritis And Other Types of Cartilage Damage When&#xA;  cartilage erosion exceeds the rate at which it is produced it&#xA;  eventually results in osteoarthritis. Almost 1 out of every 20&#xA;  Europeans suffer from a form of osteoarthritis. In general, it is&#xA;  assumed that osteoarthritis is an irreversible process. Until now, the&#xA;  medical treatment only dealt with the symptoms of osteoarthritis (pain&#xA;  and stiffness) through pain medication, physiotherapy or injections&#xA;  into the painful joint and could not offer a cure. Continued wear,&#xA;  aside from pain and stiffness may also cause deformities inside and&#xA;  outside of the joint. For advanced osteoarthritis, usually the only&#xA;  solution is joint replacement surgery. In most cases, when a joint has&#xA;  been affected by osteoarthritis, the sufferer will try to spare the&#xA;  affected joint by shifting the weight away from the painful joint, and&#xA;  this can cause the osteoarthritis to spread to other joints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the introduction of the CytotronTM it is possible to treat the&#xA;  osteoarthritis itself by stimulating the production of cartilage by&#xA;  means of RFQMR. In principle, other forms of cartilage damage (such as&#xA;  sports injuries) are also treatable. The treatment is painless.&#xA;  Depending on the size and type of the joint it may take 30 to 60&#xA;  minutes a day. The treatments must take place on 21 consecutive days&#xA;  (including the weekend!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15399" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-03-20T09:56:42.083" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T09:23:47.020" Title="Does a Rotational Field QMR-Cytotron cure arthritis?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17658" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-09T06:56:19.167" Score="8" ViewCount="3249" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are rumors that the meat &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kfc.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;KFC&lt;/a&gt; serves is not permitted to be labelled as chicken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kentucky Fried Chicken has become KFC. Does anybody know why? We thought the real reason was because of the &amp;quot;FRIED&amp;quot; food issue. It's not. The reason why they call it KFC is because they can not use the word chicken anymore. Why? KFC does not use real chickens. They actually use genetically manipulated organisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These so called &amp;quot;chickens&amp;quot; are kept alive by tubes inserted into their bodies to pump blood and nutrients throughout their structure. They have no beaks, no feathers, and no feet. Their bone structure is dramatically shrunk to get more meat out of them. This is great for KFC because they do not have to pay so much for their production costs. There is no more plucking of the feathers or the removal of the beaks and feet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The government has told them to change all of their menus so they do not say chicken anywhere. If you look closely you will notice this. Listen to their commercials, I guarantee you will not see or hear the word chicken. I find this matter to be very disturbing. I hope people will start to realize this and let other people know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/fooddrink/a/kfc_chicken.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Viral email via UrbanLegends.About.com&lt;/a&gt; - which attempts to refute it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are KFC serving real chicken?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15397" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T08:22:20.083" Title="Does KFC serve chicken?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17658" CreationDate="2013-09-09T11:08:42.073" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Claim's completely bonkers, as they still use the full name everywhere (just look at the facades of every single KFC franchise out there). It's just easier to use shorthand for things where limited space is available.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://colonelsanders.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://colonelsanders.com/&lt;/a&gt; history of KFC, the video explicitly uses the word 'chicken'.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://colonelsanders.com/history_colonelSanders.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://colonelsanders.com/history_colonelSanders.asp&lt;/a&gt; uses the word 'chicken' liberally from the first paragraph. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kentucky Fried Chicken, pioneered by Colonel Harland Sanders, has&#xA;  grown to become one of the largest quick service food service systems&#xA;  in the world - with more than a billion “finger lickin' good” Kentucky&#xA;  Fried Chicken dinners served annually in more than 80 countries and&#xA;  territories. But success didn't come easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kfc.com/about/franchises.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.kfc.com/about/franchises.asp&lt;/a&gt; talks about &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based in Louisville, KY, KFC Corporation is the world's most popular chicken franchise specializing in Original Recipe®, Kentucky Grilled Chicken® and Extra Crispy Strips® with home-style sides, Honey BBQ Wings and freshly made chicken sandwiches. KFC has been serving customers complete, freshly prepared, family meals since Colonel Harland Sanders founded the concept in 1952. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and that's just the first paragraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kfc.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.kfc.com/&lt;/a&gt; mentions chicken explicitly in the product descriptions it offers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The photo on the current &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kfc.com/about/news/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.kfc.com/about/news/&lt;/a&gt; page shows the word &quot;chicken&quot; still being used on a store-front.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KPOCZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that this is a recent photo can be inferred from the fact that it's shown with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.famouslogos.us/kfc-logo/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;post-2007 version of their logo&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, there's no truth to the claim that KFC don't use the word chicken. If indeed they did not use chicken, they'd indeed not be allowed to use the word. Hence the claim that they don't use chicken is bogus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-09-09T12:05:12.597" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T12:05:12.597" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17530" CreationDate="2013-09-09T15:53:53.570" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A 4 years old child broke through the ice of the frozen lake. He was rescued from the water and transported to the hospital by a helicopter.&#xA;Initial findings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no heart rhythm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;nonreacting pupils&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;core body temperature 19.8 °C (68 °F)&#xA;He was in cardiac arrest for 88 minutes and then successfully resuscitated (with some complications - acute respiratory distress syndrome - but recovered fully). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10155409&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Successful resuscitation of a child with severe hypothermia after cardiac arrest of 88 minutes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whole body cooling for 72 hours was associated with less brain damage in infants who suffered from brain ischemic injury during delivery compared with no cooling. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/pr/journal/v71/n1/full/pr20118a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The effect of whole-body cooling on brain metabolism following perinatal hypoxic–ischemic injury&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cerebral hypothermia can safely improve intact survival in term infants with neonatal encephalopathy.&#xA;Beneficial effects of hypothermia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Decrease of basal metabolic rate (~7% for each °C), which means lower oxygen consumption in the cells and therefore prolonged cell survival when the oxygen delivery to the cells is impaired&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slowed inflammation process &lt;a href=&quot;http://ceaccp.oxfordjournals.org/content/6/1/23.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clinical applications of induced hypothermia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the same source (oxfordjournals.org) from y.2006:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The admission body temperature seems to be a major determinant for long-term mortality after stroke. They concluded that ‘hypothermic therapy in the early stage, in which body temperature is kept low for a longer period after stroke onset, could be a long-lasting neuroprotective measure’. Since then, there have been numerous animal models and some preliminary studies but no conclusive results. The Cochrane review stated that further trials were indicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another short story. A woman was clinically dead (no heart rhythm, no breathing). Paramedics used the Arctic Sun technology (they wrapped her in some sort of &amp;quot;cloth&amp;quot; that can be filled with a cold fluid) and thus induced hypothermia. The woman has survived. Practically no technical data (time, woman's age, the underlying disease - supposedly heart arrhythmia...) are provided, though. &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130531032450/http://www.uihealthcare.org/2column.aspx?id=21985&amp;amp;side=22038&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;From Clinical Death to Restored Life&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15288" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2022-09-11T23:38:36.123" LastActivityDate="2022-09-11T23:38:36.123" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17663" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-09T16:53:26.563" Score="6" ViewCount="6118" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a quote listed everywhere in aviation safety publications, but not in a consistent form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aopa.org/-/media/Files/AOPA/Home/Pilot%20Resources/ASI/Safety%20Advisors/sa11.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.aopa.org/-/media/Files/AOPA/Home/Pilot%20Resources/ASI/Safety%20Advisors/sa11.pdf&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Frost, snow, and ice accumulations (on the leading edge or upper surface of the wing) no thicker or rougher than a piece of coarse sandpaper can reduce lift by 30&#xA;  percent and increase drag up to 40 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/civilaviation/publications/tp10643-chapter1-concept-1119.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/civilaviation/publications/tp10643-chapter1-concept-1119.htm&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Test data indicates that during takeoff, frost, ice or snow formations having a thickness and surface roughness similar to medium or coarse sandpaper, on the leading edge and upper surface of a wing, can reduce wing lift by as much as 30% and increase drag by 40%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another publication by Transport Canada removes the &quot;during takeoff&quot; caveat &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tc.gc.ca/media/documents/ca-publications/AIM-2013-1_ENG.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.tc.gc.ca/media/documents/ca-publications/AIM-2013-1_ENG.pdf&lt;/a&gt; (p. 423):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Test data indicate that frost, ice or &#xA;  snow formations having a thickness and surface roughness &#xA;  similar to medium or coarse sandpaper, on the leading edge &#xA;  and upper surface of a wing, can reduce wing lift by as much &#xA;  as 30% and increase drag by 40%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This publication removes the restriction to the leading edge and upper surface of the wing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jumpjet.info/Emergency-Preparedness/Disaster-Mitigation/Climate/Aircraft_Icing.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.jumpjet.info/Emergency-Preparedness/Disaster-Mitigation/Climate/Aircraft_Icing.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;tests have shown that icing no thicker or rougher than a piece of coarse sandpaper can reduce lift by 30% and increase drag by 40%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that icing no thicker or rougher than a piece of coarse sandpaper can reduce lift by 30% and increase drag by 40%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true even when the ice is restricted to the upper surface and leading edge of the wing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true at times other than takeoff?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T10:39:28.920" Title="Can a sandpaper-thick layer of ice reduce lift by 30 percent and increase drag up to 40 percent?" Tags="|aviation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13550" CreationDate="2013-09-09T19:16:55.083" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A. Using fluoridated toothpaste in both children and adults reduces the risk of dental caries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;B. Fluoridated toothpaste increases the risk of dental fluorosis only when children &lt;em&gt;8 years old or younger&lt;/em&gt; swallow it, in which case fluoride is absorbed, enters the blood and from there the teeth. Fluoride in children in adults does not enter the teeth through their surfaces, for example, during brushing the teeth.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;C. Brushing teeth immediately after eating acidic foods or drinks (fruits, cola, fruit juices) can damage tooth enamel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14960006&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14960006&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results revealed strong evidence (level 1) for the caries&#xA;  preventive effect of daily use of fluoride toothpaste compared to&#xA;  placebo in the young permanent dentition and that toothpastes with&#xA;  1,500 ppm of fluoride had a superior preventive effect compared with&#xA;  standard dentifrices with 1,000 ppm fluoride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claims 1-5 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/minerals/fluoride/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/minerals/fluoride/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Topical use of fluoride (including fluoridated toothpaste) reduces the risk of dental caries in children and adults  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;swallowed&lt;/em&gt; fluoride, which enters circulation and ends in teeth (until 8 years of age) and can cause dental mottling and not fluoride in the toothpaste - except when children swallow large amount of toothpaste. Small children can swallow 0.3 mg fluoride per brushing , which is about 1 mg per day.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to the U.S. Institute of Medicine (IMO), adequate intake (which reduces caries risk and does not cause tooth mottling) for fluoride for children 1-3 years old is 0.7 mg/liter and for 4-8 years olds 1 mg/liter (see reference above).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the U.S., fluoridated water contains 0.7-1.2 mg fluoride/liter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In areas with 1 mg fluoride/liter tap water, about 10% of &lt;em&gt;mild&lt;/em&gt; fluorosis in population was observed, and in areas with 2 mg fluoride/liter, 5% of &lt;em&gt;moderate&lt;/em&gt; fluorosis was observed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18435369&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18435369&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Tooth brushing &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; acidic meals is more harmful than brushing &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; acidic meals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15288" LastEditorUserId="15288" LastEditDate="2019-01-07T08:47:54.243" LastActivityDate="2019-01-07T08:47:54.243" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17656" CreationDate="2013-09-09T19:32:42.803" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do our minds get quantum entangled?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just need to know if there is really any mathematical model or in physics it is approved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quantum mysticism&lt;/a&gt; article suggests that the answer is &amp;quot;no&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia is also critical of the author you quoted, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rupert Sheldrake&lt;/a&gt;, saying,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sheldrake's &amp;quot;morphic resonance&amp;quot; hypothesis is widely rejected within the scientific community[5][6][7][8] with some calling it pseudoscience[8][9][10][11][12] and magical thinking.[9][13] Concerns include the inconsistency of the hypothesis with accepted scientific theories and associated evidence for them,[8] lack of evidence for the hypothesis,[14][15][16][17] and concern that the hypothesis is overly vague[9][10] and unfalsifiable.[9][15] Sheldrake's experimental methods have been criticised for being poorly designed and subject to experimenter bias,[18][19][20] and his analyses of results have also drawn criticism.[10][21]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In promoting his hypothesis Sheldrake occasionally garners public attention through television and other media outlets, and has been accused of negatively impacting the public understanding of science.[9][10][14]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is a former biochemist, not a physicist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video excerpt which is cited in the OP references a book titled &lt;em&gt;Entangled Minds&lt;/em&gt; whose &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanradin.com/NewWeb/EMblurbs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blurbs (i.e. promotional reviews)&lt;/a&gt; are not written by physicists. The first blurb is by Deepak Chopra who at timeline 3:10 in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-FaXD_igv4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; says that physicists have &amp;quot;somehow hijacked the word for their own use&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO the term &amp;quot;quantum&amp;quot;, as and when it is used by 'these people', doesn't have the same meaning as when it's used by most physicists and/or applied mathematicians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I accept that this answer of mine is &amp;quot;ad hominem&amp;quot;: i.e. it concentrates on the people more than on the argument. On the other hand, if you're looking for &amp;quot;peer-reviewed&amp;quot; literature, this answer may be useful to you, in that identifies who they regard as they own peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T19:32:42.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17663" CreationDate="2013-09-09T21:07:49.760" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The phenomenon is discussed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sae.org/events/icing/presentations/2007s1tanner.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; which says on page 24,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wind tunnel and flight test data show that &#xA;  modern high performance airfoils stall at lower &#xA;  AOA when the wing leading edge is &#xA;  contaminated.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;   Roughness along the wing leading edge &#xA;  equivalent to #40 grit sandpaper can cause the &#xA;  stall AOA to reduce by over 5°, with a &#xA;  corresponding loss of maximum lift capability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Changing the angle of attack has a large effect on lift. Page 17 of the paper shows that the change in AOA can even become catastrophic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's especially true when there's a high AOA already, for example during takeoff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's accurate, Figure 9 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://allstar.fiu.edu/aero/airflylvl3.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://allstar.fiu.edu/aero/airflylvl3.htm&lt;/a&gt; suggests that a 5° change in AOA corresponds to approximately 30% or 40% lift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for drag, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sandford.org/gandercrash/investigations/majority_report/html/_appendixc.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sandford.org/gandercrash/investigations/majority_report/html/_appendixc.shtml&lt;/a&gt; explains,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ice contamination of an aircraft wing also has a significant detrimental effect on the aircraft's total drag, that is, the force which resists the aircraft's forward motion through the air. The total drag has two components, parasite drag and induced drag. Induced drag is that drag which is produced by the generation of lift. Induced drag increases as the angle of attack increases. Therefore, since a contaminated wing must fly at a higher angle of attack at a given airspeed to produce the required lift, the induced drag generated at that airspeed will be higher than the induced drag of an uncontaminated wing. Furthermore, since ice contamination causes the airflow to separate earlier from the upper surface of the wing, it results in a higher induced drag value at any angle of attack. The increase in parasite drag as a result of ice contamination is small in comparison to the increase in induced drag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This implies that the two figures (life and drag) are related: &lt;em&gt;because&lt;/em&gt; it reduces lift by 30%, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; the pilot changes attitude to compensate, &lt;em&gt;therefore&lt;/em&gt; the drag increases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the Conclusions at the end of &lt;a href=&quot;http://allstar.fiu.edu/aero/airflylvl3.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://allstar.fiu.edu/aero/airflylvl3.htm&lt;/a&gt; it doesn't surprise me that the change in drag is proportional to the change in lift; and the second-last sentence quoted above may explain why it's slightly higher (e.g. 40% instead of 30%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't a good answer IMO, but I hope it's better than none: it explains &quot;why&quot;, and shows that the &quot;how much&quot; is at least plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T10:39:28.920" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T10:39:28.920" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17668" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17656" CreationDate="2013-09-09T23:10:26.637" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No one knows what &quot;mind&quot; is, but the brain is a bad candidate for hosting quantum superpositions, much less sharing them with other people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most credible proponent of mind having a quantum component is the physicist &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose&quot;&gt;Roger Penrose&lt;/a&gt; who has argued, beginning in his 1989 book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0192861980&quot;&gt;The Emperor's New Mind&lt;/a&gt; that the human mind displays non-computable behavior and thus cannot be a Turing machine. He proposed quantum phenomena as a route towards non-algorithmic computation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Penrose's logic by which he makes the conclusion that the brain is not a Turing machine has been widely criticized, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduction#cite_ref-Burgess_20-0&quot;&gt;Wikipedia quotes Princeton's John Burgess as saying&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the consensus view of logicians today seems to be that the Lucas-Penrose argument is fallacious, though as I have said elsewhere, there is at least this much to be said for Lucas and Penrose, that logicians are not unanimously agreed as to where precisely the fallacy in their argument lies. There are at least three points at which the argument may be attacked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1996, Stuart Hameroff and Penrose published &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/penrose-hameroff/orchor.html&quot;&gt;Orchestrated Objective Reduction of Quantum Coherence in Brain Microtubules: The &quot;Orch OR&quot; Model for Consciousness&lt;/a&gt;, which proposed that the physical structure called &quot;microtubules&quot; in the brain might be a mechanism by which quantum effects could affect neurons, whose structure is otherwise firmly in the world of classical physics. In that text, they acknowledge that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Warm, wet and noisy, the brain at first glance seems a hostile environment for delicate quantum phenomena which generally demand isolation and cold stillness (superconductors), or energy pumping of crystals (lasers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Orch OR&quot; theory has been heavily criticized. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/3049/1/OOR.pdf&quot;&gt;Falsifications of Hameroff-Penrose Orch OR Model of Consciousness and Novel Avenues for Development of Quantum Mind Theory&lt;/a&gt;, Georgiev provides: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a list of twenty four problems not being repaired for a whole decade after the birth of the model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most philosophers don't see the need for a quantum component of mind; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's no compelling theory for a quantum component of mind&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a quantum component of mind, we don't know how that component works. We certainly don't know how it interacts with other minds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T23:10:26.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17663" CreationDate="2013-09-09T23:42:07.263" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tech-knowledge.co.il/suppliers/nusil/article-en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; (A Silicone-Based Ice-Phobic Coating for Aircraft) is another source of the quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, wind tunnel tests have shown that very thin ice sheets &#xA;  can reduce lift by as much as 30% and drag by 40%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gives a reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mulherin, ND, RB Haehnel, JF Jones (1998) Toward developing a standard shear test fro &#xA;  ice adhesion. Proceedings, 8th International Workshop on Atmospheric Icing Structures, &#xA;  Reykjavik, Iceland, June 8-11, 1998. IWAIS ’98&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1998 was too long ago for the papers to be online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2013-09-09T23:42:07.263" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8339" CreationDate="2013-09-10T00:35:38.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this true/possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. An example of a dog with this talent is described at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chaserthebordercollie.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.chaserthebordercollie.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this dog has had expert training:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;JOHN W. PILLEY is an emeritus professor of psychology at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He has been working with Chaser since 2004 and has published the findings from their work in the Journal Behavioural Processes.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The bond between Pilley &amp;amp; Yasha set the stage for his work and incredibly close relationship with Chaser, which came several years after Pilley's retirement. It has only been during these years that Pilley has slowed down enough to be able to log in significant hours to work with Chaser.  His time was previously devoted to his family, students and personal passions of whitewater kayaking and windsurfing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And an enriched/specialized environment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YJ1oV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Photo taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.memphis.edu/update/feb11/pilley.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.memphis.edu/update/feb11/pilley.php&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, that this dog is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Collie&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Border Collie&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Border Collie is a herding dog breed developed in the Anglo-Scottish border region for herding livestock, especially sheep.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Ranked number one in Stanley Coren's The Intelligence of Dogs and typically extremely energetic, acrobatic, smart and athletic, they frequently compete with great success in dog sports, in addition to their success in sheepdog trials, and are often cited as the most intelligent of all dogs.&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YJ1oV.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; In January 2011, a Border Collie was reported to have learned 1,022 words, and acts consequently to human citation of those words.[2][3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-09-10T00:43:13.083" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T00:43:13.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17632" CreationDate="2013-09-10T04:46:24.460" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSJMoH7tnvw&quot;&gt;September 9 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live&lt;/a&gt;, Jimmy revealed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjHRLM7gxjY&quot;&gt;the full video&lt;/a&gt; that included him being ready with a fire extinguisher to put out the flames.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was staged, and filmed months ago. The name of the actress in the video is Daphne Avalon, a stunt woman. The co-star was Caitlin Geier (&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/daphneavalon/status/377310041826533376&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jimmy Kimmel said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To all the conspiracy theorists on the internet who thought the video was fake: you were right, it was fake, we made it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-09-10T06:38:15.593" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T06:38:15.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17674" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17822" CreationDate="2013-09-10T06:35:55.880" Score="4" ViewCount="364" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57601879/diana-nyad-team-becoming-sensitive-to-skeptics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57601879/diana-nyad-team-becoming-sensitive-to-skeptics/&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Diana Nyad's 110-mile swim from Cuba to Florida has generated positive publicity and adoration for the 64-year-old endurance athlete — along with skepticism from some members of the small community of marathon swimmers who are questioning whether she accomplished the feat honestly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They go on to explain that some people doubt her feat:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On social media and the online Marathon Swimmers Forum, long-distance swimmers have been debating whether Nyad got a boost from the boat that was accompanying her — either by getting in it or holding onto it — during a particularly speedy stretch of her swim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Diana Nyad swim from Cuba to Florida without touching the accompanying boat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T09:54:43.027" Title="Did Diana Nyad swim from Cuba to Florida?" Tags="|sport|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17675" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13857" CreationDate="2013-09-10T07:22:20.403" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is addressed in (Gilbin 2013). At p. 41, she specifically mentions the claim in this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The New Zealand Federation Against Copyright Theft (NZFACT) claimed that the number of major US films shared by New Zealand users each month effectively halved when the law came into operation, before increasing slightly and then plateauing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gilbin says that &quot;the underlying studies and methodologies on which these claims are based are not publicly available&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gilbin also talks about &quot;[a] much more transparent study was conducted by researchers at Waikato University&quot;. &quot;The study suggested that P2P traffic and the number of users engaged in P2P file sharing decreased by at least half after the law came into force.&quot; (Citing Alcock and Nelson 2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gilbin adds though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, as discussed in more detail below, it [Alcock 2012] also found a massive increase in the amount of HTTPS traffic. HTTPS if a form of encryption which prevents traffic from being easily analyzed. The researchers theorized that this increase was caused by a shift towards non-P2P sources of infringement, which fell outside the scheme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Summary&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no public data supporting the claim that internet piracy has halved. The group claiming the halving of internet privacy has not released their studies. Another group that witnessed a drop in P2P traffic also noticed an increase in HTTPS traffic, and could not rule out a shifting of piracy behaviours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alcock, S. and Nelson, R., Measuring the Impact of the Copyright Amendment Act on New Zealand Residential DSL Users, WAND NETWORK RESEARCH GROUP (2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giblin, Rebecca, Evaluating Graduated Response (September 6, 2013). Available at SSRN: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ssrn.com/abstract=2322516&quot;&gt;http://ssrn.com/abstract=2322516&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T07:22:20.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7931" CreationDate="2013-09-10T10:24:31.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;While they are not ceramic, there is concern that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/05/03/this-is-the-worlds-first-entirely-3d-printed-gun-photos/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;plastic guns made from 3D printers&lt;/a&gt; will not be detectable by metal detectors without deliberate insertion of metal for that purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15423" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-09-10T11:59:47.747" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T11:59:47.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17679" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-10T10:28:06.110" Score="1" ViewCount="2060" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://health.india.com/diseases-conditions/15-health-benefits-of-methi/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://health.india.com/diseases-conditions/15-health-benefits-of-methi/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Breast Enlargement&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Want to enlarge your breasts? Include fenugreek in your regular diet. The oestrogen-like property of fenugreek can help in breast enlargement by balancing hormones in women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homeremediesweb.com/fenugreek_health_benefits.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.homeremediesweb.com/fenugreek_health_benefits.php&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Breast Enlargement&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Fenugreek is often used in many teas and other products that help balance women's hormones and/or enlarge the breasts. Therefore, a simple home remedy for breast enlargement is to make Fenugreek a part of your regular diet. A common suggestion is to consume up to 3g of Fenugreek per day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5341" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-08-20T09:34:57.467" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T10:55:20.177" Title="Does Fenugreek help in breast enlargement?" Tags="|medical-science|breast|breast-enlargement|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7931" CreationDate="2013-09-10T14:49:37.460" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undetectable_Firearms_Act_of_1988&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Undetectable Firearms Act&lt;/a&gt; which would make such a gun illegal in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T14:49:37.460" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17684" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-10T16:19:43.860" Score="1" ViewCount="438" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wittman_Regional_Airport&amp;amp;oldid=566806742&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia: Wittman Regional Airport (latest revision as of 2 Aug 2013)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the week of AirVenture Oshkosh (known locally as &quot;The Airshow&quot; or &quot;The Fly-in&quot;), Wittman Regional is the world's busiest airport by traffic movements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=EAA_AirVenture_Oshkosh&amp;amp;oldid=570712002&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia: EAA AirVenture Oshkosh (latest revision as of 29 Aug 2013)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The airport's control tower is the busiest control tower in the world during the gathering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both reference &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070321055359/http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=246265&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EAA AirVenture takes flight for the future. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. July 24, 2004&lt;/a&gt;. It only says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So many planes take off and land, in fact, that tiny Wittman Field is transformed into the world's busiest airport during the convention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=World%27s_busiest_airport&amp;amp;diff=570884293&amp;amp;oldid=567965985&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia: World's busiest airport (latest revision as of 31 Aug 2013)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The world's busiest airport by traffic movements during the seven-day EAA AirVenture Oshkosh event. 25,000 traffic movements are handled in a week during the yearly event [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It references &quot;EAA Newsletter, Volume 3, Number 36&quot;. August 2004, and links &lt;a href=&quot;http://members.eaa.org/home/ehotline/030801.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, which is actually EAA Newsletter, Volume 3, Number 36, from August 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The summary of the story reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During this year’s EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, some 25,000 takeoffs and landings will be performed at Wittman Field, making this the world’s busiest airport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Wittman Regional Airport's 25,000 takeoffs and landings during EAA AirVenture Oskhosh make it the world's busiest airport and control tower during that period?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T20:04:45.347" Title="During EAA Airventure Oshkosh, is Wittman Regional Airport the &quot;world's busiest&quot;?" Tags="|aviation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17685" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17686" CreationDate="2013-09-10T16:48:07.720" Score="8" ViewCount="10494" Body="&lt;p&gt;June Callwood claimed in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avroarrow.org/AvroArrow/june.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1997 Macleans Magazine article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone has flown an Arrow to safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ctvnews.ca/avro-arrow-mystery-deepens-with-u-k-discovery-1.741854&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CTV news&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The discovery of an intact ejection seat from Canada's legendary Avro Arrow is fuelling[sic] a half-century-old conspiracy theory that one of the purportedly destroyed jets was smuggled to safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Avro Arrow program was infamously shut down by then-Canadian prime minister John Diefenbaker in 1959. All related materials, from the prototype jets right down to the blueprints, were ordered destroyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The customer told Wilson that as a teenager he often watched planes land at the base and he still remembered a strange incident in which a white, high delta wing aircraft with no national markings or registration landing at the base in the early 1960s.&#xA;&amp;quot;He's still 100 per cent adamant he saw an Arrow aircraft land,&amp;quot; Wilson said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did one &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-105_Arrow&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CF-105 Avro Arrow&lt;/a&gt; get smuggled to safety, and avoid being destroyed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-12-25T08:43:57.693" Title="Did one Avro Arrow (CF-105) avoid being scrapped?" Tags="|aviation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17685" CreationDate="2013-09-10T19:03:43.723" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CTV article you cite says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While Sipe is quite confident there were no Arrows saved, he does admit to one mystery that still lingers, allowing for the &quot;romantic&quot; possibility.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;(The) first pictures taken of the MK-1 Arrow aircraft sitting on the flight line after program cancellation show all of the Arrows, S/N RL-201 through RL-205. However, later pictures taken do not show aircraft RL-202. No one seems to know what happened to RL-202 which had just received major maintenance due to landing gear collapse experienced several months prior, and was just repaired and returned to flight worthiness immediately before program cancellation,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly &lt;a href=&quot;http://members.shaw.ca/b.bogdan/Arrow/avro_arrow.htm&quot;&gt;http://members.shaw.ca/b.bogdan/Arrow/avro_arrow.htm&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are many legends of a lone Arrow escaping destruction. In addition to Callwood's speculation about an Iroquois-equipped arrow flying away at dawn, there are tales of an Arrow being spirited away on a covered flatbed truck. Some say that RL-202 cannot be seen in the aerial photos of the destruction, and may have been being fitted with missiles at a different location. None of these stories can be confirmed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://issuu.com/tikit/docs/scrapbook&quot;&gt;The Arrow Scrapbook&lt;/a&gt; (by Peter Zuuring, published in 1999):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Page 118 shows RL-207 (the only Iroquois-equipped arrow) being disassembled&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Page 125 shows RL-202 being dismantled&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Page 131 describes June Callwood's reaction to this evidence of the destruction:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When I showed June these findings ... years of hope that one did get away were shattered with the realization that nothing flyable did!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-09-10T19:17:43.603" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T19:17:43.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17684" CreationDate="2013-09-10T20:04:45.347" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several ways of mesuring 'busiest airport', but the one being used here is 'aircraft movements' (i.e. a landing or takeoff).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The airport &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_busiest_airports_by_aircraft_movements&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;listed as the worlds busiest over a year&lt;/a&gt;, according to Wikipedia, is Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport with around 900,000 movements a year.  Several others are in the same range. Assuming that their traffic is approximately the same over the year, that works out at 17,000 movements a week. During the week of &quot;The Airshow&quot; Wittman Regional is busier than Hartsfield-Jackson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be surprised if weekly variations in traffic at any of the very busy major airport took their weekly traffic to over 25,000 movements. However I have no way of knowing if some other one-off event converted some other small airfield to an even more crowded aviation hub. It seems unlikely. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/looking-up--major-air-shows-in-2011-2154353.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Independent says&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EAA's AirVenture far outstrips any other airshow on the planet in terms of scale. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2013-09-10T20:04:45.347" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17693" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-11T10:35:06.663" Score="8" ViewCount="14836" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the TV show &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8w6XbHB5W8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;QI XL J16 - Just the Job&lt;/a&gt; Jeremy Clarkson tells a story, about a Scottish Lord making a hat rack out of a german WWI soldier. The story goes (from 21:20 in the video):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There were some people looking around an Auction at a Scottish Lords castle for a WWI German Soldier who had been made into a hat-stand. &#xA;  Apparently the Lord had a batman/valet who was something more than just a servant to him who was killed in WWI. The lord was so enraged that he went across the trenches shot and dragged back the German soldier and had him made into a hat-stand. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Transcription taken from the forum discussion below&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only think I found related to the story is &lt;a href=&quot;http://old.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=26858&amp;amp;start=0&amp;amp;sid=f25154c9691dd94afdc59f8cee55b64e&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; forum discussion, which starts as a request to corroborate the story, but eventually only discusses its legal implications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2013-09-11T13:11:28.737" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T13:11:28.737" Title="Was a German WWI soldier made into a hat rack by a furious Scottish Lord?" Tags="|history|world-war-i|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8681" CreationDate="2013-09-11T12:15:07.843" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is that there are two people, Lazar Wiesel and Elie Wiesel, and that Elie Wiesel stole the identity of the (presumably dead) Lazar Wiesel after Lazar Wiesel had written a book in Yiddish, called &lt;em&gt;Un di velt hot geshvign&lt;/em&gt;. Elie Wiesel then used that as a basis for his own book, &lt;em&gt;Night&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But most claims made that is supposed to support this assertion are simply incorrect or inconsistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it is claimed that Lazar Wiesel at &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchenwald_concentration_camp&quot;&gt;Buchenwald Concentration Camp&lt;/a&gt; was born 1913, and arrived there with his brother Abraham born 1900. They also claim that Lazar's signature is different from Elie's. The evidence for this is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://revblog.codoh.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/DOC-2_sm.jpg&quot;&gt;form filled out after the liberation&lt;/a&gt; with &lt;a href=&quot;http://revblog.codoh.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/DOC-3_sm.jpg&quot;&gt;Lazar Wiesel's signature&lt;/a&gt; on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that form sets Lazar Wiesel's birth date to 1928 in Romania, the same as Elie's claimed birth date and country. So why is there an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/EW_evidence5_filecard-large.jpg&quot;&gt;detainee card&lt;/a&gt; for a Lazar Wiesel that claims he was born 1913 in Hungary? And why is that detainee card showing he came to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp&quot;&gt;Auschwitz&lt;/a&gt; in 1945, when Elie claims he came there in 1944?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, either they are two different Lazar Wiesels, one Hungarian born 1913, and one Romanian born in 1928, being released from  Auschwitz, or one of the forms is incorrect. The number on the detainee card is hard to read. Elie Wiesels number is A7713. The number of the detainee card is A77??. Looks more like A7798 to me, but it's hard to say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if it's the elder Lazar's signature on that form, then it's the elder Lazar that is stealing the identity of the younger Lazar, not the other way around. That would invalidate the whole claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also sometimes claimed that Elie Weisel wasn't a victim of the Holocaust at all, but took over Lazar Weisel's identity after he wrote the book. But that then invalidates all the arguments that the &quot;real&quot; Lazar Wiesel, the actual author, was Hungarian and born in 1913. In that case that has to be a &lt;em&gt;third&lt;/em&gt; Lazar. Another possibility is that Elie, that was 15 when he was arrested, simply lied about his age, so that he would be interred with the adults, instead of sent directly to be killed as a child. This possibility does not seem to have struck any of the people claiming he is a fraud. On the other hand it seems unlikely that they would have believed that he was 31. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also sometimes claimed that Elie Wiesel doesn't look like the person claimed to be Lazar Wiesel in a photo from the concentration camp. A lot of the evidence of this comes from pictures just after the war when Elie Wiesel was 16 or 17 years old. These do look like somebody who is 16 or 17 and is obviously not somebody who is at this point 32-33. Indeed all the conspiracy sites claim that these pictures show the real Lazar Wiesel, and that he is 16 or 17. That is inconsistent with their claims that the real Lazar Wiesel is born in 1913.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims that this young man doesn’t look like Elie Wiesel are obviously subjective. Personally, I think that's hogwash. The person in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/EW_profile-at-prayer-service.jpg&quot;&gt;photos from just after the war&lt;/a&gt; looks very much like &lt;a href=&quot;http://c510383.r83.cf2.rackcdn.com/photos/PhotoDB_Repository/2006/8/Elie%20Wiesel%20at%20DePauw.jpg&quot;&gt;Elie Wiesel&lt;/a&gt;, meaning that he not only was the same age as Lazar Wiesel, but also looked remarkably similar. It is equally absurdly claimed that the photos of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/EW-face-no1-age15.jpg&quot;&gt;15-year old Lazar&lt;/a&gt; before arrest looks nothing like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eliewieseltattoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/EW-face-no2-buchenwald-liberation.jpg&quot;&gt;Lazar shown in a photo from Buchenwald&lt;/a&gt;, and identified as the real Lazar by another person in the photo (although he claims Elie Wiesel is not that person).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then the only evidence remaining is that his signature has changed since the war&lt;/strong&gt;. That's not much evidence, especially considering that there is not only many years in between the two signatures, but that he also has become famous and gets to sign a lot of books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if there was a Lazar Wiesel that wrote the original book, didn't anybody meet him or know about this? Did he write and publish that book without telling any friends or family about it? Why has nobody come forward and said &quot;I knew Lazar Wiesel and he is missing&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if Lazar Wiesel is not really Elie Wiesel, should he not have any friends or family that can identify him and say what Lazar's real name is? Unless it also is Eliezer Wiesel. In which case we have an Eliezer Wiesel born circa 1928 that takes over the identity of another Eliezer Wiesel also born in 1928, with whom he shares such a remarkable facial similarity that nobody notices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that, frankly, is quite absurd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-09-11T13:01:28.777" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T13:01:28.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17695" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17696" CreationDate="2013-09-11T18:25:20.807" Score="48" ViewCount="9305" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across this picture on Facebook. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6nGVR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Claiming ice sheet has grown by 60%&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image claims to have been taken from a NASA satellite. I am skeptical this is correct, and if it is, does it show the ice sheet has increased in size during this period?? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-09-11T18:41:32.530" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T19:18:33.897" Title="Did the Arctic Ice Sheet grow by 60% from 2012 to 2013?" Tags="|climate-change|ice|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17695" CreationDate="2013-09-11T18:35:55.127" Score="85" Body="&lt;p&gt;Technically, yes. Is this an actual measure of anything useful? &lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an example of an extreme version of data cherry-picking. The explanation is very simple.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The level of sea ice fluctuates. 2012 was an extremely bad year for sea ica - really really bad. It was down, at its lowest to barely half what it normally is. Given that, it was absolutely certain that 2013 would be a better year for sea ice than 2012, and a number of people have posted the fact in an attempt to convince us that sea ice isn't decreasing - which, if you look at more than a one year comparison, it clearly is. The 2013 figures are still way down compared with the average of the last 30 years. The posting does serve to refute exaggerated claims made last year from equally misleading data that sea ice would be gone in a few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QycBn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Graph of Arctic sea ice&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given today's date, I'll make this comparison - it's like posting the number of murders in New York for September 2002, and claiming that because it's far fewer than the previous year, crime must be on a downward trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;tl;dr &lt;strong&gt;The posted factoid is a massively misleading case of selected data, and certainly doesn't indicate any reversal of global warming.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference for all this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/09/10/climate_change_sea_ice_global_cooling_and_other_nonsense.html&quot;&gt;this article from Slate&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2013-09-15T16:41:12.830" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T16:41:12.830" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17698" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-11T20:25:47.873" Score="4" ViewCount="3698" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read &lt;a href=&quot;http://explaininglifesmysteries.blogspot.in/2009/06/former-life-of-shanti-devi.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt; which presented the story of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanti_Devi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Shanti Devi&lt;/a&gt; as evidence of reincarnation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to these accounts, when she was about four years old, she told her parents that her real home was in Mathura where her husband lived, about 145 km from her home in Delhi. Discouraged by her parents, she ran away from home at age six, trying to reach Mathura. Back home, she stated in school that she was married and had died ten days after having given birth to a child. Interviewed by her teacher and headmaster, she used words from the Mathura dialect and divulged the name of her merchant husband, &quot;Kedar Nath&quot;. The headmaster located a merchant by that name in Mathura who had lost his wife, Lugdi Devi, nine years earlier, ten days after having given birth to a son. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there reliable evidence that Santi Devi could remember a &quot;past life&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15443" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-09-13T13:09:01.800" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T13:09:01.800" Title="Could Shanti Devi remember a past life?" Tags="|esp|reincarnation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17698" CreationDate="2013-09-11T21:32:01.550" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claims about Shanti Devi (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://beforeitsnews.com/beyond-science/2012/02/reincarnation-fact-the-amazing-case-of-shanti-devi-from-india-1791397.html&quot;&gt;http://beforeitsnews.com/beyond-science/2012/02/reincarnation-fact-the-amazing-case-of-shanti-devi-from-india-1791397.html&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shanti Devi was born on December 11, 1926&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When she was 4 years old, she said: &quot;This is not my real home! I have a husband and a son in Mathura! I must return to them!&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shanti said that her husband was in Mathura where he owned a cloth shop and they had a son.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shanti said, &quot;In my house in Mathura, I ate different kinds of sweets.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shanti talked about what type of dresses she used to wear.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shanti described her husband as fair, having a big wart on his left cheek, and wearing reading glasses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shanti said that her husband's shop was located in front of Dwarkadhish temple.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shanti even gave a detailed account of her dying following childbirth in her previous life.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One of her teachers told Shanti that if she told him her husband's name, he would take her to Mathura; she said his name was &quot;Kedarnath Chaube.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The teacher wrote a letter to Kedarnath Chaube, detailing all that Shanti had said, and invited him to visit Delhi.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kedarnath said that his young wife, Lugdi, had recently passed away and that all the details Shanti had described about her old house and members of her previous family were all true.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Upon arriving at Mathura, Shanti lead a small crowd to her previous home.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;She had correctly described what it had looked like years earlier — before its recent refurbishing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As a test, Kedarnath was falsely introduced as being an elder brother of Kedarath's. Shanti said, &quot;No, he is not my husband's brother. He is my husband himself. Didn't I tell you that he is fair and he has a wart on the left side cheek near his ear?&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shanti then said several things that Kedarnath said could only have been known by his previous wife.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reincarnation is not the only explanation for this story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We need to be skeptical about testimony, especially testimony that has passed through many sources before arriving in its current form. In its current form, this is all &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearsay&quot;&gt;hearsay&lt;/a&gt;. We have no proof that any of this happened as described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several things that could explain the existence of this story (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewthread/12714/&quot;&gt;http://www.centerforinquiry.net/forums/viewthread/12714/&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shanti may have had a very active imagination as a child&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shanti could have guessed the name of a person that lived in Mathura, or her teacher could have just found the closest sounding name in a directory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Her parents could have been lying or exaggerating about the accuracy with which Shanti predicted the appearance of Mathura or Kedarnath, or the details of her previous life (they were getting publicity)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kedarnath could have lied about Shanti being correct in the details that she provided as proof (this was a young girl that was claiming to be his wife... why not say she's correct?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-09-11T21:48:33.773" LastActivityDate="2013-09-11T21:48:33.773" CommentCount="7" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-09-11T21:32:01.550" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8146" CreationDate="2013-09-11T23:13:43.633" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is no. They don't get punished for not maximizing shareholder value. But it is true that maximizing value needs to be their goal and they may not be negligent in the pursuit of that goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Fiduciary Responsibility&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason the law is this way is that everyone else who deals with a corporation has their own legal rights: Suppliers, employers, customers, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the law was not this way then stockholders would have no recourse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.professorbainbridge.com/professorbainbridgecom/2012/05/case-law-on-the-fiduciary-duty-of-directors-to-maximize-the-wealth-of-corporate-shareholders.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A business corporation is organized and carried on primarily for the&#xA;profit of the stockholders. The powers of the directors are to be&#xA;employed for that end. The discretion of directors is to be exercised&#xA;in the choice of means to attain that end, and does not extend to a&#xA;change in the end itself, to the reduction of profits, or to the&#xA;nondistribution of profits among stockholders in order to devote them&#xA;to other purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15445" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T00:46:52.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3410" CreationDate="2013-09-12T07:30:22.110" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Elaeocarpus grandis or the &quot;Blue Marble Tree&quot; is found in Australia. It is sometimes nicknamee &quot;blue fig&quot; although it is not a true fig. It also has a regional name of blue quandong. It is a fast-growing, large, spreading, distinctive, rainforest tree native to Australia. It bears edible fruits that look like blue marbles and taste a little like dates although they are slightly more bitter.&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wR4aw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15454" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T07:30:22.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3435" CreationDate="2013-09-12T07:38:42.527" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;A rather late answer on this question, but here goes: The idea that &quot;global temperatures cause the increase of CO2.&quot; is fairly easily refuted.  The line of reasoning is that the solubility of CO2 in water decreases as temperature increases, so the rise in global temperature implies that the oceans will have released some of the dissolved CO2 that it contains.  The premise is correct, but the conclusion is a Non sequitur as it ignores the fact that the solubility of CO2 in water also depends on the difference in partial pressure of CO2 between the ocean and the atmosphere.  As we have released CO2 from fossil fuels into the atmosphere, the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen, and so the oceans have been taking up more CO2, not less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do we know this is true? .  The argument is easily refuted by the&#xA;  observation that the rate at which atmospheric CO2 levels are rising&#xA;  is less than the rate at which we are releasing CO2 into the&#xA;  atmosphere from fossil fuel use, which implies that the natural&#xA;  environment must be a net carbon sink, taking in more carbon each year&#xA;  than it emits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More formally, let Ea represent annual carbon emissions from&#xA;  anthropogenic sources (fossil fuel use and land use change), En&#xA;  represent the carbon emissions from all natural sources (the oceans,&#xA;  soil respiration, volcanos etc.) and Un represent the uptake of carbon&#xA;  by all natural carbon sinks (oceans, photosynthesis, etc.), Ua would&#xA;  be the uptake of carbon due to anthropogenic activities, but this is&#xA;  essentially zero, so we can safely exclude it from the analysis.  Then&#xA;  assuming that the carbon cycle obeys the principle of conservation of&#xA;  mass (any carbon emitted into the atmosphere that is not taken up by&#xA;  natural sinks remains in the atmosphere), the annual change in&#xA;  atmospheric CO2 is given by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;C' = Ea + En - Un&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This can be rearranged to give an estimate of the difference between&#xA;  annual emissions from all natural sources and annual natural uptake by&#xA;  all natural sinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;En - Un = C' - Ea&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have accurate, reliable data for the growth of atmospheric CO2 and&#xA;  for anthropogenic emissions (for details, see Cawley, 2011). Both of&#xA;  these are displayed below, along with an estimate of the net natural&#xA;  carbon flux En - Un.  The fact that the net natural flux is negative&#xA;  clearly shows that natural uptake has exceeded natural emissions every&#xA;  year for the last fifty years at least, and hence has been opposing,&#xA;  rather than causing the observed rise in atmospheric CO2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fZfsT.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=1259&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some time back, I wrote a journal paper refuting a related climate myth, which outlines some of the evidence that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic, and is not a natural phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef200914u&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gavin C. Cawley, &quot;On the Atmospheric Residence Time of Anthropogenically Sourced Carbon Dioxide&quot;, Energy &amp;amp; Fuels, volume 25, issue 11, pages 5503–5513, 2011.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it hard to understand how this argument can be so ubiquitous on climate blogs, given that it is so easily refuted.  For further information, see the many articles on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SkepticalScience.com&lt;/a&gt; addressing this issue (and other climate myths).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-07-01T13:38:28.443" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T13:38:28.443" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17709" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17695" CreationDate="2013-09-12T09:04:20.057" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the figure (from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/&quot;&gt;National Snow and Ice Data Center&lt;/a&gt;) shown below puts the claim into a proper context.  The sea ice extent for August 2012 was 4.71 million square km and 6.09 for August 2013, and the area from 2.56 to 3.83 million square km (which presumably gives rise to the 60% figure).  So the claim is correct, but I suspect used to imply a misleading conclusion.  The trend in Arctic sea ice extent is clearly downwards (even more dramatic if you look at sea ice volume), but there is quite considerable variability from year to year.  For example, there was also a large increase from 1994 to 1995, but this doesn't imply there was a meaningful recovery in sea ice extent and that the long term decrease had slowed, stopped or reversed.  I rather doubt the &quot;recovery&quot; this year is meaningful either, and says more about Arctic weather rather than climate trends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that last year was a very unusual year, with the observed September minimum being very much at the lower end of what statistical methods predicted were plausible.  Looking at the data, record minima are generally followed by an increase (a phenomenon known in statistics as &quot;regression to the mean&quot;), so one would have expected this years extent to be substantially higher than last years, however (pleasingly) the increase has been more than would be expected (or indeed hoped for).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, having said which, the long term trend is downward, and the Arctic summer sea ice is is disappearing, and once gone is unlikely to come back very quickly due to the albedo feedback mechanism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ANRpa.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I suspect the pictures are computer generated images using satellite derived data to estimate the edge of the ice extent (if they were direct images, of course, there would be clouds and cracked/patchy ice etc.).  The data from the NSIDC suggest that (with the right choice of definition) the claim is reasonable.  Here are the comparable extent maps from the &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Aug/&quot;&gt;NSIDC&lt;/a&gt; (looks reasonable to me):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HY4iY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5Mse4.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T13:48:27.610" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T13:48:27.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17712" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-12T13:04:18.920" Score="9" ViewCount="7312" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine forwarded me &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqALdkTArqs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Obama Yes We Can = Thank you Satan (when reversed)&lt;/a&gt;, a video claiming that an audio clip of Obama saying &quot;Yes We Can&quot;, when reversed, says &quot;Thank you, Satan&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this video accurate? That is, has any manipulation been done to the audio of Obama and the cheering crowd, apart from merely reversing it? I'm especially suspicious about the cheering crowd at the end, because the &quot;Thank&quot; there seems to have a &quot;th&quot; sound, unlike when Obama was saying it. I assume they'd fake the cheering crowd reversed rather than Obama reversed, because it'd be easier to impersonate a crowd than impersonate Obama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of people discussing the &quot;Thank you Satan&quot; meme, but not necessarily this video: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unreasonablefaith/2010/09/obama-yes-we-can-thank-you-satan/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://beforeitsnews.com/obama/2012/10/obama-yes-we-can-thank-you-satan-video-2445032.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=58653&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2215392/posts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2017-09-02T04:29:28.747" LastActivityDate="2017-09-02T04:29:28.747" Title="Does reversing a clip of Obama saying &quot;Yes We Can&quot; become &quot;Thank you, Satan&quot;?" Tags="|barack-obama|backmasking|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2017-09-02T15:15:40.733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17713" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-09-12T13:06:26.743" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-09-12T13:06:26.743" LastActivityDate="2013-09-12T13:06:26.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17714" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-09-12T13:06:26.743" Score="0" Body="for questions about claims based on backmasking, a recording method that produces a message that only makes sense when you play it backwards." OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-08-22T14:41:17.413" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T14:41:17.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9193" CreationDate="2013-09-12T13:34:32.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the melting of Arctic sea ice may have little direct effect on sea level rise, it will substantially reduce the albedo of the Arctic ocean as sunlight will be absorbed by the dark ocean water, rather than being reflected back into space from the bright ice.  This is likely to result in a general warming of the Arctic region, which is likely in turn to result in melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which would result in a very substantial rise in global sea levels over the course of a thousand years or so.  This means there is a good reason to be concerned about the loss of summer (when albedo really matters) Arctic sea ice from a sea level rise perspective.  This is known as ice-albedo feedback, there is a basic discussion on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-albedo_feedback&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, a slightly more detailed explanation is described &lt;a href=&quot;https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/environment/global_climate.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; by the NSIDC, a relevant section of the IPCC WG1 report is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch4s4-1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch4s4-6.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2015-11-03T09:58:36.000" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T09:58:36.000" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17718" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-12T15:40:18.807" Score="13" ViewCount="11881" Body="&lt;p&gt;A quick Google with &quot;Parsley Kidney Cleanse&quot;, would return a search results of blogs and personal articles where it claims how regularly drinking refrigerated filtered water boiled with Parsley helps in cleaning Kidney from accumulated Salt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these claims like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturallifeenergy.com/kidney-cleanse/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How To Clean Your Kidneys | Kidney Cleanse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kidney Cleanse: Second Preparation | Ingredients:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;4 bunches of fresh parsley&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rinse with very hot water to cleanse it. Add the parsley to 1 quart of&#xA;  water and boil for 5 minutes. Drink 1/4 cup as soon as it is cool&#xA;  enough. Refrigerate a pint and freeze 1 pint. Drink daily for 3 weeks:&#xA;  3/4 cup of the root mixture and 1/2 cup of the parsley water&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://goodguy.hubpages.com/hub/simple-kidney-cleanse&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Simple Kidney Cleanse With Parsley&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Easy Steps For Kidney Cleanse.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Follow these easy steps for kidney cleanse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Cut a bunch of parsley into smaller pieces.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Boil the parsley in a pot of water for 10 minutes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Let it cool down and then sieve and discard the parsley.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Pour the filtered water into bottles or any container and keep in fridge.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Drink one glass of the water daily.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You should notice the sediments in your urine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;You should feel a sense of well-being after that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/411452-does-parsley-clean-the-kidneys/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does Parsley Clean the Kidneys?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What's In It?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Parsley owes its diuretic effect to the presence of two ingredients,&#xA;  apiol and myristicin, which are found in parsley oil. The amount of&#xA;  these substances varies across the more than 30 varieties of parsley,&#xA;  and the amount of oil varies in different parts of the plant, being&#xA;  more concentrated in the leaves than in the root. The German agency&#xA;  Commission E indicates that parsley may be used for ridding the body&#xA;  of kidney stones. There is currently no clinical evidence to support&#xA;  this, according to the Tufts Medical Center, but increased urine flow&#xA;  could potentially have this effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately none of the links leads me to a research paper or the claim that was backed by a reputed medical practitioner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is this a Myth or a Fact?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15466" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-09-16T20:15:50.863" LastActivityDate="2017-09-22T21:15:26.403" Title="Does parsley help in cleansing the kidneys?" Tags="|medical-science|anatomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3410" CreationDate="2013-09-12T20:23:52.013" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5fDq4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Oregon grapes or creeping mahonia&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oregon grapes or creeping mahonia or &lt;em&gt;Mahonia aquifolium&lt;/em&gt;. Sour, but edible.  In western North America. Usually to make jelly or pies or to flavor drinks.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://montana.plant-life.org/species/mahon_repe.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Description here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://northernbushcraft.com/topic.php?name=oregon+grape&amp;amp;region=bc&amp;amp;ctgy=edible_berries&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15288" LastEditorUserId="15288" LastEditDate="2016-08-29T08:08:14.763" LastActivityDate="2016-08-29T08:08:14.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17723" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17727" CreationDate="2013-09-12T22:35:08.220" Score="22" ViewCount="3623" Body="&lt;p&gt;This one comes from my 7-year-old. So, do all monkeys go bananas for bananas? Some types of monkeys? Do all monkeys like bananas somehow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...or is it just a cartoon convention with no basis in reality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15178" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T09:48:37.317" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T09:48:37.317" Title="Do monkeys love bananas?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17723" CreationDate="2013-09-13T09:30:38.163" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming that &amp;quot;monkeys&amp;quot; includes Chimpanzees, Jane Goodall's documentation shows they really like bananas. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.webster.edu/%7Ewoolflm/janegoodall.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www2.webster.edu/~woolflm/janegoodall.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jane was very discouraged and depressed after only a few weeks at Gombe. The chimps would not let her within 50 yards of them, and she had observed very little. Jane was getting discouraged about the project. She had never done research with animals, and the chimpanzees were certainly not cooperating with her.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;[...] One day, a large male chimp wandered into the camp. He eyed the tent from a nearby tree. Suddenly, he began stomping and screaming, as though he felt threatened. Jane soon realized the chimpanzee was eyeing a banana on the table just inside the tent. This would be Jane's chance to get close to the chimps. From that day on, bananas were kept near by for any curious chimps.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Jane eventually grew very close to the chimps at Gombe. They would soon allow her to follow them, as they led the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://letsspreadcompassion.wordpress.com/tag/banana-club/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://letsspreadcompassion.wordpress.com/tag/banana-club/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gave birth to “Banana Club”, it is what she calls her methodology, a feeding method which bonded her even closer to them, and her observations became more fruitful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.janegoodall.org.uk/content/1000kgs-bananas&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.janegoodall.org.uk/content/1000kgs-bananas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can buy 1,000kgs of Bananas for the Jane Goodall Institute&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/reCd4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Image caption: &amp;quot;Delivery of 1000kg of Bananas and other fruit&amp;quot;; image copied from the link above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/10/jane-goodall/gombe-photography#/08-jane-feeding-old-714.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/10/jane-goodall/gombe-photography#/08-jane-feeding-old-714.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bananas gave Jane an edge. A steady supply lured chimps and enabled her to gain their trust. David Greybeard (right), who once ate about 50 bananas in a sitting, was the first Gombe chimp to lose his fear of human contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course Jan Goodall isn't the only one to document this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://communications.uwo.ca/western_news/stories/2009/January/my_month_with_the_chimps.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;My month with the chimps&#xA;By Susan Fussell&#xA;January 15, 2009&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clinical Veterinarian Susan Fussell greets a distraught Danial, who had been chained to a freezer for over a year. A week later, happiness is lots of bananas for Daniel who is now at the Sanaga-Yong Chimpanzee Rescue Center in Cameroon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wheelbarrow loads of fruit are taken to enclosures, a plastic container drummed to herald the arrival of breakfast. The chimps are frantic for the bananas, oranges and guavas. The Cameroonian staff and volunteers can identify each of the 64 chimps and ensure that each receives its share. Next the vitamins and finally the medications are given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chimpanzees aren't the only apes who like bananas: for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6waeJALVb4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here is a Toutube video&lt;/a&gt; showing an orangutan putting 10 bananas in his mouth at once. (I think that's to carry them somewhere to eat later: monkeys carry things in their mouths: they don't have shopping bags or clothes with pockets, and put their hands on the ground when they walk).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However monkeys don't only eat bananas. The &amp;quot;A huge menu&amp;quot; section of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://animals.sandiegozoo.org/animals/monkey&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;San Diego Zoo web site page about monkeys&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prehensile tails come in handy for holding on while the monkey collects food: flowers, fruits, nuts, leaves, seeds, insects, birds’ eggs, spiders, and small mammals. Old World monkeys fill up their large cheek pouches with fruits, leaves, and insects as they forage during the day, stopping to chew and swallow their food when they find a safe spot to rest. Baboons are also known to eat meat when they can catch it, including young antelope, rabbits, and birds like guinea fowl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaves are the food of choice for some monkey species. Colobus monkeys and langurs have chambered stomachs that carry bacteria, which help ferment and digest leaves. Geladas prefer to graze on grass!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monkeys at the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Zoo Safari Park are offered a variety of vegetables, special herbivore biscuits, and a variety of leafy branches (mulberry, willow, hibiscus, and ficus) to munch on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the kinds of banana which they at are not the same as ours. We eat &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavendish_banana_subgroup&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Canvendish bananas&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cavendish bananas accounted for 47% of global banana production between 1998 and 2000, and the vast majority of bananas entering international trade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cavendish bananas are an artificial cultivar which is grown from clones and (because it so rarely has any seeds) does not exist in the wild. MSN's article &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.msn.com/science-technology/is-it-time-to-say-bye-bye-to-the-banana?stay=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is it time to say 'bye-bye' to the banana?&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since bananas are not propagated from seeds, but instead from identical clone plants called &amp;quot;pups,&amp;quot; there is no way to reverse the swath of disease spreading across banana plantations around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EAZA is a group which publishes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eaza.net/activities/Pages/Nutrition.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;nutrition information for zoos&lt;/a&gt;. Their article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eaza.net/activities/Documents/NutritionDocs/EAZA-ZAN4.PDF&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fruits as foods – common misconceptions&#xA;about frugivory&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Primate species known or thought to be mainly or partly frugivorous in the wild are&#xA;usually provided with a fruit-based diet in captivity. However, cultivated fruits as available&#xA;on European markets are grown for human consumption and have been selectively bred for&#xA;high sugar and low fibre content. They may thus not be representative of wild fruits. In this&#xA;paper we compared the nutritional characteristics of fruits consumed by primates in the&#xA;wild to those of such fruits that are commonly used in diets for captive primates in&#xA;European zoos.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;[...]Overall, fruits consumed by wild&#xA;primates are more comparable in their nutrient composition to vegetables used in zoo&#xA;diets. We therefore recommend not to simply translate a frugivorous nutritional strategy of&#xA;a species in the wild to a captive diet for that species that mainly consists of fleshy fruits,&#xA;but to look at nutrient composition and try to mimic this as closely as possible in order to&#xA;avoid diet-related problems such as obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggests that wild bananas are more like vegetables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T09:30:38.163" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17728" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17732" CreationDate="2013-09-13T09:34:07.083" Score="3" ViewCount="1934" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backmasking#Subliminal_persuasion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;, some people (e.g. christian groups) have claimed that backmasking could be used to manipulate the listener:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Various fundamentalist Christian groups have declared that Satan—or Satan-influenced musicians—use backmasked messages to subliminally alter behavior. Pastor Gary Greenwald claimed that subliminal messages backmasked into rock music induce listeners towards sex and drug use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This related question addresses whether or not some bands made use of backmasking: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1674/backwards-masking-in-music&quot;&gt;Backwards masking in music&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It only clarifies part of the claims. &lt;strong&gt;Assuming that music bands willingly put backwards messages in their songs, would it affect an uninformed listener?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am very skeptical about this, and strongly suspect that claimers had other reasons to discredit rock music. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_subliminal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;French Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; claims indeed that it is unlikely to work, due to consonants sounding very different when played backwards, but it lacks reliable references. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14065" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T17:27:24.287" Title="Has backmasking any significant effect as subliminal stimulus?" Tags="|psychology|music|backmasking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17723" CreationDate="2013-09-13T13:53:56.927" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/2703/chrisw&quot;&gt;@ChrisW's answer&lt;/a&gt;, which shows that chimpanzees love bananas and orangutans like bananas is an excellent answer... but only if you accept the common usage of &quot;monkey&quot; to include the chimpanzee and orangutan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chris clearly stated that that assumption was being made, and that's probably an acceptable assumption - the general meme of &quot;monkeys love bananas&quot; extends to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Hot-sale-Funny-Chimpanzee-Plush-Stuffed-Animal-Toy-Don-t-Touch-My-Banana-Doll/903921120.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;chimpanzees&lt;/a&gt; and orangutans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;em&gt;chimpanzees and orangutans &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/animals/mammals/apevsmonkey.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;are not monkeys&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, they are apes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, do &lt;strong&gt;true&lt;/strong&gt; monkeys truly &lt;strong&gt;love&lt;/strong&gt; bananas above all else? i.e. not, merely will they eat them, but do they prefer them over other foods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1935, Dr Rosa Katz and her husband Professor David Katz decided to find out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They offered seven different foods on a dish to each of three &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_monkey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;green monkeys&lt;/a&gt; and three &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capuchin_monkey&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Capuchin monkeys&lt;/a&gt;, and watched what order they ate the items. They did this repeatedly over several days, to make sure it wasn't just a mood thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each monkey always ate them in the same order, and all the monkeys ate them in a very similar order to each other - even across the species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic ordering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grape&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Banana&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apple&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carrot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lettuce or Cabbage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nuts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bread&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, sure, these two species of monkeys &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; like bananas, but they &lt;em&gt;love&lt;/em&gt; grapes more!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(A couple of chimpanzees were also offered similar diets. Both were big fans of the grapes as their first choice, but one preferred apple to bananas.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;David Katz and Rosa Katz, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1936.tb08519.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some Problems concerning the Feeding Behaviour of Monkeys&lt;/a&gt;, Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, Volume 106, Issue 2, pp579-582, July 1936.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Sorry, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8G5gSP64D4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;no relevant video&lt;/a&gt; - it was 1935.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T13:53:56.927" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17728" CreationDate="2013-09-13T14:49:07.497" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Vokey and Read, 1985) mention the &amp;quot;fallacy that presence implies effectiveness&amp;quot; — that &amp;quot;advocates appear to believe that demonstrating the existence of the messages is not merely necessary to the argument but is sufficient as well&amp;quot;. They present Gary Greenwald and Bryan Wilson Key as proponents of this fallacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Greenwald presents a collection of reversed recordings of rock music to demonstrate the existence of backward messages. From these demonstrations and the alleged presence &lt;em&gt;and presumed effectiveness&lt;/em&gt; of subliminal messages in other media such as advertising, Greenwald concludes that listening to such music is having a detrimental effect on young people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bryan Wilson Key, the major proponent of the claim that advertisers have&#xA;resorted to &amp;quot;subliminal advertising&amp;quot; to influence the buying public, provides an extensive litany of subliminal messages in various print, film, and television&#xA;media. Like Greenwald, he presents the &amp;quot;exposed&amp;quot; messages as proof not only that the respective media contain such messages but &lt;em&gt;also that the messages have the intended effect&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated by (Vokey and Read, 1985), even if such messages exist, &amp;quot;it does not follow that the messages must be effective&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They tested this by recording sets of messages that had meaning, playing them in reverse to listeners, then asking the listeners to perform tasks that would be influenced by the messages had the listeners been affected by the content of the backward messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken together with the results of the other tasks, &lt;em&gt;we could find no evidence that our listeners were influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the content of backward messages&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a different setting, (Schwartz and Froufe, 2001) studied the effect of intentionally inserted subliminal messages (not backmasked, but present in the signal at a low level) for the goal of improving self-esteem. They found that &amp;quot;there were no statistically significant differences between the placebo group and the subliminal group&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schwartz, Cecilia, and Manuel Froufe. &amp;quot;Subliminal messages for increasing self-esteem: Placebo effect.&amp;quot; The Spanish journal of psychology 4, no. 1 (2001): 19.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vokey, John R., and J. Don Read. &amp;quot;Subliminal messages: Between the devil and the media.&amp;quot; American Psychologist 40, no. 11 (1985): 1231.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T17:27:24.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17655" CreationDate="2013-09-13T17:25:18.513" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are at least three issues here which contribute to the large differences which Spencer describes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, there's a highly misleading aspect to the chart.  People not familiar with the subject, or who just glance at the chart quickly might conclude that experimental data show essentially no change even though all the climate models are predicting significant temperature increases - which would indicate that global warming isn't really occurring.  This is not what the chart shows.  In fact, Spencer has selected temperature predictions and measurements just for a specific part of the atmosphere, over a specific part of the earth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The middle of the lower atmosphere (the mid-troposphere)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Near the equator (between 20 degrees north and south of the equator).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He did not make it clear in the post that he's focusing on this single value.  While people who are knowledgeable in the field will notice what's being plotted, he's implicitly suggesting that predicted temperature increases are consistently much higher than observations, which is not true.  Without speculating on whether this is intentional, he is certainly aware that many people will see (and share) the chart as-is, without understanding what it's truly saying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more global &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20100322194954/http://tamino.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/models-2/&quot;&gt;comparison&lt;/a&gt; clearly shows the models are working quite well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vTpOC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, there is some truth in the chart.  There is a known discrepancy between tropical tropospheric temperature predictions and observations.  This has been recognized for years, so it's nothing new.  There's some discussion &lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/4/044018/article&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; which explains the issue and sums it up by saying it's not clear whether it's caused by inaccuracies in the models, inaccuracies in the temperature data, or some combination of the two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The apparent model-observational difference for tropical upper tropospheric warming represents an important problem, but it is not clear whether the difference is a result of common biases in GCMs, biases in observational datasets, or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, there's some clear cherry-picking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He has focused on a single temperature - the tropical mid-troposphere.  That means he's looking at atmospheric temperatures in a particular range of elevations, within a particular range of latitudes.  Thus, he's ignoring all other temperature predictions and measurements, which present a much different picture as shown in the chart above. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He has chosen not to illustrate areas where the consensus model predictions are &lt;strong&gt;understating&lt;/strong&gt; the severity of climate change, for example polar ice melting  or global sea level rise - which are occurring much faster than models predict.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GHCHL.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/sea-level-rise-predictions.htm&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qTpPH.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://soa.arcus.org/sites/soa.arcus.org/files/sessions/1-1-advances-understanding-arctic-system-components/pdf/1-1-7-maslowski-wieslaw.pdf&quot;&gt;source (pdf file)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He has used the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5 predictions from all the models.  There are 4 standard CO2 emissions scenarios used in climate modeling, all of which are considered possible.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/rcp.php?t=3&quot;&gt;Here is a good summary of what RCP means&lt;/a&gt;  Of the four, 8.5 represents the highest CO2 emissions, thus the greatest climate change:   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The worst case scenario - RCP8.5 - assumes more or less unabated emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the difference isn't particularly large in the early years, it is clear that he intentionally selected the RCP value which results in the greatest predicted increases because that will maximize the difference between predictions and observations &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastActivityDate="2013-09-13T17:25:18.513" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8420" CreationDate="2013-09-14T06:41:47.260" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;I looked up the sources mentioned above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pratt DM and VH Anderson. 1982. Population, distribution and behavior of giraffe in the Arusha National Park, Tanzania. Journal of Natural History 16 pp481-489&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article is about population data collected over a year of observation. It mentions there have been 22 births in that year, a low birth rate considering the population included 172 females. It says nothing about mating or homosexual behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pratt DM and VH Anderson. 1985. Giraffe social behavior. Journal of Natural History 19 pp771-781.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article summarizes the authors' observations and statistics of social interaction in giraffes, collected in three separate national parks in Northen Tanzania, over about 3 years of total (non-consecutive) observations, more precisely 3264 hours of observation. They mention that they integrate findings from the '79 and the '82 articles in this summary article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They say that sparring bouts, which usually involve &quot;necking&quot;, when giraffes swing their necks and hit each other with them, sometimes included one male attempting to mount another. &quot;We saw this eight times in the Arusha Park and eight times at Tarangire. In nine of these 16 events, the animal attempting to mount had his penis unsheathed. [...] In no case did a bull try to mount another male as large as himself. Intent observation and detailed recording of positions and movements failed to show that this act was an expression of dominance (which we initially surmised); we never saw any indications---e.g., behavioural, postural--of submission in bulls mounted.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article goes on to discuss courtship and mating. It appears that it's very rare for giraffes to actually mate. The female is in heat only one day out of every two weeks. The males test females for readiness by sniffing their urine, but the female can choose who to give this data (by choosing to urinate or not when the male lowers his head to her rump). When a male giraffe senses that a female is in the right condition, they may proceed to courtship, which involved 1-2 days worth of following her closely and occasionally attempting to mount, which the female usually frustrates by just walking forward. When the female chooses to stand still, the mounting will proceed. The researchers note with some exasperation that over their 3 years of observation, they only saw one successful mounting, out of 46 courtship attempts and 304 urine-sniffing attempts. In light of the fact that in one of these years 22 calves were born as discussed in the previous article, they must have missed many - but of course they could also miss many homosexual mounting attempts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dagg, AI and Foester JB. 1976. The giraffe, its biology, behavior and ecology. New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book briefly mentions that homosexual mounting was frequent (no numbers) in one park where the number of females was unusually low, about 30%; in another park with approximate parity between the sexes, it was much more rare, and they only saw 3 attempts in 400 hours of observation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Necking&quot; is not treated as homosexual behavior by any of these sources; they mention that necking is reserved only for males, and seems related to dominance relationships between males.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion from all this is that although it's arithmetically true that in 3 years of observation, the authors of the '85 source saw 16 homosexual mountings and just one mating, it might be misleading to summarize that as &quot;94% of sexual activity is homosexual&quot;. First, the observation apparently missed the vast majority of matings, and probably of homosexual mounting as well. Second, the male giraffes seemed interested in much more coupling, but the menstrual cycle and female refusal combined to give them only incredibly rare opportunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15483" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T06:41:47.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17741" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-14T12:46:45.733" Score="4" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_viewing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Remote viewing&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the early 1990s the Military Intelligence Board, chaired by DIA chief Soyster appointed Army Colonel William Johnson to manage the remote viewing unit and evaluate its objective usefulness. Funding dissipated in late 1994 and the program went into decline. The project was transferred out of DIA to the CIA in 1995.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1995 the CIA hired the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to perform a retrospective evaluation of the results generated by the Stargate Project. Reviewers included Ray Hyman and Jessica Utts. &lt;strong&gt;Utts maintained that there had been a statistically significant positive effect, with some subjects scoring 5%-15% above chance.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? There was only a 5%-15% effect at the gifted subjects?&#xA;How many trials were made there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15327" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T10:18:37.527" Title="Have remote viewing tests shown a positive effect, 5-15% above chance?" Tags="|esp|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17743" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17745" CreationDate="2013-09-14T13:27:11.407" Score="32" ViewCount="3389" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ask most anybody about dogs or cats, and they will repeat the claim that these animals are colorblind.  To most, it means greyscale.  Is it true that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rationalskepticism.org/psychology/can-the-brain-see-at-night-with-cats-eye-implant-t27749.html#p1209026&quot;&gt;cats&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quake3world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&amp;amp;t=41606&quot;&gt;ref 2&lt;/a&gt;) and &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/angela_adams_PR/statuses/126768625561505793&quot;&gt;dogs&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070712190428AAb6vSX&quot;&gt;ref 2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.topix.com/forum/topstories/TKR8TBO9ITULD0MN4/p483#c9982&quot;&gt;ref 3&lt;/a&gt;) only see in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grayscale&quot;&gt;grayscale&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've noticed that my cats somehow don't seem to see very well, although at night they play with each other without any light at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15298" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-09-14T16:30:35.343" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T03:22:39.910" Title="Do cats and dogs only see in grayscale?" Tags="|biology|ophthalmology|dogs|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17743" CreationDate="2013-09-14T16:36:31.100" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cats and dogs have what we would call red-green color blindness. But they don't see only in grayscale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dogs and cats are dichromats (having two types of color receptors). (Neitz et al. 1989, Loop et al. 1979) Their cones allow them to distinguish between blue and yellow wavelengths, but less well between red and green wavelengths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In cats, the two cone types have peak responses to wavelengths of 445-455 nm (deep blue) and 555 nm (greenish yellow). (Jacobs 1993, at p. 429)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In dogs, these receptors have peak responses to wavelengths of 429 nm (blue) and 555 nm (greenish yellow). (Neitz et al. 1989, Jacobs 1993 at p. 427)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jacobs, G. H. (1993). The distribution and nature of colour vision among the mammals. Biological Reviews, 68(3), 413-471.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Loop, M. S., Bruce, L. L., &amp;amp; Petuchowski, S. (1979). Cat color vision: The effect of stimulus size, shape and viewing distance. Vision research, 19(5), 507-513.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neitz, J., Geist, T., &amp;amp; Jacobs, G. H. (1989). Color vision in the dog. Vis Neurosci, 3(2), 119-125.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-09-14T16:50:22.040" LastActivityDate="2013-09-14T16:50:22.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17743" CreationDate="2013-09-14T16:40:39.923" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;:  The claim is actually false.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sewanee.edu/chem/Chem&amp;amp;Art/Detail_Pages/ColorProjects_2003/Early/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cats and Dogs (as well as many other animals) just see the world differently from humans&lt;/a&gt;.  We would call them colourblind, but not greyscale colorblind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I run into this claim A LOT, so I feel that it is indeed a great skeptical claim.  At the very least a teaching moment to introduce what skepticism means since this is such a common belief which people can change because their worldview isn't tied too much to animals seeing in greyscale versus dicromatic scales.  Okay, on to the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, a great explanation of how human color vision came to be can be found on this &lt;a href=&quot;http://genomewiki.ucsc.edu/index.php/Opsin_evolution:_trichromatic_ancestral_mammal&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of California Santa Cruz site&lt;/a&gt;.  In particular, it talks about the Opsin evolution of trichromatic sight.  Of particular note is that evolutionarily, trichormatic and dichromatic sights has gone back and forth a few times.  In particular as shown by this diagram (wikicommons license):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iMYVz.png&quot; alt=&quot;Evolutionary Tree of Sight&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, all this lead up material, to simply answer your question, dogs and cats are not greyscale seeing animals.  They are simply red-green color blind (so this may explain why they  will ignore a yellow tennis ball on green grass unless they can locate it by scent).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www4.uwsp.edu/psych/dog/LA/DrP4.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Mark Plonsky  at the University of Wisconsin at Steven-Point gives a great rundown&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dogs are red-green color blind. They see a brighter and less detailed world when compared to humans. Peripheral vision is better than humans (dogs see more of the world), but distance is not judged quite as well. Dogs excel at night vision and the detection of moving objects. Figure 1 is a rough guesstimate of what a dog and human might see when viewing a color band (the electromagnetic spectrum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xiDKd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Dog Vision&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ccmr.cornell.edu/education/ask/?quid=165&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cornell University also answers this question&lt;/a&gt;.  Note that horses see things differently from cats and dogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many adults think that dogs and cats cannot see any colors, only shades of gray. But this is not true. Cats and dogs can see some colors but not all of them. So in a sense they are like adults who are colorblind. Cats and dogs have cells in their eyes that respond well in bright and dim light. At night, cats and dogs use cells called rods that are sensitive to dim light. They are found in a lining at the back of the eye called the retina. When light falls on the rods, they send a message to the brain to explain the image that they see. For the bright light of day, you need cells called cones. But having cones in your eyes also means that you can also see color. Humans have three kinds of cones that allow them to see blue, red and green. So humans (and monkeys!) can see in full color. Dogs and cats only have two kinds of cones sensitive to blue and green light. So they do see some colors. By the way, if you have a horse or pony at home, they have red and blue cones. Horses see some colors, but they can't tell green from gray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that is a good rundown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T03:22:39.910" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17746" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-14T21:43:47.723" Score="9" ViewCount="1410" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miracle_of_Lanciano&quot;&gt;Miracle of Lanciano&lt;/a&gt; is that, in 700 AD, a monk in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanciano&quot;&gt;Lanciano&lt;/a&gt; reported that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the Mass, when he said the Words of Consecration [...], with doubt in his soul, the priest saw the bread change into living flesh and the wine change into live blood which coagulated into five globules, irregular and differing in shape and size&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many Catholics believe that this was a genuine miracle. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the evidence for and against this alleged miracle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15496" LastEditorUserId="29514" LastEditDate="2019-06-05T08:08:36.223" LastActivityDate="2019-06-05T08:08:36.223" Title="Did the Miracle of Lanciano turn bread and wine into flesh and blood?" Tags="|religion|catholic-church|miracle|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17746" CreationDate="2013-09-14T22:22:38.097" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Assuming the bits are actually flesh and blood, the main question is whether or not they used to be bread and wine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only evidence &lt;em&gt;for&lt;/em&gt; this transformation occurring is the long-ago testimony of a monk sometime near the year 700:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the 700th year of Our Lord [...] a monk of the Order of St. Basil was celebrating Holy Mass according to the Latin Rite. Although his name is unknown, it is reported in an ancient document that he was &quot;... versed in the sciences of the world, but ignorant in that of God.&quot; (Cruz 1984, at p. 10)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this being so long ago, and very little documentation surrounding the incident, I would treat descriptions of what happened as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearsay&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hearsay&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Philosopher &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/d/davidhume405337.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;David Hume explained&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case the testimony's hearsay nature makes the likelihood of its falsehood quite high. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, science has a very solid understanding of matter and chemistry. Under our current understanding, such a transformation is not possible. The likelihood of that being so substantially incorrect that bread could transform to flesh and blood in the hands of a doubting priest is very, very low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This hearsay account is not enough to be persuasive that a miracle occurred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joan Carroll Cruz. Relics. Our Sunday Visitor Publishing, 1984.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T07:16:11.203" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T07:16:11.203" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17757" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-15T06:33:06.500" Score="2" ViewCount="473" Body="&lt;p&gt;Countries like China, Britain, and the U.S. have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_of_drugs#US_prohibition_of_opium&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;banned  opium&lt;/a&gt;. The media is anti-narcotics and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/the-national-drug-control-budget-fy-2013-funding-highlights&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;U.S. government spends billions&lt;/a&gt; of dollars enforcing these laws. We're told that narcotics are too dangerous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a quote on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin#Adverse_effects&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;adverse effects&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like most opioids, unadulterated heroin does not cause many long-term&#xA;  complications other than dependence and constipation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are narcotics really as dangerous&lt;/strong&gt; as the media and government would have you believe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10227" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-09-15T15:22:20.480" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T18:31:31.053" Title="Are narcotics too dangerous?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17757" CreationDate="2013-09-15T07:03:34.797" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The term narcotic is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcotic&quot;&gt;imprecise&lt;/a&gt; and, in the US, has implications of &quot;illicit&quot;. I am putting issues with the criminalisation of drugs aside, and I am focussing on heroin and cocaine in particular, as example narcotics.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an additional long-term complication to these narcotics - death due to overdose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db22.pdf&quot;&gt;CDC report&lt;/a&gt; (key &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://ftp.cdc.gov/pub/Health_Statistics/NCHS/Publications/Data_Briefs/db022/fig02.xls&quot;&gt;table&lt;/a&gt;), there were over 7.476 deaths due to cocaine overdose and 2,090 deaths due to heroin overdose in the United States in 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While those numbers might include (a) double-counting if both drugs were involved, (b) deliberate suicides and (c) deaths that would not have occurred had the drug been decriminalised - e.g due to impurities, (d) deaths that would not have occurred if the drugs had been consumed within the purview of a medical facility, it is clear that the statement that there are no serious complications to narcotics is inaccurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T07:03:34.797" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17757" CreationDate="2013-09-15T10:43:45.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO we should take it for granted that opium (and perhaps cocaine) has been found to be desirable by at least some of the people who have tried it, resulting in addiction or at least repeated use, and that it is fairly safe or well-tolerated (in that, at the least, users tend not to die of it, at least not immediately).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the main argument against (and the argument in favour of making them illegal) is the cost to society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/stream/encyclopdiabri20chis#page/130/mode/2up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Opium article in the Encyclopedia Brittanica of 1911&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Chinese government regardng the use of opium as one of the most acute moral and economic questions which as a nation they have to face, representing a loss to the country of 856,250,000 taels, decided in 1906 to put an end to the drug within 10 years&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In October of the same year, the American government in the Philippines, having to deal with the opium trade, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this meeting it was resolved that it was the duty of the respective governments to prevent the export of opium to any countries prohibiting its importation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difficulties of the task undertaken by the Chinese government to eradicate a national and popular vice, in a country whose population is generally estimated at 400,000,000, are increased by the fact that opium has been indulged in by all classes of society, that opium has been the principal if not the only national stimulant; that it must involve a considerable loss of revenue, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/stream/encyclopdiabri20chis#page/136/mode/2up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;page 136&lt;/a&gt; of the same source,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1906 is was estimated that 13,455,699 of Chinese smoked opium, or 27% of adult males; but during 1908-1910 the consumption of opium is believed to have diminished by about one third.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result was the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Opium_Convention&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Opium Convention&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The International Opium Convention, signed at The Hague on January 23, 1912 during the First International Opium Conference, was the first international drug control treaty. It was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on January 23, 1922.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text of that convention is easy to find; &lt;strike&gt;but I haven't found (except for the Encyclopedia Britannica article mentioned above) a statement of what motivated that agreement.&lt;/strike&gt; and here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/details/cu31924032583225&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Report of the International opium commission, Shanghai, China, February 1 to February 26, 1909&lt;/a&gt; (620 pages) which preceded and motivated that agreement. However it seems that commission is more about how to stop the trade: for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/stream/cu31924032583225#page/n15/mode/2up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;introduction on page 9&lt;/a&gt; states as a given that it's a harmful &amp;quot;bane&amp;quot; (which may be why they called that Commission to discuss it), and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/stream/cu31924032583225#page/n531/mode/2up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;message from the President of the United States&lt;/a&gt; is headed &amp;quot;Opium problem&amp;quot;, as if the fact that it was problem was common knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's article about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampden_Coit_DuBose&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hampden Coit DuBose&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a witness of the destructive problems of opium addiction in China, he was moved to join with other likeminded missionaries and Christian medical workers to form the Anti-Opium League in China. DuBose was its first president. In 1899 the League published a seminal book called Opinions of Over 100 Physicians on the Use of Opium in China. The book illustrated the purpose of the league and published facts about the opium abuse crisis that ultimately influenced public opinion against the trade. DuBose eventually gained the support of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, the U.S. Congress, and the International Opium Commission. In 1906 the League achieved success when the British Parliament declared that the trade was &amp;quot;morally indefensible.&amp;quot; DuBose circulated a petition signed by over a thousand missionaries in China and it was presented to the Guangxu Emperor. In turn the Emperor issued an imperial edict, following verbatim the petition Dubose had drafted, which prohibited the trade and abuse of opium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a letter to U.S. Senator John McLaurin he called upon the U.S. to own its responsibility for the opium trade, in that, along with Great Britain it had profited at the expense of the Chinese. He asserted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“ …opium has no judicious use…save as administered by a physician[1]  ”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His use of the term &amp;quot;judicious&amp;quot; was I guess because of its addictive properties. For example, Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine_dependence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cocaine dependence&lt;/a&gt; article says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cocaine addiction continues to be the most difficult to manage behind heroin, and according to some scientists, addiction to cocaine may be almost impossible to stop.[23][24]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/details/39002055095831.med.yale.edu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Opinions of over 100 physicians on the use of opium in China (1899)&lt;/a&gt; was as influential as stated, here are some extracts from it. The first chapter is about the &amp;quot;moral, physical, and social&amp;quot; effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page v. Introduction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The slaves of the habit have their faces shrunken and dark. They become old, infirm, and incapacitated before their time, and all finances are exhausted. This condition is pitiable but it is not the worst -- for those who hold office on their part become greedy and grasping, those who are soldiers become nerveless, and the number of depraved population is increased steadily, while the wealth of the country steadily decreases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This depends largely on a man's means; if he can afford to eat well and plentifully, opium has not the same deleterious effect on the body as when he is badly off for food; he may not lose flesh, but he loses color and powers of resistance. The moral and social effects can never be good, but the degree of badness depends very largely on circumstances -- the temptations a man is led into, either of place or to obtain the drug, the length of time taken and the amount of the drug used each day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T13:00:54.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17770" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17773" CreationDate="2013-09-15T12:51:48.697" Score="15" ViewCount="2990" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately I've been seeing a lot of articles (mostly in local news) that suggest that canned beer is better, but from my own subjective experience I find it worse than beer stored in glass bottles. And the one that comes in plastic bottles is the worst in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/why-canned-beer-is-better-2013-8&quot;&gt;An article from Business Insider&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To everyone's delight, canning is also better for a beer's quality,&#xA;  according to Welz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cans don't let light in, plain and simple. &quot;Light is destructive to&#xA;  the organic compound in beer that make the flavors everyone is so&#xA;  crazy about,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Welz also suspects that cans, with a &quot;double-crimped&quot; seal, are better&#xA;  than bottles at preventing air from getting in — air being one of the&#xA;  main enemies of a delicious brew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All that is true, but Ska Brewing thinks the mounting consumer&#xA;  preference for canned beer has less to do with quality and more to do&#xA;  with convenience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been any scientific studies that prove that canned beer tastes better? Like beer from different sources being given to a group of people, then they point out which one is the best without knowing the source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2636" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-09-15T15:23:00.943" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T21:40:17.873" Title="Does canned beer taste better than bottled beer?" Tags="|beer|taste|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17770" CreationDate="2013-09-15T16:22:48.427" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taste is extremely subjective and I couldn't find any rigorous tests scientific literature of blind taste tests. However, that said, unscientific tests such as one by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/06/canned-vs-bottled-beer_n_1575730.html&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt; had the following results for blind bottled vs. canned taste test with 25 tasters:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Budweiser - 64 percent identified the canned variety, 17 percent preferred the canned variety&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Heineken - 52 percent identified the canned variety, 68 percent percent preferred the canned variety&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sapporo - 56 percent identified the canned variety, 52 percent percent preferred the canned variety&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA - 44 percent identified the canned variety, 68 percent percent preferred the canned variety&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as you can see, in may cases the correct identification as very close to random chance and the preference of one of the other as variable. This variability leads to the much more interesting point that there are practical reasons for canning vs. bottling and that is cans are better than bottles in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/02/science-speaks-on-the-crucial-canned-beer-question/252999/&quot;&gt;protecting the beverage from UV light&lt;/a&gt;, also known &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-10/uonc-ucf101701.php&quot;&gt;skunky beer&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esquire.com/blogs/food-for-men/canned-vs-bottled-beer-debate-6655494&quot;&gt;some reports&lt;/a&gt; that some people may be able to smell the metal of the can while drinking from it which may the beer to taste different due to the connection between &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/2737-surprising-impact-taste-smell.html&quot;&gt;smell and taste&lt;/a&gt;. This sense of smell is part of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/2013/05/01/craft-beers-say-hello-cans-goodbye-bottles-an-aluminum-revolution/&quot;&gt;Sam Adams marketing campaign&lt;/a&gt; for their canned beer,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Similar to the highly specialized and often grape specific Reidel and&#xA;  Spiegelau wine glasses that swept oenophiles in the 1990s, they are&#xA;  specially designed for the proper “delivery” of beer. According to Sam&#xA;  Adams’ press release, “The position of the can opening and wider lid&#xA;  naturally opens up the mouth allowing for more air flow and positions&#xA;  the drinker’s nose closer to the hop aromas of the beer.  A little&#xA;  known fact is that most of what we think we taste is actually what we&#xA;  smell – that’s why it’s hard to taste food with a stuffed up nose.&#xA;  Drinkers also noticed that the extended, curved lip of the can&#xA;  delivered the beer to the front of the palate to maximize the early&#xA;  enjoyment of the malt sweetness.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, modern cans are now lined with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fastcompany.com/1327963/ditch-bottle-microbreweries-say-can-do&quot;&gt;water-based epoxy&lt;/a&gt;, i.e. &lt;a href=&quot;http://tablematters.com/2013/02/07/canned-answers/&quot;&gt;bisphenol-A&lt;/a&gt;, to ensure that the beer does not interact with the can itself. This does lead to other arguments against canned beer on the grounds of &lt;a href=&quot;http://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2011/sc-hc/H164-125-2010-eng.pdf&quot;&gt;bisphenol-A leeching&lt;/a&gt; into the beer; however, that does not appear to actually affect the taste of the beer itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary, there are some scientific reasons why canned beers might taste better than bottled, namely by preventing UV light exposure which can lead to skunking of the beer, but beyond that there shouldn't be any reason why the same product would taste noticeably different. When beer is poured and drunk for a glass, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://beeradvocate.com/beer/101/taste&quot;&gt;generally&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://beer.about.com/od/howtotastebeer/ht/HowToTasteBeer.htm&quot;&gt;recommended&lt;/a&gt;, any issues with smells coming off the container would also be avoided and you should be unable to tell the difference, as hinted at by the Huffington Post article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2013-09-15T16:22:48.427" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17775" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17793" CreationDate="2013-09-15T18:55:39.643" Score="9" ViewCount="2666" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of technologies which are aimed at producing energy from non-fossil sources, among which very popular are wind power and solar power technologies. However, I have encountered a number of claims (&lt;a href=&quot;http://toryaardvark.com/2010/12/29/uk-wind-turbines-consume-more-enerygy-than-they-produce/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3038824&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;) that due to the amount of energy and work currently required or was recently required to extract materials and produce mechanisms required for such technologies to work, more fossil-powered energy is spent on producing these power-generating devices than these devices themselves would produce (thus replacing the need for fossil fuels to be burned to extract the same energy) - and because of it such devices are not energy efficient. I would like to see some proof or dis-proof of such claims. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if the device - such as wind turbine - would produce energy for infinite time after making it, eventually it would surpass any energy cost put into producing it. But this is not realistic, so the question is - where would the break even point be? How long a common solar panel or a common wind turbine would need to work to recoup fossil energy costs put into producing it and how does it compare to average term of service for such device? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3600" LastEditorUserId="3600" LastEditDate="2013-09-15T19:21:23.517" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T04:00:53.447" Title="How long does it take for renewable technology to recoup its energy cost?" Tags="|energy|energy-efficiency|power-generation|wind-power|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17776" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17777" CreationDate="2013-09-15T21:21:52.010" Score="30" ViewCount="13268" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sentence, supposedly by Pascal in his &lt;em&gt;Pensées&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from&#xA;  religious conviction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is quoted &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com.ar/search?q=evil%20%22from%20religious%20conviction%22%20pascal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;extensively&lt;/a&gt; (especially in &lt;a href=&quot;http://camel76.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/quotes-from-the-god-delusion/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;atheist&lt;/a&gt; circles). This has always puzzled me, because I've read (many years ago) the &lt;em&gt;Pensées&lt;/em&gt; in Spanish, and I didn't remember this, and it seemed hard (for me at least) to reconcile this affirmation with Pascal's beliefs - after all, his &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pens%C3%A9es&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; is an apology of Christianity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did a cursory search for the French original, and I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ub.uni-freiburg.de/fileadmin/ub/referate/04/pascal/pensees.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this pdf&lt;/a&gt; (p 147) (I can't vouch for its fidelity to the original) which reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jamais on ne fait le mal si pleinement et si gaîment que quand on le&#xA;  fait par conscience&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks quite different to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone clarify this? Is the text above the real original source? Is this  translator's liberty, an error or what?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: 1. To add to the accepted answer, after several years, here I found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.penseesdepascal.fr/C1-C2/C1p419v-421v-C2p395-395v-XXIX8.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;original&lt;/a&gt;, with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.penseesdepascal.fr/XXIX/XXIX8-savante.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;critical transcription&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.penseesdepascal.fr/XXIX/XXIX8-moderne.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;modern transcription&lt;/a&gt; (it coincides with my quote -in French- above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: To help understanding the real meaning of the original quote (&quot;Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it following their conscience&quot;), in the context of Pascal's polemics against Jesuits' appeal to conscience: &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.ar/books?id=mNPyCAAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA28&amp;amp;lpg=PA28&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Studies in Pascal’s Ethics - A.W. Baird - p. 28&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2834" LastEditorUserId="2834" LastEditDate="2018-10-04T19:52:31.007" LastActivityDate="2018-10-05T11:05:05.667" Title="Did Pascal write: &quot;Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17776" CreationDate="2013-09-15T22:13:10.100" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia references &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/Pascal/Pensees_1671_ancien.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/Pascal/Pensees_1671_ancien.pdf&lt;/a&gt; as being the &quot;1671 edition with old French spelling&quot;. It contains,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jamais on ne fait le mal ſi pleinement &amp;amp; ſi gayement, que &#xA;  quand on le fait par un faux principe de conſcience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to me it looks like more than a translator liberty: more like a deliberate falsification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the French version which you found is simplified: it's missing &quot;un faux principe de&quot; ... so the atheist' English version may (instead of being a falsification) be just a misinterpretation of that or of some other simplified version.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I can't vouch for its fidelity to the original&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A photo of this sentence can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8606964f/f343.image.r=Pens%C3%A9es%20de%20M%20Pascal.langFR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;page 271 of the First edition on Gallica&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RzIBy.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RzIBy.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Wikipedia I read that the first edition was published after his death: and so I wondered whether the first edition might be unreliable. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pens%C3%A9es&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia says&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the 1990s, decisive philological achievements were made, and the edition by Philippe Sellier of the book contains his &quot;thoughts&quot; in more or less the order he left them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for a more modern version you might want to try to find that, which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pocket.fr/site/pensees_&amp;amp;100&amp;amp;9782266147835.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;available here&lt;/a&gt; (or a larger version with more background information &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fabula.org/revue/document5779.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reviewed here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fabula.org/actualites/pascal-pensees-opuscules-et-lettres-ed-sellier_36209.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;available here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen Sellier's version, however &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Pens%C3%A9es.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this review of it&lt;/a&gt; implies that its message is approximately as you remember, i.e. not atheist in its intent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The structure of the apology Pascal intended is best described by H. F. Stewart D.D. in the preface to his translation of the Pensees: Part I shows &quot;from Nature&quot; that man is wretched without God, Part II shows &quot;from Scripture&quot; that Jesus is the Redeemer of mankind. Part I subdivides into Ia (man without God) and Ib (man with God) to show man's inherent wretchedness. The themes of Part I are largely in the tone of vanitas mundi, after the tradition of the Hebrew Bible's book of Ecclesiastes, while the many short maxims inserted into the text are reminiscent of the Book of Proverbs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For the non-Old-French speakers, would you care to hazard a more appropriate translation?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the IMO slight risk of using a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;False friend&lt;/a&gt; in the following translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One never does evil so fully and gaily, as when one does it through a &quot;false principle of conscience.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO only a atheist with no sense of history or of the text could translate or interpret &quot;false principle of conscience&quot; there as &quot;religious conviction&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other translations of &quot;conscience&quot; include &quot;mind&quot; or &quot;awareness&quot;: it's saying that what a person thinks or believes can be mistaken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example the very previous paragraph to that sentence (in the first edition) gives a sense of the kind of thing he's saying,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Il y a trois moyens de croire, la raison, la coutume, &amp;amp; &#xA;  l’inſpiration. La Religion Chreſtienne, qui ſeule a la raison, n’admet &#xA;  pas pour ſes vrays enfans ceux qui croient ſans inſpiration. Ce n’eſt pas &#xA;  qu’elle exclue la raison, &amp;amp; la coutume: au contraire, il faut ouvrir ſon &#xA;  eſprit aux preuves par la raison, &amp;amp; s’y confirmer par la coutume; mais &#xA;  elle veut qu’on s’offre par l’humiliation aux inſpirations, qui ſeules &#xA;  peuvent faire le vray &amp;amp; salutaire effet; ne evacuetur crux Christi.. [I &#xA;  Cor. 1, 17]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... which I translate as,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are three ways to believe: reason, custom, and inspiration. The Christian religion, which alone has reason, doesn't admit as its true children those who believe without inspiration. It's not that she (i.e. the Christian religion) excludes reason and custom: on the contrary, one must open one's spirit to proofs by reason, and confirm oneself there by custom (or &quot;habit&quot;); but she wants that one offers oneself by humiliation (or &quot;humility&quot;) to inspirations, which alone can make the true and salutary effect; &quot;lest the cross of Christ be emptied&quot; (Latin quoting 1 Corinthians 1:17).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paragraph before that is even more telling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Toutes les Religions &amp;amp; toutes les sectes du monde ont eu la &#xA;  raison naturelle pour guide. Les ſeuls Chreſtiens ont eſté aſtreints à &#xA;  prendre leurs règles hors d’eux-meſmes, &amp;amp; à s’informer de celles que &#xA;  JÉSUS-CHRIST a laiſſées aux anciens pour nous eſtre tranſmises. &#xA;  Il y a des gens que cette contrainte laſſe. Ils veulent avoir, comme les &#xA;  autres peuples, la liberté de ſuivre leurs imaginations. C’eſt en vain que &#xA;  nous leur crions, comme les Prophètes faisoient autrefois aux Juifs: &#xA;  Allez au milieu de l’Église; informez vous des loix que les anciens luy &#xA;  ont [259] laiſſées, &amp;amp; ſuivez ſes sentiers. Ils répondent comme les Juifs: &#xA;  Nous n’y marcherons paſ; nous voulons ſuivre les penſées de noſtre &#xA;  cœur, &amp;amp; eſtre comme les autres peuples. [I Rois 8, 20]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... translation,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All the religions and sects of the world had natural reason for their guide. Only Christians have been compelled to take their rules from outside themselves, and to inform themselves with those [rules] which Jesus Christ has left to the ancients to be transmitted to us. There are some people who are tired (or &quot;weary&quot;, &quot;jaded&quot;, or &quot;bored&quot;) of this constraint. They want to have, like other peoples, the liberty to follow their imaginations. It's in vain that we cry to them, as the Prophets did formerly to the Jews: go into the [middle/environment/society of the] Church; inform yourself of the laws which the ancients left (i.e. gave or transmitted to) her (i.e. the Church), and follow her pathways. They reply like the Jews: we will not walk there; we want to follow the thoughts of our hearts, and be like the other peoples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2018-10-05T11:05:05.667" LastActivityDate="2018-10-05T11:05:05.667" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17778" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-16T01:31:28.933" Score="6" ViewCount="349" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nea.org/home/15200.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Need for a Diverse Teaching Staff&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It is also important to expose children to a diverse teaching staff within each of our schools. Every child has a basic right to a great public school with a qualified and caring staff, including educators who look like them, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical of this claim, and more generally, the idea that a diverse teaching staff is essential to close the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nea.org/home/AchievementGaps.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;achievement gap&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm planning to teach in economically-disadvantaged public schools, and considering joining the highly selective &lt;a href=&quot;http://tntpteachingfellows.org/why-teaching-fellows&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TNTP Teaching Fellows&lt;/a&gt;. They claim to hold the highest standards of any training program in America. The students they intend to help tend to be minorities. I see &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3ahttp://tntpteachingfellows.org%20diversity&amp;amp;rlz=1C1GIGM_enUS546US546&amp;amp;oq=site%3ahttp://tntpteachingfellows.org%20diversity&amp;amp;aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.6267j0&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8#q=site%3atntpteachingfellows.org%20diversity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;nothing on their site&lt;/a&gt; which suggests a commitment to teacher diversity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;How important is teacher diversity in closing the achievement gap?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15514" LastEditorUserId="15514" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T03:45:08.923" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T09:22:16.443" Title="Importance of teacher diversity in closing the achievement gap?" Tags="|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17778" CreationDate="2013-09-16T09:22:16.443" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/HE/diversityreport.pdf&quot;&gt;A 2004 report&lt;/a&gt; linked on the NEA’s teacher diversity website lists the evidence that supports that teacher diversity does indeed impact on closing the achievement gap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, they highlight that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Students of color tend to have higher academic, personal, and social performance when taught by teachers from their own ethnic groups, [and]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Teachers from different ethnic groups have demonstrated that when students of color are taught with culturally responsive techniques and with contents-pecific approaches …, their academic performance improves significantly&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And they say this about the data-gathering methodology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most of the data currently available on connections between teachers of color and student performance are generated from small-scale qualitative research involving single or multiple case studies. These data focus on a number of significant, though under-recognized, school achievement markers, including attendance records, disciplinary referrals, dropout rates, overall satisfaction with school, self-concepts, cultural competence, and students’ sense of the relevance of school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they themselves give the caveats “small-scale” and “qualitative” and don’t seem to consider other, more conventional markers such as grades and rates of conversion to higher education, this looks like it might be a valid conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, the report doesn’t provide an itemisation of the cited studies (which, by the way, is inexcusable). A lot of the evidence seems to have been collected in a monograph [1]. Unfortunately I’m unable to check this out myself since I couldn’t obtain access to it online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[1] Gay &lt;em&gt;&amp;amp; al.&lt;/em&gt;, “The Presence and Performance of Teachers of Color in the Profession”, 2003.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T09:22:16.443" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17136" CreationDate="2013-09-16T10:29:05.833" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;To begin with, the question ought to be reworded as &quot;Can simple, old models of the effect of CO₂ predict &lt;strong&gt;global mean surface temperature&lt;/strong&gt; better than complex modern climate simulations?&quot;.  GMSTs can be modelled quite well by comparatively simple models of global climate, using physics that has been well understood for many years (see the primers by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Principles-Planetary-Climate-Raymond-Pierrehumbert/dp/0521865565&quot;&gt;Pierrehumbert&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Climate-Modelling-Primer-Kendal-McGuffie/dp/047085751X&quot;&gt;McGuffie and Henderson-Sellers&lt;/a&gt;).  The reason that climatologists use GCMs rather than these simple climate models is GCMs can model regional climate, so that for instance we can project the effect of increasing GHGs on Europe, or Australasia or the Arctic.  The simple climate models cannot do this as they have no concept of the spatial element of climate.  So even if simple, old models can provide a better prediction of observed GMSTs, that doesn't mean that they are more useful than GCMs, as they don't provide the level of spatial detail necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next important part is that there is a &lt;strong&gt;big&lt;/strong&gt; difference between the questions &quot;&lt;em&gt;Can&lt;/em&gt; simple, old models ... ?&quot; and &quot;&lt;em&gt;Do&lt;/em&gt; simple, old models ... ?&quot;  Callendars simple, old model is only one of many, there were others with higher climate sensitivity than Callendars (there is a nice compilation of classic papers on climate edited by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Warming-Papers-Scientific-Foundation/dp/1405196165/&quot;&gt;Archer and Pierrehumbert&lt;/a&gt;).  For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2010/01/the-carbon-dioxide-theory-of-gilbert-plass/&quot;&gt;Gilbert Plass&lt;/a&gt; suggested a climate sensitivity of 3.6ºC per doubling of CO2.  Had ClimateAudit used that figure instead of Callendar's more modest 1.67 deg, I suspect that the GCM-Q model would have shown much more warming than from HadGEM2 and the conclusion would have been the exact opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important point here is that ClimateAudit isn't using GCM-Q as a genuine &lt;em&gt;prediction&lt;/em&gt; as Callendar's low climate sensitivity was selected in the knowledge that a low climate sensitivity seems to match the observed climate better than a high one, having already seen the observations to be predicted.  A skeptic ought to ask why ClimateAudit chose Calendar's value of climate sensitivity, rather than any of the higher historical estimates that could have been selected?  A better analysis would have been to perform a survey of historical estimates of climate sensitivity and plot the results for each estimate using GCM-Q.  This would basically show that modern GCMs lie well within the span of historical estimates, but that if you were so inclined, you could select a historical model that was closer to the observations than the modern models.  Would that tell us anything surprising or that we didn't already know?  I would say &quot;no, not really&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does the fact that a lower climate sensitivity seems to fit the observations mean that the modern GCMs with higher climate sensitivities are wrong?  No, sadly it isn't as simple as that.  The observed climate is a combination of the forced response (i.e. the response of the climate system to a change in the forcings, such as CO2 or solar) and the unforced response (a.k.a. &quot;natural variability&quot;, &quot;weather noise&quot; etc., which is changes in the climate that are not directly due to the forcings, such as oscillations in ocean currents, such as ENSO etc.).  Now the unforced response is chaotic, which means that it is deterministic, but cannot be predicted a long way into the future because it is extremely sensitive to the initial conditions.  This means that GCMs can only simulate the effects of the unforced response that are statistically plausible, but cannot predict them as we don't have sufficient information regarding the initial conditions.  The best we can do is to form an ensemble of model runs and take the average.  The unforced responses in individual runs will not be coherent, and thus will largely cancel out, leaving us with just an estimate of the forced response (which is also what GCM-Q gives us).  However, in comparing with the observations, we need to bear in mind that we are not comparing apples with apples, but apples with oranges.  The models give us an estimate of the forced response only, but the observations are a combination of forced and unforced response.  So the difference between the two may be due to the models being systematically wrong (i.e. their climate sensitivity is too high) or because the effects of the unforced response has been cooling, rather than warming, which makes climate sensitivity &lt;strong&gt;over the period of observation&lt;/strong&gt; look lower than it actually is, or a bit of both.  We only have one observed climate, so we can't work out from the observations which is which, the best we can do is to look at the spread of the model runs (which gives us an idea of the plausible variability due to the unforced response) and see if the observations lie in the spread of the runs.  This is as accurate as the GCMs can plausibly be expected to be, and this is pretty much what climatologists actually do (see below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/20uFz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Found a corresponding figure for the 20th century. Note the spread of the model runs (which is our best estimate of the plausible variability due to the unforced response) is pretty broad.  There is no good reason to expect the observed climate to lie any closer to the modern GCM ensemble mean (or indeed GCM-Q) than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D7AIH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So all in all, there is nothing really surprising here, at least not to anyone familiar with the operation of climate models and aware of the existence of other &quot;old, simple models&quot; (on this case estimates of climate sensitivity) that could equally have been discussed, but which were not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2013-09-19T09:33:53.310" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T09:33:53.310" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17783" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17787" CreationDate="2013-09-16T13:04:44.343" Score="5" ViewCount="571" Body="&lt;p&gt;An recent article from &lt;em&gt;Wait But Why&lt;/em&gt; titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-unhappy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy&lt;/a&gt; blames young professionals for being unhappy because their expectations are too high; they believe themselves special.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;each individual [Generation Y Yuppie] thinks that he or she is destined for something even better&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lucy's extreme ambition, coupled with the arrogance that comes along with being a bit deluded about one's own self-worth, has left her with huge expectations for even the early years out of college.  And her reality pales in comparison to those expectations, leaving her &amp;quot;reality - expectations&amp;quot; happy score coming out at a negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The anonymous author fails to demonstrate that this is the true cause of the unhappiness of Generation Y in their working life, but more importantly, fails to demonstrate that the young adults in Generation Y are any less happy with their place in the workforce than the young adults in Generation X, Baby Boomers, in the Depression Era, or any other demographic age groups you might fail to clearly define.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which leads to my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are Generation Y members any less happy than previous generations at the same age?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T14:34:40.107" Title="Are Generation Y yuppies unhappy?" Tags="|demographics|happiness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17784" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-16T13:47:58.227" Score="8" ViewCount="1440" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Lebanese news sitem Almanar News &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/adetails.php?eid=110043&amp;amp;cid=31&amp;amp;fromval=1&amp;amp;frid=31&amp;amp;seccatid=71&amp;amp;s1=1&quot;&gt;cites an anonymous source&lt;/a&gt; claiming that two missiles were fired by US forces in Spain towards Syria. They were detected by Russia, it sparked an international incident, so one was exploded in mid-air and the other was &quot;diverted towards the sea&quot; (presumably the Mediterranean sea) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US has &lt;a href=&quot;http://militarybases.com/overseas/spain/&quot;&gt;two military bases&lt;/a&gt; in Spain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6zILy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Map showing bases&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest distance between these military bases in Spain and Syria is about 4,000 km.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ballistic missiles are quite loud when they are fired. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyRyAIAM2-c&quot;&gt;Check this video&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how could such loud launch, from Andalusia in Spain or near Gibraltar, have been unnoticed given there are a lot of people living in south of Spain and a lot of airports with radars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the claims made in the article possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15520" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-09-17T02:30:33.567" LastActivityDate="2015-11-25T07:17:45.993" Title="Were two ballistic missiles fired from Spain towards Syria?" Tags="|united-states|military|physics|spain|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17783" CreationDate="2013-09-16T16:20:49.733" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The hypothesis that generation Y / millennials are particularly unhappy is not well supported by the evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://pewsocialtrends.org/files/2010/10/millennials-confident-connected-open-to-change.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Millennials - A Portrait of Generation Next&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Pew Research Center&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among Millennials, 31% say they are very happy these days and an additional 56% are somewhat happy. Only 12% say they are not too happy. Nearly equal proportions of Gen Xers (27%), Boomers (29%) and Silents (27%) are very happy. Members of the Silent generation are somewhat more likely than Millennials to say they are not too happy with their lives (20%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.viacom.com/2012/11/the-next-normal-an-unprecedented-look-at-millennials-worldwide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;The Next Normal: An Unprecedented Look At Millennials Worldwide&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Blog.Viacom&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And when we looked back at data from 2006, we found that Millennials today are even happier today than they were back then.  Young people today are demonstrating an amazing duality when it comes to harsh economic realities and their ability to be happy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Howe, N., &amp;amp; Strauss, W. (2009). Millennials rising: The next great generation. Random House Digital, Inc., at p. 178:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the 1990s, &quot;happiness&quot; among teens has been trending higher...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://ir.viacom.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=721468:&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Viacom Unveils Findings From Global Research Study, &quot;The Next Normal: An Unprecedented Look At Millennials Worldwide&quot;&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Viacom&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But despite significant economic concerns, the vast majority of Millennials worldwide demonstrate a strong sense of happiness and optimism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T14:34:40.107" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T14:34:40.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17784" CreationDate="2013-09-16T16:22:38.497" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hard to get sources, but some common sense comes to mind as a good way to reason about this:&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;launch could have been from a ship or submarine at sea, out of sight of the coast. That's not hard to do, in fact the USSR/Russia, France, UK, China, and the USA all have submarines capable of doing this. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio-class_submarine&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio-class_submarine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Any such launch would be near instantly observed by orbiting satellites put up there for that very purpose by the USA, Russia/USSR, and probably by now China and other nations as well as part of their warning systems against nuclear attack. Any such launch is likely to trigger an extremely paranoid response from the other side, up to and including a nuclear retaliatory strike.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The US certainly has ballistic missiles for launch from submarines with the required range. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_%28missile%29&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_%28missile%29&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All these missiles have only nuclear warheads, no conventionally armed versions are known to exist (of course they could be so secret nobody outside the military knows about them, but the risk of launching one would be too grave, see above)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The US currently has no land based ballistic missiles that I'm aware of except the Minuteman III and some MGM-140 tactical weapons with range of a few hundred km for use from the M270 launch system, all of which are located on the US mainland in their launch silos (and all of which have only nuclear warheads). The Pershing 1 and 2 were all destroyed under the INF treaty (and lacked the described range), Midgetman, MX, Trident 1, etc. etc. were all retired as well, Lance (which also lacks the range, and would be the only conventional armed option) is also gone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ergo, the only conclusion I can draw from what data I have and know from past study of such systems (a lot of it from printed books) is that no such ballistic missile with the capabilities implied exists in the US arsenal, and that any launch of such if it existed would have been very rapidly detected and responded to by the Russians and possibly others.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;As to it being an Israeli missile, &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.yahoo.com/russia-detects-two-missile-launches-mediterranean-093544642.html&quot;&gt;Yahoo news&lt;/a&gt; shows a map of one being fired over what looks like the Adriatic and dated 03 September. So not from Spain at all (and the timing might also be wrong, I don't know the supposed launch date from the Libyan claim).&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Israel-announces-successful-joint-missile-test-with-US-in-Med-325152&quot;&gt;The Jeruzalem post&lt;/a&gt; confirms and details what was launched and tested, but doesn't mention the capabilities (range, speed, etc.) of the missile. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/israel-usa-perform-sparrow-target-missile-test-390118/&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; lists the size and has a decent photograph of the Sparrow ballistc missile decoy, which from the looks of it doesn't seem like it has anything near 4000km range (and the map shown by Yahoo seems to indicate more like several hundred km).&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Even if you don't believe any of those sources, you might be more inclined to believe &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/09/20139391217914513.html&quot;&gt;Al Jazeera&lt;/a&gt;, not exactly a friend of Israel, who don't question the launch.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;A major problem finding any data on this vehicle is the fact that its name is identical to an old and very common US air to air missile, so any search comes up with thousands of hits about that one (and in fact many news stories about the 03 September launch mistakenly include photographs of that one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastEditorUserId="263" LastEditDate="2013-09-16T18:07:46.297" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T18:07:46.297" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17775" CreationDate="2013-09-16T23:37:37.867" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends on the renewable energy technology, but the answer is generally a few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apere.org/manager/docnum/doc/doc1248_090706fiche36.pdf&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a detailed analysis of the embodied energy in two sizes of large scale wind turbines (850 Kw and 3 MW).  This study involved a very detailed assessment of the embodied energy, which showed that previous estimates were considerably low.  In spite of this more realistic initial energy cost, the paper states that the embodied energy represents less than 5% of the total energy produced, assuming a 20 year life, and concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The use of a systemically complete hybrid embodied energy analysis method has shown that previous embodied energy assessments of wind turbines may be up to 78% incomplete. Despite these significant improvements in embodied energy assessment, the relative insignificance of the embodied energy component of wind turbines over their service life has been highlighted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For photovoltaic systems using current technology, the US Department of Energy's National Renewable energy Lab (NREL) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt; it takes 3 to 4 years to recover the embodied energy, and specifically states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on models and real data, the idea that PV cannot pay back its energy investment is simply a myth. Indeed, researchers Dones and Frischknecht found that PV-systems fabrication and fossil- fuel energy production have similar energy payback periods (including costs for mining, transportation, refining, and construction).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a link to Wikipedia's article on Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI) which tabulates values for various energy sources.  EROEI is the ratio of energy produced to the by energy consumed to produce it.  Wind comes in at 18 - very close to the 20 for oil production. Photovoltaic solar is listed as 6.8.  Both these are higher (i.e. better) than many other alternatives including shale oil (5) and tar sands (3).  In other words, the return on both wind and solar is better than for oil moving through the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that much of the energy input for these technologies is currently fossil-based, but as these renewable sources come on line the percentage of fossil energy invested becomes lower and lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastActivityDate="2013-09-16T23:37:37.867" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17791" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17792" CreationDate="2013-09-17T00:28:40.037" Score="1" ViewCount="884" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some time ago there were several statements about missile launch detection over the Midterranean using russian Station Armavir:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rbth.ru/science_and_tech/2013/09/09/armavir_radar_keeps_an_eye_on_the_middle_east_29629.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://rbth.ru/science_and_tech/2013/09/09/armavir_radar_keeps_an_eye_on_the_middle_east_29629.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Armavir radar station’s quick detection of the launch of two ballistic missiles near the Syrian coast&#xA;success for Russia’s missile defense system.&#xA;A radar station Voronezh-DM located at Armavir covers more than 3,7 miles , including the entire Black Sea and Mediterranean.&#xA;A radar station located at Armavir tracked the launch of two missiles that dropped into the sea.&#xA;the launch was a joint Israeli-U.S. missile experiment.&#xA;the Armavir radar station that detected the ballistic launch performed in accordance with its specifications: Its coverage extends to 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles), including the entire Black Sea and Mediterranean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10282788/Missiles-launched-in-Mediterranean-towards-Syrian-coast-claims-Russian-defence-ministry.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10282788/Missiles-launched-in-Mediterranean-towards-Syrian-coast-claims-Russian-defence-ministry.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The launches took place at 10:16 am Moscow time (0616 GMT) and were detected by the ballistic missile early warning system in Armavir in southern Russia, the defence ministry said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is already question about that here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17784/ballistic-missiles-fired-4000km-accros-the-mediterranian-sea-without-any-observe&quot;&gt;Were two ballistic missiles fired from Spain towards Syria?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in my question I want focus on geometry and radio wave propagation through atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can check that there are two types of radars (check page 10 of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.navymars.org/national/training/nmo_courses/nmoc/module18/14190_ch1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Navy's PDF&lt;/a&gt;): above the horizon and beyond the horizon (OTH). First type uses straight lines from radar to the target and OTH uses &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/place-lancashire/plain/A632729&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;HF or 'High Frequency' range is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum between 3MHz and 30MHz.&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; which is mirrored by some layers of atmosphere and radio wave propagate as polygonal chain (piecewise line). First type is limited by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.furunousa.com/ProductDocuments/Radar%20Horizon.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;line-of-sight&lt;/a&gt; and second is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Voronezh-DM is declared as first type of radar and it uses straight line because of frequency of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voronezh_radar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;0.1m (UHF)&lt;/a&gt; - which is between 300 MHz and 3 GHz and not in range of 3 and 30 MHz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Armavir is located at distance of at least 700 miles (1100 km) from nearest point of Syria (I checked for Latakia, using data from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.defence.pk/forums/world-affairs/143762-voronezh-dm-russia-activates-6000-km-range-missile-early-warning-radar.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zyMek.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Red line is from Armavir to Latakia&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is to imagine &lt;strong&gt;how high should fly&lt;/strong&gt; the &amp;quot;test ballistic &lt;strong&gt;missile&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; above Mediterranean (Cyprus, Latakia) &lt;strong&gt;to be visible for&lt;/strong&gt; the above the horizon radar in &lt;strong&gt;Armavir&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some formulas here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.navymars.org/national/training/nmo_courses/nmoc/module18/14190_ch1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.navymars.org/national/training/nmo_courses/nmoc/module18/14190_ch1.pdf&lt;/a&gt; page 10, but I can't apply them correctly. Also I'm not sure that the World Goverment and their The Army allows Internet everyman to know true formulas for long-distance radar horizon computation. I believe there is some refraction in the air at high altitude for 0.1 m UHF radio waves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I think, the something what was called the &amp;quot;test ballistic missile&amp;quot; was not the classic ballistic missile which can be used by Syria or Iran (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scud&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scud&lt;/a&gt; of 300-500 km range). Instead, it was the real outer space rocket with maximum altitude greater then 100 km, or kind of anti-satellite missile (capable of destroying of ISS space station).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: somebody in linked question says about Sparrow missile &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparrow_(target_missile)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparrow_(target_missile)&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rafael.co.il/marketing/SIP_STORAGE/FILES/2/622.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.rafael.co.il/marketing/SIP_STORAGE/FILES/2/622.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The missile is currently used as a target missile to test the Arrow anti-ballistic missile system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the Silver Sparrow version is designed to simulate Iranian Shihab-3 class ballistic missiles with a 1,500-2,000 km range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Silver Sparrow version was first tested on September 2, 2013.[7] The launch from the Mediterranean was detected by a Russian ballistic missile early warning radar at Armavir,[8][9]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can somebody recompute 2000 km range to the maximum altitude?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to &lt;a href=&quot;http://vif2ne.ru/nvk/forum/0/archive/2514/2514114.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://vif2ne.ru/nvk/forum/0/archive/2514/2514114.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eOhWP.png&quot; alt=&quot;Actual data from the radar&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full videos:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MeS3RcMinw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MeS3RcMinw&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJiyQ2wvpUI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJiyQ2wvpUI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Screenshot was from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnEitwIuD8s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnEitwIuD8s&lt;/a&gt; 3:38-3:46&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10996" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T01:03:11.107" Title="Is it possible for Armavir to see ballistic missile over Mediterranean (how high was it)?" Tags="|military|mathematics|radio|russia|physics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-09-17T02:19:45.867" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17791" CreationDate="2013-09-17T00:38:28.263" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are another believer here &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.russiadefence.net/t2079p15-voronezh-ew-radar-news&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.russiadefence.net/t2079p15-voronezh-ew-radar-news&lt;/a&gt; ( SOC on Wed Sep 04, 2013 )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll copy his version, but I still want to see the actual computations and information on refraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apogee for the Blue Sparrow has been demonstrated at 100 km.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, the likely radar tracking the test is not the Armavir-based BMEW. At a range of about 1500 km, with an elevation of about 200 meters &lt;strong&gt;for the Armavir site, you get visibility&lt;/strong&gt; of a Blue Sparrow at apogee &lt;strong&gt;at just under 1400 km.&lt;/strong&gt; At that range the target would appear to be just coming above the horizon. One small problem: there are mountains in Turkey, and they're in the way! Terrain is pretty consistently at about 5000 feet in elevation on a line of sight between the Armavir radar and the launch area in the eastern Med. Basically, Blue Sparrow isn't getting high enough for anyone to see it. Plus, if you want to throw in the &quot;but maybe it was an OTH-SW&quot; or &quot;well maybe Voronezh can be an OTH-SW&quot; argument, great...but the target is still going to be in the blind zone manifested downrange by the terrain, and therefore invisible. The only way Armavir makes any sense at all mathematically is if the target missile had a much higher apogee, but physically it seems to be topping out at about 100 km based on the motor characteristics and mass. Prior launches only hit apogees of about 40 km max, although they were using the Black Sparrow target designed to simulate slower SRBMs. Silver Sparrow is supposed to be a new system emulating more capable threats than Blue Sparrow, but little info is available and even if you jack up the apogee substantially (which you really can't, it's supposed to be about the same size as Blue Sparrow) there's still the issue of Turkish terrain. And actually, the report seems to indicate that this was in fact potentially a Silver Sparrow test as it mentions a new Sparrow variant. Plus the report at the link mentions that they detected the launches, but they did not specify with what system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anyway, if &lt;strong&gt;they could track the target missile using a radar site (like one of the ships in the Med)&lt;/strong&gt;, they'd also be able to potentially track things like SCUDs fired within Syria. What likely happened was that they got an IR hit from a satellite of both the Sparrow booster igniting and the subsequent Arrow launch: the two &quot;ballistic&quot; launches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10996" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T00:38:28.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17775" CreationDate="2013-09-17T08:42:36.617" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question cites two links, but neither of them raise as a claim the question of how long it takes for a renewable energy system to recoup its energy cost, which is the title of the question. First I'll address the very broad question in the title, for which no notable claim was cited (but which will exist somewhere out there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two links cited raise two other claims, and I'll address those two after that. The first claims that there are times when power consumption by wind turbines for their own management, exceeds their generation. The second claims that total mean power generation by the world's installed PV systems has only recently exceeded the total mean power consumption used by the world's PV manufacturers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Claim 1: More fossil-powered energy is spent on producing these power-generating devices than these devices themselves would produce&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr: false. Onshore wind produces around 20-80 times as much energy as is required to produce the turbines. Offshore wind about 10-20 times. PV around 10-20 times.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the question mentions large-scale wind and PV, I'll just focus on that subset of renewables. I'll look at energy payback time, and lifetime, both measured in years. As long as lifetime exceeds energy payback time (EPBT), then more electricity is generated than is consumed in its construction. And if generation exceeds total energy consumed, it must also exceed total fossil-fuel consumption used, as that cannot be greater than total energy consumed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                         EPBT(y)  life(y) sources&#xA;LARGE-SCALE WIND:                          [1],[2],[3],[4],8]&#xA;                onshore   0.25-1  20-25   &#xA;               offshore      1-2  20-25?&#xA;PV:                                        [5].[6],[7]&#xA;monocrystalline silicon  1.7-2.7  25+&#xA;polycrystalline silicon  1.7-2.2  20-25&#xA;                   CdTe  0.8-1.1  10-25&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2009.01.012&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vestas.com/en/about-vestas/sustainability/sustainable-products/life-cycle-assessment/comparing-energy-payback-1.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vestas.com/Files/Filer/EN/Sustainability/LCA/LCAV90_juni_2006.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3,pdf&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vestas.com/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=/Files/Filer/EN/Sustainability/LCA/LCA_V80_2004_uk.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4,pdf&lt;/a&gt;,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clca.columbia.edu/papers/Raugei_AIST_FINAL.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5, pdf&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.firstsolar.com/en/Innovation/CdTe-Technology&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0927-0248%2800%2900293-2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.offshorevaluation.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt; - a mixture of independent studies, peer-reviewed journal papers, and manufacturers' information, which are all broadly consistent on the range of numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note 1:&lt;/strong&gt; We don't know how long monocrystalline PV will last, because it's only been around for a few decades in commercial form. We do know that after 20-30 years, the cells can be stripped of their old encapsulation and re-encapsulated (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.remanufacturing.org.uk/pdf/story/1p261.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pdf&lt;/a&gt;). Similarly, we can only estimate the lifetime of commercial offshore windfarms as 20-25 years, as the first such farm, at Vindeby, is stil generating now, having been built in 1991 (more numbers in my blogpost on &lt;a href=&quot;http://energynumbers.info/capacity-factors-at-danish-offshore-wind-farms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;capacity factors at Danish offshore wind farms&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note 2:&lt;/strong&gt; different studies make different assumptions about the level of wind/solar resource available at the actual site; about how much energy is used for operations, maintenance and decommissioning (and this are indeed generally included in lifecycle cost analyses, as you'll see from most of those references explicitly); and about the manufacturing specifics. These can result in wide variations in the estimates. Onshore wind only reached maturity around 2002 (which means we haven't yet done a full lifecycle for modern onshore wind turbines yet); the others are still in the phase of disruptive innovation; so there's no meaningful empirical whole-lifecycle data available yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Claim 2: there are times when power consumption by wind turbines for their own management, exceeds their generation.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr: False for recent years; true on occasion before 2003. It's rare, but it has happened: I could find no occurrence of it in the data for Britain, but some instances of it happening in Denmark in 2000 and 2002.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, it can happen to any type of generation: gas plants, coal plants, nuclear plants, hydro plants, etc: they all use some amount of electricity for background operations, even when they're not generating: lights in the control room, cooling equipment, whatever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's more noticeable for wind, because of the nature of common-cause (aka common-mode) lack of generation. All forms of generations are susceptible to common-cause lack of generation, where (almost) no plants of a particular type in a specific country are generating electricity at a given moment. For example, Japan's nuclear fleet had many months of common-cause lack of generation after the 2011 earthquake &amp;amp; tsunami. But electricity was still being consumed at those sites, so the whole nuclear fleet was a net consumer of electricity. Similarly, if a country's supply of coal or natural gas were interrupted, that whole generation fleet would go offline at the same time, but skeleton operations would continue at plants, to ensure they were ready for operation when fuel supplies resumed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For wind, where the whole generation fleet is within the same climatic area, there can be times when total generation is very low (of the order of 0.5% or so) of total nameplate capacity, and at those times, the operational electricity consumption of the turbines, for de-icing and standby mode, can exceed total wind generation. This has happened in Denmark, over a decade ago, but not since; I couldn't find any occasion in the data of it happening in Britain. The cited link, claims it got its story from a columnist in a downmarket English newspaper: that columnist doesn't cite the source of his data, nor the specific date and time, just that it was a few weeks before 21 December 2010. However, examining the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.elexonportal.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elexon half-hourly grid data&lt;/a&gt; (data free with registration) that covers the period from 1 November 2008 to now, there was no time when net mean half-hourly wind generation was less than zero. The lowest mean half-hourly output was 2MW, for the period 0700-0730 (UTC+1) on 5 June 2010. There are no times times in the instantaneous 5-minute data where it happened, either, over the same period. There is a period of corrupt data in the record, around 19 October 2010, where net output for generation (coal, gas, wind) are all shown as zero (which is impossible, as it would have caused a national blackout, and that didn't happen then), and it may be that that corrupt data is the origin of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, looking at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.energinet.dk/EN/El/Engrosmarked/Udtraek-af-markedsdata/Sider/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Danish data&lt;/a&gt;, it had happened in the past in Denmark, that net generation from wind was negative, as turbine own-power consumption was greater than total turbine generation: sixteen half-hourly intervals in 2000; one half-hourly interval in 2002; nothing since then. It's not that surprising that it hasn't happened since: turbine control technology has improved, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://sustainability.stackexchange.com/a/1041/48&quot;&gt;a lot of older turbines were phased out in 2002 as part of a national repowering programme&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Claim 3: total mean power generation by the world's installed PV systems has only recently exceeded the total mean power consumption used by the world's PV manufacturers.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl:dr: probably true as of 2012; impossible to verify, but entirely plausible.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without a particular reason to be sceptical, I don't see any reason to doubt the conclusions of the peer-reviewed paper cited. The data necessary to make the calculation isn't available, so one is left with partial information and best professional estimates, both of total global PV generation in a year, and of total energy consumption by PV manufacturers in a year. We can make a good estimate of the former, because almost all PV is now grid-connected, and a proportion of it (one that is likely to be decently representative) is metered.  It's much harder to make a good estimate of the latter, because there are so many factories involved in the different stages of PV production, all over the world, and they don't have to report their energy consumption. So the paper in question estimates energy consumption, by combining estimates of total manufacturing output, and known figures for some fabricators for unit input energy per unit manufactured capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a plausible number, even though PV energy payback times tend to be of the order of 3 years, and that's because although the expansion of installed PV capacity has been so very fast: of the order of 70% per year, averaged over several years. We can do a crude back-of-envelope calculation to see how that works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Year    Generation    new capacity  total capacity   Power consumption&#xA; 1           0              10               10              30&#xA; 2          10              17               27              51&#xA; 3          27              29               56              87&#xA; 4          56              49              105             147&#xA; 5         105              83              189             251&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a simplified calculation, showing capacity in terms of mean generation (rather than nameplate capacity; year 3 generation is same as total capacity at the end of year 2; year 3 power consumption is three times the new capacity built in year 3; to simplify the calculation, I've assumed that it all comes online only at the very end of the year it's manfactured). PV generation will only exceed PV production when that exponential growth starts levelling off (as it will, of course, in time), and/or energy payback times reduce even further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this is going to be true of any new generation technology that expands very fast, relative to its energy payback period: for a 4-year energy payback, it will be true for any growth rate over 25% per year; for a 3-year energy payback, anything over 33% per year; for a 2-year energy payback, anything over 50% per year, etc: during the phase of rapid expansion, manufacturing energy consumption will exceed total generation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This relationship is shown well in the chart in the abstract of the paper (note that this is a log-log graph):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eTXZU.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es3038824&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that annual growth rates have risen at about the same rate as which energy payback times have decreased (the linking factor being the rapidly-declining costs of PV in the last 13 years: lower energy input -&amp;gt; cheaper panels -&amp;gt; higher deployment -&amp;gt; innovation in manufacturing -&amp;gt; lower energy input -&amp;gt; ...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T04:00:53.447" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8810" CreationDate="2013-09-17T10:38:41.717" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This places the stress of bite at about 0.6MPa &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/06/14/rspb.2010.0509.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/06/14/rspb.2010.0509.full&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This places gold's hardness at 216 MPa using diamond tip.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webelements.com/gold/physics.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.webelements.com/gold/physics.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think any human could really dent gold- we are probably either smearing given it high ductility or deforming it due to high malleability. Biting maybe a gold test of gold's other properties which may be reflective of purity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15252" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T10:38:41.717" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4086" CreationDate="2013-09-17T12:03:12.430" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ben Collins (the second &quot;The Stig&quot; from the UK car program Top Gear) wrote a detailed and (in my opinion) convincing &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.drive.com.au/motor-news/how-far-will-car-makers-go-to-look-good-20110520-1evqk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;response&lt;/a&gt; to these claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short: production cars vary anyway; manufacturers typically pick a good example, give it more time to run in, and frequently add several optional extras (which are disclosed).  High end cars like Ferraris have many user-configurable options, which will be optimised.  They also turn up to track events with mechanics and stacks of fresh tires.  Race tracks will of course allow faster driving than the public road.  Some niche manufacturers have attempted to cheat by e.g. using racing tyres; big marques have not apparently been caught doing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Whether you consider any of the above to be cheating is up to you; I actually don't consider it cheating since any (well-heeled) customer could replicate these without modifying a production car.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that covers only magazine tests - exploiting loopholes on standardized fuel efficiency tests is a different kettle of fish, and apparently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/14/car-manufacturers-manipulating-fuel-efficiency-tests&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;widespread&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I'd personally consider the fuel efficiency test manipulation much more like cheating - there's no expectation that these will match what a customer could replicate without modifying a production car.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastEditorUserId="29269" LastEditDate="2018-07-03T19:09:14.320" LastActivityDate="2018-07-03T19:09:14.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13721" CreationDate="2013-09-17T20:09:12.660" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some study was performed by an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uvm.edu/%7Ehoncoll/S13_Thesis/S13_Thesis_Leahy.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;undergraduate thesis&lt;/a&gt; and the conclusion was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of this study was to determine if supplementation of BCAAs in combination with glucose would reduce exercise-induced delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS). (...) there was a statistically significant difference between BCAA and placebo for females at the 24-hour rating (p=0.0182).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study concluded that &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/182/3/210.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BCAA without tyrosine&lt;/a&gt; reduced mania symptoms, but I don't think that's the claim you're looking for (specially because it's a specific formulation for a BCAA, not the one sold to improve recovery after exercises).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And for specific sport-related analysis, there was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scielo.br/pdf/rbme/v14n1/a08v14n1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an study&lt;/a&gt; about the use of BCAA to increase endurance of running:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Em conclusão, a suplementação de BCAA não afetou o desempenho de endurance em um teste de corrida até a exaustão (original)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion is that the BCAA supplementation didn't affect the durance performance in a test of running until exhaustion. (translation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4146" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-17T20:09:12.660" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17804" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-18T09:04:33.873" Score="7" ViewCount="3736" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XCj22.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;A German and a Soviet officer shaking hands at the end of the Invasion of Poland.&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;A German and a Soviet officer shaking hands at the end of the Invasion of Poland.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spotkanie_Sojusznik%C3%B3w.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the 17th of September 1939 the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, following a German invasion from the west which started 2 weeks prior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's taken for a fact in Poland that at the time Soviets and Nazis were allies, per secret protocols of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;treaty included a secret protocol that divided territories of&#xA;  Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland into Nazi and&#xA;  Soviet &quot;spheres of influence&quot;, anticipating potential &quot;territorial and&#xA;  political rearrangements&quot; of these countries (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand for example in the US many people believe that Soviets and Nazis were always enemies (you can find such a claims for example in comments to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14818/did-the-ussr-have-21-thousand-tanks-at-the-beginning-of-ww2&quot;&gt;Did the USSR have 21 thousand tanks at the beginning of WW2?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were Soviets and Nazis de facto allies in September 1939?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2243/was-stalin-planning-to-attack-germany&quot;&gt;Was Stalin planning to attack Germany?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="34347" LastEditDate="2020-07-28T14:31:27.770" LastActivityDate="2020-07-28T14:31:27.770" Title="Were the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany de facto allies in September 1939?" Tags="|history|world-war-ii|soviet-union|nazi-germany|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17804" CreationDate="2013-09-18T10:01:37.313" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Churchill (who was of course partisan) alleged that they weren't exactly cooperating: from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1939/1939-10-01a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1939/1939-10-01a.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Russia has pursued a cold policy of self-interest. We could have wished that the Russian Armies should be standing on their present line as the friends and allies of Poland, instead of as invaders. But that the Russian Armies should stand on this line was clearly necessary for the safety of Russia against the Nazi menace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At any rate the line is there, and an Eastern Front has been created which Nazi Germany does not dare assail. When Herr von Ribbentrop [German Foreign Minister] was summoned to Moscow last week, it was to learn the fact, and to accept the fact, that the Nazi designs upon the Baltic states and upon the Ukraine must come to a dead stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a [riddle] wrapped in mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, Wikipedia's article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact#The_secret_protocol&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The secret protocol of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the Western nations unwilling to accede to Soviet demands, Stalin instead entered a secret Nazi–Soviet alliance.[77]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary the answer seems to me to depend on what you think &quot;de facto ally&quot; means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The section titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact#Expansion_of_raw_materials_and_military_trading&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Expansion of raw materials and military trading&lt;/a&gt; seems to me to meet at least the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/ally&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;second definition of &quot;ally&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, and quite possible the first as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;noun: a state formally cooperating with another for a military or other purpose, typically by treaty.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  antonyms:   enemy, opponent&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  a group of nations taking military action together, in particular the countries that fought with the US in World War I and World War II.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;verb: combine or unite a resource or commodity with (another) for mutual benefit.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, per for example Churchill's view, they were also &quot;opponents&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that the Soviets were &quot;reluctant allies&quot; (for example, if I were cooperate with you because you had a gun to my head, I'm uncertain whether that would make me your &quot;ally&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Various points of view are discussed in Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact#Post-war_commentary_regarding_the_motives_of_Stalin_and_Hitler&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Post-war commentary regarding the motives of Stalin and Hitler&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several possible motives are alleged, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;In return for 'non-intervention' Stalin secured a breathing space of immunity from German attack&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The claim that the Soviet Union was at the time threatened by Hitler, as Stalin supposed,...is a legend, to whose creators Stalin himself belonged&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stalin's primary motive for signing the Soviet–German non-aggression treaty was his calculation that such a pact could result in a conflict between the capitalist countries of Western Europe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-09-17T21:44:07.680" LastActivityDate="2018-09-17T21:44:07.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17806" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17810" CreationDate="2013-09-18T10:16:56.487" Score="16" ViewCount="4723" Body="&lt;p&gt;Early in his extremely readable and widely admired history of the Battle of Britain (&lt;a href=&quot;https://kindle.amazon.com/work/most-dangerous-enemy-history-ebook/B000AF2LRU/B0071B705O&quot;&gt;The Most Dangerous Enemy&lt;/a&gt;), Stephen Bungay puts Britain's situation after the defeat of France in context by describing the reaction to Germany's success around the world. At one point he writes the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gandhi wrote in an Indian newspaper that Germans of the future would ‘honour Hitler as a genius, as a brave man, a matchless organiser and much more.’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Gandhi say this and is it, in context, an accurate statement of his views on Hitler at the time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T16:31:03.810" LastActivityDate="2020-07-11T10:24:08.943" Title="Did Gandhi express admiration for Hitler early in WW2?" Tags="|history|quotes|world-war-ii|mahatma-gandhi|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17807" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17809" CreationDate="2013-09-18T10:28:44.233" Score="4" ViewCount="2334" Body="&lt;p&gt;The popular view of the Battle of Britain is that one of the critical factors that enabled  the British to win it was Watson-Watt's invention of Radar. The History Learning Site, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/radar_and_the_battle_of_britain.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;summarises like this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The radar invented by Robert Watson-Watt,  was invaluable to the men who fought the Battle of Britain. The radar allowed Britain to track incoming German warplanes and gave Fighter Command, led by Sir Hugh Dowding, sufficient time to get airborne and attack them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in his widely admired book on the battle, &lt;a href=&quot;https://kindle.amazon.com/work/most-dangerous-enemy-history-ebook/B000AF2LRU/B0071B705O&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Most Dangerous Enemy&lt;/a&gt;, Stephen Bungay writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Germans knew all about radar and used it themselves to great effect. &lt;strong&gt;They had in fact invented it first.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the popular mythology wrong to assume that the British invented Radar first and that that invention was vital to the victory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2017-07-16T11:00:17.457" Title="Did the Germans invent Radar first?" Tags="|history|technology|war|world-war-ii|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17807" CreationDate="2013-09-18T12:52:01.267" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the popular mythology wrong to assume that the British invented Radar first&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's debatable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Watson-Watt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia on Robert Watson-Watt&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His early work was using radio to detect thunderstorms&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In January 1935 ... he also mentioned in the same report a suggestion that was originally made to him by Wilkins that radio waves may be capable of detecting aircraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On 12 February 1935, Watson-Watt sent the secret memo of the proposed system to the Air Ministry, Detection and location of aircraft by radio methods. Although not as exciting as a death-ray, the concept clearly had potential but the Air Ministry, before giving funding, asked for a demonstration proving that radio waves could be reflected by an aircraft.[7] This was ready by 26 February and consisted of two receiving antennas located about ten km away from one of the BBC's shortwave broadcast stations at Daventry. The two antennas were phased such that signals travelling directly from the station cancelled themselves out, but signals arriving from other angles were admitted, thereby deflecting the trace on a CRT indicator (passive radar).[8] Such was the secrecy of this test that only three people witnessed it: Watson-Watt, his colleague Arnold Wilkins, and a single member of the committee, A.P. Rowe. The demonstration was a success; on several occasions a clear signal was seen from a Handley Page Heyford bomber being flown around the site. Most importantly, the prime minister, Stanley Baldwin, was kept quietly informed of radar's progress. On 2 April 1935, Watson-Watt received a patent on a radio device for detecting and locating an aircraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In mid-May 1935, Wilkins left the Radio Research Station with a small party, including Edward George Bowen, to start further research at Orford Ness, an isolated peninsula on the coast of the North Sea. By June they were detecting aircraft at 27 km, which was enough for scientists and engineers to stop all work on competing sound-based detection systems. By the end of the year the range was up to 100 km, at which point plans were made in December to set up five stations covering the approaches to London.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, very rapid (only a few months) progress in implementing a system once there was a desire for and funding for it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.radarworld.org/germany.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Radar Development in Germany for Aircraft Warning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GEMA built the first radar transmitter in the autumn of 1934 for detecting ships. The radar operated on 50 cm wave length and could find ships up to 10 km away. In the summer of 1935, a pulse radar was developed with which they could spot the ship the &amp;quot;Koenigsberg&amp;quot;  8 km away. This radar unit used the &amp;quot;Braunschen&amp;quot; tubes and had an accuracy of 50 m. A magnetron had been tried but the frequency was not stable, and as such, tubes were used. A wave length of 60 - 80 cm was used so the sender and receiver could be spaced close together. An airplane at a height of 500 m and a distance of 28 km could be seen. By 1935, they had built the first successful radar unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Huelsmeyer had invented and demonstrated his radar in 1904. However, his invention was an idea too early for its time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see any claim that British radar wasn't vital, so I won't answer that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And Watson-Watt did invent /a/ radar device, and got a patent on it. However, clearly what he invented was a particular implementation of a radar device (and not, the concept of radar, nor even the first practical implementation of it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-18T12:52:01.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17806" CreationDate="2013-09-18T13:59:11.847" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quote is from a paper called &quot;How to Combat Hitlerism&quot;, which tells you something. Here's the full quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I doubt if the Germans of future generations will entertain unadulterated pride in the deeds for which Hitlerism will be deemed responsible. They will honour Herr Hitler as genius, as a brave man, a matchless organizer and much more. But I should hope that the Germans of the future will have learnt the art of discrimination even about their heroes. Anyway I think it will be allowed that all the blood that has been spilled by Hitler has added not a millionth part of an inch to the world’s moral stature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's in the context of a discussion of non-violent resistance, and discusses what might have happened had the Czechs and Poles employed it rather than meeting violence with violence. It's certainly not expressing general admiration for Hitler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should also be pointed out that this dates from June 1940, at which time Gandhi would have had no knowledge of Hitler's intentions for genocide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gandhi-manibhavan.org/gandhiphilosophy/philosophy_nonviolence_nonviolence.htm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=pjN3jZQ74AoC&amp;amp;pg=PA338&amp;amp;lpg=PA338&amp;amp;dq=%22germans%20of%20the%20future%20will%20entertain%20unadulterated%20pride%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=tvMvySwh0q&amp;amp;sig=f22GBFi9Rv_ue91613ApCPUCOJE&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=4bA5UpqyKce24APauYCADg&amp;amp;ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22germans%20of%20the%20future%20will%20entertain%20unadulterated%20pride%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2013-09-20T03:05:57.760" LastActivityDate="2013-09-20T03:05:57.760" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17811" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17948" CreationDate="2013-09-18T14:23:59.343" Score="14" ViewCount="33416" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent commercial for a particular brand of yogurt claims, among other things, that 70% of your immune system is located in your gut. I have seen this claim repeated here (the emphasis is mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vitabase.com/blog/allergy-immune/intestine-immune-connection.aspx&quot;&gt;The Intestine/Immune Connection&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most people don’t know that 60-70% of their immune system is located in the gut &lt;strong&gt;as a vast network of lymph tissue referred to as GALT (gut associated lymphatic tissue)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And repeated without explanation in a few other places, e.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://beforeitsnews.com/economics-and-politics/2013/03/did-you-know-that-over-70-of-your-immune-system-is-located-in-your-digestive-system-2450596.html&quot;&gt;Did you know that over 70% of your immune system is located in your digestive system?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodbelly.com/learn/digestive-issues/&quot;&gt;Understanding Digestive Health&lt;/a&gt; (&quot;Since 70% of the body’s immune system dwells in the digestive tract, maintaining balanced digestive health is crucial to the body’s overall well-being.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these sources appear to be pushing some form of edible immune boosting product, and they use the 70% claim in a strange form of logical deduction that says &quot;70% of your immune system is in your gut; our food goes into your gut; thus, our food is good for your immune system.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not interested in how and/or whether these products work, as there are other skeptics questions dealing with that claim. I'm just asking about the &quot;70%&quot; claim. In particular, I would have guessed that most of the cells that make up our immune system would be located in our lymph nodes, blood stream, and bone marrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before anyone asks, I have no idea what they are measuring 70% of, so I'm not even sure that the claim makes sense as written. If someone can explain what measurement makes the 70% figure true, that would be a very helpful answer. Otherwise,  I'm mostly interested in actual medial science that could explain how the immune system is &quot;distributed&quot; through the body and how much of that can be attributed to the digestive system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7998" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-10-01T13:10:29.517" LastActivityDate="2016-10-28T19:04:58.033" Title="Is 70% of your immune system &quot;located&quot; in your gut?" Tags="|biology|immune-system|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17812" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-18T15:40:52.477" Score="20" ViewCount="3804" Body="&lt;p&gt;The viral YouTube video, (over 1.1m views at the time of positing), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2sozrof3HY&quot;&gt;How To Make A Paper Airplane Fly Forever - INFINITY PAPERPLANE&lt;/a&gt; purports to show a basic paper plane being flown in continuous circles over a stove, presumably using the updraft of hot air rising to drive the plane to continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I guess the basic idea of using an updraft to keep a glider in the air seems plausible, the video looks hinky to me: The loops are too even, I can't perceive the height changing as it moves in and out of the air above heat source. It looks to me like it is being held up by fishing wire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a true representation of a cool physics demonstration, or a cheap stunt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="20791" LastEditDate="2015-09-22T09:07:32.720" LastActivityDate="2015-09-25T23:52:54.520" Title="Is this a true demonstration of using a stove to power a paper airplane?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17817" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18213" CreationDate="2013-09-18T19:50:36.670" Score="12" ViewCount="6845" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; This question was unclear before, I have tried to clarify it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is on the first page of Google results for the query &quot;George Bernard Shaw&quot;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQvsf2MUKRQ&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;George Bernard Shaw Defends Hitler, Mass Murder&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have a hard time taking the video seriously, but I do not know enough to actually refute it. The video makes incredible claims, like &quot;The Left&quot; supporting Hitler because he would kill people. Also that Marxian Socialism was about killing of &quot;the parasites of society&quot;. And that eugenics was about killing off people based on class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bernard_Shaw#Eugenics&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; on him lists several sources (none of which I can see or confirm) that the speech they use as evidence was just a joke on the more extreme eugenics camps (reductio ad absurdum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Other reading:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's related stuff that I've found that don't directly have to do with the claims made by the video:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This quote from a play that he wrote which is decidedly unsympathetic to Hitler, &lt;em&gt;Buoyant Billions&lt;/em&gt; (1946-48):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why appeal to the mob when ninety five per cent of them do not&#xA;  understand politics, and can do nothing but mischief without leaders?&#xA;  And what sort of leaders do they vote for? For Titus Oates and Lord&#xA;  George Gordon with their Popish plots, for Hitlers who call on them to&#xA;  exterminate Jews, for Mussolinis who rally them to nationalist dreams&#xA;  of glory and empire in which all foreigners are enemies to be&#xA;  subjugated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p509_Klett.html&quot;&gt;a defense&lt;/a&gt; of the Irish Prime Minister expressing condolences to the German ambassador upon Hitler's death. This, too, seems vague, since he says it was the chivalrous thing to do, and accordance to diplomatic protocol. This could be taken as a &quot;Screw you&quot; to England or a call to humanity to even the most inhumane. Or as the page implies, that he was sympathetic to Hitler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7733" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-10-28T01:33:01.160" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T01:33:01.160" Title="Was George Bernard Shaw a Nazi/Hitler sympathizer?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17821" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17824" CreationDate="2013-09-19T12:09:03.170" Score="23" ViewCount="31528" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=608718045833094&amp;amp;set=a.265870746784494.62760.265444660160436&amp;amp;type=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WTF Facts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DizVp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image from facebook&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Kenyan elite runner passes water to a dehydrated disabled Chinese&#xA;  runner who was suffering. This slowed her time. She came in 2nd in the&#xA;  race not only costing her the win but also the $10,000 cash prize.&#xA;  It's not all about winning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A blog post called &lt;a href=&quot;http://runwiththebiggirls.com/2013/06/what-its-all-about/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;What It’s All About&lt;/a&gt; said the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the 2010 Zheng-Kai marathon Jacqueline Nyetipei Kiplimo from&#xA;  Kenya saw a Chinese elite disable athlete struggling to drink water.&#xA;  She ran with him from the 10km to the 38km mark aiding him through all&#xA;  the water stations. This slowed her time — she came in 2nd in the race&#xA;  — not only costing her the win but also the $10,000 cash prize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaifeng#China_Zheng-Kai_International_Marathon&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paragraph&lt;/a&gt; on the marathon, so I think the marathon itself exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across a unrelated news article about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.possosports.com/news_details.php?id=32&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jacqueline Nyetipei Kiplimo&lt;/a&gt;, so she also is real. I don't know if she's the same person as the person in the photograph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.malimwengu.com/africa/sports/i-have-never-regretted-helping-the-man-i-did-it-to-touch-someone-s-heart&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.malimwengu.com/africa/sports/i-have-never-regretted-helping-the-man-i-did-it-to-touch-someone-s-heart&lt;/a&gt; , but I don't think it's a reliable source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did this incident happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2023-03-29T01:43:12.137" Title="Did an elite Kenyan athlete help an armless runner drink, losing $10,000 prizemoney as a result?" Tags="|water|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17674" CreationDate="2013-09-19T13:47:12.877" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, and my arguments for saying so are two-fold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, there's the historical timeline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When she first arrived there was jubilation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then some skeptics questioned the feat, their principal argument being &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/diana-nyad-cheating-conspiracy-theory-2013-9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a sudden increase in her speed overnight&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/sep/08/diana-nyad-refute-cheating-cuba-florida&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;independent oceanographer concurred&lt;/a&gt; with that speed's being due to an unusual, favourable ocean current&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A week later she had a conference call with the expert skeptics, which left them satisfied&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IMO there was motive and opportunity for skeptics to press their counter-claim, if they had one, before or during that conference call: however, they did not do so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_burden_of_proof#Preponderance_of_the_evidence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Preponderance of the evidence&lt;/a&gt; (at least) is that she didn't 'cheat' as was originally alleged by the skeptics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, there's the current balance of opinion: the interested experts are now arguing over whether (because people in the boat would touch her ankle while she trod water, while helping her into her protective suit at night) it should be counted in the record books as an &quot;assisted swim&quot; or as an &quot;unassisted swim&quot;. Therefore IMO there is no longer any expert doubt about whether it was &quot;a swim&quot; at all: which, was the question posed in the OP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the video referenced below she has not yet published &quot;the logs&quot; of the swim, which one former skeptic (Evan Morrison) still awaits with interest (not so much because he still skeptical, but because he wants to learn from the details how she did it in order to improve his own techniques in the future). Although it's theoretically possible that further doubts may surface later, the same is theoretically possible for anything: because the question seems settled in the present time, so it seems appropriate to answer this question with &quot;yes&quot; now, instead of waiting forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/09/17/3633708/diana-nyad-cuba-to-florida-swim.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/09/17/3633708/diana-nyad-cuba-to-florida-swim.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nyad and her support crew have quelled doubts and provided evidence in&#xA;  recent days to show that she swam from Cuba to Florida under her own&#xA;  power, without hanging onto or climbing into a boat or receiving&#xA;  flotation assistance from the handlers, divers or kayakers&#xA;  accompanying her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her evidence was allegedly sufficient to satisfy the expert skeptics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.yahoo.com/questions-linger-over-u-swimmer-diana-nyads-record-015309249--spt.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.yahoo.com/questions-linger-over-u-swimmer-diana-nyads-record-015309249--spt.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A lot of the big picture questions were answered,&quot; said Evan&#xA;  Morrison, a San Francisco-based marathon swimmer and corporate data&#xA;  analyst, who was on the call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During that call, she appeared to satisfy other marathon swimmers with&#xA;  her explanation that ocean currents had helped quicken her pace during&#xA;  a section of the swim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/morningswimshow/35860.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evan said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We heard from her navigator, who was essentially in charge of plotting their course across the channel given the gulf stream currents which is a fairly complicated task and one which I wasn't really qualified to even ask particularly complicated questions about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The evidence&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Mitch Roffer of Melbourne-based Roffer's Ocean Fishing Forecasting Service Inc said he got an email questioning whether Nyad's swim was a hoax, so he decided to look at the charts for himself. What he saw convinced him that she could do it.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/sep/08/diana-nyad-refute-cheating-cuba-florida&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roffer said, &quot;Many times that current runs west-east and you're constantly fighting the current if you're swimming north. In this case, it was in the shape of an S, and the angle was almost exactly from Havana to Key West&quot;. (The Guardian)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roffer is preparing a report on the currents derived from satellites and ocean buoys. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.roffs.com/2013/09/roffer-responds-controversy-around-diana-nyad-swim-havana-cuba-key-west-fl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Roffs.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There's no hard evidence that Nyad cheated.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/diana-nyad-cheating-conspiracy-theory-2013-9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Business Insider&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-09-22T09:54:43.027" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T09:54:43.027" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17821" CreationDate="2013-09-19T15:36:41.937" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;This incident did happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Kenyan newspaper &lt;em&gt;The People&lt;/em&gt; has an article on the incident &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thepeople.co.ke/755/i-sacrificed-my-win-to-touch-someones-heart-%EF%BF%BC/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The website for the Zheng-Kai marathon also confirms most of the story. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zkmarathon.com/race/news.asp?ClassID=242&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;results of the 2010 race&lt;/a&gt; show that Jacquline Nyetipei finished 2nd. The time for the split shows the first 5 women together. This suggests that she did indeed have a good chance of winning the race. There are also &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20131120163226/http://www.zkmarathon.com/photos/index.asp?pitem=//menu%5B0%5D/item%5B1%5D&amp;amp;ppage=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2 photos of her&lt;/a&gt; with the disabled runner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wasn't able to find a figure for the prize money for the 2010 race, but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zkmarathon.com/en/news.asp?ClassID=758&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2013 prize&lt;/a&gt; for first woman was $15,000 so a figure of $10,000 is plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2023-03-29T01:43:12.137" LastActivityDate="2023-03-29T01:43:12.137" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8205" CreationDate="2013-09-19T19:33:04.373" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following Wikipedia, it has been investigated quite a bit and there are no controversies about whether it really congeals and liquefies. Moreover (via Wikipedia):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2010, Geraci (from Dipartimento di Biologia Molecolare dell’Università Federico II di Napoli) after 4 years of research concluded that in casket is real blood. His results were confirmed by Trombettiego, former leader of Conference of Rectors of Italian Universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and, regarding Lerian's answer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study rejects the thixotropic gel hypothesis arguing that such substances do not retain their properties for periods longer than a few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems the question about what is going on there is still open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15565" LastActivityDate="2013-09-19T19:33:04.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17695" CreationDate="2013-09-20T13:48:03.633" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article answers the question: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/notes/zero-co2-join-us/daily-mail-manipulating-nasa-facts-and-now-its-global-cooling/296729500466293&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.facebook.com/notes/zero-co2-join-us/daily-mail-manipulating-nasa-facts-and-now-its-global-cooling/296729500466293&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The secret is comparing 2013 with the right year, by that I mean that 2012 was the maximum ever recorded lowest ice cap.... so I's only normal to be bigger then the all time low&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15574" LastActivityDate="2013-09-20T13:48:03.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17840" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-21T01:30:21.460" Score="6" ViewCount="415" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nea.org/tools/16917.htm&quot;&gt;Research Spotlight on Hard-to-Staff Schools&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What characterizes &quot;hard-to-staff&quot; schools, those schools that have&#xA;  difficulty in finding and retaining qualified, effective teachers?&#xA;  Many are high-poverty inner-city schools or rural schools that, as a&#xA;  consequence of their location in economically depressed or isolated&#xA;  districts, offer lower salaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are teacher salaries lower in low-income school districts? As in the context of this quote, are the low salaries a reason why low-income school districts are harder to staff with effective teachers? Any numbers to show this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15514" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-09-21T01:42:43.900" LastActivityDate="2013-09-21T01:42:43.900" Title="Are teacher salaries lower in high-need (low-income) school districts?" Tags="|united-states|education|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17841" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="38901" CreationDate="2013-09-21T05:35:19.927" Score="30" ViewCount="11394" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this rumor on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1msvpb/til_macaques_monkeys_in_japan_learned_to_steal/&quot;&gt;Reddit&lt;/a&gt;, which refers to &lt;a href=&quot;http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=887&quot;&gt;factsanddetails.com&lt;/a&gt; and which doesn't indicate the information source. I saw a video of a monkey using a vending machine on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=2&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CDkQtwIwAQ&amp;amp;url=http://www.collegehumor.com/embed/6896949/monkey-uses-vending-machine&amp;amp;ei=dC89Uuf8NaawiQeDsoAI&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNExr-wYLTZDE114VpbtXUKnd9qeRQ&amp;amp;sig2=PSSYfWHeqjeJg5iad7QnRQ&amp;amp;bvm=bv.52434380,d.aGc&quot;&gt;College Humor&lt;/a&gt;, but that doesn't say whether monkeys have actually started stealing purses or wallets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, the claim is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Monkeys in Mino near Osaka have learned to steal purses and wallets and take out the coins use them to buy drinks and snacks from vending machines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2017-07-11T07:59:23.603" LastActivityDate="2017-07-13T04:58:10.567" Title="Do Macaque monkeys steal money from wallets and use it to buy food from vending machines?" Tags="|zoology|japan|ethology|behavior|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2243" CreationDate="2013-09-22T12:41:09.733" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there sufficient evidence to be sure one way or the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps not. There's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controversy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;entire Wikipedia article on the subject&lt;/a&gt; which claims various historians are for or against the idea, and presents some evidence from both sides of the argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question in the OP isn't very precise, for example: would or should developing weapons that are capable of being used in an offensive war, during the 1930s, be counted as &quot;evidence&quot; that Stalin &quot;planned&quot; to &quot;attack the West via Germany&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same controversy is documented in the article about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact#Post-war_commentary_regarding_the_motives_of_Stalin_and_Hitler&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some critics of Stalin's policy, such as the popular writer Viktor Suvorov, claim that Stalin's primary motive for signing the Soviet–German non-aggression treaty was his calculation that such a pact could result in a conflict between the capitalist countries of Western Europe.[citation needed] This idea is supported by Albert L. Weeks.[257][page needed] Claims by Suvorov that Stalin planned to invade Germany in 1941 are debated by historians with, for example, David Glantz opposing such claims, while Mikhail Meltyukhov supports them.[citation needed]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following claims to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controversy#Reactions_and_critiques&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a summary of the consensus position&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While most agree that Stalin made extensive preparations for an eventual war and exploited the military conflict in Europe to his advantage, the assertions that Stalin planned to attack Nazi Germany in the summer of 1941, and that Operation Barbarossa was a preemptive strike by Hitler, are generally discounted.[8]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the question may be unanswerable due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_offensive_plans_controversy#Middle_positions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lack of published evidence&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Asked to what degree the leaders of the Wehrmacht needed to feel threatened by the Soviet military buildup, van Creveld replies &quot;very much&quot; and adds: &quot;In 1941, the Red Army was the largest army in the world. Stalin may, as I said, not have planned to attack Germany in autumn 1941. But it would be hard to believe that he would not have taken the opportunity to stab the Reich in the back sometime.&quot;[50] &lt;strong&gt;The actual documents of the Central Command of the Red Army, headed by George Zhukov for the last 6 months preceding the Nazi invasion, remain classified in Russia.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally there were at the time some &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact#Background&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;similar suspicions in the opposite direction&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hitler's fierce anti-Soviet rhetoric was one of the reasons why the UK and France decided that Soviet participation in the 1938 Munich Conference regarding Czechoslovakia would be both dangerous and useless.[22] The Munich Agreement that followed[23] marked a partial German annexation of Czechoslovakia in late 1938 followed by its complete dissolution in March 1939,[24] which as part of the appeasement of Germany conducted by Chamberlain's and Daladier's cabinets.[25] This policy immediately raised the question of whether the Soviet Union could avoid being next on Hitler's list.[26] &lt;strong&gt;The Soviet leadership believed that the West wanted to encourage German aggression in the East[27] and that France and Britain might stay neutral in a war initiated by Germany, hoping that the warring states would wear each other out and put an end to both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.[28]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T12:41:09.733" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8420" CreationDate="2013-09-22T16:16:36.930" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anne Innis Dagg studied giraffe in the wild in the late 50's &amp;amp; early 60's. She observed and documented lots of male homosexual behavior. She authored &quot;The giraffe : its biology, behavior and ecology&quot; in 1976 &amp;amp; much later, &quot;Pursuing Giraffe&quot;, which is about her experiences as a woman zoologist at that time, &amp;amp; some of the resistance to her observing and reporting on homosexual behavior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15593" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T16:16:36.930" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16825" CreationDate="2013-09-22T19:26:03.480" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reuters World Wide Press reports (Hardly what I would call skeptical unless you bury your head in the sand)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Migrants in Greece detained based on appearance: HRW&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;SOURCE:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reuters) - Greek police have often detained people based on their physical appearance during a crackdown on illegal immigration and only a fraction of them were found to be in the country unlawfully, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Migrants who are stopped and searched are insulted, sometimes physically abused and often detained for hours until their identity is verified, the group said in a report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About 130,000 mostly African and Asian migrants try to enter Europe through Greece's porous borders each year but migrants face growing hostility on the streets as the country endures a sixth year of deep recession and record unemployment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Police have arrested thousands of suspected illegal immigrants since last August when Prime Minister Antonis Samaras's government launched &quot;Xenios Zeus&quot;, an operation named after the ancient Greek god of guests and travelers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Operation Xenios Zeus is anything but hospitable to migrants and asylum seekers who are regularly stopped, searched, and detained just because of the way they look,&quot; said Eva Cosse, Greece specialist at Human Rights Watch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cosse said police should base their operations &quot;on evidence and intelligence, not stereotypes&quot; and said the lack of training in immigration and asylum issues left room for abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As many as 85,000 foreigners were taken to police stations to verify their immigration status in the first seven months of the operation but no more than 6 percent were found to be in Greece illegally, the group's report said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Police had no immediate comment on the report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of those searched said they believed they were stopped because of the way they looked, the report said, citing interviews with 44 people who had been stopped at least once since the launch of the sweep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirty-five of those had a right to be in Greece because they were asylum seekers, legal foreign residents, or Greeks of foreign origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report said a 19-year-old Guinean asylum seeker who gave his name as Tupac told Human Rights Watch he and other black and Asian passengers were forced off a bus in Athens in February.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Police officers came to the door and said 'All blacks out, all blacks out',&quot; he was quoted by the report as saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The United Nations says racially motivated attacks have risen to alarming levels in Greece, sometimes by attackers wearing the insignia of the far-right Golden Dawn party, and that authorities are doing little to tackle the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Golden Dawn was catapulted from obscurity on a fiercely anti-immigrant agenda to win 18 seats in parliament in elections last June.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In November, the U.S. embassy in Greece warned of a rise in attacks against people who are considered foreigners &quot;because of their complexion, are perceived to be foreign migrants&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Alison Williams)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/12/us-greece-migrants-police-idUSBRE95B0PK20130612&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/12/us-greece-migrants-police-idUSBRE95B0PK20130612&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15594" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T19:26:03.480" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2938" CreationDate="2013-09-22T19:54:52.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Humans were designed to squat for bodily functions (including childbirth).  By abandoning squat toilets, we have lost the ability to squat (except momentarily).  So, by returning to the daily habit of squatting to defecate, women can regain their ability to give birth in the most natural, ergonomic position. This study (&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-0528.1969.tb06185.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-0528.1969.tb06185.x/abstract&lt;/a&gt;) shows that squatting opens the birth canal twenty to thirty percent more than the standard recumbent birth posture. Squatting has many other benefits, discussed at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturesplatform.com/health_benefits.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.naturesplatform.com/health_benefits.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15595" LastActivityDate="2013-09-22T19:54:52.680" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2938" CreationDate="2013-09-23T09:38:54.840" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a French person, I can tell you that there is no correlation between &amp;quot;squat toilets&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;birth complications&amp;quot; in France.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Squat toilets are only found in public areas. At home or work, nobody would want a &amp;quot;squat toilet&amp;quot; (only some old houses have them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only reason there are &amp;quot;squat toilets&amp;quot; in France is that they are easier to clean and use less water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course, nowadays they tend to be rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="417" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-08-03T15:59:22.473" LastActivityDate="2022-08-03T15:59:22.473" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17859" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17938" CreationDate="2013-09-23T13:15:55.557" Score="20" ViewCount="4637" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently been to Poland and I've heard the claim that Polish is the hardest language to learn. I've found this claim repeated again today, for example on &lt;a href=&quot;http://claritaslux.com/blog/the-hardest-language-to-learn/&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hardest language to learn is: Polish – Seven cases, Seven genders and very difficult pronunciation. The average English speaker is fluent in their language at the age of 12, in contrast, the average Polish speaker is fluent in their language after age of 16.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no citations in the post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there any direct studies that prove that Polish is &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt; hardest language to learn? Does it even make sense to claim that (e.g. hardest for whom)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any proof that learning Polish is relatively harder than other slavic languages?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T23:26:10.683" Title="Is Polish the hardest language to learn?" Tags="|language|learning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17862" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-24T10:30:38.943" Score="2" ViewCount="813" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1394322/Armchair-astronomer-discovers-structure-Mars-Google-earth.html#ixzz2foIIEM6t&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But now an American 'armchair astronaut' claims to have discovered a mysterious structure on the surface of the red planet - by looking on Google earth.&#xA;  David Martines, whose YouTube video of the 'station' has racked up over 200,000 hits so far, claims to have randomly uncovered the picture while scanning the surface of the planet one day.&#xA;  Describing the 'structure' as a living quarters with red and blue stripes on it, to the untrained eye it looks nothing more than a white splodge on an otherwise unblemished red landscape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this evidence of a inhabitable space-station on Mars?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15603" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:30:27.503" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:30:27.503" Title="Has David Martines found a picture of a space-station on Mars?" Tags="|astronomy|mars|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17862" CreationDate="2013-09-24T17:18:52.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. (Well, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; evidence. Photos and testimony as to their interpretation are evidence by definition, but I will argue that in this case, it is not &lt;em&gt;strong&lt;/em&gt; evidence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the photo he claims that shows a 700 foot long living structure or power station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lzKje.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The photo contains approximately 20 bright white pixels that have been blurred or degraded by compression artifacts. In my opinion, these 20 degraded pixels are not strong enough evidence to support the conclusion that there is a space station on Mars, given the answers at &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3748/could-the-usa-have-a-secret-colony-on-mars&quot;&gt;Could the USA have a secret colony on Mars?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He admits these photos are not evidence of anything living there: &quot;I'm just assuming that something lives in it or has lived in it.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/06/armchair-astronomer-finds-evidence-life-on-mars/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fox News&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Richard Hoagland examined the original ESA data for this region (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbmhGOqgcyQ&amp;amp;t=39s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbmhGOqgcyQ&amp;amp;t=39s&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I went and found the original data. I compared the images from ESA — from the Mars Express spacecraft — with the Google Mars object in the same exact location and it appeared to be on the ESA data just a digital data dropout. Just a series of little white pixels separated by black pixels in between looking like a one-pixel picket fence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(He goes on to claim that the extra detail seen in the Google Mars images was an intentional hoax to set up a strawman, but that's not relevant to the question here.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T20:18:38.087" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17868" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15538" CreationDate="2013-09-24T17:42:06.387" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hypothesis:&#xA;Drinking urine may prolong survival time after water deprivation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SITUATION:&#xA;You get trapped somewhere without food and water and you hope to be rescued by someone in few days. You drink your own urine in hope to postpone death from dehydration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;THINGS TO CONSIDER:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There were many &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehealthstar.com/dehydration/how-long-can-you-survive-without-water&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reports how people survived without water from 7 to 10 days&lt;/a&gt; and they didn't mention any urine drinking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A healthy, sedentary young adult in a moderate climate loses at least about 1 liter of water per day — obligatory water loss by urination, breathing and invisible perspiration, but no sweating; you lose about 500 mL of water with the urine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You die when you lose &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v57/n2s/full/1601897a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10-15% of your initial body weight due to water loss&lt;/a&gt;; for a 70 kg person, this is 7-10.5 kg body mass (7-10.5 liters of water). So, the question is can you replace some of this water by drinking urine. Yes, you can, but more water (urine) you drink, the more urine you will excrete, so the expected water replacement doesn't actually work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the first day without water, when you are still relatively well hydrated you excrete about 500 mL urine, but by consuming this you also consume some urea and sodium — these will eventually need to be excreted again and some water will be needed for that, so the net benefit of drinking 500 mL of urine will be....less than 500 mL... &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;With progression of dehydration, you will excrete smaller amounts of urine, which will be highly concentrated. If you drink this concentrated urine, you will obligatory excrete (urinate) more water (to excrete ingested urea and sodium) than you drank it — so in this stage, by drinking urine you are actually dehydrating yourself.   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The water from the urine you drank in the first few days will be excreted in those first days and you will be pretty much out of urine probably after the day 5. This means you can not prolong your survival time with drinking urine (assuming you can survive without any water (or urine) for 7-10 days anyway).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above consideration is based on the theoretical knowledge about how water is lost from the body and it lacks any measurements and accurate calculations, but roughly this is how I believe this works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another situation, like in a hot desert, your survival time without water may be as low as a day or two. In this situation, drinking urine might prolong your survival for...only an hour or so, because you will quickly sweat out that water from the urine you have drunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About OTHER CLAIMS in the original question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Urine is highly sterile...so it can be used to disinfect wounds&quot;. Urine is not highly sterile but usually contains a certain amount of bacteria from the urinary tract. Besides that, they are not sterile but sterilizing fluids that kill bacteria; even sterile water does not kill bacteria (apart from those that drown in it).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Urine...cures jet lag&quot;. Maybe it does, maybe it does not, but I did not find any reliable source which would prove that this is the best method.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Urine can be used to treat bacterial and fungal infections.&quot; Urine actually allows bacteria to grow and multiplicate. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bd.com/vacutainer/labnotes/Volume14Number2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;urine sample&lt;/a&gt; intended for urine culture (checking for bacteria in urine) has to be refrigerated or some preservative used before transported to the lab, otherwise the bacteria in urine will multiplicate, which will lead to erroneous result.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15288" LastEditorUserId="15288" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T11:35:51.263" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T11:35:51.263" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17862" CreationDate="2013-09-24T19:59:39.390" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since this claim has been around for a couple of years now, there are several people who have provided competing theories for what this image shows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunking-bio-station-alpha-google-mars.166/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This one&lt;/a&gt; includes the original image straight from the ESA rather than the one that was post-processed, colourised, rotated, recompressed and wrapped around a sphere in Google Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WVrZv.png&quot; alt=&quot;Original shots of Mars showing capture errors.&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This photo shows quite clearly that it is not a colony or a building of any sort and is the result of individual pixels being set to white.  I don't know of a plausible explanation in which buildings on Mars could produce this image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The page also provides a possible explanation for the white pixels (a data transmission glitch) and replicates the process on an aerial image of an area near the Grand Canyon by manually adding white pixels and post-processing the image the way it would be before appearing in Google Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The end result looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GFARR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Grand Canyon with Mars colony&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite similar to the alleged Bio Station Alpha image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later still he shows another photo of the same area without any data glitch or buildings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Zg3sh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Bio Station Alpha area with no buildings evident.&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/07/secret-space-base-found-on-google-mars-debunked/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another article on Fox News&lt;/a&gt; debunking &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/06/armchair-astronomer-finds-evidence-life-on-mars/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an earlier article on the same site&lt;/a&gt; contains this explanation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It looks like a linear streak artifact produced by a cosmic ray,&amp;quot; said Alfred McEwen, a planetary geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Lab at the University of Arizona and the director of the Planetary Imaging Research Laboratory. McEwen is the principal investigator of the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), a powerful telescope currently orbiting Mars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cosmic rays are extremely energetic particles emitted by the sun and other stars. For the most part, the Earth's protective magnetosphere blocks them from hitting the planet's surface, McEwen explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;But with space images that are taken outside our magnetosphere, such as those taken by orbiting telescopes, it's very common to see these cosmic ray hits. You see them on optical images and a lot of the infrared images too,&amp;quot; he told Life's Little Mysteries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a cosmic ray passes through a camera's image sensor, it deposits a large amount of its electric charge in the pixels that it penetrates. If the particle passes through at a shallow angle to the plane of the camera, it affects several pixels along its path. The result is a bright streak on the image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The digital compression software that converts the image into a JPEG file then &amp;quot;sort of smears out the image, giving it that pixelated look,&amp;quot; McEwen said. What started as a clear streak in high-resolution turns into a streak that, in the armchair astronaut's words, looks like it is &amp;quot;made up of cylinders.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter which of the data transmission glitch or the linear streak artifact theories are correct, it is not a Mars colony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11387" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-24T20:24:34.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17870" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-25T03:26:16.940" Score="3" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;At my community college, a person in a booth was handing out pamphlets talking about the health problems with cigarettes and e-cigarettes. The pamphlet seemed to indicate that e-cigarettes could be as unhealthy as conventional cigarettes. When I asked the person handing out the pamphlet whether we just had insufficient research to conclude that e-cigarettes were safer or whether there was research indicating that e-cigarettes were unsafe, she clarified that it was the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This brings me to my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this person right? Do we have evidence that E-Cigarettes are as unhealthy as conventional cigarettes?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As this question has now been marked as a duplicate, and the duplicate question has been linked to, I should note that my question was primarily answered by the response to the other question that wasn't selected as the answer, via this quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But what the FDA report does not address at all is a comparison between the long term health effects of smoking vs. vaping, for the very simple reason that there isn't any data on that. So if by &quot;better&quot; you mean &quot;has fewer long term health effects&quot; the answer is &quot;insufficient data.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:20:08.987" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:20:08.987" Title="Are E-Cigarettes as unhealthy as conventional cigarettes?" Tags="|environmental-health|smoking|cigarettes|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-09-25T07:18:25.797" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6572" CreationDate="2013-09-25T04:13:30.307" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using that study, of aircraft tires, to conclude that it is impossible or even unlikely for a bicycle to hydroplane is dubious, at best.  There are significant differences between the two situations that are not being accounted for, or even mentioned.  You cannot simply take an unrelated study and assume that it applies to another case.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among other things, the macrotexture constant is going to be far different for a tire with a tiny contact patch, versus a comparatively huge aircraft tire.  A pavement inconsistency that is irrelevant to an airplane might occupy the entire contact patch of a bike tire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, for the record, the predicted hydroplanning speeds in that study differed substantially from their experimental results for modern tires.  In other words, the model didn't even work for different aircraft tires... and you are trying to apply it to a completely different scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe that it is impossible for a given tire ( on any vehicle ) to hydroplane, then can you explain how and why that tire will slide on a wet surface at a lower speed than it will on a dry surface?  Or, if you don't believe even that is true, explain why wet lap times are slower than dry times in all forms of wheeled sport.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rubber tires grip pavement by deforming into the microscopic imperfections in the surface... whether or not the tire features a tread pattern.  That effect is reduced in wet conditions because the &quot;wet&quot; fills in those imperfections.  In other words, the tire partially hydroplanes, one little square millimeter at a time.  That is why you can't go as fast in the wet, as in the dry, without losing traction... and losing traction due to a wet surface is hydroplaning.  If you have an alternate explanation, please share it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I can't believe you are still spreading the nonsense about weight/pressure equaling contact patch.  If tires were balloons, that would be true, but they are not, they have structure.  That equation has been experimentally disproved ( by Avon Tires, among others... &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.performancesimulations.com/fact-or-fiction-tires-1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.performancesimulations.com/fact-or-fiction-tires-1.htm&lt;/a&gt; ).  Note the difference between what happens when you inflate a structure-less tire tube, and a structured tire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15628" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T04:13:30.307" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17873" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17891" CreationDate="2013-09-25T08:50:00.850" Score="1" ViewCount="2190" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Harbhajan Singh Yogi say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you want to learn something - read about it; understand something -&#xA;  write about it; master something - teach it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikiquote has it as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk%3aHarbhajan_Singh_Yogi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unsourced&lt;/a&gt;, and there's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ericlee.asia/60/to-learn-read-to-know-write-to-master-teach&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unsourced claim&lt;/a&gt; that a variant, &quot;To learn, read. To know, write. To master, teach.&quot; is a Hindu proverb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T17:46:41.707" Title="Did Harbhajan Singh Yogi say &quot;... to learn something - read about it ...&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6572" CreationDate="2013-09-25T10:12:14.967" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/q/1029/1097&quot;&gt;Cyclists will warn you&lt;/a&gt; that although you won't actually hydroplane, nevertheless you have less traction on wet surfaces: and that some surfaces (painted lines, and metal man-hole covers and streetcar rails) are especially slippery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tire manufacturers acknowledge/allege this (loss of traction), and produce tires designed to improve wet-weather traction, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/michelin-rolls-out-three-new-pro4-tires-36376/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;for example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Michelin Pro4 Grip clincher&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Pro4 Grip has a few features designed to keep you rolling in the&#xA;  wet. Sipes are cut into the tread, not to clear water as many might&#xA;  think, but to increase pressure and therefore grip by reducing the&#xA;  contact patch of the tire. Margadonna gave the analogy of a football&#xA;  player with a size 14 shoe and a little girl with a high heel; &quot;the&#xA;  girl's heel is putting more pressure on the ground because the contact&#xA;  patch is much smaller,&quot; Margadonna said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of course a soft rubber would squish and negate some of that benefit,&#xA;  so a higher-durometer rubber is used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Grip in the wet, Michelin claims, is 15 percent better than the&#xA;  regular Pro4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:32:40.750" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T10:12:14.967" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15538" CreationDate="2013-09-25T16:56:05.293" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;With respect to the claim that urotherapy can cure cancer, the American Cancer Society &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/complementaryandalternativemedicine/pharmacologicalandbiologicaltreatment/urotherapy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;has this to say&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No well-controlled studies published in available scientific literature support the claims that urotherapy can control or reverse the spread of cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What is the evidence?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some individual reports of urotherapy's ability to stop cancer growth. However, available scientific evidence does not support claims that urine or urea given in any form is helpful for cancer patients. &lt;strong&gt;Two small studies done during the 1980s found urea did not cause tumors to shrink in patients with cancer in the liver.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Are there any possible problems or complications?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Individuals have reported that drinking or injecting urine or applying it directly to the skin is safe and not linked to any harmful side effects, but the safety of these practices has not been established by scientific studies. &lt;strong&gt;There have been reports of nausea, vomiting, upset stomach, and diarrhea after drinking one's own urine, especially during the first few days. Some medications are excreted into the urine, and by drinking their own urine, patients can accumulate toxic levels of these drugs.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relying on this type of treatment alone, and avoiding or delaying conventional medical care for cancer, may have serious health consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no. There is no evidence that drinking your own urine will cure cancer. It can potentially cause more harm than good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15636" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-25T16:56:05.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17879" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-25T17:15:09.287" Score="6" ViewCount="570" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not entirely sure how notable this claim is. But a popular Tweeter named &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/RealTimeWWII&quot;&gt;WW2 Tweets from 1941&lt;/a&gt; made the &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/RealTimeWWII/status/346742176471994368&quot;&gt;following claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;British officers in Egypt now using their Indian soldiers to translate all radio messages into Hindustani- fearful of snooping Germans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tweet was retweeted 68 times and favourited 26 times. It has (since) been doing the rounds in blogs and such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any basis for this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(One of the repliers to the tweet claims that the Indian army similarly employed Tamil during the 1971 Bangladesh/East Pakistan War. A less notable claim, but just as interesting.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15636" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T15:35:56.997" Title="Did British officers in Egypt use Indian soldiers to translate all radio messages into Hindustani?" Tags="|united-kingdom|world-war-ii|egypt|india|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17881" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17890" CreationDate="2013-09-25T22:29:19.590" Score="11" ViewCount="2051" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anyone who follows the genetically modified organism (GMO) debate has probably heard the claim that GMO crops, and specifically the inability to save seed and other associated production costs, have lead Indian farmers deep into debt, and a large number of farmer suicides in India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is explained in detail &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vandana-shiva/from-seeds-of-suicide-to_b_192419.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The crisis of suicides shows how the survival of small farmers is incompatible with the seed monopolies of global corporations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard the claim referenced and explained many times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today I saw it disputed, but in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/?p=12074#.UkNiExJNOis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;opinion piece&lt;/a&gt; with few facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there sufficient evidence that patented, bio-engineered crops, and their associated farming costs, have raised debt among Indian farmers, and subsequently lead to farmer suicides?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;EDIT&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many specific claims made by the article. The key claims, which I think ought to be addressed are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Using the new seeds has increased production cost, thus increasing debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cotton seed used to cost Rs 7/kg. Bt-cotton seeds were sold at Rs 17,000/kg. Indigenous cotton varieties can be intercropped with food crops. Bt-cotton can only be grown as a monoculture. Indigenous cotton is rain fed. Bt-cotton needs irrigation. Indigenous varieties are pest resistant. Bt-cotton, even though promoted as resistant to the boll worm, has created new pests, and to control these new pests, farmers are using 13 times more pesticides then they were using prior to introduction of Bt-cotton. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The new seeds, specifically Monsanto Bt Cotton, routinely does not perform as promised, thus reducing profits, often resulting in negative profits, and ultimately, greater poverty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Monsanto ... claims of yields of 1500/kg/year when farmers harvest 300-400 kg/year on an average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Instead of incomes of 10,000 rupees an acre, farmers ran into losses of 6,400 rupees an acre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;These factors increase farmer suicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High costs and unreliable output make for a debt trap, and a suicide economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-10-02T23:42:20.113" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T23:42:20.113" Title="Are GMO crops to blame for farmer suicides in India?" Tags="|biology|economics|technology|gmo|suicide|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7605" CreationDate="2013-09-26T07:12:41.207" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whydontyoutrythis.com/2013/07/take-two-normal-people-add-money-to-just-one-of-them-and-watch-what-happens-next.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; suggests that it might not be the model, but the wealth of the driver making him a bad driver. Being an upclass model, could explain why BMW-drivers might drive more inconsiderate then others. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5141" LastEditorUserId="5141" LastEditDate="2013-09-26T14:44:03.263" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T14:44:03.263" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17879" CreationDate="2013-09-26T15:29:46.437" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did British officers in Egypt use Indian soldiers to translate &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; radio messages into Hindustani?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, certainly not &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All radio messages includes both voice messages and morse-code messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At least some messages were enciphered using a different system. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arcre.com/archive/cryptography/cryptolowgrade&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;British Army Low Grade ciphers used in World War II&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At least some radio messages were intended to be received by the Germans for purposes of misinformation. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mikekemble.com/ww2/el_alamein.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;El Alamein&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And certainly not all messages in Hindustani would have required required an &lt;strong&gt;indian soldier&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As compro1 notes in a comment, In at least one case, the services of an Indian soldier were not needed. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Messervy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;General Frank Messervy&lt;/a&gt; was &lt;a href=&quot;http://caribbeanhistoryarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/frank-messervy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;born in Trinidad&lt;/a&gt; to English and French parents.  - Unless the term &quot;Indian soldier&quot; encompasses all the soldiers of every nationality who ever served in the British Indian army.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-09-26T15:35:56.997" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T15:35:56.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8739" CreationDate="2013-09-26T15:45:49.020" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is kind of ambiguous.  What is &quot;it?&quot;  Does the question mean  &quot;Is the placebo effect dependent on the amount of belief  in the placebo effect?&quot; or does it mean &quot;Is the placebo effect dependent on the amount of belief in the effectiveness of the (alleged) treatment?&quot;  The first possibility seems pretty goofy and the discussion in the question seems not to support this interpretation.  There is evidence on the second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a clever paper by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/placebo_effect.pdf&quot;&gt;Anup Malani&lt;/a&gt; about this.  Trials differ in how they split the subjects into placebo and treatment arms.  Sometimes, it's 1:1.  Sometimes it's 1:2.  Sometimes it's other ratios.  If you are in a 1:1 trial, you assess a 50% chance you are getting a sugar pill.  If you are in a 2:1 trial, you assess a 33% chance you are getting a sugar pill.  This is a convenient way to parameterize how strongly a person believes that they are receiving a potentially effective treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Malani looked at hundreds of trials for ulcer drugs and anti-cholesterol drugs.  In trials where there is a higher probability that you are assigned to treatment, you get better outcomes.  Quoting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The central finding is that a higher probability of treatment is associated with a&#xA;  significantly higher healing rate in H2-blocker trials and with a significantly greater reduction in LDL levels and side effects in statins trials.  The coefficient estimates suggest that going from a probability 0 to a probability 1 trial, which generates the full placebo effect, increases the probability of healing an ulcer with H2-blockers by 0.06 – 0.22. It increases the reduction in LDL levels following statin treatment by roughly 45 – 92 percent. It also causes increase the probability of any side effects and usual side effects from statin therapy by at least 0.6 and 0.5, respectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15649" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T15:45:49.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17881" CreationDate="2013-09-26T16:43:17.890" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;There is no increase in suicides&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article assumes there is such a thing as a &quot;suicide economy&quot;, and that suicides have increased since the introduction of GM seeds. This was reviewed by The Guardian in 2008 , &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/nov/05/gmcrops-india&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Indian farmer suicides not GM related, says study&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[S]uicides among farmers have been decreasing since the introduction of GM cotton by Monsanto in 2002.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from the summary of the the original publication (full text &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifpri.cgiar.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp00808.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifpri.org/publication/bt-cotton-and-farmer-suicides-india&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bt Cotton and farmer suicides in India&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We first show that there is no evidence in available data of a “resurgence” of farmer suicides in India in the last five years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-09-26T19:17:55.107" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T19:17:55.107" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17873" CreationDate="2013-09-26T17:46:41.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quote is noted on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kundaliniresearchinstitute.org/faq.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;official site&lt;/a&gt; that publishes and certifies on his behalf,   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kundaliniresearchinstitute.org/teachertraining.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kundalini Research Institute&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;“If you want to learn something, read about it. &#xA; If you want to understand something, write about it. &#xA; If you want to master something, teach it.”   &#xA;   —Yogi Bhajan&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(see the bottom of that page)&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is implied in other ways in older texts that remains to be confirmed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2224" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T17:46:41.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17892" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17896" CreationDate="2013-09-26T17:54:20.283" Score="5" ViewCount="1573" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I had to take 5 this month on individual teeth, my dentist reassured me that with the current technology there is absolutely no risk and that I can take as many as I need. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you search the web, you see lots of opinions about this so maybe people are misinformed. Recent research seems to indicate that there is a risk to develop tiroid or brain cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is basically in the title: Are dental X-Rays safe? Are there any studies that point the balance in a direction or the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15651" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T08:17:52.683" Title="Are dental X-Rays safe?" Tags="|medical-science|radiation|dentistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17881" CreationDate="2013-09-26T19:56:37.723" Score="3" Body="&lt;h2&gt;2. The new seeds, specifically Monsanto Bt Cotton, routinely does not perform as promised&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifpri.cgiar.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp00808.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bt Cotton and Farmer Suicides in India - Reviewing the Evidence&lt;/a&gt; (referenced in Sancho's answer):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Second, we find that Bt cotton technology has been very effective overall in &#xA;  India. However, the context in which Bt cotton was introduced has generated disappointing results in &#xA;  some particular districts and seasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following implies that high-efficiency cotton production may be difficult for small or poor farmers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Table 5 shows the evolution of yield levels in India over time;&#xA;  according to these official data, the  productivity growth in cotton&#xA;  has been rather slow in India for the last 50 years, and the yield&#xA;  level  remained far below the global average in 2003. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This significant yield gap is due to various factors, including a lack&#xA;  of irrigation facilities, pest  problems, and factors characterized by&#xA;  small-scale and resource-poor farming systems. In India, most of  the&#xA;  cotton is cultivated under rain-fed condition (Sundaram et al. 1999).&#xA;  Thus the variability in yields is  largely dependent on the monsoon.&#xA;  Another major factor is infestations of pests, especially the American&#xA;  bollworm, which attack cotton plants at various stages of their life&#xA;  cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also states that spending on pesticides is a &quot;large expenditure&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This implies that farmers have to incur large expenditures on&#xA;  pesticides every year. Figure 6,  which give the pesticide consumption&#xA;  by different crops, shows that cotton consumes about 45 percent of &#xA;  pesticides used in Indian agriculture (Choudhary and Laroia 2001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gives several reasons why performance of Bt cotton was disappointing in some regions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Counterfeit seeds&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first issue is the widespread distribution and use of spurious&#xA;  seeds. Inclusive of the  technology fee, in the absence of&#xA;  regulations, Bt cotton (hybrid) seeds were initially sold at a price&#xA;  equal  to five times that of the local hybrid varieties. Bt&#xA;  cottonseeds initially cost about 1,650 rupees (Rs) for a  450-gram&#xA;  packet, compared with Rs 300 for a 450-gram packet for the local&#xA;  hybrid variety DCH32  (Acharya 2006). This prompted a booming market&#xA;  for spurious seeds, which were sold at much lower  prices. However,&#xA;  these seeds were mostly a mix of Bt and non-Bt cotton as well as seeds&#xA;  of unapproved  varieties. Mostly sold by local traders, the seeds were&#xA;  targeted to farmers trying to save on seed costs. The  germination&#xA;  rate of these seeds was inconsistent and often resulted in crop loss&#xA;  and disappointment for  many farmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lack of formal training and lack of local experience&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lack of agriculture extension and dissemination of knowledge about&#xA;  these new varieties from  the government has left farmers solely&#xA;  dependent on the companies for information regarding these  varieties&#xA;  (SEMC 2007). The spreading adoption of Bt cotton has been driven&#xA;  mainly by demonstrations  from farmers who have had success&#xA;  cultivating it (Ministry of Environment and Forests 2003a). Very few &#xA;  agriculture extension services were provided and were located in&#xA;  distant places (Rao and Suri 2006). The  seed and fertilizer company&#xA;  agents have been the sole interface between the technology and the&#xA;  farmers 16 (Shridhar 2006). Faced with choosing among the numerous&#xA;  brands of Bt cottonseeds released between  2004 and 2005, farmers were&#xA;  practically gambling on the seed they used (Stone 2007).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sub-optimal use of pesticides&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Third, the high use of pesticides even with Bt cotton seems to have&#xA;  played a role (SEMC 2007).  Cotton has been the crop most dependent on&#xA;  pesticides in India. It is cultivated in only 5 percent of the  area&#xA;  but receives 45 percent of the pesticides used in India, pesticides&#xA;  account for 42–50 percent of the  total cost of cultivation (Shetty&#xA;  2004). The higher price paid for Bt cottonseeds is justified by the &#xA;  reduction in pesticide use since the plants themselves guard against&#xA;  bollworms. But this does not mean a  total elimination of pesticide&#xA;  sprays. To have maximum yield results from Bt cotton, pesticide sprays&#xA;  should be optimized and targeted to the secondary pests that used to&#xA;  be covered by the wide-spectrum  pesticides used before Bt cotton. &#xA;  However, farmers, lacking knowledge about the requirements for Bt&#xA;  cotton, followed their own  spraying schedules. In a survey of farmers&#xA;  in Maharashtra and Gujarat, Shetty (2004) found that farmers  in&#xA;  Guntur and Warrangal districts sprayed cotton 20 to 30 times, when the&#xA;  optimum required was only 15  times. This indiscriminate spraying led&#xA;  to development of resistance in the bollworm and hence pest &#xA;  infestation returned, lowering the yield from Bt cotton in these&#xA;  regions. The survey also revealed that  farmers changed pesticide&#xA;  types and doses to combat the development of resistance among&#xA;  bollworms  (Shetty 2004). However, the situation has improved&#xA;  according to a more recent report (ASSOCHAMIMRB 2007), showing that Bt&#xA;  cotton farmers have largely reduced pesticide consumption, compared&#xA;  with  conventional hybrids&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Insufficient variety&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The loss observed in some studies is largely due to the lack of&#xA;  adequate Bt varieties (particularly for  rainfed conditions under&#xA;  drought),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unreasonable expectations&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the lower quality of cotton with some of these varieties, the high&#xA;  price  of seeds compensating for the reduction in pesticide costs, and&#xA;  the improper use of the technology  associated with the limited&#xA;  knowledge of the technology among cotton growers (for example, use of&#xA;  the  wrong variety, improper pesticide use, and the perception of Bt&#xA;  as a “silver bullet”)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it says that the Genetic Modification itself is beneficial; and the problems (as listed above) are in the way in which their use is implemented:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In other words, the  technology, represented by the Bt trait, should&#xA;  not be blamed, instead, the conditions in which it was  introduced,&#xA;  sold, and used explain some of the observed losses in specific regions&#xA;  of India.4  At the same  time, taken together, these later studies&#xA;  show that despite all these constraints, on average, a large  majority&#xA;  of Indian farmers gained significantly by adopting Bt cotton varieties&#xA;  in most locations and  seasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They warn that there are various problems with their studies or conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lastly, the controversy has been fueled by the lack of consistent&#xA;  public information on the  performance of Bt cotton (SEMC 2007). Many&#xA;  studies have been published by various institutes and cited  one after&#xA;  the other by the media or selectively by opponents or proponents to Bt&#xA;  cotton. However, there  has been no visible public effort toward a&#xA;  comprehensive and synthetic assessment of the effects of Bt  cotton in&#xA;  the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because adoption is a  nonrandomized process, Bt cotton adopters may&#xA;  be more productive farmers than nonadopters, and  neglecting this fact&#xA;  could result in overestimating the actual net effect of Bt cotton&#xA;  compared with non-Bt  cotton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO their conclusion is that Bt is of net average benefit, but that there have been some problems in some areas, due to inexperience etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Bt&quot; is (if I understand the article correctly) not a single type of seed: rather it's a genetic modification applied to many varieties of seeds. So part of the problem (and part of the solution) is choosing the right Bt seed for the diverse environments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another factor, which has helped the sale of spurious seeds, is the&#xA;  confusion related to the large  release of approved Bt cotton&#xA;  varieties by the government of India in recent years. In the summer of&#xA;  2007,  there were 135 varieties of Bt cotton hybrids approved by the&#xA;  GEAC. This figure is up from 62 approved  varieties in 2006 and 20 in&#xA;  2005. The new varieties are available for sale in one or more of the six  originally approved states of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka,&#xA;  Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and  Tamil Nadu, along with three new&#xA;  states of Haryana, Punjab, and Rajasthan (as shown in Appendix Table &#xA;  A.1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-09-27T11:49:52.873" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T11:49:52.873" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17896" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17892" CreationDate="2013-09-26T22:49:12.033" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dental X-rays are not 100% free of risk. However, they are very, very low risk. Given people take risks with radiation every day (going into the sun, eating bananas), it is reasonable to accept the risks of dental X-rays to gain the health benefits associated with their diagnostic abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/radiation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;xkcd info-graphic&lt;/a&gt; puts the risk in perspective - click to expand and then see dental Xrays at 5 µSv in the top corner):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://imgs.xkcd.com/blag/radiation.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5XgZo.png&quot; alt=&quot;XKCD Info-graphic&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what are the actual risks from these doses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: Some of these studies are dated - I would expect that modern technology, the amount of radiation required has been reduced and the ability to treat the malignancies has improved, making these over-estimates of the current risk levels.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673604154330&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2004 study in the UK&lt;/a&gt; looking at &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; diagnostic X-rays concluded:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our results indicate that in the UK about 0·6% of the cumulative risk of cancer to age 75 years could be attributable to diagnostic X-rays. This percentage is equivalent to about 700 cases of cancer per year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjr.birjournals.org/content/56/668/511.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1983 study in the UK&lt;/a&gt; suggested that, depending on the type of dental X-ray, the risk of fatal malignancy from dental x-rays is up to 1.3 per million, suggesting that accounted for no more than a total of three extra fatalities per year.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.20036/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2004 study&lt;/a&gt; found the risk of getting an intercranial meningioma roughly doubled - remember this is from a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meningioma&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;relatively low base-rate&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T22:49:12.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="936" CreationDate="2013-09-26T22:57:08.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most studies (such as the ones summarized in the Wikipedia article about &quot;Orgasm&quot;) point towards the idea that the g-spot is actually the inner part of the clitoris and nothing more. Moreover, anatomical dissections have shown that the clitoris is much bigger than what was thought at first, and its nerves extend across the vaginal wall. This could be the reason why some women have sensitivity in the area and others not, and why most women are unable to reach orgasm without direct clitoral stimulation (around 80% or so). Think about this, if it was really a different organ, why would it be absent in so many women, and why would it be so elusive? It makes more sense that the inner part of the clitoris is more developed in some women, just as some men have larger penises.&#xA;So well, in my opinion: Is there a sensitive area in that zone? In some cases, yes. But is this a g-spot separated from the clitoris? No.&#xA;In my experience at least, both zones are closely connected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15658" LastActivityDate="2013-09-26T22:57:08.470" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17899" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17881" CreationDate="2013-09-26T23:12:30.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;3. These factors increase farmer suicide&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That may be some truth to that; but it's not entirely fair to blame it on &quot;GMO&quot; crops, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The evidence is that Bt cotton generally (i.e. on average) performs better than non-Bt cotton&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When and where Bt cotton crops failed, that was not the fault of the Bt trait (it was more caused by inexperience with using it, per &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/17894/2703&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Statistics don't show a strong correlation between suicides and the Bt cotton: as follows.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article referenced in the OP says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The region in India with the highest level of farmers suicides is the&#xA;  Vidharbha region in Maharashtra -- 4000 suicides per year, 10 per day.&#xA;  This is also the region with the highest acreage of Monsanto's GMO Bt&#xA;  cotton. Monsanto's GM seeds create a suicide economy by transforming&#xA;  seed from a renewable resource to a non-renewable input which must be&#xA;  bought every year at high prices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifpri.cgiar.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp00808.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bt Cotton and Farmer Suicides in India&lt;/a&gt; article (the same as already referenced in other answers) says, about the Maharashtra state,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ed0It.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For Maharashtra, the combination of suicide and adoption rates leads&#xA;  to similar conclusions  (Figure 12). Maharashtra tends to be a good&#xA;  proxy for what happens at the aggregate national level,  notably&#xA;  because of its important cotton sector. Figure 12 clearly shows that&#xA;  the growth in farm suicides in  this state started much before Bt&#xA;  cotton and actually slowed down in the years after the introduction of&#xA;  Bt  cotton. Even the relative peaks in suicides observed in 2004 and&#xA;  then in 2006 lie under the projected trend  line from 1997–2002.&#xA;  Overall, at this level of analysis, all other things being equal, it&#xA;  is clear that the  overall adoption of this technology was not a&#xA;  driver of suicide growth; in fact it may even have helped  slow the&#xA;  process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data shows that suicides have been increasing, &lt;strong&gt;and continued to increase (slightly) after the introduction of Bt cotton&lt;/strong&gt;; but, that the rate of increase has slowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vandana Shiva, who is the author of the article cited in the OP, ends the article with a recommendation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The suicide economy is not an inevitability. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.navdanya.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Navdanya&lt;/a&gt; has started a&#xA;  Seeds of Hope campaign to stop farmers suicides. The transition from&#xA;  seeds of suicide to seeds of hope includes :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;· a shift from GMO and non renewable seeds to organic, open pollinated&#xA;  seed varieties which farmers can save and share.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;· a shift from chemical farming to organic farming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;· a shift from unfair trade based on false prices to fair trade based&#xA;  on real and just prices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The farmers who have made this shift are earning 10 times more than&#xA;  the farmers growing Monsanto's Bt-cotton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.navdanya.org/about-us/overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Navdanya : An Overview&lt;/a&gt; it says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Navdanya has trained about 500,000 farmers, conserved 3,000 varieties&#xA;  of rice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Navdanya's seed bank in the farm at Dehradun preserves 500 land races&#xA;  of paddy, 150 land races of wheat, 11 land races of barley, 5&#xA;  varieties of barnyard millet, 10 varieties of oats, 6 varieties of&#xA;  finger millet, 3 varieties of foxtail millet and 7 varieties of&#xA;  mustard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Biodiversity Conservation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Till date Navdanya's conservation farm has protected 12 genera of&#xA;  cereals and millets, 16 genera of legumes and plants, 50 genera of&#xA;  vegetables, 7 genera of oil yielding plants, 13 genera of spices and&#xA;  condiments, 20 genera of aromatic plants, 54 genera of fruit and&#xA;  flower yielding plants and 250 genera of ornamental, timber and&#xA;  medicinal plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.navdanya.org/home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;on its home page&lt;/a&gt; it says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Navdanya has helped set up 111 community seed banks across the&#xA;  country, trained over 5,00,000 farmers in seed sovereignty, food&#xA;  sovereignty and sustainable agriculture over the past two decades, and&#xA;  helped setup the largest direct marketing, fair trade organic network&#xA;  in the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, apparently Navdanya advocates that farmers should grow various foods. If &quot;they should grow food instead of Bt cotton&quot; is true, the main point would be that it should be instead of cotton not instead of GMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand there are arguments for food sovereignty and fair trade, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/17628/2703&quot;&gt;perhaps even for organic agriculture&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, her writing a polemic against (specifically) GMO instead of against (more broadly):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monocultures&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Practices which require (borrowed) money or large capital investments (e.g. for irrigation) as their input&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Crops which have variable/risky rates of return (e.g. water-dependent cotton in areas which rely on rain instead of having artificial irrigation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... may be doing her argument a disservice: because, the mere fact that it's GMO doesn't seem to be the villain in this story. For example the question posed in the OP, and Sancho's answer to it, fixate on the question of &quot;GMO crops&quot;. But the article is actually talking about a different time-line, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;200,000 farmers have ended their lives since &lt;strong&gt;1997&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;1998&lt;/strong&gt;, the World Bank's structural adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill,&#xA;  Monsanto and Syngenta.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1593 farmers committed suicide in Chattisgarh in 2007. Before &lt;strong&gt;2000&lt;/strong&gt; no farmers suicides are reported in the state.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bt cotton wasn't started to be introduced until 2002.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of what she said is supported by the article, for example my highlights in the following fragment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Monocultures and uniformity increase the risk of crop failure, as&#xA;  diverse seeds adapted to diverse to eco-systems are replaced by the&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;rushed introduction&lt;/strong&gt; of uniform and often untested seeds into the&#xA;  market. When Monsanto &lt;strong&gt;first introduced Bt Cotton in 2002&lt;/strong&gt;, the farmers&#xA;  lost 1 billion rupees due to crop failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, those are temporary problems. At best, the truth of what she's saying against GMO &lt;strong&gt;in general&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e., not temporary problems) may lie in some of her other allegations (which I haven't disproven): for example that GMO cotton can only be grown as a monoculture and precludes diversity -- not simply &quot;diversity of cotton varieties&quot; (there are many varieties of cotton with the Bt trait), but &quot;diversity of crops&quot; including non-cotton food-stuffs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cited claim, though, may be true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High costs and unreliable output make for a debt trap, and a suicide economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although Bt cotton improves the average profit of cotton farming, it may not be suitable for farmers who must borrow money to afford it, and who can't afford/survive occasional years of losses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of her other allegations may also be true: for example, complaining about cotton subsidies in the USA ... but again, that's not specifically to do with GMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T12:36:20.430" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16846" CreationDate="2013-09-27T01:07:39.980" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Through a combination of coercion and persuasion, the Nazis managed to pass the so-called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Enabling Act&lt;/a&gt; with the necessary two-thirds &quot;supermajority&quot; in the Reichstag. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key features of the Act were that with very few exceptions, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;...laws of the Reich may also be enacted by the government of the Reich...&#xA;Laws enacted by the Reich government shall be issued by the Chancellor [Hitler] and announced in the Reich Gazette. They shall take effect on the day following the announcement, unless they prescribe a different date.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hitler had basically given himself the power to write Germany's laws, effective one day after publication. Therefore, everything he did while Chancellor after the passage of the law (March 23, 1933) was legal, or could be made legal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T01:07:39.980" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17903" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-27T10:01:11.437" Score="3" ViewCount="3807" Body="&lt;p&gt;ADG (UK) - Alien Disclosure Group - published a story in September 2013:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The timing of astral disembodiment in which the spirit leaves the body has been captured by Russian scientist Konstantin Korotkov, who photographed a person at the moment of his death with a bioelectrographic camera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/g94sp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image taken using the gas discharge visualization method, an advanced technique of Kirlian photography shows in blue the life force of the person leaving the body gradually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this for real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15664" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T10:24:47.630" Title="Did Konstantin Korotkov take a photograph of the life force leaving a dead body?" Tags="|mortality|spirituality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17903" CreationDate="2013-09-27T10:24:47.630" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are actually two claims here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did Konstantin Korotkov take such a photograph?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this the photograph?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I propose to let someone else address the debunking of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirlian_photography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kirlian photography&lt;/a&gt; as a method of capturing images of souls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will address the second part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This image was NOT taken by Korotkov.&lt;/strong&gt; This is a stock image that has been (accidentally?) &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi: &amp;amp;biw=1536&amp;amp;bih=860&amp;amp;site=imghp&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=aFhFUr2DK8mAlQWTx4CIBg&amp;amp;ved=0CE8Q9Q8oAA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;attached to the story&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original was produced by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/287461/enlarge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oscar Buriel&lt;/a&gt; as part of a larger series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qPHmy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hat tip to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-soul-leaving-body-photo-russian-scientist-konstantin-korotkov.2447/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mick West from MetaBunk&lt;/a&gt; for finding this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same site shows &lt;em&gt;another&lt;/em&gt; false image that has attached to this story, this time thermal images showing the effect of a sauna on the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T10:24:47.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17881" CreationDate="2013-09-27T11:48:42.117" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;1. Using the new seeds has increased production cost, thus increasing debt&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seems to be true. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifpri.cgiar.org/sites/default/files/publications/ifpridp00808.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bt Cotton and Farmer Suicides in India&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Table 9 and Figure 10 show the average effects  of Bt cotton, weighted&#xA;  and unweighted, based on the number of plots for these two groups of&#xA;  studies. We  find that the differences across average estimates do not&#xA;  differ that much. According to these empirical  studies, on average,&#xA;  Bt cotton reduces the number of pesticide sprays by 32–40 percent,&#xA;  reduces pesticide  costs by 30–52 percent, &lt;strong&gt;increases the total costs&#xA;  of production by about 15 percent&lt;/strong&gt;, has no clear effect on  seedcotton&#xA;  prices, increases yields by 34–42 percent, and raises net returns by&#xA;  52–71 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that &quot;seedcotton&quot; is the yet-to-be-processed crop of the cotton harvest, not &quot;cotton seed&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_cotton_seed_and_seed_cotton&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the statistics show a net benefit, on average. However (I speculate) the increased cost may increase the risk, for small farmers who can't afford occasional failures. It also provides fuel for the argument that the seeds themselves are expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T11:48:42.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17907" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8739" CreationDate="2013-09-27T13:09:38.537" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way the term placebo is used in medicial studies it's a catch-all term for different effects. &#xA;Let's look at an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A patient asks for a painkiller and a nurse gives a patient a painkiller as a pill. What effects are there? Without claiming to have a complete list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The chemical in the painkiller binds to the targets that the pharmacompany who designed the painkiller identified as good targets for reducing pain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The chemical in the painkiller binds to an offtarget or otherwise does something that the company that produced the drug doesn't expect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The patient has mindfulness about what he feels when he contemplates the decision whether or not to ask for a painkiller.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The patient made a conscious decision to do something that reduces his pain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The patient gets caring attention from the nurse.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The patient drinks a glas of water to take the pill.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The patient has an expectation that asking the nurse for help will help his problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The patient has an expectation that a pailkiller pill will reduce his pain because he believes in pills.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The nurse suggests to the patient that he will feel less pain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The patient pays more attention to the feeling because he wants to know whether the pill works.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the person is asked, whether he has less pain, he wants to report that the efforts the nurse made has been effective or that the nurse should do something else.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the person is asked, whether he has less pain, he thinks he's expected to report less pain because he got a pill.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effects from 3-12 are all something that would appear as placebo in a study. Whether or not the water has an effect depend much on beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://quantifiedself.com/2011/08/nancy-dougherty-on-mindfulness-pills/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nancy Dougherty&lt;/a&gt; found in a self experiment that #3/4 had a high influence when she too placebos to improve her emotional state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as 9 goes you have studies within the domain of hypnosis that investigate similar effects. Different people seem to have a different level of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suggestibility&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;suggestibility&lt;/a&gt; and the effects are not the same for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-06-20T13:55:45.293" LastActivityDate="2016-06-20T13:55:45.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17908" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17909" CreationDate="2013-09-27T17:48:16.160" Score="11" ViewCount="3513" Body="&lt;p&gt;This Vimeo video &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/74080203&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;&#xA;DOD VIRUS 'FUNVAX' Vaccine for RELIGIOUS Peoples!!!!!!!&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; purports to show a government presentation about the deliberate introduction of a virus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaked April 13, 2005 video shows how the Pentagon intends to destroy people’s brains by putting a virus in vaccines used by most of the population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The virus will act to eliminate the sense of ‘fundamentalism’ from people in war zones such as Afghanistan. The elimination of the so-called God Gene would be achieved by putting the virus in a vaccine that is widely provided to a population, which would ensure a larger reach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As if disease alone wasn’t a problem, there are powerful people searching for ways to change the way people think and act. A video apparently originated in the Department of Defense (DoD), which is identified with the number 149AZ2 and recorded in room BC282 of the Pentagon shows a speaker relating to a rather small audience the breakthrough in the making of a brain eating virus which will make people permanently passive, by attacking the V-Mat 2 gene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this video staged?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13330" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T00:47:48.507" Title="Is the US government preparing to remove religiosity in the population with a virus, using vaccines as a vector?" Tags="|united-states|government|virus|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17908" CreationDate="2013-09-27T18:15:40.723" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was debunked by Mick West at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-funvax-pentagon-briefing-on-removing-the-god-gene.317/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Debunked: FunVax, Pentagon Briefing on Removing the God Gene&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image in the video at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRg41D8SOq0&amp;amp;t=121&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2:01&lt;/a&gt; (left, labelled &quot;A&quot;) uses the same brain MRI as an image in a December 2010 article in &lt;em&gt;Neurology&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurology.org/content/75/18_Supplement_1/S67.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;A case of confusion and bilateral temporal lesions in a young woman&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (right, labelled &quot;B&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QihGk.png&quot; width=&quot;300&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y5slh.png&quot; width=&quot;310&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video claims to be from April 13, 2005. But, the image did not exist until 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2013-09-27T23:35:54.020" LastActivityDate="2013-09-27T23:35:54.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17910" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-28T02:24:50.677" Score="7" ViewCount="423" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mi6-and-mi5-refuse-to-use-lenovo-computers-over-claims-chinese-company-makes-them-vulnerable-to-hacking-8737072.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, which claims that MI5 found backdoors in Lenovo built PCs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Machines produced by the state-backed technology company, which is the largest PC producer&#xA;in the world, are claimed to have been found in tests by MI5 and GCHQ to have modifications&#xA;in their circuitry which could allow remote access to the devices without the owners’&#xA;knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists are claimed to have identified highly-classified “back doors” in chips used in&#xA;Lenovo machines which are extremely difficult to identify and could be activated remotely to&#xA;either stop targeted computers working or access their contents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15122" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T04:04:52.077" Title="Are there back doors in Lenovo-built PCs?" Tags="|hacking|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17913" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-28T18:55:07.917" Score="21" ViewCount="25663" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the events of 9-11 it has been claimed several times that no other skyscraper in history has ever collapsed from fire damage. It's usually used as a part of the argument that fire alone cannot bring down a steel-frames building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/fires.html&quot;&gt;The 911 research website&lt;/a&gt;  claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Excepting the three 9-11 collapses, no fire, however severe, has ever caused a steel-framed high-rise building to collapse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ae911truth.org/news/41-articles/363-burning-question-should-the-history-of-high-rise-fires-be-ignored.html&quot;&gt;ae911truth.org&lt;/a&gt; has a list of other building that did not collapse and uses it as evidence to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ae911truth.org/en/news-section/41-articles/688-dubai-skyscraper-engulfed-in-flames-does-not-collapse.html&quot;&gt;claim that&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the Twin Towers and WTC Building 7, the only steel framed skyscrapers in history, whose… complete collapses have been officially blamed on fire&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and to further claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;overwhelming scientific, forensic, and eyewitness evidence that proves the WTC skyscrapers were not destroyed by fire&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I ask:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than the World Trade Center buildings, has fire alone ever caused a steel skyscraper to collapse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15661" LastEditorUserId="56774" LastEditDate="2021-10-04T00:52:39.087" LastActivityDate="2021-10-04T00:52:39.087" Title="Are the 3 World Trade Center towers the only steel-framed high-rises to collapse due to fire?" Tags="|9-11|fire|architecture|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="17914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17915" CreationDate="2013-09-28T21:59:37.403" Score="9" ViewCount="526" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/07/strange-case-volcanic-eruption-set-clocks-15-minutes-fast/39775/&quot;&gt;The Atlantic Wire: The Case of the Volcano That Set Time 15 Minutes Fast&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It came to light that for thousands of people, digital clocks and watchers, from computers to alarm clocks, were all running 15 minutes fast. RIA Novosti also reported that in Palermo digital clocks and watches in Sicily were running more than 15 minutes fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2013145/Mount-Etna-eruption-closes-airports-knocks-clocks-15-minutes-fast.html&quot;&gt;The Daily Mail: Mount Etna eruption closes airports and 'knocks clocks 15 minutes fast'&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bemused Sicilians, meanwhile, were quick to blame the volcano after thousands noticed that their clocks were running 15 minutes fast. The fast forward time keeping has affected a wide spectrum of digital clocks and watches - from computers through to alarm clocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did a Mt. Etna eruption cause clocks, watches, and computers to run fast?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T22:38:11.860" Title="Did Mt. Etna cause Sicilian clocks to run fast?" Tags="|electromagnetism|power-generation|time|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17914" CreationDate="2013-09-28T21:59:37.403" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was covered by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/317&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, episode 317&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_clock#Accuracy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Electric, digital clocks&lt;/a&gt; keep time by using the frequency of the power lines to keep time (60 Hz in the US, and 50 Hz in Europe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you change the frequency of the AC current, you will change the pace of the clock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The frequency of the AC current coming out of power plants &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; regularly fluctuate, but that fluctuation is regulated such that the correct number of cycles happens in each day. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_frequency#Stability&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia:Utility frequency stability&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In North America, adjustment occurs whenever the error exceeds 10 seconds (in the East), 3 seconds (in Texas), or 2 seconds (in the West). (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naesb.org/pdf2/weq_bklet_011505_tec_mc.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manual Time Error Correction&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continental_Europe&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;synchronous grid of continental Europe&lt;/a&gt; is re-calibrated every morning at 8:00am. You can see the real-time frequency at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mainsfrequency.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.mainsfrequency.com/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Italy is part of this synchronous grid, but Sicily being an island, this connection is via a single underwater cable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the time of this Volcanic eruption, for about 20 days in May, this cable was disconnected for routine maintenance. Sicily relied largely on its local hydro power. The more unstable hydro power production combined with the smaller Sicily-only grid resulted in the clock error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://palermo.repubblica.it/cronaca/2011/06/08/news/catania_orologi_digitali_impazziti_scatta_la_caccia_al_poltergeist-17409229/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leggo.it/index.php?p=articolo&amp;amp;id=126314&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; (both in Italian) tell the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The power supplied to users has fluctuated between 50 and 50.13 Hz, creating small accelerations in timer appliances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It will happen again at the next detachment from the continental network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only common alarm clocks, but also microwave ovens and appliances with timers are victims of hectic times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Daily Mail claimed that watches were also affected, but that is impossible. Skeptics Guide speculates that either it was mass delusion or poor reporting or mistranslation on the part of the Daily Mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-28T22:38:11.860" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5907" CreationDate="2013-09-29T01:17:30.877" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is authentic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thehill.com/video/campaign/189945-perry-has-no-doubt-obamas-an-american-citizen-wants-transcripts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Perry acknowledged that his transcript has been published&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let's lay out our income taxes. Let's lay our college transcripts. &lt;em&gt;Mine's been on the front page of the paper&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T01:17:30.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16087" CreationDate="2013-09-29T03:34:33.710" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's possible that Japan is exporting food to the US that is above the Japanese maximum allowable limits and below the FDA limits, but the FDA has only found one sample of imported food from Japan that had detectable levels of gamma-ray emitting radionuclides and it was still below the FDA derived intervention level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of April 1, 2012, Japan's maximum allowed amounts for radioactive cesium in foods are (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/new-safety-standards-for-radioactive-cesium-in-food-products-go-into-effect&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;New safety standards for radioactive cesium in food products go into effect&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100 becquerels of radiation per kilogram of general foodstuffs such as fruit, vegetables, rice, seafood, or meat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;50 becquerels per kilogram of milk, baby food, or infant formula&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10 becquerels per kilogram of drinking water or tea leaves&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows 1200 becquerels per kilogram in imported food. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fukushima-fish-remain-radioactive-suggesting-ongoing-radionuclide-release&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Scientific American — Radioactive Fish Near Fukushima Suggest Ongoing Contamination&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/ComplianceManuals/CompliancePolicyGuidanceManual/ucm074576&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;FDA — 560.750 Radionuclides in Imported Foods - Levels of Concern&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding this difference, the NRC says (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fukushima-fish-remain-radioactive-suggesting-ongoing-radionuclide-release&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Scientific American&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more restrictive action taken by the Japanese seems reasonable for the population living close to Fukushima because they receive radiation doses from other sources, including non-fish food, drinking water and land surface contamination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FDA has addressed the issue of importing food from Japan in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/newsevents/publichealthfocus/ucm247403.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;FDA Response to the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Facility Incident&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To date, FDA has no evidence that radionuclides from the Fukushima incident are present in the U.S. food supply at levels that would pose a public health concern. This is true for both FDA-regulated food products imported from Japan and U.S. domestic food products, including seafood caught off the coast of the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of June 20th, 2012, FDA import investigators had performed 32,685 field examinations for radionuclide contamination. FDA had tested 1313 samples, 199 which were seafood or seafood products. 1312 samples had no Iodine-131, Cesium-134, Cesium-137, or other gamma-ray emitting radionuclides of concern. 1 sample was found to contain detectable levels of Cesium, but was below the established Derived Intervention Level (DIL) and posed no public health concern. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/downloads/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/UCM290179.xls&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Test results&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-29T03:34:33.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17921" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18027" CreationDate="2013-09-29T10:40:09.003" Score="5" ViewCount="806" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim is made by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jasnh.com/a8.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Smuts and Gubernick&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An additional mechanism shaping female preference for stronger mates&#xA;  could have been the increased survival benefits conveyed to offspring.&#xA;  Smuts and Gubernick (1992) point out that in many non-human primate&#xA;  species, infants benefit from paternal involvement in that they are&#xA;  less at risk of injury by predators and conspecific males with&#xA;  tendencies for infanticide. These authors extend this logic to humans&#xA;  such that male investment in offspring is purported to have evolved&#xA;  through sexual selection based on females' preference for indicators&#xA;  of men's abilities and willingness to protect offspring.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Preferences for protection benefited ancestral women by increasing the&#xA;  survival chances of their offspring. Attributes associated with&#xA;  offering greater protection benefited ancestral men by giving them&#xA;  more sexual access to women. In support of the idea that women prefer&#xA;  mate characteristics related to protection, Buss found that women,&#xA;  more than men, valued height and physical strength in a potential&#xA;  mate.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-10-10T09:04:56.777" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T20:29:38.217" Title="Did/do women select for protectiveness in their mates?" Tags="|gender|evolution|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17922" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-29T10:48:40.813" Score="20" ViewCount="890" Body="&lt;p&gt;Was almost everything (excluding &quot;seated meditation posture&quot;) in western yoga invented in twentieth century? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia, for example, states that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga&quot;&gt;yoga&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;originated in ancient India&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And does not carry out the difference between the western and ancient Indian versions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand Curtis states &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/bodybuilding_and_nation-buildi&quot;&gt;that&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was something very new - that had very little to do with traditional Yoga as it had been practiced for centuries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;modern Yoga was constructed out of Western ideas of gymnastics and a modern Indian political nationalism&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-09-29T13:21:38.217" LastActivityDate="2016-12-07T19:17:34.043" Title="Was most of western yoga invented in twentieth century?" Tags="|india|yoga|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17923" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17924" CreationDate="2013-09-29T17:34:53.393" Score="4" ViewCount="8914" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasaed161979.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bookbrowse.com/quotes/detail/index.cfm?quote_number=207&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;different&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/39629.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sites&lt;/a&gt; attribute the sentence &quot;If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves&quot; to Thomas Edison. However, it seems to me that the word &quot;literally&quot; is used in this sentence merely for emphasis, as opposed to meaning &quot;in a literal manner or sense; exactly&quot;. According to the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/literally?q=literally&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OED&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, such informal usage has become common in &lt;em&gt;recent&lt;/em&gt; years, but Thomas Edison &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;died in 1931&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did he say that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15678" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2018-04-22T07:26:23.310" LastActivityDate="2018-04-22T07:26:23.310" Title="Did Thomas Edison say &quot;If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|thomas-edison|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17923" CreationDate="2013-09-29T17:58:31.887" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Attribution&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Biech 2009, at p. 152) attributes this quote to Thomas Jefferson. This is the only source I found attributing the quote to somebody other than Edison, so I assume it is in error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The National Parks Service attributes the quote to Thomas Edison on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nps.gov/edis/forteachers/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;page for the Thomas Edison National Historical Park&lt;/a&gt;. While this is still not a contemporaneous attribution with details of time, addressee, etc., I treat the Thomas Edison National Historical Park as more reliable than the citations in the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Using &lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt; to mean &lt;em&gt;virtually&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of &lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt; in a colloquial sense to mean &lt;em&gt;virtually&lt;/em&gt; has been occuring for centuries, as per the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/109061?redirectedFrom=literally#eid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OED (see usage c. colloq.)&lt;/a&gt; from as far back as 1769, and notably in 1876 by Mark Twain. Thus, if Thomas Edison used the word &quot;&lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt;&quot; in this sense, that would not be inconsistent with the history of the word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Biech, Elaine. Ten Steps to Successful Training. ASTD, 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;National Parks Service. Thomas Edison National Historical Park. url:&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nps.gov/edis/forteachers/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nps.gov/edis/forteachers/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-10-04T00:35:35.087" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T00:35:35.087" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17927" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17942" CreationDate="2013-09-30T03:45:46.007" Score="18" ViewCount="23596" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been presented with the following conundrum. Either you sleep on your back and snore, or sleep on your right side and get acid reflux, or sleep on your left side and put a heavier load on your heart, thus weakening it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I d not have or seek scientific evidence for the first two claims. I have (weak) empirical evidence to accept them as plausible (I &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt; snore more on my back for instance). What I am asking here is about the third claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does sleeping on your left side put such an extra burden of weight on your heart that it might be unhealthy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15178" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T09:37:53.287" Title="Is sleeping on your left side bad for your heart?" Tags="|medical-science|sleep|cardiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17930" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17931" CreationDate="2013-09-30T05:24:50.217" Score="18" ViewCount="24595" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://usahitman.com/microwave-test/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this story&lt;/a&gt; a couple of times in my facebook newsfeed and it strikes me as highly unlikely. The story goes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Below is a Science fair project presented by a girl in a secondary&#xA;  school in Sussex. In it she took filtered water and divided it into&#xA;  two parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first part she heated to boiling in a pan on the stove, and the&#xA;  second part she heated to boiling in a microwave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then after cooling she used the water to water two identical plants to&#xA;  see if there would be any difference in the growth between the normal&#xA;  boiled water and the water boiled in a microwave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She was thinking that the structure or energy of the water may be&#xA;  compromised by microwave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As it turned out, even she was amazed at the difference, after the&#xA;  experiment which was repeated by her class mates a number of times and&#xA;  had the same result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8pZT4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So does microwaved water kill plants?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any structural difference between water boiled on a stove top and water boiled in a microwave?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Bonus points for confirming/debunking any other statements in the original article. Please cite sources of evidence.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="711" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T05:24:33.370" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T19:24:11.720" Title="Does microwaved water kill plants?" Tags="|microwaves|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17930" CreationDate="2013-09-30T05:52:06.840" Score="31" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Microwave radiation and water&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;She was thinking that the structure or energy of the water may be compromised by microwave.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was debunked by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/science/microwave/plants.asp&quot;&gt;snopes.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no difference in the water heated by microwaves compared to water heated by another source (like a gas flame, or electric element).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microwaves are non-ionizing radiation, so do not alter the substance other than exciting it to higher temperatures. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonionizing&quot;&gt;Wikipedia:Non-ionizing radiation&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-help/about-cancer/cancer-questions/radiation-microwaves-and-cancer&quot;&gt;cancerresearchuk.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nonionising radiation has enough energy to move things around inside a cell but not enough to change cells chemically. The radiation from a microwave oven is nonionising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arpansa.gov.au/radiationprotection/basics/ion_nonion.cfm&quot;&gt;Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nonionising radiation is found at the long wavelength end of the spectrum and may have enough energy to excite molecules and atoms causing then to vibrate faster. This is very obvious in a microwave oven where the radiation causes water molecules to vibrate faster creating heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Skeptical analysis of the experiment&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was not a useful experiment. Using a sample size of 1 for each population is akin to the fallacy of using anecdotal evidence. This is just one instance in which one plant died and another lived. The dead plant could have had poor genes, an infestation, poor soil quality, among other things. The container they were using for the microwave water could have been contaminated with something, or used for other purposes in between waterings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The description of the experimental method, especially the measures they took to avoid causing a difference between the two populations is extremely lacking. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The experiment which was repeated by her classmates a number of times and had the same result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many times? Two? Three? 300? Without more detail, this is just hearsay. And again, the story fails to describe the measures taken to prevent other causes of differences between the two populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-09-30T06:08:03.907" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T06:08:03.907" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17932" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-09-30T05:53:50.833" Score="19" ViewCount="1850" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was talking to a contractor at a major U.S. airport, a Project Manager who told that they were moving the runways due to the shifting of 'Magnetic North'.  I have heard that the poles have shifted even after the Chilean quake that registered at &gt;8.0.  I have no knowledge of planes, flight or the reason for needing to shift runways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much have the poles shifted and can anyone knowledgeable in aeronautics either confirm or deny a need to do this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14906" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2013-09-30T14:38:41.473" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T16:23:43.873" Title="How much has Magnetic North shifted in the last few years and would this affect aeronautics?" Tags="|aviation|geology|earth|magnets|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17932" CreationDate="2013-09-30T06:35:04.033" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story is slightly less dramatic than it sounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The runways themselves are not being &amp;quot;shifted&amp;quot; (i.e. construction crews getting out and laying tarmac), but just renamed and signposted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/9231-earths-magnetic-field-shifts-forcing-airport-runway-change.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Livescience report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Runways are designated according to the points on a compass, and the drifting magnetic north means that they, periodically, need to be renamed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Recently, the drift has caused our runways' orientations to be closer to the next increment on the magnetic compass,&amp;quot; Tampa International Airport spokeswoman Brenda Geoghagan told LiveScience in an e-mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the west parallel runway, which was named 36Left —18Right to designate compass points of 360 degrees and 180 degrees, is being renamed to 1Left — 19Right, to indicate 10 degrees and 190 degrees, since the runway designations are separated into 10-degree increments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adjustments to runways like this and to navigational aids are ongoing, according to Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration's Southern Region. A third airport is scheduled to rename its runways in October; however, the changes aren't necessary for all airports in the Tampa Bay area, she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/essex/8136307.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;similar change was required&lt;/a&gt; in Stansted Airport in England in 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T06:35:04.033" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17932" CreationDate="2013-09-30T06:43:38.687" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;At all major U.S. airports, the runways are labelled based on magnetic north, not true north. Only in the Northern Domestic Airspace of Canada are runways numbered based on True North (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tc.gc.ca/media/documents/ca-publications/RAC-AIM-2013-1_ENG-5.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Transport Canada Aeronautical Information Manual&lt;/a&gt;, at p. 189).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Transport Canada says the reason that they use True North in Northern Domestic Airspace is because &quot;&lt;em&gt;the Magnetic North Pole is located near the centre of the Northern Domestic Airspace, therefore magnetic compass indications may be erratic&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tc.gc.ca/media/documents/ca-publications/RAC-AIM-2013-1_ENG-5.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Transport Canada AIM&lt;/a&gt;, at p. 189)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, most runways are numbered based on their magnetic heading (rounded to the nearest 10), and magnetic north &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; shift.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mnhs4.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When magnetic north shifts far enough, runways need to be renumbered. For example (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yyc.com/News/tabid/91/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/129/language/en-US/Runways-at-YYC-and-YBW-will-be-renumbered-in-2013.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.yyc.com/News/tabid/91/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/129/language/en-US/Runways-at-YYC-and-YBW-will-be-renumbered-in-2013.aspx&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For instance, Runway 34 at YYC is numbered 34 because it lines up with 340 degrees magnetic and because the magnetic north pole is slowly moving (this movement is part of the earth's natural process), every 60 or 70 years runways have to be given new designations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True north also moves (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_motion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_motion&lt;/a&gt;). It has shifted about 20m since 1900. This is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; enough to trigger airport runway renumbering, even in Canada's Northern Domestic Airspace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-09-30T19:41:37.243" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T19:41:37.243" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17859" CreationDate="2013-09-30T11:12:06.140" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question cannot be answered with a simple 'yes' or 'no', be it about Polish or any other language, as &quot;language difficulty&quot; is not readily definable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, there is an effort among linguists to use &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markedness&quot;&gt;language markedness&lt;/a&gt;&quot; to predict language difficulty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jakobson (1941, 1963), however, observed that the marked members of&#xA;  oppositions were acquired later by children and were found in fewer&#xA;  languages, suggesting that they are not only more complex in their&#xA;  abstract structure, but also more difficult for language users. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/staff/haspelmath/pdf/Againstmarkedness.pdf&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's not usually a problem during first language acquisition (L1 acquisition):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although there is great variation between individual children and the rate of their language acquisition, there is little variation in the pattern of development between languages. One language is not more difficult than another, as we can establish by observing the ease with which children acquire different languages by the same age. Virtually every child develops linguistic and communicative competence, and it is learned naturally and in context, not arranged in an easy-to-difficult sequence. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ecap.crc.illinois.edu/pubs/katzsym/clark-b.pdf&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for second lanquage acquisition (L2 acquisition), &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_distance&quot;&gt;linguistic distance&lt;/a&gt; often plays a more important role than language markedness in whether a language will be perceived as difficult. Speakers of other Slavic languages will find a lot of similarities in Polish so they might not view Polish as particularly difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=x0PQZ8CJ0XYC&amp;amp;pg=PA271&amp;amp;lpg=PA271&amp;amp;dq=markedness%20language%20difficulty&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=mcxg6NsWwM&amp;amp;sig=7t246JFRvKi5hO24edb4UdUwt28&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=hctCUr7XKIXP0AWw8IHIDw&amp;amp;ved=0CE4Q6AEwBTgK&quot;&gt;Markedness Differential Hypothesis&lt;/a&gt; (Eckman 1977)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a) Those areas of the target language which differ from the native&#xA;  language and are more marked than the native language will be&#xA;  difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;b) The relative degree of difficulty of the areas of the target&#xA;  language which are more marked than the native language will&#xA;  correspond to the relative degree of markedness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;c) Those areas of the target language which are different from the&#xA;  native language but are not more marked than the native language will&#xA;  not be difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as English speakers go, there has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftp.iza.org/dp1246.pdf&quot;&gt;some research&lt;/a&gt; that focused on measuring the &quot;distance&quot; between English and other languages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The paper by Hart-Gonzalez and Lindemann (1993) reports language&#xA;  scores for 43 languages for English-speaking Americans of average&#xA;  ability after set periods (16 weeks and 24 weeks) of foreign language&#xA;  training. &amp;lt;...&gt; The range is from a low score (harder to learn) of&#xA;  1.00 for Japanese to a high score (easier to learn) of 3.00 for Afrikaans, Norwegian and Swedish. The score for French is 2.50 and for&#xA;  Mandarin 1.50. These scores suggest a ranking of linguistic distance&#xA;  from English among these languages: Japanese being the most distant,&#xA;  followed by Mandarin, then French and then Afrikaans, Norwegian and&#xA;  Swedish as the least distant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this report, the score for Polish is 2.00. (Compare with some other Slavic languages: Russian - 2.25, Serbo-Croatian - 2.00, Czech - 2.00, Bulgarian - 2.00.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, there might be other factors that can make a certain language &quot;harder to learn&quot; for L2 learners. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation_in_second-language_learning&quot;&gt;motivation&lt;/a&gt; or attitutde.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A second affective factor, which is formed by the cognitive&#xA;  development of a person, that can make second language acquisition&#xA;  difficult for an adult is attitude. Young children are not cognitively&#xA;  enough developed to possess attitudes towards races, cultures, ethnic&#xA;  groups, and languages. As the child reaches school age, attitudes are&#xA;  acquired. It is agreed that negative attitudes towards the target&#xA;  language, target language speakers, the target language culture, and&#xA;  the social value of learning a second language can impede language&#xA;  learning while positive attitudes can enhance learning (Ellis, 1994;&#xA;  Brown, 1994). &lt;a href=&quot;http://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/elt/article/download/2384/2247%E2%80%8E&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14765" LastEditorUserId="14765" LastEditDate="2013-09-30T11:58:03.500" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T11:58:03.500" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17932" CreationDate="2013-09-30T14:01:00.020" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've long thought this graphic gives a good idea of the issue&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Earth_Magnetic_Field_Declination_from_1590_to_1990.gif&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem at an airport is variation in local magnetic declination, not the variation in location of the magnetic north pole. Due to local magnetic anomalies, magnetic compasses rarely point at any magnetic north pole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have noted, Runway naming is mostly based on &lt;strong&gt;local&lt;/strong&gt; magnetic north (not on the direction of any north pole).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Runways are named by a number between 01 and 36, which is generally one tenth of the &lt;strong&gt;magnetic&lt;/strong&gt; azimuth of the runway's heading in degrees: a runway numbered 09 points east (90°), runway 18 is south (180°), runway 27 points west (270°) and runway 36 points to the north (360° rather than 0°).[1] When taking off from or landing on runway 09, a plane would be heading 90° (east). However, runways in North America that lie within the Northern Domestic Airspace of Canada are numbered relative to true north because proximity to the magnetic North Pole makes the &lt;strong&gt;magnetic declination&lt;/strong&gt; large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My emphasis. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/civilaviation/publications/tp14371-rac-2-0-2599.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt; (via Wikipedia)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A sidenote on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_declination&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;declination&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Magnetic declination is the angle between [magnetic] compass north (the direction the north end of a [magnetic] compass needle points) and true north (the direction along the earth's surface towards the geographic North Pole[1]). The declination is positive when the magnetic north is east of true north. The term magnetic variation is a synonym, and is more often used in navigation. Isogonic lines are where the declination has the same value, and the lines where the declination is zero are called agonic lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note this definition deliberately does not mention the magnetic north pole - it's location and wanderings are irrelevant. It's the direction a nearby magnetised needle points that is important (and it mostly doesn't point towards any magnetic north pole - of which the earth sometimes has several).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:39.077" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T16:23:43.873" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17927" CreationDate="2013-09-30T18:45:38.663" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maybe&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735109702027171&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;, patients with congestive heart failure tend to unconsciously avoid sleeping on their left side, whereas healthy patients don't display this avoidance.  The reason for this avoidance is unknown, though the paper offers several lines of speculation, ranging from discomfort to various forms of cardiac impairment.  As far as I can find, no one has yet followed up on these and even if the reason is the impairment, whether this extends to healthy people is an open question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though not directly related to the heart, sleep apnea is frequently (about half of cases) position dependant (i.e. Apneas only occur when in a certain sleep position).  In persons with sleep apnea dependant on the left side, sleeping on the left side would have definite deleterious effects, including cardiac ones.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00405-006-0090-2&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; investigated the frequency of associated positions with sleep apnea, though the actual numbers are behind the paywall and out of my sight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastEditorUserId="13967" LastEditDate="2013-09-30T19:11:26.603" LastActivityDate="2013-09-30T19:11:26.603" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10417" CreationDate="2013-10-01T07:45:43.143" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;More deaths have been attributed to war than have been caused by flea-carried plague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Deaths caused by the plague&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bubonic plague has been confirmed to be the cause of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_of_Justinian&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Plague of Justinian&lt;/a&gt; in AD 511-512 in the Eastern Roman Empire. (Wade, 2010) A high estimate is that this outbreak of the plague killed 25 million people. (Rosen, 2007)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the Black Death, the plague is estimated to have killed 75 million (Dunham, 2008) to 200 million people (BBC News, 2001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It killed 12.5 million during the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_plague_pandemic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Third Plague&lt;/a&gt; at the beginning of the 20th century. (Orent, 2004)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That gives a high-end estimate of 237.5 million deaths caused by the flea-caused Bubonic plague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Deaths caused by wars&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia gives a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list of wars by death toll&lt;/a&gt;. &quot;These numbers usually include both the deaths of military personnel which are the direct results of battle or other military wartime actions, as well as the wartime/war-related deaths of civilians, which are the results of war induced epidemics, diseases, famines, atrocities, genocide etc.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;60,669,200-84,589,300 – World War II (1939–1945)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;30,000,000–60,000,000 – Mongol conquests (1206-1324)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;27,000,000 – Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;25,000,000 – Qing dynasty conquest of Ming Dynasty (1616–1662)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;20,000,000 – Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;16,563,868-30.000.000 – World War I/Great War (1914–1918)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;16,000,000 – White Lotus Rebellion (1794-1804)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;13,000,000 - An Lushan Rebellion (755–763)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10,000,000 – Era of Warring States (475 BCE–221 BCE)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10,000,000 - Red Eyebrows Rebellion (9-24)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;8,000,000–12,000,000 – Dungan revolt (1862 –1877)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;7,500,000 – Chinese Civil War (1927–1949)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are only the top 12 of the estimated 3,023 wars (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vency.com/wars.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.vency.com/wars.html&lt;/a&gt;) in recorded human history and the low-end estimate for the death toll across these wars is already 245 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BBC News. &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1576875.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Decoding the Black-Death&lt;/a&gt;. October 3, 2001.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dunham, William. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/01/29/2149185.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Black death 'discriminated' between victims&lt;/a&gt;. ABC Science. January 29, 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Orent, Wendy. Plague: The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World's Most Dangerous Disease. Simon and Schuster, 2004.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rosen, William. Justinian's Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire. Penguin, 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wade, Nicholas. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/01/health/01plague.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Europe’s Plagues Came From China, Study Finds&lt;/a&gt;. New York Times. October 31, 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T07:45:43.143" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17892" CreationDate="2013-10-01T08:17:52.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a good article about lethal risks, including radiation exposure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/risk.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OSU: Radiation and Risk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;List of equal risks, .0001% chance of dying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smoking 1.4 cigarettes (lung cancer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eating 40 tablespoons of peanut butter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spending 2 days in New York City (air pollution)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Driving 40 miles in a car (accident)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Flying 2500 miles in a jet (accident)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Canoeing for 6 minutes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Receiving 10 mR of radiation (cancer)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;0.1mR = 1uSv, so twenty dental x-rays could go in the above list.   Or, one dental x-ray is about as hazardous as 2mi of driving (car crash,) or eating a peanut-butter sandwich (colon cancer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breathing air in NYC for a day is 10X more dangerous than a dental x-ray?!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13350" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T08:17:52.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17913" CreationDate="2013-10-01T13:50:21.333" Score="37" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Other examples?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a list of buildings which have collapsed due to fire here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haifire.com/resources/presentations/Historical_Collapse_Survey.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Historical Survey of Multi-Story Building Collapses Due to Fire&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Scanning this document, to include only building which are made of steel (and not e.g. reinforced concrete), shows only two:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alexis Nihon Plaza Montreal, Canada&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steel frame with composite steel beam and &#xA;deck floors; fire resistive without sprinklers &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;15 floors, Office&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Oct. 26, 1986, after 5 hour fire, which then &#xA;continued for 13 hours &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Partial 11th floor collapse &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One New York Plaza New York, NY, &#xA;USA&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steel framing with reinforced concrete core,&#xA;fire resistive with no sprinklers. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;50 floors, Office&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;August 5, 1970 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Connection bolts sheared during &#xA;fire, causing several steel filler &#xA;beams on the 33-34th&#xA;floors to fall &#xA;and rest on the bottom flanges of &#xA;their supporting girders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Can fire destroy steel?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Photographs of structural steel deformed by fire are shown on page 3 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mace.manchester.ac.uk/project/research/structures/strucfire/DataBase/References/Reinstatement_Fire_Damaged_Steel.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Reinstatement of Fire Damaged Steel and Iron Framed Structures&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.steelconstruction.info/Fire_damage_assessment_of_hot_rolled_structural_steelwork&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Steel loses strength when it's heated&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.steelconstruction.info/Design_using_structural_fire_standards#Effect_of_load&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eventually fails&lt;/a&gt;, which is why it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.steelconstruction.info/Fire_protecting_structural_steelwork&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;needs protection&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.steelconstruction.info/Fire_testing#Other_standard_fire_tests&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fuel-based fires get hot unusually quickly&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.steelconstruction.info/Fire_testing#Limitations_of_the_standard_fire_test&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Normal/natural fires usually spread slowly, and are limited by available ventilation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What about the WTC specifically?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two explanations of how/why fire caused the WTC collapse here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/0112/eagar/eagar-0112.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse? Science, Engineering, and Speculation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0711/banovic-0711.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Role of Metallurgy in the NIST Investigation &#xA;of the World Trade Center Towers Collapse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter reference contains an explanation for the collapse (in the side-bar, on the right):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First, in the absence of structural and insulation damage, a conventional fire substantially similar to or less intense than the fires encountered on September 11, 2001 likely would not have led to the collapse of a WTC tower. Second, the towers likely would not have collapsed under the combined effects of aircraft impact and the subsequent multi-floor fires encountered on September 11, 2001 if the insulation had not been widely dislodged or had been only minimally dislodged by aircraft impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also says that they found no other causes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, the investigation team neither found nor invoked any extraordinary events, beyond the terrorist attack that damaged the structure and removed the insulation, that led to the collapse of the towers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above (aircraft impact dislodging insulation) doesn't explain the collapse of Building 7. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/1376/2703&quot;&gt;analysis of the Building 7 collapse&lt;/a&gt; states that the failure of this building was more caused thermal expansion (steel changing size and shape): its fire-insulation wasn't affected by an airplane crash, but it failed in the 300°C-450°C temperature range, before it got hot enough (e.g. 650°C) for the steel to lose significant strength:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the WTC 7 collapse, the loss of steel strength or stiffness was not as important as the thermal expansion of steel structures caused by heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various ways in which the WTC buildings and the WTC fire were famously unusual or unique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authorities &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_collapse#Model_code_changes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;learn from disasters and update the building codes and fire codes accordingly&lt;/a&gt;: perhaps that's another explanation for why we may not see an event quite this like one again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T14:49:48.677" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17811" CreationDate="2013-10-01T16:25:18.940" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possibly yes, depending on your definition of &amp;quot;your immune system&amp;quot;: I suspect that something like the following is their justification for the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FBJN%2FBJN80_S1%2FS0007114598001226a.pdf&amp;amp;code=972710b0ea57c582954f7b01a59f9543&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Functional food science and gastrointestinal physiology and function&lt;/a&gt; includes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;3. The gastrointestinal immune system&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;3. I. Gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Brandtzaeg et al. 1989)&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The first, and in normal individuals only, contact that&#xA;ingested bacteria, including probiotics, have with the&#xA;immune system is with the GALT. The human intestine&#xA;represents the largest mass of lymphoid tissue in the body,&#xA;containing over 10^6 lymphocytes/g tissue. In addition,&#xA;about 60% of the total immunoglobulin (Ig; several&#xA;grams) produced daily is secreted into the gastrointestinal&#xA;tract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T17:05:01.273" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17953" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-01T20:07:57.163" Score="5" ViewCount="1674" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was watching a fairly decent documentary regarding marijuana use and at a certain point a clinical psychologist mentioned that long term patients of his that smoked marijuana from a young age showed very little growth in psychological and emotional maturity. Are there any clinical studies that indicate a connection between marijuana use and unstable psychological growth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14619" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T14:46:42.520" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T14:46:42.520" Title="Can smoking marijuana from a young age cause emotional immaturity?" Tags="|psychology|recreational-drugs|psychiatry|marijuana|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2013-10-06T18:48:57.457" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17954" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-01T20:46:47.080" Score="6" ViewCount="444" Body="&lt;p&gt;The video in question, which is in the public domain.  Warning: may contain disturbing imagery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/details/Experime1940&quot;&gt;http://archive.org/details/Experime1940&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 20 minute 1940 Russian video purports to show the results of early experiments by Doctor Sergei Brukhonenko in artificially sustaining biologic life and brain functions.  At one point the decapitated head of a canine is shown artificially kept alive, reacting to stimuli as though conscious.  There is no doubt that Doctor Sergei Brukhonenko performed the experiments and that he contributed significantly to the medical field with them.  However, many claim the video is not genuine, but instead is a special effects recreation of the experiments and does not therefor show accurately the results of the experiments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the events of the video genuine, or are they a recreation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1617" LastActivityDate="2013-10-01T20:46:47.080" Title="Does the video Experiments in the Revival of Organisms depict genuine results?" Tags="|medical-science|history|video|experiments|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17958" CreationDate="2013-10-02T10:52:06.133" Score="2" ViewCount="430" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep reading about this amazing claim such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popsci.com/comment/233411#comment-233411&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quoted here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And as it was described in the article, there the passive &quot;walk away&quot;&#xA;  safety system using the freeze plug. This was routinely used in the&#xA;  Oak Ridge MSR experiment, where they would literally shut off the&#xA;  power to the reactor on Friday, letting the fuel pour in to the drain&#xA;  tank, built for maximizing passive cooling, where it would cool and&#xA;  solidify during the weekend. On Monday they would just turn on heaters&#xA;  around the tank, and then pump it back in to the reactor and continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did that really happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T13:24:27.673" Title="Was the molten salt reactor (MSR) at Oak Ridge shut down over weekends?" Tags="|nuclear-energy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17958" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17957" CreationDate="2013-10-02T10:52:06.133" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;That never happened, according to Dick Engel and Syd Ball explaining their involvement with Oak Ridge National Laboratory's thorium molten salt research: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENH-jd6NhRc&amp;amp;t=12m49s&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENH-jd6NhRc&amp;amp;t=12m49s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;This story of closing off the heat exchangers: that never happened, right? You didn't switch it off for the weekend?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;No.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-10-02T13:24:27.673" LastActivityDate="2013-10-02T13:24:27.673" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17960" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17969" CreationDate="2013-10-03T00:33:22.477" Score="5" ViewCount="6964" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short introduction: Recetly some russian newspapers talked about airplane, lost in Moscow Sheremetevo airport. And this airplane was claimed to be full of Euros in cash, up to 20 billions (20 000 000 000, 200 wooden pallets with €20bn in €100-notes). There are some english versions of the story: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/report-26-billion-left-at-moscows-sheremetyevo-airport-2013-9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;b.insider&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/billion-of-cash-left-at-sheremetyevo-airport-moscow-since-2007/story-e6frfq80-1226730046887&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;news au&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rbth.ru/society/2013/09/27/20_billion_stuck_at_moscows_sheremetyevo_airport_30241.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rtbh&lt;/a&gt; or just google for koroorian motlagh or Farzin Motlagh. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But today the RBC Daily posted a story about origin of such amoutns of money and my question is about this publication:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(in russian) &lt;a href=&quot;http://rbcdaily.ru/society/562949989084744&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Россиянин раскрыл тайну самолета с 20 млрд евро на борту&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(short english version) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.panorama.am/en/economy/2013/10/02/azerbaijan-dollars/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RBC Daily: 677 million Iranian petrodollars mysteriously disappear in Azerbaijan&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;also referenced here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-20bn-mystery-could-iran-be-the-owner-of-huge-cash-stash-at-moscows-sheremetyevo-airport-8854563.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The €20bn mystery: Could Iran be the owner of huge cash stash at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is unreferenced claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the story began when the United States and Iran were still friends,&#xA;  and the Americans were buying oil from the Iranians. At the beginning&#xA;  of 90s Americans being tired of carrying dollars to Iran offered to&#xA;  send them two U.S. Federal Reserve System officers along with a&#xA;  printing machine, for the Iranians to print for themselves as much&#xA;  dollars as oil is delivered.&#xA;  This scheme worked until the nuclear program of Iran started to bother the United States. &#xA;  The Americans immediately canceled all the contracts and took the machine back.&#xA;  ... Then the Iranians began to think, what to do with these dollars which amounted to six trillion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(and in russian)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;США и Иран дружили, а американцы покупали у иранцев нефть. В начале 90-х американцы устали перевозить им доллары (Иран признавал только наличку) и предложили: давайте мы отправим вам двух офицеров Федеральной резервной системы США вместе с печатным станком, дадим клише, и вы будете печатать себе доллары сами. Сколько нефти поставили, столько и напечатали.&#xA;  Эта схема работала до того момента, пока ядерная программа Ирана не стала мешать США. Американцы тут же расторгли все договора и забрали станок.&#xA;  ... Тогда иранцы стали думать, что делать с этими долларами, а было их шесть триллионов.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is additional claim in russian text: &quot;(Iran accepted only cash)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the claimed scheme was stopped due to Iranian nuclear program, and money was converted with help of Russia, Germany and Italy. Dollars were converted into euros in Frankfurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there evidences that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;USA payed Iran in cash for petroleum.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is possible to USA to send FRS officers and dollar-printing machine to other country. Even to Iran?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is possible to print 6 trillions dollars outside the USA.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10996" LastEditorUserId="10996" LastEditDate="2013-10-03T01:10:33.027" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T22:47:43.677" Title="Did USA send Federal Reserve System officers to Iran to print cash for Iranian oil" Tags="|united-states|economics|iran|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17965" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23244" CreationDate="2013-10-03T08:34:37.417" Score="6" ViewCount="533" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-04-08/developmental-issues/38372348_1_elephant-dung-eco-friendly-products-seeds&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; there is a paper that has been infused with elephant dung and flower seeds that, if planted and watered properly, will actually grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it sounds plausible but I feel there are a lot of factors that I am not really certain of. For example it says the elephant dung is treated and bleached... doesn't this kill most of the fertilizing aspects along with the bacteria? Does this need to be planted immediately? Furthermore is elephant dung in itself special?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15526" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T09:50:23.420" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T03:28:17.077" Title="Will elephant dung paper infused with flower seeds grow when planted?" Tags="|biology|zoology|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17966" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-03T11:25:08.483" Score="10" ViewCount="2051" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/02/228568286/obama-says-hes-exasperated-by-the-gop&quot;&gt;this interview with CNBC&lt;/a&gt; (at 00:00:39), President Obama said &quot;Deficits are coming down; they have been cut in half since I came into office.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? What statistic is he referring to? Is this more or less a red herring, referring to the extraordinarily large deficits that were temporarily run for things like TARP, etc.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15719" LastEditorUserId="1680" LastEditDate="2013-10-03T19:16:29.460" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T17:39:15.973" Title="Have US deficits been cut in half since Obama came into office?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17966" CreationDate="2013-10-03T12:43:16.243" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Budget_Office&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Congressional Budget Office&lt;/a&gt; defines the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/budgetinfographic.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;federal budget deficits&lt;/a&gt; (pdf) as when spending exceeds revenues for the fiscal year (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_year#United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;October 1st through September 30th&lt;/a&gt;) so it is reasonable to assume that this what &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;President Obama&lt;/a&gt; is referring to when he maid that claim. Additionally, since the deficit is defined solely on the basis of the receipts vs. outlays, programs such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)&lt;/a&gt; are included in the official figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Monthly Treasury Statement for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0913.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;September 2013&lt;/a&gt; (pdf) there was a $680 billion deficit for Fiscal Year 2013 through September 30, 2013. According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Office of Management and Budget&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historicals&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Historical Tables&lt;/a&gt;, the following are the total receipts, outlays, and deficits for 2008 through 2012 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2014/assets/hist01z1.xls&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;, xls) in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_versus_nominal_value_%28economics%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;nominal dollars&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&#xA;Year    Receipts    Outlays     Surplus or Deficit (-)&#xA;2008    2,523,991   2,982,544   -458,553&#xA;2009    2,104,989   3,517,677   -1,412,688&#xA;2010    2,162,706   3,457,079   -1,294,373&#xA;2011    2,303,466   3,603,059   -1,299,593&#xA;2012    2,450,164   3,537,127   -1,086,963&#xA;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the Fiscal Year 2009 deficit of $1,412 billion that means that as of August 2013 the Fiscal Year 2013 reduction of $680 billion is &lt;strong&gt;accurate&lt;/strong&gt; on the hard numbers and is about a 52% reduction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we adjust these values for inflation by using an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;inflation calculator&lt;/a&gt; then we find that $680 billion in 2013 dollars is the same about $623 billion in 2009 dollars. This represents about a 56% reduction in the deficit when compared to it in 2009 which means that the statement is also &lt;strong&gt;accurate&lt;/strong&gt; using inflation adjusted figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way of looking at the deficit is as a percentage of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_domestic_product&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gross domestic product (GDP)&lt;/a&gt; which has also been done by President Obama and was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factcheck.org/2013/08/deficits-falling-from-way-up/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;examined by FactCheck.org&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, although the White House didn’t cite it, the newly released&#xA;  mid-year projection from the White House Office of Management and&#xA;  Budget for the 2013 fiscal year shows that due to rising revenues, the&#xA;  2013 deficit is now projected to be $759 billion — $214 billion lower&#xA;  than the $973 billion deficit projected in the original budget. As a&#xA;  percentage of GDP, the 2013 deficit is now projected to equal 4.7&#xA;  percent. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects an even&#xA;  lower 2013 deficit of $642 billion, or 4 percent of GDP. That’s still&#xA;  above the level in 2008 (or any year since 1992), but it’s&#xA;  substantially lower than 2009. (Even if those projections pan out,&#xA;  however, Obama’s talking point wouldn’t be correct.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where the deficit as a percentage of the GDP was -10.10% &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.multpl.com/u-s-federal-deficit-percent/table&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on December 31, 2009&lt;/a&gt; which would make this claim &lt;strong&gt;accurate&lt;/strong&gt; but still dependent upon the final Fiscal Year 2013 data. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-11-01T17:39:15.973" LastActivityDate="2013-11-01T17:39:15.973" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17968" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17971" CreationDate="2013-10-03T19:27:40.437" Score="16" ViewCount="5771" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a debate between Richard Dawkins and Cardinal Pell, the latter claimed that Darwin believed in God, &lt;a href=&quot;http://protectthepope.com/?p=5007&quot;&gt;saying rather smugly&lt;/a&gt;: ”It’s on page 92 of his autobiography. Go and have a look.”’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here’s the excerpt from p.92-93 of Charles Darwin’s autobiography: I took it from a religious website, so it may be biased:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did he actually write this, in his autobiography? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If he wrote this, does this represent an accurate summary on his self-stated religious view? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14619" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-04T13:57:36.673" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T19:41:41.673" Title="Did Darwin self-identify as theist?" Tags="|history|charles-darwin|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17960" CreationDate="2013-10-03T20:09:43.187" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claims:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;USA payed Iran in cash for petroleum ?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cannot verify&lt;/strong&gt; - Iran is a member of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opec.org/opec_web/en/about_us/25.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;OPEC&lt;/a&gt; and their operating currency is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-11-20/will-opec-dump-the-dollar-businessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;USD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So all the trades are made in US dollars, however I cannot verify if it was made in cash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;It is possible to USA to send FRS officers and dollar-printing machine to other country. Even to Iran?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not verifiable, everything is possible, the questions should be formed as &quot;has it ever happened ?&quot; And if it is, I have found some sources that suggest it might be true, but I cannot confirm it completelly, since I cannot find original references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;It is possible to print 6 trillions dollars outside the USA ?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a very broad claim, anybody can print a dollar on a printer, but there are different quality of dollars, if we are talking about Iranian dollars mentioned in original articles, then they are so called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SuperDollars - A very high quality counterfeit United States one hundred-dollar bill&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/03/world/new-c-note-is-awaited-in-the-land-of-fake-bills.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article in New York Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The third world is the playground of the bogus C-note. The United&#xA;  States Secret Service said $248 million in counterfeit American&#xA;  currency was seized outside the United States last year, compared with&#xA;  $73 million seized domestically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is for 1994 - we can speculate how much counterfeit dollars are out there in circulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12773.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Federal Reserve&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was approximately $1.21 trillion in circulation as of September&#xA;  11, 2013, of which $1.16 trillion was in Federal Reserve notes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I have a hard time believeing that 6 Trillion ! have been printed in Iran alone. In my analysis below I can only get a figure of 12 $ Billion annualy. There is no better evidence that can support this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Analysis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is such a long story so it is impossible to explain what exactly happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all here are the original articles (in Russian):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mk.ru/moscow/article/2013/09/25/921254-otdam-milliardyi-v-dobryie-ruki.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Part1 - Отдам миллиарды в добрые руки&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mk.ru/social/article/2013/09/30/923015-raskryita-tayna-samoleta-s-20-000-000-000-evro-na-bortu.html#start=70&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Part2 - &#xA;Раскрыта тайна самолета с 20 000 000 000 евро на борту&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot confirm if plane is real or not, this is another research story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the article is wrong - it states that the printing of money has only started in the 90-s and ended with Iran nuclear ambition, but this is not the case. The sources that I found so far states that by 90-s Iran and US were clearly not friendly.  Since &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The 1979 revolution&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_hostage_crisis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The 1979 Iran hostage crisis&lt;/a&gt; their relationship has been getting only colder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A consequence of that is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_energy_crisis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1979 oil crisis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also see on the graph a sharp drop of oil imports after &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_Revolution&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The 1979 revolution&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&amp;amp;s=MTTIM_NUS-NIR_2&amp;amp;f=A&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Department of Energy graph&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6pwlH.png&quot; alt=&quot;U.S. Imports from Iran of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products (Thousand Barrels per Day)&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Iran and US were friends since &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1953 Iranian coup&lt;/a&gt; and possibly shared printing equipment but this is something I cannot verify beyond few sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copi.com/articles/Guyatt/Pegasus2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;that&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/293&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;that&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One operation in which Tatum has knowledge, regards the so called&#xA;  &quot;Superbills,&quot; or &quot;Supernotes&quot; sting. Years earlier, in the late&#xA;  sixties or early seventies, &lt;strong&gt;the CIA had secretly provided to the Shah&#xA;  of Iran a perfect set of printing plates that could reproduce US$100&#xA;  bills without blemish.&lt;/strong&gt; Also provided was an intaglio printing press.&#xA;  This special printing press ensures that the etched plate meets paper&#xA;  with tremendous force, creating the distinctive embossed feel of a&#xA;  genuine banknote. &lt;strong&gt;In addition, the Shah was also given the ink and&#xA;  banknote quality paper enabling him to produce perfect counterfeit US&#xA;  Dollar banknotes. The Shah later fled Iran and left the plates and&#xA;  press behind in his confusion.&lt;/strong&gt; The whole caboodle sat in the mint at&#xA;  Tehran, according to some experts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This quote referes article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1995/10/23/1995_10_23_050_TNY_CARDS_000373602&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;New Yorker&lt;/a&gt;, but I cannot verify this since access is locked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also found some more articles that support the claim that &quot;US has shared printing equipment with Iran&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.org/news/iran/1992/920701-233652.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this report in 1992&lt;/a&gt; from &quot;United States. House Republican Research Committee. Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare&quot; alleges:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A joint Iran-Syria conspiracy to counterfeit U.S. dollars, purportedly in order to strengthen Iran's economy and weaken the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The fact of the matter is that the Iranian government, in cooperation with Syria, has undertaken a massive counterfeiting campaign in order to alleviate their financial difficulties and pursue economic warfare against the West,&quot; Representative Bill McCollum (Republican of Florida) said in a July 1 news conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The Iranians last week outraged me personally when they put in their official publication the statement that this &lt;strong&gt;counterfeit money was being produced by the United States 'intelligence community' and distributed over there&lt;/strong&gt;,&quot; McCollum said. &quot;That's hogwash.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2482&amp;amp;dat=19920702&amp;amp;id=4albAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=2FENAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=1265,247105&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this newspaper article&lt;/a&gt; by &quot;The Post and Currier&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It was impossible to determine how many counterfeit bills were being produced by Iran and distributed through Syria's drug and terrorist connections. &lt;strong&gt;Iran's goal appears to be printing up to 12 $ billion annually&lt;/strong&gt; to erase its foreign currency shortfall&quot; - McCollum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is the interesting part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The report says &lt;strong&gt;the operation uses U.S. built presses, U.S. trained chemists and money printing expertise obtained from the United States&lt;/strong&gt; during the rule of the late Shah of Iran  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15722" LastEditorUserId="15722" LastEditDate="2013-10-03T20:39:10.647" LastActivityDate="2013-10-03T20:39:10.647" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17968" CreationDate="2013-10-03T21:00:58.143" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;Darwin does state in his autobiography, on pages 92-93 that he was a theist, but you really need to read it in context. &lt;sub&gt;(Granted I read only the pages just before and after the quote, not the whole book, and not even the footnotes on those pages.)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings, impresses me as having much more weight. This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; &lt;strong&gt;and I deserve to be called a Theist&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(from &lt;a href=&quot;http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F1497&amp;amp;viewtype=text&amp;amp;pageseq=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Darwin Online&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we read farther, we see on pages 93-95:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the Origin of Species; and it is since that time that it has very gradually with many fluctuations become weaker. But then arises the doubt—can the mind of man, which has, &lt;strong&gt;as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal&lt;/strong&gt;, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? May not these be the result of the connection between cause and effect which strikes us as a necessary one, but probably depends merely on inherited experience? Nor must we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot pretend to throw the least light on such abstruse problems. The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; &lt;strong&gt;and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic&lt;/strong&gt;. (Granted, this portion was written in a letter to Francis Darwin [who was editing the autobiography], by Emma Darwin and not actually written by Charles Darwin)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward&lt;/strong&gt;, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones. A dog acts in this manner, but he does so blindly. A man, on the other hand, looks forwards and backwards, and compares his various feelings, desires and recollections. He then finds, in accordance with the verdict of all the wisest men that the highest satisfaction is derived from following certain impulses, namely the social instincts. If he acts for the good of others, he will receive the approbation of his fellow men and gain the love of those with whom he lives; and this latter gain undoubtedly is the highest pleasure on this earth. By degrees it will become intolerable to him to obey his sensuous passions rather than his higher impulses, which when rendered habitual may be almost called instincts. His reason may occasionally tell him to act in opposition to the opinion of others, whose approbation he will then not receive; but he will still have the solid satisfaction of knowing that he has followed his innermost guide or conscience.—As for myself I believe that I have acted rightly in steadily following and devoting my life to science. I feel no remorse from having committed any great sin, but have often and often regretted that I have not done more direct good to my fellow creatures. My sole and poor excuse is much ill-health and my mental constitution, which makes it extremely difficult for me to turn from one subject or occupation to another. I can imagine with high satisfaction giving up my whole time to philanthropy, but not a portion of it; though this would have been a far better line of conduct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nothing is more remarkable than the spread of scepticism or rationalism during the latter half of my life&lt;/strong&gt;. Before I was engaged to be married, my father advised me to conceal carefully my doubts, for he said that he had known extreme misery thus caused with married persons. Things went on pretty well until the wife or husband became out of health, and then some women suffered miserably by doubting about the salvation of their husbands, thus making them likewise to suffer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we read in context we can see not only that Darwin doubts the human capacity to comprehend God, and the freedom of the choice to believe. He reaffirms his belief in the evolutionary ancestry of humans, and depicts himself as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the answer to the question as put, but some more perspective should be given. Even if Darwin believed in God, even the Christian God as depicted by the 19&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; century Anglican Church, it doesn't mean that his scientific findings lose their validity. Being an active religious person who participates in active religious life doesn't mean that you must not accept the theory of evolution (assuming this is what the debate was about).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most notable example for this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_R._Miller&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kenneth R. Miller&lt;/a&gt;, who is a practicing Roman Catholic evolutionary biologist and was a witness at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District&lt;/a&gt; trial opposing the teaching of Intelligent Design in public schools in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is not the only one: There is a full Wikipedia page dedicated to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_scientists&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roman Catholic scientists&lt;/a&gt;, and there are many other scientists of other religions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even Richard Dawkins himself collaborates with religious figures. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQ0WinCWtLs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; he makes an interview with the Bishop of Oxford, saying that they both have the same view of the physical way the world came into existence, even though they don't have the same moral and religious view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T19:41:41.673" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17976" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18212" CreationDate="2013-10-04T12:52:19.757" Score="29" ViewCount="10191" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some idioms (&quot;chase the carrot&quot; / &quot;carrot and stick&quot;) and a popular image (as shown below) suggest that you can make a mule move forward (and pull a cart), by placing a carrot or some other food hanging from a stick, in front of its face. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=chase%20the%20carrot&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a dictionary&lt;/a&gt; of urban idioms explains: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;chase the carrot&quot;: attempting to reach the unreachable, in the old&#xA;  days a carrot was tied to a stick in front of a wagon's mule or&#xA;  stubborn horse to make them step forward and walk ahead... they&#xA;  were never able to reach the carrot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this known to really happen so? Have this (or some variation) been used as a practical locomotive trick? (things like the rabbit at dog races don't count; the key is that the animal itself moves the object it's seeking).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ie2uP.gif&quot; alt=&quot;carrot without the stick&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="102" LastEditorUserId="2834" LastEditDate="2015-06-03T06:45:16.043" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T06:45:16.043" Title="Does the carrot on a stick method work on a mule?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17960" CreationDate="2013-10-04T19:51:23.303" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DMINATOR, Can you add oil price graph to estimate how much oil export per year costs? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combining the graph in DMINATOR's answer with the graphs on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htm&lt;/a&gt; allow an estimate of the value of US oil imports from Iran.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the graphs, an overestimate is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average 500,000 barrels/day from 1970 through 1980 = 2*10^9 barrels/decade.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cost of oil $75/barrel =&gt; 150*10^9 (one hundred and fifty billion) dollars/decade.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &quot;six trillion&quot; seems improbably high: by at least one order of magnitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO that falsifies one detail of the claim (although the &quot;20 billions&quot; in question is only a small fraction of 6 trillion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-10-04T22:47:43.677" LastActivityDate="2013-10-04T22:47:43.677" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-10-04T19:51:23.303" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17983" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-04T21:55:44.900" Score="16" ViewCount="46349" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few sources report that elephants use their trunks to masturbate. This practice, if it exists, is apparently called trunking,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per &lt;a href=&quot;http://todayilearned.co.uk/2011/08/07/male-elephants-use-their-trunks-to-masturbate/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;todayilearned.co.uk&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This may not be the most useful piece of knowledge, but if you ever get to see an elephant doing this you would at least know what he is up to. Urban Dictionary calls it trunking. Don’t try to do it at home – you will break your back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They provide some pictures of this practice, but I'm not sure if these are photoshopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VX6iE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Elephant sucking his own elephant penis&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/z4Gzy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Elephant sucking his own elephant penis pt 2.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do elephants do this? Or, is this all fabricated and the pictures fake?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T09:43:50.960" LastActivityDate="2023-01-07T22:49:55.070" Title="Do elephants &quot;trunk&quot; themselves (masturbate)?" Tags="|elephants|masturbation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17986" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="17989" CreationDate="2013-10-05T04:23:40.677" Score="11" ViewCount="1075" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does a screensaver save the computer display screen?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And if it does, what does it save the screen from?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;If the above two questions have a NO answer, than why is it called screensaver?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14940" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T09:44:23.150" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T17:07:12.980" Title="Does a screensaver save the computer display screen?" Tags="|technology|computers|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17988" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-05T16:55:06.837" Score="4" ViewCount="466" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've asked a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8259/is-global-iq-dropping-over-time&quot;&gt;similar question&lt;/a&gt; some time ago and people mentioned the &quot;Flynn effect&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But after watching &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_higher_than_our_grandparents.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video from James Flynn&lt;/a&gt; I'm having doubts about the relevance of IQ tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, that guy says that our grandparents are more inclined towards concrete thought, while we're leaning towards hypothetical thought. And if you take a look at the IQ tests, they are all made of hypothetical questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And he is right, I've tested it on my grandmother, and she cannot even conceive some hypothetical situations. Her answer is always &quot;don't be silly, why would that happen?&quot; :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is - are  we getting smarter if we're moving away from concrete thinking? The examples from the video, with the war lies are pretty accurate. The governments tell us that we should fear &quot;terrorists&quot;, because of hypothetical events which sound plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is no concrete evidence that these events happened in the past at all. In fact, all their previous warnings turned out to be lies. If we were to use concrete thinking, we would assume these are likely lies as well. Doesn't this make us naive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2636" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2016-03-05T04:51:50.883" Title="Are we getting smarter?" Tags="|intelligence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-10-07T10:58:11.503" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17986" CreationDate="2013-10-05T20:54:22.240" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;This is a summary of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_burn-in#Plasma.2C_LCD_and_OLED_displays&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia:Screen burn-in&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;CRT, Plasma, and OLED displays&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These displays develop burn-in due to degradation of the light emitting compounds. Screensavers were initially designed to prevent phosphor burn-in in cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors. Plasma displays are also susceptible to burn-in due to overheating of the phosphors. Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays develop burn-in due to degradation of the organic compounds. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57598963-221/seven-problems-with-current-oled-televisions/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cnet&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the worst cases, the burn-in is visible even when the display is not powered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q8JhW.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;LCDs&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) can suffer a different type of burn-in (&lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/292842/lcd-burn+in-exists-and-it-isnt-pretty&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;gizmodo&lt;/a&gt;) also referred to as image persistence (&lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.ts.fujitsu.com/rl/servicesupport/techsupport/Diagscript/monitor/ImagePersistence.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fujitsu&lt;/a&gt;). Liquid crystals are designed to allow light through in their relaxed state, but can become &quot;stuck&quot; at a particular level of activation, causing an effect that looks very similar to traditional burn-in. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://compreviews.about.com/od/monitors/a/LCDBurnIn.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xnnEA.jpg&quot; width=&quot;300&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Screensavers&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screensavers can be useful in preventing burn-in on CRT, plasma, and OLED displays. For LCD displays, image persitence can be prevented by using a screensaver. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.ts.fujitsu.com/rl/servicesupport/techsupport/Diagscript/monitor/ImagePersistence.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fujitsu&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T17:07:12.980" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T17:07:12.980" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17988" CreationDate="2013-10-05T23:08:54.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: hypotheses are necessary but are not sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So my question is - are we really getting smarter if we're moving away from concrete thinking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be mis-stating the conclusion of his lecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until the end of first 7 minutes he talks about history of IQ tests, specifically the findings of someone whose name sounds like &quot;Luria&quot;, who found that people in his time (which was just before they entered &quot;the scientific age&quot;) could not answer IQ questions such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are no camels in Germany.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hamburg is in Germany.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there camels in Hamburg?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their answer was &quot;Maybe, depending on how big Hamburg is&quot;: because the respondent had never seen a town without a camel ... they valued their concrete experience (e.g. that camels exist in towns) more than the hypothetical (that there's a country called Germany in which there are no camels).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until time 11:00 he says that modern jobs are more cognitively demanding than they used to be, but mentions some moral lapses (e.g. that the recent sub-prime mortgage/banking crisis was engineered by &quot;merchant bankers&quot; who &quot;may have been morally remiss but were cognitively very agile&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At time 11:10 he describes himself as a &quot;moral philosopher&quot;, not a psychologist, and says that what interests him is &quot;moral debate&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At time 11:35 he begins to say that moral debate can't happen without &quot;taking the hypothetical seriously&quot;. The example which he gives of that, is his going home from university in 1955 in the time of MLK and saying to his father (who was born in 1885), &quot;What if you were Black?&quot; His father wouldn't accept the hypothesis and therefore wouldn't sympathize with the reality/experience of being a black person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, his principle claims include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We have more education (e.g. 12 years instead of 4)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our education includes more theory&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We accept hypotheses which are outside our experience&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This makes us &quot;cognitively agile&quot;, which is needed for science and by 'knowledge workers', and helps to enable debate about morality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last part from about 16:20 says that, &quot;if you're ignorant of history and other countries then you can't do politics&quot;, and says that &quot;we&quot; (Americans) have been &quot;lied into 4 of our last 6 wars&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO the principle claim is not that 'being able to accept the hypothetical as a hypothesis makes you less smart'. On the contrary: that ability is important for science, for modern jobs, and for morality (&quot;moral debate&quot;). However, agility (the ability to hypothesize) is not sufficient: you also need to know facts ... historical facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;We've noticed a trend among young Americans that they read less history and less literature and less material about foreign lands. They're essentially ahistorical. ... Think of how different America would be, if every American knew that this is the fifth time Western armies had gone to Afghanistan to put its house in order, and if they had some idea of what had happened on those four previous occasions: and that is they had barely left and there wasn't a trace in the sand.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The governments tell us that we should fear &quot;terrorists&quot; or whatever, because of hypothetical events which sound plausible. However there is no concrete evidence that these events happened in the past at all. In fact, all their previous warnings turned out to be lies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There /is/ some historical evidence that some &quot;terrorist&quot; events have happened (&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/9-11&quot;&gt;for example&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say that, without wanting to draw unwarranted conclusions from it: &quot;unwarranted conclusions&quot; such as, &quot;we're at risk&quot;, or that going or not going to war is a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;lie&quot; was w.r.t. whether Al-Quaeda and Iraq (Sadam Hussein) were related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doesn't this make us naive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not wanting to end on a pessimistic note, his conclusion was that the &quot;20th century shows enormous cognitive reserves of ordinary people that we have now realized&quot; and that the &quot;aristocracy used to be convinced that the average person couldn't make it and that they could never share their mind-set or their cognitive abilities&quot; (see also for example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/17068/2703&quot;&gt;Has it only been about two hundred years since women gained access to literacy?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T08:47:16.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17992" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-06T05:30:30.927" Score="6" ViewCount="438" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this article from the BBC, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22025328&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22025328&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As many as 15% of white students admitted to elite colleges don't meet admissions standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This quote seems to be a rephrasing of a quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/09/28/at_the_elite_colleges___dim_white_kids/?page=full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; (that the above article links to):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers with access to closely guarded college admissions data have found that, on the whole, about 15 percent of freshmen enrolled at America's highly selective colleges are white teens who failed to meet their institutions' minimum admissions standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This number is hard for me to believe, and I wonder if this claim has any basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T14:01:58.370" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T14:01:58.370" Title="Do 15% of elite college students in the US not meet the admission requirements?" Tags="|united-states|university|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16920" CreationDate="2013-10-06T11:09:08.427" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some components of wheat do cause health problems, but not in most people&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with the claim that wheat is bad for you is that it is a generalisation to the whole population of something which does cause problems for a minority of people. And, in the specific source quoted here, that claim is mixed incoherently with a general rant about modern agriculture, genetic engineering and radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the problems described do occur in those with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;coeliac&lt;/a&gt; (or celiac in the US) disease who suffer an immune reaction to the gluten protein in wheat. Many of the symptoms described in the article will occur in people with coeliac disease. Prevalence of coeliac disease is common, but not &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; common (upper estimates in the USA are 1% of the population according to the wikipedia article on the disease). One peer-reviewd (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12578508?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pubmed abstract here&lt;/a&gt;) study using antobody techniques suggests:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The overall prevalence of CD in not-at-risk groups was 1:133&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is large enough (perhaps 20m americans) to generate a lot of anecdotes to feed scare sites and generate plausible stories. And the absence of any statistical analysis at all doesn't make a case that the problem is bigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the issue that many people not suffering from coeliac disease (that is not exhibiting the immune response that characterises it) may have some sensitivity to gluten. This is controbversial, but possible. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/diet/news/20120220/gluten-sensitivity-fact-or-fad&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Web MD&lt;/a&gt; summarises the whole situation well (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;There is an academic controversy whether a broader group of people show some degree of gluten intolerance but not the immune reactions that characterise coeliac disease&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gluten is a protein in wheat, rye, and barley that is commonly found in bread, beer, pasta, and a wide range of other processed foods containing these grains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For about 1% of the population, eating gluten causes celiac disease, an intestinal condition characterized by the inability to absorb nutrients from food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Celiac disease is diagnosed through blood and bowel tests, but there are &lt;em&gt;no good tests to determine non-celiac gluten sensitivity, and there has been considerable debate about whether the condition even exists&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their essay published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Celiac researchers Antonio Di Sabatino, MD, and Gino Roberto Corazza, MD, of Italy’s University of Pavia, explored what is and is not known about gluten sensitivity and addressed the growing hype about the benefits of gluten-free eating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“&lt;strong&gt;Claims [about gluten-free diets] seem to increase daily, with no adequate scientific support to back them up&lt;/strong&gt;,” they write. “This clamor has increased and moved from the Internet to the popular press, where gluten has become the new diet villain.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The (paywalled) article Web MD is referring to is &lt;a href=&quot;http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1132649&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: the current state of knowledge recognises that some people have a reaction to gluten. This explains many of the anecdotes quoted by antiscientific scare sites. But, unless they produce hard statistics and proper evidence to the contrary (which they don't even attempt) their general claim is simply bogus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T20:27:46.233" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17995" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-06T13:15:00.353" Score="9" ViewCount="884" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just before the recent IPPC meeting which was due to publish new analysis on climate change, the Financial Times published an excellent summary of the difference between predictions made in the last IPCC report and actual observations. The chart shows what looks like a clear presentation of the discrepancy between observations and predictions (see the FT article &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.ft.com/ftdata/2013/09/23/how-the-ipccs-projections-match-up/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;: note the dataviz is interactive and shows more than just temperature. The dataviz is accessible &lt;a href=&quot;http://public.tableausoftware.com/shared/RXQ2CD99K?:display_count=no&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; to those who can't access the (paywalled) FT original). A static picture of the temperature chart is below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SGzIT.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Climate skeptic Steve Mcintyre (I think &quot;skeptic&quot; is a better term for him than denier as he doesn't deny climate change; other opinions on him are available) &lt;a href=&quot;http://climateaudit.org/2013/09/30/ipcc-disappears-the-discrepancy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;argued&lt;/a&gt; that the IPCC were originally going to use a similar chart but changed their mind during the review process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He argues that the chart below was present in early drafts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YRwGQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;Mcintyre&amp;#39;s copy of early draft models vs observations&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but was changed to this chart in later drafts and the final report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IuVXs.png&quot; alt=&quot;Mcintyre&amp;#39;s version of final ipcc chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mcintyre argues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Figure 1.4 of the Second Order Draft clearly showed the discrepancy between models and observations, though IPCC’s covering text reported otherwise. ... Needless to say, this diagram did not survive. Instead, IPCC replaced the damning (but accurate) diagram with a new diagram in which the inconsistency has been disappeared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of technical issues here (even in the first chart: eg what does the grey bad mean and what is its derivation?). But the thrust of his argument seems to be that the IPCC have deliberately chosen a way of presenting the data that obscures what seems like an obvious problem: model skill doesn't seem to be very good in the last decade or so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think answers to the questions of whether there is a problem with model skill would be better addressed in this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14889/are-the-ipcc-climate-change-models-overestimating-sensitivity-to-carbon-dioxide&quot;&gt;Are the IPCC climate change models overestimating sensitivity to carbon dioxide?&lt;/a&gt; so please don't make them in answers here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is simpler: is Mcintyre correct to argue that the IPCC have modified their presentation of the data in a way that obscures the discrepancy? Supplementary question: what is a good and unbiased way to present this sort of comparison in a way that allows a neutral skeptic to make a judgement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T19:45:03.497" Title="Did the IPCC obfuscate the evidence in a way that obscures the discrepancy between previous climate models and recent observations?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17997" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17995" CreationDate="2013-10-06T16:30:21.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Evaluating information visualizations&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To determine whether or not the published chart &quot;obscures the discrepancy&quot; compared to the draft versions of the chart, we'd need to conduct an empirical evaluation of the visualizations. (Chen, 2000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visualizations are commonly measured against &lt;em&gt;accuracy&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;efficiency&lt;/em&gt; metrics. &quot;Accuracy measures typically include precision, error rate, the average number of incorrect answers and the number of correct document retrieved. Efficiency measures typically include the average time to completion and the performance time.&quot; (Chen, 2000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Identification of the task to be performed is a required step in the experimental design. (Card, 1997; Chen, 2000; Schulz, 2013) Here is just a small sample of the range of tasks that have been proposed in the information visualization community: exploring the data, presenting data, finding similarities/differences, visualizing parameter distributions, visualizing parameter variations, visualizing outliers, gaining overview over a dataset, finding correlations, creating a high quality presentation, searching for characteristic features, and finding relations/phenomena/effects. (Schulz, 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What task is this chart made for?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if it did &quot;obscure the discrepancy&quot; in a way that slows down a viewer's analysis, perhaps the chart was chosen for improvement in other metrics, such as accuracy of that analysis, or ability to answer questions about a wider range of projections. As much as we don't know the effect of this choice of visualization, we don't even know the intent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;My impression&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want a sample size of 1 from a bad experiment, I can still see the discrepancy in the published chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Card, Stuart K., and Jock Mackinlay. &quot;The structure of the information visualization design space.&quot; In Information Visualization, 1997. Proceedings., IEEE Symposium on, pp. 92-99. IEEE, 1997.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chen, Chaomei, and Yue Yu. &quot;Empirical studies of information visualization: a meta-analysis.&quot; International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 53, no. 5 (2000): 851-866.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Schulz, Hans-Jörg, Thomas Nocke, Magnus Heitzler, and Heidrun Schumann. &quot;A Design Space of Visualization Tasks.&quot; IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics 19, no. 12 (2013): 2366-2375.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-10-06T17:12:01.807" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T17:12:01.807" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10656" CreationDate="2013-10-06T19:17:27.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From (O'Connor 2009):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[R]esearchers who have looked into this particular folk remedy have found little evidence that it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is little evidence that parsley can counteract bad breath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(O'Connor 2009) references (Lodhia 2008), which says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[P]arsley-seed oil product did not reduce the concentration of volatile sulfur compounds in mouth air at any time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[N]o significant deodorant activity of mints, chewing gum or parsley-seed oil product were observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results in this study showed no effect of [parsley-seed oil] products in reducing oral malodor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lodhia, Parth, Ken Yaegaki, Ali Khakbaznejad, Toshio Imai, Tsutomu Sato, Tomoko Tanaka, Takatoshi Murata, and Takeshi Kamoda. &amp;quot;Effect of green tea on volatile sulfur compounds in mouth air.&amp;quot; Journal of nutritional science and vitaminology 54, no. 1 (2008): 89-94.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;O'Connor, Anahad. The Claim: Eating Parsley Can Eliminate Bad Breath. The New York Times. April 27, 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T19:17:27.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="17999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17995" CreationDate="2013-10-06T21:39:26.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading the three charts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first chart joins the observed values with lines, emphasising volatility in observed values.  It has a shorter &lt;em&gt;y&lt;/em&gt;-axis scale than the others, making things look more dramatic than the other two charts. The four 2007 scenarios are each shown as a single line rather than a range.  The visual suggestion is that observed values are a long way below the scenarios A1B, A2 and B1 but are reasonably close to the Commit scenario. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The second chart gives coloured bands for the different reports, with AR4 visible in the middle of these and apparently narrower than TAR ranges. The grey band is not explained in the key. AR4 scenario A1B is emphasised with the yellow double headed arrows and is in the bottom three-quarters of the AR4 band.  The &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt;-axis scale from 1990 to 2015 emphasises observations since FAR, SAR ,TAR and AR4. 2010 observations seem to be below the AR4 and A1B ranges but 2011 observations (without an uncertainty bar) below them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The third chart shows a lot of lines presumably of what was in AR4 CMIP3. It also gives a variety of observed points and smoothed lines; the &lt;em&gt;y&lt;/em&gt;-axis scale is longer than the others, making observed changes seem smaller. The extension of the &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt;-axis scale to 1950 to 2030 substantially reduces the emphasis on observations since AR4.   The background shading seems to emphasise FAR, SAR and TAR rather than AR4.  The bars at the right suggest that the individual scenarios A1B, A2 and B1 each had wider uncertainty than TAR.  Recent observed values appear to be near the bottom of the very spiky AR4 CMIP3 lines.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, the biggest difference between the three graphs is how much uncertainty was associated the three AR4 scenarios A1B, A2 and B1 and how this has been displayed.  The first chart shows no uncertainty in each, and has the three very close together to 2020; the second chart suggests a narrower uncertainty for one of them AR4 as a whole and AR4 scenarios together less uncertain than TAR; and the third chart only shows anything about them at all off to the side of the chart, and suggests that each was extremely uncertain, which is why the &lt;em&gt;y&lt;/em&gt;-axis scale has to be so long.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The change in &lt;em&gt;x&lt;/em&gt;-axis scale between the second and third charts in fact changes the message from the charts: the second appears to say it is a comparison between forecasts and observations with a scale covering observations since the forecasts were made, while the third seems to be saying it was uncertain before the initial forecasts and will be highly uncertain into the future beyond current observations. Compared with the second chart, the third chart de-emphasises the comparison between forecasts and observations and this may be what is underlying McIntyre's point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the charts have been modified, it has been with the effect of suggesting increased uncertainty in the past and so subsequent observations appearing more within the (now wider) uncertainty bands, and great uncertainty beyond the current observations.  This is presumably deliberate.  The real question is whether it is honest history: the IPCC believes that it is.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2013-10-06T21:39:26.853" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-07T04:43:21.770" Score="13" ViewCount="1329" Body="&lt;p&gt;The critical period hypothesis (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_period_hypothesis&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The critical period hypothesis is the subject of a long-standing&#xA;  debate in linguistics and language acquisition over the extent to&#xA;  which the ability to acquire language is biologically linked to age.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;The hypothesis claims that there is an ideal time window to acquire&#xA;  language in a linguistically rich environment, after which further&#xA;  language acquisition becomes much more difficult and effortful.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In second-language acquisition, the strongest evidence for the&#xA;  critical period hypothesis is &lt;strong&gt;in the study of accent, where most older&#xA;  learners do not reach a native-like level&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that there is an ideal time window to acquire language, after which further language acquisition becomes more difficult?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do most older learners never acquire a native-like accent in a second language? Do most older learners also never acquire native-like grammar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14828" LastEditorUserId="14828" LastEditDate="2013-10-07T20:54:02.583" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T18:49:28.473" Title="Does language acquisition become more difficult after a &quot;critical period&quot; linked to age?" Tags="|language|learning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18004" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18006" CreationDate="2013-10-07T12:11:20.650" Score="7" ViewCount="614" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently saw this photo on Facebook.  Is the contained claim true, that post offices in Singapore will attend to men with long hair last?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ISX41.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T11:11:30.920" Title="Do (or did) post offices in Singapore have a policy of attending to men with long hair last?" Tags="|law|discrimination|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18005" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-07T12:13:38.053" Score="5" ViewCount="768" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/abbotts-challenge-in-asia-20130911-2tl0t.html&quot;&gt;Abbott's challenge in Asia&lt;/a&gt; says that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abe's Deputy Prime Minister, Taro Aso, suggested a few weeks ago that&#xA;  Japan should learn from the example of Nazi Germany in implementing a&#xA;  constitutional revision with limited public debate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This comment passed virtually unnoticed in the Australian media. A&#xA;  European leader guilty of such revisionism would be immediately and&#xA;  universally condemned - and would certainly be forced to resign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was Aso saying that the Nazi change in the constitution was a good thing that Japan should emulate? Or is he being quoted out of context?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-10-07T12:17:57.013" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T17:19:06.920" Title="Did Taro Aso say that Japan should emulate the Nazis in amending the constitution?" Tags="|politics|quotes|japan|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18004" CreationDate="2013-10-07T12:17:59.627" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;So it was reported in the news at the time (e.g. 1980):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Long hair not fitting in in Singapore&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SINGAPORE (AP) - A government campaign against long hair on males has been extended … (&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1891&amp;amp;dat=19800613&amp;amp;id=hUJHAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=jf0MAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=4278,2212586&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Long Hair Frowned Upon In Singapore&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SINGAPORE (AP) - A five-year attempt to stamp out long hair here has not been successful but the campaign continues with much vigor. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1755&amp;amp;dat=19760208&amp;amp;id=eUk0AAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=L2cEAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=5546,3278787&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently it started in the early 1970s according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://singapore60smusic.blogspot.fr/2009/03/blog-post_24.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, which includes a sample poster:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mTBhk.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T11:11:30.920" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18005" CreationDate="2013-10-07T15:00:06.377" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Did Taro Aso say that Japan should emulate the Nazis in amending the constitution?&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes he did (if we believe the BBC, CNN, Xinhua and several newspapers). He later retracted his comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr Aso said on Monday Japan could &quot;learn the technique&quot; Nazi Germany used to change the Weimar constitution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23527300&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2013-10-07T15:00:06.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8563" CreationDate="2013-10-07T15:59:42.783" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently been interested in brewing my own Kombucha tea at home after hearing from several people how beneficial the tea is from their own personal experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was shocked to see that little positive scientific studies have been published on this tea, but instead the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/herb/kombucha&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/herb/kombucha&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because of the fermentation process, Kombucha can easily become&#xA;  contaminated. Allergic reactions, jaundice, serious illness and&#xA;  occasionally death have been associated with the consumption of&#xA;  home-grown Kombucha tea. It may also reduce the absorption of drugs&#xA;  that are sensitive to the pH level of the stomach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have also been reported &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9820255&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cases of anthrax&lt;/a&gt; from improperly preparing the tea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above cases may be rare, but it gives enough concern that home brewing the beverage may be a risk that most should avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without more research on the tea it is hard to know if the benefits outweigh the possible side effects. Every article that I found that had something positive to say about the tea seemed to be from personal experience or hearsay. All the risks that I found were connected with home brewing the tea, so it might be a safe option to drink the tea when it is prepared professionally. For now, I would suggest ingesting foods that have &lt;a href=&quot;http://mag.newsweek.com/2010/07/13/fermentation-frenzy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;similar benefits&lt;/a&gt; without the side effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to a comment about deaths only being associated with improper containers being used to prep the tea; there have been deaths associated with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/complementaryandalternativemedicine/dietandnutrition/kombucha-tea&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;severe acidosis&lt;/a&gt; as well. Most issues are due to improper handling of the tea when brewing it, even an unclean brewing environment can cause the lesser side effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7674" LastEditorUserId="7674" LastEditDate="2013-10-10T13:03:16.247" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T13:03:16.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18009" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18010" CreationDate="2013-10-07T22:19:52.687" Score="9" ViewCount="561" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen a few articles now reporting that a Chinese doctor has actually grown a second nose on his patient's forehead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-doctor-builds-nose-forehead-20130926,0,4557555.story&quot;&gt;LA Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-man-grows-new-nose-on-forehead-2013-9&quot;&gt;Business Insider&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/25/china-transplant-nose-forehead/2871369/&quot;&gt;USA Today&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/09/25/doctors-grow-nose-on-mans-forehead/&quot;&gt;ABC News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While many of these can be considered &quot;reputable&quot; news sources,  there have been times they've gotten it really wrong.  I'm curious if there has even been an research or verified successes done in this area that actually support these claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="554" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T23:49:11.810" Title="Is it possible to grow a nose on a human forehead?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18009" CreationDate="2013-10-07T22:29:28.377" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/09/130928-nose-forehead-ear-arm-reconstructive-surgery-medical-science/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Geographic&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's called prelamination: Tissue that's going to be used to rebuild an area is constructed in multiple layers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the nose, for example. If the damage from disease or injury goes all the way through, then all three layers must be replaced: the skin on the outside, the cartilage, and the soft lining inside. The forehead skin tends to be the best match for the outside skin from an area called the paramedian forehead flap...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not &amp;quot;grown&amp;quot; on the forehead, but rather, &amp;quot;constructed&amp;quot;. While the nose is being constructed on the forehead, it does not get connected to the normal air passages. After the nose is constructed, it is moved to its final destination where a nose normally would go, and connected with the normal air passages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technique also been performed using the forearm (Sinha et al. 2008) (includes pictures of the procedure). They also say that &amp;quot;a forehead flap, traditionally, has been the workhorse of such reconstructions and can provide excellent nasal reconstruction&amp;quot;, but that &amp;quot;an adherent forehead scar precluded the use of a forehead flap&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard technique (using the forehead) is described in (Menick 2008, at p. 329).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Menick, Frederick J. Nasal reconstruction: art and practice. Elsevier Health Sciences, 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sinha, M., J. R. Scott, and S. B. Watson. &amp;quot;Prelaminated free radial forearm flap for a total nasal reconstruction.&amp;quot; Journal of Plastic, Reconstructive &amp;amp; Aesthetic Surgery 61, no. 8 (2008): 953-957.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T23:49:11.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18012" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18031" CreationDate="2013-10-08T00:52:08.663" Score="8" ViewCount="1400" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-179264/Cannabis-kills-30-000-year.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-179264/Cannabis-kills-30-000-year.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cannabis is as dangerous as cigarette smoking...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[C]annabis could be a major contributor to UK deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers calculate that if 120,000 deaths are caused among 13 million smokers, the corresponding figure among 3.2 million cannabis smokers would be 30,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Does cannabis cause deaths at the same rate as tobacco cigarettes? Are there 13 million tobacco smokers in the UK? Are there 3.2 million cannabis smokers in the UK?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T13:01:56.660" Title="Does smoking cannabis kill 30,000 people per year?" Tags="|mortality|united-kingdom|smoking|recreational-drugs|marijuana|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9054" CreationDate="2013-10-08T03:32:52.570" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.villagevoice.com/2011-06-29/news/real-men-get-their-facts-straight-sex-trafficking-ashton-kutcher-demi-moore/all/&quot;&gt;Village Voice&lt;/a&gt; performed two months of investigative research and found weak evidence to back that claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Law enforcement records show that there were only 8,263 arrests across America for child prostitution during the most recent decade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &quot;100,000 to 300,000&quot; figure ... came from two University of Pennsylvania professors, Richard J. Estes and Neil Alan Weiner. ... that the figure actually represents the number of children Estes and Weiner considered &quot;at risk&quot; for sexual exploitation, not the number of children actually involved. Who, then, is at risk? Not surprisingly, the professors find that any &quot;outsider&quot; is at risk. All runaways are listed as being at risk. Yet the federal government's own research acknowledges that &quot;most runaway/thrown-away youth were gone less than one week (77 percent)&quot;—hardly enough time to take up prostitution&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;David Finkelhor, professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire ... &quot;As far as I'm concerned, [the University of Pennsylvania study] has no scientific credibility to it,&quot; he says. &quot;That figure was in a report that was never really subjected to any kind of peer review. It wasn't published in any scientific journal.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T03:32:52.570" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-08T10:44:49.657" Score="11" ViewCount="1009" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common practice in India to store drinking water in Polyethylene Terephthalate(commonly know as PET) bottles. It is also claimed in many health forums &amp;amp; newspapers articles that PET bottles shouldn't be used to store water for a prolonged time, generally 2-3 months after which it should be replaced by a new on. The articles claim chemical contamination of water.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Taking into account that drinking water at room temperature is stored in PET bottles, is it really harmful to store drinking water in PET bottles.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Also what should be the recycle period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14940" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T15:36:15.730" Title="Is consuming drinking water stored in PET bottles harmful" Tags="|medical-science|chemistry|water|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18001" CreationDate="2013-10-08T18:49:28.473" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before I get into detail, I'd like to make a few remarks regarding the questions and their possible pitfalls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, it is not easy to assess how difficult it is for young children to learn a language because they cannot provide you with cognitive feedback until a certain age. That is why &amp;quot;more difficult&amp;quot; lacks a starting point that it can be compared to and in any case there is still a lot of ground for subjectivity when it comes to difficulty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the question about whether most older learners never acquire a native-like accent, the answer is most likely 'yes'. But I strongly believe it is not the result of some critical period but rather the external factors and approach. For more information, see below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CPH (Critical Period Hypothesis) popularized by Eric Lenneberg has been the subject of lively debate among scholars ever since its conception. In the case of first language acquisition,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;lt;...&amp;gt; the hypothesis is difficult to test directly because cases of&#xA;linguistic deprivation during childhood are fortunately rare. &amp;lt;...&amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many researchers have hypothesized that young children are predisposed to the acquisition of language (Chomsky, 1959; Lenneberg, 1967; Newport, 1990) and further that this disposition is unique to childhood. Lenneberg (1967) formally proposed a critical period for language acquisition that extends from infancy until puberty. Although the exact timing (Johnson &amp;amp; Newport, 1989; Krashen, 1973; Lenneberg, 1967) and nature (Lenneberg, 1967; Newport, 1990) of the critical period are matters of debate, there is a great deal of indirect evidence to support the hypothesis (Basser, 1962; He´caen, 1976; Johnson &amp;amp; Newport, 1989, 1991; Lenneberg, 1967). Direct evidence, in the form of individuals who were deprived of linguistic input during&#xA;the proposed critical period, is more rare, and the interpretation of these cases is often ambiguous (Curtiss, 1977; Mayberry &amp;amp; Eichen, 1991; Skuse, 1993). (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/%7Eskang/371/DownloadablePapers/BongaertsEtAl97.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...it should be noted that, while the postpubescent&#xA;learners did not reach as high a level of proficiency as the native or early&#xA;learners, language had not become totally unlearnable for them. This&#xA;rules out any extreme interpretation of the critical period hypothesis. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://static.squarespace.com/static/512c2269e4b091ea7fcc8dfa/t/51ba54c5e4b086f6858a79cd/1371165893936/Grimshaw%20et%20al.%20-%201998%20-%20First-Language%20Acquisition%20in%20Adolescence%20Evidence%20for%20a%20Critical%20Period%20for%20Verbal%20Language%20Development.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of second language acquisition, the evidence is mixed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scovel's (2000) review indicates that during the 1980s expert opinion swung away from the CPH. It was influenced no  doubt by a number of negative evaluations of early language learning at school (e.g. Burstall et al, 1974) which indicated that the initial gains from making an early start&#xA;at primary school had largely evaporated within a few years at secondary school. In&#xA;recent years however opinion has begun to swing back again. Initially the CPH&#xA;focused mainly on speech (native-like accent) but in recent years has been extended&#xA;to embrace other aspects of language competence such as grammar (particularly&#xA;morphology and syntax), opening up the possibility that there may not be one 'critical&#xA;period' which applies at the one time 'across the board' but that different aspects of&#xA;language competence may go through different periods which are particularly&#xA;sensitive for their development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marinova-Todd et al 's (2000) review, on the other hand, is more&#xA;sceptical about the  CPH, pointing to thirty-five fairly recent&#xA;studies, of which fourteen seemed to offer  some support for the CPH,&#xA;with twenty-one providing negative evidence. Several of  these&#xA;studies, they claim, show that learners post-puberty are in fact&#xA;capable of  achieving native-like competence. In particular they claim&#xA;that those favouring the  CPH have committed three fallacies:&#xA;misinterpretation, misattribution and  misemphasis¹.(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/newport/pdf/Johnson_NewportCogPsy89.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The excerpt has an interesting footnote that elaborates on possible misconceptions arising from what seems obvious versus what may be the case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;¹ Marinova-Todd, Marshall and Snow (2000) accept that generally adults&#xA;achieve lower levels of proficiency than younger learners do, but they&#xA;attribute this to contextual rather than to biological factors. They&#xA;claim that those favouring the CPH fall victim to three fallacies:&#xA;'The first fallacy is misinterpretation of observations of child and&#xA;adult learners, which might suggest that children are fast and&#xA;efficient at picking up second languages. Hard data make it clear that&#xA;children learn new languages slowly and effortfully - in fact, with&#xA;less speed and more effort than adolescents or adults. The second&#xA;fallacy is misattribution of conclusions about language proficiency to&#xA;facts about the brain; connections between brain functioning and&#xA;language behaviour will no doubt in time be confirmed, but their exact&#xA;nature cannot even be guessed from the data currently available on&#xA;brain functions in early versus late bilinguals. Finally, the common&#xA;fallacy of reasoning from frequent failure to the impossibility of&#xA;success has dogged second language research. Most adult second&#xA;language learners do, in fact, end up with lower-than-native-like&#xA;levels of proficiency. But most adult learners fail to engage in the&#xA;task with sufficient motivation, commitment of time or energy, and&#xA;support from the  environments in which they find themselves to expect&#xA;thigh levels of success. …… this misemphasis has distracted&#xA;researchers from focusing on the truly informative cases:  successful&#xA;adults who invest sufficient time and attention in second language&#xA;acquisition and who benefit from high motivation and from supportive,&#xA;informative second language  environments.(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/newport/pdf/Johnson_NewportCogPsy89.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will address the question about native-like accent with the following citation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of recent studies, e.g. Bongerts et al (1997), Nikolov (2000a), Bellingham&#xA;(2000), and Neufeld (2001) all suggest that adults are in fact capable of attaining a&#xA;native-like accent, which runs counter to the CPH. Nikolov's study featured thirty three&#xA;successful language learners aged 20 to 70, all of whom had acquired their&#xA;target language after puberty. Of these, twenty were of different first languages&#xA;learning Hungarian and thirteen were of Hungarian as first language learning&#xA;English. She found that, as judged by three groups of native speakers, six of the&#xA;learners of Hungarian and five of the learners of English were either generally or&#xA;often mistaken for native speakers, and she concludes that this calls any strong&#xA;version of the CPH into question. Her survey showed that 'these successful language&#xA;learners want to sound like natives, they share intrinsic motivation in the target&#xA;language which is often part of their profession, or they are integratively motivated.(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/newport/pdf/Johnson_NewportCogPsy89.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another paper that you might be interested in reports on two studies that carefully screened a group of successful late second language learners that mastered a native-like accent:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ling.ohio-state.edu/%7Eskang/371/DownloadablePapers/BongaertsEtAl97.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SSLA, 19, 447-465. &lt;em&gt;Age and Ultimate Attainment in the pronunciation of a foreign language&lt;/em&gt;. By Theo Bongaerts, Chantal van Summeren, Brigitte Planken, and Erik Schils&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://static.squarespace.com/static/512c2269e4b091ea7fcc8dfa/t/51ba54c5e4b086f6858a79cd/1371165893936/Grimshaw%20et%20al.%20-%201998%20-%20First-Language%20Acquisition%20in%20Adolescence%20Evidence%20for%20a%20Critical%20Period%20for%20Verbal%20Language%20Development.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(1)&lt;/a&gt; BRAIN AND LANGUAGE 63, 237–255 (1998) ARTICLE NO. BL971943&#xA;&lt;em&gt;First-Language Acquisition in Adolescence: Evidence for a Critical Period for Verbal Language Development.&lt;/em&gt; By Gina M. Grimshaw, Ana Adelstein, M. Philip Bryden,† and G. E. MacKinnon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/newport/pdf/Johnson_NewportCogPsy89.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(2)&lt;/a&gt; COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 21, 60-99 (1989)&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Critical Period Effects in Second Language Learning: The Influence of Maturational State on the Acquisition of English as a Second Language.&lt;/em&gt; By JACQUELINE S. JOHNSON AND ELISSA L. NEWPORT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/johnstoneen.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(3)&lt;/a&gt; ADDRESSING 'THE AGE FACTOR': SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR LANGUAGES POLICY&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Guide for the development of Language Education Policies in Europe From Linguistic Diversity to Plurilingual Education. Reference Study.&lt;/em&gt; By Richard JOHNSTONE. 2002&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14765" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-08T18:49:28.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4309" CreationDate="2013-10-08T22:54:19.983" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ranbaxy is a good example of a company that simply faked a lot of their data. Katherine Eban wrote a very &lt;a href=&quot;http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/15/ranbaxy-fraud-lipitor/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;good article&lt;/a&gt; in Fortune that summarizes the episode:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ranbaxy pleaded guilty to seven federal criminal counts of selling adulterated drugs with intent to defraud, failing to report that its drugs didn't meet specifications, and making intentionally false statements to the government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the agency's finding of fraud and misconduct, it granted Ranbaxy lucrative rights to sell new generic drugs. In the most high-profile example, in November 2011 the FDA allowed the company to maintain its exclusive first dibs on making the generic version of a medicine taken by tens of millions of Americans: Lipitor. In the first six months, this privilege allowed Ranbaxy to generate $600 million in sales of generic atorvastatin, as nonbranded Lipitor is known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In November 2012, Ranbaxy had to recall millions of pills after tiny glass particles were discovered in some of them. Even that, it turns out, was enough for only a temporary suspension, and the FDA permitted the company to resume sales in March.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically companies who want to cheat the system can easily get away with it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the Ranbaxy story makes vividly clear, generic-drug makers intent on breaking the rules -- especially those operating abroad -- can easily do so. Drug applications work on the honor system: The FDA relies on data provided by the companies themselves. &amp;quot;We depend on that information to be truthful,&amp;quot; Gary Buehler, who headed the FDA's office of generic drugs for 10 years, said in December 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-09T13:23:18.317" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17995" CreationDate="2013-10-08T23:58:25.220" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, IPCC did not obfuscate evidence.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The early draft version of the graph was flawed.  That's why it was in an early draft and has been removed subsequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question has been adressed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/ipcc-global-warming-projections.htm&quot;&gt;an article at skepticalscience.com&lt;/a&gt;, which draws mainly from &lt;a href=&quot;http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/fake-skeptic-draws-fake-picture-of-global-temperature/&quot;&gt;an excellent blog post by climate blogger and statistician Grant Foster (a.k.a. &lt;em&gt;Tamino&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/a&gt;.  Quoting from the skepticalscience article, which in turn quotes from the blog-post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Late last year, an early draft of the IPCC report was leaked, including the first draft version of the figure shown above. The first version of the graph had some flaws, including a significant one &lt;a href=&quot;http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/fake-skeptic-draws-fake-picture-of-global-temperature/&quot;&gt;immediately noted by statistician and climate blogger Tamino&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;The flaw is this: all the series (both projections and observations) are aligned at 1990. But observations include random year-to-year fluctuations, whereas the projections do not because the average of multiple models averages those out ... the projections should be aligned to the value due to the existing trend in observations at 1990.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Aligning the projections with a single extra-hot year makes the projections seem too hot, so observations are too cool by comparison.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the draft version of the IPCC figure, it was simply a visual illusion that the surface temperature data appeared to be warming less slowly than the model projections, even though the measured temperature trend fell within the range of model simulations. Obviously this mistake was subsequently corrected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This illustrates why it's a bad idea to publicize material in draft form, which by definition is a work in progress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that neither skepticalscience nor the linked blog are peer-reviewed publications.  I recommend reading both articles in their entirely and then forming your own opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2013-10-09T00:16:28.567" LastActivityDate="2013-10-09T00:16:28.567" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17995" CreationDate="2013-10-09T16:10:48.430" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first version of the IPCC diagram is not a very good representation of what the models actually say.  Note that the diagram suggests that the models were all in exact agreement on global temperatures in 1990.  Was this the case?  No, as we can see if we look at the outputs of the model using &lt;a href=&quot;http://climexp.knmi.nl/start.cgi?id=someone@somewhere&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ClimateExplorer&lt;/a&gt; (which is a great tool for checking out what the models actually say):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YTNdp.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the anomalies (i.e. the mean seasonal cycle has been subtracted out) for all model runs for RCP8.5 for the temperature at surface (TAS).  It is quite clear that the models are not all in perfect agreement about 1990.  The revised IPCC diagram faithfully reflects the variability in actual model output, so rather than obfuscating the model-observation comparsion, it has made it more fair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between the two plots is due to baselining.  Climate models are better at modelling the changes in temperature resulting from changes in forcings than they are at accurately modelling absolute temperature (some of the variability in the model runs shown above is due to differences in absolute temperature between model runs).  This is well known to those who work with models (although it is such common practice it is difficult to find a paper explaining why this is necessary - it is apparently part of the scientific paradigm).  However these differences in absolute temperature are essentially irrelevant to the question of the response of the climate to increasing CO2 radiative forcing.  The simple solution is to subtract a constant from each model run so that they agree on the mean temperature over some agreed baseline period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is what the IPCC say about baseline periods (from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg2/index.php?idp=144&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TAR&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;A popular climatological baseline period is a 30-year &quot;normal&quot; period, as defined by the WMO. The current WMO normal period is 1961-1990, which provides a standard reference for many impact studies.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long baseline periods are a good idea as it means that the projections are not very sensitive to the effects of internal variability in the observations and in the models (as it is the average offset over an extended period that e.g. contains several cycles of ENSO).  If we use just one year and align all the models and observations to that one year, then if it is a particular warm year in the observations e.g. 1990, the models also start hot and this increases the apparent discrepancy later.  If we use a cool year, e.g. 1992, the models start cooler as well, and this would decrease the apparent discrepancy later.  However the difference between the two is entirely meaningless as it depends on the noise in the observations.  That is why the longer baseline used in the revised diagram gives a more accurate depiction of the difference between models and observations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So why did the IPCC use a single year baseline in the original diagram?  I suspect it is because it makes the trends (rate of warming) easier to see visially if the models and projections all pass through some common point.  &lt;strong&gt;HOWEVER&lt;/strong&gt; this does mean that there is a spurious offset between models and observations, that depends on which year in which the data are made to agree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Far from obfuscating the difference between models and observation, the new diagram presents it more clearly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastActivityDate="2013-10-09T16:10:48.430" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18025" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18026" CreationDate="2013-10-09T22:32:30.353" Score="19" ViewCount="3729" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/g2TkRl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;standing desk&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thedailyomnivore.net/2011/09/page/2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard conflicting claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.co.uk/about_5472437_calories-burned-standing-vs-sitting.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Site that claims it maks a crap load of difference&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crankyfitness.com/2012/03/stand-up-workstations-revisited.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Site that claims it doesn't make a shred of difference&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does science say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;You may find &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13568/is-using-a-standing-desk-for-several-hours-healthier-than-sitting-at-a-desk-all&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; about the general health effects also interesting&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2022-12-07T15:34:35.157" Title="Does working at a standing desk consume more calories than sitting?" Tags="|medical-science|computers|work|physical-fitness|ergonomics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18025" CreationDate="2013-10-10T00:23:38.607" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Reiff et al. 2012) looked at this question in the classroom setting, where the the desk was used for general paper-based work (not computer based work). They recruited 20 (10 male, 10 female) young adults (22.8 ± 1.9 years). Participants were randomly assigned to a sitting desk or a standing desk. They found that calorie expenditure differed between the two groups. The sitting group expended 1.02 ± 0.22 kcal/min, while the standing group expended 1.36 ± 0.20 kcal/min. This was with &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt; ≤ 0.0001.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Benden et al. 2011) looked at the effect of &quot;desks that encourage standing rather than sitting&quot;, and found that &quot;the treatment group experienced significant increases in calorie expenditure over the control group&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Perry 2012) says &quot;research has shown that standing burns 30% to 40% more calories than sitting&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benden, Mark E., Jamilia J. Blake, Monica L. Wendel, and John C. Huber Jr. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2010.300072&quot;&gt;The impact of stand-biased desks in classrooms on calorie expenditure in children&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Journal Information 101, no. 8 (2011).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perry, Lance S. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ergostoreonline.com/pdfs/standing-up-to-obesity.pdf&quot;&gt;Standing Up&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Professional Safety (2012).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reiff, Christopher, Kara Marlatt, and Donald R. Dengel. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cehd.umn.edu/kin/research/lihp/publications/Reiff%20JPAH%202012.pdf&quot;&gt;Difference in caloric expenditure in sitting versus standing desks&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Journal of Physical Activity and Health 9, no. 7 (2012): 1009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-10-11T01:36:21.147" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T01:36:21.147" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17921" CreationDate="2013-10-10T04:34:34.183" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is true to an extent, because you can't really draw a line between nature and culture. I don't think there's a definite answer to this question, but I'll try to share some theories around it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an evolutionary point of view, female hominids have always invested a big part of their time and energy in their offspring's survival. Our babies take a very long time to develop, and they do it outside the womb (because the hominid brain is so big, it needs to keep growing after the infant is born, otherwise it won't fit through the pelvis). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;African hominoids, including chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), gorillas&#xA;  (Gorilla gorilla), and humans (Homo sapiens; Gagneux et al., 1999),&#xA;  share a number of parenting mechanisms with other placental mammals,&#xA;  including internal gestation, lactation, and attachment mechanisms&#xA;  involving neuropeptides such as oxytocin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.missouri.edu/~gearyd/GearyFlinnParent.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Geary et al., 2001&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Early hominids combined hunting and scavenging, and used mostly scavenging because they were competing with large predators (&lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/hunters-scavengers-meat-obtaining-techniques-of-454079.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article by Mark Fox&lt;/a&gt; expands on the subject). &#xA;Scavenging is something a female hominid can potentially do while carrying an infant, while hunting would be technically impossible until the baby has grown up. This doesn't mean males went hunting and females stayed in a cave feeding their babies 24/7, it just means a more balanced distribution of tasks would mean more chances of infants living up to adulthood and reproducing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of factors played in this subtle 'evolution' of families and groups. Charles Darwin (1871) was the first to propose that competition for mates plays an important role in reproductive success (he called this process sexual selection). Stronger males have an 'advantage': they can protect their group and offspring against other groups and against predators more effectively. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Intergroup conflict is undeniably pervasive across human societies&#xA;  (...) There are reliable accounts of intergroup conflict in past&#xA;  hunter–gatherer societies—usually via raiding and ambushing—killing&#xA;  substantial numbers of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/367/1589/670.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;McDonald et al., 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, a larger / taller man may have been able to provide more protection, have greater genetic qualities to pass on to their future children (or look like he does), and even be awarded with a better social status. But we can't talk only in biological terms, because we are (also, or mainly) cultural beings. The previous seems valid and proven for hominids, but what about modern Homo Sapiens? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Through studying group structure and complex social relationships,&#xA;  we've learned that human ancestors may have acted similar to primates&#xA;  -- grooming and all&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/367/1589/670.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nakamura, 2003&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can't be absolutely certain on how these behaviours have changed during our evolution as a species, but we do know culture and language have played a major role in how things developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Culture mediates our relationships with other people, with the&#xA;  environment, with spirits and deities, and with abstract or imagined&#xA;  worlds like mathematics and the future. Culture provides the context&#xA;  for language, without which our ability to think would be grossly&#xA;  constrained (however often we find ourselves at a loss for words), and&#xA;  it makes possible our endlessly diverse modes of social cooperation&#xA;  and conflict. Culture encompasses much of what makes us distinctively&#xA;  human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.templeton.org/what-we-fund/funding-priorities/culture-biology-and-human-uniqueness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a consensus that through evolution, female hominids seem to have sexually selected stronger males as mates. There is also a consensus that primate behaviour studies can shed some light not only on how our ancestors lived, but also on our species as it is now. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moment we start talking about culture, these extrapolations become extremely complex, and our current tools not good enough to deepen them. While some biological pressure might still exist, what was once considered a good mate has drifted to a whole new set of characteristics. Being protective can now mean having resources, having money or being a position of power. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to optimize their inclusive ﬁtness, women may look for a man&#xA;  who is relatively older (and has thus had more time to accrue material&#xA;  and political wealth) and of high social status. It should be noted&#xA;  that these preferences are not always at the conscious level, but are&#xA;  theorized to have been ingrained into the human psyche as innate&#xA;  responses through the process of evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psych.colorado.edu/~cuchangelab/pdfs/bryan/2006/femalehipratio.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Braun &amp;amp; Bryan, 2006&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pawlowski, B., Dunbar, R. I. M., &amp;amp; Lipowicz, A. (2000). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v403/n6766/abs/403156a0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tall men have more reproductive success&lt;/a&gt;. Nature, 403, 156.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nakamura, Michio. &quot;'Gatherings' of social grooming among wild chimpanzees: implications for evolution of sociality.&quot; Journal of Human Evolution. 44, 1. 59-71. 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Braun, M. F., &amp;amp; Bryan, A. (2006). &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CCsQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://psych.colorado.edu/~cuchangelab/pdfs/bryan/2006/femalehipratio.pdf&amp;amp;ei=GS9WUuyDMYmrkQXqrYGgBQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNEvWNPrtFn9KDfzVdph2-g3VoEhtA&amp;amp;sig2=iYzwK64eAzejFxXer68DcA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Female waist-to-hip and male waist-to-shoulder ratios as determinants of romantic desirability&lt;/a&gt;. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 23, 805-819.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gills, J. S., &amp;amp; Avis, W. E. (1980). &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CDAQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://psp.sagepub.com/content/6/3/396.abstract&amp;amp;ei=Ji9WUrTFN8q3kgXzw4CQCQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFoUArM4kWjSo03OAqEZqgI5TwKUQ&amp;amp;sig2=i8ykZATntVWHkf2QEwjzHA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The male-taller norm in mate selection&lt;/a&gt;. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 6, 396-401. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fink, B., Neave, N., Brewer, G., &amp;amp; Pawlowski, B. (2007). &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CCsQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886907002504&amp;amp;ei=Ni9WUsuWJITykAWB3IGQDQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNFpMDH7gm46vKwkXY4nDmyHM9nBHw&amp;amp;sig2=t3fzB3gRVx67MHlOgV2lFA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Variable preferences for sexual dimorphism in stature (SDS): Further evidence for an adjustment in relation to own height&lt;/a&gt;. Personality and Individual Differences, 43, 2249-2257.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Buss, D., M. (1998). &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CDAQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3367282&amp;amp;ei=Qi9WUtW4NYinkgWykICwDQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNEBwcnJBUd-VpxNb4xIxTQAqd_2gQ&amp;amp;sig2=HYYbN9zK9FAKt1G4bJlDKg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The evolution of human intrasexual competition: Tactics of mate attraction&lt;/a&gt;. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 616-628.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pawlowski, B., &amp;amp; Jasienska, G. (2005). &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CDAQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16038772&amp;amp;ei=Uy9WUoj2Oc63kAXFh4CQBQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNH916Ak3j6sPLrGrwLgS3aNZfxQow&amp;amp;sig2=-Q1zpGQ-b4O1dzHvsWSQ1g&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Women’s preferences for sexual dimorphism in height depend on menstrual cycle phase and expected duration of relationship&lt;/a&gt;. Biological Psychology, 70, 38-43.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Note: This is my first answer in Skeptics, please let me know how I can make it better!&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14740" LastEditorUserId="14740" LastEditDate="2013-10-10T20:29:38.217" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T20:29:38.217" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18028" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18030" CreationDate="2013-10-10T09:49:18.427" Score="31" ViewCount="14351" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Oatmeal&lt;/a&gt; claims that Columbus engaged in sexual slavery. &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/870CV.png&quot; alt=&quot;oatmeal extract&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Columbus began rewarding his lieutenants with sex slaves -- particularly young girls who had been forced into sexual slavery. In a letter to a friend, Columbus remarked upon how girls between the ages of nine and ten could be used as currency:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By contrast, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/31358/why-do-liberals-hate-columbus-day/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why Do Liberals Hate Columbus Day?&lt;/a&gt; is skeptical:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3 . Columbus was the pimp of the New World&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1500, Columbus wrote to a friend: “A hundred castellanoes are as&#xA;  easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and&#xA;  there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from&#xA;  nine to ten are now in demand.”  Another letter written by Columbus’&#xA;  friend Michele de Cuneo (in 1492, before the expedition reached the&#xA;  New World) reads “Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native&#xA;  women to rape.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From these letters it has been deduced that Columbus was something of&#xA;  a New World pimp, auctioning off women to his men for sexual pleasure.&#xA;  Surely this behavior must have occurred to an extent, but was it&#xA;  systemic and carried out with great relish by Columbus?  No one can&#xA;  know for sure, yet the charge is leveled at Columbus by his detractors&#xA;  as if it is indisputable fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was Columbus involved in sexual slavery?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-04-21T06:07:11.670" LastActivityDate="2018-04-21T06:07:11.670" Title="Was Columbus involved in sexual slavery?" Tags="|history|sexual-abuse|slavery|christopher-columbus|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18028" CreationDate="2013-10-10T12:34:42.743" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;The initial quote that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as for a&#xA;  farm, and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls;&#xA;  those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good&#xA;  price must be paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;comes &lt;a href=&quot;http://ageofex.marinersmuseum.org/index.php?type=explorersection&amp;amp;id=65&quot;&gt;from a letter&lt;/a&gt; that Christopher Columbus wrote while prisoner on a ship being sent back to Spain after &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_Bobadilla&quot;&gt;Francisco de Brobadilla&lt;/a&gt; was sent to replace him as governor of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispaniola&quot;&gt;Hispaniola&lt;/a&gt;. During the time that Christopher Columbus was governor it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/hispaniola/&quot;&gt;well&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yale.edu/gsp/colonial/hispaniola/&quot;&gt;documented&lt;/a&gt; that he was involved in the establishment of the slave trade and was criticized by the church for favoring his economic interests over &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=SwtMUtesSDEC&amp;amp;pg=PA111&amp;amp;hl=es#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;conversion of the natives&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We also have a letter from &lt;a href=&quot;http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michele_da_Cuneo&quot;&gt;Michele da Cuneo&lt;/a&gt;, a childhood friend of Columbus who &lt;a href=&quot;http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/poca/POC-col.html&quot;&gt;wrote&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When I was in the boat, I took a beautiful Cannibal girl and the&#xA;  admiral gave her to me. Having her in my room and she being naked as&#xA;  is their custom, I began to want to amuse myself with her. Since I&#xA;  wanted to have my way with her and she was not willing, she worked me&#xA;  over so badly with her nails that I wished I had never begun. To get&#xA;  to the end of the story, seeing how things were going, I got a rope&#xA;  and tied her up so tightly that she made unheard of cries which you&#xA;  wouldn't have believed. At the end, we got along so well that, let me&#xA;  tell you, it seemed she had studied at a school for whores. The&#xA;  admiral named the cape on that island the cape of the Arrow for the&#xA;  man who was killed by the arrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, the admiral that da Cuneo is referring to is Columbus. This letter also provides us with historical documentation that that least one rape took place as a result of Columbus's actions. It is &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=VmIIawS3SRcC&amp;amp;pg=PA99&amp;amp;dq=sexual+abuse+slavery&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=pkBYUvXRL6654AO1wICwDg&amp;amp;ved=0CEgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=sexual%20abuse%20slavery&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;documented&lt;/a&gt; that sexual abuse took place at the time with regards to slaves as a general population and later documentation of the the same (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/enslavement/text6/text6read.htm&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/guy60/History326/Burnard.pdf&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=pGv5dC2hDV8C&amp;amp;pg=PA231&amp;amp;lpg=PA231&amp;amp;dq=caribbean%20slaves%20brothels&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=6G_IrFRuVP&amp;amp;sig=mXfB1CKI9kOwB2IqWCkN4xKM0kc&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=o0RYUsaEA_Dh4APrqYDoBA&amp;amp;ved=0CCwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=caribbean%20slaves%20brothels&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;three&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=jvno7nJsMycC&amp;amp;pg=PA88-IA2&amp;amp;lpg=PA88-IA2&amp;amp;dq=sexual%20abuse%20slavery%201500s&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=A7e81_cUxa&amp;amp;sig=97zKYD6hSBhMWRSeQxszQYQWI0o&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=h5tWUo_yO7Sv4AOX6oHwDg&amp;amp;ved=0CEEQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=sexual%20abuse%20slavery%201500s&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;four&lt;/a&gt;, etc.) supports the pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any evidence of a historical evidence or consensus that Columbus was involved with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_slavery&quot;&gt;sexual slavery&lt;/a&gt; with regards to the modern definition of the term; however, the historical record does strongly support his involvement in the slave trade and the one rape by da Cuneo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-10-12T02:03:25.180" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T02:03:25.180" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18012" CreationDate="2013-10-10T12:56:03.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article you quoted is must be very old. It refers to a recent reclassification of cannabis to a class-C drug in UK law, which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/society/2001/oct/24/drugsandalcohol&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;happened in 2001&lt;/a&gt; (and was reclassified as Class-B in 2009). It also refers to a BMJ article published &amp;quot;today&amp;quot;, which I assume is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/326/7396/942&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Comparing cannabis with tobacco.&lt;/a&gt;. This article attempts to correlate the severity of cannabis smoking deaths with that of cigarette deaths. The basic argument they make is that cannabis and cigarette smoking have roughly equal risks of death, and that typical cannabis smokers &amp;quot;smoke less but inhale more&amp;quot;, so they ought to be able to make estimates of cannabis mortality by studying cigarette mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is an article from around 2003, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/327/7416/635&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Comparing cannabis with tobacco - again&lt;/a&gt;, which appears to be a rebuttal of the original article; it's abstract begins:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Link between cannabis and mortality is still not established&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent editorial in this journal implied that as many as 30 000 deaths in Britain every year might be caused by smoking cannabis.1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first study done in a cohort of 45 450 male Swedish conscripts, age 18-20 when interviewed about the use of cannabis, reported no increase in the 15 year mortality associated with the use of cannabis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second study was performed in a cohort of 65 171 men and women age 15-49, who were members of a large health maintenance organisation in California, United States. They completed a questionnaire assessing their use of cannabis, and reported no increase in mortality associated with use of cannabis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This second article seems to imply that the original BMJ article did not really establish a mortality level of cannabis, and that the 30 000 number was simply an &amp;quot;editorial opinion&amp;quot; based on cigarette deaths. Even the quotes from the publishers of the editorial in the Daily Mail show a strong level of weasel-wording:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In today's issue of the British Medical Journal, Prof Henry and other doctors from Imperial College, and St Mary's Hospital, both in London, say cannabis &lt;em&gt;could be&lt;/em&gt; a major contributor to UK deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers calculate that if 120,000 deaths are caused among 13million smokers, the corresponding figure among 3.2million cannabis smokers &lt;em&gt;would be&lt;/em&gt; 30,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prof Henry added: &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Even if&lt;/em&gt; the number of deaths turned out to be only a fraction of the 30,000 we &lt;em&gt;believe&lt;/em&gt; possible, cannabis smoking would still be described as a major health hazard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(all emphasis mine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7998" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-10T13:01:56.660" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18033" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-10T20:37:10.850" Score="9" ViewCount="228" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=605542&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=605542&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3rd years get sick on peds alot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peds or EM during the winter months pretty much maximizes your odds of getting something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do students on paediatrics rotations get sick a lot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T01:12:40.253" Title="Do students on paediatrics rotations get sick a lot?" Tags="|medical-science|hygiene|disease|infection|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14190" CreationDate="2013-10-11T00:28:27.027" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer:&lt;/strong&gt; If you measure IQs, taller people tend to show higher numbers, and men are taller in average. A man and a woman of the same size would show a slight difference in favour of the female. If measuring intelligence as brain components, men show slightly higher numbers and have a better short-term memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Hampshire-et-al.-2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Adam Hampshire&lt;/a&gt; from the University of Western Ontario has very recently conducted a &lt;a href=&quot;http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Hampshire-et-al.-2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt; with 100,000 participants of different age, gender and geographical locations, criticising the use of IQ tests as a measure of intelligence. They run cognitive tests that analysed the memory, reasoning, attention and planning abilities, and reinforced them with MRI scanning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For a century or more many people have thought that we can distinguish&#xA;  between people, or indeed populations, based on the idea of general&#xA;  intelligence which is often talked about in terms of a single number:&#xA;  IQ. We have shown here that’s just wrong.  Results from the study found that given a broader range of cognitive&#xA;  tasks, the differences in ability relate to &lt;strong&gt;at least three components&#xA;  of intelligence&lt;/strong&gt; – short-term memory, reasoning and verbal aptitude.&#xA;  These three components combined create an intelligence, or &quot;cognitive&#xA;  profile&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, &lt;strong&gt;there is no single measure of intelligence&lt;/strong&gt;. The components interact with one another but are handled by three distinct nerve “circuits” in the brain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to mention this because IQ has been used as a measuring tool since the 1900s. They were created by French psychologist Alfred Binet, but &lt;strong&gt;Binet himself did not believe that his psychometric instruments could be used to measure a single, permanent and inborn level of intelligence&lt;/strong&gt; (Kamin, 1995). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Works like the one cited on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/14196/14740&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; have actually been &lt;a href=&quot;http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kanazawa/pdfs/ajp2009.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;critisised by Satoshi Kanazawa and Diane J. Reyniers in 2009&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The orthodoxy in intelligence research for the second half of the 20th&#xA;  century had been that men and women had the same average intelligence,&#xA;  but men had greater variance in their distribution than women.  Most&#xA;  geniuses were men, and most imbeciles were men, they said, while most&#xA;  women were in the normal range.  This conclusion, however, was&#xA;  manufactured out of political expediency.  Not wanting to discover, or&#xA;  a priori denying, any sex differences in intelligence,&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;psychometricians simply deleted from the standardized IQ tests any&#xA;  item on which the performance of men and women differed.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kanazawa and Reyniers ventured another hypothesis. They started with something that had been stated before: that height is positively correlated with 'intelligence' (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_and_intelligence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt;), taller people on average are 'more intelligent' than shorter people. And men in every human population are taller than women. They analysed a large representative American sample (20.745 from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health) and discovered that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Once height (measured in inches) is controlled,  women have&#xA;  significantly higher IQs than men.&lt;/strong&gt; Net of  height, women score 2.14&#xA;  points higher on the PPVT.  In contrast, each inch in height is worth&#xA;  more than  half an IQ point (0.56).  Further controlling for health,&#xA;  physical attractiveness, age, race, education, and earnings does not&#xA;  alter this conclusion. Height has exactly the same effect on&#xA;  intelligence for men and women:  Each inch in height increases the IQ&#xA;  by about .4 point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because American men on average are 5 inches taller than American women (5'10&quot; vs. 5'5&quot;), this translates into 2.80 IQ points (overcoming the 2.14-point advantage of women). According to this study, &lt;strong&gt;when height is not controlled, men show higher IQs in average&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are still just &lt;strong&gt;abstractions&lt;/strong&gt; for what we want to define as intelligence (&lt;code&gt;IQ&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;g&lt;/code&gt;, Hampshire's ratio). Kanazawa's work offers a plausible explanation to why IQ tests show higher numbers for men, but I think it's Hampshire's research that shows a more flexible approach to the subject. Intelligence has environmental modifiers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7eG9e.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yi7UR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Hampshire-et-al.-2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;: Fractionating Human Intelligence&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Age&lt;/strong&gt; was by far the most signiﬁcant predictor of performance, with the mean scores of individuals in their sixties 1.7 SD below those in their early twenties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the games you play, if you are an anxious person or if you smoke, all modify your final &lt;code&gt;g&lt;/code&gt; number, or supposed intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here comes what I think is a possible answer to this question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;While the differences between male and female participants’ mean (0.1&#xA;  SD), verbal (0.03), and reasoning scores (0.03) were negligible, males&#xA;  showed a small advantage over females on the STM component score (0.2&#xA;  SD)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are men smarter than women?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you measure IQs, taller people tend to show higher numbers, and men are taller. According to this, taller men are (generally, very broadly) 'smarter' than shorter men and shorter women. In average, a man and a woman of the same size would show a slight difference in favour of the female. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If measuring intelligence as brain components, men show slightly higher numbers and have a better short-term memory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the latest study using 'modern' technology such as MRI scanners. The brain is still the most complex structure we possess, so I doubt any of this will remain carved in stone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14740" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T17:02:17.803" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18037" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18038" CreationDate="2013-10-11T05:39:27.947" Score="6" ViewCount="569" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to an article in the Wall Street Journal: &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204603004577269910906351598.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What You Lose When You Sign That Donor Card&lt;/a&gt;, EEG measurements aren't required in declaring brain death, because EEG patterns are probably absent.  Is this claim true or utter rot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You might also be emitting brainwaves. Most people are surprised to&#xA;  learn that many people who are declared brain dead are never actually&#xA;  tested for higher-brain activity. The 1968 Harvard committee&#xA;  recommended that doctors use electroencephalography (EEG) to make sure&#xA;  the patient has flat brain waves. Today's tests concentrate on the&#xA;  stalk-like brain stem, in charge of basics such as breathing, sleeping&#xA;  and waking. The EEG would alert doctors if the cortex, the thinking&#xA;  part of your brain, is still active.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But various researchers decided that this test was unnecessary, so it&#xA;  was eliminated from the mandatory criteria in 1971. They reasoned&#xA;  that, if the brain stem is dead, the higher centers of the brain are&#xA;  also probably dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-10-11T11:54:54.850" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T12:32:44.477" Title="Are EEG recordings required to declare brain death?" Tags="|medical-science|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18037" CreationDate="2013-10-11T11:59:59.457" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In summary: EEG is used only as an ancillary test and is not one of the 3 main clinical criteria of brain death (in most US states).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Waters et al. 2004):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The diagnosis of brain death in most European countries and in the US, is defined as the total and irreversible loss of all brain functions (the ‘whole’ brain concept).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only in the UK is brain death defined as a non‐functional state of the brainstem in which all the signs of brainstem activity are absent (the ‘lower’ brain concept). In this context, examination of cortical and subcortical bioelectrical activity is not necessary in the UK and therefore an EEG and other technical tests need not be performed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Wijdicks et al. 2010) gives a description of the state of brain-death determination in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most US states have adopted the Uniform Determination of Death Act. That act, however, defers to &amp;quot;accepted medical standards&amp;quot; in defining determination of death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1995, the American Academy of Neurology published a practice parameter to establish these medical standards. The practice parameters emphasized three necessary clinical findings to confirm brain death:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;coma with a known cause,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;absense of brainstem reflexes, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apnea&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;apnea&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The 1995 practice parameter is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aan.com/Guidelines/home/GetGuidelineContent/118&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and (Wijdicks 1995) has more background information.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The EEG is listed in the practice parameter as an &lt;em&gt;ancillary test&lt;/em&gt;. &amp;quot;In adults, ancillary tests are not needed for the clinical diagnosis of brain death and can not replace a neurologic examination. Physicians ordering ancillary test should appreciate the disparities between tests and the potential for false-positives (i.e. the test suggests brain death, but the patient does not meet the clinical criteria).&amp;quot; (Wijdicks et al. 2010)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The EEG (along with other confirmatory tests) &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; recommended in certain situations where the clinical criteria are known to be less reliable (severe facial trauma, preexisting pupillary abnormalities, toxic levels of drugs, sleep apnea).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 2010 review of the effectiveness of the clinical criteria established in 1995, they conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In adults, recovery of neurologic function has not been reported after the clinical diagnosis of brain death has been established using the criteria given in the 1995 ANN practice parameter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite this apparent practical effectiveness, they do emphasize that the guidance given in the 1995 practice parameter and repeated in 2010 is not evidence-based:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the details of the clinical neurological examination to determine brain death cannot be established by evidence-based methods. The detailed brain death evaluation protocol that follows is intended as a useful tool for clinicians. It must be emphasized that this guidance is opinion-based. Alternative protocols may be equally informative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waters, C. E., G. French, and M. Burt. &amp;quot;Difficulty in brainstem death testing in the presence of high spinal cord injury.&amp;quot; British journal of anaesthesia 92, no. 5 (2004): 760-764.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wijdicks, Eelco FM. &amp;quot;Determining brain death in adults.&amp;quot; Neurology 45, no. 5 (1995): 1003-1011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wijdicks, Eelco FM, Panayiotis N. Varelas, Gary S. Gronseth, and David M. Greer. &amp;quot;Evidence-based guideline update: Determining brain death in adults Report of the Quality Standards Subcommittee of the American Academy of Neurology.&amp;quot; Neurology 74, no. 23 (2010): 1911-1918.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-11T12:32:44.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18039" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20802" CreationDate="2013-10-11T12:29:57.240" Score="23" ViewCount="2240" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancel_Keys&quot;&gt;Ancel Keys&lt;/a&gt; in the 1950s published the famous &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Countries_Study&quot;&gt;Seven Countries Study&lt;/a&gt;, which tied saturated fat intake to heart disease (among other findings).  Critics claim that he hand-picked data from countries to fit his hypothesis.  From &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Countries_Study#Major_findings&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Critics of the Seven Countries Study (like Gary Taubes) say, &quot;Keys chose seven countries he knew in advance would support his hypothesis.&quot; If Gary Taubes is correct, then Ancel Keys provides researchers with little to no valuable clinical information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8WA5wcaHp4&quot;&gt;Big Fat Lies&lt;/a&gt; documentary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Keys had reliable data from 22 countries, and the results were all over the place. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8WA5wcaHp4&amp;amp;t=1m8s&quot;&gt;from 1:08&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that Ancel Keys cherry-picked the data for his study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NOTE: I'm not asking whether his conclusion(s) are accurate, nor am I asking about the other claims made in the video. I'm not interested in discussing the merits (or lackthereof) of low-fat diets, etc.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:43:38.043" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T00:43:38.043" Title="Did Ancel Keys disregard reliable data that did not fit his conclusion that saturated fat was a leading contributor to heart disease?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4466" CreationDate="2013-10-11T22:29:31.663" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://paleale.eecs.berkeley.edu/~varaiya/papers_ps.dir/HOV.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a study made on the effectiveness of HOV Lanes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, the study says that:&#xA;1. Speed of traffic in a pool lane is reduced by 20% compared to off peak hours. &#xA;2. It increases congestion in other lanes, and reduces the speed in those lanes.&#xA;3. People who have long term pooling arrangements are not influenced by the time saving factor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15797" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2013-10-12T09:39:02.663" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T09:39:02.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18043" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18046" CreationDate="2013-10-11T23:55:48.130" Score="5" ViewCount="947" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just heard on the news that some comet named ISON is passing by the Sun. And they said that it will split and then it may hit us. They are citing Nostradamus prophecies and stuff. It appears that he predicted an event like this. Also they said Russia has put their armed forces on alert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there any chance it will head towards Earth? :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2636" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T06:29:58.920" Title="Is comet ISON going to kill us?" Tags="|astronomy|extinction-event|sun|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18043" CreationDate="2013-10-12T04:43:56.657" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, there are many objects out there that &quot;may or may not&quot; impact Earth. ISON (a &quot;sungrazer,&quot; incoming from the Oort Cloud) is headed for a close roundabout of our Sun and may wholly or partially disintegrate or may come back round intact. Earth MAY pass through the remnants of very tiny particles of ISON's pass-through; most, burning up in the atmosphere and possibly illuminating high-up clouds, potentially causing a &quot;glowing cloud effect.&quot; This does not mean humans on the ground will also glow or suddenly develop mutant abilities. Particles hit Earth 24/7. A similar panic existed when Halley's Comet swung through about a century ago. Read this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;As Halley's Comet approached the sun in 1910, astronomers announced that Earth would actually pass through the tail of this comet during May of that year. They assured everyone that our planet was safe and suggested the possibility of some spectacular sunsets. Meanwhile, the doomsayers latched onto a potential link: if comets contain a poisonous gas and if Earth is going to pass through the comet's tail, then the people of Earth were in serious danger. Numerous newspapers actually published this story. Astronomers countered by saying the material in the tail was so spread out that there could be no ill affects, but few newspapers published this accurate information. Interestingly, a minor panic arose in some cities and entrepreneurs took advantage of it. They sold &quot;comet pills&quot; which were said to counter the effects of the poisonous gas. The pills sold like crazy. On May 20, after Earth had passed through the tail, everyone who had taken the pills was still alive...but, then, so was everyone else.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;source:&lt;a href=&quot;http://cometography.com/hysteria.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://cometography.com/hysteria.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sound familiar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for a direct hit (in ISON's current state), it does not seem likely. &#xA;Firstly, you must determine the reliability of the &quot;they said&quot; source you refer to. Although, NASA and certain nationally funded US Astronomical resources are offline or somewhat stagnant and delayed in data posting, there are other world-wide observatories still contributing daily data on ISON. My advice is to compare a variety of resources and images and certainly, not solely rely on conspiracy and non-scientific online sources. Although, there may be a human desire for conspiracy and potential doom, cross-referencing multiple Science-based resources will help you determine for yourself any potential hazard ISON may or may not represent. I say this so you might have an opportunity to include/compare scientific data with any other facts and or metaphysical/spiritual/theoretical data or inclinations you may have already aligned yourself with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI: I am not a scientist but I often try to include scientific understanding and knowledge on events that contain potential to change the world as we know it. I am not waving off your concerns in the way some pure Scientists might do to a deeply Spiritual person (or vice-versa). I am a deeply Universal and Spiritual person and I think I understand &quot;where&quot; you are asking you question from. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WARNING: There is a lot of nonsense out there, especially, on YouTube. Be cautious of tight editing, doom music, frozen images with graphic additions added and Biblical/other religious cross-referencing. Anything you find out there like that, is likely, complete and utter nonsense; usually geared to increase the self-importance of whomever posted the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have always been open to greater purpose for ISON but to date, ISON has not demonstrated anything exceptionally peculiar that would indicate it is anything but a comet coming in for a Sun dive. There are a few independent suggestions (metaphysical &amp;amp; conspiracy) suggesting ISON was ejecting &quot;controlled jet outbursts,&quot; as if, to imply an intelligent control for spacial guidance. However,it has not been wholly determined whether those suggestions are devised, for promoting a particular agenda, or factual. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to answer your question &quot;will it head towards Earth?&quot; &#xA;Well, if it breaks apart, the possibility MAY exist any broken parts COULD, potentially, fall to Earth but we do not have that exact data yet, as the comet has not knowingly broken apart. Again, currently, the full object (ISON) trajectory is calculated to make a Sun swoop, at about 730,000-ish miles from the Sun but this does not include any additional calculations should the comet slow, reposition or break apart prior to Sun approach or what ISON (or what is left of) do upon re-emergence from the Sun orbit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this helped. Peace. Dream &amp;amp; Be Well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15800" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T04:43:56.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8717" CreationDate="2013-10-12T15:20:04.523" Score="18" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The rate of population growth is declining and will soon become&#xA;  negative.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://esa.un.org/wpp/unpp/panel_population.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UN DESA provides 3 prediction variants&lt;/a&gt;: high, medium, low. Of these only the low one predicts decline and only by 2050. With medium growth slowly declines, but is non-negative up to 2100. So while it's true that the growth is declining, it most likely will not become negative anytime soon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/j7z5L.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, unlike video claims, it's not &quot;unknown&quot; why this happens. Well proven scientific theory of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uwmc.uwc.edu/geography/demotrans/demtran.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;demographic transition&lt;/a&gt; has been formulated in 1929 by the American demographer Warren Thompson. As nation progress towards being highly developed, they also progress trough the 4 stages.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lUK06.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;CBR is the Crude Birth Rate - births in a given year for every 1000 persons. CDR is the Crude Death Rate, defined similarly.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been also studies showing that very highly-developed countries experience what is called &quot;fertility rebound&quot;, i.e. in countries with extremely high HDI (Human Development Index) the fertility is growing again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7256/full/nature08230.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Advances in development reverse fertility declines&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Mikko Myrskylä, Hans-Peter Kohler &amp;amp; Francesco C. Billari, Nature 460, 741-743 (6 August 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature08230&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the twentieth century, the global population has gone through&#xA;  unprecedented increases in economic and social development that&#xA;  coincided with substantial declines in human fertility and population&#xA;  growth rates. The negative association of fertility with economic and&#xA;  social development has therefore become one of the most solidly&#xA;  established and generally accepted empirical regularities in the&#xA;  social sciences. As a result of this close connection between&#xA;  development and fertility decline, more than half of the global&#xA;  population now lives in regions with below-replacement fertility (less&#xA;  than 2.1 children per woman). In many highly developed countries, the&#xA;  trend towards low fertility has also been deemed irreversible. Rapid&#xA;  population ageing, and in some cases the prospect of significant&#xA;  population decline, have therefore become a central socioeconomic&#xA;  concern and policy challenge. Here we show, using new cross-sectional&#xA;  and longitudinal analyses of the total fertility rate and the human&#xA;  development index (HDI), a fundamental change in the well-established&#xA;  negative relationship between fertility and development as the global&#xA;  population entered the twenty-first century. Although development&#xA;  continues to promote fertility decline at low and medium HDI levels,&#xA;  our analyses show that at advanced HDI levels, further development can&#xA;  reverse the declining trend in fertility. The previously negative&#xA;  development–fertility relationship has become J-shaped, with the HDI&#xA;  being positively associated with fertility among highly developed&#xA;  countries. This reversal of fertility decline as a result of continued&#xA;  economic and social development has the potential to slow the rates of&#xA;  population ageing, thereby ameliorating the social and economic&#xA;  problems that have been associated with the emergence and persistence&#xA;  of very low fertility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This again means, that the low variant of population predictions mentioned above is less likely. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The reason for undernourishment famine is not lack of supply, but&#xA;  political.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Socioeconomical rather than political. It's true that on worldwide average more food than needed is produced. Also in last decades world hunger has become less of an issue, significant progress has been made. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/gbd/research/project/global-burden-diseases-injuries-and-risk-factors-study-2010&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study&lt;/a&gt;, in metric of increased risk of death, child malnutrition has dropped from 6th position in 1990 to 16th in 2010, with a overall risk drop of -62%, on the other hand obesity went up from 10th position up to 6th (+60% risk increase). Currently &lt;strong&gt;obesity kills 3 times more people than malnutrition&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This topic has been discussed here in the question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/525/can-we-grow-enough-crops-to-feed-all-people-on-earth&quot;&gt;Can we grow enough crops to feed all people on Earth?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We aren't running out of space. Everyone on earth could live in the&#xA;  area of Texas.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is absolutely wrong. Truth is that if you'd had whole world population live in one city with population density of New York City, then that megapolis would have size of Texas. However, cities are not self sustainable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing this is based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://persquaremile.com/2011/01/18/if-the-worlds-population-lived-in-one-city/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Per Square Mile infographic&lt;/a&gt;, that went viral quite a while ago:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/37HtZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, because of misinterpretations, he has &lt;a href=&quot;http://persquaremile.com/2012/08/08/if-the-worlds-population-lived-like/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;prepared follow-up&lt;/a&gt; infographic.&#xA;That this one is based on &quot;ecological footprint&quot;, according to which current global population has a footprint of 1½ of Earth's surface. Sourced from: Wackernagel, M., Kitzes, J., Moran, D., Goldfinger, S. &amp;amp; Thomas, M. (2006). &lt;a href=&quot;http://eau.sagepub.com/content/18/1/103&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;The Ecological Footprint of cities and regions: comparing resource availability with resource demand, Environment and Urbanization&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, 18 (1) 112. DOI: 10.1177/0956247806063978&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SQdHb.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T14:06:11.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18053" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18055" CreationDate="2013-10-12T17:37:47.607" Score="5" ViewCount="2827" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://vbagdasaryan.ru/nuzhna-li-putinu-nobelevskaya-premiya-mira/&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; &quot;Does Putin really need Nobel Peace Prize&quot;, it is claimed that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari had the following conversation with Serbian president Miloshevich during the Miloshevich-Ahtisaari-Chernomyrdin meeting (my translation from Russian):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ahtisaari: &lt;em&gt;We met here totally not for any discussions or&#xA;  negotiations.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Miloshevich (after reading the document): &lt;em&gt;What will happen if we will&#xA;  not sign?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ahtisaari (moves hand over the table surface): &lt;em&gt;Belgrade will be like&#xA;  this table. We at once will start carpet bombing of Belgrade.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ahtisaari (again moves the hand over the table): &lt;em&gt;This will happen to&#xA;  Belgrade. In less than a week there will be half a million dead.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6248" LastEditorUserId="6248" LastEditDate="2013-10-12T21:49:33.710" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T07:40:53.713" Title="Did Nobel Peace Prize winner, Martti Ahtisaari, threaten to bomb Belgrade and kill half a million people?" Tags="|history|politics|war|europe|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18053" CreationDate="2013-10-12T18:03:28.397" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best evidence I could find in support of this conversation is from Gregory Elich at Counterpunch (and also published by globalresearch.ca, which is operated by the Centre for Research on Globalization).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/10/14/how-the-nobel-peace-prize-was-won/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How the Nobel Peace Prize was Won&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalresearch.ca/how-the-nobel-peace-prize-was-won/10573&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;globalrearch.ca reprint&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ahtisaari opened the meeting by declaring, “We are not here to discuss or negotiate,” after which Chernomyrdin read aloud the text of the plan. Ahtisaari says that Milosevic asked about the possibility of modifying the plan, to which he replied, “No. This is the best that Viktor and I have managed to do. You have to agree to it in every part.” Ristic reports that as Milosevic listened to the reading of the text, he realized that the “Russians and the Europeans had put us in the hands of the British and the Americans.” Milosevic took the papers and asked, “What will happen if I do not sign?” In answer, “Ahtisaari made a gesture on the table,” and then moved aside the flower centerpiece. Then Ahtisaari said, “Belgrade will be like this table. We will immediately begin carpet-bombing Belgrade.” Repeating the gesture of sweeping the table, Ahtisaari threatened, “This is what we will do to Belgrade.” A moment of silence passed, and then he added, “There will be half a million dead within a week.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not prove that the conversation happened, but simply shifts the question to whether or not you trust this source and its references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It refers to two sources behind this construction of the conversation, which I don't have access to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interview with Ljubisa Ristic by Renato Farina, “Why We Serbs Have Given In,” Il Giornale (Milan), June 7, 1999.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Interview with Martti Ahtisaari by Riccardo Chiaberge, “Ahtisaari: This is How I Bent Milosevic,” Corriere della Sera (Milan), July 21, 1999.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-10-12T18:22:11.677" LastActivityDate="2013-10-12T18:22:11.677" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18043" CreationDate="2013-10-12T20:35:18.517" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it will miss us, in this orbit, by about 0.428 astronomical units (64 million km, 40 million miles).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=C%2F2012%20S1;orb=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is the latest technical tracking information&lt;/a&gt; on &quot;C/2012 S1 (ISON)&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a Java app that can be used to model the orbits, and is used and vetted by hundreds or thousands of astronomers every night. If you animate the orbit, you will see the you will see the nearest point is about Dec 26, 2013, and the earth distance is 0.428 AU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can also confirm from the app that the uncertainty in the orbits is very low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it's very clear that the comet is going to miss us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A piece of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/11/05/breaking-up-is-easy-to-do-if-youre-a-comet/#.Ulmva2RATA0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;comet could break off&lt;/a&gt; and change course. Indeed, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lpi.usra.edu/education/explore/comets/background/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the &quot;tail&quot; of a comet is dust and vapor being blown away from the comet&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the larger the chunk of the comet, the less likely it is to be diverted very far away from the main body, so a large chunk won't be diverted enough to hit the Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists (and amateur astronomers) are &lt;em&gt;hoping&lt;/em&gt; that a fair amount of &lt;em&gt;dust-sized&lt;/em&gt; pieces of ISON might make it to Earth's atmosphere in mid-January (after our orbit has carried us the tens of millions of kilometres the comet will miss us by). That &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; make &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space.com/20859-comet-ison-new-meteor-shower.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a nice meteor shower&lt;/a&gt;, which would be lovely.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-10-13T06:29:58.920" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T06:29:58.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18053" CreationDate="2013-10-12T21:23:42.467" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would claim that it is highly unlikely that the description of the events are truthful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tpk.fi/ahtisaari/eng/press/sken.html&quot;&gt;description of the meeting&lt;/a&gt; from the website of the President of Finland (which was Ahtisaari in 1999, when this meeting happened), there is at least one part of that description that was true: This was not a negotiation. The meeting was to present the NATO/Russian proposition. The negotiations were between NATO and Russia, and Ahtisaari was brought in as a third part in those negotiation as he had proven to be a good mediator earlier. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NATO explicitly did &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/363599.stm&quot;&gt;not want to negotiate&lt;/a&gt; with Milosevic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that's not of course what the quote really is about. That Milosevic obviously didn't have a chance once NATO decided to stop the war was pretty obvious. He of course had no chance to win a war against NATO. This was probably obvious to him as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The question then is if Ahtisaari really threatened to kill half a million Serbs if Milosevic didn't agree to the proposition?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, only the people in that room really knows, and at least two of them are already dead. But what is clear is that after that meeting, Milosevic needs to convince everyone else that agreeing to the proposition is the right thing to do, and since the proposition includes Serbian withdrawal from Kosovo, that will be a very hard pill to swallow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would that pill be easier to swallow if they had no option? Is it easier to accept if the alternative is half a million dead? Well, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But would NATO really carpet bomb and flatten Belgrade? Of course not. They already knew from long before that bombing civilians isn't seen with kind eyes, and was in the bombing of Yugoslavia aiming at military and strategic targets, although of course there were &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualties_during_Operation_Allied_Force&quot;&gt;civilian casualties&lt;/a&gt;. But a mass destruction of Belgrade would have not have been accepted by people, media or politicians in the west.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I don't think Milosevic was stupid enough to believe it would be accepted. So I don't think Ahtisaari made any such threats, because it would have made him seem like a fool. &lt;strong&gt;It's most likely that this is Milosevic excuse for agreeing to a proposal he knew he didn't have much choice than to agree to.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quotes about Ahtisaari making a sweeping gesture over a table comes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/10/14/how-the-nobel-peace-prize-was-won/&quot;&gt;Ljubisa Ristic&lt;/a&gt;. Then a politician, now it seems like he is a movie director. I think we can ascribe the creative license to him. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also notable that the quotes have Ahtisaari saying &quot;we will bomb&quot;. Who exactly? The Finnish airforce? The reference is to NATO of course, of which Ahtisaari was not a part. He would not and could not have said &quot;we&quot; about NATO. So at best the quote is a distortion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="80" LastEditorUserId="80" LastEditDate="2013-10-13T07:40:53.713" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T07:40:53.713" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18059" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18060" CreationDate="2013-10-13T00:31:07.047" Score="5" ViewCount="931" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DOthU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Hajimemashite! I&amp;#39;m Fukuppy&quot;&gt;&#xA;Text: Hajimemashite! (Pleased to meet you) &quot;Fukuppy&quot; desu. (I'm Fukuppy)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this the mascot of the Fukushima dai-ichi nuclear accident?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Example tweet)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;#&lt;/code&gt;Fukushima #FukNuke #FUBAR now officially called #Fukuppy by #TEPCO&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2013-10-14T00:31:05.613" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T11:15:07.873" Title="Is &quot;Fukuppy&quot; a mascot of the Fukushima nuclear accident?" Tags="|japan|fukushima-daiichi|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18059" CreationDate="2013-10-13T00:31:07.047" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's the wrong Fukushima. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fukusima.co.jp/character/index.html&quot;&gt;mascot&lt;/a&gt; is for Fukushima Industries Corporation, founded by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fukusima.co.jp/en/company/history.html&quot;&gt;Nobuo Fukushima&lt;/a&gt; in Osaka, where it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fukusima.co.jp/en/company/outline.html&quot;&gt;still headquartered&lt;/a&gt;. The name of the company has &lt;a href=&quot;http://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/19407126/japans-fukuppy-firm-rethinking-mascot-after-sniggers/&quot;&gt;nothing to do&lt;/a&gt; with the prefecture affected by the nuclear accident. Its business is fridges, not nuclear reactors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mascot &lt;a href=&quot;http://tokyodesu.com/2013/10/14/meet-fukuppy-the-unfortunately-named-new-mascot-of-fukushima-industries/&quot;&gt;does not&lt;/a&gt; belong to TEPCO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2013-10-15T11:15:07.873" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T11:15:07.873" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18005" CreationDate="2013-10-13T01:34:35.940" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;You posit two questions: one in the title, and the other in the text. They are completely different questions. But to your intention or not, that may mislead readers to the impression that they are the same question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did Taro Aso say that Japan should emulate the Nazis in amending the constitution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, he did. He said that we can learn from the technique that Nazi used to gain popularity from the German people to change the constitution. (There is no doubt that the way Hitler and Goebbels made their speech was very effective in gaining people's attention and sympathy.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Was Aso saying that the Nazi change in the constitution was a good thing that Japan should emulate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, he did not say that the particular change made to the German constitution by Nazi was good (although the major goal of The Liberal Democratic Party (where Aso belongs) from the time of its establishment has been to change Japan's constitution).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although Aso is said, according to Nonaka Hiromu, to have made a discriminative comment regarding a particular social class in Japan, there is no particular mentioning that he is a supporter of Nazi's policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt; Since there was a request for a source citation, here you go for the whole transcription: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asahi.com/politics/update/0801/TKY201307310772.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.asahi.com/politics/update/0801/TKY201307310772.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8357" LastEditorUserId="8357" LastEditDate="2013-10-13T17:19:06.920" LastActivityDate="2013-10-13T17:19:06.920" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18064" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18071" CreationDate="2013-10-13T21:04:13.047" Score="12" ViewCount="6472" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18028/was-columbus-involved-in-sexual-slavery&quot;&gt;Was Columbus involved in sexual slavery?&lt;/a&gt; , the &lt;a href=&quot;http://theoatmeal.com/comics/columbus_day&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;same Oatmeal page&lt;/a&gt; makes an additional series of claims about Christopher Columbus that describe systematic atrocities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;When the Lucayans refused, Columbus responded by ordering that their ears and noses be cut off....&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Columbus's men took to hunting these refugees down for sport, and after murdering them, using their bodies as dog food.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Punishment for not meeting a quota was &quot;...Columbus's men would cut off the natives' hands and force them to wear [their own cut-off hands.]&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these claims true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-04-21T06:06:22.460" LastActivityDate="2019-10-09T18:22:49.977" Title="Did Columbus order atrocities against the Lucayan people?" Tags="|history|christopher-columbus|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18065" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-14T00:42:29.550" Score="12" ViewCount="3758" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found some websites claiming a Norwegian artist (Reidar Finsrud) created a true perpetual motion machine. Perpetual motion is a concept that would violate both the first and second thermodynamics' laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD3yft0XKIw&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt; showing the machine: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a perpetual motion machine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15812" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-10-14T02:05:41.047" LastActivityDate="2015-06-03T03:22:32.187" Title="Has Reidar Finsrud created a perpetual motion machine?" Tags="|physics|perpetual-motion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18066" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-14T02:14:07.570" Score="10" ViewCount="311" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Naturally&quot; is probably not the best term, but I wonder if one chose a random city and poked about with a Geiger Counter, would one find similar figures to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1329729/elevated-radiation-claimed-tokyo-2020-olympic-venues&quot;&gt;those reported here by a civic group&lt;/a&gt; and relayed by the South China Morning Post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tests were also carried out at the planned site of the Olympic Village and the media centre, with the highest radiation reading - 0.484 microsieverts per hour - detected in undergrowth close to Yumenoshima Stadium, where the equestrian events will be held.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, an organisation (that I consider to be trustworthy) who monitor levels across Tokyo and the North-East said this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It is difficult to have this debate unless we know for sure whether this radiation is from Fukushima or whether it is naturally occurring background radiation,&quot; said Pieter Franken, founder of the Japan office of the environmental monitoring organisation Safecast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the civic group also said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We found caesium-137 at almost every place we carried out tests, and there was no caesium here before the accident at Fukushima,&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be untrue, I would say, as fallout from South Pacific nuclear tests would have produced caesium-137.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T19:17:41.270" Title="Do radiation hotspots occur &quot;naturally&quot;?" Tags="|radiation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18065" CreationDate="2013-10-14T02:19:16.483" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;As discussed in my answer to a strongly-related question - &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14283/can-permanent-magnets-be-exploited-to-create-energy/14295#14295&quot;&gt;Can permanent magnets be exploited to create energy?&lt;/a&gt; - there have been so many attempts to create perpetual motion machines like this one, that Adjunct Engineering professor, Dr. Kevin Kilty, has written an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kilty.com/pmotion.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;essay that provides categories&lt;/a&gt; and explains how they inevitably fail to be true Perpetual Motion machines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finsrud's contraption belongs in category 8: &quot;Machines without losses or friction&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_thermodynamics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Laws of Thermodynamics&lt;/a&gt; have been well-tested and verified in a wide-range of situations. A video showing a demonstration of a perpetual motion machine running for 30 seconds is insufficient evidence to overturn our acceptance of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T02:33:25.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18064" CreationDate="2013-10-14T11:23:04.953" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would guess that many claims come from the same source, i.e. the writings of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolom%C3%A9_de_las_Casas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bartolomé de las Casas&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't read it all, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wdl.org/en/item/515/view/1/198/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chapter 2&lt;/a&gt; describes &quot;the first island which was found by Christians&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wdl.org/en/item/515/view/1/199/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; describes cutting off hands and tying them to the victims' body, telling the victim to take letters to those who had escaped into the mountains (this was to punish the Indian's first revolt, not as a punishment for not getting enough gold).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wdl.org/en/item/515/view/1/201/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; describes using hunting dogs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have linked to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wdl.org/en/item/515/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;French translation&lt;/a&gt; because I don't read Spanish. The French and Dutch were partisan/biased against the Spanish, and the original author (Bartolomé de las Casas) had a religious or political agenda in writing this account, but I have no great reason to doubt their veracity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly I think that Bartolomé de las Casas is an origin of the claims in the OP. The Oatmeal article says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All of the information in this essay came from A People's History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, and Lies My Teacher Told Me, by James W. Loewen, both of which uses primary sources such as eyewitness accounts, journal entries, and letters from Christopher Columbus himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/History/Hero-making_LMTTM.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;alleged extracts from Lies my Teacher Told Me&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All of these gruesome facts are available in primary source material- letters by Columbus and by other members of his expeditions-and in the work of Las Casas, the first great historian of the Americas, who relied on primary materials and helped preserve them. I have quoted a few primary sources in this chapter. Most textbooks make no use of primary sources. A few incorporate brief extracts that have been carefully selected or edited to reveal nothing unseemly about the Great Navigator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia says that the writings of Bartolomé de las Casas were part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend#The_Conquest_of_the_Americas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;origin of the Black Legend&lt;/a&gt;; and its summary of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend#Scholarly_analysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scholarly analysis&lt;/a&gt; on that subject includes statements such as the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is neither a legend, insofar as the negative opinions of Spain have genuine historical foundations, nor is it black, as the tone was never consistent nor uniform. Gray abounds, but the color of these opinions was always viewed in contrast which we have called the white legend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... proposes an overcoming of the &quot;false choice&quot; between two legends, to present an approach that appreciates the positive results of Spanish conquest without denying or ceasing to deplore the atrocities that were perpetrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of the above imply there is no &quot;scholarly&quot; doubt that &quot;atrocities&quot; by the Spanish did occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-10-14T15:49:41.120" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T15:49:41.120" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18073" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18074" CreationDate="2013-10-14T13:26:54.440" Score="6" ViewCount="712" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/08/call-time-congressional-fundraising_n_2427291.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Call Time For Congress Shows How Fundraising Dominates Bleak Work Life&quot;&lt;/a&gt; the huffingtonpost writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The daily schedule prescribed by the Democratic leadership contemplates a nine or 10-hour day while in Washington. Of that, four hours are to be spent in &quot;call time&quot; and another hour is blocked off for &quot;strategic outreach,&quot; which includes fundraisers and press work. An hour is walled off to &quot;recharge,&quot; and three to four hours are designated for the actual work of being a member of Congress -- hearings, votes, and meetings with constituents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Call time&quot; is explained as being fundraising-related as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...whether it's &quot;call time&quot; spent on the phone with potential donors, or in person at fundraisers in Washington or back home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that give an accurate impression of how much time US congressman spend fundraising?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2013-10-19T13:29:39.180" LastActivityDate="2013-10-19T13:29:39.180" Title="Do US congressman spend most of their time fundraising?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18073" CreationDate="2013-10-14T16:07:00.840" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll only address the quoted claim: that a 9-10 hour work day generally includes 4-5 hours of fundraising time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;References&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm putting these first because they're an interesting series of interviews and stories by NPR and WBEZ on the topic of political fundraising, and I'll be drawing from them for my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/03/30/149648666/senator-by-day-telemarketer-by-night&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Planet Money: Senator By Day, Telemarketer By Night&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/03/30/149698946/on-tour-with-nancy-pelosi-fundraising-rock-star&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Planet Money: On Tour With Nancy Pelosi, Fundraising Rock Star&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/03/30/149712857/the-friday-podcast-im-calling-to-ask-for-your-contribution&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Planet Money: I'm Calling To Ask For Your Contribution&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/transcript&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This American Life: Take the Money and Run for Office&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/03/26/149390968/take-the-money-and-run-for-office&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Planet Money: Take the Money and Run for Office&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/04/04/150004648/where-money-meets-power-in-washington&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Planet Money: Where Money Meets Power in Washington&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Details&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Walt Minnick (former US Representative from Idaho): &amp;quot;I would spend two or three hours a day as a congressman trying to raise money&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;most of those hours are spent across the street from the Capitol, in special offices set up by the parties specifically for this purpose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Alex Bloomberg (quoting Dick Durbin, senior US Senator from Illinois) says that &amp;quot;on the Senate side, they'll have these things called &amp;quot;power hours&amp;quot; several times a week, where a bunch of senators will go into the call center&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are also in-person fundraising events. Minnick says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I get lots of those kinds of events, too. I was on the egg committee, and every egg group in Washington that wanted to host one of those kinds of events, I would be pleased to go to. And if you walked away with $4,000 or $5,000 from that, that was, a half or a third of what you were supposed to raise that day. And that was easy money. That was a lot fewer phone calls you had to make that afternoon, so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Alex Bloomberg reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's not uncommon for congressman to average two, three, four hours a day doing the other job, the one in the call center.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One member told me, if it was the end of the quarter and he really needed to make his numbers, he'd be there all day long. The fact is, you don't have time to do both jobs. And often, the fundraising wins out over the lawmaking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nancy Pelosi (US Representative from California, Minority Leader):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I think they've said this year I've attended almost 400 fundraisers in nearly 40 cities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This graphic breaks down fundraising events (not just Nancy Pelosi's) by type:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/weyEx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This graphic breaks down fundraising events by time of year:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YkFXv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on these reports, I find that &lt;em&gt;sometimes&lt;/em&gt; the majority of a senator's or representative's working day is spent fundraising, and that on many days, several hours per day are spent fundraising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T18:23:25.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18076" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18077" CreationDate="2013-10-14T18:48:09.117" Score="10" ViewCount="2834" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a 1996 special of German news-magazine &quot;Der Spiegel&quot; there's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/spiegelspecial/d-8870372.html&quot;&gt;a column about Alan Abbott&lt;/a&gt;, who participated in Marilyn Monroes funeral. He's cited to have told a story about a &quot;young male&quot; who bought a hearse from Abbott, only to dig up his dead lover, transport him home and proceed to have &quot;bodily love&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my translation of the interesting section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The embalming preserved the object of his lust, &lt;strong&gt;and sex with the dead is not punishable in California.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true? Was there a time after 1957 where necrophilia was not punishable or even legal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15212" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T19:10:31.060" Title="Is necrophilia legal in California?" Tags="|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18076" CreationDate="2013-10-14T18:55:27.640" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a felony under &lt;a href=&quot;http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=HSC&amp;amp;sectionNum=7052.&quot;&gt;California Code § 7052&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This section was enacted almost as-is in 1939 by Stats 1939 ch 60.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amendments since enactment were by Stats 1993 ch 1232 § 19 (AB 598) and Stats 2004 ch 413 § 1 (AB 1493).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 1993:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) Added &quot;willfully&quot; and the comma before &quot;without&quot; in the first sentence; and (2) substituted &quot;, under authority of law, removes the remains for reinterment, or performs a cremation&quot; for &quot;removes the remains of a relative or friend for reinterment&quot; in the last sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 2004:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) Added subd (a) designation; (2) substituted &quot;interment, or commits an act of sexual penetration on, or has sexual contact with, any remains known to be human, without&quot; for &quot;interment any human remains, without&quot; in subd (a); and (3) added subd (b).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-10-14T19:10:31.060" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T19:10:31.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18080" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-14T19:36:38.823" Score="6" ViewCount="14976" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was posted to Reddit's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/occupywallstreet/comments/1ofpfc/a_bad_day_for_the_indians_xpost_from_rconspiracy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;/r/occupywallstreet&lt;/a&gt; for Columbus Day 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dI5K2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image of quote&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. [...] They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I shoed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane[...] They would have make fine servants[...] With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.&quot; - Christopher Columbus &lt;em&gt;Captain's Log, 1492&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-04-21T23:04:22.163" LastActivityDate="2018-04-21T23:04:22.163" Title="Did Christopher Columbus ever make this statement?" Tags="|quotes|christopher-columbus|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18081" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18080" CreationDate="2013-10-14T20:05:28.683" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I struggeled to find an &lt;em&gt;official&lt;/em&gt; copy of the captain's log online, but there are two that have a lot of commonalities,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/columbus1.asp&quot;&gt;Fordham University's Medieval Sourcebook: &#xA;Christopher Columbus: Extracts from Journal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.franciscan-archive.org/columbus/opera/excerpts.html&quot;&gt;Franciscan Archives: Excerpts from Christopher Columbus' Log, 1492 A.D.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these lead one to a similar conclusion,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thursday, 11 October., &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Weapons they have none, nor are acquainted with them, for I showed them swords which they grasped by the blades, and cut themselves through ignorance. They have no iron, their javelins being without it, and nothing more than sticks,&lt;/strong&gt; though some have fish-bones or other things at the ends. [...] It appears to me, that the people are ingenious, and &lt;strong&gt;would be good servants&lt;/strong&gt; and I am of opinion that they would very readily become Christians, as they appear to have no religion.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see the translations here is pretty similar. &quot;Weapons&quot;&quot; vs &quot;arms&quot;, &quot;cane&quot; vs &quot;sticks&quot;, &quot;fine&quot; vs &quot;good&quot;. It's pretty close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sunday, 14 October., &lt;em&gt;I could conquer the whole of them with fifty men, and govern them as I pleased.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the conclusion is pretty accurate: conquer vs subjugate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only notable exception, using the Fordham archive is this,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;As I saw that they were very friendly to us, and perceived that they could be much more easily converted to our holy faith by gentle means than by force, I presented them with some red caps, and strings of beads to wear upon the neck, and many other trifles of small value, wherewith they were much delighted, and became wonderfully attached to us. Afterwards they came swimming to the boats, bringing parrots, balls of cotton thread, javelins, and many other things which they exchanged for articles we gave them, such as glass beads, and hawk's bells; which trade was carried on with the utmost good will. But they seemed on the whole to me, to be a very poor people. [...]&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to indicate Columbus was &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; hostile from the first encounter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the quote from above can be found in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Letter_on_the_First_Voyage#Letter_to_Luis_de_Santangel_.28Spanish.29&quot;&gt;Santangel letter&lt;/a&gt; as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ems.kcl.ac.uk/content/etext/e022.html&quot;&gt;reproduced and translated here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They knew no sect and were not idolaters, except that they all believe that power and good come from heaven, and they believed very firmly that I and these ships and crew came from heaven and in this belief they received me everywhere, once they had overcome their fear. And this is not because they are ignorant; rather, they are of subtle intelligence and can find their way around those seas, and give a marvellously good account of everything; it is only because they have never seen men clothed or ships of that kind. &lt;strong&gt;When I arrived in the Indies, at the first island I found I took some of them by force so that they could learn and give me information about what there was in those parts, and in that way they soon understood us and we them, whether by word or by sign; and they have been very useful to us.&lt;/strong&gt; I still have them with me, and they still insist that I come from heaven, in spite of all the exchanges they have had with me, and they were the first to announce this wherever I went, and the others would run from house to house and to the nearby towns shouting: &quot;come, come and see the people from heaven.&quot; In this way they all flocked in, men and women alike, great and small, once they were confident about us; none were left behind, and they all brought something to eat and drink, which they gave with marvellous affection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;tldr;?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this was said or written by Christopher Columbus with very little deviations in the translations however it comes from at least three separate sources: two entry in the ships log and one in a the &quot;Santangel letter&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2013-10-14T20:17:36.610" LastActivityDate="2013-10-14T20:17:36.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18082" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18085" CreationDate="2013-10-15T07:19:38.867" Score="5" ViewCount="6438" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a couple sites with this claim but I can't find any reliable sources...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snapple.com/real-facts/cap-view/715&quot;&gt;http://www.snapple.com/real-facts/cap-view/715&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chacha.com/question/how-much-water-does-a-full-grown-oak-tree-expel-through-its-leaves-each-day&quot;&gt;http://www.chacha.com/question/how-much-water-does-a-full-grown-oak-tree-expel-through-its-leaves-each-day&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was hoping someone could give a better explanation or confirmation of this claim... How many leaves does an oak tree have? What is the rate at which water is expelled? What is the definition of a &quot;full grown oak tree&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15526" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T10:07:28.197" Title="Does a full grown oak tree expel 7 tons of water from its leaves in a day?" Tags="|biology|water|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18059" CreationDate="2013-10-15T08:37:27.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This mascot has absolutely nothing to do with Fukushima the prefecture, the nuclear plant or anything related to the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster.  It is purely a mascot for an Osaka-based company created with a name that, when pronounced as intended in Japanese (&quot;Foo Koo Pee&quot;), has no relation to what people think it spells. The company's mistake is using unnecessary English letters in showing the character.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone else's mistake is how they think it's pronounced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15828" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T08:37:27.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18082" CreationDate="2013-10-15T10:29:09.003" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Summary: 7 tons seems extreme, but it is probably not more than one order of magnitude too large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trees lose water by transpiration through the pore-like stomata of their leaves. This water is primarily drawn up in the tree-sap from the roots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect the transpiration figures vary a lot depending on local climate type, current weather (humidity etc), availability of water, exact tree size, tree variety, etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a large oak tree can transpire 40,000 gallons of water per year&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://water.me.vccs.edu/courses/SCT112/lecture3_print.htm&quot;&gt;vccs.edu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are about 240 US Gallons of water in a ton. SO the above figure equates to an average of about 0.45 tons a day. However, trees in temperate climates are much more active in summer than in winter, so the peak daily value might be several times higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the full-grown oak (Quercus robur L.) tree ... [has] sap flow rate values ... of up to 400 Kg per day ... 100 years of age, 33 m height.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02880444#page-2&quot;&gt;Sap Flow Rates and Transpiration Dynamics in the Full-Grown Oak ...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;400 Kg is about 0.44 tons or exactly 0.4 tonnes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T10:07:28.197" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T10:07:28.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18089" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-15T17:47:22.630" Score="6" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that people with blond hair usually have significantly more strands of hair. I searched around online, but I can't find anything outside of some unsourced answers to more more broad Q&amp;amp;A sites. Is there any proof that the number of hair strands or follicles are related to the color of your hair?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example of such a claim is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stylelist.com/read/blondes-vs-brunettes-what-your-hair-color-says-about-you/&quot;&gt;StyleList&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fun fact! Natural blondes have significantly more hair than brunettes,&#xA;  because evolutionary science tells us that hair evolved in part to&#xA;  protect our scalp from the sun's rays. With less pigmentation than&#xA;  brunettes, blondes developed more hair to get that protective barrier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="930" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2013-10-15T20:29:09.650" LastActivityDate="2013-10-15T20:29:09.650" Title="Is there a link between hair color and the number of hair follicles?" Tags="|hair|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18090" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18211" CreationDate="2013-10-15T19:36:48.353" Score="25" ViewCount="1546" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Oral-B makes some claims about their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oralb.com/products/pro-health-all-in-one-toothbrush/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oral-B Pro-Health All-In-One&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oral-B Pro-Health All-In-One toothbrush has been clinically proven to remove more plaque than a regular manual toothbrush with its CrissCross® bristles, which are angled at 16° to attack plaque from the right angle.&#xA;  Removes up to 99% of plaque with perfectly angled CrissCross bristles&#xA;  Helps clean hard-to-reach places with Power Tip® bristles&#xA;  Is gentle on enamel and gums&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jc3Od.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this toothbrush remove more plaque than a toothbrush without 16° CrissCross bristles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a &quot;right angle&quot; for attacking plaque?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14619" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2019-01-24T18:22:48.967" LastActivityDate="2019-01-24T18:22:48.967" Title="Do modern toothbrush features remove more plaque than regular toothbrushes?" Tags="|hygiene|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18094" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18096" CreationDate="2013-10-16T15:29:52.597" Score="5" ViewCount="17934" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just saw this picture making the latest rounds today on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/socialism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reddit's /r/socialism&lt;/a&gt;. The picture has the quote attributed to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malala_Yousafzai&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Malala Yousafzai&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/J7Rsj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Malala on socialism&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caption reads,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am convinced&#xA;  socialism is the&#xA;  only answer and&#xA;  I urge all&#xA;  comrades to&#xA;  take this&#xA;  struggle to a&#xA;  victorious&#xA;  conclusion. Only&#xA;  this will free us&#xA;  from the chains&#xA;  of bigotry and&#xA;  exploitation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom banner reads,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Malala Yousafzai&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen other claims of the same sort,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://31.media.tumblr.com/ad1fde90028ffc93ee906110cafa0ce1/tumblr_mjgwj3FzTe1qzxm3co1_500.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Malala socialist claim repeated&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="36598" LastEditDate="2022-12-19T13:24:09.367" LastActivityDate="2022-12-19T13:24:09.367" Title="Did Malala Yousafzai ever say &quot;socialism is the only answer&quot;?" Tags="|politics|quotes|pakistan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18096" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18094" CreationDate="2013-10-16T15:44:45.497" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Malala as the author of a letter received at a conference.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.democracynow.org/2014/10/13/socialist_city_councilmember_on_nobel_prize&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quote claimed by Amy Goodman of DemocracyNow.org&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/12/23/-hold-malala-obamasocialismnobellaureatespoliticalviewscomplex.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;later repeated by Al Jazeera&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am convinced Socialism is the only answer and I urge all comrades to take this struggle to a victorious conclusion. Only this will free us from the chains of bigotry and exploitation. - Malala Yousafzai&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marxist.com/historic-32nd-congress-of-pakistani-imt-1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marxist.com states that Malala said these things in a letter&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comrade Javed Iqbal, a Pakistani comrade from Birmingham in the UK, intervened to read out a message that had been sent from Malala Yousafzai, the young sympathiser of the Marxist Tendency famous for her part in the struggle for the right to education for girls in Pakistan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The leader reads,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“First of all I’d like to thank The Struggle and the IMT for giving me a chance to speak last year at their Summer Marxist School in Swat and also for introducing me to Marxism and Socialism. I just want to say that in terms of education, as well as other problems in Pakistan, it is high time that we did something to tackle them ourselves. It’s important to take the initiative. We cannot wait around for any one else to come and do it. Why are we waiting for someone else to come and fix things? Why aren’t we doing it ourselves?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I would like to send my heartfelt greetings to the congress. &lt;strong&gt;I am convinced Socialism is the only answer and I urge all comrades to take this struggle to a victorious conclusion. Only this will free us from the chains of bigotry and exploitation.&lt;/strong&gt;”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xz17fp_young-girl-from-swat_news&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;is a video of this speech where her letter is read&lt;/a&gt;. If you look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marxist.com/historic-32nd-congress-of-pakistani-imt-1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IMT page for the event&lt;/a&gt;, you’ll notice that the &lt;a href=&quot;https://picasaweb.google.com/103315366936682530345/CongressOfTheStruggle2013?feat=flashalbum#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;picture gallery at the bottom of the page&lt;/a&gt; shows &lt;a href=&quot;https://picasaweb.google.com/103315366936682530345/CongressOfTheStruggle2013?feat=flashalbum#5853792982247956434&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the same woman (she enters at 1m0s) in the move&lt;/a&gt;. Unfortunately, we don’t have a translation, nor do we have acknowledgement that the letter is official, but the speaker does seem to say “Malala” quite a bit, and the video is tagged “Pakistan”, “Malala Yousafzai”, “Swat District”, “International Marxist Tendency”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to say, “A close friend of Malala was also present at the congress, who was on the bus when the girls were attacked. She spoke, making some comments and reading out a poem.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Malala as a socialist.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the words of the letter are harder to tie to Malala, her connection with Socialism is not. If you wanted to make that connection then outside of the claims in this letter, we have photographic evidence of her at an IMT conference in Swat, and mentions in two Indian newspapers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here she is speaking at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Marxist_Tendency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Marxist Tendency (IMT)&lt;/a&gt; (a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trotskyism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trotskyist&lt;/a&gt; group) in the Swat valley which was covered not just by Marxist.com but by &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20131015013012/https://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2013%5C10%5C13%5Cstory_13-10-2013_pg3_4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dailytimes.com.pk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marxist.com/images/stories/pakistan/SWAT_Marxist_school_Malala_Yousufzai.JPG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rrIKK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Malala Yousufzai speaking at the Marxist school in SWAT&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hindu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Hindu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, a Chennai-based English-Indian daily newspaper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/it-is-business-as-usual-in-pakistan/article4049128.ece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;acknowledged this claim by IMT of Malala's participation as early as October 12, 2012&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that the International Marxist Tendency has posted a report following the attack that Malala had attended a National Marxist Youth School in Swat in July, another line of conspiracy theories is sure to emerge regarding how she was a communist and la-deen (irreligious).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2022-08-16T15:25:42.883" LastActivityDate="2022-08-16T15:25:42.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18102" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-17T03:58:58.737" Score="9" ViewCount="814" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many libertarian economists argue in favor of laissez-faire economic policies. As a supporting argument, they often claim that Roosevelt's New Deal program actually prolonged the Great Depression. I'm a little skeptical about this claim. I somehow think that libertarians tend to state their opinions as the absolute and obvious truth...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there a general consensus among economists regarding whether the New Deal helped to end the Great Depression? What are some of the evidence backing the libertarian side of the argument?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15805" LastEditorUserId="15805" LastEditDate="2013-10-18T02:00:04.017" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T16:50:43.500" Title="Did Roosevelt's New Deal Program Prolong the Great Depression?" Tags="|economics|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="861" CreationDate="2013-10-17T20:49:22.353" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's not forget that Methadone is the &quot;BEST by far&quot; pain &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methadone#Analgesic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;medicine for chronic pain&lt;/a&gt;, making it a necessary evil. &#xA;It takes at least 200 mgs.to kill an average adult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15864" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-10-17T23:38:59.080" LastActivityDate="2013-10-17T23:38:59.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8810" CreationDate="2013-10-17T20:54:07.290" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_gold&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Crown Gold&lt;/a&gt; has a nice summary for this topic. Essentially,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are pure gold coins, e.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mint.ca/store/coins/125-oz.-pure-gold-coin---maple-leaf---mintage-8000-2017-prod2910207#.WP1jL33fR_E&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Canadian Maple Leaf&lt;/a&gt;, as well as&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;alloyed gold coins, e.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randrefinery.com/products_krugerrands.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Krugerrand&lt;/a&gt; of which e.g. the 1 oz coin contains 1 oz of gold plus another 2.8 g of copper.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Historically, this alloy (22 karat crown gold) has been introduced (in 1526) because it is more durable than pure gold. At that time, gold coins were used for payments, and (in addition to shaving) wear due to normal use as a means of payment was a concern. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to the Wikipedia article, until the mid 20th century, all gold coins were intended for circulation and used these durable alloys&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nowadays, also pure gold coins for collection purposes are produced.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Unless &quot;historically&quot; means &gt; 500 years old, the biting is likely not to work, because the gold coins were alloys that were deliberately chosen to be not too soft.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;For recent (&amp;lt; 60 a) &lt;em&gt;collection&lt;/em&gt; coins, biting may dent them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: An unknown editor of this post found the following closely related manuscript &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.27019.08487&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why do pirates bite gold coins they are given?&lt;/a&gt; which&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;concludes that the coin biting is most probably a  cliche  in literature and movies.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The manuscript points out that there are many references to coin biting form  early 20th century but not from older (contemporary to the setting) sources e.g.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brecht based his play Mother Courage on Grimmel-&#xA;  hausen’s Courage [6]. The book, published in 1670, makes many references to&#xA;  coins, money, ducats and pistoles but at no time is a coin bitten to determine&#xA;  whether or not it is genuine. One must conclude that Brecht and Cendrars&#xA;  merely invented the scene of biting the coin  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They put a possible origin to the cliche to 19th century gold prospectors distinguishing pyrite from gold nuggets by biting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;that 19th century false coins of lead with gold plating would have been &lt;em&gt;softer&lt;/em&gt; than the real coins (possible bite detection) but that the weight difference would have been quite distinct and easier to judge and (consequently? anyways?) most fake coins were better falsifications where hardness was not so distinct.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And show experimentally that typical mint gold alloys in the shape of typical historical (e.g. 15th century) coins could be dented by biting strongly but the dents are unfortunately difficult to judge as the biting strength [and tooth shape] would play a crucial role. Note that those coins are &lt;em&gt;much&lt;/em&gt; thinner than modern coins.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastEditorUserId="8865" LastEditDate="2017-04-24T11:06:20.317" LastActivityDate="2017-04-24T11:06:20.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18109" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18115" CreationDate="2013-10-18T00:22:41.750" Score="9" ViewCount="532" Body="&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://qr.ae/NJ641&quot;&gt;Quora&lt;/a&gt; a person claims that lithium ion batteries improve roughly similar to Moore's law:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The installed price of lithium ion batteries is dropping in half every 18 months and they last twice as long ... just like Moore's law for computer chips... &#xA;  well not quite Moore's law but something very similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that claim accurate? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2013-10-18T16:04:26.500" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T16:04:26.500" Title="Do lithium ion batteries double effective performance every 18 month similar to Moore's law?" Tags="|technology|energy|battery|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18112" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-18T02:14:57.833" Score="9" ViewCount="7956" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a friend who's begun taking Herbalife products, presumably for weight loss.  I informed him that their products, like all supplements, are not regulated by the FDA, and that there have been numerous cases of liver toxicity associated with them.  He still insists that he has watched his sister lose over 100 lbs while on their products, and nothing can sway him.  Are their products safe, and is it possible that they promote sustained weight loss?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15871" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T01:49:00.847" Title="Is Herbalife safe, and can it actually promote sustained weight loss?" Tags="|nutritional-supplements|weight-loss|herbalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18113" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18139" CreationDate="2013-10-18T08:18:57.803" Score="28" ViewCount="2148" Body="&lt;p&gt;I grew up watching movies that depict the sound of a bomb dropping overhead like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/FLvV4NegF0o&quot;&gt;Feeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwww&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that for real? I have never heard a bomb dropping over my head. Just curious how it would sound in real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15874" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T14:30:19.010" LastActivityDate="2018-10-09T18:05:05.327" Title="Do falling bombs make whistling sounds?" Tags="|weapons|sound|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18112" CreationDate="2013-10-18T11:41:18.920" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since 1986, Herbalife have been under a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mlmwatch.org/04C/Herbalife/1986order.html&quot;&gt;permanent injunction from the California Courts&lt;/a&gt;, which restrains it from &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;B. Representing that defendants' products contain herbs: (1) which in&#xA;  and of themselves naturally curb the appetite; (2) which burn off&#xA;  calories; or, (3) which naturally cleanse the system....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;C. Representing that one who uses defendants' products will lose&#xA;  weight without a reduction in the user's caloric intake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and a long list of other things.  So it would be difficult for anybody to claim that it promotes weight loss in itself, especially after ephedrine related substances were removed from products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Safety is a much harder issue, and there have been persisent allegations that taking Herbalife is associated with liver problems.  But even here there are correlation/causation issues.  The  Spanish Agency for Food Safety and Nutrition &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aesan.msc.es/AESAN/docs/docs/evaluacion_riesgos/comite_cientifico/HEPATOTOXICIDAD_DIETAS_CONTROL_PESO.pdf&quot;&gt;scientific committee looking at &quot;hepatoxicity associated with consumption of certain food supplements&quot;&lt;/a&gt; said: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There seems to be no link between the hepatic anomalies noted and the&#xA;  consumption of a specific product. The adverse effects are rather&#xA;  associated to the particular habits of consumption of these products&#xA;  that have been attributed with benefits for slimming and for improving&#xA;  general wellbeing. It is not uncommon to find examples of rapid&#xA;  weight-loss behaviour among this group of people, with combinations of&#xA;  food-deprivation alternating with other eating habits and/or taking&#xA;  different botanical extracts or synthetic products or, more generally,&#xA;  taking food supplements to which promising slimming properties have&#xA;  been attributed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, rapid weight loss has medical side effects, some of them negative.  The committee recommended that this type of product should carry a warning about the possible health risks associated with very rapid weight-loss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T11:41:18.920" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18109" CreationDate="2013-10-18T15:07:19.187" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, that claim is highly inaccurate. I'm guessing that it's somehow related to the part of a talk that was widely quoted (also by mainstream media):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shai Agassi, the founder and former CEO of Better Place, also touted&#xA;  the importance of the rate of battery innovation during his talk at&#xA;  the Cleantech Investor Summit. He said the energy density of batteries&#xA;  goes up 15 percent every 18 months; the cost per kilowatt hour goes&#xA;  down 15 percent every 18 months; the life cycles of the batteries (how&#xA;  many times it can charge and recharge) goes up 15 percent every 18&#xA;  months; and the cost per lifecycle-mile does down 50 percent every 18&#xA;  months. “If you don’t like the margins in this [electric car] business&#xA;  just wait 12 months,” said Agassi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus this directly contradicts both claims about the cost and how long they last. I don't really know what &quot;cost per lifecycle-mile&quot; is supposed to mean. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T15:07:19.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14913" CreationDate="2013-10-18T21:51:59.840" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As you noted, alcohol is not listed as an active ingredient. Likewise, J&amp;amp;J &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.listerine.com/products-how-does-listerine-work&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;does not claim&lt;/a&gt; that the alcohol helps kill germs, at least not in the link provided. Furthermore, they &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jjdentalprofessional.com/antiseptic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;do state&lt;/a&gt; that &quot;[in] LISTERINE® Antiseptic products, alcohol is an inactive ingredient that is used as a solvent, and a delivery vehicle to carry the fixed combination of 4 ESSENTIAL Oils.&quot; Thus, assuming their claim is true, the question is how the alternative solvent compares to alcohol in delivering the oils.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23082381&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; concluded that Listerine Zero was more effective in reducing plaque and gingivitis than the negative control 5% hydroalcohol mouthrinse (the abstract doesn't specify brand). Note that the study was conducted by J&amp;amp;J, the manufacturer of Listerine. Also, it doesn't answer the more important question: how Listerine Zero compares to normal Listerine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11894" LastActivityDate="2013-10-18T21:51:59.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18118" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-18T21:54:05.733" Score="9" ViewCount="5387" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a lot of buzz in the fitness community recently about how situps and crunches are bad for people's backs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/want-a-stronger-core-skip-the-sit-ups&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harvard Medical School&lt;/a&gt; makes the claim, but they don't cite any scientific studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One reason is that sit-ups are hard on your back — by pushing your curved spine against the floor and by working your hip flexors, the muscles that run from the thighs to the lumbar vertebrae in the lower back. When hip flexors are too strong or too tight, they tug on the lower spine which can be a source of lower back discomfort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that doing crunches or situps to exercise abdominal muscles is harmful to the lower back?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-10-24T00:26:21.047" LastActivityDate="2015-12-29T00:33:54.347" Title="Do situps and crunches cause lower-back pain?" Tags="|medical-science|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18118" CreationDate="2013-10-19T08:13:07.140" Score="11" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a demonstrated link in the literature between both cumulative compressive loads of the spine and low duration, high peak compression with low back pain incidence and spondylosis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All types of sit-ups result in high levels of peak compression which meets the threshold of peak compression levels studied within the literature.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Athletes have a higher incidence spondylosis than the general population.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pain is not a reliable indicator of the presence of spondylosis or other spinal abnormalities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is evidence that compressive forces can lead to other structural changes in intervertebral discs—for example, decreased disc thickness—as well as to changes in intervertebral disc cell metabolism.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Stuart McGill has demonstrated in his lab that sit-ups produce compression forces of around 3400 Newtons on the lumbar spine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this 1995 article, they predict the compression loads for various types of sit-ups. In 1997, they demonstrated this experimentally (discussed further below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mechanics of torso flexion has not been thoroughly investigated due to the lack of knowledge of tissue force-time histories during the performance of torso flexion exercises. An anatomically detailed, three-dimensional model that was sensitive to lumbar curvature and muscle activation patterns was used to assess tissue load distribution during the performance of both isometric and dynamic situps and standing flexion manoeuvres in 12 young men. Situps were performed starting with a flexed torso which was lowered to horizontal and then raised again (instrumentation restrictions did not allow subjects to rest their torsos when in the lowered position). Specific variables measured were air flow during inhalation-exhalation, intra-abdominal pressure, myoelectric activity of the torso muscles, intercostals, and rectus femoris, three-dimensional dynamic curvature of the lumbar spine and body segment displacements. Lumbar compressive loads greater than 3000 N were predicted for both straight leg and bent knee situps. No biologically significant differences were found between bent knee and straight leg situp techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/026800339591396V&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/026800339591396V&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an interview with Dr. McGill where he mentions this research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CW: Let's talk about sit-ups. Stu, there are so many guys I know that just can't get enough of them. I honestly believe that we have the Rocky movies to blame for them being so ubiquitous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your book Low Back Disorders was one of the first clinical-based texts that taught us sit-ups aren't very good for our discs. Your lab determined one of the primary reasons and it's due to the high compressive forces they induce, on the order of 3400N or 764 pounds. Tell us more about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SM: The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) sets exposure limits for substances that are known to compromise the health of the American worker. Along with obvious limits for things like poisons, radiation exposure, etc., they've found values for low back compression that lead to elevated rates of disabling back disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NIOSH have sponsored research that surveyed workers, and their data show that when lumbar loads exceed 3400N, the injury rates go up and interventions are recommended. The problem is that these are for average workers. Who's average?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the sit-up recruits torso and hip muscles that impose compressive load on the spine for the average male of about 3400N. Performing sit-ups uses some training capacity – compression plus repeated bending – to achieve training of the torso and hip flexors. But remember that this combination of load and motion is a potent cause of annulus collagen delamination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/an_interview_with_dr_stuart_mcgill_part_ii&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/an_interview_with_dr_stuart_mcgill_part_ii&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the 1997 paper where they published the results of the work referred to in the interview and 1995 paper above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Axler C, McGill S. Low back loads over a variety of abdominal exercises: searching for the safest abdominal challenge. 1997. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 29(6):804-11.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9219209&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9219209&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this 1997 study, they state in the introduction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abdominal exercises are prescribed for a variety of reasons, but mainly for rehabilitation of low back injury and as a component of fitness training programs (6,19). In the past, abdominal exercises have been recommended for their capacity to maximize muscle activity (3,21). However, some investigators have raised concern regarding the safety of abdominal exercise programs, with suspicion that tissue damage can occur (5,7,11,20), especially through compressive loading on the lumbar spine (16,18,20). Unfortunately, the level of risk of low back injury from performing various abdominal exercises, quantified by measures of tissue loading, has not yet been sufficiently examined (7). The purpose of this study was to identify quantitatively abdominal exercises that optimize the amount of abdominal muscle recruitment (or “challenge” to the abdominal muscle), with a simultaneous minimization of compressive load, or “penalty” to the lumbar spine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since then, more work has been done concerning the link between peak and cumulative compressive lumbar loads with low back pain and injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Village J et al. Electromyography as a measure of peak and cumulative workload in intermediate care and its relationship to musculoskeletal injury: an exploratory ergonomic study. 2005. Applied Ergonomics. 36(5):609-18.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15893290&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15893290&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some quotes from the Discussion section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Norman et al. (1998) developed a “low back pain index” suggesting from their data the percent of workers who are likely to report back pain at a given level of cumulative loading. From their data, a cumulative compression of 23 MN s corresponds with 50% of workers likely reporting low back pain. [...] This must be viewed with caution however as the data are from different populations of workers and cumulative compression is obtained with different methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kumar (1990) also estimated cumulative compression in a study of 161 institutional CAs (14 males, 147 females) with and without back pain using a structured questionnaire/interview in a retrospective study. Spinal loading estimates were obtained by using recall, line drawings and/or a manikin model to obtain estimates of working postures and then analyzing these postures with a two dimensional biomechanical model. Cumulative compressive and shear loads were then estimated based on estimates of task duration and frequency. The pain groups had significantly greater average estimates of cumulative spinal compression (males=15.6 MN s, females=14.5 MN s) than the no pain groups (males=6.6 MN s, females=9.3 MN s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seidler et al. (2001) used a modification of the Kumar (1990) approach to evaluate cumulative occupational exposure of the lumbar spine to lifting, carrying and working postures with extreme forward bending. A case control study was conducted between 229 male patients with symptomatic osteochondrosis or spondylosis of the lumbar spine and 197 control subjects. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Seidler et al., found that working postures with extreme forward bending for up to 1500 h (calculated over all working years) was associated with the diagnosis of osteochondrosis or spondylosis (OR 2) and the odds ratio increased to 4.3 for more than 1500 h exposure. Combined exposures to lifting or carrying with working postures with extreme forward bending yielded odds ratios of 16:1. This is one of the first studies to use cumulative risk factor exposure as an independent variable. The authors suggest that the pathogenic concept of chronic increases in intervetebral pressure has long been considered an important cause of lumbar spinal disease, yet it has been difficult to quantify. All these studies have evaluated cumulative loading over occupational exposures. Since compressive loading does not end with the work day, the next goal in research may be to develop ways of measuring the non-occupational component of cumulative compression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Few instances of peak compression above the 3400 N guidelines (Waters et al., 1994) were experienced by CAs in IC. During an average of 75 min pre-breakfast, compression exceeding 3400 N is experienced for an average of 11.5 s. Other periods of the day have even less peak compressions. Yet, peak compression was significantly correlated to injury rates, MSI rates, numbers of tasks performed in the day and perceived exertion in the day. It appears that even though the time spent in peak exertions is small, the perception of workload is highly influenced by these exertions. Norman et al. (1998) found strong correlations within the peak spinal loading variables and within the cumulative loading variables, but poor correlation between the two. They suggested that peak and cumulative loading are measuring different aspects of risk for these jobs. Peak and cumulative compression measured among CAs in this study were highly correlated with each other, but were independently correlated with different variables supporting Norman et al.'s assertion that both are important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Seidler et al. study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1740072/?tool=pmcentrez&amp;amp;rendertype=abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1740072/?tool=pmcentrez&amp;amp;rendertype=abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To calculate cumulative forces to the lumbar spine over the entire working life, the Mainz-Dortmund dose model (MDD), which is based on an overproportional weighting of the lumbar disc compression force relative to the respective duration of the lifting process was applied with modifications: any objects weighing [gt-or-equal, slanted]5 kg were included in the calculation and no minimum daily exposure limits were established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The calculation of the sum of forces to the lumbar spine is a useful tool for risk assessment for symptomatic osteochondrosis or spondylosis of the lumbar spine. The results suggest that cumulative occupational exposure to lifting or carrying and extreme forward bending increases the risk for developing symptomatic osteochondrosis or spondylosis of the lumbar spine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several experimental studies suggest that compressive forces can lead to structural changes in intervertebral discs—for example, decreased disc thickness—as well as to changes&#xA;in intervertebral disc cell metabolism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A review of the literature concerning ergonomics can be found here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heu.org/sites/default/files/uploads/docs/ergonomicreport_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.heu.org/sites/default/files/uploads/docs/ergonomicreport_1.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We find that the relationship between cumulative spinal compression and low back pain incidence is linear as per Norman et al 2008.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So a there is a definite established link between spinal compression -- both peak and cumulative -- and low back pain, spondylolysis, and osteochondrosis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What relevance does this have to athletes or the more fit population? Do they suffer from these issues as well? Do they have a lower incidence due to being more fit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soler T, Calderon C. The Prevalence of Spondylolysis in the Spanish Elite Athlete. 2000. Am J Sports Med. 28 no. 1 57-62.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajs.sagepub.com/content/28/1/57.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ajs.sagepub.com/content/28/1/57.abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The incidence of spondylolysis in elite Spanish athletes(~8%) was somewhat higher than in the general population, which ranges from 3.5 - 7%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Incidence was found to vary significantly based on sport.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Incidence among weightlifters was 12.94% (N=11). This rate is lower than other authors who report rates between 15 and 36%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Their findings of the incidence among Spanish elite athletes were much lower than incidence among athletes found among the other literature which range from 12-15% in studies with a high number of subjects across a large number of sports. One study with 28 subjects across 13 sports found an incidence rate of 100%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And importantly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pain is not a reliable indicator of spinal disorder.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the Soler and Calderon study, only about half of the people with spondylolysis were symptomatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another study found that of a group of 98 people with no low back pain incidence, only 36 percent had normal spinal disks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8208267&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8208267&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirty-six percent of the 98 asymptomatic subjects had normal disks at all levels. With the results of the two readings averaged, 52 percent of the subjects had a bulge at at least one level, 27 percent had a protrusion, and 1 percent had an extrusion. Thirty-eight percent had an abnormality of more than one intervertebral disk. The prevalence of bulges, but not of protrusions, increased with age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14912" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T16:08:21.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18126" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18132" CreationDate="2013-10-19T19:59:04.843" Score="9" ViewCount="846" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently watched the short film &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzrRmB40l00&quot;&gt;&quot;From Farm To Fridge.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(It contains video footage of farm animals being abused and killed.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously the video makes an emotional appeal more so than a purely logical one, and as such I just want to fact-check some of the claims made about what it refers to as normal and routine practices on USDA-approved factory farms. I'm particularly curious about the footage of farm workers stomping on calves and birds, swinging piglets and birds around violently and slamming them into the floor, twisting birds' necks in an apparently ineffective attempt to break it, and castrating, branding, and de-horning/beaking animals without anesthetic in extremely unsanitary conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand the function of some of these acts, but it seems like more effective alternative actions exist that would accomplish the same thing with less mess, effort, and suffering on the part of both the farmer and animals. Therefore it seems likely this footage reflects the exception rather than the norm of factory farming, but I'm not sure how I can prove that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16638" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-10-20T18:11:12.120" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T19:27:58.417" Title="Is gratuitous farm animal abuse condoned by the USDA?" Tags="|united-states|zoology|law|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18126" CreationDate="2013-10-20T12:49:48.597" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a comment,  Fabian said, &amp;quot;A good answer should provide the laws and regulations involve, but also provide some evidence if those laws are not enforced properly.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are no Federal laws at all regarding &amp;quot;animal abuse&amp;quot; on farms&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;State-level cruelty laws usually exempt &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; farm practices&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is one Federal law which should regulate &amp;quot;abuse&amp;quot; at slaughter-houses, but which:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Isn't thoroughly enforced by the USDA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doesn't apply to chickens&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Laws on the farm&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no Federal laws regarding animal cruelty on farms. Here are two relevant quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanesociety.org/forms/contact_us/farm_animals_contact.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Humane Society of the United States&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q. Aren't there laws that protect farm animals from abuse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From life on a factory farm to death at a slaughter plant, animals raised for meat, eggs, and milk suffer immensely. And, as shocking as it may be, much of the abuse these animals endure is often perfectly legal. There are no federal animal welfare laws regulating the treatment of the billions of &amp;quot;food animals&amp;quot; while they're on the farm. Further, while all 50 states have cruelty statutes, most explicitly exempt common farming practices, no matter how abusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://awic.nal.usda.gov/farm-animals&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;USDA's Animal Welfare&lt;/a&gt; web site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Farm Animals are regulated under the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) only when used in biomedical research, testing, teaching and exhibition. Farm animals used for food and fiber or for food and fiber research are not regulated under the AWA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there are no federal laws, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruelty_to_animals#State_welfare_laws&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia says that&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several states have enacted or considered laws in support of humane farming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The five laws (from five States) listed in this section of Wikipedia all pertain (only) to use of gestation crates.&#xA;There's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://aldf.org/resources/advocating-for-animals/animal-protection-laws-of-the-united-states-of-america-and-canada/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;compendium of all State laws listed here&lt;/a&gt; (which I haven't read, but which you could if you want details about any specific State).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sidebar of &lt;a href=&quot;http://awic.nal.usda.gov/government-and-professional-resources/federal-laws&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this USDA Animal Welfare page&lt;/a&gt; lists the Federal laws, which are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://awic.nal.usda.gov/government-and-professional-resources/federal-laws/animal-welfare-act&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Animal Welfare Act&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://awic.nal.usda.gov/government-and-professional-resources/federal-laws/horse-protection-act&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Horse Protection Act&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://awic.nal.usda.gov/government-and-professional-resources/federal-laws/humane-methods-slaughter-act&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Humane Methods of Slaughter Act&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://awic.nal.usda.gov/government-and-professional-resources/federal-laws/other-federal-laws&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Other Federal Laws&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://awic.nal.usda.gov/government-and-professional-resources/federal-laws/twenty-eight-hour-law&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Twenty-Eight Hour Law&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading this list, assuming it's complete, shows that it's true that there are no Federal laws which condemn cruelty to farm animals before they are taken for slaughter: which includes all animals which will not enter the human food chain (e.g. because they are too sick).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Laws on slaughter&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://awic.nal.usda.gov/government-and-professional-resources/federal-laws/humane-methods-slaughter-act&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Humane Methods of Slaughter Act&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Originally passed in 1958, the law that is enforced today by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) was passed as the Humane Slaughter Act of 1978. This Act requires the proper treatment and humane handling of all food animals slaughtered in USDA inspected slaughter plants. It does not apply to chickens or other birds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contact the USDA Humane Handling Ombudsman if you have a humane handling related comment or concern or wish to file a complaint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The USDA sometimes &amp;quot;suspends&amp;quot; a slaughterhouse, after an &amp;quot;undercover investigator&amp;quot; from an animal welfare group captures video and sends it to the USDA: for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/22/us/california-slaughterhouse-video/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;USDA suspends slaughterhouse after video appears to show animal cruelty&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The USDA suspended inspections at the Hanford-based company, effectively halting slaughter operations there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Company officials have not seen the video, Brian Coelho, president of the Central Valley Meat Co., said Tuesday. He said he was &amp;quot;extremely disturbed&amp;quot; to learn that inspections were suspended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Our company seeks to not just meet federal humane handling regulations, but to exceed them,&amp;quot; Coelho said in a statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Effectiveness of USDA inspections&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;USDA inspectors do not detect or prevent all instances of cruelty: at least one animal welfare group claims to have discovered (and has corresponding video of) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mercyforanimals.org/investigations.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;several instances of 'cruelty' over the years&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://awionline.org/sites/default/files/uploads/legacy-uploads/documents/10_HumaneSlaughterReport_singlepage-1285863342-document-25011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This document&lt;/a&gt; shows that in 2008 and 2009, there were 80 or 90 &amp;quot;suspensions&amp;quot; per year, issued to federally inspected&#xA;plants for violations of humane handling and humane&#xA;slaughter regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does seem true to say that USDA inspectors do or have &amp;quot;condoned&amp;quot; cruelty:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://awionline.org/sites/default/files/uploads/legacy-uploads/documents/10_HumaneSlaughterReport_singlepage-1285863342-document-25011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ibid&lt;/a&gt; says, on its first page,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In early 2008, multiple incidents of egregious cruelty&#xA;to cattle at the Westland-Hallmark Meat Packing&#xA;Co. in Chino, California, caught on videotape by&#xA;animal protection advocates, resulted in widespread&#xA;public outrage and eventually led to the largest&#xA;beef recall in the history of the U.S. These incidents happened despite the continual on-site presence of USDA inspection personnel and the performance of periodic third-party humane slaughter audits at the plant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humane_Slaughter_Act#2002&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2002 resolution that the Humane Slaughter Act should be enforced&lt;/a&gt; included a Senator's saying,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Humane Slaughter Act simply requires that animals be rendered insensible to pain before they are harvested. However, apparently this law is not being enforced in some instances. For example, the Washington Post article reported that &amp;quot;enforcement records, interviews, videos and worker affidavits describe repeated violations of the Humane Slaughter Act&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;the government took no action against a Texas beef company that was cited 22 times in 1998 for violations that include chopping hooves off live cattle&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are allegations (which may be so self-evident as to need no proof) that the USDA is more concerned with &amp;quot;food safety&amp;quot; than with &amp;quot;humane killing&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US Government Accountability Office (which reports to Congress) wrote a document in 2010 titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-10-203&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HUMANE METHODS OF SLAUGHTER ACT:&#xA;Actions Are Needed to Strengthen Enforcement&lt;/a&gt;. The GAO report things like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Only 23% of inspectors would suspend operations on seeing multiple failures to stun an animal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Inspectors at half of the&#xA;plants did not correctly answer basic facts about signs of sensibility [i.e., determine whether stunning was successful]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The GAO made four &amp;quot;Recommendations for Executive Action&amp;quot;, only one of which (which was to review the paperwork) now has a status of &amp;quot;Closed - implemented&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reporting violations to the USDA&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The USDA is more concerned with &amp;quot;food safety&amp;quot; than &amp;quot;humane killing&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the subject of &amp;quot;food safety&amp;quot;, the problem at the Canadian &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XL_Foods#XL_Lakeside_shutdown&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;XL Foods&lt;/a&gt; meat packing (slaughterhouse) was that the workers were too hurried: for example The Globe and Mail's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/xl-foods-workers-feared-raising-food-safety-concerns-union-says/article4602675/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;XL Foods workers feared raising food safety concerns, union says&lt;/a&gt; article wrote,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. O’Halloran also called for whistleblower protection for workers like those at XL who saw safety standards lapse as a result of what the union describes as an impossibly fast pace of work coupled with inadequate training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The line speeds, when they get up high, you don’t have time to clean your knife properly,” he said. “If the line speed is too great, you cheat. You don’t have enough time to do it. And, consequently, you are not doing all the things [required for] cleanliness.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodwhistleblower.org/blog/23-2012/471-xl-foods-canada-beef-plant-workers-call-for-whistleblower-protections&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;it's not easy to be a whistleblower&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Canadian meat industry workers are in the same boat as American meat industry workers in that they lack whistleblower protections – key legal safeguards that would enable problems to be made known (and hopefully addressed) without punishing the messenger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The allegation that cruelty happens, and is not reported by the workers involved, finds some support in &lt;a href=&quot;http://warincontext.org/2013/06/21/how-the-meat-industry-mirrors-obama-in-its-war-on-whistleblowers/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;articles like this one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/campaigns/factory_farming/fact-sheets/ag_gag.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anti-Whistleblower Bills Hide Factory-Farming Abuses from the Public&lt;/a&gt; suggests that anti-whistleblower (&amp;quot;ag-gag&amp;quot;) bills have been introduced but not passed; so apparently it is still legal (per the First Amendment which allows journalists to report) to produce videos like the one you cited in the OP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story from today's news (from Canada) seems to me typical of other articles I read while researching this answer: &lt;a href=&quot;http://canadaam.ctvnews.ca/horrific-conditions-seen-in-egg-industry-are-unacceptable-egg-farmers-of-canada-1.1505916&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Horrific' conditions seen in egg industry are 'unacceptable': Egg Farmers of Canada&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the following is a summary of what's happening:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apparently &amp;quot;cruel&amp;quot; treatment on the farm is not illegal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some methods of killing such as &amp;quot;thumping&amp;quot; (aka 'blunt trauma') are said to be normal industry practice (for unwanted animals, i.e. except at the slaughter-house)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Undercover animal rights activists take video (on private property)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The intent of the activists is not to get the law enforced (there is no law), but to coerce companies (e.g. McDonald's) and other suppliers/consumers via the threat of bad publicity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;News such as this is not popular with the general public&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The factory farming industry tries to downplay and deny such news, tries to villify animal rights activists, and tries to prevent such news (video) from being obtained.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T19:27:58.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18135" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-20T16:03:34.553" Score="28" ViewCount="1280" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is this saying that if you drink alcoholic beverages of good quality (expensive or &quot;well made&quot; whiskey, vodka, wine etc.), you are less likely to get a hangover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any correlation between the quality of the consumed alcoholic beverages and the likeliness of getting a hangover?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5192" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T13:26:22.503" Title="Is there a correlation between the quality of alcoholic beverages and the likeliness of a hangover?" Tags="|nutrition|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18136" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-20T16:42:38.667" Score="14" ViewCount="1431" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bjorn Lomborg&lt;/a&gt; has just edited a new book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/economics/economic-development-and-growth/how-much-have-global-problems-cost-world-scorecard-1900-2050&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Much have Global Problems Cost the World?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (Kindle version &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Much-Global-Problems-World-ebook/dp/B00DOW6OMO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1382286848&amp;amp;sr=8-1&amp;amp;keywords=lomborg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) in which he assembles economic analysis of the world's major challenges. The point of the exercise is to encourage decision-makers to focus on the right things which is important if we are to deal with the challenges effectively. The book contains historic analysis and some attempt to forecast forward to 2050.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the book arguments are presented suggesting climate change has, so far, been good for the world. Lest this seems an outrageous claim here is a passage from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/30/climate-activists-need-to-dial-back-on-the-panic/#ixzz2iHTiQOOj&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent article&lt;/a&gt; summarising some of the argument:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, global warming is happening. In the long run, it has an overall negative impact. But actually — and surprisingly for many — economic models generally find that moderate global warming is a net global benefit. Worldwide and in almost all regions, many more people die from cold than heat. With increasing temperatures, avoided cold deaths will vastly outweigh extra heat deaths. By midcentury, researchers estimate 400,000 more heat deaths but 1.8 million fewer cold deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, CO2 fertilizes crops and will increase production more in temperate countries than it will slow down crop increases in tropical countries. It will reduce heating costs more than it will increase cooling costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new study by climate economist Richard Tol that is featured in my forthcoming book, How Much Have Global Problems Cost the World?: A Scorecard From 1900 to 2050, shows that since 1900, global warming has been an increasing net benefit for humanity and will peak around 2025 with an annual benefit of about 1.5% of GDP. Only toward the end of the century will global warming turn to a net loss — so while we need to do something, it must be cost-effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is his argument right? &lt;strong&gt;Has global warming been a net benefit to the world economy so far?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T16:34:50.283" Title="Is climate change currently good for the world economy?" Tags="|economics|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18137" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-20T17:13:49.063" Score="9" ViewCount="904" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Neil Gaiman&lt;/a&gt; recently made what has been hailed as one of the best commencement speeches ever at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts (reported &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2012/05/neil-gaiman-one-of-the-best-commencement-speeches-ever/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, available as a book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0062266764/farstrblo-21&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In it he talks about the value of literacy. As part of his argument he says (i'm quoting from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2013/10/neil-gaiman-reading-libraries/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this report&lt;/a&gt; of the speech):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons – a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry needs to plan its future growth – how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11-year-olds couldn’t read...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s not one to one: you can’t say that a literate society has no criminality. But there are very real correlations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is he right? What's the evidence? &lt;strong&gt;Does illiteracy in the young correlate with criminal behaviour later?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T09:48:21.150" Title="Does the extent of illiteracy in children correlate with future criminality?" Tags="|criminology|literature|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18113" CreationDate="2013-10-20T22:13:16.040" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This depends on the design of the bomb. Some bombs made whistling sounds, as explained in &lt;a href=&quot;https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/2686/did-world-war-ii-era-bombs-actually-whistle/2689#2689&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; on the History site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another famous bomb was the so-called &quot;Buzzbomb&quot;, aka &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-1_flying_bomb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;V-1 rocket&lt;/a&gt;, used by the Nazis, primarily against Great Britian during WW II. It didn't whistle, but did make a loud buzzing noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:47:51.013" LastActivityDate="2013-10-20T22:13:16.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18140" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18145" CreationDate="2013-10-20T22:17:41.577" Score="59" ViewCount="93671" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following quotation is commonly attributed to Albert Einstein:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm&#xA;  not sure about the universe.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I've been unable to find a reliable source confirming the quote. Can anyone confirm or reject the genuiness of this citation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10642" LastEditorUserId="10642" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2016-01-29T15:46:17.670" LastActivityDate="2017-12-29T09:18:58.510" Title="Did Einstein say &quot;Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.&quot;" Tags="|quotes|albert-einstein|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18137" CreationDate="2013-10-21T07:29:28.700" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seem to be a lot of statistics that point to that correlation, e.g. see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reentrynow.org/1/post/2011/12/read-or-go-to-jail.html&quot;&gt;&#xA;Read, or Go to Jail&lt;/a&gt; that refers to some relevant statistics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;85 percent of all juveniles who interface with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;More than 60 percent of all prison inmates are functionally illiterate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;When the State of Arizona projects how many prison beds it will need, it factors in the number of kids who read well in fourth grade&#xA;  (Arizona Republic (9-15-2004)). Evidence shows that children who do&#xA;  not read by third grade often fail to catch up and are more likely to&#xA;  drop out of school, take drugs, or go to prison. So many nonreaders&#xA;  wind up in jail that Arizona officials have found they can use the&#xA;  rate of illiteracy to help calculate future prison needs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Low literacy is strongly related to crime. 70% of prisoners fall into the lowest two levels of reading proficiency(National Institute&#xA;  for Literacy, 1998).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Low literacy is strongly related to unemployment. More than 20% of adults read as or below a fifth grade level – far below the level&#xA;  needed to earn a living wage. enal institution records show that&#xA;  inmates have a 16% chance of returning to prison if they receive&#xA;  literacy help, as opposed to 70% who receive no help. This equates to&#xA;  taxpayer costs of $25,000 per year per inmate and nearly double that&#xA;  amount for juvenile offenders.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Illiteracy and crime are closely related. The Department of Justice states, “The link between academic failure and delinquency, violence,&#xA;  and crime is welded to reading failure.” Over 70% of inmates in&#xA;  America's prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.begintoread.com/research/literacystatistics.html&quot;&gt;Literacy&#xA;  Statistics at&#xA;  Begintoread.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4795" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-10-21T09:48:21.150" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T09:48:21.150" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18145" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18140" CreationDate="2013-10-21T16:50:03.463" Score="64" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unable to determine veracity of quote.  It pretty much depends on whether or not you believe a single man's claim about a personal conversation with Einstein.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/04/universe-einstein/&quot;&gt;Quote Investigator&lt;/a&gt;, the origin of the quotation being attributed to Einstein is the book &lt;em&gt;Gestalt Therapy Verbatim&lt;/em&gt; by Frederick S. Perls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As Albert Einstein once said to me: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity.” But what is much more widespread than the actual stupidity is the playing stupid, turning off your ear, not listening, not seeing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further context on the quote is given in another Perls book, &lt;em&gt;In and Out the Garbage Pail&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I spent one afternoon with Albert Einstein: unpretentiousness, warmth, some false political predictions. I soon lost my self-consciousness, a rare treat for me at that time. I still love to quote a statement of his: “Two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also used the quote in a previous book &lt;em&gt;Ego, Hunger, and Aggression: a Revision of Freud’s Theory and Method&lt;/em&gt;, though did not cite it to Einstein, but rather to &quot;a great astronomer&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_einstein#Disputed&quot;&gt;Wikiquote lists the quote as &quot;disputed&quot; and also notes similar quotations from various people dating back to 1880&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T16:50:03.463" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18146" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18147" CreationDate="2013-10-21T20:55:38.153" Score="11" ViewCount="633" Body="&lt;p&gt;A [recent question here] prompted me to ask the more fundamental question of whether the fees charged by professional advisors can be shown to be worth it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many consulting firms certainly claim their advice adds value. Here is the claim from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mckinsey.com/about_us/our_values&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mckinsey&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our mission is to help our clients &#xA;  make distinctive, lasting, and substantial improvements in their performance &#xA;  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accenture.com/us-en/pages/index.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Accenture's&lt;/a&gt; slogan is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High performance: Delivered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or variants thereof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there is a lot of cynicism about the value of consultants, the obvious retort is that clients would not keep buying advice if it didn't work. On the other hand &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weitzenegger.de/en/to/jokes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the old joke goes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A consultant is someone who borrows your watch to tell you the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Some consultants, not me, obviously, might respond that clients are people with watches who can't tell the time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, aside from anecdote, &lt;strong&gt;is there any objective evidence that consulting advice is worth paying for?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full disclosure: I work for a consulting firm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T12:15:02.300" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T12:15:02.300" Title="Do management consulting firms add more value to their clients than the fees they charge?" Tags="|marketing|finance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18146" CreationDate="2013-10-21T21:02:35.990" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;S. Dubner (of Freakonomics fame) covered this in one of Freakonomics podcasts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://freakonomics.com/2012/11/26/i-consult-therefore-i-am-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/&quot;&gt;http://freakonomics.com/2012/11/26/i-consult-therefore-i-am-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They present evidence both ways, but the &quot;yes&quot; evidence is backed up by a nice study by Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stanford.edu/~nbloom/DMM.pdf%E2%80%8E&quot;&gt;Does Management Matter? Evidence from India&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To investigate this, we ran a management field experiment on large Indian textile firms. We provided free consulting on management practices to randomly chosen treatment plants and compared their performance to a set of control plants. We find that adopting these management practices raised productivity by 17% in the first year through improved quality and efficiency and reduced inventory, and within three years led to the opening of more production plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastActivityDate="2013-10-21T21:02:35.990" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14098" CreationDate="2013-10-21T22:20:26.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saf.org/lawreviews/smitht1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A CALL FOR A TRUCE IN THE DGU WAR&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, by Tom W. Smith, (published in &lt;em&gt;Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Northwestern)&lt;/em&gt; 87 (1997): 1462) discusses this. (DGU stands for Defensive Gun Use.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; the truth is somewhere between both of the extremes (the low 55k-80k of NCVSs and the high of 2.5M of Kleck-Gert). But &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;more studies are needed&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we factor in some of the probable over- and underestimates affecting the NCVS and K-G 1993 survey, the widely divergent figures on DGUs draw much closer together. &lt;strong&gt;The latest figures from the NCVS indicate 108,000 DGUs per annum. [40] If this is adjusted for a 50% under-reporting due to not directly asking for DGUs, this increases the estimate to 216,000. Next, research by Cook and Ludwig suggests that perhaps 16-42% of DGUs involve crimes not covered by the NCVS. [41] Adding in these would raise DGUs to 256,500-373,000.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, using the average of the K-G one-year lower (B) estimate and the NSPOF figure gives a starting estimate of 1,810,000. Assuming a net cognitive over-reporting (telescoping-forgetting) of 50%, [42] reduces the figure to 1,210,000. [43] These estimates should draw even closer together if other measurement errors could be factored in. [44] &lt;strong&gt;But even as they stand, the gulf has been narrowed from 30+:1 to 3.2-5.6:1.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the above calculations are based on reasonable, but mostly unconfirmed, estimates of various error parameters. What is needed is less argumentation and speculation and more and better data. First, some additional information can be gained by refined analysis of the existing surveys (K-G 1993, NSPOF, NCVS, etc.). Each [Page 1469] of the surveys should be fully documented and archived at the Roper Center, University of Connecticut, and the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research, University of Michigan, for any researcher to use. [45]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Second, more studies are needed.&lt;/strong&gt; These should include: (1) validation studies specifically designed to ascertain whether a social desirability bias exists for DGUs; (2) studies that experimentally vary factors that are believed to inflate or deflate DGUs reports to see (a) how robust reports are and (b) whether they are affected by the hypothesized factors; (3) taped descriptions of reported DGUs with detailed probes so that one can determine exactly what transpired, including such issues as whether (a) a criminal threat existed, its nature, and seriousness, (b) the DGU was probably legal, and (c) accounts are accurate and truthful; (4) trying alternative methods for measuring DGUs that might lessen both any self-presentation bias and cognitive error. One possibility would be to ask people whether they had handled or fired a gun in the last year and then ask about for what purpose it was used (e.g., hunting, target shooting, self-defense, etc.); and (5) the use of refined, direct experience questions on a large, high quality, panel survey with explicit corrections for telescoping. Adding a few questions to the NCVS would be the easiest way to achieve this. Only by such further careful, empirical research will the errors in measuring DGUs be understood and the true level of DGUs ascertained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T00:10:47.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18152" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18155" CreationDate="2013-10-22T00:01:27.207" Score="4" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/pmharper&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stephen Harper's Facebook page&lt;/a&gt; (the Prime Minister of Canada), I found many claims that I am skeptical of. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one is that since 2008, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151934657807110&amp;amp;set=a.410445882109.207942.9106562109&amp;amp;type=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the cost of wireless services has fallen 20 per cent. &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I pretty much pay the same amount - if anything, it is increasing from year to year. None of my friends have noticed a price drop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8cnsJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7569" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-10-22T01:04:01.867" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T16:44:24.417" Title="Has the cost of wireless services in Canada fallen nearly 20% during 2008-2013?" Tags="|economics|technology|canada|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18153" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18154" CreationDate="2013-10-22T00:29:45.267" Score="13" ViewCount="7049" Body="&lt;p&gt;Raw milk advocates seem to claim one of two things regarding the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactase&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lactase enzyme&lt;/a&gt; (not to be confused with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lactose&lt;/a&gt; sugar):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That raw milk contains lactase which is destroyed in the pasteurisation process&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That raw milk contains bacteria (or probiotics) that produce lactase and these bacteria are destroyed in the pasteurisation process.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our products have what Mother Nature intended, a diversity of good bacteria and a wide range of essential enzymes including lactase for lactose digestion and phosphatase that is essential for the utilization of calcium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One reason raw milk is so much easier to digest compared to pasteurized milk is due to the presence of lactase&lt;/strong&gt;, the enzyme that breaks down milk sugar and which many humans are unable to produce. The experts I have spoken with deny the presence of lactase in raw milk; however, &lt;strong&gt;it is the friendly bacteria in raw milk that facilitate the creation of lactase in the intestine where it is needed&lt;/strong&gt;. That is why lactose-intolerant people can drink raw milk without a problem. Pasteurization kills these friendly bacteria. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realmilk.com/safety/safety-of-raw-milk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion of these two specific &amp;quot;pro raw milk&amp;quot; arguments is the same, pasteurised milk contains no lactase, and this does seem to be backed up scientifically. However, I am skeptical that raw milk does contain lactase or that raw milk contains lactase-producing bacteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does raw cows' milk contain lactase or bacteria that could produce lactase in sufficient quantities for it to have any impact on human digestion of milk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it does contain lactase-producing bacteria, what is this bacteria and where does it originate from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8108" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T14:41:24.947" Title="Does raw cows' milk contain lactase?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|milk|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18153" CreationDate="2013-10-22T01:00:46.167" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; No, there is no lactase in raw milk. No, there are no probiotic organisms in raw milk that produce lactase. Some (named) lactase-producing microorganisms are added to yoghurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have issued a statement about Raw Milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodborneIllnessContaminants/BuyStoreServeSafeFood/ucm247991.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Raw Milk Misconceptions and the Danger of Raw Milk Consumption&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no indigenous lactase in milk.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Raw milk advocates claim that raw milk does not cause lactose intolerance because it contains lactase secreted by “beneficial” or probiotic bacteria present in raw milk.  [...] &lt;strong&gt;raw milk does not contain probiotic organisms.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fermented dairy products, especially yogurt, have been reported to ease lactose mal-absorption in lactose intolerant subjects.  This enhanced digestion of lactose has been attributed to the intra-intestinal hydrolysis of lactose by lactase secreted by yogurt fermentation microorganisms.  However, &lt;strong&gt;raw milk does not contain the same types of microorganisms at the similar levels that are found in yogurt&lt;/strong&gt;.  Yogurt that showed a benefit towards lactose intolerance typically contained 107cfu/ml or higher levels of &lt;em&gt;Streptococcus thermophilus&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Lactobacillus bulgaricus&lt;/em&gt;, and these microorganisms were purposely inoculated during yogurt manufacturing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FDA page contains links to journal articles to support their claims, which I have omitted in this summary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T01:00:46.167" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18152" CreationDate="2013-10-22T01:15:50.370" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. From 2008-2013, there has been nearly a 20% decrease in the average monthly mobile wireless price, mostly due to decreased prices in mid and high volume plans, and new market entrants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This statistic is supported by Industry Canada (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/064.nsf/eng/07326.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Backgrounder—Facts About Competition: More Choice, Lower Prices&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]he average price of wireless services has decreased by nearly 20 percent...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) says something a bit different (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/com100/2013/r130926.htm#.UmXUwJSieLg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CRTC issues annual report on the state of the Canadian communication system&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2012, [...] &lt;em&gt;Canadian families spent an average of $67 per month on wireless services, up from $61 the previous year.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That CRTC statistic is about monthly spending per family, rather than the average price of wireless services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CRTC also distributes a report prepared for them by Wall Communications Inc. titled &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/publications/reports/rp130422.htm#a12&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Price Comparisons of Wireline, Wireless and Internet Services in Canada and with Foreign Jurisdictions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. At section 4.2, they review the price of wireless service in three different service level baskets over the past four years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r9rpV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the data in table form going back to 2008:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EyMdQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(CAGR = Compounded Annual Growth Rate. Note that some generally minor changes in methodology apply year-to-year. Averages calculated on a market share and population weighted basis.)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From 2008-2013, basket 1 has a 6% decrease, basket 2 has a 26% decrease, and basket 3 has a 17% decrease.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These averages may be lower because of cheaper, new entrants to the market, rather than incumbents. This would explain you and your friends not noticing lower prices if you haven't sought out plans from new market entrants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/H5ner.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-10-22T16:44:24.417" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T16:44:24.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18159" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-22T11:02:07.237" Score="5" ViewCount="245" Body="&lt;p&gt;I stumbled upon the following claim in the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/21/fructose-poison-sugar-industry-pseudoscience&quot;&gt;&quot;Fructose: the poison index&quot; in the Guardian&lt;/a&gt;, written by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Lustig&quot;&gt;Dr Robert Lustig&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fructose causes seven times as much cell damage as does glucose,&#xA;  because it binds to cellular proteins seven times faster; and it&#xA;  releases 100 times the number of oxygen radicals (such as hydrogen&#xA;  peroxide, which kills everything in sight).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any solid scientific support for this statement? Does fructose lead to cell damage by reactive oxygen species, and is this damage much higher than for glucose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2013-10-22T12:27:56.920" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T20:09:57.487" Title="Does fructose release a high number of oxygen radicals and damage cells?" Tags="|nutrition|sugar|robert-lustig|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18160" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-22T13:07:36.323" Score="4" ViewCount="455" Body="&lt;p&gt;After seeing my GP about a wart on my knee she suggested that any removal should be done while the moon is waning in order to improve recovery. This sounded, to put it mildly, odd to me. Have there been any studies that provide evidence for a relationship between the moon cycle and recovery from surgery? If the answer is yes, is it due to another manifestation of the placebo effect?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15911" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:32:16.070" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:32:16.070" Title="Does a waning moon have a positive influence on recovery after surgery?" Tags="|medical-science|moon|astrology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18161" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-22T13:42:26.970" Score="13" ViewCount="1245" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2007, the New Zealand Herald &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&amp;amp;objectid=10450883&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; &quot;&lt;em&gt;People with moles on their skin live longer&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A study comparing more than 1,800 twins has found that those with more moles on their skin have longer telomeres - a marker of biological ageing found in all cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The findings suggest that the risk of cancer is counteracted by the effects of the telomeres, which protect the chromosomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Veronique Bataille (who lead the study) is cited, saying (emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This &lt;strong&gt;could imply&lt;/strong&gt; susceptibility to fewer age-related diseases such as heart disease or osteoporosis. Further studies are need to confirm this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That study was aparently published in &lt;em&gt;Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the study itself seems to only offer the possibility of longer life for mole-bearers and since six years have passed, I wonder if there were any follow up studies or other means to harden the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full study:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/16/7/1499.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nevus Size and Number Are Associated with Telomere Length and Represent Potential Markers of a Decreased Senescence &lt;em&gt;In vivo&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15212" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:19:55.867" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T21:26:33.013" Title="Do people with more moles live longer?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18162" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-22T14:54:55.177" Score="8" ViewCount="4930" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently came across a video (that is anti-MSG) that made the claim that scientist use MSG to fatten lab rats/mice. I can't seem to find any source for this information. I can find examples of studies where baby mice were given large amounts of MSG, but I can't seem to find a &quot;how-to fatten your lab rats? give them MSG&quot; example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Link to the video: &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/39562192#t=925s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://vimeo.com/39562192#t=925s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transcript:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It actually excites a part of your brain that's in charge of the fat programs. The chemical of MSG excites the brain. And due to that excitation, your body activates the fat programs and gets fatter, and everybody knows this!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15913" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T10:46:38.307" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T10:46:38.307" Title="Do scientists use monosodium-glutamate (MSG) to fatten lab mice/rats?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|obesity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18162" CreationDate="2013-10-22T17:00:46.377" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are studies where monosodium glutamate (MSG) is used to induce obesity in rodents, but using this fact as an anti-MSG argument is very questionable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of papers using rodent models of MSG-induced obesity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1106764&quot;&gt;The induction of obesity in rodents by means of monosodium glutamate.&lt;/a&gt; - Bunyan et al., &lt;strong&gt;Br J Nutr.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;1976&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14632317&quot;&gt;The monosodium glutamate (MSG) obese rat as a model for the study of exercise in obesity.&lt;/a&gt; - Gobatto et al., &lt;strong&gt;Res Commun Mol Pathol Pharmacol.&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;2002&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this is rodent data and as much as animal research is absolutely indispensable to understand human physiology and pathology, it is necessary to critically interpret its results.&#xA;Note that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Newborn mice were injected subcutaneously with 3 mg MSG/g body-weight at 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, and 8 d of age&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and, in the second study&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Obesity was induced by MSG administration (4 mg/g, each other day, from birth to 14 days old)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is definitely not the same as an adult human eating MSG.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how much MSG is consumed by an average person daily?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 1979 US survey reported 550 mg/die&lt;br&gt;&#xA;GRAS Committee on GRAS List Survey. Estimating distributions of daily intake of monosodium glutamate (MSG). Washington, DC: Food and Nutrition Board, Division of Biological Sciences, Assembly of Life Sciences, &lt;em&gt;1979&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(sorry, could not really find a link for this, but it is cited in many other publications...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 1991 UK survey reported 580 mg/die&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1818840&quot;&gt;A survey of the monosodium glutamate content of foods and an estimation of the dietary intake of monosodium glutamate.&lt;/a&gt; - Rhodes et al., &lt;strong&gt;Food Addit Contam.&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;1991&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source reports 5 to 12 g/die in European countries&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16957679&quot;&gt;Consensus meeting: monosodium glutamate - an update.&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;strong&gt;Eur J Clin Nutr.&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;2007&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking the larger 12 g/die figure, for a 70kg person that comes to approximately 0.17 mg/g body weight, that is about 17 times less than what was used in the article.&#xA;The 550 mg/die figure would give 0.007 mg/g body weight, which is 380 times lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I could find one study linking consumption of MSG with obesity in the Chinese population&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21471280&quot;&gt;Consumption of monosodium glutamate in relation to incidence of overweight in Chinese adults: China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS)&lt;/a&gt; - He et al., &lt;strong&gt;Am J Clin Nutr.&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;2011&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;although the results have been criticized:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21856888&quot;&gt;A lack of epidemiologic evidence to link consumption of monosodium L-glutamate and obesity in China.&lt;/a&gt; - Bursey et al. - &lt;strong&gt;Am J Clin Nutr.&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;2011&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary altough there are studies showing that injection of MSG in neonatal rodents cause adult obesity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;this is definitely not the most common model of obesity used in a laboratory setting &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the fact that MSG had to be injected rather than given orally to get the effect may indicate that the obesity is rather a consequence of the stress due to the injection. Exposure to high level of glucocorticoids (the &quot;stress hormones&quot;) during the perinatal period (pregnancy and lactation) has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15554887&quot;&gt;linked to adult cardiovascular diseases and obesity&lt;/a&gt; in both rodents and human.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2013-10-22T22:26:03.330" LastActivityDate="2013-10-22T22:26:03.330" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18165" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18166" CreationDate="2013-10-22T20:14:23.627" Score="38" ViewCount="20648" Body="&lt;p&gt;A persistent tale in martial arts is that one can strike an unfortunate other on the nose in such a way that you drive the cartilege up into their brain.  Is this possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think some points to consider are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a path from the inside of the nose to the brain that doesn't pass through bone?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If not, could the cartilege penetrate any intervening bone?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the cartilege in the nose long enough to reach into the brain before the hand propelling it stops against rim of the nasal cavity?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the cartilege attached to the skull in such a way that a blow could send it into the skull?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons I doubt the claim are that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've never heard of a boxer suffering this injury, despite millions of fights and training sessions containing billions of punches having occured.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've taken an upward travelling kick to the face that broke my nose, and the cartilege just stuck out the side!  :-)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15728" LastEditorUserId="15728" LastEditDate="2013-10-23T15:04:56.657" LastActivityDate="2018-01-11T14:54:18.793" Title="Can you punch someone's nose into their brain?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|physiology|martial-arts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18166" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18165" CreationDate="2013-10-22T20:23:03.863" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;From FightingArts.com, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fightingarts.com/reading/article.php?id=511&quot;&gt;Martial Arts Myths &amp;amp; Misconceptions - Pushing The Nose Bone Into The Brain&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You cannot drive the nose bone into the brain. It cannot be done by any martial arts blow, and never has been done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sheer mechanics of accomplishing this are daunting. First, there is the crista galli, a thick, smooth, triangular piece of bone that projects from the bone that forms the roof of the nasal cavity (cribriform plate). Though there are small openings in the cribiform plate which allow nerves to pass through, they are not large enough to allow a mass of splintered bone to enter the brain case, nor are they direct conduits to the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, Ezine@articles states in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Nose-Bones-Into-The-Brain-Martial-Myth&amp;amp;id=6140470&quot;&gt;The Nose Bones Into The Brain Martial Myth&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it is a myth and it is not possible for a blow to the nose to drive bone fragments into the brain. The nose contains mostly cartilage, not bone, and there's no direct way for this cartilage, or any small nasal bones that fracture into pieces from blunt trauma, to penetrate into the brain. It just can't happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-10-23T11:45:18.387" LastActivityDate="2013-10-23T11:45:18.387" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28928" CreationDate="2013-10-23T02:17:53.510" Score="5" ViewCount="1224" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilkes_Booth#Theories_of_Booth.27s_escape&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on John Wilkes Booth&lt;/a&gt; has a few paragraphs on the theories that he escaped, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1907, Finis L. Bates wrote Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth, contending that a Booth look-alike was mistakenly killed at the Garrett farm while Booth eluded his pursuers.[165] Booth, said Bates, assumed the pseudonym &quot;John St. Helen&quot; and settled on the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas, and later moved to Granbury, Texas. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Meltzer%27s_Decoded#Season_one_.282010.E2.80.932011.29&quot;&gt;entire TV episode&lt;/a&gt; on this theory. However, this seems questionable, considering the History Channel's reputation for overly-dramatized theories with little credibility. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Books, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=PX9RjixQc6kC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=Bates,%20Finis%20L.%20%281907%29.%20Escape%20and%20Suicide%20of%20John%20Wilkes%20Booth&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=hS5nUqXJLa-WyAGE6IDwCA&amp;amp;ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Escape and suicide of John Wilkes Booth&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldcat.org/title/john-wilkes-booth-beyond-the-grave/oclc/818953960&amp;amp;referer=brief_results&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;John Wilkes Booth : beyond the grave&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, have been written about the subject, which are somewhat more believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the theory of Booth's escape past the Garrett barn plausible or are there irreconcilable problems with the theory? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15087" LastEditorUserId="15087" LastEditDate="2013-10-27T20:06:07.100" LastActivityDate="2015-09-05T19:17:36.923" Title="Was John Wilkes Booth killed in the Garrett barn?" Tags="|history|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18168" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18169" CreationDate="2013-10-23T02:51:01.930" Score="10" ViewCount="22367" Body="&lt;p&gt;In October 2013, on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.my2crazycurls.com/about/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;My 2 Crazy Curls&lt;/a&gt;, a blogger from Richmond, VA, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.my2crazycurls.com/2013/10/10/wait/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported receiving a letter from her child's preschool&lt;/a&gt;, explicitly banning students from bringing their own food to school without a medical reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dear Parents,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have received word from Federal Programs Preschool pertaining to lunches from home. Parents are to be informed that students can only bring lunches from home if there is a medical condition meriting a specific diet, along with a physicians note to that regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am sorry for any inconvenience. If you have any questions concerning this matter, please contact [name redacted], the Health Coordinator for Federal Programs Preschool at [number redacted].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By itself, this claim (that the preschool sent such a letter) is barely notable, but it has been adopted as a rallying point by a number of anti-GMO web-sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ijreview.com/2013/10/86357-read-federal-programs-note-telling-parents-need-doctors-note-make-kids-lunch/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/brown-bag-ban-fed-programs-preschool-says-no-lunch-from-home-without-a-doctors-note-10222013&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.activistpost.com/2013/10/fed-programs-preschool-says-no-lunch.html?showComment=1382478880719&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://beforeitsnews.com/alternative/2013/10/government-says-parents-cannot-send-lunches-with-children-to-school-anymore-unless-they-have-a-doctors-note-2800122.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://politicalhat.com/2013/10/21/parents-not-allowed-to-feed-their-own-children-without-governments-permission/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/federal-government-your-preschooler-cant-bring-a-lunch-from-home-without-a-doctors-note/question-4004047/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it, as claimed, policy in Federal Programs Preschools, that students are not permitted to bring their own lunch to school? (Bonus points: What is a Federal Programs Preschool? For example, do all preschools operating in the US fall under this term, or are there US preschools that are not Federal Programs Preschools? If the second, how does one determine if a specific preschool is Federal Programs or not?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="36598" LastEditDate="2023-10-17T21:29:08.537" LastActivityDate="2023-10-17T21:29:08.537" Title="Do US preschools ban lunches being brought to school?" Tags="|united-states|politics|gmo|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18168" CreationDate="2013-10-23T03:21:19.873" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Federal Programs Preschool&quot; appears to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.henrico.k12.va.us/instruction/Elementary/Preschool.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;refer to&lt;/a&gt; the Health and Human Services &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Head_Start_Program&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Head Start&lt;/a&gt; program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can confirm this is policy is in place for at least some preschools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hcapweb.org/headstart-parent-handbook.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's an example&lt;/a&gt; of a policy at one Head Start preschool that forbids outside lunch:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All children in Head Start are served breakfast and lunch, and a snack in the extended day programs. We provide one-third to one-half of the child's daily nutritional need. All meals are USDA approved. Meals must be consumed during mealtime only. Food items high in nutrients and low in fat, sugar, and salt are offered to the children. &lt;strong&gt;Also, outside foods are not allowed. This includes goodie bags filled with food items during the holidays and birthdays.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; Highlights in original.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My wife works for a subsidized preschool program, and she has provided me with some (anecdotal) confirmation of the policy and shared some of her expertise in the background for the policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her preschool does not allow outside meals unless there is a medical reason (with a doctor's note). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She said this is the norm for subsidized preschools in this area. This policy applies even to their non-subsidized &quot;full fee&quot; children. Private schools tend to be more flexible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of reasons for this policy at her school:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One is because they are a publicly subsidized program with mainly low-income families and they want to ensure that the children are receiving healthy meals that meet recognized federal nutritional guidelines. Parent supplied meals are often lacking in nutritional balance.  (For example, in one field trip where parents did supply meals, one child's &quot;meal&quot; was 3 different bags of chips.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another reason is due to allergies. They have a protocol that they have to follow to prevent children from coming into contact with foods that they have an allergy to, and it's much harder to do this with meals brought from home as they have no way to verify ingredient lists or keep track of every child's meals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another is storage and preparation. They have little staff time or space to devote to meal storage and preparation, and keeping track of dozens of home-brought meals would cut into the time available for meal prep. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there are liability concerns. They have no way to assure the food safety for a home-brought meal, as they don't know how it was prepared or stored prior to arrival. Yet a parent may put blame on the school for improper storage if a meal is spoiled and sickens their child.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all sounds like a bunch of needless complexity and rules for something as simple as a home-packed bag lunch, but they are an understaffed non-profit on a razor-thin budget, subject to both city and state scrutiny for licensing (and funding). They also have the scrutiny of parents that have a propensity to put blame on the agency for the most trivial of concerns -- which leads to a licensing investigation that takes away valuable staff time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since private schools usually have more flexible meals policies (because they have additional staffing and funds), parents that don't agree with the food policy can find a more acceptable solution at a private agency. However, this is a much more costly solution for those that qualify for subsidized child-care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13418" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-10-25T01:04:24.190" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T01:04:24.190" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18136" CreationDate="2013-10-23T08:47:28.970" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first quote presents a specious argument as I rather doubt the heat and cold related deaths includes deaths due to famine, which often involve crop-failures where weather/climate was an issue, which can easily affect hundreds of thousands or even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jun/21/millions-face-starvation-west-africa&quot;&gt;millions&lt;/a&gt; in a single year, which clearly outweighs Lomborg's &quot;by mid-century&quot; figures.  The recent famine in Somalia alone is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsnau.org/in-focus/technical-release-study-suggests-258000-somalis-died-due-severe-food-insecurity-and-famine-&quot;&gt;estimated&lt;/a&gt; to have resulted in 258,000 deaths. Much of the worlds populations depends on the productivity of agricultural land already becoming marginal.  The greatest agricultural effects of climate change are likely to be due to changes in rainfall, and sea level rise (much of Bangladesh, a very populous country, is low lying and already susceptible to flooding) rather than the direct effects of increased temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence for the &quot;CO2 is plant food&quot; argument is also at best equivocal.  Increased CO2 may increase gross primary production in areas where sunlight, water and the availability of nutrients are not already the limiting factors.  Increasing CO2 may benefit some plants and disadvantage others (via the effects of climate change on temperature and precipitation), and it is far from clear that there will be a net benefit (see SkS link given below for more details and links to the peer reviewed literature).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote &lt;em&gt;&quot;A Scorecard From 1900 to 2050, shows that since 1900, global warming has been an increasing net benefit for humanity and will peak around 2025 with an annual benefit of about 1.5% of GDP.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; is a rather specious argument if used to argue against climate change mitigation.  A &lt;strong&gt;net&lt;/strong&gt; benefit can be achieved by providing a very large benefit to a few at the expense of catastrophic loss to millions.  Just because something is a net benefit in terms of GDP, that doesn't mean that it is a net benefit to humanity.  Note Tol also goes on to say &lt;em&gt;&quot;Only toward the end of the century will global warming turn to a net loss — so while we need to do something, it must be cost-effective.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;, this is basically saying that the net loss will be someone else's problem, so why should I care?  Economists have a name for this which is &quot;discounting&quot;.  I would agree that any action should be cost effective, but it needs to be based on a full analysis of the costs and benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update, Prof. Tol supports some of what I have said above in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-012-0613-3&quot;&gt;recent paper&lt;/a&gt;, for which the abstract is given below (emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The national version of FUND3.6 is used to backcast the impacts of climate change to the 20th century and extrapolate to the 21st century. Carbon dioxide fertilization of crops and reduced energy demand for heating are the main positive impacts. &lt;strong&gt;Climate change had a negative effect on water resources and, in most years, human health. Most countries benefitted from climate change until 1980, but after that the trend is negative for poor countries and positive for rich countries.&lt;/strong&gt; The global average impact was positive in the 20th century. In the 21st century, impacts turn negative in most countries, rich and poor. Energy demand, water resources, biodiversity and sea level rise are the main negative impacts; the impacts of climate change on human health and agriculture remain positive until 2100.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which suggest that currently (i.e. post 1980), climate change is beneficial for already rich countries but has a negative impact on poor countries.  GDP is only one measure of the economy and increasing GDP isn't necessarily an indicator of the health of the global economy if it results in a greater polarisation of rich and poor countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SkepticalScience.com has a number of pages with relevant information, including  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-advanced.htm&quot;&gt;&quot;its not bad&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/Can-animals-and-plants-adapt-to-global-warming.htm&quot;&gt;&quot;animals and plants can adapt&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm&quot;&gt;&quot;CO2 is plant food&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/carbon-fertilization-effect.html&quot;&gt;&quot;how big is the carbon fertilisation effect&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which all contain links to the primary literature on relevant issues.  The IPPC reports would also be well worth reading, as assessing the cost of the impacts of climate change is the subject of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml#1&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; from working groups 2 and 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, a Google scholar search for &quot;effect of climate change on GDP&quot; provides &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/sep/26/climate-change-damaging-global-economy&quot;&gt;&quot;Climate change is already damaging global economy, report finds&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-26/climate-change-reducing-global-gdp-by-1-dot-6-percent-a-year-report-finds&quot;&gt;Climate Change Reducing Global GDP by $1.2 Trillion&lt;/a&gt;, etc.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch20s20-6-1.html&quot;&gt;IPCC&lt;/a&gt; say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Most of the aggregate impacts reported in IPCC (1996) were of the first type; they monetised the likely damage that would be caused by a doubling of CO2 concentrations. For developed countries, estimated damages were of the order of 1% of GDP. Developing countries were expected to suffer larger percentage damages, so mean global losses of 1.5 to 3.5% of world GDP were therefore reported.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the Stern Review also comes in strongly in favour of mitigation on economic grounds, so I would suggest that the idea that climate change is good for the world economy is at best, highly equivocal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2013-10-25T10:32:58.813" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T10:32:58.813" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18160" CreationDate="2013-10-23T09:05:59.530" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea that the lunar cycle has a direct effect on human physiology (apart from having slightly more light to see by, or planning fishing trips based on the tides) has had a long history. The concept is known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lunar Effect&lt;/a&gt;, and is maintained by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticblog.org/2013/05/06/the-lunar-effect-and-confirmation-bias/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;confirmation bias&lt;/a&gt; and under-sampled studies testing against every conceivable effect that turn out to be unreproduceable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your GP seems to be referring to this study, which did come to the conclusion that the waning moon seems to have an effect on the recovery of patients, but only for the recovery of Aortic dissection repair. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://icvts.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/07/08/icvts.ivt299.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;The inﬂuence of seasons and lunar cycle on hospital outcomes following ascending aortic dissection repair&quot;&gt;The inﬂuence of seasons and lunar cycle on hospital outcomes following ascending aortic dissection repair&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The full-moon cycle appeared to reduce the odds of death, and the full-moon cycle, along with being male and requiring a concomitant cardiac procedure, was associated with shorter LOS (length of stay).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A slightly older study, with much large sample size (over 18,500 patients rather than 210), &lt;strong&gt;did not&lt;/strong&gt; find a similar effect: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/anesthesiology/Fulltext/2009/10000/Operation_Timing_Does_Not_Affect_Outcome_after.21.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Operation Timing Does Not Affect Outcome after Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The number of cases each weekday, each month of the year, and during each phase of the moon were consistent. None of the time factors significantly affected the composite morbidity outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My suspicion would be sampling bias, especially with the small positive results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="466" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-10-23T13:25:20.093" LastActivityDate="2013-10-23T13:25:20.093" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18173" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18174" CreationDate="2013-10-23T16:15:38.010" Score="27" ViewCount="12920" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim, mentioned in the title text of &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/1281/&quot;&gt;the most recent XKCD&lt;/a&gt;, is one that I've heard before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The LEGO Group is already the world's largest tire manufacturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This time, however, I did some digging. Hitting up Wikipedia first, I found it references &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Shift+of+emphasis.-a0289215925&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, which was posted on April Fool's Day of last year. (Possibly a coincidence, but it also has a few mistakes such as claiming LEGO is Swedish.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can trace the statistics it cites back to &lt;a href=&quot;http://brokensecrets.com/2013/02/19/lego-is-the-largest-tire-manufacturer/&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt;, but that's about as far as I can find with those numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[T]he company that produces the most tires is LEGO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, it is comparing apples and oranges, but the claim seems to be that the number of little &quot;tires&quot; that LEGO makes is larger than the number of &quot;real&quot; tires that any tire company makes.  Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15924" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-10-23T16:48:28.563" LastActivityDate="2016-12-16T00:29:42.177" Title="Does The LEGO Group produce more tires than any other tire manufacturer?" Tags="|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18173" CreationDate="2013-10-23T16:56:22.663" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, The Lego Group produces more Lego tires than tire companies produce &quot;real&quot; tires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_tire#cite_note-bus_week-5&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article for Lego Tires&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All tires (and wheels) for Lego products are manufactured by Lego, which has produced tires between 14.4 and 107 millimetres (0.57 and 4.2 inches) in diameter. In 2006 the Lego Group produced 15 billion individual pieces of Lego, which included 306 million tires.By 2011 Lego's annual production was increased to 381 million, more than twice as many as any of the other tire companies, including Bridgestone, Michelin, and Goodyear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And they give the numbers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Lego - 381 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Bridgestone - 190 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Michelin - 184 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Goodyear - 181 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their source for the number of tires manufactured by Lego is &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=a52a_F-OKUcC&amp;amp;pg=PA105&amp;amp;dq=Lego+Tires&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=yTWzT5zpIZOE2QXw17zpCA&amp;amp;ved=0CF8Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Lego%20Tires&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;a book&lt;/a&gt; called &quot;Lego: A Love Story&quot; by Jonathan Bender (2010) which states on page 105:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LEGO is the largest manufacturer of tires in the world, with 306 million produced per year&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-11-29/the-making-of-a-legobusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice&quot;&gt;this 2006 Bloomberg article&lt;/a&gt; which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tire production accounts for some of that number; the factory also produces 306 million tiny rubber tires a year. In fact, going by that number, LEGO is the world's No. 1 tire manufacturer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the source for the amount of tires manufactured by real tire companies, their source is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Shift+of+emphasis.-a0289215925&quot;&gt;same article&lt;/a&gt; that appears in the question which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LEGO produces over 381 million tires per year. In 2011, Bridgestone produced over 190 million tires, Michelin 184 million and Goodyear 181 million. World tire production last year totaled 1.6 billion. LEGO's production was not included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2013-10-23T20:32:06.753" LastActivityDate="2013-10-23T20:32:06.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18178" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-23T19:32:54.043" Score="1" ViewCount="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is regularly stated that aluminium is very bad for the brain, and for your general health. Is this true for antiperspirants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Potassium alum more healthy or is this just about marketing ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15336" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-10-23T21:59:07.180" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T12:36:58.303" Title="Are aluminum antiperspirants unhealthy?" Tags="|environmental-health|hygiene|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2013-10-24T12:37:10.507" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18180" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18168" CreationDate="2013-10-23T22:55:20.997" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Out of curiosity, I contacted Catherine Digilio Grimes, Director, Office of School Nutrition Programs, Virginia Department of Education and Michael Welch, Director, Division of WIC &amp;amp; Community Nutrition Services, Virginia Department of Health. Director Welch also inquired with his USDA contact. They said there are no federal or state (that is VA) policies, guidelines or regulations that would prevent a lunch from home. This specific preschool center &quot;may have decided to restrict lunches from home because they can’t get reimbursed&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: Digilio Grimes, Catherine (DOE)&#xA;Oct 23&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. Weber,&#xA;  I am not aware of  that any school restricts children from bring their own lunches.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Do you know what school and school division this is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Catherine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Catherine Digilio Grimes&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Catherine Digilio Grimes, MS, RD., LDN, SNS&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Director, Office of School Nutrition Programs&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Division of Finance and Operations&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Virginia Department of Education&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  101 N. 14th Street&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Richmond, VA 23219&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Office Phone (804) 225-2074&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Fax  Number (804)786-3117&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Email-catherine.digilio-grimes@doe.virginia.gov&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: Digilio Grimes, Catherine (DOE)&#xA;Oct 23&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eric,&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  I am going to forward your request to the Virginia Department of Health. Michael Welch who is the Director who oversees the USDA Child Care programs.  He may have more insight into this preschool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Catherine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: Digilio Grimes, Catherine (DOE) &#xA;Oct 23 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mike,&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  I received this email for Mr. Eric Weber as concerned citizen related to the blog in the link below that show a note and comments saying children are not allowed to bring in their own lunch .  We believe it s a day care program in Richmond area.&#xA;  Not sure if they are part of CACFP or not.   Would you please looked into this and get back to Mr. Weber&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: Welch, Michael (VDH) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. Weber,&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  I have received your email from Ms. Digilio Grimes. I have sent to my contacts at USDA to determine if any such regulations exist for day care or preschools. As soon as I hear back, I will let you know.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: Welch, Michael (VDH)&#xA;Oct 23&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. Weber&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From my USDA contact:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  There is no federal policy that restricts parents from supplying meals from home.  The center may have decided to restrict lunches from home because they can’t get reimbursed but there is no such federal policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15928" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-10-25T01:08:51.553" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T01:08:51.553" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18182" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18186" CreationDate="2013-10-24T03:29:11.313" Score="14" ViewCount="1152" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have not only heard the soda can theory since I was a kid, but more recently when researching the topic I have found many websites that claim pans made of aluminum and antiperspirants are correlated to Alzheimer's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/01/02/aluminum-and-alzheimer-prevention.aspx&quot;&gt;Mercola.com&lt;/a&gt; is one such website that lists all three.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of more practical importance is a case-control study which looked at the association of AD and lifetime exposure to aluminum in antiperspirants and antacids. Scientists found a direct correlation. The more antiperspirant that was used, the more likely the person would develop AD. The same held true for aluminum antacids. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Science still has quite a few years of research before it can definitely state that aluminum causes AD. However, the above items of evidence should encourage us to limit our aluminum intake if we hope to avoid this horribly devastating illness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15799" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-10-24T06:28:47.347" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T11:04:20.580" Title="Is aluminum in pans, soda cans and antiperspirants correlated to Alzheimer's?" Tags="|environmental-health|hygiene|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18182" CreationDate="2013-10-24T05:17:28.883" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;And yet, a different media publication claims a complete opposite (no link between Alzheimer and aluminium whatsoever):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/07/29/1163941.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/07/29/1163941.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15908" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T05:17:28.883" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18182" CreationDate="2013-10-24T10:53:06.177" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR;&lt;/strong&gt; We don't really know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/alzheimers/guide/controversial-claims-risk-factors&quot;&gt;WebMD&lt;/a&gt; has a good summary of the current state of science on this topic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the most publicized and controversial theories concerns aluminum, which became a suspect in Alzheimer's disease when researchers found traces of this metal in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease. Many studies since then have either not been able to confirm this finding or have had questionable results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that aluminum is correlated to Alzheimer's disease came about when autopsies found elevated amounts of aluminum in the brains of diseased Alzheimer's patients.  As as demonstrated in &lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/963531/reload=0;jsessionid=aDhnqGtGsgnxl4An6pA2.44&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Five of 6 cerebral biopsies from patients with Alzheimer's disease also had elevated aluminium content. In 2 additional Alzheimer's brains with neurofibrillary degeneration restricted to certain anatomical areas, elevated aluminium content was found to be associated with neurofibrillary degeneration and not with senile plaques. Furthermore, elevated aluminium content in multiple cortical regions was not found in 2 vascular dementias of the elderly. While the cytotoxic concentration for human neurons is unknown, the cytotoxic concentration for cat's cerebral neurons appears to lie between 4 and 6 mug/g dry weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, critics point out that the elevated aluminum levels did not occur in all cases, suggesting that, even if aluminum is correlated, it cannot be blamed as a single cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other studies have failed to show a correlation (although that might be expected if aluminum is not the only cause). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurology.org/content/29/6/809.short&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt;, for instance, found no statistical correlation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There were no statistically significant differences in brain aluminum concentration between the 10 patients with Alzheimer disease, and the 9 nonneurological controls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies continue along these lines, and many studies do seem to find a correlation, but since it's difficult to do direct tests on such a matter on living human brains, proxy tests must be done (on animals, or other experimental areas).  This of course, leads to criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some such studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/180/4085/511.short&quot;&gt;Brain Aluminum Distribution in Alzheimer's Disease and Experimental Neurofibrillary Degeneration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neurofibrillary degeneration is an important pathological finding in senile and presenile dementia of the Alzheimer type. Experimentally, aluminum induces neurofibrillary degeneration in neurons of higher mammals. Aluminum concentrations approaching those used experimentally have been found in some regions of the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00688530&quot;&gt;Intranuclear aluminum content in Alzheimer's disease, dialysis encephalopathy, and experimental aluminum encephalopathy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Direct injection of aluminum into the cerebrospinal fluid of cats resulted in a progressive encephalopathy with neurofibrillary degeneration and increased intranuclear aluminum content. It is speculated that in Alzheimer's disease the normal blood-brain and cytoplasmic barriers for this neurotoxic metal are defective permitting aluminum to gain access to DNA-containing constitutents of the nuclei.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course, there are accusations of a cover-up by government and/or the aluminum industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-10-24T11:04:20.580" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T11:04:20.580" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9920" CreationDate="2013-10-24T21:02:50.820" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every mechanical engine, gasoline, diesel or other (such as LNG) is made up of a multitude of parts manufactured to accepted engineering &quot;standards.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These standards spell out, down to the smallest detail, what engineering criteria the finished part will meet. Quite frequently however these individual parts come from different factories and various countries. But because each manufacturer subscribes to the same engineering standards, a wrist pin manufactured in Korea will mate to a piston manufactured in India for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, so good. There is, however, the rub called &quot;Manufacturing tolerances.&quot; Which are accepted as a necessity in the above engineering standards. Thus, the commercially produced wrist pin made above may be allowed to have a circumference + or - variance of say .0005&quot; to .0009&quot;, it will still function for its intended purpose and meet the manufacturers requirement for MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure). The cost to get that same part to be dead-on perfect, with absolutely minimal deviation from its design specification would drive the cost much higher than the intended market (you and me) could afford. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's one reason why the engine in a Lamborghini, Aventador Roadster costs so much more than the powerhouse of a Chevrolet Corvette: Manufacturing tolerances (i.e. variations from the design) in the Lambo are almost non-existent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of which Which leads us to: Breaking in a new engine! Let's say you could only afford the Corvette and not the Lambo, but you want your prized beauty to last a long, long time... What do you do? You break the darn thing in properly of course! Here's the engineering reason: All those parts in your new engine manufactured to that above mentioned +or- tolerance need to mate to each other (think of it as dating before marriage). Every part, commercially machined has microscopic hi and low spots on its surface called &quot;asperities.&quot; These asperities need to rub against each other under load in order to literally break off the high spots and bring the load bearing surfaces closer to the ultimate goal of 100% contact. The other element is called &quot;wear hardening.&quot; Piston rings, cylinder walls and camshafts along with many crank shafts in most non-exotic, passenger vehicle engines are made from nodular cast iron. IF these cast iron parts are allowed to break in properly, they will develop an extremely hard, long lasting wear surface. It may only be .001&quot; to .003&quot; or so thick, but it will stand up to many years of use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all happens on a microscopic level of course. But I guarantee you that, as they came from the factory, the rings to cylinder wall contact and the cam lobe to lifter contact etc on your new Corvette were NOT optimal for (a) full performance and (b) engine longevity. Breaking it in carefully will, however accomplish this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recommended break in procedures vary by manufacturer, but essentially it boils down to a few basics: (1) NEVER rev a cold engine! (2) Vary your speeds for the first 500 miles and don't maintain a constant speed (like 60 MPH) for extended periods. (3) In the first 500 miles, accelerate evenly and allow your engine to coast frequently (i.e. coast from 60 to 50 foot off he gas). This creates a high vacuum in the combustion chamber and pulls more fresh oil to the rings ad cylinder walls. (4) Change your oil and filter after the first 100 miles and again at 500 miles. (5) Only use high quality oil, preferably synthetic. I've rebuilt many types of engines and some of them exceeded 150,000 miles on that rebuild. Break an engine in right, treat it good and it will last you a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15945" LastActivityDate="2013-10-24T21:02:50.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18173" CreationDate="2013-10-25T00:03:25.580" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Appears that in 2012 they were awarded the Guinness World Record for this. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://aboutus.lego.com/en-gb/news-room/2012/june/guiness-world-record-to-the-lego-group/&quot;&gt;http://aboutus.lego.com/en-gb/news-room/2012/june/guiness-world-record-to-the-lego-group/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15949" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T00:03:25.580" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18168" CreationDate="2013-10-25T02:01:40.453" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Federal Programs Preschool is actually just the (uninspired and confusing) name of a set of Head Start facilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/preschool/parent-handbook/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Parent Handbook of one facility in Henrico, Virginia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Federal Programs Preschool provides a high quality, active learning environment for at-risk four-year-old children in twenty-three (23) locations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can prove this letter was sent by this facility by matching the name of the person in the note to the name of the Health Coordinator at the school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't specific wording on the school's regulations that states it is against facility policies for a parent to pack their kids' lunches, but it does mention guidelines for shared foods like birthday cupcakes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to Federal Regulations and Safety Guidelines, all prepared foods brought into the classroom (i.e., birthday cakes, cupcakes, cookies, etc.) must be store bought or restaurant prepared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is a vague rule that seems to imply that parents have to apply to get the lunches for free or at reduced prices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For Breakfast, lunch and snack are provided at each location, at no cost to participants. Free and reduced lunch applications must be completed by all participating families. This is a program requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the facility policies cite a single federal regulation or law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as for the Head Start federal regulation, according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/standards/Head%20Start%20Requirements/45%20CFR%20Chapter%20XIII/45%20CFR%20Chap%20XIII_ENG.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;official federal law and guidelines&lt;/a&gt; approved by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, there is no specific regulation I could find stating that parents could not provide home lunches for their children, nor any regulation that would imply this. It appears to be the total opposite, in fact, as stated in the regulation, &lt;a href=&quot;http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/standards/Head%20Start%20Requirements/45%20CFR%20Chapter%20XIII/45%20CFR%20Chap%20XIII_ENG.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;part 1304.23 Child Nutrition, section b paragraph vii subsection 4&lt;/a&gt; (top right of page 128)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;parents and appropriate commu­nity agencies must be involved in plan­ning, implementing, and evaluating the agencies’ nutritional services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's very safe to say this is a (misinterpreted) rule of the facility and staff of this Head Start preschool, rather than a broad requirement/law by the federal government as many of these blogs are implying. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15950" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-10-25T04:07:35.180" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T04:07:35.180" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11221" CreationDate="2013-10-25T03:01:17.917" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;They may be beneficial from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aoa.org/patients-and-public/caring-for-your-vision/protecting-your-vision/computer-vision-syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Optometric Association&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eyeglasses or contact lenses prescribed for general use may not be adequate for computer work. Lenses prescribed to meet the unique visual demands of computer viewing may be needed. Special lens designs, lens powers or lens tints or coatings may help to maximize visual abilities and comfort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lens powers and tints or coatings are what the Gunnar glasses are providing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also an opthamological literature review reveals that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The occasional computer viewer may be able to get away with using their general eyewear, but those who spend more than one hour a day, including the occupational user, can benefit from the use of computer glasses. The trick is in choosing the right type. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039625705000093&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Computer Vision Syndrome: A Review, Blehm, et al 2005&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Color-contrast optic filters are known to improve the color discriminating capacity when exposed to video display terminals. Feigin et al revealed that 20 of 23 subjects reported an improvement of visual fatigue after 4 weeks of using the eyeglasses with spectral filters.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039625705000093&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract of the referenced article states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Color-contrast optic filters are developed for improving the color discriminating capacity of eyes exposed to video display terminals. These filters are applied as a coating on correcting &lt;strong&gt;or common glasses&lt;/strong&gt;. Effects of such eyeglasses on visual functions accommodation, frequency-contrast sensitivity, and critical frequency of flashes fusion (CFFF) were studied in 23 PC users with visual acuity of 1.0 with correction. Wearing of eyeglasses with filters promoted shifting of the most distant point of clear vision further and increased the accommodation volume, contrast sensitivity at the low and decreased it at the medium and high frequencies. CFFF was not changed. Wearing of eyeglasses with filters for 4 h of working at a display caused shifting of the nearest and most distant points of clear vision in comparison with the control group with the accommodation volume unchanged and preserved the high contrast sensitivity at the mean and low frequencies during the entire period of work. No changes in CFFF were noted. After 4 weeks of using eyeglasses with spectral filters, 86.9% of volunteers noted an improvement of visual working capacity and 13.1% considered there was no difference. Hence, eyeglasses with spectral filters are recommended as an ophthalmological measure preventing visual fatigue during long work with video displays.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9621819&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prevention of visual fatigue in computer users by eyeglasses with spectral filters, Feigin, et al 1998&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15928" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T13:47:32.847" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18199" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-25T19:09:12.617" Score="2" ViewCount="363" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are various reports of people feeling depressed and suicidal having taken Champix. What is the truth about this stop-smoking-pill?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Daily Mail tell the story of a girl who took it and tried to kill herself - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-509683/Champix-Is-smoking-pill-safe.html#ixzz2ijuGeTDe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-509683/Champix-Is-smoking-pill-safe.html#ixzz2ijuGeTDe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then the NHS website describes this as a 'myth' - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MYTH: Champix will make me feel depressed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;THE FACTS: Champix has been linked with occasional reports of&#xA;  depression and even suicidal thoughts. However, it’s not clear whether&#xA;  these side effects were due to the medicine or quitting smoking, and&#xA;  for most people it’s perfectly safe. Talk over any concerns with your&#xA;  doctor or NHS stop smoking adviser beforehand, especially if you’ve&#xA;  had depression or another mental illness before. Be aware of your&#xA;  moods while you’re taking the tablets and tell your doctor if you&#xA;  notice any change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/smoking/Pages/stop-smoking-treatment-myths.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/smoking/Pages/stop-smoking-treatment-myths.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the truth about Champix? Is it the pill causing the suicidal tendencies or is it nicotine withdrawal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10899" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T14:46:28.203" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T14:46:28.203" Title="Is Champix safe?" Tags="|environmental-health|smoking|pharmaceutical|medications|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14663" CreationDate="2013-10-25T20:38:16.390" Score="17" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You might think that it was the one closest to the killer’s apartment. Or, that it was the one with the largest audience. Yet, neither explanation is right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Eagan_Holmes&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; the shooter lived on Paris Street.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!4m18!3m17!1m1!1sParis+Street%2C+Aurora%2C+CO!1m5!1sCentury+16+Aurora%2C+14300+E+Alameda+Ave%2C+Aurora%2C+CO+80012!2s0x876c62e78e635813%3A0x36dd9e42b88c0eb8!3m2!3d39.705911!4d-104.820664!3m8!1m3!1d138459!2d-104.849189!3d39.7320317!3m2!1i1407!2i1083!4f13.1&amp;amp;fid=0&quot;&gt;this Google Maps search&lt;/a&gt; the theatre is 10 minutes drive from Paris Street. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!q=movie+theater&amp;amp;data=!4m10!1m9!4m8!1m3!1d34615!2d-104.849189!3d39.7320317!3m2!1i1407!2i1083!4f13.1&quot;&gt;this Google Maps search&lt;/a&gt; the only closer movie theatre is the &quot;Cinema Grill&quot;, which doesn't appear to be a traditional theatre (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cinemagrill.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.cinemagrill.com/&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One might apply Occam's Razor to more complex explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2013-10-25T21:05:27.407" LastActivityDate="2013-10-25T21:05:27.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18199" CreationDate="2013-10-26T00:43:52.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a web page from The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, which I think is supposed to train medical students about risk, and which uses Champix as a case study: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smd.qmul.ac.uk/risk/yeartwo/casestudies/champix.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Champix&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It summarizes the &amp;quot;controversy&amp;quot;, including individual anecdotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Musician Carter Albrecht was shot and killed by his girlfriend's neighbour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and actions by regulatory bodies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The New York Times reported that the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (F.A.A.) had announced the day before a ban on the use of Champix (varenicline tartrate) for both pilots and air traffic controllers, due to concerns with possible adverse neuropsychiatric effects which could be detrimental to public safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and widespread complaints:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2009, Health Canada announced that it had received more than 800 complaints from Canadian users, many of them reporting mood swings, depression or suicidal thoughts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United Kingdom Up to 200,000 people take the medicine twice-a-day. The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) say they have received over 800 reports from users of Champix who experienced adverse reactions when using the drug. Not all these adverse reactions were of a psychological nature but included things like nausea, dizziness, vomiting and abnormal dreams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless it ends with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the controversy, a cohort study published evaluated medical records of 80,660 persons attempting to quit smoking (10,973 of which were using Champix) and found no evidence of an increased risk of depression, self-harm and suicide, although a small increase could not be ruled out on statistical grounds. A study conducted by Group Health Center for Health Studies, SRI International, and Free &amp;amp; Clear, Incorporated, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, found that people with a history of depression are not more susceptible to the reported psychiatric side effects of Champix than people with no history of depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discussion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the controversial use of Champix as a method to quit smoking,&#xA;do you think that this medicine should be legal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it worth the risk? Think In terms of not developing adverse&#xA;reaction and quitting smoking which is associated with cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a medical student but my reading of this is that we're meant to understand three things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotes aren't worth as much as cohort studies; when you have 200,000+ people taking a drug there are going to be some scary stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The cohort study says it's safe (at least regarding depression etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's less dangerous than smoking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T00:43:52.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7614" CreationDate="2013-10-26T03:36:46.293" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;A case has just been reported in the Guardian: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/25/australian-holiday-winners-duped-smuggling-crystal-meth&quot;&gt;Australian holiday winners duped into smuggling crystal meth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An Australian couple were unwittingly conned into becoming&#xA;  multi-million dollar drug mules after winning a dream trip to Canada&#xA;  with new luggage thrown in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The elaborate con duped the couple by taking them to Canada as the&#xA;  winners of an all-expenses paid trip, which included accommodation and&#xA;  new suitcases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But after a dream week in North America, the couple became suspicious&#xA;  about their bags on their return to Western Australia and reported&#xA;  themselves to customs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T03:36:46.293" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7614" CreationDate="2013-10-26T15:45:17.653" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a story of it happening here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/23/world/americas/mexico-blind-drug-mules/index.html&quot;&gt;'Blind mules' unknowingly ferry drugs across the U.S.-Mexico border&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The victim was arrested and convicted; and then the case was dismissed when a judge noticed the same thing happening elsewhere:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Senior U.S. District Judge David Briones, a 17-year judicial veteran,&#xA;  had noticed the pattern in the cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I got information about [District Judge Philip R.] Martinez's trial&#xA;  this week with almost the exact same facts: Two bags in the trunk,&#xA;  each with about 50 pounds tied together, and the individual was again&#xA;  inspected at the [commuter] lane,&quot; Briones told Andres' attorneys and&#xA;  the prosecutors at the status hearing that afternoon in May.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I, quite frankly, think that an injustice has been done,&quot; he said.&#xA;  The judge dismissed the case against Andres, and he was released that&#xA;  day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, though, the drugs were planted in the victim's car (not in their luggage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-10-26T15:45:17.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17995" CreationDate="2013-10-26T17:08:31.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The data visualization choices made by the IPCC are poor and have the effect of obscuring the differences between model forecasts and observed temperatures.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: this answer assesses whether the IPCC have done a good job of presenting the comparison of observed temperatures and model projection. This, I think, is what a good skeptic would demand if the purpose of presenting the data is to assess whether the models have any predictive skill. This may not be the intention of the IPCC presentation, of course. Also, I am not assessing the IPCCs conclusions, merely their choices of presentation methods.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key problem the IPCC or other climate modellers have to face is how to present the results of climate projections which contain a great deal of uncertainty. Models don't predict a single path of future temperatures: the short term climate is chaotic and, even if we know all the inputs with precision (which we don't) there are many factors that create many paths into the future. So even a single model will give an ensemble of possible paths into the future. So one key question is how to describe that uncertainty in a visual way that does not misrepresent the nature of the uncertainty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another problem is that there are multiple scenarios for what will happen in the future. The key ones use different assumptions about how the world will respond to climate change (will we constrain the output of CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; or just keep producing increasing amounts each year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The initial IPCC chart does a half-assed job of the first problem and a poor job dealing with the second. The chart presents the envelopes of forecasts produced by particular models, which is commendable, but incomplete and it fails to account for the shape of the probability distribution of possible temperature paths (examples of better approaches below). The second problem is that the chart tries to show multiple envelopes from multiple model versions. This just confuses as the envelopes overlap and it is hard to get a clear visual impression of the particular envelope for any one model. In fact the choice of models to show is particularly confusing as the envelopes are shown for the key models from &lt;em&gt;previous&lt;/em&gt; IPCC rounds despite the obsolescence of the old models and their irrelevance to whether current models are doing a good job. A better approach, if the goal would be to show one chart for each group of models showing the projections made at each previous report with a comparison of all subsequent actual observations. Small Multiples of this sort are a very effective visualisation technique (see this excellent discussion with many examples at &lt;a href=&quot;http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/small_multiples/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Junk Charts&lt;/a&gt;). The IPCC even used this approach when they presented the original AR4 forecasts (why not, it seems reasonable to ask, just repeat these charts in the current report with observed temperatures overlayed?):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LBXGI.png&quot; alt=&quot;IPCC model forecasts from AR4&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are good techniques for unambiguously presenting statistical ranges on forecasts. One of the best is used by the Bank of England (BOE) for its inflation forecasts. Inflation forecasts have a lot in common with climate forecasts: they are based on complex models of the behaviour of the economy, projected from historic observations but containing chaotic noise. They, again like climate models, produce a range of possible paths for future inflation. An example is given below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3WaWA.gif&quot; alt=&quot;economist version of BOE forecasts&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The economist article the chart is derived from also discusses the technique explaining it like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1996, the Bank introduced the innovation of presenting the forecast as a probability distribution, in order to highlight the risks to the central forecast. These forecasts, which are agreed by the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), are called “fan” charts because the expected outcomes spread out in bands from the most likely path of inflation to cover 90% of the probability distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advantage of the BOE approach is that it gives the right visual impression that paths near the edge of the envelope are less probable than those in the middle. The IPCC envelopes in the original chart equally weight the whole envelope of forecasts giving the (incorrect) impression that edge paths are just as likely as central paths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final version of the IPCC charts compounds this problem by also adding many individual paths to the plot. Visually this overweights the extreme paths at the edge of the probability distribution far too heavily compared to the much larger number of paths near the middle of the distribution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final presentation also botches the second task even more thoroughly by including multiple AR4 scenarios despite the fact that only one of those comes close to representing the observations (such as CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emissions) which were uncertain at the time of the projection but are now history (why include scenarios assuming tight emission constraints when we know that didn't happen?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IPCC could have done a much better job. For example, the chart below shows a much clearer view (I'm not judging the data here, just the presentation format):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tZ8au.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;hawkins comparison chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This chart is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://judithcurry.com/2013/02/22/spinning-the-climate-model-observation-comparison/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Judith Curry's blog&lt;/a&gt; but is initially derived from Jeff Hawkings &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2013/updated-comparison-of-simulations-and-observations/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Surprigingly, there have been very few, if any, attempts to either do this comparative analysis or to present the results well. As Judith Curry observes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the midst of substantial public interest on this issue, there is no published analysis that I know of that compares CMIP5 simulations to observations, although it looks like Ed Hawkins’ analysis is heading towards publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An alternative and simpler view would show a snapshot of the average performance of the models up to now versus the actual temperature record (this view simplifies the paths taken over time so loses some information). An example of such an analysis is shown below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YIbpn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;pielke version of nature chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original source for this is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n9/full/nclimate1972.html?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201309&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent paper in Nature&lt;/a&gt; (paywalled). The chart makes a direct comparisons among CMIP5 forecasts (the grey distribution) and the observed path of temperature since the forecasts were made. (Note this was published after the Curry comment quoted above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effective visualization of complex data is difficult. But good advice exists (for example: see the guru of the field &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Edward Tufte's work&lt;/a&gt;;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Junk Charts readable and topical blog&lt;/a&gt;; or the usually excellent examples at &lt;a href=&quot;http://flowingdata.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flowingdata&lt;/a&gt;. Unfortunately this advice is mostly ignored, especially by scientists who often seem to believe &quot;the data in the chart was fine; what's the problem?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In pure visualization terms the IPCC's changes made an average chart much worse and obscured things a reasonable skeptic would have preferred to be clarified. The visualization changes made any comparison between model projections and observations much harder and much less statistically sound. In their defence, perhaps clarity was never their goal and they didn't have any competent visualization advice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T19:45:03.497" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T19:45:03.497" CommentCount="22" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18090" CreationDate="2013-10-27T01:08:34.590" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are only three studies in PubMed that mention CrissCross bristle design explicitly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first, authored by Oral-B Laboratories, finds that &quot;comparisons with more than 80 leading manual toothbrushes from around the world demonstrate a consistent, significant advantage for the new CrossAction toothbrush, both with respect to interproximal penetration and cleaning effectiveness.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second compares five manual toothbrushes of different bristle design and finds that CrissCross bristle design &quot;demonstrated statistically significantly better plaque removal.&quot; It is also significant that the study was written &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biosci-canada.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BioSci Research&lt;/a&gt;, self described as &quot;Independant [sic] Evaluation of Oral Health Care Products&quot;--a for-profit lab that frequently endorses Oral-B products in their studies.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third, and the only legitimate-looking of the three (since it comes from an actual academic department), &lt;strong&gt;finds no difference&lt;/strong&gt; between a power brush with a static CrissCross component and a manual toothbrush (made by Butler Gum).&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beals, Ngo, et. al. &quot;Development and laboratory evaluation of a new toothbrush with a novel brush head design.&quot; Am J Dent. 2000 Mar;13(Spec No):5A-14A.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;A clinical evaluation of the plaque removal efficacy of five manual toothbrushes&quot; published in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Clinical Dentistry&lt;/em&gt; 2010;21(1):8-12.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Evaluation of several brushing motion combinations in relation to plaque-removing efficacy with Oral-B CrossAction Power: a professional brushing study.&quot; Int J Dent Hyg. 2006 Nov;4(4):204-8.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Please note that this answer does not constitute medical advice. It is only meant to summarize published research related to the topic and limited to the cited sources. Consult your physician about what these results may mean for your health.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-11-30T16:18:11.353" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T16:18:11.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17976" CreationDate="2013-10-27T02:14:03.407" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it works to coax the animal to move, but probably not as means for consistent forward locomotion. Some evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUJJ2qgyFd8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Footage&lt;/a&gt; of a man &quot;training donkey to move with a target stick/lure/feeder.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Amateur &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PVFBGN_zoMH&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; showing a &quot;pony move under saddle while being baited with a carrot dangling from a string attached to a stick.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150601161505/http://chestofbooks.com/food/household/Woman-Encyclopaedia-3/A-Children-s-Donkey-Gymkhana.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Every Woman's Encyclopedia&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, 1910-1920:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stick-and-carrot race. Each competitor tries to incite her steed to its top speed by dangling a fine carro' before its nose spirits of the place, who will be sure to enter into the fun, and make things go with a swing, before inviting the less enterprising boys and girls and smaller children.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150601161250/https://i.stack.imgur.com/8WbO1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUJJ2qgyFd8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUJJ2qgyFd8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PVFBGN_zoMH&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PVFBGN_zoMH&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150601161505/http://chestofbooks.com/food/household/Woman-Encyclopaedia-3/A-Children-s-Donkey-Gymkhana.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20150601161505/http://chestofbooks.com/food/household/Woman-Encyclopaedia-3/A-Children-s-Donkey-Gymkhana.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:39.093" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T16:16:35.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17817" CreationDate="2013-10-27T02:53:39.920" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the question in your title directly: &lt;strong&gt;yes, George Bernard Shaw publicly expressed sympathy for Hitler in the 1930s&lt;/strong&gt;. This was less controversial before WWII than it was after.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a 1961 article on the topic, H.M. Geduld (then secretary of the Shaw Society) quotes from a lecture in 1933, where Shaw calls Hitler &quot;a very remarkable, a very able man.&quot; Geduld writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This remark may puzzle readers who are aware of Shaw's fervent enthusiasm for Soviet Communism. Actually there is no contradiction, no deliberate paradox in Shaw's attitude. He admired Hitler and Stalin, just as he had admired Mussolini, because these men were trying to get something done and because they had all got rid of the &quot;pseudo-democratic&quot; party system - that &quot;unparalleled engine for preventing anything being done.&quot; For G.B.S. dictatorship was &quot;the only way in which government can accomplish anything.&quot; The party system would have to be eliminated if we really intended to solve our political problems&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Bernard Shaw and Adolf Hitler,&quot; &#xA;H. M. Geduld,&#xA;&lt;em&gt;The Shaw Review&lt;/em&gt;,&#xA;Vol. 4, No. 1 (January, 1961), pp. 11-20.&#xA;Published by: Penn State University Press,&#xA;Stable URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/40682385&quot;&gt;http://www.jstor.org/stable/40682385&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-10-27T18:45:56.080" LastActivityDate="2015-10-27T18:45:56.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17679" CreationDate="2013-10-27T02:59:00.303" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The search query &quot;breast &amp;amp; fenugreek&quot; return a single paper on PubMed. It is published in &lt;em&gt;Obstetrics &amp;amp; Gynecology&lt;/em&gt; and produced by the Department of Health Care Sciences, George Washington University School of Medicine. Its conclusions are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Bust enhancing&quot; herbal products are widely advertised. No clinical trials have been published. These products contain a variety of ingredients, including grains, hops, saw palmetto, dong quai, chaste-tree berry, wild yam, kava, fennel, black cohosh, and fenugreek. Several of these herbs are hormonally active; for example, hops contain 8-prenylnaringenin, a phytoestrogen that is more potent than other dietary phytoestrogens. Many bust-enhancing dietary supplements contain substrates for Fusarium, a fungus that produces zearalenone, a potent estrogen that has been associated with breast enlargement in humans and other species. &lt;strong&gt;The use of bust-enhancing products should be discouraged because of lack of evidence for efficacy and long-term safety concerns.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that this answer does not constitute medical advice. It is only meant to summarize published research related to the topic and limited the cited sources. Consult your physician about what these results may mean for your health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Obstet Gynecol.&lt;/em&gt; 2003 Jun;101(6):1345-9.&#xA;&quot;Bust enhancing&quot; herbal products.&#xA;Fugh-Berman A. Department of Health Care Sciences, George Washington University School of Medicine, Washington, DC, USA. fughberman@aol.com&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-05-22T17:41:03.347" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T17:41:03.347" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18017" CreationDate="2013-10-27T03:14:38.707" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent meta-analysis of published literature on the subject &lt;strong&gt;was inconclusive. As of 2011, there was no scientific consensus on the question.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Genotoxic and estrogenic activities in PET-bottled water have been reported. Chemical mixtures in bottled water have been suggested as the source of these toxicological effects. Furthermore, sample preparation techniques, such as solid-phase extraction (SPE), to extract estrogen-like compounds in bottled water are controversial. It has been suggested that inappropriate extraction methods and sample treatment may result in false-negative or positive responses when testing water extracts in bioassays. There is therefore a need to combine chemical analysis with bioassays to carry out hazard assessments. Formaldehyde, acetaldehyde and antimony are clearly related to migration from PET into water. However, several studies have shown other theoretically unexpected substances in bottled water. The origin of these compounds has not been clearly established (PET container, cap-sealing resins, background contamination, water processing steps, NIAS, recycled PET, etc.). [...] &lt;strong&gt;Our literature review shows that contradictory results for PET-bottled water have been reported, and differences can be explained by the wide variety of analytical methods, bioassays and exposure conditions employed.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Please note that this answer does not constitute medical advice. It is only meant to summarize published research related to the topic and limited to the cited sources. Consult your physician about what these results may mean for your health.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Water Res.&lt;/em&gt; 2012 Mar 1;46(3):571-83. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0043135411007548&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chemical compounds and toxicological assessments of drinking water stored in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles: A source of controversy reviewed.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; Bach C, Dauchy X, Chagnon MC, Etienne S. ANSES, Nancy Laboratory for Hydrology, Water Chemistry Department.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-10-23T15:36:15.730" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T15:36:15.730" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18220" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17047" CreationDate="2013-10-28T10:00:11.990" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is parallels to how communism in ended in Russia and how Apartheid ended in South Africa. To put it plainly South Africa was broke. Very few countries where willing to do business with them. They simple could not have continued on with these massive trade embargoes in effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They simply had to do something to revive the economy. FW De Klerk knew this and the only way he could foresee the prevention of this decline was accepting Democracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;falling GDP, either in an absolute way, or compared to other countries&#xA;  in the region&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is simply not true. For a good long time in the early noughties SA's Economy was growing by 3 - 5%. Which had never happened before. They took a knock when the recession came but still not as bleak as some other countries in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;significantly increasing crime rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take this article for instance from the Mail &amp;amp; Guardian&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While many believe Jo'burg is the most dangerous city to live in, in&#xA;  SA, the reality is very different. Lizette Lancaster explains why.&#xA;  While murder is often used as the main indicator to support arguments&#xA;  that South Africa is a violent country, it makes up only 2.5% of all&#xA;  violent crime. (Madelene Cronje, M&amp;amp;G)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite a lot of people thinking that Johannesburg is the most&#xA;  dangerous metropolitan city to live in, in South Africa, the reality&#xA;  is quite different. Consider that between April 2011 and March 2012,&#xA;  police recorded more murders in Cape Town than in Johannesburg and&#xA;  Pretoria combined. This means that taking population into account,&#xA;  Cape Town residents are almost twice (1.8 times) more likely to be&#xA;  murdered than Johannesburg residents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yet this information is potentially misleading because the likelihood&#xA;  of being a victim of crime depends in large part on race, gender, age,&#xA;  economic profile and whereabouts in a city a person lives. For&#xA;  example, almost two-thirds of the Cape Town murders took place in just&#xA;  10 of the 60 police station precincts in the city, according to an&#xA;  analysis of crime hotspots we carried out at the Institute for&#xA;  Security Studies (ISS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For years, Mitchell's Plain experienced the highest violence and&#xA;  property crime rates in the country. With the recent surge in gang&#xA;  violence, Mitchell's Plain and surrounding areas clearly require&#xA;  in-depth multi-disciplinary intervention. The Cape Town residential&#xA;  areas of Nyanga, Khayelitsha, Gugulethu and Harare remain the most&#xA;  murderous in the peninsula, according to an analysis which takes&#xA;  population size into account. These areas have experienced abnormally&#xA;  high murder rates for more than a decade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Low-income areas most affected Similarly, countrywide analysis of&#xA;  police precinct statistics suggests that income levels matter.&#xA;  Residents in low-income areas, the analysis shows, are far more likely&#xA;  to be murdered than their middle and high-income counterparts. Half of&#xA;  South Africa's murders occur in only 13% or 143 out of 1 127 of police&#xA;  precincts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A vast majority of the average of 43 murders that take place daily do&#xA;  not make the news. They happen in areas where crime and violence are&#xA;  part of the daily despair of residents who already feel marginalised&#xA;  and forgotten by media and politicians. The majority of murders are&#xA;  not premeditated or committed as part of a crime, like a robbery, but&#xA;  occur when an argument leads to physical assault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research shows that most victims are killed by acquaintances, friends&#xA;  or family members during disputes overwhelmingly fuelled by alcohol&#xA;  and in some occasions, drug abuse. Victimisation surveys, police&#xA;  docket surveys and mortuary surveillance studies reveal that the most&#xA;  victims of murder in South Africa are young black men. And studies&#xA;  reveal that most murdered women are killed by their intimate partners.&#xA;  And that men are six times more likely to be killed than women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People tend to focus on our national murder rate, which is four and a&#xA;  half times higher than the global average of 6.9 per 100 000 people.&#xA;  Yet, some 13% of police precincts in South Africa have murder rates&#xA;  below this rate. These areas include affluent ones such as Brooklyn&#xA;  (Pretoria), Garsfontein (Pretoria), Camps Bay, Claremont, Rondebosch&#xA;  (Cape Town), Edenvale and Linden (Gauteng). Meanwhile, residents of&#xA;  suburbs like Sandton, Parkview (Johannesburg), Durban North, Table&#xA;  View and Woodstock (Cape Town) and others have a murder rate of fewer&#xA;  than 10 per 100 000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over 10% of our policing precincts – more than 115 stations – have a&#xA;  zero murder rate.  Three in four murders occur in just a quarter of&#xA;  the country's police station areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While murder is often used as the main indicator to support arguments&#xA;  that South Africa is a violent country, it makes up only 2.5% of all&#xA;  violent crime. While there were 15 609 murders last year, a total of&#xA;  607 877 other violent crimes including attempted murder, rape, robbery&#xA;  and assault were also reported to the police. When violent crime&#xA;  hotspots are analysed, central business districts remain the most&#xA;  high-risk areas in terms of violence in general, and specifically for&#xA;  robberies. The clear front-runner is Johannesburg Central, followed by&#xA;  Durban Central, Pietermaritzburg, Cape Town Central and Pretoria&#xA;  Central. These areas also experience very high property crime rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mg.co.za/article/2013-09-19-where-murder-happens-in-south-africa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://mg.co.za/article/2013-09-19-where-murder-happens-in-south-africa&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that you cannot make generalizations when it comes to crime in SA. Their are place that are crime ridden and others where you can live in peace. As it is in most places in the world poverty plays a central role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;increasing poverty rates&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This may not be true as Government grants and unemployment insurance tries to rectify it. Also the black middle class is very much real and that is something that did not exist in 94. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For a developing country South Africa has a well-established social&#xA;  welfare system and a large proportion of social spending goes towards&#xA;  social grants. According to Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan's&#xA;  budget speech &quot;substantial growth in social spending over the past&#xA;  decade has financed a threefold increase in the number of people&#xA;  receiving social grants&quot; and over 15 million people in South Africa&#xA;  now receive cash transfers from the state. Since the gradual extension&#xA;  of the Child Support Grant to children up to the age of 18, spending&#xA;  on social assistance has increased an average of 11% per year and will&#xA;  increase to R120 billion in the 2014/15 financial year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://groundup.org.za/content/everything-you-need-know-about-social-grants&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://groundup.org.za/content/everything-you-need-know-about-social-grants&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15977" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T18:25:46.037" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T18:25:46.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18221" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-28T12:04:47.010" Score="9" ViewCount="4712" Body="&lt;p&gt;This video purportedly shows a guitar player, Vahid Iran Shahi, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=224591747710180&amp;amp;set=vb.288510634534816&amp;amp;type=2&amp;amp;theater&quot;&gt;playing the Flight of the Bumblebee at 350 bpm&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an experienced guitar player, it seems humanly impossible to me to play this fast:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the background, there's a second hand implying the video is not accelerated, though. Are there any signs of this being a fake?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11922" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-10-28T12:35:12.070" LastActivityDate="2016-02-08T12:49:09.930" Title="Is this guitar player capable of playing as fast as depicted?" Tags="|video|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18221" CreationDate="2013-10-28T15:00:15.547" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The guitarist is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em_cbaafSVs&quot;&gt;Vahid Iran Shahi&lt;/a&gt; (or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/vahid.iranshahi&quot;&gt;Iranshahi&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He self-describes as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbML84i9PLs&quot;&gt;Fastest And Technical Spanish guitarist In The World&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could find no evidence regarding the reliability of this video and no independent source verifying his claims of being the fastest Spanish guitarist or the specific speeds at which he played in the video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others have been verified to play faster than he has claimed in the video, so that should remove your argument from incredulity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://recordsetter.com/world-record/guitar-player/7285?autoplay=true#contentsection&quot;&gt;http://recordsetter.com/world-record/guitar-player/7285?autoplay=true#contentsection&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2012/1/dr-hot-licks-sees-in-the-new-year-in-hong-kong-with-new-fastest-guitar-playing-record/&quot;&gt;http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2012/1/dr-hot-licks-sees-in-the-new-year-in-hong-kong-with-new-fastest-guitar-playing-record/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, without additional evidence, I believe the question of whether this is an unaltered video of Vahid Iranshahi playing at 350bpm is unanswerable at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-10-28T18:47:21.557" LastActivityDate="2013-10-28T18:47:21.557" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18226" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18260" CreationDate="2013-10-28T21:09:05.720" Score="10" ViewCount="1357" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today New America Foundation has published a report &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/the_cost_of_connectivity_2013&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;The Cost of Connectivity 2013: &#xA;A comparison of high-speed Internet prices in 24 cities around the world&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been covered by media, mostly in a tone that US is lagging behind and lacking choices (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Americans pay so much because they don't have a choice&lt;/strong&gt;,&quot; says Susan&#xA;  Crawford, a former special assistant to President Barack Obama on&#xA;  science, technology and innovation policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although there are several national companies, local markets tend to&#xA;  be dominated by just one or two main providers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We deregulated high-speed internet access 10 years ago and since then&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;we've seen enormous consolidation and monopolies&lt;/strong&gt;, so left to their own&#xA;  devices, companies that supply internet access will charge high&#xA;  prices, because they face neither competition nor oversight.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two-thirds get their broadband via their television cables, she says,&#xA;  because the DSL (digital subscriber line) service provided by phone&#xA;  companies over copper lines can't compete with cable speeds, while&#xA;  wireless and satellite services are subject to low usage caps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;source:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24528383&quot;&gt;BBC News &lt;em&gt;&quot;Why is broadband more expensive in the US?&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand there has been editorial in NYT by Verizon's CEO Lowell C. McAdam, titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/opinion/how-the-us-got-broadband-right.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;How the U.S. Got Broadband Right&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  stating quite the opposite (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrast this with the European Union, where innovation and investment&#xA;  in advanced networks have stagnated under an onerous regulatory regime&#xA;  that limits investment and innovation, and where today only about 2&#xA;  percent of households have access to broadband networks with&#xA;  100-megabit-plus speeds. “Once, Europe led the world in wireless&#xA;  communication: now we have fallen behind,” Neelie Kroes, the European&#xA;  Union official responsible for broadband policy, said in a speech in&#xA;  January. “Europe needs to regain that lead.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since 1996, as&#xA;  America encouraged the growth of its broadband industry, European&#xA;  regulators have adopted policies that generally limited network&#xA;  infrastructure deployment to a single facility in a given country or&#xA;  region. Other companies were allowed to “resell” broadband services to&#xA;  consumers, but only if they used the same infrastructure. This&#xA;  “retail” competition resulted in prices that may have covered the&#xA;  costs of operations but left little capital or other incentive for&#xA;  companies to invest in improving these networks. In other words, a&#xA;  decade ago the European broadband market may have looked healthy from&#xA;  the standpoint of consumer pricing, but &lt;strong&gt;after 10 years of&#xA;  underinvestment, European households (only half of which have access&#xA;  to networks capable of speeds of even 30 megabits) have far fewer&#xA;  broadband options and innovations than their American counterparts&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what's the hard data? How does state of broadband in US and EU compare?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T21:36:43.800" Title="Is US ahead or behind of EU in terms of broadband Internet access?" Tags="|united-states|internet|europe|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15791" CreationDate="2013-10-29T06:13:35.807" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was the infamous 2004 - 2006 Dell Laptops that had to be recalled because they literally caught fire. 4.1 million Dell batteries had to be recalled because of faulty batteries &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/Dell-to-recall-4-million-batteries/2100-1044_3-6105486.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://news.cnet.com/Dell-to-recall-4-million-batteries/2100-1044_3-6105486.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9NBcY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FVYeU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hXPcb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15977" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T06:13:35.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18230" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18231" CreationDate="2013-10-29T09:46:03.047" Score="28" ViewCount="4379" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fortfreedom.org/p22.htm&quot;&gt;The Myth of Plutonium Toxicity&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Cohen_%28physicist%29&quot;&gt;Bernard L. Cohen&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Plutonium is constantly referred to by the news media as ``the most&#xA;  toxic substance known to man.''  Ralph Nader has said that a pound  of&#xA;  plutonium  could cause  8  billion cancers,  and former Senator&#xA;  Ribicoff  has said  that a  single particle  of plutonium inhaled into&#xA;  the  lung can cause cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is plutonium &quot;the most toxic substance known to man&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="5079" LastEditDate="2013-10-29T11:21:20.597" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T09:27:21.233" Title="Is plutonium the most toxic substance known to man?" Tags="|nuclear-energy|nuclear-weapons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18230" CreationDate="2013-10-29T09:46:03.047" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter13.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Nuclear Energy Option, Chapter 13, Plutonium and Bombs&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (Plenum Press, 1990, ISBN 0-306-43567-5), &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Cohen_%28physicist%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bernard L. Cohen&lt;/a&gt; writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When plutonium oxide, the form in which plutonium would be used in the&#xA;  nuclear industry and also its most toxic form, is inhaled as a fine&#xA;  dust, 25% of it deposits in the lung, 38% deposits in the upper&#xA;  respiratory tract, and the remainder is exhaled. Within a few hours,&#xA;  all of that deposited in the upper respiratory tract, but only 40% of&#xA;  that deposited in the lung, is cleared out. The other 60% of the&#xA;  latter — (.25 x .60 =) 15% of the total inhaled — remains in the lung&#xA;  for a rather long time, an average of 2 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 2 million fatalities per pound inhaled leaves plutonium dust far&#xA;  from &quot;the most toxic substance known to man.&quot; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Biological agents, like&#xA;  botulism toxin or anthrax spores are many hundreds or thousands of&#xA;  times more toxic.&lt;/em&gt; Plutonium toxicity is similar to that of nerve&#xA;  gas, but given the choice of being in a room with equal quantities&#xA;  of plutonium dust and nerve gas, the latter would be infinitely more&#xA;  dangerous.&lt;/strong&gt; It rapidly permeates the room air, whereas plutonium, being&#xA;  a solid material, would be largely immobile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The calculational procedure used here to obtain our result, 2 million&#xA;  deaths per pound inhaled, follows the recommendations of the&#xA;  International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP). It would&#xA;  be impossible to obtain a very different result without sharply&#xA;  deviating from them; at least three independent investigations have&#xA;  used them to evaluate the toxicity of plutonium and they have all&#xA;  obtained essentially the same result. These ICRP recommendations are&#xA;  used by all groups charged with setting health standards all over the&#xA;  world, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the&#xA;  Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the United States.&#xA;  They are almost universally used in the scientific literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is 5,000 times more dangerous to inhale plutonium than to eat it, and eating plutonium is about equal in danger to eating the same quantity of caffeine.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no direct evidence for plutonium-induced cancer in humans,&#xA;  but there have been a number of experiments on dogs, rabbits, rats,&#xA;  and mice. The results of these are summarized in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter13.html#fig1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fig. 1&lt;/a&gt;, where the&#xA;  curve shows the expectation from our calculation. It is evident that&#xA;  the animal data give strong confirmation for the validity of the&#xA;  calculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zqG9Q.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Fig. 1 — Results of animal experiments with inhaled plutonium. The curved line shows the predictions of the calculation outlined in the text.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="5079" LastEditDate="2013-11-07T09:27:21.233" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T09:27:21.233" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18232" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-29T10:25:36.783" Score="2" ViewCount="1036" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Wikipedia, in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_topics_characterized_as_pseudoscience#Racial_theories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list of pseudoscientific topics&lt;/a&gt; included the following &quot;pseudosciences&quot;: Scientific racism, Aryanism and Melanin theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is quite evident that Aryanism and Melanin theory can be easily classified as pseudoscience, Scientific racism is defined as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;claim that scientific evidence shows the inferiority or superiority of&#xA;  certain races, or alternatively the claim of &quot;classifying&quot; individuals&#xA;  of different phenotypes into discrete races or ethnicities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this claim is described as pseudoscientific, I wonder whether it was ever proven that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;people of different phenotypes cannot be classifyed into different races&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I was studying in the school in the 1990s we were taught that there are three main races: Europeoid, Mongoloid and Negroid, we were taught that people Europeoid race have more body hair, Negroid race has darker skin, big lips and curled hair and people of Mongoloid race have epicantus. We of course were told that not all people represent pure features characteristic for these races due to mixing. Was this view refuted since then? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is no scientific evidence indicating superiority or inferiority of people of different racial/ethnic origin in different fields&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I remember I read a study indicating unequal distribution of IQ index over races, ethnicities and countries. Is composing such statistics also now considered pseudoscience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6248" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:43:22.043" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T00:43:22.043" Title="Is scientific racism a pseudoscience?" Tags="|biology|race|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-10-29T13:44:46.330" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18232" CreationDate="2013-10-29T13:12:46.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't if that could be classified as superiority of inferiority, since I'd say that is just some characteristic: there are some research about drugs that could benefit more one race than another (if you also accept that there are some difference races among humans)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rxlist.com/bidil-drug/indications-dosage.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BiDil: indications and dosage&lt;/a&gt; is an approved drugs for heart conditions, and it's indicated to &lt;code&gt;self-identified black patients&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some opinions that we couldn't define human races (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/ViewPage.aspx?pageId=79&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;), and so perhaps even racial drugs are a misleading theme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4146" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T13:12:46.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18236" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18238" CreationDate="2013-10-29T14:32:23.890" Score="10" ViewCount="1700" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter13.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Myth of Plutonium Toxicity&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Cohen_%28physicist%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bernard L. Cohen&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Plutonium is constantly referred to by the news media as ``the most&#xA;  toxic substance known to man.''  Ralph Nader has said that a pound  of&#xA;  plutonium  could cause  8  billion cancers,  and former Senator&#xA;  Ribicoff  has said  that a  single particle  of plutonium inhaled into&#xA;  the  lung can cause cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/appendix.html#13&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sources the quote&lt;/a&gt; as coming from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;R. Nader, speech at Lafayette College (Spring 1975).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source states that he said this in a debate with radiation pioneer Ralph Lapp:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/18855/title/Discussions-Of-Nuclear-Power-Should-Be-Based-In-Reality/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Discussions Of Nuclear Power Should Be Based In Reality&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by nuclear engineer Theodore Rockwell, published in The Scientist:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, one day consumer activist Ralph Nader was debating radiation pioneer Ralph Lapp. Nader stated that a pound of plutonium could kill every human being on Earth. One could picture a one-pint jar of the stuff spilling on the ground and its dea dly vapors spreading until all life was obliterated. That's what Nader's statement means in the common-sense real world. But Lapp put the statement in its proper context by replying: &quot;So could a pound of fresh air, Ralph.&quot; Now how can that be? We've been repeatedly told that plutonium is the deadliest substance known. And we know that fresh air is literally the breath of life. What's going on here? Nader's statement was not actually a lie; he was just trying to make us think that a hypothetical conjecture was a real-world problem. He's saying that the lethal dose of plutonium is a five-billionth of a pound. It's really several thousand times larger, but even if Nader were correct, the only way you could actually kill the world's 5 billion people with just one pound would be to line them up and have a trained physician inject into each person just the toxic amount of plutonium-no more or there wouldn't be enough to go around. It would have to be in a fine aerosol mist, or it wouldn't be lethal, and it would have to go directly into the lung. Then we would have to wait several decades, protecting the individual from other life-threatening influences such as cars, smoking, and malnutrition, until he or she died of lung cancer, because plutonium poses no other health threat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Context can make a huge difference in what people actually mean, so I wonder if Ralph Nader has actually claimed that a pound of plutonium could cause 8 billion cancer deaths, and, if so, if context would indicate whether he means it in the way it is interpreted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Ralph Nader claim that &lt;em&gt;a pound of plutonium could cause 8 billion cancers&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Question inspired by: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/18230/5337&quot;&gt;Is plutonium the most toxic substance known to man?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T07:45:15.397" Title="Did Ralph Nader say that a pound of plutonium could cause 8 billion cancers?" Tags="|quotes|toxicology|nuclear-energy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18236" CreationDate="2013-10-29T15:10:07.230" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/cgi-bin/showfile.exe?CISOROOT=/bw2&amp;amp;CISOMODE=print&amp;amp;CISOPTR=42096&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LeHigh University Brown and White, Volume 36, No. 41, Tuesday, March 11, 1975&lt;/a&gt;, Nader introduced a two-day “Symposium on Nuclear Power Development and Society” at Lafayette, where he said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nader referred to nuclear power as a producer of deadly radioactive materials.  Plutonium 239, while the &quot;deadliest cancer producing agent ever produced by man,&quot; is &quot;a prodigious product of the forthcoming breeder reactor,&quot; he said. Nader said production of plutonium is a major category of concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not confirm the &lt;em&gt;8 billion&lt;/em&gt; number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T15:10:07.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18236" CreationDate="2013-10-29T15:13:22.713" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a common figure of speech to say &lt;em&gt;[small amount]&lt;/em&gt; of toxin could kill &lt;em&gt;[large amount]&lt;/em&gt; people. (Examples: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2209256/Teenager-fights-life-bitten-snake-kill-100-men-ONE-DROP-venom.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2011/04/07/world-record-167-the-worlds-deadliest-toxins/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;)  It is an emotive demonstration of the toxicity, but it openly ignores the complexity of the delivery mechanism - an assumption Rockwell scoffs at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is more relevant than the figure of speech used to describe the toxicity, is the underlying level of toxicity claimed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He's saying that the lethal dose of plutonium is a five-billionth of a pound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I don't have a transcript of his March 11, 1975 speech, I did find an article Nader wrote about two weeks later (&lt;a href=&quot;http://nader.org/1975/03/29/plutonium-makes-the-heart-beat/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source: Nader.org&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any use of plutonium, a tiny 0.2 micrograms of which has given lung can­cer to animals, must be viewed with utmost caution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com.au/search?q=(0.2+micrograms)+per+pound&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2,267,961,850&lt;/a&gt; doses of 0.2 micrograms per pound - i.e. about 2 billion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;based on this article, rather than the cited speech,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assuming similar dosages will work on humans, as well as other animals,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ignoring the distribution mechanisms required to split the dosages up and apply them to the lungs of the humans:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ralph Nader &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; suggest that the toxicity of Plutonium was high enough to cause over &lt;em&gt;2 billion&lt;/em&gt; cancers per pound. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is lower than the quoted 8 billion, but shows Nader was making toxicity claims in the ball-park of the quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-28T07:45:15.397" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T07:45:15.397" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18241" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-29T16:19:01.223" Score="8" ViewCount="1033" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following post was given to me on Facebook. I could use some help sifting some of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I do not promote the use of a flu vaccine. But it's not because &quot;the&#xA;  mercury&quot; or &quot;the formaldehyde,&quot; but rather because epidemiological&#xA;  studies do not show that there is an actual social/economic or&#xA;  functional benefit to these vaccines. In other words, when we look at&#xA;  two randomly assigned, randomly selected groups of participants (in&#xA;  large studies) where they either get a flu shot, or a control saline&#xA;  shot, it is very true that the experimental group mounts a response,&#xA;  and adequate levels of antibodies to the vaccine can be detected in&#xA;  about 95-99% of the experimental groups, and 0% of the control&#xA;  subjects mount a similar response... which on the surface would&#xA;  strongly suggest or imply that they would also be protected from&#xA;  getting the flu, the problem is that even though they have a high&#xA;  degree of antibody production, when the studies actually follow them&#xA;  for a whole year and look not just at the antibody response (which is&#xA;  a theoretical assessment that assumes they will get sick less often&#xA;  than those without the antibody response) but they actually look at&#xA;  functional measures such as:&#xA;  -how many times they got the flu or flu-like symptoms, and for how many days these symptoms lasted&#xA;  -how many days off from work they took that year&#xA;  -self-reported quality of life in that time frame&#xA;  -self-reported money spent on OTC medications for flu symptoms they had&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These feel like unrealistic expectations to me. A vaccine's effect cannot be measured by its effect on a person's quality of life, spending habits, or the emergence of &quot;flu-like symptoms.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All these functional measures turn out to be null. There is no&#xA;  difference. In some groups, the vaccine group actually experienced&#xA;  more sickness (not statistically significant). The point is, while the&#xA;  immune response is there in the experimental group, it seems to&#xA;  actually play no role and have no influence on it's desired effect,&#xA;  namely, keeping people from getting sick with symptoms of flu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here the author appears to be arguing with the very mechanism of vaccination. Stimulating an immune response has no role in preventing emergence of the condition. I suspect he is cherry-picking studies to get this conclusion. I have asked for citations, but showing studies to the contrary may be enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is known for certain is that presently, no vaccine for flu has&#xA;  any benefit whatsoever in those under the age of 2. Likewise in the&#xA;  elderly, flu vaccines have shown, for sure, absolutely no benefit. If&#xA;  you find any evidence to the contrary, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For elderly, I found this:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/15767/were-flu-vaccines-9-effective-for-the-elderly-in-2013&quot;&gt;Were flu vaccines 9% effective for the elderly in 2013?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For 2-year-olds, I recall reading this before, but can't remember the study. What I do remember is that it was a meta-analysis suggesting that more research is needed on children in this age range -- NOT that studies were done and found no effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I want to mention right now that there is a difference between&#xA;  &quot;efficacy&quot; and &quot;effectiveness.&quot; These terms may seem to convey the&#xA;  same idea to lay people, but they have very different experimental&#xA;  meanings. Efficacy is the ability to show benefit in the test tube. In&#xA;  other words, to detect antibodies. When a flu vaccine study says it&#xA;  has high efficacy, which they all do, it means &quot;we were able to detect&#xA;  antibody production in 95+ percent of the experimental group that got&#xA;  the vaccine.&quot; Yes. Bravo. They all do that. All the studies do that&#xA;  and nobody is questioning that. Not even the hippie idiot hugging the&#xA;  oak tree by the creek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But effectiveness, that means the observed reduction in incidence and&#xA;  risk after the treatment has been given. In this case, a vaccine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And with all the studies, effectiveness is very very low, if not&#xA;  nonexistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this person is merely watering the discussion here. He is trying to suggest that effectiveness is all that matters, but the science can only demonstrate efficacy with nothing to connect the two. I'm not certain how to respond to this except to assure the person that I only care about effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are some confounders that many study authors note. Such as, it's&#xA;  known that in children 6 months to around 8 years of age, the flu&#xA;  vaccine appears to help, but often these are not randomly assigned&#xA;  study designs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think he is basically saying that he has not encountered a study he likes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's possible that, since flu shots are not free, the&#xA;  high socio-economic status parents are more likely to give them to&#xA;  their kids, because a flu shot is not seen as a mandatory need by&#xA;  those who are on a tighter budget, and that alone means you're not&#xA;  getting good data. Is it that the vaccine is helping? Or is it that&#xA;  high SES preferentially selects for healthier kids at baseline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure what he is getting at here. My flu shots cost me nothing. They offer them in the lobby of the building where I work. Some of the schools offer them. My doctor doesn't charge me for it. They pass flu shots out like candy around here. The CDC appears to agree.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/keyfacts.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/keyfacts.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even still, assuming in 6 month olds to 8 years of age it helps, then&#xA;  we should ONLY be really recommending it to them, and not to everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And for the record, the symptoms of a flu &quot;immune response&quot; are in&#xA;  some people indistinguishable from flu-like symptoms. Your chart is a&#xA;  little flawed. You don't always only get a minor fever from a flu&#xA;  shot. And you can indeed have whole body pain, not just in the arm.&#xA;  And with the fever, comes headache. And malaise is very similar to&#xA;  fatigue and weakness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have the medical experience to know if this is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And this is why some people do believe they &quot;get the flu&quot; from the&#xA;  vaccine. Indeed that's impossible, but it's NOT impossible to get&#xA;  indistinguishable symptoms from the flu, due to a vaccine. That's very&#xA;  possible and happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And my take home message is not the same as yours. Mine is: the flu&#xA;  shot is at best very very mildly effective, in some groups of people.&#xA;  It is useless in infants, and the elderly (and those are the ones we&#xA;  want it to help the most, because they are at highest risk of actually&#xA;  having serious complications from the flu. And yet they are the ones&#xA;  who benefit the least from a vaccine to the flu. Influenza, in the&#xA;  general population is not a life threatening disease. At all. And the&#xA;  best prevention for it appears to be dietary and lifestyle (exercise).&#xA;  Unfortunately everyone wants a simple answer like a vaccine. Doesn't&#xA;  work that way. Save your money and get a gym membership instead of a&#xA;  vaccine. Make sure you have adequate vitamin D status. Work on sleep&#xA;  habits (this is a huge risk factor for influenza), and eat more&#xA;  vegetables and fruits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this contradictory since he is suggesting that the flu may work for people within the adequate age range to do these things. You wouldn't get a gym membership for a 2-year-old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T22:43:56.593" Title="Flu vaccination opponent attempts to assess effectiveness rather than efficacy" Tags="|vaccines|flu|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2013-10-30T00:28:06.367" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18241" CreationDate="2013-10-29T16:36:27.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;When my doctor asked me to get a flu shot, the reason he gave me was that it was to &amp;quot;increase &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;herd immunity&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; it's not measurably &amp;quot;effective&amp;quot; (in terms of quality of life) for the individual, I expect that it is effective for the &amp;quot;herd&amp;quot;.&#xA;One reason to have the shot yourself, is to (try to) protect other vulnerable people, like infants and the elderly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because answers require references, here is one: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22414740&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The vaccination coverage required to establish herd immunity against influenza viruses&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RESULTS: The required percentage that would have been required to establish herd immunity against previous influenza viruses ranged from 13% to 100% for the 1918-19, 1957-58, 1968-69 and 2009-10 pandemic viruses, and from 30% to 40% for the 2008-09 epidemic virus. The objectives of vaccination coverage proposed in the United States - 80% in healthy persons and 90% in high-risk persons - are sufficient to establish herd immunity, while those proposed in Europe - only 75% in elderly and high-risk persons - are not sufficient. The percentages of vaccination coverage registered in the United States and Europe are not sufficient to establish herd immunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CONCLUSION:&#xA;The influenza vaccination coverage must be increased in the United States and Europe in order to establish herd immunity. It is necessary to develop new influenza prevention messages based on herd immunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The principal claim in the OP seemed to be, &amp;quot;It's not worth getting the flu shot: because although it is 'efficacious', it is not 'effective'&amp;quot; -- where, &amp;quot;effective&amp;quot; was defined as &amp;quot;observed reduction in incidence and risk after the treatment has been given&amp;quot; as well as the &amp;quot;functional measures&amp;quot; listed at the end of the first paragraph, and where &amp;quot;effectiveness&amp;quot; was purportedly measured (or immeasurable) &lt;strong&gt;in individuals&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, by talking about &amp;quot;herd immunity&amp;quot;, my doctor seemed to me to be saying that it is effective (at avoiding epidemics) when &lt;strong&gt;sufficiently many of a population&lt;/strong&gt; have been immunized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even (or especially) if you are a healthy individual and could therefore afford to risk not having an injection (because, you can fight off the flu if you get it), perhaps you should get it anyway to benefit your herd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On whether it is &amp;quot;effective for the herd&amp;quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000256&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Economic Appraisal of Ontario's Universal Influenza Immunization Program: A Cost-Utility Analysis&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Main outcome measures were quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), costs&#xA;in 2006 Canadian dollars, and incremental cost-utility ratios&#xA;(incremental cost per QALY gained). Program and other costs were drawn&#xA;from Ontario sources. Utility weights were obtained from the&#xA;literature. The incremental cost of the program per QALY gained was&#xA;calculated from the health care payer perspective. Ontario's UIIP&#xA;costs approximately twice as much as a targeted program but reduces&#xA;influenza cases by 61% and mortality by 28%, saving an estimated 1,134&#xA;QALYs per season overall. Reducing influenza cases decreases health&#xA;care services cost by 52%. Most cost savings can be attributed to&#xA;hospitalizations avoided. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio is&#xA;Can$10,797/QALY gained. Results are most sensitive to immunization&#xA;cost and number of deaths averted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Universal immunization against seasonal influenza was estimated to be&#xA;an economically attractive intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The measures of &amp;quot;effectiveness&amp;quot; which the OP alleges were conducted include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;they actually look at functional measures such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how many times they got the flu or flu-like symptoms, and for how many days these symptoms lasted&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how many days off from work they took that year&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;self-reported quality of life in that time frame&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;self-reported money spent on OTC medications for flu symptoms they had&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast the &amp;quot;Cost-Utility Analysis&amp;quot; document (referenced above) argues from the point of view of &amp;quot;cost effectiveness&amp;quot;: how much does it cost (to provide immunizations), compared with how many lives are saved, and how much healthcare costs (e.g. from visiting doctors after you catch the flu) are reduced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion says that &lt;strong&gt;targeted immunization of high-risk populations&lt;/strong&gt; have been proven worthwhile:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cost-effectiveness of influenza immunization programs has been demonstrated by numerous economic evaluations of TIIPs, many of which are directly based on clinical trial data. TIIPs have been shown to be cost-effective in children 6 mo and older [29]–[36], adults 50 y and older [37]–[41], working adults [42]–[44], working adult cancer patients [45], pregnant women [46], health care workers [47],[48], high-risk individuals [49], and older adults (65 y and older) [39],[50]–[55] from a health care payer perspective. Most economic evaluations found TIIPs to be not only cost-effective but cost-saving from a societal perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to say that &lt;strong&gt;universal immunation&lt;/strong&gt; is also &amp;quot;cost-effective&amp;quot;, in that on average &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality-adjusted_life_year#Use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;it saves one year of life for each $10,000 spent&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ontario's UIIP also prevented 111 deaths, a 28% reduction in&#xA;mortality. This resulted in a projected 1,134 QALYs gained in total or&#xA;0.09 quality-adjusted life days per person vaccinated. Approximately half of all health gains (QALYs) were associated with a reduction of&#xA;influenza mortality; the other half was associated with reduction in&#xA;influenza-related morbidity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The program costs of UIIP are high, approximately double that of a&#xA;targeted program ($40 million versus $20 million). However, UIIP was&#xA;estimated to prevent 786 influenza-related hospitalizations, 7,745&#xA;influenza-related ED visits, and 30,306 office visits per season.&#xA;Preventing influenza cases effectively reduced influenza-related&#xA;health care costs by 52%, saving the health care system approximately&#xA;$7.8 million per season, so that the net cost of the UIIP program is&#xA;$12.2 million, or $2.60 per person vaccinated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Improving herd immunity might not an argument which would convince low-risk individuals in the USA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The program appears to offer some health benefits, but the relationship between cost and health benefits of universal immunization had not been evaluated. Our study provides evidence that a universal program is economically attractive in jurisdictions with influenza epidemiology and health care costs that are broadly similar to that of Ontario. [...] A health care system similar to Ontario's (i.e., health care systems with one major payer), where the costs of the immunization program and the costs of treating influenza cases are both in the payer's budget, will enable the universal program costs to be partly offset by savings in health care cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-29T22:43:56.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18246" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18250" CreationDate="2013-10-29T22:14:32.940" Score="12" ViewCount="1040" Body="&lt;p&gt;A video titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/1ph3az/this_video_of_chinese_street_food_made_from/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This Video Of Chinese Street Food Made From 'Gutter Oil' Is The Most Disgusting Thing You Will See All Day&lt;/a&gt; rose to the top of the reddit front page today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It claims some restaurants in China use &quot;gutter oil&quot; - cooking oil that is recycled from drains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people in the comments claimed that the source, Radio Free Asia, is not reputable, and after a bit of cursory research, I am erring on the side of 'this is bogus', but I am not sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this story true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5606" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T06:50:34.587" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T06:50:34.587" Title="Do restaurants in China recycle 'gutter oil'?" Tags="|hygiene|china|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18247" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27316" CreationDate="2013-10-29T22:36:06.417" Score="32" ViewCount="13481" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several sites claim that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford&quot;&gt;Henry Ford&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/henryford136294.html&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt; the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our&#xA;  banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be&#xA;  a revolution before tomorrow morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Members in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Henry_Ford&quot;&gt;Wikiquote&lt;/a&gt; claim that it is unsourced. Does anyone have a source for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10899" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-11T21:19:48.260" LastActivityDate="2016-04-09T10:19:54.167" Title="Did Henry Ford predict revolution if people understood the banking and monetary system?" Tags="|economics|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18250" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18246" CreationDate="2013-10-30T06:55:58.517" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I cannot speak to the veracity of the video, gutter oil is mentioned enough times in other verifiable sources to make it &lt;strong&gt;a reasonably accurate story&lt;/strong&gt;. An article in &lt;em&gt;Bioresource Technology&lt;/em&gt; mentions &quot;popular concern on food security caused by illegal use of gutter oil in China&quot; as well as &quot;producing biodiesel from gutter oil.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another article in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of China Executive Leadership Academy&lt;/em&gt; with the title &quot;Dilemma in the Supervision of 'Gutter Oil.'&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; It starts like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For quite a long time,alluring profits and absence of effective supervision jointly contribute to the rampancy of &quot;gutter oil&quot; business. Besides,there lack of relevant laws and regulations to curb the production and sale of &quot;gutter oil.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another paper, in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Instrumental Analysis&lt;/em&gt; proposes to use gas chromatography-mass spectrometry to distinguish gutter from edible oils.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is a the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gutter_oil&quot;&gt;wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; on gutter oil, with even more sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sai Liang, &lt;em&gt;et al&lt;/em&gt;. &quot;Life cycle assessment of biodiesel production in China.&quot; &lt;em&gt;Bioresource Technology&lt;/em&gt;, Volume 129, February 2013, Pages 72–77.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wang, Dang. &quot;Dilemma in the Supervision of 'Gutter Oil.&quot; &lt;em&gt;Journal of China Executive Leadership Academy&lt;/em&gt;, 2012:05.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hui-qin Wu, &lt;em&gt;et al&lt;/em&gt;. &quot;A Novel Method for the Identification of Gutter Oils Using SPME/GC-MS.&quot; &lt;em&gt;Journal of Instrumental Analysis&lt;/em&gt;, 2012:01.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T06:55:58.517" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18251" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-30T09:07:41.213" Score="4" ViewCount="915" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://glennrowe.net/baroncohen/faces/eyestest.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;psychological test&lt;/a&gt; purports to measure your ability to read facial expressions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the quiz, you examine a number of pictures and have to choose a word that best describes what the person was thinking/feeling at the moment this picture was taken, and it provides a numeric score.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A typical score is in the range 22-30. If you scored over 30, &#xA;  you are very accurate at decoding a person's facial expressions &#xA;  around their eyes. A score under 22 indicates you find this quite difficult&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It provides no references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is whether there is any scientific basis for this test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4603" LastEditorUserId="4603" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T13:35:25.487" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T15:42:13.773" Title="Is this &quot;facial expression reading&quot; test scientifically reliable?" Tags="|psychology|emotions|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18251" CreationDate="2013-10-30T12:01:03.663" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the validity of a single test is difficult to determine without more information on how the test was constructed, the approach itself is valid and has been used in other peer reviewed studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/713756761#.UnDuzlEu7x8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Is There a &quot;Language of the Eyes&quot;? Evidence from Normal Adults, and Adults with Autism or Asperger Syndrome&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Discussion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt; The results of Experiment 1 strongly support both predictions. First, normal adult subjects are able to detect a range&#xA;  of mental states (both basic and complex) from whole facial&#xA;  expressions, showing strong agreement. This replicates our earlier&#xA;  study which used paintings and drawings of whole faces (Baron-Cohen et&#xA;  al., 1996), but shows this ability under tightly controlled,&#xA;  standardized conditions (photographs of the same actress). Second,&#xA;  whilst for basic mental states the whole face provides significantly&#xA;  more information than either the mouth or the eyes, for complex mental&#xA;  states the eyes (but not the mouth) provide as much information as the&#xA;  full face. This may be because complex mental states are not easily&#xA;  expressed just by the mouth, unlike basic ones (happy, sad, etc).&#xA;  These results are consistent with Nummenmaa’s (1964) result, but&#xA;  demonstrate it for a wider set of mental states. They are also&#xA;  consistent with the idea that there is a language of the eyes. In&#xA;  Experiment 2, we tested if the eye-region effect would replicate if&#xA;  photos of a male face were used, in order to test the robustness of&#xA;  the effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/089892902760807258&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Impaired Recognition of Social Emotions following Amygdala Damage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recognition of Basic Emotions and Complex Mental States from the Eyes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;   In general, it is more difficult to recognize emotions from&#xA;  only a small region of the face, such as the eyes, than from the whole&#xA;  face. In our analysis, we controlled for this effect since correctness&#xA;  scores were calculated on the basis of the distribution of&#xA;  performances given by normal subjects to the stimuli. Figure 4&#xA;  summarizes these data, in the same format previously shown for Figure&#xA;  3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the peer review studies I was able to find were related to fields of neural science; however, they did use the technique of showing the area around the eyes to test for emotional recognition. However, the studies also take steps to control the images that are used by ensuring the same actor or actress and also using standard references such as &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books/about/Handbook_of_Emotions.html?id=uIQQskejGwUC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Handbook of Emotions&lt;/a&gt;&quot; when preparing the images to be used for the tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the website provided doesn't actually provide information on how the images were selected and there are different actors and actresses in the pictures, the best we can say is that while the approach is valid, the test is unlikely to pass peer review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-10-30T13:18:33.020" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T13:18:33.020" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18257" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18357" CreationDate="2013-10-30T18:17:24.150" Score="10" ViewCount="6925" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sex-crimes.laws.com/prostitution/prostitution-statistics&quot;&gt;The Prostitution Statistics You Have to Know&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;50% of prostitutes throughout the world have contracted the HIV virus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For this statistic it references this BBC news article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7257623.stm&quot;&gt;The men who sleep with prostitutes&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:16:33.790" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:16:33.790" Title="Do 50% of prostitutes have HIV?" Tags="|medical-science|hiv-aids|epidemiology|prostitution|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18260" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18226" CreationDate="2013-10-30T21:36:43.800" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no contradiction between the propositions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Typical broadband prices for the same level of service tend to be lower in the European Union than the United States&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The US has faster broadband networks (and 4G-LTE mobile) covering a higher proportion of the population than the European Union&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statement &quot;only about 2 percent of households [in the EU] have access to broadband networks with 100-megabit-plus speeds&quot; is wrong, or at least badly worded.  The figure of 2% is for subscriptions to 100Mbit/s services rather than availability of such services. &#xA;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/sites/digital-agenda/files/DAE%20SCOREBOARD%202013%20-%202-BROADBAND%20MARKETS%20.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;European Commission's Digital Agenda Scorecard&lt;/a&gt; says there are &quot;about 2% of European homes subscribing to at least 100Mbps&quot;.  It also shows (Figure 16) that Docsis 3.0 cable broadband has a coverage of 39.4% and Fibre-To-The-Premises coverage of 12.2%.  In the UK, the Virgin Media cable broadband network covers almost half the country (more than 2% of the EU on its own and there are similar networks elsewhere) offering its customers a choice of 30, 60 and 100Mbit/s at &lt;a href=&quot;http://store.virginmedia.com/broadband/compare-broadband/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;different prices&lt;/a&gt;, and most choose the cheapest; prices at the lower end are kept down by competing ISPs (especially BT, Sky and TalkTalk) offering VDSL FTTC services at speeds of up to 40 or 80 Mbit/s.   But even if this point was misspoken, it does do not detract from the US still having a faster network covering covering a higher proportion of the population (at a higher price).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2013-10-30T21:36:43.800" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18262" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-10-31T01:42:46.853" Score="8" ViewCount="2463" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery &amp;amp; Witchcraft in Holmavik allegedly holds a pair of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2476512/Are-terrifying-trousers-The-17th-century-NECROPANTS-corpse-legs--supposed-lucky.html#ixzz2jEm0Yart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;17th century Icelandic trousers&lt;/a&gt;, made from a corpse.  Warning, the image in the article is not for the faint of heart.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it possible hundreds of years ago (or even today) to skin a human so perfectly and preserve the &quot;trousers&quot; from decay so well, or is this more likely to be a hoax/made from modern materials?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6005" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T13:56:06.803" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T14:32:53.507" Title="Are these &quot;necropants&quot; trousers made from human skin?" Tags="|history|biology|fashion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18266" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31927" CreationDate="2013-10-31T10:28:12.883" Score="15" ViewCount="6127" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer in &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081227095846AAYXuAo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yahoo Answers&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hindi has been declared in the Constitution of India, as the official language of the Union of India. It is also one of the 23 languages recognised under the Official Languages Act 1962.&#xA;Hindi got the position as stated above, when the presiding officer of the Constituent Assembly, Dr.Rajendra Prasad, gave his casting vote in its favour, when the house was exactly evenly divided even during the third and final reading of the draft provision. Thus one person's vote became the deciding factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blogger, &lt;a href=&quot;http://sajidkalmani.blogspot.in/2010/02/hindi-is-not-indias-national-language.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sajid Kalmani&lt;/a&gt;, makes a different, but similar claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While India was getting independence, there was a question before the parliament as to which language should be the national language of the Indian union. Indian Muslims spoke Urdu and Hindi was spoken by Hindus in BiMaRU states (Bi; Bihar, Ma: Madhya Pradesh, R:Rajasthan, U: UP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was voting done in the parliament to choose a national language. Urdu and Hindi tied with equal number of votes. Then it was decided by the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi that our national language would be Hindustani, a mix of Hindi and Urdu (no idea about the script).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Note: In this claim, it is Hindustani not Hindi, Gandhi not Prasad, the &amp;quot;national language&amp;quot; not the &amp;quot;official language of the Union&amp;quot; and around the time of Independence (e.g. late 1940s, not early 1960s).]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was there a tie in the vote for languages for the official language of the Union, that was broken by a single tie-breaker vote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16035" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T13:38:17.787" Title="Was the official language of the Union of India selected by a single tie-breaker vote?" Tags="|language|india|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18267" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18268" CreationDate="2013-10-31T13:41:43.017" Score="18" ViewCount="1965" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw the following letter in today's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2013/oct/30/laptops-on-the-nhs&quot;&gt;Guardian&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Having just returned from that country, I note one curious fact you missed about Uruguay (Shortcuts, G2, 23 October): duelling is allowed provided that both parties are registered blood donors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim about duelling true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastEditorUserId="2603" LastEditDate="2013-11-01T10:09:14.443" LastActivityDate="2023-01-13T20:06:08.287" Title="Is duelling legal in Uruguay if both participants are registered blood donors?" Tags="|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18268" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18267" CreationDate="2013-10-31T14:08:29.830" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1920, duelling was made legal subject to some strict conditions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F60D1EFC355511738DDDAF0894D0405B808EF1D3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times article, 1920&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, Aug 5 — The Chamber of Deputies has approved a bill suppressing existing penalties on duelling, provided certain conditions are fulfilled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The penalties are suppressed under the bill, provided the seconds submit previously to a court of honor consisting of three members, the question of whether an offense justifying the duel exists and if so who is the offended party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.donateblood.com.au/about-us/history-blood-services/1901-1939&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blood banks weren't established until the 1930s&lt;/a&gt;, so being a blood donor could not have been a requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a court of honor met as recently as 1990, &lt;strong&gt;this law was overturned in 1992&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deseretnews.com/article/235374/URUGUAY-RESCINDS-LAW-ALLOWING-DISPUTES-TO-BE-SETTLED-BY-DUEL.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deseret News article, 1992&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Uruguay's congress has rescinded a 72-year-old law that allowed disputes to be settled by a duel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1990, police inspector Saul Claveria challenged La Republica newspaper publisher Federico Fasano to a duel over an article that linked Claveria to smuggling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claveria eventually withdrew his challenge, saying Fasano was not a worthy opponent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lower house approved rescinding the law earlier and the Senate followed suit on Wednesday. It now goes to President Luis Lacalle for signing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could find no sign of the law being re-enacted since 1992.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T14:08:29.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18262" CreationDate="2013-10-31T14:24:58.513" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The nábrók, or &quot;necropants&quot; as they are known in English, were actually featured on an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOJO0mAHZw4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;episode of QI&lt;/a&gt; (a fact-based entertainment show) and the particular artifact that is on display at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.galdrasyning.is/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Strandagaldur Museum of Icelandic Sorcery &amp;amp; Witchcraft&lt;/a&gt; is reported as a &lt;strong&gt;replica&lt;/strong&gt; in the media (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/28/necropants-iceland-legend_n_4164338.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/necropants-made-dead-human-skin-display-iceland-museum-nsfw-photo-1444724&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The museum &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.galdrasyning.is/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;task=view&amp;amp;id=212&amp;amp;Itemid=60&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;describes the process&lt;/a&gt; for making them as follows,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you want to make your own necropants (literally; nábrók) you have&#xA;  to get permission from a living man to use his skin after his dead.&#xA;  After he has been buried you must dig up his body and flay the skin of&#xA;  the corpse in one piece from the waist down. As soon as you step into&#xA;  the pants they will stick to your own skin. A coin must be stolen from&#xA;  a poor widow and placed in the scrotum along with the magical sign,&#xA;  nábrókarstafur, written on a piece of paper. Consequently the coin&#xA;  will draw money into the scrotum so it will never be empty, as long as&#xA;  the original coin is not removed. To ensure salvation the owner has to&#xA;  convince someone else to overtake the pants and step into each leg as&#xA;  soon as he gets out of it. The necropants will thus keep the&#xA;  money-gathering nature for generations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropodermic_bibliopegy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;anthropodermic bibliopegy&lt;/a&gt; is the process of binding books in human skin and in fact, the Harvard Libraries &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2006/2/2/the-skinny-on-harvards-rare-book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;have some of these books&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/houghton/2013/05/24/bound-in-human-skin/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in their collection&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/S3HcA.jpg&quot; width=&quot;233&quot; height=&quot;338&quot; title=&quot;Arsène Houssaye’s Des destinees de l’ame (FC8.H8177.879dc), bound in human skin.&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Arsène Houssaye’s, &lt;em&gt;Des destinees de l’ame&lt;/em&gt; (FC8.H8177.879dc), bound in human skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in theory at least, a properly &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tanned&lt;/a&gt; and preserved leather artifact could survive for a very long time in remarkable state. In fact there is at least one instance of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/06/100609-worlds-oldest-leather-shoe-armenia-science/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;5,500 year old leather moccasin-like shoe&lt;/a&gt; that is remarkable shape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-10-31T14:32:53.507" LastActivityDate="2013-10-31T14:32:53.507" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14367" CreationDate="2013-11-01T01:55:44.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I find this question quite frustrating. It is a complete train-wreck, despite the OP's claims that it is &quot;one of the better ones I've seen&quot;. It has received way too many upvotes from the community, despite comments pointing out some of its flaws. The answers have pussy-footed around this. It is time to go for the jugular.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim makes no sense whatsoever. It isn't just wrong because of its false premises and non-sequiturs. It is meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I shall use an extended analogy to try to explain this. Imagine I made the claim that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The addition of the preservatives of sugar and formaldehyde to fruit cake have indubitably worked to preserve the recipe over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would be flabbergasted. This fruit-cake claim is riddled with errors. So is the original claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Unclear Term&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does &quot;preserve the recipe&quot; mean? Does it mean keep the recipe unaltered? Does it mean ensuring the recipe exists in the future? Does it mean ensuring the recipe grows in popularity? Does it mean ensuring the popularity remains the same?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it means keeping the recipe unaltered, then the act of altering it clearly doesn't preserve the recipe. Likewise, if &quot;preserve the species&quot; means keeping the relative distribution of genes in the gene pool the same, introducing a genetic change doesn't preserve the species. [No references. I'm arguing about (lack of) definitions here.] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, the fact that homosexuality appears in other related species [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17117661&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;], shows that homosexuality doesn't somehow stop evolution from happening, in the same way having sugar in the recipe obviously hasn't worked to keep recipes the same, or there would only be one sugary cake. Instead, cake recipes keep changing, and fruit cake recipes keep changing - which is to say, new mutations appear, and the relative populations of the different recipes change. And &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_displaying_homosexual_behavior&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;species with homosexual behaviours&lt;/a&gt; keep evolving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it means ensuring the popularity/population remains the same, which is implied by &quot;reduction in population growth&quot;, then the species is &lt;strong&gt;completely failing to be preserved&lt;/strong&gt;. The population is growing, especially since the advent of homosexuality - i.e. the beginning of homo sapiens. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/history/world-population-growth.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;] This weird argument defends a demonstrably false conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;False Premise 1&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fruit cakes don't contain formaldehyde. [Reference: I just made the claim it up, and I really hope it isn't true.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Homosexuality isn't a simple matter of genetics. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tim-taylor.com/papers/twin_studies/theories.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reference&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a purely genetic argument to discuss the advent of homosexuality is flawed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;False Premise 2&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if fruit cakes &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; contain formaldehyde, it doesn't mean that it would act as a preservative &lt;em&gt;in cakes&lt;/em&gt;. That would have to be shown empirically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if homosexuality &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; pure genetics, it doesn't mean that there is a reduction in population growth. That would have to be shown, and is possibly wrong. [Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news-medical.net/news/20100205/Kin-selection-hypothesis-may-explain-homosexuality-from-an-evolutionary-point-of-view.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one possible counter-hypothesis: kin selection&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Mixing of Levels&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if cakes &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; contain formaldehyde &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; formaldehyde &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; a cake preservative, there is a huge difference between &lt;em&gt;preserving an individual cake&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;preserving a recipe&lt;/em&gt;. They are at different levels of abstraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim makes a similar (common) error of confusing how evolution works - the unit of evolution is the gene, not the species. Evolution works to preserve (i.e. increase the relative population of) the successful genes, even at the expense of the species. [Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Selfish Gene&lt;/a&gt;] The suggestion that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;group selection&lt;/a&gt; might occur through natural selection is heavily disputed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This error in levels is further explained by evolutionary expert, Richard Dawkins, in his &lt;a href=&quot;https://richarddawkins.net/2015/03/darwin-day-2015-questions-is-homosexuality-natures-population-control-4/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; addressing a similar question: &quot;Is Homosexuality Nature’s Population Control?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several false premises in the claim, showing a lack of understanding of populations and the biology of homosexuality. There is fault logic in the claim showing a lack of understanding of evolution. There is no clear definitions of the terms, making the question meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I have clearly demonstrated: both the original question and my invented analogous statement are fruit-cake claims, riddled with errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-03-25T15:36:37.373" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T15:36:37.373" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18272" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-01T13:48:40.803" Score="30" ViewCount="1763" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many countries are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_incandescent_light_bulbs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;phasing out incandescent light bulbs&lt;/a&gt;. For example, in the European Union, various types of classic light bulbs have been removed from the market in the last years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that this process will help &lt;a href=&quot;http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-08-1909_en.htm?locale=en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reduce overall electrical energy consumption&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By enforcing the regulation of switching to energy saving bulbs, EU citizens will save close to 40 TWh (roughly the electrictity consumption of Romania, or of 11 million European households, or the equivalent of the yearly output of 10 power stations of 500 megawatts) and will lead to a reduction of about 15 million tons of CO2 emission per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Critics say that the switch to CFLs &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenmuze.com/blogs/guest-bloggers/1031-the-dark-side-of-cfls.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;won't conserve energy&lt;/a&gt; for various reasons, two of the most prominent being that CFLs take substantially more energy to manufacture and that households will require more heating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An International Association for Energy-Efficient Lighting (IAEEL) study conducted in Denmark, explored some carbon footprint factors, but not all, showing it took 1.8 Kwh of electricity to assemble a CFL compared to 0.11 Kwh to assemble an incandescent bulb. [...] The study did not include the fact that a CFL is much heavier and is more dangerous to handle, and will thus cost more to package, to ship, and to sell. [...] This research also did not calculate the energy required to safely dispose of a CFL and reclaim the mercury. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because they burn cooler, they cause home heating costs to rise. &amp;quot;Lighting regulations (banning incandescent lights) will increase GHG emissions in Hydro’s service territory by 45,000 tons due to cross effects of a switch to cool-burning bulbs,” explained a BC Hydro spokesperson in 2009 Vancouver Sun article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any hard data that shows a &lt;em&gt;measurable&lt;/em&gt; effect on the overall energy consumption in countries or regions that have already started the phase-out a few years ago?&lt;/strong&gt; Or is it to early to get statistically significant measurements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/2031/16044&quot;&gt;Do CFLs have a significant impact on your light bill?&lt;/a&gt; (Examines the effect on a single household if incandescent light bulbs are replaced by CFLs and nothing else changes.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/2435/16044&quot;&gt;Are CFLs always more ecologic than incandescent light bulbs?&lt;/a&gt; (Compares the environmental effect of heating with incandescent light bulbs to other heating options for a single household.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-06-06T11:09:05.593" Title="Does the phase-out of incandescent light bulbs measurably reduce overall electrical power consumption?" Tags="|environment|climate-change|light|energy-efficiency|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18272" CreationDate="2013-11-01T18:07:41.177" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very simplistic calculation shows that the initial energy input is quickly paid back. The cited numbers show a manufacturing energy difference of 1.8 - .11 = 1.69 kW-hr = 1690 W-hrs. A CFL with a light output equivalent to a 75 W incandescent bulb typically uses about 20 W, or about 50 W less than the incandescent. 1690 w-hrs divided by 50 watts = 34 hours. So within the first week or two, the initial energy cost has been paid back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more detailed study requires a life-cycle analysis that takes manufacturing, transportation, and use into consideration. Fortunately, &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/publications/pdfs/ssl/2012_LED_Lifecycle_Report.pdf&quot;&gt;there is one available&lt;/a&gt;. It concludes that the initial extra energy cost to produce CFLs and LEDs is made up very quickly, and they ending up being far better in the long run from an energy use point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The key results of this analysis indicate that the average life-cycle energy consumption of LED lamps and CFLs are similar, at approximately 3,900 MJ per functional unit (20 million lumen- hours). This is about one quarter of the incandescent lamp energy consumption—15,100 MJ per functional unit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The heating impacts are a bit misleading. True, during heating periods the waste heat from light bulbs helps warm the building a little, and if not there it must be made up for with other sources. Light bulbs are fairly efficient heaters, but not quite as efficient as a small electric heater that doesn't &quot;waste&quot; any energy by producing light, and not nearly as efficient as a heat pump. So using an electric resistance heater to make up the difference would have no impact at all on carbon emissions or electric consumption, and using a heat pump would produce a net reduction in electric use and carbon emissions. If heat from light-bulbs was important for heating houses, we would leave our lights on all the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During cooling periods the air conditioner will work less hard if there is less waste heat in the building. The heating and cooling affects may largely offset each other over the long run. To really understand we'd need to know how BC Hydro came up with their numbers. However, I couldn't find any legitimate source for the quote from BC Hydro, though it sure appears on a lot of right-wing internet sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastEditorUserId="22585" LastEditDate="2016-06-06T11:09:05.593" LastActivityDate="2016-06-06T11:09:05.593" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18280" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18291" CreationDate="2013-11-02T06:38:51.550" Score="16" ViewCount="4946" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across this link &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread945636/pg1&quot;&gt;Mysterious Cave Complexes discovered in China&lt;/a&gt;  that describes  some caves in China that supposedly were built by unknown people hundreds of years ago.  They are known as the HMG or Huashan Mysterious Grottoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are supposed to have been built a long time ago; for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-7-10/43755.html&quot;&gt;The Epoch Times wrote&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The exact time of the cave's construction is currently unknown. However, according to the minerals found inside the cave, the experts estimate that it was constructed at least 1,700 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same age quote is given here &lt;a href=&quot;http://anhui.chinadaily.com.cn/travel/2011-05/10/content_12483078.htm&quot;&gt;from Anhui Tourism Administration&lt;/a&gt; with a disclaimer that nothing is known about the caves!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All the Huashan Caves, each ranging from 10 meters to 20 meters in height, were manually chiseled more than 1,700 years ago. &#xA;  [...] The history and purposes of Huashan Caves are now untraceable due to the lack of any words in books or on cave walls describing their use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QyD1A.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Chinese cave&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any trustworthy information abut them with Google, other than sites that are unskeptical by nature and seem willing to perpetuate any myths (i.e. they are religious websites).  I am skeptical that these are ancient caves, and they are more likely modern caves, carved for industrial or military reasons, then abandoned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is region is popular with tourists, and think the story of these caves is fictional in order to drive business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16053" LastEditorUserId="16053" LastEditDate="2013-11-03T06:27:17.173" LastActivityDate="2017-01-11T12:19:47.730" Title="Are these &quot;mystical caves&quot; in China antique, or modern?" Tags="|china|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18287" CreationDate="2013-11-03T03:24:32.210" Score="12" ViewCount="1330" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/jul/04/marriage-first-cousins-birth-defects&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Marriage between first cousins doubles risk of birth defects...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family&quot;&gt;Rothschilds&lt;/a&gt; (richest banking family in human history) are known for inter-marriages between cousins and they are still very rich today. So, their offspring cannot be too bad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15894" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:55:33.507" LastActivityDate="2016-02-29T20:38:01.330" Title="Does marriage between first cousins double the risk of birth defects?" Tags="|medical-science|children|pregnancy|marriage|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18287" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18286" CreationDate="2013-11-03T05:49:24.477" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, except for some subcommunities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PLoS Biology published an article reviewing the evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paul DB, Spencer HG (2008) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.0060320&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“It's Ok, We're Not Cousins by Blood”&lt;/a&gt;: The Cousin Marriage Controversy in Historical Perspective. PLoS Biol 6(12): e320. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060320&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until recently, good data on which to base an answer were lacking. As a result, great variation existed in the medical advice and screening services offered to consanguineous couple. In an effort at clarification, the National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC) convened a group of experts to review existing studies on risks to offspring and issue recommendations for clinical practice. Their report concluded that &lt;strong&gt;the risks of a first-cousin union were generally much smaller than assumed—about 1.7%–2% above the background risk for congenital defects&lt;/strong&gt; and 4.4% for pre-reproductive mortality—and did not warrant any special preconception testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the quote from the Guardian is talking about a specific community - babies of Pakistani origins, in Britain and Wales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both the scientists quoted by the Guardian and the 2008 acknowledge this is a more difficult situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be higher genetic risk in a sub-population:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Pakistani immigrant population, for example, the quoted high average rate of birth defects may mask a single trait (or small number of traits) at very high frequency, a situation with different medical consequences from one characterized by a larger number of less-frequent disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, there may be other confounding factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inbred populations, including British Pakistanis, are often poor. The mother may be malnourished to begin with, and families may not seek or have access to good prenatal care, which may be unavailable in their native language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UK Pakistanis are less likely to use prenatal testing and to terminate pregnancies [20,25]. Thus the population attributable risk of genetic diseases at birth due to inbreeding may be skewed by prenatal elimination of affected fetuses in non-inbred populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether the additional risks can be used to justify a ban on cousin marriage is outside the scope of this answer. (Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cousin Marriage&lt;/a&gt; page gives more background), but, in any case, using a single example of a very rich family is anecdotal, and is a poor justification for dismissing the concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T05:49:24.477" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11220" CreationDate="2013-11-03T16:51:44.183" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am also confused about this, but it seems like more recent studies suggest that induction may not be associated with an increased risk of caesarian section. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/263311.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/263311.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16067" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T16:51:44.183" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18280" CreationDate="2013-11-03T18:09:42.680" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440312003500&quot;&gt;Lichenometric dating and the nature of the excavation of the Huashan Grottoes, East China&lt;/a&gt; says in its Highlights section,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The period of excavation of Huashan Grottoes have been determined to be 450–335 yr BP [or the middle and late Ming Dynasty (1552–1667 AD)]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The purpose of exploration is the tremendous demand for stone materials.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It uses 4 methods to get these dates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;lichenometric dating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;lithologic comparison of the grottoes and the surrounding ancient architectures&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;studies on the historical documents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;fragments of ancient porcelain in the grottoes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though they were started in the Ming Dynasty (above), excavation might have continued into the Qing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we infer that the excavation of the inner grottoes might have lasted till the Qing Dynasty (1636–1912 AD), because the lichens chosen for dating are mainly at the grottoes' entrances&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-11-03T20:46:01.163" LastActivityDate="2013-11-03T20:46:01.163" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5774" CreationDate="2013-11-03T21:34:05.337" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Globe and Mail article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/more-invasive-cervical-cancers-prevented-with-new-test-1.2325972&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;More invasive cervical cancers prevented with new test, posted Nov 02, 2013&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Saturday's issue of the medical journal Lancet there is an article about researchers analyzing data from trials involving 176,464 women in England, Itlay, the Netherlands and Sweden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;HPV-based screening prevented more invasive cervical cancers than did cytology,&amp;quot; Dr. Guglielmo Ronco, from the Center for Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention in Turin, Italy, and his co-authors concluded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Increased protection against invasive cervical cancer was greatest in women aged 30 to 35 years, and HPV screening every five years proved more beneficial in identifying invasive cancers of the cervix compared with Pap screens done every three years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;With economies of scale that come with broad implementation of primary HPV testing (which will foster competition among various HPV tests) and the lengthening of screen intervals, cervical cancer screening might end up costing countries less money while providing greater safety than with conventional cervical cytology,&amp;quot; the commentators concluded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they said there are logistical challenges, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Settling on the type of HPV screening to use.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Determining appropriate screening ages and intervals.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Defining triage and management policies for women who are HPV positive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is all to say that at the moment PAP smears are not obsolete. However, the scientific literature suggests that in many cases they may be replaced with HPV screening over the coming years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T15:42:34.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18293" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-04T00:43:17.640" Score="9" ViewCount="5196" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several websites claim that filtering cheap vodka makes it taste more premium:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/474541&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chow - Does filtering cheap vodka through a Brita filter really work?&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/5901746/vodka-alchemy-how-to-change-cheap-clear-hooch-from-terrible-to-tolerable&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gizmodo - Vodka Alchemy: How to Change Cheap Clear Hooch from Terrible to Tolerable&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5404375/increase-the-quality-of-cheap-vodka-with-a-water-filter&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lifehacker - Increase the Quality of Cheap Vodka with a Water Filter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://guyism.com/lifestyle/alcohol/does-putting-vodka-through-a-brita-filter-really-work.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;guyism - Does putting vodka through a Brita filter really work?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Cheap-Vodka-Taste-Better&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikiHow - How to Make Cheap Vodka Taste Better&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although these sites make a lot of claims, the evidence seems to be lacking or otherwise less than rigorous (e.g. unblinded, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does filtering cheap Vodka improve its taste?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16071" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-11-04T15:05:26.963" LastActivityDate="2018-09-23T03:40:33.810" Title="Does filtering cheap vodka improve taste?" Tags="|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18294" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-04T01:45:16.400" Score="11" ViewCount="754" Body="&lt;p&gt;To introduce this question, there is an ongoing &lt;a href=&quot;http://protectmilah.org/?page_id=7&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lawsuit&lt;/a&gt;&#xA; in NYC about the religous practice of &quot;metzitzah b’peh&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the city's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/html/pr2012/pr017-12.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;info page&lt;/a&gt; about it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Health Department investigations of newborns with herpes virus between 2000 –2011 have shown that 11 infants contracted the herpes virus when mohelim, or ritual circumcisers, placed their mouths directly on the child’s circumcision wound to draw blood away from the circumcision cut. Ten of these infants were hospitalized, at least two developed brain damage, and two babies died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the city's official &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyc.gov/html/doh/downloads/pdf/std/mbp-myths-facts.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;guide&lt;/a&gt; to MBP:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Between 2004 and 2011, the Department learned of 11 cases of laboratory-confirmed herpes simplex virus infections in male infants following circumcisions that were likely to have had direct oral suction. Ten of these infants were hospitalized, at least two developed brain damage, and two babies died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from an &lt;a href=&quot;http://protectmilah.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/MBP-Chaim-Zwiebel.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; supporting the plantiffs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Notably, the Health Department’s conclusion that MBP carries significant risk of dangerous infection is not at all supported by the evidence.  In the plaintiffs’ court papers challenging the regulation, a number of distinguished experts strongly challenge the validity of the City’s position.  As Dr. Daniel S. Berman, Chief of Infectious Diseases at the New York Westchester Square Hospital, states in his legal affidavit, “In my professional opinion, the evidence does not show that MBP has ever resulted in transmission of HSV-1.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yated.com/city-poised-to-enforce-mbp-ban.0-800-0-.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; supporting the plantiffs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the facts are indisputable. “No case of neonatal herpes anywhere in the world has ever been proved, through definitive DNA fingerprinting, to have resulted from metzitzah b’peh,”the plaintiff brief attests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is simple; is there a health risk from MBP, given the available evidence, or not? Are the facts &quot;disputable&quot; (which is a moot point. They clearly are, at least by NYC and the CDC).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; here's a Google search that has all the relevant links from NYC's website:&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=site:nyc.gov+mbp+hsv-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/search?q=site:nyc.gov+mbp+hsv-1&lt;/a&gt; (I don't want to track down all the links.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; I just wanted to add two more links, one in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.matziv.com/pictures/drbermanarticlemetzitzah&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;defence&lt;/a&gt; of MBP, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://download.journals.elsevierhealth.com/pdfs/journals/1201-9712/PIIS1201971213001872.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; referred to in an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2013-11-16T18:18:09.427" LastActivityDate="2022-01-17T02:26:41.700" Title="Does the practice known as MBP cause HSV-1 in infants?" Tags="|medical-science|religion|infection|circumcision|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18295" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18296" CreationDate="2013-11-04T02:05:58.477" Score="7" ViewCount="1513" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been told time after time that at school if you are not going to leave the room for more than 10 minutes to keep the lights on instead of turning them off because the amount of power it takes to turn them back on is more than just leaving them on. I am also told this is only for fluorescent tube lights?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true and if not where did this myth come from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15830" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-11-04T13:01:58.150" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T13:01:58.150" Title="Do fluorescent lights use more power to turn on?" Tags="|light|energy-efficiency|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18295" CreationDate="2013-11-04T11:14:31.997" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's not true.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=turn-fluorescent-lights-off-when-you-leave-room&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article in Scientific American, there is a slight additional energy required to start up a fluorescent bulb, but it lasts an extremely brief time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;that power surge is so brief that its energy draw doesn't amount to much: the equivalent of a few seconds or so of normal operation, according to U.S. Department of Energy estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article recognizes that there is some additional wear-and-tear each time the lamp is turned on, which may have an impact on life.  It recommends turning them off if you won't need them for more than five minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A simple rule of thumb that balances both concerns is to shut off fluorescents if you’re planning to leave a room for more than five minutes, according to Francis Rubinstein, a staff scientist in the Building Technologies Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Environmental Energy Technologies Division.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above article is directed primarily at CFL bulbs, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/myths/fluorescent_lights.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is a reference from the California Energy Commission based on more conventional tubular fluorescent bulbs.  It comes to the same conclusion, stating&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The modern electronic ballast and T8/T5 lamp combination do draw a higher level of current during startup, but it only lasts for a fraction of a second, which is negligible compared to normal current requirements of the lamps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their recommendation is the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You should turn off your fluorescent lamps if the space is not going to be occupied for more than a few minutes (3-5 minutes is a good rule of thumb)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastActivityDate="2013-11-04T11:14:31.997" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18293" CreationDate="2013-11-04T12:57:18.020" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Taste is extremely subjective so one persons idea of a good vodka might not be the same as another persons; however, in the United States, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ttb.gov/spirits/bam/chapter4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;vodka is legally defined as&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neutral spirits distilled or treated after distillation with charcoal&#xA;  or other materials so as to be without distinctive character, aroma,&#xA;  taste or color&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives us a fairly unique bar since it shouldn't taste like much of anything if the product is being sold as vodka. Some manufactures of vodka will filter it (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vodka#Distilling_and_filtering&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ginvodka.org/history/vodkaProduction.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agriculturejournals.cz/publicFiles/69406.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;three&lt;/a&gt;) using &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activated_charcoal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;activated charcoal&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.filter-ru.com/use/food/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;industry grade products are sold for this purpose&lt;/a&gt;. Activated charcoal is what &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brita&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BRITA filters&lt;/a&gt; contain so from that standpoint the claim is &lt;strong&gt;plausible&lt;/strong&gt; and in fact the examiner.com explained how &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/article/charcoal-filtering-vodka-how-it-works&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;charcoal filtering is used in industry&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XsLHz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Industry grade charcoal filter for vodka&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How is it done? It’s quite a simple process really. The picture&#xA;  accompanying this article shows a charcoal filtration cylinder used at&#xA;  the Great Lakes Distillery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to make Rehorst&#xA;  Vodka. They pack the cylinder with fresh granular charcoal then drip&#xA;  the vodka through the cylinder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The result is a cleaner, smoother tasting vodka with a more pleasant&#xA;  aroma, and not incidentally a drink with fewer traces of heavy&#xA;  alcohols that might contribute to that queasy feeling the next day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many vodka producers claim a certain number of passes through the&#xA;  charcoal filtering cylinder on their labels. Great Lakes Distillery&#xA;  doesn’t do that; their philosophy is to filter it as many times as&#xA;  necessary to make the vodka just the way the master distiller thinks&#xA;  it should be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When does the charcoal get refreshed? When the master distiller thinks&#xA;  it is time to do so; that varies from distiller to distiller.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to taste, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MythBusters&lt;/a&gt; has conducted a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-blind#Double-blind_trials&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;double-blind taste test&lt;/a&gt; with three testers to include &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Dias_Blue&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anthony Dias Blue&lt;/a&gt; as expert and found that subjectively the filtered vodka &lt;a href=&quot;http://kwc.org/mythbusters/2006/04/episode_50_bullets_fired_up_vo.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;did taste progressively better&lt;/a&gt;; however, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They analyzed the vodka samples and found that there was no difference&#xA;  in chemical composition between the filtered vodka and the unfiltered&#xA;  vodka. You're better off buying the top-shelf stuff than wasting a&#xA;  bunch of water filters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T14:47:26.700" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T14:47:26.700" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2435" CreationDate="2013-11-05T17:12:02.727" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Arguably, incandescents are the green bulbs...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Efficient in making bright light using few components and earth minerals.&#xA;Sustainable in being easily locally made as simple safe generic patent-expired products without needing long transport and without needing recycling.&#xA;Long lasting up to 20 000 hours (eg for mining, when major manufacturers don't control the markets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re lifespan of incandescents, see Aerotech and other manufacturers also see Phoebus Cartel&#xA;= the 1000 hr fixed standard by GE, Philips, Osram cartel  eg &lt;a href=&quot;http://ceolas.net/#phoebuspol&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ceolas.net/#phoebuspol&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see answer on phase-out of incandescents saving energy or not&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The manufacture process of complex fluorescents involves more (mercury) mining, component manufacture, product assembly, recycling etc (when not dumped leeching mercury) and more transport in all stages&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re Heat value of incandescents, Finnish, Canadian, UK etc references as per &lt;a href=&quot;http://ceolas.net/#li6x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ceolas.net/#li6x&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incandescents don't burn coal and they don't give out CO2 or other emissions.&#xA;Power plants might and might not.&#xA;But even if they do, those power plants would mostly be burning the same coal anyway in their base level night output covering the low demand when incandescents are mainly used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 14 point referenced rundown of why switchover arguments make no sense &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://freedomlightbulb.org/p/how-bans-are-wrongly-justified.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://freedomlightbulb.org/p/how-bans-are-wrongly-justified.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16075" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T17:12:02.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18309" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-05T22:05:59.813" Score="12" ViewCount="2880" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess a lot of people have seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.woodward.cl/engeinsteinsriddle.htm&quot;&gt;this riddle&lt;/a&gt; which is commonly attributed to Einstein.  What is the true source of it and did Einstein have anything to do with it and the claim that only 2% of the people are able to solve it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13242" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2013-11-10T04:18:35.023" LastActivityDate="2020-06-11T02:26:25.520" Title="Was Einstein's riddle (the zebra puzzle) created by Albert Einstein?" Tags="|history|quotes|albert-einstein|logic|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18272" CreationDate="2013-11-05T23:07:40.117" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the comments to your question, you ask for percentages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The total electricity production for Europe is approximately 3,200 TWh:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Electricity_production_and_supply_statistics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Electricity production and supply statistics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2232rank.html?countryname=European%20Union&amp;amp;countrycode=ee&amp;amp;regionCode=eur&amp;amp;rank=3#ee3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CIA World Fact Book&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The savings alleged in the OP are &quot;close to 40 TWh&quot;: which is approximately 1% of the total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first link above claims to be able to measure small percentage differences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After a decrease of electricity production in 2011 (-2.2 %), the volume of produced electricity at EU-27 level decreased once again in 2012 by 0.9 % compared to the preceding year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't know how to prove that these savings come from changing light-bulbs. I don't believe that even &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_meter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;smart meters&lt;/a&gt; know exactly which minor devices (not major appliances) in a home are responsible for what percentage of the home's consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, 1% is a small percentage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/final-electricity-consumption-by-sector/final-electricity-consumption-by-sector-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Households account for 30% of total consumption&lt;/a&gt; so that &quot;1% of total consumption&quot; is approximately &quot;3% to 5% of household consumption&quot; -- which is still a pretty small percentage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last link tries to answer the question, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/final-electricity-consumption-by-sector/final-electricity-consumption-by-sector-3#toc-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Is electricity consumption decreasing in the European household sector?&lt;/a&gt;, saying,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Between 1990 and 2009, the electricity consumption in the household sector in EU-27 grew by 39.0 %, at an average annual rate of 1.7 %.&#xA;  This trend can be explained by rising incomes, higher living&#xA;  standards, a shift towards smaller households and larger dwellings and&#xA;  a growing demand for electrical appliances. In 2009, total household&#xA;  final electricity consumption was 839 TWh (representing 30.9 % of&#xA;  final electricity consumption across a total of almost 200 million&#xA;  households in the EU-27). Between 2005 and 2009, the electricity&#xA;  consumption in the household sector increased by 4.3% and between 2008&#xA;  and 2009 it increased by 1.6%.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;In non-EU EEA countries, electricity consumption in the household sector grew by 76.4 % in this period, an average annual growth rate of&#xA;  3.0 %. Improvements in efficiency of large electrical appliances (leading to a decrease in average specific consumption of 1.5 % per&#xA;  year in the case of refrigerators, freezers, washing machines,&#xA;  dishwashers, TVs and dryers) were to a large extent offset by the use,&#xA;  numbers and size of large appliances as well as a growing number of&#xA;  smaller appliances such as videos and computers (Enerdata et al,&#xA;  2003). Between 2005 and 2009, electricity consumption in the household&#xA;  sector increased by 13.2%. In 2009, electricity consumption in the&#xA;  household sector increased by 1.1 % compared to 2008.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Overall despite the overall increases in electricity consumption in the household sector, just under half of EEA32 countries reported a&#xA;  reduction in consumption as a result of high electricity prices,&#xA;  milder winters and the economic recession, most notable decreases&#xA;  include Malta (-11.6%), Ireland (-6.5 %), Spain (-5.0 %), United&#xA;  Kingdom (-2.6 %), the Netherlands (-2.6 %) and Denmark (-2.4 %).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see from the above that there are many factors (other than the type of lightbulb) which affect gross domestic electricity consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-11-05T23:07:40.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18311" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18334" CreationDate="2013-11-06T00:07:59.460" Score="17" ViewCount="11927" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantula#Medical_implications&quot;&gt;Wikipedia:Tarantula&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[N]o fatalities have been attributed to tarantula bites...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/animals/bugs-animals/spiders-and-scorpions/tarantula_goliath/&quot;&gt;Nationalgeographic.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to researchers, there's never been a single confirmed human death from a tarantula bite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither backs up its claims with references. In the case of the second claim, I'd want to know at least &quot;which researchers?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any (confirmed) human deaths been attributed to tarantula bites?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-15T22:04:36.900" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T22:04:36.900" Title="Has any person ever died from a tarantula bite?" Tags="|medical-science|entomology|toxicology|arachnology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18312" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-11-06T07:48:48.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachnid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia:Arachnid&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachnology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia:Arachnology&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Use this tag for questions about spiders and scorpions and other arachnids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-11-06T12:18:30.160" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T12:18:30.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18313" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-11-06T07:48:48.227" Score="0" Body="Arachnology is the study of arachnids: spiders and scorpions, for example." OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-11-06T12:18:35.410" LastActivityDate="2013-11-06T12:18:35.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18322" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-07T07:04:52.723" Score="7" ViewCount="732" Body="&lt;p&gt;People like me who live in the northern part of the world, often get a bit depressed at this time of the year, when it's essentially dark when you leave for work and when you get home from work. This has been blamed on vitamin D deficiency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies on supplementation for this? I imagine it would be quite simple to do a double blind placebo experiment comparing vitamin D supplement with a control, checking for general mood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm looking for is something that actually &quot;proves&quot; the whole sequence so to speak. From intake of vitamin D to better mood. If I end up raising my vitamin D levels without any effect on mood, that's kind of useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16116" LastEditorUserId="13967" LastEditDate="2013-11-07T15:43:53.393" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T05:31:55.010" Title="Do vitamin D supplements help against winter depression?" Tags="|nutritional-supplements|vitamins|depression|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18322" CreationDate="2013-11-07T15:32:55.293" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vitamin D supplementation at the level of 800 IU per day does not appear to be an effective treatment for Seasonal Affective Disorder in older women.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Winter depression&quot; is properly known as &quot;Seasonal Affective Disorder&quot; (SAD) or &quot;major recurrent depressive disorder with seasonal pattern&quot;.  As the name suggests, it's recurrent depression that occurs and remits in sync with the seasons, typically occurring in the winter and remitting in the summer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typical treatments include light therapy (involving the daily use of a bright, broad-spectrum light to simulate summertime sunlight.  Related question/answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14568/do-light-boxes-help-seasonal-affective-disorder/17581#17581&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), cognitive-behavioural therapy, and/or anti-depressant medication, though possible links between vitamin D deficiency (which typically occurs due to lack of UVB exposure, which is common at high latitudes in the winter) and SAD have been investigated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02247486&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a (admittedly small, only 30 participants) study&lt;/a&gt; comparing Seasonal Affective Disorder patients against normal controls, no difference in serum vitamin D levels was found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biologicalpsychiatryjournal.com/article/0006-3223%2895%2900294-4/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another study&lt;/a&gt; (though again, small, 29 participants) found the same and also compared the serum vitamin D levels in the SAD group against the same group's levels during the summer.  No difference was found there either, suggesting that vitamin D deficiency is not linked to SAD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jad-journal.com/article/S0165-0327%2809%2900070-6/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A larger study (over 3000 participants) in China&lt;/a&gt; also found no link between depressive symptoms and serum vitamin D levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/16554952&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another large (over 2000 participants) study&lt;/a&gt; in the UK investigating vitamin D supplementation's effect on preventing SAD symptoms found no significant effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T18:04:53.263" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2013-11-07T22:29:33.940" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trends in solar radiation don't match up with trends in temperature.&lt;/strong&gt; One of the arguments from skeptics of climate change is that rising global temperatures are a natural phenomenon caused by the Sun. However, most measures of total solar irradiance (also known as solar radiation, the electromagnetic energy incident on Earth's surface) show that, on the whole, it is falling. (This, of course, necessitates taking a step back to see &lt;a href=&quot;http://lasp.colorado.edu/lisird/tsi/historical_tsi.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;larger TSI trends&lt;/a&gt;, beyond the valleys and peaks caused by the solar cycle.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8z1Pb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;ACRIM&amp;#39;s Irradiance Data from 1978-1984&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it looks like the Sun is actually cooling. Not dramatically, but it's certainly not becoming hotter, and certainly not enough to account for rising global temperatures. In fact, when we juxtapose climate temperature with solar irradiance, as shown below, we find that they have little to do with one another. This is a basic, common sense approach, but if you require mathematical proof, then Skeptical Science has put together &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming-advanced.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a digestible calculation and analysis&lt;/a&gt;. Anyhow, just a graph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tmQ20.png&quot; alt=&quot;From atmospheric scientist Bart Verheggen&amp;#39;s blog, *Our Changing Climate*&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you may not agree that global warming is anthropogenic. But as scientists look at solar irradiance as just one piece of evidence that correlates with various others that fellow commenters have left, it's becoming increasingly clear that it's not caused by the Sun. What does that leave?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16120" LastActivityDate="2013-11-07T22:29:33.940" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18309" CreationDate="2013-11-08T00:16:09.353" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clue #13 is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The German smokes Prince.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_%28cigarette%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prince cigarettes were introduced in 1957&lt;/a&gt;, 2 years after Einstein died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, Einstein could not have written the puzzle, as he would not have heard of Prince cigarettes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-11-08T00:37:41.913" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T00:37:41.913" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18329" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18331" CreationDate="2013-11-08T02:47:11.433" Score="21" ViewCount="997" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the anti-&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetically_modified_organism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;GMO&lt;/a&gt; debate, it is frequently suggested that the use of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glyphosate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Glyphosate&lt;/a&gt; (trade name: Roundup) on Roundup-ready GMO crops causes environmental harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Example claim: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/041464_glyphosate_monsanto_toxicity.html#ixzz2k2OgyQdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Natural News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monsanto's infamous Roundup contains the hotly debated compound called glyphosate. This merciless herbicide is also found in 750 or more U.S. products. An herbicide like this infiltrates the landscape and accumulates in mammals, especially bone, hindering cellular detoxification along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A destroyer, glyphosate annihilates a plant's building blocks of life, tearing apart amino acids. By disrupting the &amp;quot;shikimate pathway&amp;quot; in plants and microorganisms, glyphosate creeps inside leaves and stalk, raping natural life processes. Glyphosate also destroys the beneficial microorganism in the human gut, destroying the human immune system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the use of Roundup accumulate in mammals and cause illness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16123" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-09-29T18:30:40.057" Title="Does Roundup harm mammals?" Tags="|environmental-health|gmo|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18329" CreationDate="2013-11-08T22:05:10.850" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this Cornell University toxicology report, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chronic Toxicity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subchronic and chronic tests with glyphosate have been conducted with rats, dogs, mice, and rabbits in studies lasting from 21 days to two years. With few exceptions there were no treatment-related gross (easily observable) or cellular changes (5). In a chronic feeding study with rats, no toxic effects were observed in rats given doses as high as 31 mg/kg/day, the highest dose tested. No toxic effects were observed in a chronic feeding study with dogs fed up to 500 mg/kg/day, the highest dose tested (8). Mice fed glyphosate for 90 days exhibited reduced body weight gains. The lifetime administration of very high amounts of glyphosate produced only a slight reduction of body weight and some microscopic liver and kidney changes. Blood chemistry, cellular components, and organ function were not affected even at the highest doses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hens fed massive amounts over three days and again 21 days later showed no nerve related effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/dienochlor-glyphosate/glyphosate-ext.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://pmep.cce.cornell.edu/profiles/extoxnet/dienochlor-glyphosate/glyphosate-ext.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16130" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-08T22:05:10.850" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18309" CreationDate="2013-11-08T23:42:05.570" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Ultimate Quotable Einstein&lt;/em&gt; was written by Alice Calaprice, Senior Editor and administrator of the Einstein Translation Project, who worked on all 12 volumes of his &lt;em&gt;Collected Papers&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Though the book has an entry for the Zebra Puzzle, the attribution reads: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Supposedly, but not actually devised by Einstein as a child.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Calaprice/e/B001IODLOE&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Alice-Calaprice/e/B001IODLOE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Einstein, Albert, and Alice Calaprice. &lt;em&gt;The Ultimate Quotable Einstein&lt;/em&gt;. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2011: p. 485.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2020-06-11T02:26:25.520" LastActivityDate="2020-06-11T02:26:25.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18311" CreationDate="2013-11-09T02:30:42.320" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is at least one citation reporting death in PubMed.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; I was not able to load the article, but having gone trough related literature on tarantula bites, it seems that a bite often causes localized necrotic ulcers,&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; which, although not usually lethal, could lead to infection, gangrene, and death if left untreated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some quick digging through newspaper archives reveals more anecdotal references. The &lt;em&gt;Arizona Daily Citizen&lt;/em&gt; September 14, 1901 reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bite of a small tarantula cased the death of Gottlieb Hassler, a pioneer of this valley, at this home in Evergreen yesterday afternoon. Last Wednesday Haler went to the barn on his ranch to feed his horses. While getting some hay a tarantula the size of a pigeon's egg and covered with black hair fell on his arm and bit him. Although not especially painful the bite was soon followed by a swelling of the arm to twice its normal size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A physician was summoned and the wound cauterized, but the action was too late to prevent blood-poisoning. Hasler grew worse rapidly and died yesterday afternoon in terrible agony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should note that in this context it is likely that the newspapers are using the word tarantula to refer to a wide range of spiders. The death reports are common enough in the early literature, however. In the words of a headline from &lt;em&gt;The Philadelphia Inquirer&lt;/em&gt; on July 17, 1899: &amp;quot;Bitten by a Tarantula, Death Probably Lurked in a Bunch of Bananas.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Banerjee, K, R Banerjee, A K Mukherjee, and D Ghosh. “Tarantula Bite Leads to Death and Gangrene.” &lt;em&gt;Indian Journal of Dermatology&lt;/em&gt;, Venereology and Leprology 63, no. 2 (April 1997): 125–126.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;See for example Isbister, Geoffrey K, and Hui Wen Fan. “Spider Bite.” &lt;em&gt;Lancet&lt;/em&gt; 378, no. 9808 (December 10, 2011): 2039–2047. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(10)62230-1.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T03:37:31.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18338" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-09T07:06:51.457" Score="22" ViewCount="168250" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2492549/Video-reveals-heat-home-using-just-TEALIGHTS-FLOWERPOTS--costs-just-8p-day.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article at the Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt; describes a small heater based on tealights and flowerpots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It claims that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[the system] &quot;make[s] the heating more efficient&quot; (I assume in comparison to just tealights)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Based on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9167/are-ceramic-heaters-more-efficient-than-convection-heaters&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, it seems all heaters are 100% efficient.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T04:06:24.173" Title="Is this tealight-flowerpot heater more efficient than just tealights?" Tags="|physics|energy|engineering|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18340" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18341" CreationDate="2013-11-09T13:33:30.760" Score="7" ViewCount="4865" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw &lt;a href=&quot;http://americanoverlook.com/obama-gives-muslim-nation-195000000-for-muslim-holiday/102448&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; floating around Facebook today. It claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s the Muslim holiday, Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan. President Obama has decided to give $195M of taxpayer money to the Islamic nation of Syria to mark the occasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“To help the many Syrians in need this Eid al-Fitr, the United States is providing an additional $195 million in food aid and other humanitarian aid, bringing our humanitarian contribution to the Syrian people to over $1 billion since the crisis began.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is certainly odd and skeptics worthy. We give plenty of aid to countries, but have we ever tied it to a holiday? Furthermore relations between the US and Syria aren't exactly great (unless this article means the rebels in Syria).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this article completely bogus? Or is there some truth to it? How much is the article twisting the truth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1139" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2017-05-21T23:32:28.483" LastActivityDate="2017-05-21T23:32:28.483" Title="Did Obama give $195 million to Syria for the Muslim holiday Eid al-Ftr?" Tags="|politics|barack-obama|syria|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18340" CreationDate="2013-11-09T14:27:33.790" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;We give plenty of aid to countries, but have we ever tied it to a holiday?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see why not; for example the first thing I searched for on Google was &quot;Berlin air-drop Christmas&quot; and I found that, indeed, that was an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/airlift/timeline/timeline2.html&quot;&gt;The Berlin Airlift&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;December 20: &quot;Operation Santa Claus&quot; brings Christmas gifts to 10,000 Berlin children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Associating the charitable gift of food with Eid seems to me to be culturally-sensitive or diplomatic: appropriate (however, I see in the first of the 2000-odd comments below the article referenced in the OP, that it also stokes some &quot;Obama is a Muslim&quot; comments at home).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is this article completely bogus? Or is there some truth to it? How much is the article twisting the truth?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be entirely true; except that (according to the Whitehouse statement) it's intended for &quot;the many Syrians in need&quot; and &quot;the Syrian people&quot;, and not (as stated in the article referenced in the OP) &quot;the Islamic nation of Syria&quot; and &quot;a war-torn Muslim country&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://americanoverlook.com/obama-gives-muslim-nation-195000000-for-muslim-holiday/102448&quot;&gt;article cited in the OP&lt;/a&gt; said,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In an official White House release, President Obama said: “Michelle and I send our warmest greetings to Muslims celebrating Eid al-Fitr here in the United States and around the world&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google easily finds the White House release in question: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/07/statement-president-occasion-eid-al-fitr&quot;&gt;Statement by the President on the Occasion of Eid al-Fitr&lt;/a&gt; (August 07, 2013): it includes the sentences which it was alleged to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I quote below the complete text of the statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Michelle and I send our warmest greetings to Muslims celebrating Eid al-Fitr here in the United States and around the world. During the past month, Muslims have honored their faith through prayer and service, fasting and time spent with loved ones. At this year’s White House Iftar, I was proud to spend time with some of the many American Muslims whose contributions enrich our democracy and strengthen our economy. Many of us have had the opportunity to break fast with our Muslim friends and colleagues—a tradition that reminds us to be grateful for our blessings and to show compassion to the less fortunate among us, including millions of Syrians who spent Ramadan displaced from their homes, their families, and their loved ones. To help the many Syrians in need this Eid al-Fitr, the United States is providing an additional $195 million in food aid and other humanitarian aid, bringing our humanitarian contribution to the Syrian people to over $1 billion since the crisis began. For millions of Americans, Eid is part of a great tapestry of America’s many traditions, and I wish all Muslims a blessed and joyful celebration. Eid Mubarak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer your comment,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;We're not turning money over to the Assad regime, but I'm guessing to some kind of aid workers.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's some information about that in this September 23, 2013 article by the Associated Press -- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2013/09/us_faces_tough_challenges_to_d.html&quot;&gt;U.S. faces tough challenges to deliver aid in Syria&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The U.S. assistance to the crisis flows from three spigots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first $1 billion goes for humanitarian needs. Half is for Syrians&#xA;  now crowded in camps or communities in neighboring Jordan, Lebanon,&#xA;  Turkey, Egypt or Iraq. The other half is for Syrians who are displaced&#xA;  from their homes, but still live inside Syria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The U.N. can work in regime-controlled areas, but not in ones held by&#xA;  the opposition unless the government approves. So far Assad has said&#xA;  no. The opposition areas, therefore, rely on the work of NGOs — many&#xA;  supported by U.S. tax dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second spigot of money — $26 million so far — is non-lethal&#xA;  assistance the U.S. is providing to the Free Syrian Army. That has&#xA;  paid for more than 350,000 meals given to opposition fighters as a&#xA;  test to see if they ended up in the wrong hands. They didn't and now&#xA;  the U.S. is sending the army bigger items like trucks, large radios&#xA;  and medical equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The third spigot — some $250 million — is given to local councils&#xA;  springing up in areas no longer controlled by the government. The&#xA;  money pays for training — a kind of Governance 101 — for Syrians&#xA;  trying to get services turned back on in the middle of a war. It also&#xA;  provides small cash grants to the councils and heavy equipment, such&#xA;  as fire trucks, ambulances, generators, water tanks and garbage&#xA;  trucks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-11-09T22:13:20.527" LastActivityDate="2013-11-09T22:13:20.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18338" CreationDate="2013-11-09T16:07:00.513" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brHqBcZqNzE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;original video&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.woodenboat.com/showthread.php?155245-heating-a-boat-with-candles-and-flowerpots-for-8p-a-day-and-the-home-office-too&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;forum post&lt;/a&gt; does a much better job explaining what is going on and states that the four (4) tea light candles are being used to warm the smaller inner flower pot which has the top drain hole blocked off while the large outer flower pot is used to create a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convection&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;convection effect&lt;/a&gt; that draws air past the warm inner pot and out the top. The narrator explains the effect as follows,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, what you have is an inner core of a flower pot which gets very hot&#xA;  and then you have this one [pointing at the outer pot] which doesn't&#xA;  get massively hot but it does get warm. But what you get is a&#xA;  convection up here [pointing at the bottom of the pot] and out the top&#xA;  and it really, really flows out well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video also notes that a computer is also being run at the same time and the room isn't too large, as it only appears to contain a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bed_size&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;queen sized bed&lt;/a&gt; and desk. This also isn't a very new idea since the same idea was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/31796&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;advocated during World War II by Great Britain&lt;/a&gt; for use in shelters,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here's a simple flower-pot heater&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  Stand the candle in a 6-inch flower-pot so that the hole is not covered; put a second flower-pot over the top. The top pot soon warms up, giving off a lot of heat. Raise the lower pot off the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it is important to note that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tealight&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tea lights are named such&lt;/a&gt; because one of their purposes is to warm tea or in food warmers and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teavana.com/tea-products/tea-accessories/teapot-warmers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;products are sold with this in mind&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judging the efficiency of the device is difficult; however, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.comsol.com/paper/download/62922/koppenhoefer2_paper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one analysis of a burning candle&lt;/a&gt; showed that most of the heat travels in a column over the candle itself,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wkHtU.png&quot; alt=&quot;Candle burning simulation&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this standpoint, anything that that allows for the heat put off from the candles to circulate through the space is going to improve the subjective efficiency over just using bare candles. However, as noted in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/18374/6629&quot;&gt;Sklivvz's answer&lt;/a&gt;, the heat output of candles &lt;a href=&quot;http://fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/fire05/PDF/f05141.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;is well studied&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From measurements of the mean mass loss rate (0.105 g/min) and hceff&#xA;  (43.8 kJ/g), the steady-state heat release rate from the candle was&#xA;  calculated as 77±9 W&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which works out to about 262.7 BTU/h or 1050.9 BTU/h for the four of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point it is important to draw attention to the fact that the maker of this claim is using it while running a computer in his room. Desktop computer put out heat that can affect the room temperature. If we use a &lt;a href=&quot;http://purl.tue.nl/727151493353874.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;conservative value of 145 watts of heat&lt;/a&gt; or 494.8 BTU/h &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_thermal_unit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;based upon the conversion&lt;/a&gt; which is also contributing the room temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.calculator.net/btu-calculator.html?&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BTU calculator&lt;/a&gt;, 341 BTU (99 watts) are needed to raise the temperature of a 2x4x3 meter room (very rough estimate based upon the apparent queen size bed and desk present in the video) with normal insulation 1°C. This means that under ideal circumstances, that it may be possible for the candles to raise the temperature of the room 3°C with the computer possible contributing another 1°C of heat. As such, in a small room room it is &lt;strong&gt;plausible&lt;/strong&gt; that a small, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_temperature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;colder winter room&lt;/a&gt; (i.e. under 20°C) the combined 4°C increase in temperature might be sufficient. However, such an effect would be highly dependent upon the size of the room, location of the heater, drafts, and personal preference in room temperatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T15:20:52.530" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18344" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18351" CreationDate="2013-11-10T02:49:29.137" Score="36" ViewCount="6661" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aTZKim.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;American Capitalism in 2013: There are 18,600,000 vacant homes in the United States. That’s enough for every homeless person to have six.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find a source for this, and that number seems much too high to me (although I don't know much about the subject). Is this true? If not, what is the actual ratio of homeless people to vacant houses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16140" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-11-10T10:28:06.773" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T13:35:08.340" Title="Are there enough unused houses in America for each homeless person to have six?" Tags="|united-states|economics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10708" CreationDate="2013-11-10T03:21:58.037" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The search for &quot;miswak&quot; returns 72 hits on PubMed, which is one of the most comprehensive databases of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. I have briefly reviewed the abstracts of each, and &lt;strong&gt;none support anything but claims related to oral hygiene&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, there are numerous studies supporting the link between oral hygiene and general health. See, for example, &quot;Periodontitis as risk factor for acute myocardial infarction: A case control study&quot; in &lt;em&gt;Heart Views&lt;/em&gt;, 2013 Jan;14(1):5-11.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in a sense, the claims have some truth to them in so far as taking care of your teeth and mouth, whether by miswak or with a toothbrush, is better than doing nothing.&lt;sup&gt;†&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;† &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Please note that this answer does not constitute medical advice. It is only meant to summarize published research related to the topic and limited to the cited sources. Consult your physician about what these results may mean for your health.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-09-20T23:21:21.217" LastActivityDate="2015-09-20T23:21:21.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18338" CreationDate="2013-11-10T03:23:05.337" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is more efficient than just tealights, though still a very small source of heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You note that &quot;all heaters are 100% efficient.&quot;  This is partially true - all heaters convert virtually all input energy into heat, thus achieving near 100% efficiency.  However, if that heat simply rises to the ceiling by convection it doesn't do much to warm the room or its occupants.  Radiant heat flows directly from the source to people and objects in the room, and is much more effective as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiant_heating&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;noted in Wikipedia:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The internal air temperature for radiant heated buildings may be lower than for a conventionally heated building to achieve the same level of body comfort, when adjusted so the perceived temperature is actually the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This system appears to be a more effective way to heat than an open candle flame, because the flame heats the clay pot, which radiates the heat to the room.  The total heat input is still very small, however, as noted below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The design can be viewed as a much smaller and simplified version of a masonry fireplace.  A normal fireplace is very inefficient because most of the heat is carried up the chimney by convection.  As noted &lt;a href=&quot;http://oikos.com/esb/27/fireplaces.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At best, an open fireplace is no more than 20 percent efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Efficiencies can actually be much lower, and even negative if large amounts of room air are drawn out through the chimney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An open candle operates similarly when viewed as a heater.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/fire05/PDF/f05141.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This reference&lt;/a&gt; determined the amount of energy radiated from a candle through laboratory testing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The radiative fraction was determined by finding the ratio of the radiative emission and m x Hc [&lt;em&gt;my note: this is the total heat produced by combustion&lt;/em&gt;], which yielded a value of 0.17 +/- 0.01.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, 17% of the heat produced by an open candle flame is radiated to the surroundings, with the remaining 83% carried away by convection.  This convective loss is equivalent to the convective loss up the chimney for an open fireplace, as it rises rapidly to the ceiling where it is effectively lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A much improved design for a fireplace forces the combustion gases to flow through a circuitous path made of masonry materials, which absorb heat from the gases and radiate it to the room.  This improves the overall efficiency of heating to much higher levels.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://pages.uoregon.edu/hof/W09HOF/21MasonryHeater_ppr.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a study which showed one masonry fireplace achieved a heating efficiency of just under 80%.  The stove looks like this in cross section:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GCUy2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Contraflow masonry heater&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gas flows are similar to the flower pot arrangement as shown here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8cAgJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the tealight and flower pot function as a small-scale masonry fireplace, reducing the convective losses and increasing radiation to the room, as opposed to an open candle which functions like an open fireplace, with most of the heat lost by convection up the chimney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the flower pot does increase the effectiveness of the candles as heaters, a few calculations can show how little heat it actually produces:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tea lights are made of paraffin wax, and are commonly about 38 mm in diameter and 16 mm high, and burn for 3 to 5 hours &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tealight&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(per Wikipedia)&lt;/a&gt;. Paraffin wax has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraffin_wax&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;density&lt;/a&gt; of about 900 kg/m3, and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_of_combustion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;heat of combustion&lt;/a&gt; of about 46 MJ/kg.  running through the math, we get 0.75 MJ/candle, and assuming a 4 hour burn time and 100% combustion efficiency (which is close, though not exact) that is a power output of 187,500 J/hr, or 52 watts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If 4 candles are burning at one time, this is 208 watts - probably quite close to the heat being generated by the two computers and two desk lamps in the room shown in the video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would it be better to put a light bulb inside a flower pot?  Probably, since it wouldn't produce any combustion by-products such as carbon monoxide, which flames inevitably do.  But from a purely economic point of view, it may actually be cheaper to use the candles, if the pricing claim is true.  If the candles truly cost 1 £ for 100, then the heat costs about 5 pence per kW-hr, which is lower than the 14 pence I found by looking at British electric rates.  However, the cheapest source I found for these candles in the US is $6 per 100 (3.75£/100).  At this price, the candle heat costs about 18 pence per kW-hr, which is more than electricity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is nothing new about this idea.  Googling &quot;Candle Heater&quot; brings up all sorts of sites, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tacticalintelligence.net/blog/how-to-make-a-candle-heater.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one with flower pots&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastEditorUserId="8436" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T04:06:24.173" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T04:06:24.173" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18338" CreationDate="2013-11-10T03:30:02.010" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;How much will 4 candles heat a room?  It depends, but probably not much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candle#Light&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;candles give off heat at a rate of approximately 80 W&lt;/a&gt;.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/fire05/PDF/f05141.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source cited by Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; actually lists 77 W +/- 9 W on page 277.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Burning 4 candles simultaneously for 8 hours produces 2.464 kWh.  ( 4 candles x 8 hours x 0.077 kW )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/heat-work-energy-d_292.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;formula for how much this&lt;/a&gt; amount of energy can heat the air is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;amount of heat = [specific heat of air][4] x [mass of air][5] x temperature difference&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;temperature difference = amount of heat&#xA;                         ----------------------------------&#xA;                         specific heat of air x mass of air&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I estimate the room in the video to be 15m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; (4m long x 2.5m high x 3m wide x 0.5 because it's triangular.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.464 kWh = 8,870 kJ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;temperature difference = 8,870 kJ&#xA;                         ----------------------------------&#xA;                         1.0035 kJ/kg.K x 18 kg&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which gives a heating amount of approximately 491 °C if you assume there is no loss of heat from the system.  Of course, this is an &lt;em&gt;unreasonable&lt;/em&gt; assumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calculating heat losses is a little more complicated and requires knowing what kind of insulation the room has, what temperatures exist on the other side of each wall and what drafts there might be&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using a simplistic model and &lt;a href=&quot;http://openenergymonitor.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/how-much-energy-does-it-take-to-heat.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the values given for heat conductivity used in this blog post&lt;/a&gt; and these values for the dimensions of the room in the video:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;floor: 12m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;walls: 7.5m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;main wall: 10m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;roof: 15m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can maintain a temperature difference of 12 °C between inside and the outside using the 308 W given off by the four candles combined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding in a 2m&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; glass window to the room using the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_thermal_conductivities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;heat conductivity value from Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; changes the result drastically.  With that window allowing heat to escape, the four candles can only maintain a 1 °C difference between inside and outside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if we assume that the air is still and only half the room heats up, that's only 2 °C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The answer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's complicated, but unless you have a very well insulated room, four candles are barely going to make a difference.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll also have a go at answering the unspoken question &amp;quot;Are tea lights cheaper than conventional heating?&amp;quot; for interest's sake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video states that the tea lights last 4 hours so the total for the day comes to 8 candles at a cost of 8p.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current gas and electricity prices in London (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uswitch.com/gas-electricity/supplier-details/new&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;from uSwitch&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Electricity unit rates    13.550p per kWh&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gas unit rates            4.162p per kWh&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same amount of heating using an electric heater (assuming 100% efficiency) would cost approximately 33p.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same amount of heating using a gas heater (assuming 100% efficiency) would cost approximately 10p.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tea lights &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; cheaper but not by much.  And only if you ride or walk to Ikea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that cheap candles produce the lower rate of heat (68W) the total heat given off by the 8 tea lights over the day would be 2.176 kWh.  The cost of this much gas is approximately 9p which is still more expensive than the 8p worth of tea lights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding in a value based on Mark's calculation that a tea light gives off 52 W, the equivalent amount of gas would cost 7p.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tea lights are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/50097995/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;currently £1.75 / 100 pack on Ikea's website&lt;/a&gt; which changes the heating cost from 8p per day to 14p per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tea lights would be more convenient on a boat or in an attic which may not be supplied with gas and electricity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11387" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T03:40:11.310" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18294" CreationDate="2013-11-10T04:05:17.847" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's bracket out religious controversy by asking: Can a person contract herpes from direct contact between mouth and genitals? The answer is a definite yes.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; The situation is only exacerbated by the age of the child and raw contact with an open wound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A meticulously-documented meta-analysis on religious practices in the &lt;em&gt;International Journal of Infectious Diseases&lt;/em&gt;, examines MBP to find:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The largest case series by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was published in 2012, wherein they highlighted 11 cases of HSV-1 after confirmed or probable oral–genital suction from 2000 to 2011 in New York City. 10 of 11 cases were hospitalized and unfortunately two cases were fatal. Six patients had mucocutaneous lesions, two had central nervous system involvement, and three had dissemination to visceral organs. In 2004 twin boys born via cesarean to a mother without evidence of HSV infection during childbirth underwent metzitzah on the eighth day of life. Afterwards, both neonates developed fever and vesicles on their abdomen, buttocks, and genitalia that contained HSV. One of these infants later developed disseminated infection and died. These cases prompted an investigation by the New York City Health Department, which discovered that a year prior, a case of neonatal HSV infection after metzitzah by the same mohel had also led to vesicular lesions. After these cases were reported the New York City Health Department set up surveillance, which uncovered eight more cases of HSV-1 after probable or confirmed oral–genital suction. The discovery of these cases was facilitated by a 2006 mandate in the New York City Health Code that infants less than 60 days old with a diagnosis of herpes infection be reported. When laboratory confirmation of HSV-1 or untyped HSV was obtained there was further investigation to determine if ritual oral–genital suction was performed. &lt;strong&gt;The authors calculated the estimated relative risk of neonatal herpes to be 3.4 times greater after direct oral–genital suction compared to those who did not.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These 22 cases provide evidence that metzitzah with direct oral–genital contact can transmit HSV-1 infection. The temporal relationship where all infants presented within 2 weeks of the ceremony is consistent with the typical incubation period of HSV; the isolation of HSV-1, a pathogen typically transmitted via oral contact, and negative serologies or clinical manifestations of herpes in most of the mothers all suggest an association. Additionally, the finding that some of the mohels’ saliva tested negative for HSV is not surprising since shedding of HSV is sporadic and can be found in asymptomatic individuals, as demonstrated by Hatherley et al. and Douglas and Couch.15 Finally the location of HSV-1 on genitalia suggests that it was likely transmitted via direct contact.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Center for Disease Control and Prevention, &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/std/herpes/stdfact-herpes.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Genital Herpes, CDC Fact Sheet&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pellerin, James, and Michael B Edmond. “Infections Associated with Religious Rituals.” &lt;em&gt;International Journal of Infectious Diseases&lt;/em&gt; 17, no. 11 (November 2013): e945–948.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2022-01-17T02:26:41.700" LastActivityDate="2022-01-17T02:26:41.700" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18344" CreationDate="2013-11-10T08:16:52.617" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number of vacant houses seems to be correct for 2009 (but seems to have fallen since to 14M, see below). The number of homeless people may be much lower (~630,000), but that may depend on definition. Using these numbers brings the ratio to 22, and given that a house can house more than one person, the ratio becomes more pronounced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The numbers may have been originated from amnesty - &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.amnestyusa.org/us/housing-its-a-wonderful-right/&quot;&gt;http://blog.amnestyusa.org/us/housing-its-a-wonderful-right/&lt;/a&gt; but I did not find their source.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/01/homeless-homelessness-housing/2730301/&quot;&gt;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/09/01/homeless-homelessness-housing/2730301/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.storyleak.com/recovery-us-enough-empty-houses-hold-population-of-britain/&quot;&gt;http://www.storyleak.com/recovery-us-enough-empty-houses-hold-population-of-britain/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;amp;sid=an17jgiccivM&quot;&gt;http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&amp;amp;sid=an17jgiccivM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4795" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T08:16:52.617" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18350" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20140" CreationDate="2013-11-10T10:47:55.353" Score="15" ViewCount="2740" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfort_women&quot;&gt;Comfort women&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is a commonly used euphemism for sex slaves used by the Japanese army during World War II.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Negationists argue that &quot;Comfort women&quot; were not sex slaves, and make the specific claim that they were well paid, which would be inconsistent with the women being sex slaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of claims that they were well paid:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fromfukuoka.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/comfort-women-were-not-sex-slaves-but-very-well-paid-prostitutes/&quot;&gt;Comfort Women were not sex slaves, but very well-paid prostitutes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Comfort Women earned over six times more than newly recruited&#xA;  policemen who earned a relatively high salary in Japan. Comfort women&#xA;  were voluntary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.japanprobe.com/2010/01/23/granddaughter-of-comfort-woman-they-were-never-forced-and-they-were-all-paid-very-well/&quot;&gt;Copy of an opinion piece&lt;/a&gt; run, and subsequently retracted, in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Korea_Times&quot;&gt;Korea Times&lt;/a&gt; (probably authored by a pro-Japanese troll)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only the people of Korea seem to be unable to come to grips with the&#xA;  reality that there never really was a “hellish situation” for these&#xA;  women. My grandmother, who made lots of money from her work as a&#xA;  prostitute servicing Japanese soldiers, and her friends (yes, they are&#xA;  Koreans, too) all say they never were forced and they were all paid&#xA;  very well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://japanrevisited.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/texas-daddy-whacking-lies-of-comfort.html&quot;&gt;Texas Daddy Whacking the Lies of Comfort Women&lt;/a&gt; quotes &quot;Texas Daddy&quot; citing a report by the United States written in August 1944 (that is, when it was at war with Japan, and had every reason to paint Japan in a negative light):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;They lived in near-luxury in Burma in comparison to other places.&#xA;    They lived well because their food and material was not heavily&#xA;    rationed and they had plenty of money with which to purchase desired&#xA;    articles. They were able to buy cloth, shoes, cigaretes, and cosmetics&#xA;    to supplement the many gifts given to them by soldiers who had&#xA;    received 'comfort bags' from home.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;While in Burma, they amused themselves by participating in sports&#xA;    events with both officers and men, and attended picnics,&#xA;    entertainments, and social dinners. They had a phonograph, and in the&#xA;    towns they were allowed to go shopping.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;In an average month, a girl would gross about 1,500 yen (half of&#xA;    which she turned over to the master)&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the following as commentary (not from the US report)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This means, a comfort girl earned 750 yen a month. To give you an idea&#xA;  of how humongous this salary was, a Japanese Imperial Army sergeant at&#xA;  the time was paid 30 yen a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were &quot;Comfort women&quot; well-paid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is about whether they were well paid, and not about whether &quot;Comfort women&quot; were sex slaves. I want to be able to rebut specific claims when encountering negationists, rather than &quot;knowing&quot; that &quot;Comfort women&quot; were sex slaves but not knowing how to prove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, this is what I had in my bounty message:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A rebuttal of this specific claim (about &quot;comfort women&quot; being paid&#xA;  well) would be appreciated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I strongly suspect the claim is false, but the specific nature of the&#xA;  claim may make it seem plausible, if one were not familiar with other&#xA;  atrocities committed by imperial Japan, and the negationism modern-day&#xA;  Japan has about such atrocities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ideally, an answer would point to a resource that would be useful in&#xA;  debunking other false claims about imperial Japan, or at least about&#xA;  the &quot;Comfort Women&quot; issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T12:54:50.780" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T05:46:54.827" Title="Were &quot;comfort women&quot; well-paid?" Tags="|japan|sexual-abuse|world-war-ii|slavery|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18344" CreationDate="2013-11-10T13:35:08.340" Score="57" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, the proportions are &lt;strong&gt;far more extreme&lt;/strong&gt; than six vacant houses per homeless person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.endhomelessness.org/pages/snapshot_of_homelessness&quot;&gt;National Alliance to End Homelessness&lt;/a&gt; collates the US Department of Housing and Urban Development figures (number collected November 2013):&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are 633,782 people experiencing homelessness on any given night in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The US Census Bureau reports on the residential vacancies. In April 2013, they &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/qtr113/q113press.pdf&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; 18,439,000 homes were vacant in the first quarter of 2013. Some of these were seasonal, but 13,970,000 were &quot;Year-round&quot; vacant, so that's a more conservative figure to use. [Figures from Table 3.]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ratio of 13,970,000 : 633,782 is greater than &lt;strong&gt;22 vacant homes&lt;/strong&gt; per homeless person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T13:35:08.340" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18352" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-10T15:35:43.093" Score="5" ViewCount="1361" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://myergobed.com/best-mattress-inflammation.php&quot;&gt;competitor&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] the visco memory foam mattress cuts off circulation and increases inflammation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in keeping with my personal experience of inflammation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that just an anecdote and one more dubious claim from a competitor with many of them? Or is there scientific evidence to support the claim that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_foam&quot;&gt;memory foam&lt;/a&gt; mattresses cause more inflammation than other styles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16142" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-11-11T00:03:29.243" LastActivityDate="2015-10-11T10:20:20.023" Title="Do memory foam mattresses cause inflammation?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|sleep|memory-foam|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18257" CreationDate="2013-11-10T19:59:36.203" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this article published in the International Journal of Public Health by the Institute of Tropical Medicine, Antwerp, it's, on average significantly lower than 50%:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/N7JY3.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02084300&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02084300&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funnily enough, this is actually the most recent chart I could find like this. I guess no one bothered to do another study in the last 25 years. However, there are a few more articles I found that give more recent percentages for certain areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nigeria's growing commercial sex industry is a major source of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission, and studies undertaken in Lagos suggest that up to 20% of female prostitutes are HIV-infected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popline.org/node/288578&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.popline.org/node/288578&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is one more problem with the chart above, in that it only takes into account prostitutes that don't use intravenous drugs, and just assuming 0% in that field is just ludicrous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to one PubMed article, Human immunodeficiency virus seroprevalence and condom use among female sex workers in Italy, about 37% use intravenous drugs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall, 131 of 802 (16%) were HIV positive: 36 of 558 (6%) professional sex workers and 95 of 244 (39%) sex workers who used intravenous drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9800254&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9800254&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly I can't personally find one specifically for the US. But, that said, based on the information above, I would hazard a guess that it would be significantly less than 50%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16130" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T19:59:36.203" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18356" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18338" CreationDate="2013-11-10T22:16:55.657" Score="-2" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Summary:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the main physical effect I can see of the flower pot is increased heating power due to faster rate of burning. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But burning candles (or any other fuel) indoors without a proper exhaust/chimney to take care of the exhaust gas is not a bright idea!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;And four candles burned over 8 h is about an order of magnitude below civil engineering recommendations for installed heating power. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just weighed some tea candles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some old ones  17 g each - look taller than normal&#xA;(box said they were sold for 1 DM/10 pcs, but that was at least 25 years ago)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;newer ones: 14 g each - I'll use these for calculations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The heat of combustion for paraffin is about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_of_combustion#Heat_of_combustion_tables&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;46.00 MJ/kg higher and 41.50 MJ/kg lower heating value, respectively&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;Thus, each of the 14 g candles can give ca. 650 kJ, or approximately 2.5 MJ in 4 tea candles (HHV). For the LHV, we get 580 kJ / candle and 2.3 MJ for 4 candles.&#xA;The higher heating value HHV is calculated assuming that all hydrogen in the wax will at the end become &lt;em&gt;liquid&lt;/em&gt; water, the lower heating value LHV leaves the water as vapor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heating a room in winter, you'll probably get the HHV, but that means that the room will get damp (unless you air it, and then you loose your precious heat through the air exchange). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Already without flower pots, a candle with properly trimmed wick will not soot, so we can assume losses due to incomplete combustion to be negligible. Radiation losses are negligible as well - particularly if you close the curtains because you are in a precarious heating situation. We can thus say that the candle already without flower pot is a 100% energy efficient heater.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, &lt;strong&gt;the flower pot cannot enhance the energy efficiency of burning the candles.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some effects the flower pot construction can have:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Physico-chemically, if the flower pot construction works like a chimney, and possibly even like a chimney that preheats the air, then the candle can burn faster (higher power). Of course, it will burn out accordingly faster.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(literature: go for an industrial chemistry textbook discussing furnace constructions)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't think that the flower pot helps much against the convection. However, I don't have measurements to support this. But, if that would be the desired effect, the stove should be placed on the floor just under the window, where the upward convection from the stove works against the cold downward convection from the window, (or maybe a bit further up in front of the window, so we can get the benefit of the radiation heating).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This would be the claim about the &lt;em&gt;judicial positioning helps&lt;/em&gt;, which is true (I remember that we learned these heater positioning concepts with the usual convection heaters in elementary school).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Physiologically and probably also psychologically, one important difference between convector heating and heating by a stove is that with the stove more of the heat transfer occurs by radiation instead of by conduction and convection (via the air). Therefore, the heat &lt;em&gt;perception&lt;/em&gt; can be vastly different even though the air temperature did not change that much.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The perception of a human being of heat, cold or thermal comfort does not react on the air temperature&#xA;  only. In an often comparable order, solar radiation, wind velocity, humidity as well as heat radiation of&#xA;  atmosphere and ground (Landsberg 1972, VDI 1998) have a decisive influence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.utci.org/isb/documents/perceived_temperature.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;JENDRITZKY, G., STAIGER, H., BUCHER, K., GRÄTZ, A., LASCHEWSKI, G., 2000. The Perceied Temperature: The Method of the Deutscher Wetterdienst for the Assessment of Cold Stress and Heat Load for the Human Body. Internet Workshop on Windchill, Environment Canada&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in order to get a &lt;em&gt;comfortable&lt;/em&gt; amount of heating, with direct radiation we may be able to heat only when we are in the room and need the heat and possibly deliver it better where we need it (as opposed to heat all the air and the walls, with the corresponding increased heat losses). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I do not see why a flower pot would help with the radiation part (over open candles). The more consequent implementation of this idea to deliver the heat where we need it are pocket stoves. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not find good literature on the difference between radiation heat and air temperature, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.giglinger.de/vortraege/Wandheizsysteme_giglinger.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;these slides in German language have interesting data on comfort zones depending on air and (wall) surface temperature&lt;/a&gt; and state that radiation heating can save 15 - 30% of heating energy and &lt;a href=&quot;http://as-infrarotheizung.npage.de/haeufig-gestellte-fragen.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this manufacturer of radiation heaters claims that the perceived temperature with radiation heater is 2 - 3 °C above the air temperature, and that as a rule of thumb 40 - 60 W / m² (assumed 2.5 m room height) should be installed&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking the 15 m² from &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/18347/8865&quot;&gt;@Ladadadada's answer&lt;/a&gt;, they would argue that 600 - 900 W heating power is needed. That would be burning ca. 3 1/3 - 5 candles per hour. However, this calculation does not take into account that if you burn the candles at that rate, you need to start thinking about exhaust gas in your room air: 5 candles are 70 g and need about 150 l of oxygen to burn (and will produce about 100 l CO_2 and another 100 l of water vapor (or 26 ml of liquid water)).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umweltbundesamt.de/sites/default/files/medien/pdfs/kohlendioxid_2008.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;indoor air quality (Gesundheitliche Bewertung&#xA;von Kohlendioxid in der Innenraumluft, Bundesgesundheitsbl - Gesundheitsforsch -&#xA;Gesundheitsschutz, 2008, 51:1358–1369, DOI 10.1007/s00103-008-0707-2)&lt;/a&gt; by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umweltbundesamt.de/en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;German Umweltbundesamt&lt;/a&gt; cites the outdoor air concentration of CO2 usually around 400 ppm, while indoors averages of between 800 and 3000 ppm were found. 1400 ppm is considered the limit for bad indoor air quality (good indoor air quality is with &amp;lt; 800 ppm).  Thus, we can produce 1000 ppm (1 l / m³) until the bad air limit is reached. With our estimated total room volume of &#xA;37.5 m³ that would be reached after 22,5 min. We'd need to air the room completely almost 3 times per hour - that would completely cancel out our heating efforts!&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Of course, if we could cut still cut this down to airing the room only every hour or so - but we'd already be in an atmosphere were studies (see the paper above) found school children to perform worse on cognitive tasks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So yes, it is really not a bright idea to try heating a room by combustion without having the fumes led out by a proper exhaust!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Mark estimates that each tea candle (at a burning rate so that it lasts 4 h) produces about 50W heat. &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grundumsatz#Tats.C3.A4chlicher_Energieumsatz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This is in the same order of magnitude or somewhat lower as a human doing office work&lt;/a&gt;. In other words, instead of burning 4 tea candles over 4 h, you could also ask 2 or 3 buddies to join you - they'd have the same heating effect.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;I calculated this example because it probably allows us to have a better intuitive perception of how much heating we can (or rather: cannot) expect from the candles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8865" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T22:16:55.657" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18257" CreationDate="2013-11-10T22:38:06.727" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be true or true-ish among some sub-populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/rrbprostitute.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THE PROSTITUTE PARADOX&lt;/a&gt; from 1993 says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;In New York City, for example, 40 to 50 percent of streetwalkers (a very low caste of prostitute) who have used IV drugs over the past&#xA;  decade are HIV seropositive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Among call girls in New York City (a higher caste of prostitute), no seropositivity was found among those who were drug free. These figures&#xA;  were constant between 1984 and 1989.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The same sorts of figures have been found in all Western nations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It says that the risk factor is the using of intravenous drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two more data points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=List_of_countries_by_HIV/AIDS_adult_prevalence_rate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;List of countries by HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate&lt;/a&gt; states than in a few countries (Lesotho, Botswana, and Swaziland) in Africa, the incidence is 25% in the general population of adults (it's 17% in South Africa), and I imagine it may be higher than that already-very-high average among any prostitutes there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sti.bmj.com/content/80/1/74.1.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Perceived transmissibility of STIs: lack of differentiation between HIV and chlamydia&lt;/a&gt; claims (based on &lt;code&gt;Mastro TD, de Vincenzi I. Probabilities of sexual HIV-1 transmission. AIDS1996;10(Suppl A):S75–82.&lt;/code&gt;) that,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The estimated probability of HIV transmission from an infected heterosexual man to a woman in one act of unprotected vaginal intercourse is 0.1%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/205/3/351.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Probability of Heterosexual HIV-1 Transmission per Coital Act in Sub-Saharan Africa&lt;/a&gt; cites another study which says that 0.2% is a baseline: when the man is known to be HIV positive, and the rate of condom use is high (in the 78% to 93% range).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that 50% is too high to be a world average, especially in populations where HIV isn't pandemic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the maths says that infection rate of 0.3% implies a 50% chance of infection after 230 sex acts, when a condom is used more-or-less regularly, if all clients are HIV-positive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If 10% of clients are HIV positive then the number is 2300 instead of 230.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-11-10T23:06:51.150" LastActivityDate="2013-11-10T23:06:51.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18329" CreationDate="2013-11-11T15:00:06.683" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question is a bit complex:  &amp;quot;Does the use of Roundup accumulate in mammals and cause illness?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to focus on a slightly simplified version of the question, for sanity sake:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Does glyphosate cause illness?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to this much simpler question is clearly &amp;quot;Yes.&amp;quot; But that alone does not mean that glyphosate is pure evil; many things can cause illness, depending on concentration and other circumstances.  See my closing comments for more on this...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Pesticide Action Network of the UK has a well-referenced, and seemingly un-biased fact sheet on the topic of glyphosate. It discusses varoius types of toxicity, and on the topic of mamalian toxicity, it says in summary&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is nevertheless evidence of toxic effects on humans as well as environmental toxicity, indirect environmental damage and resistance in some target weed species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Acute Toxicity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The acute toxicity of glyphosate itself is very low. According to the World Health Organisation, the oral LD50 in the rat of pure glyphosate is 4,230 mg/kg, or 5,600 mg/kg according to Monsanto(6). The low acute toxicity of glyphosate can be attributed to its biochemical mode of action on a metabolic pathway in plants (called the shikimic acid pathway) which does not exist in animals(7). However, glyphosate can also disrupt functions of enzymes in animals. In rats it was found to decrease the activity of some detoxification enzymes when injected into the abdomen(8). In general, controlled toxicity tests report adverse symptoms from exposure to glyphosate only at extremely high doses, ie several grammes per kg body weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While glyphosate itself may be relatively harmless, some of the products with which it is formulated have a rather less benign reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Chronic Toxicity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some literature suggests that glyphosate can cause some chronic health effects and birth defects in certain test animals when administered at high doses over prolonged periods(15). Chronic feeding studies have shown reduced weight gain, blood and pancreatic effects, but no evidence of carcinogenicity to humans. A US EPA report says: &amp;quot;Effects on pregnant mothers and foetuses included diarrhoea, decreased weight gain, nasal discharge and death of mothers and kidney and digestive disorders in rat pups&amp;quot;(16).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is extremely unlikely that human users or members of the public would be exposed to doses as high as those used in the trials, but extrapolating toxicity data from rats, mice and rabbits on which trials are run, to humans can be inaccurate and misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this answer does not address the entirety of the question; this only focuses on the direct toxic effect of glyphosate on mammals; the question also makes the claim that glyphosate can destroy gut flora; this claim is not addressed, and that glyphosate can accumulate in bones, thus &amp;quot;hindering cellular detoxification&amp;quot; (whatever that means).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think those other questions could be answered (the one about gut flora in particular), but I believe this answer shows sufficiently that glyphosate does have an effect on mammalian health. If all you want is a &amp;quot;yes or no&amp;quot; answer, the answer is clearly &amp;quot;yes.&amp;quot;  If you want an answer about degrees to which glyphosate harms mammals, the answer is much more complicated, and then the question of gut flora, etc, may be more relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-11T15:00:06.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18361" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-11T18:40:45.253" Score="1" ViewCount="833" Body="&lt;p&gt;So &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/LzxTXk1JCFw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;November 8, 2013: Microwave Pulse gives birth to Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda)&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; video and other blog posts are making the claim that Haiyan was influenced, started or even straight-up controlled by man-made microwave emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He doesn't cite any sources much beyond his own blog and videos, so it's difficult to even understand his claims well enough to debunk them. It seems to be playing off the speculative idea put forward by some scientists over the years that weather could possibly be influenced using microwaves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16150" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:09:56.613" LastActivityDate="2019-07-16T05:10:48.803" Title="Was Typhoon Haiyan influenced by man-made microwaves?" Tags="|weather|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18361" CreationDate="2013-11-11T18:58:54.820" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;His argument goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;What we've seen several times is out here near Guam, of all places, we see a large microwave spiral shaped pulse that comes from the north and then extends to the south over Guam.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Following that, we see rotation begin to develop and form into these cyclones.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;And, it's happened time after time now; it's happened like four times. And I've documented each one on my website.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;There is no pulse&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He fails to demonstrate that there is such a phenomenon as a &quot;microwave pulse&quot;. (He attempts to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzxTXk1JCFw&amp;amp;t=3m33s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;at 3:33 and onward&lt;/a&gt;.) His example does not demonstrate a large microwave spiral shaped pulse. He doesn't demonstrate that anything originates from the north or Guam. What he claims is &lt;a href=&quot;http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/wpac/images/mosaic20131022T000000.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an example of this pulse&lt;/a&gt; (from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2f7lcGKsrPo&amp;amp;t=50s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;0:50 of this video&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/wpac/images/mosaic20131022T000000.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/wpac/images/mosaic20131022T000000.gif&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is only an &lt;em&gt;expected artifact&lt;/em&gt; from the composition process:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As stated above, this technique is highly sensitive to biases between the different satellite instruments' calibration and/or retrievals of TPW. Even slight differences between retrievals can create two easily discernable artifacts in the animation: 1) &lt;strong&gt;The appearance of data swath edges throughout the image domain&lt;/strong&gt;, and 2) The &lt;strong&gt;apparent &quot;pulsing&quot; of various high-TPW areas&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;especially in areas of precipitation&lt;/strong&gt;. (From &lt;a href=&quot;http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/prodDesc/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/prodDesc/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These artifacts are frequent and easy to find. For example, here's one sequence filled with such artifacts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140219215132/http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/wpac/anim/2012/20120924T000000anim72.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140219215132/http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/wpac/anim/2012/20120924T000000anim72.gif&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another more extreme example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/natl/images/mosaic20130426T000000.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/natl/images/mosaic20130426T000000.gif&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Post hoc ergo propter hoc&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He then commits the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;post hoc ergo propter hoc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; fallacy. Even &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt;, a &quot;microwave pulse&quot; happened before the formation of these storms, that does not suggest causation. In fact, he gets the causation backwards. The data provider says these artifacts will be found &quot;especially in areas of precipitation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Confirmation bias&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding any of the above, his analysis also suffers from either &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;confirmation bias&lt;/a&gt; (if not deliberate) or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporting_bias&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reporting bias&lt;/a&gt; (if deliberate). A proper analysis would include how many times a &quot;microwave pulse&quot; occurred and &lt;em&gt;was not&lt;/em&gt; followed by a cyclone and how many times cyclones formed &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; such a &quot;microwave pulse&quot; occurring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2019-07-16T05:10:48.803" LastActivityDate="2019-07-16T05:10:48.803" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18364" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-11T19:53:15.593" Score="23" ViewCount="6246" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just saw &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/million-lines-of-code/&quot;&gt;an infographic comparing the size of various programs in lines of code&lt;/a&gt;, the largest one of those being the healthcare.gov site at 500 million lines of code. The source they used seems to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/21/us/insurance-site-seen-needing-weeks-to-fix.html?pagewanted=all&amp;amp;_r=0&quot;&gt;this NY Times article&lt;/a&gt; that states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to one specialist, the Web site contains about 500 million&#xA;  lines of software code. By comparison, a large bank’s computer system&#xA;  is typically about one-fifth that size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I have no problems believing that the whole thing is rather large, this number seems wildly implausible to me. Is there any hard information (i.e. not from unnamed sources) on the size of the codebase? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T23:43:13.050" Title="Does healthcare.gov contain 500 million lines of code?" Tags="|united-states|programming|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13772" CreationDate="2013-11-12T00:30:47.273" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's reported, but not conclusively demonstrated by experiment. Also, in some cases sex is known to &lt;em&gt;cause&lt;/em&gt; migraine. I found absolutely no evidence for it being more than a temporary analgesic, let alone a cure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uLNGym.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Not tonight dear, I have a headache&quot; /&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/2818262016/hAD692A58/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Primary sexual headache&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a well known ailment which affects about 1% of the population. There are three main kinds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Early coital cephalgia&lt;/strong&gt;, which is usually of short duration and moderately severe. It is a tight, cramping, dull pain, often occurring bilaterally in the occipital/cervical region, which intensifies as sexual excitement increases. […]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Orgasmic coital cephalgia&lt;/strong&gt;, which is severe, of abrupt onset and lasts 15 to 20 minutes. It can be in the occipital region, behind the eyes, or in a more generalised form and occurs at the point of orgasm. […]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Late coital cephalgia&lt;/strong&gt;, comes on after standing and may last for hours or days. […]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patient.co.uk/doctor/primary-sexual-headache&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Effect on existing headaches&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best study I could find — and the most cited article in recent popular press — was published this March 2013 in the journal “Cephalalgia”: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cep.sagepub.com/content/33/6/384.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;The impact of sexual activity on idiopathic headaches: An observational study&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our data suggest, however, that sexual activity can lead to partial or complete relief of headache in some migraine and a few cluster headache patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honestly, I think this is a &lt;em&gt;big stretch&lt;/em&gt; on their side as the study is simply a &lt;em&gt;scientific survey&lt;/em&gt;. It does not control for double blind, for example, and does not distinguish between real physiological effects and placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Totally aside, but funny, here's a much less suspicious conclusion from the same study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of patients with migraine or cluster headache do not have sexual activity during headache attacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T12:27:39.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3520" CreationDate="2013-11-12T01:38:05.630" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is certainly possible to &quot;harvest&quot; power via induction from high voltage power lines. There is a vertical voltage drop from the wires to the ground. This effect can power stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For an example of this, see this (awesome) picture of a neon being lit by proximity to the power lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hSPcMl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;neon lit by capacitance&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bb/Fluorescent_tube_under_electric_line.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this energy leakage is openly admitted by power lines companies, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Electric fields emanate from any conductor or wire that carries voltage. Higher line voltages produce higher electric field strengths. The closer the conductor is to the ground, the higher the field strength beneath it tends to be, and the &#xA;  increased possibility of shocks.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Larger objects such as a building or a large vehicle have the capability of a larger charge and therefore the shock could be more noticeable. Backyard metallic objects such as swings, portable grills and lawnmowers have been known to deliver similar shocks. Ungrounded metal wire fences can also receive sufficient charges to cause nuisance shocks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://transmission.bchydro.com/nr/rdonlyres/f99224d1-ece9-4c70-be78-5dca1beb58be/0/bctc_devbook_may13_final_lowres.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lighting a neon bulb is one thing, but how much power can be generated? This was studied multiple times, for example in 1976 by the US Department of Agriculture. One of the major risks (or opportunities to &quot;generate&quot; power) is when building fences parallel to high-voltage power lines. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For typical fence values, h = 4 feet (1.22 meters), GMR = 0.125 &#xA;  inches (3.2 &amp;times; 10&lt;sup&gt;-3&lt;/sup&gt; meters) and a ground voltage gradient of 4 kV/M &#xA;  (maximum gradient for a lateral distance of 38 feet from the center &#xA;  line of the 345 kV transmission line, Figure 111-1, and a phase &#xA;  conductor vertical clearance of 29 feet, reference 12) then from &#xA;  Equation 111-3 the magnitude of electric shock current is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;|I&lt;sub&gt;shock&lt;/sub&gt;| = 15.4 &amp;times; 10&lt;sup&gt;-6&lt;/sup&gt; amperes/meter or 25 milliamperes/mile&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://efile.mpsc.state.mi.us/efile/docs/13934/0071.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a theoretical calculation so take it with a grain of salt. These are relatively small currents, and correspond to a 15 milliWatts (&amp;approx;1.5 &amp;times; 10&lt;sup&gt;-5&lt;/sup&gt;A &amp;times; 10 &amp;times;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;V) for every meter of &lt;em&gt;ungrounded&lt;/em&gt; fence. Now, a house consumes about 100,000 times more power (kiloWatts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible? Yes, there is clearly a voltage gradient at which point how much energy can be harvested is a matter of size of the antenna we use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it feasible? No, because the size is likely to be a few kilometers of ungrounded wire, which is not exactly a cheap solution. It is in fact, potentially deadly, as anyone touching it would get a major shock, certainly illegal and very hard to hide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will post more papers if I find them - most are IEEE papers behind a paywall :-(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-11-12T12:24:38.173" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T12:24:38.173" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18338" CreationDate="2013-11-12T02:48:40.537" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll try my shot at giving a good referenced answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The claim&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As evidenced in this clearer explanation of the claim, by &lt;em&gt;efficiency&lt;/em&gt; it is meant that the heat of the candles is &lt;em&gt;retained by the pots and released slowly&lt;/em&gt;. There is also a secondary claim that this makes the system efficient enough to heat an open space. There is no claim that the total energy output is increased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzKbFzUEWkA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzKbFzUEWkA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Is the heat retained longer?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be self evident that it is, for some time. So there is an improvement there. Such an effect, is actually a sought-after property of heaters. However, clay and air are not good storage mediums for heat and in commercial heaters the choice is oil:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For convection (non-radiant) space heaters, the best types incorporate a heat transfer liquid, such as oil, that is heated by the electric element. The heat transfer fluid provides some heat storage, allowing the heater to cycle less and to provide a more constant heat source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/portable-heaters&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is simply due to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/aqa/heatingandcooling/buildingsrev3.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;specific heat capacity&lt;/a&gt; of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-heat-capacity-d_391.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;materials&lt;/a&gt;, air (1005 J/kg°K) being worse than clay (1381 J/kg°K), being worse than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-heat-fluids-d_151.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mineral oil&lt;/a&gt; (1670 J/kg°K).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Is the heating power enough?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heating power is measured in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_thermal_unit&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BTU&lt;/a&gt; [which is a few percent larger than 1 kJ], while the exact details of how many BTU are required per room depend on the size, insulation of it and the efficiency and positioning of the heating unit, there are standard calculations and examples which are used to size heating unit in houses. For example, in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/portable-heaters&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; above typical characteristics of a heater are given between 10 and 40 kBTU/h (about 3-11 kilowatts). In my experience, often a 2kW (6800 BTU/h) heater is also enough, so I'll use that as a lower limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Space heater capacities generally range between 10,000 BTU and 40,000 Btu per hour, and commonly run on electricity, propane, natural gas, and kerosene (see wood and pellet heating for information on wood and pellet stoves).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, how many candle do we need to produce 10 kBTU/h? It turns out that the energy output of candles is &lt;a href=&quot;http://fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/fire05/PDF/f05141.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;well studied&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From measurements of the mean mass loss rate (0.105 g/min) and&#xA;hc&lt;sub&gt;eff&lt;/sub&gt; (43.8 kJ/g), the steady-state heat release rate from the candle was&#xA;calculated as 77±9 W&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unitconversion.org/power/watts-to-btus-th--per-hour-conversion.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;converted&lt;/a&gt; to be 263 BTU/h.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, by division, a 6.8kBTU room heater corresponds to 26 candles. It is easy to see that the heat released by 4 candles, as in the claim, is &lt;em&gt;6.5 times smaller&lt;/em&gt; than an electric heater and thus vastly insufficient to heat a room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Safety&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a home made heater is also unsafe. I am adding this even if a bit off topic to make sure that any future visitor gets a warning. From the first &lt;a href=&quot;http://energy.gov/energysaver/articles/portable-heaters&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unvented combustion units are not recommended for use inside your home, because they introduce unwanted combustion products into the living space—including nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and water vapor—and deplete air in the space. […]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electric space heaters are generally more expensive to operate than combustion space heaters, but they are the only unvented space heaters that are safe to operate inside your home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-12T15:13:02.550" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18376" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-12T03:23:49.750" Score="8" ViewCount="5766" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_fat_percentage#Typical_body_fat_amounts&quot;&gt;Wikipedia says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Certified personal &lt;strong&gt;trainers will suggest to male bodybuilders that they aim for a body fat percentage between 2–4% by contest time&lt;/strong&gt;. However it is unclear that such levels are ever actually attained since (a) the means to measure such levels are, as noted below, lacking in principle, are inaccurate, and (b) 4-6% is generally considered a physiological minimum for human males.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=126149493&amp;amp;p=521156833&amp;amp;viewfull=1#post521156833&quot;&gt;forum.bodybuilding.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's also guys that get leaner than me and &lt;strong&gt;probably are on the verge of the high 2's if not at least in the low 3's&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=5314783&amp;amp;p=91381603&amp;amp;viewfull=1#post91381603&quot;&gt;forum.bodybuilding.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;the presumption is usually 2-3&lt;/strong&gt; but I heard some say it is more 4-5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are claiming that 2-4% bodyfat percentage is attainable for bodybuilding competitions. Wikipedia expresses doubt about that claim due to lacking a means of measurement at that level and cites a paper claiming that 4-6% is the physiological limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the evidence say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2015-09-11T05:39:27.760" Title="Do bodybuilders achieve 2-4% bodyfat percentage during competition?" Tags="|physiology|sport|bodybuilding|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18381" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-12T23:42:08.710" Score="8" ViewCount="2213" Body="&lt;p&gt;England is, apparently, one of the most &amp;quot;crowded&amp;quot; countries in the world with a high population density and the population is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15461579&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;growing quite quickly&lt;/a&gt;. This has prompted a variety of concerns about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/282184/8-in-10-say-England-is-crowded-as-fears-grow-over-migrants&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;immigration&lt;/a&gt; and the possibility of &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tories-plan-to-concrete-over-our-countryside-155361&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;concreting over the countryside&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; with new build housing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a campaign group for the homeless and for better housing, Shelter, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.shelter.org.uk/2013/11/a-fair-way-do-we-prioritise-golf-or-homes/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recently claimed&lt;/a&gt; that England uses as much land for Golf courses as for homes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a comprehensive government assessment in 2011, that’s the same amount of land in England used for homes.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Data on homes is from the UK National Ecosystem Assessment by Defra. Around 10% of land in England is classified as urban, but the majority of this is gardens, parks, roads, lakes and rivers. 2.27% of land in England is built upon while 1.1% is domestic buildings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For golf, Colin uses the figure of 2,700 courses in the UK scaled to England. The average size of playing area is 30-40 hectares with the average full size of a course (including space between fairways) adding another 30-40 hectares. Colin therefore assumes 75 hectares per course multiplied by 2000 courses which is 150,000 ha, or 1.1% of England’s 13.4m hectares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are their assumptions reasonable? Is their claim correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2022-01-19T15:41:40.480" Title="Does England devote as much land to Golf as housing?" Tags="|united-kingdom|geography|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18364" CreationDate="2013-11-13T00:51:31.277" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;(&quot;Yeah, but to be fair, 400M lines is just the JSON file with all our names and addresses...&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 500MLoC number almost certainly originated in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/21/us/insurance-site-seen-needing-weeks-to-fix.html?pagewanted=2&amp;amp;_r=0&quot;&gt;NY Times on 10/21&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to one specialist, the Web site contains about 500 million lines of software code. By comparison, a large bank’s computer system is typically about one-fifth that size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say &quot;almost certainly&quot; because prior to that date I was researching the software development process for &lt;a href=&quot;http://sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=65237&amp;amp;page=1&quot;&gt;my column&lt;/a&gt; and that number never came up and is not in any of the major primary sources (the most important of which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/655291.pdf&quot;&gt;this GAO report from June&lt;/a&gt; ). I can't prove that it was never used prior to that NYT quote, but the NYT article was where it gained traction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CGI has not released the source code for their work -- the github repository that was briefly visible and of which there are a few forks, was extremely minimal and only contained, at most, front-end aspects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OP is right to be extremely skeptical about the 500MLoC number, which would represent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Complexity vastly greater than reasonable (as the comparison in the question shows),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Productivity vastly greater than reasonable (the contracts only having been awarded over the past few years) (Source lines of code / month is a &lt;em&gt;terrible&lt;/em&gt; measure of software productivity, but since this site puts a premium on references, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.compaid.com/caiinternet/ezine/reifer-benchmarks.pdf&quot;&gt;this is one of many&lt;/a&gt; references that speaks to a rate in the low hundreds per staff month for larger projects.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coordination vastly greater than reasonable (per-developer software productivity goes &lt;em&gt;down&lt;/em&gt; with complexity and team size: yet somehow this extremely troubled development process led to 500MLoC of production?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be more reasonable is that there might be 500MLoC that was &lt;em&gt;generated&lt;/em&gt;, i.e., data initialization. Or it may be that this was simply a quote that was more about adding color than being the basis for analysis: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the NYT article, you'll see that it's the last paragraph and is not followed up. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The statement, &quot;the Web site contains about 500 million lines of software code&quot; is, at best, sloppy (the &lt;em&gt;site&lt;/em&gt; is more in the few-tens-of-thousands of lines size but clearly the back-end was where the vast majority of effort / costs were expended).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;By comparison, a large bank's computer system is typically about one-fifth that size&quot; is, although not outrageous, also a fairly dubious quote. Large banks don't have a single &quot;computer system,&quot; accumulate their codebases over decades, and don't open their codebases for analysis of what is and is not &quot;typical.&quot; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE 2014-05-22&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/265yns/million_lines_of_code/cho3xhz&quot;&gt;Reddit user agenaille claims to have worked on healthcare.gov&lt;/a&gt; and says that an automated tool produced the following counts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Language     files    blank    comment       code&#xA;Java        13,481  419,643    847,982  2,399,683&#xA;HTML         1,635   50,124     16,845    515,494&#xA;Javascript   1,631   56,298    102,140    322,192&#xA;XSD          5,227    1,238     20,945    156,696&#xA;XML            659    6,436     13,073    136,827&#xA;CSS            205   14,000      9,420    109,815&#xA;Maven          275      737      1,421     47,449&#xA;XSLT           383    2,357      1,476     21,624&#xA;Bourne Shell   248    2,305      1,446      8,830&#xA;SQL             28      860        139      8,487&#xA;JavaServer Face 35      766          0      3,770&#xA;DOS Batch       48      235        118        849&#xA;Ant              8       77         45        810&#xA;Perl            18      161         45        646&#xA;Visualforce Com 39        0          0        626&#xA;Groovy           4       68         15        361&#xA;Python           5       55         90        263&#xA;Visual Basic     1        3          0         25&#xA;DTD              1        8          0         17&#xA;JSP              3        0          0         13&#xA;ASP.Net          1        0          0         11&#xA;SUM         23,935  555,371  1,015,200  3,734,488&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These numbers are still quite high (as @ChrisW mentioned in comments, &lt;a href=&quot;http://compaid.com/caiinternet/ezine/reifer-benchmarks.pdf&quot;&gt;compaid.com/caiinternet/ezine/reifer-benchmarks.pdf&lt;/a&gt; suggests software development costs at least $20/LOC) and the variety of languages suggest that this codebase might be a catch-all rather than a snapshot of what is in production (48 DOS batch files? Fascinating!). Nonetheless, at more than two orders of magnitude less than the 500MLoC number, it's a far more believable volume. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T23:43:13.050" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T23:43:13.050" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18385" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-13T04:44:57.290" Score="31" ViewCount="13209" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears to be a common strain of folk wisdom in Asia (or at least in Japan) that Asian people traditionally have had diets based on plants while Westerners have had diets based on meat, and therefore Asians have longer intestines that are suited to digesting plants. I thought this was an interesting claim, and I immediately had my doubts, but I am unable to find anything definitive that suggests this is true. Searching in English I can only find people speculating about it. Searching in Japanese there are numerous places saying that Japanese intestines are 2~3 meters longer than Westerners'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a blog post &lt;a href=&quot;http://d.hatena.ne.jp/ROYGB/20090419&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (in Japanese) that discusses it, but it's not making a claim either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biguglyreview.com/body/nonfiction_andy_raskin.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; cites two surgeons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You were right!&amp;quot; he said. After our dinner, he told me, he had emailed a gastroenterologist he knew in Tokyo. &amp;quot;My friend says Japanese intestines are definitely longer. Sometimes, when he's performing colonoscopies, he actually runs out of cable. He says he doubts such a thing ever happens in the United States.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I discounted this last testimony as ludicrous until a couple of years later, when my gallbladder became infected and had to be removed. After my operation, I asked my doctor, an American colorectal surgeon named Jeff Sternberg, the question I had now been asking for nearly 20 years. He surprised me in two ways: (1) by not dismissing the notion as ridiculous, and (2) by using the word &amp;quot;colonoscope&amp;quot; as a verb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I don't have data or anything,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;But it's kind of known in the field that when you colonoscope Asian woman, especially young Asian women, their colons are like, really freakin' long.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support or refute this claim that Asians have longer intestines? If not ethnicity, then can diet in general affect it, either evolutionary or through lifestyle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be interested in seeing data for intestinal length of many different ethnicities, however the claim that they are making is about Asians vs. white people. (Note: the answer provide so far is indeed interesting but I have not accepted it because the actual claim is more specific).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11016" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T10:03:16.993" Title="Do Asian (esp. Japanese) people have longer intestines than people of European descent?" Tags="|medical-science|race|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18361" CreationDate="2013-11-13T16:12:11.870" Score="-5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He's just playing the post hoc fallacy game. Something happened to the weather after a &quot;pulse&quot; therefore the &quot;pulse&quot; caused the weather. It doesn't matter the &quot;pulse&quot; was just an error in the display or data feed. It doesn't matter that 99.9% of such &quot;pulses&quot; aren't follow by significant weather. They saw a blip on the screen and the storm happened. That blip must have been something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metabunk.org/threads/super-typhoon-haiyan-haarp-conspiracy-theories.2634/#post-74957&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a thread on metabunk.org&lt;/a&gt; which includes an email which confirms that the 'pulses' are an artifact:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Osgdr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16176" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-11-13T17:46:47.263" LastActivityDate="2013-11-13T17:46:47.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18361" CreationDate="2013-11-14T01:27:01.563" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/epac/main.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tropic.ssec.wisc.edu/real-time/mimic-tpw/epac/main.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this is supposed to be the website where you can see the microwave data for yourself, archived for the past several years. its been said that if you look through the archives you can see many things that look like &quot;pulses&quot; and yet no weather events follow&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16176" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T01:27:01.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18391" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-14T09:12:44.123" Score="3" ViewCount="61" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard about orally consuming fluoride and rinsing with a solution containing fluoride to help prevent cavities, but I've also heard some claims that fluoride is bad for peoples' health. What health concerns are there and does it matter how the fluoride is taken (e.g. swallowed vs spitting out after a minute)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_controversy#Safety&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipeidia&lt;/a&gt; it seems fluoride is safe but according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalhealingcenter.com/health-hazards-to-know-about/where-the-yellow-went&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://wakeup-world.com/2011/05/27/fluoride-is-bad-for-you/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; it is not. I don't consider Wikipedia a reliable source and the other two articles don't speak directly about reasons why fluoride may be harmful to adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T09:12:44.123" Title="When and how does the consumption of fluoride cause health problems?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|dentistry|fluoride|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2013-11-14T09:17:38.107" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18392" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18567" CreationDate="2013-11-14T16:15:07.510" Score="5" ViewCount="656" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To much fanfare, in 2006 Medicare announced that only 7 percent of its&#xA;  payments were a result of fraud. Two years later, The New York Times&#xA;  reported that it was actually 31.5 percent -- and that Medicare had&#xA;  aggressively hidden the fraud from outside auditors.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2013-11-13.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/business/21medicare.html?ex=1377057600&amp;amp;en=884e1e2c05a09789&amp;amp;ei=5124&amp;amp;partner=permalink&amp;amp;exprod=permalink&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This seems to be the NY Times article this is based on.&lt;/a&gt;. (&lt;em&gt;Thank you Fabian&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was the original NYT article's claim that there was a 31.5% fraud rate concerning medicare in 2006 accurate? And is the interpretation that the fraud was intentionally hidden from auditors backed up by any evidence?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Please note: I realize that the person quoted above has a political agenda and has chosen inflammatory wording to make her point.  I am not looking to parse her political agenda but rather to determine if there is a basis in reality for her interpretation that the fraud was knowingly concealed.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:56:28.777" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T08:56:28.777" Title="Was 31.5% of Medicare payments in 2006 the result of fraud?" Tags="|united-states|economics|healthcare|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18392" CreationDate="2013-11-14T16:36:06.863" Score="4" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Ann Coulter's claim about what the New York Times reported&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She makes two claims about what the New York Times reported:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;that it was actually 31.5 percent&quot; -- and that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Medicare had aggressively hidden the fraud from outside auditors&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the New York Times article she refers to: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/business/21medicare.html?pagewanted=print&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The New York Times: Report Rejects Medicare Boast of Paring Fraud&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first claim is partly true. The New York Times reported that the &quot;error rate&quot; (not the fraud rate) was &quot;closer to 31.5 percent&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second claim is false. The New York Times did not report that Medicare had aggressively hidden or even intentionally hidden &quot;the fraud&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the inspector general’s report, &lt;strong&gt;officials at Medicare instructed AdvanceMed to disregard [the CERT] policies&lt;/strong&gt;. Instead, AdvanceMed was told to examine only the documents submitted by the companies selling the medical equipment, rather than verify those documents against physicians’ records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the New York Times reported that instructions were given that resulted in the auditors missing a large portion of the fraud, but &lt;strong&gt;whether those instructions were given with the intent to hide&lt;/strong&gt; (&quot;aggressively hidden&quot;) is a judgement of motivation that we can't do here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The New York Times's report&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The New York Times was correct in its reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the Office of Inspector General's report that the New York Times refers to (&lt;a href=&quot;https://oig.hhs.gov/oas/reports/region1/10700508.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://oig.hhs.gov/oas/reports/region1/10700508.pdf&lt;/a&gt;). It says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The OIG estimated that the additional errors &#xA;  would have increased the FY 2006 DME error rate by 24 percentage points, from 7.5 percent to 31.5 percent.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OIG also said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, CMS orally instructed the CERT contractor to deviate from written policies by making determinations based primarily on the limited medical records available from suppliers (generally the physicians’ orders and certificates of medical necessity), not the full medical records available from physicians, and by applying clinical inference when reviewing supplier medical records to reasonably infer that the DME provided was medically necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not establish an intentional attempt to hide fraud, given that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Monitoring-Programs/CERT/index.html?redirect=/CERT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CERT error rates are not fraud rates&lt;/a&gt;, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CMS believed the change in instructions was consistent with policy and claims that it was done with the purpose of &quot;reducing the documentation requirement on physicians&quot;. Evaluating whether or not the instructions were given to &quot;intentionally hide&quot; or &quot;aggressively hide&quot; fraud rather than &quot;reduce the documentation requirement on physicians&quot; is a question of motive and not on-topic for this site.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their response to the OIG report (found at the end of &lt;a href=&quot;https://oig.hhs.gov/oas/reports/region1/10700508.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this document&lt;/a&gt;) the reasoning behind the change in procedure, the Centres for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From 2003-2006, CERT did not request additional information from ordering physicians. Instead, CERT requested a certificate of medical necessity (CMN) from suppliers who submitted DME claims. The CMN was designed to reduce documentation requirements on physicians. By 2007, CMS's requirements for CMNs had been eliminated in favor of ensuring that ordering physicians maintained documentation needed to support coverage and payment for DME. Beginning with the 2007 improper payment report period, CERT has been asking physicians, as well as the supplier, for supporting information on DME claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CMS believed that their instructions were consistent with policy and that policy was just different in the years 2003-2006 than in 2008. CMS changed their instructions to AdvanceMed to require physician documentation &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; the OIG report recommended that change to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;CERT error rates are not fraud rates&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Monitoring-Programs/CERT/index.html?redirect=/CERT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;the improper payment rate is not a “fraud rate,” but is a measurement of payments that did not meet Medicare requirements. The CERT program cannot label a claim fraudulent.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T01:54:08.113" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T01:54:08.113" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18394" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-14T19:40:41.907" Score="22" ViewCount="2248" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AQqB9.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/M7FIvfx5J10&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Volvo Trucks ad&lt;/a&gt; shows actor and martial artist, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000241/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jean-Claude Van Damme&lt;/a&gt;, performing a suspended split between two moving trucks, driving in reverse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to think that what we see in the video is quite real, however impressive. But perhaps I'm gullible and missing something. Am I or is this &quot;for real&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16186" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T06:25:36.097" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T23:37:31.087" Title="Did Jean-Claude Van Damme do a suspended split between two trucks?" Tags="|road-vehicles|advertising|video|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14190" CreationDate="2013-11-14T21:58:59.150" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;That men are on average smarter than women&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lynn#Sex_differences_in_intelligence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia cites a study by the author&lt;/a&gt; which shows there is a difference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1994, Lynn concluded in a meta-analysis that an IQ difference of roughly 4 points does appear from age 16 and onwards, but detection of this had been complicated by the faster rate of maturation of girls up to that point, which compensates for the IQ difference. This reassessment of male-female IQ has been bolstered with meta-analyses with Paul Irwing in 2004[46] and 2005[47] which found a difference of 4.6 to 5 IQ points [5].They saw no evidence that this is due primarily to the male advantage in spatial visualization, and concluded that some research previously presented as showing that there are no sex differences actually demonstrates the opposite. A further study of 1,258 11-year-olds in Mauritius derived a difference of more than 6 IQ points.[48]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia also references &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/education/2005/nov/06/research.gender&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a critique of that study&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, last week's publication of Blinkhorn's critique in Nature&#xA;represents a major change in attitudes to their claims. He points to a&#xA;number of 'serious flaws' in the approach taken by Lynn and Irwing.&#xA;For a start, he accuses them of carefully selecting those IQ studies&#xA;that they allowed in their meta-analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, he says they chose to ignore a massive study, carried&#xA;out in Mexico, which showed there was very little difference in the&#xA;IQs of men and women. 'They say it is &amp;quot;an outlier&amp;quot; in data terms --in&#xA;other words, it was a statistical freak,' Blinkhorn said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'It was nothing of the kind. It was just plain inconvenient. Had it&#xA;been included, as it should have been, it would have removed a huge&#xA;chunk of the differences they claim to have observed.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, Blinkhorn said the pair were ignoring a vast body of work&#xA;that had found no differences. 'Psychologists often carry out studies&#xA;that find no differences between men's and women's IQs but don't&#xA;publish them for the simple reason that finding nothing seems&#xA;uninteresting. But you have to take these studies into account as well&#xA;as those studies that do find differences. But Lynn and Irwing did&#xA;not. That also skewed their results.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blinkhorn also accuses the pair of adopting a variety of statistical&#xA;manoeuvres that he describes, in his paper, as being 'flawed and&#xA;suspect'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last week Irwing defended the study and accused Blinkhorn of&#xA;'attacking the men, not the science'. The study they had done 'also&#xA;has to be seen in context of our other work which has shown&#xA;significant sex differences in IQ. Nor is it true that we played about&#xA;with our data.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For his part, Blinkhorn is unrepentant. 'Sex differences in average&#xA;IQ, if they exist at all, are too small to be interesting,' he states&#xA;in Nature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a stark, unequivocal statement - although it will certainly not&#xA;be the last word in a debate that seems likely to dog psychology for&#xA;years to come.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_psychology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sex differences in human psychology&lt;/a&gt; starts by saying,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most IQ tests are constructed so that there are no differences between the average (mean) scores of females and males.[1] Areas where differences in mean scores have been found include verbal and mathematical ability.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_psychology#IQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Its section on IQ&lt;/a&gt; mentions several studies which show at least that professor that Lynn is not the only person to report a difference in the mean IQ:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several meta-studies by Richard Lynn between 1994 and 2005 found mean IQ of men exceeding that of women by a range of 3–5 points.[40][41][42][43] Lynn's findings were debated in a series of articles for Nature.[44][45] Jackson and Rushton found males aged 17–18 years had average of 3.63 IQ points in excess of their female equivalents.[46] A 2005 study by Helmuth Nyborg found an average advantage for males of 3.8 IQ points.[47] One study concluded that after controlling for sociodemographic and health variables, &amp;quot;gender differences tended to disappear on tests for which there was a male advantage and to magnify on tests for which there was a female advantage.&amp;quot;[48] A study from 2007 found a 2-4 IQ point advantage for females in later life.[49] One study investigated the differences in IQ between the sexes in relation to age, finding that girls do better at younger ages but that their performance declines relative to boys with age.[50] Colom et al. (2002) found 3.16 higher IQ points for males but no difference on the general intelligence factor (g) and therefore explained the differences as due to non-g factors such as specific group factors and test specificity.[38] A study conducted by Jim Flynn and Lilia Rossi-Case (2011) found that men and women achieved roughly equal IQ scores on Raven's Progressive Matrices after reviewing recent standardization samples in five modernized nations.[51] Irwing (2012) found a 3 point IQ advantage for males in g from subjects aged 16–89 in the United States.[52]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion (or 'take-away') on this subject is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#Current_tests&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a difference of that magnitude is too small&lt;/a&gt; to be noticeable in real life (or &amp;quot;too small to be interesting&amp;quot; as is stated above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;That very-high-IQ men are much more common-place than very-high-IQ women&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_human_psychology#IQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ibid&lt;/a&gt; has some support for that theory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some studies have identified the degree of IQ variance as a difference between males and females. Males tend to show greater variability on many traits including tests of cognitive abilities,[54][55] though this may differ between countries.[56][57][58][59] A 2005 study by Ian Deary, Paul Irwing, Geoff Der, and Timothy Bates, focusing on the ASVAB showed a significantly higher variance in male scores, resulting in more than twice as many men as women scoring in the top 2%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both Feingold (1992b) and Hedges and Nowell (1995) have reported that, despite average sex differences being small and relatively stable over time, test score variances of males were generally larger than those of females. Feingold found that males were more variable than females on tests of quantitative reasoning, spatial visualisation, spelling, and general knowledge. […] Hedges and Nowell go one step further and demonstrate that, with the exception of performance on tests of reading comprehension, perceptual speed, and associative memory, more males than females were observed among high-scoring individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These studies support the theory that &amp;quot;high-IQ men are more common-place than high-IQ women&amp;quot;: for example, &amp;quot;more than twice as many men as women scoring in the top 2%&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of scientific support for the more extreme version of that theory (i.e. 8-to-1 disparity at IQ 145 and above). In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1274952/Men-ARE-brainy-women-says-scientist-Professor-Richard-Lynn.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the article referenced in the OP&lt;/a&gt;, professor Lynn writes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In recent years, the forces of political correctness have made the reporting of this sort of statistic virtually impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet as a psychologist who has dedicated his career to the study of intelligence - and, in particular, to how it differs between the sexes - I can tell you that in my academic circles these IQ figures are barely disputed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't find that argument convincing, because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If he has numbers to support his theory, can he really not publish them (except as indirect allegations in the Daily Mail)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The alleged consensus among &amp;quot;my academic circles&amp;quot; doesn't convince me, because it's easy to imagine that &amp;quot;his circles&amp;quot; are a self-selecting subset of people who don't disagree with him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-14T21:58:59.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14683" CreationDate="2013-11-15T03:00:58.957" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There aren't pyramids in Brazil.&#xA;All the native brazilian tribes were in the Paleolithic state, with some starting to implement rudimentary agriculture.&#xA;There aren't pre-colombian bricks or stone constructions in Brazil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What exists in Brazil are the &lt;em&gt;&quot;Sambaquis&quot;&lt;/em&gt; (&quot;shell midden&quot; or &quot;shell mound&quot;) that are just piles of organic matter. &lt;em&gt;Sambaquis&lt;/em&gt; can be found in several other locations (including North America and Europe) and are not usually classified as pyramids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Midden &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midden&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midden&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sambaqui &lt;a href=&quot;http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambaqui&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambaqui&lt;/a&gt; (only in portuguese, but  you can check the pictures)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16194" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-11-16T01:16:51.240" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T01:16:51.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="39842" CreationDate="2013-11-15T07:41:47.103" Score="16" ViewCount="4026" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Sans_MS#cite_note-2&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comic_Sans_MS#cite_note-2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Earlier versions of Comic Sans had an eye in the Euro sign. This was&#xA;  later removed because 'The EU was going to sue us over that.'[2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reference suggest yes. However, c'mon....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still find it hard to believe and not much info about that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are several claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comic sans have eyes on euro sign. If so, why not on other letters?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;EU threatened to sue. Another miracle given that Europe's sense of humor may not be smaller than the rest of the world.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Comic sans creator removes the eye.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T14:10:09.213" LastActivityDate="2018-01-25T18:54:11.177" Title="Did the EU threaten to sue in connection with &quot;Comic Sans&quot; having an eye on the Euro symbol?" Tags="|history|europe|typography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18394" CreationDate="2013-11-15T12:01:00.893" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it's real, as real as anything you see on TV or in the Cinema these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets start from the beginning, the term &quot;6th Live Test&quot; refers to the fact that Volvo have been running a series of adverts showing off their latest trucks/technology. For example, the 2nd live test refers to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N87uxyDQT0&amp;amp;feature=c4-overview-vl&amp;amp;list=PLKFJ3tQvdojTHq0Zw0PUYtDTjGqi93bPe&quot;&gt;hamster's ability to steer their trucks&lt;/a&gt; and the 3rd live test refers to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BRoU1hw-CU&amp;amp;feature=c4-overview-vl&amp;amp;list=PLKFJ3tQvdojTHq0Zw0PUYtDTjGqi93bPe&quot;&gt;their trucks ability to out maneuver some raging bulls through a spanish city&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we know that the phrase &quot;6th live test&quot; does not imply that JCVD had tried 5 times to do this stunt, it instead refers to the 6th commercial Volvo have put out there to show off their trucks and associated technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/Yatg89gi0nM&quot;&gt;behind the scenes video&lt;/a&gt; on youtube, which captures JCVD's response to the stunt being explained, and some other footage which, albeit possibly staged, seems genuine enough to imply that the stunt was indeed carried out as described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find no immediate reason to believe that this stunt was faked, or carried out in any way but that described in the above video. There appears to be no CGI, nor external straps or supports. However, that is not to say that some good post-production could not hide such things from the viewer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T12:01:00.893" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18381" CreationDate="2013-11-15T15:17:26.050" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;My stats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golf#Golf_courses_worldwide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2,752 golf clubs in the UK&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golf_course#Environmental_impact&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;High end of 150 acres per golf course&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives 412,500 acres of golf course in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More stats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1.1% of the UK is urbanised. (From original post)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2147.html#uk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Area of the UK is 243,610 km^2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This gives around 662,000 acres of urbanised acres in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUT: The golf course number is for 18 hole courses. 9 hole courses are &quot;common&quot;, and presumably take less space than the 18 hole courses, so the coverage of golf courses should be considered an upper limit, rather than a true number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The assumptions are broadly reasonable, but are at the optimistic end of reasonable and it seems that there is more housing land in the UK than golf land, but the numbers may be of the same order of magnitude, it seems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5961" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-11-15T19:14:14.030" LastActivityDate="2013-11-15T19:14:14.030" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18394" CreationDate="2013-11-15T18:58:16.323" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/11/15/how-volvo-created-the-jean-claude-van-damme-video/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;How Volvo Created the Jean-Claude Van Damme ‘Epic Split’ Video&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Van Damme, 53, was hooked to safety lines that aren’t visible in the film, and each foot is on a small platform that was built on the trucks’ side mirrors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Van Damme’s feet aren’t secured to the mirrors, video director Andreas Nilsson said, “but we had him rigged so that if he would fall off he wouldn’t die obviously. We didn’t want to be responsible for killing the Muscles from Brussels.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I checked, to the best of my abilities, for discontinuities or any unexplained shadows, reflections, backing-up lights not being on, light/shadow on JCVD's face, etc. and couldn't find any. It doesn't help that the sun light is from behind. However, perhaps there is a technique to identify some CGI being used in certain areas of the frame. (Perhaps covering up some cables, although they could also be hidden behind him or in his pants.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(One remaining doubt: the relative height of the trucks, seemingly changing around 0:36, which might be explained by the right truck moving slightly faster? Or is this explained by the moving away of the left truck, at that time?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the movement of JCVD's pants bottoms as they fall from his boots (from 0:41) it can also be deduced that it is &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; unlikely that the film was played backwards (in case you were wondering).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that it is relatively difficult for a combination truck to drive backwards in an extremely accurate fashion. (Try parking backwards with something attached to the back of your car, let alone driving in this fashion.) However, the combination truck on the right &amp;quot;only&amp;quot; has to keep a straight line (possibly helped by the Volvo system that's being advertised), whereas the left truck is rigid, and therefore much easier to manoeuvre. &lt;em&gt;This&lt;/em&gt; is the only truck, in the video, that moves away to accommodate the split.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's (now) also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.volvotrucks.com/trucks/global/en-gb/newsmedia/pressreleases/Pages/pressreleases.aspx?pubId=16768&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;press release&lt;/a&gt; by Volvo Trucks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I almost forgot: Unless JCVD's whole career was faked, there's isn't much reason to doubt his &amp;quot;splitting abilities&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16186" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T23:37:31.087" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18409" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18418" CreationDate="2013-11-15T22:39:51.013" Score="3" ViewCount="550" Body="&lt;p&gt;I go to yoga class every Monday and Wednesday and my instructor says we are doing this stretch to cleans the &quot;X&quot; which can be either blood, kidneys, liver, etc. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This website says yoga has &quot;cleansing&quot; effects on kidneys:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/446838-yoga-and-kidney-cleanses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Livestrong site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yoga instructor Tias Little recommends forward bending postures to stretch the low back region and ease the compression of your kidneys caused by too much sitting. Allowing space into the low back through forward bends &lt;strong&gt;allows your kidneys to work optimally&lt;/strong&gt; and flush themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence of &quot;cleansing&quot; effects on body parts from yoga or stretching?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7466" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T14:47:30.333" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:47:30.333" Title="Can yoga or stretching aid in cleansing organs?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|livestrong|yoga|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18251" CreationDate="2013-11-15T23:37:09.850" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As was pointed out above there is some connection to the following:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/well-quiz-the-mind-behind-the-eyes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/well-quiz-the-mind-behind-the-eyes/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One poster there points out that:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&quot;Bryant, Chicago&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;My guess is this is based off the work of Paul Ekman. See his book &quot;Emotions Revealed&quot;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the following quote:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ekman&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;reveals that:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&quot;...these photographs have been rated by large normative groups in different cultures.&quot;&#xA;(referring to the original test by Elkman, on which the Well test as well as the test in discussion seem to be based)&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;So, all together that means that, the test is scientific in that sense that it compares your decisions with the decisions of a &quot;large normative group&quot;. But one could argue that this is only a very limited definition of the &quot;ability to read facial expressions&quot; if it is one at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16205" LastEditorUserId="16205" LastEditDate="2013-11-16T15:37:10.077" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T15:37:10.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18415" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-16T10:12:24.947" Score="7" ViewCount="1257" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many manufacturers of photovoltaic solar panels offer some sort of warranty that is valid for 15 to 25 years. Many people suggest that after that period of time, a replacement of the panels is necessary&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.renewablegreenenergypower.com/solar-energy-facts/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;For example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lifetime of solar panels (photovoltaic panels) on average ranges between 20-25 years – different solar panel companies may give different guaranties for the performance and operation of their solar panels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenenergysavingtips.com/pros-and-cons-of-photovoltaic-pv-panels-solar-energy/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PV panels can last up to 25 years or more, some with a maximum efficiency loss of 18% only, even after 20 years of operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both suggesting that there is about a 20 year lifetime and then you have to replace your solar panels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical that something that works 20 years would, all of a sudden, stop working and require replacement. I expect that a non-mechanical device has little wear-out. That's why there is a relatively long warranty period. For that reason, it is not reasonable to expect much performance loss over time. I expect that even after 20 years, a solar panel will still generate at least 80% of its initial performance which really makes me wonder about why a replacement should be necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16209" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-11-16T17:23:20.463" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T17:23:20.463" Title="Do photovoltaic solar panels need replacement after 20 years?" Tags="|technology|energy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18417" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18415" CreationDate="2013-11-16T11:50:58.647" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The life time of photo voltaic (PV) cells is fundamental in assessing the ecological impact and greenhouse gas emissions of solar power. As such, it has been studied in thousands of papers, some of which report on measurements spanning 20 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with the panels is that their efficiency drops a certain amount per year. After a while, the panel fails -- there are studies around the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy11osti/47755.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;various failure modes&lt;/a&gt; as well. This yearly degradation has been measured to be between 0.5% and 1% (depending on study and PV type), however failure is due to cumulative damage and is catastrophic (e.g. a panel at a certain point short circuits).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So obviously you need to replace a PV panel only when it short-circuits or shunts and stops working, or when it's not cost-efficient anymore due to a grossly degraded efficiency, however if you have many -- such as in a power plant -- what matters is the number of average years: some panels will break sooner, some later and basically only the average affects your bottom line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A history of degradation rates using field tests reported in the literature during the last 40 years &#xA;  has been summarized. Nearly 2000 degradation rates, measured on individual modules or entire &#xA;  systems, have been assembled from the literature and show a mean degradation rate of 0·8%/year &#xA;  and a median value of 0·5%/year. The majority, 78% of all data, reported a degradation rate of &#xA;  &amp;lt;1%/year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51664.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;very good meta-analysis of ~2,000 studies&lt;/a&gt; has been performed by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrel.gov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US National Renewable Energy Laboratory&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What they found is that &lt;em&gt;recent&lt;/em&gt; PV systems are predicted to last over 25 years (maybe 30 or so), the older one are a litlle less reliable. The figure that follows is takend from the NREL study linked above and gives an idea of typical measured life times of panels in studies varying by the year the study was published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q50e9.png&quot; alt=&quot;PV Lifespan&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-11-16T13:21:51.010" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T13:21:51.010" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18409" CreationDate="2013-11-16T12:29:20.873" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;While &quot;cleansing an organ&quot; is hogwash, there is minor evidence that yoga may be better than no exercise for patients in dialysis. This study is really small, not replicated but at least a blind study. It does not compare yoga and conventional exercise, so I would be very careful and wait until further confirmation and better studies, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Improvement of the variables in the yoga-based exercise program was found to be superior to that in the control group for all the variables except calcium, phosphorus, HDL-cholesterol and triglyceride levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.complementarytherapiesinmedicine.com/article/S0965-2299(06)00073-2/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A modified yoga-based exercise program in hemodialysis patients: A randomized controlled study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the other variables are nervous system related, which is not surprising since Yoga has &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/2283/96&quot;&gt;well known positive effects&lt;/a&gt; on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://givebackyoga.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/The-Health-Benefits-of-Yoga-and-Exercise%EF%80%A2-A-Review-of-Comparison-Studies.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;full PDF article&lt;/a&gt; gives a good overview of the benefits of yoga.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2013-11-16T13:28:11.500" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18420" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-17T01:21:04.133" Score="13" ViewCount="1290" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/timoreilly/status/401785163232706560&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tim O'Reilly&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Good Q?, the kind politicians are loathe to answer RT @jamesoreilly:&#xA;  &quot;Is it right to waste helium on party balloons?&quot;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24903034&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24903034&lt;/a&gt; …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and from the linked article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some scientists believe a finite resource that could one day run out&#xA;  should not be used for party balloons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We're going to be looking back and thinking, I can't believe people&#xA;  just used to fill up their balloons with it, when it's so precious and&#xA;  unique,&quot; says Cambridge University chemist Peter Wothers, who has&#xA;  called for the end to helium-filled party balloons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I suspect the amount that is used in party balloons is quite small&#xA;  compared to the other main uses of it,&quot; says Dr Wothers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But it's just a rather trivial use of something we should be valuing&#xA;  a little bit more.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is helium being used on party balloons at the expense of other purposes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related question about whether there is a helium shortage, and whether we are at risk of running out of helium forever: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/13757/104&quot;&gt;Is there a worldwide helium shortage?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T00:34:38.250" Title="Is helium being &quot;wasted&quot; on party balloons?" Tags="|economics|environment|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18420" CreationDate="2013-11-17T01:21:04.133" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The UK's Balloon Association denies this is the case. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19676639&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Helium shortage prompts scientist's balloon use warning&lt;/a&gt; (Hat tip: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13757/is-there-a-worldwide-helium-shortage#comment49972_13757&quot;&gt;Joep Grooten&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But John Lee, the association's chairman insisted that the helium its&#xA;  members put into balloons, was not depriving the medical profession of&#xA;  the gas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The helium we use is not pure,&quot; he said. &quot;It's recycled from the gas&#xA;  which is used in the medical industry, and mixed with air. We call it&#xA;  balloon gas rather than helium for that reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There is no way the balloon and party industry would even consider&#xA;  taking badly-needed helium from the medical profession. That is&#xA;  important - people have to come first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If I thought this industry was taking helium away from the medical&#xA;  profession, I would be looking at doing things differently.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T01:21:04.133" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18422" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-17T10:43:00.287" Score="29" ViewCount="2436" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a popular belief that scaring a hiccuping person would cure the hiccups:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/straw-designed-instantly-cure-hiccups-180978028/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This Straw Is Designed to Instantly Cure Hiccups&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lots of folks will try to scare hiccups away with a shock or surprise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.livescience.com/23834-hiccup-scare-fort-hood.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Can a Scare Cure the Hiccups?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recent death of a Fort Hood U.S. Army soldier in Killeen, Texas, shows that a belief in the folk cure of scaring away hiccups can have tragic effects when taken to the extreme, but does the cure have any basis if administered within reason?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.farmersalmanac.com/could-these-remedies-really-stop-the-hiccups-2886&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;9 Unusual Cures For The Hiccups&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another remedy was to terrify the person inflicted. Perhaps this one grew out of the fact that many primitive people believed that hiccups were caused by demons entering the person and that the only way to get rid of them was to scare them to death. Sometimes this method actually works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-09-15T20:58:02.740" LastActivityDate="2024-02-29T17:37:31.123" Title="Can scaring a person cure hiccups?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|hiccups|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18423" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-17T14:15:01.030" Score="4" ViewCount="592" Body="&lt;p&gt;The recent extreme tropical storm Haiyan has brought the relationship between cyclones and climate change back into the newspaper headlines. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/typhoon-haiyan-climate-change-continues-2710436#ixzz2kuZT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recent headline&lt;/a&gt; from Britain's Daily Mirror suggests the link is clear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Typhoon Haiyan: As climate change continues, we should expect more devastating storms&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Guardian &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/11/typhoon-haiyan-climate-change&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;is a little more circumspect&lt;/a&gt;, but still believes the link is clear (my highlights):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the devastating storm has only just happened, it is too soon for any research to have been done on whether global warming influenced typhoon Haiyan. But there are good reasons for expecting that it has (see below). Furthermore, the tools exist to determine how much climate change may have intensified the typhoon. They have already been used on other extreme weather events, giving a &lt;em&gt;clear scientific answer that climate change had dramatically increased the risk of heatwaves and floods&lt;/em&gt;, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Economist &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21589923-physics-suggests-storms-will-get-worse-planet-warms-it-too-early-tell-if-it?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/thenewnormal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;strikes a note of caution&lt;/a&gt;, though, recognising that the theory isn't simple and the historic statistics are muddy (my highlights):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the evidence so far is messy. Meteorological records are of uneven quality, and tropical storms vary widely in intensity, which makes spotting trends tricky ... The IPCC concludes that, although there is good evidence for more and stronger Atlantic hurricanes over the past 40 years, there is no consensus on the cause of them. Worldwide, &lt;em&gt;there is no trend in either the frequency or the intensity of tropical storms&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is right? Theory hints that storms will get worse (but not in the simple way newspaper headlines imagine) but is that prediction backed by current meteorological statistics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note for clarification: the claim i'm interested in here is the one based on meteorological history. That is, is there a statistical trend in severity or frequency of storms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="8436" LastEditDate="2013-11-17T18:31:10.717" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T13:58:22.487" Title="Has climate change measurably increased the likelihood of tropical storms such as Haiyan?" Tags="|climate-change|weather|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18423" CreationDate="2013-11-17T18:07:45.870" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scientists at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, part of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/hurricanes-and-climate-change&quot;&gt;have determined&lt;/a&gt; that it's too early to tell.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Through research, GFDL scientists have concluded that it is premature to attribute past changes in hurricane activity to greenhouse warming, although simulated hurricanes tend to be more intense in a warmer climate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/historical-atlantic-hurricane-and-tropical-storm-records&quot;&gt;Another page on the GFDL site&lt;/a&gt; indicates that we may be at the beginning of an increasing trend, but observations over a century-scale time period will be needed to clearly distinguish a trend from the natural variability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There has been a very pronounced increase in the number of tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic since the late-1980s. However, to gain insight on the influence of climate change on Atlantic tropical storm and hurricane frequency, we must focus on longer (&gt; 100 yr) records of Atlantic hurricane activity since very strong year-to-year and decade-to-decade variability appears in records of Atlantic tropical cyclones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Globally, the World Meteorological Organization published a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/arep/tmrp/documents/iwtc_statement.pdf&quot;&gt;statement&lt;/a&gt; in 2006 which noted that the 2004-2005 hurricane season was extremely active, with devastating storms around the world, but also noted that there is not yet a consensus on whether increased cyclone activity and intensity is caused by global warming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus it is possible that global warming may have affected the 2004-2005 group of events as a whole. The possibility that greenhouse gas induced global warming may have already caused a substantial increase in some tropical cyclone indices has been raised (e.g. Mann and Emanuel, 2006), but no consensus has been reached on this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastEditorUserId="8436" LastEditDate="2013-11-17T19:00:31.260" LastActivityDate="2013-11-17T19:00:31.260" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18427" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18483" CreationDate="2013-11-17T19:42:34.160" Score="33" ViewCount="30506" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a related question, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7837/are-all-cells-of-the-human-body-completely-replaced-every-seven-to-ten-years/7844#7844&quot;&gt;Are all cells of the human body completely replaced every seven to ten years?&lt;/a&gt;, it is explained that there are cells in the human body, like neurons, that are never replaced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, are the &lt;em&gt;atoms&lt;/em&gt; within those neurons replaced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples of people claiming they are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-most-of-the-atoms-in-your-body-to-be-replaced-by-others/answers/624373?srid=hXE0&amp;amp;share=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quora&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every ~16 days nearly 100% of the water is exchanged in a healthy body. Heavy elements like carbon, sodium and potassium take occupancy far longer perhaps 8 months - 11 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In about a year every atom in your body would have been exchanged.  Not a single atom in your body resides there forever and there is a 100% chance that 1000s of other humans through history held some of the same atoms that you currently hold in your body. - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,936455,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Time Magazine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was a study done at Oak Ridge Lab. by Paul C. Aebersold in 1953 that found that 98 percent of all the atoms in a person’s body change out every year, and that within five years all the atoms had changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/g63l6/are_98_of_the_atoms_in_the_human_body_replaced/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reddit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies at the Oak Ridge Atomic Research Center have revealed that about 98 percent of all the atoms in a human body are replaced every year. You get a new suit of skin every month and a new liver every six weeks. The lining of your stomach lasts only five days before it’s replaced. Even your bones are not the solid, stable, concrete-like things you might have thought them to be: They are undergoing constant change. The bones you have today are different from the bones you had a year ago. Experts in this area of research have concluded that there is a complete, 100 percent turnover of atoms in the body at least every five years. In other words, not one single atom present in your body today was there five years ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="155" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2017-05-31T18:41:17.347" Title="Are all the atoms in our bodies replaced on a regular basis?" Tags="|biology|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18431" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-18T05:59:23.757" Score="11" ViewCount="507" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems often to be an implicit assumption in the minds of many people that most trolls are children or teenagers or generally in the younger demographics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such as this unsourced claim on &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.bleacherreport.com/articles/148853-the-art-of-internet-war-tips-on-how-to-combat-a-troll&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Close to 90 percent of the trolls on the Internet are between the ages of 14 to 21 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also in one of the quotation for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newstatesman.com/helen-lewis/2013/07/who-are-trolls&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These trolls are predominantly young white men&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also in one of the responses to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111124202541AAJzfEx&quot;&gt;YA question&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many are pre-teens and adolescents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and from the same post, the (most likely made up) statistics claimed by user ILLUMINUTTY:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;13 - 14 : 12%&#xA;15 - 19 : 43%&#xA;20 - 26 : 22%&#xA;26 - 33 : 14%&#xA;34 and older : 9%&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the title of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/aug/03/how-to-stop-trolls-social-media&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is turning so many young men into internet trolls?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any sort of truth to this? Is there any evidence that shows the demographic of trolls to be any different than the demographic of normal internet users (esp. age; race, gender, and economic status are also interesting  topics to discuss but please focus this question on age)? Is young internet users more predisposed to trolling than older people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="542" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:18:25.653" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:18:25.653" Title="Trolling and young people" Tags="|sociology|behavior|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18432" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28388" CreationDate="2013-11-18T08:21:54.833" Score="1" ViewCount="462" Body="&lt;p&gt;In south east Asia there is a craze for getting fair complexion in women, hence cosmetics companies - like Unilever, which sells Fair &amp;amp; Lovely creams throughout the Middle East and Indian subcontinent - are earning good money by making advertisements which claims fairness in 3 or 4 weeks etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know are these fairness creams effective?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fairandlovely.in/knowledge_center/faqs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fair &amp;amp; Lovely&lt;/a&gt; makes the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How will I know the cream is working?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Fair &amp;amp; Lovely Advanced Multi Vitamin’s formula combines ingredients that have an immediate&#xA;  impact on skin appearance as well as work over the longer term to&#xA;  lighten skin. You can yourself measure the results using the ‘expert&#xA;  fairness meter’ on the pack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its formula includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What are the main ingredients?&lt;/strong&gt;   Fair &amp;amp; Lovely contains a synergistic combination of extensively researched, safe &amp;amp;&#xA;  internationally approved cosmetic ingredients such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fairness and skin benefit actives Niacinamide (Vitamin B3) and Vitamin B6 work synergistically to lighten skin and spots and&#xA;  stimulate skin renewal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other skin benefit actives and powerful antioxidants (Glycerin, Allantoin, Provit C and Provit E) which soothe the skin, improve skin&#xA;  texture, Lighten dark circles and provide antioxidant benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Triple sunscreens (Parsol MCX, Parsol 1789 &amp;amp; TiO2), protecting against UVA and UVB rays (including UVAI and UVAII), preventing skin&#xA;  darkening and tanning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;White optics for instant brightening and natural glow&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16228" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-11-20T10:26:56.307" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T08:31:31.440" Title="Are fairness creams effective?" Tags="|advertising|cosmetics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3506" CreationDate="2013-11-18T09:18:03.743" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;One more win by a margin of 1 vote :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-04-12/india/38491090_1_krishnamurthy-one-vote-single-vote&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Times of India - First to lose elections in Karnataka by one vote&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the studies conducted by American psephologists in the history of American democracy of 16,577 national elections from 1898 , they have found that only one's electoral fate had been decided by a single vote. It was in the 1910 election in New York's 36th Congressional District a Democrat who polled 20,685 votes to the Republican candidate's 20,684 was declared elected by one vote .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In India this one vote victories became a reality with the advent of electronic voting machines where there is no scope for human intervention and error of judgment in deciding the votes and Karnataka became the first state to record such an incident . &lt;strong&gt;The first candidate to enter the book of records is none other than the son of veteran politician and former governor of Kerala late B Rachiah's son A R Krishnamurthy who lost against R Dhruvanarayan in Santhemarahalli(Sc) constituency in the 2004 assembly elections. While Krishnamurthy contesting on JDS ticket polled 40751 against Dhruvanarayan's 40752 votes .&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16229" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T11:02:06.150" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18434" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18454" CreationDate="2013-11-18T10:58:29.810" Score="20" ViewCount="4239" Body="&lt;p&gt;Read in an Italian magazine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The University professor who conducted the study, such Mike Archer, showed instead that the production of plants consumed by humans can kill a number of animals 25 times higher per kilogram of usable protein produced, compared to what happens for the meat production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.robadadonne.it/12423/shock-i-vegetariani-uccidono-piu-animali-di-chi-mangia-carne/&quot;&gt;original&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?act=url&amp;amp;depth=1&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;rurl=translate.google.com&amp;amp;sl=auto&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http://www.robadadonne.it/12423/shock-i-vegetariani-uccidono-piu-animali-di-chi-mangia-carne/&amp;amp;usg=ALkJrhjm8CL_Vn4j4LdKgK1zsY3knYRApQ&quot;&gt;translation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a sensationalist title or does it have some substance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:46:41.310" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T13:51:43.463" Title="Does eating vegetarian kill more animals than eating meat?" Tags="|zoology|vegetarianism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18436" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18423" CreationDate="2013-11-18T16:07:55.340" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://myweb.fsu.edu/jelsner/PDF/Research/ElsnerKossinJagger2008.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://myweb.fsu.edu/jelsner/PDF/Research/ElsnerKossinJagger2008.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;seems to indicate a likely relationship:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Atlantic tropical cyclones are getting stronger on average, with a&#xA;  30-year trend that has been related to an increase in ocean temperatures over the Atlantic Ocean and elsewhere&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here we overcome&#xA;  these two limitations by examining trends in the upper quantiles&#xA;  of per-cyclone maximum wind speeds &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We find significant upward trends [...] for the strongest cyclones. We note separate&#xA;  upward trends in the estimated lifetime-maximum wind speeds of&#xA;  the very strongest tropical cyclones (99th percentile) over each&#xA;  ocean basin, with the largest increase at this quantile occurring&#xA;  over the North Atlantic, although not all basins show statistically&#xA;  significant increases. Our results are qualitatively consistent with&#xA;  the hypothesis that as the seas warm, the ocean has more energy to&#xA;  convert to tropical cyclone wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4795" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T16:07:55.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18434" CreationDate="2013-11-18T17:10:26.510" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you take the headline to mean &amp;quot;there exists a vegetarian A, and a meat eater B, such that more animals are killed during the production of A's food than the production of B's food&amp;quot;, it is true. For example, consider a vegetarian that consumes commercially produced milk and cheese, from livestock that are fed barley and soy versus a non-vegetarian that grows their own organic vegetables and only eats moose, deer, or grouse that they've hunted themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, taking the more reasonable interpretation: &amp;quot;the average number of animals killed to produce the diet of an average vegetarian is more than the average number of animals killed to produce the diet of an average non-vegetarian&amp;quot;, it is false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The total area occupied by grazing is equivalent to 26 percent of the ice-free terrestrial surface of the planet. In addition, &lt;strong&gt;the total area dedicated to feedcrop production amounts to 33 percent of total arable land&lt;/strong&gt;. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://meteo.lcd.lu/globalwarming/FAO/livestocks_long_shadow.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Livestock's Long Shadow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United States, with the world's fourth largest land area, livestock are responsible for an estimated ... &lt;strong&gt;37 percent of pesticide use&lt;/strong&gt; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2002, a total of 670 million tonnes of cereals were fed to livestock, representing roughly one-third of the global cereal harvest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pesticides impact the health of wild animals (including fishes, shellfishes, birds, and mammalians)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2001, &lt;strong&gt;70 percent of the volume of herbicides used in agriculture can be attributed to animal feed production&lt;/strong&gt; in the form of soybean and corn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, if a vegetarian's diet is causing animal deaths due to standard agricultural practices, an omnivore's diet is causing them just the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article writer can claim I'm attacking a strawman, because the article says &amp;quot;the production of plants consumed by humans &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; kill a number of animals 25 times higher per kilogram of usable protein produced, compared to what happens for the meat production&amp;quot;. Certainly, it's possible to kill a lot of animals while farming plants, and it's possible to simply use grazing or wild animals for your meat production. However, that's not the norm, and it doesn't make the headline true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T17:48:30.247" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18438" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-18T17:28:06.770" Score="2" ViewCount="2759" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68izU5g0CR0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;commercial&lt;/a&gt; which David Beckham did for Pepsi where he kicks three soccer balls into three different cans at a considerable distance on the beach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video went viral and we can see people debating on online forums if it is fake or real and arguing about Beckham's soccer skills. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In these times where we can alter almost everything digitally, can we figure out whether this particular video is for real ? Any articles/blogs which can explain it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16230" LastActivityDate="2013-11-18T17:28:06.770" Title="Is Beckham's Pepsi beach commercial real?" Tags="|advertising|video|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18442" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-19T12:58:19.660" Score="3" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is basically a rephrase of &lt;a href=&quot;https://sustainability.stackexchange.com/q/1277/679&quot;&gt;this question from Sustainability SE&lt;/a&gt;. Paper manufacturer UPM claims they have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yes-paper.com/index.php?yespaper=yespaper-yes-light&amp;amp;ch_nav_eb2=yespaper-yes-light&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; that has the same key characteristics (as white, as thick and as usable in office equipment) as &quot;usual&quot; office paper but lower &quot;grammage&quot; (mass per square meter) and therefore (the claim continues) lower load on the environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example is &lt;em&gt;UPM Kymmene Yes Paper&lt;/em&gt; - they offer &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yes-paper.com/index.php?yespaper=yespaper-yes-light&amp;amp;ch_nav_eb2=yespaper-yes-light&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Yes Light&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; with 70 gsm grammage and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yes-paper.com/index.php?yespaper=yespaper-yes-bronze-copy-print&amp;amp;ch_nav_eb2=yespaper-yes-bronze-copy-print&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Yes Bronze copy/print&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; with 80 gsm grammage. Looks like the two papers are very similar in everything except grammage and brightness (and 70 gsm paper even has better whiteness):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;            Grammage  Thickness  Opacity  CIE Whiteness&#xA;Yes Light    70 gsm    0,105 mm    92%       165%&#xA;Yes Bronze   80 gsm    0,104 mm    93%       150%&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the manufactures further says that 70 gsm paper has &lt;em&gt;10 % smaller environmental load per sheet compared to the same paper in 80 gsm&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim 10% lower load, but 70 gsm paper uses about 12,5% less abstract &quot;material&quot; compared to 80 gsm paper. Where have the 2,5% disappeared? It's &quot;just&quot; 2,5% when you compare 2,5% and 100%, but it's 20% difference when you compare 12,5% and 10%. If the process was explained - something like &lt;em&gt;well, we make tiny enclosed pores in the sheet and that allows us to use 12,5% less fiber, but we need more energy for making those pores with compressed air so we lose those 2,5% for making pores and so the net advantage is 10%. And btw here's how we estimated that the extra energy we spend amounts to about 2,5% and not any other number&lt;/em&gt;. Nothing like that. The process is not detailed and there's this &quot;10%&quot; claim out of nowhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the manufacturing process is not detailed. Do they use less fiber? How do they achieve the same thickness (do they use or add plutonium or other not so green materials)? Finally, if there exists such a brilliant technology for producing paper as usable as usual one but with less raw materials why wouldn't everyone license it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any independent data on how such paper is produced and how its manufacturing process is different from that of &quot;usual&quot; paper in environmental terms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="666" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:28.103" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T07:58:47.167" Title="How fair is &quot;N% lower environment load&quot; claim for lower grammage paper?" Tags="|consumer-products|environment|manufacturing|ecology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20419" CreationDate="2013-11-19T23:21:31.157" Score="13" ViewCount="2026" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr. David Perlmutter argues that grains are [the/a?] cause of Alzheimer's disease and brain degeneration in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He says eating grains can lead to dementia, chronic headaches, depression, epilepsy and other health problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Even healthy ones like whole grains can cause dementia, ADHD, anxiety, chronic headaches, depression, and much more,&amp;quot; his website says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr Perlmutter, a Fellow of the American College of Nutrition, says our brains thrive on fat and cholesterol but suffer when we eat grains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He says that Alzheimer's and other debilitating diseases are preventable with major lifestyle and dietary changes. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/neurologist-claims-grains-are-destroying-our-brains/story-fneuzkvr-1226762490985&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/neurologist-claims-grains-are-destroying-our-brains/story-fneuzkvr-1226762490985&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research that confirms these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10622" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T20:43:52.677" Title="Does eating grains cause alzheimer's?" Tags="|nutrition|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18423" CreationDate="2013-11-20T13:58:22.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is that there is no significant trend, the operative word being significant.  There is a cyclical trend, probably related to ENSO, but no trend that can reasonably be attributed to global warming.  If anything, the data indicates that there might actually be a slight downward trend.  But you are correct, the data is indeed muddy and as with statistics of any kind it can be massaged to produce a wide variety of results.  Below are a series of links and graphs from a variety of sources that show no upward trend in worldwide cyclonic activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it should be noted that Haiyan was not what it was cracked up to be.  The maximum sustained wind speed were actually ~147 mph, based upon actual readings, making it a category 4 storm.  Numerous category 5 storms have hit the Philippines in the past so as bad as Haiyan was it was not extraordinary.  The higher wind speeds that were attributed to Haiyan were either estimates (check the footnotes) or the result of a mistake, based upon an early report that confused the storm’s 235 kph winds with 235 mph winds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that, in all the hype over Haiyan, little mention has been made of the dud that was the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season.  NOAA had predicted an above-average hurricane season with 3-6 major hurricanes, but 2013 turned out to be one of the calmest years in recorded history.  There was not a single major hurricane and the ACE (Accumulated Cyclone Energy) was a measly 29, the lowest in 30 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what is the overall global trend in cyclonic frequency and power?  Following is data from numerous sources showing, if anything, a slight downward trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00010.1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00010.1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/accumulated_cyclone_energy.asp?basin=gl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/accumulated_cyclone_energy.asp?basin=gl&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/cei/step6.02-01.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/cei/step6.02-01.gif&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_hurricanes/fig33.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_hurricanes/fig33.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/images/tc-graph-1969-2012.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bom.gov.au/cyclone/images/tc-graph-1969-2012.png&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://policlimate.com/tropical/global_major_freq.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://policlimate.com/tropical/global_major_freq.png&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/global_running_ace.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/global_running_ace.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16247" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T13:58:22.487" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18434" CreationDate="2013-11-20T14:30:31.023" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a more detailed article on the subject here, written by the author cited in the OP, which may be the origin of the claim made in the Italian magazine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-technology/vegetarian-dilemma&quot;&gt;The vegetarian dilemma&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The elements of the argument, which justify the claim, are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most cattle slaughtered in Australia feed solely on pasture. This is usually rangelands, which constitute about 70% of the continent.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Each area of grain production in Australia has a mouse plague on average every four years, with 500-1000 mice per hectare. Poisoning&#xA;  kills at least 80% of the mice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At least 100 mice are killed per hectare per year (500/4 × 0.8) to grow grain. Average yields are about 1.4 tonnes of wheat/hectare; 13%&#xA;  of the wheat is useable protein. Therefore, at least 55 sentient&#xA;  animals die to produce 100kg of useable plant protein: 25 times more&#xA;  than for the same amount of rangelands beef.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've no reason to believe that these allegations are false: so I hesitate to call the claim &quot;false&quot; or &quot;sensationalist&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I have various reasons to believe that the claim is not widely/generally applicable as may be implied by the Italian magazine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fao.org/docrep/X5303E/x5303e04.htm&quot;&gt;This FAO document&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Grazing systems.&lt;/em&gt; These are systems based almost exclusively on livestock production, with little or no integration with crops. They are mainly based on native grassland. In terms of total production, &lt;strong&gt;grazing systems are of lesser importance because they supply only 9 percent of global meat production&lt;/strong&gt;. Of this, three-quarters comes from Central and South America and of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Livestock interact in these systems with land, water and plant and animal biodiversity, especially wildlife.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mixed farming systems&lt;/em&gt;  In mixed farming systems, crops and livestock production are integrated on the same farm. Globally, mixed farming systems produce the largest share of total meat (54 percent), and milk (90 percent).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Industrial systems.&lt;/em&gt; These systems cover industrial types of production and small-scale urban or pert-urban production in developing countries. Both monogastric (pig and poultry) and ruminant production systems exist. They provide 37 percent of the total global meat production.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore the argument is applicable only for 10% of meat (i.e. range-fed cattle and sheep).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, almost all the relevent hits from the first three pages of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=mouse+plague&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/search?q=mouse+plague&lt;/a&gt; Google search are from Australia: so &quot;mouse plagues affecting wheat&quot; seems to be, more or less, a specially-Australian problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, the author is IMO cherry-picking his foodstuffs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not all meat is cattle (pigs, chickens, etc. are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogastric&quot;&gt;monogastric&lt;/a&gt;) and don't eat grass.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wheat isn't the only food for human vegetarians (but I suspect that wheat is especially susceptible to mouse plagues), so by picking &quot;wheat&quot; he is picking a 'worst case' crop for mouse-killing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, articles such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_vegetarianism#Criticisms&quot;&gt;Criticisms of Environmental vegetarianism&lt;/a&gt; may be right in saying than being vegetarian is insufficient:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Cornell scientists, &quot;the heavy dependence on fossil&#xA;  energy suggests that the US food system, whether meat-based or&#xA;  plant-based, is not sustainable.&quot; but they also mention that:&#xA;  &quot;lactoovovegetarian diet is more sustainable than the average American&#xA;  meat-based diet. &quot; [23]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some environmental activists claim that adopting a vegetarian diet may&#xA;  be a way of focusing on personal actions and righteous gestures rather&#xA;  than systemic change. Dave Riley, an Australian environmentalist,&#xA;  states that &quot;being meatless and guiltless seems seductively simple&#xA;  while environmental destruction rages around us,&quot; noting that animals&#xA;  can contribute to the food chain.[24]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bill Mollison has inconsistently argued in his Permaculture Design&#xA;  Course that vegetarianism exacerbates soil erosion. This is because&#xA;  removing a plant from a field removes all the nutrients it obtained&#xA;  from the soil, while removing an animal leaves the field intact. On US&#xA;  farmland, much less soil erosion is associated with pastureland used&#xA;  for livestock grazing than with land used for production of crops.[25]&#xA;  Robert Hart has also developed forest gardening, which has since been&#xA;  adopted as a common permaculture design element, as a sustainable&#xA;  plant-based food production system.[26]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eating range-fed Australian cattle is not feasible for the majority of the people (vegetarians or otherwise) in the world, and for that reason the article isn't wholly or generally true (because it's impossible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are interested in this subject (i.e. if you want to do something about it) there may be other options which you can explore locally (in whichever country you are living in): for example, &quot;organic&quot; farming might be less deleterious to wild-life ... but deciding that would be a topic for a different question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am inclined to praise the author for at least making me think more about the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T14:30:31.023" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18456" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18458" CreationDate="2013-11-20T16:23:44.720" Score="21" ViewCount="5783" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been watching today's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/programmes/b03hcv64&quot;&gt;Paul Hollywood's Pies and Puds&lt;/a&gt;, and they have just had a shown a segment where they create seaweed dessert to sample a fifth human taste, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umami&quot;&gt;umami&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently the perception of human taste consists of;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sweet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sour&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;bitter &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;salty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;umami&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way the programme was pushing this &lt;strong&gt;umami&lt;/strong&gt; seemed disproportionately enthusiastic, for a man who usually acts so bored you're wondering whether he's paying attention, or trying to remember if he's left the tap running in the downstairs bathroom. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can see how the marketing of such a food stuff could have industry wide benefits, similar to the case of &quot;super fruits&quot;, and immediately smelled a rat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alternet.org/story/147181/do_we_really_have_a_5th_taste_what_is_the_umami_fad_all_about&quot;&gt;some criticism&lt;/a&gt; of the concept online, and evidence that the food industry has at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umami.com/umami-burger/&quot;&gt;responded to the concept&lt;/a&gt; if not engineered it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence, academic or otherwise, to suggest that umami has a sufficiently tangible taste to be considered as an identifiable flavor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16257" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:46:21.223" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T19:30:11.820" Title="Is umami a real flavor, or a marketing strategy?" Tags="|physiology|taste|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15951" CreationDate="2013-11-20T16:41:31.423" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the IPCC's AR5 summary report &quot;No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies.&quot; I'm not a physicist, nor I suspect is anyone else here, but this change in reporting would seem to indicate a lack of confidence in the actual impact of additional atmospheric CO2 on the climate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16247" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T16:41:31.423" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18456" CreationDate="2013-11-20T16:53:34.020" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, umami exists as a taste and is distinct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Triggering mechanisms have been identified (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/99/7/4692.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.pnas.org/content/99/7/4692.short&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;human T1R1/T1R3 responds to the umami taste stimulus L-glutamate, and this response is enhanced by 5′-ribonucleotides, a hallmark of umami taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is listed without controversy in peer-reviewed work (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867403008444&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867403008444&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sweet and umami (the taste of monosodium glutamate) are the main attractive taste modalities in humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sense of taste is responsible for detecting and responding to sweet, bitter, sour, salty, and umami (amino acid) stimuli.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is distinct from the other tastes&lt;/strong&gt; (same ref):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In humans, monosodium L-glutamate (MSG) and L-aspartate, but not other amino acids, elicit a distinctive savory taste sensation called umami.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theory that it is a distinct taste has testable predictions that have checked out (same ref):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If T1R1 combines with T1R3 (T1R1+3) to generate the mammalian umami receptor, then a knockout of T1R1 should also eliminate all umami responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's more recent work (2009) saying the same thing (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/90/3/723S.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/90/3/723S.short&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The uniqueness of umami perception is based on several lines of evidence. First, numerous perceptual studies have shown that the sensation aroused by MSG is distinct from that of the other 4 taste qualities. Second, biochemical studies that show the synergy of the binding of MSG and 5′-guanylate to tongue taste tissue mirror this hallmark perceptual effect. Third, several specific receptors that may mediate umami taste have recently been identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Taste vs. flavour&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a difference between the two:  &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flavor&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;flavour is the sensory impression of a food or other substance, and is determined mainly by the chemical senses of taste and smell&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;. So, change the taste; change the flavour. If there exists a umami taste, then it can be used to change the flavour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-20T17:35:05.647" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18463" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-20T22:58:37.213" Score="2" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've often heard that taking notes helps remember information, even if you don't read it again. Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://dyslexia.yale.edu/Technology.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; that sites studies that supports this. For this to happen must the note taking be done by hand or can it be typed on a computer? For people familiar with the Android app Swype, does taking notes with it help remember information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious what methods of note taking help people remember because dyslexic people may have difficulty writing by hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T14:01:22.423" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T14:01:22.423" Title="Does notetaking that does not involve writting by hand help remeber information?" Tags="|psychology|learning|school|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2013-11-21T01:07:04.990" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18465" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-21T10:48:32.443" Score="7" ViewCount="217" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember seeing on TV in my own country (Bulgaria) floated the claim that during the first census done in Macedonia, most of the population was self-identifying as Bulgarians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After that, the story goes, the Serbian authorities (Macedonia had been given under the control of Serbia), annulled the census, much violence ensued, and a second census was done, and none claimed to be Bulgarians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since, my own country is a bit biased on the subject, I'm asking here if anyone can verify this claim - did such a thing happen during the first census, or any census.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the story is true, may be there won't be direct evidence, since the authorities would have destroyed evidence of the first census, but some historical traces would have been left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4974" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T10:48:32.443" Title="Did most people self-identify as Bulgarians in first census of Macedonia?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18467" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16723" CreationDate="2013-11-21T13:59:58.553" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes it does, combined with the vibrations from the traffic on the street, and the shape of the statue's base:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor Brian Cox, who teaches physics at the university, gave a more worldly explanation. Mr Price said: “Brian thinks it’s differential friction, where two surfaces - the serpentine stone of the statuette and glass shelf it is on - cause a subtle vibration which is making the statuette turn.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And now ITV's Mystery Map programme claims to have solved the conundrum, backing Prof Cox's explanation. Their expert Steve Gosling put three-axis vibration sensors under the cabinet, and found a peak vibration level - coinciding with movement from passers-by and traffic from the very busy Oxford Road nearby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He said: &amp;quot;The vibration is a combination of multiple sources so there's buses outside on the busy road, there's footfall activity. And it's all of those things combined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;This statue has a convex base. There's a lump at the bottom which makes it more susceptible to vibrations than the others which have a flat base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/mystery-solved-manchester-museums-spinning-ancient-egyptian-statue-isnt-cursed-8951201.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; at The Independent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T13:59:58.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18468" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18509" CreationDate="2013-11-21T14:30:08.373" Score="9" ViewCount="4794" Body="&lt;p&gt;Noted Young-Earth Creationist &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Hovind&quot;&gt;Kent Hovind&lt;/a&gt; made a claim &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX6rM-ayoLw&quot;&gt;in a 2007 video&lt;/a&gt; that suggested that the idea of dinosaurs living on Earth millions of years ago was implauseable if the oxygen levels were the at the same level that exist today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/uX6rM-ayoLw?t=34m3s&quot;&gt;TimeStamp from video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He argued that dinosaurs needed a higher partial pressure of Oxygen to account for their large size ,claiming the partial pressure of Oxygen during the period was too low, that they would not be able to get enough Oxygen. He suggested, in a light-hearted manner, that they would need so much air intake that the very process might have created enough friction to start a fire. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He used this conjecture to demonstrate that the earth might have had a water canopy above it which would increase the partial pressure of oxygen and therefor allow dinosaurs to grow to the sizes that are evident from the fossils. This is based on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://creationwiki.org/Canopy_theory&quot;&gt;Water Canopy Theory&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is his conjecture true: Was the partial pressure of Oxygen too low for dinosaurs to exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13859" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-11-27T08:48:13.800" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T14:55:11.367" Title="Did the Earth have so little oxygen that dinosaurs couldn't exist?" Tags="|physiology|climatology|young-earth-creationism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18468" CreationDate="2013-11-21T14:45:48.883" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_whale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blue whale&lt;/a&gt; is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fao.org/fishery/species/2744/en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;larger animal than any dinosaur&lt;/a&gt; with similarly large nostrils (see below) and is also warm blooded.  It seems to be able to breathe without any problems (including spontaneous combustion ;o), in an atmosphere with lower oxygen levels than in the Cretateous (see below), which suggests there isn't really any need for higher partial pressure of oxygen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding atmospheric oxygen during the Phanerozoic era, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n9/full/ngeo923.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; looks interesting [*&lt;em&gt;emphasi&lt;/em&gt;*s mine]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ian J. Glasspool &amp;amp; Andrew C. Scott, Phanerozoic concentrations of atmospheric &#xA;  oxygen reconstructed from sedimentary charcoal, Nature Geoscience 3, 627 - &#xA;  630 (2010) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Variations of the Earth’s atmospheric oxygen concentration (pO2) are&#xA;  thought to be closely tied to the evolution of life, with strong&#xA;  feedbacks between uni- and multicellular life and oxygen1, 2. On the&#xA;  geologic timescale, pO2 is regulated by the burial of organic carbon&#xA;  and sulphur, as well as by weathering3. Reconstructions of atmospheric&#xA;  O2 for the past 400 million years have therefore been based on&#xA;  geochemical models of carbon and sulphur cycling4, 5, 6. However,&#xA;  these reconstructions vary widely4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, particularly&#xA;  for the Mesozoic and early Cenozoic eras. Here we show that the&#xA;  abundance of charcoal in mire settings is controlled by pO2, and use&#xA;  this proxy to reconstruct the concentration of atmospheric oxygen for&#xA;  the past 400 million years. We estimate that pO2 was continuously&#xA;  above 26% during the Carboniferous and Permian periods, and that it&#xA;  declined abruptly around the time of the Permian–Triassic mass&#xA;  extinction. During the Triassic and Jurassic periods, pO2 fluctuated&#xA;  cyclically, with amplitudes up to 10% and a frequency of 20–30 million&#xA;  years. Atmospheric oxygen concentrations have declined steadily from&#xA;  the middle of the Cretaceous period to present-day values of about&#xA;  21%. &lt;strong&gt;We conclude, however, that variation in pO2 was not the main&#xA;  driver of the loss of faunal diversity during the Permo–Triassic and&#xA;  Triassic–Jurassic mass extinction events.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dinosaurs evolved in the Triassic and persisted through the Jurassic and Cretateous, and it seems that Oxygen levels have fluctuated considerably during the time, but for the most part were higher than they are now.  If lung efficiency was the issue that caused the dominance of the dinosaurs it seems odd that this continued through the Cretaceous where oxygen levels were apparently generally higher than they are now (why didn't any other groups evolve similar compensatory mechanisms given the long timescale available).  However, this is only one study, and I am no expert on this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, from what I remember large dinosaurs developed largely from the mid-Jurassic to Cretaceous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, having seen some of the video, the claim is that Apatosaurus had nostrils the size of a horse.  According to Weischampel, Dodson and Osmolska, &quot;Dinosauria&quot;, page 273 &quot;In general terms, the most striking features of the sauropod skull include the enlarged and retracted externel nares [DM: nostrils]&quot;.  See also&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lawrence M. Witmer &quot;Nostril position in dinosaurs and other&#xA;  vertebrates and its significance for nasal function&quot;, Science 3 August&#xA;  2001: Vol. 293 no. 5531 pp. 850-853 &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1062681&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DOI:10.1126/science.1062681&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Many dinosaurs have enormous and complicated bony nasal apertures&lt;/strong&gt;. Functional interpretation requires knowledge of the location of the&#xA;  external opening in the skin. Traditionally, the fleshy nostril of&#xA;  dinosaurs has been placed in the back of the bony opening, but studies&#xA;  of extant dinosaur relatives suggest that it is located far forward.&#xA;  Narial blood supply and cavernous tissue corroborate the rostral&#xA;  position in dinosaurs. A rostral nostril was, and remains, a virtually&#xA;  invariant rule of construction among Amniota, which has consequences&#xA;  for (i) nasal airstreaming, and hence various physiological&#xA;  parameters, and (ii) the collection of behaviorally relevant&#xA;  circumoral odorants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that as soft tissue rarely gets significantly fossilised, the &quot;enormous and complicated bony nasal apertures&quot; are pretty much all we have to go on, so I suspect Hovind's comment about the size of their nostrils is at best a guess.  Clearly if the dinosaurs needed bigger fleshy nostrils, their skulls could have accommodated them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also CrisW's answer for another possible explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2013-11-26T18:37:14.363" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T18:37:14.363" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18442" CreationDate="2013-11-21T17:28:09.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;You seem to be focusing on two specific claims made by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yes-paper.com/index.php?yespaper=yespaper-yes-light&amp;amp;ch_nav_eb2=yespaper-yes-light&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yes light marketing material&lt;/a&gt;.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;touch and feel like 80 gsm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is incredibly subjective, and therefore difficult to analyze objectively. It seems plausible, though, that 70gsm paper would have a &quot;touch and feel&quot; like that of 80gsm paper. In certain regards, all paper has a &quot;touch and feel&quot; like 80gsm paper, even cardstock.  All paper products have a certain &quot;touch and feel&quot; in common.  Note the claim is not that it has a &quot;touch and feel identical&quot; to 80gsm paper...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;10 % smaller environmental load per sheet compared to the same paper in 80 gsm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is very easy to analyze.  AS &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammage#Grammage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gsm&lt;/a&gt; is a standard measurement, and means &lt;em&gt;grams per meter&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, it's easy to do some simple math:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(80gsm - 70gsm) / 80gsm = 12.5%&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, Yes light has 12.5% less mass per square meter than 80gsm paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the original claim, that the Yes light paper has a 10% smaller environmental load per sheet should be approximately correct. This assumes, of course, that paper weight is directly proportional to environmental load, which seems to be a reasonable enough assumption on the surface.  (Perhaps examining this claim would be worthy of a separate question, if anyone doubts it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final claim, borrowed for your Sustainable Living post, is that the Yes light paper has the same thickness as the Yes Bronze paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;            Grammage  Thickness  Opacity  CIE Whiteness&#xA;Yes Light    70 gsm    0,105 mm    92%       165%&#xA;Yes Bronze   80 gsm    0,104 mm    93%       150%&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any of either of these papers at my disposal to measure them, but due to truth-in-advertising laws, I'm willing to put at least a small amount of faith in this claim.  But more importantly, you don't seem to be questioning the claim, but rather are asking for an explanation as to how paper with less mass can match (or exceed) the thickness of another paper with more mass.  Such explanations of paper manufacturing are off-topic here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2013-11-21T17:58:15.457" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T17:58:15.457" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18473" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-21T20:04:20.733" Score="31" ViewCount="4756" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his 1964 book &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertas_Laurin%C4%8Diukas#Bibliografija&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The third side of the dollar&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, Lithuanian journalist &lt;a href=&quot;https://lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertas_Laurin%C4%8Diukas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Albertas Laurinčiukas&lt;/a&gt; writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After Laika's flight, a group of women from Mississippi, U.S., sent a letter to the United Nations. They demanded to condemn USSR's inhumane treatment of space dogs and put forward a proposal: &amp;quot;if science needs to send living creatures to space, there are plenty of black kids in our town for this purpose.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(translation mine)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is quite a popular story in the former USSR, but I failed to find any mentions of this letter except in the book and citations therefrom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastEditorUserId="34347" LastEditDate="2020-07-29T09:18:43.703" LastActivityDate="2020-07-29T09:18:43.703" Title="Did a group of U.S. women propose to send black kids instead of dogs to space?" Tags="|united-states|space-flight|racism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18474" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18476" CreationDate="2013-11-21T20:56:17.740" Score="18" ViewCount="3924" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone told me that there are people who claim that the income tax, and by extension the IRS, is unconstitutional, and that some have won in court using this argument. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a prominent claim is the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0930374053&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Great Income Tax Hoax&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Irwin Schiff.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/13558/15980&quot;&gt;Was the 16th Amendment (income tax) improperly ratified?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2018-10-31T17:05:58.367" LastActivityDate="2018-10-31T17:05:58.367" Title="Has income tax been found unconstitutional by a court?" Tags="|united-states|law|taxes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18474" CreationDate="2013-11-21T22:37:55.367" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's not true.  There is ample case law where the constitutionality of income taxes has been tested, and the courts have clearly ruled that income taxes are constitutional.  Such claims are regarded as frivolous and subject to legal penalties.  The IRS has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/The-Truth-About-Frivolous-Tax-Arguments-Section-III&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;publication&lt;/a&gt; which clearly spells out the significant penalties for pursuing or promoting frivolous claims, and includes the following statement from the decision in one such case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Once the legal system has resolved a claim, judges and lawyers must move on to other things.  They cannot endlessly rehear stale arguments . . . . [T]here is no constitutional right to bring frivolous suits . . . . People who wish to express displeasure with taxes must choose other forums, and there are many available.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IRS discusses it at length in a document titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irs.gov/Tax-Professionals/The-Truth-About-Frivolous-Tax-Arguments-Section-I#_Toc350157905&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Truth About Frivolous Tax Arguments&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This document addresses numerous examples of claims that income taxes are unconstitutional and cites the case law in which courts have ruled in favor of income taxes.  Some claims, and excerpts from the IRS response, include the following.  All are supported by references to the actual court decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First Amendment Claims:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The First Amendment, however, does not provide a right to refuse to pay income taxes on religious or moral grounds or because taxes are used to fund government programs opposed by the taxpayer.  The First Amendment does not protect commercial speech or speech that aids or incites taxpayers to unlawfully refuse to pay federal income taxes, including speech that promotes abusive tax avoidance schemes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fifth Amendment Claims:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that a person shall not be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law . . . .”  The United States Supreme Court stated that “it is . . . well settled that [the Fifth Amendment] is not a limitation upon the taxing power conferred upon Congress by the Constitution; in other words, that the Constitution does not conflict with itself by conferring, upon the one hand, a taxing power, and taking the same power away, on the other, by the limitations of the due process clause.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no constitutional right to refuse to file an income tax return on the ground that it violates the Fifth Amendment privilege against self‑incrimination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thirteenth amendment claims:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Courts have consistently found arguments that taxation constitutes a form of involuntary servitude to be frivolous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sixteenth Amendment Claims:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the income tax laws enacted subsequent to ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment.  Brushaber v. Union Pacific R.R., 240 U.S. 1 (1916).  Since that time, the courts have consistently upheld the constitutionality of the federal income tax&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The constitutionality of the Sixteenth Amendment has invariably been upheld when challenged.  Numerous courts have both implicitly and explicitly recognized that the Sixteenth Amendment authorizes a non‑apportioned direct income tax on United States citizens and that the federal tax laws are valid as applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-21T22:37:55.367" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13628" CreationDate="2013-11-22T00:12:39.507" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google is your friend:&#xA;Official results from the Board of Elections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;REGISTERED VOTERS - TOTAL .  .  .  .  .    927,996&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barack Obama/Joe Biden (DEM) .  .  .  .    447,273 &#xA;Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan (REP)  .  .  .  .    190,660  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/pdf_boe/en-US/ElectionResults2012/Nov2012/amended/11062012FinalAmendedofficialResultsbyCategory.HTM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://boe.cuyahogacounty.us/pdf_boe/en-US/ElectionResults2012/Nov2012/amended/11062012FinalAmendedofficialResultsbyCategory.HTM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16281" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T00:12:39.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15017" CreationDate="2013-11-22T19:08:34.647" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chelyabinsk wasn't the only fireball reported on the same day that DA14 passed by.  I don't know if I believe Frank Davis that most of them actually were related to DA14 in some way, but he has a couple possible explanations for the different trajectories.  And these are supported by his computer models.  If there's a chance that he's right it means that near-miss asteroids can be accompanied by such events -- meaning a serious risk when Apophis passes in 2029.  If he's wrong , I'd like to see NASA or someone specifically debunk his models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/rock-cloud-strike/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2013/07/07/rock-cloud-strike/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/hunting-for-che/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/hunting-for-che/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2013/09/14/a-different-health-risk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2013/09/14/a-different-health-risk/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Jim Burrill&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16289" LastActivityDate="2013-11-22T19:08:34.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18427" CreationDate="2013-11-22T19:28:47.050" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Atoms in tooth enamel are not replaced. As a consequence, the C14 levels found in a person's tooth enamel can be used to estimate the year at which their teeth formed, due to the fact that atmospheric levels of C14 have decreased steadily since the cessation of above-ground nuclear bomb testing in 1964.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details can be found at the link below, along with information on the relative rates of turnover for other tissues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/227839.pdf&quot;&gt;https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/227839.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure 9 (page 34) shows that some tissues turn over more slowly than others, and therefore retain more of the C14 from the person's early years. This demonstrates that the rate of turnover varies by tissue, and that there is not a single uniform rate of turnover that can be used to judge how quickly atoms are replaced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In total nine tissue types were selected for measurement from the 36&#xA;  donors [who died in 2006].... The tissues with the lowest radiocarbon&#xA;  values (ie closest to atmospheric levels in 2006) and the lowest&#xA;  standard deviations within the  sample set were blood, hair and nails.&#xA;  Skin and bone lipid values have slightly higher  radiocarbon values,&#xA;  but relatively low scatter. Surprisingly, skin collagen radiocarbon &#xA;  content was quite variable, suggesting it is not a good candidate for&#xA;  Year-of-Death determination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That paper also cites other studies reporting that there is no turnover of neuronal DNA and eye lens crystaline protiens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Work by Spalding et al. (2005b) and Bhardwaj et al. (2006) on neural&#xA;  tissue  DNA, and by Lynnerup et al. (2008) on eye lens crystalline&#xA;  proteins have confirmed that  other tissue components in the body&#xA;  besides tooth enamel, once formed, do not turnover  during life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16282" LastEditorUserId="16282" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T22:06:22.247" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T22:06:22.247" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3568" CreationDate="2013-11-23T00:53:34.667" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a 2012 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_19779_5-supposedly-badass-criminals-caught-in-embarrassing-ways_p2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cracked article&lt;/a&gt;, Robert Phillips succeeded with a skin graft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Phillips simply convinced a doctor to graft skin from his abdomen and surgically sew it where his fingerprints were. Just like that, Phillips went down in history as the only known successful case of someone permanently blanking out their fingerprints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that didn't help him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fingerprints are generally attached to something else that leaves impressions on whatever it touches. That, of course, being a hand. While police found no fingerprint evidence, what they did find were several prominent palm prints with anatomically incorrect blanks where the fingerprints should be. This would end up being vitally important a few weeks later when Phillips was arrested. Shockingly, it seems that a person with no fingerprints sticks out like a non-fingerprinted sore thumb when it comes time to book people into jail. It's not like there are millions of fingerprintless people walking around out there. It was pretty much just Phillips. So his printless fingers were just as damning as a matching set of prints would have been.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16293" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-11-23T13:34:30.397" LastActivityDate="2013-11-23T13:34:30.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13663" CreationDate="2013-11-23T10:32:18.377" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer has three sections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is human intelligence declining? No.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the genetic foundation of human intelligence eroding? This has not been shown.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are other factors influencing the genetic component of intelligence? Probably.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Is intelligence declining?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, human intelligence is not declining. In fact, it is increasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually stated in the article that inspired the news stories, which is publicly available:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our Fragile Intellect, by Gerald Crabtree &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.tig.2012.10.002&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Part I&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1016/j.tig.2012.10.003&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Part II&lt;/a&gt; (PDF and &amp;quot;Full Text&amp;quot; links to right of page)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Flynn Effect is discussed in Part II, Box I. Crabtree attributes increased scores on IQ tests to two factors: improved childhood environment, and cultural biases in the test:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;these changes in IQ scores are probably linked to environmental&#xA;influences including reduction in lead and other heavy metals used in&#xA;gasoline and paint and the virtual elimination of hypothyroidism in&#xA;children due to the widespread use of iodinated salt. These and many&#xA;other advances in prenatal care and prevention of anoxia during&#xA;childbirth have clear effects on our average intellectual abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even the original proponent of this idea admits that human intelligence is probably &lt;em&gt;increasing&lt;/em&gt;. While he suggests that this increase has plateaued, he is apparently discussing wealthy, Western nations. Globally, childhood malnutrition (measured by growth stunting) has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/nutgrowthdb/jme_unicef_who_wb.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;declined substantially from 1990 to 2011&lt;/a&gt;, from which we could predict that human intelligence is continuing to increase globally. Crabtree is discussing a process that occurs over thousands of years, and we can only speculate about the impact that medical, economic, and cultural changes will have on human intelligence over that period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crabtree dismisses some of this increase of IQ scores as being the result of increased levels of education, which cause the students to develop the cultural traits that produce high test scores and therefore do not reflect true intelligence. This brings up another thorny question -- how exactly can we measure intelligence, and is there even a unitary intelligence? This has been debated &lt;em&gt;ad nauseam&lt;/em&gt;, with one classic debate being centered around Stephen J. Gould's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mismeasure_of_Man&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Mismeasure of Man&lt;/a&gt;. This is not a topic to delve into here; Crabtree is relying on the literature relating to X-linked Intellectual Disability, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/20doi:2010.1016/j.tig.2009.05.002&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one of his sources&lt;/a&gt; is available free online. This appears to focus on severe mental disabilities, so those subtleties are probably not important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Is the genetic foundation of human intelligence eroding?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that I have addressed the issue of average intelligence, as such (and our risk of developing into &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Idiocracy&lt;/a&gt;), let's now examine the core issue of this theory -- is the genetic basis for intelligence eroding? Crabtree openly admits that he has no evidence that this is actually happening. In fact, the entire purpose of this essay seems to be to propose a human population genomic study that will test for patterns of relaxed selection on genes that are associated with cognitive and emotional variation (Part II, Figure 2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sequencing many individuals whose last common ancestors ranged from&#xA;present day to 5000 years ago should produce an estimate of the&#xA;rapidity of change and the level of selection operating on these&#xA;genomes at various time-intervals during this 5000 year period (an&#xA;interval that would span the emergence of cities for several&#xA;population groups). These genomes would have sequence variations in&#xA;intellectual deficiency (ID) genes but, because each generation&#xA;produces only about 40 new signature mutations, these would not be&#xA;enough to guide the temporal ordering. However, using the 400 million&#xA;retroviral insertion sites as signatures of a specific ancient&#xA;generation to estimate the age of nearby new mutations, sufficient&#xA;fineness might be produced to permit dating of mutations in ID genes.&#xA;Because mutations that control the evolution of specific&#xA;characteristics have often been found in regulatory rather than coding&#xA;regions, full genome sequences would need to be assayed. I would be&#xA;very happy to learn from this test that there is no substance to my argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this hits the core points of our question. The only issue left to discuss is if Crabtrees' argument is at all reasonable. I think there is good reasons to believe that it is not reasonable, and I'm sure these are discussed by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23153596&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;published responses&lt;/a&gt; to his original essay. I see the following weaknesses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I suspect that his estimate of mutational target size is the upper bound for what is reasonable. He started by included every gene that could conceivably be said to be involved in intelligence (though he did moderate that assumption by focusing only on the fraction where the intellectual deficit has been shown to arise from loss-of-function). He also assumes that all  &amp;quot;deleterious&amp;quot; mutations to these genes would decrease intelligence. Perhaps most importantly, he assumed that each gene had a major impact on intelligence, and that mutations had cumulative deleterious effects. While he did make a brief argument to justify these assumptions, his evidence is very indirect and his model conflicts with much of what we know about the typical functioning of biological systems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He seemed to assume that the only selection acting on these genes was for human-like intelligence, even after he described how these genes are found in non-human animals and these &amp;quot;Intellectual Deficiency&amp;quot; disorders often arise from the disruption of core physiological processes and include massive developmental abnormalities. He acknowledged the possibility of pleiotropy, but did not incorporate it into his calculations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He provided absolutely no evidence that the strength of selection on these traits has changed, just a bunch of hand-waving arguments about how difficult it was to be a hunter-gatherer and how easy it is to reproduce in modern society. The closest that he came to offering a plausible explanation for why selection on intelligence may be reduced was to reflect on how living in large societies must have increased selection on our immune system (which then &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haldane%27s_dilemma&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reduces the effectiveness&lt;/a&gt; of selection on other traits). However, communicable disease is no longer a major selective pressure, as indicated by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/10LCID_All_Deaths_By_Age_Group_2010-a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC's charts of the cause of death&lt;/a&gt;. Indeed, the main causes of death for people in their reproductive prime (15-34) are accidents, homicide, and suicide -- all of which can be influenced by cognitive and emotional capabilities. If Crabtree thinks that throwing a spear is cognitively difficult, he should try driving a car.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He emphasizes how ineffective natural selection can be on intellectual traits, but does not even assert that this has changed between prehistoric and modern populations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He never mentioned the immense expansion of the human population and the elimination of geographic structure in our modern population. Both of these factors increase the effectiveness of selection in a population. So even if the selection coefficient on cognitive traits has decreased, we could still expect to see the preservation of these traits, and possibly even additional evolution of these traits. Recent studies have actually measured this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/104/52/20753.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;increase in the effectiveness of natural selection&lt;/a&gt; in humans.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, Crabtree missed some of the obvious, traditional arguments suggesting that selection on intelligence is decreasing. These would include the reduced variation in reproductive success (associated with greater survival past reproductive age) and the lack of correlation (or even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10842506&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;anticorrelation&lt;/a&gt;) between the number of children that a person has and other traits that are predictive of intelligence. I can only speculate on why he did not make those arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To restate my conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Human intelligence is probably still increasing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no evidence that the genetic foundation of intelligence is eroding&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The essay in question dose not provide a solid reason to speculate that the genetic foundation of intelligence is eroding.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Are other factors influencing the genetic component of intelligence?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A central tenet of both Crabtree's essay and the popular science reporting on this topic is that modern (and future) humans lack the genetic foundation of intelligence that their ancestors had. Crabtree's &amp;quot;use it or lose it&amp;quot; model of mutation pressure does not capture all of the genetic processes that influence traits such as intelligence. For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Inbreeding depression:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Loss-of-function mutations like those discussed by Crabtree tend to be masked by heterozygosity. Therefore, inbreeding can result in more individuals exhibiting these intellectual problems, as has been documented for populations such as Ashkenazi Jews (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/canavan-disease&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Canavan Disease&lt;/a&gt;) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15624786&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;North Indian Muslims&lt;/a&gt;. Over the past few centuries, homozygosity in the human population has probably decreased as a result of population growth, inter-continental migration, and urbanization; however, I cannot find measurements of this effect. Likewise, I cannot find any broad study of how these changes in homozygosity levels might affect the distribution of intellectual capabilities. If Crabtree is correct about how common these loss-of-function mutations are, then we might expect them to be common throughout the human population. Crabtree argued that the developmental genetics of the nervous system are such that loss-of-function intellectual deficiencies may be evident in heterozygous individuals, which would make inbreeding less important. Increasing heterozygosity has been proposed as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17638507&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cause for the Flynn effect&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Assortative mating:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Charles Murray, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/the-truth-about-income-inequality-in-america/252892/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Coming Apart&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, has proposed that humans are increasingly mating with people of similar intelligence, which may greatly increase the variation of intelligence within the human population (meaning more very smart people and more very stupid people).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That brings us to the role of homogamy -- interbreeding of individuals&#xA;with like characteristics. Drawing on the extensive technical&#xA;literature and the CPS, sociologists Christine Schwartz and Robert&#xA;Mare examined trends in &amp;quot;assortative marriage,&amp;quot; as it is known in the&#xA;jargon, from 1940 to 2003. They found that homogamy has increased at&#xA;both ends of the educational scale -- college graduates grew more&#xA;likely to marry college graduates and high school dropouts grew more&#xA;likely to marry other high school dropouts. In 1960, just 3 percent of&#xA;American couples both had a college degree. By 2010, that proportion&#xA;stood at 25 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not just that college graduates are likely to marry college&#xA;graduates, but that graduates from elite colleges are likely to marry&#xA;other graduates from elite colleges. Increased educational homogamy&#xA;inevitably means increased cognitive homogamy. On average, children&#xA;are neither as smart nor as dumb as their parents. They are closer to&#xA;the middle. This tendency is called regression to the mean. In 2010,&#xA;87 percent of the students with 700-plus scores in Critical Reading or&#xA;Mathematics had a parent with a college degree, and 57 percent had a&#xA;parent with a graduate degree. Those percentages could have been&#xA;predicted pretty closely just by knowing the facts about the IQs&#xA;associated with different educational levels and the correlation&#xA;between parental and child IQ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is not subject to refutation: Highly disproportionate&#xA;numbers of exceptionally able children in the next generation will&#xA;come from parents in the upper-middle class, and more specifically&#xA;from parents who are already part of the broad elite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Implicit eugenics:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our society often places intelligent (or highly educated) people into low-risk occupations while relegating less intelligent (or educated) people to high risk jobs. Here I will treat educational attainment as a proxy for intelligence, which is itself a proxy for the genes that promote intelligence. The purpose is not to demonstrate that intelligence increases the odds of raising healthy children to adulthood, only to show that there are plenty of opportunities for intelligence to have an impact on the likelihood that a person has children, and that these children are likely to survive to adulthood. Sometimes this discrimination is intentional, such as when participation in higher education was grounds for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/peace/conscientiousobjection/MilitaryClassifications.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;deferment from the military draft&lt;/a&gt;. Sometimes this  discrimination is the result of uncoordinated market forces, where less intelligent/educated people have fewer opportunities to earn &lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/dangerous-jobs-pay-well-over-50000-year-without-6651714.html?cat=3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;high wages while performing a safe job&lt;/a&gt;. The Department of Labor provides information showing that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/cfoi_08092007.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;highest fatality rates&lt;/a&gt; (page 4) are found among industries that are typically not associated with high educational attainment (e.g. construction, mining, trucking, and fishing). Conversely, many people are probably turned away from these jobs exactly because they are not intelligent or emotionally stable enough to work in these dangerous conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16282" LastEditorUserId="50794" LastEditDate="2022-09-29T15:36:58.683" LastActivityDate="2022-09-29T15:36:58.683" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18569" CreationDate="2013-11-23T18:12:05.723" Score="26" ViewCount="20773" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/22/people-getting-dumber-human-intelligence-victoria-era_n_3293846.html&quot;&gt;People Getting Dumber? Human Intelligence Has Declined Since Victorian Era, Research Suggests&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As for Dr. te Nijenhuis and colleagues, they analyzed the results of 14 intelligence studies conducted between 1884 to 2004, including one by Sir Francis Galton, an English anthropologist and a cousin of Charles Darwin. Each study gauged participants' so-called visual reaction times -- how long it took them to press a button in response to seeing a stimulus. &lt;strong&gt;Reaction time reflects a person's mental processing speed, and so is considered an indication of general intelligence.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the correlation between this type of &quot;reaction time&quot; test and &quot;general intelligence&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is such a correlation, should that imply that elite sports-players (e.g. of sports which require good reaction time, such as cricket, squash, baseball, boxing, etc.) tend to be abnormally able to succeed in endeavours such as academia, which may be presumed to correlate with &quot;intelligence&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T13:30:10.817" Title="Is reaction time correlated with intelligence?" Tags="|intelligence|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18490" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23016" CreationDate="2013-11-23T19:09:54.967" Score="21" ViewCount="3844" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm Italian and, as you know, we make a big deal out of coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found some people to be very much convinced that ground coffee preserves its taste better when stored in the fridge. On the other hand, there's a whole lot of other people claiming the exact opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncausa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=70&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Coffee Association&lt;/a&gt;, suggests &lt;em&gt;airtight and cool&lt;/em&gt; but it discourages the refrigerator, in order to avoid the contact with moisture. But if the container is airtight, shouldn't this issue be greatly mitigated? The fridge looks like a great candidate for the &lt;em&gt;cool&lt;/em&gt; requirement, and an airtight container seems to be a good solution to the moisture issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another downside, as mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brewplus.com/coffee/how-to-store-your-coffee-powder-some-obvious-tips-and-pointers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in this article&lt;/a&gt;, is that coffee tends to catch odors. Again, this issue can be easily overcome with the help of a sealed container.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, Lavazza (a big Italian manufacturer of coffee products) explicitly advises to keep the coffee &lt;em&gt;in the fridge in an airtight opaque container&lt;/em&gt; in a &lt;em&gt;Tip for freshness&lt;/em&gt; section on its packages. (click to see the full-size picture)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://images.iherb.com/l/LZZ-01275-3.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/v4QDdm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I couldn't find satisfying scientific support to either claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is storing coffee in an airtight container in the fridge the best way to preserve its flavor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16297" LastEditorUserId="16297" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T16:04:31.530" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T18:06:31.840" Title="Does storing ground coffee in the fridge preserve its flavor better?" Tags="|nutrition|marketing|coffee|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18491" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-23T20:10:34.130" Score="9" ViewCount="1388" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is motivated by two other questions that hinged on this one but did not explicitly ask the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13663/is-intelligence-declining-due-to-the-lack-of-selection-pressure/18488&quot;&gt;Is intelligence declining due to the lack of selection pressure?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1853/is-human-evolution-slowing-down&quot;&gt;Is human evolution slowing down?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two questions actually hit two sides of the same coin. The first asks whether natural selection is sufficiently strong to prevent deterioration of adaptive traits due to mutation pressure. The second asks whether novel beneficial traits are spreading in the human population. Both ultimately depend on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/%E2%80%8Brsif.2008.0248&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;strength of natural section and the effective population size&lt;/a&gt;. These determine whether a genetic variant subject to natural selection persists or disappears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Natural selection requires the existence of heritable variation in reproductive rate (i.e. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecundity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fecundity&lt;/a&gt;). People frequently claim that this variation has been greatly reduced in modern human society. Here, I will think out-loud about the factors that may influence the level of heritable variation in fecundity, in the hopes of guiding someone to an answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most common claim along these lines is that the variation in reproductive rates has substantially decreased, and therefore natural selection cannot act on genetic variation in the population. This claim is first based on the fact that in wealthy societies, a larger fraction of people are surviving to adulthood, thereby reducing selection on traits linked to childhood mortality. Complementing this is the fact that large families are less common than in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see any way to interpret this supposed reduction in reproductive variability without information of how heritable traits contribute to this variability. Even if there were greater variation in the past, it could have been due to &quot;luck&quot; (i.e. stochasticity in the environment), not any genetic variation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the extent that there is variation in reproduction rates among humans, much of it occurs at at the level of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/10/31/how-the-worlds-populations-are-changing-in-one-map/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;entire societies&lt;/a&gt; and be driven by cultural and economic factors. Therefore it is not be due to the genetic variations of humans within those societies. It's unclear when this pattern first developed. It also is unclear if this negates natural selection, since between-group variation could theoretically allow for kin selection. While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nicheconstruction.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;culture and capital&lt;/a&gt; may be considered &quot;heritable variation&quot;, let's limit ourselves to genetic variation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if these developments are reducing the scope for natural selection in today's society, it is unclear whether these conditions will persist over an evolutionarily relevant timescale (hundreds of generations). For instance, Western Europe today has very low levels of pre-reproductive mortality, but had very high rates of mortality 2-3 generations ago. Likewise, the Chinese state has placed strict limits on the upper reproductive rate within the population it rules, yet this has been followed by a substantial imbalance in male:female ratio, which will likely produce substantial variation in the reproductive rate of males in that population (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/15636231&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;similar sex imbalances exist in other countries)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor to consider is that today's human population is much larger than in the past, and is less structured. We can expect continued population growth for the near future, and continued mixing of subpopulations, thereby reducing linkage disequilibrium. Both of these factors increase the amount of genetic variation on which natural selection can act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll shut up now and restate my question. Is there any solid evidence that natural selection is having a reduced impact on modern human populations? One line of evidence would be to actually measure the impact of natural selection on various traits, but I really doubt that this is possible. It will be especially difficult to detect a change that has started only a few generations ago. An alternative form of evidence would be a thorough consideration of the factors that are believed to affect the efficacy of natural selection, how they have changed, and what their combined impact is on natural selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16282" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T16:13:55.623" Title="Does natural selection have less impact on modern humans?" Tags="|biology|evolution|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4498" CreationDate="2013-11-24T21:49:05.153" Score="32" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is torture useful in interrogation? Is it feasible to torture accurate information out of people? Is it feasible to determine whether the information is likely accurate without outside confirmation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If torture is used then it is sometimes useful. Information obtained from torture may or may not be accurate, and requires outside confirmation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Can interrogators determine whether information is accurate?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The subject may not know the truth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The subject may not tell the truth&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf&quot;&gt;INTELLIGENCE SCIENCE BOARD, EDUCING INFORMATION: INTERROGATION, SCI­ENCE AND ART National Defense Intelligence College Press (2006)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chapter 3 discusses whether human interrogators can tell whether they are being deceived; and concludes, &quot;not reliably&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;We do not really know what we think we know.&lt;/em&gt; Overall, knowledge of &#xA;  behavioral indicators that might assist in the detection of deception is very limited &#xA;  and provides little reliable information that could assist intelligence collectors &#xA;  operating anywhere outside the United States or Europe. Despite some progress &#xA;  in the ability to assess common criminals, results gleaned from the domestic &#xA;  population of criminals and college undergraduates may help us little in dealing &#xA;  with uncooperative detained soldiers or committed and possibly resistance-trained &#xA;  followers of radical movements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Very little is actually known about current populations of interest. In addition, &#xA;  this review failed to locate a single study examining the impact on deception &#xA;  detection of using interpreters/translators in questioning subjects. There is little &#xA;  reason to assume that data generalize across cultures, particularly Third World &#xA;  populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;outside the United States or Europe&quot; is a reference to earlier in the chapter where it talks about language barriers (the interrogator not being fluent in the subject's language) and cultural barriers (the interrogator not being fluent in the subject's culture, religion, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chapter includes many statements such as,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;People who adopt the belief that there are reliable cues to deception are &#xA;  frequently incorrect.&lt;/em&gt; Significant research has studied people’s beliefs about &#xA;  indicators that someone is being deceptive and their own attitudes and confidence &#xA;  about their personal ability to be deceptive. A summary of 57 studies examining &#xA;  beliefs about nonverbal cues to deception indicated that many people do not &#xA;  actually know what they think they know: in other words, their beliefs are &#xA;  just as often wrong as they are right.36 These patterns of erroneous beliefs are &#xA;  widespread and are found equally among professional interrogators/investigators &#xA;  and novices.7&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chapter 4 discusses whether there are mechanical aids to detect deception. It discusses many, including polygraphs, sodium pentothal, MRIs and PET scans, etc. It concludes,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus, despite the polygraph’s shortcomings, there is currently no viable &#xA;  technical alternative to polygraphy. After reviewing the EEG and fMRI deception &#xA;  detection efforts, as well as some other psychophysiological candidate techniques &#xA;  (e.g., VSA), the National Research Council concluded that “some of the potential &#xA;  alternatives show promise, but none has yet been shown to outperform the &#xA;  polygraph&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The polygraph isn't wholly reliable. Earlier in the chapter, it says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The accuracy of the polygraph is a matter of controversy. Some researchers &#xA;  believe that the current system with the CQT is no better than chance&#xA;  (c.f. BenShakhar, 1991; Furedy, 1996; Saxe, 1991).&#xA;  Other researchers estimate the accuracy &#xA;  at 75% to 80% (i.e., one error, on average, in four to ﬁ ve trials): Elaad and others &#xA;  (1992) with the GKT/CIT, MacLaren (2001) with the GKT/CIT, and Patrick and &#xA;  Iacono (1991) with the CQT. Supreme Court Justice John P. Stevens found “a host &#xA;  of studies that place the reliability of polygraph tests at 85 to 90 percent” (United &#xA;  States v. Scheffer, 523 U.S. 303, 333, quoted in Greeley, 2004, p. 129). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Is there scientific evidence that torture works?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 10 of Ibid states that there hasn't [yet] been [published] scientific investigation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eduction practices are methods, techniques, procedures, strategies, etc., &#xA;  employed as part of interviews and interrogations to draw out information &#xA;  from subjects, some of whom may initially be unwilling to provide information. Obviously educed information can provide an important source of &#xA;  HUMINT. Surprisingly, the last forty years have seen almost no scientific &#xA;  research examining eduction practices. Rather, our current knowledge is &#xA;  based on feedback and lessons learned from field experience. The “interrogation approaches” taught in standard interrogation training (e.g., Army &#xA;  Field Manual 34-52) have remained largely unchanged since World War &#xA;  II.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper argues two points: first, that scientific investigation of eduction &#xA;  practices is needed to supplement lessons learned from field experience, &#xA;  and second, that various research venues are available to examine these &#xA;  practices. Research approaches could include both retrospective analyses &#xA;  of data about past interrogations (including those that used harsh methods) &#xA;  and new studies that relate different eduction practices to the value of information obtained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It suggests that such research could be (but hasn't been) made, using as datum the records of past interrogations (including e.g. interrogations of American POWs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Is torture sometimes useful?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anecdotal evidence suggests &quot;yes&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the goal is short-term&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When the information can be verified externally&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/torturecardozo.pdf&quot;&gt;EVIDENCE GAINED FROM TORTURE:&#xA;WISHFUL THINKING, CHECKABILITY,&#xA;AND EXTREME CIRCUMSTANCES&lt;/a&gt; cites the following story,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another case, not exactly of torture, but of truth confessed &#xA;  under extreme duress (hence logically very similar), is from opera­&#xA;  tions against the Tamil Tigers. It involved a literal ticking bomb &#xA;  scenario: a security forces unit apprehended three terrorists who it &#xA;  suspected of planting a bomb somewhere in a city. They were &#xA;  brought before the officer in charge: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;He asked them where the bomb was. The terrorists-highly &#xA;    dedicated and steeled to resist interrogation-remained silent. &#xA;    [He] asked the question again, advising them that if they did not &#xA;    tell him what he wanted to know, he would kill them. They &#xA;    were unmoved. So [he] took his pistol from his gun belt, &#xA;    pointed it at the forehead of one of them, and shot him dead. &#xA;    The other two, he said, talked immediately; the bomb, which &#xA;    had been placed in a crowded railway station and set to explode &#xA;    during the evening rush hour, was found and defused, and &#xA;    countless lives were saved.16 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It mentions a case where torture has been effective in American civilian police-work,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Torture is not restricted to operations against terrorists; it is &#xA;  also resorted to in more mundane police work. In Leon v. Wain­&#xA;  wright, the Eleventh Circuit considered a case where the police ap­&#xA;  prehended one of two kidnappers of a taxi driver while the &#xA;  kidnapper was collecting ransom. The court found that when [the &#xA;  kidnapper] refused to tell them [the police] the location, he was set &#xA;  upon by several of the officers. .. [T]hey threatened and physi­&#xA;  cally abused him by twisting his arm and choking him until he re­&#xA;  vealed where [the taxi driver] was being held.21 The court held &#xA;  these actions to be reasonable given the &quot;immediate necessity&quot; to &#xA;  save the driver's life. The important point is that the information &#xA;  confessed turned out to be true.22 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also mentions a case where information obtained was unreliable or misleading,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is possible to find, on the other hand, cases in which infor­mation gained under torture by experienced interrogators turned &#xA;  out to be false. A case that proved significant for the intelligence &#xA;  failures in the lead-up to the Iraq War is that of Ibn al-Shaykh al­&#xA;  Libi, a Libyan al-Qaeda operative captured while fleeing Afghani­stan around the end of 2001. Al-Libi later claimed that, under tor­ture, he fabricated evidence that Iraq had provided chemical and &#xA;  biological warfare training to al-Qaeda. This evidence appears to &#xA;  have been a main source of false claims by President Bush that &#xA;  there were links between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Based on the incom­plete evidence available, it appears that al-Libi did fabricate such &#xA;  evidence under torture or the threat of torture. However, it is un­clear whether he did so to avoid torture, as in the classic scenario &#xA;  of a tortured interrogee telling the interrogator anything he wants &#xA;  to hear, or whether he did so deliberately to encourage the United &#xA;  States to invade Iraq and thus radicalize the Arab world.23 Despite &#xA;  the fragmentary nature of these cases, they suggest, when taken as &#xA;  a whole, that the reliability of evidence gained from torture should &#xA;  not be dismissed on the basis that an interrogee will confess to &#xA;  anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-11-24T21:49:05.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18504" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-25T11:55:32.117" Score="16" ViewCount="440" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trueactivist.com/gab_gallery/soon-there-will-be-no-fish-left-ending-overfishing/?utm_source=facebook.com&amp;amp;awesm=fbshare.me_iJ0N&amp;amp;utm_content=fbshare-js-large&amp;amp;utm_campaign&amp;amp;utm_medium=fbshare.me-facebook-post&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; video only 10% of the fish biomass that was in the ocean during the pre-industrial era is left, due to overfishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim seems to be based on a study by &lt;a href=&quot;http://wormlab.biology.dal.ca/ramweb/papers-total/nature01610_r.pdf&quot;&gt;Myers and Worm&lt;/a&gt; which has been published &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v423/n6937/abs/nature01610.html&quot;&gt;2003 in Nature&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seemed overblown to me. And at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://fishtruth.net/BigFishGone.htm&quot;&gt;one source&lt;/a&gt; (admittedly a somewhat activist looking website on the other end of the spectrum) claims, that there have been big problems with the study. &#xA;It cites three further papers (Walters (2003), Hampton et al. (2005), and Polacheck (2006)), which I have not looked into.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the 90% figure true, completely overblown or lies the truth somewhere in between?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7752" LastEditorUserId="7752" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T15:42:36.797" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T16:57:42.983" Title="Is 90% of the large fish biomass gone, when compared to pre-industrial levels?" Tags="|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18506" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18521" CreationDate="2013-11-25T15:50:17.270" Score="10" ViewCount="1436" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm seeing a few reports, which appear to primarily stem from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onislam.net/english/news/africa/466297-angola-bans-islam-destroys-mosques.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this report on a site called onislam.net&lt;/a&gt;, which claim that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angola&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Angola&lt;/a&gt; has destroyed (or is set to destroy) all its mosques and has banned the religion of Islam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“This is the final end of Islamic influence in our country,” President José Eduardo dos Santos was quoted by Osun Defender newspaper on Sunday, November 24.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last October, Muslims from the urban municipality of Viana, Luanda, attended the destruction of the minaret of their mosque Zengo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The provincial governor of Luanda, Bento Bento, has also said on the airwaves of a local radio that &amp;quot;radical Muslims are not welcome in Angola and the Angolan government is not ready for the legalization of mosques.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He added that Muslims were not welcome in Angola and that the government would not legalize the presence of mosques in the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sources are sketchy and most of the (few) other news sites that are reporting this story either cite onislam.net or point to unnamed news sources. I can't see any first-hand reports on this story from any reliable, mainstream sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it true? Has the country of Angola destroyed all its mosques and banned Islam itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T13:27:16.090" Title="Has Angola destroyed all its mosques and banned Islam itself?" Tags="|religion|politics|islam|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18507" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18508" CreationDate="2013-11-25T19:02:46.840" Score="15" ViewCount="1455" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dannen.com/decision/hst-jl25.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;his diary entry for July 25, 1945&lt;/a&gt;, US President &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harry S. Truman&lt;/a&gt; wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Truman believe that the bomb was not going to be used on civilians?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T12:11:29.370" Title="Was Truman told that the first atom bomb was going to be used on a military target?" Tags="|history|united-states|japan|nuclear-weapons|world-war-ii|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18507" CreationDate="2013-11-25T22:32:46.683" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a letter, dated the day before the diary entry, which describes Hiroshima as 'an &quot;Army&quot; city':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?documentdate=1945-07-24&amp;amp;documentid=31&amp;amp;studycollectionid=abomb&amp;amp;pagenumber=1&quot;&gt;John Stone to General Arnold, July 24, 1945. Subject File, Atomic Bomb Collection&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) Hiroshima (population 350,000) is an &quot;Army&quot; city; a major POE; has large QM and supply depots; has considerable industry and several small shipyards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the minutes of the meeting in which those targets were chosen: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dannen.com/decision/targets.html&quot;&gt;Minutes of the second meeting of the Target Committee&#xA;Los Alamos, May 10-11, 1945&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the minutes of this meeting, note that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They decided that a military target must be within a built-up area.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kyoto was the number 1 target on the original list selected by the committee.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, although the diary entry says &quot;purely military&quot; perhaps you should read that in the context of the previous paragraph: they decided to bomb 'an &quot;Army&quot; city' instead of the capital cities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see no evidence that he was &quot;fooled&quot; by his staff about what the target was. IMO, the simpler hypothesis (simpler than a conspiracy theory) is that he viewed Hiroshima as a (relatively) &quot;military&quot; target, albeit a city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-11-25T23:15:32.063" LastActivityDate="2013-11-25T23:15:32.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18468" CreationDate="2013-11-26T00:38:07.457" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following articles suggest that dinosaurs breathed efficiently, like birds do still: which allowed them to cope with low oxygen levels that killed off other species.&#xA;Note that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webcitation.org/6ESilGnVV&quot;&gt;some birds are able to breathe and fly at 20,000 feet&lt;/a&gt;, where the oxygen is lower (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1114067/figure/FN0x97c9610.0x9bb8c18/&quot;&gt;less than half sea-level pressure&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.walkingwithdinosaurs.com/news/post/did-all-dinosaurs-breathe-like-birds/&quot;&gt;BBC Earth - Did all dinosaurs breathe like birds?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BIRDS EVOLVED from carnivorous theropod dinosaurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Living birds have a very unusual system of respiration, which sets&#xA;  them apart from all other animals: their lungs are unidirectional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In birds, the unidirectional nature of the lung means that air with&#xA;  oxygen passes through the lungs during inhalation and exhalation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Birds can do this because they have a system of air sacs that connect&#xA;  to the lungs, which store air during the entire breathing cycle.&#xA;  During inhalation, oxygen-rich air passes through the lungs directly&#xA;  from the trachea, but during exhalation other oxygen-rich air that had&#xA;  been stored in air sacs passes across the lungs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Their lung is remarkably efficient at getting lots of oxygen into the&#xA;  blood. This is important because birds fly, and flight is an activity&#xA;  that requires a lot of energy and an elevated metabolism, both of&#xA;  which require a large quantity of oxygen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So did dinosaurs have this type of lung? Some dinosaurs definitely&#xA;  did. We know that because the air sacs often leave characteristic&#xA;  traces on the bones, which fossilise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In many birds and dinosaurs the air sacs are actually inside the bones&#xA;  themselves, hollowing out the centre. We can see these internal&#xA;  sinuses, as well as the circular or oval-shaped openings that lead&#xA;  into them, in many bones of theropod and sauropod dinosaurs. This is&#xA;  clear evidence that they had a bird-like lung.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are not so sure about ornithischians, such as the horned dinosaurs&#xA;  and duck-billed dinosaurs. Their bones do not have the hollow centres&#xA;  and circular or ovoid ‘foramina’ that are so often seen in the bones&#xA;  of theropods and sauropods. This may mean that ornithischians breathed&#xA;  very differently compared to other dinosaurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is an important question about dinosaur biology that is currently&#xA;  the subject of much research by palaeontologists, so keep your eyes&#xA;  peeled!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2003/11/03/980837.htm&quot;&gt;ABC Science - Did low oxygen give dinosaurs a boost?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Low oxygen levels could have triggered two giant extinctions hundreds&#xA;  of millions of years ago, allowing the dinosaurs to reign supreme over&#xA;  the ancestors of mammals, a U.S. researcher says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;University of Washington palaeontologist, Dr Peter Ward, presents his&#xA;  argument to a meeting of the Geological Society of America in Seattle,&#xA;  Washington this week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dinosaurs first appeared during a long period of low oxygen and&#xA;  therefore developed highly efficient breathing mechanisms that allowed&#xA;  them to thrive while many other species became extinct. Ward arrived&#xA;  at his theory by tying in what is known about the physiology of&#xA;  dinosaurs with recent geological evidence suggesting that from 275&#xA;  million to 175 million years ago, oxygen levels stayed very low -&#xA;  comparable to levels found now at altitudes of 4,200 metres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ward believes low oxygen and hot greenhouse conditions caused by&#xA;  intense volcanic activity may have caused widespread extinctions 250&#xA;  million years ago, at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic&#xA;  periods, and about 200 million years ago, at the boundary between the&#xA;  Triassic and Jurassic periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ward said he put together three pieces of the puzzle - the extremely&#xA;  efficient breathing systems of birds, the finding that many dinosaurs&#xA;  had similar physiology, and a report that came out earlier this year&#xA;  showing that oxygen levels were low during the two extinctions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Someone told me they had heard of or seen geese flying above [Mount]&#xA;  Everest - at 31,000 feet [10,000 metres],&quot; said Ward, pointing out the&#xA;  air at this altitude was very thin. &quot;If you put a human at 30,000 feet&#xA;  they'd be very, very, quite dead. And the birds are not only up there,&#xA;  they are doing major heavy exercise.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Birds and dinosaurs both have holes in their bones. And many of the&#xA;  largest dinosaurs, such as brontosaurus or apatosaurus, seem to have&#xA;  had lungs attached to a series of thin-walled air sacs that may have&#xA;  acted something like bellows to move air through the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The reason the birds developed these systems is that they arose from&#xA;  dinosaurs halfway through the Jurassic Period. They are how the&#xA;  dinosaurs survived,&quot; Ward said. &quot;The literature always said that the&#xA;  reason birds had sacs was so they could breathe when they fly. But I&#xA;  don't know of any brontosaurus that could fly.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;However, when we considered that birds fly at altitudes where oxygen&#xA;  is significantly lower, we finally put it all together with the fact&#xA;  that the oxygen level at the surface was only 10% to 11% at the time&#xA;  the dinosaurs evolved.&quot; Currently at sea level, atmospheric oxygen&#xA;  levels are 21%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If giant dinosaurs had to breathe in a low-atmosphere environment,&#xA;  then such an efficient breathing system would have given them a&#xA;  survival advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You'd be really favoured for survival in very bad, nasty, low-oxygen&#xA;  world,&quot; Ward said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T00:38:07.457" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18511" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-26T03:37:45.307" Score="5" ViewCount="578" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does eating cheese help one to fall asleep or have a sound sleep?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sharecare.com/health/sleep-health/can-cheese-crackers-help-sleep&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Oz it does&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cheese and 100% whole grain crackers are your best bedtime-snack bet. The whole grains help produce serotonin. Cheese, like other dairy products, contains tryptophan. Together, they make for a winning combination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to realbeauty.com &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realbeauty.com/health/wellness/sleep-inducing-foods#slide-4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;it doesn't&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a nap is in your future, steer clear of Parmesan, Romano, Asiago, and other hard cheeses (basically, all the yummy smelly ones!). The high levels of the amino acid tyramine are known to keep you up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pong Cheese seem to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pongcheese.co.uk/the-big-cheese/articles/does-cheese-make-for-sweet-dreams.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;second the claims&lt;/a&gt; made by RealBeauty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cheese contains naturally high levels of an amino acid called Tryptophan. It is from Tryptophan that our brains manufacture the chemical Serotonin which is vital for our well-being and mental stability. Tryptophan can be bought in natural food stores for the treatment of symptoms of depression, Seasonal Affective Disorder and Pre-Menstrual Tension as well as helping with relaxation, restfulness, and a good night's sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related Questions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13643/does-the-combination-of-red-wine-and-cheese-cause-bad-dreams&quot;&gt;Does the combination of red wine and cheese cause bad dreams?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2111/does-eating-just-before-sleeping-cause-nightmares&quot;&gt;Does eating just before sleeping cause nightmares?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T07:59:35.043" Title="Does eating cheese help one to fall asleep or have a sound sleep?" Tags="|nutrition|sleep|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18513" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8929" CreationDate="2013-11-26T14:20:54.333" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR:&lt;/strong&gt; No, it is not more than 100 % efficient, the test performed was probably invalidated by using a heat meter assuming water as a heat transfer fluid, while propylene glycol/water mixture was actually used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Detailed:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some details about how &lt;a href=&quot;http://stafor.eu/wpic/documents/COP_test_protocol_CZECH.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;test was performed&lt;/a&gt; can be found on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://jaromir-bednar.webnode.cz/produkty/kotle-stafor/dokumenty/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Czech reseller site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ion boiler STAFOR 3-5&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Circulation pump Vilo 25/7&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Radiator Korad T22 300/400 500w&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ion boiler control panel STAFOR 3-5&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Heat meter Dunfos Sonometer 1100&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Electricity analyzer Fluke 430&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Thermostatic sensor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Hydraulic protection group&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Performance checking stand made from copper pipes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details about how those pieces were connected are not described, but most likely it was more or less what can be seen in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgm7hXbULV8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the YouTube video&lt;/a&gt; at 0:07.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When checking for individual pieces of equipment used, one thing looks very suspicious, and that is &lt;a href=&quot;http://heating.danfoss.com/PCMPDF/VDSHJ502_Sonometer_1100-DS-1303_lores.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Danfoss Sonometer 1100&lt;/a&gt; is intended to be used with water as a circulation medium. In this test a different liquid was almost certainly used, as the liquid required by the boiler to operate is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stafor.lv/ion/index.php?part=5&amp;amp;lng=en&amp;amp;part2=17&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;heat carrier STATERM EKO E40&lt;/a&gt;, which is &quot;made on the basis of propylene&quot;.  By &quot;propylene&quot; the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propylene_glycol&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;propylene glycol&lt;/a&gt; is most likely meant here (melting point -59°C), which is commonly used as a Heat-Transfer Fluid (it could hardly be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propene&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a propene&lt;/a&gt;, which is highly flammable gas with boiling point of -47.6°C.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the ultrasonic heat meters compute the energy by measuring flow and temperature and multiplying measured volume with specific heat capacity, by assuming water properties on Propylene Glycol water solution an error is made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/propylene-glycol-d_363.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Propylene Glycol based Heat-Transfer Fluid&lt;/a&gt; with boiling point 120°C is approx. 85 % Propylene Glycol (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lyondellbasell.com/techlit/techlit/2519.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Boiling Point of Aqueous Propylene Glycol Solutions&lt;/a&gt;), with specific heat capacity 2.51*0.85+4.18*(1-0.85) J/(gK) = 2.76 J/(gK) (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=propylene%20glycol%20specific%20heat%20capacity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;propylene glycol specific heat capacity&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=water%20specific%20heat%20capacity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;water specific heat capacity&lt;/a&gt;), which is 1.51 x lower than water heat capacity, therefore apparent heat transfer is approx. 1.51 x higher than it really is. Given Propylene Glycol concentration is not given, I only estimate it, I found the result close enough to be likely explanation of the 1,57 COP result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T18:37:40.530" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T18:37:40.530" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18514" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18515" CreationDate="2013-11-26T17:26:42.077" Score="12" ViewCount="49047" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Twitter account named &lt;em&gt;History in Pictures&lt;/em&gt; (followed by 515,501 users) &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/HistoryInPics/status/405221862872870912&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tweeted the following&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;President Obama was known to be heavy marijuana smoker in his teen &amp;amp; college days. His nickname was &quot;Barack Oganja&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following image accompanied the text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dXBKm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I write this, the tweet has been retweeted 4,174 times and favourited 2,448 times. This claim has also been made on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/fact5/posts/366700466713262&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; (332,000 likes) and other &lt;a href=&quot;http://inagist.com/all/264579603518070785/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;random sites&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is that Barack Obama in the photograph?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has he been known to smoke pot? Heavily?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was he ever nicknamed Barack Oganja?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this is completely fabricated, please (try to) point out the source of this rumour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-12-10T16:48:47.067" LastActivityDate="2015-11-29T09:33:11.503" Title="Was Barack Obama nicknamed Barack Oganja?" Tags="|barack-obama|marijuana|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18514" CreationDate="2013-11-26T17:48:20.007" Score="20" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1866765_1815174,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yes, this is Barack Obama&lt;/a&gt;. It is a photo by Lisa Jack, taken in 1980 at Occidental College. (From Lisa Jack's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mbart.com/artists/_Lisa%20Jack/_artist-statement/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;artist statement&lt;/a&gt;.) The work was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mbart.com/artists/_Lisa%20Jack/_other%20works/_3244,14/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;exhibited at M+B Gallery in West Hollywood&lt;/a&gt;, among other places.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;He has been known to smoke pot: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpBzQI_7ez8&amp;amp;t=57&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;I inhaled, frequently. That was the point.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can find no evidence in any text online that the claim is true. (This does not prove that it is false, though.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first online reference that I could find to &quot;Barack Oganja&quot; as an early nickname for Barack Obama is on May 18, 2012:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/fact5/posts/366700466713262&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.facebook.com/fact5/posts/366700466713262&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/FactBoook/status/203585034484068352&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://twitter.com/FactBoook/status/203585034484068352&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is consistent with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=barack%20oganja#q=barack%20oganja&amp;amp;cmpt=q&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Trends&lt;/a&gt; not showing any activity for this term before June 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9whJ0.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One individual created this nickname for themself prior to 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://soundcloud.com/madfatdubsbro&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://soundcloud.com/madfatdubsbro&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One user attributed a Barack Obama quote to &quot;Barack Oganja&quot; on December 4, 2011, but didn't claim it was a nickname from his younger years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://freak.no/forum/showpost.php?s=6445eb8566606c81c72b80e19cd1b731&amp;amp;p=2364430&amp;amp;postcount=20&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://freak.no/forum/showpost.php?s=6445eb8566606c81c72b80e19cd1b731&amp;amp;p=2364430&amp;amp;postcount=20&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two marijuana growers named a strain of marijuana &quot;Barack Oganja&quot; (reported December 4, 2009)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Life/93793-weed-grows-in-Boston/?page=4#TOPCONTENT&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Life/93793-weed-grows-in-Boston/?page=4#TOPCONTENT&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One blog called Barack Obama &quot;Barack O-Ganja&quot; in a headline on October 26, 2009, but didn't connect it to a nickname from Obama's earlier years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theburbslife.com/2009/10/states-dealing-with-new-ganja-law/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://theburbslife.com/2009/10/states-dealing-with-new-ganja-law/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-12-11T17:31:52.727" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T17:31:52.727" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18516" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18517" CreationDate="2013-11-26T18:07:58.027" Score="3" ViewCount="1087" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/131124/football-jordanian-player-19-dies-during-game-club&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; site and some others:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Qusai Emad al-Khawalda died from lack of oxygen after swallowing his tongue during the first half of the match with Al-Jazeera in Amman, Faisaly official Ihab al-Khalili told AFP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible to swallow your tongue, since the frenulum would prevent it from going that far? And will you really sufocate if you do it, or the muscle will become flacid as you loose concious and then someone could bring it back to position ?f&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4146" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T18:26:05.553" Title="Is it possible to &quot;swallow&quot; your tongue?" Tags="|mortality|suffocation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18516" CreationDate="2013-11-26T18:26:05.553" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/health/22real.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/health/22real.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Swallowing the tongue is virtually impossible. In the human mouth, a small piece of tissue called the frenulum linguae, which sits behind the teeth and under the tongue, keeps the tongue in place, even during a seizure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-11-26T18:26:05.553" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18518" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-26T19:47:07.540" Score="15" ViewCount="4252" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always thought drinking warm milk before going to bed helps one fall asleep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.recapo.com/dr-oz/dr-oz-advice/dr-oz-housewives-health-myths-debunked-does-warm-milk-induce-sleep/&quot;&gt;Dr.Oz's friend, it does&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. Oz talked with a sleep expert who said warm milk will help you&#xA;  fall asleep at night. The milk helps you fall asleep because it&#xA;  contains small amounts of tryptophan and melatonin, both of which help&#xA;  you sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.zocdoc.com/answers/7860/does-drinking-warm-milk-before-bed-help-insomnia&quot;&gt;zocdoc.com it does&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your mother was right that drinking warm milk before bed can help you&#xA;  sleep. This is because milk contains tryptophan, which is an amino&#xA;  acid which helps induce sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eatingwell.com/nutrition_health/nutrition_news_information/6_sleep_myths_busted?page=7&quot;&gt;Art Spielman it does not&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But when milk was tested, it failed to affect sleep patterns.&#xA;  “Tryptophan-containing foods don’t produce the hypnotic effects pure&#xA;  tryptophan does, because other amino acids in those foods compete to&#xA;  get into the brain,” explains Art Spielman, M.D., an insomnia expert&#xA;  and professor of psychology at the City University of New York.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to an article published by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/health/04real.html?_r=4&amp;amp;ex=1190088000&amp;amp;en=0b4a9d49dc75fb0b&amp;amp;ei=5070&amp;amp;emc=eta1&amp;amp;oref=slogin&amp;amp;oref=slogin&amp;amp;oref=slogin&amp;amp;&quot;&gt;Anahad O'Connor it's debatable&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But whether milk can induce sleep is debatable, and studies suggest&#xA;  that if it does, the effect has little to do with tryptophan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To have any soporific effect, tryptophan has to cross the blood-brain&#xA;  barrier. And in the presence of other amino acids, it ends up fighting&#xA;  — largely unsuccessfully — to move across.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One study by researchers at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/massachusetts_institute_of_technology/index.html?inline=nyt-org&quot;&gt;Massachusetts Institute of Technology&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  demonstrated this in 2003. The study, which was published in The&#xA;  American Journal of Clinical &lt;a href=&quot;http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/specialtopic/food-guide-pyramid/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier&quot;&gt;Nutrition&lt;/a&gt;, showed that eating&#xA;  protein-rich foods — like milk — decreased the ability of tryptophan&#xA;  to enter the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="7654" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T06:24:41.890" LastActivityDate="2017-11-23T05:05:18.547" Title="Does drinking warm milk help people fall asleep and if so what is it about it that does?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|sleep|milk|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18506" CreationDate="2013-11-27T13:27:16.090" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Islam has not been banned in Angola. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2013/11/angola-denies-reports-banning-islam-2013112782236279392.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Al Jazeera&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Angola's government has denied it had banned Islam and closed mosques in the country, after media speculation that sparked outrage among Muslims worldwide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;There is no war in Angola against Islam or any other religion,&amp;quot; said Manuel Fernando, director of the National Institute for Religious Affairs, part of the ministry of culture, on Tuesday.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There is no official position that targets the destruction or closure of places of worship, whichever they are.&amp;quot; Fernando told AFP news agency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While mosques &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; been closed/destroyed in Angola, this was apparently done due to their lack of permits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But according to the ministry of culture, those closures were related to a lack of necessary land titles, building licenses or other official documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A witness in the province of Uige (Carmona) told Al Jazeera that the closed mosques were hastility built by expatriate communities from west and north Africa who needed a place to perform Friday prayers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“It’s true that several mosques have been destroyed and others simply shut down in the last few months. &lt;strong&gt;Most of the mosques that were destroyed were built without government permission. Two authorised mosques in Luanda are still operating without a problem.&lt;/strong&gt; I have not heard of any official decision to ban Islam or prohibit Muslim prayers in mosques.” Ahmed ould Taher told Al Jazeera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it does appear that Angola does not officially recognise Islam as the number of Muslims in Angola is apparently below the required 100,000 mark. This figure might be inaccurate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The oil-rich southern African nation has a population of about 18 million people, several hundred thousand of whom are Muslims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Religious organisations are required to apply for accreditation in Angola, which currently recognises 83, all of them Christian.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In October the justice ministry rejected the applications of 194 organisations, including one from an umbrella Islamic community group.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OnIslam.net, the site that appears to be largely responsible for publicising this rumour, also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onislam.net/english/politics/africa/466375-the-reality-behind-banning-islam-in-angola.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;offers a backhanded clarification&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In light of the mentioned political and economic environment, the contended discussion of banning Islam in Angola can be discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer to this question is that Islam did not get “banned” in Angola, simply because it was not officially approved in the first place. Until this day, Angolan Muslims are not able to get government approval for their religion to be able to build mosques, secure their standing as an officially registered religious group, and gain legal religious rights, among others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-11-27T13:27:16.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18523" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-27T20:37:07.207" Score="4" ViewCount="12656" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several articles on internet claim that 80% of child's intelligence is acquired from mother. however not providing any scientific publications. Is it really true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://brooklynmutt.com/post/158024942/medical-evidence-shows-that-approximately-80-of-a&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://brooklynmutt.com/post/158024942/medical-evidence-shows-that-approximately-80-of-a&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15948" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T11:59:55.273" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T11:59:55.273" Title="Is 80% of childs intelligence acquired from mother?" Tags="|intelligence|genetics|parenting|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-09-08T10:42:16.167" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18528" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-28T14:59:56.097" Score="6" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;A study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23921675&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The relation between intelligence and religiosity: a meta-analysis and some proposed explanations&lt;/a&gt; indicates that there is a relationship, with an abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A meta-analysis of 63 studies showed a significant negative association between intelligence and religiosity. The association was stronger for college students and the general population than for participants younger than college age; it was also stronger for religious beliefs than religious behavior. For college students and the general population, means of weighted and unweighted correlations between intelligence and the strength of religious beliefs ranged from -.20 to -.25 (mean r = -.24).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though it appears the access to the article is restricted, I would nevertheless like to understand better the claims made, and the scope of this and related studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, I would like to know how sound the methods of the study are e.g. did they cherry-pick the 63 studies, or were these the only 63? Are there conflicting studies that have been left out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well, what do the authors mean by &quot;religious&quot; e.g. is the scope of the studies limited to only Christians in the USA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All to express: How convincing is the methodology of this study, or any related studies proposing to answer this question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T14:01:09.287" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T14:01:09.287" Title="Is there a negative correlation between intelligence and being religious?" Tags="|religion|intelligence|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-12-04T20:12:29.437" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18530" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-28T22:36:50.457" Score="6" ViewCount="1568" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the many arguments used to try and persuade us to drink less is that the calorific content of alcohol contributes to obesity. For example, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/alcohol/Pages/calories-in-alcohol.aspx&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; from the UK NHS Choices website argues, among many other things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regularly drinking more than the NHS recommends can have a noticeable impact on your waistline as well as cause less obvious but more serious health problems.&#xA;  Many women don’t realise that two large glasses of white wine not only puts them over the recommended daily limit for regular alcohol consumption, but also provides them with nearly 20% of their recommended daily calorie intake, at approximately 370kcal in total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most people would baulk at consuming a full glass of single cream, but wouldn’t think twice about the calorie content of a couple of pints. But the calorie content is similar and, over time, excess alcohol intake can easily contribute to gaining weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wine, beer, cider, spirits and all our favourite drinks are made from natural starch and sugar. Fermentation, and distillation for certain drinks, is used to produce the alcohol content. This helps explain why alcohol contains lots of calories – seven calories a gram in fact, almost as many as a gram of fat. And, of course, additional calories can be present in added mixer drinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tonyedwardsscience.com/the-good-news-about-booze.php&quot;&gt;new book&lt;/a&gt; argues that this is just wrong empirically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a some of the claims as summarised in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/new-book-claims-that-nightly-glass-of-wine-wont-go-straight-to-the-hips/story-fneuzkvr-1226768698384&quot;&gt;Australian news article&lt;/a&gt; (I'm sure some will say they would say that):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A six-year study of 43,500 people by the University of Denmark. Key findings: teetotallers and infrequent drinkers ended up with the biggest waistlines, daily drinkers had the smallest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An eight-year study of 49,300 women by University College Medical School, London. Key findings: women who drank below 30 grams a day (around two medium glasses of wine) were up to 24 per cent less likely to put on weight than teetotallers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A ten-year study of 7,230 people by the U.S. National Center for Disease Control. Key findings: drinkers gained less weight than non-drinkers. Alcohol intake did not increase the risk of obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a possible explanation is that the metabolic routes for alcohol digestion don't involve the production of glucose (though, obviously, some booze also contains high glycaemic index carbohydrate so will cause peaks in blood sugar).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the claim true? Does the alcohol content of drinks make no observed contribution to excess weight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T00:15:19.527" Title="Does the alcohol content of drinks make you fat?" Tags="|nutrition|physiology|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18530" CreationDate="2013-11-29T00:15:19.527" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The studies quoted in the question are observational, not interventional, and thus are not suited to address the question: &quot;does the alcohol content of drinks make you fat&quot;. To answer that question, we need an interventional study to look at the counterfactual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been done in the case of alcoholics (Lieber, 1991).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To investigate whether ethanol contributes to the body’s energy&#xA;  balance according to its caloric value of 7.1 kcal/g, the effects&#xA;  of ethanol on body weight were assessed in 14 [alcoholic] subjects given&#xA;  ethanol under metabolic-ward conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isocaloric substitution (&lt;em&gt;replacing&lt;/em&gt; calories they would have been consuming with ethanol calories) of up to 50% of the daily calorie intake resulted in a 0.9kg decrease in weight over 16 days, compared to +0.04kg increase in weight in a control group. This was statistically significant (p &amp;lt; 0.001). This experiment used 12 subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a separate experiment, 2 subjects were given 2000kcal per day of &lt;em&gt;additional&lt;/em&gt; calories in ethanol form. They gained 0.19kg over 30 days (subject 1), and 0.45kg over 11 days (subject 2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lieber's study concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Weight watchers are usually advised&#xA;  to restrict their alcohol consumption. This advice is based&#xA;  on the assumption that the calories derived from ingested ethanol&#xA;  are approximately the same as those liberated when ethanol is&#xA;  combusted in a bomb calorimeter, namely 7.1 kcal/g. This advise&#xA;  is still wise and pertinent in the case of the social drinker because&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;all of the evidence related to the above-concerning energy deficit&#xA;  pertains to the chronic abuser of large amounts of alcohol&lt;/strong&gt;. The&#xA;  energy loss seems to result either from the liver damage produced&#xA;  by alcohol and the consequent inefficient utilization of fat as&#xA;  well as other nutrients, and/or the energy wastage associated&#xA;  with the induction of microsomal pathways that results from&#xA;  the chronic consumption of substantial amounts of ethanol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Suter and Angelo, 2005) examine the broader question as it effects non-alcoholics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Epidemiologic data showed a positive, negative, or no relationship between alcohol intake and body weight. Despite the difficulty in assessing alcohol intake as well as controlling for different confounders of the energy-balance equation, the conflicting epidemiologic data can be explained in most instances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The studies you quote would fall under that description. They are three studies that show a negative relationship between alcohol intake and body weight. However, they are only part of a larger body of work that presents conflicting epidemiologic data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is their summary of epidimiological studies, organized into whether they found a positive, negative, or no relationship between alcohol intake and body weight:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/U4re1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the moderate drinker:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The experimental metabolic evidence suggests that the consumption of moderate amounts of alcohol has to be accounted for in the energy-balance equation and may represent a risk factor for the development of a positive energy balance and thus weight gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Experimental data in combination with epidemiologic findings suggest that alcohol energy counts more in moderate nondaily alcohol consumers than in some moderate daily and all heavy consumers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a large individual variation in response to alcohol, strongly influenced by genetic factors (Suter and Angelo, 2005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interventional studies would be ideal, but &quot;due to ethical reasons and the typical effects of alcohol, controlled long-term intervention studies on the effect of alcohol on body weight are difficult to perform. Accordingly, very few long-term intervention studies address the effect of alcohol on body weight regulation as the primary aim&quot; (Suter and Angelo, 2005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude that the question should be rephrased:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Accordingly the question is not “Whether alcohol calories do count” but “How much do alcohol calories count?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much alcohol calories count is highly dependant on the individual. Factors that conspire together to affect the energy balance of an individual include &quot;body weight, substrate composition of the diet, substrate oxidation capacity, genetic background, gender, and physical activity as well as the drink (i.e., frequency and amount of consumption, pattern of drinking regarding concomitant food intake)&quot;. (Suter and Angelo, 2005)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The alcohol calories count more in an overweight person, with a high-fat diet, low levels of physical activity, and a positive family history of obesity as well as a low rate of ethanol degradation.&quot; (Suter and Angelo, 2005)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lieber, Charles S. &quot;Perspectives: do alcohol calories count?.&quot; The American journal of clinical nutrition 54, no. 6 (1991): 976-982.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suter, Paolo M., and Angelo Tremblay. &quot;Is alcohol consumption a risk factor for weight gain and obesity?.&quot; Critical reviews in clinical laboratory sciences 42, no. 3 (2005): 197-227.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T00:15:19.527" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18532" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="56021" CreationDate="2013-11-29T06:40:59.620" Score="17" ViewCount="4408" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fugu is also the only food the Emperor of Japan is forbidden to eat, for his safety&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This information comes from a Forbes article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/2004/02/24/cz_af_0224health.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Killer Foods&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fish remains the only delicacy denied the emperor – too risky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems a bit fishy to me, so doing a search in Japanese, the best I could come up with was &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/wako3999/status/271914874668466176&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this anecdote&lt;/a&gt;, with my translation interspersed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;昭和天皇が自分だけフグ食べさせてもらえなくて拗ねられた話大好き。&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I love this story about Hirohito sulking because he alone couldn't eat fugu&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;侍従「陛下はだめです」&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Chamberlain: Your Majesty is forbidden&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;陛下「なんで」&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Hirohito: Why?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;侍従「毒があるので」&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;C: It's poisonous&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;陛下「みんな食べてるじゃん」&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;H: But everyone else is eating it&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;侍従「毒抜きしましたので」&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;C: The poison has been removed&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;陛下「じゃあ私も」&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;H: OK, I'll have some too&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;侍従「だめです」&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;C: It's forbidden&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;陛下「なんで」&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;H: Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tisen.jp/tisenwiki/?%B2%CF%C6%DA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;another page&lt;/a&gt; (with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ja&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;js=n&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tisen.jp%2Ftisenwiki%2F%3F%25B2%25CF%25C6%25DA&amp;amp;act=url&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;horrendous Google Translate&lt;/a&gt;) that makes similar statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what is the truth about the emperor and fugu?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2023-09-05T11:33:23.767" LastActivityDate="2023-09-05T20:08:38.320" Title="Is the Japanese emperor forbidden from eating fugu (puffer fish)?" Tags="|japan|toxicology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5865" CreationDate="2013-11-29T12:50:07.633" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Summary: &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, it seems &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetable_wash&quot;&gt;vegetable washes&lt;/a&gt; (a.k.a. produce washes) generally don't really help remove pesticides... but that isn't the point of them... but even at their main task of removing microbes, they may or may not be effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Are Pesticides the Real Problem?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We wash produce to remove a number of contaminants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dirt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Artificial Wax&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microbes including bacteria and viruses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pesticide&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a health perspective, the microbes should be a far greater concern than the trace amounts of pesticide remaining. (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/food/resourcesforyou/consumers/ucm114299&quot;&gt;FDA recommendations&lt;/a&gt; don't even mention pesticides; they recommend washing to avoid harmful bacteria.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/blogs/does-produce-wash-remove-pesticides&quot;&gt;reviewer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While I found lots of how-to advice on the Internet about removing pesticides, I didn’t find a single wash that claims to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this reviewer clearly didn't find Veggie Wash and FIT Fruit and Vegetable Wash, whose manufacturers &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; made those claims, but I am using this just to support the idea that produce washes aren't primarily aimed at cleaning pesticides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further discussion of the alleged dangers/safety of pesticides (at the dosages found on produce) probably deserves its own Skeptics.SE question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the problem is broader than merely pesticides, I have included some studies below that don't look at pesticides, but I think are relevant in evaluating fruit washes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Which Specific Case?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of how much cleaner the produce becomes is difficult to answer because of the diverse set of situations we could measure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The type of fruit wash.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The type of pesticide/species of microbes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The type of fruit (compare washing firm-skinned tomatoes with soft-skinned peaches or high-surface-area grapes.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether the washing is done by the consumer or the producer - I have focussed on the consumer here. For producer issues, this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ftb.com.hr/39/39-305.pdf&quot;&gt;a good starting point&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we can't give a single, simple answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some Data Points&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some data-points from individual studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ct.gov/caes/cwp/view.asp?a=2815&amp;amp;q=376676&quot;&gt;Removal of Trace Pesticide Residues from Produce&lt;/a&gt;, Dr. Walter J. Krol, The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This experiment looked at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Twelve pesticides - including DDE (a metabolite of DDT, that has been banned)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Several four commercial produce washes: FIT, Fruit &amp;amp; Vegetable Wash, Organiclean and Vegi-Clean&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They were compared to detergent solution, to rinsing in tap water alone, and not washing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Several types of produce: lettuce, strawberry and tomatoes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, they checked that water removed pesticides. They found all but three types of pesticide were &quot;significantly reduced&quot;. (I don't know what that term means in this case.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then they tried comparing the washes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The mechanical action of rubbing the produce under tap water is likely responsible for removing pesticide residues. Mild detergents or &lt;strong&gt;fruit and vegetable washes do not enhance the removal of pesticide residues from produce&lt;/strong&gt; above that of rinsing with tap water alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1471-5740.2003.00063.x/abstract&quot;&gt;Effectiveness of cleaning methodologies used for removal of physical, chemical and microbiological residues from produce&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper looked at a couple of experiments variously involving:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dirt, Wax, a &quot;cocktail&quot; of organophosphorous and organochlorine pesticides, and contaminating it with Tryptone Soya broth and ground beef brothes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An unnamed (in the abstract) produce wash, with and without a paper towel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was compared to water (with and without a paper towl), a produce brush and a chlorine solution.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Several types of produce: waxed apples, unwaxed apples, cucumbers and lemons.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Water rinse and paper towel dry was found superior to all other methods tested. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For pesticides: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;any treatment that included wiping with paper towels showed increased effectiveness over similar treatments or controls&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the Tryptone Soya broth, the chlorine dip was better than water rinse and paper towel. For the beef contaminant, water rinse and paper towel was better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The efficacy shown by paper towels usage in this diverse set of experiments is based on frictional removal of offending soils.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iafp/jfp/2003/00000066/00000012/art00027&quot;&gt;Efficacy of a Commercial Produce Wash on Bacterial Contamination of Lettuce in a Food Service Setting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This measured actual produce being served at a university dining hall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It looked at any microflora they could culture. This one is not about pesticides.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It compared before washing, after washing in water and after washing in Victory produce wash.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It looked only at lettuce.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They find the high contaminated lettuces had less microflora on them when washed in the produce wash with water. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our results indicate that Victory produce wash is effective in reducing indigenous flora on lettuce during food service preparation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I note the authors had some caveats about the techniques used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iafp/jfp/2003/00000066/00000002/art00003&quot;&gt;Reduction of Poliovirus 1, Bacteriophages, Salmonella Montevideo, and Escherichia coli O157:H7 on Strawberries by Physical and Disinfectant Washes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This looked at a number of different washing solutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It looked only at strawberries.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They strawberries were innoculated with 4 different viruses and bacteria. This one is not about pesticides.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It compared warm and cool water, seven various chlorine, bleach and phosphate solutions plus Fit produce wash, Healthy Harvest, liquid and automatic dishwashing liquid, saline and vinegar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they didn't top the lists, the produce washes outperformed water:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The consumer-oriented produce wash Fit was very effective (&gt;99%) in reducing the numbers of bacteria but not in reducing the numbers of viruses. Another wash, Healthy Harvest, was significantly less effective than Fit in reducing bacterial pathogens but more effective for viruses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/iafp/jfp/2001/00000064/00000010/art00004&quot;&gt;Efficacy and Reproducibility of a Produce Wash in Killing Salmonella on the Surface of Tomatoes Assessed with a Proposed Standard Method for Produce Sanitizers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study was trying to check that a particular result was reproduceable by trying it at three different labs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They looked only at tomatoes (but suggests the results will apply to &quot; similar fruits and vegetables with rigid, smooth surfaces.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They contaminated the tomatoes with five different types of Salmonella. (This is not about pesticides.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They compared Fit produce wash, sterile water and &quot;neutralizer broth&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fit produce wash worked better than water or the neutralizer broth at removing Salmonella.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Treatment with PW resulted in reductions in the number of Salmonella 2 to 4 logs greater than those achieved with the sterile water or D/E neutralizer broth controls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Food Safety &amp;amp; Health department of the University of Wisconsin took one manufacturer's claims to task: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodsafety.wisc.edu/assets/pdf_Files/FFH_Fit.pdf&quot;&gt;FIT Fruit and Vegetable Wash: Do the Ads and Research Match?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They showed that the claims made by the company were based on experiments that did not match realistic situations, and that the cleanliness it implied might not translate to real-world benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. they claim that some experiments were done on glass containers rather than fruit, and that pesticides were applied immediately before harvest, which is not how fruit is normally consumed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fit's overall claim is to provide a convenient and more effective way to CLEAN fresh produce better than water alone. It make no claims for increased safety of quality. Fit may indeed clean produce better than water by removing wax and fingerprints. There is no available proof that Fit increases safety of produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Overall&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of studies of various aspects of the effectiveness of produce washes. It is clear that pesticides are not the only reason to consider them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results of the studies are somewhat mixed and almost contradictory, which may be due to the large number of differences between the situations. In the absence of a formal review of the literature (which I have looked for but didn't find), we might turn to organisations that evaluate such risks: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/food/resourcesforyou/consumers/ucm114299&quot;&gt;US FDA Recommendation&lt;/a&gt; is to use running water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Washing fruits and vegetables with soap or detergent or using commercial produce washes is not recommended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T12:50:07.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18535" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15452" CreationDate="2013-11-29T12:50:35.357" Score="73" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with @RedGrittyBrick's negative answer to the strict interpretation of @Carlo_R's question, i.e. whether reading Classical Chinese is no more difficult than reading modern Chinese for a person educated in modern-day China. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think that the question, in spirit at least, admits a looser, but still interesting interpretation, that is &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Whether a person educated in modern-day China or Taiwan can read ancient Chinese texts with an unusual fluency compared to speakers of other language systems and of comparable educational backgrounds reading ancient texts in their language&lt;/strong&gt;?&quot; I'll ignore the Ship of Theseus paradox as to whether we can meaningfully talk about a single &quot;language&quot; encompassing both its modern and ancient variations as it changes over time. I'll hand-wave it by saying that modern linguistics seems perfectly fine with labels such as &quot;Old Chinese&quot; or &quot;Old English&quot; and leave it at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To my looser interpretation of the question, I would answer yes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Evidence&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also some details in this section that I will elide initially and save for later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The strongest piece of evidence for this comes from (PRC) China's infamous &lt;em&gt;gaokao&lt;/em&gt; exam (taken by all secondary school graduates applying for university), whose &lt;strong&gt;Chinese language section contains reading comprehension questions on Classical Chinese texts in their original wording without an accompanying modern commentary to help&lt;/strong&gt;. As a result, it is a fair extrapolation to say that the typical graduate from the (PRC) Chinese secondary school system can read Classical Chinese texts and be able to understand them in broad strokes, if not necessarily in minute detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2011 &lt;em&gt;gaokao&lt;/em&gt; exam questions concerning Classical Chinese can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://ewenyan.com/contents/zl/sj.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (it's the link on the first row and comes as a RAR archive that needs to be unpacked). The Shandong version of the test (each province gets its own version), which starts on page 13, has a section from &lt;em&gt;Guanzi&lt;/em&gt;, an anthology dating from the first century B.C.E. (so 2100 years ago, not quite 2500). There are multiple-choice questions such as question 9 &quot;对下列句子中加点词的解释，不正确的一项是,&quot; which translated into English is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among the explanations given for each of the marked phrases in the following sentences, the incorrect one is...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and a short response question (question 13) which asks &quot;把文言文阅读材料中加横线的句子翻译成现代汉语,&quot; which translates into &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Translate the underlined sentences of the Classical Chinese text into modern Chinese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although Taiwan does not have the &lt;em&gt;gaokao&lt;/em&gt; exam, its education system has a comparable amount of material dealing with Classical Chinese. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taiwaninsights.com/2010/09/10/taiwanese-students-to-study-more-classical-chinese/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This dubious link&lt;/a&gt; has some information talking about policies in place to increase students' exposure to Classical Chinese. I include it because it happens to be English and it more or less echoes what Xinhua states &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.xinhuanet.com/edu/2009-12/11/content_12627715.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, namely that 65% of the humanities curriculum in secondary school will be devoted to Classical Chinese (a source direct from the Taiwan government's mouth would be appreciated here). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The absence of treatments of equally ancient documents in their original form (even with a modern English transcription) used as widely in secondary schools for speakers of most other languages is unfortunately the best evidence I can find that this kind of familiarity with the ancient language is unusual to Chinese (I know absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence... but if anybody can give me examples, I'd be happy to see them). &lt;strong&gt;I don't think it's unique to Chinese (I suspect that modern Greeks' comprehension after a typical secondary school education of varieties of ancient Greek is comparable), but I do think such a familiarity is rare among languages used today.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Details I Elided and Background/Context&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This section is light on evidence and is more an illumination of exactly how &quot;fluent&quot; fluency is and why this relatively unusual linguistic phenomenon came about&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An interesting background note to this question is if you asked it a century ago, the answer, even for the strict interpretation of this question, would have been an emphatic yes for the typical &lt;em&gt;educated&lt;/em&gt; Chinese person and a definite no overall (due to significantly lower literacy rates). The fact that only a century ago the question would have been much easier to answer for an &lt;em&gt;educated&lt;/em&gt; Chinese person is actually an indication of why modern Chinese people might have an unusual grasp of Classical Chinese as compared to speakers in other languages (see &quot;What Exactly is Classical Chinese&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Traditional vs. Simplified&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the details that I skipped over is that the &lt;em&gt;gaokao&lt;/em&gt; test is written in Simplified Chinese, as are the Classical Chinese texts it presents. @RedGrittyBrick brings up a good point that the original Chinese texts would have been written in Traditional Chinese and not Simplified Chinese and hence someone brought up in the PRC apart from Hong Kong would have difficulty reading the texts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In fact even someone intimately familiar with Traditional Chinese might have some difficulty with recognizing, let alone reading, the characters of text written 2500 years ago (but perhaps not those written several hundred years later)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference between scripts as written &gt; 2500 years ago and modern scripts is much larger than the difference between Traditional Chinese script and Simplified Chinese script. &lt;strong&gt;Different scripts of ancient Chinese can have radically different levels of readability&lt;/strong&gt;. Indeed I wouldn't surprised if there were a non-trivial number of scholars specializing in the study of Confucian texts who would be unable to read the oldest scripts and cursive scripts (probably because there's little need since usually our most complete copies of these texts don't extend as far back in time as the authorship of those texts). As an example, take the character for &quot;year&quot; as it is written currently in both Traditional and Simplified (Image 1) and how it would have been written in &quot;seal script&quot;, the dominant script of 2500 years ago (Image 2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image 1:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dxOmA.png&quot; alt=&quot;Character for &amp;quot;year&amp;quot; in modern script.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jxFID.png&quot; alt=&quot;Character for &amp;quot;year&amp;quot; in seal script.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The difference in these scripts is immense, arguably even more so than the difference between Simplified and Traditional. Hence, I would argue that when writing a Classical Chinese text using Simplified Chinese instead of Traditional Chinese we are merely transcribing the text from one script to another as one would do when comparing cursive English to non-cursive, printed English, especially because we can preserve a (practically speaking) one-to-one correspondence between the characters of each script that is no less severe of a change than transcribing from the original script of the text itself to a printed book fit for a modern audience to read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even Clerical Script, the script that @RedGrittyBrick refers to in the comments, would have looked significantly different from modern Traditional Chinese in its earliest stages. I won't include an image since I couldn't find any examples that had an explicit license that would allow me to copy the picture, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://guaiguai1358504.blog.163.com/blog/static/2186027201082121033697/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; has a nice picture of the Wufeng Inscription from the Western Han Dynasty (below the big banner on top). The big characters on the far right (note that they read top-bottom then right-left) written in modern Traditional script would look something like&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4wk3e.png&quot; alt=&quot;Clerical Script Example in Traditional Chinese&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I wanted to add some additional details to @RedGrittyBrick's account of the difficulty someone brought up in the Simplified Chinese system would have reading Traditional Chinese. Even people brought up in the PRC's education system have a passing knowledge of Traditional Chinese characters. Ceremonial uses of Chinese characters still tend to use Traditional characters even in mainland China. Perhaps the most prominent example of this is the practice of 春联 (New Year's couplets), short phrases written on decorative paper which are hung and shown often enough to be known by heart. &lt;strong&gt;Although people may not be fluent, readers of Simplified Chinese are also not completely lost when trying to navigate Traditional Chinese&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, this is also purely anecdotal and hardly strong evidence, but Baidu's &quot;Knowledge&quot; forums have a slew of questions asking things like &lt;a href=&quot;http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/575997152.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;为什么我们中国大陆人认识繁体字而台湾人不认识简体字&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (&quot;Why is it that mainland Chinese people can recognize Traditional characters, but Taiwanese people can't recognize Simplified characters?&quot;) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/300295122.html?qbl=relate_question_3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;台湾人看简体和大陆人看繁体，哪个更困难些？&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (&quot;Taiwanese people reading Simplified Chinese and mainland Chinese people reading Traditional Chinese, which is harder?&quot;) to which the top-rated answer is &quot;I believe it's harder for Taiwanese people to read simplified Chinese.&quot; Keep in mind there's probably some nationalistic fervor going on here, but at least there's evidence of some comprehension of Traditional Chinese. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An image of New Year's couplets from Yunnan, China is below, written entirely in Traditional Chinese characters (credit Peter Morgan, posted on Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chinese_New_Year%27s_poetry.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RzdFF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;An image of New Year&amp;#39;s couplets from Yunnan, China&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, much of (but not all) Simplified Chinese is the codification of some simplifications that were already in use informally for at least a millennium. For a compilation of some these simplifications see (Editors Liu Fu, Li Jiarui. 宋元以來俗字譜/A Glossary of Popular Chinese Characters Since Song and Yuan Dynasties. Nanjing: Academia Sinica, 1930.). The first example that I could find when just flipping through was a document on page 18 where (&quot;話&quot; becomes &quot;话&quot;). Thus in the event that a Chinese visitor from thousands of years in the past was &lt;em&gt;hastily&lt;/em&gt; scribbling a message rather than formally writing something out, it is possible that knowing Simplified Chinese rather than traditional Chinese might even be beneficial!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in the hypothetical situation that a sufficiently literate unfortunate soul from ancient China is blasted into modern-day China, literary communication would still probably be possible even if he or she is met by a PRC adult who has been brought up in the Simplified Chinese system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;How Fluent is Unusual Fluency?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other point I initially neglected is &quot;how fluent is unusual fluency?&quot; The questions on the &lt;em&gt;gaokao&lt;/em&gt; exam give us a hint. They are similar in flavor to the questions that a side-by-side commentary on Shakespeare might answer for the reader for particularly difficult sections of his works. Hence I would peg the difficulty of a Classical Chinese text for the average Chinese secondary school graduate as in the ballpark of a secondary school graduate English reader reading a difficult (linguistically, not necessarily from a literary perspective) section of Shakespeare. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another analogy for native English speakers might be people who have taken one or two French (or any other language that shares many orthographically similar cognates with English) classes in high school trying to read a French newspaper. They'll be able to read it, albeit it perhaps with some difficulty. They will also recognize a lot of the words (although sometimes they will be tripped up by words that have different meanings in English than in French even though they are cognate and are spelled similarly) just because they are in English as well. Finally, they should be able to give a fairly accurate description of what the article is talking about, although the details might be off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also of note, although Chinese secondary school graduates would have some grasp of how to read Classical Chinese, it is far from the case that they would be able to write Classical Chinese. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other thing that inhibits understanding of Classical Chinese texts is the heavy reliance on historical events, people, nations, and works. These would probably be the most difficult for modern readers to grasp; these are, however, reasons extrinsic to the language of Classical Chinese. For the original question of somebody teleported from the future, it is unlikely that the notes they scribble to the modern day Chinese speaker will have flowery literary references, but for most of the extant literature, this is a major reason for why vernacular glosses for the literature exist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several commentators pointed out that the fact that professional translators wrestle over the translation of words to be evidence that Classical Chinese is clearly an extremely difficult language for modern Chinese speakers to grasp. Like the problem of allusions, this is really more an artifact of philosophical movements which use Classical Chinese rather than the language itself. Although translation is clearly difficult, I don't believe that this reason by itself is evidence either way. For the most part the reasons behind why certain words are difficult to translate into modern English hinge either on non-linguistic reasons or are based on inherent difficulties in translating any language into English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example Wittgenstein's &lt;em&gt;Tractatus&lt;/em&gt; is difficult to translate not because German from the first half of the 20th century is incomprehensible to the modern German speaker, but because of the vast philosophical baggage behind the &lt;em&gt;Tractatus&lt;/em&gt;. Likewise, if we look at the most common &quot;difficult to translate&quot; terms that pop up in Classical Chinese works, the words are not difficult in the sense that a modern Chinese reader would not understand what the word means linguistically, but rather difficult because of the philosophical background and connotations that the word carries which are specific to a single philosophical movement. Two such terms are “道&quot; (the &lt;em&gt;dao&lt;/em&gt; in Daoism) and &quot;仁&quot; (&lt;em&gt;ren&lt;/em&gt;, Mencius' favorite catchphrase). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“道&quot; would be universally recognized by any modern Chinese speaker and its modern meanings are more or less indistinguishable from English translations of Daoism (e.g. the &quot;way,&quot; the &quot;path,&quot; the &quot;direction,&quot; the &quot;word&quot; or &quot;to speak&quot;). The difficulty in translation comes not from the fact that its meaning in Classical Chinese is drastically different from its modern meaning nor is it an obscure character that nobody can read. Its translation-related complexity arises simply because of the insane amount of nuance that Laozi and Daoists have attributed to the word rather than its meaning in Classical Chinese. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;仁&quot; (&lt;em&gt;ren&lt;/em&gt;) follows a similar pattern. It is a word with which virtually any modern native speaker of Chinese is familiar and its use in ancient texts in a non-Mencius context largely agree with its modern meaning (which carries tones of love, acceptance, and compassion). However, both its meaning in Mencius as well as its modern word are both difficult to translate. The former because, like &lt;em&gt;dao&lt;/em&gt; in Daoism, Mencius' assigns a special meaning to &lt;em&gt;ren&lt;/em&gt; predicated on his own philosophy, and the latter because, like any other modern language, it's one of those words that just happens to lack a single, nice equivalent in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this does not imply by any means that the vast majority of Chinese words' everyday meanings have failed to changed from their ancient roots (they have). However, difficulty of translation is a rather poor metric of this change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What Exactly is Classical Chinese&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far I've been talking about &quot;Classical Chinese&quot; (文言文), a category which encompasses everything from Confucius to the early 20th century and is widely used in China to mean such (the &lt;em&gt;gaokao&lt;/em&gt; exam certainly did). This categorization is fairly problematic because it implies that Chinese did not change over this 2400 year period when in fact it did and in fairly significant ways (loan words from Buddhism, new poetry styles, natural mutations in the language, etc.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the fact that China tries to fit this huge swath of time period under a single umbrella of &quot;Classical Chinese&quot; is indicative of the active effort during this time to preserve the writing style of Confucius. The Imperial Examination system which held sway over this time from the Han to the Qing dynasties focused almost exclusively on the Chinese used by Confucian texts (for a direct quote see the book review, &lt;em&gt;China's Examination Hell. The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China. by Ichisada Miyazaki; Conrad Schirokauer&#xA;Review by: C. P. FitzGerald&#xA;Pacific Affairs , Vol. 50, No. 1 (Spring, 1977), pp. 128-130&lt;/em&gt;, which contains &quot;The other developing defect was the strictly classical content of the passages to be answered&quot;)*. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course new syntax, new vocabulary, and the general shifts in literary style still affected the language despite efforts to the contrary, but the fact that there was a concerted and systematic effort for thousands years has led to the current situation where Chinese from 2000 years ago is still at least generally intelligible from the viewpoint of a modern Chinese reader, who is only 100 years removed from the last effort to preserve the written Chinese language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also had the rather drastic side effect that by the 20th century, it was impossible to understand any formal literary work when spoken aloud. The written language and the spoken language had become widely divergent, hence why Classical Chinese is generally not used today. For example, Hu Shih, one of the leaders of the modernizing May 4th movement, wrote a polemic called &quot;A Preliminary Discussion of Literature Reform&quot; in which he railed against what he perceived to be a reprehensible disconnect between written Chinese of his time and comprehensible written communication. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://zh.wikisource.org/zh-hans/%E6%96%87%E5%AD%B8%E6%94%B9%E8%89%AF%E8%AC%85%E8%AD%B0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for an online version in Simplified Chinese of the article (the original citation is 胡適. &quot;文學改良芻議.&quot; 新青年: 1917); unfortunately I can't seem to find an authoritative English translation. Tellingly, among 8 points that he laid out, three of them dealt with an overuse of Classical Chinese. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;不摹仿古人 (Do not imitate ancient writers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;不用典 (Do not use allusions, in particular Hu Shih is referring to the tendency to use historical and literary allusions that are characteristic of Classical Chinese texts)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;不避俗字俗语 (Do not avoid the vernacular)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These demonstrate both an appreciation of the difficulty in reconciling the written language with the spoken language of Chinese as well as the strong adherence to Classical Chinese followed by even fairly modern writers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a somewhat amusing addendum, Hu Shih's original article reads as extremely formal and Classical in modern Chinese just one century later. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;So in Summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the exact wording of the question, @RedGrittyBrick is right. Not only is reading Classical Chinese significantly more difficult for a modern Chinese reader of a typical educational background, even students of Traditional Chinese would have a hard time recognizing the characters of works 2500 years ago, let alone read what a time-transported Confucius might confusedly scrawl for a modern passer-by. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if we look at works written in the last 2000 years rather than the last 2500 years, and allow the modern Chinese reader some leniency in not having to get the details, he or she could probably do an adequate job of deciphering the text, all the more so if he or she learned Traditional Chinese along the way. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, wow, this turned out a lot longer than I expected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*That unfortunately was the best piece of evidence I could gather up; I'll see if I can get the actual book and pull a quote from there as necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Addendum&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Articuno's generous bounty donation led me to revisit this question and I realized that another subtlety to the question as implicitly framed by Bill Bryson is &lt;strong&gt;whether it is the knowledge of modern Chinese &lt;em&gt;language&lt;/em&gt; that imparts some ability to read Classical Chinese or whether it is simply the modern Chinese &lt;em&gt;education&lt;/em&gt; that yields this ability&lt;/strong&gt;. Of course, to some degree the two are inseparable; if a language speaker goes through a certain education process, that education process is bound to have a profound influence on his or her language. As such if an entire people go through the same education, then that people's language will also be similarly affected by that education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, there is still a meaningful difference between the two. The 19th century university curricula of English and American universities generally still required knowledge of Latin, indicating a heavy reliance on Latin. See as a representative example the 1851 University of Pennsylvania catalog &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archives.upenn.edu/primdocs/upl/upl1/upl1_1851_52.pdf#page=29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;here&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, which indicates that to be admitted, a student must have read Caesar, Ovid, Vigil, Cicero, Horace, Xenophon, and Homer and must also be proficient in &quot;Greek and Latin Exercises&quot; (page 29). However, modern English readers do not need a similar Latin background to read and fully comprehend the overwhelming majority of 19th century English works. Hence, in this case it makes sense to say that the 19th century English &lt;em&gt;education&lt;/em&gt; imparted knowledge of Latin, but the 19th century English &lt;em&gt;language&lt;/em&gt; did not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the most part, as the &lt;em&gt;gaokao&lt;/em&gt; evidence shows, the modern Chinese education system is responsible for comprehension of Classical Chinese, but the modern Chinese language, especially at its most formal and literary levels, still gives the modern Chinese speaker a basic familiarity with Classical Chinese, which although rudimentary, nonetheless exceeds that of most other languages. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the clearest evidence of this fact is that textbooks of advanced &lt;em&gt;modern&lt;/em&gt; Chinese aimed at &lt;em&gt;non-native&lt;/em&gt; Chinese learners include lessons on Classical Chinese. I list a couple examples here (apologies for the Ivy League bias, those are just the ones that happen to be most visible and hence public).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shengli Feng, Lulei Su et al. &lt;em&gt;Comprehensive Chinese Advanced Writing: Writing and Truth&lt;/em&gt;. Higher Education Press: Beijing, 2007. This two-volume series, has two 11th century Song Dynasty Classical Chinese readings in their original Classical Chinese: 读孟尝君传 (&quot;On Meng Changjun&quot;), a work about the Warring States-era prince Meng Changjun and 五代史伶官传序 (&quot;A Preface to a History of the Five Dynasties' Lingguan Chuan&quot; where &quot;Lingguan Chuan&quot; refers to the records of court performers), a work about the successes and failures of one of the Five Dynasties' era empires.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yanfang Tang and Qinghai Chen. &lt;a href=&quot;http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=9780300104639&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Advanced Chinese: Intention, Strategy, and Communication&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Yale University Press: New Haven. Chapter 11 in the table of contents contains a section called &quot;Terse and elegant: using words and structures from Classical Chinese.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/series/plpmc.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Princeton Language Program: Modern Chinese&lt;/a&gt;. This is actually a long series of books. I note it here because it has five books on Classical Chinese.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that the textbook authors considered a basic primer on Classical Chinese necessary for modern Chinese strongly suggests that an elementary understanding of Classical Chinese is intrinsic to the modern Chinese language and is not just a product of the Chinese education system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, writings which demand formality or terseness in modern Chinese tend to become more Classical in nature. The terseness found in public placards and notices tends to be a good demonstration of this. The examples will all be linked to and not embedded, because I'm not sure about licensing issues concerning the images. A good example is &lt;a href=&quot;http://lingua.mtsu.edu/qing/china/thisOne.php?file=photo_small/signs/publicarea/CIMG1863.jpg&amp;amp;Cat=signs/publicarea&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, which combines modern terms with phrases and phrasing which would not be out of place in a Classical text, such as &quot;挺身而出 见义勇为.&quot; This might be translated as &quot;Boldly and unflinchingly stride forth and upon seeing injustice, conduct oneself bravely and correct it&quot; or perhaps less awkwardly, but less accurately &quot;Stand up for what's morally right!&quot;; I'll explain the awkwardness later. The first part of this sentence is from a Yuan Dynasty work 西厢记 (&quot;Romance of the West Chamber&quot;) and the second is a paraphrasing of a statement from the Analects. This is in part due to heavy usage of four-character idioms, a characteristic pattern of Chinese speech and writing which usually takes phrases that were originally four characters or have been condensed to four characters and uses them as idioms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is one reason why Chinese signs and notices often sound hilariously mistranslated. The Classical Chinese-like nature of them means that they often have a lyricism and literary register which is completely out of place for their equivalents among English signs. The sign &lt;a href=&quot;http://lingua.mtsu.edu/qing/china/thisOne.php?file=photo_small/signs/publicarea/CIMG2274.jpg&amp;amp;Cat=signs/publicarea&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, for example, if translated to the appropriate register in English might be &quot;Protect our plants and our environment!,&quot; but this loses some of the meaning. On the other hand, translating the meaning of the sign results in something which would seem overly lyrical as a notice, namely &quot;Lovingly protect our greenery and [thereby] beautify our environment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16370" LastEditorUserId="16370" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T12:43:35.663" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T12:43:35.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18536" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-29T15:16:38.177" Score="3" ViewCount="4660" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found this question hard to answer. A previous post on this forum worded, &quot;Is 432HZ more &quot;natural&quot; or beneficial to human body than 440Hz?&quot; What not satisfactorily answered, I think largely because the question was to vague. What is meant by &quot;more natural&quot; or &quot;more beneficial&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought rephrasing the question to make it more concrete might provide better insight. What reasons are there that might prompt sound technicians to tune to 440Hz instead of 432Hz? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16374" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T18:42:39.963" Title="Why was the tuning standard changed from 432 Hz to 440 Hz?" Tags="|music|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2013-11-29T18:49:48.943" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18536" CreationDate="2013-11-29T17:46:36.527" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The older 'standard' appears to be a French one at 435Hz.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;While, 432Hz was used by Verdi; also referred as '&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_pitch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Verdi Tuning&lt;/a&gt;',&lt;br&gt;&#xA;based on a power of 2 calibration for middle C.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The ISO 16 standard finalized to 440Hz (among other variations;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;including 439Hz being a prime and hence not easily reproduced in the lab).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I guess it is not quite like 432Hz was changed to 440Hz&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(you could probably say 435 was changed to 440... yet, there is a lot of detail on Wikipedia about this).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extracts from the Wikipedia page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_pitch#19th_and_20th_century_standards&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Concert Pitch&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The A above middle C is often set at 440 Hz although other frequencies&#xA;  are also used, such as 442 Hz and 443 Hz. Historically, this A has&#xA;  been tuned to a variety of higher and lower pitches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, there is a lot of other interesting information there and on linked pages about its variations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most vocal opponents of the upward tendency in pitch were singers,&#xA;  who complained that it was putting a strain on their voices. Largely&#xA;  due to their protests, the French government passed a law on February&#xA;  16, 1859 which set the A above middle C at 435 Hz. This was the&#xA;  first attempt to standardize pitch on such a scale, and was known as&#xA;  the diapason normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and after that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The diapason normal resulted in middle C being tuned at approximately&#xA;  258.65 Hz. An alternative pitch standard known as philosophical or scientific pitch, fixed middle C at 256 Hz (that is, 2&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; Hz),&#xA;  which resulted in the A above it being approximately 430.54 Hz.&#xA;  The appeal of this system was its mathematical idealism (the&#xA;  frequencies of all the Cs being powers of two). This system never&#xA;  received the same official recognition as the French A = 435 Hz and&#xA;  was not widely used. In recent years, this tuning has been revived,&#xA;  sometimes as 432 Hz under the name &quot;Verdi tuning&quot; since Italian&#xA;  composer Giuseppe Verdi had proposed a slight lowering of the French&#xA;  tuning system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2224" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2013-11-29T18:42:39.963" LastActivityDate="2013-11-29T18:42:39.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18539" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-11-30T03:38:56.213" Score="256" ViewCount="101859" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;John Carmack&lt;/a&gt; is a renowned developer and CTO. His &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Twitter account&lt;/a&gt; has over 100,000 followers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the occasion of Stack Exchange's 5th anniversary, he &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/380018564792455168&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quipped&lt;/a&gt; on Twitter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[... Stack Overflow] has probably added billions of dollars of value to the world in increased programmer productivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tweet was widely read and retweeted over 100 times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim supported by evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What have I tried?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've made a quick calculation to see if he was completely off the mark, but the numbers seem to add up to a layman like me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Our visit counter recently &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/sklivvz/status/405970187930722304&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;overflowed&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/94591/what-is-the-maximum-value-for-a-int32&quot;&gt;Int32&lt;/a&gt;: 2,147,483,647.&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;The above is a reference to my own tweet but I can also provide supporting evidence: &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#traffic&quot;&gt;the site is 5 years old and currently does around 6m visits/day&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Average pay for a programmer in the UK is 45,000£/annum (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/jobs/uk/programmer.do&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;) or 22.5£/h. Let's assume a low pay of 20US$/h. I assume an hour is saved every time an answer is provided.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Each visit will potentially save some money, but only &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#traffic&quot;&gt;77% of visits land on answered questions&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a cost relative to answering a question, however answers are useful to hundreds of people.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are many other factors I am not calculating: for example, does answering a question make you more knowledgeable? Does finding an answer make you less knowledgeable than you would be otherwise? I am ignoring these as this is a ballpark estimate, certainly not a valid answer to my own question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum it up: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;value provided = 2 billion page views * 77% answer ratio * 20US$ &amp;approx; 30 billion US$&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What kind of answer do I expect?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect answers to provide evidence to the value (or lack thereof, or cost!) of the increased (or decreased!) programmer productivity as to ascertain whether it is true that they are &quot;probably billions&quot;. I do not really want to see calculations like the one I provided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disclosure&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I work for Stack Exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Rather Unprecedented Moderator Note from @Oddthinking&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question has caused a startling amount of interest and discussion. A &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/welcome-to-new-users&quot;&gt;big welcome&lt;/a&gt; to the users from &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6850474&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hacker News&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/1s4rpo/has_stackoverflow_saved_billions_of_dollars_in/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reddit&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone seems to have an opinion. Unlike those sites though, &lt;strong&gt;opinions generally aren't welcome here&lt;/strong&gt; - as answers or in the comments. We are looking for definitive answers based on empirical evidence. Comments should be directed at improving the question, not at discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a tough question. It isn't obvious how economists might measure value to an economy. It isn't obvious how computer scientists might measure productivity. It isn't obvious how much time it takes to answer or how much time is saved for each page view. There may be unintentional side-effects of making answers easy to find.  etc.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arguments from incredulity&lt;/a&gt; are not a valid response to such difficulty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sklivvz has given openly naive answers to those questions, as a back-of-the-envelope calculation, and is asking if anyone has done the calculation professionally. If you can find such calculations in the literature, please answer the question. If all you want to do is point out the naive calculations are naive, let's take that as stipulated; it doesn't help answer the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, the question has been &quot;protected&quot;, so only users with a modicum of rep on the site may answer, and the comments have been cleaned up several times. If you want to comment on this mod note, please take it to &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;meta&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:24.653" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T17:17:39.723" Title="Has Stack Overflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity?" Tags="|economics|programming-productivity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18543" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-01T04:01:38.953" Score="10" ViewCount="2428" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an ad I've seen several times about the internet, advertising tape worms for use in dieting.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/z13m0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This image can easily be found googling &quot;tapeworm diet ad&quot;. Snopes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/horrors/vanities/tapeworm.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;asserts uncertainty&lt;/a&gt; as to whether this is real, but I'm not sure if that's authoritative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I find particularly interesting is that one of my professors whose focus is history asserted near certainty that this ad is fake, because the fonts and styles used in this ad are anachronistic and don't make sense together. I don't know enough to know if that's credible; anyone have insight?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16386" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-07T10:48:39.240" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T12:22:36.570" Title="Is this tapeworm diet ad real?" Tags="|nutrition|zoology|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18544" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-01T07:31:19.303" Score="22" ViewCount="6458" Body="&lt;p&gt;Drudge Report had a headline on 12-1-2013 that claimed that the PAL security protocol was illegally bypassed from 1962 through 1977 by setting the launch code to 00000000 on all Minuteman missiles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give you an idea of how secure the PAL system was at this time,&#xA;bypassing one was once described as being “about as complex as&#xA;performing a tonsillectomy while entering the patient from the wrong&#xA;end.“  This system was supposed to be essentially hot-wire proof,&#xA;making sure only people with the correct codes could activate the&#xA;nuclear weapons and launch the missiles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, though the devices were supposed to be fitted on every&#xA;nuclear missile after JFK issued his memorandum, the military&#xA;continually dragged its heels on the matter.  In fact, it was noted&#xA;that a full 20 years after JFK had order PALs be fitted to every&#xA;nuclear device, half of the missiles in Europe were still protected by&#xA;simple mechanical locks. Most that did have the new system in place&#xA;weren’t even activated until 1977.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those in the U.S. that had been fitted with the devices, such as ones&#xA;in the Minuteman Silos, were installed under the close scrutiny of&#xA;Robert McNamara, JFK’s Secretary of Defence. However, The Strategic&#xA;Air Command greatly resented McNamara’s presence and almost as soon as&#xA;he left, the code to launch the missile’s, all 50 of them, was set to&#xA;00000000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to recap, for around 20 years, the Strategic Air Command went&#xA;out of their way to make launching a nuclear missile as easy, and&#xA;quick, as possible.  To be fair, they had their reasons, such as the&#xA;fact that the soldiers in the silos in the case of a real nuclear war&#xA;may have needed to be able to launch the missiles without being able&#xA;to contact anyone on the outside.  That said, their actions were in&#xA;direct violation of the orders of the Commander-in-Chief, the&#xA;President of the United States, during a time of extreme nuclear&#xA;tension. Further, not activating this safeguard and lax security&#xA;ensured that with very little planning, someone with three friends who&#xA;had a mind to, could have started World War III.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/11/nearly-two-decades-nuclear-launch-code-minuteman-silos-united-states-00000000/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support this claim?  Was entering the 8 zeros all that was required to launch World War III (Or at least a missile)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="39663" LastEditDate="2020-10-27T18:50:17.943" LastActivityDate="2020-10-27T18:50:17.943" Title="Was the US nuclear missile launch code set to 00000000 for 15 years of the Cold War?" Tags="|united-states|nuclear-weapons|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18543" CreationDate="2013-12-01T09:57:32.197" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This answer addresses an earlier version of the question, which was weather people used tape-worms, not whether a particular advert was anachronistic.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, people are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.today.com/health/iowa-woman-tries-tapeworm-diet-prompts-doctor-warning-6C10935746&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;still trying it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The woman went to her doctor and admitted she’d bought a tapeworm off the Internet and swallowed it, says Dr. Patricia Quinlisk, the medical director of the Iowa Department of Public Health. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Ingesting tapeworms is extremely risky and can cause a wide range of undesirable side effects, including rare deaths,” Quinlisk wrote in the email, as the Des Moines Register reported Friday. “Those desiring to lose weight are advised to stick with proven weight loss methods — consuming fewer calories and increasing physical activity.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-12-07T12:22:36.570" LastActivityDate="2013-12-07T12:22:36.570" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2067" CreationDate="2013-12-01T11:02:24.463" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another thing that nobody has talked about is the unstable power supply in poorer countries. In some countries (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dawn.com/news/1033372/voltage-fluctuations-and-hesco&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pakistan&lt;/a&gt;), you have frequent power cuts and/or brownouts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/lahore/25-May-2011/Mepco-urged-to-check-voltage-fluctuations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Such voltage fluctuations can cause computers to fail.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In such a situation, there is a strong incentive to unplug a computer that is not is use, to prevent it from being damaged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Yes, you could get a UPS but they are expensive.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16389" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T12:46:43.733" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T12:46:43.733" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18547" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18544" CreationDate="2013-12-01T13:05:57.087" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The source of the information is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_G._Blair&quot;&gt;Bruce Blair&lt;/a&gt;. The New York Times has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/30/opinion/their-missiles-out-of-control.html&quot;&gt;characterized him an &quot;expert&quot;&lt;/a&gt; during his time at the Brookings Institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20120511191600/http://www.cdi.org/blair/permissive-action-links.cfm&quot;&gt;wrote in 2004&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Strategic Air Command (SAC) in Omaha quietly decided to set the “locks” to all zeros in order to circumvent this safeguard. During the early to mid-1970s, during my stint as a Minuteman launch officer, they still had not been changed. Our launch checklist in fact instructed us, the firing crew, to double-check the locking panel in our underground launch bunker to ensure that no digits other than zero had been inadvertently dialed into the panel. SAC remained far less concerned about unauthorized launches than about the potential of these safeguards to interfere with the implementation of wartime launch orders. And so the “secret unlock code” during the height of the nuclear crises of the Cold War remained constant at 00000000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This is hearsay, but it's a more primary source than the source in the question. This answer can be improved by verifying Blair's testimony.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-12-01T13:11:55.693" LastActivityDate="2013-12-01T13:11:55.693" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18548" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-01T23:56:48.560" Score="1" ViewCount="277" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the feature that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/benefits.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;kinesis&lt;/a&gt; advertises for their Kinesis Advantage Pro Contoured Keyboard is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vertical key layout - keys are arranged in vertical columns to reflect natural motions of your fingers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typematrix keyboard get advised with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://typematrix.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sentence&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Matrix Architecture (straight vertical key columns) increases typing accuracy and decreases wrist distortion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there research that supports the notion that a vertical key layout is more ergonomic than the conventional key layout?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T21:32:27.903" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T21:32:27.903" Title="Are Vertical key layouts more ergonomic?" Tags="|computers|ergonomics|keyboard|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18549" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18550" CreationDate="2013-12-02T00:31:36.037" Score="11" ViewCount="1476" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, and came across this rather interesting interpretation of Pareto's Principle;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Twenty percent of beer drinkers drink 80 percent of all beer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this be correct? I've searched around online but can't find any study that backs this up, despite the fact that I found roughly the same thing quoted elsewhere, for similarly difficult to believe &quot;facts&quot;, but I never see references to any studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16395" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2013-12-02T03:50:08.657" LastActivityDate="2018-06-10T23:59:20.123" Title="Is the Pareto Principle applicable to national alcohol consumption?" Tags="|alcohol|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18549" CreationDate="2013-12-02T01:54:46.620" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt; it isn't, at least in UK in 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the best data I could find and it will require some calculations. I will try to err in favor of the claim in order to disprove it convincingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1qs4e.png&quot; alt=&quot;Calcs&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ghs/general-lifestyle-survey/2010/index.html#_blank&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;General Lifestyle Survey Overview&lt;/a&gt; and in particular the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ghs/general-lifestyle-survey/2010/drinking.xls&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;General Lifestyle Survey - Drinking tables 2010 (Excel sheet 609Kb)&lt;/a&gt; found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm%3A77-226919&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, in particular Table 2.16.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Units and unit% columns are mine and are so calculated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;using the Rural units&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;assuming 0 units for nothing,  2.5 units for up to 4/3, 6 units for up to 8/6, 10 units for up to 12/9, and 15 units for more than 12/9. I believe I've exceeded in favor of the claim.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the top 20% (more or less) consumes about 50% of the alchool (more or less). It's very far away from 80%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the top 20% is &lt;em&gt;the same people every week&lt;/em&gt;: if enough people have a sporadic wild night out once a year, they would appear as heavy drinkers in this table. This makes it either realistic or an over estimation in favor of the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this I can conclude that the evidence points &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;The double numbers &amp;quot;4/3&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;8/6&amp;quot;, etc. refer to male vs. female numbers of units.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-02T17:46:15.347" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18558" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18725" CreationDate="2013-12-02T19:21:36.817" Score="37" ViewCount="5169" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;When Roman engineers built a bridge, they had to stand under it while the first legion marched across. If programmers today worked under similar ground rules, they might well find themselves getting much more interested in Ada !&quot; — Robert Dewar, President Ada Core Technologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first sentence is an appealing story, but does it have a basis in fact? (The rest of the quote is included to try to establish notability.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T01:14:28.317" Title="Were Roman engineers required to stand beneath their bridges as they were tested?" Tags="|engineering|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-02T20:25:25.790" Score="17" ViewCount="1798" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found an article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldwidehippies.com/2013/11/12/the-truth-about-long-hair/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Worldwide Hippies&lt;/a&gt; which describes a military experiment on the intuitive abilities of Native American trackers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then they would pair two men together who had received the same scores on all the tests. They would let one man in the pair keep his hair long, and gave the other man a military haircut. Then the two men retook the tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Time after time the man with long hair kept making high scores. Time after time, the man with the short hair failed the tests in which he had previously scored high scores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this being made up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16405" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T02:03:03.150" Title="Do long-haired men have better intuition?" Tags="|physiology|hair|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18489" CreationDate="2013-12-03T02:41:01.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Neuroscience has evolved a lot since those papers were published. Also, thousands of research have focused on intelligence... why consider only 14 of them in almost 130 years? Is it because of the use of reaction times? I'm not sure it's possible to compare data obtained 130 years ago with those of modern computerized testing. But I digress...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reaction times studied in these papers seem to me like they only focused on visual reflexes which, as Kip cited, isn't really indicative of superior intelligence otherwise most baseball players of old would've chosen a different career.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There might not be a correlation between visual reaction times and intelligence, but there are reaction time studies that show there is indeed a link between learning and reaction times. One that comes to mind is that of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027712000777&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Shtulman and Valcarcel (2012)&lt;/a&gt;. It's behind a paywall, but I can summarize it for you guys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this research, a test consisting of 200 true/false questions was constructed. Questions were on 10 different topics of science and mathematics known for being rich in misconceptions. Some of the questions were labeled &quot;consistent&quot;, where the actual answer was the same as the naïve answer. The others were labeled &quot;inconsistent&quot;, meaning that the answer was different from the naïve answer. After the experiment, it was revealed that questions that need to be answered &quot;false&quot; always take more time to process than answers to which the answer is true, which would indicate that your brain has issues dealing with answering with a negative. But the real kicker is that questions that were labeled &quot;inconsistent&quot; took more time to answer on average than questions that were labeled &quot;consistent&quot;. The authors interpret these results as meaning that to answer correctly on questions that refer to concepts that are inconsistent with naïve conceptions, one has to inhibit the prior conception, a process that takes some time and effort. In this specific study, &lt;strong&gt;a slower reaction time is an indicator that proves someone has realized a conceptual change and is inhibiting a prior conception to manifest a better, more scientific one&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be concordant with data obtained by Kevin Dunbar's team where inhibition has been linked with conceptual change in different fMRI studies. In one, it was shown that conceptions that are inconsistent with prior conceptions are harder to learn because your brain is actively inhibiting them, interpreting the conflicting observations as errors &lt;a href=&quot;https://uwaterloo.ca/reasoning-decision-making-lab/sites/ca.reasoning-decision-making-lab/files/uploads/files/FugDun2005a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(Fugelsang &amp;amp; Dunbar, 2005)&lt;/a&gt;. In another, it was shown that physics students still instinctively cling to the concept of impetus, despite many classes showing otherwise, and that it's only because the concept of impetus is inhibited that a proper mastery of newtonian mechanics can be demonstrated (Dunbar, K. N. &amp;amp; Stein, C. (2007). Do naïve theories ever go away? In Lovett (Ed.), Thinking with data (pp.193-205), New York : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.). This study was not peer reviewed, but it was replicated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archipel.uqam.ca/4876/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Steve Masson (2011)&lt;/a&gt; (in french) for his PhD, using concepts tied to electricity instead of newtonian physics, and the results were mostly identical as those claimed by Dunbar.&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br&gt;&#xA;When it comes to answering tests, slower reaction times means that conceptual change was achieved and that naïve conceptions needed to be inhibited for the proper conceptions to manifest. &lt;strong&gt;Slower reaction time is in fact an indicator of learning taking place&lt;/strong&gt;. Thus, &lt;strong&gt;faster reaction times != more intelligence&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7698" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T02:41:01.367" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18562" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-03T06:16:32.947" Score="16" ViewCount="7592" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several popular self-improvement books, some of which are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Think and grow rich - Napoleon Hill&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Power of Your Subconscious Mind - Joseph Murphy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The secret - Rhonda Byrne&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which suggest &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autosuggestion&quot;&gt;Autosuggestion&lt;/a&gt; as a method of succeeding in life, claiming you can alter your &quot;subconscious&quot; mind (&quot;trick&quot; it) into believing certain things which will later manifest in reality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wording in the books are quite lengthy, but here is some text which claims the helpfulness of the method, it is found on page 46 of Napelon Hill's book  which is open source and can be found here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/details/Think_and_Grow_Rich&quot;&gt;https://archive.org/details/Think_and_Grow_Rich&lt;/a&gt; (Pages 45 - 46 are where he introduces the method so can be good to read if you want a bigger picture of what it entails):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is a well known fact that one comes, finally, to BELIEVE whatever one repeats to one’s self, whether the statement be true or false [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The psychologists have named this law “auto-suggestion,” and let it go at that.&#xA;  The name by which one calls this law is of little importance. The important fact&#xA;  about it is-it WORKS for the glory and success of mankind, IF it is used constructively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if used destructively, it will destroy just as readily. In this statement may be found a very significant truth, namely; that those who go down in defeat, and end their lives in poverty, misery, and distress, do so because of negative application of the principle of auto-suggestion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cause may be found in the fact that ALL IMPULSES OF THOUGHT HAVE A TENDENCY TO CLOTHE THEMSELVES IN THEIR PHYSICAL EQUIVALENT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read that page and the end of the page before it, he also describes quite explicitely steps which are to be executed as part of the method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the the concept is almost identical, if not completely identical to that of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_prayer&quot;&gt;Affirmations&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_attraction&quot;&gt;Law of attraction&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have known the idea originally as affirmations, and have trusted in it for some time. &lt;br&gt;&#xA;My question is if there has been any research in the area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not talking about relaxation techniques such as yoga, meditation and autogenic training (which according to Wikipedia has stemmed from autosuggestion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question can be put simply as &quot;If I verbally repeat sentences to myself in relation to achieving certain goals, and use my imagination to make myself believe that they are in fact real, does it increase my chances to attain these goals?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7123" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-12-03T12:37:46.880" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T11:14:35.357" Title="Does auto-suggestion work?" Tags="|psychology|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18562" CreationDate="2013-12-03T17:06:08.993" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is covered by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wiseman&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Richard Wiseman&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/217&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast episode 217&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some things he says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visualizing your perfect self: study after study after study shows that in terms of motivation – an appalling thing to do. Because you visualize yourself doing well, and the first set-back comes along, and that's it, you just kind of give up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you want to achieve, visualize &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;, visualize what you need to do to achieve, not you achieving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advice to students sometimes is: imagine yourself being awarded an A grade for an essay, or if you want to improve your career, imagine yourself on top of the corporate ladder, or if you want to date a beautiful woman, imagine yourself walking out on that date. All of them – appalling things to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding visualization for sports,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visualizing the &lt;em&gt;process&lt;/em&gt;, whatever it is you need to do to get there, is a good idea. There's no doubt about that. Lots of studies have shown that. And that's a relatively fine grained distinction that psychologists have known about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Literature&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To avoid simply appealing to authority, I'll present a few results from the literature backing up Richard Wiseman's statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suzie Tuffey Riewald, in her series &amp;quot;Mind Games&amp;quot; in the NSCA's Performance Training Journal, says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When mental (cognitive) anxiety tends to be excessive, your goal should be to calm the mind – effective skills include [...] focusing on process goals (as opposed to outcome goals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pham and Taylor (1999) compared visualizing process vs outcome in the context of exam preparation. &amp;quot;For 5 to 7 days prior to a midterm&#xA;examination, college freshmen mentally simulated either the&#xA;process for doing well on the exam (good study habits) or&#xA;simulated a desired outcome (getting a good grade) or both&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[S]tudents who envisioned the steps leading to successful goal achievement performed better on a midterm exam than those who had practiced outcome simulations, which focused them on the outcome they wanted to achieve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results suggest that envisioning the desired outcome did not prompt effective actions to bring about the desired goal. In fact, outcome simulation can have negative effects on goal-directed behaviour. [...] Outcome simulation participants reported studying 5 hours less, on average, than they had expected to, and they reported striving for a lower grade the day before the exam ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They say that this matched previous work of Oettingen (1995) that suggested:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Positive fantasies reduce the likelihood of effective action because they produce anticipatory consummation of success and prevent a person from appreciating the effortful actions that are necessary for goal achievement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;References&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oettingen, G. (1996). Positive fantasy and motivation. In P. M. Gollwitzer &amp;amp; J. A. Bargh (Eds.), &lt;em&gt;The psychology of action: Linking cognition and motivation to behavior&lt;/em&gt; (pp. 236–259). New York: Guilford Press. Available online, URLs: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yachtingnz.org.nz/sites/yachtingnz/files/images/coaches%20and%20officials%20-%20Resources%20-%20help%20im%20nervous.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epb.uni-hamburg.de/files/Oettingen,%20G.%20%281996%29.%20Positive%20fantasy%20and%20motivation_0.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;. Retrieved January 23, 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pham, L. B., &amp;amp; Taylor, S. E. (1999). From thought to action: Effects of process-versus outcome-based mental simulations on performance. &lt;em&gt;Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25&lt;/em&gt;(2), 250–260.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Riewald, S. T. (2009). Mind games: &amp;quot;Help—I'm nervous&amp;quot;. &lt;em&gt;National Strength and Conditioning Association Performance Training Journal, 8&lt;/em&gt;(5), 17–18. Available online, URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=v1LQVSI9hfMC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA236&amp;amp;dq=Positive+Fantasy+and+Motivation+oettingen&amp;amp;ots=BxHrK2Y0SF&amp;amp;sig=7X6OesLtslQLPVY_ioUFv79Syq4&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Positive%20Fantasy%20and%20Motivation%20oettingen&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;. Retrieved January 23, 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T11:14:35.357" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18566" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-03T17:47:59.893" Score="4" ViewCount="215" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems plausible that increased radiation exposure could negatively impact the health of these populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;cancer patients&lt;/em&gt; currently on a chemoradiation regime&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;cancer survivors&lt;/em&gt; who are at-risk from radiation exposure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;those with cancer risk&lt;/em&gt;, which may be at-risk from radiation exposure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSkkbBvcQ9A&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This professor says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The concern is that not any one person eating one tuna is gonna have a problem, but that over large numbers of people, the small increase in radiation will produce a small increase in cancer risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all fish or sea-food products (e.g. kelp) would be involved - only those with increased bio-accumulation of radioactive particles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some articles state that fish caught near Fukushima (from var. time periods) is not safe.  Other statements say that pacific ocean fish &quot;pose no risk to people&quot; without citing levels of potential exposure in relationship to safety regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does a increase in risk to large numbers not impact the individuals risk? Are there factors that will increase the risk to an individual eating these fish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8735" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-12-03T22:10:39.633" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T02:06:49.483" Title="Could some pacific fish (export, or migratory) be dangerous for those at-risk of certain cancers?" Tags="|medical-science|environmental-health|cancer|radiation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18392" CreationDate="2013-12-03T18:20:05.930" Score="6" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Was the original NYT article's claim that there was a 31.5% fraud rate concerning medicare in 2006 accurate?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr: No. The NYT article is about claims for &quot;Durable Medical Equipment&quot; that accounted for only 1.7% of all Medicare expenditures in 2006.&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e., 31.5% of 1.7% is much smaller than 31.5% of 100.0%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, yes, &lt;strong&gt;if&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;concerning medicare&quot; applies only to &quot;Medicare claims submitted by sellers of durable medical equipment.&quot; (see also note on &quot;fraud rate&quot; below) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a result, Medicare did not detect that more than one-third of&#xA;  spending for wheelchairs, oxygen supplies and other medical equipment&#xA;  in its 2006 fiscal year was improper, according to the report. Based&#xA;  on data in other Medicare reports, that would be about $2.8 billion in&#xA;  improper spending. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/business/21medicare.html?_r=0&amp;amp;ei=5124&amp;amp;en=884e1e2c05a09789&amp;amp;ex=1377057600&amp;amp;partner=permalink&amp;amp;exprod=permalink&amp;amp;pagewanted=print&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NYT&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2006 Medicare expenditure for &quot;Durable Medical Equipment&quot; (DME) was $6.9 billion (1.7% of the $403.7 billion in total Medicare expenditures for 2006) - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/Downloads/tables.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Health Expenditures, Table 4&lt;/a&gt;. In other words, if the 31.5% in &quot;improper spending&quot; applied to Medicare as a whole then the &quot;fraud&quot; would be around $124.4 billion &lt;strong&gt;more&lt;/strong&gt; than the $2.8 billion stated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Brief note on what &quot;improper-payment rate&quot; means&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, an organization of&#xA;  about 100 private insurers and public agencies, estimates that some&#xA;  $60 billion (about 3% of total annual health care spending) is lost to&#xA;  fraud every year, but that figure is considered conservative. In 2008,&#xA;  government-wide &quot;improper payments&quot; cost the U.S. Treasury $72&#xA;  billion, or about 4% of total outlays for the related programs. Of&#xA;  that amount, 50% took the form of reimbursements to providers, medical&#xA;  suppliers, and other Medicare and Medicaid vendors. Medicaid had an&#xA;  estimated improper-payment rate of 10.5%, or $18.6 billion, for the&#xA;  federal share of Medicaid expenditures — the highest rate of any&#xA;  federal program. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0904854#t=article&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that 50% of the 10.5% &quot;improper-payment rate&quot; was &lt;strong&gt;under-payment&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;And is the interpretation that the fraud was intentionally hidden from auditors backed up by any evidence?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr: Not that I could find.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NYT article does not support Coulter's claim that &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2013-11-13.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Medicare had aggressively hidden the fraud from outside auditors&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Statements attributed to lawmakers or their staff are worthless without corroborating facts. (Protections provided by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_or_Debate_Clause&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Speech or Debate Clause&lt;/a&gt; allow lawmakers and &quot;congressional staff&quot; to say pretty much anything - factual or otherwise. Coulter's protections flow from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_U.S._Constitution&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;U.S. Const. amend. I&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company that was doing the auditing at the time, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nciinc.com/about-us/advancemed/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;AdvanceMed&lt;/a&gt;, is still at it and I could not find any evidence they had been investigated (or even given a stern talking to).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nor could I find any evidence that the episode resulted in even a &quot;shake up&quot; at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note on &quot;fraud rate&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in the other answers and comments, the terms &quot;improper payment rate&quot; or &quot;error rate&quot; and &quot;fraud&quot; are not interchangeable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/5582/articuno&quot;&gt;Articuno&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18392/was-31-5-of-medicare-payments-in-2006-the-result-of-fraud/18393#18393&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is important to note that the &lt;strong&gt;improper payment rate&lt;/strong&gt; is not a&#xA;  &quot;fraud rate,&quot; but &lt;strong&gt;is a measurement of payments that did not meet&#xA;  Medicare requirements&lt;/strong&gt;. The CERT program cannot label a claim&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;fraudulent&lt;/strong&gt;. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Monitoring-Programs/CERT/index.html?redirect=/CERT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;em&gt;Black's Law Dictionary, 9th ed.&lt;/em&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;fraud&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;n&lt;/em&gt;. (14c) &lt;strong&gt;1&lt;/strong&gt;. A knowing misrepresentation of the truth or concealment of a material fact to induce another to act to his or&#xA;  her detriment. ● Fraud is usu. a tort, but in some cases (esp. when&#xA;  the conduct is willful) it may be a crime. — Also termed &lt;em&gt;intentional&#xA;  fraud&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;2&lt;/strong&gt;. A misrepresentation made recklessly without belief in&#xA;  its truth to induce another person to act. &lt;strong&gt;3&lt;/strong&gt;. A tort arising from&#xA;  a knowing misrepresentation, concealment of material fact, or reckless&#xA;  misrepresentation made to induce another to act to his or her&#xA;  detriment. &lt;strong&gt;4&lt;/strong&gt;. Unconscionable dealing; esp., in contract law, the&#xA;  unfair use of the power arising out of the parties' relative positions&#xA;  and resulting in an unconscionable bargain. — &lt;strong&gt;fraudulent&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;em&gt;adj&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2013-12-03T18:20:05.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18568" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-03T22:59:34.147" Score="9" ViewCount="3118" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a programmer and have been for over 20 years and I am starting to feel the effects of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/carpal_tunnel/detail_carpal_tunnel.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carpal Tunnel Syndrome&lt;/a&gt;.  I have always used the QWERTY style keyboard though I have often heard that the DVORAK style was better and more ergonomic.  In doing research I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theworldofstuff.com/dvorak/#advantages&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; which claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people switch to Dvorak because it's more comfortable. The Dvorak&#xA;layout was carefully adapted to fit the English language. QWERTY, on&#xA;the other hand, is about as efficient as a random layout. Because it&#xA;makes typing easier and more natural, &lt;strong&gt;Dvorak may actually decrease the&#xA;risk of carpal-tunnel syndrome and other forms of repetitive-stress&#xA;injury (RSI).&lt;/strong&gt; You can type longer on Dvorak without making your&#xA;fingers sore. In fact, most RSI sufferers no longer feel pain in their&#xA;fingers after switching to Dvorak. If you experience pain from using&#xA;the QWERTY keyboard, the Dvorak layout is for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to back these claims up.  When I search the internet I see several people who have decided through their anecdotal experience that they did not think so.  Is there any actual evidence one way or the other?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:16:11.957" Title="Does the DVORAK keyboard layout reduce the risk of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?" Tags="|environmental-health|ergonomics|keyboard|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18489" CreationDate="2013-12-04T00:23:36.960" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;, it is surprising, but it is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on existing answers and comments, there seems to be some confusion, so let's start by clarifying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This question is not about whether we were smarter/faster in Victorian times. It is not about 120 year old data.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This question is not about how quickly people answered questions. It is how quickly they respond to a stimulus. (But, how quickly people make choices between options is a closely-related &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289699800518&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;area of research&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This question is not about causality, it is about correlation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This question is not about what you &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; might be the answer, based on your conjectures. It, like every question on this site, is what the literature shows based on empirical data.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what does the literature say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_time#Mental_chronometry_and_cognitive_ability&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; gives us a quick overview:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers have reported medium-sized correlations between reaction time and measures of intelligence: There is thus a tendency for individuals with higher IQ to be faster on reaction time tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research into this link between mental speed and general intelligence (perhaps first proposed by Charles Spearman) was re-popularised by Arthur Jensen, and the &amp;quot;Choice reaction Apparatus&amp;quot; associated with his name became a common standard tool in reaction time-IQ research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The strength of the RT-IQ association is a subject of research. Several studies have reported association between simple reaction time and intelligence of around (r=-.31), with a tendency for larger associations between choice reaction time and intelligence (r=-.49).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems astonishing to you? Jensen (who was credited with repopularising the idea by Wikipedia, above) agrees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/20182199&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why Is Reaction Time Correlated with Psychometric g?&lt;/a&gt;, Arthur R. Jensen, Current Directions in Psychological Science, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Apr., 1993), pp. 53-56&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems almost incredible that individual differences in reaction time (RT) in simple tasks that involve no intellectual content and are so easy as to be performed by most persons in less than 1 s should be correlated with scores on nonspeeded, complex tests of reasoning ability, vocabulary, and general knowledge - the kinds of content that compose IQ tests. Nevertheless, in recent years, the correlation between Rt and IQ has become an empirically well established fact, based on thousands of subjects in scores of studies conducted in many laboratories around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this this next article, he discusses how the idea was counter-intuitive and initially rejected:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A. R. Jensen, &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-68664-1_4#page-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reaction Time and Psychometric g&lt;/a&gt;, A Model for Intelligence 1982, pp 93-132.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jensen has done some experiments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arthur Jensen, Ella Munro, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0160289679900102&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reaction time, movement time, and intelligence&lt;/a&gt;, Intelligence Volume 3, Issue 2, April–June 1979, Pages 121–126&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract is a bit light on (and I haven't read the paywalled article), but claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Reaction Time] and [Movement Time] show reliable individual differences which are significantly correlated with intelligence as measured by Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moving away from Jensen, do we have anyone else making the claim? Here's the reference was used by Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deary, I., Der, G., and Ford, G. (2001) &lt;a href=&quot;http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/2590/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reaction time and intelligence differences: a population based cohort study&lt;/a&gt;. Intelligence, 29 (5). pp. 389-399. ISSN 0160-2896 (doi:10.1016/S0160-2896(01)00062-9)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The association between reaction times and psychometric intelligence test scores is a major plank of the information-processing approach to mental ability differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They measured the correlation amongst 900 56-year-old Scottish people between reaction time and AH4, a type of intelligence (&amp;quot;general mental ability&amp;quot;) test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Quick stats lesson recap: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson_product-moment_correlation_coefficient&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Correlation coefficients&lt;/a&gt; range from 1 (total positive correlation) to 0 (no correlation) to -1 (total negative correlation). If there is a correlation between &lt;em&gt;higher&lt;/em&gt; mental ability and &lt;em&gt;shorter&lt;/em&gt; reaction time, we should expect the r-values to be negative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AH4 Part I total scores correlated -.31 with simple reaction time, -.49 with four-choice reaction time, and -.26 with intraindividual variability in both reaction time procedures. [...] Separate analyses were conducted after partitioning the total group according to sex, educational level, social class grouping, and number of errors on the four-choice reaction time task. None of these factors significantly altered the effect sizes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ian Deary and Geoff Der, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/16/1/64.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reaction Time Explains IQ's Association with Death&lt;/a&gt;, doi: 10.1111/j.0956-7976.2005.00781.x, Psychological Science January 2005 vol. 16 no. 1 64-69&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two of the same co-authors from the previous paper, builds on the correlation between psychometric intelligence and reaction times, and the unexplained correlation between intelligence and longer life, and suggests, with (presumably) the same sample of people, it is actually the faster reaction times that are the important factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside: Another related concept is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspection_time&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Inspection Time&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the exposure duration required for a human subject to reliably identify a simple stimulus&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A meta-analysis found that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289601000782&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;it also correlated with IQ&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the elite sports-player conjecture, it seems to contain a number of assumptions that are not necessarily true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most importantly, the correlation is moderate, and not total. Plenty of intelligent people may have slower than normal reaction times. Plenty of unintelligent people may have faster than normal reaction times.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Many sports-players &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; succeed in academic endeavours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It isn't safe to assume that elite sports-players would &lt;em&gt;want&lt;/em&gt; to enter academia, even if their abilities allowed it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T13:30:10.817" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18566" CreationDate="2013-12-04T02:06:49.483" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll skip the &quot;seems plausible&quot; conjecture, and focus on the professor who says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The concern is that not any one person eating one tuna is gonna have a problem, but that over large numbers of people, the small increase in radiation will produce a small increase in cancer risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model&quot;&gt;Linear No-Threshold model&lt;/a&gt;, what the professor says is absolutely true. There are two other main models, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_model&quot;&gt;Threshold model&lt;/a&gt; that says up to a certain level radiation is benign, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis&quot;&gt;Radiation Hormesis model&lt;/a&gt; that says up to a certain level radiation is actually beneficial. Thus, the LNT is obviously the more conservative of the three. As far as I am aware, the other two models are more favoured scientifically and LNT is just a compromise. Note, however, that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-pub.iaea.org/iaeameetings/IEM4/31Jan/Weiss.pdf&quot;&gt;UNSCEAR says this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to the great uncertainties in risk estimates at very low doses, UNSCEAR does not recommend multiplying very low doses by large numbers of individuals to estimate numbers of radiation-induced health effects within a population exposed to incremental doses at levels equivalent to or lower than natural background levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what the professor is doing. Looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/tale-of-the-tuna&quot;&gt;data from east Pacific tuna presented here&lt;/a&gt;, we see:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In bluefin tuna caught off San Diego, the total radioactive cesium levels were 10 becquerels, only three percent above radiation levels from naturally occurring potassium-40, and far below safe-consumption levels set by the United States and Japanese governments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I shall assume they mean 10 Bq/kg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single banana, by comparison, has &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose&quot;&gt;15 becquerels of potassium-40&lt;/a&gt;, or, given a 150 gramme banana, 100 Bq/kg. Therefore we are looking at less than a tenth of the effect (or indeed 40% of the 25 Bq/kg from the C14 in the sugars in a banana). However, I have seen it argued that (a) the body has evolved to handle natural radiation (now that would be a good question for here!) and (b) it bio-accumulates, unlike K40 and C14.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I conclude that Professor Daniel Hirsch (&lt;em&gt;ad hom: a politics lecturer and anti-nuclear campaigner&lt;/em&gt;) is correct in what he says, but he goes against the advice of UNSCEAR to produce his conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fun calculation: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbcnews.com/health/even-drink-day-boosts-cancer-death-risk-alcohol-study-finds-1C8381639&quot;&gt;even moderate drinking&lt;/a&gt; causes cancer deaths at rates (with real data to back these rates) 40 times higher than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straight.com/life/497646/fish-data-belie-japans-claims-fukushima&quot;&gt;an LNT-based estimate for Japanese fish-eaters&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T02:06:49.483" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18571" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16846" CreationDate="2013-12-04T05:37:02.537" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the obvious (Beer Hall Putsch), he also violated the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/text_enabling_act_1933.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Enabling Act&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Article 2 states, &quot;Laws enacted by the government of the Reich may deviate from the constitution as long as they do not affect the institutions of the Reichstag and the Reichsrat. The rights of the President remain undisturbed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in 1934, Hitler abused the Enabling Act to violate both parts.  First, he abolished the Reichsrat (February 1934), then later he took the President's powers.  See &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enabling_Act_of_1933#Consequences&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Night of the Long Knives&lt;/a&gt; (on Hitler's orders) is also an obvious illegal example.  They rounded up enemies.  Some they simply shot dead.  But they hacked &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Ritter_von_Kahr&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gustav Ritter von Kahr&lt;/a&gt; to death with pickaxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what law (if any) it violates the letter of.  However, it's legally extremely dubious to arrest some legislators, then surround the rest with SA troops to intimidate them while they vote (as they did during the passage of the Enabling Act).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, treaties are also considered law.  In 1939, Germany and the USSR agreed to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact&lt;/a&gt;, which provided, &quot;Both High Contracting Parties obligate themselves to desist from any act of violence, any aggressive action, and any attack on each other, either individually or jointly with other Powers.&quot;  The duration was ten years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1941 (only two years later), Hitler ordered the invasion of the USSR in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Operation Barbarossa&lt;/a&gt;, a clear violation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1053" LastEditorUserId="1053" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T05:44:58.820" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T05:44:58.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18572" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18576" CreationDate="2013-12-04T05:55:01.123" Score="24" ViewCount="1391" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that Iceland's police force(s) have only shot and killed one person ever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-02/in-iceland-when-police-kill-a-gunman-they-apologize.html&quot;&gt;Bloomberg reports&lt;/a&gt; (December 3, 2013):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Icelandic police shot dead a man who refused to stop firing at them with a shotgun in the capital of Reykjavik earlier today -- and then they apologized. &lt;strong&gt;It was the first time that anyone in the country was killed by police gunfire.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1053" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T16:27:59.007" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T18:38:21.557" Title="Have Iceland's police only ever shot one person dead?" Tags="|guns|criminology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18573" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-04T11:02:45.010" Score="6" ViewCount="7178" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read this highly informative &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutsense.org/gutsense/the-causes-of-hemorrhoids-and-anal-fissures.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article from Gut Sense&lt;/a&gt; on the causes of hemorrhoids commonly known as piles. The article argues convincingly that eating too much dietary fibre can cause Hemorrhoidal disease. I quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hemorrhoidal disease and anal fissures start with a little &amp;quot;defect&amp;quot; in&#xA;human anatomy — the anal canal that is too darn tight for large and/or&#xA;hard stools to pass through. When these abnormal stools get stuck&#xA;inside your colon or rectum, you may have no choice but to strain,&#xA;gradually causing yourself hemorrhoidal disease, anal fissures, and&#xA;other complications...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, if the stools are large, let's use a pickle —&#xA;something we can both relate to without looking at the &amp;quot;real thing&amp;quot; —&#xA;to compare its size with the anus. As you can see even a smallish&#xA;Corby pickle is huge relative to the anus size. And not just the anus&#xA;— the pickle is about the same size as the entire rectum...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if anyone is telling you to &amp;quot;eat more fiber&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;bulk up&amp;quot; your&#xA;stools, so you can relieve or prevent hemorrhoidal disease and anal&#xA;fissures, give that person a Corby pickle, and ask him or her to jam&#xA;it up their anuses, and, then, tell you how normal it feels. If that&#xA;experience does not get them out of the pickle you got yourself into&#xA;with painful hemorrhoids or bleeding fissure, nothing will...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What giveth? Newton's third law, of course: for every action there is&#xA;an equal and opposite reaction. Here's what I mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;● As hemorrhoids get larger, the anal canal aperture gets smaller, and&#xA;the stools become harder to pass;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;● As the difficulty of passing stools intensifies, the need to strain&#xA;grows more pronounced, and the hemorrhoidal pathologies turn worse;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;● As the first two problems evolve, people often keep increasing the&#xA;amount of dietary and/or supplemental fiber to counteract defecation&#xA;difficulties;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;● As people increase the amount of fiber in their diet, their stool&#xA;keep getting larger, causing further enlargement of hemorrhoids, while&#xA;the anal aperture becomes smaller and smaller;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;● As the anal aperture becomes smaller and the stools larger, people&#xA;experience more constipation, strain harder, feel more pain, and begin&#xA;experiencing anal fissures and other complications described elsewhere&#xA;on this site and in my books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this chain of events isn't interrupted by luck, education, or God's&#xA;will, the vicious cycle continues unabated until patients require&#xA;surgery to fix rectal prolapse, anal fissures, fistulas, abscesses,&#xA;fecal incontinence, or other related ailments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVxVnZDsRHw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; in the article explains clearly what are hemorrhoids. However, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=fibre%20hemarrhoid&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;general consensus&lt;/a&gt; is that &lt;code&gt;a high fibre diet helps to prevent Hemorrhoidal disease&lt;/code&gt;. I am very interested to know whether this is a myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15874" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T07:37:53.403" Title="Can eating too much fibre cause Hemorrhoidal disease (or piles)?" Tags="|nutrition|disease|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18574" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18573" CreationDate="2013-12-04T15:20:29.860" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is fine to have a plausible theoretical model of what might happen when eating more fibre, just so long as the theoretical model matches the actual experimental data. When it doesn't, it is time to rethink the model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the experimental data show? Well, we have a good source here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pablo Alonso-Coello, Ed Mills, Diane Heels-Ansdell, Maite López-Yarto, Qi Zhou, John F Johanson and Gordon Guyatt, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ajg/journal/v101/n1/abs/ajg200631a.html&quot;&gt;Fiber for the Treatment of Hemorrhoids Complications: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis&lt;/a&gt;,  The American Journal of Gastroenterology (2006) 101, 181–188; doi:10.1111/j.1572-0241.2005.00359.x&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their summary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trials of fiber show a consistent beneficial effect for symptoms and bleeding in the treatment of symptomatic hemorrhoids.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we can dismiss the conjecture described in the question, because it doesn't match the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How was this summary reached? Well, this isn't merely one small experiment. It is a systematic review, which means they carefully searched for existing studies, where possible consolidated the data, and drew a conclusion from that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found seven quality trials, totalling 378 patients (fiber + non-fiber control)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The risk of not improving/persisting symptoms decreased by 47% in the fiber group [...] and the risk of bleeding by 50% [...] consistent results over time. [...] One study suggested a decrease in recurrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Details about RR, Confidence Intervals, and some non-significant trends are available in the report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Please don't use this as medical advice; if you have symptoms of haemorrhoidal disease, see your doctor and follow their advice.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T15:20:29.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18575" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18589" CreationDate="2013-12-04T15:45:56.250" Score="5" ViewCount="934" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently ran into &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foc.us&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a website&lt;/a&gt; making some pretty interesting claims about &quot;transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS)&quot;. The claims are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Overclock your brain using transcranial Direct Current Stimulation&#xA;  (tDCS) to increase the plasticity of your brain. Make your synapses&#xA;  fire faster.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this seemed to be to be pretty obvious snake-oil pitch, I was curious as to whether there was any scientific basis for the claims made. There is a Wikipedia entry for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcranial_direct-current_stimulation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Transcranial direct-current stimulation&lt;/a&gt;, indicating that it is &quot;form of neurostimulation originally developed to help patients with brain injuries such as strokes.&quot; It also makes similar claims of beneficial effects in the article's initial summary, but they don't seem to be appropriately referenced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Tests on healthy adults demonstrated that tDCS can increase cognitive&#xA;  performance on a variety of tasks &lt;strong&gt;[citation needed]&lt;/strong&gt;, depending on the&#xA;  area of the brain being stimulated. tDCS has been utilized to enhance&#xA;  language and mathematical ability, attention span, problem solving,&#xA;  memory, and coordination.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I haven't conducted a thorough review of every scientific article referenced, most seem to relate to treatment of brain disorders rather than any effects on a healthy adult brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientifically verifiable evidence that passing an electrical current across certain parts of a healthy person's brain can either a) increase the plasticity of the brain, b) make synapses fire faster, or c) otherwise improve a person's cognitive ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16422" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-12-05T22:31:11.270" LastActivityDate="2018-07-13T16:18:13.613" Title="Is transcranial Direct Current Stimulation beneficial for a healthy human brain?" Tags="|medical-science|neurology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18572" CreationDate="2013-12-04T18:08:13.583" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll make this community wiki because I suspect we'll need to put together many sources of evidence to confirm this claim (or a single piece of evidence to refute it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Is this a reliable source?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good heuristic to judging the reliability of a news story is whether or not they name their sources and whether those sources are acting in official capacity. In this case the source is named: &quot;national police chief Haraldur Johannessen&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=248239176&quot;&gt;NPR&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/02/iceland-armed-police-shoot-man-dead-first-time&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; more directly attributes this claim to Johannessen, quoting him as saying this is &quot;without precedent&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/02/iceland-armed-police-shoot-man-dead-first-time&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; issued a correction after Iceland police informed them that part of their translation was inaccurate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The police did not 'express regret' but rather stated that they are 'deeply saddened by this tragic event'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Iceland police did not ask for a correction to the &quot;without precedent&quot; quote, which lends support to the accuracy of that quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;A more dubious chain of evidence&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wbur.org/npr/248214872/for-first-time-in-memory-icelandic-police-shoot-and-kill&quot;&gt;NPR story&lt;/a&gt; is more equivocal, saying &quot;for the first time in memory&quot;, and &quot;according to local news outlets&quot;. They link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/?cat_id=29314&amp;amp;ew_0_a_id=404485&quot;&gt;one local news outlet&lt;/a&gt;. That news outlet defers the fact to another report: &quot;this morning was the first person to die from a police shot in Iceland, visir.is reports&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://visir.is/fyrsta-sinn-sem-madur-fellur-fyrir-skoti-islenskrar-logreglu/article/2013131209883&quot;&gt;virir.is&lt;/a&gt; stated the fact without attribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Is this confirmed by multiple, independent sources, with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25190119&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25190119&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=248239176&quot;&gt;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=248239176&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wbur.org/npr/248214872/for-first-time-in-memory-icelandic-police-shoot-and-kill&quot;&gt;http://www.wbur.org/npr/248214872/for-first-time-in-memory-icelandic-police-shoot-and-kill&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/02/iceland-armed-police-shoot-man-dead-first-time&quot;&gt;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/02/iceland-armed-police-shoot-man-dead-first-time&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/12/02/iceland-police-shoot-and-kill-someone-for-the-first-time-in-nations-history/&quot;&gt;http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/12/02/iceland-police-shoot-and-kill-someone-for-the-first-time-in-nations-history/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Is this information that he could know?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this just an off-the-cuff estimate? Or could the police actually have this knowledge ready to quote during an interview?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/iceland&quot;&gt;annual gun homicide count&lt;/a&gt; (which would include shootings by police) varies between 0 and 1, it seems reasonable that one could recall if one of those was due to a police shooting. However, memory is fallible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/iceland&quot;&gt;http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/iceland&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;2007: 1&#xA;2006: 1&#xA;2005: 1&#xA;2004: 0&#xA;2003: 0&#xA;2000: 1&#xA;1996: 1&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Armed forces and police in Iceland&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.logregla.is/upload/files/Icelandic%20Police%20and%20Justice%20System.pdf&quot;&gt;The Icelandic Police and Justice System: A Short Introduction&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Iceland has no armed forces and the police is organized along non-military&#xA;  lines. Accordingly the members of the police force have civil status. The&#xA;  police in Iceland are very restricted in their use of force and &lt;strong&gt;the police are&#xA;  unarmed while on duty except for a short baton and an OC-canister&lt;/strong&gt;, but all&#xA;  policemen are trained in the use of firearms. A Special Weapons and Tactics&#xA;  Team is operated within the National Commissioner of police (the so-called&#xA;  “Viking Squad”). The Unit acts as an intervention unit in all cases where opponents use firearms and the regular police are not capable of dealing with&#xA;  the situation. The unit acts for all of Iceland and its territorial waters, as well as other special duties such as VIP protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-12-04T18:35:46.470" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T18:35:46.470" CommentCount="0" CommunityOwnedDate="2013-12-04T18:08:13.583" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18572" CreationDate="2013-12-04T18:38:21.557" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Iceland is a fairly unique country in that it does not &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_Iceland&quot;&gt;maintain a standing army&lt;/a&gt; and the arming of police is limited to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%ADkingasveitin&quot;&gt;Víkingasveitin&lt;/a&gt; (lit. The Viking Squad, also know as the Special Task Force) which was founded in 1982 and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newsoficeland.com/home/culture/item/1306-the-viking-squad-special-forces-armed-in-72-raids-in-2012&quot;&gt;regular police do not carry any guns&lt;/a&gt;. Also, it should be noted that they emphasize &lt;a href=&quot;http://logreglan.is/upload/files/Today.pdf&quot;&gt;only using firearms as a last resort&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Special Task Force also operates in all parts of the country, and&#xA;  is trained to deal with particularly dangerous criminals. It should be&#xA;  stressed, however, that weapons are only used as a last resort if and&#xA;  when all other means to disarm those concerned, or to dissuade them&#xA;  from a dangerous course of action, have failed. To enable the Special&#xA;  Task Force to achieve results through gentler means, several of its&#xA;  members have received special training in negotiating techniques, and&#xA;  are called in when desperate and armed individuals have to be dealt&#xA;  with and human life may be in danger. The Special Task Force is also&#xA;  specially trained in riot control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grapevine.is/News/ReadArticle/Shooting-In-Iceland-Leads-To-One-Dead&quot;&gt;The Reykjavík Grapevine&lt;/a&gt;, an English newspaper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grapevine.is/News/ReadArticle/Shooting-In-Iceland-Leads-To-One-Dead&quot;&gt;reported the incident as follows&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 59-year-old man, who opened fire within his home and at police, died&#xA;  in a confrontation with law enforcement - a first in Icelandic&#xA;  history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mbl.is/frettir/innlent/2013/12/02/sersveitin_aldrei_gripid_til_vopna/&quot;&gt;Icelandic media says the same thing&lt;/a&gt;, but provides some more detail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sérsveit ríkislögreglustjóra, stofnuð árið 1982, hefur aldrei áður&#xA;  þurft að grípa til þess neyðarráðs að beita skotvopnum sínum á&#xA;  vettvangi, þó svo hún hafi margoft verið kölluð til í þeim tilgangi að&#xA;  yfirbuga menn, ýmist vopnaða skot- eða eggvopnum. Hins vegar kom fram&#xA;  í máli Jóns Bjartmarz, yfirmanns sérsveitarinnar, að sérsveitin hafi&#xA;  skotið gasi í aðgerðum sínum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which loosely translates that the National Commissioner's Task Force (i.e. Víkingasveitin) has never had to &quot;impose their firearms at the scene&quot; although they have been called in cases where suspects were armed with firearms or bladed weapons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this, is it entirely reasonable that the Víkingasveitin have never kill anyone in the line of duty since their founding in 1982 and that they would be able to report that accurately. From a broader standpoint, other than the reporting by newspapers, I couldn't find any official documentation if there have been any other fatalities due to police gunfire but such information might be limited due to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_language&quot;&gt;Icelandic language barrier&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T18:38:21.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18578" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18568" CreationDate="2013-12-04T20:29:05.503" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that using computers in general does not cause carpal tunnel syndrome, regardless of the type of keyboard. Some references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: The Epidemic That Never Was&amp;quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ohscanada.com/news/carpal-tunnel-syndrome-the-epidemic-that-never-was/1000156835/?&amp;amp;er=NA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Canada's Occupational Health and Safety magazine&lt;/a&gt;, September 2001&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Computer use deleted as carpal tunnel syndrome cause&amp;quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/02.02/09-carpal.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harvard University Gazette&lt;/a&gt;, February 2006&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Mayo Clinic debunks link between heavy computer use and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome&amp;quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theengineer.co.uk/in-depth/mayo-clinic-debunks-link-between-heavy-computer-use-and-carpal-tunnel-syndrome/269239.article&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Engineer&lt;/a&gt;, June 2001&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key quotes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurology.org/content/56/11/1431.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the study&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The notion that computer or keyboard usage is a risk factor for CTS was refuted by the lack of difference between groups in hours at keyboard per day, years using keyboard, frequency of mouse usage, concurrent usage of typewriter, hours at typewriter per day, and years using typewriter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this study is unlikely to be the final word on the possible relationship between computer usage and CTS, the absence of a relationship is one possible explanation for the lack of proven benefit for primary prevention of CTS by ergonomically designed keyboards and supports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1011" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-04T23:10:47.853" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-05T11:12:46.380" Score="22" ViewCount="62934" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common claim in school yards (and from parents?) that you should not draw on your skin with a pen, or you will suffer &quot;ink poisoning&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example for notability: a Facebook page called &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/pages/People-have-warned-me-about-ink-poisoning-but-I-draw-on-my-hands-anyway/332493987177&quot;&gt;People have warned me about ink poisoning... but I draw on my hands anyway&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink#Health_and_environmental_aspects&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; makes the following unreferenced claim,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a misconception that ink is non-toxic even if swallowed. Once ingested, ink can be hazardous to one's health. Certain inks, such as those used in digital printers, &lt;strong&gt;and even those found in a common pen can be harmful&lt;/strong&gt;. Though ink does not easily cause death, &lt;strong&gt;inappropriate contact can cause effects such as severe headaches, skin irritation, or nervous system damage&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard people say it leads to cancer; supposedly because the skin absorbs the ink chemicals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have never seen a warning on any pen or its packaging, which I would expect if it was toxic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, many links returned from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=pen+ink+toxic&quot;&gt;a Google search&lt;/a&gt; suggest that it's not toxic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can drawing on yourself with a normal ball-point pen lead to harm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16423" LastEditorUserId="16423" LastEditDate="2013-12-06T22:43:37.110" LastActivityDate="2016-08-30T02:11:06.013" Title="Can you get ink poisoning from drawing or writing on your skin with pen?" Tags="|environmental-health|dermatology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18588" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-05T11:45:23.493" Score="2" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that, evolutionarily speaking, the fitness of a purely homosexual animal or human is much lower than that of a heterosexual one, and therefore would be strongly selected against. Thus I am puzzled at the apparent rate of homosexuality in the human population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware that homosexual behavior has been observed in other animals, but I suspect that they many of them are actually bisexual rather than homosexual. On the other hand, there are many animals (such as beta male hyenas, or lions) who do not reproduce but play important supporting social roles. Perhaps homosexuality is similar to this? Maybe it keeps occurring as a side effect of some genetically advantageous traits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically I am not sure how to reconcile the theory of evolution with the claims that homosexuality is innate. And saying that gay people for centuries were forced to marry and have children doesn't seem to resolve this, unless there's data behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16517" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T11:45:23.493" Title="Is homosexuality primarily genetic?" Tags="|biology|sexuality|evolution|genetics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2013-12-05T12:27:52.760" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18575" CreationDate="2013-12-05T21:14:27.637" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research on tDCS actually dates back to 1960's when researchers performed DC stimulation on rats and found that stimulation induced lasting changes on the neuron's membrane potential, which effects its spontaneous firing activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would recommend you check out this scientific peer-reviewed article on it which explains all of the research conducted with tDCS on human subjects over the course of 10-15 years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aipass.org/files/TDCS_State%20of%20the%20art.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Transcranial direct current stimulation: State&#xA;of the art 2008&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effects of weak electrical currents on brain and neuronal function&#xA;were ﬁrst described decades ago. Recently, DC polarization of the&#xA;brain was reintroduced as a noninvasive technique to alter cortical&#xA;activity in humans. Beyond this, transcranial direct current&#xA;stimulation (tDCS) of different cortical areas has been shown, in&#xA;various studies, to result in modiﬁcations of perceptual, cognitive,&#xA;and behavioral functions. Moreover, preliminary data suggest that it&#xA;can induce beneﬁcial effects in brain disorders. Brain stimulation&#xA;with weak direct currents is a promising tool in human neuroscience&#xA;and neurobehavioral research. To facilitate and standardize future&#xA;tDCS studies, we offer this overview of the state of the art for tDCS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16571" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-05T21:21:19.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18596" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-06T13:01:11.440" Score="13" ViewCount="646" Body="&lt;p&gt;My monthly Comcast statement says that I should go paperless and pay my bill online via &quot;Ecobill, the environmentally friendly way to pay your bill each month&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All jokes about Comcast aside, has anyone done studies about the environmental impact from switching to online bill pay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3989" LastActivityDate="2020-04-03T10:48:00.247" Title="Is paying your bill online more environmentally friendly than post?" Tags="|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18598" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-06T20:41:43.380" Score="8" ViewCount="1776" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heavy.com/news/2013/12/paul-walker-crash-45-mph-speed/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Heavy.com&lt;/a&gt; report that the car crash that killed actor &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Walker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paul Walker&lt;/a&gt; was at about 40-45 miles per hour (64-72 km/h). They cite an NBCNews &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/NBCNews/statuses/407645950333976576&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tweet&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Update: Paul Walker was not drag racing at time of crash, sources say; car was going 40 – 45 m.p.h. around bend with 15 m.p.h. speed limit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, images of the car being reported in the press looks like it was flying along before it met the tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6erTj.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6erTj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Car after accident&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thehindu.com/features/cinema/paul-walker-of-fast-furious-fame-dies-in-car-crash/article5410266.ece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Hindi&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the crash happen at such low speeds?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16594" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-01-30T07:33:06.147" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T07:33:06.147" Title="Did the Paul Walker crash happen at ~45 mph speed?" Tags="|road-vehicles|driving-speed|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18598" CreationDate="2013-12-06T20:57:17.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The coroner's report stated that the impact occurred at over 100 miles per hour. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0104-paul-walker-20140104,0,3308771.story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LA Times&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Fast and Furious&quot; actor Paul Walker and his friend were traveling at more than 100 mph when the Porsche they were in crashed, killing them both, according to a coroner's report released Friday that offers the first detailed account of the Santa Clarita wreck since it occurred Nov. 30.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The L.A. County Sheriff's Investigation concluded the car was travelling up to 93 mph (&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/25/local/la-me-ln-paul-walker-death-report-20140325&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LA Times&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The high-performance Porsche that &quot;Fast &amp;amp; Furious&quot; actor Paul Walker was riding in was traveling up to 93 mph when it crashed and burst into flames, killing him and the driver, an L.A. County Sheriff's investigation found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was based on &quot;surveillance videos and electronic data retrieved from the car’s computers&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These reports came out much later than the report you base this question on, but there were earlier signs that the initial reporting should have not been taken as a reliable source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few heuristics that are useful when judging the accuracy of hot news items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, see items 1, 2, and 3 from &lt;em&gt;On the Media&lt;/em&gt;'s &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onthemedia.org/story/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-pdf/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Breaking News Consumer Handbook&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the immediate aftermath, news outlets will get it wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't trust anonymous sources.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't trust stories that cite another news outlet as the source of the information.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heavy.com/news/2013/12/paul-walker-crash-45-mph-speed/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The source you linked to&lt;/a&gt; says, &quot;NBC is quoting unnamed police sources&quot;, which implicates the second and third of those heuristics. The first suggests that we look for more recent reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20762380,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This story from People&lt;/a&gt;, which is a more recent source, says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Los Angeles County Sheriff's detective Jeff Maag tells PEOPLE the driver &quot;&lt;strong&gt;was doing well over 45&lt;/strong&gt; — [it's] fair to say at least twice that.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also that even this estimate is uncertain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maag says it will take days or even weeks to complete the investigation and conclude exactly how fast the car was going [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T16:21:12.767" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T16:21:12.767" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18602" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-07T12:48:32.197" Score="15" ViewCount="1863" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this episode of &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Lee%27s_Superhumans&quot;&gt;Stan Lee's Superhumans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; featuring Raj Mohan Nair, also known as &quot;Current Mohan&quot;. He seems to be able to conduct electric current through his body to power up household electrical appliances without suffering the adverse effects of electric shock and electrocution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://parasci.net/1164&quot;&gt;ParaSci reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Raj Mohan Nair, or Current Mohan as he calls himself, possesses the unlikely ability to withstand large amounts of electrical current. To put it simply, he can’t be electrocuted. Mohan first discovered his gift after his mother’s passing at the age of seven. Feeling suicidal, he climbed a nearby transformer and grabbed hold of a wire. Miraculously, Mohan withstood a typically fatal amount of electrical current, making him aware of his unique physiological capabilities. Current Mohan was born.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report includes a History channel documentary about him. He also appears in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/PRf9MqqkMDM&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; performing various stunts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this for real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15874" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:57:08.817" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T08:57:08.817" Title="Can &quot;Current Mohan&quot; conduct high levels of electrical current through his body?" Tags="|physiology|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18605" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18623" CreationDate="2013-12-07T17:41:14.410" Score="29" ViewCount="16570" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many claims that Nelson Mandela was a killer; for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://topconservativenews.com/2013/12/obama-holds-surprise-press-conference-to-praise-genocidal-killer-nelson-mandela/&quot;&gt;Obama holds surprise press conference to praise genocidal killer Nelson Mandela&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thebackbencher.co.uk/3-things-you-didnt-want-to-know-about-nelson-mandela/&quot;&gt;He signed off on the deaths of innocent people, lots of them&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://frankroman.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/roman-road-mandela-never-forgive-never-forget/&quot;&gt;Mandela was a Marxist, a terrorist and a killer. That’s why he was sent to prison.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela#Arrest_and_Rivonia_trial%3a_1962.E2.80.931964&quot;&gt;He was responsible for sabotage (of materiel)&lt;/a&gt;, not killing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela#Umkhonto_we_Sizwe_and_African_tour%3a_1961.E2.80.931962&quot;&gt;Mandela himself stated that they chose sabotage not only because it was the least harmful action, but also &quot;because it did not involve loss of life [and] it offered the best hope for reconciliation among the races afterward.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On dates such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://thebackbencher.co.uk/3-things-you-didnt-want-to-know-about-nelson-mandela/&quot;&gt;the following&lt;/a&gt;, he was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela#Imprisonment&quot;&gt;in prison and more-or-less incommunicado&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Church Street West, Pretoria, on the 20 May 1983&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Amanzimtoti Shopping complex KZN, 23 December 1985&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Krugersdorp Magistrate’s Court, 17 March 1988&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Durban Pick ‘n Pay shopping complex, 1 September 1986&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Pretoria Sterland movie complex 16 April 1988 – limpet mine killed ANC terrorist M O Maponya instead&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court, 20 May 1987&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Roodepoort Standard Bank 3 June, 1988&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did he kill anyone? Did he tell anyone else to kill? Did he found an organization that only killed people years after he was no longer its leader? Or is there another option?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="15980" LastEditDate="2013-12-16T10:03:43.410" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T07:43:45.477" Title="Was Nelson Mandela a killer?" Tags="|history|nelson-mandela|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10461" CreationDate="2013-12-08T05:24:59.183" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Folic Acid is extremely important in human development. It is one of the responsible for the full development of the neurological system.  Low levels of it can cause underdevelopment of the neural tube in embryos, causing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleft_lip_and_palate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cleft lips&lt;/a&gt;, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flour is enriched with Folic Acid in some places. I'm from Brazil and we have Folic Acid enriched Flour. Meaning that every food that use Flour as an ingredient is enriched/supplemented with it. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Some articles, including a meta-analysis, concluded the are no statistical correlation with intake of Folic Acid supplements and cancer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23352552&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effects of folic acid supplementation on overall and site-specific cancer incidence during the randomised trials: meta-analyses of data on 50,000 individuals.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22018948&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Meta-analysis of cancer risk in folic acid supplementation trials.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to mention a few.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a Biologist, but I do not work as one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, an edit, in our Embryology class we used &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0878939784&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt;, there's an online version of it and I found a piece regarding the &lt;a href=&quot;http://10e.devbio.com/article.php?id=119&amp;amp;search=folic%20acid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Neural Tube Closure.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16577" LastEditorUserId="16577" LastEditDate="2013-12-08T07:20:16.720" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T07:20:16.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18612" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18613" CreationDate="2013-12-08T10:05:08.017" Score="5" ViewCount="631" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a newly released video by RT they claim that &quot;Future Epidemic? Monsanto GM foods cause gluten-related illnesses&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyV001qX2i4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyV001qX2i4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;18 million of Americans suffer from gluten-related illnessess - &lt;strong&gt;that's thanks to the genetically modified soya and corn they eat&lt;/strong&gt;, a survey reveals. Medical experts say it may become an epidemic for the next generation, prompting more and more Americans to choose a gluten free diet. RT's Marina Portnaya investigates the seeds of GMO-phobia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly stating that it is attributed by consumption of GMO food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Digging further and finding the article on their site, reveals a different story: &quot;GMOs linked to gluten disorders plaguing 18 million Americans - report&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/usa/gmo-gluten-sensitivity-trigger-343/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://rt.com/usa/gmo-gluten-sensitivity-trigger-343/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Genetically modified foods such as soy and corn may be responsible for a number of gluten-related maladies&lt;/strong&gt; including intestinal disorders now plaguing 18 million Americans, according to a new report released on Tuesday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So here are the claims to verify:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do Monsanto GM foods cause gluten-related illnesses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can Genetically modified foods such as soy and corn be responsible for a number of gluten-related maladies (and how likely?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I know similar topic has been discussed multiple times, but this is &lt;strong&gt;specific to Gluten related illnesses&lt;/strong&gt; and in the light of recently released report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8263/is-gm-corn-toxic&quot;&gt;Is GM corn toxic?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2215/is-genetically-modified-food-safe-to-consume&quot;&gt;Is Genetically Modified food safe to consume?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15722" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T12:34:27.633" Title="Do Monsanto GM foods cause gluten-related illnesses?" Tags="|nutrition|gmo|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18613" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18612" CreationDate="2013-12-08T11:48:47.427" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The report this is based on is &lt;a href=&quot;http://responsibletechnology.org/media/images/content/Exploding-Gluten-Sensitivity_.pdf?key=32174740&quot;&gt;&quot;Can Genetically Engineered Foods Trigger Gluten Sensitivity?&quot;&lt;/a&gt; published by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://responsibletechnology.org/&quot;&gt;Institute for responsible technology&lt;/a&gt;. As far as I can tell this is not a peer-reviewed scientific paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On reading through it, the report makes a lot of small individual claims about the effect of GMOs, or the specific proteins inserted into GMOs like bt-toxin. Each of those claims would deserve a full post here, I'm not going to dissect all of them in this post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that is also not necessary, as the report does not actually show any causal link between GMOs and gluten sensitivity. It creates a narrative that implies this link, but in the end it even states that there is no sufficient evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While there is insufficient research to prove that GMO consumption &#xA;  causes gluten sensitivity, the evidence does show how it might, at&#xA;  least,  exacerbate the symptoms, or contribute to the conditions that&#xA;  might  lead to the development of sensitivity to gluten&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This report was also criticized heavily by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://celiac.org/&quot;&gt;Celiac Disease Foundation&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://celiac.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/2013-12-04.pdf&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The report, published last week by the Institute for Responsible&#xA;  Technology (IRT), was &quot;speculative,&quot; Celiac Disease Foundation CEO&#xA;  Marilyn Geller told FoodNavigator-USA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There has been no scientific&#xA;  evidence put forward for a GMO/celiac disease link that is supported&#xA;  by the CDF Medical Advisory Board.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, plant geneticist Dr.&#xA;  Wayne Parrott - professor of crop science at the University of Georgia&#xA;  - claimed the report relied on &quot;a handful of deeply flawed&quot; studies and did not reference the &quot;more than 1,000 studies that have been&#xA;  published in refereed journals and which show that GM crops are as&#xA;  safe as their counterparts.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T11:48:47.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18618" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-08T18:42:27.963" Score="4" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;My physics teacher used to tell us stories about how food becomes dangerous because of distorted cells in microwaved materials, which in turn may cause cancer. But he wasn't very detailed about it, and I couldn't find any concrete research, just rumors referencing other rumors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, the &lt;em&gt;food&lt;/em&gt; is not necessarily only junk food, but normal home-made meals (mostly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can microwaved food cause harm (cancer or otherwise) if eaten often?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13563" OwnerDisplayName="user1306322" LastActivityDate="2013-12-08T19:37:34.323" Title="Is it harmful to eat microwave heated food on daily basis?" Tags="|nutrition|cancer|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-12-08T20:07:12.147" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18605" CreationDate="2013-12-08T19:54:27.810" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is well known that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/8304153/Nelson-Mandelas-Spear-of-the-Nation-the-ANCs-armed-resistance.html&quot;&gt;Nelson Mandela was involved with the formation of MK, the armed resistance wing of the ANC&lt;/a&gt;. However the organization was set up primarily to sabotage rather than to kill. As the campaign escalated people were killed by MK - as many as 63, with more than 400 injured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For comparison it should be remembered that this actions was a revolution against a deeply repressive regime, which had killed &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpeville_massacre&quot;&gt;69 people, more than the entire MK campaign, in a single incident at Sharpeville&lt;/a&gt;. It is certain that many fewer people were killed by MK than there were civilians killed by the Patriot side in the American War of Independence. The suggestion that 63 deaths amounts to 'genocide' under these circumstances is ridiculous. There is no indication that Mandela was directly responsible for any of these deaths. Even when he was prosecuted by the Apartheid regime, the charges were &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mandela/mandelaaccount.html&quot;&gt;sabotage, ordering munitions, recruiting young men for guerrilla warfare, encouraging invasion for foreign military units, and conspiring to obtain funds for revolution from foreign states&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, but not murder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nelson Mandela did indeed receive support from countries to which the USA was opposed. The US was at the time providing substantial support to the Apartheid regime, and had condemned the ANC as a terrorist organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mandela was convicted at his trial of '&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppression_of_Communism_Act,_1950&quot;&gt;statutory communism&lt;/a&gt;'. Communism is defined there as: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;any scheme that aimed &quot;at bringing about any political, industrial, social, or economic change within the Union by the promotion of disturbance or disorder&quot; or that encouraged &quot;feelings of hostility between the European and the non-European races of the Union the consequences of which are calculated to further...disorder&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was not necessary to be a Marxist, or any kind of communist, to fall within that definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2015-04-23T15:39:09.723" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T15:39:09.723" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18605" CreationDate="2013-12-09T01:13:55.127" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first of the lethal bombings listed in the OP has a Wikipedia article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Street_bombing&quot;&gt;Church Street bombing&lt;/a&gt; (20 May 1983), which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In submissions to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1997 and 1998, the ANC revealed that the attack was orchestrated by a special operations unit of the ANC's Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), commanded by Aboobaker Ismail. Such units had been authorised by Oliver Tambo, the ANC President, in 1979. At the time of the attack, they reported to Joe Slovo as chief of staff, and the Church Street attack was authorised by Tambo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/media/1998/9805/s980506b.htm&quot;&gt;TAMBO ORDERED CHURCH STREET BLAST: ANC&lt;/a&gt; says that people other than Nelson Mandela were responsible for this action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mandela was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Mandela#Imprisonment&quot;&gt;captured in 1962 and imprisoned until 1990&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While he was in prison, he did not &quot;reject violence&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in February 1985 Botha offered him a release from prison on condition that he '&quot;unconditionally rejected violence as a political weapon&quot;. Mandela spurned the offer, releasing a statement through his daughter Zindzi stating &quot;What freedom am I being offered while the organisation of the people [ANC] remains banned? Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I find it implausible that he had any personal control over tactical or strategic decisions taken by people such as Oliver Tambo, during the period of the lethal bombings of 1983 through 1988:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In April 1982 Mandela was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison in Tokai, Cape Town along with senior ANC leaders Walter Sisulu, Andrew Mlangeni, Ahmed Kathrada and Raymond Mhlaba; they believed that they were being isolated to remove their influence on younger activists.[160] Conditions at Pollsmoor were better than at Robben Island, although Mandela missed the camaraderie and scenery of the island.[161] Getting on well with Pollsmoor's commanding officer, Brigadier Munro, Mandela was permitted to create a roof garden,[162] also reading voraciously and corresponding widely, now permitted 52 letters a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recovering from tuberculosis caused by dank conditions in his cell,[173] in December 1988 Mandela was moved to Victor Verster Prison near Paarl. Here, he was housed in the relative comfort of a warder's house with a personal cook, using the time to complete his LLB degree.[174] There he was permitted many visitors, such as anti-apartheid campaigner and longtime friend Harry Schwarz.[175][176] Mandela organised secret communications with exiled ANC leader Oliver Tambo.[177]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding his activities before he was arrested, &lt;a href=&quot;http://frankroman.wordpress.com/2009/05/10/roman-road-mandela-never-forgive-never-forget/&quot;&gt;one of the blogs referenced in the OP&lt;/a&gt; (which I viewed as a questionable 'claim', not as 'evidence') said,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, it is still a mystery why Percy Yutar (the then state attorney) did not file for murder, but manslaughter instead. Based on the facts it is commonly agreed by legal scholars that Mandela would have been hanged if Yutar filed for murder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_resistance_to_South_African_apartheid#Resistance_goes_underground&quot;&gt;This article on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says that &quot;some deaths did occur&quot; but without details or citation (so perhaps, in its present state, it's best ignored):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nelson Mandela, who was the commander of MK, had developed the &quot;M Plan&quot; (Mandela Plan), a programme of controlled sabotage, launching a guerilla war modelled upon the FLN's struggle in Algeria. Its policy involved the targeting of state buildings for sabotage without resorting to murder. On 16 December 1961 MK carried out its first acts of sabotage by assaulting post offices and other structures in Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Durban. Many other acts of sabotage would take place over the next few years. In its first eighteen months, MK carried out about 200 acts of sabotage, but despite its policy, some deaths did occur.[citation needed] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a credible reference to one death/killing in &lt;a href=&quot;http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mandela/mandelaaccount.html&quot;&gt;The Nelson Mandela (Rivonia) Trial: An Account&lt;/a&gt;, which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Justice de Wet turned to Bram and announced in a gentle voice, &quot;You may call your next witness.&quot;  Walter Sisulu, former Secretary General of the ANC and a member of MK's National High Command, took the stand.  Sisulu testified that Operation Mayibuye was the brain child of Arthur Goldreich, a member of the High Command and a former member of the Israeli underground movement.  Sisulu said that the plan had not been adopted, in part because more time was needed &quot;to condition the masses.&quot;  The ANC and Umkhonto, Sisulu also told the court, were separate organizations.  He testified that he agreed sabotage was necessary, but insisted that &quot;the choice of targets makes the position perfectly clear that the intention was not to injure anybody at all.&quot;  &lt;strong&gt;Pressed on this point by Justice de Wet, who pointed to the death of a passer-by when a bomb exploded at a post office, Sisulu conceded that accidents could happen, despite the precautions Umkhonto tried to take.&lt;/strong&gt;  In five days of cross-examination, Yutar tried to link the ANC and Umkhonto to the Communist Party and pushed Sisulu to identify others who played key roles in underground organizations.  Despite warnings from the bench, Sisulu refused to name names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see no evidence that they were tried for even manslaughter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;[...] prosecutor Percy Yutar called the case of &quot;State versus the National High Command and Others.&quot;  He then produced an indictment&#xA;  charging the eleven defendants with two counts of sabotage and two&#xA;  counts of conspiracy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Defense attorney Bram Fischer led off the proceedings with an attack on the sufficiency of the indictment.  He argued that the charges were&#xA;  vague, and failed to provide any indication as to which defendants&#xA;  carried out which alleged acts of sabotage.  Instead, the government's&#xA;  indictment simply stated that details concerning the sabotage were&#xA;  &quot;peculiarly within the knowledge of the accused.&quot;  Justice de Wet, in&#xA;  his flowing red robes beneath a wooden canopy, found the defense&#xA;  arguments convincing.  He told Yutar that the indictment seemed to&#xA;  presuppose guilt and provided almost no clue as to the nature of the&#xA;  offenses.  The indictment, Justice de Wet announced, must be quashed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;In December, the remaining defendants were back in court to hear Yutar read the state's new charges.  The defendants were accused of&#xA;  sabotage, ordering munitions, recruiting young men for guerrilla&#xA;  warfare, encouraging invasion for foreign military units, and&#xA;  conspiring to obtain funds for revolution from foreign states.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;[...] later, Justice de Wet announced his verdict.  Only Rusty Bernstein was acquitted.  Ahmed Kathrada was found guilty on one of&#xA;  the four counts.  The other defendants: guilty on all counts.  Justice&#xA;  de Wet told the assembled courtroom that he would deal with the&#xA;  question of sentencing the next morning.  He released a 72-page&#xA;  summary of the evidence with findings.  Justice de Wet concluded,&#xA;  among other things, that &quot;beyond doubt Nelson Mandela had been the&#xA;  leading spirit behind the creation of Umkhonto we Sizwe&quot; and that&#xA;  &quot;Operation Mayibuye comprised a detailed plan for waging guerrilla war&#xA;  intended to culminate in full scale revolt against the Government of&#xA;  South Africa.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence that the High Command of MK had at least been considering future guerrila warfare: &lt;a href=&quot;http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mandela/mandelaoperationm.html&quot;&gt;Operation Mayibuye&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's reason to doubt that Mandela personally endorsed this plan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sisulu testified that Operation Mayibuye was the brain child of Arthur Goldreich, a member of the High Command and a former member of&#xA;  the Israeli underground movement.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The defendants contended that Operation Mayibuye had never been formally adopted by the High Command and was merely under&#xA;  consideration as a possible plan of action.  Mandela later described&#xA;  Operation Mayibuye as a &quot;draft document&quot; that he considered &quot;entirely&#xA;  unrealistic in its goals and plans.&quot;  Operation Mayibuye was drafted&#xA;  by members of the National High Command.  Mandela, who was imprisoned&#xA;  at the time, did not participate in drafting the document.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mandela/chaskalsonclose.html&quot;&gt;closing statement from the defence&lt;/a&gt; helps to explain why the defendants (including Mandela) were neither tried nor convicted as 'killers' (including &quot;murder, incitement to murder and attempted murder&quot;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;May it please your Lordship, the State has told your Lordship that this trial is a trial for murder and attempted murder. The indictment alleges military training and sabotage. But despite this the accused have been subjected to cross-examination on murder, incitement to murder and attempted murder. The evidence presented to the court on these claims is all hearsay, and the existence of these claims has never been substantiated in this court. There has been a mass of inadmissible evidence which bears no relation to the indictment. The defense will not even deal with these allegations as they have nothing to do with the case. The defense concedes that Umkhonto we Sizwe recruited men for military training and that members of Umkhonto committed acts of sabotage. The defense denies, however, that they committed all the acts of sabotage with which they are charged. I will demonstrate to your Lordship, from the evidence, that there were other organizations in South Africa committing acts of sabotage at the time in question.... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even if the State had succeeded in proving that certain acts of sabotage were committed by Umkhonto, that is not the end of the matter. The accused who the State said were the leaders of Umkhonto are only responsible for the acts falling within the designated policy of Umkhonto. The evidence is that Umkhonto’s policy was only to commit acts of sabotage against government and public property which it labeled symbols of apartheid. The evidence further shows and stands corroborated by the evidence of the State witnesses Mtolo and Mthembu that the clear policy of Umkhonto was sabotage without loss of life. The authorities show that if one member of the conspiracy goes out and commits an act falling outside the ambit of the conspiracy, his fellow conspirators are not legally liable for such acts. On this basis the accused, who adhered at all times to a policy designed to avoid danger to life, were not responsible for acts of sabotage committed even by proved members of Umkhonto against their instructions. The accused accordingly disclaim all responsibility of bomb attacks on private houses... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO the evidence suggests that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They deliberately avoided killing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If anyone were killed, that was by accident; or against their orders; or independently (not on their orders at all).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some of the MK High Command (Mandela was arrested and imprisoned before the others were) considered escalating, in the future, from sabotage to guerrilla war.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know what Mandela's own views, intentions, or actions were re. a hypothetical future guerrilla war, civil war, and/or invasion of South Africa by foreign armies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary the evidence suggests that Mandela's actions and intentions were not &quot;non-violent&quot;, but he was not a killer. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umkhonto_we_Sizwe#Motivation_for_formation_of_the_MK&quot;&gt;In his own defence, he wrote&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Firstly, we believed that as a result of Government policy, violence by the African people had become inevitable, and that unless responsible leadership was given to canalise and control the feelings of our people, there would be outbreaks of terrorism which would produce an intensity of bitterness and hostility between the various races of this country which is not produced even by war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-12-09T14:23:45.450" LastActivityDate="2013-12-09T14:23:45.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18626" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18631" CreationDate="2013-12-09T09:23:13.303" Score="14" ViewCount="1270" Body="&lt;p&gt;A very famous photo is the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:H96566k.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/d4fitm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;First bug&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is the picture of a moth stuck to a piece of paper with the writing &quot;First actual case of a bug being found&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We already know that &lt;em&gt;bug&lt;/em&gt; was being used for &lt;em&gt;glitch&lt;/em&gt; in engineering for a long time (Edison used it!), and we already &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10298/did-the-computing-term-bug-come-from-a-moth-stuck-in-a-computer&quot;&gt;address that on another question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is much less clear is if she was the first one to use it in the context of software engineering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She was a mathematician and a pioneer in the use of computers in the military, particularly in the United States Navy. She was one of the inventors of the computer language &quot;COBOL&quot; and was the first person to use the word &quot;bug&quot; to describe an error in a computer program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/ghopper.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Grace Hopper's obituary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example is this article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9183584/Moth_in_the_machine_Debugging_the_origins_of_bug_&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Computerworld&lt;/a&gt; confuses the two and doesn't answer the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper#Anecdotes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; is unclear on the matter, as it only says it was used in &lt;em&gt;engineering&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Though the term bug had been in use for many years in engineering to refer to small glitches and inexplicable problems, Admiral Hopper did bring the term into popularity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was &quot;bug&quot; used to refer to software bugs before being popularized by Grace Hopper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T17:41:30.840" Title="Was &quot;bug&quot; used to refer to software bugs before being popularized by Grace Hopper?" Tags="|history|software|etymology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18628" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-09T17:36:49.100" Score="8" ViewCount="9060" Body="&lt;p&gt;Traditionally, Muslims only eat meat that has been slaughtered and prepared according to the rules of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halal&quot;&gt;Halal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people claim that leads to meat that is healthier to eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://halalforhealth.com/why_halal.html&quot;&gt;Halal for Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Halal meat tastes better, is more tender, is healthier and stays fresh longer because the absence of blood makes it resistant to bacteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-03-27/food-reviews/30675282_1_halal-meat-slaughter-animal&quot;&gt;Times of India&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr Modi has support from Dr Karuna Chaturvedi, consultant nutritionist at Apollo Hospitals in New Delhi. &quot;Halal is considered healthier because after slaughter, blood is drained from the animal's arteries, ejecting most toxins because the heart continues to pump for a few seconds after slaughter. In jhatka [i.e. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jhatka&quot;&gt;the Sikh tradition&lt;/a&gt;], not all the blood is drained, leaving the meat tougher and drier.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence of a nutritional or health benefit for Halal meat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8001" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-12-14T12:17:04.290" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T13:05:52.120" Title="Is Halal meat healthier to consume?" Tags="|nutrition|religion|meat|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18629" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-09T20:46:47.637" Score="-4" ViewCount="3553" Body="&lt;p&gt;Truther News, part of conspiracy theory site, Truther.org &lt;a href=&quot;http://truthernews.wordpress.com/2013/12/01/fast-and-furious-star-paul-walker-assassinated-by-obama-drone-strike/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While initial reports state that the car split in two after striking a tree at a high rate of speed, one look at the crash scene (see photo below) and it’s evident that the tree (no more than 6 inches in diameter) was not solely responsible for cutting in half, exploding and completely destroying the 2005 Porsche Carrera GT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few inches of wood are obviously no match for thousands of pounds of forged steel allegedly traveling at an extremely high-rate of speed.. In other words, what is being alleged as the cause of death by authorities is scientifically impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to indirectly suggest the US Government hit the car with a missile fired from a drone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16640" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T14:54:09.257" Title="Was Paul Walker killed by a US Government drone?" Tags="|mortality|government|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18630" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-10T01:41:26.120" Score="5" ViewCount="490" Body="&lt;p&gt;Facebook brought this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.minds.com/blog/view/248173902813990912/fda-finally-admits-chicken-meat-contains-cancer-causing-arsenic&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Minds.com&lt;/a&gt; article to my attention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After years of sweeping the issue under the rug and hoping no one would notice, the FDA has now finally admitted that chicken meat sold in the USA contains arsenic, a cancer-causing toxic chemical that’s fatal in high doses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a result wouldn't necessarily shock me, but none of the references are to primary sources, and the article doesn't distinguish between organic and inorganic arsenic, so I am skeptical that they have the details right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the FDA (or any other scientifically reputable source, if you don't trust them) declare that chicken meat contains (pharmacologically significant amounts of) cancer-causing arsenic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-10T12:00:23.370" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T17:36:13.187" Title="Does chicken meat from the US contain arsenic?" Tags="|nutrition|united-states|environmental-health|meat|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18626" CreationDate="2013-12-10T02:21:51.277" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is limited evidence to support the term being in use on an informal basis due to the overlap with engineering due to the electromechanical nature of early computers. However, the terms &quot;bug&quot; or &quot;debugging&quot; could not considered to be widely accepted as having a meaning applied strictly to software until the 1950's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Early computers such as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Mark_I&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harvard Mark I&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Mark_II&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;II&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Delay_Storage_Automatic_Calculator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC)&lt;/a&gt; where &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromechanics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;electromechanical&lt;/a&gt; and required the use of a combination of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plugboard&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;plug boards&lt;/a&gt; and system software in order to be programmed. It was not until the development of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-0_System&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A-0 System&lt;/a&gt; compiler for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIVAC_I&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UNIVAC I&lt;/a&gt; by Grace Hopper that modern programming (i.e. writing instructions that are compiled and interpreted by the computer) came about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This electromechanical nature of early computers is relevant as articles such as &quot;Etymology of the Computer Bug: History and Folklore&quot; by Fred R. Shapiro in &quot;American Speech&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/455415?uid=3739696&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;uid=3739256&amp;amp;sid=21103094283171&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vol. 62, No. 4 (Winter, 1987), pp. 376-378&lt;/a&gt;) provides the following pieces of evidence that while Grace Hopper may be well known for using the term &quot;bug&quot; due to the moth story, she was not the first one to use it in the context of computing,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hopper and her colleagues must have thought the discovery of  the &#xA;  moth remarkable  because  mechanical  defects  were ALREADY  called&#xA;  bugs. Her  9 Sept. 1945 log  entry,  which reads, &quot;First actual case&#xA;  of bug  being found,&quot; makes this quite clear. Even the  verb debug&#xA;  must have predated Mark II, since  the Supplement cites  a 1945  usage&#xA;  in  the  Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society which  was probably&#xA;  preceded  by several years  of  oral  use in engineering  slang.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Stalking the elusive computer bug&quot; by Peggy Kidwell in &quot;Annals of the History of Computing, IEEE&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=728224&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vol. 20. No. 4. pp. 5-9&lt;/a&gt;) makes the case that Hopper learned the term &quot;bug&quot; while working on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Mark_I&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harvard Mark I&lt;/a&gt; from other engineers on the project, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Grace Hopper Papers in the National Museum of American History&#xA;  (NMAH, Smithsonian Institution) Archives Center and documents&#xA;  elsewhere show that by 1947, Harvard personnel had been using the word&#xA;  &quot;bug&quot; to describe problems with their computers for several years.&#xA;  Indeed, they apparently adopted the terms &quot;bug, &quot;debug,&quot; and&#xA;  &quot;debugging&quot; from contemporary U.S. engineering slang.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documents related to the operation of the Mark I show others using the term &quot;bug&quot;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ASCC Mark I arrived at Harvard in February of 1944 and was&#xA;  installed with the assistance of IBM engineers (see Fig. 2). I.B.&#xA;  Cohen has examined a photocopy of the logbook kept by Robert Campbell,&#xA;  a young physicist at the Computation Laboratory. It tersely summarizes&#xA;  hours spent finding and correcting errors. on 17 April 1944, Campbell&#xA;  wrote, &quot;Ran test program. Mr. Durfee from I.B.M. was here to help us&#xA;  find the 'bugs'&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the term was also being used in the context of programming the Mark I &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hopper arrived at Harvard in early July of 1944. She soon was acutely&#xA;  aware of the bugs that could appear in coding and punching the paper&#xA;  tapes. Instructions she prepared for running one problem on the&#xA;  machine included &quot;a debugging note to operators.&quot; This problem ran&#xA;  from November 1945 to March 1946. In a contemporary list of people who&#xA;  worked on solving the problem, Hopper reported &quot;errors in mathematics&#xA;  and tap bugs pursued and captured by Ensign Bloch and Ensign Campbell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper goes on to note that, in the broader sense, term &quot;debugging&quot; did not enter the popular usage until the early 1950's and the paper makes the case that this was in part due to the term already being used by engineers in other contexts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, it was during the work on the Harvard Mark I that the term &quot;bug&quot; made was made to include issues with both the hardware and software, but the term was not in widespread use. As shown by the lack of of the term in early formal papers on what would now be called debugging, such as &quot;The Diagnosis of Mistakes in Programmes on the EDSAC&quot; by S. Gill in &quot;Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/98663?uid=3739696&amp;amp;uid=2129&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=70&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;uid=3739256&amp;amp;sid=21103094283171&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vol. 206, No. 1087 (May 22, 1951), pp. 538-554&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ht462.png&quot; alt=&quot;&amp;quot;Grin and Bear it&amp;quot;, 23 March 1952&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was not until 1953 when Hopper prepared a glossary for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckert-Mauchly_Computer_Corporation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eckert–Mauchly Computer Corporation&lt;/a&gt; for Univac programmers that &quot;debug&quot; was defined in formal documentation as &quot;to remove a malfunction from a computer or an error from a routine&quot; and it was not the Univac I documentation that definitions would appear that would be recognizable by modern software developers,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Programs provided for the Univac I included an &quot;Automonitor&quot; routine.&#xA;  A January 1953 description of it began, &quot;It frequently becomes&#xA;  necessary in the debugging of routines to follow step by step each&#xA;  operation involved in a specific computation.&quot; Documentation for&#xA;  another program, called &quot;Codesearch,&quot; explained that it would be used&#xA;  if &quot;a bug is encountered in a routine and on typing out the memory,&#xA;  the programmer discovers that a memory location, 289 for instance,&#xA;  contains decimal zero instead of the expected instruction.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, while a very compelling case can be made for Hopper being at least in part responsive for the widespread adoption of the terms &quot;bug&quot; and &quot;debugging&quot; in the software industry through her work on the Univac documentation, evidence exists to show that the terms were already associated with programming the Harvard Mark I prior to Hopper's arrival at Harvard in July of 1944.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as the question is phrased, &lt;em&gt;yes&lt;/em&gt; the term &quot;bug&quot; was used to refer to errors in software prior to terms being popularized in the the early 1950's; however, the extent of the usage appears to be &lt;em&gt;limited&lt;/em&gt; with the strongest case only being made for the term being used at Harvard University and by those associated with those projects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-12-10T17:41:30.840" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T17:41:30.840" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18635" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-10T10:00:01.377" Score="26" ViewCount="1944" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2012-11-09/article/40474&quot;&gt;Berkeley Daily Planet&lt;/a&gt; reports one rumour I heard:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The one Nobel Prize you won’t hear announced is for Mathematics―because, in contrast to Chemistry, Physics, and Literature, there is no Nobelity in Math. Rumor has it that it’s because of a sex scandal: Alfred Nobel’s wife had an affair with a mathematician. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The variant I have heard was that it was Alfred Nobel’s fiance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this why there is no Nobel Prize for Mathematics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5745" LastEditorUserId="22504" LastEditDate="2016-01-01T20:49:01.510" LastActivityDate="2016-01-01T20:49:01.510" Title="Is there no Nobel Prize for Mathematics because of an act of infidelity?" Tags="|history|mathematics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18629" CreationDate="2013-12-10T17:39:20.400" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quote makes several fallacies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;False premise&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the car split in two&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, only the empty, front cargo compartment of the car was split in two. This is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_premise&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;false premise&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/245eJ.jpg&quot; width=&quot;300&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Argument from incredulity&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;and it’s evident that the tree was not solely responsible for cutting in half &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evident to who? Not to me. It looks pretty evident that the tree &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; solely responsible for cutting in half. This is an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance#Argument_from_incredulity.2FLack_of_imagination&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;argument from incredulity&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at what trees do to cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rkOpmnuLXwk/UhvYmoPvSoI/AAAAAAAAAm8/0plFjBqV2kg/s1600/Car_crash_1.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&#xA;(Tree stopped by engine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_FoXyvaPSnVk/RemvmchLzMI/AAAAAAAAE3c/2Hi3bdMrNjE/s1600/Carscoop_RS6_1.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt; (Tree split this single car in half, fully.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;False analogy&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a few inches of wood are obviously no match for thousands of pounds of forged steel allegedly traveling at an extremely high-rate of speed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if true, so what? This was 6 inches of wood, and a a few hundred pounds of a crumple-ready cargo compartment. This is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_analogy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;false analogy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1hsQi.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:39.120" LastActivityDate="2013-12-10T17:39:20.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18648" CreationDate="2013-12-10T18:25:24.890" Score="5" ViewCount="901" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Ramsey&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dave Ramsey&lt;/a&gt;, an American financial author and radio host, recently made the following claim on his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.podfeed.net/episode/The+Dave+Ramsey+Show+-+12062013/4500559&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;6 December 2013 radio show&lt;/a&gt; (at 5 minutes into the show) when discussing holiday shopping in the United States (i.e. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Friday_%28shopping%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Black Friday&lt;/a&gt; through Christmas),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[retailers] make all of their money for the entire year in 45 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This statement was made in the context that shopper aren't good at controlling their impulses and marketers are very good at getting people to spend money since the holidays are when retailers make their profits for the year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this statement in fact accurate in the sense that retailers either make all of their money for the year from holiday shopping or that they don't turn a profit until the holiday shopping season?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-12-12T16:10:07.243" LastActivityDate="2013-12-12T16:10:07.243" Title="Do retailers make all of their money for the year in last 45 days?" Tags="|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18642" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18646" CreationDate="2013-12-11T01:52:04.237" Score="15" ViewCount="1155" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a news article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/363656&quot;&gt;Man commits suicide after girlfriend refuses to quit shopping&lt;/a&gt;, a man in China jumped to his death after his girlfriend insisted on going to one more shoe outlet after an enormous shopping spree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this hard to believe, and I wonder if this is a real story, or one made up by the Chinese media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T06:49:38.080" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T06:49:38.080" Title="Did a man jump to his death after too much shopping?" Tags="|china|suicide|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9228" CreationDate="2013-12-11T01:58:46.087" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No it is fake, as this website has already investigated this &lt;a href=&quot;http://translate.google.com.au/translate?hl=en&amp;amp;sl=pl&amp;amp;u=http://www.plecakwspomnien.eu/2013/05/kod-2fabe-czyli-jak-wysyac-pocztowki-za.html&amp;amp;prev=/search?q=Z%2binformacji%2botrzymanych%2bw%2bprzedmiotowej%2bsprawie%2bz%2bjednostki%2b%253E%2bodpowiedzialnej%2bw%2bPoczcie%2bPolskiej%2bS.A%2bza%2bkontakty%2bz%2bzagranicznymi%2b%253E%2bAdministracjami%2bPocztowymi%2bwynika,%2b%25C5%25BCe%2bw%2bobrocie%2bmi%25C4%2599dzynarodowym%2bnie%2bs%25C4%2585%2b%253E%2bznane%2bprzypadki%2bhonorowania%2bjakiegokolwiek%2btego%2btypu%2bkodu%2b%253E%2bumo%25C5%25BCliwiaj%25C4%2585cego%2bnadanie%2bkartek%2bpocztowych%2bza%2bgranic%25C4%2599.%2bTak%25C5%25BCe%2bdor%25C4%2599czanie%2b%253E%2btakich%2bkartek%2bmimo%2bbraku%2bznaku%2bop%25C5%2582aty,%2bkt%25C3%25B3re%2bde%2bfacto%2bnie%2bpowinny%2b%253E%2btrafi%25C4%2587%2bdo%2bobrotu%2bpocztowego%2bnie%2bwynika%2bz%2bnaniesienia%2btego%2bkodu.&amp;amp;rlz=1C1JUFK_enAU497AU497&amp;amp;espv=210&amp;amp;es_sm=93&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the bottom it has a message from the Polish post office saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Z informacji otrzymanych w przedmiotowej sprawie z jednostki&#xA;  odpowiedzialnej w Poczcie Polskiej S.A za kontakty z zagranicznymi&#xA;  Administracjami Pocztowymi wynika, że w obrocie międzynarodowym nie są&#xA;  znane przypadki honorowania jakiegokolwiek tego typu kodu&#xA;  umożliwiającego nadanie kartek pocztowych za granicę. Także doręczanie&#xA;  takich kartek mimo braku znaku opłaty, które de facto nie powinny&#xA;  trafić do obrotu pocztowego nie wynika z naniesienia tego kodu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which translates to,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The information received in this case the unit responsible for the&#xA;  Polish Post SA for contacts with foreign postal administrations shows&#xA;  that international trade is not aware of any cases of honoring this&#xA;  type of code enabling the granting of cards abroad. Additional&#xA;  delivery of such sheets despite the absence of a trade charges which&#xA;  in fact should not enter the postal traffic does not result from&#xA;  application of this code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while the code may allow some letters to be sent, it is not because of the code that these letters are sent, and is probably more a result of nice post office staff not wanting to throw away postcards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="8930" LastEditDate="2013-12-11T21:43:27.783" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T21:43:27.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18642" CreationDate="2013-12-11T09:05:38.690" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/09/boyfriend-suicide-shopping_n_4414873.html&quot;&gt;Huffington post&lt;/a&gt; has a story about it, which cited two Chinese sources (&lt;a href=&quot;http://opinion.hexun.com/2013-12-09/160414722.html&quot;&gt;source 1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://sz.sohu.com/20131209/n391498702.shtml&quot;&gt;source 2&lt;/a&gt;). The Chinese sources are in Chinese so I can't read them, but it also links to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://edu.gmw.cn/2013-12/09/content_9738913.htm&quot;&gt;collection of photos&lt;/a&gt; from the accident (might be slightly too graphic for some).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same story is also reported in several other news sites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2520753/Chinese-boyfriend-jumped-death-girlfriend-insisted-going-clothes-shop.html&quot;&gt;The Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chinasmack.com/2013/stories/man-fed-up-with-girlfriends-shopping-spree-jumps-to-his-death.html&quot;&gt;China Smack&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/man-jumps-to-his-death-after-argument-with-girlfriend-in-chinese-shopping-mall-state-media-say-8994795.html&quot;&gt;The Independant&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/chinese-shopping-trip-boyfriend-jumps-2913017&quot;&gt;Miror&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that he didn't jump to his death &quot;only&quot; because of too much shopping, but after an argument that ensued due to too much shopping. Since the version of his girlfriend is not available, we don't know for sure what happened at the argument. It could be (speculating here) that they broke up during the argument and then the headline should be &lt;em&gt;Man jumps to his death after a break up&lt;/em&gt; which is much less sensational.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2013-12-11T09:22:39.710" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T09:22:39.710" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18639" CreationDate="2013-12-11T09:41:44.403" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, the claim is completely ridiculous, and easy to disprove.  The claim doesn't say &lt;em&gt;which&lt;/em&gt; retailer(s) are supposed to only make profits during holiday shopping, but, at least in the U.S., when we think &quot;retailers&quot;, we think of Wal-Mart or Target.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://stock.walmart.com/financial-reporting/quarterly-results/&quot;&gt;Wal-Mart web site&lt;/a&gt; shows that they turned a profit every quarter of 2013:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/investors/walmart-reports-a-46-percent-increase-for-q1-eps-of-114-us-businesses-forecast-positive-comp-sales-for-q2-1820850&quot;&gt;2013Q1&lt;/a&gt;, US$1.14 EPS (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/eps.asp&quot;&gt;earnings per share&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/investors/walmart-reports-q2-eps-of-124-up-51-percent-adds-27-billion-in-net-sales-1847817&quot;&gt;2013Q2&lt;/a&gt;, US$1.24 EPS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/investors/2013/11/14/walmart-reports-q3-eps-of-114-updates-full-year-guidance-aggressive-holiday-plans-to-drive-sales&quot;&gt;2013Q3&lt;/a&gt; US$1.14 EPS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://investors.target.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=65828&amp;amp;p=irol-IRHome&quot;&gt;Target web site&lt;/a&gt; shows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pressroom.target.com/news/target-reports-first-quarter-2013-earnings&quot;&gt;2013Q1&lt;/a&gt;, US$0.77 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.investopedia.com/articles/analyst/091901.asp&quot;&gt;GAAP EPS&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pressroom.target.com/news/target-reports-second-quarter-2013-earnings&quot;&gt;2013Q2&lt;/a&gt;, US$0.95&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pressroom.target.com/news/target-reports-third-quarter-2013-earnings&quot;&gt;2013Q3&lt;/a&gt;, US$0.54&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And compare this to Walmart's &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/investors/walmart-reports-q4-eps-from-continuing-operations-of-151-walmart-us-delivers-positive-traffic-positive-comp-sales-in-q4-1663026&quot;&gt;2012Q4&lt;/a&gt; US$1.51 EPS, or Target's &lt;a href=&quot;http://pressroom.target.com/news/target-reports-fourth-quarter-and-fiscal-2012-earnings&quot;&gt;2012Q4&lt;/a&gt; $1.47 GAAP EPS and you can see that, if all else is equal, the last quarter of the year, which encompasses the holiday season, is &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; profitable.  But it is not in any way the only profitable, nor is it significantly more profitable, such that one might choose to ignore the other 3/4 of the year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be similarly easy to find the earnings per quarter of any publicly-traded retail company you fancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-12-11T12:38:57.923" LastActivityDate="2013-12-11T12:38:57.923" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18654" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-11T17:52:11.377" Score="6" ViewCount="12525" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across a site where &lt;a href=&quot;http://hollywoodlife.com/2013/12/06/is-paul-walker-alive-not-dead-twitter-still-living/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in the comments section somebody says that the number plate of the Porsche he was last seen in, was different from the one that crashed&lt;/a&gt;. I've tried challenging this claim, but interestingly enough, I managed to find a picture of the last moment of Walker's life where the number plate of the Porsche he got in is shown, but I've searched up dozens of the car crash photos and not one shows even a hint of the number plate. Maybe I'm not looking closely, but can anyone shed light on this topic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16662" LastEditorUserId="16860" LastEditDate="2016-06-23T10:30:40.867" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T10:30:40.867" Title="Did the Porsche which Paul Walker was in at the time of death have a different number plate to the one he was last seen in alive?" Tags="|celebrities|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18654" CreationDate="2013-12-11T18:27:31.663" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's not true. The claim is based on pictures of the license plate at the crash site memorial, which is not actually the plate that was on the car at the time of the crash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the last picture of Paul Walker, with the car:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vnJ0km.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Paul alive with his car&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Can be seen on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tmz.com/2013/11/30/paul-walker-final-photo-before-deadly-crash-porsche/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TMZ&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/paul-walker-dies-crash-report-article-1.1533786&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily News&lt;/a&gt; and others.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the holder around the license plate has the words &quot;Always Evolving&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the picture of the license plate with a different number at the scene:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aKaN3m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;License plate at Walker memorial&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; The pictures of the &quot;fake&quot; license plate can be seen at various sites that either discuss the accident or the conspiracy theory.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's clearly seen that it's outside the crash zone, as marked by the police line. And obviously part of a memorial. Also note that now there is a license plate holder that says &quot;Fast Way racer&quot;. Another indication that this didn't come from the car in the first picture. Again, something someone else placed there as part of the memorial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now look at the car after the crash:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JDPvWm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Walker&amp;#39;s car after the accident&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The car is destroyed beyond recognition, yet the license plate in question looks almost new, no dents, no sign of the fire that burned the car, even the plastics and the lettering on it are intact. It's highly improbable that the license plate was part of the car, wasn't burned or damaged during the accident and then was left at the scene by the police/authorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="16860" LastEditDate="2016-06-23T10:29:55.833" LastActivityDate="2016-06-23T10:29:55.833" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18657" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-11T18:54:30.010" Score="21" ViewCount="1762" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-problems-with-modern-wheat/#axzz2nDcltDFX&quot;&gt;Mark's Daily Apple&lt;/a&gt; gives an example of a claim that I have encountered: that modern wheat bears little resemblance to wheat prior to the 1960s, and that this new wheat is the cause for the rise in wheat-related digestive and health issues in the past 50 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Modern wheat is dwarf wheat, a cultivar developed in the ’60s to massively increase yield per acre. [...] It’s less nutritious. [...] It’s more damaging to celiacs and gluten-sensitives. [...] celiac disease is on the rise, and some researchers have suggested that this is caused by the prevalence of certain gluten proteins that predominate in the new varieties of wheat. Namely, a gluten peptide known as glia-α9, which is nearly absent in older wheats but prevalent in modern wheats, is the most reactive “CD (celiac disease) epitope.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the predominant wheat strains eaten today significantly different in nutrition to those used prior to the 1960s? Are they more likely to trigger celiac disease or similar gluten sensitivities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16666" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T12:37:29.803" LastActivityDate="2019-12-09T11:48:09.217" Title="Did wheat nutrition change in the 1960s, causing health problems?" Tags="|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18660" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18680" CreationDate="2013-12-11T22:42:54.120" Score="4" ViewCount="6978" Body="&lt;p&gt;My history teacher once told us about how several centuries ago people in Europe who were guests at fancy balls and masquerades used to urinate on curtains, under stairs and in dark corners of dimly lit halls, because it was too cold outside or simply because not many bothered to go to an outhouse, restroom or what had they at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Teacher also told us that folks used to camouflage the stench with powerful colognes, which is more believable, considering not every person had enough time to bathe thoroughly so as to naturally smell nice, but I'm interested in the urination bit here, as I couldn't find much evidence to this on the net.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13563" LastActivityDate="2022-05-24T18:48:36.853" Title="Did people use to urinate everywhere at fancy balls?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14886" CreationDate="2013-12-12T03:49:55.230" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is a see-saw, up until 1942 with the introduction of the 75mm KwK 40 L/48 gun the T-34 was superior. Having said that the superiority could not be taken advantage of due to command shortcomings like lack of radio, and also to political interference stifling initiative down to small unit level.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;German tank designs were marred not by over-engineering but by a lack of raw materials to make specially hardened steels for vehicle drive trains.  So Panther, Tiger 1 and Tiger 2 suffered from gear box break downs.  By then being on the defensive and in retreat they were often unable to recover and repair vehicles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming their designs could be built properly the Germans had the best designs.  They were physically bigger than Soviet designs not just heavier.  They had more working space, carried superior optics, more ammunition, and better protection.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1862270333&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr S. Hart and Dr R. Hart German Tanks of World War II 1998 Brown Books&lt;/a&gt;, late model Panther was best tank of WW2, and as a result Germans had better tanks.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16672" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-14T13:02:49.380" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T13:02:49.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18665" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-12T15:42:09.687" Score="2" ViewCount="388" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/170785-the-american-made-stuxnet-virus-has-infected-the-international-space-station&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Extreme Tech&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Last year, news broke that a virus sabotaged the Iranian uranium enrichment program. It seemed all too convenient at the time — and as it turned out, the virus, Stuxnet, was actually engineered by the United States and Israel. Now, the man-made virus has ventured into space, and made its way to the International Space Station.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:28:36.177" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:28:36.177" Title="Did the Stuxnet virus attack the International Space Station?" Tags="|computers|space-flight|virus|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18668" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-12T19:46:01.480" Score="24" ViewCount="6756" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been informed that using the standard household vacuum cleaner's blower attachment to clean motherboards (and the insides of laptops and desktops in general) is dangerous due to the possibility of damaging electronic components. This apparently happens because of possible static electricity build-up on the device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B001J4ZOAW&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Metro Vacuum Datavac&lt;/a&gt; advertises itself as an Electric Duster specially designed to avoid this problem. Its most popular review states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The positives vs vacuuming the PC, or using a standard compressed air can, outweigh the negatives. &lt;strong&gt;The risk of accidentally damaging a component or creating a static discharge when using a vacuum is higher (although I have never had this happen).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SkET9l.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This product is one among many which claim to be specially designed to avoid static build up and therefore be safer for use with electronics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sites such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techspot.com/community/topics/is-it-ok-to-vacuum-clean-the-interior-of-the-system-unit.26402/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.howtogeek.com/57870/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; seem to largely concur with the static build-up claim. The latter states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It’s bad to clean the inside of your computer with a vacuum cleaner because vacuuming creates a large static build up that could (and most likely will) discharge into the sensitive electronics inside your computer case.&lt;/strong&gt; There are specialized vacuum cleaners designed for cleaning out computers and electronic equipment but given the limited amount of use a single user would get from such a purchase it’s not a very wise one—they start at $300+ and can easily break the $1000 price barrier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, to me, sounds like a marketing gimmick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can static electricity build up in vacuum cleaners, and in particular, their nozzles?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How are the designs of &quot;electric dusters&quot; different to common vacuum cleaners?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are &quot;electric dusters&quot; necessary? Or can simpler alternatives or basic modifications to the household vacuum cleaner solve this issue?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have there been any cases of motherboards, or electronics in general, being damaged due to static discharges through the use of vacuum cleaners?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="14521" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T15:40:03.427" LastActivityDate="2014-05-25T15:40:03.427" Title="Is it dangerous to vacuum-clean motherboards (and other electronics)?" Tags="|computers|electronics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18669" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-12T21:10:49.973" Score="1" ViewCount="1288" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm completely rewriting this question to hopefully make it more clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First claim (this is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://guardianlv.com/2013/12/nelson-mandela-what-were-we-thinking/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;guardianlv.com&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now that it has been officially announced that Nelson Mandela has passed away, our position on the matter has not changed in any way. Inevitably, his passing had to be revealed. Many of our South African readers have believed us from the start; &lt;strong&gt;those that have criticized us have presented not one shred of evidence that we were wrong.&lt;/strong&gt; The idea that we are proven wrong because the official announcement comes only now is absurd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And later:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nelson Mandela is now officially dead – but he was already dead. &lt;strong&gt;Nothing has transpired between our initial June 26 reports and the present time to prove otherwise.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;present time&lt;/em&gt; refers to December 6, 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the first claim is the two bolded quotes. &lt;strong&gt;Is there any evidence that Nelson Mandela was alive between June 26 and December 5?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second claim is in the next quote from the same article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During a Mandela family legal battle, &lt;strong&gt;documents emerged which stated that doctors had advised the family to turn off Mandela’s life support as he was brain-dead.&lt;/strong&gt; At a later point, Zuma made a statement denying this, but we noted carefully that, while other news organizations were reporting that the doctors themselves had retracted their claims that Mandela was brain-dead, &lt;strong&gt;no such retraction had been made&lt;/strong&gt;; Zuma himself claimed that the doctors had retracted this assertion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the second claim is that &lt;strong&gt;Mandela's doctors said he was brain dead, and the doctors did not retcact that. Did the doctors say that, and did they retract it?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="15980" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T15:53:51.287" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T15:53:51.287" Title="Did Nelson Mandela die on June 26, 2013?" Tags="|mortality|nelson-mandela|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18676" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18669" CreationDate="2013-12-13T18:17:18.603" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will analyze this claim that you have presented:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to this video just released by Courageous Nerdz, Nelson Mandela really died on June 26th, 2013, and he shares that proof here in a way that will make even the biggest skeptics wonder what is really going on in South Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;According to this video just released by Courageous Nerdz, Nelson Mandela really died on June 26th, 2013&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, the video doesn't claim this. The closest it comes to making this claim is at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9pjwRGk0M8&amp;amp;t=11m41s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;11:41&lt;/a&gt;, it says, &quot;Nelson Mandela's life support was shut down&quot;. Everything else it says regarding this is of the form &quot;others have said that...&quot;, avoiding making a claim itself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;and he shares that proof here&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. His proof is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9pjwRGk0M8&amp;amp;t=12m21s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;screenshots of an article (at 12:21)&lt;/a&gt; by Michael Smith at guardianlv.com. The article in the video shows a headline &quot;Nelson Mandela Life Support Shut Down as Respected Humanitarian Dies Age 94&quot;, however, that headline was &lt;a href=&quot;http://guardianlv.com/2013/06/nelson-mandela-life-support-shut-down-as-respected-humanitarian-dies-age-94/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;later corrected to include a question mark at the end&lt;/a&gt;. The article doesn't claim that Nelson Mandela died on June 26, as asserted by the video. It only says things like &quot;&lt;em&gt;[we] have provided the following information that has been supplied to us by our local South African sources&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, and &quot;&lt;em&gt;according to our sources&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, and &quot;&lt;em&gt;sources have said&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. That is not proof. The article doesn't say that its author or editors believe that Nelson Mandela died on June 26. They don't use language like &quot;we can confirm that&quot;. The article simply asks the question, and then relays what anonymous sources said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onthemedia.org/story/breaking-news-consumers-handbook-pdf/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Breaking News Consumer's Handbook&lt;/a&gt;, there is a difference between news that only reports that &lt;em&gt;sources have said&lt;/em&gt; X and news that &lt;em&gt;confirms&lt;/em&gt; X. Only the latter means that the news outlet feels confident that it can claim something as an actual fact.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;that will make even the biggest skeptics wonder what is really going on in South Africa&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a claim about the effect that the video will have on people like us. I can only speak anecdotally, but it didn't have the claimed effect on me.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-12-13T18:17:18.603" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18679" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-14T11:59:42.307" Score="15" ViewCount="4002" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do we get sick when we get wet in rain while nothing happens when we stand in the shower?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16701" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-12-15T01:32:06.070" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T05:21:49.223" Title="Do we catch a cold when we get wet in rain?" Tags="|medical-science|common-cold|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18660" CreationDate="2013-12-14T13:13:51.983" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is clear that in the twenty first century, people, especially intoxicated people, occasionally &lt;a href=&quot;http://stoneyroads.com/alan-braxe-pees-on-wall-gets-kicked-out-denies-it/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;urinate in inappropriate places&lt;/a&gt;. There's no reason to believe that people were any different a few hundred years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, several centuries ago it was not normal to urinate on curtains&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sanitary needs of Tudor courtiers at Hampton Court Palace were met in a variety of ways.  The lodgings of the senior members of the court, such as those in Base Court, had their own garderobe shafts.  Some used piss-pots, like the Tudor pot excavated and displayed at Hampton Court (still containing traces of Tudor urine).  Lower-ranking members of the court would use the ‘common jakes’ in the south-west corner of the palace, later known as the Great House of Easement, where lavatories drained via the moat into the river.  Fourteen people could be seated here simultaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hrp.org.uk/discoverthepalaces/Historyandstories/Lifeinthepalaces/Toiletsandbathrooms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Historic Royal Palaces&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/B57Wf.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Toilets on two levels over the river Skell at Fountains Abbey, a Cistercian monastery founded in 1132.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &lt;em&gt;&quot;not have time to bathe thoroughly&quot;&lt;/em&gt; - probably nobody bathed in a way that would be considered thorough today. Not for lack of time but simply because it wasn't thought necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;everyone stank, no one noticed it or recorded it for history. Sensitive souls might bury their faces in nosegays or scented hankies when a long-unwashed regiment tramped past, but most of our forebears remained as blissfully unaware of their stench as we are of the growing foulness of our air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.org/foundation/journal/autumn00/bathe.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Coming Clean in Colonial America&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2013-12-14T18:04:03.153" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T18:04:03.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18681" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-14T13:29:02.000" Score="15" ViewCount="1168" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim has all the hallmarks of a made up story (too good to be true, against common wisdom, etc.), but is being spread around social media and appears on TIme, who sources it to a scientific paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But even after controlling for nearly all imaginable variables — socioeconomic status, level of physical activity, number of close friends, quality of social support and so on — the researchers (a six-member team led by psychologist Charles Holahan of the University of Texas at Austin) found that over a 20-year period, mortality rates were highest for those who were not current drinkers, regardless of whether they used to be alcoholics, second highest for heavy drinkers and lowest for moderate drinkers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2017200,00.html&quot;&gt;http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2017200,00.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this study reliable? Can we say, scientifically, that heavy drinking on average predicts longer life or is the study being misinterpreted for sentationalism? Or is it simply an unreliable study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-14T19:17:54.360" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T09:33:53.730" Title="Do heavy drinkers outlive nondrinkers?" Tags="|medical-science|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18684" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-14T18:56:29.967" Score="11" ViewCount="909" Body="&lt;p&gt;In discussions on the whether Christianity played a key role in the abolition of slavery in the Western world, I've read the claim that the Christian Europe state, around 800-1000 AD, was the first place where slavery was abolished. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2009/11/did-christianity-abolish-slavery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;commenter xlr wrote&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Christian Europe in the post-Roman state was the first and for centuries only place on the planet were slavery was abolished. This was due to inherent issues between the faith and slavery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Since the initial answer refers to a place that 'abolished' slavery for three years before re-instating it, let's make this interesting and ask if Christian Europe was the first place to abolish slavery for a long period of time - say 100 years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2834" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T13:47:05.020" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T13:47:05.020" Title="Was Christian Europe the first place to abolish slavery?" Tags="|history|slavery|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18684" CreationDate="2013-12-14T20:18:24.763" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Wang Mang, an Emperor of the Xin Dynasty, abolished slavery in the year 9CE. (It was reinstated, but that's not the question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Mang&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; referencing Hallet, Nicole. &quot;China and Antislavery&quot;. Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition, Vol. 1, p. 154 – 156. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007. ISBN 0-313-33143-X.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2013-12-14T20:18:24.763" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18688" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18689" CreationDate="2013-12-14T21:55:11.867" Score="21" ViewCount="10821" Body="&lt;p&gt;Prior to about a week ago, I've never known Christ's birthday to be anything other than December 25th. However, my kids are starting to tell me about how they're hearing claims from peers that this is not the case. Couple this with &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/1Een6omgk74&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the latest Simpson's couch gag&lt;/a&gt; (23 seconds in):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FKoRQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;94 DAYS TILL MARCH 28&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...and now I'm curious. Are these mad claims, or is there actual proof out there of Christ's birthday falling on this &quot;March 28th&quot; date?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15755" LastEditorUserId="31604" LastEditDate="2019-04-30T13:22:57.303" LastActivityDate="2019-05-01T14:31:59.053" Title="Is Jesus Christ's birthday March 28th?" Tags="|history|bible|christianity|jesus-christ|christmas|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18688" CreationDate="2013-12-14T22:10:45.583" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;We don't have a clear idea of the date on which he was born. In fact, we don't even know the year he was born. Some historians like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Price&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Robert Price&lt;/a&gt; even disagree on his historicity or existence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another skeptics answer we have shown some indirect &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/1629/96&quot;&gt;historical evidence&lt;/a&gt; for his existence, and to be fair, most historians agree that someone like him existed (from Galilee, preached, was crucified by Pilate), even though there are different and diverging theories to who he was or what he did exactly.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most scholars agree that Jesus was a Jewish teacher or rabbi from Galilee [...]&#xA;  Scholars have constructed various portraits of the historical Jesus, which often depict him as having one or more of the following roles: the leader of an apocalyptic movement, Messiah, a charismatic healer, a sage and philosopher, or an egalitarian social reformer. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jesus (Wikipedia)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as to date, we come up empty of any direct evidence - all evidence beyond the Gospels speaks in general terms of him, and even the gospels do not set an exact date for his birth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even the historicity of the Gospels is object of debate among historians:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although some claim that all four canonical gospels meet the five criteria for historical reliability, others say that little in the gospels is considered to be historically reliable. _ &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_Gospels&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Historical reliability of the Gospels (Wikipedia)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A believable birth date therefore is out of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="31604" LastEditDate="2019-04-30T13:22:49.480" LastActivityDate="2019-04-30T13:22:49.480" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13789" CreationDate="2013-12-15T04:20:36.443" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question includes two separate questions: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it more cost effective to adapt to warming rather than avoiding greenhouse emissions? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Might carbon capture and storage be better than avoiding emissions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most comprehensive work on the economics of global warming is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=U-VmIrGGZgAC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=stern+review&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=jyStUr7qK5DvkAXNrYCABg&amp;amp;ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=stern%20review&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stern review&lt;/a&gt;, which found that it is substantially cheaper to avoid global warming than it is to adapt. This hasn't exactly achieved consensus (as is predictable in both climate change discussions and in economics), but anyone arguing the reverse conclusion should really identify why they disagree with Stern. All of the problems with the report I have seen have been convincingly dealt with, but you may want to check them for yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carbon capture and storage just gives us another way of generating power without greenhouse gas emissions, much like solar or wind power. It may become cost effective in the future, but today the technology is too immature to realistically estimate the likely cost. For that reason, it is far less promising than more widespread green energy options, for which working plants are already operating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16709" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-15T21:59:27.440" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T21:59:27.440" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18628" CreationDate="2013-12-15T12:37:57.680" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a common misconception that Halal meat is &quot;healthier&quot; than non-Halal meat, because it is often confused with it's parent, Kosher.&#xA;The practice of Halal, like a large number of Islamic practices, was born from Judaism, specifically Kosher. However, many of the restrictions of Kosher were not included in Halal, including the restrictions that add health value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To be Kosher, after slaughter the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kashrut.com/articles/glatt/&quot;&gt;animal's lungs must be checked&lt;/a&gt; for any holes or serious imperfections. Halal does not require this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To be Kosher, the animal's intestines (again, after slaughter) must be inspected for any blockages, holes or illnesses. Halal does not require this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To be Kosher, the animal must have been in good health and comfort externally before being slaughtered. Halal does not necessarily require this (there are opinions that do).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kosher meats do not included certain parts of the animal, like some fats and organs. Many people prefer Kosher meat for this reason.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adherents to Halal are permitted, by all opinions, to eat Kosher, however adherents to Kosher are not permitted to eat Halal. In other words, Halal is a subset of Kosher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aish.com/jl/m/mm/48958906.html&quot;&gt;More about Kosher&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://halalguide.com.ph/halalindustry/whatishalal/&quot;&gt;More about Halal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16711" LastEditorUserId="16711" LastEditDate="2013-12-15T13:05:52.120" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T13:05:52.120" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18693" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18630" CreationDate="2013-12-15T17:36:13.187" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A older study [1] suggests that this is true in younger chicken. A relevant excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the years 1994–2000 mean arsenic concentrations in young chickens ranged from 0.33 to 0.43ppm, and the mean for the entire period was 0.39 ppm (Figure1). During the same period, the mean values for mature chickens, turkeys, hogs, and all other species was between 0.10 and 0.16 ppm (Figure1). The mean concentrations of arsenic in young chickens declined from 0.43 ppm (95% CI, 0.4–0.47) to 0.33 (95% CI, 0.30–0.36) between 1994 and 1999, with a slight upturn to 0.39 (95% CI, 0.37–0.41) in 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found several other references at scholar.google.com using the keywords &quot;poultry arsenic&quot;, however, on a first glance this looks like the most complete study I could find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mean total arsenic concentrations in chicken 1989-2000 and estimated exposures for consumers of chicken. Tamar Lasky, Wenyu Sun, Abdel Kadry, Michael K Hoffman. Environ Health Perspect. 2004 January; 112(1): 18–21. PMCID: PMC1241791. URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1241791/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1241791/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6180" LastActivityDate="2013-12-15T17:36:13.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18694" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-15T18:14:07.033" Score="23" ViewCount="9146" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monroeinstitute.org/resources/what-are-binaural-beats&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-binaural-beats.com/&quot;&gt;websites&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt_3sI8id-c&quot;&gt;YouTube videos&lt;/a&gt; (including &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats#Hypothetical_effects_on_brain_function&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Binaural Beats&quot; are a proven brain wave entrainment audio stimulus that are guaranteed to alter your state of consciousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Understanding the claim in more detail:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that the brain operates at different frequencies, depending on your state of consciousness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are some examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Frequency range  Name               Usually associated with:&#xA;&amp;gt; 40 Hz          Gamma waves        Higher mental activity, including perception, problem solving, fear, and consciousness&#xA;13–39 Hz         Beta waves         Active, busy or anxious thinking and active concentration, arousal, cognition, and or paranoia&#xA;7–13 Hz          Alpha waves        Relaxation (while awake), pre-sleep and pre-wake drowsiness, REM sleep, Dreams&#xA;8–12 Hz          Mu waves           Mu rhythm, Sensorimotor rhythm&#xA;4–7 Hz           Theta waves        Deep meditation/relaxation, NREM sleep&#xA;&amp;lt; 4 Hz           Delta waves        Deep dreamless sleep, loss of body awareness&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theory behind &quot;binaural beats&quot; is that by watching/listening to stimulus at certain frequencies, you can invoke a state of mind in the listener relating to that frequency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if your brain is running at 25Hz (a frequency associated with anxious thinking and concentration), listening to a &quot;binaural beat&quot; of 6Hz would aid a listener change the frequency of their brain to 6Hz, and so invoke a state of consciousness associated with that frequency. In this case, changing the listener's mindset from anxiety to deep relaxation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is there actually any scientifically sound evidence to suggest that listening to &quot;Alpha waves&quot; could aid sleep? Or &quot;Theta waves&quot;, meditation? Or &quot;Beta waves&quot; aiding concentration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In other words:&lt;/strong&gt; Is there any solid evidence that ANY frequency could &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; the listener achieve a state of awareness/consciousness that they were aiming for? Or is it all pseudo-science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1835" LastEditorUserId="1835" LastEditDate="2014-01-03T22:17:11.090" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T23:15:28.187" Title="Can &quot;binaural beats&quot; alter your state of consciousness?" Tags="|neurology|consciousness|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18695" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-15T21:50:21.417" Score="2" ViewCount="355" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been suggested to me more than once by amateur historians on forums, that before 1500&amp;nbsp;BC the Britons only kept livestock and didn't grow crops at all.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14gb77/what_crops_did_the_bronze_age_britains_grow/c7cv4b1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AskHistorians on Reddit&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that agricultural practices changed quite significantly over the course of the Bronze Age in Britain. As argued in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/086/ant0860707.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recent &lt;em&gt;Antiquity&lt;/em&gt; paper&lt;/a&gt;, in the early Bronze Age people seem to have been doing almost no farming at all, instead falling back on foraging and pastoralism. In 1103 BCE (oh you and your dates), i.e. the Middle/Late Bronze Age, it was coming back into fashion and several new crops were introduced: spelt wheat, peas and beans. The latter two are both incredibly useful nitrogen-fixing plants which we know were essential to later agricultural practices in Britain (e.g. the Medieval three-field system), so it may be that introducing them helped the second wave of farmers to overcome the problem of soil deterioration and practice more intensive agriculture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16713" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-12-16T15:08:08.343" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T15:08:08.343" Title="Did the Britons start growing crops before 1500 BC?" Tags="|history|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18697" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-16T01:41:51.270" Score="10" ViewCount="1010" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard multiple times that the vast majority of day traders, sometimes given as &quot;over 99%&quot;, lose money. What's a realistic number? For specificity, use a one year time-frame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here are references to two such claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/odean/papers/Day%20Traders/Day%20Trade%20040330.pdf&quot;&gt;Do Individual Day Traders Make Money? Evidence from Taiwan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moreover, in the typical six month period, more than eight out of ten &#xA;  day traders lose money&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crbtrader.com/trader/v09n01/v09n01a01.asp&quot;&gt;What It Takes to be A Successful Day Trader&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ninety-two percent of day traders trying to scalp loose money. Only eight percent are successful. Out of the eight percent, only two percent of the day trading public make money on a consistent basis. Why do 92 percent of day traders fail and what makes eight percent successful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T15:29:16.630" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T15:29:16.630" Title="Do over 80% of day traders lose money?" Tags="|personal-finance|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18699" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18710" CreationDate="2013-12-16T02:07:41.797" Score="7" ViewCount="264" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/10510455/Nelson-Mandela-memorial-interpreter-was-a-fake.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Telegraph reported&lt;/a&gt; that the (then unidentified) man who attempted to provide sign translations at Nelson Mandela's funeral was a fake:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr Buxton said he was purely making “childish hand gestures and clapping, it was as if he had never learn a word of sign language in his life”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was later identified as Thamsanqa Jantjie, and he was confirmed as accredited by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/SAgovnews/statuses/411095362523250689&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;South African government&lt;/a&gt;, but claimed he had a schizophrenic episode at the time. (For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/13/21887836-mandela-service-sign-language-interpreter-failed-in-2012-with-self-invented-gestures&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NBN News&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has Thamsanqa Jantjie demonstrated he can translate sign language before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-12-17T14:16:03.103" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T14:16:03.103" Title="Can Thamsanqa JantjieIs (from Mandela's funeral) actually act as a sign language interpreter?" Tags="|nelson-mandela|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18700" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18740" CreationDate="2013-12-16T02:46:08.850" Score="15" ViewCount="9268" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://topconservativenews.com/2013/10/muslim-immigrants-raped-over-300-swedish-children-in-seven-months-of-2013/&quot;&gt;Top Conservative News&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Muslim immigrants raped over 300 Swedish children in seven months of 2013&#xA;  In the first seven months of 2013, over 1,000 Swedish women reported being raped by Muslim immigrants. Over 300 of those were under the age of 15. The number of rapes is up 16% compared to 2012 numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They cite Swedish Public Radio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really true or just some anti muslim rant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2013-12-22T13:26:25.747" LastActivityDate="2018-10-01T02:26:17.493" Title="Did Muslim immigrants rape over 300 Swedish children in seven months of 2013?" Tags="|religion|sexual-abuse|sweden|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18695" CreationDate="2013-12-16T03:03:23.750" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. &lt;a href=&quot;http://antiquity.ac.uk/Ant/086/0707/ant0860707.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The paper you've cited&lt;/a&gt; starts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper rewrites the early history of Britain, showing that while the cultivation of cereals arrived there in about 4000 cal BC, it did not last. Between 3300 and 1500 BC Britons became largely pastoral&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence is a combination of analysis of: isotopes in diets, dental caries, and pollen. The paper sets out theories which have different timelines for the farming of crops, but those differing theories are mutually consistent in referring to some crop-growing going on before 1500 BCE: cultivation of crops seems to have been introduced around 4000 BCE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the relevant part of figure 2 from that paper (data about wild foraged food cropped off from the top):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wKsHN.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2009.11.016&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Radiocarbon evidence indicates that migrants introduced farming to Britain&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, cited in the above paper, Collard et al found that (from the abstract):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Archaeologists disagree about how farming began in Britain. Some argue it was a result of indigenous groups adopting domesticates and cultigens via trade and exchange. Others contend it was the consequence of a migration of farmers from mainland Europe. To shed light on this debate, we used radiocarbon dates to estimate changes in population density between 8000 and 4000 cal BP. We found evidence for a marked and rapid increase in population density coincident with the appearance of cultigens around 6000 cal BP. We also found evidence that this increase occurred first in southern England and shortly afterwards in central Scotland. These findings are best explained by groups of farmers from the Continent independently colonizing England and Scotland, and therefore strongly support the migrant farmers hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB 6000 cal BP is 4000 cal BCE. &quot;BP&quot; means &quot;Before Present&quot;. &quot;cal&quot; indicates that the years are calibrated radiocarbon dates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T03:03:23.750" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18700" CreationDate="2013-12-16T03:49:54.980" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Top Conservative News web-site provides a reference from an article from &lt;a href=&quot;http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=103&amp;amp;artikel=5612131&quot;&gt;Swedish Public Rado&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using my rather rusty Swedish, confirmed by Google Translate, the original source makes NO mention of the religion of the perpetrators. The anti-Muslim slur has been added by Top Conservative News.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It says there were 300 reports of rapes of girls under 15 in the first seven months of 2013. Given the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.euro-islam.info/country-profiles/sweden/&quot;&gt;percentage of Muslims&lt;/a&gt; is estimated 1.8-4.4% (let alone Muslim &lt;em&gt;immigrants&lt;/em&gt;), it is fanciful to assume that they are responsible for 300 rapes in that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T03:49:54.980" CommentCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18703" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-16T04:24:22.607" Score="4" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the last few years &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00AK7AV4S&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;snail cream&lt;/a&gt; has become a &lt;a href=&quot;http://travel.cnn.com/seoul/shop/snail-cream-821956&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;skin-care phenomenon&lt;/a&gt; in South Korea. Are there any scientific studies analyzing the impact of snail cream on the skin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/d2aBo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T04:24:22.607" Title="Does snail cream have a positive impact on the skin?" Tags="|medical-science|dermatology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18706" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-16T07:05:17.273" Score="11" ViewCount="975" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is more about a common prejudice (or not) about fraternities than about some famous claim.  I want to know whether frat members rape more than the common non-fraternity member? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/09/opinion/foubert-fraternities-rape/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Opinion: 'Rapebait' e-mail reveals dark side of frat culture - CNN&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA; John Foubert says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu/163846/Foubert_J._D._Newberry_J._T._and_Tatum_J._L._2007_._Behavior_differences_seven_months_later_Effects_of_a_rape_prevention_program_on_first-year_men_who_join_fraternities._NASPA_Journal_44_728-749&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(A study)&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  I published in 2007 with my colleagues Jerry Tatum and J.T. Newberry found that fraternity men were three times more likely to commit rape than other men on college campuses. It was the third study showing that fraternity men are three times more likely to rape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16721" LastEditorUserId="50794" LastEditDate="2019-11-22T16:44:49.877" LastActivityDate="2019-11-22T16:44:49.877" Title="Are frat members more often involved in rape?" Tags="|sexual-abuse|university|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18706" CreationDate="2013-12-16T07:45:02.917" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Women Sexual Victimization study (Fisher, Cullen, &amp;amp; Turner, 2006), in a sample covering over 4000 women across the United States, indicates that women report instances of Rape at around 3.5% before University and 11% after university. There is sufficient evidence to suggest a concerning trend regarding sexual victimization at University. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should check out Bannon, R. S., Brosi, M. W., &amp;amp; Foubert, J. D. (2013). Sorority women’s and fraternity men's rape myth acceptance and bystander intervention attitudes.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jsarp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/jsarp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16328" LastEditorUserId="47468" LastEditDate="2019-11-19T13:03:17.287" LastActivityDate="2019-11-19T13:03:17.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18708" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18711" CreationDate="2013-12-16T11:05:22.530" Score="4" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought marijuana was legal in some Arab countries, but Wikipedia's front page &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_in_Uruguay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported that&lt;/a&gt; Uruguay was the first country to legalize it. They qualify as authority to me - at least, they take care not to put plainly wrong information on the front page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's reference for this factoid is the following article from Reuters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/11/us-uruguay-marijuana-vote-idUSBRE9BA01520131211&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Uruguay becomes first country to legalize marijuana trade&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Reuters) - &lt;strong&gt;Uruguay became the first country to legalize the growing, sale and smoking of marijuana&lt;/strong&gt; on Tuesday, a pioneering social experiment that will be closely watched by other nations debating drug liberalization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other countries have decriminalized marijuana possession and the Netherlands allows its sale in coffee shops, but Uruguay will be the first nation to legalize the whole chain from growing the plant to buying and selling its leaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several countries such as Canada, the Netherlands and Israel have legal programs for growing medical cannabis but do not allow cultivation of marijuana for recreational use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14975" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T15:31:34.247" Title="Did Uruguay become the first country in the world to legalize the cultivation, sale, and use of cannabis?" Tags="|marijuana|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18709" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-16T12:54:43.410" Score="2" ViewCount="21240" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=nirvana%20sex%20and%20candy%20nirvana&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google Search&lt;/a&gt; turns up lots of results that suggest Nirvana did the song &quot;I Smell Sex And Candy&quot; but according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_Candy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; It was done by Marcy Playground and the article doesn't mention Nirvana. Did Nirvana do a cover of this song and if so where? If not, is there a reason this misconception is popular?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T02:28:16.527" Title="Did Nirvana ever do a cover of &quot;I Smell Sex And Candy&quot;?" Tags="|history|music|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-12-18T02:47:40.577" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18710" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18699" CreationDate="2013-12-16T13:02:35.797" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can find no press reports of Thamsanqa Jantjie performing satisfactorily as a sign-language interpreter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are reports that suggest his incomprehensible performance was not an isolated incident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US broadcaster CBS News’ archival footage of a press conference on June 24 shows Jantjies did the same thing during an international press briefing given by President Jacob Zuma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was two weeks after Mandela was hospitalised and shortly before US President Barack Obama arrived in South Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked Zuma: “Nelson Mandela is critically ill at a time when US President Barack Obama is due to visit South Africa. Should he cancel his trip?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Expert sign language interpreter Pholoho Selebano revealed he interpreted the question as: “Toilet! Toilet! Union! Forehead!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He said he saw “angels” during Mandela’s memorial. I wonder what he saw six months before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– Debora Patta&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;reported by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citypress.co.za/news/newsmaker-thamsanqa-jantjie-con-crazy-criminal-ballsy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;City Press&lt;/a&gt; a South African Sunday newspaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Deaf Federation of South Africa said on Wednesday that it had submitted a formal complaint to the ANC about Jantjie’s interpretation after an event in 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/12/21873839-violent-sign-language-interpreters-access-to-obama-triggers-investigation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NBC News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several sign-languages used in South Africa, but the one most likely to be used at official events may be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.education.gov.za/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=ZlJsOf4xcTY%3D&amp;amp;tabid=1011&amp;amp;mid=2687&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;South African Sign Language&lt;/a&gt; (SASL), which probably has more in common with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britishsignlanguage.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;British Sign Language&lt;/a&gt; (BSL) than with American Sign Language (ASL). This &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; partly explain why some ASL experts are so baffled by what they saw. It doesn't explain why many South Africans believe Thamsanqa Jantjie's sign language is incomprehensible or nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T14:09:27.770" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18708" CreationDate="2013-12-16T13:53:08.560" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Because you say, &amp;quot;I thought marijuana was legal in some Arab countries&amp;quot;, therefore I assume you're asking about the contemporary world:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I hope it goes without saying that cannabis has been known and used &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_(drug)#History&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;since prehistoric times&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first (that I know of) wide-spread international treaty outlawing cannabis was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Law#List_II_drugs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;the second Opium Law&amp;quot; introduced on 12 May 1928&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of this answer will therefore deal with its current status: whether Uruaguay is the first &lt;strong&gt;in recent history&lt;/strong&gt; to legalize it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_Drugs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs&lt;/a&gt; is an international treaty, which regulates cannabis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of May 2013, the Single Convention has 184 state parties. &lt;strong&gt;The Holy See plus all members of the UN are state parties&lt;/strong&gt;, with the exception of Afghanistan, Chad, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Kiribati, Nauru, Samoa, South Sudan, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Googling suggested to me that the exceptions listed (e.g. Afghanistan) have their own laws against cannabis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia page &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_country&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Legality of cannabis by country&lt;/a&gt; shows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is illegal in all Arab countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Holland and North Korea are listed as exceptions on that page, but that's for possession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be illegal but tolerated in some countries; for example it says of Lebanon,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possession is illegal. However, large amounts are grown within the country and personal use, as long as not in public is not a major issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pakistan&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Illegal/Legal: Laws prohibiting the sale and misuse of cannabis exist, but are very rarely enforced. As with hash, the occasional use of cannabis in community gatherings is broadly tolerated as a centuries old custom, despite its association with lower-income groups. The open use of cannabis by Sufis and Hindus as a means to induce euphoria has never been challenged by the state. Further, large tracts of cannabis grow unchecked in the wild.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nepal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Illegal (but not regulated) -- Marijuana and its derivatives, such as Hashish, are widely available throughout Nepal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-25340324&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UN are complaining about Uruguay's decision&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T15:31:34.247" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18713" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-16T14:31:21.477" Score="6" ViewCount="716" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10486479/Phobias-may-be-memories-passed-down-in-genes-from-ancestors.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; floating around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pretty much they state that if a parent is traumatized, the child could be born with a phobia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers at the Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta,&#xA;found that mice can pass on learned information about traumatic or&#xA;stressful experiences – in this case a fear of the smell of cherry&#xA;blossom – to subsequent generations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the study, which is published in the journal of Nature&#xA;Neuroscience, the researchers trained mice to fear the smell of cherry&#xA;blossom using electric shocks before allowing them to breed. The&#xA;offspring produced showed fearful responses to the odour of cherry&#xA;blossom compared to a neutral odour, despite never having encountered&#xA;them before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article seems very straight forward with it's conclusions, but it leaves me skeptical as it disagrees with everything that I understand about genetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4369" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-06-04T03:25:50.520" LastActivityDate="2022-06-06T07:41:50.227" Title="Can phobias be genetic, but created in one generation and not by natural selection?" Tags="|psychology|evolution|genetics|psychiatry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18714" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-16T15:00:38.237" Score="5" ViewCount="599" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been suggested to me more than once by amateur historians on forums, that in the time between 3300BC and 1500 BC the Britons stopped farming crops, and instead only kept livestock and foraged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14gb77/what_crops_did_the_bronze_age_britains_grow/c7cv4b1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/14gb77/what_crops_did_the_bronze_age_britains_grow/c7cv4b1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that agricultural practices changed quite significantly over the course of the Bronze Age in Britain. As argued in a recent Antiquity paper, &lt;strong&gt;in the early Bronze Age people seem to have been doing almost no farming at all, instead falling back on foraging and pastoralism. In 1103 BCE (oh you and your dates), i.e. the Middle/Late Bronze Age, it was coming back into fashion&lt;/strong&gt; and several new crops were introduced: spelt wheat, peas and beans. The latter two are both incredibly useful nitrogen-fixing plants which we know were essential to later agricultural practices in Britain (e.g. the Medieval three-field system), so it may be that introducing them helped the second wave of farmers to overcome the problem of soil deterioration and practice more intensive agriculture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also isn't the only time i've heard of &lt;strong&gt;a fallback to pastoralism and semi-sedentary lifestyles, the same thing occurs in prehistoric Cyprus&lt;/strong&gt;; between the Aceramic Neolithic and the Ceramic Neolithic (also known as the Sotira phase). It's been theorised that this is due to a temporary climate change that was not initially adjusted to, and it meant that &lt;strong&gt;less intense settlement became neccesary. The norm returns to a rotated series of hunting settlements and foraging sites rather than permanent villages&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It reminds of the &lt;strong&gt;demographic collapse decline and shift to mobile settlement&lt;/strong&gt; you see in the Balkan and eastern European Bronze Age too. I wonder if pure Neolithic farming was just fundamentally unsustainable. They did rely heavily on cereals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16713" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T15:15:27.030" Title="Did the Britons stop growing crops in the time between 3300BC &amp; 1500 BC?" Tags="|history|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18709" CreationDate="2013-12-16T16:00:34.483" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Sex and Candy&quot; came out in 1997. Kurt Cobain died in 1994. You can probably work it out from there. The misconseption exists simply because people think they sound alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kurt Cobain died April 5, 1994 &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Cobain&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Cobain&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sex and Candy by Marcy Playground released November 4, 1997 &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_Candy&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_Candy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15847" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T16:00:34.483" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18688" CreationDate="2013-12-16T17:36:35.443" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;By definition this question would be best asked on Christianity.SE and &lt;a href=&quot;https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/5144/christmas-on-december-25th&quot;&gt;it has&lt;/a&gt;.  What is clear is that he was probably born in the spring or summer as that is when shepherds watch over their flocks (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+2%3A8-14&amp;amp;version=NIV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Luke 2:8&lt;/a&gt;).  March 28 is far more plausible than December 25.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They watched over their flocks in the field in the spring because that is when there was food.  Other times, the sheep were brought food - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bible-history.com/links.php?cat=39&amp;amp;sub=414&amp;amp;cat_name=&amp;amp;subcat_name=Shepherds&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;especially in the winter&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the principal&#xA;  duties at all seasons of the year is for the shepherd to plan food for&#xA;  his flock. In the springtime there is an abundance of green pasture,&#xA;  and usually the sheep are allowed to graze near to the village where&#xA;  the shepherd's home is located. After the grain is reaped, and the&#xA;  poor have had an opportunity to glean what is left for them, then the&#xA;  shepherd brings in his flock, and the sheep feed on certain fresh&#xA;  growths, or dried blades, or an occasional ear of grain that the&#xA;  reapers may have left, or was overlooked by the gleaners. When this&#xA;  source of food is exhausted then the pasture is sought in other&#xA;  places. The wilderness of Judea which is located along the western&#xA;  side of the Jordan Valley is carpeted in the spring with a certain&#xA;  amount of grass and this turns into standing hay as the hot weather&#xA;  comes, and this becomes food for the sheep during part of the&#xA;  summer.12 Scripture often refers to shepherds looking for pasture for&#xA;  their flocks. &quot;And they went to the entrance of Gedor, even unto the&#xA;  east side of the valley, to seek pasture for their flocks&quot; (I&#xA;  Chronicles 4:39). The Psalmist thanks GOD for the pasturage which the&#xA;  LORD as Shepherd provides for His people: &quot;So we thy people and sheep&#xA;  of thy pasture will give thee thanks for ever&quot; (Psalm 79:13). In the&#xA;  late autumn or winter months, there are times when the shepherd can&#xA;  find no pasturage that is available for his flock, and then he must&#xA;  become responsible for feeding the animals himself. If the flock is&#xA;  small there may be times when it is stabled within the peasant house,&#xA;  and the family lives on a sort of mezzanine floor above it. At such&#xA;  seasons of the year the shepherd must provide the food. This is what&#xA;  Isaiah meant when he said: &quot;He shall feed his flock like a shepherd&quot;&#xA;  (Isaiah 40:11). In some sections of Syria, flocks are taken at this&#xA;  season to places in the mountain country, where the shepherd busies&#xA;  himself with the bushy trees, cutting down branches that have green&#xA;  leaves or tender twigs, that the sheep and goats can eat. Micah was&#xA;  probably speaking of this custom of providing food for the sheep, when&#xA;  he said: &quot;Feed thy people with thy rod, the flock of thine heritage&quot;&#xA;  (Micah 7:14). [Manners And Customs of Bible Lands]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly December 25th is not a birthday party.  It's a feast day to celebrate the incarnation of the logos. I'm not sure that any denomination says that his birthday was in December.  I'm very confident that the bible does not claim that this was his birthday.  Please, do not bring your noise makers and cone hats, it's not a birthday party.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ewtn.com/library/Liturgy/zlitur109.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;nice question and answer here&lt;/a&gt;.  It may even suggest a possible relationship to March 28th:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, both Christmas and the Annunciation celebrate different&#xA;  aspects of the mystery of the Incarnation and do so with relatively&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;little attention to biological or chronological precision.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The feast of Christmas originated in the city of Rome and was first&#xA;  celebrated about the year 330, some 15 years after the end of the&#xA;  persecutions, and, perhaps, in the recently completed basilica of St.&#xA;  Peter's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The earliest traces of a feast of the Annunciation are found in Egypt&#xA;  in 624. The testimonies increase after that date in various areas of&#xA;  Christendom. From the beginning it was celebrated on &lt;strong&gt;March 25&lt;/strong&gt; due to&#xA;  the belief that the spring equinox was both the day of the creation&#xA;  and of the start of the new creation in Christ. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This date caused a difficulty for some Churches, such as the Spanish&#xA;  Mozarabic rite and the Ambrosian rite of Milan, due to their strict&#xA;  prohibition of all festivities during Lent. They thus opted for&#xA;  celebrating the Annunciation on Dec. 18, a practice that continues to&#xA;  this day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6381" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:56:43.530" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T16:33:16.837" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18709" CreationDate="2013-12-16T18:35:53.220" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an interview &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.songfacts.com/blog/interviews/marcy_playground/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;at songfacts&lt;/a&gt; Marcy Playground's John Wozniak says that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeah, where did I get the “sex and candy” part from? Well, I was dating a girl and she was going to Bryn Mawr College and it’s where my dad teaches. And I was probably 17 or something like that and she was like 18. I always liked the older girls. (laughs) But we were in her dorm room, and her roommate came in and she saw us there, and she was like, “Oh, it smells like sex and candy in here.” And I always remembered that. And that was back in the late ‘80s.&#xA;And then when I was writing the song and I was coming up with all these weird disco-era references that I was making up, “platform double suede” and all that business, I was like, hey, let’s just throw in that phrase that’s been sticking in my head for the last 5 years or whatever. So I wrote that song in ’92, ’93, somewhere around there. And it didn’t really come out until ’97.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So according to the man who originally held the &lt;a href=&quot;http://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=5&amp;amp;ti=1,5&amp;amp;Search_Arg=marcy%20playground&amp;amp;Search_Code=NALL&amp;amp;CNT=25&amp;amp;PID=oy1AWjCkERSrDWqBmzz8JWW9IsRY3&amp;amp;SEQ=20131216132020&amp;amp;SID=11&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;copyright claim&lt;/a&gt; the song wasn't recorded in a finished form until 1997.  That makes it rather doubtful that Nirvana ever covered the song.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, all of the versions of &amp;quot;Sex and Candy&amp;quot; on youtube that are listed as being by Nirvana sound exactly like Marcy Playground's official video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3575" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T18:35:53.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10071" CreationDate="2013-12-16T20:10:40.170" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There doesn't seem to be an obvious increase of productivity, despite some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plantcultureinc.com/whyGreen.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;biased summaries&lt;/a&gt;. It seems to depend on how the workplace is and the employees themselves:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lohr, Virginia I., Caroline H. Pearson-Mims, and Georgia K. Goodwin. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hriresearch.org/docs/publications/JEH/JEH_1996/JEH_1996_14_2/JEH%2014-2-97-100.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Interior plants may improve worker productivity and reduce stress in a windowless environment&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Journal of Environmental Horticulture 14 (1996): 97-100.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study documents some of the benefits of adding plants to a&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;windowless work place&lt;/strong&gt;-a college computer lab. Participants' blood&#xA;  pressure and emotions were monitored while completing a simple, timed&#xA;  computer task in the presence or absence of plants. When  plants were&#xA;  added to this interior space, the participants were more productive&#xA;  (&lt;strong&gt;12% quicker reaction time on the computer task&lt;/strong&gt;) and less stressed&#xA;  (systolic blood pressure readings lowered by one to four units).&#xA;  Immediately after completing the task, participants in the  room with&#xA;  plants present reported feeling more attentive (an increase of 0.5 on&#xA;  a self-reported scale from one to five) than people in the room with&#xA;  no plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Mmcw5.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Larsen, Larissa, et al. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eab.sagepub.com/content/30/3/261.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Plants in the Workplace The Effects of Plant Density on Productivity, Attitudes, and Perceptions.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; Environment and Behavior 30.3 (1998): 261-281.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This experiment measures the effects of indoor plants on participants'&#xA;  productivity, attitude toward the workplace, and overall mood in the&#xA;  office environment. In an office randomly altered to include no&#xA;  plants, a moderate number of plants, and a high number of plants, paid&#xA;  participants (N = 81) performed timed productivity tasks and completed&#xA;  a survey questionnaire. &lt;strong&gt;Surprisingly, the results of the productivity&#xA;  task showed an inverse linear relationship to the number of plants in&#xA;  the office, but self-reported perceptions of performance increased&#xA;  relative to the number of plants in the office&lt;/strong&gt;. Consistent with&#xA;  expectations, participants reported higher levels of mood, perceived&#xA;  office attractiveness, and (in some cases) perceived comfort when&#xA;  plants were present than when they were not present. Decreased&#xA;  productivity scores are linked to the influence of positive and&#xA;  negative affect on decision making and cognitive processing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ulrich, Roger S. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0169204686900058&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Human responses to vegetation and landscapes&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Landscape and urban planning 13 (1986): 29-44.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rapidly expanding research record concerning aesthetic, emotional&#xA;  and physiological response to visual landscapes is summarized, with&#xA;  emphasis on aesthetic preferences for views containing trees and other&#xA;  vegetation. The survey is set within a conceptual perspective&#xA;  suggesting that affective responses such as aesthetic preference are&#xA;  central to a landscape observer's thoughts, conscious experience and&#xA;  behavior. Substantial progress has been made in developing models that&#xA;  relate aesthetic responses to specific visual properties of&#xA;  environments. When aesthetic preferences are compared for urban and&#xA;  unspectacular natural views, American and European adult groups&#xA;  evidence a strong tendency to prefer nature. However, liking for urban&#xA;  scenes usually increases when trees and other vegetation are present.&#xA;  Views of nature, compared to most urban scenes lacking natural&#xA;  elements such as trees, appear to have more positive influences on&#xA;  emotional and physiological states. The benefits of visual encounters&#xA;  with vegetation may be greatest for individuals experiencing stress or&#xA;  anxiety. Recent research demonstrates that &lt;strong&gt;responses to trees and&#xA;  other vegetation can be linked directly to health, and in turn related&#xA;  to economic benefits of visual quality.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastActivityDate="2013-12-16T20:10:40.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18746" CreationDate="2013-12-16T20:47:58.250" Score="8" ViewCount="451" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today I was pointed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politaia.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Full-Disclosure-NSA-GCHQ-Hacks.pdf&quot;&gt;at this document&lt;/a&gt; which claims, among other things, that the secret agencies perform man-in-the-middle attacks by using a second network connection established by the home router. BT routers in particular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there were backdoors found in routers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a man-in-the-middle attack on Google's SSL connections was discovered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big question that is asked in the document (and that they claim to answer) is how did they get in-between? I don't buy what they say, so here my question(s):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there really such a VLAN 301 as described in the document, and what is it for? (and who owns it)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How did the NSA (or whoever faked googles certificates) get &quot;in the middle&quot;?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there really a &quot;DoD NIC&quot; and what is it? Some DNS server?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What does it mean that the ping command stops eventually when executed at boot time of the router? Is there really a window where an attacker could bypass the firewall settings?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16734" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T22:16:13.600" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T22:16:13.600" Title="Do BT routers secretly connect to a NSA/GHCQ network?" Tags="|united-kingdom|security|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18558" CreationDate="2013-12-17T01:07:55.410" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can not find a positive reference for this claim. But what I've found is the text of the famous roman architect Vitruvius who pities [1] that a certain law in Ephesus, holding architects responsible for their works, does not exist in roman law:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;[...] When an architect [in Ephesus] was entrusted with the execution of a public work, an estimate thereof being lodged in the hands of a magistrate, his property was held, as security, until the work was finished. [...] But when more than one-fourth of the estimate was exceeded, he was required to pay the excess out of his own pocket.&#xA;  [...]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Would to God that such a law existed among the Roman people, not only in respect of their public, but also of their private buildings, for then the unskilful could not commit their depredations with impunity, and those who were the most skilful in the intricacies of the art would follow the profession. Proprietors would not be led into an extravagant expenditure so as to cause ruin; architects themselves, from the dread of punishment, would be more careful in their calculations, and the proprietor would complete his building for that sum [...]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book is dated around 15 BC [2] - certainly not quite the end of the roman empire; so if such a law or customs existed, one should probably look after this date or investigate in military codices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another great source for the history of bridge building is &quot;Berühmte Brückenbauer: Ihre Zeiten und Bauwerke&quot; [3]. It's full of trivia and references and deals a lot about ancient roman engineering - but this certain kind of punishment or however you might call the claim, is not mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marcus Vitruvius Pollio. &quot;De Architectura&quot;, Liber X, Introduction, paragraphs 1-2. Translation by Bill Thayer. Undated. URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Vitruvius/10&quot;&gt;http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Vitruvius/10&lt;/a&gt;*.html . Accessed 2013-12-17. (yes, there's really an asterisk in the URL)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_architectura&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_architectura&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ditchen, Henryk; Glomb, Jozef. &quot;Berühmte Brückenbauer: Ihre Zeiten und Bauwerke&quot;. Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH. 2012. URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=U5iUF7twBBgC&quot;&gt;http://books.google.de/books?id=U5iUF7twBBgC&lt;/a&gt; . Accessed 2013-12-17.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6180" LastEditorUserId="6180" LastEditDate="2013-12-17T01:14:28.317" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T01:14:28.317" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18727" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-17T08:02:04.383" Score="2" ViewCount="643" Body="&lt;p&gt;The primary source documentation for whatever Jesus did are the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there still any non-religious sources for the works/Miracles performed by Jesus. Can we find anywhere historical records of all those miracles in four Gospels?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10611" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2013-12-17T09:14:18.793" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T09:39:54.230" Title="Are there any historical records of Gospel miracles?" Tags="|history|jesus-christ|christianity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2013-12-17T09:36:55.817" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18727" CreationDate="2013-12-17T08:03:21.810" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is logical that once you have enough evidence for  Jesus’ historical presence  on earth, the next question that comes to mind is whether He really did all those  miracles which are mentioned in Gospels.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one thing, we have four &lt;strong&gt;independent sources&lt;/strong&gt; of significant length (apart from scores of other non canonical texts), which is pretty good as far as ancient accounts for a single person goes. They were written by four different writers with a clear and distinct style.  But the problem seems to be that they were collected and compiled under one cover as religious texts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a fundamental misunderstanding in this demand for independent material. Bible itself actually is merely a collection of independent sources.  There is a tendency to look at the Bible as a single work because it is now under one cover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of argument, let’s say the Gospels were intended religious texts because they contain narration of miracles and Jesus’ teachings about God. This means then that there doesn’t exist by definition any non-religious accounts for Jesus’ life and miracles.  If any account features what He taught and what He did, it pretty much counts as a religious text.  If there were a “non-religious” work with as much detail as the four evangelists include, it would be considered a religious text.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, the very fact that miracles are hard to believe by non religious people, so is their narration in any historical records. These may not satisfy the physicist or the psychologist; for the matter of that, it may not satisfy the theologian either like in case of Jews of Jesus’ time. So the historical method has its limitations, just as the scientific method in general has, when it is confronted with a phenomenon which is by its very nature unique. Attempts are made to rationalize or explain away such phenomenon and this was attempted soon after resurrection, as we find in Matt. 28:13.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ehrman, Bart D.. Jesus, Interrupted, HarperCollins, 2009.ISBN 0-06-117393-2 page 175 writes:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We would call a miracle an event that violates the way nature always, or almost always, works ... By now I hope you can see the unavoidable problem historians have with miracles. Historians can establish only what probably happened in the past, but miracles, by their very nature, are always the least probable explanation for what happened&quot;--  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, there are some non Christian sources pointing to the existence of Jesus and then to what He did too.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A. The Testimonium Flavianum&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some reject the strong scholarly consensus that Josephus' references to Jesus are genuine, although embellished. However, many agree with that scholarly consensus represented by such diverse and respected scholars as Dominic Crossan, John P. Meier, and N.T. Wright that the first and fullest reference to Jesus by Josephus is partially authentic, with detectable signs of tampering that can be disregarded. Josephus provides valuable, independent confirmation of the existence, life, and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. The following is the relevant part of the reconstructed version of the Testimonium Flavianum accepted by a majority of N.T. scholars:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following among many Jews and among many of Gentile origin.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;B. The Babylonian Talmud&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another Jewish source for Jesus' miracle working can be found in the Babylonian Talmud:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been taught: On the eve of Passover they hanged Yeshu. And an announcer went out, in front of him, for forty days (saying): 'He is going to be stoned, because he practiced sorcery and enticed and led Israel astray. Anyone who knows anything in his favor, let him come and plead in his behalf.' But, not having found anything in his favor, they hanged him on the eve of Passover.--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.come-and-hear.com/sanhedrin/sanhedrin_43.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What matters is also the estimated date of their writing.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote from &quot;The Miracles of Jesus: A Historical Inquiry, by Christopher Price&quot;:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The miracle stories of Jesus originated very early, contained reports not likely to have been created by early Christians, and cohere well with the rest of what we know about Jesus and his ministry. The best explanation for this evidence is that Jesus was known during his life as a miracle worker. The uniqueness of such miracle working adds significant weight to this conclusion and leads us to the further conclusion that the feats of Jesus must have been impressive. Though, as Carrier points out, Jesus lived in a time of superstition and religiosity, his miracles are uniquely attested. No other person of that time period has anything close to the attestation Jesus receives as a miracle worker. Accordingly, even if your philosophical predispositions preclude you from believing that Jesus actually performed miracles that violated the laws of nature, it should be admitted that he performed feats that convinced his contemporaries that he did such deeds.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there are some tangential references to the persona of Jesus. What is relevant here is these books are that they are outside bible and written between first and second century with a reference to Jesus’ life. One example is this writer called Mara Bar Serapion.  We have no idea what qualifications the writer of this letter held but he wrote:   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise King? It was just after that their Kingdom was abolished. &quot;--Mara Bar Serapion  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information on this topic &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_bar_Serapion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;see these links here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_bar_Serapion_on_Jesus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;  and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist/serapion.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;  and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.preteristarchive.com/StudyArchive/b/barserapion-mara.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reference found in the book Ascension of Isaiah is one of the Pseudepigraphaan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information on this topic &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascension_of_Isaiah,&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;see these links here&lt;/a&gt;  and &lt;a href=&quot;http://gnosis.org/library/Cathar-Vision-Isaiah.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/8237-isaiah-ascension-of#anchor3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.biblicaltraining.org/library/ascension-isaiah&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there are several Gnostic writings and gospels which invariably portray Jesus as Miracle performer. Whoever wrote these texts; the writers were consistent to write about the most common theme found in the Gospels about Jesus: &lt;strong&gt;that He was a performer of great miracles, yet they chose to differ with Gospels, on other traits about the persona of Jesus.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10611" LastEditorUserId="10611" LastEditDate="2013-12-17T09:03:15.493" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T09:03:15.493" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18730" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18739" CreationDate="2013-12-17T14:33:51.620" Score="6" ViewCount="669" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this newly release video by RT: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1A3x7AyIVo&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1A3x7AyIVo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A man sets water on fire that is pouring from his well, the narrator reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The local government of Texas, tells Steve Lipsky that the water from his well, water that he can set on fire is safe to drink and to use in his home?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;RT Implies that it is not safe, and when viewing this video I get this first impression, but I am wondering if this true or not? The questions is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Water that can be set on fire, is it safe to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Drink&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use in home for ordinary purpose&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. To clarify, this is not specific to fracking, it can be any other cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S.S I am also not talking about alcohol, this is purely about water from natural sources (like water well)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15722" LastEditorUserId="15722" LastEditDate="2013-12-17T15:05:32.820" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T21:14:05.467" Title="Is water that can be set on fire safe to drink?" Tags="|water|safety|fire|drink|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18688" CreationDate="2013-12-17T14:43:04.497" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before we get started, it's worth observing that the appearance of a date on a poster inside an episode of &lt;em&gt;The Simpsons&lt;/em&gt; can hardly be taken as an assertion of historical fact. The show is known for being provocative and including parodies of reality. Bart Simpson should hardly be our go-to expert on history&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; even though it turns out this instance wasn't just a fabrication for the silver screen. The original source appears to have been an anonymous tip — albeit a very old anonymous tip that has been floating around on Catholic document archives since before there were comics&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the current state of historical records takes us, the claim first surfaces in a document known as &lt;em&gt;De Pasha Computus&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/02m/0200-0258,_Cyprianus_Carthaginensis,_De_Pascha_Computus,_MLT.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pdf&lt;/a&gt;) believed to have originated in North Africa around A.D. 243&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;. The document, written in Latin, is anonymous. It's possible the author had something to base his assertions on, but without knowing what his sources were (or even his identity) it is hard to judge whether the case holds water. Besides the DOB calculations, other assertions are made but there is no particular attempt to defend them. They are just commentary not apologetics. Additionally troublesome is the fact that a key word in the text could possibly be rendered 'conceived' instead 'born'&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;, a possibility that would put the birth closer to the popular notion of late December.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides the unknown veracity of this source, there is another obvious issue: that document is far from the only source available. Many dates have been forwarded, some by more trustworthy sources than &lt;em&gt;De Pasha Computus&lt;/em&gt;. In his first century work &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Detection_and_Overthrow_of_the_So-Called_Gnosis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Adversus Haereses&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Irenaeus identifies the birth of Christ as having taken place on the now popular date of December 25th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While popular, that date too is not without its critics. Certain logistical problems are posited as hard to reconcile with the account found in the canonical Gospels. For one thing, a national census and extensive traveling in winter seem unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This brings us to our final two points:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The primary source for most of the detailed accounts of Jesus life come from the four Gospel books of the Biblical canon. While an argument can be made for the historical veracity of these witnesses, one need not even accept such a case to settle this question: &lt;strong&gt;none of the four even attempts to precisely identify the date&lt;/strong&gt;. No source accepted as authoritative either by religious institutions or secular history makes a positive claim on the date.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the absence of primary sources the best we can do is estimate based on circumstantial data, which is itself slim. The Gospel accounts give some historical events as a frame of reference, but these are not even enough to conclusively establish the year much less the day. While the advent of the &lt;em&gt;logos&lt;/em&gt; is without a doubt of massive importance to Christianity, the actual date has never been considered that important. There are no special sacraments associated with the day and the early church didn't even observe it as a festival. When the tradition to celebrate on a particular day was begun, various differing calculations eventually led to different branches observing different days.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;With not even the year of his birth known beyond a reasonable doubt and the primary historical sources not providing the particular detail it is unlikely that any claim can be sufficiently corroborated to label as definitive.&lt;/strong&gt; Certainly the claim by the poster in the episode of The Simpsons stands on dubious ground. I wouldn't call it a mad claim, but neither would I go &lt;a href=&quot;https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/17903/1925&quot;&gt;rewriting your calenders&lt;/a&gt; just yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside —because it is a common source for confusion— its worth noting that this question is not about the observance of the Christian holiday 'Christmas' but only about the historical date of the birth of a human&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt;. Of course there is a correlation between the two and the historical date is a factor often brought up in discussions of the festival, but there are also other considerations and it falls to religion to weigh these and decide when (and what) to celebrate. For this question we will only consider the historical date. Disputing the exact date should not be allowed to pass for disputing the validity of the holiday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your children's knowledge about history is gleaned from &lt;em&gt;The Simpsons&lt;/em&gt; and their peers (who likely have similar sources), the date of Christmas is going to be the least of your worries!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I totally just pulled that claim out of a hat, so shoot me. It's even falsifiable if cave paintings count as comics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A.D. 243 date per U.S. News &amp;amp; World Report article “In Search of Christmas” by Joseph L. Sheler, December 23, 1996, page 58. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/04z/z_0200-0258__Cyprianus_Carthaginensis__De_Pascha_Computus__MLT.pdf.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Catholic Document Archives&lt;/a&gt; label it 200-258 A.D. from Carthage.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas#Dies_Natalis_Solis_Invicti&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dies_Natalis_Solis_Invicti&lt;/a&gt; (Wikipedia)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another question on this site addresses the issue &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/1624/933&quot;&gt;Did Jesus live?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastEditorUserId="933" LastEditDate="2019-05-01T14:31:59.053" LastActivityDate="2019-05-01T14:31:59.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18732" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-17T15:20:38.830" Score="2" ViewCount="605" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read this over &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yated.com/even-george-will-isn-t-always-right.7-1119-7-.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;American intelligence has been caught by surprise by every successful test of a nuclear device since the Soviet Union in 1949. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2013-12-17T20:00:17.953" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T20:00:17.953" Title="Was American intelligence caught by surprise by every nuclear test since 1949?" Tags="|united-states|nuclear-weapons|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18732" CreationDate="2013-12-17T16:50:57.330" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I doubt it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Hurricane&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;British test&lt;/a&gt; was on Australian soil, using Canadian plutonium, and British scientists who had worked on the Manhattan project, with prime minister &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_the_United_Kingdom#First_test_and_early_systems&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Churchill announcing the test 8 months before it happened&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;To take another example, according to Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Republic_of_China_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#History&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Americans also knew when China was developing nuclear weapons&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In June 1959 the two nations [USSR and PRC] formally ended their agreement on military and technology cooperation,[15] and in July 1960 all Soviet assistance with the Chinese nuclear program was abruptly terminated and all Soviet technicians were withdrawn from the program.[16] &lt;strong&gt;The American government under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson was concerned about the program and studied ways to sabotage or attack it&lt;/strong&gt;, perhaps with the aid of Taiwan or the Soviet Union, but Khruschev did not display interest. The first Chinese nuclear test, code-named 596, occurred on 16 October 1964.[14]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T16:50:57.330" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18732" CreationDate="2013-12-17T17:07:48.617" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in the case of South Africa, Not only that the US intelligence knew of preparations for a nuclear test. The US, together with other world powers were able to prevent if from happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction#Testing_the_first_device&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Atomic Energy Commission officials say that a &amp;quot;cold test&amp;quot; (a test without uranium-235) was planned for August 1977. An Armscor official who was not involved at the time said that the test would have been a fully instrumented underground test, with a dummy core. Its major purpose was to test the logistical plans for an actual detonation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How that test was cancelled has been well publicised. Soviet intelligence detected test preparations and in early August alerted the United States; U.S. intelligence confirmed the existence of the test site with an overflight of a Lockheed SR-71 spy plane. On 28 August, the Washington Post quoted a U.S. official: &amp;quot;I'd say we were 99 percent certain that the construction was preparation for an atomic test.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Soviet and Western governments were convinced that South Africa was preparing for a full-scale nuclear test. During the next two weeks in August, the Western nations pressed South Africa not to test. The French foreign minister warned on 22 August of &amp;quot;grave consequences&amp;quot; for French-South African relations. Although he did not elaborate, his statement implied that France was willing to cancel its contract to provide South Africa with the Koeberg nuclear power reactors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia cites its sources for this as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=nQGSAAAAIAAJ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;U.S. Military Involvement in Southern Africa&lt;/a&gt;. South End Press. 1978. ISBN 0-89608-041-2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=VAwAAAAAMBAJ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;South Africa and the Affordable Bomb&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Jul 1994: 41.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The passage in Wikipedia is a direct quote from the second source (page 41).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T17:07:48.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18736" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18837" CreationDate="2013-12-17T19:16:27.117" Score="25" ViewCount="1358" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/042204_cavities_natural_healing_tooth_decay.html#&quot;&gt;this Natural News article&lt;/a&gt; popping out a lot recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It claims that dental caries is not caused by bacteria but by poor nutrition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;which results in minerals being pulled from bones, causing tooth and bone loss&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It strongly hints, without explicitly stating it, that the correct diet can &lt;em&gt;repair&lt;/em&gt; cavities and &quot;get your pearly white smile back&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How scientifically valid is any of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1301" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T07:42:54.017" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T14:05:12.747" Title="Can teeth cavities be cured through diet?" Tags="|nutrition|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18737" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-17T20:08:46.483" Score="8" ViewCount="37501" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hdtvsupply.com/hdmi-problems.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; on the Internet saying something to that effect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Warning!!.....Never connect and disconnect HDMI cables and equipment while your devices are powered on (hot plugging cables). The hdmi cables carries a low DC voltage while connected. You will damage your equipment and the HDMI Distribution equipment while hot-plugging cables which will not be replaced under the 1 year manufacturers warranty. Only use the Switched Mode Power supply supplied with the HDMI Equipment since replacing the power adapter might damage your equipment if incorrect voltage is supplied to the equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4974" LastEditorUserId="4974" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T07:27:14.613" LastActivityDate="2017-01-28T18:46:38.483" Title="Can hot-plugging an HDMI cable damage the HDMI port?" Tags="|computers|electronics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18738" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-17T20:55:25.870" Score="6" ViewCount="3046" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's been endless controversy over the late 90s and early-ish 2000s about Michael Jackson and sex allegations with children. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_child_sexual_abuse_accusations_against_Michael_Jackson&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This whole article is about it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the original article from BBC in 1993 when the allegations first hit the news:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/24/newsid_2512000/2512077.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1993: Michael Jackson accused of child abuse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have always wondered this since it was so bloated on the news and media for such a long time, and then everything regarding this case just vanished without much explanation, and everything carried on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did he ever sexually abuse children? Do any reports/sources/evidence prove it was true/false?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16747" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-03-09T18:04:18.990" LastActivityDate="2022-03-09T18:04:18.990" Title="Did Michael Jackson sexually abuse children?" Tags="|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18730" CreationDate="2013-12-17T21:14:05.467" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, Google can find quite a lot of background on the dispute between Steve Lipsky and Range Resources Corp. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eenews.net/stories/1059990957&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; is a summary of the situation, where Range Resources Corp. has been drilling for gas close to Lipsky's estate, after which Lipsky is blaming the company for ruining a well, from which he used to get his fresh water supply. It is perhaps also worth to note that Lipsky has been convicted for being 'part of a &quot;conspiracy to defame&quot; the company because he'd circulated a video &quot;calculated to alarm the public into believing the water was burning.&quot;'. Assuming that the verdict was correct, Lipsky has previously distributed videos with fraudulent claims about the water from his well burning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The news article I linked to, mentions methane contamination as the reason for the burning water, which is consistent with the fact that Range has been drilling for natural gas nearby. Methane is indeed a highly inflammable gas (mixed with air, the methane content must exceed appr 5% for the mix to be inflammable) and it seriously contributes to the greenhouse effect, but except for that, it is pretty harmless with no known toxic effects (&lt;a href=&quot;http://avogadro.chem.iastate.edu/MSDS/methane.pdf&quot;&gt;material data safety sheet&lt;/a&gt;). There are even relatively high levels of methane in the humane digestion tract. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://image.sciencenet.cn/olddata/kexue.com.cn/upload/blog/file/2010/1/2010123203248875447.pdf&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;, the average flatus (fart) has a methane content of about 7%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, methane is barely soluble in water, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane&quot;&gt;Wikipedia, only 22.7mg/l&lt;/a&gt;. If you look closely at the video from 0:20 to 0:30, there is also no obvious proof that the water is actually burning. To me, it looks as if a gas escaping the water pipe is burning at the opening. If the water had actually been burning, why wouldn't the water jet burn further away from the pipe opening as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is it safe to drink water, which can be set on fire?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, there is no sign that the water is actually burning. If whatever burns at the pipe opening is methane gas, it is in no way harmful to drink water having been in contact with methane gas or with small amounts of methane disolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is it for ordinary home purposes safe to use water, which can be set on fire?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still doubting that the water is actually burning, what &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be a problem is that methane is released in closed rooms through a water pipe network. Even here, small levels are uncritical, but depending on how fast methane is released and how fast the air in the room is replaced, there may of course be a risk, that explosive levels of methane are reached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastActivityDate="2013-12-17T21:14:05.467" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18700" CreationDate="2013-12-17T22:32:28.830" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two relevant differences between the &quot;Top Conservative News&quot; summary and the actual report from Swedish Radio, to which they are linking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Swedish Radio report does not mention the ethnicity of the perpetrator. Since the report refers to the number of police reports and not actual convictions, the perpetrator is likely to be unknown in several cases.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Swedish Radio report only counts the number of reports in Stockholm County. The &quot;Top Conservative News&quot; summary seem to indicate that the numbers are for the whole country.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bra.se/bra/statistik/P1/2013/P1LaJul-2013.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;statistics from &quot;Brottsförebyggande rådet&quot; (BRÅ)&lt;/a&gt;, the actual number for the entire country are as expected quite a bit higher. In the first 7 months of 2013, there were in total 3,426 reports on rape or rape attempt. In 1,133 cases, the victim was below the age of 15 (1,004 girls and 129 boys).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most recent statistics on crime among immigrants seem to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bra.se/download/18.cba82f7130f475a2f1800012697/2005_17_brottslighet_bland_personer_fodda_sverige_och_utlandet.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this report from BRÅ&lt;/a&gt;, dated 2005. The report does not quote any absolute numbers, but on page 42, the relative risk of being accused for different kind of crimes is listed for the three categories &quot;born in Sweden, both parents born in Sweden&quot;, &quot;born in Sweden, at least one parent born outside Sweden&quot; and &quot;born outside Sweden&quot;. For rape and rape attempts, the relative risks for these three categories are 1.0, 1.8 and 5.0. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, looking to find the percentage of the total population falling into each of these three groups, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scb.se/sv_/Hitta-statistik/Statistik-efter-amne/Befolkning/Befolkningsframskrivningar/Demografisk-analys/55349/2012A01L/Befolkningens-sammansattning/Fodda-i-Sverige--anda-olika/Fodda-i-Sverige-med-utrikes-fodda-foraldrar/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Statistiska centralbyrån&quot; offers the numbers for the year 2008&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Born in Sweden, both parents born in Sweden: 75%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Born in Sweden, at least one parent born abroad: 11%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Born abroad: 14%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the known risk of correlating three different statistics collected over a range of 8 years, the number of perpetrators in each of the three population groups (considering their share of the total population and relative crime risk) should be approximately:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Born in Sweden, both parents born in Sweden: 1557&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Born in Sweden, at least one parent born abroad: 415&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Born abroad: 1454&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summing it up: Of the 3,426 reported rapes or rape attempts in the first 7 months of 2013, some 1900 can be assumed to have been performed by a perpetrator born outside Sweden or with at least one parent born outside Sweden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where it seems impossible to get any further with the analysis. There are no public statistics regarding the religion of the foreign-born population and also no crime statistics with a more detailed breakdown of the nationality or religion of the crime suspects. Even if the Swedish Radio news report is misquoted and there are no further backups for the claim, it is not &lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; unrealistic, that 1000 of the assumed 1900 foreign rapists are Muslims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-10-01T02:26:17.493" LastActivityDate="2018-10-01T02:26:17.493" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18737" CreationDate="2013-12-18T06:45:28.827" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Hot-Plug-Detection feature is part of the HDMI protocol. All data-lines are quiet until a hotplug-event is detected via the physical pin 19. A handshake then negotiates a real connection:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The HPD (Hot-Plug-Detect) feature is a communication mechanism between a source and a sink device that makes the source device aware that it has been connected/disconnected to/from the sink device. When an HDMI cable is inserted between the two devices, the resulting hot-plug detection instantiates a start-up communication sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, unless we're talking about massive static discharge - which should be prevented by opto-isolation if we're talking about a proper implementation - it is safe, even safer than USB which applies 5 V of Vcc right away without any prior negotiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ni.com/white-paper/12680/en/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ni.com/white-paper/12680/en/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Regarding the physical USB connectors I should point out that the data- and Vcc-/mass connectors are not of the same length. If you plug it in, mass and power is applied before the data lines are physically attached. This works good enough for most applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6180" LastEditorUserId="6180" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T06:56:28.617" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T06:56:28.617" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18720" CreationDate="2013-12-18T13:47:27.043" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, BT routers do not secretly connect to a NSA/GCHQ network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core argument supporting this claim in the document is that the BT routers make DHCP requests to netblocks assigned to the US DoD (specifically, 30.0.0.0/8, which belongs to the Defense Information Systems Agency).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the author didn't consider is that people running large private networks have been &quot;borrowing&quot; IP addresses that belong to other people.  IPv4 address space is very limited, and the small sections set aside for private use often encounter conflicts when connecting private networks (particularly big ones such as large company or university) to semi-private networks (such as ISPs internal networks). Some examples of this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://seclists.org/nanog/2011/May/749&quot;&gt;Canadian ISP Rogers using 7.0.0.0/8 for internal network&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,27330309&quot;&gt;US mobile network Sprint using 30.0.0.0/8 for internal network&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://b.logme.in/2012/11/07/changes-to-hamachi-on-november-19th/&quot;&gt;VPN software provider LogMeIn using 5.0.0.0/8 and 25.0.0.0/8 for networks created by Hamachi software&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US DoD is a prime target for people to &quot;borrow&quot; IP addresses from, since they have &lt;a href=&quot;http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/02/13/where-did-all-the-ip-numbers-go-the-us-department-of-defense-has-them/&quot;&gt;a stupidly large number of IP addresses&lt;/a&gt; for historical reasons, and almost none of these have ever been advertised on the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T13:47:27.043" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18102" CreationDate="2013-12-18T16:50:43.500" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The is no evidence that the New Deal extended the Great Depression. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there are those who assert that the New Deal ended the Great Depression which is not true either. The Great Depression as we all know ended due to the increased demand of production of World War II. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are those who think that the system needs to &quot;clean itself&quot; in order to rejuvenate and come back to full capacity. However, the system did let a lot of banks and companies go broke, so even if the argument was true, it does not apply, as the system let itself be &quot;cleansed&quot;. There clearly was a lower equilibrium in production as were stuck without making investments for fear of lack of demand in a cycle that just reaffirmed itself. The deflation necessary to make everything cheap enough to increase demand could have taken a large number or years to achieve so it is by no means automatic that that adjustment would have taken less time without the New Deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16755" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T16:50:43.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17047" CreationDate="2013-12-18T16:55:18.877" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very simplistic to associate GDP changes to the regime change of apartheid. Much more important than that are commodity price trends that include precious metals and agricultural commodities, and livestock. If you see the price trends of commodities you will see that they tended to decline throughout the 1990s, especially between 1995 and 2002. This effect hit the world as a whole. The price of the dollar increased and commodities decreased. It had tremendous consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the price of the dollar rose, the price of gold, platinum, palladium, copper, lead, aluminum, oil, gasoline, heating oil, natural gas, pork bellies, lean hogs, etc. tended to decline decreasing the GDP of South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, India, the Gulf States and many other countries which were not counting on it. Not only that, but the East Asian countries that held their currency fixed to the dollar had to abandon the peg with full-fledged financial crisis as a consequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So please do not attribute GDP change in South Africa to apartheid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16755" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T18:26:19.353" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T18:26:19.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18753" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18766" CreationDate="2013-12-18T20:22:28.087" Score="22" ViewCount="1816" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plannedparenthood.org/health-topics/pregnancy/standard-21507.htm&quot;&gt;Planned Parenthood&lt;/a&gt;, Crisis Pregnancy Centers have a history of providing misleading or wrong information about abortions. Specifically they state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They have a history of giving women wrong, biased information to scare&#xA;  them into not having abortions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These centers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;may tell you that you are not pregnant even if you are. This may fool you into continuing your pregnancy without knowing it. If your decision is delayed, it could make abortion more risky. It could also keep you from getting early prenatal care.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that Crisis Pregnancy Centers have lied about the results of a pregnancy test? Is there evidence that they lie about this as a matter of policy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5707" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2013-12-19T22:19:25.007" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T06:21:14.913" Title="Do Crisis Pregnancy Centers lie about the results of pregnancy tests?" Tags="|politics|sexuality|abortion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18753" CreationDate="2013-12-18T20:55:49.870" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Introduction&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is a bit more complex than presented by the question, which is an extract of a particular bullet point in a larger set of &quot;things that could go wrong&quot; going to a Crisis Pregnancy Centers, according to Planned Parenthood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular the OP points to the main claim of bias/wrongdoing of same of the CPCs and a particular claimed risk that they could lie about the results of pregnancy tests. I'm addressing both claims in the following paragraphs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;A note of caution. Medical and scientific facts are taken as &lt;em&gt;representing our best knowledge&lt;/em&gt; in the rest of the answer. The following paragraphs will merely concentrate on ascertaining whether some CPCs committed certain actions. If you disagree with the mainstream scientific position on contraception, pregnancy tests and abortion you are probably better off not proceeding.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;First Claim&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They have a history of giving women wrong, biased information to scare them into not having abortions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is evidently true and even a cursory look using google returns dozens of studies (some with the US government imprimatur) showing that they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wrong info about consequences&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2010/08/07/deception_used_in_counselling_women_against_abortion.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Star&lt;/a&gt;, CPCs offer false medical information about the consequences of abortion: they overstate (or completely make up) emotional trauma, breast cancer and future fertility problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wrong info about consequences&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.contraceptionjournal.org/article/S0010-7824%2812%2900415-5/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Abortion misinformation from crisis pregnancy centers in North Carolina&lt;/a&gt;, a peer-reviewed article, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many crisis pregnancy centers give inaccurate medical information regarding the risks of abortion. Overstating risks stigmatizes abortion, seeks to intimidate women and is unethical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wrong info about consequences, manipulation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://familyplanning.uchicago.edu/policy/publications-resources/Crisis%20Pregnancy%20Center%20Fact%20Sheet%20FINAL.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study by the University of Chicago&lt;/a&gt; some have deceptive practices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CPCs continue to provide limited resources, inaccurate &#xA;  information and biased counseling to women seeking prompt &#xA;  and reliable reproductive guidance and care. While the &#xA;  services they provide may be appropriate for the needs of &#xA;  some women, the delays and misinformation at many of these &#xA;  centers can undermine the health and well-being of women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wrong info about facts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Guttmacher Institute, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/gpr/09/4/gpr090406.html/en-en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Misinformed Consent: The Medical Accuracy of State-Developed Abortion Counseling Materials&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A pregnant teenager who relied on the information from these federally funded centers would make her decision about whether to give birth or terminate her pregnancy based on erroneous facts and misinformation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Second Claim&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;may tell you that you are not pregnant even if you are. This may fool you into continuing your pregnancy without knowing it. If your decision is delayed, it could make abortion more risky. It could also keep you from getting early prenatal care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bit harder to find in the dozens of reports available, but there's very strong evidence that there is a concrete risk they do lie, manipulate and try to delay patients using pregnancy tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Manipulation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/caitlin-bancroft/crisis-pregnancy-center_b_3763196.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;independent journalistic report&lt;/a&gt; on the Huffington Post&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I could hear two employees whispering before entering my room, plotting strategies to reveal the test results and best manipulate my reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's at least a real example of a CPC manipulating how (positive) pregnancy test results are revealed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wrong information about tests&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naralva.org/what-is-choice/cpc/revealed.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pro-choice group&lt;/a&gt; presented a referenced study of CPCs in Virginia and found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several CPCs told our investigators of the need to &quot;medically confirm a pregnancy&quot;&#xA;   before even considering abortion, and many stressed the importance of obtaining a &quot;professional&quot; pregnancy test – despite using common urine tests widely available in stores. One investigator was told to visit the center for a pregnancy test because &quot;the pregnancy tests we use are extra sensitive and better than the average pregnancy tests.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, above, they are saying to a woman who has done a test by herself and found it positive to disregard the result and do one of &lt;em&gt;theirs&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wrong information about tests&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have been caught bold face lying about pregnancy tests by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/23/nyregion/pregnancy-centers-anti-abortion-role-challenged.html?pagewanted=2&amp;amp;src=pm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All three centers advertise &quot;free pregnancy tests.&quot; Since the City Health Department levied its fines, which ranged from $750 to $4,000, it is unclear whether tests are still being processed on the premises. At the time of Ms. Weinstock's visit, she said, she was told that urine and blood tests were &quot;identical&quot; and that a urine sample did not need to be taken the first thing in the morning. Both pieces of information are incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Delaying tactics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prochoice.org/pubs_research/publications/downloads/public_policy/cpc_report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pro-Choice&lt;/a&gt; research paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CPCs employ tactics designed to delay and even harass or intimidate women from having abortions. For example, CPCs have been known to extend the waiting period for pregnancy test results to expose women to their anti-choice or religious propaganda&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Delaying tactics&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prochoicemd.org/assets/bin/pdfs/cpcreportfinal.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pro choice research&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our investigators found that medical services were often used to lure women into the centers or to delay abortion services. All centers visited offered free pregnancy testing. This is a principal strategy used to entice women into the centers. Unfortunately, CPCs used this seemingly benign service as an opportunity to dissuade women from &#xA;  abortion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Caveats&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I've ignored the &quot;may&quot; in the second claim even though they clearly present this as a possibility and not a certainty&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some resources are pro-choice, and they were chosen because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;they presented a clear argument&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it was published, possibly reviewed and always well referenced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I presented at least another independent, not pro-life reference for the same claim&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are very many resources on this topic, if anyone has patience to find more example they should free to add them to this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-22T00:53:12.303" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T00:53:12.303" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16347" CreationDate="2013-12-18T20:59:34.917" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's clearly allowed. In fact, here's a mosque in Tokyo:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tokyo_Camii_2009.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rD73c.png&quot; alt=&quot;Tokio Camii&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Camii&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Camii&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T20:59:34.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17047" CreationDate="2013-12-18T21:14:08.590" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;South Africa's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bit.ly/1gGKNhC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fate&lt;/a&gt; after the end of the apartheid got determined by AIDS. In 1990 the HIV rate among pregnant woman was 0.8% and in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_South_Africa#1993&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1993&lt;/a&gt; it was 4.3% in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hivsa.com/static/hiv-aids-in-south-africa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1997&lt;/a&gt; it was 17.0%. The high point of South African lifespan was in 1992 with 62 years. By 2005 AIDS had killed enough people that average lifespan declined to 52 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That a lot. If you look at the effects of world war two on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bit.ly/1gGLiYP&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;French lifespan&lt;/a&gt;, French lifespan was at 60 years on 1939 and at 65 years on 1949.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you however look at GDP/person. It declined before end of Apartheid. In 1981 it was at 8800 and it's low was at 7150 in 1993. This was partly due to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinvestment_from_South_Africa#Achieving_critical_mass_.281984-1989.29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;trade embargos&lt;/a&gt; against the apartheid regime. After apartheid ended it rose. In 2003 it was at 7850. That's not a high amount of growth but it's better than the economic decline that happened in the previous years.&#xA;AIDS kills people in their working years. If AIDS didn't kill that many people the economy would have grown much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In total you could say that the stuggle for the end of apartheid produced a lot of problems for South Africa in the years before apartheid was abolished. If South Africa wouldn't have been torn before they ended apartheid, they might have responded more effectively to the threat of Aids and also had economic growth in the 1980th. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even after apartheid was abolished the topic of AIDS didn't get enough attention and the situation worsened through the 1990th and early 2000ths. Former South African president Mbeki did &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hivsa.com/static/hiv-aids-in-south-africa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; whether HIV causes AIDS. &#xA;If South African political leadership would have been more open to the views of the Western scientific elite on AIDS, fewer people would have died in South Africa and the economy of South Africa would be better off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ironic think is that the goal of achieving equality didn't succeed. Inequality rose from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bit.ly/1gGNbor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gini index&lt;/a&gt; of 59 in 1993 to 63 in 2003. Even through the leader of the struggle against apartheid had a goal of economic equality the opposite happened. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2011/02/democracy-born-chains&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Naomi Klein&lt;/a&gt; gives a good description of how the struggle for equality got effectively abandoned due to calculations of realpolitiks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2013-12-18T21:29:07.523" LastActivityDate="2013-12-18T21:29:07.523" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18759" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-19T04:51:52.013" Score="11" ViewCount="567" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is controversy on whether there are a few percents of innocent people in US jails or much less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innocenceproject.org/Content/How_many_innocent_people_are_there_in_prison.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Innocent project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q. How many innocent people are there in prison?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A. We will never know for sure, but the few studies that have been done estimate that between 2.3% and 5% of all prisoners in the U.S. are innocent (for context, if just 1% of all prisoners are innocent, that would mean that more than 20,000 innocent people are in prison).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But also&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That would make the error rate [in felony convictions] .027 percent—or, to put it&#xA;another way, a success rate of 99.973 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/26/opinion/26marquis.html?pagewanted=print&amp;amp;_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The innocent and the Shammed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a statistically valid study on wrongful convictions that can settle the debate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14975" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T23:40:47.700" Title="Are the innocents in US prison a single digit percentage?" Tags="|united-states|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13721" CreationDate="2013-12-19T07:08:49.743" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the studies I have found at Pubmed, suggests that there is a gain from taking such supplements and lists the type and levels they used to get a statistical different result from placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24195702&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24195702&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By typing BCAA in muscle growth recovery into the search bar on their site, you can get many other studies on the effect of BCAA in exercise. I only have looked at one of the studies, the above link, and it show some benefit. You would need to look at the others studies and see if they also prove a net benefit. Another study from Flinders University suggests that simply taking Chocolate Milk would give you a good recovery outcome from exercise. You can easily Google this last study as it is fairly current.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16766" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T07:08:49.743" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9106" CreationDate="2013-12-19T09:01:10.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If one leave aside the mention of &quot;crucifixion&quot;  in Bible, we still have a solid evidence outside Bible  that Jesus was in fact crucified on cross.  Lucian (c.120–after 180 A.D. referred to Jesus as a crucified sophist (philosopher). Apart from Jesus' crucifixion,  it also testifies- an earliest non Biblical record, about the deity of Jesus, indicating that Christian were already worshiping Jesus.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The Christians, you know, worship a man to this day—the distinguished personage who introduced their novel rites, and was crucified on that account. … You see, these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains their contempt of death and voluntary self-devotion which are so common among them; and then it was impressed on them by their original lawgiver that they are all brothers, from the moment that they are converted, and deny the gods of Greece, and worship the crucified sage, and live after his laws. All this they take quite on faith, with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike, regarding them merely as common property.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_of_Peregrinus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lucian, The Passing of Peregrin&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another non Biblical reference is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus_on_Christ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tacitus (c. 56–c.120 A.D.) who wrote&lt;/a&gt;,  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty … at the hands of our procurator, Pontius Pilate.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10611" LastEditorUserId="10611" LastEditDate="2013-12-19T14:13:32.157" LastActivityDate="2013-12-19T14:13:32.157" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18763" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-19T15:44:27.183" Score="21" ViewCount="8403" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv8ICItg-50&quot;&gt;QI episode about killers&lt;/a&gt; the panel mentions that German SS soldiers during WWII were given puppies at the start of their training to raise, and then they were required to kill the dogs at the end of the training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found that the same claim was made about various armies and/or units: Iraqi, Israeli, American, Russian and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://msgboard.snopes.com/message/ultimatebb.php?/ubb/get_topic/f/36/t/000745.html&quot;&gt;A thread at Snopes forum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120404142909AAx1Ohw&quot;&gt;Yahoo answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found some references that the Bolivian army used dogs as live targets, but I couldn't find any credible sources reporting this, the most credible source was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peta.org/blog/bolivia-bans-military-abuse-animals-historic-victory/&quot;&gt;PETA&lt;/a&gt;, but I couldn't find the story in any large news outlet online even though Peta claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the Bolivian minister of defense went on that country’s national television to announce an historic ban on all animal abuse in military training exercises, stating that the Bolivian government is issuing Resolution 217 to prohibit all acts of violence, exploitation, and mistreatment that provokes the death of animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that post was published on April 1&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt;, 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="16786" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T11:18:16.960" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T07:55:54.507" Title="Did any armed forces, or units give pets to their soldiers at the start of their training which they were required to kill at the end of it?" Tags="|zoology|military|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18764" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-19T16:30:56.487" Score="28" ViewCount="1311" Body="&lt;h2&gt;© Time Warner Studios MCMXCVIII&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/10149/why-do-studios-use-roman-numerals-in-the-copyright-notice-in-the-end-credits&quot;&gt;post on MTVSE&lt;/a&gt; questions why movies use Roman numerals in the copyright notices of the end credits. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://movies.stackexchange.com/a/10150/3650&quot;&gt;accepted (and referenced) answer&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~aahobor/Lucy-Day/Authors/Feldman.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1934990.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref 2&lt;/a&gt;) states that this convention &lt;em&gt;probably&lt;/em&gt; arose in a bid to &lt;em&gt;make it difficult for viewers to determine exactly how old the show is&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;https://movies.stackexchange.com/a/10151/3650&quot;&gt;another (unreferenced) answer&lt;/a&gt; suggests a couple of other plausible and practical answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roman numerals are easier to read when the film degrades. Just a little degradation, the number &lt;em&gt;6&lt;/em&gt; could be mistaken for the number &lt;em&gt;5&lt;/em&gt;. It's not as easy with &lt;em&gt;VI&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;V&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unlike Roman numerals, Arabic ones are hard to distinguish in fine print.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So which is true? Were Roman numerals used to mask the age of a movie? If so, why? What is the basis for this conclusion? Or were they used for improved legibility?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or is the reason something else altogether?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:54:04.793" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T17:40:13.367" Title="Are Roman numerals used in the end credits of films to mask their age?" Tags="|movies|typography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20063" CreationDate="2013-12-19T21:30:43.740" Score="24" ViewCount="4656" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.serfes.org/orthodox/memoryof.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eastern Orthodox Christians claim&lt;/a&gt; that there has been a 'Holocaust' of sorts in the latter part of the 19th century and throughout the entire 20th century (and continuing into the 21st century). But unlike &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Victims_and_death_toll&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the 6 million Jews killed in Nazi Germany&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.serfes.org/orthodox/memoryof.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;they claim that 50 million Eastern Orthodox Christians have been killed&lt;/a&gt;, many under Islamic and Communist regimes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems believable in light of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0674076087&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Black Book of Communism&lt;/a&gt;, which records close to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/9199/11344&quot;&gt;94 million deaths under Communist governments&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodoxy_by_country#Statistics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;most Russians and Eastern Europeans consider themselves to be Eastern Orthodox&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.levada.ru/26-09-2011/religioznaya-vera-v-rossii&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;70% of Russians considered themselves to be Orthodox in March 2012&lt;/a&gt;, but &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/rs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;far less are recorded as such according to the CIA World Fact Book&lt;/a&gt; which likely factors &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.levada.ru/26-09-2011/religioznaya-vera-v-rossii&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;low participation in religious services&lt;/a&gt; as a factor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.serfes.org/orthodox/memoryof.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claim concerning 50 million Orthodox Christians being killed&lt;/a&gt; historically accurate? The specific claim from the essay is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Between the tolls exacted from prisons, concentration camps, forced&#xA;  marches and exiles, warfare, famine, and brutal military occupation,&#xA;  it is reasonable to conclude that up to 50 million Orthodox Christians&#xA;  have perished in the first eight decades of the twentieth century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CLARIFICATION:&lt;/strong&gt; A large factor in how you count this is whether having a certain national heritage automatically makes one Orthodox (i.e. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyletism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;phyletism&lt;/a&gt;). A good answer will need to determine if ethnophyletist reckonings of Orthodoxy are valid for determining a death toll or not. A view that accepts phyletism may well use any deaths in certain countries as Orthodox Christian deaths, or perhaps determine how to subdivide this (were they killed for their faith/heritage or for other reasons?), while a view that rejects ethnophyletist claims may use facts like those cited above for what percentage of various nations should be considered 'Orthodox Christian' to further break down these numbers. I am not sure, but it is my presumption that the author of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.serfes.org/orthodox/memoryof.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the article claiming 50 million Orthodox Christian deaths&lt;/a&gt; takes a phyletist worldview as a given.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11344" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-10-30T10:54:20.533" Title="Have 50 million Eastern Orthodox Christians been killed in the 20th century?" Tags="|history|war|christianity|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18753" CreationDate="2013-12-19T23:49:19.503" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a long list of references to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_pregnancy_center#False_medical_information&quot;&gt;False medical information&lt;/a&gt; collected on Wikipedia.&#xA;One of those is their being misleading/inaccurate about the type of pregnancy tests they offer, with a reference to the following New York Times article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1987/01/23/nyregion/pregnancy-centers-anti-abortion-role-challenged.html?pagewanted=2&amp;amp;src=pm&quot;&gt;PREGNANCY CENTERS: ANTI-ABORTION ROLE CHALLENGED (January 23, 1987)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Pearson manual has been described by law-enforcement officials&#xA;  around the country as a 93-page guidebook of ways to mislead&#xA;  consumers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Referring to the centers' pregnancy tests, the same sort available at&#xA;  a drugstore, the manual suggests: ''Tell her it's a refined form of&#xA;  the old rabbit test. This usually satisfies them. At no time do you&#xA;  need to tell them what you're doing.''&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the time of Ms. Weinstock's visit, she said, she was told that&#xA;  urine and blood tests were ''identical'' and that a urine sample did&#xA;  not need to be taken the first thing in the morning. Both pieces of&#xA;  information are incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the counter urine tests are not as accurate as a blood test: for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/home-pregnancy-tests/PR00100/NSECTIONGROUP=2&quot;&gt;the Mayo Clinic says&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Could a negative result be wrong?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's possible to get a negative result from a home pregnancy test when&#xA;  you're actually pregnant. This is known as a false-negative — and it's&#xA;  much more likely to occur than is a false-positive. You might get a&#xA;  false-negative if you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Take the test too early.&lt;/strong&gt; The earlier after a missed period that you&#xA;  take a home pregnancy test, the harder it is for the test to detect&#xA;  HCG. For the most accurate results, take the test one week after a&#xA;  missed period — when the level of HCG in your urine is most likely to&#xA;  be detectable. If you can't wait that long, ask your health care&#xA;  provider for a blood test.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using that to try to answer your questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is there any evidence that Crisis Pregnancy Centers have lied about the results of a pregnancy test?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wording of the claim in the OP is not that they &quot;lie about the results&quot;.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Lying about the nature of the test&lt;/strong&gt; and/or &lt;strong&gt;giving false information about how to conduct the test&lt;/strong&gt; is IMO justification for a claim or warning that they &quot;may tell you that you are not pregnant even if you are&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is there evidence that they lie about this as a matter of policy?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=the+pearson+manual+pregnancy&quot;&gt;The Pearson manual&lt;/a&gt;, a training manual for such clinics referenced in the NYT article quoted above, is (some, old) evidence for this being a matter of 'policy'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-12-20T00:35:49.107" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T00:35:49.107" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18767" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-20T04:15:47.073" Score="5" ViewCount="480" Body="&lt;p&gt;A  claim is &lt;a href=&quot;http://carolineglick.com/where_israel_went_astray/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1997, the PA published census figures that exaggerated its population figures in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem by nearly 50 percent. The PA double counted Arab Jerusalemites, included hundreds of thousands of emigrants to its population rolls, asserted mass immigration when in fact there has been net emigration from the PA since 1995. It exaggerated fertility rates and understated mortality rates. In all, the PA added approximately 1.4 million people who did not exist to its population rolls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this 50% figure accurate, and is the 1.4 million &quot;non-existent&quot; figure accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:31:38.970" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:31:38.970" Title="Did the Palestinian Authority exaggerate their census numbers by 50%?" Tags="|sociology|israel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18768" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18784" CreationDate="2013-12-20T06:38:22.350" Score="35" ViewCount="5515" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read in a book that &quot;as the next millennium begins, there are more young black men in prison than in college.&quot; Jury Nullification by Clay S Conrad (Kindle edition, Dec 2013 loc: 343). (First Published 1998)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking &quot;That's awful and really?&quot; I first turned to google.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acenet.edu/the-presidency/columns-and-features/Pages/By-the-Numbers-More-Black-Men-in-Prison-Than-in-College-Think-Again-.aspx&quot;&gt;http://www.acenet.edu/the-presidency/columns-and-features/Pages/By-the-Numbers-More-Black-Men-in-Prison-Than-in-College-Think-Again-.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;provides a statistical table for 2000-2010 indicating that there were more African Americans in college than in jail or prison in the year 2002 and thereafter. But in 2000 and 2001, there were more in jail or prison. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same article notes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Washington Post editorial published in June referenced a 2007 quote&#xA;  from then-Senator Barack Obama. In this quote, Obama stated that “we&#xA;  have more black men in prison than we have in our colleges.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;National Public Radio (NPR, a non-profit broadcaster) has published a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2013/04/23/178601467/are-there-really-more-black-men-in-prison-than-college&quot;&gt;transcript of a radio program&lt;/a&gt; dated April 23, 2013:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But you've probably heard that there are more African-American men in&#xA;  jail than in college. Even then-candidate Barack Obama talked about&#xA;  this at an NAACP candidate forum, back in 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: We have more work to do when more young black&#xA;  men languish in prison than attend colleges and universities across&#xA;  America.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ...&#xA;  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ivory Toldson is an associate professor at Howard University School of&#xA;  Education. He wrote about this for TheRoot.com, and he says...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IVORY TOLDSON: It's wrong. There are 1.4 million black men in college&#xA;  right now, and there are about 840,000 black men in prison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbcnews.com/id/21001543/#.UrPfOt9OXoc&quot;&gt;NBC News article from Sep 2007&lt;/a&gt; suggests the results can vary depending on who is included in the college category:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More than three times as many black people live in prison cells as in&#xA;  college dorms, the government said in a report to be released&#xA;  Thursday. The ratio is only slightly better for Hispanics at 2.7&#xA;  inmates for every Latino in college housing. Among non-Hispanic&#xA;  whites, more than twice as many live in college housing as in prison&#xA;  or jail. The numbers, driven by men, do not include college students&#xA;  who live off campus.  Previously released census data show that black&#xA;  and Hispanic college students — commuters and those in dorms — far&#xA;  outnumber black and Hispanic prison inmates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this topic is something of a political football. I would be open to editorial suggestions to further pin down the question.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2013-12-20T06:54:32.483" LastActivityDate="2021-06-08T15:17:47.537" Title="In the USA, are there more African American men in prison than in college?" Tags="|united-states|race|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1367" CreationDate="2013-12-20T14:51:45.760" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The CDC's site says circumcision on infants is a cost effective way to prevent disease, mainly it speaks about HIV.  It does say that the effects of circumcision in homosexual relations is inconclusive, but it does not say the circumcision increases risk.  I think this is very strong evidence that circumcision is beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/prevention/research/malecircumcision/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/prevention/research/malecircumcision/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Summary&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Male circumcision reduces the risk that a man will acquire HIV from an infected female partner, and also lowers the risk of other STDs ,&#xA;  penile cancer, and infant urinary tract infection.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;For female partners, male circumcision reduces the risk of cervical cancer, genital ulceration, bacterial vaginosis, trichomoniasis, and&#xA;  HPV. Although male circumcision has risks including pain, bleeding,&#xA;  and infection, more serious complications are rare.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16778" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-12-20T17:59:44.723" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T17:59:44.723" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13964" CreationDate="2013-12-20T15:19:44.823" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This appears to have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://languor.us/victor-hugo-working-naked-story-myth-or-fact&quot;&gt;investigated in some depth&lt;/a&gt;. The conclusions of the linked article are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Yes, there is some truth to the story that Hugo locked himself in a room, naked, with nothing but pen and paper to distract him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;However, he was not naked. He just didn't have access to his formal (going out) clothes and chose to (only?) wear a large shawl.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;There was no valet involved. He locked away his formal clothes himself.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The source of this anecdote is his wife, Adèle Foucher's memoir, &lt;em&gt;Victor Hugo Recounted by a Witness of His Life&lt;/em&gt;, which was published in the 1860s.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The anecdote is included in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Notre-Dame-Paris-Classics-Victor-Hugo/dp/0140443533/r&quot;&gt;the introduction to Notre-Dame de Paris&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;'He bought himself a bottle of ink and a huge grey knitted shawl, which swathed him from head to foot, locked his formal clothes away so that he would not be tempted to go out and entered his novel as if it were a prison.&lt;/strong&gt; He was very sad.' This engagingly domestic report on Victor Hugo sitting down in the autumn of 1830 to write Notre-Dame of Paris is by his wife, Adèle, who in the 1860s published a quaintly tinted memoir (dictated, some have hinted, by its subject himself): Victor Hugo Recounted by a Witness of His Life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T15:19:44.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18700" CreationDate="2013-12-20T16:47:08.487" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Their claim is &lt;strong&gt;unsupported&lt;/strong&gt; by any evidence that I can find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their source (&lt;a href=&quot;http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=103&amp;amp;artikel=5612131&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=103&amp;amp;artikel=5612131&lt;/a&gt;) makes no mentions of Muslims or Islam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/muslims-raped-over-300-swedish-children-and-700-women-in-seven-months-of-2013/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This blog post&lt;/a&gt; explains this away as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The official radio report quoted from BRÅ (The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention) refuses to mention the M-word in the socialist-suffocated Sweden, a country held hostage by the extreme left. But when you contact senior police and government sources they confirm (anonymous in fear of losing their jobs) that these numbers represent Muslims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not rely on anonymous sources for a claim of this significance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T16:47:08.487" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18775" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18776" CreationDate="2013-12-20T20:33:32.970" Score="10" ViewCount="2211" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a controversial show about cholesterol drugs, the Australian (ostensible) science show, Catalyst, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3881441.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; an interview with &lt;a href=&quot;http://cardiology.ucsf.edu/facstaff/faculty_profiles.html?key=aacf651ebfae80530ab9273eb073c483&amp;amp;name=REDBERG%2CRITA+F&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Professor Rita Redberg&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Professor Rita Redberg&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;There are a lot of ways that one can manipulate data in a trial. Trials do what they call a washout period, and what that means is before they choose the people that are going to be in the trial, they give everybody the drug, and the people that have side effects get excluded from the trial. And they say that so people aren't uncomfortable when they are in the trial. But of course it takes out all the people that have side effects, and that's very commonly done in drug trials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dr Maryanne Demasi&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;So the side effects would be grossly underestimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Professor Rita Redberg&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;Yes, it would definitely grossly underestimate the number of people that have side effects. They're not as safe as they're made out to be, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Wikipedia's definition of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-in_period&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;washout period&lt;/a&gt; suggests it is a period &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do clinical trials that measure drug side-effects use washout periods to screen out people with side-effects from the study, and thus bias their figures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T22:10:11.207" Title="Do 'washout periods' in drug studies lead to underestimates of side-effects?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18775" CreationDate="2013-12-20T20:43:22.360" Score="9" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Summary&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wash-out periods&lt;/strong&gt; are periods without treatment between cross-over trials to minimize carry-over between the trials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the quoted discussion is talking about is a &lt;strong&gt;run-in period&lt;/strong&gt;, where participants either given placebo or active treatment prior to the study with the intention of excluding non-compliant participants or participants with intolerable side effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Definitions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/glossary&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cochrane.org/glossary&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Run-in period&lt;/strong&gt;: A period before randomisation when participants are monitored but receive no treatment (or they sometimes all receive one of the study treatments, possibly in a blind fashion). The data from this stage of a trial are only occasionally of value but can serve a valuable role in screening out ineligible or non-compliant participants, in ensuring that participants are in a stable condition, and in providing baseline observations. A run-in period is sometimes called a &lt;strong&gt;washout period&lt;/strong&gt; if treatments that participants were using before entering the trial are discontinued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane-net.org/openlearning/html/modA2-3.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cochrane-net.org/openlearning/html/modA2-3.htm&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the acupuncture trial, a three-week 'washout' period was built into the trial between the two treatment periods. This is a common method to minimize 'carry-over' effects and ensure the participant is in the same state at the beginning of each period, though it is not always sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://handbook.cochrane.org/chapter_16/16_4_2_assessing_suitability_of_cross_over_trials.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://handbook.cochrane.org/chapter_16/16_4_2_assessing_suitability_of_cross_over_trials.htm&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many cross-over trials include a period between interventions known as a washout period as a means of reducing carry-over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Effect on external validity&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.who.int/rhl/Lancet_365-9453.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://apps.who.int/rhl/Lancet_365-9453.pdf&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pre-randomisation &lt;strong&gt;run-in&lt;/strong&gt; periods are also often used to&#xA;  select or exclude patients. In a placebo run-in, all&#xA;  eligible patients receive placebo and those who are&#xA;  poorly compliant are excluded. &lt;strong&gt;There can be good&#xA;  reasons for doing this, but high rates of exclusion&#xA;  will reduce external validity.&lt;/strong&gt; For example, one trial of&#xA;  the effect of salts on blood pressure excluded 93% of&#xA;  patients in a placebo run-in period. &lt;strong&gt;Active treatment&#xA;  run-in periods in which patients are excluded if they&#xA;  have adverse events or show signs that treatment may&#xA;  be ineffective are excluded are more likely to undermine&#xA;  external validity.&lt;/strong&gt; For example, two RCTs of&#xA;  carvedilol, a vasodilatory  blocker, in chronic heart&#xA;  failure excluded 6% and 9% of eligible patients in&#xA;  treatment run–in periods because of worsening&#xA;  heart failure and other adverse events, some of which&#xA;  were fatal. In both trials, the complication rates in the&#xA;  subsequent randomised phase were much lower than&#xA;  in the run-in phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, run-in periods that exclude a high number of participants have lower external validity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How to account for this when reading or doing research&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See (Berger and Durkalski) and (Brittain and Wittes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect of run-in periods on research simply changes how we should expect the results of these studies to transfer to practical treatment. In the case of compliance-based exclusion, a follow-up pragmatic study (Roland and Torgerson) would reveal the discrepancy. In the case of exclusion based on adverse effects, sometimes that test-dosing is reported. While the external validity of the eventual study may be lessened, good studies will make this limitation clear, describe the demographics of the selected participants, and provide details about the pre-trial exclusion. Be alert for large numbers of unexplained pre-trial exclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Berger, Vance W., and Valerie L. Durkalski. &quot;Run‐In Period.&quot; Wiley Encyclopedia of Clinical Trials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brittain, Erica, and Janet Wittes. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2289394&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The run-in period in clinical trials: the effect of misclassification on efficiency.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; Controlled Clinical Trials 11, no. 5 (1990): 327-338.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roland, Martin, and David J. Torgerson. &quot;Understanding controlled trials: What are pragmatic trials?.&quot; Bmj 316, no. 7127 (1998): 285.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-12-20T22:10:11.207" LastActivityDate="2013-12-20T22:10:11.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14881" CreationDate="2013-12-20T23:21:06.303" Score="3" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EMDR is one of only two systems widely endorsed as highly effective, first-line therapies for PTSD, the other being TFCBT (prolonged exposure). As such, EMDR is superior to all other researched systems than TFCBT, to which it is roughly equal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, EMDR is demonstrably gentler than TFCBT, requiring much less painful exposure to distressing traumatic material. It is therefore less prone to dropout. EMDR is also probably faster than TFCBT. There is some research and widespread anecdotal evidence for EMDR's relatively low drop-out rate and speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for eye movements, the latest meta-studies and reviews judge EMDR's eye movements to be essential to its effectiveness and theoretically justified. There is much more to EMDR than eye movements, however, and the eye movement component arguably acts as a catalyst that makes the entire system faster and more effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Full answer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, in answering questions about EMDR, it's best not to rely on meta-studies and reviews prior to about 2003, since a lot happened after that to change the scientific view of EMDR, all in the positive direction. Even an important 2007-8 report is now out of date (see below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, you are correct to say that eye movements or other bilateral stimulation (BLS) techniques are an &lt;em&gt;aspect&lt;/em&gt; of EMDR. There is indeed much more to EMDR than BLS. (See Hyer &amp;amp; Brandsma, 1997; Rozelle &amp;amp; Lewis, 2014). But for that reason you cannot compare eye movements to other therapies -- that is compare a technique that is a part of a therapy to other complete therapies -- it is an ill-formed question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I assume you are really asking one or both of two related questions: (a) Is EMDR as effective (or more effective) than other therapies? (b) how important to EMDR's effect is BLS? Both these questions are addressed in the scientific literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to (a) is well-established by numerous studies and judgments of professional bodies such as the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS, the major international professional society concerned with PTSD) and national bodies in many countries (for example, the US Veterans Administration) -- EMDR is one of two highly recommended, first-line therapies for PTSD, the other being what's called trauma-focused (or exposure-based) cognitive-behavioral therapy (TFCBT) of which there are several forms. And between EMDR and TFCBT, neither is preferred based on the evidence. See Spates, etal (2010), pp. 279-301  for a summary of the evidence on EMDR published by the ISTSS, bearing in mind that the section on the efficacy of eye movements is out of date (see below). But on EMDR as a whole, this ISTSS report says &amp;quot;Based an on this review of seven new controlled efficacy/effectiveness studies of EMDR and seven new meta-analytic investigations of this technique, we assigned EMDR for treatment of adult PTSD and AHCPR rating of Level A.&amp;quot; and that it is &amp;quot;equally effective as exposure-based therapies&amp;quot; (p. 298). In fact, &amp;quot;recent investigations... suggest the possibility that the dosed exposure, along with postexposure 'mindfulness' features comprising EMDR, might confer advantages over conventional prolonged exposure to trauma memories. However, this hypothesis requires substantially more research to test its validity.&amp;quot; (p. 300)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, Nijdam, etal (2012), a recent rigorous study with high n (140), concluded &amp;quot;EMDR and brief eclectic psychotherapy [BEPP, a form of TFCBT] had equal effects in terms of reduction of self-reported and clinician-rated PTSD symptoms, depressive symptoms and general anxiety symptoms when statistically controlling for pre-treatment differences. Across all outcomes, the response pattern was significantly different for EMDR and brief eclectic psychotherapy when accounting for baseline differences, indicating that EMDR led to faster symptom decline and brief eclectic psychotherapy to more gradual improvement.&amp;quot; Not only was this an exceptionally rigorous and large study with controls against bias, it was conducted by the group at the University of Amsterdam that developed BEPP. So if there is any bias it would have gone against EMDR! This study is openly available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/200/3/224.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/200/3/224.long&lt;/a&gt;. By the way, in this study EMDR worked approximately twice as fast as BEPP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only significant dissenting body is the US Institute of Medicine (IOM). IOM's 2007-8 report did not cast any explicit doubt on EMDR's efficacy, but simply excluded it from the top rank because it did not have enough studies that met the topmost criterion for rigor. But that extremely high bar for studies did not bother the other bodies, particularly ISTSS. Also, there are quite a few more studies on EMDR since the IOM's report, all positive. For a detailed discussion of the controversies surrounding all the institutional assessments of EMDR, see Forbes, etal (2010), pp. 550-551.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for (b), the latest meta-study on the contribution of eye movements to EMDR's effect is Lee &amp;amp; Cuijpers (2012). They found (p. 231) &amp;quot;The effect size for the additive effect of eye movements in EMDR treatment studies was moderate and significant (Cohen’s d = 0.41). For the ... laboratory studies the effect size was large and significant (d = 0.74).&amp;quot; They also found methodological flaws in two major earlier meta-studies on eye movements, Davidson &amp;amp; Parker (2001) and Devilly (2002), and updated them with the considerable subsequent research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jeffries &amp;amp; Davis (2013) reviewed the literature on eye movements in EMDR and concluded &amp;quot;the results suggest support for the contention that EMs are essential to this therapy and that a theoretical rationale exists for their use. Choice of EMDR over trauma-focused CBT should therefore remain a matter of patient choice and clinician expertise; it is suggested, however, that EMs may be more effective at reducing distress, and thereby allow other components of treatment to take place.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One interpretation (in Rozelle &amp;amp; Lewis, 2014 forthcoming) of the recent results on eye movements in EMDR is that BLS is actually a kind of catalyst that enhances the actual core process of EMDR, that being information processing via mostly silent free association (Solomon &amp;amp; Shapiro, 2008, p. 321). Thus EMDR can indeed work without BLS, but it works better, often much better with BLS. In practice, however, there is no reason not to use BLS when doing EMDR -- it does help, sometimes a lot, and has not, to my knowledge, been shown to have any problematic side-effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some last thoughts. EMDR is still held in low esteem by some academics, mainly because its early claims for efficacy seemed excessive and early research was not very rigorous. Both of these are now put to rest, but academics, like everybody, hate to admit their mistakes in public, especially when their earlier assertions were so strongly worded, and some even vituperative. Also, in those days waving fingers in front of a client's face seemed, on the face of it (pun intended) to be just too weird to be respectable -- not a terribly scientific opinion, but it carried a lot of emotional weight. Now that various forms of meditation have gained significant currency in psychotherapy, however, especially Kabat-Zinn's Buddhist-inspired mindfulness techniques, perhaps it's time to rethink the weirdness objection to BLS. How much weirder, after all, is attending to a therapist's fingers going back and forth than attending to your own breath going in and out?! (In fact, there may well be a relationship between those two techniques.) To tell the truth, nobody really yet understands in a scientific reductionist sense, why or how either works (not to mention &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; psychotherapy system)... but they do!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Davidson, P. R., &amp;amp; Parker, K. . C. (2001). Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR): A meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 69(2), 305–316.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Devilly, G. J. (2002). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing: a chronology&#xA;of its development and scientific standing.The ScientificReview of Mental Health&#xA;Practice: Objective Investigations of Controversial and Unorthodox Claims in&#xA;Clinical Psychology, Psychiatry, and Social Work, 1(2), 113-138.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forbes, D., Creamer, M., Bisson, J. I., Cohen, J. A., Crow, B. E., Foa, E. B., Friedman, M. J., Keane, T. M., Kudler, H. S. and Ursano, R. J. (2010), A guide to guidelines for the treatment of PTSD and related conditions. J. Traum. Stress, 23: 537–552. doi: 10.1002/jts.20565&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hyer, L., &amp;amp; Brandsma, J. M. (1997). EMDR minus eye movements equals good psychotherapy. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 10(3), 515–22.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fiona W. Jeffries, Fiona W. &amp;amp; Davis, Paul (2013). What is the Role of Eye Movements in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)? A Review. Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy, 41, pp 290-300. doi:10.1017/S1352465812000793.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lee, C. W., &amp;amp; Cuijpers, P. (2012). A meta-analysis of the contribution of eye movements in processing emotional memories. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 44(2), 231–239. doi:10.1016/j.jbtep.2012.11.001&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nijdam MJ, Gersons BP, Reitsma JB, de Jongh A, Olff (2012). Brief eclectic psychotherapy v. eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder: randomised controlled trial. British Journal of Psychiatry, 2012 Mar;200(3):224-31. doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.111.099234. Epub 2012 Feb 9.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rozelle, D. &amp;amp; Lewis, D (forthcoming in 2014). What can Buddhism and EMDR tell us about treating PTSD? In V. Follette, J. Briere, D. Rozelle, J. Hopper, &amp;amp; D. Rome (Eds.), Contemplative practices in trauma treatment: Mindfulness and other approaches. Guilford Press, forthcoming 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Solomon, R. M., &amp;amp; Shapiro, F. (2008). EMDR and the adaptive information processing model: Potential mechanisms of change. Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, 2(4), 315–325. doi:10.1891/1933-3196.2.4.315&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spates, C. R., Koch, E., Cusack, K., Pagoto, S., &amp;amp; Waller, S. (2010). Eye movement desentization and reprocessing. In E. B. Foa, M. Keane, Terence, M. J. Friedman, &amp;amp; J. A. Cohen (Eds.), Effective treatments for PTSD: Practice guidelines from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (pp. 279–305). Guilford Press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16783" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T17:06:18.003" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18780" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18759" CreationDate="2013-12-21T15:58:31.603" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously the rate of wrongful convictions is hard to estimate because a conviction (at least in theory) follows a rigorous examination of the evidence by a court. So in order to classify a conviction as wrongful, researchers need evidence that's significantly stronger than the evidence that was examined by the convicting court. There aren't many opportunities to get hold of such evidence in a systematic way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;em&gt;post-conviction DNA testing&lt;/em&gt; provides such evidence. DNA testing only became reliable and cheap enough to be routinely used in criminal investigations in the 1990s, so there was an opportunity to re-examine convictions in which DNA evidence had not been used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/238816.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Post-Conviction DNA Testing and Wrongful Conviction&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Roman, Walsh, Lachman and Yahner, summarizes the results from an important study based on post-conviction DNA testing. I'll quote from the executive summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Virginia, a cohort of 634 cases of sexual assault and/or homicide dating from 1973 to 1987 was discovered to have retained physical evidence. Since most state legislation that requires evidence storage was enacted in the post-DNA era, it is likely that many states have not preserved physical evidence for cases from the pre-DNA era. Therefore, the evidence in the Virginia cases provides a unique opportunity to determine how often DNA testing can be used to identify wrongful convictions. The results can be generalized (with caveats) because the physical evidence was retained for reasons unrelated to the case outcome, and the cases were assigned to the serologist who retained the evidence in a way that did not introduce bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of the cases originally reviewed (more than 534,000), approximately 3,000 had retained physical evidence; in 2,100 of those cases a suspect was identified; and 740 cases had at least one suspect convicted of a felony. Of those, 634 cases with 715 convictions (62 cases had multiple suspects) were NIJ eligible based on crime type (homicide, sexual assault) and a conviction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DNA testing produced a determinate outcome for 230 of these cases, in which there were 250 convicted offenders. In 56 of those convictions the convicted offender was eliminated as the source of DNA evidence, and for 38 convictions that elimination supported exoneration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given the potential inaccuracy of an estimate of any rate of wrongful conviction, we provide two statistics as an alternative, both based on the actual numbers observed in this data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1) The rate at which convictions for serious person crimes and retained evidence yielded a DNA profile and the convicted offender was eliminated as the source (56/715 or 7.8 percent); and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2) The rate at which convictions for serious person crimes and retained evidence yielded a DNA profile and the convicted offender was eliminated, and that elimination appears to be probative evidence that supports exoneration (38/715 or 5.3 percent)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should read the whole paper for details and caveats. But the results seem to be in line with the figures given by the Innocence Project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14749" LastActivityDate="2013-12-21T15:58:31.603" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18768" CreationDate="2013-12-22T01:29:04.020" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;Right now, the answer is no, though in 2007 when Obama made the claim the answer was yes.  In both cases the numbers are very close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Data on the number of male African Americans in Federal, state, and local prisons and jails are available from the Bureau of Justice statistics &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/pim09st.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Data on the number of male African Americans enrolled in college are available from the US Census Bureau &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2012/tables/12s0279.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They each contain the values for a number of recent years, which I have listed below.  Up until 2006 there were more African American men in prison than enrolled in college.  Since then, the reverse has been true - primarily because the college numbers have risen significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;div class=&quot;s-table-container&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;table class=&quot;s-table&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Prisoners&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;College Students&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Prisoners per 100 Students&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;2000&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;791,600&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;635,300&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;125&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;2005&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;806,200&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;774,100&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;104&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;2006&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;836,800&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;795,400&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;105&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;2007&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;814,700&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;838,100&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;97&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;2008&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;846,000&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;911,800&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;93&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;2009&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;841,200&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;1,037,100&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;81&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;/table&gt;&#xA;&lt;/div&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data are available for white men as well, and the equivalent values are strikingly different:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;div class=&quot;s-table-container&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;table class=&quot;s-table&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Prisoners&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;College Students&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;th&gt;Prisoners per 100 Students&lt;/th&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/thead&gt;&#xA;&lt;tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;2000&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;663,700&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;4,634,600&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;14&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;2005&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;688,700&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;5,007,200&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;14&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;2006&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;718,100&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;5,046,200&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;14&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;2007&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;755,500&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;5,146,100&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;15&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;2008&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;712,500&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;5,302,900&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;13&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;2009&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;693,800&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;5,594,400&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;td&gt;12&lt;/td&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/tbody&gt;&#xA;&lt;/table&gt;&#xA;&lt;/div&gt;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2021-06-08T15:17:47.537" LastActivityDate="2021-06-08T15:17:47.537" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18788" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18789" CreationDate="2013-12-22T10:37:36.343" Score="29" ViewCount="17300" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 1996 Australia passed the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Australia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Firearms Agreement (NFA)&lt;/a&gt; which greatly restricted the option to legally own some types of guns by private citizens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The activist site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldpublicunion.org/2013-04-05-NEWS-australian-gun-ban-resulted-in-higher-crime-rates.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;World Public Union&lt;/a&gt; claims that crime is on the rise in Australia since then&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Australia banned semiautomatic rifles, shotguns and pump action shotguns the gun crime rates have skyrocketed throughout the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Murders committed with guns increased by 19%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Home invasions increased by 21%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assaults committed with guns increased by 28%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Armed robberies skyrocketed with an increase of 69%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0dNlfm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;pic&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.military.com/video/guns/small-arms/australias-gun-ban-not-working-so-well/1775480805001&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It cites no sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have crime rates been on the rise in Australia since 1996?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; - The video was hosted on the WPU site, but can no longer be found there, it can still be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.military.com/video/guns/small-arms/australias-gun-ban-not-working-so-well/1775480805001&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;military.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-02-21T15:23:42.600" Title="Did violent gun crime rates rise in Australia after the 1996 gun control laws?" Tags="|criminology|guns|australia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18788" CreationDate="2013-12-22T10:37:36.343" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;No they haven't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching Google for the picture brings up this &lt;a href=&quot;http://bill4dogcatcher.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/bogus-australian-post-gun-ban-crime-info-floating-around-the-internet-and-on-facebook/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fallowing blog post&lt;/a&gt; which address this picture particularly. It cites the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aic.gov.au/documents/0/B/6/%7B0B619F44-B18B-47B4-9B59-F87BA643CBAA%7Dfacts11.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2011 Australian Crime Report&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;alternative link&lt;/a&gt;) published by the Australian Institute of Criminology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from the post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Below is a chart from the annual Australian crime stats report for murders — the short version: murders have fallen 10% just since 2006 and that is raw numbers. Overall murders on annual basis have dropped almost 25% since the late 1990s gun ban.&#xA;  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/B707k.png&quot; alt=&quot;From page 16 of the 2011 Australian Crimes Statistics Report&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From page 16 of the 2011 Australian Crimes Statistics Report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Australia did see an increase in violent crime during the 1990s which leveled off after 2001, with exception to a slight rise from 2005-2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cV9Mn.png&quot; alt=&quot;This chart is from page 6 of the 2011 Australian Crime Statistics Report.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This chart is from page 6 of the 2011 Australian Crime Statistics Report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;page on Snopes&lt;/a&gt; addressing a slightly diffrent rumor regarding rise in crime in Australia, a supposed letter from an Australian police officer. From the Snopes page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the latter case, it should be noted that the Australia-wide percentage of &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20090221083431/http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/cfi/cfi066.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;homicides committed with firearms&lt;/a&gt; is now lower than it was before the gun buy-back program, and lower than it has been at any point during the past ten years. (In the former case, the absolute number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20090630071430/http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/tandi/tandi151.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;firearm homicides&lt;/a&gt; in Australia in 1998-99 was the lowest in the past ten years.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other claims offered here, such as the statement that &quot;While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months&quot; and &quot;There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly&quot; are even more difficult to evaluate, because they don't offer any figures or standards of measurement at all. Do they deal with absolute numbers, or percentages? Do they reflect all incidents of crime, or only those committed with firearms? How much of an increase constitutes a &quot;dramatic&quot; increase? According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abs.gov.au/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Australian Bureau of Statistics&lt;/a&gt;, the proportion of armed robberies involving firearms has actually declined over the last several years: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1995 - 27.8% &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1996 - 25.3% &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1997 - 24.1% &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1998 - 17.6% &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1999 - 15.2% &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2000 - 14.0%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="15728" LastEditDate="2018-02-19T11:10:15.483" LastActivityDate="2018-02-19T11:10:15.483" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14049" CreationDate="2013-12-22T11:51:27.653" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is not strictly an answer to your question, but the Israeli import requirement is for 7 year availability guarantee by the manufacturer - see &lt;a href=&quot;http://he.mot.gov.il/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;id=953:2010-05-31-09-34-57&amp;amp;Itemid=161&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://he.mot.gov.il/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;id=953:2010-05-31-09-34-57&amp;amp;Itemid=161&lt;/a&gt;. I would imagine many other countries have similar requirements. So in practice, unless export is not planned, such legal requirement may apply even if not Bourne of federal law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4795" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T11:51:27.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18791" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-22T15:36:46.317" Score="17" ViewCount="983" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common belief within the science fiction community that sci-fi has motivated a lot of people to pursue careers as scientists and engineers. A brief search finds many &lt;a href=&quot;http://2020science.org/2009/09/03/hooked-on-science/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;anecdotal accounts&lt;/a&gt; where people credit sci-fi for their scientific career, as well as attempts to intentionally create inspiring fiction, such as this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/aug/25/nasa-novel-mission-science-fiction&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;novel-writing collaboration involving NASA&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Authors will be paired with scientists and engineers from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center at a two-day workshop in November, where the as-yet-unnamed writers will have access to Nasa data, facilities and experts, and will learn more about space exploration. Nasa and the publisher will then bring out a series of science-based novels – the &amp;quot;Nasa inspired works of fiction&amp;quot; line – which will be based on &amp;quot;concepts pertinent to current and future agency missions and operations&amp;quot;. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pair hope the collaboration will raise awareness of science, technology, engineering and maths, and inspire more students to specialise in the subjects, as well as increasing knowledge of Nasa's own work. Science fiction, they said, is credited as a &amp;quot;significant inspiration&amp;quot; for many scientists' career choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm not aware of any scientific studies that would have attempted to verify and quantify this impact. It could be that the correlation between &amp;quot;interest in sci-fi&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;interest in science&amp;quot; isn't necessarily causal: maybe the kinds of people who are drawn to science fiction are also the kinds of people who would be drawn to science regardless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And although there are anecdotal reports of highly specific correspondences between the kind of fiction consumed when young and the interests that one has pursued as an adult - such as really liking space exploration stories when young and then pursuing a space-related career - this could also be an instance of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpshooter_fallacy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Texas sharpshooter fallacy&lt;/a&gt;. People who like a genre are likely to read widely in it (thus reading about many different aspects of science), and there are lots of people reading sci-fi, so we should expect to encounter many such &amp;quot;liked stories of X previously / now works with X&amp;quot; correspondences purely by coincidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, articles such as &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/6348107/CSI-fuels-forensic-science-degree-rise.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CSI fuels forensic science degree rise&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; would seem to suggest that fiction really does have a significant impact on people's career choices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of undergraduates studying forensic science and crime scene science has more than doubled over a five year period to 5,664, it was disclosed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third of students taking degrees said they had been inspired by TV coverage of the profession, the study said, although it insisted it was not the main reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I would still be interested in any studies that attempted to quantify the possible career-choice effects of science fiction more rigorously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5927" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T17:17:50.847" Title="Does science fiction inspire significant amounts of people to pursue STEM careers?" Tags="|psychology|sociology|media|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8530" CreationDate="2013-12-22T17:18:44.077" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;de Mesquita is no more able to predict the future reliably than anyone else&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;There are two classes of forecasters: those who don't know and those who don't know they don't know.&lt;/em&gt; J K Galbaith&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What de Mesquita claims is, strictly, not to be able to predict &lt;strong&gt;the&lt;/strong&gt; future, but to predict the outcome of certain classes of events where the outcome is determined by some form of negotiation potentially amenable to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Game Theoretic&lt;/a&gt; analysis and rational choice theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of his most famous predictions was to correctly name the successor to Ayatollah Khomeni as Iran's Supreme Cleric (the story is told &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.good.is/posts/the-new-nostradamus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His first foray into forecasting controversy took place in 1984, when he published an article in PS, the flagship journal of the American Political Science Association, predicting who would succeed Iran’s ruling Ayatollah Khomeini upon his death. He had developed a rudimentary forecasting model that was different from anything anyone had seen before in that it was not designed around one particular foreign-policy problem, but could be applied to any international conflict. &amp;quot;It was the first attempt at a general mathematical model of international conflict,&amp;quot; he says. His model predicted that upon Khomeini’s death, an ayatollah named Hojatolislam Khamenei and an obscure junior cleric named Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani would emerge to lead the country together. At the time, Rafsanjani was so little known that his name had yet to appear in the New York Times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more improbably, Khomeini had already designated his successor, and it was neither Ayatollah Khamenei nor Rafsanjani. Khomeini's stature among Iran’s ruling clerics made it inconceivable that they would defy their leader’s choice. At the APSA meeting subsequent to the article’s publication, Bueno de Mesquita was roundly denounced as a quack by the Iran experts --- a charlatan peddling voodoo mathematics. &amp;quot;They said I was an idiot, basically. They said my work was evil, offensive, that it should be suppressed,&amp;quot; he recalls. &amp;quot;It was a very difficult time in my career.&amp;quot; Five years later, when Khomeini died, lo and behold, Iran’s fractious ruling clerics chose Ayatollah Khamenei and Hashemi Rafsanjani to jointly lead the country. At the next APSA meeting, the man who had been Bueno de Mesquita’s most vocal detractor raised his hand and publicly apologized to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trouble is even this supposed great success is not a great as he or his acolytes make it seem. The surprising nature of the prediction looks a lot less clear when you read this (from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/21/world/khomeini-s-grip-appears-at-its-tightest.html?pagewanted=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NY Times article&lt;/a&gt; published two year &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; de Mesquita's predicition (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this is likely to change much while Ayatollah Khomeini lives, in the view of diplomats in Teheran. But he is 83 years old, his health is frail, and the search for a successor has begun. A committee to decide will be elected on Dec. 10, but most politicians here seem to assume that a triumverate will emerge to run the country after he dies. &lt;em&gt;It would include Hojatolislam Rafsanjani, who is regarded as the most able politician; President Khamenei&lt;/em&gt;, and Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, the Imam's designated heir, who is considered intellectually weak and insufficiently sophisticated by many politicians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently de Mesquita made the prediction that the Arab Spring would not spread to Lybia (see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://r3---sn-8pgbpohxqp5-auoe.googlevideo.com/videoplayback?upn=xyGe4hU3jjU&amp;amp;mv=m&amp;amp;sparams=id,ip,ipbits,itag,pcm2fr,ratebypass,source,upn,expire&amp;amp;source=youtube&amp;amp;ms=au&amp;amp;expire=1387754849&amp;amp;fexp=933208,922920,940309,909717,924616,932295,936912,936910,923305,936913,907231,907240,921090&amp;amp;id=6d8ef299767dfd33&amp;amp;sver=3&amp;amp;mt=1387729462&amp;amp;ratebypass=yes&amp;amp;key=yt5&amp;amp;ip=81.97.190.47&amp;amp;itag=22&amp;amp;pcm2fr=yes&amp;amp;ipbits=0&amp;amp;title=Political%20Forecaster:%20Saudia%20Arabia%20Won%27t%20Mirror%20Egypt%20or%20Tunisia.%20%5B720p%5D&amp;amp;signature=6BBF867BBFE5DD034668DDD5CFB88D3A1B8D608F.79F34F4A443F4385C36166D184CA26DD6DA2DCC1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; starting about 1:50 into the segment):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...So it is unlikely to spread to those parts of the Middle East that have substantial oil wealth such as Saudia Arabia Libya and so forth...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one didn't turn out so well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We could test his predictive accuracy by forcing him to archive all his predictions about the future from today forward and checking them in a year or two. But right now we mostly have his word for the predictive accuracy as many of his predictive successes as told in his book were not made public before the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also theoretical reasons for doubting high predictive value. Anyone who has read, for example Taleb's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Black-Swan-Impact-Improbable/dp/0141034599&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Black Swan&lt;/a&gt;, should appreciate that many major events are often influenced by incidents that are rare enough not to have happened before and therefore can't be included in existing probability estimates based on historic observations. No model based on rational choice or game theory can include such considerations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could go on and I could list more debunked predictions. But the job has already been done by others. For more detail and more examples I suggest looking &lt;a href=&quot;http://decision-making.moshe-online.com/criticism_of_bueno_de_mesquita.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (I found many useful sources there).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In short: de Mesquita's predictions are not as reliable as his supporters think and even his successes are not a surprising as he claims when examined closely.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T22:03:15.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18767" CreationDate="2013-12-22T23:36:18.953" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;You quote the claim from Caroline Glick's article which, from the context of General Dan Halutz's resignation, was written in 2007.   Her claims are similar to those in the 97-page research document &lt;em&gt;“The Million Person Gap”&lt;/em&gt; published in 2006 as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biu.ac.il/SOC/besa/MSPS65.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BESA report No 65&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read through BESA, there are essentially three criticisms of the 1997 census figures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The census numbers included 325,000 individuals who hold Palestinian residency permits, but had been living abroad for more than a year. Personally I would regard this a legitimate criticism of something purporting to be a census &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The census numbers included 210,000 Arabs living in Jerusalem.  The status of East Jerusalem is incredibly sensitive in Israeli and Palestinian politics, but to me this seems an unreasonable criticism of a Palestinian census, especially when the State of Israel does not regard most of these individuals as its citizens.  The BESA 65 authors are on stronger ground in saying that double counting needs to be avoided if adding these numbers to Israeli census numbers which count all residents in Jerusalem.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The BESA 65 report claimed to identify an unexplained 113,000 increase over Israel Central Bureau of Statistics records.  They state that voting records in 2005 confirm their analysis.  This seems to be the weakest claim: a census is designed to inform administrative estimates rather than the other way round.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, there is a debate over the 1997 Palestinian census figures, but Caroline Glick severely overstated it when she said &quot;In all, the PA added approximately 1.4 million people who did not exist to its population rolls.&quot;  Even if you add all three points stated in BESA 65, you get less than 0.7 million, and I suspect that a figure half that might be more reasonable.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of Glick's 1.4 million claim depended on other claims in BESA 65 unrelated to the 1997 census, and probably even more debatable.  A challenge and rebuttal to this was published in the Israeli magazine &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070927012451/http://www.azure.org.il/magazine/magazine.asp?id=356&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Azure&lt;/em&gt; in 2007&lt;/a&gt;. Much of the debate was political rather than statistical.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it is worth, the CIA World Factbook gives population estimates in 2013 of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/we.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2,676,740 in the West Bank&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gz.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1,763,387 in the Gaza Strip&lt;/a&gt;.  Allowing for modest natural growth, this looks between the extremes of the positions put forward in 2006/7. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2013-12-22T23:36:18.953" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18798" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-23T14:13:16.227" Score="18" ViewCount="1411" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/pot/blunderof37.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Marijuana Became Illegal&lt;/a&gt; Bud Fairy writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the same period, Du Pont was developing cellophane, nylon, and dacron from from fossil fuels. Du Pont held the patents on many synthetics and became a leader in the development of paint, rayon, synthetic rubber, plastics, chemicals, photographic film, insecticides and agricultural chemicals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Du Pont 1937 Annual Report we find a clue to what started to happen next: &amp;quot;The revenue raising power of government may be converted into an instrument for forcing acceptance of sudden new ideas of industrial and social reoganization&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok, enter William Randolph Hearst. Hearst's company was a major consumer of the cheap tree-pulp paper that had replaced hemp paper in the late 19th century. The Hearst Corporation was also a major logging company, and produced Du Pont's chemical-drenched tree pulp paper, which yellowed and fell apart after a short time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugwarrant.com/articles/why-is-marijuana-illegal/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why is marijuana illegal?&lt;/a&gt; Pete Guither writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hearst and Anslinger were then supported by Dupont chemical company and various pharmaceutical companies in the effort to outlaw cannabis. Dupont had patented nylon, and wanted hemp removed as competition. The pharmaceutical companies could neither identify nor standardize cannabis dosages, and besides, with cannabis, folks could grow their own medicine and not have to purchase it from large companies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This all set the stage for…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that an accurate description of the poltical realities of the time? Did the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 pass because if lobbying by Dupont and Hearst for their commerical interests as paper producers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T14:46:11.563" Title="Was the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 passed because of the commercial interests of Dupont?" Tags="|history|politics|recreational-drugs|marijuana|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18799" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18800" CreationDate="2013-12-23T15:48:34.907" Score="16" ViewCount="6681" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following statement is doing to the rounds across the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=%22When%20a%20dog%20sees%20its%20owner,%20its%20brain%20secretes%20the%20same%20substances%20as%20ours%20when%20we%20are%20in%20love%22&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;social web&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a dog sees its owner, its brain secretes the same substances as ours when we are in love&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is usually accompanied by an image such as this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iXmVr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the Twitter accounts &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Fascinatingpics/status/414892139085324289&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tweeting this&lt;/a&gt; has ~1M followers and the tweet in question has received 1,624 retweets and 1,985 favourites as of this moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does a dog's brain secrete the same substances when it sees its owner as humans do when in love?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2013-12-23T17:25:58.653" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T06:04:01.600" Title="Does a dog's brain secrete the same substances when it sees its owner as humans do when in love?" Tags="|neurology|dogs|emotions|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18799" CreationDate="2013-12-23T17:20:21.773" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sentence is technically true, albeit drawing any conclusion about animal feelings from it would be very questionable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our neurons secrete several substances, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotransmitter&quot;&gt;neurotransmitters&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromodulator&quot;&gt;neuromodulators&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurohormone&quot;&gt;neurohormones&lt;/a&gt; in many different situations. The same molecules are used by a dog's neurons, or by those of a fruit fly or an earthworm for that matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that the roundworm &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caenorhabditis_elegans&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;C. elegans&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is one commonly used animal model in neuroscience (although probably not as common as mice and rats) should be proof of that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One should understand the same molecule can be secreted in completely different situations, they are not specific for a certain emotion. The sentence you quote is meaningless in that there is no specific &quot;love substance&quot; secreted by the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract of: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15990719&quot;&gt;The Neurobiology of Love&lt;/a&gt; - Esch and Stefano 2005&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Love is a complex neurobiological phenomenon, relying on trust, belief, pleasure and reward activities within the brain, i.e., limbic processes. These processes critically involve oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine, and serotonergic signaling. Moreover, endorphin and endogenous morphinergic mechanisms, coupled to nitric oxide autoregulatory pathways, play a role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that all those molecules are also secreted in completely different situations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dopamine is also important for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21338876&quot;&gt;drug addiction&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21340584&quot;&gt;processing of food rewards&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21985690&quot;&gt;gambling&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Vasopressin is important for many things, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7532304&quot;&gt;regulating water excretion by the kidney&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Oxytocin has mostly been described for its effect during parturition and lactation, namely &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12763111&quot;&gt;stimulating uterine contraction&lt;/a&gt; (it is a drug commonly used when labour needs to be induced), and for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8469313&quot;&gt;milk let-down reflex&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;However, it is also implicated in a variety of other situations such as regulation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18583541/&quot;&gt;bone metabolism&lt;/a&gt; and adipogenesis, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7991761&quot;&gt;obsessive-compulsive disorder&lt;/a&gt;, regulation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9826739/&quot;&gt;cardiac contraction&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20626426&quot;&gt;many more&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar things can be said for serotonin, and endogenous opioids but really the point is not to list every possible action of every neurotransmitter in the brain (there are plenty of 1000+ pages books that do that...) but rather to understand that different neurotransmitters, released at different sites, at different concentrations, in different patterns, in different combinations and different physio-pathological situations have different effects. No need to have one neurotransmitter for each single action the brain needs to perform, when information can be coded (and is coded) by modulating the &lt;strong&gt;way&lt;/strong&gt; these molecules are secreted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in summary, one may as well say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a dog sees its owner, its brain secretes the same substances as those secreted by an addict's brain when on a cocaine trip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which sounds less cute, I guess. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T10:06:08.507" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T10:06:08.507" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18066" CreationDate="2013-12-23T19:17:41.270" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It depends what your definition of &lt;em&gt;hotspot&lt;/em&gt; is, but some places have much higher levels of radiation than others&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some rocks are much more radioactive than others and if you live in a place built on certain rocks you can easily be exposed to enough radiation to cause notable harm. More than that there have even been natural nuclear reactors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two examples to illustrate the point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is at least one known example where geological conditions created a critical mass that led to a natural nuclear reactor. The best known is Oklo in Gabon. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklo&quot;&gt;Wikipedia explains&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is strong geochemical evidence that the Oklo uranium deposit behaved as a natural nuclear fission reactor in Precambrian times: some of the mined uranium was found to have a lower concentration of uranium-235 than expected, as if it had already been in a reactor. Geologists found that it had been in a reactor before—two billion years ago. At that time the natural uranium had a concentration of about 3% 235U, and could have gone critical with natural water as neutron moderator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly an actual nuclear reactor would count as a &lt;em&gt;natural&lt;/em&gt; nuclear radioactive hotspot. Luckily it wasn't in a built up area and occurred a couple of billion years before there were any built up areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But people do live in places where the geology exposes them to potential natural radiation. As an example consider the variation in natural radon levels in england. Public Health England have an interactive map &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ukradon.org/map.php?map=englandwales&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. This clearly shows greater than 30-fold variation in the percentage of houses affected by concerning levels of radiation. People living in high risk areas such as devon and cornwall, for example, are advised to take precautions to reduce the level of indoor radon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The radon is thought to have significant health effects (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ukradon.org/article.php?key=risksradon&quot;&gt;PHE radon website&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A European study, funded by Cancer Research UK and the European Commission showed that radon in the home &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/338/bmj.a3110&quot;&gt;increases the risk of lung cancer&lt;/a&gt;. An independent report, Radon and Public Health estimated that radon is a cause in over 1,100 lung cancer deaths each year in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So, in short, there are several examples of natural hotspots of radiation.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2013-12-23T19:17:41.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18803" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18806" CreationDate="2013-12-23T19:53:10.610" Score="9" ViewCount="6947" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following map has been around on the internet for a while and claims that Britain has invaded almost every country in the world (&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Amazing_Maps/status/415178558395650048/photo/1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;):&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sSXgj.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I received it most recently in a tweet from @Amazing_Maps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have reason to doubt it, or at least the definition of invasion. In several of the European examples Britain was a liberating power not staging a takeover (as much of the comment implies). Lots of European countries were &quot;invaded&quot; by coalitions involving Britain during the Napoleonic wars and the two world wars (as were countries on other continents). And when was the last time we invaded Finland?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it accurate on a strict definition of &lt;em&gt;invasion&lt;/em&gt; (colonial takeovers, for example) or even on any looser definition? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T02:49:07.763" Title="Has Britain invaded most countries in the world?" Tags="|history|war|geography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18805" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18808" CreationDate="2013-12-23T21:04:59.140" Score="11" ViewCount="4128" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is somewhat related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18090/do-modern-toothbrush-features-remove-more-plaque-than-regular-toothbrushes&quot;&gt;Do modern toothbrush features remove more plaque than regular toothbrushes?&lt;/a&gt; except that I'm concerned about modern &lt;strong&gt;electric&lt;/strong&gt; tooth brushes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advertising from a known firm states that &quot;removes 100% more plaque than standard ones&quot; ... forgive the misleading &quot;100% more&quot; ... don't know what can really mean  ... the question simply is &quot;do electric tooth brushes&quot; some how are more efficient then manual brushing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW my childrens dentist warn me against giving them electric tooth brushes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16809" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T07:50:11.580" Title="Are electric toothbrushes better than standard ones?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18803" CreationDate="2013-12-23T21:11:30.453" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is based on (Laycock 2012). It clarifies the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of 193 countries that are currently UN member states, we've invaded &lt;strong&gt;or fought conflicts&lt;/strong&gt; in the territory of 171.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Telegraph's coverage of this book clarifies further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only a comparatively small proportion of the total in Mr Laycock's list of invaded states actually formed an official part of the empire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remainder have been included because the British were found to have &lt;strong&gt;achieved some sort of military presence&lt;/strong&gt; in the territory – however transitory – either through force, the threat of force, negotiation or payment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incursions by British pirates, privateers or armed explorers have also been included, provided they were operating with the approval of their government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, many countries which once formed part of the Spanish empire and seem to have little historical connection with the UK, such as Costa Rica, Ecuador and El Salvador, make the list because of the repeated raids they suffered from state-sanctioned British sailors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the introduction in (Laycock 2012), he states what he included and excluded in his count of &amp;quot;invasions&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;British forces set foot on soil - included&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Naval actions in other countries' waters - included&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Air raids - not included&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Negotiated/paid presence - included&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Incursions in support of the locals (D-Day, for example) - included&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;British soldiers in foreign armies - not included&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pirates - included if they had official approval&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, the author is using a different definition of &amp;quot;invade&amp;quot; than commonly accepted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To enter in a hostile manner, or with armed force; to make an inroad or hostile incursion into. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/98875&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;OED&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Samples&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a sampling of the types of activities that (Laycock 2012) counts, I'll give summaries of the first few countries alphabetically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Afghanistan - An 1838 attempt at regime change by a 21,000 person British army, among other events.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Albania - Royal Navy captured a French corvette on the Albanian coast in 1809. British troops landed in Albania in 1915 to help the Serbian army evacuate. In 1918, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Durazzo_(1918)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Second Battle of Durazzo&lt;/a&gt;. Others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Algeria - The British navy battled the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_pirates&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Barbary Corsairs&lt;/a&gt;, based in Algeria, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbary_pirates#17th_century&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in 1682&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Algiers_(1816)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Britain attacked Algeria in 1816&lt;/a&gt;, attempting to end the slave trade. In 1942, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Torch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Operation Torch&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Andorra - One of the 22 countries that the author did not count as invaded. He noted that some British airmen used Andorra as an escape route from France.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Angola - &amp;quot;650 British troops on UN duty set foot in Angola in 1995 as part of Operation Chantress to help protect a ceasefire. A friendly invasion.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;... and so on. I don't think I can reproduce much more of the book without implicating copyright.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Summary: it depends on definition&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether one considers this claim true depends on whether one accepts the loose definition of &amp;quot;invade&amp;quot; used by the book's title and headline writers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Addressing the specific doubts in the question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;And when was the last time we invaded Finland?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuation_War&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Continuation War&lt;/a&gt;, the United Kingdom &amp;quot;declared war on Finland on 6 December 1941&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stuart Laycock. &lt;em&gt;All the Countries We've Ever Invaded: And the Few We Never Got Round To&lt;/em&gt;. History Press Limited, 2012&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jasper Copping. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9653497/British-have-invaded-nine-out-of-ten-countries-so-look-out-Luxembourg.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;British have invaded nine out of ten countries - so look out Luxembourg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. The Telegraph. November 4, 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T02:49:07.763" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18805" CreationDate="2013-12-23T22:23:17.123" Score="11" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Systematic reviews&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most comprehensive evidence on this question is the Cochrane systematic review (Robinson &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 2005). The results are summarized by (Forrest and Miller 2004) as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Searches identified 354 trials, of which 29 met inclusion criteria. These trials involved 2.547 participants who provided data for meta-analysis. Results indicated that for both plaque and gingivitis, all types of power toothbrushes worked as well as manual toothbrushes, however only the rotating oscillating toothbrush consistently provided a statistically significant though modest benefit over manual toothbrushes in reducing plaque (7%) and gingivitis (17%). None of the battery powered toothbrush studies met the inclusion criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A later review comparing different &lt;em&gt;types&lt;/em&gt; of powered brushes by (Deacon &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 2010) concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This review included data from 17 trials with 1369 participants. Brushes with a rotation oscillation action reduced plaque and gingivitis&#xA;  more than those with a side to side action in the short term. However, the difference was small and its clinical importance unclear.&#xA;  Due to the low numbers of trials using other types of powered brushes, no other deﬁnitive conclusions can be drawn regarding the&#xA;  superiority of one type of powered toothbrush over another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/cochrane-reviews&quot;&gt;Cochrane systematic reviews&lt;/a&gt; are better evidence than simple meta-analyses. They follow a strict protocol that required pre-establishing and registering eligibility criteria, outcomes, interventions, and objectives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deacon, Scott A., Anne‐Marie Glenny, Chris Deery, Peter G. Robinson, Mike Heanue, A. Damien Walmsley, and William C. Shaw. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.update-software.com/bcp/wileypdf/en/cd004971.pdf&quot;&gt;Different powered toothbrushes for plaque control and gingival health&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Cochrane Database Syst Rev 18 (2010).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forrest, J. L., and S. A. Miller. &quot;Manual versus powered toothbrushes: a summary of the Cochrane Oral Health Group's Systematic Review. Part II.&quot; Journal of dental hygiene: JDH/American Dental Hygienists' Association 78, no. 2 (2004): 349.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robinson, P. G., S. A. Deacon, C. Deery, M. Heanue, A. D. Walmsley, H. V. Worthington, A. M. Glenny, and W. C. Shaw. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://drdembros.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Manual_versus_powered_toothbrushing.pdf&quot;&gt;Manual versus powered toothbrushing for oral health&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2 (2005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T01:32:37.303" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T01:32:37.303" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18809" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-23T23:36:48.883" Score="2" ViewCount="139" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dragon NaturallySpeaking's editor Nuance &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuance.com/for-business/by-product/dragon/dragon-for-the-pc/dragon-professional/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that Dragon 12 delivers up to a 20% improvement in out-of-box accuracy compared to Dragon 11. Nuance made similar claims in the past with previous versions. Are there any rigorous studies to verify this commercial claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T00:51:18.880" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T00:51:18.880" Title="Dragon NaturallySpeaking's accuracy improvement over versions" Tags="|computers|software|voice|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7611" CreationDate="2013-12-23T23:45:58.210" Score="-2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many psychics claim to be able to see auras. Many healing methods like reiki are based on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think Reiki is based on the concept of auras. As far as I know, orthodox Reiki doesn't use the term &quot;aura&quot;. I searched a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aetw.org/pdf/Usui_Memorial.zip&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;few&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aetw.org/pdf/Reiki_the_Five_Principles_Vol_3.zip&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reiki&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aetw.org/pdf/The_Original_Usui_Reiki_Ryoho.zip&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ebooks&lt;/a&gt; I found online and they don't include the term. Reiki is a framework created by a Japanese Buddhist named Mikao Usui in 1922. &#xA;Japanese takes aura as a loan word with indicates that Japanese does not have a native equivalent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Psychics claim that if you look at someone with soft eyes, you can see a hazy field around them, white at first, which with practice becomes colourful and more detailed. They claim this is the aura.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would judge that claim as true. In principle, you can get people in a state where they see strange things. Drugs like LSD help, but you can access states where people are suggestible for visual hallucinations also without drugs. One of the most detailed well-documented descriptions of hallucinations I have come across are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/Tulpas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tulpas&lt;/a&gt; where people with mental training see people who are just as detailed as real people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we move back to the soft eye thing, that normally gets you a counter color. If you look at a red circle, that circle will have a green glow around it. &lt;a href=&quot;http://monoskop.org/images/6/6f/Wade_Nicholas_J_Brozek_Josef_Purkinjes_Vision_The_Dawning_of_Neuroscience.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Purkinjes Vision - The Dawning of Neuroscience&lt;/a&gt; describes a bunch of related effected in the chapter about halos and afterimages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I understand right, aura training begins by convincing the person that auras are real by showing them some of those well-documented Neuroscience halo effects. Together with a highly meditative state and social pressure that's enough to get a bunch of the people who try to hallucinate more complex images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That leaves the question of how the colors of the people come about. During the time the people are in a suggestible state they are going to be told what colors they are supposed to see in what circumstances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Different brains will draw on different information to process that information into an aura color that's consistent with suggestions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An aura is claimed to be a physical field: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The strongest energy source of the human body is the human heart. You can measure it via &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrocardiography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;EKG&lt;/a&gt;. Depending on the strength of your measurement equipment you can measure it from a bit of distance. I think it's unlikely that humans can directly perceive the EKG of another person they don't touch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are however indirect way to access that information such a slight pupil dilations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that point it's useful to remind of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microexpression&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ekman's micro expressions&lt;/a&gt; that can last on the order of 1/25 to 1/15 of a second. There are all sorts of information that we perceive on a visual level and that get processed by most people on a unconscious level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humans can't smell as well as dogs who can be trained to detect some cancers via smell but there a lot of information that's available through human senses that isn't organised in a form where it's useful and which potentially can be put in a form through training. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could certainly by useful to pull that kind of information together into a color spectrum to interact with it better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldmemorychampionships.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;memory championships&lt;/a&gt; get won by people who rearrange information through mnemonics in a way that helps them to achieve extraordinary results. As far as I understand current record holder usually use face memory of human faces and spatial memory to encode information about playing cards. Recombining human senses, can certainly achieve useful effects but you won't know what individual people who try it can do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humans also radiate heat waves via infrared. That effect could be strong enough to be perceived by other humans. Heat is interesting because outer body extremities with low blood flow are colder than those with high blood flow. It plausible that a part of the body that doesn't get enough blood flow is physically ill and therefore has a &quot;weak aura&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that a lot of energy healers do work with relaxation and tensions can restrict blood flow, a bunch of what those people react to can very well be heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2013-12-24T14:39:34.667" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T14:39:34.667" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18815" CreationDate="2013-12-24T03:26:14.670" Score="16" ViewCount="1335" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this claim at &lt;a href=&quot;http://torrentfreak.com/u-s-army-base-runs-unlicensed-windows-7-computers-131222/&quot;&gt;TorrentFreak&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, a signal soldier serving in Qatar informs TorrentFreak that this incident may not be as unique as it sounds. According to the soldier, who we will name Mark, the soldiers’ education center at his base has 18 computers which all run unlicensed copies of Windows 7.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the US base in Qatar have unlicensed versions of Windows 7 running on their computers? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T19:52:40.880" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T19:52:40.880" Title="Does the US army use unlicensed copies of Windows 7?" Tags="|united-states|computers|copyright|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18814" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-24T12:39:19.740" Score="22" ViewCount="1364" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/12/billion-dollar-climate-denial-network-exposed/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article in arstechnica&lt;/a&gt; reports that there is a large flow of funding from some conservative groups to a network of climate denying think tanks and lobbyists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article Reports how work by Robert Brulle (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;shows how a network of 91 think tanks and industry groups are &lt;em&gt;primarily responsible for conservative opposition to climate policy&lt;/em&gt;. Almost 80 percent of these groups are registered as charitable organizations for tax purposes and collectively received more than seven billion dollars between 2003 and 2010...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He added: &amp;quot;They have their profits and they hire people to write books that say climate change is not real. They hire people to go on TV and say climate change is not real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The implication of the research is that the majority of the opposition to both the science of climate change and government policies intended to mitigate it is just paid advocacy and not genuine skepticism. Is this a fair summary of the reality of skepticism about climate change?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical because some of the more interesting climate skeptics don't seem to be part of this network despite the claim that it is &amp;quot;primarily responsible&amp;quot; for opposition to climate policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-02-23T01:11:15.207" Title="Is a billion dollar lobbying campaign primarily responsible for opposition to climate policy?" Tags="|united-states|politics|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18812" CreationDate="2013-12-24T13:08:08.317" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The claim is &lt;em&gt;false&lt;/em&gt;.  The soldier does not have evidence of unlicensed software.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims are based entirely on photographs and witness statements from an anonymous source.  There are a number of problems with the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The photos show computers which have not been &lt;em&gt;activated&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/piracy/mpa.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This is not the same thing as &lt;em&gt;unlicensed&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The US Army negotiates to license software directly with suppliers, both &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Microsoft-Windows-8-U.S.-Government,20258.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;deliberately&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/2067900/us-army-settles-unlicensed-software-claim-for-50-million.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;after screwing up&lt;/a&gt;.  The activation state is therefore even less evidence of unlicensed software.  Remember, the license is an agreement between the US Army and the supplier, only they know what it says, and neither are likely to share.  The only evidence we might see would be a court case.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The photos clearly show Dell OEM product keys running on several identical Dell Optiplex computers.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2012/11/04/dell-to-sell-army-10m-in-computers.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The US Army spends $millions with Dell&lt;/a&gt;.  Nothing in the photos suggests they came from a source who might be distributing unlicensed copies of Windows.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the most likely explanation is simply that the US Army's secure network and the base's remote location have prevented the activation from working correctly over the internet.  It's worth noting that the linked article says this, though not in as many words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the information we received it is unclear why the computers are not licensed. Perhaps the legitimate keys were lost, perhaps there are no valid keys available, or maybe the Army has fallen victim to the consumer unfriendliness of DRM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we do know is that the Department of Defense has a long-standing relationship with Microsoft. Earlier this year both parties signed a $617 million licensing deal to bring Windows 8 to the Army, Air Force, and Defense Information Systems Agency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, there is no evidence to support this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-24T13:08:08.317" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18814" CreationDate="2013-12-24T23:08:05.170" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best we can do is analyze the methodology of the referenced work (Brulle 2013).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Identifying relevant organizations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They identified 118 Climate Change Counter Movement (CCCM) organizations by considering all organizations identified as such in prior studies and then selecting those that had a &lt;em&gt;substantial focus&lt;/em&gt; on climate change. The coding form is at S-2 in the supplementary material. The 118 organizations identified as belonging to the CCCM are at S-3 in the supplementary material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;60 Plus&#xA;Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow&#xA;International Climate And Environmental Change At Pjt (I)&#xA;Advancement Of Sound Science Center Inc. The)&#xA;Competitive Enterprise Institute&#xA;International Climate Science Coalition&#xA;Alliance For Climate Strategies (ACS)&#xA;Congress Of Racial Equality&#xA;International Policy Network&#xA;American Coal Foundation&#xA;Consumer Alert/National Consumer Coalition&#xA;James Madison Institute&#xA;American Coalition For Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE)&#xA;Consumer Energy Alliance&#xA;John Locke Foundation&#xA;American Conservative Union Foundation&#xA;Cooler Heads Coalition&#xA;Landmark Legal Foundation&#xA;American Council For Capital Formation&#xA;Cornwall Alliance For The Stewardship Of Creation&#xA;Manhattan Institute For Policy Research&#xA;American Council For Capital Formation Center For Policy Research&#xA;Edison Electric Institute&#xA;Manhattan Libertarian Party&#xA;American Energy Alliance/Institute For Energy Research&#xA;Energy Citizens&#xA;Media Research Center&#xA;American Energy Freedom Center&#xA;Energy Makes America Great&#xA;Mercatus Center, George Mason University&#xA;American Enterprise Institute For Public Policy Research&#xA;Environmental Literacy Council&#xA;Mountain States Legal Foundation&#xA;American Farm Bureau&#xA;Federation For American Coal, Energy And Security&#xA;National Association Of Manufacturers&#xA;American Friends Of The Institute Of Economic Affairs&#xA;Free Enterprise Action Institute/Free Enterprise Education Institute&#xA;National Center For Policy Analysis&#xA;American Gas Association&#xA;Freedom Action&#xA;National Center For Public Policy Research&#xA;American Legislative Exchange Council&#xA;Freedom Works&#xA;National Mining Association&#xA;American Natural Gas Alliance&#xA;Freedom Works Foundation&#xA;National Petrochemical And Refiners Association&#xA;American Petroleum Institute&#xA;Friends Of Coal&#xA;National Petroleum Council&#xA;American Policy Center&#xA;Frontiers Of Freedom Institute And Foundation&#xA;National Rural Electric Cooperative Association&#xA;American Tradition Institute&#xA;George C. Marshall Institute&#xA;National Taxpayers Union&#xA;Americans For Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC)&#xA;Global Climate Coalition&#xA;National Taxpayers Union Foundation&#xA;Americans For Prosperity/Americans For Prosperity Foundation&#xA;Global Climate Information Project&#xA;Oklahoma Council Of Public Affairs&#xA;Annapolis Center For Science-Based Public Policy&#xA;Global Warming Initiative&#xA;Oregon Institute Of Science And Medicine&#xA;Association Of Global Automobile Manufacturers&#xA;Greening Earth Society&#xA;Pacific Research Institute For Public Policy&#xA;Atlas Economic Research Foundation&#xA;Heartland Institute&#xA;Plants Need Co2&#xA;Capital Research Center/Greenwatch&#xA;Heritage Foundation&#xA;Reason Foundation/Reason Public Policy Institute&#xA;Cascade Policy Institute&#xA;Hoover Institution&#xA;Responsible Resources&#xA;Cato Institute&#xA;Hudson Institute&#xA;Science And Environment Policy Project&#xA;Center For The Defense Of Free Enterprise&#xA;Ice Age Now&#xA;Science And Public Policy Institute&#xA;Center For The Study Of Carbon Dioxide And Global Change/CO2 Si&#xA;Independence Institute&#xA;Southeastern Legal Foundation&#xA;Chamber Of Commerce Of The United States Of America&#xA;Independent Institute&#xA;Sovereignty International&#xA;Citizen's Coalition On Global Climate Policy&#xA;Independent Petroleum Association Of America&#xA;State Policy Network&#xA;Citizens For Affordable Energy&#xA;Independent Women's Forum&#xA;Surface Stations. Org&#xA;Climate Audit&#xA;Industrial Energy Consumers Of America&#xA;Texas Public Policy Foundation&#xA;Climate Science Coalition Of America&#xA;Information Council On The Environment&#xA;Thomas Jefferson Institute For Public Policy&#xA;Climate Strategies Watch&#xA;Institute For Biospheric Research&#xA;TS August/The Second Of August&#xA;CO2 Is Green&#xA;Institute For Energy Research&#xA;Washington Policy Center&#xA;Coalition For American Jobs&#xA;Institute For Liberty&#xA;Western Fuels Association&#xA;Coalition For Vehicle Choice&#xA;Institute For The Study Of Earth And Man&#xA;World Climate Report&#xA;Coalition To Preserve American Security And Sovereignty&#xA;Intermountain Rural Electric Association&#xA;World Coal Association&#xA;Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this is a methodological weak point (or at least a lacking sufficient description in the paper and supplementary material). He doesn't describe how the &lt;em&gt;initial&lt;/em&gt; list was collected. He doesn't tell us if multiple coders were used and how conflicts between them were resolved. Confidence in this study would be strengthened by sharing the initial list of organizations, clarifying the coding procedure, and sharing the coding sheets for all the organizations considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Analyzing the income of the CCCM organizations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After identifying organizations to be considered part of the CCCM, Brulle then assesses how each institution is maintained. He argues that &quot;&lt;em&gt;One of the major influences on the institutional capacity of movement organizations is the level of financial resources. An examination of both the levels and sources of financial resources available to an organization provides a means to assess its institutional capacity, and thus its potential influence within the CCCM.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study does not attempt to identify how much funding was spent on advocacy relating to climate change. It simply identifies: how are the organizations that are part of the CCCM funded? Brulle says: &quot;Since the majority of the organizations are multiple focus organizations, not all of this income was devoted to climate change activities.&quot; Again, this study &lt;em&gt;is only designed&lt;/em&gt; to answer the question: how are the organizations identified as part of the CCCM funded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brulle analyzed the income sources for these organizations by looking at &quot;IRS data were extracted from both the National Center for Charitable Statistics and the Foundation Center for the period 2003 to 2010&quot;. However, IRS data was only available for 91 of the 118 identified organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final sample that he worked with were the 91 organizations for which IRS data was available. (The other 27 organizations had not filed for non-profit status and thus were not required to submit funding information.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those 91 organizations, they only counted funding foundations that gave $500,000 or more over the 2003-2010 period, or $200,000 or more in any one year. (Limiting the dataset to only large funders resulting in 10% of peripheral funding being uncounted.) They consolidated foundations that operated under the same controlling boards, resulting in the 140 foundations. Those 140 separate funding foundations made &quot;5,299 grants totaling $558 million&quot;. The grants were given to 69 of the 91 CCCMs that had IRS data. The remaining 22 CCCMs had no record of &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; grants being received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Total income&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These 91 organizations received 7,225,218,809 of income over the 2003-2010 study period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Where does the income come from?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For trade associations, the single largest source of income is membership dues, providing nearly half of their income, and foundation grants are not relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Charitable organizations (501 (c) 3) receive 25% of their income from foundation grants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advocacy organizations (501 (c) 4) receive 14% of their income from foundation grants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a large amount of undisclosed contributions. Some organizations receive less than 30% of income as undisclosed contributions. However, 36% of the 501 (c) 3/4 CCCM organizations receive more than 90% of income as undisclosed contributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How much do large funders fund?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For 501 (c) 3 and 501 (c) 4 organizations, the range is nearly 0 to as high as 74% of income that comes in the form of grants from funding foundations. The mean is 24.8%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Who's giving the money?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fVyyC.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bunch of it flows through Donors Trust and Donors Capital. These are donor directed funds, through which individual donors can give and direct their money to specific organizations, while maintaining anonymity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Who's getting the money?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DxcRA.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conservative think tanks were the largest recipients of foundation support. These think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute, are among the best known conservative think tanks in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusions and other observations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author concludes that since the major funding foundations are &quot;well-known and prominent conservative funders&quot;, and since the major receiving organizations are &quot;core actors in the larger conservative movement&quot;, that the &quot;CCCM is a subsidiary movement of the larger conservative movement&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also notes that Koch and ExxonMobil foundations have stopped publicly funding CCCM organizations. This decreasing in public funding coincides with an increase in funding via Donors Trust and Donors Capital. The author speculates that this is simply a shifting in funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Analyzing the claims&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;shows how a network of 91 think tanks and industry groups are primarily responsible for conservative opposition to climate policy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would be a plausible conclusion. However, because 27 of the CCCM organizations initially identified had no funding information available, it's &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; that &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; are actually more responsible for the conservative opposition to climate policy, or that the large amounts of undisclosed donors are more responsible. The study didn't address that or primary responsibility at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Almost 80 percent of these groups are registered as charitable organizations for tax purposes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Actually, 76%. (69/91).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;and collectively received more than seven billion dollars between 2003 and 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. $7,225,218,809.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The implication of the research is that the majority of the opposition to both the science of climate change and government policies intended to mitigate it is just paid advocacy and not genuine skepticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, that is not the implication. The study demonstrated that &lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt; organizations receive a lot (0-74%, with a mean of 24.8%) from primarily conservative funding foundations, it did not conclude that this paid advocacy is not genuine skepticism. It did observe that due to the financial incentives, funding foundations can select from among the applicant organizations, and choose those that will advocate in line with their goals. That does not preclude the applicant organizations from legitimately believing in what they are advocating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion of this study is that conservative funding organizations play a &quot;&lt;em&gt;major role&lt;/em&gt;&quot; in the CCCM. The study did not conclude that it is &quot;primarily responsible&quot;, and did not conclude that the arguments being made are not &quot;genuine skepticism&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical because some of the more interesting climate skeptics don't seem to be part of this network despite the claim that it is &quot;primarily responsible&quot; for opposition to climate policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That may certainly be the case. They didn't filter based on interesting-ness. They excluded 27 of the 118 CCCM groups from this study because they didn't have any public funding information available. Perhaps the ones that you find interesting are among those 27.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Genuine skepticism&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judging how genuine an organization's skepticism is should be ignorant of its funding. In my opinion, we &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; make judgements about an organization's level of skepticism, but that judgement should be based on its treatment of the evidence. Does it cherry-pick? Does it update its advocacy in light of new evidence? Does it overstate the conclusions of poorly conducted studies and understate or ignore the conclusions of more rigorous studies? Are they simply being contrarian rather than being skeptical? Are they letting the science lead them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; we can make a judgement about an organization's general level of skepticism, that shouldn't affect our analysis of any one of their positions or arguments in particular. Each should stand or fall by its own merits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brulle, Robert J. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drexel.edu/~/media/Files/now/pdfs/Institutionalizing%20Delay%20-%20Climatic%20Change.ashx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of US climate change counter-movement organizations&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Climatic Change (2013): 1-14. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Institutionalizing%20Delay%20Supplemental%20Material.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Supplemental material&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2019-02-22T22:07:45.767" LastActivityDate="2019-02-22T22:07:45.767" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18824" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18829" CreationDate="2013-12-25T13:29:16.133" Score="10" ViewCount="9022" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a widespread belief that says that the reason for French having so many silent letters is that historically the authors were paid by the letter, so they were tempted to write longer words. This is likely false for a number of reasons, but I can't find any resources online that debunk or even discuss this idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;В книге Жанны Агалаковой «Все, что я знаю о Париже» рассказывается красивая и забавная история, будто в Средние века писарям платили за каждую букву, вот они и старались растянуть слова до предела&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://francoman.blogspot.co.il/2012/01/blog-post.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adapted Google translation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jeanne Agalakova's book &amp;quot;Everything I know about Paris&amp;quot; tells a beautiful and funny story, though in the Middle Ages scribes paid for each letter, so they tried to stretch each word to the limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any websites that I can cite as reference about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8889" LastEditorDisplayName="user36020" LastEditDate="2020-12-25T04:07:05.447" LastActivityDate="2020-12-25T04:07:05.447" Title="Was French spelling artificially altered for longer words?" Tags="|language|france|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18824" CreationDate="2013-12-25T17:06:16.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have only heard this claim about &lt;em&gt;English&lt;/em&gt; spellings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-language_spelling_reform#History&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia:English-language spelling reform - History&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, type-setters were paid by the line and were fond of making words longer...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://englishspellingproblems.co.uk/html/history.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;English Spelling Problems&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were also usually paid by the line and often inserted additional letters into words to earn more money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the opposite claim about &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_orthography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;French spellings&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;French spelling, however, &amp;quot;is largely based on the pronunciation of Old French c. 1100–1200 CE and has stayed more or less the same since then, despite enormous changes to the pronunciation of the language in the intervening years.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is unreferenced, and another Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_French_orthography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reforms of French orthography&lt;/a&gt; says that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spelling and punctuation before the 16th century was highly erratic, but the introduction of printing in 1470 provoked the need for uniformity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third (1740) and fourth (1762) editions of the Académie dictionary were very progressive ones, changing the spelling of about half the words altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that at least one of these accounts is accurate, either spelling has been relatively fixed since 1100-1200 CE (before printing), or spelling changes have been prescribed by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Académie française&lt;/a&gt; (not printers). It's also possible that both are true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-25T17:06:16.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18824" CreationDate="2013-12-25T20:43:08.917" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;French Wikipedia has some things to say about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographe_fran%C3%A7aise&quot;&gt;Orthographe française&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;En 1718, avec sa seconde édition, le Dictionnaire introduit de façon systématique les lettres j et v en remplacement des lettres muettes qui permettaient jusqu'alors de distinguer les mots homonymes écrits respectivement avec les lettres i et u (ainsi « apuril » devient « avril »). Par ailleurs, certaines lettres étymologiques sont supprimées, de même que certains « s » muets internes... Dans le même temps, d'autres lettres muettes font leur apparition, souvent pour rappeler l'étymologie latine (le g de doigt en référence à digitus) des mots, parfois pour d'autres raisons (le h introduit dans huile ou le l ajouté à ennuyeulx n'ont rien d'étymologique 5). En 1740, avec la troisième édition, un tiers des mots change d’orthographe et les accents apparaissent (par exemple, « throne, escrire, fiebvre » deviennent « trône, écrire, fièvre, etc. »). En 1836, pour la sixième édition du Dictionnaire de l'Académie impose que les terminaisons en « ois » qui se prononcent « è » s’écrivent désormais avec « ais » (« français », « j’étais »…).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Au début du xixe siècle, l'orthographe se fixe et, contrairement aux autres pays romans, c'est le courant étymologiste qui prévaut et non pas phonétique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the summary of relatively recent changes is,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They have been dropping (not adding) silent letters: for example &quot;apuril&quot; -&gt; &quot;avril&quot;, and dropping silent &quot;s&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spelling is dictated by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acad%C3%A9mie_fran%C3%A7aise&quot;&gt;French Academy&lt;/a&gt;, not by &quot;authors&quot; or &quot;printers&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some of the silent letters are there to indicate the etymology (not pronunciation) of the word: for example the &quot;g&quot; in &quot;doigt&quot; to remind you of the latin &quot;digitus&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding pre-18th century spelling, earlier in the same Wikipedia article it says that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;11th century spelling had few silent letters: the terminal consonants were pronounced (which explains why those terminal consonants existed in the words)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Starting in the 13th century spelling became more &quot;ideographic&quot; and less &quot;phonetic&quot;: for example the (initially) silent &quot;b&quot; in the word &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/subtil&quot;&gt;subtil&lt;/a&gt;&quot; -- spelled &quot;soutil&quot; or &quot;sutil&quot; in old french, reconstructed with a &quot;b&quot; to match the latin word &quot;subtilis&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one reference to the effect alleged in the OP (i.e. of spelling being influenced by authors) is the following paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Au début du xvie siècle, l'orthographe commence à avoir un effet sur la prononciation. Des consonnes initialement muettes, introduites en suivant l'étymologie, commencent à être prononcées (le b de subtil par exemple). Sous l'impulsion d'imprimeurs et d'écrivains (notamment Ronsard), apparaît une orthographe réformée, plus proche de la prononciation : introduction des accents, suppression des lettres « grecques » (ph, th, rh, y), du y notant [i], du ez notant [e], du x final muet, remplacement de en prononcé [ɑ̃] par an. Mais le Dictionnaire francoislatin (1549) de Robert Estienne va marquer le retour à une orthographe ancienne (y notant [i], es notant [e] ou [ɛ], rétablissement des lettres grecques, suppression de la plupart des accents)&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paragraph talks about authors simplifying spelling (e.g. using one consonant instead of two).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the question is about modern-day French. French spelling has changed a lot (e.g. it says above that a third of all words are changed in 1740), all under the direction of the French Academy. So I think it's fair to conclude that the spelling of modern French is entirely due to the French Academy and not to writers or printers being paid by the letter. The reason why there many silent vowels is to remind you of the latin word: assuming that you know latin, the latinised spelling makes it easier to recognize the meaning of written french.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reference cited in the OP explains the reason for many final silent &quot;e&quot;: they mark feminine nouns, which are inherited from corresponding Latin feminine nouns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The example word shown in the illustration/image in the reference cited in the OP is of the word &quot;beaucoup&quot;, whose etymology is given here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/beaucoup&quot;&gt;http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/beaucoup&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case the final silent &quot;p&quot; is to show that it derives from the same word as &quot;couper&quot; meaning &quot;to cut&quot;; one of the reasons for silent letters is to distinguish homonyms: French already has another word &quot;cou&quot; which means &quot;neck&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bbouillon.free.fr/univ/hl/Fichiers/Cours/orthog.htm&quot;&gt;http://bbouillon.free.fr/univ/hl/Fichiers/Cours/orthog.htm&lt;/a&gt; gives an example of words which are homonyms in French, which are spelled differently: cinq, saint, sain, sein, seing, ceint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordonnance_de_Villers-Cotter%C3%AAts&quot;&gt;Ordonnance de Villers-Cotterêts&lt;/a&gt; in 1539 replaced Latin with 'the mother tongue' (i.e. French) as the language used in law: that was another reason why they wanted the spelling of French words to be regularized (across the country) and unambiguous (across homonyms), and therefore started to latinize spellings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the subject of Middle Ages scribes, ibid says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Le but des scribes au Moyen Âge n'est pas de faire des effets, mais de transcrire ce qui était dit, de restituer une prononciation ; aux XIIème - XIIIème siècles encore, l'écriture est une sorte d'aide-mémoire, plus ou moins instable, à usage individuel ou restreint, dans une civilisation essentiellement orale. C'est à l'époque une orthographe pure, mais pauvre. [dixit Nina Catach, Langue Française n° 20] Une orthographe que l'on peut considérer comme phonologique, mais avec des insuffisances et des contradictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is consistent with the Wikipedia article: Old French was pronounced differently and 'extra' letters were sometimes added because that is how the words used to be pronounced, and spelling was a transcription of pronunciation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't mention any 'baser' motives until the following in 1694,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Le mouvement de simplification lancé par les imprimeurs au XVIème&#xA;  siècle (appuyés par des auteurs comme Ronsard) échoue en grande partie&#xA;  ; l'une des raisons principales est que les gens trop en avance ont&#xA;  été soupçonnés de protestantisme, et ont dû s'expatrier (ex : en&#xA;  Hollande) ; ne sont donc restés que ceux qui étaient au service de la&#xA;  monarchie, et qui ont perpétué la tradition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Le principe au XVIIème siècle est qu'on ne doit pas changer les&#xA;  habitudes établies. A la fin du siècle, l'académicien Mézeray écrit&#xA;  encore, dans un projet pour le Dictionnaire de l'Académie de 1694 :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;La Compagnie declare qu'elle desire suiure l'ancienne orthographe qui&#xA;    distingue les gents de lettres davec les ignorants et les simples&#xA;    femmes, et qu'il faut la maintenir par tout, hormis dans les mots ou&#xA;    un long et constant usage en aura introduit une contraire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cependant, la &quot; nouvelle orthographe &quot; (simplifiée, celle des&#xA;  imprimeurs) continuait à vivre, en province, et dans certains milieux,&#xA;  comme le montre le dictionnaire de Richelet en 1680, qui simplifie des&#xA;  consonnes doubles, supprime des lettres qui avaient été rajoutées (y&#xA;  compris des lettres grecques), compensant ce manque par l'emploi de&#xA;  l'accent aigu, et partiellement de l'accent grave, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The printers wanted to simplify spelling, but were opposed by conservative forces. Academicians wanted to keep the old orthography because of (IMO) snobbery. Nevertheless the printers' new orthography eventually prevailed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T15:17:57.400" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T15:17:57.400" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18831" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18832" CreationDate="2013-12-26T14:19:19.783" Score="18" ViewCount="1826" Body="&lt;p&gt;My social media stream lately has been awash with claims about items supposedly discovered at a site discovered by Turkish army captain Llhan Durupınar in 1959 that is believed by some to be the final resting site of Noah's Ark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a resident in Turkey and interested in Biblical sites, I have been aware of the site for some time but the last few months seem to have seen a piqued public interest in the site fueled (as far as I can tell) by the claims compiled in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.viewzone.com/noahx.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; (if server not responding try re-posts &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sunnyskyz.com/good-news/470/Noah-s-Ark-Has-Been-Found-Why-Are-They-Keeping-Us-In-The-Dark-&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://planet.infowars.com/outdoors/noahs-ark-has-been-found-why-are-they-keeping-us-in-the-dark&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) about the advanced technological nature of various items supposed to be part of the archaeological find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These claims include reports of advanced carpentry in the form of ancient &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glued_laminated_timber&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Glulams&lt;/a&gt;…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most significant find from the Ark itself is a piece of petrified wood. When this was first found it appeared to be a large beam. But upon closer examination it is actually three pieces of plank that have been laminated together with some kind of organic glue!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;…as well as a some rivets involving alloyed metals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An analysis of the metal used to make the rivets revealed that they were a combination of iron (8.38%), aluminum (8.35%) and titanium (1.59%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list goes on although some associated claims seem a little less far fetched/ such as the ballast anchors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[…] huge stones were discovered, some standing upright while others lying on the ground. These stones, weighing many tons, have holes carved in them.Scientists have determined that they were anchors and the holes would have been their attachment to a ship with hemp rope. […] The huge anchors would have been suspended from the keel of the ship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the claims about technologically advanced artefacts made in this article reputable and reliable in the sense of having been verified as finds from this site, have been properly dated, and has there been sufficient independent review of the technological properties of these items been done?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that almost all archaeological claims involve some degree of doubt but I would like to know if there is reason to be skeptical (and not perpetuate) these claims, or if they hold enough credibility to be worth further interest and investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="933" LastEditorUserId="26673" LastEditDate="2020-09-02T17:16:40.680" LastActivityDate="2020-09-02T17:16:40.680" Title="Were technologically advanced artifacts found at the Durupinar &quot;ark&quot; site?" Tags="|bible|religious-texts|archeology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18831" CreationDate="2013-12-26T18:26:28.873" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been unable to find any corroborating source concerning the planks glued together (even the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wyattmuseum.com/noahsark.htm&quot;&gt;Wyatt Museum website&lt;/a&gt; says nothing of this); at this time it appears to have originated with this article. I have sent an email requesting references, and will provide an update later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I do know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Witnesses&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Dr. Brandenburger&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ohio State University's Dr. Brandenburger, quoted in the article as a supporter of this location being the ark, in fact vehemently denied the claim&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regarding my position on the Durupinar site, the core drilling we performed in 1988 settled the issue as far as I am concerned--the site is a natural formation, nothing more, produced by a mud slide as mud flowed around a ridge-shaped block of basement rock that is still present inside the resulting boat-shaped form...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Furthermore, the material Ron claims is petrified wood is nothing but igneous rock of basaltic composition. We have analyzed many samples of it here at our laboratory, and Ron is aware of these analyses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Baumgardner then lists a question and answer session he had with another person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did you witness evidence of the metal rivets in this &quot;igneous rock?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;--none whatsoever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have seen pictures of these rivets and wonder, based on what you state above, if they're from another site or from that location. Do you have any comments on that?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;--I am almost 100% certain that Ron 'planted' them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;David Fasold&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US Merchant Marine officer and salvage expert David Fasold joined Wyatt in his investigation in 1985, and for a time considered it to be the remains of a boat constructed of reeds and bitumen; however, he became convinced in the 90's that the structure was a natural formation, even co-authoring a paper to support that conclusion&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Archaeological Evidence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The structure&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article claims that &quot;the distance from bow to stern was 515 feet [157 m], or exactly 300 Egyptian cubits. The average width was 50 cubits. These were the exact measurements mentioned in the Bible.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, Fasold measured the structure to be 538 ft (164 m) long&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;, which is about 310-313 Egyptian cubits. This is a very minor point, as we're assuming we know what the biblical &quot;cubit&quot; is and the biblical writer was not necessarily seeking numerical accuracy, but I cannot help but wonder why the author would claim &quot;exact measurements.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Drogue Stones&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several miles from the location of the Ark, huge stones were discovered, some standing upright while others lying on the ground. These stones, weighing many tons, have holes carved in them. Scientists have determined that they were anchors and the holes would have been their attachment to a ship with hemp rope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These stones were found in a cemetery, and research has determined the rocks came from the area, rather than from Mesopotamia, as would be the case if they were anchors for the ark&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;. Must more be said?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is most likely that these &quot;anchor&quot; stones originally had nothing to do with Christianity or the Flood. According to Abraham Terian the stones that Wyatt has found are not unique to the Durupinar area but are scattered throughout ancient Armenia. They are known to have been crafted by pagans and used in their worship long before Christianity came to Armenia. What Wyatt has identified as &quot;rope holes&quot; were originally niches for lamps. When the local Armenians became Christians, says Terian, many of these pagan stele were Christianized with inscriptions and symbols. This is why many of them are found in Christian cemeteries. They were holy stones, first for the pagans, then the Christians.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tentmaker.org/WAR/BaumgardnerLetter.html&quot;&gt;Letter from John Baumgardner to Gary Amirault&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.andrews.edu/archaeology/archive/merling/newpage21.htm&quot;&gt;Has Noah's Ark Been Found?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;3: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/bogus.html&quot;&gt;Bogus &quot;Noah's Ark from Turkey&quot; Exposed as a Common Geologic Structure&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;4: &lt;em&gt;The Ark of Noah&lt;/em&gt;, David Fasold&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15901" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T18:26:28.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18833" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18839" CreationDate="2013-12-26T20:04:18.970" Score="17" ViewCount="6279" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got this in my Facebook timeline today and it seems to be viral&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1428737340692581&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZZXlo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Gods born on December 25th&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Gods born on December 25th:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Happy Birthday Horus (c. 3000 BCE)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Happy Birthday Osiris (c. 3000 BCE)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Happy Birthday Attis of Phrygia (c. 1400 BCE)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Happy Birthday Krishna (c. 1400 BCE)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Happy Birthday Zoroaster (c. 1000 BCE)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Happy Birthday Mithra of Persia (c. 600 BCE)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Happy Birthday Heracles (c. 800 BCE)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Happy Birthday Dionysus (c. 186 BCE)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Happy Birthday Tammuz (c.400 BCE)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Happy Birthday Adonis (c. 200 BCE)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Happy Birthday Hermes (c. 400s BCE)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Happy Birthday Prometheus (Born at the beginning of mankind)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jesus (if he actually lived) however, was born sometime in June, probably the 16th, according to most scholars, but is celebrated on December 25th because some early church leaders wanted to seize the enthusiasm from crowds gathering on a day holy to many people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;BCE = Before Common Era (Sometimes written as CE)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/18688/96&quot;&gt;We have already shown that we don't know when Jesus was born&lt;/a&gt;, thus the claim that he was born in June is false. On the other hand, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/13877/96&quot;&gt;the claim that the Christian celebration of Christmas falls on a pre-existing holiday seems correct&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about the rest of the image? How many of these deities' birthdays were celebrated at Christmas&lt;sup&gt;†&lt;/sup&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;†&lt;/sup&gt; Let's paraphrase the claim as &amp;quot;a bunch of other deities' nativities were celebrated at Christmas, such as these&amp;quot;. For this reason:&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;(a) any deity in the list above whose birthday was believed to be or celebrated around the winter solstice, or Christmas or New Year's eve should count as &amp;quot;close enough&amp;quot;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;(b) I'd like to see the overall stats in a single answer (finding one which doesn't fit does not disprove the claim)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T12:07:17.740" Title="Which of these deities were believed to be born on Christmas?" Tags="|history|religion|jesus-christ|christmas|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18834" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-12-26T20:09:23.683" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T20:09:23.683" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T20:09:23.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18835" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-12-26T20:09:23.683" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions pertaining to Christmas or other celebrations held on December 25th." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-26T20:09:23.683" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T20:09:23.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18798" CreationDate="2013-12-26T20:09:48.170" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mexico outlawed marijuana 10 years before the United States did because they viewed it as a problem there. The Dupont and Hearst bit makes for good conspiracy theory though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis#History&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis#History&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The name marijuana (Mexican Spanish marihuana, mariguana) is associated almost exclusively with the plant's psychoactive use. The term is now well known in English largely due to the efforts of American drug prohibitionists during the 1920s and 1930s. Mexico officially adopted prohibition in 1925, following the International Opium Convention.[15]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16843" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T20:09:48.170" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18736" CreationDate="2013-12-26T20:37:47.350" Score="9" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Extrinsic sugars plus bacteria cause cavities&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hypothesis that intake of non-milk extrinsic sugars&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; continues to be the main threat for dental health is well-supported by the evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The introduction to (Harris &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 2012) reviews this evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sugars, particularly sucrose, are the most important dietary aetiological cause of dental caries. The evidence establishing sugars as an aetiological factor in dental caries is overwhelming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies acknowledge that only extrinsic sugars are implicated in this relationship. (&amp;quot;Foods rich in starch, without the addition of sugars, play a small&#xA;role in coronal dental caries&amp;quot;, (Harris &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt;, citing Moynihan and Petersen 2004)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence&#xA;comes from many different types of investigation&#xA;including human studies (both observational and intervention),&#xA;human plaque pH studies (in which the pH of&#xA;plaque is monitored in situ following ingestion of a test&#xA;substance), enamel slab experiments (in which slabs of&#xA;bovine enamel are fitted in a removable oral appliance and&#xA;worn during periods of consumption of experimental diets&#xA;and subsequently the level of demineralisation is&#xA;measured), animal studies and incubation studies of oral&#xA;bacteria and dietary substrates in vitro. (Moynihan and Petersen 2004)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bacteria &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; consume processed sugar. From (Moynihan and Petersen 2004):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Streptococcus mutans&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Streptococcus sorbrinus&lt;/em&gt; are important bacteria in the development of dental caries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mutans streptococcal invertase splits sucrose into glucose and fructose, which can be metabolised to produce mainly lactic but also other acids including acetic and formic acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Interventions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding interventions, the claim that introducing dairy into ones diet is helpful is supported by two studies. &amp;quot;Milk and cheese &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; reduce the effects of metabolic acids and help restore enamel lost during eating&amp;quot; (Harris &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 2012, citing Aloha &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 2002 and Kashket &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 2002).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The systematic review (Harris &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 2012) found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;most of the studies concerning sugar consumption are of relatively weak quality,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the evidence for dietary advice aiming to change sugar consumption is poor, and that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;further studies in this area should be considered.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was because there is a dearth of studies examining the advice to change sugar consumption as an intervention and those that do exist have methodological weaknesses. &lt;em&gt;Even though&lt;/em&gt; sugar is clearly linked by the evidence through a causal chain to dental cavities, that does not automatically mean that the best (or even useful) intervention is advice to change diet. Possible reasons are poor compliance, improvements masked by simply following toothbrushing advice, etc. The authors conclude that further systematic research needs to be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1. Non-milk extrinsic sugars are sugars not incorporated into the cellular structure of foods and not milk sugars (lactose).&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ahola, A. J., Heli Yli-Knuuttila, T. Suomalainen, T. Poussa, A. Ahlström, Jukka H. Meurman, and R. Korpela. &amp;quot;Short-term consumption of probiotic-containing cheese and its effect on dental caries risk factors.&amp;quot; Archives of oral biology 47, no. 11 (2002): 799-804.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arens, Ursula. &amp;quot;Oral health: diet and other factors.&amp;quot; Nutrition Bulletin 24, no. 1 (1999): 41-44.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harris R, Gamboa A, Dailey Y, Ashcroft A. One-to-one dietary interventions undertaken in a dental setting to change dietary behaviour. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2012, Issue 3. Art. No.: CD006540. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD006540.pub2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kashket, Shelby, and Dominick P. DePaola. &amp;quot;Cheese consumption and the development and progression of dental caries.&amp;quot; Nutrition reviews 60, no. 4 (2002): 97-103.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moynihan, Paula, and Poul Erik Petersen. &amp;quot;Diet, nutrition and the prevention of dental diseases.&amp;quot; Public health nutrition 7, no. 1A; SPI (2004): 201-226.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-26T20:37:47.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18833" CreationDate="2013-12-27T00:19:40.603" Score="31" Body="&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://panhistoria.com/www/AncientEgyptianVirtualTemple/calendar1.html&quot;&gt;Horus&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; -- he's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horus#Sky_god&quot;&gt;sky god&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://panhistoria.com/www/AncientEgyptianVirtualTemple/calendar1.html&quot;&gt;Osiris&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; -- July 14&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Attis -- I haven't found a birthday; he wasn't a god; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/attis.html&quot;&gt;http://www.tektonics.org/copycat/attis.html&lt;/a&gt; alleges that similarities between Christianity and the cult of Attis were due to the latter imitating the former, not the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krishna_Janmashtami&quot;&gt;Krishna&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; - 18 July 3228 BCE&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/zoroastrian/holydays/khordadsal.shtml&quot;&gt;Zoroaster&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; -- 6 days after Spring equinox&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithras_in_comparison_with_other_belief_systems#The_25th_of_December&quot;&gt;Mithras&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; -- the date is a mystery/secret&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Heracles -- I haven't found a birthday, it is a week after his cousins Eurystheus. As stated in Homer's epic of the Illiad&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus&quot;&gt;Dionysus&lt;/a&gt; says he was worshipped in 13th century BCE, so  the &quot;186 BCE&quot; in the OP is wrong; there was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senatus_consultum_de_Bacchanalibus&quot;&gt;Roman senatorial decree to outlaw the Bacchanalia in 186 BCE&lt;/a&gt;  (which doesn't mention a birthday).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without working my way on through to the end of the list, in summary IMO this list is low-grade rubbish, which doesn't stand up to casual fact-checking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The (alleged) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus#Parallels_with_Christianity&quot;&gt;link between Dionysus and Christianity is wine&lt;/a&gt;, not birthdays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People have &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Christ_in_comparative_mythology&quot;&gt;compared Christianity to various other religions and mythologies&lt;/a&gt;. IMO someone has taken this list of &quot;comparable&quot; figures and fabricated the above by saying that &quot;what they have in common is that they were all born on December 25&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For completeness' sake:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tammuz_(deity)&quot;&gt;Tammuz&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; -- death celebrated at the summer solstice and he lived for 6 months of each year&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adonis&quot;&gt;Adonis&lt;/a&gt; suggests &lt;strong&gt;possibly&lt;/strong&gt; -- &quot;Adonis was certainly based in large part on Tammuz&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermes&quot;&gt;Hermes&lt;/a&gt; says that the year is wrong (too late) again -- because he's described by Homer he dates from at least 700 BCE; no record of his birthdate, but his festival &lt;a href=&quot;http://dagr.univ-tlse2.fr/sdx/dagr/feuilleter.xsp?tome=3&amp;amp;partie=1&amp;amp;numPage=137&amp;amp;nomEntree=HERMAE&amp;amp;vue=image&quot;&gt;the Hermaia&lt;/a&gt; was celebrated in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenic_calendars&quot;&gt;different months in different cities&lt;/a&gt; (February in Boetia, November in Crete)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Prometheus -- I found no record of a birth-date; there was a festival in Athens in his honour called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0062%3Aalphabetic+letter%3DL%3Aentry+group%3D2%3Aentry%3Dlampadedromia-harpers&quot;&gt;Promethea&lt;/a&gt; but I don't know its date&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attic_calendar#Names_of_the_months&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attic_calendar#Names_of_the_months&lt;/a&gt; says that Greeks celebrated birthdays monthly rather than yearly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Athenian festivals were divided between the 80 or so annually&#xA;  recurring celebrations and a set of monthly holy days clustered around&#xA;  the beginning of each month. These were often the birthdays of gods,&#xA;  the Greeks thinking of birthdays as a monthly rather than a yearly&#xA;  recurrence. Every month days 1-4 and 6-8 were all sacred to particular&#xA;  gods or divine entities, amounting to some 60 days a year:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Day 1: New Moon&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Day 2: Agathos Daimon&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Day 3: Athena's Birthday&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Day 4: Heracles, Hermes, Aphrodite and Eros&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2016-05-10T12:07:17.740" LastActivityDate="2016-05-10T12:07:17.740" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18842" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-27T07:06:35.217" Score="4" ViewCount="340" Body="&lt;p&gt;A claim made by &lt;a href=&quot;http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Anki&lt;/a&gt; is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research has shown that active recall testing is far more effective at building strong memories than passive study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definitions (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Anki&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Active recall testing&lt;/strong&gt;: being asked a question and trying to remember the answer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Passive study&lt;/strong&gt;: where we read, watch or listen to something without pausing to consider if we know the answer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is active recall testing more effective than passive study at building strong memories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T14:05:21.733" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T14:05:21.733" Title="Is active recall testing more effective than passive study?" Tags="|psychology|education|memory|learning|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18843" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18846" CreationDate="2013-12-27T09:10:05.150" Score="8" ViewCount="9634" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading several articles about Casu Marzu, a kind of Sardinian cheese delicacy that is infested with maggots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gRzIP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Casu Marze&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.travelandleisure.com/articles/worlds-most-dangerous-foods/4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_14979_the-6-most-terrifying-foods-in-world.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;websites&lt;/a&gt; claim that these maggots may pass through the digestive tract alive because &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alwaysfoodie.com/casu-marzu-sardinian-cheese-live-insect-larvae.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;human stomach acids are unable to kill them&lt;/a&gt;, and may even &lt;a href=&quot;http://cheese.wikia.com/wiki/Casu_marzu&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;infest one's intestines&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15834" LastEditorUserId="15834" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T09:18:12.350" LastActivityDate="2018-01-02T21:50:28.223" Title="Can maggots live in your digestive system?" Tags="|entomology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18843" CreationDate="2013-12-27T15:55:42.080" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, maggots can infest the digestive tract of humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was able to find a number of articles describing this condition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gastrointestinal Myiasis by Larvae of Sarcophaga sp. and Oestrus sp. in Egypt: Report of Cases, and Endoscopical and Morphological Studies&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3063926/&quot;&gt;Korean Journal of Parasitology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Four cases of gastric or intestinal myiasis are reported. The cases contain 2 males (1 child 10 years old, and 1 adult 40 years old) and 2 females (1 girl 18 years old, and 1 adult 50 years old) from Minia Governorate, Southern Egypt. Three of them, including cases no. 1, 3, and 4, were gastric myiasis, and complained of offensive hematemesis of bright red blood. Minute moving worms, larvae of the fly, were found in the vomitus. On the other hand, case no. 2 had intestinal myiasis, and complained of abdominal distention, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. The stool of case 2 was mixed with blood, and minute moving worms were observed in the stool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Intestinal Myiasis -- Washington&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00000503.htm&quot;&gt;Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (CDC)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In June and August 1984, the mother of a 12-month-old Washington girl periodically observed &quot;moving worms&quot; in the child's stool. The child was asymptomatic. She was treated by her physician for a presumptive diagnosis of pinworm infection, first with pyrvinium pamoate and then with piperazine. However, the mother continued to see &quot;worms&quot; in the child's stool. In early September, fly larvae (maggots) were seen in each of two stool specimens collected on different days. These larvae were identified as living third-instars of Muscina stabulans, the false stable fly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;GASTROINTESTINAL MYIASIS, REPORT OF A CASE&lt;/strong&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=537288&quot;&gt;Archives of Internal Medicine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The literature contains numerous reports of infestations of the ear and nose and of external wounds, but those of the gastro-intestinal tract are comparatively rare, there being but sixty-three cases reported to date. Of these, twelve were caused by Fannia canicularis or the black flower fly, eleven by Musca domestica or the common house fly, four by Fannia scalaris, six by Sarcophaga or the flesh fly, three by Piophila casei or the cheese maggot fly, twelve by Eristalis tenax or the drone fly ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2603" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T15:55:42.080" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18848" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-27T16:08:38.103" Score="15" ViewCount="1188" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lot of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/01/crunch-mode&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; on the internet that talk about diminishing productivity in relation to overtime and include graphs like the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iATfK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but I cannot seem to find a reputable and scientific study. What studies are there to prove this relationship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5525" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T21:57:36.937" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T21:57:36.937" Title="Do longer work weeks result in less productivity for knowledge workers?" Tags="|productivity|work|time|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18849" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-27T17:37:12.153" Score="9" ViewCount="470" Body="&lt;p&gt;Statins are a range of pharmaceuticals that inhibit the body's ability to produce &quot;bad&quot; cholesterol thereby reducing the amount in the blood. Lower LDL levels in the blood are known to be associated with lower levels of cardiovascular events such as heart attacks and strokes. The drugs have become one of the largest selling categories of pharmaceutical and are the most prescribed drug in the UK. According to The Telegraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The pills, which cost the NHS less than 10p per patient per day, are now the most commonly prescribed medication in Britain, with eight million people on some type of anti-cholestoral drug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some experts argue that statins have been a major contributor to the large reduction in mortality from cardio vascular disease that has been seen in recent decades. The Indian Express summarises the belied of some experts thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Wonder drug' statins have slashed the number of deaths from heart attacks by half, saving millions of lives over the past decade, experts say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is some dissent, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jnrbm.com/content/10/1/6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some challenging the effectiveness&lt;/a&gt; (not least because clinical trials have mostly used proxy endpoints rather than measuring the actual reduction in mortality: see this question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13719/has-the-primary-benefit-of-statins-in-reducing-early-deaths-never-been-fully-tes&quot;&gt;Has the primary benefit of statins in reducing early deaths never been fully tested in comparative trials?&lt;/a&gt;), others challenging the use of drugs with significant known side effects when simple lifestyle interventions have much the same benefit (see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f7267&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent BMJ&lt;/a&gt; article comparing a statin a day to an apple a day). &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/105/6/509.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Others&lt;/a&gt; even argue that the epidemic of heart disease was declining rapidly and statins did little to affect the rate of decline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The consensus seems to be leaning towards the miracle drug view that statins have saved many lives and could save more. &lt;strong&gt;Is this view right?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The benefits and harms from widespread use of Statins is still a significant topic in 2016 two years after this question was first asked here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BMJ and the Lancet (two of the world's top medical journals) have taken opposing views after the Lancet published a new review on the topic. The BMJ criticised the evidence used by the Lancet and wrote to England's Chief Medical Officer asking her to review the evidence to resolve the controversy (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/09/15/chief-medical-officer-asked-to-launch-independent-review-into-st/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;from the Daily Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr Fiona Godlee has asked Dame Sally Davies to intervene after medical journal The Lancet published a review claiming the drugs were safe and effective and warning that their harms had been exaggerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pro-statin experts &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/statins-drugs-side-effects-heart-attack-stroke-cholesterol-a7108771.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claimed&lt;/a&gt; that the controversy had led many patients to stop taking the drugs and therefore:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...around 2,000 people may suffer a cardiovascular event such as a heart attack or stroke, experts have predicted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the benefit of statins is really this large, surely the evidence should be clear in the statistics for strokes and heart attacks? Is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2016-09-22T16:22:52.187" Title="Have statins been responsible for a major reduction in cardiovascular disease?" Tags="|medical-science|healthcare|medications|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18849" CreationDate="2013-12-27T17:53:19.337" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;See the Cochrane Review: &lt;em&gt;Statins for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their objective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To assess the effects, both harms and benefits, of statins in people with no history of cardiovascular disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Selection criteria (they included all trials satisfying this criteria):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We included randomised controlled trials of statins versus placebo or usual care control with minimum treatment duration of one year and follow-up of six months, in adults with no restrictions on total, low density lipoprotein (LDL) or high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels, and where 10% or less had a history of CVD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary of included trials:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eighteen randomised control trials (19 trial arms; 56,934 participants) were included. Fourteen trials recruited patients with specific conditions (raised lipids, diabetes, hypertension, microalbuminuria).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They summarize their main results as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All-cause mortality was reduced by statins (OR 0.86, 95% CI 0.79 to&#xA;  0.94); as was combined fatal and non-fatal CVD RR 0.75 (95% CI 0.70 to 0.81), combined fatal and non-fatal CHD events RR 0.73 (95% CI 0.67 to 0.80) and combined fatal and non-fatal stroke (RR 0.78, 95% CI 0.68 to 0.89). Reduction of revascularisation rates (RR 0.62, 95% CI 0.54 to 0.72) was also seen. Total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol were reduced in all trials but there was evidence of heterogeneity of&#xA;  effects. There was no evidence of any serious harm caused by statin&#xA;  prescription. Evidence available to date showed that primary&#xA;  prevention with statins is likely to be cost-effective and may improve&#xA;  patient quality of life. Recent findings from the Cholesterol&#xA;  Treatment Trialists study using individual patient data meta-analysis&#xA;  indicate that these benefits are similar in people at lower (&amp;lt; 1% per&#xA;  year) risk of a major cardiovascular event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Highlights and re-phrasing&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the statin group, 1077/24,404 (4.4%) died. In the placebo group, 1223/23,562 (5.1%) died. In terms of confidence intervals, the all-cause mortality rate in the statin group is 0.86x the rate in the placebo group, with a 95% confidence interval of 0.79 to 0.94.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that in the population of people taking statins with no prior cardiovascular disease, the all-cause mortality rate is likely (with 95% confidence) 6-21% lower than in the population of people with no prior cardiovascular disease that are not taking statins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Reference&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taylor, Fiona, K. Ward, T. H. Moore, M. Burke, and S. G. Davey. &quot;Statins for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease.&quot; Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 1 (2013). (&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004816/statins-for-the-primary-prevention-of-cardiovascular-disease&quot;&gt;Summary&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T21:31:25.093" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T21:31:25.093" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18851" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-27T20:25:06.070" Score="8" ViewCount="489" Body="&lt;p&gt;My girlfriend visited a place in Latvia associated with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uk.metatron-nls.ru/main.php?id=29&quot;&gt;Institute of Practical Psychophysics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of aspects have made me skeptical, including recommendations for products from health food stores and for items not available in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their site claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Non-linear analysis systems (NLS) are the most advanced information technologies available in this century and can be considered the most remarkable and advantageous accomplishment of modern natural science. The diagnosis equipment is based on the spectral analysis of the vortex magnetic field of any biological object. It is quite unique and unparalleled in the world today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The researches of the Institute succeeded in producing this most effective equipment that is capable of tuning to the frequency of the master pulses automatically without human intervention, as well as, detecting and correcting defects and pathologies in organs and body cell on its own. This is achieved through combination of different specifically modulated magnetic oscillations recorded on a matrix. The fundamental concept in the development of this equipment was the hypothesis that the human body has an electromagnetic information framework that is able to respond to external radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is practical psychophysics a legitimate medicine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14529" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T21:51:01.897" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T21:51:01.897" Title="Is practical psychophysics based on science?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18852" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2013-12-27T22:44:26.787" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2013-12-27T22:44:26.787" LastActivityDate="2013-12-27T22:44:26.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18853" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2013-12-27T22:44:26.787" Score="0" Body="Chemical substances given to people intended to cure disease or alleviate symptoms of disease. " OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2013-12-28T00:48:12.627" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T00:48:12.627" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18854" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18858" CreationDate="2013-12-28T02:26:02.300" Score="6" ViewCount="7708" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia page of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran_and_miracles#Prophecies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Qur'an and Miracles&lt;/a&gt; states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some Muslims believe that the Qur'an predicted many events years&#xA;  before they happened. They argue that such prophecies are proof of the&#xA;  divine origin of Qur'an.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, Muslims say that the Qur'an predicted the eventual defeat&#xA;  of the Persians by the Romans at the Battle of Issus (622). At the&#xA;  Battle of Antioch in 613 AD, the Persians defeated the Romans and took&#xA;  control over important Byzantine territories expanding into Syria,&#xA;  Jerusalem, Armenia, and Egypt. A few years after the severe defeat of&#xA;  the Byzantine armies by the Persians, this verse was revealed in the&#xA;  Qur'an, &lt;em&gt;&quot;The Romans have been defeated. In a land close by; but they&#xA;  will soon be victorious-Within a few years. Allah's is the command&#xA;  before and after; and on that day the believers shall rejoice.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; [Quran&#xA;  30:2-4] In 622 AD at the Battle of Issus, the Romans successfully&#xA;  defeated the Persians, confirming the prophecy in the Quran.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:28:28.380" LastActivityDate="2016-08-07T21:19:25.257" Title="Did the Qur'an predict the defeat of the Persians at the Battle of Issus?" Tags="|history|islam|religious-texts|divination|quran|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18854" CreationDate="2013-12-28T18:05:22.673" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several translations of that line (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/quran/verses/030-qmt.php#030.2-4&quot;&gt;http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/quran/verses/030-qmt.php#030.2-4&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;but they, (even) after (this) defeat of theirs, will soon be victorious&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and they, after their defeat will be victorious&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and they, after being vanquished, shall overcome&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This line predicts &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; Roman victory, &lt;em&gt;soon&lt;/em&gt;, or even more broadly, &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, this line would have been accurate had the Romans been victorious in &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; battle in the years following its revelation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The line did not predict this &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; victory. It predicted &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; victory. There are many ways that history could have unfolded that would be considered consistent with this prediction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading more specificity into a prediction than it literally contains is an example of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postdiction&quot;&gt;post-diction&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-12-28T18:13:30.650" LastActivityDate="2013-12-28T18:13:30.650" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18865" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18869" CreationDate="2013-12-29T15:07:10.380" Score="12" ViewCount="852" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is currently a vehement debate in the Italian media about animal rights activism and experimentation on animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caterina S., a person with four genetic diseases, publicly demonstrated her support for animal experimentation by stating that she was alive only thanks to it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oXrmG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Valentina S.&amp;#39;s statement&quot;&gt; &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2013/12/27/giovane-malata-difende-test-su-animale-e-riceve-auguri-di-morte-su-facebook/826119/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She was subsequently answered with death threats from (supposed) animal rights activists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This induced a media frenzy. More than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.albengacorsara.it/corsara/2013/12/28/malattie-e-ricerca-biologa-susanna-penco-sperimentazione-su-animali-non-serve-ma-inaccettabili-insulti-e-minacce/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one biologist stated that animal experimentation is not only a useless cruelty, but also bad for research&lt;/a&gt;, and that it can be substituted by other means of experimentation. In particular Dr. Penco advocates using donated organs as test subjects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Grazie alle mie conoscenze scientifiche [...] sono persuasa che, anche per le malattie più agghiaccianti, ossia delle quali non si conoscono le cause e che riducono fortemente la qualità della vita, sia proprio la sperimentazioni sugli animali ad allontanare le soluzioni e la guarigione per i malati. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(translation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thanks to my scientific knowledge [...] I am convinced that, even for the most frightening diseases, that of which you do not know the causes and that greatly reduces the quality of life, it is precisely animal testing that makes it more difficult to find solutions and healing sick people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Does animal experimentation delay results in medical research?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:22:56.273" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:22:56.273" Title="Does animal experimentation delay results in medical research?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18865" CreationDate="2013-12-29T16:12:34.267" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a serious debate about how good animal models are in predicting the effect of new drugs on humans. This is a very complicated issue, and the answer is very likely to be completely different for different animal models. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are indications that some animal models that were widely used turned out to be almost useless. One example is shown in the paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/02/07/1222878110&quot;&gt;&quot;Genomic responses in mouse models poorly mimic human inflammatory diseases&quot;&lt;/a&gt; published in PNAS (see also &lt;a href=&quot;http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/02/13/mouse_models_of_inflammation_are_basically_worthless_now_we_know.php&quot;&gt;the blog post from Derek Lowe on this paper&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here, we show that, although acute inflammatory stresses from&#xA;  different etiologies result in highly similar genomic responses in&#xA;  humans, the responses in corresponding mouse models correlate poorly&#xA;  with the human conditions and also, one another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another paper examining multiple animal models is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1781970/&quot;&gt;&quot;Comparison of treatment effects between animal experiments and clinical trials: systematic review&quot;&lt;/a&gt; published in BMJ: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions&lt;/strong&gt; Discordance between animal and human studies may be due to bias or to the failure of animal models to mimic clinical disease adequately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are multiple reasons why animal studies would fail to correctly predict the result of specific drug candidates in humans. There could be fundamental differences in the biology between e.g. mice and humans in the specific parts affected by the disease and the drug candidate. But there are also some indications that the problem is in part due to flaws in the animal studies themselves. The paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000245&quot;&gt;&quot;Can Animal Models of Disease Reliably Inform Human Studies?&quot;&lt;/a&gt; published in PLOS Medicine states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The value of animal experiments for predicting the effectiveness of&#xA;  treatment strategies in clinical trials has remained controversial,&#xA;  mainly because of a recurrent failure of interventions apparently&#xA;  promising in animal models to translate to the clinic. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Translational&#xA;  failure may be explained in part by methodological flaws in animal&#xA;  studies, leading to systematic bias and thereby to inadequate data and&#xA;  incorrect conclusions about efficacy. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Failures also result because of&#xA;  critical disparities, usually disease specific, between the animal&#xA;  models and the clinical trials testing the treatment strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Systematic flaws in animal studies and issues like publication bias are something that can be changed, they are not an unavoidable issue. Cases where the biology is too different between the laboratory animals and humans are much more difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fundamental issue is that we just don't have anything better available than animal experiments in most cases. Studies in humans have to meet very high ethical barriers. And in vitro experiments and cell cultures are much, much farther away from the actual human biology than even the flawed animal models. &lt;a href=&quot;http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/08/13/animal_testing_a_view_from_the_labs.php&quot;&gt;Derek Lowe writes about animal experiments from the perspective of a chemist in the pharmaceutical industry:&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So that's my answer: we use animals because we have (as yet) no alternative. And our animal assays prove that to us over and over by surprising us with things we didn't know, and that we would have had no other opportunity to learn. We'd very much like to be able to do things differently, since &quot;differently&quot; would surely mean &quot;faster and more cheaply&quot;. None of us enjoy it when our compounds sicken healthy animals, or have no effect on sick ones. Just the wasted time and effort alone is enough to make any drug discoverer think so. There are billions of dollars waiting to be picked up by anyone who finds a better way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Animal models are certainly problematic in many cases, but they are still the best we have. There are no real alternatives in most cases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T14:56:58.463" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T14:56:58.463" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18872" CreationDate="2013-12-29T19:15:08.233" Score="7" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are currently various products on the market that allow people to track, among other things, how many steps they take every day. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fitbit.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The FitBit®&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nike.com/us/en_us/c/nikeplus-fuelband&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Nike+ FuelBand&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2424951,00.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The M7 chip in the iPhone&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The implication of their marketing seems to be that taking more steps leads to you being healthier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that clocking up more steps, measured using devices like these, leads to improved actual health outcomes (fewer heart attacks, for example), or surrogate measures of health (like blood pressure or resting heart rate, although I’m more interested in actual outcomes)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1680" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:15:40.500" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:15:40.500" Title="Does taking more steps lead to better health outcomes?" Tags="|medical-science|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18871" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-29T19:16:05.700" Score="4" ViewCount="973" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend claimed that areas near lakes or the sea have less snow, a theory she heard on a visit to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster,_Lancashire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lancaster, England,&lt;/a&gt; which is near the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_District&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lake District&lt;/a&gt; as well as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Sea&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Irish Sea&lt;/a&gt; and so would feel the effect of this phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’ve reviewed the information I can find on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake-effect_snow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lake-effect snow&lt;/a&gt; and everything I can find suggests the opposite. Is this a real phenomenon? Why does it happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8363" LastActivityDate="2023-05-13T18:39:59.077" Title="Do lakes and seaside areas have less snow? Why?" Tags="|water|weather|meteorology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18870" CreationDate="2013-12-29T20:17:47.777" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, for example it makes you slimmer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 10,000 steps·d&lt;sup&gt;−1&lt;/sup&gt; exercise prescription resulted in weight loss over 36 weeks in previously sedentary, overweight/obese adults. Adherence to the step goal had a marked effect on the outcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajhpcontents.org/doi/abs/10.4278/0890-1171-21.2.85&quot;&gt;http://ajhpcontents.org/doi/abs/10.4278/0890-1171-21.2.85&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lowers your blood pressure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our results indicate that walking 10,000 steps/days or more, irrespective of exercise intensity or duration, is effective in lowering blood pressure, increasing exercise capacity, and reducing sympathetic nerve activity in hypertensive patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/11131268/reload=0;jsessionid=xGW7X7uGUDlAWWW90YNm.4&quot;&gt;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/11131268/reload=0;jsessionid=xGW7X7uGUDlAWWW90YNm.4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, walking is an effective activity which qualifies your overall activity level&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on currently&#xA;  available evidence, we propose the following preliminary indices be used to&#xA;  classify&#xA;  pedometer-determined physical activity in healthy adults: (i) &amp;lt;5000 steps/&#xA;  day&#xA;  may be used as a ‘sedentary lifestyle index’; (ii) 5000–7499 steps/day is&#xA;  typical&#xA;  of daily activity excluding sports/exercise and might be considered ‘low&#xA;  active’;&#xA;  (iii) 7500–9999 likely includes some volitional activities (and/or elevated&#xA;  occupational&#xA;  activity demands) and might be considered ‘somewhat active’; and&#xA;  (iv)&#xA;  ≥10&#xA;  000 steps/day indicates the point that should be used to classify individuals&#xA;  as ‘active’. Individuals who take &gt;12&#xA;  500 steps/day are likely to be classified&#xA;  as ‘highly active’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.utah.edu/peak/health_fitness/Tudor%20Locke%20Paper.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.health.utah.edu/peak/health_fitness/Tudor%20Locke%20Paper.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, an activity level of less than 10,000 steps can be offset by other exercise&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When there is a deficit in daily steps, both sports and home activities can be used to supplement the daily steps to reach the daily step goal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.udel.edu/PT/PT%20Clinical%20Services/journalclub/noajc/10-11/January/Daily%20Step%20Goal%20of%2010,000%20Steps%20-%20A%20Literature%20Review.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.udel.edu/PT/PT%20Clinical%20Services/journalclub/noajc/10-11/January/Daily%20Step%20Goal%20of%2010,000%20Steps%20-%20A%20Literature%20Review.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, pay attention, only a subset of the podometers in commerce have a good performance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to the variation that exists among models&#xA;  in regard to the internal mechanism and sensitivity, not all pedometers count steps accurately. Thus, it is important for researchers who&#xA;  use pedometers to assess physical activity to be aware of their accuracy and reliability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/9069101_Accuracy_and_reliability_of_10_pedometers_for_measuring_steps_over_a_400-m_walk/file/d912f508566eec3eab.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/9069101_Accuracy_and_reliability_of_10_pedometers_for_measuring_steps_over_a_400-m_walk/file/d912f508566eec3eab.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-29T20:50:25.773" LastActivityDate="2013-12-29T20:50:25.773" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18876" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18881" CreationDate="2013-12-30T03:59:50.320" Score="8" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/12/29/german-magazine-report-reveals-details-nsa-hacking-unit/&quot;&gt;Fox news article entitled &quot;German magazine claims NSA hacking unit uses powerful methods to obtain data&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, a magazine article in Der Spiegel is cited as claiming, among other things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...if the NSA tracked a target ordering a new computer or other&#xA;  electronic accessories, TAO could tap its allies in the FBI and the&#xA;  CIA, intercept the hardware in transit, and take it to a secret&#xA;  workshop where it could be discretely fitted with espionage software&#xA;  before being sent on its way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Intercepting computer equipment in such a way is among the NSA's &quot;most&#xA;  productive operations,&quot; and has helped harvest intelligence from&#xA;  around the world, one document cited by Der Spiegel stated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first paragraph contains the weasel word &quot;could&quot;.  Of course they could.  In a way it would not be terribly surprising, one might expect such an opportunity to be seized when monitoring serious criminal or terrorist activity if due process permits.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second paragraph says that this is &quot;among the NSA's most productive operations&quot;.  To me, that implies that they do this a lot, and/or that it has obtained notable results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, from Fox this is now 3rd hand information (Document --&gt; Der Spiegel --&gt; Fox) and I wondered about credibility of such a document that the news article itself does not identify.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, another portion of the article claims that US products contain known exploits that secret agencies are well aware of -- indicating to me that physically intercepting a new computer order would perhaps be unnecessary. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a hidden source reasonably support a claim of hardware interception? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any other credible reports that support this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T04:12:16.067" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T11:32:31.593" Title="Do US agents intercept and install spyware on new computers ordered by persons of interest?" Tags="|computers|security|nsa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18877" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18879" CreationDate="2013-12-30T04:45:50.330" Score="4" ViewCount="1738" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nearly every newborn in the USA is given the Vitamin K injection at birth or within a few days after. The shot is meant to help the infants quickly build the biochemical pathways that allow for quick blood clotting, because hemorrhage, in the brain and other areas, does happen sometimes from the birthing process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are conflicting reports that the shot has been linked to Cancer and, specifically, Leukemia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Midwifery Digest, Vol 2 #3, September 1992 estimated that the chance of your child developing leukemia from the vitamin K shot is about one in 500! This means that the risk of developing leukemia from the vitamin K shot is much higher than the risk of bleeding on the brain which the vitamin K shot is supposed to prevent!&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/skip-that-newborn-vitamin-k-shot/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would think the 1 in 500 stat would mean more if I knew the prevalence of leukemia in children who did not receive the shot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source says that there is absolutely no connection, but it is still in favor of avoiding the treatment, just as the first source is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was suggested some years ago that vitamin K injections were associated with cancer and leukemia. However, that conclusion was in error. There is NO known association between the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned above, these injections are absolutely inappropriate for your baby -- but the increased risk for cancer is not a legitimate concern.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/03/27/high-risks-to-your-baby-from-vitamin-k-shot-they-dont-warn-you-about.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it sits with me right now, I trust Dr. Mercola more than Sarah the health blogger, but that is because I am familiar with some of Dr. Mercola's other work and found it reasonable. The issue is that Sarah seems to quote a source more reputable than her, but it is from 1992.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is there a connection between the newborn vitamin K injection and cancer or leukemia? Are there any actual studies on this topic that allow us to reject or accept this hypothesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T04:24:40.620" Title="Is the Newborn Vitamin K Injection Linked to Cancer or Leukemia?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1624" CreationDate="2013-12-30T06:29:25.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is actually quite a few references to Jesus in books from antiquity. The second chart also puts the New Testament in comparison to other ancient works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CX5M0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SOURCE: The Verdict of History, Gary Habermas&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any extra-biblical validations of his existence around the time he is commonly thought to have lived?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following book chapter (online) from this author details the non-Christian writers referenced in Chart #1 above: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.garyhabermas.com/books/historicaljesus/historicaljesus.htm#ch9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chapter IX&#xA;Ancient Non-Christian Sources&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any accepted archeological evidence to support claims in favor of his living at this time?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author claims this is historical (documentary) evidence at least of Jesus being crucified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using only the information gleaned from these ancient extra biblical&#xA;sources, what can we conclude concerning the death and resurrection of&#xA;Jesus? Can these events be historically established on these sources&#xA;alone? Of the seventeen documents examined in this chapter, eleven&#xA;different works speak of the death of Jesus in varying amounts of&#xA;detail, with five of these specifying crucifixion as the mode. When&#xA;these sources are examined by normal historical procedures used with&#xA;other ancient documents, the result is conclusive.(91) It is this&#xA;author’s view that the death of Jesus by crucifixion can be asserted&#xA;as a historical fact from this data. This conclusion is strengthened&#xA;by the variety of details which are related by good sources. As&#xA;mentioned often, a few of the documents may be contested, but the&#xA;entire bulk of evidence points quite probably to the historicity of&#xA;Jesus’ death due to the rigors of crucifixion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ancient references to the resurrection are fewer and somewhat more&#xA;questionable. Of the seventeen sources, seven either imply or report&#xA;this occurrence, with four of these works being questioned in our&#xA;study. Before answering the issue concerning Jesus’ resurrection, we&#xA;will initially address the cognate point of whether the empty tomb can&#xA;be established as historical by this extra biblical evidence alone.&#xA;There are some strong considerations in its favor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Here is a very interesting quote by an often quoted skeptic New Testament scholar on the issue of mythicism.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a society in which people still claim the Holocaust did not happen,&#xA;and in which there are resounding claims that the American president&#xA;is, in fact, a Muslim born on foreign soil, is it any surprise to&#xA;learn that the greatest figure in the history of Western civilization,&#xA;the man on whom the most powerful and influential social, political,&#xA;economic, cultural and religious institution in the world -- the&#xA;Christian church -- was built, the man worshipped, literally, by&#xA;billions of people today -- is it any surprise to hear that Jesus&#xA;never even existed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the claim made by a small but growing cadre of (published )&#xA;writers, bloggers and Internet junkies who call themselves mythicists.&#xA;This unusually vociferous group of nay-sayers maintains that Jesus is&#xA;a myth invented for nefarious (or altruistic) purposes by the early&#xA;Christians who modeled their savior along the lines of pagan divine&#xA;men who, it is alleged, were also born of a virgin on Dec. 25, who&#xA;also did miracles, who also died as an atonement for sin and were then&#xA;raised from the dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Few of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient&#xA;history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in&#xA;the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want&#xA;to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher&#xA;who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine. There are a couple&#xA;of exceptions: of the hundreds -- thousands? -- of mythicists, two (to&#xA;my knowledge) actually have Ph.D. credentials in relevant fields of&#xA;study. But even taking these into account, &lt;strong&gt;there is not a single&#xA;mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even&#xA;Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the&#xA;Western world. And it is no wonder why. These views are so extreme and&#xA;so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone&#xA;holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established&#xA;department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on&#xA;in a bona fide department of biology.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why then is the mythicist movement growing, with advocates so&#xA;confident of their views and vocal -- even articulate -- in their&#xA;denunciation of the radical idea that Jesus actually existed? It is,&#xA;in no small part, because these deniers of Jesus are at the same time&#xA;denouncers of religion -- a breed of human now very much in vogue. And&#xA;what better way to malign the religious views of the vast majority of&#xA;religious persons in the western world, which remains, despite&#xA;everything, overwhelmingly Christian, than to claim that the&#xA;historical founder of their religion was in fact the figment of his&#xA;followers' imagination?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The view, however, founders on its own premises. The reality -- sad or&#xA;salutary -- is that Jesus was real. And that is the subject of my new&#xA;book, &amp;quot;Did Jesus Exist?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that Jesus is not mentioned in any Roman sources of his&#xA;day. That should hardly count against his existence, however, since&#xA;these same sources mention scarcely anyone from his time and place.&#xA;Not even the famous Jewish historian, Josephus, or even more notably,&#xA;the most powerful and important figure of his day, Pontius Pilate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also true that our best sources about Jesus, the early Gospels,&#xA;are riddled with problems. These were written decades after Jesus'&#xA;life by biased authors who are at odds with one another on details up&#xA;and down the line. But historians can never dismiss sources simply&#xA;because they are biased. You may not trust Rush Limbaugh's views of&#xA;Sandra Fluke, but he certainly provides evidence that she exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is not whether sources are biased but whether biased&#xA;sources can be used to yield historically reliable information, once&#xA;their biased chaff is separated from the historical kernel. And&#xA;historians have devised ways of doing just that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With respect to Jesus, we have numerous, independent accounts of his&#xA;life in the sources lying behind the Gospels (and the writings of&#xA;Paul) -- sources that originated in Jesus' native tongue Aramaic and&#xA;that can be dated to within just a year or two of his life (before the&#xA;religion moved to convert pagans in droves). Historical sources like&#xA;that are is pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind.&#xA;Moreover, we have relatively extensive writings from one first-century&#xA;author, Paul, who acquired his information within a couple of years of&#xA;Jesus' life and who actually knew, first hand, Jesus' closest disciple&#xA;Peter and his own brother James. If Jesus did not exist, you would&#xA;think his brother would know it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the claim that Jesus was simply made up falters on every&#xA;ground. The alleged parallels between Jesus and the &amp;quot;pagan&amp;quot;&#xA;savior-gods in most instances reside in the modern imagination: We do&#xA;not have accounts of others who were born to virgin mothers and who&#xA;died as an atonement for sin and then were raised from the dead&#xA;(despite what the sensationalists claim ad nauseum[sic] in their&#xA;propagandized versions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, aspects of the Jesus story simply would not have been&#xA;invented by anyone wanting to make up a new Savior. The earliest&#xA;followers of Jesus declared that he was a crucified messiah. But prior&#xA;to Christianity, there were no Jews at all, of any kind whatsoever,&#xA;who thought that there would be a future crucified messiah. The&#xA;messiah was to be a figure of grandeur and power who overthrew the&#xA;enemy. Anyone who wanted to make up a messiah would make him like&#xA;that. Why did the Christians not do so? Because they believed&#xA;specifically that Jesus was the Messiah. And they knew full well that&#xA;he was crucified. The Christians did not invent Jesus. They invented&#xA;the idea that the messiah had to be crucified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One may well choose to resonate with the concerns of our modern and&#xA;post-modern cultural despisers of established religion (or not). But&#xA;surely the best way to promote any such agenda is not to deny what&#xA;virtually every sane historian on the planet -- Christian, Jewish,&#xA;Muslim, pagan, agnostic, atheist, what have you -- has come to&#xA;conclude based on a range of compelling historical evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether we like it or not, Jesus certainly existed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bart-d-ehrman/did-jesus-exist_b_1349544.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have now quotes to highly regarded New Testament scholars both Christian and Atheist who both claim that Jesus most certainly did exist. So if this is not enough to put this issue to bed then I fear nothing will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15977" LastEditorUserId="50794" LastEditDate="2022-10-19T16:28:57.973" LastActivityDate="2022-10-19T16:28:57.973" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18877" CreationDate="2013-12-30T06:54:38.750" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't find the text of the original 1992 Midwifery Digest article, however, there is more recent work addressing the same question. It is scientifically dishonest for somebody to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking_(fallacy)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cherry-pick&lt;/a&gt; that 1992 study and not mention the research that has been done since then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Klebanoff &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 1993) noted that &amp;quot;two recent studies have found that infants who received intramuscular vitamin K were at twice the expected risk for cancer during childhood.&amp;quot; They referenced (Golding &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 1990) and (Golding &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 1992). All the work since then refers back to Golding &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; as having suggested the association between vitamin K and leukemia. My guess is that it is Golding &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; that was mentioned in the Midwifery Digest as they estimated the incidence between 1.87 and 2.04 per 1000 (matching approximately the 1 per 500 in the claim). (Klebanoff &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 1993) performed an independent study to examine this hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found &amp;quot;no increased risk of either cancer in general or leukemia in particular among children who received vitamin K during the perinatal period; this finding is in accordance with the observation that the incidence of childhood leukemia in the United States did not increase from 1948 (when few or no newborns received vitamin K) to 1980 (when nearly every newborn received the drug).&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Vitamin K Ad Hoc Task Force 2003) also addressed the evidence behind this hypothesis. They summarized:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Vitamin K Ad Hoc Task Force of the American Academy of Pediatrics reviewed the reports of Golding et al and other information regarding the US experience and concluded that there was no association between the intramuscular administration of vitamin K and childhood leukemia or other cancers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional studies that have since been conducted by other investigators have not supported a clinical relationship between newborn parenteral administration of vitamin K and childhood cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They mention specifically (Ross and Davis 2000) that &amp;quot;found no randomized or quasi-randomized evidence of an association between parenteral vitamin K prophylaxis and cancer in childhood. Ten &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case-control_study&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;case-control studies&lt;/a&gt; were identified, of which 7 found no relationship and 3 found only a weak relationship of neonatal administration of intramuscular or intravenous vitamin K with the risk of solid childhood tumors or leukemia.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Vitamin K Ad Hoc Task Force also notes that &amp;quot;recent research on the pathogenesis of childhood leukemia additionally weakens the plausibility of a causal relationship between parenteral administration of vitamin K and cancer.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/cochrane-reviews&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cochrane Review&lt;/a&gt; of (Puckett and Offringa 2000) stated that &amp;quot;taken as a whole, these studies do not establish a causal relationship between these routes of administration and an increased risk of cancer&amp;quot;, and that &amp;quot;no randomized or quasi randomized evidence with regard to the association between parenteral vitamin K prophylaxis and cancer in childhood was found.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Why might the original studies have found an association?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe there &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; a correlation in the Golding &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; sample that doesn't exist in the full population. There is always a small risk of a false positive. However, a few things stand out to me that might have increased the risk of a false positive in those initial studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original studies (and even many of the subsequent studies) were &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case-control_study#Usefulness_and_drawbacks&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;case-control&lt;/a&gt; studies. One draw-back of this type of study &amp;quot;relates to the difficulty of obtaining reliable information about an individual’s exposure status&amp;quot;. This was evident in the studies of Golding &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; They admit that &amp;quot;one of the problems encountered in abstracting data from the notes was the fact that the route of vitamin K administration was often not recorded, although vitamin K was noted as having been given.&amp;quot; They employed &amp;quot;several strategies [...] to identify the probable route of administration&amp;quot;. These were not blinded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrast that with the study of Klebanoff &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt;, which, while also a (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nested_case-control_study&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;nested&lt;/a&gt;) case-control study, used data from a previous &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prospective_cohort_study&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;prospective&lt;/em&gt; cohort study&lt;/a&gt;, that had exact records of a child's vitamin K administration (route, dose, name, for example). The later cancer diagnoses were blinded as to the vitamin K exposure status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, Golding &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; tested for multiple correlations (at least two: pethidine, and Vitamin K), and reported significance without &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonferroni_correction&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;correcting for&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_comparisons&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;multiple hypothesis tests&lt;/a&gt;. Test for enough correlations, and you'll find one by chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Golding, J., M. Paterson, and L. J. Kinlen. &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1971807/pdf/brjcancer00216-0134.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Factors associated with childhood cancer in a national cohort study&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;quot; British journal of cancer 62, no. 2 (1990): 304.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Golding, Jean, Rosemary Greenwood, Karen Birmingham, and Martin Mott. &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1883000/pdf/bmj00086-0023.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Childhood cancer, intramuscular vitamin K, and pethidine given during labour&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;quot; BMJ: British Medical Journal 305, no. 6849 (1992): 341.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Klebanoff, Mark A., Jennifer S. Read, James L. Mills, and Patricia H. Shiono. &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ich/research-ich/mrc-cech/training/evidence-based-child-health/teaching-resources/ich/research-ich/mrc-cech/training/evidence-based-child-health/docs/ft-articles/006_Klebanoff-1993_ft.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The risk of childhood cancer after neonatal exposure to vitamin K&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;quot; New England Journal of Medicine 329, no. 13 (1993): 905-908.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Puckett, R. M., and M. Offringa. &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.update-software.com/pdf/CD002776.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prophylactic vitamin K for vitamin K deficiency bleeding in neonates&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;quot; Cochrane Database Syst Rev 4 (2000).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ross, Julie A., and Stella M. Davies. &amp;quot;Vitamin K prophylaxis and childhood cancer.&amp;quot; Medical and pediatric oncology 34, no. 6 (2000): 434-437.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vitamin K Ad Hoc Task Force. &amp;quot;Controversies concerning vitamin K and the newborn.&amp;quot; Pediatrics 112, no. 1 (2003): 191-192.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T07:44:54.423" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18876" CreationDate="2013-12-30T11:32:31.593" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, from Fox this is now 3rd hand information&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article links (in the 4th paragraph) to the original article from Der Spiegel which is available online for free and in English:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-nsa-uses-powerful-toolbox-in-effort-to-spy-on-global-networks-a-940969.html&quot;&gt;Der Spiegel: Inside TAO: Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I wondered about credibility of such a document that the news article&#xA;  itself does not identify&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Der Spiegel has a formidable reputation for investigative journalism and operates what &lt;em&gt;the Columbia Journalism Review&lt;/em&gt; called &quot;most likely the world's largest fact checking operation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report by Der Spiegel &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/29/der-spiegel-nsa-hacking-unit-tao&quot;&gt;was partly compiled by Laura Poitras&lt;/a&gt;, who collaborated with Edward Snowden and the Guardian on initial release of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Global_surveillance_disclosure&quot;&gt;information from internal NSA documents&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both the Guardian and the Washington Post (who have copies of the leaked documents) have confirmed the report by Der Spiegel (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/29/der-spiegel-nsa-hacking-unit-tao&quot;&gt;Guardian&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/29/the-nsa-has-its-own-team-of-elite-hackers/&quot;&gt;Washington Post&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on all the above, yes, this is a credible claim from reliable sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T11:32:31.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18883" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18884" CreationDate="2013-12-30T15:55:41.360" Score="33" ViewCount="2157" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read on one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.defectivebydesign.org/amazon-kindle-swindle&quot;&gt;Free Software Foundation's&lt;/a&gt; websites the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is not conspiracy -- we know this capability exists because Amazon has previously deleted copies of 1984 from users' Kindles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this very implausible. Did Amazon actually remove copies of 1984 from people's Kindles remotely? What possible benefit could Amazon get out of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-11-03T22:30:39.673" LastActivityDate="2015-11-03T22:30:39.673" Title="Did Amazon remove copies of 1984 from Kindles?" Tags="|books|amazon|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18883" CreationDate="2013-12-30T16:04:16.097" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;It happened due to alleged copyright infringement in July 2009&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Amazon spokesman, Drew Herdener, said in an e-mail message that the books were added to the Kindle store by a company that did not have rights to them, using a self-service function. “When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers’ devices, and refunded customers,” he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18amazon.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that they removed only a particular &lt;em&gt;set&lt;/em&gt; of those books, so the book remained available in the stores and on many Kindles. The claim doesn't imply otherwise but it needs to be read carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T20:07:22.987" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18886" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-30T19:22:57.333" Score="4" ViewCount="144" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Healy_%28psychiatrist%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;David Healy,&lt;/a&gt; the controversial author of, &lt;em&gt;inter alia&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pharmageddon-David-Healy/dp/0520275764&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pharmageddon&lt;/a&gt; rails against the credulity of many doctors in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://davidhealy.org/pharmacosis-so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;latest blog&lt;/a&gt; arguing, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recent estimates suggest companies spend over $50,000 per annum on marketing to each and every doctor in the United States – possibly considerably over $50,000. Despite this, &lt;strong&gt;there is not a single medical course on earth that teaches doctors about pharmaceutical company marketing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the highlighted claim correct? Is there no training in standard medical courses that helps doctors develop appropriate scepticism about claims made by pharmaceutical salesmen? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-30T22:05:46.750" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T22:29:44.390" Title="Are there no courses to teach medics how to handle pharmaceutical marketing?" Tags="|medical-science|education|pharmaceutical|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18887" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-30T19:33:06.377" Score="4" ViewCount="1265" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Healy_%28psychiatrist%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;David Healy's&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://davidhealy.org/pharmacosis-so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;latest blog&lt;/a&gt; warns against the credulity of doctors in the face of vast marketing efforts by pharmaceutical firms. In making a general argument about how the medical profession ought to do a better job he makes the following assertion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Treatments now are far more lethal than they were in [Oliver Wendell] Holmes’ day and &lt;strong&gt;treatment induced injury has become one of the leading causes of death and disability.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His focus is probably (from the context) mostly about pharmaceuticals, but might be considered more general. Is the highlighted claim true either restricted to just drugs or if it covers all medical interventions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T00:59:45.477" Title="Is &quot;treatment induced injury&quot; one of the leading causes of death and disability?" Tags="|medical-science|healthcare|pharmaceutical|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18888" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18887" CreationDate="2013-12-30T20:01:33.993" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The word you may be looking for is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iatrogenesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;iatrogenic&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the United States an estimated 225,000 deaths per year have&#xA;  iatrogenic causes, with only heart disease and cancer causing more&#xA;  deaths.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some iatrogenic effects are clearly defined and easily recognized,&#xA;  such as a complication following a surgical procedure. Less obvious&#xA;  ones require significant investigation to identify, such as complex&#xA;  drug interactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Causes of iatrogenesis include negative effects of drugs, chance,&#xA;  medical error, negligence, unexamined instrument design, anxiety or&#xA;  annoyance in the physician or treatment provider in relation to&#xA;  medical procedures or treatments, and the adverse effects or&#xA;  interactions of medications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;225,000 deaths&quot; seems to be often quoted/requoted when I Google for iatrogenic statistics. The reference in the Wikipedia article is to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avaresearch.com/ava-main-website/files/20100401061256.pdf?page=files/20100401061256.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Is US Health Care really the best in the world&lt;/a&gt; (2000) reprinted from &lt;em&gt;The Journal of the American Medical Association&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;em&gt;JAMA&lt;/em&gt;).&#xA;Those deaths break down as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;12,000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgery&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;7,000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;80,000 deaths/year from nosocomial infections in hospitals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;106,000 deaths/year from non-error, adverse effects of medications&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, page 19 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.audit-commission.gov.uk/auditcommission/sitecollectiondocuments/AuditCommissionReports/NationalStudies/nrspoonfulsugar.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this document from the NHS audit commission&lt;/a&gt; reports only about 1,200 deaths/year from medications in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allowing for the fact that UK population is 5 times less than that of the USA, I calculate from the above that the death rate due to medications is &lt;code&gt;106000 / (1200*5) =&lt;/code&gt; 18 times higher in the USA than the UK: either the rate of iatrogenic death is much higher than in the States, or there's something wrong or incompatible (not comparable) with the way in which cause-of-death is reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is that a big number compared to, say, heart attacks, road accidents, cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above Wikipedia article claims &quot;iatrogenic causes&quot; are the 3rd-leading cause of death, &quot;with only heart disease and cancer causing more deaths&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US Centre for Disease Control gives the following statistics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Number of deaths for leading causes of death&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Heart disease: 597,689&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Cancer: 574,743&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 138,080&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 129,476&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Accidents (unintentional injuries): 120,859&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Alzheimer's disease: 83,494&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Diabetes: 69,071&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 50,476&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Influenza and Pneumonia: 50,097&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Intentional self-harm (suicide): 38,364&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like the above, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate#United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; doesn't list iatrogenic causes at all, as a leading or significant cause of death; however, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_preventable_causes_of_death#Leading_causes_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this other one does&lt;/a&gt; (it claims &quot;44,000 to 98,000&quot; deaths from &quot;Preventable medical errors in hospitals&quot;, citing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/deaths.htm/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;To Err Is Human:&#xA;Building a Safer Health System (2000)&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page 41 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_04.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;these CDC statistics from 2010&lt;/a&gt; state 2,490 deaths due to &quot;Complications of medical and surgical care&quot;, plus 40,393 deaths due to &quot;Drugs&quot; (which number has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Causes_of_Death#sthash.JXSTkwuA.dpbs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a breakdown here&lt;/a&gt; and includes illegal drugs and suicides).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, &quot;non-error, adverse effects of medications&quot; is or isn't a big number, depending on the source: I don't see it in the CDC statistics. Has the number been greatly reduced now, since it was reported in the year 2000? Is cause of death &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximate_and_ultimate_causation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ambiguous&lt;/a&gt; (e.g. if someone has a heart attack because of an adverse drug effect), which affects the way in which it's reported? I don't know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two references (one to another &lt;em&gt;JAMA&lt;/em&gt; article and one to a &lt;em&gt;Lancet&lt;/em&gt; article) were given in the JAMA article which estimated &quot;106,000&quot; as the number of deaths due to adverse drug effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The first reference is &lt;a href=&quot;http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9555760&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Incidence of adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients: a meta-analysis of prospective studies&lt;/a&gt;: it is criticised by &lt;a href=&quot;http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11104449&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adverse drug reactions in hospitalized patients: A critique of a meta-analysis&lt;/a&gt; which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With regard to fatal ADRs, the problem of small numbers of events is likely to introduce large errors in incidence estimates. Simple pooling of fatal event frequencies from only those studies specifically reporting the number of fatal ADRs, as was done in the meta-analysis of Lazarou and colleagues, is likely to dramatically overestimate the death rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSION:&#xA;  Meta-analysis was invalid because of heterogeneity of the studies. Most of these studies did not report the data needed for incidence calculations. The methodology used was seriously flawed, and no conclusions regarding ADR incidence rates in the hospitalized population in the United States should be made on the basis of the original meta-analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The second reference is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2898%2924009-8/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Increase in US medication-error deaths between 1983 and 1993&lt;/a&gt;. I haven't read it but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2805%2977709-6/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this letter&lt;/a&gt; says says that it &quot;reports an increase in medication-error deaths in the USA from 2876 in 1983 to 7391 in 1993&quot;: which is much smaller than 106,000 in 2000. The letter also says (regarding UK data) that &quot;suspected&quot; ADRs are 150 times higher than death-certified ADRs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary the extremely high number is widely reported, but disputed in a subsequent study; and is probably based on estimates rather than officially-reported and certified cause-of-death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2013-12-31T00:59:45.477" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T00:59:45.477" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18890" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18900" CreationDate="2013-12-30T21:09:46.540" Score="6" ViewCount="1413" Body="&lt;p&gt;The New York Times published an editorial on December 29, 2013 about Pope Francis titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/30/opinion/radical-pope-traditional-values.html?hp&amp;amp;rref=opinion&amp;amp;_r=0&quot;&gt;&quot;Radical Pope, Traditional Values&quot;&lt;/a&gt; which includes the following statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a result of its work in basic health and education — and despite its obtuse views on birth control — in the last 50 years the church has probably lifted more people out of poverty than any other civic institution in history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?  Has the Catholic Church lifted more people out of poverty than any other civic institution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2013-12-31T19:31:26.403" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T20:40:13.727" Title="Has the Catholic Church lifted more people out of poverty than any other civic institution?" Tags="|economics|catholic-church|charities|poverty|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18892" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-30T22:25:48.413" Score="4" ViewCount="170" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that medical screenings are useful, and also that medical screenings don't improve health outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do medical screenings improve health outcomes? Are they worth their risks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T00:09:11.540" Title="Do medical screenings improve health outcomes?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18893" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18892" CreationDate="2013-12-30T22:25:48.413" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer is based on (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-skeptical-look-at-screening-tests/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-skeptical-look-at-screening-tests/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the criteria for a good screening test:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disease has serious consequences&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Screening population has high prevalence of the condition&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not too many false positive or false negative results&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test detects disease before critical point&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test is safe – causes little morbidity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Test is affordable and available&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treatment exists and is not too risky or toxic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Treatment is more effective when started earlier&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using mammography as an example, &quot;If 1,000 women [from the general population] are screened yearly for 10 years starting at age 50&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2-10 will be over-diagnosed and treated unnecessarily&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;5-15 will be diagnosed earlier without any change in the final outcome&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;500 will have at least one false alarm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;250 will undergo biopsy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 life will be saved&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;999 would have lived just as long if they had never had a mammogram&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of PSA testing for prostate cancer,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To prevent one death from prostate cancer, 1,068 men would have to be screened and 48 treated. But here’s the kicker: there was no reduction in all-cause mortality. The overall death rate was the same in the screened group as in the unscreened group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recommendations are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don’t screen men under 40 or over 70&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don’t screen men with a life expectancy of less than 10-15 years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Don’t screen men age 40-50 who are at average risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider screening men age 55-69 who are at average risk&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consider screening high risk men of any age&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Before any screening, doctor should discuss risks and benefits with patient&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The USPSTF is an independent group of experts who keep up with the current medical literature and issue recommendations based on the best available evidence.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They recommend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pap smear (age 21-65, every 3-5 years)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Colorectal cancer (choice of tests, age 50-75)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diabetes (only if blood pressure is elevated)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cholesterol (men over 35; women and younger men only if they are at increased risk)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and others.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They recommend &quot;against doing these tests as routine screening tests because they do more harm than good&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Annual chest x-ray&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TB tine test&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scoliosis check&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;EKG&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Teaching patients to do breast and testicular self-exams&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above are just samples. Their full set of recommendations are available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/recommendations.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Most screenings have customized recommendations for particular risk groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Screening tests can be very valuable but they can sometimes do more harm than good. They should be chosen judiciously, and the USPSTF offers sound recommendations based on the latest available evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2013-12-31T00:09:11.540" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T00:09:11.540" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18886" CreationDate="2013-12-30T22:29:44.390" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a recommended curriculum on that subject, published by the American Medical Student Association: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amsa.org/AMSA/Libraries/Misc_Docs/ModelPharmFreeCurriculum.sflb.ashx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evidence and Recommendations for a&#xA;Model PharmFree Curriculum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the AMSA's advocacy web site on that subject: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pharmfree.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pharmfree.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know to what extent they've been successful at introducing any such courses at medical schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The topic has been studied (see page 9 of the above document), for example in the following study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11739058&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An innovative approach to educating medical students about pharmaceutical promotion.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The authors describe an educational program, in which university pharmacists portrayed pharmaceutical company representatives to model a promotional presentation, that they designed to generate critical thinking among third-year medical students regarding the influence of pharmaceutical representatives on the prescribing practices of physicians. The authors also provide information suggesting that the program increased the uncertainty many students felt about the accuracy and ethics of standard drug &quot;detailing.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If such a study counts as a &quot;course&quot; that shows that there has been at least one such course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Googling suggests to me that the current formal &quot;state of the art&quot; is (mostly, merely) to ask medical schools to clarify their &quot;conflict of interest&quot; guidelines: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amsascorecard.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amsascorecard.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-12-30T22:29:44.390" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18896" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-31T04:08:33.783" Score="2" ViewCount="130" Body="&lt;p&gt;Flexarome is a blend of essential oils to relieve aching joints and tense muscles. It was created by &lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Valnet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Jean Valnet&lt;/a&gt;, who is regarded as a founder of modern &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromatherapy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;aromatherapy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cold, humid weather and age are often the origin of joint pains, along with over exertion or the stress caused by frequent muscular contractions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all these cases, FLEXAROME, composed of tincture of ginger, spirit of rosemary, essential oils of oregano, juniper, cypress and turpentine, gives you an immediate benefit (in 50 or 125 ml bottles).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://biorganic.perso.sfr.fr/valnetproduitsgb.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://biorganic.perso.sfr.fr/valnetproduitsgb.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know specifically whether this product is effective to relieve aching joints and tense muscles or just some placebo. I couldn't find any articles on Google Scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T11:55:25.220" Title="Is Flexarome effective to relieve aching joints and tense muscles?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|herbalism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18897" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-31T09:27:23.223" Score="8" ViewCount="1078" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are claims that sulfur and its compounds like organic sulfur and MSM can cure many health issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sulfur and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylsulfonylmethane&quot;&gt;Methylsulfonylmethane&lt;/a&gt; or MSM for short is being claimed to have these benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Increasing enzyme production within bodily glands and improving resistance to illness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Increasing flexibility in muscle tissue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Increasing blood circulation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Reducing muscle inflammation and promoting muscle healing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Promoting the healthy growth of hair and fingernails&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Discouraging the growth of cancer cells through oxygenation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Reversing osteoporosis, Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Promoting healthy skin production and reducing wrinkles&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Regulating insulin production&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Improving colon function and eliminating colonic parasites&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/029263_sulfur_joint_health.html&quot;&gt;http://www.naturalnews.com/029263_sulfur_joint_health.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More claims about its various &quot;miracle&quot; properties:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/09/12/the-third-abundant-mineral-in-your-body-are-you-getting-enough.aspx&quot;&gt;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/09/12/the-third-abundant-mineral-in-your-body-are-you-getting-enough.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msm-info.com/msm_brochure_pdf.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.msm-info.com/msm_brochure_pdf.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthy.net/scr/article.aspx?ID=2066&quot;&gt;http://www.healthy.net/scr/article.aspx?ID=2066&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/037292_msm_sulfur_breast_cancer.html&quot;&gt;http://www.naturalnews.com/037292_msm_sulfur_breast_cancer.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does sulfur actually help with?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it make sense to take MSM supplements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much of a miracle cure is it in reality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14646" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2017-03-02T04:24:11.487" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T04:24:11.487" Title="Is sulfur a &quot;miracle cure&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18890" CreationDate="2013-12-31T14:38:02.917" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statement is vague: for example it says, &quot;the church has probably lifted more people out of poverty&quot; without defining what the 'poverty line' is. Without defining a poverty line you can't say, &quot;That person used to be poor but is no longer poor.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's difficult to attribute credit, too: for example if a person receives education in a Church-sponsored school, does that count as the Church &quot;lifting them out of poverty&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very crude measure of estimating relative sizes of &quot;civic institution&quot; is to look at thir budgets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dchp.cz/res/data/001/000287.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This document&lt;/a&gt; alleges that Caritas organizations have a combined budget of approximately USD 5.5 bn.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Bill &amp;amp; Melinda Gates Foundation is perhaps &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wealthiest_charitable_foundations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the wealthiest charity in the world&lt;/a&gt; ... it paid &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gatesfoundation.org/~/media/GFO/Documents/Annual%20Reports/2011Gates%20Foundation%20Annual%20Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;USD 3.2 bn&lt;/a&gt; in 2012&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unicef.org/about/execboard/files/UNICEF_finance_and_budget_17Jan2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UNICEF apparently paid&lt;/a&gt; 67% of USD 4.6 bn&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the Caritas budget is bigger than any other I can think of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Bill &amp;amp; Melinda Gates Foundation are said to spend their money cleverly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, Caritas has a million volunteers (which may mean that it's able to do more good than you would suspect from its budget alone) and the Church has been operating for more than 50 years (and so has UNICEF, but not Bill &amp;amp; Melinda Gates Foundation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2013-12-31T14:38:02.917" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18890" CreationDate="2013-12-31T17:00:07.073" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It depends how you define &amp;quot;civic institution&amp;quot; but if political parties count, then China's Communist party wins the prize&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Defining &amp;quot;civic institution&amp;quot; is a little tricky especially if an organisation has multiple roles. I'd argue that political parties are civic institutions even if they also have a dual role when they are in government (this is consistent with the definition given in &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_Civic_institutions?#slide=2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikianswers&lt;/a&gt; thanks to @ChrisW for the link). The benefit of including political parties is that it allows us to include some of the biggest recent contributions to poverty reduction in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other definitional issue is the definition of poverty. Here, however, there are widely agreed definitions such as this one from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/06/economist-explains-0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Economist&lt;/a&gt; summarising a widely accepted World Bank definition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The threshold for dire poverty in developing countries is set much lower, at $1.25 a day of consumption (rather than income). This figure is arrived at by averaging the poverty lines in the 15 poorest countries, not because $1.26 spells comfort. This is the yardstick by which poverty reduction in poor countries is measured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On this yardstick, the world has made amazing progress on reducing poverty in the last few decades. The chart, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21578643-world-has-astonishing-chance-take-billion-people-out-extreme-poverty-2030-not&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;another Economist article&lt;/a&gt;, summarises recent progress and projections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/N3Nti.png&quot; alt=&quot;world poverty levels and projections&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also summarises just how much progress has been made (I've highlighted the parts relevant to this question):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The country that cut poverty the most was China, which in 1980 had the largest number of poor people anywhere. China saw a huge increase in income inequality—but even more growth. &lt;strong&gt;Between 1981 and 2010 it lifted a stunning 680m people out poverty—more than the entire current population of Latin America.&lt;/strong&gt; This cut its poverty rate from 84% in 1980 to about 10% now. &lt;strong&gt;China alone accounts for around three quarters of the world’s total decline in extreme poverty over the past 30 years.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is less often realised is that the recent story of poverty reduction has not been all about China. Between 1980 and 2000 growth in developing countries outside the Middle Kingdom was 0.6% a year. From 2000 to 2010 the rate rose to 3.8%—similar to the pattern if you include China. Mr Ravallion calculates that &lt;strong&gt;the acceleration in growth outside China since 2000 has cut the number of people in extreme poverty by 280m.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By any reasonable statistical standards the world has made astonishing progress in the last 40 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why is this relevant here? Even without doing a detailed analysis of the contributions of the Catholic Church to education and health, it is a mathematical impossibility that they could have lifted a larger number of people out of poverty. We could argue that these numbers are the result of government action, not civil institutions. And they are, but the government actions in China were the result in a change in the ideology of the Chinese Communist party, so arguably the consequence of a change in a &lt;em&gt;civil&lt;/em&gt; institution first (though the party-government distinction is blurred in China).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are other stories of poverty reduction where the church might have a problem keeping up. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21565617-bangladesh-has-dysfunctional-politics-and-stunted-private-sector-yet-it-has-been-surprisingly&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another Economist article&lt;/a&gt; reminds us that Bangladesh used to be a basket case:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its people are crammed onto a flood plain swept by cyclones and without big mineral and other natural resources. It suffered famines in 1943 and 1974 and military coups in 1975, 1982 and 2007. When it split from Pakistan in 1971 many observers doubted that it could survive as an independent state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet over the past 20 years, Bangladesh has made some of the biggest gains in the basic condition of people’s lives ever seen anywhere. Between 1990 and 2010 life expectancy rose by 10 years, from 59 to 69. Bangladeshis now have a life expectancy four years longer than Indians, despite the Indians being, on average, twice as rich. Even more remarkably, the improvement in life expectancy has been as great among the poor as the rich.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further it is worth noting some of the key factors behind this progress is built on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Family planning was made free and widely accessible&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Primary education was made nearly universal (and radically improved for women)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was a dramatic improvement in agricultural productivity&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Microfinance gave access to loans to the poor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The role of NGOs, especially BRAC (originally the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee) became significant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The focus on Women's education and freely available contraception led to one of the most profound demographic shifts in world history (with a total fertility rate--that is average number of children per woman--moving from 6.3 in 1975 to 2.3 in 2010, just above the replacement rate). The benefit of this shift in reducing poverty and mortality is not expected to be replicated in church-run programmes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the role of BRAC, a civic institution on most definitions, is worth noting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BRAC began life distributing emergency aid in a corner of eastern Bangladesh after the war of independence. It is now the largest NGO in the world by the number of employees and the number of people it has helped (three-quarters of all Bangladeshis have benefited in one way or another). Unlike Grameen, which is mainly a microfinance and savings operation, BRAC does practically everything. In the 1980s it sent out volunteers to every household in the country showing mothers how to mix salt, sugar and water in the right proportions to rehydrate a child suffering from diarrhoea. This probably did more to lower child mortality in the country than anything else. BRAC and the government jointly ran a huge programme to inoculate every Bangladeshi against tuberculosis. BRAC’s primary schools are a safety net for children who drop out of state schools. BRAC even has the world’s largest legal-aid programme: there are more BRAC legal centres than police stations in Bangladesh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world has seen enormous numbers of people taken out of poverty in the last few decades. But the biggest numbers are attributable to Chinese economic growth arguably the result of the changed ideology of a political party. Other third world countries have also seen major improvements. But some of the key causes of those improvements are not the sort of things any catholic program could endorse (e.g. the case of contraception in Bangladesh). Other NGOs (Bangladesh's BRAC, for example) have lifted very large numbers from poverty. Compared to these numbers it is a major stretch to argue that the Catholic Church could be anywhere near the top of the league table however much good it has actually done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T20:40:13.727" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18903" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2013-12-31T19:48:10.607" Score="12" ViewCount="1620" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rabbi Lawrence Keleman in his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=YOHpUbHCY_cC&amp;amp;lpg=PA224&amp;amp;ots=Nc_khWMcFS&amp;amp;dq=%22Magic%20Unmasked%2C%22%20Holiday%20(Nov.%201960)&amp;amp;pg=PA104#v=onepage&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Permission to Receive&lt;/a&gt; states that Egyptian magicians today (or when the study it was based on was published in 1960) do a similar stick-snake trick as in the Book of Exodus. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quote from the book is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D.P. Mannix writes that modern Egyptians have preserved some of those &amp;quot;secret arts&amp;quot; and still practice the &amp;quot;snake as stiff as a rod&amp;quot; trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mannix, D. P. &amp;quot;Magic Unmasked.&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;Holiday&lt;/em&gt;, November 1960.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16824" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T13:24:59.163" Title="Do magicians in Egypt turn sticks into snakes?" Tags="|history|bible|stage-magic|egypt|judaism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18903" CreationDate="2013-12-31T20:12:29.087" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Brian Brushwood (a magician and skeptic) says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;magic only exists in a willful contract between the person that wants to be fooled and the magician who says, &quot;I'm now going to fool you&quot;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/205&quot;&gt;SGU episode 205&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;James Randi (also a magician and skeptic) says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;magicians are the most honest people in the world; they tell you they're gonna fool you, and then they do it. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVMl36t2cLc&amp;amp;t=5m04s&quot;&gt;An Honest Liar: The James Randi Story (Trailer)&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these people are self-identifying as magicians, then they are saying: &quot;I'm now going to fool you.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many variants and related tricks involving changing one thing into another thing or making something appear where it previously wasn't:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphosis_%28illusion%29&quot;&gt;Metamorphosis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1jxofIypx8&amp;amp;t=10m23s&quot;&gt;Making birds appear and disappear&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW2gXZyK_yQ&amp;amp;t=18m36s&quot;&gt;Turning a skeleton into a dummy into a girl&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQshYliIc0E&amp;amp;t=7m13s&quot;&gt;Turning a burned piece of paper into a bill of money&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y0GTUtdam8&quot;&gt;Making an elephant appear&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, Lawrence Keleman doesn't claim that &quot;Egyptian magicians today turn sticks into snakes&quot;. The exact quote from &lt;em&gt;Permission to Receive&lt;/em&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;D.P. Mannix writes that modern Egyptians have preserved some of those &quot;secret arts,&quot; and still practice the &quot;snake as stiff as a rod&quot; trick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-01-01T02:24:48.713" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T02:24:48.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18909" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26471" CreationDate="2014-01-01T01:36:00.777" Score="33" ViewCount="8463" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many articles on IT websites claim that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swype&quot;&gt;Swype&lt;/a&gt; is faster than typing on smartphones (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zdnet.com/swiftkey-more-than-just-a-pretty-swype-7000011794/&quot;&gt;zdnet&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ghacks.net/2013/04/25/87559/&quot;&gt;ghacks&lt;/a&gt;, etc). &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swype&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; relates the following claim : &quot;&lt;em&gt;The creators of Swype predict that users will achieve over 50 words per minute.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. I know that Swype was used to set a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.softpedia.com/news/New-Record-for-Fastest-Typing-Set-on-Galaxy-S-with-Swype-153274.shtml&quot;&gt;new record for fastest typing&lt;/a&gt;, but I wonder whether Swype is faster than typing for the average smartphone user (i.e. who did not train to set a typing record).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="21442" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T13:36:12.130" LastActivityDate="2015-01-18T16:53:45.810" Title="Is Swype faster than typing?" Tags="|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18913" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18920" CreationDate="2014-01-01T09:02:52.613" Score="22" ViewCount="216803" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a number of social media sites, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/quotes/comments/1e18ys/&quot;&gt;Reddit&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“If there is a God, He will have to beg my forgiveness.” — A phrase that was carved on the walls of a concentration camp cell during WWII by a Jewish prisoner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this attribution correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2803" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-01T20:15:48.100" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T22:40:30.300" Title="Did a Jewish prisoner write this quote about God and forgiveness?" Tags="|history|quotes|world-war-ii|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="36576" CreationDate="2014-01-01T14:01:17.280" Score="8" ViewCount="535" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been told that the level of knowledge in mathematics is much lower today than twenty or fifty years ago. Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm looking for statistics that present the level of knowledge in mathematics of teenagers (or slightly older) versus time (year) in different countries in Europe and/or North America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please make sure to give information about the test used to measure knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A source with easily handling (easy to graph) statistics would be very welcome!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16332" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-01T14:53:11.677" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T18:46:40.287" Title="Has knowledge in mathematics in teenagers decreased through time?" Tags="|education|mathematics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18916" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18923" CreationDate="2014-01-01T15:08:16.400" Score="21" ViewCount="12015" Body="&lt;p&gt;As per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stormfront.org/jewish/antisemite.html&quot;&gt;StormFront&lt;/a&gt; (warning: neo-nazi website):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While only 3% of the population, the Jews control over 25% of the&#xA;  nation's wealth and this percentage rises every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is only 3% of the population Jewish?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do the Jewish control over 25% of the nation's wealth?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this percentage rising?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16934" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T10:36:28.877" LastActivityDate="2021-03-17T02:49:23.427" Title="Do the Jewish control a larger proportion of U.S. wealth than their proportion in the population?" Tags="|history|united-states|economics|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8245" CreationDate="2014-01-01T17:01:03.217" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Despite the consensus, there are good quality studies that don't find a strong link&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the scientific consensus is clear: almost everyone thinks secondhand smoke is bad. But skeptics should carefully consider, especially in areas where emotions run as high as this, the alternative views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a large scale study of the long term effects of secondhand smoke that finds little impact on all cause mortality. The BMJ paper is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/326/7398/1057.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusions. The results do not support a causal&#xA;  relation between environmental tobacco smoke and&#xA;  tobacco related mortality, although they do not rule&#xA;  out a small effect. The association between exposure&#xA;  to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart&#xA;  disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker&#xA;  than generally believed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of balance it is worth reading the follow-up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/326/7398/1057.abstract/reply#bmj_el_228499&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;debate&lt;/a&gt;. My reading is that there are few direct criticisms of the science but many attacks on the scientists (who have some relationship with the &quot;evil&quot; tobacco industry). The intemperate nature of many responses suggest that it is becoming hard to conduct and publish any research on the topic that does not agree with the consensus. I'd recommend any skeptic to read the paper and then the responses and make their own mind up while trying to consider only criticism of the results and not their funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both poor quality studies agreeing with the consensus and entirely unreferenced claims are widely repeated to justify legislation. One example is the (entirely unreferenced) claim that secondhand smoke kills 600,000 people a year. The claim comes from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs339/en/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WHO factsheet&lt;/a&gt; which does not reference any sources. Yet this is repeated as an accurate assessment even by people who should know better such as David Nutt (it is in his, mostly sensible, book *&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Drugs-Without-Minimising-Harms-Illegal/dp/1906860165&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Drugs-without the hot air&lt;/a&gt;&quot;). This is not a small number of deaths and, if the claim were true, we would expect strong epidemiological evidence. This is not obviously there in the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;There has been some new debate on the subject since the original answer was written.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One author at &lt;a href=&quot;http://reason.com/blog/2013/12/16/is-it-safe-yet-to-have-an-honest-convers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reasons.com&lt;/a&gt; argues that it is becoming easier to challenge the evidence as the political significance of the position you take is now less significant since many countries now have widely accepted indoor smoking bans. The debate is summarised thus (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several years ago I was talking to an epidemiologist who is skeptical of the idea that smokers pose a mortal threat to people in their vicinity. Although he supported workplace smoking bans, he was frustrated by the &lt;em&gt;willingness of so many anti-tobacco activists and public health officials to overlook or minimize the weakness of the scientific case that secondhand smoke causes fatal illnesses such as lung cancer and heart disease.&lt;/em&gt; He wondered when it would be possible to have a calm, rational discussion of the issue, one in which skeptics would not be automatically dismissed as tools of the tobacco industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The opinion piece references a new recent study that doesn't suffer from many of the biases that affect many other studies. The bias is explained here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the study has advantages over most of the research commonly cited as evidence that secondhand smoke causes lung cancer. &quot;To our knowledge,&quot; the authors say, &quot;this is the first study to examine both active and passive smoking in relation to lung cancer incidence in a complete prospective cohort of US women.&quot; The prospective design avoids a weakness of studies that start with lung cancer cases and &quot;match&quot; them to controls. &quot;Many studies that showed the strongest links between secondhand smoke and lung cancer were case-control studies, which can suffer from recall bias,&quot; notes the JNCI article, since &quot;people who develop a disease that might be related to passive smoking are more likely to recall being exposed to passive smoking.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/12/05/jnci.djt365.extract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;referenced study&lt;/a&gt; is from the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Its key conclusions are (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A large prospective cohort study of more than 76,000 women confirmed a strong association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer &lt;strong&gt;but found no link between the disease and secondhand smoke.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T17:01:03.217" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18694" CreationDate="2014-01-01T17:50:02.420" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a bunch of scientific papers who show that binaural beats do have effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938497004368&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Binaural Auditory Beats Affect Vigilance Performance and Mood&lt;/a&gt; published in Physiology &amp;amp; Behavior (Impact Factor 3.16) concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neural activity with slightly different volley frequencies from left and right ear converges and interacts in the central auditory brainstem pathways to generate beats of neural activity to modulate activities in the left temporal lobe, giving rise to the illusion of binaural beats. Cortical potentials recorded to binaural beats are distinct from onset responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1089/acm.2006.6196&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Binaural Beat Technology in Humans: A Pilot Study To Assess Psychologic and Physiologic Effects&lt;/a&gt; they gave eight participants a CD with delta (0–4 Hz) binaural beat frequencies to which they were supposed to listen daily for 60 days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was a decrease in trait anxiety (p = 0.004), an increase in quality of life (p = 0.03), and a decrease in insulin-like growth factor-1 (p = 0.01) and dopamine (p = 0.02) observed between pre- and postintervention measurements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In frontiers of human neuroscience Reedijk et al wrote an article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frontiersin.org/Human_Neuroscience/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00786/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;The impact of binaural beats on creativity&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. In it they write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results showed that binaural beats, regardless of the presented frequency, can affect divergent but not convergent thinking. Individuals with low EBRs &lt;em&gt;(Eye Blink Rate)&lt;/em&gt; mostly benefitted from alpha binaural beat stimulation, while individuals with high EBRs were unaffected or even impaired by both alpha and gamma binaural beats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that I illustrated the presence of an effect I also want to say, that I don't agree with the word &quot;guaranteed&quot;. There are probably plenty of ways to use the technique that doesn't have an effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you have something that has an effect you should also be aware that it has an effect. Plenty of people might not understand what relaxation or concentration really means and therefore use corresponding brainwave entertainment time where they are more harmful than helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would especially be wary of being constantly exposed to such sounds as that could mess up the way the brain regulates itself. I do have heard of anecdotal reports of someone messing up his brain completely by going down that road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also add that a lot of modern brainwave entertainment that's sold nowadays uses additional effects besides binaural beats. A popular software for adding such effects to audio files is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.transparentcorp.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mind WorkStation&lt;/a&gt;. They have plenty of documentation if you want to learn about details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T00:23:04.353" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T00:23:04.353" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18913" CreationDate="2014-01-01T18:34:51.223" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's very likely correct.&lt;/strong&gt; The correct original quote should be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wenn es einen Gott gibt muß er mich um Verzeihung bitten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a quote that supposedly appears on the walls of the jails of Mauthausen concentration camp, according to the documentary they show to people at the camp tours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boblucky.com/Biking/Danube/day3.htm&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.travelblog.org/Europe/Austria/Upper-Austria/Mauthausen/blog-678100.html&quot;&gt;anecdotal&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Nx4HU0Fexj0C&amp;amp;lpg=PA165&amp;amp;dq=%22if%20there%20is%20a%20god%22%20%22beg%20my%20forgiveness%22&amp;amp;pg=PA165#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22if%20there%20is%20a%20god%22%20%22beg%20my%20forgiveness%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;confirmations&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iUqKafcKRukC&amp;amp;lpg=PA149&amp;amp;dq=%22If+there+is+a+god%22+%22beg+my+forgiveness%22&amp;amp;pg=PA149&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22If%20there%20is%20a%20god%22%20%22beg%20my%20forgiveness%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;of&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://betsy.murphy00.tripod.com/Europe/WesternEurope.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I finally managed to track down a copy of said documentary, unfortunately in Italian, and it does make that claim. Given that is shown in the same concentration camp, I have no reason to doubt it's true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ospitiweb.indire.it/~copc0001/ebraismo/mauthaus.htm&quot;&gt;transcript&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nel carcere del campo, detto bunker, si impidocchiano i detenuti per esperimenti con gli antiparassitari, ma il carcere del campo serve anzitutto per isolare i prigionieri. La Gestapo del campo vuole estorcere confessioni e tiene i detenuti nelle celle, per bastonarli a sangue, per torturarli: per molti questa gabbia è l'ultima tappa della vita.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mentre, di solito, sulle pareti delle celle ci sono scritte di speranza o testimonianze di uno spirito sveglio che si ribella alla prostrazione, qui troviamo l'ultimo monologo, segno di avvilimento, di disperazione, di morte imminente.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Dio mio perché mi hai abbandonato?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Piegarsi significa mentire&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Se esiste un dio, deve chiedermi perdono&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Queste scritte sono state ritrovate, dopo il 1945, sui muri delle celle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(translation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the prison of the camp, called the 'bunker', they give lice to prisoners for experiments with pesticides, but the camp's prison serves primarily to isolate the prisoners. The camp's Gestapo wants to extort confessions and holds the prisoners in cells, to beat them bloody, to torture them: for many this cage is the last stage of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While, usually, on the walls of the cells there are writings expressing hope, or testimonies of a wakeful spirit which rebels against bowing down, here we find the last monologue, a sign of discouragement, despair, of imminent death .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;My God why have you forsaken me?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;To bend means to lie&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;If there is a god, he must ask me forgiveness&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These writings were found, after 1945, on the walls of the cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The documentary is available on YouTube: &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/8r50t7148sA?t=19m20s&quot;&gt;http://youtu.be/8r50t7148sA?t=19m20s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eWiD5.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the documentary is indeed showing the walls of the Mauthausen jails while this is described by they are (freshly) painted white, I think that the writings are not there anymore, so finding a picture will likely be almost impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no proof that these were written by a Jewish prisoner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is not claimed by the original source. The documentary doesn't say it was a &lt;em&gt;signed&lt;/em&gt; message, nor that it was written in Hebrew.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It was in the jails, not in the Jewish barracks, which excludes assuming authorship based on location.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As mentioned in the comments, only &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauthausen-Gusen_concentration_camp#Inmates&quot;&gt;a minority of the Mauthausen inmates were Jews&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet it is possible that some of the authors were Jewish:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The first writing appears in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Psalm%2022&amp;amp;version=KJV&quot;&gt;Psalm 22:1&lt;/a&gt; as well as in the Gospels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The second writing, &quot;Sich fügen heißt lügen&quot;, appears in a 1920 poem titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gedichte.eu/ex/muehsam/brennende-erde/der-gefangene.php&quot;&gt;The Prisoner&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, written by a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_M%C3%BChsam&quot;&gt;German-Jewish antimilitarist anarchist poet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I've found on the official Mauthausen Memorial web site,  a German and English translation of the documentary which is called &quot;Rückkehr unerwünscht (return undesirable)&quot;. The interesting part is still at 19m20s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;English: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.mauthausen-memorial.at/db/admin/de/showvideodetail256.php?cvideo=39&amp;amp;cbereich=1&amp;amp;cthema=347&quot;&gt;http://en.mauthausen-memorial.at/db/admin/de/showvideodetail256.php?cvideo=39&amp;amp;cbereich=1&amp;amp;cthema=347&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;German: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mauthausen-memorial.at/db/admin/de/showvideodetail256.php?cvideo=16&amp;amp;cbereich=1&amp;amp;cthema=347&quot;&gt;http://www.mauthausen-memorial.at/db/admin/de/showvideodetail256.php?cvideo=16&amp;amp;cbereich=1&amp;amp;cthema=347&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-01T22:40:30.300" LastActivityDate="2014-01-01T22:40:30.300" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18916" CreationDate="2014-01-02T01:11:23.837" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer: Yes, self-identified Jews have, on average, higher household incomes in the USA than other religious groups, with Hindus only slightly behind. Drawing strong conclusions from this correlation is dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(Watch out! This answer includes a tiny bit of misdirection. The question was about &lt;strong&gt;wealth&lt;/strong&gt;, but the answer is about &lt;strong&gt;income&lt;/strong&gt; because it was the best I could find. Wealth and income aren't exactly the same, but they are pretty tightly related, so I think the answer should still be acceptable.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pewforum.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life&lt;/a&gt; produce the &lt;a href=&quot;http://religions.pewforum.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;U.S. Religious Landscape Survey&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have &lt;a href=&quot;http://religions.pewforum.org/pdf/comparison-Income%20Distribution%20of%20Religious%20Traditions.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a chart&lt;/a&gt; showing the results of income distributions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/F9DsO.png&quot; alt=&quot;Income Distribution of Religious Traditions&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(This chart has been turned into an &lt;a href=&quot;http://awesome.good.is/transparency/web/1002/almighty-dollar/flat.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;infographic&lt;/a&gt; which I find doesn't help very much, but you may prefer it.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this chart, you can see that Jews have the highest proportion of household income of greater than $US100,000. Similarly, they are the second-least-likely to have household incomes of less than $US30,000, after Hindus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Antisemitic sites, such as Stormfront, use data like this to conclude that there is a Jewish conspiracy. This is not a safe assumption, due to a large number of potential confounding factors (ignoring the innate difficulty/impossibility of having a conspiracy of that size.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The relatively low socioeconomic position of black Americans is likely a large confounding factor. Black Americans account for only roughly 3% of American Jewish population compared to roughly 13% of the general population (sources: [&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/F9DsO.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;](&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_of_Black_Jews&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_of_Black_Jews&lt;/a&gt;), &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt;). Note the lowest incomes are associated with &amp;quot;Historically Black Churches&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Income is correlated with age. If American Jews are demographically aged closer to their peak earning potential than the general population, it may sway the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Immigration status is likely to affect income. If American Jews are now more likely to be settled in the country longer ago than American Muslims, on average, it may make their relative income higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Household size affects household income. If American Jews are more likely to live in households with a larger number of income earners, it may increase their apparent income without actually increasing the average individual income. If the women are more likely to participate in the workforce, that would also increase the figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Culture is likely to affect income. If American Jews are more likely to be focussed on academic achievement than other cultures, it may increase their income.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My goal here is not to prove that any of these potential confounding factors are true or relevant, just to give context to the bare facts before they are used to make dangerous conclusions about conspiracies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2021-03-17T02:49:23.427" LastActivityDate="2021-03-17T02:49:23.427" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="18924" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18926" CreationDate="2014-01-02T03:56:56.230" Score="8" ViewCount="1413" Body="&lt;p&gt;Paul Graham &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wrote the following&lt;/a&gt; in March 2005:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One advantage startups have over established companies is that there&#xA;  are no discrimination laws about starting businesses. For example, I&#xA;  would be reluctant to start a startup with a woman who had small&#xA;  children, or was likely to have them soon. But you're not allowed to&#xA;  ask prospective employees if they plan to have kids soon. &lt;strong&gt;Believe it&#xA;  or not, under current US law, you're not even allowed to discriminate&#xA;  on the basis of intelligence.&lt;/strong&gt; Whereas when you're starting a&#xA;  company, you can discriminate on any basis you want about who you&#xA;  start it with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In March 2005, was it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of intelligence under US law?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T04:39:25.143" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T04:39:25.143" Title="Was it illegal to discriminate on the basis of intelligence in the United States?" Tags="|united-states|law|intelligence|discrimination|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18694" CreationDate="2014-01-02T04:00:20.117" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is research claiming positive effects of binaural beats, but many suffer from methodological weaknesses. I'll present two examples of weak studies, and one that in my opinion may show a real effect (but failing to rule out at least one confounding factor).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Owens &lt;em&gt;et al&lt;/em&gt;. 1998&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Owens &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 1998) tested on 29 subjects. Each subject performed a 30-minute visual vigilence task on three different days while listening to noise while listening to either simple tones (no binaural beats), or binaural beats in the beta (16 and 24 Hz) or theta/delta (1.5 and 4 Hz) range. Participants were blinded as to the presence of binaural beats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each participant participated in three 30-minute experimental sessions across three days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Session 1 was intended as training &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; establishment of a baseline. The participant was presented the control stimulus (with no binaural beats) for this session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sessions 2 and 3 were treatment session, where the participants were presented with the beta and theta/delta binaural beats, one in each session, with the order counterbalanced across subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They used a single-tailed t-test (rather than a two-tailed t-test) to test the hypothesis that the beta frequency beats would improve performance more than the theta/delta frequency beats would. They found a statistically significant increase in the number of correct targets and a statistically significant decrease in the number of false positives when using the beta frequency beats as compared to the theta/delta frequency beats. They also tested self-reported mood differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are various methodological weaknesses to this research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They did not confirm that the binaural beats were not noticed by the participants. They were audible to the experimenters when listening carefully, but only relied on the fact that no participant reported hearing the beats.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They used a single-tailed t-test with the justification that their hypothesis was that beta frequency beats would improve upon theta frequency beats. This is a nice story, but they provided no prior declaration of this hypothesis, or any rationale for why they would not have simply selected a null-hypothesis of no-difference. The single-tailed t-test is a more powerful test, and thus reports statistical significance for smaller differences. This really seems like an inappropriate use of a one-tailed t-test, as it removed the possibility of finding the opposite result.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They mention that session 1 was used for both training &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; establishment of a baseline, yet present &lt;em&gt;no comparisons&lt;/em&gt; with a baseline. Were either of the treatment conditions better than baseline? This paper doesn't answer that question.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, these are symptoms consistent with the researchers having tried various comparisons and analysis strategies (perhaps comparing against baseline, trying a two-tailed t-test, etc.) and only reporting those that turned out showing some effect.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Wahbeh &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 2007&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was an uncontrolled pilot study. It was an unblinded, non-randomized trial. Participants were simply given a CD containing binaural beats and they listened to it over a 60 day period. This study &lt;em&gt;admits&lt;/em&gt; that it is simply exploratory. It doesn't draw any conclusions concerning causation, because it was not designed to do so. It simply identified a few possible correlations (which may not even exist due to the methodological weakness described next) for future research to verify in a controlled experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Methodological weakness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They performed 35 separate hypothesis tests and found 4 statistically significant differences from the null hypothesis at the &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt;=0.05 level. When using &lt;em&gt;p&lt;/em&gt;=0.05, these tests are &lt;em&gt;expected&lt;/em&gt; to produce 1 false positive for every 20 hypotheses tested. That means in 35 hypotheses tests, you should &lt;em&gt;expect&lt;/em&gt; to find about 1.75 statistically significant results just by chance. They found 4, so maybe there's &lt;em&gt;something&lt;/em&gt; there, but this is anomaly hunting, and the exact situation in which one should apply a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonferroni_correction&quot;&gt;correction factor&lt;/a&gt; to control for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Familywise_error_rate&quot;&gt;family-wise error rate&lt;/a&gt;. They did not apply a correction factor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Reedijk &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 2013&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study is more rigorous. It asks the question, do binaural beats affect creativity. They used binaural beats that were noticeable by the participants, calling the binaural beats a form of &quot;cognitive entertainment&quot;, and they added white noise in such a way that it &quot;enhanced the clarity of the beats&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They compared a control (a non-beating tone), to alpha frequency, to gamma frequency and tested performance on a &lt;em&gt;divergent thinking&lt;/em&gt; task (naming as many uses as possible for a common household item) and a &lt;em&gt;convergent thinking&lt;/em&gt; task (given three seemingly unrelated words, find a single word that could be prepended to each to make three new words: market, hero, and star become supermarket, superhero, and superstar).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were 24 subjects each exposed to each condition (control, alpha, and gamma), and had to perform each task (divergent and convergent) in each of the conditions. The order of condition and task was counterbalanced across subjects using a latin square design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eye blink rate was also recorded as a proxy for striatum dopamine levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, they use appropriate statistical tests to conclude that the convergent thinking task is unaffected by the binaural beats and that the divergent thinking task is affected by the binaural beats (no matter the type), but mediated by the subject's baseline eye-blink rate (striatal dopamine levels). Binaural beats increased the performance of those with low striatal dopamine levels. Binaural beats did not increase, and perhaps slightly inhibited the performance of those with higher striatal dopamine levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, this study found that audible binaural beats (no matter the type: alpha or gamma) resulted in improved performance at divergent thinking tasks for people with low levels of striatal dopamine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposed mechanism is that binaural beats could be assisting in setting up synchronized neural states. That assistance may not be needed in people with more optimal levels of striatal dopamine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They don't report a frequency-specific effect as stated in some of the quoted claims. They also note that the effect is individualized, as opposed to the broad claims in the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One weakness is that they didn't compare against other sounds with beats. Perhaps any audio with a consistent beat would be sufficient to produce this effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Owens, James D., E. Kasian Justine, and Gail R. Marsh. &quot;Binaural auditory beats affect vigilance performance and mood.&quot; Physiology &amp;amp; behavior 63, no. 2 (1998): 249-252.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reedijk, Susan A., Anne Bolders, and Bernhard Hommel. &quot;The impact of binaural beats on creativity.&quot; Frontiers in human neuroscience 7 (2013): 786.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wahbeh, Helane, Carlo Calabrese, and Heather Zwickey. &quot;Binaural beat technology in humans: a pilot study to assess psychologic and physiologic effects.&quot; The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 13, no. 1 (2007): 25-32.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-01-03T22:53:33.540" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T22:53:33.540" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18924" CreationDate="2014-01-02T04:14:04.030" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The controlling case law in this area is &lt;em&gt;Griggs v. Duke Power&lt;/em&gt;, 401 U.S. 424 (1971).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The United States Supreme Court held:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The [Civil Rights Act of 1963] requires the elimination of artificial, arbitrary, and unnecessary barriers to employment that operate invidiously to discriminate on the basis of race, and if, as here, an employment practice that operates to exclude Negroes cannot be shown to be related to job performance, it is prohibited, notwithstanding the employer's lack of discriminatory intent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applying that standard to the facts of the case, they ruled:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the record before us, neither the high school completion requirement nor the general intelligence test is shown to bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used. Both were adopted, as the Court of Appeals noted, without meaningful study of their relationship to job performance ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, it is not illegal to discriminate based on intelligence, but any test must be &quot;shown to bear a demonstrable relationship to successful performance of the jobs for which it was used&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, (Hatch 2008) assesses the NFL's use of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonderlic_Test&quot;&gt;Wonderlic test&lt;/a&gt; under this standard, argues that it isn't predictive of job performance, and advocates for a football-related intelligence test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.&quot;&gt;Wikipedia: Griggs v. Duke Power&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oyez.org/cases/1970-1979/1970/1970_124&quot;&gt;Audio from the Supreme Court oral argument&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/401/424/case.html&quot;&gt;The text of the decision&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hatch, Christopher. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://uconn.lawreviewnetwork.com/files/archive/v41n5/fourthandshort.pdf&quot;&gt;Fourth and Short on Equality: The Disparate Impact of the NFL's Use of the Wonderlic Intelligence Test and the Case for a Football-Specific Test&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Conn. L. Rev. 41 (2008): 1669.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T04:25:56.327" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T04:25:56.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18916" CreationDate="2014-01-02T04:35:30.127" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;A partial answer in addition to Oddthinking's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Is only 3% of the population Jewish?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jews are about 2% of the U.S. population, fewer than many people guess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.maxwell.syr.edu/amazur/Jews.pdf&quot;&gt;A Statistical Portrait of American Jews into the 21&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt;Century&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T04:35:30.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18928" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-02T06:54:08.363" Score="6" ViewCount="531" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many conspiracy theory websites (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://wtfrly.com/2013/09/03/911truth-wtfact-9-united-flight-93-did-not-end-like-the-movie/#.UsUI3vRe-Ro&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/flight_93_crash.html&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUzrHHDu96U&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usmessageboard.com/conspiracy-theories/70909-flight-93-never-crashed-in-the-empty-field-outside-shanksville.html&quot;&gt;[4]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2008/04/us-air-force-shot-down-flight-93.html&quot;&gt;[5]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/analysis/flight93/&quot;&gt;[6]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flight93crash.com/flight93_shoot_down.html&quot;&gt;[7]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://piratenews.org/flight93.html&quot;&gt;[8]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2010/02/17/911-shock-opera-act-4-%E2%80%93-building-7-and-flight-93-the-grand-finale-that-wasn%E2%80%99t/&quot;&gt;[9]&lt;/a&gt;) and even some of my friends posit that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_93&quot;&gt;Flight 93&lt;/a&gt; was shot down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is well known that there were fighter jets scrambled to intercept Flight 93. Conspiracy theorists claim that there are some anomalies at the crash site, such as the larger than expected crater but striking lack of intact debris. Despite this, the official government position is that Flight 93 was not shot down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Was Flight 93 shot down?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16942" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T07:43:05.060" Title="Was Flight 93 shot down?" Tags="|9-11|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18928" CreationDate="2014-01-02T07:22:19.427" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/06-09-11/&quot;&gt;http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/06-09-11/&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The [claim about Flight 93 being shot down] rests largely on unsupported assertions that the main body of the engine and other large parts of the plane turned up miles from the main wreckage site — too far away to have resulted from an ordinary crash. This is incorrect, because the engine was found only 300 yards from the main crash site, and its location was consistent with the direction in which the plane had been traveling. Furthermore, the black box for the flight records the struggle onboard preceding the plane’s crash. Conspiracy theorists are left with not only an evidentially worthless theory, but also a confusing one. Why would the same U.S. government that allegedly destroyed the WTC shoot down Flight 93 before it could cause similar damage to other buildings? Of course, this question assumes a standard of logical consistency that the 9/11 Truth Movement seems to lack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; well known that fighter jets scrambled to intercept Flight 93. See the account of &lt;a href=&quot;http://metro.co.uk/2006/10/04/60-seconds-ben-sliney-256942/&quot;&gt;Ben Sliney, the Federal Aviation Administration’s operations manager on September 11, 2001&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First of all, there were no military aircraft near it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/news/flight-93-controller-looks-back/2/&quot;&gt;http://www.cbsnews.com/news/flight-93-controller-looks-back/2/&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FAA headquarters never notified NORAD, in Colorado, that Flight 93 was hijacked until after it crashed at 10:03a.m. in a field in western Pennsylvania. No military plans had been scrambled in its direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The anomalies you mention are not relevant either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;larger than expected crater&lt;/em&gt;: Expected by who? How big of a crater &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; we have expected from an 757-222 hitting the ground upside down at a 40° angle at 563 m.p.h. with 7000 lbs of jet fuel on board?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;striking lack of intact debris&lt;/em&gt;: 1000s of pieces of the aircraft were recovered, including parts of the planes two engines, a large piece of fuselage, the planes recorders (found in the crater) (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nps.gov/flni/historyculture/upload/FAQs-long-form-July-2011.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.nps.gov/flni/historyculture/upload/FAQs-long-form-July-2011.pdf&lt;/a&gt;). How much &quot;intact debris&quot; did the conspiracy theorists expect to see after a crash like this?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T07:43:05.060" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T07:43:05.060" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17053" CreationDate="2014-01-02T09:36:03.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A mobile phone that contains a battery is never fully turned off, otherwise the power button would not work. Having developed cell phones, I can think of two ways to locate an &quot;off&quot; cell phone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unlikely - passively - any circuit modifies the magnetic fields in which it resides and that effect can be measurable (albeit in a short range, making the technique unpractical).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Likely - it is possible (and relatively simple), to modify the phone's software (e.g. using a software &quot;upgrade&quot; or simply by making sure the &quot;option&quot; is included as configurable in the original software) so that it would periodically transmit a traceable signal or signal containing location in the &quot;off&quot; state, record voice or video in the &quot;off&quot; state, etc. This option is useful for targeted tracking, and when done right would have minimal battery draw.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, I don't think that without modifying the phone as described in the second option above, such surveillance is practical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4795" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T09:36:03.990" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18916" CreationDate="2014-01-02T10:24:13.090" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://takimag.com/article/jewish_wealth_by_the_numbers_steve_sailer/print#axzz2pCJO9wGI&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; claims/shows that 25% to 35% of US billionaires are Jewish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here’s my count of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.co.il/news/new.aspx?pn6Vq=J&amp;amp;0r9VQ=IEII&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forbes Israel‘s&#xA;list&lt;/a&gt;, with&#xA;Jewish billionaires as a fraction of the country’s total number of&#xA;billionaires:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US 105/442 = 24%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] Overall, n/a states that 140 of the Forbes 400 rankings of richest Americans, or 35 percent, are Jewish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T10:24:13.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18933" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-02T12:35:26.673" Score="2" ViewCount="1217" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read various claims regarding the best position to eat: sitting on the floor, sitting on a chair, standing, etc. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eating while sitting on the floor is believed to be healthier than&#xA;  eating while sitting to a table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/491625-is-it-better-to-sit-or-stand-while-eating/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.livestrong.com/article/491625-is-it-better-to-sit-or-stand-while-eating/&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Increasing knowledge on the effects of standing while performing a&#xA;  variety of tasks indicates that standing while eating may be better&#xA;  for you than sitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies on the best way to sit while having food?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T14:49:45.547" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T14:49:45.547" Title="What is the best way to sit while having food?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|ergonomics|livestrong|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18934" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-02T13:13:16.760" Score="4" ViewCount="1360" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard and read from various (low quality) sources that green clay &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cataplasm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cataplasms&lt;/a&gt; are effective to treat &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendinitis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tendinitis&lt;/a&gt; (a.k.a. tendonitis). E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.argiletz.com/en/tips/how-to-use-clay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Argiletz&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Green clay can be used for healing bruises and relieving pain in&#xA;  children and grown-ups: rheumatism, sustained effort, long walks&#xA;  (soothes sore feet), tendinitis, back pain...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hopeforhealth.webs.com/greenclayinstructions.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hope For Health&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pain Relief, Anti-Inflammatory Action, and Swelling Reduction. Helpful For tendinitis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hawaiinaturopathicretreat.com/treatments/clay-packs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hawaii Naturopathic Retreat&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tendonitis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clay wrap around entire area if possible, 1/4 – 1/2 inch thick,&#xA;  covered, for 20 minutes to an hour initially, increased to overnight&#xA;  applications as tolerance permits, for three days to three weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies on green clay cataplasms' effectiveness to treat tendinitis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware of the existence of question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/10923/7654&quot;&gt;Does eating clay have any beneficial effect?&lt;/a&gt;, but I'm interested in the external use of green clay, not internal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T05:05:05.683" Title="Are green clay cataplasms effective to treat tendinitis?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18935" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-02T14:40:47.783" Score="4" ViewCount="499" Body="&lt;p&gt;Workplace wellness programmes are becoming increasingly popular as employers (and governments) attempt to control escalating healthcare costs. They offer the promise of making the workforce healthier and, in principle, lowering the cost of providing their healthcare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the aspects of such programs are uncontroversial. Few people, for example, would argue against incentives to eat more healthy food or do more exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But many workforce programs also include significant elements of medical screening. Screening programs use a variety of diagnostic techniques in an attempt to discover early signs of disease. The promise being that, if disease is spotted early, it can be treated more effectively. This sounds as though screening can only be good for your health. Many experts, however, disagree. Al Lewis argues, in an article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2013/04/26/caution-wellness-programs-may-be-hazardous-to-your-health/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;thehealthcareblog&lt;/a&gt; titled &quot;Caution: Wellness Programs May Be Hazardous to Your Health&quot;  that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...many ... HRAs [health risk assessments] and screens, from well-known vendors, provide blatantly incorrect advice that can potentially cause serious harm if followed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is he right that &lt;em&gt;population screening can undermine the benefit of wellness programs?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB To avoid some of the misunderstandings that previous versions of this question have encountered here are some definitions and notes on the focus and intent of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is not whether wellness programs as a whole are good but whether the &lt;em&gt;inclusion of population screening makes them worse&lt;/em&gt;. Screening is not a necessary element of such programs and could be eliminated without affecting the remaining components.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Population screening is the use of a variety of diagnostic tests on a whole group with no specific risk factors for the diseases being screened for. The statistics of screening are radically different if screens are only applied to &quot;at risk&quot; groups. The key issue is whether screens applied to &lt;em&gt;whole populations&lt;/em&gt; have net benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are a lot of different techniques and screens, they all possess a set of common statistical characteristics. The root cause of concern that critics of &lt;em&gt;population&lt;/em&gt; screening express are mostly based on those common characteristics so a good answer doesn't have to evaluate every possible screening technique but can focus mostly on those common characteristics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some specific techniques have been discussed in detail on sceptics.SE in other questions. For example: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6473/is-routine-screening-for-breast-cancer-for-asymptomatic-women-worthwhile&quot;&gt;Is routine screening for breast cancer for asymptomatic women worthwhile?&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6568/does-screening-for-prostate-cancer-save-lives&quot;&gt;Does screening for prostate cancer save lives?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T09:31:24.590" Title="Does the inclusion of whole population medical screening undermine the benefits of wellness programmes?" Tags="|medical-science|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18935" CreationDate="2014-01-02T15:53:44.500" Score="8" Body="&lt;h1&gt;What is the situation?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fifty-five percent of large firms (200 or more workers) and 26% of smaller firms offering health benefits report offering biometric screening to employees. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://kff.org/report-section/2013-summary-of-findings/&quot;&gt;The Kaiser Family Foundation - 2013 Employer Health Benefits Survey&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What are the common screens included in workplace wellness programs?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A biometric screening is a health examination that measures an employee’s risk factors, such as body weight, cholesterol, blood pressure, stress, and nutrition. (&lt;em&gt;ibid.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;health risk assessments (HRAs) and biometric screenings, such as body mass index (BMI), blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose levels. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acoem.org/uploadedFiles/Public_Affairs/Policies_And_Position_Statements/Guidelines/Position_Statements/Biometric%20Hlth%20Screening%20Statement.pdf&quot;&gt;Consensus Statement of the Health Enhancement Research Organization,&#xA;  American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, and Care&#xA;  Continuum Alliance - Biometric Health Screening for Employers&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;height, weight, calculated BMI, waist circumference, hip circumference, body fat and/or body composition, blood pressure, pulse rate (&lt;em&gt;ibid.&lt;/em&gt; at p. 1245)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What are the common characteristics of these screens (if any)?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, the only common characteristic of these screens is ease of use within a wellness program:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Biometric screening: the measurement of physical characteristics such as height, weight, body mass index, blood pressure, blood cholesterol, blood glucose, and aerobic fitness tests that can be taken at the worksite and used as part of a workplace health assessment to benchmark and evaluate changes in employee health status over time. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/workplacehealthpromotion/glossary/&quot;&gt;Centers for Disease Control and Prevention&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What does the evidence say about the efficacy of these screens outside of wellness programs?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;height, weight, BMI&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The USPSTF recommends screening all adults for obesity. Clinicians should offer or refer patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 kg/m2 or higher to intensive, multicomponent behavioral interventions. Grade B recommendation.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspsobes.htm&quot;&gt;USPSTF - Obesity&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf11/obeseadult/obeseart.pdf&quot;&gt;USPSTF Evidence Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;waist circumference, hip circumference, body fat and/or body composition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These measurements are taken to mitigate potential false positives of the BMI test when applied to particular individuals, such as athletes and body builders. (Joint consensus statement, at p. 1245)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding body fat percentage, &quot;although body fat is considered a better measure for determining healthy weight and health risks, it can be difficult to accurately and consistently measure in the workplace.&quot; (&lt;em&gt;ibid.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;blood pressure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The USPSTF recommends screening for high blood pressure in adults age 18 and older. Grade A recommendation.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspshype.htm&quot;&gt;USPSTF - Blood pressure&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf07/hbp/hbparticle.pdf&quot;&gt;USPSTF Evidence report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;blood cholesterol&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) strongly recommends screening men aged 35 and older for lipid disorders. Grade A recommendation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The USPSTF recommends screening men aged 20 to 35 for lipid disorders if they are at increased risk for coronary heart disease. Grade B recommendation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The USPSTF strongly recommends screening women aged 45 and older for lipid disorders if they are at increased risk for coronary heart disease. Grade A recommendation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The USPSTF recommends screening women aged 20 to 45 for lipid disorders if they are at increased risk for coronary heart disease. Grade B recommendation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The USPSTF makes no recommendation for or against routine screening for lipid disorders in men aged 20 to 35, or in women aged 20 and older who are not at increased risk for coronary heart disease. Grade C recommendation.&#xA;(All from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspschol.htm&quot;&gt;USPSTF - Lipid disorders&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ahrq.gov/downloads/pub/prevent/pdfser/lipidser.pdf&quot;&gt;Evidence report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;blood glucose (type 2 diabetes)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The USPSTF recommends screening for type 2 diabetes in asymptomatic adults with sustained blood pressure (either treated or untreated) greater than 135/80 mm Hg. Grade B recommendation.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspsdiab.htm&quot;&gt;USPSTF - Type 2 Diabetes&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The USPSTF concludes that the current evidence is insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms of screening for type 2 diabetes in asymptomatic adults with blood pressure of 135/80 mm Hg or lower. Grade I Statement.&quot; (&lt;em&gt;ibid.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf08/type2/type2art.pdf&quot;&gt;Supporting article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf08/type2/type2es.pdf&quot;&gt;Evidence synthesis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;aerobic fitness tests&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The USPSTF has no recommendation regarding aerobic fitness tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;stress&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The USPSTF has no recommendation regarding checking stress levels. However, they do recommend &quot;screening adults for depression when staff-assisted depression care supports are in place to assure accurate diagnosis, effective treatment, and follow-up&quot;, but not if &quot;staff-assisted depression care supports are not in place&quot;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/uspstf/uspsaddepr.htm&quot;&gt;USPSTF - Depression&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;nutrition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force&#xA;(USPSTF) concludes that the evidence is&#xA;insufficient to recommend for or against routine&#xA;behavioral counseling to promote a healthy diet&#xA;in unselected patients in primary care settings.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/3rduspstf/diet/dietrr.pdf&quot;&gt;USPSTF - Behavioural Counseling in Primary Care to Promote a Healthy Diet&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What is the effect of including these screens in a wellness program?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wellness programs and the effect of the inclusion of screenings can only be assessed on a case-by-case basis. (Joint consensus statement, at p. 1250)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characteristics well-designed workplace screening programs include (&lt;em&gt;ibid.&lt;/em&gt; at p. 1249):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Following consistent protocols for all participants in a target population&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adhering to industry standards and scientific/clinical guidelines regarding quality, accuracy, privacy, and safety&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Following referral protocols based on national guidelines for individuals whose results are outside the normal range&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having an established process for communicating results to the participant's physician&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The asker claims that &quot;Screening is not a necessary element of such programs and could be eliminated without affecting the remaining components.&quot; This not true. &quot;Companies and other organizations implement screenings to ... tailor health management programs to individual employee needs, provide data to help motivate employees to take appropriate actions to improve their health, and refer individuals to their respective health care providers&quot;. (Joint consensus statement, at p. 1245)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The value of [biometric screenings] is more fully realized when they are integrated into an overall health management program that offers various approaches, interventions, incentives, and environmental support to help employees and employers act on the data gathered.&quot; (&lt;em&gt;ibid.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;When integrated into a well-designed health management program, screenings can play an important role within the context of primordial, primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention efforts.&quot; (&lt;em&gt;ibid.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Further reading&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consensus Statement of the Health Enhancement Research Organization, American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, American Cancer Society and American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, American Diabetes Association, and American Heart Association. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acoem.org/uploadedFiles/Public_Affairs/Policies_And_Position_Statements/JOEM%20Joint%20Consensus%20Statement.pdf&quot;&gt;Guidance for a reasonably designed, employer-sponsored wellness program using outcomesbased incentives.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; J Occup Environ Med 54, no. 7 (2012): 889-96.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T17:18:47.067" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T17:18:47.067" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17053" CreationDate="2014-01-02T16:10:49.783" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.erratasec.com/2013/07/no-nsa-cant-track-phones-even-when-off.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;It depends upon your definition of &quot;off&quot;, &quot;track&quot;, and &quot;phone&quot;.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some phones will keep the baseband chip powered when the device has been shut down.  In some cases, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130723/12395923907/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;security agencies have &quot;updated&quot; the baseband sofware&lt;/a&gt; on a large number of phones in order to make them trackable when shut down.  It's certainly possible to install OTA updates with almost unlimited abilities on most modern phones, though you would require co-operation from a network, or possibly to run a rogue cell tower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/07/22/nsa_can_reportedly_track_cellphones_even_when_they_re_turned_off.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article in Slate&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2006, it was reported that the FBI had deployed spyware to infect suspects’ mobile phones and record data even when they were turned off... In 2009, thousands of BlackBerry users in the United Arab Emirates were targeted with spyware that was disguised as a legitimate update. The update drained users’ batteries and was eventually exposed by researchers, who identified that it had apparently been designed by U.S. firm SS8, which sells “lawful interception” tools to help governments conduct surveillance of communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130723/12395923907/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reference to the above article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Gallagher, the NSA may be using mass updates to infect phones of targets overseas (and presumably, any &quot;non-targets&quot; applying the same faux update). This would be difficult, but not impossible, and considering what we've learned about the NSA's far-reaching surveillance net, certainly not implausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, the answer is &lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, at least some phones, when they appear to be off, could connecting to a cell tower, and could be tracked to some extent.  Given that this article is covering &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-growth-fueled-by-need-to-target-terrorists/2013/07/21/24c93cf4-f0b1-11e2-bed3-b9b6fe264871_story.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a story from the Washington Post&lt;/a&gt;, this is a credible claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T17:07:07.740" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T17:07:07.740" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18940" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-01-02T17:40:06.823" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T17:40:06.823" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T17:40:06.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18941" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-01-02T17:40:06.823" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for claims regarding the physiological effects of plants." OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T17:40:06.823" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T17:40:06.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18943" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-02T18:26:56.313" Score="8" ViewCount="546" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mises.org/daily/6627/How-the-Drug-War-Makes-Drugs-Less-Safe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recent article in Mises Daily&lt;/a&gt;, Benjamin Wiegold argues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Drug War Makes Drugs Less Safe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is his argument right that legalising recreational drugs would improve the quality of supply and reduce the harms they cause?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T14:45:41.827" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T14:45:41.827" Title="Does prohibition make illegal drugs less safe?" Tags="|safety|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18948" CreationDate="2014-01-02T18:35:40.863" Score="4" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recent books by critics of the pharmaceutical industry (such as David Healy's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pharmageddon-David-Healy/dp/0520275764/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1388687435&amp;amp;sr=1-1&amp;amp;keywords=pharmageddon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pharmageddon&lt;/a&gt; and Ben Goldacre's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Pharma-How-Medicine-Broken/dp/000749808X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bad Pharma&lt;/a&gt;) have highlighted problems in the way the industry promotes its products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a 2010 article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://i.bnet.com/blogs/spielmans-parry-ebm-to-mbm-jbioethicinqu-2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bioethical Enquiry&lt;/a&gt;, Spielmans and Parry argue the following (this is from their abstract):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While much excitement has been generated surrounding evidence-based medicine, internal docu- ments from the pharmaceutical industry suggest that the publicly available evidence base may not accurately represent the underlying data regarding its products. The industry and its associated medical communication firms state that publications in the medical literature primarily serve marketing interests. Suppression and spinning of negative data and ghostwriting have emerged as tools to help manage medical journal publications to best suit product sales, while disease mongering and market segmentation of physicians are also used to efficiently maximize profits. We propose that &lt;strong&gt;while evidence-based medicine is a noble ideal, marketing-based medicine is the current reality.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is their summary of the current situation correct? Is prescribing dominated by marketing not evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-08T12:44:08.303" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T12:44:08.303" Title="Has medical prescribing become dominated by marketing rather than evidence?" Tags="|medical-science|healthcare|marketing|pharmaceutical|philosophy-of-ebm|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18943" CreationDate="2014-01-02T18:40:43.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;(Thornton 1998) makes this prediction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Legalizing drugs does not simply reduce the price and increase consumption and addition; instead, it completely transforms these drugs and their markets and results in drug products of lower potency, higher quality, and greater safety for the consumer. The economic model of potency predicts that the re-legalization of drugs would reverse the trends in drug potency, perhaps resulting in significant improvement in the health and safety of consumers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(MacCoun 2011) predicts a deilemma:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;full legalization will probably reduce average harm per use but increase total consumption; the net effect of these two changes is difficult to project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What actually is the case is something we'll have to wait and see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MacCoun, Robert J., and Peter Reuter. &quot;Assessing drug prohibition and its alternatives: A guide for agnostics.&quot; Annual Review of Law and Social Science 7 (2011): 61-78.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thornton, Mark. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=173712&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The potency of illegal drugs&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Journal of Drug Issues 28 (1998): 725-740.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T18:49:14.773" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T18:49:14.773" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18943" CreationDate="2014-01-02T18:44:39.333" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Decreased quality is a well studied effect of prohibition:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Still another effect of prohibition is increased uncertainty about product quality. Government quality regulation does not exist for illegal commodities, and buyers cannot complain about quality without incriminating themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://facultypages.morris.umn.edu/~kildegac/Courses/macro1/Papers/Economic%20Case%20Against%20Drug%20Prohibition.pdf&quot;&gt;The Economic Case Against Drug Prohibition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Author(s): Jeffrey A. Miron and Jeffrey Zwiebel&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Source: The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 175-192&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Published by: American Economic Association&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Stable URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/2138396&quot;&gt;http://www.jstor.org/stable/2138396&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T18:44:39.333" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18943" CreationDate="2014-01-02T18:55:43.157" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If he is right I can not say, but from what I've read on the topic here are a few points that further argue for the validity of his argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be valid in the limited evidence we've seen in countries where soft-drugs such as cannabis have been decriminalized or legalized. One of these cases which has been considered highly successful is the legalization of cannabis in the Netherlands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Global drug prohibition’s most glaring weakness and greatest vulnerability is cannabis. As UN experts point out, cannabis is by far the most widely used illegal drug in   the   world.   Cannabis   grows   wild   throughout   the world,  and  is  commercially  cultivated  in  remote  areas, in  backyard  gardens,  and  in  technologically  sophisticated   indoor   farms.   Just   as   it   was   impossible   for prohibitionists to prevent alcohol from being produced and  used  in  the  US  in  the  1920s,  so  too  it  is  now impossible  to  prevent  cannabis  from  being  produced and widely used, especially in democratic countries. As a result of this enormous and unstoppable production and use, global cannabis prohibition faces a growing crisis of legitimacy (Zimmer, 1997). Since   the   1980s,   the   Netherlands   has   successfully administered   its   system   of   regulated,   decriminalised cannabis sales. &lt;strong&gt;[1]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there are cases such as Portugal and the Czech Republic where hard drugs have been decriminalized as well I am not aware of any papers analyzing the success of these policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text below is a collection of arguments often made in conjunction with the one made in the article linked in the question. It has been added solely for your insight into the argument made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If drugs were legal, it would open up for public debate. Today people in countries where drugs are illegal people cannot openly discuss quality of suppliers as their identity must remain concealed to prevent their arrest. Another issue is that certain drugs are easier to produce/smuggle with little to no regard for whether that drug is significantly less safe for use, this includes among many other things ecstasy tablets which rarely contain what is advertised (MDMA) exclusively and sometimes not at all. Further is there a common argument from libertarians that regulation is not necessarily needed as legalization would be sufficient for improved competition, especially where market share is controlled with violence and not with quality/price of product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References for similar reasoning can be found in the answers of both @Articuno and @Ebenezer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[1] - Levine, Harry G. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395903000033&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Global drug prohibition: its uses and crises.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~hlevine/hglevine-global-drug-prohibition.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PDF&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;) International Journal of Drug Policy 14.2 (2003): 145-153.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16952" LastEditorUserId="16952" LastEditDate="2014-01-02T19:50:39.447" LastActivityDate="2014-01-02T19:50:39.447" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18944" CreationDate="2014-01-02T19:07:43.850" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;See Spurling, Geoffrey K., Peter R. Mansfield, Brett D. Montgomery, Joel Lexchin, Jenny Doust, Noordin Othman, and Agnes I. Vitry. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000352&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Information from pharmaceutical companies and the quality, quantity, and cost of physicians' prescribing: a systematic review&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; PLoS medicine 7, no. 10 (2010): e1000352.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of the set of studies examining prescribing quality outcomes, five found associations between exposure to pharmaceutical company information and lower quality prescribing, four did not detect an association, and one found associations with lower and higher quality prescribing. 38 included studies found associations between exposure and higher frequency of prescribing and 13 did not detect an association. Five included studies found evidence for association with higher costs, four found no association, and one found an association with lower costs. The narrative synthesis finding of variable results was supported by a meta-analysis of studies of prescribing frequency that found significant heterogeneity. The observational nature of most included studies is the main limitation of this review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, their opinion is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we recommend that practitioners follow the precautionary principle and thus avoid exposure to information from pharmaceutical companies unless evidence of net benefit emerges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Steven Novella summarizes this study at his blog, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/pharmaceutical-company-contact-and-prescribing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Science Based Medicine&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;five studies showed decreased prescribing quality, while five studies showed no association or ambiguous results. To me these are weak outcomes, without a clear answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After reading this review I am still left with the sense that the data on this important question is currently insufficient – it is mostly observational, and on the two most important questions (cost and quality) the evidence (while trending to the negative) is unclear. What is obvious is that better data would be helpful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also agrees that following the precautionary principle is prudent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Meanwhile I think it is prudent to limit access of drug reps to physicians and their offices&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Other relevant posts&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ghostwriting-as-marketing-tool/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ghostwriting-as-marketing-tool/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/marketing-pharmaceuticals-in-todays-regulatory-environment/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/marketing-pharmaceuticals-in-todays-regulatory-environment/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/bad-pharma-a-manifesto-to-fix-the-pharmaceutical-industry/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/bad-pharma-a-manifesto-to-fix-the-pharmaceutical-industry/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/274&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/274&lt;/a&gt; (interview with Ben Goldacre)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-01-03T16:19:43.840" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T16:19:43.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18950" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19732" CreationDate="2014-01-02T23:19:00.240" Score="15" ViewCount="1345" Body="&lt;p&gt;On December 23, 2013, a man who goes by the YouTube username &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/user/Kill0Your0TV&quot;&gt;KillYour0TV&lt;/a&gt; took a Geiger counter to Pacifica State Beach in San Francisco and detected disturbing levels of radiation as he approached the ocean. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LcQLxT49ZP0&quot;&gt;The video&lt;/a&gt; has gone viral. He explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Background radiation reading is 30 CPM. Near the ocean it's 150 CPM. The moister (sp) coming from the ocean waves seems to be what makes the Geiger Counter jump up 5X. This is not normal at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video title suggests he attributes the heightened radiation to the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is his reading accurate? Is there evidence to suggest the radiation results from the Fukushima Daiichi disaster?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T11:36:44.567" Title="Does this video show Fukushima Daiichi radiation in San Francisco?" Tags="|radiation|fukushima-daiichi|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-02T23:28:11.760" Score="10" ViewCount="1359" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a well known fact that some situations may trigger flashbacks of trauma in PTSD sufferers, like going to some places, or seeing particular scenes in movies or TV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lately I've seen many mentions of trigger &quot;words&quot;. The idea is that, for example, &lt;em&gt;reading&lt;/em&gt; the word &quot;rape&quot; would induce a flashback in a rape victim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ptsdconnect.com/discussions/1749-faced-with-a-trigger-word-in-class&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example of such a claim&lt;/a&gt; in which the word is &quot;bitch&quot;. (Note this has 404ed since the question was asked).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical of the idea since the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trauma_trigger&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page for trauma trigger&lt;/a&gt; does not mention it, and even contains more than one instance of the word &quot;rape&quot;. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Trigger_warning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;feminism wikia&lt;/a&gt; also agrees that the correct usage of &quot;trigger warning&quot; has to do with the content and not simply the usage of a word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, it's not &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.myptsd.com/c/threads/trigger-warnings-and-trigger-words.41298/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;uncommon to find people with PTSD&lt;/a&gt; complaining that this kind of &quot;trigger words&quot; trivialize the real mental illness and its victims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-01-14T17:02:07.757" LastActivityDate="2017-02-14T16:03:26.997" Title="Can reading a word trigger a trauma flashback?" Tags="|psychology|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="21" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18954" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-03T03:35:36.533" Score="5" ViewCount="4485" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eggsafety.org/consumers/consumer-faqs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eggsafety.org states&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers say that, if present, most bacteria is usually in the&#xA;  yolk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar statements are made on other egg-related websites. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.safeeggs.com/eggs/salmonella-eggs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;safeeggs.com states&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any part of the egg can harbor bacteria, and both whites and yolks&#xA;  have been implicated in foodborne illness. However, the yolk is the&#xA;  most common source, according to the USDA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, restaurants often serve eggs where only the white has been cooked and the yolk remains runny, possibly implying that they are unconcerned by salmonella in the yolk. I have also had (unsourced) people insist that &quot;studies&quot; show that the yolks do not get salmonella.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, can egg yolks contain salmonella more often than the whites?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16824" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-03T04:32:52.720" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T04:55:52.480" Title="Are eggs more likely to contain salmonella in the yolk than the white?" Tags="|nutrition|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18955" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18957" CreationDate="2014-01-03T04:33:38.743" Score="37" ViewCount="33334" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story from an Illuminati conspiracy site has become a semi popular meme on Facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three ancient pyramids have been discovered in the Antarctic by a team&#xA;  of American and European scientists. Two of the pyramids were&#xA;  discovered about 16 kilometers inland, while the third one was very&#xA;  close to the coastline, media reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GM5WJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.secretsofthefed.com/ancient-pyramids-discovered-antarctica/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SOURCE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have three pyramids been discovered in Antarctica?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-03-22T19:47:03.267" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T05:37:38.933" Title="Are there three pyramids in Antarctica?" Tags="|geology|pyramids|antarctica|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18954" CreationDate="2014-01-03T04:55:52.480" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your friends who say yolks don't get salmonella infections are dangerously wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that Salmonella infections tend to start on either in the albumen (the egg white) or the layer between the yolk and the albumen, called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitelline_membrane&quot;&gt;Vitelline Membrane&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;T.J. Humphrey&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/016816059490197X&quot;&gt;Contamination of egg shell and contents with Salmonella enteritidis: a review&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;International Journal of Food Microbiology, Volume 21, Issues 1–2, January 1994, Pages 31–40&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0168-1605(94)90197-X&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0168-1605(94)90197-X&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In egg contents the most important sites of contamination are either the outside of the vitelline membrane or the albumen surrounding it. In fresh eggs, only few salmonellas are present and as albumen is an iron-restricted environment, growth will only occur once storage-related changes to vitelline membrane permeability, which allow salmonellas to invade yolk contents, have taken place. When this happens high populations are achieved in both yolk contents and albumen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you count that layer as the yolk? If not, strictly, there are more infections in the albumen than the yolk. If so, you might get a practical measurement more like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1593116?uid=3737536&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21103194082551&quot;&gt;Deposition of Phage Type 4 and 13a Salmonella enteritidis Strains in Yolk and Albumen of Eggs Laid by Experimentally Infected Hens&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] incidence of yolk contamination (approximately 2.5% overall) was significantly greater than the incidence of albumen contamination (approximately 0.5% overall).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that doesn't take a more important issue into account. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] egg yolk and albumen differ substantially in their ability to support bacterial growth. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, it may be that more eggs are infected in the albumen + vitelline membrane than the yolk proper, &lt;em&gt;but&lt;/em&gt; there may be more &lt;em&gt;risk to health&lt;/em&gt; in the cases where the eggs are left unrefrigerated and the yolk infections take place. In the case of eggs (under)cooked in their shells, it is more likely the yolk will not reach the necessary temperature to kill the Salmonella cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T04:55:52.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18955" CreationDate="2014-01-03T07:02:38.097" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://inserbia.info/news/2013/06/ancient-pyramids-discovered-in-antarctica/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only reliable information provided by the scientists was that they were planning an expedition to the pyramids to research them more thoroughly and determine for sure whether the structures were artificial or natural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am even doubtful that there is such a group of scientists or a planned expedition. No names are given. They don't mention a team, university, or research group affiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an old claim, with a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stKJJ6xWYFY&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt; to go along with it. It provides three photos, two of which are of the same feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stKJJ6xWYFY&amp;amp;t=9s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stKJJ6xWYFY&amp;amp;t=9s&lt;/a&gt; (East end of Schatz ridge – see below)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stKJJ6xWYFY&amp;amp;t=32s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stKJJ6xWYFY&amp;amp;t=32s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stKJJ6xWYFY&amp;amp;t=46s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stKJJ6xWYFY&amp;amp;t=46s&lt;/a&gt; (East end of Schatz ridge – see below)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP66gyHEdCc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another Youtube video&lt;/a&gt; includes a 4th photo that other sites use (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.riseearth.com/2012/09/man-made-ancient-pyramids-found-on.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://deusnexus.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/pyramids-found-in-antarctica/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;). However, that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/alpowers53/2322629361/in/set-72157604023570563&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;photo is by Al Powers&lt;/a&gt; during his 2008 Antarctica trip. He says: &quot;it is just an ice and snow covered hill&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The photo in the question and most of the stories is a known glacial horn (also known as a &quot;pyramidal peak&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramidal_peak&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramidal_peak&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's actually just the east end of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geographic.org/geographic_names/antname.php?uni=18881&amp;amp;fid=antgeo_128&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Schatz Ridge&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!1m4!1m3!1d12038!2d-86.0324511!3d-78.4850368!2m1!1e3&amp;amp;fid=7&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's a Google map view of it&lt;/a&gt;. Here are some other photos of this peak from a slightly different viewpoint &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.panoramio.com/photo/41154392&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pic 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.panoramio.com/photo/41154384&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pic 2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.panoramio.com/photo/41196851&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pic 3&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coincidentally, there is also a specific peak named &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_Peak_(Antarctica)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pyramid Peak&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!1m4!1m3!1d8960!2d165.583333!3d-72.2666673!2m1!1e3&amp;amp;fid=7&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;top down view of Pyramid Peak in Google maps&lt;/a&gt;. It was named in 1963.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Summarizing&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Schatz Ridge&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ObEIw.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/X0ERC.png&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5rRZb.png&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;An ice and snow covered hill, from 2008&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2hDsX.png&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The third, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/08/02/antarctica-once-covered-in-palm-trees-scientists-discover/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;credited to Etienne Classen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/blWue.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A peak actually named &quot;Pyramid Peak&quot;, that the stories don't even mention, demonstrating that these formations are not that hard to find&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ilm91.png&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-01-03T18:05:41.970" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T18:05:41.970" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18714" CreationDate="2014-01-03T14:19:44.507" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;That does not seem to be a generally accepted view. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence that crop-farming was carried out in the Bronze Age in Britain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The site proved to be late Bronze Age, around 3,000 years old, four or five houses and evidence of smaller structures, such as storage sheds and &lt;strong&gt;granaries&lt;/strong&gt;. There was also an Iron Age burial ground with seven barrows and other graves. This was quite unexpected and the site is unique in Britain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The team discovered pottery fragments, &lt;strong&gt;remains of ancient crops&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;a quern or grinding stone&lt;/strong&gt;, loom weights and a whetstone, giving a clear idea that Adanac Park’s former residents were working in a farm environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/blog/2010/06/bronze-age-farm-discovered-at-our-new-head-office/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bronze Age farm discovered&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Middle Bronze Age also sees the first field systems in Britain, indicating growing pressure on the land as the numbers of people and animals increased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/overview_british_prehistory_01.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Bronze Age in Britain started around 2000 BC and lasted until the start of the Iron Age around 650 BC. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/bronzeageman_01.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt; - So I believe this covers the period in the question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-01-03T14:33:29.850" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T14:33:29.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18965" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18955" CreationDate="2014-01-03T16:25:17.857" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The photo in the OP seems to be lifted from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mountainguides.com/photos/vinson/vinson-s-pyramid.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.mountainguides.com/photos/vinson/vinson-s-pyramid.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5nGsG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pictures such as the main one on &lt;a href=&quot;http://climb.mountains.com/Photo_Gallery_files/Continent_files/Vinson.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://climb.mountains.com/Photo_Gallery_files/Continent_files/Vinson.shtml&lt;/a&gt; suggest there are many, many more than three such &quot;pyramids&quot; in Antarctica.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/I92Hw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T16:25:17.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18473" CreationDate="2014-01-03T17:18:18.843" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been unable to find any reference to this letter and I must say that it certainly has the ring of propaganda about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time of Sputnik II (AKA Muttnik) there were certainly protests from the RSPCA and the Canine Defence League as well as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cold-war-sputnik-soviet-space-dog-laika.com/doggy_protest_at_un.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;protest outside the UN building&lt;/a&gt; in New York where dogs (and their owners) had placards stating &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=fiP3gRzrtRUC&amp;amp;pg=PA161&amp;amp;lpg=PA161&amp;amp;dq=%22pet%20lovers%20brought%20their%20dogs%20to%20the%20united%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=6-fTkQK_I1&amp;amp;sig=XoL9bPEAN3cypTSEMkrVLWnvPmo&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=ffDGUobjJc2ThQe0jIG4AQ&amp;amp;ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22pet%20lovers%20brought%20their%20dogs%20to%20the%20united%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Send Up Khrushchev&quot; and &quot;Pick on someone your own size&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4gQB5.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Dogs outside the UN protesting the launch of Sputnik 2&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's probably this incident that the author is referring to. The similarities seem too great to be a coincidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16965" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T17:18:18.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18950" CreationDate="2014-01-03T18:34:57.263" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, &quot;Counts per minute&quot; is essentially &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counts_per_minute#Count_rates&quot;&gt;meaningless&lt;/a&gt; since every device registers counts differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Wikipedia points out;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Counts are only manifested in the reading of the measuring instrument,&#xA;  and &lt;strong&gt;are not an absolute measure of the strength of the source of &#xA;  radiation&lt;/strong&gt;. Whilst an instrument can display at a rate of cpm, it does&#xA;  not have to detect counts for one minute, as it can infer the total&#xA;  per minute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, significant radiation leakage from Fukushima is &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/fukushima-radioactive-plume-reach-us-130901.htm&quot;&gt;unlikely to have even reached the West coast of America yet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Ocean simulations showed that the plume of radioactive cesium-137&#xA;  released by the Fukushima disaster in 2011 could begin flowing into&#xA;  U.S. coastal waters starting in early 2014 and peak in 2016. Luckily,&#xA;  two ocean currents off the eastern coast of Japan — the Kuroshio&#xA;  Current and the Kuroshio Extension — would have diluted the&#xA;  radioactive material so that its concentration fell well below the&#xA;  World Health Organization’s safety levels within four months of the&#xA;  Fukushima incident. But it could have been a different story if&#xA;  nuclear disaster struck on the other side of Japan.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even when it does, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/news/50176&quot;&gt;levels of radioactivity&lt;/a&gt; will fall well below a level that is likely to be significantly harmful to health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tentatively assuming a value of 10 petabecquerel (PBq) for the net&#xA;  137Caesium (Cs) input during the first weeks after the Fukushima&#xA;  incident, the simulation suggests a rapid dilution of peak&#xA;  radioactivity values to about 10 Bq/m³ during the first 2 years,&#xA;  followed by a gradual decline to 1–2 Bq/m³ over the next 4–7 years.&#xA;  The total peak radioactivity levels would then be about twice the&#xA;  pre-Fukushima values. “While this may sound alarming, these levels are&#xA;  still lower than those permitted for drinking water,” said Böning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite what is causing his geiger counter to register a different rate as he approaches the ocean is unclear. Perhaps it's something to do with moisture in the air because there's no reliable indication that it has anything to do with radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16965" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T18:34:57.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18986" CreationDate="2014-01-03T19:02:00.477" Score="0" ViewCount="353" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question of whether sugary drinks contribute to obesity is controversial, not least because the large manufacturers of the drinks would most likely suffer if the contribution to obesity were proved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Michael Bloomberg, the recent Mayor of New York believed the problem so serious he tried to impose bans and taxes on some drinks in an attempt to fight flab in the city (see NYT stories &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/nyregion/new-york-soda-ban-to-go-before-states-top-court.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/nyregion/bloomberg-plans-a-ban-on-large-sugared-drinks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The industry disagreed with his position arguing that soft drinks were irrelevant to obesity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The New York City health department’s unhealthy obsession with attacking soft drinks is again pushing them over the top,” the industry spokesman, Stefan Friedman, said. “It’s time for serious health professionals to move on and seek solutions that are going to actually curb obesity.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the controversy, what does the balance of evidence look like? Do sugary drinks contribute significantly to obesity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB I think answers should avoid the meaningless distinction between sucrose and High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) as the difference is negligible when ingested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that related, but not identical, questions have been asked here before such as: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13993/can-artificial-sweeteners-make-you-gain-weight&quot;&gt;Can artificial sweeteners make you gain weight?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T17:19:24.613" Title="Do sugary drinks make you fat?" Tags="|medical-science|sugar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18971" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18532" CreationDate="2014-01-03T19:42:57.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found references to Fugu (or poisonous Blowfish) being forbidden &quot;to the Emperor&quot;, &quot;the Emperor and his family&quot;, &quot;to the Emperor and the Empress&quot;, To the Emperor and the royal family&quot; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/2004/02/24/cz_af_0224health.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://nymag.com/restaurants/features/46462/index1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NYMag&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/12/tokyo-eases-restrictions-blowfish&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1992-04-06/news/9201310910_1_fugu-mitsugoro-bando-japanese-delicacy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chicago Tribune&lt;/a&gt;, etc etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this article in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-japan-blowfish1-2009apr01,0,982097.story#axzz2pMdsLDPs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LA Times&lt;/a&gt;, they talk about it being an &lt;strong&gt;ancient law&lt;/strong&gt; forbidding the Emperor to eat fugu;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The blowfish, known here as fugu, carries a deadly neurotoxin with no&#xA;  known antidote. An average-sized fugu is chock-full of the poison&#xA;  tetrodotoxin -- in its blood, liver and even its sex organs, Sasaki&#xA;  says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But he scoffs at the centuries-old ban on the Japanese monarch eating&#xA;  the delicacy, sought after by many Japanese as daring cuisine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;The prince and other royalty have eaten fugu&lt;/strong&gt;, so why not the&#xA;  emperor?&quot; he says. &quot;It would set a good example.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly I've seen so many re-hashings of the same phrase (all without any shred of sourcing) that I'm utterly convinced that this is an urban myth, potentially one taught to qualified fugu chefs during their training since they seem to be taken in by it as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16965" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T19:42:57.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18972" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="18978" CreationDate="2014-01-03T20:00:50.893" Score="3" ViewCount="1493" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia suggests that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Akhenaten (who died perhaps in 1336 BC or 1334 BC)&lt;/a&gt; was &quot;The first claims of global supremacy of a specific god&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotheism#Origin_and_development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Monotheism - Origin and development&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the cities of the Ancient Near East, each city had a local patron deity, such as Shamash at Larsa or Sin at Ur. The first claims of global supremacy of a specific god date to the Late Bronze Age, with Akhenaten's Great Hymn to the Aten (speculatively connected to Judaism by Sigmund Freud in his Moses and Monotheism).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard many times that the Jews were the first. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has it been conclusively established who were the first to believe in monotheism? What historical evidence is available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16894" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T01:15:00.527" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T18:54:13.130" Title="Were the Jews the first to believe in monotheism?" Tags="|history|religion|judaism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16258" CreationDate="2014-01-03T20:18:19.343" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, the answer is that there is no definitive answer to that, yet. As with many behavioral addictions, including sex addiction, that would be a broader category,  pornography addiction is just now starting to be researched and understood. In order to give a clear view of how polarizing this topic is, I will bring two articles to this discussion. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3050060/#CIT1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;first one&lt;/a&gt;, by Hilton and Watts (2011), defends that there is a pornography addiction. It starts of by postulating how other addictions affect the brain: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All addictions create, in addition to chemical changes in the brain, anatomical and pathological changes which result in various manifestations of cerebral dysfunction collectively labeled hypofrontal syndromes. In these syndromes, the underlying defect, reduced to its simplest description, is damage to the “braking system” of the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then they follow the argumentation by saying that other behaviors, such as compulsive eating, can also trigger those changes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They quote a famous researcher:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A decade ago Dr. Howard Shaffer at Harvard wrote, “I had great difficulty with my own colleagues when I suggested that a lot of addiction is the result of experience … repetitive, high-emotion, high-frequency experience. But it’s become clear that neuroadaptation—that is, changes in neural circuitry that help perpetuate the behavior—occurs even in the absence of drug-taking.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a few more examples and quotations from other studies, they conclude: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Certainly our role as healers suggests we can do more to investigate and treat human pathology related to this new entity of process or natural addiction, particularly given the growing weight of evidence supporting the neural basis of all addictive processes. Just as we consider food addiction as having a biologic basis, with no moral overlay or value-laden terminology, it is time we looked at pornography and other forms of sexual addiction with the same objective eye. Currently, social pressures relegate the management of pornography primarily to proceedings in civil or in criminal judicial venues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article had a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3115160/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;response letter&lt;/a&gt;, by Reid et al (2011), which was way more conservative. They state that the article by Hilton and Watts over-generalized the findings of small studies and ignored a lot of gaps of knowledge to postulate pornography addiction as real. Generally, they refute the main points of the first article. This sums up their conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus, although for some it is common to speak of pornography addiction or other sexual addiction, the lack of convergence of findings has led a growing number to take a more modest and careful position, wherein the connections to other classes of excessive behavior patterns are still under study. Further, delineation of what constitutes an addiction has no agreed-upon standard. &#xA;  This is also of great importance, since those two aspects are present in all drug addictions: &#xA;  Research on tolerance or withdrawal, genetic associations, and neuroimaging in hypersexual patients with pornography problems are non-existent at this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude that more research is needed, and that there might be more than one explanation to excessive pornography use (that is, some may be addicted to it, some may be using it a lot for another reason).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23035810&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;subsequent study&lt;/a&gt;, Reid et al (2012) tested the proposed criteria for Hypersexual Disorder for the (then) upcoming DSM-5. Hypersexual Disorder was a category which would include excessive pornography use among its possible presentations. They reported: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The HD criteria proposed by the DSM-5 Work Group on Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders appear to demonstrate high reliability and validity when applied to patients in a clinical setting among a group of raters with modest training on assessing HD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite all that, The American Psychiatric Association opted to not include Hypersexual Behavior on DSM-V because it still lacked evidence to be considered a real diagnosis. Therefore, it is not an official diagnosis as of now, but there is sure to be more research on this and it might change in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16968" LastEditorUserId="26673" LastEditDate="2017-02-08T21:49:52.643" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T21:49:52.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18974" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18972" CreationDate="2014-01-03T20:18:28.610" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always read and been told Zoroastrianism was the first monotheistic religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an extract from its Wikipedia entry, but there is some good stuff on youtube as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zoroastrianism arose in the eastern region of the ancient Persian Empire, when the religious philosopher Zoroaster simplified the pantheon of early Iranian gods[2] into two opposing forces: Ahura Mazda (Illuminating Wisdom) and Angra Mainyu (Destructive Spirit) in the 7th century BCE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zoroastrians believe that there is one universal, transcendent, supreme god, Ahura Mazda, or the 'Wise Lord'.(Ahura means 'Being' and Mazda means 'Mind' in Avestan language).[9]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was also told that here aren't any surviving religious scriptures from before Zoroastrianism except Hindu, and that Hinduism is not at all monotheistic; but some people say that that some sects of Hinduism may be monotheistic too (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_views_on_monotheism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hindu views on monotheism&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16961" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T06:52:58.183" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17608" CreationDate="2014-01-03T22:01:47.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have never heard of &quot;vampire theory&quot; as a term, but I have heard a lot about victim-to-victimizer, and &quot;identification with the aggressor&quot;. The later has psychoanalytic origin, and therefore I won't talk much about it because it is not empirically validated, although it can be observed in therapeutic settings with the patiens. &#xA;About the question itself: An association between both certainly exists, as the prevalence of sexual abusers among those who have been abused has been reported by some longitudinal studies, like those:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12583946&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12583946&lt;/a&gt;&#xA; &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/190/49/s27.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/190/49/s27.full.pdf&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;As you can see, the prevalence of severe antisocial behavior is way higher than would be expected. But the evidence is not enough to prove causality, as many confounding factors apply, like other social adversities, and even genetics (since many abusers are family members too). Also, only a minority of those abused turn into abusers, so that certainly is not a determinant factor. Therefore, someone can hardly “blame” being abused in childhood for abusing someone in adulthood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16968" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T22:01:47.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18972" CreationDate="2014-01-03T23:26:00.887" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any conclusive facts to determine who were the first to believe in monotheism?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_views_on_monotheism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some elements of monotheism in the Rig Vedas&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even the earlier Mandalas of Rig Veda (books 1 and 9), which contain hymns dedicated to devas, are thought to have a tendency toward monotheism.[6] Often quoted isolated pada 1.164.46 of the Rig Veda states (trans. Griffith):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indraṃ mitraṃ varuṇamaghnimāhuratho divyaḥ sa suparṇo gharutmān,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ekaṃ sad viprā bahudhā vadantyaghniṃ yamaṃ mātariśvānamāhuḥ&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &quot;They&#xA;  call him Indra, Mitra, Varuṇa, Agni, and he is heavenly nobly-winged&#xA;  Garutmān. &lt;strong&gt;To what is One&lt;/strong&gt;, sages give many a title they call it Agni,&#xA;  Yama, Mātariśvan.&quot;(trans. Griffith)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the terms used to describe Hindu monotheism is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brahman&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rig_Veda&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rigveda&lt;/a&gt; is old:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is one of the oldest extant texts in any Indo-European language&lt;/strong&gt;. Philological and linguistic evidence indicate that the Rigveda was composed in the north-western region of the Indian subcontinent, roughly between 1700–1100 BC[5] (the early Vedic period). There are strong linguistic and cultural similarities with the early Iranian Avesta, deriving from the Proto-Indo-Iranian times, often associated with the early Andronovo and Sintashta-Petrovka cultures of c. 2200 – 1600 BC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take this as evidence that people have been thinking and writing about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism#Religious_monism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;monism&lt;/a&gt;, pantheism, monotheism, etc., since the dawn of recorded history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the following quote describing the origins in Judaism describes Zoroastrianism as &quot;dualist&quot;, in spite of the quote in the other answer which defines it as &quot;monotheist&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Temple_Judaism#Babylonian_captivity&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Second Temple Judaism - Babylonian captivity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Babylonian captivity had a number of consequences for Judaism and the Jewish culture, including changes to the Hebrew alphabet and changes in the fundamental practices and customs of the Jewish religion. Many[who?] suggest the people of Israel were henotheists during the First Temple period, believing each nation had its own god but that theirs was superior.[3][4] Others suggest the people of Israel and Judah were polytheists,[5] citing for example the presence of an asherah in the Temple.[6] Some suggest that strict monotheism developed during the Babylonian Exile, &lt;strong&gt;perhaps in reaction to Zoroastrian dualism&lt;/strong&gt;.[7]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I take from that that there are different degrees/understandings/explanations of &quot;monotheism&quot;, and therefore that &quot;who were the first to believe in monotheism?&quot; might be debatable or unclear. For example someone might say &quot;Zoroastrians&quot; or &quot;Hindus&quot; to which someone else might reply, &quot;no &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;that wasn't true monotheism&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-01-03T23:26:00.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6788" CreationDate="2014-01-04T10:35:08.047" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a study here from the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12597475&quot;&gt;US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;  (Lukasik J, et al) entitled &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Reduction of poliovirus 1, bacteriophages, Salmonella montevideo, and Escherichia coli O157:H7 on strawberries by physical and disinfectant washes&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study describes the anti-bacterial effects of a &quot;vinegar wash&quot;. Apparently using a vinegar based solution was 95% successful in removing bacteria from bacteria treated strawberries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The efficacy levels of different physical and chemical washing&#xA;  treatments in the reduction of viral and bacterial pathogens from&#xA;  inoculated strawberries were evaluated. Escherichia coli O157:H7,&#xA;  Salmonella Montevideo, poliovirus 1, and the bacteriophages PRD1,&#xA;  phiX174, and MS2 were used as model and surrogate organisms. Chemicals&#xA;  readily available to producers and/or consumers were evaluated as&#xA;  antimicrobial additives for the production of washes. The gentle&#xA;  agitation of contaminated strawberries in water for 2 min led to&#xA;  reductions in microbial populations ranging from 41 to 79% and from 62&#xA;  to 90% at water temperatures of 22 and 43 degrees C, respectively.&#xA;  Significant reductions (&gt; 98%) in numbers of bacteria and viruses were&#xA;  obtained with sodium hypochlorite (50 to 300 ppm of free chlorine),&#xA;  Oxine or Carnebon (200 ppm of product generating &quot;stabilized chlorine&#xA;  dioxide&quot;), Tsunami (100 ppm of peroxyacetic acid), and Alcide (100 or&#xA;  200 ppm of acidified sodium chlorite) washes. Overall, 200 ppm of&#xA;  acidified sodium chlorite produced the greatest reductions of&#xA;  microorganisms. Hydrogen peroxide (0.5%) was slightly less effective&#xA;  than free chlorine in a strawberry wash and caused slight fruit&#xA;  discoloration. Cetylpyridinium chloride (0.1%) was effective in the&#xA;  reduction of bacterial species, while trisodium phosphate (1%) was&#xA;  effective against viruses. The consumer-oriented produce wash Fit was&#xA;  very effective (&gt; 99%) in reducing the numbers of bacteria but not in&#xA;  reducing the numbers of viruses. Another wash, Healthy Harvest, was&#xA;  significantly less effective than Fit in reducing bacterial pathogens&#xA;  but more effective for viruses. The performance of automatic&#xA;  dishwashing detergent was similar to that of Healthy Harvest and&#xA;  significantly better than that of liquid dishwashing detergent.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Solutions containing table salt (2% NaCl) or vinegar (10%) reduced the&#xA;  numbers of bacteria by about 90%, whereas only the vinegar wash&#xA;  reduced the numbers of viruses significantly (ca. 95%).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16965" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T10:35:08.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13675" CreationDate="2014-01-04T13:39:22.163" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;These pictures are ostensibly made by using a head-mounted light as well as a secondary light pointing toward the camera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The photographer (Dan Arkle) has a number of similar photos on his &lt;a href=&quot;http://danarklephotography.yolasite.com/nightsoloing-gallery.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; as well as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://danarklephotography.yolasite.com/nightsoloing-at-stanage.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;very detailed explanation&lt;/a&gt; of the technology and techniques used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HIpQQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, you can see an extensive &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mMy-7cynDU&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;making of&lt;/a&gt;&quot; documentary that was shown on BBC1's &quot;The One Show&quot; showing both the process by which these photos were made (including head-mounted camera footage) and the cameras used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In several of the individual shots on the video you can distinctly make out a human form climbing along with the lights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VUoRU.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst I agree that it would be perfectly possible to have faked all of the above, it stretches the bounds of credibility to imagine that that's the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16965" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T13:39:22.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18986" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18970" CreationDate="2014-01-04T16:14:05.880" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bes-Rastrollo M, Schulze MB, Ruiz-Canela M, Martinez-Gonzalez MA (2013) Financial Conflicts of Interest and Reporting Bias Regarding the Association between Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Weight Gain: A Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews. PLoS Med 10(12): e1001578. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1001578&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001578&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[M]ost reviews that reported having no conflicts of interest argued that current evidence justified public health strategies that discourage the consumption of [sugar sweetened beverages].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among those reviews without any reported conflict of interest, 83.3% of the conclusions (10/12) were that [sugar sweetened beverage] consumption could be a potential risk factor for weight gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[T]he best large randomized trials also support a direct association between [sugar sweetened beverage] consumption and weight gain or obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reviews that declared conflicts of interest with food companies reported results in the opposite direction, but this review concluded that this &amp;quot;suggests an empirical evidence of bias&amp;quot; and that &amp;quot;these findings draw attention to possible inaccuracies in scientific evidence from research funded by the food and drink industry&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T16:37:12.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18987" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-04T19:36:13.117" Score="2" ViewCount="574" Body="&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that yeast (esp. candida) lives in digestive systems of most people. I was recently introduced to the concept of &quot;candida overgrowth&quot;. My pseudoscience detector quickly alerted me about the concept (see also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidiasis#Society_and_culture&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candidiasis#Society_and_culture&lt;/a&gt; as suggested by @GlenTheUdderboat), and it is not my area of expertise nor have I dug into the topic, but I heard that reducing sugar intake is recommended for controlling candida in the (human) digestive system (e.g., see diet section in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalcandidacenter.com/candida-causes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nationalcandidacenter.com/candida-causes/&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecandidadiet.com/why-does-candida-need-sugar/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thecandidadiet.com/why-does-candida-need-sugar/&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: is there scientific evidence for and/or against sugar intake correlating/causing candida growth in human/animal digestive systems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7671" LastEditorUserId="7671" LastEditDate="2014-01-04T20:14:57.690" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T20:14:57.690" Title="Does eating sugar feed yeast in the gut?" Tags="|nutrition|alternative-medicine|sugar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18987" CreationDate="2014-01-04T20:12:07.847" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-brewery_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Auto-brewery syndrome&lt;/a&gt; is a well-known but rare condition in which yeast living in the digestive tract can consume carbohydrates (sugars) producing alcohol, causing the host to become drunk even though he or she never consumed any alcohol.  The yeast can overgrow in such conditions, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/auto-brewery-syndrome-teetotal-teesville-man-6148233&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;persisting seemingly indefinitely until treated&lt;/a&gt;.  Treatment comes in the form of antifungal medication along with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=33912#.UshpBWRDukA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a reduced sugar diet&lt;/a&gt;, which seems to address part of your question.  From what I can tell, whether or not high sugar intake &lt;em&gt;causes&lt;/em&gt; the yeast overgrowth in the first place seems to be an open question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastActivityDate="2014-01-04T20:12:07.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18989" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-04T20:36:53.340" Score="10" ViewCount="3928" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/q/9158/3164&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;em&gt;Philosophy SE&lt;/em&gt;. Nobody there has yet been able to come up with a &quot;good&quot; source/reference. (The thus-far apparently oldest reference, provided in a comment, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wNVYAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;q=%22the%20world%20is%20beautiful%20but%20has%20a%20disease%20called%20man%22&amp;amp;dq=%22the%20world%20is%20beautiful%20but%20has%20a%20disease%20called%20man%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=ysHGUqauEefU0QXt6YDADQ&amp;amp;ved=0CGQQ6AEwCQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;.) This seems like something you are quite good at and might enjoy solving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, despite &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&amp;amp;tbm=bks&amp;amp;q=%22The%20world%20is%20beautiful,%20but%20has%20a%20disease%20called%20man%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;numerous attributions&lt;/a&gt;, is there any reason to believe that Nietzsche ever said, wrote, stated, or uttered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The world is beautiful, but has a disease called man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;either &lt;em&gt;literally&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;literally translated&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;PS: I know that cross-posting is sometimes frowned upon. Let me know (or just put &quot;on hold&quot;) if moderators think this is not appropriate.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16186" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:42:18.433" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T14:51:20.947" Title="Did Nietzsche ever state “The world is beautiful, but has a disease called man”?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18989" CreationDate="2014-01-04T23:45:33.633" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quote seems to be a paraphrase coming from Nietzche's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Genealogy_of_Morals/Second_Essay&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zur Genealogie der Moral&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But thereby he introduced that most grave and sinister illness, from which mankind has not yet recovered, the suffering of man from the disease called man&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9hHvD.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9hHvDm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was published in 1887.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In German:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mit ihm aber war die grösste und unheimlichste Erkrankung eingeleitet, von welcher die Menschheit bis heute nicht genesen ist, das Leiden des Menschen am Menschen, an sich&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which google translates a bit differently (probably more politically correctly):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But with him the biggest and scariest disease was initiated, of which humanity is still not recuperated, the suffering of the people on the people, per se.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Google N-Gram viewer, the above is the earliest usage of the idiom &amp;quot;disease called man&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, you found another great source on our Philosophy site, where you also &lt;a href=&quot;https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/q/9158/96&quot;&gt;cite&lt;/a&gt; another book of his &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Also sprach Zarathustra&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in Thus Spake Zarathustra (section 40, &amp;quot;Great Events&amp;quot;), in the discourse with the fire-dog, Nietzsche has Zarathustra say the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Die Erde, sagte er, hat eine Haut; und diese Haut hat Krankheiten. Eine dieser Krankheiten heisst zum Beispiel: &amp;quot;Mensch.&amp;quot; [The earth, said he, hath a skin; and this skin hath diseases. One of these diseases, for example, is called &amp;quot;man.&amp;quot;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book was published earlier still, 1883, but uses a slightly different version of the idiom &amp;quot;disease called man&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T14:51:20.947" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9797" CreationDate="2014-01-05T00:49:04.460" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, there seems to be some benefit of a low to moderate consumption of red wine to prevent cardiovascular disease. There has been a lot of different studies on this, with different methodologies and results, when that happens, a meta-analyses is warranted, and this question is so polemic that it has a few meta-analyses already. This study, from Chiva-Blanc et al (2013), attempts to make a summary of those meta-analyses of &lt;strong&gt;human&lt;/strong&gt; studies:&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The beneficial effects of red wine on the cardiovascular system are summarized in Fig. 1, and seem to be greater than other alcoholic beverages, probably because of its high phenolic content. A meta-analysis analyzing 23 studies of the cardiovascular effects of wine and 22 studies of the cardiovascular effects of beer (Di Castelnuovo et al., 2002) observed an inverse association between moderate wine consumption and vascular risk. This meta-analysis indicated an average significant reduction of 32% of overall vascular risk associated with wine drinking. Wine drinkers show a reduced cardiovascular mortality and a lower incidence of non-fatal vascular end points. Beer drinking was also associated with a reduced risk of vascular events, although to a&#xA;  lesser extent than that observed with wine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many possible explanations for this. The authors show supporting studies that wine and other forms of alcohol increase good cholesterol, decrease oxidative stress and inflamation, reduce platelet aggregation and other pathophysiological mechanisms to heart disease, and red wine shows a greater effect than alcohol in other forms (beer, spirits). This is well demonstrated on a table in their article, but I believe I can't reproduce it because those are usually copyrighted. Anyway, this is possibly because both ethanol and poliphenols (which are present in wine, but not in spirits) exert those effects, so yes, red wine seems to be the most beneficial. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, it is important that they also state that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although daily low to moderate alcohol intake is inversely related to CVD, the hormetic behavior of alcohol consumption shows an increased risk of certain cancers, cirrhosis and death from accidents with increasing alcohol consumption (Di Castelnuovo et al., 2010). Three or more drinks per day may increase the risk of heart disease, hypertension, stroke, obesity, hypertriglyceridemia, breast cancer, neurodegeneration, depressive disorders, weakening of bones, suicide and injuries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In response to that article, Testino et al (2013) wrote a letter to the editor explaining that, although cardiovascular risk may decrease, cancer risk rises even with low consumption, and is generally not advisable:&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For all these reasons, in Australia, the National Heart Foundation explicitly advises against the consumption of red wine and other type of alcoholic drinks for the preventing or treatment of heart disease and WHO suggests that a greater reduction in death from ischaemic heart disease can be more effectively obtained by being physically active and eating a healthier diet than by drinking a low dose of alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, as a psychiatrist, I would be concerned to make such recommendation because of the addictive properties of alcohol, and the general lack of understanding of people that is not a logical conclusion that, if 1 glass is good for your health, 10 glasses are 10 times as good…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;List of references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23408240&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23408240&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23831770&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23831770&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16968" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-05-29T11:40:17.680" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T11:40:17.680" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18994" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-05T01:59:17.847" Score="5" ViewCount="188" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maxmimalist shoes (i.e. running shoes with oversized foam midsoles) were the subject of a question at &lt;a href=&quot;https://fitness.stackexchange.com/questions/13987/are-maximalism-shoes-like-hoka-be-good-for-running&quot;&gt;Fitness Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;, which I answered, but I had to rely on anecdote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Advocates of the shoes &lt;a href=&quot;http://running.competitor.com/2013/08/shoes-and-gear/2014-running-trend-oversized-shoes_79859&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;argue&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First, it feels comfortable underfoot on every footstrike. But there’s also the lessened impact stress inflicted on the body, and runners who swear by Hokas will tell you the extra foam reduces the amount of recovery time needed from a long run or race. Then there’s the idea of increased energy return, which each of these companies and many runners say is increased considerably in max cushioned shoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that running shoes with larger foam midsoles reduces injury?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:51.697" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T21:02:26.880" Title="Do maximalist shoes reduce injuries?" Tags="|sport|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18995" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-05T03:33:10.987" Score="1" ViewCount="1282" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many comedians claim that you can't learn to be funny. 'Either you're born funny or you're not. No amount of practice or learning will change that.' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes against pretty much every other creative/artistic field. Artists are generally insulted if you suggest that they were born with talent, as it assumes that they didn't practice for hundreds of hours. Yet when it comes to comedy, experts claim that it's not something you can learn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that neurologically we aren't born the same, but is there any proof that humor is genetics and not something you can learn?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: And as OddThinking suggested below, how important is environmental factors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6497" LastEditorUserId="6497" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T21:58:19.650" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T21:58:19.650" Title="Are some people born funnier than others?" Tags="|humor|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18995" CreationDate="2014-01-05T04:10:29.227" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before I start, I want to unpick some assumptions that appear in the question, that are common in nature-versus-nurture questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you ask &quot;is there any proof that humor is genetics and not something you can learn?&quot; you are introducing two false dichotomies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The firstly is that it suggests that an attribute is either 100% genetics or 0% genetics. That ignores the common option that genetics may account for some, but not all, of the variability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, it ignores other effects - such &lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/02699058909004559&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;environmental factors&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165178110006347&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;personal factors&lt;/a&gt; unrelated to training. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epigenetics are another confusing factor that undermines the either-or nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good way to evaluate whether an attribute has a strong genetic component is to use twin studies. If there is a strong genetic component, we would expect that identical twins would have a more similar expression of the attribute than fraternal twins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using twins means that most of the confounding factors, such as upbringing, education and socioeconomic factors are close to identical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cherkas L, Hochberg F, MacGregor AJ, Snieder H, Spector TD. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10808236&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Happy families: a twin study of humour&lt;/a&gt;. Twin Res. 2000 Mar;3(1):17-22.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study evaluated 127 pairs of female twins at their response to cartoons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found that sisters tended to have correlated responses, but identical twin sisters did not have higher correlations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This pattern of correlations suggests that shared environment rather then genetic effects contributes to cartoon appreciation. Multivariate model-fitting confirmed that these data were best explained by a model that allowed for the contribution of the shared environment and random environmental factors, but not genetic effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that evaluation of cartoons has a reasonably strong correlation to the ability to produce comedy, it seems that there is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a strong genetic component.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, shared environment has an effect. This does not prove or disprove that training in comedy can help. It only disproves that one is born funny genetically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T04:10:29.227" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18998" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-05T06:26:42.793" Score="14" ViewCount="1665" Body="&lt;p&gt;A popular claim is that drinking cow's milk make children grow taller. Is that belief scientifically supported?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suggested (by editor) (notable?) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.erasmusmc.nl/perskamer/archief/2011/3418329/?lang=en&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt; that strongly suggests causality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As people who drink more milk grow taller, the consumption of large amounts of dairy products during childhood could increase the risk of developing cancer[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that question is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; concerned with cancer, only with tallness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorDisplayName="user16186" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T20:41:13.747" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T20:21:50.970" Title="Does drinking cow's milk make children grow taller?" Tags="|children|milk|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="18999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18943" CreationDate="2014-01-05T06:30:05.227" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, and here is a known case of the war on drugs making illegal use of legal-as-regulated drugs less safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the USA, Legal pain killers can be illegal if abused, i.e. taken by persons not suffering from a genuine medical condition, or taken in excess of the amount directed by the prescribing physician.  Pain killer abuse is well known and an issue of government interest: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samhsa.gov/newsroom/advisories/1308215815.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.samhsa.gov/newsroom/advisories/1308215815.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The liver toxic acetaminophen -- more commonly known from the brand name Tylenol -- is a mild pain killer and in the USA, is required to be added to pills containing stronger pain killers.  The combined formula is supposed to limit abuse among addicts who seem to be presumed to know that the acetaminophen component could be deadly at the larger dosages in seeking a high from the stronger opioid component of the combined pill.  Problem is, who said drug addicts were rational or knowledgeable about this issue? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/archevore/201103/tylenol-and-the-war-drugs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tylenol and the War On Drugs: Are you better off dead than high?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I remember being annoyed that in order to get effective pain relief I&#xA;  was being forced to take a liver toxin that added little to the pain&#xA;  relieving efficacy of the opiate. I speculated to my wife that there&#xA;  was probably more injury and death occurring from the acetaminophen&#xA;  than the &quot;dangerous narcotic&quot; in the Vicodin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now it looks like the FDA has recognized the same thing that was&#xA;  casually obvious to a radiologist more than 10 years ago. As&#xA;  recreational drug users and addicts seek Vicodin for it's narcotic&#xA;  benefits, and regular folks have acute pain, they are increasingly&#xA;  suffering inadvertent liver toxicity from acetaminophen, contributing&#xA;  to the 40,000 Emergency room visits per year related to acute liver&#xA;  injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhat earlier in the same article...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently some 38% of cases of acute liver failure are due to acetaminophen&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ingestion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T07:27:42.333" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T07:27:42.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-05T12:46:20.260" Score="4" ViewCount="4852" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read some &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00AQNK970&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that charcoal bags help removing harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Bamboo Charcoal helps improve indoor air quality by absorbing and trapping odors, allergens, and harmful VOCs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim scientifically supported? Do only &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abatement.com/pdf/benefits-of-activated-carbon-filters.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;charcoal air filters&lt;/a&gt; work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-05T21:21:56.970" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T08:45:56.570" Title="Do charcoal bags help removing volatile organic compounds (VOCs)?" Tags="|environmental-health|chemistry|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15727" CreationDate="2014-01-05T16:30:54.237" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no clear evidence that this is the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=28599&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;report itself&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data presented in this paper, including both exposure levels and CH incidence, should be considered as preliminary. They require confirmation and expansion, including long-term follow-up of infants and other children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Understanding why CH rates have risen in developed nations such as the US is a &lt;strong&gt;complex task, as multiple factors are likely involved&lt;/strong&gt;. Exposure to radiation, especially the thyroid-seeking radioiodine isotopes, &lt;strong&gt;should be considered as one of these factors&lt;/strong&gt;. The meltdown at Fukushima Dai-ichi presents an opportunity to analyze this factor, and studies such as this one should continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors themselves don't believe that this report is conclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These authors have a tendency to report &amp;quot;preliminary findings&amp;quot; with misleading titles. a quote from another publication: Because a large number of deaths are involved (37 and 125 in the two periods), the change &lt;strong&gt;approaches statistical significance&lt;/strong&gt; at p&amp;lt;.09 (p&amp;lt;.05 is significant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16987" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-05T17:26:43.947" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19006" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-05T17:01:17.887" Score="11" ViewCount="755" Body="&lt;p&gt;The History Channel stated that Nixon administration actively used anti-drug law to get rid of anti war activists. Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16698" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T14:45:23.967" LastActivityDate="2019-01-30T05:25:49.623" Title="Did the Nixon administration use anti-drug law against anti-war movement?" Tags="|united-states|politics|war|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19010" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-05T20:51:52.043" Score="9" ViewCount="1458" Body="&lt;p&gt;Similar to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/Intactivists/comments/1oa0gi/babies_go_into_neurogenic_shock_when_circumcised/&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; on Reddit, which asks for sources, I've heard various claims that during unanesthetized, ceremonial circumcision, the boy can go into &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurogenic_shock&quot;&gt;neurogenic shock&lt;/a&gt;. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drmomma.org/2009/11/circumcision-how-much-does-it-hurt.html&quot;&gt;this article on DrMomma.org&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. Mark Reiss, long time physician and member of Doctors Opposing Circumcision, discusses ample research which shows us that even those babies who don't scream and cry while being cut apart - even the 4% who do receive anesthesia - still show significant and detrimental physiological changes in body and brain activity. &lt;strong&gt;Those who do not scream bloody murder show (on neurological scans) to be lapsing into a state of neurogenic shock and/or coma (which can sometimes occur immediately).&lt;/strong&gt; To the untrained eye (i.e. the parent who says 'my baby didn't cry') it appears as though the baby has just fallen asleep... How blind we sometimes are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not clear, however, what the &quot;ample research&quot; is or who performed the neurological scans and under what conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others have said that such claims are hyped up and that ceremonial circumcision is not harmful or very painful and that when babies cry little or not at all it's a sign that it's painful, and that most crying is just from the commotion surrounding the ceremony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the real story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16824" LastEditorUserId="16824" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T19:03:03.590" LastActivityDate="2015-09-20T23:25:26.893" Title="Does unanaesthetized circumcision result in neurogenic shock?" Tags="|medical-science|circumcision|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19012" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19020" CreationDate="2014-01-05T22:26:06.560" Score="7" ViewCount="1773" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many examples of this claim on the web&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1936 Larson Kohl, the German paleontologist and anthropologist, found the bones of gigantic men on the shore of Lake Elyasi in Central Africa. Other giant skeletons were later found in Hava, the Transvaal and China. The evidence for the existence of giants is incontrovertible. &quot;A scientifically assured fact,&quot; says Dr. Louis Burkhalter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thetallestman.com/whoisthetallest/viewtopic.php?f=8&amp;amp;t=567&amp;amp;start=10&quot;&gt;http://www.thetallestman.com/whoisthetallest/viewtopic.php?f=8&amp;amp;t=567&amp;amp;start=10&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were giant skeletons found in 1936 as described or at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16332" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T00:10:46.293" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T13:09:17.953" Title="Were giant skeletons found in 1936?" Tags="|history|paleontology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19015" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18950" CreationDate="2014-01-06T01:48:21.833" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This video shows a background reading of 30 to 40 cpm. From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://seintl.com/support/manuals/InspectorUSB_Operation_Manual_English.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;manual &lt;/a&gt; the specifications of the geiger counter are known. It detects alpha, beta and gamma radiation with a pancake tube, however alpha radiation is blocked by air within 4cm and not detected. Assuming Cs-137, as most other detectors are calibrated against this source and the given tube characteristics, a dose rate of ~90 nSv/h is obtained. This is in perfect agreement with natural background radiation expectations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now taking the 150 cpm reading, you get 450 nSv/h. As you are not 24hours/365 days in this radiation field, it may considered safe, depending on your local legislation. However, this level is indeed above the background. This readings are out of the &#xA;error band and statistically significant. And the video shows a distance correlation to the the beach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update 1: &#xA; According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hmbreview.com/news/health-officials-respond-to-beach-radiation-scare/article_8c7e7fb0-74de-11e3-9c9d-001a4bcf887a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article &quot;Health officials respond to beach radiation scare&quot;&lt;/a&gt; there is now an official investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;County health officials first learned of the radiation levels last week, and they sent their own inspector on Dec. 28 to Pacifica with a Geiger counter. Using a different unit, the county inspector measured the beach to have a radiation level of about 100 micro-REM per hour, or about five times the normal amount. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: 100 microRem/h=1 microSievert/h. So the original video even underestimated the radiation by a factor of 2. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although the radiation levels were clearly higher than is typical, Peterson emphasized that it was still not unsafe for humans. A person would need to be exposed to 100 microREMs of radiation for 50,000 hours before it surpassed safety guidelines by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, he explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100 microREM/h times 50 000 hours makes 5 REM or 50 mSv. This is outside of  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icrp.org/publication.asp?id=ICRP%20Publication%20103&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The 2007 Recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection&lt;/a&gt; of 1 mSv artificial dose rate for common people. For the US &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/radiationionizing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;special regulations&lt;/a&gt; apply. Your yearly combined dose should not exceed 5 mSv. Within 5 000 hours  in a 100 micro REM radiadion field you get your yearly &quot;save&quot; dose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So maybe you should avoid this confirmed hot spot beach West of San Mateo, south of Princeton Harbor. Or limit your visit to approx. 3 hours a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hmbreview.com/news/radioactive-sands-known-for-years/article_1c513cde-7ed7-11e3-8c62-001a4bcf887a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Half Moon Bay Review article&lt;/a&gt; interprets the readings with the occurrence of radioactive Thorium in the black sand&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It’s not considered a radiation hazard, &lt;strong&gt;so long&lt;/strong&gt; as you’re &lt;strong&gt;not eating it&lt;/strong&gt;, and you’re &lt;strong&gt;not living on it, 24/7&lt;/strong&gt;.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16992" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T11:36:44.567" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T11:36:44.567" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-06T04:28:14.133" Score="6" ViewCount="127" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/undergraduate-numbers-cap-to-be-abolished-osborne/2009667.article&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this story&lt;/a&gt;, the UK chancellor is quoted as saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each year, around 60,000 young people who have worked hard at school,&#xA;  got the results, want to go on learning and want to take out a loan to&#xA;  pay for it, are prevented from doing so because of an arbitrary cap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That makes no sense when we have a far lower proportion of people&#xA;  going to university than even the United States, let alone countries&#xA;  like South Korea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Access to higher education is a basic tenet of economic success in the&#xA;  global race.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2886" LastEditorUserId="2886" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T06:48:45.553" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T06:48:45.553" Title="Does higher education increase international competitiveness?" Tags="|united-kingdom|university|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19010" CreationDate="2014-01-06T09:35:11.570" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The search for &quot;neurogenic shock circumcision&quot; returns zero results on pubMed, which is the largest database of medical literature in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest thing I could find is &quot;American Society for Pain Management Nursing (ASPMN) Position Statement: Male Infant Circumcision Pain Management,&quot; which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the AAP (AAP, 1999; AAP, 2005), there is solid evidence that male infants who undergo circumcision without the benefits of analgesia experience physiologic stress and pain. Unrelieved pain during circumcision can result in negative physiologic stress responses such as changes in heart rate and blood pressure, apnea, cyanosis, and decreases in cortisol level and oxygen concentration (American Academy of Pediatrics Task Force on Circumcision, 1999, Anand et al., 2005 and Berde and Sethna, 2002). In addition, male infants who are circumcised without analgesia may exhibit a stronger pain response to routine immunizations (Taddio et al., 1997).&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pmn.2011.08.007&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pmn.2011.08.007&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Please note that this answer does not constitute medical advice. It is only meant to summarize published research related to the topic and limited to the cited sources. Consult your physician about what these results may mean for your health.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-09-20T23:25:26.893" LastActivityDate="2015-09-20T23:25:26.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19012" CreationDate="2014-01-06T11:45:40.867" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Kohl-Larsen&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Larson Kohl's Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; does state that he found human ancestral remains, but it was Australopithecus afarensis (the same species as the famous Lucy) but nothing about giants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The place described at the passage is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumba_Cave&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mumba Cave&lt;/a&gt;, which is located on the shore Lake Eyasi (not Elyasi) in  Tanzania and was excavated by Kohl and his wife margit in the 1930s. The findings in the cave, by Kohl and his wife, and by later archaeologists are described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiana.edu/~origins/teach/P314/MSA%20reports/MumbaCave.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; Indiana University Article and it doesn't say anything even remotely close to giants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also published scientific articles regarding Mumba cave, none of them depicts giants. &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=mumba+cave&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=0%2C5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Scholar results for Mumba Cave&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote that is attributed to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Burkhalter&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Louis Burkhalter&lt;/a&gt; was not said regarding the supposed findings of Larson Kohl, but on other findings, that didn't include skeletons or any other human (or other creature) remains at all:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He is also notable in some fringe circles for suggesting the existence of giants as a &quot;scientific fact&quot; in the Acheulean period when commenting on the gigantic lithic finds of Denis Saurat at Sasnych in Syria. Later review of his suggestion notes that large lithics found could have been used for stunning and traps and present no evidence for giant populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Burkhalter&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia sources the quote to a french book by Burkhalter himself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Burkhalter, Louis., &quot;Bibliographie préhistorique (suite et fin)&quot; in Bulletin du Musée de Beyrouth. Tome IX, 1949-1950&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the rebatle to him is sourced to a french article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/annor_0003-4134_1957_num_7_3_6117&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Edeine, Bernard., Monuments mégalithiques détruits ou en voie de disparition dans le bac de Caux, Annales de Normandie, 1957&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-01-06T13:09:17.953" LastActivityDate="2014-01-06T13:09:17.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19022" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-06T16:13:14.260" Score="12" ViewCount="685" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/09/27/statement-president&quot;&gt;Obama&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Iran’s Supreme Leader has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, according to a Middle East Media Research Institute report entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/6291.htm&quot;&gt;Renewed Iran-West Nuclear Talks – Part II: Tehran Attempts to Deceive U.S. President Obama, Sec'y of State Clinton With Nonexistent Anti-Nuclear Weapons Fatwa By Supreme Leader Khamenei&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, an investigation by MEMRI reveals that no such fatwa ever existed or was ever published, and that media reports about it are nothing more than a propaganda ruse on the part of the Iranian regime apparatuses – in an attempt to deceive top U.S. administration officials and the others mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Khamenei issue a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatwa&quot;&gt;fatwa&lt;/a&gt; banning development of nuclear weapons?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some news story about this supposed fatwa:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2013/11/27/did-irans-supreme-leader-issue-a-fatwa-against-the-development-of-nuclear-weapons/&quot;&gt;www.washingtonpost.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/01/iran-fatwa-against-nukes-text-mystery/2903789/&quot;&gt;www.usatoday.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastActivityDate="2017-02-06T17:08:30.860" Title="Did Khamenei issue a fatwa banning development of nuclear weapons?" Tags="|islam|nuclear-weapons|iran|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19025" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-06T20:04:43.980" Score="8" ViewCount="508" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's set aside the argument that computers have a pseudo-random number generator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm interested in knowing if a lottery terminal generates each quick pick independently from all previous picks and draws each from an identical uniform distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Why I'm doubtful of the above claim.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A colleague of mine relayed a story (I don't know his source) where he said that the lotteries are more interested in having multiple winners for a given jackpot prize than a single winner because it creates more publicity.  So, people who ask for a quick pick are more likely to get numbers that were already picked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3989" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-01-20T20:15:40.697" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T20:15:40.697" Title="Are Lottery Quick Picks independently and uniformly distributed?" Tags="|united-states|gambling|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19026" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-06T21:03:31.847" Score="0" ViewCount="474" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.treasurydirect.gov&lt;/a&gt; puts the debt at around $17.3 trillion (this will change, so I'm not putting an exact amount).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A related quote from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Us_debt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On December 12, 2013, debt held by the public was approximately $12.312 trillion or about 73% of Q3 2013 GDP[5][6] Intragovernmental holdings stood at $4.9 trillion (29%), giving a combined total public debt of &lt;strong&gt;$17.226 trillion&lt;/strong&gt; or over 100% GDP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the reason I'm doubting this is because of two &amp;quot;dissenters&amp;quot;. One says it is $90 trillion&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/14127/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UC PROFESSOR PEGS NATIONAL DEBT AT NEARLY $90 TRILLION DOLLARS&lt;/a&gt;; and one says the US has a &lt;em&gt;surplus&lt;/em&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urCrL0R9Zlg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;$1,138.26 trillion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are either of those correct? The original article that piqued my interest was in Barrons entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424053111904227604579198062920358796.html?mod=googlenews_barrons&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;No Accounting for Government Cost&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how the article starts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The financial position of the U.S. is not just troubled; it is artificially created to fool the people.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quote from the article that makes the claim is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The government's financial reporting is misleading because our political leaders have subverted the democratic process to advance their personal interests. They have spent enormous sums of taxed and borrowed money to endear themselves to the electorate, but they do not want to be held accountable for the full extent of this spending. Hence, the legislative and executive branches collude to underreport expenditures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reality, the federal government's existing legal obligations exceed $90 trillion, which is far above the carefully defined debt-ceiling limit of $16.7 trillion and is almost six times the size of the gross domestic product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few paragraphs later:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Constitution's statement and account clause requires that &amp;quot;a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.&amp;quot; &lt;strong&gt;Congress' false reporting&lt;/strong&gt; has resulted in the violation of several rights, including the right to vote, freedom of speech, due process, equal protection, the right to financial information, and the right to political accountability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So he is directly claiming that Congress is falsifying data. If you can't view that article, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=No+Accounting+for+Government+Cost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google&lt;/a&gt; No Accounting for Government Cost and select the Barron's article to view the whole article. For some reason the direct link only gives an excerpt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T01:53:39.057" Title="Is the US debt between 15 and 20 trillion dollars?" Tags="|united-states|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19027" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-06T23:39:07.507" Score="2" ViewCount="34792" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Socrates say this ?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17006" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T09:04:40.517" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T10:49:45.953" Title="Did Socrates say “The secret of change is...&quot;?" Tags="|history|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19030" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19033" CreationDate="2014-01-07T06:45:00.370" Score="3" ViewCount="1190" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://didyouknow.org/animals/sharks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Did You Know.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sharks are the only animals that almost never get sick: they are immune to almost every known disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true or is it a myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16701" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T09:23:50.247" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T09:23:50.247" Title="Are sharks immune to almost all known diseases?" Tags="|medical-science|zoology|immune-system|disease|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19030" CreationDate="2014-01-07T07:51:43.540" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not only is this not true, but it is explicitly disproved by the sources provided by that very site. LOL!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sharks do get cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further down on the same page as the claim, it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also see:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/64/23/8485.full&quot;&gt;History of known shark tumors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clicking on that link we get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gary K. Ostrander, Keith C. Cheng, Jeffrey C. Wolf, and Marilyn J. Wolfe, &lt;a href=&quot;http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/64/23/8485.full&quot;&gt;Shark Cartilage, Cancer and the Growing Threat of Pseudoscience&lt;/a&gt;, doi: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-04-2260, Cancer Res December 1, 2004 64; 8485&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The promotion of crude shark cartilage extracts as a cure for cancer has contributed to at least two significant negative outcomes: a dramatic decline in shark populations and a diversion of patients from effective cancer treatments. &lt;strong&gt;An alleged lack of cancer in sharks constitutes a key justification for its use. Herein, both malignant and benign neoplasms of sharks and their relatives are described, including previously unreported cases from the Registry of Tumors in Lower Animals, and two sharks with two cancers each.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The claims that sharks do not, or rarely, get cancer was originally argued by I. William Lane in a book entitled “Sharks Don’t Get Cancer” in 1992 (7) , publicized in “60 Minutes” television segments in 1993, and reargued in another book in 1996 (8) . The titles of the books do not match their texts in which the authors note that sharks actually get cancer but claim incorrectly that sharks rarely get cancer. We make three main points below: (a) sharks do get cancer; (b) the rate of shark cancer is not known from present data; and (c) even if the incidence of shark cancer were low, cancer incidence is irrelevant to the use of crude extracts for cancer treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T07:51:43.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19027" CreationDate="2014-01-07T09:15:37.710" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, he didn't. At least not the Socrates of ancient Greece.&#xA;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Socrates#Misattributed&quot;&gt;Wikiquote&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.&#xA;  This a actually a quote from a character named Socrates in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_of_the_Peaceful_Warrior&quot;&gt;Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book that Changes Lives&lt;/a&gt;, by Dan Millman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T10:49:45.953" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T10:49:45.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19035" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-07T09:20:37.540" Score="9" ViewCount="1241" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am curious about white hair: A friend told me that drinking coffee and tea would increase the number of white hair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a similar claim on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.pravda.ru/health/20-06-2006/82265-gray_hair-0/&quot;&gt;English Pravda site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among other reasons of hair graying are excessive intake of tea, coffee and alcohol, of fried and oily foods, spices and sour and acidic foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can you tell me if this true or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17015" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T09:26:52.837" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T21:02:31.550" Title="Will coffee increase the growth of white hair?" Tags="|nutrition|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|hair|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19037" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-07T10:35:44.980" Score="7" ViewCount="169" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that people with high IQs stay up late. I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/smart-means-sex-and-drugs-and-staying-up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; which in turn refers to this study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;S. Kanazawa, K. Perina, &lt;a href=&quot;http://personal.lse.ac.uk/KANAZAWA/pdfs/PAID2009.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why night owls are more intelligent&lt;/a&gt;, Personality and Individual Differences 47 (2009) 685–690&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More&#xA;  intelligent children are more likely to grow up to be nocturnal&#xA;  adults who go to bed late and wake up late on both weekdays&#xA;  and weekends&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the science sound? I find this strange because there is the claim that successful people get up early.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="14333" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T20:01:21.453" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T20:01:21.453" Title="Do intelligent people tend to stay up later?" Tags="|sleep|intelligence|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-01-07T20:02:09.613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19038" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-07T12:56:41.070" Score="24" ViewCount="3335" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are various articles online quoting studies (or even loosely referring to &quot;studies&quot; without reference) claiming you can only gain fat cells but not loose them. Some examples include &lt;a href=&quot;http://calorielab.com/news/2006/08/17/fat-cells-never-say-die/&quot;&gt;Calorielab.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fat Cells Shrink, But Don’t Die&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As well as &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/07/22/fat.weight.loss/&quot;&gt;CNN.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If anyone of us overeats long and hard enough, we can increase the number of fat cells in our body,&quot; Fried said. &quot;When we lose weight, we don't lose the number of fat cells.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Earlier in the article: &quot;Susan Fried, director of the Boston Obesity and Nutrition Research Center at the Boston University School of Medicine&quot;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CNN does mention one way to actually get rid of the cells:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Liposuction can remove fat cells&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia also chips in on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipocyte&quot;&gt;Adipocyte&lt;/a&gt; article, which has a section on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipocyte#Cell_turnover&quot;&gt;Cell Turnover&lt;/a&gt; that claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even after marked weight loss, the body never loses adipocytes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, to end with a question: are these claims true that you can not loose fat cells with any kind of lifestyle change (diet, exercise, etc), and only with invasive (e.g. surgical) methods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7206" LastEditorUserId="7206" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T13:32:23.433" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T00:23:12.387" Title="Can the body never lose fat cells?" Tags="|nutrition|physiology|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19026" CreationDate="2014-01-07T16:25:40.737" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The national debt is, at time of writing, a bit over $17 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office wrote at the end of last November that the national debt was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44877&quot;&gt;$17.1 trillion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The amount of outstanding debt subject to limit is now around &lt;strong&gt;$17.1 trillion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Emphasis in the original text)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Treasury concurs, listing the current national debt (a month and half after the CBO's report) at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current&quot;&gt;$17.3 trillion&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w19253&quot;&gt;paper to which you linked&lt;/a&gt; does not say that the national debt is $90 trillion, but rather that &quot;off-balance-sheet commitments&quot; combined with the national debt equate to around $90 trillion. These &quot;off-balance-sheet commitments&quot; don't measure the debt we've already incurred, but rather the debt we've already incurred as well as the debt we would have to incur in the future maintaining current spending levels, and with assuming predict growth in GDP and healthcare costs. As far as I can tell, Hamilton is measuring something other than the national debt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The person in the YouTube video to which you linked, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_McMillan&quot;&gt;Jimmy McMillan&lt;/a&gt;, is, as far as I can tell, in no way qualified to make statements about the economy. He cites no evidence for any of his claims, so we can reject them as unsubstantiated and contradicted by the Congressional Budget Office and Treasury. This is ignoring the fact that the surplus he claims the US has is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product&quot;&gt;orders of magnitude greater&lt;/a&gt; than the entire world's economic output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastEditorUserId="8532" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T17:06:46.987" LastActivityDate="2014-01-07T17:06:46.987" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19042" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19071" CreationDate="2014-01-07T17:57:00.553" Score="5" ViewCount="513" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0w36GAyZIA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this talk&lt;/a&gt; by Jacob Appelbaum, where he revealed some tools used by NSA for the mass surveillance via TAO. At the end of the talk he also added that the NSA could actually beam a 1 kW RF energy from its portable continuous wave radar unit (CTX4000). Is this possible? It sounds like a serious threat to human safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13552" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-07T23:12:06.753" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T10:31:08.707" Title="Can NSA's portable surveillance radars emit 1kW of RF energy?" Tags="|radiation|security|surveillance|nsa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19044" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-07T19:49:11.540" Score="18" ViewCount="962" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard claimed many times that reading an iPad in bed makes for worse sleep quality than reading a book or a Kindle with a bedside lamp,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possible explanations I've heard are because of the brightness level, the blue-rich light or the angle of lighting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking on wikipedia probably raised more questions than settled:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 2012 study [...] showed that melatonin levels are suppressed by roughly 22% when someone is exposed to backlit screens for two hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there is no effect for less than two hours at full brightness, which is clearly not how I would typically use an iPad before falling asleep:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tablets were then turned on, with their displays at full brightness. The conclusions from the study were that with only one hour of use, there was no significant melatonin suppression. However, two hours of use did lead to significant melatonin suppression. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_media_and_sleep#Self-luminous_tablets&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_media_and_sleep#Self-luminous_tablets&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study had only 13 test subjects and no double blind, so I'm quite doubtful it can give a reliable answer anyways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the science say? Should I go back and read my Kindle or can I enjoy my iPad without fear of screwing up my sleep patterns?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2017-09-24T17:18:23.500" Title="Does reading off a self-luminous tablet impact the quality of sleep?" Tags="|sleep|electronics|reading|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19035" CreationDate="2014-01-08T03:44:25.777" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is some &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-4632.2007.03119.x/abstract;jsessionid=4CB0B638D79A5993941CC9A2ED507985.f01t02&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;evidence&lt;/a&gt; that caffeine may stimulate hair growth in general, which could mean that white hair would also grow faster. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Androgen-dependent growth inhibition of ex vivo hair follicles from patients suffering from AGA was present in the human hair organ culture model, a constellation which may serve for future studies to screen new substances against androgen-dependent hair loss. Caffeine was identified as a stimulator of human hair growth in vitro; a fact which may have important clinical impact in the management of AGA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for coffee specifically causing white hair to grow, there appears to be only anecdotal evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16823" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T21:02:31.550" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T21:02:31.550" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19047" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T09:40:48.950" Score="3" ViewCount="102" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/worlds-scariest-drug/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; the drug referred to as Devil's breath &quot;renders a person incapable of exercising free will&quot;. In the video at 3:27 one person claims people under the influence are completely susceptible to suggestion and would do things like write a person a check if told to do so. To what extent are these statements true? I found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopolamine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; article on this and it mentions nothing about &quot;free will&quot; or &quot;mind control&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T14:45:03.290" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T14:45:03.290" Title="Can this drug make &quot;zombies&quot; out of people in the sense they will do whatever they are told?" Tags="|hypnotism|medications|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-01-08T13:06:59.163" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19049" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T12:45:00.467" Score="17" ViewCount="4392" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sensodyne is famously known for saying &lt;em&gt;&quot;Recommended by nine out of ten dentists&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since being introduced in 1961, Sensodyne has become the favorite sensitive toothpaste of dentists around the world. In fact, 9 out of 10 dentists recommend Sensodyne and Pronamel as the brand for Acid Wear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sensodyne-me.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.sensodyne-me.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this &quot;nine out of ten&quot; actually based on unbiased tests or statistics, or is just a slogan come up by a marketing department?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14542" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-08T13:04:57.400" LastActivityDate="2015-09-23T22:37:25.260" Title="Is Sensodyne recommended by &quot;nine out of ten dentists&quot;?" Tags="|consumer-products|dentistry|marketing|advertising|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18635" CreationDate="2014-01-08T20:06:36.150" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This urban legend is false. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://snopes.com/science/nobel.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Prize's Rite&lt;/a&gt; and the peer-reviewed &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03025815&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Why is there no Nobel prize in Mathematics&quot;&lt;/a&gt; he was never married and there is no written record of his motives except of his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/will-full.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;last will&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;..the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the &lt;strong&gt;greatest benefit to mankind&lt;/strong&gt;. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the &lt;strong&gt;most important discovery or invention&lt;/strong&gt; within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is in the Nobel committee to fulfill his will of inventions and discoveries, that have been proven to be useful for the benefit to mankind. E.g. there was never a prize awarded for a new physical theory alone, just for a proven theory with an application. Einstein never got the prize for the special or general theory of relativity, he got it for the theory of photoelectric effect, that was measured and verified in an experiment and proven to be usefull in generating electricity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was actually a mathematician once awarded a Nobel prize 1994, John Nash, for his achivements in game theory. However, the commonly known Nobel prize in economics is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, established in 1968 and endowed by Sweden's central bank&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also several noteworthy prizes in the field of mathematics:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_Prize&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Abel Prize&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fields Medal&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chern_Medal&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chern Medal&lt;/a&gt; should be mentioned. Their combined prize money is even higher than the Nobel prize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ironically, if Mittag-Leffler was ever in dispute with Alfred Nobel, in the first&#xA;few years after Nobel’s death in 1896, he was of &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“decisive importance...in&#xA;  shaping the decisions and hence the international standing of&#xA;  the [Nobel] prizes” [p. 8, Crawford,The Beginnings of the Nobel Institution, Cambridge University Press, 1984]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17044" LastEditorUserId="19346" LastEditDate="2015-12-31T15:53:47.117" LastActivityDate="2015-12-31T15:53:47.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19057" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T21:46:08.080" Score="3" ViewCount="692" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is not about &lt;em&gt;smoking&lt;/em&gt; cannabis. The scope of this question is limited to other methods of consumption such as edibles, tinctures, and transdermal patches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_effects_of_cannabis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the long-term effects of cannabis&lt;/a&gt; says that studies show that cannabis usage by teenagers may cause permanent cognitive impairment, but except at very high doses, this has not been established for adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It says that it may raise the risk of schizophrenia in susceptible individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also says that cannabis usage during pregnancy may cause permanent damage to an unborn child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, preliminary research suggests that cannabis consumption may prevent Alzheimer's disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a similar question asked on this site: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/487/is-smoking-weed-bad-for-your-health&quot;&gt;Is smoking weed bad for your health?&lt;/a&gt;, but this other question deals primarily with the negative effects of &lt;em&gt;smoking&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, what do we know today about the long-term effects of cannabis consumption besides smoking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3988" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T19:45:52.070" Title="Is cannabis bad for your health, when not smoked, in the long term?" Tags="|medical-science|recreational-drugs|marijuana|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19057" CreationDate="2014-01-08T23:09:10.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As of 2010, there was &quot;insufficient evidence, particularly because of the low number of studies, to assess whether the all-cause mortality rate is elevated among cannabis users in the general population. Case–control studies suggest that some adverse health outcomes may be elevated among heavy cannabis users, namely, fatal motor vehicle accidents, and possibly respiratory and brain cancers.&quot; (Calabria &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 2010)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calabria, Bianca, Louisa Degenhardt, Wayne Hall, and Michael Lynskey. &quot;Does cannabis use increase the risk of death? Systematic review of epidemiological evidence on adverse effects of cannabis use.&quot; Drug and Alcohol Review 29, no. 3 (2010): 318-330.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2014-01-08T23:09:10.040" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-08T23:09:10.040" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19059" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-08T23:47:36.800" Score="11" ViewCount="459" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my friend told me about &lt;a href=&quot;http://investigate911.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;. It gives many proofs related to the catastrophic event. The use of Nano-thermite strongly suggests that the buildings were imploded.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Although I do not trust these kinda sites, but presence of a conspiracy can't be completely rejected. Was it really pre-planned by USA itself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1368/on-911-was-building-7-destroyed-in-a-controlled-explosion&quot;&gt;On 9/11, was Building 7 destroyed in a controlled explosion?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2076/did-the-u-s-government-have-prior-knowledge-of-9-11&quot;&gt;Did the U.S. government have prior knowledge of 9/11?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10862/have-six-of-the-ten-9-11-commission-members-said-that-the-us-government-was-cove&quot;&gt;Have six of the ten 9/11 commission members said that the US government was covering up something about the 9/11 attacks?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2971/was-osama-bin-laden-responsible-for-9-11&quot;&gt;Was Osama Bin Laden responsible for 9-11?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17031" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T07:08:38.233" Title="Was 9-11 planned by the US Government?" Tags="|united-states|9-11|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-01-08T23:50:10.363" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19060" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20808" CreationDate="2014-01-09T00:38:54.220" Score="6" ViewCount="1102" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am surprised to see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-sugar-affects-the-brain-nicole-avena&quot;&gt;video on TED&lt;/a&gt; claiming that sugar can lead to addiction (differently from other kinds of food, for example broccoli).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, yes, over-consumption of sugar can have addictive effects in the brain&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEXBxijQREo&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;amp;t=4m39s&quot;&gt;precise spot&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that over-consumption of sugar is bad because of many reasons, but I find hard to believe that sugar could be compared to heroin or nicotine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are TED and Dr. Avena right on this matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus Points: Is there any grossly false claim in the video, beside this, if it is false at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T15:47:27.433" Title="Can eating sugar result in addiction?" Tags="|nutrition|physiology|sugar|recreational-drugs|cognitive-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19061" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-09T04:53:30.637" Score="6" ViewCount="6474" Body="&lt;p&gt;Over the years, I've heard the following anecdote repeated often as an example of marketing-gone-bad:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Argentina (or sometimes, Latin America), Colgate-Palmolive faced huge hurdles in marketing their brand of toothpaste, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colgate_%28toothpaste%29&quot;&gt;Colgate&lt;/a&gt;, as it effectively translate to, &lt;em&gt;Go Hang Yourself!&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omg-facts.com/Business/Colgate-Had-Troubles-Marketing-In-Spanis/749&quot;&gt;Here is one&lt;/a&gt; of many sites that make this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T16:53:24.467" Title="Did Colgate face marketing issues in Argentina because its name meant 'go hang yourself'?" Tags="|consumer-products|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19062" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19065" CreationDate="2014-01-09T11:08:22.320" Score="4" ViewCount="258" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just come across the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20538394?dopt=AbstractPlus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PubMed article&lt;/a&gt; (referenced &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/01/does-taking-paternity-leave-give-you-a-longer-life/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/the-risky-business-of-paternity-leave/282688/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) which claims that taking paternity leave &lt;em&gt;causes&lt;/em&gt; one to live longer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has also been suggested that paternity leave [...] could benefit men's lifetime health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main finding was that [...] taking paternity leave between 30 and 135 days decreased the risk of all-cause mortality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the studied phenomena influence male mortality independently of each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no access to the full article but here's a summary courtesy of the Atlantic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The researchers speculate that the men who opted for paternity leave in the late 1970s may have been more health-aware than their peers. But they conclude that there could also be something about increased parental involvement that moderates some of the detrimental effects of traditional masculinity on men’s health behaviors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's according to Harvard Business review:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study says increased involvement in parenting may reduce some of the detrimental effects of traditional masculinity on men’s health behaviors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this conclusion scientifically sound? Are there other articles or reviews that find different results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:44:41.987" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:44:41.987" Title="Does taking paternity leave make you live longer?" Tags="|medical-science|mortality|children|gender|parenting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19061" CreationDate="2014-01-09T17:54:24.287" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can vouch for the translation: &quot;colgate&quot; here means &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=colgarse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;hang yourself&quot;&lt;/a&gt; or &quot;hang you&quot;. Notice that this differs from &quot;normal&quot; Spanish (Spain and most Latin America), because our &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voseo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;voseo&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (for familiar second person speaking) alters grammar -in Spain it would be &quot;cuélgate&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This matches the testimony &lt;a href=&quot;http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=95;t=000458;p=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It must have been surely an unfortunate coincidence for the marketers, but I don't believe that it was a great deal; people just understand and get over it. And I don't think that the coincidence is so terrible as it might sound. First, we don't normally use that word to as a colloquial insult or curse, as in English - Spanish speakers might say instead: '&lt;em&gt;matate&lt;/em&gt;' (kill yourself) o '&lt;em&gt;pegate un tiro&lt;/em&gt;' (fire yourself). Furthermore, the verb &quot;colgar&quot; has quite other meanings, apart from the act of killing hanging from a rope. For example, currently, it's also used as younger slang for &quot;to take part of something&quot; (similar to &quot;hang out&quot;) and there are more related &quot;positive&quot; meanings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been some much more unfortunate coincidences: the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Pajero&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mitsubishi Pajero&lt;/a&gt; had to be changed (to &lt;a href=&quot;https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Montero&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Montero&lt;/a&gt;) because &lt;em&gt;pajero&lt;/em&gt; is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=pajero&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;very strong and vulgar word&lt;/a&gt; in many Spanish-speaking regions (&lt;em&gt;wanker&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: an interesting point is raised in the comments, regarding the pronunciation. We (I'm speaking about Argentina, and most non-English-speaking countries) are used to pronounce most &quot;foreign&quot; words not by following the Spanish phonetic rules, but with the original sounds (well... approximately). Say, we pronounce &quot;Seven Up&quot; as if the last syllable had a Spanish 'a'. But a word like 'Colgate' can make us hesitate, because it feels like a Spanish word, but we (might) know that it's foreign. And, indeed, a few people here pronounce 'colgueit', ala English. A consensus is normally formed, often driven by TV-radio announcements. Hence (and this is the point of this disgression) one might guess that the marketing should have try to impose the 'foreign' pronounciation in the announcements, to dispell the unfortunate coincidence with the Spanish verb. However, for some reason, that didn't happen (because the Spanish pronounciation was already established, or because the coincidence didn't matter? I'd bet for the later, but that's just my guess). See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVsqw4snjag&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (Mexico, ~1960) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8_GjPXW7sE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (Argentina, ~2010). The same happens in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2EW1jYhaXs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Italy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2834" LastEditorUserId="2834" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T16:53:24.467" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T16:53:24.467" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19062" CreationDate="2014-01-09T19:39:12.237" Score="2" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Månsdotter (2010)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Månsdotter, Anna, and Andreas Lundin. &quot;How do masculinity, paternity leave, and mortality associate?–A study of fathers in the Swedish parental &amp;amp; child cohort of 1988/89.&quot; Social Science &amp;amp; Medicine 71, no. 3 (2010): 576-583.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This study was not designed to assess causation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken literally, this sentence in the abstract is an inaccurate representation of the study's results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main finding was that low 'masculinity' ranking increased the risk of all-cause mortality, and mortality from alcohol and violent causes, while taking paternity leave between 30 and 135 days decreased the risk of all-cause mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, part of their conclusion makes an unproven assertion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall, strategies aimed at less gender-stereotypical expectations on what a man “should do” are on the whole &lt;em&gt;likely to benefit male health&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the authors are consistent throughout the rest of the text to only talk about &quot;association&quot;. Such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How do masculinity, paternity leave, and mortality &lt;strong&gt;associate&lt;/strong&gt;? (The title)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the objective was to examine &lt;strong&gt;associations&lt;/strong&gt; (also in the abstract)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;paternity leave of more than 30 days but less than 136 days was &lt;strong&gt;associated with&lt;/strong&gt; a decreased risk of all-cause mortality among Swedish men who had a child in 1988/89 (results section)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;taking paternity leave is &lt;strong&gt;associated with&lt;/strong&gt; a lower risk of mortality among middle-aged fathers in Sweden (in the conclusion)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They do mention causation when positing that there are &quot;separate causal pathways&quot; to explain the association between masculinity and longevity and the association between paternal leave and longevity. They don't claim to have determined what the nature of those causal pathways are (paternal leave -&gt; longevity vs. confounding factor -&gt; paternal leave and longevity vs. longevity -&gt; paternal leave, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3mty0.png&quot; width=&quot;100&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;How this work has been received&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This work has been cited uncritically in the following publications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sörlin, Ann, Lars Lindholm, Nawi Ng, and Ann Öhman. &quot;Gender equality in couples and self-rated health-A survey study evaluating measurements of gender equality and its impact on health.&quot; Int J Equity Health 10 (2011): 37.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sörlin, Ann, Ann Öhman, Nawi Ng, and Lars Lindholm. &quot;Can the impact of gender equality on health be measured? a cross-sectional study comparing measures based on register data with individual survey-based data.&quot; BMC public health 12, no. 1 (2012): 795.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Brussoni, Mariana, Lise L. Olsen, Genevieve Creighton, and John L. Oliffe. &quot;Heterosexual gender relations in and around childhood risk and safety.&quot; Qualitative health research 23, no. 10 (2013): 1388-1398.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sörlin, Ann. &quot;Health and the elusive gender equality: Can the impact of gender equality on health be measured?.&quot; PhD diss., Umeå University, 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Elwér, Sofia, Lisa Harryson, Malin Bolin, and Anne Hammarström. &quot;Patterns of gender equality at workplaces and psychological distress.&quot; PloS one 8, no. 1 (2013): e53246.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maroto‐Navarro, Gracia, Guadalupe Pastor‐Moreno, Ricardo Ocaña‐Riola, Vivian Benítez‐Hidalgo, María del Mar García‐Calvente, María del Pilar Gutiérrez‐Cuadra, María T. Gijón‐Sánchez, María del Río‐Lozano, and Jorge Marcos‐Marcos. &quot;Male and female involvement in the birth and child‐rearing process.&quot; Journal of clinical nursing 22, no. 21-22 (2013): 3071-3083.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could find no other work citing Månsdotter 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Any other studies on this question?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for other work looking at paternal care and health, I could find none assessing the effect or association of paternity leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, I found one that examined the association between &quot;parental equality&quot; and health (by the same authors as the study in the question):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Månsdotter, Anna, Lars Lindholm, Michael Lundberg, Anna Winkvist, and Ann Öhman. &quot;Parental share in public and domestic spheres: a population study on gender equality, death, and sickness.&quot; Journal of epidemiology and community health 60, no. 7 (2006): 616-620.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From the domestic sphere, it is significantly shown that traditional men (temporary care) have higher risks compared with equal men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T21:48:39.613" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T21:48:39.613" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19066" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-01-09T21:14:23.117" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-01-09T21:14:23.117" LastActivityDate="2014-01-09T21:14:23.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19067" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-01-09T21:14:23.117" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about claims based in Antarctica, or limited to Antarctica. Antarctica is Earth's southernmost continent, containing the geographic South Pole. It is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean." OwnerUserId="16700" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2015-03-25T02:06:35.827" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T02:06:35.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19069" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-10T00:43:34.810" Score="9" ViewCount="1885" Body="&lt;p&gt;All parents have to deal with a fussy infant at one time or another and it seems like nothing will sooth them*. Hence, there are many over-the-counter tonics and formulas that are said to calm a fussing infant child suffering from gastrointestinal discomfort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of these is Gripe Water. I currently have &lt;em&gt;Mommy's Bliss&lt;/em&gt; brand in front of me and it says right on the front:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Safely and naturally relieves stomach discomfort and gas*&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  occasionally associated with colic / upset tummy / hiccups / teething&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnosis, treat, cure, or prevent disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This particular brand contains these seemingly benign ingredients:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Deionized water, vegetable glycerine, fructose, citrus biflavinoid extract, citric acid, natural fennel flavor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have never actually used it more than twice, once on my daughter a few years ago and earlier today on my infant son who won't stop fussing today, so I can't speak from personal experience if it works or not. My sister swears by it with her three children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any study on the effectiveness of Gripe Water? Can the claim be substantiated? What is the history of this solution? What is the active ingredient in the above list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*In fact, I am typing this with one hand because my three week old son won't stop fussing unless I hold him in a particular way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:55:46.197" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T08:55:46.197" Title="Does Gripe Water work for fussy babies?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|children|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19070" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19044" CreationDate="2014-01-10T05:59:08.563" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;That Wikipedia article and several visible results from Google searches on this topic appear to draw their information from a Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute press release, &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.rpi.edu/luwakkey/3074&quot;&gt;http://news.rpi.edu/luwakkey/3074&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back to the source, it does indeed indicate that exposure to self-luminous displays for less than two hours still has an effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The actual melatonin suppression values after 60 minutes were very similar to those estimated using a predictive model of human circadian phototransduction for one-hour light exposures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason the author provided for why this is problematic for sleep:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland at night and under conditions of darkness in both diurnal and nocturnal species. It is a “timing messenger,” signaling nighttime information throughout the body. Exposure to light at night, especially short-wavelength light, can slow or even cease nocturnal melatonin production. Suppression of melatonin by light at night resulting in circadian disruption has been implicated in sleep disturbances...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You rightly point out that the referenced study from RPI is quite small (limiting the statistical significance that can be inferred), however there have been many studies on the effects of artificial light over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1964886/&quot;&gt;earlier report&lt;/a&gt; with contributions from people at the University of Connecticut, Bassett Research Institute, Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University, the Danish Cancer Society, Harvard Medical School, the University of Virginia, the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and others &lt;em&gt;in addition&lt;/em&gt; to Rensselaer had this to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Humans have evolved over millions of years and adapted to a solar day of approximately 12 hr of light and 12 hr of dark, latitude and season permitting. Our ability to artificially light the night began about 250,000 years ... However, only in the last 120 years has environmental illumination begun to change on a pervasive scale for the masses of people through the introduction of electric lighting. ... It has become apparent, however, that although of obvious benefit, it may not be completely innocuous. Light, including artificial light, can be potent in regulating human physiology and behavior and can therefore alter human physiology when inappropriately timed. One example of potential light-induced disruption is the effect of light on circadian organization, including the production of several hormone rhythms. Changes in light–dark exposure shift the timing of the circadian system such that internal rhythms can become desynchronized from both the external environment and internally with each other, impairing our ability to sleep and wake at the appropriate times and compromising metabolic processes. Light can also have direct acute effects on neuroendocrine systems, for example, in suppressing melatonin synthesis or elevating cortisol production that may have untoward long-term consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the accuracy of the claimed 0.18% per minute suppression of melatonin does not appear to be independently verified. Notwithstanding, the vast majority of scientific literature on this does agree that artificial light at night can adversely affect sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17062" LastEditorUserId="17062" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T11:58:40.797" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T11:58:40.797" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19042" CreationDate="2014-01-10T08:09:26.600" Score="5" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible possible that the NSA possesses portable radar systems that can put out 1 kW? Sure it is. There are mobile units able to output far more than just 1 kW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MIT developed a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCR-584_radar&quot;&gt;portable 250 kW radar system&lt;/a&gt; back during WWII. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/TPQ-36&quot;&gt;TPQ-36&lt;/a&gt; can output +20 kW and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AN/TPQ-37&quot;&gt;its larger cousin&lt;/a&gt; can go well over 100 kW. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Define &quot;portable&quot;. There are many possible setups which are both relocatable and produce relatively high output, but with varying levels of complexity in configuration, maintenance requirements, weight, and size. Depending on one's situation, &quot;portable&quot; can mean vastly different things.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/b0w36GAyZIA?t=56m35s&quot;&gt;56:35 in the video you linked&lt;/a&gt;, Appelbaum begins discussing &quot;a specialized technology for beaming energy into you and to the computer systems around you... with 1 kW of RF energy at short range&quot; which he alleges the NSA uses. There a few problems with segment of his talk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The alleged system is very vaguely described. As someone with a technical background, I was left with all sorts of questions about the details of &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; what he described would work. (This is not to say it is impossible. The world of cryptography and surveillance have produced far stranger technologies. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_cryptanalysis&quot;&gt;Acoustic cryptanalysis&lt;/a&gt; is a fun one.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aside from making an unsubstantiated claim about the source of Hugo Chávez's cancer, Appelbaum gave no examples of where this technology has or is being used.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Appelbaum showed a few slide of electronics readily available to consumers which could be theoretically capable of doing what he said, but did not acquire and configure the equipment himself to provide a proof-of-concept. Even in the DIY oriented &quot;hacker scene&quot;, PoCs are common; and according his own testimony, this should have been possible.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All he did was describe a vague possibility, gave no evidence of its use, and presented equipment which could conceivably be modified to output 1 kW of RF as proof of the existence and use of another technology. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignoratio_elenchi&quot;&gt;Ignoratio elenchi&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even given the issues listed under point number 3, if we were to assume the technology described by Appelbaum does exist and is regularly used, is it a threat to human safety? The short answer is no. The health effects you likely associate with &quot;radiation&quot; is actually &lt;em&gt;ionizing radiation&lt;/em&gt;. (Any form of &quot;light&quot; is &quot;radiation&quot;.) Standing next to a high energy RF source would be more likely to cook someone from the heat than riddle them with cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/inf-fs/en/fact183.html&quot;&gt;World Health Organization agrees&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RF fields are non-ionizing radiations (NIR). Unlike X-rays and gamma rays, they are much too weak to break the bonds that hold molecules in cells together and, therefore, produce ionization. RF fields may, however, produce different effects on biological systems such as cells, plants, animals, or human beings. These effects depend on frequency and intensity of the RF field. By no means, will all of these effects result in adverse health effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;ast; For adverse health effects, such as eye cataracts and skin burns, to occur from exposure to RF fields above 10 GHz, power densities above 1000 W/m2 are needed. Such densities are not found in everyday life. They do exist in very close proximity to powerful radars. Current exposure standards preclude human presence in this areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RF fields between 1 MHz and 10 GHz penetrate exposed tissues and produce heating due to energy absorption in these tissues. The depth of penetration of the RF field into the tissue depends on the frequency of the field and is greater for lower frequencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;ast; Most adverse health effects that could occur from exposure to RF fields between&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1 MHz and 10 GHz are consistent with responses to induced heating, resulting in rises in tissue or body temperatures higher than 1C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a fun an informative chart on &quot;the ionizing radiation dose a person can absorb from various sources&quot;, take a look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://xkcd.com/radiation/&quot;&gt;https://xkcd.com/radiation/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17062" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T10:31:08.707" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T10:31:08.707" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19072" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-10T10:12:48.097" Score="6" ViewCount="651" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a filter coffee maker with a plastic coffee drip holder inside (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-Cup&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;K-cups&lt;/a&gt;). This almost &#xA;boils the water as it drips through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are concerns that these plastic coffee containers may leach &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BPA&lt;/a&gt; and other toxic chemicals into the coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://themommyilluminati.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/how-k-cups-might-damage-your-metabolism-reproductive-health-and-cause-cancer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Mommy Illuminati&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But now there are K-cups- a fresh cup of plastic, er- I mean coffee, brewed into your cup every day. Hot water temperatures and acidic ground coffee amplifying the leaching effects to new heights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to warn of dire results from overdosing on such chemicals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these coffee machines release toxic chemicals from the plastic (ignoring the regular contents of a cup of coffee)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17066" LastEditorUserId="5343" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T10:35:01.270" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T10:35:01.270" Title="Do plastic single-serve brewed coffee packages leach toxic chemicals?" Tags="|coffee|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19073" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-10T13:50:44.147" Score="14" ViewCount="6273" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a site by David Esker named Dinosaur Theory: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dinosaurtheory.com&quot;&gt;dinosaurtheory.com&lt;/a&gt;. David says that dinosaurs was so big because the early (at dinosaurs age) earth atmosphere was very dense and most mass of extinct giant reptilians and other non-avian dinosaurs was compensated by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy&quot;&gt;Buoyancy force&lt;/a&gt; from air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dinosaurtheory.com/solution.html&quot;&gt;http://www.dinosaurtheory.com/solution.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the Earth's atmospheric density during the late Jurassic period can be calculated to be 670 kg/m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;. This says that to produce the necessary buoyancy so that the dinosaurs could grow to their exceptional size, the density of the Earth’s air near the Earth’s surface would need to be 2/3’s of the density of water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And he says that now at sea level &quot;&lt;em&gt;air has a low density of only 1.29 kg/m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Thanks to Dikran Marsupial, 670 kg/m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; is very high, like density of some light wood types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have some doubts about so dense (thick) atmosphere and my question is: Is there any scientific evidence of Earth's atmosphere density in the era of dinosaurs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10996" LastEditorUserId="10996" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T16:59:09.303" LastActivityDate="2016-04-02T00:41:31.267" Title="What was the density of prehistoric Earth atmosphere (dinosaurs buoyancy theory)" Tags="|geology|earth|air|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19073" CreationDate="2014-01-10T15:46:14.583" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Esker has no evidence to support the idea of the Earths atmosphere being more dense in the Jurrasic than it is now, other than the assertion that dinosaurs are too large to have existed otherwise.  However this assertion has little support, as evolutionary adaptions (such as the unidirectional breathing discussed in the previous question) are able to explain the size of giant hebivorous dinosaurs seen in the Jurassic, without the need to introduce bouyancy from a dense atmosphere.  Resource availability seems to be more of a limiting factor on size than gravitational issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See e.g. Saunders et al. &quot;Biology of the sauropod dinosaurs: the evolution of gigantism&quot; Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 2011 February; 86(1): 117–155. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045712/&quot;&gt;www&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, allometry suggests that the ratio of the long bone dimensions and plausible body weight of dinosaurs is similar to that of modern animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. you do have to wonder about anybody that refers to themselves in the third person &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dinosaurtheory.com/solution.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Esker’s Thick Atmosphere Theory violates no property of science. It is the correct solution.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in supposedly scientific writing! ;o)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T16:05:13.527" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T16:05:13.527" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19075" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-10T17:06:49.743" Score="12" ViewCount="2559" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a popular story about Indian field hockey legend, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhyan_Chand&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dhyan Chand&lt;/a&gt;, and his encounter with Adolf Hitler at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.in/books?id=OFFWNqHeu6UC&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one randomly selected version&lt;/a&gt; of it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler who left midway as he could not bear to see his &amp;quot;racially superior&amp;quot; team being demolished attended the match. Sensing something amiss, Dyan Chand he was ordered to change his stick, but the flow of goals continued. India won the match 8-1 &lt;strong&gt;[snip]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adolf Hitler is said to have left his special box in a huff, after Germany's rout. Next day, he invited him for a meeting. One is that Hitler asked Dhyan Chand what post he held in India. On learning that the hockey wizard was a mere Naik in the Indian army, Hitler offered to make Dhyan Chand a Field Marshal should he decide to live in Germany. Dhyan Chand politely refused, saying that he had a large family to look after in India. Another version is that Hitler called him up at the end of the match and asked him the question, &amp;quot;What will you take to play for Germany?&amp;quot; To this, Dhyan Chand replied, &amp;quot;Nothing sir, India is my India&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dhyanchandhockey.blogspot.in/2008/08/dhyan-chand.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is one&lt;/a&gt; of hundreds of blog posts that tell a similar tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this anecdote at all? Did Hitler leave his box in a huff? Did Chand ever meet or speak to Hitler? Was he offered any posts or asked to stay on in Germany?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15636" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2024-01-05T07:07:30.923" Title="Did Adolf Hitler offer to make Dhyan Chand a Field Marshal in the German army?" Tags="|sport|adolf-hitler|india|germany|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9089" CreationDate="2014-01-10T20:26:21.283" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The accepted answer has said it basically all right, but in case you do manage to scratch the coating with your rescue attempt, the situation is slightly less rosy (than implied there): basically you've got the same chance as with poking your knife &lt;em&gt;directly in the power outlet&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are dangerous inaccuracies regarding the referenced &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2119/is-poking-a-knife-into-the-toaster-really-dangerous&quot;&gt;straightdope article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.) &lt;em&gt;&quot;...current to flow through a special type of wire with a high resistance...&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's actually a &lt;em&gt;low-resistance&lt;/em&gt; wire. These appliances are of a few hundred Watts, and &lt;code&gt;R = U^2 / P&lt;/code&gt; implies a few dozen ohms at most (maybe a hundred or two, with weak devices, assuming 230V). With 120V it's well below 100 ohms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When voluntarily participating in the toasting circuitry, adding (some unknown part of!) the toaster's resistance to your body resistance, which is several &lt;em&gt;thousand&lt;/em&gt; ohms (minimum), it makes a negligible difference compared to directly touching the power line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.) &lt;em&gt;&quot;...inside a toaster and making contact with the wires connecting the coil can certainly electrocute you however these are typically tucked safely away where you couldn't reach it with a knife unless you disassembled the body&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the above reason, you don't need to reach that connection, it makes no difference from touching the heating filaments (those &quot;coils&quot;) themselves with damaged or missing coating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, while basically touching the power line &lt;em&gt;with one hand&lt;/em&gt;, and not preparing your breakfast in your bath tube (and not attaching yourself to the grid with your other hand), you still have a fair chance of getting away (as correctly mentioned in the other answer); see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_1/chpt_3/3.html&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; very cute article about various configurations in which you (or a bird) can (and cannot) be electrocuted, and other handy information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as a safe bet: &lt;strong&gt;always use a wooden&lt;/strong&gt; (butter) &lt;strong&gt;knife for toast mining&lt;/strong&gt;, one that you won't regret burning. Or, well, just unplug the thing, if you can do without the excitement. ;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17070" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T20:26:21.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19078" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-10T20:51:10.310" Score="6" ViewCount="191" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 1988, Olympic athlete, Ross Rebagliati, failed a drug test for marijuana.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1607611-ross-rebagliati-controversial-snowboarder-opens-weed-dispenary-embraces-past&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bleacher Report&lt;/a&gt; explained:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rebagliati claimed, and still claims, that the positive was triggered by second-hand smoke he unwittingly inhaled at a going-away party. He copped to past marijuana usage, but said he stopped smoking 10 months before the Games began.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it plausible to ingest enough marijuana through second-hand smoke to fail a drug test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17074" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T01:06:40.863" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T01:06:40.863" Title="Can second-hand marijuana smoke cause somebody to fail a drug test?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|marijuana|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2014-01-18T15:09:53.030" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19079" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19069" CreationDate="2014-01-10T22:19:07.467" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-311-FENNEL.aspx?activeIngredientId=311&amp;amp;activeIngredientName=FENNEL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fennel&lt;/a&gt; is commonly used as a natural remedy for gas and other digestive problems, so that is probably the &quot;active ingredient&quot; (though &quot;natural flavor&quot; is pretty vague). Glycerin would be for texture and sweetness, fructose is a sweetener, citric acid adds tartness (probably just for flavor). Citrus bioflavonoids is trickier. That umbrella covers many different compounds, &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/05/flavonoid-compound-can-prevent-blood-clots/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/quercetin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;studied&lt;/a&gt;, some not so much.&#xA;There is a chance that the gripe water could work, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.med.nyu.edu/content?ChunkIID=108303&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one study&lt;/a&gt; has shown fennel effective at reducing the symptoms of colic, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/20/health/la-he-skeptic-gripe-water-20110620&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;none yet&lt;/a&gt; prove the effectiveness of prepared gripe water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16823" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T22:19:07.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19080" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19082" CreationDate="2014-01-10T22:24:46.947" Score="3" ViewCount="2488" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the chapter on &lt;a href=&quot;http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/nlm/nlm3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Statism: Our Condition&lt;/a&gt; of the 1983 version of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/nlm/nlm1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New Libertarian Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Edward_Konkin_III&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Samuel Edward Konkin III&lt;/a&gt; the following can be found,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the 20th Century alone, war has murdered more than all previous deaths&lt;/strong&gt;; taxes and inflation have stolen more than all wealth previously produced; and the political lies, propaganda, and above all, &quot;Education&quot; have twisted more minds than all the superstition prior; yet through all the deliberate confusion and obfuscation, the thread of reason has developed fibers of resistance to be woven into the rope of execution for the State: Libertarianism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being in the first 10 sentence in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agorism.info/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;seminal work on Agorism&lt;/a&gt; such a claim is kind of concerning. I don't see how it could be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially interesting is that he wrote this in 1983, the 20th century wasn't even over yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-01-10T23:44:56.193" LastActivityDate="2015-10-02T05:25:58.270" Title="Did war in the 20th century murder more than &quot;all previous deaths&quot;?" Tags="|mortality|war|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19080" CreationDate="2014-01-10T22:45:41.060" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's completely false: a good, and well cited, guesstimate is that 100 billion people lived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9jcwD.png&quot; alt=&quot;how many people lived&quot;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://sdoucette.webs.com/Unit%202%20Human%20Population%20Issues/How%20many%20people%20have%20ever%20lived%20on%20Earth.doc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;full article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the same table, about 10 billion people lived in the XX century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In no way, therefore, more than the same amount of people may have died in the XX century, and in consequence, war in the XX century may not have caused more than about 100 billion deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: the table above contains spurious digits: what determines precision is the &quot;Deaths per 1,000&quot; column which has 1 significant digit, so any result should be assumed to be valid to the order of magnitude. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-11T10:49:57.580" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T10:49:57.580" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19083" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-10T22:48:43.047" Score="6" ViewCount="439" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the chapter on &lt;a href=&quot;http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/nlm/nlm3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Statism: Our Condition&lt;/a&gt; of the 1983 version of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/nlm/nlm1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New Libertarian Manifesto&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Edward_Konkin_III&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Samuel Edward Konkin III&lt;/a&gt; the following can be found,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the 20th Century alone, war has murdered more than all previous deaths; &lt;strong&gt;taxes and inflation have stolen more than all wealth previously produced&lt;/strong&gt;; and the political lies, propaganda, and above all, &quot;Education&quot; have twisted more minds than all the superstition prior; yet through all the deliberate confusion and obfuscation, the thread of reason has developed fibers of resistance to be woven into the rope of execution for the State: Libertarianism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being in the first 10 sentence in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://agorism.info/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;seminal work on Agorism&lt;/a&gt; such a claim is kind of concerning. I don't see how it could be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Especially interesting is that he wrote this in 1983, the 20th century wasn't even over yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T06:32:46.353" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T03:36:54.560" Title="Did tax and inflation consume more wealth in the 20th Century than previously produced?" Tags="|economics|taxes|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2016-12-22T09:26:16.577" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19080" CreationDate="2014-01-10T23:11:17.693" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As literally stated, no this could not have been the case.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's take the Wikipedia list of wars by death toll, and take the maximum estimate of each (almost certainly too high) in the 20th Century. Let's consider only wars with over a million deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second World War: 85 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second Sino-Japanese war (almost certainly some overlap with WWII) 27 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;World War 1 30 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chinese Civil War (probable overlap with Sino-Japanese) 7.5 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Russian Civil War 9 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second Congo war 5 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Algerian War of independence 2 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Korean War 1 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vietnam War 4 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nigerian Civil War 3 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mexican Revolution 2 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sino-Tibetan War 1 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First Indochina War 1 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iran-Iraq War 1 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Second Sudan Civil War 1 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Soviet Afghanistan War 1 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mozambican Civil War 1 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rwandan Civil War 1 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First Congo Civil war 1 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spanish Civil War 1 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mozambican Civil war 1 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Horrific as these figures are, they come to less than 200 million deaths. The world population grew to 1 billion around 1830, which makes it more than certain that there were many more than a billion deaths before 1900.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is of course possible that they author meant to say &quot;more people died in wars in the 20th Century than in all previous wars&quot;. That's going to be much harder to calculate, because of some very vague statistics of deaths in ancient wars, but also a vague definition of 'what is a war'. If one village rides out to kill the people in another village and steal their cows, that doesn't count as a war in twentieth century reckoning, but it may have happened millions of times in the ancient world and the casualties add up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2014-01-10T23:11:17.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19072" CreationDate="2014-01-11T11:48:38.813" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, BPA is classified by the IARC as group 3 carcinogen - &lt;em&gt;Not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans&lt;/em&gt;. It is still less probably harmful than cell phone radiation and coffee itself (group 2B). &lt;a href=&quot;http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Classification/ClassificationsAlphaOrder.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Link to the full list&lt;/a&gt; (In my opinion, if there is a problem, the Bisphenol-A is not the problem, but the coffee is.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2008 report by the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction within the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), which is within the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, reported:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For adults, the Expert Panel has negligible concern for adverse&#xA;  reproductive effects following exposures in the general population to&#xA;  Bisphenol A. For highly exposed subgroups, such as occupationally&#xA;  exposed populations, the level of concern is elevated to minimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A#Expert_panel_conclusions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;that's from Wiki&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/ohat/bisphenol/bisphenol.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;and here's the report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to the components of your coffee maker: You may find something &lt;a href=&quot;http://thesoftlanding.com/ask-tsl-what-type-of-plastic-is-used-in-keurig-coffee-makers-and-k-cups/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Companies (some at least, obviously) are aware of a possible problem and do avoid plastics in hot environments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17078" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T11:48:38.813" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16920" CreationDate="2014-01-11T14:26:23.683" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wrote an article showing that &lt;a href=&quot;http://wheat-heart-disease.github.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wheat consumption could be a risk factor of coronary heart disease and obesity&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the studies cited in that link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jn.nutrition.org/content/69/2/202.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a study on atherosclerosis in rabbits&lt;/a&gt; concluded that the severity of atherosclerosis after 5 months was greatest on the wheat germ-supplemented diet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;wheat was associated with coronary heart disease in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/09/02/the-china-study-wheat-and-heart-disease-oh-my/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chinese study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.fr/2008/10/dart-many-lessons-learned.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a randomized controlled trial&lt;/a&gt; on men who had already suffered from a myocardial infarction saw an increase in death in the group advised to eat at least six slices of wholemeal bread per day compared to the group not receiving this advice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15936" LastEditorUserId="15936" LastEditDate="2015-05-22T09:40:15.850" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T09:40:15.850" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19092" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-11T14:50:08.863" Score="1" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most health organizations see wheat as an healthy food. However I wrote an article arguing that &lt;a href=&quot;http://wheat-heart-disease.github.io/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wheat could be a risk factor of coronary heart disease&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there is a similar question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16920/is-wheat-the-cause-of-numerous-serious-health-problems&quot;&gt;Is wheat the cause of numerous, serious health problems?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;But that question discuss an article claiming that wheat causes every possible disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here I want to discuss specifically the links between wheat and coronary heart disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could someone debunk my article and prove that wheat is safe for your heart?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15936" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T14:11:41.643" Title="Does wheat cause coronary heart disease?" Tags="|nutrition|cardiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-01-11T20:23:29.530" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8105" CreationDate="2014-01-11T16:09:34.060" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dioxins are not particularly toxic to people but are deadly to Guinea Pigs and some other animals&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: many of the facts below are from a summary of Dioxin evidence in John Emsley's book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Consumers-Good-Chemical-Guide-Jargon-free/dp/0716745054/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;amp;ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1389452190&amp;amp;sr=1-1&amp;amp;keywords=consumers%20good%20chemical%20guide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Consumer's Good Chemical Guide&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the things about dioxins that creates unwarranted worry is that chemists have devised ways to detect them in incredibly small quantities (in the 1950s they were lucky to reliably detect parts per thousand; by the 1980s fractions of parts per trillion were easily detected). This means they can now be detected &lt;em&gt;almost everywhere&lt;/em&gt;. They are also fairly stable (though they are broken down by some bugs and by the UV component of sunlight) and slightly volatile, so they do get around a lot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that there are a large range of different dioxins most of which are not at all toxic. The two archetypal nasty members of the class are shown below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dPfFW.png&quot; alt=&quot;two key dioxin structures&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are nearly two hundred other dioxins which differ from the two shown by having different numbers and locations of the chlorines attached to the rings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons that caused concern about them was they they were significant contaminants in a range of chlorinated weedkillers (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4,5-Trichlorophenoxyacetic_acid&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2,4,5-T&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic_acid&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2,4-D&lt;/a&gt;, for example, the major ingredients of Agent Orange). The wide use of these weedkillers exposed many people to their contaminants (both because of use and manufacture). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the reason dioxins came to be regarded as one of the most deadly known toxins is that they are, &lt;em&gt;to guinea pigs.&lt;/em&gt; A dose of 1 micro-g per kg will kill guinea pigs. In hamsters, however, the toxic dose is 5,000 micro-g per kg and there good evidence that people are much less sensitive to them than this. As a reference, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulinum_toxin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;botulinum toxin&lt;/a&gt; (one of the nastiest known human toxins) kills people at a dose of 10 micro-g per kg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While we can't do laboratory experiments on people to estimate the acute and chronic activity of dioxins, but we can estimate the effects from looking at people who have been accidentally exposed from chemical accidents. There have been several accidents in manufacturing plants and R&amp;amp;D labs, some of which exposed the public to dioxins. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most obvious human effect of dioxin exposure is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloracne&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;chloracne&lt;/a&gt; which is nasty but reversible. Emsley quotes Michael Gough, an expert on the topic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...no human illness, other than the skin disease chloracne, which has occurred only on highly exposed people, has ever been convincingly associated with dioxins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One big worry, though, is whether exposure might cause cancer in the longer term (dioxins &lt;em&gt;look&lt;/em&gt; like the sort of things that might cause cancer). But as Gough &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/447#.UtFoHXkcXQU&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;summarised&lt;/a&gt; more recently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are fewer studies of ‘environmentally exposed’ people, primarily because there are few populations that have been exposed to higher than ‘background’ levels. The two most studied populations are those that lived around a chemical plant in Seveso, Italy, which blew up in 1976; and the residents of Times Beach, Missouri, which was exposed to dioxin-contaminated oil. These studies find that there are no increases in overall disease rates or cancers. It is possible to associate dioxin exposures with elevated occurrence of a specific cancer or disease in some studies, but the occurrence of other cancers and diseases is lower than expected, and there is little consistency among studies’ results. This suggests that the varying disease rates result from fluctuations of occurrence observed whenever small populations are studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another fact putting dioxins in perspective has become apparent as analytical techniques have improved: they are &lt;em&gt;natural&lt;/em&gt; compounds not just evil byproducts of the chemical industry. In fact we have been exposed to them since we invented fire and the natural world has had some level of dioxins in it since plants first burned, long before people appeared. This happens because wood and plants always contain some chloride (wood is 0.2% chloride) and, when material containing chlorine and carbon burns, dioxins are produced in small quantities. It may even be that people are particularly resistant to dioxins compared to some animals as we have been exposed to higher levels than most animals ever since we started using fire to cook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While some animals are exquisitely sensitive to dioxins, the best evidence suggests people are not. And, while some dioxins cause nasty human diseases like chloracne, there is little evidence that any cause other conditions even when exposure is chronic. They are not near the top of the list as human toxins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T16:09:34.060" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19094" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-11T17:24:50.097" Score="11" ViewCount="723" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always been told that obesity is a drain a country's healthcare system...and it's generally accepted as fact.  In online debates I frequently see reference to this.  I remember seeing news reports on 'The Cost Of Obesity' that say obese people cost the U.S. (as an example) millions or billions each year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to give a specific claim - so here is just one of a near-endless supply I could find:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/04/30/obesity-now-costs-americans-more-in-healthcare-costs-than-smoking/&quot;&gt;http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/04/30/obesity-now-costs-americans-more-in-healthcare-costs-than-smoking/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Obese men rack up an additional $1,152 a year in medical spending,&#xA;  especially for hospitalizations and prescription drugs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seems really straight-forward....but, on the flip side....there seems to be evidence that suggests the opposite.  One study tracked life-time medical expenses from age 20 until death:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/22/alcohol-obesity-and-smoking-do-not-cost-health-care-systems-money/&quot;&gt;http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/22/alcohol-obesity-and-smoking-do-not-cost-health-care-systems-money/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The actual numbers for lifetime from 20 years old medical costs were:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lifetime costs were in Euros:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Healthy: 281,000  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Obese: 250,000 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smokers: 220,000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first glance - I think it might be possible for both of these statements to be true.  An average living obese man might cost an average of $1,152 per year than an average living non-obese man; but the obese man might die sufficiently earlier so that the life-time cost is lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I'm left unable to determine the actual financial impact.  Is obesity as scapegoat for increasing insurance costs when, clearly, living a healthy life will result in more medical costs....or is obesity really raising all of our bills?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2637" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-01-11T19:53:44.310" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T19:53:44.310" Title="Do obese people have lower lifetime healthcare costs?" Tags="|economics|healthcare|obesity|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19095" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19092" CreationDate="2014-01-11T20:11:46.583" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your article is too long to address every piece of evidence in this format where we are limited to 30,000 characters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are problems even between the article and the evidence.  For example, in the section on &lt;strong&gt;Randomized Controlled Trials on Wheat&lt;/strong&gt;, you say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This advice resulted on a 22% death increase:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However this result bordered on statistical significance: the 95% confidence interval being 0.99–1.65.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Had the study last a little longer, it would have raised way more suspicion toward whole-grains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the abstract of the linked study says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Subjects given fibre advice had a slightly higher mortality than other subjects (not significant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a result is not significant, it is not significant.  We can't use an insignificant result to make the claim that the &quot;advice resulted on a 22% death increase&quot;.  We also can't say that it &quot;bordered on statistical significance&quot; without further evidence that it actually did.  We certainly can't predict the future outcome of a trial without actually conducting the trial.  If we could, we would be even have trials?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of paragraphs from &lt;a href=&quot;http://eurheartjsupp.oxfordjournals.org/content/3/suppl_D/D75.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reflections on the Diet and Reinfarction Trial (DART)&lt;/a&gt; illustrate some of the problems with trials of this sort that lead to insignificant data.  In the past, fibre has been seen as having a &lt;em&gt;protective&lt;/em&gt; effect rather than the detrimental effect your article is claiming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The relationship between fibre intake and mortality was paradoxical: within the group advised to eat more fibre there was an inverse relationship between fibre intake and mortality,yet its overall mortality was higher than that of the group not given this advice. There was a favourable effect of compliance with all three interventions, of&#xA;  roughly equal size — a ‘healthy complier effect’ that was independent of the efficacy of the intervention. Good compliance seems to be a marker for something else, possibly a tendency to comply with other aspects of management that really do bestow benefit, or perhaps a better state of health: conceivably, people who feel unwell cannot be bothered to follow uncongenial diets. It is very difficult to allow adequately for such confounders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These findings illustrate the importance of the controlled trial as against observational studies. If the subjects advised to eat fibre are treated as a cohort, they appear to provide evidence of a protective effect of cereal fibre, an impression which the randomized trial shows to be misleading. Several cohort studies have shown an apparently favourable effect of cereal fibre on CHD[8–11], but confirmation by a randomized controlled trial is lacking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Directly after your claim that the trial would have found statistically significant results if it had lasted longer, you make the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, researchers found this effect to be statistically significant in a follow-up study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However in the abstract of the linked study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fat and fibre advice had no clear effect on coronary or all-cause mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You claim is contrary to the abstract of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's worth noting that the fish results changed in the follow up paper as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The early reduction in all-cause mortality observed in those given fish advice (unadjusted hazard 0.70 (95% CI 0.54, 0.92)) was followed by an increased risk over the next 3 y (unadjusted hazard 1.31 (95% CI 1.01, 1.70).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the following sentence, you state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After adjusting for pre-existing conditions and medication use, we can see in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v56/n6/fig_tab/1601342t4.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;table 4&lt;/a&gt; of this study an hazard ratio of 1.35 (95% CI 1.02, 1.80) for the 2-year period of the randomized controlled trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a case of cherry picking. You have chosen the highest number on the page, regardless of its relevance and failed to mention that in the same group in following years the ratio was reversed.  More people who were not given the advice died than those who were given it in some time periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper includes comments on this table:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All-cause mortality was increased in those given fibre advice in the first two time periods but reduced in the later time periods such that there was no long-term effect on survival. A similar pattern was present for coronary death. The risk of stroke death was slightly increased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I haven't addressed every claim and every paper your article contains, the small part I did examine shows that your article does not do a good job of correctly reporting the results of the studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11387" LastActivityDate="2014-01-11T20:11:46.583" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19099" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-12T01:00:17.183" Score="15" ViewCount="892" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife and I are having a bit of a debate (I won't reveal which side I'm on!). Our situation is perfect for this question, as we have two daughters: one was born Sept. 15th, and the other on Aug. 29th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US schools (or at least here in Minnesota), typically have the requirement that children be of age 5 on or before early September (I've heard Sept. 1st and 2nd). For our Sept. daughter, this means she will be one of the very oldest in her class, and if we entered the Aug. daughter &amp;quot;on time,&amp;quot; she would be one of the very youngest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are fairly opinionated folks on both sides of the argument regarding whether or not to hold a child back vs. starting them &amp;quot;on time&amp;quot; (i.e. should we enter our Aug. daughter in kindergarten when she's 5 by Sept. or wait a year so that she's one of the oldest instead of youngest?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lapetite.com/parent-resources/blog/2012/02/redshirt-greenshirt-%E2%80%93-the-surprising-pros-and-cons-of-starting-kindergarten-a-year-late/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This quote&lt;/a&gt; speaks to the widespread nature of the issue/debate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Redshirting” – holding your child back from starting Kindergarten a year (or even two) – is the latest fad in so-called early education trends. It’s an extreme version of holding back “late born” children. No longer content with holding back fall- or even summer-born children, more parents are holding back their spring-, winter-, and even previous year’s fall-born children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means more and more kiddos are starting Kindergarten at the age of 6. More and more parents are succumbing to the pressure to have their child be the biggest, fastest, and most mature in the classroom. And, unfortunately, more and more schools are taking the easy way out and moving their Kindergarten “cutoff date” even earlier in the year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A strongly &lt;a href=&quot;http://thestir.cafemom.com/big_kid/126581/why_starting_kindergarten_early_is&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;opposed view&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thinking about holding your child back for another year of pre-school? Whether you're hoping he'll be the biggest kid on the football team or the smartest little dude at the spelling bee, it turns out you will be &lt;strong&gt;shooting that kid right in the foot&lt;/strong&gt; -- academically speaking -- if you delay kindergarten. Not exactly what parents were going for when they made the call to let their 5-year-old wait a year before beginning his academic career. (Emphasis original)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;em&gt;a new study&lt;/em&gt; shows that children who start kindergarten earlier do better. (Emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/25/kids-starting-kindergarten-later_n_2016927.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An example&lt;/a&gt; advocating for holding back:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parents who decide to hold summer babies back and have them start kindergarten a year later may be onto something.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;New research&lt;/em&gt; finds that kids born in the summer are less likely to grow up to be company CEOs, mainly because being younger puts them at a disadvantage in school, according to researchers. (Emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As may not be surprising, the media has given us two &amp;quot;new studies&amp;quot; which support opposing positions!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some facets of this debate I've heard (put from the side advocating holding children back):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being emotionally under-developed compared to peers (especially females)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being physically under-developed compared to peers (especially females during puberty)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Being one of the last to be able to drive or reach the legal age of alcohol consumption&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A constant feeling of being overwhelmed, under-performing, not as capable, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intuitively I could theorize on some pros:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constantly being challenged and thriving in an environment where you are learning &amp;quot;ahead of your time&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having a year to witness successes and mistakes of your peers &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; being able to drink or drive&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Having friends who are theoretically a year &amp;quot;more mature&amp;quot; for emotional/social support&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, which is it? From the above, you can tell I'm obviously interested in long-term impacts, which carry through to all grade levels and into adulthood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I plan on looking for data myself, but currently don't know if such a data set exists (perhaps anonymous grades or other performance metrics paired with grade level and date of birth, for example). I have yet to dig into the specific examples of studies which have investigated this, but plan to do that as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a side comment, if evidence/data/studies suggests that parents &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; hold kids back until they are at least ~5.5 before starting kindergarten, I might expect that this would have become part of school enrollment standards. To date, it appears that it has not been incorporated, hence some skepticism on my part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T04:24:06.003" Title="Are there benefits to holding a child back a year before starting kindergarten?" Tags="|education|children|school|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19069" CreationDate="2014-01-12T02:11:01.447" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is little limited research on if/how Gripe Water works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This literature review from 2000 looks at the evidence of how Gripe Water deals with &lt;em&gt;colic&lt;/em&gt; (which may or may not be caused by intestinal discomfort):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blumenthal, I (April 2000). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1297971/pdf/10844880.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;The Gripe Water Story&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 93 (4): 172–174. PMC 1297971. PMID 10844880.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some versions of Gripe Water contain alcohol (depending on jurisdiction), but that does not appear to be an active ingredient in dealing with colic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, it is the &lt;em&gt;sweet taste&lt;/em&gt; that helps. So (depending on the ingredients), not the bicarbonate, not the sugar itself and probably not the dill in most cases. (Fennel wasn't present in the original formulation, although it varies.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It now seems that the soothing effect of gripe water derives from its sweet taste. Recent studies have shown that infants with colic obtain relief from sugar solutions. The face that the analgesic effect of a sugar solution is lost when it is fed by tube indicates the effect, which persists after the sugar is swallowed, is mediated through taste. Artificial sweeteners such as aspartame are just as effective as sucrose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T10:09:47.050" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T10:09:47.050" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19103" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-12T08:44:29.370" Score="5" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2013-2014/the-silence-of-the-labs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A CBC article&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the past five years the federal government has dismissed more than&#xA;  2,000 scientists, and hundreds of programs and world-renowned research&#xA;  facilities have lost their funding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claims like this are being used to suggest there is an &quot;attack on science&quot; by the Canadian government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“What’s important is the scale of the assault on knowledge, and on our&#xA;  ability to know about ourselves and to advance our understanding of&#xA;  our world,” said James Turk, executive director of the Canadian&#xA;  Association of University Teachers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were more than 2,000 scientists dismissed because their projects left unfunded? Is this just a case where the government has shifted funding to other new science programs and while 2000 positions may have been cut a similar number have been created in other projects?  Or is there some other explanation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:42:31.460" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T00:42:31.460" Title="Has the Canadian government recently dismissed a net of 2,000 scientists?" Tags="|economics|politics|canada|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19107" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19108" CreationDate="2014-01-12T19:21:33.690" Score="15" ViewCount="3927" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I was introduced to this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/proof-that-group-meditation-can-change-the-world/&quot;&gt;Proof that Group Meditation can Change the World&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which lead to this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://maharishi-programmes.globalgoodnews.com/maharishi-effect/&quot;&gt;http://maharishi-programmes.globalgoodnews.com/maharishi-effect/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Meditation&quot;&gt;the Wikipedia Article on Transcendental Meditation&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Proponents have postulated that 1 percent of a population (such as a city or country) practicing the TM technique daily, may have an impact on the quality of life for that population group. This has been termed the Maharishi Effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first couple articles seem a bit shakey in their credibility, but they do state that this effect has been verified across a whole bunch of &quot;Scientific Studies&quot;, etc... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;20 minutes of reading and googling, and I can't find a source I respect giving it the &quot;full treatment&quot; so to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10747" LastActivityDate="2020-01-31T00:42:29.903" Title="Is the &quot;Maharishi Effect&quot; real?" Tags="|meditation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19108" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19107" CreationDate="2014-01-12T20:14:35.633" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence that transcendental meditation confers any specific benefit separate from the benefits achieved by relaxation. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/yoga-woo/&quot;&gt;ref - sciencebasedmedicine.org&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://hyper.ahajournals.org/content/early/2013/04/22/HYP.0b013e318293645f&quot;&gt;ref - American Heart Association Scientific Statement&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Dr. Steven Novella:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, there are many studies showing that transcendental meditation is effective for lowering blood pressure. However, studies generally compare TM to no intervention, not to other forms of relaxation. The parsimonious interpretation is that TM confers the generic benefits of relaxation, but &lt;strong&gt;there is no evidence to suggest it confers any specific benefits&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the AHA's &lt;em&gt;Beyond Medications and Diet: Alternative Approaches to Lowering Blood Pressure&lt;/em&gt; (at p. 6):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The overall evidence supports that TM modestly lowers BP.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;It is not certain whether it is truly superior to other meditation&#xA;  techniques in terms of BP lowering&lt;/strong&gt; because there are few&#xA;  head-to-head studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that no specific effects above relaxation have been demonstrated in &lt;em&gt;individuals&lt;/em&gt; practicing TM, I don't see how there could be specific effects in entire populations that interact with those individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this research (above) is focusing on clinical outcomes of transcendental meditation. The Maharishi effect theory makes claims that are more vague. It claims that there is a &quot;collective consciousness&quot; or a &quot;unified field&quot; of consciousness, and that the effect on this field by the TM practitioners can result in TM-coherence even in non-practitioners, among other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070207074308/http:/onwww.net/unstress4less.org/transcendental_meditation-tmresearch-problems.htm&quot;&gt;Here is a page&lt;/a&gt; that examines the specific evidence that proponents of the Maharishi effect point to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One specific peer-reviewed critique of the Maharichi effect (&lt;a href=&quot;http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/content/76/2/511.full.pdf&quot;&gt;Evaluating Heterodox Theories&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070207121644/http://onwww.net/trancenet.org/research/markovsky2.shtml&quot;&gt;text available here&lt;/a&gt;) says the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MT [Maharichi effect theory] has serious problems regarding the clarity and integrity of its arguments, and it does not cohere well with other strongly confirmed theories, hence conflicting with the evidence supporting those theories. MT is under-articulated, often vague or enigmatic, reliant upon specious analyses, and silent about key processes that link causes to their alleged effects. These defects are not uncommon in novel theories, but in this case they allow nothing better than crude plausibility arguments for its extraordinary predictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes into detail about what the Maharichi effect theory actually claims, the purported evidence supporting its predictions, and gives alternative explanations for that evidence that have not been ruled out by the theory's proponents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-01-12T20:27:24.337" LastActivityDate="2014-01-12T20:27:24.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19114" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19115" CreationDate="2014-01-13T07:45:13.440" Score="30" ViewCount="6184" Body="&lt;p&gt;The meme of American ignorance in geography and world affairs seems to be pretty common in my experience. But, how much truth is there in it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I'm inclined to believe that the US population is generally less informed than its counterparts of other developed nations (a lot of data does indicate that the US at least lags behind in primary education), I find it hard to believe that Americans could be quite so ignorant as is widely purported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When looking into the subject, I quickly found on-line sources &lt;a href=&quot;http://geography.about.com/b/2007/08/30/one-in-five-americans-cant-find-us.htm&quot;&gt;refuting the well traveled &lt;em&gt;1 in 5 Americans can't find the US on a map&lt;/em&gt; claim&lt;/a&gt;. All such sources I've found back this up with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/0502_060502_geography.html&quot;&gt;2006 survey by National Geographic&lt;/a&gt;. What caught my eye about this survey was (1) all the other horrific statistics it produced instead and (2) the fact that this survey has been used as the sole supporting citation in many other articles discussing American ignorance of the world. In fact, I came across no article citing any other study, nor could I myself find another study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would expect to find more than one paper since 2006 if this were true. The report indicated that two-thirds of those surveyed couldn't identify northwest on a map, that 74% believed English to be the world's most commonly spoken native language, etc. It all just seems too far-fetched and the methodology seems questionable. The report states that &quot;510 interviews were conducted with a representative sample of 18- to 24-year old adults in the continental United States.&quot; At first that may sound like a lot, but that would come out to about 10 interviewees per state. How representative of each state could a sample of 10 be? If much more than 10 people were interviewed per state, than which group states did the researchers decide would represent all of the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any scientific studies within the last decade that support or refute National Geographic's report and the mass of claims which grew from it? Or, is this a lone study that many others have latched on to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Insights from fresh eyes would be greatly appreciated.&lt;/em&gt; :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17062" LastEditorUserId="30" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T00:33:21.933" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T10:26:47.673" Title="Are Americans ignorant of geography and the world?" Tags="|united-states|education|geography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19114" CreationDate="2014-01-13T08:34:59.517" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 2006 report you refer to is the last in a series of three. The pattern has been tracked across two decades, with surveys conducted by two separate polling organizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1988 - performed by Gallup, sampling 18-24 year olds (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/28/us/americans-falter-on-geography-test.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times article&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2002 - performed by Roper, sampling 18-24, and 25-35 year olds in the US, and compared against the 1988 results (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalgeographic.com/geosurvey2002/download/RoperSurvey.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2006 - performed by Roper, sampling 18-24 year olds in the US (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/pdf/FINALReport2006GeogLitsurvey.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;1988 Highlights (from the NYT article)&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;no more than half those tested could answer correctly when asked to identify the country in which the Sandinistas and the contras are fighting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;52 percent were aware that the Soviet Union's war with rebel forces was in Afghanistan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;55 percent could identify South Africa as the country where apartheid is official government policy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;only 25 percent could name four countries that officially acknowledge having nuclear weapons&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;more than a third could not pick out the westernmost city on a map &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2002 Highlights&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;just 23% of young adults surveyed could name&#xA;four countries that officially acknowledge having nuclear weapons&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;young adults in other countries in the study were better able to locate other&#xA;European countries than American young adults are to locate U.S. states&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;close to onethird&#xA;(30%) said that the U.S. has 1 to 2 billion people, or roughly one-third of the world s&#xA;population. Only one-fourth of American young adults (25%) correctly identified the U.S.&#xA;population as falling within the range of 150 to 350 million. Respondents in all other&#xA;countries were better able to identify the U.S. population than are young Americans.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;just 17% could find Afghanistan on a world map.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;only 14% of young Americans could locate Israel on a Middle East/Asia map&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;young Americans did seem more geographically literate on current events that occur near or in the U.S. or that affect U.S. life&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When asked to identify the western-most city on a hypothetical map, seven in ten young Americans (70%) answered correctly — up 12 points from 1988.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When asked to identify 12 countries on a map of Europe, the average young American&#xA;could locate only about 3, compared to their counterparts in the other countries&#xA;surveyed, who could locate an average of 5.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just 37% could find England&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2006&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I'm not going to repeat all of the results, but some highlights are listed &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/05/0502_060502_geography.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (which you link to in the question).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sampling strategy&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To address your specific doubt about the representativeness of the sample, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalgeographic.com/roper2006/pdf/FINALReport2006GeogLitsurvey.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;p. 46-47 of the 2006 report&lt;/a&gt;. The sample was not intended to be representative of any particular state (and some states might have been poorly represented). The sample was intended to be representative of the 18-24 year old population in the continental United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A multistage, stratified area probability sample applied down to the Secondary Sampling Unit (SSU) stage (i.e. street/block group or similar classification) was used for this research. For the selection of households, interviewers followed randomly selected, pre-determined interviewing routes with skip intervals. At the household level, quotas for sex and age were applied for respondent selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Expectation of more than one paper&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You expect more than one paper about American geographic literacy. There are many:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carano, Kenneth T., and Michael J. Berson. &quot;Breaking stereotypes: Constructing geographic literacy and cultural awareness through technology.&quot; The Social Studies 98, no. 2 (2007): 65-69.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lukinbeal, Chris, and Jim Craine. &quot;Geographic media literacy: an introduction.&quot; GeoJournal 74, no. 3 (2009): 175-182.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gaudelli, William, and Elizabeth Heilman. &quot;Reconceptualizing geography as democratic global citizenship education.&quot; The Teachers College Record 111, no. 11 (2009): 2647-2677.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Turner, Sally, and Joseph Leydon. &quot;Improving Geographic Literacy among First-Year Undergraduate Students: Testing the Effectiveness of Online Quizzes.&quot; Journal of Geography 111, no. 2 (2012): 54-66.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are multiple papers on the topic. They take their motivation from this series of three surveys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;A more recent survey&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://americangeo.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/AGSGeographicKnowledgeValuesSurveyFinal.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The American Geographic Society's Geographic Knowledge and Values Survey&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was an online survey, with volunteers soliciting responses from US residents. They had 4021 valid responses. This was not a random sample, and is not representative of anything other than the population of people who tend to answer surveys like this. Respondents had a high level of education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Of the 3,972 respondents who answered regarding the axis on which longitude changes, 56% of the respondents answered incorrectly [...] This result is &#xA;little better than what might be expected from random guesses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The majority of the respondents &#xA;said they did not know if a conformal or Mercator projection was appropriate for comparing the &#xA;land areas of Russia and Kenya. For those who did choose an answer, 32.3% incorrectly said &#xA;that a conformal projection was appropriate, while 34.8% correctly said that a Mercator &#xA;projection would not be appropriate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The majority of respondents, 55.4%, correctly chose a map scale of 1:50,000,000 for a &#xA;map of the entire earth at page size, compared to 14.7% who chose 1:5,000 and 30% who said &#xA;they did not know. [...] this result is little better than what might be &#xA;expected from random guesses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;23.3% correctly identified Florida as the flattest state&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Most respondents (67.8%) correctly chose Africa South of the Sahara as the &#xA;poorest world region&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, this survey does not overturn the results found in 1988, 2002, and 2006. It asked a very limited set of geographic literacy questions, and its sample was not representative of young Americans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="23396" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2016-03-29T10:26:47.673" LastActivityDate="2016-03-29T10:26:47.673" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19120" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19121" CreationDate="2014-01-13T16:38:27.890" Score="3" ViewCount="2002" Body="&lt;p&gt;On an episode of Qi there was a 'fact' that claimed oranges aren't actually orange they are green and they lose their green colour in transport and become orange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I was indeed skeptical about this, surely they are just green when they are unripe, like a lot of fruits and I'm pretty sure I have seen pictures of orange trees with orange oranges on them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any thoughts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17116" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T17:11:29.973" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T17:11:29.973" Title="Are oranges actually green?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2014-01-13T16:45:39.210" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19120" CreationDate="2014-01-13T16:45:13.070" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, that's wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oranges are/can be orange in their trees, as they get mature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ba.ars.usda.gov/hb66/100orange.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ba.ars.usda.gov/hb66/100orange.pdf&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peel color at maturity ranges from light to deep orange but may remain green under warm conditions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One research analysis how the water ammount can change the fruit color: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/datastore/234-2628.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/datastore/234-2628.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Our research suggests that late-season&#xA;  water stress may produce a fruit with less&#xA;  green and more orange color earlier in the&#xA;  season when even a few days difference in&#xA;  harvest timing can mean a large price differential&#xA;  in fruit value.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4146" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-13T16:58:04.297" LastActivityDate="2014-01-13T16:58:04.297" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19123" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-13T23:59:09.460" Score="1" ViewCount="331" Body="&lt;p&gt;As governments attempt to get their finances back into balance, many have cut back on a wide range of spending commitments. Some governments such as the UK have chosen to protect spending on healthcare, though that spend is no longer rising at its previous rate leading some campaigners to accuse the government of imposing &quot;cuts&quot; (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-24286582&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this BBC news story&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2532984/Dont-spare-wasteful-NHS-future-spending-cuts-says-senior-Conservative-MP.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Some thinkers&lt;/a&gt; argue the NHS should not be protected. They are opposed by many campaigners who argue the NHS should get even more money (e.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;http://nhap.org/nha-plan/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Health Action Party&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One argument used by those who propose increases in health spending is that health spending is good for the economy. A recent analysis by some health economists sympathetic to this view appeared recently in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1744-8603-9-43.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BiomedCentral&lt;/a&gt;. They summarise the debate well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Great Recession that beset Europe and North America since 2007 has sparked widespread debate about alternative approaches to achieving economic recovery. Much of the discussion has centred on the ques- tion of whether government spending will promote or inhibit economic growth. Critics of government spending argue, first, that such spending has an immediate effect of increasing debt which, if associated with a loss of confidence by investors, will also increase the cost of servicing that debt as a consequence of increased inter- est rates. Second, they argue that, by “crowding out” private markets and, by implication, their assumed greater efficiency, they will inhibit the growth necessary for recovery. In contrast, advocates of greater spending during recessionary periods, which are characterized by unemployment and deficits, argue that the effects of short term increases in borrowing will be compensated for by higher growth resulting from a high marginal propensity to consume, generating positive cycles of consumption and employment growth. Many of these arguments have been tested empirically. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They proceed to make an econometric argument that spending more on health would boost the economy arguing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our findings indicate that government spending on health may have short-term effects that make recovery more likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm slightly suspicious of their conclusion as BiomedCentral isn't exactly a mainstream Economics journal and the authors have known bias on the topic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is their conclusion that health spending will boost an economy economically sound?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T12:49:00.313" Title="Does government spending on healthcare promote economic growth?" Tags="|economics|government|healthcare|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19126" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19132" CreationDate="2014-01-14T04:54:22.413" Score="14" ViewCount="1128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a few news stories about the ocean freezing in a &quot;instant&quot; and trapping fish, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/01/this-sea-water-froze-so-fast-that-it-killed-thousands-of-fish-instantly/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Gizmodo Australia&lt;/a&gt;  one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Norwegian public radio (Google-translated) reports on the instant dead of thousands of fish in a bay in the island of Lovund, Norway. An air temperature of -7.8C combined with a strong east wind froze the sea water instantly, trapping and killing the fish &#xA;  you can see in this fishapocalyptic image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6AVuCm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image of frozen fish via Gizmodo&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't seen anything from what I would consider a reliable news source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A temperature of -7.5C doesn't seem that cold to freeze salt water instantly.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.imr.no/om_havforskningsinstituttet/ansatte/s/aril_slotte/en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ariel Slotte&lt;/a&gt;, who was quoted in the story, is a real person, although I don't speak the language and am not certain on his exact job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did this happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16869" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T06:48:33.983" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T06:48:33.983" Title="Did the ocean freeze suddenly, trapping fish?" Tags="|meteorology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19128" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20814" CreationDate="2014-01-14T05:48:38.107" Score="22" ViewCount="2155" Body="&lt;p&gt;Marketwatch's story &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-surprising-steps-to-staying-cancer-free-2012-03-29&quot;&gt;&quot;10 surprising steps to staying cancer-free&quot;&lt;/a&gt; states that getting an flu shot every year help prevent cancer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Get an annual flu shot. Having the flu triggers inflammation, which&#xA;  can set the body up for serious problems when it’s most vulnerable, he&#xA;  says. The flu vaccine, whose contents change every year according to&#xA;  the dominant viral strains projected to circulate, helps the body tone&#xA;  down its harsh immune response. “I want [people] to think of a flu&#xA;  shot in terms of not just what it means today but a decade from now,”&#xA;  [Dr. David Agus, oncologist, professor of medicine at UCLA] says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does avoiding the flu reduce the risk of cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-14T06:42:00.587" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T16:41:27.477" Title="Does getting a flu shot every year help prevent cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19132" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19126" CreationDate="2014-01-14T09:48:26.440" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More or less, yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many news sources are incomplete.  For the most direct account, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrk.no/nordland/smafisk-svomte-i-doden-1.11466122&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this report by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation&lt;/a&gt;.  This is a normally quite reliable news source.  Some key elements missing in some reports.  Firstly: &lt;em&gt;they were trapped due to cormorants&lt;/em&gt;.  Secondly: &lt;em&gt;there is a concrete wall under the surface of the water&lt;/em&gt;.  Quote and translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– 7–8 minusgrader og austavind gjorde at vågen frøs til i løpet av kort tid. Småseien var blitt jaget mot land av skarv, og har tydeligvis ikke klart å komme seg ut på åpent hav igjen, forteller Ingolf Kristiansen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aril Slotte, som er leder for Pelagisk fisk ved Havforskningsinstituttet, sier det ikke er uvanlig at sild blir jaget på land av predatorer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;– Vi vet at hvalen skremmer silda på land flere steder i Troms, så det er ikke utenkelig at dette kan skje med småsei og annen fisk som blir trengt opp mot land, sier han til NRK.no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;7–8 degrees below zero and an easterly wind caused the bay to freeze very rapidly.  The pollock had been chased toward the land by cormorants, and could apparently not get out to the open sea again, says Ingolf Kristiansen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.imr.no/om_havforskningsinstituttet/ansatte/s/aril_slotte/en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aril Slotte&lt;/a&gt;, head of pelagic fish [group] at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imr.no/en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Institute of Marine Research&lt;/a&gt;, says it is not unusual for herring to be chased onto the land by predators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know that whales scare herring toward the land on many places in Troms, so it is not unthinkable this can happen with pollock and other fish chased to the land, he says to NRK.no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, another important piece of information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Om sommeren er vågen ei populær badevik. Det er bygd en betongmur under vann ut mot åpent hav slik at det bare er innsig av sjøvann når det flør.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During summer, the bay is a popular bathing place.  There is a concrete wall under the water toward the open sea, so that there is only seepage of water during high tide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no, it didn't freeze incredibly fast — but the fish had been chased there by cormorants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T05:34:07.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19134" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-14T11:52:22.170" Score="5" ViewCount="529" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google#cite_note-202&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source of all knowledge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On February 22, 2008, Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA)&#xA;  attempted to block regional access to YouTube following a government&#xA;  order. The attempt inadvertently caused a worldwide YouTube blackout&#xA;  that took 2 hours to correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly the reference link is broken. How can a websites with presumably servers around the world be accidentally taken out? I'm interested in the technical details of what the authorities did that disabled YouTube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:57:17.530" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:57:17.530" Title="Did the Pakistan government accidentally cause YouTube to become unusable in 2008?" Tags="|internet|government|networks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19134" CreationDate="2014-01-14T12:05:34.423" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember that event!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The European IP Network's Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC - &lt;em&gt;the acronym makes more sense in French&lt;/em&gt;) issued &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ripe.net/internet-coordination/news/industry-developments/youtube-hijacking-a-ripe-ncc-ris-case-study&quot;&gt;a case-study about the incident&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On Sunday, 24 February 2008, Pakistan Telecom (AS17557) started an unauthorised announcement of the prefix 208.65.153.0/24. One of Pakistan Telecom's upstream providers, PCCW Global (AS3491) forwarded this announcement to the rest of the Internet, which resulted in the hijacking of YouTube traffic on a global scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It contains the technical details on the IP range hijacking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T12:05:34.423" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19138" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19139" CreationDate="2014-01-14T14:52:17.780" Score="21" ViewCount="5892" Body="&lt;p&gt;This morning at 8:30 AM on the Power 96.1 radio station in Atlanta, Georgia, I heard a radio ad for M&amp;amp;M in which it was claimed that one out of every one hundred (1/100) peanuts ends up in Peanut M&amp;amp;Ms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any data behind this assertion or was it just made up for marketing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mms-peanut-chocolate-candies-thrill-fans-at-25th-annual-peach-drop-in-atlanta-with-all-star-performances-and-one-sweet-surprise-238335271.html&quot;&gt;an article on PR Newswire&lt;/a&gt; which also mentions the statement touted by Mars:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;in fact only 1 in 100 peanuts is lucky enough to find its way into a bag of M&amp;amp;M'S Peanut&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;I tagged this with the nutrition tag because &quot;food&quot; is a synonym.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14622" LastEditorUserId="43" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T19:18:22.937" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T11:08:02.440" Title="Does one out of every hundred peanuts produced end up in Peanut M&amp;Ms?" Tags="|nutrition|marketing|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19138" CreationDate="2014-01-14T17:33:15.397" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/psdreport.aspx?hidReportRetrievalName=BVS&amp;amp;hidReportRetrievalID=918&amp;amp;hidReportRetrievalTemplateID=1#ancor&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;preliminary projection for world peanut production in 2012/2013&lt;/a&gt; is 39.93 million metric tons. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crbtrader.com/fund/articles/peanuts.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In 2006&lt;/a&gt;, it was 32.30 million metric tons. That is in-shell weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The global shelling percentage (how much peanut is left after shelling, by mass) is about 70% (El Bassam. &lt;em&gt;Handbook of Bioenergy Crops: A Complete Reference to Species, Development and Applications&lt;/em&gt;. 2010. At p. 200).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That results in about 28 million metric tons of shelled peanut in 2013, or 23 million metric tons of shelled peanut in 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=28+million+metric+tons+%2F+100&amp;amp;oq=28+million+metric+tons+%2F+100&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;For 1/100 of that&lt;/a&gt; to find its way into Peanut M&amp;amp;Ms would mean that at least 0.28 million metric tons of peanuts are used in Peanut M&amp;amp;Ms per year (or 0.23 million metric tons at 2006 levels of production).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://stat.pugetsound.edu/hoard/datasetDetails.aspx?id=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;average mass of a Peanut M&amp;amp;M&lt;/a&gt; is 2.59 grams (with a standard error of 0.03 grams). (The average mass of Peanut M&amp;amp;Ms is an upper bound on the average mass of peanut in them. There are other ingredients.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=0.23+million+metric+tons+%2F+2.59+grams&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;0.23 million metric tons (the 2006 number) of 2.59 gram units is 88,803,088,803 units&lt;/a&gt;. At least 88 billion Peanut M&amp;amp;Ms would be needed to be produced. (For 2013, the requisite number is 108 billion Peanut M&amp;amp;Ms.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are about 146 billion M&amp;amp;M candies produced per year. (Sutton and Klein. &lt;em&gt;Enterprise Marketing Management: The New Science of Marketing&lt;/em&gt;. 2006. At p. 139). This estimate is still current. I confirmed this by a phone call to Mars. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dropbox.com/s/hm1a4ugxykgy650/400million.mp3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;They said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We make about 400 million M&amp;amp;M pieces every day; that's for all types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically the question comes down to whether it's plausible (or even better, whether there's evidence) that at least 60% (for 2006) or at least 74% (for 2013) of M&amp;amp;Ms are peanut M&amp;amp;Ms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="37939" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2017-10-25T11:08:02.440" LastActivityDate="2017-10-25T11:08:02.440" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19138" CreationDate="2014-01-14T18:29:37.710" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;1/100&quot; claim appears to have originated directly from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mars.com/global/press-center/press-list/news-releases.aspx?SiteId=94&amp;amp;Id=5415&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this press release from Mars&lt;/a&gt;, the manufacturer of M&amp;amp;Ms, which itself directly quotes Roy Benin, Chief Consumer Officer of Mars Chocolate North America:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“This event perfectly captured our passion for peanuts – in fact only 1 in 100 peanuts is lucky enough to find its way into a bag of M&amp;amp;M’S Peanut.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim appears to be the cornerstone of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/mms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an ongoing marketing campaign for M&amp;amp;M&lt;/a&gt;.  The exact wording used in that press release, though, is a bit ambiguous.  It could very well mean that only 1 in 100 of the peanuts &lt;em&gt;delivered&lt;/em&gt; to Mars makes it into an M&amp;amp;M.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/19139/1337&quot;&gt;Articuno's answer&lt;/a&gt; provides a thorough analysis of the numbers, which I see no need to reproduce.  With that said I disagree with the conclusion that the numbers are insufficient to conclude that the 1/100 claim is &lt;em&gt;plausible&lt;/em&gt;, because, like most agricultural products, worldwide peanut production varies quite dramatically year over year.  For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peanutsusa.com/component/phocadownload/category/20-2011.html?download=82:Peanut%20Crop%20Production%20-%202011%20Annual%20Summary&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the USDA reported almost a 13% increase in peanut production in the US from 2009 to 2010&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/psdreport.aspx?hidReportRetrievalName=BVS&amp;amp;hidReportRetrievalID=918&amp;amp;hidReportRetrievalTemplateID=1#ancor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The data to which Articuno linked&lt;/a&gt; predicted over a 5% increase in worldwide production in 2012/2013.  Global peanut production in 2006—the year from which the M&amp;amp;M candy production statistic was reported—&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crbtrader.com/fund/articles/peanuts.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;was 32.303 million metric tons&lt;/a&gt;, which is about 20% lower than the cited projections for 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using the new numbers for 2006, the requisite number of peanut M&amp;amp;Ms produced would be about 124.7 billion units, which is below the total number of M&amp;amp;M sales reported in that year.  Therefore, there is a chance that the interpretation that &quot;1/100&quot; means &quot;one out of every hundred peanuts produced &lt;em&gt;in the world&lt;/em&gt;&quot; could potentially be plausible, but it is impossible to evaluate the statement's validity because its original wording is ambiguous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2014-01-14T18:29:37.710" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19141" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-14T20:57:37.970" Score="3" ViewCount="200" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work a job that requires 100% travel. I cannot recall ever having to pay a toll since I use Google maps with the &quot;avoid toll&quot; feature. Yet, I have work mates who regularly claim that they go to jobs which absolutely require tolls. Is that possible in the US? I did &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=places%20you%20can%27t%20go%20without%20paying%20tolls&amp;amp;oq=places%20you%20can%27t%20go%20without%20paying%20tolls&amp;amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.12534j0j8&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;espv=210&amp;amp;es_sm=93&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8#q=places%20you%20can%27t%20go%20without%20paying%20tolls&amp;amp;start=10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a little digging&lt;/a&gt; on Google and couldn't find anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1618" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T20:03:05.357" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T20:03:05.357" Title="Are there places you can't go in the US without paying tolls?" Tags="|driving|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2014-01-14T21:00:06.173" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19165" CreationDate="2014-01-14T23:00:00.310" Score="21" ViewCount="76378" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a famous quote by Winston Churchill that, when asked to cut arts funding in favour of the war effort, he replied: “Then what are we fighting for?” (it can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=276436585843247&amp;amp;set=a.212771035543136.1073741828.211736048979968&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;stream_ref=10&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, among other places).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17048" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-14T23:22:01.230" LastActivityDate="2016-01-04T03:46:28.697" Title="Did Winston Churchill say we should not cut art funding?" Tags="|history|quotes|world-war-ii|winston-churchill|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19144" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19148" CreationDate="2014-01-15T00:01:31.153" Score="29" ViewCount="2871" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a clich&amp;egrave; that is constantly repeated by the likes of Gordon Ramsey:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You are running around like headless chickens!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mfk0v.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;headless chicken&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.successcreationtoolbox.com/futureinspiredbusinessowner/are-you-running-around-like-a-headless-chicken/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, for example, they do in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/222638/bailout&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;South Park animations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do headless chicken run around? After all, why wouldn't they collapse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T12:16:08.197" LastActivityDate="2017-07-26T09:54:45.717" Title="Do headless chickens run around?" Tags="|physiology|zoology|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19144" CreationDate="2014-01-15T11:36:25.310" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes they do, or at least kind of do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They move after decapitation in a kind of jumping-running-flapping motion, and can be seen in the videos getting out of containers, or traveling several dozen meters away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching for &quot;headless chickens run around&quot; gives a bunch of YouTube videos. All depicting decapitated chickens running around, flapping their wings and jumping. Here are some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caution: NSFW. Contains graphic content.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HksE-7aYmIw&quot;&gt;A decapitated chicken running around in the yard until finally succumbing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt0NGCckfzU&quot;&gt;A decapitated chicken jumps out of a bucket and running around until finally succumbing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swuD2rX3hfQ&quot;&gt;Shows the decapitation of a chicken and then the chicken jumps around, and another chicken decapitated and then flapping while it's held down&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T12:12:33.570" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T12:12:33.570" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19149" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-15T12:34:47.847" Score="6" ViewCount="592" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do humans (and I guess also most creatures) sleep better in darkness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17149" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-15T19:42:01.407" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T03:44:39.477" Title="Do humans sleep better in darkness?" Tags="|biology|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19150" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2017" CreationDate="2014-01-15T14:05:21.117" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The biggest study I can find concludes that it is ineffective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the most comprehensive reassessment of the effects of cloud seeding over the past fifty years, new findings from Prof. Pinhas Alpert, Prof. Zev Levin and Dr. Noam Halfon of Tel Aviv University's Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences have dispelled the notion that seeding is an effective mechanism for precipitation enhancement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101101125949.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Cloud Seeding' Not Effective at Producing Rain as Once Thought, New Research Shows&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a hard problem to decide though - effectively &amp;quot;hypothetical meteorology&amp;quot; i.e. you must decide when, where and how much would it have rained anyway, had you not done anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other peer-reviewed studies have come to a different conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a 2010 study by Bernard Silverman, a consulting meteorologist based in Colorado, published in the peer-reviewed journal Atmospheric Research. Silverman reviewed 11 Sierra Nevada cloud-seeding programs and found that six were successful in boosting streamflow. In the remaining five, the evidence was not conclusive whether they were successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sacbee.com/2013/11/11/v-print/5898983/cloud-seeding-no-longer-magical.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cloud seeding, no longer magical thinking, is poised for use this winter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In summary: No, a reliable technology does not exist.&lt;/strong&gt;  It's still unclear, despite several scientific studies, how effective the technology is.  It might still useful, at least in some situations, but we &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; say for sure it's not yet &amp;quot;a reliable technology&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T14:05:21.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19151" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19152" CreationDate="2014-01-15T16:09:34.137" Score="6" ViewCount="1009" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone told me that human cells can somehow feel the earth's magnetic field. The same guy thought that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centriole&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;centrioles&lt;/a&gt; are probably involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, would it be true for stronger magnetic fields?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that this claim is quite widespread because a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nikken.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;society&lt;/a&gt; uses this claim to sell stuff that are supposed to increase well-being thanks to magnets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question concerns human's abilities to sense magnetic field and not the effectiveness of therapeutic magnets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16332" LastEditorUserId="16332" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T14:57:32.927" LastActivityDate="2014-01-17T15:46:29.400" Title="Can humans &quot;feel&quot; the earth's magnetic field?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|alternative-medicine|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19152" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19151" CreationDate="2014-01-15T16:40:52.077" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is known that many animals posess the ability to sense magnetic fields (magnetoreception), a well-known example are migratory birds. Humans are generally considered to lack such a mechanism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://jeb.biologists.org/content/213/19/3247.long&quot;&gt;&quot;A behavioral perspective on the biophysics of the light-dependent magnetic compass: a link between directional and spatial perception?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The intervening years have provided a wealth of evidence that the&#xA;  magnetic sense is present in taxonomically diverse groups of animals&#xA;  (Wiltschko and Wiltschko, 1995). For example, among mammals there is&#xA;  evidence for magnetic sensitivity in mice, hamsters, rats, mole rats,&#xA;  bats, cows and deer (Olcese et al., 1985; Burda et al., 1990; Kimchi&#xA;  and Terkel, 2001; Deutschlander et al., 2003; Muheim et al., 2006a;&#xA;  Thalau et al., 2006; Begall et al., 2008; Holland et al., 2008).&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Indeed, animals that do not have a magnetic sense (humans are widely&#xA;  assumed to fall in this category&lt;/strong&gt;) may be the exception, rather than&#xA;  the rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some studies by Robin Baker, but they are cited as controversial in the newer articles I found on the topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3128388/&quot;&gt;&quot;Human cryptochrome exhibits light-dependent magnetosensitivity&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Humans are widely assumed not to have a magnetic sense3. For example,&#xA;  the extensive behavioural studies by Robin Baker11,12,13,14,15,&#xA;  suggesting a link between non-visual navigation and magnetoreception&#xA;  in humans, are controversial. However, there is consistent evidence of&#xA;  an influence of geomagnetic fields on the light sensitivity of the&#xA;  human visual system16,17.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this article the authors show that humans posess one protein that can potentially sense magnetic fields:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our results show that hCRY2, the prototype type 2 CRY18,19, has the&#xA;  molecular capability to function in a light-dependent magnetoreception&#xA;  system, either as a light-sensitive magnetosensor or as part of a&#xA;  magnetosensing pathway. However, we do not yet know whether this&#xA;  capability is translated into a downstream biological response in the&#xA;  human retina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far there is no convincing data that humans can sense magnetic fields, but there are some results that merit some further investigation. But even if we can sense magnetic fields, I would strongly doubt any medical effects of such magnets unless they are shown in a clinical trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2014-01-15T16:40:52.077" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19149" CreationDate="2014-01-16T03:44:39.477" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The simple answer is &amp;quot;yes.&amp;quot; The human brain has evolved to sleep better in the dark and be more alert in the light. The reason has to do with the times of day our ancestors traditionally were active or resting. In the case of nocturnal animals, this relationship with light and dark is generally reversed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a more thorough summary of why this is the case, here's an excerpt from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000145&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Light, Sleep, and Circadian Rhythms: Together Again&amp;quot;, by Dijk &amp;amp; Archer, published in PLOS Biology on 23 June 2009&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 24-hour (h) light–dark (LD) cycle is a fundamental characteristic of Earth's environment and so its powerful influence on the behaviour and physiology of animals and humans that evolved on this planet is not surprising. ...light coordinates the temporal rhythms of physiology and behaviour by sending signals to structures in the brain that contain the central circadian clock. These signals are mediated in part by melanopsin, a photopigment found in the retina. Light affects the brain through these nonvisual pathways, and scientists have recently begun to realize just how pervasive these nonvisual effects are. Mounting evidence supports the view that the effects of light on sleep and brain activity during wakefulness, as well as the duration of sleep and the homeostatic response to sleep loss, depend on both melanopsin and circadian time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Light and Entrainment of Circadian Rhythms&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In humans and other diurnal animals, most behavioural activity occurs during the day, whereas in nocturnal animals, such as mice, most activities are confined to the dark phase. Even in the absence of an LD cycle, the rest–activity rhythm persists with a periodicity of approximately 24 h, instead of redistributing across the 24-h day. More than 35 years ago, it was discovered that circadian rhythms in mammals are driven by “pacemakers” in the brain, which consist of thousands of neurons in structures called the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) in the anterior hypothalamus... The SCN are directly connected to the retina; when this pathway is disrupted, the rest–activity cycle fails to be synchronized to the LD cycle. Normal synchronization, or entrainment, to different LD cycles is accomplished through variation in the response of the circadian pacemaker to light pulses [2],[3]. Light exposure late in the biological day, around dusk, will delay the onset of activity in a nocturnal animal, and delay the onset of inactivity in a diurnal animal. Light exposure early in the biological day (dawn) will advance the onset of activity in a diurnal species, and advance the onset of sleep in a nocturnal species. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the full text, visit &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000145&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000145&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17062" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-16T03:44:39.477" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19157" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-16T09:20:57.853" Score="6" ViewCount="719" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramayana&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ramayana&lt;/a&gt; is one of Hinduism's greatest epics. Nobody appears to know with &lt;em&gt;certainty&lt;/em&gt; when the poem was composed or when the events in it occurred. However, while some scholars claim that the events probably occurred at around the 8th century BCE mark, others claim that it is much, much older.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One section of these other scholars asserts that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindunet.org/hindu_history/ancient/ramayan/rama_vartak.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;events took place circa 7300 BCE&lt;/a&gt; (or about 4000 years before the Bronze Age). In the linked article, the author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12839903&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. P.V. Vartak&lt;/a&gt;, even goes as far as narrowing down Rama's (the eponymous hero of the tale) date of birth to 4th December, 7323 BCE. He bases his conclusions on astronomical, meteorological, and cultural data sprinkled throughout the poem. For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mahabharat states that Sage Vishwamitra started counting nakshatras from Shravana (Aadiparva A.71 and Ashwamedha A.44) and a new reference to time measurement thus initiated. According to the old tradition, the first place was assigned to the nakshatra prevelant on the Vernal Equinox. Vishwamitra modified this and started measuring from the nakshatra at the Autumnal Equinox. Sharvan was at this juncture at about 7500 B.C, which is therefore the probable period when Vishwamitra existed and also that of the Ramayanic Era.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formerly, the year initiated with the Varsha-Rutu (season) and therefore was termed &amp;quot;Varsha&amp;quot;. Ramayan shows that the flag was being hoisted to celebrate the new year on Ashwin Paurnima (Kishkindha 16/37, Ayodhya 74/36). Ayodhya 77 mentions that the flags were defaced and damaged due to heat and showers. These descriptions point to the fact that their new year started on the Summer Solstice when heat and rain simultaneously exist. The Summer Solstice fell on Ashwin Full Moon, so the Sun was diagonally opposite at Swati nakshatra. This astral configuration can be calculated to have occured around 7400 B.C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it appears that the primary basis for estimating a date is the calendar by Vishwamitra. Other estimates are arrived at relative to this conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if any credence can be given to this claim. Is the supposition about Vishwamitra's &amp;quot;calendar&amp;quot; correct? Are the astronomical aspects of his method reliable? Dr. Vartak claims to have similarly dated the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mahabharata&lt;/a&gt; to 5561 BCE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both these claims are often sensationalised in reports as providing a scientific evidence of the truth of the events in both epics as well as the time of their occurrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15636" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T06:08:00.893" Title="Can the events of the Ramayana and Mahabharata be astronomically dated to around 7300 BCE and 5561 BCE respectively?" Tags="|history|religion|astronomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13636" CreationDate="2014-01-16T10:40:35.930" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxfam.org/en/grow/landgrabs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oxfam claims&lt;/a&gt; food shortages are caused by land grabs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Land grabs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's not necessarily a problem when wealthy companies invest in&#xA;  agricultural land in poor countries for commercial use. But when&#xA;  families are kicked off the land or less food is grown as a result,&#xA;  that's a very big problem indeed. Recent data indicates that at least&#xA;  33 million hectares of land deals have been identified since 2001 – an&#xA;  area 8 times the size of the Netherlands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And since the food price spikes of 2008, that's been happening more&#xA;  and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Demand for land has soared as investors look for places to grow food&#xA;  for export, grow crops for biofuels, or simply buy-up land for profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But in many cases, land sold as “unused” or “undeveloped” is actually&#xA;  being used by poor families to grow food. These families are often&#xA;  forcibly kicked off the land. Promises of compensation are broken.&#xA;  Often people are violently evicted by hired thugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cao-ombudsman.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Office of the Compliance Advisor/Ombudsman&lt;/a&gt; is a more credible source than Oxfam, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cao-ombudsman.org/cases/document-links/documents/UpdatedMubendeProgressReportafterFinalAgreement-August142013.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here's one recent report&lt;/a&gt; Oxfam's land grab page &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxfam.org/en/grow/ugandan-community-reaches-agreement-british-company&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;linked to&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;August 14, 2013&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Background to the Complaint&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The IFC-supported Agri-Vie Agribusiness Fund is a private equity fund&#xA;  with the purpose of making equity investments in agribusiness&#xA;  companies in Southern and Eastern Africa. In its current portfolio,&#xA;  Agri-Vie has invested in New Forests Company (NFC), a UK-based&#xA;  forestry company operating established and growing timber plantations&#xA;  in Eastern Africa. Operational in Uganda since 2005, NFC operates three pine and eucalyptus plantations - in the Mubende, Kiboga and Bugiri&#xA;  districts respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In December 2011 affected community&#xA;  representatives, Oxfam International, Oxfam Great Britain, and the&#xA;  Uganda Land Alliance (a national consortium of organizations&#xA;  advocating on land issues) submitted a complaint to the CAO on behalf&#xA;  of people living around the plantation in Mubende. The complaint&#xA;  raised concern s about evictions and displacement in the plantation&#xA;  area, alleging that the evictions negatively impacted the communities&#xA;  by displacing them from land, destroying their private property, and&#xA;  forcing them to forgo health, education, and livelihood opportunities.&#xA;  The complaint also voiced broader concerns about the IFC’s due&#xA;  diligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/Energy,%20Environment%20and%20Development/0413pp_biofuels.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Energy, Environment and Resources EER PP 2013/01, &quot;The Trouble with Biofuels: Costs and Consequences of Expanding Biofuel Use in the United Kingdom&quot;, by Rob Bailey, April 2013&lt;/a&gt; agrees with Oxfam's research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Current biofuel standards do not ensure biofuel use is sustainable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Agricultural biofuel use increases the level and volatility of food&#xA;  prices, with detrimental impacts on the food security of low-income&#xA;  food-importing countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Africans are too poor to buy their own food, if they can even grow it, because they're being robbed of their wealth by greedy people.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they were able to, they could aid themselves, so food aid is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; the cause of famines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/greed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Merriam-Webster defines&lt;/a&gt; &quot;greed&quot; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a selfish desire to have more of something (especially money)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &quot;selfish&quot; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;having or showing concern only for yourself and not for the needs or&#xA;  feelings of other people&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming the victims of alleged land grabs as &quot;other people&quot;, then those responsible for them losing their land are greedy. &lt;a href=&quot;http://mathworld.wolfram.com/QED.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;QED&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to refute my logic in the comment section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://assets.coca-colacompany.com/6b/65/7f0d386040fcb4872fa136f05c5c/proposal-to-oxfam-on-land-tenure-and-sugar.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Coca-Cola has committed to ending abuse among its suppliers&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Q1 2014, we will incorporate and publish FPIC guidance into our&#xA;  Supplier Guiding Principles under the section regarding Laws and&#xA;  Regulations as well as in the Sustainable Agriculture Guiding&#xA;  Principles, establishing auditable criteria for FPIC to be implemented&#xA;  as new supplier audits are conducted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, if poor people cannot earn money by working for low wages, how will they be supported if not through aid (e.g. social security)? &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labor_laws_in_the_United_States#cite_note-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The USA had child labor&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2379324M/Mill_family&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7452809M/Like_a_Family&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;), but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mexico-takes-title-of-most-obese-from-america/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;is now #2 at obesity&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3300e/i3300e.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Study&lt;/a&gt;. Would the USA have prospered without that shameful phase? The exercise of answering that question must be left for another occasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="5079" LastEditDate="2014-01-18T18:55:46.703" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T18:55:46.703" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19143" CreationDate="2014-01-16T22:28:23.883" Score="23" Body="&lt;h1&gt;The quotation is bogus and there may not have been much to cut.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;There's no evidence that Churchill said this&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/micwright/100010200/winston-churchill-on-arts-funding-how-twitter-twists-history-to-suit-modern-agendas/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; the quotation is bogus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spend enough time on Facebook or Twitter and you'll eventually come across a quote which purportedly emerged from that bulldog visage in the darkest days of World War II. It has Churchill responding to a plan to cut money for the arts to fund the war effort by saying: &amp;quot;Then what are we fighting for?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a pithy line and it sounds a little Churchillian but the great man never said it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we want the next generation to have any notion of real history beyond warmed-up, fabricated aphorisms, we'd best start teaching them to fact-check.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rischard Langworth, a Churchill historian &lt;a href=&quot;http://richardlangworth.com/tag/arts-funding&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This alleged quotation was raised a few years ago in the Village Voice and is all over the web, but it is not in any of Churchill’s 15 million &lt;strike&gt;speeches&lt;/strike&gt; [words in his], papers, letters, articles or books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The premise of the quotation is incorrect&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alleged quotation suggests that cutting money for arts could provide a significant source of additional funding for the war effort. However the amounts involved are so trivial that the preservation of arts funding is hardly heroic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/who-we-are/history-arts-council&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;History of the Arts Council&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1940    Committee for Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) set up by Royal Charter&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1941    John Maynard Keynes becomes Chair of CEMA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;1945    46 arts organisations are funded by CEMA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/wid/ead/acgb/acgbf.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;V&amp;amp;A Museum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The initial objective of the committee was to give financial assistance to cultural societies finding difficulty in maintaining their activities during the War. The committee was funded by &lt;strong&gt;£25,000&lt;/strong&gt; from the Pilgrim Trust, of which Lord Macmillan and Dr Thomas Jones were also the chairman and secretary respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1940 the committee, enlarged by the inclusion of several new members, was formally appointed as the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) by Lord De La Warr, President of the Board of Education. The new Council began to receive direct funding from the government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1940 Britain &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/year_spending_1940UKbn_13bc1n_30#ukgs302&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;spent £643 million on defence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding any sum similar to 25,000 to the existing 643,000,000 defense expenditure was almost certainly not going to shorten the war noticeably. It seems unlikely that Churchill was really faced with an important choice between the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T17:06:03.480" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="45891" CreationDate="2014-01-17T01:32:40.703" Score="1" ViewCount="350" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tegarome is a blend of essential oils designed to treat soothes minor skin injuries such as sun burn, insect stings, scratches. It was created by &lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Valnet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Jean Valnet&lt;/a&gt;, who is regarded as a founder of modern &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aromatherapy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;aromatherapy&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tegarome is a product based on the essential oils of lavandin, miaouli, cypress, rosemary, sage, geranium, thyme, and eucalyptus which each of us needs at one time or another.  Superficial burns, sun burn, insect stings, blisters, bruises, grazes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://biorganic.perso.sfr.fr/valnetproduitsgb.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://biorganic.perso.sfr.fr/valnetproduitsgb.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know specifically whether this product is effective to treat minor skin injuries. I couldn't find any article on Google Scholar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastActivityDate="2020-02-12T10:14:57.833" Title="Is Tegarome effective to treat minor skin injuries such as sun burn, insect stings, scratches?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|herbalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19169" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-17T01:51:38.350" Score="2" ViewCount="1116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard and read from various (low quality) sources that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%27ai_chi_ch%27uan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tai Chi&lt;/a&gt; is effective to treat &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendinitis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tendinitis&lt;/a&gt; (a.k.a. tendonitis). E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://askville.amazon.com/cure-tendonitis/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=369267&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Askville&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gentle exercises such as Tai Chi, Yoga, and stretching, swimming and&#xA;  light weight lifting are all may help cure tendonitis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.andydent.com/TaiChiAndRSI.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Personal experience&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About three years ago I was caught up in such a project and developed&#xA;  a problem with RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury, or Tendonitis) in my&#xA;  right arm. I have tried this experiment twice and am now satisfied&#xA;  that my daily Tai Chi is extremely important in keeping RSI at bay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any study on Tai Chi's effectiveness to treat tendinitis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="7654" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T02:08:53.883" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T17:14:15.320" Title="Is Tai Chi effective to treat tendinitis?" Tags="|medical-science|sport|yoga|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19170" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-17T02:01:36.333" Score="5" ViewCount="2783" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theradome.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Theradome Laser Helmet&lt;/a&gt; is claimed by its manufacturers to promote healthy hair growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this infographic, they claim it delivers energy to the skull at a concentration of 6.959 j/cm2 - presumably they are referring to 6.959 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;J&lt;/a&gt;/cm&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hd3pM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Infographic from Theradome home page&quot;&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is consistent with the research I have done (e.g. this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.overmachogrande.com/index.php?/omg/site_pages/your_laser_device_isnt_wont_be_strong_enough/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;unreferenced essay&lt;/a&gt;) that suggests around 6 to 7 J/cm&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; is required for better hair growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they also claim in the chart from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WBKeeR6SY8&amp;amp;t=1m57s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video segment&lt;/a&gt; that the concentration is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1.05 J/cm2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There web-site states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The key to treating hair loss is lasers, but all lasers are not created equal. We use specially developed, high efficiency lasers that allow us to deliver the maximum amount of light and cover 582 cm2 of the 720 cm2 total scalp area in the average human head.   We don't want to bore you with numbers, but with over 440 Joules per treatment and an optimised wavelength of 678 +/-8nm, each of the 80 lasers is precisely tailored for maximum hair growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each treatment is 20 minutes long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have attempted to do the calculations to support the 6.959 J/cm&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; claim, but have been unable to get these results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence (or even a calculation with the given data) that supports either of the concentration claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This question is re-posted from &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/94015/what-does-simple-j-cm2-represent-and-how-does-this-result-6-959j-cm2&quot;&gt;Physics.SE&lt;/a&gt;, as suggested by @BrandonEnright&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17175" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:12.727" LastActivityDate="2015-11-15T23:22:35.127" Title="Does the Theradome Laser Helmet deliver around 7 J/cm2 to the head?" Tags="|physics|energy|hair|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19171" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28247" CreationDate="2014-01-17T09:02:55.057" Score="7" ViewCount="6161" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a letter circulating that puports to be from Charlie Chaplin to his daughter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://zaranelson.wordpress.com/2010/04/17/charlie-chaplin-letter-to-his-daughter-geraldine/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one example&lt;/a&gt;. It starts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now it is night. One Christmas night. All unarmed wars in my little castle slept. Not awake or your brother or your sister. Even your mother now sleeps. Not only woke up zaspalite birds until he came to this polusvetla room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was this originally written by Charlie Chaplin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5745" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T09:52:15.883" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T04:26:16.270" Title="Did Charlie Chaplin write this letter to his daughter?" Tags="|quotes|charlie-chaplin|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19173" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-17T10:56:20.183" Score="14" ViewCount="3095" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an editorial titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g171&quot;&gt;&quot;Should journals stop publishing research funded by the drug industry?&#xA;&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in the British Medical Journal the authors make the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another dire example is antipsychotics. Many recent drug industry&#xA;  crimes are related to off-label promotion of antipsychotics, and in&#xA;  the United States they were the most sold drugs in 2009. However, they&#xA;  are so dangerous that just one of them, olanzapine (Zyprexa), has&#xA;  probably caused 200 000 deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The citation for this claim is the book &quot;Deadly medicines and organised crime: how big pharma has corrupted health care.&quot; by Peter C. Gøtzsche, one of the authors of the editorial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of deaths mentioned in this claim seems extremely large to me, and I wonder how the authors arrived at this number and how credible it is. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:30:54.373" LastActivityDate="2016-03-01T19:50:45.533" Title="Has olanzapine (Zyprexa) caused 200,000 deaths?" Tags="|safety|medications|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19174" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19244" CreationDate="2014-01-17T11:21:26.483" Score="15" ViewCount="96158" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have always been told by my mom that when I feel nauseous, I should drink Coke. I've heard many people say the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that it is good to drink Coke when you're feeling nauseous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Under what conditions (what symptoms) is it good to drink Coke?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What are the beneficial effects that Coke have on us?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16332" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T01:59:52.753" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T14:42:42.360" Title="Is it good to drink Coke when sick?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19177" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-17T15:00:13.023" Score="4" ViewCount="3539" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this a few times now with people claiming that brushing your teeth with baking soda is a good way to whiten your teeth and generally a better product to use than toothpaste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qImfh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Baking soda&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Toothpaste manufacturers have obviously heard this too as there are quite a few toothpaste brands that offer a paste with baking soda added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this question I'm only interested in finding out if there is research that proves (or disproves) the theory that Baking Soda (the standard stuff you get in a supermarket) can remove stains from your teeth with no adverse effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1791" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-18T19:56:24.147" LastActivityDate="2019-01-13T23:57:45.013" Title="Does baking soda remove stains from your teeth?" Tags="|consumer-products|natural-remedies|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19190" CreationDate="2014-01-17T16:59:58.113" Score="6" ViewCount="6511" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many health websites suggest a substitute for cooking oil as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_pomace_oil&quot;&gt;olive pomace oil&lt;/a&gt;. Some also say that extra virgin olive oil can be used for cooking. I can't remember when but a newspaper featured that cooking with extra virgin olive oil (specifically) causes cancer. And some others say that olive oil shouldn't be heated at all! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blisstree.com/2010/12/17/food/cooking-with-olive-oil-may-cause-cancer/#ixzz2qhIhOiuQ&quot;&gt;Example of the claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first to slander EVOO was New York-based nutritionist Christian Henderson. “Never cook with olive oil,” she said. “There’s a reason why oils are cold-pressed; they break down at higher temperatures, and they’re not good for you.” Boom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To what extent are any of these claims true, if at all any of them are true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16841" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-17T22:29:25.260" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T15:37:25.740" Title="Does cooking with extra virgin olive oil cause cancer?" Tags="|nutrition|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19181" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-17T17:09:42.613" Score="4" ViewCount="336" Body="&lt;p&gt;On a business trip to China, I ate a lot of wonderful food.  Towards the end of the second week, I was craving BBQ, a hamburger, anything...  I asked our interpreter if there were any such places around (Shenzhen) that had this sort of food.  She looked at me with horror.  I mean, not just a shocked look, but like I was pulling the curtain open while she was in the shower and I had a knife in my hand.  She told me that &quot;they&quot; believe that grilled meat (that with char marks) causes cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does charred meat cause cancer?  Are there any studies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6381" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T11:33:50.280" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T11:33:50.280" Title="Does grilled meat cause cancer?" Tags="|nutrition|cancer|meat|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-01-18T00:48:59.043" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19184" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-17T19:31:23.623" Score="7" ViewCount="6701" Body="&lt;p&gt;As often seen in Hollywood movies, a bottle of lube (or oil or anything) is something one would always prepare for masturbation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll spare you the detail, but as a European I'm, um, not quite accustomed to this practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick search on Wikipedia seems to confirm the claim is notable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While most males and females both produce varying amounts of their own lubrication, it is often desirable to add extra lubrication. There are specific lubricants which may be used in male masturbation but are not suitable for vaginal or anal use or for use with condoms.  Lubricant that is safe for sexual intercourse is also safe for masturbation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Masturbation cream is specially formulated to enhance male masturbation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_lubricant#Masturbation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_lubricant#Masturbation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it a movie cliche or Americans do use it more often than Europeans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17183" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T16:25:33.560" Title="Do males commonly use lubricant for masturbation?" Tags="|sexuality|masturbation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-01-21T14:51:28.557" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19185" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-18T01:12:00.613" Score="10" ViewCount="2504" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read from various (low quality) sources that Leonardo da Vinci practiced &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep&quot;&gt;polyphasic sleep&lt;/a&gt;, maybe the Uberman's sleep schedule. Polyphasic sleep refers to the practice of sleeping multiple times in a 24-hour period—usually more than two, in contrast to biphasic sleep (twice per day) or monophasic sleep (once per day).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yankodesign.com/2008/09/17/time-stays-long-enough-for-anyone-who-will-use-it/&quot;&gt;Yanko Design&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An object that with knowledge of the most excellent ways of Leonardo&#xA;  Da Vinci will require very little explaining. The Da Vinci Alarm Clock&#xA;  assists the user in adhering to the 3.5/.5 sleep schedule devised by&#xA;  the Renaissance Man, allowing the user 21 hours of awake time a day,&#xA;  completely free of sleepiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.4hourlife.com/2012/04/29/become-uberman-sleep-like-da-vinci-the-polyphasic-sleep-cheat-sheet/&quot;&gt;4-Hour Life&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Become Uberman &amp;amp; Sleep like Da Vinci: The Polyphasic Sleep Cheat&#xA;  Sheet: this is supposedly the way that Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas&#xA;  Jefferson, Matt Mullenweg (the developer of WordPress) and a&#xA;  fluctuating list of other legends (including Tim Ferriss) often slept.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some emit doubts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.supermemo.com/articles/polyphasic.htm&quot;&gt;Polyphasic Sleep: Facts and Myths&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although even Stampi anecdotally refers to Leonardo da Vinci ,&#xA;  Leonardo's polyphasic sleep is probably an urban myth. I could not&#xA;  locate any credible sources with any notes on his sleep habits, and&#xA;  yet da Vinci is nearly always mentioned whenever the art of napping&#xA;  comes into question. It seems quite strange that someone would come up&#xA;  with a crazy polyphasic schedule idea at the time of leisurely&#xA;  Renaissance life that was well-timed by the superiority of sunlight&#xA;  over candlelight. Allegedly, hinting at a monophasic mindset, he spoke&#xA;  of death: &quot;As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used&#xA;  brings happy death&quot;. Even more telling is Bandello's report on da&#xA;  Vinci's work over &quot;The Last Supper&quot;. Leonardo would work continuously&#xA;  from dawn to dusk forgetting about food and drink. Stunned Bandello&#xA;  would definitely reported the round-the-clock work of a polyphasic&#xA;  sleeper as even more amazing. It seems to me that using a poorly&#xA;  researched historic case from 500 years ago as a prop in favor of&#xA;  polyphasic sleep is rather a dated argumentum ad verecundiam.&#xA;  Incidentally, da Vinci is also a name that crops up on other suspect&#xA;  lists: the lists of great people suffering from attention deficit&#xA;  disorder, or the lists of great vegetarians. The same memetic&#xA;  mechanism must be placing da Vinci, Jesus, Einstein, and Hitler&#xA;  alongside each other in a number of myths over and over again. And did&#xA;  you hear of &quot;Da Vinci Code&quot; or the authorship of the Turin Shroud?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any trustworthy source indicating whether Leonardo da Vinci was a polyphasic sleeper?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-18T14:43:46.710" LastActivityDate="2019-08-28T01:27:53.287" Title="Was Leonardo da Vinci a polyphasic sleeper?" Tags="|history|sleep|leonardo-da-vinci|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19186" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-18T01:40:25.970" Score="2" ViewCount="559" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Einstein say the following: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Creating a new theory is not like destroying an old barn and erecting a skyscraper in its place. It is rather like climbing a mountain, gaining new and wider views, discovering unexpected connections between our starting points and its rich environment. But the point from which we started out still exists and can be seen, although it appears smaller and forms a tiny part of our broad view gained by the mastery of the obstacles on our adventurous way up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is attributed to him in many places, but I cannot find the original source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17184" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-01-18T16:22:19.137" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T16:22:19.137" Title="Did Einstein talk about creating a new theory being like climbing a mountain?" Tags="|quotes|albert-einstein|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19187" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19191" CreationDate="2014-01-18T06:01:39.117" Score="3" ViewCount="1073" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do people have almost same brain-waves (Waves that captured by EEG) while they are thinking the same thing (For example thinking about an Apple)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it another way, are there patterns in measured brain activity that can reveal what someone is thinking about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17187" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T14:02:53.707" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T16:18:22.240" Title="Does everybody have almost same brain-waves while they're thinking about the same thing?" Tags="|biology|neurology|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19186" CreationDate="2014-01-18T10:06:31.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evolution_of_Physics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; points towards &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/details/evolutionofphysi033254mbp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this download page&lt;/a&gt;. And indeed we find:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QERCp.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is not from the very first printing/edition. So, if one wants to be 100% certain (about the time), one would have to look up the very first edition as well: &lt;em&gt;The Evolution of Physics&lt;/em&gt;, Albert Einstein &amp;amp; Leopold Infeld, 1938, Edited by C.P. Snow, Cambridge University Press, ASIN: B000S52QZ4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that your quote is not 100% accurate. Also, I suggest that the attribution should be to the &lt;em&gt;duo&lt;/em&gt; Einstein and Infeld.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16186" LastEditorDisplayName="user16186" LastEditDate="2014-01-18T10:40:03.993" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T10:40:03.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19190" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19180" CreationDate="2014-01-18T14:07:05.247" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, oil is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_oil#Cooking_with_oil&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;not healthy when burnt&lt;/a&gt;. Burnt oil has many negative health effects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as oils go, extra virgin olive oil has the very desirable property of a high smoke point, which means it is less likely to burn when cooked, and makes it an option for frying. That said, more refined oils like olive pomace oil have an even higher smoke point and lighter taste making them ideal for frying. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_point&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep also in mind that the quality of the oil makes the smoke point vary &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051500398.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;significantly&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, as far as oils go, olive pomace oil, virgin olive oil and extra virgin olive oil are all &quot;healthy&quot; oils given &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking_oil#Types_of_oils_and_their_characteristics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;low levels of saturated and polyunsaturated fats&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding cancer, extra virgin olive oil is considered a potential &lt;em&gt;anticarcinogenic&lt;/em&gt;, so quite the opposite of the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compared to other vegetable oils, the presence of several phenolic antioxidants in olive oil is believed to prevent the occurrence of a variety of pathological processes, such as cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24326154&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24326154&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There have been numerous evidences supporting the relationship between olive oil and cancer, with most of the attention being directed toward its fat and phenolic content. [...] It was observed that upon combination treatment, anti-proliferation effects and apoptosis induction were augmented. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24161488&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24161488&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=olive+oil+mediterranean+cancer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;these studies&lt;/a&gt; are more generally about the Mediterranean diet, where olive oil of all kinds is commonly used in cooking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-18T15:37:25.740" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T15:37:25.740" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19187" CreationDate="2014-01-18T14:20:31.157" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. EEGs can be used to monitor the general mental state of a person and to diagnose disease. The kind of resolution that EEGs have, that is very responsive but with a low spatial definition, lets us examine the kind of electrical wave patterns in the brain. For example, alpha waves indicate a person being relaxed (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography#Normal_activity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ref.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some experiments have been performed to &quot;read&quot; people thoughts with another tool, fMRI. This is called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_identification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;thought identification&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and it is not at all controversial that it is being performed, as the page I linked shows with good references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freepatentsonline.com/20100049076.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IBM patented a machine to retrieve images from scans&lt;/a&gt; and visual images have been reconstructed in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982211009377&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;experiment&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even then, fMRI is tricky to use correctly, as shown by recent results and meta-analyses (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/scicurious-brain/2012/09/25/ignobel-prize-in-neuroscience-the-dead-salmon-study/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/35121/title/Bad-Stats-Plague-Neuroscience/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Scientist&lt;/a&gt;). This doesn't mean that the results are bogus, but that results are way harder to achieve than &quot;reading the brain waves&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T16:04:39.447" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T16:04:39.447" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19192" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-18T14:44:44.847" Score="1" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;Medical guidelines designed to avoid damage to the heart during non-cardiac surgery in Europe recommend the use of beta-blockers. But the guidance was partially written by and largely based on work by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryhusten/2012/12/17/jacc-issues-notice-of-concern-over-three-poldermans-papers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recently disgraced&lt;/a&gt; dutch researcher Don Poldermans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forbes sums up the story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Current European Society of Cardiology guidelines recommend that beta-blockers be given to many patients having surgery for noncardiac reasons to protect the heart during surgery. (US guidelines are somewhat less aggressive in their endorsement of perioperative beta-blockade.) The guidelines, which were published in 2009, were based on analyses of the available trials. The strongest evidence came from the DECREASE family of trials, which appeared to strongly support perioperative beta-blockade, and one other large trial, POISE, which raised concerns that beta-blockers might lead to an increase in deaths. When the ESC committee combined all the data they found a neutral effect on mortality but a strong benefit due to significant reductions in non-fatal MI and stroke with beta blocker use. This was the basis for the strong recommendation in the ESC guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2011, however, faith in the reliability of the DECREASE trials was shattered as a result of a scientific misconduct scandal centering on the principal investigator of the studies, the now disgraced Dutch researcher Don Poldermans. The issue was further complicated because, in addition to his key role in the trials, Poldermans was the chairman of the committee that drafted the guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://heart.bmj.com/content/early/2013/07/30/heartjnl-2013-304262.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reanalysis&lt;/a&gt; of the known results when Poldermans' work is excluded showed that the standard recommended practice of using beta-blockers would significantly increase deaths. Forbes summarises their initial results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each year in the UK, according to the Heart authors, 2.5 million procedures are performed each year for which this treatment is recommended in the current guidelines. Based on a 27% increase in the risk of death associated with perioperative beta-blockade, they calculated that as many as 10,000 deaths might be caused by physicians faithfully following the guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But their work is not entirely uncontroversial and an extension of their estimate to Europe as a whole has been withdrawn by a journal (see the follow up story in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryhusten/2014/01/15/medicine-or-mass-murder-guideline-based-on-discredited-research-may-have-caused-800000-deaths-in-europe-over-the-last-5-years/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have clinical guidelines based on this faulty research killed tens of thousands of people undergoing surgery?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T15:52:43.990" Title="Have surgical guidelines on the use of beta-blockers killed tens of thousands of people?" Tags="|healthcare|surgery|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19193" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19177" CreationDate="2014-01-18T15:20:05.777" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it can, but it's definitely not a magic bullet, or any major innovation. It's also not by some chemical reaction as some people assume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Baking soda is a mild abrasive which is ideal in toothpaste because it's compatible with fluoride, it's not too abrasive as to damage teeth, it's cheap to produce and it's safe to use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does it whiten the teeth? Simply by rubbing off the tartar and plaque, which is the mechanism by which toothpaste works. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Salts, either sodium chloride, sodium bicarbonate, or a mixture of both, have also been used for tooth cleaning because of their ready availability and low cost. Because of both their relatively low intrinsic hardness and their high solubility, another advantage is low abrasivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12017930&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The use of sodium bicarbonate in oral hygiene products and practice.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Baking soda, also known as sodium bicarbonate, is composed of a chemical compound that makes it a great mild abrasive. It is this same abrasiveness that effectively removes surface stains from your teeth and make them appear whiter. However, if your goal is to remove deeper, older stains, then baking soda will not be as effective. You will need to see your dentist or use a product that was specifically created for whitening teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colgate.com/app/CP/US/EN/OC/Information/Articles/ColgateNewandNow/Personal/2013/January/article/SW-281474979043022.cvsp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Colgate site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T15:20:05.777" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19192" CreationDate="2014-01-18T15:52:43.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only peer reviewed article is a meta-analysis they published so far makes the following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The well-conducted trials indicate a statistically significant 27% increase in mortality from the initiation of perioperative β-blockade that guidelines currently recommend. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://heart.bmj.com/content/early/2013/07/30/heartjnl-2013-304262.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Meta-analysis of secure randomised controlled trials of β-blockade to prevent perioperative death in non-cardiac surgery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, as one reviewer put it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The recent meta-analysis by Bouri et al. has concluded that, according to these 9 trials, beta-blockade significantly increases mortality (risk ratio=1.27; 95% confidence interval: 1.01 to 1.60; p=0.04), but this result was at the limits of statistical significance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://heart.bmj.com/content/early/2013/07/30/heartjnl-2013-304262.abstract/reply#heartjnl_el_17807&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beta-blocakde to prevent perioperative death in non-cardiac surgery: a trial-sequential analysis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, there's a controversy. The authors of the original meta-analysis claim to have found more significant results, but their second work was temporarily retracted because it hasn't been peer reviewed yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T15:52:43.990" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19195" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19173" CreationDate="2014-01-18T16:15:14.087" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The evidence does not suppor the claim conclusively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a 1% increased risk of death per year due to atypical anti psychotic drugs such as olanzapine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risk differences for death in patients treated with [...] olanzapine vs placebo, 0.01 (95% CI, −0.00 to 0.03; P = .07)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HoJmL.png&quot; alt=&quot;olanzapine effect&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=201714#REF-JRV50021-26&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Risk of Death With Atypical Antipsychotic Drug Treatment for Dementia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Olanzapine sells about 1,000,000 units per month in the US (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugs.com/stats/olanzapine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref.&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gULwk.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, in a year, will statistically lead to around 10,000 more deaths than placebo per year, assuming that the dementia patient data can be extended to the whole set of olanzapine users, that a unit corresponds to a month's worth of medicine and that the figure is representative of a typical month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Olanzapine was released in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/data/Journals/PSS/3474/1137.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1996&lt;/a&gt;. This means 17 years of use, or 170,000 possible statistical deaths. This is probably an upper limit as it would be surprising to see a figure of 1 million units per month in the first year of sale, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, the effect measured is barely statistically significant, so we can't confidently conclude that there were any extra deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case the 200,000 figure doesn't seem to be justified by the numbers, as the best upper estimate I can come up with is 170,000, even though, if the effect was confirmed, it would mean that a substantial number of people died because of this molecule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T17:45:02.193" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19184" CreationDate="2014-01-18T16:25:33.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Male masturbation lubricants are fairly mainstream on Amazon.com.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example this personal lubricant is clearly marketed for male masturbation and it's one of the top 100 personal lubricants on Amazon.com:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/j2OHN.png&quot; alt=&quot;Personal lubricant ranking&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/10786421&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the highest seller among the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masturbation_cream#cite_note-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;three masturbation creams mentioned by Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; as being in common use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-01-18T16:25:33.560" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19198" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19286" CreationDate="2014-01-18T17:36:36.147" Score="14" ViewCount="5735" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been told that it is currently very popular to shave you pubic hair, especially if you are a woman. There appears to be evidence that it is popular. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/the-new-full-frontal-has-pubic-hair-in-america-gone-extinct/249798/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; from The Atlantic is titled:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The New Full-Frontal: Has Pubic Hair in America Gone Extinct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But some people are now questioning the impact on health. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/physician-calls-for-an-end-to-bikini-waxing-8008628.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An article&lt;/a&gt; in UK paper &lt;em&gt;The Independent&lt;/em&gt; summarises the latest thinking:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emily Gibson, a family physician and head of a student health centre, called for an end to the “war on pubic hair” claiming it is increasing the risk of infection and of sexually transmitted diseases amongst young people...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...As director of the health centre at Western University in Washington State, US, she has seen the consequences. “Pubic hair removal naturally irritates and inflames the hair follicles, leaving microscopic open wounds. Frequent hair removal is necessary to stay smooth, causing regular irritation of the shaved or waxed area. When that is combined with the warm, moist environment of the genitals, it becomes a happy culture media for some of the nastiest bacterial pathogens,” she writes on the respected US medical website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/04/war-pubic-hair.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kevin MD.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So shaving seems to be popular, but is it bad for your health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user16186" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T16:58:51.133" Title="Is shaving your pubic hair bad for you?" Tags="|medical-science|hair|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="999" CreationDate="2014-01-19T00:28:04.367" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on polyphasic sleep&lt;/a&gt; gives some interesting pointers such as this study for the NASA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NASA, in cooperation with the National Space Biomedical Research&#xA;  Institute, has funded research on napping. Despite NASA&#xA;  recommendations that astronauts sleep 8 hours a day when in space,&#xA;  they usually have trouble sleeping 8 hours at a stretch, so the agency&#xA;  needs to know about the optimal length, timing and effect of naps.&#xA;  Professor David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of&#xA;  Medicine led research in a laboratory setting on sleep schedules which&#xA;  combined various amounts of &quot;anchor sleep,&quot; ranging from about 4 to 8&#xA;  hours in length, with no nap or daily naps of up to 2.5 hours. Longer&#xA;  naps were found to be better, with some cognitive functions benefiting&#xA;  more from napping than others. Vigilance and basic alertness benefited&#xA;  the least while working memory benefited greatly. Naps in the&#xA;  individual subjects' biological daytime worked well, but naps in their&#xA;  nighttime were followed by much greater sleep inertia lasting up to an&#xA;  hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_F._Dinges&quot;&gt;David Dinges&lt;/a&gt; (major American sleep researcher) &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/03jun_naps/&quot;&gt;concludes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dinges notes another finding of their study: Naps are a short-term&#xA;  fix, offering only temporary boosts in mental acuity. &quot;They cannot&#xA;  replace adequate recovery sleep over many days,&quot; he says. &lt;strong&gt;In the end,&#xA;  there's no substitute for 8 sweet hours of shut-eye.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T00:28:04.367" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19207" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-19T00:39:02.767" Score="4" ViewCount="1151" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a widely held belief that &quot;negative ions&quot; in the atmosphere are good for you (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/balance/features/negative-ions-create-positive-vibes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on WebMD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sources (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=3&amp;amp;ved=0CEEQFjAC&amp;amp;url=http://faculty.uncfsu.edu/grahi/Positive%2520Ion%2520Poisoning.doc&amp;amp;ei=g8_bUo2GFYic0AXSl4CoDw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNE1kCHEO1KecgU2lslVWxtegW-CMQ&amp;amp;sig2=uZ0NZC7yMuCarVfBlChWAQ&amp;amp;bvm=bv.59568121,d.d2k&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this word document&lt;/a&gt; from Fayetteville State University) say that positive ions have negative effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How good is the evidence that positive ions are bad?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17198" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-01-19T19:59:04.693" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T14:39:34.353" Title="Are positive ions bad for you?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19209" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-19T02:56:49.247" Score="3" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read from various (low quality) sources that practicing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;polyphasic sleep&lt;/a&gt; would add around 10 years to my lifespan vs. an average Western lifespan. Polyphasic sleep refers to the practice of sleeping multiple times in a 24-hour period—usually more than two, in contrast to biphasic sleep (twice per day) or monophasic sleep (once per day).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.4hourlife.com/2012/04/29/become-uberman-sleep-like-da-vinci-the-polyphasic-sleep-cheat-sheet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;4-Hour Life&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The polyphasic sleep concept is that, indeed, if you succeeded in&#xA;  sleeping 3 hours per day instead of the prescribed 8, starting at 20&#xA;  years of age, you would gain over 11 years in an average Western&#xA;  lifespan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://letstip.com/what-are-the-health-risks-of-a-polyphasic-sleep-pattern/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Letstip&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Polyphasic sleep pattern or popularly known as Uberman sleep pattern&#xA;  refers to sleeping in short bursts of duration throughout the day and&#xA;  skipping altogether the one complete long stretch of normal night&#xA;  sleep. The recommendations can go from anywhere between 15 to 20 min.&#xA;  for every four hr time period to 30 min. for  each block of 6 hr&#xA;  duration. So if your normal sleep requirement is of 7 hrs, with this&#xA;  sleep pattern you can easily save 5 hrs everyday! Assuming an average&#xA;  lifespan of 70 years and if one starts practicing this pattern at the&#xA;  age of 20, it “adds” up to a whopping 10 years to one’s lifespan.&#xA;  While this may sound very appealing, experts advise to employ caution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mysleepexperiment.wordpress.com/effects-of-polyphasic-sleep-on-health/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;My Sleeping Experiment&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of you said that studies show that getting less than eight hours&#xA;  of sleep will reduces life expectancy. Even if, despite leaving me&#xA;  rested and happy, it does shorten my life by ten years, I will&#xA;  actually end up netting five years of “awake” time over a monophasic&#xA;  lifestyle. From my perspective, “life” only counts if you’re awake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any study on the effect of polyphasic sleep on lifespan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware of the existence of the thread &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/999/7654&quot;&gt;Does polyphasic sleep work? Does it have long-term or short-term side effects?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, but it doesn't focus on the lifespan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T16:54:56.923" Title="Can I add around 10 years of wakeful time to my lifespan by practicing polyphasic sleep vs. an average Western lifespan?" Tags="|sleep|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-01-27T10:10:56.667" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19211" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19279" CreationDate="2014-01-19T12:28:58.033" Score="20" ViewCount="1177" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Snake oil&quot; is a common name for a fake or over-hyped product. As defined by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=snake%20oil&quot;&gt;urban dictionary&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;comes from the 19th-century American practice of selling cure-all&#xA;  elixirs in traveling medicine shows. Snake oil salesmen would falsely&#xA;  claim that the potions would cure any ailments. now-a-days it refers&#xA;  to fake products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But according to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/how-snake-oil-got-a-bad-rap/&quot;&gt;How Snake Oil Got a Bad Rap&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (&lt;em&gt;Collectors Weekly&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The original snake oil actually worked. Save this one for the&#xA;  next cocktail party; it will blow your friends’ minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the 1860s, Chinese laborers immigrated to the United States to work&#xA;  on the Transcontinental Railroad. At night, they would rub their sore,&#xA;  tired muscles with ointment made from Chinese water snake (Enhydris&#xA;  chinensis), an ancient Chinese remedy they shared with their American&#xA;  co-workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and it was all those later salesmen that gave it a bad name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the article contains an explanation and references -- including an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=snake-oil-salesmen-knew-something&quot;&gt;article in &lt;em&gt;Scientific American&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; --  to make this point, are these reasonable?  It seems reasonable to be skeptical of claims that involve old dates, practices of far off cultures, etc...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16841" LastEditorUserId="16860" LastEditDate="2015-05-28T17:03:14.547" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T17:03:14.547" Title="Did the original snake oil work?" Tags="|history|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19212" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-19T13:11:06.897" Score="2" ViewCount="693" Body="&lt;p&gt;An article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/the-number-crunch-will-big-data-transform-your-life--or-make-it-a-misery-9065643.html?origin=internalSearch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Independent&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; covering recent developments in Big data contains the following, suspiciously precise, claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By 2020, it's thought that the number of bytes will be 57 times greater than all the grains of sand on the world's beaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim remotely plausible? Is there even any remotely plausible way to validate it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: There is a related claim in this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10418/has-90-of-the-worlds-data-been-created-in-the-last-two-years&quot;&gt;Has 90% of the world&amp;#39;s data been created in the last two years?&lt;/a&gt;. And, since part of the question is about &lt;em&gt;sand&lt;/em&gt; I've used the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/tagged/geology&quot; class=&quot;post-tag&quot; title=&quot;show questions tagged &amp;#39;geology&amp;#39;&quot; rel=&quot;tag&quot;&gt;geology&lt;/a&gt; tag. ;-) Any better suggestions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarification&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I don't want the focus of this to be about our inability to predict the future or about extrapolation (unless there is &lt;strong&gt;strong&lt;/strong&gt; evidence that argues against projecting data trends 6 years into the future). The focus should be on whether our knowledge of the current trends is good enough to give us a plausible estimate on the data side and our knowledge of the world is good enough to give a plausible estimate on the &quot;grains of sand&quot; side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T02:07:45.990" Title="Will the bytes of data stored in 2020 be greater than the number of grains of sand on the world's beaches?" Tags="|computers|geology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19212" CreationDate="2014-01-19T22:54:32.437" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is at least possible, although there is a great uncertainty both in the estimate of number of grains of sand on the world's beaches and the world-wide number of bytes stored. What is immediately obvious is that the text in the news article you're linking to seem to indicate a correlation between the daily number of bytes created and the number of bytes actually stored. I won't even guess a ratio, but I would assume that the larger part of the &quot;created bytes&quot; are for immediate use and not actually permanently stored anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer ratcher freak mentioned in his comment is already linking to estimates of the number of sand grains on earth. The sources for the numbers (ranging from 7.5*10^18 for the world's beaches to 10^20-10^24 for the total number of sand grains) are obviously just rough estimates. I am not able to find any more reliable numbers and I doubt that any exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idc.com/&quot;&gt;&quot;International Data Corporation&quot;&lt;/a&gt; regularly publishes reports on the estimated global data storage and predicted development. Their most recent reports &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/idc-the-digital-universe-in-2020.pdf&quot;&gt;The Digital Universe in 2020&quot;&lt;/a&gt; estimates the global number of bytes stored in 2012 to be 2.9x10^21 and estimated to increase to 4x10^22 in 2020. These numbers are of course not exact values either, but the report has at least some details on how the numbers are produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the article only states the expected ratio between number of grains of sand and number of stored bytes (57) and not an absolute number for any of the compared values, it is of course difficult to tell if they have done their math correctly. The estimates for the number of grains of sand vary by a factor larger than 100.000 and the estimates for the number of stored bytes (both for 2012 and 2020) are placed somewhere in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastActivityDate="2014-01-19T22:54:32.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19217" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20556" CreationDate="2014-01-20T05:27:55.937" Score="5" ViewCount="350" Body="&lt;p&gt;This image is currently trending on social media:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7M1MFm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;海外で日本の売った原発が事故を起こした場合、その費用はすべて日本国民の税金から支払う約束になっていりる&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=473675439405310&amp;amp;set=a.195155197257337.35266.100002885756282&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The caption reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;海外で日本の売った原発が事故を起こした場合、その費用はすべて日本国民の税金から支払う約束になっていりる&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  If a nuclear power plant sold abroad by Japan causes an accident, then the costs are promised to be paid entirely by tax paid by Japanese citizens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Wikipedia has a list of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Japan#Nuclear_vendors_and_fuel_cycle_companies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Japanese companies selling nuclear power plants or fuel&lt;/a&gt;. &quot;な…なんだって!!&quot; is an expression of surprise)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2047" LastEditorUserId="2047" LastEditDate="2014-01-20T12:53:12.390" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T11:46:10.030" Title="Must Japan's population pay for any accident caused by nuclear power plants sold abroad by Japanese companies?" Tags="|environment|japan|nuclear-energy|taxes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19218" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-20T10:17:06.300" Score="7" ViewCount="1403" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to hear this from my friends: If you apply honey to your hair, your hair will turn white.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17015" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-20T10:35:17.517" LastActivityDate="2015-06-13T05:56:27.507" Title="Does honey, applied topically, cause your hair to go white?" Tags="|hair|honey|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19220" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19232" CreationDate="2014-01-20T10:45:23.307" Score="9" ViewCount="4061" Body="&lt;p&gt;The use of pendulum to answer all sorts of questions is quite widespread. People use it to make decision about their lives or to find a lost object. Talking about several people believing in these things, two of them argued that the efficiency of pendulum has been demonstrated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question. Are there any scientific studies that investigated the efficiency of pendulum to answer question or to make any kind of prediction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of sites claiming that pendulums can help with decision making: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lovesedona.com/08.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.silentvoices.org.uk/#/laura-evans-april-11/4548990103&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://askyourpendulum.com/Tips.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some links to scientific studies who tested the predictive/divinatory abilities of pendulums are very welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16332" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T06:17:45.443" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T06:17:45.443" Title="Do pendulums have any explanatory power?" Tags="|divination|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19223" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19227" CreationDate="2014-01-20T12:13:29.983" Score="7" ViewCount="585" Body="&lt;p&gt;Blue Monday is supposedly the most depressing day of the year, it's a Monday in beginning of January. Several news pages reports about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;Blue Monday&quot; said to be the most miserable day of the year&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Monday, January 6, 2014, is what some psychological researchers call&#xA;  &quot;Blue Monday.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Millions are returning to work after time off for the holidays and&#xA;  they're facing the facts -- the big price tag that came with all the&#xA;  gifts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/24370679/blue-monday-said-to-be-the-most-miserable-day-of-the-year#axzz2qwHLHpTK&quot;&gt;Myfox.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Feeling down? Blame it on Blue Monday: Today is the day we feel at our lowest ebb&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Woes include travel chaos, feeling poor after Christmas and lack of    daylight&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Major drop in motivation comes from continued winter darkness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How are you feeling today? Chances are, not that great... Because this&#xA;  morning you woke up on what has come to be known as ‘Blue Monday’ -&#xA;  the day of the year on which most of us feel at our lowest ebb.&#xA;  PUBLISHED: 00:55 GMT, 21 January 2013&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2265639/Most-depressing-day-year-Feeling-Blame-Blue-Monday-2013.html&quot;&gt;Dailymail&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;'Maandag 20 januari is deprimerendste dag van het jaar'&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Een Britse psycholoog heeft maandag 20 januari aangewezen als 'Blue&#xA;  Monday', oftewel de deprimerendste dag van het jaar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nu.nl/lifestyle/3679772/maandag-20-januari-deprimerendste-dag-van-jaar.html&quot;&gt;Nu.nl&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Translation:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Monday 20th january is the most depressing day of the year.&#xA;British psychologists says that Monday 20th January, &quot;Blue Monday&quot; is the most depressing day of the whole year.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blue Monday is a name given to a date in January stated, as part of a publicity campaign by Sky Travel, to be the most depressing day of the year. However, the whole concept is considered pseudoscience, with its formula derided by scientists as nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Monday_%28date%29&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on topic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be reported yearly on news pages about this topic. On the other hand they seem to report different dates as blue Monday, and reference &quot;psychologist&quot; without any source to it. Wikipedia article on Blue Monday calls it pseudoscience, so what is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11430" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T12:40:38.747" Title="Does Blue monday exist?" Tags="|psychology|depression|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1178" CreationDate="2014-01-20T12:18:25.323" Score="-11" Body="&lt;p&gt;2017 Aug update&#xA;3 years down the road, this answer is still down the tube!! Feel free to ignore the facts. Here is one of the latest research &lt;a href=&quot;https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12020-015-0795-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12020-015-0795-3&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://time.com/4508432/what-is-wifi-radiation-cancer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://time.com/4508432/what-is-wifi-radiation-cancer/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original 2014 answer:&#xA;Yes, an increasing body of research links WIFI with cancer and other harmful effects. Here is a study from 2013 dec that involved plant seeds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the experiment, they placed six trays in a room without any&#xA;  equipment and another six trays in a room next  to two routers. Over&#xA;  12 days many of the seedlings in the wifi room turned brown and died,&#xA;  whereas those in the others room thrived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2524598/Experiment-finds-plants-die-placed-internet-Wi-Fi-routers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2524598/Experiment-finds-plants-die-placed-internet-Wi-Fi-routers.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Also, a recent israeli study linked cell phone use with an increased presence of free radicals in saliva!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results of the study published in Antioxidants and Redox Signaling&#xA;  showed the heavy mobile phone users had significantly greater saliva&#xA;  oxidative stress.&#xA;  “Our study indicates that mobile phone users experience considerable&#xA;  oxidative stress on proximal tissue as shown in the saliva, which&#xA;  mostly originates from the parotid glands,” the researchers concluded.&#xA;  “Oxidative stress is a potential contributor for the risk for&#xA;  developing cancer.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gsma.com/publicpolicy/saliva-study-suggested-as-cancer-link-with-mobiles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.gsma.com/publicpolicy/saliva-study-suggested-as-cancer-link-with-mobiles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more quote for the downvoters from a recent event :D&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a division of&#xA;  the World Health Organization (WHO), classified mobile phone use as a&#xA;  possible cause of cancer. After examining a body of evidence on mobile&#xA;  phone use, the IARC yesterday announced it will now classify mobile&#xA;  phone signals as ‘possibly carcinogenic’ due to some study results&#xA;  suggesting a link to some types of brain cancers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/news/2011/05May/Pages/iarc-mobile-phones-brain-tumour-cancer.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nhs.uk/news/2011/05May/Pages/iarc-mobile-phones-brain-tumour-cancer.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17215" LastEditorUserId="17215" LastEditDate="2017-08-17T13:57:33.530" LastActivityDate="2017-08-17T13:57:33.530" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19226" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19267" CreationDate="2014-01-20T13:26:54.323" Score="14" ViewCount="4218" Body="&lt;p&gt;This story did the rounds at the start of the year, and I see it getting quoted again now in comments in various news sites. Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/30/1226634/-India-Declares-Dolphins-Non-Human-Persons-Dolphin-shows-BANNED#&quot;&gt;Daily Kos&lt;/a&gt;'s quote of a press release:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Whereas cetaceans in general are highly intelligent and sensitive, and various scientists who have researched dolphin behavior have suggested that the unusually high intelligence; as compared to other animals means that dolphins should be seen as ‘non-human persons’ and as such should have their own specific rights and is morally unacceptable to keep them captive for entertainment purpose,” the ministry said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story appears to be that captive dolphins in aquariums have been banned, but what exactly is the &quot;non-human persons&quot; aspect? Does it have any force in law?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T03:11:09.133" Title="Did India declare dolphins &quot;non-human person&quot; status?" Tags="|law|dolphins|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19227" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19223" CreationDate="2014-01-20T16:00:23.583" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ben Goldacre - Guardian science writer and proprietor of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://badscience.net&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Bad Science&quot;&gt;Bad Science&lt;/a&gt; blog - wrote an article entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badscience.net/2011/01/tell-me-now-how-do-i-feel/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Tell Me Now How do I Feel&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in Jan 2011 and mentioned it again on Twitter. He also wrote an earlier, well-referenced, article in 2009: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.badscience.net/2009/01/part-432-in-which-i-get-a-bit-overinterested-and-look-up-waaay-too-many-references/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;'Blue Monday' is churnalism, beware any journalist who puffs it&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Antidepressant prescriptions have been tracked a few times (they peak in spring, or in February, May and October). GP consultations for depression peak in May-June, and in November-January  (you get the same pattern with osteoarthritis consultations, oddly).  Admissions for depression peak in autumn, or spring and summer, while 8 studies found no seasonal variation at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 1974 study on all suicides in North Carolina (3,672) and admissions to their Veterans Hospital Psychiatry Service (3,258) from 1965 to 1971 showed no seasonal variation. A 1976 Ontario study found peaks of suicide and admissions for depression in spring and autumn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17218" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2014-01-26T12:40:38.747" LastActivityDate="2014-01-26T12:40:38.747" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19228" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-20T17:39:22.077" Score="5" ViewCount="291" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many deodorant manufacturers claim that they have products specifically targeted to prevent stress sweating, or &amp;quot;emotional sweating&amp;quot; as I have seen. Some examples come from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nivea.com.au/products/deodorant/stress-protect/stress-protect-women-roll-on&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nivea&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.en.vichy.ca/Deodorant/Lip-protection/Stress-Resist-Anti-perspirant-Intensive-Treatment-%E2%80%93-Excessive-perspiration-p915.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vichy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you know that we sweat differently when we are under stress? Our body reacts by producing more sweat, triggering stronger odour than that produced during physical activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NIVEA Stress Protect Roll-On is scientifically proven to protect against emotional sweating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim their products have technologies proven to be more effective against stress sweat. I'm skeptical of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any difference between sweat caused by heat or exercise and sweat caused by emotional stress? If so, are there any substances shown to work better against emotional sweat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16968" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T23:13:03.180" Title="Do stress-protection deodorants work better for stress sweat?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19229" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19231" CreationDate="2014-01-20T17:39:34.257" Score="10" ViewCount="1433" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mentalfloss.com/article/30010/10-ways-cia-tried-kill-castro&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; (along with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historyhouse.com/in_history/castro/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; and many others) mentions some plots by CIA to overthrow the Cuban leader Fidel Castro:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Staging the Second Coming so that religious people would abandon their anti-clerical leader&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Poison him with tallium salts so that he would lose his beard (and political power majorly based on his charisma as well)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Giving him LSD before a live broadcast to the nation so that nonsense speech he would produce make people lose trust in him&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other plots (like femme fatale or poisoned handkerchief) don't sound that implausible but the three above really got me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were any of the plots above real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastEditorUserId="4430" LastEditDate="2017-10-18T19:25:09.960" LastActivityDate="2017-10-18T19:25:09.960" Title="Did CIA plot to overthrow Fidel Castro by staging the Second Coming, making him lose his beard or getting him high on radio?" Tags="|politics|fidel-castro|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19230" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-20T19:14:02.423" Score="7" ViewCount="509" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hear that it actually helps people to fall asleep and feel less stress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is specifically for the sleep 'rescue' remedy which has the following ingredients according to their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bachflower.com/bach-rescue-sleep/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;White Chestnut: To help ease restless mind. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Star of Bethlehem: For&#xA;  trauma and shock. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Clematis: For the tendency to “pass out”, and&#xA;  unconsciousness, being ‘far away’ and not present mentally. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cherry Plum: Fear of mind giving way, verge of breakdown, anger. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Impatiens:&#xA;  For irritability, tension and fidgety. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rock Rose: For frozen terror&#xA;  and panic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They don't state the potency or concentration of each ingredient which makes me suspicious. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bach_flower_remedies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wiki article&lt;/a&gt; and linked papers don't go to a specific remedy or ingredient and have minimal evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does the evidence say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16792" LastEditorUserId="16792" LastEditDate="2014-01-20T22:03:28.137" LastActivityDate="2023-07-04T07:09:21.653" Title="Is Bach's flower remedy 'rescue' effective?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|herbalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19229" CreationDate="2014-01-20T20:42:31.670" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes for LSD and thallium. I don't see any reliable source regarding the second coming, that sounds implausible to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LSD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro&quot;&gt;Assassination attempts on Fidel Castro (Wikipedia)&lt;/a&gt; mention the LSD attempt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lacing Castro's radio studio with LSD to cause his disorientation&#xA;  during the broadcast and damage his public image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alleged Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, S. Rep. No. 755, 94th Cong., 2d sess. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/pdfs94th/94465.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the 1967 Report of the CIA's Inspector General, an&#xA;  official in the Technical Services Division (TSD) recalled discussing&#xA;  a scheme to spray Castro's broadcasting studio with a chemical which&#xA;  produced effects similar to LSD&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thallium:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thallium is mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=4QBjaEMELSsC&amp;amp;pg=PA52&amp;amp;lpg=PA52&amp;amp;dq=fidel%20castro%20attempted%20to%20kill%20LSD&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=qtx8JfrWtp&amp;amp;sig=LdAbjA6EVmGKNtNjx6WKCLPbw4Y&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=qYTdUqyQOZOosATu5oGQBA&amp;amp;ved=0CHwQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=fidel%20castro%20attempted%20to%20kill%20LSD&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Conspiracy Encyclopedia&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_Encyclopedia&quot;&gt;required&lt;/a&gt; reading in a 2008 course on conspiracy at Harvard University):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another was to dust Castro with the depilatory, thallium, so as to&#xA;  destroy his image by causing his beard to fall out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alleged Plots Involving Foreign Leaders, U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, S. Rep. No. 755, 94th Cong., 2d sess. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/pdfs94th/94465.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Inspector General also reported a plan to destroy Castro's image&#xA;  as &quot;The Beard&quot; by dusting his shoes with thallium salts, a strong&#xA;  depilatory that would cause his beard to fall out. The depilatory was&#xA;  to be administered during a trip outside Cuba, when it was anticipated&#xA;  Castro would leave his shoes outside the door of his hotel room to be&#xA;  shined. TSD procured the chemical and tested it on animals, but&#xA;  apparently abandoned the scheme because Castro cancelled his trip.&#xA;  (I.G. Report, pp. 10-13)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other interesting links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Project#Assassination_proposals&quot;&gt;Cuban Project&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/638_Ways_to_Kill_Castro&quot;&gt;638 Ways to Kill Castro&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="7654" LastEditDate="2014-01-20T20:48:50.077" LastActivityDate="2014-01-20T20:48:50.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19220" CreationDate="2014-01-20T22:12:49.197" Score="14" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, one can &quot;ask&quot; a pendulum questions about one's choices in life.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; supernatural prediction of the future is involved.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pendulum operator is determining the &quot;answers&quot; received.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Early psychologists made efforts at explaining such phenomena. As humans we are able to fool ourselves about objects answering questions unless careful &quot;blind&quot; experimental designs are used that rule out not only dishonesty but also mere suggestion or other knowledge of the correct answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contemporaneously, from the 1600s onward the science of physics developed an excellent understanding of what actually makes pendulums move in various ways and how that can be put to practical use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Claim&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the first link, pendulums are claimed to be useful in these areas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Appropriate Types of Questions to Ask It is appropriate to ask a&#xA;  pendulum about things that are within your control, about situations&#xA;  where you have the right to make a choice, or about things your&#xA;  subconscious already has access to. For example, it is appropriate to&#xA;  ask whether it would be good for you to marry a particular person, but&#xA;  it not appropriate for you to ask whether he is going to ask you to&#xA;  marry him, because that is not your right to choose. In the same way,&#xA;  it is not appropriate to ask if you are going to meet your prince&#xA;  charming today, because that is not within your control. However, it&#xA;  is appropriate to try to divine other people's motivations or who they&#xA;  are inside, because you already know this at a subconscious level&#xA;  anyway. For example, it is appropriate to ask &quot;Can I trust him? Does&#xA;  he want me for a friend, or only for what I can give him?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, and mostly consistent with the above principles, they provide a list of applications:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The pendulum can be used for choosing between alternatives in a&#xA;  relatively wide range of areas. To get an answer from the pendulum,&#xA;  simply ask any yes/no question about a specific thing that would be&#xA;  good for you, but only in areas where you have the right to make the&#xA;  decision, for example, anything to do with health &amp;amp; healing, love or&#xA;  domestic relationships, career. Here are some typical areas where the&#xA;  pendulum can be used to good advantage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Making a Choice of any kind. (Do I want to travel for my vacation or&#xA;  stay home?) Figuring out what is best to do. (Would it be better to&#xA;  keep my present job or look for a new job?) Figuring out how you&#xA;  really feel about something. (Do I want children in the near future?)&#xA;  Becoming more conscious of who someone is inside, to know his&#xA;  motivation, his compatibility with you. Determining your probability&#xA;  of success in a situation.(Do I have what it takes to complete this&#xA;  course?) Finding the cause of physical symptoms. (Is my diet causing&#xA;  my migraines?) Determining what foods or vitamins to take. (Would it&#xA;  be good for me to double my Vitamin C intake?) Determining what is&#xA;  causing an allergic reaction. (Am I lactose intolerant?) Prospecting&#xA;  for water, oil, treasure. (Is there gold over here?) Finding missing&#xA;  people or pets, or lost objects. (Is my key under the bed?) You can&#xA;  even use the pendulum with a map. Put the pendulum over a small area&#xA;  of the map and ask &quot;Is Bowser here&quot;?, and narrow it down in this way.&#xA;  Part of the knowledge that comes with experience in working with the&#xA;  pendulum is learning to sometimes start with broad questions, and then&#xA;  narrow them down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the second link unreadable.  Maybe someone with IE can try it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third link &lt;a href=&quot;http://askyourpendulum.com/Tips.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://askyourpendulum.com/Tips.asp&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also places various restrictions on how the pendulum functions. According to the headings, you have to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Prepare Yourself&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ask Well Phrased Questions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Troubleshoot -- if you didn't get the answer you wanted. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, you must &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Always cite the source before asking questions. &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds a lot like &lt;a href=&quot;https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/215544/137487&quot;&gt;advice on how to ask a Stack Overflow question&lt;/a&gt;, doesn't it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Except for this bit of boilerplate that has to go in front of all the questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I call upon the higher self to answer these&#xA;  questions. I will only accept answers from the higher self and not&#xA;  from my conscious mind. I seek absolutely truthful answers that are&#xA;  aligned with the highest and greatest good for all concerned.&quot; You can&#xA;  definitely craft your own version of this – just make sure you use it&#xA;  each time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm so glad Stack Overflow doesn't require that, instead deprecating pleadings and thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Explanation&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now many of these applications can be explained as simply a person taking the time to recall or think about the facts and circumstances of their situation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of objects, places, or situations as cognitive or meditation aids to assist in the recall or processing of personal mental information is well known.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this way. the usefulness of a pendulum in determining the cause of an allergy or the truth about a girlfriend or boyfriend is similar to that of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/03/rubber-duck-problem-solving.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;rubber duck debugging a computer program&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it helps someone remember that dust preceded sneezes (and thus, helped determine the cause of an allergy), or that a friend is kind but seems to have stronger romantic interests elsewhere (and thus, might not be an ideal marriage partner), or that a particular message about a missing file preceded a program crash (and thus, help isolate a bug to a section of the program that depends on the missing file), it was useful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as to causation, the most likely explanation is that the person asking the questions is making the decisions, or predictions, or insights, not the pendulum or the rubber duck or other cognitive aid -- since the person has a brain that is the store of information and source of processing, whereas the pendulum or rubber duck lack information storage and processing capability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To go beyond this, and attribute to the object itself an ability to correctly answer questions and claim that they are not known to the person asking, is an extraordinary claim. It requires similarly strong evidence that the answers thereby obtained are correct and would be obtained by chance with low probability.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;ideomotor effect&lt;/em&gt; has been proposed as a credible alternative explanation to the extraordinary claim that the pendulum is making the predictions or decisions.  Put more simply: people are suggestible, and fool themselves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ideomotor.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quackwatch, How People Are Fooled by Ideomotor Action, R Hyman, PhD&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This &quot;influence of suggestion in modifying and directing muscular&#xA;  movement, independently of volition&quot; was given the label ideomotor&#xA;  action by the psychologist/physiologist William B. Carpenter in 1852&#xA;  [4]. Later the concept was more widely publicized by the Harvard&#xA;  physician-turned-psychologist William James [5]. Carpenter wanted to&#xA;  show that a variety of currently popular phenomena had conventional&#xA;  scientific explanations rather than the widely believed supernatural&#xA;  ones. The phenomena he tackled included dowsing (&quot;water witching&quot;),&#xA;  the magic pendulum, certain aspects of mesmerism, spiritualists'&#xA;  &quot;table turning,&quot; and Reichenbach's &quot;Odylic force.&quot; Carpenter did not&#xA;  question the reality of the phenomena, nor the honesty of the people&#xA;  who were involved. He only disputed the explanation, arguing that,&#xA;  &quot;All the phenomena of the 'biologized' state, when attentively&#xA;  examined, will be found to consist in the occupation of the mind by&#xA;  the ideas which have been suggested to it, and in the influence which&#xA;  these ideas exert upon the actions of the body.&quot; Thus Carpenter&#xA;  invoked ideomotor action as a nonparanormal explanation for various&#xA;  phenomena that were being credited to new physical forces, spiritual&#xA;  intervention, or other supernatural causes. He published many books&#xA;  and articles during the latter half of the nineteenth century&#xA;  expounding his ideas about ideomotor action [6,7].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disproving that a &quot;exploring pendulum&quot; identifies chemical substances involved some early applications of the &quot;blind study&quot;, where the subject (who uses the pendulum to identify a substance) and/or the experiment manager purposefully are kept ignorant of which result is the correct outcome, thereby negating the possibility that the manager influenced the subject.  In this case, an actual blindfold was used...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hyman explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first recorded use of the exploring pendulum occurred around 371&#xA;  C.E. A priest would bow over a plate, the edge of which was marked&#xA;  with the letters of the alphabet. This &quot;diviner&quot; or &quot;oracle&quot; would&#xA;  hold a ring, suspended from a thin thread, over the center of the&#xA;  plate. A question would be put to the priest. The movements of the&#xA;  ring would then be observed. When the ring was set in motion, it would&#xA;  swing toward one of the letters. This letter would be recorded; then&#xA;  the same process would be used to select another letter. This would&#xA;  continue until one or more words, which answered the question, would&#xA;  be generated. In this, we see the origins of the modern Ouija board,&#xA;  used to this day by occultists for divining purposes [8].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the early nineteenth century, certain chemists were advocating this&#xA;  method for analyzing the composition of substances. In 1808, a&#xA;  Professor Gerboin of Strasbourg wrote an entire book on use of the&#xA;  pendulum for chemical analysis [9]. As a budding scientist, Chevreul&#xA;  was intrigued, but he remained skeptical. He was surprised, however,&#xA;  to find that the pendulum worked as advertised when he tried it over a&#xA;  dish of mercury. He carried out more tests, however. To see if a&#xA;  physical force was responsible for the movement of the pendulum, he&#xA;  placed a glass plate between the iron ring and the mercury. To his&#xA;  surprise, the oscillations diminished and then stopped. When he&#xA;  removed the glass plate, the pendulum movements resumed. He next&#xA;  suspected that the pendulum moved because it was difficult to hold his&#xA;  arm steady. When he rested his arm on a support, the movements&#xA;  diminished but did not stop altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, Chevreul did what none of his predecessors had thought of&#xA;  doing. He conducted the equivalent of what we would call a&#xA;  double-blind trial. He blindfolded himself and then he had an&#xA;  assistant interpose or remove the glass plate between the pendulum and&#xA;  the mercury without his knowledge. Under these conditions, nothing&#xA;  happened. Chevreul concluded, &quot;So long as I believed the movement&#xA;  possible, it took place; but after discovering the cause I could not&#xA;  reproduce it.&quot; His experiments with the pendulum show how easy it is&#xA;  &quot;to mistake illusions for realities, whenever we are confronted by&#xA;  phenomena in which the human sense-organs are involved under&#xA;  conditions imperfectly analyzed.&quot; Chevreul used this principle of&#xA;  expectant attention to account for the phenomena of dowsing, movements&#xA;  of the exploring pendulum, and the then current fad among&#xA;  spiritualists, table-turning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These early efforts to dispel the notion that one can obtain answers to questions by asking objects like pendulums and moving them around to get the answer should hopefully suffice in showing that the modern pendulum claims are no different and are not credible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quackwatch: references cited by Hyman&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[4] Carpenter WB. On the influence of suggestion in modifying and&#xA;  directing muscular movement, independently of volition. Proceedings of&#xA;  the Royal Institution of Great Britain. 1852;1:147-153. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[5] James W.&#xA;  Principles of Psychology. New York, NY: Holt; 1890. Carpenter WB.&#xA;  Mental Physiology. London, UK: C. Kegan Paul; 1874. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[6] Carpenter WB.&#xA;  Mesmerism, Spiritualism, Etc. New York, NY: D. Appleton; 1874. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[7]&#xA;  Carpenter WB. On the influence of suggestion in modifying and&#xA;  directing muscular movement, independently of volition. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[8] Jastrow J.&#xA;  Wish and Wisdom. New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts; 1935.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[9] Faraday M. Experimental investigation of table turning. Atheneum. July 1853:801-803.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Another approach: replication and principles of operation&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a separate note, suppose we take as a null hypothesis the statement given in the initial article that Pendulums can answer &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; certain types of questions (questions related to things one can control, choose or things one has seen and remembers subconsciously).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then we find that pendulums in fact reliably answer other kinds of questions in a very different way.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then that null hypothesis about how pendulums work in discovering knowledge will be falsified.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It turns out Pendulums are able to answer certain physics questions.  400 years of study in science and engineering have shown pendulums useful in measuring time, determining that the planet is rotating, measuring latitude, standardizing length, measuring gravitational pull and variations in gravitational pull.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pendulum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt; [Wikipedia: Pendulum&lt;/a&gt; ]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is interesting about this latter class of scientific and engineering questions is that they are not personal questions, or questions of choice, or things likely to have been seen previously by a person and stored in memory and the answers do not occur in the mind of the user but instead require the application of mathematical skills to careful observation of the behavior of the pendulum. Mathematical skills can also be applied by 3rd parties to the observations to obtain identical results, something that might be difficult to do with using a pendulum to answer questions of a personal nature.  In the case of the pendulum clock, the motion of the pendulum is measured by a primitive single purpose &quot;computer&quot; consisting of various gears (instead of transistors or modern CPUs) attached to a display of rods (clock &quot;hands&quot;) that could be read  (via a clock dial) with minimal training.  This allows multiple people to get the exact same answer from the pendulum clock without concern as to variations in mathematical or magical training or whether they had the right to ask what time it is or had cleared their mind of negative influences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nature of this latter class of questions calls into question the operational principles of how pendulums work in the realm of knowledge if we were to assume the null hypothesis advocated in that first link.  It is clear that it falsifies the requirements proposed by advocates of the pendulum as a prognosticator separate from the human operator.  The alternative explanation, founded over 400 years, is that pendulum motion is the result of physical laws, including force inputs from someone at the top of the pendulum.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-20T10:29:45.857" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T17:31:00.853" CommentCount="8" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-01-21T02:32:30.353" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19236" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-21T03:13:49.647" Score="5" ViewCount="998" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://schugurensky.faculty.asu.edu/moments/1968rosenjacob.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1968 study&lt;/a&gt; of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pygmalion Effect&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rosenthal and Jacobson gave an intelligence test to all of the students at an elementary school at the beginning of the school year. Then, they randomly selected 20 percent of the students - without any relation to their test results - and reported to the teachers that these 20% of 'average' students were showing &quot;unusual potential for intellectual growth&quot; and could be expected to &quot;bloom&quot; in their academic performance by the end of the year. Eight months later, at the end of the academic year, they came back and re-tested all the students. Those labeled as &quot;intelligent&quot; children showed significantly greater increase in the new tests than the other children who were not singled out for the teachers' attention. This means that &quot;the change in the teachers' expectations regarding the intellectual performance of these allegedly 'special' children had led to an actual change in the intellectual performance of these randomly selected children&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My understanding is that a person's IQ doesn't change. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient#IQ_and_age&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;See Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How is this result possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-21T05:18:10.517" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T14:04:23.837" Title="Do people's IQs change?" Tags="|psychology|intelligence|experiments|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19236" CreationDate="2014-01-21T03:43:56.593" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;IQ changes during childhood development are well known. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=Z8i8LeV74m4C&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IQ Testing 101&lt;/a&gt;, page 218, for an example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Campbell et al. reported IQ gains from age 3 to 21 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gains during elementary and high school [...] were smaller than the short term gains but still substantial (4 points at age 8, 6 points at ages 6.4, 12, and 15).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Ceci and Williams. &lt;em&gt;Schooling, Intelligence, and Income&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;staying in school can itself elevate one's IQ&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;children whose schooling was delayed experienced a decrement of five IQ points for every year that their schooling was delayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that IQ &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; change throughout childhood, that should remove your incredulity about the study's results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T03:54:45.650" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13689" CreationDate="2014-01-21T13:40:03.293" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim of extraterrestrial origin has been debunked in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_rain_in_Kerala#Criticism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;same wiki&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hypothesis' authors – G. Louis and Kumar – did not explain how debris from a meteor could have continued to fall on the same area over a period of two months, despite the changes in climatic conditions and wind pattern spanning over two months. &lt;strong&gt;Samples of the red particles were also sent for analysis to his collaborators Milton Wainwright at Sheffield University and Chandra Wickramasinghe at Cardiff University.&lt;/strong&gt; Louis then incorrectly reported in 29 August 2010 in the non-peer reviewed online physics archive &amp;quot;arxiv.org&amp;quot; that they were able to have these cells &amp;quot;reproduce&amp;quot; when incubated at high pressure saturated steam at 121 °C (autoclaved) for up to two hours. Their conclusion is that these cells reproduced, without DNA, at temperatures higher than any known life form on earth is able to. They claimed that the cells, however, were unable to reproduce at temperatures similar to known biology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regarding the &amp;quot;absence&amp;quot; of DNA, Louis admits he has no training in biology,&lt;/strong&gt; and has not reported the use of any standard microbiology growth medium to culture and induce germination and growth of the spores, basing his claim of &amp;quot;biological growth&amp;quot; on light absorption measurements following aggregation by supercritical fluids, an inert physical observation. &lt;strong&gt;Both his collaborators, Wickramasinghe and Milton Wainwright independently extracted and confirmed the presence of DNA from the spores. The absence of DNA was key to Louis and Kumar's hypothesis that the cells were of extraterrestrial origins.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Louis' only reported attempt to stain the spore's DNA was by the use of malachite green, which is generally used to stain bacterial endospores, not algal spores,&lt;/strong&gt; whose primary function of their cell wall and their impermeability is to ensure its own survival through periods of environmental stress. They are therefore resistant to ultraviolet and gamma radiation, desiccation, lysozyme, temperature, starvation and chemical disinfectants. Visualizing algal spore DNA under a light microscope can be difficult due to the impermeability of the highly resistant spore wall to dyes and stains used in normal staining procedures. To stain the spores' DNA, which is tightly packed, encapsulated and desiccated, spores must first be cultured in suitable growth medium and temperature to first induce germination, then cell growth followed by reproduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Milton Wainwright, mentioned above, wrote about this in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19025455.400-red-rain-fantasies.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;New Scientist&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There appears to be an increasing tendency among scientists to come up with wild explanations when asked by the press to comment on unusual, novel phenomena. A good example is provided by comments about the recent Indian red rain phenomenon (4 March, p 34).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Red rain is morphologically similar to fungal spores or algae, as I have recently been able to confirm by microscope analysis of samples. There is no evidence that I am aware of to support suggestions that red rain is dust, sand, fat globules or blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has also been covered in some detail &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4224&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;on skeptoid.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15636" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T13:40:03.293" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19236" CreationDate="2014-01-21T14:53:16.047" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; there seems to be strong evidence that IQ is both highly hereditary (in simple terms, &quot;nature&quot;), but is also extremely negatively affected by bad socioeconomic status (&quot;nurture&quot;).  If we allow the assumption that the latter effect takes place over a relatively long period of time (as opposed to say, a special few weeks of neglect early on), then we have to admit that IQ can indeed change, depending on the level of &quot;nurture&quot; that takes place over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;heritability of IQ&lt;/a&gt; article on wikipedia gives a good summary, with decent references.  Specifically, in their article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v388/n6641/full/388468a0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The heritability of IQ&lt;/a&gt;, Devlin &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; found the heritability to be around 0.5, while in &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01067188&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Variability and stability in cognitive abilities are largely genetic later in life&lt;/a&gt;, Plomin &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; found it be even higher, at 0.8.  This means that the IQ of closely related individuals is highly correlated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/14/6/623&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Socioeconomic Status Modifies Heritability of IQ in Young Children&lt;/a&gt; Turkheimer &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; find that the correlation goes down to almost 0 (even for &quot;identical&quot; twins), for extremely impoverished families.  From the article's abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The models suggest that in impoverished families, 60% of the variance in IQ is accounted for by the shared environment, and the contribution of genes is close to zero; in affluent families, the result is almost exactly the reverse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, here we see strong evidence that the environment greatly affects IQ.  Assuming that this effect occurs over most of childhood (unfortunately I'm unable to find any articles along these lines at the moment), there is no reason to believe that IQ cannot change.  Indeed, an improvement in the children's condition (special treatment, extra tuition, or simply encouragement / placebo effect), as we see in the study you cite, should lead to some kind of improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9002" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T14:53:16.047" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19174" CreationDate="2014-01-21T20:23:31.623" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recommended to &quot;drink Coke when sick&quot; several times, and it sounded pretty peculiar to me as well, here is what I found wondering on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Severe vomiting+diarrhea cause you to loose many potential &quot;fuel&quot; (food) that is in your system, as well as causing dehydration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, vomiting and diarrhea often result in electrolyte imbalance, which is more important than the sugar loss. And in this case: &quot;Carbonated drinks, including cola, provide inadequate fluid and electrolyte replacement and &lt;strong&gt;cannot be recommended&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/03/health/03real.html?partner=rssnyt&amp;amp;emc=rss&amp;amp;_r=1&amp;amp;&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;, not the best reference though).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coke also has many acid-like chemicals, that famously destroy your teeth. But on the positive side, these chemicals &lt;strong&gt;aid in dissolving phytobezoars&lt;/strong&gt; (trapped mass in the stomach, that consists of components of indigestible plant material, such as fibers, skins and seeds, which may cause nausea and  vomiting):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coca-Cola alone is effective in gastric phytobezoar dissolution in half of the cases and, combined with additional endoscopic methods, is successful in more than 90% of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23252775&quot;&gt;resource&lt;/a&gt; - thanks, Oddthinking).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is very much dependent on the particular condition, and hardly can be recommended in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17233" LastEditorUserId="17233" LastEditDate="2014-01-27T21:28:54.873" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T21:28:54.873" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1586" CreationDate="2014-01-21T21:32:09.473" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sleep.med.harvard.edu/people/faculty/210/charles+a+czeisler+phd+md&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Charles A. Czeisler&lt;/a&gt;, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School, advises against LED blue lights at night time:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/01/electric-light-sleep-circadian-rhythm-cycle_n_3332920.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LED lights are particularly bad for our sleep because the&#xA;  intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells in our eyes&#xA;  respond more to blue and blue-green lights -- like the ones typically&#xA;  emitted by LEDs -- thereby interfering with sleep through melatonin&#xA;  disruption. However, he also noted that it's possible to change the&#xA;  color composition of LED lighting, so that the intrinsically&#xA;  photosensitive retinal ganglion cells in our eyes won't be as&#xA;  sensitive to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v497/n7450_supp/full/497S13a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nature&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Solid-state white light is typically rich in blue light, and the&#xA;  colour composition matters. The ipRGCs are most sensitive to&#xA;  short-wavelength (blue and blue–green) light, so night-time exposure&#xA;  to LEDs is typically more disruptive to circadian rhythms, melatonin&#xA;  secretion and sleep than incandescent lighting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But solid-state lighting could also provide some solutions. A&#xA;  solid-state white-light fixture can comprise multicoloured LEDs, so it&#xA;  is relatively easy to control not only the light intensity, but also&#xA;  the colour composition. &lt;strong&gt;The adverse effects of night-time light on&#xA;  sleep and circadian rhythms can be reduced by replacing blue-enriched&#xA;  light with red- or orange-enriched white light after sunset&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  Unfortunately, existing uses of this new-found colour control have&#xA;  tended to be wrong-headed: some airlines, for example, suffuse&#xA;  aircraft cabins with monochromatic blue light at night, the optimal&#xA;  colour for suppressing melatonin and disrupting sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastActivityDate="2014-01-21T21:32:09.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19236" CreationDate="2014-01-22T14:04:23.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My understanding is that a person's IQ doesn't change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an misunderstanding. When it is corrected, the conflict disappears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(The other answers agree that this is a misunderstanding, but I don't think they adequately illustrate that how &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; incorrect this is.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the provided notability link from Wikipedia does not claim that IQ remains the same. It doesn't support this misunderstanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IQ can change to some degree over the course of childhood. However, in one longitudinal study, the mean IQ scores of tests at ages 17 and 18 were correlated at r=.86 with the mean scores of tests at ages five, six, and seven and at r=.96 with the mean scores of tests at ages 11, 12, and 13.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is a strong correlation - on average they don't change much, but they do change over childhood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This idea that IQ changes over childhood is supported by other studies. HEre is a selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/109/2/425.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Schooling helps&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/15/8/511.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Music training may&#xA;help&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/109/2/425.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Radiation&#xA;therapy may be harmful&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, IQ doesn't just change over childhood. More importantly, it doesn't just change over long time periods. It may change over the source of a single day. Here is a selection of studies supporting that idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may be affected &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2466/pms.1973.36.3c.1265&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;by distractions from music&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may be affected &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/xap/6/3/236/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;by tiredness&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may be affected &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00140139308967988#.Ut_MphAzFaQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;by alcohol consumption&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may be affected by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neurology.org/content/59/9/1337.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;marijuana consumption&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It may be affected &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/%28SICI%291097-4679%28199601%2952:1%3C32%3a%3aAID-JCLP5%3E3.0.CO;2-Y/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;by head injury&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that intelligence is a constant over the lifetime of a person over-estimates the ability of IQ tests to pull out some fundamental property of a person, rather than measuring their performance on the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-01-22T14:04:23.837" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19249" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28548" CreationDate="2014-01-22T15:34:59.543" Score="13" ViewCount="1563" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/AA67/AA67.htm&quot;&gt;National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism&lt;/a&gt; strongly implies that consuming &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; alcohol at all while under the age of 18 is excessively detrimental to one's health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While never stated outright, this implication is visible in places such as this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whatever it is that leads adolescents to begin drinking, once they start they face a number of potential health risks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For adults, most studies indicate that a regular diet of one or two drinks a day is healthy--and in fact may have health benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would drinking one or two drinks a day (or less) do more physiological harm to a 13 to 18 year old than an adult?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14622" LastEditorUserId="14622" LastEditDate="2014-04-01T14:00:35.750" LastActivityDate="2015-08-20T04:22:32.760" Title="Does drinking recommended amounts of alcohol do more harm to children aged 13 to 18 than it does to adults?" Tags="|medical-science|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19251" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-22T21:50:00.220" Score="6" ViewCount="408" Body="&lt;p&gt;The British artist &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hockney&quot;&gt;David Hockney&lt;/a&gt; argues in his book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Knowledge-Rediscovering-techniques-Masters/dp/0500286388/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1390426908&amp;amp;sr=8-4&amp;amp;keywords=hockney&quot;&gt;Secret Knowledge&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;from the early 15th century many Western artists used optics--by which I mean mirrors and lenses (or a combination of the two)--to create living projections&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His basic idea is that tools like the Camera Obscura and the emerging science of optics created technological methods that allowed artists to create effects like realistic perspective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But his views have offended some in the mainstream art world. As an Amazon review of the book reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hockney concedes that his opinions have been attacked by the mainstream art world that has complained that &quot;for an artist to use optical aids would be 'cheating'; that somehow I was attacking the idea of innate genius&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Hockney's thesis convincing? Did some of the great artists use technological aids to create their masterpieces?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T00:51:39.903" Title="Was the radical change in art in the 15th century assisted by technology?" Tags="|history|technology|art|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19257" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-23T12:18:54.330" Score="3" ViewCount="1453" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this cute &lt;a href=&quot;http://sleepyti.me/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;online sleep calculator&lt;/a&gt;. They claim (put in any time, and you'll see it):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The average adult human takes fourteen minutes to fall asleep, so plan accordingly!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-23T13:20:13.213" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T14:02:18.673" Title="Does the average human take 14 minutes to fall asleep?" Tags="|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19258" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19257" CreationDate="2014-01-23T14:02:18.673" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term for this time is &quot;sleep latency&quot;. (Actually Wikipedia prefer &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_onset_latency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sleep Onset Latency&lt;/a&gt; but that doesn't match the literature I was finding.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The calculator makes predictions down to the minute based on this estimate. The figure is not that predictable or precise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aasmnet.org/Resources/PracticeParameters/PP_MSLTMWT.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Practice Parameters for Clinical Use of the Multiple Sleep Latency Test and the&#xA;Maintenance of Wakefulness Test&lt;/a&gt; is a discussion on the Multiple Sleep Latency Test - where patients are given several opportunities throughout the day to fall asleep, and their sleep latency is measured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Table 3, it gives mean sleep latency of 10.4 +/- 4.3 minutes or 11.6 +/- 5.2 minutes, depending on the protocol used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalsleep.org/Articles/270702.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Meta-Analysis of Quantitative Sleep Parameters From Childhood to Old Age in&#xA;Healthy Individuals: Developing Normative Sleep Values Across the Human&#xA;Lifespan&lt;/a&gt; they look at how sleep latency changes over time and between genders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall, it appeared that sleep latency modestly but significantly increased with age. However, the change is very subtle [...] The overall increase in sleep latency between 20 and 80 years was less than 10 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also showed men have higher mean sleep latency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Figure 1A they showed a scatterplot which gives a good idea of the range (and trends). Note the trend line is somewhat higher than the previous reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xTnse.png&quot; alt=&quot;Scatterplot from Figure 1a&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: 14 minutes is &lt;em&gt;around&lt;/em&gt; the right time, but planning your alarm clock wake-up time based on such a precise figure isn't warranted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-01-23T14:02:18.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19261" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22654" CreationDate="2014-01-23T15:28:38.667" Score="19" ViewCount="3384" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this cute &lt;a href=&quot;http://sleepyti.me/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;online sleep calculater&lt;/a&gt;. They claim (put in any time, and you'll see it):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sleep cycles typically last 90 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waking up in the middle of a sleep cycle leaves you feeling tired and groggy, but waking up in between cycles lets you wake up feeling refreshed and alert!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They appear to claim that if, for example, you need to choose between sleeping 7 and a half hours (which is a multiple of 90 minutes), or sleeping 8 hours, then 7 and a half would be better for feeling &lt;em&gt;awake&lt;/em&gt; in the morning. Is this correct? In particular, a doctor I spoke to said that &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; sleep is more important than not interrupting sleep cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T06:48:22.860" Title="Is it better to wake up in between sleep cycles than during one?" Tags="|sleep|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19265" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19251" CreationDate="2014-01-24T00:51:39.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a currently unproven issue without a clear-cut answer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is no direct historical evidence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there is controversial evidence obtained by providing some mechanism which could have worked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_M._Falco&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prof. Charles Falco&lt;/a&gt; claims to have proven it via optical methods, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webexhibits.org/hockneyoptics/post/stork.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;David Stork&lt;/a&gt; rejects the claim. That there is no historical evidence is my own assumption, since if it was presented, it would trump any discussion how the paintings could have been made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When David Hockney wrote in his book Secret Knowledge that he had “rediscovered” secret methods of the great painters, asserting that “from the early 15th century many Western artists used optics—by which I mean mirrors and lenses (or a combination of the two)—to create living projections,” he sparked a debate that would motivate new lines of inquiry and research in a multitude of disciplines including art history, optics, image analysis, and more. Charles Falco later claimed he had proven Hockney’s ﬁndings scientiﬁcally. In the last three “Artful Media” articles, David Stork presented applications of computer imaging for analyzing paintings, some of which challenge those claims. In this article, Falco defends his original ﬁndings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fp.optics.arizona.edu/SSD/art-optics/papers/IEEEComputerVision.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fp.optics.arizona.edu/SSD/art-optics/papers/IEEEComputerVision.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information, the wikipedia page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockney%E2%80%93Falco_thesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the Hockney-Falco thesis&lt;/a&gt; does a good job of describing the controversy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T00:51:39.903" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19226" CreationDate="2014-01-24T02:02:33.413" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the Department of Environment &amp;amp; Forests of All States did &lt;a href=&quot;http://moef.nic.in/assets/ban%20on%20dolphanariums.pdf&quot;&gt;issue a circular&lt;/a&gt; banning the establishment of dolphinariums. It contains the quote listed in the question. But, it's &lt;strong&gt;not correct&lt;/strong&gt; that dolphins have been legally declared as &quot;non-human persons&quot;. The circular only says that some scientists have suggested that they should be seen that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A punctuation error in the circular slightly complicates things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17265" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-24T03:11:09.133" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T03:11:09.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19272" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-24T16:12:39.477" Score="9" ViewCount="190" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following article relates this claim by someone who stayed awake for 11 days:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/sleep-deprivation.htm&quot;&gt;How can someone stay awake for 11 days?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He also employed a unique raw-food diet. Wright claims that his&#xA;  regimen of salads, avocados, bananas, pineapples, nuts, seeds, carrot&#xA;  juice and herbal tea helped his brain stay awake. He also says that it&#xA;  allowed him to &quot;switch&quot; from one side of his brain to the other when&#xA;  he got tired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Whales and dolphins are known to employ similar brain-switching techniques, which allow one part of their brain to rest while the other focuses on breathing and other basic functions.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a raw-food diet allow someone to &quot;switch&quot; from one side of his brain to the other when he gets tired?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastActivityDate="2014-01-24T16:12:39.477" Title="Can a raw-food diet allow someone to &quot;switch&quot; from one side of his brain to the other when he gets tired?" Tags="|natural-remedies|sleep|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19274" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-24T17:59:49.667" Score="29" ViewCount="11115" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've often thought that it doesn't and that this was just a myth, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24464774&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this BBC article&lt;/a&gt; backs me up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but [water] can be contained in food, alcohol or caffeinated beverages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, beer and coffee do not dehydrate you to any noticeable extent (there's a nice paper where some medical students got to drink quite a lot of beer and had their urine studied - British Medical Journal (Clin Res Ed), December 1982, Acute biochemical responses to moderate beer drinking, Gill GV).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4377&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Skeptiod podcast episode&lt;/a&gt; I heard seems to contradict it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you consume one unit of alcohol, your body expels three to four units of water, causing dehydration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My best guess is that short term it hydrates you, but long term (such as overnight) it will cause you to dehydrate faster than water. What is the answer? Does the same apply to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diuretic&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;diuretics&lt;/a&gt; like caffeine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6842" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T12:00:53.157" Title="Does drinking alcohol dehydrate you?" Tags="|physiology|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19277" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-25T05:27:34.370" Score="2" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;The documentary &lt;em&gt;Last Supper&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2000418/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;IMDb&lt;/a&gt; / &lt;a href=&quot;http://vimeo.com/10964671&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;full video on Vimeo&lt;/a&gt;) by Mats Bigert, and Lars Bergstrom released in 2005 suggests that there is a connection between the declination of a last meal and whether or not a person’s guilt has been posthumously disputed and challenged. Are there evidence backing up this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware of Kniffin, Kevin M., and Brian Wansink. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdpi.com/2075-471X/3/1/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Death Row Confessions and the Last Meal Test of Innocence&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Laws 3.1 (2013): 1-11, but they focus on self-perceived innocence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="7654" LastEditDate="2014-01-25T23:01:57.913" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T23:01:57.913" Title="Is there a connection between the declination of a last meal and whether or not a person’s guilt has been posthumously disputed and challenged?" Tags="|law-enforcement|prisoner|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19211" CreationDate="2014-01-25T06:22:22.093" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to NPR's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/08/26/215761377/a-history-of-snake-oil-salesmen&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A History Of 'Snake Oil Salesmen'&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Made from the oil of the Chinese water snake, which is rich in the&#xA;omega-3 acids that help reduce inflammation, snake oil in its original&#xA;form really was effective, especially when used to treat arthritis and&#xA;bursitis. The workers would rub the oil, used for centuries in China,&#xA;on their joints after a long hard day at work. The story goes that the&#xA;Chinese workers began sharing the oil with some American counterparts,&#xA;who marveled at the effects...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...from psychiatrist and researcher Richard Kunin revealed that the Chinese oil contained&#xA;almost triple the amount of a vital acid as did rattlesnake oil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question now becomes does omega-3 acid help reduce inflammation? According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://umm.edu/health/medical/altmed/supplement/omega3-fatty-acids&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Maryland Medical Center&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research shows that omega-3 fatty acids reduce inflammation and may&#xA;help lower risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and&#xA;arthritis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And Web MD's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/omega-3-fatty-acids-fact-sheet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Omega-3 Fact Sheet&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids. Research shows&#xA;strong evidence that the omega-3s EPA and DHA can help lower&#xA;triglycerides and blood pressure. And there are studies showing that&#xA;omega-3 fatty acids may help with other conditions, including&#xA;rheumatoid arthritis, depression, and many more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it would seem that original snake oil was helpful. However the term became derogatory after it was found that a major snake oil salesman's oil contained no snake products. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/08/26/215761377/a-history-of-snake-oil-salesmen&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A History Of 'Snake Oil Salesmen'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stanley's Snake Oil didn't contain any snake oil at all. The Pure Food&#xA;and Drug Act of 1906 sought to clamp down on the sale of patent&#xA;medicines and it was that legislation that led to Stanley's undoing.&#xA;After seizing a shipment of Stanley's Snake Oil in 1917, federal&#xA;investigators found that it primarily contained mineral oil, a fatty&#xA;oil believed to be beef fat, red pepper and turpentine. That's right —&#xA;Stanley's signature product did not contain a drop of actual snake&#xA;oil, and hundreds of consumers discovered they had been had.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was probably around then that snake oil became symbolic of fraud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7387" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T06:22:22.093" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19281" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-25T08:55:48.567" Score="15" ViewCount="1712" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the author of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibiblio.org/harris/500milemail.html&quot;&gt;this story&lt;/a&gt;, an improperly configured email server had too strict timeout settings which effectively limited its communication radius to 500 miles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author states it's the maximum range a signal can travel there and back with the speed of light within the timeout interval set up and speculates that this was the real reason for the distance constraint. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in my opinion, this story as it is presented does not hold water. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can it be true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:56:37.890" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:56:37.890" Title="Is the 500-mile email case true?" Tags="|physics|email|networks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19281" CreationDate="2014-01-25T10:26:23.557" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's true, but not all the details are accurate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author posted a FAQ post about the case where they explain that they did take some creative liberty both for simplification and because they didn't remember all the details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If you're not 100% certain of all the details, why did you write the original post so vividly?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took license. It made a better story that way. Honestly, would writing &amp;quot;I'm not sure, but maybe...&amp;quot; every second sentence really have changed anything? And I did say at the start that I was changing or eliding irrelevant details for the sake of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor is the context in which this originally appeared. It was posted to the sage-members list, a list for members of SAGE, the System Administrators Guild, in a thread about &amp;quot;favorite impossible tasks&amp;quot;. That is to say, it was a light-hearted discussion about the impossible tasks that users or management sometimes bring to sysadmins to solve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I had any notion that this post would be forwarded so widely, I would have added some details to answer the questions of skeptics. But I was posting to a list of colleagues, a good proportion of whom I know personally, and so was tailoring it for an audience inclined to believe me. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The story is fun, but the technical details at the end just don't add up.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know. See the answer to the previous question. First and foremost, I was writing a humorous story based on an actual occurence, not a case study, so I wrote only what was required to get the point across. I find I suddenly have great respect for writers who write works based on true stories, as I now know how hard it is to find the balance between verisimilitude and storytelling. And I now know the kind of criticism you open yourself up to when you choose storytelling over verisimilitude. :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That three millisecond time doesn't make sense as the timeout for a connect() call.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I know. And it wasn't the timeout, actually. In the story, I make it sound like it took all of ten minutes from being made aware of the 500-mile email limit and determining a 3 ms light-speed issue. In fact, this took several hours, and quite a bit of detective work. The point is, eventually I came up with that figure, ran units, and gagged on my latte. (I'm fairly certain it was a different latte from the one I started with.) So what, in particular, is your question about the 3 ms figure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Well, to start with, it can't be three milliseconds, because that would only be for the outgoing packet to arrive at its destination. You have to get a response, too, before the timeout will be aborted. Shouldn't it be six milliseconds?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course. This is one of the details I skipped in the story. It seemed irrelevant, and boring, so I left it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Actually, shouldn't it be twelve/eighteen/twenty-four milliseconds, to account for the three-way TCP handshake?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe. Again, this would be a detail my lost notes would answer. But I think that a connect() timeout would be aborted upon receiving a SYN/ACK packet; I don't think that the whole handshake had to be completed. Even if it did, I eventually would have arrived at the 3 ms figure, however I got to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Router delays would have been a much greater factor than you admit in the story.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, you're probably right. But they are factors I could account for. I'm not certain this is how I did it, but it seems likely I could have pinged the nearest router I could find (such as one at another school at UNC that manged its own network) to find out what sort of delay a router was likely to add. Then I could multiply that by the number of routers to remote destinations. The number was likely to be constant for other East Coast universities. And even if it wasn't, the delay imposed by an additional router would only be on the order of a few hundred microseconds at most, not enough to make a large difference for nearby destinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The story is cute, but it has a fatal flaw: signals don't travel at lightspeed in copper.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's true, they travel at 3 c / 4 or thereabouts. But the NIC, the campus backbone, and certainly the Internet backbone was all fiber.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ah-hah! But signals don't travel at light speed in fiber, either!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You got me. I'm told they travel at from 2 c / 3 (yes, slower than copper) up to a few percent under c depending on a wide variety of factors. But again, this was a factor I could, and did, account for. I recall pinging various destinations and writing down distances versus ping times, and coming up with an empirical &amp;quot;effective time&amp;quot; that differed from actual time. This was just another &amp;quot;irrelevant and boring detail&amp;quot; to be left out of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Well, the story still can't be true.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me ask you a question: regardless of the details, is it possible that a misconfiguration could cause the operational behavior of nearby email being delivered while faraway email was not? I think the answer is yes. In fact, I know the answer is yes, because it happened. But even putting aside my own experience and viewing it as best I can as a skeptical observer, I think the idea is possible, though certainly implausible at first gloss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have a question that isn't answered here, go ahead and email me at trey+500mi@lopsa.org. I may put it in the FAQ and credit you. But I'm more likely to just say, &amp;quot;I don't know, I don't remember and no longer have the raw data to answer your question.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T10:26:23.557" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19198" CreationDate="2014-01-25T18:25:07.413" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Emily Gibson does have a point. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pamf.org/teen/health/skin/pubichairremoval.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt;, the consequences are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Itching &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Razor burn &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Nicks &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Cuts &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Bumps &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Blisters/Pimples &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Genital infections &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ingrown hairs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Folliculitis: an infection in the hair follicle usually caused by the bacteria Staphylococcus (staph) or a fungus. A common cause of&#xA;  folliculitis is recently shaved hairs re-growing out of the follicle&#xA;  and curling back around to irritate the skin. It is interesting to&#xA;  note that the lack of hair around the anus will make it impossible to&#xA;  pass gas silently.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you're planning on keeping your pubic area smooth and hairless, you&#xA;  will need to shave regularly, even daily. You should consider if this&#xA;  is worth the trouble; what is appealing now may not be after four or&#xA;  five weeks of daily shaving. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition to being time-consuming, the maintenance can be costly&#xA;  since you need to invest in special shaving equipment and care like a&#xA;  new razor, female shaving cream, baby oil, and/or aloe vera cream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to reiterate that shaving is a personal choice. Some people do risky things, like anal sex or driving while texting. If a person does not want to take big risks, then it is best for that person to consult a medical provider or work with a professional or seek an easier, low-risk alternative. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wholesomely agree with the same author's advice. Think for yourself. What is popular is not always right, and what is right is not always popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shaving the pubic area has become much more common, even desirable,&#xA;  among teenagers and young adults. Although shaving may be becoming the&#xA;  social norm, that does not mean you should do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author's claims have some back-up from a peer-reviewed journal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt; Basow, S. A. (1991). THE HAIRLESS IDEAL. Women and Their Body Hair. Psychology Of Women Quarterly, 15(1), 83-96.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A major component of ``femininity'' in the United States today is a&#xA;  hairless body, a norm that developed in the United States between&#xA;  1915-1945. Little has been written regarding the development of this&#xA;  norm, and virtually no empirical research has been done to assess how&#xA;  universally ascribed to is this standard or why women actually remove&#xA;  their leg and underarm hair. More than 200 women from two national&#xA;  professional organizations responded to a mailed questionnaire&#xA;  (response rate 56%). The majority (around 80%) remove their leg and/or&#xA;  underarm hair at lead occasionally. Two types of reasons for shaving&#xA;  emerged: feminine/attractiveness reasons and social/normative reasons.&#xA;  Most women start shaving for the latter reasons but continue to shave&#xA;  for the former reasons. Certain groups, however, were least likely to&#xA;  remove leg and/or underarm hair: strongly feminist women and&#xA;  self-identified lesbians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt; Whether or not shaving pubic hair is &quot;bad&quot; for you must be judged on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, it is highly recommended that one seeks professional or medical help before shaving off pubic hair, if one is concerned about serious repercussions. Remember, it's a personal choice. Also, remember that personal choices or popular choices are sometimes not the best or safest choices in the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14593" LastActivityDate="2014-01-25T18:25:07.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19287" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19311" CreationDate="2014-01-26T06:53:17.117" Score="20" ViewCount="2722" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people claim that the fossils that have been generally classified as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal&quot;&gt;Neanderthal&lt;/a&gt; are actually human, and in particular, humans who have lived to a very old age - i.e. two or three hundred years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They further claim that the bones in the human face continue to grow and change long after maturity, albeit, much slower than when children. So the bones in the face of a two or three hundred year old person would look a lot like the so-called Neanderthal skulls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is used to support &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth&quot;&gt;Young Earth Creationist&lt;/a&gt; views. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few examples where this is mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jack Cuozzo, who was the first to radiograph Neanderthal fossils in modern times, postulated that the unusual skeletal structures may actually be the result of extreme longevity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://creationwiki.org/Neanderthal#Cuozzo.E2.80.99s_angle&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The bible describe people in the early parts of Genesis that lived for hundreds of years. One of the things that we have learned from modern science is that the bones of the head and face continue to grow through our entire adult life (though at a slower rate than when we are children).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What would the faces of people who lived for hundreds of years look like? Dr. Jack Cuozzo has studied both the Bible and the Neanderthal remains in depth, he believes these people would look like (and consequently are) the Neanderthals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.angelfire.com/mi/dinosaurs/patriarch.html&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to have all started with Dr. Jack Cuozzo, who wrote a book titled &quot;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0890512388&quot;&gt;Buried Alive: The startling truth about Neanderthal Man&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it scientifically plausible that Neanderthal skulls are actually the skulls of humans that lived for many hundreds of years in Biblical times?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-27T07:36:15.447" LastActivityDate="2014-10-10T11:29:20.700" Title="Are neanderthal skull fossils just skulls of very elderly humans?" Tags="|medical-science|bible|paleontology|young-earth-creationism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19261" CreationDate="2014-01-26T13:09:46.667" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sleep cycles typically last 90 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not entirely true. The first stage sleep cycles do but they become longer through the night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep#Physiology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; cites Michael Billiard. Sleep: Physiology, Investigations, and Medicine (Google eBook). Springer. p. 5. as saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The average length of the first sleep cycle is approximately 90 minutes and 100 to 120 minutes from the second to the fourth cycle, which is usually the last one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This conflicts with the proposed maths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not heard of any conclusive scientific study on the optimal cycle to wake up on, although in my own experience I much prefer to wake up during a sleep cycle. This guarantees that you will be able to recall the dream you were having before you woke up. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very much recommended however that you &lt;strong&gt;should not&lt;/strong&gt; set an alarm clock to wake you up. As this interferes with the body's natural process of waking up (hard to avoid however in our world though) . &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/your-alarm-clock-may-be-hazardous-to-your-health-164620290/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;REF&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13859" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-01T09:01:08.900" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T09:01:08.900" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19291" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-26T16:58:37.263" Score="20" ViewCount="2163" Body="&lt;p&gt;Those skeptical about the science of global warming have frequently alleged that the surface temperature record has &quot;paused&quot; since about 1998 and showed no significant warming trend (see this recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/01/26/the-pause-of-global-warming-risks-destroying-the-reputation-of-science/&quot;&gt;wattsupwiththat&lt;/a&gt; post as a representative example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mainstream climate science community has responded to this in several ways (see my italics in the quotes below highlighting the different claims). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some deny that the pause exists or argue that recent extensions to the record show it to be a data error, see this news story from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exposed-the-myth-of-the-global-warming-pause-8945607.html&quot;&gt;Independent&lt;/a&gt; claiming:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A new study has found that &lt;em&gt;global temperatures have not flat-lined over the past 15 years&lt;/em&gt;, as weather station records have been suggesting, but have in fact continued to rise as fast as previous decades, during which we have seen an unprecedented acceleration in global warming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But other mainstream scientists accept the pause exists and seek explanations. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-1.14525&quot;&gt;recent review in Nature&lt;/a&gt; starts with this admission:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For several years, scientists wrote off the stall as noise in the climate system: the natural variations in the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere that drive warm or cool spells around the globe. But the pause has persisted, sparking a minor crisis of confidence in the field. Although there have been jumps and dips, &lt;em&gt;average atmospheric temperatures have risen little since 1998&lt;/em&gt;, in seeming defiance of projections of climate models and the ever-increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but continues&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Now, as the global-warming hiatus enters its sixteenth year, scientists are at last making headway in the case of the missing heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So some people don't believe there has been a pause and others are trying to explain the pause. My question is given the uncertainties have global surface temperatures shown no significant growth since about 1998?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note for clarity&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I realise that most heat is not absorbed by the atmosphere and that climate change may well be continuing. That is relevant &lt;em&gt;context&lt;/em&gt; but not the question. The question is about surface temperatures. So answer that first and provide context later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T18:47:25.570" Title="Have global surface temperatures not shown significant warming since the late 1990s?" Tags="|climate-change|climatology|modelling|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19293" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-26T18:31:18.577" Score="6" ViewCount="375" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has hypnotism been used to enhance memory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example if I go to my friend's house, I may forget it's details like how many steps does there have or what color was it's door!&#xA;This is my conscious mind.&#xA;But as I hear, these details stored in the subconscious mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it possible to obtain those data by hypnotism ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17187" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-27T10:09:30.473" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T22:50:07.430" Title="Has hypnotism been used to enhance memory?" Tags="|criminology|memory|hypnotism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19291" CreationDate="2014-01-26T19:26:54.943" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this answer, I focus on the Cowtan and Way paper, which seems to be causing some of the dynamics of this debate (e.g., the &lt;em&gt;The Independent&lt;/em&gt; article mentioned by you).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am assuming that when you speak of 'significant', you mean 'statistically significant'. There is another meaning to the word, and if you meant that, then this answer isn't very useful. I'm also assuming that you would like to take &quot;no upward trend&quot; as your null-hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the amount of extrapolation done by Cowtan and Way, I suggest that their analysis is not suitable to answer your question in the &lt;em&gt;negative&lt;/em&gt; [this is awkwardly phrased because you already have a 'not' in your question], but rather more aimed at providing a trend (i.e. point) estimate only. (Indeed there doesn't appear to be a claim about significance in either the abstract or the conclusion of the paper.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;their paper&lt;/a&gt; (p. 11) they &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; provide us with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Dataset          Trend +/- sigma&#xA;Hybrid s = 1.0   0.119 +/- 0.076&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which might be used to answer your question in the positive (&lt;em&gt;at least if this dataset/period is the only data admitted&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With some further assumptions, that translates to a p-value of about 6%. Given all the extrapolation going on, I'd suggest that objectively sigma should have been estimated higher, and therefore I'd suggest that the p-value is also higher. I don't know what significance level (to which the p-value should be compared) is conventional or justified in this area, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were 5% or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: The Cowtan and Way paper isn't, and doesn't provide reason for us to be, conclusive either way with regards to your question. (That is: It can't give &quot;significant&quot; and it can't give &quot;not significant&quot;.) &lt;em&gt;If their data/period would be the only available, then&lt;/em&gt; their analysis would suggest: no significant upward trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have noted that such things are hotly debated. Perhaps it is good to state my position. &lt;em&gt;I don't care.&lt;/em&gt; (And I don't follow this debate.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16186" LastEditorDisplayName="user16186" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T18:47:25.570" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T18:47:25.570" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19296" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-26T20:07:40.710" Score="7" ViewCount="402" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livedrive.com/ForHome/Backup&quot;&gt;Livedrive&lt;/a&gt; claims that &quot;52% of computer users lose irreplaceable documents, photos, music and videos every year?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any published study on that matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:29:44.117" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:29:44.117" Title="Do 52% of computer users lose irreplaceable documents, photos, music and videos every year?" Tags="|consumer-products|computers|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19298" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19350" CreationDate="2014-01-26T23:21:21.123" Score="11" ViewCount="18484" Body="&lt;p&gt;Inhaling helium and talking with a funny voice used to be a great party trick for chemists with access to it and has now become more popular as helium supplies have become accessible for filling balloons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But claims are being brought forth that helium inhalation is dangerous. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-11810372&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC story&lt;/a&gt; claims a teenager died from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Members of the public will be more familiar with the usually harmless and not uncommon party trick, of inhaling helium from a balloon to a high-pitched squeaky voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It must be recognised that such activity can, on rare occasions, lead to adverse health effects and some deaths have been reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breathing in helium displaces oxygen from the lungs which in turn, deprives vital organs of essential oxygen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if helium is the most inert element, how can it be deadly, and if so, why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2021-02-18T15:33:28.500" Title="Is inhaling helium dangerous?" Tags="|medical-science|safety|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19299" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-27T03:38:59.757" Score="1" ViewCount="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;While researching Masaru Emoto (who I hadn't heard of before today), I found plenty of places where his work was rejected as being only pseudo-scientific, yet I also found this one paper: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550830706003272&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Double-Blind Test of the Effects of Distant Intention on Water Crystal Formation&lt;/a&gt;. I didn't make a concerted and thorough effort to find a challenge, debunking, or supporting paper, but neither did I see any mention of this paper on another site that debunked Masaru's other work (and was put up after this paper was published). So I'm asking you guys if the results of this paper (or its methodology) were ever supported, challenged, or debunked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware of &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16781/does-masaru-emotos-experiment-show-human-consciousness-affects-the-aesthetics-o&quot;&gt;this very related question&lt;/a&gt;, but I don't think they're duplicates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8765" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T00:58:05.643" Title="Has this 2006 experiment about the effect of distant intention on water been challenged?" Tags="|water|masuru-emoto|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-01-27T07:23:56.183" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19300" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-27T03:46:42.913" Score="8" ViewCount="208" Body="&lt;p&gt;My gym (like almost every other gym) has specific instructions that people must wipe down equipment after using it. This is in addition to the regular (daily) cleaning done by the staff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gym provides a cleaning solution which is 3.95% hydrogen peroxide. Other gyms I've been to provide other cleaning agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: does this actually stop the spread of disease, or is it mostly &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater&quot;&gt;security theater&lt;/a&gt; done to assuage people's sense of &quot;ew, that person's sweat is gross&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If anything, I wonder if wiping the equipment down with moisture might help diseases to stay alive longer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17201" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-27T07:21:22.763" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T07:21:22.763" Title="Do cleaning agents in the gym stop the spread of disease?" Tags="|disease|cleaning|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19296" CreationDate="2014-01-27T13:04:27.420" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Peer reviewed article from 2003:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;US businesses use an estimated 76.2 million PCs to aid in the&#xA;  production of goods and services. [...] estimating 4.6 million&#xA;  episodes of severe data loss per year&#xA;  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/650U5.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://gbr.pepperdine.edu/2010/08/the-cost-of-lost-data/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;The Cost of Lost Data&quot; David M. Smith, PhD&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4.6mln of 76.2mln is 6% per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T13:04:27.420" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3371" CreationDate="2014-01-27T14:01:27.667" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;A new paper on this phenomenon has been published recently. It offers yet another explanation and has even caught the attention of popular media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nature.com/articles/srep03005&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1038/srep03005&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://arxiv.org/abs/1310.6514v2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv:1310.6514v2&lt;/a&gt; [physics.chem-ph]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They say the interaction between the hydrogen bonds and the stronger&#xA;bonds that hold the hydrogen and oxygen atoms in each molecule&#xA;together, known as covalent bonds, is what causes the effect. Normally&#xA;when a liquid is heated, the covalent bonds between atoms stretch and&#xA;store energy. The scientists argue that in water, the hydrogen bonds&#xA;produce an unusual effect that causes the covalent bonds to shorten&#xA;and store energy when heated. This they say leads to the bonds to&#xA;release their energy in an exponential way compared to the initial&#xA;amount stored when they are cooled in a freezer. So hot water will&#xA;lose more energy faster than cool water. Dr Changqing said: “Heating&#xA;stores energy by shortening and stiffening the H-O covalent bond.&#xA;“Cooling in a refrigerator, the H-O bond releases its energy at a rate&#xA;that depends exponentially on the initially stored energy, and&#xA;therefore, Mpemba effect happens.” The Royal Society of Chemistry&#xA;received more than 22,000 responses to its call for a solution to the&#xA;Mpemba effect and it is still receiving theories despite the&#xA;competition closing a year ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoted from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10420496/Have-scientists-worked-out-why-hot-water-freezes-faster-than-cold-water.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Telegraph.co.uk&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5580" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-07-20T09:30:59.117" LastActivityDate="2022-07-20T09:30:59.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19291" CreationDate="2014-01-27T16:35:23.377" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first thing to point out is that &quot;no statistically significant warming&quot; does not mean that there has been no warming, essentially it just means that there hasn't been enough warming to rule out the possibility that there has been no warming.  If that sounds counter-intuitive, it is because it is, but that is the way frequentist statistical hypothesis testing works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way frequentist hypothesis tests work is broadly as follows:  Say you have a hypothesis (H1) that you wish to support using a set of observations (X).  Next you define a &quot;null hypothesis&quot; that is basically what you need to show to be false in order for your H1 to be true.  For example, if you hypothesise that there has been some warming, then the obvious choice for H0 is that there has been no warming at all, i.e. the rate of warming is zero.  You then calculate the p-value, which is the probability of observing a trend at least as large as that observed &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;IF&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; H0 is true.  If the p-value is sufficiently small, say p &amp;lt; 0.05, this is taken as sufficient evidence that H0 is false so we say that &quot;we reject the null hypothesis&quot; or equivalently &quot;the rate of warming is statistically significant&quot; and otherwise &quot;we fail to reject the null hypothesis&quot; or &quot;the rate of warming is not statistically significant&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the first point to notice here is that H0 should be the hypothesis you are arguing &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  So for mainstream science, which suggests there will be warming due to the greenhouse effect, the natural H0 is that there is no warming.  The &quot;Skeptics&quot; on the other hand hypothesise there is no warming, yet they are using that as their null hypothesis as well.  This is a grave statistical error as it means that hypothesis testing no longer functions as a sanity check, as the skeptics are assuming that they are right and requiring evidence to prove them wrong.  Mainstream science on the other hand are assuming that they are wrong (H0 is true) and asking if the observations refute H0 (implying, but not proving that H1 is true).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for the second point.  If the trend is not statistically significant, there are at least two reasons:  Firstly H0 actually is true, and secondly H0 is false, but there is insufficient data to demonstrate that it is wrong.  Consider flipping a two-headed coin four times.  The traditional test for the bias of a coin will fail to reject the null hypothesis as even getting four flips in a row will happen by chance with a fair coin more that 5% of the time.  This is because the power of the test (the probability of rejecting the null hypothesis when it is actually false) is not very high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the case for the &quot;not statistically significant&quot; observed trend we have now, given the expected size of the anthropogenic trend and the noise in the data (weather), the power of the test is so low that it is not at all surprising that the result is not statistically significant.  E&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009GL037810/abstract&quot;&gt;asterling and Wehner&lt;/a&gt; have demonstrated that the climate will occasionally show decadal (or more) periods with little or no trend, and that this is also found in model simulations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add to this, the hypothesis test assumes that you are looking at an n-year period chosen at random.  If you cherry pick the start and end dates, the power is even lower, unless you compensate for the implicit multiple hypothesis testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote from the Independent does not show that it is a &quot;data error&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new study has found that global temperatures have not flat-lined over the past 15 years, as weather station records have been suggesting, but have in fact continued to rise as fast as previous decades, during which we have seen an unprecedented acceleration in global warming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saying that temperatures have not &quot;flat-lined&quot; is not incompatible with the rate of warming not being statistically significant, because the latter just means we cannot rule out the possibility that the underlying rate of warming is zero.  The problem is that most journalists, and an even larger proportion of climate skeptic bloggers don't really understand hypothesis testing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Saying that the rate of warming is the same as that before is not incompatible with the rate of warming being not statistically significant either for much the same reason. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comment about acceleration needs a bit more evidence though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pause in warming is interesting, it is well explained as a result of the effects of ENSO (see the paper by &lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/4/044022&quot;&gt;Foster and Rahmsdorf&lt;/a&gt;), and it is providing an interesting area for research in climate variability.  This does not however mean that the underlying rate of warming has changed, or that carbon dioxide is not a greenhouse gas etc.  So the two views are not actually contradictory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To give a direct answer to the question, whether the warming is significant or not depends on the dataset you look at, how you choose the period in question, your statistical assumptions (e.g. taking into account autocorrelation and multiple hypothesis testing due to choosing the period after looking at the data etc.).  Even then, it doesn't necessarily mean much unless you also look at the statistical power of the test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-01-27T20:20:19.757" LastActivityDate="2014-01-27T20:20:19.757" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19307" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-27T17:19:16.697" Score="1" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;While a nuclear war will obviously cause significant environmental harm to the earth, after doing some research on the subject I'm starting to find facts that make me question whether it would actually be a doomsday scenario like the media depicts it. For example I have found out that since 1945 over 2,000 nuclear weapons have been detonated.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-07/6/japanese-artist-nuclear-weapons&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-07/6/japanese-artist-nuclear-weapons&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;I have also found out that the a lot of the fallout in the Bikini Atoll disappeared from the soil because all the coconut trees absorbed it and deposited in it's coconuts. (Which they obviously made a warning not to eat the coconuts there) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bikiniatoll.com/history.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bikiniatoll.com/history.html&lt;/a&gt; Also the fact that Carl Sagan claimed that the environmental effects of Iraq burning all their oil reserves during the Iraq Kuwait war would have effects worse than nuclear winter makes me the magnitude of danger from nuclear winter is exaggerated. Obviously a nuclear winter is not something we want to happen and would obviously cause severe harm to the environment, but is it really an end of the world scenario like the media tends to depict it? Or is it just an environmental disaster that will require a lot of cleanup but can be recovered from?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16123" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T20:03:48.760" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T20:03:48.760" Title="Is nuclear winter a doomsday scenario like the media depicts it?" Tags="|environmental-health|environment|nuclear-weapons|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-01-27T18:00:28.900" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="460" CreationDate="2014-01-28T00:04:03.223" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nucleardarkness.org/index2.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The link that Michael Pryor mentioned&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The smoke would form a stratospheric smoke layer that would block&#xA;  sunlight from reaching the surface of Earth for a period of about ten&#xA;  years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably has a couple inaccuracies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The U.S and Russia keep more than 2000 strategic nuclear weapons on&#xA;  high-alert&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;amp;v=LLCF7vPanrY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YouTube: A Time-Lapse Map of Every Nuclear Explosion Since 1945&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 2053 nuclear explosions. However, since &lt;code&gt;October 10, 1963&lt;/code&gt; the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) went into effect, and after this date, every explosion was underground.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read about &lt;strong&gt;neutron&lt;/strong&gt; weapons. In their case, nothing would be evaporated into the atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read about eruption of volcanoes; seems like one volcano makes more dust than 1,000 nuclear bombs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a Great Winter, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_weather_events_of_535%E2%80%93536&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;year without summer in 535-536 CE&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like Scandinavian Ragnarok is a similar situation. Once Europe has no summer after an eruption, great famine, snow, no greenery, cold...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/archive/nucweapons/50&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time of Berlin's wall, there was much more nuclear weaponry, such as SADM – The Special Atomic Demolition Munition on both sides, USSR and USA. Infantry with such ammunition theoretically can't be stopped or inhibited, only annihilated. The real war of Gods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17314" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T10:13:36.273" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T10:13:36.273" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19287" CreationDate="2014-01-28T00:06:04.540" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;No they are clearly not very old homo sapiens. The hypothesis of Dr. Cuozzo completely fails to explain the following evidence (and more).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Direct DNA evidence&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neanderthal DNA has been mapped multiple times and it is distinguishable from Sapiens DNA. While it is clear that Neanderthals and Sapiens share a lot of DNA, it very evident from DNA sequencing that there are a number of Neanderthal-specific genes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yLbAd.png&quot; alt=&quot;Analysis of one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comparison with the human and chimpanzee genomes reveals that modern human and Neanderthal DNA sequences diverged on average about 500,000 years ago. .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://bioinformatica.uab.es/base/documents%5CmasterGP%5CNeandertalGenome.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Analysis of one million base pairs of Neanderthal DNA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Specimen evidence&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Neanderthal fossil was of a 3 years old:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study combines traditional methods of assessing dental developmental status based upon modern human standards with new techniques based upon histological observations in order to reassess the age at death of the Gibraltar child from Devil's Tower. The results indicate that the most likely age of this individual at death was 3 years of age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.1330700305/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Age at death of the Neanderthal child from Devil's Tower, Gibraltar and the implications for studies of general growth and development in Neanderthals&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Different morphology&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neanderthals looked different, and this difference in morphology is not age-related. Even a Neanderthal child would have looked different from a child Sapiens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here we use computerized fossil reconstruction and geometric morphometrics to show that characteristic differences in cranial and mandibular shape between Neanderthals and modern humans arose very early during development, possibly prenatally, and were maintained throughout postnatal ontogeny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v412/n6846/abs/412534a0.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Neanderthal cranial ontogeny and its implications for late hominid diversity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More morphological differences&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is suggested that the unique facial topography of the classic Neanderthal be viewed as stemming from a change of much of the infraorbital region from the coronal orientation of the generalized face to a more sagittal orientation. This reorganization renders the infraorbital facial plates more efficient in opposing the rotation of the snout in the sagittal plane, which in turn is generated by the unusual use of the anterior teeth. The triangular shape that the “sagittally” oriented infraorbital plate assumes is considered the result of its greater efficiency in opposing the rotation of the anterior part of the face. Both the shift from the coronal into the sagittal orientation and the reshaping of the bone plate into a triangle with a specific anteroposterior length to achieve optimal proportions act to produce the unusual mid-facial prognathism in the Neanderthal skull.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047248486800422&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Neanderthal: A new look at an old face&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Find out more at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_anatomy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Neanderthal Anatomy&lt;/a&gt; wikipedia page&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Mortality studies&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the age of death of fossilized Neanderthals is so well studied that we have statistical studies. There was a higher-than-expected mortality among prime-age adults which is a little beyond the point. The point here is that most of the fossils we have of Neanderthals are determined to be much younger than any definition of &amp;quot;elderly&amp;quot;. Here is the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consideration of the mortality distributions of 206 European and Near Eastern Neanderthals (40 associated skeletons and 166 isolated elements), compared to those of 11 Recent human ethnographic and palaeodemographic samples and two non-human mammalian samples. indicate that there is a clear representational bias in the total sample, with too few infants and older adults plus too many adolescents and prime-age adults. Manipulations of the Neanderthal data produce immature mortality distributions within the ranges of the Recent human samples, but they maintain the high prime-age adult and low older adult mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following are the mortality patterns according to the article. You can see that most are in the young adult category or younger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/T431D.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440395801707&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Neanderthal mortality patterns&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Neanderthal dating&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Dr. Cuozzo is a creationist, and makes the claim within a creationist context, I'd like to also present evidence that we measured some Neanderthals to be 600,000 years old, way older than the presupposed 6,000-10,000 years of age of the Universe that is postulated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Young Earth Creationists&lt;/a&gt;. The Neanderthal fossils can not be remains of Biblical &amp;quot;multi-centenaries&amp;quot; simply because they are way, way older than the Bible and its characters, besides being clearly non-sapiens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pSo9Q.png&quot; alt=&quot;High-resolution U-series dates from the Sima de los Huesos hominids yields 600kyrs: implications for the evolution of the early Neanderthal lineage&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This compatibility between the new age estimates determined for the SRA-3 speleothem and the biostratigraphic indicators from the site provides strong evidence that the radiometric results should be considered conclusive for a minimum age of 530 kyr (MIS 14) for the SH sediments&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/234091067_High-resolution_U-series_dates_from_the_Sima_de_los_Huesos_hominids_yields_600_N_66_kyrs_implications_for_the_evolution_of_the_early_Neanderthal_lineage/file/32bfe50efc2964fe4b.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;High-resolution U-series dates from the Sima de los Huesos hominids yields 600kyrs: implications for the evolution of the early Neanderthal lineage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T22:28:58.313" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19312" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19314" CreationDate="2014-01-28T01:00:51.190" Score="17" ViewCount="1350" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm currently shopping for a mattress, and prices range from $200-$2000+.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My current mattress is a $500 IKEA memory foam mattress, and I feel like I get a good night's sleep, but if it could be shown that spending two or three times more could improve my quality of sleep than I would spend it without reservations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that more expensive mattresses result in better sleep quality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13346" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-28T11:42:46.293" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T08:18:25.563" Title="Do expensive mattresses give better quality of sleep?" Tags="|medical-science|consumer-products|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19314" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19312" CreationDate="2014-01-28T02:40:18.387" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no known relations between mattress cost and sleep quality. In fact, there are no standards to recommend a particular bedding system over another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No benchmark standards presently exist for recommending bedding systems, whether for the purpose of alleviating pain-related sleep disturbance, stress, or for the purpose of enhancing sleep quality. Recommendations of medium-firm mattresses, hard beds, or suggesting that no difference exist between sleep surfaces add to the confusion. Indeed, the ideal mattress is yet to be determined and likely depends on many variables illustrating the need for additional research. It may be overly optimistic to conclude that one type of mattress fits all individuals because of the range of varied anthropometric characteristics of the human body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2697581/#!po=39.4737&quot;&gt;Changes in back pain, sleep quality, and perceived stress after introduction of new bedding systems&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, using a new mattress (possibly medium-firm) will result in better sleep, less back ache and less stress, than sleeping in an older bed: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the present study, [&lt;em&gt;new&lt;/em&gt;] medium-firm bedding systems reduced back pain by approximately 48% (37.1 [pre mean] − 19.3 [post mean week 1-4] = 17.8/37.1 = .48) and improved sleep quality by 55% (43.5 [pre mean] − 21.0 [post mean week 1-4] = 22.5/43.5 = .52)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;em&gt;ibid.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T02:40:18.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19316" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-28T05:20:25.073" Score="2" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3tlVzjcQiA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this television advertisement&lt;/a&gt; H&amp;amp;R Block claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Last year, thinking they could do their own taxes, Americans left behind more than a billion dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did American tax payers leave behind over $1 billion in tax refunds in 2012 (the last tax year)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2014-01-28T05:20:25.073" Title="Did Americans leave behind over $1bn in tax refunds in 2012?" Tags="|united-states|advertising|taxes|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19317" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26867" CreationDate="2014-01-28T06:31:50.527" Score="19" ViewCount="585" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-stop_system&quot;&gt;start-stop system&lt;/a&gt; stops the engine when the car comes to a halt, for example, in front of a traffic light or during a traffic jam. The engine automatically restarts when pressing the clutch or the accelerator. Obviously, this saves fuel and reduces emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim:&lt;/strong&gt; This system saves money. Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/technology/bluemotion-technologies/stop-start&quot;&gt;an example&lt;/a&gt; from the Volkswagen homepage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We think that sitting in traffic is bad enough without knowing that you have to pay for it too. That's why we created Start/Stop Technology, a really simple way of helping you to save money whenever you come to a stop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reason to doubt:&lt;/strong&gt; Cars consume little fuel when halting. Starting the engine more frequently might wear out starter motors or batteries faster, increasing service cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16044" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:50:32.613" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T13:34:26.393" Title="Does a start-stop system for a combustion engine pay off?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19323" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-28T15:24:50.133" Score="11" ViewCount="330" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stfuconservatives.tumblr.com/post/55543172865&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This post on tumblr&lt;/a&gt; currently has more than 77,500 &quot;notes&quot;, so I'd consider it notable. &lt;strong&gt;The numbers and letters are mine:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Things that lower abortion rates:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;A1&lt;/em&gt;: Better access to condoms&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;A2&lt;/em&gt;: Accessible birth control &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;A3&lt;/em&gt;: Accessible Plan - B pills&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;A4&lt;/em&gt;: Comprehensive sex education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Things that do not lower abortion rates:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;B1&lt;/em&gt;: Abstinence-Only sex education&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;B2&lt;/em&gt;: Banning contraceptives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;B3&lt;/em&gt;: Shaming people who have sex or get abortions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;B4&lt;/em&gt;: Making abortion illegal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, according to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/13555/15980&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;B4&lt;/em&gt; is incorrect. According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/12277/15980&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;A1,2,and 3&lt;/em&gt; are correct. Are the other claims in here correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T09:50:06.010" Title="Are these claims about what reduces abortion correct?" Tags="|law|sociology|abortion|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19324" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19342" CreationDate="2014-01-28T16:48:19.417" Score="13" ViewCount="1498" Body="&lt;p&gt;As reported by Reuters, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/27/us-germany-cows-idUSBREA0Q1HY20140127&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flatulent cows start fire at German dairy farm - police&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Methane gas from 90 flatulent cows exploded in a German farm shed on Monday, damaging the roof and injuring one of the animals, police said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;High levels of the gas had built up in the structure in the central German town of Rasdorf, then &amp;quot;a static electric charge caused the gas to explode with flashes of flames,&amp;quot; the force said in a statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical of the explanation by police that methane from farting cows and a static electrical spark caused an explosion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/01/28/farting-cows-methane-gas-explosion-german-dairy-farm_n_4678584.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Huffington Post have added to the claim that the roof of the barn was &lt;em&gt;blown off&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11387" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T10:56:16.840" Title="Did cows in Germany blow up their own barn by farting?" Tags="|biology|zoology|chemistry|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19335" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-29T13:12:06.947" Score="3" ViewCount="783" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many action movies (especially in Mission Impossible, Fantomas but in many others too) are created latex masks that very closely and realistically resemble the face of someone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the real world, (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/sep/27/behind-the-mask/?page=all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;see this page&lt;/a&gt;) is stated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. Mendez’s greatest technical achievement may have been the creation&#xA;  of an effective quick-disguise system — the Mendezes call it “Dagger”&#xA;  — the details of which remain classified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The difference between what Hollywood does in ‘Mission: Impossible’&#xA;  is that it takes them five hours of makeup,” Mr. Mendez said. “We can&#xA;  do it in five minutes without fail and with no makeup guy standing&#xA;  there.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Questions about creation of such masks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;really exists  technology which can be used to produce such &lt;strong&gt;really lifelike and realistic&lt;/strong&gt; masks?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is &quot;machine based&quot; technology?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question about &quot;scanning&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I know I can make a plaster cast of the face. It is possible to make such a mask for example from photo or 3d scan?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I know here already exists technology what allows creation of latex or silicone masks, with a some degree of realism. Mostly based on face plaster cast = routinely used in movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is mainly about the existence of &quot;sci-fi like&quot; technology of creation of such masks - e.g. from photography or soo and with easy technology, like 3d printing and 3d modeling from photos...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ps: if someone knows better tags for this question, please edit...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17353" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T14:30:02.643" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T14:30:02.643" Title="Creating realistic latex &quot;face masks&quot; from fotography" Tags="|technology|dermatology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-01-29T20:11:31.843" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19298" CreationDate="2014-01-29T14:08:14.780" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Helium inhalation rarely causes negative effects in the long term, as the gas is inert and can't bond to haemoglobin within the blood (diffusional hypoxia - a common cause of illness after inhaling other gases).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because, generally speaking, a person inhaling helium does so from a balloon, the loss of consciousness will usually result in the restore of the oxygen supply, it's not usual to suffer ill affects from Helium.  If a person were in an atmosphere of helium, or if they were somehow attached to Helium delivered by a mask, this can lead to complete asphyxiation, and death from Hypoxia (lack of oxygen to tissues within the body).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Importantly&lt;/em&gt; though, inhaling Helium can on rare occasions cause the formation of a Gas Embolus (a blockage in a vein caused by the presence of a bubble of gas), which can easily kill, or cause significant damage.  The risk is increased if the Helium is increased from a pressurised source, rather than inspired by the person because a pressurised source can caused injury (barotrauma) to the pleura of the lungs, leading to Helium building up in the lungs.  Technically this could actually cause a pneumothorax (collapsed lung) but this would be rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/760299&quot;&gt;Medscape article on Helium Inhalation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is notably different to inhalation of some other gases which people also deliberately inhale, such as Nitrous Oxide, which is popular in some European holiday destinations.  Nitrous Oxide will cross the alevolar wall by diffusion, and will bond to Haemoglobin in the blood, which displaces the ability of this haemoglobin to bind to oxygen instead.  This affect is called Diffusional Hypoxia, and can kill because, even after inhalation stops, the ability of haemoglobin to carry oxygen takes time to restore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ceaccp.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/5/145.full&quot;&gt;Diffusion Hypoxia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short version is, it &lt;em&gt;rarely&lt;/em&gt; causes any harm, but a on unlucky occasions it will, and this could be fatal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17358" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T14:08:14.780" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19339" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-29T15:53:31.713" Score="1" ViewCount="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;Before my question, these are results I've gained when I researched about brain and neurons in couple of websites (plus my analysis!) :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;It's not about reading thoughts through &quot;monitoring brain waves&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brain is actually an organic computer that's always processing the&#xA;  data that it gives from human body's sensors. Human brain includes&#xA;  about 200 billion neurons with 125 trillion synapses in the cerebral&#xA;  cortex. Neuron is an electrically excitable cell that processes and&#xA;  transmits information through electrical and chemical signals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's similar to wires of an electronic kit connected to a&#xA;  power-source and electricity flows it's wires. Now it makes an&#xA;  electrical field thanks to the electricity flows. That's exactly&#xA;  what's happening in the human brain. So the human brain has also an&#xA;  electrical field (like this kit) with an indicated frequency that's&#xA;  different from person to person, cause the differences among people's&#xA;  brains. And the process of thinking is : &lt;em&gt;transmitting electricity&#xA;  among the neurons&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So it seems that our thoughts are broadcasting on our brain's frequency, like a radio-transfer module that transfers data on it's indicated radio-frequency.&#xA;In this case, it should be possible to get others thought using sort of receiver then re-broadcast it on our brain frequency.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's like receiving others thoughts like kind of inception!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really happening ?&#xA;Has any research done in this scope ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17187" LastEditorUserId="17187" LastEditDate="2014-01-29T17:19:45.163" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T17:19:45.163" Title="Are people thoughts broadcasting on their brain-waves frequency?" Tags="|neurology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-01-29T16:39:39.397" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19341" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19344" CreationDate="2014-01-29T16:16:22.820" Score="6" ViewCount="5338" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;em&gt;The Alchemist&lt;/em&gt; and stumbled upon something that says, &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/h9YUEm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;The Alchemist, Page 104&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here and there, he found a shell, and realized that the desert, in remote times, had been a sea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were the deserts once oceans/seas? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13992" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-01-29T16:42:02.240" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T04:09:56.350" Title="Were deserts once oceans/seas?" Tags="|geology|literature|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19342" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19324" CreationDate="2014-01-29T17:00:02.750" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story is partially true. A farm shed in Rasdorf, Hesse exploded on Monday, after probably an electric spark ignited a methane gas buildup. The original story appeared in many German publications as well, but contained very few details on the actual cause, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fuldaerzeitung.de/artikelansicht/artikel/1721013/regional+hunfeld/brennende-gullegase-in-stall&quot;&gt;Fuldaer Zeitung&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, the same paper printed a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fuldaerzeitung.de/artikelansicht/artikel/1732006/regional+hunfeld/methan-gefahr-geht-von-der-gulle-aus-die-kuh-ist-doch-kein-risikofaktor&quot;&gt;new article&lt;/a&gt;, stating that the methane buildup came from the manure and not directly from the flatulent cows: (translated from German)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The methane danger comes from the manure. The cows are not a risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article goes on to explain that the shed is open to one side and should have been adequately ventilated. It is not clear how the methane concentration still could rise enough to produce an explosive mixture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, looking at the relevant numbers, it does not seem unlikely that belching and farting cows alone can produce enough methane to create an explosive atmosphere. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalofanimalscience.org/content/73/8/2483&quot;&gt;This report&lt;/a&gt; states that cows can emit 250-500 litres of methane daily. To keep the numbers simple (I know, there were only 90 cows in the shed, but assuming 100 makes it easier to calculate :-), 100 cows would each day emit 25-50m³ methan gas. Since a methane/air mixture is explosive at methane concentrations between &lt;a href=&quot;http://avogadro.chem.iastate.edu/MSDS/methane.pdf&quot;&gt;5 and 15%&lt;/a&gt;, the daily emissions of 100 cows would be enough to create 500 to 1000m³ of explosive methane/air. Since methane is much lighter than air, the required concentration would even be reached under the roof in a much larger room. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Oddthinking points out in his comment that sheds &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; ventilated. At least they should be. This German &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.de/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=6&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CFoQFjAF&amp;amp;url=http://www.slk-miltitz.de/landwirtschaft_show.php?filedownload=landwirtschaft.unterthema.unterthema1.landwirtschaft_show.teaser.teaser8.datei&amp;amp;ei=HGXpUpiZIsav7AaCoYGwBg&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGgZFeombwhJa-FT5PnafJPN75XOQ&amp;amp;sig2=wN4HZghIedpcowY8LZegyg&amp;amp;bvm=bv.60157871,d.ZGU&quot;&gt;&quot;Guidebook to air conditioning in sheds&quot;&lt;/a&gt; from the Saxonian State Institute of Agriculture, states on page 7 that shed ventilation is in most cases regulated only by temperature, which may lead to high gas concentrations within the shed. It is not unlikely, that e.g. a low outdoor temperature may lead to insufficient ventilation in a shed, if the ventilation is merely controlled by air temperature and not any other parameters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastEditorUserId="8188" LastEditDate="2014-01-29T20:47:32.357" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T20:47:32.357" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19341" CreationDate="2014-01-29T17:04:07.227" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, some of them clearly were, for example whale fossils have been found in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/20047.aspx&quot;&gt;Sahara&lt;/a&gt; at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1186&quot;&gt;Wadi al-Hitan&lt;/a&gt;. However, while some deserts were once oceans/seas, that doesn't mean all deserts were once oceans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-01-29T17:33:13.753" LastActivityDate="2014-01-29T17:33:13.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19350" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19298" CreationDate="2014-01-29T22:01:19.613" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes helium can be dangerous, but usually because of other risky behaviour associated with taking it&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistically speaking it looks as though helium is associated a small, but increasing number of deaths. The following picture is based on mentions of helium on English death certificates (original source &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Azeem_Majeed/status/424471452037820416/photo/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this tweet&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wCIwl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;english helium deaths&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this doesn't help understand whether the problem is that the gas was &lt;em&gt;helium&lt;/em&gt; or whether the users were doing something else that created or exacerbated the risk. Since helium is inert and doesn't have any direct physiological affects (though there are some small positive effects, see next reference) it is a little implausible that it is the direct primary cause of death. Helium is used safely in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicalgasresearch.com/content/3/1/18&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;medicine&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heliox&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;deep sea diving&lt;/a&gt; in gas mixtures that also contain oxygen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, pure helium will &lt;em&gt;displace&lt;/em&gt; oxygen leading to potential asphyxiation. But it isn't obviously easy to achieve that just by breathing it from a balloon. If you inhale enough to become unconscious, you won't breathe any more of the helium and the worst risk is likely to be related to fainting. As soon as you fall you are in air and will regain the required supply of oxygen on refilling your lungs. As this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2006/06/stay_out_of_that_balloon.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slate&lt;/a&gt; article explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't have to worry about fatal asphyxiation if you're sucking from a helium balloon at a party. At worst you'll keep going until you get lightheaded and pass out—at which point you'll stop inhaling helium and your body's oxygen levels will return to normal. Of more concern is the possibility that you'll hurt yourself when you fall down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Industrial accidents involving asphyxiation usually involve closed spaces filled with inert gas. If you faint in one of these, you are still in the dangerous, airless environment and will die quickly if not removed (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aria.developpement-durable.gouv.fr/accident/33637_en/?lang=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; example). It isn't easy to achieve this with helium as it is less dense than almost every other gas so will only fill spaces enclosed that are sealed completely or at the top. It has been done, though. Two students won a Darwin Award for dying after climbing into an 8' helium filled balloon in florida (reported &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/03/2006_darwin_award/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). In this case, though, monumental stupidity deserves a larger share of blame than helium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another direct risk from trying to inhale helium, but again it isn't the helium that is the problem but the inherent risk of any compressed gas supply. As this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cganet.com/helium%20article.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bulletin&lt;/a&gt; from the Compressed Gas Association explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attempting to inhale helium from a commercial helium balloon filling system poses a greater hazard than does inhaling helium from a balloon. Beyond the risk of passing out, the potential for fatal injury is present. Unfortunately, several young people have been killed while inhaling helium from such a system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can a healthy young person be killed by a seemingly harmless substance, you ask? Postmortem examinations of victims explain what occurs, while engineering analysis explains how.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chemical reaction does not cause fatal injuries. Rather, the &lt;em&gt;pressure of gas&lt;/em&gt; inside the lungs is the agent that can kill instantly. Autopsies show that the alveoli (air sacs) in the lungs have been ruptured. Death follows immediately, as the victims literally drown in their own blood. Under such circumstances, cardiopulmonary resuscitation is of no avail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, strictly speaking, the risk is &lt;em&gt;gas pressure&lt;/em&gt; not helium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To summarise&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no physiological effect of helium that makes it risky to inhale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if the user can contrive a situation where the helium completely displaces air, asphyxiation is possible. So don't climb into gas filled balloons or put bags over your head (these are bad ideas whatever the gas.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't breathe any gas direct from the compressed supply, that is very risky because of the effect of uncontrolled pressure on your delicate lungs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; inhale, do it from a small balloon in a room where you won't hurt yourself if you fall and where other, sober, people are present. The risks here are very low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T14:48:47.857" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19353" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T02:08:35.430" Score="6" ViewCount="294" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; article on Jeremy Hammond echoes a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/11/hammond-sentence/&quot;&gt;Wired article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to Kevin Poulsen, the credit card numbers were used by&#xA;  Anonymous to make $700,000 worth of fraudulent donations to non-profit&#xA;  groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Jeremy Hammond use 60,000 credit cards to exclusively give to charity? (i.e. no personal, financial gain)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T15:47:15.070" Title="Did Jeremy Hammond use 60,000 credit cards to give to charity only?" Tags="|charities|hacking|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19361" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T16:20:19.560" Score="8" ViewCount="2715" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogurt#History&quot;&gt;article on yogurt&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In ancient Indian records, the combination of yogurt and honey is called &quot;the food of the gods&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.in/books?id=19C3DnJyWE0C&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;pg=PA170&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;provided reference&lt;/a&gt; states is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whatever the real origin, yogurt is mentioned in records of ancient civilizations from India to Iran; by 500 BCE, holy men on the subcontinent had labelled the delicious mixture of yogurt and honey &quot;the food of the gods&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Who are these holy men and where do they label the mixture of yoghurt and honey, &quot;food of the gods&quot;? Where does the date of 500 BCE come from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15636" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T11:33:04.187" LastActivityDate="2016-12-13T03:21:57.647" Title="Was the combination of yoghurt and honey called &quot;the food of the gods&quot; in ancient Indian records?" Tags="|nutrition|history|india|honey|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19362" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-30T19:21:31.317" Score="14" ViewCount="9189" Body="&lt;p&gt;Noted skeptic and magician, &lt;a href=&quot;http://richardwiseman.wordpress.com/&quot;&gt;Richard Wiseman&lt;/a&gt; has released &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRAmvLV_EmY&quot;&gt;a popular Youtube video&lt;/a&gt; that claims to test extraversion and ability to lie, with a simple binary test - asking the subject to draw a Q on their own forehead with their finger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the outcome of the test:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;you are happy being the centre of attention and you are a good liar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;you tend to be more of an intravert and not very good at lying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So if you want to gain a quick and fun insight into someone, ask them to draw a Q on their forehead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific basis for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-30T23:22:22.603" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T15:07:47.190" Title="Is the Q-on-the-forehead test a valid method of determining extraversion and ability to lie?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19298" CreationDate="2014-01-30T23:35:39.127" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;As reported in Frontline (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/suicide-plan/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/suicide-plan/&lt;/a&gt;) inhaling helium is a popular way for assisted suicide organizations to help people die. A crude plastic hood is placed over the subject's head to induce suffocation while a tube connected to a helium tank pumps in helium. This gas is chosen because according to the organization it promotes a peaceful death experience. The use of helium in this manner may help explain the rise in helium-related deaths in the graph shown above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that the gas is dangerous in and of itself in lower inhaled amounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17394" LastActivityDate="2014-01-30T23:35:39.127" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19364" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19365" CreationDate="2014-01-30T23:55:11.220" Score="15" ViewCount="3200" Body="&lt;p&gt;This site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://wtfrly.com/2014/01/30/fake-snow-videos-doesnt-melt-normal-burns-smells-of-plastic/#.UurlQhCSzLO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;‘Fake Snow’: Videos In Multiple States Show Strange Snow That Doesn’t Melt Normal, Burns, Smells of ‘Plastic’&lt;/a&gt;, shows several videos and images of people burning snow they collect from outside after recent snowfall. They claim that it chars and smells like plastic rather than melting like normal ice would. They cite this as evidence for some sort of weather manipulation conspiracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this (chemical phenomenon, not necessarily a conspiracy) really happening? And if it is, does it actually indicate anything unusual, or is it just people making assumptions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11016" LastEditorUserId="11016" LastEditDate="2014-03-01T05:14:41.800" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T05:14:41.800" Title="Did January 2014 American snowfall char and burn when exposed to fire?" Tags="|physics|chemistry|weather|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19364" CreationDate="2014-01-31T00:50:36.663" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;I immediately thought soot from the yellow flames and dry snow. It is people, many of whom are unfamiliar with snow, misunderstanding what is happening. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a good description from Chris West at &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.metabunk.org/threads/debunked-fake-snow-burning-snow.3026/&quot;&gt;Metabunk&lt;/a&gt; where he sets out three points: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The snow is melting, but the very loose fluffy structure of the snow wicks away the water, turing dry snow into wet snow, and eventually turning the snow into slush.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The snow is blackened when a lighter is held underneath it because of the soot from the lighter. It's not burning.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The smell is likely fumes from the lighter and/or people briefly burning nearby objects like gloves.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He has a series of pictures demonstrating the first two of these, including showing how you can darken ice with a lighter flame, and how small pieces of snow melt to visible water if there is nowhere else for the water to go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2014-01-31T00:50:36.663" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19367" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-31T08:34:12.983" Score="8" ViewCount="409" Body="&lt;p&gt;Do claims that Himalayan Salt Lamps produce negative ions when lit with an incandescent bulb have any science to back it up?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17397" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2017-03-02T04:27:19.120" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T04:27:19.120" Title="Do salt lamps produce negative ions?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|sleep|himalayan-salt|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19373" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-01-31T17:34:32.423" Score="9" ViewCount="1024" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9sar_Lattes&quot;&gt;César Lattes&lt;/a&gt; had some important participation in the discovery of the the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pion#History&quot;&gt;pi meson&lt;/a&gt;, but the Nobel prize was awarded to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Powell&quot;&gt;Cecil Powell&lt;/a&gt; alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are claims that Niels Bohr left a letter explaining why Lattes wasn't awarded the Nobel Prize. &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.br/books?id=abqjP-_KfzkC&amp;amp;pg=PA452&amp;amp;lpg=PA452&amp;amp;dq=bohr+lattes+letter&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=C_2P1WZ5zJ&amp;amp;sig=Cs_RGSK0uHRivKHju3QwRyCXDDo&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=xdvrUoPhDsbLsQTok4HgCA&amp;amp;ved=0CEAQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=bohr%20lattes%20letter&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;One source: The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Powell received the Nobel Prize of 1950 for the discovery, an award that Latin Americans feel should have gone to Lattes. A letter from Niels Bohr, to be opened in 2012, supposedly explains Lattes's exclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any letter from Niels Bohr about this subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4146" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditorDisplayName="user16186" LastEditDate="2015-11-08T20:50:48.640" LastActivityDate="2016-02-26T03:37:58.647" Title="Is there a letter from Bohr about the 1950 Nobel prize?" Tags="|history|physics|history-of-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19374" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19375" CreationDate="2014-01-31T19:29:23.467" Score="7" ViewCount="463" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2520058/How-rescue-NHS-food-Put-blue-plate-Simple-switch-helped-elderly-weak-patients-eat-nearly-more.html&quot;&gt;Daily Mail article&lt;/a&gt; says the NHS is replacing their plates with blue ones to get patients to eat more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NHS caterers have finally found a means of getting frail patients to eat more – putting the meals on blue plates.&#xA;  The simple switch has helped elderly and weak patients eat nearly a third more food than those served exactly the same meals on white crockery. &#xA;  Experts think blue plates work because food looks more tasty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support that blue plates increase consumption?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17404" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-01-31T19:49:16.270" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T11:31:49.750" Title="Does food on blue plates look tastier?" Tags="|nutrition|united-kingdom|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19374" CreationDate="2014-02-01T10:53:06.213" Score="14" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experts think blue plates work because food looks more tasty&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No they don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Patients with dementia can see food on a blue plate. If they can see food, they are more likely to eat it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some patients with dementia have problems seeing white food on a white plate, or red food on a red plate. When they don't see any food, they don't eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible the NHS doesn't serve much food that is blue to dementia patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the evident existence of the food, not it's perceived flavour, that is the point at issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People with dementia may experience problems with eating and drinking. As well as poor appetite and changes in food preferences, they may have difficulty recognising food, drinks and cutlery; seeing foods on a plate; communicating their likes and dislikes; or coordinating movement to eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To support these patients, we have made a picture menu which is soon to be taken to patients, dementia groups and learning difficulty groups for feedback before being finalised and printed for use throughout the Trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are currently trialling sweet and savoury finger foods to encourage patients who have difficulty using cutlery to eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People with advanced dementia can find it difficult to differentiate different shades of colour. Hence mashed potato on a white plate or tomato based meals on a red plate are difficult to see. We are piloting the use of blue plates for patients who have advanced dementia and who the nursing and dietetic teams feel would benefit from this added support. The rationale behind this is that if patients can see their food more clearly, they are more likely to be stimulated to eat it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ekhuft.nhs.uk/patients-and-visitors/news/news-archive-2013/blue-plates-finger-food-and-pictures/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;East Kent Hospitals&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-01T11:31:49.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19379" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19399" CreationDate="2014-02-01T23:44:37.413" Score="13" ViewCount="39379" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just saw &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=581381251954933&amp;amp;set=a.347907068635687.81180.346937065399354&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;stream_ref=100&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one shared&lt;/a&gt; on Facebook by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/OccupyDemocrats&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Occupy Democrats&lt;/a&gt; with 79k+ likes. It's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=404781346333693&amp;amp;set=a.289009784577517.1073741828.276174399194389&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;repost of this&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/LessThan10DollarsAnHour&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Less Than 10 Dollars an Hour&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jvkxCm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image of house in very bad shape with text&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Text reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Today's Bit of Irony&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Owsley County, Kentucky&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is 99.22% White and 95% Republican&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has the Highest Usage Of SNAP Benefits In the USA&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-02-03T12:13:37.520" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T12:12:14.293" Title="Does majority-white and majority-republican Owsley county have the highest SNAP usage?" Tags="|united-states|race|poverty|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19380" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-02T01:36:06.933" Score="17" ViewCount="671" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tweet by &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/postsecret/status/423174428831526912&quot;&gt;PostSecret&lt;/a&gt;, with 203 retweets and 85 favorites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;100,000 deaths in the US alone could be avoided each year if health&#xA;  care workers washed their hands more, according to the CDC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do 100,000 deaths in the US occur per year which could be avoided by health care workers washing their hands more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CDC Foundation (not the CDC itself) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdcfoundation.org/frontline/articles/2010-03/hand-washing-simple-step-prevent-hospital-infections&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt; that 99,000 deaths a year are caused by healthcare associated infections, but doesn't say how many are caused by a lack of hand-washing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/hygiene/fast_facts.html&quot;&gt;Hygiene Fast Facts&lt;/a&gt; by the CDC claims that 1 million deaths world-wide are caused by a lack of hand-washing by everyone (not just healthcare workers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T02:54:01.607" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T18:09:48.467" Title="Does a lack of hand-washing by health-care workers cause 100,000 deaths per year in the USA?" Tags="|medical-science|united-states|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19379" CreationDate="2014-02-02T02:22:30.150" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unless there are more recent statistics on SNAP usage than the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program-%28snap%29-data-system/time-series-data.aspx&quot;&gt;official statistics available from the US Department of Agriculture&lt;/a&gt; or someone has a very creative definition of &quot;highest useage&quot;, the statement is false. If we go back a few years, the statistics may however back the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the statistics, there are two different values, which both could be described as &quot;usage&quot; in a colloquial language. One value is the ratio of the population receiving SNAP benefits, the other value being the average benefit amount per inhabitant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we take a look at the latest statistics from 2010, 52.08% of the population in Owsley County received SNAP benefits, ranking Owsley behind Shannon County, SD (59.33%), Todd County, SD (55.08%) and Wade Hampton, AK (54.13%). If we go back to 2008 and earlier, Owsley County was indeed in the &quot;lead&quot;, but the three other counties passed Owsley in 2009 when it comes to number of recipients per population count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we look at the average payment per inhabitant, Owsley is even further down the list. The statistic contains however some very strange numbers, which seem erroneous to me. E.g. Hopewell City, VA with a population count of 22655 allegedly received $243,376,900 in SNAP benefits in 2010, making an average monthly payment per inhabitant of $895.23, or per participant of $3,051.67. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-02-02T03:12:38.643" LastActivityDate="2014-02-02T03:12:38.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19382" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-02T15:53:29.357" Score="2" ViewCount="1045" Body="&lt;p&gt;From 15.00 minutes onwards in this video titled 'Everything you know is wrong' Lloyd Pye claims that there are no identical (or very close) bones found in any pre human fossil records and that there would need to be 20-30 missing link skeletons to make the gradual transition plausible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the claim is that pre-hominid skeletons do not have any bones that are identical (or very close to?) to the equivalent bones in present-day human skeletons. He asserts that this means there is a big transition from the pre-human remains we have found to humans, and there would have to be many missing links to account for this, which he asserts is implausible. The relevant section is at about 17:15.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone dispute this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe6DN1OoxjE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pe6DN1OoxjE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A written &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/esp_cienciadarwing_faq.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;version of Lloyd Pye's claim&lt;/a&gt; which gives some futher detail on the species and claimed time period can also be found online:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...not a single human bone, or even a remotely human bone, is in the entire &quot;prehuman&quot; fossil record until the &lt;strong&gt;Cro-Magnons&lt;/strong&gt; (essentially modern humans) &lt;strong&gt;appear quite suddenly at only 120,000 years ago&lt;/strong&gt;. This simply flies in the face of Darwinian gradualism, and creates a need for what has come to be called &quot;the missing link.&quot; The missing link is any bone dated prior to the Cro-Magnons which will in any way indicate that a transition is underway from the so-called &quot;prehumans&quot; to actual humans. This, too, has been sought by Darwinian anthropologists for 140 years, but it remains nowhere on their horizon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17193" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2014-02-07T04:07:19.643" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T09:49:40.200" Title="Are there no identical human bones found in any pre human fossil records?" Tags="|evolution|paleontology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19383" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-02T17:10:15.683" Score="4" ViewCount="1037" Body="&lt;p&gt;Researcher &lt;a href=&quot;http://phantasypublishing.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/mystery-of-rh-negative-blood-genetic.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daniel Wilks claims:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blood type O is a universal blood type. Blood types are further broken down into two groups, negative and positive. This is called the RH factor. The RH factor is the Rhesus (rhesus as in monkey) blood factor. The RH- type contains no rhesus (monkey) blood&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No solid scientific explanation exists as to how or why Rh- blood came&#xA;about.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a scientific explanation for how or why Rh- blood came about?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17193" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-08-06T12:16:31.037" Title="Are the origins of Rh- blood unexplained by science?" Tags="|biology|evolution|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19386" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-02T18:39:12.487" Score="8" ViewCount="767" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple claims in Russian press that in 2006 NATO in Estonia has instructed neo-Nazi anti-government paramilitary hate groups from Ukraine on how to conduct diversions and wage guerilla war. How much these claims are correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a well reported fact that NATO conducted instructage of Ukrainian neo-Nazi hate groups (particularly, the UNA-UNSO whose emblems are visible on the photos) in Estonia in 2006 on how to conduct diversions, terrorist acts and wage partisan war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder how does NATO justify this activity and whether it is well known in NATO countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/E4Zdws.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sgHmKs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7Hbbhs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xfzhps.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xVgVbs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bwmx6s.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LzPgqs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sovr.krivbassinfo.com/cgi-bin/sovr.pl?lang=ru&amp;amp;action=showstat&amp;amp;sndir=2006_11&amp;amp;razd=4&amp;amp;stat=27&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sovr.krivbassinfo.com/pict/2006_11/video.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;videos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6248" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:45:24.323" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:45:24.323" Title="Did NATO instruct anti-government neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine on conducting diversions and waging guerilla?" Tags="|politics|russia|ukraine|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19379" CreationDate="2014-02-03T06:49:32.463" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's another issue this question doesn't address: the 95 percent Republican part of the equation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 3497 registered voters in the county; 917 are Democrats; 67 are neither GOP or D. That makes the registered voters in the county about a quarter registered Democrats. In 2012 election, about 17.9 percent of those who cast ballots voted for Obama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of voters who cast ballots for Obama in 2012 must be considered as a subset of the number of people who voted, not as a percentage of the population as a whole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See registration information and election results at the Kentucky Secretary of State's website  (and stop sharing flawed memes on social media, ugh):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2012 Presidential election results:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Results/2010-2019/2012/2012genresults.pdf&quot;&gt;http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Results/2010-2019/2012/2012genresults.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kentucky registration by county:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Results/2010-2019/2012/statcnty.txt&quot;&gt;http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Results/2010-2019/2012/statcnty.txt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17439" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T06:49:32.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19393" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-03T12:01:47.667" Score="7" ViewCount="606" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can food type have any effect on weight loss even though net calories would remain constant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, The Fast Diet &lt;a href=&quot;http://thefastdiet.co.uk/michael-answers-frequently-asked-questions/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt;, which is a diet based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Intermittent fasting&lt;/a&gt;, contains the following question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What foods should I avoid on a fast day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is best to avoid refined carbs on fast days ie anything white or rich in sugar. That means pasta, rice and potatoes, as well as the more obvious things like donuts!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this example, will these types of food lessen the effect of the diet due to the way energy is released from these foods, or could the reason be to simply remain satiated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the type of foods eaten affect a calorie restricted diet, and is there any evidence for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please leave willpower out of the equation. Assume the person has total control on the foods ingested - I'm just interested in what effect it would have on weight loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6842" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T02:48:44.260" Title="Do the types of food affect a calorie restricted diet?" Tags="|nutrition|physiology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19395" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19396" CreationDate="2014-02-03T14:39:31.110" Score="10" ViewCount="8144" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Further, the actress playing Valeria had her index finger severed during a fight scene where they inexplicably used a real sword instead of a prop, and then even more inexplicably gave it to an extra instead of a trained stuntman. The random dude parried the actresses' blow, the sword slipped, and off came her finger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_20853_5-amazing-performances-by-actors-who-werent-acting-part-3.html&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Sandahl Bergman lose her index finger? Was it reattached?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17021" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:45:08.313" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:45:08.313" Title="Did Sandahl Bergman lose a finger during the filming of Conan the Barbarian?" Tags="|weapons|movies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19395" CreationDate="2014-02-03T15:39:36.537" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, she nearly lost her finger, but it was fixed. You can hear her describing the injury in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/XCFF-Xp2qHs?t=20s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;youtube video&lt;/a&gt; where she also shows the scar to a fan, who confirms that it is present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I almost lost my finger [...] The sword slid down and I was holding my sword and it cut this way through. [...] That's why my handwriting is hard, this is the writing finger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She has all fingers though :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y7tMS.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T15:39:36.537" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19380" CreationDate="2014-02-03T18:09:48.467" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily, but it's too broad an assertion to make really.  There is plenty of literature supporting a correlation between handwashing and infection rates, all concluding that more handwashing = less infection.  There's also plenty on actually swabbing hands for pathogens.  These are useful articles on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1281522/&quot;&gt;NIH Handwashing EBM paper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-6553%2807%2900595-0/abstract&quot;&gt;Effectiveness of handwashing techniques&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there's plenty of info that handwashing is good, and even that it reduces infection rates, but to put a figure on how many deaths are caused by not washing hands would be an educated guess at best - collecting even some of the data on this would be a huge task, bear in mind these questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you attribute a death to a lack of handwashing (lab tests on every death correlated are restrictively expensive)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you find out whether a found pathogen got into the body via hands, or by another contaminated item?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How do you fund such research&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yeah, the possibility is there that this estimate is too low, too high, or exactly right - tracking pathogens is too difficult to put an accurate quantity on this kind of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17358" LastActivityDate="2014-02-03T18:09:48.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19379" CreationDate="2014-02-03T21:07:49.890" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Summing up: MOSTLY TRUE,&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three claims here,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Claims of whiteness: 99.2% is &lt;strong&gt;correct&lt;/strong&gt; for the 2000 census. (The city became slightly more diverse in &lt;a href=&quot;http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_12_5YR_DP05&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2010 dropping to 96.2% white.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Claims of snap-usage: the actual claim to having the &lt;em&gt;highest usage (percent of population) of snap benefits&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;correct&lt;/strong&gt; for the year 2008. See &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/19381/3835&quot;&gt;Tor's answer below&lt;/a&gt;. I also think given the proximity to a claim about Republican votership it makes more sense to interpret this in the terms of &lt;em&gt;percentage of the population.&lt;/em&gt; Why would it otherwise make a material difference if they received the most in SNAP benefits but it all went to one person? The point of the graphic is to raise the point of people voting against their interest which is why it was shared on &lt;em&gt;Occupy -Democrats-&lt;/em&gt;, and titled &lt;em&gt;&quot;Today's Bit of Irony&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Claims of percentage Republican: it's &lt;strong&gt;incorrect&lt;/strong&gt; for any year. In 2008 for instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Results/2000-2009/2008/General%20Election/Nicholas-Scott/OWSLEY%20gen%2008.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;%75.9 voted for the Republican ticket&lt;/a&gt;. In 2012 that number went up a bit, 81.88% cast a vote for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Results/2010-2019/2012/2012genresults.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Republican ticket.&lt;/a&gt; It's a gross super majority either way, but it's not a 95% majority. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Results/2000-2009/2008/Primary%20Election/Voter%20Reg%20Stat%20by%20County%20Pri%2008.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2008, 75% were registered Republicans&lt;/a&gt;. Currently as of &lt;a href=&quot;http://elect.ky.gov/SiteCollectionDocuments/Election%20Statistics/statcnty.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2014-01-23, it's 70%&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So had the percentage of Republicans been 76% rather than 95% I'd have said it was true. As it sits, it's only &lt;strong&gt;MOSTLY TRUE&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, the graphic doesn't seem to be from the county, but I kind of figured it was a stock image anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2016-05-11T12:12:14.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19401" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31135" CreationDate="2014-02-03T22:39:51.853" Score="12" ViewCount="10761" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some state, that burning dry potato skin would remove or reduce carbon black in a chimney. One can find many &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_8663260_clean-fireplace-potato-peels.html&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;s for this online:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The potato peels burn at high energy and will help push the soot and creosote out of the chimney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find any evidence for this yet and guess it is an urban legend.&#xA;Is there any evidence for this effect or explanation (chemical reaction?) how it works?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10319" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T01:54:07.037" LastActivityDate="2020-08-02T07:09:23.377" Title="Can burning potato peels clean a chimney?" Tags="|chemistry|cleaning|household|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19402" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-03T22:54:22.737" Score="9" ViewCount="4959" Body="&lt;p&gt;I went to a dentist because my 2nd molar needed a filling.&#xA;Just out of curiosity I asked him if a wisdom tooth can replace a lost 2nd molar.&#xA;Suddenly he looked at me like I killed somebody and said loudly &quot;NO!&quot;. Then there was another occasion where I went to a dentist with my nephew. I asked the same question and got the same answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well then I did some research on my own and did find out that this might be a controversial topic. So the main belief is that they can't replace 2nd molars except if the patient is very young (max 14 years). It's important how much root of the wisdom tooth has already formed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other sites where I do find claims that it can be done up to age 25.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I thought about it. If it would be possible dentist would not want you to know because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wisdom teeth removal are by far the most common surgeries done by dentists. So this is a big market&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If the wisdom teeth could replace molars that would make some implants useless. But implants, bridges etc. are a big market too.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is also another question that comes out of this: Why are wisdom teeth routinely removed? Even if they can't replace the molars through growing into the free space a dentist can pull out the tooth by himself and put it into the free space. So you wont have the costs of an implant and this teeth might fit perfectly like it has always been there. Nothing artificial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very good source about this topic that I did find:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.orthodontic.ca/caseevaluation/2ndmolarreplacement.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.orthodontic.ca/caseevaluation/2ndmolarreplacement.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17324" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T01:13:33.417" LastActivityDate="2016-03-17T14:54:16.463" Title="Can wisdom teeth replace 2nd molars?" Tags="|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19038" CreationDate="2014-02-04T00:23:12.387" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a 2008 article in the New York Times, referencing an article published in Nature. According to this research, fat cells die as part of normal body processes, but they are replaced in the same quantities. This appears to maintain the same number of fat cells in the body, under most circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/health/research/05fat.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/05/health/research/05fat.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the referenced publication, by Kirsty L. Spalding, et al.:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/nature/journal/v453/n7196/full/nature06902.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/nature/journal/v453/n7196/full/nature06902.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a review article on &quot;adipocyte turnover&quot; from 2010, by Peter Arner and Spalding:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/science/article/pii/S0006291X10004067&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/science/article/pii/S0006291X10004067&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My take on the review article is that the cycle of death &amp;amp; rebirth in fat cells &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be modified, but that doing so without other changes to diet and exercise is unlikely to have much effect. That is, even if you are able to adjust the set-point for number of adipocytes, the remaining cells will simply get larger, unless you also modify other processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13135" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T00:23:12.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19383" CreationDate="2014-02-04T02:11:15.403" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Rhesus factor is due to a particular mutation and is a gene which derives from our common ancestors with chimpanzees and gorillas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The human RH locus is responsible for the expression of the Rh blood group antigens. It consists of two closely linked genes, RHD and RHCE, that exhibit 92% similarity between coding regions. These observations suggest that they are derived from a relatively recent duplication event. Previously a study of nonhuman primate RH-like genes demonstrated that ancestral RH gene duplication occurred in the common ancestor of man, chimpanzees and gorillas.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, not all people have the same genetic code or carry this mutation. Like lactose intolerance, which has a similar origin, only some people carry it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scientific explanation for this is natural selection related to toxoplasmosis: there is a big difference in the distribution of Rh- persons in Europe versus Africa, and this has a similar distribution to the prevalence of this disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The observed effects of RhD phenotype could provide not only a clue to the long-standing evolutionary enigma of the origin of RhD polymorphism in humans (the effect of balancing selection), differences in the RhD+ allele frequencies in geographically distinct populations (resulting from geographic variation in the prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii), but might also be the missing piece in the puzzle of the physiological function of the RhD molecule.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in Africa we have almost no Rh- and our closest co-descendants (chimpanzees) are also located in Africa. Is it surprising that they also have a similar distribution of Rh factor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, keep in mind the human version of the Rh genes has strong similarities with the chimpanzee mutation, but it's not exactly the same. This is strong proof of a common ancestor and of evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Rh, factors of chimpanzee blood are different from the Rh,, factors of&#xA;  human blood, as proved by the absorption experiments described in the&#xA;  present paper &amp;hellip; Therefore, according to the degree of resemblance of the Rh-Hr reactions&#xA;  to those of man, the apes could be arranged in the order: chimpanzee, gibbon,&#xA;  gorilla, and orangutan.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A big nod to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://biology.stackexchange.com/q/1515/1315&quot;&gt;Biology.SE question&lt;/a&gt; which I used to put together this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;References&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; J Hered. 2000 May-Jun;91(3):205-10. &lt;a href=&quot;http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/91/3/205.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Evolution of RH genes in hominoids: characterization of a gorilla RHCE-like gene.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Blancher A, Apoil PA.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; Neuro Endocrinol Lett. 2008 Aug;29(4):475-81.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18766148&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Neurophysiological effect of the Rh factor. Protective role of the RhD molecule against Toxoplasma-induced impairment of reaction times in women.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Flegr J, Novotná M, Lindová J, Havlícek J.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Am J Hum Genet. 1964 June; 16(2): 246–253.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1932293&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Blood Groups of Apes and Monkeys. IV. The Rh-Hr Blood Types of Anthropoid Apes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;A. S. Wiener, J. Moor-Jankowski, and E. B. Gordon&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:10.240" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T10:01:34.257" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19408" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20809" CreationDate="2014-02-04T12:34:12.080" Score="26" ViewCount="742" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/marshallislands/10616194/Castaway-from-Mexico-First-photos-of-Jose-Salvador-Alvarengas-boat.html&quot;&gt;Daily Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is the boat in which Jose Salvador Alvarenga, a fisherman from El&#xA;  Salvador, apparently drifted 8,000 miles from the coast of Mexico&#xA;  during a remarkable 13-month voyage across the Pacific Ocean. Amid&#xA;  fierce speculation about the veracity of Mr Alvarenga's tale, the&#xA;  photographs show that the 37-year-old landed in the Marshall Islands&#xA;  in a heavily-damaged small fibreglass vessel with a broken motor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The boat, about 24-feet long, was empty aside from a small blue&#xA;  container in which Mr Alvarenga would hide, to seek shelter from the&#xA;  sun. It was emblazoned with the name Camaroneros de la Costa,&#xA;  apparently the fishing cooperative for which Mr Alvarenga worked in&#xA;  Mexico.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr Alvarenga washed onto a remote atoll last week, saying he had been&#xA;  adrift for more than a year and survived on birds, sharks, turtles,&#xA;  fish and barnacles. He said he left Mexico in December 2012 on a&#xA;  one-day fishing trip with a 15-year-old, whom he knew only as Ezekiel.&#xA;  The teenager died four months into the voyage after refusing to eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that Alain Bombard's journey lasted for 65 days, during which he had lost 25 kg of weight and had to be hospitalized upon reaching his destination, the man on the photo looks surprisingly healthy for a person who had undergone such a lengthy drift in the open ocean. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this story be true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5039" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T01:25:04.280" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T01:25:04.280" Title="Did a man survive for 13 months on a boat in the open ocean?" Tags="|survival|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19412" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-04T16:36:48.023" Score="30" ViewCount="2557" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was just sent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_m6p99l6ME&quot;&gt;a YouTube video&lt;/a&gt;, which appears to demonstrate that one can determine the &quot;health&quot; of a battery (current voltage, useful lifetime remaining, etc.) by bouncing it on a level surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A new[ish] battery will not bounce, and tend to stay standing up.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A drained battery will bounce and tend to fall over.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comments are wrought with typical subjective banter, such as &quot;This is the greatest new piece of knowledge ever,&quot; and, &quot;This is definitely a hoax,&quot; which leads me to believe it could be a good candidate for Skeptics.SE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as other sources of the claim, there's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=16623738&quot;&gt;post on Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; where members attempt to both reproduce the test (one appears to have done so successfully) as well as determine the mechanism by which it occurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the test more than a YouTube video hoax, and, if so, is there an explanation for the mechanism that allows it to work as a test for battery health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of assessing the term &quot;health,&quot; please use typical measures of remaining battery lifetime. This could be the voltage at the present moment vs. the starting voltage, or some means of calculating the remaining capacity (mAh). I simply mean to suggest answering in a way that's both quantifiable and relevant to the mechanism of alkaline battery electricity output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="2459" LastEditDate="2014-02-04T18:44:43.217" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T19:08:11.800" Title="Can the health of an alkaline battery be determined by bouncing it?" Tags="|physics|electronics|battery|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19413" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-04T19:08:29.840" Score="5" ViewCount="955" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dawn.com/news/1083771/gandhis-exile&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; in Pakistan's Dawn:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Renowned researcher and historian&lt;/strong&gt;, Dr Mubarak Ali writes in his book, &lt;em&gt;Gumshuda Taareekh&lt;/em&gt; (Lost History):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[snip]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“&lt;strong&gt;The British even gave renaming Taj Mahal to something of their choice a try.&lt;/strong&gt; They were more interested in proving that the people of the sub-continent were not as skilled a people to have managed the construction of such a beautiful architectural wonder.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the British ever attempt to rename the Taj Mahal? If so, what did they want to rename it to?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15636" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T22:46:32.033" Title="Did the British attempt to rename the Taj Mahal?" Tags="|history|india|architecture|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19414" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-04T19:24:48.157" Score="14" ViewCount="1096" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the &lt;em&gt;controversial&lt;/em&gt; Super Bowl commercial by Coca-Cola, there are those who contend it was a conspiracy by Coca-Cola to appeal to an emerging demographic and boost sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coca-Cola knew exactly what it was doing with this commercial. It knew it would inflame white conservatives, but, more importantly, it knew the commercial would align Coke with Latinos and other quickly-growing groups in the United States. So Coke expands its market share and promotes its product while endorsing a vision of a diverse, multi-cultural America. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]Educated, affluent white Americans are drinking less soda than they were a few years ago, and soft drink makers now rely largely on “heavy users” – those who drink several sodas every day – to keep their businesses booming. Heavy users tend to be in lower-income areas – places New Orleans, Louisiana and Rome, Georgia. Coke is trying to expand that model. &lt;a href=&quot;http://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2014/02/04/coca-colas-america-the-beautiful-ad-why-liberals-should-be-upset/&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I realize this isn't a mainstream news source, and I wouldn't expect to encounter this type of opinion piece on such a source. However, this rhetoric is out there, nonetheless.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been trying to find a scientific survey that correlates political affiliation or income level to soft drink use, but have been unable to locate one with such relevance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone offer evidence to debunk or confirm this claim that white conservatives are drinking less Coca-Cola in the last few years, and that low-income Americans are drinking more?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd actually think the opposite was true. In my limited sphere of influence, Liberal and low-income Americans seem to be more willing to accept new-age diet trends and information than conservatives (definition of a conservative after-all).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17402" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:44:41.950" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:44:41.950" Title="Do low-income Americans drink more Coca-Cola than their counterparts?" Tags="|demographics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19415" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19413" CreationDate="2014-02-04T20:43:13.540" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It just &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be that the renowned researcher and historian is confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taj_Mahal_Palace&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a &lt;em&gt;second&lt;/em&gt; Taj Mahal&lt;/a&gt; that was renamed &lt;em&gt;from&lt;/em&gt; Raj Mahal at the suggestion of the British Resident at Bhopal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That doesn't prove anything—it might even point to a British habit of suggesting other names for things that already have a name—, but still...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dwrl.utexas.edu/%7Esyverson/worldsfair/exhibits/hall1/fung-patel-yuan/330c/tajmahal/history.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; we find&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Taj Mahal, one of the seven wonders of the world, is a symbol of love. It is greatly admired as one of the most magnificent monument ever created by an individual in memory of his beloved. The Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan in memory of his beautiful queen, Mumtaz Mahal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A township was built for the workers near the monument and named Mumtazabad. The actual name of the Taj Mahal was Ruazaye-Mumtaz Mahal during the 17th century. However the British, during the 19th century, renamed this monument and called it the Taj Mahal, because Mumtaz Mahal's alias name was Taj Bibi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this seems to corroborate the renaming of the famous Taj Mahal, but it also claims that the English renaming &lt;em&gt;stuck&lt;/em&gt; (contrary to the claim). Also the name &amp;quot;Ruazaye-Mumtaz Mahal&amp;quot; isn't to be found anywhere else on the internet. :(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there also &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.nl/books?id=0xU8RR07yGsC&amp;amp;pg=PT82&amp;amp;lpg=PT82&amp;amp;dq=the+british+renamed+the+taj+mahal&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=NZfluaSzqQ&amp;amp;sig=wzRC8UeA_uAzPms0LpDzr0QGSmA&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=jGXxUt_EMK-M0wXk14GIAw&amp;amp;ved=0CCcQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=the%20british%20renamed%20the%20taj%20mahal&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, which might be related:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y4iU2.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stephen-knapp.com/true_story_of_the_taj_mahal.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;P. N. Oak&lt;/a&gt; we also find in a comment on &lt;a href=&quot;https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/2361/was-tajmahal-tejo-mahal#comment5216_2361&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;History SE&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Is he/she supposed to be (or represent) '[t]he British' from the claim? He's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._N._Oak&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;not British&lt;/a&gt; (and also, less relevant, characterised, by some, as a &amp;quot;crackpot&amp;quot;). Someone familiar with the context might explain whether this is &lt;em&gt;possibly&lt;/em&gt; what the claim is referring to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16186" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user16186" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T22:46:32.033" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19414" CreationDate="2014-02-04T20:46:33.917" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: yes, it seems there is a correlation between socio-economical status and sweetened beverages consumption in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few very recent studies looking at drink consumption and different socio-economical descriptors. I will report some of them, although not all are related to the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This first study looks at consumption patterns of sweetened beverages in the US&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3662243/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CONSUMPTION PATTERNS OF SUGAR SWEETENED BEVERAGES IN THE UNITED STATES&lt;/a&gt; - Han and Powell - &lt;em&gt;J Acad Nutr Diet.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;2013&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A summary of the study (note SSBs = sugar sweetened beverages)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trend and cross-sectional analyses of 24-hour dietary recall data and demographic characteristics and socioeconomic status (SES) drawn from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1999–2000, 2001–2002, 2003–2004, 2005–2006, and 2007–2008).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Participants/setting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Children (2–11 years, N=8,627), adolescents (12–19 years, N=8,922), young adults (20–34 years, N=5,933), and middle-aged and elder adults (≥35 years, N=16,456).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Statistical analyses performed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Age-stratified regression analyses for SSBs overall and by subtypes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a summary of the results/conclusions (bold mine, SES=socio-economical status)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prevalence of heavy total SSB consumption (≥500 kcal/day) increased among children (4% to 5%) although it decreased among adolescents (22% to 16%) and young adults (29% to 20%). Soda was the most heavily-consumed SSB in all age groups except for children. Prevalence of soda consumption decreased, whereas heavy sports/energy drink consumption tripled (4% to 12%) among adolescents. &lt;strong&gt;Black children and adolescents showed a higher odds of heavy fruit drink consumption (OR=1.71 and 1.67) than whites. Low-income children had a higher odds of heavy total SSB consumption (OR=1.93) and higher caloric intake from total SSBs and fruit drinks (by 23 and 27 kcal/day) than high-income children.&lt;/strong&gt; Adolescents with low- versus high-educated parents had a higher odds of heavy total SSB consumption (OR=1.28) and higher caloric intake from total SSBs and soda (by 27 and 21 kcal/day). Low- versus high-SES was associated with a higher odds of heavy consumption of total SSBs, soda, and fruit drinks among adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prevalence of soda consumption fell but non-traditional SSBs rose. Heterogeneity of heavy consumption by SSB types across racial/ethnic subpopulations and higher odds of &lt;strong&gt;heavy SSB consumption among low-SES populations should be considered in targeting policies to encourage healthful beverage consumption.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A detailed age/race/income breakdown of SSBs consumption is shown in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3662243/table/T6/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Table 6&lt;/a&gt; of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the discussion (bold mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The previous literature reported greater odds of heavy consumption of regular soda among low-income adults&lt;/strong&gt; and larger energy intake among children with low-educated parents. &lt;strong&gt;Results of the present study also indicated that low SES was a positive determinant of higher odds of heavy SSB consumption&lt;/strong&gt; and higher caloric intake in all age groups including children. Children and adolescents in low SES showed a greater odds of heavy consumption of total SSBs (OR=1.93 and 1.28) and higher caloric intake from total SSBs (by 23 and 27 kcal/day), fruit drinks (by 27 kcal/day, children only), and regular soda (by 21 kcal/day, adolescents only). &lt;strong&gt;Such results may imply that low-income individuals may access SSBs more easily than other nutrient-dense beverages and/or water because of differences in availability or prices.&lt;/strong&gt; Differential consumption among adolescents by parents’ education level also indicated the importance of the household environment in guiding youths’ more healthful beverage choices. Given that those populations in low SES reportedly had a higher prevalence of overweight and obesity, these results imply that those vulnerable populations should be included as important target populations for policy interventions. The study results also indicated that policies targeting the major form of SSBs, i.e., regular soda, can be effective for low-SES populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another recent cross-sectional study looking at drink consumption in the US. Unfortunately they do not specifically look at soda vs ethnicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3840570/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Water and beverage consumption among adults in the United States: cross-sectional study using data from NHANES 2005–2010&lt;/a&gt; - Drewnowski et al. - &lt;em&gt;BMC Public Health.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;2013&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The summary of the results (bold mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Water and other beverages contributed 75-84% of dietary water, with 17-25% provided by water in foods, depending on age. Plain water, from tap or bottled sources, contributed 30-37% of total dietary water. Overall, 56% of drinking water volume was from tap water while bottled water provided 44%. Older adults (≥71y) consumed much less bottled water than younger adults. Non-Hispanic whites consumed the most tap water, whereas Mexican-Americans consumed the most bottled water. &lt;strong&gt;Plain water consumption (bottled and tap) tended to be associated with higher incomes.&lt;/strong&gt; On average, younger adults exceeded or came close to satisfying the DRIs for water. Older men and women failed to meet the Institute of Medicine (IOM) AI values, with a shortfall in daily water intakes of 1218 mL and 603 mL respectively. Eighty-three percent of women and 95% of men ≥71y failed to meet the IOM AI values for water. However, average water volume per 1,000 kcal was 1.2-1.4 L/1,000 kcal for most population sub-groups, higher than suggested levels of 1.0 L/1.000 kcal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study classified beverages into nine groups:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Water (bottled or tap), milk (including flavored), fruit juice (100%), soda/soft drinks (regular and diet), fruit drinks, sports/energy drinks, coffee, tea, and alcoholic beverages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They first analyse plain water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found a decrease in total amount of consumed water with age, but no sex difference. However&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a strong effect of socioeconomic status on consumption of water as a beverage. Adults with higher incomes consumed more water as a beverage than adults with lower incomes. There was no marked difference by race/ethnicity, though the other race/mixed race group consumed the most water as a beverage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were strong socio-demographic effects on type of water consumed. Non-Hispanic whites consumed the most tap water and the least bottled water (703 mL/d from tap vs. 437 mL/d from bottled). By contrast, Mexican Americans consumed the most bottled water (729 mL/d from bottled vs. 383 mL/d from tap). Lower-income adults consumed 603 mL/d of tap water as opposed to 721 mL/d for higher income adults. There was a strong effect of family income on consumption of tap water. For bottled water, compared to adults with higher family incomes, only those with the lowest family incomes consumed significantly less bottled water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They then proceed to look at different beverages.&#xA;Figure 1 of the paper shows water intakes from beverage/food category by age and gender among US adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3840570/bin/1471-2458-13-1068-1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Water intake by food category&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, Table 4 gives a socio-economic brakeout of water consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They show that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adults 50-70y, women, non-Hispanic whites and adults with higher incomes consumed the most water dense diets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is, unfortunately, unclear what the breakout of that is.&#xA;However, the survey data is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhanes/nhanes_questionnaires.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;publicly available&lt;/a&gt;, so I will leave to the reader this interesting analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar study from the same authors as the first one looks at drink consumption in South Korea, showing a different pattern than in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3626885/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beverage consumption and individual-level associations in South Korea&lt;/a&gt; - Han et al. - &lt;em&gt;BMC Public Health&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;2013&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They report that (bold mine, note: SSBs = sugar-sweetened beverages)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women (top- income group only) and men in higher income groups showed higher odds of consuming total SSBs (OR = 1.18-1.25), soda (OR = 1.18, men only), fruit drinks (OR = 1.18, the top-income only for both genders), and miscellaneous SSBs (OR = 1.1-1.2). &lt;strong&gt;Men with higher-education showed higher odds of total SSB consumption&lt;/strong&gt; (OR = 1.14-1.20), and all subtypes of SSBs (OR = 1.18, 1.29, 1.19 for soda, fruit drinks, and miscellaneous SSBs, respectively for the top-education group only). There were statistically significant but minimal differences in the overall amount of caloric intake from SSBs by individual SES for both genders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that they further break down the consumption and report that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Men in the near-top income group consumed more total SSBs (+2.3 kcal/day), fruit drinks (+1.6 kcal/day), and miscellaneous SSBs (+1.5 kcal/day). &lt;strong&gt;Education was positively associated with the amount of caloric intake only from regular soda (+2.0 kcal/day), although the magnitude of the association was minimal.&lt;/strong&gt; Men with higher income and higher education also consumed more milk: the top-, near-top, and near-bottom income groups, respectively, consumed 7.3, 4.7, and 4.0 kcal/day more than the bottom-income quartile group; men with college or more and high school educations, respectively, consumed 5.5 and 15.5 kcal/day more than men with less than high school education&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, a similar study has been done on British people, although socio-economical status is not considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3575376/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beverage consumption habits “24/7” among British adults: association with total water intake and energy intake&lt;/a&gt; - Gibson and Shirreffs - &lt;em&gt;Nutr J.&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;2013&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-04T20:46:33.917" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19417" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-05T09:06:58.800" Score="-4" ViewCount="1095" Body="&lt;p&gt;I mean, I am not exactly a creationist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shem&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How come we have a race called &quot;semite&quot; as in anti-semite? It's as if people think that those people are descendant from Shem, mythical son of Noah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, the picture says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CrcuN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is that the Shem descendants become Europeans. The Japhets become Asians and the Ham become Africans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are European Jews closely genetically related or are there better explanations? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2019-11-12T07:25:39.540" LastActivityDate="2019-11-12T07:25:39.540" Title="Do Jews mostly descend from Shem, son of Noah?" Tags="|genetics|religious-texts|bible|jews|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19418" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-05T11:05:38.067" Score="11" ViewCount="958" Body="&lt;p&gt;This came up randomly during office talk but it goes something as follows; sneezing repeatedly is equivalent to having an orgasm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/sneeze.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;basic&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110716024431AAwJO8K&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amirite.com/129201-if-a-sneeze-is-the-equivalent-of-one-eighth-of-an-orgasm-what-happens-if-you-sneeze-eight-times-in&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.lib.umn.edu/vanm0049/myblog/2011/10/sneezing-is-orgasmic.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_sneezing_one_eighth_of_an_orgasm?#slide=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;internet&lt;/a&gt; seems to indicate there is some basis behind this statement with many people stating things like &quot;10 sneezes is equivalent to 1/10th of an orgasm&quot; or &quot;8 sneezes is like an orgasm&quot; while other sites &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/34337-sneezing-like-orgasm.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cite this as a myth&lt;/a&gt; or incorrectly understood statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I'm not going to sit here forcing myself to sneeze repeatedly to test it out for myself I was wondering - is there any actual fact behind this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that sneezing repeatedly is equivalent in any way to an orgasm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17466" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T20:59:53.470" LastActivityDate="2017-03-05T08:44:36.130" Title="Does sneezing repeatedly lead to orgasm, or a similar sensation?" Tags="|physiology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2107" CreationDate="2014-02-05T17:02:01.787" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Yes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, there is damning evidence that the relationship between the Catholic Church and the abuse of children has been systemic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a recent report by the UN (CRC/C/VAT/CO/2), as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/vatican-policies-allowed-priests-to-rape-children-un-report-says-1.2523737&quot;&gt;reported by CBC&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Vatican &lt;strong&gt;&quot;systematically&quot; adopted policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades&lt;/strong&gt;, a UN human rights committee said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In its report, the committee blasted the &quot;code of silence&quot; that has long been used to keep victims quiet, saying the Holy See had &quot;systematically placed preservation of the reputation of the church and the alleged offender over the protection of child victims.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/fileadmin/user_upload/File_Versione_originale/Rapporto_Onu_su_Vaticano.pdf&quot;&gt;The report itself&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp; 29. The Committee is &#xA;  particularly concerned that in dealing with allegations of child sexual abuse, &lt;strong&gt;the Holy See &#xA;  has &lt;em&gt;consistently&lt;/em&gt; placed the preservation of the reputation of the Church and the protection &#xA;  of the perpetrators above children’s best interests&lt;/strong&gt;, as observed by several national &#xA;  commissions of inquiry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;43. ...  Well-known child sexual abusers have been transferred from parish to parish &#xA;  or to other countries in an attempt to cover-up such crimes, a practice documented by numerous national commissions of inquiry.  ... Due to a code of silence imposed on all members of the clergy under penalty &#xA;  of excommunication, &lt;strong&gt;cases of child sexual abuse have hardly ever been reported to the law &#xA;  enforcement authorities&lt;/strong&gt; in the countries where such crimes occurred. On the contrary, &lt;strong&gt;cases &#xA;  of nuns and priests ostracized, demoted and fired for not having respected the obligation of &#xA;  silence have been reported&lt;/strong&gt; to the Committee as well as &lt;strong&gt;cases of priests who have been congratulated for refusing to denounce child abusers&lt;/strong&gt;, as shown in the letter addressed by &#xA;  Cardinal Castrillon Hojos to Bishop Pierre Pican in 2001; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;60. The Committee expresses serious concern that in dealing with child victims of &#xA;  different forms of abuse, &lt;strong&gt;the Holy See has &lt;em&gt;systematically&lt;/em&gt; placed preservation of the &#xA;  reputation of the Church and the alleged offender over the protection of child victims.&lt;/strong&gt; The &#xA;  Committee is particularly concerned that while the Holy See recognized in its written &#xA;  responses and during the interactive dialogue the primary competence of judicial &#xA;  authorities, it has continued to address these cases through Canon Law proceedings which &#xA;  contain no provision for the protection, support, rehabilitation and compensation of child &#xA;  victims. The Committee is also particularly concerned that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(a) &lt;strong&gt;Child victims and their families have often been blamed by religious &#xA;  authorities, discredited and discouraged from pursuing their complaints and in some &#xA;  instances humiliated&lt;/strong&gt;, as noted especially by the Grand Jury in Westchester, the Ryan &#xA;  Commission in Ireland and the Winter Commission in Canada; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(b) Confidentiality has been imposed on child victims and their families as a &#xA;  precondition of financial compensation; and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(c) Although it has extended its own statute of limitations, the Holy See has in &#xA;  some instances obstructed efforts in certain countries to extend the statute of limitation for &#xA;  child sexual abuse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer according to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;. There is a systemic relationship between Catholic priests and sexual abuse of children in that the church has:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;adopted policies that allowed rape and molestation of children over decades;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;a systematic preference for preserving the reputation of the church and sexual offenders above the best interest of those the church has abused;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;demoted or fired those who violated the &quot;cone of silence&quot; on child abuse, and congratulated those who have refused to denounce child abusers;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;obstructed efforts in some countries to extend the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;blamed, humiliated, discredited or discouraged its victims of sexual abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I noted that the report cites the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_Commission&quot;&gt;Winter Commission (Canada)&lt;/a&gt; regarding the Mount Cashel affair I mentioned in the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T14:35:05.843" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T14:35:05.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19423" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-06T01:28:36.023" Score="3" ViewCount="583" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the debate between &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nye&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bill Nye&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Ham&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ken Ham&lt;/a&gt; on Feburary 4, 2014, Ham claimed the Richard Lenski experiments added no new genetic data. He went on to show &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI&amp;amp;feature=share&amp;amp;t=45m50s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a clip&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liberty.edu/academics/healthsciences/biology-chemistry/?PID=25928&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Andrew J. Fabiach&lt;/a&gt;, a creationist that teaches at Liberty University,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When I look at the evidence that people cite of E. Coli supposedly evolving over 30 years, over 30,000 generations in the lab, and people say that it is now able to grow on citrate I don't deny that it grows on citrate but it is not any kind of new information. The information is already. It is just a switch that gets turned on and off. That is what they reported and it's nothing new.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later in the Q/A exchange between Nye and Ham, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6kgvhG3AkI&amp;amp;t=2h30m20s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ham reiterates this claim&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What Bill Nye needs to do for me is to show me an example of something -- some new function -- that arose that was not previously possible from the genetic information that was there. I would claim and challenge you that there is no such example that you can give. That's I brought up the example in my presentation of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli_long-term_evolution_experiment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lenski experiments in regards to E. coli&lt;/a&gt;; and, there were some that seemed to develop the ability to exist on citrate but as Dr. Fabiach (sp?) has said from looking at his research he has found that that information was already there. It was just a gene that switched on and off. There is no example because information that's there in the genetic information of different animals and plants and so on there is no new function that can be added. Certainly great variation within a kind, but you'd have to show an example of brand new function that never previously was possible. There is no such example that you can give anywhere in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So did the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli_long-term_evolution_experiment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;E. coli long-term evolution experiment&lt;/a&gt; result in new genetic data from mutation, or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-06T01:59:21.580" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T14:22:41.567" Title="Did the Lenski experiments result in additional genetic information?" Tags="|evolution|genetics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19423" CreationDate="2014-02-06T14:22:41.567" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll avoid trying to define what &quot;additional genetic information&quot; means and focus on what the Lenski experiment actually shows. The claim from Ken Ham that an existing gene was switched on  is essentially correct, although there is a bit more to the whole thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The genetic background for the evolution of the Cit&lt;sup&gt;+&lt;/sup&gt; trait is examined in Detail in the paper &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2632098/&quot;&gt;&quot;Genomic Analysis of a Key Innovation in an Experimental E. coli Population&quot; from Lensky&lt;/a&gt;. They state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Cit1 trait originated in one clade by a tandem duplication that&#xA;  captured an aerobically expressed promoter for the expression of a&#xA;  previously silent citrate transporter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;E. coli&lt;/em&gt; strain in this experiment is unable to use citrate as a carbon source under aerobic conditions, a major reason for that is that it can't transport citrate though the membrane. This &lt;em&gt;E. coli&lt;/em&gt; strain has a copy of the &lt;em&gt;citT&lt;/em&gt; gene which can function as a citrate/succinate antiporter, but this gene is under the control of a promoter that is not active under aerobic conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the bacteria did that evolved the ability to use citrate under aerobic conditions is that they duplicated the &lt;em&gt;citT&lt;/em&gt; gene. The duplicated gene was inserted in a way that put it under the control of an entirely different promoter, which is active under aerobic conditions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is not the whole story, they write in this paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The evolution of the Cit1 trait involved three successive processes:&#xA;  potentiation, actualization and refinement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The process I described is the actualization step. But before this some unspecified mutations were necessary to make this step possible. They didn't identify exactly which mutations those were, but they could show that they must have existed. The third step, refinement was also necessary as the initial phenotype was very weak, and several other mutations substantially increased the ability to use citrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2014-02-06T14:22:41.567" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19434" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-07T02:58:59.167" Score="1" ViewCount="6636" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/5882160/3-ways-to-chill-your-superbowl-beer-fast&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Example of the claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Take a couple paper towels and wrap them around your beer, then douse it in water. It should be soaked but not dripping (you don't want ice forming in your freezer). Air is not a very good heat-conductor. Water is a better conductor, plus you get a little boost from evaporation. Pop it in the freezer for 8-15 minutes, depending on the freezer's temperature (err on the side of caution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this make the bottle chill faster in the freezer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2543" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T09:42:35.567" LastActivityDate="2019-03-23T00:54:16.680" Title="Will wrapping a bottle in a wet paper towel make it chill faster?" Tags="|physics|beer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19362" CreationDate="2014-02-07T05:02:19.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you look at the paper (Hass, R.G. 1984), rather than the video, you gain insight into what is actually being suggested. The paper suggests that a person is &lt;em&gt;more likely&lt;/em&gt; to be an extrovert or a good liar if they draw a letter so that it could be read from the perspective of another person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key point lies in what is meant by &quot;more likely.&quot; The paper means that there is a &lt;em&gt;statistically significant increase&lt;/em&gt; in scores on the personality-traits in questionnaire the study used. And this is supported by their experimental data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the paper does not support categorically labelling people based on this test. It simply suggests that this test is an indicator of certain personality types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17494" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T05:02:19.543" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19437" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-07T09:26:40.583" Score="6" ViewCount="3625" Body="&lt;p&gt;Honey vendors say that to identify pure honey drop a spoonful of honey. If the ants don't feed it is pure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thee-greatestwealthishealth.blogspot.com.au/2009/06/how-to-verify-purity-of-honey.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;For example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leave a little of testing honey near some ants, if the ants hover around it then the honey is adulterated.Bees naturally build the combs between the stones and on the trees, and to protect the honey from insects, ants and others they add an additive to honey. This is the reason that ants will not hover around pure honey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this test work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16701" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T11:32:20.963" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T09:59:01.180" Title="Do ants feed on pure honey?" Tags="|nutrition|entomology|honey|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="154" CreationDate="2014-02-07T10:29:01.847" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not exactly definitive proof, but this meta-study of seven trials seems mildly positive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Four of seven acupressure band trials supported the positive effects&#xA;  of acupressure, whereas three acupressure band trials yielded negative&#xA;  results regarding the possible effects of acupressure; however, all&#xA;  the studies with negative results had methodological issues. In&#xA;  contrast, one quasi-experimental and two randomized finger acupressure&#xA;  trials all supported the positive effects of acupressure on CINV&#xA;  control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18440769/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Review of acupressure studies for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting control&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, Lee J, et al. &lt;em&gt;J Pain Symptom Manage. 2008 Nov;36(5):529-44&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's 7 of 10 in favor, and 3 studies &quot;with methological issues&quot; against.  Technically these are for chemotherapy, not motion sickness, but I'd presume nausea is nausea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15184" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T10:29:01.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19362" CreationDate="2014-02-07T15:07:47.190" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quoting from &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/46/4/788/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Haas 1984&lt;/a&gt;, Experiment 3 which is the one examining individual differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sixty-two undergraduates (15 men and 47 women) participated in Experiment 3. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Power was very low, hence the correlation cannot be reliably estimated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also combined this experiment with a manipulation of self-focused attention (showing or hiding a tape recorder during the task). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cDsUW.png&quot; alt=&quot;Results of Exp. 3&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect measured public self-consciousness (using a median-split which wastes information) was not significant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chi.square (1, N = 62) = 2.85, p &amp;lt; .10, and the interaction between manipulated 2 self-focus and public self-consciousness, Chi.square (1, N = 62) = 3.09, p &amp;lt; .08, on E direction was not significant either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apparently the presence of the tape recorder in the situation overwhelmed the individual difference variable in the high self-focus condition, so that no difference between high and low public self-conscious subjects could be found. When the self-focus inducing effects of the tape recorder were removed from the situation, however, the relationship between the personality variable and the direction the E was drawn emerged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He then did post-hoc analyses (known to increase false positives, but it is hard to appropriately correct for this)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Looking at the results in a slightly different way, correlations were computed between each of the Self-Consciousness Scale subscale scores and perspective taking. For all subjects com- bined a significant correlation of .36 (p &amp;lt; .01) was found between public self-consciousness and the likelihood of drawing the E from an external perspective. The correlation between the direction the E was drawn and private self- consciousness was not significant (r = .08). A marginally significant correlation was found between E direction and social anxiety (r = .21, p = .10), but this correlation declined to .12 (ns) when the effect of public self-consciousness was removed using a partial correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 95% confidence interval of a .31 correlation with 62 subjects is [0.07; 0.52].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All told, if this is all Wiseman is relying on (I didn't watch the video, I trusted @ndwaldner), then there is quite the jump from a just-significant correlation between E direction and public self consciousness to Q direction and being &quot;more of an intravert and not very good at lying&quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the self consciousness scale relied on self-report. Personality psychologists usually don't worry about that, but when you're making inferences about lying you probably should. Of course it'd easy to change the E/Q direction consciously if you have a hunch of what is being assessed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS.:&#xA;There has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22drawing+an+e%22&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=2005&amp;amp;sciodt=1%2C5&amp;amp;cites=17416406314993617500&amp;amp;scipsc=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a number of conceptual replications of this paper&lt;/a&gt;, which I didn't read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2722" LastActivityDate="2014-02-07T15:07:47.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19442" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-07T20:16:38.037" Score="6" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article states that Scotland's oil and gas reserves and tax incomes are dwindling:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/07/scottish-independence-economic-implications-niesr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/07/scottish-independence-economic-implications-niesr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scotland's immediate fiscal position would be in a worse state than the rest of the UK, partly because government spending per person is significantly higher in Scotland, mainly because of higher spending on public services rather than benefits. In 2011-12 this was more than matched by greater revenues from oil and gas, but over the longer term this will not be the case as oil and gas reserves – and the revenues they bring – dwindle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct? I read somewhere else that there is plenty of oil left to extract on Scotland's seas and oil companies are just extracting the amount the market demands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDITED: Thanks OddThinking for your edited question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Will Scotland's reserves reduce so much that the costs increase so much faster than prices so that profits (and tax revenues) will drop quick enough, in the next 30 years or so, to significantly affect Scotland's oil and gas current tax revenues?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10728" LastEditorUserId="10728" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T14:01:41.003" LastActivityDate="2014-02-08T14:01:41.003" Title="Are Scotland's oil and gas reserves dwindling?" Tags="|united-kingdom|geology|geography|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19443" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-07T23:14:00.837" Score="6" ViewCount="408" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard time and again that increasing the length of prison sentences produces little or no improvements in crime rates. It is said that increasing the probability of arrest after a crime has much better results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence for this (especially in developing countries)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7818" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T09:40:54.510" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T20:01:13.983" Title="Does lengthening prison sentences reduce crime rates?" Tags="|criminology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19444" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19482" CreationDate="2014-02-08T03:40:51.617" Score="6" ViewCount="666" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some footprints were found in Great Britain earlier this year. They are reported to be about 800,000 years old. Here is how they were dated, according to a Yahoo! article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientists dated the footprints by studying their geological position and from nearby fossils of long-extinct animals including mammoth, ancient horse and early vole.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-800-000-old-footprints-uk-114052260.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yahoo! Article Feb. 7, 2014&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How exactly were these prints dated? I'm not an archaeologist, but it seems tenuous at best by the way the Yahoo! article describes it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:44:27.007" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:44:27.007" Title="Are the footprints found in Great Britain 800,000 years old?" Tags="|geology|paleontology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19447" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19472" CreationDate="2014-02-08T11:22:59.170" Score="4" ViewCount="1207" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I hear more and more often about the correlation between the digit ratio and the behavior of a person (or even his successes studying scientific subjects, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any large-scale scientific experiments that examine this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example claim: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Like science-backed palm reading, new studies use digit ratio to predict aggressive behavior and risk of disease.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://discovermagazine.com/2013/may/04-finger-length-ratio-can-predict-aggressive-behavior-and-risk-of-disease#.UvYR6tySySo%20f&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Finger Length Predicts Health and Behavior&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17510" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-02-08T16:08:21.707" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T16:05:20.937" Title="Can the digit ratio predict personality or behavior?" Tags="|psychology|physiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19447" CreationDate="2014-02-08T23:56:12.497" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_ratio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Digit Ratio&lt;/a&gt; provides a good background and references dozens of studies divided up into areas such as physiology and disease, psychological disorders, physical and competitive behaviour, cognition and personality, management, sensory perception and sexual orientation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some relevant results to personality to the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lesbians are more likely to be femme and less likely to be butch with a high digit ratio.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aggression in males and assertiveness in females is associated with low digit ratio.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paranormal and superstitious beliefs among men with a higher digit ratio.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Increased Anxiety in males with a higher digit ratio.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T21:49:12.270" LastActivityDate="2014-02-09T21:49:12.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19451" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-09T09:47:12.740" Score="10" ViewCount="383" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard numerous times that less educated people have lower work ethics, but I've never seen any scientific papers on the subject. Is there any correlation between work ethic and level of education?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17238" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T09:52:02.767" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T00:06:40.743" Title="Is a better work ethic correlated to the level of education?" Tags="|education|sociology|work|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19451" CreationDate="2014-02-09T17:18:53.937" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A study by Hill and Rojewski suggests that having poor work ethic is related to not completing school. As I interpret this, this would induce the correlation you are asking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Their question&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hill and Rojewski did a study with the goal of determining if work ethic differed for 152 9th grade students categorized by risk of school failure or dropout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The motivation was the idea that &quot;[youth at risk of failure or dropping out] exhibit poor attendance habits, lack of interest, and have discipline problems, and in the community they are often at odds with the law. These behaviors limit opportunities for success, either at school or at work, and their existence prevents people from fulfIlling their potential throughout their lives.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Why does this relate to your question?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hill and Rojewski wanted to check if work ethic was indeed predictive of being at risk of failing. This question gets to what you're asking about because if people with poor work ethic fail or drop out of school, they will have lower levels of education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Methods&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To measure work ethic, students completed an Occupational Work Ethic Inventory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To measure risk of school failure or dropout, &quot;respondents were asked to indicate whether during the past school year they had been disciplined by a teacher (detention or extra study halls), suspended from school, had cut classes, been in trouble with the law, thought about dropping out of school, were disinterested in school, or disliked doing schoolwork that required some effort.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(The validity of the above measure of risk of school failure is supported by an earlier study by (Bryk and Thurn, 1989).)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Results&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data indicated that being dependable was the key issue underlying differences in work ethic of students categorized by varying levels of at-risk behaviors. OWEI mean scores for at-risk students were lower than those for students who were moderately at risk, and mean scores for students not at risk were higher than scores for all others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Summary&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study found that in a non-random sample of 152 9th graders, the questionnaire-based measure of work ethic correlated negatively with the self-reported measure of risk of school failure or dropout.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bryk, Anthony S., and Yeow Meng Thum. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.msu.edu/~thum/Papers/Bryk-Thum.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The effects of high school organization on dropping out: An exploratory investigation.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; American Educational Research Journal 26, no. 3 (1989): 353-383.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hill, Roger B., and Jay W. Rojewski. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2161-0045.1999.tb00736.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Double jeopardy: Work ethic differences in youth at risk of school failure.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; The Career Development Quarterly 47, no. 3 (1999): 267-279.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T00:06:40.743" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T00:06:40.743" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19456" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-09T18:53:10.643" Score="12" ViewCount="6804" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of the popular &lt;em&gt;experiments&lt;/em&gt; mentioned in motivational books. Here is summary from &lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3aFn9UP6p-ae4J%3awww.lifeprobabilities.com/2014/01/29/fleas/+&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ct=clnk&amp;amp;gl=pl&quot;&gt;a motivational webpage&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the beginning of the experiment a number of fleas are placed in a jar. The natural reaction of the fleas is to jump out. After that a glass lid is placed on the top of the jar. Now the fleas fly high, hit the lid and fall back down into the jar. After a short time fleas adjust and begin jumping lower – until they start jumping slightly below the glass lid, in order not to hit it anymore. After three days the glass lid is removed. Since the fleas had already learnt to limit themselves from jumping high, they staid in the jar and there was no longer a lid needed to keep them inside. They have already been conditioned to the fact that they cannot escape from the jar and they have accepted that fact. Now no matter whether the lid is on or off the fleas will stay in the jar forever. Even more:  when/if the fleas reproduce their offsprings will duplicate the behaviour and will not jump high either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I've seen it cited many times, but without any proper background. There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-Dn2KEjPuc&quot;&gt;one video on youtube&lt;/a&gt; presenting the experiment, but there is no source about how exactly it was conducted or proof about the behaviour of offspring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up, I have two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do fleas really jump lower after being 'trained' in a lid? Does this behaviour persist?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, is this behaviour passed onto next generations?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17524" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-02-11T19:26:07.033" LastActivityDate="2022-11-05T13:42:06.983" Title="Do fleas jump lower after being covered by lid? If so, do their offspring adjust to this lower height?" Tags="|biology|zoology|experiments|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19458" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19524" CreationDate="2014-02-09T20:42:52.533" Score="16" ViewCount="1010" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scpr.org/news/2014/02/09/42085/dumb-starbucks-coffee-shop-opens-in-los-feliz/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This claim originated on 89.3 KPCC&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LinRn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Dumb Starbucks Store Front&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8fu8b.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Dumb Starbucks FAQ&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there really a &quot;Dumb Starbucks&quot; shop in existence? And, is what they're doing legal under &quot;Parody Law&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-09T21:47:08.693" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T01:32:19.807" Title="Is there a coffee shop called &quot;Dumb Starbucks&quot;?" Tags="|united-states|law|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19458" CreationDate="2014-02-09T21:16:05.670" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;The place existed&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dumb-starbucks-shop-appears-las-678728&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dumb-starbucks-shop-appears-las-678728&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dumb Starbucks Coffee, which parodies the design of a coffee giant chain store, appeared out of seemingly nowhere over the weekend as a pop-up store in a nondescript Hillhurst Ave. location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was the creation of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Fielder&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nathan Fielder&lt;/a&gt; and was closed by LA County Health inspectors. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/canadian-comics-dumb-starbucks-cant-outsmart-health-inspectors/article16794333/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The third paragraph of the FAQ is false.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fair use of copyrighted works (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;17 U.S.C. § 107&lt;/a&gt;) is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the same as fair use of trademarks (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1115&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;15 U.S.C. § 1115(b)(4)&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are different statutes, and the courts apply different tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, in asserting the affirmative defense of of 1115(b)(4) (the statutory fair use defense), the defendant would have to show that &quot;a term is used descriptively, not as a mark, fairly, and in good faith&quot;. (&lt;em&gt;KP Permanent Make-Up, Inc. v. Lasting Impression I&lt;/em&gt;, Inc. &lt;a href=&quot;http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&amp;amp;court=US&amp;amp;vol=543&amp;amp;page=111&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;543 US 111&lt;/a&gt; (2004))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parody has played a role apart from 1115(b)(4), though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tmcases/coca.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Coca-Cola Co. v. Gemini Rising, Inc.&lt;/em&gt;, 346 F. Supp. 1183 (E.D.N.Y. 1972)&lt;/a&gt;, in which Coca-Cola successfully enjoined the defendant from printing, distributing and selling commercially a poster which consists of an exact blown-up reproduction of plaintiff's familiar &quot;Coca-Cola&quot; trademark and distinctive format except for the substitution of the script letters &quot;ine&quot; for &quot;-Cola&quot;, so that the poster reads &quot;Enjoy Cocaine.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of parody that &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; allowed by the courts is Jim Hensons's &lt;em&gt;Muppet Treasure Island&lt;/em&gt;. It featured a character named &quot;Spa'am&quot;. (see &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tmcases/hormel.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hormel Foods Corp. v. Jim Henson Prods&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;., 73 F.3d 497 (2d Cir. 1996)). This opinion makes it evident that &lt;strong&gt;parody is not treated as a special case in trademark law&lt;/strong&gt;, but simply informs the multi-factor analysis of infringement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tcattorney.typepad.com/ip/2010/01/trademark-parody-doctrine-what-is-and-what-is-not-fair-use.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here's an in-depth discussion of trademark parody&lt;/a&gt; on Trademark Law Radio by Daniel Corbett.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corbett gives a few bright line rules that somebody wishing to parody a mark should follow if they want to be more likely to successfully defend themselves in court. &quot;Dumb Starbucks&quot; breaks all of these rules. However, every case is analyzed case-by-case, so whether this is infringement will only be answered if this case goes to court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T16:24:05.560" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T16:24:05.560" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19461" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="36230" CreationDate="2014-02-10T02:25:34.500" Score="11" ViewCount="12516" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iqBYV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Don&amp;#39;t Speak The Enemy&amp;#39;s Language! The Four Freedoms Are Not In His Vocabulary. Speak American!&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Enemy%27s_language.jpg&quot;&gt;Wikimedia commons entry&lt;/a&gt;, claiming a citation to &quot;Una Storia Segreta&quot; by Lawrence Distasi. The licensing metadata from the picture claims that it is a &quot;work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AFEQ7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Don&amp;#39;t Speak The Enemy&amp;#39;s Language! The Four Freedoms Are Not In His Vocabulary. Speak American!&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://biker-wear.biker-crossroads.com/Speak-American-Sign.html&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt; (Replica sales website)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were there World War II propaganda posters in the United States telling people not to speak German, Italian or Japanese, and to &quot;Speak American&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T11:45:41.317" LastActivityDate="2023-03-10T13:00:33.217" Title="Did World War II propaganda posters tell people to &quot;Speak American&quot;, rather than languages of the enemy?" Tags="|united-states|language|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19462" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19474" CreationDate="2014-02-10T03:08:18.903" Score="3" ViewCount="1377" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend just posted that their 2-year-old has a cold, and they want to prevent their two-week old from getting said cold. They plan to inject breast milk up the two-year-old's nose in an attempt to prevent spreading the cold to their infant. Is there evidence for or against the efficacy of this practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... there are a few ways you can naturally help your baby, from home. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Squirt breastmilk up your baby’s nose. Its much better than any other sprays, has no nasties (only goodies!) and works well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bellybelly.com.au/baby/nasal-congestion-and-colds-in-babies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blocked Nose And Colds In Babies – Treatments For A Blocked Nose&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the baby, or anyone for that matter, has some nasal congestion due to a cold or allergy, breastmilk can help to clear up the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/did-know-breastmilk-cure-these-ailments-536950.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Did You Know Breastmilk Can Cure These Ailments?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10857" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T07:13:32.840" Title="Will intranasal application of breast milk treat colds?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|milk|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19463" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-10T03:15:43.167" Score="9" ViewCount="318" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just heard that a friend plans to feed their toddler raw garlic because the toddler has a cold and they don't want it spreading to their infant.  Is there evidence for or against the efficacy of this practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10857" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T11:56:17.287" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T23:51:00.030" Title="Does garlic prevent the spread of colds?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19461" CreationDate="2014-02-10T12:12:42.067" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book &quot;Our House Divided: Seven Japanese American Families in World War II&quot; by Tomi Kaizawa Knaefler, published in 1991, had the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The government posters said, &quot;Speak American. Don't Speak the Enemy's&#xA;  Language.&quot; So I frustrated my mother terribly by speaking English to&#xA;  her, disregarding the fact that she, like the other &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Issei&quot;&gt;issei&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;  communicated primarily in Japanese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which suggest that there were some posters out there with the message of speaking American. Not necessarily those two photos, but they did exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it's possible that the second photo is fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Speak_American_WWII.jpg&quot;&gt;http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/File:Speak_American_WWII.jpg&lt;/a&gt; is a deletion request for a supposed poster saying &quot;Speak American&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Appears to be a modern commercial recreation (I see it's being sold as&#xA;  a metal sign, for example), and it's not just a direct copy of a WWII&#xA;  era US government poster, so not PD Afiler (talk) 23:19, 24 November&#xA;  2011 (UTC)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To maybe slightly better answer your question, the typeface used is a&#xA;  modern computer typeface, and the caricatures seen there are an&#xA;  entirely different drawing as in the blurry image above. The bottom&#xA;  line is that there's no evidence at all that this is a US government&#xA;  work, only that it uses the same &quot;Speak American&quot; text as a poster&#xA;  reproduced in book that claims it's a US government work. - Afiler&#xA;  (talk) 11:22, 26 November 2011 (UTC)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second photo in the question was being sold as a metal sign, so it's quite possibly referring to that photo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T12:12:42.067" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19447" CreationDate="2014-02-10T15:55:46.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Finger ratio is an indication of prenatal testosterone in relation to estradiol. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037837820400012X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;2nd to 4th digit ratios, fetal testosterone and estradiol&quot;&lt;/a&gt; Lutchmayaa et al report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results: A significant negative association between right 2D:4D ratio and FT (fetal testosterone) /FE (fetal estradiol)  ratio, which was independent of sex. Conclusions: These preliminary findings lend support to an association between low 2D:4D and high levels of FT (fetal testosterone)  relative to FE (fetal estradiol), and high 2D:4D with low FT (fetal testosterone) relative to FE (fetal estradiol).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's also a predictor of current testosterone as shown in &lt;a href=&quot;http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/13/11/3000.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;The ratio of 2nd to 4th digit length: a predictor of sperm numbers and concentrations of testosterone, luteinizing hormone and oestrogen.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The dimorphism is present from at least age 2 years and 2D:4D is probably established in utero; (ii) high 2D:4D ratio in right hands was associated with germ cell failure in men (P = 0.04); (iii) sperm number was negatively related to 2D:4D in the right hand (P = 0.004); (iv) in men testosterone concentrations were negatively related to right hand 2D:4D and in women and men LH (right hand), oestrogen (right and left hands) and prolactin (right hand) concentrations were positively correlated with 2D:4D ratio and (v) 2D:4D ratio in right hands remained positively related to luteinizing hormone and oestrogen after controlling for sex, age, height and weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testorsterone has a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14355/is-testosterone-responsible-for-typically-male-behaviour/14376#14376&quot;&gt;lot&lt;/a&gt; to do with personality and therefore you can use the finger ratio as an imperfect predictor of personality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T16:05:20.937" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19462" CreationDate="2014-02-10T17:45:10.037" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The underdeveloped nature of a baby's throat, with the epiglottis being much higher up in the throat means that squirting anything up an infant's nose - any excess beyond that which coats the nasal passages are likely to be inhaled to the baby's lungs. See: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ummchealth.com/Health_Care_Services/Ear,_Nose_and_Throat_%28Otolaryngology%29/Children/Ear,_Nose_and_Throat_Services/Nose_and_Throat_Disorders/Nose___Throat_Disorders.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Choanal atresia.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is of course dangerous, and should not be attempted without the supervision of trained (orthodox) medical professionals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the efficacy, if the baby caught the cold from the mother, by the time the baby is showing symptoms, the mother's milk may well contain appropriate antibodies. The question you would then need to ask is will these antibodies affect viral propagation in the nose/throat/ducts to eyes and ears and the variety of sinus cavities which the virus can affect. I know of no research which shows that this is possible or even desirable. See: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ummchealth.com/Health_Care_Services/Ear,_Nose_and_Throat_%28Otolaryngology%29/Children/Ear,_Nose_and_Throat_Services/Nose_and_Throat_Disorders/Nose___Throat_Disorders.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alternative medicine for colds.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Systemic treatment by introducing the antibodies into the digestive tract (the &quot;yummy-mummy&quot; way) is the natural way which has evolved to protect the baby. One might imagine that direct treatment of the nasal-mucosa - if it were to have any strong survival bias in evolutionary terms, babie's noses would be adapted to clamp onto the nipple and provide a sucking reflex - no such adaptation exists. This is another reason to question it's validity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the elder sibling is producing milk, then it may contain the specific antibodies necessary to buffer the baby/infant's immune system. If the mother doesn't catch the cold, this would indicate (probably) that those antibodies are already present and yummy mummy would &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; protect the younger sibling. Timing is important, if the youngster catches the cold before the mother shows symptoms, it's too late for yummy mummy as a first line of defence. See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold#Prevention&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cold Prevention.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17546" LastEditorUserId="17546" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T18:39:12.480" LastActivityDate="2014-02-10T18:39:12.480" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19477" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19484" CreationDate="2014-02-10T22:41:16.770" Score="6" ViewCount="1491" Body="&lt;p&gt;The BRAT diet is Bananas, Rice, Apples and Toast.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sites like this first one add Yogurt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mademan.com/mm/5-foods-stop-diarrhea.html&quot;&gt;http://www.mademan.com/mm/5-foods-stop-diarrhea.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this wikiHow, the A is applesauce and the Bananas should be green:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Treat-Diarrhea-(BRAT-Diet-Method)&quot;&gt;http://www.wikihow.com/Treat-Diarrhea-(BRAT-Diet-Method)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has the applesauce but doesn't specify green bananas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRAT_diet&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRAT_diet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About has BRAT, also adds yogurt, chicken, and blueberries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ibs.about.com/od/diarrhea/tp/Diarrhea-and-Food.--04.htm&quot;&gt;http://ibs.about.com/od/diarrhea/tp/Diarrhea-and-Food.--04.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One site will say &quot;Don't eat fiber.&quot; and yet the bananas are also explained as having fiber.  Similar issues occur with sugars.  So there doesn't seem to be a consistent approach.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the BRAT diet backed by any kind of scientific studies or evidence or is it more of a folk remedy passed down by word of mouth?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2014-02-10T22:52:38.763" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T16:01:06.653" Title="Does the BRAT diet help stop diarrhea?" Tags="|nutrition|disease|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19463" CreationDate="2014-02-11T07:13:59.167" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there is insufficient clinical trial evidence regarding the effects&#xA;  of garlic in preventing or treating the common cold. A single trial&#xA;  suggested that garlic may prevent occurrences of the common cold but&#xA;  more studies are needed to validate this finding. Claims of&#xA;  effectiveness appear to rely largely on poor-quality evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garlic#cite_ref-46&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiki&lt;/a&gt; Unfortunately, I cannot access the article referred to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also pay attention to this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Children:&lt;/strong&gt; Garlic is POSSIBLY SAFE when taken by mouth and appropriately for a short-term in children. But garlic is POSSIBLY UNSAFE when taken by mouth in large doses. Some sources suggest that high doses of garlic could be dangerous or even fatal to children; however, the reason for this warning is not known. There are no case reports available of significant adverse events or mortality in children associated with taking garlic by mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/300.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Medline&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17078" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T07:13:59.167" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19444" CreationDate="2014-02-11T09:46:47.993" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The original paper&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; explains how the prints were dated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here we report on a footprint surface found in Early Pleistocene estuarine muds at Happisburgh, UK, [...] The estuarine sediments at Happisburgh are part of the Hill House Formation (HHF) and are Early Pleistocene in age, dating to between 1 and 0.78 My. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the footprints were made in mud which subsequently fossilized. The mud is dated geologically&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the same researchers presented strong dating evidence in another article on Nature&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The age of the human occupation is constrained by a combination of palaeomagnetism and biostratigraphy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Palaeomagnetic analyses at Happisburgh were undertaken on 45 samples from the laminated silts (beds A, C, D and F) below, within and above the artefact-bearing gravels (Fig. 3). [...] The Happisburgh sediments therefore display a reversed polarity, depositional remanence throughout beds A, C, D and F (Supplementary Information 3, Supplementary Fig. 1 and Supplementary Table 1). This indicates deposition during either the Matuyama chron (2.52–0.78 Myr) or during a brief Brunhes chron geomagnetic excursion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The age of the site is further constrained by biostratigraphic evidence. [...] The overlapping ranges of the plant and mammalian taxa indicate a date towards the end of the&#xA;  Early Pleistocene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This evidence together with the palaeomagnetic data indicates that human occupation occurred towards the end of the Matuyama Chron between 0.99 and 0.78 Myr ago (Fig. 5).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the evidence is very convincing that these footprints are, in fact, as old as claimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Ashton N, Lewis SG, De Groote I, Duffy SM, Bates M, et al. (2014), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0088329&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hominin Footprints from Early Pleistocene Deposits at Happisburgh, UK.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; PLoS ONE 9(2): e88329. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0088329&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://geology.utah.gov/Surveynotes/gladasked/gladage.htm&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Glad You Asked article, Survey Notes&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, v. 30 no. 1, September 1997&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Simon A. Parfitt, Nick M. Ashton, Simon G. Lewis, et al. (2010), &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/45102323_Early_Pleistocene_human_occupation_at_the_edge_of_the_boreal_zone_in_northwest_Europe/file/79e41509296a0c493d.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Early Pleistocene human occupation at the edge of the boreal zone in northwest Europe&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Nature 466, 229–233 (08 July 2010) doi:10.1038/nature09117&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T09:46:47.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7087" CreationDate="2014-02-11T15:56:28.740" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As has been mentioned in both comments and in another answer, 'energy' is a subjective term to use for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Red Bull cans vary in size, but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tesco.com/groceries/Product/Details/?id=259153617&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;European can size&lt;/a&gt; (250ml) delivers 112.5kCal of energy.  A cup of &lt;a href=&quot;http://globalassets.starbucks.com/assets/0c4216ad12084401b5ad12e4fe7fce98.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Starbucks Americano (Grande)&lt;/a&gt; coffee contains 72kCal, meaning that in the scientific defintion of 'energy', the Red Bull contains more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point that this is missing is energy in the calorific sense does not equal feeling energetic, it just equals having more energy to use.  For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk/calories-in-food/bakery-products/Warburtons-Medium-Sliced-White-Bread.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a slice of bread&lt;/a&gt; typically contains 80-120kCal of energy, so a similar amount to a can of Red Bull, but it will not make you feel energetic in the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's a fair given that Red Bull will make the majority of people feel more energetic, and that coffee also helps most people feel alert.  Some of this affect may of course be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;placebo&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The significant difference between coffee and Red Bull, nutritionally and physiologically, is that, whilst coffee contains one significant ingredient that has an 'energising affect' on the body (Caffeine), Red Bull has 2 (Caffeine and Taurine).  Both, potentially - depending on how you like your coffee, also contain Sugars of one sort or another, mainly Glucose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caffeine is a vasoconstrictor and cardiovascular agonist.  The vasoconstriction caused by caffeine will cause the peripheral network of capillary blood vessel to become smaller, and thus move less blood, the effect of this is that the volume of blood within the body will be held in a smaller space, and thus the Arterial Blood Pressure will increase, increasing perfusion to the organs, including the brain.  Thus, caffeine causes a feeling of alertness through a greater bloodflow to the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caffeine also causes a release of Adrenaline and Noradrenaline within the body.  Adrenaline and it's derivatives are Beta-agonists, which raise blood pressure, and heart rate, so blood flow is further increased by heighten cardiac output.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.udel.edu/chem/C465/senior/fall00/Caffeine/Physiological.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-1024-TAURINE.aspx?activeIngredientId=1024&amp;amp;activeIngredientName=TAURINE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Taurine&lt;/a&gt; is an amino acid used in the formation of proteins, which is  especially useful to the brain, which is a primary consumer of taurine.  Although its affects on the cardiovascular system aren't fully understood, they are observed.  It has a calming affect on Cardiac Output, and thus may help recovery from a large amount of caffeine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The long and short of the question is that in pure energetic terms, Red Bull has slightly more energy, but that this isn't necessarily what makes drinkers feel energised.  The affects of the ingredients of coffee and Red Bull will act differently on different people, so it's not possible to say which makes people more energised, as different people will react differently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17358" LastEditorUserId="17358" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T12:09:38.007" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T12:09:38.007" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19484" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19477" CreationDate="2014-02-11T16:40:56.850" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea behind BRAT is that none of the foods included are not particularly harsh on the gastrointestinal system, and are low in fibre.  This is mostly true, although intolerances and allergies to Apples are reasonably common.  However, there's no particular evidence that this aids recovery.  Patients should eat a diet that is gentle on the system and that they are happy with.  The most important treatment from diarrhea is rehydrative treatment.  Treatment in the main does not focus on relieving symptoms, instead focussing on preventing harm from dehydration, which is the biggest hazard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actuality is that BRAT provides a far from balanced diet, and is more of a tradition than a scientifically grounded diet.  Although the Carbohydrate content is adequate, as are some other nutrients like Potassium, it lacks in many areas, including fibre - and the basis of it was that a low fibre diet would help avoid further upsets.  Whilst a weirdly unbalanced diet won't hurt for a few days whilst a patient recovers, it's not going to help particularly, although it is better than eating processed food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most diarrhea is caused by either infection or food intolerance, and eating a fruit and grain based diet does not help with these.  If infection is the cause, then a sudden change in diet will do little to stem the disease, and if the problem is a food intolerance, then only avoiding that food, and waiting for the disturbance to pass will suffice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many clinicians claim that BRAT is unnecessarily restrictive, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/assets/0/78/1067/2709/2777/2793/9199/32e14f93-09fe-4138-85be-7d86ed145537.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://nurse-practitioners-and-physician-assistants.advanceweb.com/Archives/Article-Archives/Rehydration-and-Refeeding-After-Diarrheal-Illness.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;with&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002118.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;these&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ebmedicine.net/media_library/aboutUs/Peds0710%20Gastroenteritis%20practice%20recs.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt;.  I'm inclined to agree.  The last thing I'd want to do &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17358" LastActivityDate="2014-02-11T16:40:56.850" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19506" CreationDate="2014-02-11T18:33:39.797" Score="14" ViewCount="759" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend.html&quot;&gt;http://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;claims that stress is bad for your health, unless you don't believe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this really hard to believe, because if it's true, how did the belief that stress is bad for your health get started in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17561" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:14:57.827" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:14:57.827" Title="&quot;Stress is bad for you, unless you don't believe it&quot;" Tags="|environmental-health|stress|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3805" CreationDate="2014-02-11T21:18:58.037" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clearly there are harmful components, otherwise studies such as this wouldn't exist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comparison of hydrofluorosilicic acid and pharmaceutical sodium fluoride as fluoridating agents—A cost–benefit analysis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901113000087&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1462901113000087&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The U.S. could save $1 billion to more than $5 billion/year by using USP NaF in place of HFSA while simultaneously mitigating the pain and suffering of citizens that&#xA;result from use of the technical grade ﬂuoridating agents.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do realise though that this study postdated the question!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17564" LastEditorUserId="17569" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T02:52:32.080" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T02:52:32.080" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19491" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19493" CreationDate="2014-02-11T22:21:34.743" Score="8" ViewCount="1146" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bill Gates has recently &lt;a href=&quot;http://qz.com/175616/three-things-bill-gates-wishes-he-could-have-done-20-years-ago&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ultimate is computers that learn. So called &lt;strong&gt;deep learning which&#xA;  started at Microsoft&lt;/strong&gt; and is now being used by many researchers looks&#xA;  like a real advance that may finally learn. It has already made a big&#xA;  difference in video and audio recognition - more progress in the last&#xA;  3 years than ever before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statement was quoted in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=%22like%20a%20real%20advance%20that%20may%20finally%20learn.%20It%20has%20already%20made%20a%20big%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; news articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How true is it that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Learning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Deep Learning&lt;/a&gt; started at Microsoft?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:41:58.923" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T00:41:58.923" Title="Did deep learning start at Microsoft?" Tags="|history|computers|microsoft|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19491" CreationDate="2014-02-12T00:08:11.870" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;That is incorrect.&#xA;It might be true that Microsoft pioneered commercial applications of Deep Learning though,&#xA;which is what I suspect Bill was getting at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Li Deng, who works for Microsoft Research,&#xA;took the Deep Belief Nets (DBNs), devised by Hinton and his team at the University of Toronto,&#xA;and applied them (successfully) to the TIMIST dataset for speech recognition.&#xA;This got Deep Learning a lot of interest, in the commercial sector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DBNs were the start of a resurgence of interest in deep learning.&#xA;Originally when neural nets were created in 1986, they were often deep,&#xA;in the 90's something called the Universal Approximation theorem was proven, which roughly says &amp;quot;A neural net with one hidden layer (that is sufficiently large) can approximate (given sufficient training data) any continuous function.&amp;quot; This, combined with the difficulty in training deeper nets, basically ended Deep Learning.&#xA;Hinton's paper in 2006, and Bengio's monograph in 2007, sparked a resurgence of interest, because Hinton showed a novel new technique that made training deep nets feasible (this technique being Deep Belief Networks), and Bengio argued that deep nets were important, and that we could get many advantages over shallow nets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Li Deng at Microsoft research took this onboard, and with his work on TIMIST,&#xA;showed the world that Deep Learning was feasible and great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;DBN's in academia&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hinton et al's First DBN Paper: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/neco.2006.18.7.1527&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Fast Learning Algorithm for Deep Belief Nets&lt;/a&gt; 2006&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bengio et al's Deep Learning Monograph: &lt;a href=&quot;https://papers.nips.cc/paper/3048-greedy-layer-wise-training-of-deep-networks.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Greedy layer-wise training of deep networks&lt;/a&gt; 2007.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;(Still trying to date Li Deng's work. citations needed.)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16869" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T14:24:08.893" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19495" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-12T00:18:21.327" Score="5" ViewCount="569" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10253/did-christopher-robinson-provide-psychic-information-that-was-successfully-used&quot;&gt;Related&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this current point in time (within say the last 5 years) are there any police departments or emergency service organisations which employ a psychic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It shows up occasionally in movies and I'm sure there are TV series based around it.&#xA;It sometimes turns up as a reality TV show topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does it actually happen?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is money/police resources actually being used this way?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16869" LastEditorUserId="25398" LastEditDate="2023-02-13T03:30:50.560" LastActivityDate="2023-02-13T03:30:50.560" Title="Does any police/emergency services department in the US/UK/Australia/Canada employ a psychic consultant?" Tags="|politics|psychics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19497" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-12T03:19:47.123" Score="10" ViewCount="2067" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was taught 2 semesters of cold Spanish, but forgot most of it. Does learning Latin first make learning Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, etc. a whole lot faster or easier as some claim. They all stem from latin of course. Any studies on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17567" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T12:26:53.940" Title="Does learning Latin first dramatically improve the ability to learn more languages?" Tags="|language|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19500" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-12T08:21:31.257" Score="5" ViewCount="526" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not questioning the theory of comment descent, but I am skeptical about the evolutionary mechanisms proposed for speciation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have we ever observed in detail how speciation occurs? We can take the easiest example, allopatric speciation, or any of the other modes. What do we know from observation about this process?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In religion, I often see lots of ad hoc dogmatic opinions. But in evolutionary theory (especially evolutionary psychology) I see a bunch of ad hoc &quot;just so&quot; opinions. So it bothers me, and I wonder just how much we actually know. It seems that this is a symptom of actually not knowing much at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16517" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T11:24:06.440" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T11:29:35.940" Title="Does speciation occur?" Tags="|evolution|genetics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19500" CreationDate="2014-02-12T09:09:58.233" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. One example is documented in (Dobzhansky and Pavlovsky, 1971). &quot;By means of selection in many generations, ethological (sexual) isolation has been built between strains of &lt;em&gt;Drosophila&lt;/em&gt; which were formerly not reproductively isolated.&quot; The researchers created a new species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example is (Wright, 1989). A type of fly, &lt;em&gt;Rhagoletis pomonella&lt;/em&gt; began to split into two species starting about 160 years ago. One group began to feed on apples, while another group fed on hawthorns. By 1960, genetic differences were observed that could not be maintained if the flies mated randomly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A third example is described in (Wilcox, 2011). Two new species of American goatsbeards arose in the last century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the early 1900s, three species of these wildflowers &amp;#8211; the western salsify (&lt;em&gt;T. dubius&lt;/em&gt;), the meadow salsify (&lt;em&gt;T. pratensis&lt;/em&gt;), and the oyster plant (&lt;em&gt;T. porrifolius&lt;/em&gt;) &amp;#8211; were introduced to the United States from Europe. As their populations expanded, the species interacted, often producing sterile hybrids. But by the 1950s, scientists realized that there were two new variations of goatsbeard growing. While they looked like hybrids, they weren&amp;#8217;t sterile. They were perfectly capable of reproducing with their own kind but not with any of the original three species &amp;#8211; the classic definition of a new species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dobzhansky, Theodosius, and Olga Pavlovsky. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5549403&quot;&gt;Experimentally created incipient species of Drosophila.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; Nature 23:289-292. (1971).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wilcox, Christie. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/science-sushi/2011/12/18/evolution-watching-speciation-occur-observations/&quot;&gt;Evolution: Watching Speciation Occur&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Scientific American Blog. December 18, 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wright, Karen. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v260/n2/pdf/scientificamerican0289-22.pdf&quot;&gt;A Breed Apart.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; Scientific American 260 (1989): 22-24.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T11:29:35.940" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T11:29:35.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19497" CreationDate="2014-02-12T12:26:53.940" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, not according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/edu/95/1/174/&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;.  I wasn't able to find enough study on this to form a real basis for a literature review, but the outcome of the linked study was that, when teaching speakers of a non-latin based language spanish, those who learnt French first did better than those who learnt latin first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The outcome is unsurprising in my opinion.  Latin is indeed a base point for many languages such as French, Spanish and Portuguese, but none of these languages actually inherited such an extensive grammar, tense-structure or verb transformational system.  Latin is complicated, and more complicated than it's 'offspring' in use today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although Latin is still taught in many schools, and Universities, this is more an exercise in learning than in language (and IMO is somewhat tradition over education).  The University I attended and subsequently worked for is very traditional, and viewed Latin or Classics study as an advantage, not because Latin was particularly useful - one can easily get by without it - but because excelling at Latin shows an ability to study a complicated thing successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To conclude, at least according to the referenced study, learning latin may help learn latin based languages, but learning a latin based language would too - and slightly better as it seems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17358" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T12:26:53.940" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19505" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-12T15:36:11.953" Score="7" ViewCount="1993" Body="&lt;p&gt;I live in a mostly atheistic country. I have often heard the claim that Muslim people commit more crimes than others, especially that they are thieves due to their religion. Is there is any truth to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does Islam proclaim thievery?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there a causal relationship between being a Muslim and stealing something? How about being violent, such as hitting or murdering someone (sans sexual violence)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard time and time again that there is a relationship between Islam and crimes, but nobody have been able to produce any sort of evidence except appeals to common held beliefs. I'm sure most people living in a western country have met these sentiments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7413" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2015-01-12T00:52:31.037" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T00:52:31.037" Title="Does Islam lead to higher crime rates?" Tags="|criminology|sociology|islam|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2015-01-12T01:26:25.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19487" CreationDate="2014-02-12T15:57:10.830" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;McGonigal justifies this claim by reference to a single study: (Keller &lt;em&gt;et al&lt;/em&gt;. 2012).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;McGonigal says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;they started by asking people, &quot;How much stress have you experienced in the last year?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is basically true. The study asked &quot;During the past 12 months, would you say that you experienced a lot of stress, a moderate amount of stress, relatively little stress, or almost no stress at all?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;McGonigal says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They also asked, &quot;Do you believe that stress is harmful for your health?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is false. The study asked &quot;During the past 12 months, how much effect has stress had on your health—a lot, some, hardly any, or none?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is significant in that the study was looking at whether people believed that stress had &lt;em&gt;already started to affect their health&lt;/em&gt;, not whether the person had a nebulous belief about whether stress is harmful for health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is reasonable to expect that people who have already noticed health effects due to stress will die sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper muses for some time about the possible forward causation between belief in the effect of stress and poor health outcomes before admitting (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adults who reported poor health may have been more likely to report that stress impacts their health simply because of their poor health status; moreover poor health status could also have influenced the amount of stress reported. &lt;strong&gt;The cross-sectional nature of these data precludes us from examining the direction of causality among the amount of stress, the perception that stress affects health, and health outcomes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Summary&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;McGonigal used a single study to support this claim. That study didn't ask the question of its participants that she said it asked. It wasn't designed to be able to find a causation from &quot;belief that stress is harmful for your health&quot; (McGonigal's words) to &quot;poor health outcomes&quot;. It wasn't designed to be able to find causation from &quot;how much effect has stress had on your health&quot; (authors' words) to &quot;poor health outcomes&quot;. The study didn't claim any findings of causation, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keller A, Litzelman K, Witt W, et al. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3374921/&quot;&gt;Does the perception that stress affects health matter? The association with health and mortality&lt;/a&gt;. Health Psychology [serial online]. September 2012;31(5):677-684. Available from: PsycARTICLES, Ipswich, MA. Accessed February 12, 2014&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T23:15:32.187" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T23:15:32.187" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19508" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19510" CreationDate="2014-02-12T16:53:36.073" Score="22" ViewCount="14559" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10631973/Turin-Shroud-may-date-from-time-of-Jesus.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; article makes an interesting claim, in a discussion about the Shroud of Turin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However a new study claims than an earthquake in Jerusalem in 33AD may have not only created the image but may also have skewed the dating results. The Italian team believes the powerful magnitude 8.2 earthquake would have been strong enough to release neutron particles from crushed rock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/02/12/newser-shroud-turin-earthquake/5418349/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;USA Today&lt;/a&gt; reports something very similar:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...where Italian researchers suggest that an 8.2-magnitude earthquake that rocked Jerusalem in 33AD both formed the image and distorted the results of radiocarbon dating...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignoring the question of the age of the Shroud of Turin, the specificity of the magnitude 8.2 earthquake makes me ask - are there extant records of such an earthquake, or is the journal suggesting that there was an earthquake, and had it been magnitude 8.2, you have seen the effects in this shroud?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, the Biblical resurrection account mentions the earthquake, but is there any other corroboration?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5707" OwnerDisplayName="Affable Geek" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-06-06T19:10:13.043" LastActivityDate="2022-06-06T19:10:13.043" Title="Did a magnitude 8.2 earthquake hit Jerusalem in 33AD?" Tags="|history|geology|bible|religious-texts|natural-disasters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19509" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6275" CreationDate="2014-02-12T22:25:43.120" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The answer is NO, but the question is poorly formed and we have to interpret it to get anything like a reasonable answer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other answers have already addressed why a simple interpretation of &quot;one molecule away from&quot; doesn't make much chemical sense. But if we generously interpret the intent of the question in a way that makes chemical sense as something like &quot;margarine is made of molecules that are similar to some plastics&quot; we can answer more precisely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To do so we need to draw some pictures of what typical molecules plastics are made from and what margarines (and butter for that matter) are made from. To avoid excessive clutter in structures chemists draw the carbon skeleton (often omitting the letter C for carbon and trusting readers to fill in the hydrogens so each carbon node has 4 bonds in total). So we draw butanoic acid (CH&lt;sub&gt;3&lt;/sub&gt;CH&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;CH&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;COH) as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MjMoJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;butanoic acid structure&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Packaging is commonly made of plastics like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;polyethylene&lt;/a&gt; which as a structure like this where n is a large number often in the thousands:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ANzFD.png&quot; alt=&quot;polyethylene&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably the one the question likens margarine to, but there are lots of other common plastics. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PET&lt;/a&gt; (polyethylene terephthalate) is commonly used in packaging (especially soft drink bottles) and looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FaT05.png&quot; alt=&quot;PET&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another common plastic used in packaging, cling film and many other uses is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinyl_chloride&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PVC&lt;/a&gt; which looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NCk0s.png&quot; alt=&quot;PVC&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only polyethylene bears any resemblance to the constituents of margarine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is margarine made from? Margarine is actually very similar to butter in that it consists of a mixture of natural oils which in turn consist of triglycerides of fatty acids. A typical margarine (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) might contain a lot of this, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wmo6Z.png&quot; alt=&quot;typical margarine triglyceride&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triglyceride&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Triglycerides&lt;/a&gt; are compounds of glycerol and three fatty acids. Fatty acids (which, when separated from the glycerol, are the key constituents of soap) are compounds like this (this is linoleic acid with 18 carbons and two double bonds) with even numbers of carbons from 4 to about 22 in typical plant and animal oils . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ydmHN.png&quot; alt=&quot;linoleic acid&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typical plant oils are liquids at room temperature and people want their spreads to be solids, the plant oils are usually chemically altered a little to create compounds that are solid at room temperature. Since the oils containing fatty acids with multiple CC double bonds are more liquid, food companies use a process called hydrogenation to add hydrogens giving constituents that are solids at room temperature. These are the parts of the margarine that bear a superficial resemblance to polyethylene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are major differences. The fatty acid groups are unlike the simple carbon chains of the polymer because they are terminated with a CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;R group which allows the digestive system to chop up the chain, two carbons at a time, to generate energy. You can't do that with polyethylene as there is no &quot;handle&quot; at the end of the chain for the digestive system to get to grips with. So a superficially small chemical difference makes a huge biological difference. And, of course, the chemical functionality allows the fatty acids to be moved around as the triglycerides (which are nothing like any of the plastics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the carbon chains in fatty acids are rarely longer than 22 carbons whereas polymer chains often have &lt;em&gt;thousands&lt;/em&gt; of repeat units. This length alone makes typical polymers biologically inert as they are too insoluble to be digested in normal biological systems (even assuming there was a &quot;handle&quot; for the systems to grip to start the digestive process.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So despite the superficial resemblance between some plastic polymers and fatty acids, they have little &lt;em&gt;chemical&lt;/em&gt; resemblance and the claim that margarine is one molecule away from plastic is nonsense. Moreover, butter, a &quot;natural&quot; product differs from margarine only in having a different mix of fatty acids (it is also mostly made of triglycerides). And some of the fatty acids are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcrm.org/health/health-topics/essential-fatty-acids&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;essential nutrients&lt;/a&gt; for mammals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some general references:&#xA;Some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificpsychic.com/fitness/fattyacids.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;information&lt;/a&gt; about fatty acids and triglycerides&#xA;Typical &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenutritiondr.com/what-is-margarine-fatty-acid-profile-composition-of-margarine-vs-butter/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;compositions&lt;/a&gt; of butter and margarine&#xA;Analysis of butter and margarine &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889157599908773&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reference&lt;/a&gt; (paywalled)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-02-12T22:53:30.613" LastActivityDate="2014-02-12T22:53:30.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19508" CreationDate="2014-02-12T23:09:45.193" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11012-013-9865-x/fulltext.html&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; that sparked the news story states in its conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Considering the historical documents attesting the occurrence in the “Old Jerusalem” of a disastrous earthquake in 33 A.D., the authors assume that a seismic event with magnitude ranging from the 8th to the 9th degree in the Richter scale could have produced a thermal neutron flux of up to 1010 cm−2 s−1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The historical documents cited are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;NOAA's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/&quot;&gt;National Geophysical Data Center&lt;/a&gt; &quot;Significant Earthquake Database&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it does list a number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/nndc/struts/results?bt_0=0&amp;amp;st_0=100&amp;amp;type_17=EXACT&amp;amp;query_17=None+Selected&amp;amp;op_12=eq&amp;amp;v_12=&amp;amp;type_12=Or&amp;amp;query_14=None+Selected&amp;amp;type_3=Like&amp;amp;query_3=&amp;amp;st_1=&amp;amp;bt_2=&amp;amp;st_2=&amp;amp;bt_1=&amp;amp;bt_4=&amp;amp;st_4=&amp;amp;bt_5=&amp;amp;st_5=&amp;amp;bt_6=&amp;amp;st_6=&amp;amp;bt_7=&amp;amp;st_7=&amp;amp;bt_8=&amp;amp;st_8=&amp;amp;bt_9=&amp;amp;st_9=&amp;amp;bt_10=&amp;amp;st_10=&amp;amp;type_11=Exact&amp;amp;query_11=&amp;amp;type_16=Exact&amp;amp;query_16=&amp;amp;bt_18=&amp;amp;st_18=&amp;amp;ge_19=&amp;amp;le_19=&amp;amp;display_look=1&amp;amp;t=101650&amp;amp;s=1&amp;amp;submit_all=Search+Database&quot;&gt;earthquakes in the first century&lt;/a&gt;, the evidence for each is widely diverse.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/nndc/struts/results?eq_0=58&amp;amp;t=101650&amp;amp;s=13&amp;amp;d=22,26,13,12&amp;amp;nd=display&quot;&gt;August 24, 79 A.D. Naples earthquake&lt;/a&gt; is well documented since it coincided with the eruption of Vesuvius.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/nndc/struts/results?eq_0=8178&amp;amp;t=101650&amp;amp;s=13&amp;amp;d=22,26,13,12&amp;amp;nd=display&quot;&gt;33 A.D. earthquake in Palestine&lt;/a&gt; seems to have far less documentation.  The two sources indicate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;33 A.D., Bithynia and Palestine. At the crucifixion. The city of Nisaea was destroyed. (reference #521)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;33 A.D., Palestine, Jerusalem. (reference #1222)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;#521:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Catalogue of Recorded Earthquakes from 1606 B.C. to A.D. 1850, Part I, 1606 B.C. to 1755 A.D. Report of the 22nd Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science held at Hull, Sept., 1853, John Murray, London, p. 1-176.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;#1222:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Historical seismicity of the Arab region. IASPEI/UNESCO Working Group on Historical Seismograms and Earthquakes, August 27-28, 1985, Tokyo; Preliminary Proceedings, p. 59-84.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not at all clear (without reading those reports) where each got its data.  One might expect the second used the first as a baseline.  It's possible the 1853 catalogue used the Gospel accounts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thallus_%28historian%29&quot;&gt;Thallus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We only have only have fragments of his third book of histories via &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sextus_Julius_Africanus&quot;&gt;Sextus Julius Africanus&lt;/a&gt;' &lt;em&gt;History of the World&lt;/em&gt;, which has also been lost.  However, Africanus was quoted by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Syncellus&quot;&gt;George Syncellus&lt;/a&gt;, who disputed Thallus' apparent claim that the darkness reported at the same time was an eclipse.  There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jgrchj.net/volume8/JGRChJ8-8_Carrier.pdf&quot;&gt;some doubt&lt;/a&gt; that Thallus was writing about the Crucifixion event at all.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Narrative of Joseph of Arimathea&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had some difficulty finding out much about this document, except that it appears to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_of_Arimathea#Development_of_Legends&quot;&gt;legend&lt;/a&gt;, not history.  In &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=QzxpAgAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA569#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Bart Ehrman and Zlatko Plese date the work between the 4&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; and 12&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; century.  Therefore, it was likely influenced by Matthew's accounts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dante's &lt;em&gt;Inferno&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10950-005-8183-8&quot;&gt;Ambraseys N (2005) Historical earthquakes in Jerusalem: a methodological discussion. J Seismol 9:329–340&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have access to this myself, but the article helpfully notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Modern writers say that Jerusalem is situated relatively close to the active Dead Sea Fault zone. They accept the occurrence of the Resurrection earthquake, to which they assign the severity of a catastrophic event, characterized by a local magnitude ML = 8.2, as well as of another earthquake that took place in Bithynia, during the same period, that would have had even a greater magnitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Details of &quot;local scale&quot; may be found on Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richter_magnitude_scale#Development&quot;&gt;Richter magnitude scale&lt;/a&gt; article.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the abstract of &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10950-005-8183-8&quot;&gt;the paper cited&lt;/a&gt; reads in part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, as we go further back in time before our era, the historical record gradually disappears and the archaeological record takes over. Unfortunately, the archaeological record is too coarse and ambiguous, without any precise internal archaeological indicators. Dating is based on, or influenced by the very few historical records, such as in the Bible and inscriptions, which provide an example of how their assumed accuracy may influence archaeologists' interpretation and dating. Quite often this develops into a circular process in which archaeological assumptions or theories are transformed into facts and used by earth scientists to confirm the dates and size of their proposed events. In this article we discuss the problems that arise when Biblical and archaeological information is used at face value to assess earthquakes in the Holy Land. This combination may produce earthquakes of hypothetical location and of grossly exaggerated magnitude with consequences for the assessment of seismic hazard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore the paper used to obtain the oddly specific local magnitude of 8.2 seems to express caution about the evidence for the dates and sizes of earthquake reports like &quot;Old Jerusalem&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems likely that all the evidence for an earthquake at the time of the Crucifixion is derived from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://legacy.esvbible.org/Matthew%2B27%3A45-54,28:2/&quot;&gt;Gospel of Matthew&lt;/a&gt;.  The authors of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11012-013-9865-x/fulltext.html&quot;&gt;Is the Shroud of Turin in relation to the Old Jerusalem historical earthquake?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; seem to have over-estimated the strength of evidence for such an event.  It is perhaps worthwhile to note that conclusions of the paper depend on the precise timing and strength of the quake.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3252" LastEditorUserId="3252" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T01:32:51.333" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T01:32:51.333" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19513" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-13T01:26:33.513" Score="20" ViewCount="2662" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is commonly believed that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian. Sometimes that is used as some sort of argument-by-association that vegetarianism is a bad idea:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vegetariansareevil.com/hitler.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Vegetarians Are Evil&quot; web-site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adolph (sic) Hitler would have been a model PETA activist.&#xA;  Adolph Hitler was a vegetarian - although it is widely known that in his early years he would have a lapse and indulge in the odd liver dumpling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some, especially vegetarians, who claim this is not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/hitler.html&quot;&gt;Michael Bluejay&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For Hitler, there's no compelling evidence that he stuck with a real veggie diet for any appreciable length of time. Multiple sources document him as eating meat throughout the 1930's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence for Hitler's vegetarianism? If so, was is there any indication as to the motivation and extent of Hitler's vegetarianism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Of course, I do not mean to indicate that Hitler being or not being a vegetarian would be an argument relevant to modern vegetarianism.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17455" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-13T14:11:40.733" LastActivityDate="2020-03-12T16:39:02.057" Title="Was Hitler a vegetarian?" Tags="|history|adolf-hitler|vegetarianism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19353" CreationDate="2014-02-13T06:10:26.087" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some links you might find useful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hackthissite.org/news/view/672&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hackthissite.org, Jeremy's hacking site&lt;/a&gt; - Blog post by the site admins about his detainment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vivien-lesnik-weisman/jeremy-hammond-q-and-a_b_4298969.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Interview with Jeremy&lt;/a&gt; - About halfway down the interview they start to discuss his intentions of the Stratfor incident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might notice it says, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Margaret Ratner Kunstler, Hammond's attorney, clarified that her client did not himself make any donations or use the credit cards. He also did not personally profit from the hacked credit cards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17590" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T06:10:26.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15336" CreationDate="2014-02-13T13:55:48.040" Score="4" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Motto&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;They are white by convention,&#xA;and they heat by convection.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Analysis&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I am sorry this answer is mostly theoretical, however I was unable to find any practical material in this area so far.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question contains a significant misconception, and that is that a heating radiator transfers energy mostly by radiation. As &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia articles describe&lt;/a&gt;, in a typical case it does not work this way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In practice, the term &quot;radiator&quot; refers to any of a number of devices in which a liquid circulates through exposed pipes (often with fins or other means of increasing surface area), notwithstanding that such devices tend to transfer heat mainly by convection and might logically be called convectors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the radiator temperature, most of the radiation happens out of the visible spectrum, therefore visible characteristics of the radiator have almost no effect. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Black-body radiation Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A black-body at room temperature appears black, as most of the energy it radiates is infra-red and cannot be perceived by the human eye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As one can see in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3aBlackbodySpectrum_loglog_150dpi_en.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Black-body spectrum for temperatures between 300 K and 1000 K&lt;/a&gt;, even if the radiator was 227 °C (500 K) hot, its radiation would be well beyond visible spectrum. This can be easily verified by observing radiators in the dark. If there was any emission in the visible spectrum, the radiators would glow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the question does not define radiator efficiency at all. While the term may seem clear and intuitive, in fact it is not. One could say in principle each radiator is 100 % effective, as there is no thermal loss possible (thermal &quot;loss&quot; is the desired property here). It would be possible to define radiator efficiency to be related to the output power, or by the difference between input and output water temperature. In practice it is necessary to consider efficiency of the whole heating system, including the control devices. See also&#xA;quite old &lt;a href=&quot;http://accurateinspection.com/Painting%20Radiators.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Painting Radiators&lt;/a&gt; article (dated July 19, 1935, I did not attempt to verify it the dating is genuine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The heat that is developed by burning fuel is transferred to the rooms by means of the radiators. A radiator&#xA;  neither creates nor destroys heat and a large radiator, while it can put more heat into a room than a small one, must be &#xA;  supplied with all of the heat it puts in. In the sense that they ultimately transfer all the heat supplied into the room, all &#xA;  radiators are 100% efficient. The word &quot;efficiency&quot; is, however, used in other ways, and it is now customary to use it on &#xA;  all possible occasions, but it is hardly correct to say that putting metallic paint on a radiator reduces its efficiency when &#xA;  the effect is merely to reduce its capacity. The size of the radiators in a house can only affect the fuel required for heating &#xA;  by increasing or decreasing the heat wasted in transmission from boiler to radiator and that lost up the chimney. Only &#xA;  when the radiators are so small as to render the whole heating plant ineffective is an appreciable saving of fuel to be &#xA;  expected by installing larger radiators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="79" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2014-02-16T18:44:07.817" LastActivityDate="2014-02-16T18:44:07.817" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19353" CreationDate="2014-02-13T15:47:15.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If only it were so. But no, there are plenty of sources out there that indicate there were other charges made too, such as on Steam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I wouldn't trust a thing Kunstler says on it either. It's her job to try and distort the truth about her client to put him in the best light possible. In an &lt;a href=&quot;http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/the-stream/the-latest/2013/11/12/hacktivism.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Al Jazeera America interview&lt;/a&gt; (where I was another participant having &lt;a href=&quot;http://ktetch.co.uk/2013/10/jeremy-hammond-lulz-ing-in-jail/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;known Hammond 06-10&lt;/a&gt; and targeted by him after an attack on the Political party I work for when it wouldn't become his anarchist haven) , she claimed he wasn't even part of the group until well after the credit card numbers had been stolen and used. The problem is, no good attorney EVER advises their client to plead guilty to something they didn't do, and by all accounts his legal team was top-notch. So either the FBI had plenty of proof, or were plea-bargaining for something bigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problem is, taking credit card numbers and making charges on them is one of his 'things' (along with violence; either directly as with holocaust deniers and Daly Plaza, or indirectly via SWATing), it's what he was convicted of in 06 with Protest Warrior, except he was caught there before he could use it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And even if they did just donate to charity, that's in some ways worse. fraudulent charges hurt charities, and cost them money. So he &quot;stole&quot; from them too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17592" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T15:47:15.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15927" CreationDate="2014-02-13T16:49:53.127" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have any knowledge of this specific case, but according to the fire official quoted in &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.gastongazette.com/spotlight/firefighters-save-puppy-from-fire-speak-to-pet-rescues-1.271483&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, rescuing animals from burning buildings is a routine part of firefighting practice. I see no particular reason to doubt the present claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2014-02-13T16:49:53.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19521" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19538" CreationDate="2014-02-13T20:12:31.403" Score="18" ViewCount="1749" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an article in a recent edition of the Economist surveying Lego, the world's second largest toymaker, the magazine &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/02/daily-chart-8??fsrc=scn/=tw/dc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By 2017 Lego men are expected to outnumber humans&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We've had arguments about Lego on this site before (&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18173/does-the-lego-group-produce-more-tires-than-any-other-tire-manufacturer&quot;&gt;Does The LEGO Group produce more tires than any other tire manufacturer?&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is this claim likely to be correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2020-01-10T17:58:53.780" Title="Will Lego people outnumber people by 2017?" Tags="|population|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19523" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8283" CreationDate="2014-02-13T20:51:17.527" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a retired analytical chemist and over the years I have analysed hundreds of samples for asbestos and been responsible for assessing results of many thousands of samples from a team of analysts.In a small percentage where samples have shown mainly Chrysotile (white) asbestos a very small amount of Crocidolite (blue) was also present. Could this account for white asbestos apparently causing cancer? The appearance of white asbestos fibres is soft and fluffy and those of brown and blue are very sharp needle like. From the appearance alone white asbestos looks less vicious than the other two. The fact that white asbestos slowly dissolves in the lungs also indicates that it is less dangerous. Over the years I have come to the conclusion that the only thing wrong with white asbestos is its name, and that blue and brown asbestos are the real killers.&#xA;Ref&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asbestoswatchdog.co.uk/news/most-recent?NewsTagID=89dc3291-6f32-4747-8141-987aab6da363&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.asbestoswatchdog.co.uk/news/most-recent?NewsTagID=89dc3291-6f32-4747-8141-987aab6da363&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;              andhttp://www.asbestoswatchdog.co.uk/news/most-recent/11-12-2005/Fatal-Cracks-Appear-in-Asbestos-Scam-as-HSE-Shifts-its-Ground&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17596" LastEditorUserId="17596" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T08:43:43.950" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T08:43:43.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19458" CreationDate="2014-02-14T01:04:03.773" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dumb-starbucks-shop-appears-las-678728&quot;&gt;store was opened&lt;/a&gt; that when by the name of &quot;Dumb Starbucks&quot;; however, it was &lt;a href=&quot;http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/02/10/comedy-central-nathan-fielder-dumb-starbucks/&quot;&gt;revealed to be a publicity stunt&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Fielder&quot;&gt;Nathan Fielder&lt;/a&gt; for the show &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_For_You&quot;&gt;Nathan for You&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Comedy Central’s Nathan Fielder revealed Monday that he’s behind Dumb&#xA;  Starbucks, the mystery coffee shop that made its debut in Los Feliz,&#xA;  Calif., over the weekend. Fielder, who’s currently filming the second&#xA;  season of his show Nathan for You, explained that the Los Feliz&#xA;  location of the store — which first garnered attention for its&#xA;  impressive re-creation of the Starbucks logo — will remain open&#xA;  through Friday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Fielder’s show, he helps business owners use funny strategies to&#xA;  try and succeed, though we’re doubting Starbucks is one of his&#xA;  clients. That being said, Fielder is not worried about using the&#xA;  trademarked Starbucks name, considering that what he’s doing is&#xA;  clearly a “parody art.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the store could be considered a business is debatable since they &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scpr.org/news/2014/02/09/42105/dumb-starbucks-mystery-the-real-starbucks-responds/&quot;&gt;gave their product (i.e. the coffee) away for free&lt;/a&gt; and did not appear to be operating as other businesses, specifically, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It also does not have posted in public view a business license, nor a&#xA;  grade for a health inspection, like other coffee shops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shortly after a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo_deCOd1HU&quot;&gt;promotional video&lt;/a&gt; was released on YouTube the store was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-dumb-starbucks-health-shut-down-20140210,0,145994.story#axzz2t1HYRNiG&quot;&gt;shut down for operating without a health permit&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Los Angeles County Health Department shut down the Dumb Starbucks&#xA;  on Monday just as the man behind the faux coffee shop in Los Feliz&#xA;  revealed he was the host of a Comedy Central TV show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The shop was closed for operating without a health permit, the&#xA;  department told The Times. A sign was posted on the front window of&#xA;  the store on Hillhurst Avenue on Monday evening, saying it was closed&#xA;  for violations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the legality of the business in terms of their use of Starbucks logo and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use&quot;&gt;fair use&lt;/a&gt;, Starbucks says that &lt;a href=&quot;http://eater.com/archives/2014/02/10/real-starbucks-dumb-starbucks-cannot-use-our-name.php&quot;&gt;their name cannot be used&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Starbucks has responded to the Los Angeles parody coffee shop/art&#xA;  thing Dumb Starbucks. A spokesperson tells Eater, &quot;We are evaluating&#xA;  next steps and while we appreciate the humor, they cannot use our&#xA;  name, which is a protected trademark.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scpr.org/news/2014/02/10/42115/starbucks-attempts-to-contact-dumb-starbucks/&quot;&gt;legal standing of the store as a parody is being debated&lt;/a&gt; and it is currently unclear how a court case would be resolved,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now that it’s clear Comedy Central was behind the &quot;Dumb Starbucks&quot;&#xA;  saga, UCLA Law Professor Neil Netanel says Starbucks would have a much&#xA;  tougher case should they choose to go after the outlet for trademark&#xA;  infringement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If the use of the Starbucks trademark, the logo and name relates to&#xA;  what the show is about or ties into the theme of the show in some way,&#xA;  then I think they’re [Comedy Central] on safer ground,&quot; Netanel told&#xA;  KPCC's Brian Watt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But, he said, if Comedy Central is using the Starbucks name solely to&#xA;  draw attention to a show that  has nothing to do with Starbucks, the&#xA;  coffee giant could make a credible trademark case against them.  Is it&#xA;  worth it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually determining if the use of Starbucks passes as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use_%28U.S._trademark_law%29&quot;&gt;trademark fair use&lt;/a&gt; is complicated since it would only be &lt;a href=&quot;http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/hilden/20040104.html&quot;&gt;determined in a court case&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A registered trademark holder, by statute, has the right to sue other&#xA;  users of the same trademarked word or phrase for trademark&#xA;  infringement - but only when the other users' &quot;use is likely to cause&#xA;  confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Specifically, the trademark holder must show - according to the Court&#xA;  in K-P Permanent Make-Up Inc. - &quot;that the [other user's] actual&#xA;  practice is likely to produce confusion in the minds of customers&#xA;  about the origin of the goods or services in question.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/metaschool/fisher/domain/tm.htm#10&quot;&gt;parody is a valid defense&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, certain parodies of trademarks may be permissible if they are&#xA;  not too directly tied to commercial use. The basic idea here is that&#xA;  artistic and editorial parodies of trademarks serve a valuable&#xA;  critical function, and that this critical function is entitled to some&#xA;  degree of First Amendment protection. The courts have adopted&#xA;  different ways of incorporating such First Amendment interests into&#xA;  the analysis. For example, some courts have applied the general&#xA;  &quot;likelihood of confusion&quot; analysis, using the First Amendment as a&#xA;  factor in the analysis. Other courts have expressly balanced First&#xA;  Amendment considerations against the degree of likely confusion. Still&#xA;  other courts have held that the First Amendment effectively trumps&#xA;  trademark law, under certain circumstances. In general, however, the&#xA;  courts appear to be more sympathetic to the extent that parodies are&#xA;  less commercial, and less sympathetic to the extent that parodies&#xA;  involve commercial use of the mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of this means that ultimately, without an actual court ruling, whether or not the store is legal from a trademark fair use standpoint is at best &lt;strong&gt;unresolved&lt;/strong&gt;. Although, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/12/dumb-starbucks-trademark-lawyer&quot;&gt;The Guardian did make the following summary&lt;/a&gt; which is worth keeping in mind,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The premise of Fielder’s Comedy Central show, “Nathan for You”, is&#xA;  that he gives terrible advice to small businesses. Whether the legal&#xA;  analysis in the Dumb Starbucks “FAQ” was correct or false became&#xA;  irrelevant. If the advice was correct (that fair use protected the&#xA;  “store” as a parody), then Fielder could operate as “Dumb Starbucks”&#xA;  without infringing on intellectual property. If the analysis was&#xA;  wrong, well, that’s just more of his terrible advice. Either way, Dumb&#xA;  Starbucks had to be fair use legally, because Fielder was making fun&#xA;  of Starbucks, which has a smart intellectual property protection team.&#xA;  “We’re an art gallery, and the coffee we’re selling is considered the&#xA;  art, and art galleries don’t need health permits,” he told Jimmy&#xA;  Kimmel on Tuesday night.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-02-14T01:32:19.807" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T01:32:19.807" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19505" CreationDate="2014-02-14T02:28:13.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did my own table to review pure numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I took the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gallup.com/poll/114211/Alabamians-Iranians-Common.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;top 11, and bottom 11 nations&lt;/a&gt;  by &quot;religiosity&quot; and referenced numbers from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religions_by_country&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's religious numbers&lt;/a&gt; and also added &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#2000s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;murder rates&lt;/a&gt; (most available crime data it seems) and then added in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_percentage_of_population_living_in_poverty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;poverty&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own chart, once complete looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Country Religious   Homicide Rate   Religion    Poverty&#xA;Azerbaijan  96.9    2.2 Muslim  11&#xA;Bangledesh  89.9    2.7 Muslim  26&#xA;Belarus 71.2    4.9 Christian   27.1&#xA;Democratic Republic Congo   95.8    30.8    Christian   71&#xA;Czech Republic  76.4    0.8 Unaffiliated    9&#xA;Denmark 83.5    0.9 Christian   13.4&#xA;Djibouti    96  3.4 Muslim  42&#xA;Egypt   94.9    1.2 Muslim  20&#xA;Estonia 59.6    5.2 Unaffiliated    17.5&#xA;France  63  1.1 Christian   6.2&#xA;Hong Kong   56.1    0.2 Unaffiliated    NA&#xA;Indonesia   87.2    8.1 Muslim  13.33&#xA;Japan   57  0.3 Unaffiliated    16&#xA;Malawi  82.7    36  Christian   53&#xA;Mongolia    55.1    8.7 Buddhist    39.2&#xA;Morocco 99  1.4 Muslim  15&#xA;Norway  84  2.3 Christian   NA&#xA;Senegal 96.4    8.7 Muslim  5.4&#xA;Sierra Leone    78  14.9    Muslim  70.2&#xA;Sri Lanka   69.3    3.6 Buddhist    8.9&#xA;Sweden  67  1   Christian   NA&#xA;United Arab Emirates    79.6    0.8 Muslim  19.5&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Religious in my graph is percentage of the population who are in the majority religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then made this chart, sorted by highest homicide rate, and added in poverty for the sake of seeing other possible ideas / solutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0IWr4.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worth noting is the rate of each religion here too:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;christian   7   31.82&#xA;muslim  9   40.91&#xA;buddhist    2   9.09&#xA;unaffiliated    4   18.18&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the top 5 most homicidal countries, Muslim is on the list twice.&#xA;In the top 11 (half), Muslim slots in 5 times, and 4 times in the bottom 11. This seems pretty even handed to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although Buddhism has 100% of its representation in the top 11! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally, for the sake of mentioning it, unaffiliated is 75% in the least homicidal half of the chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion is that Islam does not lead to higher crime rates. At least not as the sole predictor. If there was a good predictor, from what I gathered above it is poverty. Most likely though, in my opinion the nations with the highest crime rates have a very complex explanation that includes poverty, diversity (or lack thereof), region and religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13521" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T02:28:13.290" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19513" CreationDate="2014-02-14T02:37:13.770" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following photo shows Hitler eating meet with Prime Minister Neville Chamberlin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dDq5o.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, as you can see, Rynn Berry has written a monograph disproving the point, the full text of which can be purchased &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0962616966&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for all the sordid details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://michaelbluejay.com/veg/hitler.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michael Bluejay&lt;/a&gt; also points out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robert Payne is widely considered to be Hitler's definitive biographer. In his book, Hitler: The Life and Death of Adolph Hitler, Payne says that Hitler's &amp;quot;vegetarianism&amp;quot; was a &amp;quot;legend&amp;quot; and a &amp;quot;fiction&amp;quot; invented by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda. According to Payne:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hitler's asceticism played an important part in the image he projected over Germany. According to the widely believed legend, he neither smoked nor drank, nor did he eat meat or have anything to do with women. Only the first was true. He drank beer and diluted wine frequently, had a special fondness for Bavarian sausages and kept a mistress, Eva Braun… His asceticism was fiction invented by Goebbels to emphasize his total dedication, his self-control, the distance that separated him from other men. By this outward show of asceticism, he could claim that he was dedicated to the service of his people. In fact he was remarkably self-indulgent and possessed none of the instincts of the ascetic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5707" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T02:37:13.770" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19535" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-14T15:01:09.827" Score="15" ViewCount="24198" Body="&lt;p&gt;This image is claimed to be of a man holding his own heart after getting a transplant. Is this description true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Zmf2u.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/4funsociety/photos/a.178003795588213.60115.176890359032890/2137353942986512/?type=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.facebook.com/4funsociety/photos/a.178003795588213.60115.176890359032890/2137353942986512/?type=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorDisplayName="user30557" LastEditDate="2016-07-03T21:19:48.947" LastActivityDate="2016-07-03T21:19:48.947" Title="Is this man holding his own heart after getting a transplant?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19521" CreationDate="2014-02-14T19:43:47.890" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://cache.lego.com/r/club/-/media/club/markets/us/inside%20scoop/history%20of%20minifig/history%20of%20the%20minifigure.pdf?l.r=252533808&quot;&gt;LEGO&lt;/a&gt;, in 2003 they had hit the 4,000,000,000 minifigures-produced mark. They were introduced in 1978, and they've added thousands of variations over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that LEGO has produced &gt;560,000,000,000 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego#cite_note-3&quot;&gt;total items&lt;/a&gt; (or about 80 LEGO bricks/objects per human currently living), it seems highly reasonable to believe that they may hit ~8,000,000,000 minifigures by 2017-2019 (the &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/1281&quot;&gt;XKCD&lt;/a&gt; reference calculates 2019).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, whether they &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; or not is another story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, counting those minifigures &lt;em&gt;still in existence&lt;/em&gt; vs the total population of &lt;em&gt;produced&lt;/em&gt; minifigs is more-or-less impossible to verify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="637" LastActivityDate="2014-02-14T19:43:47.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19535" CreationDate="2014-02-14T21:09:14.270" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears to be true.  After finding a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/uudmk/just_my_friend_holding_his_own_heart_nbd_xpost/&quot;&gt;Reddit thread&lt;/a&gt; and reading through the comments I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/uudmk/just_my_friend_holding_his_own_heart_nbd_xpost/c4ytenj&quot;&gt;a post&lt;/a&gt; by a user name XanderLink.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hello all. Please allow me to introduce myself. My real name is&#xA;  Brandon but I go by Xander. I am the 19 year old in the picture above&#xA;  that so many of you seem to be skeptical of. On October 13, 2011, I&#xA;  received a heart transplant at Duke University as a result of&#xA;  Congestive Heart Failure, Tachycardia, Atrial Fibrilation, Atrial&#xA;  Flutter, and Viral Cardiomyopathy. I was the 838th heart transplant at&#xA;  Duke University since Duke started transplants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I know this may seem hard to believe, but I invite you to visit my&#xA;  facebook page and read my note titled &quot;My Story.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;www.facebook.com/xanderlink81&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/xanderlink81&quot;&gt;XanderLink's  link&lt;/a&gt; (Not sure if that is his real name or stage name.  He appears to be in the music industry.) I was able to find the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151137238275223&amp;amp;set=pb.723335222.-2207520000.1392411462.&amp;amp;type=3&amp;amp;theater&quot;&gt;original picture&lt;/a&gt;. he also has a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/notes/xander-link/my-story/10150575413865535&quot;&gt;Facebook note&lt;/a&gt; explaining his story.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  After researching this a bit more I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/woman-holds-her-own-heart-following-successful-heart-transplant-surgery-photo-1023986&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; from International Business Times. It is about a woman who was holding her own heart after a transplant surgery.  In the story it talks about the Reddit thread and the picture you were questioning.  The story said the man in the picture was Brian Linkenhoker.  The article had his name wrong.  It is Brandon Linkenhoker and it appears that he is the man in the photo and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/Courage.Hope.Future&quot;&gt;has since passed away&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, with the evidence available, it appears to be a true story and a real picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8691" LastEditorUserId="8691" LastEditDate="2014-02-24T16:28:27.303" LastActivityDate="2014-02-24T16:28:27.303" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19538" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19521" CreationDate="2014-02-14T22:46:38.003" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the time of this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.planitnorthwest.com/shopping/pdfs/legolandfunfacts.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lego Fun Facts PDF&lt;/a&gt; from 2009, there were at least 4 billion minifigs that had been produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They sell 3.9 minifigs/second which is 122,990,400 per year. (3.9/second * 60 seconds* 60 mintues * 24 hours * 365 days in a year)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there were 4 billion in 2009 + 1,229,904,000 (10 years * 122,990,400 figs/year) = 5,229,904,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://esa.un.org/wpp/Excel-Data/EXCEL_FILES/1_Population/WPP2012_POP_F01_1_TOTAL_POPULATION_BOTH_SEXES.XLS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UN prediction&lt;/a&gt;, the world population in 2019 would be 7,641,372,898 which is considerably higher than the 5,229,904,000 figure for Lego minifigs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors of the PDF were Julie Stern and Karen Lynch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Julie Stern's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/pub/julie-stern/8/358/606&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Linked In profile&lt;/a&gt; shows her as being a Brand Relations Manager for Lego from 2002-2011.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/in/karenclynch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Karen Lynch&lt;/a&gt;, now known as Karen Nolan, works for Flashpoint PR which is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://flashpointpr.com/cases/view/lego&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PR firm that Lego uses&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to your question would be that the claim is incorrect. But keep in mind that my figures were calculated using the rate as which Lego sold minifigs in 2009, not produced, as this was the only figure I could find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional calculations to see when the minifigs might overtake the human population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2029 World - 8,464,764,831  Minifig - 6,459,808,000&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  2039 World - 9,254,752,148  MiniFig - 7,689,712,000&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  2049 World - 10,117,522,812  MiniFig - 8,919,616,000&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  2059 World - 11,132,821,140  MiniFig - 10,149,520,000&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  2069 World - 12,434,173,955  MiniFig - 11,379,424,000&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  2079 World - 14,169,449,904  MiniFig - 12,609,328,000&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since I am not able to make assumptions about how the minifig production rate may/may not increase I decided to stop as this point as the rate of the population growth per decade was higher than the calculated minifigs/decade rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8691" LastEditorUserId="22682" LastEditDate="2020-01-10T17:58:53.780" LastActivityDate="2020-01-10T17:58:53.780" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19539" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22823" CreationDate="2014-02-15T04:59:49.950" Score="24" ViewCount="22739" Body="&lt;p&gt;This quote is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alberteins107012.html&quot;&gt;attributed to Einstein&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did he say it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14324" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T15:36:09.067" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T07:51:24.163" Title="Einstein: &quot;Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.&quot;" Tags="|quotes|albert-einstein|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19546" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-16T16:04:35.577" Score="9" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://reporting.bsa.org/r/report/add.aspx?src=us&amp;amp;ln=en-us&quot;&gt;BSA form&lt;/a&gt; claims that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1 in 5 pieces of software in the US are unlicensed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How true is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-11T07:12:25.877" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T07:12:25.877" Title="Are 1 in 5 pieces of software in the US unlicensed?" Tags="|united-states|computers|software|copyright|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19553" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-17T01:17:08.220" Score="27" ViewCount="72304" Body="&lt;p&gt;This picture is from &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_J._Miller&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Emily Miller&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/EmilyMillerDC&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Facebook page&lt;/a&gt; shows one lung divided into two parts one labeled Tobacco and one labeled Marijuana. The Marijuana side is substantially less-healthy looking and the the picture's caption reads,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Marijuana deposits four times more tar in the lungs than tobacco&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QtL28m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Picture of lungs&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=673609002698012&amp;amp;set=a.130184107040507.22278.121020287956889&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;You can find the post here (dated Feb 5, 2013)&lt;/a&gt;, Emily comments on it,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Obama hails CVS for stopping selling tobacco products but has no trouble with smoking marijuana. This photo from&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was able to find &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/DrugFreeAmericaFndn/posts/745091392181887?comment_id=7590718&amp;amp;offset=0&amp;amp;total_comments=8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drug Free America Foundation's original post of the picture here (also dated Feb 5)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:14:40.867" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T22:41:28.003" Title="Does Marijuana deposit four times the tar in the lungs as tobacco?" Tags="|environmental-health|marijuana|tobacco|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4298" CreationDate="2014-02-17T10:29:54.500" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR: There is a basis of fact in claims that sex existed in the geisha world. However, it is not always the case.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Geishas are trained in a variety of art forms (&quot;Geisha&quot; literally means &quot;Artist&quot;) that prostitutes would not be trained in. So in that sense, geishas are not prostitutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is sex a part of their work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia is a tertiary source, often edited by people with widely diverging views, who insert claims that fit into their opinions on the subject. As a result, some parts of an article are not entirely consistent with other parts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the case of geishas, the variety of claims is not the result of Wikipedia having a poor editorial process. Even secondary sources written by a single author, such as Liza Dalby's &quot;Geisha&quot;, say that it is a complex issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liza_Dalby#Geisha&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Geisha&lt;/a&gt;, Dalby mentions in a number of places a variety of factors that can influence whether sex is involved in being a geisha. This includes the time period you are examining, whether you're looking at geishas who live in major cities versus onsen town geishas, and even which geishas districts you are in for a given city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's stated that the role of sex varies between geisha districts (hanamachi) on page 6:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Midori's natural mother was a retired geisha in the nearby area of&#xA;  Miyagawa-chō, one of the six recognized geisha communities&#xA;  (hanamachi) in Kyoto. Why didn't Midori become a geisha there? I&#xA;  wondered. This was the sort of thing one could not inquire about&#xA;  directly but about which my okāsan, ex-geisha, mistress of an elegant&#xA;  inn, and pillar of the Pontochō community, could enlighten me as we&#xA;  had tea in the afternoon or snacks late at night after a party at her&#xA;  establishment, the Mitsuba.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You're making a study of this, Kikuko,&quot; she said, using my ordinary&#xA;  and familiar Japanese name, &quot;so you should know about Miyagawa-chō.&#xA;  There's a word called 'double registration' - that's what many of the&#xA;  geisha in areas like that are. You can call them geisha if you like,&#xA;  but they do a bit more than dance for the customers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Notes section] &quot;Double registration&quot; (nimae kansatsu) dates from the&#xA;  days when prostitution was legal in Japan. Prostitutes had to be&#xA;  licensed as such, and geisha were licensed as geisha. A woman could&#xA;  not hold both licenses, so double registration became the derogatory&#xA;  description for a geisha who slept around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's stated that the role of sex has varied over time. On page 116:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sex undoubtedly used to be simpler in the geisha world. A maiko was a&#xA;  maiden, and her sexual initiation was part of becoming a full geisha.&#xA;  Ordinary girls put aside their swinging sleeve kimonos when they&#xA;  married; maiko put aside theirs when they graduated into geisha. In&#xA;  both cases, adulthood presumed sexual experience. A virgin geisha&#xA;  would have been as odd as a virgin wife. Now, however, freedom of&#xA;  choice has muddled these once straightforward categories. I know a&#xA;  maiko who has stolen away to meet her young boyfriend in one of the&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_hotel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hotels&lt;/a&gt; that offer special day rates. On the other hand, Ichiume&#xA;  and Ichiteru passed into geishahood with maidenheads intact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Geisha generally know more about sex than housewives do, but a man who&#xA;  thinks of a geisha's gei [art] as rampant eroticism will be&#xA;  disappointed. Even in the long-gone era of licensed [pleasure]&#xA;  quarters, geisha were not the foremost sexual adepts. The appeal of a&#xA;  romantic entanglement with a geisha has always embraced more than sex.&#xA;  [Words in square brackets added]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On pages leading up to the following quote, there was the description of the host of a geisha event helpfully describing mizuage to Dalby. Dalby's matter-of-fact description of how older geishas feel about the topic makes it seem like someone describing reality, rather than feeding the reader's preconceptions back to them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What about now?&quot; I asked, seeing this as a chance to find out more&#xA;  about sex in the geisha world - a topic that geisha are understandably&#xA;  touchy about. &quot;It's all changed now,&quot; said the okaasan. &quot;There's no&#xA;  mizu-age ceremony any more, with or without eggs. All the maiko have&#xA;  been through junior high school, so they aren't as ignorant as we were&#xA;  - right, Ichiume? They pretty much pick their own boyfriends  and patrons when they're ready. That's not the same as mizu-age.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I sensed a faint embarrassment in a few of the older geisha as the&#xA;  curious young ones listened. Today geisha and women in general have&#xA;  more control over their sexuality. Older geisha automatically say how&#xA;  wonderful it is that their daughters do not have to submit to&#xA;  mizu-age. Yet this means that their own experiences, far from being a&#xA;  useful guide to the younger women, are dismissed as &quot;feudalistic&quot; - a&#xA;  term used in Japanese not only in a political sense, but also to refer&#xA;  to any practice considered passe, unenlightened, or simply&#xA;  unfashionable. I often found that the older geisha spoke more freely&#xA;  about sex when the young women were not present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Liza Dalby's okāsan was a genuine geisha. She wasn't a prostitute who put on a kimono and pretended to be a geisha. She's as real as real can get, and probably as prestigious and up-market as any.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On page 173, Dalby talks about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onsen_geisha&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;onsen geisha&lt;/a&gt;. To answer the question &quot;Are they still considered geisha?&quot;, Dalby says they are, but that combining different categories of geisha is ludicrous. Before the quoted section, she talks about some derogatory terms for geishas, including &quot;Korobi&quot; (roll-over) geisha and &quot;Daruma&quot; geisha (named after &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daruma_doll&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daruma dolls&lt;/a&gt;, which go horizontal very easily).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The more I found out about the geisha world, literally the world of&#xA;  flowers and willows, the more diverse it appeared. But soon I&#xA;  understood one thing. The common misunderstandings and arguments about&#xA;  the connection between geisha and prostitution springs from an&#xA;  indiscriminate collapsing of categories of geisha. Whereas in one&#xA;  sense we may speak of a Kyoto apprentice and an onsen geisha in the&#xA;  same breath as part of Japan's living geisha tradition, in another&#xA;  sense combining them at all is ludicrous. When I began my detailed&#xA;  look into the various characteristics that differentiate geisha - the&#xA;  part of the country where they work, the prestige of their particular&#xA;  hamamachi, their ages and so on - it became clear that I was dealing&#xA;  with a very complicated phenomenon indeed, and that making an easy&#xA;  general statement about &quot;the geisha&quot; would inevitably be misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When stating that variations exist over time, or between different geisha districts, my intention is not to say that sex always exists in some circumstances, and never in others, but merely that it is a complex issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book &quot;Autobiography of a Geisha&quot; (not related to the book &quot;Memoirs of a Geisha&quot;) provides a first-hand account of someone who was a geisha for part of her life. She had to do sex as part of being a geisha. I have not read the book yet, but a couple of reviews of the book note that she underwent mizuage a total of five times, even though it's supposed to only happen once. &lt;a href=&quot;http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-12950-3/autobiography-of-a-geisha&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This review&lt;/a&gt; notes that she learnt several geisha arts, such as dance, song, shamisen, and song, so she wasn't just a prostitute pretending to be a geisha.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a counter-example based on personal experience, I had dinner with two geishas, plus a translator, in Aizuwakamatsu, Fukushima prefecture. They did not have sex with me. Instead, the geishas performed two dances (one for me, a guy, and one for my translator, who was female), played a variety of ozashiki asobi (geisha games) with me and the translator, and talked a lot. A further description is available on &lt;a href=&quot;https://travel.stackexchange.com/a/14233/324&quot;&gt;Travel Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt;, and on &lt;a href=&quot;http://lang-8.com/424295/journals/265902987670208303733747739360134755206&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;lang-8.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:01.993" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T10:29:54.500" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19553" CreationDate="2014-02-17T11:08:17.050" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://adai.uw.edu/marijuana/factsheets/respiratoryeffects.htm&quot;&gt;it does&lt;/a&gt;, approximately 3 times that amount by weight, but that's not the whole story.  You should consider other factors too in determining whether this means it is more harmful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, when people smoke cannabis leaves or buds, they smoke them in a rolled cigarette which is usually larger than a tobacco cigarette.  This would suggest that not only does cannabis smoke contain more tar, but that cannabis users inhale more smoke.  In the outset, this seems worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider also, however, that cannabis smoking is often a social activity, and that people may not actually smoke much of a joint to themselves in the main.  It may also be the case that cannabis smokers may not smoke as often as cigarette smokers.  Both of these facts may suggest that cannabis users don't typically inhale as much tar overall, as actual amount of smoke inhaled could well be 1/3rd or less of the smoke inhalation of a regular smoker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Equally, a portion of cannabis smokers will also smoke tobacco.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In considering the content of tar, you may also consider that low-tar cigarettes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/healthyliving/smokingandtobacco/filtersandlowtarcigarettes/&quot;&gt;haven't be shown to actually reduce risk of cancer&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3644019&quot;&gt;hasn't been shown to reduce emphysema either.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic conclusion of this is that yes, we know that cannabis smoke contains more tar, but we don't know that that makes it more harmful, nor do we know whether cannabis users actually inhale more tar, even though cannabis contains more.  The answer to your question is yes, but whether or not the difference in tar content impacts health is undetermined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17358" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T11:08:17.050" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18679" CreationDate="2014-02-17T11:24:38.907" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;'Cold' is just a name given to the rhinoviruses that cause cold symptoms, the idea that going out into the cold would cause a cold was just a traditional idea, not necessarily based on anything other than biased observations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/features/cold-and-flu-iq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All this said, it is true that colds, and more specifically flu, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_season&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;are more prevalent in winter months&lt;/a&gt;, and that this is true, even in opposite hemispheres of the planet, where winter occurs at opposite times of year.  This provable seasonality of flu doesn't show that the cold temperature causes flu, though.  It could be that cold weather aligns with flu season because, for instance, people stay indoors, together, incubating viruses during this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17358" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T11:24:38.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19562" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="976" CreationDate="2014-02-17T16:29:28.990" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the BBC article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26222578&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Missouri gun murders 'rose after law repeal'&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reporting soon in the Journal of Urban Health, the researchers will say that the [gun control law's] repeal resulted in an &lt;strong&gt;immediate spike in gun violence and murders&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study links the abandonment of the background check to an additional 60 or so murders occurring per year in Missouri between 2008 and 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Coincident exactly with the policy change, there was an &lt;strong&gt;immediate upward trajectory to the homicide rates&lt;/strong&gt; in Missouri,&amp;quot; said Prof Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like the paper cited has sensible controls for the conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;That upward trajectory did not happen with homicides that did not involve guns; it did not occur to any neighbouring state; the national trend was doing the opposite – it was trending downward; and it was not specific to one or two localities – it was, for the most part, state-wide,&amp;quot; he told BBC News.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The team said it took account of changes that occurred in policing levels and incarceration rates, trends in burglaries, and statistically controlled for other possible confounding factors such as shifts in unemployment and poverty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the BBC the underlying study is to-be reported in the Journal of Urban Health. If vetted, the study would be compelling evidence that the absence of gun control laws correlates with higher gun violence and murders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt; Referencing CBC story &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/mass-shootings-in-the-u-s-guns-glory-broken-dreams-1.3203335&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mass shootings in the U.S.: Guns, glory, broken dreams &lt;em&gt;A new study sheds light on why mass shootings in the U.S. are 'an exceptionally American problem'&lt;/em&gt;, Aug 25, 2015&lt;/a&gt;.  This article states that Adam Lankford recently presented at the American Sociological Association's conference the results along the lines of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using data compiled by the New York City Police Department in its 2012 report on active shooting incidents in the U.S. and around the world, as well as data from a 2014 FBI report, Lankford determined that the U.S. had 90 mass shooting incidents during that time frame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;America's &lt;strong&gt;gun culture and the widespread availability of firearms, contributes to the country's mass shooting problem&lt;/strong&gt;, the study says. It found that American mass shooters were more likely to arm themselves with multiple weapons, though they killed fewer people than shooters in other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Lankford's study suggested a strong link between the civilian firearm ownership rate and the number of public mass shooters in the United States, he said &lt;strong&gt;there could be other factors&lt;/strong&gt; that make the U.S. especially prone to public mass shooting incidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;America puts &lt;strong&gt;more pressure on its citizens to succeed professionally and financially&lt;/strong&gt; than other countries, Lankford discusses in his study, and when Americans have bad experiences at work or school and fail to achieve their goals, they are more likely to &lt;strong&gt;respond with acts of violence&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there's also the &lt;strong&gt;idolization of fame&lt;/strong&gt;, which appears uniquely American, according to Lankford. Increasingly in the U.S., especially among young people, becoming famous is considered the ultimate form of success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Unfortunately, &lt;strong&gt;due to some combination of strains, mental illness and American idolization of fame&lt;/strong&gt;, some mass shooters succumb to terrible delusions of grandeur, and &lt;strong&gt;seek fame and glory through killing&lt;/strong&gt;,&amp;quot; his study says. They realize that the only way they will become a household name is by killing innocent people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is all to say, according to the article and the underlying study the exceptionally high number of American gun massacres is linked to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gun prevalence,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gun culture,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;mental illness,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cultural expectations for success, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;desire for fame.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is to say: Gun control would reduce the prevalence, but I think it is fair to say that one should be cautious of using gun control as a solution because the underlying demand for mass murders in America will remain (as created by mental illness, cultural expectations, and desire for fame).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-08-28T15:22:52.230" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19569" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-17T18:06:02.557" Score="8" ViewCount="1402" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several TV chefs including, the late Julia Child, have advised against pouring liquor directly from the bottle to a pan to be ignited, as 'flames could travel up the stream and ignite the bottle' causing damage, injury or death. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there documented cases of this happening or is this simply &quot;lawyering up&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Carl D" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-18T02:16:32.513" LastActivityDate="2017-05-15T10:57:46.690" Title="Is pouring liquor from a bottle onto a flambé an explosion risk?" Tags="|environmental-health|chemistry|cooking|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19569" CreationDate="2014-02-17T21:33:19.077" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Flame can travel up the stream, that is not news. There are many hospital admissions every year from people trying to add some meths (ethanol + methanol, &quot;lighter fluid&quot; in USA) direct from bottle to the BBQ to get it going properly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem occurs more often if the bottle has a wide opening, then you get easy flame transfer up the stream and into bottle. The expanding gases of the flame pushes out the rest of the fuel. Very ugly!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a smaller bottle opening this effect is somewhat reduced (hence USA &quot;lighter fluid&quot; sold in squirt bottle), or using a &quot;nip&quot; pourer on a liquor bottle. But it is still a problem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Liquor is typically around 40% alcohol, so less violent, but still very hazardous. Do what chefs do, and pour out a measured amount into a small glass (they have to account for the cost too)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2175896/Family-suffer-horrific-burns-set-alight-holiday-waiter-tried-flamb-fish-table.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dailymail - Family suffer horrific burns from flambe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3444" OwnerDisplayName="TFD" LastActivityDate="2014-02-17T21:39:57.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19572" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-17T22:52:29.487" Score="4" ViewCount="12462" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've all seen ads for it but do any products actually work? There used to be more information on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3aPenis_enlargement#STOP_REMOVING_LEGITIMATE_INFORMATION&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; about this but since has been removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard a number of claims penile traction devices work to straighten curved penis but have not found any proof of this. The closest I've come is &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2008.00814.x/abstract;jsessionid=16E5269CA72E96760D120168F3F51543.f04t04&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt; written by a doctor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17667" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-02-18T00:32:15.167" LastActivityDate="2017-06-16T04:19:06.803" Title="Do penile traction devices work to straighten curved penises?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19573" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-18T00:44:58.373" Score="21" ViewCount="2225" Body="&lt;p&gt;One often hears that diamonds &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gemsociety.org/article/are-diamonds-really-rare/&quot;&gt;aren't&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080218200007AAwdvuG&quot;&gt;rare&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://knowledgenuts.com/2013/08/29/diamonds-arent-rare-at-all/&quot;&gt;at&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5kWu1ifBGU&quot;&gt;all&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon closer inspection, such claims appear to actually state that diamonds cost more than their abundance alone would account for. Sources that outright claim that diamonds are common don't seem to have anything to back it up with. Plus, most sources that state numbers tend to state how many are &lt;strong&gt;mined&lt;/strong&gt;, which is a meaningless number when one considers the possibility of artificially limiting the supply to inflate prices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, on a scale of iron being common (~50000 ppm in Earth's crust) and gold being rare (~0.005 ppm), are gem-quality diamonds rare in Earth's crust?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2017-05-03T01:41:25.017" LastActivityDate="2021-04-06T07:59:23.073" Title="Are gem-quality diamonds common?" Tags="|geology|gemology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19577" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19579" CreationDate="2014-02-18T08:22:20.723" Score="5" ViewCount="1545" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been a few videos around since as far back as 2010 that people can run on water. This is less commonly called Liquid Mountaineering. This is apparently a new sport, but I have only ever seen videos of people doing this, e.g &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe3St1GgoHQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Walk on water (Liquid Mountaineering)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mythbusters tried this and they came to the conclusion that this myth was &amp;quot;busted&amp;quot;, but as we should all know, we should not take what these guys do as a bible. The myth here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160104212326/http://mythbustersresults.com/running-on-water&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Episode 162: Running on Water&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a lot of debate over this in comments of the running on water videos, as you can hide a platform under the water which will make you look like you are running on water, for example. This means it could be a simple illusion of running on water rather than actually running on water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Definition of &amp;quot;Running on water&amp;quot;:&lt;/strong&gt; Running on water is the art of running un-supported on water, to remain on top of the water for a given series of steps on the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15830" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-10-25T14:44:20.057" LastActivityDate="2022-10-25T14:49:24.560" Title="Can people run on water?" Tags="|physics|water|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19577" CreationDate="2014-02-18T10:39:00.460" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, not in the sense that you mean.  It isn't only Mythbusters that have debunked this one. Even if your feet only make contact for a brief moment, the weight of a human, plus the weight distribution of a person makes balancing on a dynamic very difficult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further explanation here in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/digital/fact-vs-fiction/water-runner-physics-debunked&quot;&gt;Popular Mechanics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Walking on water is a popular magic trick, but it's nothing more than a cleverly established illusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Walking, or something akin to walking, on water is possible if it is combined with something like cornflour (Cornstarch for the Americans) to create a non-newtonian fluid, but this is not not exactly water, and not exactly running!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17358" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T10:39:00.460" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19577" CreationDate="2014-02-18T14:48:29.533" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, that video was made as a publicity stunt by a shoe manufacturer to promote their water-proof shoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7bjT0ypsNIo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Making Of Hi Tec Liquid Mountaineering&lt;/a&gt; is a video they later uploaded revealing how they made the video, using hidden platforms below the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can, however, run on water if you add some cornflour into the water, resulting in a non-Newtonian fluid. There are several videos of this around on the internet.  (EG &lt;a href=&quot;https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q-DZ0f0_NCA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;These People Are Walking On Water&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-10-25T14:49:24.560" LastActivityDate="2022-10-25T14:49:24.560" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19572" CreationDate="2014-02-18T15:48:12.957" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although any internet search for anything penis-related results in a deluge of useless adverts and claims, there are genuine studies which have concluded that traction devices have an effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2008.00814.x/abstract;jsessionid=AC57256AB997428D9D90ECA96DB75A35.f01t04?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; notes an average curvature change of 33% from a group trying the FastSize Penile Extender, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2011.02519.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; found a lower proportion of success, with only 54% of participants responding to treatment of traction and verapamil injections, but those who responded achieved a 26 degree correction on average, which is not insignificant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2924711/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;All&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.expert-reviews.com/doi/abs/10.1586/17434440.5.3.305&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;of&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/19138361&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;these&lt;/a&gt; studies also find at least some positive affect of traction therapy for curvature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Caveats:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Two of the studies mentioned refer specifically to the &lt;em&gt;FastSize&lt;/em&gt; device in their titles, which could indicate that they were in fact funded by &lt;em&gt;FastSize&lt;/em&gt; themselves.  Consider these results critically.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/19138361&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Only one study&lt;/a&gt; significantly expressed the long term affects after cessation of therapy.  Whilst this study showed a similar achievement of correction immediately after the 6 month study period, results varied after cessation of traction for a further 6 months, with some participants reporting a return to their previous state.  This could suggest that the affects of penile traction for correcting curvature are temporary or sometimes temporary, and that permanent results could only be achieved with long term or even permanent use of traction.  This same study also notes that long term results were of minimal difference, but that the selection of participants may have been a factor in this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The overall conclusion of the studies mentioned is that traction makes some difference, but no study could conclude a definitive and extensive long term result - the possibility of which seems more hit and miss according to the one study that addressed it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Google Scholar search for &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=penile%20traction%20curvature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Penile traction curvature'&lt;/a&gt; yielded slightly over 2 thousand results, so further literature is available for review, and a proper literature review may yield firmer and more definite results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17358" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-18T15:48:12.957" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19587" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19590" CreationDate="2014-02-19T04:12:16.167" Score="12" ViewCount="2435" Body="&lt;p&gt;For most internet users, the public web, accessible by search engines like Google, is the beginning and the end of the Internet.  More savvy users understand that there are large numbers of sites that are not accessible by Google, and are accessible only through browsers like Tor.  Collectively, this is called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Web&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deep Web&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, in Season 2 of &lt;em&gt;House of Cards&lt;/em&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2014/02/house-of-cards-season-2-episode-3-doormats-and-matadors-laws-and-sausages.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Deep Web even makes an appearance&lt;/a&gt;, and the screen clearly shows the Tor Browser being used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=jep;view=text;rgn=main;idno=3336451.0007.104&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper at the University of Michigan&lt;/a&gt; specifically states the deep web is orders of magnitude larger than the surface web.  To wit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Public information on the deep Web is currently 400 to 550 times larger than the commonly defined World Wide Web.&#xA;The deep Web contains 7,500 terabytes of information compared to nineteen terabytes of information in the surface Web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's my issue - when I've tried out Tor, the lack of a search engine that actually returns results makes me wonder how they gathered that data.  So, in addition to testing the veracity of the claim that the Deep Web is orders of magnitude larger than the surface web, how do researchers actually prove this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And how can I get something other than a broken link if I want to see for myself?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5707" LastEditorUserId="39658" LastEditDate="2023-06-13T14:32:48.587" LastActivityDate="2023-06-13T14:32:48.587" Title="Is the Deep Web orders of magnitude larger than the surface web?" Tags="|internet|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19588" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-19T05:35:20.037" Score="14" ViewCount="936" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/news/swiss-fighters-office-hours-514/&quot;&gt;http://rt.com/news/swiss-fighters-office-hours-514/&lt;/a&gt; on a recent emergency:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Swiss airforce is only available during office hours. These are&#xA;  reported to be from 8am until noon, then 1:30 to 5pm.&#xA;       So, if planning an aerial invasion of Switzerland, nights, weekends, and lunchtimes are probably your best bet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many news sources joke/claim that Switzerland is vulnerable to an aerial attack outside &lt;strong&gt;office hours&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the reality? An actual vulnerability? Or did they have complete control over the situation due to alliances with France and Italy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6227" LastEditorUserId="34347" LastEditDate="2019-08-18T11:24:33.357" LastActivityDate="2019-08-18T11:24:33.357" Title="Is Switzerland vulnerable to aerial threats outside office hours?" Tags="|military|switzerland|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19589" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19591" CreationDate="2014-02-19T10:38:07.413" Score="0" ViewCount="400" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Canada, are Safeway and Thrifty Foods owned by the same company? I find this hard to believe but was told this by an employee who worked at Safeway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobeys&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; here it seems Thrifty Foods is owned by Sobeys who bought out the Canadian chain of Safeway, so I guess the answer is yes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In June 2013, Sobeys announced the purchase of Safeway's Canadian&#xA;  operations for $5.8 billion, subject to regulatory approval. The&#xA;  acquisition will add Safeway's 214 locations, primarily located in&#xA;  Western Canada, to its portfolio. Sobeys has not yet determined&#xA;  whether it will maintain the Safeway brand post-acquisition.[5] In&#xA;  August 2013, Sobeys sold the land under 68 Safeways to Crombie REIT&#xA;  for $900 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T11:23:07.430" Title="In Canada, are Safeway and Thrifty Foods owned by the same company?" Tags="|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19587" CreationDate="2014-02-19T11:08:11.567" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The paper you link to is referring to 'Deep Web' meaning unindexed data, and it's claims may be roughly correct in this sense - at the time it was published.  It's not referring to the Tor based network of hidden sites you also mention, however.  The term DarkNet is often used for these sites, so for clarity, I will refer to 'Deep Web' when discussing normal web content that is unindexed, and DarkNet when referring to encrypted, hidden, anonymised websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Deep Web as unindexed pages&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper you refer to is actually from 2001, and also seems to be a founding basis for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Web&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Wikipedia page on Deep Web&lt;/a&gt;.  Because the paper is so old now, the likelihood of it's estimates being still correct, or even of the proportions of information being correct is in my opinion, remote.  Opinions aside, the paper is very out of date, and a more up to date reference would be needed to estimate the size of indexed vs non indexed data on the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Darknets&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anonymised proxy delivered websites, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road_%28marketplace%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Silk Road&lt;/a&gt; and it's ilk, are the sites delivered over Tor and similar relays using obscure urls like &lt;a href=&quot;https://silkroad3dff81.onion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://silkroad3dff81.onion&lt;/a&gt; (deliberately not the actual Silk Road URL, although even the real one would be useless now it has been closed).  These are more correctly known as DarkNets, or Dark Internet, although the terminology gets a bit mixed up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Size of Darknet&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've looked through as much as I possibly can in the time I have on how big the DarkNet actually is, that is to say, how much data on the internet is stored in DarkNets.  The search has been rather problematic, as most articles that are most prominent on the internet are actually quoting the 7.5TB or a reduction of this to a percentage, multiple etc. and this came from the orignal 2001 paper, you refer to, which can't be referring to Tor based Darknets, as it was published &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28anonymity_network%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one year before Tor was launched&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only practical way to measure the DarkNet, because the information is encrypted whilst passed, is by network analysis, which will only ever be a rough estimate (much encrypted data will not be DarkNet traffic).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?tp=&amp;amp;arnumber=4068042&amp;amp;url=http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4068042&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This IEEE paper&lt;/a&gt; covers an approach to measuring the DarkNet, but does not offer an actual figure for either bandwidth usage, or data stored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The inherent problem of this question is that you are asking the size of hidden and secret data.  To really size it, you'd need to be able to see it all, and even if you could, you couldn't know that there wasn't more information you were unable to see.  So the answer is that the estimates given by journalist constantly are probably wrong, the size is probably changing all the time, and the size of the DarkNet is basically indeterminate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also of interest is &lt;a href=&quot;http://dreadedmonkeygod.net/home/attachments/darknet5.doc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;, which refers to the technical plausibility of growth of the DarkNet, concluding that growth is very possible, and likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17358" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T00:20:41.783" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19589" CreationDate="2014-02-19T11:23:07.430" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, to start off, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sobeys.com/en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sobey's is the owner of Thrifty Foods, as confirmed by their about page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://business.financialpost.com/2013/11/04/sobeys-completes-5-8-billion-purchase-of-safeway/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sobey's did buy Safeway&lt;/a&gt;, for $5.8Bn in 2013, however &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sobeys.com/en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;their website&lt;/a&gt; doesn't list it amongst their brands (see the footer), and various business news articles mention the selling of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/sobeys-to-sell-23-stores-in-safeway-deal-1.2159468&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Safeway stores&lt;/a&gt; following intervention by the Competition Bureau in Canada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basic conclusion:  Sobey's do indeed own both, but the acquistion of Safeway led to unforeseen regulatory problems, that may change the situation somewhat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17358" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T11:23:07.430" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19593" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-19T13:53:05.690" Score="6" ViewCount="557" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people claim that taking vitamin can improve your memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.memory-improvement-tips.com/vitamins-for-memory.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Memory Improvement Tips&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone has heard there are vitamins and supplements that can improve your memory and other brain functions. Research indicates this may be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to list three:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B VITAMINS. Research shows that B vitamins improve memory by creating a protective shield for the neurons in the brain. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ANTIOXIDANTS. Vitamins C, E, and beta carotene are antioxidants and are also important vitamins for memory. [...] Antioxidant vitamins and memory are linked because the damage free radicals do can impare the functioning of the neurons in your brain. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OMEGA FATTY ACIDS. Omega-3 fatty acids are not really &amp;quot;vitamins&amp;quot; as such, but important fat molecules that enhance memory and brain function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there vitamins that help improve memory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17695" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T11:57:47.777" Title="Do vitamins improve memory abilities?" Tags="|biology|memory|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19594" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-19T15:17:38.440" Score="1" ViewCount="1090" Body="&lt;p&gt;People who attend Pentecostal churches speak in tongues which is also called glossolalia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it for real or do they just fake it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13992" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T15:35:02.750" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T16:09:22.097" Title="Is speaking in tongues real?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19595" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19594" CreationDate="2014-02-19T15:59:33.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I will quote the Wikipedia article on this topic because I believe its content is uncontroversial and it is well supported by references, some of which I repeat inline here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Glossolalia&amp;amp;oldid=596026302&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Glossolalia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... glossolalic speech does resemble human language in some respects. The speaker uses accent, rhythm, intonation and pauses to break up the speech into distinct units. Each unit is itself made up of syllables, the syllables being formed from consonants and vowels taken from a language known to the speaker ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Felicitas Goodman, a psychological anthropologist and linguist, also found that the speech of glossolalists reflected the patterns of speech of the speaker's native language. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1384336?uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21103479539377&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;glossolalia is &amp;quot;only a facade of language&amp;quot;. (Samarin, William J. (1972). Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Pentecostalism. New York: Macmillan. p. 128)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Samarin defined Pentecostal glossolalia as &amp;quot;meaningless but phonologically structured human utterance, believed by the speaker to be a real language but bearing no systematic resemblance to any natural language, living or dead&amp;quot;. (Samarin, William J. (1972). Tongues of Men and Angels: The Religious Language of Pentecostalism. New York: Macmillan. p. 2)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, speakers &lt;em&gt;believe&lt;/em&gt; they are speaking a real language unknown to them, but they use vocal components taken from languages familiar to the speaker, and the resulting utterance has &amp;quot;no systematic resemblance to any natural language&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also covered in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcast/sgu/227&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;episode 227 of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe&lt;/a&gt; at 47:00 and onward in response to a listener email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They quote a Joe Nickell book that summarizes the conclusions of Samarin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glossolalia consists of strings of meaningless syllables made up of sounds taken from those familiar to the speaker and put together more or less haphazardly. Glossolalia is language-like because the speaker subconsciously wants it to be language-like. Yet in spite of superficial similarities, it's fundamentally not a language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T16:09:22.097" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19596" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19598" CreationDate="2014-02-19T16:28:41.600" Score="14" ViewCount="3229" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I understand, in yoga, breathing through the left or right nostrils are associated with different (dualistic) mental activities. As Gregor Maehle writes in his book 'Pranayama - The Breath of Yoga':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The right brain hemisphere, which is more intuitive and holistic, is powered by the left nostril. The left brain hemisphere, which is more analytical and dissecting, is powered by breathing through the right nostril.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims about the difference in the functions of the hemispheres is &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/58/do-the-left-brain-and-right-brain-have-different-functions/&quot;&gt;questionable by itself&lt;/a&gt;. The author then goes on to describe a number of other connections, eg. symphatetic nervous system - right nostril, parasymphatetic - left nostril etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could breathing through one nostril or the other have &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; effect on the nervous system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would assume that it does not make any difference on which nostril the air comes in. Restricting the amount of air by blocking one nostril can have an effect, though. But I don't believe it makes any difference which nostril we breathe, as long as we are breathing at the same rate. Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16771" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T18:12:47.613" Title="Does breathing through one nostril affect the nervous system?" Tags="|yoga|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19597" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-19T16:54:37.253" Score="10" ViewCount="13571" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ultimeyesvision.com&quot;&gt;Ultimeyes&lt;/a&gt; app and am very concerned many people will be throwing away their money. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ULTIMEYES® is a non-invasive interactive program designed specifically to improve vision by optimizing visual processing in just four simple 25-minute sessions per week for a total duration of eight weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrast sensitivity, which is the visual skill that enables you to distinguish objects in dim light and against obscure backgrounds, increased dramatically among users in these studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UltimEyes presents you with the increasingly difficult challenge of identifying faint and fuzzy Gabor stimuli, which are shown against a hazy, gray background. Among other tests, the blurry blobs might slowly materialize on the screen, or you might be tasked to find multiple blobs as they grow slightly less faint. It isn't exactly fun, but it's challenging, and the sessions are short. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard of eye exercises before such as looking &quot;past&quot; something then look at that object very near to your eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://download.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/PIIS0960982214000050.pdf?intermediate=true&quot;&gt;study published this week in the journal Current Biology&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://download.cell.com/current-biology/mmcs/journals/0960-9822/PIIS0960982214000050.mmc1.pdf&quot;&gt;Supplemental data and procedures&lt;/a&gt;), Seitz worked with 19 players on the University of California, Riverside, baseball team, and showed that his app UltimEyes lengthened the distance at which the players could see clearly by an average of 31 percent. After using the app for 30 25-minute intervals, players saw an improvement that pushed many of them beyond normal 20/20 vision, including seven who attained freakishly good 20/7.5 vision—meaning that at a distance of 20 feet, they were clearly seeing what someone with normal vision could see at no farther than 7.5 feet away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a scientifically supported claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17700" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T20:56:56.217" LastActivityDate="2015-10-09T10:22:03.510" Title="Can the UltimEyes app improve distance vision?" Tags="|physiology|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19598" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19596" CreationDate="2014-02-19T17:12:20.780" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll be honest, this answer surprised me when I looked up the info about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Anatomy and Physiology&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, it's useful to know that you actually breathe through one nostril at a time already, and this changes about once every 4 hours. This is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_cycle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Nasal Cycle&lt;/a&gt;, and basically put, your body blocks one nostril and clears the other, and swaps round regularly.  There is no muscle to control which nostril you breathe through, so you can't independently decide to breathe through a selected nostril without manipulating the airway manually.  This differs a bit from mouth vs nose breathing, as you can choose to breath only through your nose, even with your mouth open, using the Superior Pharyngeal Constrictor muscle.  The major opposition to the claim that Yogis breathe through an selected muscle in order affect their state of mind is that you'd literally need to hold one closed, which doesn't seem too conducive with other activity that may be going on, however...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Literature on the subject&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite my reservations, there is confirmatory literature on this subject.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.1997.81.2.555&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; found that subjects tended to perform better at spatial tasks whilst in the left nostril phase of the nasal cycle, and better at verbal tasks during the right nostril phase, which aligns with the original claim you asked about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As further back up to this, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ijpp.com/IJPP%20archives/1994_38_2/133-137.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; took 2 groups of individuals, gave them yoga training for one month, and had one group concentrate on right nostril breathing and one on alternate nostril breathing, a number of times a day across the experiment.  Both groups showed an increase in oxygen usage, but the right nostril breathing group showed a gain of around 200ml/min over the training, where the both nostril group showed an increase of around 100ml/min.  Statistically significant changes were also noted in the change in galvanic skin resistance, heart rate, and respiratory rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently, &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10484-008-9055-0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; looked at physiological effects of left nostril breathing, right nostril breathing and any nostril breathing, and found that there were significant differences between each, finally concluding that there may be potential for use of this for therapeutic applications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've looked through a few more studies too, and all have concluded that a physiological difference is observable.  Those that have observed mental performance have also noted differences in ability at tasks, and those that addressed mental acuity have all concluded either that right nostril breathing performs better, or that right nostril and any nostril breathing performs better than left nostril alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Literature critique&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, having looked at the evidence, I'm satisfied that there is an observable difference in several physiological signs, as well as in mental performance, I'm still not clear on &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; Yogis manage to 'select' a nostril to breath through.  The studies I have read haven't explained anything further than to say that Yoga breathing techniques were used which involved concentrating on a nostril, and I'm unaware of a physical mechanism within the pharynx and sinuses that would allow this to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that Yoga techniques can allow a person to 'cue' their nasal cycle to change to a preferred nostril, but I've not seen a physiological study of the nose and sinuses during these activities, so I can't say whether that's the case.  This said, it's therefore possible that simply &lt;em&gt;concentrating&lt;/em&gt; on breathing through a particular nostril could make these differences.  This would only be contradicted by the first study which found differences at different stages of the nasal cycle, and didn't attempt to manipulate which nostril a subject breathed through (they waited until the applicable nostril was in use, essentially).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall verdict - It's possible, and there is some literature that backs it up, but a little more knowledge of what is occuring in the noses of Yogis is needed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17358" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-19T17:12:20.780" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19600" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21918" CreationDate="2014-02-19T20:06:13.710" Score="3" ViewCount="383" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can find numerous references that reflexology is no better than placebo for particular medical conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/reflex.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Quack Watch&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23405024&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Evaluation of the effects of reflexology on quality of life and symptomatic relief in multiple sclerosis patients with moderate to severe disability&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am trying to take an objective view here. Is there any scientific evidence to support reflexology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4334" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T20:31:36.583" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T17:26:54.747" Title="Can reflexology diagnose and cure disease?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19604" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-19T22:56:41.050" Score="25" ViewCount="7470" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard a study was done that was found that papers written in size 12 Times New Roman font received higher marks. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2013/06/how-to-increase-your-grades-change-your-typeface/&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; is the only source I could find. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We all know that Comic Sans is a joke. But this post examines how you can change your marks from a B- to and A by simply changing your typeface in submitted work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone else heard of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-19T23:54:26.010" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T12:25:25.930" Title="Does size 12 Times New Roman font receive better grades in school?" Tags="|school|typography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1675" CreationDate="2014-02-20T00:59:49.710" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.  Yes they do.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may like to first look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bems.org/journal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bioelectromagnetics&lt;/a&gt; journal for an understanding of how it is possible.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sun, and solar flares, modulate evolution and life for the solar system.  Solar flares, and geomagnetic storms affect human health via biogenic magnetite, bone, and photoreceptors in the eyes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few abstracts for consideration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/03/12/rspb.2012.0324.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Are stress responses to geomagnetic storms mediated by the cryptochrome compass system?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A controversial body of literature demonstrates associations of geomagnetic storms (GMS) with numerous cardiovascular, psychiatric and behavioural outcomes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this one may be found in Med. Hypothesis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16701959&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Solar cycles and their relationship to human disease and adaptability&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We conclude that intermittent and largely unpredictable peak solar cycle radiation has been the fundamental engine of evolution, forcing organisms to adapt to mutagenic UVR and producing enough damage to instigate genetic variation. Probably a chance genetic mutation over 80,000 years ago produced a human brain capable of abstract thought and consciousness. The slight genetic instability that favored an adaptable, creative brain also produced other somatic variations that present phenotypically as disease, but largely expressed after natural selection (reproduction) and associated with the inexorable entropy of aging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kay RW., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8199794&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Geomagnetic storms: association with incidence of depression as measured by hospital admission.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hypothesis that geomagnetic storms may partly account for the seasonal variation in the incidence of depression, by acting as a precipitant of depressive illness in susceptible individuals, is supported by a statistically significant 36.2% increase in male hospital admissions with a diagnosis of depressed phase, manic-depressive illness in the second week following such storms compared with geomagnetically quiet control periods. There is a smaller but not statistically significant increase in female psychotic depression and non-psychotic depression admissions following storms. There was no correlation between geomagnetic storm levels and number of male admissions with psychotic depression, which is consistent with a threshold event affecting predisposed individuals. Phase advance in pineal circadian rhythms of melatonin synthesis may be a possible mechanism of causation or be present as a consequence of 5-hydroxytryptamine and adrenergic system dysfunction associated with geomagnetic disturbance. Effects on cell membrane permeability, calcium channel activity and retinal magneto-receptors are suggested as possible underlying biochemical mechanisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17707" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T01:31:03.940" LastActivityDate="2014-02-20T01:31:03.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19604" CreationDate="2014-02-20T13:39:50.360" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;tl;dr&lt;/em&gt; — Fonts can influence the perceptions of the reader. Whether they can substantially raise your grades is an open question and no scientifically rigorous study seems to have been performed on the point. An anecdotal study on the point suggests that Georgia and Times New Roman will result in higher grades than Trebuchet MS. A more sophisticated study suggests that words set in Baskerville are more agreeable than words set in other typefaces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about both studies in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all-ye-people-hearken-o-earth/?_php=true&amp;amp;_type=blogs&amp;amp;_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NY Times article Hear, All Ye People; Hearken, O Earth&lt;/a&gt; by Errol Morris, which summarizes the &lt;a href=&quot;http://riotindustries.com/words/the-secret-lives-of-fonts/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;anecdotal study on grades: &amp;quot;The Secret Lives of Fonts&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://riotindustries.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Phil Renaud&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Renaud had written 52 essays in total. Eleven were set in Times New Roman, 18 in Trebuchet MS, and the remaining 23 in Georgia. The Times New Roman papers earned an average grade of A-, but the Trebuchet papers could only muster a B-. And the Georgia essays? A solid A.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Errol goes on to note of the original article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But Renaud’s results are anecdotal.&lt;/strong&gt; I wondered: is there an experiment that could decide this once and for all? Or barring that, at least throw some empirical light on the situation? Could the effect of typography on the perception of truth be assessed objectively?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is how he performed a more trustworthy experiment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benjamin Berman (who designed the Multics emulation for my Times article “Did My Brother Invent Email with Tom Van Vleck?”) created a program that changes the typeface of the David Deutsch passage. Each Times participant read the passage in one of six randomly assigned typefaces — Baskerville, Computer Modern, Georgia, Helvetica, Comic Sans and Trebuchet. The questions, ostensibly about optimism or pessimism, provided data about the influence of typefaces on our beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The test consisted of comparing the responses and &lt;strong&gt;determining whether typeface choice influenced our perception of the truth of the passage&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than 100,000 people clicked on the page, and approximately 45,000 people took the quiz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusions of the study being (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Baskerville is different from the rest. I’d call it a &lt;em&gt;1.5%&lt;/em&gt; advantage&lt;/strong&gt;, in that that’s how much higher agreement is with it relative to the average of the other fonts. That advantage may seem small, but if that was a bump up in sales figures, many online companies would kill for it. The fact that font matters at all is a wonderment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a quote about the statistical significance of the Baskerville effect, from the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those interested in the statistical analysis of the data, I have included a note from David Dunning. I had wondered whether the “Baskerville Effect” was so small as to be insignificant. A 1.5 percent advantage. Dunning assured me otherwise. He wrote to me, “In the 1990s, the federal government stopped a big trial testing whether taking aspirin prevented heart attacks. The aspirin worked, and it was considered unethical to prevent the control group from starting to take the drug. Size of the advantage to aspirin? It was 0.8%.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psych.cornell.edu/people/david-dunning&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;David Dunning&lt;/a&gt; goes on to say, and I will quote at length from &lt;a href=&quot;http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/hear-all-ye-people-hearken-o-earth-part-2/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Part 2 of Errol Morris's article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done three analyses, to see if they converge on the same conclusion. Two of them do; the third does not but involves a cruder and less sensitive measure, and so I am not too disappointed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scenario #1: The first analysis is to take the coding scheme you used to weight confidence (+3, +2, +1, -1, -2, -3) and ask this question. I redid the “omnibus” ANOVA that Ben carried out and got practically the same result, F (5, 45518) = 2.90, p = .013, any slight difference from Ben’s numbers are probably due to rounding error. What this result suggests is that the averages of the six font groups differ more from one another than one would expect by chance. Something somewhere is going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get more specific, I next looked at each font in turn, to ask whether it produces responses that differ from the average of the other 5? When I do that analysis, these are the results I get:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RnMpU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;ANOVA 1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, here are two catches. We never completely rule out random chance as a possible cause of any result we see. But, sometimes the result is so strong that chance is just very, very unlikely. What’s strong enough? If the p-value is .05 or less, we typically dismiss chance as an explanation, by “industry agreement”. That is, we tolerate a 5% chance on any one comparison that what we are looking at is merely random variation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But here’s the second catch. I am doing 6 tests here, not 1 — and so there are 6, not 1, opportunities for me to be just looking at random chance. So I have to be more conservative in any call to dismiss chance as an issue. There are many ways to do this. For now, let me be just simple, blunt, and very conservative. I’m doing 6 tests and I want to give myself no more than a 5% chance of making an error, then let me simply divide .05 by the number of tests I’m doing. That means that the p-value needed for me to dismiss chance falls to .0083 (Or .83%). By this, Baskerville is still different from the average of the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If people prefer to ask instead to about differences between individual groups, I can confidently say people are responding to Baskerville more favorably than they are to Comic Sans (Tukey’s honest significant difference, q = 4.24). Given so many other group to group comparisons, it be-comes difficult to rule out chance for any other individual comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scenario #2: The coding scheme you used is reasonable, but it does have an unusual feature and there are alternatives. Specifically, there’s a gap right in the middle of your scheme between ‐1 and +1, and some might question whether having that gap is reasonable. That is, is moving from ‐1 (slightly disagree) to +1 (slightly agree) really twice as different as moving from +1 (slightly agree) to +2 (moderately agree)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting question, so I redid the analysis with a different coding scheme that removes this gap problem by stacking the responses up and placing the same interval in between them: -5(strongly disagree), -3(mod disagree), -1(slight disagree), +1(slight agree), +3(mod agree), +5(strong agree).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is normally the way I would “weight” the confidence scores in my own research, so I’m comfortable with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The omnibus ANOVA calculation is significant, F(5, 45518) = 2.88, p = .013. Something’s going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I redid the analysis from comparing each font against the average of the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rxvPi.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;ANOVA 2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, as you can see, this re-weighting scheme changes little. People are responding to Baskerville differently than they are the average of the other tests, even after correcting for the fact that I’m doing multiple tests. Any results for Comic Sans and Computer Modern weaken a touch; maybe, if generous, one could say that Georgia is “marginal,” but before correcting for chance. For individual group-to-group comparisons, the only one outstripping chance is the Baskerville to Comic Sans comparison (Tukey HSD q = 4.11).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, you may ask which of these coding schemes is the superior one. My answer is I don’t care. They are both reasonable. What is important is that they both lead roughly to the same conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let’s just look at the data the most crude way possible, just counting up the percentage of times people agreed with Deutsch’s statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mY7aD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;ANOVA 4&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I switch from an F­test to a z­test because the data are binary (i.e., agree, disagree) rather than more smoothly continuous. Here, no differences in fonts survive the chance correction put in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, what this is telling me is that throwing away the fine-grained information contained in the confidence ratings obscures the precision of the test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this analysis gives us a way to quantify the advantage to Baskerville. It’s small, but it’s about a 1% to 2% difference — 1.5% to be exact, which may seem small but to me is rather large. You are collecting these data in an uncontrolled environment (who knows, for example just how each person’s computer is rendering each font, how large the font is, is it on an iPad or iPhone, laptop or desktop), are their kids breaking furniture in the background, etc. So to see any difference is impressive. Many online marketers would kill for a 2% advantage either in more clicks or more clicks leading to sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the exact claim in question here, there is the study from the original article (&amp;quot;The Secret Lives of Fonts&amp;quot;) that indicates that Times New Roman correlates with an A-, and Georgia with an A, significantly higher than the B- average with Trebuchet. However as Errol noted, it was an anecdotal study. That said, there is a correlation between fonts and the perception of the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the claim that Times New Roman (or Georgia) will lead to higher marks than Trebuchet (or other sans-serif fonts like Arial or Helvetica) seems plausible. It is plausible, in other words, based on the specific results of Phil Renaud's anecdotal study and based on the conceptual results of Errol Morris's study, that &lt;strong&gt;simply changing your font from a sans-serif to a serif (particularly Baskerville, but also potentially Georgia and Times New Roman) will lead to higher marks&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I have &lt;a href=&quot;http://brianmhunt.github.io/articles/importance-of-typography/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;written at some length about this&lt;/a&gt; as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Further reading&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fastcodesign.com/3046678/the-kindle-finally-gets-typography-that-doesnt-suck&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.fastcodesign.com/3046678/the-kindle-finally-gets-typography-that-doesnt-suck&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/userexperience/comments/2tvm2i/is_serif_more_readable_than_sans_serif_on_mobile/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.reddit.com/r/userexperience/comments/2tvm2i/is_serif_more_readable_than_sans_serif_on_mobile/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://alexpoole.info/blog/fighting-bad-typography-research/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://alexpoole.info/blog/fighting-bad-typography-research/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-27/your-e-mail-font-is-ruining-your-life&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-07-27/your-e-mail-font-is-ruining-your-life&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T12:25:25.930" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19615" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32319" CreationDate="2014-02-20T14:35:29.823" Score="24" ViewCount="6080" Body="&lt;p&gt;Delusional conspiracy theorists are commonly portrayed as wearing tin-foil hats to protect against mind-control rays from sinister organisations such as  [goverments/aliens/NSA/CIA/FBI/liberals/conservatives/devil/god].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any (electromagnetic or other natural world) rays that would be blocked by a tinfoil or aluminium foil hat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, I am not asking for proof that anyone is trying to tamper with our minds, I am just wondering if a tinfoil hat would offer protection against anything at all. Is there any form of emitted radiation that would be blocked by such a hat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8651" LastEditorUserId="8651" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T15:05:19.013" LastActivityDate="2019-02-02T22:40:29.120" Title="Do tinfoil hats protect against any sort of radiation?" Tags="|physics|electromagnetism|radiation|mind-control|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19616" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19621" CreationDate="2014-02-20T15:21:40.883" Score="5" ViewCount="2321" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few years ago, at the beginning of the financial crisis, there was this rumor that traveled from mouth to mouth about some company that did some layoffs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story says the company's management announced an important communicate to all the employees and all employees needed to gather in the building's parking lot for this announcement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When all people were there the announcement was made: &lt;em&gt;some people were laid off&lt;/em&gt;. If you tried to return to the building and your access badge didn't work any more then you were laid off; if it worked, you were still an employee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find any reference of this anywhere. Did this actually happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17717" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-20T21:58:24.580" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T10:36:54.880" Title="Has a company fired its employees by deactivating their access badges?" Tags="|history|economics|employment|unemployment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19617" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-20T15:27:31.077" Score="5" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[The mayor of St. Louis, Missouri, Francis] Slay cites the efforts to&amp;hellip; and reduce lead poisoning in children as some of his most fulfilling work. Regarding the latter, &quot;The drop has been dramatic,&quot; he said. &quot;It was over 20 percent when I took office [in April of 2001], and now it's under three percent of those kids tested [who] have elevated levels of lead in their blood. And more kids are being tested.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;mdash;&amp;nbsp;Lauren Brucker, &quot;St. Louis' Mayor&quot;, in &lt;em&gt;Saint Louis Brief&lt;/em&gt; (the alumni magazine of Saint Louis University School of Law), volume 15, issue 1, [2014,] page 14. (The bracketed phrases &quot;The mayor&amp;hellip;&quot; and &quot;in April of 2001&quot; were added by me; the bracketed &quot;who&quot; appears in the article.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few claims here. Two are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mr. Slay is claiming that the number of kids who test positive for lead poisoning has decreased 85% from 20% to 3%. I see no reason to disbelieve him (though confirmation would be nice).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ms. Brucker is claiming that the mayor's statement is &quot;[r]egarding the latter&quot;, that is regarding the decrease in lead poisoning among kids. In other words, she's claiming that there's been a decrease in the percentage of lead-poisoned kids &amp;mdash; not just in the percentage of tested-positive-for-lead-poisoning kids. Note that, precisely because &quot;more kids are being tested&quot;, there may not have been a decrease at all in the percentage of lead-poisoned kids, even though there was an 85% decrease in the percentage of tested-positive-for-lead-poisoning kids.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I seek confirmation for either of these claims, especially the latter. If I could also get the actual percentage decrease in lead-poisoned kids, that'd be even better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I don't know Mr. Slay's definition of &quot;kids&quot; or Ms. Brucker's of &quot;children&quot;, so I guess any known percentage decrease for some class reasonably termed &quot;children&quot; will suffice.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2916" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T18:01:45.593" Title="Has lead poisoning in kids in St. Louis (Mo.) decreased since 2001?" Tags="|medical-science|united-states|children|lead|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19616" CreationDate="2014-02-20T18:38:03.850" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I could not find any evidence that this ever happened as you described it, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/business/consumer/firedrill.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; concurs.  In fact, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dol.gov/compliance/laws/comp-warn.htm&quot;&gt;mass employee layoffs without advanced warning is (under almost all circumstances) illegal in the United States&lt;/a&gt;.  &quot;Advanced warning&quot; just means that the entire workforce needs to be warned that a mass layoff is going to happen at least 60 days before the first employee is notified that they specifically have been chosen to be terminated.  So, any company that pulled such a stunt would almost certainly be breaking the law, and would likely have received a lot of negative press for it.  Since I could find no such record in the press, I think it's relatively safe to say that it is just a legend, at least within the United States.  Proving whether or not it happened internationally may be impossible unless there is a high profile incident that somehow eluded our collective Google-fu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will say that for large layoffs that are below the legal definition of a &quot;mass layoff,&quot; using this technique would be legal in the US, and therefore might be plausible.  However, I would think that such a stunt would cause a lot of negative press for the employer.  The same sort of effect could be achieved by simply packing up all of the terminated employees' belongings over a weekend and then individually denying them access to the facility on Monday morning, which avoids the spectacle of having everyone laid off in a group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; been a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-452685/Store-bosses-set-alarm-sack-staff-car-park.html&quot;&gt;couple&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6624343.stm&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; incidents both in the UK and in the USA where the &lt;em&gt;entire workforce&lt;/em&gt; was terminated using the &quot;fire drill&quot; method. In all such cases, however, it was due to the entire company ceasing business, so all employees were terminated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addition (2014-02-21):&lt;/strong&gt; It turns out that there has been an international treaty (currently ratified by 35 countries) in effect since 1985, called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termination_of_Employment_Convention,_1982&quot;&gt;Termination of Employment Convention&lt;/a&gt;, that has very similar restrictions to the US law I mentioned above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Article 11&lt;/strong&gt;: A worker whose employment is to be terminated shall be entitled to a reasonable period of notice or compensation in lieu thereof…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As was mentioned in the comments, the employer could always immediately revoke access to the employee(s) and then provide some severance compensation, but unless the employees were being terminated for negligence (which sounds not to be the case in the supposed firedrill scenario), then the employer would likely want to have the employees work for that period anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Article 13 Paragraph 1&lt;/strong&gt;: When the employer contemplates terminations for reasons of an economic, technological, structural or similar nature, the employer shall: (a) provide the workers' representatives concerned in good time with relevant information including the reasons for the terminations contemplated, the number and categories of workers likely to be affected and the period over which the terminations are intended to be carried out; (b) give, in accordance with national law and practice, the workers' representatives concerned, as early as possible, an opportunity for consultation on measures to be taken to avert or to minimise the terminations and measures to mitigate the adverse effects of any terminations on the workers concerned such as finding alternative employment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in all 35 countries that ratified that treaty, the employer would have had to give the employees advanced notice of the layoffs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="1337" LastEditDate="2014-02-22T01:59:34.227" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T01:59:34.227" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19623" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19688" CreationDate="2014-02-20T23:14:42.800" Score="15" ViewCount="1236" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it claimed that white noise improves sleep quality, and anecdotally I've found it to sometimes be true. There are many white noise devices targeted at improving sleep, but research on the topic is scant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does anyone know of thorough studies looking at positive and negative effects of white noise generators and sleep?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical of the general claim based on a few heuristics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I've found limited studies (and no meta studies)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;My own experience shows both positive and negative effects&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The available gadgets I've found do not cite reputable claims, instead relying on appeal to common knowledge or anecdote&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17733" LastEditorUserId="17733" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T20:41:27.120" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T12:57:46.903" Title="Does white noise improve sleep quality?" Tags="|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19625" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-20T23:17:32.890" Score="21" ViewCount="1245" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conventional common wisdom has been that red meat consumption increases the risk of developing heart disease. There are a lot of studies indicating this may be true, but there are also a lot of studies indicating this may not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/new-study-links-l-carnitine-in-red-meat-to-heart-disease-201304176083&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; from the Harvard Health Blog last year discussed this. Not only is there disagreement over what (in red meat) would be the cause, various other foods recognized as healthy also contain significant quantities of the same substances which often take the blame. And in the case of processed red meat (which is unequivocally a negative factor for heart health), the clear connection appears to have more to do with the high salt-content of processed red meats than any naturally occurring substance in the meats itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;is there any modern science which takes into account the likely decrease of other healthier foods in diets with high red meat consumption when evaluating its risk to heart health?&lt;/strong&gt; As we know, &lt;em&gt;proportion&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;quantity&lt;/em&gt; play just as large a role in the effects of what we eat as what they are made of. For instance, vitamin E and other antioxidants (things which are very healthy) are known to actually promote cancer when over-consumed. &lt;em&gt;Given the conflicting evidence on red meat's role in encouraging heart disease, it seems possible that the real culprit is actually the total diet rather than some specific poison.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17062" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T11:39:07.980" LastActivityDate="2023-12-07T17:06:45.870" Title="Does red meat increase the risk of heart disease?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|biology|meat|cardiology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19628" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-21T00:50:00.327" Score="1" ViewCount="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just had MRI of my left shoulder, about 3/4's of the way through, left side of my chest became very hot.  My left breast had a titanium marker.  Why was my chest hot and my shoulder was not.  I was told it was from anxiety! I was also told the titanium marker was not a problem&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17737" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T00:50:00.327" Title="Would an MRI of a shoulder cause hot sensation in left chest, left breast has a titanium marker" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-02-21T02:50:10.613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19593" CreationDate="2014-02-21T05:12:16.770" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard for years that Ginkgo Biloba was good for memory. I take it along with the multivitamin. It doesn't cost much. My family doctor said it has no negative side effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wedmd says... &lt;em&gt;&quot;Some studies have found that in healthy people, ginkgo might modestly boost memory and cognitive speed. Other studies have not found a benefit. ...&#xA;Several ginkgo studies have shown that it can help with memory problems caused by dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. &quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and-supplements/lifestyle-guide-11/supplement-guide-ginkgo-biloba&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and-supplements/lifestyle-guide-11/supplement-guide-ginkgo-biloba&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17740" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T05:12:16.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19593" CreationDate="2014-02-21T14:17:30.897" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Lots of research. Nothing of quality that supports vitamin supplements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is rather broad. Studies tend to focus on particular drugs/drug combinations and/or particular classes of patients with memory problems (e.g. elderly, dementia sufferers, multiple sclerosis sufferers, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's go through a few drugs where there have been high-quality Cochrane Reviews of the available evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Vitamins B6&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004393/no-evidence-of-benefit-from-vitamin-b6-supplementation-on-mood-or-cognition-of-older-people-with-normal-vitamin-b6-status-or-with-vitamin-b6-deficiency&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;No evidence it helps with cognition of the elderly, even if they have a deficiency.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Vitamins B9 and B12&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's no evidence that &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004514/no-evidence-that-folic-acid-with-or-without-vitamin-b12-improves-cognitive-function-of-unselected-elderly-people-with-or-without-dementia.-long-term-supplementation-may-benefit-cognitive-function-of-healthy-older-people-with-high-homocysteine-lev&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Folic Acid (Vitamin B9), with or without Vitamin B12, helps the cognitive functions of the elderly&lt;/a&gt; although it may help the elderly with high homocysteine levels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Vitamin E&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Should &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD002854/vitamin-e-should-not-be-used-for-the-treatment-of-mild-cognitive-impairment-mci-and-alzheimers-dementia-ad&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;not be used for mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer's dementia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Omega-3&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD005379/fish-oils-for-the-prevention-of-dementia-in-older-peopl&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;no benefit for cognitive function with omega-3 PUFA supplementation among cognitively healthy older people&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Alpha-Lipoic Acid&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004244/no-evidence-of-efficacy-of-alpha-lipoic-acid-for-dementia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;No tests have been done&lt;/a&gt; to see if it helps dementia (as of 2008).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Anti-Dementia Drugs for Non-Dementia Patients&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Even if you have (non-dementia) memory problems, &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD009132/anti-dementia-drugs-for-people-with-memory-problems-but-without-dementia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cholinesterase inhibitor ('anti-dementia') drugs have no evidence of helping memory or even preventing dementia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Carbohydrates&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD007220/there-is-insufficient-evidence-for-the-use-of-carbohydrates-to-improve-cognitive-performance-in-older-adults-with-normal-or-mild-cognitive-impairment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nope, no help to the elderly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Iron&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iron-supplements for anaemic children? &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001444/iron-therapy-for-improving-physical-and-intellectual-development-in-children-under-the-age-of-three-who-are-anaemic-due-to-a-lack-of-iron&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;No evidence&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Procaine&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While we are on the subject, &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD005993/procaine-is-a-controversial-substance-that-has-been-used-for-antiageing-effects-including-cognitive-improvement-for-more-than-50-years&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;there's no good evidence that Procaine can prevent dementia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;DHEA&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Possibly has deleterious affects on quality of life, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD006221/no-current-evidence-for-an-improvement-in-memory-or-other-aspects-of-cognitive-function-of-non-demented-older-people-following-dhea-supplements&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;no evidence it helps memory for non-demented elderly&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;CDP-choline&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some &lt;em&gt;hopeful&lt;/em&gt; news here. There haven't been enough long-term studies, but it &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD000269/some-evidence-that-cdp-choline-has-a-positive-effect-on-memory-and-behaviour-in-at-least-the-shortmedium-term-in-elderly-people-with-cognitive-deficits-associated-with-chronic-cerebral-disorders-of-the-brain#sthash.TkMtJMLY.dpuf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;might help memory on elderly people with chronic cerebral disorders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Any Drugs&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pharmacological agents for Multiple Sclerosis sufferers: &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD008876/pharmacological-agents-as-symptomatic-treatment-for-memory-disorder-in-people-with-multiple-sclerosis#sthash.ya3d84qe.dpuf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;No good evidence for any of donepezil, ginkgo biloba, memantine and rivastigmine&lt;/a&gt; and moderate evidence against donepezil. From this review, I believe we can also conclude there is no good evidence for any vitamins.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T14:17:30.897" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19615" CreationDate="2014-02-21T18:03:50.980" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another benefit is that it will block &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_particle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;alpha radiation&lt;/a&gt; (helium nuclei) and most of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_particle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;beta radiation&lt;/a&gt; (electrons).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yos68.gif&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blackcatsystems.com/GM/articles/alpha_beta_gamma_radiation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this will have no significative benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13743" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-01-31T08:56:07.410" LastActivityDate="2019-01-31T08:56:07.410" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19553" CreationDate="2014-02-21T19:46:49.190" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM198802113180603&quot;&gt;It appears marijuana leaves about 3x the tar as cigarettes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As compared with smoking tobacco, smoking marijuana was associated with .. an approximately threefold increase in the amount of tar inhaled, and retention in the respiratory tract of one third more inhaled tar&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about the difference in smoking styles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Significant differences were also noted in the dynamics of smoking marijuana and tobacco, among them an approximately two-thirds larger puff volume, a one-third greater depth of inhalation, and a fourfold longer breath-holding time with marijuana than with tobacco&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311802/&quot;&gt;This summary article&lt;/a&gt; talks about the cancer rates too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For me, it raises the obvious question: what about vaporizers? &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1477-7517-4-11.pdf&quot;&gt;One study I found&lt;/a&gt; is imperfect (no randomization, recruiting issues) but helpful for a baseline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;vaporizer users were less likely to report respiratory problems than patients who did not vaporize.. vaporizer users are only 40% as likely to report respiratory symptoms&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17158" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T19:46:49.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19640" CreationDate="2014-02-21T23:32:51.293" Score="6" ViewCount="1294" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just heard that a new study found out that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A study claims to have new evidence that proves tighter gun control laws can reduce gun violence.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/study-claims-violence-surges-repeal-gun-control-laws/&quot;&gt;http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/study-claims-violence-surges-repeal-gun-control-laws/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17751" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T23:57:56.917" Title="Did a new study prove that relaxing gun control increases murder rates?" Tags="|guns|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19639" CreationDate="2014-02-21T23:42:22.840" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are 3 claims all mashed together here. Let's look at them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There was a study that looked at Missouri murder rates in relation to gun control law changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TRUE&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2014/repeal-of-missouris-background-law-associated-with-increase-in-states-murders.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Repeal of Missouri's Background Check Law Associated with Increase in State's Murders&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The study &lt;strong&gt;claims&lt;/strong&gt; to have new evidence that &lt;strong&gt;proves&lt;/strong&gt; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mostly TRUE.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On one hand, the title study itself clearly states &quot;associated&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correlation!=causation and scientific evidence doesn't &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; a theory, merely supports it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the study summary linked above quotes its author (full disclosure: he sounds like gun control proponent, not an independent researcher, from what I could find): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This study provides compelling confirmation that weaknesses in firearm laws &lt;strong&gt;lead to deaths&lt;/strong&gt; from gun violence,&quot; said Daniel Webster, ScD, MPH, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and the study's lead author. &quot;There is strong evidence to support the idea that the repeal of Missouri's handgun purchaser licensing law &lt;strong&gt;contributed&lt;/strong&gt; to dozens of additional murders in Missouri each year since the law was changed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That the study actually proves its claims about causation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Likely false.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will need to dig further into it, but one MAJOR red flag was already found by gun rights proponents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study - while correlating Missouri murder rates vs. national - have &lt;strong&gt;completely ignored&lt;/strong&gt; the fact that while murder rate in Missouri rose 17 percent relative to the rest of the U.S. in the five years after 2007, &lt;strong&gt;it had actually increased by 32 percent during the previous five years&lt;/strong&gt; - which wasn't the case for national rate which was nearly flat(&lt;a href=&quot;http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/2014/02/what-does-missouri-show-about-the-benefits-from-universal-background-checks-the-forthcoming-journal-of-urban-health-study-by-the-bloomberg-school-of-public-health/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;summary/research&lt;/a&gt;), (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/mocrimn.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MI source&lt;/a&gt;), (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US source&lt;/a&gt;). In other words, Missouri:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Was already an outlier in national murder rate in 5 years preceding the law changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D691p.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/2014/02/what-does-missouri-show-about-the-benefits-from-universal-background-checks-the-forthcoming-journal-of-urban-health-study-by-the-bloomberg-school-of-public-health/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Experienced a &lt;strong&gt;slowdown&lt;/strong&gt; in the growth of murder rates after the laws relaxing gun control passed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that similar laws exist in several other states that were NOT included in this study - and that a cross-state study (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0226493660&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;) showed a completely different result - it sounds like he cherry-picked one state that had non-gun-control-related murder upward trend.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2014-02-21T23:57:56.917" LastActivityDate="2014-02-21T23:57:56.917" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19644" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="599" CreationDate="2014-02-22T14:59:43.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/min-wage-2013-02.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment?&lt;/a&gt; is a paper published Feb 13. From the executive summary -&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The report reviews evidence on eleven possible adjustments to&#xA;  minimum-wage increases that may help to explain why the measured&#xA;  employment effects are so consistently small. The strongest evidence&#xA;  suggests that the most important channels of adjustment are:&#xA;  reductions in labor turnover; improvements in organizational&#xA;  efficiency; reductions in wages of higher earners (&quot;wage&#xA;  compression&quot;); and small price increases. Given the relatively small&#xA;  cost to employers of modest increases in the minimum wage, these&#xA;  adjustment mechanisms appear to be more than sufficient to avoid&#xA;  employment losses, even for employers with a large share of low-wage&#xA;  workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a financial author, I take issue with the tossing around of supply/demand, as if any increase in the cost of one thing (here, the cost of labor) has the same effect as anything else. As the first answer here suggests, the elasticity may be lower than claimed, and those who offer the sweeping statement &quot;when you raise the cost of something you get less of it&quot; aren't talking economics, but playing to an audience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit - I am not quoting any one pundit. Any CNN, Fox, etc show that has this debate will result in someone against the proposal citing supply/demand as an absolute truth with no clarification. If the total wages received, post increase are well above those before, a small decrease in employment is not a reason to vote against this increase. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current proposal, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/02/21/obama-minimum-wage-hike/5710359/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by 2016&lt;/a&gt;, doesn't take effect all at once, it would occur over a few years. It will be simple enough to observe the effect of the first increase, and decide what the results really were. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2499" LastEditorUserId="2499" LastEditDate="2014-02-22T21:18:22.493" LastActivityDate="2014-02-22T21:18:22.493" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13554" CreationDate="2014-02-23T00:51:51.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Kind of. &#xA;I will refer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/add.12460/abstract&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;, because it it a review of current studies on this topic. The authors have reviewed studies of psychostimulants in healthy young (12-25 years of age) people. Regarding modafinil, all studies compared it to placebo, or caffeine, or other drugs. While this might not be definitive evidence, it is the best we have at the moment - i is still in press, after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intellectual performance is a broad concept, most tests will measure a few dimensions of it. It seems that modafinil can increase attention, specially the ability to make rapid shifts in constant attention, which could be required on some tasks. Also, to quote the article (note: I suppressed statistical data for easier readability):  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Those who took modafinil demonstrated greater subjective attention and&#xA;  alertness, greater objective accuracy in regards to recall (...),&#xA;  visual memory (...) and spatial planing (...), and decreased latency&#xA;  on short-term memory tasks and a risk-reward paradigm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it seems that some of those could be, at least partially attributed to decreased sleepiness, and an increase in self-confidence that might be related to the increased alertness of a direct effect of the medication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Participants believed that improvements would be greater than they are,&#xA;  which the authors contributed to increased vigor. In non-sleep&#xA;  deprived participants, modafinil does not appear to induce&#xA;  over-confidence in cognitive abilities (...) while still improving&#xA;  cognitive performance in logical reasoning (accuracy and response&#xA;  times), vigilance and serial reaction time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yeah, it can make you kind of smarter, but: &#xA;1) it is only for some aspects of intelligence, mainly those related to attention and awareness&#xA;2) you will probably think it makes you smarter than you really get to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16968" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T00:51:51.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19649" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-23T12:37:46.057" Score="5" ViewCount="2897" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the internet, there are a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=babushka%20bomb&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lot of references&lt;/a&gt; to the so-called &quot;Babushka bomb&quot;, &#xA;which is defined at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=babushka%20bomb&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Urban Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eastern European women are pretty when they're young, but age quickly and badly. The babushka bomb hits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies that have looked into this, for example, by comparing photos side by side of Eastern European and Western women, for different age groups?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4974" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-23T22:49:18.590" LastActivityDate="2014-02-23T22:49:18.590" Title="Is there such a thing as the &quot;Babushka Bomb&quot; (i.e. Eastern European women age quickly in appearance)?" Tags="|europe|aging|beauty|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19654" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-24T07:29:34.407" Score="23" ViewCount="9583" Body="&lt;p&gt;A popular meme says the teachers in Japan don't have to bow in front of the Emperor and that's because without teachers there would be no emperor.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Since my understanding of the whole bowing system in Japan is that it's not something required by law, but it's just a way to show respect; no one in Japan HAS to bow in front of anyone. So I interpret it to mean &quot;If a teacher does not bow in front of the Emperor,  it is not being rude; it's a custom.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a real custom? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's in Italian but the meaning is the one I specified already.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pMTEMm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;teacher bow&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did you know...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Japan, the teachers are the only citizens who do not have to bow in front of the Emperor. The reason is that the Japanese think that without teachers there can be no Emperors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20121126045043AAhfUk7&quot;&gt;This question has also been asked quite a few times on Yahoo answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13830" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-10-21T11:39:54.767" LastActivityDate="2017-05-26T15:20:40.537" Title="Do Japan's teachers need to bow to the Emperor?" Tags="|japan|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-24T22:57:16.183" Score="2" ViewCount="119" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ncb/journal/v14/n5/full/ncb2499.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nature magazine&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The financial crisis of the past few years has led to deep cuts in funding for scientific research by governments and charitable organizations, hiring freezes across university departments and academic institutes, and downsizing and restructuring in the life sciences industry. Despite signs of some reprieve, the global economy remains fragile, and the future of science funding continues to be at risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there some statistic or proof that expenditure on scientific research (not consumer based research e.g. smart phones) has been affected by the economy? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16938" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:41:20.603" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T00:41:20.603" Title="Is the US economic downturn slowing scientific research?" Tags="|united-states|economics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19662" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-25T00:16:21.843" Score="4" ViewCount="3719" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard some claims that most participants of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Milgram's studies&lt;/a&gt; were happy they had done the experiment and were fine years latter, other times I've been told that the participants experienced psychological distress and needed counseling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="79" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T07:35:22.717" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T09:22:40.093" Title="In Milgram's studies (1963) were the volunteers alright after?" Tags="|psychology|experiments|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19663" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19662" CreationDate="2014-02-25T05:37:23.243" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary:&lt;/strong&gt; The electric shocks given to &quot;victims&quot; in the experiment were fake. A &quot;scientist&quot; ordered &quot;assistant&quot; participants to apply higher and higher voltages; measuring these participants' willingness to obey authority was the true objective. Some of these participants suffered psychological effects such as emotional discomfort, uncontrolled laughter, and anxiety including anxiety over future life choices such as participating in the military.  There are no credible, widely-reported incidents of anyone being institutionalized or committing suicide as a result of the experiment.  Nevertheless, the experiment is infamous and helped others advocate for stronger ethical standards in human subject research.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia uses the term &quot;inflicted insight&quot; (notice also the mention of deception):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Inflicted insight is a possible consequence for subjects participating&#xA;  in certain kinds of research. It occurs when the subject is given&#xA;  insight into his flaws through his participation in an experiment,&#xA;  often unexpectedly or causing emotional pain. It is especially likely&#xA;  in social and psychological research and especially when that research&#xA;  involves &lt;strong&gt;deception&lt;/strong&gt; of the subject by the researcher.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Milgram&#xA;  experiment is a well-known example of an experiment with a very high&#xA;  potential for inflicted insight. Through their participation in the&#xA;  experiment, many subjects realized that they were capable of&#xA;  committing acts of extreme violence on other human beings. After&#xA;  having this realization, many subjects experienced prolonged symptoms&#xA;  of anxiety.[2] (However, 84 percent of former participants surveyed&#xA;  later said they were &quot;glad&quot; or &quot;very glad&quot; to have participated.)[3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have performed a number of human subject experiments in Economics for the purpose of testing various auction designs (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stern.nyu.edu/networks/brewer.pdf&quot;&gt;BICAP 1996&lt;/a&gt;), and am familiar with navigating the Human Subject Committee/ Institutional Review Board apparatus that came about as a response to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.isu.edu/graduate/orientation/hsc_overview.ppt&quot;&gt;unethical research&lt;/a&gt;.  Generally, experiments in Economics and Game Theory receive an expedited review because of the limited risk of harm. However, use of deception in an experiment can be an issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deception was an essential element of the Milgram psychology experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who are unaware, this infamous experiment involved an experimenter who hires an assistant (but the assistant is actually the experimental subject and does not know that his behavior is the subject of the study) who is ordered to apply electric shock repeatedly and at higher voltages to a supposed subject (who is not really the subject, but actually a research assistant who is not being harmed, but screams and pretends to pass out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://boingboing.net/2010/07/12/eerie-relic-of-scien.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+boingboing%2FiBag+%28Boing+Boing%29&quot;&gt;BoingBoing&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2010/07/384px-Milgram_Experiment_advertising.png&quot;&gt;thesocietypages.org&lt;/a&gt; provide similar copies of a &quot;Milgram recruitment flyer&quot;. This flyer advertises a payment of $4/hour to participate in a study on memory.  When these participants arrived, they were told they would participate in the role of the experimenter's assistant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The goal was to understand the nature and limits of obedience to authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2011/09/28/milgram-experiment-50-years-on/&quot;&gt;http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2011/09/28/milgram-experiment-50-years-on/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;describes the experiment as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the experiment, a scientist — the “authority figure” — ordered&#xA;  participants to ask another individual a series of questions and&#xA;  administer increasingly painful electric shocks for every wrong&#xA;  answer. The intensity of the shocks started at a level of mild pain&#xA;  when the experiment began but could be built up to lethal doses of&#xA;  electricity as the experiment continued. Unbeknownst to the&#xA;  participant, the setup was fake — there was no real electricity&#xA;  shocking anyone, all other people in the experiment were actors, and&#xA;  the actual purpose of the study was to observe how much pain the&#xA;  participant would inflict under orders. Milgram found that 65 percent&#xA;  of participants administered the final, lethal shock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/10/02/the-shocking-truth-of-the-notorious-milgram-obedience-experiments/#.UwwuaN-B13-&quot;&gt;Gina Perry, guest blogging at Discover Magazine&lt;/a&gt;, disputes Milgram's numbers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By examining records of the experiment held at Yale, I found that in&#xA;  over half of the 24 variations, 60% of people disobeyed the&#xA;  instructions of the authority and refused to continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The negative effects on the subject pool are mostly described as psychological effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1963, Milgram told the News that the experiment, which used 43&#xA;  Yalies as participants and took place in Linsly-Chittenden Hall,&#xA;  reduced several “naturally poised” undergraduates to “twitching,&#xA;  stuttering wrecks, on the verge of nervous collapse.” In the process,&#xA;  Milgram said they proved themselves willing to obey people in&#xA;  positions of higher authority, even suggesting that they would agree&#xA;  to drop a bomb or push a button launching an atomic missile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Milgram tested over 1,000 men from the Yale and New Haven community,&#xA;  some of whom he said fell into fits of “bizarre” laughter and flashed&#xA;  “unnatural smiles” as they pressed buttons marked “Danger: Severe&#xA;  Shock.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Published in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology&lt;/em&gt;, Milgram's &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/67/4/371/&quot;&gt;article (paywall, abstract visible)&lt;/a&gt; also describes in the abstract similar psychological effects on subjects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;26 Ss obeyed the experimental commands fully, and administered the&#xA;  highest shock on the generator. 14 Ss broke off the experiment at some&#xA;  point after the victim protested and refused to provide further&#xA;  answers. The procedure created extreme levels of nervous tension in&#xA;  some Ss. Profuse sweating, trembling, and stuttering were typical&#xA;  expressions of this emotional disturbance. One unexpected sign of&#xA;  tension—yet to be explained—was the regular occurrence of nervous&#xA;  laughter, which in some Ss developed into uncontrollable seizures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's article on the Milgram experiment&lt;/a&gt; mentions a subject who became a conscientious objector when called for military service:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Six years later (at the height of the Vietnam War), one of the&#xA;  participants in the experiment sent correspondence to Milgram,&#xA;  explaining why he was glad to have participated despite the stress:&#xA;  While I was a subject in 1964, though I believed that I was hurting&#xA;  someone, I was totally unaware of why I was doing so. Few people ever&#xA;  realize when they are acting according to their own beliefs and when&#xA;  they are meekly submitting to authority… To permit myself to be&#xA;  drafted with the understanding that I am submitting to authority's&#xA;  demand to do something very wrong would make me frightened of myself…&#xA;  I am fully prepared to go to jail if I am not granted Conscientious&#xA;  Objector status. Indeed, it is the only course I could take to be&#xA;  faithful to what I believe. My only hope is that members of my board&#xA;  act equally according to their conscience…[14][15]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The experiment incited reform.  Reformers advocated the establishment of review boards and human subject committees to provide oversight and peer review of human subject research (as well as help limit liability to universities for poorly thought out projects by denying permission at the review stage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Yale Daily News article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Milgram’s study incited national controversy and led in part to major&#xA;  human testing regulation reform from Yale administrators and the&#xA;  federal government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“At the time, we didn’t have ethics committees or even consent forms&#xA;  for these tests,” Dovidio said. “Milgram’s study made people think&#xA;  more seriously about the ethics of research.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By 1980, Yale had instituted reforms mandating that any experiment&#xA;  using paid subjects receive approval by a six-member Committee for the&#xA;  Protection of Human Subjects, and much tighter rules were put in place&#xA;  limiting the degree of deception that could be used in an experiment,&#xA;  a 1980 article in the News stated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Milgram's argument (see footnote 3, p. 3 of Milgram[1965], pdf below) that only 1.3% of subjects were sorry that they had participated and that the rest enjoyed or were neutral to the experiment conflicts with the nature of his own study and raises disturbing questions. Would a subject, who felt troubled, complain to the authority about feeling bad in an experiment where the stakes for disobedience/non-compliance during the experiment seemed much higher and demonstrated a degree of callousness towards human life and emotional state? Did Milgram report complaints accurately? If Milgram was willing to deceive his subjects in their participation, was he willing to deceive academia or others to be able to continue his research? Even if he has a reputation for being an honest researcher, does this research strategy still hint of impropriety and unethical behavior?  Was the knowledge gained worth doing this research if it also caused emotional pain and discomfort to some non-zero number of people?  Is it ethical for the researcher to decide and answer this latter question without any sort of review or should it be peer reviewed or left to the consent of the subject?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is now common for all human subject research at a university to require pre-approval by a human subjects committee or an institutional review board.  These boards operate on the principles of subject consent and protection from harm. Subjects must volunteer, and must know they are in an experiment and the nature of any risks of the experiment. Usually subjects must also be told that they may refer complaints directly to the board. Furthermore, &lt;em&gt;deception&lt;/em&gt; is now thought to be a form of research pool pollution, in that there is a perceived danger that subjects who were deceived in previous experiments might not take factual instructions at the word of the experimenters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additional reading - Milgram's experiments&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psyc604.stasson.org/Milgram2.pdf&quot;&gt;Some Conditions of Obedience and Disobedience to Authority by&#xA;Stanley Milgram. &#xA;Human Relations 1965 18: 57 - pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Additional reading, re: treatment of human subjects&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/belmont.html&quot;&gt;Belmont report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/humansubjects/guidance/45cfr46.html&quot;&gt;45CFR46 Code of Federal Regulations: Protection of Human Subjects&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T09:22:40.093" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T09:22:40.093" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-02-25T09:22:40.093" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="598" CreationDate="2014-02-25T06:40:37.377" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youngandwellcrc.org.au/document/ea0e9511fce02b8be23990_07ef7fc4c7/Videogames_and_Wellbeing.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Johnson, Jones, Scholes, and Carras &lt;sup&gt;(2013)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt; published a review of research literature that mostly focused on the positive aspects of video gaming, which they argue have been overlooked due to dominant societal preoccupations with theories about its effects on violent behavior &lt;sup&gt;(Kutner &amp;amp; Olson, 2008; Ferguson, 2007; &lt;a href=&quot;http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131108072659/the-kings-hand/images/a/ae/Not_worth_the_fuss.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ferguson et al., 2013&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sup&gt;. They include a section reviewing violent games specifically though, which I'll paraphrase here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have already noted, existing research on relationships between video games and violence has been insufficient and heavily criticized. A relatively convincing study found longitudinal relationships between playing violent video games and being rated as more aggressive by teachers and peers &lt;sup&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/~dgentile/pdfs/G2_Exemplary_Teachers_in_press.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gentile &amp;amp; Gentile, 2008&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sup&gt;. However, problems with other studies have included publication bias and unsupported generalizations from in-lab results to behaviors in normal contexts &lt;sup&gt;(Boyle, Connolly &amp;amp; Hainey, 2011; Ferguson, 2007; Kutner &amp;amp; Olson, 2008; &lt;a href=&quot;http://cht.tcm.ncku.edu.tw/attachments/053_96_Flow%20and%20Media%20Enjoyment.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sherry, 2004&lt;/a&gt;, 2007)&lt;/sup&gt; and dependence on self-reported subjective experiences &lt;sup&gt;(Lemmens et al., 2011; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vfa-ev.de/fileadmin/File/Moeller_Krahe_AB2009.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Möller &amp;amp; Krahé, 2009&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;http://lilt.ilstu.edu/mjreese/psy453/Anderson%20et%20al,%202010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anderson et al., 2010&lt;/a&gt;; Shibuya, Sakamoto, Ihori, &amp;amp; Yukawa, 2008)&lt;/sup&gt; or self-reported aggressive behaviours &lt;sup&gt;(Shibuya et al., 2008; Bucolo, 2010)&lt;/sup&gt;.  Criticisms aside, two of these studies did not demonstrate any sustained causal relationships anyway &lt;sup&gt;(Lemmens et al., 2011; Shibuya et al., 2008)&lt;/sup&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After correcting for publication bias, Ferguson &lt;sup&gt;(2007)&lt;/sup&gt; found no meta-analytic support for the relationship. &lt;a href=&quot;http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131108072659/the-kings-hand/images/a/ae/Not_worth_the_fuss.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ferguson and colleagues &lt;sup&gt;(2013)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt; later found no effects in their own study either, and claimed to have eliminated the likelihood of a false null result. &lt;a href=&quot;http://lilt.ilstu.edu/mjreese/psy453/Anderson%20et%20al,%202010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anderson and colleagues &lt;sup&gt;(2010)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt; did one of those controversial meta-analyses supporting the relationship that's listed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_controversy#cite_ref-Violent_video_game_effects_on_aggression.2C_empathy.2C_and_prosocial_behavior_in_Eastern_and_Western_countries_52-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; to which @KonradRudolph's accepted answer links, but Wikipedia covers that particular controversy well enough already, so I'll leave it alone. Suffice it for here to say that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.igea.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Ferguson-Kilburn-2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ferguson and Kilburn &lt;sup&gt;(2010)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; weren't convinced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Johnson and colleagues &lt;sup&gt;(2013)&lt;/sup&gt; also recommend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.asp?ID=CRD42012002882#.Uww4b4V5Pmw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carras et al. (in prep)&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;For a more complete exploration of these issues and the research regarding long-term outcomes of videogame play,&quot; but it looks like they haven't completed their analyses yet at this time. BTW, I have cited Johnson and colleagues for &lt;a href=&quot;https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/a/5641/4086&quot;&gt;a related answer on Cognitive Sciences about the addictive quality of gaming&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xA;- Anderson, C. A., Shibuya, A., Ihori, N., Swing, E. L., Bushman, B. J., Sakamoto, A., Rothstein, H. R., &amp;amp; Saleem, M. (2010). Violent video game effects on aggression, empathy, and prosocial behavior in eastern and western countries: A meta-analytic review. &lt;em&gt;Psychological Bulletin, 136&lt;/em&gt;(2), 151–173. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://lilt.ilstu.edu/mjreese/psy453/Anderson%20et%20al,%202010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://lilt.ilstu.edu/mjreese/psy453/Anderson%20et%20al,%202010.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Boyle, E., Connolly, T. M., &amp;amp; Hainey, T. (2011). The role of psychology in understanding the impact of computer games. &lt;em&gt;Entertainment Computing, 2&lt;/em&gt;(2), 69–74.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Bucolo, D. (2010). &lt;em&gt;Violent video game exposure and physical aggression in adolescence: Tests of the General Aggression Model&lt;/em&gt;. University of New Hampshire.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Carras, M. C., Johnson, D., &amp;amp; Jones, C. (2014). Adverse effects of videogame play on health, behavioral and educational outcomes in longitudinal studies of young people (unpublished manuscript). Further info available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.asp?ID=CRD42012002882#.Uww4b4V5Pmw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.asp?ID=CRD42012002882#.Uww4b4V5Pmw&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Ferguson, C. J. (2007). The good, the bad and the ugly: A meta-analytic review of positive and negative effects of violent video games. Psychiatric Quarterly, 78(4), 309–316.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Ferguson, C. J., Garza, A., Jerabeck, J., Ramos, R., &amp;amp; Galindo, M. (2013). Not worth the fuss after all? Cross-sectional and prospective data on violent video game influences on aggression, visuospatial cognition and mathematics ability in a sample of youth. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 42&lt;/em&gt;(1), 109–122. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131108072659/the-kings-hand/images/a/ae/Not_worth_the_fuss.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://static1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131108072659/the-kings-hand/images/a/ae/Not_worth_the_fuss.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Ferguson, C. J., &amp;amp; Kilburn, J. (2010). Much ado about nothing: The misestimation and overinterpretation of violent video game effects in Eastern and Western nations: Comment on Anderson et al. (2010). &lt;em&gt;Psychological Bulletin, 136&lt;/em&gt;(2), 174–178. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.igea.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Ferguson-Kilburn-2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.igea.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Ferguson-Kilburn-2010.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Gentile, D. A., &amp;amp; Gentile, J. R. (2008). Violent video games as exemplary teachers: A conceptual analysis. &lt;em&gt;Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 37&lt;/em&gt;(2), 127–141. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/~dgentile/pdfs/G2_Exemplary_Teachers_in_press.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/~dgentile/pdfs/G2_Exemplary_Teachers_in_press.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Johnson, D., Jones, C., Scholes, L., &amp;amp; Carras, M. C. (2013). &lt;em&gt;Video games and wellbeing: A comprehensive review.&lt;/em&gt; Sydney: Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youngandwellcrc.org.au/document/ea0e9511fce02b8be23990_07ef7fc4c7/Videogames_and_Wellbeing.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.youngandwellcrc.org.au/document/ea0e9511fce02b8be23990_07ef7fc4c7/Videogames_and_Wellbeing.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Kutner, L., &amp;amp; Olson, C. (2008). &lt;em&gt;Grand theft childhood: The surprising truth about violent video games and what parents can do&lt;/em&gt;. Simon and Schuster.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Lemmens, J. S., Valkenburg, P. M., &amp;amp; Peter, J. (2011). Psychosocial causes and consequences of pathological gaming. &lt;em&gt;Computers in Human Behavior, 27&lt;/em&gt;(1), 144–152.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Möller, I., &amp;amp; Krahé, B. (2009). Exposure to violent video games and aggression in German adolescents: A longitudinal analysis. &lt;em&gt;Aggressive Behavior, 35&lt;/em&gt;(1), 75–89. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vfa-ev.de/fileadmin/File/Moeller_Krahe_AB2009.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.vfa-ev.de/fileadmin/File/Moeller_Krahe_AB2009.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Sherry, J. L. (2004). Flow and media enjoyment. &lt;em&gt;Communication Theory, 14&lt;/em&gt;(4), 328–347. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://cht.tcm.ncku.edu.tw/attachments/053_96_Flow%20and%20Media%20Enjoyment.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://cht.tcm.ncku.edu.tw/attachments/053_96_Flow%20and%20Media%20Enjoyment.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Sherry, J. L. (2007). Violent video games and aggression: Why can't we find effects? In R. W. Preiss, B. M. Gayle, N. Burrell, M. Allen, &amp;amp; J. Bryant (Eds.), &lt;em&gt;Mass media effects research: Advances through meta-analysis&lt;/em&gt; (pp. 245–262). Mahwah, NJ, US: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;- Shibuya, A., Sakamoto, A., Ihori, N., &amp;amp; Yukawa, S. (2008). The effects of the presence and contexts of video game violence on children: A longitudinal study in Japan. &lt;em&gt;Simulation &amp;amp; Gaming, 39&lt;/em&gt;(4), 528–539.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16995" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:56:17.773" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T06:40:37.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19665" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-25T11:05:54.280" Score="4" ViewCount="813" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been reading this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stephen-knapp.com/true_story_of_the_taj_mahal.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;. And it was pretty controversial in claiming that the Taj Mahal is actually a Hindu temple and not an islamic tomb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tajmahal is not a Islamic mausoleum but an ancient Shiva Temple known as Tejo Mahalaya which the 5th generation Moghul emperor Shahjahan commandeered from the then Maharaja of Jaipur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I made some google search but found articles mostly related to studies of guy named -- P. N. Oak? Are there any more studies or books claiming the same thing? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How true are the claims of this guy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17793" LastEditorUserId="29922" LastEditDate="2015-11-19T14:45:53.640" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T14:45:53.640" Title="Was the Taj Mahal originally called Tej-o-Mahal?" Tags="|history|india|architecture|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19665" CreationDate="2014-02-25T11:57:42.510" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How true are the claims of this guy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.N. Oak is a controversial writer also known for claiming that the Vatican was once a Hindu temple. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now onto the Taj Mahal, this claim is listed under &lt;a href=&quot;http://tajmahal.travel/myths-taj-mahal.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Myths of the Taj Mahal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purushottam_Nagesh_Oak&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;P.N.Oak's wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; states &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2000 India's Supreme Court dismissed Oak's petition to declare that&#xA;  a Hindu king had built the Taj Mahal and reprimanded him for bringing&#xA;  the action, saying he had a &quot;bee in his bonnet&quot; about the Taj.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact you should read all of this &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purushottam_Nagesh_Oak#Taj_Mahal_Theory&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;entry&lt;/a&gt;. &#xA;Other than Oak's book itself, there do not seem to be other claims of the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this seems to be a myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are multiple theories about the name - and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tajmahal.gov.in/taj_story.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;offical website&lt;/a&gt; claims it actually stands for Crown Palace which is a literal translation of the words &quot;Taj&quot; and &quot;Mahal&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tajmahal.org.uk/legends/name-legend.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the legends is that the name Taj Mahal is derived from the&#xA;  Persian language, the language spoken in Mughal court. In Persian, the&#xA;  word Taj means Crown and the word Mahal means place or area. In&#xA;  combination, the word Taj Mahal more or less means, &quot;Crown Place&quot; or&#xA;  &quot;Place of the Crown&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2015-02-12T19:59:31.543" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T19:59:31.543" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19667" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-25T13:18:05.160" Score="22" ViewCount="994" Body="&lt;p&gt;Claim: whole grain (specifically wheat) bread is healthier than white bread.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2014/02/podcast-55-dont-call-it-a-comeback/&quot;&gt;Stack Exchange podcast #55&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T13:23:04.770" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T01:43:06.330" Title="Is whole-grain bread healthier than white bread?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19668" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19672" CreationDate="2014-02-25T13:36:15.920" Score="5" ViewCount="33040" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this piece of information repeated on many blogs: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthyfoodhouse.com/amazing-herb-kills-98-cancer-cells-just-16-hours/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;healthy food house&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taking in consideration it is one of the deadliest diseases,&#xA;  scientists constantly try to find a cure and finally put and end to&#xA;  cancer. This herb is one of those cures and it can kill up to 98% of&#xA;  cancer cells in just 16 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Namely, according to the researches published in “Life Science”,&#xA;  artemisinin, a “Sweet wormwood” or “Artemisia Annua” derivative, was&#xA;  used in Chinese medicine and it can kill 98% of lung cancer cells in&#xA;  less than 16 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://truththeory.com/2013/12/25/little-known-chinese-herb-iron-kill-98-of-cancer-cells-in-16-hours/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Truth Theory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to studies that were published in an issue of Life Sciences,&#xA;  artemesinin – a derivative of the wormwood plant used in Chinese&#xA;  Medicine - can kill 98% of breast cancer cells in less than 16 hours.&#xA;  The herb used alone caused a 28% reduction in breast cancer cells, but&#xA;  when paired with iron, sweet wormwood was able to eradicate cancer&#xA;  almost entirely. What’s more, normal cells were not negatively&#xA;  affected in the experiment by this treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=3&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;ved=0CDsQFjAC&amp;amp;url=https://www.facebook.com/dailyhealthtipss/posts/701938013214037&amp;amp;ei=GJkMU_PHN8GL7AbShYCwBw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNEaWWBWZESL2MoGQikAu1CYXpNtPg&amp;amp;sig2=WE-oG5YY0hIyBJfqwMDysQ&amp;amp;bvm=bv.61725948,d.ZGU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I already checked on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemisia_annua&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page about Artemisia annua&lt;/a&gt;, and there is a paragraph about cancer &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15642597&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;with a paper&lt;/a&gt; that explains the promising anti-cancer effects of the herb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We found that holotransferrin-tagged artemisinin, when compared with&#xA;  artemisinin, was very potent and selective in killing cancer cells.&#xA;  Thus, this 'tagged-compound' could potentially be developed into an&#xA;  effective chemotherapeutic agent for cancer treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but I wonder, where is the 98% in 16 hours figure from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T02:24:14.380" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T17:55:14.767" Title="Does Artemisia annua kill 98% of cancer cells in 16 hours?" Tags="|natural-remedies|cancer|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19668" CreationDate="2014-02-25T15:23:32.677" Score="14" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Overview&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer to your question is yes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0944711311001930&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;artemsia annua can kill cancer cells, it is cytotoxic and can in fact kill most cells, including cancerous cells&lt;/a&gt;.  I can't find a scientifically supported source for 16 hours, but it may well be the case that this is also true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of that information is of only academic use, though, as (as has been pointed out by Oddthinking in the comments) cold water and hot water would achieve a similar result - cells can be killed by extremes of temperature.  The claims made come with a very big but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The very big but&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with cancer cells is not, and never has been, killing them.  You can kill cancer cells with any cytotoxic or generally dangerous substance, such as alcohol, radiation therapy, a baseball bat etc.  (ok, so the baseball bat would be hit and miss, but the point is there).  The issue with cancer treatment is killing &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;mostly&lt;/em&gt; cancer cells, in order to &lt;strong&gt;not kill the patient as well&lt;/strong&gt; - and that's the difficult bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For this reason, the problem of aiming cytotoxic treatments at only cancerous cells, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatmentsandsideeffects/complementaryandalternativemedicine/herbsvitaminsandminerals/wormwood&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Artemsia Annua is not recommended as a cancer treatment&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some derivatives of Artemisia annua, or sweet wormwood, a relative of wormwood, have been shown to be effective in the treatment of malaria. In fact, the World Health Organization approved artemisinin for use against malaria in Africa in 2004. These extracts also show some promise in laboratory studies as cancer treatment drugs. Further studies are required to find out whether the anti-cancer results apply to people. It is important to remember that extracted compounds are not the same as the whole herb, and study results are not likely to show the same effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does have uses in treating other conditions, such as Malaria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The treatment of cancer in modern medicine is based on the killing or removal of cancerous cells, by chemical or radiation based treatments, by removal of tumours.  A large part of the problem that onocologists face with treating cancers is the targetting of treatment towards cancerous cells, and away from non cancerous cells.  One relatively new treatment is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/cancer/in-depth/monoclonal-antibody/art-20047808&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Monoclonal Antibody Treatment&lt;/a&gt;, which uses an approach of antibodies which can (in theory) recognise and envelop cancerous cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The long and the short of it&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Artemsia Annua could be used as a cytotoxic agent to kill cancerous cells, but this is hindered by actually avoiding killing healthy cells, which is the same problem modern Chemotherapy faces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17358" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T21:24:09.900" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19673" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-25T15:59:53.997" Score="1" ViewCount="310" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently stumbled upon the notion of an experience curve: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects#The_experience_curve&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_curve_effects#The_experience_curve&lt;/a&gt; . It basically says, that plotting the cost per item over the number of produced items will follow a power law with negative exponent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law&lt;/a&gt; on the other side states, that the number of transistors on a CPU doubles every 18 months. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if one would plot the number of transistors on a CPU not per year, but per number of produced CPUs (which I can't do, because I do not have the data for this) I guess this would give a power law, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that sense can one say that Moores law is just a special case of an experience curve as also found in other industries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3199" LastEditorUserId="3199" LastEditDate="2014-02-25T16:06:04.413" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T14:23:06.630" Title="Is Moore's law just a special case of an experience curve?" Tags="|economics|technology|productivity|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-03-06T16:44:24.630" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19673" CreationDate="2014-02-25T16:50:10.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However if one would plot the number of transistors on a CPU not per&#xA;  year, but per number of produced CPUs (which I can't do, because I do&#xA;  not have the data for this) I guess this would give a power law, too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, it would not.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doubling every 18-months is equivalent to 58.7% YtY growth. Generic version of Moore's law talks about doubling every 2 years, which is still equivalent to 41.4% YtY growth. On the other hand PC CPU sales have flat-lined in recent years. YtY growth for PC CPUs was expected to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23907213&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;3.2% (units) and 1.6% (value)&lt;/a&gt; in years 2013 to 2016. I've haven't yet seen more recent revised forecast, but I'd expect them to be actually even worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2014-02-25T16:50:10.720" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19676" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19689" CreationDate="2014-02-25T19:01:32.607" Score="14" ViewCount="1458" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sheikh Saleh bin Saad al-Lohaidan who is either &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/29/world/meast/saudi-arabia-women-driving-cleric/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a leading Saudi cleric&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/29/us-saudi-driving-idUSBRE98S04B20130929&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a judicial adviser to an association of Gulf psychologists&lt;/a&gt;, has been reported to have told &lt;a href=&quot;http://sabq.org/YvEfde&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sabq.org&lt;/a&gt; (original site down, statement taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/29/us-saudi-driving-idUSBRE98S04B20130929&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reuters&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If a woman drives a car, not out of pure necessity, that could have negative physiological impacts as functional and physiological medical studies show that it automatically affects the ovaries and pushes the pelvis upwards,&amp;quot; he told Sabq.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;That is why we find those who regularly drive have children with clinical problems of varying degrees,&amp;quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are those valid claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14840" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-08-04T03:57:01.643" Title="Does driving affect women's ovaries, pushes their pelvis upwards and cause clinical problems in their children?" Tags="|medical-science|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19679" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-25T21:25:17.357" Score="4" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/24/climate_change_will_cause_huge_increase_in_murder_robbery_and_rape/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Register&lt;/a&gt; reports, somewhat skeptically, that an american consultant has produced an analysis claiming that climate change will lead to an increase in crime. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper, published in the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069613001289&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal of Environmental Economics and Management&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (original article paywalled) claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Between 2010 and 2099, climate change will cause an additional 22,000 murders, 180,000 cases of rape, 1.2 million aggravated assaults, 2.3 million simple assaults, 260,000 robberies, 1.3 million burglaries, 2.2 million cases of larceny, and 580,000 cases of vehicle theft in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this analysis remotely credible, or is this just another example of someone leaping on the Climate Change bandwagon?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T00:17:41.053" Title="Will a warming climate cause more crime?" Tags="|climate-change|criminology|forecasting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19679" CreationDate="2014-02-25T23:22:34.713" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Correlation doesn't imply causation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of that paper, no matter how convoluted he is trying it to appear, basically just assumes that there are no other parameters in crime rate per capita than temperature and precipitation. Also the model is linear and lacks any proper validation. The assumption that relation between temperature changes within a year and crime rates can be interpolated and imposed on general climate change pattern is completely baseless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I document a striking relationship between monthly weather patterns&#xA;  and crime rates. Across a variety of offences, higher temperatures&#xA;  cause more crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For it to be proven, one must show that the relation between temperature and crime is stronger than between time of the year and crime (as well as region and crime - yes, south regions of US are more criminal and warmer, but there is no proof that one is related to another), that is the difference is outside the standard error (at least). The uncertainty calculation is omitted from paper and it is not clear if the resulting numbers are artefacts or statistically significant results. Any sort of cross-validation is also absent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The methodology of data selection looks like cherry-picking as well (removing outliers is quite a controversial topic in statistics, and this probably is not the worst example of it, but if someone removes data from sample usually it means it doesn't support the theory). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I take several final steps to clean the crime data. First, I drop all&#xA;  county-by-year records in which U.S. Census estimates indicate that&#xA;  the county had a population of fewer than 1,000 persons. Second, I&#xA;  drop all county-by-year records in which zero crimes were reported in&#xA;  all months, or in which weather data are missing for at least one&#xA;  month. Third, I eliminate outliers (almost all of which appear to be&#xA;  reporting errors) by dropping county-by-year observations in which the&#xA;  crime rate in any month is greater than twice the value of the 99th&#xA;  percentile crime rate for the entire sample. Finally, to minimize&#xA;  problems with heteroskedasticity in the data, I drop counties in which&#xA;  the mean crime rate is above the 99th percentile or below the 1st&#xA;  percentile for the entire sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, crime rate plots by year (presented by the author) clearly show that the crime rate is going down since 90's while climate is slowly warming up. This is in direct contradiction with the conclusions of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p2l5p.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, while the general idea of the claim under investigation seems plausible, the methodology of this paper is far from drawing any robust conclusions. It lacks a few important steps which should be included in building any statistical forecasting model (fundamental model justification, variable selection, dealing with collinearity issues, cross-validation, uncertainty handling, etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="14651" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T00:17:41.053" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T00:17:41.053" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19401" CreationDate="2014-02-26T01:11:43.013" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fire in the hearth will deposit soot and tar in the chimney to a certain extent depending on the fuel and the temperature of burning. In general, the cooler the fire is, the more soot and tar is deposited - the hotter, the less soot and tar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to potato peelings which have been dried, I have no specific reference as to the latent energy of combustion, I'll have to take your word for it that they burn fast and hot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a tipping point at which the chimney starts to clean itself - this is called a chimney fire. This may result in the catastrophic failure of the house structure, as small gaps in the masonry next to surrounding timbers promote their combustion, or the masonry becoming so hot; that the surrounding wooden structure will start to burn. This is not always the case, but it's a judgement call that would need to be made by a suitably qualified professional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some damage limitation tips: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Extinguish-a-Chimney-Fire&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only effective and safe way to clean a chimney is with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.staffordshirefire.gov.uk/2333.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sweep's Brush and Rods.&lt;/a&gt; (From a UK Government Agency)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to further references and reading, this document is highly detailed and comprehensive: &lt;a href=&quot;http://fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/fire87/PDF/f87007.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17546" LastEditorUserId="17546" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T01:53:08.437" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T01:53:08.437" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19682" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19685" CreationDate="2014-02-26T01:19:43.353" Score="1" ViewCount="892" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the work &quot;quack&quot; to describe a charlatan or medical kook, come from the word quicksilver (mercury)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I heard doctors would inject mercury in sick patients to destroy malignant cells, and as a result, the patients would get even more sick, their hair would fall out, etc. Thus these doctors were reputed &quot;quacks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a folk etymology, or is there real basis to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17811" LastEditorUserId="17804" LastEditDate="2016-07-15T19:48:44.443" LastActivityDate="2016-07-15T19:48:44.443" Title="Is the etymology of quack from quicksilver?" Tags="|etymology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19293" CreationDate="2014-02-26T04:48:01.500" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, but with reservations, as you will read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hypnotism as practiced by physicians and the like is essentially guided self-hypnosis. The brain changes in measurable ways from a normal &quot;awake&quot; state (or Beta brain wave frequency) gradually down through alpha state when the brain waves slow down and you become more relaxed and then finally to a theta state. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/026844_hypnosis_brain_consciousness.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here.&lt;/a&gt; When you fall asleep you go through these stages and finally into a delta state, which is sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice people's susceptibility to guiding themselves or being guided, varies enormously, but most people are able to be hypnotized to some degree. Once you are in this state, you are able to focus and concentrate very much better than &quot;normally&quot;. This may well enable you to remember fine details of that front door, even chips in the paintwork and tiny plants growing through cracks in the concrete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Theta state is a deeper state of relaxation; this is a common state of&#xA;  hypnosis and meditation. Theta allows you to access memories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From reference above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a couple of interesting tidbits from psychologytoday.com &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hypnosis-the-power-trance/200909/does-hypnosis-improve-memory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The key to understanding the ability of hypnosis to improve memory is&#xA;  found in how our memory works in the first place. Memory is actually a&#xA;  complicated system that remains not fully understood. There are the&#xA;  very short term memories (like recalling a phone number) which last a&#xA;  few seconds. The long term memory works in a two stage process. First,&#xA;  you store the experience somewhere in you mind and secondly, we have&#xA;  to recall that memory. Problems may occur in either system: the&#xA;  storage or retrieval.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first question is what and how were you trying to store that&#xA;  information? What cognitive mode were you using (visual, auditory,&#xA;  written, sensory, etc)? What was the context of the situation? What&#xA;  were any associations about the information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and (Slight edit for it to make contextual sense)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;memory retrieval is accomplished by helping the subject focus on the&#xA;  experience and sequence of details increasing the vividness of each&#xA;  memory until all the information was recalled. Police have used&#xA;  hypnotists to help witnesses recall details of crime scenes. This has&#xA;  actually led to the thorny issue of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/media-spotlight/201211/implanting-false-memories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;false memories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer would seem to be a qualified yes, so it depends on how well you can focus your mind upon a singular series of sensory impressions, emotions and thoughts you had at the time. So it all depends on your ability to relax into a theta state, even if only for a brief moment, just long enough for you to recall what you need.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other References Taken from an article by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Steve G. Jones, Ed.S. has been practicing hypnotherapy since the&#xA;  1980s. He is the author of 22 books on Hypnotherapy. Steve is a member&#xA;  of the National Guild of Hypnotists, American Board of Hypnotherapy,&#xA;  president of the American Alliance of Hypnotists, on the board of&#xA;  directors of the Los Angeles chapter of the American Lung Association,&#xA;  and director of the Steve G. Jones School of Clinical Hypnotherapy.&#xA;  Steve G. Jones, Ed.S. is a board certified Clinical Hypnotherapist. He&#xA;  has a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Florida&#xA;  (1994), a master's degree in education from Armstrong Atlantic State&#xA;  University (2007), and is currently working on a doctorate in&#xA;  education, Ed.D., at Georgia Southern University&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Learn more: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/026844_hypnosis_brain_consciousness.html#ixzz2uaTbyCZV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.naturalnews.com/026844_hypnosis_brain_consciousness.html#ixzz2uaTbyCZV&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17546" LastEditorUserId="17546" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T05:11:14.577" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T05:11:14.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19682" CreationDate="2014-02-26T05:33:55.833" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears that it has a different origin - quacksalver - Kwakzalver in contemporary Dutch literally meaning &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quackery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;hawker of salve&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the middle ages Quack meant shouting - as these people would be at the market-place shouting to hawk their wares.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And taken from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quackery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Quackery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Quack&quot; derives from the 17th century word &quot;quacksalver&quot;, in turn from&#xA;  the Dutch word kwakzalver (hawker of salve). Both &quot;quack&quot; and &quot;kwak&quot;&#xA;  originate from the Middle Dutch quacken (to brag or boast).&#xA;  Quacksalvers would appear in town markets offering cure-alls in&#xA;  bottles to anyone gullible enough to part with their money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although you are right about mercury being used in ways which seem odd to us now, this is not the etymology of &quot;quack&quot; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off topic: I can't resist telling this, but there was an old saying: &quot;You spend one night with Venus, then you must spend four nights with Mercury&quot; as mercury was used against sexually transmitted diseases by injecting it into the bladder, or via the urethra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17546" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T05:33:55.833" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19623" CreationDate="2014-02-26T12:57:46.903" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been several experiments on the effect of white noise on sleep, under different conditions leading to different conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It helps &lt;a href=&quot;http://adc.bmj.com/content/65/1/135.abstract&quot;&gt;neonates get to sleep&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We studied two groups of 20 neonates, between 2 and 7 days old, in a randomised trial. Sixteen (80%) fell asleep within five minutes in response to white noise compared with only five (25%) who fell asleep spontaneously in the control group. White noise may help mothers settle difficult babies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It interfered with &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8986.1972.tb00757.x/abstract&quot;&gt;REM sleep in adults&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eight male college students slept for 8 consecutive nights under conditions of 93 ± 2 dB white noise (N) and under normal quiet conditions (Q). On N nights the percentage of total sleep time spent in stage REM was decreased (p &amp;lt; .001), the percentages of stages 1 and 2 were increased (p &amp;lt; .05, p &amp;lt; .001, respectively) and REM latency was increased (p &amp;lt; .02) compared to Q nights prior to N nights. On Q nights following N nights the percentages of stage REM increased above baseline levels indicating compensatory recovery effects from REM sleep deprivation on the prior N nights. Stages 3 and 4 remained unchanged throughout the study. The reduction in stage REM on N nights was directly attributed to the effects of noise on the CNS and not a secondary result of an increased number of awakenings on N nights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It helped &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389945704002242&quot;&gt;maintain sleep in noisy environments&lt;/a&gt; by hiding the  jumps in volume that cause arousal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mixed frequency white noise increases arousal thresholds in normal individuals exposed to recorded ICU noise by reducing the difference between background noise and peak noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T12:57:46.903" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19689" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19676" CreationDate="2014-02-26T14:28:05.603" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In reviewing the literature initially:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searches of &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.uk/&quot;&gt;Scholar&lt;/a&gt; for these phrases:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'physiological effects driving'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'women driving'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'ergonomics driving'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'pelvis driving'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;'driving + ovaries'&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...all returned no relevant studies discussing any effect of this kind, suggesting that if this kind of phenomenon has occurred, no one has thought it significant enough to study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A search for 'driving pelvis' turns up &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.sae.org/960481/&quot;&gt;one semi-relevant paper&lt;/a&gt; on the design of seats, according to the position of the pelvis.  This paper, considering the ergonomics of driving position &lt;em&gt;specifically related to the pelvis&lt;/em&gt; and published by a manufacturer of automobile and aerospace systems, doesn't specially address the supposed problems of women driving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additonally, a Scholar search for &quot;dislodged pelvis&quot; returns exactly 0 results, although without the quotes you find a number of irrelevant articles.  A Google web search for &quot;Dislodged pelvis&quot; yields 106 results, of which one is this very question, and the majority of others concern either a dislodging during childbirth (which is of course an outward dislodging of the pelvis) or a dislodging after a fracture, which is a high energy traumatic injury, not really the kind of thing one might encounter whilst driving an uneventful route!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, choosing a country in which women regularly drive (I've chosen the UK, because I'm used to perusing their health statistics, and with 30 million women, there's a decent sample size), there is not significantly high incidence of pelvic trauma at all regardless of gender.  Code S33 of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB08288&quot;&gt;2012 Hospital Episode Statistics&lt;/a&gt; shows that during that year, 220 people were admitted with a dislocation, ligament damage or weakening, or strain to the the lumbar spine or pelvis, of which number 148 were male.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this, it's easy to see that, at least in the UK (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/8933/nts2010-02.pdf&quot;&gt;where approximately 66% of women hold a driver's licence, around 80% of women under 50 hold a licence&lt;/a&gt;), approximately 67% of those presenting at hospital with pelvis injuries of this type are male.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking into account that one cause of injury to the pelvis is giving birth, I think I can say with relative confidence that driving is very unlikely to cause injury to the pelvis of a woman in a significantly higher proportion than it does to men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NB: I would have liked to address this with statistics from Saudi Arabia itself, but I was unable to find such detailed information for the country.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17358" LastEditorUserId="17358" LastEditDate="2014-02-26T14:39:20.350" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T14:39:20.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9597" CreationDate="2014-02-26T16:01:12.553" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The French administration in charge of enforcing trade and advertisement regulations (&lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/DGCCRF&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DGCCRF&lt;/a&gt;) and the observatory of data privacy (&lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNIL&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNIL&lt;/a&gt;) held an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnil.fr/linstitution/actualite/article/article/ip-tracking-collaboration-en-cours-entre-la-cnil-et-la-dgccrf/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;investigation on IP tracking&lt;/a&gt; on an unspecified set of vendors of train and flight tickets operating in France. Their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnil.fr/linstitution/actualite/article/article/ip-tracking-conclusions-de-lenquete-conjointe-menee-par-la-cnil-et-la-dgccrf/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;conclusion&lt;/a&gt; was that they could not find any evidence that prices would rise when you check the same site multiple times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot find the details of the investigation, there doesn't seem to be a public report. In particular, I cannot find any information about the testing methodology or the companies that were tested (in particular whether Ryanair was included in the study).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I quote some relevant extracts from the press release (my translation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tests revealed practices resulting in sometimes large variations in prices: practices based on the number of seats offered or available in the desired airplane or train. This price policy (known as “yield management”) results for example in the price of a ticket depending on the date at which it was bought or the proportion of occupied seats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tests also revealed a practice consisting of adjusting booking fees based on the time at which the booking is made. The online shopper thus benefits from better rates when buying a ticket at “off-peak hours” chosen by the merchant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Investigations were carried out with online merchants, then with their contractors in the domain of behavioral marketing. (…) None of the techniques that were observed took the IP address of shoppers into account as a decisive factor nor aimed to modulate the price of products or services offered to consumers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A practice consisting of adjusting the offered price based on the site previously visited by the consumer was also observed. Thus a consumer coming from a price comparison site will sometimes see a more attractive offer, but with higher fees, resulting in no significant variation in the total price. This operation is carried out without anyone being able to determine the mechanisms resulting in variations in the displayed price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The press release reads “the site”, singular, which hints at a decision based on the referer rather than based on cookies leading to cross-site tracking. But I wouldn't try to draw a definitive conclusion on this technical issue based on a one-paragraph layman's summary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the basis of this study, here are my personal conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you visit the airline's site multiple times, you are not penalized (price-wise) for that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, given well-known yield management techniques, you are likely to see the price rise over time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Variations such as the modulation on the time of day make generalizable comparisons harder.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you browse the site in a fresh browser, you may see a different offer but the resulting price is substantially similar. This kind of makes sense as a marketing ploy — try harder to attract the comparison shopper, but sell them the same ticket in the end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/16581/does-browsing-ticket-sites-in-incognito-mode-and-or-from-different-ips-result-i/17613#17613&quot;&gt;Travel Stack Exchange user Shane&lt;/a&gt; reports having observed the practice you describe, but sadly his testimony lacks methodology or concrete evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="525" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-26T16:01:12.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19693" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19727" CreationDate="2014-02-26T23:00:39.470" Score="60" ViewCount="39459" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent Cracked.com photoplasty contest produced this image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QAPIb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;If churches paid taxes...&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this image correct? Would taxing churches generate that much money, and would that much money be enough to cover food stamps and house the homeless? At what tax rate would churches have to be taxed (for example, a corporate tax rate, small business tax rate, etc.)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(If you feel this question is overly broad, I'll accept an answer just about how much money could be gained at what rates from taxing churches, rather than what this money could cover).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8532" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-09-04T02:21:02.903" LastActivityDate="2015-09-04T23:43:47.113" Title="If American churches paid taxes, how much revenue would that generate?" Tags="|united-states|religion|taxes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19699" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19706" CreationDate="2014-02-27T05:36:53.563" Score="10" ViewCount="983" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/pet-dogs-damaging-environment-suvs/story?id=9402234&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; referring to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Eat-Dog-Sustainable-Living/dp/0500287902&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; the authors claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taking the dog for a walk to the store would seem like a more&#xA;  environmentally-friendly option than piling into the SUV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not so, say two New Zealand scientists whose new book claims pets have&#xA;  a carbon footprint that is about twice the size of the gas guzzling&#xA;  vehicles that have long been a bane of environmentalism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw this rephrased and talked about a lot recently, however, does it have any scientific proof? It seems that firstly, emitting less carbon and being more environmentally friendly is not exactly the same thing, and secondly I haven't seen any real justification for the rough numbers presented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T16:30:13.870" Title="Are pets as bad for environment as cars?" Tags="|zoology|road-vehicles|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19699" CreationDate="2014-02-27T15:46:19.507" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/nov/13/ethical-living-carbon-emissions&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article on The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; mentions a flaw that has been raised with the book's methodology: that the meat used for pet food is not grown for the purpose and would still exist even if pets didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Far from being unsustainable, pet-food manufacturing uses material from animals which are inspected by vets as fit for human consumption but which are surplus to the requirements of the human food industry,&amp;quot; says Michael Bellingham, the chief executive of the Pet Food Manufacturers' Association. &amp;quot;These byproducts must meet the very high safety and quality criteria laid down in European legislation. Without us adding value annually to around 630,000 tonnes of animal byproducts in the UK, it might otherwise have to be disposed of via landfill or incineration. Not very green. Furthermore, a recent report by the Waste and Resources Action Programme [more commonly known as Wrap] is rightly damning of the enormous amounts of food – around 30% – that goes to waste each year. Compare that with the 1% of pet food they found went to disposal.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't yet been able to find whether the authors included this in their calculations or whether they used the same footprint per kilogram of meat as was used for human consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the claim about meat-based pet food being primarily made up of off-cuts that would be otherwise burned is true, and the authors didn't include this in their calculations, the carbon footprint of meat-eating pets would be significantly smaller than the book claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://phys.org/news176582720.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Phys.org also expresses some skepticism&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clark Williams-Derry, chief researcher at the Sightline Institute, a nonprofit sustainability think-tank in Seattle, scoffed at the study, which is how scientists express disdain.&#xA;&amp;quot;When I saw the study I ran some quick numbers,&amp;quot; Williams-Derry said. &amp;quot;The average dog has to eat at least twice as much as the average person for this to be right. People are just heavier than dogs so, I just had to scratch my head at that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1037931_do-dogs-leave-a-larger-footprint-than-suvs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Car Connection points out that the book authors have used a yearly travel distance that is around half the U.S national average&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;then by assuming that the vehicle will only be driven 10,000 km (about 6,200 miles) annually. According to the Department of Energy, the true U.S. average is more than twice that, at 13,700 miles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amongst other errors such as severely underestimating the value for the carbon footprint of the car's manufacture.  They also suggest that the authors have not included &amp;quot;indirect impact like roads, bridges, and fuel infrastructure.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://grist.org/article/dogs-vs-suvs/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An article on Grist&lt;/a&gt; compounds up all these errors and adds a few more to calculate that the book authors are off by a factor of 18.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;combining the underestimates of SUV impacts with the overestimates of dog food impacts — the anti-doggites are off by a factor of at least 18, and probably more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11387" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T16:30:13.870" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19710" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19714" CreationDate="2014-02-27T16:30:56.707" Score="17" ViewCount="1783" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this picture &lt;a href=&quot;http://srsfunny.tumblr.com/post/77750220123/useful-information-http-srsfunny-tumblr-com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/w2SZs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;reddit story&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Can cancer be detected by a pregnancy test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastActivityDate="2016-04-11T10:53:20.993" Title="Can pregnancy tests check for testicular cancer in men?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19721" CreationDate="2014-02-27T16:48:25.553" Score="20" ViewCount="4024" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across an info graphic that says that former U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson had an amphibious car and would drive guests into the lake while screaming about the brakes. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mXr7u.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Infographic: Lyndon Johnson driving an amphibious car&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2017-05-25T14:33:11.310" LastActivityDate="2017-05-25T14:33:11.310" Title="Did Lyndon Johnson have an amphibious car?" Tags="|united-states|history|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19710" CreationDate="2014-02-27T17:45:36.307" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, most pregnancy tests detect human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), a hormone produced by fertilized eggs, but also by some kinds of cancer cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read more about different tumor markers on this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/treatment/understandingyourdiagnosis/examsandtestdescriptions/tumormarkers/tumor-markers-t-m-blood-urine&quot;&gt;info page&lt;/a&gt; from &quot;The American Cancer Society&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also several other situations where a pregnancy test may give a false positive result (both for men and non-pregnant women). The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_test&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; lists several possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;False positive test results may occur for several reasons, including&#xA;  errors of test application, use of drugs containing the hCG molecule,&#xA;  and non-pregnant production of the hCG molecule. Urine tests can be&#xA;  falsely positive in those that are taking the medications:&#xA;  chlorpromazine, phenothiazines and methadone among others.[10]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Spurious evaporation lines may appear on many home pregnancy tests if&#xA;  read after the suggested 3–5 minute window or reaction time,&#xA;  independent of an actual pregnancy. False positives may also appear on&#xA;  tests used past their expiration date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A woman who has been given an hCG injection as part of infertility&#xA;  treatment will test positive on pregnancy tests that assay hCG,&#xA;  regardless of her actual pregnancy status. However, some infertility&#xA;  drugs (e.g., clomid) do not contain the hCG hormone.[11]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some diseases of the liver, cancers, and other medical conditions may&#xA;  produce elevated hCG and thus cause a false positive pregnancy test.&#xA;  These include choriocarcinoma and other germ cell tumors, IgA&#xA;  deficiencies, heterophile antibodies, enterocystoplasties, gestational&#xA;  trophoblastic diseases (GTD), and gestational trophoblastic neoplasms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastEditorUserId="8188" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T02:25:17.330" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T02:25:17.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19715" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19719" CreationDate="2014-02-27T18:21:12.523" Score="6" ViewCount="428" Body="&lt;p&gt;Why is 'Higgs Boson' called the 'God Particle'? &#xA;According to Forbes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The name was the invention of Leon Lederman, himself a great physicist, who used it as the title of a popular book in 1993.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this actually true?&#xA;Or is there any reason for the particle to be named like that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16701" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T00:07:41.090" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T00:07:41.090" Title="Is 'Higgs Boson' called the 'God Particle' because of a book by Leon Lederman?" Tags="|physics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19716" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-02-27T18:23:10.470" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The word video in video game traditionally referred to a raster display device,but it now implies any type of display device that can produce two- or three-dimensional images. The electronic systems used to play video games are known as platforms; examples of these are personal computers and video game consoles. These platforms range from large mainframe computers to small handheld devices. Specialized video games such as arcade games, while previously common, have gradually declined in use. Video games have gone on to become an art form and industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16701" LastEditorUserId="16701" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T22:23:33.473" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T22:23:33.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19717" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-02-27T18:23:10.470" Score="0" Body="A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device." OwnerUserId="16701" LastEditorUserId="16701" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T21:04:10.427" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T21:04:10.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19715" CreationDate="2014-02-27T18:43:37.093" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books/about/The_God_particle.html?id=15nuAAAAMAAJ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The God particle: if the universe is the answer, what is the question?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=God+particle&amp;amp;case_insensitive=on&amp;amp;year_start=1950&amp;amp;year_end=2008&amp;amp;corpus=15&amp;amp;smoothing=0&amp;amp;share=&amp;amp;direct_url=t4%3B%2CGod%20particle%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3BGod%20Particle%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BGod%20particle%3B%2Cc0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google ngram viewer results&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q5pFR.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/God_particle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiktionary&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leon Lederman's book The God Particle was apparently thus called at the suggestion of his editor. It is also claimed that Lederman himself dubbed it (the particle) the goddamn particle, for its elusiveness, the term being toned down for public use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-02-27T18:55:16.700" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T18:55:16.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19719" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19715" CreationDate="2014-02-27T18:59:41.503" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;They named it the God Particle because in the book, &lt;em&gt;The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question?&lt;/em&gt;, the publisher wouldn't allow them to call it the Goddamn particle. They called it this because of its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. And two, there is a connection, of sorts, to another book, a much older one... Referring to the book of Geneses from the Bible. Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17856" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-03-02T17:12:39.137" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T17:12:39.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19720" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19728" CreationDate="2014-02-27T19:11:09.947" Score="7" ViewCount="16817" Body="&lt;p&gt;A conversation on Reddit mentioned that in Alabama, the law states that it's legal for a man to beat his wife as long as he doesn't do it more than once per month. If this law is still around, I assume that it's not enforced. However, I'd like to know (from a reputable source, preferably the law or repeal itself) whether this law is still on the books or not. I'm also curious to know if it was ever a law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some say Alabama, some say Arkansas. (Non-reputable) places that I've seen it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idiotlaws.com/cant-beat-your-wife-more-then-once-a-month/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Idiot Laws&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071115134857AAXv8nX&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yahoo Answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stupidlaws.com/a-man-can-legally-beat-his-wife-but-not-more-than-once-a-month/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stupid Laws&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chacha.com/question/is-it-legal-to-beat-your-wife-in-alabama&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cha Cha&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify: I only want to know whether the law is or was in existence. If it does exist, I'm assuming that the law is not enforced (i.e., that domestic violence is indeed illegal in both states).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17781" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-02-28T15:09:43.443" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T13:31:45.177" Title="Does Alabama or Arkansas have (unenforced) laws permitting men to beat wives up to once per month?" Tags="|united-states|law|violence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19711" CreationDate="2014-02-27T20:43:42.010" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I hope this helps...&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nps.gov/lyjo/planyourvisit/presidentialvehicles.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nps.gov/lyjo/planyourvisit/presidentialvehicles.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amphicar&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Built in Germany from 1961 to 1968, the Amphicar is the only civilian amphibious passenger automobile ever to be mass produced. A total of 3,878 vehicles were produced in four colors: Beach White, Regatta Red, Fjord Green (Aqua), and Lagoon Blue--the color of President Johnson's Amphicar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;President Johnson enjoyed surprising unsuspecting guests when taking them for a ride in his Amphicar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The President, with Vicky McCammon in the seat alongside him and me in the back,was now driving around in a small blue car with the top down. We reached a steep incline at the edge of the lake and the car started rolling rapidly toward the water. The President shouted, &amp;quot;The brakes don’t work! The brakes won’t hold! We’re going in! We’re going under!&amp;quot; The car splashed into the water. I started to get out. Just then the car leveled and I realized we were in a Amphicar. The President laughed. As we putted along the lake then (and throughout the evening), he teased me. &amp;quot;Vicky, did you see what Joe did? He didn’t give a damn about his President. He just wanted to save his own skin and get out of the car.&amp;quot; Then he’d roar.&#xA;--Joseph A. Califano, Jr&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17857" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-02-27T21:31:47.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19723" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-02-28T06:56:27.400" Score="27" ViewCount="40832" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently saw this image on Facebook (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10201654159501890&amp;amp;set=a.1591603196094.2076571.1416308554&amp;amp;type=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qhgcu.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qhgcu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;claim that depiction of Jesus is actually of Caesar Borgia&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Along with a caption:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pope Alexander lV then ordered the destruction of all art depicting a Semitic Jesus and commissioned a number of paintings depicting a Caucasian Jesus. His son, Cardinal Cesare Borgia, was the model for these paintings. Thus, the nastiest of all the Borgias, became the iconic Caucasian Jesus so loved by Christians today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since then, following links has led to three sources that seem to be rather independent of each other: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omg-facts.com/History/The-classic-depiction-of-Jesus-may-actua/49835&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://theholyprepuce.tumblr.com/post/16655875084/white-jesus-modeled-on-cesare-borgia-the-theory&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://rapgenius.com/Killah-priest-bible-basic-instructions-before-leaving-earth-lyrics#note-99466&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;. In particular, the first one has this statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many scholars believe that Cesare Borgia was the basis for some depictions of Jesus that eventually became the standard look that is used until today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But no source for that claim. The third source has more information that certainly seem to be accurate, and the second has this comparison image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SnrhE.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SnrhE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;side by side comparison of Caesar Borgia and Jesus Christ&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hence, I'm willing to believe that the popular modern depiction of Jesus in Western cultures is based off of Cesare Borgia, but I'd like to see more evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it true that Cesare Borgia was the model for today's depictions of Jesus?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8765" LastEditorUserId="8765" LastEditDate="2015-09-21T20:34:42.543" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T20:34:42.543" Title="Is the popular (Western) depiction of Jesus based off of Cesare Borgia?" Tags="|jesus-christ|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9476" CreationDate="2014-02-28T08:03:16.197" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess you cannot spoil someone who is not able to anticipate that if he cries the care-giver will come to help. I've read from different sources that this developmental milestone is achieved when babies are 9-12 months, eg. here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/re/itf09cogdevfdcae.asp&quot;&gt;http://www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/re/itf09cogdevfdcae.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reference given is Lerner &amp;amp; Ciervo 2003. My guess is that it refers to:&#xA;Lerner &amp;amp; Ciervo 2003. Healthy Minds: Nurturing Children’s Development from 0 to 36 Months.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zerotothree.org/child-development/brain-development/9-12months.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.zerotothree.org/child-development/brain-development/9-12months.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This document is in turn apparently based on a report by the NAS:&#xA;National Research Council. From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2000.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9824&quot;&gt;http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=9824&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;But I haven't found the relevant part by flicking through this over-600-pages report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17869" LastActivityDate="2014-02-28T08:03:16.197" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19693" CreationDate="2014-02-28T15:27:16.987" Score="102" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary: The graphic is based on an article from the Council for Secular Humanism which is almost entirely incorrect&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be the case that the infographic is based on the report &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.secularhumanism.org/fi/vol_32/4/cragun_32_4.pdf&quot;&gt;&quot;How Secular Humanists (and Everyone Else) Subsidize Religion in the United States&quot;.&lt;/a&gt;, by the Council for Secular Humanism. The figures seem to agree, so it's reasonable to assume that the source of the graphic is the report. To assess the reliability of the graphic, we therefore have to assess the reliability of the report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;A Sanity Test&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The annual amount given to religious organisations in 2009 was around $100 billion. We know this because the article cites it, and claims 'Giving USA' as a source. They claim that $70 billion is the tax due. &lt;strong&gt;The article is asking us to believe that churches, if taxed fairly, would pay 70% of their income in tax.&lt;/strong&gt; (That's &lt;em&gt;income&lt;/em&gt;, not profit.) No other corporation, profitable or not, pays anywhere near that level of tax in the US. A 70% rate is not &quot;paying taxes the same as everyone else&quot;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://corporate.ford.com/annual-reports/annual-report-2014/index.html&quot;&gt;The Ford Motor Company&lt;/a&gt;, for example, had around $140B in income the year to 30 JUN 2015 and paid less than $2B in tax.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now let's look at the claims in detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first thing that needs to be noted is that this report is not from a neutral source. The Council for Secular Humanism exists to promote secular humanism, which largely defines itself by the absence of religion, and Free Inquiry is not a peer-reviewed journal. This does not mean we reject it, of course - it means that we should apply a skeptical analysis to the report, which the rest of this answer will do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Claims&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are the principal claims made by the report as to subsidies to churches:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Federal Income Tax Subsidy - $35.3billion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;State Income Tax Subsidy $6.billion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Property Tax Subsidy $26.2 billion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Investment Tax Subsidy $0.041 billion ($41 million)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Parsonage Subsidy $1.2 billion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Faith Based Initiatives Subsidy $2.2 billion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Total $71 billion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report seems to imply that these tax breaks are special to churches. In fact only one is (the parsonage allowance). The rest are available to other non-profits, whether they are religious or not, and whether they do any charitable work or not. For example, fee paying private prep schools get the same exemptions as a church, even if their sole purpose is to provide expensive education to the rich, who pay a large fee in return. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irs.gov/Charities-&amp;amp;-Non-Profits/Other-Non-Profits/Requirements-for-Exemption&quot;&gt;It is likely that &lt;strong&gt;most churches could register for tax exemption under 501c, even if ‘religion’ were removed as one of the criteria&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ohiocommunitytheatre.org/Section%20II%20-%20Page%2096%20-%20Incorporation%20and%20Tax%20Exempt.pdf&quot;&gt;Community theatres and fraternal organisations (e.g. Moose Lodges and college fraternities) do this all the time.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Humanist_Association#Early_history&quot;&gt;Secular&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.floridahumanist.org/donate/&quot;&gt;humanist&lt;/a&gt; organizations are registered for tax-exempt status. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutworldview.org/humanist-sociology-and-the-classroom-faq.htm&quot;&gt;The American Humanist Association specifically has tax exemption in the religious category.&lt;/a&gt;, which means that atheist religious organizations are getting the same tax breaks as 'believing' religious ones. &lt;a href=&quot;https://centerforinquiry.thankyou4caring.org/council-donation-form&quot;&gt;Even the Council for Secular Humanism itself is tax exempt.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at the claims of the individual kinds of subsidies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Federal Income Tax subsidy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report claims that “the subsidy to religion in the form of lost corporate tax revenue to the federal government revenue is about $35 billion annually&quot;. It has calculated this by taking the total annual donations to religious organizations (which it elsewhere states to be $100billion) and applying the top rate corporate tax rate to all of it. But corporate tax doesn’t work like that. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_tax_in_the_united_states#Taxable_income&quot;&gt;Buinesses are allowed to deduct their expenses before their taxable income is calculated.&lt;/a&gt; Churches typically use most of their income on staff salaries, building maintenance, office equipment and the like – all of which are legitimate expenses, and would be deducted from income by any normal business. As we saw above, churches as they are now virtually never make a profit, and so would pay virtually no corporate tax. If they did make a profit they would not qualify for tax exempt status under today's rules. (Let's leave aside the fact that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_tax_in_the_United_States&quot;&gt;even highly profitable multi-national industry corporations don't pay 35% tax - 12% is more normal&lt;/a&gt;, and it's 12% of their profit, not their income). As we also saw above, most churches could also register as tax-exempt under other parts of the 501c regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The $35 billion Federal tax figure is a fantasy, unsupported by anything from tax law or practice.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;State Income Tax Subsidy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This falls by exactly the same argument as the Federal subsidy.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Property Tax Subsidy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Council is very vague about how it arrives at its figure for the total value of church property. It claims (without support) that the average value of a church building is $1.7 million. However a quick &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.loopnet.com/California_Churches-For-Sale/&quot;&gt;look at churches for sale&lt;/a&gt; show that - even in a high real estate area - $1.7 million dollars will buy a modern well-equipped church suitable for many hundreds or thousands of worshippers. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intelligencer.ca/2013/07/15/church-for-sale&quot;&gt;Most church buildings are much smaller than that&lt;/a&gt;. They also state that they arrived at the figure by multiplying the number of congregations by their claim of the average value of a church building. Many congregations do not own buildings at all, renting space to meet as required, or sharing space with other congregations. There is no indication that the report took this into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Churches have no special treatment regarding property taxes compared with other non-profits. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taxes.ca.gov/exemptbus.shtml#Property&quot;&gt;Non-profits are frequently (not always) exempt from property taxes&lt;/a&gt;, but churches are treated equally with them  We saw above that churches would almost certainly be able to register for tax-exempt status without the religious status. Many secular humanist organisations are probably tax-exempt, just like churches. It might be worth noting some other organizations that claim tax exemption here, including private schools, many of which have the sole purpose of providing fee-paying education to those rich enough to afford it. While the property tax exemption could be explicitly abolished for churches (putting them at a disadvantage compared with Moose Lodges, College Fraternities and private schools for the rich), in reality the $26 billion claimed would (probably) not materialize. &lt;strong&gt;The Property Tax figure is highly suspect, and is a benefit common to all non-profits, whether religious or not.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Investment tax subsidy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once again corporations are not taxed on their investments, but on their profits. If your investment income is offset by business expenses, it isn't taxed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Parsonage allowance&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/parsonage-allowance.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The parsonage allowance is a real subsidy, specific only to religious organizations.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; However all kinds of religious organizations are entitled to it, probably including even atheist 'religious organizations'. Note that it represents less than a fiftieth of the amount claimed in the report as a total subsidy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Faith Based Initiatives&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Payments under the Faith Based Initiatives programs are not simply made to churches for their own benefit - they are for specific charitable and social purposes. For example, if a church is running a homeless shelter, or a food bank, the Faith based initiatives program is allowed to pay towards the running of the shelter - in the same way that government is allowed to pay towards a shelter run by a non-religious organization. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faith_based_initiatives#Safeguards_on_faith-based_organizations&quot;&gt;This is not a payment to the church, and the church does not profit from it. There are accounting controls in place to ensure this is the case.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;If all payments like this counted as 'subsidy of religion', then every payment to a secular charity (Oxfam, Save the Children or even UNICEF) would count as a 'subsidy of secularism'.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;An aside - Churches as businesses&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Council for Secular Humanists writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We calculated the subsidies to religions under the assumption that religions are more like for-profit corporations providing entertainment (such as movie theaters or amusement parks) rather than charities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a highly selective comparison. Churches have many differences with a movie theatre – they don’t charge admission, and they don’t make a profit for two. It’s also worth pointing out that if churches did make a profit, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charitable_organization#United_States&quot;&gt;they would fail the test of tax exemption under 501c, whether or not they were religious foundations.&lt;/a&gt; The report could have chosen other secular organizations for comparison – if we truly believe that churches are in the entertainment business, then a community theatre would probably be a better comparison. As we saw above community theatres are usually tax exempt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NOTE:In response to some comments, when I say &quot;Churches don't typically make a profit&quot;, I don't mean that in any complicated sense involving share dividends; I mean simply &quot;Churches don't typically have significantly more income than expenses&quot;. Any church treasurer will back this up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Federal and State Income Tax subsidies are entirely mythical. Treating churches as a business would not bring in any of the $35billion federal tax, nor the $6 billion state tax claimed. The investment subsidy falls in the same category.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Property Tax Subsidy applies to all tax-exempt non-profits, including those with no ‘charitable’ activity. It is highly likely that churches would qualify under one of those conditions, even if religion were excluded as a specific grounds for status. In any case the figures given are highly questionable.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Parsonage subsidy is real, and if abolished would bring in about $1.2billion.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Faith-Based Initiatives program is not a subsidy to the churches, any more than contributions to Oxfam are a subsidy to secularism.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The real level of subsidy is much, much less than $70 billion, and of that tiny subsidy virtually all could be claimed by a similar non-religious organization.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="28795" LastEditDate="2015-09-04T23:43:47.113" LastActivityDate="2015-09-04T23:43:47.113" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19720" CreationDate="2014-02-28T16:12:22.023" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This appears to be an urban legend since in the 2007 &lt;a href=&quot;http://law.uark.edu/documents/860_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Arkansas Law Notes&lt;/a&gt; which contains &quot;Reports to the Arkansas Bar by the Faculty of the University of Arkansas School of Law&quot; there is an article that runs from page 113 to page 128 titled &quot;Virtually Legal: Or don’t believe everything you see on the internet!&quot; by Lorraine Lorne who was the Assistant Director of Law Library at the time of the articles writing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article is fairly long but makes for an interesting read but the relevant part comes towards the end,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally we return to consider, and conclude with, the stupid law with&#xA;  which this investigation began.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is legal in Arkansas for a man to beat his wife no more than once a month with a stick three inches or wider . . . on the courthouse&#xA;  steps . . . on the state-house steps. . . .&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although gleefully included on almost all of the stupid laws websites,&#xA;  no such law was found in any of the various compilations of Arkansas&#xA;  statutes. However, after checking the various stupid/dumb/crazy laws&#xA;  web-sites again, the states of Alabama, Arizona, California, South&#xA;  Carolina appear to permit beating one's spouse within certain limited&#xA;  circumstances: once a month, or only on Sundays, on the courthouse&#xA;  steps or the State House steps, with a leather strap or a stick no&#xA;  wider or larger than three inches or one's thumb, &lt;strong&gt;with the permission&#xA;  of the victim!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An interesting aspect of researching this particular &quot;law&quot; is that I&#xA;  first asked a criminal law professor if he had ever heard it. He said&#xA;  &quot;Of course. My criminal law professor told us that this legal concept&#xA;  dates back hundreds of years and is usually known as the&quot;rule of&#xA;  thumb&quot;! Wanting to follow up on this nugget of knowledge, I looked in&#xA;  Black’s Law Dictionary and found no entry. The Oxford English&#xA;  Dictionary defines rule of thumb: a method or procedure derived&#xA;  entirely from practice or experience, without any basis in scientific&#xA;  knowledge; a roughly practical method. Finally I searched one online&#xA;  legal periodical index for possibly relevant articles; there were over&#xA;  6000 hits. Since an in-depth consideration of the rule of thumb is&#xA;  beyond the scope of this article, I'll leave that for the reader to&#xA;  delve into. However, one author wrote an interesting article that&#xA;  suggests that &quot;rule of thumb&quot; has nothing to do with punishment and&#xA;  very little to do with thumbs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2014-03-03T04:24:43.613" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T04:24:43.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19729" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19736" CreationDate="2014-02-28T22:14:12.277" Score="19" ViewCount="4625" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://beforeitsnews.com/prophecy/2014/02/impossible-3000-year-old-heiroglyphics-depict-modern-day-technology-markings-of-the-fallen-angels-shocking-video-and-pictures-2458842.html&quot;&gt;Impossible? 3,000 Year-Old Hieroglyphics Depict Modern Day Technology! Markings of the Fallen Angels?&lt;/a&gt;, they claim that there are aircraft depicted in 3000-year-old Egypt hieroglyphs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Decorating an Egyptian temple wall at Abydos are strange hieroglyphs which depict what appears to be modern day aircraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AQN7tm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a natural explanation for this not involving the supernatural claims of the article (i.e. angels)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-03-01T04:46:24.793" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T15:18:12.647" Title="Do hieroglyphs in Egypt depict aircraft?" Tags="|history|aviation|egypt|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18950" CreationDate="2014-03-01T05:58:27.243" Score="15" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is his reading accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most likely, yes. There's quite a lot of naturally occurring uranium, thorium and radium in California. As Thunderf00t (Phil Mason) points out in his video, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTJlkEE3edo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Panic as Fukushima radiation 'found' on Californian beach,&lt;/a&gt; magnetic black sand is well known for containing elements like thorium,  and you can see the CPM rise when the man walks over black sand and the levels decrease nearer the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to suggest the radiation results from the Fukushima&#xA;  Daiichi disaster?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. After seeing that video, &lt;a href=&quot;http://geigercounter.com/california-beach-radiation-fukushima/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dan Sythe&lt;/a&gt; tested soil samples taken from the beaches in Half Moon Bay and here are his findings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The radionuclides are in the NORM class of radioactive substances, not from Fukushima. NORM stands for Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material. We put a sample in a Multichannel Analyzer and found Radium 226 and Thorium 232. See the measured spectra below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AlYp8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Radioactive spectrum from California Beach&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the sand were contaminated by radiation from Fukushima it would show Cesium 137. See spectra below from contaminated area of Fukushima Prefecture.  The same instrument is identifying Cesium 137 rather than Radium and Thorium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zYlYe.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Radioactive spectrum of Fukushima sample&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2008 paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/0352-5139/2009/0352-51390904461R.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Radioactivity of sand from several renowned public beaches and assessment of the corresponding environmental risks&lt;/a&gt;, took samples from California beaches and found notable concentrations of Ra226, Th232, and K40.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GrUlA.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7387" LastEditorUserId="7387" LastEditDate="2014-03-03T06:25:21.280" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T06:25:21.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19733" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-01T10:13:48.950" Score="5" ViewCount="1069" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyberBunker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CyberBunker&lt;/a&gt;, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cyberbunker.com/web/swat.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dutch Police SWAT team attempted a raid on their property&lt;/a&gt; but were so unsuccessful in gaining entry that staff didn't even notice the attempts until they reviewed the security footage later that afternoon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the DDoS attacks aimed at Spamhaus last year, many stories were written about CyberBunker which repeated this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/F1JQV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Dutch police in riot gear in front of a bunker&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;This photo illustrating the article on CyberBunker's site is an relatively obvious composite of Dutch police in riot gear in the foreground and a bunker in the background and is probably not evidence of anything.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the security footage that they threatened to release exist anywhere on the internet?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any record of the €8088 they claim was paid to them by the Dutch police for repairing their fence?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did the reporter they claim was there ever report anything?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical that the event happened as described and possibly that it happened at all.  Is there any independent evidence of this event?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11387" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2018-07-03T16:19:47.303" LastActivityDate="2018-07-03T16:19:47.303" Title="Was there an unsuccessful raid by a SWAT team on the CyberBunker?" Tags="|law-enforcement|netherlands|police|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19729" CreationDate="2014-03-01T21:04:25.523" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; natural explanation is that these hieroglyphs in fact &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; look like aircraft to many people and that those that &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; think they look like aircraft are experiencing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia&quot;&gt;pareidolia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that this is speculative, but it is a speculative question. Other people have also proposed this same explanation. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_hieroglyphs&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/julio_scarlotti/status/340158146960039937&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciforums.com/Abydos-Helicopter-t-65746.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One factor that contributes to the current appearance of the hieroglyphs (regardless of what that appearance is interpreted as) is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsest&quot;&gt;palimpsest effect&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most Egyptologists strongly disagree that these carvings are anything but hieroglyphs. They guess that a recarving took place. Hieroglyphs were carved into the temple's sandstone wall. After some time, for whatever reason, new hieroglyphs were carved, but the hieroglyphs were only partially erased from the sandstone wall. Some of the old characters remained behind the new characters. People viewing the images today think the pictures look like modern modes of transportation. However, any resemblance to today's machines is simply a coincidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(From Ancient Astronauts, by Sue L Hamilton. p. 10)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2014-03-01T21:04:25.523" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19737" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-01T23:28:37.173" Score="3" ViewCount="477" Body="&lt;p&gt;My philosophy teacher told us this, that Albert Einstein in his late years was outside one day, and was suddenly struck by inspiration for something important (perhaps the unifying theory of physics, no less). Having no paper and no pen, he looked how he could write down this marvellous idea so as not to forget it. Nearby, there was a coal delivery truck, and so Einstein picked up a lump of coal and wrote his idea on the side of the truck. The truck driver refused to put up with him and drove off and the idea was lost forever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that even remotely true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1964" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T19:15:25.103" Title="Did Einstein write a brilliant discovery with coal?" Tags="|albert-einstein|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2016-11-30T01:39:44.717" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19729" CreationDate="2014-03-02T00:32:21.237" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;Further to Articuno's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is part of an inscription where one king's name was later overwritten with another's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xwda0.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://members.tripod.com/~a_u_r_a/abydos.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Abydos-Hieroglyph does NOT depict a Helicopter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1DsSE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://raincool.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/helicopter-hieroglyphs-explained.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;helicopter hieroglyphs explained&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T00:32:21.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19928" CreationDate="2014-03-02T07:12:24.773" Score="12" ViewCount="3857" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to many websites, the skin on our faces are very delicate. As such, regular soap (bar soap, body wash soap or any bathing cleanser not specially designed for washing the face) may cause severe damage, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthkart.com/resources/3-reasons-shouldnt-soap-face/#.UxO3W_ldWAU&quot;&gt;Wrinkles&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lovelyish.com/2009/02/07/why-you-should-never-use-soap-to-wash-your-face/&quot;&gt;Drying your face resulting in mature skin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stylelist.com/read/should-you-wash-your-face-bar-or-liquid-soap/&quot;&gt;Disrupt the pH balance of your face and encourage the growth of acne-causing bacteria&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.paulaschoice-eu.com/learn/question-of-the-month-march-2010/&quot;&gt;Prevents the buildup of collagen and elastin, as well as decreaases healing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eves-best.com/the-truth-about-all-natural-soap.htm&quot;&gt;Clogs Pores&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these claims true? Is regular soap really that bad for your face?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15834" LastEditorUserId="15834" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T14:08:02.450" LastActivityDate="2019-08-26T11:55:50.690" Title="Is it bad to wash your face with regular soap?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19742" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19750" CreationDate="2014-03-02T11:12:45.860" Score="9" ViewCount="3212" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to an article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/should-peel-apple-3848854.html&quot;&gt;Yahoo! Voices&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many people choose to peel an apple because they fear exposure to pesticides. This is a legitimate concern. Surveys have shown that pesticide residues were found on more than ninety percent of apples tested. Some apples contained the residues of as many as eight different pesticides. In fact, peaches and apples top the list of the most pesticide contaminated fruits on the market. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does apple peel contain significantly higher amounts of toxic chemicals, and thus should be removed before eating? Even if they are safe in the short-term, do they accumulate over decades and contribute to health problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://iufost.org/publications/books/documents/Chap9LiandLi.pdf&quot;&gt;case study&lt;/a&gt; mentions some of the chemicals involved in growing and packaging apples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that the chemicals involved are approved by governments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17897" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T14:04:36.887" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T14:04:36.887" Title="Is the peel of commercially-grown apples toxic with pesticides?" Tags="|nutrition|pesticides|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19744" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-02T17:10:38.597" Score="6" ViewCount="2417" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/033703_kidney_stones_natural_remedies.html#&quot;&gt;Natural News&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Highly acidic diets tend to create an environment which encourages kidney stones, while more alkaline diets help prevent these kind of deposits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T07:56:47.363" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T07:56:47.363" Title="Does an alkaline diet help to prevent kidney stones?" Tags="|nutrition|alkaline-diet|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19746" CreationDate="2014-03-02T19:34:26.660" Score="19" ViewCount="2624" Body="&lt;p&gt;Were pigeons, ravens etc actually used to send letters? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="272" LastEditorUserId="2828" LastEditDate="2014-03-02T19:40:26.973" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T20:07:51.453" Title="Were birds used for communication historically?" Tags="|birds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19745" CreationDate="2014-03-02T20:01:27.067" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, pigeons were used to carry messages, sometimes even after radio communication was available. Some of them even got medals for their role in combat:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cher_Ami&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cher Ami&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - recipient of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croix_de_guerre_1914%E2%80%931918_(France)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Croix de guerre&lt;/a&gt; for its help in saving the the Lost Battalion of the 77th Division in the Battle of the Argonne, October 1918.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winkie_(pigeon)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Winkie&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - recipient of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickin_Medal&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dickin Medal&lt;/a&gt; for assisting in the rescue of an aircrew forced to ditch in the North Sea during the Second World War.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Alone_(pigeon)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;All Alone&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; - recipient of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickin_Medal&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dickin Medal&lt;/a&gt; for delivering an important secret message in one day over a distance of 400 miles, while serving with the National Pigeon Service in August, 1943.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other recipients of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickin_Medal&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dickin Medal&lt;/a&gt; include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beach_Comber&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beach Comber&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broad_Arrow_(pigeon)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Broad Arrow&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commando_(pigeon)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Commando&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_of_Orange_(pigeon)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;William of Orange&lt;/a&gt; and others&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, according to the Wikipedia post on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_post&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pigeon post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pigeon post is the use of homing pigeons to carry messages. Pigeons were effective as messengers due to their natural homing abilities. The pigeons were transported to a destination in cages, where they would be attached with messages, then naturally the pigeon would fly back to its home where the owner could read his mail. Pigeons have been used to great effect in military situations, with 32 birds winning the Dickin Medal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a method of communication, it is likely as old as the ancient Persians from whom the art of training the birds probably came. The Mughals also have used them as their messengers. The Romans used pigeon messengers to aid their military over 2000 years ago. Frontinus said that Julius Caesar used pigeons as messengers in his conquest of Gaul. The Greeks conveyed the names of the victors at the Olympic Games to their various cities by this means...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T20:07:51.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19748" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19749" CreationDate="2014-03-02T22:43:28.310" Score="10" ViewCount="1352" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was claimed (though referred to as a hoax by one of the characters) in a recent XKCD comic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xkcd.com/1330/&quot;&gt;http://www.xkcd.com/1330/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Soviet miners drill a hole to super-hot cavern where you could hear screaming?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17906" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T22:46:14.500" Title="Did Soviet miners drill a hole to Hell?" Tags="|religion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19748" CreationDate="2014-03-02T22:46:14.500" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was, indeed, a hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The real drilling was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_Superdeep_Borehole&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kola Superdeep Borehole&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They didn't encounter any super-hot caverns (though the temperature reached a much higher than predicted 180 degrees C). There's no record of it ever being super-hot (the hoax claimed thousands of degrees) or emitting tortured screams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The hoax itself was well debunked, both on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/religion/wellhell.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; as well as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_to_Hell_hoax&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The documentation included tracing first mentions of the story that were traced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;he story was reported to first have been published in 1990 by a Finnish newspaper 'Ammennusastia', a journal published by a group of Christians from Leväsjoki, a village in the municipality of Siikainen in Western Finland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story eventually made its way to the American Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), which broadcast it on the network, claiming it to be proof of the literal existence of Hell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-03-02T22:46:14.500" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19742" CreationDate="2014-03-02T22:59:04.700" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least some agencies charged with ensuring the safety of foods say not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that these notions arise from studies into the effects on pesticide residues of washing and cooking of fruit. For example a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tna.europarchive.org/20130814101929/http://www.food.gov.uk/science/research/foodcomponentsresearch/mixturesresearch/t10prog/T10projlist/t10019/?view=printerfriendly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2006-2009 UK Study&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report looked at how detectable levels of residues were affected by washing, peeling and cooking fruit. However in the summary of that report there is no suggestion that residual levels in unwashed fruit were actually unusual or harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Europe&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In western countries at least, National and international organisations set maximum residual levels (MRL) for pesticides and national and regional organisations perform regular tests to check levels on fruit and vegetables. MRLs are set at a level that young, old and pregnant women can eat daily for the whole of their lives without appreciable risk to their health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to wash or peel fruit and vegetables that would not ordinarily be peeled before consumption (for example apples) because of pesticide residues, as no assumption is made that such foods are peeled when deciding whether a pesticide can be approved for use or setting a legal limit (maximum residue level, MRL).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A package of toxicological studies is carried out on all pesticides before they are approved for use in the European Union. These studies follow internationally agreed guidelines. Based on these studies, levels of exposure to the pesticide that pose no appreciable health risk are determined. Both long term and short term exposures to pesticides are considered during the safety assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.food.gov.uk/policy-advice/pesticides/pestfaq/pesticides14#.UxO0d-PSNUo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UK Food Safety Agency (FSA)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;an 18 kg boy would have to eat 534 apples every day of his life to exceed a residue level that is not dangerous to laboratory animals. And an 18 kg girl would have to eat 13,636 kg of carrots every day of her life to exceed such a level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecpa.eu/faq/what-maximum-residue-level-mrl-and-how-are-they-set&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;European Crop Protection Agency&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;China&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The case study linked in the question is from China. This country has suffered from several high-profile food scares which some have attributed to corruption. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, some Chinese mainland mothers still prefer to buy milk-powder from Hong Kong (some brands in HK are imported from western europe). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article/1277509/mainland-chinese-mothers-still-back-hong-kong-milk-products-best-baby&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HK testing suggests that food safety standards there are good. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/programme/programme_fs/files/2014_food_safety_report_01_e.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ref&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T19:35:36.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19753" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-03T04:26:03.680" Score="3" ViewCount="1553" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Thompson maneuver is described here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.miraclepainrelief.com/thompsonmaneuver.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.miraclepainrelief.com/thompsonmaneuver.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key claims are in this paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Thompson Maneuver simply brings the sacroiliac joints into their proper position.  Once the sacroiliac is back in normal position, the entire spine will eventually realign itself and pressure on sensitive tissues will diminish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:13:54.570" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T06:05:39.527" Title="Does the Thompson maneuver decrease sacroiliac pain?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19762" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19763" CreationDate="2014-03-03T12:18:06.680" Score="18" ViewCount="5070" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1178/are-wifi-waves-harmful&quot;&gt;there was a question&lt;/a&gt; about the harmfulness of WiFi waves, but i'd like to focus on the claims that they can cause headaches specifically; not the cancer-claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Numerous people come up with anecdotes about how they, or someone they know, get headaches from WiFi radiation.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.squidoo.com/wifi-headaches#module124071521&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.squidoo.com/wifi-headaches#module124071521&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't seem to find any research on this. Does anyone know of the latest insights into this?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On PubMed i found this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=wifi+headache&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=wifi+headache&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;There were more statistically significant associations (36%) than could be expected by chance (5%).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8347" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-10-23T19:08:35.620" Title="Can WiFi waves cause headaches?" Tags="|environmental-health|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19762" CreationDate="2014-03-03T16:10:45.367" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;The symptoms you describe are commonly referred to as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity&quot;&gt;electromagnetic hypersensitivity&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the studies you would be interested in are the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The majority of provocation trials to date have found that&#xA;  self-described sufferers of electromagnetic hypersensitivity are&#xA;  unable to distinguish between exposure to real and fake&#xA;  electromagnetic fields,[2][3] and it is not recognized as a medical&#xA;  condition by the medical or scientific communities. Since a systematic&#xA;  review in 2005 showing no convincing scientific evidence for it being&#xA;  caused by electromagnetic fields,[2] &lt;strong&gt;several double-blind experiments&#xA;  have been published, each of which has suggested that people who&#xA;  report electromagnetic hypersensitivity are unable to detect the&#xA;  presence of electromagnetic fields&lt;/strong&gt; and are as likely to report ill&#xA;  health following a sham exposure, as they are following exposure to&#xA;  genuine electromagnetic fields.[4][5][6]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The systematic review of 2008 by Röösli M [3], which seems to be the latest, writes in the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RF-EMF [radiofrequency electromagnetic field] discrimination was investigated in seven studies including a&#xA;  total of 182 self-declared electromagnetic hypersensitive (EHS)&#xA;  individuals and 332 non-EHS individuals. The pooled correct field&#xA;  detection rate was 4.2% better than expected by chance (95% CI: −2.1&#xA;  to 10.5). &lt;strong&gt;There was no evidence that EHS individuals could detect&#xA;  presence or absence of RF-EMF better than other persons.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA;[2] Rubin, James; J Das Munshi J, Simon Wessely (March–April 2005). &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1097%2F01.psy.0000155664.13300.64&quot;&gt;&quot;Electromagnetic hypersensitivity: a systematic review of provocation studies&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Psychosomatic Medicine 67 (2): 224–32. doi:10.1097/01.psy.0000155664.13300.64. PMID 15784787.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[3] Röösli M (June 2008). &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2008.02.003&quot;&gt;Radiofrequency electromagnetic field exposure and non-specific symptoms of ill health: a systematic review&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Environ. Res. 107 (2): 277–87. doi:10.1016/j.envres.2008.02.003. PMID 18359015.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[4] Regel, Sabine; Sonja Negovetic, Martin Roosli, Veronica Berdinas, Jurgen Schuderer, Anke Huss, Urs Lott, Niels Kuster, and Peter Achermann (August 2006). &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.8934&quot;&gt;&quot;UMTS Base Station-like Exposure, Well-Being, and Cognitive Performance&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Environ Health Perspect 114 (8): 1270–5. doi:10.1289/ehp.8934. PMC 1552030. PMID 16882538.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[5] Rubin, James; G Hahn, BS Everitt, AJ Clear, Simon Wessely (2006). &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.38765.519850.55&quot;&gt;&quot;Are some people sensitive to mobile phone signals? Within participants double blind randomised provocation study&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. British Medical Journal 332 (7546): 886–889. doi:10.1136/bmj.38765.519850.55. PMC 1440612. PMID 16520326.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[6] Wilen, J; A Johansson, N Kalezic, E Lyskov, M Sandstrom (April 2006). &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/bem.20195&quot;&gt;&quot;Psychophysiological tests and provocation of subjects with mobile phone related symptoms&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Bioelectromagnetics 27 (3): 204–14. doi:10.1002/bem.20195. PMID 16304699.&#xA;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5370" LastEditorUserId="5370" LastEditDate="2014-03-03T16:27:07.037" LastActivityDate="2014-03-03T16:27:07.037" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19766" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3635" CreationDate="2014-03-03T17:57:46.563" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Konrad's excellent answer, another way we can know that volcanic CO2 does not exceed anthropogenic CO2 is to look for signs of volcanic eruptions in CO2 data.  Here are the Mauna Loa data collected by the [Scripps Institution]:&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hu35g.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hu35g.png&quot; alt=&quot;http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N.B. the pre-industrial CO2 level had been around 280ppm for several thousand years (see comments below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were large volcanic eruptions in 1963 (Agung), 1980 (mt St Helens), 1982 (El Chichon) and 1991 (Pinatubo), none of which left so much as a blip on the measurements taken at Mauna Loa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, looking back further in time, we can look at super-volcanoes in the proxy record, such as the Yellowstone supervolcano 640,000 years ago, which again left no trace in the proxy record:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dTPsW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken from a very good article by Tamino, archived &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20100105155104/http://tamino.wordpress.com/2009/08/13/do-you-believe-ian-plimer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, which gives a further three examples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T13:03:54.543" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T13:03:54.543" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31002" CreationDate="2014-03-04T02:34:58.823" Score="14" ViewCount="1265" Body="&lt;p&gt;The argument is that by trying (and failing) to maintain your walkways, you're responsible for accidents that happen there, while if you don't make any attempt at all, any accident or injury is an Act of God. It's possibly state-to-state, but is there any definitive legal precedent for letting the snow and ice sit than trying to clear it out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If someone falls on a shoveled portion of your sidewalk, they have a&#xA;  better chance at filing a lawsuit, though few of those kind of suits&#xA;  ever make it to a courtroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wlwt.com/news/local-news/cincinnati/to-shovel-or-to-not-shovel-icy-sidewalks-present-hazard/24203446&quot;&gt;WLWT Cincinnati&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been debated (with differing opinions) on &lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=595846&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt;, as well as various legal blogs (&lt;a href=&quot;http://premise-liability.whocanisue.com/property-owners-removing-ice-and-snow/&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://chicagopersonalinjurylegalblog.com/2010/12/does-shoveling-snow-actually-increase-homeowners-liability.html&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legalteamusa.net/civillaw/2012/12/21/why-not-shoveling-saves-you-from-liability-lawsuits/&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clelaw.lib.oh.us/public/misc/FAQs/Budish_Shovel.html&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;) and housing sites (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r28674046-Other-Snow-Removal-Liability-Question&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.delawareohrealestate.com/2011/02/16/will-shoveling-your-walk-get-you-sued/&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;) and general news sites (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ohio.com/news/break-news/akron-attorney-says-ignore-urban-legend-shovel-the-sidewalk-1.464199&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/shovel-clearing-sidewalks-doesnt-increase-liability-slip-and-fall-cases-say-attorneys&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17935" LastEditorUserId="17935" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T20:08:24.387" LastActivityDate="2015-12-03T21:57:55.997" Title="Does US law leave walk-shoveling homeowners open to lawsuit more than those who don't shovel at all?" Tags="|united-states|law|weather|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19138" CreationDate="2014-03-04T03:23:18.193" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's about time we remind the world how irresistible M&amp;amp;M's Peanut really is,&quot; Seth Klugherz, senior director of M&amp;amp;M's Chocolate Candies, said in a statement. &quot;Each M&amp;amp;M's Peanut is literally 1 in 100 — meaning we have to sort through 100 different peanuts, just to find one that's lucky enough to make its way into a bag of M&amp;amp;M's Peanut.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mars.com/france/fr/press-center/press-list/news-releases.aspx?SiteId=94&amp;amp;Id=5446&quot;&gt;http://www.mars.com/france/fr/press-center/press-list/news-releases.aspx?SiteId=94&amp;amp;Id=5446&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so, NOT 1% of all peanuts in the world... but that raises a new question of what happens to the 99% of peanuts they don't use?  and why are they so bad/what's wrong with all those peanuts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17937" LastEditorDisplayName="user16186" LastEditDate="2014-03-04T11:05:32.287" LastActivityDate="2014-03-04T11:05:32.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19771" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-04T16:44:22.273" Score="15" ViewCount="525" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/20/us-usa-security-rsa-idUSBRE9BJ1C220131220&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article from Reuters&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Undisclosed until now was that RSA received $10 million in a deal that set the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation in the BSafe software, according to two sources familiar with the contract. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, later in the article they quote RSA as denying this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RSA and EMC declined to answer questions for this story, but RSA said in a statement: &quot;RSA always acts in the best interest of its customers and under no circumstances does RSA design or enable any back doors in our products. Decisions about the features and functionality of RSA products are our own.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the NSA pay 10 million dollars to the RSA to weaken their systems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I know this is closely linked to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1960/does-the-nsa-build-backdoors-into-encryption-algorithms&quot;&gt;Does the NSA build backdoors into encryption algorithms?&lt;/a&gt; However, I think this is a different question, because it's a specific algorithm here, and a more specific allegation (and the accepted answer there, which talks about the same algorithm doesn't answer my question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T05:39:51.277" Title="Did the NSA pay RSA $10 million to make Dual_EC_DRBG the default in BSafe?" Tags="|computers|software|cryptography|nsa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19775" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="41010" CreationDate="2014-03-05T02:50:28.703" Score="21" ViewCount="2672" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many Russian language articles and sources (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ru.wikiquote.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B5_%D0%94%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%82&quot;&gt;wikiquote&lt;/a&gt;) I come across the quote attributed to René Descartes, which can be translated&#xA;“&lt;em&gt;People would get rid of half of their problems if they could agree on the meaning of words&lt;/em&gt;”, or “&lt;em&gt;Determine the precise meaning of words, you will save mankind from half of the delusions&lt;/em&gt;”. But all the sources are just mentioning this phrase, none states where or when he said or wrote it. I wasn’t able to find any Russian or English language sources proving that René Descartes actually said or wrote such phrase, and unfortunately I don’t know French.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be very grateful if someone could help prove or disprove this quote’s attribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17947" LastActivityDate="2018-04-02T22:25:21.617" Title="Did René Descartes say “People would get rid of half of their problems if they could agree on the meaning of words”?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19776" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19779" CreationDate="2014-03-05T05:06:42.660" Score="28" ViewCount="11655" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://huvrtech.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; is promoting a hovering skateboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as my knowledge can tell, this seems fake. The only two known technologies I know of which can hover like that are magnets and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyOtIsnG71U&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quantum levitation&lt;/a&gt;. But they both require a modified floor, which wasn't used here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have I missed something? Is this fake or real? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The closest real thing I've seen is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F-VVmMD4_k&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MagSurf&lt;/a&gt;. which uses quantum levitation. But it requires a special surface and it's highly limited in terms of maneuverability compared to the supposedly real Huvr. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All answers were wonderful and each one added a point not mentioned by others, I advise you to check them all out. I've decided to pick Jwenting's answer not because it's the most convincing, but because it relies on simply comparing the Huvr board technology to common sense and known scientific facts. If for some reason all external references the answers rely on disappear, Jwenting's answer would still be valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17948" LastEditorUserId="17948" LastEditDate="2014-03-08T19:33:11.597" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T19:33:11.597" Title="Is the &quot;Back to the future&quot; Huvr board real?" Tags="|physics|consumer-products|technology|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19778" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-05T07:25:06.207" Score="11" ViewCount="6973" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been hearing this a lot lately, but I can't seem to find anything to disprove (or prove) this claim. I know that a weak signal means the phone produces more radiation (which makes sense), but a lot of people I know constantly talk about how using a mobile phone &lt;em&gt;while it is being charged&lt;/em&gt; is dangerous, because when you plug it in it produces a lot more radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it's an extension of &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13807/does-a-cell-phone-emit-1000-times-more-radiation-when-its-battery-is-low/13816#13816&quot;&gt;this rumor&lt;/a&gt; about low battery causing a similar effect. Also, note I'm not talking about the dangers of the phone exploding or anything like that, because while that does happen, it seems that those are most probably related to &lt;a href=&quot;http://wafflesatnoon.com/2014/02/02/cell-phone-charging-dangers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;counterfeited phones&lt;/a&gt; of questionable quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17641" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2018-08-22T10:24:07.117" LastActivityDate="2018-08-22T11:07:19.557" Title="Does a mobile plugged in to the charger produce more EM radiation?" Tags="|electromagnetism|radiation|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19779" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19776" CreationDate="2014-03-05T07:53:12.347" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at their own website, the product they describe has no electrical or mechanical parts at all. &quot;Made from only 2 pieces of paramagnetic titanium&quot;. &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;Also, it has optional handlebars  &quot;for added lateral stability on 'high slip surfaces' such as concrete&quot;.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;And in their terms of service they explicitly state that what you read may 'contain inaccuracies', in other words it may well all be a pack of lies.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting &lt;a href=&quot;http://huvrtech.com/legal.html&quot;&gt;their legal notice&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...HUVr does not warrant the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of&#xA;  such information and materials or the reliability of any advice,&#xA;  opinion, statement or other information displayed or distributed&#xA;  through the site...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They CLAIM to have engineered antigravity while working on battery technology, a highly doubtful claim as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-gravity&quot;&gt;antigravity&lt;/a&gt; is not known to be physically possible and has never been observed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were it real, it would be a scientific breakthrough large enough that even the popular press would pick up on it, yet the only things an internet search shows are hoax websites and conspiracy theories. Of course you may choose to believe in those, but thinking people usually don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="263" LastEditorUserId="17948" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T09:25:18.643" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T09:25:18.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19776" CreationDate="2014-03-05T08:33:39.100" Score="34" Body="&lt;h2&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funny or Die have admitted that the video is a hoax on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/eb823e7388/funny-or-die-is-sorry-for-lying-about-hoverboards&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;their site&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Original answer:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;Huvr board&amp;quot; is most probably a hoax product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to Jwenting's answer depicting the problem with the fact that a breakthrough technological achievement wasn't published in any form, professional, scientific or popular. Several sites on the internet have found evidence suggesting that this is a hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://nerdreactor.com/2014/03/04/clever-huvr-hoverboard-prank-is-a-month-early/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nerd Reactor&lt;/a&gt;, the lead engineer depicted in the videos is an actor named Nelson Cheng: &lt;a href=&quot;http://nelsoncheng.com/home&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;His site&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3912387/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;His IMDB page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://mashable.com/2014/03/04/huvr-videos/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mashable&lt;/a&gt; a costume designer who worked on the shoot revealed that the shoot was produced by funny or die on her &lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:laurenbiedenharn.4ormat.com/11872-resume&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;online resume&lt;/a&gt; by mistake. I've also uploaded a screen capture of the cached page &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jdfAl.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heavy.com/tech/2014/03/huvr-tech-hoax-fake-real-hoverboard-video-debunk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; Heavy.com article explores other aspects that support the theory that it's a hoax:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cinematography style of the videos:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As cool as these hoverboard videos are, there are many signs that the hoverboard tech is bogus. There are no long, wide shots of the hoverboard in use, which means that wires used to fake this kind of hoverboard tech could be just off screen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some 4th wall breaking moments at the videos and anonymity of the main character (played by the actor Nelson Cheng):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the main &amp;quot;HUVr&amp;quot; tech guy in the blue shirt is never identified by name, which he would likely be if his product were real. Plus, some fans say they can see a harness under Tony Hawk's shirt in the video, while others say they can see Terrell Owens being held up on the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The anonymity of the site owners and the supposed inventors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slashgear.com/huvr-back-to-the-futures-hoverboard-gets-real-04319427/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Slashgear&lt;/a&gt; notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The webpage for the company is protected from analyzation by Protected Domain Services, though we can see that it was created on the 25th of November, 2013 - or at least protected from that date forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the people who own the domain want to remain anonymous, chances are they just aren't legit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the possible motives of the celebrities involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T07:07:57.483" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19784" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19817" CreationDate="2014-03-05T12:58:50.490" Score="19" ViewCount="2171" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10676877/High-protein-diet-as-bad-for-health-as-smoking.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Telegraph claimed&lt;/a&gt; that &amp;quot;High-protein diet 'as bad for health as smoking'&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risk is nearly as high as the danger of developing cancer by smoking 20 cigarettes each day. [...] They recommend consuming about 0.8g (0.03oz) of protein per kilogram of body weight every day in middle age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5625" LastEditorUserId="34347" LastEditDate="2022-06-15T16:39:27.380" LastActivityDate="2022-06-15T16:39:27.380" Title="Does a high protein diet increase your risk for cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|cancer|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19776" CreationDate="2014-03-05T15:00:30.317" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This indeed is fake. The entire hoax campaign has been built around some idea to make a future product launch successful (Which most probably is a new product line from Nike!). See &lt;a href=&quot;http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/04/why-are-all-these-celebrities-participating-in-an-epic-fake-hoverboard-troll/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; for some more details(Actually not details but this confirms it's a fake campaign) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17960" LastEditorUserId="17960" LastEditDate="2014-03-05T15:37:30.630" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T15:37:30.630" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19786" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19787" CreationDate="2014-03-05T16:29:17.470" Score="64" ViewCount="20166" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was looking through the questions tagged 9-11 and noticed the no-planes theory isn't on here. So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were there planes that crashed into the WTC? Some examples of notable claims asserting otherwise are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;task=view&amp;amp;id=163&amp;amp;Itemid=60&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; , &lt;a href=&quot;http://beforeitsnews.com/eu/2014/03/ex-cia-pilot-gives-sworn-testimony-that-no-planes-hit-the-twin-towers-2552498.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&amp;amp;address=125x73867&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/02/20/911-planesno-planes-and-video-fakery/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another article&lt;/a&gt; elaborates, and claims the following: (note: these are scattered throughout the article)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first to notice that American Airlines Flights 11 and 77 were not even scheduled to fly on 9/11&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edward Hendrie has published the data tables for both of these alleged flights, where it turns out that the BTS subsequently revised their tables with partial data in order to cover up their absence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more surprisingly, however, Pilots has also determined that United Flight 175 was in the air in the vicinity of Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, PA, at the time it was purportedly crashing into the South Tower in New York City.  This may come as quite a shock to those who watched as it entered the South Tower on television.  Indeed, when an FBI official was asked why the NTSB, for the first time in its history, had not investigated any of these four crashes, he replied that it wasn’t necessary “because we saw them on television”.  Well, we didn’t see the Shanksville crash or the Pentagon crash on TV, which leaves us wondering what we did see on television on 9/11.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The footage of the South Tower hit exemplifies several anomalies, including a Boeing 767 flying at an impossible speed, an impossible entry into the building (in violation of Newton’s laws), and even passing through its own length into the building in the same number of frames it passes through its own length in air—which is impossible, unless this 500,000 ton, steel and concrete building posed no more resistance to its trajectory in flight than air.  Some have claimed that this was a “special plane” that could fly faster than a standard Boeing 767, but no real plane could violate Newton’s laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T04:17:34.700" Title="Did planes crash into the WTC on 9-11?" Tags="|aviation|9-11|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19786" CreationDate="2014-03-05T17:23:16.317" Score="92" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes: &lt;a href=&quot;http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/index.htm&quot;&gt;National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;CyberCemetery&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first to notice that American Airlines Flights 11 and 77 were not even scheduled to fly on 9/11&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence to support this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pilots has also determined that United Flight 175 was in the air in the vicinity of Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, PA, at the time it was purportedly crashing into the South Tower in New York City.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence to support this claim. They say &quot;Pilots has also determined&quot;. How? Via what evidence? This is not disclosed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The footage of the South Tower hit exemplifies several anomalies including a Boeing 767 flying at an impossible speed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was travelling at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.911myths.com/images/c/c1/Radar_Data_Impact_Speed_Study--AA11%2C_UA175.pdf&quot;&gt;approximately 513 knots&lt;/a&gt;, not impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;an impossible entry into the building (in violation of Newton's laws)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They don't describe at all what makes the claimed entry impossible or a violation of physics, so this is not worth debunking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;and even passing through its own length into the building in the same number of frames it passes through its own length in air—which is impossible&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The frame rate of video does not yield the resolution necessary to notice all rates of deceleration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aircraft decelerated from 513 knots to a speed close to 0 knots. Some debris had enough momentum to be carried through the building and was ejected for several blocks surrounding the tower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;unless this 500,000 ton, steel and concrete building posed no more resistance to its trajectory in flight than air&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aircraft was not stopped by a 500,000 ton, steel and concrete building. It was stopped by the structure of up to three floors of that building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2015-08-25T04:17:34.700" LastActivityDate="2015-08-25T04:17:34.700" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19786" CreationDate="2014-03-05T18:05:53.860" Score="33" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The footage of the South Tower hit exemplifies several anomalies, including a Boeing 767 flying at an impossible speed, an impossible entry into the building &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is ample documentation and physical evidence of aircraft parts at and near the WTC site in the day after crash that seem improbable without there having been an impact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/aircraft.html&quot;&gt;http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/aircraft.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others have mentioned that the speed was not impossible for a 767. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(in violation of Newton’s laws), and even passing through its own length into the building in the same number of frames it passes through its own length in air—which is impossible, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is more consistent with video abnormalities than with an impact not occurring. There is plenty of video of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFbINinFsxk&quot;&gt;wheels seeming to move backwards as the vehicle moves forward&lt;/a&gt;, in violation of newton's laws. When using video as evidence you need to take into account the limits of that technology. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;unless this 500,000 ton, steel and concrete building posed no more resistance to its trajectory in flight than air. Some have claimed that this was a “special plane” that could fly faster than a standard Boeing 767, but no real plane could violate Newton’s laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the physical evidence matches the types of aircraft and is consistent with a impact. The fact that much of the aircraft was turned into 100 micron powder is consistent with an impact as described in the official record. I can assure that F=MA and that the F of impact was sufficient for the plane to enter the building as in the official record, with much of the mass turning into a powder. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They provide no evidence of a special plane nor a reason why it might have violated Newton’s laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="982" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T18:05:53.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19789" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19776" CreationDate="2014-03-05T18:21:54.720" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is very much fake. If you pause at 3:28, as depicted in the image here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FMXbJ.jpg.png&quot; alt=&quot;Huvr&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FMXbJ.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FMXbJ.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see the wire attached to the person, as well as the rig's shadow used to hold up the person. They did a very good job of hiding such things for the most part otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17963" LastEditorUserId="17963" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T16:57:25.787" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T16:57:25.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19790" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19776" CreationDate="2014-03-05T18:21:59.020" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that Funny or Die put together this hoax:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scpr.org/blogs/newmedia/2014/03/04/15990/funny-or-die-apparently-behind-fake-back-to-the-fu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scpr.org/blogs/newmedia/2014/03/04/15990/funny-or-die-apparently-behind-fake-back-to-the-fu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17962" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T18:21:59.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19723" CreationDate="2014-03-05T18:41:36.340" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's start with some sanity checks. The image of Cesare Borgia presented here doesn't look much like either of the images of Jesus presented, nor like any of the other images of Jesus. The face is flatter, the nose is flatter, the eyes are smaller and a different colour, the lips are thinner, the hair is a different colour, and while there are similarities in the hairstyle there are differences too. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://streetcatproject.deviantart.com/art/Cesare-Borgia-249591093&quot;&gt;only other image of Cesare Borgia&lt;/a&gt; I've found looks slightly more Jesus-like, but not by much. The only thing that makes for any similarity is the beard and (to some extent) hair, and there were almost certainly plenty of people with that beard and hairstyle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But let's look at some &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depiction_of_Jesus&quot;&gt;other Jesus pictures&lt;/a&gt;. The one at the top right looks very like the Jesus in the question. Could it be Cesare Borgia? No, because it's from the 6th century. Similarly &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3aJesus-Christ-from-Hagia-Sophia.jpg&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3aChrist_pantocrator_daphne1090-1100.jpg&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; are similar to renaissance Jesus, and predate Cesare Borgia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a definitive answer, but does provide some reasons to doubt the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T14:42:06.593" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T14:42:06.593" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19792" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-05T18:44:48.703" Score="11" ViewCount="5318" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several products on the market that claim to block license plates from being read by cameras, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ghostplates.com/&quot;&gt;Plastic covers&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;number plate covers which are designed to protect your vehicle licence plate from speed cameras that are aimed at your number plate from various side angles.The Super Protector license plate cover &quot;silver ghosting&quot; effect cover half the number plate making identification impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.phantomplate.com/&quot;&gt;clear sprays&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once sprayed on your license plate, PhotoBlocker’s special formula produces a high-powered gloss that reflects the flash back towards the camera. This overexposes the image of your license plate, rendering the picture unreadable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sunflexzone.com/product/stealth-anti-tracking-ir-infrared-license-plate-privacy-frame-alpr-countermeasure&quot;&gt;mounted lights that ruin pictures&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a special low profile license plate frame that emits a high intensity IR light that is projected onto the plate and effectively blinds the device's camera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tNhhyGfBEw&quot;&gt;mounted shades that block viewing from an angle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do any of these countermeasures work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="245" LastEditorUserId="245" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T00:45:38.037" LastActivityDate="2016-08-20T20:51:58.003" Title="Do &quot;License Plate Blockers&quot; work?" Tags="|consumer-products|surveillance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19786" CreationDate="2014-03-05T22:17:27.020" Score="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;We don't need the video evidence. Even without the footage from many angles, there is a plethora of eye-witness accounts testifying that a plane hit the South Tower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies/whattheysaw%3Aeyewitnessaccountsofthenycai&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's a small sample&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that time Chief Ganci was behind me and he thought there was another explosion in the north tower and that's when I turned around and said Chief, listen, there is a second plane that hit the other tower. He was like no no no no, we have another explosion. I said no, Chief, I witnessed it. I watched the plane hit the other tower. He is like are you sure. &lt;strong&gt;I said Chief, I'm 100 hundred percent positive I watched the second plane hit the other tower.&lt;/strong&gt; FDNY firefighter Scott Holowach&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I just happened to raise my head watching the Statue of Liberty and as I watched &lt;strong&gt;I saw this giant aircraft&lt;/strong&gt;... coming in slow motion towards me -- eye level, eye contact. And I just froze.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At some point after our arrival and after we had moved to the west side of West Street, &lt;strong&gt;I heard a loud roar of a jet, looked up and saw the second plane impact the south tower.&lt;/strong&gt; At that point it was clear to me it was a terrorist attack. We stepped over small airplane aviation parts, on Vesey, continued west, continued looking at the building. FDNY Chief Daniel Nigro&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that time, I started walking towards Engine 3. Engine 3 drove south to the south pedestrian bridge to make a U turn to come back and as I'm walking towards the Engine to find out what Lieutenant Walsh wanted us to do, I heard the sound of a jet plane. &lt;strong&gt;I looked up and saw it pretty close&lt;/strong&gt; and I was like holy shit. What's going on with the with the flight patterns. All of a sudden, the wings turned and it dove right into the building and it was screwed up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Upon that time I heard a plane roar. I had my window down and on my side &lt;strong&gt;we saw a plane flying very low come right across us&lt;/strong&gt; and with a loud, you know, the engines revved up, and I had mentioned to him, I had no idea that it was heading towards that way, and I just said like where is this guy going, you know, he was extremely low, not realizing it was another plane heading towards the World Trade, and we saw it struck the building, we saw a big mushroom of flame, of fire coming up, and it was like disbelief, and he had gotten on the radio and notified the dispatcher another plane had struck the World Trade Center. FDNY firefighter Stephen Zasa&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;While assisting a female burn victim, I observed PO Rivero look up towards the WTC tower #2. At this time the undersigned &lt;strong&gt;heard the sound of jet engines and observed an aircraft with a blue color tail fly directly into the south face of WTC Tower #2&lt;/strong&gt;. Following the impact an enormous explosion occurred causing debris to begin to fall down all around the WTC complex.&amp;quot; PAPD PO James Hall Source (pg. 5)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eye-witnesses are not the most reliable source of evidence, but here they consistently corroborate the video, with no significant contingent of witnesses making counter-claims, so the &amp;quot;no plane&amp;quot; theory isn't sustainable, and falls into the &amp;quot;so clearly untrue it is offensive&amp;quot; category.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T22:17:27.020" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19799" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19786" CreationDate="2014-03-05T23:40:47.477" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Live footage from multiple sources clearly show an object hitting the 2nd tower... in several the silhouette of a plane is readily visible... Here is a good compilation of LIVE feeds with the network identified: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMQWzdc175A&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMQWzdc175A&lt;/a&gt;... All I can say is this shouldn't even be debatable anymore...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user776" LastActivityDate="2014-03-05T23:40:47.477" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19775" CreationDate="2014-03-06T00:12:34.507" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I haven't found anything similar in all French quotation websites; but it will be hard to prove that he truly never said this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, considering that I translated your own English translation, it is quite possible that he meant to say this, but phrased it completely differently, which would make the search difficult. Perhaps our friends at Philosophy.SE could help you find out if it is the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, this quotation is fairly similar to a Confucian doctrine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Rectification of Names (Chinese: 正名; pinyin: Zhèngmíng; Wade–Giles: Cheng-ming) is the Confucian doctrine that to know and use the proper designations of things in the web of relationships that creates meaning, a community, and then behaving accordingly so as to ensure social harmony is The Good. Since social harmony is of utmost importance, without the proper rectification of names, society would essentially crumble and &quot;undertakings [would] not [be] completed.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectification_of_names&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rectification_of_names&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Don't Russians like ancient Chinese philosophy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14065" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T00:12:34.507" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2112" CreationDate="2014-03-06T01:09:19.640" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/students/undergraduate-courses/course-homepages/jpa305h1-310h1/k-ar-dating.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Definitely not a creation website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Problems with K-Ar dating&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Complex and separate procedures to&#xA;  measure amounts of K and Ar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Measurements of K and Ar subject to&#xA;  errors on order of a percent – error in ratio&#xA;  is even larger&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;K and Ar must be measured on different&#xA;  parts of sample – inhomogeneity errors&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;No way of knowing if age is correct, or&#xA;  sample has lost or gained K or Ar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;geo.arizona. edu/~reiners/.../kelly2002:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the fundamental assumptions of&#xA;  K-Ar dating (assumption 3, above) is that&#xA;  after correcting for atmospheric argon, all&#xA;  40&#xA;  Ar in the sample is the result of the&#xA;  in situ&#xA;  decay of&#xA;  40&#xA;  K, an assumption which is not always&#xA;   valid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first post was deleted for not being referenced, but think about why K-Ar dating is not used for &quot;young&quot; rock. It's assumed there is not enough 40Ar in the sample to be measured. However enough 40Ar was found in recently formed samples of volcanic rock. The excuse of the wrong test doesn't hold up. Also the &quot;excess Argon&quot; excuse does not hold up either. It's that  the amount of Argon is not what they expected. BTW I not trying to say the Earth is young or old; I'm just saying K-Ar doesn't work because the assumptions are not valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17910" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T14:24:16.163" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T14:24:16.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19804" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-06T02:30:22.677" Score="7" ViewCount="662" Body="&lt;p&gt;Treaded car tires are said to be better at avoiding hydroplaning than smooth tires (slicks) in the rain. In particular, directional treads are thought to be the best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is an example of that claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=16&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hydroplaning: the Role Tires Play&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Directional tread designs (sometimes called Unidirectional tread designs) are frequently used on tires intended to better resist hydroplaning. Their multiple tread grooves are aligned in a repeating &quot;V&quot; shape to increase the tire’s ability to channel water from between the tire’s footprint and the road. Somewhat like the vanes of a water pump continually pushing water in one direction through the engine, the grooves of a directional tire are designed to push water in one direction through the tire (forward on an angle to the sides). Directional tread designs are especially helpful in increasing hydroplaning resistance when relatively wide Plus Two, Plus Three or Plus Four tire and wheel applications result in fitting a much wider tire to a vehicle than its Original Equipment size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there is a difference between &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.tirerack.com/blog/choose-the-best-tires-with-zig/symmetric-asymmetric-directional-unidirectional-what-does-this-mean&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;directional tires and asymmetric tires&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do directional tires (not asymmetric tires) give measurably better performance in the rain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you mount them with a contrary rotation, does it matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17977" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-27T10:11:08.993" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T10:11:08.993" Title="Do directional tread patterns on tires reduce hydroplaning?" Tags="|physics|road-vehicles|safety|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19807" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-03-06T09:32:41.263" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T09:32:41.263" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T09:32:41.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19808" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-03-06T09:32:41.263" Score="0" Body="The National Security Agency, a US intelligence organization." OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2014-03-06T10:16:47.940" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T10:16:47.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19673" CreationDate="2014-03-06T14:23:06.630" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer would be No. - Assuming that the number of CPU's produced follows also follows a power law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason;&#xA;If &lt;code&gt;n^y&lt;/code&gt; CPU's are produced by year &lt;code&gt;y&lt;/code&gt;.  And if the number of transistors on CPU number &lt;code&gt;n&lt;/code&gt; where given by &lt;code&gt;t^n&lt;/code&gt;.  Then the number of transistors on the CPU produced at the end of year &lt;code&gt;y&lt;/code&gt; would be &lt;code&gt;t^(n^y)&lt;/code&gt;. - So we would expect a super exponetial growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the points indicated by vartec might cast doubts on the question of wether CPU production is still growing exponentially, we should look at the time when the law was formulated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17996" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T14:23:06.630" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19813" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20275" CreationDate="2014-03-06T14:23:43.160" Score="11" ViewCount="4338" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of stories about hundreds of underground cities being build here and there in USA, but I've only seen photos of one under the Denver airport (and even so it's no real proof that these photos are related to that place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But would it be possible to build such huge infrastructures without having a major impact on the economy? As I know USA has a very big military budget, could it be used to hide those operations, if they exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://diaconspiracyfiles.com/2009/10/30/secret-alex-christopher-photos-from-beneath-denver-international-airport/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;photos&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.angelfire.com/ut/branton/Martyrs.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of persons who claim they were there&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the 1st is self-explanatory, the second reference is just a list of key persons without any specific info. I was using this list to Google info on each person, and that's too big a list to put it here. Basically that's where I got those numbers about cities and average population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18000" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-04-11T15:12:09.907" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T19:55:57.877" Title="Are there any underground cities in the United States?" Tags="|united-states|architecture|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19792" CreationDate="2014-03-06T15:33:46.097" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, conclusively they do not work. There have been many studies done on them and there are several companies that do exactly this kind of debunking. Every major photo enforcement company knows exactly what people will try in order to evade detection and are very adept at either countermeasures or legislation that will prevent you from doing it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Testing from a radar detection company pushing their own products &lt;a href=&quot;http://radartest.com/Red-Light-Camera-Countermeasures-Test.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;red light test&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mythbusters episode &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-database/way-to-beat-police-speed-cameras.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;self explanitory link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People have been buying and selling snake oil for centuries and nothing will change. This is just another form of snake oil&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18002" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T15:33:46.097" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19816" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19826" CreationDate="2014-03-06T16:36:19.977" Score="26" ViewCount="9380" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read this claim somewhere recently, and a google search shows that it's occasionally made around the web, but was perhaps more common in the 1970's (many of the stories I find online are people reminiscing over old protests).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first glance it seems probable to me: wars historically haven't killed all that many people (mostly because there were not all that many to be killed). In the US alone, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; gives a figure of about 40,000 deaths due to motor vehicle accidents this year. Assuming that the US death rate is a reasonable estimator for the world (assuming poor countries have fewer cars, but more accidents), I get the total figure should be 40,000*20 = 800,000 this year alone. The accident rates were actually higher in the past, although population was lower, so my first guess is that we had ~10 million deaths in the last 15 years, and probably another 15 million or so in the 10-15 years before that. My guess is that overall deaths are probably something like 45 million, but this might be off by +/- 15 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guestimate for war is that WWI and WWII combined saw about 40,000,000 deaths, so that gets us into the same ballpark. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'd really like to see is an authoritative source on the total figures for both types of death, and maybe something on the origin of the claim. Can't seem to find either. Might also be interesting to see if/when this will become true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastEditorUserId="18008" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T19:17:07.457" LastActivityDate="2019-11-27T00:17:11.537" Title="Have more people been killed by automobiles than by all wars combined?" Tags="|road-vehicles|mortality|war|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19784" CreationDate="2014-03-06T16:43:34.253" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/03March/Pages/high-protein-diet-may-be-harmful-for-middle-aged.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NHS Choices&lt;/a&gt; about The Daily Telegraph's headline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have quoted the opening paragraphs below (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have decades of very good evidence that smoking kills and – fortunately for meat lovers – this latest unhelpful comparison with high protein diets largely appears to be a triumph of PR spin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The warning was raised in a press release about a large study which found that for people aged 50-65, eating a lot of protein was associated with an increased risk of dying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the study, which assessed the diets of Americans in a single 24-hour period (rather than long-term), found in those aged over 65 that a high protein diet was actually associated with a reduced risk of death from any cause or from cancer. These differing findings meant that overall there was no increase in risk of death, or from dying of cancer with a high protein diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, in those aged over 65, a high protein diet was actually associated with a reduced risk of death from any cause or from cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several reasons to be cautious when interpreting the results of this study, including that the researchers did not take into account important factors such as physical activity in their study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The claim in much of the media, that a high protein diet in middle-aged people is “as dangerous as smoking” is unsupported.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We need to eat protein, we do not need to smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14584" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-03-06T16:43:34.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19818" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="453" CreationDate="2014-03-06T17:38:23.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eratosthenes of Cyrene (Wikipedia)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My man Carl Sagan tipped me off to this one in the Cosmos. If you haven't seen it, go watch it now! Youtube! Free and available to everyone because he was a beast! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do think it was a generally accepted concept among those who cared to think about it before Eratosthenes, but he gets the credit for proving it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18014" LastEditorUserId="31604" LastEditDate="2016-10-16T22:01:42.233" LastActivityDate="2016-10-16T22:01:42.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19821" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-06T20:43:55.570" Score="5" ViewCount="2248" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does Andy Garcia really have a scar on his shoulder from a childhood surgery to remove a half-formed twin? I've seen it around the net, for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nndb.com/people/534/000024462/&quot;&gt;example on NNDB&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Andy Garcia was born with a conjoined twin the size of a softball attached to his shoulder. It was surgically removed, and Garcia has no memory of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18019" LastEditorUserId="6308" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T02:40:47.107" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T02:40:47.107" Title="Was Andy Garcia born with a Conjoined Twin?" Tags="|medical-science|celebrities|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19823" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-06T23:51:10.703" Score="7" ViewCount="435" Body="&lt;p&gt;Earlier today, &lt;a href=&quot;http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Newsweek&lt;/a&gt; outed a 64-year-old Japanese-American engineer Satoshi Nakamoto as THE Satoshi Nakamoto who invented Bitcoin. But the article provides little more than circumstantial evidence to prove the point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now Nakamoto is denying it. An &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/byandreachang/status/441687863222996992&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LA Times reporter&lt;/a&gt; who went out to lunch with Nakamoto today claims he's maintained that he's not involved in Bitcoin, and he has &lt;a href=&quot;http://instagram.com/p/lNv9-_QaNF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;told the swarming press corp&lt;/a&gt; that himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto THE Satoshi or is the Newsweek article full of it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="16860" LastEditDate="2015-05-29T02:39:46.097" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T02:39:46.097" Title="Is the Satoshi Nakamoto outed by Newsweek the creator of Bitcoin?" Tags="|currency|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-05-29T17:53:41.663" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19816" CreationDate="2014-03-07T03:57:21.027" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did some more research on this tonight, and was able to answer my own question, at least to some extent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusions seem to be: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For the world as a whole, this is a very unlikely claim.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For the United States of America in particular, this is likely true, at least for the deaths of Americans in wars since the country was founded.&lt;/strong&gt; This is possibly the origin of the claim, at least in my region, which I`ve often seen made by Americans (i.e. &lt;code&gt;More Americans have been killed by cars than by all wars combined&lt;/code&gt; becomes &lt;code&gt;More People have been killed by cars than by all wars combined&lt;/code&gt;.) The claim is also likely to be true in many other individual countries. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For this claim to become true for the world in general in the future, the bulk of the world's population would have to be at peace for a very long time, and average car safety would have to decline.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidence against the worldwide claim: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/19080/did-war-in-the-20th-century-murder-more-than-all-previous-deaths?rq=1&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; similar question has an answer which puts a lower bound on the number of humans killed in war in the 20th century at an estimate 200 million. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://trid.trb.org/view.aspx?id=681597&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reference&lt;/a&gt; cited by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/publications/road_traffic/world_report/chapter2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; quite interesting WHO report (page 33), puts the cumulative total number of deaths by automobile at 25 million, conservatively, in 1997. Unfortunately I can't get access to the reference directly to see what methodology was used.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/78256/1/9789241564564_eng.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent WHO report&lt;/a&gt; estimates the number of fatalities due to automobiles in 2013 at 1.2 million (worldwide). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If we made a very generous estimate based on 2 and 3, doubling the conservative estimate of 25 million by 1997 to 50 million, and assume that 2 million a year were killed 1997-2014, rather than the fewer than 1.2 million that seems probable, we still get less than 90 million total deaths due to automobiles. This is less than the number of people killed in all wars, worldwide, in the 20th century alone, and in fact, is less than half the number required.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidence for the claim being true in America:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assume that the original claim was more people have been killed by cars than by warfare, in the history of the country of the United States of America.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; table on Wikipedia (which seems to be sourced from the US government's NHTSA &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FARS&lt;/a&gt; database) gives a list of recorded US traffic fatalities going back to 1899. The total number of deaths is 3,581,306 (my computation via a spreadsheet). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war#Wars_ranked_by_total_number_of_U.S._military_deaths&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; table on Wikipedia gives the total number of American military deaths as 1,321,612, though the estimates come from a lot of different sources. Major deployments that were not &quot;proper&quot; wars are also included.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The only major conflict in which US civilians died in large numbers (to my knowledge) is the US civil war. There is considerable debate on how many civilians died in total, and no official records were kept at the time. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (4th paragraph) suggests the number is unknown, though it cites a poor source. However, I cannot find anything better than wild speculation on enthusiast websites beyond this. The highest estimate I see anywhere is around 800,000 dead, mostly slaves. This would have been nearly 25% of the enslaved population, and about equal to the total number of soldiers that died. and seems an overly high estimate. If anyone has better data, I'd really like to see it!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, US contractors have been killed in fairly substantial numbers. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/07/03/us-usa-iraq-contractors-idUSN0318650320070703?sp=true&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reuters&lt;/a&gt; puts the total number of contractors killed in Iraq by 2007, who were also US citizens, at just 224. I cannot find a similar number for Afghanistan, but this at least gives us a ballpark.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In total then, I estimate the number of American civilians and military personal who have died as a direct result of warfare at no more than about 2.5 million. This is less than the total number of Americans killed in motor vehicle accidents, for which we have very good data.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidence that the worldwide claim is unlikely to be true in future:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At current rates, we'd need a century of world peace for cars to catch up to the 20th century death toll alone. This seems very unlikely. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The current tread is for car safety to improve over time. With inventions like self-driving cars, this tread may even accelerate. Therefore, it is likely that more than a century of world peace is needed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Final notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is quite likely that in other countries that have not seen large scale total wars fought on their soil, the claim is true as well. Most of the 20th century death toll is concentrated in specific countries, especially Russia, China, and Germany. Countries that remained neutral during major conflicts like Holland, Sweden, or Switzerland, are probable candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Air pollution from vehicles is also worth considering as a possible factor. This &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231013004548&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MIT study&lt;/a&gt; suggests the &lt;em&gt;annual&lt;/em&gt; deaths in the USA from air pollution exceed 50,000 in the US. If these are counted, then the total number of deaths due to automobiles in the USA is markedly higher, but still unlikely to exceed 8 million (emissions related deaths were probably lower in the past because there were fewer people and fewer cars, and cars have only been around for about 100 years in significant numbers). This factor is not likely to significantly change the answer for any country. It approximately doubles the rate at which cars kill people, but in countries with total wars fought on their soil, or with large scale ethnic cleansing or genocides that were part of wars, the death tolls from wars still dwarf the tolls from cars. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastEditorUserId="18008" LastEditDate="2019-11-27T00:17:11.537" LastActivityDate="2019-11-27T00:17:11.537" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19816" CreationDate="2014-03-07T03:59:03.537" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Wars haven't killed all that many people,&quot; eh? I think you want &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll&quot;&gt;this Wikipedia page on that topic&lt;/a&gt;. Simply summing all these estimates (using lower bounds where ranges appear) gives &lt;strong&gt;344,998,537&lt;/strong&gt; as the death toll of this &quot;&lt;strong&gt;very incomplete&lt;/strong&gt; list of wars (an estimated 3,010 wars have taken place in recorded human history and 438 are recorded here).&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vency.com/wars.html&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&quot; Plenty of these numbers are questionable, but I won't make a point of questioning them myself; hence I've used lower-bound estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare a comically inaccurate upper-bound estimate of automobile accidents based on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/78256/1/9789241564564_eng.pdf&quot;&gt;World Health Organization's &quot;Global status report on road safety 2013&quot;&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_road_accidents#1800s&quot;&gt;year of &quot;the first recorded automobile death&quot;, 1869&lt;/a&gt;. Even if 2010's estimated 1.24M automobile deaths was a decent estimate of the average annual death toll over those 145 years (and it's not – it's obviously way too high), that would still fall far short of the war toll over the much longer history of war (179.8M). Automobiles simply haven't been around for anywhere near as long as war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also wouldn't be so sure that the USA is a good representative of the rest of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate&quot;&gt;the world in terms of traffic-related death rates&lt;/a&gt;. I agree an authoritative source on either figure would be great, but this is not that kind of answer, and I wouldn't hold my breath for one. I've tried briefly to find a grand total of automobile deaths, but haven't been able myself. That much seems feasible, but with war deaths, not so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_conflict_deaths&quot;&gt;The Wikipedia page on direct conflict deaths&lt;/a&gt; gives a good intro to the problems with recording war deaths. It also offers a couple useful statistics for annual death rates due to war between 2004–2007: violent deaths due directly to war ≈ 52K; due indirectly to factors caused by war ≈ 200K &lt;sup&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.genevadeclaration.org/fileadmin/docs/Global-Burden-of-Armed-Violence-full-report.pdf&quot;&gt;Geneva Declaration Secretariat, 2008&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sup&gt;. This is much lower than the automobile death rate in 2010, but it's an indirect comparison. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see you just posted your own answer on very similar information...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reference&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Global burden of armed violence. Geneva Declaration Secretariat, 2008. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.genevadeclaration.org/fileadmin/docs/Global-Burden-of-Armed-Violence-full-report.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.genevadeclaration.org/fileadmin/docs/Global-Burden-of-Armed-Violence-full-report.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16995" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T03:59:03.537" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19830" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19831" CreationDate="2014-03-07T17:04:03.107" Score="3" ViewCount="487" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://livr-app.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This website&lt;/a&gt; claims to be launching a new app in Spring 2014. It is said to be a social network that will only open up if your blood alcohol level is over a certain limit. Inside the app you then have a number of features like drunk dialling people etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been a number of news websites reporting on this today, and with the launch date being &quot;Spring 2014&quot;, I can't help but think it is potentially an April Fools gag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The app seems to use a breathalyzer connected to your mobile devices charging port. I know small breathalyzers like this exist, but as I am not informed enough about 3rd party peripheral communication over charging/sync ports, I am unsure as to whether this can actually be done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A massive part of me is hoping this is true, as it would be really fun to try it out on my next social gathering.. The other part of me however, is thinking &quot;hoax, hoax, HOAX&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18056" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T15:55:16.557" Title="Is the new &quot;Livr&quot; social network a hoax?" Tags="|social-media|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19830" CreationDate="2014-03-07T17:13:27.203" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;ADDITIONAL EDIT:  Apparently &lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/how-livr-fooled-the-world-and-why-the-world-probably-d-1539513713&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gizmodo&lt;/a&gt; has posted an updated article where they were able to confirm that this is a fake app and even tracked down the hoaxers. A quote by Brandon Bloch, one of the hoaxers, explaining it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've worked closely enough with media, and I've done enough of this&#xA;  sort of thing before, to know that the media would blindly jump at it.&#xA;  I was more surprised when people did reach out to me; I can count on&#xA;  one hand the number of outlets that bothered to call me up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The media in a way allows this to happen to themselves... The media will just jump&#xA;  at a juicy story and not look deeper into it. I&#xA;  think it's because a lot of people working at these blogs and media&#xA;  outlets are overworked and underpaid. Especially around an event at&#xA;  SXSW, they need to crank out story after story. So it's kind of like&#xA;  this cheapening journalism. I don't know if they can even be called&#xA;  journalists anymore; it's more media as a mouthpiece for the companies&#xA;  that want to get a message out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm leaving my original post as is below but from the above edit, you can see that the app is fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ORIGINAL POST:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is real, or at least giving the impression of being a real app that is going to be released soon.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/07/livr-is-my-most-fav-app-4va-lol-im-drunk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Engadget&lt;/a&gt; article on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you've heard one too many gripes about your boozy postings, don't&#xA;  fret -- there'll soon be a like-minded social app for you. It's called&#xA;  &quot;Livr,&quot; and you won't even be able to log in without a smartphone&#xA;  breathalyzer confirming you've tippled enough. In fact, the higher&#xA;  your BAC, the more app features are unlocked. Those include a&#xA;  crowdsourced &quot;truth or dare&quot; game and hotspot map that shows the&#xA;  location and sobriety of other users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that the higher your BAC the more features you can access, which is what makes the more interesting in my mind and also is what is going to make it controversial if it ever takes off.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/07/livr-is-my-most-fav-app-4va-lol-im-drunk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Engadget&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/03/07/livr-social-network-unlocks-features-drunk-get/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Next Web&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:  I have seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/84967&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;additional&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/the-livr-hoax-everybodys-favorite-new-drunkbro-app-is-1538595679&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;articles&lt;/a&gt; posted today that are much more skeptical of Livr, but none have conclusive proof that it is a hoax.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/84967&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Network World&lt;/a&gt; article seems to be the only article that has gotten a response from either of the founders.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So what do the &quot;founders&quot; have to say for themselves? Just so there&#xA;  would be no misunderstanding my level of disbelief, here's what I&#xA;  asked them via email: &quot;What's the end game here? Straight publicity&#xA;  stunt? Marketing guys hoping to bag a few clients at SXSW? Or maybe&#xA;  it's one of those try-to-fool-the-media hoaxes?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reply from &quot;co-founder Avery Platz&quot; was a polite side-step that&#xA;  would make any politician proud:&#xA;  &quot;Thanks for writing. We think the best ideas start as jokes too. But&#xA;  then why not just go the extra step and make it a reality?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So far the response has been fantastic!&quot; he continues. &quot;In a world&#xA;  where Snapchat turns down $3B, there seems to be demand for a private&#xA;  place to have fun online. I think we've definitely tapped into&#xA;  something here.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His reply did not really confirm the existence of a real app, nor deny it.  The founders are supposed to be speaking at SXSW today in Austin so once that happens more will be known.  Until that happens no one can conclusively say if this is real or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8691" LastEditorUserId="8691" LastEditDate="2014-03-13T15:55:16.557" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T15:55:16.557" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19830" CreationDate="2014-03-07T17:16:24.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's little evidence Livr real. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onthemedia.org/story/you-must-be-drunk-use-social-network/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;On The Media's TLDR blog is skeptical&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the neither of &lt;a href=&quot;http://livr-app.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the founders&lt;/a&gt; have LinkedIn profiles, and I couldn't find them on Facebook either. That's very rare for people creating this sort of thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: &lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/the-livr-hoax-everybodys-favorite-new-drunkbro-app-is-1538595679&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;It's fake&lt;/a&gt;, according to Gizmodo. &lt;a href=&quot;http://livr-app.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;One of its creators, &quot;Avery Platz&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, is actually &lt;a href=&quot;http://newyork.ucbtheatre.com/talent/view/8297&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;comedian Matt Mayer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18059" LastEditorUserId="18059" LastEditDate="2014-03-07T20:11:39.493" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T20:11:39.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14134" CreationDate="2014-03-07T20:28:06.107" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think there might be a misunderstanding of what tissue transglutaminase (TTG) does. TTG is sold in the food industry as &quot;meat glue&quot;... it's an enzyme for sticking proteins together - specifically an amine and a glutamine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think this enzyme has anything to do with the digestive process. As I understand it, TTG is required to create physically stable cell structures, which is what you need if you're building new tissues in the body. TTG is found all over the body, not just in the gut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They've shown that the interaction of TTG with gluten is part of the pathological process in celiac disease. TTG can stick the glutamine part of the gliadin molecule to other molecules, and when it releases it, the amine gets left behind, creating the &quot;deamidated gluten peptide&quot; (DGP). These DGP can trigger the immune response*.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*J Pediatr Gastroenterol Nutr. 2008 Mar;46(3):253-61. doi: 10.1097/MPG.0b013e31815ee555.&#xA;Deamidated gliadin peptides form epitopes that transglutaminase antibodies recognize.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18376241&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18376241&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that damaged tissue is going to create a lot more TTG as it tries to repair itself, and if the gluten reacting with the TTG is adding to the damage, then the situation can run away with itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I don't understand is where the process starts. I reckon that poor digestion is a part of the story, so that more gluten arrives intact in the small intestine, but I also think there is likely to be a factor that allows the TTG and the gluten to get together... maybe the gut barrier breaks down in some way due to dysbiosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever is happening, I reckon that in someone with a healthy digestion the TTG and the gluten/gliadin would never be able to meet up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't answer your original question, Melissa, but I write it to dispute your argument that TTG is for digesting gluten. It's not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18066" LastActivityDate="2014-03-07T20:28:06.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19836" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-07T21:37:29.380" Score="158" ViewCount="78584" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several references to the quote &quot;There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things&quot; can be found, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoHardThings.html&quot;&gt;Martin Fowler's blog&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://diehealthy.org/software/naming-things&quot;&gt;others&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm unable to find the source of this quote, has he ever said it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4186" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2014-03-08T00:30:12.303" LastActivityDate="2020-07-16T19:20:46.020" Title="Has Phil Karlton ever said &quot;There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|programming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18039" CreationDate="2014-03-08T02:44:24.770" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It occurred to me also that this was a crucial question, yet it was very difficult for me to find any discussion outside of the enormous number of web sites parroting the &quot;low carber&quot; position. It's discussed in great detail &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plantpositive.com/3-the-journalist-gary-taubes-3/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and in subsequent articles. Articles are listed, in numerical order, in the sidebar to the right, this being the first to mention Ancel Keys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The broader set of articles is an extremely comprehensive attack on the science and promotion of the popular &quot;low carb&quot; position, beginning &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plantpositive.com/catalyst-corrected-1-the-histo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18078" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-03-08T03:54:47.547" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T03:54:47.547" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14171" CreationDate="2014-03-08T06:46:32.077" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I'm a software engineer at Khan Academy.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, SRI International &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sri.com/work/projects/research-use-khan-academy-schools&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;released a research report&lt;/a&gt; on a two-year study of the use of Khan Academy in schools. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.khanacademy.org/about/blog/post/78876580708/sri-internationals-research-report-shows-positive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;We're encouraged by the results.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't cover the use of Khan Academy instead of traditional teaching as your question suggests but instead its use as a supplemental tool. The full report is available on the SRI website; I'll copy here the main bullet points from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sri.com/sites/default/files/publications/2014-03-07_implementation_briefing.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;research brief&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Student Use and Perceptions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Student perceptions of their time spent on Khan Academy was highly positive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Students’ engagement level was generally high during Khan Academy sessions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Students perceived that use of Khan Academy encouraged greater independence in learning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The amount of time students spent working on Khan Academy varied considerably across and within sites, and also by school year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Teacher Use and Perceptions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A majority of teachers were happy with their Khan Academy experience and planned to use the Academy with their students in the upcoming school year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Teacher perception of Khan Academy’s impact on students varied across different learning areas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Teachers reported that integrating Khan Academy into their instruction has increased their capacity to support their students in a number of areas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Teachers who viewed the Khan Academy reports regularly found them useful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Student Outcomes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;A positive association was found between more Khan Academy use and more problem sets completed and two outcomes: (1) improvements in student test scores, and (2) improvements in three of the four self-reported nonachievement outcomes – math anxiety, math self-concept, and academic efficacy (i.e., belief in one's ability to succeed in academic endeavors).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report goes into much more depth on these topics as well as information about what the educators found helpful and challenging about using Khan Academy, and I'd recommend reading it if you're interested in the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18086" LastEditorUserId="18086" LastEditDate="2014-03-08T22:47:24.980" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T22:47:24.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19840" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19846" CreationDate="2014-03-08T11:32:14.080" Score="7" ViewCount="1360" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is a scenario like the one in LOST possible? Is there a possibility of finding a significant number of survivors from a plane crash in the sea? Is there evidence of anything like this having ever happened in our world's history?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4395" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-03-08T20:31:29.610" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T18:16:18.253" Title="Is it possible to survive a plane crash on water?" Tags="|aviation|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19784" CreationDate="2014-03-08T11:35:59.340" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2014/03/animal-protein-as-bad-as-smoking/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog post by Zoë Harcombe&lt;/a&gt; details a long list of problems with the conclusions of this study.  She doesn't raise any problems with the methodology of the study, just the conclusions that have been drawn from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically to answer your question, no protein does not increase the risk of cancer.  The study only claims that it does within a certain age group and within the other age group, it is actually associated with a lower risk of cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many conclusions can be drawn from the study but only the ones that make animal protein sound bad actually were, which is suspicious:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a direct quotation from the article (my emphasis): “Using Cox Proportional Hazard models, we found that high and moderate protein consumption were positively associated with diabetes-related mortality, but &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; associated with all-cause, CVD [cardiovascular], or cancer mortality when subjects at all the ages above 50 were considered.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e. when we looked at the 6,381 over 50 year olds there was not even an association with protein intake and all-cause mortality, or CVD mortality, or cancer mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a relationship with diabetes mortality and protein intake, but the numbers were so tiny (one death from diabetes in one group) that this was not considered important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that could have been the headline – “There is no association between protein intake and mortality” – but then there would be no headline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results showed that high protein diets are associated with higher life expectancy in over-65s.  This means that low protein diets must be associated with lower life expectancy since the average over the entire data set was no association:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sure enough, the 3,342 people over the age of 65 were far less likely to die from any cause if they were in the moderate or high protein intake group. Cancer mortality for the low protein group was two and a half times the cancer mortality for the high protein group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that the headlines chose to claim “protein will kill you in middle age” rather than “protein will save you in old age” just highlights the nonsense and bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a conflict of interest.  The author of the study sells a product that can solve the problems raised by the study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study claims to have adjusted for protein in general vs. animal protein to conclude that animal protein is the harmful factor and not protein per se. Call me suspicious, but I always check for conflicts of interest and the lead researcher, Dr Longo, has declared interests in (actually, he’s the founder of) L-Nutra – a company that makes ProLon™ – an entirely plant based meal replacement product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A comment on the post mentions that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.l-nutra.com/index.php/about/team&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;three other authors of the study also work for L-Nutra&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study doesn't have any comparison to smoking but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pressroom.usc.edu/meat-and-cheese-may-be-as-bad-for-you-as-smoking/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;press release from the lead author of the study does&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That chicken wing you’re eating could be as deadly as a cigarette.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a mortality risk factor comparable to smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's difficult to determine exactly what this means.  It could mean that one chicken wing is the equivalent of one cigarette, meaning that the Daily Telegraph's claim would suggest that a high protein diet means eating 20 chicken wings every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11387" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T12:07:51.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19593" CreationDate="2014-03-08T11:57:47.777" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people would be correct to observe that good nutrition in general will prevent memory loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are particular circumstances, such as in alcoholism, where the person can benefit from strong B vitamin and especially B1 can improve memory: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patient.co.uk/health/Alcohol-Detoxification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;B12 keeps the brain and nervous system healthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Auto-immune conditions such as pernicious anemia can cause B12 deficiency,  which in turn causes lethargy and tiredness. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Anaemia-vitamin-B12-and-folate-deficiency/Pages/Introduction.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in people in good health otherwise, those who take acid supressors for 2 years or more stand a chance of developing B12 deficiency. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthline.com/health-news/food-taking-acid-reducers-could-trigger-vitamin-b12-deficiency-121013&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently no particular vitamin is associated with Ginkgo Biloba, but as has been noted above, Ginkgo Biloba may produce some measurable benefits in some subsets of people tested, but are not considered generally successful.: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-and-supplements/lifestyle-guide-11/fortifying-your-memory-with-supplements&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt;. (same reference as Guru42's answer, just read a little more of the article and you'll see it's benefits are not considered of great significance.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unable to find any reputable article which demonstrates that vitamin supplements are of any benefit to the memory of (ie. enhance the memory of) people who otherwise lie within the normal range of health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17546" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T11:57:47.777" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19845" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22937" CreationDate="2014-03-08T15:56:07.133" Score="7" ViewCount="1140" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen such statement in a number of websites. E.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;in &lt;a href=&quot;http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/411&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UNESCO's website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Without a buffer zone the total area of the archeological site is 1780 hectares, 09 areas and 49 square meters and 1,400 buildings have been recorded, of which only about 10% have been explored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palenque&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By 2005, the discovered area covered up to 2.5 km² (1 sq mi), but it is estimated that less than 10% of the total area of the city is explored, leaving more than a thousand structures still covered by jungle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the last 15 or 20 years, a great deal more of the site has been excavated, but currently, archaeologists estimate that only 5% of the total city has been uncovered&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those claims are replicated in various blogs and travel agencies websites (both in english and spanish) but I couldn't track the original source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5533" LastEditorUserId="637" LastEditDate="2014-03-15T03:20:00.883" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T18:49:13.753" Title="Are approximately 95% of the Mayan ruins of Palenque still buried and unexplored?" Tags="|archeology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19840" CreationDate="2014-03-08T17:13:57.473" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There were 50 survivors of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Airlines_Flight_961&quot;&gt;ET Flight 961&lt;/a&gt; and all 155 survived &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549&quot;&gt;US Flight 1549&lt;/a&gt;, but those were controlled (well-controlled in the latter case) landings near land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1111" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-03-11T18:16:18.253" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T18:16:18.253" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19847" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-08T17:17:58.143" Score="6" ViewCount="96" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Kobe Beef Marketing &amp;amp; Distribution Promotion Association &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kobe-niku.jp/english/contents/faq/&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There may well be some farms rearing low numbers of cattle who are&#xA;  doing things bordering on this. But, this does not mean that these&#xA;  rearing methods are all standards for producing prime Kobe Beef. For&#xA;  example, &lt;strong&gt;if you make it a custom of playing music at feeding time,&#xA;  then the cows as a conditioned reflex know that it's feeding time just&#xA;  by hearing the music, and this, it is said, increases their&#xA;  appetite.&lt;/strong&gt; However, the affect of music improving meat quality has&#xA;  not yet been proved. There is also the theory that beer is useful in&#xA;  improving cows' appetites. Actually, however, it can be said that&#xA;  there have been almost no cases of cows being raised on beer. And,&#xA;  massage, too, is considered to be useful in lowering cows' stress&#xA;  because of the close, physical contact it provides and in indirectly&#xA;  helping to improve the quality of the meat. Once again, however,&#xA;  massage itself neither softens meat nor increases the amount of&#xA;  marbling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does regularly playing music to cows increase their appetite?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastActivityDate="2014-03-08T17:17:58.143" Title="Does regularly playing music to cows increase their appetite?" Tags="|music|cows|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19853" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-09T09:40:02.907" Score="40" ViewCount="1424" Body="&lt;p&gt;I only shower once every few days, sometimes as little as once a week depending how oily/sticky I'm feeling (I lead a pretty sedentary lifestyle so I don't reach that stage daily). People around me find it disturbing/disgusting but I usually shrug it off, telling them that it's unnecessary and that they're just wasting water showering once/twice a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also see articles like this around the web skeptical of daily showering (though it's really only talking about skin health): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-showering-bad-for-your-health/&quot;&gt;http://www.cbsnews.com/news/is-showering-bad-for-your-health/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also understand that people living in very clean environments during their childhood are more prone to certain health problems like allergies and asthma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that people who work in dirty environments (e.g. car mechanics?) will have to do it frequently but what about people who don't? Should we only be showering after we fall into a pool of mud or after a heavy workout?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18108" LastEditorUserId="18108" LastEditDate="2014-03-10T09:30:18.003" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T20:04:13.087" Title="Is it good (for your health) to shower/bathe daily?" Tags="|environmental-health|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19854" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-09T12:00:08.787" Score="-1" ViewCount="1199" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r69WDtoLQ2M&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This part of Loose Change&lt;/a&gt; contains footage of the first plane crashing into the first World Trade Center.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In it, Dylan Avery claims that there is a flash under the plane before it crashes into the tower, and comes to the conclusion that this was a missile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any credible evidence to support this claim, and what is a more likely explanation for the flash shown in the video?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18111" LastActivityDate="2014-12-31T22:15:15.720" Title="Did the plane that crashed into the first World Trade Center fire a missile towards the tower before it crashed into it?" Tags="|9-11|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19854" CreationDate="2014-03-09T13:14:11.547" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The youtube video replays this part over and over again, here is the &quot;flash&quot; under the plane alleged to be a missile launch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Q9omc.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this is a greatly enlarged portion of a video recorded from a few blocks away. It is far too small for there to be any resolution of the details of the aircraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A credible alternative explanation might be that this is the result of the nose of the aircraft striking the glazed exterior of the building, perhaps the outburst of shattered glass fragments catches the sunlight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But basically the youtube video is an over-enlarged small area of the original video frames. From that distance there isn't enough video resolution to provide compelling evidence of an airliner firing a missile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T13:14:11.547" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19857" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-09T16:14:28.967" Score="12" ViewCount="717" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recently I've been seeing &lt;a href=&quot;http://beta.diylol.com/posts/650603-so-government-orchestrating-terror-is-a-silly-conspiracy-theory-please-explain-operation-northwoods&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this image&lt;/a&gt; make its way around Facebook,&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://beta.diylol.com/posts/650603-so-government-orchestrating-terror-is-a-silly-conspiracy-theory-please-explain-operation-northwoods&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jvHlh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image with text&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So government orchestrating terror is a silly conspiracy theory?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Please explain Operation Northwoods.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't think much of it at first, but I eventually decided to google &quot;operation northwoods&quot;. After doing so, I found quite a significant number of people who seemed to claim that in 1962, there was a proposal by the Department of Defense to execute an operation where U.S. personnel would disguise themselves as agents of the Cuban government and to engage in terrorist attacks on the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay. It also called for terrorist attacks within the United States that would be conducted by pro-U.S. forces disguising themselves as Cuban agents.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Operation Northwoods was a series of false flag proposals that originated within the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the United States government in 1962. The proposals, which called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or other operatives, to commit perceived acts of terrorism in U.S. cities and elsewhere, were rejected by the Kennedy administration.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  At the time of the proposal, Cuba had recently become communist under Fidel Castro. The operation proposed creating public support for a war against Cuba by blaming it for terrorist acts. To this end, Operation Northwoods proposals recommended hijackings and bombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate the Cuban government.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  It stated:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The desired resultant from the execution of this plan would be to place the United States in the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances from a rash and irresponsible government of Cuba and to develop an international image of a Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Several other proposals were included within Operation Northwoods, including real or simulated actions against various U.S. military and civilian targets. The operation recommended developing a &quot;Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington&quot;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The plan was drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and sent to the Secretary of Defense. Although part of the U.S. government's Cuban Project anti-communist initiative, Operation Northwoods was never officially accepted; it was authorized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but then rejected by President John F. Kennedy. According to currently released documentation, none of the operations became active under the auspices of the Operation Northwoods proposals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initially, this struck me as &quot;just more conspiracy theory&quot;, but after seeing the amount of sites that reference this, I'm starting to wonder if there is actually credibility to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any evidence of Operation Northwoods actually being proposed?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6598" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-10-18T22:08:49.543" LastActivityDate="2017-10-18T22:08:49.543" Title="Were terror attacks proposed to gain political support for a war against Cuba?" Tags="|united-states|politics|terrorism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19860" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19857" CreationDate="2014-03-09T22:03:28.520" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The document in which the actions mentioned were proposed is named, dated and given an author in reputable publications, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/19/us/declassified-papers-show-anti-castro-ideas-proposed-to-kennedy.html&quot;&gt;including the New York Times&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.ca/books?id=ofXSLln9a3QC&amp;amp;pg=PA432&amp;amp;lpg=PA432&amp;amp;dq=%22Possible%20Actions%20to%20Provoke,%20Harass%20or%20Disrupt%20Cuba%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=E-lajUgdWQ&amp;amp;sig=FrGFrSuoUmbvgFajjoeP_Xbi-9M&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=-uIcU8L4No-FqQGkkICICw&amp;amp;ved=0CCYQ6AEwADgK#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22Possible%20Actions%20to%20Provoke,%20Harass%20or%20Disrupt%20Cuba%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Evan Thomas' life of Robert Kennedy&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1980&amp;amp;dat=19971115&amp;amp;id=8JAiAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=460FAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=4077,4761455&quot;&gt;Associated Press&lt;/a&gt;. All quote it as a 'recently declassified memo' The Wikipedia article gives other references. It is pretty inconceivable that the memo is a hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However we should beware of excessive outrage on this subject. It's clear from all the sources that the 'proposals' were never acted on, and we have no records of the context. The writers may have been asked to submit all ideas, no matter how outrageous. Or they may have been proposed seriously. We don't have that information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2014-03-09T22:03:28.520" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19840" CreationDate="2014-03-10T14:58:59.710" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question actually has two parts, one obvious one is if it's possible have survivors after plane is ditched into the sea. Wikipedia provides &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_landing#Passenger_airplane_water_ditchings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dozens of referenced examples of such a cases&lt;/a&gt;, two prominent ones are already mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/19846/3790&quot;&gt;Malvolio's answe&lt;/a&gt;r. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other part is &quot;LOST&quot; scenario is possible, which I understand as in passengers surviving but disappearing without a trace. This is highly improbable, due &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icao.int/safety/SafetyManagement/Pages/SARPs.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ICAO SARPs&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cospas-sarsat.org/en/beacons/carriage-requirements&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;requirements&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distress_radiobeacon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitters)&lt;/a&gt; on aircraft itself and on rescue equipment such as rafts. These ELTs operate as part of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cospas-sarsat.org/en/operatons/operations-concept&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cospas-Sarsat&lt;/a&gt; system. The only feasible scenario where none of the ELTs would be functioning, is aircraft wreck sinking into deep sea, dragging all of ELT equipped survival equipment to the bottom with it. In which scenario chances for survivors are practically nil. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2014-03-10T14:58:59.710" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19868" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-10T15:48:48.670" Score="9" ViewCount="2346" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several websites claim that the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zohar&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zohar&lt;/a&gt; predicted the event of 9/11 (for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://magog.web-site.co.il/gog/e_terror.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.soundthemidnightcry.com/life_church_of_lafayette_/2009/12/the-genius-of-vilna.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abqjew.net/2011/09/911-kabbalistic-insights.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://2012forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&amp;amp;t=17092&amp;amp;view=next&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;). The following quote is from the last link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On 9-11, not only the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed after being flown into by hijacked airliners, but a third 47-story skyscraper, part of the same complex, also tumbled to the ground, at 5:20 pm, the very same day. &#xA;  The Zohar predicted this tremendous event would occur on the 25th day of the month of Elul, in its most recognized edition. However, in the 18th century, the Genius of Vilna (famous Jewish sage) stated the text was off by two days – that the most correct version of the Zohar reads that this devastation would occur on Elul 23. &#xA;  September 11, 2001, was the 23rd day of Elul!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many more can be found by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=zohar+9+11+prediction&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;searching&lt;/a&gt; (About 508,000 results).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T06:20:07.200" LastActivityDate="2015-07-24T21:32:43.710" Title="Did the Zohar predict 9/11?" Tags="|religion|9-11|divination|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19869" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-10T16:39:36.577" Score="3" ViewCount="972" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIj2xEd_z78&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realviewimaging.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RealView Imaging&lt;/a&gt; is claiming to be able to create 3D holography in mid-air, without glasses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't fully understand &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realviewimaging.com/?page_id=158&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;their page about their technology&lt;/a&gt;. They claim they are using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_light_modulator&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Spatial Light Modulation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have they invented a new technology? Is it something we already know, wrapped in clever marketing? Is this real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8786" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-03-11T03:20:44.217" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T11:26:42.660" Title="Has Realview Imaging created a 3D holography device?" Tags="|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19872" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-11T03:19:39.033" Score="18" ViewCount="4341" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Live Well Naturally website says in an article entitled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livewellnaturally.com/Tips-from-A-Cop.html&quot;&gt;9 crucial tips written by a cop. This might save someone's life.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If the predator has a gun and you are not under his control, ALWAYS RUN! &lt;strong&gt;The predator will only hit you (a running target) 4 in 100 times;&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  And even then, it most likely WILL NOT be a vital organ. RUN,&#xA;  Preferably in a zig-zag pattern!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does an average criminal with a gun hit a running human target only with 4% probability?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="7654" LastEditDate="2014-03-11T14:24:02.883" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T15:40:55.827" Title="Does an average criminal with a gun hit a running human target only with 4% probability?" Tags="|criminology|guns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19875" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19894" CreationDate="2014-03-11T09:49:57.570" Score="1" ViewCount="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember been told to stay in bed when on antibiotics as a child but don't know the reason why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it sound?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any negative health effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16960" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T12:48:21.810" Title="Is it harmful to exercise when on antibiotics?" Tags="|medical-science|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-03-12T17:55:31.803" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19872" CreationDate="2014-03-11T13:28:03.203" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/crime/prevent/ninetips.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes has covered this&lt;/a&gt;. The list was originally based on a seminar by ex-cop Pat Malone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pat Malone's seminars are described as &quot;self-protection from predators, without self-defense or weapons&quot; and &quot;not self-defense classes.&quot; On his web site, he offers for sale a video entitled &quot;Taking Control,&quot; which he represents as &quot;A self-protection training program using common sense as a weapon.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However his original teachings have been modified and devolved on the internet into tips of doubtful validity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the intervening years, the e-mailed list of crime avoidance tips has been edited by various anonymous folks whose cyber hands it has passed through, being severely pared down from its original form and then padded with extraneous material in a number of places. It has thus become even less reliable in terms of the quality of advice being offered than it was in 2001, and even then it would have had to have been regarded as suspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific claim you talk about are one of the dubious additions, for which Snopes was unable to find any supporting evidence, and which they are highly skeptical of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T13:28:03.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6284" CreationDate="2014-03-11T13:33:50.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, probably. Using the same link to the American Diabetes Association (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/myths/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/myths/&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Myth: Eating too much sugar causes diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fact: The answer is not so simple. Type 1 diabetes is caused by genetics and unknown factors that trigger the onset of the disease; type 2 diabetes is caused by genetics and lifestyle factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Being overweight does increase your risk for developing type 2 diabetes, and a diet high in calories from any source contributes to weight gain. Research has shown that drinking sugary drinks is linked to type 2 diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The American Diabetes Association recommends that people should limit their intake of &gt;sugar-sweetened beverages to help prevent diabetes.&#xA;  - See more at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/myths/#sthash.ouOhB8if.dpuf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/myths/#sthash.ouOhB8if.dpuf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there are studies which show correlation between high glycaemic index and risk of diabetes and obesity. &#xA;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2804%2916937-7/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effects of dietary glycaemic index on adiposity, glucose homoeostasis, and plasma lipids in animals&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18174" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-01-03T05:21:44.917" LastActivityDate="2018-01-03T05:21:44.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19872" CreationDate="2014-03-11T15:40:55.827" Score="20" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Don't listen to this advice, there is probably no one rule that can be applied to all situations involving hostile situations with weapons!!!&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;disclaimer:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally we get questions on this site that ask for advice for personal situations where only a professional familiar with the exact and full details can help, those  question (usually of the medical nature) get closed because they don't have an actual claim in them. In this case there is a claim and the claim will be addressed, but it's very important to emphasize&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Consult only professionals regarding life and death situation, don't trust unsourced and/or anonymous posts on the internet.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;end of disclaimer&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the disclaimer, as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/crime/prevent/ninetips.asp&quot;&gt;snopes article&lt;/a&gt; dealing with this claim states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We don't know the origin of the claim that someone shooting at you &quot;will only hit you 4 in 100 times&quot;, but we're highly skeptical of the notion that a gun-wielding bad guy in relatively close proximity to a human target hits what he's aiming at only once out of 25 times (even if the target is a moving one). And just because the shooter may not hit a &quot;vital organ&quot; doesn't mean the victim is going to get away — a gunshot to just about any body part will usually inflict enough pain or physical damage to hamper the escape of someone fleeing on foot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim's source is unknown, but it's neither a police officer nor a self defence expert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More importantly, the hit ratio of a shooter depends on a wide variety of parameters, including the shooter's training, expertise and state of mind, the weapon they are holding, the position of the victim and other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In several high profile cases, however, shooters got better results than 4% hit rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_massacre&quot;&gt;Virginia Tech Massacre&lt;/a&gt; the shooter fired at least 174 rounds and hit 47 people with at least three bullets each, rounding the number of fires shot up to 180, and taking the minimum of 3*47=141 bullets hits give us 78% hit rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During this second assault, he had fired at least 174 rounds,[22] killing 30 people and wounding 17 more.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/crime/prevent/ninetips.asp&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;[38] All of the victims were shot at least three times each&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting&quot;&gt;Sandy Hook Shooting&lt;/a&gt;, the total number of bullets Adam Lamza shot is unclear (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://nypost.com/2012/12/18/adam-lanzas-weapons/&quot;&gt;The New York Post&lt;/a&gt;), but according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/28/us/connecticut-shooting-documents/&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt; he shot&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lanza didn't make it home alive. Nor did the 26 people -- 20 of them schoolchildren ages 6 and 7 -- he shot dead in less than five minutes, firing one bullet roughly every two seconds he was at Sandy Hook Elementary School.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;rounding the number to 150 rounds (5*60*1/2) and assuming that he hit each victim with only one bullet will give 17.3% hit rate or 13% if we round the number of bullets to 200.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mall_in_Columbia&quot;&gt;2014 the Mall in Columbia shooting&lt;/a&gt; the shooter shot 6-9 bullets from a 12-gauge shotgun and hit 7 people, even assuming that only 1 bullet hit all the people (some ammo for 12-gauge shotguns has a high spread) and shot 9 bullets gives 11% hit rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On January 25, 2014, at around 11:15 a.m., 19-year-old Darion Marcus Aguilar entered a Zumiez store on the second floor of the mall, armed with a 12-gauge shotgun, and fired six to nine shots, killing two employees—21-year-old Brianna Benlolo and 25-year-old Tyler Johnson—and injuring five others before committing suicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trained police officers, in stressful situations can get to hit rates near 50%, depending on the distance, and situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/weekinreview/09baker.html?pagewanted=all&amp;amp;_r=0&quot;&gt;A Hail of Bullets, a Heap of Uncertainty, The New York Times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;New York City police statistics show that simply hitting a target, let alone hitting it in a specific spot, is a difficult challenge. In 2006, in cases where police officers intentionally fired a gun at a person, they discharged 364 bullets and hit their target 103 times, for a hit rate of &lt;strong&gt;28.3 percent&lt;/strong&gt;, according to the department’s Firearms Discharge Report. The police shot and killed 13 people last year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2005, officers fired 472 times in the same circumstances, hitting their mark 82 times, for a &lt;strong&gt;17.4 percent&lt;/strong&gt; hit rate. They shot and killed nine people that year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In all shootings — including those against people, animals and in suicides and other situations — New York City officers achieved a 34 percent accuracy rate (182 out of 540), and a &lt;strong&gt;43 percent&lt;/strong&gt; accuracy rate when the target ranged from zero to six feet away. Nearly half the shots they fired last year were within that distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Los Angeles, where there are far fewer shots discharged, the police fired 67 times in 2006 and had 27 hits, a &lt;strong&gt;40 percent&lt;/strong&gt; hit rate, which, while better than New York’s, still shows that they miss targets more often they hit them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/weekinreview/09baker.html?pagewanted=all&amp;amp;_r=0&quot;&gt;Ready, Fire, Aim: The Science Behind Police Shooting Bystanders, Times.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While incidents of police shooting bystanders are uncommon, they shouldn’t surprise New Yorkers (or anyone else) when they happen. Just last year, New York police injured nine onlookers in the course of responding to a murder suspect near the Empire State Building. As police chased the man through rush hour crowds, he fired at the cops; &lt;strong&gt;they returned 16 shots, hitting the man 10 times&lt;/strong&gt;. That actually counted as accurate shooting for the NYPD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to a 2008 RAND Corporation study evaluating the New York Police Department’s firearm training, between 1998 and 2006, the average hit rate during gunfights was just &lt;strong&gt;18 percent&lt;/strong&gt;. When suspects did not return fire, police officers hit their targets &lt;strong&gt;30 percent&lt;/strong&gt; of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All emphases are mine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A wide variety of factors affect the hit ratio of an assailant, and in many cases, hit ratio is high, even though those are stressful situations where the targets were probably moving or hiding, there is probably no way to know if an anonymous assailant is an ex navy seal with 100% hit rate, or doesn't know how to properly handle their weapon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My anonymous and unsourced advice would be to try to avoid the attacker using their weapon, but see disclaimer above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T15:40:55.827" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19884" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-03-11T15:54:53.110" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-03-11T15:54:53.110" LastActivityDate="2014-03-11T15:54:53.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19885" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-03-11T15:54:53.110" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for &quot;natural&quot; solutions to common problems such as healthcare conditions, but also everyday nuisances and problems. See also &quot;folk remedies&quot; or &quot;home remedies&quot;." OwnerUserId="18124" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T15:28:58.820" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T15:28:58.820" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19889" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30775" CreationDate="2014-03-12T03:09:11.813" Score="17" ViewCount="837" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassins&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Assassins (from Arabic: حشّاشين‎ Ḥashshāshīn) were an order of&#xA;  Nizari Ismailis, particularly those of Persia and Syria that formed in&#xA;  the late 11th century. In time, the order began to pose a strong&#xA;  military threat to Sunni Seljuq authority within the Persian&#xA;  territories by capturing and inhabiting many mountain fortresses under&#xA;  the leadership of Hassan-i Sabbah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The name &quot;Assassin&quot; is often said to derive from the Arabic Hashishin&#xA;  or &quot;users of hashish&quot;, thought to have been originally derogatory&#xA;  and used by their adversaries during the Middle Ages. In actuality,&#xA;  the word is a misnomer for the Nizari Ismailis applied abusively to&#xA;  them by the Mustali Ismailis during the fall of the decaying Ismaili&#xA;  Fatimid Empire when the two streams separated from each other. In 1122&#xA;  the Mustalian dynasty Fatimid caliph al-Amir referred to the Nizaris&#xA;  as the hashishiyya &quot;without any explanation&quot; and &quot;without actually&#xA;  accusing them of using hashish, a product of hemp&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The modern word &quot;assassin&quot; originates from this Muslim order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A popular myth says that  the Assassins (part of them, at least) were killers who smoked hashish to suppress their conscience before proceeding to the killings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I came across this story in several works of fiction, including &lt;em&gt;La Casa dorada di Samarkand&lt;/em&gt; (&quot;The Gilded House of Samarkand&quot;, from the Corto Maltese graphical novel series by Hugo Pratt), and more recently the &lt;em&gt;Ghost in the Shell&lt;/em&gt; TV series. But after a tiny bit of research, it seems to be a fairly common tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was part of it true, or it is only a myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14065" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T14:44:35.493" LastActivityDate="2015-11-12T17:39:22.180" Title="Did Nizari Ismailis assassins commit murders under the influence of hashish?" Tags="|history|islam|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19875" CreationDate="2014-03-12T12:48:21.810" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Children, the younger they are, the more they are susceptible to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Febrile-convulsions/Pages/Introduction.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;febrile seizures&lt;/a&gt; which can occur during an infection. The safest place to be whilst having a seizure is on a soft surface like a mattress, not say, climbing a tree or swinging across a river on a rope. The above reference gives that it is best to place the patient in the recovery position to prevent choking on vomitus. This can be done if the child is in sight of the parent/guardian, which may best be done on the sofa or in bed, depending on the layout of the house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an adult, you may well be able to function relatively normally with a bacterial condition, but if you have a fever and you exercise, your temperature may reach &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14988341&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dangerously high, ie. &gt;= 38 Celsius, whereupon you may seize&lt;/a&gt;, which could be dangerous depending on where this happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two facts are also relevant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1/ Antibiotics can and do put a strain on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/k/kidney_damage_antibiotics/intro.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;kidneys&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2/ A large amount of aerobic exercise - such as running a marathon - will cause the breakdown of a certain percentage of erythrocytes in the blood and a release of myoglobin in the damaged muscles (this is perfectly normal). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/sudden-extreme-exercise-risks-damaging-kidneys-1.1312564&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This also stresses out the kidneys.&lt;/a&gt; Conditions such as Rhabdomyolysis make matters worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Above two items occurring at the same time may cause irreparable kidney damage, leading to necessitate dialysis or transplant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tell your medical professional if you plan such strenuous activities, and take their advice is the best thing you can do here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17546" LastActivityDate="2014-03-12T12:48:21.810" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19775" CreationDate="2014-03-12T15:47:08.007" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe it is an approximation. Read the quote below which comes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Descartes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;René Descartes&lt;/a&gt; in his 1629-11-20 letter to Mersenne:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Au reste, je trouve qu’on pourrait ajouter à ceci une invention, tant pour composer les mots primitifs de cette langue, que pour leurs caractères ; en sorte qu’elle pourrait être enseignée en fort peu de temps, et ce par le moyen de l’ordre, c’est-à-dire, établissant un ordre entre toutes les pensées qui peuvent entrer en l’esprit humain, de même qu’il y en a un naturellement établi entre les nombres ; et comme on peut apprendre en un jour à nommer tous les nombres jusques à l’infini, et à les écrire en une langue inconnue, qui sont toutefois une infinité de mots différents, qu’on pût faire de même de tous les autres mots nécessaires pour exprimer toutes les autres choses qui tombent en l’esprit des hommes. Si cela était trouvé, je ne doute point que cette langue n’eût bientôt cours parmi le monde ; car il y a force gens qui emploieraient volontiers cinq ou six jours de temps pour se pouvoir faire entendre par tous les hommes. Mais je ne crois pas que votre auteur ait pensé à cela, tant parce qu’il n’y a rien en toutes ses propositions qui le témoigne, que parce que l’invention de cette langue dépend de la vraie philosophie1 ; car il est impossible autrement de dénombrer toutes les pensées des hommes, et de les mettre par ordre, ni seulement de les distinguer en sorte qu’elles soient claires et simples, qui est à mon avis le plus grand secret qu’on puisse avoir pour acquérir la bonne science. Et si quelqu’un avait bien expliqué quelles sont les idées simples qui sont en l’imagination des hommes, desquelles se compose tout ce qu’ils pensent, et que cela fût reçu par tout le monde, j’oserais espérer ensuite une langue universelle fort aisée à apprendre, à prononcer et à écrire, et ce qui est le principal, qui aiderait au jugement, lui représentant si distinctement toutes choses, qu’il lui serait presque impossible de se tromper ; au lieu que tout au rebours, les mots que nous avons n’ont quasi que des significations confuses, auxquelles l’esprit des hommes s’étant accoutumé de longue main, cela est cause qu’il n’entend presque rien parfaitement. Or je tiens que cette langue est possible, et qu’on peut trouver la science de qui elle dépend, par le moyen de laquelle les paysans pourraient mieux juger de la vérité des choses, que ne font maintenant les philosophes. Mais n’espérez pas de la voir jamais en usage ; cela présuppose de grands changements en l’ordre des choses, et il faudrait que tout le monde ne fût qu’un paradis terrestre, ce qui n’est bon à proposer que dans le pays des romans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English translation (author unknown, via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/descartes-lg1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;autodidactproject.org&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe, however, that it would be possible to devise a further system to enable one to make up the primitive words and their symbols in such a language so that it could be learnt very quickly. Order is what is needed: all the thoughts which can come into the human mind must be arranged in an order like the natural order of the numbers. In a single day one can learn to name every one of the infinite series of numbers, and thus to write infinitely many different words in an unknown language. The same could be done for all the other words necessary to express all the other things which fall within the purview of the human mind. If this secret were discovered I am sure that the language would soon spread throughout  the world. Many people would willingly spend five or six days in learning how to make themselves understood by the whole human race.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I do not think that your author has thought of this. There is nothing in all his propositions to suggest it, and in any case the discovery of such a language depends upon the true philosophy. For without that philosophy it is impossible to number and order all the thoughts of men or even to separate them out into clear and simple thoughts, which in my opinion is the great secret for acquiring true scientific knowledge. If someone were to explain correctly what are the simple ideas in the human imagination out of which all human thoughts are compounded, and if his explanation were generally received, I would dare to hope for a universal language very easy to learn, to speak, and to write. The greatest advantage of such a language would be the assistance it would give to men's judgement, representing matters so clearly that it would be almost impossible to go wrong. As it is, almost all our words have confused meanings, and men's minds are so accustomed to them that there is hardly anything which they can perfectly understand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is possible to invent such a language and to discover the science on which it depends: it would make peasants better judges of the truth about the world than philosophers are now. But do not hope ever to see such a language in use. For that, the order of nature would have to change so that the world turned into a terrestrial paradise; and that is too much to suggest outside of fairyland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18160" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T01:23:53.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19901" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19903" CreationDate="2014-03-13T11:44:44.403" Score="4" ViewCount="70340" Body="&lt;p&gt;As the title suggest is it necessary to fast before thyroid test. Last week I have given thyroid test in my office. They conducted T3,T4 and TSH testing and my result came as thyronormalcy. I didnt fast before giving this test. My friend planned to take the test in a test lab outside (not from my office). The lab technician asked her not to drink water or eat any food before giving the test. I am confused now. Is it necessary to fast or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17843" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T17:16:08.713" Title="Do we need to fast before thyroid testing?" Tags="|blood|fasting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19902" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-13T14:43:21.183" Score="2" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim is frequently made by Dave Ramsey, who is a radio host with a very big audience, so it is notable. It is also featured in his website - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daveramsey.com/article/the-truth-about-life-insurance/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.daveramsey.com/article/the-truth-about-life-insurance/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His claim is, basically, that whole life insurance is a 2-in-1 package of insurance coverage + built-in savings account. However, he claims, paying for the same amount of term life insurance coverage and then investing the difference in fees in a regular bank account or mutual funds would give you better returns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example, let's say that you buy life insurance coverage for $1,000,000 for $1,000 yearly fees, but term life insurance for $1,000,000 costs only $100 in fees, and you invest the $900 difference into a bank account or some appropriate investment vehicle. If an accident happens, you get the $1,000,000 face value both ways, but if no accident happens, according to his claim, you would end up with more money in your bank account than in your whole life insurance policy, while getting the same amount of actual insurance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4974" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T14:43:21.183" Title="Is cash value or whole life insurance a bad investment?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-03-14T14:49:37.190" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19901" CreationDate="2014-03-13T15:03:30.003" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a study published in 1994 entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15471172&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Serum TSH variability in normal individuals: the influence of time of sample collection&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by Scobbo et al., there were significant differences between late-morning non-fasting TSH and early-morning fasting TSH tests:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The late morning non-fasting TSH tests declined in 97 of 100 subjects by an average of 26.39% when compared to early morning, fasting, TSH test results. This lead to reclassification of 6% of patients from presumptive subclinical hypothyroidism to &quot;normal.&quot; Since the time of day of phlebotomy or the fasting or non-fasting status of the patient, or both, can significantly affect serum TSH test results, the diagnosis of subclinical hypothyroidism should not be made only on a fasting TSH measurement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22857384&quot;&gt;2012 study in &lt;em&gt;Endocrine Research&lt;/em&gt; by a Russian group&lt;/a&gt; looked at TSH levels throughout the day in women with hypothyroidism compared to another group taking L-thyroxine replacement therapy (treatment for hypothyroidism). They found the range of TSH variability between morning and afternoon blood draws reached 73% in the hypothyroid group, and 65% in the treated group, with higher levels observed in the morning. This confirms previous data showing significant circadian variability of TSH, so the time of the blood draw probably influences the results more than the intake of food. Scobbo's study did not correct for time of draw (early AM without food vs. late AM with food), so one can't even reasonably conclude from their data that the presence of food actually affected the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, from the available data, if you test later in the day and you've had food, you are likely to have a lower TSH level than if you test earlier in the day with fasting. Any diagnosis of hypothyroidism shouldn't be made on the basis of a single test, anyway, so if your levels of TSH are higher than normal, your doctor will order one or more additional tests to confirm the diagnosis, along with taking into account any other symptoms that may be present, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Feeling tired, weak, or depressed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dry skin and brittle nails.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not being able to stand the cold.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Constipation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Memory problems or having trouble thinking clearly.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Heavy or irregular menstrual periods&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/hypothyroidism-topic-overview&quot;&gt;WebMD&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As is the case with with any type of medical intervention, you should always follow your doctor's or the lab's instructions when undergoing any type of test, particularly concerning fasting, the time that you should take your medication before the test, and the time that the test should be performed. If in doubt, please ask!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;This post should not be construed as, nor is it intended to be medical advice. &lt;strong&gt;Always&lt;/strong&gt; talk to your doctor or other healthcare professional about medical issues, including test results and symptoms.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14501" LastActivityDate="2014-03-13T15:03:30.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19906" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-13T20:44:52.693" Score="26" ViewCount="2020" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common trope in movies that after someone performs a felony (even &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppjyB2MpxBU&quot;&gt;murder&lt;/a&gt;), if one &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwpgR_HhvFc&quot;&gt;lays low for awhile&lt;/a&gt;&quot; the case will more or less fade away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Putting aside the obvious advantage that witnesses' memories fade and eventually they die, does it (still) make much sense that one can avoid being picked up for questioning just by the passage of time? What may have been true in the period depicted in &lt;em&gt;The Godfather&lt;/em&gt; doesn't seem like it would apply in this day of database queries during traffic stops and computerized records. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Towards an answer: I assume that if a felony is not solved quickly, it's unlikely to be solved at all, but perhaps there are statistics that show that this is less true than it used to be? Or perhaps statistics about &quot;routine traffic stops&quot; leading to more serious prosecutions? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T14:29:34.437" LastActivityDate="2018-02-06T02:03:04.793" Title="Is &quot;Laying Low for Awhile&quot; an Effective Tactic in Avoiding Felony Questioning?" Tags="|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19914" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-14T14:19:24.097" Score="16" ViewCount="1432" Body="&lt;p&gt;Europe has been under exceptional sunlight for the past ten days, cf. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flickr.com/photos/eumetsat/13058301555/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eumetsat's picture&lt;/a&gt;. According to French media, this prevents smog from escaping major hubs. In an attempt to reduce this air pollution, some cities have lowered their speed limits, as RFI, Radio France Internationale, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.english.rfi.fr/france/20140312-smog-alert-hits-maximum-high-paris-region&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Paris police lowered the speed limit for cars to 20 km/h in some areas and banned trucks weighing over 3.5 tonnes from entering the city after a peak in air pollution in December 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is meant to focus specifically on the 10 km/h arbitrary choice: it makes sense that lowering speed limits by 50 km/h will result in much less pollution. But is 10 km/h enough to have any substantial change? How likely is it that some drivers may be confused at to which gear to be in at 60 km/h instead of their usual 70: if they're driving with a higher or lower RPM than the optimal operating RPM then wouldn't these drivers actually pollute more? (Cf. this answer which specifies that at least the highest gear coincides with getting the maximum mileage -- and therefore lower consumption -- at the maximum allowed speeds &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/3355/2086&quot;&gt;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/3355/2086&lt;/a&gt; .)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the scientific basis of this claim? I did not find any relevant results on &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.lu/scholar?hl=en&amp;amp;q=smog+vehicle+speed&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;as_sdt=1%2C5&amp;amp;as_sdtp=&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; nor on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sparrho.com/articles/?q=smog+vehicle+speed&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sparrho&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2086" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2021-08-29T22:08:31.497" Title="Does lowering speed limits by 10 km/h have any impact on air pollution?" Tags="|road-vehicles|pollution|driving-speed|smog|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19915" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-14T14:38:37.943" Score="26" ViewCount="1646" Body="&lt;p&gt;The conventional wisdom is that established speed limits lead to an increase in safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speed limits are usually set to attempt to cap road traffic speed; there are several reasons for wanting to do this. It is often done with an intention to improve road traffic safety and reduce the number of road traffic casualties from traffic collisions. In their World report on road traffic injury prevention report, the World Health Organization (WHO) identify speed control as one of various interventions likely to contribute to a reduction in road casualties.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limit&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia: Speed Limit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am inclined to question the conventional wisdom, especially when those proposing the restrictions have something to benefit by maintaining and enforcing restrictions (ticket revenues, enforcement disgression, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I am not talking about raising the speed limit.  I think the presence of any established limit has a psychological effect on people, who may actually drive faster than is safe if a sign says that it is permissible.  I am also not asking if driving a car too fast for conditions is dangerous, that seems pretty clear.  I am asking if establishing and posting a legal speed limit decreases the danger on highways.  I am also restricting this query to highways, since I believe that they are fundamentally different than surface and residential streets, and the data for each will be vastly different, so different conclusions may be reached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17748" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-06-05T03:36:44.143" LastActivityDate="2021-06-16T07:23:57.890" Title="Does the establishment of a legal upper speed limit on highways lead to a reduction in traffic deaths and accidents?" Tags="|law|safety|traffic|driving-speed|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19917" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-15T00:18:16.207" Score="5" ViewCount="6569" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read a post saying that blowing on food is dangerous because it can cause &quot;Stomach Cancer&quot;, and found on google some links like &lt;a href=&quot;http://lovelifelust.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/doyouknow-thedangerblowinghotdrink/&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot find attendible references, and moreover I read that not blowing on food is part of Muslims's etiquette so I feel a bit skeptic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the reality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18226" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2019-04-17T00:24:46.043" LastActivityDate="2019-04-17T00:24:46.043" Title="Does blowing on food cause stomach cancer?" Tags="|nutrition|cancer|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19921" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-15T18:32:53.857" Score="12" ViewCount="814" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reuters &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/14/us-banks-atms-idUSBREA2D13D20140314&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Windows XP currently supports around 95 percent of the world's ATMs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same article, it is said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The U.S. software company first warned that it was planning to end&#xA;  support for Windows XP in 2007, but only one-third of the world's 2.2&#xA;  million ATMs which use the system will have been upgraded to a new&#xA;  platform, such as Windows 7 by the April deadline, according to NCR,&#xA;  one of the biggest ATM makers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It find it hard to believe that over 28% (=33-5) of ATM worldwide can be upgraded in less than one month and a half. Hence I wonder whether 95 percent of the world's ATMs still use Windows XP currently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="7654" LastEditDate="2014-03-15T20:35:39.700" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T09:02:08.673" Title="Do 95 percent of the world's ATMs use Windows XP?" Tags="|technology|software|banking|microsoft|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19924" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-15T20:50:40.770" Score="6" ViewCount="925" Body="&lt;p&gt;To what extent are octopi violent towards humans? Has there been any confirmed fatalities? &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cephalopod_attack&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The source of all knowledge&lt;/a&gt; claims that some have the capacity to kill humans, and claims there have been documented instances of attacks but doesn't list any sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Has_a_octopus_ever_harmed_a_human&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this wiki.answers.com&lt;/a&gt; claiming humans have been poisoned by octopi. Also I'm interested if the altercation was provoked &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="17748" LastEditDate="2014-03-18T22:46:49.450" LastActivityDate="2014-03-19T12:11:26.747" Title="Have there been any fatalities caused by octopi?" Tags="|history|zoology|oceanography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-15T23:59:14.993" Score="18" ViewCount="770" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are some articles alleging poor construction from Habitat for Humanity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://michellemalkin.com/2009/01/04/jimmy-carter/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Conservative blogger, Michelle Malkin&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The road to hell is paved with good intentions — and, apparently, the homes in the neighborhoods along that hellish path are built by Jimmy Carter and Habitat for Humanity. The Times of London reports on one of the celebrity charity’s biggest showcase projects in Jacksonville, Florida, Fairway Oaks, where residents claim their houses are crumbling due to shoddy construction)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Malkin goes on to suggest many, but not all, of the complaints were exaggerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucanews.com/news/habitat-for-humanity-homes-falling-apart/58496&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UCA News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Houses constructed for victims of massive floods in Mindanao last December are showing signs of breaking down less than four months after the beneficiaries moved in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Residents of a relocation site in Canitoan village in Cagayan de Oro City are complaining of substandard materials and sloppy construction work by building contractors. The houses were built for the government by Habitat for Humanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people have wondered whether Habitat hires night crews to fix the shoddy work done by volunteers during the day. I have heard it from more sources, but sadly can't find them now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=537370&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forum post on the Straight Dope, 2005&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I met someone this past weekend who told me something interesting about his experience volunteering for Habitat for Humanity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He used the example of framing a wall for a house. He said there were cases where a group of volunteers will spend the day framing the wall with hammers and nails, go home feeling good about their accomplishment, and then Habitat for Humanity will have the wall frame torn down so a professional can build it again to meet building code standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Habitat for Humanity hire professional crews to clean up the work done by the volunteers, or do volunteers produce work that can stand on its own?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3837" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T21:06:49.877" Title="Does Habitat for Humanity hire professional &quot;cleanup crews&quot; to fix poor construction work done by volunteers?" Tags="|productivity|charity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19924" CreationDate="2014-03-16T01:08:53.450" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question about the &lt;em&gt;extent&lt;/em&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/octopus&quot;&gt;octopuses&lt;/a&gt; being violent is off-topic here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have octopuses have fatally envenomated humans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. In 1954, &lt;a href=&quot;http://museumvictoria.com.au/about/mv-blog/nov-2011/death-by-octopus/&quot;&gt;Kirk Dyson-Holland&lt;/a&gt; was killed after picking up (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00852988.1964.10673804?journalCode=tmos19#.UyT2dvmSx8E&quot;&gt;what was later identified&lt;/a&gt; as) a blue-ringed octopus. Another man died in 1962.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Australia, octopus attacks are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wemjournal.org/article/S1080-6032%2802%2970605-4/abstract&quot;&gt;rarely seen in hospitals&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/9295/SPUMS_V20N1_2.pdf?sequence=1&quot;&gt;rarely cause deaths in scuba-divers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;School children in Australia are now warned against them, which may explain the lack of reports in the last 50 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T01:08:53.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19739" CreationDate="2014-03-16T07:11:30.510" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From your fifth source, at the site footer: &quot;&lt;em&gt;The information contained on this website is not intended as medical advice. Consult your doctor before making any changes to your medication or lifestyle.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soap &lt;em&gt;itself&lt;/em&gt; doesn't &lt;em&gt;usually&lt;/em&gt; seem to be a problem. The human facial skin is indeed delicate, especially around the eyes, but as long as you don't scrub hard and just gently lather facial soap, it should be fine: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121113091900.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121113091900.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It's important for people to treat the face with care. Never scrub the skin or use harsh products as doing so irritates the skin, which makes skin look worse,&quot; said Thomas E. Rohrer, MD, FAAD, a board-certified dermatologist in private practice in Chestnut Hill, Mass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Step number one includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Use a gentle, &lt;strong&gt;non-abrasive cleanser that does not contain alcohol&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So cleansers + gentle = good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the WSJ with doctors talking about this subject with various recommendations: &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304402104579149542082224218&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304402104579149542082224218&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Face washing at night is most important&lt;/em&gt;, dermatologists say. It removes dirt, grime and pollutants that have gathered on the skin during the day, as well as makeup. Some doctors &lt;strong&gt;say people without a serious skin-care issue, such as acne, can skip the soap and just rinse in the morning&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  &quot;Your skin has just slept on a pillow, it is clean, it doesn't necessarily need to be washed,&quot; said Gervaise Gerstner, a Manhattan dermatologist and consultant for L'Oréal Paris. &lt;strong&gt;Dry skin from overcleansing is a problem for people as they age&lt;/strong&gt;, she says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18243" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T07:11:30.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7559" CreationDate="2014-03-16T07:44:46.493" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a well documented study. Individual productivity was not the goal of this paper, but there is data that's related to your question. A copy of the paper can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/prechelt/Biblio/jccpprtTR.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On page 22, there's a box graph of hours needed to complete the program by language. If we assume programmer productivity to be time to complete a given programming task, then we have a maximum range of productivity of ~4 hours - 63 hours within Java. We can say that the best programmer did perform 10 times faster than the worst.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An empirical comparison of C, C++, Java,&#xA;Perl, Python, Rexx, and Tcl&#xA;for a search/string-processing program by Lutz Prechelt (2000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you were interested, the paper includes the raw data, and you can perform your own analysis on the distribution. The distribution would tell you approximately &lt;strong&gt;how many programmers you would need to say that the best programmer is 100x more productive than the worst&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18244" LastActivityDate="2014-03-16T07:44:46.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19921" CreationDate="2014-03-17T08:03:24.740" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I could not find any world-wide data. However, the reputable German IT news site Heise &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/95-Prozent-aller-Geldautomaten-laufen-mit-Windows-XP-2088583.html&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt; they have a report of the German Credit Association dated November 2013, which &quot;seems to imply that almost all ATMs in Germany run on Windows 2000 or Windows XP&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Germany might not be typical; it is a developed country, which could either mean that its infrastructure is better then average, or conversely, that the infrastructure is well-established and thus &lt;em&gt;older&lt;/em&gt; than average. If, however, we assume it to be representative, we can say that an overwhelming majority of ATMs run Windows XP or older.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastEditorUserId="18230" LastEditDate="2014-03-17T09:02:08.673" LastActivityDate="2014-03-17T09:02:08.673" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-17T23:02:15.737" Score="13" ViewCount="4269" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read that the common story about St. Patrick ridding Ireland of &quot;snakes&quot; is actually a reference to ridding Ireland of druids and other pagans.  Some sources say that he accomplished this through his preaching of Christian principles, but other sources say that he accomplished this through more violent means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples of the claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2011/nov/15/st-patrick-banish-snakes-ireland&quot;&gt;Notes and queries: What did St. Patrick banish from Ireland - snakes or Druids?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-weigant/saint-patrick-and-the-sna_b_503252.html&quot;&gt;Saint Patrick and the Snakes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pagancentric.org/pagans-and-saint-patricks-day/&quot;&gt;Pagans and Saint Patrick's Day: The Real Meaning of the Holiday&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What evidence is there for what really happened, and what St. Patrick's role was?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1859" LastEditorUserId="17062" LastEditDate="2014-03-19T11:37:56.727" LastActivityDate="2021-07-27T18:51:44.013" Title="Did St. Patrick rid Ireland of druids and other pagans?" Tags="|history|religion|christianity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2241" CreationDate="2014-03-18T12:18:03.197" Score="13" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the issue of Peak Oil remains an imminent concern. I look at the evidence for this, and discuss why the mainstream is unconcerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Scenarios&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oil is &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/1111/23&quot;&gt;ultimately a finite resource&lt;/a&gt; that depletes with usage, and production must necessarily peak at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three potential scenarios for Peak Oil:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A peak occurs due to physical resource constraints and is close enough to occurring that we will not be prepared for it and it should be a great current concern (the viewpoint of people raising the issue of Peak Oil such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_the_Study_of_Peak_Oil_and_Gas&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ASPO&lt;/a&gt;, the  &lt;a href=&quot;http://energywatchgroup.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Energy Watch Group&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirsch_report&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hirsch Report&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A peak is not really discussed, with the assumption that it is far enough away from occurring that it is not a current concern. There is no need to try and predict the date of the peak or discuss any mitigation at this time. (the mainstream view)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A peak will occur, but not due to supply limits, but because oil has been replaced painlessly in the marketplace - for example electricity from renewables is powering a transportation system based on electricity that has become cheaper than our oil-based one. So demand for oil peaks before oil production hits physical limits. This view is  based on the economic principle of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substitute_good&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;substitution good&lt;/a&gt;. . However, there is no single substitution good proposed in this case that would replace oil. (An economists view and also what Hubbert believed in March 1956 when he first presented his paper titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mkinghubbert.com/files/1956.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels&lt;/a&gt;, which was the first time the issue of  Peak Oil was raised. His &lt;a href=&quot;http://mkinghubbert.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/curve.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;replacement for oil, coal and natural gas was nuclear energy&lt;/a&gt; (and an implied new transportation infrastructure))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The &amp;quot;Doomsayers&amp;quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The advocates of the Scenario 1 are a small disparate group, although retired petroleum geologist &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Campbell_(geologist)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Colin Campbell&lt;/a&gt; founded the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_the_Study_of_Peak_Oil_and_Gas&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ASPO&lt;/a&gt;) in 2000 to study the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Industry View&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any of the oil companies, or major investment banks, or governments and their oil-related agencies (such as the US Energy Information Administration (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EIA&lt;/a&gt;) and the International Energy Agency (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iea.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IEA&lt;/a&gt;)) predicting a peak for which we will not be prepared. They do not advocate Scenario #1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iea.org/aboutus/faqs/oil/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the International Energy Agency says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our analysis suggests there are ample physical oil and liquid fuel&#xA;resources for the foreseeable&#xA;future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e. the IEA predict Scenario #2, if we assume that the foreseeable future (&lt;a href=&quot;http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/maps_and_graphs/2009/11/09/OilProduction.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;their graph forecasts only go to 2030&lt;/a&gt;), includes enough time to have replacements in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IEA, on the other hand &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iea.org/aboutus/faqs/oil/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;suggests the possibility of Scenario #3 occuring&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A combination of sustained high prices and energy policies aimed at&#xA;greater end-use efficiency and diversification in energy supplies&#xA;might actually mean that peak oil demand occurs in the future before&#xA;the resource base is anything like&#xA;exhausted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Oil industry remains optimistic despite the warning signs.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the mainstream (and the previous answers to this question on Skeptics.SE) is sanguine, during the period in which ASPO has been in existence, the price of oil has more than tripled in real terms, and has reached &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/Inflation_Rate/Historical_Oil_Prices_Chart.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the highest inflation-adjusted plateau, if not ever, at least since 1946&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Also during that period, the inflation-adjusted spot price of oil spiked to a level even higher than during the spike of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_energy_crisis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;second oil crisis&lt;/a&gt;. Coincident with that spike was the tanking of the OECD economies in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Great Recession&lt;/a&gt;. So, prices have risen above previous levels, which per the basic economic principle of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;supply and demand&lt;/a&gt; means that there is less supply with regard to demand then at any time since 1946 (I have not seen data from before that) and/or it has become more expensive to produce oil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zDgWu.png&quot; alt=&quot;West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices, weekly average 2002-2013&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;West Texas Intermediate crude oil prices, weekly average 2002-2013&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even without an oil production peak, the price rise suggests problems. The price rise was predicted and easily explained by people advocating Scenario #1. The people supporting Scenario #2 did not predict these prices levels. They have to either concede supply shortages, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/special/pdf/2007-oil-prices.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as the EIA did here in 2007&lt;/a&gt;, or they can point to higher costs to obtain oil. But either explanation implies a worsening oil marketplace for consumers.  (I don't know if there were people supporting Scenario #3 a decade ago and what they predicted with regard to price)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the oil price rise has not dampened the inherent optimism with regard to the global production of this critical finite depletable resource. Despite the price rise, there has actually been an increase of articles proclaiming the Peak Oil &amp;quot;theory&amp;quot; being &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/death-of-peak-oil-2013-3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dead&lt;/a&gt;, mostly dead or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidblackmon/2013/07/16/as-fracking-rises-peak-oil-theory-slowly-dies/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;slowly dying&lt;/a&gt;, spurred on by the production of total liquids production rising above peaks predicted by various Peak Oil proponents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this misplaced optimism can be explained by examining the two different methodologies used to forecast oil production which can lead to two different conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Evidence for Scenario #1&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;1. Conventional Oil Has Already Peaked&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Conventional crude oil&amp;quot; is crude oil that is obtained via traditional  methods (drill vertically and pump out), and excludes oil obtained from fracking techniques or other non-oil sources (actually total liquids sources) like tar sands or natural gas liquids (NGLs) that are included in world &amp;quot;oil&amp;quot; production figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Conventional crude oil&lt;/em&gt; production &lt;strong&gt;peaked in 2005&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://energypolicy.columbia.edu/events-calendar/global-oil-market-forecasting-main-approaches-key-drivers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent talk given at Columbia University&lt;/a&gt;, Steven Kopits, of Douglas-Westwood, an oil field services consulting company, &lt;a href=&quot;http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/kopits-48-conventional-oil-production.png?w=640&amp;amp;h=426&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;presented this graph&lt;/a&gt; showing the peak of conventional crude oil production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eFlUs.png&quot; alt=&quot;Kopit Graph&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the increase that has come since 2005 in world total liquids production (aka total oil production) is from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US fracking of tight oil&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NGLs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Canadian tar sands&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bulk has been from US fracking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The next graph below shows the oil production of the major oil companies also peaked in 2005.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;2. Production Costs for Major Oil Companies are Spiralling Up&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major stock exchange listed oil companies are spending much more and not increasing their production significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/kopits-40-oil-majors-capex-and-production.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A second graph from Kopits shows&lt;/a&gt; that the oil majors expenses for discovering and producing oil are now over 5 times what they were in 1999, and production is only 1.55% higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cvWJZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;Kopit Graph #2&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As shown on &lt;a href=&quot;http://energypolicy.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/energy/Kopits%20-%20Oil%20and%20Economic%20Growth%20%28SIPA,%202014%29%20-%20Presentation%20Version%5B1%5D.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;slide 18 of Kopits' presentation&lt;/a&gt; spending to find and produce &lt;em&gt;conventional crude oil&lt;/em&gt; (all producers) was 1.5 trillion US dollars from 1998 to 2005 and this resulted in an increase of 8.6 million barrels per day (mbpd). From 2006 to 2013 spending was 2.5 trillion (an increase of 66% over the prior 8 year period) and &lt;strong&gt;production decreased by 6%&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2vFKE.png&quot; alt=&quot;Kopit Graph #3&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The costs of finding and producing oil have become so high that a &lt;a href=&quot;http://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/kopits-45-industry-needs-oil-prices-over-100.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Goldman Sachs study&lt;/a&gt; calculates that nearly half of the oil industry requires oil prices above $120 dollars a barrel in order to achieve positive cash flow and also pay their dividends. This cost problem is having a negative impact on new projects - some are being put on hold, some are being canceled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;3. Oil Production growth has been slower than GDP.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oil production has slowed from traditional growth rates with respect to GDP growth.&#xA;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://energypolicy.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/energy/Kopits%20-%20Oil%20and%20Economic%20Growth%20%28SIPA,%202014%29%20-%20Presentation%20Version%5B1%5D.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;page 15 of his presentation&lt;/a&gt;, Kopits shows that oil supply growth has not matched traditional rates with respect to GDP growth and traditional oil efficiency gains (1.2%). And this slowing started in 2004, 4 years before the great recession of 2008. Did we suddenly voluntarily get more efficient in usage, or were we forced to get more efficient?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Demand-Driven Forecasting Leads To False Optimism&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given this evidence, why are some pundits still optimistic about the dangers of Peak Oil?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLCsMRr7hAg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kopits points out at the 04:10 minute mark in his talk&lt;/a&gt; that most entities are using Demand Driven or Demand Constraint forecasting, which assumes for an item, that whatever is demanded by consumers, will be produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as I mentioned, this is traditional demand driven forecasting,&#xA;everybody uses this, all the investment banks, all the oil majors, the&#xA;US and foreign government all use this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Kopits details, this forecasting technique that they are using for oil is the same as what they use to forecast car production, or smart phones or any other manufactured item. They start with a forecast percentage change in GDP (from one of the government agencies), then use a ratio (determined from historical observation of GDP and item production) to apply that GDP change to current production of the item in question and get a number for future production. Their forecasts assume that supply will match demand. So the demand for oil drives the production of oil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When production does not match their forecast of demand, they conclude that their predetermined ratio was wrong - that is, demand now changes less per GDP change than they had previously assumed - and not that supply could not meet demand. Whereas Kopits and his firm (Douglas-Westwood) and Peak Oil proponents are using Supply Driven or Supply Constraint forecasts for oil. They feel that supply cannot meet demand. So they start out by making an estimate of how much oil can be produced and if desired, forecast GDP based on the oil supply prediction and a calculated oil usage efficiency (which improves over time).  While this model would not have been applicable in years past, Kopits feels it valid now and has been proven correct in recent years. He tries to demonstrate that Supply Driven is the correct method at this point in time with regard to oil, and one of the things he mentions is that in Demand Driven forecasting, it is believed that the price of an item will rise above the highest cost to produce it. But the oil majors are cutting projects because the oil price has plateaued below the cost required for their new projects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the key point is that most oil production forecasters start with an assumption that causes them to not even look for supply problems or predict maximum production rates. It is assumed that whatever is needed will be supplied. If oil production were to decrease, they would believe that it is because oil demand has decreased. If oil production were to peak, they would believe that it was because oil demand has peaked. The demand driven forecasters will focus on reserves. And reserves of unconventional sources with lower flow rates like tar sands or Venezuelan heavy oil can get lumped together with crude oil and published as total reserves, even though they have much different production rates. Steven Kopits and his firm feel that this forecasting method was once valid, but at this point in time, a Supply-Driven forecasting model is the correct one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Future Supply Growth&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bulk of current total liquids production consists of conventional crude oil. The IEA is predicting that conventional crude oil production will slightly increase for the next 15 years. This would mean a reversal in the small 6% current decline from the 2005 peak. But as noted, the 6% decline came after a 66% increase in spending over the prior 8 year period. Whether we see Peak Oil before 2030 likely hinges on the ability of the world to maintain conventional crude oil production. The Energy Watch Group, in contrast to the EIA, in their March 2013 report titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://energywatchgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/EWG-update2013_long_18_03_2013up1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fossil and Nuclear Fuels – the Supply Outlook&lt;/a&gt; (page 10), show conventional crude oil production in terminal decline through 2030.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of the production increases since the peak of conventional crude oil in 2005 has come from US fracking of tight oil. The US EIA is getting more optimistic with regard to fracking output, seeing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://peak-oil.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/EIA-Data-from-Ron-Patterson.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2 mpbd higher output peak in their 2014 forecast, versus 2013&lt;/a&gt;, but both total oil production and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/er/images/figure_1es-lg.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tight oil production&lt;/a&gt;, are still forecast to  &lt;strong&gt;peak before 2020&lt;/strong&gt;. Most of the growth in world &amp;quot;oil&amp;quot; supplies since 2005 has come from US tight oil, and the EIA shows it peaking in five years or less. After 2020 world oil production growth will likely require fracking to begin in other countries. This article cites &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.cnn.com/2013/09/17/news/global-fracking-ihs/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;175 billion barrels potentially recoverable worldwide, versus the 43 billion in the US&lt;/a&gt;. But any gain from fracking or NGLs or tar sands will likely be offset to a greater or lesser extent by  continued decreases in &lt;em&gt;conventional crude oil&lt;/em&gt; production. It would seem that optimism about future oil production growth into the 2030's is dependent on quick development and output from that 175 billion barrels of &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tight_oil&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tight oil&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; worldwide. There is talk of drilling in the arctic for a potential 90 billion barrels of oil, but those projects are currently &lt;a href=&quot;http://arcticjournal.com/oil-minerals/arctic-oil-exploration-ice&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on ice&lt;/a&gt; due to the costs being higher than current oil prices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tar sands&lt;/a&gt;, due to an energy-intensive mining and conversion process, have limitations with how much they can produce annually. Although Canada is referred to as having a &amp;quot;Saudia Arabia's worth of oil&amp;quot;, people are only talking about getting to 5 mbpd, not the 10 mbpd that a Saudi Arabia can produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Natural Gas Liquids (which are only partially substitutable for crude oil) &lt;a href=&quot;http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/maps_and_graphs/2009/11/09/OilProduction.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;are predicted to increase in the future by the IEA&lt;/a&gt;.  But as with oil, there are predictions of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_gas&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peak Gas&lt;/a&gt; that deviate sharply from more optimistic forecasts from the government agencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a large amount of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_crude_oil&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;heavy crude oil&lt;/a&gt; in Venezuela. Like the tar sands of Canada, it was formerly crude oil that has degraded, and suffers from similar limitations as to how much can be produced annually. The IEA, in their WEO 2010 report say that production of heavy oil is 0.7 mpbd and forecast 1.3 mbpd in 2020 and 2 mbpd in 2035. At the present time, both tar sands and heavy crude oil contribute much more to world reserve totals than they do to world production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As seen in some answers in this page, some oil supply optimists (not necessarily in the profession of forecasting oil production) will even talk about the quantities of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerogen_shale&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;kerogen shale&lt;/a&gt; (aka oil shale), which has no significant historical production to even ensure its economic viability, let alone calculate its potential flow or production rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Future Demand Growth&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two most populated countries on earth (2.64 billion people) have had their economies jump-started by OECD job export, and are now becoming big players in the global energy market. But they are still low on the motorization curve, versus the OECD countries. Even if oil production could continue to grow for a few decades, it would need to grow faster than the increase in usage from these two countries in order to avoid further supply problems and price increases. If it does not exceed their demands, then they will continue to, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLCsMRr7hAg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as Steven Kopits puts it&lt;/a&gt;, get much of their oil “from Main Street, USA”. That is, they will bid it away in the marketplace from American and other OECD consumers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Were Dr. M. King Hubbert's predictions correct?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming you are talking about the date, rather than the issue of oil production reaching a peak worldwide and going into terminal decline, according to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hubbertpeak.com/hubbert/natgeog.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1974 National Geographic article&lt;/a&gt;, Hubbert predicted 1995 as the peak (I have seen somewhere else that he had a secondary date, just as with the US he predicted 1965 as primary and 1971 as secondary [peaked in 1970]) &amp;quot;if present trends continue&amp;quot;. The second oil shock of 1979 definitely stopped &amp;quot;present trends&amp;quot; for a decade. Oil usage rather than increasing, actually &lt;a href=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/World_Oil_Production_1980-2012.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;decreased for 5 years&lt;/a&gt; in the aftermath. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImV1voi41YY&amp;amp;feature=channel_page&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In a 1976 interview&lt;/a&gt; he talks about a 1995 world oil production peak but notes that OPEC countries were “curtailing production somewhat” and said that it was conceivable that “we might extend this by something like 10 years” (“this” being his graph showing an oil production peak in 1995).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the qualification of his first prediction to Congress in 1974 was not met, and he raised the possibility of a peak as late as 2005,  two years later. And as shown above, conventional crude oil peaked in 2005. However, conventional crude oil production has not dropped at the rate that Hubbert was expecting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, predicting the date, to me, is like a doctor telling you you have cancer and then predicting when you will die from it. Does missing the date change the overriding fact that you have cancer? Can you be sanguine if the problem remains, but a date was missed? Does Hubbert predicting 1995, 21 years earlier change the issue of the peaking in production of a finite depletable resource that has been used to great extent for a century?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing that isn't well known is that Hubbert had something in common with some of the optimists of today. There has been some increasing talk of the economic idea of substitution with regard to oil -  something will be - painlessly - substituted for oil and other fossil fuels. His paper which first talked about Peak Oil was actually titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mkinghubbert.com/files/1956.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels&lt;/a&gt; and. Past examples of substitution are coal for wood and oil for whale oil. &lt;a href=&quot;http://coldfusionnow.org/m-king-hubbert-on-nuclear-energy/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hubbert felt that over time nuclear power would increase and replace oil, coal and natural gas.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T06:14:59.557" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19940" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19941" CreationDate="2014-03-18T16:17:09.170" Score="5" ViewCount="1224" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2408748/The-sensor-reads-heartbeat-feet-away-WITHOUT-touching-you.html&quot;&gt;Daily Mail article&lt;/a&gt; suggests that the Kinect camera on the xbox is capable of assessing your heart rate from four feet away by detecting changes in the colour of your skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has the accuracy of this claim been proven?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6588" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T17:01:55.290" Title="Can the Xbox Kinect sensor accurately assess your heart rate across the room?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19940" CreationDate="2014-03-18T17:01:55.290" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any video camera is capable of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/&quot;&gt;This work by Wu &lt;em&gt;et al&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/a&gt; demonstrates the technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using our method, we are able to visualize the flow of blood as it fills the face...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a video: &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/video/face-ideal-from-0.83333-to-1-alpha-50-level-4-chromAtn-1.mp4&quot;&gt;http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/video/face-ideal-from-0.83333-to-1-alpha-50-level-4-chromAtn-1.mp4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/matthickey/2013/05/24/source-xbox-ones-heart-sensing-tech-not-microsofts-idea/&quot;&gt;Microsoft uses the same or similar method&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2014-03-18T17:01:55.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19945" CreationDate="2014-03-18T22:24:10.483" Score="15" ViewCount="11804" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the 1940s, American psychologist William Herbert Sheldon formulated the theory of &lt;em&gt;constitutional psychology&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the proposals in this theory is that there are three basic elements, or somatotypes, that contribute to your body type. These somatotypes and their associated physical traits &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatotype_and_constitutional_psychology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;are&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4wwHT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;endomorph, mesomorph, ectomorph&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Endomorphic&lt;/strong&gt;: characterized by increased fat storage, a wide waist and shoulders and a large bone structure, usually referred to as fat, or chunky. Endomorphs are predisposed to storing fat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mesomorphic&lt;/strong&gt;: characterized by medium bones, solid torso, low fat levels and a narrow waist; usually referred to as muscular. Mesomorphs are predisposed to build muscle but not store fat.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ectomorphic&lt;/strong&gt;: characterized by long and thin muscles/limbs and low fat storage; usually referred to as slim. Ectomorphs are not predisposed to store fat nor build muscle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this sound like he's basically saying &quot;Let's call fat people endomorphs, buff people mesomorphs and thin people ectomorphs. Because it sound more sciency&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I &lt;a href=&quot;https://fitness.stackexchange.com/search?q=ectomorph&quot;&gt;occasionally&lt;/a&gt; hear people refer to their somatotype as if it was an intrinsic property of their constitution, e.g. &quot;I'm an ectomorph, so that's why it's very hard for me to build muscle&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore (and now it get's weird) he claimed that an individual's mental characteristics could be predicted from the composition of the somatotypes. For example, endomorphs might be good-natured but lazy, ectomorphs intelligent but neurotic, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there are a few intertwined claims here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three elements/somatotypes whose composition&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;define your body type (and basic appearance)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;predicts your personality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and is intrinsic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any validity to this theory or can we put this to rest along other pseudosciences from the 1940s?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:51.697" LastActivityDate="2015-08-19T13:33:43.857" Title="Are &quot;ectomorph&quot;, &quot;mesomorph&quot; and &quot;endomorph&quot; valid and useful descriptors?" Tags="|psychology|physiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19945" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19943" CreationDate="2014-03-19T01:08:03.163" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sources I find suggest that the validity of the theory is still up for debate (surprisingly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/21/us/nude-photos-are-sealed-at-smithsonian.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; NY Times article dismisses the theory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, other photographs were taken by W. H. Sheldon, a researcher who believed that there was a relationship between body shape and intelligence and other traits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Sheldon has since died, and his work has long been dismissed by most scientists as quackery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and there's a more detailed, academic critique &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/JSH/JSH2002/JSH2901/jsh2901m.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time, academic researchers are conducting empirical studies as recently as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcser.org/journal/index.php/mjss/article/viewFile/684/712&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2013&lt;/a&gt;  that appear to confirm Sheldon's hypothesis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questionnaire was administered to 242 (two&#xA;hundred and forty two) University of The Gambia students by stratified sampling technique based on body types&#xA;(whether endomorph, mesomorph or ectomorph). &lt;strong&gt;The physical body type an individual possesses has an&#xA;influence on the behaviour or personality of that individual, as posited by Sheldon’s constitutional theory.&lt;/strong&gt; This&#xA;was confirmed, even when applied in the African society specifically in The Gambia, by this study. [emphasis mine]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1097-4679%28198409%2940:5%3C1226::AID-JCLP2270400518%3E3.0.CO;2-Q/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's&lt;/a&gt; a 2006 paper making similar claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Investigated whether measures of personality considered compositely and individually differ significantly among groups differentiated according to self-perceived somatotype (PSS). The Bodv Cathexis Scale, Eysenck Personality Inventory, and Tennessee Self-Concept Scale were employed to assess personality in 285 college males, and the indices of somatotype were measured using the Perceived Somatotype Scale. MANOVA revealed significant differences in global personality among the groups. Univariate analyses indicated that the PSS groups differed significantly in self-concept, extraversion, neuroticism, and body cathexis, while the PSI groups differed significantly in extraversion. &lt;strong&gt;Apparently, the male personality is partly a function of the body build perceived as self, the image viewed as ideal, and whether a discrepancy exists between the figures perceived as self and ideal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here's a third, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.koreascience.or.kr/article/ArticleFullRecord.jsp?cn=HGPSBI_2010_v14n1_11&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2010&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After examining the relativity between personal measurement categories of the subjects and character type through the MBTI, &lt;strong&gt;Extraversion(E) type showed inverse correlation in stature, height, biacromial breadth, and subcutaneous fat thickness of posterior iliospinale&lt;/strong&gt;. Contrary to the E type, the &lt;strong&gt;Introversion(I) type showed positive correlation&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Sensing(S) type showed inverse correlation only in biacromial breadth&lt;/strong&gt;, Intuition(N) type showed positive correlation in most categories including height, width and the subcutaneous fat thickness. Thinking(T) type showed positive correlation in bust point-bust point, chest depth and hip width. Feeling(F) type, on the other hand, showed inverse correlation. The Judging(J) type showed inverse correlation in stature, height, length and the parts of chest. In contrast, Perceiving(P) type showed positive correlation in other categories including biacromial breadth, same as the J type.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Google scholar &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?start=10&amp;amp;q=somatotype%20personality&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=0,5&amp;amp;as_ylo=2010&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;search&lt;/a&gt; for &amp;quot;Somatotype personality&amp;quot;, limited to publications since 2010, produces almost 500 results, which suggests this is still an active area of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional caveat: I am not qualified to assess whether the research present is correcting for discipline appropriate factors, and thus whether their findings are valid. However, taken at face value, it looks like there is some relationship between somatotype and personality, and all of these papers are referencing the theory. Some of them are using more detailed measurements however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Some additional information in response to one of the comments: Yes, one's somatotype can change over time, for at least some groups (I speculate: for anyone). For example, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.1330440215/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; study, in which 67% of subjects changed dominant somatotypes during puberty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T18:58:25.943" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19948" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-19T17:06:51.017" Score="3" ViewCount="354" Body="&lt;p&gt;Claim: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ewg.org/research/mens-health&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ewg.org/research/mens-health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;There has been significant research in recent decades showing that chronic conditions such as heart disease, prostate cancer, infertility may be linked to everyday exposures to chemicals in water, consumer products and food.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no links to examples of such research on that webpage. Also it does not specify which chemicals are responsible for listed illnesses. Is the claim a lie or does it have any scientific evidence to back it up? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15281" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T22:11:29.747" Title="Have chronic conditions such as heart disease, prostate cancer, infertility ever been linked to everyday exposures to chemicals in food?" Tags="|nutrition|chemistry|disease|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19949" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19953" CreationDate="2014-03-19T21:05:33.910" Score="3" ViewCount="2779" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://m.globalindustrial.com/m/p/hvac/air-conditioning/portable/global-portable-air-conditioner-8000-btu?infoParam.campaignId=T9F&amp;amp;gclid=CKett5S9n70CFTIV7AodSH4A4w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; website for an air conditioner claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A built-in ionizer helps stimulate blood circulation, improve lung function and prevent respiratory passage illnesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does research indicate that ionizers in air conditioners have the stated benefits?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14237" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T08:49:06.190" Title="Do ionizers in air conditioners promote cardiopulmonary health?" Tags="|medical-science|household|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-20T03:28:19.503" Score="18" ViewCount="10656" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen in numerous movies that after a person gets beaten up in a fight they place a chunk of raw meat on their face. I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://goaskalice.columbia.edu/black-eye-cure&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt; making reference to the practice and &lt;a href=&quot;http://wowforbruises.com/random-myths-about-treating-bruises/&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; claiming it's a myth (though I have no regards for the validity of the website). My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was there ever a time when applying raw meat to some sort of external injury was common?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What type of meat was used?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;According to current medical research is it safe to use this treatment?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="6397" LastEditDate="2014-03-20T07:46:34.717" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T17:18:59.333" Title="As seen in movies, is it medically sound to treat a bruise with raw meat?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19949" CreationDate="2014-03-20T04:54:44.763" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three health claims being made:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ionizers help with circulation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ionizers can improve lung function.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ionizers can prevent respiratory passage illness.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim 1 might be true, but evidence is scarce.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proof: I spent quite a while poking around on Google scholar. There are plenty of patents, and (surprisingly) company spec sheets that show up there when searching for terms related to this claim, but I can only find a single study that looks at the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004840050028#page-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; paper finds (via a randomized controlled trial with n=13) that sitting in an ionized sauna yields a statistically significantly higher pulse rate than sitting in an ordinary one. The article looks kind of pseudo-sciency, but it is published in a real journal, and does look like it's at least taking basic precautions in its experimental design. If someone has a better source for this, I'm very interested to see it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim 2 is false, at least for those with asthma. It may be true for those with dust allergies who do not suffer from asthma.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proof: The possibility of using these systems to remove dust from the air has been studied since at least the 1960's. &lt;a href=&quot;http://thorax.bmj.com/content/31/4/428.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; 1975 study showed improvement in morning airflow (i.e. after sleeping in the house, hence being exposed to dust) for asthmatics. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1440-172X.2010.01835.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; 2010 metastudy finds, based on 6 randomized controlled trials:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on the evidence currently available from RCTs, a recommendation cannot be given for the use of room air ionizers to reduce symptoms in patients with chronic asthma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2221169111602128&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; 2012 study establishes that ionizers are effective at killing dust mite populations (which are a common cause of &quot;dust&quot; allergies), but only when they operate for a long period. Mites in the open lasted less than a day, but mites in a &quot;simulated mattress&quot; took more like months (these values are extrapolated by me from the reported LD50 exposure times). So, it's possible that if you are not asthmatic, but nonetheless allergic to dust mites, these systems could be effective. You'd need to leave them running for a very long time though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One might suppose based on their ability to kill dust mites, that these systems would then be effective at controlling dust induced asthma as well (I certainly expected this). However, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1440-172X.2010.01835.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;meta study&lt;/a&gt; addresses this point as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Trials of current chemical and physical methods aimed at reducing exposure to house dust mite allergens failed to find an effect (relative risk 1.01, 95% CI 0.80–1.27), asthma symptom scores (standardized mean difference 0.04, 95% CI 0.15–0.07), or in medication usage (standardized mean difference 0.06, 95% CI 0.18–0.07.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1477-5751-12-14.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a second 2013 meta study that considers only this issue. Their findings are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite numerous experimental and analytical differences across studies, the literature does not&#xA;  clearly support a beneficial role in exposure to negative air ions and respiratory function or asthmatic symptom&#xA;  alleviation. Further, collectively, the human experimental studies do not indicate a significant detrimental effect of&#xA;  exposure to positive air ions on respiratory measures. Exposure to negative or positive air ions does not appear to&#xA;  play an appreciable role in respiratory function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim 3 is likely true, at least for some diseases. However, the evidence is scarce.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proof: Again, it's very hard to find good source data on this one. I could find one study, but it did show a very significant reduction in infection rates for air treated with an ionizer. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3adoi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000043&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; 2009 PLoS medicine article performed an extensive study on changes in TB rates in guinea who were exposed directly to the exhaust air of a TB ward. They find that using ionizers halves the infection rate for the animals (though using UV light drops it to a third of the original instead). The presumed mechanism of action is the removal of TB cells from the air via attraction to the ionizer, so it stands to reason that is might work in humans as well. However, I cannot find any study showing that this is the case. I also cannot find any studies showing an impact on any other common respiratory infection (influenza, colds, etc.). Again, if anyone has a better source, I'm very interested to see it!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T04:54:44.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19954" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19951" CreationDate="2014-03-20T09:06:32.880" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question title is &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The act of putting raw meat on a bruise comes from Hollywood and cartoons, and it usually is adopted when you have a &lt;strong&gt;black eye&lt;/strong&gt;, rather than just any bruise. But what works is the cold factor of the frozen meat and not the meat itself, since cold naturally constrains blood vessels and helps reducing the swelling. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, using meat could even be dangerous because you might cause an infection. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is always strongly discouraged, for example on the page for &lt;a href=&quot;http://firstaid.about.com/od/softtissueinjuries/ht/07_black_eye.htm&quot;&gt;First Aid&lt;/a&gt; on About.com:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Never put raw meat on a black eye. There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://firstaid.about.com/od/firstaidbasics/tp/06_bad1staid.htm&quot;&gt;first aid myth&lt;/a&gt; that putting steak on a black eye will help it heal faster. It will not. In fact, putting raw meat on a black eye is more likely to cause an infection (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://firstaid.about.com/od/infections/qt/06_Ecoli.htm&quot;&gt;E coli&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geteyesmart.org/eyesmart/diseases/black-eye-treatment.cfm&quot;&gt;Geteyesmart&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] Despite what you see in movies or on television, you should never put a raw steak or other raw meat on a black eye. The bacteria on raw meat poses a high risk of infection, and this method of treating a black eye has no scientific basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A frozen bag of veggies would likely be cleaner than raw meat, but an even better solution would be using ice packs for medical use or cold compresses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1: American Academy of Ophthalmology Launches Expanded GetEyeSmart.org, a Trusted Source for Eye Health Information. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aao.org/newsroom/release/20110210.cfm&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4727" LastEditorUserId="4727" LastEditDate="2014-03-21T17:18:59.333" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T17:18:59.333" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4159" CreationDate="2014-03-20T21:28:35.787" Score="-3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That depends on the specific highway. For example, in British Columbia, it seems as if increasing the speed limit actually causes accidents to go down (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.carbibles.com/speeding_facts.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; - there's a video near the end of the page that explains why this is so). You have probably heard about the German Autobahn, where in some stretches there's no posted limit, and yet it's famously safe to drive on (in 2011, there were 5.6 fatalities in German roads per &lt;em&gt;billion&lt;/em&gt; vehicle-km - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate%5d&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No, people are safer when everyone is driving at the same speed, going in the same direction. The first link above has several sources to back up this claim.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18307" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T21:28:35.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19961" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13606" CreationDate="2014-03-20T22:27:55.207" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, you can fly an airplane upside down, as long as the airplane frame supports the unexpected loads and the fuel, engine oil and battery acid stay where they are supposed to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to popular belief, a plane flies not because the air above the wings moves faster than the air below, but because of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/airfoils.html#sec-circulation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;circulation&lt;/a&gt;. This means that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.av8n.com/how/htm/airfoils.html#sec-inverted-camber&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;there is no reason why a plane couldn't fly upside down&lt;/a&gt;, as airshow pilots routinely do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The links point to a very good book by John Decker on how to fly airplanes. It explains quite thoroughly why airplanes behave as they do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18307" LastActivityDate="2014-03-20T22:27:55.207" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19948" CreationDate="2014-03-21T02:39:05.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lead poisoning is one example of an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aafp.org/afp/1998/0215/p719.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;every day exposure&lt;/a&gt; that has been known about for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fi.edu/learn/brain/metals.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;centuries&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lead poisoning is associated with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1849948/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;heart disease&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12642986&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;prostate cancer&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11764848&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;infertility&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-03-21T02:39:05.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19964" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20770" CreationDate="2014-03-21T14:43:02.707" Score="11" ViewCount="558" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today, I was made aware of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/08/ugandan-app-for-pain-free-malaria-test&quot;&gt;a research project made by Ugandan CS students&lt;/a&gt; who claim to have built a smartphone app together with a device called a &quot;matiscope&quot; that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] uses a red light to penetrate the skin [of a finger inserted into the device] and detect the red blood cells [...and] used light-scattering technology to determine the scatter patterns of both normal and infected cells&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in order to detect an infection with Malaria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this device sounds a lot like a simple oximeter, and the claims put forth in that article are rather vacuous, i. e. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] they test no less than 50 patients a day for malaria and receive eight to 10 positive results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;without saying anything about whether those results were accurate. But even if they were, my guess would be that changes in oxygen saturation caused by a severe bout of malaria would far outweigh any possible changes in light absorption caused by Plasmodium parasites. But I'm curious anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick PubMed search has turned up nothing, but maybe I've been using the wrong search terms - is there any evidence available that such a device/app could in fact work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The students have won the &lt;a href=&quot;http://imaginecup.com/Finalists/Team?teamname=code8&amp;amp;year=2013#?fbid=Wexltfrdtyd&quot;&gt;&quot;Women's Empowerment Award&quot; from Microsoft's Imagine Cup in 2013&lt;/a&gt;, which is wonderful, but the website doesn't have any additional information, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2015-08-18T21:47:22.807" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T21:47:22.807" Title="Is it possible to (reliably) diagnose malaria with a noninvasive device/smartphone app?" Tags="|medical-science|diagnostic-test|malaria|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19948" CreationDate="2014-03-22T12:40:58.157" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A well known culprit for heart disease is table salt. (Sodium Chloride)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Raised blood pressure is a major cause of cardiovascular disease,&#xA;  responsible for 62% of stroke and 49% of coronary heart disease.&#xA;  Importantly, the risk of CVD increases throughout the range of blood&#xA;  pressure, starting at 115/75 mmHg.(Lewington S et al. Age-specific&#xA;  relevance of usual blood pressure to vascular mortality: a&#xA;  meta-analysis of individual data for one million adults in 61&#xA;  prospective studies. Lancet. 2002; 360, 1903-1913) Salt is the major&#xA;  factor that increases blood pressure and is therefore responsible for&#xA;  many strokes and heart attacks every year. - See more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.actiononsalt.org.uk/salthealth/factsheets/stroke/index.html?&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An high-fat diet must also be taken into account. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mckinley.illinois.edu/handouts/facts_about_fat.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a comprehensive breakdown of what types of fat there are, what it does to help you (obtain fat soluble vitamins such as Vitamin A, provide energy.) and harm you. (As in heart disease, narrowing of arteries because of fatty deposits such as cholesterol.)&#xA;This is true not just for those who are obese, though both high fat diet and obesity are risk factors for cause heart disease and vascular problems. Obesity on it's own but with a favorable diet - ie. a balanced one, but eaten in excess quantity - is known to cause heart disease, type ll diabetes, increased risk of certain cancers, heart attack and stroke. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Obesity/Pages/Introduction.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;See here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prostate cancer seems to have flimsy evidence to support the idea that a high fat and low fruit diet may add to susceptibility:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Men from western countries, such as the UK and USA, have a higher&#xA;  rate of prostate cancer than men from eastern countries such as China&#xA;  and Japan. It’s thought that this might be because western diets tend&#xA;  to be higher in animal fat (including dairy products) and lower in&#xA;  fresh fruit and vegetables. Asian men also tend to have a higher&#xA;  intake of soy in their diet. Soy and soy products contain chemicals&#xA;  called phyto-oestrogens. Researchers believe these might reduce the&#xA;  risk of prostate cancer, but more research is needed to confirm this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you finish the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.macmillan.org.uk/Cancerinformation/Cancertypes/Prostate/Aboutprostatecancer/Causes.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, it emphasizes that more research is needed, ie. a strong causal connection can not yet be made between a particular diet and the onset of Prostate Cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards infertility, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletters/Harvard_Mental_Health_Letter/2009/May/Follow-Fertility-Diet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; it is suggested avoiding fads such as ginseng, kelp, oysters, garlic and champaigne, which have a folk-tail connection to increased fertility, and just follow a balanced diet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;an eight-year study of more than 18,000 women that uncovered ten&#xA;  evidence-based suggestions for improving fertility. This work, from&#xA;  the landmark Nurses' Health Study, fills a critical information gap on&#xA;  diet and fertility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can find no suggestion (or study) that a particular food reduces fertility. However, there is a suggestion &lt;a href=&quot;http://voices.yahoo.com/3-tropical-fruits-cause-miscarriage-9146289.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; certain tropical foods can cause spontaneous abortion. (Miscarriage) There are similar claims elsewhere, but again, no studies to confirm or deny a causal connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some ancient methods of birth control are listed &lt;a href=&quot;http://listverse.com/2010/11/14/10-ancient-methods-of-birth-control/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but again, no study to support their effect, though many are known to be generally poisonous, and we can expect they wouldn't do any prospective baby much good, nor the mother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17546" LastEditorUserId="17546" LastEditDate="2014-03-22T22:11:29.747" LastActivityDate="2014-03-22T22:11:29.747" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10492" CreationDate="2014-03-22T15:32:10.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/lesson-of-a-lifetime-72754306/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an exercise&lt;/a&gt; where a teacher labelled kids with blue eyes as being not as smart and eventually the class treated them like that and the kids began to not do as well in school, and then she did the same thing with children who had brown eyes.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It pretty much showed that simply being part of the majority group helped improve the grades of the students.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jane Elliot was the teacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18328" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-03-23T01:54:46.887" LastActivityDate="2014-03-23T01:54:46.887" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19974" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19975" CreationDate="2014-03-23T07:26:10.763" Score="56" ViewCount="24958" Body="&lt;p&gt;The image &amp;quot;Who controls your mind? 2013&amp;quot; below claims that a very large proportion of the US media companies have Presidents, CEOs, Founders, Owners, Vice Presidents and Chairs that are Jewish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be found on many antisemitic sites such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t987442/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stormfront Forums&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://watchdogwire.com/florida/2013/09/02/who-is-controling-your-mind-in-2013/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WatchDogWire&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://whitemanmarch.com/destroying-the-anti-white-arguments/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;White Man March&lt;/a&gt;. [Note: These links are NSFW, and contain material that may be disturbing.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it accurate and representative? Is it true that American media is mostly (i.e. more than 50%) controlled by people of Jewish origin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PPhcg.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PPhcgl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Who controls your mind&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11278" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2021-03-17T02:50:19.337" LastActivityDate="2021-03-17T02:50:19.337" Title="Are American media controlled mostly by Jews?" Tags="|united-states|media|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="19975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19974" CreationDate="2014-03-23T10:39:24.670" Score="87" Body="&lt;h3&gt;The methodology of the supposed table is wrong.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The table cherry picks its data points.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The table has factual errors.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At first, we need to address the main question, &amp;quot;Do Jews control American Media?&amp;quot;. This is a problematic statement, as it's conspiratorial by nature. The problem with such claims is, as Larian LeQuella put in his answer on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/979/can-haarp-affect-weather-or-earthquakes&quot;&gt;Can HAARP affect weather or earthquakes?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;beauty&amp;quot; of a conspiracy theory is that no matter what evidence is presented, there is a &amp;quot;talk around&amp;quot; for the believer. No matter what answer is given, they will have a more conspiratorial rebuttal for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The table tries to &amp;quot;prove&amp;quot; the claim that the American media is controlled by Jews by showing the supposed large number of Jewish executives in media companies. Before we go over the factual errors and the misrepresentation, we need to address the faulty logic behind this attempt at proof. The table shows us the executives of the companies, while executives have power over the content generated by their company, it is arguably lesser than the influence held by people actually creating the content itself -  the writers, reporters, directors, actors, producers, editors and other people involved with the creative process. The table doesn't try to explain why does the Steven Spielberg, as the founder of Dreamworks animation, has more influence on the American media and culture than Steven Spielberg, as the director who won two Oscars on WWII films, one &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schindler%27s_List&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;depicting the life of a German businessman who saved Jews during the Holocaust&lt;/a&gt;, and one &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saving_Private_Ryan&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;depicting the exploits of a squad of  American soldiers looking for another soldier on the western front of WWII&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The table also puts Vice Presidents of a company as having the same influence as CEOs, Presidents and Chairpersons of the board, which is not true for all VPs. One example is the Associated Press; &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/lhb/4/3/201/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;their site&lt;/a&gt;, shows they have eight VPs. Of those, the author of the table chose to put Jessica Bruce, the director of HR, and Kathleen Carroll, the executive editor. Surely the head of HR doesn't have the same influence as the executive editor. Moreover the VPs who control the financial aspects didn't made the list. Surely if a CEO controls content because they control the money, the Chief Financial Officer of AP should make the list of influential figures together with (if not instead of) the head of HR.&#xA;AP is not the only company with more executives that the table claims. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbcumv.com/mediavillage/networks/nbcentertainment/executives&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NBC entertainment&lt;/a&gt; has 28 executives listed on their site. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/about/company/facts/management/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google&lt;/a&gt; has 6 executive officers and another 7 senior leaders. The same goes to &lt;a href=&quot;http://press.foxnews.com/corporate-info/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fox News&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytco.com/executives/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The New York Times&lt;/a&gt; and many others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The table includes the founders of a company, many of whom - like Walt Disney, Carl Laemmle, Albert Warner and others - have been dead for decades, and could no longer have direct influence on the American media and culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The table doesn't differentiate between media that generates independent content and media which is merely a platform for user generated content. For example, the News channels and film companies create their own content, while the content that appears on Facebook, Google and YouTube is not generated by the owners or employees but by the users. Nine of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_most_subscribed_channels_on_YouTube&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ten most subscribed YouTube channels by days&lt;/a&gt; are operated by private non-Jewish people, and one is the official channel of YouTube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also doesn't differentiate between demographics. Disney appeals to younger demographic than News companies. The demographic a company appeals to can be very influential on its effect on the media as the susceptibility of people &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/lhb/4/3/201/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;changes with age&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is misrepresentative as there are many people who appear several times in the table, people like Mark Zuckerberg, Rupert Murdoch, Marissa Mayer and others. So a person like Mark Zuckerberg, who is the President, CEO, Founder, owner and chairman of Facebook appears more times on the table than the President and CEO of a major news network (Roger Ailes from Fox News).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The table is cherry-pickeded. Not every company has been put on the table. e.g. Facebook is on, but not Instagram, Twitter and other social platforms. The table includes MTV but not VH1, Marvel but not DC comics. I'm sure that there are other major media companies which are absent from the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question of whether a person is Jewish or not can be complicated, as there is a duality of religion and nationality. According to Jewish religious law, everyone who is born to a Jewish mother is a Jew. The only other way to become a Jew is through a conversion process. But once a person is a Jew (whether by birth or otherwise), in the eyes of the religious law that person will always stay a Jew, even if they convert to another religion. A person born to a Jewish father and a non Jewish mother is, at the eyes of the religious law and tradition, isn't a Jew.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people are atheist, but see their Jewish heritage as a cultural heritage, in a way familiar to Americans with Irish, German, Italian and other ancestors in the USA. A good example for this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Stewart&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jon Stewart&lt;/a&gt;, who isn't a religious person, yet on his show he constantly talks about his Jewish heritage, about the Jewish traditions and identifies with Jewish stereotypes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, for the sake of this answer we must accept the criteria that is put by the claim. The claim is made by a racist society that tries to convince us that there is a Jewish conspiracy to take over the media/banks/world. They are not very interested in the religious and cultural identity of each individual, so for the sake of this answer, I take the broadest definition possible: who ever has Jewish ancestry from either side of their family or is a converted Jew. So under this definition, everyone who is a Jew according to the Jewish religion is counted, as well as whoever has Jewish ancestry only from their father's side. It will include atheist and non practicing Jews, as well as Jews who converted to another religion (if there are any who are relevant). This is a very broad definition and it will also include people like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Disraeli&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Benjamin Disraeli&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Karl Marx&lt;/a&gt;. If there are any people who were Jews but latter converted, I'll note that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More on who is a Jew can be read in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew%3F&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;, and on other sources online (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/news/international/21593507-competing-answers-increasingly-pressing-question-who-jew&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Economist&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jewfaq.org/whoisjew.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;JewFAQ.com&lt;/a&gt;...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the sources for showing that a person is not Jewish, are racist blogs with no sources. This is only used when no other better sources are found, and under the assumption that a racist blog will not let a Jew or even a suspected Jew to &amp;quot;escape&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is still a work in progress, as going over all the names takes time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From now on the specific claims of the table will be checked, I only check the ethnicity of the people mentioned, not whether they hold the position claimed in the table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People in the table, and whether they are in fact Jewish:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Incorrect&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deb Finan - Jew in table but not really Jewish, source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://thezog.wordpress.com/who-controls-the-news-part-1/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;racist blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phil Griffin - Jew in table, but not really Jewish, only married to one. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://thezog.wordpress.com/who-controls-the-news-part-1/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;racist blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marissa Mayer - Jew in table but not really Jewish. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marissa_Mayer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steve Jobs - Jew in table but not really Jewish. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eric Schmidt - Not a Jew in reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/08/09/top-10-non-jews-positively-influencing-the-jewish-future-2012/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;theAlgemeiner.com&lt;/a&gt;, but appears in the table several times, and in one of the times (as the chairman of CNN) he appears as a Jew, while in all other he isn't.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Arianna Huffington - Not a Jew in reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianna_Huffington&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; but appears in the table several times, and in one of the times (as the co-founder of Huff post) she appears as a Jew, while in all other he isn't.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Correct&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vivian Schiller - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/61145/media-control-remark-prompts-npr-resignations&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tabletmag.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mark Zuckerberg - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Larry Page - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sergey Brin - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jeffrey Katzenberg - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Katzenberg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steven Spielberg - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Spielberg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;David Geffen - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Geffen&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rupert Murdoch - Not a Jew in the table and in reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hutch Parker - Not a Jew in the table and in reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://thezog.wordpress.com/who-controls-hollywood/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;racist blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ronald Meyer - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Meyer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thomas Rothman - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Rothman&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;William Fox - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Fox_(producer)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Joseph Schenck - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_M._Schenck&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;James Schamus - Jew in Table and reality. sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://plogspot101.blogspot.co.il/2010/11/ang-lee-and-james-schmaus-taiwan.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some blog&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/a-jewish-film-for-the-soul/?_php=true&amp;amp;_type=blogs&amp;amp;_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The New York Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carl Laemmle - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Laemmle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ted Turner - Not a Jew in the table and in reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Turner&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Leslie Moonves - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Moonves&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dana Walden - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abbanibi.com/blog/top-10-most-influential-jewish-women/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;abbanibi.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sheryl Sandberg - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheryl_Sandberg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nikesh Arora - Not a Jew in the table and in reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://thezog.wordpress.com/who-controls-google/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;racist blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Robert Iger - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Iger&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sumner Redstone (Rothstein) - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumner_Redstone&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Roger Ailes - Not a Jew in the table and in reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thejewishweek.com/roger_ailes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TheJewishWeek.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brian Lewis - Not a Jew in the table, I couldn't find any confirmation of his religion or ethnicity, but since the table puts his as a non-Jew, I'm applying the &amp;quot;racist blog&amp;quot; rule here and accept this with the disputed claim as the source.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stacey Snider - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/snider-stacey&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jewish Women's Archive&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Warner Brothers - Jews in the Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Warner&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paul Reuter - Jew in Table and reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Reuter&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ralph Waldo Emerson - Not a Jew in the table and in reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Waldo_Emerson&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Henry Longfellow - Not a Jew in the table and in reality. source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uuquincy.org/projects/stamps/9longfellow.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Unitarian Church of Quincy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Undetermined&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kathy Keller-Brown - Jew in table, couldn't verify either way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Patricia Fili-Krushel - Jew in table, couldn't verify either way. She did chair an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/uja-to-honor-bloomberg-ceo-andy-lack_b169528&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;event of the UJA-Federation of New York&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tom Rogers - Jew in table, couldn't verify either way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John Nicol - Jew in table, couldn't verify either way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;alvy ray smith - Jew in table, couldn't verify either way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lew Coleman - Jew in table, couldn't verify ether way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adam Fogelson - Jew in Table, couldn't verify ether way. &lt;a href=&quot;http://names.whitepages.com/Adam/Fogelson&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;His last name is Jewish&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jennifer Salke - Jew in table, couldn't verify ether way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Robert Merrick - Jew in table, couldn't verify ether way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;John Lasseter - Jew in table, couldn't verify ether way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Holly Bario - Jew in table, couldn't verify ether way.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The table also puts NBC Universal as the owner of MSNBC, Time Warner as the owner of HBO and The Woodbridge Company as the owners of Reuters, and puts them as half jewish and half not. It also puts Hearst Corporation as the owner of Cosmopolitan and puts it as non Jew. Corporations don't have religion, race or ethnicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T16:29:47.453" CommentCount="38" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19979" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="19996" CreationDate="2014-03-23T19:54:37.960" Score="8" ViewCount="25441" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that saying something nice in front of water changes the water molecules shape into a nice shape and saying something bad in front of it makes the molecules align in a bad order (ugly one).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not about &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2/does-water-have-a-memory-as-claimed-in-homeopathy&quot;&gt;Does water have a memory as claimed in homeopathy?&lt;/a&gt; but about how molecules are arranged in water and their good/bad effect on humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If water listens to nice music would it become more productive? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18340" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2021-11-14T04:49:50.717" Title="Do water molecules change when you talk to them?" Tags="|physics|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19983" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-24T00:25:34.787" Score="1" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to a theatrical superstition, called the Scottish curse, speaking the name Macbeth inside a theatre will cause disaster. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Scottish_Play&amp;amp;oldid=600390799&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the legend, a curse befell the large, blue diamond when it was plucked (i.e. stolen) from an idol in India - a curse that foretold bad luck and death not only for the owner of the diamond but for all who touched it. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://history1900s.about.com/od/1950s/a/hopediamond.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Curse of the Hope Diamond&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these curses real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18345" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:44:09.930" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:44:09.930" Title="Are these curses real?" Tags="|superstition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10492" CreationDate="2014-03-24T01:21:47.990" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is known as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pygmalion effect&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is the phenomenon whereby the greater the expectation placed upon people, the better they perform&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wikipedia article has more evidence, but here's a quote about the original Rosenthal study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All students in a single California elementary school were given a disguised IQ test at the beginning of the study. These scores were not disclosed to teachers. Teachers were told that some of their students (about 20% of the school chosen at random) could be expected to be &quot;spurters&quot; that year, doing better than expected in comparison to their classmates. The spurters' names were made known to the teachers. At the end of the study all students were again tested with the same IQ-test used at the beginning of the study. All six grades in both experimental and control groups showed a mean gain in IQ from pretest to posttest. However, First and Second Graders showed statistically significant gains favoring the experimental group of &quot;spurters.&quot; This led to the conclusion that teacher expectations, particularly for the youngest children, can influence student achievement&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1094" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T01:21:47.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19986" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-24T06:37:12.780" Score="3" ViewCount="632" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.testedich.de/tests/person.php3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.testedich.de/tests/person.php3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A so-called &quot;behaviour trainer&quot; gave us the above test and the results. I am quite skeptical about it; there were some correlations, but that could well be due to the construction of the answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The test asks you to choose one of nine abstract pictures. After you have chosen one, you'll get an analysis of your personality that is specific to the picture you chose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific psychological research giving hard evidence (strong correlation) that this sort of tests does work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17078" LastEditorUserId="17078" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T21:08:17.697" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T21:10:04.830" Title="Can looking at pictures tell you something about your personality?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19986" CreationDate="2014-03-24T08:28:48.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got an answer from someone else in the meantime. The phenomenon may be explained by the Forer effect: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, all the answers possible will lead you to an &quot;analysis&quot; that just enumerates character traits that are virtually universal among mankind, and the Forer effect states that everyone will identify with his &quot;personal&quot; description.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17078" LastEditorUserId="17078" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T21:10:04.830" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T21:10:04.830" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19989" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-24T09:47:21.420" Score="4" ViewCount="301" Body="&lt;p&gt;The manufacturer of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;M-Disc&lt;/a&gt; DVD &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdisc.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that the data written on these discs will last for 1000 years if the discs are written to and stored correctly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What is worth saving forever? Thanks to M-DISC™, the permanent storage solution, you don't have to decide. This new standard of storage engraves your information into a patented rock-like layer that has been proven to last 1,000 years [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence for this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8926" LastEditorUserId="8926" LastEditDate="2014-03-24T13:24:34.207" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T13:15:16.397" Title="Do M-Discs last for 1000 Years?" Tags="|technology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19983" CreationDate="2014-03-24T11:11:21.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, they are not. They are the product of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;confirmation bias&lt;/a&gt;, magical thinking and often deliberate fabrication (as pointed out in the comments, there can of course be psychological and psychosomatic effects).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia page about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_diamond#The_curse_controversy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hope Diamond&lt;/a&gt; details many examples of deaths incorrectly linked to it, individuals who embellished the story of the curse for personal gain, and most tellingly finishes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the Smithsonian acquired the gemstone, the &quot;curse appears to have gone dormant.&quot; Owning the diamond has brought &quot;nothing but good luck&quot; for the nonprofit national museum, according to a Smithsonian curator, and has helped it build a &quot;world-class gem collection&quot; with rising attendance levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who believe in curses would no doubt come up with an explanation (probably focusing on the &quot;nonprofit&quot; angle) rather than admit that there simply is no curse (a form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_scotsman&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;no true scotsman&lt;/a&gt; fallacy). Note especially that the person who talks about the curse &quot;going dormant&quot; (instead of being bogus) also works for an organization which profits from the additional attention it draws to the stone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14002" LastEditorUserId="14002" LastEditDate="2014-03-24T21:04:18.133" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T21:04:18.133" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19974" CreationDate="2014-03-24T16:05:20.013" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. This Table is very much a distortion a truth.  I will take them point by point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Concept.  The Title 'Who controls your mind' starts from a faulty assumption.  I don't care what is under the at title, the answer will always be 'Me'.  Just because a person or company creates a product, is does not mean that I am forced to consume that product.  And supposing that I actually consume an entertainment/information product that they produce does it mean that they control my mind. No.  The makers of this table lack a fundamental understanding of individual free agency.  Freedom of thought is one of the ultimate freedoms, because it can never be taken from you*. Unfortunately so many give it up so freely.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Sharansky/sharansky-con3.html&quot;&gt;account&lt;/a&gt; from Natan Sharansky, a Jew imprisoned by the Soviets for 'Zionist' activities below for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I remember how I loved to tell to my interrogators anti-Soviet jokes, because there were many anti-Soviet jokes, which, of course, were all underground, and telling them openly. And they're so funny that you are laughing. They would almost explode from desire to laugh, but they could not, they had to be angry. They had to show one another how loyal they were. And you're laughing, and so you say, &quot;You see, you are saying to me that you are free and I am a prisoner. You can't even afford to laugh when you want to laugh! So you're the real prisoner.&quot; And all the time, it was giving you the opportunity to enjoy the absurdity of this KGB world, and of course it helped a lot to survive in that world. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Market Share - A select group of companies are shown across various markets, but the complete market is not shown.  For example Google is shown to apparently represent search engines, but absent is Microsoft (Bing), Yahoo, or any other competitors.  Google Search Engine Market Share is approximately &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4&amp;amp;qpcustomd=0&quot;&gt;71%&lt;/a&gt;.  This seems to be the sector that most supports the question, if we look at cable news, of course, it is the opposite, with about &lt;a href=&quot;http://stateofthemedia.org/2012/cable-cnn-ends-its-ratings-slide-fox-falls-again/&quot;&gt;48%&lt;/a&gt; of the market being represented by Companies with officers that are Jewish or of Jewish descent.  These two are the easiest to estimate from the chart, since it is incomplete and the market breakdown is not really specified.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Assuming Jews or Individuals with Jewish Heritage/Culture were officers in News and Entertainment companies, does that mean they control the American media?  The answer is also no.  Similar in part 1, the question derives from a misunderstanding of freedom and capitalism.  Under this system, neither the producer or the consumer completely controls the market, if the producer tries to produce something that does not meet the demands of the consumers, they are quickly replaced by one that does.  Perhaps one could argue that Radio or Cable television are hardly free markets due to FCC regulations, but this list also contains movie, internet, newspaper and magazine companies, which hold no such regulations. Holding a position of power in a company does not allow you to change the market demands, just to influence business decisions in the company.  These decisions may have an impact on market share, but as long as the market is free, that impact on market share is the result of meeting or not meeting the customers demands.  A famous example of this is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beerconnoisseur.com/the-fall-of-schlitz&quot;&gt;Decline of Schlitz beer&lt;/a&gt; from a market leader in the 50s and 60s to a cautionary tale in the late 70s as a result of cutting quality to increase profitability.  This Excerpt from page 89 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=C0KUJ0F3XB4C&amp;amp;pg=PA89&amp;amp;lpg=PA89&amp;amp;dq=market%20share%20beer%20schlitz&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=2d25x5lfDb&amp;amp;sig=LV920YNKe7I1v6-_xxsNpUpp-gs&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=16YxU47LKKeA2gWug4DQCQ&amp;amp;ved=0CHcQ6AEwDA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=market%20share%20beer%20schlitz&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;The U.S. Brewing Industry Data&lt;/a&gt; exemplifies how efficiently the market can react to changes in a product&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Company's strategy of cutting brewing costs at the expense of quality and product image also appears in the handling of it's Primo brand in Hawaii.  In the early 1970's Schlitz discontinued brewing Primo in Hawaii and began brewing wort for Primo in Los Angeles, the wort was then dehydrated, fermented, aged, and packaged.  Islanders claimed that Primo's taste had been altered, and its market share in the state of Hawaii plunged from 70 percent to 20 percent between 1971 and 1975.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;F.A. Hayek, a Nobel Economist who studied self Organization in Economic Systems, had an observation in his book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.libertarianismo.org/livros/fahtfc.pdf&quot;&gt;The Fatal Conceit&lt;/a&gt; that I think explains why Nazis have a tenancy to find Jewish Conspiracies like these.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The result is that such persons (intellectuals hostile to market self organization) are tempted to interpret more complex structures animistically as the result of design, and to suspect some secret and dishonest manipulation - some conspiracy, as of a dominant &lt;code&gt;class' – behind&lt;/code&gt; designs' whose designers are nowhere to be found. This in turn helps to reinforce their initial reluctance to relinquish control of their own products in a market order. For intellectuals generally, the feeling of being mere tools of concealed, even if impersonal, market forces appears almost as a personal humiliation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*This argument does not require belief in the existence of Free Agency (I do, but apparently discussions of free agency are outside the scope of the skeptics SE).  Consider this.  Even if some external force is controlling Natan Sharansky thoughts (as suggested by Christian, Daniel Dannett, and perhaps many others), the fact that he believes he is in control of his thoughts allows him considerable freedom from the attempts of the Soviets at controlling his thoughts by wielding their physical power and controlling the consequences of his choices to the extent they are able.  This is evidenced by the provided reference.  I don't think that I will ever be able to prove the existence of free agency to someone that does not believe it, and is unwilling to experiment with it, but there are plenty of cases, such as this one, that demonstrate that at a minimum a belief in free agency and exercise of such agency can protect oneself from external attempts at control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17748" LastEditorUserId="17748" LastEditDate="2014-03-27T15:50:48.967" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T15:50:48.967" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19994" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-24T17:10:22.657" Score="26" ViewCount="2691" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some friends of mine believe that different ways of killing an animal may reduce the quality of the meat; in particular, a violent death produces a tougher meat, maybe caused by the adrenaline released in the tissues of the animal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's a urban legend. Does animals killing method affect the meat quality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18367" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T11:34:37.837" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T11:34:37.837" Title="Does the means of slaughter affect meat quality?" Tags="|nutrition|meat|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19979" CreationDate="2014-03-24T19:02:23.340" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Words are just that – words. They have no power whatsoever and the laws of physics do not distinguish between &quot;good&quot; words and &quot;bad&quot; words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You speak English, which happens to be one of many thousands of languages that have developed over the centuries. There is no general rule that allows you to categorise &quot;good&quot; words and &quot;bad&quot; words. In some languages the same words mean the complete opposite - e.g. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C4%8Derstv%C3%BD&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;čerstvý&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; in Czech means &quot;fresh&quot;, while &lt;em&gt;czerstwy&lt;/em&gt; in Polish (pronounced the same) means &quot;old&quot;, &quot;stale&quot; and &quot;bad&quot;. There are many cases where words that sound exactly the same have a completely different meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly &quot;nice music&quot; is a relative term, the laws of physics cannot distinguish between music that someone finds nice and not nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Music and spoken words are sound waves that can make the water &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecule&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;molecules&lt;/a&gt; vibrate. However this will not change the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_geometry&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;shape&quot;&lt;/a&gt; of the molecule, a molecule that is pretty simple (H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O). Moreover a molecule doesn't really have a &quot;shape&quot; per say, it is just a collection of particles that keep quite close to each other and follow a certain &quot;structure&quot;. A quote from Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Molecules have fixed equilibrium geometries—bond lengths and angles— about which they continuously oscillate through vibrational and rotational motions. A pure substance is composed of molecules with the same average geometrical structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;isomers&lt;/a&gt; of the same molecule have a different structure, and they become an isomer through a process called &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomerization&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;isomerization&lt;/a&gt;, however this cannot be practically caused by sound waves&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;, especially by those caused by voice or music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally it is impossible for water to &quot;align in the wrong order&quot;. A single molecule of water is two hydrogen atoms &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covalent_bond&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;covalently bonded&lt;/a&gt; to a single oxygen atom. You cannot &quot;reorder&quot; those atoms. When an atom is covalently bonded with another one, it means that it is sharing an electron pair with another atom. Since a hydrogen atom has only one electron, it cannot be bonded with two atoms, only one - this is why reordering is impossible, you can't have &lt;code&gt;H-H-O&lt;/code&gt; instead of &lt;code&gt;H-O-H&lt;/code&gt; - the latter is the only possible &quot;order&quot;. It is also impossible for a water molecule to become ugly. Here is a water molecule:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/micPs.png&quot; alt=&quot;Structure of water shown as a simplified diagram&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignoring the fact that we've already established that it is impossible to change its structure, I can't really understand how a structure so simple can become &quot;ugly&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might be related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16781/does-masaru-emotos-experiment-show-human-consciousness-affects-the-aesthetics-o?rq=1&quot;&gt;Masaru Emoto's claims&lt;/a&gt; that water can react to intentions, which can be seen by freezing water and looking at the frozen crystals - it was also based around the idea of talking to water, but focusing more on human consciousness and emotions rather than just the sound. He would even go as far as suggesting that exposing water to certain pictures would have an effect on it. However &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_22_4_radin.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an experiment&lt;/a&gt; has proven these claims to not be true. Emoto also refused James Randi's US$1,000,000 challenge to reproduce his own experiment with frozen water. His claims are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1144934/masaru_emotos_wonderful_world_of_water/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;widely considered&lt;/a&gt; to be pseudo-science and to violate basic laws of physics. Moreover the experiment itself and methods used have been criticized and described as not being able to verify his own claims. Physician Harriet A. Hall wrote that &lt;em&gt;&quot;This watery fantasy is all very entertaining and imaginative, full of New Age feel-good platitudes, holistic oneness, consciousness raising, and warm fuzzies; but it's hard to see how anyone could mistake it for science.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;* Some isomerization happens when molecules get heated up in a presence of a catalyst. It is therefore &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physicscentral.com/explore/poster-coffee.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;theoretically possible&lt;/a&gt; to use sound waves to heat up a substance, since sound is also energy. An average yell lasting a single second would warm a glass of water 0.00000095 degrees Celsius. It is therefore theoretically possible to heat up a substance using &lt;strong&gt;very long&lt;/strong&gt; shouting (we're talking months of constant, non-stopping yelling) in order to produce an isomer of a molecule, however this does not apply to water molecules and is generally a crazy idea.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18368" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T15:10:44.483" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19998" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20014" CreationDate="2014-03-24T19:14:39.180" Score="30" ViewCount="8503" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://kitchenrap.blogspot.de/2011/10/black-pepperworth-its-weight-in-gold.html&quot;&gt;frequent claim&lt;/a&gt; that common black pepper was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thespicehouse.com/info/lore/&quot;&gt;worth its weight in gold&lt;/a&gt; in early modern times. Just yesterday I heard it again in a documentary about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company&quot;&gt;Dutch East India Company's&lt;/a&gt; spice trade in the 17th century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no doubt that the spice trade back then was ridiculously profitable, but is the specific claim about the value of pepper true or exaggerated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically: I'd consider the claim true only if there is evidence that pepper-gold parity existed in a reasonably liquid market, not in isolated cases, though of course the latter would still be of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14002" LastActivityDate="2023-01-02T22:13:38.880" Title="Was pepper once worth its weight in gold?" Tags="|history|economics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="19999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19998" CreationDate="2014-03-24T19:54:44.917" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was a question on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcasts/episode-452&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SGU's Science or Fiction segment March 8, 2014 (Episode 452)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Black pepper has been used as currency throughout ancient and medieval times, often valued equal to or greater than gold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At 1:11:24 of the podcast:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You all assumed &amp;quot;by weight&amp;quot;, and it is by weight. [...] Pepper was also a very good store of value. That's why it was used as currency because... as long as you kept them dry and out of the sunlight they would last for a really long time. They were acceptable in many times as payment for rent or a dowry. On two separate occasions, when Rome was sacked, part of the bribe they had to pay was a ton of pepper... a literal ton of pepper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="14002" LastEditDate="2023-01-02T22:13:38.880" LastActivityDate="2023-01-02T22:13:38.880" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9663" CreationDate="2014-03-24T20:24:08.320" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is yes.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14#Origin_and_radioactive_decay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14#Origin_and_radioactive_decay&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other factors that can influence natural C14 production&#xA; - Strength of Earth's magnetic field.  Higher field strength results is lower C14 production&#xA; - Cosmic radiation rate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Common mistake: Assume Cosmic radiation rate and earth's magnetic field strength are near constants.  Nothing is further from the truth. C-14 dating has been historical problematic due to errors in calibration curves.  Nuclear blasts are just one source of several factors that can influence C-14 concentrations and introduce error in dating calculations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Biggest concern today, anyone who questions dating techniques is assumed to have an anti-science agenda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(from the Wikipedia article. Facts match my notes from Geophysics taken as an undergraduate.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carbon-14 is produced in the upper layers of the troposphere and the stratosphere by thermal neutrons absorbed by nitrogen atoms. When cosmic rays enter the atmosphere, they undergo various transformations, including the production of neutrons. The resulting neutrons (1n) participate in the following reaction:&#xA;1n + 14N → 14C + 1p&#xA;The highest rate of carbon-14 production takes place at altitudes of 9 to 15 km (30,000 to 50,000 ft) and at high geomagnetic latitudes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other carbon-14 sources[edit]&#xA;Carbon-14 can also be produced by other neutron reactions, including in particular 13C(n,gamma)14C and 17O(n,alpha)14C with thermal neutrons, and 15N(n,d)14C and 16O(n,3He)14C with fast neutrons.[14] The most notable routes for 14C production by thermal neutron irradiation of targets (e.g., in a nuclear reactor) are summarized in the table.&#xA;Carbon-14 may also be radiogenic (cluster decay of 223Ra, 224Ra, 226Ra). However, this origin is extremely rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Formation during nuclear tests&#xA;The above-ground nuclear tests that occurred in several countries between 1955 and 1980 (see nuclear test list) dramatically increased the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere and subsequently in the biosphere; after the tests ended, the atmospheric concentration of the isotope began to decrease.&#xA;One side-effect of the change in atmospheric carbon-14 is that this has enabled some options (e.g. bomb-pulse dating[19]) for determining the birth year of an individual, in particular, the amount of carbon-14 in tooth enamel,[20][21] or the carbon-14 concentration in the lens of the eye.[22]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18331" LastActivityDate="2014-03-24T20:24:08.320" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20001" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-24T12:50:32.440" Score="23" ViewCount="1463" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yesterday I got a request to install a cellphone tower on my building. The company is going to pay me fair amount but I heard that cell tower radiations cause some serious health issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they safe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related Questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/569/do-mobile-phones-have-anything-to-do-with-brain-cancer&quot;&gt;Do mobile phones have anything to do with brain cancer?&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;[Answers focus on mobile phone use]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6368/mobile-towers-pose-serious-hazards&quot;&gt;Mobile towers pose serious hazards?&lt;/a&gt; [Marked as duplicate of above, but asks about towers, not phones]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4838/is-this-new-study-on-cell-phone-cancer-connection-legitimate&quot;&gt;Is this new study on cell phone / cancer connection legitimate?&lt;/a&gt;  [Answers focus on mobile phone use]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18417" OwnerDisplayName="user2551549" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T05:52:38.657" Title="Do cellphone towers cause health issues?" Tags="|cancer|electromagnetism|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20003" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20040" CreationDate="2014-03-25T00:49:29.397" Score="9" ViewCount="4419" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend, known as a liar, came to me two days ago and told stories about red mercury, something I never heard about. Could do magic, the pharaohs used it. 1 kg worth 30 million dollars, used in weapons something like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I never believe him, he's not really a friend. Out of curiosity I started Googling about the subject, some say it's real, some say it's not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/rtiyKXnJPnM&quot;&gt;This documentary in Arabic&lt;/a&gt; got my attention, it's made by Al Jazeera, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJ6hoTMQVOM&quot;&gt;this is part 2&lt;/a&gt;, it claims that the substance existed and was used by the Russians, and  now the Mossad are in south Africa for that thing.  You can watch minute 7:30, they talk to each other in English. In that documentary, they keep calling it, Red mercury 20, 20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone called Alan Kidger was murdered because he had something to do with red mercury, the documentary says. They spoke to someone in English at minute 19 in part one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watch minute 32:50  part 1, a Russian nuclear chemist talking about it, I think it's red mercury RM 20 20 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The British police arrested someone for &lt;a href=&quot;http://chemistry.about.com/cs/chemicalweapons/f/blredmercury.htm&quot;&gt;reading this article&lt;/a&gt; and trying to produce the mercury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The USA said it doesn't exist, but they have a team in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) who's job is to find out more about the subject, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hounam&quot;&gt;Peter Hounam&lt;/a&gt; in the documentary. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_T._Cohen&quot;&gt;Samuel T. Cohen&lt;/a&gt; talks about it in minute 28 of part 2 in English. It seems to be used to create neutron bombs and small nuclear bombs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/4943122.stm&quot;&gt;Terror accused in 'mercury sting'&lt;/a&gt;, would the people be arrested if there's nothing true about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what do we know about about Red mercury? And if it existed, then what's its chemical formula? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13947" LastEditorUserId="13947" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T12:39:12.623" LastActivityDate="2016-07-14T21:32:28.003" Title="What do we know about red mercury?" Tags="|chemistry|war|weapons|nuclear-weapons|mercury|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="18" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-03-25T12:39:12.623" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20006" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20071" CreationDate="2014-03-25T03:47:57.670" Score="2" ViewCount="1254" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am aware that &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/magazine/14vision-t.html?pagewanted=all&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;behavioural optometry&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, the extension of optometry to cover a wide array of problems, is definitely a pseudoscience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, is optometry itself entirely a pseudoscience? &lt;strike&gt;From what I have gathered on the web, ophthalmologists (aka real scientists) distance themselves from it, but I have not seen outright condemnation.&lt;/strike&gt; &lt;em&gt;(After review and reconsideration, I see now that the &quot;distancing&quot; I spoke of was more to do with distancing from some claims on curing myopia, which is espoused by some optometrists, but not necessarily representative of optometry.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the writing by optometrists has warning signs of being a pseudoscience. For example, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myopia.org/ebook/21chapter16.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this ebook about how to cure myopia&lt;/a&gt;, which I was referred to by multiple (3) optometrists via the site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justanswer.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;justanswer.com&lt;/a&gt;, there are a lot of the standard conspiracy theory style denials of mainstream science. Such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That the real cause of myopia is being kept from the public is nothing&#xA;  short of a tragedy. The numerous organizations that pretend to tell&#xA;  the public about eye care are supported financially by eye doctors and&#xA;  the optical industry. They spend millions of dollars urging us to have&#xA;  our eyes examined, knowing that this will lead to more eye business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is definitely a lot about the way optometry has so far been presented to me that makes me personally very sceptical, but perhaps I'm being overly dismissive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any merit in optometry, or is it an outright pseudoscience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7180" LastEditorUserId="7180" LastEditDate="2014-03-31T04:56:53.283" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T04:56:53.283" Title="Is optometry a pseudoscience?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19994" CreationDate="2014-03-25T05:29:52.720" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is truth. This is well known in rural enviorements, pigs is a clear example of this. The reason are stated in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/x6909e/x6909e04.htm&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; study by the &lt;strong&gt;Food and Agriculture Organization of the United nations&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The energy required for muscle activity in the live animal is obtained&#xA;  from sugars (glycogen) in the muscle. In the healthy and well-rested&#xA;  animal, the glycogen content of the muscle is high. After the animal&#xA;  has been slaughtered, the glycogen in the muscle is converted into&#xA;  lactic acid, and the muscle and carcass becomes firm (rigor mortis).&#xA;  This lactic acid is necessary to produce meat, which is tasteful and&#xA;  tender, of good keeping quality and good colour. If the animal is&#xA;  stressed before and during slaughter, the glycogen is used up, and the&#xA;  lactic acid level that develops in the meat after slaughter is&#xA;  reduced. This will have serious adverse effects on meat quality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spoilage of meat&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is necessary for animals to be stress and injury free during&#xA;  operations prior to slaughter, so as not to unnecessarily deplete&#xA;  muscle glycogen reserves. It is also important for animals to be well&#xA;  rested during the 24-hour period before slaughter. This is in order to&#xA;  allow for muscle glycogen to be replaced by the body as much as&#xA;  possible (the exception being pigs, which should travel and be&#xA;  slaughtered as stress free as possible but not rested for a prolonged&#xA;  period prior to slaughter). It is important that the glycogen levels&#xA;  in the muscles of the slaughtered carcass are as high as possible, to&#xA;  develop the maximum level of lactic acid in the meat. This acid gives&#xA;  meat an ideal pH level, measured after 24 hours after slaughter, of&#xA;  6.2 or lower. The 24h (or ultimate) pH higher than 6.2 indicates that the animal was stressed, injured or diseased prior to slaughter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This condition is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSE_meat&quot;&gt;PSE&lt;/a&gt; (Pale, soft, exudative meat) which Wikipedia describes and explains it might be caused by stress prior to slaughter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PSE meat, describes a carcass quality condition known to occur in both&#xA;  pork and poultry. It is characterized by an abnormal color,&#xA;  consistency, and water holding capacity, making the meat dry and&#xA;  unattractive to consumers. The condition is believed to be caused by&#xA;  abnormal muscle metabolism following slaughter, due to an altered rate&#xA;  of glycolysis and a low pH within the muscle fibers. Genetic&#xA;  predispositions and stress levels prior to slaughter are known to&#xA;  affect the incidence of PSE meat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also it looks like there other  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sites.ext.vt.edu/newsletter-archive/livestock/aps-01_12/aps-0442.html&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt; about this which conclude :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results of recent scientific studies on pork quality should have a&#xA;  great impact on the entire swine industry from the producer to the&#xA;  packer to the consumer. The stress placed on pigs can be lessened with&#xA;  the proper management practices, which increases meat quality and&#xA;  benefits everyone&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8930" LastEditorUserId="8930" LastEditDate="2014-03-25T14:53:06.867" LastActivityDate="2014-03-25T14:53:06.867" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19915" CreationDate="2014-03-25T10:37:30.663" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Germany is an interesting case to study this, as they have stretches of highway with and without speed limits. In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://brandenburg.de/cms/media.php/lbm1.a.2239.de/studie_tempolimit.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; done in the state of Brandenburg, the effect of putting a speed limit on stretches of highway has been studied by comparing the accident statistics before and after the new limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On two stretches the speed limit was changed from no limit to 130 km/h (~80 MPH) and the effects were quite remarkable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Die Zahl der Unfälle (P,SS) halbierte sich von 654 U/3 Jahre auf 337 U/3 Jahre nach Einführung der Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung (-48 %). Die Zahl der Verunglückten sank&#xA;deutlich von 838 auf 362 Verunglückte in 3 Jahren (-57 %).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This says that the number of accidents in the years after the new limit decreased by 48% whereas the number of people involved in accidents decreased by 57%. (This is illustrated in the report on figure 3.1 very clearly)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this has to be put into relation to the general decrease of accidents on all highways, which they did by looking at a couple of reference stretches where there was no speed limit over the whole time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Der Rückgang zum Zeitraum 2000-2002&#xA;entsprach 50 %. Die Kontrollgruppen zeigen im Durchschnitt einen Rückgang um 23,5 % für die zeitliche Entwicklung auf, so dass die Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung zu einer&#xA;Verminderung um 26,5 % beigetragen hat. Der Unterschied der UKRa zwischen den&#xA;begrenzten und unbegrenzten Strecken lag 2006 ebenfalls bei 26,5 %.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that the decrease (this time of the cost per distance driven linked to the accident) was 50% on the stretches with the new speed limit while it was 23.5% on the reference samples and that thus 26.5% can be linked to the new speed limit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall this leads to the conclusion that in this case, a speed limit did significantly decrease the number of accidents. However I admit that this is limited to the German context, especially since it only looks at those two stretches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16700" LastEditorUserId="16700" LastEditDate="2021-06-15T06:00:07.710" LastActivityDate="2021-06-15T06:00:07.710" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19998" CreationDate="2014-03-25T16:36:27.197" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlikely. Pepper was the cheapest spice. This academic website &lt;a href=&quot;http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UC Davis&lt;/a&gt; suggests four shillings for a pound of pepper. This would be when - by definition - a pound of silver was worth one pound (= 20 shillings), and historically gold was 20-30 times as valuable as silver, so 100-150 times as valuable as pepper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18396" LastEditorUserId="18396" LastEditDate="2014-05-07T16:50:42.753" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T16:50:42.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20015" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-25T21:15:35.393" Score="8" ViewCount="831" Body="&lt;p&gt;I often hear the claim that running promotes muscle loss. To what extent is this true? If a person is a triathlete don't they need both cardio and muscle? Does it matter what distance is run and the speed? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I first red such a claim on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.t-nation.com/training/jogging-delusion&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, though it clearly is not scientific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And while the idea of masculinity varies somewhat from era to era and&#xA;  from one region of the world to another, masculinity is usually&#xA;  associated with superior strength, muscularity, speed, and power. The&#xA;  human body, as it turns out, isn't a very good multi-tasker when it&#xA;  comes to &quot;S.A.I.D.&quot; (specific adaptation to imposed demand). It&#xA;  prefers to be either big and strong, or small and weak, (albeit with&#xA;  good endurance). True, some guys can manage to have it both ways, but&#xA;  if you find it challenging to gain muscle or strength, you're not one&#xA;  of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/henkin6ffff.htm&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; seems to second it but also isn't scientific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="14333" LastEditDate="2015-08-04T04:43:18.257" LastActivityDate="2015-08-04T22:01:01.847" Title="Does running, short or long distance, cause muscle loss?" Tags="|physiology|sport|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20021" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20307" CreationDate="2014-03-26T10:32:33.950" Score="25" ViewCount="13925" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yoga International provided an acquittance with a &lt;em&gt;cleansing technique&lt;/em&gt; dubbed &lt;em&gt;upper wash&lt;/em&gt; where the healthy subject is to voluntarily vomit in order to clean their body from toxins: &lt;a href=&quot;http://yogainternational.com/article/view/detoxing-your-digestive-tract-and-clearing-congestion&quot;&gt;http://yogainternational.com/article/view/detoxing-your-digestive-tract-and-clearing-congestion&lt;/a&gt; (cf. paragraphs called &lt;em&gt;Can Vomiting Be Pleasant?&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;How to Do the Upper Wash&lt;/em&gt;, about half way down the page).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vomit#Miscellanea&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page on &lt;em&gt;Vomiting&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, self-induced vomiting is performed by people with eating disorders, to engage in binge drinking, or in case of nausea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does regular voluntary vomiting provide any health benefits to an otherwise healthy person, as described in the tutorial?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like a complete absurdity to me, but as of now 608 people liked the link on Facebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2086" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:13:02.410" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:13:02.410" Title="Does regular self-induced vomiting provide any health benefit?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|alternative-medicine|yoga|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20001" CreationDate="2014-03-26T12:53:23.060" Score="15" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Link between Cell Towers and Cancer Elusive&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick search on cell phone towers and cancer provides many results, some state cell phone towers are dangerous because it can cause cancer, while some others state that tests regarding cell phone towers and cell phone usage are inconclusive with regards to cancer, though there are chances of increased risks in some cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many scientific studies have investigated possible health symptoms of&#xA;  mobile phone radiation. These studies are occasionally reviewed by&#xA;  some scientific committees to assess overall risks. A 2007 assessment&#xA;  published by the European Commission Scientific Committee on Emerging&#xA;  and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) concludes that the three&#xA;  lines of evidence, viz. animal, in vitro, and epidemiological studies,&#xA;  indicate that &quot;exposure to RF fields is unlikely to lead to an&#xA;  increase in cancer in humans&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Studies in people&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very few human studies have focused specifically on cellular phone towers and cancer risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In one large study, British researchers compared a group of more than 1,000 families of young children with cancer against a similar group of families of children without cancer. They found no link between a mother’s exposure to the towers during pregnancy (based on the distance from the home to the nearest tower and on the amount of energy given off by nearby towers) and the risk of early childhood cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In another study, researchers compared a group of more than 2,600 children with cancer to a group of similar children without cancer. They found that those who lived in a town that could have exposed them to higher than average RF radiation from cellular phone towers in the previous 5 years had a slightly higher risk of cancer, although not of any certain type of cancer (like leukemia or brain tumors). This study estimated the children’s possible exposure based on the number of towers in their town and how strong the signals were from the towers. It did not look at actual exposure of any individual child based on how far their home or school was from a tower.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One study looked for signs of DNA and cell damage in blood cells as a possible indicator of cancer-causing potential. They found that the damage was no worse in people who lived near a cell phone tower as compared with those didn’t.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of exposure from living near a cell phone tower is typically many times lower than the exposure from using a cell phone. About 30 studies have looked at possible links between cell phone use and tumors in people. Most studies to date have not found a link between cell phone use and the development of tumors, although these studies have had some important limitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Studies done in the lab&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laboratory studies have looked at whether the types of RF waves used in cell phone communication can cause DNA damage. Most of these studies have supported the idea that the RF waves given off by cell phones and towers don't have enough energy to damage DNA directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some scientists have reported that the RF waves may produce other effects in human cells (in lab dishes) that might possibly help tumors grow. However, these studies have not been verified, and these effects weren’t seen in a study that looked at the blood cells from people living near a cellular phone tower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several studies in rats and mice have looked at whether RF energy might promote the development of tumors caused by other known carcinogens (cancer-causing agents). These studies did not find evidence of tumor promotion. Research in this area continues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/athome/cellular-phone-towers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cancer.org&lt;/a&gt; - Cell Phone Towers&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fipmi.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Ionizing Radiation&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Image Source &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.safespaceprotection.com/electrostress-from-cell-towers.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Safe Space&lt;/a&gt;: Ionising and Non-Ionising Radiation&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though it is a popular belief that excessive cell phone usage and high proximity of cell towers cause cancer, but there isn't substantial scientific evidence to support this claim. This doesn't mean there aren't risks that come with cell tower proximity; there could be risks we don't know of yet. The research done isn't enough to give a definitive answer. In any case, take precautions, because there might be a link and we just don't know of it yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PS&lt;/strong&gt;: Watch &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veritasium&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Veritasium's&lt;/a&gt; video &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU5XkhUGzBs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Do Cell Phones Cause Brain Tumors?&lt;/a&gt; for a more info.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Source of Quotations: Wikipedia - &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_radiation_and_health&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mobile Phone Radiation &amp;amp; Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18414" LastEditorUserId="18414" LastEditDate="2015-02-08T18:53:22.453" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T18:53:22.453" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20023" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-26T18:02:45.903" Score="1" ViewCount="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does anti glare really works? Got many suggestions from fellow friends who practice medicine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dont use them if you are not experiencing any strain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Use them it will be helpful to reduce strain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It will affect the eye moment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dont use them just rest your eyes for a while. See the sky for a minute( I know this is true)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found some page in internet which are contradictory to one another&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source : &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5980509/do-computer-glasses-really-work&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LifeHacker&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First: If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you aren't experiencing any eye problems, you can just stop here.&#xA;  Specially-coated and/or computer eyeglasses won't do anything for you&#xA;  (other than geekify your look). In fact, they could be a hindrance.&#xA;  Dr. Robert Noecker, an ophthalmologist and Director of Glaucoma for&#xA;  Opthalmic Consultants of Connecticut, notes that:P&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Computer eyewear does not necessarily prevent eye strain in an already&#xA;  optimized environment. Also, the range that the eyes can sweep from&#xA;  one side to the other is maximized without any eyewear. The frame&#xA;  edges limit this range of motion and may actually hinder people more&#xA;  who are not getting much benefit from wearing the glasses. Also&#xA;  eyeglasses get smudges which can interfere with vision as well&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wisegeek.org/do-i-need-anti-glare-glasses.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wisegeek&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eye strain is characterized by blurred vision, burning eyes, headache,&#xA;  and tired eyes. If you are experiencing any of these symptoms while&#xA;  using the computer, anti-glare glasses may be a wise buy for you. Even&#xA;  if you are not a regular computer user, your eyes may benefit from&#xA;  anti-glare glasses. In addition to being affected by the glare from&#xA;  your computer screen, your eyes can be come strained from being in a&#xA;  room with poor lighting. Anti-glare glasses can also be beneficial for&#xA;  this type of situation, as they help reduce the strain on your eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anti-glare glasses help reduce the amount of strain your eyes feel by&#xA;  reducing the convergence of your eyes and by helping to reposition&#xA;  your eyes to a more comfortable position. This reduces the strain&#xA;  placed on the muscles in your eyes, as well as the tension your eyes&#xA;  experience. In addition, anti-glare glasses help reduce the amount of&#xA;  ultraviolet radiation that reaches your eyes, and they do not magnify&#xA;  the light like traditional eyeglasses do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sources:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2009/10/leveling-up-your-eyesight-with-gaming-glasses-ars-explores/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;arstechnica&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbetternow.com/are-anti-reflective-anti-glare-lenses-worth-the-cost-t37.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cbetternow&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17843" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-03-27T03:31:54.643" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T03:32:11.480" Title="Is anti-glare 'computer' glasses effective at relieving eye-strain?" Tags="|medical-science|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-03-27T03:32:19.567" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22842" CreationDate="2014-03-26T19:26:20.657" Score="15" ViewCount="2064" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard about &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakuntala_Devi&quot;&gt;Shakuntala Devi&lt;/a&gt; for the first time today, an Indian Savant who allegedly performed such feats as finding the 23rd root of a 201 digit number in 50 seconds, unaided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be some documentation of these feats, but there also exists plenty of documentation for the tricks of psychics and others (i.e. plenty of people, and maybe even experts, will witness the power in action and be unable to detect the trick). Given that her father was a travelling magician, and she was a practising astrologer, I'm more inclined to believe that there's a trick at work than that this woman could factor 200 digit numbers in her head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could Shakuntala Devi actually perform these feats? If so, are there other living people who can do this? If not, what sort of tricks were (or might have been) used to make people think she could?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some additional information for comparison: A little more poking around turns up the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Calculation_World_Cup&quot;&gt;Mental_Calculation_World_Cup&lt;/a&gt;, a modern, international event. Multiplication events consist of finding the product of two 8-digit numbers, which takes about 30 seconds per problem for the winners. Shakuntala Devi is claimed to have found the product of two 13-digit numbers in the same time period, which seems to be a super-linearly harder task. Similarly, the competition for root finding is to find the square root of a 6-digit number, a task which takes the world record holder about 42 seconds. Shakuntala Devi is claimed to have found a 23rd root of a random 201-digit number in 50 seconds, again, a task that seems much harder.          &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:55:09.893" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T13:22:36.430" Title="Was Shakuntala Devi able to perform complex computations far faster than the best living human calculators?" Tags="|psychology|mathematics|stage-magic|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20025" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20026" CreationDate="2014-03-26T21:00:56.617" Score="38" ViewCount="3351" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been recently downloading PuTTY from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html&quot;&gt;official page&lt;/a&gt; and I have noticed a message stating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;LEGAL WARNING: Use of PuTTY, PSCP, PSFTP and Plink is illegal in countries where encryption is outlawed. &lt;strong&gt;I believe it is legal to use PuTTY, PSCP, PSFTP and Plink in England and Wales&lt;/strong&gt; and in many other countries, but I am not a lawyer and so if in doubt you should seek legal advice before downloading it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same website then points at a website called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cryptolaw.org/cls2.htm#uk&quot;&gt;cryptolaw.org&lt;/a&gt; which explains a bit more, in particular the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/53&quot;&gt;Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The explanation makes sense, however some people go even further by making claims like the following: &lt;a href=&quot;http://falkvinge.net/2012/07/12/in-the-uk-you-will-go-to-jail-not-just-for-encryption-but-for-astronomical-noise-too/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;In the UK you will go to jail not just for encryption but for astronomical noise too&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. The author of this claim, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickard_Falkvinge&quot;&gt;Rick Falkvinge&lt;/a&gt; (founder of the Swedish Pirate Party), explains further that &quot;you’re going to be sent to jail for an inability to unlock something that the police think is encrypted&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(...) So imagine your reaction when the police confiscate your entire collection of vacation photos, claim that your vacation photos contain hidden encrypted messages (which they don’t), and sends you off to jail for five years for being unable to supply the decryption key?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess my full question would be &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Can the police put you in jail by simply stating that they think your data contains encrypted data and you refuse to disclose it?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18368" LastEditorUserId="18368" LastEditDate="2014-03-26T23:47:24.510" LastActivityDate="2019-05-07T14:19:24.320" Title="Is refusing to decrypt data for the police illegal in England and Wales?" Tags="|law|united-kingdom|law-enforcement|cryptography|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20025" CreationDate="2014-03-26T21:15:32.530" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question links to an article that quotes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/53&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the relevant law&lt;/a&gt;. The law makes it pretty clear that, to answer the question in the title: &lt;strong&gt;yes you can be put in jail for refusing to provide a decryption key for encrypted data&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a significant reversal of the presumption of guilt. To quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the purposes of this section a person shall be taken to have shown that he was not in possession of a key to protected information at a particular time if— (a)sufficient evidence of that fact is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it; and (b)the contrary is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it's not a defence to simply say &quot;I don't have the key&quot;. You are presumed to have the key unless you can provide some evidence (not necessarily proof) that you don't have it. (With apologies to @Konrad Rudolph, who originally held this view and I disagreed with him)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that single exception, nothing else in the law appears to override the basic legal principle that you have to be shown to be guilty in a court of law. The police have to show that there is encrypted data in order to show that you failed to provide a key to it. If you have (unencrypted) astronomical data on your laptop, then the burden of proof would still be on the police to show that it was encrypted data. And anyway, the case would still be tried in a court of law. The police can no more send you to jail because they &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; you have encrypted data than because they &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; you committed a murder. A court &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; send you to jail if it can be &lt;em&gt;proved&lt;/em&gt; that you have encrypted data, you refuse to disclose the key, and you can't show that you don't have the key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the question at the end: &lt;strong&gt;No you cannot be put in jail just because the police &lt;em&gt;think&lt;/em&gt; you have encrypted data.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T16:55:33.633" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T16:55:33.633" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20029" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-27T00:31:25.317" Score="3" ViewCount="916" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worthytoshare.com/pretty-girl-seeking-rich-husband-reply-got-banker-priceless&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this publication&lt;/a&gt; in many editions posted on FB and other sources.  While the reply to her is brilliant and priceless, I have a hard time believing that the CEO of such major visibility as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Dimon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Jamie Dimon&lt;/a&gt; would put his public persona on the line for something like that.  Can anybody confirm or submit any supporting material pointing to either confirm or debunk this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10676" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T11:07:11.700" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T11:07:11.700" Title="Did JPMC CEO author the circulated letter to 25 y.o. golddigger?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20029" CreationDate="2014-03-27T04:59:23.930" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/love/dating/golddigger.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes.com&lt;/a&gt; investigated and reported that the original letter was posted to Craigslist in 2007, apparently genuinely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The response, however, was anonymous. It has since been falsely attributed to a number of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of them, an investment banker with J.P. Morgan Chase &amp;amp; Co., was fingered more often than the others as the most likely author. His firm, however, denied that the banker so named (who did indeed work for that entity) did anything more than forward the message to friends, an act that inserted his signature block into the fray and caused some to take him for the originator of the piece. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-03-27T04:59:23.930" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17262" CreationDate="2014-03-27T10:32:49.180" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several studies have shown an inverse correlation between intake of garlic and risk of cancer in the digestive system (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.canlet.2006.05.009&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Cancer chemoprevention with garlic and its constituents&quot;&gt;this review&lt;/a&gt; for instance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find other studies looking investigating the intake of RAW garlic and its effect on lung cancer. In the chinese study you discuss, they suggest that the vapours released from eating raw garlic are part of the preventive effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain the chemopreventive effects of garlic and related OSCs, including inhibition of mutagenesis by inhibiting the metabolism, blockage of DNA adduct formation, free-radical scavenging, effects on cell proliferation and tumor growth, and modulation of immune responses (42). The volatile oil with effective OSCs are largely excreted via lung that might be related to above reviewed mechanisms or functions, in addition to its role in infection control, inflammation reduction, and probable protection of lung from carcinogens such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These experimental evidences are supportive for the hypothesis of the protective effects of raw garlic consumption against lung cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study in general seems to hold up, but I am not an expert in this particular field so I may be missing something vital. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that this is however a CHINESE study. As the reason for the beneficial effects of garlic are not fully understood, there is NO evidence that a person living somewhere else would have a lower risk of lung cancer. A population based study is only valid for statistically similar populations. For instance they mention that 49.6% of the lung cancer patients and 50.8% of their control group are illiterate. In comparison the literacy rate in the US is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2103.html#136&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;CIA World Factbook&quot;&gt;99%&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing that might be of concern is genetics. It is known that Asians with lung cancer have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673605676258%20%22Gefitinib%20plus%20best%20supportive%20care%20in%20previously%20treated%20patients%20with%20refractory%20advanced%20non-small-cell%20lung%20cancer%3a%20results%20from%20a%20randomised,%20placebo-controlled,%20multicentre%20study%20%28Iressa%20Survival%20Evaluation%20in%20Lung%20Cancer%29%22%20-%20The%20Lancet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;different response&lt;/a&gt;  to certain forms of therapy than other population groups. I was unable to find a study that investigates if similar effects are seen with RAW garlic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that the correlation they find is for SMOKERS ONLY. They simply don't have enough non-smoking cancer cases to say anything about non-smokers (p-value 0.137):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In stratified analyses, a borderline inverse association of raw garlic consumption with lung cancer risk was observed among never smokers, which is most likely explained by small sample size of nonsmoking cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same goes for exercising. They can't find an effect in people who exercised regularly 10 years prior to the study (p-value of 0.332).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As eating raw garlic is fairly uncommon in western countries (could not find a source for this, based on personal experience), it would be hard to confirm the study. A US study would likely need thousands of participants, all eating raw garlic for a decade. &#xA;A more likely scenario is the isolation of the active ingredient in the garlic, which could then be used as a supplement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TLDR: If you are living in China, smoking and not exercising, eating raw garlic more than twice a week is likely to reduce your risk of lung cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18429" LastEditorUserId="18429" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T08:51:28.093" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T08:51:28.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20035" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-27T13:46:08.710" Score="9" ViewCount="601" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every once in a while I see the claim that lifespan of a laptop is more or less the same, no matter how often it is used. How far is this from being true? Is it true that the difference in lifespan is not significant one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13242" LastActivityDate="2016-11-11T16:53:49.263" Title="Does the lifespan of laptop depend significantly on its usage?" Tags="|computers|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20003" CreationDate="2014-03-27T18:39:45.070" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Red mercury does indeed exist, mercury (11) oxide (HgO) varies from yellow to red, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemicalbook.com/ChemicalProductProperty_EN_CB6384854.htm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The more fine the particles the more towards the yellow it is, the bigger the lumps, the more red.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the neat trick that if you heat it in a low oxygen environment (say one in which there is charcoal to snap up the O2), it decomposes to mercury and oxygen (2HgO =&gt; 2Hg + O2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When heated to decomposition (932F) it decomposes into mercury and&#xA;  oxygen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cameochemicals.noaa.gov/chemical/5050&quot;&gt;Here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can then be re-oxidized. Rinse and repeat. That's magic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you read to the bottom of the &quot;Reactivity Profile&quot; et al. in the above link, you will see it's quite dangerous to play with and highly toxic. It can decompose spontaneously (explosively) under sunlight and/or friction. - It's conceivable that this was viewed as magical too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I am unable to prove the existence of a special property of any mercury compounds or amalgams regarding nuclear weapons, I would posit that red mercury may have been spoken of or written about because it was covering for or being used as a synonym for something magical during WW2 - in technical terms, Germany and the rest of the industrialized world were trying to solve the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Supercriticality&quot;&gt;supercriticality&lt;/a&gt; problem (creating a nuclear fission event on a large scale, ie. a bomb.) with the uranium, in simple terms they needed to create High Explosives, and ways of detonating them, to smash the uranium pieces together really hard or to compress a sphere of the material by surrounding it with the H.E. and detonating it as quickly as possible. Thus the code words Red Mercury might have come about as a &quot;magical bullet&quot; that wins the war. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an unproven hypothesis though, it would need a reference from a consensus of historians of repute, there doesn't yet appear to be one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to be confused with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1453170&quot;&gt;mercury fulminate&lt;/a&gt;, another explosive discovered in the 1830s, used to prime ammunition - this may well have been the chemical end-product that the terrorists were after in the article cited by the OP, &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4943122.stm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17546" LastEditorUserId="17546" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T23:30:25.703" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T23:30:25.703" CommentCount="3" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-03-27T18:39:45.070" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20041" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-27T19:57:51.810" Score="1" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading an article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drive-recovery-hints.com/Never_open_cover_of_hard_drive.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;why opening the cover of a hard drive was a bad idea.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the article, the author mentions that the safest way to open the cover of a hard drive was to do it in a class 100 clean room (&amp;lt; 100 airborne particles per cubic feet).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, near the end of the article the author states that alternatively, if you lack the capital to send your hard drive to a laboratory to have your data recovered, you could use a plastic tent because it will keep a lot of contaminants out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't make sense to me, if you set up a plastic tent inside your room (or somewhere else) wouldn't the same amount of contaminants that were in the space you were planning to open your hard drive would stay INSIDE the tent as well?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14176" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T03:07:00.163" Title="Can a plastic tent keep contaminants out and emulate a safe clean room?" Tags="|physics|hardware|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20025" CreationDate="2014-03-27T23:16:27.917" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is refusing to decrypt data for the police illegal in England and Wales?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_Kingdom&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), Part III&lt;/a&gt;, people can be forced by police to surrender keys to encrypted data. This law has been applied at least three times, twice up until 2009 according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2009-11-03e.296657.h&amp;amp;s=ripa+encryption#g296657.r0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Claire Ward, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice&lt;/a&gt;, and one additional time in 2010 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/06/jail_password_ripa/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;according to &lt;em&gt;The Register&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can the police put you in jail by simply stating that they think your data contains encrypted data and you refuse to disclose it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt; Contrary to what DJClayworth’s answer states, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/53&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;relevant passage&lt;/a&gt; reads (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a person shall be taken to have shown that he was not in possession of a key to protected information at a particular time if—&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) sufficient evidence of that fact is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it; &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) the contrary is not proved beyond a reasonable doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meaning, unless you can &lt;em&gt;provide sufficient evidence&lt;/em&gt; to the contrary – which is vague and subject to interpretation – &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; no evidence to the contrary exists “beyond a reasonable doubt”, you can be presumed to possess the key. Ignore condition (b) (which on the face of it helps the accused), because condition (a) &lt;em&gt;also&lt;/em&gt; needs to fulfilled:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Even if&lt;/em&gt; the police cannot prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that you have a key, you &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; need to provide “sufficient evidence of that fact” (= “not in possession of a key”). This is a direct reversal of the burden of proof and the principle of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;innocent until proven guilty&lt;/a&gt;. It is telling that the whole paragraph is written from the default assumption of guilt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="82" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T01:24:58.857" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20045" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24063" CreationDate="2014-03-28T10:33:06.960" Score="13" ViewCount="1785" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/14/sunday-review/unplanned-pregnancies.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Writing for the New York Times&lt;/a&gt;, Gregor Aisch and Bill Marsh model long term failure rates of birth control methods by extrapolating the one-year failure rate based on a simple mathematical formula:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The probability that a woman doesn't get pregnant at all over a given period of time is equal to the success rate of her contraceptive method, raised to the power of the number of years she uses that method. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.speakersalberta.com/_Genuis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr Stephen Genuis&lt;/a&gt; models the long-term failure rate of condoms in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/sexuality/se0001.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Catholic Education Resource Center article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The effectiveness of a contraceptive method is defined in terms of the phrase &quot;number per 100 woman-years.&quot; This definition is designed to complete the sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Of 100 typical users who start out the year &#xA;  employing a given method of contraception, &#xA;  the number who will be pregnant by the end &#xA;  of that year will be _________.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After reviewing the extensive literature on contraception, some variation in results is found. Reported failure rates for condom use vary from about 2 to 35 unplanned pregnancies per year, but a conservative consensus reveals a rate in the range of 8 failures per 100 users each year in the general population. Simple mathematics would conclude that after five years, the number pregnant with this method would be five times the yearly rate. Thus, after five years of condom use, there would be about 40 pregnancies in this group of 100 real people; after 10 years there would be 80 pregnancies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus he predicts a 40% failure rate over five years of condom use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mathematics exercise book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0198572212&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;One Thousand Exercises in Probability&lt;/a&gt;, makes a similar prediction &lt;em&gt;in a probability exercise&lt;/em&gt; based on unsubstantiated estimates of a 10% annual failure rate, leading to 41% failure rate over five years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_birth_control_methods&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; states that the typical use first-year failure rate is 15%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, these simple mathematical models and may not represent reality. For example, significant correlation in failure rates for individual subjects across years, or significantly time-varying failure rates, would invalidate this simple model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the typical use five-year failure rate for condoms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6479" LastEditorUserId="23185" LastEditDate="2014-12-07T17:52:13.907" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T22:59:34.170" Title="What is the five-year failure rate for condom-usage?" Tags="|medical-science|contraception|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20047" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-28T15:34:22.807" Score="4" ViewCount="814" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quadcitiesrealestate.com/SHOE_ARTICLES/Different_Size_Feet.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.quadcitiesrealestate.com/SHOE_ARTICLES/Different_Size_Feet.htm&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First, you should know that &lt;strong&gt;60% of the population have different size&#xA;  feet&lt;/strong&gt; that we will pick up when measuring. Contrary to popular belief,&#xA;  the &lt;strong&gt;left foot is 80% of the time, the larger foot&lt;/strong&gt;.  It is explained&#xA;  that 80% of the population is right hand dominant.  That to do any&#xA;  work, you can not lift with the right hand and the right foot&#xA;  forward.  Everything is in the same plain and unbalanced.  Instead you&#xA;  put your right hand forward and your left foot forward.  This creates&#xA;  a three legged stool or tripod and is stable for lifting.  It also&#xA;  exercises the foot opposite the dominant hand more, thus the slight&#xA;  variance in the size of the feet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How true is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T21:29:16.087" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T20:06:20.933" Title="Amongst the 60% of the population that have different size feet, is the left foot 80% of the time the larger foot?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20048" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20057" CreationDate="2014-03-28T16:15:35.373" Score="7" ViewCount="1065" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone I know has been talking about how there is a huge factory in China that supplies the US with a significant fraction of its annual caffeine import, and that supposedly no one is allowed to enter the factory to inspect what's going on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She claims that because no one is allowed into the factory to inspect it and because testing of imported food chemicals in the US is infrequent, we can't know for sure how much caffeine is going into our energy drinks, or whether they are lacing it with impurities. As evidence for this, she offered anecdotal evidence of people reacting differently to energy drinks with the same caffeine content, as well as referencing a supposed historical laxity in chemical assaying of imported chemicals in the food industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been having trouble verifying or denying her claims. The best I have been able to find is a reference to &lt;em&gt;Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us&lt;/em&gt;, where a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/murray-carpenter/caffeinated/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;book review mentions that&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Refused access to the world’s largest synthetic caffeine factory in China, Carpenter notes that the industry is far from transparent; inspections are rare, and conditions are not always sanitary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her claims strike me as incredibly farfetched, primarily for the reason that as far as I was aware, synthetic caffeine is usually supplied in near-100% purity, so it would be incredibly easy to detect any deviation above a few parts per thousand (let alone deviations on the order of ~500 parts per thousand like she is claiming) by a routine chemical assay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have no experience in how chemical assaying is done in the United States, and in particular how often (and how randomly-scheduled) chemical testing is done on imported synthetic food additives, and so I have not been able to get any definitive answers on whether these claims are plausible or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in essence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What are the regulatory guidelines imposed by the FDA on the frequency and scope of chemical assaying of imported pure synthetic food additives like caffeine? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18446" LastEditorUserId="18446" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T23:22:54.523" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T00:14:07.457" Title="Is there a conspiracy to prevent testing of the actual caffeine content of energy drinks in the United States?" Tags="|caffeine|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6788" CreationDate="2014-03-28T17:01:54.467" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Blending vinegar (a dilute acetic acid) with baking soda (a base) essentially produces a neutral (neither acidic or basic) The chemical equation for the overall reaction is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NaHCO3(s) + CH3COOH(l) → CO2(g) + H2O(l) + Na+(aq) + CH3COO-(aq)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where s=solid, l=liquid, g=gas, aq=aqueous or in a water solution. In other words, after the  two compounds combine they first produce CO2 gas, water, aqueous sodium ions and aqueous acetate ions. The sodium and acetate ions eventually combine in the water to form a very mild sodium acetate solution (NaC2H3O2 + H2O).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/230004477_EFFECT_OF_SODIUM_ACETATE_ON_GROWTH_AND_AFLATOXIN_PRODUCTION_BY_Aspergillus_parasiticus_NRRL_2999/file/9fcfd5135c90193dbf.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to one study&lt;/a&gt; you would need 1 gram of sodium acetate per 100 ml of water for the mixture to be effective to suppress aflatoxin produced by aspergillus parasiticus. Stachybotrys chartarum and aspergillus are two common household molds of which only certain strains of which are known to produce toxigens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assume the concentration of a liter of standard household vinegar (~5%) is combined with an appropriate amount of baking soda (~4 tablespoons). The yield should be around 2.3 grams per 100 ml of sodium acetate solution (assuming my math is correct) and would be sufficient as a mold suppressant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only issue might be any residual vinegar smell. You can buy anhydrous sodium acetate online and blend it with water for a cleaner, perhaps cheaper, solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18447" LastEditorUserId="11387" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T10:04:06.803" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T10:04:06.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20050" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20048" CreationDate="2014-03-28T17:37:05.207" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;because no one is allowed into the factory to inspect it, we can't know for sure how much caffeine is going into our energy drinks, or whether they are lacing it with impurities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible to sample any product that has been &quot;introduced or delivered for introduction in interstate commerce&quot;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/Inspections/IOM/ucm122523.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/Inspections/IOM/ucm122523.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the FDA uses in-transit samples and undercover buys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inability to inspect the factory (and I don't know if this is actually true) would not preclude testing at the point of sale or during delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3aYhoBpB0gaMEJ%3awww.candyusa.com/files/fdafsmaexplainedallcandy0119111.doc+&amp;amp;cd=7&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ct=clnk&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&quot;&gt;this description of the Food Safety Modernization Act&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Food facilities are required to register with FDA biennially.&#xA;Food from an unregistered facility may not be imported into the United States or introduced into interstate or intrastate commerce.&#xA;Food facilities will be inspected with greater frequency, and domestic facilities will be inspected at least once every 5 years.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/FSMA/ucm257978.htm&quot;&gt;FDA's own description&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ucm239907.htm&quot;&gt;About denying the FDA access to the facility&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FDA can refuse entry into the U.S. of food from a foreign facility if FDA is denied access by the facility or the country in which the facility is located.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-03-28T18:03:14.260" LastActivityDate="2014-03-28T18:03:14.260" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20051" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-28T18:37:24.433" Score="11" ViewCount="2771" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/newt-gingrich-s-plan-to-stave-off-the-apocalypse-20140328&quot;&gt;article from the National Journal&lt;/a&gt; released and linked to from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drudgereport.com/&quot;&gt;the Drudge Report&lt;/a&gt; today(28MAR2014), Peter Pry, &quot;a former CIA officer and head of a congressional advisory board on national security&quot; claimed that a single EMP that is large enough to take out the power grid in the US would result in(among other things):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One hundred four nuclear reactors going Fukushima, spreading toxic&#xA;  clouds everywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/reg-guides/power-reactors/rg/01-057/01-057.pdf&quot;&gt;US NRC standards, all Nuclear Power Plants include a containment vessel&lt;/a&gt; so the only way for them to spew toxic clouds would be for them to explode much like happened in Fukushima.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So In the event of an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse&quot;&gt;EMP&lt;/a&gt; would we have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/reactor/&quot;&gt;nearly all of the active plants&lt;/a&gt; melting down and exploding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T19:08:51.013" Title="Would an EMP in the US Cause all of our active Nuclear Power Plants to melt down and explode?" Tags="|environment|nuclear-energy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20048" CreationDate="2014-03-29T00:14:07.457" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In February 2013, the FDA issued &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetters/2013/ucm340194.htm&quot;&gt;a warning letter to an importer of caffeine powder&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In it, the FDA reports that a number of violations to the FDA standards were observed for several imported ingredients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Further, your firm failed to establish specifications to provide sufficient assurance that products your firm receives from a supplier for packaging and/or labeling and distribution as dietary supplements are adequately identified and are consistent with your purchase order, as required by 21 CFR 111.70(f).  Specifically, your firm did not establish specifications for the products SUPER MSM (Methyl-Sulfonyl-Methane) 1000mg, Inositol 500mg, and &lt;strong&gt;White Crystalline Powder Caffeine (1/2 oz.)&lt;/strong&gt; your firm receives in bulk for repackaging and labeling as dietary supplements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, the FDA complained that the importer accepted the claims of the supplier about the contents of the imported ingredients without (a) checking the ingredients themselves and (b) without ensuring that the suppliers are reliable in performing their analyses of the content:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to rely on a certificate of analysis from a supplier of the component, the following requirements of 21 CFR 111.75(a)(2)(ii) must be met: (A) qualify the supplier by establishing the reliability of the supplier’s certificate of analysis through confirmation of the results of the supplier’s tests or examinations; (B) the certificate of analysis must include a description of the test or examination method(s) used, limits of the test or examinations, and actual results of the tests or examinations; (C) maintain documentation of how the supplier was qualified; (D) periodically re-confirm the supplier’s certificate of analysis; and (E) the documentation setting forth the basis for qualification (and re-qualification) of any supplier must be reviewed and approved by quality control personnel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This letter demonstrates that the FDA is concerned about the quality of ingredients, including caffeine powder, imported from overseas, that it has standards to address those concerns, and that it (sometimes) takes action against infringements, even without needing to frequently inspect foreign factories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is only &lt;em&gt;one&lt;/em&gt; example of the FDA taking action. It doesn't demonstrate that the FDA is consistently monitoring all importers or that its concerns are taken seriously by the suppliers. (It also demonstrates that, at least in the short term, there are suppliers that don't treat the issue with the same care as the law expects.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Your friend's claim and the book reviewer's claims contradict. Your friend claims &lt;em&gt;no-one&lt;/em&gt; is allowed to inspect. The book reviewer cites that inspections are &quot;rare&quot;, and that the &lt;em&gt;author of a hostile book&lt;/em&gt; was not granted access to the factory, which is very different to refusing access to inspectors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T00:14:07.457" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20058" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19667" CreationDate="2014-03-29T01:43:06.330" Score="8" Body="&lt;h2&gt;It's Hard to Say&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nutrition is a tough area to make strong black-and-white statements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=562740&quot;&gt;Bread preference is correlated with other health-affecting lifestyle choices&lt;/a&gt;, so we can't just measure the health of people who prefer one bread over another.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to do a randomised, double-blind, controlled trial over the lifetime of a large sample of people, substituting wholemeal bread for white bread. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is made worse, because the area has a lot of mixed results and contradictory band-wagons (at least, in the public eye).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some nutrients are needed (or need to be avoided) by a small proportion of the population, and may be of little consequence to otherwise healthy individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;White bread&quot;, &quot;brown bread&quot; (or even &quot;wheat bread&quot;) are not tight specifications of bread, but, rather broad categories.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The issue of white versus brown bread was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1259527/?page=1&quot;&gt;already raging in 1924&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I cannot give a simple answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;They Are Not The Same&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; say is &quot;there is a difference&quot;. If the original claim was meant to imply they are nutritionally identical (as opposed to merely equally healthful), it is incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gut.bmj.com/content/18/9/725.abstract&quot;&gt;Gastric emptying of wholemeal and white bread&lt;/a&gt;, 1977&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We studied the rates at which solid and liquid leave the stomach after meals of wholemeal and white bread by using a double isotope technique. There was no difference in the rates at which the solid phases of the gastric contents left the stomach but liquid left the stomach significantly more rapidly with white bread than with wholemeal bread. Furthermore, the amount of liquid leaving the stomach unaccompanied and therefore unbuffered by solid was significantly greater after while bread than wholemeal bread. These findings may be of significance in the pathogenesis of duodenal ulcer and they provide a rational basis for a possible form of dietary treatment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Breaking it Down&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To deal with this quandary, I am going to look at some individual nutrients. Note: This approach risks the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition&quot;&gt;fallacy of composition&lt;/a&gt;. It may be that some combination of nutrients has more or less effect that the individual nutrients would suggest. For example, it has been shown that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/175478&quot;&gt;adding bran to wheat bread reduces iron absorption&lt;/a&gt;. We therefore need to treat these results with some care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I have done this with a number of the most obvious nutrients, until I started to get bored. I avoided cherry-picking; every nutrient I researched is included here. If there are other nutrients worth including, please add a comment or edit it in.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In alphabetical order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Calcium&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eating brown bread over white bread increases the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/33/4/739.short&quot;&gt;intake of calcium from other sources - specifically milk-products&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19215556&quot;&gt;66% of pregnant women are calcium deficient&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Calories&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-bread-whole-wheat-commercially-prepared-i18075&quot;&gt;Wholewheat bread&lt;/a&gt; has slightly more calories than &lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-bread-white-commercially-prepared-i18069&quot;&gt;white bread&lt;/a&gt;, but not as much as &lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-wonder-bread-sandwich-i113248&quot;&gt;Wonder bread&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Fat&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-bread-whole-wheat-commercially-prepared-i18075&quot;&gt;Wholewheat bread&lt;/a&gt; has similar fat levels to &lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-bread-white-commercially-prepared-i18069&quot;&gt;white bread&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Fibre&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-bread-whole-wheat-commercially-prepared-i18075&quot;&gt;Wholewheat bread&lt;/a&gt; has three times the level of dietary fibre of  &lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-bread-white-commercially-prepared-i18069&quot;&gt;white bread&lt;/a&gt;. Insufficient fibre in North American diets is &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1753-4887.2009.00189.x/full&quot;&gt;common and associated with a large number of gastrointestinal disorders&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, intake of &lt;strong&gt;whole grains&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01635589509514411#.UzYXqPmSx8E&quot;&gt;have been reliably associated with lower rates of colorectal and gastric cancers&lt;/a&gt;, and maybe endometrial cancer and coronary heart disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Iron&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/21/10/1162.short&quot;&gt;Wheat bread provides more iron that unfortified white bread&lt;/a&gt;, and about the same as iron-salt-fortified white bread. (Watch out the for the bran though - see above.) Iron deficiency is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17016951&quot;&gt;prevalent form of malnutrition world-wide&lt;/a&gt;. While less common in North America, it still causes thousands of deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Potassium&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-bread-whole-wheat-commercially-prepared-i18075&quot;&gt;Wholewheat bread&lt;/a&gt; has less than half the potassium of &lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-bread-white-commercially-prepared-i18069&quot;&gt;white bread&lt;/a&gt;. While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0055106&quot;&gt;low potassium intake is linked to diabetes&lt;/a&gt;, most people in the USA &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/potassium-and-your-heart&quot;&gt;get enough potassium from their diets&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Sodium&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-bread-whole-wheat-commercially-prepared-i18075&quot;&gt;Wholewheat bread&lt;/a&gt; has lower sodium levels than &lt;a href=&quot;http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-bread-white-commercially-prepared-i18069&quot;&gt;white bread&lt;/a&gt;.  In the USA, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/salt-and-sodium/&quot;&gt;up to 70% of adults&lt;/a&gt; are at risk of sodium-related health problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Vitamin B-6&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whole wheat bread has &lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/7411239&quot;&gt;more B-6 in it that white bread&lt;/a&gt;, and about the same as B-6 fortified white bread. However, B-6 is slightly less available after eating whole wheat bread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Zinc&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You absorb &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/33/4/739.short&quot;&gt;more zinc&lt;/a&gt; from eating brown bread. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0946672X06000411&quot;&gt;A quarter of the world's population is zinc-deficient&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While attempts to answer with a definitive study are missing, by looking at the individual nutrients involved, whole-wheat bread offers more of a number of nutrients associated with better health, with a proviso that bran can reduce iron absorption, and that fortification of white-bread can remedy many of these differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, white bread tastes better! :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T01:43:06.330" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20051" CreationDate="2014-03-29T10:49:05.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no reason to think this is the case. The effect of high altitude electromagnetic pulses has been studied by a scientific commission for the US government and they released a long, in-depth result. &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.ornl.gov/sci/ees/etsd/pes/pubs/ferc_Meta-R-320.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;It's a 168-page book&lt;/a&gt;, full of physical models and engineering assessments -- hard to summarize in its entirety, but from a quick look it seems to me to be solid evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their conclusion is that there would certainly be some level of damage, some of which could take years to recover from. They end with the following paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a final note, the bottom line for predicting E1 HEMP effects is that our modern world &#xA;  has never experienced such as assault. We can try to predict effects and draw upon &#xA;  similar effects and experimentation, but there is always the possibility of some surprise. &#xA;  Often even somewhat minor issues have lead to extensive problems in the past, which &#xA;  would not have been predicted. It is also not known how American society in general &#xA;  would react if massive infrastructure failures occur over a large region and for a long &#xA;  time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is to say: obviously it would be a very negative event, with consequences. That said, there's no evidential support for an apocalyptic scenario such as the one presented by the claimants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, they have an appendix dedicated to &quot;E1 HEMP Myths&quot; and they openly call out apocalyptic scenarios as &quot;not very believable&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some general emphasis of comments fall into either “the world as we know &#xA;  it will come to an end” if there is a high altitude nuclear burst, or the other extreme: “it’s not a big deal, nothing much will happen”. Since we really have never had a nuclear &#xA;  burst over anything like our current modern infrastructure, no one really knows for sure &#xA;  what would happen, but both extremes are not very believable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-03-29T10:49:05.300" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20061" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-29T20:17:00.043" Score="15" ViewCount="1201" Body="&lt;p&gt;Claim: “According to Gallup polls done throughout the 1960s, young and educated people (meaning college students) were far more likely to support the war than their old and educated fellow citizens. In fact, it was the over-50 crowd that opposed the war more than anyone.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/J7i5K.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;An image of people protesting the Vietnam war, with a caption stating that at the time of the war, young people were far more likely to support the war than older citizens&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find the Gallups polls from that time, but I found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seanet.com/~jimxc/Politics/Mistakes/Vietnam_support.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;web page that reproduces the poll&lt;/a&gt; and it says the poll was conducted every few months from 1965 to 1971 and that question used in that poll was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In view of the developments since we entered the fighting in Vietnam, do you think the U.S. made a mistake sending troops to fight in Vietnam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me it seems that poll can't be very conclusive about telling if someone supports or not the Vietnam War. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question becomes, &lt;strong&gt;Are there other polls or evidence that would confirm or refute this claim?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16835" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2018-08-28T00:33:26.660" LastActivityDate="2018-08-28T00:33:26.660" Title="Were younger people more likely to support Vietnam war than people older than 50 years old in the 60s?" Tags="|war|vietnam-war|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20051" CreationDate="2014-03-29T21:36:04.323" Score="13" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Could a single EMP cause nearly all USA reactors to &quot;go Fukushima&quot; - melt-down and explode?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;(paraphrased)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;In brief&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NRC policies have taken into account EMP since the late 1970s&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The USA has no nuclear reactors of the old design type used at Fukushima.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;EMP&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have been studying the effect of EMP on nuclear power plants since the 1970s to ensure that these plants can shutdown safely after an EMP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://public-blog.nrc-gateway.gov/2011/10/31/keeping-u-s-reactors-safe-from-power-pulses/&quot;&gt;Keeping U.S. Reactors Safe from Power Pulses&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The NRC requires U.S. nuclear power plants to be able to shut down safely in the face of many extreme events – tornados, hurricanes and earthquakes. But the NRC also takes into account far more unusual events, like solar flares and electromagnetic pulse (EMP) caused by a certain type of nuclear weapon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example study: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osti.gov/scitech/biblio/6391155&quot;&gt;Interaction of electromagnetic pulse with commercial nuclear-power-plant systems&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it &#xA;  was concluded that: (1) Diffuse fields inside Seismic Class I &#xA;  buildings are negligible; (2) EMP signal entry points are identifi- &#xA;  able; (3) Interior signal attenuation can be reasonably modeled; &#xA;  (4) Damage thresholds, even for equipment containing solid state &#xA;  components are high; (5) EMP induced signals at the critical &#xA;  equipment in the example plant are much less than nominal operating &#xA;  levels, but plant topology and cabling practice have a strong &#xA;  influence on responses; (6) The likelihood that individual com- &#xA;  ponents examined will fail is small; therefore, it is unlikely that &#xA;  an EMP event would fail sufficient equipment so as to prevent safe &#xA;  shutdown&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EMP from high altitude nuclear tests in the 1960s did cause significant damage to some sections of street lighting and other equipment at long range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the continental USA is a large country, it would take an extraordinarily large nuclear explosion to create a single EMP pulse that affects both west and east coasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Fukushima&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The containment failures at Fukushima were due to a combination of factors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Tsunami knocked out the power grid in the region.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Tsunami flooded the standby generators at the power plant.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Reactors did not have a purely passive system for reaching cold-shutdown.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Fukushima reactors are Boiling Water Reactors (BWR) designed by GE in the 1960s and now designated, by some people, as Generation-1 reactors. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boiling_water_reactors&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; there are no Generation-1 reactors operating in the USA (they've all been decommissioned - the last was Big Rock Point in 1997). However this system of classification is not universally used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-03-30T10:48:08.997" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T10:48:08.997" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18765" CreationDate="2014-03-29T22:19:08.653" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is essentially correct -- tens of millions of Orthodox Christians died of political violence in the 20th century. However, everything that Mr. Serfes tries to imply by making that claim is basically wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Complications&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it's hard to be more precise about the claim because Mr. Serfes' essay loaded with so much hyperbole that his claim is almost nonsensical. The specific claim is that &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;up to&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; 50 million Orthodox Christians have perished in the first eight decades of the twentieth century.&quot; He is actually asserting an upper limit, though his thesis is based on conveying the impression that this is a large number of people -- which requires a lower limit instead. Serfes basically accounts for 15 million deaths (or so), and then bumps the number up by a few tens of millions by appealing to the general political turmoil of Eastern Europe during the 20th century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this gives him a nice big headline figure, it undermines his thesis by demonstrating that there is nothing special about the suffering of the Orthodox Christian community -- Orthodox Christians simply lived in a region of the world that was in constant political turmoil since roughly the 1880s, and therefore a lot of them died violent deaths, just like a lot of people in other parts of the world. I do not mean to trivialize their suffering, I am simply providing context for the facts that Serfes cites in his political diatribe disguised as a memorial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An additional complication in evaluating the claim arises from the unclear and possibly inconsistent definition of &quot;orthodox Christian&quot; that Serfes uses. As suggested in the question, it appears that he treats the term as synonymous with &quot;person of a traditionally Orthodox Christian nationality&quot;. This is consistent with how the term &quot;Jew&quot; is used with respect to the Nazi's genocide towards the Jewish people, since the Nazi's defined &quot;Jew&quot; based on genetic heritage and not any profession of faith. Furthermore, it may be consistent with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyc.gov/html/fhnyc/html/protection/citizenship-status.shtml&quot;&gt;some modern American notions&lt;/a&gt; of religious discrimination, since such discrimination is driven by the &lt;em&gt;perception&lt;/em&gt; of religious identity, regardless of actual religious belief. It's possible (and likely) that membership in a historically Orthodox national group was taken as evidence of Orthodox Christian faith by the attackers. However, in the cases that Serfes cites, I see little indication that the attacks were driven by religious animosity rather than nationalist or racist animosity -- or simply the desire to dominate others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, it is unclear what Serfes includes under his umbrella term &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthodox_Christianity&quot;&gt;Christian Orthodox&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. From my brief reading, it seems that the Eastern Orthodox communion (Russia, Greece, Ukraine) and the Oriental Orthodox communion (Armenia, Ethiopia) have some substantial theological differences; institutionally, they diverged prior to the &quot;Great&quot; Catholic/Eastern schism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/Christianity_Branches.svg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Serfes also includes the Assyrian and Ethiopian Churches among his list of victims. I'm not sure why he lumps these branches together -- is it simply their geographical clustering? Perhaps he considers the Great Schism to be the fundamental division in Christianity (with the Eastern Orthodox church being affiliated with the Oriental and Assyrian churches). Or perhaps -- to acknowledge his thesis of Orthodox persecution -- he suspects that Western Christians view the &quot;pre-Roman Catholic&quot; churches to be somehow primitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final problem is that Serfes seems to exclude Orthodox vs. Orthodox violence from his tally. This becomes a serious complication when we aren't sure who to count as Orthodox -- I get the impression that Russian Communists are to be counted as &quot;Orthodox&quot; when they are the victims of political violence, but not the perpetrators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, I will be tallying the deaths of people from Orthodox Christian nationalities, and noting the relevant complications as they arise. I doubt that it is possible to provide a more precise accounting of &quot;Orthodox Christian&quot; deaths since the Orthodox church was the state-sponsored religion for many of these nationalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Tally&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Serfes has essentially summed up the death counts from a variety of unconnected events, which I will list below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The Armenian Genocide (1915-1923): up to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocidefaq.html#How_many&quot;&gt;1.5 million people&lt;/a&gt;. This doesn't contribute much to the 50 million deaths, so I'm not going to quibble over the numbers and I'll just take the value from the people who are trying to raise awareness of the genocide (Serfes claimed 1.8 million). However, this has a strong psychological impact because it was a genocide attempt (a Holocaust, if you will). Furthermore, the modern Turkish state still favors Islam (sometimes at the expense of Orthodox Christians) and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_301_%28Turkish_Penal_Code%29&quot;&gt;persecutes those who raise awareness of the genocide&lt;/a&gt;, so this supports Serfes' contention that Orthodox Christians are an marginalized minority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it also undermines his assertion that the USA and Western governments are insensitive to the plight of Orthodox Christian nationalities, since Turkey's NATO allies regularly risk &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_resolution_on_Armenian_Genocide&quot;&gt;diplomatic&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-18758078&quot;&gt;rifts&lt;/a&gt; by bringing up the issue of the Armenian Genocide, just as they &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocidefaq.html#response&quot;&gt;condemned it&lt;/a&gt; as it happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another note on this topic is that the Ottoman/Turkish governments that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.armenian-genocide.org/genocidefaq.html#responsible&quot;&gt;perpetrated the genocide&lt;/a&gt; were not Islamist (as implied in the question), they were secular Nationalist (even militantly secular).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) The Balkans, Greece, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire (1912-1922): Serfes claims 1.75 million Greeks &quot;murdered by Turkish persecutions&quot;, with the massacre of Smyrna (1922) as the touchstone of this violence. Again, the numbers are a small portion of the total, so I'm not going to bother with the details. While Serfes limits his count to WWI period (and the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire), this violence seems to be intimately linked with the 19th century's wars of Independence for the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_War_of_Independence&quot;&gt;Greek&lt;/a&gt;(1821) and Balkan Christian nations, along with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Turkish_War_%281877%E2%80%931878%29&quot;&gt;Russian expansion&lt;/a&gt; into Ottoman territory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The massacre of Smyrna seems to be the finale to an almost continuous period of violence ranging from the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), through WWI (1914-1918), and the Greko-Turkish war (1919-1922). While these wars mainly saw Orthodox Christian Nations allied against the Ottoman Empire (with Western powers aiding either side as suited them), Bulgaria often fought against other Orthodox Christian nations (in the Second Balkan War and WWI).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cumulative total: up to 2.25 million&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3) World War I (1914-1918): Serfes does not mention WWI directly, only indirectly in his summary statement mentioning &quot;warfare&quot;. There were probably about &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties&quot;&gt;5 million deaths&lt;/a&gt; among residents of traditionally Orthodox nations (Russia, Romania, Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria). Romania and Serbia had a particularly large number of deaths as a portion of the population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Orthodox Christian nationals made up 1/3 of the total deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cumulative total: up to 7.25 million&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) Communist revolutions(1918 and later): Serfes clearly dislikes the Bolsheviks for their anti-religious policies. Perhaps one or two million deaths can be attributed to these wars. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;First in Russia and Ukraine, then in Eastern Europe, in Greece during its &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Civil_War&quot;&gt;civil war&lt;/a&gt; (1945-49), and in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Civil_War&quot;&gt;Ethiopia&lt;/a&gt;, the Orthodox Church was the principle target for attach, subversion, or destruction.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know that a specific number of deaths can be attributed to specifically anti-religious activities, especially since the church was tightly aligned with the monarchy during these wars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cumulative total: up to 9.25 million&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4) The Ukranian Famine (1932-1933): This is perhaps the cornerstone of Serfes' tally. He reports 7-12 million deaths due to hostility from the Soviet Union; the encyclopedia Brittanica reports &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/612921/Ukraine/275912/Industrialization-and-collectivization&quot;&gt;4-5 million&lt;/a&gt;. The Rutgers Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights reports &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncas.rutgers.edu/center-study-genocide-conflict-resolution-and-human-rights/ukrainian-famine&quot;&gt;10 million&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://canada.mfa.gov.ua/en/ukraine-%D1%81%D0%B0/holodomor-remembrance/holodomor-remembrance-ukraine/holodomor-law-ukraine&quot;&gt;Ukrainian law regarding the &quot;Holodomor&quot;&lt;/a&gt; does not provide a number, but a website specifically dedicated to the Holodomor tallies 5.5 million (4 million from starvation; 1.5 million from dekulakization campaigns). In general, I do not see serious estimates over 10 million, so that's the value I'll use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cumulative total: up to 19.25 million&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5) World War II (1939-1945): Again, Serfes hardly mentions WWII, but this surly is the bulk of the 50 million deaths that he counts. The traditionally orthodox nations suffered up to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties&quot;&gt;30 million deaths during the war&lt;/a&gt;, almost all of them being from the Soviet Union, at the hands of Nazi Germany and their fascist allies -- including Bulgeria and Romania. Other &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.secondworldwarhistory.com/world-war-2-statistics.asp&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt; gave slightly lower estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, deaths among Orthodox Christian Nationalities accounted for about 1/3 of the deaths in WWII (other major contributors were China, Poland, and Germany)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cumulative total: up to 49.5 million&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;But does it mean anything?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When this question was posted, I objected that it was a bad question and little more than political propaganda. This tally is from a number of essentially unrelated events, and grouping them together only makes sense in the context of some theory that links them. What are those possible theories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Orthodox Christians are a community, and members of a community should recognize the suffering that occurred within it. I could respect this theory, but unfortunately this does not seem to be the theory that Serfes is promoting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) These deaths are part of a larger trend of oppression of Orthodox Christians. This appears to be Serfes' agenda, and it is dangerous bullshit. This theory has two components: first, that Orthodox Christians were treated especially brutally by other communities; second, that other communities continue to minimize and ignore the suffering done to Orthodox community. I say that this theory is bullshit because neither of those claims are true. I say that the theory is dangerous because Serfes' presentation comes very close to minimizing the suffering of other communities (e.g. Jews) and excusing abuses committed by Orthodox Christians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Orthodox Christians were not singled out for abuse (mostly)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Under the USSR&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary culprit in these deaths is the Soviet Union (through enslavement, political terrorism, wars of aggression, and general economic/military incompetence). The Soviet government exploited and terrorized all populations in its territory. It attacked any group that offered an alternative to the USSR -- whether Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim, or secular. It did not single out Orthodox Christians; if that group made up the largest portion of its victims, its simply because the USSR emerged from an Orthodox Christian society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Serfes' thesis of Orthodox oppression relies on the perception that all of these hardships came at the hands of &quot;outsiders&quot;. The Soviet Union should not be viewed as an outside group oppressing a Eastern Orthodox nation -- the Bolshivik movement was a home-grown Russian political movement. Serfes wrote his essay before Putin came to power, but I wonder what he thinks of Putin's redefining Russian identity in a way that embraces the Orthodox Church at the same time it claims the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/news/ukraine-monuments-nazi-symbols-645/&quot;&gt;glory of the USSR&lt;/a&gt; (especially with respect to Ukraine). Even Western communists have rejected the Soviet Union for over half a century. The current crisis in Ukraine reveals that many Ukrainians see their oppression under the USSR as being a nationalist issue as much as a ideological/religious one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is not enough space here to list all of the groups that were targeted by the Soviet state (many different nationalities and ideologies). One particularly relevant group is the Crimean Tartars, a Muslim population that suffered the Holodomor along with their Orthodox Christian neighbors. After WWII, the Tartars suffered &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tatars&quot;&gt;mass deportation to Siberia&lt;/a&gt;, during which a huge portion of their population died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nazi Germany&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The secondary culprit in these deaths is Nazi Germany, through its invasion of Eastern Europe and genocidal policies towards various populations. The policy of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost#Phases_of_the_plan_and_its_implementation&quot;&gt;Lebensraum&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (living space for Aryans) was particularly destructive towards the people of Eastern Europe. The Nazis had a special disdain for the Slavic people to their east, and were more tolerant of the Germanic and Latin peoples to their west (though the French were effectively &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/18/books/review/Herzog.t.html?_r=0&quot;&gt;enslaved like everyone else&lt;/a&gt;). The hostility towards Slavs manifested as genocidal plans that would have substantially &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost#Phases_of_the_plan_and_its_implementation&quot;&gt;reduced the eastern populations&lt;/a&gt; -- particularly the Catholic Poles and Lithuanians. The Orthodox Christian nationalities (particularly Ukrainians) were definitely harmed by these policies, but they were not singled out. The Nazis even had two Orthodox nations (with Orthodox Christian leaders) as allies -- Romania and Bulgaria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Turkey&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the one situation in Europe where it appears that Christians were specifically marginalized and massacred. Turkey obviously still has a lot of problems with its institutions. I think Serfes exaggerates the influence that the USA has over Turkey. Sill, Christian nationalities were not the only victims of Turkish nationalism -- the Kurds have a long history of conflict with the Turkish state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Orthodox Christians as Assailants&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last set of events to consider are those where Orthodox Christians were the assailants. My purpose in bringing this up is to show that this region of the world was generally unstable and violent during the last century. I don't mean to imply that the Orthodox Christians were particularly aggressive or that they (as a community) deserved any of the suffering that Serfes listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, there is the issue of whether to count home-grown communist movements as &quot;Orthodox Christian&quot;. I've discussed that above and will leave communist aggression out of this count. I'll also leave out anti-Semitism. Here are the events I can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Balkan wars: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacres_of_Albanians_in_the_Balkan_Wars&quot;&gt;massacres of Albanian&lt;/a&gt; Muslims and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tc-america.org/issues-information/turkish-history/1912-1913-balkan-wars-death-and-forced-exile-of-ottoman-muslims-an-annotated-map-755.htm&quot;&gt;exile of Ottoman muslims&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Russo-Ottoman wars: Ethnic cleansing of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing_of_Circassians&quot;&gt;areas conquered by Russia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Breakup of Yugoslavia: Ethnic cleansing by Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Russian suppression of Chechen Independence and the destruction of Grozny.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what makes Serfes' diatribe particularly dangerous. Orthodox Christians are the dominant community in many countries (such as Russia), which makes this narrative of oppression both absurd and dangerous. Serfes even goes as far as to suggest that &quot;Christians&quot; should always give the benefit of the doubt to other Christians (e.g. Serbia) in their conflicts with non-Christians, and likewise to suggest that the American government should not press Christian nations (such as Russia) to increase religious freedom until non-Christian allies (e.g. Turkey) have instituted full religious freedom. This is a recipe for tyranny and a continuation of these ancient blood feuds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Random notes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Ukrainian famine is a major item in this list, and I want to provide a little more context. First, other sources disagree with Serfes contention that the famine of 1932-33 was limited to Ukraine. The Brittanica article estimates that 1/3 of the victims were outside of Ukraine (though it's unclear if that includes Crimea, which was part of Russia at the time). Wikipedia has &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%9333&quot;&gt;more information&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll also note the similarities between the Ukranian famine and the Great Irish Famine and the Great Chinese Famine. Briefly, all involved an element of enslavement and exploitation, where a food producing country continued to export food while its residents suffered starvation and were prevented from growing food for themselves. Like the Ukrainian famine, the Great Irish Famine also involved a power relationship between nations (England/Ireland; Russia/Ukraine). The Chinese Famine is similar to the Ukrainian famine in its connection to Stalinist collectivization and the use of starvation to destroy traditionalist communities and punish political opponents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the Holodomor is only comparable to the Nazi campaign against the Jews in that both were horrible. Most notably, the USSR sought to break the resistance of the Ukrainian community, not to kill every single one of them. In the context of Serfes' thesis, this comparison of Orthodox community's trauma to the Nazi genocide against the Jews implies that the only reason for popular concern with anti-Semitism is the political influence of Jews. I hope that's not what he means to imply, since the history of Jewish marginalization and persecution in Western society is very different from the trauma experienced by Orthodox Christians in Western society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16282" LastEditorUserId="16282" LastEditDate="2014-08-25T04:08:57.120" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T04:08:57.120" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20064" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-29T22:47:42.077" Score="31" ViewCount="7353" Body="&lt;p&gt;In one of the episodes of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Lee%27s_Superhumans&quot;&gt;Stan Lee's Superhumans&lt;/a&gt; (the excerpt in question can be viewed &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/8HZ2eCB3usw?t=6m22s&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) a Shaolin monk named Hu Qiong claims that by training his body and &quot;transfering Chi to the right part of the body&quot; he can make his body so tough that it is like &quot;wearing steel armour&quot;. He then demonstrates a few feats including one where he pushes an electric drill against his stomach, throat and skull.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The feat has been witnessed by a &quot;bio-mechanical engineer&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdr-training.com/trainers/ca/danVoss.html&quot;&gt;Dan Voss&lt;/a&gt;, who says he has performed a test that confirmed that the monk has indeed been pushing the drill against his skull.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the monk using &quot;chi energy&quot;, as he claims, to make himself &quot;unbreakable&quot; and withstand an electric drill?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What kind of answers I expect&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are, in my opinion, the possible answers that can be given:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &quot;bio-mechanical engineer&quot; has used an invalid method to &quot;confirm&quot; that the monk had indeed been pushing the drill against his body. (Why?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The method used by the engineer was correct, but the monk has fooled him into thinking that he was pushing the drill. (How?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The monk was indeed pushing the drill against his body but has used a method that wasn't based on &quot;chi energy&quot; to withstand the drills power. (What method?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The monk has indeed used an interpretation of the &quot;chi energy&quot; concept in order to protect himself from the drill. (How does this work?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We were fooled to believe that the drill would cause severe harm to the monk in the first place. (Why?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18368" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-05T15:18:21.143" LastActivityDate="2023-07-19T12:54:56.183" Title="Is Shaolin monk Hu Qiong using &quot;Chi energy&quot; to withstand an electric drill?" Tags="|physiology|stage-magic|martial-arts|chi|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="39" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-04-05T15:18:21.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20067" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-30T12:48:54.987" Score="22" ViewCount="5003" Body="&lt;p&gt;Comedian &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Sedaris&quot;&gt;David Sedaris&lt;/a&gt; performed at the Sydney Opera House. During his performance, he gave an anecdote about being in a store in Japan. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://sydfoodie.wordpress.com/2014/01/19/an-afternoon-with-david-sedaris/&quot;&gt;Confirmation link&lt;/a&gt;, but I heard about this elsewhere)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was looking at a T-shirt with a bear with a fish in its mouth, a river, and a bright yellow swastika. Sedaris looked at the T-shirt with some puzzlement. A shop assistant noticed his puzzlement, and helpfully explained what he obviously was pondering about: the fish was a salmon!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are swastikas considered so normal in Japan that a shop-keeper wouldn't have thought of that being the source of Sedaris' confusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-03-30T13:37:40.637" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T15:42:04.603" Title="Are swastikas commonplace in Japan?" Tags="|politics|japan|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20067" CreationDate="2014-03-30T12:48:54.987" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. However, he neglected to mention one detail during his performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Swastikas are a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#Buddhism&quot;&gt;common symbol in Buddhism&lt;/a&gt;. Buddhism and Shinto are the two most common &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Japan&quot;&gt;religions in Japan&lt;/a&gt; (with people often practicing both).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More likely than not, the swastika in question was not representing &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika#As_the_symbol_of_Nazism&quot;&gt;Nazism&lt;/a&gt;, the ideology of one of Imperial Japan's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_powers&quot;&gt;allies&lt;/a&gt; in World War II.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-03-30T12:48:54.987" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20006" CreationDate="2014-03-31T00:06:00.743" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Optometry appears to have a scientific foundation. While I am in no position to evaluate the claims made by Optometrists, I can see that Optometry has the same institutional structure as science-based medicine (e.g. Ophthalmology); in fact, many major research universities have Schools of Optometry that conduct research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://optometry.berkeley.edu/admissions/research-opportunities-students&quot;&gt;UC Berkeley&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sunyopt.edu/research&quot;&gt;SUNY&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://optometry.osu.edu/research/&quot;&gt;Ohio State University&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Optometrists have professional associations that publishes research journals in conjunction with major academic publishers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.optometryjaoa.com/&quot;&gt;Optometry - Journal of the American Optometric Association&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalofoptometry.org/&quot;&gt;The Journal of Optometry: the Spanish General Council of Optometrists&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaopt.org/section/ovs/&quot;&gt;Optometry and Vision Science: the American Academy of Optometry&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These all claim to be &quot;scientific peer-reviewed&quot; publications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main difference between Ophthalmologists and Optometrists is that Ophthalmologists are Medical Doctors (i.e. M.D.). This distinction is based on the degree and focus of training, not any perceived illegitimacy of Optometrists. My impression is that the distinction between them is similar to the distinction between Psychologists (i.e. therapists) and Psychiatrists. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Academically, Optometrists have the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aoa.org/about-the-aoa/what-is-a-doctor-of-optometry&quot;&gt;O.D. degree&lt;/a&gt; (Doctor of Optometry). These are treated as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aapos.org/terms/conditions/132&quot;&gt;respected, but lesser degrees&lt;/a&gt; by Ophthalmologists. Ophthalmologists regularly work alongside Optometrists, as at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ophthalmology.medicine.pitt.edu/personnel.asp?id=127&quot;&gt;UPMC Eye Center&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note, there may be some confusion between the O.D. degree and the D.O degree (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_of_Osteopathic_Medicine&quot;&gt;Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine&lt;/a&gt;). I tend to hear the charge of pseudoscience leveled at the D.O. more than at the O.D.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16282" LastEditorUserId="16282" LastEditDate="2014-03-31T00:15:34.983" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T00:15:34.983" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-03-31T00:11:09.670" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20073" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-31T06:20:37.933" Score="25" ViewCount="5345" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very common, at least in Italy, to see bottles of water near walls in sidewalk and I've been told it's because it prevents dogs and cats from peeing on the wall. Is this actually the case and why wouldn't a dog/cat pee on it? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neatorama.com/2007/10/05/do-water-bottles-on-sidewalk-discourage-dogs-from-peeing/#!B2Fbt&quot;&gt;online reference&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13830" LastActivityDate="2017-01-24T11:55:58.973" Title="Do water bottles on sidewalk/corners prevent dogs/cats from peeing?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20067" CreationDate="2014-03-31T10:32:52.290" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%8D%8D&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;卍&lt;/a&gt; ( &quot;ban&quot; ) character is common at many temples, and predates Nazism by many centuries. Also note the mirror image and the rotation compared to 卐, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_symbolism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;swastika used by the German Nazi party&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Japan makes no particular associations between the character and the Third Reich - it appears on many street maps, tourist guides and the like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's carved in stone in front of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sens%C5%8D-ji&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sensoji&lt;/a&gt;, one of the largest Buddhist temples in Tokyo and a major tourist attraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/en1fN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Swastikas from temple&quot;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Manji(Swastika)_at_Asakusa_Sensoji.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The maps printed in English avoid the character over prolonged complaints from the tourists. Still used extensively in Japanese online maps in areas like Kyoto, where there's a temple every few blocks.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other segments of Japan, like publishing, have learned the hard way what the rest of the world thinks but they aren't that interested in changing anything. After all, they had it first. There's also a &quot;KKK Building&quot; in Ginza&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; and a popular beverage called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calpis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Calpis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JR Kyoto Station, tourist information counter. Ask for a map. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chuo-dori, Ginza. West side of the street. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18484" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2014-04-01T15:42:04.603" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T15:42:04.603" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20079" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-31T12:44:41.207" Score="14" ViewCount="10698" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard the claim that artificial banana flavoring doesn't taste like bananas since it was based on a different cultivar than the one we know today. Until the 1950's the main banana cultivar commercially grown and sold was the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gros_Michel_banana&quot;&gt;Gros Michel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;Big Mike&lt;/em&gt;. This would be the banana most people were familiar with. However, the &lt;em&gt;Gros Michel&lt;/em&gt; was nearly wiped out by &lt;em&gt;Panama Disease&lt;/em&gt;, so bananas you find in the stores today, are mostly all of the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavendish_banana&quot;&gt;Cavendish&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; variety, which can withstand the disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've read and heard the claim that the artificial banana flavor used in candies and other food, is based on the taste and flavor of &lt;em&gt;Big Mike&lt;/em&gt;. That, according to the claim, is the reason that banana flavored food tastes nothing like bananas. See for instance this article in &lt;em&gt;Business Insider&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/strange-facts-about-bananas-2013-7&quot;&gt;&quot;Strange Facts About Bananas&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=87138&quot;&gt;thread on the Snopes forum&lt;/a&gt; someone offers the idea that the difference in taste is more likely due to use of a single flavoring, isoamyl acetate, instead of a richer palette of flavorings. But that doesn't exclude the possibility that the artificial banana flavoring was developed in the time of &lt;em&gt;Gros Michel&lt;/em&gt; and based on its taste, and has changed little since, possibly because it became a flavor in its own right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is the taste of artificial banana flavor more like the &lt;em&gt;Gros Michel&lt;/em&gt; than the &lt;em&gt;Cavendish&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And if so, is that because artificial banana flavor was developed to taste like the &lt;em&gt;Gros Michel&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16121" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T21:10:34.387" Title="Is the flavor of artificial banana flavoring based on the &quot;Gros Michel&quot; banana?" Tags="|nutrition|history|plants|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20080" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-31T14:38:45.183" Score="2" ViewCount="95" Body="&lt;p&gt;I work in a secure facility where all my belongings have to be x rayed daily. Is there any possibility that metal objects such as watches, keys, coins etc. can absorb any harmful radiation?   Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18492" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T14:38:45.183" Title="Metal objects through X Ray (cabinet scanners) daily" Tags="|radiation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-03-31T15:12:43.757" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20081" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-03-31T15:39:55.693" Score="11" ViewCount="331" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately I've been hearing a lot of people saying that the advice to start solids between 4-6 months is out of date. For example, KellyMom, a usually fairly respected parenting resource says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Health experts and breastfeeding experts agree that it’s best to wait until your baby is around six months old before offering solid foods. There has been a large amount of research on this in the recent past, and most health organizations have updated their recommendations &lt;strong&gt;to agree with current research&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following organizations recommend that all babies be exclusively breastfed (no cereal, juice or any other foods) for the first 6 months of life &lt;strong&gt;(not the first 4-6 months)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://kellymom.com/nutrition/starting-solids/delay-solids/&quot;&gt;http://kellymom.com/nutrition/starting-solids/delay-solids/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when a friend of mine started digging into this supposed &quot;current research&quot; that supports this position, she couldn't find it. So we are on the quest to find out whether there's actual research that supports this notable claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in that article, some of the sources cited do not appear to actually support the claim. For example, the article summarizes one study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One study has shown that babies who were exclusively breastfed &lt;strong&gt;for 4+ months&lt;/strong&gt; had 40% fewer ear infections than breastfed babies whose diets were supplemented with other foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But since that study found 4+ months was better, it doesn't support the claim that it's better to wait until 6 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17050" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-03-31T15:43:38.047" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T04:00:58.463" Title="Is waiting until 6 months to introduce solids to babies better?" Tags="|nutrition|parenting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20079" CreationDate="2014-03-31T20:59:34.307" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Artificial banana flavor was derived from natural banana flavor; bananas, both Gros Michel and Cavendish, as well as other varieties including &quot;wild&quot; bananas, contain isoamyl acetate, amyl acetate and related compounds which result in their smell and taste. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The synthesis of isoamyl acetate from other sources (namely the reaction of isopentanol aka amyl alcohol with acetic acid as found in vinegar; the acid deprotonates the alcohol to form an ester) allowed for the replication of banana flavoring on a mass-producible scale without the need for natural banana extracts; however, because it's only one such compound in the full palette of &quot;banana oil&quot;, it produces a one-note flavor. That flavor is recognizable as banana, by taste and smell, but it was never meant to be an accurate reproduction of any one variety of banana; merely a cheap reproduction of the species in general. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other similar synthetics that have come to dominate use of the natural flavoring include methyl salicylate (the key ingredient of oil of wintergreen, and so close that hardly anybody bothers with the natural stuff anymore), and hydroxymethoxybenzaldehyde aka vanillin, used in place of natural vanilla extract in most brands of vanilla ice cream (and other flavors; it adds a creamier flavor to chocolate, for instance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Dr. Derek Lowe, synthetic organic chemist, and FDA documentation on artificial food flavorings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5997" LastEditorUserId="5997" LastEditDate="2014-03-31T21:10:34.387" LastActivityDate="2014-03-31T21:10:34.387" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20087" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20093" CreationDate="2014-04-01T06:01:02.763" Score="13" ViewCount="1367" Body="&lt;p&gt;There a lot of differing views reports on pH levels and cancer. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/why-alkaline-approach-can-successfully-treat-cancer&quot;&gt;Some&lt;/a&gt; say that cancer only grows in acidic bodies. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancerfightingstrategies.com/pH-and-cancer.html&quot;&gt;Some&lt;/a&gt; say that an alkaline body can prevent or cure cancer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2337913/The-alkaline-diet-save-brother-cancer--Im-glad-I-persuaded-try-says-TIM-LOVEJOY.html&quot;&gt;Many&lt;/a&gt; others &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/diet/alkaline-diets&quot;&gt;disagree&lt;/a&gt; calling &lt;a href=&quot;http://chriskresser.com/the-acid-alkaline-myth-part-2&quot;&gt;it&lt;/a&gt; a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.ca/en/prevention-and-screening/be-aware/cancer-myths-and-controversies/an-alkaline-diet-and-cancer/?region=on&quot;&gt;&quot;myth&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What this question is:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a link between pH levels and cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What this question isn't:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question isn't about alkaline diets, ash diets or any other diets or whether they work or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Also&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that the body is naturally slightly alkaline. I mean average pH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastActivityDate="2017-07-18T14:49:34.427" Title="Is cancer linked to having an acidic body?" Tags="|nutrition|natural-remedies|cancer|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20090" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-01T15:53:51.587" Score="13" ViewCount="2386" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_Care_Act&quot;&gt;ACA&lt;/a&gt; changed health insurance regulations, placing &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordable_Care_Act#Change_in_insurance_standards&quot;&gt;new requirements&lt;/a&gt; on most or all health insurance plans in the United States. These changes have resulted in the obsolescence of many existing plans, and the creation of many new plans. As a result of this, some number of individuals are no longer covered by their previous health care plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is commonly in the media termed as people having &quot;lost their insurance due to Obamacare&quot;. However, hard numbers are hard to come by. The top several search results all give different numbers, and many are obviously biased.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://americaswatchtower.com/2013/11/13/5-million-people-have-now-lost-their-healthcare-coverage-due-to-obamacare/&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; claims five million have lost coverage. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kansascity.com/2013/11/07/4605187/analysis-tens-of-millions-could.html&quot;&gt;Kansas City Star&lt;/a&gt; claims as many as 52 million could lose coverage. CBS reports &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obamacare-more-than-2-million-people-getting-booted-from-existing-health-insurance-plans/&quot;&gt;two million&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.californiahealthline.org/road-to-reform/2013/how-many-people-are-losing-their-plans-under-obamacare-really&quot;&gt;California Health Line&lt;/a&gt; puts the number over seven million. All those numbers are at least a few months out of date, and I don't think I trust any of them even if they were current.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many people that had health insurance have ceased to have health insurance, confirmably as a direct consequence of the ACA? How many of those now pay more for insurance? And how many of those would be eligible for Medicaid, but live in states that have elected not to accept the Medicaid expansions under the ACA?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10857" LastEditorUserId="10857" LastEditDate="2014-04-01T17:50:22.973" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T14:26:08.047" Title="How many people have lost their health insurance as a result of the ACA (Obamacare)?" Tags="|government|healthcare|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6686" CreationDate="2014-04-01T18:19:58.493" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, A vehicle starter can move a standard shift vehicle across the parking lot even with an occupant standing on the brakes.  I worked at a car manufacturer where we tried this by disabling the clutch and neutral safety switches. The engineer could not stop the vehicle from moving with the brakes, torque multiplication of the (starter/flywheel X trans gear X axle ratio) is very impressive!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remote start isn't the only possibility.  Most manufactures now crank the car until it starts, even if you let go of the key.  You can often test yours (auto or manual) for &quot;single turn start&quot; by pushing (and holding) the accelerator to the floor and then hit the start and let go of the key (or the push button).  As long as the pedal is held down, the fuel injectors are off to clear a flooded engine.  When you let up on the pedal, the cranking engine will start.&#xA;  I usually do this &quot;long crank&quot; trick to freak out the salesman when I buy a new or used car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Remember: Safety switches do fail even on a new car!  Never start any car with someone in front or back of the car!       &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18507" LastActivityDate="2014-04-01T18:19:58.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20092" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20113" CreationDate="2014-04-01T18:51:14.993" Score="8" ViewCount="488" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/video-captures-amazing-moment-deaf-woman-hears-time-article-1.1736982&quot;&gt;This touching video&lt;/a&gt; shows a woman's reaction to her cochlear implants. It seems to me amazing that someone hearing &lt;em&gt;for the first time&lt;/em&gt; would be able to understand the signal (speech) so well and even apparently know that the sound is too high-pitched. I imagine that the technician is probably signing quite a bit, but nonetheless, it seems like the patient is understanding spoken speech at least to a significant degree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do people who have never experienced sound immediately have the ability to interpret spoken language? (I've seen another video where a person with cochlear implants is moved by her first exposure to music, which raises similar questions.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Not sure if this is more a straight biology / medicine SE question...) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T08:58:37.670" Title="Do those hearing for the first time via cochlear implants understand speech immediately?" Tags="|cognitive-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20093" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20087" CreationDate="2014-04-01T20:47:02.667" Score="22" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;cancer only grows in acidic bodies ... an alkaline body can prevent or cure cancer.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is certainly over-simplistic, probably meaningless, almost certainly useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Average body pH&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect this is not a meaningful thing to attempt to measure. In terms of cancer, it may be no more meaningful than average body thickness, average body density or average body conductivity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our bodies are made up of many materials with varying pH:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Stomach:                2.0  ±1&#xA;Stomach with food:      4.5  ±0.5&#xA;Adipose:                7.0  ±0.1&#xA;Blood:                  7.40 ±0.05&#xA;Small Intestine:        8    approx&#xA;Muscle tissue spaces:   alkaline&#xA;Muscle fibre interior:  acid    &#xA;Urine:                  4.6 - 8       &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we make an average by volume?, by mass? Should it be a weighted average? Should we measure and monitor the pH of hundreds or thousands of different tissues, fluids and other materials in our bodies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cancer and pH&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cancer is essentially uncontrolled excessive cell division and growth. Therefore we might reasonably interpret the question in terms of intracellular fluid pH and ignore the pH of other materials/fluids in the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cellular pH is regulated. The body has mechanisms that maintain the pH of cells independently of other internal and external factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However Cellular pH does play a role in tumor cell survival [4]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;pH Control&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can we deliberately alter our cellular pH?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, no. We cannot easily or safely manipulate our cellular pH outside normal ranges. Our cells have mechanisms to regulate pH. If pH goes outside the normal ranges we become ill and may die. [5]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;References&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intracellular pH is difficult to measure and may vary in different types of cells and in different parts of cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;pH of the plasma (i.e. pH of the plasma of whole blood = conventional &amp;quot;blood&amp;quot; pH) is controlled at 7.4 (7.35 - 7.45).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://dwb4.unl.edu/Chem/CHEM869R/CHEM869RLinks/www.usyd.edu.au/su/anaes/lectures/acidbase_mjb/control.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;D.Brooks, University of Nebraska-Lincoln&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The normal human stomach has a pH which can range from approximately 1-3 but is usually closer to 2. When there is food in the stomach the pH can raise to as high as 4-5. After the food leaves the stomach bicarbonate ions are secreted to neutralize and alkalinize the mixture. The pH of the small intestine is approximately 8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=275&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of California Santa Barbera&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is only the interior spaces that are alkaline, whereas the interior of the muscle fibres is actually acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01605687#page-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Rochester&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the major obstacles to the successful treatment of cancer is the complex biology of solid tumour development. Although regulation of intracellular pH has been shown to be critically important for many cellular functions, pH regulation has not been fully investigated in the field of cancer. It has, however, been shown that cellular pH is crucial for biological functions such as cell proliferation, invasion and metastasis, drug resistance and apoptosis. Hypoxic conditions are often observed during the development of solid tumours and lead to intracellular and extracellular acidosis. Cellular acidosis has been shown to be a trigger in the early phase of apoptosis and leads to activation of endonucleases inducing DNA fragmentation. To avoid intracellular acidification under such conditions, pH regulators are thought to be up-regulated in tumour cells. Four major types of pH regulator have been identified: the proton pump, the sodium-proton exchanger family (NHE), the bicarbonate transporter family (BCT) and the monocarboxylate transporter family (MCT). Here, we describe the structure and function of pH regulators expressed in tumour tissue. Understanding pH regulation in tumour cells may provide new ways of inducing tumour-specific apoptosis, thus aiding cancer chemotherapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14585264&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cellular pH regulators: potentially promising molecular targets for cancer chemotherapy.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cells must constantly maintain their pH in order to function properly. In animals, for example, the maintainence of blood pH is crucial for life. A slightly acidic pH (6.95) would result in coma and death. A slightly more basic pH (7.7) would result in convulsions and muscle spasms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;em&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tiem.utk.edu/%7Egross/bioed/webmodules/phbuffers.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MAINTAINING CELLULAR CONDITIONS: pH AND BUFFERS. University of Tenessee, Knoxville&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-07-18T14:49:34.427" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20096" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20099" CreationDate="2014-04-01T21:50:12.737" Score="5" ViewCount="752" Body="&lt;p&gt;Everyday I hear advertisements that some painkiller directly targets the pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nurofen.co.uk/products-headache.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nurofen's UK web-site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Targets pain fast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Targets pain twice as fast as standard ibuprofen tablets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible? How does body know where the pain is and where to provide a given substance? Is it true or is this some sort of poetic licence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18511" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-02-08T22:54:51.293" Title="Do pain killers &quot;target&quot; pain?" Tags="|biology|chemistry|pain-control|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10974" CreationDate="2014-04-02T01:24:54.997" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Al-Yousef N, et al., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22922085&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Camel urine components display anti-cancer properties in vitro.&lt;/a&gt;, J Ethnopharmacol. 2012 Oct 11;143(3):819-25. doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2012.07.042. Epub 2012 Aug 16.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While camel urine (CU) is widely used in the Arabian Peninsula to treat various diseases, including cancer, its exact mechanism of action is still not defined. The objective of the present study is to investigate whether camel urine has anti-cancer effect on human cells in vitro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Camel urine showed cytotoxicity against various, but not all, human cancer cell lines, with only marginal effect on non-tumorigenic epithelial and normal fibroblast cells epithelial and fibroblast cells. Interestingly, 216 mg/ml of lyophilized CU inhibited cell proliferation and triggered more than 80% of apoptosis in different cancer cells, including breast carcinomas and medulloblastomas. Apoptosis was induced in these cells through the intrinsic pathway via Bcl-2 decrease. Furthermore, CU down-regulated the cancer-promoting proteins survivin, β-catenin and cyclin D1 and increased the level of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p21. In addition, we have shown that CU has no cytotoxic effect against peripheral blood mononuclear cells and has strong immuno-inducer activity through inducing IFN-γ and inhibiting the Th2 cytokines IL-4, IL-6 and IL-10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CONCLUSIONS: CU has specific and efficient anti-cancer and potent immune-modulator properties in vitro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18513" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T02:18:40.857" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20096" CreationDate="2014-04-02T06:34:16.093" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The children's website &lt;a href=&quot;http://kidshealth.org/kid/talk/qa/ibupro.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kidshealth&lt;/a&gt; gives a gentle introduction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two pain relievers kids take most often are ibuprofen (say: i-byoo-pro-fen) and acetaminophen (say: uh-see-tuh-mi-nuh-fen). They come in liquid or pill form. You swallow them, and the pain soon goes away or hurts less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your body is full of nerve endings in your skin and tissues. Some of these nerve endings can sense pain, like from a burn or a blow to a body part (like your friend's foot hitting your shin). When cells in your body are injured or damaged, they release a chemical called prostaglandin (say: prass-tuh-glan-din).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The special nerve endings that sense pain are very sensitive to this chemical. When prostaglandin is released, the nerve endings respond to it by picking up and transmitting the pain and injury messages through the nervous system to the brain. They tell the brain everything about the pain, like where it is and how much it hurts. The brain then responds: Yow!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pain is painful, but it isn't all bad. It's your body's early warning system that something is wrong, so you can take steps to correct the problem. For example, if you couldn't feel pain, and you had your hand on a hot stove, you wouldn't know your hand was burning. Because of pain, your brain gets the message to get your hand off the stove right away!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you take a pain reliever like ibuprofen, it keeps injured or damaged cells from making and releasing prostaglandin. When the cells don't release this chemical, it means that the brain won't get the pain message as quickly or clearly. So your pain goes away or becomes less severe for as long as the cells aren't releasing the chemical. Acetaminophen works in the brain so you don't feel the pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ever have an operation or another health problem that causes a lot of pain, doctors may prescribe pain relievers that are stronger than acetaminophen and ibuprofen. These types of pain relievers work by getting in between the nerve cells so they can't transmit the pain message to one another. The message isn't able to make it to the brain, and this keeps the person from feeling pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other links&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://atvb.ahajournals.org/content/31/5/986.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prostaglandins and Inflammation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Painkillers-ibuprofen/Pages/Introduction.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ibuprofen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/007489.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Narcotic Pain Medications&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18515" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T14:07:13.110" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26795" CreationDate="2014-04-02T08:34:32.513" Score="5" ViewCount="704" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm a pretty intelligent guy (I like to think) and I work with a pretty intelligent guy. Today, I said cyclones can't &lt;em&gt;form&lt;/em&gt; close to the equator, thinking cyclones need the Coriolis effect. He was quite adament that they could and sent me &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_Storm_Vamei&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Tropical Cyclone) Vamei formed and reached tropical storm strength at 1.5º N&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I came back with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/news/big-questions/if-a-hurricane-rotates-in-one-direction-and-a-cyclone-rotates-inthe-other-what-happens-if-they-cross-the-equator/2005/09/15/1126750065686.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hurricanes and cyclones can't actually &lt;em&gt;form&lt;/em&gt; within 4 degrees of the equator, because the Coriolis effect is just too small&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do cyclones (or hurricanes) form within 4 degrees of the equator?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="5487" LastEditDate="2015-02-17T03:03:57.093" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T11:17:00.857" Title="Do cyclones or hurricanes form near the equator?" Tags="|weather|meteorology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20101" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-02T09:17:57.780" Score="5" ViewCount="740" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/4LkMweOVOOI?t=1h&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This YouTube video snippet&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Easterbrook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr Don Easterbrook&lt;/a&gt; claims there is not enough CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; available to affect the oceans enough to make them go lower than a pH of 7, and hence there is no acidification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true or are there other factors that could cause &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ocean Acidification&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="6236" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T00:58:52.023" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T00:58:52.023" Title="Is ocean acidification happening?" Tags="|climate-change|oceanography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20101" CreationDate="2014-04-02T09:39:39.693" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know, nobody is claiming that ocean acidification will result in the pH going lower than 7, so this is at best a straw man.  The IPCC project a reduction by 0.3 - 0.4 units by 2100 (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-4-2.html&quot;&gt;AR4 WG1 report&lt;/a&gt;) (current pH is about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification&quot;&gt;8.14&lt;/a&gt;).  The pH does not need to fall as far as 7 for there to be substantial impacts (see the three sources given for details).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect this is just silly pedantry on the grounds that a pH greater than 7 is alkaline, so it is inaccurate to say that it isn't ocean acidification but ocean dealkalinisation.  However this is bogus as pH is getting more acidic and less alkaline as the pH drops, so it is perfectly correct to say that the oceans are becoming more acidic, even if the pH remains higher than 8.  It is a bit like defining &quot;hot&quot; as meaning above 0C and &quot;cold&quot; as below 0C and then complaining when someone describes a change from 2C to 1C as &quot;becoming colder&quot; and insisting on it being described as &quot;becoming less warm&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The glossary of the IPCC A4 report defines ocean acidification as &quot;A decrease in the pH of seawater due to the uptake of anthropogenic carbon dioxide&quot;, so they make it very clear that they mean only a decrease in pH.  Scientific terminology varies from field to field, if you want to understand the science, you do need to understand the terminology used in that field and not to try to impose your own definitions on what they have said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having now seen the video, my suspicion was entirely correct.  The OED defines &quot;acidification&quot; as &lt;em&gt;&quot;The action or process of making something (more) acidic; conversion into an acid; addition of acid. Cf. acidify v.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.  The inclusion of &quot;(more)&quot; means that the scientists use of the term is completely in accordance with normal English usage.  Senator Ericksen at about 1:03:15 makes a comment that suggests that he understands that &quot;less alkaline&quot; and &quot;more acidic&quot; means essentially the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW, a pH of 8.2 is not &quot;strongly alkaline&quot; as Easterbrook states, that is just hyperbole.  If seawater is &quot;strongly alkaline&quot;, one wonders how he would describe drain cleaner! ;o)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having looked at the video again, excluding the pedantry issue, Easterbrook only makes one scientific argument, which happens to be incorrect (which makes it rather ironic he described it as Chemistry 101 ;o).  He states &lt;em&gt;&quot;The effect of global warming is to make the oceans more alkaline, not more acidic, because warming drives CO2 out of the oceans&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.  Now it is true that the solubility of CO2 in water decreases with increasing temperature, but that is only part of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%27s_law&quot;&gt;Henry's law&lt;/a&gt; the other part is that the solubility depends on the difference in partial pressure in the atmosphere and the concentration in the water (the constant of proportionality depends on temperature).  So increasing temperatures will have the effect of reducing solubility, but the increasing partial pressure of CO2 will have the opposite effect, tending to increase solubility.  Which effect is strongest?  Well the fact that the oceans are acidifying (rather than becoming more alkaline as Easterbrook predicts) and that &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef200914u&quot;&gt;atmospheric CO2 levels are rising at only about half the rate of anthropogenic emissions&lt;/a&gt; is very strong evidence that the oceans are taking up large amounts of CO2.  It is the interplay of these two factors that to a large extent explains why CO2 levels have been so stable for the last million years, the pre-industrial equilibrium is the point where these two influences balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a good series of articles on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/Mackie_OA_not_OK_post_1.html&quot;&gt;Ocean Acidification&lt;/a&gt; at SkepticalScience.com, written by Doug Mackie that sets out the basics in some detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-04-02T14:04:43.880" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T14:04:43.880" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6114" CreationDate="2014-04-02T12:42:00.033" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Distance record in a day for a human is 188.590 miles.[1]&#xA;I can't find any record of an attempt at more than 100 miles for a horse. This makes it very difficult to say which can run &lt;strong&gt;further&lt;/strong&gt; in a comparison of human ultramarathon vs endurance riding, contrary to some of the other answers.&#xA;It's also not ideal to compare different races of the same distance across different terrain.&#xA;However, the question was with regard to a marathon distance which is 26.2 miles[2].&#xA;Some of the other answers have already pointed to the annual Man vs Horse marathon in Wales, which has only been won by a man twice out of thirty-three races.[3]&#xA;It has the advantage of comparing both man and horse on the course, on the same day. Given that fact, it's probably the fairest source of an answer to the question despite the fact that it actually falls approximately 4 miles short of being a true marathon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_run&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-hour_run&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18519" LastActivityDate="2014-04-02T12:42:00.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20108" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-02T22:03:01.807" Score="10" ViewCount="2193" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently had an argument with a conspiracy theory type who had a bunch of strange ideas about a number of pretty well established scientific phenomenon. One that I had never heard before, nor can I find anything to back up his claim, though I suspect it's nonsense, was that the Pangaea supercontinent could have never have existed because it would be impossible for all the earth's land masses to exist on one side of the planet and the oceans on the other side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer to him was that this was nonsensical since continental land is the same as ocean floor, except that it happens to be poking out from the water. But does anyone have any information/research to back up or repudiate this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18535" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T06:58:32.050" Title="Did Pangaea exist?" Tags="|geology|earth|young-earth-creationism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20108" CreationDate="2014-04-02T22:48:18.457" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, continental rocks are not the same as ocean floor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continents are mostly made up of minerals like &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=3657&quot;&gt;granite&lt;/a&gt;, which are lighter than ocean floor minerals like basalt (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sima_%28geology%29&quot;&gt;sima, short for Silicon/Magnesium&lt;/a&gt;). Continental material is mostly &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sial&quot;&gt;sial&lt;/a&gt; (short for  Silicon/Aluminium) which is lighter. Partially molten mantle material is pushed up at mid-ocean ridges, which then causes the tectonic plates (ocean plates) to move apart. As the mantle material is not fully molten, the composition of the melt is different from that of the mantle, which in turn is different from the continents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the continents are lighter they effectively float on the oceanic floor, and travel along with the spreading seafloor. There is abundant evidence for the movement of tectonic plates. The first discovery was the &lt;a href=&quot;http://platetectonics.pwnet.org/story_tectonics/theory/magnetic_striping.htm&quot;&gt;striped magnetism&lt;/a&gt; of the seafloor, caused by the effect of earth's reversing magnetic field on solidifying rock. Earthquakes are also far more prevalent at plate boundaries than elsewhere, and maps show quite clearly that earthquake follow the boundaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continental movement has been measured directly with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iris.edu/hq/files/programs/education_and_outreach/aotm/14/1.GPS_Background.pdf&quot;&gt;GPS satellites&lt;/a&gt;, and also by bouncing lasers off the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moonlandinghoax.org/8.html&quot;&gt;reflectors that the Apollo astronauts left&lt;/a&gt; on the moon. Of course, conspiracy theorists may not believe those mirrors are actually there... At least they would have to admit that GPS works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continental drift does not necessarily mean that all the continents ever were joined together. However, there is a lot of evidence for that, too. Start with the way the continents fit together. There is also the distribution of related fossils across different continents (leading, for example, to marsupials in Australia and the Americas only), which would otherwise be very hard to explain. And, there is the fact that, if you join the continents together, geological features line up. Again it would be a funny coincidence if this happened without them having been joined while those features were formed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastEditorUserId="6710" LastEditDate="2014-04-03T11:01:42.233" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T11:01:42.233" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20112" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-03T07:45:31.923" Score="6" ViewCount="806" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/education/svrwx101/lightning/faq/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, it seems like the visible portion of lightning comes from the ground up; however I watched some slow motion &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dukkO7c2eUE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YouTube videos&lt;/a&gt;, and it is clear that the lightning appears to be traveling downwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-blogs/weathermatrix/lightning-seminar-lightning-101-lightning-lingo/16589&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; it claims the visible part of lightning travels down:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lightning goes both &quot;from the ground up&quot; and &quot;from the cloud down&quot;.&#xA;  The first part you can't see starts up and goes down and is called a&#xA;  &quot;Leader&quot;, leading the trail of the transfer of charge. Special cameras&#xA;  can track these. The Return Stroke actually propagates up the channel,&#xA;  and is the light that we see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how does one reconcile the fact that generally speaking people see lightning as going down? Initially I thought the brain may misinterpret the image somehow, perhaps since lightening is traveling so fast. But in the slow motion YouTube video the lightening is still traveling from sky down. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T22:53:46.583" LastActivityDate="2014-07-16T13:58:14.050" Title="If the viewable part of lightning goes from the ground up, why does it look like lightning goes from the sky down?" Tags="|physics|ophthalmology|weather|lightning|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2014-07-16T17:10:20.133" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20092" CreationDate="2014-04-03T08:58:37.670" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding the person you mentioned, there's another article (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2593013/The-elation-hearing-birdsong-gurgling-tap-childs-voice-In-emotional-interview-Joanne-filmed-hearing-sound-week-deaf-birth-reveals-felt.html&quot;&gt;Mail&lt;/a&gt;) explaining her experience with Usher Syndrome in detail (kudos to comment from Johnny):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She explains: 'My hearing aids gave me some sense of the environment around me. &lt;em&gt;I could recognise when someone started talking, like an indistinct noise, but I had to lip-read to understand what they were saying. And I couldn't distinguish different voices.&lt;/em&gt; But with my implant I can identify voices, hear individual words and sounds. It's just amazing.&#xA;  'I used to rely on someone to tap me on the arm or leg to indicate that they were talking. Because I lip-read, I always had to look at them to know what they were saying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also worth noting that her speech therapist was in the room with her when her implants started working. It's possible she had some speech therapy for quite some time. So the ability to understand someone talking after receding deafness may depend on that. It also depends on the amount of hearing loss involved, since deafness may vary from person to person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also another deaf person who manages to produce spoken words after 18 years of speech therapy, in spite of not having a cochlear implant - Rachel Kolb. &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/uKKpjvPd6Xo&quot;&gt;http://youtu.be/uKKpjvPd6Xo&lt;/a&gt; She had to feel the vibrations coming from the nose and throat to understand how the spoken word was produced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18243" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T08:58:37.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20115" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20117" CreationDate="2014-04-03T16:13:21.677" Score="13" ViewCount="6463" Body="&lt;p&gt;The History Channel documentary &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America%3a_The_Story_of_Us&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;America, the Story of Us&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; states that NASA uses whale oil in the Hubble Space Telescope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any solid evidence to confirm or dispute this claim?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18134" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:27:15.107" LastActivityDate="2016-10-16T14:26:26.840" Title="Does NASA use whale oil in the Hubble Telescope?" Tags="|astronomy|nasa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20115" CreationDate="2014-04-03T17:13:21.393" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;This appears to be a myth that has been repeated in the media. White it is true that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_oil&quot;&gt;whale&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_oil&quot;&gt;sperm oil&lt;/a&gt; have been used historically as lubricants, modern &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lubegard.com/lxe.aspx&quot;&gt;synthetic replacements&lt;/a&gt; exist from a variety of manufactures to include the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyelubricants.com/index.shtml&quot;&gt;Nye Lubricants&lt;/a&gt; that is mentioned in various articles as being a provider to NASA of lubricants. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least three articles have been written fact checking the story. The first from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemheritage.org/discover/media/magazine/index.aspx&quot;&gt;Chemical Heritage Magazine&lt;/a&gt; titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemheritage.org/discover/media/magazine/articles/31-3-whales-in-space.aspx&quot;&gt;Whales in Space&lt;/a&gt;&quot; reported the following,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Speculation about the use of whale oil in NASA’s machines had spread&#xA;  far enough by the late 1990s that the organization’s historians&#xA;  conducted a large-scale internal inquiry. At the time, most&#xA;  speculation focused on whale oil use in space shuttles, not in the&#xA;  Hubble telescope. Bill Barry, NASA’s chief historian, recalls that&#xA;  researchers traced the whale-oil rumors back to Nye Lubricants. “Our&#xA;  Shuttle engineers had a discussion with the chief of engineering at&#xA;  Nye Lubricants and left that conversation convinced that whale-based&#xA;  oils had been ‘out of vogue for a good many years’ and had never been&#xA;  used on the Shuttle.” Case closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since then NASA has conducted additional investigations into its other&#xA;  programs and has found no evidence of whale oil being used. After the&#xA;  History Channel documentary aired, NASA turned to Twitter to refute&#xA;  the recycled claim, quoting Hubble’s astrophysics systems manager: “No&#xA;  whale oil was used in Hubble.” But such pronouncements can’t seem to&#xA;  kill the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some further information on the fact checking of the &quot;Whales in Space&quot; article is &lt;a href=&quot;http://chemheritage.tumblr.com/post/80687677682/from-the-fact-checker-whales-in-space&quot;&gt;written by the fact checker&lt;/a&gt; who largely attributes the myth to arising out of the book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0061976202&quot;&gt;The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and bad fact checking on the part of its author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2014-04-03T17:13:21.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20118" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-03T18:33:55.747" Score="7" ViewCount="4038" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent spreading rumour about the missing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370&quot;&gt;Malaysian Airlines Flight 370&lt;/a&gt; (MH370) is that a passenger sent a message claiming to be hijacked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I have been held hostage by unknown military personal after my flight was hijacked (blindfolded). I work for IBM and I have managed to hide my cellphone in my ass during the hijack. I have been separated from the rest of the passengers and I am in a cell. My name is Philip Wood. I think I have been drugged as well and cannot think clearly.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://intellihub.com/freelance-journalist-hijacked-flight-370-passenger-sent-photo-hidden-iphone-tracing-back-secret-u-s-military-base-diego-garcia/&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the rumour true - i.e. that such a message was sent from a passenger after the plane went missing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18548" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T00:50:46.637" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T13:14:46.933" Title="Did an MH370 passenger text a claim of hijacking?" Tags="|aviation|mh370|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20119" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-03T23:59:52.227" Score="11" ViewCount="15050" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a serious question and not intended to demean any ethnic group or racial group. I'm Caucasian and have dated Asian (Chinese), black and South Asian (Indian and Pakistani) men. I have noticed distinct body smells in all three groups and I have been told I had a &quot;white man smell.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from diet, which I suspect contributes to body odor, is there any indication that ethnic/racial groups differ in odor, as they might in skin color or hair texture? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18535" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T12:10:35.427" Title="Do races/ethnicities have different odors?" Tags="|genetics|race|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20122" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-04T05:21:43.023" Score="5" ViewCount="2466" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.artofmanliness.com/trunk/687/gorkha-soldier-saves-girl-from-rape-and-takes-on-40-train-robbers-with-only-a-khukuri/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Art of Manliness website reports&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bishnu Shrestha, who had just retired from the Indian army where he served as a Gorkha soldier, held off a horde of robbers that tried to rob a train in India. From the article on Republica:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The band of about 40 robbers, some of whom were travelling as passengers, stopped the train in the Chittaranjan jungles in West Bengal around midnight. Shrestha– who had boarded the train at Ranchi in Jharkhand, the place of his posting–was in seat no. 47 in coach AC3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“They started snatching jewelry, cell phones, cash, laptops and other belongings from the passengers,” Shrestha recalled. The soldier had somehow remained a silent spectator amidst the melee, but not for long. He had had enough when the robbers stripped an 18-year-old girl sitting next to him and tried to rape her right in front of her parents. He then took out his khukuri and took on the robbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The girl cried for help, saying ´You are a soldier, please save a sister´,” Shrestha recalled. “I prevented her from being raped, thinking of her as my own sister,” he added. He took one of the robbers under control and then started to attack the others. He said the rest of the robbers fled after he killed three of them with his khukuri and injured eight others…“Fighting the enemy in battle is my duty as a soldier; taking on the dacoits in the train was my duty as a human being,” said the Indian army nayak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, one man took on 40 armed thieves with only a khukuri.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this hard to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can anyone come to a train bringing knife?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T15:02:02.803" Title="Did a soldier fight off 40 train robbers?" Tags="|criminology|india|martial-arts|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20122" CreationDate="2014-04-04T06:56:45.740" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archives.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&amp;amp;news_id=27132&quot;&gt;Bishnu Shrestha&lt;/a&gt;'s story seems to have undergone some embellishments in the re-telling, but the underlying accounts were considered veracious enough for &lt;a href=&quot;http://the-indian-army.blogspot.in/2012/02/list-of-gallantry-award-winners-on-2012.html&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://indianarmy.gov.in/Site/FormTemplete/frmTempSimple.aspx?MnId=VK3mJdmPQdEbcRWt4Tk1Cw==&amp;amp;ParentID=qrOzFs5BScmRnecGW2h9Bw==&amp;amp;flag=cME4A8gsAx6nSJ1YE+za/g==&quot;&gt;medals&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://archives.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&amp;amp;news_id=27132&quot;&gt;honours&lt;/a&gt; to be awarded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reading the question, I assumed &quot;retired&quot; meant 55 or older. He was 35 years old at the time of the incident. The people arrested for the crime were &quot;youths&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The reports are inconsistent about the total number of criminals, the number he killed and the number he injured:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archives.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&amp;amp;news_id=27100&quot;&gt;Republica&#xA;reported&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(triggering the quote in the question) about 40 criminals, with three killed&#xA;and eight injured.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraphindia.com/1100904/jsp/bengal/story_12895050.jsp&quot;&gt;Telegraph India&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;saying &quot;about 15&quot; criminals, three injured, no deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://xnepali.net/a-gurkha-soldier-who-fought-40-train-robbers-to-be-felicitated-in-the-republic-day-of-india/&quot;&gt;Xnepali&lt;/a&gt; report 30 train robbers (but judging from the URL, lowered it from 40 originally), three deaths and eight injuries.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/dacoits-loot-maurya-express-4-passengers-in/676875/&quot;&gt;The Indian Express&lt;/a&gt; reported 11 criminals, four injuries (amongst the passengers) and nothing about an ex-ghurka soldier fighting back.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T06:56:45.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20124" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20229" CreationDate="2014-04-04T07:20:02.660" Score="1" ViewCount="2346" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the medical device described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulliver%27s_Travels&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Guliver's Travels&lt;/a&gt;, published in 1726, resemble anything that actually existed, or has there ever been a medical need to pump air into the anus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was complaining of a small Fit of the Cholick, upon which my&#xA;  Conductor led me into a Room, where a great Physician resided, who was&#xA;  famous for curing that Disease by contrary Operations from the same&#xA;  Instrument. He had a large pair of Bellows with a long slender Muzzle&#xA;  of Ivory. This he conveyed eight Inches up the Anus, and drawing in&#xA;  the Wind, he affirmed he could make the Guts as lank as a dried&#xA;  Bladder. But when the Disease was more stubborn and violent, he let in&#xA;  the Muzzle while the Bellows were full of Wind, which he discharged&#xA;  into the Body of the Patient, then withdrew the Instrument to&#xA;  replenish it, clapping his Thumb strongly against the Orifice of the&#xA;  Fundament; and this being repeated three or four times, the&#xA;  adventitious Wind would rush out, bringing the noxious along with it&#xA;  (like Water put into a Pump) and the Patient recover. I saw him try&#xA;  both Experiments upon a Dog, but could not discern any Effect from the&#xA;  former. After the latter, the Animal was ready to burst, and made so&#xA;  violent a Discharge, as was very offensive to me and my Companions.&#xA;  The Dog died on the Spot, and we left the Doctor endeavouring to&#xA;  recover him by the same Operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-04-13T15:12:07.773" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T17:59:46.373" Title="Did such a medical device ever exist that blew air into the anus?" Tags="|medical-science|history|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17517" CreationDate="2014-04-04T07:48:19.547" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several German books (e.g. Ulli Kulke's &quot;Weltraumstürmer&quot;, Johannes Weyer's &quot;Wernher von Braun&quot;) say that von Braun's statement was made more than ten years after the fact, in 1956.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can judge, the source is &lt;a href=&quot;http://longstreet.typepad.com/thesciencebookstore/2013/08/did-we-hit-the-wrong-planet-w-von-braun-1956.html&quot;&gt;von Braun's article &quot;Reminiscences of German Rocketry&quot; published in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society&lt;/a&gt; which had a sub-heading: &quot;Did we land on the wrong planet?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article itself says it is von Brauns's story &quot;as told to Henry J. White&quot;, so that the wording might or might not not come from Brown himself. On the other hand, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=p-CZ5iydXoUC&amp;amp;pg=PA293&amp;amp;lpg=PA293&amp;amp;dq=%22Behind%20The%20Scenes%20Of%20Rocket%20Development%20In%20Germany%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=VfPJV2hFvc&amp;amp;sig=o3ZnKJgt5W43lY65uctjWqZh9nY&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=t2E-U-TyJ-fX7AbooYCIAg&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22Behind%20The%20Scenes%20Of%20Rocket%20Development%20In%20Germany%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;some imply&lt;/a&gt; that the article was &quot;a heavily edited version&quot; of von Braun's manuscript &quot;Behind The Scenes Of Rocket Development In Germany 1928 through 1945&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastEditorUserId="18230" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T13:37:01.383" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T13:37:01.383" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20118" CreationDate="2014-04-04T13:14:46.933" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The purported message wasn't sent to the passenger's family, the press or authorities. Instead, its source has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/599910-diego-garcia-source-for-alleged-philip-wood-photo-revealed-to-be-4chan-likely-hoax/&quot;&gt;traced back&lt;/a&gt; as an &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/27834494/#27834494&quot;&gt;anonymous message&lt;/a&gt; to, of all places, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan&quot;&gt;4chan forum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As their Wikipedia page describes, 4chan is the source of a number of hoaxes; it is not a reputable source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no credible evidence to suggest that the message is anything other than a hoax in poor taste, that has been swallowed by some irrational conspiracy theorists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T13:14:46.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20130" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-04T14:37:40.423" Score="5" ViewCount="4174" Body="&lt;p&gt;2010 article from gigaom (&lt;a href=&quot;http://gigaom.com/2010/09/13/sensor-networks-top-social-networks-for-big-data-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://gigaom.com/2010/09/13/sensor-networks-top-social-networks-for-big-data-2/&lt;/a&gt; Sensor Networks Top Social Networks for Big Data) says that twin engine Boeing Jet aircraft generates lot of information, 40 terabytes per hour:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Boeing jet generates 10 terabytes of information per engine every 30 minutes of flight, according to Stephen Brobst, the CTO of Teradata. So for a single six-hour, cross-country flight from New York to Los Angeles on a twin-engine Boeing 737 — the plane used by many carriers on this route — the total amount of data generated would be a massive 240 terabytes of data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that engine's sensors generates so lot data?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that all data generated by sensors are stored on-board (this will need 50+ hugest 4TB harddrives) or downloaded to Earth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10996" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T02:07:16.383" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T02:07:16.383" Title="Terabytes of data generated by Boeing Jet every hour" Tags="|aviation|electronics|hardware|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20131" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-04T15:00:21.203" Score="2" ViewCount="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story is that (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blogher.com/wild-parrots-east-austin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blogher.com/wild-parrots-east-austin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a city known from producing fake rain (remember the sprinklers on MoPac near 35th Street?) and celebrating Spamarama, it should be no surprise that Janet Gilles can stand under a light pole on Town Lake and chirp without causing much of a fuss. She calls out for monk parakeets seen grooming just before they leave their nests to eat. They chirp back. Gilles release 19 monk parakeets, natives to Argentina, in March of 1991 when they wore out their welcome as house pets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those sites describe this story as an urban myth, but that designation &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_myth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;suggests nothing about the story's veracity&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T15:00:21.203" Title="Did the wild Parakeets of Austin originate as housepets?" Tags="|birds|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16829" CreationDate="2014-04-04T16:01:39.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several claims about extremely huge data storage capacity in Utah, like &quot;&lt;em&gt;The NSA's Utah Data Center will be able to handle and process five zettabytes of data.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (yotta = 1000 zetta = 1M exa = 1 billion peta = 1 trillion tera)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of them comes from wrong estimations from William Binney (a former NSA technical director), according to NPR: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2013/06/10/190160772/amid-data-controversy-nsa-builds-its-biggest-data-farm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.npr.org/2013/06/10/190160772/amid-data-controversy-nsa-builds-its-biggest-data-farm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The NSA's Utah Data Center will be able to handle and process five zettabytes of data, &lt;strong&gt;according to William Binney&lt;/strong&gt;, a former NSA technical director turned whistleblower. Binney's calculation is an &lt;strong&gt;estimate&lt;/strong&gt;. An NSA spokeswoman says the actual data capacity of the center is classified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is full photocopy of Binney declaration for the CASE NO. CV-08-04373-JSW, from September 28, 2012: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/binneydeclaration.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/binneydeclaration.pdf&lt;/a&gt; - page 4 lines 18-26:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;18   11. A futher notable development has been the NSA's public announcement in October &#xA;19  2009 that it was building a massive, $1.2 billion digital storage facility in Ft. Williams, Utah.&#xA;20  According to some reports, the Utah facility will eventually have a data storage capacity measured &#xA;21  in yottabytes (10**24 bytes). Even if the Utah facility were to have no more than the amount of data&#xA;22  storage that is presently commercially available, then one would expect the data storage to be in the&#xA;23  range of multiples of ten exebytes (10**18 bytes). See www.cleversafe.com. (According to &#xA;24  Cleversafe, its ten exebyte storage solution fills no more than tho hundred square feet).&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forbes checked his estimations and found huge error in how much space will Cleversafe's solution needs for 10 exabytes:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/07/24/blueprints-of-nsa-data-center-in-utah-suggest-its-storage-capacity-is-less-impressive-than-thought/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/07/24/blueprints-of-nsa-data-center-in-utah-suggest-its-storage-capacity-is-less-impressive-than-thought/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blueprints Of NSA's Ridiculously Expensive Data Center In Utah Suggest It Holds Less Info Than Thought, 7/24/2013&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Binney gave the 5 zettabyte estimate to NPR and also included it in an affidavit filed in Jewel vs. NSA ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His estimate is based on the assumption the facility might offer equipment like that developed by Cleversafe. The company says it has a 10-exabyte data storage system that involves portable data centers with 21 racks each&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Binney read this as meaning that 21 racks could hold 10 exabytes, and assumed an efficient rack size of 4 square feet, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;he misread the Cleversafe marketing materials&lt;/strong&gt;. They actually say that 560 portable data centers of 21 racks each (or 11,760 racks) can hold 10 exabytes. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chris Gladwin, founder of Cleversafe, says that in January of 2012, 10 exabytes of storage system would have needed “about 2 million square feet.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, marketing speech of Cleversafe leads ex NSA technical director to the very wrong estimations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10996" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T16:01:39.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20108" CreationDate="2014-04-04T18:56:34.690" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to @hdhondt's answer (+1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangea#Evidence_of_existence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The evidence for the existence of Pangea&lt;/a&gt; lies in the existence of &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1144/0016-764901-118&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;matches&lt;/a&gt; between fossil records and rock formations in continents that are now thousands of miles apart, in addition to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wegener's&lt;/a&gt; observation that the (continental shelves) of the existing continents match quite closely like a jigsaw.  If Pangea did not exist, it becomes hard to explain how the same fossil species evolved independently on continents that were not contiguous at some point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This picture from Wikipedia illustrates the fossil evidence for Pangea quite nicely:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UKKIl.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, Pangea apparently formed as a result of a mantle plume producing very high rates of production of ocean sea floor, which in turn pushed all of the continents together, until the plume subsided and divergent faults within Pangea pushed the continents apart again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seem to be a fair few papers about this sort of thing, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v1/n8/full/ngeo250.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1342937X08001469&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but the geology is well beyond me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-04-04T19:03:54.003" LastActivityDate="2014-04-04T19:03:54.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20124" CreationDate="2014-04-05T02:26:24.993" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.universityhealthsystem.com/colonoscopy/&quot;&gt;Colonoscopy&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During colonoscopy, air is placed in the colon to help visualize the&#xA;  walls of the colon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/colorectal-cancer/colonoscopy-16695&quot;&gt;elaborate&lt;/a&gt;, the patient needs to clear their intestines by &#xA;1) Not eating&#xA;2) Taking MgCl&#xA;3) Using an enema.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Afterwards, the doctor inserts the colonoscope, and needs to inflate the intestine so that he can see the intestinal walls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a very awkward feeling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16282" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T02:26:24.993" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20139" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20148" CreationDate="2014-04-05T03:21:14.027" Score="15" ViewCount="1565" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to PolitiFact.com, Barack Obama stated that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By the time she turns 3 years old, a child born into a low-income home hears 30 million fewer words than a child from a well-off family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, PolitiFact.com reported &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/dec/05/barack-obama/obama-says-children-low-income-families-hear-30-mi/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; that this claim is true, on the basis of the research of child psychologists Betty Hart and Todd Risley published in the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books/about/Meaningful_differences_in_the_everyday_e.html?id=I2pHAAAAMAAJ&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. There's even an advocacy group called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tmw.org/tmw-initiative/&quot;&gt;Thirty Million Words Initiative&lt;/a&gt; directed by professor Dana Suskind at the University of Chicago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that this number seems implausible to me, since 30,000,000 is roughly 1 word/second for 8 hours a day every day for 3 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim actually true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: The original paper behind the research, &quot;The Early Catastrophe&quot; by Hart and Risley, is available freely from Harvard &lt;a href=&quot;http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1317532.files/09-10/Hart-Risley-2003.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13878" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-06T17:13:16.093" LastActivityDate="2015-12-30T22:37:10.903" Title="Do poor children hear 30 million fewer words by age 3?" Tags="|psychology|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18350" CreationDate="2014-04-05T05:46:54.827" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trigger warnings:&lt;/strong&gt; Detailed depiction of sexual assault, trafficking, and related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends on what you mean by &quot;well&quot;, and it depends on a wide different number of factors - Paid by whom, to whom? The actual yen range was so wide it's hard to depict an &quot;average&quot; without being insensitive to the trauma endured. It's like asking how well-paid the average prostitute here in the States is, when the reality stretches from a person making just over the minimum wage, to higher-class escorts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=mV5dymPXNBgC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;particular book&lt;/a&gt;, pages 35-36:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many married women also became prostitutes due to financial difficulties that arose while their husbands were working away from home. &lt;strong&gt;However, the amount of an advance paid for a Korean woman was for less than that paid for a Japanese woman&lt;/strong&gt;. For example, in 1933, brothel owners in Inchon made an advance payment of between &lt;strong&gt;200 and 700 yen for a Korean woman&lt;/strong&gt; for a five-year contract, while between &lt;strong&gt;700 and 2500 yen was a usual amount paid for a Japanese woman&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;  [...]&#xA;  It was quite common also for owners of &quot;restaurants,&quot; &quot;cafes,&quot; and &quot;bars,&quot; who operated clandestine prostitution businesses, to pay far less - &lt;strong&gt;between 50 and 100 yen in advance&lt;/strong&gt; - in order to employ Korean women under the pretence of being &quot;waitresses&quot; and &quot;barmaids&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those are just some of the &quot;better&quot; examples of &quot;advances&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=Q5IX0vcmsuQC&amp;amp;source=gbs_navlinks_s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another book from Columbia University Press gives more examples that don't fare better - page 101&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A woman with the professional name Kikumaru, who worked as a geisha in Nishikoyama in Tokyo, went to the Truk Islands in 1942 to work in a comfort station for naval officers. &lt;strong&gt;Since the military agreed to pay off her debt of close to 4,000 yen&lt;/strong&gt; to the brothel owner, she is said to have volunteered. [...] Contracts were for a period of one and a half years. &lt;strong&gt;Comfort women kept 40 percent of their earnings, while 60 percent went to the navy&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=mV5dymPXNBgC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Back to the other book&lt;/a&gt;, page 78, harder to read, gives an example of a &quot;comfort station&quot; (in Flores, from Surabaya, which included trafficked Eurasians, Chinese, Indonesians, etc) and gives a more harrowing description. In the previous page there was a disturbing mention of &lt;em&gt;involuntary&lt;/em&gt; inspection of their genitalia, to detect the condition of their hymen (or archaically, &quot;virginity&quot;, which is worth noting it's not an actual medical term):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On average, each woman was forced to serve 20 soliders, two NCOs, and one officer every day. [...] Each comfort woman was expected to collect at least 100 &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;tickets&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; a week. Those who failed were physically punished by the manager. Each man was given a condom along with the ticket, and was instructed to use it without fail. But many would not use condoms and some beat into submission those women who refused service without a prophylactic. &lt;strong&gt;It seems the women rarely received payment&lt;/strong&gt;, although sufficient food was provided every day. [...] Undoubtedly their situation was very similar to that experienced by most Korean comfort women, as seen in the previous chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And apparently some women were downright lied to about any supposed benefits other than monetary value - page 79:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to a Javanese woman, Siti Fatimah, a daughter of Singadikarto, the Subdistrict head of Subang in west Java, she was told that she would be sent to Japan to study in Tokyo. [...] They joined a few hundred Indonesian girls who had been deceived by the Japanese and believe that they were going to Tokyo. The ship went instead to Flores Island. As soon as they arrived, the Japanese attitude towards the girls suddenly changed. [...] Three months later they were transported to the north of Buru Island, where they were put into a military compound. Here too, they were sexually abused every day until the end of the war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In both Flores and Buru, many girls died as the result of maltreatment by the Japanese. Others suffered psychological trauma as the result of sexual abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also another book called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=9HR_65wBRi4C&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Legacies of the Comfort Women&quot; with multiple authors&lt;/a&gt;, that gives a similar account of the Surabaya-Flores-Buru route and even mentions Siti Fatimah again in page 61.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18243" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T05:46:54.827" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20143" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20212" CreationDate="2014-04-05T18:34:17.370" Score="1" ViewCount="346" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/zoN0D337GaA?t=15m&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; in which &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Robbins&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tony Robbins&lt;/a&gt; claims practicing mentally can be more effective than practicing physically.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He refers to a study where basketball players struggling with free throws were split into three groups.  One group practiced throwing directly,  one group spent the time visualising the perfect shot,  and a third group did not practice.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His goes on to claim that the group who mentally practiced showed the most improvement.   Are there any studies to back up or refute this claim? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14529" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:40:33.803" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T00:40:33.803" Title="Is mentally practicing a skill more effective than physically practicing?" Tags="|physical-fitness|cognitive-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20144" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-04-05T19:23:21.703" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-04-05T19:23:21.703" LastActivityDate="2014-04-05T19:23:21.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20145" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-04-05T19:23:21.703" Score="0" Body="For all beverages, alcoholic or otherwise" OwnerUserId="18134" LastEditorUserId="18134" LastEditDate="2014-04-06T05:04:41.443" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T05:04:41.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20146" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-05T19:45:22.427" Score="2" ViewCount="458" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Canadian high-school student is &lt;a href=&quot;http://wearechange.org/alberta-students-science-project-finds-high-radiation-levels-grocery-store-seafood/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reported to have found&lt;/a&gt; that some kelp from supermarkets is radioactive beyond safe limits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Some of the kelp that I found was higher than what the International Atomic Energy Agency sets as radioactive contamination, which is 1,450 counts over a 10-minute period,” she said. “Some of my samples came up as 1,700 or 1,800.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the claims made in here valid, particularly about the counts per minute and the levels being higher than the International Atomic Energy Agency standards? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not putting much stock in it since its a high school project, and the findings of the project itself i have yet to find. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18576" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2014-04-06T22:18:49.897" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T05:48:36.107" Title="Is food in Alberta, Canada contaminated with radioactivity?" Tags="|radiation|fukushima-daiichi|canada|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20147" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-06T01:28:40.363" Score="11" ViewCount="673" Body="&lt;p&gt;Healbe had &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/healbe-gobe-the-only-way-to-automatically-measure-calorie-intake&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an IndieGoGo campaign&lt;/a&gt; for the GoBe which raised about a million dollars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only GoBe precisely calculates calorie intake, burn, and metabolic rate during any activity, with no logging, tracking, or guesswork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;https://images.indiegogo.com/file_attachments/478256/files/20140402062420-flow.jpg?1396445060&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;infographic&lt;/a&gt; states that through a combination of a pressure sensor, impedance sensor, and accelerometer, they can calculate your Calorie intake, calories burned, heart rate, stress levels, hydration levels, and sleep status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pando Daily &lt;a href=&quot;http://pando.com/tag/healbe/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;disagreed&lt;/a&gt; during the campaign, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.producthunt.com/posts/healbe-gobe-2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;admits there were issues in the first version&lt;/a&gt; but they &lt;a href=&quot;https://healbe.com/us/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt; the new version can measure intake with 15% accuracy. Is this backed up by any evidence and/or consistent with available evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7100" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-11-19T09:23:23.580" LastActivityDate="2017-11-23T17:42:23.883" Title="Can the GoBe devices measure your caloric intake?" Tags="|nutrition|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20139" CreationDate="2014-04-06T04:40:37.963" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article from which this claim stems has multiple issues. The most glaring is that even though its subtitle is &quot;The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3&quot;, the body of the article never actually makes this claim, instead claiming that there is a 32 million gap by age 4. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors of the article gathered data on how many words per hour a child heard through monthly 1-hour observations starting at 7-9 months of age and ending at 33-36 months of age. How and when this observation was conducted is not described. On average during this observation, children in families on welfare heard an average of 616 words while children from professional families heard an average of 2153 words. They assume that children are exposed to the same number of words per hour for 14 hours/day, and conclude that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In four years of such experience, an&#xA;  average child in a professional family would have accumulated experience with almost&#xA;  45 million words, an average child in a working-class family would have accumulated&#xA;  experience with 26 million words, and an average child in a welfare family would have&#xA;  accumulated experience with 13 million words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This of course doesn't match the claim in the subtitle (since it refers to age 4). A couple of severe problems in the analysis stand out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The assumption that children are exposed to the same number of words for 14 hours per day as in the one hour of observation is suspect, and is impossible to evaluate since the conditions of observation are not described.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Presumably people talk less to babies than to children who can understand them, so extrapolating the constant rate of exposure back to birth is unreasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The math is also a little off: 2153 words/hour for 14 hours a day for 4 years works out to 44.01 million, not 45 million. Based on their numbers and assumptions, the actual word gap by age 3 is 23.6 million words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also seems to have never been subject to peer review, appearing first in a book by the authors and later being reprinted in the magazine &quot;American Educator&quot;, published by the American Federation of Teachers. Google Scholar lists the correct citation as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hart, Betty, and Todd R. Risley. &quot;The early catastrophe.&quot; Education Review 17.1 (2003).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the only journals I was able to find with that name are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edrev.info/index.html&quot;&gt;a journal of book reviews&lt;/a&gt; and what appears to be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.educationreview.com.au/&quot;&gt;magazine&lt;/a&gt;, neither of which published it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the whole, it seems that the word gap is large, but the claim probably significantly exaggerates it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13878" LastActivityDate="2014-04-06T04:40:37.963" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20152" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-06T17:06:59.793" Score="6" ViewCount="1087" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tigerkingdom.com/Phuket.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tiger Kingdom&lt;/a&gt; attraction in Phuket lets you walk into the enclosure and pose for photos with real, live, full-size tigers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://static.asiawebdirect.com/m/phuket/portals/phuket-com/homepage/phuket-magazine/tiger-kingdom/allParagraphs/0/image/tiger-kingdom-phuket.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Man literally about to get eaten by tiger.&quot;&gt;Man literally about to get eaten by tiger. http://static.asiawebdirect.com/m/phuket/portals/phuket-com/homepage/phuket-magazine/tiger-kingdom/allParagraphs/0/image/tiger-kingdom-phuket.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim that the tigers are not drugged. From their website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tigers at Tiger Kingdom are hand raised by their trainers since young, bonding with it throughout the development process. The trainer employ a combination of repetition, trust and encouragement to train their big cats and over time the Big Cat are use to human and often see us as one of the family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I call shenanigans. How is it possible to get close to a tiger and have it not attack/eat you? Is it possible they are lying about drugging the tigers? Would it be possible to keep the tigers extremely well fed and reduce their appetite for attack?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3837" LastEditorUserId="3837" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T18:43:41.800" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T18:43:41.800" Title="Are the tigers at Tiger Kingdom in Phuket drugged?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20156" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23749" CreationDate="2014-04-06T20:32:44.643" Score="27" ViewCount="4588" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cynical-c.com/2007/08/08/only-15-to-20-of-combat-soldiers-in-wwii-would-fire-at-enemy/&quot;&gt;cynical-c&lt;/a&gt;:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in combat during World War II would fire at the enemy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this statistic accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T22:17:52.153" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T18:22:48.827" Title="Did most of the American riflemen in combat during World War II avoid firing at the enemy?" Tags="|history|war|world-war-ii|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20161" CreationDate="2014-04-07T02:26:15.497" Score="3" ViewCount="773" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was chatting to some older folks today that had recently attended a &quot;retirement course&quot; (i.e. a course that teaches you about retirement and what to expect etc.). One of the presenters apparently claimed that their life expectancy was ~100 years, and that their children could expect 125 years. The basis for this claim was that the actuarial tables used to compute the life expediencies we're always seeing reported (~88 years for women, a bit less for men), are based on research done in the 1970's, and do not account for modern medical advances (or possibly, for the pace of modern medical advances).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think there are three dubious claims here that I'd like to see evidence for, or see debunked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That people aged ~20-30 today can reasonably expect to live to 125.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That people aged ~55-65 today can reasonably expect to live to 100.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That modern actuarial tables are computed using the bad methodology discussed above.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd be willing to accept evidence for these claims in the context of any modern, industrialized nation, so even if it's only true for say, people in Japan, that would still be of interest. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T23:38:58.397" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T23:38:58.397" Title="Are actuarial life expectancy tables based on information that is 40 years out of date?" Tags="|life-expectancy|aging|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20146" CreationDate="2014-04-07T03:38:17.503" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, the limit for foodstuffs of Cs-134 and Cs-137 is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inspection.gc.ca/food/imports/japan-nuclear-crisis/test-results-september-october-2012/eng/1384713807497/1384713849714&quot;&gt;1,000 Becquerels per kilogram&lt;/a&gt; according to the linked page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The student (or the reporter) says that the IEAE limits are &quot;1,450 counts in 10 minutes&quot; (that seems a strange unit to me), which works out at 0.4027777 counts per second, or 0.4 becquerels. Thus, for her to claim that as the limit, she must be measuring 2.5 tonnes of seaweed!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a bit more searching turned up &lt;a href=&quot;http://nutec.jaea.go.jp/fnca/common/images/l10.pdf&quot;&gt;this document from Japan&lt;/a&gt; - on page 3 it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ICRP : alpha emitters                   0.37 Bq/cm2&#xA;           : beta and gamma emitters 3.7 Bq/cm2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;JAERI : alpha emitters                   0.4 Bq/ cm2 &#xA;            : beta and gamma emitters 4.0 Bq/ cm2 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we have our 0.4 Bq figure, perhaps, but per square centimetre, but both Cs's are gamma emitters...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To conclude, I can only say that I suspect she has made some sort of false assumption or misreading of nuclear contamination data somewhere along the way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I'm also exceptionally suspicious of the seaweed being from China - who knows what other pollutants might be in that]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: I believe &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailyheraldtribune.com/2014/03/25/local-science-project-finds-high-levels-of-radiation-in-seaweed&quot;&gt;this is a better link&lt;/a&gt; that includes a photo of her Geiger counter, which is a bog-standard one, not a specialised food-measuring one. She also says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Radioactivity is measured in becquerels (Bq), and 0.5 Bq per square&#xA;  centimetre is widely considered an actionable level of contamination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Delacruz said one Bq is equivalent to 1,450 counts over a 10-minute&#xA;  period, and many of her samples tested well over this amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There we go. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becquerel&quot;&gt;One Bq is one count per second&lt;/a&gt;, and last time I checked there were 600, not 1,450 seconds in 10 minutes. Furthermore, she is using a surface contamination figure, as I suspected, so I wonder if the experimental procedure was to cut out a 1 cm square of seaweed and sit it on top of the detector for ten minutes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My updated conclusion: yes, false assumptions leading to a meaningless experiment. Junk. Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npl.co.uk/publications/good-practice-online-modules/radiation/radiation-monitoring-techniques/direct-measurement-of-surface-contamination/&quot;&gt;detailed description of how to measure surface contamination properly&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastEditorUserId="6397" LastEditDate="2014-04-07T05:48:36.107" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T05:48:36.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20159" CreationDate="2014-04-07T08:16:34.627" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No. Life expectancy estimates are based on current information alongside extrapolation of trends&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't speak for how every country does this, but the basic methods are common. I'm summarizing the figures used by the UK's Office of National Statistics (ONS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lifetables/historic-and-projected-data-from-the-period-and-cohort-life-tables/2012-based/sty-babies-living-to-100.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Current projections&lt;/a&gt; for the UK population are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Around one-third of babies born in 2013 in the UK are expected to survive to celebrate their 100th birthday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the 374,000 men and 393,000 women aged 65 this year (2013), 8% and 14% respectively are expected to survive to their 100th birthdays according to the principal projection..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both these claims are much more pessimistic than the first two made in the question. One third of babies making to 100 is not a &amp;quot;reasonable expectation&amp;quot; of living to 125 for newborns nor is 14% making it to 100 for 65 year olds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So how do they calculate these numbers?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life expectancy is calculated by observing &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; mortality (that is how many people in each age group actually died last year) and extrapolating trends in those rates into the future. The key information is those mortality numbers which are &lt;em&gt;current&lt;/em&gt; as most countries are fairly diligent about recording deaths. We can't predict the future perfectly, though, so the extrapolation to future mortality will introduce some uncertainty (but the projections are founded on long series of clearly observed numbers so, again, are not based on &amp;quot;old&amp;quot; data).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ONS &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lifetables/historic-and-projected-data-from-the-period-and-cohort-life-tables/2012-based/stb-2012-based.html#tab-Method&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;explains&lt;/a&gt; their method in more detail thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A life table is purely a hypothetical calculation. It is a statistical tool typically used to portray expectation of life at various ages. The basic assumption is that a given number of births (100,000 born in a given year, known as the radix of the life table) are subject, as the survivors pass through each year of age, to the mortality rates prevailing for each age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Period life tables deal with mortality rates in a particular year only. The mortality rates for each age are used to calculate how many of the 100,000 births will reach each year of age until eventually all have died. This enables the total number of years lived to be calculated. When this total is divided by the number of persons in the life table (100,000), the result is the average number of years lived or the mean expectation of life at birth. The total number of years lived from any given age can also be calculated and when divided by the number of survivors entering that year of age, the figure obtained is the expectation of life in years for those persons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cohort life tables are calculated using age-specific mortality rates which allow for known and projected changes in mortality. A cohort life table provides mortality rates that vary over time for each age. For example, cohort life expectancy at age 65 in 2012 would be worked out using the mortality rate for age 65 in 2012, for age 66 in 2013 for age 67 in 2014 and so on. This uses observed mortality rates in 2012 and projected mortality rates from 2013. Therefore, cohort figures are regarded as a more appropriate measure of how long a person of a given age would be expected to live on average than period life expectancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two projections being made here. Period life expectancy uses current mortality in its estimate; Cohort life expectancy uses projected future mortality changes (so it is the one to compare to the question's claims).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the UK the latest numbers are shown in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lifetables/historic-and-projected-data-from-the-period-and-cohort-life-tables/2012-based/stb-2012-based.html#tab-Life-Expectancy--ex--at-Birth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ONS&lt;/a&gt; chart below (with three scenarios based on uncertainty in the future mortality numbers):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Uc84s.png&quot; alt=&quot;UK cohort life expectancy at birth&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Life expectancy is calculated based on current, observable, numbers not old assumptions. And it isn't reasonable given those numbers that the optimistic projections in the question are likely to occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-07T08:16:34.627" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20164" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-07T20:03:59.977" Score="26" ViewCount="5782" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have my home computer set to go into &quot;sleep mode&quot; when idle for a short time, and I assumed that by  doing so I was saving lots of energy and that it was good for the computer by shutting down nearly every component while the computer is sleeping. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/10/19/computer-sleep-mode-vs-shutdown-savings-experiment&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt; claims that using sleep mode &quot;&lt;em&gt;can result in more harm that good. Your memory is still fully functioning, which can lead to overheating and damage, so it's always better to fully power down and let your machine rest.&lt;/em&gt;&quot; and additionally, it states that it &quot;&lt;em&gt;costs about $50 more per year on your electric bill&lt;/em&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The website is sponsored  by Bank of America and Visa, so I'd hope that they did their research, but it doesn't seem accurate, and is contrary to measurements of my own computer, which uses 1 - 2 watts in &quot;sleep mode&quot; (my Kill-a-Watt meter bounces between 1 and 2 Watts when measuring sleep mode power, and none of the components inside are warm to the touch).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At 1.5W, the computer should only cost around $2/year to keep it in sleep mode all day every day (at 15 cents/KWh for electricity), and 1.5W of power dissipation should not cause any heat problems at all, even with no fans running. To get up to the $50/year quoted on that website, the computer would have to dissipate nearly 40W of power while in &quot;sleep mode.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The website dates back from Oct, 2012, but my computer is older than that, so I don't think that the information on the website is simply out of date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it common for computers to use significant power in &quot;sleep mode&quot;? Doing so would seem to negate the entire advantage of having a sleep mode in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, turning it off (or hibernating it) may be more sustainable, but I'm trying to strike a balance between usability and sustainability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13418" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-04-08T23:17:47.343" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T15:58:30.813" Title="Is using &quot;sleep mode&quot; wasteful and harmful to a computer?" Tags="|computers|sustainability|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-09T03:39:41.163" Score="1" ViewCount="77" Body="&lt;p&gt;Has there ever been any people who existed from split personality disorder like those seen in movies? In the sense they had more than one coherent, distinct personalities (and weren't biopolar or another condition)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T03:39:41.163" Title="Is it possible to have a split personality like those seen in the movies?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-04-09T08:10:36.393" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20174" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-09T04:16:04.790" Score="2" ViewCount="174" Body="&lt;p&gt;A popular conspiracy theory is floating around that a passenger on-board MH370, named Philip Wood who worked for IBM, managed to stash a mobile phone and &lt;a href=&quot;http://intellihub.com/freelance-journalist-hijacked-flight-370-passenger-sent-photo-hidden-iphone-tracing-back-secret-u-s-military-base-diego-garcia/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;take a black photo&lt;/a&gt; with the coordinates embedded in the Exif data of where the plane has supposedly landed - a small island called Diego Garcia in the British Indian Ocean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is compounded by the fact that the man's wife has &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1zNy-5ESos&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;been on BBC News&lt;/a&gt; claiming a cover-up, and also that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2584123/Revealed-Malaysian-Airlines-pilot-high-security-US-base-Diego-Garcia-programmed-homemade-flight-simulator-deleted-data-just-taking-control-missing-plane.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the FBI reports&lt;/a&gt; that one of the pilots had been practising flying to Diego Garcia in his home simulator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's now been 3 or 4 days since I heard this, and I'm wondering if any agency has been to check it out?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11930" OwnerDisplayName="Danny Beckett" LastEditorUserId="18134" LastEditDate="2014-04-09T17:57:47.063" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T17:57:47.063" Title="Has anybody flown to Diego Garcia to look for MH370?" Tags="|mh370|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2014-04-09T08:08:54.310" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20176" CreationDate="2014-04-09T12:35:54.860" Score="2" ViewCount="491" Body="&lt;p&gt;Picture scraper @Globe_Pics, which has 520,000 followers, &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Globe_Pics/status/453547871904993280&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tweeted&lt;/a&gt; the following (currently 205 retweets, and 135 favorites):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fMxIZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Tweeted picture: See description below&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Earless bunnies were born in Japan after the Fukushima Nuclear&#xA;  Disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twitter debunker account @PicPedant &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/PicPedant/status/453862453781463040&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;responded&lt;/a&gt; with the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Real pic but bunny ear loss isn't exclusively caused by radiation;&#xA;  there are other factors.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2002249/Japan-tsunami-earthquake-Earless-bunny-born-near-Fukushima-raising-new-nuclear-fears.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2002249/Japan-tsunami-earthquake-Earless-bunny-born-near-Fukushima-raising-new-nuclear-fears.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Daily Mail article states or quotes the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A rabbit was born in the UK without ears in 2008, before the nuclear accident in Japan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rabbits can lack ears because of genetic defects, or because of mothers biting off their ears.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If it were caused by Fukushima Dai-ichi, it'd be logical to expect other bunnies in the group to have defects, and there's no sign of that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the Daily Mail is well-known for publishing articles about science, it isn't as well known for reliability, so I'm not confident about it being used to evaluate a claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was the Fukushima Dai-ichi accident responsible for earless bunnies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T13:55:28.020" Title="Is Fukushima Dai-ichi responsible for earless bunnies?" Tags="|zoology|fukushima-daiichi|anatomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20175" CreationDate="2014-04-09T13:00:45.357" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very hard to say what is the cause of the bunny's situation, however, it's a somewhat common phenomenon, which is caused mainly by mutilation and not genetic defects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/06/09/6821742-nuclear-bunny-thats-too-big-a-leap&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NBC news article&lt;/a&gt; from 2011 cites University of Miami biologist Dana Krempels, and rabbit expert on the issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many different reasons a rabbit may be born this way or acquire this characteristic early on, &lt;strong&gt;not least of which is a stressed mother rabbit who overgrooms her babies to the point of mutilation. This is the most common reason we see baby bunnies with missing ears or limbs&lt;/strong&gt;. So while it's possible that the earless condition of this baby is congenital (i.e., bun was born with it), it's also possible that it was acquired after birth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to wonder whether there are any other bunnies in the group that have anomalies like that. I didn't see any. And that would make me very hesitant to cry 'Radiation!' just because one baby bunny is missing his external ear pinnae.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't tell from the video whether the bunny has ear canals covered by the fur. If not, that would tell us that this isn't a result of a mother's overgrooming, but rather some kind of birth defect. &lt;strong&gt;Whether it's due to radiation or some other factor is not possible to say, since these types of malformations do occasionally occur in the absence of known mutagens&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly, only time will tell whether the radiation leaks are affecting the germline (i.e., the cells that will become eggs or sperm) or embryos of human and non-human animals in the irradiated regions of Japan. &lt;strong&gt;But a sample size of one bunny is far too small to make a positive conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dana Krempels (Ph.D) appears on the University of Miami &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.as.miami.edu/biology/people/faculty-with-teaching-emphasis/dana-krempels/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Biology Department site&lt;/a&gt; as a Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies. Also, several sources online cite her as an expert on rabbits &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wheekwheekthump.com/2013/09/15/1-rabbit-resource-need-know-dana-krempels-ph-d/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;wheekwheekthump.com&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allexperts.com/ep/703-35789/Rabbits/Dana-Krempels-Ph-D.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;allexperts.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, this phenomena is well documented to happen in other places, even before the Fukushima accident:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://metro.co.uk/2008/12/22/heard-about-the-earless-bunny-267397/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Metro article&lt;/a&gt; from 2008 about an earless bunny from the UK&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/entertainment/2012/03/earless-bunny-crushed-by-cameraman/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An ABC news article&lt;/a&gt; about a German earless baby bunny crashed to death by a TV cameraman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blackinkwhitepaper.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/community-2/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A blog post&lt;/a&gt; telling (and showing) about someone's earless bunny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-09T13:55:28.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20191" CreationDate="2014-04-09T19:33:55.767" Score="18" ViewCount="7417" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this claim before, but every time I dig deeper I am unable to find a reason for why cucumbers would be significantly colder than their surroundings.  Is there any validity to this claim?  If so, why does this phenomenon occur?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/food-nutrition/natural-foods/natural-food-cucumber.htm&quot;&gt;How Stuff Works: Cucumbers: Natural Food&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All that water also gives cucumbers their unique refreshing quality, especially on a hot summer day. The phrase &quot;cool as a cucumber&quot; is actually a scientific fact: The inside temperature of a cucumber can be up to 20 degrees cooler than the outside air [source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fruitsandveggiesmatter.gov/month/cucumber.html&quot;&gt;CDC&lt;/a&gt;].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: The linked CDC page does not (no longer?) mention cucumbers. Presumably 20 degrees refers to an interval of 20 degrees Fahrenheit (an interval of about 11 degrees Celsius).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18633" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T16:38:22.437" LastActivityDate="2017-06-29T02:28:38.463" Title="Is the inside of a field cucumber 20 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than its surroundings?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20183" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-09T21:18:40.560" Score="3" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;At &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rense.com/general13/djsk.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rense.com&lt;/a&gt;, a writer claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The United States is known to have a huge budget for so called ``black projects,'' because it spends more on defense than can be accounted for by adding up the value of public programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any good examples from history of it being revealed that the US government knew about some technology long before the general scientific community did?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two most obvious examples I can think of are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Manhattan Project: However, I'm not sure how private it actually was -- I know they were very secretive about details (which are of course very important!), but the basic science was already widely known, I think.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RSA: I remember that a British mathematician later revealed to have discovered it before R, S, and A did, but it was kept quiet because of a security issue. So that's a good example, I think.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18510" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:39:49.843" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T00:39:49.843" Title="Does the US government have secret research projects?" Tags="|technology|government|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2014-04-10T21:51:15.920" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20190" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-10T18:11:16.620" Score="6" ViewCount="337" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politicalears.com/blog/yellowstone-animals-fleeing-park-supervolcano-eruption-imminent/?utm_content=buffer889c8&amp;amp;utm_medium=social&amp;amp;utm_source=facebook.com&amp;amp;utm_campaign=buffer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, which has been circulating lately on Facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, there is a mass animal exodus underway. Miles of buffalo can be seen running frantically from the Northwest end of the park. They are even running down roads. Elk are also evacuating at an astounding rate. Smaller animals such as rabbits and squirrels are also fleeing Yellowstone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to one expert, Thomas Lupshu, &lt;strong&gt;the only possible explanation is that the seismic activity in Yellowstone which has been increasing over the past month could mean that an eruption is on the way.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is an imminent volcanic eruption the most plausible explanation for this reported animal mass-exodus from Yellowstone National Park?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, I'm not asking if an eruption is imminent, I'm asking if there are other, more plausible explanations than this so-called expert Thomas Lupshu would have us believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T14:34:42.760" Title="Is an imminent volcanic eruption the most plausible explanation for the Yellowstone animal exodus?" Tags="|zoology|natural-disasters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20180" CreationDate="2014-04-10T19:35:30.577" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cucumbers, like all matter, are made up of, uh... matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And all matter has properties of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_conductivity&quot;&gt;thermal conductivity&lt;/a&gt; which dictate how quickly heat will move through the matter.  The thermal conductivity of a cucumber is incidentally reported at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0260877400001175&quot;&gt;0.62 W/m K&lt;/a&gt;.  This means that it will always take some time for heat to penetrate from the outside of the cucumber to the center of the cucumber.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the outside air temperature rises quickly enough, then the inside of the cucumber will, at some point, be 20 degrees lower than the outside air temperature--same as with any other matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T19:40:52.383" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T19:40:52.383" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20164" CreationDate="2014-04-10T20:13:10.070" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Sleep mode&quot; (on a computer or notebook) is a term that can hold different meaning.  Generally it is considered &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Configuration_and_Power_Interface#Global_states&quot;&gt;S3 as defined by the ACPI specification&lt;/a&gt;, otherwise called &quot;suspend-to-RAM,&quot; where your computer's RAM remains powered (let's call it charged) so that everything your computer is &quot;thinking&quot; at the time it entered sleep mode, it will resume thinking once it's awakened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your RAM loses power during Sleep Mode, you will lose your system's current state, which can be harmful to some data only.  All running software should be able to handle the announcement that &quot;I'm going to sleep kids!&quot; sent by the system [including the operating system itself].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things like &quot;hybrid sleep&quot; are measures to help protect this possible data loss by entering into S4 (&quot;suspend-to-disk&quot;), otherwise known as Hibernation before power loss occurs (it simply watches battery levels, it can't magically tell if you've unplugged the power from the back of your computer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while S3 does use more power versus G2 (&quot;soft off&quot;, what you think is actually &quot;off&quot;, although some peripherals, such as your network port, are likely still powered), it doesn't use a great amount more, and it uses a lot less than G0 (aka &quot;working on&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11246" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T20:13:10.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20193" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20205" CreationDate="2014-04-10T21:26:19.567" Score="16" ViewCount="783" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politicalears.com/blog/yellowstone-animals-fleeing-park-supervolcano-eruption-imminent/?utm_content=buffer889c8&amp;amp;utm_medium=social&amp;amp;utm_source=facebook.com&amp;amp;utm_campaign=buffer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; claims that animals are fleeing en masse from Yellowstone National Park.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, there is a mass animal exodus underway. Miles of buffalo can be seen running frantically from the Northwest end of the park. They are even running down roads. Elk are also evacuating at an astounding rate. Smaller animals such as rabbits and squirrels are also fleeing Yellowstone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It includes a video clip of a bunch of bison (not really buffalo) running down a road--but it's impossible to tell from the context of the video if this is abnormal, or if the bison are even fleeing the park.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are animals leaving the park in exceptional numbers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T14:13:52.593" Title="Are animals fleeing Yellowstone park?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20194" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20164" CreationDate="2014-04-10T21:30:52.177" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Damage to the computer because of &quot;sleeping&quot; frequently, if it happens, is probably caused by thermal cycling. Thermal cycling is the process of expansion-contraction due to changes in temperature. Even if the temperature itself stays within the rated limit, a large number of cycles can cause fatigue in the solder joints on your computer's internal components, which causes failure. Every time you put your computer in sleep mode, it cools down, then it heats up when you turn it back on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, fatigue due to thermal cycling was the primary cause of the high early failure rate of Nvidia's 8600 series line of graphics cards (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_Series#Problems&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dandax.wordpress.com/2010/10/20/el-extrano-caso-de-la-nvidia-geforce-8600/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog post going into more detail, in Spanish&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I qualified my initial statement because I can't find any evidence that &quot;sleeping&quot; frequently leads to early failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18307" LastEditorUserId="18307" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T21:41:57.953" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T21:41:57.953" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20196" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-04-10T22:29:42.393" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T22:29:42.393" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T22:29:42.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20197" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-04-10T22:29:42.393" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-04-10T22:29:42.393" LastActivityDate="2014-04-10T22:29:42.393" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20199" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-11T05:20:21.540" Score="19" ViewCount="41980" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amish.net/amish-life-faqs/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amish website&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the average life expectancy of Amish men and women and what is&#xA;the number one cause of death in the Amish communities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is the same&#xA;as for all persons in the United States, no different than for other&#xA;groups of people. Answer coordinated by THE BUDGET [Editor: According&#xA;to US Government Statistics, the average life expectancy for Caucasian&#xA;men is 74.3 and for Caucasian women is 79.9. The leading cause of&#xA;death is heart disease.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I however find it doubtful that with all the medical advances people living with 18th century technologies have the same life expectancy. I understand that it is partially balanced out by more healthier lifestyle (first of all, no alcohol) etc, but still I haven't seen a persuasive statistics to convince me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is this claim justified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T01:27:26.627" Title="Is life expectancy of an Amish person same as average in US?" Tags="|life-expectancy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20200" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-11T07:47:22.213" Score="8" ViewCount="2249" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently found &lt;a href=&quot;http://monthlyreview.org/commentary/did-mao-really-kill-millions-in-the-great-leap-forward&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; calling into question the effect of Mao's policies on the famine during the Great Leap Forward in China towards the end of the 1950s. The author doesn't go as far as to claim outright that there was no famine during this period of Chinese history, but he states that the sources which largely attribute the famine to Mao's policies are both biased and lack sufficient credibility. &lt;strong&gt;Is there sufficient credible evidence to attribute 30 million deaths during this period to Mao's failed policies (intentional or otherwise)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article claims that the death count was released by Deng Xiaoping's government to cast Mao in a bad light:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Official Chinese sources, released after Mao’s death, suggest that&#xA;  16.5 million people died in the Great Leap Forward. These figures were released during an ideological campaign by the government of Deng&#xA;  Xiaoping against the legacy of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural&#xA;  Revolution. However, there seems to be no way of independently,&#xA;  authenticating these figures due to the great mystery about how they&#xA;  were gathered and preserved for twenty years before being released to&#xA;  the general public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the reasoning he gives for this claim is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By encouraging the Chinese ruling class to describe the Great Leap&#xA;  Forward as a disaster that killed millions, Deng was able to develop a&#xA;  political line that made his regressive policies in the countryside&#xA;  seem legitimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author also claims that there are a lack of independent sources of data with which to determine the total number of deaths:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main reason so few national population data appear in Chinese&#xA;  sources, however, is central censorship. No national population&#xA;  figures can be made public without prior authorization by the State&#xA;  Council. Even officials of the SSB [State Statistical Bureau] cannot&#xA;  use such figures until they have been cleared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is independent evidence of such a large number of deaths, this would go a long way towards disproving the claims made in this article and affirming that the Great Leap Forward was indeed responsible for 30 million deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a further point against the likelihood of such a large famine, the author brings up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.china-profile.com/data/fig_WPP2008_L0_1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;large increases in Chinese life expectancy&lt;/a&gt; during that era:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But how is it possible to reconcile such statistics with the figures&#xA;  on life expectancy that the same authors quote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HUfu6.gif&quot; alt=&quot;national life expectancy&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="711" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T12:13:54.427" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T12:13:54.427" Title="Was Mao's Great Leap Forward responsible for 30 million deaths?" Tags="|history|mortality|politics|china|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20193" CreationDate="2014-04-11T14:13:52.593" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's unlikely, it seems they are just migrating for food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Al Nash, chief of public affairs for Yellowstone, explained in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1vwuBA6Gfk&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&quot;&gt;rumor control video&lt;/a&gt; on this subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We do have bison, elk and other animals that have moved outside the&#xA;  park recently, but they're doing that because it's the depth of&#xA;  winter, food is a little hard to find in places inside Yellowstone,&#xA;  and they tend to migrate at this time of the winter outside the park&#xA;  to lower elevations where they think there might be something to eat&#xA;  that's easier to get at. When the snow melts off and things start to&#xA;  green up, those very same animals will walk right back into the park.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the video displayed above was actually taken more than two weeks before the 30 March 2014 earthquake that triggered fears of an upcoming eruption at Yellowstone and shows bison running into the park, not away from it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leo Leckie, a sales associate of the nonprofit Yellowstone Assn. ...&#xA;  shot the video, which lasts 1 minute and 9 seconds and was originally&#xA;  posted March 14 on his Facebook page under the title, &quot;Yellowstone&#xA;  bison on the run for the joy of Spring.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Those bison were running for the sake of running,&quot; Leckie said in an&#xA;  interview. &quot;There was nothing chasing them. There was no mudslide.&#xA;  They were just running.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Added Leckie: &quot;And they were running into the park, not away from it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/critters/gnus/yellowstone.asp&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/critters/gnus/yellowstone.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17023" LastActivityDate="2014-04-11T14:13:52.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20209" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-11T17:34:17.790" Score="7" ViewCount="595" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cornucopia.org/2014/02/dont-eat-carrageenan-finding-alternatives-toxic-food-additive&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article on how to avoid carrageenan&lt;/a&gt; on a friend's facebook post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;article&amp;quot; starts with this statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carrageenan is a common food additive extracted from red seaweed. For the past four decades, scientists have warned that the use of carrageenan in food is not safe. Animal studies have repeatedly shown that food-grade carrageenan causes gastrointestinal inflammation and higher rates of intestinal lesions, ulcerations, and even malignant tumors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the evidence showing the risks in eating carrageenan, it’s still approved for use in organic food where it’s most often used as a stabilizer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there conclusive studies showing that carrageenan found in our food is a significant risk for gastrointestinal inflammation, and/or higher rates of intestinal lesions, ulcerations, or malignant tumors in humans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no direct references to research on the article, other than some circular links, resulting in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cornucopia.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Carrageenan-Report1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; (published by the same website).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been looking through some of the references in that paper, but I almost immediately spotted some rather dubious citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;15 Marinalg (seaweed-based hydrocolloid industry trade lobby&#xA;group, representing carrageenan manufacturers) test&#xA;results show contamination of food-grade carrageenan with&#xA;degraded carrageenan, classifed as a “possible human&#xA;carcinogen.” Available online at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marinalg.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.marinalg.org/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Final-Full-Report.pdf. Last accessed January 30, 2013&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a review of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.marinalg.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Final-Full-Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;that cited source&lt;/a&gt; shows no mention of the word &amp;quot;carcinogen&amp;quot;, and indeed states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Marinalg believes that there is no&#xA;toxicological evidence to support the establishment of the specific numerical values in the&#xA;specification&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is neither toxicological evidence from animal studies&#xA;nor epidemiological evidence from observation of the effects of consumption of carrageenan&#xA;by a broad segment of the population to indicate that commercial carrageenan for food use is&#xA;unsafe for human consumption. The effect of the very small amounts of lower molecular&#xA;weight components in carrageenan is of no significance to human health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the &amp;quot;report&amp;quot; by cornucopia.com complete bunk, or is there real science behind it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T14:55:42.567" Title="Does carrageenan cause gastrointestinal inflammation and higher rates of intestinal lesions, ulcerations, and even malignant tumors in humans?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20211" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20261" CreationDate="2014-04-12T04:53:50.593" Score="5" ViewCount="1153" Body="&lt;p&gt;I see repeated claims, mostly from sources of highly questionable veracity, that Sucralose was developed while searching for new insecticides. &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/w_DietAndFitness/sweet-nothings-artificial-sweeteners-splenda-equal-sweetn-low/story?id=16548908&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ABC news&lt;/a&gt; also makes this claim in a summery of various sugar substitutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Origin: Another accidental lab creation, this sweetener was discovered&#xA;  in 1976 by scientists in search of new insecticides&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Snopes has a similar claim regarding aspartame rated as false, but I'm not finding anything on this claim regarding Sucralose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/16500/13967&quot;&gt;There's also this question about whether they work as insecticides, which concludes they don't&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T10:49:34.613" Title="Was sucralose accidentally discovered in the course of insectide research?" Tags="|nutrition|entomology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20143" CreationDate="2014-04-12T05:40:08.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;[I]f an experienced individual has already learned the component motor skills of a physical task, then mental practice may be sufficient to enhance performance without additional physical practice and feedback.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is pretty much what is being said in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/zoN0D337GaA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; (starting at 15:00).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More from the study quoted above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A meta-analysis of the literature on mental practice was conducted to&#xA;  determine the effect of mental practice on performance and to identify&#xA;  conditions under which mental practice is most effective. Results&#xA;  indicated that mental practice has a positive and significant effect&#xA;  on performance, and the effectiveness of mental practice was moderated&#xA;  by the type of task, the retention interval between practice and&#xA;  performance, and the length or duration of the mental practice&#xA;  intervention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...snip...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Novice subjects benefited more from mental practice on cognitive tasks&#xA;  than on physical tasks. This result is consistent with Ryan and&#xA;  Simons's (1983) argument that if an experienced individual has already&#xA;  learned the component motor skills of a physical task, then mental&#xA;  practice may be sufficient to enhance performance without additional&#xA;  physical practice and feedback. For novices, who have not formed an&#xA;  approximation of the skill, the symbolic rehearsal provided by mental&#xA;  practice may not be sufficient to guide performance. This suggests&#xA;  that mental practice may be more effective, everything else held&#xA;  constant, if novice subjects are given schematic knowledge before&#xA;  mental practice of a physical task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...snip...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In summary, the results of this study indicate that mental practice is&#xA;  an effective means for enhancing performance, although less effective&#xA;  than physical practice. Thus, for tasks that are dangerous to train&#xA;  for physically, for tasks in which there are seldom opportunities for&#xA;  physical practice, or as a means of supplementing normal training,&#xA;  mental practice should be considered as an effective training&#xA;  alternative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Driskell, James E., Carolyn Copper, and Aidan Moran, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/228118007_Does_mental_practice_enhance_performance/file/e0b49527e74ea53a69.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Does mental&#xA;practice enhance&#xA;performance?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Journal of Applied Psychology 79.4 (1994): 481.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly the study mentioned in the video: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Twining, Wilbur E., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10671188.1949.10621053&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mental practice and physical practice in&#xA;learning a motor&#xA;skill.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Research Quarterly. American Association for Health, Physical&#xA;Education and Recreation 20.4 (1949): 432-435.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastActivityDate="2014-04-12T05:40:08.857" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20216" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20219" CreationDate="2014-04-12T14:02:32.857" Score="23" ViewCount="26209" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard multiple times through out my college and early work career that they believed sugar was one element away from being cocaine (or some other drug).  However, none of these people had a biology or chemistry background, so I was skeptical.  Is there any evidence and explanation if sugar is one element away from cocaine (or any other drug)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16892" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T10:27:33.710" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T14:47:29.610" Title="Is sugar one element away from cocaine or any other drug?" Tags="|chemistry|recreational-drugs|sugar|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20217" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20248" CreationDate="2014-04-12T14:23:31.313" Score="18" ViewCount="6065" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are dozens of articles similar to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.offgridquest.com/mobility/592-vw-300-mpg-car&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; floating around claiming the new Volkswagen XL1, which can get 300+ MPG (0.78 L/100 km) in ideal driving conditions, has been banned in the USA because it is too fuel efficient and it would cut into oil company profits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You won’t find the 300 MPG Volkswagen XL1 in an American showroom, in fact it has even been denied a tour of America because it is too efficient for the American public to be made widely aware of, and oil profits are too high in America with the status quo in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No tour has been allowed for this car because the myth that 50 mpg [4.7 L/100km] is virtually impossible to obtain from even a stripped down econobox is too profitable to let go of, and when it comes to corporate oil profits, ignorance is bliss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot find any information to substantiate that it is even banned in the first place, never mind the reason for the banning, which could just as easily be for safety or other regulatory reasons. It also appears that Volkswagen only made 250 of these and may not even have interest in selling them in the USA in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone shed some light on whether or not it is actually banned, and if so, what reason was given for the banning?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15311" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T16:30:03.470" Title="Did the US ban the Volkswagen XL1 for being too fuel efficient?" Tags="|united-states|road-vehicles|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20218" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20221" CreationDate="2014-04-12T16:32:10.133" Score="11" ViewCount="3291" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a board game from the 90's called 'Mind Trap' in which players must solve tough riddles.  One of the riddles goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sid Shady claimed that he developed a special insulation for high powered electrical lines. He said the insulation is guaranteed to save thousands of birds who unwittingly land on the lines and are electrocuted each year. [..]  What was wrong with Shady's claim? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solution was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High powered electrical lines have such a strong magnetic field that is virtually impossible for birds to land on them. The magnetic field will actually repel the birds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sounds like hogwash to me.  However, over the past few years I've noticed &lt;strong&gt;I have never once seen a bird sitting on a high-voltage power-line.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are birds really magnetically repelled by high-voltage power lines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=1359637&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; asked the same question, and the consensus seemed to be that birds don't land on the wires because &lt;em&gt;&quot;a bird's sense of direction is governed by magnetic fields.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, note that they also concluded that the birds wouldn't be shocked by the wires because they're not grounded, which I'm &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Lbmis-VUW0#t=4m50s&quot;&gt;fairly certain is incorrect&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T13:20:46.763" Title="Are birds magnetically repelled from high-voltage power lines?" Tags="|biology|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20216" CreationDate="2014-04-12T16:46:20.887" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all I will assume that by &lt;em&gt;sugar&lt;/em&gt; we mean &lt;em&gt;sucrose&lt;/em&gt;, which is the common &lt;em&gt;table sugar&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the structural formula for sucrose:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1a/Saccharose2.svg/200px-Saccharose2.svg.png&quot; alt=&quot;sucrose&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucrose&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia - Sucrose&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are not familiar with chemical structures for organic compounds, note that every &quot;corner&quot; in a chemical structure like this is considered to be a carbon atom (C), even if it is not written for visual clarity (there may also possibly be hydrogen atoms, see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_formula&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page on skeletal formulae&lt;/a&gt; for an extended explanation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the formula for cocaine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Kokain_-_Cocaine.svg/200px-Kokain_-_Cocaine.svg.png&quot; alt=&quot;cocaine&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia - Cocaine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is heroin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/70/Diamorphine2DACS.svg/200px-Diamorphine2DACS.svg.png&quot; alt=&quot;heroin&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia - Heroin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously I could go on for a while listing all existing drugs but I guess there is no much point in doing that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, if we take the claim literally, and we look at elements, then the claim is true. Sugar is made by 3 elements: carbon (C), oxygen (O) and hydrogen (H). Cocaine has the same plus nitrogen (N).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this is pretty meaningless as the majority of organic compounds contains C, O and H...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the claim is to be read as &lt;em&gt;one atom more&lt;/em&gt; then it is clearly false.&#xA;And even if it were the case that would not imply absolutely anything in terms of the biological actions of either compound, as their 3D structures are clearly different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:39.213" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T07:06:37.697" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20218" CreationDate="2014-04-13T01:09:37.023" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The premise of the question is wrong and the science of electromagnetism suggests why&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple google search for images using the term &quot;birds power lines&quot; will show many pictures revealing birds sitting on power lines such as this one (source is &lt;a href=&quot;http://georgetownphotoblog.com/?tag=power-lines&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cayb0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;birds on power lines&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, for those who think only high voltage power lines are the issue, this one (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enidhi.net/2012/10/birds-on-powerline.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uYhEx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;birds on HV power lines&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This demonstrates two things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;birds are not repelled from power lines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;birds are not electrocuted by sitting on power lines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the premise of the question--birds don't sit on power lines--is demonstrably wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We could probably work this out by noting the actual magnetic fields around power lines are small (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emfs.info/Sources+of+EMFs/Overhead+power+lines/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for actual numbers and note these are millions of times smaller than the fields in medical MRI scanners which don't repel the people they scan who are made from the same stuff as birds). To clarify for those who referenced the youtube videos of diamagnetic levitation, the issue is about field strength and the magnitude of the force. Small animals and diamagnetic objects can be levitated in extremely strong magnetic fields (say 10 Tesla or so, similar to the fields used in the largest MRI scanners which don't cause enough force for even a medium sized animal to notice). The fields around power lines (which you could &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pa.msu.edu/courses/1997spring/phy232/lectures/ampereslaw/wire.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;calculate for yourself from basic physics&lt;/a&gt;) are a few micro-Tesla even near the line. This is a million or so times smaller than the fields used to levitate small diamagnetic objects and weaker than the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_magnetic_field&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;earth's magnetic field&lt;/a&gt; which varies from around 25 to 60 micro Tesla.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The birds also don't get electrocuted as they have no path to earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that even a small field could disrupt a magnetic sense of direction (as some birds are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetoception&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;thought to have&lt;/a&gt;), but the field decays rapidly with distance and birds don't need to navigate when they can see where they are so the idea is, again, implausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-04-13T13:20:46.763" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T13:20:46.763" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20216" CreationDate="2014-04-13T08:16:49.680" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps what they are really talking about is the link between sugar and opiates in as far as a predisposition found in users of both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109725/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3109725/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words a similar chemistry in the brain for both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18700" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T08:16:49.680" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20232" CreationDate="2014-04-13T10:13:56.640" Score="6" ViewCount="1294" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/dec/17/vitamin-supplements-waste-money-scientists&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some recent research&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vitamin supplements almost never have health benefits, are a waste of&#xA;  money and could even be harmful, a group of scientists said in a&#xA;  damning indictment of the industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:12:18.533" LastActivityDate="2018-09-15T22:51:34.820" Title="Do vitamin supplements have any health benefits?" Tags="|medical-science|vitamins|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20124" CreationDate="2014-04-13T12:13:31.213" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, yes. Probably the device being referred to here is a tobacco smoke enema. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoke_enema&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;. (The page provides a picture of the device.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tobacco smoke enema, an insufflation of tobacco smoke into the rectum by enema, was a medical treatment employed by European physicians for a range of ailments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The procedure was used to treat gut pain, and attempts were often made to resuscitate victims of near drowning. Liquid tobacco enemas were often given to ease the symptoms of a hernia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were doing this since they believed inflating the bowels would also inflate the lungs and they believed tobacco would treat a wide range of ailments by &amp;quot;warming&amp;quot; the body. &amp;quot;Cholick&amp;quot; appears to roughly translate to peptic ulcer disease or some sort of generalized digestive ailment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This treatment was also sometimes used on animals. It gained a very poor reputation and is often cited as the origin of the phrase, &amp;quot;blowing smoke up my...&amp;quot; So, the passage humorously condemning the practice is logical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18704" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T17:59:46.373" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20230" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-13T12:17:08.193" Score="16" ViewCount="4556" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sources on the internet claim that the GPS system requires Relativity to work (&lt;a href=&quot;https://xkcd.com/808/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;xkcd&lt;/a&gt;). I've searched information about the GPS system, how it works and how it was set up, reading information from many sources including the US military who maintain the GPS system. I also looked at the equations used to calculate position.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any dependence on relativity anywhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All I could find is a minor claim that the satellite clocks initial setting were CONSISTENT with relativity, but that claim didn't come from the US military websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does GPS use Einstein's General Relativity in order to work accurately?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18702" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-06-27T07:51:05.283" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T11:17:18.240" Title="Does GPS use General Relativity?" Tags="|physics|technology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20227" CreationDate="2014-04-13T13:21:48.933" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a complex issue. What the public health authorities are saying is correct. Vitamin supplements have health benefits for certain groups of people in certain instances and there are many studies to show this. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vitamindcouncil.org/vitamin-d-news/national-osteoporosis-society-uk-releases-clinical-guidelines/&quot;&gt;Vitamin D and Calcium&lt;/a&gt; are often recommended for people at risk of osteoporosis. Some people may have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8359072&quot;&gt;digestive disorders&lt;/a&gt; for example that also benefit from vitamins. But as shown in the studies in your link, multivitamins taken by most people are not helpful, and some supplements can even be harmful. High levels of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20091117/folic-acid-b12-may-increase-cancer-risk&quot;&gt;folic acid will cause increased risk of cancer&lt;/a&gt; and taking &lt;a href=&quot;http://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminE-HealthProfessional/&quot;&gt;vitamin E may be harmful&lt;/a&gt; as well, especially if it is combined with smoking, aspirin or blood thinners. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_overload#Epidemiology&quot;&gt;Iron overload&lt;/a&gt; is the most common genetic disorder among whites and often goes undiagnosed for many years causing destruction of the liver. Taking extra iron when you don't have an iron deficiency may be harmful for many people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people take supplements that are not strictly vitamins, as well. Many haven't been tested using large clinical tests, so its hard to know if they work or may be dangerous. Usually when they are tested, they are shown not to work. That is why the doctors are saying they are a waste of money. Some do work, though. Probiotics for example reduce the risk of death for intensive care patients. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uptodate.com/contents/antibiotic-associated-diarrhea-caused-by-clostridium-difficile-beyond-the-basics&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; says they can be used to reduce death from C Dif, a very terrible infection contracted in hospitals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, personally if I want to know if a vitamin, supplement or herb has been tested, is safe, effective and has drug interactions, these are a few sites I like. (This is of course not medical advice. Please talk to your doctor about the supplements you are taking.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginfo/natural/961.html&quot;&gt;MedlinePlus Supplements&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://fnic.nal.usda.gov/dietary-supplements/herbal-information&quot;&gt;National Agricultural Library&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18704" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T13:21:48.933" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20216" CreationDate="2014-04-13T13:56:45.257" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;One element away&quot; is pretty much nonsense, and there are lots of kinds of sugar. Let's ask a more targeted question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are some sugars closely related chemically to cocaine or any other drug?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, but it's not cocaine. It's the most commonly used recreational drug, alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ethanol, the alcohol in beverages, is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;        H    H&#xA;        |    |   &#xA;    H - C  - C  - O  - H&#xA;        |    |&#xA;        H    H&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glucose, a simple sugar, is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;               H     OH    H     H     H&#xA;               |     |     |     |     |&#xA;     O = C  -  C  -  C  -  C  -  C  -  C  -  O  -  H&#xA;         |     |     |     |     |     |&#xA;         H     OH    H     OH    OH    H&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you know no chemistry, by inspecting the diagrams you can see that by breaking the sugar into smaller pieces you can turn at least part of it into something resembling an alcohol. In fact, you can turn one glucose into two ethanol and have enough left over to make two CO2 molecules. The reaction is a bit complicated and is usually carried out by a living organism, like brewers yeast. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fermentation&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ethanol fermentation&lt;/em&gt; on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; for the details. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18708" LastEditorUserId="3187" LastEditDate="2016-06-29T14:47:29.610" LastActivityDate="2016-06-29T14:47:29.610" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6642" CreationDate="2014-04-13T14:36:26.993" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Vegetarianism is not associated with more healthful sleep patterns, per se. Lowering the intake of protein &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24051052&quot;&gt;hurts sleep quality&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moreover, the consumption of certain types of foods which impact the availability of tryptophan as well as the synthesis of serotonin and melatonin may aid in promoting sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But reducing fat and salt intake will improve sleep quality, so as this is a likely consequence of changing to a vegetarian diet or a juice fast, it could be the reason people often experience more restful sleep. People getting more restful sleep may get up earlier or sleep longer, depending on if they were experiencing insomnia, restless sleep, sleep apnea or the quality (REM) was disrupted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's probably partially psychological, as well. These people are making a committed choice to improving their health, so they might feel more relaxed and positive, which makes good quality sleep much easier to obtain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&#xA;Sleep symptoms associated with intake of specific dietary nutrients&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23992533&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23992533&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relationship of dietary factors and habits with sleep-wake regularity.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23945417&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23945417&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17557978&quot;&gt;Sleep apnea is induced by a high-fat diet and reversed and prevented by metformin in non-obese rats&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17241208&quot;&gt;Ketogenic diet improves sleep quality in children with therapy-resistant epilepsy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18704" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T14:36:26.993" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20230" CreationDate="2014-04-13T15:00:56.430" Score="66" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, GPS requires both general and special relativity to work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Note this is simplified account based on &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/1061/why-does-gps-depend-on-relativity&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.crownedanarchist.com/emc2/applications_of_relativity_in_gps.doc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (MS word download)]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can understand why by looking at how GPS actually determines where you are. The system relies on a number of satellites transmitting signals and your GPS device receiving those signals (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;). There are about 32 GPS satellites and each transmits a signal that contains the exact time based on very accurate atomic clocks on the satellite and position information about where the satellite is. A typical GPS receiver can &quot;see&quot; a handful of satellites from any given position on the earth's surface. Crudely, the position of the receiver is calculated by noting how long the signal takes to arrive from each satellite, using this to calculate the &lt;em&gt;distance&lt;/em&gt; to the satellite and then, by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;trilateration&lt;/a&gt; (the 3D equivalent of triangulation), deriving the receiver's position from the distances from several satellites whose positions are known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Civilian GPS is typically quoted as having an accuracy of about +/- 15m though there are ways to do better. Military GPS can go below +/- 1m precision. Since the speed of light (the speed of the radio signals from the satellites) is about 300 million m/s this means we need to be able to account for time in accurate units of a handful of nano seconds to get that degree of precision for distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where relativity comes in. Clocks are affected by both gravity and motion. High speeds make clocks run &lt;em&gt;slower&lt;/em&gt; according to special relativity and higher gravity also slows them according to general relativity. Since GPS satellites travel at about 14,000km/hr their clocks will be &lt;em&gt;slow&lt;/em&gt; relative to the earth's surface by about 7 microseconds (7,000 nano seconds) per day. Because the earth's surface has gravity about 4 times higher than a GPS satellite the satellite clocks run about 45 microseconds &lt;em&gt;faster&lt;/em&gt; than one on the ground. This gives a net difference of about 38 microseconds relative to the surface per day. If we ignored relativity and failed to correct for this, GPS positions would be out by about a dozen kilometres per day (those microseconds trump the required accuracy of nanoseconds by factors of thousands).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise the issue. We need to keep accurate account of time for GPS to work. But GPS clocks are affected by relativistic effects that alter their clocks relative to the earth's surface. We can retain accurate times if we adjust for the known differences and so we can retain an ability to accurately find the position of a GPS receiver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So relativity, both special and general, is required or the system would be useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Philosophical note&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comments here have suggested that there is some obfuscation and confusion on the conclusion here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true, as some have pointed out, that absolute proof is not possible in science (at least if you take a Popperian view of verification). Facts can show a theory is wrong, but they can't &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; it is correct. While true this isn't a strong objection to the answer here. Perhaps it would be clearer if we said &quot;provides extremely strong evidence in favour of&quot; rather than &quot;proves&quot; but in practice the difference is small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of GPS we have a scientific theory (or two related theories) that &lt;em&gt;predicted&lt;/em&gt; precise effects more than 50 years before the GPS system was deployed. That is pretty much the strongest sort of scientific verification that is possible. Arguing that it isn't &quot;proof&quot; in a mathematical sense is merely nit-picking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And arguing that the relativistic corrections would be irrelevant in a Newtonian universe is just a ridiculous distraction based on an irrelevant philosophical though experiment. The question is about &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; universe and &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; universe is accurately modeled by relativity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:40:12.727" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T11:17:18.240" CommentCount="27" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6425" CreationDate="2014-04-13T15:25:31.217" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the claim is certainly false for &lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoplastic_polymer&quot;&gt;thermoplastic&lt;/a&gt; polymers like polyethylene, it's far more likely to be true for &lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermosetting_polymer&quot;&gt;thermoset&lt;/a&gt; polymers such as &lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyurethane&quot;&gt;polyurethanes&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoxy&quot;&gt;epoxies&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol_formaldehyde_resin&quot;&gt;phenolics&lt;/a&gt; such as &lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bakelite&quot;&gt;Bakelite&lt;/a&gt; (which, being the first widely used synthetic plastic, may well be the original source of this claim).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, a &lt;strong&gt;thermoplastic polymer&lt;/strong&gt;, by definition, consists of moderately large (that is, large on an atomic scale, but still microscopically small from a human perspective) chains or branched &quot;trees&quot; of monomer units, each (mostly) linked to two other neighboring units in the chain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In polyethylene, for example, these chains generally have &lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_mass&quot;&gt;molecular weights&lt;/a&gt; ranging from a few hundred to a few million &lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_mass_unit&quot;&gt;AMU&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt; with an average typically somewhere around 10,000 AMU (&amp;approx;&amp;nbsp;1.6&amp;nbsp;&amp;times; 10&lt;sup&gt;-23&lt;/sup&gt; kilograms) depending on the manufacturing process.  For comparison, a single &lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethylene&quot;&gt;ethylene&lt;/a&gt; monomer weighs about 28 AMU, so a 10,000 AMU polyethylene molecule has about 350 ethylene units, or about 700 carbon atoms.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These long chains stick to each other by intermolecular forces (mainly &lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_der_Waals_force&quot;&gt;van der Waals forces&lt;/a&gt;) and also simply due to the chains getting tangled with each other (&lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steric_effects&quot;&gt;steric effects&lt;/a&gt;, in chemistry jargon) rather like a bowl of sticky noodles.  When heated and/or mechanically stretched, however, the chains can slip past each other, allowing the material to be reshaped (= thermoplasticity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;strong&gt;thermoset polymer&lt;/strong&gt; like Bakelite, however, the monomer units can (and typically do) link up with more than two other monomers.  Thus, instead of forming chains, they form a complex three-dimensional network structure.  As long as the average number of links per monomer exceeds a critical &lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percolation_theory&quot;&gt;percolation&lt;/a&gt; threshold (which varies depending on the structure of the material, but is typically not far above two), most of the monomers will link up together into a single giant network that spans the whole object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the monomers have joined together into such a network, they can no longer be separated without destroying the material.  Thus, thermoset polymers cannot be re-molded after curing, and they tend to be relatively hard and brittle compared to thermoplastics (although exceptions exist).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Another way to make a thermoset polymer is to start with a suitable thermoplastic polymer and somehow, e.g. by rapid heating and/or chemical treatment, create additional cross-links between the chains than join them up into a single network.  Examples of such thermoset polymers include &lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-linked_polyethylene&quot;&gt;cross-linked polyethylene&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcanization&quot;&gt;vulcanized&lt;/a&gt; rubber.  An advantage of such polymers is that they can be shaped like thermoplastics before curing them into their final shape and consistency; the degree of cross-linking can also be controlled to adjust their flexibility and elasticity properties.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, if your ice cream tub happens to be made of, say, polyurethane instead of polyethylene, it probably &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; consist &lt;em&gt;mostly&lt;/em&gt; of a single giant molecule.  While there might be some small isolated clusters that are disconnected from the main network, those will generally make up a relatively insignificant fraction of the material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ps. The best sources for this stuff are probably textbooks on polymer chemistry like &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt; or introductory online sources like &lt;sup&gt;[3]&lt;/sup&gt; or &lt;sup&gt;[4]&lt;/sup&gt;; it's considered basic enough that you won't really find it discussed in primary sources like scientific papers these days, except maybe as background material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a lot of sources, you'll find somewhat weaselly wording like &quot;the entire molecular network &lt;em&gt;can be considered to be&lt;/em&gt; a single molecule&quot; (&lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;, emphasis mine).  One reason for such wording is that, while it's easy enough to conclusively demonstrate that a thermoplastic like polyethylene does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; consist of a single molecule just by melting it, there's no way to definitively &lt;em&gt;prove&lt;/em&gt; that any given piece of thermoset polymer really consists of a single network, and not, say, two or three or 10,000 interpenetrating giant networks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While a single network comprising most of the material is indeed expected on theoretical grounds, provided that the amount of cross-linking is sufficiently high, and while it is consistent with observed evidence, we don't really have any way to directly show that, say, &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; atom and &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; atom at the opposite ends of the object are really connected by a chain of covalent bonds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reason for such weasel wording is simply that many chemists tend to feel vaguely uncomfortable using the word &quot;molecule&quot; for things so huge that you can see them with the unaided eye, instead preferring to call such materials e.g. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_covalent_bonding&quot;&gt;network covalent solids&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.  Such macroscopic chunks of matter simply don't have much in common with the kind of small groups of atoms (from a few AMU up to say, a few thousand AMU; maybe a few million for polymer chemists and biochemists) that most chemists normally refer to when they say &quot;molecule&quot;, even if they technically do fall under the same definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[1]: Peacock, Andrew. &lt;em&gt;Handbook of Polyethylene: Structures: Properties, and Applications&lt;/em&gt;. CRC Press (2000). pp. 6&amp;ndash;10. (&lt;a href=&quot;//books.google.com/books?id=OPuWyxwJwJwC&amp;amp;lpg=PA7&amp;amp;ots=VrCnDhHXiu&amp;amp;dq=polyethylene%20molecular%20weight%20distribution&amp;amp;pg=PA8#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=polyethylene%20molecular%20weight%20distribution&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;via Google Books&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[2]: Tuttle, Mark E., &lt;em&gt;Structural Analysis of Polymeric Composite Materials&lt;/em&gt;, Second Edition. CRC Press (2012). pp. 8&amp;ndash;11. (&lt;a href=&quot;//books.google.com/books?id=wzbkoYcwn0IC&amp;amp;lpg=PA10&amp;amp;dq=thermoset%20%22single%20molecule%22&amp;amp;pg=PA10#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=thermoset%20%22single%20molecule%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;via Google Books&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[3]: Woodland Plastics Corporation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.woodlandplastics.com/understanding-thermoset-plastics.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Understanding Thermoset Plastics&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Web page.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[4]: Cramb, Alan; Salvador, Paul. &lt;a href=&quot;http://neon.mems.cmu.edu/cramb/27-100/lab/S00_lab2/lab2.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Experiment #2: Understanding Polymeric Materials, their Structure and Properties&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Online course material from &lt;em&gt;Materials in Engineering: 27-100&lt;/em&gt;, Spring Semester 2000, Carnegie Mellon University.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6254" LastEditorUserId="6254" LastEditDate="2014-04-13T15:45:05.013" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T15:45:05.013" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20241" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-13T19:43:40.423" Score="2" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Agha Waqar's car that ran on water was a great news for a long time. Where a Pakistan based inventor invented a car that got all the power from water. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was using a &lt;strong&gt;water kit&lt;/strong&gt; to get the energy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a WikiPedia page for that too: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agha_Waqar%27s_water-fuelled_car&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WikiPedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just wanted to know, how can such thing come to happen? If it was true, wouldn't America and other Developed countries have changed their power consumption to water? Is it really fake or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18713" LastActivityDate="2014-04-13T19:43:40.423" Title="Can a car run on water? As per this experiment" Tags="|road-vehicles|water|energy|pakistan|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-04-14T00:05:15.337" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20257" CreationDate="2014-04-14T00:21:50.710" Score="35" ViewCount="1347" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many functional language advocates make a few surprising assertions about them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;functional languages code is significantly less buggy than otherwise&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;functional languages code is significantly faster than otherwise in parallel scenarios&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;functional languages code is significantly cheaper to write than otherwise&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am only able to find a lot of speculation on the matter but I can't find hard data. Has anyone actually measured it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd only like to see answers citing &lt;em&gt;peer-reviewed material&lt;/em&gt; from &lt;em&gt;reputable&lt;/em&gt; sources, such as IEEE or ACM. I am not interested in any logical or theoretical explanation, but only in rigorous measurements on real world projects/code bases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-04-14T08:50:15.500" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T20:53:11.513" Title="Do functional programming languages offer significant advantages?" Tags="|programming|programming-productivity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20246" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20200" CreationDate="2014-04-14T05:08:19.250" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in your question, you'll be hard pressed to find hard numbers on the failures of totalitarian societies. So in a way, your question can't be answered concretely but we can find out if such a political failure is possible by analyzing each policy and reviewing what academia and historians have said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The estimates vary wildly from 18 million (1) to 45 million (2) deaths, around 2-8% of the estimated 670 million inhabitants, died from mistreatment or starvation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Policy: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sparrow_Campaign&quot;&gt;Four Pests Campaign&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1958 Mao initiated a campaign to eradicate 4 pests (mosquitoes, flies, rats, and sparrows). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The masses of China were mobilized to eradicate the birds, and&#xA;  citizens took to banging pots and pans or beating drums to scare the&#xA;  birds from landing, forcing them to fly until they fell from the sky&#xA;  in exhaustion. Sparrow nests were torn down, eggs were broken, and&#xA;  nestlings were killed. By 1960, Chinese leaders realized that sparrows&#xA;  ate a large amount of insects, as well as grains. Rather than&#xA;  being increased, rice yields after the campaign were substantially&#xA;  decreased&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This problem was exacerbated by a devastating locust swarm, which was&#xA;  caused when their natural predators were killed as part of the Great&#xA;  Sparrow Campaign. Although actual harvests were reduced, local&#xA;  officials, under tremendous pressure from central authorities to&#xA;  report record harvests in response to the innovations, competed with&#xA;  each other to announce increasingly exaggerated results. These were&#xA;  used as a basis for determining the amount of grain to be taken by the&#xA;  State to supply the towns and cities, and to export. This left barely&#xA;  enough for the peasants, and in some areas, starvation set in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Policy: Industrialisation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During this time 21 million people were taken out of agriculture. Resulting in major stress on China's food-rationing system, which led to increased and unsustainable demands on rural food production. (5)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Policy: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backyard_furnace&quot;&gt;Backyard Furnaces&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mao encouraged the establishment of small backyard steel furnaces in every commune and in each urban neighborhood...huge efforts on the part of peasants and other workers were made to produce steel out of scrap metal. To fuel the furnaces the local environment was denuded of trees and wood taken from the doors and furniture of peasants' houses. Pots, pans, and other metal artifacts were requisitioned to supply the &quot;scrap&quot; for the furnaces so that the wildly optimistic production targets could be met. Many of the male agricultural workers were diverted from the harvest to help the iron production as were the workers at many factories, schools and even hospitals. (6)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Policy: Irrigation Works&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trying to boost agricultural productivity, Mao, invested massive human resources in poorly planned water works. This resulted in the diversion and often death of thousands of agricultural workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mao was well aware of the human cost of these water-conservancy campaigns. In early 1958, while listening to a report on irrigation in Jiangsu, he mentioned that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Wu Zhipu claims he can move 30 billion cubic metres; I think 30,000&#xA;  people will die. Zeng Xisheng has said that he will move 20 billion&#xA;  cubic metres, and I think that 20,000 people will die. Weiqing only&#xA;  promises 600 million cubic metres, maybe nobody will die.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(7)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Policy: Crop Experimentation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the communes, a number of radical and controversial agricultural innovations were promoted at the behest of Mao. The policies included close cropping, whereby seeds were sown far more densely than normal on the incorrect assumption that seeds of the same class would not compete with each other. Deep plowing (up to 2 m deep) was encouraged on the mistaken belief that this would yield plants with extra large root systems. Moderately productive land was left unplanted with the belief that concentrating manure and effort on the most fertile land would lead to large per-acre productivity gains. Altogether, these untested innovations generally led to decreases in grain production rather than increases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(8)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Policy: Export and Food Aid&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the period of the Great Leap Forward, China continued to be a net exporter of grain, despite the widespread famine experienced in the countryside, as Mao sought to maintain face and convince the outside world of the success of his plans. Foreign aid was refused. When the Japanese foreign minister told his Chinese counterpart Chen Yi of an offer of 100,000 tonnes of wheat to be shipped out of public view, he was rebuffed. (9)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Great Leap Forward was a series of political blunders that either exacerbated or caused the &quot;worst famine in the history of the world&quot; (10). The exact figures of the dead will never be known, but with the decimation of the agricultural industry, mistreatment of the rural workforce, rejection of food aid and continued export of grain during a time of widespread famine, it would be entirely possible that 2-8% of the population may starve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the risks to their careers, some Communist Party members openly laid blame for the disaster at the feet of the Party leadership. Liu Shaoqi made a speech in 1962 at Seven Thousand Cadres Conference criticizing that &quot;The economic disaster was 30% fault of nature, 70% human error.&quot; (11)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gráda, Cormac Ó (2011). Great Leap into Famine. UCD Centre For Economic Research Working Paper Series. p. 9&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dikötter, Frank. Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62. Walker &amp;amp; Company, 2010 p. 12 &amp;amp; 333&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shapiro, Judith Rae (2001). Mao's War Against Nature: Politics and the Environment in Revolutionary China. Cambridge University Press.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lardy and Fairbank (1987)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cook, Ian G.; Geoffrey Murray (2001). China's Third Revolution: Tensions in the Transition Towards a Post-Communist China.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The memoirs of Jiang Weiqing Jiangsu renmin chubanshe. p.421.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shenfan: The Continuing Revolution in a Chinese Village.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dikötter, Frank (1991). pp.114-115.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ashton, Hill, Piazza, and Zeitz (1984). Famine in China, 1958-61. Population and Development Review, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Dec., 1984). p.614&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Twentieth Century China: Third Volume. Beijing, 1994. p.430&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T05:08:19.250" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20248" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20217" CreationDate="2014-04-14T09:44:35.010" Score="23" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Safety rules&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/healey/2013/12/07/vw-xl1-shows-how-to-get-200-mpg/3883503/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;December 2013 article&lt;/a&gt; in USA Today, the XL1 cannot meet US safety rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latest teaser: XL1. It's a spaceship-like, ultra-high-mpg, plug-in diesel-electric hybrid. VW used exotic, but obtainable, materials and technologies to craft a mileage-above-all car able to get 261 mpg in European tests, equating, very roughly, to perhaps 200 mpg in U.S. tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barely a real production model, it's made in a factory, but largely by hand. It couldn't meet U.S. safety rules&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sleek roof provides no rear window. Equally sleek sides aren't interrupted by mirrors. Rear view is via two cameras in tiny pods about where mirrors would be. Inside, each door has a view screen in which to see what's beside and behind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would take us longer to get used to the camera system than it would to get comfortable with the noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A car without mirrors — you can begin to see the kinds of regulatory hurdles the XL1 would have to jump to become mainstream. Just one air bag, in the steering wheel. Another non-starter almost everywhere&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems the stated reasons for VW not marketing this vehicle in the USA are insufficient conventional safety measure, not excessive fuel economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/about-us/futures/xl1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;press pack&lt;/a&gt; describes the approach to safety taken by VW with the XL1. It may be that changes in safety law may be needed before it is accepted that the vehicle is as safe as more conventional vehicles (other news reports support this view, saying that rules were changed in Germany to allow the XL1). This is an expensive limited-production hand-made car, perhaps VW are really using this mainly as an exercise for testing the reaction of the public and of legislators to technologies and approaches that may be used in future vehicles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T09:57:16.747" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20251" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-14T12:27:29.283" Score="3" ViewCount="878" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia definition of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax%5fwedge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tax wedge&lt;/a&gt; references &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timbro.se/bokhandel/pdf/9175665646.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a document&lt;/a&gt;, which makes following claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Europe's comparatively high tax burden has created big marginal&#xA;  effects and tax wedges. For example a 2007 report by a right-wing&#xA;  thinktank, Timbro, calculated the amount going to the service worker's&#xA;  wallet is approximately 10% in Belgium, 15% in Sweden, 30% in Ireland&#xA;  and the UK, compared to 50% in the United States. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2016-10-04T20:36:28.003" Title="Is tax wedge 80%-90% in most of western Europe vs 50% in US?" Tags="|united-states|economics|taxes|europe|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20164" CreationDate="2014-04-14T15:58:30.813" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;To be just as much simple to you as I can be, actually what &lt;strong&gt;sleep mode&lt;/strong&gt; in computer is, that only the LCD is turned off saving a little amount of energy consumption only. Which means, that only the LCD is turned off this way. All of the other hardware components still run as they have to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the example of a human. When we sleep our metabolic rate is too low that it is almost negligible, but still it &lt;strong&gt;isn't&lt;/strong&gt;. His brain works, heart beats, only thing that isn't doing its job is his eyes and some other organs (biology student would have explained it in a better way, I am just a Computer Science student now). This way, less energy is required to make his body work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the computer also takes up energy and provides it to other parts of the hardware for them to run. In Sleep Mode, computer's mind (CPU) works, clock ticks are being generated, RAM works and all other components run, so that you get back to the exact place where you left off just with a press of button (or pick of a lid on laptops). This way, LCD is turned off only and the computer goes to sleep mode. You can imagine how much energy would be saved by turning off this hardware, these components get turned off:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;VGA card&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In some of the VGA cards there are CPUs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RAM of the VGA card.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;LCD screen&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get some information from this website, where it has been shared &lt;strong&gt;which component of your computer drains most of the energy of your computer&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5566020/how-to-maximize-the-battery-life-of-your-windows-laptop&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://lifehacker.com/5566020/how-to-maximize-the-battery-life-of-your-windows-laptop&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you can save energy by going into sleep mode and you can save your time by coming back online from a sleep mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Back effects&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only bad effect of the sleep mode, I have myself faced is that it gets heat up too soon. You can never even imagine when it would make your VGA card melt down due to heating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other negative point is that the laptop will still be consuming a small amount of battery while in sleep mode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;and finally&lt;/strong&gt; - Some system processes and applications end up hogging resources and the only way to release it is to restart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, you can never say which thing is good or bad. There are some bright and some bad effects of every process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18713" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T15:58:30.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20255" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-14T17:18:38.713" Score="7" ViewCount="546" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/food-stamp-recipients-outnumber-women-who-work-full-time#.U0wRE6aF_Pc.facebook&quot;&gt;story&lt;/a&gt; has been circulating through the conservative media channels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the average month of 2012, according to the Department of Agriculture, there were 46,609,000 people participating in the food stamp program (formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). That contrasts with the 44,059,000 women who worked full-time, year-round in 2012, according to the Census Bureau’s report on Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18739" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T02:34:55.833" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T00:13:17.850" Title="Do US food stamp recipients outnumber women who work full-time?" Tags="|united-states|economics|politics|poverty|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20257" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20244" CreationDate="2014-04-14T17:52:46.470" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://digbib.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/volltexte/documents/1978116&quot;&gt;Pankratius, Schmidt, and Gareton, 2011&lt;/a&gt; found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrary to popular belief, the functional style does not lead to bad performance. Average Scala run-times are comparable to Java, lowest run-times are sometimes better, but Java scales better on parallel hardware. We confirm with statistical significance Scala’s claim that Scala code is more compact than Java code, but clearly refute other claims of Scala on lower programming effort and lower debugging effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As always with empirical studies of software development, one must be very cautious about generalizing. In the particular case of a study about Scala done in ~2010, one would certainly worry about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;language familiarity (Scala being far less popular than Java)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tool support (a problem that's still significant, but was acute in 2010)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use of immutable data structures &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Update: It's not clear to me that this study was ever peer-reviewed.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2014-04-14T20:53:11.513" LastActivityDate="2014-04-14T20:53:11.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20258" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-15T01:13:20.780" Score="7" ViewCount="1596" Body="&lt;p&gt;Andrew Auernheimer (aka. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;weev&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;a href=&quot;http://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/read/i-drove-weev-home-from-prison?utm_source=motherboardfb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;is reported to have said&lt;/a&gt; last Friday:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Did you know they have &lt;strong&gt;special laws&lt;/strong&gt; to protect kid-fuckers in federal&#xA;  prison?” Andrew Auernheimer asked me with a grin on his face. “I can't&#xA;  hit them, it's a five year felony if I do. &lt;strong&gt;We're not held to the same&#xA;  standard&lt;/strong&gt; because the feds protect kid-fuckers, and don’t want them to&#xA;  have a bad time in prison.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there laws &lt;strong&gt;especially&lt;/strong&gt; designed to protect incarcerated pedophiles in the US, which do not apply to other inmates?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-11T07:13:57.103" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T07:13:57.103" Title="Are incarcerated pedophiles protected by special laws in federal prison in the US?" Tags="|united-states|law|prisoner|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20258" CreationDate="2014-04-15T02:31:30.897" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every state has criminal laws prohibiting assault and battery. Also, a physical assault also opens the attacker to a civil suit. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www3.law.columbia.edu/hrlr/jlm/toc/&quot;&gt;A Jailhouse Lawyer's Manual&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www3.law.columbia.edu/hrlr/jlm/chapter-24.pdf&quot;&gt;Chapter 24: Your right to be free from assault by prison guards and other prisoners&lt;/a&gt; from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www3.law.columbia.edu/hrlr/&quot;&gt;Columbia Human Rights Law Review&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prison also assumes liability if a foreseeable threat is allowed to persist. (ibid. at footnote 24)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prisons tend to place child molesters into protective custody (&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=90004&amp;amp;page=2&quot;&gt;http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=90004&amp;amp;page=2&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;so child molesters and high-profile killers both tend to be given protective custody unless they're deemed tough or discreet enough to get along in the general population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't because of any &quot;special law&quot;, but as a result of the standard-of-care owed to prisoners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T03:00:01.783" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T03:00:01.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20211" CreationDate="2014-04-15T13:42:45.953" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears to have been discovered by a team including members from the sugar industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were looking for ways to use sucrose as a chemical intermediate. Most synthetic processes involve multiple steps. I have not found what (if any) final product was in mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can find no evidence that any of the participants were engaged in insecticide research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can find no evidence that Tate &amp;amp; Lyle, usually characterised as a sugar business, would have been aiming to synthesize an insecticide from sugar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers at Queen Elizabeth College, University of London, discovered sucralose in 1976, during a collaborative research program with UK sugar producer, Tate &amp;amp; Lyle, PLC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://sucralose.org/sucralose-facts/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sucralose information site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sucralose was discovered in 1989 by scientists from Tate &amp;amp; Lyle, working with researchers Leslie Hough and Shashikant Phadnis at Queen Elizabeth College (now part of King's College London).[5] While researching &lt;strong&gt;ways to use sucrose as a chemical intermediate&lt;/strong&gt; in non-traditional areas, Phadnis was told to test a chlorinated sugar compound. Phadnis thought that Hough asked him to taste it, so he did.[5] He found the compound to be exceptionally sweet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Sucralose.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Princeton&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This article was written with the help of Professor Leslie Hough whose research student Shashikant Phadnis discovered sucralose&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Curiously, these substances might still have been waiting to be tested for sweetness had not Shashikant Phadnis, a graduate researcher, misheard a telephone call requesting samples of the chlorinated sugars for testing. As the call came from a large sugar company it is perhaps understandable that Phadnis thought that the company had requested them for tasting and so he tried them himself. The results are available in UK patents 1 543 167 and 1 543 l68.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnemsley.com/articles/new_scientist/ns_sweetness.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New Scientist&lt;/a&gt; (allegedly)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sucralose is manufactured by a proprietary, patented process developed by Tate &amp;amp; Lyle, and uses ordinary granulated sugar, similar to that used in the home, as the starting material.&#xA;  Sucralose is technically a chlorinated carbohydrate, and it is made by selectively replacing three hydroxyl groups on the sugar molecule with three chlorine atoms. There are multiple locations on the sugar molecule where hydroxyl groups can be replaced. The trick for making sucralose, to get the best taste, highest levels of purity and the best yield, is to ensure that the sugar molecule is chlorinated in very specific locations only. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tateandlyle.com/aboutus/ourindustry/pages/sucralose.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tate &amp;amp; Lyle&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tate &amp;amp; Lyle is a global provider of distinctive, high quality ingredients and solutions to the food, beverage and other industries &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tate &amp;amp; Lyle, a British sugar company, was looking for ways to &lt;strong&gt;use sucrose as a chemical intermediate&lt;/strong&gt;. In collaboration with Prof. Leslie Hough’s laboratory at King’s College in London, halogenated sugars were being synthesized and tested. A foreign graduate student, Shashikant Phadnis, responded to “testing” of a chlorinated sugar as a request for “tasting,” leading to the discovery that many chlorinated sugars are sweet with potencies some hundreds or thousands of times as great as sucrose. (Walters, 2000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kon.org/urc/frank.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sucralose - an overview, Genevieve Frank, Penn State University&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T13:59:39.193" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T13:59:39.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20262" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-15T15:07:22.073" Score="3" ViewCount="485" Body="&lt;p&gt;This Yahoo! news article &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/oddnews/man-pays--1-100-to-have-stolen-car-returned-to-him-from-impound-lot--car-is-towed-from-his-home-only-15-minutes-later-by-police-205121331.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 30-year-old’s 2000 Monte Carlo was stolen from in front of his&#xA;  mother’s house last summer. Finally, several months later, Williams&#xA;  was told that his car had been found and was available to him at&#xA;  Bobby’s Towing, which keeps impounded cars on their lot for the&#xA;  police. He paid up (which totally stinks, by the way. I’ll never&#xA;  understand why &lt;strong&gt;car theft victims have to pay to have their cars&#xA;  returned&lt;/strong&gt;), and then had his car delivered to his home. It was&#xA;  missing its tires, but Mr. Williams planned on putting the wheels on&#xA;  when the weather warmed up. After it had been delivered, he went to go&#xA;  pick up his kids. But when he got back…the car was gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Williams was confused why his car was taken away, telling WJBK, “I&#xA;  don't know why they took my car. &lt;strong&gt;I paid $1,100 to get my car out&lt;/strong&gt; again&#xA;  and then ya'll take my car away.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do car theft victims have to pay around 1,000 USD to have their cars returned in the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T15:07:22.073" Title="Do car theft victims have to pay around 1,000 USD to have their cars returned in the US?" Tags="|united-states|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20263" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20284" CreationDate="2014-04-15T15:17:02.917" Score="15" ViewCount="9537" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to rumors, the S.S. Ourang Medan was a Dutch cargo ship whose crew mysteriously all died on the seas. The bodies were found in terrified postures, and when a rescue ship attempted to tow the ship back to land, a fire broke out and the ship exploded and sank. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth behind this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's actually a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ourang_Medan&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; on this but I'm not sure how much is myth or fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18670" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-15T22:51:05.953" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T11:13:52.553" Title="Did the Ourang Medan &quot;ghost ship&quot; exist?" Tags="|history|mortality|transportation|netherlands|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20264" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20255" CreationDate="2014-04-15T16:33:52.847" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The count of the number of people participating in the the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) checks out from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/34snapmonthly.htm&quot;&gt;Department of Agriculture figures&lt;/a&gt;. At the time of writing, the original web-site is down, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.fns.usda.gov/pd/34snapmonthly.htm&quot;&gt;Google cache&lt;/a&gt; covers it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8AWn9.png&quot; alt=&quot;Excerpt from Google cache of Dept of Agriculture table&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The figures quoted for women working full-time are indirectly calculated. Going back to &lt;a href=&quot;http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_12_1YR_S2303&amp;amp;prodType=table&quot;&gt;the original source&lt;/a&gt;, we get slightly different figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/o0HBS.png&quot; alt=&quot;Excerpt from Census Fact Finder&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this table, we can see the working age population of women is estimated at 103,214,187, and that 40.2% of those are working the full year (50-52 weeks), full-time (more than 35 hours).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiplying that out we get about 41.5 million full-time working-age women, which is well less than the 46.6 million participants in SNAP - even when the given error bars are considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It must be pointed out that this is a rather meaningless comparison. It is difficult to see what policy decisions could be made based on this comparison of apples and oranges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-04-15T16:33:52.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14028" CreationDate="2014-04-16T07:45:55.993" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;First it's important to understand broadly what workforce productivity is, please see Wikipedia's page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workforce_productivity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Workforce productivity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The OECD defines it as &quot;the ratio of a volume measure of output to a volume measure of input&quot;.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_resources&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; Volume measures of output are normally gross domestic product (GDP) or gross value added (GVA), expressed at constant prices i.e. adjusted for inflation. The three most commonly used measures of input are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;hours worked;&#xA;workforce jobs; and&#xA;number of people in employment.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commonly understood, it's very difficult to imagine that working fewer hours increases productivity. However, the education, health and satisfaction level of workers is also very important. Increases in those levels can make up for fewer hours worked to some degree. When a business would would like to implement these they offer more benefits, industry specific training programs and can make the management process more democratic in certain ways.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;recent research has examined why U.S. labor productivity rose during the recent downturn of 2008–2009, when U.S. gross domestic product plummeted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lay-offs would be the obvious reasons, but there are other reasons for this and it will be discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The changes to the 21st century work-force have made highly skilled &quot;knowledge workers&quot; more &quot;productive&quot; even while working longer hours than 40 hours per week. Factory workers are increasingly skilled workers now, too in Europe; but over-working factory workers may also cause industrial accidents, so it is not only a &quot;productivity&quot; issue, as you mention. Factory work is very monotonous, which makes it actually more mentally stressful, which is a major reason why their hours must be kept down to prevent bad quality work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worker productivity can be defined in a number of ways. Measurements try to approximate work quality and quantity. One issue that is consistently re-evaluated is whether sleep deprivation or working longer hours causes more medical mistakes (sort of like an industrial accident in principal). &#xA;&quot;A review of studies concerning effects of sleep deprivation and fatigue on residents' performance.&quot; Samkoff JS1, Jacques CH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The data presently available suggest that sleep-deprived or fatigued house officers can compensate for sleep loss in crises or other novel situations. &lt;em&gt;However, sleep-deprived residents may be more prone to errors on routine, repetitive tasks and tasks that require sustained vigilance, which form a substantial portion of residents' workload.&lt;/em&gt; The authors concur with the recommendation of the Executive Council of the Association of American Medical Colleges that the total working hours for residents should not exceed 80 hours per week averaged over four weeks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &quot;routine paperwork error&quot; can occasionally be a very serious error as well that might also kill someone, but according these meta analysis is doesn't occur until over 80 hours/week. A mediocre and sleep deprived doctor is however much more productive than no doctor, but a bad doctor can be less productive than no doctor, as their job is to improve your health, not make you sick, in other words. This is a very extreme case, but in general, it shows the principal that as the knowledge level goes up, the more it makes sense to promote long work hours for the profession even if it causes a decline in work quality up to a certain point. I'm setting the point at increased accidents, although Ford in the quote in the question set his at unacceptable rates of unacceptable quality products and one or other would still be most appropriate to any modern factory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to other &quot;knowledge workers&quot; or office workers, their productivity is as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_resources&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;human resources&lt;/a&gt;- seen in terms of the annual financial position of the company minus the cost of the workers salaries and benefits. The US department of Labor tracks employment data by full time and part-time workers and tries to keep track how many hours people are working. Since the Great Recession of 2008, there has been more part-time employment and a drop in hours worked hourly. But there is much evidence that many workers, especially the full-time, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.katz.pitt.edu/facultyblog/?p=78&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;working greater than 40 hours/ week has been increasing.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a long-term trend that has helped companies to strengthen financial positions through this process, so their workforce is more &quot;productive&quot; for them, as defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why High Earners Work Longer Hours&lt;/em&gt; (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During most of the 1900s, the hours of work declined for most American men. But around 1970, the share of employed men regularly working more than 50 hours per week began to increase. In fact, the share of employed, 25-to-64-year-old men who usually work 50 or more hours per week on their main job rose from 14.7 percent in 1980 to 18.5 percent in 2001. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The linked paper examines some of the reasons for this change and theorizes that much of it has occurred because high income workers make more money in benefits if they work more hours. As suggested before, benefits, training and democratic input are encouraged in companies to increased productivity BUT also usually these accompany more hours worked too. Many more hours in many cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, the statement &quot;increasing hours doesnt proportionally increase productivity&quot; is true for some people and not for others and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminishing_returns&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;law of diminishing returns&lt;/a&gt; always applies in all cases. At this time in the US, the number of people who are beneficial for a company working long hours is lower than those that can work roughly 40 hour/ week and be &quot;productive&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18704" LastEditorUserId="18704" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T02:42:26.920" LastActivityDate="2014-04-17T02:42:26.920" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20273" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-16T18:09:29.260" Score="2" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/01/chicks-being-ground-up-al_n_273652.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/01/chicks-being-ground-up-al_n_273652.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story is on Facebook, about a video showing chicks being ground up to make breakfast omelets. Is this real or some shock media technique?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18739" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-04-17T16:25:45.837" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T12:15:00.413" Title="Do they grind up chicks for breakfast omelets?" Tags="|zoology|ethics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-04-16T20:46:40.197" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20275" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19813" CreationDate="2014-04-16T19:55:57.877" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;For a generalized listing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_city&quot;&gt;Underground city&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beijing's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City_%28Beijing%29&quot;&gt;Underground City&lt;/a&gt; was built as a bomb shelter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_tunnels&quot;&gt;Shanghai Tunnels&lt;/a&gt; connect the basements of many hotels and bars in Portland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several cities, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1326187/Las-Vegas-tunnel-people-How-1-000-people-live-shimmering-strip.html&quot;&gt;Las Vegas&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://nypost.com/2009/03/06/notes-from-the-underground-2/&quot;&gt;New York&lt;/a&gt;, have homeless populations living in underground tunnels (whose designed purpose may be for storm drains or the like).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do city structures that were once at ground level, but have been built on top of and are now underground count?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground&quot;&gt;Seattle Underground&lt;/a&gt; was at street-level until the Great Seattle Fire damaged it, and the city built over top of the area rather than demolishing it and rebuilding in its place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_Atlanta&quot;&gt;Underground Atlanta&lt;/a&gt; is a shopping center that was once at street level, but got built over and is now underground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chicago raised its street level in the 1850s as a means to deal with drainage from the lake. The city did not pay for home and businessowners to raise their buildings; combine that with the Chicago pedway...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How about catacombs or necropoli? These things litter the Old World, and while you don't generally get &lt;em&gt;living&lt;/em&gt; residents in a &quot;city of the dead,&quot; there are certainly plenty of people there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, Paris has &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2011/01/30/133308592/parisunderground&quot;&gt;cataphiles&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also interesting: Disney, when building Magic Kingdom Park, first created the employee-only areas at ground level. The park that visitors see was built on top of that, resulting in the &quot;utilidors&quot; the cast uses to traverse the park unseen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16003" LastActivityDate="2014-04-16T19:55:57.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20276" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20278" CreationDate="2014-04-17T01:54:45.517" Score="6" ViewCount="953" Body="&lt;p&gt;Electroshock therapy was a popular treatment for depression and other mental illnesses in the middle of the 20th century. After losing its favor for many decades, it seems that it is being reinvestigated as a treatment option and it is supported by many medical authorities. I am still skeptical, though, since they say they don't know why it works. Is this really an effective treatment short-term and &lt;strong&gt;long-term (atleast 6-8 weeks after treatment; however I would much prefer a longer term study)&lt;/strong&gt;? A study investigating its effectiveness combined with other treatments is completely appropriate although I'd rather know without, since there is a problem with occulogyric crisis here. About how effective is it compared to other treatments for severe mental illness, especially &lt;strong&gt;long term inpatient treatments of several months time using medication and therapy?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus Question: &lt;strong&gt;Has this treatment been investigated for its safety for patients with seizure disorders?&lt;/strong&gt; Or is the seizures caused by ETC not likely to effect a seizure disorder?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: I think this was sort of a pointless question. ETC causes remission of refractory status epilepticus, which was my issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/ect&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mental Health America&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today, ECT is administered to an estimated 100,000 people a year, primarily in general hospital psychiatric units and in psychiatric hospitals.  It is generally used in treating patients with severe depression, acute mania, and certain schizophrenic syndromes.  ECT is also used with some suicidal patients, who cannot wait for antidepressant medication to take effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to WebMD&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ECT is among the safest and most effective treatments available for depression. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18704" LastEditorUserId="18704" LastEditDate="2014-04-20T20:42:15.480" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T07:33:23.613" Title="How effective is electroshock therapy?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20276" CreationDate="2014-04-17T06:54:48.743" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My answer is in 3 parts: my professional experience with ECT and my perspective on its use, a list of articles and book references for efficacy studies, and a great list of the current understanding of possible mechanisms of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Professional Experience with ECT:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was required in my psychiatric rotation in med school 2 years ago to assist with ECT therapy sessions.  I had a lot of concerns about ECT myself, so I did a lot of reading about ECT - before I felt I could ethically assist with the procedures.  My attending physician (an expert in the field and strong advocate for ECT) gave me some resources, and then I searched for my own (to avoid his bias).  After reading, I was surprised about the efficacy results in studies, and with my gained understanding of current knowledge on mechanism of action, I felt comfortable in assisting.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assisted with several ECT sessions in an extended inpatient setting.  A patient whom I was following responded very well to it, after years of failed antidepressant therapy and suicide attempts.  I followed her only over 10 days, so I can't personally say I witnessed her improvement past that date.  Many patients were kept on their antidepressant/ antipsychotic medication regimen, and ECT was a supplement.  Other patients who were completely unable to tolerate psychotropic medications, so ECT was their only medical option (outside of alternative medicine etc., which I do not know enough about to make comparisons).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Resources&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, for long-term efficacy versus antidepressant therapy, I didn't find a lot of data when I looked.  It would take a more in-depth PubMed search.  I plan to keep my eye out, because although it's not something I prescribe, I would like to understand it more deeply.  Let me know if you find something!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clinical Guidelines:&lt;/strong&gt;  Source &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uptodate.com/contents/overview-of-electroconvulsive-therapy-ect-for-adults?source=search_result&amp;amp;search=ect&amp;amp;selectedTitle=1~85&quot;&gt;UpToDate&lt;/a&gt; - a clinical practice database of peer-reviewed evidence-based current best practice guidelines and information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uptodate.com/contents/unipolar-major-depression-in-adults-indications-for-and-efficacy-of-electroconvulsive-therapy-ect?source=search_result&amp;amp;search=ect&amp;amp;selectedTitle=4~85&quot;&gt;UpToDate Efficacy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research Articles:&lt;/strong&gt;  Source PubMed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=12642045&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Efficacy and safety of electroconvulsive therapy in depressive disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AUUK ECT Review Group,  SOLancet. 2003;361(9360):799.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BACKGROUND&lt;/strong&gt;: We aimed to review published work for the efficacy and safety of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) with simulated ECT, ECT&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;versus pharmacotherapy&lt;/strong&gt;, and different forms of ECT for patients with&#xA;  depressive illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;METHODS**strong text**ODS: We designed a **systematic overview and meta-analysis&lt;/strong&gt; of randomised controlled trials and observational&#xA;  studies. We obtained data from the &lt;strong&gt;Cochrane Collaboration Depressive&#xA;  Anxiety and Neurosis and Schizophrenia Group Controlled trial&#xA;  registers&lt;/strong&gt;, Cochrane Controlled Trials register, Biological Abstracts,&#xA;  CINAHL, EMBASE, LILACS, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and SIGLE, reference lists,&#xA;  and specialist textbooks. Our main outcome measures were depressive&#xA;  symptoms, measures of cognitive function, and mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;FINDINGS&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;Meta-analysis&lt;/strong&gt; of data of short-term efficacy from randomised controlled trials was possible. &lt;strong&gt;Real ECT was significantly&#xA;  more effective&lt;/strong&gt; than simulated ECT (six trials, 256 patients,&#xA;  standardised effect size [SES]-0.91, 95% CI -1.27 to -0.54). Treatment&#xA;  with ECT was &lt;strong&gt;significantly more effective than pharmacotherapy&lt;/strong&gt; (18&#xA;  trials, 1144 participants, SES -0.80, 95% CI -1.29 to -0.29).&#xA;  Bilateral ECT was more effective than unipolar ECT (22 trials, 1408&#xA;  participants, SES -0.32, 95% CI -0.46 to -0.19).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;INTERPRETATION&lt;/strong&gt;: ECT is an effective short-term treatment for depression, and is probably more effective than drug therapy.&#xA;  Bilateral ECT is moderately more effective than unilateral ECT, and&#xA;  high dose ECT is more effective than low dose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=12972983&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A meta-analysis of electroconvulsive therapy efficacy in depression.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AUKho KH, van Vreeswijk MF, Simpson S, Zwinderman AH&#xA;SOJ ECT. 2003;19(3):139.  PMID12972983&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SUMMARY: Recently published controlled studies comparing&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) with other treatments for depression&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  offer the opportunity to perform a meta-analysis of ECT in depression.&#xA;  Fifteen studies were identified which fulfilled the inclusion&#xA;  criteria. From these controlled trials, 20 effect sizes of ECT were&#xA;  calculated. The &lt;strong&gt;speed of action during the course and the efficacy&#xA;  after a full course of ECT were explored&lt;/strong&gt;. The efficacy of sine wave&#xA;  and brief pulse machines were compared. The comparison between ECT and&#xA;  four other comparative treatments was made. Predictive variables were&#xA;  explored using homogeneity tests. &#xA;  ECT was shown to be &lt;strong&gt;superior after a&#xA;  full course.&lt;/strong&gt; The funnel plot showed the absence of publication bias.&#xA;  There was no exaggeration of effect size in the lower quality trials.&#xA;  No evidence was found for a superior speed of action of ECT or for a&#xA;  difference in efficacy between sine wave and brief pulse stimulation.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;ECT was shown to be superior to medication and simulated ECT&lt;/strong&gt;. Some&#xA;  evidence was found that psychosis predicted better response to ECT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Delfland, Locatie St Jorisweg, 2 Delft, The Netherlands. k.kho@ggz-delfland.nl&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=15087991&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Efficacy of ECT in depression: a meta-analytic review.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AUPagnin D, de Queiroz V, Pini S, Cassano GB&#xA;SOJ ECT. 2004;20(1):13.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study analyzed the efficacy of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in&#xA;  depression by means a meta-analytic review of randomized controlled&#xA;  trials that &lt;strong&gt;compared ECT&lt;/strong&gt; with &lt;strong&gt;simulated ECT&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;placebo&lt;/strong&gt; or&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;antidepressant drugs&lt;/strong&gt; and by a complementary &lt;strong&gt;meta-analytic review&lt;/strong&gt; of&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;nonrandomized controlled trials&lt;/strong&gt; that compared &lt;strong&gt;ECT with antidepressants&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  drugs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The review revealed a &lt;strong&gt;significant superiority of ECT&lt;/strong&gt; in &lt;strong&gt;all&#xA;  comparisons:&lt;/strong&gt; ECT versus simulated ECT, ECT versus placebo, ECT versus&#xA;  antidepressants in general, ECT versus TCAs and ECT versus MAOIs. The&#xA;  nonrandomized controlled trials also revealed a &lt;strong&gt;significant&#xA;  statistical difference in favor of ECT when confronted with&#xA;  antidepressants drugs.&lt;/strong&gt; Data analyzed suggest that ECT is a valid&#xA;  therapeutic tool for treatment of depression, including &lt;strong&gt;severe and&#xA;  resistant forms.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Department of Psychiatry, Neurobiology, Pharmacology and Biotechnology. University of Pisa, Italy. d.pagnin@psico.med.unipi.it&#xA;PMID15087991&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Mechanisms of Action&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are still uncertainties of exactly what among the physiological effects of ECT is directly responsible for mood alteration, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uptodate.com/contents/overview-of-electroconvulsive-therapy-ect-for-adults?source=search_result&amp;amp;search=ect&amp;amp;selectedTitle=1~84#H3&quot;&gt;UpToDate has a great breakdown of the mechanisms:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MECHANISM OF ACTION — The mechanism of action for ECT is unknown, but&#xA;  there are many well-documented changes in the central nervous system:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Human and animal studies show that ECT increases release of monoamine&#xA;  neurotransmitters, particularly dopamine and serotonin [8-10]. ECT&#xA;  also enhances monoamine transmission by desensitizing presynaptic&#xA;  adrenergic autoreceptors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One theory postulates that ECT exerts its&#xA;  beneficial effects by increasing release of central neuropeptides,&#xA;  including corticotrophin releasing factor, somatostatin (STS), and&#xA;  neuropeptide Y [11]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The neuroendocrine hypothesis is based upon the&#xA;  diabetes/insulin model and suggests that mood disorders are caused by&#xA;  insufficiency of a hypothalamic mood-maintaining peptide [12].&#xA;  Repeated seizures enhance the production and release of the putative&#xA;  hypothalamic peptide antidepression, which relieves both&#xA;  neuroendocrine and behavioral abnormalities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ECT has anticonvulsant&#xA;  properties (perhaps related to enhanced gamma-aminobutyric acid&#xA;  transmission), which has led to the suggestion that these properties&#xA;  are responsible for the therapeutic effects of the treatment [13].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Positron emission tomography (PET) studies demonstrate decreased&#xA;  metabolic activity in frontal and cingulate cortex after ECT [14].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Functional magnetic resonance imaging before and after successful&#xA;  treatment with ECT reveals a reduction in global connectivity within&#xA;  the left dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex [15]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quantitative&#xA;  electroencephalogram (EEG) studies demonstrate increased slow (delta)&#xA;  wave activity in the prefrontal cortex after ECT, which is associated&#xA;  with clinical response [16]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several human and animal studies indicate&#xA;  that ECT has trophic effects on the central nervous system [17-21].&#xA;  ECT increases brain derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in patients and&#xA;  electroconvulsive stimulation induces neurogenesis and mossy fibre&#xA;  sprouting from granule cells in rat hippocampus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the book chapter that I read is called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0521883881&quot;&gt;Hypothesized Mechanisms and Sites of Actions of Electroconvulsive Therapy&quot; by Nikolaus Michael&lt;/a&gt; in the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0521883881&quot;&gt;Electroconvulsive and Neuromodulation Therapies by Conrad M. Swartz MD.&lt;/a&gt; Very technical but very interesting!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18784" LastEditorUserId="18784" LastEditDate="2014-04-18T05:17:50.013" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T05:17:50.013" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20263" CreationDate="2014-04-17T21:42:11.030" Score="19" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Absence in registry of ships&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no records of an SS Ourang Medan in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lr.org/about_us/shipping_information/Lloyds_Register_of_Ships_online.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lloyds Register&lt;/a&gt; for 1946. You can find records of other ships with similar names - for example the SS OrangOutan!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the stories about the SS Ourang Medan mention that an American ship named Silver Star heard the morse-code distress call and responded. Sometimes the Silver Star is described as a US Navy ship and sometimes as a US Merchant ship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lloyds register for a relevant period only contains mention of one ship with a name staring &quot;Silver Star&quot;. A Canadian merchant ship, not a US ship. It's name was &quot;Silver Star Park&quot; not just &quot;Silver Star&quot;. This ship had been sold and renamed by the time of the alleged sinking of SS Ourang Medan (1947, 1948 or 1952 - depending on which story you read).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plimsollshipdata.org/pdffile.php?name=44b0971.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D3Jwi.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  Refs: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plimsollshipdata.org/ship.php?ship_id=34804&amp;amp;name=Silver%20Star%20Park&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?194490&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Dutch Newspaper &quot;De Locomotief&quot; 1948&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story seems to originate in a 1948 report in De Locomotief. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ju5Xe.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;De Locomotief also reported on this story on two later dates. So there are a series of three reports on this subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kranten.kb.nl/view/article/id/ddd%3A010862872%3Ampeg21%3Ap003%3Aa0050&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;03 February 1948&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kranten.kb.nl/view/article/id/ddd%3A010862918%3Ampeg21%3Ap002%3Aa0033&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;28 February 1948&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kranten.kb.nl/view/article/id/ddd%3A010862945%3Ampeg21%3Ap002%3Aa0038&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;13 March 1948&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They concluded&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/B4AXC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Rz94R.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translation courtesy of &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/6710/hdhondt&quot;&gt;hdhondt&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alongside this is the finish of the story about OM. The conclusion leads us to repeat that we have no further details about this &quot;puzzle of the sea&quot;. It is not possible to give an answer to the many questions that arise from this story. The conclusion is that the whole story is a fantasy, an interesting romance. Against this is the statement from the author, Silvio Scherli of Trieste, who persists in assuring its authenticity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Absence of other records&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google engrams finds no mention of &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Ourang+Medan&amp;amp;year_start=1940&amp;amp;year_end=2014&amp;amp;corpus=15&amp;amp;smoothing=3&amp;amp;share=&amp;amp;direct_url=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ourang medan&lt;/a&gt; between 1940 and 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It finds plenty of references to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Mary+Celeste&amp;amp;year_start=1800&amp;amp;year_end=2008&amp;amp;corpus=15&amp;amp;smoothing=3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mary Celeste&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Ourang Medan is certainly a far less well-known story but if it's story had substance, I'd expect something more to have been written about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Onus of proof&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'm not sure how much is myth or fact.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proponents of this account have not firmly established any facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a claim is made that something very unusual exists (e.g. a fairy who exchanges teeth for money), the onus is on the persons(s) making the claim to provide some reasonable evidence. It is unreasonable to expect others to provide evidence of non-existence. Therefore, until or unless some firm evidence emerges, it is reasonable to treat the claim as a myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare the case of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Celeste&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mary Celeste&lt;/a&gt; of 1872. It seems unlikely that a similarly mysterious event in comparatively modern times (1947/8) would not be recorded more thoroughly in registries, newspapers or court records of the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T11:25:05.257" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20021" CreationDate="2014-04-17T22:56:06.540" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea behind this comes from ancient medical understanding of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;four humors&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Humorism, or humoralism, is a now discredited theory of the makeup and workings of the human body, adopted by Ancient Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers, positing that an excess or deficiency of any of four distinct bodily fluids known as humors (UK: humours) in a person directly influences their temperament and health&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just as bleeding patients, vomiting and laxatives were common to balance the bodily fluids. Humorism is an idea common to most cultures. Vomiting was a very common practice amongst the Native Americas, for instance. Now, here the claim has been replaced slightly with &quot;toxins&quot; rather than &quot;humors&quot; Replacing toxin into the claim makes it seem more credible, but its not. The removal of toxins was always a large part of humorism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CCkQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http://www.customblends.com/TOBACCOFOLKCURES.PDF&amp;amp;ei=cARTU7y6HabjsASQr4CoCg&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGP0fqhYTs0G3FSkHZrsUST73YSDw&amp;amp;sig2=MvLfEla4DbBBl4C2l3iq7w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TOBACCO IN FOLK CURES IN WESTERN SOCIETY&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the reason for the rapidity of European acceptance of tobacco as medicine was the basic medical&#xA;  theory itself, the &lt;strong&gt;theory of humours&lt;/strong&gt;. Fundamentally this was the belief that only&#xA;  four elements (air, fire, earth, and water) composed all things, including the human&#xA;  body and its illnesses. These elements were capable of much interfunctioning, but&#xA;  ideally they balanced one another. They had four basic properties which occurred&#xA;  in combinations (moist, hot, dry, and cold—that is, water has the combined properties&#xA;  of moist and cold, fire of hot and dry, and so forth); and they corresponded to&#xA;  the four seasons of the year (spring, summer, fall, and winter). They appeared in the&#xA;  human body, together with their properties, in the forms of **four humours—bloodj&#xA;  yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm—**and when the humours balanced, the human&#xA;  being was healthy. Sickness resulted from an imbalance of these humours&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And Vittich wrote that there could he no doubt about tobacco's&#xA;  ability to &quot;&lt;strong&gt;cleanse all impuritites&quot; and do away with &quot;every gross and viscous humour&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vomiting balances the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/hippocrates/a/hippocraticmeds.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;yellow bile.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia on the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Misuse of Toxin&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When used non-technically, the term &quot;toxin&quot; is often applied to any toxic substance, even though the term toxicant would be more appropriate. Toxic substances not directly of biological origin are also termed poisons and many non-technical and lifestyle journalists follow this usage to refer to toxic substances in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the context of alternative medicine the term is often used to refer to any substance claimed to cause ill health, ranging anywhere from trace amounts of pesticides to common food items like refined sugar or additives such as monosodium glutamate (MSG).[23]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Toxins are poisons produced by your body or by another plant or animal that would be harmful to you. Most toxins thus are the ones produced during respiration (CO2) or other normal bodily processes. If C02 builds up, known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercapnia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hypercapnia&lt;/a&gt;, you will die for example. In this case of course, C02 is expelled when you exhale.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for vomiting specifically. This is one way the body can get rid of toxins, but only if it is something very toxic you just ate, because vomiting only expels food from the stomach. Food only stays in your stomach for a few hours and environmental toxins can be absorbed before this time. Obviously if you eat poison on accident, it is appropriate to induce vomiting if it isn't acidic or basic (bleach, cleaning products, drain cleaners). Poison Control specializes in answering questions about when to throw things up. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poison.org/prepared/ipecac.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Guidelines for Ipecac.&lt;/a&gt; The toxicologists here are saying its rarely useful for anything, because of the fast absorbtion and because vomiting isn't very useful at expelling poison even in the most dire instances, so its best to always call.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Through the pathway of vomiting it would not be possible to remove substances that might cause ill health suggest as MSG or trace pesticides, either, unless the intention is to do this by causing the person simply not to eat. Starvation is very much less beneficial to ones health than any benefit this is supposed to be causing. Consistent vomiting, known as bulimia, is very bad for one's health. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulimia_nervosa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effects include&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Chronic gastric reflux after eating&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Dehydration and hypokalemia caused by frequent vomiting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Electrolyte imbalance, which can lead to cardiac arrhythmia, cardiac arrest, and even death&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Esophagitis, or inflammation of the esophagus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Boerhaave syndrome, a rupture in the esophageal wall due to vomiting&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Oral trauma, in which repetitive insertion of fingers or other objects causes lacerations to the lining of the mouth or throat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Gastroparesis or delayed emptying&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Constipation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Mallory-Weiss tears&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Infertility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Enlarged glands in the neck, under the jaw line&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Peptic ulcers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Calluses or scars on back of hands due to repeated trauma from incisors[16][17]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Constant weight fluctuations are common&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The erosion on the lower teeth was caused by bulimia. For comparison, the upper teeth were restored with porcelain veneers.[18]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The frequent contact between teeth and gastric acid, in particular, may cause:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Severe dental erosion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Perimolysis, or the erosion of tooth enamel[19]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Swollen salivary glands[19][20]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Constant vomiting can lead to gastroesophageal reflux&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further reading on the health consequences of bulimia, here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/health-consequences-eating-disorders&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Eating Disorders Association&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18704" LastEditorUserId="18704" LastEditDate="2014-04-20T00:34:28.703" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T00:34:28.703" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20286" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20289" CreationDate="2014-04-18T00:07:42.200" Score="4" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;My dad just visited the chiropractor for leg pain. He was given this &quot;laser&quot; device that is supposed to relieve pain. I think the product is called B Laser (Low Level Laser Therapy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right away I am skeptical that a laser can be used to treat pain. Is this a scam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18794" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T11:23:49.447" Title="Low level laser therapy for pain" Tags="|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20289" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20286" CreationDate="2014-04-18T11:05:57.840" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The evidence for therapeutic effects of very low powered lasers is weak and there is history of deliberate deception by makers of these devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is notable that laser pointers can be bought for $5 but laser therapy devices can cost $750. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.devicewatch.org/reports/lllt.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;A Skeptical Look at Low Level Laser Therapy&lt;/em&gt; by Stephen Barrett, M.D.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the bottom line appears to be that LLLT devices may bring about temporary relief of some types of pain, but there's no reason to believe that they will influence the course of any ailment or are more effective than other forms of heat delivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other references&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3065857/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Role of Low-Level Laser Therapy in Neurorehabilitation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/170796.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Efficacy Of Low-Level Laser Therapy In The Treatment Of Neck Pain&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of people find paracetamol effective against pain and a microwaved bag of wheat an effective and low cost method of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/jul/05/health.society&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;using heat to temporarily relieve pain&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-04-18T11:23:49.447" LastActivityDate="2014-04-18T11:23:49.447" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20292" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-18T16:21:47.933" Score="13" ViewCount="903" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acefitness.org/certifiednewsarticle/715/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ace Fitness&lt;/a&gt;, it is a myth that potassium deficiency causes cramps, since there isn't enough potassium in sweat to deplete potassium. Sodium deficiency is blamed instead. Is this true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One commonly held myth is that muscle cramping in active individuals is due to the loss of potassium; however, the amount of potassium in sweat is likely too low for this to be the culprit. Muscle cramping due to electrolyte imbalance is more likely associated with the loss of high amounts of sodium through sweat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1101" LastEditorUserId="24780" LastEditDate="2016-05-13T04:01:10.780" LastActivityDate="2016-05-13T04:01:10.780" Title="Does potassium deficiency cause cramps?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20298" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-19T07:45:50.843" Score="9" ViewCount="6818" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dailybuzzlive.com/archives/5413&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Daily Buzz Live&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fact that McDonald’s uses cow eyeballs and worm fillers does not&#xA;  stop them from legally using the claim that they served 100% beef.&#xA;  McDonald’s has assured its consumers that its product contains 100%&#xA;  beef. They are allowed to do this because McDonald’s buys their “beef”&#xA;  from a company called “100% Beef Company”, making it possible for&#xA;  McDonald’s to call beef byproducts and soy products “100% beef”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4951" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T17:32:51.387" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T17:32:51.387" Title="Does McDonald's use worm meat filler in their &quot;100% beef&quot;?" Tags="|mcdonalds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20300" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-19T12:49:56.783" Score="5" ViewCount="696" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen this episode about religion from the documentary series &quot;Through the Wormhole&quot; and how it is disappearing and they say that it will have only 10% theists in New Zealand by 2050. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/qrIq5xd8nBM?t=23m&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;view the documentary on YouTube&lt;/a&gt; and they discuss the subject at about the 23 minute mark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14939" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T07:43:25.953" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T14:44:53.173" Title="Will only 10% of the New Zealand population be religious by 2050?" Tags="|religion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20300" CreationDate="2014-04-19T17:43:19.097" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is likely that they did a simple projection of the current trends into the future to make this prediction.  On the regular census that the New Zealand Government runs, they ask each citizen what their religious affiliation is. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_New_Zealand&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here are the results for the last four censuses&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XPu1W.png&quot; alt=&quot;Religions affiliations in New Zealand&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, the answer &quot;No religion&quot; is trending upwards at around 10% per decade.  Christianity is trending downwards at about the same rate. The total of the categories &quot;No religion&quot;, &quot;Object to answering&quot; and &quot;Not stated&quot; is at around 50% of the population in New Zealand.  Christianity makes up about 43% of the total population in New Zealand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the rates stay constant, we would expect that after 36 years, the percentage of Christians in New Zealand will have dropped by 36% which would leave 8% of the population left as Christians.  The same would be true for the No Religion group in the reverse direction, going up by 36% to 74%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The percentage of non-Christian religions has been growing over the last four censuses, however the rate of change is smaller than the other two groups.  At about 2% per decade, by 2050 they would make up 13% of the population, outnumbering Christians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this simple projection, they along with the &quot;Object to answering&quot; and &quot;Not stated&quot; groups would make up the remainder of the population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a simple projection from existing trends and is not highly likely to be precisely correct however it does suggest that the prediction of less than 10% religious by 2050 is close to what we should expect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can get a more accurate picture by looking at the breakdown of Atheists by age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wuIQq.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Atheists by age in New Zealand&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This chart suggests that the percentage of the No Religion group in the younger population is greater than in the overall population.  As they get older, you would expect the overall population to more closely match what we see in the younger population now.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stats.govt.nz/Census/2006CensusHomePage/QuickStats/quickstats-about-a-subject/culture-and-identity/religious-affiliation.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This is the chart from 2006&lt;/a&gt; but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stats.govt.nz/~/media/Statistics/Census/2013%20Census/profile-and-summary-reports/quickstats-culture-identity/no-religion.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the chart&lt;/a&gt; from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stats.govt.nz/Census/2013-census/profile-and-summary-reports/quickstats-culture-identity/religion.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2013 census shows a similar pattern&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The future is difficult to predict which is why we tend to avoid it here at Skeptics.  These trends show what will happen if the forces at work do not change and the rates stay constant.  Predicting for certain that the rates &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; stay constant until 2050 is beyond the abilities of science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11387" LastEditorUserId="11387" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T16:20:48.750" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T16:20:48.750" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20304" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-19T19:22:34.823" Score="8" ViewCount="402" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been quite a few claims lately on the internet (though all look deceptively similar), that vegetable oils in general are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thankyourbody.com/vegetable-oils/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;bad for your health&lt;/a&gt; and that one should prefer oils which are not extracted from seeds, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://wellnessmama.com/2193/why-you-should-never-eat-vegetable-oil-or-margarine/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;coconut and olive oil&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, in these claims there is no differentiation between oils - All are equally branded as &quot;unnatural&quot; and therefore bad. In addition, &lt;a href=&quot;http://authoritynutrition.com/6-reasons-why-vegetable-oils-are-toxic/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;it is claimed that they are responsible for cardiovascular and other diseases&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if these claims are correct and whether all vegetable oils can be shown to be collectively problematic to human health, when consumed in regular, day-to-day amounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are vegetable oils (such as canola, corn, sunflower, etc.) linked to health problems?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17130" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T13:04:16.790" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T20:17:09.740" Title="Can vegetable oils, extracted from seeds, be shown to cause health problems?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ClosedDate="2014-05-25T02:02:59.677" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20298" CreationDate="2014-04-19T19:45:01.920" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;No they don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/business/market/allbeef.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; have covered this rumor already. Beyond the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food/product_nutrition.sandwiches.255.big-mac.html&quot;&gt;official McDonald's publication and advertising&lt;/a&gt;, Snopes also cites the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/RegulatoryInformation/Legislation/ucm148712.htm&quot;&gt;Federal Trade Commission Act&lt;/a&gt; which has the power to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;prevent persons, partnerships, or corporations from using unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also citing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eslegal.net/uploads/Materiality_Matter_article.pdf&quot;&gt;Lanham Act&lt;/a&gt; as having provisions that provide remedy for customers against corporations that have deceived them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;McDonald's have admitted that they used &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_slime#cite_note-ABCNews-CompaniesStop-22&quot;&gt;Pink Slime&lt;/a&gt; in their products and have announced that they will stop using it. (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2012/02/01/mcdonalds-announces-end-to-pink-slime-in-burgers/&quot;&gt;ABC news&lt;/a&gt;). Pink Slime can constitute up to 15 percent of ground beef without additional labeling in the USA (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/US/safeway-supervalu-food-lion-stop-selling-pink-slime/story?id=15974064#.T3bVZNnZeSo&quot;&gt;ABC news&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It disturbs me that USDA made a decision that this filler, up to 15 percent doesn't have to be disclosed,&quot; she told ABC News. &quot;Therefore the consumer is at the mercy of each retailer's decision.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Israel, the patties for McDonald's are made by a company named &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oftov.co.il/&quot;&gt;Of Tov&lt;/a&gt; which literally translates as &quot;Good Chicken&quot;, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcdonalds.co.il/%D7%9E%D7%94%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%9B%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%96%D7%95%D7%A0%D7%94/%D7%A8%D7%9B%D7%99%D7%91%D7%99_%D7%94%D7%9E%D7%96%D7%95%D7%9F&quot;&gt;their site&lt;/a&gt; they still say that their patties are made from 100% lean beef meat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-04-19T20:19:53.383" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T20:19:53.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19361" CreationDate="2014-04-19T22:50:02.453" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;well its true in a way....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the original concoction is called Panchamrita ( cos it has 5 things added ). Yogurt and honey do form large portions. sugar the least...and milk and ghee ( clarified butter ) are also added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;honey, sugar, milk, yogurt, and ghee&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchamrita&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panchamrita&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the food of the gods.....cos it is used during puja. Normally the stuff is later swallowed by the kids etc of the house.....Its a ceremonial blessing thingy and very delicious....but mostly in small quantities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is also used in large quantites containing mostly milk for big rituals, in which case it is a large waste of milk.....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhisheka&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhisheka&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18820" LastActivityDate="2014-04-19T22:50:02.453" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20021" CreationDate="2014-04-20T01:20:46.327" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a physician I have to tell you that &lt;strong&gt;regular induced self-vomiting&lt;/strong&gt; has the following short-term consequences:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.- Dehydration and electrolyte imbalance that can potentially cause metabolic alkalosis, hypokalaemia and hypochloraemia (that in turn perpetuates the alkalosis).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.- In severe metabolic alkalosis with marked dehydration, acidic urine may be produced (paradoxical aciduria).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.- Frequent vomiting exposes your oral cavity to many digestive acids, and produces permanent tooth decay and tonsilitis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4.- Changes in gastric pH might lead to severe micronutrient deficiencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are not long term benefits from such behaviour.&lt;/strong&gt; On the other hand, there are many references in literature regarding malnutrition and metabolic abnormalities arising from self induced vomiting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to read the following sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Merck Manuals Online Medical Library. Home Edition for Patients and Caregivers. Digestive Disorders. Symptoms and Diagnosis of Digestive Disorders.&lt;/strong&gt; [2007]. Available from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec09/ch119/ch119b.html#sec09-ch119-ch119b-151&quot;&gt;http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec09/ch119/ch119b.html#sec09-ch119-ch119b-151&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Milestones In Recovery. Anorexia and Bulimia and the Effects on your Teeth.&lt;/strong&gt; [2012]. Available from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.milestonesprogram.org/article/Anorexia-and-Bulimia-and-The-Effects-on-Your-Teeth&quot;&gt;http://www.milestonesprogram.org/article/Anorexia-and-Bulimia-and-The-Effects-on-Your-Teeth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;WebMD. Oral Care.Tonsillitis: Symptoms, Causes, and Treatments.&lt;/strong&gt; [2012]. Available from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/oral-health/guide/tonsillitis-symptoms-causes-and-treatments&quot;&gt;http://www.webmd.com/oral-health/guide/tonsillitis-symptoms-causes-and-treatments&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18822" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T01:20:46.327" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20292" CreationDate="2014-04-20T16:16:18.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ratio of intracellular to extracellular potassium is important in determining the cellular membrane potential. Small changes in the extracellular potassium level can have profound effects on the function of the cardiovascular and neuromuscular systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Low potassium (&lt;em&gt;hypokalemia&lt;/em&gt;) refers to a lower than normal level of potassium in your bloodstream. &lt;strong&gt;Potassium&lt;/strong&gt; is a chemical (&lt;em&gt;electrolyte&lt;/em&gt;) that is critical to the proper functioning of nerve and muscles cells, particularly heart muscle cells. &lt;strong&gt;Hypokalemia&lt;/strong&gt; is generally defined as a serum potassium level of less than 3.5 mEq/L (3.5 mmol/L). Severe hypokalemia is a level of less than 2.5 mEq/L. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most cases of hypokalemia occur in the setting of specific disease states, and most common cause of low potassium is &lt;em&gt;excessive potassium loss in urine or from the digestive tract&lt;/em&gt;, transcellular shift (movement of potassium from serum into cells), or the direct effect of medications. Only rarely is low potassium due to sweating or not getting enough potassium in your diet. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Patients are often asymptomatic, particularly those with mild hypokalemia. Symptoms that are present are often from the underlying cause of the hypokalemia rather than the hypokalemia itself. The symptoms of hypokalemia are nonspecific and predominantly are related to muscular or cardiac function. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those symptoms include: weakness and fatigue (most common), palpitations, psychological symptoms (eg, psychosis, delirium, hallucinations, depression). &lt;em&gt;Muscle cramps and pain are only present in severe cases, as &lt;strong&gt;Troponin&lt;/strong&gt;'s (a regulatory protein complex that is integral to muscle contraction in skeletal and cardiac muscle) becomes impaired.&lt;/em&gt; Therefore, hypokalemia can hyperpolarize skeletal muscle cells, impairing their ability to develop the depolarization necessary for muscle contraction. It can also reduce blood flow to skeletal muscles. The reduced blood flow can predispose patients to &lt;strong&gt;Rhabdomyolysis&lt;/strong&gt; (damaged skeletal muscle tissue breaks down its breakdown products are released into the bloodstream) especially when vigorous exercise is combined with impaired blood-flow regulation. The combination of these effects frequently leads to muscle weakness, easy fatigability, cramping, and myalgias. Paralysis, although uncommon, can occur in cases of profound potassium deficiency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assadi F. &lt;strong&gt;Diagnosis of Hypokalemia: a Problem-solving Approach to Clinical Cases.&lt;/strong&gt; Iran J Kidney Dis. Jul 2008;2(3):115-22. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gennari FJ. &lt;strong&gt;Hypokalemia.&lt;/strong&gt; N Engl J Med. Aug 13 1998;339(7):451-8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zull DN. &lt;strong&gt;Disorders of Potassium Metabolism.&lt;/strong&gt; Emerg Med Clin North Am. Nov 1989;7(4):771-94.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ingram TC, Olsson JM. &lt;strong&gt;In Brief: Hypokalemia.&lt;/strong&gt; Pediatr Rev. Sep 2008;29(9):e50-1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18822" LastActivityDate="2014-04-20T16:16:18.783" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17407" CreationDate="2014-04-20T18:54:13.267" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a thorny question, both because it is a politicized issue, and because the effects of cannabis use while driving are less well studied than the effects of alcohol, and appear to include a number of confounding factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, my survey of the literature suggests that there are two questions, which have (surprisingly) different answers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does marijuana consumption make it more difficult for a driver to operate a motor vehicle?&#xA;The answer  to this question is &lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does marijuana consumption prior to operating a motor vehicle increase the risk of serious injuries or death during operation? The answer to this question is probably &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, and at best that much more study is needed. Certainly it is nothing like the same risk increase as driving drunk.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Justification for claim 1&lt;/strong&gt;: There are a number of studies on the subject, and you've cited several of them in your question. The WHO report &lt;a href=&quot;http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/1997/WHO_msa_PSA_97.4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; offers a reasonable overview of the state of research circa 1997, and concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is sufficient consistency and coherence in the evidence from&#xA;experimental studies and studies of cannabinoid levels among crash&#xA;victims to conclude that there is an increased risk of motor vehicle&#xA;crashes among persons who drive when intoxicated with cannabis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as noted in a 1999 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/12633755_Role_of_cannabis_in_motor_vehicle_crashes/file/e0b4951c0bbf9d97a4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;meta-study&lt;/a&gt; out of John Hopkins (which I consider to be an exceptionally well done paper in general, not just on this topic), the studies considered in the WHO report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...were for experimental studies and descriptive studies of cannabis prevalence in drivers. In themselves, such studies do not establish a casual association between cannabis use and motor vehicle crashes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, the studies cited by the WHO report were either experimental in nature (e.g., giving subjects controlled doses of cannabis and then measuring their driving abilities in a controlled environment), or studies that simply showed &amp;quot;lots of dead drivers have cannabis in their system&amp;quot; (which cannot show that lots of cannabis consumers who drive end up dead). The John Hopkins study cites another meta-study (Smiley 1986), which I cannot find an online source for, indicating that among other things, THC impairment of driving skills is present only during an extremely brief time after consumption. This is consistent with the measured half-life of 0.1 hours in blood mentioned slightly earlier in the paper. However, the meta-study &lt;strong&gt;does&lt;/strong&gt; confirm impairment during acute exposure, and this result appears to be broadly upheld in more recent research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly on this point, studies attempting to find a safe limit for driving while under the effects of THC (e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2007.02009.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) suggest a limit of 7–10ng/ml. For reference, a typical inhaled dose used in &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00427321&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt; takes about 2 hours to decay to this value. Interestingly, alcohol does not have a half-life in blood, and is instead removed at a &lt;em&gt;linear&lt;/em&gt; rate, possibly explaining the difference in effect lengths (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1600-0773.1958.tb01164.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what we can conclude from this is that the experimental and descriptive studies in the WHO report and elsewhere do show some evidence that drivers will be impaired briefly following the consumption of cannabis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Justification for claim 2&lt;/strong&gt;: The main reason that there doesn't seem to be an increase in traffic accident rates after consuming cannabis, even though there &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a measurable decrease in ability to drive safely, is that such drivers appear to drive more cautiously. The John Hopkins meta-study establishes this by considering a very large number of epidemiological studies together, along with evidence from experimental studies like those mentioned in part 1 above and, after accounting for other risk factors and confounding, concludes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is &lt;strong&gt;no evidence&lt;/strong&gt; that cannabis consumption increases the risk of culpability for injury or death while driving, and that in fact, such risks may be slightly reduced. (CI for the odds ratio includes 1.0, but with mean below it.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is evidence that there may be an interaction between cannabis and alcohol, which impairs drivers more than either drug alone, and leads to increased accident risk. However, this relationship is unclear, in part because of confounding factors like frequent misclassification caused by police preferentially attributing fault to drivers under the influence (as opposed to the other party in an accident), and to delays in blood testing which make it difficult to determine whether a party was in fact experiencing the symptoms of cannabis exposure at the time of the accident, or not (the exponential decay means that even small errors in the test equipment can produce large errors in the estimated time of consumption).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cannabis consumption &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; lead to an increased risk of minor accidents (these being less rigorously reported and recorded). However, the evidence for this claim is not conclusive.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This result is in broad agreement with other more modern studies. For example, a 2005 &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2005.01100.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; finds that while a naive analysis shows a strong relationship between cannabis consumption and accident rates, this relationship disappears when other risk factors (seat-belt use, alcohol consumption, speed, and sleepiness) are taken into account, and cannabis is instead found to have a mild (and not significant) 0.8 OR &lt;em&gt;protective&lt;/em&gt; effect. In contrast, studies that do not account for other risk factors, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsijournal.org/article/S0379-0738%2803%2900052-5/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; continue to find correlations between cannabis use and accident rates, but I would consider their methodology flawed because they do not account for known confounders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another interesting &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1080/10550490902786934/abstract;jsessionid=BB4AC23BC1419DA1E076FDF40504D3E3.f04t03?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2010 study&lt;/a&gt; supports all these findings as well: cannabis does impair driving ability immediately following exposure; effects do not last long; drivers compensate strongly for their impairment; alcohol and cannabis together may increase accident risk more than either alone. Its recommendation is that users be advised by doctors to wait an hour or two after consumption before driving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So overall, it looks like driving while high is probably not a good idea (frankly, I can't imagine it being a &lt;em&gt;fun&lt;/em&gt; experience), but is probably not risking your life or the lives of other people in anything like the same way as driving drunk. There are however a lot of confounding factors, and indisputably driving safely will be more difficult immediately following consumption, for 1-2 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastEditorUserId="26652" LastEditDate="2022-12-02T02:21:15.040" LastActivityDate="2022-12-02T02:21:15.040" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20313" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20321" CreationDate="2014-04-21T02:42:07.627" Score="19" ViewCount="48840" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I saw the following story on &lt;a href=&quot;http://truthbook.com/stories/funny-comebacks/gandhi-and-professor-peters&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;truthbook&lt;/a&gt; and wanted to know if it is true.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(This one was found on the internet. We cannot corroborate its accuracy, but it is an amusing story...)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Gandhi was studying law at the University College of London, there was a professor, whose last name was Peters, who felt animosity for Gandhi, and because Gandhi never lowered his head towards him, their &amp;quot;arguments&amp;quot; were very common.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day, Mr. Peters was having lunch at the dining room of the University and Gandhi came along with his tray and sat next to the professor. The professor, in his arrogance, said, &amp;quot;Mr Gandhi: you do not understand... a pig and a bird do not sit together to eat,&amp;quot; to which Gandhi replies, &amp;quot;You do not worry professor, I'll fly away, &amp;quot; and he went and sat at another table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Peters, green of rage, decides to take revenge on the next test, but Gandhi responds brilliantly to all questions. Then, Mr. Peters asked him the following question, &amp;quot;Mr Gandhi, if you are walking down the street and find a package, and within it there is a bag of wisdom and another bag with a lot of money; which one will you take?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without hesitating, Gandhi responded, &amp;quot;the one with the money, of course.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Peters, smiling, said, &amp;quot;I, in your place, would have taken the wisdom, don't you think?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Each one takes what one doesn't have,&amp;quot; responded Gandhi indifferently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Peters, already hysteric, writes on the exam sheet the word &amp;quot;idiot&amp;quot; and gives it to Gandhi. Gandhi takes the exam sheet and sits down. A few minutes later, Gandhi goes to the professor and says, &amp;quot;Mr. Peters, you signed the sheet, but you did not give me the grade.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9115" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-08-22T12:56:03.303" Title="Did Gandhi trump Professor Peters in a number of interactions?" Tags="|history|politics|quotes|mahatma-gandhi|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20317" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-21T13:40:44.427" Score="3" ViewCount="131" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep reading about fracking and cases of contaminated water supplies. I would like to know if there is quantitative evidence of fracking being more disruptive to people's lives in the areas of extraction, compared to crude oil, coal and non-fracking natural gas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, are there more cases of fracking-related contaminated water supplies than crude oil extraction? Coal?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10728" LastEditorUserId="10728" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T18:19:30.680" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T18:19:30.680" Title="is fracking inherently more contaminating than extracting or transporting crude oil, coal and non-fracking natural gas?" Tags="|fracking|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-04-21T19:58:27.833" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20319" CreationDate="2014-04-21T17:52:16.683" Score="35" ViewCount="5485" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151521973955155&amp;amp;set=a.496176595154.294030.8798180154&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;relevant_count=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Richard Dawkins Foundation&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/afLME.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was Ishtar's symbols anything similar to the bunny and the egg?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was Easter named after Ishtar?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15834" LastEditorUserId="15834" LastEditDate="2014-04-21T17:58:48.807" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T13:13:43.177" Title="Is Easter named after the Canaanite goddess Ishtar?" Tags="|religion|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20318" CreationDate="2014-04-21T18:09:09.917" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Easter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Easter is derived from Eōstre&lt;/a&gt;, who was a Germanic divinity, a goddess of the dawn. The word is related to other dawn goddesses, but not to Ishtar, who is goddess of fertility and war. This is backed up by The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 1971, Vol. 1, pg. 827:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides the lions on her gate, her symbol is an eight-pointed star. Bunnies and eggs are not associated with her. (see Black, Jeremy and Green, Anthony (1992). Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary. ISBN 0-292-70794-0 pp. 156, 169–170)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might also like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/29/happy-easter-which-is-not-named-after-ishtar-okay.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this refutation of the meme&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/22270/etymology-of-easter&quot;&gt;this question on the English Language site&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:10.210" LastActivityDate="2016-03-28T13:13:43.177" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20318" CreationDate="2014-04-21T20:31:45.080" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the entry from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/59097?isAdvanced=false&amp;amp;result=1&amp;amp;rskey=nUFz6L&amp;amp;&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oxford English Dictionary, Third Edition June 2011&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etymology:  Cognate with Old Dutch ōster- (in ōstermānōth April, lit. ‘Easter-month’), Old Saxon ōstar- (in ōstarfrisking paschal lamb; Middle Low German ōsteren , ōstern , plural), Old High German ōstara (usually in plural ōstarūn ; Middle High German ōster (usually in plural ōstern ), German Ostern , singular and (now chiefly regional) plural), probably &amp;lt; the same Germanic base as east adv. (and hence ultimately cognate with Sanskrit uṣas , Avestan ušah- , ancient Greek (Ionic and Epic) ἠώς , (Attic) ἕως , classical Latin aurōra , all in sense ‘dawn’). For alternative (and less likely) etymologies see the references cited below. It is noteworthy that among the Germanic languages the word (as the name for Easter) is restricted to English and German; in other Germanic languages, as indeed in most European languages, the usual word for Easter is derived from the corresponding word for the Jewish Passover; compare pasch n.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bede ( De Temporum Ratione 15. 9: see quot. below) derives the word &amp;lt; Eostre (a Northumbrian spelling; also Eastre in a variant reading), according to him, the name of a goddess whose festival was celebrated by the pagan Anglo-Saxons around the time of the vernal equinox (presumably in origin a goddess of the dawn, as the name is to be derived from the same Germanic base as east adv.: see above). This explanation is not confirmed by any other source, and the goddess has been suspected by some scholars to be an invention of Bede's. However, it seems unlikely that Bede would have invented a fictitious pagan festival in order to account for a Christian one. For further discussion and alternative derivations see D. H. Green Lang. &amp;amp; Hist. Early Germanic World (1998) 351–3, J. Udolph &amp;amp; K. Schäferdieck in J. Hoops's Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde (ed. 2, 2003) XXII. 331–8, and for a parallel development compare yule n.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that the easterly direction is associated with the resurrection from early Christianity because the sun rise is a symbol of new life. Churches were built facing east, and people were buried facing east, anticipating the resurrection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18843" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-21T20:31:45.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20313" CreationDate="2014-04-21T22:08:36.013" Score="33" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I saw the following story on truthbook and wanted to know if it is true.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(This one was found on the internet. We cannot corroborate its accuracy, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Probably not true&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This degree of zinging repartee seems very unlikely from someone who described himself as shy and tongue tied at that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read Gandhi's autobiography &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gandhiheritageportal.org/mahatma-gandhi-books/the-story-of-my-experiments-with-truth#page/1/mode/2up&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;The Story Of My Experiments With Truth&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; you will see that, during his studies in London he was rather shy and had trouble speaking in public&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;I was at a loss to know how to express myself&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YO10G.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YO10Gm.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt; p81&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;This shyness I retained throughout my stay in England ...&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;the presence of half a dozen or more people would strike me dumb&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EdHFQ.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EdHFQm.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt; p82&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can find nothing about a Professor Peters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can find no original source for the anecdote in the question. There are plenty of copies in the Internet but they all seem very recent and lack firm attribution - it seems unlikely that this anecdote was only passed by word of mouth between 1898 and 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this doesn't mean the anecdote is untrue, but it does seem not to fit well with Gandhi's account of his own confidence in English at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T13:02:37.043" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20318" CreationDate="2014-04-22T00:12:35.320" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a detailed answer to the second question from &lt;a href=&quot;http://brandplucked.webs.com/easterreplenish.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a blog by a King James Bible apologist&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One view is that Easter was in fact the name of the Anglo-Saxon pagan goddess of spring and that Herod was waiting till after this pagan holiday was over before he was going to have Peter killed. There are however many serious problems with this view. Number one is the fact that the pagan goddess was named Eoestre or Eastre or some say Ishtar or Astarte (all different gods and goddesses), but the name is not Easter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the King James Bible had read: &amp;quot;intending after Ishtar&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;intending after Eoestre&amp;quot;, they might have a case for their argument. But it clearly does not read that way. It says: &amp;quot;intending after EASTER to bring him forth to the people.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at it from the Greek side of things. The Greek word used here is clearly πάσχα or paska. There is NO way on God's green earth that the Greek word πάσχα can possibly mean anything remotely like &amp;quot;Eoestre&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;Ishtar&amp;quot;.  The King James Bible translators were not morons. They knew exactly what this word means and it means EASTER, particularly when it applies to the yearly celebration of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that is what they wrote. The second major problem with this view is that Herod was an Edomite and probably a Roman citizen, but by no stretch of the imagination was he an Anglo-Saxon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term Anglo-Saxon designates the population in Britain partly descended from the Germanic tribes who migrated from Europe and settled the south and east of the island beginning in the early 5th century, and the period after their initial settlement through their creation of the English nation up to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon era denotes the period of English history between about 550 and 1066. The term can be used for the language, also known as Old English, that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons in England (and parts of south-eastern Scotland) between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century, after which it is known as Middle English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it would be more than a little difficult to have a Roman/Edomite king in the first century celebrating an Anglo-Saxon pagan goddess who was never acknowledged among the Romans and in fact did not even exist until some 4 to 5 centuries later. About the only thing the term Easter and the Anglo-Saxon Eoestre could possibly have in common is that they are both derived from the Middle English word &amp;quot;east&amp;quot; meaning simply the East. Aside from that, it's a theory totally devoid of and contrary to all known historical facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18848" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T01:37:10.237" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20325" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T02:29:36.140" Score="11" ViewCount="2160" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been hearing since grade school that standing straight improves brain activity, that you will be able to think clearer, faster, better, etc. Mostly, it's teachers who say that, but I have yet to find any scientific proof that it's how it all works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pupils are expected to stand up when answering teacher's question. Also, talking to teacher while sitting is considered bad tone or outright rude. In school students are supposed to speak to teachers while standing unless the teacher specifically allows the student to sit while answering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect this &quot;standing up makes you think better&quot; thing was originally supposed to encourage etiquette, so as not to come off as rude when talking to teachers and seniors while sitting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also this may have started as a way to teach children that sitting too much can be harmful. This I can agree with, as it's scientifically proven that people who don't move around enough may suffer from various illnesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've talked to my classmates when I was still in school and they mostly disagreed with that statement. They thought that if they were to stand for too long, eventually they would become too tired of standing to focus on the task at hand, which would be the exact opposite of the expected result. Besides, being the only one (or one of the few) students standing would look like an attempt to show off, so then we decided it would harm our reputation and didn't do it, even though some teachers said they encourage standing up during their classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does standing up instead of sitting allow you to think better, or is it a school myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13563" LastActivityDate="2022-12-07T15:28:14.313" Title="Does standing as opposed to sitting or lying improve brain activity?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20325" CreationDate="2014-04-22T03:00:39.017" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are studies that might suggest that there's an increase of physiological conditions that are favorable to creative brain activity, as well as persistence of neuronal function itself while maintaining an standing position. General blood circulation increases, preventing the risk of high blood pressure and the possibility of blood clots as a direct benefit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some users of standing position desks refer a subjective increase of equilibrioception, motivation morale and general mood and outlook. However, those benefits are mostly anecdotical in nature. The increase in brain activity is a direct consequence of the activation of the propioceptive receptors in the ankle, and might not be related with the thinking process itself, beyond the awareness that standing up practically implies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yasuomi Ouchi, et al. &lt;strong&gt;Brain Activation During Maintenance Of Standing Postures In Humans.&lt;/strong&gt; Brain. Volume 122, Issue 2Pp. 329-338. Available at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/122/2/329.full&quot;&gt;http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/122/2/329.full&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Daniel J. Goble, et al. &lt;strong&gt;Brain Activity during Ankle Proprioceptive Stimulation Predicts Balance Performance in Young and Older Adults.&lt;/strong&gt; The Journal of Neuroscience, November 9, 2011 • 31(45):16344 –16352. Available at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/45/16344.full.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.jneurosci.org/content/31/45/16344.full.pdf&lt;/a&gt;‎&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18822" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T03:00:39.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20330" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T07:07:15.693" Score="2" ViewCount="2544" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorman&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Survivorman&lt;/a&gt;, Les Stroud went on a Bigfoot expedition. Towards the end of the episode he showed &lt;a href=&quot;https://mtc.cdn.vine.co/r/videos/4D6E291F821060810759585615872_178594448a5.4.8.42249831158997803.mp4?versionId=1JH4iMDeYe1Xhoq0Hb2z2vB9hCLGZ4AY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;footage provided by Todd Standing&lt;/a&gt; with a very clear picture of what appears to be a juvenile Sasquatch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/x2Z5A.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Todd Standing with Sasquatch&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ce7SZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this good evidence of the existence of the sasquatch?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lesstroud.ca/news/survivorman-bigfoot&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://lesstroud.ca/news/survivorman-bigfoot&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18853" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T07:37:34.050" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T11:30:39.477" Title="Did Todd Standing video a sasquatch?" Tags="|united-states|biology|cryptozoology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="21" ClosedDate="2014-04-22T20:44:50.787" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20335" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T14:02:44.340" Score="25" ViewCount="20874" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSrIkUXwsNk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; a dog's head is brought back to life by artificially injecting blood and air. The dog's head reacted to sound and touch and used its tongue to taste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not skeptic about its &lt;em&gt;possibility&lt;/em&gt;, but I am skeptic if it was possible in 1940.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Links and sources:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Wikipedia: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiments_in_the_Revival_of_Organisms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiments_in_the_Revival_of_Organisms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Youtube Part 1: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSrIkUXwsNk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSrIkUXwsNk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Youtube Part 2 (killing and reviving a dog): &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjBa6scGIPQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjBa6scGIPQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Dog head robot: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Russian_Experiment_Dead_Dog.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Russian_Experiment_Dead_Dog.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-05-18T20:10:30.043" LastActivityDate="2019-05-18T20:10:30.043" Title="Is this video of the Soviet Dog Revival Experiment real?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|zoology|soviet-union|experiments|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20336" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T18:03:06.177" Score="9" ViewCount="1102" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://atlanteangardens.blogspot.com/2014/04/massive-megalithic-stone-ruins.html?spref=fb&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atlantean Gardens blog&lt;/a&gt; humans worked 3000 ton stones were found in Russia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D9gtSm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Example of Stones&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://therundownlive.com/largest-blocks-stone-ever-discovered-megalithic-ruins-russia/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Rundown Live has more photos.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wands-of-horus.com/en/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr Valery Uvarov&lt;/a&gt; thinks they are man-made. He is &quot;Head of the Department of Palaeoscience, Palaeotechnology, and UFO Research of the National Security Academy of Russia&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this site from an ancient advanced civilization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18848" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T23:15:55.660" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T06:20:34.047" Title="Are these gigantic stones in Russia from a technologically advanced ancient civilization?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20335" CreationDate="2014-04-22T18:46:49.043" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;In answer to the question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if [what is depicted in linked video] was really possible in 1940?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is unequivocally &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt; - in fact quite a bit earlier. Reanimating a severed head was hypothesised in 1812, first attempted in 1857 and, for the most part, perfected in 1928-29.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1812, French Physiologist &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9sar_Julien-Jean_Le_Gallois&quot;&gt;Julian Jean Cesar Legallois&lt;/a&gt; hypothesised that a head could theoretically be kept alive in isolation from its body by maintaining a supply of blood. However this hypothesis was not tested until 1857 when &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-%C3%89douard_Brown-S%C3%A9quard&quot;&gt;Dr Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard&lt;/a&gt; lopped off the head of a dog, drained the blood and after 10 minutes injected fresh blood back into the arteries. He reported signs of life displaying what appeared to be voluntary movements of the eyes and face. This continued for a few minutes until the head once again &quot;died&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source: Brown-Séquard, E (1858) L'encephale, apres avoir complement perdu ses fonctions et ses proprietes vitales peut les recouvrer sous l'influence de sand change d'oxygene. &lt;a href=&quot;http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k77336x.image&quot;&gt;Jounal de la physiologie de l'homme et des animaux.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar research continued with Dr Jean-Baptiste Vincent Laborde who was first to fill a severed human head with blood. The results were disappointing, nothing much happened. Laborder blamed this on the delay between getting the head from the gallows (The subject was reported to be a murderer named &quot;Campi&quot;) to his labratory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laborde subsequently tried again, this time on the murderer &quot;Gagny&quot; whose head he received a mere 7 minutes post-mortem. By 18 minutes he had connected the carotid artery to that of a still-living dog. Laborde reported that the facial muscles contracted, while the jaw snapped violently shut. No signs of conciousness were reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Around the same time, Paul Loye (A collegue of Laborde) erected a guillotine in his office and used it to decaptitate hundreds of dogs in order to study their reaction&#xA;After Laborde and Loye, a handful of doctors pursued this line of research but for real breakthroughs the world needed to wait until the late 1920s when Soviet Physician Sergei Brukhonenko succeeded in keeping the isolated head of a dog alive for three hours. What made this possible was the use of anti-coagulant drugs and a primative heart-lung machine (developed by Brukhonenko) which he called an autojector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source: Brukhonenko, S (1929). Experiences avec la tete isolee du chien II: Resultats des experiences. &lt;a href=&quot;http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k64295415/f41.image&quot;&gt;Journal de physiologie et de pathologie generale.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which leads us back to the question. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0496948/&quot;&gt;In 1940 a film was released&lt;/a&gt; detailing the work of Dr S.S Brukhonenko and entitled &quot;Experiments in the Revival of Organisms&quot;. Dr Brukhonenko is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0496948/fullcredits?ref_=tt_cl_sm#cast&quot;&gt;credited&lt;/a&gt; with Writing and Technical Direction roles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A remaining question is whether the video in question is an accurate depiction of the very real scientific work of Brukhonenko et al. The answer to &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; question, I am still looking for references!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of this answer has been researched with help of the (rather fun) book: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Elephants-Acid-Other-Bizarre-Experiments/dp/0330506641&quot;&gt;Elephants on Acid (ISBN:9781743291870)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T20:02:09.693" LastActivityDate="2014-04-22T20:02:09.693" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20336" CreationDate="2014-04-22T19:26:57.447" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is very interesting. I am going to elaborate on Valery Uvarov first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's have a look at Dr Valery Uvarov. It seems very hard to get a biography of the guy, the only &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/esp_autor_uvarov_a.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;information&lt;/a&gt; I can find is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr Valery Mikhailovich Uvarov is the head of the Department of UFO Research, Palaeosciences and Palaeotechnology of the National Security Academy of Russia, and has devoted more than 14 years to ufology as well as to the study of the legacy of ancient civilizations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is the author of numerous papers on palaeotechnology and palaeoscience, as well as ufology and esoterica, published in the Russian and foreign press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if he really is a specialist in Palaeoscience, that would make him the right person to assess this kind of phenomenon. I did a &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.ch/scholar?start=0&amp;amp;q=author:Valery%20author:Uvarov&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=0,5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;search&lt;/a&gt; for papers authored by him in English, however the only documents that match him are his books on ufology. This means that he hasn't published any papers in a reputable, international journal on Geology or Palaeoscience which makes me rather sceptical about his authority in the field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The National Security Academy of Russia where he apparently works, is only ever mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.ch/search?client=ubuntu&amp;amp;channel=fs&amp;amp;q=National%20Security%20Academy%20St.%20Petersburg&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;gfe_rd=cr&amp;amp;ei=gbpWU9i1IePW8geLhIHgCw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;connection with him&lt;/a&gt;. So that means either he is the only member of that academy that ever translates the name into English or it's a made-up institute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is all the information that I can find about him. But given that he does not seem to publish in scientific journals (or at least international ones), never gives information on his exact education background and works at a fictitious academy, I doubt he is what you would call a credible scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now on the matter itself, are those stones man-made?.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story about those structures seems to be pretty new, so I couldn't find much reliable information on how they could have been formed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes you say those structures are not natural formations? If you look at this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXeuTK2fhwI&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; of the site, it looks a lot less like a man-made structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of similar structures that a layman would identify as man-made but that are actually natural. Examples are the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant%27s_Causeway&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Giant's Causeway&lt;/a&gt; in Northern Ireland or structures called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_%28rock_formation%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tors&lt;/a&gt;, that look like piled up blocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Valery Uvarov doesn't have a scientific track record and is not a credible scientist. As of now, nothing indicates that those structures are man-made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16700" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T06:20:34.047" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20340" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T21:11:56.850" Score="4" ViewCount="370" Body="&lt;p&gt;The organization, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mars-one.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mars One&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mars-one.com/#sthash.YxaeEfMW.dpuf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claims that&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mars One will establish a permanent human settlement on Mars. Crews of four will depart every two years, starting in 2024.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A key part of the success of such a mission seems to rely on the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On Mars, water can be extracted from the soil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will supposedly give them everything they need in terms of water, oxygen and food production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This organization also solicits donations from the public to fund their 'mission to mars'.&#xA;That's just ten years from now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this scientifically viable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6722" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:09:43.640" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:09:43.640" Title="Are Mars One sending people on one-way missions to mars, starting in 2024?" Tags="|space-flight|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-04-30T02:26:26.510" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20341" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T21:43:51.300" Score="11" ViewCount="653" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my favorite children's books growing up was the &lt;em&gt;Education of Little Tree&lt;/em&gt;. This is a popular children's book in the US about a child who goes to live with his Cherokee grandparents in Appalachia during the Great Depression. The story was supposed to be based loosely on the author, Forrest Carter, real life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a very well-referenced &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Education_of_Little_Tree&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;, this book was actually written by a white man with no Cherokee ancestry, real name Asa Carter, who used to be in the KKK and was the speech writer for the famous racist politician, George Wallace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will excerpt a few passages:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carter had been an active participant in several White supremacist organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens' Council. He was also a speechwriter for Alabama Governor George Wallace, for whom he allegedly wrote Wallace's famous line &amp;quot;Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.&amp;quot; Although Carter claimed to be part Cherokee, in 1970 he ran for governor of Alabama against Wallace and others (Wallace eventually won another term after a runoff), on a White supremacist platform, finishing last among the candidates listed on the Democratic Party ballot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Forrest Carter denies that he is Asa Carter. The connection seems entirely based on a &amp;quot;distant cousin&amp;quot; who says this and also that Forrest Carter does not have a half-Cherokee great uncle. The testimony of the cousin was published in the New York Times, twice. Also, I see that other news organizations have followed the story, such as the Oprah Book Club and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.salon.com/2001/12/20/carter_6/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Salon.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Salon article for instance relates that Forrest Carter's family pulled up his gravestone years after he was dead to replace it with a gravestone saying Asa Carter. The source of this story seems to be directly the distant cousin. Common sense suggests this did not occur for many reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find these stories impossible to believe. Is there more evidence than this distant cousin? Is this really true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18704" LastEditorUserId="19346" LastEditDate="2023-07-10T15:30:52.190" LastActivityDate="2023-07-10T15:30:52.190" Title="Was the Education of Little Tree written by an ex-Klansman?" Tags="|politics|literature|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20342" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-22T22:31:14.123" Score="6" ViewCount="2088" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that giving your kid a cigarette when they are very little and forcing them to smoke the whole thing will make them have a bad memory of the event and make them less likely to smoke in the future. I was suspicious. Later, I remember reading about a study that actually showed that giving your kid a cigarette young makes them much more likely to smoke in the future not less likely. (This was pretty long ago and I cannot find the study or the article.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is forcing your kid to smoke one cigarette young to make them not smoke in the future a myth, like I suspect, or is it actually shown to be effective? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8106" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-22T23:02:42.367" LastActivityDate="2015-11-07T00:05:45.990" Title="Does forcing a young child to smoke a cigarette discourage longer term use?" Tags="|environmental-health|smoking|parenting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20344" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T09:09:27.547" Score="7" ViewCount="263" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bjorn Lomborg &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/bj-rn-lomborg-says-that-the-un-climate-panel-s-latest-report-tells-a-story-that-politicians-would-prefer-to-ignore&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;argues&lt;/a&gt; that the implication of the latest IPCC report is that current mitigation policies are not smart in that the cost of  mitigating CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; emissions is much higher than the benefits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Climate change has been portrayed as a huge catastrophe costing as much as 20% of world GDP, though brave politicians could counter it at a cost of just 1% of GDP. The reality is just the opposite: We now know that the damage cost will be perhaps 2% of world GDP, whereas climate policies can end up costing more than 11% of GDP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His argument is partially that the catastrophic scenarios for future climate are now thought less likely but also that there are better ways to spend the money than current polcies (which feel good but don't make economic sense):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We live in a world where one in six deaths are caused by easily curable infectious diseases; one in eight deaths stem from air pollution, mostly from cooking indoors with dung and twigs; and billions of people live in abject poverty, with no electricity and little food. We ought never to have entertained the notion that the world’s greatest challenge could be to reduce temperature rises in our generation by a fraction of a degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The solution is to stop applauding politicians who warn of catastrophe and promote poor policies. Instead of subsidizing inefficient solar and wind power with little benefit, we need to invest in long-term green innovation.&lt;/em&gt; And we need to give more attention to all of the other problems. This is perhaps less entertaining, but it will do much more good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[my emphasis].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is his argument that current mitigation strategies are more expensive than the benefits they are likely to bring a reasonable one?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T10:52:55.423" Title="Are the latest estimates of the cost of climate policy five time higher than the projected benefits?" Tags="|economics|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20344" CreationDate="2014-04-23T10:22:51.763" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is &lt;strong&gt;probably not&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look at where he has his numbers from first. The 2% come from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/IPCC_WG2AR5_SPM_Approved.pdf&quot;&gt;IPCC report&lt;/a&gt; which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Global economic impacts from climate change are difficult to estimate.&#xA;  Economic impact estimates completed over the past 20 years vary in their coverage of subsets of economic sectors and depend on a large number of assumptions, many of which are disputable, and many estimates do not account for catastrophic changes, tipping points, and many other factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With these recognized limitations, the incomplete estimates of global annual economic losses for additional temperature increases of ~2°C are between 0.2 and 2.0% of income (±1 standard deviation around the mean) (medium evidence, medium agreement). Losses are more likely than not to be greater, rather than smaller, than this range (limited evidence, high agreement).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Additionally, there are large differences between and within countries.&#xA;  Losses accelerate with greater warming (limited evidence, high agreement),&#xA;  but few quantitative estimates have been completed&#xA;  for additional warming around 3°C or above.&#xA;  Estimates of the incremental economic impact of emitting carbon dioxide lie between a few dollars and several hundreds of dollars per tonne of carbon 60 (robust evidence, medium agreement). Estimates vary strongly with the assumed damage function and discount rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This indeed says that the estimated global economic loss of income is between 0.2 and 2.0% for an increase in temperature of 2°C. Which is (from the same report) in the high-emission scenario going to be around 2050.&#xA;It also says however that this is difficult to estimate and that for higher temperature increases, there are few estimates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now where do the 11% that policies will cost come from? It's from another &lt;a href=&quot;http://report.mitigation2014.org/spm/ipcc_wg3_ar5_summary-for-policymakers_approved.pdf&quot;&gt;IPCC report&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scenarios in which all countries of the world begin mitigation immediately, there is a single global carbon price, and all key technologies are available, have been used as a cost‐effective benchmark for estimating macroeconomic mitigation costs (Table SPM.2, green segments). Under these assumptions, mitigation scenarios that reach atmospheric concentrations of about 450ppm CO2 eq by 2100 entail losses in global consumption—not including benefits of reduced climate change as well as co‐benefits and adverse side‐effects of mitigation — of 1% to 4% (median:1.7%) in 2030, 2% to 6% (median:3.4%) in 2050, and 3% to 11% (median:4.8%) in 2100 relative to consumption in baseline scenarios that grows anywhere from 300% to more than 900% over the century.&#xA;  These numbers correspond to an annualized reduction of consumption growth by 0.04 to 0.14 (median:0.06) percentage points over the century relative to annualized consumption growth&#xA;  in the baseline that is between 1.6% and 3% per year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the report concludes on a reduction of 3% to 11% in consumption in 2100 or more clearly on a annual consumption growth that it is slightly reduced (0.04 to 0.14 (median:0.06) percentage points).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, of course comparing a reduction of the consumption rate to a loss of income is comparing apples and oranges. The conclusion that the costs of climate policies are five time highers than the benefits cannot be drawn from those numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than that there are other aspects why the reasoning is false. For instance it does not take into account the costs of not taking action now will have on the time after 2080, where if no action is taken, the temperature will continue to grow (see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/IPCC_WG2AR5_SPM_Approved.pdf&quot;&gt;IPCC report&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further information can be found on this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.skepticalscience.com/preventing-global-warming-is-the-cheap-option.html&quot;&gt;article on the Skeptical Science&lt;/a&gt; blog with additional sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16700" LastEditorUserId="16700" LastEditDate="2014-04-23T10:52:55.423" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T10:52:55.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20304" CreationDate="2014-04-23T15:54:54.133" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One major concern is the fatty-acid content of these oils.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major point of contention is about unsaturated fatty acids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An unsaturated fatty acid is a molecule with &quot;free slots&quot; to bind other molecules (mono-unsaturated as only one slot, poly-unsaturated can have many). So unlike saturated fatty acids which are stable, unsaturated fatty acid are prone to induce many chemical reactions in the body, some of them being necessary to proper function, some of them being bad for health (inflammatory reaction causing degenerative conditions such as cancers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ingest far more unsaturated fatty acids than are necessary for the good reactions, the remaining will still be there and will be available for unwanted reactions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These fatty acids are necessary in small amount (they are even labeled &quot;essential&quot; as the human body cannot produce them by itself) but too much of it is toxic. As always in toxicology, that's the dose that makes it toxic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many vegetable oils tends to have high concentrations of poly-unsaturated fatty acids, but there are exceptions (coconut and palm are mainly saturated, olive is mainly mono-unsaturated).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With these concentrations, it's easy to reach toxic levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some nutrition books in the ancestral/paleo movement touch this subject.&#xA;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Perfect Health Diet (Paul Jaminet and Shou-Ching Shih Jaminet)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Deep Nutrition (Catherine Shanahan)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18880" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T15:54:54.133" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20347" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-23T17:36:58.907" Score="34" ViewCount="16633" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not a Holocaust denier but I am skeptical of some of the reported numbers and details of the historical event. Is there any evidence that 6 million Jews were executed as part of a plan to eliminate the Jewish people? I am also skeptical of some of the accounts of  Jewish skin used for lampshades and shrunken heads of concentration camp inmates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18881" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T01:38:56.143" LastActivityDate="2018-07-10T22:59:23.740" Title="Has the Holocaust been exaggerated?" Tags="|history|world-war-ii|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20347" CreationDate="2014-04-23T18:07:04.057" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story about the lampshade was presented as being possibly true by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvblogs.nationalgeographic.com/2012/09/27/human-lampshade-a-holocaust-mystery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Geographic&lt;/a&gt; society, who say that there is a lampshade that is definitely made of human material and for which evidence &quot;points to&quot; an origin in Nazi Germany.  According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2511/did-the-nazis-make-lampshades-out-of-human-skin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;snopes&lt;/a&gt; there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1416566279&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; on the topic (the wonders of Google!).  However, this turns out not to be the case, see the comment by @Oddthinking below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There appears no shortage of sources for evidence on the numbers &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust#Victims_and_death_toll&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;killed&lt;/a&gt;, see also the excellent answer by @RedGrittyBrick above.  I don't see any reason to be skeptical of any exaggeration, so I'd say &quot;no, it hasn't been exaggerated&quot;.  There also seems good &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/mar/13/secondworldwar.kateconnolly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;documentary&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posen_speeches#.22Extermination_of_the_Jewish_people.22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;evidence&lt;/a&gt; that it was part of a deliberate plan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I have to say that making a lampshade out of human skin is not by any means the worst thing that happened in the concentration camps. It is a pretty damning indictment of what went on there if being skeptical of whether they made lampshades out of human remains is the level we have to reach before skepticism becomes reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2016-02-03T08:53:36.260" LastActivityDate="2016-02-03T08:53:36.260" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20349" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1319" CreationDate="2014-04-23T19:44:48.420" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't like to give simple direct answers, mainly because I don't think I have enough certainty to do so, but also because I prefer to offer the data that I had analyzed and then see if the other person came up with a similar conclusion. &#xA;I think the core of this tendency to anthropomorphize odd shapes of materials is grounded on the making of false-positive errors or &quot;type I errors&quot;. But the problem seems to be to answer It is adaptative? In what context?&#xA;I think Sir Michael Shermer explains it quite eloquently in this debate &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/uy_3lAEFOW8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://youtu.be/uy_3lAEFOW8&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;Also, the lucidity of Mr Robert Sapolsky on the magical thinking might be helpful too&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/4WwAQqWUkpI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://youtu.be/4WwAQqWUkpI&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;In order to understand this subject of &quot;evolution of pareidolia&quot; we must consider the adaptative value of some behaviors, based of course on some interpretations of the world.&#xA;This behavior it is not only driven/influenced by genetic information, there is a very important aspect we must also consider, which is: the role of culture. How culture benefits some behaviors? or How culture make some behaviors adaptative? There is an interesting theory which I think that will gave you a great insight into this question once you understand it. It is the &quot;Dual inheritance theory&quot;.&#xA;A definition that sums up what is meant by &quot;culture&quot; in DIT is:&#xA;&quot;Culture is information stored in individuals' brains that is capable of affecting behavior and that got there through social learning.&quot;&#xA;For example, in humans the cultural adoptions of agriculture and dairying have, caused genetic selection for the traits to digest starch and lactose, respectively.&#xA;About the documentation/references, as far as I know there isn't such &quot;from an evolutionary biologist&quot;, I think you must ask it in other terms, regarding to the types of errors of cognition.&#xA;Anyway, here's some:&#xA;- Adapted from Stanovich et al. (2008).Stanovich &amp;amp; West (2008). On the failure of cognitive ability to predict myside bias and one-sided thinking biases. Thinking and Reasoning, 14: 129–167&#xA;- Adapted from Stanovich et al. (2010).&#xA;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/haselton/webdocs/handbookevpsych.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/comm/haselton/webdocs/handbookevpsych.pdf&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;- Richerson &amp;amp; Boyd (2005). Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. University of Chicago Press. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0226712125&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Not-Genes-Alone-Transformed-Evolution/dp/0226712125&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;- Hull (2000). Science and selection: Essays on biological evolution and the philosophy of science. Cambridge University Press. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0521644054&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/Science-Selection-Biological-Evolution-Philosophy/dp/0521644054&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope you find it useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18882" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T19:44:48.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20342" CreationDate="2014-04-23T21:34:10.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do the unpleasing side effects of a cigarette out weigh the chemical response of pleasure induced from smoking?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few important links stated by the research of the U.S. government.&#xA;One statement tells us:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research has shown how nicotine acts on the brain to produce a number of effects. Of primary importance to its addictive nature are findings that nicotine activates reward pathways—the brain circuitry that regulates feelings of pleasure. A key brain chemical involved in mediating the desire to consume drugs is the neurotransmitter dopamine, and research has shown that nicotine increases levels of dopamine in the reward circuits. This reaction is similar to that seen with other drugs of abuse and is thought to underlie the pleasurable sensations experienced by many smokers. For many tobacco users, long-term brain changes induced by continued nicotine exposure result in addiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowing how the drug works, would you take the chance that a few seconds of coughing and hacking would counteract the chemical reaction?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Although they cite long-term brain change, in the drug world there is a reason the first one is usually free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco/are-there-other-chemicals-may-contribute-to-tobacco-addiction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Are There Other Chemicals That May Contribute to Tobacco Addiction?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...Animal studies by NIDA-funded researchers have shown that acetaldehyde, another chemical found in tobacco smoke, dramatically increases the reinforcing properties of nicotine and may also contribute to tobacco addiction. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;The investigators further report that this effect is age-related: adolescent animals display far more sensitivity to this reinforcing effect, which suggests that the brains of adolescents may be more vulnerable to tobacco addiction.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://teens.drugabuse.gov/drug-facts/tobacco&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://teens.drugabuse.gov/drug-facts/tobacco&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco/nicotine-addictive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/research-reports/tobacco/nicotine-addictive&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=117976&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Study: Nicotine Addiction Can Be Immediate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists have confirmed a suspicion held by some smokers but never proven: It could take just a few cigarettes to become addicted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scientists suggested there may be three types of smokers: Those who become addicted very quickly, those who get hooked gradually after more regular smoking and those who can smoke lightly or pick up and drop the habit without becoming addicted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18853" LastEditorUserId="18853" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T07:52:55.553" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T07:52:55.553" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20352" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20347" CreationDate="2014-04-23T21:40:08.320" Score="125" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Numbers&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Nazis documented their extermination campaign. So they left detailed documentary records that provide good evidence that six million were killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, there are Nazi records of how many Jews were transported to Auschwitz and Soviet records of how many were liberated at the end of the war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, approximately a million Jews on the Eastern Front were shot during 1941-42, and buried in large pits. This is known partly because the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing units that coordinated these massacres, prepared detailed reports on the murders - reports that contained precise death tolls, broken down into men, women and children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These reports were sent to high ranking officials in Berlin, and to army, police and SS officers, as well as diplomats and even prominent industrialists. This wide distribution suggests that the perpetrators felt no shame at what they did. Had these killings not been part of Berlin's policy, the reports would never have been so widely distributed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/deniers_01.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Denying the holocaust, BBC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/c6s4Q.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Museum Archives there are 252 lists of newcomers from different periods. Each list contains: date, date of registration, camp number, prisoner category, names and surnames, date and place of birth and occulation. (Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Archives)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://auschwitz.org/en/gallery/historical-pictures-and-documents/archive-documents,2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial &amp;amp; Museum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Letter from SS-Sturmbannführer Jahrling to SS-General Kammler estimating the number of corpses that can be disposed off in 24 hours in the Auschwitz crematoriums, June 25 1943.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; 1.) Crematorium I     3 x 2 muffles     340 persons&#xA; 2.) Crematorium II    5 x 3 muffles     1440 persons&#xA; 3.) Crematorium III   5 x 3 muffles     1440 persons&#xA; 4.) Crematorium IV    8 muffles         768 persons&#xA; 5.) Crematorium V     8 muffles         768 persons&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers - J.C Pressac, the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, NY, 1989, p. 247:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I make that up to 4756 corpses each day. That would be 1,046,320 corpses in each year of five-day working weeks with two months out of operation (220 working days in a year).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Large amounts of evidence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the above is just a few small examples from a huge mountain of evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007271&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US holocaust memorial museum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allied prosecutors submitted some 3,000 tons of records at the Nuremberg trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course, there is a lot of evidence other than that submitted at Nuremberg. Some of this additional evidence can be found at numerous museums and libraries around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/international/fifty-million-nazi-documents-germany-agrees-to-open-holocaust-archive-a-411983.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;30-50 million German records of 17 million victims of Holocaust and forced labour&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/voices/holocaust.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Survivor testimony at the British Library&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Other references&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From comments below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Schutzhaft&lt;/strong&gt; - The use of &amp;quot;protective custody&amp;quot; (Schutzhaft) to round up people for concentration camps is discussed more here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005467&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Law and Justice in the Third Reich&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;United States Holocaust Memorial Museum&lt;/em&gt; - &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/23/oddthinking&quot;&gt;Oddthinking&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Non-Jewish victims&lt;/strong&gt; - In addition to the 6 million quoted above, there are several articles on the web (&lt;a href=&quot;http://remember.org/forgotten/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;such as this one&lt;/a&gt;) that estimate five million non-Jews were killed in the Holocaust, including Jehovah Witnesses, gypsies, homosexuals, and the disabled, among others. - &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/3970/tcrosley&quot;&gt;tcrosley&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Denial&lt;/strong&gt; - Convicted Holocaust denier &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dw.de/german-holocaust-denier-imprisoned-for-inciting-racial-hatred/a-2386563&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Germar Rudolf&lt;/a&gt; has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://holocausthandbooks.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;web-site&lt;/a&gt; where he publishes books that contend that the Holocaust never happened. - &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/22395/infatuated&quot;&gt;infatuated&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ICRC&lt;/strong&gt; - The International Committee of the Red Cross has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/19/us/red-cross-admits-knowing-of-the-holocaust-during-the-war.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;25,000 pages of information&lt;/a&gt; that it acquired on the subject &lt;em&gt;prior&lt;/em&gt; to the end of World War II. - &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/23255/himarm&quot;&gt;Himarm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-07-04T19:48:08.137" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6860" CreationDate="2014-04-23T21:58:03.743" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the claim is technically true but misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1997 Klaus Linde et al did a meta analysis to answer that question titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(97)02293-9/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Are the clinical effects of homoeopathy placebo effects? A meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their literature review they find:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The combined odds ratio for the 89 studies entered into the main meta-analysis was 2·45 (95% CI 2·05, 2·93) in favour of homoeopathy. The odds ratio for the 26 good-quality studies was 1·66 (1·33, 2·08), and that corrected for publication bias was 1·78 (1·03, 3·10). Four studies on the effects of a single remedy on seasonal allergies had a pooled odds ratio for ocular symptoms at 4 weeks of 2·03 (1·51, 2·74). Five studies on postoperative ileus had a pooled mean effect-size-difference of −0·22 standard deviations (95% Cl −0·36, −0·09) for flatus, and −0·18 SDs (−0·33, −0·03) for stool (both p&amp;lt;0·05).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are completely due to placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the problem? They looked at all homeopathy studies. Most studies that are conductive are not high quality studies. Low quality studies frequently find homeopathy to be effective but the effect gets smaller as the quality of the study increases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this subsequent reviews of homeopathy focus generally on high quality studies instead of trying to analyse all studies. Focusing on high quality studies seems to be the only way to get the answer: &amp;quot;Homeopathy doesn't work.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lesson of the affair that quite easy to get any result you want if you settle for low quality studies and run enough studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-23T21:58:03.743" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20357" CreationDate="2014-04-24T05:29:59.390" Score="5" ViewCount="490" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;https://torrentfreak.com/and-when-even-the-death-penalty-doesnt-deter-copying-what-then-110807/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; by Rick Falkvinge best categorized as political opinion / commentary on copyright enforcement claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A few centuries ago, the penalty for unauthorized copying was&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_wheel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;breaking on the wheel&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;  It is a term we’re not very familiar with these days, but it was a&#xA;  form of prolonged torturous death penalty where the convict first had&#xA;  every bone in his body broken, and then was weaved into the spokes of&#xA;  a wagon wheel and set up on public display. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The [French] King responded by introducing penalties for pirating&#xA;  these fabrics. Light punishments at first, then gradually tougher.&#xA;  Towards the end, the penalty was death by public torture, drawn out&#xA;  over several days. And it wasn’t just a few poor sods who were made&#xA;  into public examples: sixteen thousand people, almost entirely common&#xA;  folk, died by execution or in the violent clashes that surrounded the&#xA;  monopoly. In practice, everybody knew somebody who had been horribly&#xA;  executed for pirating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TDI44.png&quot; alt=&quot;Wikimedia: File:Klassisches_Radern.png Breaking Wheel&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Illustration from Wikimedia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were such numbers of people executed by &quot;Breaking On the Wheel&quot; for copying fabrics in pre-revolution France?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="826" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T07:11:00.563" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T09:02:02.790" Title="Were thousands of people executed by &quot;Breaking On the Wheel&quot; for copying fabrics in pre-revolution France?" Tags="|copyright|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20357" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20354" CreationDate="2014-04-24T08:18:31.990" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/lrxl9/and_when_even_the_death_penalty_doesnt_deter/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This discussion&lt;/a&gt; on Reddit cites a comment by Falkvinge (couldn't find that comment itself) where he gives his source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You're right to ask for sources. One of the primary sources is a book in Swedish on the era of mercantilism on the Continent (meaning Europe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original article in Swedish is here and there are lots of sources in the comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notably, there's this quote from &lt;strong&gt;Merkantilismen by Eli Heckscher&lt;/strong&gt;, fifth chapter, regulation of trade in France:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Of course, the attempt to stop a development supported by a violent fashion trend, carried by the... influential female kin, could impossibly succeed. The policy is considered to have cost 16,000 people their lives, through executions and armed clashes, plus the yet uncounted who were sentenced to slavery on galleys and other punishments; in Valence, on one single occasion, 77 people were sentenced to hang, 58 to be broken on the wheel and 631 to the galleys, one was acquitted, and none were pardoned. But this was so far from effective, that the use of printed kattuner (English?) spread through all social groups during this period, in France and elsewhere.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book is apparently &amp;quot;highly respected in the academic world&amp;quot;, but I find the information it gives rather suspect. It clearly refers to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chintz&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chintz&lt;/a&gt; fabrics - which were in fact made illegal to import into France in 1686 in order to protect the French clothing industry which could not produce them. It was finally lifted in 1759.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of executions (total 16,000 and the &amp;quot;single occasion&amp;quot;) was probably lifted from &lt;strong&gt;The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbronner&lt;/strong&gt;, where the quote occurs (unsourced) almost verbatim on page 31 (thank you, Google Books!). It was written in 1953, the same year as the Swedish book Falkvinge quotes, and was very popular.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find other sources for mass executions related to the Chintz ban, and in any case it was a case of industry protectionism, not copyright.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14002" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T09:02:02.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20358" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-24T09:55:40.800" Score="18" ViewCount="1452" Body="&lt;p&gt;With the upcoming elections for the European Union, there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/8067510/Up-to-half-of-British-laws-come-from-Europe-House-of-Commons-Library-claims.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that most local laws are dictated by the European union these days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8UTye.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Picture of UKIP banner&quot;&gt;&#xA;Image source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/ukip-posters-are-being-defaced-all-over-britain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Buzzfeed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has always been my understanding that the EU issues directives and it is up to the individuals parliaments of the member states to implement these into laws. &#xA;Personally I don't see any undemocratic issue with the working of the European Parliament (EP) and its interaction with local parliaments. Although I consider these claims mostly pre-election rhetoric, the claims voiced are quite numerous.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am just wondering if the EP impose new laws on member states without any opposition from the local parliaments? If this is so, did they do that on the majority of local laws?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5141" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T14:07:03.823" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T08:15:45.477" Title="Are the majority of EU member-states' local laws made in Brussels?" Tags="|politics|europe|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20358" CreationDate="2014-04-24T10:50:07.740" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short answer: no. Long answer: it depends on definitions but on most sensible definitions still no.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm summarising the excellent analysis by UK fact checkers &lt;a href=&quot;https://fullfact.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Full Fact&lt;/a&gt; as presented &lt;a href=&quot;https://fullfact.org/europe/eu_make_uk_law-29587&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. This analysis primarily relates to the UK (where the debate about EU influence is probably more contentious than anywhere else) but the key issues apply in other countries as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core problem in getting to any meaningful answer is how and what counts as a &lt;em&gt;law&lt;/em&gt;. If we just count acts of parliament then major bills (like the 500 page Health and Social Care act which completely reformed the NHS) count equally with the three page act clarifying the rules on VAT fraud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But acts of parliament are not the only things that count as law:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The figures depend on which UK law is included in the calculation, and the extent of ‘EU influence’ that we look at. There is no single interpretation of UK law, it can include: Acts put in place by the UK Parliament; rules and regulations drawn up by Ministers; and regulations produced by the EU which apply here in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The House of Commons Library warned that “there is no totally accurate, rational or useful way of calculating the percentage of national laws based on or influenced by the EU.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full Fact used the House of Commons Library analysis to produce three estimates in decreasing order of significance and impact:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1: Acts put in place by UK Parliament with EU influence – accounts for 10-14%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2: Regulations influenced by or related to the EU – accounts for 9-14%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3: EU regulations and regulations influenced by or related to the EU – accounts for 53%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But they also warn that the broader the definition, the less relevant to any estimate of real EU influence is (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from problems of definition, these calculations are based on a search of national law databases and the EU’s EUR-Lex database and therefore have immediate problems in terms of how robust the search terms were and whether all ‘laws’ were inputted to the database. &lt;em&gt;Incorporating or excluding EU regulations – some of which relate to things such as olive growing regulations and therefore will not directly impact on the UK – are likely to either overestimate EU influence or underestimate it.  Counting these things alone does not tell us enough about where the power lies.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, even on the most relaxed definition, the numbers are far short of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ukip.org/the_truth_is_out_at_least_75_of_our_laws_are_made_by_eu_institutions_says_senior_european_commissioner_viviane_reding&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; from EU critics that &amp;gt;75% of our laws are written in Brussels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a stricter, more natural interpretation the ratio could be &amp;lt;15%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that similar problems apply to calculations in other (less EU skeptical) countries:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has also been a figure of 85% floated, which seems to originate back to a calculation made in relation to Germany, based on figures provided in the German parliament in 2005. Aside from issues with the calculation itself (which has similar problems to the ones we discuss here), Germany is a federal country whose individual states have significant law-making powers that are not taken account of in calculating the 85%. This makes it very hard to relate the figure to the UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T10:50:07.740" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20358" CreationDate="2014-04-24T14:03:28.843" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. The 75% claim that UKIP and other sceptics band around is based on a widely debunked German report that claimed 86% of German laws came from the EU. UKIP figured that because the UK wasn't in the Euro zone they would subtract 11%, with no justification for that figure, and arrive at 75%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real figure is probably closer to 15%, but as matt_black pointed out it depends how you calculate it. Most of the higher estimates include UK legislation that is compliant with EU rules, rather then being the result of it. For example, back in the 90s there was the classic &quot;straight bananas&quot; nonsense story about the EU. In actual fact the rules on banana ripeness and quality didn't change at all; the UK had already agreed the same limits with banana producing countries many years before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally the EU can't force laws on anyway. It can only ask member states to pass laws that come into compliance with the rules it decides on, and try to punish them for not doing so. There is considerable leeway allowed when implementing EU rules in a country's local laws. For example, EU rules require a 2 year warranty on all electrical items, but in the UK we go much further by requiring that products last &quot;a reasonable length of time&quot; (Sale of Goods Act), which for something like a computer or washing machine is typically 6 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: The BBC covered this topic recently on the Radio 4 programme More or Less, which you may be able to listen to on iPlayer. The 75% claim is apparently based on something a Germany MEP said. He indicated that 75% of EU laws were created by the European Parliament, i.e. directly elected officials from member states. UKIP mis-interpreted that to mean 75% of member state's laws, but that is categorically not what he said. His point was merely that the EU was getting more democratic (this was around 5 years ago).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So at best it seems UKIP is confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Direct link to MP3 of BBC programme: &lt;a href=&quot;http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/moreorless/moreorless_20140502-1700c.mp3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/moreorless/moreorless_20140502-1700c.mp3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18902" LastEditorDisplayName="user18902" LastEditDate="2014-05-06T08:15:45.477" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T08:15:45.477" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20362" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-24T16:38:00.593" Score="15" ViewCount="460" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost all fire safety organizations and codes require the use of smoke alarms in new business and residential construction.   The idea is that they save lives, as mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usfa.fema.gov/campaigns/smokealarms/&quot;&gt;this article from FEMA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://freakonomics.com/2012/02/06/how-many-lives-do-smoke-alarms-really-save/&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; from Freakanomics calls into question their actual efficacy in saving lives, compared to other trends which have reduced fire deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the ionization smoke alarm was responsible for most of the decrease in fire deaths in the last part of the 20th century, shouldn’t the rate of decrease have been greatest over the time period that smoke alarm usage increased the fastest?   Yet over the time period of 1977–1987, when the use of smoke alarms skyrocketed, the trend line remained relatively constant.  The death rate was trending down before smoke alarms and continued to trend down after they saturated the market.  It does not appear that ionization smoke alarms affected the trend line. NIST inexplicably ignores the trends in better building codes, reduction in smoking, better firefighting equipment, and better emergency medical care as likely reasons for the reduction in fire deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there actual credible evidence that fire alarms reduce deaths from fire?  Is all of the time and effort going into installing, maintaining, and dealing with the false alarms when they are set off by cooking just safety theater?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14012" LastEditorUserId="14012" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T19:40:26.070" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T21:43:10.920" Title="Do smoke alarms save lives?" Tags="|safety|fire|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20358" CreationDate="2014-04-24T18:31:45.730" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding your first question: Yes, in certain areas the European Union &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; impose laws on member states without requiring the consent of the local parliaments. The relevant part is Article 288 of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv%3aOJ.C_.2012.326.01.0001.01.ENG#C_2012326EN.01004701&quot;&gt;Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To exercise the Union's competences, the institutions shall adopt regulations, directives, decisions, recommendations and opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A regulation shall have general application. It shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A directive shall be binding, as to the result to be achieved, upon each Member State to which it is addressed, but shall leave to the national authorities the choice of form and methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your understanding about &lt;em&gt;directives&lt;/em&gt; is correct: They need to be put into law by the member states. &lt;em&gt;Regulations&lt;/em&gt;, on the other hand, are applicable &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; requiring the consent of the national legislative bodies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding your second question: That depends on how you count them. &lt;a href=&quot;http://eur-lex.europa.eu/search.html?or0=DTS%3D3,DTS%3D0&amp;amp;instInvStatus=ALL&amp;amp;or1=DTT%3DR&amp;amp;qid=1398365043516&amp;amp;DTS_DOM=EU_LAW&amp;amp;DTC=false&amp;amp;type=advanced&amp;amp;lang=en&amp;amp;REP=REP&amp;amp;DB_TYPE_OF_ACT=regulation&amp;amp;VV=true&amp;amp;SUBDOM_INIT=LEGISLATION&amp;amp;DTS_SUBDOM=LEGISLATION&amp;amp;date0=IF:01012013%7C31122013&quot;&gt;EUR-Lex search reports&lt;/a&gt; that 663 regulations came into force in 2013¹, which might or might not be a lot, depending on how many laws are passed by your national legislation (and how you count them). As others have said, a purely numerical comparison is probably not useful without comparing the importance and impact of the individual laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;¹ &lt;sub&gt;Domain: EU law and related documents, Subdomain: Legislation, Type of document: Regulation, Document type: R, Exclude corrigenda: True, Limit to basic acts: True, Limit to legislation in force: True, Type of act: Regulation, Date: Date of entry into force, From (or exact date): 01/01/2013, To: 31/12/2013, Search language: English&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16044" LastEditorUserId="16044" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T18:42:04.760" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T18:42:04.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20304" CreationDate="2014-04-24T19:51:50.697" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vegetable oils tend to be higher in omega-6 fatty acids, contributing to the unhealthy,  skewed omega-6 to omega-3 ratio of the typical Western Diet, as described in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12442909&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3668" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T19:51:50.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20365" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20372" CreationDate="2014-04-24T20:06:38.123" Score="4" ViewCount="372" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a rumor I've heard amongst reptile keepers. Both organizations are openly opposed to keeping reptiles as pets. These reptile keepers claim they are against all pets, but know that going against keeping dogs and cats as pets would be a suicide mission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support these rumors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18134" LastEditorUserId="18134" LastEditDate="2014-04-24T20:51:30.390" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T22:23:21.413" Title="Are the USHS and/or PETA secretly against all pets?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-05-03T16:56:48.150" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20365" CreationDate="2014-04-24T22:00:03.860" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the case of PETA, there is no secret about it. On their web site, they say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...we believe that it would have been in the animals’ best interests if the institution of “pet keeping”—i.e., breeding animals to be kept and regarded as “pets”—never existed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peta.org/about-peta/why-peta/pets/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.peta.org/about-peta/why-peta/pets/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T22:00:03.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20365" CreationDate="2014-04-24T22:23:21.413" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here a link describing a the background of the controversy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cornutopia.com/Corn%20Utopia%20on%20the%20Web/-%20LURKING%20ENEMY%20Cornutopia%20corn%20snakes%20cornsnakes.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.cornutopia.com/Corn%20Utopia%20on%20the%20Web/-%20LURKING%20ENEMY%20Cornutopia%20corn%20snakes%20cornsnakes.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Nate points out PETA believes that it would be better that pets had never existed, since they believe pet-owning is selfish and causes pain and suffering for the animals. But they also say that it is a myth they are trying to &quot;free all the pets.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrary to myth, PETA does not want to confiscate animals who are well cared for and “set them free.” What we want is for the population of dogs and cats to be reduced through spaying and neutering and for people to adopt animals (preferably two so that they can keep each other company when their human companions aren’t home) from pounds or animal shelters—never from pet shops or breeders—thereby reducing suffering in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read more: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peta.org/about-peta/why-peta/pets/#ixzz2zqRx25O0&quot;&gt;http://www.peta.org/about-peta/why-peta/pets/#ixzz2zqRx25O0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Domesticated pets that were freed would be more likely to be injured and get sick, so it is a &quot;least-worst&quot; option. They have many campaigns targeting improving the lives of pets. I believe that since snakes are wild animals, they see a difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Humane Society of the US does not seem to have a secret anti-pet agenda. The issue is that they are running a manipulative pro-pet fundraising campaign, when the national organization hasn't run a pound since the 1970s, and its funneling all but 1% of the funds to other lobbying efforts. They also have close ties to PETA, who while not fond of pets in theory, are not seeking to abolish the institution.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humanewatch.org/the_humane_society_of_the_united_states_and_pet_shelter_giving/&quot;&gt;http://www.humanewatch.org/the_humane_society_of_the_united_states_and_pet_shelter_giving/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18704" LastActivityDate="2014-04-24T22:23:21.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20373" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20375" CreationDate="2014-04-24T23:05:03.803" Score="12" ViewCount="1818" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several online forums I've frequented have had discussions removed when suicide methods are mentioned. The reasoning have been that discussion about suicide themselves are suicide triggers. While it sounds plausible, and it's not that hard to find anecdotes, is there any research confirming that sentiment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarification:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you frequent suicide forums you are exposed to a constant stream of suicide information, so naturally that could probably give you that extra push if you are prone to self-destructive behavior. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions is not about suicide websites or forums dedicated to suicide methods, who naturally attract people contemplating suicide, but whether discussion about suicide in other contexts also function as triggers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Example:&lt;/em&gt; On a nutrition forum, it's not unheard of threads shifting to discussing toxicity, and then someone mentions cases of suicide by overdosing on a compound. Are you justified in fearing trigger effects even in this context?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="1134" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T10:23:44.557" LastActivityDate="2015-08-11T08:32:35.347" Title="Are discussions about suicide themselves suicide triggers?" Tags="|psychology|sociology|suicide|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20373" CreationDate="2014-04-25T00:52:56.463" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://freakonomics.com/2011/08/31/new-freakonomics-radio-podcast-the-suicide-paradox/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Freakonomics podcast&lt;/a&gt; there has been some research on the exact topic.  The summary of this is that yes, media reports and books about suicide have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/pss/2094294&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;proven to be&lt;/a&gt; and can be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper shows that suicides increase immediately after a suicide story has been publicized in the newspapers in Britain and in the United States, 1947-1968. The more publicity devoted to a suicide story, the larger the rise in suicides thereafter. The rise in suicides after a story is restricted mainly to the area in which the story was publicized. Alternative explanations of these findings are examined; the evidence indicates that the rise in suicides is due to the influence of suggestion on suicide, an influence not previously demonstrated on the national level of suicides. The substantive, theoretical, and methodological implications of these findings are examined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it isn't a universal truth; the evidence suggests that there weren't as many copycat suicides of Kurt Cobain as you might expect potentially because the media focused on the suffering of his wife and less on him.  At least this is what I took from the discussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18926" LastEditorUserId="18926" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T02:27:39.890" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T02:27:39.890" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20373" CreationDate="2014-04-25T02:12:16.537" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes. Online forums are a trigger for suicide. Any online forum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psychcentral.com/lib/protecting-teens-from-the-spread-of-suicide/00018255&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Protecting Teens from the Spread of Suicide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although we don’t usually think of suicide as contagious, one of the strongest predictors of suicide in youth is the suicide or suicide attempt of a friend or family member (Juhnke, Granello, &amp;amp; Haag-Granello, 2011; Mayer, 2013). Teens exposed to suicide are at significantly higher risk of suicide over the next two years (Mayer, 2013). Exposure to suicide in online forums (Dunlop, More, &amp;amp; Romer, 2011) and through YouTube videos about suicide fuels self-destructive fantasy and also increases suicide risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recommendations include refraining from giving details or images of the method or place where the victim was found (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1994; Sudak &amp;amp; Sudak, 2005). Care should be taken not to focus on the immediate external precipitant as the cause of the suicide (e.g., a break-up) or other situations to which teens can easily relate (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1994; Mayer, 2013). Doing so increases identification with the victim and can inadvertently convey that suicide could also be a solution to their problems. Another danger is allowing memorializing to go too far, feeding into teen idealization of death and suicide (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1994; Sudak &amp;amp; Sudak, 2005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where do youth learn about suicides on the Internet, and what influence does this have on suicidal ideation?&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21658185&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21658185&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While traditional sources of information about suicide were most often cited (79% were from friends and family or newspapers), online sources were also quite common (59%). Social networking sites were frequently cited as sources, but these reports were not linked to increases in ideation. However, online discussion forums [any forum] were both cited as sources and associated with increases in ideation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the internet is sometimes used by people who are already planning a suicide to help them learn to commit suicide more effectively-more lethally. Any question about the &lt;strong&gt;methods of suicide&lt;/strong&gt; would be of interest to this group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Parasuicide online: Can suicide websites trigger suicidal behaviour in predisposed adolescents?&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15204216&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15204216&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The present case report describes a 17-year-old female who explicitly visited suicide web forums, where she researched reliable suicide methods, contacted an anonymous user and purchased substances for the implementation of suicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moderators of these websites specifically are avoiding situations such as this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wrong in the comments. These studies have been replicated many times. &lt;a href=&quot;http://construct.haifa.ac.il/%7Eazy/refsuicide.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;See this.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although this research has been centered on teen suicide, it is likely also an important factor for older age groups who have strong engagement with the internet as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18704" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T20:08:03.897" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20376" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20378" CreationDate="2014-04-25T03:51:40.167" Score="7" ViewCount="1297" Body="&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.com.au/world/asia/comment-conspiracies-more-mysterious-than-mh370/story-fnh81fz8-1226894919767&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And surely you also know that all Thunder Cove military employees must&#xA;  be single with no families?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there such a requirement in some US military bases? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="14651" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T08:25:37.693" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T08:25:37.693" Title="Are there US military bases where only singles can work?" Tags="|united-states|military|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20377" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-25T06:27:39.733" Score="2" ViewCount="285" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard stories about people acquiring skills after being hit in the head, &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/04/23/from-head-injury-to-math-genius-on-savant-syndrome-and-the-possibility-of-a-little-rain-man-within-us-all/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here is one of them&lt;/a&gt;. In this particular story the man was assaulted and knocked unconscious and after he awoke he could see lines emanating from some objects. My understanding of the story is that to understand these lines he rigorously studied math. I found some parts of the story misleading as it implied the blow to the head is what caused his heightened mathematically ability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been any studies done to prove or disprove that people can actually learn something or acquire a new skill or improve upon knowledge they already know by receiving a blow to the head?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not asking about cases where someone concisely decides to make an effort to learn something after a harrowing experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="14333" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T19:04:31.963" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T19:04:31.963" Title="Can a blow to the head make a person learn something or given them a higher aptitude for learning something?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2014-04-26T16:19:36.610" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20376" CreationDate="2014-04-25T06:57:54.443" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can CIA or military be married?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://money.howstuffworks.com/how-to-become-cia-agent.htm&quot;&gt;&quot;How to Become a CIA Agent&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you're married, your spouse must also be a United States citizen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background checks and interviews may be performed on several family members and friends, no matter if the person if married or not. Most people have friends, even if not direct family. The CIA doesn't actually make The Boorne Identity as agents quite yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2010-featured-story-archive/working-at-the-cia-fact-or-fiction-part-2.html&quot;&gt;Working at the CIA: Fact or Fiction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to be successful in protecting the nation, much of the work of the CIA must remain secret. Some might guess that the life of an Agency employee would be one big secret as well. This could not be further from the truth. The Agency promotes a &lt;strong&gt;family-friendly work environment&lt;/strong&gt; and always strives to find the right work/life balance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The CIA even has &quot;Family Day.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as I said, while families are considered a great positive, some lying and omission occurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is partly true. There are many parts about my job I cannot share. But this relates to national security and protecting sources and methods and not because I am being “secretive” with them. I have told some family members where I work, especially my wife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps this really the information being discussed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Normally family will not travel with you on a temporary assignment because it is short-term.  And, family can and often do accompany officers to long-term posts, unless there is a safety reason that they should not go.  Again, it all depends on what you are doing at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, there are indeed bases without civilian family members allowed to be living there, but the soldiers and agents may or may not be married.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The policy of the military is very similar with all of the above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CIA specifically encourages committed marital relationships not only to make employees more motivated. Those who have many relationships outside or inside marriage may be more easily blackmailed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: CIA Director David Petreaus was forced to resign over an extra-marital affair. It was investigated by the FBI, too. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/09/david-petraeus-cia-resign-nbc/1695271/&quot;&gt;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/09/david-petraeus-cia-resign-nbc/1695271/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18704" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T06:57:54.443" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20358" CreationDate="2014-04-25T07:50:11.300" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Others have discussed the claim about “most local laws” so I am going to add a few remarks about the other things you mentioned in your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, one minor disposition in the 2004 Treaty establishing a constitution for Europe (a mouthful!) would have renamed “directives” to call them EU “framework laws”. But it would not have changed much so you should not be too focused on the terminology. It's true that in general a directive only defines objectives or a framework and needs to be implemented by a statute in each member state so local parliaments do have a say. But the implementation is monitored by the Commission, which can do many things if it's not satisfied with it so the content of the local laws are certainly not entirely up to the respective national parliaments. Furthermore, regulations don't need to be implemented to come into force and the EUCJ also developed a doctrine under which &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_directive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;directives sometimes have direct effects&lt;/a&gt; and can be invoked in the court system so it's not really true that the EU merely gives general orientations and leaves the rest to the local parliaments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important thing to keep in mind however is that the EU legislative process is quite complex. You asked if the European &lt;em&gt;Parliament&lt;/em&gt; can impose new laws on member states and the answer is a big, unconditional “no way”! The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Parliament&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Parliament&lt;/a&gt; has no initiative and cannot vote a proposal into a directive or regulation alone. The Commission, another pan-European institution, is very important because it's really drafting the directives and is also in charge of overseeing their implementation. But the third main actor in this process, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_European_Union&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Council&lt;/a&gt; has a very big role too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the key thing is that the Council represents &lt;em&gt;the governments of the member states&lt;/em&gt;. In some cases, it's perfectly possible for the whole process to produce something that national parliaments will be more-or-less forced to accept even if a few of them don't like it. But when you hear about “the EU”, you should also consider that what is coming from there is often something that your government wanted or at least consented to (possibly in a bargain about something else). That's another way in which quoting a proportion (high or low) of laws “made in Brussels” is misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a sense, the problem is not only or mainly whether the states or the EU are in charge but how this framework changes the balance of power within each member state. In general, governments certainly seem to have gained influence at the detriment of their respective national parliaments and once something has been made into EU law, it can be more difficult to roll back than national policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also remains to be seen how the nomination of the Commission will play out this time (with official EU-wide leaders and all that) but traditionally the member states and their governments had a big role in that too (e.g. the president of the Commission was a figure picked in a negotiation between the member states, not the leader of the majority in the Parliament, and each state nominated a commissioner based on local politics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17041" LastEditorUserId="17041" LastEditDate="2014-04-26T06:24:42.040" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T06:24:42.040" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20381" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20383" CreationDate="2014-04-25T10:13:28.203" Score="43" ViewCount="69386" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esquire.com/blogs/food-for-men/how-not-to-get-drunk?spr_id=1456_54817919&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; claims that eating active yeast powder before drinking will mitigate the effects of alcohol, by breaking down the alcohol before it enters your blood stream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You see, what Owades knew was that active dry yeast has an enzyme in it called alcohol dehydrogenases (ADH). Roughly put, ADH is able to break alcohol molecules down into their constituent parts of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Which is the same thing that happens when your body metabolizes alcohol in its liver. Owades realized if you also have that enzyme in your stomach when the alcohol first hits it, the ADH will begin breaking it down before it gets into your bloodstream and, thus, your brain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any risks from eating raw yeast? There is a rather nasty (but rare) condition called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/09/17/223345977/auto-brewery-syndrome-apparently-you-can-make-beer-in-your-gut&quot;&gt;Auto-brewery syndrome&lt;/a&gt; which could have the opposite effect if the yeast got into your intestines intact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastEditorUserId="17023" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T13:42:50.763" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T13:47:13.967" Title="Does eating yeast stop you from getting drunk?" Tags="|alcohol|yeast|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17107" CreationDate="2014-04-25T12:23:53.453" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;; during the life of Muhammad, there was no single text, as it was more about understanding the message than how it was told:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.call-to-monotheism.com/introduction_to_quranic_variants&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; cites hadiths that mention seven different ways of teaching:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Seven Ahruf (modes of recitation) are part of Islamic doctrine and&#xA;  a Muslim MUST ACCEPT IT...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahih_al-Bukhari&quot;&gt;Saheeh Bukhari&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Volume 6, Book 61, Number 513: Narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Abbas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Allah's Apostle said, &quot;Gabriel recited the Qur'an to me in one way.&#xA;  Then I requested him (to read it in another way), and continued asking&#xA;  him to recite it in other ways, and he recited it in &lt;strong&gt;several ways&lt;/strong&gt; till&#xA;  he ultimately recited it in seven different ways.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Volume 6, Book 61, Number 514:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Narrated 'Umar bin Al-Khattab:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I heard Hisham bin Hakim reciting Surat Al-Furqan during the lifetime&#xA;  of Allah's Apostle and I listened to his recitation and noticed that&#xA;  he recited in several different ways which Allah's Apostle had not&#xA;  taught me. I was about to jump over him during his prayer, but I&#xA;  controlled my temper, and when he had completed his prayer, I put his&#xA;  upper garment around his neck and seized him by it and said, &quot;Who&#xA;  taught you this Sura which I heard you reciting?&quot; He replied, &quot;Allah's&#xA;  Apostle taught it to me.&quot; I said, &quot;You have told a lie, for Allah's&#xA;  Apostle has taught it to me in a different way from yours.&quot; So I&#xA;  dragged him to Allah's Apostle and said (to Allah's Apostle),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I heard this person reciting Surat Al-Furqan in a way which you&#xA;  haven't taught me!&quot; On that Allah's Apostle said, &quot;Release him, (O&#xA;  'Umar!) Recite, O Hisham!&quot; Then he recited in the same way as I heard&#xA;  him reciting. Then Allah's Apostle said, &quot;It was revealed in this&#xA;  way,&quot; and added, &quot;Recite, O 'Umar!&quot; I recited it as he had taught me.&#xA;  Allah's Apostle then said, &quot;It was revealed in this way. &lt;strong&gt;This Qur'an&#xA;  has been revealed to be recited in seven different ways, so recite of&#xA;  it whichever (way) is easier for you&lt;/strong&gt; (or read as much of it as may be&#xA;  easy for you).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Volume 006, Book 061, Hadith Number 582.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Narated By Abdullah : That he heard a man reciting a Qur'anic Verse&#xA;  which he had heard the Prophet reciting in a different way. So he took&#xA;  that man to the Prophet (and told him the story). The Prophet said,&#xA;  &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Both of you are reciting in a correct way, so carry on reciting.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; The&#xA;  Prophet further added, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;The nations which were before you were&#xA;  destroyed (by Allah) because they differed.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scholars still have not come to a consensus regarding what these&#xA;  Seven Ahruf are. Some said that the Quran was revealed in seven&#xA;  different ways (not all the verses, only some) with synonyms replacing&#xA;  certain words. For example, besides saying &quot;ehdina al sirat al&#xA;  mustaqeem&quot; in one harf it would read &quot;arshudna al sirat al mustaqeem&quot;&#xA;  in another and they would both mean the same thing, which is &quot;Guide us&#xA;  unto the right path&quot;. It seems to me that this is the strongest&#xA;  opinion as to what the seven ahruf are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also the ten Qira'at are the different ways of reciting the Quran,&#xA;  which (according to the strongest opinion of the scholars) contain&#xA;  parts of the seven ahruf in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there were lots of ways to talk about the lessons of Muhammad, and people were already arguing about which was correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sunnah.com/bukhari/93/53&quot;&gt;Zaid bin Thabit&lt;/a&gt; started collecting verses after many people who had memorized them died:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abu Bakr sent for me owing to the large number of casualties in the&#xA;  battle of Al-Yamama, while 'Umar was sitting with him. Abu Bakr said&#xA;  (to me), 'Umar has come to my and said, 'A great number of Qaris of&#xA;  the Holy Qur'an were killed on the day of the battle of Al-Yamama, and&#xA;  I am afraid that the casualties among the Qaris of the Qur'an may&#xA;  increase on other battle-fields whereby a large part of the Qur'an may&#xA;  be lost. Therefore I consider it advisable that you (Abu Bakr) should&#xA;  have the Qur'an collected.' I said, 'How dare I do something which&#xA;  Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) did not do?' 'Umar said, By Allah, it is&#xA;  something beneficial.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So I started compiling the Qur'an by collecting it from the leafless&#xA;  stalks of the date-palm tree and from the pieces of leather and hides&#xA;  and from the stones, and from the chests of men (who had memorized the&#xA;  Qur'an). I found the last verses of Sirat-at-Tauba: (&quot;Verily there has&#xA;  come unto you an Apostle (Muhammad) from amongst yourselves--'&#xA;  (9.128-129) ) from Khuza`ima or Abi Khuza'ima and I added to it the&#xA;  rest of the Sura. The manuscripts of the Qur'an remained with Abu Bakr&#xA;  till Allah took him unto Him. Then it remained with 'Umar till Allah&#xA;  took him unto Him, and then with Hafsa bint 'Umar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sunnah.com/bukhari/66/9&quot;&gt;The collection of the Qur'an&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hudhaifa bin Al-Yaman came to Uthman at the time when the people of&#xA;  Sham and the people of Iraq were Waging war to conquer Arminya and&#xA;  Adharbijan. Hudhaifa was afraid of their (the people of Sham and Iraq)&#xA;  differences in the recitation of the Qur'an, so he said to Uthman, &quot;O&#xA;  chief of the Believers! &lt;strong&gt;Save this nation before they differ about the&#xA;  Book (Qur'an) as Jews and the Christians did before.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; So Uthman sent a&#xA;  message to Hafsa saying, &quot;Send us the manuscripts of the Qur'an so&#xA;  that we may compile the Qur'anic materials in perfect copies and&#xA;  return the manuscripts to you.&quot; Hafsa sent it to Uthman. Uthman then&#xA;  ordered Zaid bin Thabit, Abdullah bin AzZubair, Said bin Al-As and&#xA;  AbdurRahman bin Harith bin Hisham to rewrite the manuscripts in&#xA;  perfect copies. Uthman said to the three Quraishi men, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;In case you&#xA;  disagree with Zaid bin Thabit on any point in the Qur'an, then write&#xA;  it in the dialect of Quraish&lt;/strong&gt;, the Qur'an was revealed in their&#xA;  tongue.&quot; They did so, and when they had written many copies, Uthman&#xA;  returned the original manuscripts to Hafsa. Uthman sent to every&#xA;  Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and &lt;strong&gt;ordered that all&#xA;  the other Qur'anic materials, whether written in fragmentary&#xA;  manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not everyone was happy with the canonical version, though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sunnah.com/abudawud/32/36&quot;&gt;Dialects and Readings of the Qur'an (Kitab Al-Huruf Wa Al-Qira'at)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ibn Mas'ud said read the verse: &quot;Now come, thou&quot; (haita laka). Then&#xA;  Shariq said: We read it, &quot;hi'tu laka&quot; (I am prepared for thee). Ibn&#xA;  Mas'ud said: I read it as I have been taught ; it is dearer to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/bukhari/061-sbt.php#006.061.512&quot;&gt;this hadith&lt;/a&gt; makes me doubt whether everything came from Gabriel:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Volume 6, Book 61, Number 512: Narrated Al-Bara:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was revealed: 'Not equal are those believers who sit (at home)&#xA;  and those who strive and fight in the Cause of Allah.' (4.95)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Prophet said, &quot;Call Zaid for me and let him bring the board, the&#xA;  inkpot and the scapula bone (or the scapula bone and the ink pot).&quot;'&#xA;  Then he said, &quot;Write: 'Not equal are those Believers who sit..&quot;, and&#xA;  at that time 'Amr bin Um Maktum, the blind man was sitting behind the&#xA;  Prophet . He said, &quot;O Allah's Apostle! What is your order For me (as&#xA;  regards the above Verse) as I am a blind man?&quot; So, instead of the&#xA;  above Verse, the following Verse was revealed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Not equal are those believers who sit (at home) except those who are&#xA;  disabled (by injury or are blind or lame etc.) and those who strive&#xA;  and fight in the cause of Allah.' (4.95)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="5079" LastEditDate="2014-04-25T17:16:03.253" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T17:16:03.253" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20381" CreationDate="2014-04-25T12:37:47.583" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, it is highly implausible that eating yeast will stop you from getting drunk.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inside the stomach the pH &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastric_acid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;is around 1-2&lt;/a&gt;, the activity of enzymes is typically strongly dependent on the pH. Outside of their optimal pH range enzymes generally work much slower or not at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yeast ADH has a pH optimum in the neutral to alkaline range, at low pH values it is not active at all. The following two papers looked at the effect of pH on ADH and both observed that ADH was unstable at low pH values&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jbc.org/content/235/11/3188.citation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;The Role of Zinc in Alcohol Dehydrogenase: V. THE EFFECT OF METAL-BINDING AGENTS ON THE STRUCTURE OF THE YEAST ALCOHOL DEHYDROGENASE MOLECULE&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At acid pH, both activity and zinc of the enzyme are lost also  (18,&#xA;  19), but the effect of H+ ions on the structure of the enzyme  differs&#xA;  markedly from that here described for chelating agents.  Yeast alcohol&#xA;  dehydrogenase, 3.3 x 1O-5 M, when dialyzed for 24  hours in 0.1 M&#xA;  sodium acetate, pH 4.0, 0°, becomes polydispersed  and precipitates on&#xA;  increasing the temperature by only 4°. Apparently, H+ ions&#xA;  critically affect sensitive groups of this enzyme  in addition to&#xA;  those involved in activity and zinc binding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/bi00677a007&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Effect of pH on the Liver Alcohol Dehydrogenase Reaction&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are unable to study the rate of hydride transfer at  more acidic pH&#xA;  values because our enzyme preparation  undergoes rapid loss of&#xA;  activity below pH 5.9&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the proposed mechanism of the higher alcohol tolerance is highly implausible. There could be an effect of eating yeast separate from ADH, or yeast could have isoforms that also work at lower pH. But as the only evidence in favor seems to be anecdotal I would doubt that eating yeast as a significant effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-28T13:47:13.967" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T13:47:13.967" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19853" CreationDate="2014-04-25T20:04:13.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There doesn't seem to be an obvious, definitive answer to this question - The research on bathing frequency and infection prevention &lt;a href=&quot;http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/7/2/70-0225_article.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;is severely lacking&lt;/a&gt;. However, there are authoritative recommendations available. For example, teens and tweens should shower &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aad.org/dermatology-a-to-z/health-and-beauty/every-stage-of-life/children/how-often-do-children-need-to-take-a-bath&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;once daily&lt;/a&gt;. If you're athletically inclined, you should &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aad.org/dermatology-a-to-z/health-and-beauty/general-skin-care/how-to-prevent-skin-conditions-in-athletes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;shower after exercising&lt;/a&gt;. The same applies if you're spending significant time in places where communicable diseases are easier to pick up, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.med-health.net/How-Often-Should-You-Shower.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;such as the subway&lt;/a&gt;. Beyond that, the recommendation seems to be that you should choose whatever makes you &lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/skin-care/daily/tips/daily-shower-skin1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;comfortable with your cleanliness&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that being said, if the people in your immediate vicinity are saying what you're doing is disgusting, I'd guess that it would be good for your social relationships (and hence mental health) to start bathing more often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18961" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T20:04:13.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20389" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20394" CreationDate="2014-04-25T20:15:13.027" Score="35" ViewCount="5406" Body="&lt;p&gt;This image claims that you can get protein from non-meat sources, citing Broccoli as an example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oumbh.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Oumbhm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you really need meat to get Protein?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Beef&lt;/strong&gt; 6.4 grams of protein per 100 calories. &#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Broccoli&lt;/strong&gt; 11.1 grams of protein pe 100 calories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Plants have all the protein you need with none of the violence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source: Albury Times-Union&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;VeganStreet.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial reaction is &quot;NO WAY! That's not the same amino acids or structure or something...&quot; but then I realized I have no actual evidence to back this up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the statement is technically correct, however, I can't shake the feeling that I'm not seeing the whole picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18965" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-09-26T22:03:35.727" LastActivityDate="2020-05-20T05:46:35.297" Title="Can you get sufficient protein from a vegan diet?" Tags="|nutrition|vegetarianism|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20390" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20362" CreationDate="2014-04-25T21:22:27.607" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The argument from the Freakonomics article is somewhat problematic. It seems to boil down to the idea that, given that other things such as building code changes must have improved in ways that prevent fire deaths since smoke alarms were widely adopted, shouldn't the rate of deaths have plummeted instead of continuing the existing downward trend? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first problem here is that he presumes building codes and such actually improved fire safety. If they somehow made things &lt;em&gt;worse&lt;/em&gt;, and smoke alarms made them &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt;, the trend would be more gradual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, if you look closely at the death-by-fire graph, there are some interesting things to note. In the forties there was a substantial drop, which could be attributed to a significant portion of the population being off fighting a war, followed by them coming back from war and being available to fight fires. More importantly, there was apparently no substantial improvement in the death rate in the twenty years (starting around 1950) prior to the common use of smoke detectors; the line is essentially flat. Relative to THAT period, the later years represent a substantial improvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These figures, also from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usfa.fema.gov/downloads/pdf/white-paper-alarms.pdf&quot;&gt;FEMA&lt;/a&gt;, strongly suggest fire alarms are worth the hassle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smoke alarms are still missing in 4% of U.S. homes. This group&#xA;  accounts for 39% of reported home fires and nearly half of all the&#xA;  reported home fire deaths. They represent just over 4 million housing&#xA;  units.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This indicates homes without alarms were far more likely to catch fire, or the fires were much less likely to get caught by the occupants early enough to be put out by the people making the discovery. In either case, detector-less homes were substantially more likely to have reportable fires, and they account for an outsized percentage of the deaths in question. Also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Home fire deaths have declined substantially since the years before&#xA;  widespread home smoke alarm use. In 1977, when 22% of homes had smoke&#xA;  alarms, there were 5,865 home fire deaths. In 2003, when 95+% of homes&#xA;  had smoke alarms, the death toll had declined by 46% to 3,145. The&#xA;  home fire death rate, relative to resident population, declined by&#xA;  59% in the same period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at these statistics, it's blazingly obvious (sorry) that you'd be taking a substantial risk not having working smoke detectors in your house.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18961" LastActivityDate="2014-04-25T21:22:27.607" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20391" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-25T21:43:30.050" Score="21" ViewCount="4138" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I'm watching a show like &quot;Law &amp;amp; Order&quot;, I'm always curious if the following scenario is reality or just a handy plot device of television and fiction : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A discussion plays out between the police (or district attorney) with the accused. During this conversation, one side suspects that the other has something to offer and hints a deal could be worked out. At some point one of the two sides declares, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Off the record?&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; at which point, the other agrees, and the full details of the crime are openly revealed. Usually this turns into a plea agreement or in the case of the police, they ignore this lesser confession in order to go after the &quot;big crime&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is, fact or fiction? These magic words, &quot;Off the record&quot; seem to allow both sides to openly discuss anything imaginable without legal ramification. A clever invention of television drama or a real life tool of the police and justice system?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18968" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-26T00:50:07.537" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T19:18:33.167" Title="Does saying &quot;off the record&quot; allow lawyers to make admissions without legal ramifications?" Tags="|united-states|law|television|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20392" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-25T21:58:11.067" Score="4" ViewCount="380" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked the eye doctor if exercises will help my aging vision and he said basically that the benefits of eye exercise are inconclusive. I looked on Skeptics and found that this was discussed 3 years ago in several posts (linked below). One wonders if our understanding has improved over the last three years? Then I looked around the internet for something that looked reliable and found at the American Optometric Association that it helps in the cases of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research has demonstrated vision therapy can be an effective treatment option for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ocular motility dysfunctions (eye movement disorders)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Non-strabismic binocular disorders (inefficient eye teaming)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strabismus (misalignment of the eyes)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Amblyopia (poorly developed vision)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accommodative disorders (focusing problems)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Visual information processing disorders, including visual-motor integration and integration with other sensory modalities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aoa.org/optometrists/education-and-training/clinical-care/vision-therapy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Skeptics research so far is at (3 years old):&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/629/are-there-any-exercises-for-your-eyes-that-will-help-with-near-or-far-sightedn&quot;&gt;Are there any &amp;quot;exercises&amp;quot; for your eyes that will help with near or far sightedness?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2482/strange-way-of-improving-eyesight-could-it-work&quot;&gt;Strange way of improving eyesight -- Could it work?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question is:&#xA;Has our understanding of this subject grown enough since 3 years ago to decide the efficacy of eye exercises?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18848" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T13:34:16.520" Title="Does eye exercises help improve your eyesight?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2014-04-26T01:04:50.140" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20389" CreationDate="2014-04-25T23:16:28.237" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;An amino acid was first isolated in 1806, by French chemists &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifesciencesfoundation.org/printer_events-Asparagine.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Louis Nicolas Vauquelin and Pierre Jean Robiquet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proteins present in food are all composed of a group of amino-acids. The amino-acids constitute the building blocks for many different chemicals made inside the body: in hormones, enzymes, DNA. encoding, RNA. encoding.... they play vital roles in the body's immune system, they constitute the neurotransmitters in the brain, the cortisol which is involved with stress response - in short we know a fair bit about their roles in the body, and the body and mind can't function at full capacity without them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About 500 amino-acids are known. Ref(1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Altogether there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/organic/aminostruct.html#c1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;twenty amino-acids&lt;/a&gt; which we need. Of those twenty there are ten which the human body can synthesize, the other ten are only able to be obtained through our diet, these ten are called &quot;essential amino-acids&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Animal proteins contain the amino-acids we can't produce ourselves, these are called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/everyone/basics/protein.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;complete proteins&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A vegetarian diet would still contain eggs and dairy products which, together with the vegetable proteins would cover the full count of the required ten essential amino-acids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question boils down to: can a vegan diet provide all ten essential amino-acids, if not, what supliments are available? (Which are not of an animal source)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears to be the case that vegetable proteins are on the whole likely to contain these amino acids, but some of them may be present in only small quantities. It is therefore necessary to find a variety of vegetable sources in order to obtain a balanced diet of complete protein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;vrg.org/nutrition/protein.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Soybeans, quinoa (a grain), and spinach also are considered high&#xA;  quality protein. Other protein sources of non-animal origin usually&#xA;  have all of the essential amino acids, but the amounts of one or two&#xA;  of these amino acids may be low. For example, grains are lower in&#xA;  lysine (an essential amino acid) and legumes are lower in methionine&#xA;  (another essential amino acid) than those protein sources designated&#xA;  as high quality protein. Frances Moore Lappe, in her book Diet for a Small Planet &#xA;  advocated the combining of a food low in one amino acid&#xA;  with another food containing large amounts of that amino acid. This&#xA;  got to be a very complicated process, with each meal having specific&#xA;  amounts of certain foods in order to be certain of getting a favorable&#xA;  amino acid mix. Many people got discouraged with the complexity of&#xA;  this approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may not always be possible or convenient to eat healthily on a vegan diet, but there are plenty of food supplements containing the individual elements you may need for that hard to get complete diet. Using a search engine to seek: &quot;vegan amino-acids&quot; many websites offer individual amino acids and quite a few pharmacies/health and fitness stores in your local town or city probably do the same. They do in mine. It would then be advisable for the individual to ensure that they are buying not only the appropriate supplements, but ones not obtained from animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone embarking on a vegan diet would be well advised to seek advice from a dietitian about their specific requirements, particularly regarding feeding expectant mothers, children, young adults, the old and the very active or ill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refs:&#xA;1:  Wagner, Ingrid; Musso, Hans (November 1983). &quot;New Naturally Occurring Amino Acids&quot;. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl. 22 (22): 816–828.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit (1) - to include broccoli and a useful resource: Although the specific statement in the question refers to the website: VeganStreet.com, this answerer is unable to find the specific page making the claim, however there are other sites which make similar claims. Broccoli is not considered a complete source of essential amino acids, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://eathropology.com/2013/04/08/broccoli-has-more-protein-than-steak-and-other-crap/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. A serving of 91 grams of the raw product contains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;&amp;gt; Tryptophan      30.0 mg&#xA;&amp;gt; Threonine       80.1 mg&#xA;&amp;gt; Isoleucine      71.9 mg&#xA;&amp;gt; Leucine        117   mg &#xA;&amp;gt; Lysine         123   mg&#xA;&amp;gt; Methionine      34.6 mg&#xA;&amp;gt; Cystine         25.5 mg&#xA;&amp;gt; Phenylalanine  106   mg &#xA;&amp;gt; Tyrosine        45.5 mg&#xA;&amp;gt; Valine         114   mg&#xA;&amp;gt; Arginine       174   mg&#xA;&amp;gt; Histidine       53.7 mg &#xA;&amp;gt; Alanine         94.6 mg&#xA;&amp;gt; Aspartic acid  296   mg&#xA;&amp;gt; Glutamic acid  493   mg&#xA;&amp;gt; Glycine         81.0 mg &#xA;&amp;gt; Proline        100   mg&#xA;&amp;gt; Serine         110   mg&#xA;&amp;gt; &#xA;&amp;gt; Attribution: &#xA;&amp;gt; http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2356/2#ixzz30ZrrGvhy&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bio-availability of these amino acids is not stated in the raw product, nor the cooked, nor is the RDA of any of them listed here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims on the above site regarding the relative protein contents of broccoli and beef (per amount measured arbitrarily in calorific content) are contradicted &lt;a href=&quot;http://eathropology.com/2013/04/08/broccoli-has-more-protein-than-steak-and-other-crap/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; with citations, notably of USDA’s Agricultural Research Service’s Nutrient Data Laboratory database. It gives a list of the essential amino acids and their RDA. taken from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://whqlibdoc.who.int/trs/who_trs_935_eng.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WHO&lt;/a&gt; database. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reasons of complex formatting I have not quoted this, you should view the list here:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eathropology.com/2013/04/08/broccoli-has-more-protein-than-steak-and-other-crap/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://eathropology.com/2013/04/08/broccoli-has-more-protein-than-steak-and-other-crap/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is clear that to ascertain the minimum daily requirements of for example histidine, approximately 20 cups of broccoli need to be consumed per day. The story is similar for other essential amino acids. To most people this would make broccoli an unfeasible source of all necessary dietary protein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17546" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2016-09-29T12:36:00.600" LastActivityDate="2016-09-29T12:36:00.600" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20381" CreationDate="2014-04-26T03:52:31.127" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems decidedly skepticism-worthy based on the previous answers. I do not know the science, but I did find a link to a patent filing for the Prequel product filed by Joseph Owades, who also appears to be a legitimate scientific source as an industrial biochemist and Ph.D. Quotes are included in comments below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://patents.justia.com/patent/6284244&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://patents.justia.com/patent/6284244&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mediating the effects of alcohol consumption by orally administering active dry yeast&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Patent number:&lt;/strong&gt; 6284244&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract:&lt;/strong&gt; Mediating the effects of alcohol consumption by orally administering an active dry yeast containing alcohol dehydrogenase to a person prior to or simultaneously with consumption of an alcohol-containing beverage to oxidize a portion of the alcohol while it is still in the stomach of the person is described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Issued:&lt;/strong&gt; September 4, 2001&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Inventor:&lt;/strong&gt; Joseph L. Owades&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering he obtained the patent and cites an 8-person sample research study showing it has an effect, it seems plausible. Whether it's exactly alcohol dehydrogenase directly and in the stomach specifically is inconclusive from the patent. Other alcohol dehydrogenases are found in the stomach however:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;At the high ethanol concentrations in stomach after drinking, sigma-ADH is probably the ADH form with the largest contribution to human gastric ethanol metabolism.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Purification and characterization of a new alcohol dehydrogenase from human stomach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Authors:&lt;/strong&gt; A Moreno and X Parés&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Journal of Biological Chemistry, 1991&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jbc.org/content/266/2/1128.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.jbc.org/content/266/2/1128.full.pdf+html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Joseph Owades also seems to be an interesting guy. His post-mortem in the Washington Post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/20/AR2005122001540.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/20/AR2005122001540.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18977" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-26T13:13:07.773" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20399" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-26T14:15:37.817" Score="0" ViewCount="378" Body="&lt;p&gt;If somebody were to take 20mg of an opioid (for example, hydrocodone) twice a week every week, would there be any negative long-term effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18988" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:19:37.913" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:19:37.913" Title="Does intermittent opioid abuse have a long-term negative effect on health?" Tags="|medical-science|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20400" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20404" CreationDate="2014-04-26T17:35:39.187" Score="14" ViewCount="7291" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read in many sites that a car with lights on will consume more fuel that with lights off. The (hand-waving) justifications that I see tend to mention that &quot;energy has to come from somewhere&quot; and so they deduce that more fuel should be used. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the way I see it the engine is doing some work on moving the alternator, whether there is an energy need or not. And the mechanical friction caused by the alternator does not depend on whether electricity is being needed or not. In other words, when energy is not needed it is wasted; it is not that more energy is generated when needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, do lights-on increase fuel consumption? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16803" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-27T02:49:26.083" LastActivityDate="2018-07-13T22:07:42.677" Title="Is a car's fuel consumption increased when the headlights are on?" Tags="|road-vehicles|technology|energy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20400" CreationDate="2014-04-26T23:16:21.440" Score="30" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the mechanical friction caused by the alternator does not depend on whether electricity is being needed or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In other words, when energy is not needed it is wasted&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Wrong&lt;/em&gt;. The electrical energy produced by the alternator is not the result of mechanical friction but of &lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/Hbase/magnetic/forwir2.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;magnetic force&lt;/a&gt; on top of the (very small amount of) friction, which the motor has to overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inside the alternator, wire coils are made to move through magnetic fields. the force they have to overcome is proportional to the current that goes through the wire. If there is no current (i.e. no electrical energy is being used), there is no magnetic force. The higher the current, the more force the motor has to overcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how much fuel this uses: the California Energy Commission &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.energy.ca.gov/2005publications/CEC-600-2005-024/addendum_individual_files/CEC-600-2005-024-AD-1G.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cites a number of studies&lt;/a&gt; that claim it's somewhere between 0.5% and 1% - but that seems to to be the increase expected when mandating lights to be on during daytime, which would be on top of existing nighttime use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reports that extra &#xA;  fuel consumed with the use of DRLs is “a fraction of a mile per gallon,” while the &#xA;  Insurance Institute for Highway Safety cites a range of $3 to more than $40 per &#xA;  year in extra fuel cost (a consolidation of costs reported by GM and Transport &#xA;  Canada). The Institute for Road Safety Research of Netherlands (SWOV) &#xA;  reports 0.9 percent additional fuel use for DRLs based on European programs &#xA;  that have been in effect for several years. A Swedish study completed in 2002 &#xA;  estimated a fuel economy penalty range of 0.5 to 1.5 percent for various &#xA;  approaches among member nations of the European Union in implementing DRL &#xA;  programs. A recent study in Switzerland under “real world” Swiss driving &#xA;  conditions in European design gasoline passenger cars indicated about 0.8 &#xA;  percent fuel use when adjusting reported results to DRL use conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DRL in the above quote stands for &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daytime_running_lamp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daytime Running Lamp&lt;/a&gt;.  There are different types of DREs, with different lighting intensities (and therefore energy use).  Assuming that DREs burn with a lower intensity than headlamps (many do), then this sets a lower bound on the cost of running headlights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14002" LastEditorUserId="15781" LastEditDate="2018-07-13T22:07:42.677" LastActivityDate="2018-07-13T22:07:42.677" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20405" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-27T01:51:45.853" Score="20" ViewCount="966" Body="&lt;p&gt;When visiting a touring exhibit of Vatican museum treasures, my mother pointed at a garment with very fine embroidery. She told me that the artists who made such garments could only make one in their entire life, because working on something so minutely detailed caused blindness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This struck me as odd, but recently I rediscovered this claim in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-art-of-roto-2011/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; about rotoscoping films:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don’t know if you’ve ever seen those incredibly detailed Chinese tapestries that they made in the monasteries generations ago. They finally stopped making them because the artisans would go blind &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this? I couldn't find any articles online by doing some basic searches for textile or tapestry and blindness. I also find it hard to believe that this kind of work would actually make someone blind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18996" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T10:38:08.573" Title="Have textile workers created such finely detailed textiles that they have gone blind?" Tags="|medical-science|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20399" CreationDate="2014-04-27T02:19:50.383" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Low dosages of opioids is unlikely to have long-term negative health effects &lt;strong&gt;when taken responsibly and prescribes by a doctor.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;If the drug is abused however, dependence may occur and abuse is associated with irresponsible usage which can be very dangerous. Dependence usually results in usages of higher dosages, which have long term negative side-effects&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19165308&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prevalence of side effects of prolonged low or moderate dose opioid therapy with concomitant benzodiazepine and/or antidepressant therapy in chronic non-cancer pain.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moderate or low dose opioid therapy in conjunction with or without benzodiazepines, antidepressants, or in combinations are associated with minor side effects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Low dose&amp;quot; usually means 100mg of morphine which equals 17mg of hydrocodone/day (At this actual &amp;quot;low dose&amp;quot; I believe the results do get much more disputable. At this dosage, higher death rates are observable in most large studies)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18443640&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Opioids in the management of chronic non-cancer pain: an update of American Society of the Interventional Pain Physicians' (ASIPP) Guidelines.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;best action may differ depending on circumstances or patients' or societal values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.duffysrehab.com/blog/vicodin-301-why-is-vicodin-addictive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Duffy's Rehab&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If you’re taking Vicodin for the right reasons and in the right way, then your chances of being addicted to Vicodin (or any other prescription medication) are extremely low—less than 10%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The risk of addiction is often influenced by other factors, such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Genetics&#xA;Family history&#xA;Environmental factors&#xA;Past history of drug abuse&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if an individual is taking Vicodin non-medically or is deliberately misusing it, the chances of addiction are &lt;strong&gt;significantly higher&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dosage doesn't matter. The reason is that drug dependence also depends on &lt;strong&gt;psychological dependence.&lt;/strong&gt; Breaking the habit of use is the hardest for most users. For example, nicotine is removes from the body in three days, but smokers struggle with psychological addiction for months or even years. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_dependence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;They are similar in that addiction is a physiological &amp;quot;craving&amp;quot; for something and psychological dependence is a &amp;quot;need&amp;quot; for a particular substance because it causes enjoyable mental affects. A person becomes dependent on something to help alleviate specific emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Drugs abuse and sometimes therapy with a counselor is needed treat the underlying reasons someone might be trying to alleviate emotions with a drug. &lt;strong&gt;The biggest harm to your long-term health from drug abuse is mental and emotional. It will harm relationships and emotional and spiritual fulfillment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there is also some evidence that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2668197/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this dosage does not cause tolerance/physical dependence &lt;/a&gt;, even in long-term (9 years), recreational users of Vicodine (1-2 times per week), atleast according to this study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was little information on the direct acute effects of oxycodone and hydrocodone in this population, and therefore, a pilot study was completed to help guide the choice of safe, tolerable, and equipotent doses of oxycodone, hydrocodone and hydromorphone for use in the current study. In all respects, the pilot data collected were identical in nature and scope to that collected in the present study except: 1) doses were administered in ascending order for safety purposes, and 2) there were a greater number of test conditions (17 total, five doses each of oxycodone, hydrocodone and hydromorphone, placebo and an active practice condition) and a wider range of test doses (oxycodone [5 mg – 50 mg], hydrocodone [7.5 mg – 60 mg], and hydromorphone [2.5 mg – 35 mg]. Results showed that oxycodone (5 mg) and hydromorphone (2 and 5 mg) were inactive in sporadic opioid users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, small therapeutic dosages were still effective for Vicodin abusers. The reason appears that these users were mostly women and &lt;strong&gt;elderly&lt;/strong&gt; who did not use strong street drugs or crush or snort the medication, as opposed to the other groups of users. (For abusers of opiods, this may serve as a huge warning however, that dependence is likely to result in switching or mixing their usage with a different opioid or mixing with other drugs-Zanax, Heroin,ect- to get a &amp;quot;better high,&amp;quot; placing them into the high-risk &amp;quot;oxycodone&amp;quot; group)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hydrocodone abuse and dependence is an enormous public health issue, which suggests that many, many people are not so resistant to dependence and for those people it most certainly tragic. Abusing opioids is like playing Russian Roulette. &lt;a href=&quot;http://drugabuse.com/library/hydrocodone-abuse/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;27,000 people became dependent on Vicodin in 2009, based on the figures who either required treatment from a doctor or ended up in the emergency room due to abuse or overdose.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a presentation by WHO on its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=7&amp;amp;ved=0CIABEBYwBg&amp;amp;url=http://clinicalcenter.nih.gov/ccc/nursepractitioners/pdfs/pain_management_slid.pdf&amp;amp;ei=OlJcU6_BOorLsATCuIKQBw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGNfgFZeNeJlIB--wpuYm9SE-h-PQ&amp;amp;sig2=mNTL3gKvQkXyUAa1q4_TkA&amp;amp;bvm=bv.65397613,d.cWc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;guidelines for pain management&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If taking meds 10 days or longer on regular bases withdrawal symptoms may occur, wean off meds slowly.&#xA;Withdrawal results in hypertension, nausea, vomiting, body aches, diarrhea, anxiety, tremors, tachycardia, diaphoresis, abdominal pain&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are abusing a medication, it would always be possible to be unable to access the drug. Also if the user has a legitimate need, especially if the user fails to recognize their drug use is a problem, they may have difficulty obtaining pain management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If dependence becomes problem and large dosages start being used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;adverse consequences including hormonal and immune system effects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therapeutic opioids: a ten-year perspective on the complexities and complications of the escalating use, abuse, and nonmedical use of opioids.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18443641&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18443641&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vicodin can also of course cause death and liver damage if you take too much and mix it with alcohol and other drugs. It can increase your risk of a car accident or injury, too, no matter who you are or why you are taking it. Like almost all medications, Vicodin has rare severe side effects, such as death, and should not be taken by people with certain health condition. It should always be prescribed by doctor to ensure benefits outweigh the risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18704" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T20:51:04.527" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20408" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-27T14:22:47.200" Score="5" ViewCount="1305" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Macedonia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limewater&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;limewater&lt;/a&gt; (calcium hydroxide) is used as a folk remedy for cancer. The case was presented on television in Macedonia that patients with metastases were cured by drinking lime water and yoghurt each morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does limewater cure cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19003" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-27T14:39:49.303" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T21:31:16.107" Title="Does limewater cure cancer?" Tags="|cancer|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17422" CreationDate="2014-04-27T15:30:06.773" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim has already been featured on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/lemons.asp&quot;&gt;snopes.com&lt;/a&gt; and was rated &quot;&lt;strong&gt;mixture of true and false information&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, the best that can be said at this point is that citrus fruits may potentially harbor anti-cancer properties that could help ward off cancer. No reputable scientific or medical studies have reported that lemons have been found to be a &quot;proven remedy against cancers of all types,&quot; nor has any of the (conveniently unnamed) &quot;world's largest drug manufacturers&quot; reported discovering that lemons are &quot;10,000 times stronger than chemotherapy&quot; and that their ingestion can &quot;destroy malignant [cancer] cells.&quot; All of those claims are hyperbole and exaggeration not supported by facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16419" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T15:30:06.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20410" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-27T18:39:34.610" Score="10" ViewCount="1162" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://9gag.com/gag/anYVZmL?ref=fsidebar&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;9Gag&lt;/a&gt; has a post telling the story of a Hungarian bus driver who trolled his passengers. Some comments on 9gag and other places on the internet claim that the story is true, but they are not sourced at all. Did what is described really happened?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://d24w6bsrhbeh9d.cloudfront.net/photo/anYVZmL_700b_v1.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The story in &amp;quot;Rage Comics&amp;quot; format&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text of the image is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let me tell you the story of a hungarian bus driver who knew the art of trolling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dressed as a blind man, he approached his bus, got on while tripping on the steps a little, started the engine, then drove off while the passengers were screaming for mercy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company had no sense of humor, so he got a warning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next time, he sat at the back pf the bus with the rest of the passengers. When the bus should've left 15 minutes ago and the passengers got impatient, he got up and yelled: &amp;quot;If the driver won't do his job, I am gonna drive this shit!&amp;quot; and started for the driver's cabin. The bus was empty in 5 seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company said no more jokes while on duty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His last gag was while driving the bus down the hill. Before starting his route, he had sneaked up a spare wheel, and as the bus was going downhill he threw it out from his cabin yelling &amp;quot;OMG OMG THE WHEEL BROKE OFF, THE MOTHERFACKING WHEEL JUST BROKE OUT OF ITS PLACE!&amp;quot;. No need to say the passengers freaked out and started screaming for their lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company was so mad at him, he was fired immediately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:48:20.733" Title="Did a Hungarian bus driver scare his passengers with these pranks?" Tags="|humor|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17422" CreationDate="2014-04-27T19:17:33.397" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lemons are a fruit and contain a variety of compounds both in the pulp and the skin. Some of these organic molecules can have effects in human physiology, but the scientific information available indicates that eating lemons or drinking lemon juice will have no direct substantial effect on curing cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If scientists are studying specific compounds also found in lemons, that's a different matter.&#xA;See for example a case of a specific compound found in &lt;em&gt;Citrus&lt;/em&gt; fruits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24573532&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24573532&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10728" LastEditorUserId="10728" LastEditDate="2014-04-28T18:55:30.510" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T18:55:30.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20391" CreationDate="2014-04-27T20:04:02.553" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;off the record&amp;quot; seems to mainly be a plot device. The original &amp;quot;off the record&amp;quot; statement would mean that the lawyer approach the bench and have some off the record talk, usually about something like a confession deal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Off the Record Law &amp;amp; Legal Definition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Off the record refers to a conversation not being transcribed as part of the record of the proceedings. It may refer to a sidebar in court where the attorneys approach the bench to confer with the judge. Because the conversation is not to be heard by jurors and recorded, the conversation may be said to be off the record. It is not transcribed by the court reporter and made part of the trial record. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://definitions.uslegal.com/o/off-the-record/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Uslegal.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I seen this happen in series my self, the &amp;quot;off the record&amp;quot; statement they give in there seems to be more like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://definitions.uslegal.com/p/proffer-agreement/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Proffer agreement&lt;/a&gt; As said in one of the comments as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All tough this seems to be more of a written agreement then a stated agreement. Making me come to the conclusion that the &amp;quot;off record&amp;quot; used in series such as Law and Order are mainly plot devices&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the context of criminal law, a proffer agreement is a written agreement between federal prosecutors and individuals under criminal investigation which permit these individuals to give the government information about crimes with some assurances that they will be protected against prosecution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19013" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-27T20:04:02.553" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20416" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-28T03:20:33.717" Score="6" ViewCount="681" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did, at some point, every new programmer at Microsoft get given a copy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0735619670&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Code Complete by Steve McConnell&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19020" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:39:36.913" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:39:36.913" Title="Was every programmer at Microsoft given a copy of Code Complete?" Tags="|books|microsoft|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2014-05-02T18:02:38.863" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18450" CreationDate="2014-04-28T11:19:53.437" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cause for most Alzheimer's cases is still mostly unknown except for 1% to 5% of cases where genetic differences have been identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alz.org/research/science/alzheimers_disease_causes.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alzheimer's Association&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While scientists know Alzheimer's disease involves progressive brain cell failure, the reason cells fail isn't clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the claims by Dr. Perlmutter's book, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/12/this-is-your-brain-on-gluten/282550/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an interesting article by James Hamblin&lt;/a&gt; where Epidemiologist Dr. David Katz, founding director of Yale University's Prevention Research Center, has criticized Grain Brain, saying &amp;quot;Perlmutter is way ahead of any justifiable conclusion&amp;quot; and that many of its claims are &amp;quot;wildly preposterous&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://grist.org/food/is-gluten-lobotomizing-you/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article by Nathanael Johnson&lt;/a&gt; on grist.org also refers to this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here’s a key exchange between Hamblin (who speaks first) and Perlmutter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked for some clarity on that. “We don’t have clinical studies linking gluten to Alzheimer’s, ADHD, or —”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“With all due respect, we do. That information is well established. It was actually published by the Mayo Clinic, that gluten can in fact be related to risk for dementia. So I would beg to differ with you on that point. Gluten, certainly in patients with celiac  disease, is strongly associated with risk for dementia. As was described in the proceedings of the Mayo Clinic, it was a treatable cause of dementia. So I think that’s pretty revolutionary and exciting.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That study didn’t appear in my inbox. I asked him for it later, and he promptly sent me a 2006 case series that identified 13 patients in a review of Mayo Clinic records from January 1, 1970, to December 31, 2005. That is an interesting correlation — the study’s authors called it a “possible association” — but is far from well-established causation that gluten is a mechanism for dementia in people with celiac disease, much less all people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Got that? Under Perlmutter’s prism, a single study, of 13 people, with a finding of “possible association,” turns into a near certainty. Hyperbole is a good way to sell diet books and start fads, but it’s not good for dieters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in conclusion, there is not enough research to confirm these claims, definitely not enough to warrant an extreme change to somebody's diet like avoiding grains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16419" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-28T11:30:21.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20420" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-28T12:12:19.113" Score="13" ViewCount="48661" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: this question contains spoilers about the novel and movie.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lorenzocarcaterra.com/website-14/books/sleepers.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sleepers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is a novel about four boys who are sexually abused at a school for boys, and later exact revenge on their tormentors. It was made into &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a film&lt;/a&gt; starring Kevin Bacon, Brad Pitt, and Robert De Niro, among others. However there is a lot of skepticism about whether the story is actually true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the book, Mr. Carcaterra writes about himself (played in the film by Jason Patric) and three young friends living in the Hell's Kitchen section of Manhattan in the 1960's. After they stage a street prank that unintentionally leaves a man seriously injured, the book says, the four are sent to an upstate juvenile detention center, where they are brutalized and sexually assaulted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Years after their release, two of the boys, now professional killers, accidentally encounter a former guard who took part in the assaults. The two promptly kill the guard in a restaurant, but to save them from prison, a third member of the old foursome, an assistant district attorney (played by Brad Pitt), privately manipulates the evidence in their behalf. He needs the help of a popular Roman Catholic priest (Robert De Niro), who is asked to perjure himself on behalf of the killers, whom he has known since childhood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Strong challenges to the book's story were raised by the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church and School on the West Side of Manhattan (which Mr. Carcaterra attended), where priests expressed outrage about the author's assertions, and by the Manhattan District Attorney's office. The office said there were no records of a case like the one described in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;—&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/22/movies/sleepers-debate-renewed-how-true-is-a-true-story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;'Sleepers' Debate Renewed: How True Is a 'True Story'?&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;New York Times&lt;/em&gt;, Oct. 22, 1996&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author, Lorenzo Carcaterra, claims it is a true story, and shrugs off the skepticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: Is SLEEPERS a true story or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: There will be many who question this. First of all, names, dates and places were changed. Second, institutions raised questions which I have refused to answer. The bottom line is -- it is a true story and it is my story. Those who chose to believe it have my heart. Those who chose not to believe it -- that's for them to decide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;—Lorenzo Carcaterra, in a former &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140501024802/http://www.lorenzocarcaterra.com/faq.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt; on his website, via the Internet Archive&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Questions:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was the author sentenced to a school for troubled youth?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was the author sexually abused at that school?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did boys at the school murder a guard who had abused them?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Were those boys later acquitted of the murder?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was the acquittal aided by a prosecutor in on the job?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Was the acquittal aided by false testimony from an authority figure?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3837" LastEditorUserId="3837" LastEditDate="2020-12-01T06:25:35.983" LastActivityDate="2020-12-01T06:25:35.983" Title="Is the novel &quot;Sleepers&quot; a true account?" Tags="|history|criminology|literature|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20421" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20518" CreationDate="2014-04-28T12:51:03.180" Score="25" ViewCount="7865" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a story told in Timothy Good's book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0688092020&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Above Top Secret: The Worldwide U.F.O. Cover-Up &lt;/a&gt;  and  repeated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/article/neil-armstrong-dies-along-with-secrets-of-what-he-saw-on-moon&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Examiner&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://globalparanormal.com/what-kind-of-alien-craft-did-neil-armstrong-see-on-the-moon/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Global Paranormal&lt;/a&gt; in which Neil Armstrong saw aliens on the moon, and this was covered up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Science-fiction writer, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Binder&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Otto Binder&lt;/a&gt; claimed that some radio hams received the message from NASA in which Neil Armstrong said that he had seen other spacecraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These babies are huge, sir … enormous….Oh, God, you wouldn't believe it! I'm telling you there are other space craft out there… lined up on the far side of the crater edge… they're on the moon watching us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maurice Chatelain, former chief of NASA Communications Systems confirmed that Armstrong had indeed reported seeing two UFOs on the rim of a crater.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Vladimir Azhazha, a physicist and Professor of Mathematics at Moscow University also confirmed that the message was sent to NASA but was censored (supposedly 'confirmed' by interruptions in radio transmissions)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;NASA has lost original recordings of most Apollo 11 mission tapes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these stories true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19030" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2023-01-24T23:22:45.807" Title="Did Neil Armstrong find aliens on the moon?" Tags="|politics|moon|aliens|ufo|nasa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20426" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-28T18:21:37.270" Score="8" ViewCount="455" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the hope that the loss of American lives would bring the United States into World War 1, did Winston Churchill play a part in getting the Lusitania to carry ammunition so that it would be sunk by German u-boats?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few claims circulating, ranging from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.english.emory.edu/LostPoets/Lusitaniapapers.html&quot;&gt;indirect&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://lovkap.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/churchill-and-j-p-morgan-sunk-lusitania.html&quot;&gt;direct&lt;/a&gt; action by Churchill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theory has certainly been proposed by some on the basis of a letter Churchill wrote to Walter Runciman, the president of Britain’s Board of Trade (quoted &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rmslusitania.info/controversies/conspiracy-or-foul-up/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores in the hope especially of embroiling the United States with Germany . . . . For our part we want the traffic — the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the conspiracy has been widely discussed, most observers prefer the &quot;cock up&quot; theory. Are there any grounds for suspecting a conspiracy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4245" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T17:34:01.813" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T17:34:01.813" Title="Did Churchill have a hand in the sinking of the Lusitania?" Tags="|winston-churchill|world-war-i|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20190" CreationDate="2014-04-28T18:51:24.750" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, an &quot;imminent&quot; volcanic eruption is not a plausible explanation. But geological tremors are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Yellowstone geological activity is increasing, an eruption is not expected for a very long time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The animal exodus could also just be migration - however, the video shows the animals running, not walking. Annual migration involves a lot of walking. Running is energy intensive and requires urgency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/critters/gnus/yellowstone.asp#C28HUgwzV2EgUyFL.99&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Snopes.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As Al Nash, chief of public affairs for Yellowstone, explained in a rumor control video on this subject:&#xA;  We do have bison, elk and other animals that have moved outside the park recently, but they're doing that because it's the depth of winter, food is a little hard to find in places inside Yellowstone, and they tend to migrate at this time of the winter outside the park to lower elevations where they think there might be something to eat that's easier to get at. When the snow melts off and things start to green up, those very same animals will walk right back into the park.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The animals may have been running in response to tremors; it's normal for animals to be much more sensitive to natural things. However, an increase in tremors doesn't necessarily mean an imminent eruption and Theres nothing about the evidence presented in the Yellowstone claim that shows why the Bison are running. Some parts of the scientific establishment claim that it has not been proven that animals can sense earthquakes before humans can, yet there is millenia of anecdotal evidence that animals can indeed do so, and acceptance of the idea in naturalist circles. &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/1111_031111_earthquakeanimals.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Geographic&lt;/a&gt;, for example, contrasts with points of view published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/history-of-geology/2011/12/12/can-animals-sense-earthquakes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yellowstone, a bit like Hawaii, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_hotspot&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on a hotspot&lt;/a&gt;. Hawaii is constantly active because the crust is so thin. In continental Yellowstone, the energy/pressure has to build up a lot before it blows through the crust - and then it will be an enormous release of energy. Previous eruptions have been quite regular, and thats the basis for predicting future eruptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18702" LastEditorUserId="18702" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T14:34:42.760" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T14:34:42.760" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20430" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20389" CreationDate="2014-04-29T07:29:49.960" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adele Hite wrote about this claim on her blog &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eathropology.com/2013/04/08/broccoli-has-more-protein-than-steak-and-other-crap/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eathropology&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let’s see how similar caloric intakes of steak and broccoli stack up when comparing how these two foods provide for &lt;em&gt;essential amino acid&lt;/em&gt; requirements. A 275-calorie portion of steak (&lt;strong&gt;4 ounces&lt;/strong&gt;) has 30.5 grams of protein and comes very close to meeting all the daily essential amino acid requirements for a 70 kg adult. A 277-calorie portion of broccoli is not only &lt;em&gt;way more food&lt;/em&gt;—you’ll be chewing for a long time as you try to make it through &lt;strong&gt;9 ¼ cups&lt;/strong&gt; of broccoli—exactly NONE of the daily essential amino acid requirements for an adult are met:&#xA;  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xdv0c.png&quot; alt=&quot;Table comparing essential amino acids&quot;&gt;&#xA;  In reality, it takes twice that much broccoli, or &lt;strong&gt;over 18 cups&lt;/strong&gt;, containing &lt;em&gt;nearly twice as many calories&lt;/em&gt;, in order to get anywhere near meeting all essential amino acid requirements.  While I’m willing to concede that individual amino acid requirements may vary considerably, I am not willing to concede that similar caloric amounts of steak and broccoli provide a similar supply of those requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16419" LastEditorUserId="16419" LastEditDate="2014-04-29T07:51:42.710" LastActivityDate="2014-04-29T07:51:42.710" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20431" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20432" CreationDate="2014-04-29T12:43:04.237" Score="8" ViewCount="22358" Body="&lt;p&gt;This guy claims that he is 179 years old. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eface.in/179-years-old-man-living-in-india-guiness-world-records/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;eface India&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newsorigin.com/death-has-forgotten-me-said-179-years-old-man/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;News Origin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/indian-man-claims-hes-179-years-old/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;World News Daily Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14234" LastEditorUserId="22367" LastEditDate="2018-12-12T23:15:56.987" LastActivityDate="2018-12-12T23:15:56.987" Title="Is this Indian Man, Mûrasi, 179 years old?" Tags="|biology|india|age|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20431" CreationDate="2014-04-29T13:26:27.147" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source is apparently the World News Daily Report, which, as @Jamiec has pointed out, is a fake news site, by &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/disclaimer/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;their own disclaimer&lt;/a&gt;, with stories like &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/3-meter-tall-squirrel-killed-by-army-after-bloody-rampage/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ferocius 3-metre-tall squirrels in Australia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their article claims (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A retired cobbler from northern India, Mahashta Mûrasi, claims he was born in January 1835, making him not only the oldest man on earth, but &lt;strong&gt;the oldest to have ever lived, according to the Guiness (sic) World Records.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, their reference for their claim is Guinness World Records. But, Guinness does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; recognise him as the oldest male. Their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/1/oldest-person-(male)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;site explains&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thomas Peter Thorvald Kristian Ferdinand 'Christian' Mortensen (Denmark/USA, b. 16 August 18­82, d. 25 April 1998) died aged 115 years 252 days. He is the only Nordic person to live beyond the age of 113.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New evidence has come to light that casts doubt on the long-standing longevity record held by Shigechiyo Izumi (Japan). The birth certificate submitted as evidence might actually belong to his older brother, who died at a young age; if the family used Izumi as a 'necronym'­ that is, gave him his dead brother's name, as the new research suggests ­ this means his final age was 105 years old, not 120. The title of oldest man ever, then, passes to Thomas Peter Thorvald Kristian Ferdinand 'Christian' Mortensen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that when Mortenson was alive, the claim would have Mûrasi as being living and older than Mortensen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/GWR/status/460108366279622657&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Twitter account confirms this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T01:23:06.117" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9169" CreationDate="2014-04-29T21:54:36.440" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;This image shows the Apollo 13 timeline, derived from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_13h_Timeline.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;official log&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_13_timeline.svg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3jyrp.png&quot; alt=&quot;Apollo 13 Timeline&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, they only course-corrected four times over the course of the 143-hour mission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://history.nasa.gov/ap11-35ann/apollo11_log/log.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apollo 11 mission had five scheduled course corrections&lt;/a&gt;, three of which were considered unnecessary by mission control when the window arrived.  Of the two course corrections that actually occurred, one was only a three-second burn and the other doesn't specify how long it lasted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So no, I wouldn't say they were only on course 3% of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19048" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T01:41:00.090" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T01:41:00.090" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20438" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-29T22:26:50.750" Score="4" ViewCount="225" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2367228/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Excess cortisol can damage the hippocampus&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201404/emotional-distress-can-speed-cellular-aging&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;and we also know that stress can reduce the length of telomeres&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/109/5/1743.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;which can lead to a shortened lifespan&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But does stress accelerate aging in other ways too, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sharecare.com/health/stress-reduction/how-does-stress-cause-wrinkles&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;like accelerate skin wrinkling&lt;/a&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="727" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-11-27T11:55:16.633" LastActivityDate="2015-11-27T11:55:16.633" Title="Does stress make you age faster, biologically?" Tags="|biology|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-04-30T01:31:35.813" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20358" CreationDate="2014-04-30T01:27:07.230" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best place to start with for understanding how the EU works is &lt;a href=&quot;http://europa.eu/index_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://europa.eu/index_en.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a short explanation about how EU decisions are taken: &lt;a href=&quot;http://europa.eu/eu-law/decision-making/procedures/index_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://europa.eu/eu-law/decision-making/procedures/index_en.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and here is something about how the EU law works &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://europa.eu/eu-law/application-eu-law/index_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://europa.eu/eu-law/application-eu-law/index_en.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About local laws: it depends what you mean by local laws: national laws (UK, French) or local (Parisian, Roman, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know it may look facetious, but it is not - there are many distinctions.&#xA;Briefly: the EU has its own treaties; the moment a country is a EU member it has to adhere to those treaties: implicitly those treaties are &quot;imposed&quot; on it. It's the EU way or the high way.&#xA;After that, each country has a say in all EU directives (not laws), and each national law has to satisfy the &quot;constitutionality&quot; requirement of EU law -- so to speak. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope this clarifies your question a bit ..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18160" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T01:27:07.230" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20442" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20443" CreationDate="2014-04-30T10:08:46.423" Score="22" ViewCount="4071" Body="&lt;p&gt;An image macro I've seen a few times, has an image of a cat sitting on top of a car tyre,  and says to the effect of 'Reminder, cold season is starting, and cats seek shelter in cars, please check for cats before starting your car'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you cats really regularly sit on top of car tyres, and do they regularly get injured/killed from people starting there cars when they do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y25mN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;example picture&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorUserId="6886" LastEditDate="2015-09-27T00:34:42.563" LastActivityDate="2015-09-27T00:34:42.563" Title="Do cats like keeping warm on car tyres in winter?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20442" CreationDate="2014-04-30T10:24:37.580" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes they do like to keep warm near the engine. After the car has stopped the engine will stay warm for a considerable amount of time, and a cat who is cold might find shelter in it. As explained by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.petmeds.org/petmeds-spotlight/car-engines-and-cat-safety/#.U2DOtvmSxjI&quot;&gt;PetMeds.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now that the weather is starting to get colder, outside cats seek out warm, sheltered spots. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for a cat to crawl under the warm hood of a parked car as cats are drawn to the warmth of the engine compartment and the protection from wind and predators. Cats can easily be injured or killed by the fan belt when the car motor is started. If you live in an area with outdoor or feral cats around, there are some steps you can take to prevent injuring a hidden feline passenger:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Bang on the hood and/or honk your horn before starting your car.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If possible, keep your car parked in the garage with the garage door closed, and don’t allow your own cat access to the garage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Also, before starting your car, take a quick look under your car for cats seeking shelter there.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Consider buying or making a cozy, safe shelter for outdoor cats.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If you turn on your car and hear any unusual noise, immediately turn off the engine and check under the hood.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stories about it are plentiful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6395285/Cat-stuck-in-car-engine-travelled-for-two-miles.html&quot;&gt;The Telegraph: Cat stuck in car engine travelled for two miles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/dyrene/mirakel-kattunge-reddet-ut-av-bilmotor/a/570789/&quot;&gt;Norwegian source about a cat stuck in an engine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2306873/Let-Curious-cat-gets-stuck-car-grill-Austria.html&quot;&gt;Mail online: 'Let meow-t!' Curious cat gets stuck behind a car grill in Austria&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/miracle-kitten-survives-1-000-mile-trip-trapped-car-engine-compartment-article-1.1375724&quot;&gt;Daily News: Kitten miraculously survives 1,000-mile trip in car’s engine compartment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/lucky-black-cat-survives-two-1914768&quot;&gt;Mirror: Lucky black cat survives TWO WEEKS trapped in owner's car engine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/36/48/all-cat-in-car-2013-11-29-bk_36_48.html&quot;&gt;The Brooklyn Paper: Tiger in your tank: Family finds cat trapped in engine during drive&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes the cats aren't as lucky and are killed by the engine, like in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF__Gl-L5SY&quot;&gt;this (SFW) video&lt;/a&gt; depicting a woman removing a dead cat from her engine compartment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T13:00:28.080" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T13:00:28.080" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20444" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20446" CreationDate="2014-04-30T11:56:28.640" Score="8" ViewCount="499" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I've read, non-ionizing EM radiation is harmless. There is little evidence that it causes any health issues. This is also the consensus here on Skeptics, that's the case in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/mobile-phones&quot;&gt;mobile phone related questions&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/search?q=microwave&quot;&gt;microwave related questions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's assume that cooking food with non-ionizing radation is safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which leads to my question:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does eating food which was exposed to &lt;strong&gt;ionizing&lt;/strong&gt; EM radiation pose a health risk? The DNA material found in that food would most likely be seriously damaged, but does that even matter? Human food is in essence a dead organism. A dead DNA will not be active, it will not reproduce nor generate any proteins even when damaged. In the worst case scenario, we'd just eat a dead cancerous cell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least that's my theory. Enlighten me!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also leads to a highly related sub-question: Is eating dead cancerous cells dangerous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible answers that refute my theory:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Eating dead cancerous cells is dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ionizing radiation has some dangerous effects beyond crippling the DNA&#xA;of the food.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The DNA is still somewhat active, even in a dead organism.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Other.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17948" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T14:11:58.383" Title="Does eating food which was exposed to *ionizing* EM radiation pose a health risk?" Tags="|nutrition|radiation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20035" CreationDate="2014-04-30T12:09:40.270" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm taking a practical rather than theoretical approach so I'm going to define &quot;lifespan&quot; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lifespan is the period from the first time the laptop is used after initial sale, to last time the laptop is used by anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lifespan, using this definition, &lt;strong&gt;can be affected by usage&lt;/strong&gt;.  Break this down by the reasons why the laptop ceases being used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mechanical failure causing end of use (&lt;em&gt;Note: Almost anything is technically fixable, but to calculate the lifespan we are looking at events which result in the laptop not repaired, whether for economic reasons, unavailability of parts, user not being aware of repair options or anything else&lt;/em&gt;):&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Accidents.  I'm making an assumption that a laptop in use is at higher risk of being dropped, liquid damage, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fans, dust and other cooling problems: Increased use causes more dust be drawn into the system which causes heat related failures in many different componants. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nmbtc.com/pdf/engineering/fans_ball_vs_sleeve.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fans also have a limited lifespan, affected by usage and further affected by heat&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SSD lifespan is limited by write-cycles&lt;/a&gt;.  Many modern SSDs will outlast their host computer, but none the less, the lifespan &lt;em&gt;is affected by usage&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Software faults causing end of use (&lt;em&gt;Note: Software faults can always be resolved by a competent person, but in the real world laptops do get replaced for this reason, thus affecting the lifespan&lt;/em&gt;):&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Viruses, malware, etc. A laptop can only be practically attacked while turned on, so the chance of malware is drastically increased by usage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;User initiated software problems i.e. the user deleted something vital or caused a performance problem by installing software.  I would guess this is the more frequent cause of replacement of 3-5 year old laptops.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I'm not including theft here. I think risk of theft might increase with use, but a stolen laptop is likely to remain in use, just with a different user&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;mmary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR Yes, the lifespan of laptop does depend significantly on its usage.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T12:09:40.270" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20446" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20444" CreationDate="2014-04-30T13:21:38.567" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;United States General Accounting Office&lt;/strong&gt; wrote in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gao.gov/archive/2000/rc00217.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Report to Congressional Requesters&lt;/a&gt; in 2000:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientific studies conducted by public and private researchers worldwide&#xA;  over the past 50 years support the benefits of food irradiation while&#xA;  indicating minimal potential risks. For example, an expert committee convened by the World Health Organization reviewed the findings of over&#xA;  500 studies and concluded that food irradiation creates no toxicological,&#xA;  microbiological, or nutritional problems. Cited benefits of food irradiation&#xA;  include (1) reducing foodborne pathogens; (2) extending the shelf life of&#xA;  some fruits and vegetables by preventing sprouting, deactivating mold, and&#xA;  killing bacteria; and (3) controlling insect pests—thus reducing the need&#xA;  for environmentally harmful fumigants. These studies have not borne out&#xA;  concerns about the safety of consuming irradiated foods. For example, the&#xA;  studies indicated that chemical compounds in irradiated food are generally&#xA;  the same as those in cooked foods, and any differences do not put&#xA;  consumers at risk. As for nutritional quality, the main components of&#xA;  food—carbohydrates, protein, and fats—undergo minimal change during&#xA;  irradiation, and vitamin loss corresponds to that in foods that are cooked,&#xA;  canned, or held in cold storage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16419" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T13:21:38.567" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20448" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-04-30T14:44:00.117" Score="0" ViewCount="118" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some scientists attribute non-terrestrial causes for climate change. Are they correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, this scientist attributes current weather extremes to solar activity, moon orbit cycles and magnetic connections with astronomical bodies. Can mainstream scientists show they have a better answer? If so, what is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the video that explains the evidence that opposes anthropogenic CO2 warming.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/6R26PXRrgds&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://youtu.be/6R26PXRrgds&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18702" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-04-30T15:07:59.923" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T15:07:59.923" Title="Has anthropogenic climate change been disproven?" Tags="|climate-change|weather|meteorology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-04-30T15:22:47.550" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20449" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="41" CreationDate="2014-04-30T14:53:56.237" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that, while humans didn't like CAUSE climate change, we are indeed accelerating it. A couple of excellent links of research to explain this are here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/page4.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is Current Warming Natural?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/pd/climate/factsheets/howhuman.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How do Human Activities Contribute to Climate Change and How do They Compare with Natural Influences?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17963" LastEditorUserId="31604" LastEditDate="2017-05-01T07:35:59.413" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T07:35:59.413" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20453" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20456" CreationDate="2014-04-30T20:31:11.910" Score="13" ViewCount="8791" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria#Destruction&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Great Library of Alexandria&lt;/a&gt; was one of the wonders of ancient civilisation having collected many thousands of scrolls containing knowledge and literature from across the known world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2009 movie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1186830/synopsis?ref_=tt_stry_pl&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Agora&lt;/a&gt; is partially about its destruction and tells this story (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the Christians start defiling the statues of the pagan gods, the pagans, including Orestes and Hypatia's father, ambush the Christians to squash their rising influence. However, in the ensuing battle, the pagans unexpectedly find themselves outnumbered by a large Christian mob. Hypatia's father is gravely injured and Hypatia and the pagans take refuge in the Library of the Serapeum. The Christian siege of the library ends when an envoy of the Roman Emperor declares that the pagans are pardoned, however the Christians shall be allowed to enter the library and do with it what they please. Hypatia and the pagans flee, trying to save the most important scrolls, &lt;em&gt;before the Christians overtake the library and destroy its contents&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carl Sagan told a similar story in his series Cosmos (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuzcO4mWoco&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this clip&lt;/a&gt; from about 3:30 in).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This version of the story has been frequently repeated as an argument about the irrationality of religion, but it has been disputed. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2010/06/the-perniciously-persistent-myths-of-hypatia-and-the-great-library&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;David Bently Hart&lt;/a&gt; (commenting on the movie) says the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story he repeats is one that has been bruited about for a few centuries now, often by seemingly respectable historians. Its premise is that the Christians of late antiquity were a brutish horde of superstitious louts, who despised science and philosophy, and frequently acted to suppress both, and who also had a particularly low opinion of women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, supposedly, one tragic day in a.d. 391, the Christians of Alexandria destroyed the city’s Great Library, burning its scrolls, annihilating the accumulated learning of centuries, and effectively inaugurating the “Dark Ages.” ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is almost all utter nonsense, but I have to suppose that Amenábar [the director of Agora] believes it to be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tale of a Christian destruction of the Great Library ”so often told, so perniciously persistent”is a tale about something that never happened .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So were mobs of Christians responsible for the destruction or is that just a modern myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T22:52:25.860" Title="Did Christians burn the Great Library of Alexandria?" Tags="|history|religion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20455" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23763" CreationDate="2014-04-30T21:42:45.767" Score="14" ViewCount="1429" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently ran across “Why Fish Oil Fails: A Comprehensive 21st Century Lipids-Based Physiologic Analysis,” a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3914521/&quot;&gt;review by B. S. Peskin&lt;/a&gt; which claims to debunk previous claims about the health benefits of marine oil supplements. Abstract (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The medical community suffered three significant fish oil failures/setbacks in 2013. Claims that fish oil's EPA/DHA would stop the progression of heart disease were crushed when The Risk and Prevention Study Collaborative Group (Italy) released a conclusive negative finding regarding fish oil for those patients with high risk factors but no previous myocardial infarction. Fish oil failed in all measures of CVD prevention—both primary and secondary. Another major 2013 setback occurred when fish oil's DHA was shown to significantly increase prostate cancer in men, in particular, high-grade prostate cancer, in the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT) analysis by Brasky et al. Another monumental failure occurred in 2013 whereby fish oil's EPA/DHA failed to improve macular degeneration. In 2010, fish oil's EPA/DHA failed to help Alzheimer's victims, even those with low DHA levels. These are by no means isolated failures. &lt;strong&gt;The promise of fish oil and its so-called active ingredients EPA / DHA fails time and time again in clinical trials. This lipids-based physiologic review will explain precisely why there should have never been expectation for success.&lt;/strong&gt; This review will focus on underpublicized lipid science with a focus on physiology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review sounds legit on the surface, but other sources question the author’s credentials and good faith. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.com/11Ind/Peskin/peskin.html&quot;&gt;Quackwatch&lt;/a&gt; has a brief describing Peskin’s legal troubles in Texas, which “charged Peskin and the company with making false claims that he held a Ph.D degree, was a research scientist, and was a professor at Texas Southern University.” That case ultimately resulted in a permanent injunction barring Peskin and company from making false claims about their products and credentials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m reluctant to dismiss good science based on the reputation of the scientist, but in this case the scientist’s background suggests that he may not be working in good faith. What does the independent evidence say in this case? Does marine oil “fail” as alleged in the review? Can the review be trusted? Can the author be trusted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14359" LastEditorUserId="14359" LastEditDate="2015-01-10T09:40:58.270" LastActivityDate="2015-01-10T09:40:58.270" Title="Does fish oil “fail”?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20453" CreationDate="2014-04-30T22:00:26.237" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Library of Alexandria was destroyed/heavily damaged at least four times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;48 BC: Julius Caesar accidentally burns the library when he sets fire to his ships and the fire spreads from the docks. (Plutarch, &lt;em&gt;Life of Caesar&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;272 AD (roughly): Several areas of Alexandria (including the Library) are damaged when Emperor Aurelian suppresses Queen Zenobia's revolt. (per Ammianus Marcellinus)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;391 AD: Emperor Theodosius I makes paganism illegal. Anti-Arian riots take place, and destroy many religious objects (Socrates of Constantinople, &lt;em&gt;Historia Ecclesiastica&lt;/em&gt;), although I find it unclear whether the scrolls of knowledge in the Library were actually destroyed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;642 AD: The Muslim army captures Alexandria. ~500 years later, several accounts of the invasion mention the destruction of the Library and/or some or all of its contents by the order of Caliph Omar (such as Al-Qifti, &lt;em&gt;History of Learned Men&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, there were religion-based riots in 391 AD, and yes, things in the Serapeum were destroyed. Whether the destroyed items included the scrolls of the Library or only the religious artifacts, however, I'm unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16003" LastActivityDate="2014-04-30T22:00:26.237" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20230" CreationDate="2014-05-01T04:18:01.160" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does GPS use the theory of relativity? Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The information below is quoted from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naic.edu/~phil/rfi/gps/AFD-070803-059-1.pdf&quot;&gt;GPS interface specification&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SV here is Space Vehicle. This is how the frequency of the clock set:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The nominal frequency of this source - as it appears to an observer&#xA;  on the ground - is 10.23 MHz.  The SV carrier frequency and clock&#xA;  rates - as they would appear to an observer located in the SV - are&#xA;  offset to  compensate for relativistic effects. The clock rates are&#xA;  offset by ∆f/f = -4.4647E-10, equivalent to a change in the  P-code&#xA;  chipping rate of 10.23 MHz offset by a ∆f = -4.5674E-3 Hz. This is&#xA;  equal to 10.22999999543 MHz. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These numbers are explained in detail &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_Global_Positioning_System#Calculation_of_time_dilation&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not the only clock correction, there are many effects discussed in the paper, and so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[SV message] ... contain the parameters needed by the users for apparent SV clock correction&#xA;  (toc, af2, af1, af0). The related algorithm is given in paragraph&#xA;  20.3.3.3.3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The algorithms defined below (a)&#xA;  allow all users to correct the  code phase time received from the SV&#xA;  with respect to both SV code phase offset and relativistic effects&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SV basically keeps track of its clock's error which is calculated by the communication with the Control Segment (CS):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The NAV data contains the requisite data for relating GPS time to UTC.&#xA;  The accuracy of this data during the  transmission interval shall be&#xA;  such that it shall relate GPS time (maintained by the MCS of the CS)&#xA;  to UTC  (USNO) within 90 nanoseconds (one sigma).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, it is outlined how the user should calculate the relativistic shifts given the data from SV:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the user's equipment must determine the requisite  relativistic&#xA;  correction. Accordingly, the offset given below includes a term to&#xA;  perform this function...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a list of different generations of GPS blocks which have different periods in which they can function independently from Control Segment. If no data (including time correction) has been uploaded to the satellite within this period, it's health is considered &quot;bad&quot; and it is no longer used (until revived).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each Block IIR/IIR-M/IIF SV in the constellation determines its&#xA;  own ephemeris and clock correction parameters via  SV-to-SV ranging,&#xA;  communication of data, and on-board data processing which updates data&#xA;  uploaded by the CS.  In the Autonav mode the Block IIR/IIR-M/IIF SV&#xA;  will maintain normal operations as defined in paragraph 6.2.3.1  In&#xA;  the Autonav mode the Block IIR/IIR-M/IIF SV will maintain normal&#xA;  operations as defined in paragraph 6.2.3.1  precision. If the CS is&#xA;  unable to upload the SVs, the Block IIR/IIR-M/IIF SVs will maintain&#xA;  normal operations for  period of at least 60 days after the last&#xA;  upload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The document is huge and there's lots of interesting information in there. One of the things to derive from it is that the newer generations of GPS devices take into account more time correction effects with higher precision and thus require less frequent calibration from Control Segment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does GPS require the knowledge of relativity? No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The GR correction can be done without the knowledge of where it comes from. The signal frequency received from a satellite is different from the frequency originally emitted, and this shift can be measured experimentally. Knowing this shift, then one can proceed with the whole procedure described above, and all the other minor relativistic corrections would be included in on-line calibration, exactly as such hard-to-estimate or random effects are included now, as described &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Control_segment&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These updates synchronize the atomic clocks on board the satellites to&#xA;  within a few nanoseconds of each other, and adjust the ephemeris of&#xA;  each satellite's internal orbital model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not only possible, but exactly how it is done at the moment, because there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_analysis_for_the_Global_Positioning_System&quot;&gt;a lot of factors contributing to the inaccuracies&lt;/a&gt; and to calibrate the device you need to know the adjustments exactly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, would it be possible to create GPS system without the knowledge of Theory of Relativity? Yes, as described above, using experimental results, calibration and trial and error method. However, it would suggest the presence of unexplained phenomenon(a), because the frequency shift would not be explainable by the known phenomena. It likely will not work very well as it will require more frequent clock correction (I would not speculate further because it is too hard to guess what &quot;would be&quot; in such case).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does GPS prove Relativity (General and/or Special)? Yes and no.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All I could find is a minor claim that the satellite clocks initial&#xA;  setting were CONSISTENT with relativity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect&#xA;  of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method,&#xA;  and repeatedly confirmed through observation and experimentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no other way to confirm a theory but by observation. A consistent confirmation of a theory through observation constitutes a proof of a theory. The emitted frequency from the satellite is different from the frequency observed by the receiver, and the difference closely matches the GR time shift. In this instance, the theory matches (and successfully predicts) the observation. Of course, GPS alone is not a proof (in the aforementioned sense) of GR and SR, no serious scientific resource claims this. This is just one of the many demonstrations of the predictive power of these theories and there are certainly multiple other experiments and observations which provide a much more &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_special_relativity&quot;&gt;elaborate proof for&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity&quot;&gt;both of these&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="14651" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T01:25:42.373" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T01:25:42.373" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20459" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20488" CreationDate="2014-05-01T04:47:12.647" Score="23" ViewCount="1085" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been watching a BBC documentary &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b0122k8y/?t=51m35s&quot;&gt;Botany: A Blooming History -  Episode 3 Hidden World&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In it, (at ~51m35s) Timothy Walker, the presenter, says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Certainly there may be risks attached to genetically modified&#xA;  plants. But, it is a &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; risk that people are dying of starvation&#xA;  because we cannot produce enough food and that situation is not going&#xA;  to improve as population grows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This surprised me. I thought that was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_famines&quot;&gt;an outdated idea&lt;/a&gt;. I was under the impression that mountains of food go to waste and that people die of starvation primarily because of &lt;em&gt;political&lt;/em&gt; reasons and not &lt;em&gt;agricultural&lt;/em&gt; ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it &quot;a &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; risk that people are dying of starvation because we cannot produce enough food&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What evidence is there to prove that we are unable to grow enough food to feed the world's population?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5072" LastEditorUserId="5072" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T17:39:19.940" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T20:33:46.307" Title="Are people dying of starvation because we cannot produce enough food?" Tags="|nutrition|healthcare|agriculture|organic-food|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20460" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20464" CreationDate="2014-05-01T06:08:14.517" Score="39" ViewCount="4815" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/iteam&amp;amp;id=9519875&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, it is claimed that 1 in 5 college women are raped (at least around the 2013-2014 time period). I have heard the claim repeated from other sources (such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26263171&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;, which was apparently quoting a White House figure), so to say the least this appears to be a common statistic. However, I am doubtful about this statistic, as per &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8440/have-one-in-ten-women-suffered-rape&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, comments in Freakonomics about how such figures might be exaagerated (intentionally or not) by organizations campaigning against sexual assault, and to a degree, personal experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where are such statistics actually derived from, and are they actually accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user19074" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2016-04-13T12:25:13.437" Title="Are 1 in 5 college women raped?" Tags="|criminology|sociology|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3338" CreationDate="2014-05-01T16:03:28.847" Score="-1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are there any documented cases or even anecdotal accounts of LDN being effective in curing autoimmune diseases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term &quot;cure&quot; is somewhat of a misnomer when talking about many types of diseases, disorders, ailments, and health conditions. For example, to &quot;cure&quot; a bacterial infection we could use antibiotics. We can not &quot;cure&quot; polio, but we can prevent it with vaccines. You might hear someone say &quot;My cancer has been cured!&quot; -- but in reality it's just in &lt;em&gt;remission&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Remission&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; is a key word when it comes to treating lifelong chronic illnesses. Many patients simply strive for remission -- or at least homeostasis. If they find a remedy that can facilitate this, some may refer to it as their &quot;cure&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With that said, LDN has come a long way since this question was first posted three years ago. There are (tens of?) thousands of anecdotal accounts of its success (putting autoimmune and other diseases into remission), as well as published clinical trial studies and research reports from all around the world. Several books about it have been published. A few international LDN advocacy groups have formed. And there's even an annual global LDN conference. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is now an &lt;em&gt;abundance&lt;/em&gt; of LDN info out there (GIYF). Here are three that might help point someone in the right direction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ldnresearchtrust.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ldnresearchtrust.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ldnscience.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ldnscience.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lowdosenaltrexone.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.lowdosenaltrexone.org/&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[EDITS BELOW &lt;strong&gt;ADDED 4-May-2014&lt;/strong&gt; TO INCLUDE RESEARCH-SPECIFIC LINKS (PER COMMENTS)]  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LDN and Crohn’s Disease&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ldnresearchtrust.org/node/208&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ldnresearchtrust.org/node/208&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[has info on two studies, including a Penn State College of Medicine study: &quot;Low-Dose Naltrexone Therapy Improves Active Crohn’s Disease,&quot; (American Journal of Gastroenterology, 11 Jan 2007)]  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LDN and Multiple Sclerosis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ldnresearchtrust.org/node/209&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ldnresearchtrust.org/node/209&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[has info on four studies, including a University of California-San Francisco study: &quot;Pilot trial of low-dose naltrexone and quality of life in multiple sclerosis,&quot; (Annals of Neurology, 19 Feb 2010)]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LDN and Fibromyalgia&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ldnresearchtrust.org/fibromyalgia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ldnresearchtrust.org/fibromyalgia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[has info on a Stanford University School of Medicine study: &quot;The use of low-dose naltrexone (LDN) as a novel anti-inflammatory treatment for chronic pain,&quot; (Clinical Rheumatology, Apr 2014)]  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LDN and Autism&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ldnresearchtrust.org/node/212&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ldnresearchtrust.org/node/212&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[has reference information to dozens of studies]  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LDN and HIV / AIDS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ldnresearchtrust.org/node/210&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ldnresearchtrust.org/node/210&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[has info on several studies, including two from Mali, Africa: &quot;Effectiveness Study Low-Dose Naltrexone Versus ARV's for HIV+.&quot; (Journal of AIDS and HIV Research, Oct 2011)]  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;LDN and CRPS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ldnresearchtrust.org/node/211&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ldnresearchtrust.org/node/211&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;[has info on a Brown University Medical School study: &quot;Treatment of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) Using Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN)&quot; (Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology, 2 Apr 2013)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A longer &lt;strong&gt;list of clinical trials for LDN&lt;/strong&gt; (though not updated since May 2013, and may contain some duplicates of the examples posted above)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lowdosenaltrexone.org/ldn_trials.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.lowdosenaltrexone.org/ldn_trials.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13256" LastEditorUserId="13256" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T15:09:41.057" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T15:09:41.057" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20460" CreationDate="2014-05-01T16:19:08.720" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim in the linked article does not represent the full range of estimates for the prevalence of rape or sexual assault. The evidence is based on surveys that depend on self-reporting and with results that vary based on the specific question asked. The accuracy of the surveys is unknown, since there is no ground-truth data against which to evaluate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Campus_rape&amp;amp;oldid=607845855&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's summary regarding prevalence&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Estimates vary greatly as to the number of women who experience a sexual assault during college, with surveys focused on the United States placing it as low as 1 in 50 (2%) to as high as 1 in 4 (25%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Referencing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Louis Harris and Associates (1994). The Commonwealth Fund Survey of Women's Health. Jacobs Institute of Women's Healthh. p. 20.) and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Koss, Mary (1988). &quot;Hidden Rape: Sexual Aggression and Victimization in a National Sample of Students in Higher Education&quot;. Rape and Sexual Assault (Garland Publishing) 2: 8.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-05-17T17:27:23.670" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T17:27:23.670" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20465" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20459" CreationDate="2014-05-01T20:36:24.133" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Ziegler&quot;&gt;Jean Ziegler&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBaq9rSXjKg&quot;&gt;says, that 12 billion people could be fed by the world production&lt;/a&gt;. This is also written &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FactSheet34en.pdf&quot;&gt;in the fact sheet for the right of food&lt;/a&gt; of the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;One might think that people are denied their right to food because there is not enough food to go round. However, according to FAO, the world produces enough food to feed its entire population.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19085" LastActivityDate="2014-05-01T20:36:24.133" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19170" CreationDate="2014-05-01T23:17:39.877" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/medicaldevices/deviceregulationandguidance/howtomarketyourdevice/premarketsubmissions/premarketnotification510k/default.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;510(k) premarket notification&lt;/a&gt; must be submitted by device manufacturers to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA)&lt;/a&gt; to show a device is just as safe and effective as an existing device (referred to as a &quot;predicate&quot;].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Theradome's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cdrh_docs/pdf11/K113097.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;510(k) for their laser helmet&lt;/a&gt; used the RF Midwest LLC MEP-90 Hair Growth Stimulation System as a predicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Section 5, they claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The LH8O PRO utilizes laser diodes to&#xA;  deliver laser stimulation to the entire scalp for hands-free operation during treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An inspection of the device itself, using tissue or paper over the lasers to see the beam profile, shows that there are 80 laser spots and lots of area outside the beam coverage that are NOT receiving any laser energy. There are more areas not receiving any laser energy than areas that are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the most common areas of hair loss that people want to treat, the temporal area (sides of the head) and the vertex (‘bald spot’ on the top of the head in back), it has very little laser light coverage and therefore leaves much of the scalp untreated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, Theradome calculated the power output of their device, by measuring the energy coming from the laser that lands in a 1 square centimeter. Each laser only covers 1-2 square cm, and only these specific sized areas are receiving the full amount of laser energy. Those areas outside of the laser beam coverage are not receiving any laser energy.  Therefore, the Theradome does not “deliver laser stimulation to the entire scalp” as claimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this information, I believe that Theradome is allegedly attempting to mislead the FDA and general public, by filing their FDA 510K submission to the FDA with false and misleading information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19088" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-03T00:25:47.727" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T00:25:47.727" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20469" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-02T07:25:21.210" Score="8" ViewCount="427" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, I came across variations of this belief many times. I.e., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.back2cradle.org/tsunami2.htm&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While more than 2,00,000 people died in the devastating tsunami that&#xA;  struck several nations around the Bay of Bengal and the Indain Ocean&#xA;  on the 26th of December, 2004, hardly any wild animals were found&#xA;  dead. There are many reports of wild and domestic animals behaving&#xA;  abnormally just before the tsunami struck and saving themselves by&#xA;  running to higher ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is a considerable list of anecdotal examples. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this claim been verified, that is, was their behaviour before the tsunami any different from normal and was there a surprisingly small number of animal casualties?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T19:05:02.763" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T19:05:02.763" Title="Did the vast majority of animals escape 2004 December Asian tsunami?" Tags="|zoology|natural-disasters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20469" CreationDate="2014-05-02T07:58:09.010" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is that we just don't know, I think it is best summed up by &lt;a href=&quot;https://profile.usgs.gov/michael/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Andy Michael&lt;/a&gt;, a geophysicist at USGS:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What we're faced with is a lot of anecdotes, animals react to so many things—being hungry, defending their territories, mating, predators—so it's hard to have a controlled study to get that advanced warning signal.&#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0104_050104_tsunami_animals.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has however been &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/02/0216_060216_elephant_sound.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; that elephants &quot;hear&quot; with their feet, so the idea that they &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; sense the vibrations associated with an earthquake are at the very least plausible. Once again, we just don't know for sure as earthquakes are a tricky thing to test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T07:58:09.010" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20472" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20479" CreationDate="2014-05-02T08:59:12.707" Score="12" ViewCount="33403" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frane_Selak&quot;&gt;Frane Selak&lt;/a&gt; has been dubbed the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7721985/Frano-Selak-worlds-luckiest-man-gives-away-his-lottery-fortune.html&quot;&gt;world's luckiest man&lt;/a&gt;&quot; for his frequent, apparent escapes from death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One, in particular, strikes me as straight-up absurd: the one about him falling out of a plane onto a haystack and surviving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia tells the story: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[In 1963], during his first and only plane ride,&#xA;  he was sucked out of a malfunctioning plane door and landed in a&#xA;  haystack; the plane crashed, killing 19 people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His story is also told in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZyUWLW7kEI&quot;&gt;This-and-That animated video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18108" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T17:43:04.613" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T00:09:07.373" Title="Did Frane Selak survive a fall from a plane?" Tags="|aviation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20473" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20474" CreationDate="2014-05-02T09:49:41.080" Score="21" ViewCount="2651" Body="&lt;p&gt;The depiction of guns in movies is, famously, not very exact. (Guns are cocked dramatically a thousand times over and safety standards don't even seem to exist).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one aspect I was wondering about is the (in)famous silencer: Transforming a loud -bang- into a small &quot;pew pew&quot;.&#xA;(For examples, check the first scene from &quot;Sin City&quot;, where the narrator even comments on the gun being turned into &quot;a whisper&quot; by the silencer). This would mean that a gunshot gets reduced from about 150 to 170 dB to around 20 to 40 dB. Now this, in movies, is always achieved by a simple metal tube screwed on top of the gun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as someone who does not live in the US and doesn't know a thing about guns, I was wondering: &lt;strong&gt;Can a gun be silenced to a level of about 40dB?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17130" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T20:02:37.833" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T16:06:05.920" Title="Can a gun be silenced like in the movies?" Tags="|guns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20473" CreationDate="2014-05-02T10:52:22.090" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Evidence that movie gun silencers are not as effective as stated is all over the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_18576_5-ridiculous-gun-myths-everyone-believes-thanks-to-movies.html&quot;&gt;Internet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressor#Effectiveness&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Live tests by independent reviewers of numerous commercially available suppressors find that even low-power, unsuppressed .22 LR handguns produce gunshots over 160 decibels. In testing, most of the suppressors reduced the volume to between 130 and 145 dB, with the quietest suppressors metering at 117 dB. The actual suppression of sound ranged from 14.3 to 43 dB, with most data points around the 30 dB mark. A notable example is the De Lisle carbine, a British World War II suppressed rifle used in small numbers by Special Forces. This was recorded at 85.5 dB in official firing tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16419" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T11:33:35.527" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T11:33:35.527" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20472" CreationDate="2014-05-02T15:59:36.683" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There appear many pages about Frane Selak, but none of these pages give more details about that particular accident, or any of the accidents that he was involved in. Plane accidents are very well documented on several sites. If you look &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.planecrashinfo.com/1963/1963.htm&quot;&gt;at the year 1963 at PlaneCrashInfo&lt;/a&gt;, there is no mention of a crash that involved 19 deaths and one or more survivors. Digging further, there appears to be no crash record that mentions loosing a door during freefall (there is at least one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.planecrashinfo.com/unusual.htm&quot;&gt;mentioning an opened door in 1989&lt;/a&gt;, but not in 1963).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not saying it is impossible to survive such a fall, weird accidents and survivals happen, but I would say that his story is fabricated, or if not, badly documented (maybe the year or amount of fatalities mentioned are wrong, but I tried other years and fatality numbers, but found naught). But what really seems to point into the direction of fabrication is the lack of detail: what airline, what country, what flightnumber was the incident? None of the stories mention it and the journalists don't seem to bother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from the aircraft incident, it will be hard to prove or disprove the other incidents, as they are too small and too long ago to have made it into public records. One note on the train incident: it seems severe enough it &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_%281960%E2%80%9369%29&quot;&gt;would have made it into this list&lt;/a&gt;, but nothing of the kind can be found there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neatorama.com/2007/10/17/the-worlds-unluckiest-man/#!Hf9i7&quot;&gt;this article claims the flight was from Zagreb to Rijeka&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-132204.html&quot;&gt;this article from 2004&lt;/a&gt;, asking the same questions as you on Selak's story, claims it was a DC-8. In the same thread, a user claims that &quot;No DC-8s have been lost between Zagreb and Rijeka, in 1963 or any other year.&quot;. None of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airdisasters.co.uk/&quot;&gt;DC-8 accidents&lt;/a&gt;, or Zagreb accidents, seem to have any relation to this story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2:&lt;/strong&gt; a person going by the name &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/zeljkojayco.selak/about&quot;&gt;Jayco (Zeljko) Selak&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://themetapicture.com/meet-frane-selak/&quot;&gt;claims to be his father&lt;/a&gt; and invites you to ask him personally &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maninstitute.com/frane-selak-nothing-says-manly-like-cheating-death-6-times&quot;&gt;in another comment&lt;/a&gt;. He says that Frane Selak deliberately fabricated the story in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scotsman.com/news/world/fortune-smiles-on-unluckiest-man-1-652456&quot;&gt;an interview with a journalist from The Scottsman&lt;/a&gt;, which has since been printed and reprinted over an over.  Quote from the link (in case the link goes dead):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Than in his old age he got lucky and won a lottery.That wasn’t enough for fame…So he has found (and paid?!) a local “journalist” to fabricate the story in the local newspaper about incredible death-cheating life! Some naive scotish “jounalist” saw the story and (without checking the facts!) has published the story in “The Scottsman”! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, without verifying whether he truly is his son, or without checking with Frane Selak himself, there is no way to truly dismantle this story. However, if you sum it all up, it is pretty sure it is all made-up and fabricated, except for winning the lottery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19096" LastEditorUserId="19096" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T16:44:55.873" LastActivityDate="2014-05-02T16:44:55.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20481" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-02T18:28:05.090" Score="13" ViewCount="2610" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard a few times that paper beats rock in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock-paper-scissors&quot;&gt;rock-paper-scissors&lt;/a&gt; due to the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sodahead.com/living/how-does-paper-beat-rock-rock-paper-scissors/question-609625/&quot;&gt;reason&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It comes from an ancient Chinese tradition where when a request was sent&#xA;  to the ruler on a piece of &quot;paper&quot; or the equivalent at the time, the&#xA;  rock was placed over the paper if the request was accepted, the paper&#xA;  was draped over the rock, indicating defeat of the request, if the&#xA;  request was rejected. Hence, paper over rock = defeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How true is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-05-02T18:31:54.080" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T21:23:48.150" Title="Does paper beat rock in RPS due an ancient Chinese tradition that draping paper over rock mean rejecting a request?" Tags="|history|games|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20484" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-03T00:30:00.720" Score="16" ViewCount="3029" Body="&lt;p&gt;This story shows up a lot in sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1f3rpi/what_is_the_funniest_event_in_history_that_no_one/ca6meak&quot;&gt;Reddit&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the late 1700's, a letter appeared in the major London newspaper complaining that England was being forced to take deported French prisoners. The British were furious and wanted it stopped. The French became upset - because the uproar implied that England was too good for French prisoners. Both governments became involved, and they were on the brink of war before it all unraveled as a hoax. The original letter, it was learned years later, had been written by Benjamin Franklin - who was spending 6 months in England as an ambassador - and was simply bored. Just stirring up trouble and sitting back and watching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got curious if it really happened and dug around. I didn't find any sources, but I'd like to confirm if it was true or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19110" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-03T00:38:28.673" LastActivityDate="2016-03-02T14:49:32.720" Title="Did Benjamin Franklin almost cause a war between England and France over a hoax letter to a London newspaper?" Tags="|history|united-kingdom|france|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="47353" CreationDate="2014-05-03T07:38:19.937" Score="5" ViewCount="1575" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the episode &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outpost_%281944_film%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Outpost&lt;/a&gt; of the &quot;Private Snafu&quot; WWII propaganda series, Snafu encounters a can of pickled fish eyes with rice from the Imperial Japanese Navy. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://collections.nlm.nih.gov/transcript/nlm%3anlmuid-100960018-vid&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Transcript&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/vo_YCX01MCQ?t=1m41s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;video link&lt;/a&gt; (Warning: content is sexist and anti-Japanese))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Japanese people eat pickled fish eyes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Aichi/Nagoya/Midori-ku/blog-534400.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Japan/Aichi/Nagoya/Midori-ku/blog-534400.html&lt;/a&gt; mentions eating fish eye (not necessarily pickled) in Nagoya, and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thekitchn.com/how-a-change-of-scenery-expands-my-kids-palates-190929#cid-1774321&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;comment on a blog post&lt;/a&gt; has someone mentioning they ate pickled fish eyes in Tokyo. But the small number of google hits for &quot;pickled fish eyes&quot; I'm getting makes me somewhat doubtful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2020-04-15T17:32:48.663" Title="Did Japanese people eat pickled fish eyes?" Tags="|nutrition|japan|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20459" CreationDate="2014-05-03T09:53:28.500" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer depends on what you mean by your question, which you stated as: &#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Is it &quot;a known risk that people are dying of starvation because we cannot produce enough food&quot;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As is often the case, we'll need to go into what some of those terms mean. To start with, the &lt;em&gt;risk&lt;/em&gt; part you quote is certainly an unlucky choice; if people are dying of starvation, it's not a risk, but a tragedy. Let's start by changing the question to &lt;strong&gt;Are people dying of starvation because we cannot produce enough food?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this can have two meanings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is enough food being produced worldwide for everyone to have enough to stay alive?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The answer to this one seems to be yes. Although I could not find the original &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fao.org/&quot;&gt;FAO&lt;/a&gt; statement, most reputable sources (e.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wfp.org/hunger/faqs&quot;&gt;WPF&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/good-enough-to-eat?cid=rdt_food&quot;&gt;Oxfam&lt;/a&gt; and others) agree that there would be enough to go around (although, once again, I have not found a publication with a clear source indication for this statement).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Would producing more food mean less starvation?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The answer to this one is also yes. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3301e/i3301e.pdf&quot;&gt;FAO&lt;/a&gt;, among many others, has clear recommendations which include a significant growth of agricultural production to ward off famines and starvation now and in the future.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, you can more easily see the (false) dichotomy when you imagine two extreme scenarios. In the first, the world produces exactly as much food as is needed for everyone to have just enough to eat. You could say that any occurring starvation would be only a result of mismanagement; however, it is obvious that an absolutely perfect distribution is impossible - if one egg is dropped somewhere in the world, someone goes hungry. On the other hand, if every town and village produces a hundred times as much food as it needs, there is hardly any chance for even the grossest mismanagement or inequality to produce hunger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To sum up: the worldwide food situation is influenced by many factors, and both production and distribution are among them (in fact, the FAO report cited above has six groups of security indicators: availability, physical access, economic access, utilization, vulnerability, and shocks). It is an almost undisputed consensus view that we could significantly reduce or even eliminate malnutrition by, among other measures, redistributing the existing supplies. However, it is equally clear that we could reach the same goals by increasing food production. Which of these is the better way is a matter of dispute, with most organizations (such as the UNICEF, Oxfam or FAO) suggesting a combined approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T09:53:28.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14325" CreationDate="2014-05-03T16:00:14.797" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two sources that are provided for notability are largely valueless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first one (link now broken) appears to be computer-generated gibberish keywords &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seobythesea.com/2013/10/google-gibberish-content-to-demote-pages/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;intended to attract Google to some spam links&lt;/a&gt; for fertility pills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second one makes an unsubstantiated reference to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayurveda&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;untrustworthy form of alternative medicine&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My searches through the literature failed to find any studies of the effect of coconut water in the diet. That isn't very definitive as an answer, so I will refer to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jean W. H. Yong, Liya Ge, Yan Fei Ng and Swee Ngin Tan, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/14/12/5144&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Chemical Composition and Biological Properties of Coconut (Cocos nucifera L.) Water&lt;/a&gt;, Molecules 2009, 14, 5144-5164; doi:10.3390/molecules14125144. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this paper, they present a breakdown of the chemical composition of coconut water. More importantly, they perform a literature review of the many apparent applications of the components of coconut water (e.g. the plant tissue culture industry, antioxidants, anti-proliferative and apoptogenic effects against human cancer cells, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper reads as quite biased towards these &quot;marvellous tropical fruits&quot; and some of the claims sound very... ambitious. I am skeptical that most of them will stand up to further analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, despite their attempts to find all of the biochemical and biological properties of coconut water, they report nothing regarding the increase or decrease of semen or sperm production in men ingesting coconut water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see this as confirmation that, as of 2009, there was not strong scientific evidence about coconut water's effect on sperm, and that this is just an urban legend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-05-03T16:00:14.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20496" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20501" CreationDate="2014-05-04T03:00:38.427" Score="11" ViewCount="984" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lovearth.net/108.htm&quot;&gt;This article on the Lovearth Network&lt;/a&gt; by Linda Johnsen, points out the correspondences between sacred Hindu texts and modern science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One particular section captured my interest greatly (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact the Puranas, encyclopedias of yogic lore thousands of years old, describe the birth of our solar system out of a &quot;milk ocean,&quot; the Milky Way. Through the will of the Creator, they tell us, a vortex shaped like a lotus arose from the navel of eternity. It was called Hiranya Garbha, the shining womb. It gradually coalesced into our world, but will perish some day billions of years hence &lt;strong&gt;when the sun expands to many times it present size, swallowing all life on earth&lt;/strong&gt;. In the end, the Puranas say, the ashes of the earth will be blown into space by the cosmic wind. Today we known this is a scientifically accurate, if poetic, description of the fate of our planet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it incredible that there can be so many &quot;coincidences&quot; in the Vedas and other sacred texts. But, this one is pretty crazy. Now two notes I must make:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I do not know if that blog article is the original article to claim this.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also do not know where that piece of information lies in the actual sacred texts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been trying to locate the original source in the sacred texts to verify this claim, and I am unable to do so. Is this just a false claim? If so, why do you say so? Finally, if someone can locate excerpts in any actual sacred text, that would be amazing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19126" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T21:02:34.077" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T22:07:14.737" Title="Do ancient Hindu texts predict the future expansion of the Sun?" Tags="|religion|astronomy|sun|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20498" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-04T04:59:43.057" Score="22" ViewCount="132759" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was sent an email today with a bunch of &quot;coincidences,&quot; many of which are probably false. This one stood out since it has a year and an age (some specifics), so perhaps it has the chance of being looked in to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did you know? In 1975 a 17 year old boy was killed while riding his moped. He was killed exactly a year after his 17 year old brother was killed while riding the same moped, in the same intersection, by the same taxi, with the same driver, carrying the same passenger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems far fetched, so I Googled it. It's making its appearances on &lt;a href=&quot;http://paranormal.about.com/od/humanenigmas/a/Amazing-Coincidences.htm&quot;&gt;about.com&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=24616&quot;&gt;Snopes message boards&lt;/a&gt;, and many other websites. The source cited in each case is a book called &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B000LQCFRE&quot;&gt;Phenomena. A Book of Wonders&lt;/a&gt; by John Michell &amp;amp; Robert J. M. Rickard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no preview on Amazon and I didn't get any Google image hits for various search strategies (I was hoping to see the actual page with the story).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to suggest this was a real occurrence (aside from it being said to exist in a book)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2459" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:38:04.190" LastActivityDate="2020-09-30T18:58:39.677" Title="Were two brothers killed on the same moped by the same taxi driver, exactly a year apart?" Tags="|history|mortality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20487" CreationDate="2014-05-04T17:25:09.720" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://alinamin.jp/tired/topics/14.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This Japanese site (selling energy drinks)&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;amp;sl=ja&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Falinamin.jp%2Ftired%2Ftopics%2F14.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;English auto-translate&lt;/a&gt;) mentions that during World War 2 eyeballs were plucked from fish, dried, and sent to the Japanese troops as a source of vitamin B1, and they also mention that there is a lot of DHA and EPA in them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For your more simple question, here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://abukamo.exblog.jp/8934305/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a recipe for boiled in vinegar tuna eyeballs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastEditorUserId="6397" LastEditDate="2014-05-04T17:33:29.407" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T17:33:29.407" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20496" CreationDate="2014-05-04T22:07:14.737" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's clearly something they imagined, because looking at the details, they are all off in a way that implies a complete lack of understanding of the scales involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/266312/Hinduism/59831/The-Puranas&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Encyclopedia Britannica&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Puranic cosmogony accounts for the periodic destruction of the world at the close of an eon, when the Fire of Time will put an end to the universe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and a definition of an eon is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Puranic myths developed around the notion of yuga (world age), of which there are four. These four yugas, Krita, Treta, Dvapara, and Kali—they are named after the four throws, from best to worst, in a dice game—constitute a mahayuga (large yuga) and, like the comparable ages of the world depicted by the Greek poet Hesiod, are periods of increasing deterioration. Time itself also deteriorates, for the ages are successively shorter. Each yuga is preceded by an intermediate “dawn” and “dusk.” The Krita Yuga lasts 4,000 years, with a dawn and dusk of 400 years each, for a total of 4,800 years; Treta a total of 3,600 years; Dvapara 2,400 years; and Kali (the current one), 1,200 years. A mahayuga thus lasts 12,000 years and observes the usual coefficient of 12, derived from the 12-month year, the unit of creation. These years are “years of the gods,” each lasting 360 human years, 360 being the days in a year. One thousand mahayugas form one kalpa (eon), which is itself but one day in the life of Brahma, whose life lasts 100 years; the present is the midpoint of his life. Each kalpa is followed by an equally long period of abeyance (pralaya), in which the universe is asleep. Seemingly, the universe will come to an end at the end of Brahma’s life, but Brahmas too are innumerable, and a new universe is reborn with each new Brahma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, a &lt;em&gt;eon&lt;/em&gt; is 12,000×360×1000=4.23 billion years. We know that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formation_and_evolution_of_the_Solar_System&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sun is already older than that&lt;/a&gt; and that it will last for 4 billion more years when the expansion will &lt;em&gt;start&lt;/em&gt;, and will end in 4 more billion years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the Purana predicts 7 rays which become 7 suns which will burn the three worlds (heaven, normal world and netherworld). All of this is inconsistent with a Red Giant expansion, which is slow, singular and probably much hotter than imagined by the author of the Purana.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the orignal translated passage in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin//vp/vp158.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vishnu Purana&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PARAS'ARA.--A Pararddha, Maitreya, is that number which occurs in the eighteenth place of figures, enumerated according to the rule of decimal notation. At the end of twice that period elemental dissolution occurs, when all the discrete products of nature are withdrawn into their indiscrete source. The shortest period of time is a Matra, which is equal to the twinkling of the human eye. Fifteen Matras make a Kashtha; thirty Kashthas, one Kala; fifteen Kalas, one Nadika. A Nadika is ascertained by a measure of water, with a vessel made of twelve Palas and a half of copper, in the bottom of which there is to be a hole made with a tube of gold, of the weight of four Mashas, and four inches long. According to the Magadha measure, the vessel should hold a Prastha (or sixteen Palas) of water. Two of these Nadis make one Muhurtta; thirty of which are one day and night. Thirty such periods form a month; twelve months make a year, or a day and night of the gods; and three hundred and sixty such days constitute a year of the celestials. An aggregate of four ages contains twelve thousand divine years; and a thousand periods of four ages complete a day of Brahma. That period is also termed a Kalpa, during which fourteen Manus preside; and at the end of it occurs the incidental or Brahma dissolution. The nature of this dissolution is very fearful: hear me describe it, as well as that which takes place at the elemental dissolution, which I will also relate to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of a thousand periods of four ages the earth is for the most part exhausted. A total dearth then ensues, which lasts a hundred years; and, in consequence of the failure of food, all beings become languid and exanimate, and at last entirely perish. The eternal Vishnu then assumes the character of Rudra, the destroyer, and descends to reunite all his creatures with himself. He enters into the seven rays of the sun, drinks up all the waters of the globe, and causes all moisture whatever, in living bodies or in the soil, to evaporate; thus drying up the whole earth. The seas, the rivers, the mountain torrents, and springs, are all exhaled; and so are all the waters of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patala&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Patala&lt;/a&gt;, the regions below the earth. Thus fed, through his intervention, with abundant moisture, the seven solar rays dilate to seven suns, whose radiance glows above, below, and on every side, and sets the three worlds and Patala on fire. The three worlds, consumed by these suns, become rugged and deformed throughout the whole extent of their mountains, rivers, and seas; and the earth, bare of verdure, and destitute of moisture, alone remains, resembling in appearance the back of a tortoise. The destroyer of all things, Hari, in the form of Rudra, who is the flame of time, becomes the scorching breath of the serpent S'esha, and thereby reduces Patala to ashes. The great fire, when it has burnt all the divisions of Patala, proceeds to the earth, and consumes it also. A vast whirlpool of eddying flame then spreads to the region of the atmosphere, and the sphere of the gods, and wraps them in ruin. The three spheres shew like a frying-pan amidst the surrounding flames, that prey upon all moveable or stationary things. The inhabitants of the two upper spheres, having discharged their functions, and being annoyed by the heat, remove to the sphere above, or Maharloka. When that becomes heated, its tenants, who after the full period of their stay are desirous of ascending to higher regions, depart for the Janaloka.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Janarddana, in the person of Rudra, having consumed the whole world, breathes forth heavy clouds; and those called Samvartta, resembling vast elephants in bulk, overspread the sky, roaring, and darting lightnings. Some are as black as the blue lotus; some are white as the water-lily; some are dusky, like smoke; and some are yellow; some are of a dun colour, like that of an ass; some like ashes sprinkled on the forehead; some are deep blue, as the lapis lazuli; some azure, like the sapphire; some are white, as the conch or the jasmine; and some are black, as collyrium; some are of bright red, like the ladybird; some are of the fierceness of red arsenic; and some are like the wing of the painted jay. Such are these massy clouds in hue: in form some resemble towns, some mountains, some are like houses and hovels, and some are like columns. Mighty in size, and loud in thunder, they fill all space. Showering down torrents of water, these clouds quench the dreadful fires which involve the three worlds, and then they rain uninterruptedly for a hundred years, and deluge the whole world. Pouring down in drops as large as dice, these rains overspread the earth, and fill the middle region, and inundate heaven. The world is now enveloped in darkness, and all things, animate or inanimate, having perished, the clouds continue to pour down their waters for more than a hundred years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, there's a similarity, but not a perfect match - so it seems to be a form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepdic.com/retroactiveclairvoyance.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;retroactive clairvoyance&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-04T22:07:14.737" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20502" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20507" CreationDate="2014-05-04T22:49:48.630" Score="4" ViewCount="470" Body="&lt;p&gt;The age of the Earth has been determined by radiometric dating of meteorites, by seeing how much uranium has decayed into lead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we know the meteor samples weren't formed with lead already in them, and thus confuse the radiometric dating? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Links to references for further research would be much appreciated. I'd just like to know in depth how the process worked and how there's so much certainty in it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19139" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-05T00:07:47.027" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T02:00:16.443" Title="Could meteors have been been formed with lead, and mislead radiometric dating?" Tags="|astronomy|geology|earth|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20502" CreationDate="2014-05-05T02:00:16.443" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Radio-isotope dating is not just performed on meteorites, but also on terrestrial rocks. The dates obtained are consistent, with meteorites slightly older than the earth. Are you suggesting the earth was also formed with lead already present?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/isochron-dating.html#isoprobs&quot;&gt;Isochron dating&lt;/a&gt; avoids contamination problems. Meteorites are often dated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead-lead_dating&quot;&gt;iscohron lead-lead&lt;/a&gt; methods, and hence are not affected by contamination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastActivityDate="2014-05-05T02:00:16.443" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20508" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-05T03:07:13.953" Score="1" ViewCount="1382" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodmatters.tv/articles-1/bentonite-clay-a-safe-and-effective-detox-from-radiation-build-up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, bentonite clay can absorb and remove radiation from the human body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Calcium Bentonite clay is the natural detoxing agent that can be used&#xA;  internally, externally with poultices and full body applications, and&#xA;  by taking detox clay baths. These are highly beneficial methods for&#xA;  detoxification, especially for cases of heavy metal poisoning and&#xA;  radiation buildup. So consider releasing the toxic burden of the body&#xA;  inside and out with a safe and effective Calcium Bentonite Clay&#xA;  detoxification program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim seems to be pretty prevalent within the alternative medicine community. Sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/032013_bentonite_clay_radiation.html#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (and many others) state things like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another use for bentonite clay, which is very timely considering the&#xA;  recent natural and the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, is&#xA;  adsorption of radiation. Not only does bentonite clay adsorb radiation&#xA;  from nuclear fallout, it also adsorbs any kind of radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to support that bentonite clay can remove radiation from the human body?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7387" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:18:59.917" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T12:23:30.287" Title="Can bentonite clay remove radiation from the human body?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|radiation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20511" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-05T15:04:00.133" Score="6" ViewCount="1001" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://thehill.com/opinion/dick-morris/203019-dick-morris-investigate-2012-vote-fraud&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this  article&lt;/a&gt;: (emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But now, for the very first time, comes &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;concrete&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; proof that massive voter fraud &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; have taken place in the 2012 election, sufficiently widespread to have tainted more than 1 million votes nationwide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because North Carolina makes for about 2.5 percent of America’s population, the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;projected number&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of actual double votes nationally &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; reach to 1 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is it credible that there were 1 million &quot;fake&quot; votes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:57:26.163" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T11:19:18.460" Title="Were there 1 million fraudulent votes in the 2012 US election?" Tags="|united-states|politics|democracy|voting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20515" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-06T09:46:30.987" Score="1" ViewCount="271" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many sites claim that Aloe Vera can cure diseases and sicknesses such as Arthritis and prevent diseases such as cancer. Is there any scientific merit at all to all those claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Example sites:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/021858_aloe_vera_gel.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Natural News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/natural-medicine/herbal-remedies/aloe-vera-herbal-remedies.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How Stuff Works&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.il/#q=aloe+vera+cure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google search&lt;/a&gt; reveals hundreds of sites like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19164" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T11:34:31.550" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T11:34:31.550" Title="Does Aloe Vera cure diseases?" Tags="|cancer|disease|herbalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-05-07T23:12:36.970" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19073" CreationDate="2014-05-06T09:50:22.287" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claimed air density is about 520 times higher than air denisty now. This means that, according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideal_gas_law&quot;&gt;ideal gas law&lt;/a&gt;, you need 520 times the air pressure - roughly 520 bar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_point_%28thermodynamics%29&quot;&gt;critical point&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen&quot;&gt;nitrogen&lt;/a&gt; (main consituent of air) is about 33bar, the critical point of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen&quot;&gt;oxygen&lt;/a&gt; about 50 bar. Both critical temperatures are far below 0°C. So at this density, the athmosphere would be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_fluid&quot;&gt;supercritical fluids&lt;/a&gt;. Most importantly that means:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It can effuse through solids like a gas, and dissolve materials like a liquid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to sum it up, with a little bit of knowledge about physics we can show that gases behave radically different before we are close to the pressures described. Whoever claimed an athmospheric density of 670kg/m³ did not think the physics side through.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16410" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T09:50:22.287" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20421" CreationDate="2014-05-06T13:30:10.773" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like most things, it's impossible to conclusively prove a negative (i.e. that this didn't happen), but the supposed sources are pretty questionable and the lengths to which things would need to be changed to cover this up rule out any reasonable possibility of this being true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In reverse order:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;4. NASA has lost original recordings of most Apollo 11 mission tapes.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As DJClayworth linked in the comments, NASA not only has all the original Apollo 11 mission tapes, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/40th/apollo11_audio.html#.U16JnfldUvm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;they've put them online&lt;/a&gt;.  There were technical problems with some of the recordings, but in NASAs own words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The equipment onboard the Apollo Command Module that was used to make the recordings was called the Data Storage Equipment (DSE). Its contents were transmitted to the ground periodically during the mission. Also, the Command Module DSE had the capability to record data live during certain periods from the Lunar Module as it flew separately in lunar orbit. The equipment used aboard the Lunar Module to make the recordings was called the Data Storage Electronics Assembly (DSEA). It made recordings onboard the Lunar Module, &lt;strong&gt;but the DSEA flown on the Eagle during Apollo 11 malfunctioned.&lt;/strong&gt; As a result, many of its recordings are barely, if at all, audible, with a constant high-pitched background tone. &lt;strong&gt;In the attached database, the recordings that are virtually inaudible are highlighted, but they are available on the web to ensure a complete release of the recordings made during the mission.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure that it's possible to digitally edit out the background tone, but whether that will leave intelligible recordings, I'm not sure.  I suspect that's what they did to get the transcripts, but I haven't looked into that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that the original higher-quality video from Apollo 11's time on the moon &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11_missing_tapes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;been lost&lt;/a&gt;.  What's available now was produced by pointing a NTSC-based camera at a monitor displaying the original SSTV signal.  However, the lack of original &lt;em&gt;video&lt;/em&gt; is hardly the &amp;quot;most mission tapes&amp;quot; that was originally claimed, and the original audio from the moon landing is still available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;3. Dr. Vladimir Azhazha, a physicist and Professor of Mathematics at Moscow University also confirmed that the message was sent to NASA but was censored (supposedly 'confirmed' by interruptions in radio transmissions)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that &amp;quot;Moscow University&amp;quot; is actually &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.msu.ru/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Moscow State University&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; (aka &amp;quot;Lomonosov Moscow State University&amp;quot;), I was unable to find any contact information for &amp;quot;Valdimir Azhazha&amp;quot; on either the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phys.msu.ru/eng/struct/div/index.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;physics&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.msu.su/phone&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;math&lt;/a&gt; departments' websites.  That doesn't rule out the possibility that he used to serve there and no longer does, but the only references to him I could find &lt;em&gt;anywhere&lt;/em&gt; involve this and other UFO claims.  Like so many other &amp;quot;famous&amp;quot; scientists linked to UFOs, I suspect he never existed, or at least doesn't have the positions that are claimed for him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, what of the claim itself?  There's certainly the potential for interruptions in the radio transmissions, but there's no way that &lt;em&gt;NASA&lt;/em&gt; could cause the &lt;em&gt;Command Module&lt;/em&gt; to be censored in real time.  As per the claim with #1, if radio hams were picking up the transmissions, then the only possible way for NASA command to have censored it would be if it were received directly from the astronauts, broadcast back to them with censoring, and then retransmitted to the world.  That only leaves the possibility that the astronauts themselves censored the transmission... but they could just have chosen not to say anything rather than say something and cover it up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short the claim of &amp;quot;censoring&amp;quot; doesn't work because there is no one who could have censored the very same broadcasts that the quote was reportedly from!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;2. Maurice Chatelain, former chief of NASA Communications Systems confirmed that Armstrong had indeed reported seeing two UFOs on the rim of a crater.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is similar to the second claim, except even easier to address.  There is no such thing as &amp;quot;NASA Communications Systems&amp;quot;, but Apollo did have a &amp;quot;Chief of Communications and Frequency Management&amp;quot;.  Unfortunately for this claim, that position was held by &lt;a href=&quot;http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/A11_PressKit.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paul A. Price&lt;/a&gt; &lt;sub&gt;(page 217 of the PDF)&lt;/sub&gt; for Apollo 11.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether Maurice worked for NASA at all - all I can find are &lt;a href=&quot;http://cosmoquest.org/forum/showthread.php?4075-Maurice-Chatelain-and-Apollo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;counter-claims&lt;/a&gt; that he worked for a NASA sub-contractor and had been fired before Apollo 11 happened.  Since I can't find any definitive source either for or against, I have to leave that aspect of this open.  However, it is certain he didn't have the claimed position &lt;em&gt;during Apollo 11&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;1. Science-fiction writer, Otto Binder claimed that some radio hams received the message from NASA in which Neil Armstrong said that he had seen other spacecraft.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a great article &lt;a href=&quot;http://legacy.jefferson.kctcs.edu/observatory/apollo11/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; which discusses what it took to overhear the Apollo mission directly, including a contemporary article about it.  Noteable quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Baysinger's wife and daughter watched the Apollo 11 landing on TV while Baysinger and Rutherford listened via Baysinger's equipment.  The signal on the home-built equipment came through approximately 5-10 seconds earlier than the signal on TV.  Baysinger figures NASA or the TV network [I assume it was probably CBS] put in a delay in case they needed to edit out anything embarrassing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The signal the lunar eavesdropping equipment picked up was noisy, but Baysinger says you could hear what was going on.  Baysinger made tapes of the transmissions, which he still has.  In September 2009 he transferred salvageable sections of the tapes to MP3 format for this project.  You can hear them for yourself via the links below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked Baysinger whether he found anything that NASA edited out – comments about things going wrong, the astronauts being loose with their language, or exclamations about meeting aliens!  He said no – absolutely everything was transmitted to the public on TV.  In fact he said, &amp;quot;that was kind of disappointing&amp;quot;.  Part of the idea of this project was to hear the unedited &amp;quot;real story&amp;quot;, and it turned out there was nothing edited out.  Indeed, Rutherford's story (&lt;a href=&quot;http://legacy.jefferson.kctcs.edu/observatory/apollo11/HiResImages/RutherfordArticle.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; for hi-resolution version which you can read) makes no mention of hearing anything unusual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it's always &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; that Baysinger was &amp;quot;hushed up&amp;quot; by whoever is covering it up (as per claim #3), but given that the article in question was published less than two days after the moon landing, and that no one would have known to hush him up before it was published, it seems pretty unlikely that without an actual recording of the supposed quote surfacing there is anything to this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T17:18:15.517" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20459" CreationDate="2014-05-06T20:33:46.307" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is indeed the case that most of the problems with malnutrition and hunger throughout the world are political and social problems and not that we don't produce enough food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Coursera course &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coursera.org/course/humankind&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Brief History of Humankind&lt;/a&gt; Yuval Noah Harari Ph.D, a professor at the University of Jerusalem claims that we have a food distribution problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in the United States &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrdc.org/food/files/wasted-food-ip.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;we discard up to 40%&lt;/a&gt; of the food that we produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; also concurs that the problem mainly lies in social and political processes.  It states that two of the main reasons people go hungry are that they are poor and that we have a problem distributing food effectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0198284632&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Poverty and famines: An essay on entitlement and deprivation&lt;/a&gt;&quot; Amartya Sen also makes the argument that most of the problems with world hunger come from issues with food distribution and poverty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problems with purchasing power also lead to a situation where farmers have a hard time getting the materials that they need in order to grow their own food meaning that they are reliant on food distribution networks for their needs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I would tend to agree.  The thought that starvation happens because there is not enough food is an outdated idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19169" LastActivityDate="2014-05-06T20:33:46.307" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20481" CreationDate="2014-05-07T00:54:46.453" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your Asian/Chinese origin assumption seems correct. By Wikipedia standards: The first known mention of the game was in the book Wuzazu (zh) (simplified Chinese: 五杂俎; traditional Chinese: 五杂组) by the Chinese Ming Dynasty writer Xie Zhaozhi (谢肇淛; fl. ca. 1600), who wrote that the game dated back to the time of the Chinese Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD).[citing Moore, Michael E.; Sward, Jennifer (2006). Introduction to the game industry. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall. p. 535. ISBN 978-0-13-168743-1.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried a brief search in a few humanities databases, but all I could find is the use of the game for various methodological or clinical reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18160" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T00:54:46.453" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21926" CreationDate="2014-05-07T03:16:10.190" Score="11" ViewCount="2605" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a common belief that foods rich in estrogen (like Soya milk) increases breast size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.md-health.com/How-To-Increase-Breast-Size.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MD-health.com claims that it works&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eat Enough Estrogenic Foods.&lt;/strong&gt; Estrogen is a potent female sex hormone and proper levels can lead to enlargement of breast tissue. Testosterone is the male hormone counterpart and diminishes breast growth. Avoid carb rich foods such as chips, crackers, white rice and baked goods to help minimize testosterone production. Excellent sources of natural estrogen include: pumpkin, garlic, red beans and split peas, soy foods eggplant, flax seeds, pumpkin and squash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Try Soy.&lt;/strong&gt; Soy products are high in isoflavones that can help the body increase its own estrogen levels and promote breast growth. Soy products are also rich in protein and can help build and repair damaged tissues in the body. Soy milk is available in a variety of flavors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the Straight Dope claims &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2662/can-herbal-supplements-increase-breast-size&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;that this isn't true&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For women who do produce enough estrogen of their own, phytoestrogens actually decrease overall estrogen activity by competing with the homegrown estrogen for positions on estrogen receptor sites; when phytoestrogens latch onto these sites, they push aside the real estrogen and provide only a weaker version. In fact, that could be their real benefit, some experts think--by lowering the body's effective estrogen level, phytoestrogens may reduce a woman's chance of developing breast cancer. But here's the thing: if so, they'd likely make breasts smaller, not larger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, whatever uses phytoestrogens may have, increasing breast size isn't one of them. Many breast-enlargement products contain only small amounts of phytoestrogens anyway, and none has been proven to work in double-blind laboratory tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15834" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-08-21T23:49:17.820" Title="Do foods rich in Estrogen increase breast size?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|breast-enlargement|breast-size|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20525" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20534" CreationDate="2014-05-07T10:10:08.470" Score="5" ViewCount="416" Body="&lt;p&gt;A company called Intralinks sells a sharing software that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intralinks.com/via/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;it claims&lt;/a&gt; allows you to &quot;unshare&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;“Favorite” files so you can access them offline  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;UNshare™ gives you the power to instantly revoke access to files you've already shared, even after they’ve been downloaded  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Set permission levels and prevent printing, forwarding, and screen-grabs  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Delete synced data on devices that you no longer control&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this legit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AgMzvs.png&quot; alt=&quot;Intralinks UNshare&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On another website they explain &lt;a href=&quot;http://collaboristablog.com/2014/04/digital-rights-management-requirement-option-enterprise-file-sync-share-solutions/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;how they use DRM&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2047" LastEditorUserId="2047" LastEditDate="2014-05-12T11:40:11.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T11:40:11.730" Title="Sharing tool claims files can be &quot;unshared&quot;" Tags="|security|software|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20498" CreationDate="2014-05-07T10:12:01.527" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;An article on cracked.com about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_18788_the-5-most-mind-blowing-coincidences-all-time.html#ixzz311R1ylvZ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;coincidences&lt;/a&gt; includes a newspaper clip taken from the &lt;em&gt;The Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph&lt;/em&gt; on July 21, 1975:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gS0wS.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Newspaper article&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Twin tragedy&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Erskine Lawrence Ebbin was knocked down by a taxi and killed in Hamilton, Bermuda — and it was the same taxi with the same driver, carrying the same passanger, that killed his brother Neville in July last year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And both brothers were riding the same moped and died, aged 17, on the same street, police said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is remarkable in that it includes the full name of both brothers (Erskine Lawrence and Neville Ebbin) and the city in which it allegedly happened (Hamilton, Bermuda). This means it should be possible to verify the events by checking official records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is still possible that the whole story was made up to fill empty space on the page (notice that the &lt;em&gt;Scunthorpe Evening Telegraph&lt;/em&gt; is published in the United Kingdom, while the accident is supposed to have happened on Bermuda, difficult to verify for a reader in 1975.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this, the accident might have happened — unlikely does not mean impossible — but there is no conclusive proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20110511/NEWS/705119961&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Royal Gazette&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; has even more names and the location of the accident:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reader’s Digest reprints story of 1975 road deaths&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bizarre tragedy reported in The Royal Gazette more than 35 years ago has resurfaced in the pages of this month’s Reader’s Digest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The July 21, 1975 issue of the newspaper carried a front page lead headlined, ‘Incredible coincidence in road crash deaths’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same story appears in the current Reader’s Digest compilation entitled ‘What Are The Odds?’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an account that has circulated in publications and on the internet ever since, The Royal Gazette reports: “Erskine Ebbin and his brother Neville were killed almost exactly a year apart after being involved in collision with the same taxi, driven by the same driver and carrying the same passenger.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both victims were 17, and both were riding the same auxiliary cycle on the same road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Erskine was killed on the night of July 18, 1975, near the Packwood Home in Sandys; Neville died on July 30, 1974, on the nearby stretch of Middle Road known as Hog Bay Level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both were reported to have collided with a taxi driven by Willard Manders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to their father, John Henry Ebbin of Woodlawn Road, Sandys, even the passenger in the taxi was the same in both instances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now that we have a source from Bermuda itself and a lot of verifiable data I tend to believe that it did indeed happen, though “at the same intersection” and “exactly a year apart” are exaggerations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16419" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T12:20:39.857" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20528" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20508" CreationDate="2014-05-07T12:31:32.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I noticed your second example uses the word &quot;adsorbs&quot; (holding as a thin film on the outside) rather than &quot;absorbs&quot;; at first I thought this was an accidental spelling error, but the page you linked to was very clear about what it thought it meant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Radiation is not the sort of thing that can be adsorbed&lt;/em&gt;. Light, for example, is radiation. Gamma rays (one of the examples given in the second link) are the same stuff as ordinary light, only further in the blue direction than blue light (if you will excuse the over-simplification).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other forms of radiation include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Alpha radiation — this is ionised, fast-moving helium. It will embed itself in whatever it hits, then turn into helium gas and stop reacting entirely; imagine it as a tiny bullet. The (already dead) outer layer of your skin will stop this type of radiation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beta radiation — this is a fast moving electron. Again, imagine this like a tiny bullet. It will get stuck in whatever it hits (your flesh, some clay, the wall), and will then be a small electric charge, similar to when you brush your hair too much and it stands on end.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Neutron radiation — this is (almost) the only type of radiation that can make other things radioactive. Again, imagine this as a small bullet: it's not going to get stuck on the surface of anything, mainly because it will be deep inside whatever stops it moving. To a first approximation, if you had a source of this on one side of your body, half of the radiation will go through you and out the other side, the other half will be a&lt;b&gt;&lt;em&gt;b&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/b&gt;sorbed by your body.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, clay won't remove radiation — radiation doesn't work like that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19054" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T12:31:32.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20515" CreationDate="2014-05-07T15:34:46.630" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine: &lt;a href=&quot;http://nccam.nih.gov/health/aloevera&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://nccam.nih.gov/health/aloevera&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What the Science Says:&#xA;  Aloe latex contains strong laxative compounds.&#xA;  Products made with various components of aloe (aloin, aloe-emodin, and&#xA;  barbaloin) were at one time regulated by the FDA as oral&#xA;  over-the-counter (OTC) laxatives. In 2002, the FDA required that all&#xA;  OTC aloe laxative products be removed from the U.S. market or&#xA;  reformulated because the companies that manufactured them did not&#xA;  provide the necessary safety data. Early studies show that topical&#xA;  aloe gel may help heal burns and abrasions. One study, however, showed&#xA;  that aloe gel inhibits healing of deep surgical wounds. Aloe gel has&#xA;  not been shown to prevent burns from radiation therapy. There is not&#xA;  enough scientific evidence to support aloe vera for any of its other&#xA;  uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13804" LastActivityDate="2014-05-07T15:34:46.630" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20525" CreationDate="2014-05-07T18:26:46.653" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it's not legit (in the sense you used the word). Perhaps the file won't appear inside their application, but doesn't mean that nobody else will be able to open it again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“Favorite” files so you can access them offline&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok. You install their program in some computer, mark the file as favorite, and it's downloaded to that program. Then you disconnect from internet, and you can still access the file.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UNshare™ gives you the power to instantly revoke access to files you've already shared, even after they’ve been downloaded&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the offline? If the computer is never again connected to the internet, this access will never be revoked (since there's no way to know/download that revocation). If it's based on time, simple enough, adjust the computer date/time to the same date/time [1] [2]. It's based on number of accesses? Create a virtual machine (VM), install/download inside that VM, create a snapshot of it, and rollback to the same snapshot when you need it again [3].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the online mode? After I download the file inside the program, to be useful somehow, I need to execute it or open it with other program (think of some image). After I open it with some other program, just click in the &quot;save as...&quot; and, &lt;em&gt;voilà&lt;/em&gt;, I have a copy that cannot be &quot;unshared&quot; [4]. Or create the VM and take a snapshot when the file is opened inside some program, or executed [3]. Or install some program that will capture the stream of bytes right after it leaves the &quot;unShare program&quot; [5].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Set permission levels and prevent printing, forwarding, and screen-grabs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While inside their program, perhaps you can prevent printing and forwarding. After it leaves their program, it's up to the program using the file (like PDF reader) that will prevent such thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screen-grab: take your camera and take a picture of the screen. Done. Install some program that will work with the video driver, and that will take screenshots every x seconds. Done. [6] [7]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Delete synced data on devices that you no longer control&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yep, if the device is online, send some command to their program that will erase the data. Turn the internet access, and this functionality is gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.danrichard.com/2012/11/19/how-to-get-rid-of-cinavia-protection-on-a-ps3-or-at-least-bypass-it/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.danrichard.com/2012/11/19/how-to-get-rid-of-cinavia-protection-on-a-ps3-or-at-least-bypass-it/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1442698/prevent-time-based-copy-protection-circumvention&quot;&gt;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1442698/prevent-time-based-copy-protection-circumvention&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vmware.com/support/ws4/doc/preserve_snapshot_ws.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.vmware.com/support/ws4/doc/preserve_snapshot_ws.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[4] &lt;a href=&quot;http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/graphics/irfantut/save.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://gd.tuwien.ac.at/graphics/irfantut/save.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[5] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.x-ways.net/capture/index-m.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.x-ways.net/capture/index-m.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[6] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dotscreenshot.com/auto-screenshot-software/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.dotscreenshot.com/auto-screenshot-software/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[7] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Video-Recording/VH-Screen-Capture-Driver.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Video-Recording/VH-Screen-Capture-Driver.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;.&#xA;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit after answer accepted:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even easier to answer: the company says in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intralinks.com/eula&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EULA&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When an End User accesses data on the Service (e.g., a publication, comment, or attachments to a publication or comment), &lt;strong&gt;a copy of that data is copied to that user's local computer&lt;/strong&gt; (this is called &quot;caching&quot; and is part of how web browsers work). Caching is used to improve the speed of the Service when you repeatedly access graphics or data during a session. &lt;strong&gt;Once pages and/or data have been cached on your local computer that data is beyond the control of Intralinks, and may be accessible to anyone with access to your computer&lt;/strong&gt;. Each End User assumes all risk and liability associated with any data cached to that End User's local computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I added the &lt;strong&gt;bold&lt;/strong&gt; emphasis to parts of it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, they say that the data can be leaked by browser cache. Even easier to circumvent their protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4146" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:24.653" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T12:46:40.673" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20537" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-07T22:30:23.007" Score="13" ViewCount="601" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.child-encyclopedia.com/documents/FriedANGxp.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Encyclopedia on Early Childhood Development&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, the evidence from literature on both animals &#xA;  and humans is very convincing: smoking during pregnancy is a contributing factor &#xA;  to a host of short- and long-term effects on the growth and neurobehavioural &#xA;  development of offspring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other studies contradict these results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the associations between maternal smoking and 12 other outcomes studied (including Apgar score, intelligence, academic achievement, conduct problems, and asthma) were entirely eliminated after adjustment for measured and unmeasured confounders. The authors conclude that the hypothesized effects from maternal smoking during pregnancy on these outcomes either are not present or are not distinguishable from a broader range of familial factors associated with maternal smoking. — &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2597003/pdf/kwn175.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Maternal Smoking...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unadjusted analyses showed a statistically significant decrement of 4 points on full-scale IQ (FSIQ) associated with smoking 10+ cigarettes per day compared to nonsmoking. After adjustment for potential confounders, no significant effects of prenatal exposure to tobacco smoking were found. Considering the indisputable teratogenic effects of tobacco smoking, these findings should be interpreted with caution. Still, the results may indicate that previous studies that failed to control for important confounders, particularly maternal intelligence, may be subject to substantial residual confounding. — &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23316364&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effects of ...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding#Examples&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's page on confounders&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In risk assessments, factors such as age, gender, and educational levels often have an impact on health status and so should be controlled. Beyond these factors, researchers may not consider or have access to data on other causal factors. An example is on the study of smoking tobacco on human health. Smoking, drinking alcohol, and diet are lifestyle activities that are related. A risk assessment that looks at the effects of smoking but does not control for education, alcohol consumption or diet may overestimate the risk of smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, after removing this bias (for example with enough data available it's possible to cohort similar classes of mothers), I &lt;a href=&quot;http://med.stanford.edu/medicalreview/smrp14-16.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;found there&lt;/a&gt; some significant measures could be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8632944&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mental retardation&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smoking has been linked to small cognitive, achievement, and behavioral deficits but has not been associated with more severe cognitive impairments. This investigation evaluated the relationship between maternal smoking during pregnancy and idiopathic mental retardation&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Data on maternal smoking during pregnancy were obtained during face-to-face interviews with the mothers of 221 children with idiopathic MR and the mothers of 400 children attending public school. All children had been born in the five-county metropolitan Atlanta area in 1975 or 1976 and were living in the area when they were 10 years of age. We used exposure odds ratios (ORs) to assess the relationship between maternal smoking and MR, &lt;strong&gt;controlling for sex, maternal age at delivery, race, maternal education, economic status, parity, and alcohol use&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Maternal smoking during pregnancy was associated with slightly more than a 50% increase in the prevalence of idiopathic MR (adjusted OR, 1.6; 95% confidence interval, 1.0-2.4), and children whose mothers smoked at least one pack a day during pregnancy had more than a 75% increase in the occurrence of idiopathic MR (OR, 1.9; 95% confidence interval, 1.0-3.4). This increase was neither accounted for by other sociodemographic risk factors for MR nor explained by an increase in the prevalence of low birth weight among the children of smokers.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Our data suggest that maternal smoking may be a preventable cause of mental retardation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However mental retardation is an extreme case, which is probably not proportional or related with the others possible harms and effect that this question asks.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;After seeing those contradictories claims, the original question remains unclear. Can we prove that for similar environmental factors, a mother smoking behaviour (more than 10/day vs non-smoker) during pregnancy will affect significantly the child's development process, his capacity to learn?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the proven &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK53014/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;geno/cyto-toxicity of tobacco toxins&lt;/a&gt; responsible for an intellectual deficit since it would affect &lt;em&gt;lifelong*&lt;/em&gt; or very long-term cells like neurons and &lt;a href=&quot;http://realitysandwich.com/214813/boost-brain-harnessing-neurogenesis/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reduce neurogenesis&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurons#Nerve_regeneration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;lifelong*&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (edit from comment)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been demonstrated that neurogenesis can sometimes occur in the adult vertebrate brain, a finding that led to controversy in 1999.[30] However, more recent studies of the age of human neurons suggest that this process occurs only for a minority of cells, and the overwhelming majority of neurons comprising the neocortex were formed before birth and persist without replacement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;edit: other relevant indicators:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nicotine targets specific neurotransmitter receptors in the fetal brain, eliciting abnormalities of cell proliferation and differentiation, leading to shortfalls in the number of cells and eventually to altered synaptic activity. — &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9618392&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fetal nicotine...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;addendum: This &lt;a href=&quot;http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=1870669&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; seems to answer the question, however the full pdf isn't available for free&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8708" LastEditorUserId="8708" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T17:32:45.493" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T17:32:45.493" Title="Does fetal tobacco smoke exposure cause permanent harm?" Tags="|pregnancy|smoking|tobacco|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20545" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20552" CreationDate="2014-05-08T17:47:50.080" Score="5" ViewCount="742" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is claimed that there has been sufficient time for life to evolve on Earth from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_universal_ancestor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Last Universal Ancestor&lt;/a&gt; into its present state, based on the current theory of natural selection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we talk about enough &quot;time&quot; or &quot;speed&quot; of evolution, I am referring to the number of generations and how much percentage of the genetic information is mutated from each generation to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I rephrased this question in Biology, &lt;a href=&quot;https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/17265/has-it-been-enough-time-for-evolution-through-simple-natural-selection&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15005" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:10.240" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T02:11:26.290" Title="Does the time for evolution make sense?" Tags="|evolution|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2014-05-10T04:17:30.370" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20481" CreationDate="2014-05-08T20:18:46.243" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, what about this? &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_does_paper_beat_rock_in_a_game_of_rock_paper_scissors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_does_paper_beat_rock_in_a_game_of_rock_paper_scissors&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why does paper beat rock in a game of rock paper scissors?&#xA;In: Toys     [Edit categories]&#xA;Answer:&#xA;It comes from an ancient Chinese tradition where when a request was sent to the ruler on a piece of &quot;paper&quot; or the equivalent at the time, the rock was placed over the paper if the request was accepted, the paper was draped over the rock, indicating defeat of the request, if the request was rejected. Hence, paper over rock = defeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;same source though...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or this source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not exactly intuitive, the sympolic meaning of paper covering a rock dates back to ancient Chinese culture. When a petition was made to the Emperor, the petition was signified by a rock.Upon making a decision the Emperor would have his servants place a sheaf of paper either over or under the rock. If the sheaf was placed under the rock it would signify acceptance of the petition. If the sheaf was placed on top of the rock it signified denial of the petition. Over time the symbolic image of paper covering a rock became synonomous with defeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldrps.com/faq.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.worldrps.com/faq.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18160" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T20:18:46.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20548" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20481" CreationDate="2014-05-08T21:23:48.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to wikipedia, which is extensively sourced on this topic (although I haven't checked any of them myself for reliability), says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The earliest Japanese &quot;sansukumi-ken&quot; game was known as &quot;mushi-ken&quot; (虫拳), which was imported directly from China.[7][8] In &quot;Mushi-ken&quot; the &quot;frog&quot; (represented by the thumb) is superseded by the &quot;slug&quot; (represented by the little finger), which, in turn is superseded by the &quot;snake&quot; (represented by the index finger), which is superseded by the &quot;frog&quot;.[7] Although this game was imported from China the Japanese version differs in the animals represented. In adopting the game, the original Chinese characters for the poisonous centipede (蜈蜙) were apparently confused with the characters for the &quot;slug&quot; (蛞蝓).[8] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today, the best-known &quot;sansukumi-ken&quot; is called &quot;jan-ken&quot;,[8] which is a variation of the Chinese games introduced in the 17th century.[9] &quot;Jan-ken&quot; uses the rock, paper, and scissors signs[7] and is the game that the modern version of rock-paper-scissors derives from directly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Its English-language name is therefore taken from a translation of the names of the three Japanese hand-gestures for rock, paper and scissors:[12] elsewhere in Asia the open-palm gesture represents &quot;cloth&quot; rather than &quot;paper&quot;.[13] The shape of the scissors is also adopted from the Japanese style.[12]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&#xA; Sources: &#xA;&lt;br&gt; 7) Linhart, Sepp (1995). &quot;Some Thoughts on the Ken Game in Japan: From the Viewpoint of Comparative Civilization Studies&quot;. Senri Ethnological Studies 40: 101–124. hdl:&lt;a href=&quot;http://hdl.handle.net/10502%2F750&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10502/750&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;&lt;br&gt; 8) Linhart, Sepp (1995). &quot;Rituality in the ken game&quot;. Ceremony and Ritual in Japan. London: Routledge. pp. 38–41. ISBN &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special%3aBookSources/9780415116633&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;9780415116633&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;&lt;br&gt; 9) Sosnoski, Daniel (2001). Introduction to Japanese culture. Rutland: Tuttle. p. 44. ISBN 9780804820561.&#xA;&lt;br&gt; 12) 長田須磨・須山名保子共編 (1977.4). 『奄美方言分類辞典』上巻. Tokyo: Kasama shoin. ASIN &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.jp/dp/B000J8V5WU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;B000J8V5WU&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the sources are correct, &lt;strong&gt;there's no truth to this legend, because the &quot;paper&quot; name wasn't introduced until long after the game had spread out of China.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastActivityDate="2014-05-08T21:23:48.150" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20552" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20545" CreationDate="2014-05-09T02:11:26.290" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been unable to find papers that make an estimate of the total amount of time required for the complete evolution from the LUA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I can cite a couple of important papers which show that some of the more complicated steps can be achieved in timescales that are relatively short. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1994 paper, (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rpgroup.caltech.edu/courses/aph161/Handouts/Nilsson1994.pdf&quot;&gt;A Pessimistic Estimate of the Time Required for an Eye to Evolve&lt;/a&gt;* looks at an area which has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frayn.net/evolution/claim5.html&quot;&gt;commonly cited&lt;/a&gt; as one of the biggest challenges to Evolution - the evolution of the eye. (Ironically, Darwin himself was one of the first people to raise this issue, and one of the first to propose an answer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They theoretically estimate how many generations would be required for an eye to evolve - not from an LUA, but from a patch of skin that is light-sensitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even with a consistently pessimistic approach the time required becomes amazingly short: only a few hundred thousand years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/42794/10709_2004_Article_382347.pdf?sequence=1&quot;&gt;Rates of Evolution on the Time Scale of Evolutionary Process&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; looks at the amount of evolutionary progress we have seen compared to the amount that might be possible, and concludes it is much &lt;em&gt;less&lt;/em&gt; than it has had time for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The evolutionary process is dynamic but operates within relatively narrow morphological constraints compared to the time available for change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means, even though things change, they don't change as much as they could in the time available - which isn't that surprising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the author looks at mammals, starting in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cenozoic&quot;&gt;Cenozoic&lt;/a&gt; (aka the Age of Mammals, 65 million years ago), and concludes the variation found is four orders of magnitude less (i.e. one ten-thousandth) than the time-scale permitted. Evolution is not constrained by time as much as it is constrained by form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither of the papers look at the entire evolution of animals and plants back from our common ancestor, but they illustrate on smaller time-scales, that biological complexity (like the eye) and biological diversity (like all of the mammals on the Earth) can evolve in a small fraction of the time that is available to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this understanding, it becomes more comfortable to extrapolate and see that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolutionary_history_of_life&quot;&gt;3.6 billion years&lt;/a&gt; is rather a long time, even in evolutionary terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T02:11:26.290" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20554" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21902" CreationDate="2014-05-09T08:33:23.960" Score="3" ViewCount="458" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryolipolysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cryolipolysis&lt;/a&gt; is a non-surgical process to remove subcutaneous fat, using controlled cooling, as an alternative to liposuction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a significant amount of fat destroyed by one treatment of cryolipolysis? Is it an effective alternative to liposuction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18217" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T08:58:09.253" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T16:26:56.950" Title="Is cryolipolisis effective as a fat reduction method?" Tags="|medical-science|weight-loss|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20555" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-09T08:42:22.460" Score="2" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wikibin.org/articles/bodytite.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BodyTite&lt;/a&gt; or Radio Frequency Assisted Liposuction (RFAL) is a form of liposuction helped by radio frequency:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;involves heating the skin by the RF current which flows from the&#xA;  internal to the external electrode placed on the skin above the&#xA;  internal electrode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claimed benefits include that it is painless, safer, has a faster recovery, less tissue trauma, less coagulation of blood vessels, and that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the maximum skin contraction that is achieved through conventional liposuction techniques can be increased by up to 60%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looseness of the skin after a liposuction leads to the need for an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdominoplasty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;abdominoplasty&lt;/a&gt;. Does the use of BodyTite avoid this need?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18217" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T09:05:46.290" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T09:05:46.290" Title="Is BodyTite effective at tightening the skin during liposuction?" Tags="|medical-science|weight-loss|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19217" CreationDate="2014-05-09T11:46:10.030" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say &lt;strong&gt;almost certainly not&lt;/strong&gt;.  I can't see any evidence the Japanese government has passed any law or made any promises to assume liability, and they are not liable under international law - the main law that governs this is the amended IAEA Vienna Convention which &lt;em&gt;most but not all&lt;/em&gt; countries using nuclear power are signatories to.  Certainly it would appear to be a pretty stupid move to assume responsibility here, and with no source for the claim it doesn't seem credible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Operators of nuclear power plants are liable for any damage caused by them, regardless of fault. They therefore normally take out insurance for third-party liability, and in most countries they are required to do so.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The potential cross boundary consequences of a nuclear accident require an international nuclear liability regime, so national laws are supplemented by a number of international conventions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Liability is limited by both international conventions and by national legislation, so that beyond the limit (normally covered by insurance) the state can accept responsibility as insurer of last resort, as in all other aspects of industrial society.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exclusive liability of the operator means that in the case of an accident, all claims are to be brought against the nuclear operator. This legal channeling is regardless of the accident's cause. By inference suppliers or builders of the plant are protected from public litigation in the case of an accident. Again this simplifies the process because claimants do not have to figure out who is responsible – under law it will be the nuclear operator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Safety-and-Security/Safety-of-Plants/Liability-for-Nuclear-Damage/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Liability for Nuclear Damage&lt;/a&gt;, World Nuclear Association, April 2014&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;World-wide, almost all legal regimes transfer third party liability for nuclear accidents exclusively towards the operator of a nuclear plant. This is called “channelling” and implies that the operator of a nuclear installation is exclusively liable for damages, either legally or economically. Irrespective of their possible contribution, none of the other players – suppliers of nuclear material or fuel, transporters of nuclear material or fuel to and from the nuclear power plant, subcontractors, test operators, consultants, nuclear plant designers and constructors – bears any responsibility towards third parties in the event of a nuclear accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evelyne Ameye, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kluwerlawonline.com/abstract.php?area=Journals&amp;amp;id=EELR2010003&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Channelling of Nuclear Third Party Liability towards the Operator: Is it Sustainable in a Developing Nuclear World or is there a Need for Liability of Nuclear Architects and Engineers?'&lt;/a&gt; (2010) 19 European Energy and Environmental Law Review, Issue 1, pp. 33–58&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; Japanese citizens are not liable for accidents abroad under international law. No evidence of assumed responsibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T11:46:10.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20559" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16649" CreationDate="2014-05-09T14:55:49.440" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No of course not, don't be silly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A cigarette does immediate damage, and is very addictive. Most people are addicted after their very first smoke, so a cigarette is inevitably followed by more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A soda on the other hand is only harmful insofar as that it can contribute to obesity. But a single soda won't make you obese and many people who drink soda are not obese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main differences are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smoking damage is immediate, sugar only becomes a problem when your intake is too high.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Smoking damage cannot be counteracted, sugar can be counteracted by exercise or compensated for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cigarettes are extremely addictive, sodas aren't for most people. (There are cases of people having a food or sweets addiction, but those are not the norm.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal advice is to limit sodas to social occasions and stick to tea, fruit juice and other normal drinks in daily life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19209" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T14:55:49.440" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16649" CreationDate="2014-05-09T19:45:05.800" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A huge amount of sugar is often much worse for your health than cigarettes. This is especially true if you are not exercising and it is exacerbated by the quantity. A host of disorders can result, from low nutrition to diabetes and their resulting disorders. However, if you consume it healthily, smoking cigarettes is usually worse. The biggest threats from cigarettes are physical irritation, which can be damaging, and the introduction of free radicals. Both of these can be mitigated to some extent by being aware of irritation and damage to health and doing what you can to avoid them (dry vocal cords with no coating are more easily damaged and making sure to consume a healthy supply of antioxidants -- along with being healthy in general -- generally prevents cancer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smoking and free radicals:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1568603/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1568603/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't find a study on whether smoking causes irritation, but here's some evidence from a medical institute:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.upmc.com/patients-visitors/education/breathing/pages/smoking-and-lungs.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.upmc.com/patients-visitors/education/breathing/pages/smoking-and-lungs.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to whether smoking causes irritation, I think the question is absurdly incontrovertible and no one would fund such a childish experiment (although you can be the first).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, some may not know of any connection between diabetes and sugar consumption. Here's a layman's article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2013/02/13591/quantity-sugar-food-supply-linked-diabetes-rates&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2013/02/13591/quantity-sugar-food-supply-linked-diabetes-rates&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Diabetes is characterized by irregular insulin levels, and associated with insulin resistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/33/Supplement_1/S62.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/33/Supplement_1/S62.full&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11172473&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11172473&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About sugar and insulin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bd.com/us/diabetes/page.aspx?cat=7001&amp;amp;id=7244&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bd.com/us/diabetes/page.aspx?cat=7001&amp;amp;id=7244&lt;/a&gt; (layman's article)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background information for those wishing to learn about insulin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/diabetes/diabetes1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/diabetes/diabetes1.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a source that gives a general overview of anti-oxidants and cancer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cancer.stanford.edu/information/nutritionAndCancer/reduceRisk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://cancer.stanford.edu/information/nutritionAndCancer/reduceRisk/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, interestingly, I found that the opposite may also be true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/39022/title/Antioxidants-Speed-Up-Lung-Cancer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/39022/title/Antioxidants-Speed-Up-Lung-Cancer/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the general consensus is that by reducing free-radicals (via anti-oxidants or other methods if they achieve the same result), then fewer cells will become cancerous (often attributed to cell damage, sources following).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1850635/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1850635/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/cancerlibrary/what-is-cancer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/cancerlibrary/what-is-cancer&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancerbasics/what-is-cancer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancerbasics/what-is-cancer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19207" LastEditorUserId="19207" LastEditDate="2014-05-09T23:01:02.343" LastActivityDate="2014-05-09T23:01:02.343" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20565" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-10T05:36:07.473" Score="18" ViewCount="19276" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw the following story on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Jokes/What-are-some-of-the-most-profound-jokes-ever/answer/Mahesh-Agrawal-5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quora&lt;/a&gt; and when I Googled it, I got a lot of inspirational websites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patheos.com/blogs/drishtikone/2009/01/put-shark-your-tank/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Patheos.org&lt;/a&gt; that were hosting this same story without any citations. I would like to know if the story is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the water close to Japan has not held many fish for decades. So to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went further than ever. The further the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring the fish. If the return trip took more time, the fish were not fresh. To solve this problem, fish companies installed freezers on their boats. They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea. Freezers allowed the boats to go further and stay longer. However, the Japanese could taste the difference between fresh and frozen fish. And they did not like the taste of frozen fish. The frozen fish brought a lower price. So, fishing companies installed fish tanks. They would catch the fish and stuff them in the tanks, fin to fin. After a little thrashing around, they were tired, dull, and lost their fresh-fish taste. The fishing industry faced an impending crisis! But today, they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How did they manage? To keep the fish tasting fresh, the Japanese fishing companies still put the fish in the tanks but with a small shark. The fish are challenged and hence are constantly on the move. The challenge they face keeps them alive and fresh!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you realized that some of us are also living in a pond but most of the time tired and dull ? Basically in our lives, sharks are new challenges to keep us active. If you are steadily conquering challenges, you are happy. Your challenges keep you energized. Don’t create success and revel in it in a state of inertia. You have the resources, skills and abilities to make a difference. Put a shark in your tank and see how far you can really go!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9115" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-01-02T08:54:55.050" Title="Do Japanese fishermen put sharks in their tanks to keep fish fresh?" Tags="|psychology|zoology|marketing|japan|ethology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20566" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-10T07:27:52.330" Score="8" ViewCount="1890" Body="&lt;p&gt;An earlier Skeptics Stack Exchange question asks: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/490/if-you-shave-or-wax-will-the-hair-grow-back-stronger-or-thicker&quot;&gt;If you shave or wax, will the hair  grow back stronger or thicker?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I am interesting in a more specific claim: that shaving the head of an infant will lead to thicker and stronger hair later. For example, this is discussed at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babycenter.com/404_is-it-true-that-shaving-a-babys-head-or-cutting-his-hair-ver_10303163.bc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;babycenter.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does shaving of hairs of an infant really promote hair growth and better quality new hair?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/335/7633/1288&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMJ web-site reports&lt;/a&gt; an answer for adults, but I have been unable to follow the references to see if they are applicable to infants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the comments give reasons that the hair is dead and, hence, it does not matter whether you cut it or not, but I see there are many confounding variables e.g. the weight of hair may have some effect on the follicle. The weight reduction is more prominent in infants. Also, the pulling action affects the delicate hair follicle of infants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T20:10:22.653" Title="Does cutting or shaving the hair of infants cause better hair regrowth?" Tags="|physiology|hair|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20567" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20586" CreationDate="2014-05-10T09:28:56.820" Score="23" ViewCount="1089" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is believed that by tapping on a watermelon and listening to the feedback sound, one can deduce whether the watermelon is ripe and tasty or not. This belief seems to be very common in some areas of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some references which mention it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whataboutwatermelon.com/&quot;&gt;whataboutwatermelon.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some say a ripe watermelon will produce a hollow sound, while a&#xA;  “thick” or “solid” sound indicates a watermelon that’s not ripe or too&#xA;  ripe. Others say a hollow or “tight” sound is bad, and your watermelon&#xA;  should instead sound “firm.” Still others say a ripe watermelon should&#xA;  produce a B-flat sound. (What?!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scotlynn.com/investments/watermelons.html&quot;&gt;scotlynn.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unlike other watermelon suppliers who use the “tapping” method of&#xA;  quality control, Scotlynn uses the most advanced x-ray machines&#xA;  available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17948" LastEditorUserId="17948" LastEditDate="2014-05-10T13:07:20.410" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T03:22:04.130" Title="Can you deduce the quality of watermelons by tapping on them?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20571" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-11T00:00:25.077" Score="5" ViewCount="527" Body="&lt;p&gt;From what I understand products like Quikclot and Celox are used by the US military in first aid kits. The products are used to stop severe bleeding. While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21496135&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some studies&lt;/a&gt; indicate that these products might not actually work better than using direct pressure with standard gauze, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19741385&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;other studies&lt;/a&gt; have shown that they do help in controlling bleeding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first generation of QuikClot &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.z-medica.com/healthcare/How-QuikClot-Works/QuikClot-1st-and-2nd-Generation.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;generated so much&lt;/a&gt; heat that it caused burns, but the newer version does not have this problem. And there have been other problems. The military supposedly stopped using the power version of these product in part because the powder would blow in peoples faces and cause problems. Now they use a gauze impregnated with this powder/granulates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.firehouse.com/forums/t116447/#post1200286&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this forum&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://cqb-team.com/cqbforum/viewtopic.php?p=4636&amp;amp;sid=f1ae12fc6bfa9aa6bc13e07a9ac263e4#p4636&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;and other places&lt;/a&gt;) the claim is made that &quot;&lt;em&gt;dumping the powder on a torn blood vessel possibly send small clots around the cardio vascular system?&lt;/em&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;em&gt;celox works well but there is some studies that show the they flakes were getting into the blood stream and causing more problems.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am interested in knowing if this claim is true. That is, is it true that the powder from these products can get into the blood stream and cause problems other places in the body?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there really any studies suggesting this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19222" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T12:55:21.100" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T12:55:21.100" Title="Can hemostatics like QuikClot and Celox get into blood stream and cause embolic clots?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20579" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20537" CreationDate="2014-05-12T12:57:22.903" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/2004/highlights/children/index.htm?s_cid=tw_osh141&quot;&gt;The CDC&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2656811/&quot;&gt;NIH&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayo.edu/research/centers-programs/nicotine-dependence-center/research-program/about/tobacco-pregnancy&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic, ACS, ALA&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quitnow.gov.au/internet/quitnow/publishing.nsf/content/warnings-b-babies&quot;&gt;and the Australian Government&lt;/a&gt; are all saying the same thing. There are known studies that smoking lowers the birth-weight of a baby, which is one of the main factors in their likelihood to survive. It also raises the risk of SIDS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Laws PJ, Grayson N &amp;amp; Sullivan EA babies of smoking mothers are 50% more likely to be stillborn and twice as likely to be low birth weight than babies born to nonsmoking mothers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't found any evidence to imply that smoking has a positive or neutral effect on babies health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/tobaccocancer/questionsaboutsmokingtobaccoandhealth/questions-about-smoking-tobacco-and-health-cancer-and-health&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; showing the chemicals in tobacco smoke that are known to cause damage. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/tobaccocancer/questionsaboutsmokingtobaccoandhealth/questions-about-smoking-tobacco-and-health-how-tobacco-affects-pregnant-woman-and-babies&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; on the same site explains that the chemicals travel through the mother's bloodstream and enter the baby giving the baby exposure to the same chemicals. It also shows some of the effects tobacco can have to developing babies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19235" LastEditorUserId="19235" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T06:42:47.223" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T06:42:47.223" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20580" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-12T14:21:38.280" Score="2" ViewCount="265" Body="&lt;p&gt;Race is perhaps one of the most controversial and sensitive issues in anthropology, biology, and other related fields. As a non-scientist, I've used google to probe the disparity between the positions of those who believe that race exists and those who don't. I would like to know what is the generally accepted or most popular stance on the issue of race. Is it that, there is only one human race, and all genetic differences between us are shallow? Or, is it that, different human races exist biologically speaking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19241" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T14:21:38.280" Title="What is the mainstream position of biologists and anthropologists on the issue of human race?" Tags="|biology|anthropology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-05-13T00:39:22.613" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20581" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16582" CreationDate="2014-05-12T18:14:08.453" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I skimmed through the systematic review which became the basis of Dr. Heath's argument. It seems that much of the 11 studies included in this review were found to be low quality (&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006742.pub2/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006742.pub2/full&lt;/a&gt;). These authors suggest that we need more RCTs to weigh the benefits and harms of pharmacotherapy for mild hypertension and that &quot;the findings of this review are limited by the inability to get individual patient data from all the trials with patients in this subgroup&quot;, which you can see here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006742.pub2/tables#CD006742-tbl-0003&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006742.pub2/tables#CD006742-tbl-0003&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, these studies had follow-up measurements after 4-5 years but mild hypertension may have a longer-term effect on CVD development (i.e. via progression towards more severe hypertension (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sld.cu/servicios/hta/doc/hta_framigham.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sld.cu/servicios/hta/doc/hta_framigham.pdf&lt;/a&gt;), long-term exposure to slightly high blood pressure (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2335033&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2335033&lt;/a&gt;)). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19244" LastEditorUserId="19244" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T02:48:11.280" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T02:48:11.280" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20582" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-12T19:06:09.943" Score="8" ViewCount="414" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_of_the_future&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The race of the future is a theoretical composite race which will result from ongoing racial admixture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That article presents two contradictory views regarding whether humanity is becoming 'more homogenous' genetically or whether we are, in fact, diverging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has there been any empirical research or consensus on this? Is such an answer even possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15039" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:52:16.297" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:52:16.297" Title="Is humanity becoming more genetically homogenous?" Tags="|evolution|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3411" CreationDate="2014-05-12T22:15:17.303" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question can either be answered by yes and no, distinctively separated by your definition of &quot;professional&quot;.&#xA;Would I consider my doctor using big words, professional? I don't think so. At the same time can it be convenient, if I am with peers, to be able to share thoughts using big words as abbreviations of complex concepts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually it is &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goethe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Johann von Goethe&lt;/a&gt; versus &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_Bonnot_de_Condillac&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Etienne Bonnot de Condillac&lt;/a&gt; that nicely separate the two angles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goethe with his &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/3649/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (in limitation one recognises the master.) and Bonnot de Condillac stating that &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jargon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;every science requires a special language because every science has its own ideas&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5141" LastActivityDate="2014-05-12T22:15:17.303" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20567" CreationDate="2014-05-13T03:22:04.130" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a few papers assessing methods and results of acoustic measurements to determine the quality of watermelons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1537511004000467?np=y&quot;&gt;Diezma-Iglesias et al&lt;/a&gt; evaluated &quot;[d]ifferent acoustic parameters...for spectral characterisation: resonant frequency, maximum amplitude of the spectrum and band magnitude (BM) of the acoustic spectrum&quot; and found that &quot;[t]he BM parameters...were the best indicators of internal quality, especially the BM encompassed between 85 and 160 Hz (BM1), which showed the minimum overlap between good and hollow watermelons&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is also a recent &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0260877410002773?np=y&quot;&gt;literature review&lt;/a&gt; that examines different methods for &quot;nondestructive determination of internal quality in watermelon/melon&quot;, where they point out how acoustic methods are &quot;greatly influenced by the angle and location of the impact on the fruit surface&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the answer seems to be yes, you can deduce certain qualities of watermelons if you have an appropriate device to detect and analyze the sounds and tap on the watermelon at the right angle and location. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19244" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T03:22:04.130" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20588" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20806" CreationDate="2014-05-13T07:11:02.403" Score="15" ViewCount="3898" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife is treating all cold symptons in the family with a few spoons of freshly ground ginger juice mixed with honey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I don't mind an occasional placebo, drinking ginger juice is unpleasant because of the burning sensation while swallowing, especially with an inflamed throat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But apparently there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/natural-medicine/chinese/how-to-treat-the-common-cold-with-traditional-chinese-medicine.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;resources&lt;/a&gt; that appear to back my wife in being right, I could find an article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/article/how-ginger-can-help-heal-the-common-cold&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;examiner.com&lt;/a&gt; citing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&amp;amp;dbid=72&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;whfoods.com&lt;/a&gt;. Quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Immune Boosting Action&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ginger can not only be warming on a cold day, but can help promote healthy sweating, which is often helpful during colds and flus. A good sweat may do a lot more than simply assist detoxification. German researchers have recently found that sweat contains a potent germ-fighting agent that may help fight off infections. Investigators have isolated the gene responsible for the compound and the protein it produces, which they have named &lt;em&gt;dermicidin&lt;/em&gt;. Dermicidin is manufactured in the body's sweat glands, secreted into the sweat, and transported to the skin's surface where it provides protection against invading microorganisms, including bacteria such as &lt;em&gt;E. coli&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Staphylococcus aureus&lt;/em&gt; (a common cause of skin infections), and fungi, including &lt;em&gt;Candida albicans&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not convinced. Is there any solid evidence that ginger works against the common cold?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found an article called &amp;quot;Fresh ginger (&lt;em&gt;Zingiber officinale&lt;/em&gt;) has anti-viral activity against human respiratory syncytial virus in human respiratory tract cell lines&amp;quot; in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378874112007404&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Journal of Ethnopharmacology&lt;/a&gt;, but I am not sure how to interpret the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16419" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:10:24.877" Title="Does ginger help against the common cold?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|herbalism|common-cold|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20590" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12442" CreationDate="2014-05-13T09:54:41.890" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since weight loss requires consuming fewer calories, it makes little sense to consume more calories to do so.  (It goes against the grain, lol). Calorifically, 1 gm of fat contains 9 calories vs 4 cal for 1 g of carbohydrate or protein so consuming equivalent amounts of fat in mass to that of protein or carbohydrate will always result in consuming more than twice the calories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who lose weight on high fat diets only do so by consuming overall fewer calories, and not thru some magic burning effect. There have been numerous claims of magic fat burning substances, and coconut oil is just one of the latest.  Meta analyses of high fat diets show adverse health benefits with increased overall mortality from all causes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0055030&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Low-Carbohydrate Diets and All-Cause Mortality: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Hiroshi Noto mail, Atsushi Goto, Tetsuro Tsujimoto, Mitsuhiko Noda, Published: January 25, 2013, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0055030&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coconut oil, like other saturated fats is atherogenic, and should be avoided:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These results suggest that consuming an HFD containing even a normal number of calories can cause insulin resistance, hypertension, and adipose accumulation even without obesity. High amounts of fat in diets apparently accelerate the development of atherosclerosis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20832799&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;High-fat diet without excess calories induces metabolic disorders and enhances atherosclerosis in rabbits.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Waqar AB, Koike T, Yu Y, Inoue T, Aoki T, Liu E, Fan J. Atherosclerosis. 2010 Nov;213(1):148-55. doi: 10.1016/j.atherosclerosis.2010.07.051. Epub 2010 Aug 11.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coconut oil is also the drug of choice to induce experimental atherosclerosis in test animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1263442&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Experimental canine atherosclerosis and its prevention. The dietary induction of severe coronary, cerebral, aortic, and iliac atherosclerosis and its prevention by safflower oil.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, McCullagh KG, Ehrhart A, Butkus A., Lab Invest. 1976 Apr;34(4):394-405.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-15T00:25:48.300" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T00:25:48.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20591" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15952" CreationDate="2014-05-13T12:34:48.873" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's what Hill's bio on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.success.com/article/rich-man-poor-man#sthash.fJ2LQ3J0.dpuf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Success magazine's site&lt;/a&gt;, says about Hill's contribution to the war effort: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the United States entered World War I, he wrote to President&#xA;  Woodrow Wilson offering his services. Hill had interviewed him years&#xA;  earlier as part of his Carnegie research project when Wilson was&#xA;  president of Princeton University. Wilson took him up on the offer,&#xA;  putting Hill to work on a series of propaganda materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bio doesn't reveal the nature of the &quot;secret&quot; but one can easily imagine Hill composing something along the lines of &quot;If we believe the Hun can be beaten, then we have won&quot; or &quot;If we have faith in ourselves and our cause, then we will be victorious&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Success magazine is the successor publication to one begun by Hill and Stone in the 1950s, I think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19257" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-13T13:59:54.400" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T13:59:54.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20593" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-13T17:13:25.313" Score="4" ViewCount="293" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sometime ago a question featured on &lt;a href=&quot;https://travel.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;travel.se&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;a href=&quot;https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/9263/how-to-get-to-mythbusters-duct-tape-island&quot;&gt;Mythbusters' duct tape island&lt;/a&gt;. The footage of the island came from a database and when the guys were running on a so called &quot;deserted island&quot; they were actually meters away from a resort in Hawaii. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recently I watched an episode of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/airplane-repo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Airplane Repo&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, where suddenly the pilot ran out of fuel, indicated by the &quot;E&quot; on the compass. So a Repo pilot reads east as empty, yeah right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then you always have the &quot;extremely dangerous&quot; decent of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_Grylls&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bear Grylls&lt;/a&gt;, only to be caught up by a new camera man below. He gives the impression he is alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After finding out more, similar flaws, on Discovery Channel, I am now really wondering if there is anything for real on Discovery Channel, or is it more simply fictional entertainment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5141" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:52:01.993" LastActivityDate="2014-05-13T18:02:35.940" Title="Is everything staged on Discovery channel?" Tags="|television|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-05-13T19:18:23.590" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20597" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-14T04:43:26.940" Score="18" ViewCount="2668" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that the Australian people spend more on welfare than they do on defense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was claimed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2279787/federal-budget-2014-read-joe-hockeys-speech/?cs=2452&quot;&gt;Joe Hockey&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each year, the Government spends more on welfare than we spend on the education of our children, the health of our people or the defence of our nation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19269" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T15:48:24.870" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T04:42:44.270" Title="Does the Australian government spend more on welfare than on defense?" Tags="|government|politics|australia|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20597" CreationDate="2014-05-14T06:35:00.293" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.budget.gov.au/2014-15/content/overview/html/overview_31.htm&quot;&gt;2014 budget&lt;/a&gt; allocates $145.8 billion to social security and welfare and $24.2 billion to defense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-09/interactive-budget-2013-where-will-your-tax-go/4682404&quot;&gt;2013 budget&lt;/a&gt; this was $138 billion versus 22$ billion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course this is only the budget and not the real expenditures, but considering that there's one order of magnitude of difference between the two budget posts, even massive miscalculations won't make the defense spending go higher than the welfare spending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16700" LastActivityDate="2014-05-14T06:35:00.293" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20600" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20601" CreationDate="2014-05-14T07:10:56.823" Score="18" ViewCount="2360" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rose-lynnfisher.com/tears.html&quot;&gt;artist named Rose-Lynn Fisher has made photos of human tear drops under a microscope&lt;/a&gt;, and shows them to be different in their structure depending on how those tears were generated. Sad tears have a different appearance on a molecular level than happy tears, and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike the notorious work of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masaru_Emoto&quot;&gt;Masaru Emoto&lt;/a&gt;, who claimed that people's attitude towards water changed that water's molecular structure, the ideas of tears being different seems at least partially plausible. A person who was sad might have different hormones or levels of adrenalin, for example, than a person who was happy. Could some internal difference in the person crying find its way into the tears in any way that was observable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even though the artist claims to have used &quot;tools of science&quot;, it also seems equally likely that the artist has simply chosen from a wide sample of random images available from each set of tears and selected the ones that she felt matched her narrative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As art, it's nice enough. As science... is there anything to it? Could tears be physically different depending on the reason the human produced them? Is there any research the demonstrates what the differences are and why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7180" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-10-26T00:57:47.147" LastActivityDate="2016-10-26T00:57:47.147" Title="Are tears structurally or chemically different depending on the reason for crying?" Tags="|biology|masuru-emoto|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20600" CreationDate="2014-05-14T09:58:12.367" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tears&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a research conducted by the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, emotional tears from women have been found to reduce sexual arousal in men. Also, emotional tears are made up of a different chemical component than those evoked by eye irritants and can relay chemical messages to others.[14] The change in sex drive could be attributed to a drop in testosterone provoked by the tear chemicals, reducing aggression. In the animal world, it has been found that some blind mole rats rub tears all over their bodies as a strategy to keep aggressive mole rats away.[15]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tear composition varies from tear types.&lt;/strong&gt; Mainly, tears are composed of water, salts, antibodies and lysozymes (antibacterial enzymes). According to a discovery by Dr. William H. Frey II, a bio-chemist from St. Paul Ramsey medical center in Minnesota, the composition of tears caused by emotion differs from that of tears as a reaction to irritations, such as onion fumes, dust or allergy. &lt;strong&gt;Emotional tears are composed of more protein-based hormones&lt;/strong&gt;, such as prolactin, andrenocorticotropic, and leucine enkephalin (a natural pain killer), which is suggested to be the mechanism behind the experience of crying from emotion making an individual feel better.[16]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[14] Weaver,Janelle. Crying Women Turn Men Off”. Scientific American Mind, May/June 2011, p. 22, 6.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[15] Dell'Amore, Christine. &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/01/110106-womens-tears-sex-drive-turn-off-sexual-health-arousal-men-science/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot; Women's Tears Reduce Sex Drive in Men, Study Hints&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, “National Geographic, January 6, 2011, accessed June 6, 2011.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[16] Am J Ophthalmol. 1981 Oct;92(4):559-67&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19276" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-15T11:48:50.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20605" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-14T13:12:10.470" Score="5" ViewCount="1003" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a large number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Absorption-Photocatalyst-Mosquito-Killer-Light-Black-US-Plug/850319040.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mosquito killer traps&lt;/a&gt; available which claim to work on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.empowertraders.com/index.php/working-theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;principle that carbon dioxide generated from the reaction of titanium dioxide with UV light is used as a trap to lure and kill the mosquitoes&lt;/a&gt;. Is this setup effective in doing the job of entrapping even those rare, stray and scarce mosquitoes you might encounter in a room? and does this principle even sufficiently produce carbon dioxide to simulate human breath which they claim attracts mosquitos?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastEditorDisplayName="user11777" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T11:31:52.503" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T11:31:52.503" Title="Is carbon dioxide from a mosquito trap potent enough to attract mosquitoes?" Tags="|environmental-health|entomology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20609" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-15T17:34:17.447" Score="4" ViewCount="239" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some documentaries, e.g. by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Attenborough&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;David Attenborough&lt;/a&gt;, that dramatize the life of proto-humans (e.g. Neanderthals, etc..)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these documentaries show/dramatize the proto-humans communicating in a proto-language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is if this proto-language (as used in the dramatization) has any basis in research on what this proto-language could have been or sounded like, or is it just acting for the purposes of adding realism to the dramatization?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potential options I can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Indeed there has been research on proto-forms of human language and these results have been used in the documentaries&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There has been research on the proto-forms of language but these have not been used as basis for the documentaries&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No results are known on proto-forms of human language (and in extension none of these could have been used in documentaries)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research has been done but no results are provided that can be used (eg in documentaries).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are plausible speculations about forms of proto-language but not research results&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;??&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19217" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:38:26.670" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:38:26.670" Title="How correct are some dramatized documentaries about proto-humans?" Tags="|history|language|anthropology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20610" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-15T19:30:07.030" Score="6" ViewCount="1492" Body="&lt;p&gt;My girlfriend has told me that the varieties of toothpaste that are actually paste and have some granularity to them (as opposed to gel varieties) get rid of cold sores if applied early in the sore's appearance and regularly afterward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried it, and I must say it seems to work, at least faster than Carmex or even over the counter things from the pharmacy, and my google searching has yielded a few articles also claiming it works,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://whatallergy.com/2011-02/fighting-cold-sores&quot;&gt;http://whatallergy.com/2011-02/fighting-cold-sores&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yumyucky.com/2012/08/natural-cures-home-remedies-for-cold-sores-and-fever-blisters-hsv1.html&quot;&gt;http://www.yumyucky.com/2012/08/natural-cures-home-remedies-for-cold-sores-and-fever-blisters-hsv1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but I'm wondering if this really is something I can bank on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify, I &lt;em&gt;am&lt;/em&gt; talking about the herpes lip blister variety, and I realize the condition is overall incurable. I'm not asking if toothpaste can cure the condition permanently, I'm just asking if it can make one individual outbreak dissipate faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks in advance!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18825" LastEditorUserId="18825" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T15:55:26.667" LastActivityDate="2016-06-17T16:53:03.923" Title="Does toothpaste get rid of cold sores?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20611" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-15T19:53:08.733" Score="7" ViewCount="4726" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apple recommends installing pairs of memory sticks with matched sizes to allow for dual-channel memory interface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some people believe that it's also important not only to match the sizes of the two RAM sticks, but to install what manufacturers sell as &amp;quot;matched pair kits&amp;quot;. Others disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=392843&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=392843&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The tolerances of two single memory modules can be different. With a matched pair the tolerances are supposed to be close to the same if not the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think their is a difference, at least in the real world. Two modules of the same part number should work just fine. Matched pairs seems to be little more than marketing and paying a 'tax' for intangible 'peace of mind'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get a matched pair by buying 2 singles of the same ram too..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dslreports.com/faq/9231&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.dslreports.com/faq/9231&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two modules of the same model/brand purchased from the same vendor at the same time is essentially as likely to work properly in a dual channel configuration as is a dual channel kit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_advantages_to_buying_DDR_RAM_in_packaged_pairs?classic=true&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_advantages_to_buying_DDR_RAM_in_packaged_pairs?classic=true&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typically the chips are the same production batch and that increases the likelihood that the paired modules will work approximately at the same speed, therefore being detected (and usable) as dual-channel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some people believe that buying two individual sticks of RAM from the same manufacturer with the same specifications is no different than buying a paired kit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some people believe that buying a paired/matched kit provides some performance or reliability benefit as compared to buying two individual sticks of RAM from the same manufacturer with the same specifications.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-18T16:48:32.673" Title="Does using a matched pair of memory sticks provide any benefit?" Tags="|computers|hardware|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4724" CreationDate="2014-05-15T21:17:32.473" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best evidence we currently have suggests that NCGS is probably not a real entity. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/non-celiac-gluten-sensitivity/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Steven Novella - Neurologicablog&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is based on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23648697&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2013 study&lt;/a&gt; that concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a placebo-controlled, cross-over rechallenge study, we found no evidence of specific or dose-dependent effects of gluten in patients with NCGS (non-celiac gluten sensitivity) placed diets low in FODMAPs (fermentable, oligo-, di-, monosaccharides, and polyols).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggests that NCGS is not a real clinical entity, and that those that have self-diagnosed are either borderline celiac, subject to noncebo effects and confirmation bias, or experiencing symptoms due to some other food exposure, with FODMAPs being one possibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This result seems to conflict with the same group's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21224837&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2011 result&lt;/a&gt;. They discuss this at length in the 2013 report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several key differences in study design might have potentially influenced the results. First, in contrast to the previous use of supplements with the habitual diet, food intake was carefully controlled. All food provided was low in FODMAPs and gluten-free to reduce “background noise” and control for changes in participants’ usual diet, particularly intake of other potential dietary triggers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The restriction of all dairy products and food chemicals was also employed in the rechallenge trial in order to control other putative triggers of gut and other symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third difference was the utilization of a crossover design to reduce the influence of confounders and increase power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible that the gluten used in the current study was different from that in the first (suppliers were different). The gluten content was similar, but the non-gluten proteins were not characterized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, gluten might induce symptoms only in the presence of a moderate content of FODMAPs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T20:07:54.867" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4909" CreationDate="2014-05-16T15:13:34.767" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A point which no one has yet brought up is where the odometer cable is attached. If it is attached after the gearbox, then it will go forwards or backwards. If it is attached &lt;strong&gt;before&lt;/strong&gt; the gearbox, then no matter whether you travel forwards or backwards, it will always move in a positive direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madehow.com/Volume-7/Speedometer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on madehow.com, speedometers attached to the back of the transmission started to be used from 1921 (prior to this they were attached to one of the wheel axles, which would allow for reversal of the mechanism)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Hairy's point that mechanical odometers are automatically susceptible to reversal is not the case. I can't find any definite evidence for the percentage split between wheel attachments and engine attachments, though, but as @Oddthinking pointed out, it has been made moot anyway with the introduction of digital odometers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="619" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T15:13:34.767" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20618" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20619" CreationDate="2014-05-16T15:22:44.833" Score="1" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL99D8EA34B6D0AEA2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a series of TV adverts&lt;/a&gt; on Czech mobile service provider T-Mobile. The adverts featured Czech jokes on Chuck Norris and he himself played there. But wasn't it a twin, which would allow the ads to get much cheaper. So, where is the truth, please?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(I hope the question is on-topic and reasonably well stated. If not, please let me know. It's my first time asking here.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11345" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-05-16T18:09:14.637" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T18:09:14.637" Title="Did Chuck Norris participate in Czech T-Mobile adverts?" Tags="|advertising|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20618" CreationDate="2014-05-16T16:55:55.013" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/article/chuck-norris-hired-to-make-czechs-talk-by-t-mobile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=T-mobile+chuck+norris+ads&amp;amp;oq=T-mobile+chuck+norris+ads&amp;amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.5146j0j7&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;es_sm=121&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8#q=T-mobile+chuck+norris+hired&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dozens of others&lt;/a&gt; Chuck Norris was indeed hired by T-Mobile to appear in their television advertisements on Czech TV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T16:55:55.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20621" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20625" CreationDate="2014-05-16T18:01:28.260" Score="12" ViewCount="10143" Body="&lt;p&gt;This link came in an email that was getting passed around the office today:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vincelewis.net/unsoldcars.html&quot;&gt;http://www.vincelewis.net/unsoldcars.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The premise is that car manufacturers, not wanting to dilute their inventory to a point that would push supply up and price down, are parking their inventory in massive lots where they'll sit for an indefinite amount of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the site doesn't exactly present the information in a convincing fashion, the photographs are intriguing. It seems that the cars parked near a port are probably waiting to be loaded onto a ship for export, but the photos of cars parked at inland locations are puzzling and for these it's more difficult to create an alternative explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why would car manufacturers not scale down production if indeed their inventory is getting sent to some auto purgatory far away, never to be sold? It seems prohibitively expensive to keep manufacturing inventory that won't bring in future revenue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's going on in these photos?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18178" LastEditorUserId="18178" LastEditDate="2014-05-16T18:50:37.377" LastActivityDate="2022-07-28T11:30:32.317" Title="Are there lots worldwide filled with thousands of unsold new cars left to ruin?" Tags="|economics|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20623" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-16T18:42:34.407" Score="2" ViewCount="218" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often heard that charging a cell phone and calling in the same time may cause the cell phone to explode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=589238621163598&amp;amp;set=a.191858267568304.47981.100002323972762&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Facebook page&lt;/a&gt; that has pictures of what is claimed to be one such example.  [Caution: pictures may be distressing and may not be safe-for-work.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The French text that goes with the picture pretty much tells the story of a child answering his phone while it was charging. The text describes some unexpected symptoms that are a bit unexpected: he suffered a heart attack, his face changed color and he received a burnt hand .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you just Google &quot;cell phone charging danger&quot;, you will get many hits telling the same kind of story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can mobile phone explode if you use the phone and charge simultaneously?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16332" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-17T09:42:30.110" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T09:42:30.110" Title="Is the risk of explosion increased by calling and charging a cell phone at the same time?" Tags="|safety|mobile-phones|electronics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4724" CreationDate="2014-05-16T19:47:14.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least one study found that there was a placebo-controlled reaction to BREAD (sliced bread, muffins) in a non-Celiac group: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21224837&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21224837&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;OBJECTIVES: Despite increased prescription of a gluten-free diet for&#xA;  gastrointestinal symptoms in individuals who do not have celiac&#xA;  disease, there is minimal evidence that suggests that gluten is a&#xA;  trigger. The aims of this study were to determine whether gluten&#xA;  ingestion can induce symptoms in non-celiac individuals and to examine&#xA;  the mechanism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;METHODS:A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled rechallenge&#xA;  trial was undertaken in patients with irritable bowel syndrome in whom&#xA;  celiac disease was excluded and who were symptomatically controlled on&#xA;  a gluten-free diet. Participants received either gluten or placebo in&#xA;  the form of two bread slices plus one muffin per day with a&#xA;  gluten-free diet for up to 6 weeks. Symptoms were evaluated using a&#xA;  visual analog scale and markers of intestinal inflammation, injury,&#xA;  and immune activation were monitored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RESULTS: A total of 34 patients (aged 29-59 years, 4 men) completed&#xA;  the study as per protocol. Overall, 56% had human leukocyte antigen&#xA;  (HLA)-DQ2 and/or HLA-DQ8. Adherence to diet and supplements was very&#xA;  high. Of 19 patients (68%) in the gluten group, 13 reported that&#xA;  symptoms were not adequately controlled compared with 6 of 15 (40%) on&#xA;  placebo (P=0.0001; generalized estimating equation). On a visual&#xA;  analog scale, patients were significantly worse with gluten within 1&#xA;  week for overall symptoms (P=0.047), pain (P=0.016), bloating&#xA;  (P=0.031), satisfaction with stool consistency (P=0.024), and&#xA;  tiredness (P=0.001). Anti-gliadin antibodies were not induced. There&#xA;  were no significant changes in fecal lactoferrin, levels of celiac&#xA;  antibodies, highly sensitive C-reactive protein, or intestinal&#xA;  permeability. There were no differences in any end point in&#xA;  individuals with or without DQ2/DQ8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSIONS: &quot;Non-celiac gluten intolerance&quot; may exist, but no clues&#xA;  to the mechanism were elucidated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T19:47:14.543" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20621" CreationDate="2014-05-16T20:08:47.173" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are there lots full of unsold cars? &lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are those cars being left to ruin? &lt;strong&gt;Almost certainly not.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/unsold-cars-around-the-world-2009-2&quot;&gt;much more reliable story about lots full of unsold cars, from Business Insider&lt;/a&gt;. However you should notice an important thing: it's from 2009 - when the most recent recession was just getting started, and car sales were plummetting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next thing to notice is that most of the pictures are of working ports. Ports generally have lots of cars parked around them at the best of times, because of the way they work. A ship shows up, and all the cars are unloaded (often thousands of them). Then the cars are dispersed gradually to dealers served by the port. A thousand cars certainly isn't of itself a sign that there is a surplus of cars. It may just mean a ship recently arrived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Business Insider article points to the stockpile growing (because of the recession), and notes that some places are being used to park unsold cars that wouldn't usually be - test tracks for example. However it also contains a description of how the problem is fixed. Car manufacturers import fewer cars, and ultimately manufacture fewer (and lay off workers or close factories). But doing this takes time, and can be damaging if the surplus turns out to be short lived. There is nothing there to indicate that cars are being trashed, or deliberately left to ruin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2014-05-17T01:40:05.350" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T01:40:05.350" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20626" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-16T21:40:36.387" Score="3" ViewCount="173" Body="&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_of_Antwerp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; it is stated that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The meridan of Antwerp is one of several prime meridians that have been used for geographic referencing. It is running through the city of Antwerp, in Flanders, Belgium, and forming the 0° longitude upon which some Belgian maps were based. &lt;strong&gt;This is also where Gerardus Mercator published the first modern atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, first printed in 1570.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't however find any reference backing this. On the image on Wikipedia itself the prime meridian seems to be based in the middle of the atlantic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Azgl9.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Orbis terrarum&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5141" LastActivityDate="2014-05-16T21:40:36.387" Title="Was the Meridian of Antwerp indeed the prime meridian of Mercator's Theatrum Orbis Terrarum?" Tags="|history|geography|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20611" CreationDate="2014-05-16T23:56:35.317" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am going to assume that the memory in question has a manufacturer's warranty, as all memory I have ever seen does, and that the memory is warranted to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclocking-guide-part-1,1379-4.html&quot;&gt;perform within the specifications&lt;/a&gt; given by the manufacturer, which I think is reasonable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer this question, we need to look a bit closer at those specifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the quantity of memory, and the memory &lt;em&gt;type&lt;/em&gt; (such as DDR2, DDR3, etc.), RAM is sold with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Understanding-RAM-Timings/26&quot;&gt;varying speeds&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Understanding-RAM-Timings/26/2&quot;&gt;varying timings&lt;/a&gt;. These timings specify to the computer's memory controller how quickly the RAM is able to interact with the system in various ways. For the speed, which is expressed in MHz, a higher number is faster, and for the timings, which are expressed in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycles_per_instruction&quot;&gt;clock cycles&lt;/a&gt;, lower numbers are faster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each stick of memory you buy will have &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Presence_Detect&quot;&gt;an SPD chip&lt;/a&gt; in addition to the memory. The SPD contains the speed and timings that the manufacturer has rated the RAM to run at. It may contain &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/gaming/extreme-memory-profile-xmp.html&quot;&gt;more than one profile&lt;/a&gt;, a set of speed/timings, for use in enthusiast or high performance systems. The computer's BIOS uses these to automatically configure the system to use the RAM, though many systems allow the user to override these values, e.g. to overclock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where things get interesting is what happens when you put memory in a system, where each stick of RAM has different speed or timings. In this case, the system will &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2010/07/what-are-the-rules-on-mixing-two-different-types-of-ram/&quot;&gt;run all of the RAM at the speed and timings of the &lt;em&gt;slowest&lt;/em&gt; stick&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably what is at issue with the claim that matched pairs may have performance or reliability benefits over otherwise identical single sticks. Matched pairs of sticks are guaranteed by the manufacturer to have identical speed and timings. But pairs purchased separately may not have identical speed and timings, especially if the buyer is not careful when making the purchase.&#xA;By way of example, consider these two 8GB RAM sticks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233218&quot;&gt;CMZ8GX3M1A1600C10&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233298&quot;&gt;CMZ8GX3M1A1600C9&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time of writing, these are the same price, run at the same speed (1600) and look virtually identical except for the last bit of the model number. But one has slightly slower timings (10-10-10-27) than the other (9-9-9-24). It's easy to make a mistake and buy the &quot;wrong&quot; one if a person buys them separately. If one used one of each of these sticks, the computer would run both sticks at the slower timings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if one does purchase two of the same stick, it's perfectly reasonable to expect them to perform exactly the same as if they were sold in a pair. There's no credible evidence that I can find to suggest otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where this expectation breaks down is with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclocking-guide-part-1,1379-2.html&quot;&gt;overclocking&lt;/a&gt;. As noted earlier, manufacturers only warrant their products to run at their rated speeds/timings, and if someone chooses to run the product outside those specifications, all bets are off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only real advantage I was able to find to buying RAM in matched pairs was that it can be slightly cheaper than buying the same sticks separately. For example, at the time of writing, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233299&quot;&gt;matched pair&lt;/a&gt; of the 1600C9 sticks shown above is $15 cheaper than two of the single sticks, and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233246&quot;&gt;matched pair&lt;/a&gt; of the 1600C10 sticks is $10 cheaper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7866" LastEditorUserId="7866" LastEditDate="2014-05-17T01:12:19.420" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T01:12:19.420" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20605" CreationDate="2014-05-17T05:12:38.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://labs.russell.wisc.edu/mosquitosite/carbon-dioxide-baited-mosquito-traps/&quot;&gt;This link&lt;/a&gt; has reviewed several papers related to this technique , while they seem to agree that these traps do attract the mosquitos , but question the effectiveness in terms of the key outcome i.e reduction in mosquito biting rates, apparently what little evidnece exists points that there is no reduction in mosquito bites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results of studies that are designed in this way indicate that traps purchased by individual homeowners usually do not work to reduce human biting (see references below).  For example, Mosquito Magnets do catch 1000′s of mosquitoes, but this does not change the biting rates in yards containing these devices.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors of the above link tried to measure CO2 levels from the trap and found no such emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastActivityDate="2014-05-17T05:12:38.387" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20632" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-17T10:07:54.373" Score="6" ViewCount="625" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanarthritis.org/portal/loader.php?seite=can_cartilage_heal?&quot;&gt;American Arthritis Society describes&lt;/a&gt; a treatment (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20238330&quot;&gt;Continuous Passive Movement&lt;/a&gt;) that helps heal cartilage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results were as follows: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;–  52% rate of healing when using movement without&#xA;      strain &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;–  4% rate of healing in cases of routine use and strain&#xA;      based on the individual comfort level, or immobilization&#xA;      by a plaster cast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the page had no citations or sources, and I was not able to find much further information about &quot;movement without strain&quot; therapy. I thought that if such a treatment that sped up the healing of cartilage more than tenfold existed, it would be listed on all the major health websites but I could not find any mention of any similar therapy on any health websites. I also could not find more information about the American Arthritis Society. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a legitimate therapy? Is the American Arthritis Society a credible source? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19321" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-05-17T17:20:46.840" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T20:21:39.553" Title="Can &quot;Continuous Passive Movement&quot; help cartilage healing?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20634" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-17T22:11:40.413" Score="11" ViewCount="505" Body="&lt;p&gt;We can see that cities like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/outdoor-smoking-ban-backed-by-melbourne-city-traders-20140131-31ss1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Melbourne are pushing far the smoking bans&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often smoking is compared to car pollution, and is said to be insignificant&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/12481.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this experiment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A turbo diesel 2 litre engine was started and left idling for 30 minutes in the garage, with the doors closed, after which the doors were left open for four hours. The car was fuelled with low sulphur fuel.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Three filter cigarettes were then lit up sequentially, and left smouldering for a further 30 minutes. The nicotine and tar content of each cigarette was 1 mg and 11.2 mg, respectively.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A portable analyser took readings every two minutes during the experiments.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Combined particulate levels in the first hour after the engine had been started measured 88 ug/m3. Those recorded in the first hour after the cigarettes had been lit measured 830 ug/m3: &lt;strong&gt;10&lt;/strong&gt; times greater.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quality of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/opinions/14632&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;comments&lt;/a&gt; on this article isn't satisfying, most of are personal opinions, with no added-value, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These findings have already been discredited...by &lt;em&gt;common sense&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myhealthbeijing.com/pollution/is-pm2-5-from-air-pollution-the-same-as-from-smoking/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; or this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.otago.ac.nz/wellington/otago028661.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study page 11&lt;/a&gt; can confirm the importance of tobacco smoke as a local or global pollution source&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when searching more, to know more their exact contribution in PM2.5 or PM1.0, I couldn't find better than a big 53% of PM1 where tobacco smoke is included:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ydOdr.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PM1.0 emission sources&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gZCLq.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons composition &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airparif.asso.fr/_pdf/publications/inventaire-emissions-idf-2010-rapport-130731.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Residential (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citepa.org/images/III-1_Rapports_Inventaires/secten_avril2013_indB_sec.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;emissions inventory - fr&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Domestic use of paint (except 060107) 060104  &#xA;Paint application - Wood 060107  &#xA;Other applications of paint (non-industrial) 060109  &#xA;Application of glues and adhesives 060405  &#xA;Domestic solvent use (other than paint) 060408  &#xA;Domestic use of pharmaceuticals 060411  &#xA;Facilities Regrigeration and air conditioning, using halocarbons or SF6 060502  &#xA;Implementation of foam (except 060304) 060504  &#xA;Aerosol 060 506  &#xA;Other uses of HFC, N2O, NH3, PFC, SF6 060508  &#xA;Using Fireworks Fireworks 060601  &#xA;tobacco consumption 060602  &#xA;shoes use 060603  &#xA;military activities 080100     &#xA;Special equipment - Hobbies, gardening 0809xx   &#xA;Open fires 090702 green waste&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Tertiary, commercial and institutional&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Commercial and institutional 0201xx   &#xA;Repairvehicles  060,102  &#xA;Paint application - Wood 060107   &#xA;Dry Cleaning 060202   &#xA;Preparation of vehicles bodies 060409   &#xA;anesthesia 060501 &#xA;Facilities Regrigeration and air conditioning, using halocarbons or SF6 060502 060 503    &#xA;Implementation of foam (except 060304) 060504   &#xA;Fire extinguishers 060505   &#xA;Aerosol 060 506   &#xA;Electrical Equipment 060507  &#xA;Using Fireworks Fireworks 060601  &#xA;military activities 080100 &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can see that, many emissions more or less insignificant, form the 53% that is globally greater than road traffic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked airparif (source of the charts) about the importance of tobacco smoke pollution source:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;They gently replied me: (translated from French)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Particulate emissions in Ile-de-France for the year 2010 related to smoking are estimated at 110 tons. These particles emitted from cigarette smoke are considered to be PM2.5. For comparison, emissions from road traffic P2.5 for the same year is 3900 tonnes. Particulate emissions related to tobacco consumption therefore represent almost 3% of regional emissions of PM2.5 *, the average share may be higher locally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*: the person forgot &quot;from road traffic&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have no specific document mentioning this figure.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  You can quote as a personal communication Airparif.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The elements used to calculate come from two sources:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Centre Interprofessionnel d’Etudes sur la Pollution Atmosphérique CITEPA - OMINEA : Organisation et Méthodes des Inventaires Nationaux des Emissions Atmosphériques en France 9ème édition, 2012 (p.883) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citepa.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.citepa.org/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  - Observatoire français des drogues et des toxicomanies OFDT - Séries statistiques annuelles - Vente de tabac et cigarettes evolution depuis 1990, 1990 à 2010, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ofdt.fr/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ofdt.fr/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;links: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ofdt.fr/BDD_len/seristat/00006.xhtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tobacco sales - fr&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.citepa.org/images/III-1_Rapports_Inventaires/secten_avril2013_indB_sec.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;emissions inventory - fr&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3% of car exhaust, so it would represent more or less the same of Residential and Tertiary emissions of PM2.5 (fireworks, aerosols, paints, dry cleaners,...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a country like France, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/tobacco/surveillance/policy/country_profile/fra.pdf?ua=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;35%&lt;/a&gt; of people smoke, and where we can roughly estimate they would smoke 10% of their car ride, then the contribution in traffic jams of tobacco in combustion could be &lt;strong&gt;10&lt;/strong&gt; /3 (3 cigs were used) * .35 * .1 = 12% of cars exhausts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another way to see it, and this is probably more like that the 110 tons/year of tobacco smoke were calculated, is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ofdt.fr/BDD_len/seristat/00006.xhtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tobacco sales - fr&lt;/a&gt;, 60 billions of cigarettes were bought in 2013, we could say 10 or a bit less &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.fr/search?q=region%20parienne%20population&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in the area concerned&lt;/a&gt; (1/6th of total population), and 110e6/10e9 = 0.011 g, this concurs with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myhealthbeijing.com/pollution/is-pm2-5-from-air-pollution-the-same-as-from-smoking/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;barely the equivalent of one cigarette which has 12 mg on average&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how would you interpret these figures?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Are there enough information or not, since tobacco smoke contribution in PM1.0 and less isn't measured?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;What could be the exact proportion of the contribution of tobacco smoke in the air of midly smoking city (30% of the population)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8708" LastEditorUserId="8708" LastEditDate="2015-12-18T19:45:24.470" LastActivityDate="2015-12-18T19:45:24.470" Title="Do cigarettes emit three times as much particulates as an idling diesel engine?" Tags="|environmental-health|smoking|pollution|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20635" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-17T22:12:25.907" Score="6" ViewCount="467" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read about the &quot;Huamn Pincushion&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://ramenandpickles.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/human-pincushion-mirin-dajo/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mirin Dajo&lt;/a&gt; who used to apparently pierce his own torso on stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the reports seem to agree, that this was not fake. X-Ray images and video footage seem to support that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the explanations is that he slowly created &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fistula&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fistulas&lt;/a&gt; through his body, which enabled him to push a sword through without loss of blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: is it possible or feasible to create a fistula through your torso?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13971" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:10:00.420" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:10:00.420" Title="Is a fistula through a torso possible?" Tags="|physiology|stage-magic|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20638" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20639" CreationDate="2014-05-18T10:38:45.860" Score="6" ViewCount="1484" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent issue of the Swiss popular science magazine &quot;Beobachter Natur&quot; contains an article about microbes in which the following claims are made:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;75% of the cells in our body are non-human, however&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The total weight of these microbial cells is only 1.25kg (in the body of an adult)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any reference for these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19329" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-18T13:20:50.953" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T13:22:04.497" Title="Are 75% of cells in the human body non-human?" Tags="|biology|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-05-18T13:22:25.390" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20638" CreationDate="2014-05-18T12:46:53.910" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, and actually the percentage is estimated to be even higher than that. An article in &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-humans-carry-more-bacterial-cells-than-human-ones/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the bacteria living inside you would fill a half-gallon jug; there are 10 times more bacterial cells in your body than human cells, according to Carolyn Bohach, a microbiologist at the University of Idaho (U.I.), along with other estimates from scientific studies. (Despite their vast numbers, bacteria don't take up that much space because bacteria are far smaller than human cells.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; provides some references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is estimated that 500 to 1,000 species of bacteria live in the human gut&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome#cite_note-Sears-5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[5]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome#cite_note-Pappas-6&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[6]&lt;/a&gt; Bacterial cells are much smaller than human cells, and there are at least ten times as many bacteria as human cells in the body (approximately 10^14 versus 10^13).&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome#cite_note-Savage1977-7&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[7]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome#cite_note-Berg1996-8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[8]&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;The mass of microorganisms are estimated to account for 1-3% total body mass.&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_microbiome#cite_note-NIH_HMP-9&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[9]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[5] Science, 324: 1190 - 1192. doi:10.1126/science.1171700&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[6] Pappas S. (2009). Your Body Is a habitat ... for Bacteria. Science Now Daily News&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[7] Savage, D. C. (1977). &amp;quot;Microbial Ecology of the Gastrointestinal Tract&amp;quot;. Annual Review of Microbiology 31: 107–33. doi:10.1146/annurev.mi.31.100177.000543. PMID 334036.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[8] Berg, R. (1996). &amp;quot;The indigenous gastrointestinal microflora&amp;quot;. Trends in Microbiology 4 (11): 430–5. doi:10.1016/0966-842X(96)10057-3. PMID 8950812.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[9] MacDougall, Raymond (13 June 2012). &amp;quot;NIH Human Microbiome Project defines normal bacterial makeup of the body&amp;quot;. NIH. Retrieved 2012-09-20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16419" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T13:22:04.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20640" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7154" CreationDate="2014-05-18T13:25:58.470" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A recent carefully conducted study clearly says there is no relationship&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fabian's answer addresses the consensus and the problems with the reported methods (or their lack) of the Chinese studies quoted by the anti-fluoride movement. But a recently reported and carefully conducted study from New Zealand specifically studies the reported link between intake of fluoride and intelligence and concludes there is no link at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the pubmed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24832151&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;abstract&lt;/a&gt; (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Objectives. This study aimed to clarify the relationship between community water fluoridation (CWF) and IQ. Methods. We conducted a prospective study of a general population sample of those born in Dunedin, New Zealand, between April 1, 1972, and March 30, 1973 (95.4% retention of cohort after 38 years of prospective follow-up).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Results. No significant differences in IQ because of fluoride exposure were noted. These findings held after adjusting for potential confounding variables, including sex, socioeconomic status, breastfeeding, and birth weight (as well as educational attainment for adult IQ outcomes). Conclusions. These findings do not support the assertion that fluoride in the context of CWF programs is neurotoxic. &lt;em&gt;Associations between very high fluoride exposure and low IQ reported in previous studies may have been affected by confounding, particularly by urban or rural status.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full paper is in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301857&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Journal of Public Health&lt;/a&gt; but is paywalled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key conclusion is that, when careful consideration of potential confounding variables is done, there is no relationship between fluoride intake and IQ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is very easy for shoddily conducted studies to throw up false relationships and this carefully conducted study finds no relationship &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; suggests what some of the potential confounders in previous studies might have been.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T13:25:58.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-18T15:11:05.070" Score="1" ViewCount="100" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a karting seat that is made from carbon-fiber here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ribtect.com/RibtectSeat_Original.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ribtect.com/RibtectSeat_Original.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On that page, it claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To Improve Performance:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  The Ribtect seat helps the chassis and driver to work better. Keeping the kart rolling free and providing a better launch out of the turns. Connecting more of the kart to the driver for a better feel of the chassis. Lowering the fatigue level of the driver, allowing for better concentration and improved consistency and lower lap times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;To Prevent Rib Injury:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  The Ribtect Seat is designed to reduce the amount of rib injuries to karters. Thus, keeping more people involved and happy with the great sport of karting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if these claims are significant?  Does such a seat provide a significant benefit to rib protection as compared to using a good vest like &lt;a href=&quot;http://kracer.com.au/other-stuff/bengio-bumper.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;?  Does such a seat provide any significant performance benefit (e.g. more than 0.25% faster) in outdoor karting such as at &lt;a href=&quot;https://simracewaydrivingschool.com/organizer/simraceway-performance-karting-center/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sonoma raceway&lt;/a&gt; for a driver near the top of the field in Senior &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotax_Max_Challenge&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rotax&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I spoke with another dealer that does not sell these carbon fiber seats and they indicated that on the performance side the Original Equipment Manufacturer's (OEM's) seat that came with the kart should give the best performance since it was designed for the kart chassis specifically and that regarding rib protection, using a good rib cage (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bengiohst.it&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;such as the one they sell&lt;/a&gt;) is much more effective that the benefit any seat can provide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8467" LastActivityDate="2014-05-18T15:11:05.070" Title="Does a carbon fiber seat help karting performance and protect ribs?" Tags="|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20648" CreationDate="2014-05-19T12:39:07.380" Score="7" ViewCount="514" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wGGGf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;The picture I’m talking about&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Saviez-vous que&amp;thinsp;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;En 2013, un homme a acheté une maison à côté de celle de son ex-femme juste pour qu’elle puisse voir tous les jours la statue géante du doigt d’honneur qu’il y a installé.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this is fake, and I’m sure I’ve already seen this “story” a few times already with different dates, but I can’t find the source, just this image with different watermarks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roughly translated from French:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did you know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2013, a man bought a house next to his ex-wife’s just so that she&#xA;  would see a middle-finger sculpture pointed at her house every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16629" LastEditorUserId="2974" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T06:19:28.987" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T06:19:28.987" Title="Did a man buy a house to show a middle finger sculpture to his ex-wife?" Tags="|divorce|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20645" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26827" CreationDate="2014-05-19T13:10:20.427" Score="9" ViewCount="1129" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen some people claim that dogs can be &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vegsoc.org/facts/veggiedogs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;kept healthy on a vegetarian diet&lt;/a&gt;, while other people &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2012/01/19/vegetarianism-for-pets.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;emphatically deny this&lt;/a&gt; and yet more say &lt;a href=&quot;http://pets.webmd.com/features/vegetarian-diet-dogs-cats&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;No! Unless you're really careful&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can dogs be kept healthy — not just alive, but &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;healthy&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; — on a vegetarian (or vegan, or pescatarian) diet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been curious about this for some time, but the answers I've seen have been contradictory, often based on the author's own diet as a human, and in many cases either unsourced or from clearly biased groups like PETA and The Vegetarian Society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One consistent part of both &quot;yes&quot; and &quot;no&quot; answers is the need for taurine in their diet, but apparently this is available in synthetic form. I am therefore also curious about the effectiveness of synthetic dietary supplements for whatever would be missing from an &quot;natural&quot; vegetarian/vegan/pescatarian diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm especially interested in references to scientific papers on this topic, if they are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19054" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-02-21T13:06:14.563" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T13:06:14.563" Title="Is it possible for dogs to have a vegetarian diet?" Tags="|nutrition|vegetarianism|dogs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20646" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20582" CreationDate="2014-05-19T13:21:21.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1893020/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This study on genetic diversity between populations&lt;/a&gt; suggests that separate populations are still genetically distinct from each other. Unfortunately, I haven't found a good accessible paper on how this has varied historically, although the scientists do seem to proceed from the viewpoint that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1288178/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;greater genetic variation is tied to an &quot;older&quot; historical population within an area&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T13:21:21.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20644" CreationDate="2014-05-19T16:09:09.823" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, people do things like that. Here's an excerpt from an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/23985382/man-buys-the-house-next-to-ex-wife-erects-giant-middle-finger-statue&quot;&gt;article about this specific case&lt;/a&gt; on a local news site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alan Markovitz recently moved into the home where the statue was&#xA;  erected, which happens to be next to the home where his ex-wife now&#xA;  lives with her new lover, whom she reportedly had an affair with while&#xA;  being married to Markovitz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Markovitz tells Fox 2's Randy Wimbley his plan was to get even with&#xA;  the ex-wife's new lover, and never meant for the matter be made&#xA;  public. However, it soon grabbed local attention when the ex-wife's&#xA;  daughter posted a picture of the statue on twitter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The installation of the statue also included a spotlight to keep the&#xA;  message illuminated at all hours of the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1134" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T16:12:44.357" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T16:12:44.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20649" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-19T17:29:14.527" Score="16" ViewCount="22054" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw a new &quot;health advice&quot; meme on Facebook today:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IMBbs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please remember it is dangerous to cut an onion and try to use it to cook the next day, it becomes highly poisonous for even a single night and creates toxic bacteria which may cause adverse stomach infections because of excess bile secretions and even food poisoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the terrible grammar and punctuation, the claims at a glance seem largely ridiculous--cooking would kill any bacteria, for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the claim that an onion becomes dangerous, specifically for cooking (as opposed to eating it raw) within a day of being cut open?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T12:45:22.790" Title="Do onions become toxic or otherwise dangerous within a day of a being cut open?" Tags="|nutrition|safety|toxicology|cooking|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20650" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20684" CreationDate="2014-05-19T18:20:54.490" Score="35" ViewCount="20189" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears to be popular to claim that the Qur'an predicted the speed of light before it was scientifically well understood. Although none of the sources state that outright, that is what they imply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moslems (Muslims) believe that angels … move at any speed … up to the speed of light. It is the angels who carry out God's orders. …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Quran 32.5] (Allah) Rules the cosmic affair from the heavens to the Earth. Then this affair travels to Him a distance in one day, at a measure of one thousand years of what you count.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[P]eople back then measured the distances … by how much time they needed to walk.… [I]n this verse the Quran specifies 1000 years of what they counted (not what they walked). … Since this verse is referring to distance, then God is saying that angels travel in one day the same distance that the moon travels in 12000 lunar orbits. We discovered that in an inertial geocentric frame 12000 Lunar Orbits/Earth Day is equivalent to the speed of light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.speed-light.info/miracles_of_quran/speed_of_light.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Miracles of the Quran&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kaheel7.com/eng/index.php/astronomu-a-space/249-speed-of-light-in-holy-quran&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Speed of Light in Holy Quran &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.islamhouse.com/193679/en/en/books/speed_of_light_in_the_Holy_Quran&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;speed of light in the Holy Quran (pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2024-01-12T14:52:13.657" Title="Did the Quran predict the speed of light?" Tags="|physics|islam|religious-texts|quran|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20649" CreationDate="2014-05-19T18:32:06.463" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;As well as personal experience from eating onions that were cut not on the same day. From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://onions-usa.org/faqs/onion-flu-cut-myths&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Onion Association&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leftover Onion and Cut Onion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q&lt;/strong&gt;: Are cut onions or leftover onions poisonous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A&lt;/strong&gt;: When handled properly, cut onions are not poisonous. After being cut, onions can be stored in the refrigerator in a sealed container for up to 7 days.&#xA;A widely circulated claim states uncooked, leftover onions are 'poisonous' because they're 'a huge magnet for bacteria,' thus likely to spoilage.&#xA;This claim stems from a blog post that dates back to March 2008. While the original post was removed from the internet in 2009, part of that post continues to circulate the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T18:32:06.463" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20653" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18668" CreationDate="2014-05-19T21:17:03.897" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can static electricity build up in vacuum cleaners, and in particular, their nozzles?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, vacuum cleaners can indeed build up a noticeable static charge.  The amount of charge buildup can vary depending on several factors, such as the type of vacuum cleaner used, the amount and type of dust present, and, as with any static buildup, ambient air humidity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main source of this static buildup appears to be from dust particles striking the walls of the plastic inlet nozzle / tube, picking up a charge (and leaving an opposite charge on the nozzle) through the &lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboelectric_effect&quot;&gt;triboelectric effect&lt;/a&gt;.  Thus, the charge accumulates not only on the body of the vacuum cleaner, but also on the nozzle and the hose.  In fact, this can be quite easily observed by vacuuming the floor in dry weather: some dust tends to cling to the top side of the nozzle, and can be quite resistant to attempts to remove it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are &quot;electric dusters&quot; necessary? Or can simpler alternatives or basic modifications to the household vacuum cleaner solve this issue?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I regularly clean my computers with an ordinary floor vacuum, and have never experienced any static damage.  However, that may well be because I've known about this risk for a long time, and have always taken a couple of simple precautions to avoid it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Use a &lt;strong&gt;conductive nozzle&lt;/strong&gt; on the vacuum.  Most household vacuum cleaners come with one or two metal pipe segments between the flexible tube and the fancy nozzle assembly, so you can just remove the nozzle but leave at least one conductive pipe segment on the tube.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Keep the nozzle &lt;strong&gt;grounded&lt;/strong&gt; to the computer chassis while vacuuming it.  This ensures that the vacuum nozzle remains at the same electric potential as the computer equipment, thus preventing any static discharge between them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can get fancy and tape a piece of electric wire to the vacuum pipe, with the other end screwed to the computer chassis, or you can wrap one of those &lt;a href=&quot;//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-static_wrist_strap&quot;&gt;anti-static wrist straps&lt;/a&gt; around the pipe twice.  The simplest way to ground the nozzle, however, is just to &lt;strong&gt;ground it through your own body&lt;/strong&gt;: just hold the (conductive) nozzle in your bare hand, while making sure that your body is grounded to the chassis e.g. through one of those wrist straps, or simply by touching a metal part of the chassis with your other hand.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, apparently, also special anti-static vacuum cleaner nozzle / hose assemblies that work on the same principle (ensuring that the nozzle is conductive and grounded).  See the patent cited below for one example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How are the designs of &quot;electric dusters&quot; different to common vacuum cleaners?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've never used one of those &quot;electric dusters&quot; specifically made for cleaning computers, but I suspect they're based on a similar principle.  For example, the one you linked to in your question is advertised as having &quot;sturdy all-steel construction&quot;, which would presumably ensure that any static buildup is immediately discharged to ground through the operator's hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Also, the &quot;electric duster&quot; appears to &lt;em&gt;blow air out&lt;/em&gt; through the nozzle rather than sucking it in, which may indeed dislodge dust a bit more effectively, as long as you don't mind it being scattered everywhere.  This has nothing to do with static electricity, though.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Have there been any cases of motherboards, or electronics in general, being damaged due to static discharges through the use of vacuum cleaners?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As noted above, I have never managed to damage any electronics with static (as far as I know &amp;mdash; static damage is invisible and hard to distinguish from just random equipment failure), with or without a vacuum cleaner.  I have also been unable to locate any verifiable reports of someone damaging their computer through static from a vacuum cleaner &amp;mdash; alas, it just doesn't seem to be something that people would write up and publish.  Thus, for now, I'll have to state that I cannot offer a positive answer to this part of your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Supporting sources:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.p4c.philips.com/cgi-bin/cpindex.pl?ctn=FC8433/02&amp;amp;dct=QAD&amp;amp;faqview=1&amp;amp;refdisplay=0FC_SAFETY%20ISSUES_GENERAL_001&amp;amp;refnr=0072742&amp;amp;scy=TW&amp;amp;slg=ENG&quot;&gt;Philips FC8433/02 vacuum cleaner FAQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;During vacuum cleaning, especially in rooms with low air humidity, your vacuum cleaner builds up static electricity. As a result you can experience electric shocks when you touch the tube or other steel parts of your vacuum cleaner.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents/US4866565&quot;&gt;U.S. Patent 4,866,565 A: &quot;Vacuum cleaner electrostatic build up control system&quot; (1989)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It is known that the removal of debris in enclosed areas containing computer equipment, and especially around computer circuit boards, by the usual vacuum cleaning systems can result in static discharge. Consequently, it is a further object of the present invention to effectively eliminate static electricity from damaging circuit boards in computer installations without a reduction in the efficiency of the vacuum system.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6254" LastEditorUserId="6254" LastEditDate="2014-05-19T22:42:03.740" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T22:42:03.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20654" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20655" CreationDate="2014-05-19T22:25:08.223" Score="60" ViewCount="28152" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this a genuine image of the hand of André René Roussimoff (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_the_Giant&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;André the Giant&lt;/a&gt;) holding an everyday 12-ounce (350 mL) can of beer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qdCE2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Andre the Giant holding a beer can&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://uproxx.com/sports/2014/05/6-hard-partying-andre-the-giant-stories-you-may-have-never-heard/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Uproxx&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/o500v/andr%C3%83%C2%A9_the_giant_holding_a_beer_in_his_palm/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reddit&lt;/a&gt; suggest it's real (and word is he once drank 119 beers in a single sitting), but I'm not so sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest his hands were really this big?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T01:49:11.413" LastActivityDate="2017-11-06T19:16:10.130" Title="Is this André the Giant's hand holding a can of beer?" Tags="|physiology|beer|celebrities|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20654" CreationDate="2014-05-19T22:35:14.233" Score="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, that's Andre's hand.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This image was part of the cover spread for a biographical article &quot;To the Giant among us&quot; in &lt;em&gt;Sports Illustrated&lt;/em&gt; in 1981. The full cover spread includes regular-sized hands pouring a beer for comparison:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://cdn-s3.si.com/s3fs-public/andre-vaultlead-beer.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Andre Holding his beer&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full article text for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.si.com/vault/1981/12/21/264333/to-the-giant-among-us-thats-no-small-beer-on-the-right-its-a-normal-12-ounce-can-in-the-hand-of-7-4quot-500-pound-wrestler-andre-the-giant-the-glass-is-in-the-prodigious-paw-of-the-author-a-former-superheavyweight-powerlifting-c&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;To The Giant Among Us&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is available on sports illustrated's vault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2017-11-06T13:13:11.200" LastActivityDate="2017-11-06T13:13:11.200" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20656" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20654" CreationDate="2014-05-19T22:36:43.387" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bronze coated casts of Andre's hands are on display in the Adrian E. Flatt, M.D., Hand Collection at Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas in the George W. Truett Memorial Hospital lobby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a photo of Andre's cast:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uzM4F.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Image source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.juliatexas.com/hands/historichands21.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.juliatexas.com/hands/historichands21.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also footage of his hand relative to other objects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DV7OZ.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Image source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnjradio.com/images/andre/5.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cnjradio.com/images/andre/5.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next to a visitor's hand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gfivs.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;Image source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://trashcity.org/ARTICLES/pics/cac2004c.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://trashcity.org/ARTICLES/pics/cac2004c.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, his hands &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; that big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding whether that is actually a 12 oz can, it is at least visually consistent with what one Ebay seller is calling a 12 oz can:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-3-Collectible-Beer-Tins-Canada-Molson-Diamond-Red-Cap-Ale-Cans-/201085511406?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&amp;amp;hash=item2ed1a166ee&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ebay ad&lt;/a&gt; that says: &quot;12oz Molson Canadian lager beer by Molson, Vancouver. 12oz Diamond lager beer by Formosa Springs, Barrie, Ontario. 12oz Red Cap Ale by Carling, Toronto &amp;amp; Waterloo&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ruHAP.jpg&quot; width=&quot;400&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2017-11-06T19:16:10.130" LastActivityDate="2017-11-06T19:16:10.130" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14953" CreationDate="2014-05-19T23:15:36.877" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I agree with what has been said in the other answer. But you have to be a bit careful when you ask about what people believe. If the question in whether of not the story of Lord Xenu is part of what is taught in the Church of Scientology, then answer is yes. But if the question is whether or not all Scientologists believe in the story the answer in no. Of course this can turn into a discussion about what defines Scientology. And when you put a label on any system of belief you will have people putting the label on themselves but disagreeing with parts of what the label covers. The other answer given here seems to ignore this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many anti-Scientology websites out there and one good one is the one pointed out in the other answer: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xenu.net/&quot;&gt;xenu.net&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as Xenu.net &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xenu.net/cb-faq.html#faq1&quot;&gt;points out&lt;/a&gt; one might want to make a distinction between Scientology and the Church of Scientology (CoS) (Some might argue that the C in CoS means Cult). That is, it is actually possible to be &quot;a Scientologist&quot; and not a member of CoS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is commonly known that in CoS the whole Lord Xenu thing is something you learn when you reach Operating Thetan level III (OT III). You start the levels after you have gone &quot;Clear&quot;. And first one notes that the average Scientologist you meet on the street has not reached this level, so while Lord Xenu is part of the belief system, it is unknown to even many Scientologists. One key thing that sets Scientology apart from, for example, Christinity and the other major world religions, is that the church has secret texts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides Xenu.net and Wikipedia, many high level ex-members of CoS have stated that indeed they came across Lord Xenu when they reached OT 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the documentary &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v1ykr&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Secrets of Scientology&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; ex-member &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Beghe&quot;&gt;Jason Beghe&lt;/a&gt; indeed acknowledges that Lord Xenu is part of OT 3. Besides the documentary Beghe also describes his &quot;encounter&quot; Xenu in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNUjMz9-W2I&quot;&gt;an interview&lt;/a&gt; (with Mark Bunker) and in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rwctlz4zCmE&quot;&gt;another interview&lt;/a&gt; on Australian TV. Granted, in the same documentary several celebrity Scientologists deny the story about Xenu. (There is a reason for this that I will not get into). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tory_Christman&quot;&gt;Tory Christman&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.torymagoo.org/&quot;&gt;Tory Magoo&lt;/a&gt;) reached OT VII and described Lord Xenu in, for example, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH1JKcamcfc&quot;&gt;speech given in San Diego&lt;/a&gt; (about 39 min into speech). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Rinder&quot;&gt;Mike Rinder&lt;/a&gt; a former high level member of CoS, says in &lt;a href=&quot;http://sweptmedia.ca/2013/11/24/mike-rinder-clears-scientology/&quot;&gt;an interview&lt;/a&gt; that Lord Xenu is part of part of the teachings of Scientology.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other ex-members out there who have made similar statements. It would be hard to argue that all these former high level members would lie about this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides the testamonies from former members, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=srzUHo874qIC&amp;amp;pg=PA445&amp;amp;dq=Esotericism%20in%20New%20Religious%20Movements&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=HY16U9H0C8GBqgaTzYGYDQ&amp;amp;ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=xenu&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements on page 427&lt;/a&gt; the Lord Xenu story is also attributed to &quot;secret Scientology mythology&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, be careful with attributing &lt;em&gt;beliefs&lt;/em&gt; to Scientology. Take, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Rathbun&quot;&gt;Mark Rathbun&lt;/a&gt; who was the Inspector General for CoS. Rathbun still believes in Scientology, but &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JguNbFJo3c&quot;&gt;said in 2012&lt;/a&gt; that he does not believe in the story about Lord Xenu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(A lot more can be said about this, but I will leave you with this. Also, I will only post this one answer and I hope that (if it is possible) the moderators will delete whatever account I might accidentally have created, but please feel free to keep this answer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19352" LastActivityDate="2014-05-19T23:15:36.877" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20660" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23423" CreationDate="2014-05-20T08:02:43.940" Score="23" ViewCount="16506" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://travel.ca.msn.com/international/tripatlas-gallery.aspx?cp-documentid=24569629&amp;amp;page=7&quot;&gt;common belief/urban legend&lt;/a&gt; that there are some Asian peoples that eat brains of monkeys while they are still alive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A dish often attributed to China, monkey brains are also eaten in places like Africa, South American, and South East Asia. It's rumoured that the monkey's brains are eaten while the monkey is still alive, which is the reason why many find this inhumane and controversial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have searched online for sources confirming this belief without coming across anything substantial. Is there really such a somewhat common practice?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19365" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-20T09:20:18.947" LastActivityDate="2019-05-27T17:55:50.337" Title="Are live monkey brains a traditional cuisine?" Tags="|nutrition|meat|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20662" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20666" CreationDate="2014-05-20T11:19:43.540" Score="11" ViewCount="865" Body="&lt;p&gt;A viral photo on Facebook widely, shared by GMO Free USA, claims that Roundup has been linked to kidney disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/GMOFreeUSA/photos/a.468695639837571.108816.402058139834655/729584397082026/?type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MoTqu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Facebook photo&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breaking news: Sri Lanka becomes first country to ban sale of Monsanto's Roundup in light of recent study linking roundup to kidney disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not interested &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; Sri Lanka banned Roundup, or whether they are the first. I am interested if there is good evidence that it has been linked to kidney disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admirably, the associated Facebook page links to the study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/11/2/2125&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Glyphosate, Hard Water and Nephrotoxic Metals: Are They the Culprits Behind the Epidemic of Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Etiology in Sri Lanka?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I have not read the study. I haven't attempted to judge its reliability.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://grist.org/news/is-monsantos-roundup-linked-to-a-deadly-kidney-disease/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Environmental news-source, Grist, has reported that NPR has also reported on the story.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a reliable link between glyphosate use and chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology, warranting caution?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related Question:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18329/does-roundup-harm-mammals&quot;&gt;Does Roundup harm mammals?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T12:29:26.630" Title="Does Roundup (glyphosate) cause kidney disease in farmers?" Tags="|environmental-health|pesticides|monsanto|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20665" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5219" CreationDate="2014-05-20T13:21:42.357" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Given the reason for your question, I'd suggest an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_vortex_cannon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;air vortex cannon&lt;/a&gt; as another device that could be used to that effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On that basis, I will answer &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt; — air vortex cannons can knock over brick walls: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyAyd4WnvhU#t=141&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyAyd4WnvhU#t=141&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19054" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T13:21:42.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20666" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20662" CreationDate="2014-05-20T16:05:13.063" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a News and Views article &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.344.6180.143&quot;&gt;&quot;Mesoamerica's Mystery Killer&#xA;&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in Science about this disease. It is not a peer-reviewed scientific paper, but a news article. The main hypothesis according to the article is that heat and dehydration in combination with other factors are responsible. But it does mention the pesticide hypothesis and the researchers asked about it were rather skeptical:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He points to research from Sri Lanka suggesting that glyphosate in&#xA;  pesticides chelates arsenic, boosting its level in the water and its&#xA;  potential to damage the kidneys' delicate filtering machinery. And his&#xA;  team has preliminary evidence that arsenic levels are higher in fields&#xA;  surrounding the cemetery than in the nearby village.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wesseling, who has built her career around studying the impact of&#xA;  toxic substances, says his arguments have no merit. She says neither&#xA;  pesticides nor arsenic can explain the geography of the disease.&#xA;  Arsenic, she says, is prevalent in soil and lakes across El Salvador,&#xA;  not just where CKDu is common. &quot;It doesn't convince me at all,&quot; she&#xA;  says. &quot;He's only looked at one specific place.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cruz of Hospital Nacional Rosales agrees. &quot;We need other hypotheses,&quot;&#xA;  she says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general idea presented in that paper is that glyphosate is able to chelate metals, which is well-known and not controversial. The distribution of the disease is correlated with water hardness according to the paper, so they speculate that a metal-glyphosate complex is responsible for the disease. They speculate further that the metal-glyphosate complexes are not metabolized in the liver and then released in the kidney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article behind this theory is explicitly marked as &quot;hypothesis&quot; in the journal, and it does not actually contain any data. The only actual new data related to the hypothesis it mentions is a study currently conducted in California. This data is pretty much impossible to interpret now as it is only roughly described in the article and does not mention any control group or any further detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There isn't really anything to debunk here as there is no evidence in the first place. The entire article is speculative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2014-05-20T16:05:13.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20668" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-21T02:21:37.700" Score="8" ViewCount="509" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a Martin Thomson article at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zeromillion.com/financial-services/eight-out-of-ten-millionaires-surveyed-made-their-fortune-in-real-estate-how-by-martin-thomson.html&quot;&gt;zeromillion.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;8/10 millionaires surveyed found their wealth in Real Estate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find a reliable source for that statistic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1101" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:51:21.140" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:51:21.140" Title="Did 8 out of 10 millionaires make their fortune in real-estate?" Tags="|personal-finance|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14556" CreationDate="2014-05-21T07:42:38.623" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this is a great thread to discuss about whether blue light causes damage to eyes and skins. I also have the same scruple about damage from blue light emitting from LED monitors of computer, tablets, smartphones, etc. because i am working at an internet company and have to sit in front of the computer nearly 12 hrs per day. So i am quite concerned about the negative effect of blue light. i am even considering exchanging my job here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day, i happen to know a survey which claimed to have a proof on how blue light does harm to eyes. The below picture shows the truth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nRCac.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;blue light harm to eyes&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, this is an explain from Wikipedia (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-energy_visible_light&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-energy_visible_light&lt;/a&gt;). It said that HEV light whose wave length is from 400 -500 nm will bring great harm to our eyes. Just as was said, HEV light has been implicated as a cause of age-related macular degeneration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, i think long period exposure to computer, iPhone and iPad, eye strain becomes more and more serious for me. One of my workmate even has eye disease and can't help outflowing tears after a day's work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a lot of search, i found several tips to protect our eyes from the blue light harm. Hope i am of help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Eat for good vision, at the same time, quit smoking. &#xA;Studies have shown that nutrients such as omega-3 fatty acids, lutein, zinc, and vitamins C and E may help ward off age-related vision problems such as macular degeneration and cataracts. Regularly eating these foods can help lead to good eye health:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Green, leafy vegetables such as spinach, kale, and collards&#xA;Salmon, tuna, and other oily fish&#xA;Eggs, nuts, beans, and other non-meat protein sources&#xA;Oranges and other citrus fruits or juices&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wear sunglasses for good vision. Use safety eyewear at Home, at Work, and While Playing Sports&#xA;It is said that some specially designed sunglasses like Compute Eyewear has the ability to filter blue light. Also, some Apps like &lt;strong&gt;Bluelight Filter&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.ne.hardyinfinity.bluelightfilter.free&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.ne.hardyinfinity.bluelightfilter.free&lt;/a&gt; is claimed to filter blue light emitting from LED screens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Taime Computer Eyewear&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.halovis.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.halovis.com&lt;/a&gt; what i am wearing now,you can also have a try if needed. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Look away from the computer, smartphones, Tablets, kindle, iPod,etc. every 40-50 minutes. You can download an app to remind you the time to free eyes from computer. EyeFoo is an example to make timed period to relax your eyes. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19392" LastEditorUserId="19392" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T09:21:47.950" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T09:21:47.950" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20670" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20649" CreationDate="2014-05-21T07:46:32.383" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article seems to suggest quite the opposite effect is to be  expected - &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://permaculturenews.org/2013/04/12/layers-of-healing-realizing-the-power-of-the-ordinary-onion/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://permaculturenews.org/2013/04/12/layers-of-healing-realizing-the-power-of-the-ordinary-onion/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19338" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T07:46:32.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14556" CreationDate="2014-05-21T09:18:08.037" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ultraviolet (UV) Radiation and Your Eyes:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.allaboutvision.com/sunglasses/spf.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.allaboutvision.com/sunglasses/spf.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The Effects of Blue Light on Ocular Health:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cclvi.org/contributions/effects1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cclvi.org/contributions/effects1.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19393" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T09:18:08.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20695" CreationDate="2014-05-21T14:52:22.503" Score="9" ViewCount="39855" Body="&lt;p&gt;People in Indonesia and Malaysia claim that taking a bath or a shower at night (probably after 8.p.m.) could cause illness. A few mentioned effects are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheumatism&quot;&gt;rheumatism&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/wet+lung&quot;&gt;wet lungs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19406" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:09:42.890" LastActivityDate="2017-03-17T17:07:41.967" Title="Does taking a bath at night have any bad effects on health?" Tags="|environmental-health|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20677" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-21T19:00:00.513" Score="2" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always been a little skeptical that companies claim their food products have more servings so that they can reduce fat, cholesterol, or other numbers on the label.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120412011028AA2jZpM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Do companies choose&lt;/a&gt; to label a product with a higher number of serving sizes in order to manipulate the nutrition label values?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19410" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2014-05-23T01:58:51.550" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T01:58:51.550" Title="Who determines portion size in food?" Tags="|nutrition|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2014-05-22T09:11:37.643" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20679" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20677" CreationDate="2014-05-21T19:41:46.770" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in the United States, manufacturers are supposed to abide by the FDA's &quot;reference amounts customarily consumed per eating occasion&quot; when determining serving sizes. There are some notable rules for &quot;single-serving&quot; containers, rounding, and ingredients. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The base reference amounts are listed on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=101.12&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the FDA's website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exception for single-serving containers comes into play when a food/item can reasonably be consumed in a &quot;single-eating occasion&quot;. This is why you sometimes see a 12oz can of soda labeled as a single serving, while a 20oz bottle is listed as 2.5 (8oz servings). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foods which are generally used as ingredients instead of being consumed directly (flour, baking soda, salt, etc.) will have &quot;serving sizes&quot; in common measurement amounts, rather than common consumption amounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manufacturers regularly undergo FDA inspections, and will be issued warnings/fines if the standard is not met. For instance, if you don't measure your blintzes right, you may get &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetters/ucm191800.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one of these&lt;/a&gt; (see section 3).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know the situation in other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19407" LastEditorUserId="16003" LastEditDate="2014-05-21T19:56:30.387" LastActivityDate="2014-05-21T19:56:30.387" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20684" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20650" CreationDate="2014-05-22T09:08:52.750" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR : No, even if one chooses to interpret the excerpt of the Qur'an as such, the maths don't hold up&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am going to base this answer on your &lt;a href=&quot;http://kaheel7.com/eng/index.php/astronomu-a-space/249-speed-of-light-in-holy-quran&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;second source&lt;/a&gt;, as the calculation there is reduced to the minimum which makes it a lot easier to show its flaws. This is an answer on the mathematical aspect of the problem, not covering the interpretation of the quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a simple calculation based on the real month, the moon travels 2152612.27 km around earth in compete round. This distance represents the length of the orbit that the moon takes while a complete round during one month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wrong. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Display=Facts&amp;amp;Object=Moon&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA&lt;/a&gt;, the circumference of the orbit of the moon around Earth is 2'413'402.16 km.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, how long is a month? A sidereal month is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synodic_month#Synodic_month&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;27.21 days&lt;/a&gt; in solar days of 24 h (86'400). Note the definition of a day in the source, which is 86'164 this is also correct, but that's a sidereal day, meaning a day as measured in relation to the positions of the stars and not the sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the distance per year is: 2152612.27 × 12 = 25831347 km&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in one thousand year is: 25831347 × 1000= 25831347000 km&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's another problem. One year doesn't have 12 months. The Islamic Calendar Year has &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_calendar&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;355 days&lt;/a&gt;. Considering a month of 27.21 days as mentioned above, 1000 years are equal to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.ch/search?num=50&amp;amp;q=1000*354.25%2F27.21&amp;amp;oq=1000*354.25%2F27.21&amp;amp;gs_l=serp.12...2508.3605.0.4890.4.4.0.0.0.0.97.317.4.4.0....0...1c.1.45.serp..4.0.0.9CuWgnqD9sI&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;13'019 months&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this we can calculate the distance the moon travels in 1000 years, which is roughly &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.ch/search?num=50&amp;amp;q=13019*2152612.27&amp;amp;oq=13019*2152612.27&amp;amp;gs_l=serp.3...2530.5153.0.5837.9.9.0.0.0.0.100.675.8j1.9.0....0...1c.1.45.serp..9.0.0.zj_6rmpCPIE&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;28'000'000'000 km&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cosmic speed = 25831347000 ÷ 86164 = 299792 km\ second which is exactly the speed of the light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming this correspond to the distance light will travel in one day, we get a speed of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.ch/search?num=50&amp;amp;q=28024859143%2F86400&amp;amp;oq=28024859143%2F86400&amp;amp;gs_l=serp.3...6618.19615.0.20521.15.12.3.0.0.0.81.841.12.12.0....0...1c.1.45.serp..15.0.0.1bhp2nmGHHg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;324'000 km/s&lt;/a&gt; which is more than the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;speed of light&lt;/a&gt; (roughly 300'000 km). Using the sidereal day won't help, as this will only make the value bigger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now in a lot of the calculations they use the synodic month instead (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Month&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;29.53 days&lt;/a&gt;). This will indeed decrease the number of months but this effect will be entirely canceled out as this leads to a proportional increase in the orbit circumference. (One cannot define the month with one definition of the orbit and then use another definition of the day to calculate the distance per day.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all three sources they come to the result either by mixing up different definitions of days, orbits and the like and &lt;a href=&quot;http://kaheel7.com/eng/index.php/astronomu-a-space/249-speed-of-light-in-holy-quran&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;omitting any explanation&lt;/a&gt; for it. Or by using overly complicated calculations to an easy problem to hide those errors in a lot of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.islamhouse.com/193679/en/en/books/speed_of_light_in_the_Holy_Quran&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;smart looking maths&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16700" LastEditorUserId="16700" LastEditDate="2020-10-07T10:58:25.053" LastActivityDate="2020-10-07T10:58:25.053" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20686" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20688" CreationDate="2014-05-22T14:48:24.433" Score="8" ViewCount="2065" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following article has been circulating which includes a video that demonstrations a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Core_State_Standards_Initiative&quot;&gt;Common Core&lt;/a&gt; math problem: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ijreview.com/2014/05/137962-common-core-approach-solving-basic-math-problem-doesnt-confuse-congrats/&quot;&gt;This Common Core Math Problem Is So Absurdly Difficult It Stumps College Students and Teachers&lt;/a&gt;&quot; via Independent Journal Review. In the video, the following steps are taken to solve the math problem &quot;32 - 12 = ?&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=5187697&amp;amp;threshold=0&amp;amp;commentsort=3&amp;amp;mode=thread&amp;amp;pid=47064927#47065377&quot;&gt;summary from Slashdot&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To solve 32 - 12 = ? you do the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;12 + 3 = 15 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;15 + 5 = 20 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;20 + 10 = 30 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;30 + 2 = 32&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then 3 + 5 = 8, 8 + 10 = 18, 18 + 2 = 20. Therefore 32 - 12 = 20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an accurate depiction of how math is being taught or is it being grossly exaggerated and is an instruction technique of more limited use like &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_ten_blocks&quot;&gt;base ten blocks&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2015-09-26T04:18:11.187" Title="Does this video depict an accurate example of a Common Core math problem?" Tags="|united-states|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20686" CreationDate="2014-05-22T16:19:05.027" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is one of four algorithms for subtraction listed &lt;a href=&quot;http://homepages.ius.edu/KBONACCI/HOMEPAGE%20T101_files/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20T101SECTION%203.5%2010e%20Mental%20Est.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (p. 2). In that document, it is called &quot;Adding Up&quot;, or the &quot;Cashier's Algorithm&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not always the best algorithm to use, but it's one option. It's particularly useful when the total returned doesn't really matter, but rather only that the correct total was in fact returned. (Said another way, using this algorithm, it would be possible to return the correct amount without having to actually know how much you returned.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How does this relate to the Common Core? The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Content/2/OA/B/2/&quot;&gt;Common Core standard for Grade 2 operations and algebraic thinking&lt;/a&gt; includes &quot;&lt;em&gt;Fluently add and subtract within 20 using mental strategies.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, and this is a valid mental strategy. Common Core doesn't &lt;em&gt;prescribe&lt;/em&gt; this strategy though, and it doesn't prescribe this problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-05-22T17:40:06.717" LastActivityDate="2014-05-22T17:40:06.717" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20689" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-22T22:57:21.207" Score="4" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two different ways one can make a weaver's knot. &#xA;One has &lt;strong&gt;both ends on the same side (a)&lt;/strong&gt; the other &lt;strong&gt;on opposite sides (b)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pictures and a statement &quot;the two free ends should end up on the same side of the knot&quot; can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheet_bend&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; and many other websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find any source for this statement, but an experiment with 10 mm rope shows that (a) deforms when pulling while (b) conserves the form.&#xA;My experience was also that (a) was not so secure, which seems to be caused by the fact that the pulling direction is also the opening direction of the knot.&#xA;In variant b the directions of force are antiparallel and the knot fixes it self under tension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where can I find a trustworthy source about the safety of the weaver's knot variants?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10319" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:38:38.897" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T00:38:38.897" Title="Is a weaver's knot more secure with both ends on the same side?" Tags="|physics|safety|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20691" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20692" CreationDate="2014-05-23T08:12:46.557" Score="4" ViewCount="248" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/minnesota-just-became-the-first-state-to-ban-anti-bacte-1579074417?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&amp;amp;utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&amp;amp;utm_medium=socialflow&quot;&gt;Minnesota recently mades the news&lt;/a&gt; for banning Triclosan, an antibacterial agent used in handwashes, due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/08/08/1211314109.abstract&quot;&gt;potential health risks&lt;/a&gt;. (This question is not about those risks.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those risks must be balanced with the potential for health gains. When it comes to hand-washes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm205999.htm&quot;&gt;FDA reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At this time, the agency does not have evidence that triclosan in antibacterial soaps and body washes provides any benefit over washing with regular soap and water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(That statement was last updated November 2013.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is inconsistent with my doctor's advice (from two decades ago) and my anecdotal experience that triclosan-based antibacterial hand-washes are efficacious at clearing minor skin infections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the use of Triclosan to treat skin infections evidence-based? Have I been treating myself with a placebo?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[For completeness, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/oppsrrd1/REDs/factsheets/triclosan_fs.htm&quot;&gt;US EPA&lt;/a&gt; also has concerns.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T16:07:31.983" Title="Does Triclosan effectively treat skin infections?" Tags="|medical-science|pesticides|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20691" CreationDate="2014-05-23T15:52:35.300" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the past, Triclosan has been found to reduce the level of bacteria on the skin, as per a set of two 1987 trials, when used after mechanical washing with a bar of soap.  Since then, numerous trials have demonstrated that, although it is efficacious in certain situations, the initial conclusions concerning skin infections may have been presumptuous.  This is also related to a trend in pharmaceuticals towards proving not only efficacy overall, but efficacy compared to other available products.  So overall, yes the initial use two decades ago would have been evidence based, but current evidence points to other products being just as effective but with fewer possible adverse effects.  The reason for this discrepancy overall is basically understood to be that a reduction in bacteria on the skin, which is what the 1987 trials were able to demonstrate, does not necessarily equate to superior clinical outcomes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initial 1987 studies: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/30145125?uid=3739896&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;uid=3739256&amp;amp;sid=21104062128617&quot;&gt;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/30145125?uid=3739896&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;uid=3739256&amp;amp;sid=21104062128617&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235365/&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235365/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subsequent studies demonstrating lack of efficacy: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/45/Supplement_2/S137.long&quot;&gt;http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/45/Supplement_2/S137.long&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FDA policy release statement December 2013 changing policies related to standards for efficacy: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm378542.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm378542.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19435" LastEditorUserId="19435" LastEditDate="2014-05-23T16:07:31.983" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T16:07:31.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20694" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-23T18:20:03.853" Score="3" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a wide variety of summer mathematics workbooks available for students in elementary and middle school (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&amp;amp;field-keywords=summer%20math%20workbook&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). With summer coming up, these books seem to be available everywhere. Thus my questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any evidence that suggests summer workbooks are beneficial for average students?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This question was posted on Matheducators.SE but received limited attention. I suspect it may be better suited for this site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19437" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T18:20:03.853" Title="Summer Mathematics Workbooks for Elementary and Middle School" Tags="|education|mathematics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20675" CreationDate="2014-05-23T19:17:47.370" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It would be important to note first the cultural difference between bathing in Malaysia and Indonesia, and the western world.  In both countries, the most common form of bathing is through mandi, which utilizes a ladle water system (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webcitation.org/5x2caStUE&quot;&gt;http://www.webcitation.org/5x2caStUE&lt;/a&gt;).  The primary area to note in reference to the use of mandi rather than the typical poured water system associated with many other parts of the world is that there is standing water involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To connect to this, even today with developments in infrastructure and sanitation, Indonesia is associated with poor sanitation and water supply, with only 42.8% of households having domestic waste treatment (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wepa-db.net/policies/state/indonesia/indonesia.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.wepa-db.net/policies/state/indonesia/indonesia.htm&lt;/a&gt;).  The relation between bathing in contaminated water and illness have been long documented by the World Health Organization, specifically in effects to standing water (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/bathing/recreadis.pdf?ua=1&quot;&gt;http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/bathing/recreadis.pdf?ua=1&lt;/a&gt;).  In addition, a study in 2003 demonstrated that water poured into filling collection containers were associated with higher rates of contamination, associated with accumulative buildup of pathogens in the containers themselves, even when the source of the water was found to be safe (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15384721&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15384721&lt;/a&gt;). This draws us back to the special significance to Indonesia and Malaysia, because mandi through its mechanism of use is associated with standing water.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this point, it becomes a question of how long the water has to stand in order to become contaminated enough to cause harm to a human, and more specifically if this rate of deterioration could cause a tangible effect between water used during the day and water that may have been drawn earlier in the day.  It is also important to note that in Indonesia, there is an expansive river system that, although vitally important and prolific throughout the country, are not as large or deep as others in the world such as the Huang or the Nile (&lt;a href=&quot;http://indonesia-fascination.blogspot.com/2009/03/rivers-and-lakes-of-indonesia.html&quot;&gt;http://indonesia-fascination.blogspot.com/2009/03/rivers-and-lakes-of-indonesia.html&lt;/a&gt;); thus, in pre-water distribution infrastructure homes, the temperature of the water used in homes would be subject to diurnal variation, which for shallow rivers as opposed to lakes or oceans can be significant (&lt;a href=&quot;http://echo2.epfl.ch/VICAIRE/mod_2/chapt_5/main.htm&quot;&gt;http://echo2.epfl.ch/VICAIRE/mod_2/chapt_5/main.htm&lt;/a&gt;).  Therefore, taking a shower at night would involve water that has been standing still throughout the day, and thus has had a substantial amount of time for extra bacterial growth to take place. Thus, at a time when &quot;common sense&quot; local beliefs such as don't shower after 8pm came about, they would have been drawing river water in the morning and storing it throughout the day in a cool location away from the sun. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combining these, I would posit that, because in the past populations would have drawn water in the morning to avoid diurnal variation, and that sitting water drawn from fecally contaminated sources can incubate the pathogen throughout the day, and that contaminated bathing water is associated with illness and disease, there is reason to believe that the Malaysian and Indonesian claim that taking a bath or a shower at night could cause illness has some basis in truth.  This would, however, be more related to the hygiene of the water itself; its association with the time of day would be based on correlation, not causation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for any proposed problems outside of hygiene issues, it has been found that nighttime bathing has an effect of lowering blood pressure (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16755147&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16755147&lt;/a&gt;).  This lower blood pressure can signal an underlying problem by exacerbating symptoms.  So it could potentially cause a negative effect depending on the impact the bathing has on blood pressure (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/low-blood-pressure/basics/symptoms/con-20032298&quot;&gt;http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/low-blood-pressure/basics/symptoms/con-20032298&lt;/a&gt;).  Apart from that, bathing in warm water is a recognized palliative treatment for rheumatoid (&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD002826/thermotherapy-heat-treatment-for-treating-rheumatoid-arthritis&quot;&gt;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD002826/thermotherapy-heat-treatment-for-treating-rheumatoid-arthritis&lt;/a&gt;), and although swimming in cold water can induce pulmonary edema/adult repiratory distress syndrome (wet lung) (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15302723&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15302723&lt;/a&gt;), there were no studies available to substantiate the claim that bathing at night can result in pulmonary edema. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, a more straightforward answer would depend on exactly what negative health effects are being considered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19435" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T19:17:47.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20696" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19762" CreationDate="2014-05-23T20:15:08.717" Score="-6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes they can cause headaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A big misconception is that RF EMF cannot cause harm because it doesn't cause ionisation - the issue with this fallacy is that ignores other pathways/mechanisms for harm.  Radiofrequencies, especially modulated/pulsed fields, cause oxidative stress, nitric oxide depletion, endothelial cell dysfunction, calcium ion channel leakage, even blood-brain barrier leakage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inflammatory responses can lead to headaches in some but not others.  EHS is real - as real as light-induced epilepsy (visible light is non-ionising, but can still cause harm when pulsating).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ABSTRACT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Objective: We sought direct evidence that acute exposure to environmental-strength electromagnetic fields (EMFs) could induce somatic reactions (EMF hypersensitivity). Methods: The subject, a female physician self-diagnosed with EMF hypersensitivity, was exposed to an average (over the head) 60-Hz electric field of 300 V/m (comparable with typical environmental-strength EMFs) during controlled provocation and behavioral studies. Results: In a double-blinded EMF provocation procedure specifically designed to minimize unintentional sensory cues, the subject developed temporal pain, headache, muscle twitching, and skipped heartbeats within 100 s after initiation of EMF exposure (p &amp;lt; .05). The symptoms were caused primarily by field transitions (off–on, on–off) rather than the presence of the field, as assessed by comparing the frequency and severity of the effects of pulsed and continuous fields in relation to sham exposure. The subject had no conscious perception of the field as judged by her inability to report its presence more often than in the sham control. Discussion: The subject demonstrated statistically reliable somatic reactions in response to exposure to subliminal EMFs under conditions that reasonably excluded a causative role for psychological processes. Conclusion: EMF hypersensitivity can occur as a bona fide environmentally inducible neurological syndrome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read More: &lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/00207454.2011.608139&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/00207454.2011.608139&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*EDIT to save commenting space, commentary from Prof Dominique Belpomme of ARTAC: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emfacts.com/2012/01/electromagnetic-intolerance-elucidated/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.emfacts.com/2012/01/electromagnetic-intolerance-elucidated/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpt: &#xA;&quot;Dr. Belpomme’s team has developed a diagnostic method based on blood tests and a special brain scan (pulsed Doppler echography) to visualize blood flow. “These patients clearly have vascular disorders in the brain, said the oncologist. In addition, our biological tests show that 30% of them have high levels of histamine, 50% have too much stress proteins, most have low levels of melatonin (an potent anti-cancer hormone), and 30% have levels of antibodies and proteins that are tell-tale signs of thermal shock and brain damage.” He adds that half of his patients suffer from Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) and that MCS and EHS share the same brain abnormalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The oncologist explained that there are three distinct levels of sensitivity to pollutants. First, there is intolerance, caused by polymorphism. “This means that we are all different. For example, 30% of the population is most at risk of developing cancer.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, there is the susceptibility factor demonstrated by Swedish oncologist Lennart Hardell who studied 16 families who were electrosensitive because of shared genetic factors. There are also active susceptibility factors, “such as dental amalgam that behave like antennas capturing airwaves”, explains Belpomme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, electromagnetic hypersensitivity appears in two stages. “The first phase is induced by exposure to a specific EMF frequency, either an acute or chronic exposure, such as talking on a cell phone 20 minutes every day. The first signs of hypersensitivity are pain and a heat sensation in the ear. In the second phase, the disease sets in. That’s when you become intolerant at all frequencies.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19441" LastEditorUserId="19441" LastEditDate="2014-05-23T21:51:49.163" LastActivityDate="2014-05-23T21:51:49.163" CommentCount="26" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20697" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-24T01:08:21.900" Score="7" ViewCount="507" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/solar-roadways#home&quot;&gt;https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/solar-roadways#home&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This indiegogo campaign suggests replacing roads and highways with solar panels that could produce power, while keeping themselves free of snow and easy to replace. The idea as outlined in the video is pretty amazing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://gigaom.com/2010/10/07/ge-hands-out-first-challenge-award-to-solar-roads-really/&quot;&gt;This article related to the same project&lt;/a&gt; is highly critical, pointing out that at 4.4 million dollars per mile, it just isn't feasible to implement at any scale. Looking up how much normal highways &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.railstotrails.org/resources/documents/whatwedo/policy/07-29-2008%20Generic%20Response%20to%20Cost%20per%20Lane%20Mile%20for%20widening%20and%20new%20construction.pdf&quot;&gt;cost to build&lt;/a&gt; makes that price look much less damning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the claim that these roads could easily pay for themselves believable, and should we expect this to be a workable solution for energy generation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="218" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T02:47:19.543" Title="Is the idea of solar roadways practical?" Tags="|environment|power-generation|transportation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2014-06-28T11:19:38.960" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20698" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20699" CreationDate="2014-05-24T01:09:42.740" Score="2" ViewCount="860" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.takingontobacco.org/intro/funny.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.takingontobacco.org/intro/funny.html&lt;/a&gt;, a list of marketing &quot;lost in translation&quot; incidents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Foreign companies have similar problems when they enter English&#xA;  speaking markets. Japan's second-largest tourist agency was mystified&#xA;  when it expanded to English-speaking countries and began receiving&#xA;  requests for unusual sex tours. Upon finding out why, the owners of&#xA;  the Kinki Nippon Tourist Company changed its name. The company didn't&#xA;  change the name of all its divisions though. Visitors to Japan still&#xA;  have the opportunity to take a ride on the Kinki Nippon Railway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did &quot;Kinki Nippon Tourist Company&quot; change its name?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T01:09:42.740" Title="Did the Kinki Nippon Tourist Company change its name?" Tags="|marketing|japan|language|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20698" CreationDate="2014-05-24T01:09:42.740" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The English language Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kintetsu&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kintetsu&lt;/a&gt; states that &quot;Kinki Nippon Tourist Travel Agency&quot; is a subsidiary of Kintetsu Corporation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knt.co.jp/kokusai/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.knt.co.jp/kokusai/&lt;/a&gt; itself states that it is Kinki Nippon Tourist Company&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Copyright(c)2008. All rights reserved by Kinki Nippon Tourist Co.,Ltd.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, some renaming did go on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kintetsu Corporation used to be called Kinki Nippon Railway Co., Ltd. Apparently, you can't ride the Kinki Nippon Railway any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a renaming with a stated motivation to avoid &quot;Kinki&quot; in English has since happened in an unrelated organisation. Kinki University has &lt;a href=&quot;http://newsonjapan.com/html/newsdesk/article/107709.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;announced&lt;/a&gt; it'll change its official English name to &quot;Kindai University&quot; in April 2016. &quot;Kindai&quot; is a contraction of &quot;Kinki&quot;, a region of Japan, and &quot;Daigaku&quot;, the Japanese word for university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was some information in Japanese that I'm not certain about its reliability, or what it means. I'm just leaving it here as a potential lead for more information. The Japanese language article on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%BF%91%E7%95%BF%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%83%84%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AA%E3%82%B9%E3%83%88#.E6.A6.82.E8.A6.81&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kinki Nippon Tourist Co., Ltd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1963年以降に進出した海外では、現地の子会社が旅行客に対して到着地での各種サービスの提供、航空券や旅行商品の販売、再保険引受事業などを行っている。海外の子会社の社名は“Kinki&#xA;  Nippon Tourist 〜”ではなく、“Kintetsu International Express (〜)&#xA;  Inc.”となっている。これは Kinkiという単語が英語圏ではKinky&#xA;  （変態）に語感が似ているためである。なお、国内の会社の英語社名は“Kinki Nippon Tourist 〜”である。&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google translate gives the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overseas you have advanced to the 1963 or later, we are a subsidiary&#xA;  of local provision of various services at the place of arrival for&#xA;  tourists, sales of travel products and airline tickets, such as&#xA;  re-insurance underwriting business. Instead of &quot;Kinki Nippon Tourist&#xA;  ~&quot; name of the foreign subsidiaries, has become a &quot;(~) Inc. Kintetsu&#xA;  International Express&quot;. This is because the sense of language is&#xA;  similar to the (transformation) Kinky in English-speaking word Kinki.&#xA;  It should be noted, is a &quot;Kinki Nippon Tourist ~&quot; The English name of&#xA;  the company in the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T01:09:42.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20700" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-24T01:16:21.500" Score="7" ViewCount="631" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/fat-officially-incurable-according-to-science/&quot;&gt;this article on Cracked&lt;/a&gt; which claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The number of people who go from fat to thin, and stay there, statistically rounds down to zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seemed like a pretty incredible claim, considering the sheer amount of diets and such available to help people lose weight (and keep it off, ostensibly). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How reliable are these claims? If I am fat, am I doomed to always be that way despite my best efforts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user19443" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-24T03:27:05.427" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T03:27:05.427" Title="Is weight-loss almost always temporary?" Tags="|medical-science|weight-loss|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20701" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20700" CreationDate="2014-05-24T01:49:33.170" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Disclaimer: I practice Health At Every Size myself, which is why I have these studies on hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17469900&quot;&gt;Mann and Tomiyama&lt;/a&gt; performed a review of studies on weight loss:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These studies show that one third to two thirds of dieters regain more weight than they lost on their diets, and these studies likely underestimate the extent to which dieting is counterproductive because of several methodological problems, all of which bias the studies toward showing successful weight loss maintenance. In addition, the studies do not provide consistent evidence that dieting results in significant health improvements, regardless of weight change. In sum, there is little support for the notion that diets lead to lasting weight loss or health benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/70/3/346.full&quot;&gt;The Heritage Foundation&lt;/a&gt; found that the results of exercised-based interventions were small as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A short-term exercise intervention can induce favorable changes in body composition, but the magnitude of these changes is of limited biological significance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some idea of their definition of small but significant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There were significant decreases in all measures of fat distribution for the total sample, although the magnitude of the change was generally small. The largest change was in the abdominal visceral adipose tissue (5.9%) and the smallest change was in the waist-hip ratio (0.6%). When analyzed by group, blacks showed no changes in hip circumference or waist-hip ratio. Men had a greater change than did women in abdominal visceral fat, and white women had a greater change (1.2 mm) than black women (0.3 mm) in waist circumference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.2mm of waist size is hardly the dramatic change promised in most weight loss ads! &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/70/3/346/T3.expansion.html&quot;&gt;This table&lt;/a&gt; from their study shows less than half a kilogram of weight loss overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10449014&quot;&gt;Miller WC&lt;/a&gt; found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A brief survey of the most popular dieting techniques used over the past 40 yr shows that most techniques cycle in and out of popularity and that many of these techniques may be hazardous to health. Data from the scientific community indicate that a 15-wk diet or diet plus exercise program produces a weight loss of about 11 kg with a 60-80% maintenance after 1 yr. Although long-term follow-up data are meager, the data that do exist suggest almost complete relapse after 3-5 yr.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nutritionj.com/content/10/1/9&quot;&gt;Bacon and Aphramor&lt;/a&gt;, in a study evaluating traditional weight loss techniques vs body-positive plans such as Health At Every Size, noted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence: Long-term follow-up studies document that the majority of individuals regain virtually all of the weight that was lost during treatment, regardless of whether they maintain their diet or exercise program [5,27]. Consider the Women's Health Initiative, the largest and longest randomized, controlled dietary intervention clinical trial, designed to test the current recommendations. More than 20,000 women maintained a low-fat diet, reportedly reducing their calorie intake by an average of 360 calories per day [102] and significantly increasing their activity [103]. After almost eight years on this diet, there was almost no change in weight from starting point (a loss of 0.1 kg), and average waist circumference, which is a measure of abdominal fat, had increased (0.3 cm) [102].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the National Weight Control Registry defines a &quot;successful&quot; diet as one that produces &gt; 30lbs weight loss. Their numbers are vague, but at best .02% of diets are &quot;successful&quot;. An analysis of their numbers can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://danceswithfat.wordpress.com/2012/12/27/national-weight-control-registry-skydiving-without-a-chute/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and you can find what data they have chosen to make public &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nwcr.ws/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5027" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T01:49:33.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20702" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20700" CreationDate="2014-05-24T02:20:58.877" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would place these claims inaccurate, due to improper representation of the study that the Cracked article itself supplied.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full&quot;&gt;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Conclusion: &quot;Five years after completing structured weight-loss programs, the average individual maintained a weight loss of &gt;3 kg and a reduced weight of &gt;3% of initial body weight. After VLEDs or weight loss of ≥20 kg, individuals maintained significantly more weight loss than after HBDs or weight losses of &amp;lt;10 kg.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the &gt;3 kg, which with a conversion of ~2.2lbs/1kg comes to roughly &gt;6.6lbs does not seem substantial (although it is far from the &quot;rounds to zero&quot; that the Cracked article claims in its header), it is important to note two points from the article.  Under &quot;Study Identification,&quot; the article states &quot; Follow-up values were assessed at 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 y.&quot;  Under &quot;Meta-Analysis,&quot; it states that &quot;Weight-loss maintanance(kg)=initial body weight-bodyweight at follow up.  As defined by the article, the &quot;&gt;3kg&quot; refers not to the entirety of weight loss throughout the trial, but instead to the weight loss observed at the annual follow-up (overall averaged out).  This is further exemplified by this table, which more clearly lays out the parameters of the conclusions of the trial - &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579/T2.expansion.html&quot;&gt;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579/T2.expansion.html&lt;/a&gt;, and a graph which shows the long-term weight loss maintanance &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579/F1.expansion.html&quot;&gt;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579/F1.expansion.html&lt;/a&gt; .  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that they represented this study so greatly, and the other study was not a study focusing on individual trials, but instead on methodology for weight loss and the reasons for its importance, I believe it is fair to say that the other claims made in the article are unsubstantiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the second question, there is currently a great amount of evidence to indicate that weight loss programs can be successful.  When reading these studies, it is important to remember that averages are, ultimately, averages, and due to many modern clinical trials following intent to treat analysis (a method in statistics that retains &quot;bad&quot; or failed results in order to be more statistically true to the data, as well as be more representative of real world situations) the weight loss will likely be higher for those dutifully following the parameters of the trial, which can be demonstrated this through a 2011 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/Nejmoa1108660#t=articleResults&quot;&gt;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/Nejmoa1108660#t=articleResults&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this trial, which focused on comparing the effects of two monitored weight loss programs versus a third with no intervention, the following results were found: &quot;At 6 months, the mean (±SE) adjusted change in weight from baseline was −1.4±0.4 kg in the control group, −6.1±0.5 kg in the group receiving remote support only, and −5.8±0.6 kg in the group receiving in-person support. t 24 months, the mean change in weight from baseline was −0.8±0.6 kg in the control group, −4.6±0.7 kg in the group receiving remote support only, and −5.1±0.8 kg in the group receiving in-person support.&quot;  This is slightly more optimistic, but what is more indicative of the potential benefits are in Table 3. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/Nejmoa1108660#t=articleResults&quot;&gt;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/Nejmoa1108660#t=articleResults&lt;/a&gt;) .  At 6 mo and 24 mo, statistical significance was found for obtaining a BMI &amp;lt;30 when utilizing both support and remote.  As the NIH identifies obesity as a BMI equal to or greater than 30, this means that there was a significant effect of monitored, dedicated weight loss therapy on helping individuals overcome obesity in a trial extending for two years.  This implies that there is a great deal of optimism in terms of overcoming weight problems, if one is capable of following a more rigid regimen with the aid of an external, motivating source such as those demonstrated in the trial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19435" LastActivityDate="2014-05-24T02:20:58.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20703" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20722" CreationDate="2014-05-24T10:32:53.957" Score="2" ViewCount="643" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following &lt;a href=&quot;http://throughatoonerdarkly.wordpress.com/2013/12/08/paper-snowflakes-should-have-six-fold-symmetry/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; says (emphasis added)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Walking by our neighborhood’s great institution of learning this&#xA;  evening, I was pleased to see paper snowflakes in a window. Pleased,&#xA;  then displeased, because the snowflakes did not have six-fold&#xA;  symmetry, but &lt;strong&gt;four or eight&lt;/strong&gt;! How it is possible? Although everything&#xA;  one needs to know is learned in kindergarten, it seems not all is&#xA;  remembered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen the claim elsewhere, including recently on twitter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake#Symmetry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says that snow flakes are capable of six-fold symmetry, but doesn't explicitly rule out four-fold (or eight-fold) symmetry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are snowflakes incapable of four-fold (or eight-fold) symmetry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T20:40:24.667" Title="Are snowflakes incapable of four-fold symmetry?" Tags="|chemistry|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20704" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-24T14:58:12.177" Score="21" ViewCount="1732" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/equal-pay/career&quot;&gt;White House claims&lt;/a&gt; that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On average, full-time working women earn just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14975" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2018-02-05T17:24:37.340" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T12:09:51.963" Title="Do full-time working women earn 77 cents for every dollar a man earns?" Tags="|united-states|gender|discrimination|society|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20707" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-24T19:24:11.217" Score="8" ViewCount="334" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am usually pretty skeptical about claims on the danger of genetically modified crops because the issue of health for me logically breaks down to: Do the genes altered produce toxic chemicals in a dosage that would cause issues for human health? However, an &lt;a href=&quot;http://theconversation.com/securing-the-safety-of-genetic-modification-13102&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; I read claims that there are GM crops that have double-stranded RNA molecules (the article is not clear how the new RNA is introduced to the crop, presumably the DNA is altered to produce it), and that these &quot;dsRNA&quot;s have been shown to alter gene expression in mice. Is this a legitimate issue to human health? I had always assumed that genetic materials like DNA are broken down into the constituent nucleosides and sugars making up DNA during the human digestion process, and that the process should be similar for any other kind of genetic material, including dsRNA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18728" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T02:57:58.403" Title="Is it possible for ingested dsRNA (or other genetic materials) to affect human gene expression?" Tags="|biology|genetics|gmo|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20711" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-25T15:26:52.227" Score="5" ViewCount="5458" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous-vide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sous vide cooking&lt;/a&gt; is a style of cooking where you seal meat in bags and soak it in water at a specific temperature for a very long time, sometimes days. Some worry that in this process, &lt;a href=&quot;http://chriskresser.com/how-plastic-food-containers-could-be-making-you-fat-infertile-and-sick&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;harmful chemicals can be leached from the bags&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the Environmental Health Perspectives study, Yaniger et al. set out to determine the estrogenic activity of commonly used plastic consumer products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They bought more than 500 plastic products at places like Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Target, and other major retailers. They selected from all categories of plastic, including tupperware containers, bags and wraps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then they cut the containers into pieces, put them into liquids that contain similar chemicals found in food and drinks, and subjected them to stresses that mimic normal use, like UV light (sunlight), microwaving, or moist heat (like boiling or dishwashing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Their results showed that over 90 percent of the products leached estrogenic chemicals before they were even stressed, and after being stressed essentially all of the products showed estrogenic activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chemical referred to in this article is BPA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should I worry that using Ziplocs for sous vide style cooking could cause harmful chemicals to leach into the meat? If chemicals do leach, do they do so at an amount that could cause damage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3837" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-05-25T17:47:37.487" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T00:05:52.400" Title="Are harmful chemicals leached from ordinary Ziploc bags when used for sous vide cooking?" Tags="|chemistry|cooking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20712" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-25T22:17:11.663" Score="8" ViewCount="1467" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim that onions boost your immune system is pretty widely held. Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://healthyeating.sfgate.com/onions-good-immune-system-3954.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://healthyeating.sfgate.com/onions-good-immune-system-3954.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20191228185524/http://healthfree.com/blog/blog/5-foods-to-naturally-boost-your-immune-system/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20191228185524/http://healthfree.com/blog/blog/5-foods-to-naturally-boost-your-immune-system/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170301231305/http://livewell.jillianmichaels.com/benefits-garlic-onions-5280.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20170301231305/http://livewell.jillianmichaels.com/benefits-garlic-onions-5280.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies proving or disproving the beneficial effects of the onion on immune system? (I am specifically interested in resistance to cold/flu viruses, but the claims are frequently more generic).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="30258" LastEditDate="2020-08-07T06:51:38.260" LastActivityDate="2020-08-07T06:51:38.260" Title="Do onions enhance immune system?" Tags="|nutrition|natural-remedies|immune-system|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20713" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-25T22:20:35.040" Score="12" ViewCount="1192" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a widely held belief that garlic enhances immune system. I'll reuse the same links as my earlier &amp;quot;onion&amp;quot; question, but the purported mechanisms seem different, even if they are folded in the same articles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/garlic-immunity-boosting-superstar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/garlic-immunity-boosting-superstar&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20191228185524/http://healthfree.com/blog/blog/5-foods-to-naturally-boost-your-immune-system/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20191228185524/http://healthfree.com/blog/blog/5-foods-to-naturally-boost-your-immune-system/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://livewell.jillianmichaels.com/benefits-garlic-onions-5280.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://livewell.jillianmichaels.com/benefits-garlic-onions-5280.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.naturalnews.com/035462_garlic_immune_boosting_herbs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.naturalnews.com/035462_garlic_immune_boosting_herbs.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies proving or disproving the beneficial effects of the garlic on immune system? (I am specifically interested in resistance to cold/flu viruses, but the claims are frequently more generic.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="30258" LastEditDate="2020-08-07T06:50:43.663" LastActivityDate="2020-08-07T06:50:43.663" Title="Does garlic enhance immune system?" Tags="|nutrition|natural-remedies|immune-system|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20716" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-26T01:35:51.343" Score="3" ViewCount="387" Body="&lt;p&gt;At &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-measurements-uncertainty.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Skeptical Science&lt;/a&gt;, they explain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mauna Loa is often used as an example of rising carbon dioxide levels because its the longest, continuous series of directly measured atmospheric CO₂. The reason why it's acceptable to use Mauna Loa as a proxy for global CO₂ levels is because CO₂ mixes well throughout the atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim that Carbon Dioxide (CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;) mixes well in the atmosphere is repeated in other places: &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080122160443AAOjPLQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am wondering if this is true and what data can prove it. I am skeptical because this fails for Ozone, for example - there are holes over Antarctica and sometimes the Arctic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19459" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T10:42:06.010" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T10:42:06.010" Title="Does Carbon Dioxide mix well in the atmosphere?" Tags="|environment|climate-change|climatology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20718" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-26T07:50:14.273" Score="2" ViewCount="1414" Body="&lt;p&gt;My bag passes through an X-ray scanner every day.  They insist that our mobile phones need to be in the bag as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard from a person that continuous scanning damages the phone's SIM card. Is this true?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19463" LastEditorUserId="2810" LastEditDate="2014-05-26T10:14:34.763" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T10:14:34.763" Title="Can X-ray scanners damage mobile SIM cards?" Tags="|radiation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-05-27T02:10:13.287" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20719" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-26T16:13:27.707" Score="2" ViewCount="660" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the Wikipedia entry on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vesna Voluvic&lt;/a&gt;, who holds the Guiness book work record on  surviving the highest fall without a parachute, a conspiracy theory claiming the plane got shot by the army got debunked as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One source does not support such conspiracy theories and quotes Czech army expert:&#xA;  In case of violation of the air space, the incident would not be solved by anti-air missiles, but by fighter planes. Also it would not be possible to conceal such incident, as there would approximately 150–200 people knowing about the incident. They would not have any reason to not tell about incident today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not the only claim that debunked the conspiracy theory, so I am not reinstating this conspiracy theory. However, the claim that 150-200 would not be able to keep a secret after such a long time, doesn't look strong to me. I can imagine various intelligence organisation having much more staff at hand.  Is there any evidence or theory that give a general estimate on how many people it takes to keep a secret? I would suspect that number to be quite high, since only Snowden and Assenge comes to mind in modern history, contradicting the Czech source that with 150-200 people it wouldn't be possible to keep a secret.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5141" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:38:22.543" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:38:22.543" Title="How many people does it take to keep a secret?" Tags="|sociology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-05-26T16:29:52.417" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20721" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14255" CreationDate="2014-05-26T18:59:02.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to the question about Mullenix losing her position after the publication of the article is that it is true per Christopher Bryson's book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On May 18,1994 -- just days after the paper had been accepted -- Forsyth fired Mullenix (23).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Concerning the wrongful termination suit that she filed against her former employer which was settled out of court, we don't have data on what went on as it came up for legal review, i. e. whether the defense was on the verge of losing, etc.  What we do know is that the judge did not rule against her before the company paid up, and she agreed to drop it after that point.  However, for more information, you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://fluoridealert.org/content/mullenix-interview/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;read more about the background of the suit and Mullenix's employment from her point of view&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, having read the Christopher Bryson book, The Fluoride Conspiracy, which is extremely well-documented to the point of being dry, I can tell you that the gist of the story is that the lab she worked for got new equipment which could study rat behavior using cameras connected to motion-tracking software.  The idea suggested to her by her boss was that they do the first study on a toxin and see how it affected the rats' movements.  Mullenix agreed but was shocked when he suggested that they use fluoride as the toxin since she didn't consider it to be dangerous and had no other interest or history in researching it.  She went along with his suggestion anyway and was further shocked to see that fluoride did in fact impair the rats' behavior considerably.  Shock number three is that the old guy who was her boss, suggesting these experiments, had actually worked on pre-public fluoridation toxicity studies which had showed the same results back in the 1940s, so he pretty much knew all along what they were going to find, believe it or not.  You can see a condensed, video version of the findings featuring interviews with some of the key players &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3y8uwtxrHo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19469" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T01:10:03.753" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T01:10:03.753" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20703" CreationDate="2014-05-26T20:40:24.667" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is very hard to prove they can't have 4-fold symmetry but we have a good understanding of why they usually have 6-fold symmetry under normal conditions.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structure of snowflakes is driven by the underlying symmetry of ice at temperatures near zero Celsius (or whatever that is in non-standard american units) and pressures close to atmospheric. The crystal structures at high pressures or extreme temperatures can be different (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_IX&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ice IX&lt;/a&gt;, for example, has a tetragonal crystal structure so might form crystals with a four fold symmetry, but it it is only stable at low temperatures and high pressures, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice-nine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;thank goodness&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The underlying structure that drives six-fold symmetry in normal ice looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LK5JL.gif&quot; alt=&quot;wikipedia picture of normal ice structure&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with the symmetry arising because of the way water molecules hydrogen bond to each other in networks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/publist/AmSci2007.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kenneth Libbrecht's fantastic article&lt;/a&gt; (NB pdf) on snowflakes explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The angle between atoms in a water molecule mandates a hexagonally shaped ice lattice, which ultimately leads to the snowflake’s sixfold symmetry. As a result, snow crystals first develop into small, faceted prisms, which may grow to a few tenths of a millimeter in size, about as large as the period at the end of this sentence. Depending on the details of how they grow, these simple crystals may become slender hexagonal columns shaped like wooden pencils, thin hexagonal plates, or anything in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article is well worth reading not only for its wide range of pictures of snowflakes but for an extend discussion on the factors that create such a variety of six-fold shapes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2014-05-26T20:40:24.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20723" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-26T22:21:06.673" Score="1" ViewCount="232" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I was told, by a friend, that taking &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenugreek&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fenugreek&lt;/a&gt; tablets would increase stamina and assist in weight loss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am unsure of this claim. I had a quick look on Google but there is a lot of (contradictory) information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific basis for this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15164" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T01:04:00.167" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T11:16:01.047" Title="Do fenugreek tablets increase stamina and assist in weight loss?" Tags="|weight-loss|herbalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17366" CreationDate="2014-05-27T00:02:51.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have a reference to studies showing consuming coconut oil is healthier than other plant oils, but I do have one that showed it was worse which is what you also asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this 5 week cross-over 3x3 Latin square design study of diets high in palmitic oil, extra-virgin olive oil, and coconut oil [1], the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/94/6/1451/T3.expansion.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;coconut oil diet showed significantly higher fasting and post-prandial total cholesterol&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.  In addition &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/94/6/1451/T4.expansion.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;homocysteine levels were higher in the coconut oil group&lt;/a&gt; though not significantly so.  IL-6 was also higher but hs-CRP was not which is curious since c-reactive protein synthesis is driven by Interleukin-6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ian Prior's study from 1981 appears to clearly show the cholesterol raising effects of coconut oil consumption.  His group compared the lipids of those islanders living on the Pacific islands of Pukapuka and Tokelau where coconut oil was the main source of dietary energy.  The Tokelauan diet was then unique with more than 50% of energy mainly derived from saturated fat ( coconut oil ), whereas in comparison the Pukapukans was much lower at 35%. Dietary intake of cholesterol was low.  It was presumed that as a result &lt;strong&gt;the Tokelauans were heavier, and at all age groups had significantly higher levels of cholesterol (35-40 mg/L).&lt;/strong&gt;  Although the abstract states that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vascular disease is uncommon in both populations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and this is quoted by various papers to make a case for consuming coconut oil, the paper actually states that they took 12 lead ECGs on both groups and estimated ischemic heart disease based on the presence of Q waves, and then stated the number they studied was too small to make a definitive statement.  As we know now, using ECG for diagnosis of ischemic heart disease is very unreliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS:&#xA;I don't have enough rep to comment on the answer by @Heliotrope but this study does not show what he claims regarding raising HDL much more than LDL.  And we also know that all the drug trials on raising HDL have not lead to improved outcomes.  Presumably because there is a higher limit at which having HDL is helplful.  Also the rise in HDL occurs because HDL is involved in reverse cholesterol transport, so if you consume more fat, then HDL is obliged to rise as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Voon PT, Ng TK, Lee VK, Nesaretnam K. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22030224&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Diets high in palmitic acid (16:0), lauric and myristic acids (12:0 + 14:0), or oleic acid (18:1) do not alter postprandial or fasting plasma homocysteine and inflammatory markers in healthy Malaysian adults.&lt;/a&gt; Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 2011 Dec;94(6):1451-7. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.111.020107&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.3945/ajcn.111.020107&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 22030224. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Prior IA, Davidson F, Salmond CE, Czochanska Z. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7270479&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cholesterol, coconuts, and diet on Polynesian atolls: a natural experiment: the Pukapuka and Tokelau island studies.&lt;/a&gt; Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 1981 Aug;34(8):1552-61. PubMed PMID: 7270479. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T04:11:23.873" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T04:11:23.873" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20726" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14654" CreationDate="2014-05-27T02:14:12.510" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;That paper you quote from by Tayag et al is listed as &lt;strong&gt;For Publication&lt;/strong&gt; where coconut oil was administered to 15 HIV positive patients.  3 of the 15 HIV positive patients developed clinical AIDs on this treatment and 1 died just after 3 months of treatment.  If you look on Pubmed, this paper can not be found, and presumably was such poor quality that it was never actually published in a peer-reviewed journal.  Shame on Coconutoil.com for promoting such claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T02:14:12.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20713" CreationDate="2014-05-27T03:15:55.783" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll take it that having potent anti-cancer properties means enhancing the immune system.  Vegetable extracts have been tried against various tumor lines.  In this study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814608006419&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Antiproliferative and antioxidant activities of common vegetables: A comparative study&lt;/a&gt; from 2009, garlic was found to completely inhibit all tested cell lines.  In serial dilution testing&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Garlic was the most potent inhibitor of cell proliferation with a&#xA;  marked reduction of U-87 glioblastoma cell proliferation at a 1/1000&#xA;  (corresponding to 3.32 mg raw vegetable/ml) dilution of the extract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jn.nutrition.org/content/131/3/1032S.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Garlic and Cancer: A Critical Review of the Epidemiologic Literature&lt;/a&gt; says &lt;em&gt;&quot;Evidence from available studies nevertheless suggests a preventive effect of garlic consumption in stomach and colorectal cancers.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly the commonly consumed western vegetables showed little anti-tumor activity.  You can &lt;a href=&quot;http://growyourownhealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/anticancer.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;download the paper&lt;/a&gt; to read which vegetables did best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Garlic has also been touted in reducing the occurrence of the common cold.  A Cochrane review [2] only found 6 studies, of which only 1 study was of sufficient quality to meet their inclusion criteria.  Their conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is insufficient clinical trial evidence regarding the effects of&#xA;  garlic in preventing or treating the common cold. A single trial&#xA;  suggested that garlic may prevent occurrences of the common cold but&#xA;  more studies are needed to validate this finding. Claims of&#xA;  effectiveness appear to rely largely on poor-quality evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Lissiman E, Bhasale AL, Cohen M. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22419312&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Garlic for the common cold.&lt;/a&gt; Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2012 March 14;3:CD006206. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD006206.pub3 PubMed PMID: 22419312.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-02T05:37:12.493" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T05:37:12.493" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17140" CreationDate="2014-05-27T06:12:30.810" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a case report &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=157859&quot;&gt;A case of secondary personality with xenoglossy&lt;/a&gt; from 1979 where the Indian woman in question developed a secondary personality which spoke fluent Bengali, a language the family did not speak. However, the fact that the subject worked at a university makes one very suspicious as to what resources she had available to her.  So, a single case report from searching PubMed hardly constitutes scientifically confirmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T06:12:30.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18385" CreationDate="2014-05-27T09:56:27.393" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find data on Japanese specifically but at least one study has looked at racial differences.  This comparative study from 2011 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21480385&quot;&gt;Sigmoid colon morphology in the population groups of Durban, South Africa, with special reference to sigmoid volvulus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A total of 590 cadavers were examined (403 African, 91 Indian, and 96&#xA;  White). Length and height of the sigmoid colon and mesocolon were&#xA;  significantly longer in Africans, and mesocolon root was significantly&#xA;  narrower in Africans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we don't know if this is acquired as a result of a diet high in roughage, or inherited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim made about the Japanese colon is made by themselves, apparently as an explanation as to why they should not eat some Western foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now since this study included Indian cadavers, and since Indians are considered South Asians, then it would appear that Africans have longer sigmoid colons than some South Asians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="8991" LastEditDate="2014-05-27T21:10:47.253" LastActivityDate="2014-05-27T21:10:47.253" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20711" CreationDate="2014-05-28T00:05:52.400" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ziploc brand bags do not contain BPA, according to the manufacturer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ziploc.com/Sustainability/Pages/Safety-and-Plastics.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ziploc.com/Sustainability/Pages/Safety-and-Plastics.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SC Johnson’s Ziploc® brand Bags and Containers are BPA free. Our&#xA;  products are extensively evaluated for toxicity and safety and comply&#xA;  with applicable quality and safety regulations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nor do they contain Dioxins:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After we researched these claims, it became clear that the information&#xA;  was misleading and unnecessarily alarming. Dioxins only form when&#xA;  chlorine is combined with extremely high temperatures (such as 1,500&#xA;  degrees F). The most powerful kitchen microwave oven will never reach&#xA;  this temperature. Even if you reached 1500F (theoretically), all&#xA;  Ziploc® brand products are 100% dioxin-free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glad brand food storage bags also claim to be BPA-free:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.glad.com/faq/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.glad.com/faq/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No. Glad food containers, wraps, storage bags and other food contact&#xA;  products are not made of phthalates or polycarbonate. Nor is Bisphenol&#xA;  A (BPA) used as a raw material in their production. For more&#xA;  information, read our official statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As that cooking style requires a vacuum-sealed plastic bag, you might be best served by sticking with one of these brand names, which have more to lose by containing toxins than a no-name store brand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16341" LastActivityDate="2014-05-28T00:05:52.400" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20737" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-28T21:46:40.370" Score="8" ViewCount="1807" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently hiking in mountains with some colleagues after a business trip. None of us had proper gear for 2000m, and consequently were rather cold. Now, all of us have advanced degrees in technical disciplines, so I was surprised to hear one of my colleagues suggest that we were likely to &lt;em&gt;catch&lt;/em&gt; a cold as a result of this. I was even more surprised when the others agreed, and even claimed it was &quot;common knowledge&quot; and proposed the following mechanism of action:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You are exposed to rhinovirus at some point, but your immune system&#xA;is strong and overcomes it (mostly). Possibly it is asymptomatic at this point.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The rhinovirus, defeated, takes up residence in your bone marrow, or perhaps somewhere else (DNA of other cells was suggested). It is suppressed, but not destroyed, and continues to attempt to spread.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exposure to cold temperatures or other stimuli weaken your immune system.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The cold virus is able to resurge and you get the symptoms of a cold.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, the claim is that the cold weather causes the symptoms of a cold where one would otherwise not have experienced them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, this sounds like a post-hoc justification for an old-wives' tale, but they insisted there was proof for this claim. What I'd like to see is a proper medical study on the question, or at least on the mechanism of action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to note that this is not &lt;em&gt;quite&lt;/em&gt; the same claim as the one being made in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/88/does-being-cold-increase-your-chances-of-catching-the-common-cold/366#366&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question, which discusses the possibility of getting a cold after being cold. The answers there do not address the specific scenario outlined above, where one is first exposed to the virus, but the virus doesn't produce detectable symptoms until after the exposure to cold weather.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastActivityDate="2015-12-22T14:46:41.473" Title="Can cold viruses remain dormant in your bones, and later emerge when you are exposed to cold temperatures?" Tags="|immune-system|common-cold|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20739" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20741" CreationDate="2014-05-28T23:23:41.007" Score="10" ViewCount="1155" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a Kickstarter to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/readingrainbow/bring-reading-rainbow-back-for-every-child-everywh&quot;&gt;bring back Reading Rainbow&lt;/a&gt; currently running.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One stat in particular really stands out for me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Right now, 1 out of every 4 children in America will grow up illiterate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is fairly shocking to me, but the Kickstarter itself doesn't provide any sources. I was able to find the claim &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dosomething.org/facts/11-facts-about-literacy-america&quot;&gt;elsewhere&lt;/a&gt;, but again, no sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that 1 in 4 children in America grow up illiterate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19493" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T16:17:01.990" LastActivityDate="2016-01-25T21:27:41.490" Title="Will 1 in 4 American children grow up illiterate?" Tags="|education|reading|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20741" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20739" CreationDate="2014-05-29T02:08:31.530" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html&quot;&gt;According to the CIA World Factbook&lt;/a&gt; the literacy rate for people over 15 in the US is 99%. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim may relate to &quot;functional illiteracy,&quot; which seems to be a more nebulous concept:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A definition of literacy and/or functional literacy acceptable to all industrialized countries neither exists nor is it desirable (whatever inconvenience this may mean for international comparison purposes) since literacy is a complex, interdisciplinary and relativistic skill, open-ended in terms of an individual's lifetime and aspirations as well as in terms of possible adaptations to changing times and environments, which should take into account as many factors as possible directly concerning the interests of the people who matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0007/000770/077067eo.pdf&quot;&gt;FUNCTIONAL ILLITERACY IN INDUSTRIALIZED COUNTRIES: AN&#xA;ANALYTICAL BIBLIOGRAPHY&lt;/a&gt; Ursula Giere&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T02:08:31.530" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18763" CreationDate="2014-05-29T09:55:22.270" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Clearly this question can not be answered in the negative since we lack the history for all armed forces since the beginning of time.  However, with reference to the SS, this has been outed as an urban legend on many sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you think about it, raising that many puppies for the SS is clearly not feasible.  You would have to have farms of dogs (or puppy farms) to have enough puppies to give to each SS trainee.  Each trainee would then have to raise each puppy, feed them, clean up their poop, take them walking to encourage bonding etc.  That's a lot of time out of one's training, and a lot of barking dogs in a training camp.  It's just not feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the German Chancellor at the time, Adolf Hitler, signed into law in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/Nazianimalrights.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1933 a law on animal protection&lt;/a&gt; which would have made such treatment of dogs illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, dogs were very fashionable during the Third Reich.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Sax, Boria (2000). Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and the Holocaust. Foreword by Klaus P. Fischer. New York and London: Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-1289-8&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-05-29T10:32:07.743" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T10:32:07.743" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6967" CreationDate="2014-05-29T13:32:36.483" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not true, simply because the numbers are off.  We can count the words ourselves. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611_Psalms-Chapter-46/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Psalm 46, KJV (1611)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1&lt;/strong&gt; [To&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; chiefe&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; Musician&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; for&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt; sonnes&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; of&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; Korah&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;, a&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; song&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; vpon&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt; Alamoth&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt;.] God&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; is&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; our&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; refuge&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt; and&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt; strength&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt;: a&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; very&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt; present&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; helpe&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; in&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; trouble&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2&lt;/strong&gt; Therfore&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt; will&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; not&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; we&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt; feare&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt;, though&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt; earth&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt; be&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt; remoued&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt;: and&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt; though&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt; mountaines&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt; be&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt; caried&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt; into&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt; midst&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt; of&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt; ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now it might be reasonable to exclude the parenthesized text, in which case we come to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1&lt;/strong&gt; [To the chiefe Musician for the sonnes of Korah, a song vpon Alamoth.] God&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; is&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; our&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; refuge&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; and&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; strength&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;: a&lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt; very&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; present&lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt; helpe&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; in&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt; trouble&lt;sup&gt;12&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2&lt;/strong&gt; Therfore&lt;sup&gt;13&lt;/sup&gt; will&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt; not&lt;sup&gt;15&lt;/sup&gt; we&lt;sup&gt;16&lt;/sup&gt; feare&lt;sup&gt;17&lt;/sup&gt;, though&lt;sup&gt;18&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;19&lt;/sup&gt; earth&lt;sup&gt;20&lt;/sup&gt; be&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt; remoued&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt;: and&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; though&lt;sup&gt;24&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;25&lt;/sup&gt; mountaines&lt;sup&gt;26&lt;/sup&gt; be&lt;sup&gt;27&lt;/sup&gt; caried&lt;sup&gt;28&lt;/sup&gt; into&lt;sup&gt;29&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;30&lt;/sup&gt; midst&lt;sup&gt;31&lt;/sup&gt; of&lt;sup&gt;32&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;33&lt;/sup&gt; sea&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3&lt;/strong&gt; Though&lt;sup&gt;35&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt; waters&lt;sup&gt;37&lt;/sup&gt; thereof&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt; roare&lt;sup&gt;39&lt;/sup&gt;, and&lt;sup&gt;40&lt;/sup&gt; be&lt;sup&gt;41&lt;/sup&gt; troubled&lt;sup&gt;42&lt;/sup&gt;, though&lt;sup&gt;43&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;44&lt;/sup&gt; mountaines&lt;sup&gt;45&lt;/sup&gt; shake&lt;sup&gt;46&lt;/sup&gt; …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But counting from the end:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;… the speare&lt;sup&gt;-47&lt;/sup&gt; in&lt;sup&gt;-46&lt;/sup&gt; sunder&lt;sup&gt;-45&lt;/sup&gt;, he&lt;sup&gt;-44&lt;/sup&gt; burneth&lt;sup&gt;-43&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;-42&lt;/sup&gt; chariot&lt;sup&gt;-41&lt;/sup&gt; in&lt;sup&gt;-40&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;-39&lt;/sup&gt; fire&lt;sup&gt;-38&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;10&lt;/strong&gt; Be&lt;sup&gt;-37&lt;/sup&gt; stil&lt;sup&gt;-36&lt;/sup&gt;, and&lt;sup&gt;-35&lt;/sup&gt; know&lt;sup&gt;-34&lt;/sup&gt; that&lt;sup&gt;-33&lt;/sup&gt; I&lt;sup&gt;-32&lt;/sup&gt; am&lt;sup&gt;-31&lt;/sup&gt; God&lt;sup&gt;-30&lt;/sup&gt;: I&lt;sup&gt;-29&lt;/sup&gt; will&lt;sup&gt;-28&lt;/sup&gt; bee&lt;sup&gt;-27&lt;/sup&gt; exalted&lt;sup&gt;-26&lt;/sup&gt; among&lt;sup&gt;-25&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;-24&lt;/sup&gt; heathen&lt;sup&gt;-23&lt;/sup&gt;, I&lt;sup&gt;-22&lt;/sup&gt; will&lt;sup&gt;-21&lt;/sup&gt; be&lt;sup&gt;-20&lt;/sup&gt; exalted&lt;sup&gt;-19&lt;/sup&gt; in&lt;sup&gt;-18&lt;/sup&gt; the&lt;sup&gt;-17&lt;/sup&gt; earth&lt;sup&gt;-16&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;11&lt;/strong&gt; The&lt;sup&gt;-15&lt;/sup&gt; Lord&lt;sup&gt;-14&lt;/sup&gt; of&lt;sup&gt;-13&lt;/sup&gt; hosts&lt;sup&gt;-12&lt;/sup&gt; is&lt;sup&gt;-11&lt;/sup&gt; with&lt;sup&gt;-10&lt;/sup&gt; vs&lt;sup&gt;-9&lt;/sup&gt;; the&lt;sup&gt;-8&lt;/sup&gt; God&lt;sup&gt;-7&lt;/sup&gt; of&lt;sup&gt;-6&lt;/sup&gt; Iacob&lt;sup&gt;-5&lt;/sup&gt; is&lt;sup&gt;-4&lt;/sup&gt; our&lt;sup&gt;-3&lt;/sup&gt; refuge&lt;sup&gt;-2&lt;/sup&gt;. Selah&lt;sup&gt;-1&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm no numerologist, but I'm pretty sure 47 != 46.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course if we discount the last word, &lt;em&gt;Selah&lt;/em&gt;, then &lt;em&gt;speare&lt;/em&gt; is the 46th word... but why should we skip the last word? It's still a word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T12:27:10.667" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20716" CreationDate="2014-05-29T14:30:57.493" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are a list of some of the monitoring stations for CO₂&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://co2now.org/Know-CO2/CO2-Monitoring/co2-measuring-stations.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://co2now.org/Know-CO2/CO2-Monitoring/co2-measuring-stations.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and this is a list of all sites doing atmospheric monitoring from NOAA &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/site/site_table2.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/site/site_table2.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be immediately obvious if CO₂ measurements were not consistent from so many different sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19504" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T10:41:20.143" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T10:41:20.143" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20716" CreationDate="2014-05-29T15:23:54.903" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The NASA AIRS (Atmospheric Infrared Sounder) instrument provides satellite based measurements of global CO₂, and it shows that atmospheric CO₂ only varies by a few tens of ppm globally, which indicates that it is indeed &quot;well mixed&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mxQuj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the description on the NASA &lt;a href=&quot;http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA11194&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;webpage&lt;/a&gt; for brief explanation of some of the variability.  As @user19504 suggests (+1) there is also a global network of CO₂ measurement sites (for which data are publicly available) so if CO₂ wasn't well mixed, it would be no secret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the seasonal growth and die-back of vegetation results in an annual signal in CO₂ measurements that is highest in the tropic and greatly attenuated in the polar regions (where there is little annual/deciduous vegetation).  Also most of the anthropogenic CO₂ is released in the northern hemisphere, and there is a delay in this propagating to the southern hemisphere of about a year, which explains the slight north/south gradient. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T10:41:48.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T10:41:48.730" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20751" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-29T16:06:56.033" Score="3" ViewCount="60" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read that estimates of CO₂ emissions form volcanos has increased from 100Mt to 600Mt/ year in the last decade or so. While still only a fraction of the natural cycle, in what ways does this sort of change affect understanding of where CO₂ emissions are coming from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19504" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T07:20:30.830" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T07:20:30.830" Title="volcanic CO₂ emission estimates increasing" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-05-29T17:13:24.410" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7789" CreationDate="2014-05-29T17:25:37.263" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no documentation to the claim that &quot;In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed…&quot;&#xA;this is asserted often, but I have never seen any indication of this and certainly no data to back it up. There is no attempt to set parameters for what &quot;drastic action&quot; would consist of, or how one would gauge which scientists supported &quot;drastic actions&quot; and which didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the second statement is the main argument against ACC theory these days. specifically because current temps are at the low end of what GCM have suggested.&#xA; Here is a good discussion of important factors in this assertions with relevant links that discuss a rather complicated issue &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/climate-modelling/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/climate-modelling/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Basically there are numerous aspects of natural variability that have trended negative recently. Solar radiation has been extremely low&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/predict.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;ENSO cycle has trended negative this past decade  &lt;a href=&quot;http://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and aerosol pollution in Asia has increased tremendously limiting absorption of solar radiation and possibly affecting weather patterns. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140414154412.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140414154412.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as pointed out very clearly in the above answer Trenbeth's quote is taken out of context, and recent argo data supports his conjecture that oceans must be storing excess heat due to CO2&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/documents/STM/2013-10/14_Global_averages.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/documents/STM/2013-10/14_Global_averages.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this empirical data proves that the recent lack of warming ( which is already extremely high for the last 1,500 years), is explained by natural cause, but the explanations are completely reasonable and not post hoc attempts to shore up a failing theory as the authors imply. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the next point about plants and CO2/temps is adequately dealt with by Jivlain's answer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the last point &quot;...Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically…&quot;&#xA;is once again a subjective assertion. &#xA;The IPCC policy summary &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;the recent NCA  report &lt;a href=&quot;http://nca2014.globalchange.gov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://nca2014.globalchange.gov&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and numerous other research suggests that there is a real possibility of serious damage to both the biosphere as well as economical and humanitarian effects on people in the coming decades,&#xA;Recently the dissenting economic voice on the IPCC, Richard Tol was discovered to have falsely attributed positive effects of climate change in the short and medium turn do to misreading research data. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/1wnq1te&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bit.ly/1wnq1te&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;his views ran counter to the mainstream economic analysis, and while they still do, are not nearly the optimistic note that initially was attributed to his results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19504" LastActivityDate="2014-05-29T17:25:37.263" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20753" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-05-29T21:54:10.083" Score="14" ViewCount="2334" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a commonly cited claim that in the early 70s, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_W._Smith&quot;&gt;Fred Smith - the founder of Fedex&lt;/a&gt;, risked the company's last $5,000 in a casino gamble:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Desperate to pay bills, he flies to Las Vegas, wins $27,000 at blackjack and wires it back to FedEx. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2014/01/23/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-fedex-billionaire-fred-smith/&quot;&gt;Forbes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it seems... odd. The guy inherited $4m, and raised $91m initially; surely a $5k gamble wasn't necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T12:16:17.027" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T12:16:17.027" Title="Did Fred Smith, founder of FedEx, gamble on blackjack to keep the company afloat?" Tags="|history|corporate-finance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20704" CreationDate="2014-05-30T03:24:36.537" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is not as accurate to claim that on average full-time working women earn just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns.&lt;/strong&gt; A more accurate claim using the proper mathmatical nomenclature would be ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2011, the median full-time year-round* working female age 15+ earned 77 percent of what the median full-time year-round working male age 15+ earned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;*[25] A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-239.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;full-time, year-round worker&lt;/a&gt; (page 20 pdf, labeled page 12) is a person who worked 35 or more hours per week (full time) and 50 or more weeks during the previous calendar year (year round). For school personnel, summer vacation is counted as weeks worked if they are scheduled to return to their job in the fall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The White House website is publishing that statistic that also shows up in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/equalpay/equal_pay_task_force_progress_report_june_2013_new.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fifty Years After the Equal Pay Act&lt;/a&gt; (FYAtEPA) report. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This progress notwithstanding, in 2011, the average woman still earned only 77 cents for every dollar earned by men.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source of the claim, according to the FYAtEPA, comes from the Census Bureau&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[1] U.S. Census Bureau. “Women's Earnings as a Percentage of Men's Earnings by Race and Hispanic Origin.” Historical Income Tables, Table P-40. (2011). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/people/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/people/&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Table &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/people/2012/P40_2012.xls&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;P-40 notes&lt;/a&gt; that the 77.0 percent ratio is a comparison of the median full-time female to median full-time male. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Based on &lt;strong&gt;median earnings&lt;/strong&gt; of full-time, year-round workers 15 years old and over as of March of the following year.  [...])&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://stattrek.com/descriptive-statistics/central-tendency.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;median and average&lt;/a&gt;(mean) are not the same thing,  but sometimes the word average is used when a median value is reported for a statistic, because median values have a central tendency and are less skewed by exceptionally high/low values. The more commonly used &quot;average&quot; (mean) full-time working woman's earnings from the Census Bureau, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/people/2012/P37AR_2012.xls&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Table P-37.  Full-Time, Year-Round Workers by Mean Income and Sex:  1955 to 2012&lt;/a&gt;. Using those figures from 2011, you would determine that &lt;strong&gt;a full-time year-round working woman earns on average 72.2 cents (49040 / 67913) for every dollar a full-time year-round working man earns.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/wp/2014/04/09/president-obamas-persistent-77-cent-claim-on-the-wage-gap-gets-a-new-pinocchio-rating/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wide range of criticism&lt;/a&gt; over the 77 cent figure. Some reporters even noted the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/07/223647/white-house-defends-equal-pay.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;White House's own pay gap&lt;/a&gt;, where the average women earns only 91 cents of what the average man working at the White House earns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This comparison of median/mean earnings is on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/Women_in_America.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;broad level and does not control&lt;/a&gt; for many factors that can be significant in explaining earnings differences. One factor is that women on average &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswom2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;work fewer hours&lt;/a&gt; then men do. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among full-time workers (that is, those working at a job 35 hours or more per week), men are more likely than women to have a longer workweek. Twenty-six percent of men worked 41 or more hours per week in 2012, compared with 14 percent of women who did so. Women were more likely than men to work 35 to 39 hours per week: 12 percent of women worked those hours in 2012, while 5 percent of men did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/Women_in_America.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;women in occupations with lower-pay&lt;/a&gt;, and less women in occupations with higher pay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While women are more likely than men to work in professional and related occupations, they are more highly represented in the lower-paying jobs within this category. For example, in 2009, professional women were more likely (nearly&#xA;  70 percent) to work in the relatively low-paying education (with $887 median weekly earnings) and health care ($970 median weekly earnings) occupations, compared to 32 percent of male professionals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2009, only 7 percent of female professionals were employed in the relatively high paying computer ($1,253 median weekly earnings) and engineering fields ($1,266 median weekly earnings), compared to 38 percent of male professionals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women on average &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/Women_in_America.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;have less work experience&lt;/a&gt; than men (page 37).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;on average, women at every educational level and at every age spend fewer weeks in the labor force than do men. The differences between men and women in labor force attachment are much smaller among those with a college degree or more education.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/nlsoy.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="26361" LastEditDate="2018-02-07T12:09:51.963" LastActivityDate="2018-02-07T12:09:51.963" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5460" CreationDate="2014-05-30T04:08:25.583" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;For some conditions where immunity is boosted by regular exposure, then it would seem that paediatricians might well have a more robust immune response.  In this small study of 11 paediatricians they showed a more robust response to zoster antigens than controls, and a larger response to CMV antigens.  However, there was no difference for Adenovirus 5, or tetanus toxoid. [1] For seasonal flu where there is no previous exposure, there should be no biological reason for them to be more immune than anyone else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;em&gt;Influence of frequent infectious exposures on general and varicella-zoster virus-specific immune responses in pediatricians.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24429070&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clin Vaccine Immunol. 2014 Mar;21(3):417-26. doi: 10.1128/CVI.00818-13. Epub 2014 Jan 15.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T20:20:10.193" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T20:20:10.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9519" CreationDate="2014-05-30T04:59:21.653" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a little confusion in the original statements quoted from the Mirror.  First they say they use sheep placental tissue, and then they say they use amniotic fluid derived stem cells.  The latter is taken from the sheep uterus under ultrasound guided aspiration.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the efficacy of these treatments, I guess once we see wool growing over Victoria Beckham's eyes, we will know it worked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS) and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) released a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.surgery.org/media/news-releases/asaps-and-asps-issue-joint-position-statement-on-stem-cells-and-fat-grafting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;position statement&lt;/a&gt; on the use of stem cells ( from humans I would imagine ) in aesthetic surgery:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature, the task&#xA;  force concluded that while there is tremendous potential for the&#xA;  future use of stem cells in aesthetic surgical procedures, the&#xA;  scientific evidence and other data are very limited in terms of&#xA;  assessing the safety or efficacy of stem cell therapies in aesthetic&#xA;  medicine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T04:59:21.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20758" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16743" CreationDate="2014-05-30T05:53:46.563" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The answer to your question is yes, studies have been conducted and there is a measurable effect on inflammatory markers.&lt;/strong&gt; [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In normal subjects, the high-fat meal increased the plasma levels of&#xA;  tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), interleukin-6 (IL-6),&#xA;  intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) and vascular cell adhesion&#xA;  molecule-1 (VCAM-1)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more interesting question is why high fat meals do this.  It was thought that fat caused a leaky gut causing the passage of native bacterial endotoxin across the gut membrane, but experimental studies now suggest that the source of the bacterial endotoxin is actually from the food itself. [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To investigate what may differentiate inflammatory from&#xA;  non-inflammatory food extracts, stimulants of Toll-like receptor (TLR)&#xA;  2 and TLR4 were quantified using human embryonic kidney-293 cells&#xA;  transfected with each TLR, and calibrated with defined bacterial&#xA;  lipopeptide (BLP) and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) standards. These assays&#xA;  revealed that while most foods contained undetectable levels of TLR2&#xA;  or TLR4 stimulants, all TNF-α-inducing foods contained stimulants of&#xA;  either TLR2 (up to 1100 ng BLP-equivalent/g) or TLR4 (up to 2700 ng&#xA;  LPS-equivalent/g) in both the soluble and insoluble fractions. TLR&#xA;  stimulants were present mainly in meat products and processed foods,&#xA;  but were minimal or undetectable in fresh fruit and vegetables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Nappo F, Esposito K, Cioffi M, [..], Giugliano D. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11923038&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Postprandial endothelial activation in healthy subjects and in type 2 diabetic patients: role of fat and carbohydrate meals.&lt;/a&gt; J. Am. Coll. Cardiol. 2002 Apr 3;39(7):1145-50. PubMed PMID: 11923038. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Erridge C. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20849668&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The capacity of foodstuffs to induce innate immune activation of human monocytes in vitro is dependent on food content of stimulants of Toll-like receptors 2 and 4.&lt;/a&gt; Br. J. Nutr. 2011 Jan;105(1):15-23. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0007114510003004&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1017/S0007114510003004&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 20849668. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T03:22:07.133" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T03:22:07.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18657" CreationDate="2014-05-30T07:10:03.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is based on 2 debatable claims made by the blogger who writes marksdailyapple.  One that celiac disease [CD] is on the rise, and there exists an entity named &quot;gluten sensitives&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study he links to for the first claim [1] is actually talking about CD autoimmunity as it can not talk about CD itself which requires small bowel biopsy to make the diagnosis. This is clear in the study title.  Furthermore they state&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compared to controls, untreated CD subjects showed increased incidence&#xA;  of osteoporosis and associated autoimmune disorders, but they did not&#xA;  reach statistical significance&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so the link between autoimmunity and actual disease is not established, and can not be assumed as the blogger did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study published 2 years later [2] states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The prevalence of celiac disease (CD) in the United States is unknown.&#xA;  We sought to estimate CD prevalence nationwide by using a nationally&#xA;  representative sample.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so, it is somewhat hard to claim increasing disease prevalence when the first prevalence study was only just done in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The existence of the condition &quot;gluten sensitivity&quot; was recently studied [3] in people who fulfilled the criteria for non-celiac gluten sensitivity.  Instead their symptoms were found to be due to FODMAPs (Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides and Polyols). The existence of this condition is thus somewhat doubtful.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a placebo-controlled, cross-over rechallenge study, we found no&#xA;  evidence of specific or dose-dependent effects of gluten in patients&#xA;  with NCGS placed diets low in FODMAPs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore the answer to the question is no.  Sorry if this upsets the large numbers of people following gluten free diets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20868314&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Natural history of celiac disease autoimmunity in a USA cohort followed since 1974.&lt;/a&gt; Catassi C1, Kryszak D, Bhatti B, Sturgeon C, Helzlsouer K, Clipp SL, Gelfond D, Puppa E, Sferruzza A, Fasano A. Ann Med. 2010 Oct;42(7):530-8. doi: 10.3109/07853890.2010.514285. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22850429&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The prevalence of celiac disease in the United States.&lt;/a&gt; Rubio-Tapia A1, Ludvigsson JF, Brantner TL, Murray JA, Everhart JE. Am J Gastroenterol. 2012 Oct;107(10):1538-44; quiz 1537, 1545. doi: 10.1038/ajg.2012.219. Epub 2012 Jul 31.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23648697&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;No effects of gluten in patients with self-reported non-celiac gluten sensitivity after dietary reduction of fermentable, poorly absorbed, short-chain carbohydrates.&lt;/a&gt; Biesiekierski JR, Peters SL, Newnham ED, Rosella O, Muir JG, Gibson PR. Gastroenterology. 2013 Aug;145(2):320-8.e1-3. doi: 10.1053/j.gastro.2013.04.051. Epub 2013 May 4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T10:52:20.577" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T10:52:20.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20760" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20723" CreationDate="2014-05-30T08:30:30.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there is not enough evidence for this claim, according to the NIH:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What the Science Says&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A few small studies have found that fenugreek may help lower blood sugar levels in people with diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is not enough scientific evidence to support the use of fenugreek for any other health condition.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sources&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fenugreek. Natural Medicines Comprehensive Database Web site.&#xA;  Accessed at www.naturaldatabase.com on August 18, 2009. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fenugreek&#xA;  (Trigonella foenum-graecum L. Leguminosae). Natural Standard Database&#xA;  Web site. Accessed at www.naturalstandard.com on August 13, 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fenugreek seed. In: Blumenthal M, Goldberg A, Brinckman J, eds. Herbal&#xA;  Medicine: Expanded Commission E Monographs. Newton, MA: Lippincott&#xA;  Williams &amp;amp; Wilkins; 2000:130–133.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nccam.nih.gov/health/fenugreek&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Institutes of Health : Herbs At A Glance : Fenugreek&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastEditorUserId="914" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T10:26:35.957" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T10:26:35.957" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17400" CreationDate="2014-05-30T09:27:43.830" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question asked whether the association between levels of long chain omega-3 polyunsaturaed fatty acids (LCω-3PUFA) and prostate cancer could be caused by the prostate cancer patients taking LCω-3PUFA supplements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study &lt;em&gt;Plasma Phospholipid Fatty Acids and Prostate Cancer Risk&#xA;in the SELECT Trial&lt;/em&gt; [1] was a 427 centre trial which enrolled 35,533 patients &lt;strong&gt;without known prostate cancer&lt;/strong&gt; from 2001-2004 and followed them for a number of years.  Those that developed prostate cancer were matched by age-race to controls in the study without prostate cancer.  They studied 834 subjects who developed cancer in the first 6 years of the study.  They then added other subjects who developed cancer in subsequent years. The blood samples examined were those taken from entry into the study, ie. before the diagnosis of prostate cancer.  &lt;strong&gt;So, to your question was to whether subjects who developed prostate cancer then took fish oils or ate fish in response to the diagnosis, then the answer to this is no.&lt;/strong&gt;  The difference between the high risk group and low risk was equivalent to eating salmon twice a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next question of interest is to whether there are any health benefits at all from swallowing marine sourced LCω-3PUFA but all we can say is regarding cardiovascular health, and here the answer is again no.  NICE no longer recommend the consumption of either oily fish, or fish oil supplements to prevent cardiovascular disease based on studies such as this one [2], and a more recent study looking to see if there were cardiovascular benefits with people with already existing peripheral vascular disease also found none. [3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it would seem best at present to source your omega-3s from plants such as flaxseeds. And as the message seems to be again, eat whole foods and not supplements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Brasky TM, Darke AK, Song X, [..], Kristal AR. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23843441&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Plasma phospholipid fatty acids and prostate cancer risk in the SELECT trial.&lt;/a&gt; J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 2013 Aug 7;105(15):1132-41. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jnci/djt174&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1093/jnci/djt174&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 23843441. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Rizos EC, Ntzani EE, Bika E, [..], Elisaf MS. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22968891&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Association between omega-3 fatty acid supplementation and risk of major cardiovascular disease events: a systematic review and meta-analysis.&lt;/a&gt; JAMA. 2012 Sep 12;308(10):1024-33. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/2012.jama.11374&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1001/2012.jama.11374&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 22968891. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3] Enns JE, Yeganeh A, Zarychanski R, [..], Taylor CG. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24885361&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The impact of omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid supplementation on the incidence of cardiovascular events and complications in peripheral arterial disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis.&lt;/a&gt; BMC Cardiovasc Disord. 2014 May 31;14(1):70. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2261-14-70&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1186/1471-2261-14-70&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 24885361. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T03:10:24.063" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T03:10:24.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18657" CreationDate="2014-05-30T10:11:50.003" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are the predominant wheat strains eaten today significantly different in nutrition to those used prior to the 1960s?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 1960s, a handful of semi-dwarf, disease-resistant wheat varieties (e.g., Norman Borlaug's Pitic 62 and Penjamo 62) began to replace traditional wheat varieties (e.g., einkorn, kamut, emmer) due to the greatly increased yield of such varieties, especially in tropical and subtropical climates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since then, the mineral concentration of zinc, iron, copper, and magnesium has decreased significantly.[1] Further significant health benefits, not explainable by mineral concentration change, are also demonstrable as a result of replacing modern wheat with a traditional cultivar.[2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19013359&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Evidence of decreasing mineral density in wheat grain over the last 160 years.&lt;/a&gt; Fan et al. J Trace Elem Med Biol. 2008;22(4):315-24.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23299714&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Characterization of Khorasan wheat (Kamut) and impact of a replacement diet on cardiovascular risk factors: cross-over dietary intervention study.&lt;/a&gt; Sofi F et al. Eur J Clin Nutr. 2013 Feb;67(2):190-5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, we also process our modern wheat to remove the bran and germ from the endosperm, and we skip the sprouting, fermenting, and slow-rise yeast baking, all of which have significant effects on nutritive value,[3] but that is not the cultivars' fault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3]: &lt;a href=&quot;http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/05/traditional-preparation-methods-improve.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Traditional preparation methods improve grains' nutritive value.&lt;/a&gt; Whole Health Source. Tuesday, May 4, 2010. (N.B. There are 15 scientific journal references in that, so don't be put off by it being a blog post.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are they more likely to trigger celiac disease or similar gluten sensitivities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern wheat has been shown to contain greater levels of specific toxic forms of gluten (gluten is a family of proteins, some problematic and some not, along a spectrum). The greater levels of these proteins (e.g., T-cell alpha-gliadin) are more likely to trigger celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity.[4][5]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[4]: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2963738/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Presence of celiac disease epitopes in modern and old hexaploid wheat varieties: wheat breeding may have contributed to increased prevalence of celiac disease.&lt;/a&gt; van den Broeck et al. Theoretical and Applied Genetics. Nov 2010; 121(8): 1527-39.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[5]: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22732901&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Celiac disease: quantity matters.&lt;/a&gt; Koning F. Semin Immunopathol. 2012 Jul;34(4):541-9.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19503" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T10:11:50.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20753" CreationDate="2014-05-30T12:58:31.397" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story is well-cited by Wikipedia, and it appears to be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia cites &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/15/fred-smith-blackjack-fedex_n_1966837.html&quot;&gt;The Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;, which in turn cites Robert Frock's book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I asked Fred [Smith] where the funds had come from, and he responded, ‘The meeting with the General Dynamics board was a bust and I knew we needed money for Monday, so I took a plane to Las Vegas and won $27,000.’ I said, ‘You mean you took our last $5,000-- how could you do that?’ He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘What difference does it make? Without the funds for the fuel companies, we couldn't have flown anyway.’ Fred's luck held again. It was not much, but it came at a critical time and kept us in business for another week.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smith has also talked about the incident in other places, including with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9099&quot;&gt;Charlie Rose&lt;/a&gt;. If you're doubting whether Smith lied about the gamble, I doubt casino records exist which could prove that he won $27,000 on such a bet--and if they did, they would probably require a court order to reveal them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-05-30T14:59:57.163" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T14:59:57.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20765" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20772" CreationDate="2014-05-30T14:52:37.080" Score="24" ViewCount="5393" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been several claims in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://jezebel.com/5928584/why-most-mass-murderers-are-privileged-white-men&quot;&gt;media&lt;/a&gt; that white men are more likely to commit mass murders. I've seen rather strong evidence that the vast majority of these crimes are committed by men, so I don't doubt this part of the claim. On the other hand, I haven't seen any non-dubious statistics for the racial aspect of the claim. Are white people more likely to commit mass murder than those of other races?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="188" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-12-31T11:33:21.903" LastActivityDate="2020-06-27T02:46:44.023" Title="Are white people more likely to commit mass murder in the United States?" Tags="|united-states|criminology|race|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20768" CreationDate="2014-05-30T18:18:51.670" Score="19" ViewCount="2034" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Microsleep&amp;amp;oldid=610569601&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When experiencing microsleeps while driving an automobile, from the perspective of the driver, he or she drives a car, and then suddenly realizes that several seconds have passed by unnoticed. &lt;em&gt;It is not obvious to the driver that he or she was asleep during those missing seconds, although this is in fact what happened&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It references &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sleepdex.org/microsleep.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, which also claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsleep episodes last from a few seconds to two minutes, and often the person is not aware that a microsleep has occurred. In fact, microsleeps often occur when a person's eyes are open.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] selective loss of awareness &lt;em&gt;without the person feeling he or she has been asleep&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That second link acknowledges the difficulty in quantifying microsleep, but its references are 6 years out-of-date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that people are unaware that they have experienced a microsleep episode?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;I could say that I have always been aware of microsleeps, but somebody could pull a &amp;quot;no true scotsman&amp;quot; fallacy and say, &amp;quot;then you haven't really experienced microsleep&amp;quot;. Or maybe I'm pulling the &amp;quot;toupeé fallacy&amp;quot; by just saying &amp;quot;I've never been asleep without knowing it&amp;quot;.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Related, but not essential: do they happen while driving?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T15:02:09.310" Title="While driving (or otherwise), do people experience microsleep and are unaware that it happened?" Tags="|sleep|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20767" CreationDate="2014-05-30T19:08:49.137" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt; micro-sleep (or microsleep) is a real phenomenon that is well documented in both the mainstream and scientific literature and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2808128/&quot;&gt;can be verified by EEG&lt;/a&gt;. There is also evidence to support that people are sometimes not aware when this happens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to the phenomenon itself, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-25593327&quot;&gt;BBC said that&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of 1,000 drivers it interviewed, 45% of men admitted to micro-sleeping&#xA;  while driving, as did 22% of women. But what does this mean?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Micro-sleep is an episode of light sleep lasting five to 10 seconds.&#xA;  The brain goes to sleep involuntarily and it is more likely to happen&#xA;  in a monotonous situation. People wake suddenly, often with a sharp&#xA;  jerk of the head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Your eyelids start drooping and you start to lose contact with&#xA;  reality,&quot; says Prof Jim Horne, director of Loughborough University's&#xA;  Sleep Research Centre. &quot;You're asleep for a few second, then wake up,&#xA;  often with a jolt.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is similar to &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/blink-eye-dozing-driving/story?id=17870880&quot;&gt;a report by ABC News&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sleep researchers at the Liberty Mutual Research Institute in&#xA;  Hopkinton, Mass., estimate that every day 250,000 Americans drive&#xA;  while sleep-deprived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration figures,&#xA;  more than 6,000 people are killed every year in vehicle accidents&#xA;  blamed on an exhausted driver behind the wheel. That's second only to&#xA;  drunk-driving fatal accidents and ahead of those attributed to driver&#xA;  distraction, which includes texting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These figures are also reported by highway safety administrations and researchers such as those in &lt;a href=&quot;http://tti.tamu.edu/group/stsc/files/2010/11/Drowsy_Driving.pdf&quot;&gt;Texas&lt;/a&gt;, during &lt;a href=&quot;http://drivingassessment.uiowa.edu/DA2005/PDF/04_AmitPaul_LBoyleformat.pdf&quot;&gt;symposiums&lt;/a&gt;, and finally the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhtsa.gov/&quot;&gt;NHSTA&lt;/a&gt; reports their research on this topic under the heading &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhtsa.gov/Driving+Safety/Distracted+Driving+at+Distraction.gov/Research+on+Drowsy+Driving&quot;&gt;Drowsy Driving&lt;/a&gt;&quot; which encompass micro-sleeps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To further complicate the matter, there has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v472/n7344/full/nature10009.html&quot;&gt;recent research into local sleep&lt;/a&gt; that can occur during period of wakefulness, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110427131814.htm&quot;&gt;summarized by Science Daily&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have a new&#xA;  explanation. They've found that some nerve cells in a sleep-deprived&#xA;  yet awake brain can briefly go &quot;off line,&quot; into a sleep-like state,&#xA;  while the rest of the brain appears awake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Even before you feel fatigued, there are signs in the brain that you&#xA;  should stop certain activities that may require alertness,&quot; says Dr.&#xA;  Chiara Cirelli, professor of psychiatry at the School of Medicine and&#xA;  Public Health. &quot;Specific groups of neurons may be falling asleep, with&#xA;  negative consequences on performance.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Until now, scientists thought that sleep deprivation generally&#xA;  affected the entire brain. Electroencephalograms (EEGs) show network&#xA;  brain-wave patterns typical of either being asleep or awake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these articles and research indicate that those surveyed are either unaware or deny the extent of their fatigue so it is reasonable to conclude that those experiencing it are unaware of the event. Furthermore, the research cited into local sleep demonstrates that in rats it can occur even when the subject appears awake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To further expound upon the question of if people are aware of micro-sleep episodes, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=1tuqWy006SAC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA26&amp;amp;dq=microsleep%20denied%20event&amp;amp;ots=qJ_X_v3eJ-&amp;amp;sig=ckNYH3M93e-yEKi-x7rCmGgPU7E#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=denial&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;following discussion&lt;/a&gt; was found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most drivers involved in sleep-related vehicle crashes usually deny&#xA;  having fallen asleep, with evidence pointing to the crash being&#xA;  sleep-related coming from other sources. Possible reasons for the&#xA;  denial could include fear of procession and loss of insurance&#xA;  indemnity. It is possible, however, that the person genuinely had no&#xA;  memory of having fallen asleep, with studies showing that drives who&#xA;  fall asleep typically deny having been asleep if awoken within a&#xA;  minute or two (30). It is very likely, however, that drivers falling&#xA;  asleep at the wheel were aware of the precursory feeling of sleepiness&#xA;  even though they may not remember this after the crash (30).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An older text on the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=lA41ks7JvugC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA439&amp;amp;dq=microsleep%20denied%20event&amp;amp;ots=MiLun6683_&amp;amp;sig=W1UPUmpWOdPYYGx1xzo2-UYfd5U#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=deny&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Neurobiology of Sleep and Memory&lt;/a&gt;&quot; contains a discussion about micro-sleep in the broader context of amnesia that can point to the biological explanation for the denial,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another question concerns what happens to the information during this&#xA;  abnormal state and why patients deny any memory trace of the events.&#xA;  During micro-sleep episodes a lack of perception may exist, which is&#xA;  responsible for a non-acquisition of information. The results from the&#xA;  LSVT seem to confirm this assumption. But micro-sleeps are very short&#xA;  events and the absence of perception during these periods can only&#xA;  account for a small amount of the total amnesic period. Another&#xA;  component must also play a role in the existence of the amnesia. Our&#xA;  patients obviously present a retrograde amnesia and if we combine the&#xA;  results of our pilot study on students with the finding on our patient&#xA;  population, one could suggest that a certain amount of information&#xA;  stored in the &quot;short-term&quot; memory pool cannot be switched to the&#xA;  long-term pool because of successive micro-sleep events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T14:38:22.670" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T14:38:22.670" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20769" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20767" CreationDate="2014-05-30T19:10:50.213" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To directly answer the question of whether people can be unaware of microsleeps happening (while driving), here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/blink-eye-dozing-driving/story?id=17870880&amp;amp;page=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quote from a journalist&lt;/a&gt; participating in a study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I asked about the episode when I had run off the road.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Yes,&quot; he said. &quot;We could see it coming in your brain wave recoding.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He said I was asleep five or six seconds. But what truly shocked me was when he told me that I'd micro-slept a total of 22 times. I had only remembered dosing off twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I don't find it hard to believe at all. The times you &lt;em&gt;remember&lt;/em&gt; it happening are probably the times you were drifting out-of-lane. You then snap back to awareness and recover, so you're &lt;em&gt;bound&lt;/em&gt; to be aware of it. In other episodes where you stay in-lane and nothing &quot;bad&quot; happens, there's not much of a frame of reference to say &quot;This is not the situation I was just in, what happened to those seconds?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19407" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T19:10:50.213" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19964" CreationDate="2014-05-30T22:34:21.067" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two questions.  One is whether it's possible to diagnose malaria with a non-invasive device, and two whether that device could involve a smartphone with software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's clearly possible to non-invasively diagnose cerebral malaria by examining the retina using either direct or indirect ophthalmoscopy [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A retinopathy consisting of two unique features - patchy retinal&#xA;  whitening and focal changes of vessel color - is highly specific for&#xA;  encephalopathy of malarial etiology. White-centered retinal&#xA;  hemorrhages are a common but less specific feature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technique these students are using is most likely that described in this paper (&lt;a href=&quot;http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/98695/ApplPhysLett_99_073704.pdf?sequence=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;full text&lt;/a&gt;) [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We investigated the backward light scattering pattern of healthy and&#xA;  malaria (Plasmodium falciparum) parasitized red blood cells. The&#xA;  spectrum could clearly distinguish between predominant ring stage&#xA;  infected blood cells and healthy blood cells. Further, we found that&#xA;  infected samples mixed with different stages of P. falciparum showed&#xA;  different signals, suggesting that even variance in parasite stages&#xA;  could also be detected by the spectrum. These results together with&#xA;  the backward scattering technique suggest the potential of&#xA;  non-invasive diagnosis of malaria through light scattering of blood&#xA;  cells near the surface of human body, such as using eyes or skin&#xA;  surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likely the app just analyses the data from the device which does the light scattering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Beare NA, Lewallen S, Taylor TE, Molyneux ME. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21449844&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Redefining cerebral malaria by including malaria retinopathy.&lt;/a&gt; Future Microbiol. 2011 Mar;6(3):349-55. doi: 10.2217/fmb.11.3. Review. PubMed PMID: 21449844; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3139111. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Lee S, Lu W. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21926010&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Using elastic light scattering of red blood cells to detect infection of malaria parasite.&lt;/a&gt; IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2012 Jan;59(1):150-5. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2011.2168398. Epub 2011 Sep 15. PubMed PMID: 21926010. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-05-30T22:34:21.067" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20771" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20775" CreationDate="2014-05-31T02:25:09.883" Score="3" ViewCount="3614" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this being echoed all over social media lately, but that's about all I can find with my GoogleFu. Is there any legitimacy to this? Was there a study or something that would suggest this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Wearing steel toe boots will burn more calories than normal shoes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eg:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/FactsofHealth/status/381493178085298176&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://twitter.com/FactsofHealth/status/381493178085298176&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18965" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:09:28.453" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:09:28.453" Title="Wearing Steel toe boots will burn more calories than normal shoes" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20765" CreationDate="2014-05-31T03:02:31.533" Score="37" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We identified a total of 28 mass murderers who fit the&#xA;  criteria for inclusion [male mass murderers in the U.S. since 1970]. [...] &lt;strong&gt;71.4%&#xA;  were White, 14.3% were African American, and another 14.3%&#xA;  were some other race (Asian, Arab, and Native American)&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Kennedy-Kollar, Deniese and Charles, Christopher A. D., Hegemonic Masculinity and Mass Murderers in the United States (December 26, 2013). Southwest Journal of Criminal Justice, Vol. 8(2), 2013. Available at SSRN: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ssrn.com/abstract=2372128&quot;&gt;http://ssrn.com/abstract=2372128&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This only shows that given a mass murderer, they are more likely to be white.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the chart and references &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=White_American&amp;amp;oldid=610729428#Demographic_information&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, white people made up 87.5% of the U.S. population in 1970, 83.1% in 1980, 80.3% in 1990, 75.1% in 2000, and 72.4% of in 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;71.4% of mass murderers being white is not an over-representation of whites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-05-31T03:20:35.377" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T03:20:35.377" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15266" CreationDate="2014-05-31T03:19:11.063" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the question is whether CRNA Alice Magaw used hyponosis as the sole anaesthetic as implied in the article linked to by your question, then the answer is, no.  She talked to her patients to quieten their fears reassuring them whilst administering chloroform or ether.  The paper she wrote describing her method of administering these gases can be read in full at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aana.com/newsandjournal/Documents/imagining_0299_p33-38.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;AANA archives&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T03:19:11.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20775" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20771" CreationDate="2014-05-31T04:55:41.340" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;All things being equal, yes steel toed boots will result in more calories burned, because steel toed boots weigh more than the average casual shoe or street shoes. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B001R4BYZS&quot;&gt;this pair is 4.3 lbs&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/dietandfitness/5329807/Fitness-shoes-do-they-work.html&quot;&gt;This article (The Telegraph)&lt;/a&gt; suggests that heavy shoes &quot;work a lot like ankle weights&quot;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/3386506&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; concluded that &quot;oxygen uptake and heart rate responses were greater&quot; with ankle weights than with no weights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I could not find any study on PubMed or Google Scholar that examined prescribing steel toed boots as an intervention to see if all other things actually do remain equal (you maintain the same activity level, they don't cause injuries, among other things), and whether more calories are actually burned in practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, the mechanism is sound, but its practical effectiveness hasn't been demonstrated (as far as I can tell).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-05-31T05:11:20.827" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T05:11:20.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20776" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20737" CreationDate="2014-05-31T05:50:07.287" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't think the viruses responsible for the common cold can hide in the bone, though CMV can hide in the bone marrow.  You mentioned rhinoviruses, and these infect epithelial cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the question as to whether some of the viruses responsible for the common cold can hide, and then emerge to reinfect people, then the evidence seems to be yes where adenovirus persists inside lymphoid tissue eg tonsils.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adenovirus transcripts were rarely detected in uncultured lymphocytes&#xA;  (2 of 12 donors) but appeared following stimulation and culture (11 of&#xA;  13 donors). Viral DNA replication could be stimulated in most donor&#xA;  samples by lymphocyte stimulation in culture. New infectious virus was&#xA;  detected in 13 of 15 donors following in vitro stimulation. These data&#xA;  suggest that species C adenoviruses can establish latent infections in&#xA;  mucosal lymphocytes and that stimulation of these cells can cause&#xA;  viral reactivation resulting in RNA transcription, DNA replication,&#xA;  and infectious virus production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Garnett CT, Talekar G, Mahr JA, Huang W, Zhang Y, Ornelles DA, Gooding LR. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19109384&quot;&gt;Latent species C adenoviruses in human tonsil tissues.&lt;/a&gt; J Virol. 2009 Mar;83(6):2417-28. doi: 10.1128/JVI.02392-08. Epub 2008 Dec 24. PubMed PMID: 19109384; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2648257. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T05:50:07.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13541" CreationDate="2014-05-31T07:52:58.357" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The main benefit from flossing appears to be to reduce gingivitis or gum inflammation.  Presumably it does this by removing food from the interdental spaces because there is only weak evidence it removes plaque which might be causing gingivitis. This Cochrane review concludes [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is some evidence from twelve studies that flossing in addition&#xA;  to toothbrushing reduces gingivitis compared to toothbrushing alone.&#xA;  There is weak, very unreliable evidence from 10 studies that flossing&#xA;  plus toothbrushing may be associated with a small reduction in plaque&#xA;  at 1 and 3 months. No studies reported the effectiveness of flossing&#xA;  plus toothbrushing for preventing dental caries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Sambunjak D, Nickerson JW, Poklepovic T, Johnson TM, Imai P, Tugwell P, Worthington HV. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22161438&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flossing for the management of periodontal diseases and dental caries in adults.&lt;/a&gt; Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2011 Dec 7;(12):CD008829. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD008829.pub2. Review. PubMed PMID: 22161438. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-05-31T07:52:58.357" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20781" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20783" CreationDate="2014-05-31T22:51:41.097" Score="20" ViewCount="3399" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a movie I watched recently the hero grabs an enemy and uses him/her as a shield protecting himself from the bullets of other enemies.  When those other enemies shoot at the hero they hit the &quot;shield&quot; enemy killing him/her and leaving the hero unharmed. Would this work in real life?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The guns used in the movie were probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M16_rifle&quot;&gt;M16 rifles&lt;/a&gt;. The distance was about 12 feet. The bullet seemed to hit the shield in the upper torso.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19530" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T14:29:19.617" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T14:29:19.617" Title="Would a human shield work?" Tags="|guns|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20781" CreationDate="2014-06-01T04:06:40.820" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The details of where the bullet hits will determine this, but in general an ordinary human being will not consistently block a bullet from an M16 at close range... but could easily deflect one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per Wikipedia, citing &lt;a href=&quot;http://ammo.ar15.com/project/Fackler_Articles/effects_of_small_arms.pdf&quot;&gt;http://ammo.ar15.com/project/Fackler_Articles/effects_of_small_arms.pdf&lt;/a&gt;, an M16A1 will penetrate 15&quot; of ballistic gelatin.  So if a bullet strikes just soft tissue, it'll pass through all but the largest of human bodies. It will be relatively weak coming out the other side, skin is tough, so it may not be deadly, but it'll certainly penetrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, projectiles which strike bone can be deflected, especially small 5.56 bullets used by the M16.  So it'll help, probably a lot, but it won't be bulletproof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3150" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T04:06:40.820" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20784" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20785" CreationDate="2014-06-01T13:27:12.493" Score="2" ViewCount="206" Body="&lt;p&gt;A February 2002 Harper's Magazine article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/articles/Commoner%20UNRAVELING%20THE%20DNA%20MYTH%20Feb02.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Unraveling the DNA Myth&lt;/a&gt; discusses the fact that the effect that genes have on plants is not always as simple as one gene coding for one protein, and that modifying a gene can have unexpected results, which is why genetic engineering is often such a trial and error process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, it claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No tests, for example, are required to show that the plant actually produces a protein with the same amino acid sequence as the original bacterial protein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? From what I know, the science in the article is&#xA;sound, but I was unsure if this claim was true or not. If it isn't,&#xA;have any of these tests been done on GMO crops independently, or after&#xA; release?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18728" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-01T15:11:27.620" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T15:11:27.620" Title="Is the chemical composition of genetically modified crops tested?" Tags="|biology|gmo|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20785" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20784" CreationDate="2014-06-01T14:10:13.467" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To see what exactly the FDA does when evaluating a new genetically engineered crop I looked at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodScienceResearch/Biotechnology/Submissions/ucm396253.htm&quot;&gt;the report about a new herbicide-tolerant soybean&lt;/a&gt;. The specific example is pretty much random, I simply chose to first one in the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They do check the sequence of the inserted gene:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Syngenta and BCS characterized the insert in SYHT0H2 soybean using nucleotide sequencing and Southern blot analysis of restriction enzyme digested genomic DNA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also check if the inserted gene leads to any genetic instability:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Syngenta and BCS determined the genomic stability and inheritance pattern of the inserted DNA. Genomic stability was demonstrated using Southern blot analysis of genomic DNA, which showed consistent hybridization patterns over three generations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And they check if the inserted gene disrupts any other host genes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To determine the site of genome insertion, the developers first sequenced the genomic regions flanking the insert in SYHT0H2 soybean and then used the results to sequence the corresponding region in the untransformed variety “Jack.” They searched publicly available databases for known coding sequences similar to the flanking sequences. Syngenta and BCS conclude that the insertion does not disrupt known soybean genes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the protein level they do check how much of the protein is produced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Syngenta and BCS conducted field studies to measure expression levels of AvHPPD-03 and PAT in SYHT0H2 soybean. Tissue samples were collected from SYHT0H2 soybean and control soybean grown at four locations in Argentina during the 2011-2012 growing season. The developers measured levels of the introduced proteins by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in leaves, roots, forage, and seed samples collected at multiple growth stages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They did not sequence the produced protein as far as I can see, which would be the most direct answer to your question. But they did sequence the gene that was inserted, and they measured that the protein was produce by ELISA. This assay works by using antibodies that specifically recognize the target protein, together these data points strongly indicate that the desired protein is produced with the correct sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2014-06-01T14:10:13.467" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20787" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-01T18:37:31.797" Score="22" ViewCount="1212" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently overheard a discussion in which it was claimed that the airline industry has generated more losses than profits when we take its whole history into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is basically a repeat of &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1999/11/22/269071/index.htm&quot;&gt;Warren Buffet's claim in 1999&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here's a list of 129 airlines that in the past 20 years filed for bankruptcy. Continental was smart enough to make that list twice. As of 1992, in fact--though the picture would have improved since then--&lt;strong&gt;the money that had been made since the dawn of aviation by all of this country's airline companies was zero&lt;/strong&gt;. Absolutely zero.&#xA;  Sizing all this up, I like to think that if I'd been at Kitty Hawk in 1903 when Orville Wright took off, I would have been farsighted enough, and public-spirited enough--I owed this to future capitalists--to shoot him down. I mean, Karl Marx couldn't have done as much damage to capitalists as Orville did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That claim was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/business/2006/feb/23/theairlineindustry.travelnews&quot;&gt;still being repeated in 2006 in the Guardian&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is often said that no one has made a profit from running an airline since the Wright brothers first took to the sky. Peter Morrell, a professor specialising in air transport economics and finance at the College of Aeronautics at Cranfield University, points out that this is not entirely true, as Ryanair and easyJet make money, as do some Asian carriers; in the US, however, airlines have made an overall cumulative loss over the past 120 years. Flying has always been about a kind of pig-headed denial of observed reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder if this claim is true? Does it hold for both the US and the worldwide airlines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note the claim is about the airlines themselves, and not about, for example, aircraft manufacturers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19537" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-02T02:02:50.007" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T07:42:39.070" Title="Have airlines as a whole been unprofitable over their history?" Tags="|history|economics|aviation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2093" CreationDate="2014-06-01T19:25:56.367" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, tanks of gasoline can explode, given the right conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Quebec town of lac Megantic was recently flattened by a number of huge explosions from derailed cars carrying light crude. (And not big-flamey-Hollywood explosions but kill-hundreds-of-people explosions). &lt;a href=&quot;http://globalnews.ca/news/1192382/crude-oil-in-lac-megantic-disaster-as-explosive-as-gas-tests/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;One of the reasons given for the explosions was that the &quot;oil was more volatile than previously thought, having characteristics similar to unleaded gas&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a smaller scale, there have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnbc.com/id/101246469&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;warnings published about the explosive capabilities of ordinary gas cannisters&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other incidents include &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okobie_road_tanker_explosion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://alexandriava.gov/special/transloading/EmailArchive/69eb9e9ceb82aeef2ecce0dcb252a245.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.castagra.com/2013/03/5-terrible-storage-tank-explosions-that-will-make-you-review-your-safety-procedures/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;number 4 here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/tanker-truck-explodes-in-bellmore-injuring-2-1.6631617&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether the traditional Hollywood method of ignition, firing a small calibre handgun at an inches-thick metal tank would cause such an explosion, I'll leave that for another question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2017-03-29T17:49:05.360" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T17:49:05.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20790" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-01T20:13:29.597" Score="10" ViewCount="898" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/26xk7w/why_is_tokyo_cracking_down_on_perverted_animes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reddit post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting quite a few news about Tokyo cracking down on Lolis, hentai, hentai games, boob sizes, cosplay conventions and recently have their eyes set on an Imouto theme cafe...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's going on? There are rumors that all this is happening because of a Christian conservative group in Japan but there's really no evidence for it...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone know what's going on?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the reply posts suggest that it's related to the 2020 Olympic games and the image of Japan with the western world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth in the claim that Japanese authorities started &amp;quot;cracking down on&amp;quot; those types of entertainment/media?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17373" OwnerDisplayName="BDillan" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-09-27T17:23:41.280" LastActivityDate="2022-09-27T17:23:41.280" Title="Were Japanese authorities cracking down on adult themed entertainment in preparation for the 2020 Olympics?" Tags="|sport|japan|media|culture|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="20792" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15605" CreationDate="2014-06-02T09:48:43.920" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your question asks if there are any health benefits from intermittent fasting, preferably on humans vs mice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a very old 1957 Spanish study which was re-examined by JB Johnson in 2006 [1] where subjects in a nursing home alternately consumed either 56% or 144% of their daily caloric requirement over 3 years.  There was a highly significant difference in the number of days spent in the infirmary with 123 spent by the 60 study subjects and 219 days by the controls. Deaths were twice as high in the controls ( 13 vs 6 ) but this was not significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A much more modern study from 2011 over 6 months [2] looked at weight loss and metabolic markers on 107 young overweight human females who were either randomized to intermittent energy restriction [IER] (25% on 2 days a week) vs continuous energy restriction [CER], and found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IER is as effective as CER with regard to weight loss, insulin&#xA;  sensitivity and other health biomarkers, and may be offered as an&#xA;  alternative equivalent to CER for weight loss and reducing disease&#xA;  risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this has shown that IER has health benefits with the need only to fast 2 days a week.  Furthermore, fasting insulin and insulin resistance falls were greater in the IER group, though modest in both.  If lipid levels are related to risk for dementia, then falls in LDL and total cholesterol were seen in both groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Johnson JB, Laub DR, John S. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16529878&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The effect on health of alternate day calorie restriction: eating less and more than needed on alternate days prolongs life.&lt;/a&gt; Med. Hypotheses 2006 Mar 10;67(2):209-11. doi: 10.1016/j.mehy.2006.01.030. PubMed PMID: 16529878.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Harvie MN, Pegington M, Mattson MP, Frystyk J, Dillon B, Evans G, Cuzick J, Jebb SA, Martin B, Cutler RG, Son TG, Maudsley S, Carlson OD, Egan JM, Flyvbjerg A, Howell A. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20921964&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The effects of intermittent or continuous energy restriction on weight loss and metabolic disease risk markers: a randomized trial in young overweight women.&lt;/a&gt; Int J Obes (Lond) 2011 May;35(5):714-27. doi: 10.1038/ijo.2010.171. PubMed PMID: 20921964.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T09:48:43.920" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20794" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20797" CreationDate="2014-06-02T12:46:14.893" Score="10" ViewCount="2241" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the wake of the 2014 Santa Barbara mass shooting, there's been a justifiable outcry over domestic violence, especially sexual violence. One of the items often cited [&lt;a href=&quot;http://hope4dv.org/#/statistics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;e.g.&lt;/a&gt;] is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies by the Surgeon General's office reveal that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44, more common than automobile accidents, muggings, and cancer deaths combined. Other research has found that half of all women will experience some form of violence from their partners during marriage, and that more than one-third are battered repeatedly every year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's generally quoted as a current statistic, but the most recent official citation I can find is &lt;em&gt;Journal of American Medical Association, 1990&lt;/em&gt; although I've also found the exact same quote, except mentioning the Surgeon General cited to &lt;em&gt;Uniform Crime Reports, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1991&lt;/em&gt; and a few scattered references to the same statistic in 1992.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other end of things, there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.responsibleopposing.com/facts/leadcaus.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;statistics from 1996&lt;/a&gt; showing domestic violence to be a distant 9th on the leading causes of injury, a tenth as likely as automobile accidents. Given that there was significant legislation passed in 1990 regarding domestic violence, it would not surprise me if this is a case of outdated quotations where people left off the date on the quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short, was the statistic in the quote applicable at any point after 1990?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="19346" LastEditDate="2016-07-16T18:42:59.710" LastActivityDate="2016-07-16T20:37:45.977" Title="Is domestic violence the leading cause of injury to women between ages of 15 and 44?" Tags="|united-states|violence|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10809" CreationDate="2014-06-02T16:44:12.063" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;That's odd that they'd be calling out canned tuna. According to the EPA, &lt;a href=&quot;http://water.epa.gov/scitech/swguidance/fishshellfish/outreach/factsheet.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;canned tuna is safer than tuna steaks&lt;/a&gt; and is considered a &quot;low mercury&quot; fish. From the same article, they recommend up to 12 ounces of &quot;low mercury&quot; fish for pregnant women and children. For all others, they commend, at most, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/hg/exposure.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an RfD of 0.1 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine-archive/2011/january/food/mercury-in-tuna/overview/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Consumer Reports did a study of mercury levels in tuna&lt;/a&gt; and found that the values varied greatly. They believe that 5 ounces (approximately 1 can) should be the limit for pregnant women due to at least 6% of the cans of tuna having enough mercury to hit the same upper limit as the EPA's 12 ounces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastActivityDate="2014-06-02T16:44:12.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20794" CreationDate="2014-06-03T01:58:32.717" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For the US, for verifiable statistics, no this is not the case. But that is probably not the whole story.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Statistics&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/nfirates2001.html&quot;&gt;WISQUARS CDC Nonfatal injury report&lt;/a&gt; allows us to compare injuries by cause, gender and age group. Let us compare the numbers of injuries due to assaults (which should include all reported domestic violence injuries) with accidental transportation injuries, for women in the age range 15-44, for 2012 - the most recent year available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There were 505,000 injuries due to assaults (4.8M for the years 2003-2012)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There were 1.1M injuries due to transportation accidents (12M for the years 2003-2012)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since domestic violence is logically a subset of assaults, &lt;strong&gt;there cannot have been more reported injuries due to domestic violence than due to traffic accidents.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Reasons why these might not be the truth&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Domestic abuse is very much an under-reported crime.&lt;/strong&gt; For example where a partner is 'persuaded' not to go to a hospital or report their injury, if it's 'only' a severe bruise or a black eye, or a cut (or maybe it's worse). Or where the injury is reported as 'walked into a door' or some other lie. There are plenty of papers that attempt to give estimates of the degree of under-reporting, or to estimate injury rates by other means than reporting statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T01:58:32.717" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20798" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20801" CreationDate="2014-06-03T05:25:58.023" Score="57" ViewCount="7424" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always heard the claim that a dishwasher is more water efficient. I can attest that I once washed the dishes with a clogged pipe, and put a bucket below the sink, and was appalled at the amount of water used, and this was while using low flows and turning off the faucet when not in use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The dishwasher can operate at higher pressures and temperatures, making it more efficient&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other hand, the angle between the dishes and the water can be pretty low, making it less efficient. When washing manually you can control the angle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, assuming you're an environmentalist dish washer, what should you use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10335" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T05:28:13.787" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T12:27:56.813" Title="Does a dishwasher consume less water than manual dish washing" Tags="|environment|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20798" CreationDate="2014-06-03T05:58:18.330" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, a bit of searching found an answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1470-6431.2009.00840.x/abstract&quot;&gt;International Journal of Consumer Studies&lt;/a&gt; found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study shows that these consumers, on average, used 49 l of water&#xA;  and 1.7 kWh of energy, whereas the dishwasher used 13 l of water and&#xA;  1.3 kWh of energy on average for the same amount of dishes under the conditions tested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that I neglected the fact the modern dishwashers can recycle the water for several cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10335" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T05:58:18.330" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20798" CreationDate="2014-06-03T06:06:27.563" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, a dishwasher almost always uses less water than manual washing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a study published by the University of Bonn[1], both the energy and water consumption of a dishwasher is better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As regards the normal household practice of&#xA;  washing small amounts of dishes and heavily&#xA;  soiled articles, our comparison confirms the&#xA;  advantages of automatic over manual dishwashing when comparing the average behaviour in&#xA;  manual washing with a fully loaded average&#xA;  dishwasher. These advantages can be identified&#xA;  as lower consumption of water and energy and especially as&#xA;  better cleaning results and significantly lower amounts of&#xA;  manual working time needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As they say, the reason is mostly that smaller amounts are washed when handwashing. The average water consumption for 12 place settings is on average 83-121 litres (depending on whether all the plates are washed together or in 2 portions) when washed by hand and 20 litres when machine washed. They do however say that there's a huge spread on how much water is used when washed manually:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The water and energy measurements (Fig. 5 and 6) again&#xA;  show a very wide distribution of consumption values, ranging from four to 90 l and from 0.03 kWh up&#xA;  to 2.6 kWh for washing a pair of place settings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As this is for only 2 place settings, even the most efficient manual washers are unlikely to achieve the same efficiency in cleaning as a dishwasher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.landtechnik.uni-bonn.de/research/appliance-technology/publications/07-02-03-dishwashing&quot;&gt;http://www.landtechnik.uni-bonn.de/research/appliance-technology/publications/07-02-03-dishwashing&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16700" LastEditorUserId="16700" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T08:45:23.503" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T08:45:23.503" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18039" CreationDate="2014-06-03T08:35:37.637" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question above is a little confused mixing claims about Ancel Keys' 7 countries study which he organised, and his 6 (22) countries study. These studies are commonly confused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 6 (22) countries study was one he authored himself and presented in 1953 at a symposium at Mt. Sinai Hospital, New York City.  Some of the work came from field work done in Europe 1951-1952 when he was a Senior Fullbright Fellow headquartered at Magdalen College, Oxford, and other data came from research grants from the National Heart Institute, and the National Dairy Council, Chicago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the paper he describes his methods and he discusses the validity of death certification. He excludes &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Western Germany, and Finland because of major population shifts and&#xA;  other effects from the war, and Iceland, Luxembourg and some colonies,&#xA;  and semi-independent states with very small populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the paper, he clearly states that  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So far it has been possible to get fully comparable dietary and vital&#xA;  statistics data from 6 countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now if you look at his graph together with Uffe Ravnskov's right hand graph where the claim of cherry picking is made.  Ravnskov includes data for all 22 countries for mortality data and consumption of total fat ( not saturated fat as is stated in the question ) which was collected by Yurushalamy &amp;amp; Hilleboe ( using different sources from Keys ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/I33kq.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;6 countries graph&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You now have a chance to see the data for the countries he dropped.  Mexico's (14) data was notoriously unreliable, and appears to go against the trend.  But note that Finland (7) is also dropped where the relationship appears to be even stronger (the numbering seems wrong for the countries).  So, this is very odd cherry picking that removes data that both supports and weakens the hypothesis.  And it is clear that the relationship still is present even if you include the data which was considered by Keys to be unreliable or not comparable, or where the diets were not considered different enough to include.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 7 countries study was a totally different beast.  This was a multicenter prospective long term study which started in 1957:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beginning in 1957 Keys and his colleagues began what would eventually&#xA;  be known as the Seven Countries Study by surveying 12 000 men aged 40&#xA;  to 59 from 18 areas of seven countries (Italy, the Greek Islands,&#xA;  Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Finland, Japan, and the United States).&#xA;  Study communities were chosen for their contrasting dietary patterns&#xA;  and the relative uniformity of their rural laboring populations.&#xA;  Through central chemical analysis of the foods consumed by randomly&#xA;  selected families as well as diet-recall measures, Keys and his&#xA;  colleagues were able to determine that in societies where fat was a&#xA;  major component of every meal (i.e., the US and Finland), both the&#xA;  blood cholesterol levels and the heart-attack death rates were&#xA;  highest. Conversely, in cultures where diets were based on fresh fruit&#xA;  and vegetables, bread, pasta, and plenty of olive oil (i.e., the&#xA;  Mediterranean region) blood cholesterol was low and heart attacks were&#xA;  rare. The report published in 1970 had a decisive impact on CVD&#xA;  prevention, as it described one of the first studies to clearly show&#xA;  that dietary saturated fat leads to CVD, and that the relationship is&#xA;  mediated by serum cholesterol. [3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding Taubes' purported claim, that Keys picked the 7 countries for the 7 countries study knowing that their data would support his suspicions, then this is already addressed in his paper.  The entry criteria included:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Study communities were chosen for their contrasting dietary patterns&#xA;  and the relative uniformity of their rural laboring populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be logical to assume that further entry criteria were that they shared similar diagnostic criteria, and the countries were stable enough to support such a long term study.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is absurd for Taubes to write that Keys 7 countries study was invalid as he was somehow able to predict the results 29 years in advance, and that each population would show the same relationship of diet with heart disease both between countries and also inside each study population. (Keys published in 1986 on this study [4])&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Keys, A. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epi.umn.edu/cvdepi/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Keys-Atherosclerosis-A-Problem-in-Newer-Public-Health.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atherosclerosis: a problem in newer public health.&lt;/a&gt; J Mt Sinai Hosp N Y. 1953 Jul-Aug;20(2):118-39. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Ravnskov, U. &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0967089700&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Cholesterol Myths: Exposing the Fallacy that Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] Andrade J et al. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bcmj.org/article/ancel-keys-and-lipid-hypothesis-early-breakthroughs-current-management-dyslipidemia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ancel Keys and the lipid hypothesis: From early breakthroughs to current management of dyslipidemia.&lt;/a&gt; BCMJ, Vol. 51, No. 2, March 2009, page(s) 66-72&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[4] Keys A, Menotti A, Karvonen MJ, Aravanis C, Blackburn H, Buzina R, Djordjevic BS, Dontas AS, Fidanza F, Keys MH, et al. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3776973&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The diet and 15-year death rate in the seven countries study.&lt;/a&gt; Am J Epidemiol. 1986 Dec;124(6):903-15. PubMed PMID: 3776973&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T00:25:10.810" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T00:25:10.810" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20803" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-03T08:40:38.190" Score="2" ViewCount="295" Body="&lt;p&gt;Household appliances are getting more and more efficient at conserving water, and advertising claims that this helps conserve the environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some time ago, I've seen a documentary about a German waste water treatment plant where the incoming water was slightly chlorinated and irradiated with UV lights to kill off bacteria, and fresh water subsequently added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A spokesperson from the processing plant explained that these two steps have been added recently, as the public's conservation efforts have led to a reduced flow rate in the waste water system, allowing undesired bacteria to replicate more, and to an increased concentration of detergents, to the point where the bacteria used in the cleanup process would no longer be able to function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggests to me that in a closed cycle, it would be better to &quot;use&quot; more water in order to keep the system within the flow rate it was designed for, rather than add the additional fresh water at the end of the cycle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1323" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T08:40:38.190" Title="Is it actually beneficial to reduce water consumption?" Tags="|environment|water|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-06-03T10:22:25.693" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19393" CreationDate="2014-06-03T12:12:56.800" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12684364&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Calories are calories&lt;/a&gt;, and carbohydrates, in general, have very high satiety ratings (albeit &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/carbohydrates-highest-satiety-level-8482.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;possibly less than protein&lt;/a&gt;). However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/satiety-secret-sauce-weight-control?page=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;refined carbohydrates are an exception&lt;/a&gt;. Their lack of fiber and other &quot;bulk&quot; gives them a high glycemic index. Your body processes them and burns the energy quickly, leaving you wanting more. Thus, refined carbohydrates are more likely to leave you feeling hungry and thus more likely to have &quot;just one more&quot; in your snacking. As to whether bread and pasta are simple or complex carbohydrates, that's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/545960-white-pasta-rice-and-bread-are-complex-carbs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;more controversial&lt;/a&gt;. Most breads and pasta, even ones made using refined grains, contain relatively little sugar and have sufficient bulk to slow the uptake of the energy. To use a simple (possibly oversimplified) analogy, simple carbohydrates are like trying to fuel a fire with kerosene. It burns too quickly to sustain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would also suggest avoiding salty and/or fried food. As with sugar, it packs a lot of caloric energy in a small package that's absorbed quickly. In addition, it hits a number of tastebud areas that can result in overeating of them. Potato chips, in particular, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aarp.org/food/diet-nutrition/info-03-2013/why-junk-food-is-addictive.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hit that sweet spot&lt;/a&gt; where many people do very badly at only eating a small quantity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="19346" LastEditDate="2014-06-03T13:49:08.623" LastActivityDate="2014-06-03T13:49:08.623" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20712" CreationDate="2014-06-03T14:23:38.543" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;At this time, there is insufficient data to prove this. Onion has, indeed some benefic health effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compounds from onion have been reported to have a range of health benefits which include anticarcinogenic properties, antiplatelet activity, antithrombotic activity, antiasthmatic and antibiotic effects [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is supported by another study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From these results, we conclude that NPTS (n-propyl thiosulfate) and 2PTS (2-propenyl thiosulfate) have the potential to promote immune functions and prevent cardiovascular diseases [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The immune response was tested on rabits, and it was concluded that onion has antiinflammatory properties:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was found that mean antibody titers were significantly lower in the treated groups than in controls. The weights of thymus and lymph nodes were higher and of adrenal glands were lower in the control groups than in the treated groups. It appeared from the current study that onion extract has an inhibitory effect on immune response [3].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is even a study on onion poisoning conducted on dogs. It claims onion can induce hemolytic anemia [4].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Griffiths G, Trueman L, Crowther T, Thomas B, Smith B. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12410539&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Onions--a global benefit to health.&lt;/a&gt; Phytother Res. 2002 Nov;16(7):603-15. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ptr.1222&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1002/ptr.1222&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 12410539.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chang HS, Yamato O, Sakai Y, Yamasaki M, Maede Y. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14643182&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Acceleration of superoxide generation in polymorphonuclear leukocytes and inhibition of platelet aggregation by alk(en)yl thiosulfates derived from onion and garlic in dogs and humans.&lt;/a&gt; Prostaglandins Leukot. Essent. Fatty Acids. 2004 Jan;70(1):77-83. PubMed PMID: 14643182.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chisty MM, Quddus R, Islam B, Khan BR. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9103661&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effect of onion extract on immune response in rabbits.&lt;/a&gt; Bangladesh Med Res Counc Bull. 1996 Aug;22(2):81-5. PubMed PMID: 9103661. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tang X, Xia Z, Yu J. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18307506&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An experimental study of hemolysis induced by onion (Allium cepa) poisoning in dogs.&lt;/a&gt; J. Vet. Pharmacol. Ther. 2008 Apr;31(2):143-9. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2885.2007.00930.x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1111/j.1365-2885.2007.00930.x&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 18307506. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T18:38:25.320" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T18:38:25.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20588" CreationDate="2014-06-03T15:05:49.847" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ginger has anti-inflammatory properties. It inhibits the induction of several genes involved in the inflammatory response &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;. It mostly modulates biochemical pathways activated in chronic inflammation. It also enhances thermogenesis and reduces feelings of hunger &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to anti-viral effects, it was found that fresh ginger is effective against human respiratory syncytial virus &lt;sup&gt;[3]&lt;/sup&gt;. Although ginger extract inhibits inflammatory cytokines, fresh ginger seems to have opposite effect on anti-viral cytokines. It also stimulates mucosal cells to produce beta-interferon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grzanna R, Lindmark L, Frondoza CG. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16117603&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ginger - an herbal medicinal product with broad anti-inflammatory actions.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mansour MS, Ni YM, Roberts AL, Kelleman M, Roychoudhury A, St-Onge MP. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22538118&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ginger consumption enhances the thermic effect of food and promotes feelings of satiety without affecting metabolic and hormonal parameters in overweight men: a pilot study.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chang JS, Wang KC, Yeh CF, Shieh DE, Chiang LC. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23123794&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Fresh ginger (Zingiber officinale) has anti-viral activity against human respiratory syncytial virus in human respiratory tract cell lines.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T19:46:43.753" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T19:46:43.753" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19060" CreationDate="2014-06-03T16:32:34.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sugar plays a role too, but the personality traits are more important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sugar can induce reward and craving that are comparable in magnitude to those induced by addictive drugs. The neural substrates of sugar and sweet reward appear to be more robust than those of cocaine. Although this evidence is limited by the inherent difficulty of comparing different types of rewards and psychological experiences in humans, it is nevertheless supported by recent experimental research on sugar and sweet reward in laboratory &lt;strong&gt;rats&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to humans, food habit and addictive personality matter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In recent years, a compelling body of evidence suggests that foods high in sugar and fat have the potential to alter brain reward circuitry in a manner similar to that seen when addictive drugs like alcohol and heroin are consumed in excess. These findings have led to suggestions that some cases of compulsive overeating may be understood as an addiction to sweet, fatty, and salty foods. In this paper, it is proposed that high seasonality is a risk factor for binge eating, especially in those characterized by &lt;strong&gt;anxious and impulsive personality traits&lt;/strong&gt; - associations that could only occur in an environment with a superfluity of, and easy access to, rich and tasty foods. ... Results confirmed that symptoms of binge eating and other addictive behaviors were significantly inter-correlated, and that seasonality, gender, and addictive personality traits were strong statistical predictors of the variance in binge-eating scores. &lt;strong&gt;Seasonality and addictive personality traits also accounted for a significant proportion of the variance in the measure of addictive behaviors.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that fats have an increased addictive potential when compared to sugar:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Food craving was linked positively to fat content, but negatively to sugar.&lt;/strong&gt; Food liking was associated negatively with sugar content and processing level. Addictive-like eating predicted elevated overall food craving and liking, and increased craving and liking for processed foods. Attempted restriction efforts were unrelated to craving and liking. BMI was associated with less craving for fattier foods and lower liking for the average food. Hunger was associated with increased craving for the average food. These findings highlight the role of fat in cravings and differences in craving and liking based on BMI, loss of control over eating, and hunger &lt;sup&gt;[3]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ahmed SH, Guillem K, Vandaele Y. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23719144&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sugar addiction: pushing the drug-sugar analogy to the limit.&lt;/a&gt; Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2013 Jul;16(4):434-9. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/MCO.0b013e328361c8b8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1097/MCO.0b013e328361c8b8&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 23719144. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Davis C. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24409156&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Narrative Review of Binge Eating and Addictive Behaviors: Shared Associations with Seasonality and Personality Factors.&lt;/a&gt; Front Psychiatry. 2013 Dec 27;4:183. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00183&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.3389/fpsyt.2013.00183&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 24409156. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gearhardt AN, Rizk MT, Treat TA. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24768936&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The association of food characteristics and individual differences with ratings of craving and liking.&lt;/a&gt; Appetite. 2014 Aug;79:166-73. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2014.04.013&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1016/j.appet.2014.04.013&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 24768936. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T15:47:27.433" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T15:47:27.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19408" CreationDate="2014-06-03T17:34:21.083" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story is &amp;quot;probable&amp;quot;, although for a definitive determination, we must rely on trusting the statements by the lone survivor of the events. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/marshall-islands-castaway/pacific-castaway-passed-lie-detector-test-lawyer-says-n72536&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;He has at least passed a lie detector test&lt;/a&gt; (with the inherent skepticism inherent in that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The castaway who claims he spent more than a year lost at sea, drifting some 6,000 miles from Mexico to a remote Pacific atoll, passed lie detector tests when questioned about his experience, his lawyer said at a news conference in El Salvador Friday, according to Reuters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to his accounts, he managed to stay &amp;quot;healthy&amp;quot; by eating a lot of birds and turtles.  As a professional fisherman, he at least has the skills needed to catch this type of wildlife. And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/jose-salvador-alvarenga-and-the-science-of-survival-1.2525270&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Claude Piantadosi, a professor of medicine at Duke University and author of the book The Biology of Human Survival, answered most of the skeptical questions regarding the survival of Mr. Alavengra with the CBC&lt;/a&gt; (in particular the scurvy claim):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: Without fruit and vegetables, wouldn't he have developed scurvy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: Actually, unlike humans, birds and turtles make their own vitamin C, so fresh meat from those creatures, especially the livers, would provide sufficient vitamin C to prevent scurvy. British sailors used to get scurvy because they ate preserved meat which had oxidized and lost its vitamin C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And his health may not have been reflected in his appearance.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc15.com/news/national/castaway-jose-salvador-alvarenga-is-released-from-hospital-in-marshall-islands&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;He was admitted a second time to the hospital after his first stay for malnutrition&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alvarenga, an El Salvadoran who had been living in Mexico before he got lost at sea, washed ashore in the Marshall Islands more than a week ago. Earlier this week, his condition improved enough for him to be released from the hospital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But after his health took a turn for the worse Thursday, plans for his repatriation to El Salvador have now been postponed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Various oceanography groups have said the story is plausible as well. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/how-castaway-jose-salvador-alvarenga-survived-18-months-at-sea-484046&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hawaii&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A US study at the University of Hawai'i of the prevailing wind and current conditions has supported his tale of survival, with a model tracing a remarkably narrow path across the Pacific to pass within 120 miles of Ebon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/meet-jose-salvador-alvarenga-castaway-spent-13-months-lost-sea-survived-birds-turtles-1552944&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New South Wales&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The timing is pretty plausible, with strong currents bringing Alvarenga from Mexico to the Marshall Islands, notes AP citing Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer form the University of New South Wales. He said the trip would usually take between 18 months to two years but did not rule out 13 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, it's certainly possible that this event is a real life tale of survival and endurance (coming to a screen near you?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T00:16:18.283" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20814" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19128" CreationDate="2014-06-04T00:50:22.950" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is made that having regular influenza vaccinations helps one stay free of cancer.  However, a search of PubMed reveals no such study to support the assertion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could influenza viruses cause cancer then?  So, preventing their infection would then lower the risk for cancer? However, influenza viruses are not known amongst those known to contribute to cancer: [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About 15-20% of human cancers worldwide have viral etiology. Emerging&#xA;  data clearly indicate that several human DNA and RNA viruses, such as&#xA;  human papillomavirus, Epstein-Barr virus, Kaposi's sarcoma-associated&#xA;  herpesvirus, hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus, and human T-cell&#xA;  lymphotropic virus, contribute to cancer development&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do know that chronic inflammation can cause cancer, but as it says in this article [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chronic inflammation may be a causative factor in a variety of&#xA;  cancers. In general, the longer the inflammation persists, the higher&#xA;  the risk of cancer. &lt;strong&gt;Hence, acute inflammation, such as occurs in&#xA;  response to a transient infection, is not regarded as a risk factor&#xA;  for the development of neoplasia,&lt;/strong&gt; although many of the same molecular&#xA;  mediators are generated in both acute and chronic inflammation. In&#xA;  general, inflammatory leukocytes such as neutrophils, monocytes,&#xA;  macrophages, and eosinophils provide the soluble factors that are&#xA;  thought to mediate the development of inflammation-associated cancer,&#xA;  although other cells, including the cancer cells themselves, also&#xA;  participate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and since the flu is clearly a transient infection, the claim is unsubstantiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Poreba E, Broniarczyk JK, Gozdzicka-Jozefiak A. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22704339&quot;&gt;Epigenetic mechanisms in virus-induced tumorigenesis.&lt;/a&gt; Clin Epigenetics 2011 Aug;2(2):233-47. doi: 10.1007/s13148-011-0026-6. PubMed PMID: 22704339.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Shacter et al.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancernetwork.com/review-article/chronic-inflammation-and-cancer&quot;&gt;Chronic Inflammation and Cancer&lt;/a&gt; Review Article | January 31, 2002 | Colorectal Cancer, Oncology Journal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T00:50:22.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20767" CreationDate="2014-06-04T05:46:47.340" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looks like to answer this question regarding the awareness or lack thereof of microsleeps, we are going to have to rely on expert testimony as to why some people lack awareness of this phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Katherine Sharkey, an assistant professor of medicine and psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University is &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthland.time.com/2013/12/03/engineer-on-derailed-train-consciously-asleep-is-that-possible/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quoted as saying&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some people aren’t aware of falling into microsleeps, &lt;strong&gt;and about half&#xA;  of those who drop off into the first stages of sleep in a sleep lab&#xA;  will not say they had fallen asleep.&lt;/strong&gt; “When people are sleepy, they are&#xA;  impaired and bad at judging their own sleepiness,” she says. And&#xA;  whether it’s three-second microsleeps or deeper sleep in which all of&#xA;  our senses are shut down, our brains aren’t as aware or able to pay&#xA;  attention to what’s happening around us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T06:18:33.413" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T06:18:33.413" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9268" CreationDate="2014-06-04T08:06:37.240" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/potassium-supplement-oral-route-parenteral-route/description/drg-20070753&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic&lt;/a&gt; lists the mEq of potassium in a number of common foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yogurt, low-fat, plain  (1 cup) 14 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Banana (medium)                 12 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potato with skin, baked         22 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, a cup of low fat yoghurt has more potassium than the banana.  In comparison, a baked potato looks lethal!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In comparison, potassium used for lethal injection is given as an IV push of 100 mEq. &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/767448-medication&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Medscape&lt;/a&gt; says that the maximum safe rate normally in use is 20 mEq per hour, though 40 mEq per hour can be given in an emergency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, since many foods have more potassium than the banana, and are clearly safe to eat on an empty stomach, the claim is patently false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T08:06:37.240" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9268" CreationDate="2014-06-04T09:04:30.270" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;After you start eating, blood is redistributed to the gastro-intestinal tract to increase nutrients absorption. After a meal the blood pressure decreases a little and the heart rate increases. This is more common to the elders &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;. Food volume and caloric load are important determinants of gastric emptying and postprandial splanchnic hyperaemia, which appears to be a major contributor to hypotension &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;. It seems that postprandial changes in blood pressure are due to the nutrient composition of the meal rather than the actual energy load &lt;sup&gt;[3]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in a patient with ischemic cardiopathy or angina a square meal can trigger an infarction due to the increased oxygen needs of the miocardial muscle (increased heart rate) and hypotension. But this has nothing to do with bananas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magnesium absorption is not dependent on the stomach. Most studies suggest that Mg is absorbed predominantly in the distal intestine. At usual Mg intakes, Mg absorption occurs primarily by intercellular diffusional and solvent drag mechanisms. There is evidence for a saturable component of Mg absorption in the small intestine and the descending colon that is important at low dietary Mg intakes &lt;sup&gt;[4]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study made on rats suggest that bananas have protective properties on the gastric mucosa not only because of their phosphatidylcholine and pectin content &lt;sup&gt;[5]&lt;/sup&gt;. But bananas contain dopamine at high levels in both the peel and pulp. Dopamine levels ranged from 80-560 mg per 100 g in peel and 2.5-10 mg in pulp, even in ripened bananas ready to eat. Banana is thus one of the antioxidative foods &lt;sup&gt;[6]&lt;/sup&gt;. Dopamine induces acid secretion via activation of the dopamine D1 receptor, located on the cholinergic neurons and on some nonneuronal cells (study was made on rats) &lt;sup&gt;[7]&lt;/sup&gt;. In this way, a banana on an empty stomach may trigger acute episodes of peptic ulcer over chronic lesions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Westenend M, Lenders JW, Thien T. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2856754&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The course of blood pressure after a meal: a difference between young and elderly subjects.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Puvi-Rajasingham S, Mathias CJ. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8726096&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Effect of meal size on post-prandial blood pressure and on postural hypotension in primary autonomic failure.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Potter JF, Heseltine D, Hartley G, Matthews J, MacDonald IA, James OF. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2680230&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Effects of meal composition on the postprandial blood pressure, catecholamine and insulin changes in elderly subjects.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hardwick LL, Jones MR, Brautbar N, Lee DB. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1992050&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Magnesium absorption: mechanisms and the influence of vitamin D, calcium and phosphate.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dunjić BS, Svensson I, Axelson J, Adlercreutz P, Ar'Rajab A, Larsson K, Bengmark S. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8266018&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Green banana protection of gastric mucosa against experimentally induced injuries in rats. A multicomponent mechanism?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kanazawa K, Sakakibara H. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10725161&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;High content of dopamine, a strong antioxidant, in Cavendish banana.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tsai LH, Cheng JT. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7753504&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Stimulatory effect of dopamine on acid secretion from the isolated rat stomach.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T10:49:41.640" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T10:49:41.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18596" CreationDate="2014-06-04T15:58:52.487" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Quickbooks.com they conducted a study that reported the following results:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;EChecks help reduce the more than 67.4 million gallons of fuel used and 3.6 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions created by transporting paper checks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that paying online will not only save you money but will help lower green house emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&lt;a href=&quot;http://quickbooks.intuit.com/facts-about-electronic-checks/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://quickbooks.intuit.com/facts-about-electronic-checks/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19577" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T15:58:52.487" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20820" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-06-04T16:02:59.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Electronics deals with electrical circuits that involve &lt;strong&gt;active electrical components&lt;/strong&gt; such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated &lt;strong&gt;passive interconnection&lt;/strong&gt; technologies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commonly, electronic devices contain circuitry consisting primarily or exclusively of active semiconductors supplemented with passive elements; such a circuit is described as an &lt;strong&gt;electronic circuit&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Wikipedia - &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Electronics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T18:35:57.380" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T18:35:57.380" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20821" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-06-04T16:02:59.227" Score="0" Body="Electronics deals with electrical circuits that involve active electrical components and associated passive interconnection technologies. Use this when asking about electronic devices, electronic design and use (or misuse) of some devices." OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-06-04T18:35:51.910" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T18:35:51.910" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20822" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14126" CreationDate="2014-06-04T17:10:38.410" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A causal relationship between glutathione and autism couldn't be proven. It is a risk factor (not a determinant factor) and it &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be a potential treatment for autism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Glutathione is involved in neuro-protection against oxidative stress and neuro-inflammation in autism by improving the anti-oxidative stress system &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;. Children with autism have significantly lower baseline plasma concentrations of methionine, S-adenosylmethionine, homocysteine, cystathionine, cysteine, and total glutathione. This metabolic profile is consistent with impaired capacity for methylation. &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Variation in glutathione pathway genes, perhaps through multiple gene effects, may contribute to autism risk &lt;sup&gt;[3]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Methylation capacity, sulfates level, and the total glutathione level are decreased in autism. There is an imbalance of oxidative and anti-oxidative stress systems in autism. Decreasing the oxidative stress might be a potential treatment for autism. &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;. Nutritional interventions targeting redox metabolism may benefit some children with autism. A greater improvement in glutathione redox status was associated with a greater improvement in expressive communication, personal and domestic daily living skills, and interpersonal, play-leisure, and coping social skills. Age, gender, and history of regression did not influence treatment response. &lt;sup&gt;[4]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ghanizadeh A, Akhondzadeh S, Hormozi M, Makarem A, Abotorabi-Zarchi M, Firoozabadi A. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22708999&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Glutathione-related factors and oxidative stress in autism, a review.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;James, S. J., Cutler, P., Melnyk, S., Jernigan, S., Janak, L., Gaylor, D. W., &amp;amp; Neubrander, J. A. (2004). &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/80/6/1611.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Metabolic biomarkers of increased oxidative stress and impaired methylation capacity in children with autism.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; The American journal of clinical nutrition, 80(6), 1611-1617.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Katherine Bowers, Qing Li, Joseph Bressler, Dimitrios Avramopoulos, Craig Newschaffer and M. Daniele Fallin. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3188290/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Glutathione pathway gene variation and risk of autism spectrum disorders.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Frye RE, Melnyk S, Fuchs G, Reid T, Jernigan S, Pavliv O, Hubanks A, Gaylor DW, Walters L, James SJ. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24224089&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Effectiveness of methylcobalamin and folinic Acid treatment on adaptive behavior in children with autistic disorder is related to glutathione redox status.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T12:45:37.803" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T12:45:37.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8768" CreationDate="2014-06-04T19:38:22.090" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Trans fatty acids do not affect cellular immune response but do stimulate immune cells to produce some cytokines involved in atherosclerosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consumption of diets high in hydrogenated fat/trans fatty acids has been shown to have an adverse affect on lipoprotein profiles with respect to cardiovascular disease risk. Dietary fat and cholesterol play an important role in the regulation of immune and inflammatory responses shown to be involved in atherogenesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Production of IL-6 and TNF-α was significantly higher after consumption of stick margarine diet compared with soybean oil diet. IL-1β and TNF-α production correlated positively with ratios of total cholesterol to HDL cholesterol (r = 0.499, P &amp;lt; 0.001 and r = 0.291, P = 0.04, respectively). There was no significant difference in DTH (delayed type hipersensitivity) response, lymphocyte proliferation, or levels of IL-2 and PGE2 produced among three groups. Our results indicate that consumption of a diet high in hydrogenated fat does not adversely affect cellular immunity but increases production of inflammatory cytokines that have been associated with the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; Han SN, Leka LS, Lichtenstein AH, Ausman LM, Schaefer EJ, Meydani SN. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11893781&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Effect of hydrogenated and saturated, relative to polyunsaturated, fat on immune and inflammatory responses of adults with moderate hypercholesterolemia.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; J Lipid Res. 2002 Mar;43(3):445-52.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T11:33:49.183" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20826" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20830" CreationDate="2014-06-04T20:13:21.620" Score="2" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that if you have an alkaline diet it actually prevents/stops cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not mandatory to eat all alkaline things but to balance it so that the body does not get to acidic from food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So in the alkalines we would find:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Water (with a high ph)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Watermelon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lemon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Asparagus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Onions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And in the acidic:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Meat&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coffee&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sugar Drinks &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From wikipedia:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    Alternative medicine&#xA;&#xA;    Alternative medicine practitioners who have promoted the alkaline &#xA;    diet have advocated its use in the treatment of various medical &#xA;    conditions including cancer.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a quote about an article but sadly the link is broken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    While it has been proposed that this diet can help increase energy,&#xA;    lose weight, and treat cancer and heart disease, there is no evidence &#xA;    to support any of these claims.[12]&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19574" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T07:56:36.750" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T07:56:36.750" Title="Alkaline diet afect cancer?" Tags="|nutrition|cancer|alkaline-diet|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-06-05T01:02:30.403" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20826" CreationDate="2014-06-04T20:27:08.087" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no scientific literature establishing the benefit of an alkaline diet for the prevention of cancer at this time (2011).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effectiveness of some chemotherapeutic agents is markedly influenced by pH. Numerous agents such as epirubicin and adriamycin require an alkaline media to be more effective. Others, such as cisplatin, mitomycin C, and thiotepa, are more cytotoxic in an acid media. Cell death correlates with acidosis and intracellular pH shifts higher (more alkaline) after chemotherapy may reflect response to chemotherapy. It has been suggested that inducing metabolic alkalosis may be useful in enhancing some treatment regimes by using sodium bicarbonate, carbicab, and furosemide. Extracellular alkalinization by using bicarbonate may result in improvements in therapeutic effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; Schwalfenberg GK. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22013455&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The alkaline diet: is there evidence that an alkaline pH diet benefits health?&lt;/a&gt; J Environ Public Health. 2011 Oct 12;2012:727630. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2012/727630&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1155/2012/727630&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 22013455.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T09:53:57.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5436" CreationDate="2014-06-04T21:14:34.240" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;We can find a definitive connection between violence and exposure to media violence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/dev-392201.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Longitudinal Relations Between Children’s Exposure to TV Violence and&#xA;Their Aggressive and Violent Behavior in Young Adulthood: 1977–1992&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TV-violence viewing at ages 6 to 10 and adult aggressive behavior&#xA;  about 15 years later for a sample growing up in the 1970s and 1980s.&#xA;  Follow-up archival data ( N 450) and interview data ( N 329) reveal&#xA;  that childhood exposure to media violence predicts young adult&#xA;  aggressive behavior for both males and females. Identification with&#xA;  aggressive TV characters and perceived realism of TV violence also&#xA;  predict later aggression. These relations persist even when the&#xA;  effects of socioeconomic status, intellectual ability, and a variety&#xA;  of parenting factors are controlled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rcgd.isr.umich.edu/seminars/Fall2013/Fall13_articles/Krah%C3%A9_PPMC_2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Media Violence Use and Aggression Among German Adolescents:&#xA;Associations and Trajectories of Change in a Three-Wave&#xA;Longitudinal Study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Longitudinal studies from the United States have found significant&#xA;  pathways from media violence use to aggression over time across a&#xA;  range of media, including movies, TV, video games, music, and comic&#xA;  books (see meta- analyses by Anderson et al., 2010, for video games,&#xA;  and by Bushman &amp;amp; Huesmann, 2006&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19574" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T21:14:34.240" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20767" CreationDate="2014-06-04T21:30:41.847" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;microsleep is real&lt;/em&gt;. It manifests either as a momentary lapse of attention, or sometimes an actual 'micro' nap, which the subject is &lt;a href=&quot;http://bmeindia.org/paper/BEATs2010_352.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;usually unaware of&lt;/a&gt;. This is a well known phenomenon, which is one of the reasons freeways are bordered with rumble strips, or also known as singing strips. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rumble strips seem to originate from an idea called &lt;a href=&quot;http://pdf.textfiles.com/academics/shoulderdrift.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SNAP&lt;/a&gt;, or Sonic Nap Alert Pattern. There have been studies that show microsleep could result due to &lt;a href=&quot;http://trid.trb.org/view/2013/C/1286871&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fatigue&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0001457512004058&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sleep disturbances&lt;/a&gt;, and many other reasons. The microsleep episodes, though are a &lt;a href=&quot;http://trid.trb.org/view/2011/C/1107554&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;few seconds long&lt;/a&gt;, they can result in major accidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="742" LastEditorUserId="742" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T15:02:09.310" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T15:02:09.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20826" CreationDate="2014-06-04T23:00:04.983" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not news but there seems to be a paper/leaflet that was written in 1984 about high Ph treatment for cancer. Really simple and straight it claims that cancer just disappears after some heavy dosage of supplements. From what I can tell this idea started partly with the observation of &lt;em&gt;cultures without significant incidence of cancer [I]&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yWnRG.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this image taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://globalcancermap.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;global cancer map&lt;/a&gt; we can see that there are frontiers to cancer. And its not just money. I dare to say that food is one of those frontiers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer-coverup.com/brewer/default.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The High pH Therapy for Cancer&#xA;Tests on Mice and Humans&#xA;  A. KEITH BREWER, Ph.D.&#xA;A.. Keith Brewer Science Library, 325 N. Central Ave., Richland Center, WI 53581&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BREWER, A. K. The high pH therapy for cancer tests on mice and humans.&#xA;  PHARMACOL BIOCHEM BEHAV 21: Suppl. 1, 1-5. 1984.---Mass spectrographic&#xA;  and isotope studies have shown that potassium, rubidium, and&#xA;  especially cesium are most efficiently taken up by cancer cells. This&#xA;  uptake was enhanced by Vitamins A and C as well as salts of zinc and&#xA;  selenium. The quantity of cesium taken up was sufficient to raise the&#xA;  cell to the 8 pH range. Where cell mitosis ceases and the life of the&#xA;  cell is short. Tests on mice fed cesium and rubidium showed marked&#xA;  shrinkage in the tumor masses within 2 weeks. In addition, the mice&#xA;  showed none of the side effects of cancer. Tests have been carried out&#xA;  on over 30 humans. In each case the tumor masses disappeared. Also all&#xA;  pains and effects associated with cancer disappeared within 12 to 36&#xA;  hr; the more chemotherapy and morphine the patient had taken, the&#xA;  longer the withdrawal period. Studies of the food intake in areas&#xA;  where the incidences of cancer are very low showed that it met the&#xA;  requirements for the high pH therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I] Clark, J., Hunza in the Himalayas, National Geographic, 72, 38-45; 1963&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19589" LastActivityDate="2014-06-04T23:00:04.983" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20831" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-04T23:33:41.023" Score="0" ViewCount="745" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am well aware that during this period there were many scientific and technological achievements in many parts of the world, including the Islamic World, the Late Roman/Byzantium Empire, and the East Asian cultural region. However, in terms of Western Europe’s “Dark Age,” exactly how responsible was Christianity in causing this? Would the “Dark Ages” still have happened without the advent of Christianity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19481" LastEditorUserId="2974" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T15:44:52.197" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T15:44:52.197" Title="How responsible was Christianity for the Dark Ages of Western Europe?" Tags="|history|religion|europe|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-06-05T16:17:41.760" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20832" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1304" CreationDate="2014-06-05T02:30:24.050" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is answered by research conducted by Richard Steckel [2] taken from military records, and data on skeletal remains [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;.. analyzed skeletal data from 30 previous studies. The bones had been&#xA;  excavated from burial sites in northern European countries, including&#xA;  Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Great Britain and Denmark. In most cases, the&#xA;  length of the femur, or thighbone, was used to estimate skeletal&#xA;  height. The longest bone in the body, the femur comprises about a&#xA;  quarter of a person's height.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract from his 2001 paper says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This essay places the debate over human welfare during&#xA;  industrialization in the context of very long-term economic&#xA;  developments by examining an important aspect of living&#xA;  standards--health and nutrition--since the Middle Ages.  I use average&#xA;  stature determined from military records along with a neglected&#xA;  source, skeletal data.  &lt;strong&gt;Average heights fell from an average of&#xA;  173.4 centimeters in the early Middle Ages to a low of 165.8 centimeters during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.&lt;/strong&gt;  This&#xA;  decline of 7.6 centimeters exceeds by a factor of two any downturns&#xA;  found during industrialization in several countries that have been&#xA;  studied.  &lt;strong&gt;Moreover, recovery to levels achieved in the early Middle&#xA;  Ages was not attained until the early twentieth century.&lt;/strong&gt;  The paper&#xA;  links the decline in average height to climate deterioration; growing&#xA;  inequality; urbanization and the expansion of trade and commerce,&#xA;  which facilitated the spread of diseases; the global spread of&#xA;  diseases associated with European expansion and colonization; and&#xA;  conflicts or wars over state building or religion.  Because it is&#xA;  reasonable to believe that greater exposure to pathogens accompanied&#xA;  urbanization and industrialization, and there is evidence of climate&#xA;  moderation, increasing efficiency in agriculture and greater&#xA;  inter-regional and international trade in foodstuffs, &lt;strong&gt;it is&#xA;  plausible to link height gains that began in the eighteenth century&#xA;  with dietary improvements.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/medimen.htm&quot;&gt;http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/medimen.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Steckel R.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w8542.pdf?new_window=1&quot;&gt;Health and Nutrition in the Preindustrial Era: Insights from a Millennium of Average Heights in Northern Europe&lt;/a&gt; National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series. October 2001.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T02:50:51.047" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T02:50:51.047" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20833" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-05T03:34:23.183" Score="5" ViewCount="3763" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matt+13%3A31-32&amp;amp;version=NRSV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Matthew 13:31-32&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;31&lt;/strong&gt; He [Jesus] put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; &lt;strong&gt;32&lt;/strong&gt; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that mustard seeds are smaller than all other seeds?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19593" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:19:55.377" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:19:55.377" Title="Is the mustard seed the smallest of seeds?" Tags="|religion|bible|plants|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20834" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20081" CreationDate="2014-06-05T03:54:36.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a comprehensive review of the literature regarding the best time to introduce solids to infants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using the available information on the development of infant’s&#xA;  immunologic, gastrointestinal and oral motor function, as well as&#xA;  maternal reproductive physiology, the expert review team concluded&#xA;  that the probable age of readiness for most full term infants to&#xA;  discontinue exclusive breastfeeding and begin complementary foods&#xA;  appears to be &lt;strong&gt;near six months or perhaps a little beyond&lt;/strong&gt;. They also&#xA;  felt that there is probable convergence of such readiness across the&#xA;  several relevant developmental processes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And probably most relevant of the 36 pages of this review is the following: [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These reports combined with extensively reported clinical experience&#xA;  from specialists in infant oral motor development and therapy provide&#xA;  strong indication that under normal circumstances, oral motor function&#xA;  is developmentally ready for the introduction of semisolid and solid&#xA;  foods and thereby the discontinuation of exclusive breastfeeding&#xA;  between six and nine months of age. While infants can be offered such&#xA;  foods at an earlier age, their oral anatomy, reflexive responses and&#xA;  resulting oral motor function indicate that this is developmentally&#xA;  premature and may increase the risk of aspiration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Naylor AJ, Morrow AL (editors). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkagesproject.org/media/publications/Technical%20Reports/devreadiness.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Developmental Readiness of Normal Full Term Infants to Progress from Exclusive Breastfeeding to the Introduction of Complementary Foods. Reviews of the Relevant Literature Concerning Infant Immunologic, Gastrointestinal, Oral Motor and Maternal Reproductive and Lactational Development&lt;/a&gt; April 2001 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T04:00:58.463" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T04:00:58.463" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20835" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20836" CreationDate="2014-06-05T04:05:06.830" Score="48" ViewCount="10675" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Manga/DragonsRioting&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a manga&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mangahere.co/manga/dragons_rioting/c018/21.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;and I saw this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NliSv.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I was wondering. Will a bullet be split in half if it hits a butter knife that is fixed in place? Have there been experiments to test that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6441" LastEditorUserId="6441" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T04:21:28.617" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T15:50:19.243" Title="Will a bullet be split in half if it hits a butter knife that is fixed in place?" Tags="|physics|weapons|guns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20835" CreationDate="2014-06-05T04:26:45.780" Score="79" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the television show &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_%26_Teller_Tell_a_Lie&quot;&gt;Penn and Teller Tell A Lie&lt;/a&gt;, a competitor to Mythbusters, they conduct an experiment to try this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/1Qy-Be2cDGQ?t=1m35s&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt; of the result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the single instance they show with a slow motion camera, the bullet is indeed at split in half - or at least, fragmented into pieces - by a normal butter-knife. This is not a large sample, and doesn't demonstrate it works with all bullets or all butter knives, but shows that it is, in fact, possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus: &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/R9hWoNZdx-w&quot;&gt;Another video on the stunt using a machete&lt;/a&gt; from a source I have no particular reason to trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-29T15:50:19.243" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T15:50:19.243" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20833" CreationDate="2014-06-05T04:41:06.740" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mustard_seed&quot;&gt;Several sources&lt;/a&gt; put mustard seeds as between 1 and 2 or 3 mm in diameter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uwm.edu.pl/wnt/technicalsc/ts9_2006/2_9_2006.pdf&quot;&gt;For example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the hulling of white mustard seeds and rapeseeds,&#xA;  1.4 mm to 2.8 mm in diameter, on a disk equipped with blades [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ejournal.sinica.edu.tw/bbas/content/2005/1/Bot461-11.html&quot;&gt;begonia seeds&lt;/a&gt;, as an example, are much smaller:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Species description&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Begonia fangii&lt;/em&gt; [...] &lt;em&gt;Seeds&lt;/em&gt; many, brown, ellipsoid, 0.5-0.6 mm long, 0.3-0.35 mm in diam. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T04:41:06.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20833" CreationDate="2014-06-05T05:32:37.210" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;To repeat Oddthinking's answer, that is a simple &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;.  The mustard seed is far from the smallest. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kew.org/news/kew-blogs/orchid-seeds-natures-tiny-treasures.htm&quot;&gt;That distinction belongs to the Orchid&lt;/a&gt;.  With over 26,000 species, many having seeds no larger than grains of dust from 0.4mm to 0.2mm in size.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu/4217242/Orchid_seeds&quot;&gt;This document (PDF) actually gives a pretty full accounting of Orchid seeds&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T01:00:51.287" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T01:00:51.287" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20840" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9948" CreationDate="2014-06-05T07:56:10.387" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title of the question asks if &lt;em&gt;most blindness solved by cadaver donation?&lt;/em&gt; The World Health Organization states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the latest assessment, cataract is responsible for 51% of&#xA;  world blindness [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, cataracts are responsible for the majority of blindness.  Cataracts are readily treated by replacement of the lens of the eye with an artificial intra-ocular lens made of a type of plastic.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cadaveric eyes are only used to provide donor corneas ( transparent front part of the eye) for grafting.  The lens of the cadaveric eye is not used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Corneal blindness ( often monocular ) is the second most common cause of blindness, and figures about 1/4 that caused by cataracts [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Diseases affecting the cornea are a major cause of blindness&#xA;  worldwide, second only to cataract in overall importance. The&#xA;  epidemiology of corneal blindness is complicated and encompasses a&#xA;  wide variety of infectious and inflammatory eye diseases that cause&#xA;  corneal scarring, which ultimately leads to functional blindness. In&#xA;  addition, the prevalence of corneal disease varies from country to&#xA;  country and even from one population to another. While cataract is&#xA;  responsible for nearly 20 million of the 45 million blind people in&#xA;  the world, the next major cause is trachoma which blinds 4.9 million&#xA;  individuals, mainly as a result of corneal scarring and&#xA;  vascularization. Ocular trauma and corneal ulceration are significant&#xA;  causes of corneal blindness that are often underreported but may be&#xA;  responsible for 1.5–2.0 million new cases of monocular blindness every&#xA;  year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the authors conclude that surgery is not cost-effective way of treatment, and most cases are actually preventable.  Note also that corneal transplant requires the use of eye banks, and other sophisticated medico-surgical infrastructure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The message is clear that medical and especially surgical intervention&#xA;  is not cost-effective in eliminating corneal blindness in developing&#xA;  countries. Prevention, in the case of almost every disease involved,&#xA;  is more cost-effective and ultimately more successful in decreasing&#xA;  the prevalence of blindness. Schwartz et al. estimated that 95.5% of&#xA;  all blindness in the population they studied in the Central African&#xA;  Republic was preventable or treatable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the answer to the question, is no.  The message being passed around Facebook doesn't understand the cause of common blindness and the treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/blindness/causes/priority/en/index1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.who.int/blindness/causes/priority/en/index1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Whitcher et al &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scielosp.org/scielo.php?pid=S0042-96862001000300009&amp;amp;script=sci_arttext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Corneal blindness: a global perspective&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0042-9686200100030000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0042-9686200100030000&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-07T02:56:03.097" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T02:56:03.097" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20831" CreationDate="2014-06-05T08:37:08.667" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe you are forgetting that, if Christianity had never existed, Europe would not now look like it is today.&#xA;After the fall of the Roman Empire, people were constantly attacked and plundered by invaders coming from the East and the North.&#xA;If monasteries had never existed, two consequences would have likely occurred:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;most of the progress and culture gained during the Roman Eve would have been completely lost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Europe would have become a simple colonial territory to be exploited by all people passing by&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Men like St. Benedict and St. Patrick are not only famous because they were monks. Instead, first off they wanted to be &lt;em&gt;happy themselves&lt;/em&gt;. What they did was just to look for where they could find their happiness. As they found it, then they could no longer keep it for themselves only, but they had to tell other people that there was a better way to live. This is why monasteries were founded and towns and entire nations (!), which is the case of England and Ireland, grew upon the monasteries. Monasteries quickly became the main cultural and political centres not because monks wanted the power for themselves. Instead, people realised that they were the only ones who could help them carry on during those hard times, where wars and famines were routine.&#xA;Don't forget that if monasteries had never existed today we could never read 95% of the Roman literature, as well as very few people would be able to read.&#xA;Ah, just another thing. If Christianity had never existed, structures like hospitals and hotels like the ones we conceive of today would not exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19600" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T08:37:08.667" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20844" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-05T09:49:20.300" Score="4" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard some urban legends / 'drink party tales' about that particular liquor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8MG4z.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Jarzębiak&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jarzębiak is a fruit vodka made from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbus_aucuparia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;rowan&lt;/a&gt; by extracting the fruit through &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infusion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;infusion&lt;/a&gt; and then mixing the extract with other ingredients - natural caramel, wine distillate, fruit distillates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jarzebiak was used as a medicine in the centuries past, particularly popular in XIX century, assigned positive properties in states of leg veins inflammation, hemorroids, improving heart activity and digestion.(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.minrol.gov.pl/pol/Jakosc-zywnosci/Produkty-regionalne-i-tradycyjne/Lista-produktow-tradycyjnych/woj.-pomorskie/Lecznicza-nalewka-jarzebinowa-jarzebiak&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The drinking stories though involve drinking way more than &quot;medical dosage&quot; but still significantly less than &quot;what could kill a seasoned Pole&quot; - amounts like 250-500ml per person (say, one or two 0.5l flasks between two friends, that's really not all that much by Polish standards). Effects supposedly involved loss of consciousness, ER diagnosing critical blood pressure drop, with systolic pressure dropping below 60mmHg, applying pressure-rising drugs intravenously, and saving the patient from brink of death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, considering the source of these stories (drinking stories), I'd like to find if they have actual medical basis, or are just some coincidences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10781" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T19:40:38.183" Title="Can Jarzębiak (rowan fruit nalewka) lead to dangerous blood pressure drops?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|alcohol|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20845" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19393" CreationDate="2014-06-05T10:04:34.733" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The largest prospective study that I am aware of in the EPIC-PANACEA study which has followed over 373,000 men and women over 5 years [1] and recruited subjects between the years 1992 and 2000 in 10 European countries&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our objective was to assess the association between consumption of&#xA;  total meat, red meat, poultry, and processed meat and weight gain&#xA;  after 5 y of follow-up, on average, in the large European population&#xA;  who participated in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer&#xA;  and Nutrition-Physical Activity, Nutrition, Alcohol, Cessation of&#xA;  Smoking, Eating Out of Home and Obesity (EPIC-PANACEA) project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This showed that even adjusting for calories, you were more likely to gain weight when eating meat or poultry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Total meat consumption was positively associated with weight gain in&#xA;  men and women, in normal-weight and overweight subjects, and in&#xA;  smokers and nonsmokers. With adjustment for estimated energy intake,&#xA;  an increase in meat intake of 250 g/d (eg, one steak at approximately&#xA;  450 kcal) would lead to a 2-kg higher weight gain after 5 y (95% CI:&#xA;  1.5, 2.7 kg). Positive associations were observed for red meat, poultry, and processed meat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They then looked to see if fruit and vegetable intakes influenced weight change but there was only a weak association between failure to gain weight in women who gave up smoking.[2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this large study, higher baseline fruit and vegetable intakes,&#xA;  while maintaining total energy intakes constant, did not substantially&#xA;  influence midterm weight change overall but could help to reduce risk&#xA;  of weight gain in persons who stop smoking. The interactions observed&#xA;  in women deserve additional attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to why those who consume meat tend to gain weight, whereas those who don't are less likely, it has been shown that the intestinal microbiota differs in omnivores [3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vegetarians had a 12% higher abundance of bacterial DNA than&#xA;  omnivores, a tendency for less Clostridium cluster IV (31.86 +/-&#xA;  17.00%; 36.64 +/- 14.22%) and higher abundance of Bacteroides (23.93 +/- 10.35%; 21.26 +/- 8.05%), which were not significant due to high interindividual variations. PCA suggested a grouping of bacteria and&#xA;  members of Clostridium cluster IV. Two bands appeared significantly&#xA;  more frequently in omnivores than in vegetarians (p &amp;lt; 0.005 and p &amp;lt;&#xA;  0.022). One was identified as Faecalibacterium sp. and the other was 97.9% similar to the uncultured gut bacteriumDQ793301.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One current thought is that the bacteria in the gut of a human omnivore is more able to metabolise food releasing nutrients otherwise unavailable to vegetarians.  This might account for about 2% of the daily food intake, and works out to be about 5 lbs of weight gain a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Vergnaud AC, Norat T, Romaguera D, Mouw T, May AM, Travier N, Luan J, Wareham N, Slimani N, Rinaldi S, Couto E, Clavel-Chapelon F, Boutron-Ruault MC, Cottet V, Palli D, Agnoli C, Panico S, Tumino R, Vineis P, Agudo A, Rodriguez L, Sanchez MJ, Amiano P, Barricarte A, Huerta JM, Key TJ, Spencer EA, Bueno-de-Mesquita B, BÃ¼chner FL, Orfanos P, Naska A, Trichopoulou A, Rohrmann S, Hermann S, Boeing H, Buijsse B, Johansson I, Hellstrom V, Manjer J, WirfÃ¤lt E, Jakobsen MU, Overvad K, Tjonneland A, Halkjaer J, Lund E, Braaten T, Engeset D, Odysseos A, Riboli E, Peeters PH. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20592131&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Meat consumption and prospective weight change in participants of the EPIC-PANACEA study.&lt;/a&gt; Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 2010 Aug;92(2):398-407. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.2009.28713. PubMed PMID: 20592131.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Vergnaud AC, Norat T, Romaguera D, Mouw T, May AM, Romieu I, Freisling H, Slimani N, Boutron-Ruault MC, Clavel-Chapelon F, Morois S, Kaaks R, Teucher B, Boeing H, Buijsse B, TjÃ¸nneland A, Halkjaer J, Overvad K, Jakobsen MU, RodrÃ­guez L, Agudo A, SÃ¡nchez MJ, Amiano P, Huerta JM, Gurrea AB, Wareham N, Khaw KT, Crowe F, Orfanos P, Naska A, Trichopoulou A, Masala G, Pala V, Tumino R, Sacerdote C, Mattiello A, Bueno-de-Mesquita HB, van Duijnhoven FJ, Drake I, WirfÃ¤lt E, Johansson I, Hallmans G, Engeset D, Braaten T, Parr CL, Odysseos A, Riboli E, Peeters PH. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22170373&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fruit and vegetable consumption and prospective weight change in participants of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition-Physical Activity, Nutrition, Alcohol, Cessation of Smoking, Eating Out of Home, and Obesity study.&lt;/a&gt; Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 2012 Jan;95(1):184-93. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.111.019968. PubMed PMID: 22170373.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] Liszt K, Zwielehner J, Handschur M, Hippe B, Thaler R, Haslberger AG. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19641302&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Characterization of bacteria, clostridia and Bacteroides in faeces of vegetarians using qPCR and PCR-DGGE fingerprinting.&lt;/a&gt; Ann. Nutr. Metab. 2009 Jul 27;54(4):253-7. doi: 10.1159/000229505. PubMed PMID: 19641302.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T10:45:33.000" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T10:45:33.000" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20831" CreationDate="2014-06-05T12:21:25.577" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;They did indeed have a role in the &quot;Dark Ages&quot;, primarily in staving it off. The term &quot;Dark Age&quot; refers to our (at the time) lack of historical information as to what was going on. One of the major roles of the Church at the time was the storing of historical information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thomas Cahill, in his 1995 book &lt;em&gt;How the Irish Saved Civilization&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A]s the Roman Empire fell, as all through Europe matted, unwashed barbarians descended on the Roman cities, looting artifacts and burning books, the Irish, who were just learning to read and write, took up the great labor of copying all western literature - everything they could lay their hands on. These scribes then served as conduits through which the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultures were transmitted to the tribes of Europe, newly settled amid the rubble and ruined vineyards of the civilization they had overwhelmed. Without this Service of the Scribes, everything that happened subsequently would be unthinkable. Without the Mission of the Irish Monks, who single-handedly re-founded European civilization throughout the continent in the bays and valleys of their exile, the world that came after them would have been an entirely different one-a world without books. And our own world would never have come to be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Church records of births, deaths, and marriages continue to be used to do historical analysis of the prevalence of death and disease during that time period. The preservation of literature by the Catholic scribes has provided many of the extant documents of the time. For example, Boethius's Latin translation of Aristotle's treatises on logic were the only version available through the 12th century according to Robert A. Guisepi's &lt;em&gt;Europe's Search For Stability&lt;/em&gt;. They maintained the schools and libraries (&quot;Woods, How the Church Built Western Civilization (2005), p. 40&quot; and &quot;Le Goff, Medieval Civilization (1964), pp. 80–2&quot;) of the time and founded the first universities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I recognize that it's not likely how you intended the use of the word, I'd argue that historical evidence is that the Church were some of the most responsible people involved in the ending of the &quot;Dark Ages&quot; by ensuring that knowledge was not lost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T12:21:25.577" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20852" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-05T14:41:51.727" Score="9" ViewCount="2654" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sweetfunnycool.com/vid/i-should-have-known-this-before-its-so-simple-to-k.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SweetFunnyCool&lt;/a&gt; : Here is a simple and easy way to make your bananas last longer. All you have to do is wrap plastic around the stem. Banana stems release ethylene which causes ripening and by blocking the gases from being released the banas could last 3 to 5 days longer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the trick work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-02-11T18:50:00.340" Title="Do bananas last 3 to 5 days longer if you wrap plastic around their stem?" Tags="|nutrition|biology|plants|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19060" CreationDate="2014-06-05T18:06:59.427" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Okay, first question that I'm answering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recently saw a film about the food industry called &quot;Fed Up&quot; and it mentioned how in a study cocaine addicted rats were offered a choice of two different kinds of water. The first kind had cocaine in it and the second kind had ether sugar water or an artificial sweetener. Something close to 90% of the rats preferred the sweeter water, even with their cocaine addictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't think this study was true, so I checked around on the internet to be sure and it's true from what I can tell. I'm aware that HP is not always reliable, so I looked around for the source and I found what looks like the scientific paper on it. It seems to check out and I looked at the sources for their information, how the tests was run, and so on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below is the summary of the report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here we report that when rats were allowed to choose mutually-exclusively between water sweetened with saccharin–an intense calorie-free sweetener–and intravenous cocaine–a highly addictive and harmful substance–the large majority of animals (94%) preferred the sweet taste of saccharin. The preference for saccharin was not attributable to its unnatural ability to induce sweetness without calories because the same preference was also observed with sucrose, a natural sugar. Finally, the preference for saccharin was not surmountable by increasing doses of cocaine and was observed despite either cocaine intoxication, sensitization or intake escalation–the latter being a hallmark of drug addiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And right below this is what the conclusion was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our findings clearly demonstrate that intense sweetness can surpass cocaine reward, even in drug-sensitized and -addicted individuals. We speculate that the addictive potential of intense sweetness results from an inborn hypersensitivity to sweet tastants. In most mammals, including rats and humans, sweet receptors evolved in ancestral environments poor in sugars and are thus not adapted to high concentrations of sweet tastants. The supranormal stimulation of these receptors by sugar-rich diets, such as those now widely available in modern societies, would generate a supranormal reward signal in the brain, with the potential to override self-control mechanisms and thus to lead to addiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hope this helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/connie-bennett/the-rats-who-preferred-su_b_712254.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/connie-bennett/the-rats-who-preferred-su_b_712254.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000698&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0000698&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19618" LastEditorUserId="19618" LastEditDate="2014-06-05T18:42:17.463" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T18:42:17.463" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18763" CreationDate="2014-06-05T18:14:39.017" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Origins: While the training to become a member of the U.S. Marine Corps is indeed rigorous and demanding, at no point does it involve the murder of family members. Such tales endeavor to confirm belief that those serving in elite military units are the ultimate professional soldiers — cold, methodical, and efficient — even as they offer explanation for how these fighting &#xA;  men came to be that way (by having all compassion and kindness trained out of them). Stories like these work as advance propaganda, instilling fear in potential enemies of the two-legged killing machines that will be unleashed upon them should peaceful attempts to reconcile differences be discarded in favor of military ones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it would seem that marines at least have been proven to not kill puppies during training. I don't know about the other branches, but the site says that lots of rumors about training for special forces or marines aren't true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/military/murderer.asp#ptTx4yXJcmyzeHGS.99&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/military/murderer.asp#ptTx4yXJcmyzeHGS.99&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19618" LastActivityDate="2014-06-05T18:14:39.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20858" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17542" CreationDate="2014-06-05T19:32:01.097" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Methotrexate is used to treat psoriatic arthritis. Several studies have concluded it is effective, thus only the tolerability of the patient should be taken into account when starting methotrexate therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Methotrexate is an effective and safe agent in psoriatic arthritis. In the last decade, methotrexate has emerged as a useful second line agent for a variety of &lt;strong&gt;arthritides&lt;/strong&gt;. However, there still exists some reluctance for its wider use mainly because of concerns about its liver side effects &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study of active psoriatic arthritis  found no evidence for MTX improving &lt;strong&gt;synovitis&lt;/strong&gt; and consequently raises questions about its classification as a disease-modifying drug in psoriatic arthritis &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;. However, this is a 6 month study. The others that claim methotrexate is effective gathered data for more than 6 months &lt;sup&gt;[3, 5, 6]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Methotrexate can be used early in the course of psoriatic arthritis with good results &lt;sup&gt;[3]&lt;/sup&gt;. When it comes to long term terapy, methotrexate conferred no advantage with respect to clinical response or longterm damage even after 24 months of therapy &lt;sup&gt;[4]&lt;/sup&gt;. Methotrexate is &lt;strong&gt;superior to intramuscular gold&lt;/strong&gt; in the likelihood of achieving a clinical response and in permitting an individual to continue longterm treatment &lt;sup&gt;[5]&lt;/sup&gt;. When compared to cyclosporin A, one study shows that low-dose cyclosporin A and methotrexate are both effective in the treatment of psoriatic arthritis, but the differences in the tolerability of these drugs must be considered at the start of therapy &lt;sup&gt;[6]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In psoriasis, the rate of production of epithelial cells in the skin is greatly increased over normal skin. This differential in proliferation rates is the basis for the use of Methotrexate to control the psoriatic process &lt;sup&gt;[7]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Espinoza LR, Zakraoui L, Espinoza CG, GutiĂŠrrez F, Jara LJ, Silveira LH, CuĂŠllar ML, MartĂ­nez-Osuna P. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1404123&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Psoriatic arthritis: clinical response and side effects to methotrexate therapy.&lt;/a&gt; J. Rheumatol. 1992 Jun;19(6):872-7. PubMed PMID: 1404123. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kingsley GH, Kowalczyk A, Taylor H, Ibrahim F, Packham JC, McHugh NJ, Mulherin DM, Kitas GD, Chakravarty K, Tom BD, O'Keeffe AG, Maddison PJ, Scott DL. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22344575&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A randomized placebo-controlled trial of methotrexate in psoriatic arthritis.&lt;/a&gt; Rheumatology (Oxford). 2012 Aug;51(8):1368-77. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/rheumatology/kes001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1093/rheumatology/kes001&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 22344575.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Singh YN, Verma KK, Kumar A, Malaviya AN. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7868484&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Methotrexate in psoriatic arthritis.&lt;/a&gt; J Assoc Physicians India. 1994 Nov;42(11):860-2. PubMed PMID: 7868484. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Abu-Shakra M, Gladman DD, Thorne JC, Long J, Gough J, Farewell VT. &lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/7738945&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Longterm methotrexate therapy in psoriatic arthritis: clinical and radiological outcome.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; The Journal of Rheumatology [1995, 22(2):241-245]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lacaille D, Stein HB, Raboud J, Klinkhoff AV. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10955334&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Longterm therapy of psoriatic arthritis: intramuscular gold or methotrexate?&lt;/a&gt; J. Rheumatol. 2000 Aug;27(8):1922-7. PubMed PMID: 10955334. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spadaro A, Riccieri V, Sili-Scavalli A, Sensi F, Taccari E, Zoppini A. &lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/8575136&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Comparison of cyclosporin A and methotrexate in the treatment of psoriatic arthritis: a one-year prospective study.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Clinical and Experimental Rheumatology [1995, 13(5):589-593]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Drugs.com. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugs.com/pro/methotrexate.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Methotrexate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T15:24:16.807" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T15:24:16.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20860" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-05T20:19:00.700" Score="9" ViewCount="1702" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia defines &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fractional reserve banking&lt;/a&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the practice whereby a bank holds reserves in an amount equal to only a portion of the amount of its customers' deposits to satisfy potential demands for withdrawals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The practice of fractional reserve banking is said to have originated with European (or perhaps English) goldsmiths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The outline of the story is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Goldsmiths had nice vaults in order to protect their wares.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other people ended up renting space in the vaults to protect their&#xA;valuables.  These people would receive notes indicating what they had deposited.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An economy of trading these notes (rather than the hard assets) developed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The goldsmiths realized that they could write, i.e. lend out, more notes than they&#xA;had gold and coins stored in their vaults, since it was rarely the case that everyone&#xA;wanted all of their deposits back at the same time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that this story is a reasonable summary of a real episode in the history of banking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several versions of this story can be found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Professor Lawrence White's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freebanking.org/2012/07/02/testimony-on-fractional-reserve-banking/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2012 Testimony&lt;/a&gt; to the House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqvKjsIxT_8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Debt as Money&lt;/a&gt; animated documentary.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money#Goldsmith_bankers&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;History of Money Wikipedia entry&lt;/a&gt;, although it also mentions the role of scriveners and I have not checked the cited references.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frbatlanta.org/edresources/classroomeconomist/11fr_banking_transcript.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;classroom training materials&lt;/a&gt; shares the story, but suggests it is apocryphal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key details that I'm suspicious of are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that it was literally goldsmiths, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;that they were private actors without explicit government backing&#xA;(i.e. that some goldsmith just &quot;invented&quot; the idea.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9094" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:51:02.853" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T03:49:41.177" Title="Did goldsmiths invent fractional reserve banking?" Tags="|history|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20861" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="46166" CreationDate="2014-06-05T22:31:45.740" Score="8" ViewCount="1089" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://thatsmoderatelyraven.tumblr.com/post/87882055105&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;picture and body of text&lt;/a&gt; making its way through Tumblr again:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://37.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7eybc22Nh1rx5vygo1_500.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Facial Map&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is your acne telling you?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1 &amp;amp; 2: Digestive System — Eat less processed or junk food, reduce the amount of fat in your diet, step up water intake and opt for cooling things like cucumbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3: Liver — Cut out the alcohol, greasy food and dairy. This is the zone where food allergies also show up first, so take a look at your ingredients. Besides all this, do 30 minutes of light exercise every day and get adequate sleep so your liver can rest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4 &amp;amp; 5: Kidneys — Anything around the eyes (including dark circles) point to dehydration. Drink up!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;6: Heart — Check your blood pressure (mine was slightly high) and Vitamin B levels. Decrease the intake of spicy or pungent food, cut down on meat and get more fresh air. Besides this, look into ways to lower cholesterol, like replacing “bad fats” with “good fats” such as Omegas 3 and 6 found in nuts, avocados, fish and flax seed. Also, since this area is chock-full of dilated pores, check that your makeup is not past its expiry date or is skin-clogging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;7 &amp;amp; 8: Kidneys — Again, drink up! And cut down on aerated drinks, coffee and alcohol as these will cause further dehydration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Zone 9 &amp;amp; 10: Respiratory system — Do you smoke? Have allergies? This is your problem area for both. If neither of these is the issue, don’t let your body overheat, eat more cooling foods, cut down on sugar and get more fresh air. Also keep the body more alkaline by avoiding foods that make the body acidic (meat, dairy, alcohol, caffeine, sugar) and adding more alkalizing foods like green veggies and wheatgrass juice. Another thing that most of forget – dirty cell phones and pillow cases are two of the top acne culprits and this area is what they affect the most!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Zone 11 &amp;amp; 12: Hormones — This is the signature zone for stress and hormonal changes. And while both are sometimes unavoidable, you can decrease their effect by getting adequate sleep, drinking enough water, eating leafy veggies and keeping skin scrupulously clean. Another interesting point: breakouts in this area indicate when you are ovulating (and on which side).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Zone 13: Stomach — Step up the fibre intake, reduce the toxin overload and drink herbal teas to help with digestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;14: Illness — Zits here can be a sign that your body is fighting bacteria to avoid illness. Give it a break, take a yoga class, take a nap, take time to breathe deeply, drink plenty of water and know that everything always works out!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So the next time you break out or notice dark under-eye circles, look to your face map: your skin is probably trying to communicate on behalf of the internal organs. However, do remember that, as with all medical issues, it is always best to see your doctor or dermotologist for a proper prognosis. This is just a general guide to head you off in the right investigative direction – just because you break out between the brows doesn’t always mean you have a bad liver!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole thing reeks of palmistry; I feel people are trying to find patterns where they don't exist. Although the graphic may not be 100% accurate, will acne be found in specific areas according to problems in a diet or other imbalances, like illness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, touching location is out of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19625" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:39.243" LastActivityDate="2020-03-27T10:50:53.033" Title="Are bodily deficiencies &quot;mapped&quot; to facial acne?" Tags="|nutrition|physiology|alkaline-diet|acne|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20862" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5109" CreationDate="2014-06-06T00:19:05.070" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think we have to be skeptical of this claim that a tea bag offers additional help in stopping bleeding after dental extractions through chemical action vs just compression with a gauze cloth.  First off there are no published studies of the efficacy of using tea bags.  The claim is made often on various medical [0] and dental sites seemingly based on this paper [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tannins have also been reported to exert other physiological effects,&#xA;  such as to accelerate blood clotting&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's clear that as a review they are reporting other people's even earlier work.  (The full text of the journal is available for US$46.)  But what they could not have known in 1998 is that there are other substances found in tea that prevent clot formation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Daily Mail [2] reports&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They believe that rutin - also present in black and green tea - could&#xA;  be used in future treatments to protect against heart attacks and&#xA;  strokes. Harvard researchers found that the chemical helped block a&#xA;  potentially dangerous enzyme involved in the formation of blood clots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from the actual paper (rutin = quercetin-3-rutinoside ) [3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cellular assays showed that quercetin-3-rutinoside inhibited&#xA;  aggregation of human and mouse platelets and endothelial cell-mediated&#xA;  fibrin generation in human endothelial cells. Using intravital&#xA;  microscopy in mice, we demonstrated that quercetin-3-rutinoside blocks&#xA;  thrombus formation in vivo by inhibiting PDI. Infusion of recombinant&#xA;  PDI reversed the antithrombotic effect of quercetin-3-rutinoside.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Protein disulfide isomerase (PDI) is an oxidoreductase that has recently been shown to participate in thrombus formation, and is released by platelets and endothelial cells.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/oral-health/guide/wisdom-teeth?page=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.webmd.com/oral-health/guide/wisdom-teeth?page=2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Chung KT, Wong TY, Wei CI, Huang YW, Lin Y. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9759559&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tannins and human health: a review.&lt;/a&gt; Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr 1998 Aug;38(6):421-64. doi: 10.1080/10408699891274273. PubMed PMID: 9759559.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2141602/Chemical-apples-onions-green-tea-help-beat-blood-clots.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2141602/Chemical-apples-onions-green-tea-help-beat-blood-clots.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] Jasuja R, Passam FH, Kennedy DR, Kim SH, van Hessem L, Lin L, Bowley SR, Joshi SS, Dilks JR, Furie B, Furie BC, Flaumenhaft R. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22565308&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Protein disulfide isomerase inhibitors constitute a new class of antithrombotic agents.&lt;/a&gt; J. Clin. Invest. 2012 Jun;122(6):2104-13. doi: 10.1172/JCI61228. PubMed PMID: 22565308.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T00:19:05.070" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5109" CreationDate="2014-06-06T01:24:01.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tea contains tannic acid, which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannic_acid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a mild astringent&lt;/a&gt;, which means it tends to contract skin and blood vessels. Just to confuse matters, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/astringent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;astringent&quot; also refers to a certain tartness of taste&lt;/a&gt;, which is also a known quality of tea. Tea is only a mild astringent, but it's also a relatively harmless one, which makes it safe to put in the mouth without worrying about swallow some of the astringent material and having to worry about the blood vessels of the throat contracting, as might happen with a stronger astringent such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esciencelabs.com/files/andrea.rex/Alum.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;alum&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T01:24:01.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20865" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13719" CreationDate="2014-06-06T02:58:36.170" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has not been any statin vs statin comparisons, but there was a comparison of different dosages of the same statin. 10,001 patients were either assigned to treatment with either 10 mg of atorvastatin or 80 mg of atorvastatin. The primary end point was the occurrence of a first major cardiovascular event, defined as death from CHD, nonfatal non-procedure-related myocardial infarction, resuscitation after cardiac arrest, or fatal or nonfatal stroke.  The results showed that 80 mg was superior. [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A primary event occurred in 434 patients (8.7 percent) receiving 80 mg&#xA;  of atorvastatin, as compared with 548 patients (10.9 percent)&#xA;  receiving 10 mg of atorvastatin, representing an absolute reduction in&#xA;  the rate of major cardiovascular events of 2.2 percent and a 22&#xA;  percent relative reduction in risk (hazard ratio, 0.78; 95 percent&#xA;  confidence interval, 0.69 to 0.89; P&amp;lt;0.001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Intensive lipid-lowering therapy with 80 mg of atorvastatin per day in&#xA;  patients with stable CHD provides significant clinical benefit beyond&#xA;  that afforded by treatment with 10 mg of atorvastatin per day. This&#xA;  occurred with a greater incidence of elevated aminotransferase levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This shows, ceteris paribus, that with respect to LDL-c, lower is better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ben Goldacre is concerned that should there be just a 2% difference between the different drugs, there could be vast numbers of lives not saved due to choosing the wrong statin. [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A systematic review study protocol 2010 looked at these issues and confirmed [3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is because of the fact that most randomized clinical trials have&#xA;  not tested different statins head-­‐to-­‐head. Additionally, almost&#xA;  all of the meta-­‐analyses ‘lumped’ all statins together as one&#xA;  intervention&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And they state also&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Combination  of  direct  and  indirect  evidence:  Methodological &#xA;  advances  in  statistical  synthesis  approaches, called mixed&#xA;  treatment comparisons  (also known as network meta-analyses), &#xA;  facilitate the  combination  of  direct  and  indirect  evidence  by &#xA;  incorporating  both  direct  (when  statins  are compared  to  each &#xA;  other  within  a  trial)  and  indirect  comparisons  (when  statins &#xA;  are  compared between trials with a common comparator treatment, which&#xA;  is often placebo).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, they claim that statistic methods make head to head comparisons unnecessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The answer to the question is, so far there have not been any head to head trials with cardiovascular endpoints.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] LaRosa JC, Grundy SM, Waters DD, Shear C, Barter P, Fruchart JC, Gotto AM, Greten H, Kastelein JJ, Shepherd J, Wenger NK, . &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15755765&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Intensive lipid lowering with atorvastatin in patients with stable coronary disease.&lt;/a&gt; N. Engl. J. Med. 2005 Apr;352(14):1425-35. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa050461. PubMed PMID: 15755765.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2013/03/01/do-we-really-need-head-to-head-comparison-trials-with-statins-to-improve-cardiac-health/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2013/03/01/do-we-really-need-head-to-head-comparison-trials-with-statins-to-improve-cardiac-health/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lse.ac.uk/LSEHealthAndSocialCare/pdf/HNaciProtocol.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;COMPARATIVE CLINICAL EFFICACY OF STATINS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW AND MIXED TREATMENT COMPARISON&lt;/a&gt; 2010&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="7280" LastEditDate="2014-06-08T17:35:08.907" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T17:35:08.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13535" CreationDate="2014-06-06T06:19:11.493" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Holding in a sneeze is a form of involuntary Valsalva manoeuvre.  In a Valsalva, there are characteristic changes in cerebral blood flow, and velocity as reported in this study [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The characteristic changes in blood pressure (phases I to IV) were&#xA;  seen in all subjects, accompanying distinct changes in cerebral blood&#xA;  flow velocity. The relative changes in mean velocity during phases II&#xA;  and IV were significantly greater than those in mean blood pressure.&#xA;  Compared with the baseline value, velocity decreased by 35% in phase&#xA;  IIa, then rose by 56.5% in phase IV (corresponding changes in blood&#xA;  pressure were -10.2% and +29.8%, respectively).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is conceivable that in people with some weakening in intracranial blood vessels eg. an aneurysm, a stroke might result with aneurysm rupture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alan Wild, a head and neck surgeon and assistant professor of otolaryngology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, is quoted as saying holding in a sneeze in an unlucky person might: [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...weaken a blood vessel in the brain and cause it to rupture due to&#xA;  the momentary elevation of blood pressure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but otherwise, if you don't have such anatomical variations, then there is no mechanism to &lt;em&gt;kill a few brain cells&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Tiecks FP, Lam AM, Matta BF, Strebel S, Douville C, Newell DW. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7631342&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effects of the valsalva maneuver on cerebral circulation in healthy adults. A transcranial Doppler Study.&lt;/a&gt; Stroke. 1995 Aug;26(8):1386-92. PubMed PMID: 7631342.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/32776-is-it-safe-to-hold-in-a-sneeze.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.livescience.com/32776-is-it-safe-to-hold-in-a-sneeze.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T06:19:11.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20869" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20852" CreationDate="2014-06-06T08:13:46.930" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this paper from 2006, it states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the present study, the existence of negative and positive feedback&#xA;  regulation of ethylene biosynthesis is demonstrated in banana pulp and&#xA;  peel tissues, respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, ethylene synthesis occurs in both the fruit and peel, and if there is any in the stem, it's likely irrelevant since the majority of the metabolically active tissue lies elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the comments to this answer, it has been questioned as to whether the lack of mention of ethylene synthesis in the stem means that it allows this possibility.  As explained in the replies, ethylene is lighter than air, so if there is any production there, it can not affect the fruit of the banana as it will rise upwards. But there's another reference here to how ethylene synthesis occurs [2] which negates the possibility of ethylene synthesis in the stem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on our results, ethylene production in ripening banana fruit can&#xA;  be characterized as follows: (a) increase in the abundance of MA-ACS1&#xA;  mRNA in the flesh is the first step of ethylene induction at the onset&#xA;  of the climacteric; (b) the increased content of ACC in the flesh&#xA;  induces a rapid increase of climacteric ethylene whereby ACC oxidase&#xA;  is activated with the enhanced accumulation of MA-ACO1 mRNA once&#xA;  ripening commences;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there's an Youtube video that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NKIHPCVq-w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;busts this myth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rgbM5.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bust&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Inaba A, Liu X, Yokotani N, Yamane M, Lu WJ, Nakano R, Kubo Y. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17185740&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Differential feedback regulation of ethylene biosynthesis in pulp and peel tissues of banana fruit.&lt;/a&gt; J. Exp. Bot. 2006 Dec 21;58(5):1047-57. doi: 10.1093/jxb/erl265. PubMed PMID: 17185740.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Liu X, Shiomi S, Nakatsuka A, [..], Inaba A. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10594112&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Characterization of ethylene biosynthesis associated with ripening in banana fruit.&lt;/a&gt; Plant Physiol. 1999 Dec;121(4):1257-66. PubMed PMID: 10594112. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-16T22:34:57.350" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T22:34:57.350" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20870" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21898" CreationDate="2014-06-06T09:04:34.130" Score="14" ViewCount="972" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many sources that discuss the difference between grain-fed and grass-fed beef.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many claim there is a difference in the nutritional characteristics of the beef.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the diet of a cow have any influence on the nutrition of the end product that you may eat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15977" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-06-09T06:37:55.497" LastActivityDate="2016-11-18T02:31:02.133" Title="Is there a nutritional difference between Grain-Fed and Grass-Fed beef?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7942" CreationDate="2014-06-06T10:21:05.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no published trials of raw food diets in the treatment of type 2 diabetes (T2DM). The best we have are trials using vegan diets where there is some evidence of efficacy in promoting weight loss, lowering cholesterol levels and HbA1c levels. This 74 week trial by Neal Barnard et al showed that vegan diet was superior to the traditional diabetes diet [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both diets were associated with sustained reductions in weight and&#xA;  plasma lipid concentrations. In an analysis controlling for medication&#xA;  changes, a low-fat vegan diet appeared to improve glycemia and plasma&#xA;  lipids more than did conventional diabetes diet recommendations.&#xA;  Whether the observed differences provide clinical benefit for the&#xA;  macro- or microvascular complications of diabetes remains to be&#xA;  established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will note that nothing is said about curing T2DM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the very expensive DVD being promoted by the rawfor30days, then I think you're getting a raw deal.  In the 5 minute video I watched, they used a Dr Gabriel Cousins who had his licence taken away in California ( but since reinstated ) and remains censured in New York.  The documentary is filmed at his Tree of Life Rejuventation Center in Arizona.  Note that he is  ineligible for an Arizona medical license so has been practicing as a homeopath. [1]  So, when at 0.29 in the trailer they say he's an MD, in some states this a misdemeanor when you haven't been granted a license to practice in that state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The more interesting question though is how T2DM can be reversed.  We now have 3 year trial data from the STAMPEDE study [3] from last month's (May 2014) NEJM.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We assessed outcomes 3 years after the randomization of 150 obese&#xA;  patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes to receive either intensive&#xA;  medical therapy alone or intensive medical therapy plus Roux-en-Y&#xA;  gastric bypass or sleeve gastrectomy. The primary end point was a&#xA;  glycated hemoglobin level of 6.0% or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and it was found that gastric-bypass was better than gastric-sleeve which was better again than intensive medical treatment.  Some of these subjects were able to achieve normal blood gluose levels off medication ( ie. reversal ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among obese patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes, 3 years of&#xA;  intensive medical therapy plus bariatric surgery resulted in glycemic&#xA;  control in significantly more patients than did medical therapy alone.&#xA;  Analyses of secondary end points, including body weight, use of&#xA;  glucose-lowering medications, and quality of life, also showed&#xA;  favorable results at 3 years in the surgical groups, as compared with&#xA;  the group receiving medical therapy alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The point of this is that T2DM is more likely to reverse with greater weight loss no matter how you achieve it.  If you sequester 6 people onto a remote ranch and put them onto a calorie restricted raw food diet, or, you put them onto a Newcastle 600 kcalorie ( 500 kcals from Optifast sachets, 110 cals from non-starchy vegs ~ 600 cals ) diet for 8 weeks, then some of these people will greatly improve their diabetes. What is important is how sustainable these temporary dietary changes are as without intensive lifestyle modification that can be sustained in the future their T2DM is likely to relapse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the point of all this is, yes, it's feasible a raw food diet for 30 days could potentially reverse T2DM, but only through the mechanism of severe caloric restriction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2008-04-10/news/arizona-s-homeopathic-board-is-the-second-chance-for-doctors-who-ve-lost-their-conventional-medical-licenses-in-other-states/3/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2008-04-10/news/arizona-s-homeopathic-board-is-the-second-chance-for-doctors-who-ve-lost-their-conventional-medical-licenses-in-other-states/3/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Barnard ND, Cohen J, Jenkins DJ, Turner-McGrievy G, Gloede L, Green A, Ferdowsian H. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19339401&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A low-fat vegan diet and a conventional diabetes diet in the treatment of type 2 diabetes: a randomized, controlled, 74-wk clinical trial.&lt;/a&gt; Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 2009 May;89(5):1588S-1596S. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.2009.26736H. PubMed PMID: 19339401.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] Schauer PR, Bhatt DL, Kirwan JP, Wolski K, Brethauer SA, Navaneethan SD, Aminian A, Pothier CE, Kim ES, Nissen SE, Kashyap SR, . &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24679060&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bariatric surgery versus intensive medical therapy for diabetes--3-year outcomes.&lt;/a&gt; N. Engl. J. Med. 2014 May;370(21):2002-13. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1401329. PubMed PMID: 24679060.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[4] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diabetes.co.uk/diet/newcastle-study-600-calorie-diet.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.diabetes.co.uk/diet/newcastle-study-600-calorie-diet.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-07T20:11:54.140" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T20:11:54.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20872" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20873" CreationDate="2014-06-06T12:23:27.380" Score="5" ViewCount="390" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is recommended that &quot;daily&quot; contact lenses are to be disposed of after about 8 hours of use. I understand that daily lenses are made from a different material than, say, monthly ones; they are softer and apparently not suitable for cleaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, what stops me from buying a lens case, some sterilising lens liquid and simply storing them in the case for a couple more days?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked a salesperson at the opticians today, but they declined to answer, and have a financial bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have tried it once before (I kept some of the solution the lenses came in, placed the lenses in it after a day's wear and used them the next day) and it I didn't feel that my eyes were irritated, though I did notice that they became drier faster than usual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why I shouldn't do this; what happens to the material/my eyes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17275" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T15:02:25.627" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T15:00:34.403" Title="Can daily disposable contact lenses be safely re-used?" Tags="|hygiene|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20872" CreationDate="2014-06-06T13:08:58.977" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Truth be told, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22326604&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;all contacts are prone to buildup of biological materials&lt;/a&gt;. I could find no data on whether temporary lenses are more prone to buildup, or are more difficult to clean. To get FDA approval, the companies must have their product tested for the duration of usage, frequency of replacement, and conditions treated. A full list of approved contact lens products and what the FDA has certified them for can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/medicaldevices/productsandmedicalprocedures/homehealthandconsumer/consumerproducts/contactlenses/ucm062602.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm048893.htm#TypesofContactLenses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FDA definition of &quot;disposable&quot; contact lenses&lt;/a&gt; is for them to be used once and discarded, but sellers are also allowed to market extended use contacts as &quot;disposable&quot;. Any use past that period is not FDA-approved usage of the product and thus is outside of the usual scope of safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24709223&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reuse of temporary lenses is shown to cause problems for users&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thirty-nine percent (154/398) had some qualifying criterion: reduced comfortable wearing time (CWT), 20%; dryness, 20%; irritation, 5%; corneal staining, 8%; and hyperaemia, 7%. After refitting with [daily dispoables (DDs)], the prevalence of reduced CWT was decreased from 65% to 51% (P=0.0039), dryness from 60% to 41% (P&amp;lt;0.0001) and corneal staining from 28% to 21% (P=0.04). There was no significant change in the prevalence of irritation, or hyperaemia. Some differences were noted between the two lens materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, it's a matter of risk-benefit. Some people don't produce as much build-up. Some people are less susceptible to infections. But when it comes to your eye health, consider that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/medicaldevices/productsandmedicalprocedures/HomeHealthandConsumer/ConsumerProducts/ContactLenses/ucm062589.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;risks could be serious&lt;/a&gt; including permanent blindness. Is that worth saving a few bucks even if that's the rare worst case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="19346" LastEditDate="2014-06-06T16:13:23.097" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T16:13:23.097" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20833" CreationDate="2014-06-06T15:23:34.940" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, but one should not expect a literal interpretation of of parable.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a good idea to use an &lt;a href=&quot;http://biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/13-31.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;interlinerar bible&lt;/a&gt; when reading translated works. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://biblestudytools.com/Bible/SearchResults.aspx?q=parable&amp;amp;t=kjv&amp;amp;c=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;concordance&lt;/a&gt; or other search tool that allows you to search in multiple languages can also be useful to determine the best translation. In this particular instance, the translation you quoted above seems fairly accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important part of Matthew 13:31-32 that you seem to be overlooking is that Jesus is speaking in &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3142/whats-the-difference-between-a-fable-and-a-parable/3143#3143&quot;&gt;parables&lt;/a&gt; to the multitudes. These stories are used to illustrate a religious or moral attitude, and need not be factual. There are multiple interpretations of what &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Mustard_Seed&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this parable&lt;/a&gt; is meant to symbolize, but no religious scholar takes that passage literally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:10.210" LastActivityDate="2014-06-06T15:23:34.940" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20877" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20881" CreationDate="2014-06-06T20:55:38.053" Score="12" ViewCount="3103" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Bill Bryson's book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_Tongue&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Mother Tongue&lt;/a&gt;, it is claimed, that Dr. David Edwards, head of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.languagepolicy.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joint National Committee on Languages&lt;/a&gt; once said: &quot;If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true? Has David Edwards been the head of said organization? Did he have a Ph. D. or something similar, and in which field? But the central question is: Did he make that claim? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people mention, that the citation is also attributed to Gov. Miriam Amanda Wallace “Ma” Ferguson (Texas), but, of course, two people may make the same claim. For example till today, million people claimed that you shouldn't believe in a statistic that you didn't forge yourself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-06-07T15:36:36.803" LastActivityDate="2018-01-21T19:57:02.340" Title="Did the head of the Joint National Committee on language claim Jesus spoke English?" Tags="|history|quotes|language|jesus-christ|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20878" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-06T22:06:43.213" Score="7" ViewCount="578" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been told by a friend who works at a school for the blind that no sighted person has ever learned to read braille by touch at the level that is comparable to a literate blind person. Is this true? Many sighted people can read braille fluently but most of these people seem to read braille visually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dotlessbraille.org/faq.htm&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; suggests that people have learned to read braille by touch into their old age but it does not mention if these people were visually impaired and does not provide citations. It suggests that if you are not visually impaired, you should consider reading braille visually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciforums.com/Can-a-sighted-person-learn-Braille-t-44278.html&quot;&gt;This forum thread&lt;/a&gt; asks a similar question and gives some personal experiences but it's hard to get a specific trustworthy answer to the question. The thread points to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/saf/1302/segments/1302-4.htm&quot;&gt;this PBS video&lt;/a&gt; which I cannot find online but that apparently describes experiments of having sighted individuals wear blindfolds and read braille. Both links describe a vague concept of &quot;brain rewiring&quot; in order to read braille by touch but it's unclear if this requires absence of vision. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19244" LastEditorUserId="19244" LastEditDate="2014-06-08T01:12:34.583" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T01:12:34.583" Title="Can sighted people learn to read braille by touch at a level comparable to blind individuals?" Tags="|physiology|neurology|learning|cognitive-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20880" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22328" CreationDate="2014-06-07T00:14:51.353" Score="10" ViewCount="516" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen numerous articles claiming that Yelp extorts money from businesses by purportedly hiding higher review to drop a restaurant/business's ratings, then offering them the choice to pay money to get reviews &quot;back&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any substantiated claim to prove that Yelp does extort? I will admit, I am a bit skeptical of this kind of claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the first link: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lawsuit essentially alleges that the heavily funded startup runs&#xA;  an “extortion scheme” and has “unscrupulous sales practices” in place&#xA;  to generate revenue, in which the company’s employees call businesses&#xA;  demanding monthly payments in the guise of advertising contracts, in&#xA;  exchange for removing or modifying negative reviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the second link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Such tactics may be legal, but they clearly raise ethical concerns.&#xA;  Yelp touts its web site as consisting of &quot;real people&quot; writing &quot;real&#xA;  reviews.&quot; The allegations of business owners who have tangled with the&#xA;  company suggest otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/24/yelp-class-action-lawsuit/&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/yelp-and-the-business-of-extortion-20/Content?oid=1176635&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11227" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T12:16:41.780" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T05:43:46.667" Title="Does Yelp &quot;extort&quot; money from businesses?" Tags="|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20881" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20877" CreationDate="2014-06-07T01:25:08.767" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bill Bryson did &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; make this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Chapter 12 of his book he writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As one congressman quite seriously told Dr. David Edwards, head of the Joint National Committee on Languages, &quot;If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me,&quot; [Quoted in the &lt;em&gt;Guardian&lt;/em&gt;, April 30, 1988]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr J. David Edwards was the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gala-global.org/blog/2012/jncl-nclis-welcomes-dr-william-p-rivers-as-executive-director-rivers-to-continue-to-chair-astm-f43/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;former Executive Director&lt;/a&gt; of the Joint National Committee for Language - National Council on Language and International Studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The mission and activities of the Joint National Committee for Languages (JNCL) and the National Council for Languages and International Studies (NCLIS) are founded on the shared belief of its member organizations that all Americans should have the opportunity to learn and &lt;strong&gt;use English and at least one other language&lt;/strong&gt;, emphasizing the vital role played in the national well being by our K-12 and higher education foreign language programs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Dr. Edwards' actions are completely in contradiction to the claim as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="43607" LastEditDate="2018-01-21T19:57:02.340" LastActivityDate="2018-01-21T19:57:02.340" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20882" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17542" CreationDate="2014-06-07T01:28:41.513" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although methotrexate has been used for years now to treat psoriatic arthritis (PsA) with the impression of good effectiveness in both treating physicians, and patients, there has been scant proof of such effectiveness.  The latest and most comprehensive data we have is from the 2012 MIPA trial [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The MIPA trial was a placebo-controlled study involving 221&#xA;  methotrexate-naive individuals with PsA enrolled in 22 European&#xA;  centers over a period of 5 years. Initial methotrexate at 7.5 mg per&#xA;  week was increased to 10 mg per week at week 4, and to a target dose&#xA;  of 15 mg per week at week 8. In individuals with persistently active&#xA;  disease, the dose could be adjusted to 20 mg per week at 4 months and&#xA;  25 mg per week at 5 months. Concomitant NSAIDs were allowed, but not&#xA;  systemic glucocorticoids or other immunomodulatory agents. Response to&#xA;  treatment was assessed at 3 months and 6 months. Of 109 people in the&#xA;  methotrexate arm, only 67 were 'valid compliant completers', compared&#xA;  with 61 of 112 in the placebo arm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although intention to treat analyses found significant improvement in physician and patient global assessments, there was no difference between placebo and active treatment in measures such as ESR, CRP, tender and swollen joint counts, and HAQ scores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been some criticism of the trial including that the dose of methotrexate was escalated too slowly, and only 11% of subjects received doses greater than 15 mg per week, whereas 20 - 25 mg per week is more commonly used in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless &lt;strong&gt;we lack good evidence currently for the efficacy of methotrexate in PsA&lt;/strong&gt;, and perhaps patients should be first trialled on Leflunomide for which we do have efficacy data. [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1]  Kingsley GH, Kowalczyk A, Taylor H, [..], Scott DL. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22344575&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A randomized placebo-controlled trial of methotrexate in psoriatic arthritis.&lt;/a&gt; Rheumatology (Oxford). 2012 Aug;51(8):1368-77. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/rheumatology/kes001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1093/rheumatology/kes001&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 22344575. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2]  Kaltwasser JP, Nash P, Gladman D, [..], Mease P. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15188371&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Efficacy and safety of leflunomide in the treatment of psoriatic arthritis and psoriasis: a multinational, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial.&lt;/a&gt; Arthritis Rheum. 2004 Jun;50(6):1939-50. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/art.20253&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1002/art.20253&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 15188371. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T04:17:32.783" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T04:17:32.783" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20877" CreationDate="2014-06-07T04:22:27.530" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, Dr. David Edwards was the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.languagepolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/DelegateAssembly2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Executive Director&lt;/a&gt; of the Joint National Committee for Languages and the National Council for Languages and International Studies (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.languagepolicy.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;JNCL/NCLIS&lt;/a&gt;) for 31 years. His Ph.D. is in &lt;a href=&quot;http://flenj.org/advocacy/edwards_interview.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;political science&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is doubtful that Dr. David Edwards made such a claim. His organization promotes multilingualism (from the interview linked above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JNCL-NCLIS has grown to be an incredible organization that fosters multilingualism and gives language educators a platform for advocacy. The backbone of this essential connection to our legislative bodies is J. David Edwards&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2014/feb/12/facebook-posts/bachmann-didnt-say-bible-was-written-english-and-n/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;similar claim&lt;/a&gt; was made of Michelle Bachmann (you already noted Gov. “Ma” Ferguson).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If English was good enough for Jesus when he wrote the Bible it should be good enough for Coke,&amp;quot; Bachmann is quoted as saying in the graphic posted Feb. 3, 2014, by &amp;quot;Christians for Michele Bachmann.&amp;quot; It attributes the alleged quote to a Fox News appearance that same day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bachmann, a former presidential candidate, has supported making English the official language of the U.S., but we found no evidence that she uttered the &amp;quot;good enough for Jesus&amp;quot; line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wall Street Journal language columnist Benjamin Zimmer investigated the &amp;quot;Bible in English&amp;quot; meme, and noted &lt;a href=&quot;http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/%7Emyl/languagelog/archives/003084.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the earliest references&lt;/a&gt; pertain to a joke about a 1881 translation of the bible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Preaching on the Bible; Pulpit Opinions of the New Version.&amp;quot; New York Times, May 23, 1881, p. 8 The Rev. Dr. Pentecost ... illustrated the tenacity with which people cling to the old Bible by telling a story about an agent of a Bible society who was trying to collect money in a country church for a new translation of the Bible. The agent asked an old farmer in the congregation to contribute. &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;What's the matter with the good old King James version&lt;/strong&gt;?&amp;quot; the farmer replied. &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;That was good enough for St. Paul, and it's good enough for me.&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New York Times, Jan 15, 1905 (Sunday Magazine), p. 8 Prof. Adolphe Cohn of Columbia University recently, in discussing the teaching of French and German in public schools, said that the attitude of a good many people on that subject was explained to him very aptly by a remark he had once overheard in a street car. Two elderly Irish women were talking about their children, when one remarked: &amp;quot;I won't let my child be taught Frinch.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Why not?&amp;quot; inquired the other. &amp;quot;Sure,&amp;quot; replied the first, &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;if English was good enough for St. Paul to write the Bible in it's good enough for me&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chronicle Telegram (Elyria, Ohio), April 27, 1927 An official of the Rockefeller Institute states that, among hundreds of letters of denunciation received by the institution during the past year, one was from a man in Arkansas who took the view that all this modern education is dangerous, and that the new-fangled practice of grounding preachers in Latin and Greek is especially pernicious. They ought to be taught English, he said, adding in conclusion: &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me.&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering the history and similar language of the other jokes and claims, that ridicule Christians, it is likely that Dr. Edwards made no such claim, or if he did it was in jest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-07T05:02:49.867" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20885" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20887" CreationDate="2014-06-07T16:08:16.290" Score="14" ViewCount="1348" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen number of articles telling about the fact that firstborns are more likely to have higher IQ than their sibilings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/science/22sibling.html?pagewanted=all&quot;&gt;Research Finds Firstborns Gain the Higher I.Q.&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/1651-study-older-siblings-higher-iqs.html&quot;&gt;Study: Older Siblings Have Higher IQs&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-463761/First-borns-really-a-higher-IQ.html&quot;&gt;First-borns 'really do have a a higher IQ'&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17510" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-06-07T18:30:33.620" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T16:19:29.780" Title="Do firstborns have a higher IQ?" Tags="|neurology|intelligence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20885" CreationDate="2014-06-07T16:50:17.323" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Birth order does not influence IQ but social rank in the family does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Birth order is not associated with intelligence in between-family data once the number of siblings is statistically controlled. The analyses support the admixture hypothesis, which avers that the apparent birth-order effect on intelligence is an artifact of family size, and cast doubt on the confluence and resource dilution models, both of which claim that birth order has a causal influence on children's cognitive development. &lt;strong&gt;The analyses suggest that birth order has no genuine causal effect on general intelligence.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that although low-IQ parents have been making large families, large families do not make low-IQ children in modern U.S. society. &lt;strong&gt;The apparent relation between birth order and intelligence has been a methodological illusion.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One family of hypotheses suggests that the relation between birth order and intelligence is due to more-favorable family interaction and stimulation of low-birth-order children, whereas others claim that the effect is caused by prenatal gestational factors. We show that &lt;strong&gt;intelligence quotient (IQ) score levels&lt;/strong&gt; among nearly 250,000 military conscripts &lt;strong&gt;were dependent on social rank in the family and not on birth order&lt;/strong&gt; as such, providing support for a family interaction explanation. &lt;sup&gt;[3]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kanazawa S. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22581677&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Intelligence, birth order, and family size.&lt;/a&gt; Pers Soc Psychol Bull 2012 Sep;38(9):1157-64. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167212445911&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1177/0146167212445911&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 22581677.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rodgers JL, Cleveland HH, van den Oord E, Rowe DC. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10892201&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Resolving the debate over birth order, family size, and intelligence.&lt;/a&gt; Am Psychol 2000 Jun;55(6):599-612. PubMed PMID: 10892201.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kristensen P, Bjerkedal T. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17588924&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Explaining the relation between birth order and intelligence.&lt;/a&gt; Science 2007 Jun;316(5832):1717. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1141493&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1126/science.1141493&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 17588924.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T16:19:29.780" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20888" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20892" CreationDate="2014-06-07T23:38:52.107" Score="4" ViewCount="1027" Body="&lt;p&gt;Studies that claims &amp;quot;learning by teaching&amp;quot; has a 90% retention rate cites a study published by  &amp;quot;National Training Laboratories, Behel, Maine&amp;quot;. However, that study is not available anywhere to confirm if the methodology applied is reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of the claim from &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://repository.abertay.ac.uk/jspui/bitstream/10373/1330/1/TLAD2008_Ball_Leimich.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Contemporary database topics: learning by teaching&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Learning Pyramid shown in Fig.1b underpins this approach; it shows the effectiveness in promoting student retention of the material taught for a range of learning activities. Teaching others is shown to have the highest retention rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fai3R.png&quot; alt=&quot;Image of Learning Pyramid&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3518" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T05:22:16.587" Title="Does &quot;learning by teaching&quot; have a 90% retention rate?" Tags="|education|learning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20889" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="20890" CreationDate="2014-06-08T00:45:15.207" Score="16" ViewCount="2070" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.recapo.com/dr-oz/dr-oz-advice/dr-oz-dr-sanjay-gupta-iraq-drill-bit-surgery-monday-mornings-review/&quot;&gt;this recap&lt;/a&gt; of an interview of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanjay_Gupta&quot;&gt;Dr Sanjay Gupta&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doctoroz.com/&quot;&gt;Dr Oz Show&lt;/a&gt;, there was an incident while he was acting as a journalist in a war zone in Iraq:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While in Iraq, he encountered a soldier with a critical head wound. He&#xA;  switched roles from reporter to surgeon to offer his expertise, but&#xA;  the field was not prepared for such intensive surgery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He improvised, using a Black and Decker drill bit to perform brain&#xA;  surgery on a soldier, who was then airlifted out of the danger zone&#xA;  for further treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that it is a Dr. Oz show, which makes me incredibly skeptical of anything he says, is there anything to substantiate this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11227" LastEditorUserId="11227" LastEditDate="2014-06-08T22:31:45.643" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T22:31:45.643" Title="Did doctor/journalist Sanjay Gupta perform brain surgery on a wounded soldier in the heat of war?" Tags="|war|surgery|mehmet-oz|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20889" CreationDate="2014-06-08T01:58:57.397" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1870277,00.html&quot;&gt;Time.com&lt;/a&gt;. They repeat a quote of his from a CNN article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a neurosurgeon, I was asked to step back from my journalist's role to look at his gunshot wound to the head. Shortly thereafter, I was removing a bullet from his brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4469.htm&quot;&gt;The Salt Lake Tribune&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I probably owe my life to Dr. Gupta.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(said by Jesus Vidana, who &quot;learned that the Navy's so-called Devil Docs had asked CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon, to operate when Vidana was airlifted to a field hospital in Iraq&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailynews.com/20090109/gupta-removed-bullet-from-sun-valley-marines-head&quot;&gt;Los Angeles Daily News&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gupta switched from reporter to doctor, grabbed a drill bit and went to work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T01:58:57.397" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20891" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6389" CreationDate="2014-06-08T03:58:18.660" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The jury is still out as to whether surgical checklists used in a first world environment makes substantial savings of life or reduces complications significantly.  The benefit seen in Gawande's trial [1] may have all come from the third world hospitals that were also included but as far as we know, the hospitals were not made public as to which were which. That condition may have been part of the reason why they chose to participate in the first place.  They included the hospitals from following locations:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;eight hospitals in eight cities (Toronto, Canada; New Delhi, India;&#xA;  Amman, Jordan; Auckland, New Zealand; Manila, Philippines; Ifakara,&#xA;  Tanzania; London, England; and Seattle, WA)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A large trial from Ontario, Canada was published in March 2014, and showed different results. [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During 3-month periods before and after adoption of a surgical safety&#xA;  checklist, a total of 101 hospitals performed 109,341 and 106,370&#xA;  procedures, respectively. The adjusted risk of death during a hospital&#xA;  stay or within 30 days after surgery was 0.71% (95% confidence&#xA;  interval [CI], 0.66 to 0.76) before implementation of a surgical&#xA;  checklist and 0.65% (95% CI, 0.60 to 0.70) afterward (odds ratio,&#xA;  0.91; 95% CI, 0.80 to 1.03; P=0.13). The adjusted risk of surgical complications was 3.86% (95% CI, 3.76 to 3.96) before implementation&#xA;  and 3.82% (95% CI, 3.71 to 3.92) afterward (odds ratio, 0.97; 95% CI,&#xA;  0.90 to 1.03; P=0.29).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and they concluded the changes were not significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Implementation of surgical safety checklists in Ontario, Canada, was&#xA;  not associated with significant reductions in operative mortality or&#xA;  complications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Atul Gawande blogged on the results of that trial [3] complaining that the participants lacked adequate training in the use of the checklists, and that there was no independent check on their compliance.  The authors deny that these were important aspects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, lacking any well controlled double blinded trials in checklists, Gawande has turned to simulation testing in a crisis situation, and here the results favoured checklists. [4]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A total of 17 operating-room teams participated in 106 simulated&#xA;  surgical-crisis scenarios. Failure to adhere to lifesaving processes&#xA;  of care was less common during simulations when checklists were&#xA;  available (6% of steps missed when checklists were available vs. 23%&#xA;  when they were unavailable, P&amp;lt;0.001). The results were similar in a&#xA;  multivariate model that accounted for clustering within teams, with&#xA;  adjustment for institution, scenario, and learning and fatigue effects&#xA;  (adjusted relative risk, 0.28; 95% confidence interval, 0.18 to 0.42;&#xA;  P&amp;lt;0.001). Every team performed better when the crisis checklists were&#xA;  available than when they were not. A total of 97% of the participants&#xA;  reported that if one of these crises occurred while they were&#xA;  undergoing an operation, they would want the checklist used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Haynes AB, Weiser TG, Berry WR, Lipsitz SR, Breizat AH, Dellinger EP, Herbosa T, Joseph S, Kibatala PL, Lapitan MC, Merry AF, Moorthy K, Reznick RK, Taylor B, Gawande AA. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19144931&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A surgical safety checklist to reduce morbidity and mortality in a global population.&lt;/a&gt; N. Engl. J. Med. 2009 Jan;360(5):491-9. doi: 10.1056/NEJMsa0810119. PubMed PMID: 19144931.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Urbach DR, Govindarajan A, Saskin R, Wilton AS, Baxter NN. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24620866+&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Introduction of surgical safety checklists in Ontario, Canada.&lt;/a&gt; N. Engl. J. Med. 2014 Mar;370(11):1029-38. doi: 10.1056/NEJMsa1308261. PubMed PMID: 24620866+.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/when-checklists-work-and-when-they-dont/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/when-checklists-work-and-when-they-dont/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[4] Arriaga AF, Bader AM, Wong JM, Lipsitz SR, Berry WR, Ziewacz JE, Hepner DL, Boorman DJ, Pozner CN, Smink DS, Gawande AA. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23323901&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Simulation-based trial of surgical-crisis checklists.&lt;/a&gt; N. Engl. J. Med. 2013 Jan;368(3):246-53. doi: 10.1056/NEJMsa1204720. PubMed PMID: 23323901.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T03:58:18.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20888" CreationDate="2014-06-08T05:22:16.587" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to this question is going to depend on definitions - what is an &quot;Average Retention Rate&quot;? Based on how much teaching? etc. To understand the claim, we need to go back to the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the source research behind this diagram has been lost in the past fifty years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eprints.nuim.ie/1933/1/magennis.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TEACHING AND LEARNING ACTIVITIES: EXPANDING THE REPERTOIRE TO SUPPORT STUDENT&#xA;LEARNING&lt;/a&gt;, &#xA;Saranne Magennis and Alison Farrell&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The research base for the pyramid is difficult to establish conclusively. It was developed and used by the National Teaching Laboratory Institute at their Bethel, Maine campus in the early nineteen sixties, when that organization was part of the National Education Association's Adult Educations Division. NTL believes it to be accurate but says that it can no longer trace the original research that supports the numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The passage goes on to explain why, despite the discomfort in using data from a &quot;tenuous research base&quot; , they justify it to themselves as being appropriate for &quot;a stimulus for reflection only&quot;. As a skeptic, you may take a differing opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T05:22:16.587" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20893" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-08T05:28:45.087" Score="8" ViewCount="1139" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan were overflowed by a tsunami following the Tohaku earthquake of 2011. Consequently, a power outage at the station disabled the cooling system, which lead to core melts in three reactors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reactors type BWR/3 were equipped with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolation_Condensor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Isolation Condensors&lt;/a&gt;, a system that should cool the hot cores without any need for power. According to documentation, such a system could cool a reactor for days and such avoid core melt. This does not appear to have worked in the end. What was the problem?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(edited:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did human error contribute to the Condensors not working?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But seven minutes later, the operator decided to turn off Isolation&#xA;  Condenser system A by closing valve 3A for three reasons, TEPCO said:&#xA;  1. steam evaporation had ceased, suggesting that valves 1A and 4A had shut because of the isolation signal; 2. there might not be sufficient&#xA;  water in the IC tank to run the system; 3. IC was not working, and&#xA;  there was no water injection line set up to supply coolant to the IC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsunit-1-isolation-condensers-stopped-working-after-tsunami&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Edited again:)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why did the workers not turn on the IC's manually (by handwheels)? Is there any reason to believe they would not have prevented the damage from happening?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19661" LastEditorUserId="19661" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T14:44:52.897" LastActivityDate="2019-05-01T00:44:48.137" Title="Did the isolation condensors fail at Fukushima Daiichi? Was human error involved?" Tags="|physics|nuclear-energy|fukushima-daiichi|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20894" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20893" CreationDate="2014-06-08T09:23:20.483" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, they failed because they were turned off by operators according to the protocols for such situations and couldn't be turned on again due to the unanticipated lack of power. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The isolation condenser, which relied on convection and gravity to perform its cooling function, should have helped keep the water level high in unit 1's core through the crisis. But operators had turned off the system just before the tsunami by closing its valves—and there was no electric power to reopen them and let steam and water flow. Workers struggled to manually open the valves on the IC system, but experts believe the IC provided no help after the tsunami struck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shutting off the IC was a by-the-book decision:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The IC was cooling the core too quickly, which could stress the steel walls of the pressure vessel. So they shut the system down. It was a by-the-book decision, but the book wasn't written for the extraordinary events of 11 March.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Turning on the IC by opening its valves later was impossible due to the lack of power. It took them almost 5 hours to power the instrument panels again and make an idea about the situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At around 9 p.m., operators finally plugged the car batteries they'd collected into the instrument panels and got a vital piece of information—the water level in reactor 1. The information seemed reassuring. The gauge registered a water level of 550 millimeters above the top of the fuel assembly, which, while far below normal safety standards, was enough to assure the operators that no fuel had melted yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But instruments displayed wrong information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But TEPCO's later analysis found that the gauges were wrong. Months later, calculations would show that the superheated water inside the reactor 1 pressure vessel had dropped all the way below the bottom of the uranium fuel rods shortly before operators checked the gauge, leaving the reactor core completely uncovered. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Eliza Strickland. &lt;a href=&quot;http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/24-hours-at-fukushima&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;24 Hours at Fukushima - A blow-by-blow account of the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. IEEE Spectrum. 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T19:32:15.347" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T19:32:15.347" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="20895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17014" CreationDate="2014-06-08T13:10:18.183" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a pure physical perspective, it's plausible. There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4253849.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;at least&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4253849.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;two cases&lt;/a&gt; of women removing human testicles just by grabbing them and pulling and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2210756/Woman-bit-boyfriends-testicles-court-breaching-order-got-together.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;at least one case of the woman using her teeth to do so&lt;/a&gt;. Human biting forces are &lt;a href=&quot;http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/277/1700/3579.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;up around 1300 N&lt;/a&gt; for the molars and 500 for the canines. I have yet to find a study chronicling the tensile strength of reindeer testicles compared to human testicles, but it's probably similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastActivityDate="2014-06-08T13:10:18.183" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21898" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20870" CreationDate="2014-06-09T10:28:09.477" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is a difference [1], and the longer the cattle are finished with grain, the greater the differences appears to be [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Grass-based diets have been shown to enhance total conjugated linoleic&#xA;  acid (CLA) (C18:2) isomers, trans vaccenic acid (TVA) (C18:1 t11), a&#xA;  precursor to CLA, and omega-3 (n-3) FAs on a g/g fat basis. While the&#xA;  overall concentration of total SFAs is not different between feeding&#xA;  regimens, grass-finished beef tends toward a higher proportion of&#xA;  cholesterol neutral stearic FA (C18:0), and less cholesterol-elevating&#xA;  SFAs such as myristic (C14:0) and palmitic (C16:0) FAs. Several&#xA;  studies suggest that grass-based diets elevate precursors for Vitamin&#xA;  A and E, as well as cancer fighting antioxidants such as glutathione&#xA;  (GT) and superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity as compared to grain-fed&#xA;  contemporaries. Fat conscious consumers will also prefer the overall&#xA;  lower fat content of a grass-fed beef product. [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the amount of meat that one might ordinarily consume and with the normal food preparation of removing visible fat, the effect on your health may not be that much different.  I don't think the hypothesis that grass fed is better (or less bad) for cardiovascular health has been tested in prospective trials yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Daley CA, Abbott A, Doyle PS, Nader GA, Larson S. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20219103&quot;&gt;A review of fatty acid profiles and antioxidant content in grass-fed and grain-fed beef.&lt;/a&gt; Nutr J 2010 Mar 10;9:10. doi: 10.1186/1475-2891-9-10. PubMed PMID: 20219103.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Ponnampalam EN, Mann NJ, Sinclair AJ. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16500874&quot;&gt;Effect of feeding systems on omega-3 fatty acids, conjugated linoleic acid and trans fatty acids in Australian beef cuts: potential impact on human health.&lt;/a&gt; Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2006;15(1):21-9. PubMed PMID: 16500874.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T10:28:09.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21899" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-09T12:39:50.673" Score="4" ViewCount="444" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://elitedaily.com/envision/cars/forget-biker-gangs-actual-lamborghini-gangs-japan-video/621742/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elite Daily&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are all types of gangs in the world: biker gangs, street gangs;&#xA;  you name it. But what if we told you that there’s a Lamborghini gang&#xA;  in Japan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No, seriously, there is! In a recent video uploaded to YouTube by&#xA;  Maiham-Media, a new short documentary was featured called “Underground&#xA;  Hero: Love To Hate Me.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the documentary, we’re introduced to a Japanese man named&#xA;  Morohoshi-san, who is the leader of this gang, where he and all of his&#xA;  members commit deadly crimes and drive around in souped up&#xA;  Lamborghinis. It’s pretty crazy stuff and there’s a high chance that you’ve never seen anything like this before!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short documentary can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRIsHRHNU5k#t=259&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;viewed here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15834" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T13:39:57.497" Title="Are there criminal Lamborghini gangs in Japan?" Tags="|japan|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20632" CreationDate="2014-06-09T14:52:16.297" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't. It may improve a bit movement range and reduces stiffness and pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When it comes to rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, gout and infectious arthritis there's nothing that passive movement can do due to the etiology of these conditions. Autoimmune arthritis (rheumatoid and lupic) requires immunosupressive therapy. Gout requires lowering uric acid blood levels. Infectious arthritis requires antibiotherapy &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Damage from mechanical stress with insufficient self repair by joints is believed to be the primary cause of osteoarthritis. Sources of this stress may include: misalignments of bones caused by congenital or pathogenic causes; mechanical injury; excess body weight; loss of strength in the muscles supporting a joint; and impairment of peripheral nerves, leading to sudden or uncoordinated movements. However exercise, including running in the absence of injury, has not been found to increase the risk &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cartilage has limited repair capabilities: Because chondrocytes are bound in lacunae, they cannot migrate to damaged areas. Therefore cartilage damage is difficult to heal. Also, because hyaline cartilage does not have a blood supply, the deposition of new matrix is slow. Damaged hyaline cartilage is usually replaced by fibrocartilage scar tissue &lt;sup&gt;[3]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study made on rabbits in 1980 says that continuous passive movement helps:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At three weeks this assessment revealed that in the adolescent rabbits, healing of the defects by hyaline articular cartilage was present in 5 per cent of forty defects in ten animals whose knees were immobilized, in 9 per cent of forty defects in ten animals whose knees were permitted intermittent active motion, and in 52 per cent of forty defects in ten animals whose knees were managed immediately after operation by continuous passive motion &lt;sup&gt;[4]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, more recent studies  and reviews (although after surgery - when the etiological agent has been removed/suppressed, misalignments have been corrected) fail to confirm that on humans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is high-quality evidence that continuous passive motion increases passive knee flexion range of motion (mean difference 2 degrees, 95% CI 0 to 5) and active knee flexion range of motion (mean difference 3 degrees, 95% CI 0 to 6). &lt;strong&gt;These effects are too small to be clinically worthwhile.&lt;/strong&gt; There is low-quality evidence that continuous passive motion has no effect on length of hospital stay (mean difference -0.3 days; 95% CI -0.9 to 0.2) but reduces the need for manipulation under anaesthesia (relative risk 0.15; 95% CI 0.03 to 0.70) &lt;sup&gt;[5]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Continuous passive motion is commonly used postoperatively following cartilage surgery. Unfortunately, the clinical evidence (only 4 studies) to support the use of continuous passive motion is lacking despite an overwhelming abundance of basic science support and the common clinical practice of continuous passive motion implementation postoperatively in knee cartilage restoration procedures. There is a great need for well-conducted, high-level evidence studies to address this void in our literature &lt;sup&gt;[6]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lack of consistent standardized reporting of postoperative CPM protocols provides an impetus to researchers and clinicians to more clearly define and describe their use following knee articular surgery &lt;sup&gt;[7]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia contributors, &amp;quot;Arthritis,&amp;quot; Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arthritis&amp;amp;oldid=615702031&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Arthritis&amp;amp;oldid=615702031&lt;/a&gt; (accessed July 9, 2014).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia contributors, &amp;quot;Osteoarthritis,&amp;quot; Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Osteoarthritis&amp;amp;oldid=615716855&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Osteoarthritis&amp;amp;oldid=615716855&lt;/a&gt; (accessed July 9, 2014).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia contributors, &amp;quot;Cartilage,&amp;quot; Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cartilage&amp;amp;oldid=614202865&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cartilage&amp;amp;oldid=614202865&lt;/a&gt; (accessed July 9, 2014).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Salter RB, Simmonds DF, Malcolm BW, Rumble EJ, MacMichael D, Clements ND. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7440603&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The biological effect of continuous passive motion on the healing of full-thickness defects in articular cartilage. An experimental investigation in the rabbit.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; J Bone Joint Surg Am. 1980 Dec;62(8):1232-51.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Harvey LA, Brosseau L, Herbert RD. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20238330&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Continuous passive motion following total knee arthroplasty in people with arthritis.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2010 Mar 17;(3):CD004260. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD004260.pub2.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fazalare JA, Griesser MJ, Siston RA, Flanigan DC. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21162503&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The use of continuous passive motion following knee cartilage defect surgery: a systematic review.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; Orthopedics. 2010 Dec 1;33(12):878. doi: 10.3928/01477447-20101021-16.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Karnes JM, Harris JD, Griesser MJ, Flanigan DC. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24231597&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Continuous passive motion following cartilage surgery: does a common protocol exist?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Phys Sportsmed. 2013 Nov;41(4):53-63. doi: 10.3810/psm.2013.11.2036.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T20:12:52.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20554" CreationDate="2014-06-09T16:26:56.950" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is effective and safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both preclinical and clinical studies have established the safety and efficacy of cryolipolysis for noninvasive body contouring &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cryolipolysis has demonstrated efficacy in both human and animal studies. Histology findings also confirm the selective reduction of fat in both humans and animals, with evidence of a gradual thinning of the fat layer over a period of two to four months. Importantly, cryolipolysis has not produced any significant adverse side effects in studies to date and any noted effects have been minor and temporary &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Erythema of the skin, bruising, and temporary numbness at the treatment site are commonly observed following treatment with the device, though these effects largely resolve in approximately 1 week. To date, there have been no reports of scarring, ulceration, or alterations in blood lipid or liver function profiles &lt;sup&gt;[3]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the mechanism of action for cryolipolysis is not yet completely understood, the efficacy and safety of this non-invasive procedure for fat layer reduction has been demonstrated in the studies available to data. Further studies willl assist in identifying the mechanism and elucidate the full potential of this technology to perform safe, non-invasive fat reduction for areas of local fat accumulation &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jalian HR, Avram MM. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24049927&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cryolipolysis: a historical perspective and current clinical practice.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Semin Cutan Med Surg. 2013 Mar;32(1):31-4.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avram MM, Harry RS. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20014262&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cryolipolysis for subcutaneous fat layer reduction.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Lasers Surg Med. 2009 Dec;41(10):703-8. doi: 10.1002/lsm.20864.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nelson AA, Wasserman D, Avram MM. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20123423&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cryolipolysis for reduction of excess adipose tissue.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Semin Cutan Med Surg. 2009 Dec;28(4):244-9. doi: 10.1016/j.sder.2009.11.004.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T16:26:56.950" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21903" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-09T19:22:55.377" Score="3" ViewCount="234" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/09/evolutionary_logic_about_funct024931.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, the &quot;evolutionists&quot; believe the appendix to have evolved twice, independently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Incidentally, the appendix seems to pose other challenges for evolutionary arguments. As it is found in both marsupial and placental mammals, evolutionists are forced to believe that the same appendix evolved twice, independently, in a striking case of organ-level convergent evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an actual claim of &quot;evolutionists&quot;, or do they have some other explanation for the dual appendices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T21:40:46.497" Title="Did the appendix evolve independently in marsupial and placental mammals?" Tags="|evolution|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21903" CreationDate="2014-06-09T21:40:46.497" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know who the &quot;evolutionists&quot; are, so it's hard to address whether or not they are forced to believe what the quote says they are forced to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1420-9101.2009.01809.x/abstract;jsessionid=41A076BC2E4791EBB0A6F9A34A0E38B7.f01t04&quot;&gt;Comparative anatomy and phylogenetic distribution of the mammalian cecal appendix&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cladistic analyses indicate that the appendix has evolved independently at least twice (at least once in diprotodont marsupials and at least once in Euarchontoglires).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding whether it is the &quot;same&quot; appendix, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1631068312001960&quot;&gt;this review article, (&lt;em&gt;Multiple independent appearances of the cecal appendix in mammalian evolution and an investigation of related ecological and anatomical factors&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/a&gt; describes the wide variety of appendix shape and size relative to the rest of the intestine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is too strong to call it the &quot;same&quot; appendix given the wide variance in shape and size, and its independent evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2014-06-09T21:40:46.497" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21905" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22045" CreationDate="2014-06-09T22:34:02.690" Score="10" ViewCount="1089" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a critique (or possibly a rant) against modern climate science, Swiss geologist  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geo.unibe.ch/schluechter/schluechter.php?PID=72830769&quot;&gt;Christian Schlüchter&lt;/a&gt; makes a very specific claim that Alpine glaciers were essentially non-existent (or very much smaller than they are today) in Roman times. From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://notrickszone.com/2014/06/09/giant-of-geologyglaciology-christian-schluechter-refutes-co2-feature-interview-throws-climate-science-into-disarray/&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; translating his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.derbund.ch/wissen/natur/Unsere-Gesellschaft-ist-grundsaetzlich-unehrlich/story/24948853&quot;&gt;original interview&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the glaciers during the Roman times were at least 300 to 500 meters higher than today. “The mean temperature was one and half degree Celsius above that of 2005. The current development is nothing new in terms of the earth’s history.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Early in the interview Schlüchter reminds us that during Roman times in the Alps “the forest line was much higher than it is today; there were hardly any glaciers. Nowhere in the detailed travel accounts from Roman times are glaciers mentioned.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of contentious criticisms of climate science and some highly debatable claims about causality (is it all about the sun?). And I can't think of an easy way to verify Roman temperatures that wouldn't be controversial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the claim that Alpine glaciers were much smaller is surely a matter of history and should be verifiable from historical sources. So, is his claim that they were much smaller in Roman times correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T18:50:33.363" Title="Were Alpine glaciers much smaller in Roman times?" Tags="|history|climate-change|ancient-rome|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21907" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21914" CreationDate="2014-06-10T02:14:24.627" Score="23" ViewCount="10732" Body="&lt;p&gt;This image has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/05/1207011/-Common-Sense&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;made the rounds&lt;/a&gt; in various discussions of gun control in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mq6Tm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sign purportedly in Dodge City, Kansas, circa 1878, saying &amp;quot;The carrying of firearms strictly prohibited&amp;quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The picture was purportedly taken in Dodge City, Kansas (Popular culture's quintessential Wild West town, populated by figures such as Wyatt Earp and the setting of fiction such as Gunsmoke), in 1878.  Is this image genuine and firearms were prohibited in Dodge City?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastEditorUserId="13967" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T02:40:24.963" LastActivityDate="2020-03-20T02:58:27.277" Title="Were firearms prohibited in Dodge City, Kansas in the 1870s?" Tags="|history|united-states|guns|photography|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21911" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21913" CreationDate="2014-06-10T12:09:19.727" Score="103" ViewCount="13219" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this 4th grader's creationist quiz real or a hoax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5d7Mol.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Quiz, answers are 1) false; 2) false; 3) 6th; 4) true; 5) plants; 6) dinosaur image; 7) false&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100 A+&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Date: 3/28/13&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;4th grade Science Quiz: &lt;br&gt;Dinosaurs: Genesis and the Gospel&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;True or &lt;strong&gt;False&lt;/strong&gt;: The earth is billions of years old.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;True or &lt;strong&gt;False&lt;/strong&gt;: Dinosaurs lived millions of years ago.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On what day did God make dinosaurs? &lt;strong&gt;6th&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;True&lt;/strong&gt; or False: Dinosaurs lived with people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What did people and animals eat in the beginning? &lt;strong&gt;plants&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Which one fits the Behemoth described in Job 40? (Circle the picture)&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;[elephant image] [rhino image] [&lt;strong&gt;dinosaur image&lt;/strong&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;True or &lt;strong&gt;False&lt;/strong&gt;: If an animal has sharp teeth, it must mean it is a meat-eater.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4970" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-04-29T00:13:36.097" LastActivityDate="2021-04-30T22:43:03.920" Title="Was this 4th grader's creationist quiz on &quot;Dinosaurs: Genesis and the Gospel&quot; real?" Tags="|young-earth-creationism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21911" CreationDate="2014-06-10T12:56:09.040" Score="110" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/photos/signs/sciencetest.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; and the school is supposedly &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130828115628/http://www.brca.us/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blue Ridge Christian Academy&lt;/a&gt; in Landrum, South Carolina. There's also a second page linked on the site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Eqx50l.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;second page of creationist &amp;quot;science&amp;quot; quiz&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/graphics/quiz2.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is also confirmed by &lt;a href=&quot;https://answersingenesis.org/world-religions/atheism/intolerant-atheists-viciously-attack-christian-school/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Answers in Genesis&lt;/a&gt;, a noted anti-science, pro-creationist website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, we bring your attention to another attack on Christian education. A Christian K–12 school in South Carolina, with dedicated and highly qualified Christian teachers, has come under vicious attack by atheists. Why? Because one of its instructors, a fourth-grade teacher, tested her children about biblical creation, science, and dinosaurs (using AiG resources), and she has become (in)famous on many atheist websites and blogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, it seems that all parties agree on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="43957" LastEditDate="2021-04-30T22:43:03.920" LastActivityDate="2021-04-30T22:43:03.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21907" CreationDate="2014-06-10T13:35:27.573" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, the photograph is real and comes from Adam Wrinkler's book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0393077411&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America&lt;/a&gt;&quot; which he mentioned in an article on Huffington Post &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-winkler/did-the-wild-west-have-mo_b_956035.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on the topic of gun control in the Wild West&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Guns were obviously widespread on the frontier. Out in the untamed&#xA;  wilderness, you needed a gun to be safe from bandits, natives, and&#xA;  wildlife. In the cities and towns of the West, however, the law often&#xA;  prohibited people from toting their guns around. A visitor arriving in&#xA;  Wichita, Kansas in 1873, the heart of the Wild West era, would have&#xA;  seen signs declaring, &quot;Leave Your Revolvers At Police Headquarters,&#xA;  and Get a Check.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A check? That's right. When you entered a frontier town, you were&#xA;  legally required to leave your guns at the stables on the outskirts of&#xA;  town or drop them off with the sheriff, who would give you a token in&#xA;  exchange. You checked your guns then like you'd check your overcoat&#xA;  today at a Boston restaurant in winter. Visitors were welcome, but&#xA;  their guns were not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my new book, Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in&#xA;  America, there's a photograph taken in Dodge City in 1879. Everything&#xA;  looks exactly as you'd imagine: wide, dusty road; clapboard and brick&#xA;  buildings; horse ties in front of the saloon. Yet right in the middle&#xA;  of the street is something you'd never expect. There's a huge wooden&#xA;  billboard announcing, &quot;The Carrying of Firearms Strictly Prohibited.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While people were allowed to have guns at home for self-protection,&#xA;  frontier towns usually barred anyone but law enforcement from carrying&#xA;  guns in public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When Dodge City residents organized their municipal government, do you&#xA;  know what the very first law they passed was? A gun control law. They&#xA;  declared that &quot;any person or persons found carrying concealed weapons&#xA;  in the city of Dodge or violating the laws of the State shall be dealt&#xA;  with according to law.&quot; Many frontier towns, including Tombstone,&#xA;  Arizona--the site of the infamous &quot;Shootout at the OK Corral&quot;--also&#xA;  barred the carrying of guns openly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other cities had similarly restrictive gun laws and &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jan/23/nation/la-na-tombstone-20110123&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fines were issued for breaching them&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And one fact is usually ignored: Back then, Tombstone had far&#xA;  stricter gun control than it does today. In fact, the American West's&#xA;  most infamous gun battle erupted when the marshal tried to enforce a&#xA;  local ordinance that barred carrying firearms in public. A judge had&#xA;  fined one of the victims $25 earlier that day for packing a pistol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You could wear your gun into town, but you had to check it at the&#xA;  sheriff's office or the Grand Hotel, and you couldn't pick it up again&#xA;  until you were leaving town,&quot; said Bob Boze Bell, executive editor of&#xA;  True West Magazine, which celebrates the Old West. &quot;It was an effort&#xA;  to control the violence.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that firearms had to be checked explains why &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/dodge.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;contemporary accounts&lt;/a&gt; would make reference to secreting their firearms at times,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There were no dissenters to the program. I saw at a glance that my&#xA;  Bunkie was heart and soul in the play, and took my cue and kept my&#xA;  mouth shut. We circled round the town to a vacant lot within a block&#xA;  of the rear of the dance hall. Honeyman was left to hold the horses;&#xA;  then, taking off our belts and hanging them on the pommels of our&#xA;  saddles, we secreted our six-shooters inside the waistbands of our&#xA;  trousers. The hall was still crowded with the revelers when we&#xA;  entered, a few at a time, Forrest and Priest being the last to arrive.&#xA;  Forrest had changed hats with The Rebel, who always wore a black one,&#xA;  and as the bouncer circulated around, Quince stopped squarely in front&#xA;  of him. There was no waste of words, but a gun-barrel flashed in the&#xA;  lamplight, and the bouncer, struck with the six-shooter, fell like a&#xA;  beef. Before the bewildered spectators could raise a hand, five&#xA;  six-shooters were turned into the ceiling. The lights went out at the&#xA;  first fire, and amidst the rush of men and the screaming of women, we&#xA;  reached the outside, and within a minute were in our saddles. All&#xA;  would have gone well had we returned by the same route and avoided the&#xA;  town; but after crossing the railroad track, anger and pride having&#xA;  not been properly satisfied, we must ride through the town.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, the gun check laws are the reason why we have such artifacts as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyatt_Earp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wyatt Earp&lt;/a&gt;'s gun:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ej87j.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Wyatt Earp&amp;#39;s pistol at the Red Dog Saloon&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wyatt_Earp_gun_Red_Dog_Juneau.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wyatt Earp's pistol at the Red Dog Saloon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T13:35:27.573" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21916" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20209" CreationDate="2014-06-10T14:55:42.567" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it doesn't. Negative effects were seen only on animal models when administered mostly systemically but also orally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Systemically administered carrageenan has been reported to have a variety of effects, particularly on the immune system, but these are not pertinent to orally administered carrageenan. The lack of carcinogenic, genotoxic, or tumor-promoting activity with carrageenan strongly supports continuing such an ADI (allowable daily intake), and JECFA (Joint Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization Expert Committee on Food Additives), during its most recent review in 2001, continued this recommendation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Cohen SM, Ito N. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12389870&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;A critical review of the toxicological effects of carrageenan and processed eucheuma seaweed on the gastrointestinal tract.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Crit Rev Toxicol. 2002 Sep;32(5):413-44.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authorities worldwide have extensively reviewed carrageenan safety. Contrary to&#xA;  Tobacman’s conclusion (1), all of these authorities agree that carrageenan may be&#xA;  used safely in food. As recently as June 2001, the Joint FAO/WHO Expert&#xA;  Committee on Food Additives (JECFA; an independent international panel of expert&#xA;  scientists and government authorities) concluded a multiple year review of all of the&#xA;  relevant safety data on carrageenan (2). This included a specific analysis of the potential&#xA;  for promotion of colon cancer by carrageenan. The JECFA affirmed their earlier&#xA;  conclusion on the safety of carrageenan [e.g., (3)]—that it may be used safely in the&#xA;  diet at amounts only limited by the amount necessary to achieve its technical function.&#xA;  Overall, the carrageenan sold as a food, drug, and cosmetic additive has been tested&#xA;  extensively, and regulatory authorities worldwide have uniformly found carrageenan to be essentially nontoxic and agreed that it may be used safely in food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; P P Kirsch. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1240893/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Carrageenan: a safe additive.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Environ Health Perspect. Jun 2002; 110(6): A288.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Tobacman's conclusion&quot; is based on animal models and there is no evidence to support this in humans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because of the acknowledged carcinogenic properties of degraded carrageenan in animal models and the cancer-promoting effects of undegraded carrageenan in experimental models, the widespread use of carrageenan in the Western diet should be reconsidered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Tobacman JK. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1242073/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Review of harmful gastrointestinal effects of carrageenan in animal experiments.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; Environ Health Perspect. 2001 Oct;109(10):983-94.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has also been issued a hypothesis that carrageenan can inhibit papillomavirus infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Carrageenan is in widespread commercial use as a thickener in a variety of cosmetic and food products, ranging from sexual lubricants to infant feeding formulas. Some of these products block HPV infectivity in vitro, even when diluted a million-fold. Clinical trials are needed to determine whether carrageenan-based products are effective as topical microbicides against genital HPVs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Buck CB, Thompson CD, Roberts JN, Müller M, Lowy DR, Schiller JT. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16839203&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Carrageenan is a potent inhibitor of papillomavirus infection.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; PLoS Pathog. 2006 Jul;2(7):e69.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T14:55:42.567" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19625" CreationDate="2014-06-10T15:56:14.837" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it does increase the risk for chronic diseases including cardiovascular diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Red meat consumption is associated with an increased risk of total, cardiovascular disease, and cancer mortality. Substitution of other healthy protein sources for red meat is associated with a lower mortality risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Pan A, Sun Q, Bernstein AM, Schulze MB, Manson JE, Stampfer MJ, Willett WC, Hu FB. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22412075&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Red meat consumption and mortality: results from 2 prospective cohort studies.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Arch Intern Med. 2012 Apr 9;172(7):555-63. doi: 10.1001/archinternmed.2011.2287. Epub 2012 Mar 12.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High consumption of red meat and processed meat has been associated with increased risk of several chronic diseases. ... In a dose-response meta-analysis, consumption of processed meat and total red meat, but not unprocessed red meat, was statistically significantly positively associated with all-cause mortality in a nonlinear fashion. These results indicate that high consumption of red meat, especially processed meat, may increase all-cause mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Larsson SC, Orsini N. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24148709&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Red meat and processed meat consumption and all-cause mortality: a meta-analysis.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Am J Epidemiol. 2014 Feb 1;179(3):282-9. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwt261. Epub 2013 Oct 22.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T19:51:38.143" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T19:51:38.143" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21918" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19600" CreationDate="2014-06-10T17:19:55.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It can't cure or diagnose diseases. However, it may relieve symptoms only in some situations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reflexology is an increasingly popular complementary therapy in which parts of the body are deemed to be represented on the soles of the feet. The aim of this study was to investigate whether this representation can be used as a valid method of diagnosis. ... Despite certain limitations to the data provided by this study, the results do not suggest that reflexology techniques are a valid method of diagnosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; White AR, Williamson J, Hart A, Ernst E. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11068346&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;A blinded investigation into the accuracy of reflexology charts.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Complement Ther Med. 2000 Sep;8(3):166-72.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no evidence for any specific effect of reflexology in any conditions, with the exception of urinary symptoms associated with multiple sclerosis. Routine provision of reflexology is therefore not recommended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Wang MY, Tsai PS, Lee PH, Chang WY, Yang CM. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18489444&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The efficacy of reflexology: systematic review.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; J Adv Nurs. 2008 Jun;62(5):512-20. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2648.2008.04606.x.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of foot reflexology on fatigue, sleep and pain. ... Foot reflexology had a larger effect on fatigue and sleep and a smaller effect on pain. ... This meta-analysis indicates that foot reflexology is a useful nursing intervention to relieve fatigue and to promote sleep. Further studies are needed to evaluate the effects of foot reflexology on outcome variables other than fatigue, sleep and pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Lee J, Han M, Chung Y, Kim J, Choi J. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22310867&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effects of foot reflexology on fatigue, sleep and pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; J Korean Acad Nurs. 2011 Dec;41(6):821-33. doi: 10.4040/jkan.2011.41.6.821.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-06-10T17:26:54.747" LastActivityDate="2014-06-10T17:26:54.747" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21919" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-10T18:23:42.747" Score="16" ViewCount="731" Body="&lt;p&gt;A famous &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daskeyboard.com/blog/keyboard-productivity-employees/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mechanical keyboard site&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many mechanical keyboard fans rave at the loud, clicky sound they produce when using one of these keyboards. As mentioned above, the mechanical switches that make this loud noise are what’s ensuring the computer registers every single keystroke, therefore improving typing accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few writers and programmers have tested their typing speed and accuracy with mechanical keyboards, and the results are impressive. One writer found that he was able to put in 91 words per minute at 100% accuracy, which meant he could type a whopping 900 additional words per hour with less errors. Imagine how much more your employees could accomplish with this ability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p3dvvl.png&quot; alt=&quot;Mechanical Keyboard&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daskeyboard.com/model-s-ultimate/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim this is based on a few &amp;quot;impressive&amp;quot; results and provide one anecdote. Are there any valid studies on the matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T15:59:45.213" Title="Do mechanical keyboards improve accuracy?" Tags="|advertising|programming|programming-productivity|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21922" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-10T23:25:32.717" Score="23" ViewCount="2139" Body="&lt;p&gt;The American newspaper the Washington Post's PostEverything Op-Ed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/06/10/the-best-way-to-end-violence-against-women-stop-taking-lovers-and-get-married/&quot;&gt;One way to end violence against women? Married dads.&lt;/a&gt; (previously &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/255190/wapo-editor-stop-taking-lovers-headline-distracted-people-from-taking-article-seriously/&quot;&gt;titled&lt;/a&gt; &quot;One way to end violence against women? Stop taking lovers and get married&quot;) claims that marriage plays a causative role in preventing violence against women, and their children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This social media outpouring makes it clear that some men pose a real&#xA;  threat to the physical and psychic welfare of women and girls. But&#xA;  obscured in the public conversation about the violence against women&#xA;  is the fact that some other men are more likely to protect women,&#xA;  directly and indirectly, from the threat of male violence: married&#xA;  biological fathers. The bottom line is this: Married women are notably&#xA;  safer than their unmarried peers, and girls raised in a home with&#xA;  their married father are markedly less likely to be abused or&#xA;  assaulted than children living without their own father.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This includes domestic violence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Women are also safer in married homes. As the figure above (derived&#xA;  from a recent Department of Justice study) indicates, married women&#xA;  are the least likely to be victimized by an intimate partner. They are&#xA;  also less likely to be the victims of violent crime in general.&#xA;  Overall, another U.S. Department of Justice study found that&#xA;  never-married women are nearly four times more likely to be victims of&#xA;  violent crime, compared to married women. The bottom line is that&#xA;  married women are less likely to be raped, assaulted, or robbed than&#xA;  their unmarried peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does getting married play a causative role (and not just a correlation) against violence against women and children?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to whether the op-ed is talking about mere correlation, or actual correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title implies causation. It has a question of &quot;One way to end violence against women?&quot;, and then the answer &quot;Married dads.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blurb underneath talks about causation, not correlation: &quot;The data show that #yesallwomen would be safer with fewer boyfriends around their kids.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And from the body itself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;some other men are more likely to &lt;strong&gt;protect&lt;/strong&gt; women, directly and indirectly, from the threat of male violence: married biological fathers&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;But marriage also seems to &lt;strong&gt;cause&lt;/strong&gt; men to behave better.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the research tells us that marriage &lt;strong&gt;provides&lt;/strong&gt; a measure of stability and commitment to the adults’ relationship&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;So, women: if you’re the product of a good marriage, and feel safer as a &lt;strong&gt;consequence&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fairness to the article, there is some mention of factors that cause marriage causing a reduction of violence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For women, part of the story is about what social scientists call a&#xA;  “selection effect,” namely, women in healthy, safe relationships are&#xA;  more likely to select into marriage, and women in unhealthy, unsafe&#xA;  relationships often lack the power to demand marriage or the desire to&#xA;  marry. Of course, women in high conflict marriages are more likely to&#xA;  select into divorce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, just because it mentions correlation in some parts doesn't mean that it isn't implying causation in the rest of the Op-Ed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, would it make sense to write an entire Op-Ed that is purely about a non-causative correlation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T12:31:48.747" LastActivityDate="2017-10-02T11:06:24.327" Title="Does getting married prevent violence against women and children?" Tags="|united-states|sexual-abuse|violence|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21923" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21924" CreationDate="2014-06-11T00:02:23.000" Score="24" ViewCount="4060" Body="&lt;p&gt;While watching &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM5ZdO-IgEE&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;, it makes the claim at about the 12 minute mark that US crime rates are lower across the board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It then shows a graph that lists various violent crimes with numbers in columns for 1992 and 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It lists:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;US Crime Rates:            1992 vs. 2011&#xA;  Violent Crime:          757.7 vs. 386.3&#xA;  Murder Rate:              9.3 vs. 4.7&#xA;  Rape Rate:               42.8 vs. 26.8&#xA;  Robbery:                263.7 vs. 113.7&#xA;  Aggravated Assault:     441.9 vs. 241.1&#xA;  Property Crime:        4903.7 vs. 2809.7&#xA;  Burglary:              1168.4 vs. 702.2&#xA;  Larceny/Theft:         3103.6 vs. 1976.9&#xA;  Motor Vehicle Theft:    631.6 vs. 229.6&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jlAYp.png&quot; alt=&quot;Crime Rates Chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I'm a little annoyed that the chart doesn't show units (like incidents per thousand persons) and also fails to show a source. To make things worse, it does not define some of the more ambiguous &quot;crimes&quot; such as &quot;violent crime&quot; and &quot;property crime.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard elsewhere that many crimes were at all-time highs in the early and mid 1990's, but I am more concerned with these exact numbers. How close are they to reality? I understand that the answer will have to take some liberties on what the numbers actually mean (units) and might just have to do some (gulp) math. Sorry about that. I didn't make the claim; I'm just skeptical about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the easiest way to verify these numbers with reality would be ratios. For example, &quot;Violent crime&quot; is down 51% (386.6/757.7), according to the chart. Does this match with a respectable source?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T23:43:42.163" Title="Were US crime rates significantly lower in 2011 than in 1992?" Tags="|united-states|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21923" CreationDate="2014-06-11T00:28:27.010" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;These numbers look legitimate. They are given per 100,000 (which is a standard practice, and often assumed by default). Both 1992 and 2011 numbers exactly match &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/table-1&quot;&gt;FBI report&lt;/a&gt; (and apparently were taken from there), and I don't see any reason to doubt them. Here is a summary for 1992 &amp;amp; 2011 from the report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Table 1—Crime in the United States, by Volume and Rate per 100,000 Inhabitants, 1992–2011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Year                                                 1992         2011&#xA;Population....................................255,029,699  311,591,917&#xA;Violent crime...................................1,932,274    1,203,564&#xA;Violent crime rate..................................757.7        386.3&#xA;Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter...............23,760       14,612&#xA;Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter rate.............9.3          4.7&#xA;Forcible rape.....................................109,062       83,425&#xA;Forcible rape rate...................................42.8         26.8&#xA;Robbery...........................................672,478      354,396&#xA;Robbery rate........................................263.7        113.7&#xA;Aggravated assault..............................1,126,974      751,131&#xA;Aggravated assault rate.............................441.9        241.1&#xA;Property crime.................................12,505,917    9,063,173&#xA;Property crime rate...............................4,903.7      2,908.7&#xA;Burglary........................................2,979,884    2,188,005&#xA;Burglary rate.....................................1,168.4        702.2&#xA;Larceny-theft...................................7,915,199    6,159,795&#xA;Larceny-theft rate................................3,103.6      1,976.9&#xA;Motor vehicle theft.............................1,610,834      715,373&#xA;Motor vehicle theft rate............................631.6        229.6&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Populations are U.S. Census Bureau provisional estimates as of July 1 for each year&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the terms used in the claim are not speculative, they are used in legal sense and have strict definitions, which you can find on FBI site as well (i.e., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="14651" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T23:43:42.163" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T23:43:42.163" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20835" CreationDate="2014-06-11T05:21:51.050" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mythbusters conducted a similiar experiment. But they used an axe. The answer is yes. It is possible. At least with a particular type of axe and with the particular bullet and gun, and with the right distance. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_%282009_season%29#Davy_Crockett.27s_Magic_Bullet&quot;&gt;quoting Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After setting up a target and sticking an axe in it, the Build Team&#xA;  received training from an expert in antique American firearms and&#xA;  began shooting from 40 yards (37 m). Each member took three shots,&#xA;  moving up to 20 yards (18 m) after Tory went first. Although several&#xA;  bullets nicked the blade or handle, none split on it until Tory tried&#xA;  again with a stand at the shorter distance. With one bullet hole&#xA;  appearing on either side of the blade, the team declared the myth&#xA;  confirmed and decided that a person could consistently make the&#xA;  40-yard shot with enough practice. In addition the expert then&#xA;  proceeded to show the 40-yd.-shot standing, cleanly bursting two&#xA;  balloons located to the left and right of the axe blade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17948" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T05:21:51.050" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20523" CreationDate="2014-06-11T05:45:47.420" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Phytoestrogens have both anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidant abilities independent of their Estrogen Receptor (ER) binding actions.  The latter action brings them under the class of endrocrine disruptors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perhaps the most well characterized mode of phytoestrogen action is&#xA;  estrogen receptor (ER) binding. There are two major ER subtypes in&#xA;  mammals, ERα and ERβ (also referred to as ESR1 and ESR2,&#xA;  respectively). As such, phytoestrogens, particularly the isoflavones,&#xA;  fit the Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of an endocrine&#xA;  disruptor which characterizes these compounds as those which, “alter&#xA;  the structure or function(s) of the endocrine system and cause adverse&#xA;  effects.” This definition includes disruption of lactation, the timing&#xA;  of puberty, the ability to produce viable, fertile offspring, sex&#xA;  specific behavior, premature reproductive senescence and compromised&#xA;  fertility .... [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect on breast tissue is unclear.  Infants don't have breasts as such but [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hypothesis that exposure to soy phytoestrogens early in life can&#xA;  alter the timing and character of breast development is supported by a&#xA;  2008 cross-sectional study of 694 girls in Israel, which found&#xA;  increased prevalence of breast buds in 2-year old girls fed soy&#xA;  formula as infants&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is less clear in adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because they bind ERs with relatively high affinity, some researchers&#xA;  and clinicians are concerned that high phytoestrogen intake may&#xA;  increase the risk of carcinogenesis and put breast cancer survivors at&#xA;  risk for reoccurrence. Others have proposed that the opposite is true,&#xA;  citing traditionally low cancer rates in Asia as evidence [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect on breast cancer cells appears to be related to the dose as well as other things&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, in vitro, genistein can inhibit proliferation of&#xA;  ER-positive and ER-negative breast cancer cells at high doses (&gt;10 M),&#xA;  but, paradoxically, promote tumor growth at lower, more physiological&#xA;  doses [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is similar to Tamoxifen, a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERMs) used for breast cancer therapy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There are no studies looking at the effect on breast size in adults&lt;/strong&gt;, and the measurement itself is somewhat difficult to do reproducibly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Patisaul HB, Jefferson W. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20347861+&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The pros and cons of phytoestrogens.&lt;/a&gt; Front Neuroendocrinol 2010 Oct;31(4):400-19. doi: 10.1016/j.yfrne.2010.03.003. PubMed PMID: 20347861+.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Zung A, Glaser T, Kerem Z, Zadik Z. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18223379&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Breast development in the first 2 years of life: an association with soy-based infant formulas.&lt;/a&gt; J. Pediatr. Gastroenterol. Nutr. 2008 Feb;46(2):191-5. doi: 10.1097/MPG.0b013e318159e6ae. PubMed PMID: 18223379.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-11T06:15:05.750" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T06:15:05.750" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19744" CreationDate="2014-06-11T08:38:37.087" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Both diets promote kidney stones as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;acid diet: uric acid or cystine stones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;alkaline diet: calcium- and phosphate-containing stones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The formation of various types of kidney stones is strongly influenced by urinary pH. An alkaline pH favors the crystallization of calcium- and phosphate-containing stones, whereas and acidic urine pH promotes uric acid or cystine stones &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A low-carbohydrate high-protein diet with its increased acid load results in very little change in blood chemistry, and pH, but results in many changes in urinary chemistry. Urinary magnesium levels, urinary citrate and pH are decreased, urinary calcium, undissociated uric acid, and phosphate are increased. All of these result in an increased risk for kidney stones &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wagner CA, Mohebbi N. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21170875&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Urinary pH and stone formation.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; J Nephrol. 2010 Nov-Dec;23 Suppl 16:S165-9.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gerry K. Schwalfenberg. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3195546&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Alkaline Diet: Is There Evidence That an Alkaline pH Diet Benefits Health?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; J Environ Public Health. 2012; 2012: 727630. Published online Oct 12, 2011. doi:  10.1155/2012/727630. PMCID: PMC3195546&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T15:53:48.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21929" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20662" CreationDate="2014-06-11T10:19:23.903" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The link between glyphosate and chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology (CKDu) appears to be a medical hypothesis.  The underlying process is a tubulointerstitial nephritis, and as well as other groups, appears in otherwise young men. A review of this disease published in April 2014 and concluded: [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Associations were reported with agricultural work, agrochemical&#xA;  exposure, dehydration, hypertension, homemade alcohol use and family&#xA;  history of chronic kidney disease. There is no strong evidence for a&#xA;  single cause, and multiple environmental, occupational and social&#xA;  factors are probably involved. Further etiological research is needed,&#xA;  plus interventions to reduce preventable risk factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Almaguer M, Herrera R, Orantes CM. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24878644&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chronic kidney disease of unknown etiology in agricultural communities.&lt;/a&gt; MEDICC Rev. 2014 Apr;16(2):9-15. PubMed PMID: 24878644. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicc.org/mediccreview/index.php?issue=28&amp;amp;id=349&amp;amp;a=va&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Full text&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T10:19:23.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21930" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21931" CreationDate="2014-06-11T13:10:23.870" Score="3" ViewCount="443" Body="&lt;p&gt;We all know that the brain is in control of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;movement, information processing...etc&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Do people think from their heart or from their brain? To me I have always thought that it was the brain. But this seems to contradict the view of religions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he..&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ..that you may know the thoughts of your heart&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ..The thought of your heart may be forgiven you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quran:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unquestionably, they the disbelievers turn away their breasts to hide themselves from Him. Unquestionably, [even] when they cover themselves in their clothing, Allah knows what they conceal and what they declare. Indeed, He is Knowing of that within the breasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seemed to be a religious topic to me at first but I've seen few websites that claim experiments from everyday life that heart can think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.macquarieinstitute.com/company/proom/archive/head_heart_connect.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.macquarieinstitute.com/company/proom/archive/head_heart_connect.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://darrenlb.wordpress.com/2006/11/28/can-your-heart-think/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://darrenlb.wordpress.com/2006/11/28/can-your-heart-think/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are many other articles that talk about the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do people think from their heart or from their brain?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20707" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T13:59:51.197" Title="Do people think from their heart?" Tags="|religion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ClosedDate="2014-06-11T14:07:09.683" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21930" CreationDate="2014-06-11T13:59:51.197" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not true. The biological bases of thinking are located in the brain. Heart is just an automatic blood pump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The nature of thinking capabilities and the sequence in which they appear have been well established on two research fronts. The biological basis underlying their appearance is established by periodic increases in brain size, brain weight, cellular growth within the brain, electrical functioning with the brain, and head circumference. The psychological basis is established through evidence of the individual's increasing capacity to deal with independent ideas and to exhibit the same kinds of behaviors as other individuals within two- to three-year ranges and, with growth, the individual's ability to replace naive with more sophisticated views.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Lawrence F. Lowery. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lhsfoss.org/newsletters/archive/pdfs/FOSS_BBTL.pdf&quot;&gt;The Biological Basis of Thinking and Learning.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; 1998&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The heart is a hollow, muscular organ about the size of a fist. It is responsible for pumping blood through the blood vessels by repeated, rhythmic contractions. The heart is composed of cardiac muscle, an involuntary muscle tissue that is found only within this organ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: WikiBooks. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Human_Physiology/The_cardiovascular_system&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Human Physiology/The cardiovascular system&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can say that heart &quot;thinks&quot; for itself because its contractions are not dependent on the nervous system but are influenced by it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Automaticity is an intrinsic property of some types of cardiac tissues, like the nodes and the conducting fibers. Automatic cells are characterized by the appearance, during diastole, of a slow depolarization which is capable of reaching threshold and generate an action potential. This depolarization is the so-called slow diastolic depolarization, or pacemaker potential. Tissues with automaticity do not have the same intrinsic firing frequency, which determines the existence of a true pacemaker; normally this role is assumed by the sinus node and several latent, or subsidiary pacemakers. ... Some of the most important factors that modulate heart rate include the neurotransmitters of the automatic nervous system, the plasmatic levels of some ions, like potassium and calcium, and changes in the intrinsic properties of the membrane, like the influence of heart rate on the activity of the sodium pump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Valenzuela F, Kabela E. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6241465&quot;&gt;Automatism: an intrinsic property of cardiac tissues.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; Arch Inst Cardiol Mex. 1984 Nov-Dec;54(6):601-13.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heart has been associated with emotions since Middle Ages. The first known depiction of a heart as a symbol of romantic love dates to the 1250s. Hearts can be seen on the bible Jesus holds in the Empress Zoe mosaic in the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. It probably dates from 1239 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_%28symbol%29&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Emotions are the most basic thing of the human being and, therefore, they constitute &#xA;  something intrinsic to our lives. Above all, the heart stands out for being considered the &#xA;  place where they are located. Therefore, we can establish the metaphor “THE HEART IS A &#xA;  CONTAINER OF EMOTIONS”. Among them, love is the outstanding one. However, the fact &#xA;  that emotions are located in this body part does not constitute a universal, since there &#xA;  are other languages and cultures in which they are metaphorically reificated in other &#xA;  body parts. Turkish, for example, locates them in the liver, that is why the expression &#xA;  “My liver, my soul” may be striking to us. Another case is Nigerian English, language &#xA;  which considers the belly the seat of emotions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Regina Gutiérrez Pérez. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/10394/1/RAEI_21_03.pdf&quot;&gt;A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Heart Metaphors.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 21 (2008): 25-56 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T13:59:51.197" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19207" CreationDate="2014-06-11T14:39:34.353" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There isn't any strong evidence that positive ions are bad for your health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Psychological effects of air ions have been reported for more than 80 years in the media and scientific literature. This study summarizes a qualitative literature review and quantitative meta-analysis, where applicable, that examines the potential effects of exposure to negative and positive air ions on psychological measures of mood and emotional state. ... No consistent influence of positive or negative air ionization on anxiety, mood, relaxation, sleep, and personal comfort measures was observed. Negative air ionization was associated with lower depression scores particularly at the highest exposure level. Future research is needed to evaluate the biological plausibility of this association.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Perez V, Alexander DD, Bailey WH. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23320516&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Air ions and mood outcomes: a review and meta-analysis.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; BMC Psychiatry. 2013 Jan 15;13:29. doi: 10.1186/1471-244X-13-29.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T14:39:34.353" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21934" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-11T17:46:25.737" Score="2" ViewCount="287" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've watched several seasons of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0239195/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Survivor&lt;/a&gt; reality TV Show so far and and many contestants have been trying.&#xA;to start a fire using materials found in the wild, &#xA;yet I haven't seen anyone that could do so successfully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems one could learn to make fire by friction using wood by practicing a day or two? But then why have none of the contestants thought about it before appearing on the show? Is it hard to make a fire in the wild?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18998" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T10:59:48.337" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T10:59:48.337" Title="Is it hard to make a fire in the wild?" Tags="|television|survival|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2014-06-12T16:01:43.083" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21935" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-11T21:22:00.837" Score="6" ViewCount="1852" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following story is a translation from Hungarian, with a lot of discussion in the blog's comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cakravartin.com/archives/south-american-natives-speak-ancient-european-language&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cakravartin.com/archives/south-american-natives-speak-ancient-european-language&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story in a nutshell:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the 1960s, a guy called János Móricz (Móricz János in Hungarian order) discovered Indians in South America that he could speak Hungarian with, because their native language was so similar. He concluded that Hungarians and these Indian tribes were one nation in the not so distant past. More recent DNA analysis confirms this. For some reason (conspiracy of world-domination-hungry Mormons) his discoveries never reached the general public, the press intentionally silenced him, academia refused him, etc. He also found a cave system spanning the entire Andes, containing an ancient metal plate library documenting the whole history of humankind, and the ancient cosmic secrets that are kept secret by some powers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how can we verify or disprove this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20704" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T06:27:55.840" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T06:27:55.840" Title="Were there Hungarian speaking Indians in South America?" Tags="|history|anthropology|archaeology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21936" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-11T21:33:55.727" Score="2" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the Earth's distance from the sun affect the efficacy of nuclear medicine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20720" LastActivityDate="2014-06-11T21:33:55.727" Title="Earth's distance from the sun affects nuclear medicine" Tags="|alternative-medicine|astronomy|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-06-20T19:21:12.300" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-11T21:54:36.287" Score="6" ViewCount="3623" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are sites that claim stronger necks help prevent knockouts when boxing...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/119016-neck-exercises-boxing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Livestrong&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most boxers work hard to strengthen their legs for a good, strong base and their arms for a good, hard punch, but fewer remember to &lt;strong&gt;strengthen their neck muscles to better withstand head punches, resist knockouts&lt;/strong&gt; and avoid injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked a doctor and they claimed it was a myth.&#xA;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20718" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T21:12:43.307" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T09:50:49.803" Title="Does neck-strengthening exercise prevent knockouts in boxing?" Tags="|physiology|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21942" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21944" CreationDate="2014-06-12T10:28:04.010" Score="4" ViewCount="1309" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kneeling_chair&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kneeling chairs&lt;/a&gt; are thought to be good for some back problems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The kneeling chair is meant to reduce lower back strain by dividing the burden of the weight between the knees and the buttocks. People with coccyx or tailbone pain resulting from significant numbers of hours in a sitting position (e.g., office desk jobs) are common candidates for such chairs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a kneeling chair prevent or treat damage due to a prolong sitting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20733" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T17:24:35.710" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T21:23:28.107" Title="Does a kneeling chair reduce back pain?" Tags="|medical-science|ergonomics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21942" CreationDate="2014-06-12T15:17:44.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it doesn't. It maintains a better lumbar curvature, but that couldn't be correlated with back pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Balans chair has been introduced with claims that, because of its semi-kneeling position, individuals will experience decreased low-back pain (LBP) as well as improvement in circulation. ... Increased cervical (P = .004) and lumbar muscle EMG measurements were noted after sitting in the Balans chair. Pedal cutaneous blood flow was increased by 15% in the Balans chair (P = .001). The data do not support the manufacturer's claim that the Balans chair is likely to decrease complaints of LBP (low-back pain) &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A newer study couldn't find any evidence on low-back pain reduction although kneeling chairs maintain a better lumbar curvature:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study suggests that ergonomically designed kneeling chairs set at +20 degrees inclination do maintain standing lumbar curvature to a greater extent than sitting on a standard computer chair with an overall mean difference of 7.633 degrees. Further research with a greater number of subjects and on different chair designs is warranted &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is the opposite (a reduced lumbar curvature) associated with low-back pain? Well, it isn't:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our study aimed to investigate whether lordosis changes with age and is reduced in those with low back pain. ... We were unable to demonstrate any difference in the degree of lordosis among women with or without back pain. Men with low back pain tended to have a less prominent lordosis, but this difference did not reach statistical significance. Therefore, a 'reduced lumbar lordosis' should be regarded as a very weak clinical sign &lt;sup&gt;[3]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prolonged standing is a risk factor for back pain, no matter the type of chair:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Highly demanding jobs, prolonged standing and awkward lifting appear as the most consistent and important predictors of LBP &lt;sup&gt;[4]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lander C, Korbon GA, DeGood DE, Rowlingson JC. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2954222&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Balans chair and its semi-kneeling position: an ergonomic comparison with the conventional sitting position.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Spine (Phila Pa 1976). 1987 Apr;12(3):269-72.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bettany-Saltikov J, Warren J, Jobson M. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18810008&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ergonomically designed kneeling chairs are they worth it? : Comparison of sagittal lumbar curvature in two different seating postures.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Stud Health Technol Inform. 2008;140:103-6.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Murrie VL, Dixon AK, Hollingworth W, Wilson H, Doyle TA. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12589669&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Lumbar lordosis: study of patients with and without low back pain.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Clin Anat. 2003 Mar;16(2):144-7.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sterud T, Tynes T. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23322920&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Work-related psychosocial and mechanical risk factors for low back pain: a 3-year follow-up study of the general working population in Norway.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Occup Environ Med. 2013 May;70(5):296-302. doi: 10.1136/oemed-2012-101116. Epub 2013 Jan 15.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-06-12T21:23:28.107" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T21:23:28.107" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21946" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21948" CreationDate="2014-06-12T20:30:27.957" Score="31" ViewCount="4564" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back in the early 1980s, AIDS was originally named &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay-related_immune_deficiency&quot;&gt;Gay-related Immune Deficiency&lt;/a&gt; (GRID). Researchers renamed the disease as they became aware of the spread of the disease in other demographics. For the  non-USA population that may not be aware of this long held belief, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/california-homosexual-organization-admits-hiv-aids-is-gay-disease&quot;&gt;a gay organization in 2006 flip-flopped on their position&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center has abandoned a long-held homosexual activist contention by declaring on billboards posted throughout Southern California that HIV/AIDS is a “gay disease.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is AIDS primarily a homosexual-male disease in the USA today?&lt;/strong&gt; if not,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is AIDS disproportionately represented in the homosexal-male community in the USA today?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T22:40:28.493" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T21:24:43.947" Title="In the USA, is AIDS most prevalent in the gay male population?" Tags="|medical-science|united-states|sexuality|hiv-aids|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21948" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21946" CreationDate="2014-06-12T20:43:35.073" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, according to statistics (2010):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) of all races and ethnicities remain the population most profoundly affected by HIV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although MSM represent about 4% of the male population in the United States, in 2010, MSM accounted for 78% of new HIV infections among males and 63% of all new infections. MSM accounted for 52% of all people living with HIV infection in 2009, the most recent year these data are available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2010, white MSM continued to account for the largest number of new HIV infections (11,200), by transmission category, followed closely by black MSM (10,600).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The estimated number of new HIV infections was greatest among MSM in the youngest age group. In 2010, the greatest number of new HIV infections (4,800) among MSM occurred in young black/African American MSM aged 13–24. Young black MSM accounted for 45% of new HIV infections among black MSM and 55% of new HIV infections among young MSM overall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimated New HIV Infections in the United States, 2010, for the Most Affected Subpopulations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lMPku.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IDU = injecting drug user&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;MSM = men who have sex with men&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; aids.gov. &lt;a href=&quot;http://aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/hiv-aids-101/statistics/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HIV IN THE UNITED STATES: AT A GLANCE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-12T20:43:35.073" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21952" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21959" CreationDate="2014-06-13T09:37:43.087" Score="7" ViewCount="768" Body="&lt;p&gt;Allegedly there is disproportionate amount of U.S. police effort to perform drug bust versus fighting other classes of crimes, as the law allows them to confiscate property, which then can be sold with proceeds going directly to the police departments budget. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are both these claims true? Is it disproportionate? Does confiscated property go &lt;em&gt;directly&lt;/em&gt; to PD budgets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of such a claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ever wonder why police spend so much time enforcing failed drug laws? &#xA;  To find the answer, you just need to follow the money.  Funding&#xA;  schemes and asset forfeiture laws have given law enforcement agencies&#xA;  strong financial incentives to continue the drug war.  Because funding&#xA;  for drug task forces is often based on the number of arrests made and&#xA;  the amount of property seized in drug busts, the easiest way for local&#xA;  police to up their numbers and boost their careers is to target&#xA;  low-level drug offenders, not violent kingpins.  To create arrest&#xA;  opportunities, police routinely rely on untrustworthy informants,&#xA;  conduct dangerous home invasions on flimsy evidence, frame suspects&#xA;  and commit perjury.  Asset forfeiture laws allow law enforcement&#xA;  agencies to seize property with minimal proof, putting the burden&#xA;  instead on suspects to prove their own innocence.  Because these&#xA;  assets often go straight into the coffers of the enforcement agency,&#xA;  these laws have created financial incentives for property seizures&#xA;  that encourage corruption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugpolicy.org/distorted-financial-incentives-enforcement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Distorted Financial Incentives for Enforcement&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugpolicy.org/about-drug-policy-alliance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Drug Policy Alliance&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17283/are-swats-in-the-us-mostly-used-for-serving-marijuana-warrants&quot;&gt;Are SWATs in the US mostly used for serving marijuana warrants?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T10:26:11.857" Title="Do U.S. police (sheriff) departments earn money with drug busts?" Tags="|united-states|law-enforcement|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10154" CreationDate="2014-06-13T11:40:34.160" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/descriptions-execution-methods?scid=8&amp;amp;did=479#electrocution&quot;&gt;Death Penalty Information Centre&lt;/a&gt; describes the process (which is no longer used in the United States):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For execution by the electric chair, the person is usually shaved and strapped to a chair with belts that cross his chest, groin, legs, and arms. A metal skullcap-shaped electrode is attached to the scalp and forehead over a sponge moistened with saline. The sponge must not be too wet or the saline short-circuits the electric current, and not too dry, as it would then have a very high resistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the head is shaved, and wet and covered with an electrode, the person's hair is not able to stand on end as shown in the cartoon. Cartoons intended for children do not offer a realistic portrayal of execution by electrocution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the prisoner's eyeballs sometimes pop out and rest on [his] cheeks. The prisoner often defecates, urinates, and vomits blood and drool. The body turns bright red as its temperature rises, and the prisoner's flesh swells and his skin stretches to the point of breaking. Sometimes the prisoner catches fire....Witnesses hear a loud and sustained sound like bacon frying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T11:40:34.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21955" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-13T13:07:50.403" Score="4" ViewCount="299" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/oddnews/woman-who-cares-for-100-000-cockroaches-in-home--%E2%80%98these-are-all-my-children%E2%80%99-163242043.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article on Yahoo news&lt;/a&gt;,  citing a similar &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1530812/meet-chinas-cockroach-lady-pharmacist-turned-insect-enthusiast-touts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;South China Morning Post article&lt;/a&gt;, Yuan Meixia bought her initial stock of 20kg of cockroaches for around US$1600: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yuan, a pharmacy employee, was inspired to raise roaches after seeing&#xA;  a China Central Television program that aired last year. “I saw people&#xA;  raise this kind of cockroach in Anhui,” she said. “They said it can be&#xA;  food and also can be medicine…So I took tens of thousands of yuan to&#xA;  learn [how to breed them] for a week and spent more than 10,000 yuan&#xA;  ($1,600) to buy 20 kg (44 lbs) of live cockroaches.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article later explains how she drowns, dries, and sells the cockroaches for nutritional and folk medicine use, apparently making a nice profit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yuan sells the roaches after they are drowned in vats of water and&#xA;  then drying in the sun. ”Those dried ones can be sold at 300 yuan to&#xA;  400 yuan ($48-$64) per jin (1.1 lb).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific type of cockroach mentioned in the article is the Palmetto bug.  Wikipedia calls these the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_woods_cockroach&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Florida woods cockroach&lt;/a&gt; and differentiates them from some other species.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you ask Google &quot;400 yuan in dollars&quot; the answer (as of June 13, 2014) is $64.40, so apparently the literal currency conversion is correct. The SCMP article has numerically compatible conversions into HK$.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there could always have been a decimal point error somewhere. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have doubts that one can routinely sell cockroaches for such a high price.  For instance, there is no well-known international trade in cockroaches, yet these prices are much higher than prices for other internationally traded bulk foodstuffs such as fruits, meat, etc.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could be a temporary or localized bubble.  Another possibility is a scam promoted through smaller local media, to attract unsophisticated investors to copycat, that happened to be picked up unaware by more reputable news media as a curiosity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do Florida woods cockroaches commonly sell for ~US$80/kg in China?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-13T14:02:42.440" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T14:02:42.440" Title="Do Florida woods cockroaches (aka Palmetto bugs) commonly sell for ~US$80/kg in China?" Tags="|entomology|china|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21956" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17298" CreationDate="2014-06-13T14:07:57.500" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not possible. Nor inside the car or anywhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A car is a metal cage (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Faraday cage&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Faraday cage operates because an external static electrical field causes the electric charges within the cage's conducting material to be distributed such that &lt;strong&gt;they cancel the field's effect in the cage's interior&lt;/strong&gt;. This phenomenon is used, for example, to protect electronic equipment from lightning strikes and electrostatic discharges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Automobile and airplane passenger compartments are essentially Faraday cages, protecting passengers from electric charges, such as lightning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the electronic devices wouldn't be inside a metal cage, the lightning can interact with them in two ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;through a strike which is an electric discharge on a massive scale between the atmosphere and an earth-bound object &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;through electromagnetic pulse (EMP), sometimes called a transient electromagnetic disturbance, which is a short burst of electromagnetic energy &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lightning strike has the following properties &lt;sup&gt;[3]&lt;/sup&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;duration: 0.2 s&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;voltage: several &lt;strong&gt;hundred million volts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;current: up to &lt;strong&gt;10 kA&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A large EMP can induce &lt;strong&gt;high currents and voltages&lt;/strong&gt; in the victim, damaging electrical equipment or disrupting its function. A very large EMP event such as a lightning strike is also capable of damaging objects such as trees, buildings and aircraft directly, either through heating effects or the disruptive effects of the very large magnetic field generated by the current. An indirect effect can be electrical fires caused by heating &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most devices use Lithium-Ion or Lithium-Polymer batteries nowadays:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lithium-ion batteries are common in consumer electronics. They are one of the most popular types of rechargeable battery for portable electronics, with one of the best energy densities, no memory effect, and only a slow loss of charge when not in use &lt;sup&gt;[4]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For all practical purposes from the battery pack designer or user view point, these &amp;quot;LiPo&amp;quot; cells are of identical technology to ones marketed as &amp;quot;Li Ion&amp;quot; &lt;sup&gt;[5]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These batteries are charged in a two-step operation &lt;sup&gt;[4]&lt;/sup&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;constant current: in this step because the battery has a low voltage (is discharged) it tends to draw a high current from the charger that will destroy the battery. So the &lt;strong&gt;charger must limit current&lt;/strong&gt; until the voltage across battery poles reaches a threshold value.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;constant voltage: in this step the battery is charged enough so there is no need to limit the current (the voltage difference between battery and charger got lower and according to Ohm's law the current drawn by battery proportional to its internal resistance isn't enough to damage it) so now the charger will set its voltage to the maximum allowed (according to battery specs). As the voltage across battery increases, the current drawn from charger decreases. When this current gets at about 3% of its limited value in the first phase, the process stops.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Failure to follow current and voltage limitations can result in an explosion &lt;sup&gt;[4]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Li-ion is a “clean” system and only takes what it can absorb. Anything extra causes stress &lt;sup&gt;[6]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most cells charge to &lt;strong&gt;4.20V/cell&lt;/strong&gt; with a tolerance of +/–50mV/cell. Higher voltages could increase the capacity, but the resulting cell oxidation would reduce service life &lt;sup&gt;[6]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The charge rate of a typical consumer Li-ion battery is between 0.5 and 1C in Stage 1, and the charge time is about &lt;strong&gt;three hours&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;sup&gt;[6]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Increasing the charge current does not hasten the full-charge state by much. Although the battery reaches the voltage peak quicker with a fast charge, the saturation charge will take longer accordingly. The amount of charge current applied simply alters the time required for each stage; Stage 1 will be shorter but the saturation Stage 2 will take longer. A high current charge will, however, quickly fill the battery to about 70 percent &lt;sup&gt;[6]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is the charging curve for a Li-Ion cell (from &lt;sup&gt;[6]&lt;/sup&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uU3jp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not possible for a lightning strike or electromagnetic pulse to last a few hours and maintain a voltage of a few volts and in the same time limit the current to no more than a few amps (the graph is for one cell).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's make a rough comparison:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                Time           Voltage              Current&#xA;-----------------------------------------------------------&#xA;Lightning       0.2 s          100 MV               10 kA&#xA;Single cell     3 h            4.2 V                1 A&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_strike&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lightning strike&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Electromagnetic pulse&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/lightning2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electric/lightning2.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lithium-ion battery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_polymer_battery&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lithium polymer battery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/charging_lithium_ion_batteries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T14:56:48.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21957" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21922" CreationDate="2014-06-13T15:47:24.227" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, married parents lowers the risk of violence against women and children.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the Bureau of Justice Statistics on which the study was based, a correlation in family status and intimate partner violence was indicated. Married females had a much lower victimization rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2010, the rate of intimate partner violence against females living in households comprised of married adults with children was lower than those of households with one female only. The rate of female intimate partner violence in 2010 among households comprised of one female adult with children (31.7 victimizations per 1,000 females age 12 or older) was more than 10 times higher than the rate for females in households with married adults with children (2.5 per 1,000), and more than 6 times higher than the rate for those in households with one female adult only (4.6 per 1,000).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This particular study did not perform any sort of regression analysis, so &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality#Statistics_and_economics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;causal inferences&lt;/a&gt; shouldn't be made from those particular results. Luckily, the study’s author, &lt;a href=&quot;http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/the-washington-post-misused-the-data-on-violence-against-women/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shannon Catalano&lt;/a&gt;, did perform such &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/181867.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;analysis&lt;/a&gt;. After the logistical regression, their analysis found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Results of the logistic regression for women, but not men, support previous research that shows &lt;strong&gt;unmarried couples are at greater risk of intimate partner violence than married couples&lt;/strong&gt;, and African-American couples are at greater risk than white couples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar findings are found in other studies. The fourth release of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/research/project/national-incidence-study-of-child-abuse-and-neglect-nis-4-2004-2009&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Incidence Study of Child Abuse and Neglect (NIS-4), 2004-2009&lt;/a&gt; had similar findings. In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/nis4_report_congress_full_pdf_jan2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NIS-4&lt;/a&gt; marital status is highly correlated with abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abuse&lt;/strong&gt;. The rate of Harm Standard abuse for children living with two married biological parents (2.9 children per 1,000) is significantly lower than the rate for children living in all other conditions of family structure and living arrangement (10.2 or more children per 1,000). Again, the highest rate was among children living with just one parent and that parent’s unmarried partner (33.6 per 1,000 children). &lt;strong&gt;The rates in the highest and lowest risk groups differ by more than a factor of 11.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/opre/nis4_supp_analysis_race_diff_mar2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;supplementary analysis&lt;/a&gt;, they examine the independent variables and their effect on abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The finding that family structure relates to risk of child maltreatment is not new. Nearly two decades ago, Wilson, Daly, and Weghorst (1980) reported increased risk for children living in households with a parent and a surrogate parent (whether stepparent or cohabiting partner) compared to children in mother-only households.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;White children had a notably higher probability of maltreatment when they lived with married parents who were not both biologically related to them and a slightly higher maltreatment rate when they lived with a single parent who had no cohabiting partner, whereas Black children had a considerably higher maltreatment probabilities when they lived with their unmarried parents and when they lived with a single parent living with a partner. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T15:47:24.227" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21952" CreationDate="2014-06-13T16:45:22.147" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/detail/civil-asset-forfeiture-podcast&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fed-soc.org/publications/detail/civil-asset-forfeiture-podcast&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As civil forfeiture abuses led to state reforms, local police departments were hamstrung -- they weren't allowed to keep the profits of civil forfeiture; it had to go back to state general funds. Well, the feds are here to help, and joint FBI, state police, local police actions have the benefit that the feds can share the profits with their state and local partners, notwithstanding state law. So, this is generally the statutory context right now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relating back to the question, the funds do not go &quot;directly&quot; to PD departments. They could only go indirectly to PD departments via sharing through joint actions with the FBI, or through the state or local general budgets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2014-06-13T16:45:22.147" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8883" CreationDate="2014-06-14T09:16:56.657" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two pathways in photosynthesis.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Light reactions where O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; is released by splitting H&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dark reaction (Calvin Cycle) where CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; is used to make sugars&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The energy to drive these reactions come from sunlight.  CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; is absorbed via stomata, and O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; is released by the same stomata.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In CAM photosynthesis, or Crassulacean-Acid metabolism, the plant opens the stomata at night to minimize water loss in desert conditions.  CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; is acquired at this time, and stored in vacuoles as malate.  During the day, the malate is released, decarboxylated releasing the CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; to make it available for photosynthesis.  Any O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; released by the light reaction can not escape during the day as the stomata are only opened at night.  At the high temperatures of day, the oxygen dissolves into the cytosol of the cell.  At night the stomata open, the plant cools and oxygen is liberated from the cytosol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/l7PQ2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;CAM&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.marietta.edu/~biol/biomes/photosynthesis.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.marietta.edu/~biol/biomes/photosynthesis.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/the-ecology-of-photosynthetic-pathways-15785165&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/the-ecology-of-photosynthetic-pathways-15785165&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2019-02-02T09:08:32.343" LastActivityDate="2019-02-02T09:08:32.343" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="21969" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31707" CreationDate="2014-06-14T11:27:14.563" Score="30" ViewCount="1390" Body="&lt;p&gt;When spotting a red light or similar, I often release the gas pedal, gear down and let the engine decelerate instead of pressing the brake pedal. I was taught that this was more energy efficient for some reason, but I never really understood why. Is thIs true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20757" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-14T13:28:13.847" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T12:57:46.227" Title="Is gearing down more energy efficient than braking?" Tags="|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21975" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21976" CreationDate="2014-06-14T21:26:30.370" Score="3" ViewCount="710" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, a major qualifier here; by naturally, I mean not forced to die on its &quot;stomach&quot; (like by being stepped on). Secondly, I live in the U.S., so maybe this applies to only American roaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Literally every time I remember having seen a dead roach I did not kill or that wasn't squashed, it was lying on its back. I have looked on the internet, and I only found one decent answer to this question saying that they do not have this tendency. Considering the sheer magnitude of times I have noticed the contrary—inside, outside, in many different geographic locations—I do not believe that answer. I have asked other people, and they have noticed the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20764" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T20:55:44.593" Title="Do roaches die (naturally) on their backs?" Tags="|biology|zoology|entomology|ethology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2014-06-19T02:42:11.860" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21976" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21975" CreationDate="2014-06-14T22:32:43.727" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's hard to find reputable sources on this issue, but let me present the two different takes on it that I found. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://yougotme.hubpages.com/hub/Why-Do-Cockroaches-Topple-Over-When-They-Die&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cockroaches, apparently, have bulky bodies (composing of 3 heavy body&#xA;  segments) which are only supported by 6 long thin legs, As they die,&#xA;  they lose muscle-control causing the leg muscles to contract. &lt;strong&gt;As a&#xA;  result, the legs are forced to be pulled beneath the body causing them&#xA;  to lose their balance, and topple over.&lt;/strong&gt; This also explains why&#xA;  cockroaches on the wall fall off when they were crawling on the wall&#xA;  and got sprayed with insecticides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is flipping over always the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No. There is still a possibility for a cockroach to die without&#xA;  toppling over. However, it is inherent upon these insects to&#xA;  involuntary experience muscle contraction and end up lying on their&#xA;  back upon dying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/23/why-do-cockroaches-die-on-their-backs&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; addressing specifically this question takes a slightly different take on the issue (point 3 is similar to the previous article):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've been discussing the subject with the crack bug scientists at some&#xA;  of the nation's leading institutions of higher learning, and we've&#xA;  formulated the following Roach Mortality Scenarios, which represent a&#xA;  major step forward in our understanding of roach postmortem&#xA;  positioning:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) Roach has heart attack while crawling on the wall. OK, so maybe&#xA;  roaches don't have heart attacks. Just suppose the roach croaks&#xA;  somehow and tumbles earthward. &lt;strong&gt;The aerodynamics of the roach corpse&#xA;  (smooth on the back, or wing side; irregular on the front, or leg&#xA;  side) are such that the critter will tend to land on its back. Or so&#xA;  goes the theory.&lt;/strong&gt; Admittedly the study of bug airfoil characteristics&#xA;  is not as advanced as it might be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) Roach desiccates, i.e., dries out, after the manner of Gloria&#xA;  Vanderbilt. This is what happens when you use Cecil's Guaranteed Roach&#xA;  Assassination Technique, described elsewhere in this archive. The&#xA;  roach saunters carelessly through the lethal borax crystals, causing&#xA;  him to lose precious bodily fluids and eventually die. Since this&#xA;  process is gradual, it may happen that the roach simply conks out and&#xA;  dies on its belly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(3) Roach dies after ingesting potent neurotoxins, e.g., Diet Coke,&#xA;  some traditional bug poison like pyrethrum, or the food served at USC&#xA;  cafeterias. &lt;strong&gt;Neurotoxins cause the roach to twitch itself to death, in&#xA;  the course of which it will frequently kick over on its back&lt;/strong&gt;, there to&#xA;  flail helplessly until the end comes. No doubt this accounts for the&#xA;  supine position of the deceased cockroaches you observed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found no serious articles claiming this to be simply not the cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18335" LastActivityDate="2014-06-14T22:32:43.727" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21975" CreationDate="2014-06-15T01:17:39.033" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the answer is really in the physics of the cockroach, or other insect bodies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the insect dies, rigor mortis sets in.  Since the flexor muscles are almost always larger than the extensor muscles, the contraction causes the legs to bend inwards into the crossed position.  The bug pulled into a cylindrical shape by rigor is now unstable, and is pulled by gravity to roll over to  lie on its back as that's the most stable position, and it is the point where the center of gravity is lowest to the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the answer is that roaches don't naturally die on their backs, but end up there after death.  Death by insecticide may be a different issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/why-do-insects-cross-their-legs-when-they-die-434286&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ibtimes.com/why-do-insects-cross-their-legs-when-they-die-434286&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-15T20:55:44.593" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T20:55:44.593" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-15T12:07:05.500" Score="3" ViewCount="1804" Body="&lt;p&gt;I commonly find on the internet claims that these men had/have the following IQs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bobby Fischer: 180–190&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Einstein: 160&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hawking: 160&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Garry Kasparov: 190&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm sure most have heard somewhere that Einstein's IQ was 160. While I wouldn't be surprised if these were the real IQs of these men, I haven't found a single piece of evidence that suggests the aforementioned ever even took an IQ test, other than the occasional hearsay I get on websites. Is this just speculation, or are there truths behind these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16662" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:41:13.047" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:41:13.047" Title="Have Bobby Fischer, Einstein, Hawking and Kasparov all had their IQs tested?" Tags="|psychology|intelligence|celebrities|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21979" CreationDate="2014-06-15T14:12:22.800" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is at least one who never had his IQ tested:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as we known today, Albert Einstein has never done any IQ test. Thus his IQ is unknown!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 20ies scientists had tried to &lt;strong&gt;estimate&lt;/strong&gt; the IQ of deceased personalities such as Mozart (1756-1791) and Goethe (1749-1832) by means of &lt;strong&gt;biographic data&lt;/strong&gt;; thus they wanted to estimate Albert Einstein’s IQ, too. The value estimated for Einstein was between 160 and 180. But this rough estimation can not count as Einstein’s IQ!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; Hans-Josef Küpper. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.einstein-website.de/z_information/variousthings.html#iq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;VARIOUS THINGS ABOUT ALBERT EINSTEIN&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many ways to estimate IQ. Some rely on education, some on activity field etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1926, psychologist Dr. Catherine Morris Cox - who had been assisted by Dr. Lewis M. Terman, Dr. Florence L. Goodenaugh, and Dr. Kate Gordon - published a study &amp;quot;of the most eminent men and women&amp;quot; who had lived between 1450 and 1850 to &lt;strong&gt;estimate&lt;/strong&gt; what their IQs might have been. The resultant IQs were based largely on the degrees of brightness and intelligence each subject showed before attaining the age of 17.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cox also found that different fields have quite widely varying average IQs for their acknowledged leading geniuses. Displayed below are there calculated Deviation IQs (the number in brackets is the number in the sample considered):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Philosophers (22) average IQ 160; Scientists (39) 159; Fiction writers (53) 152; Statesmen (43) 150; Musicians (11) 149; Artists (13) 153; Soldiers (27) 136.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; Ulf Norlinger. &lt;a href=&quot;http://hem.bredband.net/b153434/Index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Estimated IQs of some of the Greatest Geniuses&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T14:12:22.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21981" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-15T18:51:51.680" Score="6" ViewCount="708" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the Qur'an promote violence towards others, or does it promote peace?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hear a lot of people saying that it promotes peace, but this seems like wishful thinking to me (both by believers and multiculturalists). Similarly, most people who proclaim it promotes violence have an anti-Islamic (i.e., bigoted) agenda as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please understand I am &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; asking for any of your personal interpretations of the Qur'an. I am only asking about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The plain meaning of the text (insofar as such a thing is possible with a religious book)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Traditional and modern interpretations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, what I'm trying to figure out is if Islamists who &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;murder other Muslims of the same sect who oppose them (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/15/world/meast/iraq-photos-isis/&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;who murder other &quot;people of the book&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beliefs_and_ideology_of_Osama_bin_Laden#Jews.2C_Christians.2C_and_Shia_Muslims&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or who murder &quot;pagans&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://infidelsarecool.com/2006/12/overwhelming-evidence-of-i/&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;perverting their religion (i.e., using it as a veneer for bigotry)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;or are in fact &lt;em&gt;the few people who take it seriously&lt;/em&gt;, while everyone else is just tiptoeing around the offensive parts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize religion is a touchy subject, and any time it comes up, it's hard to make absolute statements. But I would like to get as close to the true meaning of the text as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17201" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T18:51:51.680" Title="Does the Quran promote violence?" Tags="|religion|islam|violence|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-06-17T02:46:13.817" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16664" CreationDate="2014-06-15T19:18:38.060" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence to support that rolfing alters posture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence for clinical effectiveness and hypothesized mechanisms is severely limited by small sample sizes and absence of control arms. In view of the rapidly increasing availability of SI and its use for treatment of musculoskeletal pain and dysfunction, more adequate research in warranted &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a study that claims rolfing can improve active motion range and decrease pain. However it was made on rather small group (31 patients):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of rolfing structural integration (RSI) in neck motion and pain levels of 31 subjects who received RSI. RSI is a type of therapy that focuses on aligning the human body with gravity. ... This investigation demonstrates that the basic 10 sessions of RSI, when applied by a physical therapist with advanced RSI certification, is capable of significantly decreasing pain and increasing AROM in adult subjects, male and female, with complaints of cervical spine dysfunction regardless of age &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Eric Jacobson. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3198617&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Structural Integration, an Alternative Method of Manual Therapy and Sensorimotor Education.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; J Altern Complement Med. Oct 2011; 17(10): 891–899. doi:  10.1089/acm.2010.0258&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;James H, Castaneda L, Miller ME, Findley T. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19524847&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Rolfing structural integration treatment of cervical spine dysfunction.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; J Bodyw Mov Ther. 2009 Jul;13(3):229-38. doi: 10.1016/j.jbmt.2008.07.002. Epub 2008 Sep 13.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T19:18:38.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14999" CreationDate="2014-06-15T19:36:09.823" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it doesn't. There is no evidence to support that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims in the question are based on a more than 20 years old study which assessed subjective symptoms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We administered 20 ml of Yomeishu (YMS) twice a day before meals for 12 weeks to 50 post-operative patients in gynecology and then inquired into their subjective 20 symptoms (sense of fatigue, insomnia, headache and heavy headedness, appetite, stomach-ache, abdominal inflation, vertigo, lumbago, etc.) The YMS group showed a significant improvement on 14 items compared with the control group. On the whole, a great improvement was observed in the YMS group with serious subjective symptoms as well, and there were significant differences for &lt;strong&gt;general condition, sense of fatigue, and coldness in extremities&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Takabayashi T, Sasaki H, Shintaku Y, Sasamoto K, Ozawa N, Hamazaki Y, Yajima A. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2239815&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Effects of a medicinal herbal liqueur, &quot;yomeishu&quot;, on post-operative gynecological patients.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Am J Chin Med. 1990;18(1-2):51-8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T19:36:09.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21984" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-15T19:49:22.430" Score="1" ViewCount="352" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/features/cholesterol-food&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This Web MD article suggests that 30% people are vulnerable to dietary cholesterol&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indeed, studies suggest that only about 30% of people are particularly susceptible to the effects of dietary cholesterol on blood cholesterol levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16765/is-dietary-cholesterol-related-to-blood-serum-cholesterol&quot;&gt;This answer suggests no connection&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2010/DietaryGuidelines2010.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;These US government dietary guidelines (page 76) suggests&lt;/a&gt; it is safe to consume &amp;lt;300 mg (a little bit more that in 1 egg) of dietary cholesterol a day.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of these options are scientifically accepted? And is there any contradiction in these three different viewpoints?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user19505" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T03:22:34.570" Title="Does eating high cholesterol foods impact cholesterol blood levels of 30% of population based on Web MD article?" Tags="|nutrition|cholesterol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21985" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21988" CreationDate="2014-06-15T21:49:15.493" Score="20" ViewCount="9999" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://new-cryptozoology.wikia.com/wiki/Giant_Human_Skeletons&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; shows a diagram of the remains of human giants&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ojlDB.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;. The tallest one being 36 ft. (1097.28 cm.) This seems like a pretty large claim for an article that doesn't state any sources. Could there be any legitimacy to these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16882" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:51:23.087" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T17:19:07.390" Title="Have giant human skeletons been found?" Tags="|archeology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21984" CreationDate="2014-06-15T23:09:54.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This meta-analysis from 1992 by Hopkins of 76 trials where food was supplied by a metabolic kitchen nicely answers this question. [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/w9TXD.png&quot; alt=&quot;cholesterol kinetics&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rise in cholestrol on consuming cholesterol is closely tied to the baseline consumption of dietary cholesterol. So, you can see that if you're on a plant based diet ( or vegan ), with zero cholesterol intake, then consuming an egg containing 250 mg of cholesterol will raise your serum cholesterol by about 0.35 mmol/L (13.5 mg/dl) but if you're on an average american diet of 400 mg/day of cholesterol, then the rise is only 0.1 mmol/L (3.9 mg/dl).  This is the reason why many studies were confused by the effect of eggs on dietary cholesterol as they didn't understand the relationship between baseline intake and added consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't read link 3 above, but usually dietary guidelines advise that you don't exceed your cholesterol intake by 300 mg/day but they do not advise that you should consume cholesterol. There is no biological need to consume cholesterol since we manufacture all of our requirements in the liver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Hopkins PN. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1534437&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effects of dietary cholesterol on serum cholesterol: a meta-analysis and review.&lt;/a&gt; Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 1992 Jun;55(6):1060-70. PubMed PMID: 1534437. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/55/6/1060.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Full text&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-17T19:47:41.587" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T19:47:41.587" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21985" CreationDate="2014-06-15T23:21:08.893" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. There is no fossil evidence of &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; apes being larger than about 9.8ft tall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The fossil record suggests that individuals of the species &lt;em&gt;Gigantopithecus blacki&lt;/em&gt; were the largest known apes that ever lived, standing up to 3 m (9.8 ft).&quot; (Refs: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gigantopithecus&amp;amp;oldid=612964116&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/article/giant-ape-lived-alongside-humans/&quot;&gt;McMaster University&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2014-06-15T23:21:08.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21989" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-16T00:02:03.537" Score="4" ViewCount="530" Body="&lt;p&gt;It sounds like a no-brainer that if you eat more you'll gain weight. Given that 1 kg of fat contains 8000 kcal of energy, you can estimate how much weight you'll gain if you eat more. But there are reasons to be sceptical here. There seems to be experimental proof against this simple model that assumes that the metabolic rate does not adjust itself to the energy take, &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7838668.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;see e.g. here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is a theoretical argument against the simple model. Animals living in the wild have to cope with whatever is avaialable to eat. If they find temselves in a situation where they need to expend a bit more energy to get to their food and what they then get isa bit less, they would eventually starve to death if their metabolic rate would not compensate for that. So, if you eat one sandwich of 100 kcal a day less and keep all the other factors the same, you should lose 1 kg every 80 days, which means more than 45 kg weight loss in ten years. But this obviously not going to happen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also cannot be the case that people will feel more hungry if they eat a bit less, because some people like me stick to a diet where they measure everything they eat and their weights typically does not fluctuate wildly on a time scale of years. Nevertheless, the calories in mines calories out = weight gain model is widely used, but it seems to me without any solid scientific basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal observations suggests that people who are obese don't eat all that much, rather they tend to eat unhealthy foods and they are physically unfit. In contrast, I eat a lot, about 4000 Kcal/day, but I'm physically very fit and I only weigh 57 kg. I eat a lot more than everyone I know, but I stick to eating only healthy foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would be most interested in experiments where healthy, physically very fit people were given a lot more to eat, but only healthy foods. E.g. larger portions of brown rice at dinner, more whole grain bread at lunch, more vegetables fried in olive oil etc. while their exercise routine is monitored before and after the intervention so that the energy expenditure change due to voluntary factors is taken into account. A steady weight gain according to 8000 Kcal energy surplus = 1 kg in such an experiment would prove the simple model.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20776" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T00:43:24.313" Title="Experimental proof that eating more causes weight gain via calories in minus calories out = weight gain formula" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-06-16T01:15:56.190" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21990" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21989" CreationDate="2014-06-16T00:43:24.313" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll summarize from &lt;a href=&quot;http://evidencemag.com/why-calories-count/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://evidencemag.com/why-calories-count/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;When people create a caloric deficit, they always lose weight.&amp;quot; [...] &amp;quot;Whether they eat mostly protein, fat, or carbs makes no significant difference in how much weight they lose.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;When People Eat More Calories than They Need — They Always Gain Weight&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is supported by 10s of references and experiments, which I can expand this answer to discuss if anyone thinks this requires more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About some of your points:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;There seems to be experimental proof against this simple model that assumes that the metabolic rate does not adjust itself to the energy take.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The calories in vs calories out argument &lt;em&gt;doesn't&lt;/em&gt; ignore that metabolism or a person's activity level might change (mostly through &amp;quot;non-exercise activity thermogenesis&amp;quot;). It says &lt;em&gt;nothing&lt;/em&gt; about what might happen to calories out. All it says is that you need to be at a caloric deficit to lose weight, and a caloric excess to gain weight. True, your calories in might &lt;em&gt;affect&lt;/em&gt; your calories out, but that doesn't mean that calories in vs calories out is invalid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If they find themselves in a situation where they need to expend a bit more energy to get to their food and what they then get is a bit less, they would eventually starve to death if their metabolic rate would not compensate for that.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a false dichotomy. You have left out the option of the animal expending less energy on non-hunting activities to deal with having less food available. In either case (being less active during non-hunting activities, or a metabolic change), all you're saying is that the calories-out might change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So, if you eat one sandwich of 100 kcal a day less and keep all the other factors the same, you should lose 1 kg every 80 days, which means more than 45 kg weight loss in ten years. But this obviously not going to happen.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you did manage to keep &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the other factors the same, why is 1kg of weight loss every 80 days &amp;quot;obviously&amp;quot; not going to happen? Is it even &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; to keep &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; the other factors the same? As you lose weight, your body will need to expend less energy (less calories out). Thus, your calorie deficit will not be 100 kcal for the entire 10 years. You can't ignore the change in calories out in the equation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It also cannot be the case that people will feel more hungry if they eat a bit less, because some people like me stick to a diet where they measure everything they eat and their weights typically does not fluctuate wildly on a time scale of years&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasty_generalization&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hasty generalization&lt;/a&gt;. Just because &lt;em&gt;you&lt;/em&gt; can stick to a chosen diet by measuring and being disciplined, doesn't mean other people will. It also says nothing about the level of hunger felt by a person. Diet compliance during studies that rely on self-reporting is not good. (See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1454084&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Discrepancy between self-reported and actual caloric intake and exercise in obese subjects.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My personal observations suggests that people who are obese don't eat all that much, rather they tend to eat unhealthy foods and they are physically unfit. In contrast, I eat a lot, about 4000 Kcal/day, but I'm physically very fit and I only weigh 57 kg. I eat a lot more than everyone I know, but I stick to eating only healthy foods.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your personal observations are anecdotal and can not be taken to be representative or accurate. How did you track the amount eaten by the obese people that you have observed or the people that you know? Nothing you've said gives me reason to assume that the only difference between you others is the &amp;quot;health&amp;quot; of the food that you eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-16T00:43:24.313" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21995" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="21996" CreationDate="2014-06-16T18:55:30.583" Score="2" ViewCount="5196" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have found two papers related to garlic for treating alopecia areata [1,2]. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any other evidence for hair growth in androgenetic alopecia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact there are some statements [3,4] that it actually can cause hair loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Hajheydari Z, Jamshidi M, Akbari J, Mohammadpur R. Combination of topical garlic gel and betamethasone valerate cream in the treatment of localized alopecia areata: A double-blind randomized controlled study. Indian J Dermatol Venereol Leprol 2007;73:29-32.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Sharquie KE, Al-Obaidi HK. Onion juice (Allium cepa L.), a new topical treatment for alopecia areata. J Dermatol 2002 Jun; 29 (6): 343–6&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehealthme.com/ds/garlic/hair+loss&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ehealthme.com/ds/garlic/hair+loss&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[4] &lt;a href=&quot;http://immortalhair.forumandco.com/t8184-aged-garlic-extract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://immortalhair.forumandco.com/t8184-aged-garlic-extract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;p&gt;&#xA;What about the following link:&#xA;Garlic increases nitric oxide [2] by Hydrogen Sulfide which it contains [3]. Minoxidil is also related to the generation of nitric oxide through vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) [1] and promotes hair growth. Can garlic have the same or similar or any effects on hair like Minoxidil via nitric oxide?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References: [1] Messenger, A. G., and J. Rundegren. &quot;Minoxidil: mechanisms of action on hair growth.&quot; British journal of dermatology 150.2 (2004): 186-194.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Ping-Ho Chen, Yaw-Syan Fu, Yun-Ming Wang, Kun-Han Yang, Danny Ling Wang, and Bin Huang, “Hydrogen Sulfide Increases Nitric Oxide Production and Subsequent S-Nitrosylation in Endothelial Cells,” The Scientific World Journal, vol. 2014, Article ID 480387, 8 pages, 2014. doi:10.1155/2014/480387&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071016131534.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071016131534.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20755" LastEditorUserId="20755" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T18:48:33.593" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T19:18:25.233" Title="Does garlic improve hair growth in androgenetic alopecia?" Tags="|medical-science|hair|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21995" CreationDate="2014-06-16T20:12:55.730" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. There is no evidence to support that garlic has an effect on androgenetic alopecia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first paper you cite, shows that garlic is effective &lt;strong&gt;in synergism&lt;/strong&gt; with betamethasone valerate in alopecia areata.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The present study showed that the use of garlic gel significantly &lt;strong&gt;added to the therapeutic efficacy of topical betamethasone valerate&lt;/strong&gt; in alopecia areata and that it can be an effective &lt;strong&gt;adjunctive&lt;/strong&gt; topical therapy for alopecia areata &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the second one is about... &lt;strong&gt;onion&lt;/strong&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Garlic has antifungal activity so it can prevent alopecia (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/hair-loss/infectious-agents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;causes of alopecia&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Garlic (Allium sativum) contains ajoene, which has been demonstrated to exhibit antifungal activity. In a study of 34 patients treated topically with 0.4% ajoene cream once a day for tinea pedis, 79% noted clearing within 7 days and the remainder reported clearing within 14 days &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These results and those obtained in previous studies confirm that ajoene is a new agent for the topic treatment of superficial mycoses, and for the first time show the therapeutic usefulness of an inhibitor of phospholipids biosynthesis in eukaryotes &lt;sup&gt;[3]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this doesn't apply in case of alopecia areata because it is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alopecia_areata#Causes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;autoimmune disease&lt;/a&gt; nor in the case of androgenetic alopecia which has &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgenic_alopecia#Hormonal_etiology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hormonal etiology&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper in your update states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of in vitro effects of minoxidil have been described in monocultures of various skin and hair follicle cell types including stimulation of cell proliferation, inhibition of collagen synthesis, and stimulation of vascular endothelial growth factor and prostaglandin synthesis. Some or all of these effects may be relevant to hair growth, but the application of results obtained in cell culture studies to the complex biology of the hair follicle is &lt;strong&gt;uncertain&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;sup&gt;[4]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Uncertain... after all androgens have the last word:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Androgens stimulate beard growth but suppress hair growth in androgenetic alopecia (AGA). This condition is known as 'androgen paradox'. ...  In addition, &lt;strong&gt;androgens enhance inducible nitric oxide synthase&lt;/strong&gt; from occipital DP (dermal papillae) cells and stem cell factor for positive regulation of hair growth in beard and &lt;strong&gt;negative regulation of balding DP cells&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;sup&gt;[5]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hajheydari Z, Jamshidi M, Akbari J, Mohammadpour R. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17314444&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Combination of topical garlic gel and betamethasone valerate cream in the treatment of localized alopecia areata: a double-blind randomized controlled study.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Indian J Dermatol Venereol Leprol. 2007 Jan-Feb;73(1):29-32.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shenefelt PD. Herbal Treatment for Dermatologic Disorders. In: Benzie IFF, Wachtel-Galor S, editors. Herbal Medicine: Biomolecular and Clinical Aspects. 2nd edition. Boca Raton (FL): CRC Press; 2011. Chapter 18. Available from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92761/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK92761/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ledezma E, López JC, Marin P, Romero H, Ferrara G, De Sousa L, Jorquera A, Apitz Castro R. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10417874&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Ajoene in the topical short-term treatment of tinea cruris and tinea corporis in humans. Randomized comparative study with terbinafine.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Arzneimittelforschung. 1999 Jun;49(6):544-7.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Messenger AG, Rundegren J. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14996087&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Minoxidil: mechanisms of action on hair growth.&lt;/a&gt; Br. J. Dermatol. 2004 Feb;150(2):186-94. PubMed PMID: 14996087.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Inui S, Itami S. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23016593&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Androgen actions on the human hair follicle: perspectives.&lt;/a&gt; Exp. Dermatol. 2013 Mar;22(3):168-71. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/exd.12024&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1111/exd.12024&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 23016593.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T19:18:25.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21998" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2970" CreationDate="2014-06-17T04:46:49.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any tissue, being alive, needs energy to sustain intracellular processes.  So, having any additional tissue will increase your resting metabolic requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this study, they looked at the differences in resting energy expenditure (REE) in non-obese adults as measured by indirect calorimetry, and correlated this with whole body lean muscle mass LBM). [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;REE showed positive relationships with whole body LBM (LBMb; r=0.89)&#xA;  as well as with regional LBM (LBMtrunk = LBMt, r = 0.88, and&#xA;  LBMarms+legs = LBMe for LBMextremities, r = 0.89)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Muller MJ, Illner K, Bosy-Westphal A, [..], Heller M. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11697446&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Regional lean body mass and resting energy expenditure in non-obese adults.&lt;/a&gt; Eur J Nutr. 2001 Jun;40(3):93-7. PubMed PMID: 11697446. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T04:46:49.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="21999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18934" CreationDate="2014-06-17T05:05:05.683" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no studies on PubMed with the terms &quot;clay, poultice and tendintis/tendonitis&quot; so we can conclude that there has been no peer reviewed published research in this area to support the claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Medline Plus advises on the management of tendinitis [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rest or immobilization of the affected tendons is helpful for&#xA;  recovery. This may be achieved using a splint or a removable brace.&#xA;  The application of heat or cold to the affected area can help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if the green clay poultice provides immobilization with some heat, it might conceivably help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001229.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001229.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T05:05:05.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22002" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22040" CreationDate="2014-06-17T08:24:37.590" Score="19" ViewCount="5205" Body="&lt;p&gt;A German &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcwelt.de/galerien/illegalsten-Hacker-Tools-338102.html?bild=1&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; in PC Welt (PC World) claims to list a number of &quot;illegal hacker tools&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The list includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Network Sniffers&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aircrack-ng.org/&quot;&gt;Aircrack-ng&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wireshark.org/&quot;&gt;Wireshark&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Copy-Protection Circumvention Tools&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slysoft.com/en/anydvd.html&quot;&gt;AnyDVD&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_Shrink&quot;&gt;DVD Shrink&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mydigitallife.info/vista-loader-213-windows-vista-activator-2008-support-sp1-with-no-boot-string-free-download/&quot;&gt;Vista Loader&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Password Recovery Tools&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxid.it/cain.html&quot;&gt;Cain &amp;amp; Abel&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elcomsoft.com/edpr.html&quot;&gt;ElcomSoft Distributed Password Recovery&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pogostick.net/~pnh/ntpasswd/&quot;&gt;Offline NT Password &amp;amp; Registry Editor&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ophcrack.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;Ophcrack&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lostpassword.com/kit-enterprise.htm&quot;&gt;Passware Kit Enterprise&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/pspv.html&quot;&gt;Protected Storage PassView&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/pst_password.html&quot;&gt;Pst Password&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Keyloggers&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blazingtools.com/bpk.html&quot;&gt;Perfect Keylogger&lt;/a&gt;, Shark&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Worms&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Internet Worm Maker Thing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these programs, themselves, illegal in Germany?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my understanding, just the &lt;em&gt;use&lt;/em&gt; of a program, that may be an illegal action, but that the software itself is not illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20786" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T13:47:08.527" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T13:48:20.800" Title="Are some software programs &quot;illegal&quot; in Germany?" Tags="|law|software|germany|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22002" CreationDate="2014-06-17T09:01:09.730" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, programs can be illegal in many jurisdictions. For example distribution or sale, and in some jurisdictions even possession, of tools (be it physical or software), which &lt;em&gt;exclusive&lt;/em&gt; use is hacking is illegal in most countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example &lt;em&gt;18 U.S. Code § 1029 - Fraud and related activity in connection with access devices&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(9) knowingly uses, produces, traffics in, &lt;strong&gt;has control or custody of,&#xA;  or possesses hardware or software&lt;/strong&gt;, knowing it has been configured to&#xA;  insert or modify telecommunication identifying information associated&#xA;  with or contained in a telecommunications instrument so that such&#xA;  instrument may be used to obtain telecommunications service without&#xA;  authorization; or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T09:01:09.730" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16765" CreationDate="2014-06-17T10:13:26.153" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is the best scientific understanding of the relationship between dietary cholesterol and blood-level cholesterol?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be answered from another answer I have given to a similar question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/21984/how-are-cholesterol-blood-levels-impacted-by-eating-eggs/21987#21987&quot;&gt;Does eating high cholesterol foods impact cholesterol blood levels of 30% of population based on Web MD article?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This meta-analysis from 1992 by Hopkins of 76 trials where food was&#xA;  supplied by a metabolic kitchen nicely answers this question. [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/w9TXD.png&quot; alt=&quot;cholesterol kinetics&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rise in cholestrol on consuming cholesterol is closely tied to the&#xA;  baseline consumption of dietary cholesterol. So, you can see that if&#xA;  you're on a plant based diet ( or vegan ), with zero cholesterol&#xA;  intake, then consuming an egg containing 250 mg of cholesterol will&#xA;  raise your serum cholesterol by about 0.35 mmol/L (13.5 mg/dl) but if&#xA;  you're on an average american diet of 400 mg/day of cholesterol, then&#xA;  the rise is only 0.1 mmol/L (3.9 mg/dl).  This is the reason why many&#xA;  studies were confused by the effect of eggs on dietary cholesterol as&#xA;  they didn't understand the relationship between baseline intake and&#xA;  added consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and so for most people who are on high cholesterol diets ( eg. the Standard American Diet aka SAD ) of about 400 mg of cholesterol per day, then additional cholesterol has little impact on their blood levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the treatments for hyperlipidemia is to use plant phytosterols.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is well-established that high intakes of plant sterols or stanols&#xA;  can lower serum total and LDL cholesterol concentrations in humans&#xA;  (see Cardiovascular Disease below) (10, 11). &lt;strong&gt;In the intestinal lumen,&#xA;  phytosterols displace cholesterol from mixed micelles and inhibit&#xA;  cholesterol absorption&lt;/strong&gt; (12). In humans, the consumption of 1.5-1.8 g/d&#xA;  of plant sterols or stanols reduced cholesterol absorption by 30-40%&#xA;  (13, 14). &lt;strong&gt;At higher doses (2.2 g/d of plant sterols), cholesterol&#xA;  absorption was reduced by 60%&lt;/strong&gt; (15). In response to decreased&#xA;  cholesterol absorption, tissue LDL-receptor expression was increased,&#xA;  resulting in increased clearance of circulating LDL (16). Decreased&#xA;  cholesterol absorption is also associated with increased cholesterol&#xA;  synthesis, and increasing phytosterol intake has been found to&#xA;  increase endogenous cholesterol synthesis in humans (13). &lt;strong&gt;Despite the&#xA;  increase in cholesterol synthesis induced by increasing phytosterol&#xA;  intake, the net result is a reduction in serum LDL cholesterol&#xA;  concentration.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it clear from the above the dietary cholesterol is important, and interrupting that absorption has beneficial effects on both total cholesterol and LDL-c.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How, exactly, does the mix of fats and carbohydrates affect cholesterol?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many studies have shown that dietary fatty acids regulate plasma LDL-C&#xA;  levels by affecting LDL receptor activity, protein, and mRNA abundance [3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You could read several books on the subject for further explanation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Hopkins PN. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1534437&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effects of dietary cholesterol on serum cholesterol: a meta-analysis and review.&lt;/a&gt; Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 1992 Jun;55(6):1060-70. PubMed PMID: 1534437. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/phytochemicals/sterols/#biological_activity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/phytochemicals/sterols/#biological_activity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] Fernandez ML, West KL. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16140878&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mechanisms by which dietary fatty acids modulate plasma lipids.&lt;/a&gt; J. Nutr. 2005 Sep;135(9):2075-8. PubMed PMID: 16140878. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T10:13:26.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22002" CreationDate="2014-06-17T10:20:00.173" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Computer Games are programs and there are many computer games banned in various countries around the world due to their content, which are summarized in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_video_games&quot;&gt;Wikipedia  article on the issue&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically in Germany, some games can be prohibited for dissemination, but are still legal for&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[p]rivate possession (and thus playing it) and acquisition (such as downloading a demo from the Internet)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The possible reasons for banning a game are violence or  dissemination of Nazi symbols in any way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;§ 86a outlaws the use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations, § 130 Volksverhetzung (agitation of the people), and § 131 instructions for crimes. In the official lists, these three sections are always bundled, so any action game that contains swastika flags and/or any depiction of Adolf Hitler) is listed alongside racist propaganda pieces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;§ 131 outlaws representation of violence in media &quot;which describe cruel or otherwise inhuman acts of violence against human beings in a manner which expresses a glorification or rendering harmless of such acts of violence or which represents the cruel or inhuman aspects of the event in a manner which injures human dignity.&quot;[25]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;§ 130 and § 131 make it to a criminal offense to do following with corresponding scriptures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;distributing / selling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;issuing in public, demonstrating or otherwise making available&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;leaving it to a person under the age of 18&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;producing, buying, delivering, storing, offering, announcing, praising, importing or exporting to use them within the meaning of the letters 1 to 3.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This means, that the import or purchase and the possession for personal use are still legal for persons over 18 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A list of all currently banned games, and games on which the ban has expired (the ban is for 10 years) appears in the wiki article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that the list is relatively short, because game publishers publish edited or cut versions of their games in Germany in order to comply with local laws:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The game &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein&quot;&gt;Return to Castle Wolfenstein&lt;/a&gt; was edited to not mention the Nazis directly by name or symbol:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the German version of the game, it avoids making direct reference to Nazi Party and the &quot;Third Reich&quot;, in order to comply with strict laws in Germany. The player is not battling Nazis but a secret sect called the &quot;Wolves&quot; led by Heinrich Höller, whose name is a pun of the original character Himmler (Himmler roughly translates as &quot;Heavener&quot;, Höller as &quot;Heller&quot;). The Nazi swastika is also not present, the German forces use a Wolfenstein logo which is a combination of a stylized double-headed eagle prominent in most Nazi symbolism, a &quot;W&quot; (standing for Wolfenstein), and the Quake III: Team Arena &quot;QIII&quot; logo (the game engine and network code that RTCW is based upon).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the games in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_%28series%29&quot;&gt;Grand Theft Auto&lt;/a&gt; series were edited to be less violent. From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://gta.wikia.com/Germany&quot;&gt;GTA Wikia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since Germany is quite strict on ratings, after paranoia over violent video games, a number of the GTA games (since GTA III) have suffered cuts or edits. Some examples include: the removal of blood, pedestrians no longer dropping money when killed, no headshots, some missions removed, some weapons missing, or lack additional functionality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most countries that ban games, ban them because of depictions of violence. Some countries also ban games because of other content, like South Korea, which bans games that have content which reflects on North Korea to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;avoid increasing diplomatic tensions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;other reasons include nudity and sexuality, offensive to the culture, nationality or religion of the country and other various reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T18:58:13.557" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T18:58:13.557" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22007" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-17T11:45:57.710" Score="6" ViewCount="972" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2014/247218/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Methodological Issues and Evidence of Malfeasance in Research Purporting to Show Thimerosal in Vaccines Is Safe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is a study that questions the position of the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that thimerosal in vaccines is not linked to autism. It draws into question the methodologies used in six studies that it says the CDC based its views upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Considering that there are many studies conducted by independent researchers which show a relationship between Thimerosal and neurodevelopmental disorders, the results of the six studies examined in this review, particularly those showing the protective effects of Thimerosal, should bring into question the validity of the methodology used in the studies. A list of the most common methodological issues with these six studies is shown in Table 1. Importantly, other than the Hviid et al. [23] study, five of the publications examined in this review were directly commissioned by the CDC, raising the possible issue of conflict of interests or research bias, since vaccine promotion is a central mission of the CDC. Conceivably, if serious neurological disorders are found to be related to Thimerosal in vaccines, such findings could possibly be viewed as damaging to the vaccine program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there reason to believe that these studies are methodologically flawed? Are the provided objectives baseless?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20787" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T00:38:12.563" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T00:38:12.563" Title="Does this study show the CDC has covered up an autism/thimerosal link?" Tags="|medical-science|vaccines|autism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22007" CreationDate="2014-06-17T12:46:47.637" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a review that has taken into account pharmacokinetic and epidemiologic studies published between 2003 and 2008 and failed to prove a cause-effect relationship between thimerosal containing vaccines (TCV) and autism:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although immunization provides important benefits to public health, associated risks are inevitable. However, studies have consistently failed to identify a cause-effect relationship between thimerosal and autism. In addition, &lt;strong&gt;the prevalence of autism has increased despite a decrease in the thimerosal content of vaccines&lt;/strong&gt;; this finding further suggests that there is not an association between thimerosal and autism but that the increased prevalence of autism may be attributable to improved diagnostic criteria and increased awareness of autism. Despite failure to demonstrate an association, certain states continue to mandate that vaccines given to children contain no more than trace amounts of thimerosal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epidemiologic studies continue to provide evidence that there is no association between thimerosal exposure and autism. Whereas an infant younger than 6 months in 1999 could have been exposed to approximately 200 mcg of mercury derived from vaccines, the current amount is less than 3 mcg, if certain influenza vaccines are not included. Children should receive recommended immunizations to prevent serious disease. &lt;strong&gt;The known risks of serious complications from preventable infections&lt;/strong&gt;—e.g., influenza—&lt;strong&gt;outweigh the risks of adverse consequences from vaccines, including thimerosal containing vaccines&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; Anne M. Hurley, PharmD, Mina Tadrous, PharmD, MS, and Elizabeth S. Miller, PharmD. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3018252&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thimerosal-Containing Vaccines and Autism: A Review of Recent Epidemiologic Studies.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; J Pediatr Pharmacol Ther. 2010 Jul-Sep; 15(3): 173–181.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This eighth and final report of the Immunization Safety Review Committee examines the hypothesis that vaccines, specifically the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and thimerosal-containing vaccines, are causally associated with autism. The committee reviewed the extant published and unpublished epidemiological studies regarding causality and studies of potential biologic mechanisms by which these immunizations might cause autism. &lt;strong&gt;The committee concludes that the body of epidemiological evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism. The committee also concludes that the body of epidemiological evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism.&lt;/strong&gt; The committee further finds that potential biological mechanisms for vaccine-induced autism that have been generated to date are theoretical only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; Institute of Medicine (US) Immunization Safety Review Committee. Immunization Safety Review: Vaccines and Autism. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2004. Available from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25344/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK25344/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a study conducted in Poland that concludes the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conditional logistic regression was used to assess the risk of autism due to TCVs exposure. No significant association was found between TCVs exposure and autism. After adjusting to potential confounders, odds ratios of the risk of autism developing for infants vaccinated with TCVs were 1.52 (95% CI: 0.29-11.11) for doses 12.5-87.5 microg, 2.78 (95% CI: 0.29-11.11) for 100-137.5 microg and 1.97 (95% CI: 0.37-18.95) for these exposed &amp;gt; or = 150 microg. Our study revealed no evidence of an association between TCVs and autism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;  Mrozek-Budzyn D, Majewska R, Kiełtyka A, Augustyniak M. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22184954&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[Lack of association between thimerosal-containing vaccines and autism].&lt;/a&gt; Przegl Epidemiol. 2011;65(3):491-5. PubMed PMID: 22184954.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how did thimerosal get associated with autism? Well, it seems to be neurotoxic on cell cultures when glutathione levels are low (low glutathione is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14126/is-autism-in-children-frequently-due-to-low-glutathione-levels&quot;&gt;common situation in autism&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because mercury has a high affinity for thiol (sulfhydryl (-SH)) groups, the thiol-containing antioxidant, glutathione (GSH), provides the major intracellular defense against mercury-induced neurotoxicity. Cultured neuroblastoma cells were found to have lower levels of GSH and increased sensitivity to thimerosol toxicity compared to glioblastoma cells that have higher basal levels of intracellular GSH. Thimerosal-induced cytotoxicity was associated with depletion of intracellular GSH in both cell lines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;  James SJ, Slikker W, Melnyk S, New E, Pogribna M, Jernigan S. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15527868&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Thimerosal neurotoxicity is associated with glutathione depletion: protection with glutathione precursors.&lt;/a&gt; Neurotoxicology. 2005 Jan;26(1):1-8. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuro.2004.07.012&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1016/j.neuro.2004.07.012&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 15527868.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T21:15:43.923" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15200" CreationDate="2014-06-17T16:41:45.360" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several papers which support this claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;420 participants performed two self-report inventories assessing circadian type, as well as measures of intelligence from two psychometric batteries: CAM-IV and the ASVAB. The results indicate that, contrary to conventional folk wisdom, &lt;strong&gt;evening-types are &lt;em&gt;more likely&lt;/em&gt; to have higher intelligence scores&lt;/strong&gt;. This result is discussed in relation to current theories concerning the nature of human cognitive abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;  Roberts RD, Kyllonen PC. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11542922&quot;&gt;Morningness-eveningness and intelligence: early to bed, early to rise will likely make you anything but wise!&lt;/a&gt; Pers Individ Dif. 2000;27(6):1123-33. PubMed PMID: 11542922. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The psychophysiological data derived in this study &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;suggests&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; that &lt;strong&gt;evening types &lt;em&gt;typically&lt;/em&gt; outperform morning types&lt;/strong&gt; in various measures such working memory capacity and verbal intelligence simply because they invest more cognitive resources than morning types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;  Nowack K, van der Meer E. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24548429&quot;&gt;Impact of chronotype and time perspective on the processing of scripts.&lt;/a&gt; Int J Psychophysiol. 2014 May;92(2):49-58. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2014.02.004&quot;&gt;10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2014.02.004&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 24548429. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T16:41:45.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18504" CreationDate="2014-06-17T16:57:42.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to get an accurate value of fish biomass:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusive stock assessments of fish populations can be difficult to obtain. Ocean fisheries are particularly difficult to assess, as populations can be widely distributed, are frequently migratory, and can be affected by environmental conditions such as water temperature and current patterns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also there is the human element to assessment. A problem that ecologists have identified regarding measuring fishery populations is shifting base lines. When ecologists study declining populations, there is a tendency to judge the population based on the life-time memory of those who study the organisms. Older ecologists will remember the abundance of their youth and will assume this represents a normal population level. When a population has been declining over a period of decades or even centuries, this creates a skewed vision of the organisms' functioning role and carrying capacity within an ecosystem. To obtain a better understanding of declining fisheries, scientists have begun to look to history for answers regarding how much exploitation aquatic species have been subjected to over time, and what undepleted population levels may really have been. Some scientists and historians have suggested that it is necessary to look back at least as far as the Middle Ages to better understand what unexploited aquatic resources may have looked like.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; Carolyn Scearce. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csa.com/discoveryguides/fish/review.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;European Fisheries History: Pre-industrial Origins of Overfishing.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; 2009&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T16:57:42.983" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17514" CreationDate="2014-06-17T17:58:39.347" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. Evidence for pheromonal communication was found in mice. This kind of communication requires a pheromone and a sensory organ. There is no sensory organ in humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is more than 50 years since the term pheromone was proposed to label a category of chemical signals produced by one member of a species that elicit a definite response in another member of the same species. Since then, many pheromones have been identified in invertebrates, but the concept is less easily applied to vertebrates and especially to mammals. The problem is that robust pheromonal responses have proved &lt;strong&gt;difficult to identify in mammals&lt;/strong&gt;. Indeed, mammalian behavioral responses are so strongly modulated by context and learning that this has led some investigators to question whether mammalian pheromones really exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;  Brennan PA. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20504292&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;On the scent of sexual attraction.&lt;/a&gt; BMC Biol. 2010 Jun 3;8:71. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1741-7007-8-71&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1186/1741-7007-8-71&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 20504292. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pheromones are sensed using the vomeronasal receptors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In most species, there are two chemosensory systems, both located in the nasal cavity but physiologically and anatomically distinct. The main olfactory epithelium (MOE) is principally involved in the airborne odor perception, whereas the vomeronasal organ (VNO) of Jacobson in the detection of pheromones that are chemical compounds secreted or excreted by individuals of the same species (conspecifics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But humans do not posses this kind of sensors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The anatomical components of the VNO firstly developed in a tetrapod ancestor and led to the appearance of a rudimentary structure in amphibians that became highly organized in Squamata and in many mammalian orders as Didelphimorphia, Rodentia, and in primates (prosimians and New World monkeys). In contrast, &lt;strong&gt;VNO is virtually absent in&lt;/strong&gt; birds, bats, Old World monkeys, apes, and &lt;strong&gt;humans&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Francia S, Pifferi S, Menini A, et al. Vomeronasal Receptors and Signal Transduction in the Vomeronasal Organ of Mammals. In: Mucignat-Caretta C, editor. Neurobiology of Chemical Communication. Boca Raton (FL): CRC Press; 2014. Chapter 10. Available from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK200993/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK200993/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastActivityDate="2014-06-17T17:58:39.347" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22013" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-17T18:44:07.323" Score="15" ViewCount="2945" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/16/flow-immigrants-into-us-shows-no-signs-slowing-down/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fox News account of a recent influx of illegal immigrants at the US-Mexico border&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have been instructed by the &amp;quot;coyote&amp;quot; who ferried them across the river for an exorbitant fee – as much as $1,000 – to simply wait for the Border Patrol to pick them up. &lt;strong&gt;After processing, they will likely be given&lt;/strong&gt; a notice to appear before an immigration judge and &lt;strong&gt;a bus ticket to wherever in America they may have friends or relatives.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.vice.com/article/wave-of-unaccompanied-central-american-migrant-kids-overwhelms-us-holding-facilities&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;VICE News reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Border officials said they will keep concentrating on deporting unaccompanied minors. Some 6,000 young people were repatriated to Mexico in the first four months of the year, new figures show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“It’s just a matter of time before these kids leave,” said Will Jenkins, public affairs officer at Lackland Airforce Base in San Antonio, Texas — another compound that is housing minors. “All illegal immigrants get deported.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can't both be true.  Are illegal immigrants given a bus ticket to where they want to go?  Or are they all deported?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-01-10T21:28:33.013" Title="Do illegal immigrants in the US get a bus ticket to wherever they have family or friends?" Tags="|united-states|immigration|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22014" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-17T19:08:59.447" Score="5" ViewCount="214" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a study cited by Forbes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/06/16/the-highest-paid-ceos-are-the-worst-performers-new-study-says/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Highest-Paid CEOs Are The Worst Performers, New Study Says&lt;/a&gt;, the authors state (among other similar conclusions):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... the 5% of CEOs who were the highest paid, [...] their companies did 15% worse, on average, than their peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper in question is on SSRN: &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1572085&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Performance for Pay? The Relation Between CEO Incentive Compensation and Future Stock Price Performance&lt;/a&gt; It opens:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We find evidence that CEO pay is negatively related to future stock returns for periods up to &#xA;  three years after sorting on pay. For example, firms that pay their CEOs in the top ten percent of &#xA;  excess pay earn negative abnormal returns over the next three years of approximately -8%. The &#xA;  effect is stronger for CEOs who receive higher incentive pay relative to their peers. Our results &#xA;  appear to be driven by high-pay induced CEO overconfidence that leads to shareholder wealth &#xA;  losses from activities such as overinvestment and value-destroying mergers and acquisitions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We find evidence that CEO pay is negatively related to future stock returns for periods up to &#xA;  three years after sorting on pay. For example, firms that pay their CEOs in the top ten percent of &#xA;  excess pay earn negative abnormal returns over the next three years of approximately -8%. The &#xA;  effect is stronger for CEOs who receive higher incentive pay relative to their peers. Our results &#xA;  appear to be driven by high-pay induced CEO overconfidence that leads to shareholder wealth &#xA;  losses from activities such as overinvestment and value-destroying mergers and acquisitions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a question about the persuasiveness of the methods, quality of data, analysis and conclusions arising out of this study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Per the comment by @Oddthinking, I think a good answer to this question would examine the methodology of the paper, and identify any substantial failings e.g. (any of which may or may not be the case):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The sample size is too small&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The definition and identification of the control group, cohorts or peers is biased or cherry-picked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The sample is limited geographically, culturally or to a single legal jurisdiction e.g. USA-only&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any major weaknesses in the study? &lt;em&gt;Or, perhaps equivalently:&lt;/em&gt; How could it be improved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T15:27:13.320" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T15:27:13.320" Title="Does high CEO compensation correlate with poor performance?" Tags="|corporate-finance|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22015" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22016" CreationDate="2014-06-17T20:52:10.447" Score="12" ViewCount="10554" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friendsoffulham.com/forum/index.php?topic=8451.0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.friendsoffulham.com/forum/index.php?topic=8451.0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A82916067&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A82916067&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that Guillermo Ochoa has six fingers on his right hand. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DxH6y.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Guillermo Ochoa&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="914" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T07:56:11.340" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T02:38:14.010" Title="Does Guillermo Ochoa have six fingers on his right hand?" Tags="|anatomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22015" CreationDate="2014-06-17T21:30:03.943" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;No:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JkCVV.jpg&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Photograph from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.las5.mx/noticia/7478/memo-ochoa-no-tiene-pensado-regresar&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Memo Ochoa no tiene pensado regresar&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His first link had a photo too. Maybe this is photoshoped&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?site=&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;q=Guillermo+Ochoa+hand&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Other images of him&lt;/a&gt; show the usual number of fingers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.theprovince.com/2014/06/17/mexican-goalkeeper-guillermo-ochoa-does-not-have-six-fingers-on-his-right-hand/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Province reported&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mexican goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa does NOT have six fingers on his right hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that they're all photo-shopped; it's even possible that everything you see on the 'net is filtered/altered by the Illuminati before it reaches you: possible, but not probable, IMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T22:30:33.687" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T22:30:33.687" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-17T22:24:48.950" Score="3" ViewCount="352" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's a pressure point under your nose that, if you press it, temporarily stops the sneeze reflex.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AntiSneezeFinger&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AntiSneezeFinger&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of several places this is written about. Now, when I hear &quot;pressure point&quot;, I immediately get vigilant. However, supposedly, this doesn't have to do with homeopathic Qi, but rather on a nerve transmitting the sneezing impulse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;strong&gt;my&lt;/strong&gt; go-to method for preventing a sneeze. I'm curious whether it's simply due to the placebo effect, or if there is any truth to the explanations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10975" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T04:18:33.547" Title="Is there a pressure point under the nose that can eliminate the urge to sneeze?" Tags="|environmental-health|placebo|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22017" CreationDate="2014-06-17T23:24:11.490" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this first comprehensive review of the sneeze reflex in the English literature, there is no mention of how a sneeze might be suppressed. [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The sneeze reflex&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sneezing reflex may be divided into two phases. The first is a&#xA;  nasal or sensitive phase, following stimulation of the nasal mucosa by&#xA;  chemical or physical irritants. Many distal branches of trigeminal&#xA;  nerve terminate in the facial skin transmitting tactile, pain and&#xA;  temperature sensations, while some branches distribute in the nasal&#xA;  mucosal epithelium [Nishino, 2000]. These branches are myelinated&#xA;  sensory fibers of small diameter, which terminate with receptor&#xA;  endings. Some of these receptors are triggered by chemical stimuli&#xA;  while others are sensitive to tactile and mechanical stimuli [Nishino,&#xA;  2000]. Afferent neural stimuli are transmitted to the trigeminal&#xA;  ganglion via anterior ethmoidal, posterior nasal, infraorbital and&#xA;  ophthalmic branches of the trigeminal nerve [Wallois et al. 1991].&#xA;  Through the trigeminal ganglion the stimuli reach the sneezing center&#xA;  in the lateral medulla [Suranyi, 2001]. Upon reaching a threshold, the&#xA;  second phase – the efferent or respiratory phase – begins once a&#xA;  critical number of inspiratory and expiratory neuron has been&#xA;  recruited [Batsel and Lines, 1975]. This consists of eye closing, deep&#xA;  inspiration, and then a forced expiration with initial closing of the&#xA;  glottis, and increasing intrapulmonary pressure. The sudden dilatation&#xA;  of the glottis gives rise to an explosive exit of air through the&#xA;  mouth and nose, washing out mucosal debris and irritants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in addition to stimulation of the trigeminal nerve as documented above, there are other causes of sneezing as listed below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rhinitis&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Photic sneeze reflex (ACHOO syndrome)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Physical stimulations of the trigeminal nerve&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Central nervous system pathologies&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Psychogenic (intractable) sneezing&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Snatiation* reflex&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sexual ideation or orgasm&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus to interrupt the sneeze reflex before it reaches its explosive conclusion, one can try interfering with the causes by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;closing your eyes to suppress the photic sneeze reflex&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;further stimulate the trigeminal nerve by pinching parts of your face&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;cease sexual activity&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good luck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Songu M, Cingi C. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19617285&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sneeze reflex: facts and fiction.&lt;/a&gt; Ther Adv Respir Dis. 2009 Jun;3(3):131-41. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1753465809340571&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1177/1753465809340571&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 19617285. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/714420&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Medscape full text&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T04:18:33.547" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T04:18:33.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17514" CreationDate="2014-06-18T07:49:37.023" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;At present I don't think this question can be answered.  The science of chemo-signalling in humans is at its infancy, and a number of substances secreted by humans have been found that have an effect on others. For instance the odorous steroid compound 4,16-androstadien-3-one (androstadienone), found in axillary sweat causes a hypothalamic response in both men and women.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When exposed to the &quot;high&quot; androstadienone concentration, women showed&#xA;  stronger hypothalamic activation than men. By contrast, men showed&#xA;  more hypothalamic activation when exposed to the &quot;medium&quot;&#xA;  androstadienone concentrations in comparison to women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tears also appear to contain a chemosignal, which not unexpectedly are a turn off for both sexes: [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We found that merely sniffing negative-emotion-related odorless tears&#xA;  obtained from women donors induced reductions in sexual appeal&#xA;  attributed by men to pictures of women's faces. Moreover, after&#xA;  sniffing such tears, men experienced reduced self-rated sexual&#xA;  arousal, reduced physiological measures of arousal, and reduced levels&#xA;  of testosterone. Finally, functional magnetic resonance imaging&#xA;  revealed that sniffing women's tears selectively reduced activity in&#xA;  brain substrates of sexual arousal in men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There appears to be some gender differences in responses, so this one to fear was only found in females: [3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Facial electromyography was used in a double-blind experiment to&#xA;  measure in the receiver a partial reproduction of the state of the&#xA;  sender, controlling for the moderating influence of the sex of the&#xA;  sender and receiver. The results indicated that only female&#xA;  participants emulated the fearful state of the sender. The present&#xA;  study revealed a boundary condition for effective chemosignaling by&#xA;  reporting behavioral evidence of sexual asymmetry in olfactory&#xA;  communication via chemosignals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disgust can also be transmitted by chemosignals [4]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;disgust chemosignals evoked a disgusted facial expression and sensory&#xA;  rejection (decreased sniff magnitude, target-detection sensitivity,&#xA;  and eye scanning). These findings underline the neglected social&#xA;  relevance of chemosignals in regulating communicative correspondence&#xA;  outside of conscious access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However, the signal for sexual attraction/excitation has not yet been identified&lt;/strong&gt;, or should we say published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Burke SM, Veltman DJ, Gerber J, [..], Bakker J. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22815889&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Heterosexual men and women both show a hypothalamic response to the chemo-signal androstadienone.&lt;/a&gt; PLoS ONE. 2012 Jul 16;7(7):e40993. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0040993&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1371/journal.pone.0040993&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 22815889. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Gelstein S, Yeshurun Y, Rozenkrantz L, [..], Sobel N. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21212322&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Human tears contain a chemosignal.&lt;/a&gt; Science. 2011 Jan 14;331(6014):226-30. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1198331&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1126/science.1198331&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 21212322. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] de Groot JH, Semin GR, Smeets MA. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24588218&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chemical Communication of Fear: A Case of Male-Female Asymmetry.&lt;/a&gt; J Exp Psychol Gen. 2014 Mar 3. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0035950&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1037/a0035950&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 24588218. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[4] de Groot JH, Smeets MA, Kaldewaij A, [..], Semin GR. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23019141&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chemosignals communicate human emotions.&lt;/a&gt; Psychol Sci. 2012 Sep 27;23(11):1417-24. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797612445317&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1177/0956797612445317&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 23019141. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T07:49:37.023" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22020" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-18T10:39:09.213" Score="4" ViewCount="6357" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some Spanish language sites, including Facebook statuses and the Colombian National Daily &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-11836585&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;El Tiempo&lt;/a&gt; claim that Winston Churchill gave a quote that translates roughly as &amp;quot;those who kneel for peace get humiliation and war&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;El que se arrodilla para conseguir la paz se queda con la humillación y con la guerra&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Con esa frase, de Winston Churchill [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is used as a political argument against peace conversations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any reference that Churchill made that statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20798" LastEditorUserId="38403" LastEditDate="2022-04-17T18:00:43.317" LastActivityDate="2022-04-17T22:16:34.090" Title="Did Winston Churchill say &quot;those who kneel for peace get humiliation and war&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|winston-churchill|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22022" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-18T10:47:39.510" Score="17" ViewCount="1842" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.aljazeera.com/story/2014316184216390374&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Al Jazeera&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jose Miguel, president of the Institute of Legal Medicine, told Al Jazeera: &amp;quot;The most worrying thing is the intolerance and deep divisions within the population, so the biggest challenge for the new government is to reduce this polarisation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;John F Kennedy’s phrase about how you can win with half the people's votes but cannot govern with half against you, is particularly true in our country.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people on Facebook and &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/perpetuok/status/434438827109675008&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Tweet by @perpetuok, from 2014-02-14&quot;&gt;on Twitter&lt;/a&gt; have posted it, translated to Spanish as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Se puede ganar con la mitad, pero no se puede gobernar con la otra mitad en contra&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Kennedy say this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20798" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-07-28T14:39:41.493" Title="Did JFK say that &quot;you can win with half the people's votes but cannot govern with half against you&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|jfk|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22023" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-18T13:38:31.353" Score="15" ViewCount="4151" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldtruth.tv/&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On June 4, 1963, a virtually unknown Presidential decree, Executive&#xA;  Order 11110, was signed with the authority to basically strip the&#xA;  Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the United States&#xA;  Federal Government at interest. With the stroke of a pen, President&#xA;  Kennedy declared that the privately owned (and thus ILLEGALLY placed&#xA;  in control of our currency, 100 years ago) Federal Reserve Bank would&#xA;  soon be out of business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So did JFK sign EO 11110 on June 4, 1963 and did that order do as this site claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T17:33:30.880" Title="Did JFK Attempt to eliminate the power of the Federal Reserve Bank to loan money to the US?" Tags="|united-states|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22024" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="34985" CreationDate="2014-06-18T14:04:43.283" Score="5" ViewCount="901" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2016/07/28/overwhelming-evidence-that-obamacare-caused-premiums-to-increase-substantially/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; in Forbes says it did. Did they pick and choose their data, or is that an accurate assessment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ample Evidence Shows Average Premiums and Spending Exploded After ACA Implementation in 2014&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is important to look at data for several years after 2013 to assess the impact of the ACA, comparing individual market premiums in 2013 with those in 2014—the year its key changes took effect—provides an approximation of the initial change. The Manhattan Institute compared the average of the five least expensive pre-ACA plans in 2013 with the least expensive plans available on exchanges in 2014. Manhattan’s researchers adjusted the pre-ACA plan premiums upward to account for the population facing surcharges or denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. Manhattan estimated that the average state individual market premium increased 41% between 2013 and 2014. A county-level analysis suggested that premiums increased by 49%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13498" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-08-23T14:23:12.460" Title="Did the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) increase individual market premiums by an average of 49% nationwide?" Tags="|united-states|healthcare|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22023" CreationDate="2014-06-18T14:09:24.643" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, he signed it on June 4, 1963. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=59049&quot;&gt;text of the Executive Order&lt;/a&gt; can be found online:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SECTION 1. Executive Order No. 10289 of September 19, 1951, as&#xA;  amended, is hereby further amended --&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(a) By adding at the end of paragraph 1 thereof the following&#xA;  subparagraph (j):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;(j) The authority vested in the President by paragraph (b) of section&#xA;  43 of the Act of May 12, 1933, as amended (31 U.S.C. 821 (b)), to&#xA;  issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or&#xA;  standard silver dollars in the Treasury not then held for redemption&#xA;  of any outstanding silver certificates, to prescribe the denominations&#xA;  of such silver certificates, and to coin standard silver dollars and&#xA;  subsidiary silver currency for their redemption,&quot; and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(b) By revoking subparagraphs (b) and (c) of paragraph 2 thereof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SEC. 2. The amendment made by this Order shall not affect any act&#xA;  done, or any right accruing or accrued or any suit or proceeding had&#xA;  or commenced in any civil or criminal cause prior to the date of this&#xA;  Order but all such liabilities shall continue and may be enforced as&#xA;  if said amendments had not been made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I don't see anything in the text that would strip the Federal reserve of any power to loan money. Specifically, it only delegated &lt;em&gt;existing&lt;/em&gt; Presidential power to the Treasury Department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, Kennedy was vocal in his desire to &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/stream/EconomicReportOfThePresidentJanuary1963#page/n21/mode/2up&quot;&gt;stop using silver&lt;/a&gt; as a monetary metal, with a plan to &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=-q8fAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=LdcEAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=2964,4612588&quot;&gt;replace silver certificates&lt;/a&gt; with Federal Reserve notes. That would seem to be at odds with the claim that he was trying to put the Fed out of business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19407" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2014-06-18T17:33:30.880" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T17:33:30.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5360" CreationDate="2014-06-18T14:22:06.203" Score="15" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Is it (still) true?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Old question, just wanted to point out that at the very least Swiss trains are not exceptional by a European standard. The punctuality grade cited by Thursagen does not include either a year, nor a qualifier (e.g. 3 minute mark, 5 minute mark or even more).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, for Switzerland one can find for last year, 2013, the punctuality was 87.5% at the 3 minute mark, as per &lt;a href=&quot;http://genevalunch.com/2014/03/26/swiss-trains-slipped-slightly-timeliness/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://jalopnik.com/swiss-trains-are-not-completely-punctual-hell-also-fre-1499876989&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;. And for 2011, the original year of this question it was 89.9% as per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.informare.it/news/gennews/2012/20120592-SBB-risultati-finanziari-2011uk.asp&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;. Comparing that with another European nation with a similarly long rail track (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Federal_Railways&quot;&gt;3,138 km&lt;/a&gt; vs &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_the_Netherlands&quot;&gt;2809 km&lt;/a&gt;), The Netherlands, one will find punctuality rates of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treinreiziger.nl/actueel/binnenland/2013:_meer_klachten_en_slechtere_stiptheid_voor_ns-146023&quot;&gt;88.4%&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treinreiziger.nl/kennisnet/punctualiteit/punctualiteitscijfers/punctualiteiscijfers_ns_door_de_jaren_heen&quot;&gt;90,1%&lt;/a&gt; respectively). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Origin of the notion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching on I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treinreiziger.nl/kennisnet/punctualiteit/zwitserland_blijft_europees_kampioen_op_tijd_rijden-142272&quot;&gt;this Dutch article&lt;/a&gt; - describing the Swiss trains as the most punctual of Europe. - which seems to explain where this notion originates from: in the period surrounding 2007 it was indeed the case that the Swiss trains where more punctual than other European trains (although comparisons are made at the 5 minute mark, not the 3 minute mark). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Some thoughts&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally an interesting observation that needs to be made is that punctuality can be directly manipulated by allowing for greater or smaller leniency in the train schedule itself. In other words, if you have a train that has to wait for 5 minutes at every station it won't be hard to get a 100% punctuality, so train punctuality should in no way be taken as a qualifier for how good the train system in a nation is in the first place. Similarly Luxembourg has the highest train punctuality of Europe for the simple reason of having just a single rail track. Offsetting train punctuality against train speeds and waiting times is exceptionally hard however, but after having spend quite a bit of time reading about this in the past year I feel confident claiming that it works out to be extremely similar for most wealthy nations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18335" LastEditorUserId="18335" LastEditDate="2015-11-27T11:00:32.383" LastActivityDate="2015-11-27T11:00:32.383" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22028" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-18T14:49:28.703" Score="2" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;A thing I've often wondered is whether or not certain animals are immune to pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've often read about Naked Mole Rats being unable to feel pain. Also I thought about other animals like Jellyfish who actually don't really have a brain and thus shouldn't have a reaction to pain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are there any animals or let's just say lifeforms that aren't immobile that are actually completely unable to feel pain? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18504" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T14:49:28.703" Title="Are there animals that cannot feel pain?" Tags="|zoology|pain|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-06-18T15:29:11.797" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22029" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-18T17:23:55.460" Score="1" ViewCount="357" Body="&lt;p&gt;So far, I've been exposed to acupuncture as a version of &quot;traditional&quot; medicine that included all sorts of woo about the flow of energy, and claims along the lines of &quot;sticking a needle into this part here of your little toe will help you with liver ailments&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But when I last visit my physiotherapist for a muscle injury, she used acupuncture needles to increase blood flow into that muscle, and also claimed that it'd release a pain-relieving chemical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The muscles in my foot did indeed feel warm from that therapy, but I do know that warm feelings can be induced purely by the placebo effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, the claim of increasing blood flow via a pain response or maybe introduction of a foreign body doesn't sound as outlandish and makes no references to the usual woo of energy flows, chakras or other such stuff.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Does acupuncture increase blood flow?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1183" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T01:10:24.507" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T23:14:06.797" Title="Can acupuncture increase blood flow to a muscle?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|acupuncture|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5821" CreationDate="2014-06-18T21:15:20.887" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cause of diabetes appears to be a combination of a high fat diet in conjunction with reduced exercise.  Populations that have had historically high carbohydrate intake have not been prone to diabetes so this theory of a high white rice diet is likely incorrect without other factors being present.  The prevalence of diabetes in China in 1980 was estimated at &amp;lt; 1%, 2.5% in 1994, 5.5% in 2001, and 11.6% in 2013 [0] illustrating how dietary changes have impacted on disease prevalence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we look at animal studies where rats are fed high fat diets, we see:[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a high-fat diet that raises FFA results in a gradual increase in&#xA;  mitochondria in rat skeletal muscle, with an increase in the capacity&#xA;  for fat oxidation, concomitant with development of muscle insulin&#xA;  resistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skeletal muscle insulin resistance then facilitates the development of fatty liver during positive energy balance ( eating too much, not enough exercise ). [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Muscle insulin resistance determines the rate at which fatty liver&#xA;  progresses, and ectopic fat deposition in liver and islet underlies&#xA;  the related dynamic defects of hepatic insulin resistance and beta&#xA;  cell dysfunction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fatty liver leads to loss of response to insulin so that hepatic synthesis of glucose is no longer suppressed, and the higher levels of glucose induce higher levels of pancreatic insulin release.  The fatty liver also raises plasma triacylglycerols which in turn are toxic to pancreatic beta cells.  The accumulation of triacylglycerols in the pancreas, as well as the circulating high levels cause beta cell dysfunction which then leads to a fall in insulin release, and this allows an even higher rate of hepatic glucose synthesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rapid restoration of hepatic sensitivity to insulin following gastric bypass surgery shows that the process is potentially reversible in the early stages before permanent pancreatic beta cell failure occurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[0] Xu Y, Wang L, He J, [..], Ning G. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24002281&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prevalence and control of diabetes in Chinese adults.&lt;/a&gt; JAMA. 2013 Sep 4;310(9):948-59. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.2013.168118&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1001/jama.2013.168118&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 24002281. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Hancock CR, Han DH, Chen M, [..], Holloszy JO. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18509063&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;High-fat diets cause insulin resistance despite an increase in muscle mitochondria.&lt;/a&gt; Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2008 Jun 3;105(22):7815-20. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0802057105&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1073/pnas.0802057105&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 18509063. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Taylor R. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18726585&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes: tracing the reverse route from cure to cause.&lt;/a&gt; Diabetologia. 2008 Oct;51(10):1781-9. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00125-008-1116-7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1007/s00125-008-1116-7&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 18726585. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T22:41:39.280" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T22:41:39.280" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22032" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22013" CreationDate="2014-06-18T22:13:37.613" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, some illegal immigrants are bused from the border to various US cities, being released in the US on their own recognizance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Houston Chronicle&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Flow-of-border-immigrants-overwhelming-agencies-5520037.php&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; (in a subscribers-only article):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A little before noon on Friday, a white Homeland Security bus stopped outside a public bus terminal in downtown McAllen, its doors opening to disgorge a group of about 20 immigrants from Central and South America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly the &lt;em&gt;San Antonio Express-News&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.expressnews.com/news/local/article/Next-stop-for-immigrant-surge-bus-stations-5552963.php&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; much the same thing (again, subscribers only):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For weeks now, the Border Patrol has been dropping off hundreds of Central Americans at bus stations in the Rio Grande Valley as an unprecedented wave of immigrants pours across the southern tip of Texas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The caption to a photograph on that article states that the reason for these immigrants being released is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A wave of Central American adults with children and unaccompanied minors has overwhelmed U.S. Immigration and Customs detention centers. Immigration officials release some of them on their own recognizance after undergoing processing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some were transported at least as far as California. XETV-TDT &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sandiego6.com/news/local/Border-Patrol-dumps-undocumented-immigrants-in-Murrieta-until-city-leaders-put-a-stop-to-it-261923781.html&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The dropping off of undocumented immigrants from Texas began about eight months ago. At that point, the Border Patrol was either flying them or bussing them to Greyhound stations in Tucson and Phoenix. Even though they're both sizable cities, employees at the bus stations said they were being overwhelmed. Then, for reasons that aren't yet clear, the Border Patrol decided to start taking the immigrants to the Border Patrol station in Murrieta for processing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's called catch and release. We are out there catching people... they are arrested, sorry they are surrendering to agents in the Rio Grande Valley (in Texas) because they know they will be detained for maybe a few days, a few weeks at most and then they will be released,&quot; said Agent Shawn Moran, who is with the National Border Patrol Council, the union for Border Patrol agents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The immigrants are released and then given a date to show up in court. Agent Moran said that rarely happens. And he told San Diego 6 that Border Patrol stations in Murrieta and across the southwest are being overwhelmed. &quot;Many of these stations have ground to a halt in terms of operations because they are doing nothing but processing,&quot; said Moran. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Fox News article you provided claims that &quot;other than Mexicans&quot; are being treated in this manner, which appears to be true. Illegal Mexicans can be and are simply and easily passed back over the border, as the VICE article you provided claims. On the other hand, illegal immigrants from other countries are not so easy to deal with. As the Washington Post &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/central-american-migrants-overwhelm-border-patrol-station-in-texas/2014/06/12/7359534e-2e1b-4a6b-b010-f622f1cac3f0_story.html&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unlike illegal migrants from Mexico, who can be quickly processed and returned by bus to Mexican border cities, Central Americans cannot be easily shipped home. Airplanes must be chartered. Consular arrangements must be made. And if migrants request asylum in the United States, the U.S. government has the additional responsibility to determine whether their appeal is based on a legitimate need for protection and a “credible fear” of persecution in their home countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More than 36,000 migrants, the majority from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, requested asylum along the southwestern border during the government’s 2013 fiscal year, nearly triple the 2012 number. Ultimately, most of the applications were denied, but critics of the process say migrants are gaming the system to extend their stays in the United States. Others may simply go underground and ignore deportation orders if their petitions are rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7866" LastActivityDate="2014-06-18T22:13:37.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22033" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4695" CreationDate="2014-06-19T01:15:04.940" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;. The compressor motor will stall if you switch it off and on too quickly, resulting in an overload which can trip the circuit breaker and possibly overheat and damage the motor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A technical explanation of why this happens can be found at Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange: &lt;a href=&quot;https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/115886/why-do-refrigeration-compressors-stall-when-switched-off-and-on-quickly&quot;&gt;Why do refrigeration compressors stall when switched off and on quickly?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(disclosure: I asked this question)&lt;/em&gt; To quote &quot;horta&quot; there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The compressor compresses coolant on one side of a closed loop. If you shut off the compressor, you still have the load side of the closed loop full of pressurized coolant. That pressurized coolant makes it much more difficult to start the motor. A motor starting at 0 RPMs will want to draw large amounts of current. With an added load to the motor (pressurized coolant) the motor will draw excessive current and won't turn over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2730" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:33:07.107" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T01:30:51.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22034" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22035" CreationDate="2014-06-19T09:16:18.420" Score="9" ViewCount="2109" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I found a photo on facebook:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WPYXu.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And while I usually don't believe in these facebook &quot;Facts&quot; I took a second to think about it myself since I'm a person that speaks a few languages (we have 4 national languages in Switzerland). What really surprised me is that I could see some minor changes in my behavior when talking in a different language but it doesn't apply to every language I speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do people really change their personality based on the language they're talking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18504" LastActivityDate="2016-03-07T20:28:54.207" Title="Does talking in another language actually change your personality?" Tags="|psychology|language|behavior|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22034" CreationDate="2014-06-19T10:00:31.910" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, people don't actually change personality when talking in another language. Use of a second language accesses different cultural norms that activate appropriate behavioral expressions. Personality is taken to be what we are while behaviour is what we do &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Self-reports and behavioral observations confirmed the effects of perceived cultural norms, language priming, and interlocutor ethnicity on various personality dimensions. It is suggested that use of a second language accesses the perceived cultural norms of the group most associated with that language, especially its prototypic trait profiles, thus activating behavioral expressions of personality that are appropriate in the corresponding linguistic-social context &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.callofthewild.co.uk/library/theory/distinction-between-personality-and-behaviour/&quot;&gt;http://www.callofthewild.co.uk/library/theory/distinction-between-personality-and-behaviour/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Chen SX, Bond MH. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20944020&quot;&gt;Two languages, two personalities? Examining language effects on the expression of personality in a bilingual context.&lt;/a&gt; Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2010 Nov;36(11):1514-28. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0146167210385360&quot;&gt;10.1177/0146167210385360&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 20944020. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T10:50:21.050" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T10:50:21.050" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22036" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20025" CreationDate="2014-06-19T11:04:04.503" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an expansion to the answer given by DJClayworth above, since he quotes a less than relevant part of the law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The passage given by DJClayworth describes an afirmative defence against request under section 49 of the law quoted.  Section 49 is at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/49&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/23/section/49&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 49 states, among other things;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2)If any person with the appropriate permission under Schedule 2 believes, on reasonable grounds—&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(a)that a key to the protected information is in the possession of any person,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(b)that the imposition of a disclosure requirement in respect of the protected information is—&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(i)necessary on grounds falling within subsection (3), or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(ii)necessary for the purpose of securing the effective exercise or proper performance by any public authority of any statutory power or statutory duty,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(c)that the imposition of such a requirement is proportionate to what is sought to be achieved by its imposition, and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(d)that it is not reasonably practicable for the person with the appropriate permission to obtain possession of the protected information in an intelligible form without the giving of a notice under this section,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the person with that permission may, by notice to the person whom he believes to have possession of the key, impose a disclosure requirement in respect of the protected information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The language to note is &quot;on reasonable grounds&quot;.  IANAL, however I take this to mean that the police must have reason to believe that the noice on your hard drive is encrypted information connected to their &quot;proper performance&quot;; and that they must be able to demonstrate that reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short it's insufficient for the police to say &quot;Give me the key to this encrypted information&quot;.  It's insufficient for them to say &quot;Give me the key to this encrypted information because I believe it to be connected to the case I am working on&quot;.  They need to be able to say &quot;Give me the key to this encrypted information because I believe it to be connected to the case I am working on.  And I believe this because of ...&quot;.  I do not know what standards govern the things that go into the dots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they are able to do the above the sections contested by DJClayworth and Konrad Rudolph comes into play meaning that if you can show that you do not have the keys; for example if you can show that the &quot;encrypted data&quot; is in fact a recording of background astronomical noise, which you keep as a source of entrophy, you would not be liable to hand over the key because you are not in possesion of such a key. - For this you need to have sufficient evidence to cast doubt on the issue of you having the key, and for the police not to have evidence that you have to key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17996" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T11:04:04.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22037" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-19T11:57:33.040" Score="5" ViewCount="2317" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950)&lt;/em&gt; Alan Turing claims that &quot;the statistical evidence [for Extrasensory Perception], at least for telepathy, is overwhleming&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Google searches have largely turned up pseudo-scientific nonsense and I wondered if anyone here could point me in the direction of the statistical evidence Turing thought was &quot;overwhelming&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16328" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T19:02:15.303" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T19:02:15.303" Title="Did Alan Turing have &quot;overwhelming statistical evidence [for ESP], at least for Telepathy&quot;?" Tags="|esp|alan-turing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2014-06-19T12:21:17.403" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22038" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22020" CreationDate="2014-06-19T13:15:18.790" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/war-quotes.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The National Churchill Museum&lt;/a&gt; he said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace, and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1930, from his book &lt;em&gt;My Early Life&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which doesn't mean exactly the same thing but has a similar sentiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/neville-chamberlain-speech-1940.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a speech in Parliament&lt;/a&gt; he also said, Of his predecessor Chamberlain who made the notorious Munich Agreement with Hitler and subsequently announced &quot;peace for our time&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whatever else history may or may not say about these terrible, tremendous years, we can be sure that Neville Chamberlain acted with perfect sincerity according to his lights and strove to the utmost of his capacity and authority, which were powerful, to save the world from the awful, devastating struggle in which we are now engaged. This alone will stand him in good stead as far as what is called the verdict of history is concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it may be that Churchill's views on peacemakers were markedly different from what you might understand from the Spanish phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T13:30:53.933" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T13:30:53.933" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22002" CreationDate="2014-06-19T13:48:20.800" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is a Law, 202c StGB, which prohibits several things in relation to computer programs: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dejure.org/gesetze/StGB/202c.html&quot;&gt;http://dejure.org/gesetze/StGB/202c.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) Wer eine Straftat nach § 202a oder § 202b vorbereitet, indem er&#xA;        1.      (...)&#xA;    2.  Computerprogramme, deren Zweck die Begehung einer solchen Tat ist,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;herstellt, sich oder einem anderen verschafft, verkauft, einem anderen&#xA;  überlässt, verbreitet oder sonst zugänglich macht, wird mit&#xA;  Freiheitsstrafe bis zu einem Jahr oder mit Geldstrafe bestraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means: Who prepares a law violation as in § 202a and b, which is spying on data and catching foreign data by producing, organizing, selling, renting or spreading a program or giving access to such a program can be punished with jail or a monetary penalty. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In former times, only the concrete action was prohibited (202 a and b). In the discussion of the law in the parlament, which I followed in full length and discussed at multiple occasions, many experts argued that the possible victims of such programs need access to them to defend themselves. That the tool in itself isn't evil, only some uses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The parties which argued for the law didn't solve the conflict, that they wanted to restrict production and spreading of such tools in general for prophylactic reasons and the idea only to ban bad usage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem has now to be solved in court. The judges can refer in their decision not only to the text of the law, but to the protocols of the debate in the parlament to make a decision in the spirit of the law. AFAIK, the law is in force for about 5 years now, but got recently fresh attention by a commercially available hacking tool and the house search by police of many people, who ordered that tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there is not a definitive list of software which is affected by the law. The court has to rule in each single case.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T13:48:20.800" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5057" CreationDate="2014-06-19T16:59:11.413" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer... No!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Peterson (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2008&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pzGCV.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good summary of this topic can be found on the Skeptical Science site: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-intermediate.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s-intermediate.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20816" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T16:59:11.413" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6302" CreationDate="2014-06-19T17:14:31.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Mann (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/MannetalScience09.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2009&lt;/a&gt;), using roughly 1000 different proxy datasets:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4ZqHZ.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some recent temperatures via NOAA:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lxHC2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So according to a comparison of these data sources, it all depends on the location and the scale you are looking at. Were temperatures during the MWP &lt;em&gt;globally&lt;/em&gt; warmer than the modern warm period? Very likely not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20816" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T17:14:31.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21905" CreationDate="2014-06-19T18:42:58.837" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://rga.revues.org/328&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; seems to suggest that the Romans didn't have a specific term for glacier, but their travel writers did describe things that are plausibly glaciers.  This would imply that the claim &quot;Nowhere in the detailed travel accounts from Roman times are glaciers mentioned.&quot; is ill-informed if not actually factually incorrect.  This also implies that we can't expect to be able to unambiguously verify glacial extents from historical sources, and certainly can't use the absence of evidence that Schlüchter's claim is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean that Alpine glaciers were smaller in Roman times?  There seems to be some evidence that they were, e.g. Roman coins revealed by glacier retreat (reported by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7580294.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;), however that doesn't mean the Romans didn't traverse the glacier, rather than that it wasn't there, or that the glacier had not transported them from higher up the mountain.  However later in the article, we read &quot;The fact that we still find these 5,000-year-old pieces of leather tells us they were protected by the ice all this time, and that the glaciers have never been smaller than in the year 2003 and the years following.&quot;  which directly refutes the claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth noting that the BBC article also says &quot;The site is exactly at the point where the glacier responds most sensitively to short-term climate change and temperature variations,&quot; he explains. &quot;So if we get more carbon datings from this site, we can get the most precise picture of short-term glacier fluctuations for the past six or 7,000 years.&quot;.  This suggests we should be cautious in interpreting such regional changes in glaciers as strong evidence regarding global climate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T18:50:33.363" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T18:50:33.363" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22029" CreationDate="2014-06-19T22:57:46.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this small study of 14 healthy female subjects blood flow to skin and muscle was measured following acupuncture needle insertion: [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In randomised order, 2-7 days apart, three modes of needle stimulation&#xA;  were performed on the anterior aspect of the tibia: superficial&#xA;  insertion (SF), insertion into the anterior tibial muscle (Mu), and&#xA;  insertion into the muscle including manipulation of the needle in&#xA;  order to elicit a distinct sensation of distension, heaviness or&#xA;  numbness (DeQi).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blood flow in skin and muscle was measured non-invasively, &lt;strong&gt;increased blood flow to muscle was demonstrated:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IK2vR.png&quot; alt=&quot;blood flow with acupuncture&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compared to the control situation, muscle blood flow increased&#xA;  following both Mu and DeQi for 20 min, with the latter being more&#xA;  pronounced for the initial 5 min. Skin blood flow increased for 5 min&#xA;  following DeQi. However, no increase was found following SF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar study conducted on subjects with fibromyalgia found: [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, in FM patients subcutaneous needle insertion was followed by&#xA;  a significant increase in both skin and muscle blood flow, in contrast&#xA;  to findings in healthy subjects where no significant blood flow&#xA;  increase was found following the subcutaneous needling. The different&#xA;  results of subcutaneous needling between the groups (skin blood flow:&#xA;  p=0.008; muscle blood flow: p=0.027) may be related to a greater&#xA;  sensitivity to pain and other somatosensory input in FM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Sandberg M, Lundeberg T, Lindberg LG, Gerdle B. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12827364&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effects of acupuncture on skin and muscle blood flow in healthy subjects.&lt;/a&gt; Eur. J. Appl. Physiol. 2003 Sep;90(1-2):114-9. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00421-003-0825-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1007/s00421-003-0825-3&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 12827364. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Sandberg M, Lindberg LG, Gerdle B. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14987626&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peripheral effects of needle stimulation (acupuncture) on skin and muscle blood flow in fibromyalgia.&lt;/a&gt; Eur J Pain. 2004 Apr;8(2):163-71. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1090-3801(03)00090-9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1016/S1090-3801(03)00090-9&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 14987626. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-19T23:14:06.797" LastActivityDate="2014-06-19T23:14:06.797" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10479" CreationDate="2014-06-20T00:12:33.637" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was only able to find one study testing the Matrix Rhythm method. [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study was carried out in the Burn and Wound Treatment Department&#xA;  of Dr. Lütfi Kırdar Kartal Education and Research Hospital in Istanbul&#xA;  between October 2010 and August 2011. A treatment protocol including&#xA;  whirlpool, MRT and exercise was applied to a group of patients who had&#xA;  burn injury of upper extremity. The evaluation of each patient&#xA;  included assessment of pain, range of motion, muscle strength, skin&#xA;  flexibility and sensory function at pre- and post-treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract there does not appear to be any control patients.  And their results are nothing to speak of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was no significant difference in values of pain, muscle strength&#xA;  and flexibility between pre- and post-treatment assessments (p&gt;0.05).&#xA;  A significant increase was found in the range of motion and sensory&#xA;  function at pre-treatment according to post-treatment (p&amp;lt;0.01).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;we don't have evidence of efficacy&lt;/strong&gt; from this small uncontrolled study,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Sarı Z, Polat MG, Ozgül B, [..], Yurdalan SU. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24503181&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The application of matrix rhythm therapy as a new clinical modality in burn physiotherapy programmes.&lt;/a&gt; Burns. 2014 Aug;40(5):909-14. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.burns.2013.11.009&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1016/j.burns.2013.11.009&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 24503181. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T00:12:33.637" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22052" CreationDate="2014-06-20T06:37:01.453" Score="7" ViewCount="2211" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading articles on the Moon and I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.astronomy.com/news-observing/ask%20astro/1999/03/ive%20heard%20that%20the%20moon%20is%20moving%20away%20from%20earth%20by%20about%20an%20inch%2025%20cm%20each%20year%20why%20is%20this%20happening&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; which states that the Moon moves away from Earth at the rate of 2.5 CM/Year whereas in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space.com/3373-earth-moon-destined-disintegrate.html&quot;&gt;other article&lt;/a&gt; it states that it moves away at the rate of 1.6 Inches (4 CM)/Year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the moon moving away? Did they prove this behavior? If yes, than what's the real rate of moving?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20822" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T14:07:08.997" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T14:07:08.997" Title="Is our moon moving away from earth?" Tags="|physics|moon|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22050" CreationDate="2014-06-20T07:15:58.473" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;They use laser ranging to determine the distance of the moon (&lt;a href=&quot;http://physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/apollo/apollo.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/apollo/apollo.html&lt;/a&gt;). They bounce Earth-based lasers off of reflectors left on the moon by the Apollo astronauts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/J5Qi0.jpg&quot; width=&quot;450&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Measurements show that the Moon is receding from Earth at a rate of about 3.8 centimeters per year.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/ApolloLaser.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEhelp/ApolloLaser.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the original paper publishing the results: &lt;a href=&quot;http://physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/apollo/doc/Dickey.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://physics.ucsd.edu/~tmurphy/apollo/doc/Dickey.pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This level of accuracy is possible because they are bouncing a laserbeam off of mirrors on the moon. They know how fast light travels. They know the geometry of the beam's path. So, they can work out the Earth-moon distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T07:40:22.043" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T07:40:22.043" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22054" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22056" CreationDate="2014-06-20T14:41:11.727" Score="1" ViewCount="298" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a follow-up to a question I asked on &lt;a href=&quot;https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/33359/what-us-law-requires-a-bank-to-reopen-a-closed-account-if-a-third-party-sends-mo&quot;&gt;Money.se&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The credit union cited the Automated Clearing House regulations as the reason they reopened my closed account when a third party tried to send money to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16638" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:25:35.707" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T14:18:38.523" Title="Do financial institutions have a legal obligation to reopen a closed account if money is sent to that account?" Tags="|united-states|law|banking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2014-06-20T15:41:05.713" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22055" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-20T15:34:39.973" Score="3" ViewCount="515" Body="&lt;p&gt;A commonly held theory and an often-used argument in favour of the possession of nuclear weapons is that it deters foreign states from military threats against vital interests.  For example, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterrence_theory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;deterrence theory&lt;/a&gt; on Wikipedia, which has plenty of references to further sources.  As a more specific example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/maintaining-an-effective-independent-nuclear-deterrent/supporting-pages/uk-nuclear-deterrence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UK government policy states&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UK nuclear deterrence policy consists of 5 main principles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;preventing attack - the UK’s nuclear weapons are not designed for military use during conflict but instead to deter and prevent nuclear blackmail and acts of aggression against our vital interests that cannot be countered by other means&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which means that the UK government expects that they do have a deterrent effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any quantitative evidence that a nuclear capability deters foreign states from threatening vital interests?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answers should refer to studies that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quantitatively&lt;/strong&gt; compare military aggression (threats or actual violence) to vital interests of nuclear vs. non-nuclear states&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Quantitatively&lt;/strong&gt; compare military aggression (threats or actual violence) to vital interests of states before or after they became nuclear powers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vital interests would be interests that threaten the functioning of a state.  For example, the government would be a vital interest.  A vital interest is not a small outlying territory, such as the UK's Falkland Islands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_states&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of nuclear states&lt;/a&gt; includes major military powers such as the USA, China, Russia, but also lesser powers such as India, Pakistan, and North Korea.  Other major powers, such as Germany and Japan, do not have (their own) nuclear weapons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T19:22:09.320" Title="Does nuclear deterrence work?" Tags="|military|nuclear-weapons|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="17" ClosedDate="2014-06-21T07:48:21.147" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22056" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22054" CreationDate="2014-06-20T15:47:17.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magazine/2012/08/attack-of-the-zombie-bank-account/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Consumer Reports&lt;/a&gt; did a study on this in 2012, and found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...two of the nation’s 10 largest retail banks, Bank of America and&#xA;  Chase, reserved the right to reopen a closed account if there was a&#xA;  subsequent deposit; and Bank of America might also reopen an account&#xA;  after an attempted withdrawal. Chase told us later that it no longer&#xA;  reopens closed accounts, but it had not amended its policy online as&#xA;  of June.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it appears that while some banks will do this, it probably isn't a legal requirement (otherwise they all should comply). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've looked over the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metcapbank.com/2013_Corporate_Rules_and_Guidelines.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2013 NACHA Operating Rules and Guidelines&lt;/a&gt; as well, and didn't see anything that requires this action. Whether this has changed (either before or after 2013) I don't know, and I couldn't find a non-paywalled 2014 version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; have an explicit return code (R02) for &quot;Account Closed&quot;, which leads me to believe that is a valid reason for a bank to &lt;em&gt;reject&lt;/em&gt; a payment, rather than being forced to reopen the account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19407" LastEditorUserId="19407" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T15:52:38.520" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T15:52:38.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22058" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22065" CreationDate="2014-06-20T20:15:03.530" Score="12" ViewCount="24845" Body="&lt;p&gt;In her &lt;a href=&quot;http://cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/barbara-boland/unusual-answer-panelist-receives-standing-ovation-benghazi-coalition&quot;&gt;recent response&lt;/a&gt; to a Muslim student (Saba Ahmed), &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigitte_Gabriel&quot;&gt;Brigitte Gabriel&lt;/a&gt; has stated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world today. Of course not all of them are radicals. The majority of them are peaceful people. &lt;strong&gt;The radicals are estimated to be between 15-25% [of the Muslim population] according to all intelligence services around the world.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Are there any stats that could back her up? This number seems very high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18368" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-21T03:23:40.127" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T14:46:37.773" Title="Have multiple intelligence services estimated that 15-25% of the Muslim population are &quot;radical&quot;?" Tags="|islam|terrorism|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22059" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-20T20:45:53.547" Score="2" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today I had lunch in a small Mexican taco place, and they had hanging, in the middle of the room, two clear plastic bags filled with water:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5i4MO.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked the reason for the hanging bags of water, and was told it's intended to scare flies away.  Allegedly, the combined effects of make-shift prism, along with a fly's compound eye, alters the flies' perception of... something (??) such that they are confused, or frightened, or otherwise repelled from the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It strikes me as a completely ridiculous claim, but it's clearly taken as serious enough that someone actually went to the effort of hanging mistletoe-like water bags, and the friend I was with was also familiar with the old wive's tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there any reason to think that bags in this configuration would repel flies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T20:45:53.547" Title="Do plastic bags of water deter flies?" Tags="|biology|entomology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-06-22T01:27:17.233" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22060" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22063" CreationDate="2014-06-20T21:03:02.737" Score="3" ViewCount="670" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard this rumor today and I was wondering if there is any truth to it. I guess there are two parts to it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did Thomas Jefferson have a slave master named Tom/Thom/Thomas Jenkins?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Was the Jenkins CI server named after this person?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to research this but came up with conflicting information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20835" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T21:44:11.200" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T22:19:18.293" Title="Was the Jenkins Continuous Build Integration server named after Tom Jenkins, Thomas Jefferson's slave master?" Tags="|history|united-states|slavery|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22058" CreationDate="2014-06-20T21:28:31.363" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.loonwatch.com/2009/04/a-case-study-in-sincere-hypocrisy-brigitte-gabriel/&quot;&gt;A Case Study in Sincere Hypocrisy: Brigitte Gabriel&lt;/a&gt; claims that she defines a &quot;radical muslim&quot; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... a practising Muslim who goes to mosque every Friday, prays five times a day, and who believes that the Koran is the word of God, and who believes that Mohammed is the perfect man and (four inaudible words) is a radical Muslim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find the original quote online; the existence of this definition is also alleged by a New York Times editor, who &lt;a href=&quot;http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/a-radical-islamophobe/?_php=true&amp;amp;_type=blogs&amp;amp;_r=0&quot;&gt;wrote here&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A blog on The Australian Jewish News quoted Gabriel as saying last year, “Every practicing Muslim is a radical Muslim.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T21:28:31.363" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22058" CreationDate="2014-06-20T21:35:10.647" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is, at best, very poorly stated. No external sources are necessary to prove this.  Consider the following quotes from the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world today. Of course not all of them are radicals. The majority of them are peaceful people. The radicals are estimated to be between 15-25% according to all intelligence services around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claimant is drawing a line between &quot;peaceful&quot; Muslims and &quot;radical&quot; Muslims, claiming that 15-25% are radicals, while the others are peaceful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is re-enforced two paragraphs later:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;So why should we worry about the radical 15-25%? Because it is the radicals that kill. Because it is the radicals that behead and massacre,&quot; Gabriel said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the claim is that 15-25% of 1.2 billion Muslims participate in beheadings and massacres.  That's 180,000,000 - 300,000,000 Muslims who are supposedly involved in beheadings and massacres.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless we are going to assume a huge media cover-up of Muslim-initiated beheadings and massacres, there simply are not enough beheadings and massacres to involve that many perpetrators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although that doesn't mean there's not some element of truth to such a claim--it only means the claim is made in very sloppy terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/010556.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This post&lt;/a&gt; summarizes an article in &lt;em&gt;The Weekly Standard&lt;/em&gt;, which in turn summarizes a book by John Esposito and Dalia Mogahed, which analyzes this issue, and includes the result of its own study, which defines a radical Muslim as &lt;code&gt;those who say the 9/11 attack was “completely justified,”&lt;/code&gt;, and this group &lt;code&gt;comprises 6.5 percent of the sample.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can find no evidence to support (or contradict) the claim that &quot;world wide intelligence services&quot; support her 15-25% claim, but I stand by my belief that this is a meaningless claim anyway, as &quot;intelligence service&quot; is far too vague or ambiguous to possibly be meaningful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR&lt;/strong&gt; The specific claim is confused, but with a properly-conducted survey, with meaningful definitions, we can determine how many Radical Muslims there are, and one such study found that number to be 6.5%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T22:20:51.413" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T22:20:51.413" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22060" CreationDate="2014-06-20T21:50:19.687" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://jenkins-ci.org/content/hudsons-future&quot;&gt;stated reason&lt;/a&gt; the name Jenkins was chosen is because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... the choice for a new name is Jenkins, which we think evokes the same sort of English butler feel as Hudson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No official recognition of a slave by the name Jenkins is made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any further claim that the true/hidden reason has to do with a slave would be a question of motivation, and therefore off-topic here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-06-20T22:19:18.293" LastActivityDate="2014-06-20T22:19:18.293" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22058" CreationDate="2014-06-21T07:45:30.117" Score="10" Body="&lt;h1&gt;The numbers are realistsic ...&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't found sources for the whole world yet, however the numbers presented are not that surprising given that 2/3 of Western European Muslims can be considered fundamentalist or radical believers, according to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wzb.eu/en/press-release/islamic-fundamentalism-is-widely-spread&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2013 poll&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author analyzed data from a representative survey among immigrants and natives in six European countries. Two thirds of the Muslims interviewed say that religious rules are more important to them than the laws of the country in which they live. Three quarters of the respondents hold the opinion that there is only one legitimate interpretation of the Koran.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;... but misused&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key problem in the original statement is the not-so-subtle indication that fundamentalists are all potentially violent terrorists, but that's not how it goes. By the same definition a Catholic nun is probably a Catholic fundamentalist, but not necessarily a commando-style terrorist!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More interesting information which I've found is this document: it has no numbers but it's a really interesting description of all the facets of Islamic radicalization, and you might find it useful: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/doc_centre/terrorism/docs/ec_radicalisation_study_on_ideology_and_narrative_en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Studies into violent radicalisation -- The beliefs ideologies and narratives&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-21T07:45:30.117" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22068" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-21T17:23:57.513" Score="6" ViewCount="642" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard of the following procedure intended to make water cleaner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put a pot of water in the freezer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After a few hours the water will be partly frozen. Discard the ice. Keep the liquid in the freezer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After a few more hours the water will be, again, partly frozen. Discard the liquid. Then melt the remaining ice and use it for drinking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what &lt;em&gt;cleaner&lt;/em&gt; means, considering that tap water is perfectly good for drinking where I live. Although it seems reasonable that different solubles would have different concentrations in ice and in remaining liquid, possibly depending on mass or solubility. On the other hand I see no reason why this would discard more harmful substances than useful ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can concentrations of solubles be significantly altered using such method? Can these changes have an effect on the quality of water?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17897" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T02:57:46.800" Title="Can freezing make water cleaner?" Tags="|environmental-health|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22069" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28053" CreationDate="2014-06-21T19:29:06.017" Score="26" ViewCount="1436" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've come across several sources claiming that the US is more tolerant of trial-and-error than other cultures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;em&gt;The Black Swan&lt;/em&gt; by Nassim Nicholas Taleb) &quot;American culture encourages the process of failure, unlike the cultures of Europe and Asia where failure is met with stigma and embarrassment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20041320&quot;&gt;a BBC article&lt;/a&gt;) &quot;The US has a culture tolerant of failure, driven by individual passion.&quot; (Implied contrast with the situation in China.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalreview.com/article/370549/failing-well-american-way-michael-barone&quot;&gt;a book review of &lt;em&gt;The Upside of Down&lt;/em&gt; by Megan McArdle&lt;/a&gt;) &quot;America succeeds because Americans fail and forgive.&quot; &quot;The U.S. has the most accessible bankruptcy laws in the world.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbr.cam.ac.uk/pdf/WP334.pdf&quot;&gt;a single academic article&lt;/a&gt; on this topic (from the University of Cambridge), which has a more nuanced view, distinguishing between &quot;failure tolerance&quot; and &quot;second chancing&quot;. Are there any other credible sources that discuss the attitude towards failure in different cultures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20840" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T20:40:03.740" Title="Is the US more tolerant of failure than other cultures?" Tags="|united-states|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22058" CreationDate="2014-06-22T07:03:27.503" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That 15%-25% range seems reasonable&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without an exact definition, it is difficult to say. From the same article though, Saba Ahmed asks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;But my question is how can we fight an ideological war with weapons? How can we ever end this war? The jihadist ideology that you talk about - it's an ideology. How can we ever end this thing if we don't address it ideologically?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that Brigitte Gabriel was speaking of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jihadist&quot;&gt;jihadist&lt;/a&gt;, that are fighting a war to defend or spread their Muslim beliefs. With that definition, we &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-religion-and-politics/&quot;&gt;can look&lt;/a&gt; at some of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2013/09/Pew-Global-Attitudes-Project-Extremism-Report-Final-9-10-135.pdf&quot;&gt;the polls&lt;/a&gt; by the Pew Research Center &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/&quot;&gt;regarding support&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pewglobal.org/2013/09/10/muslim-publics-share-concerns-about-extremist-groups/&quot;&gt;suicide bombing&lt;/a&gt;. They have been performing this poll of Muslims in various countries since 2002, with some variation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pewforum.org/files/2013/04/worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-topline1.pdf&quot;&gt;the question&lt;/a&gt; below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Q89. Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies... Do you personally feel that this kind of violence is:&quot; [blank] justified&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results of those polls fluctuate quite a bit &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pewglobal.org/files/2013/09/Pew-Global-Attitudes-Project-Extremism-Report-Final-9-10-135.pdf&quot;&gt;from year-to-year&lt;/a&gt;. For example, Indonesia fluctuated from %10-15% most years, with the Spring 2013 percentages listed below being an outlier. With Indonesia representing almost 13% of the world Muslim population, differences like that and the margin of error of +/-4% can make a big difference. The table below lists &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_by_country&quot;&gt;% [of world Muslim population]&lt;/a&gt; and Total % of Muslims worldwide that support suicide bombings against civilians in defense of Islam (I.e. the product of Muslims that answer Often/Sometimes suicide bombings are justified and that countries ratio of all Muslims.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                                          Don't|Often&#xA;                       Some-              Know/|/Some&#xA;Country    |  % |Often|times|Rarely|Never| Ref.|Total&#xA;-----------+----+-----+-----+------+-----+-----+-----&#xA;Albania    | 0.2|  2  |  4  | 10   | 82  |  3  | 0.012&#xA;Bosnia     | 0.1|  1  |  2  | 10   | 86  |  1  | 0.003&#xA;Kosovo     | 0.1|  2  |  9  | 11   | 71  |  7  | 0.011&#xA;Russia     | 1.0|  1  |  3  |  4   | 86  |  7  | 0.04&#xA;Azerbaijan | 0.5|  0  |  1  |  5   | 91  |  3  | 0.005&#xA;Kazakhstan | 0.5|  0  |  2  |  2   | 93  |  3  | 0.01&#xA;Kyrgyzstan | 0.3|  1  |  9  | 16   | 66  |  8  | 0.03&#xA;Tajikistan | 0.4|  1  |  2  |  9   | 76  | 12  | 0.012&#xA;Turkey     | 4.6|  3  | 12  |  8   | 70  |  8  | 0.69&#xA;Indonesia  |12.7|  2  |  5  | 11   | 81  |  1  | 0.889&#xA;Malaysia   | 1.1|  3  | 15  | 10   | 64  |  9  | 0.198&#xA;Afghanistan| 1.2| 18  | 21  | 18   | 40  |  4  | 0.468&#xA;Bangladesh | 9.2|  9  | 17  | 20   | 51  |  3  | 2.392&#xA;Pakistan   |11.0|  4  |  9  |  3   | 77  |  6  | 1.43&#xA;Egypt      | 4.9| 11  | 18  | 28   | 40  |  3  | 1.421&#xA;Iraq       | 1.9|  3  |  4  |  8   | 83  |  3  | 0.133&#xA;Jordan     | 0.4|  4  | 11  | 29   | 53  |  3  | 0.06&#xA;Morocco    | 2.0|  5  |  4  |  6   | 68  | 16  | 0.18&#xA;Palestinian| 0.3| 18  | 22  | 15   | 34  | 10  | 0.12&#xA;Tunisia    | 0.6|  5  |  7  | 11   | 73  |  5  | 0.072&#xA;           |52.2|                              | 8.176&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the countries that were polled, which represent half of all Muslims worldwide, 15.66% of those Muslims admitted to pollsters that it is justified to use suicide bombs against civilians to defend Islam. These &quot;radial Islamist&quot; would account for 8.176% of all jihadists worldwide. The low figure of the range seems reasonable, but the chart above is missing some notable countries with large Muslim populations Nigeria (4.7%) and India (10.9%). Pew hasn't polled India to my knowledge, but Nigeria has and the results were wildly different for radical Islamists (8% 2013 and 34% 2010).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T07:03:27.503" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22073" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-22T13:36:15.623" Score="38" ViewCount="3901" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Ridley&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Matt Ridley,&lt;/a&gt; the science writer who is often grouped with global warming skeptics and denialists despite asserting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;man-made climate change is real&lt;/em&gt; but not likely to do much harm, let alone prove to be the greatest crisis facing humankind this century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;recently wrote an article in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://business.financialpost.com/2014/06/19/ipcc-climate-change-warming/?__federated=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Financial Post&lt;/a&gt; (also reproduced with extra references on his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-absurd-assumptions-behind-dangerous-climate-change.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;) that argued that the most extreme of the IPCC future climate models was based on implausible assumptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He asserts (my italics):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IPCC commissioned four different models of what might happen to the world economy, society and technology in the 21st century and what each would mean for the climate, given a certain assumption about the atmosphere’s “sensitivity” to carbon dioxide. &lt;em&gt;Three of the models show a moderate, slow and mild warming&lt;/em&gt;, the hottest of which leaves the planet just 2 degrees Centigrade warmer than today in 2081-2100. The coolest comes out just 0.8 degrees warmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now two degrees [above pre-indistrial levels] is the threshold at which warming starts to turn dangerous, according to the scientific consensus. That is to say, &lt;em&gt;in three of the four scenarios considered by the IPCC, by the time my children’s children are elderly, the earth will still not have experienced any harmful warming, let alone catastrophe.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But what about the fourth scenario? This is known as RCP8.5, and it produces 3.5 degrees of warming in 2081-2100 [or 4.3 degrees above pre-industrial levels].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He then proceeds to challenge the plausibility of RPC8.5, concluding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the one thing we can say about RCP8.5 is that it is very, very implausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this assertion a correct characterisation of the RPC8.5 model's assumptions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supplementary question: is he correctly characterising the nature of the other future economy/climate models used by the IPCC?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorDisplayName="user11643" LastEditDate="2021-11-29T07:11:04.203" LastActivityDate="2021-11-29T07:11:04.203" Title="Is Matt Ridley's assertion that the most extreme of the IPCC climate projections is based on very implausible assumptions correct?" Tags="|climate-change|forecasting|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22074" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-22T14:21:25.113" Score="11" ViewCount="1608" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read an article in the Spanish newspaper &lt;a href=&quot;http://hoy.com.do/fanatica-de-las-selfies-un-estudio-asegura-que-te-falta-sexo/&quot;&gt;Hoy&lt;/a&gt; (not a great source for scientific knowledge) and that says (translated by me):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are you a fan of selfies? Well, a study made by a Dutch researcher, Christyntjes Van Gallagher, from Wageninge University, discovered that excessive selfies are a cry for help from people who feel sexually abandoned (...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the article, the study is called: &quot;Het van fotograferen ontbering en eenzaamheid&quot;, but sadly, I haven't been able to find a well respected source (or at least, the study per se). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does this study actually exist? or, at least, is it true what it's been claimed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18432" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T21:40:41.850" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T19:46:47.017" Title="Are excessive selfies a &quot;cry for help&quot; from &quot;sexually abandoned&quot; people?" Tags="|sexuality|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22076" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22073" CreationDate="2014-06-22T16:23:21.510" Score="42" Body="&lt;h3&gt;The RCPs&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/rcp.php?t=3&quot;&gt;http://www.skepticalscience.com/rcp.php?t=3&lt;/a&gt; for a summary of the assumptions behind each of the projections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RCP 8.5 was developed using the  MESSAGE model and  the IIASA&#xA;  Integrated Assessment Framework by  the International  Institute  for &#xA;  Applied  Systems  Analysis  (IIASA),  Austria.  This  RCP  is&#xA;  characterized by increasing greenhouse gas emissions over time,&#xA;  representative of scenarios in the literature that lead to high&#xA;  greenhouse gas concentration levels (Riahi et al. 2007).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RCP6 was developed by the AIM modeling team at the National Institute&#xA;  for Environmental Studies (NIES) in Japan. It is a stabilization&#xA;  scenario in which total radiative forcing is stabilized shortly after&#xA;  2100, without overshoot, by the application of a range of technologies&#xA;  and strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions (Fujino et al.&#xA;  2006; Hijioka et al. 2008).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RCP 4.5 was developed by the GCAM modeling team at the Pacific&#xA;  Northwest National Laboratory’s  Joint Global Change Research&#xA;  Institute (JGCRI) in the United States. It is a stabilization scenario&#xA;  in which total radiative forcing is stabilized shortly after 2100,&#xA;  without overshooting the long-run radiative forcing target level&#xA;  (Clarke et al. 2007; Smith and Wigley 2006; Wise et al. 2009).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RCP2.6 was developed by the IMAGE modeling team of the PBL Netherlands&#xA;  Environmental Assessment Agency. The emission pathway is&#xA;  representative of scenarios in the literature that lead to very low&#xA;  greenhouse gas concentration levels. It  is a “peak-and-decline” &#xA;  scenario; its radiative forcing level first reaches a value of around&#xA;  3.1 W/m2  by mid-century, and returns to 2.6 W/m2  by 2100. In order to reach such radiative forcing levels, greenhouse gas emissions (and&#xA;  indirectly emissions of air pollutants) are reduced substantially,&#xA;  over time (Van Vuuren et al. 2007a). (Characteristics quoted from van&#xA;  Vuuren et.al. 2011)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The projections&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Matt Ridley's assertion that only one of the four scenarios predicts a temperature change of greater than two degrees (above pre-industrial levels) is false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Table 12.3 of the IPCC makes this explicit. The probability that there will be temperature changes (with reference to the time period 1850-1900) greater than 2°C by the time period 2081-2100 under each of the four models is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RCP2.6: 22%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RCP4.5: 79%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RCP6.0: 100%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;RCP8.5: 100%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IPCC report summarizes this as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on this assessment, global mean&#xA;  temperatures averaged in the period 2081–2100 are projected to&#xA;  likely exceed 1.5°C above 1850-1900 for RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5&#xA;  (high confidence). They are also likely to exceed 2°C above 1850-1900&#xA;  for RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 (high confidence) and more likely than not&#xA;  to exceed 2°C for RCP4.5 (medium confidence). Temperature change&#xA;  above 2°C under RCP2.6 is unlikely but is assessed only with medium&#xA;  confidence as some CMIP5 ensemble members do produce a global&#xA;  mean temperature change above 2°C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even comparing against the temperature from 1986-2005 (IPCC Table 12.2), both RCP6.0 and RCP8.0 have mean projected increases by 2081-2100 of 2.2°C and 3.7°C respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Ridley uses inconsistent baselines&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find his comparison to be sloppy science. He mentions how much the models will result in temperatures being &quot;&lt;em&gt;warmer than today&lt;/em&gt;&quot;. Then, he switches baselines in the next sentence when he says &quot;Now two degrees [above pre-indistrial levels] is the threshold at which warming starts to turn dangerous, according to the scientific consensus.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is misleading to cite projected differences from today and then compare those differences to a threshold based on differences from pre-industrial temperatures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is definitely aware of this baseline discrepancy, because he added the words &quot;[above pre-indistrial levels]&quot; (sic) to the quote when he reproduced it on his blog.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-06-22T16:43:13.833" LastActivityDate="2014-06-22T16:43:13.833" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22068" CreationDate="2014-06-23T12:09:12.493" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia explains that this technique of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_freezing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fractional freezing&lt;/a&gt; can be used for desalination:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fractional freezing can be used to desalinate sea water. In a process that naturally occurs with sea ice, frozen salt water, when partially melted, leaves behind ice that is of a much lower salt content. Because sodium chloride lowers the melting point of water, the salt in sea water tends to be forced out of pure water while freezing. Likewise, the frozen water with the highest concentration of salt melts first. Either method decreases the salinity of the frozen water left over, and with multiple runs can be drinkable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would not rely on it to remove arbitrary toxic chemicals from water. In survival situation (with access to freezing and energy to melt things and prevent yourself from freezing) it could be worth doing to purify water. I cannot compare it to alternatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17355" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T12:32:00.197" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T12:32:00.197" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22081" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-23T12:22:18.383" Score="3" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;Among the various locations for &quot;haunted&quot; places (old houses/mansions, graveyards, etc), battlefields rank as fairly common. I suppose the logic being that since lots of humans die in these locations, the likelihood of one or more poor souls turning into ghosts goes up. Likewise, old plantation houses in America, which were home to many slaves, are also fairly common among haunted destinations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reportedly_haunted_locations_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reportedly_haunted_locations_in_the_United_States&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the above link, a very high number of the haunted locations come from battlefields, plantations/farms, or other places where high numbers of humans have perished, or were buried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In regards to the notability of this claim, per &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghosts_of_the_American_Civil_War&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Battle of Gettysburg was the largest battle in North America.&#xA;  Fittingly, it has many ghost stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is: does an increase in human death in a given specific location increase the frequency of &quot;ghost&quot; reportings later on, relative to the total number of humans living in the area to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastEditorUserId="1580" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T14:35:27.907" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T14:35:27.907" Title="Do a high number of human deaths in a given location correlate to an increase in reported ghost sitings in later years?" Tags="|ghosts|superstition|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-06-23T12:26:42.820" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22082" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-23T12:40:45.020" Score="2" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://altmedicine.about.com/od/popularhealthdiets/a/candidadiet.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;About.com&lt;/a&gt; and  others (including a  brochure from my GP) suggest eliminating all yeast products from the diet to help control candida vaginal thrush symptoms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some alternative practitioners use diet to address Candida overgrowth. For example, Dr. Crook recommends people with Candida overgrowth follow certain diet guidelines:&#xA;  [...] Avoid foods containing any type of yeast. This includes fermented foods such as bread made with yeast, cheese, tomato paste, mushrooms, and beer. Although Dr. Crook believed that people with Candida overgrowth would also be allergic to other fungi, not all practitioners believe this restriction is necessary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some places suggest this relates to allergy due to the sensitization by candida. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that eliminating yeast products can help to control symptoms or prevent recurrence of vaginal thrush?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20858" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T13:36:30.830" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T13:36:30.830" Title="Does eating a low yeast diet help control recurrent candida albicans (vaginal thrush)?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22073" CreationDate="2014-06-23T12:57:25.303" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to Articuno's answer (+1):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets look at the first reason Ridley gives for RCP8.5 not being realistic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;For a start, this is a world of “continuously increasing global&#xA;  population” so that there are 12 billion on the planet. This is more&#xA;  than a billion more than the United Nations expects, and flies in the&#xA;  face of the fact that the world population growth rate has been&#xA;  falling for 50 years and is on course to reach zero – i.e., stable&#xA;  population – in around 2070. More people mean more emissions.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right, well lets see what the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/WorldPop2300final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UN report&lt;/a&gt; actually says, here is figure 7, which shows projected world populations out as far as 2300.  The range of plausible world population in 2100 is 5.5 to 14 billion.  So the figure of 12 billion that appears in RCP8.5 clearly would not be considered implausible by the UN.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/I5OmQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It took me all of five minutes of fact checking to find this out.  It seems to me that Ridley is focusing on the medium scenario, in which global populations are projected to stabilize this century.  However if you are going to say that something is implausible, you need to show that it is unlikely, for which you need the high and low scenarios as well.  This is basically either poor scholarship or cherry picking on Ridley's part.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that many of Ridleys' other claims probably don't withstand cursory fact checking either, but frankly I have better things to do, when the bias in the article is already so obvious, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... To worry now in 2014 about a very small, highly implausible set of&#xA;  circumstances in 2100 that just might, if climate sensitivity is much&#xA;  higher than the evidence suggests, produce a marginal damage to the&#xA;  world economy, makes no sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These three assertions are only supportable by extreme cherry picking of the literature, and ignore all contradictory evidence, and ought to have rung alarm bells from anybody that has taken the time to look into the arguments on &lt;em&gt;both&lt;/em&gt; sides of the &quot;debate&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T13:20:11.667" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T13:20:11.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22085" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-23T14:35:41.117" Score="18" ViewCount="4360" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homeopathic.com/Articles/Media_reports/Quotes_in_Support_of_Homeopathy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; claim Gandhi can be quoted to be in support of homeopathy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mahatma Gandhi&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Homeopathy cures a greater percentage of cases than any other method of treatment. Homeopathy is the latest and refined method of treating patients economically and non-violently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a Dutch site this claim was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wanttoknow.nl/gezondheid/homeopathie/homeopathie-bewijs-nu-uit-laboratoria/?fb_action_ids=522467624547375&amp;amp;fb_action_types=og.recommends&amp;amp;fb_source=other_multiline&amp;amp;action_object_map=%5B736588229713791%5D&amp;amp;action_type_map=%5B%22og.recommends%22%5D&amp;amp;action_ref_map=%5B%5D&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;also made&lt;/a&gt; (in fact the trigger for my search). Though not all too hard to believe, I still remained sceptical, trying to find a notable source for quotes like this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched and found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gandhitopia.org/forum/topics/ganhdi-quote-on-homeopathy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;other sceptical folk&lt;/a&gt;, more pro-homeopathy sites repeating said- and other quotes (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://homeopathyplus.com.au/mohandas-karamchand-gandhi-loved-homeopathy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://aurumproject.org.au/343/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;), but no source of note that has above-mentioned quote too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17806/did-gandhi-express-admiration-for-hitler-early-in-ww2&quot;&gt;this other question about Gandhi&lt;/a&gt; a link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikiquote on Gandhi&lt;/a&gt;, but that page does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; contain the word &quot;homeopathy&quot; (not even in the &quot;disputed&quot; section).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a notable, non-homeopathy-related source with with Gandhi quoted as supporting homeopathy, specifically mentioned quote? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7206" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2017-01-04T04:57:09.970" Title="Did Gandhi support homeopathy?" Tags="|quotes|homeopathy|mahatma-gandhi|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22086" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-23T14:48:05.260" Score="21" ViewCount="3657" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Real Science blog by &quot;Steven Goddard&quot; claims that NASA have altered their data &lt;a href=&quot;https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/noaanasa-dramatically-altered-us-temperatures-after-the-year-2000/&quot;&gt;in the USA&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/noaa-and-nasa-data-alterations-are-global/&quot;&gt;other countries&lt;/a&gt; to show global warming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Right after the year 2000, NASA and NOAA dramatically altered US climate history, making the past much colder and the present much warmer. The animation [&lt;a href=&quot;https://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/1998changesannotated.gif&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;] shows how NASA cooled 1934 and warmed 1998, to make 1998 the hottest year in US history instead of 1934. This alteration turned a long term cooling trend since 1930 into a warming trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, why would the adjusted data be considered superior to raw data?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T18:55:03.437" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T18:55:03.437" Title="Does unadjusted NASA climate data show no long-term global warming?" Tags="|environment|climate-change|nasa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22087" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22092" CreationDate="2014-06-23T15:07:30.293" Score="12" ViewCount="481" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common wives' tale about pregnancy and I heard it many times during the course of the various pregnancies I've recently been near. In particular, one of the infants was born with a full head of hair and I was surprised how frequently people were attributing the constant heartburn during the associated pregnancy to the child's hair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has such a connection ever been confirmed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T08:57:41.547" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T08:57:41.547" Title="Do babies born with lots of hair cause heartburn during pregnancy?" Tags="|medical-science|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22086" CreationDate="2014-06-23T15:10:23.620" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a word, no.  Weather stations are (as their names suggest) designed for collecting information for weather forecasting (i.e. short term variations in temperature, precipitation etc.), they were never intended for collecting information for climate research (long term statistical behaviour of the weather).  As a result, the instruments used tend to have biases and discontinuities in the records, due to things like moving the station itself, or changing the time of day at which readings are taken, changes of instrument, that are not a problem for weather forecasting, but do pose a problem for climate research.  To compensate for these known changes, homogenization steps are taken to correct for these problems.  These are well documented and explained in the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/wcc.46&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trewin&lt;/a&gt; provides a nice overview of this research topic,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blair Trewin, &quot;Exposure, instrumentation, and observing practice effects on land temperature measurements&quot;, WIRES Climate Change, volume 1, issue 4, pages 490-506, Apr 21 2010, DOI: 10.1002/wcc.46.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.surfacetemperatures.org/home&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Surface Temperature Initiative&lt;/a&gt; is a useful resource for those interested in investigating this topic in more detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also of interest is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://berkeleyearth.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Berkeley Earth&lt;/a&gt; project, which was in initiative set up by initially skeptical scientists to investigate whether the global surface temperature datasets were in fact biased by these adjustments.  Using their own independent method, they found that they got the same results as the other groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the point that the satellite global temperature datasets give similar warming trends to the surface measurements, but the satellite measurements are not subject to the same biases.  Note the UAH product is produced by noted climate skeptics John Christy and Roy Spencer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jdIzt.png&quot; alt=&quot;surface (GISS and HadCRUT) and satellite (UAH, RSS) global temperature data&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, it seems that &quot;RealScience&quot; has just cherry picked the station data to find ones with substantial calibration problems and not mentioned that there are good reasons for these adjustments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T15:10:23.620" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22089" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-23T16:02:59.020" Score="28" ViewCount="1299" Body="&lt;p&gt;In July 2012 American businessman Russ George, dumped 100 tonnes of iron in the ocean off British Columbia to encourage plankton growth and thus increase salmon stocks (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.themanitoban.com/2012/10/geoengineering-trouble-iron-fertilization-project-denounced-by-scientists-and-activists/12386/&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;). It is now &lt;a href=&quot;http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/06/russ-george-blogged-about-fraser-river.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3a%20blogspot/advancednano%20%28nextbigfuture%29&quot;&gt;claimed&lt;/a&gt; that this has increased the salmon catch by over 100,000 tons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About 20 months ago, an American businessman conducted a massive ocean fertilisation test, fertilizing around 100 tonnes of iron sulphate off Canada's coast, it has emerged the Canadian government may have known about the geoengineering scheme and not stopped it. Satellite images confirmed the claim by Californian Russ George that the iron has spawned an artificial plankton bloom as large as 10,000 square kilometres. Now it appears that the fish catch in the area was boosted by over 100,000 tons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How credible is this? The second link mentions a connection between volcanic ash and salmon numbers which would seem to lend some credence but is this generally accepted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The climate change tag is because ocean fertilisation has been proposed as a way of trapping CO2, although the current claim is a bit different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20847" LastEditorUserId="20847" LastEditDate="2014-06-23T17:49:08.267" LastActivityDate="2019-03-08T07:10:56.643" Title="Did fertilising the ocean with 100 tons of iron sulphate increase the salmon catch by over 100,000 tons?" Tags="|environment|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22091" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22117" CreationDate="2014-06-23T19:29:57.677" Score="4" ViewCount="436" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a story going about Facebook that claims that the United States is forcing El Salvador to use Monsanto's seeds if they want foreign aid through the Millenium Challenge program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6vRry.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The U.S. Government Has Tied El Salvador $277 million Aid Package to Monsanto’s GMO Seeds. In recent weeks, the U.S. has been pushing the El Salvadoran Government to sign the second Millennium Challenge Compact. One of the main conditions on the agreement is allegedly for the purchasing of GM seeds from Monsanto. At the end of 2013 it was announced that without ‘specific’ economic and environmental policy reforms, the U.S. government would not provide El Salvador with $277 million in aid money through the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). It is now clear that by ‘specific reforms’ the MCC means reforms that allow GM crops and their associated pesticides to be forced on El Salvador’s Government and citizens. Is it a coincidence that the MCC delayed its initial agreed aid payments following the announcement by the El Salvador Government that they were banning the use of Glyphosate (Roundup) and 52 other dangerous chemicals in September 2013? Is it a coincidence that the glyphosate ban was overturned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contact the USTR at &amp;quot;stakeholder inquiries&amp;quot; at iape@ustr.eop.gov and call the America´s office at 202-395-6135 to voice your outrage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;READ: &lt;a href=&quot;http://sustainablepulse.com/2014/06/08/u-s-government-ties-el-salvador-usd-277-m-aid-package-monsantos-gmo-seeds/#.U5R2IpRdUXg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://sustainablepulse.com/2014/06/08/u-s-government-ties-el-salvador-usd-277-m-aid-package-monsantos-gmo-seeds/#.U5R2IpRdUXg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;READ: &lt;a href=&quot;http://vivaecoviva.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/seed-sovereignty-remains-a-contentious-issue-in-el-salvador/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://vivaecoviva.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/seed-sovereignty-remains-a-contentious-issue-in-el-salvador/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll admit that I'm skeptical. The best I can find is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.verdaddigital.com/index.php/nacionales/10809-cesta-exige-a-embajada-de-ee-uu-que-deje-de-presionar-al-pais-en-la-compra-semillas-mejoradas&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one Salvadoran official claiming that he's being pressured by U.S. officials&lt;/a&gt;, several news articles talking about the &amp;quot;alleged&amp;quot; requirement, and one article stating that the bone of contention is over &lt;a href=&quot;http://vivaecoviva.wordpress.com/2014/06/06/seed-sovereignty-remains-a-contentious-issue-in-el-salvador/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;current Salvadoran laws giving priority to local seeds to the exemption of imported seed&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're quoting the bit about Roundup being linked to kidney disease, which we've apparently discussed in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/20662/does-roundup-glyphosate-cause-kidney-disease-in-farmers&quot;&gt;Does Roundup (glyphosate) cause kidney disease in farmers?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T22:55:56.667" Title="Does the Millennium Challenge Compact require El Salvador to use Monsanto seeds?" Tags="|politics|environmental-health|monsanto|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22087" CreationDate="2014-06-23T20:35:59.960" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is a connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heartburn is a normal consequence of pregnancy. The predominant aetiology is a decrease in lower oesophageal sphincter pressure caused by female sex hormones, especially progesterone &lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sixty-four pregnant women ranked the severity of their degree of heartburn during pregnancy. Independent coders rated newborn hair volume using 2 photographs of the infant's head, taken shortly after birth. ... The simple linear relationship between heartburn severity and hair volume was significant r(s)(62) = 0.40, p &amp;lt; 0.001 &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to expectations, it appears that an association between heartburn severity during pregnancy and newborn hair does exist. We propose a shared biologic mechanism involving a dual role of pregnancy hormones in both the relaxation of the lower esophageal sphincter and the modulation of fetal hair growth &lt;sup&gt;[2]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Richter JE. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16225482&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Review article: the management of heartburn in pregnancy.&lt;/a&gt; Aliment. Pharmacol. Ther. 2005 Nov 1;22(9):749-57. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2036.2005.02654.x&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1111/j.1365-2036.2005.02654.x&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 16225482.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Costigan KA, Sipsma HL, DiPietro JA. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17150070&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pregnancy folklore revisited: the case of heartburn and hair.&lt;/a&gt; Birth. 2006 Dec;33(4):311-4. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-536X.2006.00128.x&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1111/j.1523-536X.2006.00128.x&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 17150070.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-23T20:35:59.960" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22093" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-23T20:36:33.490" Score="0" ViewCount="1079" Body="&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/realCO2-1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RealC02&lt;/a&gt; summarizing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomind.de/realCO2/cv.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ernst-Georg Beck's&lt;/a&gt; work, this history of CO₂ levels are posted for the 19th century:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VJRGu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SkepticalScience, on its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-measurements-uncertainty.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;How reliable are CO₂ measurements?&quot; page&lt;/a&gt; says &quot;CO₂ levels are measured by hundreds of stations scattered across 66 countries which all report the same rising trend.&quot; and shows a far different history for the 19th century:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r2vU8.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What explains the wide discrepancy before the Mauna Loa samples compared to Enst-Georg's for the 19th century, and which set is most accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The discrepancy is detailed on &lt;a href=&quot;http://drtimball.com/2011/ernst-georg-beck-a-major-contributor-to-climate-science-effectively-sidelined-by-climate-deceivers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Different Perspective&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://drtimball.com/about/tim-ball/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Tim Ball&lt;/a&gt;, quoting &lt;a href=&quot;http://ef-magazin.de/2010/09/22/2559-climategate-ernst-georg-beck-ist-nicht-mehr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Edgar Gartner&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to his immense specialized knowledge and his methodical severity Ernst very promptly noticed numerous inconsistencies in the statements of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He considered the warming of the earth’s atmosphere as a result of a rise of the carbon dioxide content of the air of approximately 0.03 to 0.04 percent as impossible. And he doubted that the curve of the CO₂ increase noted on the Hawaii volcano Mauna Loa since 1957/58 could be extrapolated linear back to the 19th century. (Translated from the German)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the scientific consensus?  Is it correct that scientific consensus agrees that CO2 record for the 19th century should be reconstructed from the Law Dome Ice Core, or are Ernst-Georg Beck's results correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Mixing &amp;amp; altitudes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/author/illconsidered/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;coby&quot;&lt;/a&gt; on ScienceBlogs &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2010/10/is-co2-well-mixed/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; &quot;You can &lt;a href=&quot;http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/contents.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;go here to see dozens of CO₂ sampling station records&lt;/a&gt; from sea level to mountain top, from pole to equator, that show unequivically that CO₂ spreads very evenly throughout the global atmosphere, all theory or prediction aside.&quot;, &quot;here&quot; being a collection of research held at the &quot;Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/20749/20862&quot;&gt;obviously true&lt;/a&gt; that CO₂ is well mixed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_spectroscopy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;infrared spectroscopy analysis&lt;/a&gt; at high altitudes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mxQuj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can find no research invalidating samples taken at sea level; however, the source of anthropomorphic CO₂ production, coal fired power plants, are located nearer to population centers and not &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sink&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;carbon sinks&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/g4ZC7.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/K69DM.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My inexperience tells me that it seems Beck's research should be fully invalidated before it can be concluded that his research invalidates the Law Dome ice core.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T02:06:52.790" Title="Does Beck's chemical analysis of CO₂ discredit the Law Dome ice core findings?" Tags="|environment|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22097" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-23T23:21:58.627" Score="10" ViewCount="341" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common claim of people selling &quot;free energy&quot; devices that the government or oil companies are trying to suppress their work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering if there's any documented examples of an oil company or government going after someone, suing them, killing them, whatever - because they invented a competing energy technology that's too cheap to sell or tax. I am not able to find such an incident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe this claim. I think it would basically be impossible to &lt;em&gt;not make money&lt;/em&gt; from such a technology, and the market would overcome any possible attempts to keep such a thing under wraps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's some sketchy sites making the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freemagneticenergy.info/The_Invention_Secrecy_Act_of_1951.htm&quot;&gt;Free Magnetic Energy&lt;/a&gt; cites a law suggesting the US Government has a legal right to keep inventions secret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://waterpoweredcar.com/&quot;&gt;Water Powered Car&lt;/a&gt; [WARNING: Site plays music.] suggests that previously inventors were mysteriously killed to suppress their work, and that the government would lose its gasoline taxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19384" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-06-24T02:33:29.747" LastActivityDate="2014-06-24T02:33:29.747" Title="Are powerful entities preventing the development of free or extremely low cost energy sources?" Tags="|energy|oil|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2014-06-24T16:22:21.193" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22100" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22425" CreationDate="2014-06-24T01:29:21.803" Score="10" ViewCount="1355" Body="&lt;p&gt;In fiction it's as common as dirt to hear &quot;you're glowing&quot; as a response to news that someone is pregnant or an indication of it without it being said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't seem to be limited to just reactions upon hearing the news.  It seems &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sheknows.com/parenting/articles/504/do-you-have-the-and-quotglow-and-quot-of-pregnancy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fairly common&lt;/a&gt; for people to believe that pregnant women exhibit some visual cues about their pregnancy, sometimes before the woman even knows she's pregnant.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100326125518AAcEVsY&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Explanations&lt;/a&gt; include things such as hormonal changes to skin, increased blood flow, or even just general happiness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that this is true or is it just one of those clichés (or compliments) which has gone into common usage without any basis to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there actual visual cues related to coloration that are noticeable even before the woman is showing more obvious signs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20874" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T10:19:16.913" LastActivityDate="2021-08-16T18:45:01.317" Title="Do pregnant women &quot;glow&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22103" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-24T04:09:58.190" Score="3" ViewCount="583" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the meta-analysis &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19328536&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cell phones and brain tumors: a review including the long-term epidemiologic data&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, they find that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results indicate that using a cell phone for &gt; or = 10 years approximately doubles the risk of being diagnosed with a brain tumor on the same (&quot;ipsilateral&quot;) side of the head as that preferred for cell phone use. The data achieve statistical significance for glioma and acoustic neuroma but not for meningioma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20787" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T13:08:36.853" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T13:08:36.853" Title="Are the location of brain-tumours linked to which ear you use a cell-phone with?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|mobile-phones|ear|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22106" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22115" CreationDate="2014-06-24T12:34:59.673" Score="18" ViewCount="3357" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim appears on multiple websites about the race:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bradford.gov.uk/bmdc/leisure_and_culture/sports_and_leisure/tour_de_france/tdf_the_facts&quot;&gt;Bradford Metropolitan District Council&lt;/a&gt; (a local government website)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://letour.yorkshire.com/news/tour-de-france-the-facts&quot;&gt;A worldwide television audience of 3.5billion people watch the Tour de France annually&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://totalwomenscycling.com/road-cycling/sportives/21-nuggets-of-tour-de-france-trivia-26522/&quot;&gt;3.5 billion- the worldwide television audience that watch the Tour de France annually&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This number would mean that every other person on the planet watches Tour de France on TV. For comparison, it is estimated that ~700 million people watched the last FIFA World Cup final, and ~900 million people watched the last Olympics opening ceremony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="106" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T13:16:50.407" Title="Do 3.5 billion people watch Tour de France on TV every year?" Tags="|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22093" CreationDate="2014-06-24T13:49:52.233" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;[n.b. The original question involved Mauna Loa rather than the Law Dome, in fact the question has drifted considerably since I first answered it.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major problem here is that the CO₂ measurements that Beck provides are not measurements of background CO₂ concentrations, but measurements taken generally at low altitude, near to local CO₂ sources which mean the readings are not representative of the well mixed background levels of CO₂.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ferdinand Engelbeen is a climate skeptic, whom I hold in very high regard (although I don't agree with him on absolutely everything), and has looked into Beck's work in detail and you can find his analysis &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/beck_data.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best place to start is by asking why Mauna Loa was chosen as the first site at which background CO₂ measurements were made.  Firstly, it is on an island a long way from any continental sources of CO₂, and the observatory is at high altitude, well above the inversion layer (which would stifle mixing of locally produced CO₂).  Also the prevailing winds at night are from the land out to sea, which draws fresh, uncontaminated air from the upper atmosphere down to the observatory.  Of course Mauna Loa is a volcano, but the scientists have developed a method for detecting this and deleting the affected measurements from the record (see this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.skepticalscience.com/mauna-loa-volcano-co2-measurements-advanced.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SkepticalScience article&lt;/a&gt; and this &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/19980114152259/http://mloserv.mlo.hawaii.gov/publish/steve/VolcCO2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper by Ryan&lt;/a&gt;, ISTR an article on WUWT on why Mauna Loa measurements are sound, but I can't find it at the moment.).  CO₂ measurements are also now taken at a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/ggrn.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;global network&lt;/a&gt; of similar sites around the world, and these are in agreement with the Mauna Loa record, which suggests that these methods are effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scientists wouldn't go to the expense and hassle of collecting data from the top of a marine volcano, if they could get sensible measurements of background CO₂ in the lab at their universities in cities.  Beck's data are instrumental measurements, but they are mostly taken close to the surface and in cities or places where there is likely to be agricultural contamination.  This is well illustrated by fairly recent measurements (provided by Engelbeen) from Giessen, plotted along with the measurements from Mauna Loa (MLO) and two other background CO₂ measuring sites.  Clearly the measurements at Giessen are heavily contaminated by local sources, as demonstrated by the very high diurnal variability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/engxp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So does Beck's work discredit the Law dome record?  Well no, because again Beck is talking about measurements of surface CO₂, rather than well-mixed atmospheric CO₂.  The Law dome records well mixed atmospheric CO₂ because firstly it is in Antarctica, a long way from sources of contamination from humans or vegetation, and secondly by altitude, the longest Law dome core appears to be some 500m deep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T10:40:40.393" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T10:40:40.393" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22106" CreationDate="2014-06-25T10:34:24.527" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aso.fr/fr/tour-de-france.html&quot;&gt;comes directly from the organizers&lt;/a&gt; and seems to be nothing more than self-promotion from some press releases being carelessly repeated over and over. Exactly what it means depends on how you chose to interpret “watched the Tour de France” but it's certainly not the case that 3.5 billion different people watched the live broadcast at some point during the race. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since ASO apparently does not provide any details regarding their methodology, I am not sure it makes much sense to speculate on how they come up with such a high number but there are at least a couple of plausible solutions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They consider each stage as a separate event. In the current format, that's 21 days of broadcast. Many people just tune in occasionally but cycling fans do watch most of them so would be counted several time. It's not entirely absurd (I think that's how you would count stadium attendance and the like, maybe it's standard in this industry) but it seems a little misleading when presented without explanation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They consider &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt; audience, as suggested by this article from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lemonde.fr/sport/article/2013/07/04/le-tour-de-france-en-argent-content_3441307_3242.html&quot;&gt;Le Monde&lt;/a&gt;. So if some Chinese broadcaster paid for the right to show a few excerpts from the race, you add 1.3+ billion people. Not entirely absurd either but that does not translate to 3.5 billion people actually watching and cannot be compared to the figures you found for other events.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also easy to show conclusively that there aren't 3.5 billion different people watching the race. The world's population is a little over 7 billion people. As you noted, it would mean that every other person on earth watched the Tour de France, which is not plausible. Even assuming higher ratings in Western Europe and maybe the US, you would still need a significant proportion of the population in Africa, South America, China or India to reach that number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actual measures in the core audiences categorically rule that out. &lt;a href=&quot;https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/409271/1/11HRP15.pdf&quot;&gt;Daam Van Reeth studied data from Flanders&lt;/a&gt;, probably the region in the world where interest in this sport is highest. The highest peak audience ever was 1.4 M people, which is slightly above 20% of the population and the average audience is 8%. Impressive but a far cry from the 50% implied by the 3.5 billions figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In France, the end of the 2013 Alpe d'Huez stage &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lefigaro.fr/medias/2013/07/17/20004-20130717ARTFIG00472-le-tour-2013-un-tres-bon-cru-pour-les-audiences-tele.php&quot;&gt;was watched by 6.2 M people&lt;/a&gt;, with an average of 4 M people for other stages. It's a lot but still less than 10% of the French population watching any given stage. &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvmag.lefigaro.fr/programme-tv/article/audiences-tv/76474/france-televisions-le-tour-de-france-dope-les-audiences.html&quot;&gt;Another article based on the broadcaster's own figures&lt;/a&gt; has slightly different numbers (in the same order of magnitude) and also reveals that 24 M people watched at least one hour over the three weeks that the race lasts  (perhaps the most straightforward definition of “watching the Tour de France”). This amounts to 36% of the French population. That's getting closer but still not 50% and that's &lt;em&gt;for France itself&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17041" LastEditorUserId="17041" LastEditDate="2014-06-26T13:16:50.407" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T13:16:50.407" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22091" CreationDate="2014-06-25T14:23:38.310" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;These articles have a substantial amount of false information about the situation.  A press release was issued by the US Embassy in El Salvador:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://sansalvador.usembassy.gov/news/2014/06/19.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sansalvador.usembassy.gov/news/2014/06/19.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the United States government pressuring El Salvador to purchase&#xA;  genetically modified (GMO) seeds from U.S. agricultural companies?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No.  The U.S. government concern with the Ministry of Agriculture’s&#xA;  procurement program is completely unrelated to the purchase of&#xA;  genetically modified seeds.  Any rumor to the contrary is false.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The interest of the United States with respect to the seed procurement&#xA;  program is in ensuring that El Salvador complies with its obligations&#xA;  under CAFTA-DR, to signal that El Salvador fosters an investment&#xA;  climate that respects international commitments.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20901" LastEditorUserId="17023" LastEditDate="2014-06-26T22:55:56.667" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T22:55:56.667" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22118" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22119" CreationDate="2014-06-25T15:24:41.863" Score="7" ViewCount="1122" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Switzerland, is it legal to download copyrighted material without permission?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Switzerland you'll get all kinds of answers to the question &quot;Is it Legal?&quot;. The same goes of course for the internet where you will find &lt;a href=&quot;https://torrentfreak.com/swiss-govt-downloading-movies-and-music-will-stay-legal-111202/&quot;&gt;articles that tell you it's allowed&lt;/a&gt; and others that tell you it's not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what  is the law actually?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18504" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T15:39:39.470" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T19:09:19.770" Title="Is downloading copyrighted material legal in Switzerland?" Tags="|law|copyright|switzerland|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22118" CreationDate="2014-06-25T15:52:33.203" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;See: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ige.ch/en/ip4all/copyright/legal-info.html&quot;&gt;The Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ige.ch/fileadmin/user_upload/Juristische_Infos/e/press_releases/Medienmitteilung_Savary_e.pdf&quot;&gt;their 2011 press release&lt;/a&gt;. Legal advice is provided by a Swiss Intellectual Property Law firm, Rentsch Partner, in the form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copyright.ch/en/download-internet/practical-examples-55.htm&quot;&gt;practical examples&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is legal to download copyrighted material without permission in Switzerland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T16:19:46.197" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T16:19:46.197" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22120" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-25T16:42:15.263" Score="2" ViewCount="648" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-27939037&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article on polygamy in the Maasai of Kenya (as well as among other traditional east African groups).  The article appeared to suggest that polygamy is quite common amongst the residents of the Rift Valley, and I've heard other accounts of polygamy across Africa in traditional communities.  For example, South Africa's president Jacob Zuma has multiple wives in accordance with Zulu tradition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: how do these societies where polygamy is common sustain the cultural practice? Simple math would appear to indicate that if a significant proportion of men regularly take multiple wives, there will soon be a large population of (presumably) angry single men who would resent and fight against the system, given that humans are born in roughly even birthrates? (Indeed, the natural human birthrate tends towards &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;more males&lt;/a&gt;.  Yet, I've seen nothing to suggest this being a problem for traditional polygamous societies.&#xA;  Do these societies kick out or kill young men? Is there simply a high death rate for men? How can polygamous society avoid massive social rifts between those with wives and those without?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence that in the US, this practice exists in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), an offshoot of the of the Mormon Church, or LDS. Men (or boys actually) are kicked out of the community so they do not compete with other males who are &quot;chosen&quot; by the leaders to have multiple wives.  They are called &quot;the lost boys&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are multiple websites about this practice. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.childbrides.org/boys.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is one article&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mazeministry.com/mormonism/polygamy/lostboys.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here is another&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2010/02/polygamists/anderson-text&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here is one from the National Geographic&lt;/a&gt; where an official of the FLDS admits the practice did exist but claim it has been stopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20902" LastEditorUserId="3970" LastEditDate="2014-06-25T20:28:15.623" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T20:28:15.623" Title="Why don't polygamous societies have a bunch of angry single men?" Tags="|anthropology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ClosedDate="2014-06-25T16:55:08.990" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22121" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22123" CreationDate="2014-06-25T16:42:42.317" Score="3" ViewCount="708" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gizmag.com/solar-wind-energy-downdraft-tower/32607/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gizmag&lt;/a&gt; (largely directly reproducing the claims of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.solarwindenergytower.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Solar Wind Energy Inc&lt;/a&gt;) explains that the proposed new $US1.5m+ power station project works by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;using a series of pumps to carry water to the top of a tower standing up to 2,250 ft (685 m) tall, where it is cast across the opening as a fine mist. The mist then evaporates and is absorbed by hot, dry air, thereby cooling the air and making it denser and heavier than the warmer air outside the tower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the base of the tower, turbines are driven by the downdraft of air, and the water is recovered for re-use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It strikes me that, to the extent that the wet air is more dense and sinks is merely extracting the potential energy put into the water by pumping it higher in the first place - i.e. it is little more than a claim for a perpetual motion machine, that will actually end up consuming more energy than it generates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, to the extent that the air is cooled down (and hence sinks) by the cool water is effectively extracting energy from the temperature differential between the water and the air. That's a legitimate source of power, but it means the water is unable to be re-used once the water has been warmed up by the air. (It also requires a large supply of cool water in a warm region.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they don't claim this is a free energy device (they say it is solar-powered), it is unclear where the sun comes into it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I am hopelessly missing the point, because it smells to me like a major scam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence (competing towers, working scale models, independent analysis of the plans, etc.) that show that such a tower can generate more electricity than it uses to supply cold water to the top of the tower. Alternatively, are there credible models suggesting it will never be a net-positive power generator?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T17:08:36.437" Title="Will the Solar Wind Energy's Downdraft Tower plan produce more energy than it uses?" Tags="|power-generation|wind-power|perpetual-motion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22122" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-25T16:56:13.713" Score="7" ViewCount="624" Body="&lt;p&gt;The blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THE HOCKEY SCHTICK&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2013/04/new-paper-demonstrates-temperature.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that &quot;temperature drives CO2 levels, not man-made CO2&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n5/full/nclimate1817.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Atmospheric verification of anthropogenic CO2 emission trends&quot;&lt;/a&gt; is cited as proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is detailed as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A recent paper published in Nature Climate Change finds a disconnect between man-made CO2 and atmospheric levels of CO2, demonstrating that despite a sharp 25% increase in man-made CO2 emissions since 2003, the growth rate in atmospheric CO2 has slowed sharply since 2002/2003. The data shows that while the growth rate of man-made emissions was relatively stable from 1990-2003, the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 surged up to the record El Nino of 1997-1998. Conversely, growth in man-made emissions surged ~25% from 2003-2011, but the change in the growth rate of atmospheric CO2 has flatlined since 1999 along with global temperatures. The data demonstrates temperature drives CO2 levels due to ocean outgassing, man-made CO2 does not drive temperature, and that man is not the primary cause of the rise in CO2 levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prominent website SkepticalScience &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/Why-does-CO2-lag-temperature.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;defends&lt;/a&gt; the assertion that CO₂ levels drive temperature despite lagging but does not seem to provide a clear explanation as to why yet provides this graph of carbon dioxide vs temperature:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OJiUv.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SkepticalScience does seem to explain the temperature oscillations by the Earth's orientation relative to the sun:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aaEyz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but the explanation for changes in CO₂ causing changes in temperature despite lagging temperature is unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that temperature leads and drives CO₂ levels?  Why or why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorDisplayName="user20862" LastEditDate="2014-06-28T02:29:43.810" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T12:34:18.553" Title="Does temperature drive CO₂?" Tags="|environment|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22121" CreationDate="2014-06-25T17:08:36.437" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, at least according to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;T. Altmann, Y. Carmel, R. Guetta, D. Zaslavsky, Y. Doytsher, Assessment of an ‘‘Energy Tower’’ potential in Australia using a mathematical model and GIS&quot;,&#xA;Solar Energy 78 (2005) 799–808. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://envgis.technion.ac.il/publications/energy%20tower%20potential.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;www&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abstract: ‘‘Energy Tower’’ is a technology for producing renewable and&#xA;  clean electricity by means of cooling hot and dry air, which is&#xA;  continuously supplied to arid lands. We assess the potential of an&#xA;  Energy Tower by incorporating topographic and meteorological&#xA;  parameters into a computational model, providing evaluations for the&#xA;  net power production and the electricity production cost. We formulate&#xA;  a highly simplified model for the Energy Towers flow, setup and&#xA;  process a spatial dataset of topographic and Meteorological upper air&#xA;  parameters. The model was applied to the Australian continent. A model&#xA;  simulation of one annual cycle enabled the ranking and selection of&#xA;  promising sites. The highest potential for energy towers is in the&#xA;  Port Hedland region, where favorable meteorological and topographic&#xA;  conditions would result in high average net power (370±160MW),&#xA;  potentially providing the electricity needs of&#xA;  0.5 million people, for an economically competitive costs (3.5¢kWh).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also currently &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cites=3557196105194354236&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;9 papers&lt;/a&gt; that cite this one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T17:08:36.437" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22085" CreationDate="2014-06-25T17:19:58.323" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;It was me who asked the question on the Gandhitopia forum that you found. I have also been unable to find a source for the quote the homeopaths attribute to Gandhi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as you could see, I found those quotes from his letters recorded in what appears to be a reliable source (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gandhiserve.org/&quot;&gt;http://www.gandhiserve.org/&lt;/a&gt;), but they tend to indicate he was not a fan (the later quotes are first):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;14.10.1941 I have little faith in homeopathy and yet a homeopath a crank like myself is here and treating some patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;11.07.1940 (1) Disapproves his asking money from public Fund. (2) One needs less money if he keeps himself physically fit. Says he (G) has arranged for his Homeopathy treatment at Delhi. Hopes his total recivery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;04.04.1933 Though I have no faith in Homeopathy you may introduce the treatment after consulting the people there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;28.04.1933 Gandhiji asserts that personally he would prefer Homeopathy to Allopathy any day. As such himself does not mind his trying it after due discussion with Narandas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;16.04.1933 I have not much faith homeopathy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a few of these, it's difficult to know what his tone was and whether he was being sarcastic or flippant. Also, the longer quote looks like a summary of a letter, so not exactly what Gandhi wrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, no one else there replied and I have not been able to find out any more. So, as far as I'm aware, the only sources we have seem to indicate overall that Gandhi was &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a homeopathy believer. I suspect the homeopaths' quote is fantasy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20904" LastActivityDate="2014-06-25T17:19:58.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22125" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22122" CreationDate="2014-06-25T17:22:47.660" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The idea that &amp;quot;global temperatures cause the increase of CO2.&amp;quot; is fairly easily refuted. The line of reasoning is that the solubility of CO2 in water decreases as temperature increases, so the rise in global temperature implies that the oceans will have released some of the dissolved CO2 that it contains. The premise is correct, but the conclusion is a Non sequitur as it ignores the fact that the solubility of CO2 in water also depends on the difference in partial pressure of CO2 between the ocean and the atmosphere. As we have released CO2 from fossil fuels into the atmosphere, the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen, and so the oceans have been taking up more CO2, not less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do we know this is true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument is easily refuted by the observation that the rate at which atmospheric CO2 levels are rising is less than the rate at which we are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere from fossil fuel use, which implies that the natural environment must be a net carbon sink, taking in more carbon each year than it emits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More formally, let Ea represent annual carbon emissions from anthropogenic sources (fossil fuel use and land use change), En represent the carbon emissions from all natural sources (the oceans, soil respiration, volcanos etc.) and Un represent the uptake of carbon by all natural carbon sinks (oceans, photosynthesis, etc.), Ua would be the uptake of carbon due to anthropogenic activities, but this is essentially zero, so we can safely exclude it from the analysis. Then assuming that the carbon cycle obeys the principle of conservation of mass (any carbon emitted into the atmosphere that is not taken up by natural sinks remains in the atmosphere), the annual change in atmospheric CO2 is given by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C' = Ea + En - Un&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be rearranged to give an estimate of the difference between annual emissions from all natural sources and annual natural uptake by all natural sinks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;En - Un = C' - Ea&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have accurate, reliable data for the growth of atmospheric CO2 and for anthropogenic emissions (for details, see Cawley, 2011). Both of these are displayed below, along with an estimate of the net natural carbon flux En - Un. The fact that the net natural flux is negative clearly shows that natural uptake has exceeded natural emissions every year for the last fifty years at least, and hence has been opposing, rather than causing the observed rise in atmospheric CO2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fZfsT.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=1259&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some time back, I wrote a journal paper refuting a related climate myth, which outlines some of the evidence that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is anthropogenic, and is not a natural phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gavin C. Cawley, &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ef200914u&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;On the Atmospheric Residence Time of Anthropogenically Sourced Carbon Dioxide&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, Energy &amp;amp; Fuels, volume 25, issue 11, pages 5503–5513, 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it hard to understand how this argument can be so ubiquitous on climate blogs, given that it is so easily refuted. For further information, see the many articles on SkepticalScience.com addressing this issue (and other climate myths).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;N.B. I gave this as a tangentially relevant answer to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3435/is-co%E2%82%82-the-cause-for-global-warming/17707#17707&quot;&gt;related question&lt;/a&gt;.  It is more directly relevant to this one.  The following is new:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason usually given for temperature driving CO2, rather than the other way round is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Henry's Law&lt;/a&gt;, which says that the solubility of a gas in a liquid is proportional to the difference in partial pressure of the gas in the atmosphere and the concentration in the liquid, and that the constant of proportionality depends on temperature.  The argument goes that ocean temperatures have risen, which means that the constant of proportionality has changed and thus the oceans will begin degassing.  However, this ignores the other part of Henry's Law.  Anthropogenic CO2 emissions have increased atmospheric CO2, which has increased the pressure differential, which in turn increases the solubility of CO2, and the oceans become net carbon sinks.  The question is, which wins out, the temperature driven degassing or the partial pressure difference driven uptake?  We can be very confident that the oceans are not a net source of CO2 as (i) the mass balance indicates the natural environment is a net carbon sink, if the oceans were a net source, the biosphere would need to be an unfeasibly large carbon sink for there to be conservation of mass and (ii) the oceans are becoming more acidic, which is what you would expect if it were a net carbon sink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another line of argument is given by looking at the changes in atmospheric CO2 between glacial and interglacial periods, which suggests that we should expect to see only about 8ppmV increase in atmospheric CO2 per degree of warming.  We have seen an order of magnitude more, which means that Henry's law (even ignoring the change in partial pressure due to anthropogenic emissions) cannot explain both the current rise in CO2 and these prehistorical increases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to why CO2 lags temperature on a long timescale, the Skeptical science link given in the question seems to explain it pretty well.  As to short term correlations between CO2 and temperature, these are likely due to ENSO (El-Nino), which causes changes in both temperature and precipitation in the Americas.  These in turn cause changes in vegitation growth and die back and as a result, changes in the &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;rate of growth&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; of CO2.  This was notices by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v261/n5556/abs/261116a0.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bacastow&lt;/a&gt; back in the 1970s (see also &lt;a href=&quot;https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10036/48597&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jones et al.&lt;/a&gt;).  Note I emphasised rate of growth of CO2.  The long term rise in CO2 depends on the average value of CO2, the interanual variations in the rate have almost no effect on the long term increases.  This is an error that Prof. Salby makes in the talk he gave to the Sydney instritue, and my explanation of this (slightly complex) error is given &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/salby_correlation_conundrum.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't do much more today, I'll try and add some more references later, however my Energy and Fuels paper contains enough information to show that the conclusions of the blog article are incorrect (I wish they weren't!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T12:34:18.553" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-25T20:27:30.023" Score="4" ViewCount="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does using headphones / earphones plugged into a cellphone for taking calls / listening to music pose a significant health risk in the long run in terms of radiation exposure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also it depends what your headphones are connected to. If they are&#xA;  connected to your cell phone and you are taking calls using a wired&#xA;  headset your exposure could be significant. A conventional headset&#xA;  uses a wire cable. Wire has metal in it. This metal conducts the&#xA;  radiation coming from your cell phone allowing it to travel up the&#xA;  wire and into your head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What about just listening to music on your cell phone. If the music is&#xA;  downloaded onto your phone this is safer. But if you are streaming,&#xA;  then again your EMF exposures could be significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://elynjacobs.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/are-your-headphones-an-emf-health-risk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://elynjacobs.wordpress.com/2013/04/25/are-your-headphones-an-emf-health-risk/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on Konrad's comment, a link to the Bioinitiative Report: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bioinitiative.org/table-of-contents/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bioinitiative.org/table-of-contents/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;The relevant sections appears to be Section6, Section9, Section10, Section11 and Section13 (I still need to read through these, will quote sections out of these as I work through them)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Counter arguments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSIONS: Our results showed no evidence of any association between&#xA;  ELF-MF exposure (100 µT at 50 Hz) and AD, and ELF-MF exposure does not&#xA;  influence the pathogenesis of AD induced by Al overload.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bioinitiative.org/report/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/sec09_2012_Evidence_%20Effects_%20%20Neurology_behavior.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Neurological Effects of Non-Ionizing&#xA;  Electromagnetic Fields&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14234" LastEditorUserId="14234" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T11:54:23.077" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T11:54:23.077" Title="Are there signification health risks with long term use of headphones on a cellphone?" Tags="|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22131" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-26T09:47:02.540" Score="6" ViewCount="745" Body="&lt;p&gt;People believe that foreign objects in deep puncture wounds should be left in until medical care is available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that belief true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9058" LastEditorUserId="6308" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T00:27:40.890" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T04:55:56.487" Title="Should the foreign object in a deep puncture wound be left in until medical care is available?" Tags="|medical-science|mortality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22132" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25120" CreationDate="2014-06-26T14:05:48.330" Score="17" ViewCount="7438" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was recently shared to my mother's Facebook page.  She is currently battling an aggressive cancer that was brought on by Chemotherapy that she had to fight stage 4 breast cancer over 10 years ago. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The US Government has known since 1974 that Cannabis cures Cancer. In&#xA;  '72 Richard Nixon wanted a larger budget for his war on drugs. He&#xA;  thought that if he proved Cannabis caused lung cancer like cigarettes&#xA;  do, he would get the support he needed. He gave the Medical College of&#xA;  Virginia 2 years to do a study on the effects of THC on the body. In&#xA;  '74 the study was completed. It turns out, THC when ingested in highly&#xA;  concentrated forms (such as eating Cannabis oil) will attack any&#xA;  mutated cells in your body while strengthening and rejuvenating the&#xA;  healthy cells. They found the PERFECT cure for Cancer. It worked fast,&#xA;  it worked well, it worked on many different forms of Cancer in ALL&#xA;  stages and it had ZERO harmful side effects. (Unlike Chemo which&#xA;  deteriorates your entire body and kills 1 in 5 patients. Not only&#xA;  that, but it dissolves ALL forms of tumors and can even combat&#xA;  super-bugs like MRSA.) When Richard Nixon saw the results of the study&#xA;  he was FURIOUS. He threw the entire report in the trash and deemed the&#xA;  study classified. In 1976 President Gerald Ford put an end to all&#xA;  public cannabis research and granted exclusive research rights to&#xA;  major pharmaceutical companies, who set out — unsuccessfully — to&#xA;  develop synthetic forms of THC that would deliver all the medical&#xA;  benefits without the “high.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We only found out about the study a few years ago thanks to dedicated&#xA;  medical and law professionals who filed Freedom of Information&#xA;  Requests. The Govt lied for many reasons.. One of the main reasons is&#xA;  Pharmaceutical Companies. They spend billions every year lobbying to&#xA;  keep Cannabis illegal because they make TRILLIONS off Cancer drugs and&#xA;  research. They are already well aware that Cannabis cures Cancer. They&#xA;  have a great con going at the moment. Cancer patients and their loved&#xA;  ones will spend their entire life savings or even sell their houses&#xA;  and businesses in order to pay for Chemotherapy and other Cancer&#xA;  treatment drugs. A lot of the time they spend all that money and their&#xA;  loved one dies anyway. If the public found out that the Government has&#xA;  been lying for over 40 years, that MILLIONS of lives could have been&#xA;  saved and that the dying could grow the cure they need in their&#xA;  backyard... The Public would be going APE-SHIT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PLEASE keep an open mind about this. I realize it's hard to believe&#xA;  but I PROMISE YOU, it's true. If you want to know more, you should&#xA;  Google 'Cannabis Cures Cancer'. You will see that there are thousands&#xA;  of published scientific studies, articles, books and documentaries on&#xA;  the subject. Id start with the film 'Run From The Cure'. Its one of my&#xA;  favorites&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Comment from the admin): I feel the need to be EXCEPTIONALLY CLEAR&#xA;  here because many people have attacked me for sharing this&#xA;  information. SMOKING CANNABIS DOES NOT CURE CANCER. EATING CANNABIS&#xA;  OIL DOES. There have been A LOT of skeptics about this. I highly&#xA;  suggest you actually RESEARCH THIS SUBJECT rather than demonize the&#xA;  people that have already actually researched it. Cannabis DOES CURE&#xA;  CANCER... This is not a rumor, this is not some internet hoax.. THIS&#xA;  IS A FACT. Every single person I know that's tried this cure, has&#xA;  successfully cured their cancer. Do you get what I'm saying? I KNOW&#xA;  PEOPLE WHO WOULD NOT BE HERE TODAY IF IT WEREN'T FOR THIS CURE. Plenty&#xA;  of people have posted proof online. Check before you doubt!!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Start here :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cannabis Cures Cancer and the Government Knows it:&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://themindunleashed.org/2013/07/cannabis-cures-cancer-and-government.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://themindunleashed.org/2013/07/cannabis-cures-cancer-and-government.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;34 Medical Studies Proving Cannabis Cures Cancer:&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://themindunleashed.org/2013/12/34-medical-studies-proving-cannabis-cures-cancer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://themindunleashed.org/2013/12/34-medical-studies-proving-cannabis-cures-cancer.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Molecular Biologist Explains How THC Completely Kills Cancer:&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://themindunleashed.org/2014/04/molecular-biologist-explains-thc-completely-kills-cancer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://themindunleashed.org/2014/04/molecular-biologist-explains-thc-completely-kills-cancer.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recipe To Make Cannabis Oil For Chemo Alternative:&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://themindunleashed.org/2014/05/recipe-make-cannabis-oil-chemo-alternative.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://themindunleashed.org/2014/05/recipe-make-cannabis-oil-chemo-alternative.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To be clear I am &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; trying to challenge the claims about marijuana's effects on cancer (&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/10229/3126&quot;&gt;that has been done here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is did Nixon commission such  a study from the Medical College of Virginia in 1972?&#xA;If so were the results Classified in 1974 but recently made available through FOIA?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And finally, if so, is there any reasonable interpretation of the results that would correlate with the claims here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T23:04:26.040" Title="Did Richard Nixon commission a study on the effects of THC and then have the results classified?" Tags="|medical-science|politics|alternative-medicine|marijuana|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1823" CreationDate="2014-06-26T17:06:58.227" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Answer: Yes, lower than combustion based sources like coal, oil, and gas. Not lower than renewable sources like solar and hydro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrel.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Renewable Energy Laboratory&lt;/a&gt; performed a similar study to that posted by @FlyingSquidwithGoggles.&#xA;This might be a less biased source (NIRS page header says &quot;Nuclear Power: No Solution to Climate Change&quot; and contains much anti-nuke literature). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After screening articles by their criteria, they ended up with ~300 article inputs to the data, and ~1000 data points total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the figures listed by source: (Min, Median, Max)(in g CO2/kWh). &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hydro: 0, 4, 43 &lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solar: 5-7, 22-46, 89-217 &lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nuclear: 1, 16, 220 &lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nat Gas: 290, 469, 930 &lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Coal: 675, 1001, 1689 &lt;br&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_results.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change&quot;&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15378" LastEditorUserId="15378" LastEditDate="2014-06-26T18:13:06.810" LastActivityDate="2014-06-26T18:13:06.810" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22131" CreationDate="2014-06-27T00:36:53.240" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With impalement, the penetrating object remains within the body [...] Such objects should not be removed in the field because they sometimes tamponade injuries to vascular structures and thus prevent exsanguination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &quot;Penetrating Abdominal Injuries&quot;, S.J.A. Sclafani and S. Sheeran, page 382.  Chapter 17 of &lt;em&gt;Imaging and Intervention in Abdominal Trauma&lt;/em&gt;, ed. R.F. Dondelinger, Springer, 2004.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=1zEwsSiL49kC&amp;amp;lpg=PA382&amp;amp;dq=impalement%20injury&amp;amp;pg=PA382#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=impalement%20injury&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Google Books&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T00:36:53.240" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22140" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16810" CreationDate="2014-06-27T05:17:20.300" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shelters have saved lives and there are a number of fire reports that can be read to provide more information on both fatalities and survival. You can read specifics on the National Interagency Fire Center Page, Wildfire Lessons Learned Center and other such web links. You Tube even has a number of videos on incidents such as the Butte Fire, Little Venus, Ahorn, Mackenzie Fire, Dude Fire and others. &#xA;There have been about 1,100 deployments of the old-style fire shelter. Roughly half &#xA;of these deployments have been precautionary, meaning that the people involved &#xA;would probably not have sustained significant injury even without the shelters. An &#xA;estimated 275 of the deployments are considered to have prevented moderate to &#xA;serious burns and an estimated 275 are considered to have saved the lives of the &#xA;occupants. Twenty people have died in fully or partially deployed fire shelters. &#xA;Some victims did not get into their shelters in time; others left their shelters too &#xA;soon. In some cases the conditions were too severe for the shelters to provide &#xA;adequate protection.&#xA;Since 2005, current model fire shelters were deployed 138 times, resulting in 90 burn and/or smoke-inhalation preventions and 21 lives saved, according to data compiled by the National Interagency Fire Center. Fire shelters were deployed seven times as a precautionary measure. In that time, 21 people died while using fire shelters.&#xA;Shelters should never be used as a tool to make tactical decisions or to plan on using- it is a last resort for when things went seriously wrong. There is no guarantee of them saving you. That being said, they have saved a number of lives on the line.&#xA;Hope that helps. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20922" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T05:17:20.300" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22141" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-27T09:37:12.623" Score="2" ViewCount="491" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several articles (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://organicjar.com/2009/1396/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;organijar.com&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/12-health-benefits-of-manuka-honey.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;healthdiaries.com&lt;/a&gt;) mention that Manuka Honey can do wonders like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sore Throat Treatment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stomach Ulcer Treatment and Prevention&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New research has shown the honey kills every type of bacteria scientists have thrown at it, including the antibiotic-resistant ‘superbugs’ plaguing hospitals and killing patients around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Manuka honey really work to effectively kill bacteria outside the laboratory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-08-07T04:50:00.190" Title="Does Manuka Honey work as an effective bactericidal agent?" Tags="|honey|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22118" CreationDate="2014-06-27T13:36:19.287" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this is related or partially answers your question, but there is a one-off tax on blank cassettes, CDs, mp3 players, mobile phones etc, which goes to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUISA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SUISA&lt;/a&gt; (the collecting society for Swiss songwriters, composers and music publishers), which if I understand/recall correctly was considered to be a pragmatic way to accommodate all sides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.suisa.ch/en/services/questions-answers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Is it lawful to download music from file-sharing sites?&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Users of file-sharing sites who do not have such consents are acting unlawfully. The prevailing view, however, is that private downloading in Switzerland does not require the author’s consent – even if the music was unlawfully made available. Since there is no legal precedent so far, the question cannot be conclusively decided (in Germany, for example, it is unlawful to download music files that are «clearly» illegal).&#xA;  In practice, the question never arises in this form. If you have relatively recent P2P software, the titles on your hard disk automatically become available online. This is illegal and unless you obtain the necessary licences you may be exposing yourself to prosecution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a reference about what is taxed, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_suisse_pour_les_droits_des_auteurs_d%27%C5%93uvres_musicales&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;French&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The end of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.suisa.ch/fr/suisa/news/news/detail/artikel/2007/jul/verguetung-auf-digitalen-speichermedien-das-bundesgericht-gibt-gruenes-licht.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; seems to demonstrate that this is causation and not just correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;without such a fee, international law would have forced Switzerland to suppress freedom of private copying currently enjoyed by the public&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2192" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-06-27T19:09:19.770" LastActivityDate="2014-06-27T19:09:19.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15143" CreationDate="2014-06-27T16:48:20.233" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a difficult question to directly answer, for a number of reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some people tried to address it in previous answers (since deleted) by pointing out that honey and lemon are &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; alkaline. Unfortunately, that is undermined by proponents of alkaline diets simply shifting the definition of alkaline and pH around to use misleading, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140313080517/http://www.alkalisinggreens.com/pages/pral-potential-renal-acid-load.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;non-standard&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140611120722/http://www.unleashthepowerwithin.com.au/images/alkalinefoodchart.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;definitions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is also difficult because it prescribes some very specific rules (e.g. water temperature, time of day), which means it is difficult to apply the results of existing studies to this. I could point to references that honey is energy-dense and that &lt;strong&gt;adding&lt;/strong&gt; energy-dense foods to an existing high-intake diet is &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=569844&amp;amp;fileId=S1368980004000175&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;likely to be a risk factor for obesity&lt;/a&gt;. However, this is speculation, because it doesn't ruled out that honey, lemon juice, or some special synergy between them and luke-warm water consumed before breakfast breaks this general rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult because the original source doesn't clearly define what &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt; is being consumed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In one place it mentions &amp;quot;fasting&amp;quot; - i.e. consuming it instead of a high-calorie diet. It is easy to believe that someone sticking to such an ill-advised diet would lose weight because their calorific intake would be low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In one place it mentions it can be taken as a tonic &amp;quot;after a big and oily meal&amp;quot;. Having additional calories to a high-calorie diet makes it far less likely to be effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finally, it cops out by saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And of course, in every successful weight loss program, do bear in mind that principles such as forming healthy eating habits and diets, and keeping to a regular exercise regime over the long run are extremely important as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under this far more sensible weight-loss regime, the effects of a dilute honey and lemon drink isn't likely to be more than minor noise in the far more significant effect of exercise and an appropriate diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, the claims are both too specific to be precisely addressed by the extensive existing literature (in my searches) and too vague to be knocked down on first principles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite this, there are some things we &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; say about the surprising effects of honey on obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;strong&gt;lab rats&lt;/strong&gt; (which, remember, aren't humans!) there have been many experiments on the effects of &lt;strong&gt;replacing&lt;/strong&gt; sucrose with honey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rats given food sweetened with sugar &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1750-3841.2007.00286.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;grew faster&lt;/a&gt; than those given unsweetened or honey-sweetened food. In this experiment, the percentage body fat wasn't different, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1750-3841.2007.00592.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in a later almost-replication&lt;/a&gt; (sharing a co-author) it was higher for the sucrose-fed rats.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/ben/lddd/2011/00000008/00000001/art00010&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lab rats were given too many calories&lt;/a&gt; (lots of sucrose vs. honey + fat + a little sucrose vs. regular diet). Both hypercalorific diets led to higher weight and body fat levels, but the sucrose-fed rats also had higher blood-pressure and larger fat cells.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/meeting_abstract/21/6/A1060-b&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lab rats offered sugar-laden&lt;/a&gt; (versus honey-laden) foods tended to eat more, and gain more fat. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027153171000254X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;later experiment&lt;/a&gt; (sharing co-authors) found similar results.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion seems to be that honey in the diet is preferable to sucrose in terms of weight gain - perhaps because rats prefer to eat more sucrose-laden foods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some experiments have also been conducted on humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2008/961837/abs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Iranian study&lt;/a&gt;, overweight and obese individuals had their diets supplemented by 70g of sucrose or 70g of honey for 30 days. Surprisingly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;results showed that honey caused a mild reduction in body weight (1.3%) and body fat (1.1%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other measurements related to cardiovascular risk also improved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07315724.2010.10719885#.U62NmvmSx8E&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;American study&lt;/a&gt; in healthy non-obese women fed them breakfast fortified with honey or sucrose. Honey had a slower effect on some hormonal response to the breakfast, but didn't change how hungry they reported they were, or how much they ate over the next six hours. They conclude&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alterations in meal-induced responses of ghrelin and PYY3-36 but not meal-induced thermogenesis may be responsible in part for the potential “obesity protective” effect(s) of honey consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsp.com.pk/161-169%20(25)%20Corrected.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pakistani trial&lt;/a&gt; asked obese and healthy subjects from several ethnic groups to add 40g of honey dissolved in water to their consumption each day for four weeks. It had no significant effect on their Body Mass Index (making the idea that it is a miracle weight loss technique less clear, but it is promising/counter-intuitive that it didn't lead to weight gain.) There were positive effects on lipid profiles in some subgroups.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no straight answer. The claims from the original site seem to be largely exaggerated and sufficiently vague to be hard to falsify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, honey appears to have some counter-intuitive effects that simple calorie-counting wouldn't predict. There's some evidence that it is healthier than consuming the equivalent amount of sucrose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="33095" LastEditDate="2023-04-27T12:27:49.353" LastActivityDate="2023-04-27T12:27:49.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22144" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-27T17:24:26.467" Score="12" ViewCount="1638" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Michael Mosley, life expectancy rose through the Great Depression. In his Horizon programme Eat, Fast and Live Longer he claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From 1929 to 1933, in the darkest years of the great depression when people were eating far less, life expectancy increased by 6 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it seems strange to me that in four years life expectancy rose by 6 years, and that this happened just during Great Depression, can anybody confirm whether it is true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="8702" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T17:32:23.760" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T10:50:56.890" Title="Did life expectancy increase by 6 years during Great Depression?" Tags="|history|united-states|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22145" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-27T20:17:51.020" Score="5" ViewCount="370" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/parenting/guide/sleep-children?page=&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WebMD&lt;/a&gt;: 7-12 Years Old: 10 - 11 hours per day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At these ages, with social, school, and family activities, bedtimes gradually become later and later, with most 12-years-olds going to bed at about 9 p.m. There is still a wide range of bedtimes, from 7:30 to 10 p.m., as well as total sleep times, from 9 to 12 hours, although the average is only about 9 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there scientific research that backs those numbers for the need of sleep of children?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T17:01:56.707" Title="Do 7 to 12 year olds need 10 to 11 hours of sleep per day?" Tags="|sleep|children|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22145" CreationDate="2014-06-27T20:54:17.110" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there scientific research that backs those numbers for the need of sleep of children?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not known. This is the trend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Total average sleep was estimated at more than 13 hours a day for infants, decreasing steadily throughout childhood and early adolescence, reaching about 9 hours a day for 14- to 18-year-olds. ... These estimates are consistent with the amount of sleep recommended for children, and no evidence was found of racial/ethnic differences [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a comment [2] on this study states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... we are still far from understanding what a &quot;normal&quot;, &quot;ideal&quot; or &quot;adequate&quot; sleep duration is for an individual child to promote optimal health and functioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there is a general belief that children need more sleep:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A lack of empirical evidence for sleep recommendations was universally acknowledged. Inadequate sleep was seen as a consequence of &quot;modern life,&quot; associated with technologies of the time. No matter how much sleep children are getting, it has always been assumed that they need more [3].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Williams JA, Zimmerman FJ, Bell JF. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23403646&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Norms and trends of sleep time among US children and adolescents.&lt;/a&gt; JAMA Pediatr. 2013 Jan;167(1):55-60. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.423&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.423&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 23403646. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jenni OG. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23403792&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How much sleep is &quot;normal&quot; in children and adolescents?&lt;/a&gt; JAMA Pediatr. 2013 Jan;167(1):91-2. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.429&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1001/jamapediatrics.2013.429&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 23403792. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Matricciani LA, Olds TS, Blunden S, Rigney G, Williams MT. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22331340&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Never enough sleep: a brief history of sleep recommendations for children.&lt;/a&gt; Pediatrics. 2012 Mar;129(3):548-56. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1542/peds.2011-2039&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1542/peds.2011-2039&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 22331340. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-06-28T17:01:56.707" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T17:01:56.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22148" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22145" CreationDate="2014-06-28T07:06:25.283" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, there does appear to be some scientific experimental evidence to support these hours&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the longitudinal study of adolescents by Carskadon, time in bed was&#xA;  fixed at 10 hours a night, and the data showed that youngsters across&#xA;  the span of ages 10 to 17 slept about 9 hours and 20 minutes. The&#xA;  younger children were more likely to waken spontaneously in the lab,&#xA;  whereas the older children took a bit longer to fall asleep and were&#xA;  rarely spontaneously awake at the end of the 10 hours.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though younger children and adolescents slept the same hours, the latter were less alert across the day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Furthermore, assessment with the multiple sleep latency test (MSLT, an&#xA;  objective measure of sleepiness) showed that the younger children were&#xA;  more alert across the day, whereas the pubertal and postpubertal&#xA;  adolescents showed a midday trough of alertness in spite of the same&#xA;  amount of nocturnal sleep [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the need for sleep only diminishes in late adolescence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In summary, current data on the maturation of the biological&#xA;  regulation of sleep during adolescence show that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the circadian timing system undergoes a phase delay; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the dissipation of sleep homeostatic pressure does not change until late adolescence when it shows evidence of slowing; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the accumulation of sleep homeostastic pressure slows during puberty.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These findings support the notion that the need for sleep is stable&#xA;  (or increases) acrosse adolescent development and that the delay of&#xA;  sleep timing is supported by the circadian shift as well as the&#xA;  slowing of sleep homeostatic pressure accumulation. [3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Carskadon MA, Orav EJ, Dement WC. Evolution of sleep and daytime sleepiness in adolescents. In: Guilleminault C, Lugaresi E, editors. Sleep/wake disorders: Natural history, epidemiology, and long-term evolution. Raven Press; New York: 1983. pp. 201–16.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Carskadon MA, Harvey K, Duke P, Anders TF, Litt IF, Dement WC. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7403744&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pubertal changes in daytime sleepiness.&lt;/a&gt; Sleep. 1980;2(4):453-60. PubMed PMID: 7403744. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] Carskadon MA. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21600346&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sleep in adolescents: the perfect storm.&lt;/a&gt; Pediatr. Clin. North Am. 2011 Jun;58(3):637-47. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pcl.2011.03.003&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1016/j.pcl.2011.03.003&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 21600346. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T07:06:25.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22131" CreationDate="2014-06-28T07:37:56.300" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some objects which are not large enough to produce effective compression of blood vessels should also be removed in controlled circumstances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most complete and detailed account of arrow wounds and treatments is Dr. Joseph Howland Bill’s “Notes on Arrow Wounds,” which is considered the “definitive work on American arrow wounds.” [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the shaft was left in place, Dr. Bill’s treatment was to make an&#xA;  incision to enlarge the entry wound and slide a finger down the shaft&#xA;  to feel the depth of the wound and determine if the arrowhead is&#xA;  lodged in bone.  Without the shaft in place the doctor was forced&#xA;  to search for the arrow by making a larger incision, probing through&#xA;  tissue, causing more trauma, and taking more time.  It was much easier&#xA;  for the doctor and patient if the shaft was left intact until a doctor&#xA;  could remove the head and shaft as one piece.  Further, there was&#xA;  always the danger that the arrowhead could not be found leaving the&#xA;  “angular and jagged head… buried in bone to kill – for so it surely&#xA;  will.”  If, however, the arrowhead is removed properly, the wound&#xA;  was likely to heal naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only is there a fear of losing part of the penetrating object, but barbed objects might also cause more damage as they are removed.  In this report of a spear gun penetrating the skull of a 9 year old child, they advise that [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;barbed objects should not be removed by retracing the route of entry&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;as that causes maximal tissue damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Large shrapnel pieces have the same issue as broken off arrow heads, difficult to locate deep inside tissues, and jagged edges causing even more trauma when removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://allthingsliberty.com/2013/05/battle-wounds-never-pull-an-arrow-out-of-a-body/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://allthingsliberty.com/2013/05/battle-wounds-never-pull-an-arrow-out-of-a-body/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.turkishneurosurgery.org.tr/pdf/pdf_JTN_378.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.turkishneurosurgery.org.tr/pdf/pdf_JTN_378.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-29T04:55:56.487" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T04:55:56.487" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15143" CreationDate="2014-06-28T11:45:33.320" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;At this point we don't have any studies to confirm the benefit of lemon juice with honey on reducing visceral fat.  There are a couple of studies on using honey alone including this one which found improved diabetic control in rats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Glibenclamide or metformin combined with honey also significantly&#xA;  reduced the elevated levels of creatinine, bilirubin, triglycerides,&#xA;  and VLDL cholesterol. These results indicate that combination of&#xA;  glibenclamide or metformin with honey improves glycemic control, and&#xA;  provides additional metabolic benefits, not achieved with either&#xA;  glibenclamide or metformin alone. [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The diabetic rats lost weight, presumably due to poor diabetes control, but the drugs + honey group fared better in this respect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent randomized cross-over pilot study using 20 type 1 diabetic patients was conducted in Egypt where the dietary intervention was 12-week honey consumption in a dose of 0.5 mL/kg body weight per day ( a lot more than one teaspoon ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The intervention resulted in significant decreases in subscapular skin&#xA;  fold thickness (SSFT; P=.002), fasting serum glucose (FSG; P=.001),&#xA;  total cholesterol (P=.0001), serum triglycerides (TG; P=.0001), and&#xA;  low-density lipoprotein (P=.0009), and significant increases in&#xA;  fasting C-peptide (FCP; P=.0004) and 2-h postprandial C-peptide (PCP;&#xA;  P=.002). As possible long-term effects of honey after its withdrawal,&#xA;  statistically significant reductions in midarm circumference (P=.000),&#xA;  triceps skin fold thickness (P=.006), SSFT (P=.003), FSG (P=.005), 2-h&#xA;  postprandial serum glucose (P=.000), TG (P=.003), and HbA1C (P=.043),&#xA;  and significant increases in FCP (P=.002) and PCP (P=.003) were&#xA;  observed. This small clinical trial suggests that long-term&#xA;  consumption of honey might have positive effects on the metabolic&#xA;  derangements of type 1 DM. [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though not mentioning weight per se, they &lt;strong&gt;did show some reduction in subcutaneous fat&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study, however, found no effect on BMI studying 80 obese subjects fed 40 g of honey daily over 4 weeks though it appeared to improve their lipid profiles. [6]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How honey might have favourable effects on metabolism is unclear.  It is mainly comprised of two monosaccharides, glucose and fructose.  Fructose has lately been implicated in the metabolic syndrome due to the addition of high fructose corn syrup as a sweetener to food.  Yet, there are studies to suggest it can lower cholesterol when exchanged for carbohydrate in type 2 diabetes as concluded in this meta-analysis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pooled analyses demonstrated conditional triglyceride-raising and&#xA;  total cholesterol-lowering effects of isocaloric fructose exchange for&#xA;  carbohydrate in type 2 diabetes. Recommendations and large-scale&#xA;  future trials need to address the heterogeneity in the data. [3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fructose has also been shown to aid weight loss in this 6 week Mexican study&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Patients were randomized to receive 1500, 1800, or 2000 cal diets&#xA;  according to sex, age, and height. Because natural fructose might be&#xA;  differently absorbed compared with fructose from added sugars, we&#xA;  randomized obese subjects to either a low-fructose diet (&amp;lt;20 g/d) or a&#xA;  moderate-fructose diet with natural fruit supplements (50-70 g/d) and&#xA;  compared the effects of both diets on the primary outcome of weight&#xA;  loss in a 6-week follow-up period. [4[&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;when they found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Weight loss was higher in the moderate natural fructose group (4.19 ±&#xA;  0.30 kg) than the low-fructose group (2.83 ± 0.29 kg) (P = .0016).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fructose has a different metabolic pathway from glucose&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://img.medscape.com/article/777/692/777692-fig1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;metabolic pathways for fructose&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and previously was thought to be stored mainly in the liver. Isotopic metabolic studies show a different picture with only a little amount being stored as glycogen or turned into fat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://img.medscape.com/article/777/692/777692-fig3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;frucose effects&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Metabolic fate of dietary fructose carbons. The data are obtained&#xA;  within study periods less than or equal to 6 hours. After 50–150 gm&#xA;  fructose ingestion, the peak of fructose concentration in plasma would&#xA;  be between 3–11 mg/dL. The percent data above arrow lines or under box&#xA;  are the estimated amounts of ingested fructose doses via the pathway,&#xA;  and the question mark represents that the data remain to be further&#xA;  confirmed. The dash-line represents presumably minor pathways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the bulk of the fructose is converted to glucose or lactate, it is thus available directly as an energy source ( muscle can use lactate ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fructose in food such as honey may be quite a different beast from fructose as a food sweetener, but its role in weight loss is yet to be defined though data suggests it may be beneficial to lipid profiles, and does not in the amounts taken increase body weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Erejuwa OO, Sulaiman SA, Wahab MS, [..], Gurtu S. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21448302&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Glibenclamide or metformin combined with honey improves glycemic control in streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats.&lt;/a&gt; Int. J. Biol. Sci. 2011 Mar 14;7(2):244-52. PubMed PMID: 21448302. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Abdulrhman MM, El-Hefnawy MH, Aly RH, [..], Mohamed WS. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23256446&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Metabolic effects of honey in type 1 diabetes mellitus: a randomized crossover pilot study.&lt;/a&gt; J Med Food. 2013 Jan;16(1):66-72. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/jmf.2012.0108&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1089/jmf.2012.0108&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 23256446. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] Sievenpiper JL, Carleton AJ, Chatha S, [..], Jenkins DJ. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19592634&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Heterogeneous effects of fructose on blood lipids in individuals with type 2 diabetes: systematic review and meta-analysis of experimental trials in humans.&lt;/a&gt; Diabetes Care. 2009 Oct;32(10):1930-7. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.2337/dc09-0619&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.2337/dc09-0619&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 19592634. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[4] Madero M, Arriaga JC, Jalal D, [..], Lozada LG. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21621801&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The effect of two energy-restricted diets, a low-fructose diet versus a moderate natural fructose diet, on weight loss and metabolic syndrome parameters: a randomized controlled trial.&lt;/a&gt; Metab. Clin. Exp. 2011 Nov;60(11):1551-9. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.metabol.2011.04.001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1016/j.metabol.2011.04.001&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 21621801. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[5] Sun SZ, Empie MW. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23031075&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fructose metabolism in humans - what isotopic tracer studies tell us.&lt;/a&gt; Nutr Metab (Lond). 2012 Oct 2;9(1):89. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1743-7075-9-89&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1186/1743-7075-9-89&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 23031075. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/9/1/89&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Full text&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[6] Mushtaq, Rehana; Mushtaq, Rubina; Khan, Zahida Tasawar &lt;a href=&quot;http://zsp.com.pk/161-169%20%2825%29%20Corrected.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effects of Natural Honey on Lipid Profile and Body Weight in Normal Weight and Obese Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial&lt;/a&gt; Pakistan Journal of Zoology;2011, Vol. 43 Issue 1, p161&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:39.260" LastActivityDate="2014-06-28T12:13:14.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22153" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-29T09:22:18.887" Score="26" ViewCount="1671" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been a few articles recently on the (in)efficiency of fair trade organisation &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fairtrade.net/&quot;&gt;Fairtrade&lt;/a&gt;. Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/may/24/fairtrade-accused-of-failing-africas-poor&quot;&gt;example from the Guardian&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sales of Fairtrade-certified products from Uganda and Ethiopia are not&#xA;  benefiting poor farmworkers as profits fail to trickle down to much of&#xA;  the workforce, says a groundbreaking study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Fairtrade Foundation is committed to &quot;better prices, decent&#xA;  working conditions, local sustainability and fair terms of trade for&#xA;  farmers and workers in the developing world&quot;. But a UK&#xA;  government-sponsored study, which investigated the production of&#xA;  flowers, coffee and tea in Ethiopia and Uganda, found that &quot;where&#xA;  Fairtrade flowers were grown, and where there were farmers' groups&#xA;  selling coffee and tea into Fairtrade certified markets, wages were&#xA;  very low&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Christopher Cramer, an economics professor at Soas, University of&#xA;  London and one of the report's authors, said: &quot;Wages in other&#xA;  comparable areas and among comparable employers producing the same&#xA;  crops but where there was no Fairtrade certification were usually&#xA;  higher and working conditions better. In our research sites, Fairtrade&#xA;  has not been an effective mechanism for improving the lives of wage&#xA;  workers, the poorest rural people.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fairtrade disagrees (perhaps not surprisingly), stating that the study got its statistics all wrong, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In several places [the study] compares wages and working conditions of workers&#xA;  in areas where small-scale Fairtrade-certified tea and coffee farmers&#xA;  were present with those on large-scale plantations in the same regions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my simple question is: next time I by a bunch of Fairtrade bananas in my local store, can I rest assured that I've made life better for a bunch of farmers, or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastEditorUserId="16995" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T12:18:21.627" LastActivityDate="2018-06-11T01:24:30.407" Title="Are Fairtrade farmers paid worse than other farmers in the same regions?" Tags="|economics|marketing|employment|corporate-finance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22154" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22156" CreationDate="2014-06-29T09:28:58.527" Score="18" ViewCount="1375" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is often made by people of varying credentials that humans are able to spot lies and determine dishonesty in other people through simple observing of body posture, facial cues, eye direction, etc. i.e.: Body language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People like Pamela Meyer (who even gave a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_6vDLq64gE&quot;&gt;TED talk&lt;/a&gt; about the subject) have turned this into a business and sell books, seminars, etc. about the subject, and make the claims that theirs is a reliable method for becoming a human lie detector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence to support the claim that untruthful statements can be detected, by observing body language alone, with any degree of accuracy? And, related, how accurate (if this is applicable) is the detection rate of claimed experts/professionals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if I were to wear a coat that hides my shirt and said: &quot;I am wearing a blue shirt underneath this coat.&quot;, is it possible, through my body language alone, to determine if I am telling the truth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I am not referring here to analyzing a statement for inconsistencies, which may reveal a lie. I am only talking about detection of lies through body language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17130" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T09:59:34.617" Title="Is it possible to determine dishonesty in a person through body language?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22154" CreationDate="2014-06-29T16:50:39.690" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to determine dishonesty in a person through body language?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/determine&quot;&gt;&quot;to determine&quot;&lt;/a&gt; is a categorical verb. Maybe &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/suspect&quot;&gt;&quot;to suspect&quot;&lt;/a&gt; would have been more appropriate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what does body language include? According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thefreedictionary.com/body+language&quot;&gt;The Free Dictionary by Farlex&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gestures  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;postures  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;facial expressions, which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulekman.com/micro-expressions/&quot;&gt;according to Paul Elkman&lt;/a&gt; are of four types:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;macroexpressions - these are normal expressions, so you wouldn't expect these from a liar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;microexpressions - these are of interest, but they last only 67 miliseconds which makes them difficult to detect and very easy to miss&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;false expressions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;masked expressions&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gestures and postures&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some gestures common when lying: the neck scratch, covering the mouth or touching your face [1]. But none can be specific to lying. Most people believe that liars avoid eye contact [2]. So if someone avoids eye contact it means that person is lying? No. Children who avoid eye contact when answering questions are providing better answers [3]. What about Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern, and Native American cultures which believe eye contact is disrespectful [4]? Several studies concluded that gestures are an important addition to verbal communication. It seems that the effects of gestures are larger when they are not overlapping the verbal information [5]. What kind of gestures accompany a speech is determined by situation [6] so you can't assess someone's gestures without evaluating the corresponding speech. Listeners attempt to find a meaning also in the hand movements that accompany speech [7].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Body posture seems to be correlated with the manifestations of power [8]. In sports, specific deceptive movements can trick the opponent [9]. But the opponent can learn to spot those movements [10].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Facial expressions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A trained eye can spot someone's feelings and emotions (practice helps [12]):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Relative to genuine emotions, masked emotions were associated with more inconsistent expressions and an elevated blink rate; neutralized emotions showed a decreased blink rate. Negative emotions were more difficult to falsify than happiness [11].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the context influences how one can detect microexpressions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed that negative context impaired the recognition of micro-expressions regardless of the duration of the target micro-expression. Stimulus-difference between the context and target micro-expression was accounted for in Experiment 3. Results showed that a context effect on micro-expression recognition persists even when the stimulus similarity between the context and target micro-expressions was controlled. Therefore, our results not only provided evidence for the context effect on micro-expression recognition but also suggested that the context effect might result from both the stimulus and valence differences [13].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, body language is useful to detect someone's emotions. So, why my answer to the main question is &quot;no&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(negative) emotion is not the same as dishonesty&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you can't get a definitive conclusion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;body language should be assessed in correlation with context, verbal communication and key emotional circumstances&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the conditions in the above line affect assessor's ability to spot specific changes &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is not possible to make a &quot;standard&quot; protocol to detect lies. This depends on situation, assessor's intelligence and intuition, liar's experience etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BodyLanguageUniversity.com. Accessed 29.06.2014. Available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bodylanguageuniversity.com/public/132.cfm&quot;&gt;http://www.bodylanguageuniversity.com/public/132.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20976033&quot;&gt;A WORLD OF LIES.&lt;/a&gt; J Cross Cult Psychol. 2006 Jan;37(1):60-74. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022022105282295&quot;&gt;10.1177/0022022105282295&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 20976033.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phelps, F. G., Doherty-Sneddon, G. and Warnock, H. (2006), Helping children think: Gaze aversion and teaching. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 24: 577–588. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/026151005X49872/abstract&quot;&gt;doi: 10.1348/026151005X49872&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vermont Department of Haelth. Cultural Differences in Non­verbal Communication. Accessed 29.06.2014. Available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthvermont.gov/family/toolkit/tools%5CF-6%20Cultural%20Differences%20in%20Nonverbal%20Communic.pdf&quot;&gt;http://healthvermont.gov/family/toolkit/tools%5CF-6%20Cultural%20Differences%20in%20Nonverbal%20Communic.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hostetter AB. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21355631&quot;&gt;When do gestures communicate? A meta-analysis.&lt;/a&gt; Psychol Bull. 2011 Mar;137(2):297-315. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0022128&quot;&gt;10.1037/a0022128&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 21355631. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Holle H, Gunter TC. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17583993&quot;&gt;The role of iconic gestures in speech disambiguation: ERP evidence.&lt;/a&gt; J Cogn Neurosci. 2007 Jul;19(7):1175-92. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2007.19.7.1175&quot;&gt;10.1162/jocn.2007.19.7.1175&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 17583993. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dick AS, Goldin-Meadow S, Hasson U, Skipper JI, Small SL. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19384890&quot;&gt;Co-speech gestures influence neural activity in brain regions associated with processing semantic information.&lt;/a&gt; Hum Brain Mapp. 2009 Nov;30(11):3509-26. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/hbm.20774&quot;&gt;10.1002/hbm.20774&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 19384890. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Huang L, Galinsky AD, Gruenfeld DH, Guillory LE. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21149853&quot;&gt;Powerful postures versus powerful roles: which is the proximate correlate of thought and behavior?&lt;/a&gt; Psychol Sci. 2011 Jan;22(1):95-102. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797610391912&quot;&gt;10.1177/0956797610391912&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 21149853.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brault S, Bideau B, Craig C, Kulpa R. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20417980&quot;&gt;Balancing deceit and disguise: how to successfully fool the defender in a 1 vs. 1 situation in rugby.&lt;/a&gt; Hum Mov Sci. 2010 Jun;29(3):412-25. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.humov.2009.12.004&quot;&gt;10.1016/j.humov.2009.12.004&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 20417980. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sebanz N, Shiffrar M. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19145029&quot;&gt;Detecting deception in a bluffing body: the role of expertise.&lt;/a&gt; Psychon Bull Rev. 2009 Feb;16(1):170-5. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.3758/PBR.16.1.170&quot;&gt;10.3758/PBR.16.1.170&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 19145029.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Porter S, ten Brinke L. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18466413&quot;&gt;Reading between the lies: identifying concealed and falsified emotions in universal facial expressions.&lt;/a&gt; Psychol Sci. 2008 May;19(5):508-14. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02116.x&quot;&gt;10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02116.x&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 18466413. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shen XB, Wu Q, Fu XL. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22374615&quot;&gt;Effects of the duration of expressions on the recognition of microexpressions.&lt;/a&gt; J Zhejiang Univ Sci B. 2012 Mar;13(3):221-30. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1631/jzus.B1100063&quot;&gt;10.1631/jzus.B1100063&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 22374615. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zhang M, Fu Q, Chen YH, Fu X. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24736491&quot;&gt;Emotional context influences micro-expression recognition.&lt;/a&gt; PLoS ONE. 2014 Apr 15;9(4):e95018. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0095018&quot;&gt;10.1371/journal.pone.0095018&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 24736491.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="19552" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T09:59:34.617" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T09:59:34.617" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22157" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-29T17:11:14.357" Score="14" ViewCount="5378" Body="&lt;p&gt;The website The Gateway Pundit claims &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/06/military-bans-bibles-from-bases-but-forces-soldiers-to-adhere-to-islamic-practices-during-ramadan/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Military Bans Bibles But Forces Soldiers to Adhere to Ramadan Rules&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The US Air Force kicked Christian Gideon’s volunteers off base in March.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Bibles were too offensive and violated the separation of church and state rule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and then quotes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/us-personnel-in-bahrain-prepare-for-ramadan-1.290721&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stars and Stripes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While not required to fast during Ramadan, in Bahrain, Americans can be fined or detained by local authorities for eating, drinking or smoking in public when off-base during daylight hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Navy officials are requiring U.S. personnel to dress more conservatively off-base during Ramadan. Although not a requirement by Bahraini authorities, the Navy is demanding that men wear long-sleeved shirts and women wear sleeved blouses that cover their elbows. Also, men must wear long trousers, and women should wear pants or skirts that cover the knees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these claims true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T17:56:14.573" Title="Do US Military personnel have to observe Ramadan while Gideon volunteers are banned from bases?" Tags="|united-states|military|islam|christianity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22157" CreationDate="2014-06-29T17:56:14.573" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;The original web-site provides references to both claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From those references, we can see that the idea that the &lt;em&gt;former&lt;/em&gt; claim is inaccurate, but the latter claims are accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/03/air-force-kicks-gideons-volunteers-off-base-too-offensive/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the bibles themselves were too offensive&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;volunteers said they were told by the military that they would no longer be allowed to &lt;strong&gt;personally distribute&lt;/strong&gt; the pocket-sized Bibles to recruits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gaylan Johnson, is a public affairs officer for the Military Entrance Processing Command. He told me the Gideons’ side of the story is “not strictly true.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“&lt;strong&gt;They can place their literature within our facility&lt;/strong&gt;, but they are not allowed to stand there and talk with applicants or hand them (the Bibles) out,” he told me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, asking personnel to respect those observing Ramadan while in Bahrain, as reported in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stripes.com/news/middle-east/us-personnel-in-bahrain-prepare-for-ramadan-1.290721&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stars and Stripes&lt;/a&gt; is consistent with other &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=31304&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;briefings from the US Navy in previous years&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non-Muslim service members are asked to avoid Shiite neighborhoods during Ramadan to show respect for the worshipers. It is also asked that no photos be taken of any religious activities during the holy month.&#xA;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, to show respect for the customs and practices of Ramadan, service members are asked not to smoke, eat, drink or chew gum while in the community during fasting hours - either while driving our walking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, while guests in Bahrain, people are expected to respect the local customs and laws (e.g. Ramadan), no matter what their personal religious beliefs. While guests in a US military base, people are expected to respect the local customs and laws (e.g. separation of church and state), no matter what their personal religious beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T17:56:14.573" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22159" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22165" CreationDate="2014-06-29T18:27:02.750" Score="11" ViewCount="4259" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Piri Reis map is supposed to be a 300 year old map compiled from much older sources (possibly thousands of years old) that shows an accurate antarctic coastline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/huMwN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Piri Reis Map&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.principia-scientific.org/piri-reis-map-of-antarctica-antarctica-ice-free/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; claims that it is clearly 300 years old but its provenance is older:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1929, a group of historians found an amazing map drawn on a gazelle skin. Research showed that it was a genuine document drawn in 1513 by Piri Reis, a famous admiral of the Turkish fleet in the sixteenth century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His passion was cartography. Piri Reis high rank within the Turkish navy allowed him to have a privileged access to the Imperial Library of Constantinople. Piri Reis map The Turkish admiral admits, in a series of notes on the map, that he compiled and copied the data from a large number of source maps, some of which dated back to the fourth century BC or earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The map apparently shows an accurate map of an ice-free antarctic coast:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Piri Reis map shows the western coast of Africa, the eastern coast of South America, and the northern coast of Antarctica ice free. The northern coastline of Antarctica is perfectly detailed. The most puzzling however is not so much how the Piri Reis Antarctica map managed to so accurate 300 years before it was discovered, but that the map shows the real coastline under the ice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it is hard to see how any known ancient civilisation could have observed an ice-free antarctic the question arises: is the map an elaborate fake? Is it even true to say it has an accurate antarctic coastline?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="26673" LastEditDate="2021-10-26T12:56:02.990" LastActivityDate="2021-10-26T12:56:02.990" Title="Does the Piri Reis map demonstrate the Antarctic coast was ice-free?" Tags="|history|geography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22160" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22162" CreationDate="2014-06-29T18:27:43.667" Score="23" ViewCount="2378" Body="&lt;p&gt;HuffPost has published &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/29/facebook-experiment-psychological_n_5540018.html&quot;&gt;a story that claims&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A newly published paper reveals that scientists at Facebook conducted a massive psychological experiment on hundreds of thousands of users by tweaking their feeds and measuring how they felt afterward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that Facebook permitted researchers to alter users' data feeds without the users' respective permissions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T13:48:02.233" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:48:02.233" Title="Did Facebook permit researchers to alter data feeds without users' permission?" Tags="|facebook|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22160" CreationDate="2014-06-29T18:39:27.593" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;The experiment is published in the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full&quot;&gt;&quot;Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in PNAS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The experiment manipulated the extent to which people (N = 689,003)&#xA;  were exposed to emotional expressions in their News Feed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two parallel experiments were conducted for positive and negative emotion: One in which exposure to friends’ positive emotional content in their News Feed was reduced, and one in which exposure to negative emotional content in their News Feed was reduced. In these conditions, when a person loaded their News Feed, posts that contained emotional content of the relevant emotional valence, each emotional post had between a 10% and 90% chance (based on their User ID) of being omitted from their News Feed for that specific viewing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This cleary shows that the authors claim that they manipulated the feeds of hundreds of thousands of users. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors explicitly thank the Facebook team in the acknowledgements, so we can safely assume that Facebook did help the researchers to manipulate the feeds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We thank the Facebook News Feed team, especially Daniel Schafer, for encouragement and support; the Facebook Core Data Science team, especially Cameron Marlow, Moira Burke, and Eytan Bakshy; plus Michael Macy and Mathew Aldridge for their feedback.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the issue of informed consent the authors write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As such, it was consistent with Facebook’s Data Use Policy, to which all users agree prior to creating an account on Facebook, constituting informed consent for this research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim that agreeing to the Facebook policy when signing up constitutes informed consent, they did not explicitly request permission nor inform the involved users afterwards. There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/did-facebook-and-pnas-violate-human-research-protections-in-an-unethical-experiment/&quot;&gt;a blog post on Science Based Medicine from David Gorski&lt;/a&gt; exploring the ethical issues behind this and the question whether this actually constitutes informed consent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T08:04:49.947" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T08:04:49.947" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17283" CreationDate="2014-06-29T19:58:39.440" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SWATs are used more often for drug warrants than to deal with any violent crimes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An ACLU report © 2014 titled &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/assets/jus14-warcomeshome-report-web-rel1.pdf&quot;&gt;War Comes Home -- &#xA;The Excessive Militarization of American Policing&lt;/a&gt; says that in their statistical study of 800 SWAT deployments &#xA;conducted by 20 law enforcement agencies during the years &#xA;2011-2012, 62% were for drug searches (including marijuana).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-06-29T19:58:39.440" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22165" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22159" CreationDate="2014-06-30T01:59:40.883" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;The authenticity of the document itself does not seem to be in question - no one seems to deny that the map dates to 1513 and is the work of Piri Reis. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0820321575&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Description of the Map - Page 8 of the available online sample.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is regarding the authenticity and accuracy of the antarctic coastline depicted in that map. The nexus of the dispute can be found in your reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.principia-scientific.org/piri-reis-map-of-antarctica-antarctica-ice-free.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;PIRI REIS MAP OF ANTARCTICA&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1953, a Turkish naval officer sent the Piri Reis map to the U.S.&#xA;  Navy Hydro graphic Bureau. To evaluate it, M.I. Walters, the Chief&#xA;  Engineer of the Bureau, called for help Arlington H. Mallery, an&#xA;  authority on ancient maps, who had previously worked with him. After a&#xA;  long study, Mallery discovered the projection method used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To check out the accuracy of the map, he made a grid and transferred&#xA;  the Piri Reis map onto a globe: the map was totally accurate. He&#xA;  stated that the only way to draw map of such accuracy was the aerial&#xA;  surveying: but who, 6000 years ago, could have used airplanes to map&#xA;  the earth? And this was Antartica ice free.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Hydro graphic Office couldn’t believe what they saw: they were&#xA;  even able to correct some errors in the present days maps! The&#xA;  precision on determining the longitudinal coordinates, on the other&#xA;  hand, shows that to draw the map it was necessary to use the spheroid&#xA;  trigonometry, a process supposedly not know until the middle of 18th&#xA;  century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hapgood has proved that the Piri Reis map is plotted out in plane&#xA;  geometry, containing latitudes and longitudes at right angles in a&#xA;  traditional “grid”; yet it is obviously copied from an earlier map&#xA;  that was projected using spherical trigonometry! Not only did the&#xA;  early map makers know that the Earth was round, but they had knowledge&#xA;  of its true circumference to within 50 miles!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, on the comments of that page we find the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Instead of concluding the map was likely made by ancients with&#xA;  knowledge of spheroid trigonometry, one could also go with a more&#xA;  mainstream explanation which reads way simpler: that this northern&#xA;  coastline of Antarctica is not perfectly detailed at all. For example&#xA;  Gregory C. McIntosh at&#xA;  www.diegocuoghi.com/Piri_Reis/McIntosh/McIntosh_PiriReis.htm: &quot;it was&#xA;  an easy matter for Hapgood to move landmasses, adjust scales, alter&#xA;  orientations, rearrange landforms, redraw coastlines, twist the&#xA;  geographical depictions, and “correct errors” on the Piri Reis Map to&#xA;  match his hypothetical source maps.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It seems like a clear example of manipulating data under the influence&#xA;  of a strong bias. Only a cursory glance would show any fact-checker&#xA;  that actually there are many differences in locations, labels and&#xA;  orientations. The similarities do not appear to be significant enough&#xA;  to justify the claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although I'd like to let the evidence speak for itself, it needs&#xA;  perhaps mentioning that Hapgood was also a spiritist involved with&#xA;  mediums making contact with dead people and various gods. His works&#xA;  needs a more cautious approach and I'd advice against using this topic&#xA;  to make some statement on climate change. It opens one up to way too&#xA;  much valid criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More detail (and less bias...) here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piri_Reis_map#The_Antarctic_coast&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A more sober analysis of these claims&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; was published by Gregory McIntosh, a historian of cartography, who examined the map in depth in his book The Piri Reis Map of 1513: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...As far as the accuracy of depiction of the supposed Antarctic coast&#xA;  is concerned, there are two conspicuous errors. First, it is shown&#xA;  hundreds of miles north of its proper location; second, the Drake&#xA;  Passage is completely missing, with the Antarctic Peninsula presumably&#xA;  conflated with the Argentine coast. The identification of this area of&#xA;  the map with the frigid Antarctic coast is also difficult to reconcile&#xA;  with the notes on the map which describe the region as having a warm&#xA;  climate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It should be kept in mind that maps of the period generally depicted a&#xA;  large continent named Terra Australis Incognita of highly variable&#xA;  shape and extent. This land was posited by Ptolemy as a counterbalance&#xA;  to the extensive continental areas in the northern hemisphere; due to&#xA;  a lack of exploration and various misunderstandings its existence was&#xA;  not fully abandoned until circumnavigation of the area during the&#xA;  second voyage of James Cook in the 1770s showed that if it existed, it&#xA;  was much smaller than imagined previously. The first confirmed landing&#xA;  on Antarctica was not until 1820, and the coastline of Queen Maud Land&#xA;  did not see significant exploration before Norwegian expeditions began&#xA;  in 1891.In 1513 Cape Horn had not yet been discovered, and indeed&#xA;  Ferdinand Magellan's voyage of circumnavigation was not to set sail&#xA;  for another six years. It is unclear whether the map maker saw South&#xA;  America itself as part of the unknown southern lands (as shown in the&#xA;  Atlas Miller) or whether (as Dutch thought) he drew what was then&#xA;  known of the coast with substantial distortion, but in any case&#xA;  serious scholarship holds that there is no reason to believe that the&#xA;  map is the product of genuine knowledge of the Antarctic coast...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one is claiming that the map itself is &quot;an elaborate fake&quot;. The question is simply regarding the historical and geographical accuracy of the antarctic coastline it depicts, given that in 1513 such knowledge was not available from any traditional source: Is it indeed a correct depiction derived from some unknown ancient source, or the product of &quot;artistic license&quot;, often taken by cartographers of the period regarding &quot;Terra Incognita&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on contemporary scholarship, claiming that the map is undeniably an accurate representation of an ice-free antarctic coastline during any period when it would have been possible for humans to determine such is quite far-fetched. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15767" LastEditorUserId="15767" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T07:04:32.773" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T07:04:32.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-06-30T02:09:17.003" Score="6" ViewCount="746" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been numerous studies that show how using a phone while driving is &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/485/is-talking-and-driving-more-dangerous-than-any-other-type-of-distraction&quot;&gt;more distracting than other non-driving tasks&lt;/a&gt; and even worse than driving while intoxicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cellphonefreedriving.ca/media/fatal_distraction.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here was a study done in the US&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When controlling for driving difficulty and time on task, cell-phone drivers exhibited&#xA;  greater impairment than intoxicated drivers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://trid.trb.org/view.aspx?id=733342&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;And one in the UK&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drivers also reported that it was easier to drive drunk than to drive while using a phone. It is concluded that driving behaviour is impaired more during a phone conversation than by having a blood alcohol level at the UK legal limit (80mg / 100ml).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, these are all studies where the researchers created situations analogous to driving in real traffic. &lt;strong&gt;Is there any &lt;em&gt;naturalistic&lt;/em&gt; evidence that shows one way or the other that the tests done in controlled conditions translate into the real world?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="857" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2019-02-17T21:28:48.633" Title="Is using a phone while driving more dangerous than driving while drunk?" Tags="|road-vehicles|safety|mobile-phones|driving|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="30" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20087" CreationDate="2014-06-30T09:31:51.823" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question: &lt;strong&gt;Is there a link between pH levels and cancer?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, there is.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this review of tumor progression and metastatic dissemination, it is stated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hypoxia, elevated interstitial fluid pressure, low glucose and high&#xA;  lactate concentration resulting from a predominant anaerobic&#xA;  metabolism, are responsible of low extracellular pH (pHe) in tumor&#xA;  tissues. As a consequence, &lt;strong&gt;the second metabolic hallmark of tumor&#xA;  environment is tumor acidosis.&lt;/strong&gt; [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a result:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tumor acidity tends to correlate with cancer aggressiveness; in part, this reflects the ability of HIF-1 to promote invasiveness and angiogenesis.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;extracellular acidity per se boosts the invasiveness and metastatic capacity of cancer cells&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;this acidity renders cancer cells relatively resistant to the high proportion of chemotherapeutic drugs that are mildly basic, and may impede immune rejection of tumors&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus, practical strategies for raising the extracellular pH of tumors&#xA;  may have therapeutic utility. [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a number of things are being tried experiementally including&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;oral bicarbonate in rodents inhibits metastatic activity and response to chemotherapeutic agents&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Computer simulation used to verify the ability of sodium bicarbonate to increase pHe of tumors in vivo also indicates that the normalization of tumor acidity reduces invasiveness of tumor cells without altering the pH of blood or normal tissues&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Well-tolerated doses of the proton pump inhibitor esomeprazole have markedly impeded tumor growth and prolonged survival in nude mice implanted with a human melanoma (inhibiting the proton pump on tumor cells leads to a lowering of intracellular pH and rise in extra-cellular pH )&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;pH regulators in tumor cells include extracellular forms of carbonic anhydrase (CA), Na+/HCO3- co-transporters, Na+/H+ exchangers (NHEs), monocarboxylate transporters (MCTs) and the vacuolar H+-ATPase (V-ATPases). The raise of pHe promoted by these inhibitors is constantly associated with a decrease of intracellular pH. Acidity of pHi tends to suppress the efficiency of glycolysis, sustaining the raise of pHe , and may exert anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic effects on tumor cells themselves. Consequently, &lt;strong&gt;pH regulators might be considered true anticancer drugs&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, modifying the extra-cellular pH around tumors, and also tumor cells intracellular pH are lines of active enquiry in treating cancer at this time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Calorini L, Peppicelli S, Bianchini F. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23013757&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Extracellular acidity as favouring factor of tumor progression and metastatic dissemination.&lt;/a&gt; Exp. Oncol. 2012 Jul;34(2):79-84. PubMed PMID: 23013757. &lt;a href=&quot;http://exp-oncology.com.ua/article/3033&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Full text&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] McCarty MF, Whitaker J. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21155627&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Manipulating tumor acidification as a cancer treatment strategy.&lt;/a&gt; Altern Med Rev. 2010 Sep;15(3):264-72. PubMed PMID: 21155627. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="19250" LastEditDate="2014-06-30T09:37:06.897" LastActivityDate="2014-06-30T09:37:06.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22168" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22179" CreationDate="2014-06-30T19:51:46.643" Score="5" ViewCount="580" Body="&lt;p&gt;In July 2012, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/07&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The average temperature for the contiguous U.S. during July was 77.6°F, 3.3°F above the 20th century average, marking the warmest July and all-time warmest month on record for the nation in a period of record that dates back to 1895. The previous warmest July for the nation was July 1936, when the average U.S. temperature was 77.4°F.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dailycaller.com/2014/06/30/noaa-quietly-reinstates-july-1936-as-the-hottest-month-on-record/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Daily Caller&lt;/a&gt; reports on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/06/29/noaas-temperature-control-knob-for-the-past-the-present-and-maybe-the-future-july-1936-now-hottest-month-again/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog article by Anthony Watts&lt;/a&gt; that claimed that the historical figures reported by the NOAA have been changed in the meantime, without explanation, reinstating July 1936 as the hottest month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Watts ran the same data plot again on Sunday and found that NOAA inserted a new number in for July 1936. The average temperature for July 1936 was made slightly higher than July 2012, meaning, once again, July 1936 is the hottest year (sic) on record. [Annotations in the graph are from Watts]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and provides these graphs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3cvED.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8NN9l.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that NOAA now reports July 1936 as the hottest (July) month on record?  If so, why was this changed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T02:06:34.140" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T02:06:34.140" Title="Was July 1936 the hottest month on record for mainland USA?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22170" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-01T01:53:04.260" Score="16" ViewCount="17083" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTWY14eyMFg&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt; purports to show then-CNN reporter &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Jaco&quot;&gt;Charles Jaco&lt;/a&gt; rehearse a dramatic &quot;live&quot; report from Saudi Arabia during the 1990 Persian Gulf War from a studio, exaggerating the level of danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second part of this video was a live CNN satellite feed recorded onto VHS showing the final cut. Charles Jaco was wearing a different jacket, but he had the same act. The acting was terrible as Charles Jaco wore a gas mask, and his fellow correspondent Carl Rochelle wore a helmet. The sirens and missile sound effects are part of the stage set. The camera never pans out or shows the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did CNN really shoot a studio act, and purport it to be a real gas live gas attack?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-08-22T15:31:25.030" LastActivityDate="2021-08-14T17:11:55.153" Title="Did CNN fake footage during the Gulf War purporting a live gas attack?" Tags="|media|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22172" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22168" CreationDate="2014-07-01T06:44:02.413" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am unclear what is in doubt.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can follow the links and get July data from NOAA at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/us/110/00/tavg/1/07/1895-2014.csv?base_prd=true&amp;amp;firstbaseyear=1901&amp;amp;lastbaseyear=2000&quot;&gt;http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/us/110/00/tavg/1/07/1895-2014.csv?base_prd=true&amp;amp;firstbaseyear=1901&amp;amp;lastbaseyear=2000&lt;/a&gt; which includes the lines &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Contiguous U.S., Average Temperature, July&#xA;Units: Degrees Fahrenheit&#xA;Base Period: 1901-2000&#xA;Date,Value,Anomaly&#xA;193607,76.8,3.19&#xA;201207,76.77,3.16&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and this confirms Anthony Watts's most recent graph.  He previously used an earlier version which is consistent with what NOAA had turned into sentences at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/07&quot;&gt;http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2012/07&lt;/a&gt; saying &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The average temperature for the contiguous U.S. during July was&#xA;  77.6°F, 3.3°F above the 20th century average, marking the warmest July and all-time warmest month on record for the nation in a period of&#xA;  record that dates back to 1895. The previous warmest July for the&#xA;  nation was July 1936, when the average U.S. temperature was 77.4°F.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two points here are that NOAA revises its historical numbers from time to time when it has new information or better methods, and that July 1936 and July 2012 have similar figures with the relative ranking sensitive the the precise details.  I do not see any issue with either of these points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is controversial at the moment is how NOAA moves from raw local reports to final data, how it deals with missing or estimated values and with breaks in local reports, and whether its methods lead to a bias over time.  But that is a different question     &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T06:44:02.413" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22173" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-01T09:51:58.700" Score="11" ViewCount="5019" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu/4064241/Black_Males_and_Testosterone_Evolution_and_Perspectives&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Black Males and Testosterone: Evolution and Perspectives&quot;&lt;/a&gt; Robert Lindsay writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Young Black males have higher levels of active testosterone than European and Asian males.&#xA;  [...] Blacks have much higher testosterone levels than Whites from age 7-24. After 24, the difference starts shrinking, and by the early 30's, it is gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true and the state of our current knowledge about racial differences? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="1134" LastEditDate="2014-07-05T12:22:23.173" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T16:02:03.687" Title="Do young black males have on average higher testosterone than other races?" Tags="|race|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22174" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19588" CreationDate="2014-07-01T11:24:24.140" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Swiss airforce monitors its airspace permanently, 24 hours a day 365 days a year. However, means to intervene in the form of airborne aircraft are usually available only during office hours. Exceptions to this rule include special security situations, such as during the annual World Economic Forum in Davos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last publicized case of a lack of intervention occurred on February 17th, 2014. Around 4:30am a hijacker forced an Ethiopian Airlines passenger flight from Addis Abbeba bound for Rome to land in Geneva. Italian and later French fighters escorted the plane, but Swiss fighters were not available and did not intervene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&#xA;Factsheet &quot;Performance Spectrum of the Airforce&quot; at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vbs.admin.ch/internet/vbs/de/home/documentation/publication/factsheet/factsheet_v/factsheet_lw.html&quot;&gt;official government site&lt;/a&gt; (in German; French and Italian versions available).&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.20min.ch/schweiz/news/story/Die-Schweiz-hatte-keine-Kampfjets-bereit-19722028&quot;&gt;News report&lt;/a&gt; citing a spokesman of the Swiss airforce (in German).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20884" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T11:24:24.140" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22175" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22178" CreationDate="2014-07-01T11:48:25.013" Score="26" ViewCount="9181" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just found a picture that said: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wanna know a Secret? Google for 5676977 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That leads to &lt;a href=&quot;http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&amp;amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;amp;d=PALL&amp;amp;p=1&amp;amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&amp;amp;r=1&amp;amp;f=G&amp;amp;l=50&amp;amp;s1=5676977.PN.&amp;amp;OS=PN/5676977&amp;amp;RS=PN/5676977&quot;&gt;US Patent 5,676,977&lt;/a&gt; which describes using the &quot;diamagnetic semiconducting molecular crystal tetrasilver tetroxide&quot;, Ag₄O₄, to cure AIDS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this substance cure AIDs, as described in the patent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18504" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-01T12:01:16.520" LastActivityDate="2022-10-12T18:45:43.073" Title="Does tetrasilver tetroxide cure AIDS?" Tags="|hiv-aids|patents|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22175" CreationDate="2014-07-01T12:04:19.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can apply for a patent for a gadget that I envision.  That doesn't mean the gadget does what I purport that it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;For example:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;I believe that I can create an engine that uses water as intake, separates the oxygen into hydrogen and oxygen, and then burns the hydrogen and oxygen as fuel.  I can also claim that this engine will have zero emissions, and be extremely cheap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then submit a patent for this engine, to protect my idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, I gather venture capital to actually produce the engine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I produce the engine. It doesn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the engine no longer works, I let the patent lapse by not paying the fees.  The patent record still exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In this case&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check the details for this patent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents/US5676977&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;on Google Patents&lt;/a&gt;.  You can see that the patent lapsed due to non-payment 13 years later.  Now, this does not mean that it was lapsed due to the patent not functioning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To add more, if this drug actually worked, and it was a conspiracy (big pharma blocking the drug) - wouldn't it make more sense to keep the patent alive, so they could kill any company who wanted to sell it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Overall&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is impossible to know just from a patent application if the patent actually functions as claimed.  You would need to find a scientific study to prove or disprove this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20952" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2022-10-12T18:45:43.073" LastActivityDate="2022-10-12T18:45:43.073" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22175" CreationDate="2014-07-01T12:14:39.467" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, tetrasilver tetroxide has not been demonstrated as an effective antiviral agent, which would be required to remove the HIV virus that causes AIDS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2005, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1517/13543776.15.2.125&quot;&gt;review examined the claims from patents&lt;/a&gt; from 2001-2004 related to the use of silver  as an antimicrobial agent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A biological evaluation of the anti-viral properties of silver tetra-silver tetra-oxide is discussed, but no biological data have been reported to support the claim that silver (I) has anti-viral properties, as disclosed by most of the patents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T12:14:39.467" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22175" CreationDate="2014-07-01T12:18:31.800" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it doesn't cure AIDS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A page with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avert.org/fake-aids-cures.htm&quot;&gt;a list of fake cures&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tetrasil (or Imusil) is a substance containing tetrasilver tetroxide.&#xA;  A patent held by Dr. Marvin S. Antelman claims that this simple&#xA;  chemical compound cures AIDS by “electrocuting” HIV. Dr. Antelman&#xA;  admits his approach to AIDS is “non-conventional” and he does not&#xA;  trust viral load tests: “Accordingly we have patients who display&#xA;  viral load reduction and those that do not who are nevertheless cured&#xA;  of AIDS”, he has said. Tetrasilver tetroxide is more commonly used for&#xA;  disinfecting swimming pools. After it was promoted as an AIDS cure in&#xA;  Zambia the government banned Tetrasil because it has no proven&#xA;  benefits for people living with HIV. In America it is illegal to&#xA;  promote Tetrasil for the treatment or prevention of any disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfCFR/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=310.548&quot;&gt;FDA Code of Federal Regulations Title 21&lt;/a&gt; mentioned above states (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sec. 310.548 Drug products containing colloidal silver ingredients or&#xA;  silver salts offered over-the-counter (OTC) for the treatment and/or&#xA;  prevention of disease. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(a) Colloidal silver ingredients and silver&#xA;  salts have been marketed in over-the-counter (OTC) drug products for&#xA;  the treatment and prevention of numerous disease conditions. There are&#xA;  serious and complicating aspects to many of the diseases these silver&#xA;  ingredients purport to treat or prevent. &lt;strong&gt;Further, there is a lack of&#xA;  adequate data to establish general recognition of the safety and&#xA;  effectiveness of colloidal silver ingredients or silver salts for OTC&#xA;  use in the treatment or prevention of any disease. These ingredients&#xA;  and salts include, but are not limited to, silver proteins, mild&#xA;  silver protein, strong silver protein, silver, silver ion, silver&#xA;  chloride, silver cyanide, silver iodide, silver oxide, and silver&#xA;  phosphate.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(b) Any OTC drug product containing colloidal silver ingredients or&#xA;  silver salts that is labeled, represented, or promoted for the&#xA;  treatment and/or prevention of any disease is regarded as a new drug&#xA;  within the meaning of section 201(p) of the Federal Food, Drug, and&#xA;  Cosmetic Act (the act) for which an approved application or&#xA;  abbreviated application under section 505 of the act and part 314 of&#xA;  this chapter is required for marketing. In the absence of an approved&#xA;  new drug application or abbreviated new drug application, such product&#xA;  is also misbranded under section 502 of the act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(c) Clinical investigations designed to obtain evidence that any drug&#xA;  product containing colloidal silver or silver salts labeled,&#xA;  represented, or promoted for any OTC drug use is safe and effective&#xA;  for the purpose intended must comply with the requirements and&#xA;  procedures governing the use of investigational new drugs as set forth&#xA;  in part 312 of this chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(d) After September 16, 1999, any such OTC drug product containing&#xA;  colloidal silver or silver salts initially introduced or initially&#xA;  delivered for introduction into interstate commerce that is not in&#xA;  compliance with this section is subject to regulatory action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[64 FR 44658, Aug. 17, 1999]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T12:18:31.800" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22179" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22168" CreationDate="2014-07-01T13:52:58.740" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just to add to @Henry's answer (+1):  If you go to the NOAA &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/us/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;webpage&lt;/a&gt; for downloading the data, at the top of the page it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NCDC transitioned to the nClimDiv dataset on Thursday, March 13, 2014.&#xA;  This was coincident with the release of the February 2014 monthly&#xA;  monitoring report. For details on this transition, please visit our&#xA;  public FTP site and our U.S. Climate Divisional Database site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which suggests that the reason for the change in record is due to a change in the dataset (set of stations) used to compute the mean temperature, and that the change was announced and clearly indicated to those downloading the data.  It is a shame that the blogs and media didin't bother to investigate the reasons for the change before assuming that NOAA has made an adjustment without explanation.  The announcement is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/transitioning-gridded-climate-divisional-dataset&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-07-01T14:18:06.100" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T14:18:06.100" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22182" CreationDate="2014-07-01T15:01:27.230" Score="4" ViewCount="1452" Body="&lt;p&gt;A question asked here recently &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/19588/is-switzerland-vulnerable-to-aerial-threats-outside-office-hours&quot;&gt;Is Switzerland vulnerable to aerial threats outside office hours?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; kind of implies that this is something unusual. But is it really something unusual in Europe? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do other mainland European countries maintain their Air Force on high alert (something like Quick Reaction Alert), having fighters ready to scramble and intercept within minutes at all times during normal peaceful times? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T09:31:19.253" Title="Do European countries maintain Air Force on high alert?" Tags="|military|europe|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2017-01-04T12:16:39.317" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7801" CreationDate="2014-07-01T15:29:11.373" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;IBM had a great project that provided pictures and even a video of atoms. The video is called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/oSCX78-8-q0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Boy and His Atom&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; It holds the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/extraordinary/smallest-stop-motion-film&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guinness World Records record for the World's Smallest Stop-Motion Film&lt;/a&gt;, which isn't the most prestigious and convincing award, but it's something. You can see how it is made in the video, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/xA4QWwaweWA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Moving Atoms: Making The World's Smallest Movie&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The movie and images were made with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_tunneling_microscope&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scanning tunneling microscope&lt;/a&gt; (STM), which earned it's inventors, Gerd Binning and Heinrich Rohrer, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1986/press.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quote explaining the technical abilities of the STM:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=3Q08jRmmtrkC&amp;amp;lpg=PA345&amp;amp;pg=PA2#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;C. Bai (2000). &lt;em&gt;Scanning Tunneling Microscopy and Its Application&lt;/em&gt;. New York: Springer Verlag. pp. 2-3.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;STM can achieve atomic-level resolution. The lateral and vertical resolutions can reach &#xA;  0.1 nm and 0.01 nm, respectively, i.e., individual atoms and molecules can be resolved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;STM can be employed for the modification of a surface and for the manipulation of atoms&#xA;  and molecules through tip-sample interactions, opening up the prospects of constructing&#xA;  atomic- or melecular-scale devices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The project's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.research.ibm.com/articles/madewithatoms.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;homepage&lt;/a&gt; has much more information about the project, including some Star Trek atom art:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.research.ibm.com/software/IBMResearch/images/atomicmemory/star-trek-logo_image.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Star Trek logo http://www.research.ibm.com/software/IBMResearch/images/atomicmemory/star-trek-logo_image.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y3Hjx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;live long&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ugRba.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;USS Enterprise&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20962" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-02-04T14:33:04.070" LastActivityDate="2019-02-04T14:33:04.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22182" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22180" CreationDate="2014-07-01T16:15:50.550" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Germany has two sqads of fighters on alert at all times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.luftwaffe.de/portal/a/luftwaffe/!ut/p/c4/NYvBCsIwEAX_aDdRkNCbpSKCJw_WeotpqAtpEtZte_HjTQ6-gbkMD59YiHalyQqlaAM-cHDUvDYIG1h2b1qjX2CntIaPz9jXw-jBpeilWnwUKp7YSmLIiSXUsjCXAjTioHTXqoP6T3_N9XQ2971R3aW9YZ7n4w-ftFOj/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;From the official website of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe):&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Die sogenannten „Quick Reaction Alert-Interceptor (QRA-I)“-Rotten sind beim Jagdgeschwader 71 „Richthofen“ in Wittmund mit dem Waffensystem F-4F Phantom und beim Jagdgeschwader 74 in Neuburg mit dem Waffensystem Eurofighter stationiert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The so-called &quot;Quick REaction Alert-Interceptor (QRA-I)&quot;-squads are stationed with the Jagdgeschwader 71 „Richthofen“ in Wittmund with the weapons system F-4F Phantom and the Jagdgeschwader 74 in Neuburg with the weapons system Eurofighter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They state also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sie sind, wie auch die Kräfte der Einsatzführung, 24 Stunden am Tag, 365 Tage im Jahr in Bereitschaft und sichern kontinuierlich den deutschen Luftraum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They are, like the command staff, on alert for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and secure the german airspace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="20975" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T02:24:50.693" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T02:24:50.693" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22180" CreationDate="2014-07-01T19:49:39.127" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the specific incident that revealed this to the public and led to news stories like the one mentioned in the earlier question, both France and Italy were able to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.defense.gouv.fr/operations/actualites/les-armees-de-l-air-francaise-et-italienne-interviennent-lors-du-detournement-du-vol-eth-702&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scramble fighters&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In France, this mission is called “&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.defense.gouv.fr/jeunes/jeuneactu/la-permanence-operationnelle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;permanence opérationelle&lt;/a&gt;” and the air force is indeed supposed to have fighters but also radar systems and surface-to-air defense systems available at all times for this purpose. In total &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.defense.gouv.fr/air/missions/missions-permanentes/missions-permanentes-en-metropole/missions-permanentes-en-metropole&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the air force's website&lt;/a&gt; claims that 900 personnel are involved in this at any one time. Since the UK (mentioned in your comments) and Germany (see Fabian's answer) do it too, it would seem that most middle-size European countries have something similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Debates in Switzerland tend to look at smaller countries like Austria (which shares a few things with Switzerland: similar size, location, neutrality, etc.). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vbs.admin.ch/internet/vbs/fr/home/aktuell/mitteilung/140416.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This interview&lt;/a&gt; with a researcher working on the topic suggests that every European country except Luxembourg, Ireland and Austria have more air force resources than Switzerland and that even Austria has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmlv.gv.at/sk/lusk/verbaende/ueberwachungsgeschwader.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some 24/7 interception capabilities&lt;/a&gt; so Switzerland would really seem somewhat unusual in this regard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17041" LastEditorUserId="17041" LastEditDate="2014-07-02T09:31:19.253" LastActivityDate="2014-07-02T09:31:19.253" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22180" CreationDate="2014-07-01T20:04:04.560" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;France has similar missions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.defense.gouv.fr/air/missions/missions-permanentes/missions-permanentes-en-metropole/missions-permanentes-en-metropole&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Missions permanentes en métropole&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Le plan Vigipirate&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conçu en 1978, le plan Vigipirate est un dispositif gouvernemental de&#xA;défense, de vigilance et de prévention contre les actions terroristes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;L'armée de l'air assure les missions de mesures actives de sûreté&#xA;aérienne (MASA). Aux côtés des centres de détection et de contrôle&#xA;œuvrant 24 heures sur 24, des avions de combat et des hélicoptères&#xA;sont en alerte et veillent en permanence à la sûreté aérienne du&#xA;territoire national.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rpdefense.over-blog.com/2014/01/premi%C3%A8re-interception-de-l%E2%80%99ann%C3%A9e-pour-la-po.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Première interception de l’année pour la PO&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Un hélicoptère Fennec de la permanence opérationnelle (PO) a réalisé&#xA;la première interception de l’année 2014 au profit de la sûreté&#xA;aérienne.   Jeudi 2 janvier 2014 à 12 h 34, l’équipage de&#xA;l’hélicoptère Fennec d’alerte MASA (mesures actives de sureté&#xA;aérienne) sur la base aérienne 107 de Villacoublay est « scramblé»&#xA;(affecté à une mission en jargon opérationnel) pour intercepter un&#xA;avion de tourisme. Il ne s’agit pas d’un exercice mais de la première&#xA;alerte de l’année 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rapidement l’avion de tourisme est classé douteux.&#xA;Il vient de&#xA;pénétrer dans une zone interdite de survol : la zone sensible de&#xA;Valduc (Côte-d’Or). Le centre national des opérations aériennes&#xA;(CNOA), en charge 24h/24 de la sûreté aérienne du territoire national,&#xA;propose alors à la haute autorité de défense aérienne (HADA) de faire&#xA;intervenir les moyens dédiés.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airforce-technology.com/news/newsfrench-air-force-assumes-qra-operations-in-poland-4264967&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;French Air Force assumes QRA operations in Poland (13 May 2014)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something similar happens in other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theaviationist.com/2012/08/29/miscommunication-schipol/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Big misunderstanding sparks hijack alert at Amsterdam. F-16 fighter jets scrambled, Special Forces dispatched.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T20:04:04.560" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22187" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19588" CreationDate="2014-07-01T20:40:40.377" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I suspect that a reason for interception by military planes is so that, when a civilian plane accidentally-or-on-purpose flies into a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibited_airspace&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;prohibited airspace&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, the Authorities can send a fighter to make visual contact and to visually tell the intruder to leave, instead of simply shooting them down with a Surface-to-Air Missile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say this because interception by a military jet is what generally seems to happen: &lt;a href=&quot;https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/1037/556&quot;&gt;What should you do if you are forced to enter restricted or prohibited airspace?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand I found this list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vfrguide.com/european-flight-notes/switzerland/enr-2-navigation-warnings/prohibited-restricted-and-danger-areas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;prohibited airspaces in Switzerland&lt;/a&gt;. Reading it, any/all prohibited areas in Switzerland seem to be prohibited only because they're a danger to intruding aircraft (e.g. because they are firing ranges), not because the Authorities are afraid of intruders (e.g. there aren't any no-fly zones over major/capital cities, as there are in some other countries).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IOW, perhaps the main threat is more to errant aircraft than to the nation. Switzerland's sleepy airforce only means that if a plane gets lost at night and wanders into a dangerous area, the Swiss cannot (except by radio) warn the errant aircraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:59:54.117" LastActivityDate="2014-07-01T20:40:40.377" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22196" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-02T15:18:17.533" Score="5" ViewCount="3957" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just came across the phenomenon of 'Detoxifying Foot Pads'. They are supposed to draw toxins out of your feet by contact overnight or through the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is claimed that &lt;a href=&quot;http://simplecannabis.com/drug-testing/natural-ways-to-pass-a-marijuana-drug-test/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;they help you pass a drug test&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Detox Foot Pads will help you pass a marijuana drug test&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to remove heavy metals, toxins, metabolic wastes, mucous, chemicals, microscopic parasites, cellulite and drug metabolites from prescription medicines these foot pads are very useful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that footpads can improve your chances of passing a drug test?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20991" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-04-30T21:17:39.353" Title="Could Detoxifying Foot Pads help someone pass a drug test?" Tags="|natural-remedies|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22200" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-02T18:46:54.610" Score="4" ViewCount="372" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://themindunleashed.org/2014/04/car-runs-100-years-without-refuelling-thorium-car.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article and included video from Young Turks&lt;/a&gt; claims that Laser Power Systems has produced a &quot;concept for a car&quot; which can run for 100 years on 8 grams of thorium without needing t be refueled.  While I believe a car powered by thorium may be feasible, I am highly skeptical of their claims especially after visiting their website.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The article claims to show an image of a car which:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is powered solely by thorium,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;runs off only 8g of thorium for 100 years,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is about as safe as other cars (no dying of radiation poisoning),&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and the thorium releases its energy by using &quot;using bits of it to&#xA;build a laserbeam that heats water, produces steam, and powers an&#xA;energy-producing turbine.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has a car meeting these claims been produced? (already answered in comments.. no)&#xA;Has a concept car which is reasonably likely to meet these claims been designed?&#xA;It may be useful to give any indication as to what progress this company has made, if any, in this field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20992" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T03:46:18.377" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T03:46:18.377" Title="Is there a viable design for a thorium car that can run for 100 years without being refueled?" Tags="|road-vehicles|nuclear-energy|power-generation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22202" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-02T23:18:26.990" Score="3" ViewCount="546" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://royalcentral.co.uk/blogs/insight/can-prince-charles-be-skipped-in-the-line-of-succession-22445&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; posits that the succession to the British throne is ultimately in the hands of the Parliament, not the queen or royal family. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The news source considers an important counter argument to bypass Prince Charles in the succession, that even though he (re-) married a divorced woman, Lady Camilla Parker Bowles, he has a lot more experience as a royal than his son and daughter in law, and would therefore make a better monarch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The British government was an important factor in the abdication of King Edward VIII because of his marriage to Wallace Simpson. Could it, in theory, step in to prevent the ascension, or cause the early abdication of King Charles III, even though it is not likely to do so?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4823" LastEditorUserId="4823" LastEditDate="2015-10-24T23:08:19.837" LastActivityDate="2015-10-24T23:08:19.837" Title="Is it true that Prince Charles can be bypassed in the line of succession?" Tags="|politics|united-kingdom|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="16" ClosedDate="2014-07-03T16:49:59.243" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22203" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22214" CreationDate="2014-07-02T23:53:07.987" Score="7" ViewCount="1596" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his self-published article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youaredreaming.org/assets/pdf/Theory_Of_Precognitive_Dreams.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Theory of Precognitive Dreams&lt;/a&gt;, Ian A. Wilson describes the concept of déjà rêve - feeling you have dreamt this situation before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He describes one anecdote where he had a lucid dream, and altered the dream experience by placing a triangle on a coworker's forehead:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The dream offered no more than about a 5 minute window of opportunity where, when recognizing the location as a place of work (a movie theater) and a person known to work there at the time, being fully awake and aware that the current setting was in fact a dream, I targeted a co-worker -- only out of opportunity -- and caused a triangle to appear on his forehead over a distance of 6 feet. He was behind the concession counter and I was an usher taking tickets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He then explains that it became true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On May 13th, 1998, while working at the movie theater, the same opportunity observed in the dream synchronized with a strong déjà vu aura. Going through the motions of the dream at this point, the triangle did form as observed in the dream on the forehead of a co-worker. He was not privileged to this personal research and exploration that I was conducting. However, he felt something and was also able to observe the triangle mark. It was visible enough to be recorded with photographs and I will present the two pictures of the mark. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He discusses his experiences and further provides the photographs as references in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://youaredreaming.org/2014/06/27/video-precognitive-dreams-deja-vu-deja-reve/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this evidence that lucid dreams can be used to alter future reality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20997" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T06:18:39.167" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T06:18:39.167" Title="Can manipulating a lucid dream change the future?" Tags="|dreaming|lucid-dreaming|divination|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22204" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-03T01:59:26.010" Score="0" ViewCount="5933" Body="&lt;p&gt;Scientists like Ptolemy and and Aristotle &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;argue that the Earth is at the centre of the universe&lt;/a&gt;, and that the sun and stars are fix on spheres that rotate about the Earth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, other scientists like Copernicus and Kepler argue that in fact Earth rotates about the sun. Indeed in Copernicus' time, his model wasn't better than Ptolemy's in predicting the phenomena:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, for his contemporaries, the ideas presented by Copernicus were not markedly easier to use than the geocentric theory and did not produce more accurate predictions of planetary positions. Copernicus was aware of this and could not present any observational &quot;proof&quot;, relying instead on arguments about what would be a more complete and elegant system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What evidence to we have that the Earth rotates the sun?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T02:24:09.660" Title="Does the Earth revolve around the sun?" Tags="|astronomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2014-07-03T03:29:18.413" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22204" CreationDate="2014-07-03T02:24:09.660" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very evident that it the Earth has an orbit that circles the Sun thanks to the advancement in space travel, satellites and observatories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Nasa's website:&#xA;In the modern era, Nicholas Copernicus is credited as setting the heliocentric model of the solar system on a firm footing. He wrote about this in 1543. In 1609 Johannes Kepler used the very accurate observations of Mars made by Tycho Brahe (in the 1590's) to demonstrate that the position of Mars could be accurately predicted using sun-centered solar system suggested by Copernicus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980212a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980212a.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20997" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T02:24:09.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22144" CreationDate="2014-07-03T04:59:22.537" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, life expectancy is continually increasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mappinghistory.uoregon.edu/english/US/US39-01.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://mappinghistory.uoregon.edu/english/US/US39-01.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the chart, you'll notice that life expectancy did indeed increase during the Great Depression, but at a lower rate than the previous and following decades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21002" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T04:59:22.537" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22207" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22211" CreationDate="2014-07-03T05:16:22.360" Score="7" ViewCount="969" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/27514afc-5444-11e2-9d25-00144feab49a.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Financal Times reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Dopamine jolt behind internet addiction&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The effect on the brain is similar to what makes drug addicts reuse cocaine&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kristen Lindquist, professor of psychology at the University of North&#xA;Carolina, Chapel Hill, says social information feels intrinsically&#xA;rewarding to people. We get a jolt of dopamine when someone “likes”&#xA;our Facebook post or retweets our Twitter link. Over time, the effect&#xA;on the reward centre in the brain is similar to what makes drug&#xA;addicts go back for another line of cocaine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3518" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T09:02:51.023" Title="Are Facebook Likes similar to cocaine addiction?" Tags="|psychology|neurology|recreational-drugs|social-media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22208" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-03T05:58:12.260" Score="5" ViewCount="819" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen many articles online that talk about radioactive snow falling on the Reagan after the Tohoku tsunami and Fukushima disaster, from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://nypost.com/2013/12/22/70-navy-sailors-left-sickened-by-radiation-after-japan-rescue/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NY Post&lt;/a&gt; and shakier sources like &lt;a href=&quot;http://guardianlv.com/2013/12/navy-sailors-giving-aid-to-japan-after-tsunami-poisoned-by-nuclear-fallout/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Liberty Voice&lt;/a&gt;.  TYT had &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tytnetwork.com/2013/12/30/fukushima-responders-starting-get-sick/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a newspiece on it&lt;/a&gt; as well, which sounded like it was thinly sourced from an article like the aforementioned (of which there are many clones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The picture often associated is of &amp;quot;sailors cleaning snow off the deck&amp;quot;, because I guess white stuff is snow (like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancerisafungus.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cancer and fungus&lt;/a&gt;), despite it looking suspiciously like foam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jhJ3n.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Crew members scrub contaminated snow off the deck of USS Ronald Reagan in March 2011 during a humanitarian mission off tsunami-stricken Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Photo: Getty Images&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did snow actually fall on the Reagan, and if so, how much?  Was there enough for &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20180613091335/http://enenews.com/radio-u-s-navy-sailors-were-havinng-snow-ball-fights-on-deck-using-radioactive-snow-off-fukushima-crew-was-pretty-well-toast-by-time-they-came-into-port-contaminated-debris-off-uss-reagan&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;snowball fights&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, or is this a mix of a lawyer's statement, severely misinterpreted photo, and fear of the invisible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-04-30T16:54:25.813" Title="Did radioactive snow from Fukushima fall on the USS Ronald Reagan?" Tags="|fukushima-daiichi|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15609" CreationDate="2014-07-03T06:50:13.913" Score="-6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, they didn't&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://home.nra.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NRA is a civil rights organization&lt;/a&gt;, and isn't capable of blocking federal research funding related to gun violence and gun control. That is the job of Congress. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Congress passed the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-104publ208/pdf/PLAW-104publ208.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1996 Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Bill&lt;/a&gt;, which contains the following language:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This amendment was added by U.S. House Representative Jay Dickey (R-AR) and was approved by 104th Congress. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2013/02/gun-violence.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Psychology Association&lt;/a&gt;, that was against the Dickey Amendment admits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;this language did not explicitly ban research on gun violence&lt;/strong&gt;. However, Congress also took $2.6 million from the CDC’s budget — the amount the CDC had invested in firearm injury research the previous year —and earmarked the funds for prevention of traumatic brain injury. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the CDC themselves, they note the Dickey Amendment &lt;strong&gt;does not block research/funding&lt;/strong&gt; related to gun control/gun violence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;AR-13: Prohibition on Use of CDC Funds for Certain Gun Control Activities&#xA;  The Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act specifies that: &quot;None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anti-Lobbying Act requirements prohibit lobbying Congress with appropriated Federal monies. &lt;strong&gt;Specifically, this Act prohibits the use of Federal funds for direct or indirect communications intended or designed to influence a member of Congress with regard to specific Federal legislation.&lt;/strong&gt; This prohibition includes the funding and assistance of public grassroots campaigns intended or designed to influence members of Congress with regard to specific legislation or appropriation by Congress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition to the restrictions in the Anti-Lobbying Act, CDC interprets the language in the CDC's Appropriations Act to mean that &lt;strong&gt;CDC's funds may not be spent on political action or other activities designed to affect the passage of specific Federal, State, or local legislation intended to restrict or control the purchase or use of firearms.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T17:25:47.463" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T17:25:47.463" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22207" CreationDate="2014-07-03T08:13:00.777" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;** &lt;strong&gt;EDITED to reflect edits to the question and discussion in comments.&lt;/strong&gt; **&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything in the article seems credible, and doesn't seem to contradict other sources. It does seem guilty of sensationalising the subject because there doesn't seem to be any &lt;em&gt;unique&lt;/em&gt; link here - you can could equally draw similarities with love, food, sex, sports or many other things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly we can say there are &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; similarities between facebook feedback and cocaine use which are backed up by scientific studies, such as this study published in the journal &lt;em&gt;Frontiers in Human Neuroscience&lt;/em&gt; in which researchers used Functional MRI scans to establish that positive feedback on Facebook does stimulate the reward centre in the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Positive Facebook feedback seen as a 'reward' in brain&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The findings of&#xA;the study revealed that participants who gained positive feedback&#xA;about themselves showed stronger activity within the nucleus accumbens&#xA;compared with when they saw another person receiving positive&#xA;feedback. This corresponded with the subjects' intensity of Facebook&#xA;use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265509.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265509.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cocaine use and many other things also stimulate the reward area of the brain.  This article in the &lt;em&gt;Journal of Advanced Practive Nursing&lt;/em&gt; says that love, cocaine and gambling are all similar:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“When thinking about your beloved, there is intense activation in the&#xA;reward area of the brain — the same area that lights up when you take&#xA;cocaine, the same area that lights up when you win a lot of money.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asrn.org/journal-advanced-practice-nursing/813-love-pain-money-cocaine-light-up-same-area-of-brain.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.asrn.org/journal-advanced-practice-nursing/813-love-pain-money-cocaine-light-up-same-area-of-brain.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The drug achieves its main immediate psychological effect—the high—by causing a buildup of the neurochemical dopamine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851032/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2851032/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the development of brain-imaging technologies it has been discovered that the 'highs' cocaine users experience is directly correlated with the degree to which cocaine binds to dopamine transporters (molecules which allow for the re-uptake of dopamine), especially in the &lt;strong&gt;nucleus accumbens&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.derby.ac.uk/ostrich/intro_to_bio_psych/addiction/page_11.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www2.derby.ac.uk/ostrich/intro_to_bio_psych/addiction/page_11.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I've established with these references appears to support some similarity of the immediate effects.  I don't want to draw conclusions which are not in the sources, and I'm not sure whether they are adequate to support the idea that the cumulative effect leads to addiction; perhaps we need more references to support that or perhaps an expert in addiction could confirm that this conclusion can be drawn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR &lt;strong&gt;There is scientific evidence of the effect on the brain and there are some similarities to cocaine use&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T09:02:51.023" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8027" CreationDate="2014-07-03T12:20:44.110" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, in chemistry labs Cyanide dissolved in DMSO is referred to as &quot;Liquid Death&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lonechemist.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/liquid-death/&quot;&gt;As this in depth explanation&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The result is obvious: combining DMSO with the wrong compound will rapidly increase the risk of the situation and, if you’re unlucky, the results could be fatal. One such compound DMSO will dissolve is &lt;strong&gt;potassium cyanide&lt;/strong&gt;, making it a liquid that will  &lt;strong&gt;poison you on contact with the skin&lt;/strong&gt; or through your gloves. It is not surprising that this mixture of properties has earned it the reputation of ‘Liquid Death’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because DMSO travels straight through your skin, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chem.purdue.edu/chemsafety/safetyclass/sds/ghs-dmso.pdf&quot;&gt;and drags with it dissolved toxins&lt;/a&gt; such as cyanide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Avoid contact with DMSO solutions containing toxic materials or materials with&#xA;  unknown toxicological properties. Dimethyl sulfoxide is readily absorbed through skin&#xA;  and may carry such materials into the body&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T12:20:44.110" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22208" CreationDate="2014-07-03T13:00:55.753" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, there is no evidence to support the claim that radioactive snow fell on the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76). The photo in question was released by the US Navy with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.navy.mil/view_image.asp?id=98889&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ID 110323-N-DM338-142&lt;/a&gt; and the following original caption,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PACIFIC OCEAN (March 23, 2011) Sailors scrub the flight deck aboard&#xA;  the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76) following a&#xA;  countermeasure wash down to decontaminate the flight deck while the&#xA;  ship is operating off the coast of Japan. Sailors scrubbed the&#xA;  external surfaces on the flight deck and island superstructure to&#xA;  remove potential radiation contamination. Ronald Reagan is operating&#xA;  off the coast of Japan providing humanitarian assistance as directed&#xA;  in support of Operation Tomodachi. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass&#xA;  Communication Specialist Nicholas A. Groesch/Released)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Tomodachi&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Operation Tomodachi&lt;/a&gt; was part of the US relief efforts following the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami&lt;/a&gt; and other photos from the same time period such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.navy.mil/view_image.asp?id=98891&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;110323-N-IC111-533&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.navy.mil/view_image.asp?id=98890&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;110323-N-IC111-436&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.navy.mil/view_image.asp?id=98888&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;110323-N-DM338-113&lt;/a&gt; (included below) all make the same reference to scrubbing down the deck. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iz5Va.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;US Navy Sailors scrubbing down the deck ID 10323-N-DM338-113&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T13:00:55.753" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22203" CreationDate="2014-07-03T14:14:03.220" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. This is not evidence that control of lucid dreams provides control of the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Issues with anecdotes&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We do not know and he does not know whether his account is accurate. (&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/more-evidence-our-memory-stinks/&quot;&gt;Our memories are not an accurate recording of the past.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, and &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/implanting-false-memory/&quot;&gt;Modern neuroscience has taught us that there is practically no limit to the extent to which we can be fooled, especially by ourselves.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if we take the account at face value, we do not know how the real world would have unfolded in the case that he did not alter his lucid dream. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You would need, at minimum, a counterfactual situation to even check if there is a correlation and ideally, an interventional experiment to assess causation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia&quot;&gt;Pareidolia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was there even a triangle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see a triangle. If the criteria for &quot;triangle&quot; is so loose as to include the appearance of that guy's forehead, then what &lt;em&gt;wouldn't&lt;/em&gt; have counted?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_definition&quot;&gt;Operational definition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ian did not disclose a prediction of what the triangle &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have looked like prior to noticing the appearance of Kevin's real-life forehead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time#The_causal_arrow_of_time&quot;&gt;The causal arrow of time&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When did Kevin's forehead achieve the appearance captured in the photos? Perhaps it already looked exactly as it does in the photos prior to Ian's dream. Ian does not rule out this possibility in his documentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;What if&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What would have happened had Ian not intervened in his lucid dream, but still in real life, &quot;pointed his hand at [Kevin's] forehead from a distance of 6 feet away in distance&quot;? Would Kevin have still felt &quot;a small amount of circular energy&quot;, &quot;like a small headache&quot;? Would Ian have still been able to find a triangle on Kevin's forehead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ian hasn't tested this alternative. Thus, it is not possible from Ian's report to distinguish the effects of the lucid dream from the effects of Ian's real-world actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-07-03T17:26:15.930" LastActivityDate="2014-07-03T17:26:15.930" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22218" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22219" CreationDate="2014-07-04T01:04:48.300" Score="8" ViewCount="1404" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.beautyofplanet.com/british-scientists-clone-dinosaur/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An article&lt;/a&gt; makes a claim that scientists have cloned a baby Apatosaurus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;From Article:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientists at Liverpool’s John Moore University have successfully cloned a dinosaur, a spokesman from the university said yesterday. The dinosaur, a baby Apatosaurus nicknamed “Spot,” is currently being incubated at the University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. The scientists extracted DNA from preserved Apatosaurus fossils, which were on display at the university’s museum of natural science. Once the DNA was harvested, scientists injected it into a fertile ostrich womb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TlnQz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Imagee from source claiming to be the dinosaur clone&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Has science finally created life from fossilized dinosaur DNA as we've seen fictionalized by the movie Jurassic Park as claimed by this article?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20997" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T21:22:46.383" LastActivityDate="2016-03-13T11:35:00.640" Title="Have scientists successfully cloned a dinosaur?" Tags="|biology|genetics|dna|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22218" CreationDate="2014-07-04T01:26:29.577" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article has already been well-covered on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/dinosaurcontroversies/a/Can-We-Clone-A-Dinosaur.htm&quot;&gt;dinosaurs.about.com&lt;/a&gt; says &quot;a complete hoax, albeit a very entertaining one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/dinosaurclone.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; says &quot;False&quot; and explains the image is a kangaroo.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hoax-slayer.com/cloned-dinosaur-hoax.shtml&quot;&gt;Hoax-Slayer&lt;/a&gt; says &quot;Hoax&quot; and attributes the origin to &quot;NewsHound, a website that publishes all manner of fanciful nonsense disguised as news reports.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thatsnonsense.com/view.php?id=1831&quot;&gt;That's Nonsense&lt;/a&gt; says &quot;none of the details are factual&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T01:26:29.577" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22221" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22700" CreationDate="2014-07-04T08:49:52.313" Score="5" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I don t have any link to the claim right now, but it is heavily repeated where I live. I'll edit to add a link later&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A commonly repeated story says that the firefighters that were tasked to stop the fires in the Chernobyl reactor, rather than minimise they time exposed to radiation, volunteered to be sent again and again. They figured they would die of radiation poisoning anyway, and re-exposing themselves would that way minimise the deaths of other firefighters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any report supporting that theory? For an individual or for a large part of the firefighter team deployed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Example for an individual:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/mar/26/nuclear.russia&quot;&gt;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/mar/26/nuclear.russia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Afterwards, Volodin was told he and his crew had been so irradiated they could no longer fly. Hospitalised in a Kiev cardiology ward, the doctors told him to drink as much wine and vodka as he liked; they had no idea how to treat him. Volodin stayed until late May, and returned to fly in and out of the disaster site for another five months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16629" LastEditorUserId="16629" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T09:56:59.430" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T09:28:01.793" Title="Did irradiated Chernobyl firefighters re-volunteer to avoid others being affected?" Tags="|mortality|nuclear-energy|russia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22144" CreationDate="2014-07-04T10:36:20.940" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;While claim that life expectancy rose from 1929 to 1933 by 6 years is true, the conclusions are far fetched. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effects of the Great Depression on the people didn't end in 1933. In fact for the people 1933 was the middle of the Great Depression. US unemployment rate has been constantly rising from 1929 until 1933, when it has &lt;em&gt;peaked&lt;/em&gt; at 25% (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0014498372900034&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;). So if you'd expect to measure the effect on people, it would be after 1933. And indeed, life expectancy fell by 1½ years 1933 to 1934, and reached local low in 1936 at 6 years less than 1933 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://demog.berkeley.edu/~andrew/1918/figure2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;). It did not recover to 1933 levels until 1938, which happens to be the year when unemployment reached pre-Great Depression levels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A plot of above data (male and female life expediencies): &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SGI9P.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T10:50:56.890" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T10:50:56.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22223" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22228" CreationDate="2014-07-04T11:46:09.190" Score="9" ViewCount="1354" Body="&lt;p&gt;In some jurisdictions, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.canorml.org/medical-marijuana/patients-guide-to-california-law&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;California&lt;/a&gt;, Marijuana is permitted for 'medical use&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its most widespread administration is by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_cannabis#Methods_of_consumption&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;smoking&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there doctors prescribing marijuana to be smoked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I wouldn't contest its use with pills, drink, food etc, it seems weird to allow to be smoked for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There are known problems with incomplete organic combustions and very small toxins (that pass easily in the blood) which are very similar to tobacco smoke, chemically (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/tx700275p&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tobacco-vs-marijuana&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/32229.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cannabis-smoke-carcinogenic&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cigarette_smoke_carcinogens&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;list-of-secondhand-smoke-carcinogens&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It seems doubtful that there aren't better treatments (not just morphine) than smoking marijuana since only the THC active ingredient and other cannabinoids are desirable among the quantity of combustion products.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tuRQK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Prescription Flowchart&quot;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3358713/figure/F1/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diagram Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2012 journal article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3358713/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Medical Marijuana: Clearing Away the Smoke&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In states in which it's legal, doctors recommend medical marijuana for&#xA;  many conditions and diseases, frequently those that are chronic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but also, after testing it with placebo:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This raised the possibility that some of the pain reduction was placebo driven. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(also a mention at the end)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conflict of interest: This work was supported by the University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2006, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/2006/ucm108643.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned&lt;/a&gt; that the FDA and DEA do not support the use of smoked marijuana for medical purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;precision: I'm not smoker, and firmly against it&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8708" LastEditorUserId="8708" LastEditDate="2015-12-03T10:34:19.287" LastActivityDate="2015-12-04T05:50:28.797" Title="Is medical marijuana prescribed to be smoked?" Tags="|medical-science|smoking|marijuana|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22224" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22226" CreationDate="2014-07-04T13:58:39.590" Score="20" ViewCount="2630" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does it rain more often on weekends than weekdays?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't remember where I heard this, but due to human activity such as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Factories not opening on weekends&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fewer people traveling in cars&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Offices closed so air conditioning is less utilized&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this have an effect on the weather from day to day anywhere in the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21016" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T21:58:03.233" LastActivityDate="2022-05-09T12:36:57.573" Title="Does it rain more often on weekends than weekdays?" Tags="|weather|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22224" CreationDate="2014-07-04T14:39:08.120" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently, &amp;quot;yes&amp;quot;, according to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weekly cycles of air pollutants, precipitation and tropical cyclones in the coastal NW Atlantic region. R.S. Cerveny and R.C. Balling, Jr.&#xA;Nature, 394: 561-562. 1998 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nature.com/articles/29043&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract:&lt;/strong&gt; Direct human influences on climate have been detected at local scales, such as urban temperature increases and precipitation&#xA;enhancement&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?&amp;amp;title=METROMEX%3A%20A%20review%20and%20summary.&amp;amp;journal=Meteorol.%20Monogr.&amp;amp;volume=40&amp;amp;pages=1-181&amp;amp;publication_year=1981&amp;amp;author=Changnon%2CSAJ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?&amp;amp;title=Possible%20urban%20effects%20on%20maximum%20daily%20rainfall%20at%20Paris%2C%20St.%20Louis%20and%20Chicago.&amp;amp;journal=J.%20Appl.%20Meteorol.&amp;amp;volume=15&amp;amp;pages=517-519&amp;amp;publication_year=1976&amp;amp;author=Dettwiller%2CJW&amp;amp;author=Changnon%2CSAJ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?&amp;amp;title=Summary%20of%20METROMEX&amp;amp;publication_year=1978&amp;amp;author=Ackerman%2CBS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, and at global scales&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?&amp;amp;title=Climate%20Change%201995%3A%20The%20Science%20of%20Climate%20Change&amp;amp;publication_year=1996&amp;amp;author=Houghton%2CJT&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[4]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?&amp;amp;title=Human%20influence%20on%20the%20atmosphere%20vertical%20temperature%20structure%3A%20Detection%20and%20observations.&amp;amp;journal=Science&amp;amp;volume=274&amp;amp;pages=1170-1173&amp;amp;publication_year=1996&amp;amp;author=Tett%2CSFB&amp;amp;author=Mitchell%2CJFB&amp;amp;author=Parker%2CDE&amp;amp;author=Allen%2CMR&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[5]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. A possible indication of&#xA;an anthropogenic effect on regional climate is by identification of&#xA;equivalent weekly cycles in climate and pollution variables. Weekly&#xA;cycles have been observed in both global surface temperature&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?&amp;amp;title=Weekdays%20warmer%20than%20weekends%3F&amp;amp;journal=Nature&amp;amp;volume=367&amp;amp;pages=325-326&amp;amp;publication_year=1994&amp;amp;author=Gordon%2CAH&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[6]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; and&#xA;local pollution&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?&amp;amp;title=Photochemistry%20of%20the%20%E2%80%98Sunday%20Effect%E2%80%99.&amp;amp;journal=Environ.%20Sci.%20Technol.&amp;amp;volume=11&amp;amp;pages=690-694&amp;amp;publication_year=1977&amp;amp;author=Graedel%2CTE&amp;amp;author=Farrow%2CLA&amp;amp;author=Weber%2CTA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[7]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; data sets. Here we describe statistical analyses that&#xA;reveal weekly cycles in three independent regional-scale coastal&#xA;Atlantic data sets: lower-troposphere pollution, precipitation and&#xA;tropical cyclones. Three atmospheric monitoring stations record&#xA;minimum concentrations of ozone and carbon monoxide early in the week,&#xA;while highest concentrations are observed later in the week. This&#xA;air-pollution cycle corresponds to observed weekly variability in&#xA;regional rainfall and tropical cyclones. Specifically, satellite-based&#xA;precipitation estimates indicate that near-coastal ocean areas receive&#xA;significantly more precipitation at weekends than on weekdays.&#xA;Near-coastal tropical cyclones have, on average, significantly weaker&#xA;surface winds, higher surface pressure and higher frequency at&#xA;weekends. Although our statistical findings limit the identification&#xA;of cause–effect relationships, we advance the hypothesis that the&#xA;thermal influence of pollution-derived aerosols on storms may drive&#xA;these weekly climate cycles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Via the &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/146120.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;.  Citing papers &lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cites=2971591816013860988&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, (via Google scholar), some of which seem to provide other examples of similar phenomena.  My experience as a keen cricketer also suggests there may be some substance to this idea :-(&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, also perhaps &amp;quot;no&amp;quot;, according to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David M. Schultz, Santtu Mikkonen, Ari Laaksonen and Michael B. Richman, &amp;quot;Weekly precipitation cycles? Lack of evidence from United States surface stations&amp;quot;, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol 34 Issue 22, 2007, (&lt;a href=&quot;https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2007GL031889&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nature.com/articles/29043&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; Previous work has inferred a relationship between human activity&#xA;and the occurrence and amount of precipitation through examining&#xA;possible weekly cycles in precipitation. Daily precipitation records&#xA;for 219 surface observing stations in the United States for the&#xA;42-year period 1951–1992 are investigated for weekly cycles in&#xA;precipitation. Results indicate that neither the occurrence nor amount&#xA;of precipitation significantly depends upon the day of the week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-05-09T12:36:57.573" LastActivityDate="2022-05-09T12:36:57.573" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22223" CreationDate="2014-07-04T15:05:16.040" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, some doctors do recommend smoking marijuana in certain cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://virtualmentor.ama-assn.org/2013/05/oped1-1305.html&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;em&gt;Virtual Mentor&lt;/em&gt;, Dr. Igor Grant, MD, says that smoked marijuana can be useful in cases of painful sensory neuropathy, and specifically describes inhalation as superior to oral administration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grant is chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego (full disclosure: I attended this university but have never met Grant) and is director of the University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research which you mentioned.  Given that Dr. Grant practices in California, where under state law physicians may legally recommend marijuana (in any form) to patients, it seems likely that he routinely does so, though I could not find a record of him specifically saying this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are certainly risks, as you describe, but it appears that some doctors feel that in some cases, they can be outweighed by the benefits.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted that your claim that &quot;only the THC active ingredient is desirable&quot; does not seem to be supported by evidence.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sgvtribune.com/health/20140406/how-medical-marijuana-is-helping-californian-children-with-epilepsy&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is an article that suggests therapeutic value for the compound cannabidiol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as a semantic point, &lt;a href=&quot;http://norml.org/marijuana/medical/item/medical-frequently-asked-questions#question4&quot;&gt;doctors in California and other states do not &lt;em&gt;prescribe&lt;/em&gt; marijuana but rather &lt;em&gt;recommend&lt;/em&gt; it&lt;/a&gt;.  The precise distinction is not clear to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastEditorUserId="6308" LastEditDate="2014-07-04T15:11:09.420" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T15:11:09.420" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22229" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22230" CreationDate="2014-07-04T15:09:37.157" Score="3" ViewCount="224" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Adam Higginbotham's article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/mar/26/nuclear.russia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chernobyl 20 years on&lt;/a&gt;, it's implied that nuclear radiation increases the risk of heart attacks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now, nearly 20 years after the disaster, the survivors of Chernobyl&#xA;  are scattered across the former Soviet Union, gradually succumbing to&#xA;  cancer and early heart attacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fukushima Diary is also implying that the nuclear incidents associated with the March 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami is making heart attacks more likely, and seemingly not because of a lack of exercise. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/06/death-rate-of-heart-disease-in-fukushima-became-the-highest-in-japan/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Death rate of heart disease in Fukushima became the highest in Japan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Though Fukushima prefecture conceals its health check result data,&#xA;  Akita prefecture publishes the data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It revealed the death rate of heart disease, cerebrovascular disease,&#xA;  and renal failure increased since 2010, and the death rate of heart&#xA;  disease became the highest in Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cesium is known to damage your myocardial cell.[LINK] [Link is to YouTube video by RT]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://fukushima-diary.com/2014/06/jt-changed-the-warning-notice-on-mild-seven-package-from-stroke-to-coronary/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;JT changed the warning notice on MILD SEVEN package from “stroke” to “coronary”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cesium-134/137 are known to accumulate in the heart muscle to cause&#xA;  heart disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/05/infant-death-of-heart-disease-doubled-as-2010-in-fukushima/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Infant death of heart disease doubled as 2010 in Fukushima&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Death cases increased for every cause except for “other”, but&#xA;  especially the death of heart disease went up to as double as 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does nuclear radiation make heart attacks more likely in and of itself? That is, not caused by the stress associated with a nuclear incident, or because of actions done to avoid radiation, such as not exercising outdoors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T21:08:11.497" Title="Does nuclear radiation increase the risk of heart attacks?" Tags="|radiation|cardiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22229" CreationDate="2014-07-04T21:08:11.497" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Radiation therapy is well known in the medical community to be associated with future cardiovascular problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Crit Rev Oncol Hematol.&lt;/em&gt; 2003 Jan; 45(1):55-75.&#xA;Radiation-associated cardiovascular disease.&#xA;Adams MJ, Hardenbergh PH, Constine LS, Lipshultz SE.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12482572&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1040-8428%2801%2900227-X&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Open access full text&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cardiol Rev.&lt;/em&gt; 2012 Jul-Aug; 20(4):184-8. Radiation-induced heart disease.&#xA;Filopei J, Frishman W. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22314140&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Am J Cardiol.&lt;/em&gt; 2013 Nov 15; 112(10):1688-96. &#xA;Cardiovascular complications of radiotherapy.&#xA;Lee MS, Finch W, Mahmud E.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24012026&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be possible to extrapolate from their data to estimate the risk from non-therapeutic doses of radiation, but I have not tried to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2014-07-04T21:08:11.497" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22234" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22235" CreationDate="2014-07-05T03:26:31.543" Score="5" ViewCount="692" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.internetsafety101.org/Pornographystatistics.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Internet Safety 101&lt;/a&gt; reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Youth who look at violent x-rated material are six times more likely&#xA;  to report forcing someone to do something sexual online or in-person&#xA;  versus youth not exposed to x-rated material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously correlation does not equate to causation, but I find this hard to believe. &#xA;Can this claim be justified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the highly suspect claims on this site correlating pornography to poor behavior use ill-defined terms which make evaluating their accuracy difficult.  For the sake of this question, let's give them the benefit of the doubt by interpreting any ambiguous claim generously. For instance, I would say that &quot;violent x-rated material&quot; should be interpreted as pornography with themes of violence, rape, S&amp;amp;M, or harm to another (on the presumption that would make the claim more likely to be accurate), and that &quot;youths who look at&quot; would mean youths who regularly view this material, rather than viewing it only once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8366" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-12T09:27:39.433" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T09:27:39.433" Title="Are youths that watch violent X-rated material 6 times more likely to force others sexually?" Tags="|psychology|behavior|pornography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22235" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22234" CreationDate="2014-07-05T07:18:32.307" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following the references, it appears that the factoid derives from the following study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Michele L. Ybarra, Kimberly J. Mitchell, Merle Hamburger, Marie Diener-West, and Philip J. Leaf, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychology.iastate.edu/faculty/caa/Classes/487Readings/Ybarra11x-rated.pdf&quot;&gt;X-Rated Material and Perpetration of Sexually Aggressive Behavior Among Children and Adolescents: Is There a Link?&lt;/a&gt;, AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR, Volume 37, pages 1–18 (2011)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this study they followed over 1,000 representative US youths (initially 10-15 year olds, male and female) for 36 months, and asked them three times about whether and how they watched x-rated material and whether they had partaken in sexually aggressive behaviour. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sexually aggressive behaviour spanned a wide range, including down to unwanted kissing, unwanted sex-related text messages or pictures, or trying to get others to talk about sex when they didn't want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After compensating for some confounding factors, such as substance abuse or being victims of sexual aggression, they found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;intentional exposure to violent&#xA;  x-rated material over time predicted an almost 6-fold increase in the odds of self-reported sexually aggressive behavior [...] whereas exposure to nonviolent x-rated material was not statistically signiﬁcantly related&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A single study is, by itself, insufficient evidence. There may be other confounding variables that the authors did not consider. The authors are careful in their conclusion to note the limited strength of the finding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our findings need to be replicated. Nonetheless, the data suggest that further examination of associations between sexually aggressive behavior and consumption of violent x-rated material among children and adolescents is warranted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the factoid is &lt;em&gt;based&lt;/em&gt; on genuine science, but drawing a firm conclusion would require further evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two minor points: (1) The study found the Odds Ratio (OR) was 5.8, not 6, as reported in the snippet. (2) After reading the author list I really wanted to meet the researcher with the spectacular name Merle Hamburger. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seenamagowitzfoundation.org/merle-hamburger.html&quot;&gt;Alas, he passed away in 2011.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T07:18:32.307" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22173" CreationDate="2014-07-05T16:02:03.687" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is hard to pinpoint the references for his claims, since his article references the following blog post with a broken link:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2008/06/testosterone-and-greenland-inuit.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2008/06/testosterone-and-greenland-inuit.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this blog post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Testosterone levels are higher in black boys than in white boys as&#xA;  early as 5 to 9 years of age (Abdelrahaman et al., 2005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oddly, the abstract of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15562386&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Total testosterone, the free androgen index, and&#xA;  dehydroepiandrosterone increased with age in both groups, but after&#xA;  adjusting for age, no racial differences were found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3012385/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rohrmann et al. (2009)&lt;/a&gt; looked into the testosterone levels of neonates and found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Androstanediol glucuronide, estradiol, and SHBG concentrations did not&#xA;  differ by race; however, the molar ratio of testosterone to SHBG was&#xA;  higher in African-American than white male babies after adjustment&#xA;  (p=0.01). Both before and after adjustment, whites had higher&#xA;  concentrations of IGF-1 (adjusted; white, African-American: 93.1, 71.9&#xA;  ng/mL), IGF-2 (537.3, 474.8 ng/mL), and IGFBP-3 (1673, 1482 ng/mL)&#xA;  than African-Americans (p&amp;lt;0.05), although the molar ratio of IGF-1&#xA;  plus IGF-2 to IGFBP-3 did not differ by race.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems that there may be some differences on average, at least at birth, although the verdict may still be out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abdelrahaman, E., Raghavan, S., Baker, L., Weinrich, M., and Winters, S.J. (2005). Racial difference in circulating sex hormone-binding globulin levels in prepubertal boys. Metabolism, 54, 91-96.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rohrmann, Sabine, et al. &quot;Racial variation in sex steroid hormones and the insulin-like growth factor axis in umbilical cord blood of male neonates.&quot; Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers &amp;amp; Prevention 18.5 (2009): 1484-1491.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8081" LastActivityDate="2014-07-05T16:02:03.687" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20787" CreationDate="2014-07-06T07:42:39.070" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the industry as a whole, limited as you said to airlines, I think this claim is true. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.mcgill.ca/iasl/sites/mcgill.ca.iasl/files/ASPL614_Industry_PostDeregulation-Houston.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This 2008 law review article&lt;/a&gt; provides a summary of profits from 1955 to 2008, and claims that &quot;By the end of 1991, the U.S. airline industry had lost all the profit it had earned since data began being collected...&quot; (427). &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/borenste/NBERw16744.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This 2011 working paper&lt;/a&gt; confirms the dismal situation since deregulation of the industry in 1979, and adds continued losses through 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21027" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T07:42:39.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13764" CreationDate="2014-07-06T08:25:21.840" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a difficult one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To begin with: there is research showing that interactive media are more likely to improve driving than passive media (which would be you radio listening baseline) - though this only holds for tired drivers on monotonous drives, which does probably not apply to your urban US setting (&lt;a href=&quot;http://hfs.sagepub.com/content/50/5/772.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Takayama, Nass 2008&lt;/a&gt;). There are also other studies showing that &quot;concurrent verbal tasks&quot; are better for your driving than nothing, or a &quot;passive task&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://hfs.sagepub.com/content/56/3/453.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://hfs.sagepub.com/content/53/1/3.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;). Again, these studies are for monotonous drives and tired or non-attentive drivers. One more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369847808000600&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2008 study&lt;/a&gt; looked specifically at trivia-type games (the study proper kicked in after one hour of solo driving) and concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Engaging in cognitive tasks can counteract the effects of underload and increases driving safety as long as they are active. However, additional research is necessary to determine the effects of long term use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I think we can conclude from this that certain interactive tasks (e.g. games) are better than no secondary engagement or passive engagement (radio, audio books) in certain conditions - in particular, for drivers losing focus. However, there are no known benefits of interactive media versus &quot;having a casual conversation with passengers&quot;, or while driving in an urban setting (which is presumably much less monotonous than the study settings).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As concerning your second question - it seems that &quot;less safe behaviour&quot; is also highly situation-dependent. While reading a newspaper is surely not a good idea while driving in NYC, there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/259583934_Drowsy_Driving_Increases_Severity_of_Safety-Critical_Events_and_Is_Decreased_by_Cell_Phone_Conversation/file/60b7d52cc7286099ed.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt; showing that, if you are drowsy, giving someone a call might be a very sensible thing to do, as the loss of attention from cell phone use seems much less dangerous than the loss of attention from drowsiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T08:25:21.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22241" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-06T09:43:00.297" Score="9" ViewCount="14254" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is about a myth popular in India and Pakistan (&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Pm3Mj5t4At0C&amp;amp;pg=PA38&amp;amp;lpg=PA38&amp;amp;dq=Does+drinking+milk+after+eating+watermelon+cause+cholera?&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=ylUfiE6GRp&amp;amp;sig=wGyH6im-1-jkOOLmqvkg36GgO9Q&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=k0QZVJalI8veaMOcgtAL&amp;amp;ved=0CCgQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Does%20drinking%20milk%20after%20eating%20watermelon%20cause%20cholera%3F&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;as printed&lt;/a&gt;). The myth is that drinking water or milk after eating watermelon causes cholera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any experiments falsified/supported this myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21028" LastEditorUserId="7286" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T02:34:19.567" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T20:12:38.230" Title="Does drinking water after eating watermelon cause cholera?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22243" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-06T14:28:12.260" Score="12" ViewCount="887" Body="&lt;p&gt;An article in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/10811734/Why-avoiding-sunshine-could-kill-you.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; starts with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers followed 30,000 women for 20 years and found that those who avoided the sunshine were twice as likely to die&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women who never sunbathe during the summer are twice as likely to die than those who sunbathe everyday, a major study has shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden claim guidelines which advise people to stay out of the sun unless wearing sunscreen may be harming the population, particularly in countries like Britain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the evidence from the new study that the article features strong enough to warrant that conclusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-06-15T21:32:59.877" LastActivityDate="2022-06-18T08:46:43.653" Title="Is it healthy to sunbathe without sunscreen?" Tags="|medical-science|environmental-health|cancer|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22244" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22407" CreationDate="2014-07-06T15:05:35.543" Score="16" ViewCount="993" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read once an article that soccer players have reduced brain function when doing too many headers (i.e. hitting the soccer ball with your head).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/human/health/soccer-headers-brain-damage-sports-health-130611.htm&quot;&gt;Discovery.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A new study of long-time adult soccer players has found changes in the brain similar to traumatic brain injury as a result of repeated “headers” of the ball. The study also found an association between players who had repeatedly headed, and slight memory loss.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific data backing this up? Is the damage permanent or only temporary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21030" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-06T17:04:34.527" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T10:33:52.993" Title="Do headers in football (soccer) cause brain damage?" Tags="|medical-science|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22246" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-06T17:02:28.637" Score="5" ViewCount="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;This idea was shared with me tonight by the mother of a 6-month old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thewonderweeks.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Wonder Weeks&lt;/a&gt; is a book that describes the mental development of babies. In particular, it claims that mental development occurs in spurts (&amp;quot;leaps&amp;quot;) that occur at precise periods after the due date of the child, and that in the week before such leaps, babies exhibit fussiness, in the form of clinginess, crankiness and crying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thewonderweeks.com/clinginess-crankiness-crying/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;their site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These difficult periods are usually accompanied by the three C’s: clinginess, crankiness and crying. We now know that they are the tell-tale signs of a period in which the child makes a major leap forward in his mental development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Babies all undergo these fussy phases at around the same ages. During the first 20 months of a baby’s life, there are ten developmental leaps with their corresponding clingy periods at onset. The clingy periods come at  5, 8, 12, 19, 26, 37, 46, 55, 64 and 75 weeks. The onsets may vary by a week or two, but you can be sure of their occurrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that you can predict, to within a week, a prolonged period of particular baby fussiness, using this calendar?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-06T17:02:28.637" Title="Do infants have fussy periods at well-established periods after birth?" Tags="|children|parenting|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22250" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-07T10:50:39.227" Score="12" ViewCount="5506" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today, I was surprised to find a number of sources stating that lemons, while acidic in nature, act as bases once in the body. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vitalitylink.com/article-holistic-health-2055-lemon-juice-acidic-alkaline-body-water&quot;&gt;Here is one such source.&lt;/a&gt; I'm unclear whether the claims are based on shoddy science, or if there is any truth to the matter. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WndFDIa6a0s&quot;&gt;This person&lt;/a&gt; claims that it is due to Na+ and K+ ions in the lemon, which then form strong, fully dissociated bases that counteract the weak citric acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I'm always skeptical (and rightfully so, I think) of this type of seemingly 'alternative' claim, as they frequently aren't based on the reality of the situation. Can anyone clear up whether this is actually a valid claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21040" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T07:58:02.370" LastActivityDate="2017-03-13T20:17:00.003" Title="Do lemons act as bases in the body?" Tags="|nutrition|alkaline-diet|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22251" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22254" CreationDate="2014-07-07T13:33:24.017" Score="16" ViewCount="3172" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/wifiex&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This device&lt;/a&gt; can apparently 'charge with internet' at home from my router, then allow me to connect with my phone while I'm out and about. It claims to work on planes and subway trains too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the FAQs they make reference to a SIM chip in the device, but this still wouldn't let it work on planes etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have you seen those &amp;quot;Portable battery chargers for smartphones&amp;quot; ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well the idea of the device is based on it , but the difference here is the internet part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of charging the device from pc with electricity you will charge our device ( WiFiEX) with internet from your home-wifi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put it bluntly is there any way this could work both economically and technically, or is this a scam?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="922" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T08:03:39.573" Title="Is the 'internet charging' described by the WifiEX Indiegogo campaign possible?" Tags="|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="27" ClosedDate="2014-07-08T09:44:15.790" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22252" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22253" CreationDate="2014-07-07T07:36:25.103" Score="2" ViewCount="8374" Body="&lt;p&gt;In South India, there are people who claim that they can measure the underground water level by using the coconut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They will hold coconut in their palm and walk on the site. Near the water source the coconut moves upwards, defying the gravitational pull and thus mark the spot for digging bore well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have witnessed this and the place they marked got abundance of water after digging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted to know is it true that we can measure water level by using coconut or is it just a phoney trick. If it is true, how it can happen? Is there any scientific explanation for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21037" OwnerDisplayName="user3698167" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T19:52:26.500" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T19:52:26.500" Title="Is it possible to measure ground water level by using coconut?" Tags="|geography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-07-07T21:37:37.497" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22252" CreationDate="2014-07-07T07:47:25.497" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the United States and much of Europe (and perhaps other places), the tradition is to use a stick for the same purpose.  In english, it is called a Dowsing Rod &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowsing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(wikipedia link)&lt;/a&gt;.  As far as I know, studies have shown that the results of Dowsing are no better than random chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have met more than one person here in the US who swear that it's an effective technique :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="bitsmack" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T07:47:25.497" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22254" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22251" CreationDate="2014-07-07T14:59:53.403" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Working my way through the broken English, they don't seem to mean &quot;charging&quot; as with electricity, but rather just using that as an analogy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I can tell, this is how it works&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;You connect the WifiEX device to your home network&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Through their satellite network, other people connect through your device (and all other such devices currently in &quot;at home&quot; mode), using it as an interface between their satellite network and the internet at large, in a peer-to-peer arrangement.  While it's doing this, you build up a credit, which they're calling a &quot;charge&quot;, up to a maximum of 10GB.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When you disconnect it from your home network, it then switches to &quot;mobile&quot; mode and you connect through their satellite network to others devices for internet and use your built up credit (&quot;charge&quot;) to have internet on the go.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not pretend to understand how they think this kind of system is at all feasible.  Mobile satellite internet systems do exist (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iridium.com/products/iridium-go.aspx&quot;&gt;Iridium's GO!&lt;/a&gt; ), but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.roadpost.com/Iridium-GO-P934C485.aspx&quot;&gt;client-side hardware&lt;/a&gt; for that is about 3 times this thing's price, and I can't even find out what the actual service costs, though I suspect it comes in around &quot;You don't even want to know&quot;, and the main cost on such a system is the satellite network (putting stuff in orbit is decidedly not cheap.  Putting a single Iridium satellite into orbit costs in the vicinity of $13 million US.  And Iridium's network has 72 (66 active and 6 spares) such satellites.  For those playing at home, that's nearly a billion dollars in launch costs, not counting the cost of the satellites themselves), not the downlink.  And they're not charging for the satellite bandwidth (which networks operators like Iridium charge lots for, as they need to make back the aforementioned network costs.  Just voice appears to cost somewhere around $0.83/minute.), but rather only using customers to save on their downlink bandwidth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, it smells like a scam and going by the decided lack of funding they're getting, pretty much everyone else in the world also thinks so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastEditorUserId="922" LastEditDate="2014-07-08T08:03:39.573" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T08:03:39.573" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22256" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-07T19:14:44.480" Score="11" ViewCount="868" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bidnessetc.com/22429-us-ahead-of-saudi-arabia-as-largest-oil-producer-in-the-world/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claimed&lt;/a&gt; that the United States now produces more oil than Saudi Arabia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total crude oil production in the US, including liquids separated from natural gas, was the highest compared to all other countries in the first quarter of this year, according to a report released by the Bank of America Corporation (BAC). The US’s crude oil output in the first quarter of 2014 surpassed 11 million barrels per day (bpd) – the highest volume produced by the nation in 24 years – as production from shale formations in Texas and North Dakota was ramped up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T00:08:07.157" Title="Is the United States now the largest oil producer?" Tags="|united-states|oil|saudi-arabia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22258" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-07T21:53:36.313" Score="3" ViewCount="629" Body="&lt;p&gt;On Mail Online, it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2681812/Its-politics-not-science-driving-climate-change-mania-UN-predictions-subject-ridicule-stunning-failure.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claimed&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, across the globe, there are about one million square kilometres more sea ice than 35 years ago, which is when satellite measurements began.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true?  If so, is it the highest ever?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T02:06:20.943" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T14:36:31.390" Title="Is there more global sea ice than 35 years ago?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22259" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-07T22:04:04.220" Score="9" ViewCount="8806" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &amp;quot;meme&amp;quot; now circulating on Facebook claims that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists Find Sniffing Rosemary Can Increase memory by 75%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7t9M5.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The credited web site, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.herbs-info.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.herbs-info.com&lt;/a&gt; has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.herbs-info.com/blog/scientists-find-sniffing-rosemary-can-increase-memory-by-75/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on the topic, which in turn references a study in &lt;a href=&quot;http://roberttisserand.com/2013/04/new-rosemary-memory-research/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;. But the final article doesn't have any references, and only offers a slightly more specific version of the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers have found for the first time that essential oil from the herb when sniffed in advance enables people to remember to do things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It could help patients take their medication on time, it is claimed, or even help the forgetful to post a birthday card.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;In a series of tests rosemary essential oil from the herb increased the chances of remembering to do things in the future, by 60-75 per cent compared with people who had not been exposed to the oil.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies to show that smelling rosemary improves memory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-09-22T09:57:33.473" Title="Does sniffing rosemary improve memory?" Tags="|biology|memory|herbalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22260" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-07T22:04:53.570" Score="2" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some of the rhetoric around AGW denial/skepticism is that the Earth hasn't warmed in 10/16/17 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/09/26/as-its-global-warming-narrative-unravels-the-ipcc-is-in-damage-control-mode/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2013/09/26/as-its-global-warming-narrative-unravels-the-ipcc-is-in-damage-control-mode/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2014/05/cognitive-dissonance-media-climate-change/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2014/05/cognitive-dissonance-media-climate-change/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QnwvV.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this might be misleading the context of the larger trend etc, I'm wondering specifically about this claim, and what it relates to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorUserId="19053" LastEditDate="2014-07-07T22:23:34.413" LastActivityDate="2014-07-07T22:23:34.413" Title="Has the climate not warmed in 17 years?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-07-07T22:44:53.557" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22261" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-07T22:07:02.407" Score="2" ViewCount="357" Body="&lt;p&gt;On HUFF POST, a claim is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/07/unemployment-extension_n_5564019.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;made&lt;/a&gt; on July 7, 2014:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The past six months saw &amp;quot;the largest six-month decline in the length of unemployment ever measured,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;The debate on that extension is over, and the conservatives were right.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The end of extended benefits should push down the jobless rate by both encouraging work among those who really want work and discouraging participation among those who really don’t,&amp;quot; Stein wrote. &amp;quot;And, since the start of the year, we’ve had both faster payroll growth and a decline in the participation rate. Further supporting the case that ending extended benefits has helped: So far this year the median duration of unemployment has dropped to 13.1 weeks from 17.1 weeks, the steepest drop for any six months on record.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason offered is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Krauthammer cited a National Review article by economist Robert Stein, which explained how dropping the benefits could contribute to a decline in the unemployment rate. (The government's monthly survey only counts people as unemployed if they say they've looked for work sometime in the previous four weeks. People without jobs who haven't looked in the past month don't even count as labor force participants.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, disagreement is also written:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal D.C. think tank, said Stein makes too much of the correlation between lapsed benefits and improved job growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Just doing simple correlations you oftentimes are misled in an economy as complicated as ours is,&amp;quot; Shierholz said. She pointed to recent research by Jesse Rothstein and others that found extended benefits do cause people to linger in the labor force longer than they otherwise might, which slightly increases the unemployment rate -- but not by the magnitude Stein suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that the median unemployment duration dropped by the steepest amount ever in the US?  If so, was it due to cutting unemployment benefits?  If it wasn't due to the cuts, what caused the median unemployment duration to drop by &amp;quot;the steepest [amount] for any six months on record&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user20862" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T19:13:12.230" Title="Did the U.S. median unemployment duration drop by the steepest amount for any six month period ever in the first half of 2014?" Tags="|united-states|unemployment|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22258" CreationDate="2014-07-07T22:59:04.173" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've had trouble finding a direct reference that talks about &lt;em&gt;global&lt;/em&gt; sea ice. Why? Researchers treat the Arctic sea ice and Antarctic sea ice quite differently. Adding the two amounts together to look at global trends, as the Mail Online suggests, doesn't seem to be sensible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) have a page explaining &lt;a href=&quot;http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/characteristics/difference.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the differences in the sea ice in the two regions&lt;/a&gt;, including surrounding landmasses, prevailing wind-patterns, shape and thickness, and the lifecycle of the ice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the data on this page is somewhat dated, it also explains the difference in the trends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1979-2008 trends are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arctic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Significant decrease of 4.1% (~500,000 km2; 193,000 mi2) per decade&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Antarctic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small increase of 0.9% (~100,000 km2; 39,000 mi2) per decade&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From comparing these two numbers  can see the &lt;em&gt;area&lt;/em&gt; of the ice is decreasing. [Ooh! Be careful. Some simple original research, because scientists don't seem to find this comparison useful.] We also know that the typical thickness in the Antarctic is &lt;em&gt;lower&lt;/em&gt;, so the &lt;strong&gt;trend&lt;/strong&gt; in the overall volume of sea ice is dropping. (I haven't ruled out an short-term increase; the patterns are quite variable each year.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The NSIDC &lt;a href=&quot;http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sea Ice Index tool&lt;/a&gt; provides more up-to-date data to cross-check these trends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tDQso.png&quot; alt=&quot;Snippet from page&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From their graphs, we can see Antarctic Sea Ice is increasing from a (1981-2010) mean of 13.9 million sq km by 1.7% per decade, while Arctic Sea Ice is decreasing from a similar mean of 11.9 million sq km by 3.6% per decade. The decrease outweighs the increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addressing some of the other concerns in the Online Mail article, the NSIDC FAQ agrees that there is less attention of &lt;a href=&quot;http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/faq/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Antarctic Sea Ice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NSIDC scientists do monitor sea ice in the Antarctic, and sea ice in the Antarctic is of interest to scientists worldwide. While many have published peer-reviewed journal articles on the topic, it has received less attention than the Arctic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FAQ goes on to explain that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Climate model projections of Antarctic sea ice extent are in reasonable agreement with the observations to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and how wind pattern changes in the area are driving the increase, and that the additional sea ice will not have a large impact on the the climate system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, if polar bear habitat is your concern, Antarctic Sea Ice extent is irrelevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T09:40:27.820" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22265" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-08T00:56:31.457" Score="5" ViewCount="219" Body="&lt;p&gt;The company Skinlearning claims (in German), that one can learn &quot;over the skin&quot; with their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skinlearning.info/usonic/technik/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;uSonic&lt;/a&gt; device. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skinlearning.info/usonic/wirkschema/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So können Sie Ihren Lernstoff permanent wiederholen und damit in Ihrem Gedächtnis besser verankern und das ganz einfach neben Ihren sonstigen Beschäftigungen (Arbeiten, Fernsehen, Schlafen, …).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That way you can permanently repeat what you are learning and therefore memorize it better, all of that alongside your other activities (work, watching tv, sleep, ...).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also mention on their website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;[...] you can repeat vocabularies passively  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;learn alongside you other activities unobtrusively and unnoticed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They provide these references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Medical College of Virginia, Summer 1991, names and papers not mentioned closer&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Flanagan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Patrick Flanagan&lt;/a&gt;, the inventor (?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Tomatis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alfred A. Tomatis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How I understand it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skinlearning.info/faqs/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;works&lt;/a&gt;: One inserts the desired audiofile into the device and applies the body pads to the skin (preferredly temple, lower arms, or hips). Now the pads generate ultrasound which somehow gets to the sacculus which is perfectly capable of perceiving the audiofile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The manufacturer of the device &lt;a href=&quot;http://usonic.eu/downloads/uSonic_700N_Manual_e_2014.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;doesn't seem to repeat the claims&lt;/a&gt;, but makes their own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usonic.de/downloads/uSonic_info_e_2014.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;extraordinary clams&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole setup seems like a scam, but I'm no scientist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21044" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-14T13:07:08.547" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T13:07:08.547" Title="Can ultrasound be passed over the skin to be heard by the ear?" Tags="|language|learning|ear|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22266" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22270" CreationDate="2014-07-08T01:29:05.887" Score="6" ViewCount="942" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many accusations lately that the sudden increase in illegal child immigration on the southern border of the United States is due to an executive order by President Obama to delay some deportations, such as the one quoted &lt;a href=&quot;http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/211271-cornyn-undeniable-that-obamas-actions-cause-child-migration&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) blamed President Obama’s executive order to defer some deportations for the massive increase in unaccompanied minors trying to cross the border.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“It’s become simply undeniable, even to those in his own administration, that the president’s administrative policies — from his deferred-action program to his overall lack of serious immigration enforcement — have played a huge role in encouraging tens of thousands of children to risk their lives by traveling across Mexico,” Cornyn wrote Wednesday in an op-ed for the Dallas Morning News.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did President Obama issue an executive order to delay deportations?  If so, which one?  Also if so, is it children especially whose deportations are being delayed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user20862" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T12:14:57.947" Title="Did President Obama issue an executive order to delay deportations of children?" Tags="|united-states|barack-obama|immigration|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22268" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-08T04:46:19.110" Score="2" ViewCount="107" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.appleballa.com/2014/07/154407/scorpions-venom-can-make-cancer-cells-glow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apple Balla&lt;/a&gt; reports that Wired reports that scientists report that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Washington, July 7 (IANS) In what can alter the course of cancer treatment in the near future, researchers have found a compound that appears to pinpoint all of the malignant cells in a patient's body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The twist is that the compound's main ingredient is a molecule that is found in the sting of a deadly scorpion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The compound called chlorotoxin is found in the venom of the death stalker scorpion known as leiurus quinquestriatus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that a venom from this scorpion can help to identify cancer cells?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T14:39:11.217" Title="Can scorpion venom be used to help to identify cancer cells?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22269" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22266" CreationDate="2014-07-08T05:52:33.367" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The White House publishes a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/executive-orders&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list of executive orders&lt;/a&gt;.  I browsed their titles back to the beginning of President Obama's first term and saw nothing relevant.  The only executive order I found relating to immigration in any way is an unnumbered order dated January 19, 2012 entitled &quot;Establishing Visa and Foreign Visitor Processing Goals and the Task Force on Travel and Competitiveness&quot;; it seems to deal only with tourist visas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it appears that whatever changes in immigration or deportation policy may have been made, they have not been formalized as executive orders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/06/02/presidential-memorandum-response-influx-unaccompanied-alien-children-acr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;presidential memorandum dated June 2, 2014&lt;/a&gt; entitled &quot;Response to the Influx of Unaccompanied Alien Children Across the Southwest Border&quot;.  It addresses the need for humanitarian relief but does not appear to make any direct reference to deportation.  The closest it comes to mentioning that issue is the following sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nothing in this memorandum alters, or impedes the ability to carry out, the authorities of Federal departments and agencies to perform their responsibilities under law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T05:52:33.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22266" CreationDate="2014-07-08T07:13:29.633" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not exactly an Executive Order, but a program enacted by the Department of Homeland Security that targets illegal alien minors.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://WWW.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/08/15/deferred-action-childhood-arrivals-who-can-be-considered&quot;&gt;White House blog&lt;/a&gt; mentions the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in August 15, 2012: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will begin accepting requests for consideration of deferred action for childhood arrivals. Deferred action is a discretionary determination to defer removal action of an individual as an act of prosecutorial discretion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dhs.gov/deferred-action-childhood-arrivals#0&quot;&gt;the program&lt;/a&gt; is targeted at children who arrived in the USA illegally, it can delay the deportation of adults as old as 31.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You came to the United States before reaching your 16th birthday&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You were under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senator John Cornyn is incorrect that this was an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order&quot;&gt;Executive Order&lt;/a&gt;, which has a very specific meaning. Congress may have (debatable) granted the Secretary of Homeland Security &lt;a href=&quot;http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42924.pdf&quot;&gt;prosecutorial discretion&lt;/a&gt; to delay the deportation of children who have come to the USA illegally. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His numbers and country of origin &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/Reports%20and%20Studies/Immigration%20Forms%20Data/All%20Form%20Types/DACA/I821d_daca_fy2014qtr2.pdf&quot;&gt;are accurate&lt;/a&gt; though. The vast majority are from Mexico, and the hundreds of thousands that have been granted deferred action may be encouraging the influx of &lt;a href=&quot;http://WWW.ibtimes.com/immigration-us-border-crisis-prompts-obama-open-more-detention-centers-1607880&quot;&gt;thousands of illegal alien&lt;/a&gt; children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T07:13:29.633" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22272" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22256" CreationDate="2014-07-08T09:53:04.977" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;At some point in time other liquids besides oil began being added to crude oil output by the reporting agencies. These are primarily natural gas liquids, and can also be ethanol and maybe a few other liquified gases. Surprisingly, they also include the amount that input volumes increase during refinery processing, known as  &lt;a href=&quot;http://omrpublic.iea.org/glossary_sec.asp?G_FLOW=Refining&quot;&gt;refinery processing gains&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you are being technically correct, when giving a production figure that includes crude oil and other liquids besides crude oil,  you say - &quot;total liquids&quot; or &quot;liquids&quot; or &quot;petroleum and other liquids&quot; - production. But it is often the case that the term &quot;oil production&quot; is used instead, to refer to a combination of both crude oil and other liquids that are partially substitutable for crude oil. However, I have never seen natural gas liquids added to crude oil and the result referred to as &quot;crude oil&quot; the way the quote in your question does:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Total crude oil production in the US, including liquids separated from natural gas&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This April, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/37afc468-f48f-11e3-a143-00144feabdc0.html#axzz36rokWuAh&quot;&gt;the US had a total liquids production of&lt;/a&gt; 11.27 million barrels per day, of which &lt;strong&gt;8.3 million barrels a day was crude oil&lt;/strong&gt;. So April's figure would have included 2.97 million barrels a day of output that was not crude oil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have any figures for how much natural gas liquids Saudi Arabia produces. However, it can be estimated as they are a byproduct of natural gas processing. In 2012, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.gov/countries/country-data.cfm?fips=sa&quot;&gt;Saudi Arabia produced&lt;/a&gt;,  3,258.16 billion cubic feet of natural gas. In the same year, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9050us2a.htm&quot;&gt;United States produced&lt;/a&gt; 25,307.949 billion cubic feet of natural gas, or 7.7 times what Saudi Arabia did. So Saudi Arabia should be producing less than a seventh of what the US does - which using April's US figure of 2.97 million barrels a day or &quot;other liquids&quot; (which is not entirely NGLs), would mean they are doing less than .424 million barrels a day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/37afc468-f48f-11e3-a143-00144feabdc0.html#axzz36rokWuAh&quot;&gt;This June 15th, 2014 article&lt;/a&gt; talking about US &quot;total liquids&quot; hitting an all time high, also mentions Saudi Arabian &lt;em&gt;crude oil production&lt;/em&gt; as being &lt;strong&gt;9.7 million barrels per day&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the United States has a higher &quot;total liquids production&quot; than Saudi Arabia. But, if we take 9.7 million barrels a day as the Saudi Arabian crude oil production, and 8.3 million barrels a day for US crude oil production, Saudi Arabia still has higher &quot;crude oil production&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, if you are talking about &lt;em&gt;total liquids production&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;, if you are talking about &lt;em&gt;crude oil production&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, US crude oil production is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/er/executive_summary.cfm&quot;&gt;predicted to increase through 2019&lt;/a&gt; by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.gov&quot;&gt;EIA&lt;/a&gt;, so it is still possible that the US will surpass Saudi Arabia in annual crude oil production in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8943" LastEditorUserId="8943" LastEditDate="2014-07-14T00:08:07.157" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T00:08:07.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22273" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-08T13:18:21.957" Score="2" ViewCount="306" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Forbes article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2013/02/07/the-worst-five-years-since-the-great-depression/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;The Worst Five Years Since the Great Depression&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, it is quoted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] what America got by year five was fewer jobs than before. Even though the employment age population has increased by nearly 12 million since January, 2008, there are now 3 million fewer Americans working, with employment declining from 146.3 million in January, 2008 to 143.3 million in December, 2012. If America enjoyed the same labor force participation rate as in 2008, the unemployment rate in December, 2012 would have been 11.4%, compared to 4.9% in December, 2007, [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these claims true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-07-08T19:44:36.383" LastActivityDate="2014-07-08T19:44:36.383" Title="Are these metrics regarding the 2009-2014 recession accurate?" Tags="|united-states|economics|unemployment|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22258" CreationDate="2014-07-08T17:28:09.693" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The satellite observations for the &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Jun/N_06_area.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arctic&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;ftp://sidads.colorado.edu/DATASETS/NOAA/G02135/Jun/S_06_area.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Antarctic&lt;/a&gt; are available from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (&lt;a href=&quot;http://nsidc.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NSIDC&lt;/a&gt;).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a plot of June Arctic, Antarctic and Global sea ice extent:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0FMxS.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and June Arctic, Antarctic and Global sea ice area:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YtJLe.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That I generated directly from those observations (using a MATLAB script).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trend in global sea ice extent is clearly downwards over the period covered by the satellite observations, however there is some year to year variability (noise), which means that it is possible to find a start year where the current extent is higher than it was in some previous year.  However that is not valid form of statistical analysis, it is just cherry picking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the summer melting season for the Arctic is the winter ice forming season for the Antarctic.  It might be more instructive to look at the annual means for both hemispheres or the annual minima/maxima instead.  However, that would be more than a five minute job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;@Oddthinking (+1) also makes the very good point that sea ice volume is probably a more relevant statistic if you are interested in the changes in sea ice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also this &lt;a href=&quot;https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/909/is-there-any-explanation-for-the-large-amount-of-sea-ice-around-antarctica-recen/918#918&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; at the Geosciences SE, which is concerned with why there has been an increase in Antarctic sea ice, and one answer suggests that it may in part be due to melting of the Antarctic ice cap, which is feeding fresh water into the ocean surrounding Antarctica, which promotes the formation of sea ice (presumably due to the lower salinity).  If this were the case, it doesn't really support the arguments being made in the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope that @gracchus is beginning to notice a trend developing here.  In most cases articles with hyperbolic claims that the worlds scientists are wrong are not borne out by even a cursory glance at the data (or often in the case of climate change, looking the issue up in the IPCC WG1 report to see if the worlds scientists actually are claiming what the article suggests, often they are not).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is often suggested that models do not predict an increase in Antarctic sea ice.  However, one paper that does suggest this is Manabe et al. (note the publication date)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manabe, S., R. J. Stouffer, M. J. Spelman, K. Bryan, 1991: Transient Responses of a Coupled Ocean–Atmosphere Model to Gradual Changes of Atmospheric CO2. Part I. Annual Mean Response. J. Climate, 4, 785–818.&#xA;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/1520-0442(1991)004%3C0785:TROACO%3E2.0.CO;2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which says (on page 795):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In the G integration, in which the atmospheric CO2 concentration is&#xA;  increased with time, the thickness of sea ice over the Arctic Ocean is&#xA;  reduced markedly from 3m to less than 1m during the 100-year period&lt;/em&gt; [DM: seems likely at this stage to be a rather optimistic prediction]. &#xA;  &lt;em&gt;Owing to the reduction of sea ice, the exchange of hear between the&#xA;  oceanic water surface and overlying air increases, resulting in the&#xA;  large increase in surface air temperature over the Arctic Ocean&lt;/em&gt; [DM: note model predicts rapid warming of the Arctic region, hence the importance of including the Arctic region in order to avoid bias in estimating global mean surface temperatures, c.f. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cowtan and Way]&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;It&#xA;  is surprising, however, that the sea-ice thickness in the G&#xA;  integration increases significantly in the immediate vicinity of the&#xA;  Antarctic continent despite the increase in atmospheric carbon&#xA;  dioxide.&lt;/strong&gt;  This is consistent with the slight reduction of sea&#xA;  surface temperature mentioned earlier (fig reference).  It will be&#xA;  shown in section 9a that, owing to the intensification of the near&#xA;  surface halocline caused by the increased supply of water at the ocean&#xA;  surface, the convective mixing of cold near-surface water with warmer&#xA;  underlying water becomes less frequent, resulting in the increase of&#xA;  sea ice and slight reduction of sea surface temperature.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;emphasis&lt;/strong&gt; mine, as are any transcription errors]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect there are other studies where other models give other results, which may not agree with this one.  However Manabe et al does show that it would not be true to say that the increase in Antarctic sea ice was not predicted by model, nor that climate models cannot explain the increase in Antarctic sea ice - clearly Manabe's could!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum to the addendum:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst looking for some data on sea ice volume for Antarctica, I found the reason they were so hard to find is that they don't exist yet, however I did find a paper on model based estimation of thickness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Holland, Paul R., Nicolas Bruneau, Clare Enright, Martin Losch, Nathan&#xA;  T. Kurtz, Ron Kwok, 2014: Modeled Trends in Antarctic Sea Ice&#xA;  Thickness. J. Climate, 27, 3784–3801. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00301.1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unlike the rapid sea ice losses reported in the Arctic, satellite&#xA;  observations show an overall increase in Antarctic sea ice&#xA;  concentration over recent decades. However, &lt;strong&gt;observations of decadal&#xA;  trends in Antarctic ice thickness, and hence ice volume, do not&#xA;  currently exist.&lt;/strong&gt; In this study a model of the Southern Ocean and its&#xA;  sea ice, forced by atmospheric reanalyses, is used to assess 1992–2010&#xA;  trends in ice thickness and volume. The model successfully reproduces&#xA;  observations of mean ice concentration, thickness, and drift, and&#xA;  decadal trends in ice concentration and drift, imparting some&#xA;  confidence in the hindcasted trends in ice thickness. The model&#xA;  suggests that overall Antarctic sea ice volume has increased by&#xA;  approximately 30 km3 yr−1 (0.4% yr−1) as an equal result of areal&#xA;  expansion (20 × 103 km2 yr−1 or 0.2% yr−1) and thickening (1.5 mm yr−1&#xA;  or 0.2% yr−1). &lt;strong&gt;This ice volume increase is an order of magnitude&#xA;  smaller than the Arctic decrease,&lt;/strong&gt; and about half the size of the&#xA;  increased freshwater supply from the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Similarly to&#xA;  the observed ice concentration trends, the small overall increase in&#xA;  modeled ice volume is actually the residual of much larger opposing&#xA;  regional trends. Thickness changes near the ice edge follow observed&#xA;  concentration changes, with increasing concentration corresponding to&#xA;  increased thickness. Ice thickness increases are also found in the&#xA;  inner pack in the Amundsen and Weddell Seas, where the model suggests&#xA;  that observed ice-drift trends directed toward the coast have caused&#xA;  dynamical thickening in autumn and winter. Modeled changes are&#xA;  predominantly dynamic in origin in the Pacific sector and&#xA;  thermodynamic elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;emphasis&lt;/strong&gt; mine]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would suggest that sea ice volume gain in Antarctica is subtantially less than the sea ice volume loss in the Arctic and hence there will be a global decline in sea ice volume.  This would imply that the answer to the question &quot;Is there more global sea ice than 35 years ago?&quot;, taken literally, is &quot;no&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:50:29.817" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T14:36:31.390" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18700" CreationDate="2014-07-09T05:17:55.283" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it says non-western emigrants, not muslims. Muslims are the vast majority of those but there is no credible source (I could find) on whether the rapists were muslim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelocal.no/20120109/immigrants-behind-most-rapes-in-stavanger&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thelocal.no/20120109/immigrants-behind-most-rapes-in-stavanger&lt;/a&gt; &amp;lt;- credible norway source in English that shows the same thing, its says Asian, but the majority of Asians in Norway are West-asian(Arabs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could not find a credible source on Sweden for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21059" LastActivityDate="2014-07-09T05:17:55.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22285" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22367" CreationDate="2014-07-09T19:26:49.957" Score="6" ViewCount="703" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Climate Depot &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/02/25/greenpeace-co-founder-tells-u-s-senate-earths-geologic-history-fundamentally-contradicts-co2-climate-fears-we-had-both-higher-temps-and-an-ice-age-at-a-time-when-co2-emissions-were-10-times/&quot;&gt;quotes&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Moore_%28environmentalist%29&quot;&gt;Dr. Patrick Moore&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When modern life evolved over 500 million years ago, CO₂ was more than 10 times higher than today, yet life flourished at this time. Then an Ice Age occurred 450 million years ago when CO₂ was 10 times higher than today.’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that both higher and much lower temperatures existed while CO₂ levels were ten times higher than today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-09T20:05:50.023" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T20:46:07.157" Title="Did both higher temperatures and an ice age exist at CO₂ levels ten times the present?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22287" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-10T08:01:19.843" Score="2" ViewCount="1364" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's been a long-known saying that drinking beer cures hangover. It is said that a hangover is your body craving for alcohol, so drinking a beer helps the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13446" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T14:31:33.410" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T14:31:33.410" Title="Does drinking beer help to cure a hangover?" Tags="|physiology|alcohol|beer|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-07-10T15:01:25.477" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22288" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30755" CreationDate="2014-07-10T08:26:42.037" Score="14" ViewCount="3615" Body="&lt;p&gt;So there's this theory going around that being drunk makes you less prone to die in a car crash or other blunt force trauma like falling because you are more &quot;relaxed&quot; and your body is limp. Is there any truth to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From comments on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1xhpa6/a_drunk_driver_going_more_than_a_100mph_on_the/&quot;&gt;reddit post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think it's because it leaves you less prone to inertia. If you're relaxed like a drunk usually is, your body gets tossed around like a rag doll but it moves with the force of the collision instead of remaining stationary and having the force of the collision go through the body. At least that's how it was explained to me. I am gullible, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From answers to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120408163818AAp3629&quot;&gt;Yahoo question&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When drunk, your muscles are limp, your reflexes are slow, etc. Blunt force traumas are easier to take if you respond like jelly instead of by tensing up. Fewer bones may break, less internal bleeding from tensed muscles around bones being banged around. I forget the exact example, but someone survived a 60-foot fall down a cliff edge barely scathed, because he fell while asleep and limp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18732" LastEditorUserId="1950" LastEditDate="2014-07-16T22:56:31.273" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T07:06:46.930" Title="Are your chances for surviving blunt force trauma better when drunk" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22290" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22020" CreationDate="2014-07-10T09:59:23.033" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I also know this quote in my own language. While looking for the original one in English&#xA;I have found this link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.military-quotes.com/churchill.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill Quotes — Military Quotes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What appears there is the following quote and an additional one said on a different occasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”&#xA;Churchill’s remark after Chamberlain returned from signing the Munich pact with Hitler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21074" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-04-17T22:16:34.090" LastActivityDate="2022-04-17T22:16:34.090" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9023" CreationDate="2014-07-10T13:27:53.853" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following the Wikipedia sources, I found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;J. R. Riley, U. Greggers, A. D. Smith, D. R. Reynolds &amp;amp; R. Menzel, &lt;a href=&quot;http://viejo.df.uba.ar/users/capuzzi/f1bygV2008/articulos/abejas.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The flight paths of honeybees recruited by the waggle dance&lt;/a&gt; Nature 435, 205-207 (12 May 2005) | doi:10.1038/nature03526&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This described consisted of a number of ingenious experiments designed to test if the bees are being recruited to fly in a particular direction, or whether odour forms some part of the cue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their technique sounded like a science-fiction plot: they attached transponders to bees and tracked them individually by radar. They explain insect-tracking transponders only weigh between 6-20 milligrams; 10 years into their future and I still find this astonishing. I got distracted and followed it up. Forgive me for the digression, but here is a picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WS2pm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rgetter.com/pages/ns_articles/bee_radar.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They found some results that were consistent with the idea of a direction-based dance, but inconsistent with odour plumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The key result was that capturing and moving the bees would effectively disorient them - they would head in the same vector from the release point as their would have taken from the capture point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WrLUY.png&quot; alt=&quot;Figure 1 from the paper&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another line of evidence was the absence of behaviours associated with other insects trying to detect odours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] the ﬂight paths showed no&#xA;  evidence of the casting or upwind zigzagging that is known to&#xA;  characterize odour-following ﬂight in other insects. These two&#xA;  facts, and the ﬂight path data [...] together carry&#xA;  the very convincing inference that recruits leave the hive with prior&#xA;  knowledge of the direction and distance of a food source that they&#xA;  have never previously visited. By themselves, these observations&#xA;  thus provide extremely strong, direct support for von Frisch’s&#xA;  hypothesis that recruited bees ‘read’ the waggle dance, but the&#xA;  most compelling evidence comes from the ﬂights of displaced&#xA;  recruits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They point out that the waggle dance alone is not 100% reliable, with some unsuccessful insects returning to the hive to get the directions again, and that odour and visual cues are important in the final stages of finding the food source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We hope that together with earlier&#xA;  studies, particularly those of Gould10, Srinivasan et al.13 and Esch&#xA;  et al.14, our results will also be accepted as a vindication of the von&#xA;  Frisch hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T13:27:53.853" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22292" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-10T14:50:07.247" Score="1" ViewCount="184" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://heartland.org/craig-idso&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Craig Idso&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2014/07/10/Heartland-Institute-Conference-CO2-Rise-Increases-Biodiversity-and-Population-Growth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;increased levels of CO2 reduce the negative effects of a number of plant stresses including: high salinity, low light, high and low temperatures, insufficient water, air pollution, and protects against herbivores i.e. being eaten by animals and insects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notably, Dr. Idso emphasized that the increased CO2 levels allow plants to produce the same amount of crop yield with less water. Moreover, plants are able to grow in dry areas where it had been previously too dry to exist. A collateral benefit to this is that the increased vegetation reduces the effects of soil erosion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user20862" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T15:47:31.493" Title="Do higher CO₂ concentrations increase plant well-being?" Tags="|environmental-health|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22293" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22292" CreationDate="2014-07-10T15:27:02.120" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;CO2 is plant food&quot; is a fairly common skeptic argument (this answer is adapted from the SkepticalScience &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food-advanced.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; on that topic).  The basic point is that additional CO2 is good for plants, provided they are in an environment where CO2 is a limiting factor in growth, i.e. they already have adequate water, sunlight, nutrients etc.  This is why additional CO2 is sometimes introduced into greenhouses, where watering, sunlight and feeding are already well optimized.  However outside greenhouses, CO2 is not generally a limiting factor. Quite often the low availability of water (e.g. due to drought) or poor soils (due to over-farming) is what prevents productivity, and adding extra CO2 is of little or no use to plants.  CO2 however, is a greenhouse gas, and can be expected to produce warming, which may have a negative effect on water availability, and for some plants temperature is a limit on where they can grow.  Simplistic arguments are generally unlikely to be true on this one as there are many factors that are involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example where Dr Idso's argument clearly is not the case, consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080324173612.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Insects Take A Bigger Bite Out Of Plants In A Higher Carbon Dioxide&#xA;  World&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Date: March 25, 2008&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Summary: Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are rising at an alarming&#xA;  rate, and new research indicates that soybean plant defenses go down&#xA;  as carbon dioxide goes up. Elevated carbon dioxide impairs a key&#xA;  component of the plant's defenses against leaf-eating insects,&#xA;  according to a new article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are references to other studies at the SkS article mentioned above (especially the advanced version).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that you can always cherry pick studies to support a point of view, but the best course of action depends on taking a broader view of the scientific literature, and consider what is likely to happen in the real-world biosphere (i.e. you need to consider the local limiting factors around the world on a family-by-family basis).  The IPCC WG2 report is probably a good place to start.  I'm much more familiar with WG1 issues, rather than WG2, but this &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/04/ipcc-report-says-climate-change-is-bad-news-for-crops/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; suggests that the IPCC do not agree with Dr Idso.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should however point out that Dr Idso is presenting this work at a conference for climate skeptics only, funded by the Heartland Institute (a political lobbying organisation).  It isn't the sort of place he is likely to get a serious scientific peer review of his work that will point out the errors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T15:47:31.493" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T15:47:31.493" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5268" CreationDate="2014-07-10T16:43:34.940" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.focusatwill.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;focus@will&lt;/a&gt;, the answer is that it depends on the music in question. f@w is a music service claiming to use neuroscience to sequence their music to enhance concentration:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yJSNu.png&quot; alt=&quot;Concentration sequence&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;f@w has &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.focusatwill.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/White-Paper-on-Focus@Will-Reading-Research.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;published a white paper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[pdf]&lt;/sup&gt; on their first experiment in 2013, showing a 12% increase in beta and theta frequencies at P3 and P4 when listening to f@w-designed music as compared to participant-selected music. f@w is apparently also working on another experiment now to test genre and music intensity against different brain types.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, to help focus, you want &quot;music with soothing aspects, that plays at 60 beats per minute, [which] can decrease neural activity, and lead to a relaxed, but awake state called alpha state that is defined by an increase in alpha brain waves and a decrease in higher activity beta waves.&quot; Vocal music is not a good choice, as your brain tries to focus on the words instead of relaxing, so all of the music on f@w is instrumental. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.focusatwill.com/wp/science/science-primer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;f@w Science Primer&lt;/a&gt; (with references).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a personal note, I've noticed an almost Pavlovian response to using the f@w service, which is also mentioned. I begin listening to f@w when I want to concentrate, and so now when I listen to f@w, I concentrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16003" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T16:43:34.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15582" CreationDate="2014-07-10T17:22:23.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's probably just an estimate, but is reasonable given other physiological data available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.halls.md/chart/men-weight-w.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this chart&lt;/a&gt;, a 50th percentile, middle age man is about 180lb (80kg). From &lt;a href=&quot;http://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/bionumber.aspx?id=107236&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Harvard's bio numbers&lt;/a&gt;, the weight of a skeleton, is typically about 15% of a person's weight. This leaves us with about 150lb (70kg) of tissue to be filled with blood vessels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This well referenced &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scrollseek.com/training/densitiesofdifferentbodymatter.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; shows that the tissues remaining all have densities of approximately 1g/cm^3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you take the 60,000mi value at face value, you could calculate the upper limit (because your mass is not 100% blood vessels) for the average diameter of a blood vessel by the following equation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;(1 g/cm^3) (100,000 km) (pi/4 d^2) = (70 kg)&#xA; d = sqrt( (70kg) / ((100,000 km) (pi/4) (1 g/cm^3 )) )&#xA; d = 30 microns&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the University of Minnesota's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vhlab.umn.edu/atlas/physiology-tutorial/blood-vessels.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;page&lt;/a&gt; on vascular physiology, capillaries are the most numerous, make up much of the length of the vascular system, and average 5-10 microns in diameter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the plausible upper limit on average blood vessel diameter is 30 microns, it seems reasonable that there could 60,000 miles of blood vessels in the human body when capillaries will try to pull that average toward 5-10 microns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd also like to point out the wide range you're likely to see in real life. The University of Minnesota page, for instance, figures there's about 25,000 miles of capillaries. I suspect there are large error bars but that the estimate is roughly correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8323" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T17:22:23.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22296" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20047" CreationDate="2014-07-10T19:56:02.040" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldtracker.org/media/library/Science/Science%20Magazine/science%20magazine%201978-1979/root/data/Science%201978-1979/pdf/1978_v200_n4347/1747016.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study done in 1978&lt;/a&gt; seems to show it isn't that simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this &#xA;  study, asymmetries in the size of the two feet were strongly related to sex and hand- &#xA;  edness, right-handed males having larger right feet and right-handed females having &#xA;  larger left feet, the reverse being seen in non-right-handed individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For males, the larger foot is most often on the &lt;em&gt;same&lt;/em&gt; side as the dominant hand, and the opposite is true for females.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a &lt;strong&gt;significant&lt;/strong&gt; proportion of people with different sized feet were female, that would make the claim at plausible. However, the study above did not bear that out. Among those studied, 70% of males had different sized feet compared to 80% of females. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19407" LastEditorUserId="19407" LastEditDate="2014-07-10T20:06:20.933" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T20:06:20.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8731" CreationDate="2014-07-10T20:39:47.533" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;As is often the case, &lt;strong&gt;No, but with a grain of truth&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; a tribe which was described in legend as &quot;red-headed cannibals&quot; by the oral history of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paiute&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Paiute&lt;/a&gt; tribe: the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si-Te-Cah&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Si-Te-Cah&lt;/a&gt;.  According to their legend, as documented in &lt;em&gt;Fossil Legends of the First Americans&lt;/em&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-691-11345-9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2005&lt;/a&gt;) and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Winnemucca&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sarah Winnemucca&lt;/a&gt; of the Paiute tribe in her autobiography (1883), the Paiute fought them and killed them all, &lt;em&gt;possibly&lt;/em&gt; by sealing the survivors into &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lovelock_Cave#Si-Te-Cah:_The_Legend_of_the_Red-Haired_Giants&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lovelock Cave&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is no original source for these cannibals being giants - Winnemucca doesn't even hint at that in her book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the other end, there &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; skeletons discovered in Lovelock Cave, and Wikipedia cites one of the original miners' archeological reports saying he found the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si-Te-Cah#cite_note-5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;body of a man six feet six inches tall.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.  This is certainly tall but not a giant by modern standards, but could have been in prehistoric times.  Additionally, human bones which appeared to have been split for marrow were found, which supports the cannibal legend.  However, a lot of the remains are no longer around, due to the lack of care taken with archeological remains in the early 20th century. (One source I found said that one of the skeletons was taken to be ground up for a local lodge's &quot;initiation ritual&quot;, for example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The aforementioned &lt;em&gt;Fossil Legends&lt;/em&gt; book suggests that the story of giants&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;was started by entrepreneurs setting up tourist displays and that the skeletons themselves were of normal size. However, about a hundred miles north of Lovelock there are plentiful fossils of mammoths and cave bears, and their large limb bones could easily be thought to be those of giants by an untrained observer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T20:39:47.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22298" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22223" CreationDate="2014-07-10T22:30:26.503" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMclde1305159#t=article&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Medicinal Use of Marijuana — Polling Results&lt;/a&gt; (from a 2013 poll in the New England Journal of Medicine) says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We were surprised by the outcome of polling and comments, with 76% of all votes in favor of the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes ... In sum, the majority of clinicians would recommend the use of medicinal marijuana in certain circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who voted 'yes' in that poll concurred with an opinion which included:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] Inhaled pharmaceuticals are commonplace, but in the United States no vaporized inhalant is currently available as an alternative to medicinal marijuana, pending FDA approval of nabiximols, currently in phase 3 trials (ClinicalTrials.gov number, 01337089).6 With slow onset and unreliable bioavailability, oral cannabinoids are ill suited to relieving Marilyn's acute distress. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In July 2014 the CBC reported, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/vapourizing-marijuana-reaching-trend-status-canadian-doctor-says-1.2702193&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vapourizing marijuana is gaining momentum as a safer alternative to smoking it, says a Canadian doctor. ... One vapourizer is currently approved by Health Canada ... The device costs roughly $600.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-07-10T22:30:26.503" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20704" CreationDate="2014-07-11T02:56:54.203" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If the wording were &quot;paid&quot; rather than &quot;earned&quot; then the answer is clearly &quot;yes&quot;, and while both the left and right agree that there is a gap, there is disagreement on the magnitude, as evidenced by user1873's answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the word &quot;earned&quot; remains, statistically, this is unlikely the majority cause.  Thomas Sowell outlines the general case &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aei-ideas.org/2014/04/thomas-sowell-discusses-the-gender-pay-gap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;: occupational choice, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The vast plurality of the cause of the gap is &lt;a href=&quot;http://ideas.repec.org/p/ifs/ifsewp/04-16.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;experience&lt;/a&gt;.  This has been detected by many studies over the decades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GenderGap.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some residual gap&lt;/a&gt; that cannot be explained by conventional causal statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aei-ideas.org/2014/04/persistent-pay-gaps-could-result-from-greater-male-risk-tolerance-higher-pay-for-male-athletes-professional-musicians/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Some&lt;/a&gt; are trying to attribute the remaining gap to women's risk aversion relative to men's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T02:56:54.203" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22303" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22307" CreationDate="2014-07-11T10:05:49.907" Score="11" ViewCount="33170" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a common belief that women need to go to the bathroom more often than men because of the smaller size of their bladders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Are there more factors involved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17212" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T13:31:33.340" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T13:46:10.533" Title="Do women have smaller bladders than men?" Tags="|physiology|gender|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22303" CreationDate="2014-07-11T13:46:10.533" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anatomic bladder capacity&lt;/strong&gt; is the maximum liquid volume that can &lt;em&gt;fit&lt;/em&gt; inside the bladder [1]. While various sources [2, 3, 6] claim it is between 500 and 1000 ml none makes a comparison between men and women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Functional bladder capacity&lt;/strong&gt; is the urine volume that triggers micturition sensation [1]. And, yes, there are slight differences between men and women:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fitzgerald, Stablein, and Brubaker (2002) evaluated voiding diaries in 300 women with differing racial and ethnic backgrounds, and reported that the median voided volume was 330 ml. Latini, Mueller, Lux, Fitzgerald, and Kreder (2004) analyzed multiple variables from voiding diaries in 284 men without bothersome lower urinary tract symptoms and found that the median voided volume was 382 ml. Van Doorn and associates (2011) evaluated voiding parameters in 1688 Dutch men and found a similar mean voided volume in adult men of 400 ml [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, many factors influence this values:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because functional bladder capacity represents the intravesical volume present when an individual makes a decision to urinate, it is prone to variability based on multiple factors, such as the magnitude of the desire to urinate and individual judgment based on considerations related to the availability of a toilet in the near future [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But not only these. Age also matters [4]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All three groups reported that mean voided volumes tended to be small in older adults, although 24-hour volumes remained unchanged. Van Doorn and associates (2011) followed patients longitudinally over a period of 6.5 years and found that median voided volumes declined from 400 ml to a median value of 245 ml as men aged [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overactive bladder is a condition that modifies functional bladder capacity and it is quite common amongst women:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At minimum, 11 to 16 million women in the United States cope on a daily basis with symptoms that include sudden strong urges to urinate, difficulty delaying voids, frequent trips to the bathroom, and in many cases involuntary loss of urine when urgency strikes. They may wear pads for accidents, plan ahead for access to bathrooms, and modify their social and work lives to accommodate their symptoms [5].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there are other conditions more common in women which can make them go to the bathroom more often [7]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Urinary incontinence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Stress incontinence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Neurogenic bladder&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Flaccid bladder&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Spastic bladder&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Bladder stones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Bladder extrophy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Urinary retention&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Cystitis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mikel Gray. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/746076_3&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Evaluation of Bladder Filling/Storage Functions.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Urol Nurs. 2011;31(3):149-153. Available on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/&quot;&gt;Medscape.com&lt;/a&gt;. Accessed 11.07.2014&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia contributors, &quot;Urinary bladder,&quot; Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Urinary_bladder&amp;amp;oldid=612184165&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Urinary_bladder&amp;amp;oldid=612184165&lt;/a&gt; (accessed July 11, 2014).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;WebMD. &lt;em&gt;Image Collection: Human Anatomy: The Bladder&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/urinary-incontinence-oab/picture-of-the-bladder&quot;&gt;http://www.webmd.com/urinary-incontinence-oab/picture-of-the-bladder&lt;/a&gt; (accessed 11.07.2014)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Siroky MB. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16985852&quot;&gt;The aging bladder.&lt;/a&gt; Rev Urol. 2006;6 Suppl 1:S3-7. PubMed PMID: 16985852. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hartmann KE, McPheeters ML, Biller DH, et al. Treatment of Overactive Bladder in Women. Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US); 2009 Aug. (Evidence Reports/Technology Assessments, No. 187.) Chapter 1, Introduction. Available from: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK32536/&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK32536/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Glenn Elert and his students. &lt;em&gt;Volume of a Human Bladder.&lt;/em&gt; Available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/DanielShaw.shtml&quot;&gt;http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/DanielShaw.shtml&lt;/a&gt;. Accessed 11.07.2014&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(reviewed by) George Krucik. Body Maps: Bladder. Available at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthline.com/human-body-maps/bladder&quot;&gt;http://www.healthline.com/human-body-maps/bladder&lt;/a&gt;. Accessed 11.07.2014&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T13:46:10.533" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22309" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T15:28:48.807" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia defines &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_finance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Corporate Finance&lt;/a&gt; as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the area of finance dealing with the sources of funding and the capital structure of corporations and the actions that managers take to increase the value of the firm to the shareholders, as well as the tools and analysis used to allocate financial resources. The primary goal of corporate finance is to maximize or increase shareholder value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T15:28:48.807" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T15:28:48.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22310" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T15:28:48.807" Score="0" Body="the area of finance dealing with the sources of funding and the capital structure of corporations and the actions that managers take to increase the value of the firm to the shareholders" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T15:28:48.807" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T15:28:48.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22311" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T15:30:26.510" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia defines &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_finance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Personal Finance&lt;/a&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the financial management which an individual or a family unit is required to do to obtain, budget, save, and spend monetary resources over time, taking into account various financial risks and future life events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T15:30:26.510" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T15:30:26.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22312" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T15:30:26.510" Score="0" Body="Personal finance is the financial management which an individual or a family unit is required to do to obtain, budget, save, and spend monetary resources over time, taking into account various financial risks and future life events." OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T15:30:26.510" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T15:30:26.510" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22313" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-07-11T15:49:47.130" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia defines &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_finance&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;public finance&lt;/a&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the study of the role of the government in the economy. It is the branch of economics which assesses the government revenue and government expenditure of the public authorities and the adjustment of one or the other to achieve desirable effects and avoid undesirable ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T15:49:47.130" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T15:49:47.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22314" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-07-11T15:49:47.130" Score="0" Body="Public finance is the study of the role of the government in the economy. It is the branch of economics which assesses the government revenue and government expenditure of the public authorities and the adjustment of one or the other to achieve desirable effects and avoid undesirable ones." OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-11T15:49:47.130" LastActivityDate="2014-07-11T15:49:47.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22317" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-11T22:46:07.800" Score="16" ViewCount="9792" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://didyouknowblog.com/&quot;&gt;this did you know? blog&lt;/a&gt; humans are the only species to have permanently enlarged breast. It quotes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010/may/14/breast-size-evolution&quot;&gt;an article from the Guardian&lt;/a&gt; but the article does not contain that specific fact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21093" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2016-04-03T20:57:43.333" LastActivityDate="2016-04-11T23:55:45.113" Title="Are humans the only species to have permanently enlarged breast?" Tags="|biology|sexuality|evolution|human-reproduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22322" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18713" CreationDate="2014-07-12T09:30:11.873" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question has remained unanswered yet not closed, so I'll give it a go.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, a clarification regarding the title. If phobias are &lt;strong&gt;genetic&lt;/strong&gt;, by definition they can't be created in a generation and inherited. The term &lt;strong&gt;epigenetic&lt;/strong&gt; is the one that might have led to this confusion, so I'll start by defining it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1. Epigenetics&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epigenetics is the study of changes in the expression of genes caused by certain base pairs in DNA, or RNA, being &amp;quot;turned off&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;turned on&amp;quot; again, through chemical reactions (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;em&gt;Epi&lt;/em&gt; means &lt;em&gt;outside or around&lt;/em&gt;, so epigenetics is not genetics as you might define it. These changes happen at a genomic level, but they don't involve a change in the nucleotide sequence. The best example of epigenetics is the fertilized egg cell or zygote, that divides and changes into all the different cell types in an organism (muscle cells, neurons, epithelium). They do this by activating some genes while inhibiting the expression of others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best definition is probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Riggs_(geneticist)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arthur Riggs&lt;/a&gt;':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Epigenetics is] the study of mitotically and/or meiotically heritable&#xA;changes in gene function that cannot be explained by changes in DNA&#xA;sequence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2. Can mice inherit fears applied to their predecessors?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study you cite affirms they can. Even a third generation of mice seemed to reject the smell as well, which makes for quite shocking news:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third generation of mice — the ‘grandchildren’ — also inherited&#xA;this reaction, as did mice conceived through in vitro fertilization&#xA;with sperm from males sensitized to acetophenone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with the study is that it failed to figure out a &lt;strong&gt;mechanism&lt;/strong&gt; by which this could happen. And without knowing the molecular mechanism behind it, there is no choice but to remain skeptic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;3. A partial conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is undoubtedly a breakthrough discovery, the possibility of imprinting associations such as this in a gamete is simply astonishing. From an evolutionary point of view, it can make sense that (in some way we don't understand yet) some signals regarding experience can be transmitted to our descendants and somehow help in their survival.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cited study belongs to epigenetics because this information cannot be stored at a nucleotide level. Unfortunately, and as I previously mentioned, without knowing the details of the mechanism we can't categorically affirm these mice inherited the information associated with a traumatic experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in a laboratory context, there are &lt;strong&gt;too many unknown variables&lt;/strong&gt; we might be missing. One important one has been brought up by &lt;a href=&quot;http://martinsbioblogg.wordpress.com/2013/12/21/journal-club-of-one-parental-olfactory-experience-influences-behavior-and-neural-structure-in-subsequent-generations/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Martin Johnsson&lt;/a&gt;, and it has to do with the study using two groups of mice, one subjected to the scent and the other one not, and their descendants. If you divide individuals into two groups, you need to be sure that there are not &lt;strong&gt;genetic differences between the founders of the two groups&lt;/strong&gt;. This is not clarified in the study, and could potentially explain the supposed 'inheritance' if no other reason comes to light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So to summarize: The experiment seems to affirm it's possible. However, without a mechanism we are left with too many unknowns to consider this a proven theory.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14740" LastEditorUserId="25398" LastEditDate="2022-06-04T06:03:53.340" LastActivityDate="2022-06-04T06:03:53.340" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22317" CreationDate="2014-07-12T10:03:30.773" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Homo sapiens is, as far as we know, the only species that has permanently enlarged breasts. &lt;strong&gt;In the rest of the primates, plump breasts last only as long as breastfeeding does&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Humans are the only primate to have breasts that are enlarged at all&#xA;  times, in contrast to other primates which have swollen breasts only&#xA;  when breastfeeding. This suggests that human breasts have a unique&#xA;  function that is not shared by other primates.&#xA;  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.port.ac.uk/special/theevolutionaryfunctionofhumanbreasts/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main &lt;em&gt;reason&lt;/em&gt; for larger breasts existence (which would explain their evolutionary presence) seems to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast&quot;&gt;not lactation&lt;/a&gt; -pre-pregnancy size is no indication of a woman's ability to produce milk-, but because they are &lt;strong&gt;a signal of a woman's ability to store fat&lt;/strong&gt; - and therefore be considered &lt;strong&gt;more fertile&lt;/strong&gt; (Mascia-Lees et al., 1986, Pawlowski, 1999, Pawlowski et al., 2004). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Women with hourglass figures have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1691716/&quot;&gt;proven to be more likely to become pregnant&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Women with higher breast to under-breast ratios (large breasts) or low&#xA;  waist to hip ratio (WHR) have higher hormone levels (...) High levels&#xA;  of these hormones are good indicators that a woman will successfully&#xA;  become pregnant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ratio of bust-to-waist may predict hormone levels, so women with larger breasts are thought to be more fertile, and more attractive. &lt;strong&gt;This is believed to be the main reason why humans have permanently enlarged breasts.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14740" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T10:03:30.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22324" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22325" CreationDate="2014-07-12T12:28:02.177" Score="11" ViewCount="2577" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does China have the death penalty for spammers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example claim: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.recruitingblogs.com/profiles/blogs/welcome-to-the-united-states-of-canada&quot;&gt;Welcome to the United States of Canada&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chinese law, for example, permits executions for sending spam, and&#xA;  harvesting of the guilty party's organs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: I'm asking about the death penalty. Whether organs get harvested is not at the core of the question.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also repeated on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spam_legislation_by_country#cite_ref-oecd_5-2&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (citation is apparently to &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070427172843/http://www.oecd-antispam.org/countrylaws.php3&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;, which doesn't mention the death penalty), and in an opinion piece &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9212031/happy-birthday-spam-do-you-mind-if-we-dont-celebrate/&quot;&gt;Happy birthday, spam! Do you mind if we don’t celebrate?&lt;/a&gt; in The Spectator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T15:30:27.500" Title="Does China have the death penalty for spammers?" Tags="|advertising|china|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22324" CreationDate="2014-07-12T15:30:27.500" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This appears to be false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia entry mentions the relevant law as being the 2006 Regulations on Internet Email Services.  According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epsilon.com/international/EmailLaw/China_Regulations_On_Internet_Email_Services2006.pdf&quot;&gt;this report from Epsilon International&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benchmarkemail.com/blogs/detail/maintaining-compliance-with-chinas-severe-email-marketing-laws&quot;&gt;this one from Benchmark Email&lt;/a&gt;, the penalty for violating the law is a fine of CNY 10000 (roughly USD 1600 or EUR 1200) per email.  The fine can be tripled if the case involves &quot;unlawful proceeds&quot; (it is unclear to me what that means).  There is no mention of any stiffer penalties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am removing the unsourced Wikipedia claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T15:30:27.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22337" CreationDate="2014-07-12T16:02:18.823" Score="32" ViewCount="2957" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJoRZOK18Fg&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; is being spread on Facebook. It purports to be a North Korean television segment that fraudulently tells the North Koreans that they are participating in the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, and that North Korea have defeated USA, China and Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone is spreading this as a genuine piece of North Korean propaganda. This &quot;Korean News Backup&quot; is a 2 month old channel, with lots of North Korean videos from other sources and some of original content too. None of the other North Korean media YouTube videos I found have this reporter in the cast. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this legitimate North Korean propaganda? A segment from a South Korean comedy show spoofing the North Koreans? Or a well-produced Internet hoax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17147" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T06:47:57.507" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T06:47:57.507" Title="Does North Korea propaganda falsely claim 2014 World Cup participation?" Tags="|sport|media|north-korea|football|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20880" CreationDate="2014-07-12T23:23:42.037" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yelp itself &lt;a href=&quot;http://officialblog.yelp.com/2013/05/no-yelp-doesnt-extort-small-businesses-see-for-yourself.html&quot;&gt;attempts to refute extortion claims&lt;/a&gt; in three ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, they cite an independent study by researchers at Boston University and the Harvard Business School, &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2293164&quot;&gt;finding that advertisers were no more likely than non-advertisers to have unfavorable reviews hidden&lt;/a&gt;. Note that the focus of the study was predictors of fraudulent reviews, but they did address the extortion hypothesis, as shown in &lt;a href=&quot;http://officialblog.yelp.com/2013/12/harvard-study-debunks-yelp-extortion-conspiracy-theory-yelp-doesnt-extort.html&quot;&gt;this excerpt&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a persuasive statistical argument, but of course it relies on Yelp providing honest data on which reviews were hidden in the first place. If they deleted positive reviews of non-advertisers or excluded them from the subsection that supposedly shows questionable reviews, this analysis would not be able to detect that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, Yelp points out that the extortion claims have not held up in court. I haven't evaluated this claim one way or another (for example, if some of the lawsuits led to undisclosed settlements those wouldn't prove anything). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, Yelp invites readers to use google to search for poor reviews of yelp advertisers. They ask, &quot;if these Yelp advertisers get a special “Delete” button for negative reviews, why in the world aren’t they using it?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does provide evidence that there's not a literal, unlimited &quot;delete this review&quot; option provided to advertisers, but of course there could be more subtle, statistical bias. More importantly, it addresses whether they show honest results for advertisers -- not your specific question about whether they show honest results for &lt;em&gt;non&lt;/em&gt;-advertisers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, I would say that Yelp offers some suggestive but not decisive evidence against the extortion hypothesis, some of which comes from (very likely) unbiased research studies. Probably the strongest evidence either way would come from interviewing business owners who are offered advertising on Yelp, but I'm not aware of any systematic data on this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6444" LastActivityDate="2014-07-12T23:23:42.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22329" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-13T02:41:51.490" Score="4" ViewCount="990" Body="&lt;p&gt;A post relating to a political issue is going around saying &lt;a href=&quot;http://youngcons.com/somebody-calculated-the-odds-of-seven-hard-drives-crashing-in-the-same-month-like-the-irs-is-claiming/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it is astronomically unlikely that 7 hard drives would crash in the same month&lt;/a&gt;, specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The odds of a disk drive failing in any given month are roughly one in 36. The odds of two different drives failing in the same month are roughly one in 36 squared, or 1 in about 1,300...37 to the 7th power = 1 in 78,664,164,096. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My first reaction was that the proper odds would relate to 7 out of N and, in an organization, N is likely to be much larger than 7. OTOH, if the claim is a specific mail server and it's backup, N = 7 might make sense. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, at this point, my Google-fu cannot penetrate the echo-chambering of the &quot;astronomical odds&quot; post to know what has actually been claimed in terms of hard drive failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, to use (1/36)^7, the odds of drives crashing would have to be independent, which I think could be relevant if the claim of data loss relates to a RAID configuration (?). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical that the IRS made the claim for which the post's math would be appropriate (i.e., I am skeptical that the IRS said 'the loss of email was due to the specific failure of 7 out of 7 independent drives'). As dmckee put it in comments: &quot;[I am] asking what the IRS is actually claiming about hard drive failures that might be preventing them for complying with congressional requests for information about some [high politicized event that shouldn't play any part in the answers].&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. I've had trouble finding appropriate tags for this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T06:47:24.060" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T06:47:24.060" Title="Does the IRS claim that 7 out of 7 specific hard-drives crashed in a single month?" Tags="|united-states|government|statistics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17640" CreationDate="2014-07-13T16:38:57.747" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;I get about:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;coffee: 80 liters per cup&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;cotton: 10000 liters per kg&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The differences could be due to the original calculation including run off pollutants.  But the numbers are actually pretty close for a back of the envelope calculation. There are some details about this in the cotton water footprint report below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Cotton:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cottoninc.com/fiber/AgriculturalDisciplines/Engineering/Irrigation-Management/Cotton-Water-Requirements/&quot;&gt;http://www.cottoninc.com/fiber/AgriculturalDisciplines/Engineering/Irrigation-Management/Cotton-Water-Requirements/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;looking at the averages of cotton requirements for the three time periods in the table I get:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(25 * .09) + (35 * .22) + (50 * .30) = 24.95 inches of water per acre&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1 acre = 6272640 sq inches&lt;br&gt;&#xA;6272640 sq inches * 24.95 inches = 156502368 cubic inches per acre&lt;br&gt;&#xA;156502368 cubic inches = 2564610 liters per acre  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cotton.org/econ/cropinfo/costsreturns/usa.cfm&quot;&gt;https://www.cotton.org/econ/cropinfo/costsreturns/usa.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Taking the average of &quot;Cotton Yield: pounds per planted acre&quot;: 495.56, 667, 591&lt;br&gt;&#xA;584.52 lbs per acre = 265.134 kg per acre&lt;br&gt;&#xA;265.134 kg per acre / 2564610 liters per acre = &lt;strong&gt;9672 liters per kg&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a pretty interesting paper on the water footprint of cotton:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Chapagain_et_al_2006_cotton.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Chapagain_et_al_2006_cotton.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;for virtual water average in the world total cost (pg. 192)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;cotton lint: 8506 cubic meters per ton = &lt;strong&gt;9376.2 liters per kg&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;end textile: 9359 cubic meters per ton = 10316.5 liters per kg&lt;br&gt;&#xA;this seems to confirm my above calculations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Coffee:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/CoffeeTea&quot;&gt;http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/CoffeeTea&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;claims 140 liters per cup&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/124337/coffee-production&quot;&gt;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/124337/coffee-production&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;seems to agree with:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ancoracoffee.com/class/Fast_Facts_About_Coffee.aspx&quot;&gt;http://www.ancoracoffee.com/class/Fast_Facts_About_Coffee.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;~2000 lbs of beans per acre&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coffeeresearch.org/coffee/roasting.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.coffeeresearch.org/coffee/roasting.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;~17% weight loss (can apparently be higher or lower depending on the darkness of the blend) &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://store.starbucks.com/Coffee-Preparation-FAQ/coffee-prep-faq,default,pg.html&quot;&gt;http://store.starbucks.com/Coffee-Preparation-FAQ/coffee-prep-faq,default,pg.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;A 1-lb bag of coffee yields approximately 64 5-oz cups* (320 oz) (53 6oz cups)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This is pretty close to most of what the individuals say that I could find ~50 cups so I'll use this number.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.soap.com/p/folgers-100-columbian-ground-coffee-27-8-oz-211123&quot;&gt;http://www.soap.com/p/folgers-100-columbian-ground-coffee-27-8-oz-211123&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1 lb 11.8 oz (1.7375 lbs) = 240 6oz cups&lt;br&gt;&#xA;But here is an &lt;em&gt;up to&lt;/em&gt; amount from a folgers label: 240/1.7375 = 138 cups per lb  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/124337/coffee-production&quot;&gt;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/124337/coffee-production&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;60 to 80 inches (I'll average the two and use 70) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;70 inches * 1 acre = 7 195 310.72 liters per acre&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2000 lbs of beans per acre&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2000 lbs * .83 (less 17%) = 1660 lbs of roasted beans per acre&lt;br&gt;&#xA;1660 * 53 = 87980 cups of coffee per acre&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;82 liters&lt;/strong&gt; of water per cup of coffee  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastActivityDate="2014-07-13T16:38:57.747" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22334" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-13T22:26:34.063" Score="10" ViewCount="25670" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Hitler ever say : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I would have killed all the Jews of the world, but I kept some to show the world why I killed them&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one and similar in meaning can be seen on many websites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorDisplayName="user11777" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T06:53:54.207" LastActivityDate="2017-10-06T05:42:03.893" Title="Did Hitler say: &quot;I would have killed all the Jews of the world, but I kept some to show the world why I killed them&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|adolf-hitler|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22335" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22336" CreationDate="2014-07-13T22:30:27.887" Score="30" ViewCount="9364" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just saw &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=807623482611845&amp;amp;set=a.367249613315903.85664.354522044588660&amp;amp;type=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this meme on Facebook&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xQKIq.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;1 in 7 American houses are empty.&amp;#x0A;1 in 402 Americans are homeless.&amp;#x0A;24 empty houses are available for each homeless American.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18344/are-there-enough-unused-houses-in-america-for-each-homeless-person-to-have-six&quot;&gt;Since this question answered the ratio question&lt;/a&gt;, I would like to know if these houses are &quot;available for&quot; those homeless?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T15:06:29.567" Title="Are there 24 empty houses &quot;available&quot; per homeless person in the USA?" Tags="|united-states|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22335" CreationDate="2014-07-13T22:30:27.887" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Census.gov, in the 1st quarter of 2014 there were &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.census.gov/econ/currentdata/dbsearch?program=HV&amp;amp;startYear=2014&amp;amp;endYear=2014&amp;amp;categories=ESTIMATE&amp;amp;dataType=VACANT&amp;amp;geoLevel=US&amp;amp;notAdjusted=1&amp;amp;submit=GET+DATA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;18,319,000 vacant housing units&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of homeless is debatable, because those in institutions or staying at friends' places are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/01/16/homeless-problem-obama-america-recession-column/4539917/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;not counted&lt;/a&gt; in government reports like the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.onecpd.info/resources/documents/AHAR-2013-Part1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress&lt;/a&gt; (which estimated &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/11/21/246589487/number-of-homeless-declines-again-but-gains-arent-universal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;610,042 homeless in January 2013&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statisticbrain.com/homelessness-stats/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; mentions 1,750,000 homeless, presumably on 7.1.2014, but I could not find the AHAR 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;18319000 / 610042 = 30 vacant homes per homeless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;18319000 / 1750000 = 10 vacant homes per homeless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of those are summer homes, though, so using &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.census.gov/econ/currentdata/dbsearch?program=HV&amp;amp;startYear=2014&amp;amp;endYear=2014&amp;amp;categories=ESTIMATE&amp;amp;dataType=YRVAC&amp;amp;geoLevel=US&amp;amp;notAdjusted=1&amp;amp;submit=GET+DATA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Year-Round Vacant Housing Units&lt;/a&gt;, we get this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;13785000 / 610042 = 22.6&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;24 empty houses for each homeless American (assuming only the USA) seems like a reasonable estimate, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/02/03/1061611/-STUNNING-When-a-Single-Image-Cuts-to-the-Core-of-an-American-Injustice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;especially since the meme is older than 3 Feb 2012&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, most of those are not up for sale or rent. Totaling the vacancies for rent (3710000) and for sale (1521000) gives us:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5231000 / 610042 = 8.6&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is similar to the 6 mentioned in the meme in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/18344/5079&quot;&gt;this related/duplicate question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer is &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;; 24 is a rather gross exaggeration of the number of homes available for sale/rent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &quot;houses&quot; as depicted in the meme is an exaggeration, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fedstats.gov/qf/meta/long_HSG010207.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;according to the U.S. Bureau of the Census&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A housing unit is a house, an apartment, a mobile home, a group of&#xA;  rooms, &lt;strong&gt;or a single room&lt;/strong&gt; that is occupied (or if vacant, is intended&#xA;  for occupancy) as separate living quarters. Separate living quarters&#xA;  are those in which the occupants live and eat separately from any&#xA;  other persons in the building and which have direct access from the&#xA;  outside of the building or through a common hall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for being available to the homeless, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/12/20/republican_state_gives_free_houses_to_moochers_cuts_homelessness_by_74_percent.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Utah cut down its homeless population by 74% by giving them free homes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (in hopes of saving money on ER). And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationofchange.org/utah-ending-homelessness-giving-people-homes-1390056183&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a month later, it's 78%&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In eight years, Utah has quietly reduced homelessness by 78 percent,&#xA;  and is on track to end homelessness by 2015. How did Utah accomplish&#xA;  this? Simple. Utah solved homelessness by giving people homes. &lt;strong&gt;In&#xA;  2005, Utah figured out that the annual cost of E.R. visits and jail&#xA;  stays for homeless people was about $16,670 per person, compared to&#xA;  $11,000 to provide each homeless person with an apartment and a social&#xA;  worker.&lt;/strong&gt; So, the state began giving away apartments, with no strings&#xA;  attached. Each participant in Utah’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_First&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Housing First&lt;/a&gt; program also gets a&#xA;  caseworker to help them become self-sufficient, but they keep the&#xA;  apartment even if they fail. The program has been so successful that&#xA;  other states are hoping to achieve similar results with programs&#xA;  modeled on Utah’s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It sounds like Utah borrowed a page from &lt;a href=&quot;http://nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/CrimzReport_2009.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Homes Not Handcuffs&lt;/a&gt;, the 2009&#xA;  report by The National Law Center on Homelessness &amp;amp; Poverty and The&#xA;  National Coalition for the Homeless. Using a 2004 survey and anecdotal&#xA;  evidence from activists, the report concluded that &lt;strong&gt;permanent housing&#xA;  for the homeless is cheaper than criminalization. Housing is not only&#xA;  more human, it’s economical.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;San Francisco's mayor's chief of homelessness policy, Bevan Dufty, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Salt-Lake-City-a-model-for-S-F-on-homeless-5587357.php#page-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;had this to say&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Look, we're going to spend the money one way or another - either&#xA;  through expensive jail, shelter, emergency calls and so forth, or by&#xA;  investing in housing. It's so clear what the best way to spend it is.&#xA;  With housing you not only give people better lives, you save money in&#xA;  the long run.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might not be the case in areas with high real estate costs and for-profit prisons, but it would be a better use of homes than &lt;a href=&quot;http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=19580208&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;demolishing them due to lack of buyers&lt;/a&gt;. Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cleveland.com/naymik/index.ssf/2014/02/homeless_man_pays_property_tax.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some homeless pay property taxes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T15:06:29.567" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22337" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22326" CreationDate="2014-07-14T05:50:05.250" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very likely to be a fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nknews.org/2014/06/north-korea-televises-brazil-2014-world-cup-matches/&quot;&gt;NKnews&lt;/a&gt;, The World Cup games are aired in North Korea by KCTV (although with delay and removed commentary), so it appears that there is no sense in faking news while the general population is aware of the developments at the World Cup, at least to some extent. Also, since the North Korea qualification games were aired, they &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPyHoDcwbzE&quot;&gt;do know that their team didn't qualify&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastActivityDate="2014-07-14T05:50:05.250" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22342" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-14T21:39:07.570" Score="2" ViewCount="540" Body="&lt;p&gt;Popular visualisations of UFO crafts are mostly disc shaped like the following&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nsGj7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Disc Shaped UFO&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would a craft like this be able to fly? Why would this shape become popular, If a species could travel the distance between planets they would need an efficient craft, Which it seems this shaped craft would not be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21130" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T00:47:22.383" Title="Alien craft design - Would it work?" Tags="|aliens|ufo|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2014-07-15T03:37:01.403" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22342" CreationDate="2014-07-15T00:40:17.287" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Donald Menzel (he is the earliest source of this information I know of), the term &quot;flying saucer&quot; first was mentioned in '47 and the traditional shape followed on, although in reality most of these &quot;objects&quot; are not very saucer-like. Here is some write-up on this story I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/33351-flying-saucers-turn-64-look-back-origins-ufos.html&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On June 24, 1947, an amateur pilot named Kenneth Arnold was flying a&#xA;  small plane near Mount Rainier in Washington state when he saw&#xA;  something extraordinarily strange. Directly to his left, about 20 to&#xA;  25 miles north of him and at the same altitude, a chain of nine&#xA;  objects shot across the sky, glinting in the sun as they traveled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By comparing their size to that of a distant airplane, Arnold gauged&#xA;  the objects to be about 45 to 50 feet wide. They flew between two&#xA;  mountains spaced 50 miles apart in just 1 minute, 42 seconds, he&#xA;  observed, implying an astonishing speed of 1,700 miles per hour, or&#xA;  three times faster than any manned aircraft of the era. However, as if&#xA;  controlled, the flying objects seemed to dip and swerve around&#xA;  obstacles in the terrain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Arnold's sighting was &quot;such a sensation that it made front page news&#xA;  across the nation,&quot; UFO-logist and author Martin Kottmeyer wrote in an&#xA;  article (&quot;The Saucer Error,&quot; REALL News, 1993).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Soon everyone was looking for these new aircraft which according to&#xA;  the papers were saucer-like in shape,&quot; Kottmeyer continued. &quot;Within&#xA;  weeks hundreds of reports of these flying saucers were made across the&#xA;  nation. While people presumably thought they were seeing the same&#xA;  things that Kenneth Arnold saw, there was a major irony that nobody at&#xA;  the time realized. Kenneth Arnold hadn't reported seeing flying&#xA;  saucers.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, Arnold had told the press that the objects had flown&#xA;  erratically, &quot;like a saucer if you skip it across the water.&quot; They&#xA;  were thin and flat when viewed on edge, he said, but crescent-shaped&#xA;  when viewed from the top down as they turned. Nonetheless, a reporter&#xA;  named Bill Bequette of the United Press interpreted Arnold's statement&#xA;  to mean that the objects he saw were round discs. According to&#xA;  Benjamin Radford, UFO expert and deputy editor of the Skeptical&#xA;  Inquirer, &quot;It was one of the most significant reporter misquotes in&#xA;  history.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The phrase 'flying saucers' provided the mold which shaped the UFO&#xA;  myth at its beginning,&quot; Kottmeyer wrote. UFOs took the form of flying&#xA;  saucers, he noted, in artist's renderings, hoax photos, sci-fi films,&#xA;  TV shows and even the vast majority of alien abduction and sighting&#xA;  reports for the rest of modern history, up until the present day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story is described in Menzel's book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B000BIU1AU&quot;&gt;Flying Saucers&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, and he claims that there is no mention of such objects before that incident. Therefore, there is no sense in trying to explain the shape, as it was not caused by logic, but rather by pure accident of the craze starting with this term spread through media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="14651" LastEditDate="2014-07-15T00:47:22.383" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T00:47:22.383" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22345" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22346" CreationDate="2014-07-15T06:02:50.103" Score="195" ViewCount="29438" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a feeling of exhilaration and excitement on Twitter, with the Twitter account &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140715031459/https://twitter.com/FifNdhs&quot;&gt;@FifNdhs&lt;/a&gt; called “FIFA Corruption” seemingly having predicted the final result of the World Cup final hours ahead of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/15uEY.png&quot; alt=&quot;FifNdhas tweets&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amazing German footballer &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_G%C3%B6tze&quot;&gt;Mario Götze&lt;/a&gt; scored the game’s only goal in the 113th minute, as his nation became the first European team to win a World Cup in South America.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Twitter account in question has gained 40,000 followers and even caught the attention of broadcaster &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/mattletiss7&quot;&gt;Matt Le Tissier&lt;/a&gt; since Götze’s goal. Many of my friends and local newspapers started talking and arguing about FIFA's worst scandal ever and its corruption.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140715031459/https://twitter.com/FifNdhs&quot;&gt;@FifNdhs&lt;/a&gt;'s tweets were broadcast on the 12th of July and the &lt;strong&gt;World Cup&lt;/strong&gt; final was held on the 13th of July. How did this happen? Does it mean FIFA is corrupt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-10T21:39:03.693" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T13:15:20.127" Title="Did the Twitter account Fifndhs predict the exact World Cup results ahead of time?" Tags="|sport|social-media|football|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22346" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22345" CreationDate="2014-07-15T06:02:50.103" Score="314" Body="&lt;p&gt;The account tweeted the components of every possible scenario ahead of time, then retrospectively deleted all the ones inconsistent with reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many users have hinted that &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140715031459/https://twitter.com/FifNdhs&quot;&gt;@FifNdhs&lt;/a&gt; has hidden his twitter profile before making it public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Luckily, since his tweets were visible to many viewers, twitter user &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/sureshnakhua&quot;&gt;Suresh Nakhua&lt;/a&gt; actually managed to screenshot a bunch of the tweets before they were purged. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/sureshnakhua/status/488448452804624386/photo/1&quot;&gt;Suresh’s tweet&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hT9HW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is actually a very good trick. If he kept his twitter profile private throughout the process, it may have been more difficult to solve this mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sportskeeda.com/football/twitter-user-predicts-exact-results-day-before-world-cup&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; and this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.101greatgoals.com/blog/fifa-fraude-a-twitter-account-correctly-predicted-argentinas-group-claims-world-cup-winner-is-already-decided/&quot;&gt;one&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140715031459/https://twitter.com/FifNdhs&quot;&gt;@FifNdhs&lt;/a&gt; is not the only account who attempted to defame FIFA, as the Twitter user &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/FraudeMundial14&quot;&gt;@FraudeMundial14&lt;/a&gt; had earlier performed a similar trick, by actually predicting Argentina’s football group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tweeting in Spanish, the account started with: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We're going to make public Argentina’s group via this account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the same vein, neither is it our intention to ruin all of the&#xA;  expectations surrounding the World Cup draw, so we will only publish&#xA;  Argentina’s group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And they did publish the group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are suggestions the account may have simply published all of Argentina’s group possibilities, and simply deleted the wrong ones; but there is no screenshot whatsoever of the  wrong tweets who most likely got deleted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People should have strong doubts or reservations so that they won't fooled by some social-media junkies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="14582" LastEditDate="2015-11-16T13:15:20.127" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T13:15:20.127" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22347" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22348" CreationDate="2014-07-15T06:41:34.867" Score="4" ViewCount="1399" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.ie/sport/soccer/world-cup/special-soap-bananas-and-silent-airconditioning-brazilian-hoteliers-surprised-by-world-cup-teams-extravagant-demands-30263544.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Germans have made by far the most extravagant preparations. The&#xA;  delegation has built its own training facility in the scenic village&#xA;  of Santo André in Bahia, and the headquarters for coach Joachim Low's&#xA;  team is a gated community with 13 houses, 65 rooms, a football field&#xA;  and press centre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems like an overshot to build your own base just for the World Cup. Is it in fact true or they merely rented the place? Or maybe they build a lot of facilities worldwide regularly and this is just one of those?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="34347" LastEditDate="2020-07-27T00:20:51.730" LastActivityDate="2020-07-27T00:20:51.730" Title="Did Germany build their own training camp in Brazil in preparation for the World Cup?" Tags="|sport|football|brazil|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22347" CreationDate="2014-07-15T08:20:03.200" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may sound like overkill, but the fact is true that the German Football Association (Deutscher Fußball Bund) built this facility with the help of some private investors who will use this as a vacation camp later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more information look at wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campo_Bahia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Campo Bahia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Campo Bahia is the purpose-built training camp of the Germany national football team team for the 2014 FIFA World Cup.[1] It is situated in the village of Santo André, on the Southern tip of the state of Bahia in the North-East region of Brazil. It is about eight kilometers north of Santa Cruz Cabrália, and 30 kilometers north of Porto Seguro, on the Atlantic coast of Brazil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The facility will reportedly cost around £25 million, and will be funded by the German Football Association as well as private industry. The Germany team is the first occupant of the facilities. After the World Cup the resort will be opened to the public. The resort covers 15,000 square meters, and includes 14 two-storey houses, 65 residential units, a fitness centre, training pitch, a restaurant, a pool area and easy access to the beach. A football youth academy and an orphanage will be built on the site as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The location was chosen as it is within 2 hours flight of the team's group games to minimise travel, and is a short trip to the airport. It will also allow acclimatisation to the weather, as well as good security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Completion was originally scheduled for March 2014, and there have been worries it may not be fully complete for the start of the World Cup. According to media reports, the resort was completed just days before the arrival of the national team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21135" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T20:15:46.513" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22351" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-15T16:22:13.193" Score="3" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;Origin of claim is &lt;a href=&quot;http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/&lt;/a&gt;. At a quarter down the webpage is a more specific claim tendered, with numerous papers cited. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sans serif is better at small sizes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16959" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T19:16:55.713" Title="Are sans serif fonts easier to read than serif fonts?" Tags="|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-07-15T20:13:31.303" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22329" CreationDate="2014-07-15T17:55:48.477" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The official description of the event &lt;em&gt;by IRS&lt;/em&gt; is provided in &lt;a href=&quot;http://waysandmeans.house.gov/uploadedfiles/6_13_14_irs_letter.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a letter from Leonard Oursler (IRS) to the Committee on Finance&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page 11 of the PDF states that each employee has now a 500 MB inbox, and before July 2011 it held only 150 MB. After that capacity is reached, the user should do a backup on his computer or print it and archive it, depending on the IRS policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also states that if the hard drive crashes and cannot be recovered, or if it is recycled, no electronic version of the archived email would be retained. That's because (page 10) all server backup tapes were re-used after six months (before May 2013) to reduce costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At page 15, IRS says that her hard drive crashed in mid-2011 and could not be recovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the IRS is unable to interview Ms. Lerner to learn more, the IRS has determined that Ms. Lerner's computer crashed in mid-2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two attachments (E and F) that reproduces conversation about the hard disk failure and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only information, available so far, that IRS says that another six employees lost their emails is provided by the Committee on Ways and Means, not the IRS. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://waysandmeans.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=384708&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;press release&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to Lois Lerner’s emails, the IRS cannot produce records from six other IRS employees involved in the targeting of conservative groups.  One of those figures is Nikole Flax, who served as Chief of Staff to Steve Miller, who at the time of the targeting was Deputy Commissioner and would later serve as Acting Commissioner of the IRS – a position from which he was fired for his role in the targeting of conservative groups.  The timeframe for which Ms. Flax’s communications are purportedly unrecoverable covers when the Washington, DC office wrote and directed the Cincinnati field office to send abusive questionnaires, including inappropriate demands for donor information, to conservative groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Camp and Boustany also uncovered that the IRS has been keeping secret for months the fact that the Agency lost these critical records.  Ways and Means investigators have confirmed that the Agency first knew of the destroyed emails as early as February 2014 – nearly three months prior to newly installed Commissioner John Koskinen telling the Committee the IRS would produce all of Lois Lerner’s emails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the information the IRS provided about each employee having the &amp;quot;backup&amp;quot; of emails that exceeded the quota in their computers, and knowing that they have 90,000 employees, you could do the math of the probability of failure of 7 drives out of 90,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another thing that I'd point out is that I don't think that the precise statement of the IRS was released, or if it was informed if all hard-drives failed at the same time, or almost at the same time, or how far apart were their failures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4146" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-15T19:04:04.417" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-07-15T17:55:48.477" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22357" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-15T22:28:29.243" Score="13" ViewCount="983" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a craigslist post supposedly created by an anonymous NYC restaurant, customers take almost twice the time today to eat than 2004 because of mobile phones, food photos and fussiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I got passed this on social media today and it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.distractify.com/culture/craigslist-surveillance-restaurant/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claimed to be true&lt;/a&gt;, however I suspect it is a hoax or a joke. Can anyone verify?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2004:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customers walk in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They gets seated and are given menus, out of 45 customers 3 request to be seated elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customers on average spend 8 minutes before closing the menu to show they are ready to order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Average time from start to finish: 1:05&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2014:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customers walk in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Customers get seated and is given menus, out of 45 customers 18 requested to be seated elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before even opening the menu they take their phones out, some are taking photos while others are simply doing something else on their phone (sorry we have no clue what they are doing and do not monitor customer WIFI activity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Average time from start to finish: 1:55&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140712154835/https://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/rnr/4562386373.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Archive.org copy of the craiglist post in question&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T11:06:35.747" Title="Is the Craigslist rant saying people stay in restaurants on average a hour longer a hoax?" Tags="|nutrition|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22361" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-16T18:21:16.693" Score="2" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the Environmental Defense Fund website, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edf.org/blog/2014/07/15/bundle-polar-vortex-returns-it-climate-change&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this claim&lt;/a&gt; is made:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This past winter’s polar vortex episode was caused by a persistent high pressure system that developed over western Canada, which pushed the jet stream southward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current summertime polar vortex episode is caused by the Super Typhoon Neoguri that hit Japan last week, which has dramatically altered the jet stream (and also created a high pressure system over western Canada).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The connection to climate change&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both of these triggers—a persistent high pressure system and a strong storm —are consistent with climate change projections by experts. Even a weaker jet stream in general is anticipated as sea ice melts in the Arctic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;climate change projections&amp;quot; is linked to a page with this image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/afeKI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that a warming planet causes colder temperatures?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T11:30:18.937" Title="Did global warming cause temperatures to drop because of polar vortex episodes?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22362" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22369" CreationDate="2014-07-16T22:36:35.717" Score="21" ViewCount="2938" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-24378939&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ONS survey: More gay men in UK than gay women&lt;/a&gt;, gay men exceed lesbians as a proportion of the population, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Prevalence/Reports/Prevalence%20of%20Transsexualism.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;On the Calculation of the Prevalence of Transsexualism&lt;/a&gt; suggests that there are more male-to-female transgender people than female-to-male transgender people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, a recently released &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr077.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CDC study&lt;/a&gt; shows different results, leading me to be skeptical of the aforementioned claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of these claims are true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20902" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditorDisplayName="user20902" LastEditDate="2023-04-09T11:42:24.777" LastActivityDate="2023-04-09T11:42:24.777" Title="Are males more likely to be LGBT than females (based on sex assigned at birth)?" Tags="|biology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22361" CreationDate="2014-07-17T07:17:21.523" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question posed in here &quot;Is it true that a warming planet causes colder temperatures?&quot; is a non-sequitur, following as it does a discussion of changes in patterns of precipitation (in this case snow), rather than temperature.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article referenced is clearly discussing changes in extreme weather (short term) resulting from climate change (in this case affecting the jetstream).  These sot or changes (increases) in extreme weather are indeed discussed in the IPCC reports.  See e.g. chapter 11 of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter11.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IPCC AR4 WG1 report.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Extremes: There has been a large increase in the available analyses of&#xA;  changes in extremes. This allows for a more comprehensive assessment&#xA;  for most regions. The general findings are in line with the assessment&#xA;  made in TAR and now have a higher level of confidence derived from&#xA;  multiple sources of information. The most notable improvements in&#xA;  confidence relate to the regional statements concerning heat waves,&#xA;  heavy precipitation and droughts. Despite these advances, specific&#xA;  analyses of models are not available for some regions, which is&#xA;  reflected in the robust statements on extremes. In particular,&#xA;  projections concerning extreme events in the tropics remain uncertain.&#xA;  The difficulty in projecting the distribution of tropical cyclones&#xA;  adds to this uncertainty. Changes in extra-tropical cyclones are&#xA;  dependent on details of regional atmospheric circulation response,&#xA;  some of which remain uncertain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare this with straw man &quot;one side claims all data and predictions are perfectly without fault&quot; (c.f. comment by the OP above).  Note that even here in the summary, the IPCC are being very careful to state defficiencies in the modelling work available and the uncertainties.  I strongly recommend people obtain a copy of the IPCC report and read that, rather than climate skeptic blogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to polar vortex, the models do predict there will be changes in its behaviour as a result of climate change:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Interannual variability over North America is connected to two&#xA;  large-scale oscillation patterns (see Chapter 3), ENSO and the NAO/AO.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;The MMD model projections indicate an intensification of the polar vortex&lt;/strong&gt; and many models project a decrease in the arctic surface&#xA;  pressure, which contributes to an increase in the AO/NAO index; the&#xA;  uncertainty is large, however, due to the diverse responses of AOGCMs&#xA;  in simulating the Aleutian Low (Chapter 10). The MMD model projections&#xA;  indicate a shift towards mean El-Niño like conditions, with the&#xA;  eastern Pacific warming more than the western Pacific; there is a wide&#xA;  range of behaviour among the current models, with no clear indication&#xA;  of possible changes in the amplitude or period of El Niño (Chapter&#xA;  10).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, unlike the climate change dissenters' caricature of the debate, note the clear statement of the uncertainties.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the most recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter14_FINAL.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AR5 WGI report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anthropogenic climate change may also bring systematic cold-season&#xA;  precipitation changes. &lt;strong&gt;As with previous models, CMIP5 projections&#xA;  generally agree in projecting a winter precipitation increase over the&#xA;  northern half of NA (Figure 14.18 and AI.19). This is associated with&#xA;  increased atmospheric moisture, increased moisture convergence, and a&#xA;  poleward shift in ETC activity&lt;/strong&gt; (Section 14.6.2 and Table 14.3). The&#xA;  change is consistent with CMIP3 model projections of positive NAO&#xA;  trends (Table 14.3; Hori et al., 2007; Karpechko, 2010; Zhu and Wang,&#xA;  2010). Winter precipitation increases extend southward into the USA&#xA;  (northern portions of SREX regions 3 to 5; Neelin et al., 2013) but&#xA;  with decreasing strength relative to natural variability. This&#xA;  behaviour is qualitatively reproduced in higher resolution simulations&#xA;  (Figure&#xA;  14.18).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T11:30:18.937" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T11:30:18.937" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22366" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22368" CreationDate="2014-07-17T08:08:03.830" Score="8" ViewCount="9663" Body="&lt;p&gt;While my friend was getting a tattoo the tattoo artist said you'll bleed more because you're drunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21016" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T10:16:19.100" Title="Do you bleed more when drunk?" Tags="|physiology|alcohol|blood|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22285" CreationDate="2014-07-17T08:37:37.670" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it true that both higher and much lower temperatures existed while&#xA;  CO₂ levels were ten times higher than today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.  Is that surprising?  No.  The reason this is not surprising is that CO2 is not the only factor controlling global temperatures, and nobody claims that it is (although it is perhaps the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6002/356.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;single most dominant factor&lt;/a&gt; on many time scales).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you look at timescales as long as 500 million years, then solar brightening becomes an important factor.  It has long been known that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00151270&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;luminosity of stars increases with time&lt;/a&gt;, the &quot;theory predicts that the solar luminosity has risen steadily from about 70% of its current value during the last 4.7 x 109yr&quot;.   This leads to a what is known as the &quot;Feint young sun paradox&quot;, first &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/177/4043/52&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pointed out&lt;/a&gt; by Carl Sagan (a name that ought to be familiar) and George Mullen.  The paradox being how did the Earth remain ice free for large parts of its geological history, with so little solar irradiance compared to modern times.  The resolution of the paradox being that perhaps greenhouse gasses were present in the atmosphere in larger quantities at that time (although it isn't actually quite as simple as that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That there were warmer temperatures in the past with higher levels of CO2 is easily explained, as CO2 is a greenhouse gas, that is just what you would expect.  That there could have been times when it was colder with more CO2 than today is explainable by the fact that the sun is significantly brighter now than during the Ordovician (i.e. 450 million years ago), when there was a glaciation with CO2 levels higher than they are now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note also the radiative forcing of CO2 only rises logarithmically in its concentrations, i.e. you get a constant increase in equilibrium temperature per &lt;em&gt;doubling&lt;/em&gt; of CO2.  Thus CO2 concentrations being 10 times higher in the Ordovician does not mean that it had ten times the effect on climate than it does now.  So a substantial decrease in solar luminosity, is going to need an even more substantial change in greenhouse gas concentrations to avoid a snowball Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly Dr Moore is raising a question, but has taken no efforts whatsoever to find out the answer.  This is not very impressive given that typing &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?&amp;amp;q=ordovician%20glaciation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Ordovician glaciation&quot; into Google scholar&lt;/a&gt; would have provided some very relevant papers on the topic, such as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reconciling Late Ordovician (440 Ma) glaciation with very high (14X)&#xA;  CO2 levels&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thomas J. Crowley Steven K. Baum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres (1984–2012) Volume 100,&#xA;  Issue D1, pages 1093–1101, 20 January 1995&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Geochemical data and models suggest a positive correlation between&#xA;  carbon dioxide changes and climate during the last 540 m.y. The most&#xA;  dramatic exception to this correlation involves the Late Ordovician&#xA;  (440 Ma) glaciation, which occurred at a time when CO2 levels may have&#xA;  been much greater than present (14–16X?). &lt;strong&gt;Since decreased solar&#xA;  luminosity at that time only partially offset increased radiative&#xA;  forcing from CO2&lt;/strong&gt;, some other factor needs to be considered to explain&#xA;  the glaciation. Prior work with energy balance models (EBMs) suggested&#xA;  that the unique geographic configuration of Gondwanaland at that time&#xA;  may have resulted in a small area of parameter space permitting&#xA;  permanent snow cover and higher CO2 levels. However, the crude snow&#xA;  and sea ice parameterizations in the EBM left these conclusions open&#xA;  to further scrutiny. Herein we present results from four experiments&#xA;  with the GENESIS general circulation model with CO2 levels 14X greater&#xA;  than present, solar luminosity reduced 4.5%, and an orbital&#xA;  configuration set for minimum summer insolation receipt. We examined&#xA;  the effects of different combinations of ocean heat transport and&#xA;  topography on high-latitude snow cover on Gondwanaland. For the&#xA;  no-elevation simulations we failed to simulate permanent summer snow&#xA;  cover. However, for the slightly elevated topography cases (300–500&#xA;  m), permanent summer snow cover occurs where geological data indicate&#xA;  the Ordovician ice sheet was present. These results support the&#xA;  hypothesis based on EBM studies. Further results indicate that&#xA;  although average runoff per grid point increases substantially for the&#xA;  Ordovician runs, the decreased land area results in global runoff&#xA;  10–30% less than present, with largest runoff reductions for flat&#xA;  topography. This response has implications for CO2-runoff/weathering&#xA;  parameterizations in geochemical models. Finally, simulated tropical&#xA;  sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are the same or only marginally warmer&#xA;  than present. This result is consistent with evidence from other warm&#xA;  time intervals indicating small changes in tropical SSTs during time&#xA;  of high CO2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That temperatures have been both higher and lower in the past and that CO2 levels were generally higher in the (geological) past.  There is a good discussion of temperature and CO2 proxies at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/03/can-we-make-better-graphs-of-global-temperature-history/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;RealCLimate&lt;/a&gt;.  Here is a noce picture of the proxy data from the IPCC AR4 (via RealClimate)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/monzr.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly climate skeptic blogs are full of this kind of story, where someobdy has heard an apparently paradoxical combination of bits of science but not bothered to check the actual state of scientific knowledge, before rushing off to make grand claims.  Google scholar however makes this fact checking relatively straightforward these days, perhaps we should ask why the likes of Moore apparently don't use it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-07-19T20:46:07.157" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T20:46:07.157" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22366" CreationDate="2014-07-17T10:16:19.100" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer seems to be probably yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rats were given ethanol to a level consistent with human levels that would cause intoxication [1] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bleeding time and blood loss were increased 1 h after ethanol&#xA;  administration, regardless of the utilized technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Framingham Offspring Study looked at platelet function in 1-2k subjects, and found&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alcohol consumption is inversely associated with both platelet&#xA;  activation and aggregation, particularly in men. Additional research&#xA;  is needed to determine whether these findings contribute to the&#xA;  contrasting associations of alcohol consumption with risk of&#xA;  thrombotic and hemorrhagic cardiovascular events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there is some experimental evidence to suggest that there is impaired platelet function after consumption of alcohol, and in those who consume it regularly.  Platelets are involved in coagulation so bleeding times could be lengthened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Zoucas E, Bergqvist D, Göransson G, Bengmark S. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7200888&quot;&gt;Effect of acute ethanol intoxication on primary haemostasis, coagulation factors and fibrinolytic activity.&lt;/a&gt; Eur Surg Res. 1982;14(1):33-44. PubMed PMID: 7200888. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Mukamal KJ, Massaro JM, Ault KA, [..], Tofler GH. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16269922&quot;&gt;Alcohol consumption and platelet activation and aggregation among women and men: the Framingham Offspring Study.&lt;/a&gt; Alcohol. Clin. Exp. Res. 2005 Oct;29(10):1906-12. PubMed PMID: 16269922. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T10:16:19.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22362" CreationDate="2014-07-17T10:26:13.397" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you read the sources you cited, then you can see that while there are more gay men than gay women, and more MtF transgender people than FtM, there are significantly more bisexual women than men. This explains why there can be more LGBT women, but more gay men and MtF transgender people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr077.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; it lists:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gay men: 2,000&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gay women: 1,729&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bi men: 481&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bi women: 1,033&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which shows more gay men than gay women, but more LGBT women than men. Trans people are much less common than gay/bisexual people (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Prevalence/Reports/Prevalence%20of%20Transsexualism.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;at most 1/500 people&lt;/a&gt;) and so won't change the results significantly no matter how gender skewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastEditorUserId="45148" LastEditDate="2023-04-07T19:51:08.840" LastActivityDate="2023-04-07T19:51:08.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22373" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22347" CreationDate="2014-07-17T15:18:17.373" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Germans did build their own training camp for the World Cup, called &lt;strong&gt;Campo Bahia&lt;/strong&gt;,  in Santo André, south of the state of Bahia. The project was a collaboration between German businesses and the German Football Federation (DFB).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The beachside grounds span 15,000 square metres and, within that area, there are 14 two-storey villas comprising 64 residential units. Each villa is housing up to six players of the 23-man squad as well as members of a 39-strong backroom staff. Within Campo Bahia, there is also an outdoor swimming pool, a spa, a lounge and dining area, a fitness centre, communal lounges and an auditorium for team meetings &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/germany/10962216/World-Cup-2014-Germanys-purpose-built-training-camp-has-given-them-extra-edge.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a lot of myths and speculation on what would happen to the hotel. False Facebook threads saying that the hotel would be donated, and even this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/25370272&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC article&lt;/a&gt; that said that &quot;A football youth academy and an orphanage will be built on the site&quot; (I only found this information in non-Brazilian media outlets. I searched for Portuguese references for it. I couldn't find anything that linked a German football team and an orphanage.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in the end, the hotel was opened for business as a luxury hotel:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A diária mais &quot;suave&quot; no Campo Bahia custa 600 euros (R$ 1,8 mil), para uma vila com quatro quartos, e a mais cara, 2,5 mil euros (R$ 7,5 mil), para uma vila com seis quartos &lt;a href=&quot;http://esportes.r7.com/futebol/copa-do-mundo-2014/concentracao-da-selecao-alema-na-copa-vira-hotel-de-luxo-na-bahia-17072014&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot; German training camp in Bahia becomes luxury hotel&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(translated) The most affordable daily price in Campo Bahia costs 600 euros (R$ 1800) for a &lt;em&gt;villa&lt;/em&gt; with 4 rooms, and the most expensive costs, 2500 euros (R$ 7500) for a &lt;em&gt;villa&lt;/em&gt; with 6 rooms&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20889" LastEditorUserId="20889" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T19:11:37.840" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T19:11:37.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22374" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-17T18:42:19.903" Score="5" ViewCount="391" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine posted a link on Facebook to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.change.org/petitions/dunkin-donuts-stop-using-styrofoam-cups-15&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Change.org petition to stop using styrofoam cups at Dunkin Donuts&lt;/a&gt;. Amongst their complaints was that styrofoam cups caused health issues for the staff and customers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The effects are usually irritated skin, eyes, stomach effects, and common cold. If a worker is constantly having contact with Styrofoam, it can cause hopelessness, headaches, sleepiness, weakness, or effects on the kidney. Another shocking reason is that, drinks held in Styrofoam cups soak up a bit of something from the Styrofoam. Scientists found this out by weighing a brand new cup, then weighing the same cup after someone drank out of it. The cup was lighter!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia page for styrofoam warns that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styrofoam&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;styrene is possibly carcinogenic&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the US Food and Drug Administraion (FDA) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=177.1640&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Polystyrene and rubber-modified polystyrene identified in this section may be safely used as components of articles intended for use in contact with food, subject to the provisions of this section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are styrofoam cups safe for handling and drinking from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user19505" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T21:01:17.520" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T21:01:17.520" Title="Do styrofoam cups cause health issues?" Tags="|environmental-health|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22375" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="56545" CreationDate="2014-07-17T19:12:35.620" Score="36" ViewCount="17762" Body="&lt;p&gt;We've all heard the story, which sounds for all the world like a typical urban legend.  It goes something like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once upon a time, there was a factory in the Soviet Union that made&#xA;nails.  Unfortunately, Moscow set quotas on their nail production, and&#xA;they began working to meet the quotas as described, rather than doing&#xA;anything useful.  When they set quotas by quantity, they churned out&#xA;hundreds of thousands of tiny, useless nails.  When Moscow realized&#xA;this was not useful and set a quota by weight instead, they started&#xA;building big, heavy railroad spike-type nails that weighed a pound&#xA;each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The moral of the story, depending on who's telling it, is either &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;be careful what you measure for because it's often not representative of the result you really wanted&lt;/a&gt;,&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;ha ha, look at how silly central planning of an economy is; we never had messes like that over here with Free Enterprise™.&amp;quot;  But it makes me wonder, did the Soviet Nail Factory ever truly exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1429" LastEditorUserId="67044" LastEditDate="2023-01-03T17:57:21.767" LastActivityDate="2024-01-03T18:10:18.200" Title="Did a Soviet nail factory produce useless nails to improve metrics?" Tags="|history|economics|soviet-union|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22377" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-17T19:32:17.157" Score="1" ViewCount="99" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I was told by a friend:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People used to sleep in two shifts, one from 8pm to midnight, then wake up for an hour or two, before taking a second sleep shift from 2am to 6am.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He claims that this has been alluded to in books of the time but never directly mentioned, how many modern books do you read with the line &quot;and I went to bed at midnight and slept for 8 hours straight as is the custom&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story sounds credible but I am having trouble finding any evidence to support it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17677" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T19:32:17.157" Title="How did people sleep in the past?" Tags="|history|sleep|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-07-17T19:52:35.403" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22374" CreationDate="2014-07-17T19:39:20.663" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you follow the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inchem.org/documents/iarc/vol82/82-07.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IARC link&lt;/a&gt; in the Wikipedia article, you'll find this evaluation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5.5 Evaluation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;em&gt;limited evidence&lt;/em&gt; in humans for the carcinogenicity of styrene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;em&gt;limited evidence&lt;/em&gt; in experimental animals for the carcinogenicity of styrene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in the Wikipedia article itself, it states the styrene has been identified as a &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; human carcinogen&amp;quot; (emphasis mine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My impression, having looked through the IARC report but not any of the studies it refers to, is that the data is rather inconclusive. For example, from the IARC report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The numbers of cases were quite small in these studies, and most of the larger cohort studies have not yielded similar findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The increased risks for lymphatic and haematopoietic neoplasms observed in some of the studies are generally small, statistically unstable and often based on subgroup analyses. &lt;strong&gt;These findings are not very robust and the possibility that the observations are the results of chance, bias or confounding by other occupational exposures cannot be ruled out.&lt;/strong&gt; [emphasis mine]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that there have been a number of studies related to the carcinogenicity of styrene but none have conclusively shown that it is carcinogenic, styrene is &lt;em&gt;at worst&lt;/em&gt; only &lt;em&gt;slightly&lt;/em&gt; carcinogenic. That means that &lt;em&gt;at worst&lt;/em&gt; your risk of developing cancer will only go up with very heavy exposure to it, and even then your risk probably isn't going up very much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T19:39:20.663" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22379" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22381" CreationDate="2014-07-17T20:19:28.613" Score="4" ViewCount="790" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the Climate Depot is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.climatedepot.com/2014/07/03/global-temperature-standstill-lengthens-no-global-warming-for-17-years-10-months-since-sept-1996-214-months/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Global Temperature Standstill Lengthens: No global warming for 17 years 10 months – Since Sept. 1996 (214 months)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and this graph of RSS satellite data is posted&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oPIJr.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that graph an accurate reproduction of RSS satellite temperature samples?  Is the above claim correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorDisplayName="user20862" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T20:32:03.873" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T08:43:39.407" Title="Do RSS satellite samples show no warming since September 1996?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22380" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-17T20:53:10.547" Score="3" ViewCount="269" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-28166019&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;news article&lt;/a&gt; on the BBC summarises work of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerd_Gigerenzer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gerd Gigerenzer&lt;/a&gt; that argues (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...it's not just that doctors and dentists can't reel off the relevant stats for every treatment option. &lt;em&gt;Even when the information is placed in front of them, Gigerenzer says, they often can't make sense of it.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In one example based on real trials with real doctors using the statistics of mammography screening he quotes the results (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In one session, almost half the group of 160 gynaecologists responded that the woman's chance of having cancer was nine in 10. Only 21% said that the figure was one in 10 - which is the correct answer. &lt;em&gt;That's a worse result than if the doctors had been answering at random.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are medical professional often incapable of understanding or communicating the implications of important statistics?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T21:08:23.457" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T12:45:15.213" Title="Are medics often incapable of understanding or communicating statistical results to their patients?" Tags="|medical-science|epidemiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22379" CreationDate="2014-07-17T21:09:56.237" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is. You can confirm this by checking out the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.remss.com/measurements/upper-air-temperature&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;RSS website&lt;/a&gt;, and matching the similarity of the years mentioned to the full chart:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eriTv.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the image shows, it's &lt;strong&gt;also&lt;/strong&gt; a classic case of cherry-picking data. Make of that what you will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19407" LastActivityDate="2014-07-17T21:09:56.237" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22384" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-17T22:49:17.690" Score="4" ViewCount="818" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many websites propose cleansing the gallbladder (or the liver) in specific ways (frequently with fruit juice and oil) which they claim causes the gallbladder to expel cholesterol in the form of small balls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence that it actually does anything at all, and that these small balls are really formed by cholesterol?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://myculturedpalate.com/blog/2013/01/02/gallbladder-cleanse-an-alternative-to-surgery/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://myculturedpalate.com/blog/2013/01/02/gallbladder-cleanse-an-alternative-to-surgery/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agirsante.fr/my-liver-cleanse-results.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.agirsante.fr/my-liver-cleanse-results.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://curezone.com/cleanse/liver/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://curezone.com/cleanse/liver/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20868" LastEditorUserId="20868" LastEditDate="2014-07-17T23:27:39.273" LastActivityDate="2019-09-21T00:01:36.577" Title="Does flushing the gallbladder have any positive effect on one's health?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|cholesterol|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22386" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22375" CreationDate="2014-07-18T04:57:20.113" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Seems pretty clearly a joke grown into an urban legend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See, e.g., this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_07_2_roberts.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;memoir by Pail Craig Roberts&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A famous Soviet cartoon depicted the manager of a nail factory being given the Order of Lenin for exceeding his tonnage. Two giant cranes were pictured holding up one giant nail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cartoon in question may be the one pictured here: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zdygP.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sUBkh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Click to enlarge. &lt;a href=&quot;http://lesswrong.com/lw/1ws/the_importance_of_goodharts_law/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Image Source&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, the problem of which this is an exaggerated example was, indeed, real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21027" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T05:20:42.677" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T05:20:42.677" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22384" CreationDate="2014-07-18T06:00:46.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this comprehensive review of gall bladder physiology, it states that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the digestive period strong gallbladder contractions and sphincter&#xA;  of Oddi relaxation lead to the high rates of bile discharge flowing&#xA;  into the common bile duct and duodenum. During this period, the&#xA;  gallbladder motor activity like the rest of the gastrointestinal tract&#xA;  is influenced by the three phases of digestive process: cephalic,&#xA;  antral, and duodenal [16]. The cephalic phase is initiated by stimuli&#xA;  that activate the central nervous system, as individuals are exposed&#xA;  to olfactory, visual, and the taste of food. This phase is mediated by&#xA;  preganglionic vagal fibers that synapse with postganglionic&#xA;  cholinergic neurons. It is estimated that as much as 30–40% of the&#xA;  gallbladder bile may be emptied during this phase. Once food reaches&#xA;  the stomach it triggers an antral-gallbladder reflex also mediated by&#xA;  vagal fibers. The gallbladder empties most of its remaining contents&#xA;  during the intestinal phase induced by the release of CCK from the&#xA;  duodenum and proximal jejunum [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so that even just seeing or smelling food can cause 30-40% of the bile to be released into the duodenum.  The rest of the gallbladder contents are emptied under neuroendocrine control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Meals containing proteins and fats act on duodenal CCK containing&#xA;  endocrine cells that stimulate vagal sensory fibers followed by&#xA;  activation of pre- and postganglionic cholinergic neurons [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above mixture includes oil, so it would act via the second part of this mechanism, but there is nothing in the known physiology to suggest it would be better than a meal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Jose Behar, “Physiology and Pathophysiology of the Biliary Tract: The Gallbladder and Sphincter of Oddi—A Review,” ISRN Physiology, vol. 2013, Article ID 837630, 15 pages, 2013. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.physiology/2013/837630/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;doi:10.1155/2013/837630&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[16] I. Takahashi, M. K. Kern, W. J. Dodds et al., “Contraction pattern of opossum gallbladder during fasting and after feeding,” American Journal of Physiology, vol. 250, no. 2, pp. G227–G235, 1986. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com/scopus/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-0022479051&amp;amp;partnerID=K84CvKBR&amp;amp;rel=3.0.0&amp;amp;md5=684b58e7e0cd1638b852ea9401597ecc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;View at Scopus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T06:00:46.313" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22379" CreationDate="2014-07-18T06:44:47.670" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;While @Geobits (+1) gives a perfectly good answer to this question (i.e. it is just a clear case of cherry picking), the comments that follow suggests that some do not understand why this is such a basic statistical error, so I will expand upon this topic in my answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, the RSS dataset does show a flat trend since September 1996, the real question is &quot;is this surprising, or even meaningful?&quot;.  The answer is &quot;slightly, but not as much as you might think&quot;.  To demonstrate why, I will also engage in some cherry picking and point out that you can also get a long period with a flat trend earlier in the time series:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3rcib.png&quot; alt=&quot;RSS time series&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/plot/rss/from:1996.7/trend/plot/rss/from:1980/to:1994/trend&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;via woodfortrees.org&lt;/a&gt;).  Now &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; know that cherry picking is bad statistics, so &lt;em&gt;I&lt;/em&gt; would not make a claim about the trend from 1980 to 1994 being in any way meaningful based on a cherry-picked trend.  The reason that I am doing so is simply to demonstrate that flat trends can easily be cherry-picked from noisy time series data if that is what you really want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the trend I have cherry picked is shorter than the one cherry picked in the diagram in the original question, but then again the one in the question has the advantage of the spike caused by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/techrpts/tr9802/tr9802.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1998 super El-nino event&lt;/a&gt;, which is basically what allows such a long trend to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cherry picked&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leads me on to the second bit of cherry picking, which is why the RSS dataset (derived from satellite measurements of the lower trophosphere) rather than a surface temperature dataset?  I suspect because the satellite derived datasets are more sensitive to the effects of El-Nino, which is apparent if I plot the RSS and HadCRUT4 (an instrumental surface temperature dataset) together (I've added an offset so the differences can be seen more clearly).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GvRia.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter link description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously the 1998 super El-Nino spike is rather smaller in the surface temperature dataset than in the RSS dataset, and if you try and plot the trend from about September 1996, you find it is clearly upward in the HadCRUT4 dataset.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CXppi.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which explains why the RSS dataset was chosen rather than HadCRUT4.  Now I'm not saying that HadCRUT4 is right and RSS is wrong, what I am saying is that if someone only shows one dataset, ask yourself why.  Better still, perform the analysis for all of the available datasets and see what you get.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; It turns out that it is an even more spectacular cherry pick than I thought.  The RSS dataset is derived from MSU satellite observations, however there is another dataset that is produced from the same raw MSU observations, namely the UAH dataset (produced by climate skeptic scientists Roy Spencer and John Christy).  If you plot that, again, you find there is a clear upward trend since 1996 - I wonder why they chose RSS? ;o)  It is shocking that the readers of skeptic blogs fall for this kind of outrageous cherry-picking and some skeptics even attack those who point out the flaws by accusing &lt;em&gt;them&lt;/em&gt; of cherry picking!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/n2xZ7.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now what does the literature say about this?  Well a good start is Easterling and Wehner, which looked at flat trends in the data and in model output, and found that this sort of hiatus is not that unusual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the climate warming or cooling?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;David R. Easterling and Michael F. Wehner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DOI: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2009GL037810&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1029/2009GL037810&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3rcib.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; Numerous websites, blogs and articles in the media have claimed&#xA;  that the climate is no longer warming, and is now cooling. Here we&#xA;  show that periods of no trend or even cooling of the globally averaged&#xA;  surface air temperature are found in the last 34 years of the observed&#xA;  record, and in climate model simulations of the 20th and 21st century&#xA;  forced with increasing greenhouse gases. We show that the climate over&#xA;  the 21st century can and likely will produce periods of a decade or&#xA;  two where the globally averaged surface air temperature shows no trend&#xA;  or even slight cooling in the presence of longer-term warming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which suggests that this sort of hiatus is not that surprising, even in the presence of long term warming due to AGW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean scientists are ignoring the hiatus?  No, of course not, it is the source of great interest for climatologists as it is an opportunity to learn more about unforced climate variability.  For example, see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v7/n3/full/ngeo2116.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nature editorial&lt;/a&gt; and follow references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this &quot;pause&quot; in surface/lower-trophospheric warming mean that global warming has stopped?  No.  The atmosphere is only a small part of the globe, and measurements of Ocean Heat Content has shown that the oceans have continued to warm (which implies the hiatus is probably the result of a redistribution of heat between ocean and atmosphere).  Diagram from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375960112010389&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MZSLJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now from a statistical perspective (I am a statistician), how do we avoid cherry picking?  Well one approach would be to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Change_detection&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;changepoint detection&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which is a family of methods used to determine when there is a change in the statistical properties of a time series.  I have yet to see such analysis used, where the autocorrelation in the time series is properly taken into account (which is important in assessing the statistical significance of trends).  It is not that there are no good statistical approaches to this problem, it is just that skeptic blogs don't use them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a shame that this kind of argument comes up again, and again, and again, in discussion of climate on blogs, given that it has been answered repeatedly, even to the extent that journal papers have been published specifically to provide a peer-reviewed response to blog misunderstandings.  Please can we move on to more interesting topics, rather than keep dredging up old canards such as this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T08:43:39.407" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T08:43:39.407" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22390" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22397" CreationDate="2014-07-18T12:17:10.887" Score="22" ViewCount="919" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the question why MH17 flew over Ukrainian civil war zone, experts say: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Malaysia Airlines, like a number of other carriers, have been&#xA;  continuing to use it because it is a shorter route, which means less&#xA;  fuel and therefore less money. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/why-malaysia-airlines-was-flying-over-a-war-zone-2014-7#ixzz37ozaPFP0&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;(source)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is another claim in the comments to above article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pilots do receive a personal bonus on fuel savings.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really up to pilots to decide on flight plan and do they actually receive personal bonus based on amount of fuel saved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T22:25:55.457" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T22:25:55.457" Title="Do airline pilots decide on flight plan and receive personal bonus for fuel saving?" Tags="|aviation|mh17|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17409" CreationDate="2014-07-18T14:00:53.937" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hoax. The photo in the article is of Brisbane (Australia) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-02-11/barrister-stephen-keim-outside-the-brisbane/5253250&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Barrister Stephen Kleim&lt;/a&gt; taken by Liam Kidston of AAP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21208" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T15:28:42.887" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T15:28:42.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22392" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22393" CreationDate="2014-07-18T15:13:47.643" Score="4" ViewCount="317" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Januari 2014, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techinasia.com/beijing-residents-watching-fake-sunrises-giant-tvs-pollution/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; reported that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the weekend, a story that originated on the smut-ridden UK-based&#xA;  Daily Mail went viral among major media outlets across the world.&#xA;  Time, CBS, and the Huffington Post were among the dozens of online&#xA;  news media who published stories about Beijing residents flocking to&#xA;  giant TV screens to see fake sunrises during heavy pollution last&#xA;  week. Most of these stories were accompanied by the same photo of a&#xA;  massive TV screen in Tiananmen Square with a sunrise appearing on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OG7hn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Heavily smogged/fogged Chinese square with giant widescreen display showing a red sunrise.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article goes on to say that Beijing residents are NOT watching fake sunrises on giant TVs because of pollution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In truth, that sunrise was probably on the screen for less than 10&#xA;  seconds at a time, as it was part of an ad for tourism in China’s&#xA;  Shandong province. The ad plays every day throughout the day all year&#xA;  round no matter how bad the pollution is. The photographer simply&#xA;  snapped the photo at the moment when the sunrise appeared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That does not clearly answer the question of whether people can directly see a real sunrise in Beijing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T15:41:08.787" Title="Does Beijing still see natural sunrises?" Tags="|china|sun|smog|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22392" CreationDate="2014-07-18T15:41:08.787" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is plenty of photographic evidence of sunrises over Beijing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taken: 3 May, 2014, Taken by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/regional/2014-05/05/content_17484907.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Liu Hongan of Asianewsphoto&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZEtFK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sunrise picture&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taken: 9 September, 2006, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.viewpix.com/beijing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dan Desjardins&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2kU8j.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sunrise picture&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Published: 8 July, 2013, &lt;a href=&quot;http://burtongirls.burton.com/travel/foreign-correspondence-beijing-china/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Burton Girls&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CPV8O.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sunrise picture&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taken: June 8, 2004, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.flickr.com/photos/knexon/75913732/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Knexon Cho&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/C1SPl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sunrise picture&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T15:41:08.787" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22394" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22396" CreationDate="2014-07-18T15:44:45.227" Score="1" ViewCount="213" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Washington Times &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/17/air-force-command-nominee-is-1st-woman-non-pilot/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lori_Robinson&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lt. Gen. Lori J. Robinson&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The White House has picked the first female general to head the Air Force in the Pacific, which will make her the first non-pilot to command air power in such a large theater of operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-18T16:04:09.313" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T16:36:46.077" Title="Will Lori Robinson command the largest ever theater of operation for a non-pilot?" Tags="|united-states|military|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22395" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-18T15:46:22.937" Score="21" ViewCount="3395" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took this from a newspaper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/classicalmusic/10061574/The-Rite-of-Spring-1913-Why-did-it-provoke-a-riot.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; in the telegraph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;It is often said that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rite_of_Spring&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Rite of Spring&lt;/a&gt; are what caused the outrage, but pulsating rhythms at least have an appeal at a visceral level (an appeal certainly felt at the Rite’s premiere, where according to one eye witness one excited onlooker beat out the rhythms on the bald pate of the man in front). It’s more likely that the audience was appalled and disbelieving at the level of dissonance, which seemed to many like sheer perversity. “The music always goes to the note next to the one you expect,” wrote one exasperated critic.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also mentioned in this radiolab podcast called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.radiolab.org/story/91512-musical-language/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Musical Language&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They start talking about the Rites of Spring at around the 30th minute. Here is what they say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;...... literally that's what the story of the play is. It's a pagan ritual, in the&#xA;  end in which the virgin gets massacred. ....... it's one of the most difficult sounds you&#xA;  have ever heard. It is the stereotype of dissonance. It hurts you..... well, after three minutes they rioted.... they screamed,there was blood,.... and the question is why ? .....Why did they riot ?...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My questions:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q1.&lt;/strong&gt; Is there evidence to support the claim that there was a riot ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scopesmonkeychoir.com/2011/06/the-rite-of-spring-premiere-was-not-a-riot/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scopes Monkey Choir&lt;/a&gt; says that there is no evidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A few days after recording we got our hands on the two supplemental volumes of Truman Campbell Bullard’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldcat.org/title/first-performance-of-igor-stravinskys-sacre-du-printemps/oclc/4598341&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dissertation&lt;/a&gt; The first performance of Igor Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps. These contain every written word about the Rite in 1913 from France and the UK: newspaper articles, magazines, reviews, books, everything he could find.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;We looked through it all. There is not one mention of a riot, anywhere. There is not one  mention of a fistfight. Or a brawl. Or people being whacked by canes. Nothing.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claimed they read it. I have to take their word for it. Where can I find a copy ? Are there other such dissertation, papers, etc., ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The New York Times reported the sensational Rite premiere, nine days after the event (source: wiki) &lt;strong&gt;(read the edit)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mai3o.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Q2.&lt;/strong&gt; If there was a riot, is there any evidence to support that it was because of the             reasons stated in the telegraph article and the radiolab podcast ? Or it was just some     misunderstanding not related to the play ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not asking here for studies that show how music can induce extremely strong emotions in people (even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnNdne65bK4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michael Jackson&lt;/a&gt; concerts do that) but rather is the Rite of Spring one such example. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scopesmonkeychoir.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/riteofspringNYTimes.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is the full New York Times article on the premiere (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://scopesmonkeychoir.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scopes Monkey Choir&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;The Consecration of Spring&quot; was recieved with a storm of hissing. The&#xA;  manager, M.Astruc, however, has devised a novel method for silencing a&#xA;  demonstration. When hisses are mingled with counter-cheer, as they&#xA;  were the other night, M. Astruc oders the lights turned up. Instantly the booing&#xA;  and hissing stop. Well-known people who are hostile to the ballet do not desire to appear in an undignified role.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Igor Stravinsky, who wrote the music of &quot;The Consecration of Spring.&quot; says that &#xA;  the demonstrations are a bitter blow to the amour propre of the Russian ballet&#xA;  dancers, who are sensitive to such displays of feeling and fear they may be unable&#xA;  to continue the performances of the piece.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No mention of a riot&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Worth mentioning:&lt;/strong&gt; The programme for 29 May 1913 also included Les Sylphides, Weber's Le Spectre de la Rose and Borodin's Polovtsian Dances. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source(as mentioned in Wikipedia): Kelly, Thomas Forrest (2000). First Nights: Five Musical Premieres. New Haven: Yale University Press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though I couldn't find a source that is availaible online (a poster, newspaper articles, etc... from that time). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scopes Monkey Choir claims that &quot;&lt;em&gt;....the Rite was the first half of the program. The second half was another ballet, which the audience stayed for and by all accounts thoroughly enjoyed.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am having a hard time finding these accounts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Motivation to ask this question:&lt;/strong&gt;  It is widely considered to be the most influential musical works of the 20th Century and I just want to debunk some of the mythology surrounding it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; Scopes Monkey Choir were kind enough to reply to my query. I'll investigate the statements made in the email myself. I hope it provides anyone, who is looking into this matter, a guideline to follow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From the email:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://scopesmonkeychoir.com/2011/05/smc-31-rite-of-spring-northumbrian-smallpipes/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; to their initial podcast episode page. It has further references to their conclusions. (In the podcast, they start talking about it at the 8th minute)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...... &lt;em&gt;Builliard's dissertation, is in my opinion the best primary source. We found the second volume (with all the newspaper/magazine clippings about the Rite from 1913-14) at the NYU library. Many of our claims come from reading through this collection, including our mention of the 2nd half of the program at the concert which continued undisturbed.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Reading every word written about the piece from right after the premiere, I can't over-stress how obvious it is that there wasn't a riot. There is not a single mention of fights, blood, fires, or any of the other fanciful elements that the myth is often embellished with. Perhaps if, at that time, there was stringent policing of the press in France, one could make an argument that details were suppressed; but to my knowledge there is no reason to believe such restrictions existed.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;To reiterate some key points that (almost) never get mentioned when people pass along the myth:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Paris was already mad at the choreographer, Najinsky, for a piece of his that had bombed two weeks earlier.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Rite is, these days, presented as a piece of music. But it was a ballet when it premiered, and in our readings it seemed people were more shocked at the dancing than the music.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If anyone wants to dive in deeper than we did, here's the angle we didn't follow up on: We saw several claims that Stravinsky himself started the &quot;riot&quot; stories when, after WWI, his reputation was flowering into super stardom. The implication was that, like many stars, he wasn't just plying his craft but was also embellishing his own legend. I have no reason to doubt this, but as I say we did not do the research to confirm these claims.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21209" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:43:20.267" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T14:12:03.567" Title="Did the ballet/orchestral work 'The Rite of Spring' provoke a riot?" Tags="|history|music|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22396" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22394" CreationDate="2014-07-18T16:36:46.077" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm assuming you want to limit this to US armed forces, since I'm not sure that gathering the data from every air force in the world is very feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's the case, it certainly appears that way. Pacific Air Command (PACAF) has long been the largest area of responsibility in the US Air Force, covering &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pacaf.af.mil/library/factsheets/index.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;over 100M sq miles&lt;/a&gt;, or just over half the world's surface area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The name of the command has been changed over time (since the Army Air Forces era), but a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.afhra.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=12354&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;relatively straightforward list&lt;/a&gt; of the commanders of this area is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; General George C. Kenney, 3 Aug 1944&#xA; Lt Gen Ennis C. Whitehead, 30 Dec 1945&#xA; Lt Gen George E. Stratemeyer, 26 Apr 1949&#xA; Lt Gen Earle E. Partridge (acting), 21 May 1951&#xA; General Otto P. Weyland, 10 Jun 1951&#xA; Gen Earle E. Partridge, 26 Mar 1954&#xA; Gen Laurence C. Kuter, 1 Jun 1955&#xA; Gen Emmett O'Donnell Jr., 1 Aug 1959&#xA; Gen Jacob E. Smart, 1 Aug 1963&#xA; Gen Hunter Harris Jr., 1 Aug 1964&#xA; Gen John D. Ryan, 1 Feb 1967&#xA; Gen Joseph J. Nazzaro, 1 Aug 1968&#xA; Gen Lucius D. Clay Jr., 1 Aug 1971&#xA; Gen John W. Vogt, 1 Oct 1973&#xA; Gen Louis L. Wilson Jr., 1 Jul 1974&#xA; Lt Gen James A. Hill, 1 Jun 1977&#xA; Lt Gen James D. Hughes, 15 Jun 1978&#xA; Lt Gen Arnold W. Braswell, 1 Jul 1981&#xA; Gen Jerome F. O'Malley, 8 Oct 1983&#xA; Gen Robert W. Bazley, 1 Nov 1984&#xA; Gen Jack I. Gregory, 16 Dec 1986&#xA; Gen Merrill A. McPeak, 22 Jul 1988&#xA; Lt Gen James B. Davis, 5 Nov 1990&#xA; Gen Jimmie V. Adams, 19 Feb 1991&#xA; Gen Robert L. Rutherford, 26 Jan 1993&#xA; Gen John G. Lorber, 12 Oct 1994&#xA; Gen Richard B. Myers, 7 Jul 1997&#xA; Gen Patrick K. Gamble, 23 Jul 1998&#xA; Lt Gen Lansford E. Trapp (acting), 9 Apr 2001&#xA; Gen William J. Begert, 4 May 2001&#xA; Gen Paul V. Hester, 2 Jul 2004- &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been three commanders since that page's last entry, easily verifiable by Google:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt; Gen Carrol H. Chandler, Nov 2007&#xA; Gen Gary North, Aug 2009&#xA; Gen Herbert Carlisle, Aug 2012-&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick perusal of their Wikipedia entries shows them all as pilots at one point in their career. I don't really see why those would be inaccurate, but you can follow them all to their primary sources if interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19407" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T16:36:46.077" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22390" CreationDate="2014-07-18T16:46:05.170" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Canada, the flight plan is a joint responsibility between the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/laws/stat/rsc-1985-c-a-2/latest/rsc-1985-c-a-2.html&quot;&gt;pilot in command&lt;/a&gt; (&quot;in relation to an aircraft, the pilot having responsibility and authority for the operation and safety of the aircraft during flight time&quot;) and a flight dispatcher&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is called &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/laws/regu/sor-96-433/latest/sor-96-433.html&quot;&gt;co-authority dispatch&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the shared responsibility of the pilot-in-command and the flight dispatcher for all decisions respecting the operational flight plan prior to its acceptance by the pilot-in-command, and for the flight watch&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;[T]he operational flight plan is approved and recorded by the pilot-in-command and the flight dispatcher&quot;. (&lt;em&gt;ibid&lt;/em&gt;.) The pilot-in-command alone cannot choose a flight path that the flight dispatcher does not also approve of. Each has veto power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See more info here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/civilaviation/publications/tp13561-chapter2-section4-5356.htm&quot;&gt;Transport Canada - Flight Dispatcher&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The United States has a very similar joint dispatch responsibility system (FAR 121.533).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Around the world, there are examples where both pilots and dispatch have been given incentives to minimize the amount of fuel spent (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.exaronews.com/articles/4591/major-airline-pays-bonuses-to-pilots-to-carry-less-fuel&quot;&gt;pilot incentive&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.star-telegram.com/sky_talk/2011/01/apa-concerned-about-new-fuel-saving-program-at-american.html&quot;&gt;dispatch incentive&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2014-07-18T16:46:05.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5402" CreationDate="2014-07-19T04:40:33.980" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are 2 important points in the story which are important, one is plain wrong, the other one is heavily disputed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the german weekly newspaper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zeit.de/2002/45/200245_stimmts_gekochte.xml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Die Zeit&lt;/a&gt;, which names a Scientist from the University of Oklahoma, Victor Hutchinson, the blood of a frog will stall at about 40°C (which is about 104°F) and kill the frog. So every Story in which the frog is slowly heated until boiled must be wrong. Of course it could be the wrong version of a true message, which has moved through too many stations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second observation is, that a frog will escape heated water already at 25°C. But there are different investigations with different findings, which heat the water at different rates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the name of Victor Hutchinson from Die Zeit, I found a whole &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; with many sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this article, the German scientist &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Friedrich Goltz demonstrated that a frog that has had its brain&#xA;  removed will remain in slowly heated water, but an intact frog&#xA;  attempted to escape the water when it reached 25 °C. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An 1872 experiment by Heinzmann demonstrated that a normal frog would&#xA;  not attempt to escape if the water was heated slowly enough&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goltz raised the temperature by 3.8°C per minute while Heinzmann heated with 0.2°Cpm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other sources talk about 0.002°C per second, which is 0.12°Cpm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, the article mentions modern scientists, Professor Douglas Melton, of the Harvard University Biology department, Dr. George R. Zug, curator of reptiles and amphibians at the National Museum of Natural History and Dr. Victor H. Hutchison, Professor Emeritus of Zoology at the University of Oklahoma, but only mentions their opinions, not research or papers. They all agree that the frog will flee. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T04:40:33.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19668" CreationDate="2014-07-19T05:03:25.283" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is apparently all true.  Owen Jones is wrong in stating that artemisinin kills just as many healthy cells as cancer cells.  Artemisinin reacts with iron to form free radicals that kill cells. Since cancer cells uptake relatively larger amounts of iron than normal cells, they are more susceptible to the toxic effect of artemisinin.  There are promising studies with this, as well as a new compound:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;artemisinin-tagged holotransferrin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the link to the study:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://assasmus.unblog.fr/files/2010/05/publicationartemisiadrlai.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://assasmus.unblog.fr/files/2010/05/publicationartemisiadrlai.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to some fantastic work where all of the information and studies have been put together to show the full timeline of this discovery and what has unfolded:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://glejak.pl/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&amp;amp;t=991&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://glejak.pl/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&amp;amp;t=991&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21224" LastEditorUserId="21224" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T01:46:36.253" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T01:46:36.253" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22404" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-19T06:02:25.937" Score="1" ViewCount="715" Body="&lt;p&gt;Googling the keywords &quot;beetroot cancer cure&quot; will come up with many articles claiming that beetroot may cure cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beetroot is one of the many healthy RAW vegetables one should focus on according to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancertutor.com/rawfood/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;, but it didn't mention anything about cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, for instance, this is what this &lt;a href=&quot;http://undergroundhealthreporter.com/vegetables-for-cancer-beetroot/#axzz37shOFUIh&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; claimed: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In yet another clinical trial, 22 patients with advanced inoperable&#xA;  cancers were given 10 ozs. of beet juice daily for 3 to 4 months. All&#xA;  but one of those patients showed dramatic improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does beetroot cures cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21225" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2014-07-19T06:50:14.837" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T08:30:42.543" Title="Does beetroot cure cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22406" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22404" CreationDate="2014-07-19T08:30:42.543" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;That article doesn't provide references, and so is suspect.  Any drug needs to have the effect replicated in multiple independent laboratories to verify efficacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do have some experimental evidence that beetroot juice has some cytotoxicity for several tumour lines but the effect is much less than a standard chemotherapeutic drug such as Adriamycin [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both doxorubicin and the beetroot extract exhibited a dose-dependent&#xA;  cytotoxic effect in the two cancer cell lines tested. Although the&#xA;  cytotoxicity of the beetroot extract was significantly lower when&#xA;  compared to doxorubicin, it continued to decrease the growth rate of&#xA;  the PC-3 cells (3.7% in 3 days vs. 12.5% in 7 days) when tested at the&#xA;  concentration of 29 µg/ml. In contrast, doxorubicin, at the same&#xA;  concentration level, completely inhibited the growth of the PC-3 cells&#xA;  in three days. Similarly, comparative studies in the normal human skin&#xA;  FC and liver HC cell lines showed that the beetroot extract had&#xA;  significantly lower cytotoxic effect than doxorubicin (8.6% vs. 100%,&#xA;  respectively, at 29 µg/ml concentration of each, three-day test&#xA;  period).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Animal experiments suggest that the anti-cancer effect is by inhibition of angiogenesis ( new blood vessel growth ) and induction of apoptosis (programmed cell death), and perhaps like many vegetables, they have a role in cancer prevention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Betanin reduced the number of CD31+ endothelial microvessels and&#xA;  increased the expression of caspase-3, suggesting that the lung tumor&#xA;  inhibitory effects were through induction of apoptosis and inhibition&#xA;  of angiogenesis. Betanin also induced apoptosis through activated&#xA;  caspase-3, -7, -9, and PARP in human lung cancer cell lines. Our data&#xA;  show that betanin significantly inhibits lung tumorigenesis in A/J&#xA;  mice and merits investigation as a chemopreventive agent for human&#xA;  lung cancer. [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Kapadia GJ, Azuine MA, Rao GS, [..], Tokuda H. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21434853&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cytotoxic effect of the red beetroot (Beta vulgaris L.) extract compared to doxorubicin (Adriamycin) in the human prostate (PC-3) and breast (MCF-7) cancer cell lines.&lt;/a&gt; Anticancer Agents Med Chem. 2011 Mar;11(3):280-4. PubMed PMID: 21434853. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Zhang Q, Pan J, Wang Y, [..], You M. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22456940&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Beetroot red (betanin) inhibits vinyl carbamate- and benzo(a)pyrene-induced lung tumorigenesis through apoptosis.&lt;/a&gt; Mol. Carcinog. 2013 Sep;52(9):686-91. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/mc.21907&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1002/mc.21907&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 22456940. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T08:30:42.543" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22244" CreationDate="2014-07-19T08:56:15.527" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Certainly in England the link between heading a football and injury leading to death has been proven as the case of Jeff Astle, a former West Bromwich Albion soccer player, shows. In a definitive ruling, based on evidence provided by neurosurgeon Dr. Willie Stewart, the original diagnosis of Alzheimer's has been shown to be wrong and the correct diagnosis of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is now recorded as the cause of Astle's death. As &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Astle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;his Wikipedia entry&lt;/a&gt; shows, he played over 360 times for his club and 5 times for his country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www1.skysports.com/football/news/11698/9333913/jeff-astles-family-unhappy-with-authorities-following-research-over-his-death&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Former England and West Brom striker Jeff Astle has been confirmed as the first ever British footballer to die as a result of heading a football.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-23545796&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;And this article, drawing on data provided by the same authority, expands upon the subject of head injuries in sport.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21228" LastEditorUserId="19354" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T18:36:36.307" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T18:36:36.307" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22380" CreationDate="2014-07-19T09:21:46.033" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is &quot;yes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The studies&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another description of (I think) the same studies from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Mlodinow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Leonard Mlodinow&lt;/a&gt;'s &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=MPuUDtFH0L4C&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Drunkard's Walk&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] in studies in Germany and the United States, researchers asked physicians to estimate the probability that an asymptomatic woman between the ages of 40 and 50 who has a positive mammogram actually has breast cancer if 7 percent of mammograms show cancer when there is none. In addition, the doctors were told that the actual incidence was about 0.8 percent and that the false-negative rate about 10 percent. Putting that all together, one can use Bayes’s methods to determine that a positive mammogram is due to cancer in only about 9 percent of the cases. In the German group, however, one-third of the physicians concluded that the probability was about 90 percent, and the median estimate was 70 percent. In the American group, 95 out of 100 physicians estimated the probability to be around 75 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar results were reported by (smaller) studies from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/692627&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1978&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=1861033&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2014&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The issue&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem in these cases is conditional probability. Generally, conditional probability is the probability of one event given another event (or condition). For example, the probability of throwing two sixes with two six-sided dice is 1 in 36; however, the conditional probability of throwing two sixes with two six-sided dice &lt;em&gt;if the first one already turned out to show a six&lt;/em&gt; is just 1 in 6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With any medical test, you have questions of conditional probability. Often, the number reported about a test is its accuracy; for example, an HIV test may produce the correct result 99% of the time. This means that if you have HIV, you have a 99% chance that you will be correctly diagnosed as HIV positive; and if you do not, you have a 99% chance of being correctly diagnosed as HIV negative. The fallacy is to assume that this means that if you are diagnosed with HIV, there is a 99% chance that you are indeed HIV positive. In reality, the probability is much lower and depends heavily on your risk group; it might well be 10%, or 1%, or even below that (I do not want to go into the calculation details here).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mistake is to assume that &lt;em&gt;the probability of you being correctly diagnosed when positive&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;the probability of you being positive when diagnosed&lt;/em&gt; are the same. You can see this on an obvious example: If you are a professional football player, you are extremely likely to be a male. However, even if you are a male, you are still extremely unlikely to be a professional football player. The reason for this is that there are quite a lot of men, and very few football players; the same applies for the HIV example, since very few people are HIV positive in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does this happen in practice?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally - a chance to use anecdotal evidence with (relative) impunity! Yes, it does happen. Mlodinow, in his aforementioned book, writes about a similar case where he received a false HIV diagnosis. And I myself had a family member diagnosed with a &quot;definitely malignant&quot; tumor. And - as a side note - although I read about the issue shortly before, it did not occur to me to doubt the doctor's judgement until after the operation showed that the tumor was benign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is this about doctors?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Doctors are subject to this fallacy, and of course they are a group that is not supposed to err. But people generally have bad intuitions of many probabilistic tasks, this one included. Indeed, the common name for this particular fallacy is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosecutor&amp;#39;s_fallacy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the prosecutor's fallacy&lt;/a&gt;, which gives a hint as to who else might be affected. The linked Wikipedia article has explanations and examples of legal cases where this played a crucial (and very destructive) role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can't you trust doctors now?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, can you trust anyone? I expect most doctors to be competent at their core tasks. However, they are just people, and most of them have not been explicitly trained in probability theory. Therefore, you should use healthy skepticism when confronted with numbers describing risks and probability calculations, whether they come from doctors, lawyers and others, sometimes even mathematicians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastEditorUserId="18230" LastEditDate="2014-07-19T12:45:15.213" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T12:45:15.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8742" CreationDate="2014-07-19T09:29:29.930" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quote &quot;An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.&quot; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=Bn_6c7SjprYC&amp;amp;q=barmaid#v=snippet&amp;amp;q=barmaid&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;popularly attributed to Lord Rutherford of Nelson&lt;/a&gt; in as stated in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0486229343&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Einstein, the Man and His Achievement&lt;/em&gt; By G. J. Whitrow, Dover Press 1973&lt;/a&gt;.  Einstein is unlikely to have said it since his theory of relativity was very abstract and based on sophisticated mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-07-05T10:32:18.613" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T10:32:18.613" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8742" CreationDate="2014-07-19T10:02:49.880" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The short answer is:&lt;/strong&gt; probably no he didn't say this quote. There is no citation supporting this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other unsourced variants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't explain something to a six-year-old, you really don't understand it yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if you open page 418 of &lt;em&gt;Einstein: His Life and Times (1972)&lt;/em&gt; by Ronald W. Clark, it says that Louis de Broglie did attribute a similar statement to Einstein:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To de Broglie, Einstein revealed an instinctive reason for his&#xA;inability to accept the purely statistical interpretation of wave&#xA;mechanics. It was a reason which linked him with Rutherford, who used&#xA;to state that &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;it should be possible to explain the laws of physics to&#xA;a barmaid&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;quot; Einstein, having a final discussion with de Broglie on the&#xA;platform of the Gare du Nord in Paris, whence they had traveled from&#xA;Brussels to attend the Fresnel centenary celebrations, said &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;that all&#xA;physical theories, their mathematical expressions apart ought to lend&#xA;themselves to so simple a description 'that even a child could&#xA;understand them.'&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See all misattributed Einstein quotes here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Misattributed&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#Misattributed&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="31363" LastEditDate="2021-12-26T21:32:10.957" LastActivityDate="2021-12-26T21:32:10.957" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22411" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-19T10:09:22.353" Score="28" ViewCount="10046" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-trained-by-israeli-mossad-nsa-documents-reveal/5391593&quot;&gt;This reports&lt;/a&gt; claims regarding &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant&quot;&gt;ISIS&lt;/a&gt; which evolved since 2003 assuming erstwhile names like ISI,ISIS and now IS:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The former employee at US National Security Agency (NSA), Edward Snowden, has revealed that the British and American intelligence and the Mossad worked together to create the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This news is being spread by  many small time news houses like  Gulf Daily News, and Iranian fars news agency who is obviously vociferously against ISIS, All of these reports originate from &quot;fars&quot;  Iranian news agency.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cannonfire.blogspot.in/2014/07/the-myth-of-isis.html?showComment=1405659703994&quot;&gt;But I am yet to see any official confirmation from Snowden nor any NSA documents as a proof&lt;/a&gt;. Hence is this claim truthful based on the available evidences or &lt;strong&gt;how likely is this to be a true claim&lt;/strong&gt; and can the leaked NSA documents be searched for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T09:24:42.447" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T08:58:31.830" Title="Did Snowden reveal that ISIS is a USA-Israel tactic?" Tags="|united-states|israel|iraq|syria|isis|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22412" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22413" CreationDate="2014-07-19T11:03:03.260" Score="22" ViewCount="2123" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've done some Googling and only found case stories without any scientific backup. Most of the case reports about animal suicide online can by easily debunked by logical reasoning. For example there is a story about some dozen of cows throwing themselves off a cliff, but this event took place at the same moment a thunderstorm was growling, which could have easily spooked the poor animals to render them imprudently enough to make them less aware of the danger of the cliff(s) in the surrounding area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there real scientific evidence about this phenomenon aside from a few case stories? Are there even scientific studies out there describing it or at least confirm that the reason for animal suicide in some of the case reports is inconclusive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;IMPORTANT EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; (in a response to Oddthinking♦'s remark about a lack of definition of suicide)&#xA;Yes, definitions are a great problem here, I agree. What does count as suicide? A parent saving his or her child by taking a deadly bullet... is that suicide? It's all a matter of definitions. However, what I meant by suicide here is not (and this is a bit difficult to word correct for me, because I'm not fluent in English) the act of a direct response to a stimuli, either internal (need to reproduce) or external (seeing that child is in danger and sacrifice in an attempt to prevent the child's death), but rather the act of self destruction after analyzing and abstracting the stimuli and putting these ideas of ideas (e.g. if the idea is: I'm in pain because I get beaten every time, then an idea of that idea could be: this pain lowers my quality of life and in the absence of any hope that this regular beating will quit, committing suicide and facing the fear of death seems like a better option than continuing life). Note that this requires the animal to have concept of abstract concepts (in my wording ideas of ideas), like life, death, time, fear, etc. I originally wanted to ask this question because I was wondering about the fundamental difference between animals and humans (if any), and suicide seemed like a good candidate to presume investigating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I hope I didn't confuse to much people :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21220" LastEditorUserId="21220" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T00:05:05.213" LastActivityDate="2014-10-05T14:16:46.987" Title="Do animals commit suicide?" Tags="|mortality|ethology|suicide|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22412" CreationDate="2014-07-19T11:51:40.957" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is not enough scientific data to prove suicidal behavior in non-human animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturalists have not identified suicide in nonhuman species in field situations, despite intensive study of thousands of animal species. ... Few empirical investigations have been carried out on this topic [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern naturalistic studies have found little evidence of self-harming conduct among nonhuman species [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent study (but of the same author) supports this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No convincing animal model of suicide has been produced to date, and despite the intensive study of thousands of animal species naturalists have not identified suicide in nonhuman species in field situations. When modeling suicidal behavior in the animal, the greatest challenge is reproducing the role of will and intention in suicide mechanics [3].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Animals response to stimuli can lead to accidents and self-destruction:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lacking the capacity to visualise and enact their own deaths, animals are seen to be driven by an instinct of self-preservation. ... animal acts of self-destruction were not intentional, but accidental and instinctual responses to stimuli [4].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preti A. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18232440&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Suicide among animals: a review of evidence.&lt;/a&gt; Psychol Rep. 2007 Dec;101(3 Pt 1):831-48. PubMed PMID: 18232440.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preti A. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16342583&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Suicide among animals: clues from folklore that may prevent suicidal behaviour in human beings.&lt;/a&gt; Psychol Rep. 2005 Oct;97(2):547-58. PubMed PMID: 16342583.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Preti A. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21354241&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Animal model and neurobiology of suicide.&lt;/a&gt; Prog. Neuropsychopharmacol. Biol. Psychiatry. 2011 Jun 1;35(4):818-30. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2010.10.027&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1016/j.pnpbp.2010.10.027&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 21354241.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ramsden E, Wilson D. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20144484&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The nature of suicide: science and the self-destructive animal.&lt;/a&gt; Endeavour. 2010 Mar;34(1):21-4. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.endeavour.2010.01.005&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1016/j.endeavour.2010.01.005&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 20144484.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T11:51:40.957" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22414" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8927" CreationDate="2014-07-19T12:16:21.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. But moderate alcohol consumption seems to have some good effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The association between regular alcohol intake and incident carotid atherosclerosis (early atherogenesis) was J-shaped, with light drinkers facing a lower risk than either heavy drinkers or abstainers. Protection offered by alcohol consumption of &amp;lt;50 g/d appeared to act through inhibition of the injurious action of high levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is sustained by epidemiologic data, however the mechanism remains unclear:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Epidemiologic data generally show an inverse correlation between coronary heart disease risk and moderate alcohol intake (variously defined but generally corresponding to 2 to 4 drinks per day). ... The mechanism by which moderate alcohol intake &quot;protects&quot; remains unclear. Perhaps the best available hypothesis relates to the increased concentration of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol associated with moderate alcohol intake. However, it should be stressed that we are still uncertain about the mechanisms linking a high HDL level to protection against coronary heart disease. If a high HDL level is only a marker (and not directly protective), raising HDL levels need not confer protection. Alcoholism, on the other hand, is associated with marked elevation of triglyceride-rich lipoproteins and is among the most common causes of hypertriglyceridemia [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it increases blood triglycerides. And it is also a risk factor for hypertension:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was an increased risk of hypertension in those who consumed large amounts of ethanol (&gt;/=210 g per week) compared with those who did not consume alcohol over the 6 years of follow-up [3].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although moderate alcohol consumption may protect against atherosclerosis, it promotes other cardiovascular diseases. Other factors should be taken into account too:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The robust relationship between moderate drinking and lower risk of cardiovascular disease remains an intriguing area of investigation. ... Moderate alcohol use also has important inverse relations with inflammatory factors. ... The non-alcoholic constituents of red wine also have anti-atherogenic and perhaps even life-extending properties in vitro, but their relevance to humans remains uncertain. Genetic variants of the apolipoprotein E and interleukin 6 genes in humans may modify how alcohol influences atherosclerosis [4].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kiechl S, Willeit J, Rungger G, Egger G, Oberhollenzer F, Bonora E. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9596232&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alcohol consumption and atherosclerosis: what is the relation? Prospective results from the Bruneck Study.&lt;/a&gt; Stroke. 1998 May;29(5):900-7. PubMed PMID: 9596232. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Steinberg D, Pearson TA, Kuller LH. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2024865&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alcohol and atherosclerosis.&lt;/a&gt; Ann. Intern. Med. 1991 Jun 1;114(11):967-76. PubMed PMID: 2024865. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fuchs FD, Chambless LE, Whelton PK, Nieto FJ, Heiss G. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11358935&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alcohol consumption and the incidence of hypertension: The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study.&lt;/a&gt; Hypertension. 2001 May;37(5):1242-50. PubMed PMID: 11358935. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Li JM, Mukamal KJ. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15529027&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An update on alcohol and atherosclerosis.&lt;/a&gt; Curr. Opin. Lipidol. 2004 Dec;15(6):673-80. PubMed PMID: 15529027. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T12:16:21.500" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22415" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-19T13:54:10.880" Score="2" ViewCount="121" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm aware that a similar question has been asked before, but I'm hoping my questions are different enough to warrant a new post. &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7219/does-the-presence-of-a-cellphone-affect-sperm-count-or-heart-rate&quot;&gt;Does the presence of a cellphone affect sperm count or heart rate?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that cell phones/wifi don't produce ionizing radiation, so there isn't an obvious mechanism for causing dna damage, but there seems to be a growing consensus that they can produce oxidative stress &amp;amp; dna damage in sperm at very low intensities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have three questions: &#xA;First, am I right that there's a growing consensus, or am I just falling prey to publication bias? &#xA;Second, is there any plausible mechanism for this? I believe heating was controlled for in the papers I've linked, so that shouldn't be it. If there's no plausible mechanism, what are some explanations for their findings? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, if this is true, shouldn't we see a huge growth in infertility/birth defects/miscarriage rates? Is it likely for us to not see those and for these studies to be correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://aphoenix.awardspace.com/documents/aitken_etal_2005.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://aphoenix.awardspace.com/documents/aitken_etal_2005.pdf&lt;/a&gt; &amp;lt;- Original research &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2164/jandrol.111.014373/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2164/jandrol.111.014373/full&lt;/a&gt; &amp;lt;- Literature review&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412014001354&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412014001354&lt;/a&gt; &amp;lt;- Meta-analysis&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_risk/committees/04_scenihr/docs/scenihr_o_022.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_risk/committees/04_scenihr/docs/scenihr_o_022.pdf&lt;/a&gt; &amp;lt;- European commission report (a resounding &quot;maybe&quot;). &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0006446&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0006446&lt;/a&gt; &amp;lt;- Original research&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21230" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T13:54:10.880" Title="Is there a non-ionizing, non-heating mechanism by which cell phones can damage sperm?" Tags="|physics|human-reproduction|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-07-19T16:38:07.640" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22419" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22433" CreationDate="2014-07-19T18:01:19.313" Score="23" ViewCount="1634" Body="&lt;p&gt;The most popular question on outdoors.SE is &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/questions/645/is-it-warmer-to-sleep-naked-in-a-sleeping-bag&quot;&gt;Is it warmer to sleep naked in a sleeping bag?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, all the answers over there are not properly researched and it was suggested in one of the comments that this question might be more appropriate for skeptics.SE with which I wholeheartedly agree. For that reason I am reposting the same question here with the explicit focus on properly supported and researched answers (as are the norm on skeptics.SE), rather than personal anecdotes or claims based on experience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Google search will &lt;em&gt;mostly&lt;/em&gt; show results debunking it as a 'myth', but both on outdoors.SE and on other sites there are people who do swear by this principle (I have heard it being claimed by people with experience as well). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18335" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:48:01.090" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T09:26:59.787" Title="Does sleeping naked in a sleeping bag keep you warmer?" Tags="|biology|physiology|physics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4622" CreationDate="2014-07-19T20:12:02.877" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The sites that you said addressed the myth might be working with spamming companies or be the spammers themselves. I don't know that much about spam, but it appears to not be the same as telling someone to take you off their mailing list when they call you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several other sites agree with the fact that you should not unsubscribe from spammers as it does the following-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The typical advice from anti-spam groups is to not even try to use&#xA;  their &quot;unsubscribe&quot; methods, since that confirms for the spammer that&#xA;  the address is not only good (thus: send it more spam!) but also that&#xA;  the recipient actually opens spams sent there (thus: send it even more&#xA;  spam!)  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spamprimer.com/spammers_wont_unsubscribe_you.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.spamprimer.com/spammers_wont_unsubscribe_you.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/lisa-parker-target-5-spam-i-am-149181805.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;from this&lt;/a&gt; we can see that people have done other test for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This qoute outlines that clicking unsuscribe is the wrong course of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before you answer, in most cases the spammers are just guessing at&#xA;  email addresses. Fill out the ‘unsubscribe” line, and the guesswork is&#xA;  over: they know they have a live one. Worse, said Maiffret: &quot;In&#xA;  reality, that's usually an indicator to increase the level of things&#xA;  they send to you. We even see when you click unsubscribe, it'll take&#xA;  you to a website and the website will actually try and attack against&#xA;  your computer,&quot; he explained&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Filipiak had to change his email address, as this reporter will also&#xA;  have to do. For this article, I clicked &quot;unsubscribe&quot; on two weeks’&#xA;  worth of spams; more than 125 times. My daily spam average is on the&#xA;  rise, with no signs of slowing down. With spam accounting for an&#xA;  estimated 80 percent of all email traffic in the United States, the&#xA;  spammers don’t appear to be slowing down, either. The best option,&#xA;  experts said, is to choose the &quot;Mark as Junk&quot; option provided by some&#xA;  email providers. If that’s not an option, just hit &quot;delete&quot; and move&#xA;  on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Do spammers actually compile lists of &quot;known deliverable email addresses&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;?&quot; I couldn't find any info to support that, but from the volume of mail these people were sent other spammers were probably in on it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did however find numerous accounts of &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5875848/how-can-i-find-out-why-my-email-account-just-spammed-my-friends-and-family&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;people's e-mails sending other people spam&lt;/a&gt;, which if they unsubscribe can give the spammers more accounts. I found this by googling &quot;unsuscribing to spam gets you more spam&quot;(the results were to many).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21099" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T20:12:02.877" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9692" CreationDate="2014-07-19T20:37:28.550" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence to support this claim. Several studies have concluded that corn oil compounds have beneficial effects on inflammation and arthritis on animal models and &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; have similar effects on humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;polyunsaturated fats, also known as omega-6 fatty acids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not the best sentence. Polyunsaturated fats are triglicerides. The hydrocarbon tails of these constitutes polyunsaturated fatty acids [1]. This represents a class that includes omega 6 fatty acid amongst others [2]. Corn oil contains mostly linoleic acid [3] which is an omega-6 fatty acid and about 0.7 % alpha-linolenic acid [4, 5] which is omega-3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was found that alpha-linolenic has antiinflammatory properties on animal models:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... the protein and mRNA expression levels of iNOS and COX-2 enzyme were markedly inhibited by ALA in a dose dependent manner. These results suggest that the anti-inflammatory activity of ALA might be due to the suppression of the expressions of iNOS and COX-2 mRNA [6].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These results indicate that diet rich in ALA exerted the anti-inflammatory and anti-oxidative effects in diabetic rats, which may be beneficial to the prevention and treatment of diabetes [7].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ALA (2 and 4 ml/kg, i.p.) and LA (2 and 4 ml/kg, i.p.) were further tested for their efficacy against complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA)-induced (0.05 ml) arthritis in albino rats. Following CFA-induced arthritis, ALA and LA were tested for their inhibitory proficiency against COX-1, COX-2, and 5-LOX in vitro. The present study commends that the anti-inflammatory potential of ALA could be attributed to COX inhibition, in particular, COX-2 [8].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But these effects failed to make a statistical difference on humans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a 3-month follow-up, the treatment group showed an increased bleeding time, but the clinical, subjective (global assessment, classification of functional status, joint score index, visual analogue scale, pain tenderness score) and laboratory parameters (haemoglobin, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, C-reactive protein) did not show any statistical alterations. AA, EPA and DHA did not change either in spite of a significant increase in alpha-LNA in the treatment group. Thus, 3-month's supplementation with alpha-LNA did not prove to be beneficial in rheumatoid arthritis [9].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So alpha-linolenic fatty acid doesn't have any negative effects on arthritis. Also, corn oil is a poor source of alpha-linolenic acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about linoleic acid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should we listen to warnings that linoleic acid (LA) promotes inflammation and that Americans would be healthier if they restricted their intake of LA (i.e., vegetable oils)? A recently published systematic review of 15 clinical trials failed to find any support for the &amp;quot;diet LA causes inflammation hypothesis.&amp;quot; These findings support current recommendations that a diet with 5 to 10 energy percentage from polyunsaturated fatty acids, such as LA, is healthful and appropriate for most Americans [10].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In epidemiologic studies, there is little evidence that suggests linoleic acid contributes to cardiovascular disease, cancer, or inflammation (where inverse correlations may exist). ... It has been suggested that high dietary linoleic acid intake increases the incidence of chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer, and inflammation. The putative mechanism for these adverse health outcomes relates to the conversion of linoleic acid to arachidonic acid and the subsequent eicosanoids derived thereof. A couple of recent papers have undermined this theoretical model [11].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of the studies reported significant findings for a wide variety of inflammatory markers, including C-reactive protein, fibrinogen, plasminogen activator inhibitor type 1, cytokines, soluble vascular adhesion molecules, or tumor necrosis factor-α. The only significant outcome measures reported for higher LA intakes were greater excretion of prostaglandin E2 and lower excretion of 2,3-dinor-thromboxane B(2) in one study and higher excretion of tetranorprostanedioic acid in another. However, the authors of those studies both observed that these effects were not an indication of increased inflammation. We conclude that virtually no evidence is available from randomized, controlled intervention studies among healthy, noninfant human beings to show that addition of LA to the diet increases the concentration of inflammatory markers [12].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia contributors, &amp;quot;Polyunsaturated fat,&amp;quot; Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polyunsaturated_fat&amp;amp;oldid=616297496&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polyunsaturated_fat&amp;amp;oldid=616297496&lt;/a&gt; (accessed July 19, 2014).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia contributors, &amp;quot;Polyunsaturated fatty acid,&amp;quot; Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polyunsaturated_fatty_acid&amp;amp;oldid=606758876&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polyunsaturated_fatty_acid&amp;amp;oldid=606758876&lt;/a&gt; (accessed July 19, 2014).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia contributors, &amp;quot;Corn oil,&amp;quot; Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Corn_oil&amp;amp;oldid=612702158&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Corn_oil&amp;amp;oldid=612702158&lt;/a&gt; (accessed July 19, 2014).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vos E, Cunnane SC. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12540417&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alpha-linolenic acid, linoleic acid, coronary artery disease, and overall mortality.&lt;/a&gt; Am. J. Clin. Nutr. 2003 Feb;77(2):521-2. PubMed PMID: 12540417.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The National Agricultural Library. National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference. Release 26. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/658?fg=&amp;amp;man=&amp;amp;lfacet=&amp;amp;count=&amp;amp;max=&amp;amp;sort=&amp;amp;qlookup=&amp;amp;offset=&amp;amp;format=Full&amp;amp;new=&amp;amp;measureby=#id-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Full Report (All Nutrients):  04518, Oil, corn, industrial and retail, all purpose salad or cooking&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ren J, Han EJ, Chung SH. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17679548&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;In vivo and in vitro anti-inflammatory activities of alpha-linolenic acid isolated from Actinidia polygama fruits.&lt;/a&gt; Arch. Pharm. Res. 2007 Jun;30(6):708-14. PubMed PMID: 17679548.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Zhang LH, Zhang W, Wei GH, Yang P, Liu J, Niu XL. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22493899&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[Effects of alpha-linolenic acid on inflammation and oxidative stress in the diabetic rats].&lt;/a&gt; Zhongguo Ying Yong Sheng Li Xue Za Zhi. 2012 Jan;28(1):64-7. PubMed PMID: 22493899.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anand R, Kaithwas G. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24639012&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anti-inflammatory Potential of Alpha-Linolenic Acid Mediated Through Selective COX Inhibition: Computational and Experimental Data.&lt;/a&gt; Inflammation. 2014 Aug;37(4):1297-306. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10753-014-9857-6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1007/s10753-014-9857-6&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 24639012.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nordström DC, Honkanen VE, Nasu Y, Antila E, Friman C, Konttinen YT. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7597378&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alpha-linolenic acid in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. A double-blind, placebo-controlled and randomized study: flaxseed vs. safflower seed.&lt;/a&gt; Rheumatol. Int. 1995;14(6):231-4. PubMed PMID: 7597378.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fritsche KL. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24645297&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Linoleic acid, vegetable oils &amp;amp; inflammation.&lt;/a&gt; Mo Med. 2014;111(1):41-3. PubMed PMID: 24645297.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whelan J, Fritsche K. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23674797&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Linoleic acid.&lt;/a&gt; Adv Nutr. 2013 May;4(3):311-2. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.3945/an.113.003772&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.3945/an.113.003772&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 23674797.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Johnson GH, Fritsche K. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22889633&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effect of dietary linoleic acid on markers of inflammation in healthy persons: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials.&lt;/a&gt; J Acad Nutr Diet. 2012 Jul;112(7):1029-41, 1041.e1-15. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jand.2012.03.029&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10.1016/j.jand.2012.03.029&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 22889633.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T21:08:05.513" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22100" CreationDate="2014-07-19T20:42:13.083" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Pregnancy can cause skin to darken in the face, nipples, and even in a line from the belly button to the pubic region.  This darkening can sometimes be referred to as a &quot;glow&quot;, similar to someone with a tan might be considered to glow.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the second trimester (13-28 weeks) a woman begins to look noticeably pregnant and the enlarged uterus is easy to feel. The nipples get bigger and darker, skin may darken, and some women may feel flushed and warm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/pregnancy&quot;&gt;http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/pregnancy&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NY209Le027I&quot;&gt;https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NY209Le027I&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21210" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-19T21:18:46.940" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T21:18:46.940" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9692" CreationDate="2014-07-19T22:11:32.847" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mammals are unable to synthesize short chain polyunsaturated fatty acids ( n-3, and n-6 fatty acids ) and so these are considered essential fatty acids as they need to be consumed in the diet otherwise deficiency diseases appear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The diet therefore has a combination of these sc-PUFAs present, and historically the ratio of n-6:n-3 PUFAs in the human diet was said to be much lower than in the present USA diet of about 16:1.  The effect of those sc-PUFAs in the diet is complex, but generally n-6 are considered pro-inflammatory, and n-3 anti-inflammatory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of studies have looked at the effect of n-3 PUFAs on disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis, and in this recent study of high dose fish oil (FO) vs low dose in new onset rheumatoid arthritis treated with triple therapy, the FO group did better.  FO contains a large amount of long chain or marine n-3 PUFAs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FO was associated with benefits additional to those achieved by&#xA;  combination 'treat-to-target' DMARDs with similar MTX use. These&#xA;  included reduced triple DMARD failure and a higher rate of ACR&#xA;  remission. [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It remains to be seen whether high dose FO has benefits in people other than those with rheumatoid arthritis, and currently NICE have stopped recommending the consumption of oily fish or FO for cardiovascular disease prevention as there is now insufficient evidence of efficacy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The adverse effects of a diet high in n-6 PUFAs was recently shown in a re-examination of the Sydney Heart Study. 458 men aged 30-59 years with a recent coronary event were asked to reduce saturated fat intake, and to take n-6 PUFAs instead from safflower oil and safflower oil polyunsaturated margarine.  The results were&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The intervention group (n=221) had higher rates of death than controls&#xA;  (n=237) (all cause 17.6% v 11.8%, hazard ratio 1.62 (95% confidence&#xA;  interval 1.00 to 2.64), P=0.05; cardiovascular disease 17.2% v 11.0%,&#xA;  1.70 (1.03 to 2.80), P=0.04; coronary heart disease 16.3% v 10.1%, 1.74 (1.04 to 2.92), P=0.04). Inclusion of these recovered data in an updated meta-analysis of linoleic acid intervention trials showed&#xA;  non-significant trends toward increased risks of death from coronary&#xA;  heart disease (hazard ratio 1.33 (0.99 to 1.79); P=0.06) and&#xA;  cardiovascular disease (1.27 (0.98 to 1.65); P=0.07).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and they concluded that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An updated meta-analysis of linoleic acid intervention trials showed&#xA;  no evidence of cardiovascular benefit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although there has been some criticism of this study in that the margarines of that time were likely high in transfats which could have contributed to the excess cardiovascular mortality, the suggestion is that it is much safer to ensure that you keep the ratio of n6:n3 PUFAs as low as feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Proudman SM, James MJ, Spargo LD, [..], Cleland LG. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24081439&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fish oil in recent onset rheumatoid arthritis: a randomised, double-blind controlled trial within algorithm-based drug use.&lt;/a&gt; Ann. Rheum. Dis. 2013 Sep 30. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/annrheumdis-2013-204145&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1136/annrheumdis-2013-204145&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 24081439. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Ramsden CE, Zamora D, Leelarthaepin B, [..], Hibbeln JR. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23386268&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Use of dietary linoleic acid for secondary prevention of coronary heart disease and death: evaluation of recovered data from the Sydney Diet Heart Study and updated meta-analysis.&lt;/a&gt; BMJ. 2013 Feb 4;346:e8707. PubMed PMID: 23386268. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-07-19T22:11:32.847" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22428" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22431" CreationDate="2014-07-19T22:20:46.727" Score="9" ViewCount="19301" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chocolate doesn't have caffeine according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=15555&quot;&gt;this Snopes thread&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; stated that chocolate has it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Cocoa solids] also contain alkaloids such as theobromine, phenethylamine and caffeine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does a 30g (1 oz.) chocolate bar have a significant amount of caffeine, e.g. as much as an 23cl (8 oz.) cup of coffee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user19505" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T13:19:36.487" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T13:19:36.487" Title="Does chocolate have caffeine?" Tags="|nutrition|caffeine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22429" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-19T22:29:46.610" Score="4" ViewCount="877" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rebels shot several planes of Ukraine in the last days, after they got their hands on that missile system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some say that because of this, Ukraine flight control specifically gave directions to the plane to fly within that zone, knowing that the rebels could shoot it down like they did theirs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-17/was-flight-mh-17-diverted-over-restricted-airspace&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-17/was-flight-mh-17-diverted-over-restricted-airspace&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXQ_8_KUT3w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXQ_8_KUT3w&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2636" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2014-11-21T03:57:20.303" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T03:57:20.303" Title="Did Ukraine set up Russia on the MH17 incident?" Tags="|aviation|war|russia|ukraine|mh17|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ClosedDate="2014-07-20T00:40:46.583" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22430" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26432" CreationDate="2014-07-19T23:17:18.477" Score="11" ViewCount="19124" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VPHPF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/04/24/how-to-survive-a-lightning-strike-an-illustrated-guide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Text in the image&lt;/strong&gt; (clockwise):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Crouch down low like a baseball catcher. Get as low as you can. The nearer&#xA;  you are to the ground, the less likely you are to be struck by lightning. But never lie down!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If your hair begins to stand on end or your skin starts to tingle, a lightning strike is imminent. Immediately get into the crouching position. Lightning may strike without this warning, however.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Place hands over ears to minimize hearing loss from the loud clap of thunder that will boom very close to you.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The only thing touching the ground should be the balls of your feet. Lightning can hit the ground first, and then enter your body. The more you minimize your contact with the ground, the less chance of electricity entering your body.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Touch the heels of your feet together. If electricity from a ground strike enters through your feet, this increases the chances of the electricity going in one foot and out the other, rather than into the rest of your body.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't touch any possible conductors.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18755" OwnerDisplayName="Panda Bear" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T15:44:54.183" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T11:10:05.667" Title="Is this a way to survive a lightning strike?" Tags="|physics|environmental-health|mortality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22431" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22428" CreationDate="2014-07-19T23:50:13.053" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Depends on the type of chocolate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), a bar of dark chocolate (i.e. 162 grams, or about 6 oz) contains almost as much caffeine as a cup of coffee (resp. 70mg v.s. 95mg).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, chocolate does contain a significant amount of caffeine (but just not as much as coffee. You are more likely to ingest more caffeine by drinking coffee, simply because you drink more cups of coffee than you eat chocolate bars.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that this holds only for dark chocolate; white chocolate does not contain caffeine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;:&#xA;Notice how, if you click &quot;full report&quot; it lists theobromine separately. Coffee does not contain theobromine, chocolate does (about 10x the amount of caffeine it contains).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sources:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/6335?qlookup=19902&amp;amp;max=25&amp;amp;man=&amp;amp;lfacet=&amp;amp;new=1&quot;&gt;USDA Nutrition report on Dark Chocolate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/4290?qlookup=14209&amp;amp;max=25&amp;amp;man=&amp;amp;lfacet=&amp;amp;new=1&quot;&gt;USDA Nutrition report on brewed coffee&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/6003?qlookup=white+chocolate&amp;amp;fg=&amp;amp;format=&amp;amp;man=&amp;amp;lfacet=&amp;amp;max=25&amp;amp;new=1&quot;&gt;USDA Nutrition report on white chocolate candies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21220" LastEditorUserId="21220" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T10:04:09.750" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T10:04:09.750" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22419" CreationDate="2014-07-20T03:31:39.117" Score="27" Body="&lt;h1&gt;No&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;It's a system&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider the clothes and the sleeping bag to comprise a &amp;quot;sleeping system&amp;quot;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The functional demand on a sleeping system is to enable the user to&#xA;obtain a specified period of sleep in a given thermal environment. The&#xA;required insulation bears a linear relationship to the environmental&#xA;temperature ( ~ 4 &lt;strong&gt;clo&lt;/strong&gt;/20 °C decrease in environmental temperature).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What's a &amp;quot;clo&amp;quot;?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The insulation of clothes are often measured in the unit &amp;quot;clo&amp;quot;, where&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;clo = 0 - corresponds to a naked person&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;clo = 1 - corresponds to the insulating value of clothing needed to    maintain a person in comfort sitting at rest in a room at 21 ℃ (70 ℉)&#xA;with air movement of 0.1 m/s and humidity less than 50% - typically a&#xA;person wearing a business suit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(i.e., 0.155 m²K/W)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/clo-clothing-thermal-insulation-d_732.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One clo unit of insulation can be defined as that insulation which not&#xA;only allows, but requires the transfer of 10 kcal/hr for an average&#xA;man (1.8 m²) for each °C difference between his mean skin temperature&#xA;(Ts, which can be defined for comfort at 32 °C) and ambient&#xA;temperature. Therefore, at an ambient air temperature of 0 °C the&#xA;non-evaporative heat loss will be 320 kcal/hr with a 1 clo sleeping&#xA;system; it will be 160 kcal/hr with a 2 clo sleeping system, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;How much heat?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider a soldier of average size; i.e., weight of 70 kg and height&#xA;of 173 cm, which corresponds to a total body surface area of 1.8 m².&#xA;Such an individual produces about 72 kcal/hr while sleeping (i.e., 0.8&#xA;MET) and loses about 25% of this amount from the body by respiration&#xA;and evaporation of the body water diffusing through the skin, which&#xA;typically maintains a minimum 6% wettedness; i.e., a skin relative&#xA;humidity of .06. This leaves 54 kcal/hr to be lost by the body by&#xA;non-evaporative heat loss through the sleeping system to the ambient&#xA;environment if body heat content is to remain unchanged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;What's the target measure?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two definitions can be used for &amp;quot;adequacy&amp;quot; of a cold-weather sleeping&#xA;system: (1) &amp;quot;comfort&amp;quot;, which implies that the sleeping soldier loses&#xA;just the 54 kcal/hr by non-evaporative avenues, i.e., &lt;strong&gt;can maintain&#xA;heat balance without shivering or sweating&lt;/strong&gt;; or (2) &amp;quot;six hours of&#xA;restful sleep&amp;quot;, which allows him to incur a total body heat debt of 80&#xA;kcal during a six-hour sleeping period and, therefore, to lose 67.3&#xA;kcal/hr, i.e., 54 + 80/6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/06eXU.png&quot; alt=&quot;Lowest Ambient Air Temperatures for Comfort or 6 Hours Rest while Asleep&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;More insulation is more&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;[T]he highest insulation values obtained to date for a sleeping system&lt;/strong&gt;, ca. 8 clo (for the U.S. Army's Extreme Cold LINCLOE, sleeping&#xA;system when used by a man sleeping in clean long underwear and socks&#xA;with the insulated air mattress), &lt;strong&gt;can be extended by adding&#xA;additional clothing items&lt;/strong&gt; to achieve a 9 clo level. It was possible&#xA;to approach a 10 clo level of sleeping system insulation when the most&#xA;sensitive and heat loss prone areas of the body, i.e, the hands and&#xA;feet, were provided with supplementary warm sleeping gloves and&#xA;bootees. Conversely, much lower values of insulation were obtained&#xA;when just the long underwear and socks were worn and the extreme cold&#xA;LINCLOE sleeping bag was used on bare ground, without the insulated&#xA;air mattress which is part of the sleeping system; on a bare cement&#xA;floor, the insulation dropped from about 8 clo to less than 6 clo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: Chapter 6b, Biomedical Effects of Sleeping Systems in&#xA;Goldman, R., &amp;amp; Kampmann, B. (2007). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lboro.ac.uk/microsites/lds/EEC/ICEE/textsearch/Handbook%20on%20Clothing%20-%202nd%20Ed.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Handbook on Clothing.&#xA;Biomedical Effects of Military Clothing and Equipment Systems&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="35" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T09:26:59.787" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22434" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-20T06:03:29.953" Score="10" ViewCount="1453" Body="&lt;p&gt;Was the video implicating rebels in the shooting down of MH17 created the day before the crash?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nv1Av.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nv1Avl.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/marxistJorge/status/490458528407384064&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example claim&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;donwload SBU video of recording of rebels talking of downing #MH17 and&#xA;  check the creation date: 16/07 the day before!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;#pt try yourself, SBU recording video on SBU youtube account: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5E8kDo2n6g&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5E8kDo2n6g&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-20T13:04:47.633" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T15:28:09.893" Title="Was the video about MH17 done the day before it crashed?" Tags="|aviation|war|russia|ukraine|mh17|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22434" CreationDate="2014-07-20T08:58:42.123" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Timestamps are not a good source of information unless you are really sure where they come from. &lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms724290(v=vs.85).aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;They are set using the system time of the computer creating the file&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/system-administrator/ch-sysadmin-time.html#s16.7&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;which might, for example, be set incorrectly&lt;/a&gt;; or the program might make a mistake when creating them or writing them to the file. For a quick demonstration of why timestamps are not reliable, I have had a look at the video in question, using the same program with which the screenshot was made for your source. You will see that one of the tracks was created about 110 years ago; if this is evidence of a set-up, then it was done by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Russian Imperial secret police&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qpFMg.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Information on SBU video&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The particular problem of videos which are one day too old is very easy to replicate. I just took an old video and uploaded it to Youtube. The original creation date of the video was back in 2013, which is what the Format Analyzer shows (correctly). After I re-downloaded the video from Youtube, the creation date was given as 19.07.2014 - that is, one day (26 hours, to be exact) before I uploaded it. You can try this out for yourself, or look at &lt;a href=&quot;https://gist.github.com/klaufir/d1e694c064322a7fbc15&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reports that have documented the process in more depth&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the source of this strange behavior: the timestamps used in computers generally count the seconds that pass from a particular date. MPEG-4 files use the Macintosh epoch, which started on January 1st 1904; most web servers run Unix, where the epoch starts on January 1st 1970. You can find all this information in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/c040361_ISO_IEC%2014496-5_2001_Amd%207_2005_Reference_Software.zip&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ISO/IEC 14496-5 format documentation&lt;/a&gt;, together with the information that you need to add exactly 2082758400 to get from one epoch to the other. However, if you do the math, you will see that the real difference is 2082844800, with a difference of 86400 seconds, or one day. That is not my discovery - it has been noted &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/tmkk/XLDFdkAacOutput/blob/master/l-smash/box.h&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;before&lt;/a&gt;. Therefore, if you follow the standard (which Youtube apparently does), your date will be off by one day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say that the recording says the truth. However, there is no evidence that it was &quot;made before the crash&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastEditorUserId="18230" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T15:28:09.893" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T15:28:09.893" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22436" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-20T11:03:38.843" Score="8" ViewCount="819" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am a combat veteran, but I was not diagnosed with PTSD. When I was in the military, there were Soldiers with PTSD who had never served in a combat zone. There were also Soldiers who served in a combat zone but never saw combat. These Soldiers were sometimes diagnosed with PTSD from their tour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is PTSD Overdiagnosed for US Military Soldiers? Could Soldiers really be affected by anxiety and other life factors instead?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claim: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/2012/03/the-ptsd-trap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.wired.com/2012/03/the-ptsd-trap/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3710" LastEditorUserId="25619" LastEditDate="2015-05-21T16:15:01.477" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T20:43:41.150" Title="Are Soldiers Overdiagnosed with PTSD in the US Military?" Tags="|medical-science|united-states|psychology|military|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22437" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-20T14:42:34.777" Score="18" ViewCount="3380" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been widely reported that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17&quot;&gt;Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 crash&lt;/a&gt; was caused by the plane being shot down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/2014/07/why-planes-fly-over-ukraine/&quot;&gt;Wired: Why Planes Still Flew Over Ukraine Until MH17 Was Shot Down&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/jul/18/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh17-shot-down-ukraine-video-report&quot;&gt;The Guardian: Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 shot down in Ukraine – video report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/07/how-us-satellites-pinpointed-source-of-missile-that-shot-down-airliner/&quot;&gt;Ars Technica: How US satellites pinpointed source of missile that shot down airliner&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.handelsblatt.com/video/handelsblatt-in-99-sekunden/flug-mh17-wer-hat-geschossen/10221272.html&quot;&gt;Handelsblatt: Flug MH17: Wer hat geschossen?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10975176/Malaysia-Airlines-crash-Who-shot-down-MH17.html&quot;&gt;Daily Telegraph: Malaysia Airlines crash: Who shot down MH17?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be treated as a given fact that the incident was caused by it being shot down, but I can't seem to find any published evidence of this - only things like &quot;without going into detail about the intelligence that was obtained...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What evidence is there that the incident was caused by the plane being attacked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21044" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T20:30:05.403" LastActivityDate="2022-03-23T17:01:20.293" Title="Was MH17 shot down?" Tags="|aviation|mh17|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22441" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-20T18:43:11.783" Score="18" ViewCount="2130" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've come across a number of articles, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160630124628/http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/07/09/3458101/f35-boondoggle-fail/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Americans Have Spent Enough Money On A Broken Plane To Buy Every Homeless Person A Mansion&lt;/a&gt;, that suggest that if we took all the money that we spent on the F-35 jet, every homeless person in the US could have been given a $600,000 home:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the vast amounts spent so far on the aircraft, the United States could have worked wonders, including providing every homeless person in the U.S. a $600,000 home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s hard to argue against the need to modernize aircraft used to defend the country and counter enemies overseas, especially if you’re a politician. But the Joint Strike Fighter program has been a mess almost since its inception, with massive cost overruns leading to its current acquisition price-tag of $398.6 billion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could this be true, or is someone twisting the numbers somewhere along in the calculation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13825" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-12-05T18:42:08.193" LastActivityDate="2023-12-05T18:42:41.400" Title="Could we buy every homeless person a house with the money spent on the F-35?" Tags="|united-states|economics|military|homelessness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22436" CreationDate="2014-07-20T19:50:24.407" Score="-2" Body="&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Could Soldiers really be affected by anxiety and other life factors instead?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/drone-pilots-found-to-get-stress-disorders-much-as-those-in-combat-do.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/drone-pilots-found-to-get-stress-disorders-much-as-those-in-combat-do.html?_r=0&lt;/a&gt; or as described &quot;Oliver Twist&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then just being in a military complex in a combat zone makes you a target, when you're on patrol or even in the base itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they overdiagnosed? A simple idea would be to compare the ratio of PTSD diagnosed soliders in different wars. That has various problems mostly:&#xA;1) Name-changing and a changes in which symptoms were considered related. E.g. during WWI it was known as shell-shock.&#xA;2) Much more through psychological evaluation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21243" LastActivityDate="2014-07-20T19:50:24.407" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22437" CreationDate="2014-07-21T09:59:40.713" Score="24" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Is there any first hand evidence, accessible to the public, showing MH17 was shot down?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, nor should we expect any.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As in almost all cases, the public do not have direct personal access to evidence of the causes of an aircraft loss. For example, It is not possible for me to visit the site of the wreckage and I lack the forensic expertise to make an assessment of causes by examining marks, residues and deformation of the wreckage. I do not have direct personal access to military surveillance systems. I cannot organize my own team of trusted investigators to research the past movements and actions of individual members of various armed forces in the region.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that we can do is make our own assessment of the likely causes. Lacking expertise and access to the evidence, we have to rely on second or third hand reports. In general, we place our trust in investigation teams and wait for their reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is there any evidence, accessible to investigators, showing MH17 was shot down?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The incident occurred on 17th July 2014. In September 2014 the Dutch investigation team  published a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/uploads/phase-docs/701/b3923acad0ceprem-rapport-mh-17-en-interactief.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;preliminary report&lt;/a&gt; which says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The damage observed in the forward section of the aircraft appears to indicate that the aircraft was penetrated by a large number of high-energy objects from outside the aircraft. It is likely that this damage resulted in a loss of structural integrity of the aircraft, leading to an in-flight break up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pattern of damage observed in the forward fuselage and cockpit section of the aircraft was not consistent with the damage that would be expected from any known failure mode of the aircraft, its engines or systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there exists first-hand evidence showing MH17 was (probably) shot down. However members of the general public do not have direct personal hands-on access to the recovered debris nor to the chain of evidence of custody of that debris that clearly ties it to the crash site, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Alleged evidence reported by news organisations&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prior to these reports, (in this case, at the date the question was asked here,) we rely on reports from news organisations and we weigh what they say according to our personal assessment of their trustworthiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you believe that CNN has reasonable journalistic integrity you might take into account what &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/17/world/europe/malaysia-airlines-crash-missile/index.html?iid=article_sidebar&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;they report&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A radar system saw a surface-to-air missile system turn on and track an aircraft right before the plane went down, a senior U.S. official told CNN's Barbara Starr. And a second system saw a heat signature at the time the airliner was hit. The United States is analyzing the trajectory of the missile to pinpoint where the attack came from, the official said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is of course possible that the quoted U.S. Officials are misinformed or lying to CNN. We each have to use our own judgement to decide how probable we think that is given the circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ABC news in Australia &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-18/malaysia-airlines-mh17-phone-tap-separatists-responsibility/5606578&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ukraine's Kyiv Post newspaper has posted what it says is a conversation between a separatist commander and Russian intelligence officer Vasili Geranin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the transcript, released by Ukraine's security service, the separatist, identified as Igor Bezler, says: &amp;quot;We have just shot down a plane. It fell down beyond Yenakievo (Donetsk Oblast).&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, it would not be difficult for Ukraininan security services to make this recording using actors. There would be risks for them in concocting a false account but this possibility's likelihood is something we have to assess ourselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other (unsubstantiated) reports - some are now behind a &amp;quot;paywall&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/18/world/europe/malaysia-airlines-flight-mh17-q-a.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the social media profile of a separatist leader, Igor Girkin, said that separatists had just shot down a Ukrainian military plane. The post has since been deleted.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1dcc628-1010-11e4-90c7-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz386Dv2gIV&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The claims of rebel leader Igor Strelkov on Thursday – since hastily deleted – that his forces had shot down an Antonov An-26 at a location and time identical to the attack on MH17&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1dcc628-1010-11e4-90c7-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz386EYCX9f&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A YouTube video of a Buk-M1 uploaded later on Thursday can be definitively geo-located to the centre of Snizhne, for example, travelling down a wide boulevard which leaves the town and continues straight to the Russian border.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/malaysia-airlines-mh17-crash-blogger-captures-footage-showing-buk-missile-launcher-that-shot-down-jet-now-back-in-russia-9618115.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blogger captures footage ‘showing BUK missile launcher that shot down jet’ now back in Russia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can never really prove such things to 100% certainty, you can only decide what is the most probable cause based on evidence available at any moment. As new reports of evidence arrive we must reassess the probable cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T10:42:26.837" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16408" CreationDate="2014-07-21T11:28:35.810" Score="6" Body="&lt;h3&gt;&amp;quot;So, what's the current state of our scientific knowledge on the subject?&amp;quot;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence doesn't look good.  The EU funded a very substantial project at CERN, called the CLOUD project, to look into the basic physics of cloud formation resulting from nucleation by cosmic rays.  This project produced some very &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/08/the-cerncloud-results-are-surprisingly-interesting/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;good science and some interesting results&lt;/a&gt;, but were not able to demonstrate nucleation in conditions representative of the actual atmosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a recent survey of GCR - climate links by Laken et al, suggests there isn't much evidence for a relationship between cloud cover and galactic cosmic rays.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B.A. Laken, E. Pallé, J. Čalogović, and E.M. Dunne, &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;A cosmic&#xA;ray-climate link and cloud observations&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;, J. Space Weather Space&#xA;Clim., vol. 2, pp. A18, 2012. &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/swsc/2012018#sthash.dKJiShlh.dpuf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(www)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br&gt; Despite over 35 years of constant satellite-based measurements of cloud, reliable evidence of a long-hypothesized link&#xA;between changes in solar activity and Earth’s cloud cover remains&#xA;elusive. This work examines evidence of a cosmic ray cloud link from a&#xA;range of sources, including satellite-based cloud measurements and&#xA;long-term ground-based climatological measurements. The&#xA;satellite-based studies can be divided into two categories: (1)&#xA;monthly to decadal timescale analysis and (2) daily timescale&#xA;epoch-superpositional (composite) analysis. The latter analyses&#xA;frequently focus on sudden high-magnitude reductions in the cosmic ray&#xA;flux known as Forbush decrease events. At present, two long-term&#xA;independent global satellite cloud datasets are available (ISCCP and&#xA;MODIS). Although the differences between them are considerable,&#xA;neither shows evidence of a solar-cloud link at either long or short&#xA;timescales. Furthermore, reports of observed correlations between&#xA;solar activity and cloud over the 1983–1995 period are attributed to&#xA;the chance agreement between solar changes and artificially induced&#xA;cloud trends. It is possible that the satellite cloud datasets and&#xA;analysis methods may simply be too insensitive to detect a small solar&#xA;signal. Evidence from ground-based studies suggests that some weak but&#xA;statistically significant cosmic ray-cloud relationships may exist at&#xA;regional scales, involving mechanisms related to the global electric&#xA;circuit. However, a poor understanding of these mechanisms and their&#xA;effects on cloud makes the net impacts of such links uncertain.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Regardless of this, it is clear that there is no robust evidence of a&#xA;widespread link between the cosmic ray flux and clouds.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;strong&gt;emphasis&lt;/strong&gt; mine]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the problem that there is no long term trend in Galactic Cosmic Rays to cause the trend in clod cover for which there is no robust evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/f9Mpe.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Cosmic Rays from Neutron Monitors (via RealClimate)&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the first line of the quote in the original question (&amp;quot;If [solar cycles affect temperature], then one should expect climatic variations while we roam the galaxy.&amp;quot;) is a bit odd, as the strongest cycle in solar activity is the 11-year cycle, and that leaves barely a trace on global mean surface temperatures!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hMIq1.png&quot; alt=&quot;Solar Cycles vs Global Mean Surface Temperature (via WoodForTrees.org)&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note I have &lt;a href=&quot;http://woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1850/mean:60/normalise/plot/crutem4vgl/mean:60/normalise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;used&lt;/a&gt; a five year running mean, which leaves the 11-year cycle in the SIDC sunspot numbers, but as you can see there is little sign of an 11 year cycle in the HadCRUT4 global mean surface temperature data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&amp;quot;Is there an effect?&amp;quot;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not that can be reliably detected (see above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;&amp;quot;Is it of comparable magnitude to atmospheric gas composition?&amp;quot;&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, see Rahmstof et al (citation below), which discusses the problems with a paper by Shaviv (the source of the article in question) and Veizer, and also describe the estimation of the sensitivity of the climate to changes in CO2 from analysis of ice core data, which shows the effects of GCR are not plausibly of comparable magnitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stefan Rahmstorf et al., &amp;quot;Cosmic rays, carbon dioxide, and climate&amp;quot;, Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union, Volume 85, Issue 4, pages 38–41, 27 January 2004&#xA;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2004EO040002&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also  this article from Scientific American, which discusses a paper by Sloan and Wolfendale, Sloan being quoted as saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We conclude that the level of contribution of changing solar activity&#xA;is less than 10 percent of the measured global warming observed in the&#xA;20th century. &lt;strong&gt;As a result of this and other work, the&#xA;Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change state that no robust&#xA;association between changes in cosmic rays and cloudiness has been&#xA;identified.&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note here solar activity includes both direct effects (e.g. changes in total solar irradiance) and indirect effects, such as the possible influence of Galactic Cosmic Rays on cloud formation (for which there is no robust evidence - see above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does however show that mainstream science is not hostile to alternative explanations of climate change, the EU spent over 10 million Euro on the CLOUD project!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T14:06:40.223" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22449" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-21T13:44:56.143" Score="10" ViewCount="752" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the Breitbart News Network is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/07/19/Christian-Holocaust-Underway-in-Iraq-as-USA-and-World-Looks-On&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a region where Christians predate Muslims by centuries, over one million Christians have been killed or have had to flee because of jihadi persecution, while America is basically standing by and watching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that one million Christians have been persecuted to death or exile by jihadis?  No cite was given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorDisplayName="user11777" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T12:33:55.017" LastActivityDate="2017-01-07T20:55:57.253" Title="Have one million Christians been persecuted to death or exile in Iraq by jihadis?" Tags="|christianity|iraq|isis|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22450" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20292" CreationDate="2014-07-21T17:10:54.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;My claims: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Short-term exercise, including marathon running (~4 hours), does not result in low blood potassium levels and therefore does not likely cause muscle cramps.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10925&amp;amp;page=226&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NAP.edu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) Long-term exercise (hard physical work, several days in a hot environment) can result in mildly lowered blood potassium levels but probably not severe enough to cause cramps.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=9071&amp;amp;page=117&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NAP.edu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) Hyponatremia can cause cramps, but fitness-level exercise does not likely cause hyponatremia. Hyponatremia is rare even in marathon runners, and is not caused solely by sodium loss through sweat, but by a combination of sodium loss and excessive water drinking.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1724876/pdf/v038p00e16.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PubMed Central&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some facts:&#xA;- Mildly lowered blood potassium levels usually do not cause any symptoms, but moderately lowered levels can cause cramps. You can lose about 500 mg of potassium per liter of sweat, but this is not enough to cause hypokalemia. Potassium that moves from blood to sweat is quickly replaced by potassium that moves from cells to blood. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nutrientsreview.com/minerals/potassium-kalium.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nutrientsreview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Someone who has moderate hypokalemia can get cramps without any exercise, even during sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exact mechanism of exercise-related cramps is still not known. Lactic acid buildup and muscle breakdown (rhabdomyolysis) are two possible causes. Hyponatremia is very unlikely to develop in exercise lasting less than 2 hours and it occurs only in combination with excessive water drinking.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: to have potassium-related muscle cramps, you would need to have potassium deficiency, which can develops within weeks, not within few hours of exercise.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15288" LastEditorUserId="15288" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T18:32:18.887" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T18:32:18.887" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19169" CreationDate="2014-07-21T17:14:15.320" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no specific studies on tendinitis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But tendinitis is an inflammatory condition and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;TCC (tai chi chih) can be considered a useful behavioral intervention to reduce circulating levels of IL-6 in older adults who show elevated levels of this inflammatory marker and are at risk for inflammation-related morbidity [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tai chi has improved symptoms in other inflammatory conditions (and non-inflammatory).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knee osteoarthritis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall, Tai Chi appears to reduce pain and improve physical function for people with knee OA. The measures of benefit include patient-reported outcomes as well as physician assessments and several physical function tests [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rheumatoid arthritis (RA):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tai Chi appears safe and may be beneficial for functional class I or II RA. These promising results warrant further investigation into the potential complementary role of Tai Chi for treatment of RA [3].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fibromyalgia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tai chi may be a useful treatment for fibromyalgia and merits long-term study in larger study populations [4].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Irwin MR, Olmstead R. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21934474&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mitigating cellular inflammation in older adults: a randomized controlled trial of Tai Chi Chih.&lt;/a&gt; Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2012 Sep;20(9):764-72. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/JGP.0b013e3182330fd3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1097/JGP.0b013e3182330fd3&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 21934474. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wang C, Schmid CH, Hibberd PL, Kalish R, Roubenoff R, Rones R, McAlindon T. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19877092&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tai Chi is effective in treating knee osteoarthritis: a randomized controlled trial.&lt;/a&gt; Arthritis Rheum. 2009 Nov 15;61(11):1545-53. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/art.24832&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1002/art.24832&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 19877092. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wang C. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18487901&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tai Chi improves pain and functional status in adults with rheumatoid arthritis: results of a pilot single-blinded randomized controlled trial.&lt;/a&gt; Med Sport Sci. 2008;52:218-29. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000134302&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1159/000134302&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 18487901. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chenchen Wang, M.D., M.P.H., Christopher H. Schmid, Ph.D., Ramel Rones, B.S., Robert Kalish, M.D., Janeth Yinh, M.D., Don L. Goldenberg, M.D., Yoojin Lee, M.S., and Timothy McAlindon, M.D., M.P.H. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0912611&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Randomized Trial of Tai Chi for Fibromyalgia.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; N Engl J Med 2010; 363:743-754August 19, 2010DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa0912611&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T17:14:15.320" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22452" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-21T17:38:38.750" Score="1" ViewCount="600" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is fibromyalgia a discrete clinical entity? Is it a disease?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=0&amp;amp;q=%22discrete+clinical+entity%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Discrete clinical entity&lt;/a&gt; (a term often used in the medical literature, usually without definition): &quot;there is something specific and definable going on, involving a specific part of the anatomy, a particular pathological process, or a physiological function outside of healthy parameters. The term “disease” is best reserved for these specific entities.&quot; - Steven Novella&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T19:43:50.850" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T07:15:04.560" Title="Is fibromyalgia a discrete clinical entity?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22453" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22452" CreationDate="2014-07-21T18:53:51.957" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it is not currently understood to be a discrete clinical entity; it is a clinical syndrome (2013):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Guidelines from three continents showed remarkable consistency regarding the clinical concept of FMS (fibromyalgia syndrome), acknowledging that FMS is neither a distinct rheumatic nor mental disorder, but rather a cluster of symptoms, not explained by another somatic disease. While FMS remains an integral part of rheumatology, it is not an exclusive rheumatic condition and spans a broad range of medical disciplines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mary-Ann Fitzcharles, Yoram Shir, Jacob N. Ablin, et al., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2013/528952/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;“Classification and Clinical Diagnosis of Fibromyalgia Syndrome: Recommendations of Recent Evidence-Based Interdisciplinary Guidelines,”&lt;/a&gt; Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, vol. 2013, Article ID 528952, 9 pages, 2013. doi:10.1155/2013/528952&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T23:55:01.650" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T23:55:01.650" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22452" CreationDate="2014-07-21T20:00:51.557" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think this paper suggests &quot;no&quot;, but I haven't had time to look further than the abstract yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Autoimmunity Reviews&#xA;Volume 11, Issue 8, June 2012, Pages 585–588&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Review&#xA;Is fibromyalgia a discrete entity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Jacob N. Ablina,&#xA;Dan Buskilab,&#xA;Boudewijn Van Houdenhovec,&#xA;Patrick Luytend,&#xA;Fabiola Atzenie,&#xA;Piercarlo Sarzi-Puttinie, , &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fibromyalgia (FM) is defined as chronic widespread pain (CWP) with allodynia or hyperalgesia to pressure pain, and is classified as one of the largest group of soft tissue pain syndromes. Its pathogenesis is not entirely understood, although it is currently believed to be the result of a central nervous system (CNS) malfunction that increases pain transmission and perception. There are no instrumental tests to confirm the diagnosis, but many of the differential diagnoses can be excluded by means of an extensive clinical examination and patient history. Although fibromyalgia is a recognisable clinical entity, it would seem appropriate to consider the entire range of tenderness and distress in clinic patients in order to tailor treatment on an individual basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568997211002382&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568997211002382&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;quoting from the paper it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Take-home messages&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• Fibromyalgia is defined as chronic widespread pain (CWP) with allodynia or hyperalgesia to pressure pain. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• The pathogenesis of FM is not entirely understood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• FM is a disease with multi-symptoms, considered a stress-related disorder overlapping other ‘functional somatic’ syndromes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;• FM treatment requires an individualised, multimodal and multidisciplinary approach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't see where it explicitly gives an answer, but the take home message clearly implies a &quot;no&quot; (especially the third point) as far as I can see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-07-21T20:11:01.070" LastActivityDate="2014-07-21T20:11:01.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22456" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-22T02:28:15.820" Score="4" ViewCount="764" Body="&lt;p&gt;Time Magazine had &lt;a href=&quot;http://time.com/2913065/mars-curiosity-rover-selfie/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; with a photographic portrait of the Curiosity Rover on Mars, attributed to NSA/JPL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's another version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fu8gS.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This photos seems like it would be impossible to take. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would understand if it had used a monopod or any other extension from coming from its body, but how was it able to even take a photo including its optic lens? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would even accept it if it used remote controlled drones (it's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsxYbnT8tKk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;possible&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;but from how they put it, they &quot;combined all the photos taken by the curiosity&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16852" LastEditorDisplayName="user32299" LastEditDate="2018-10-14T11:26:09.373" LastActivityDate="2018-10-14T11:26:09.373" Title="Did the Curiosity Rover take its own hands-free selfie?" Tags="|photography|nasa|mars|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22456" CreationDate="2014-07-22T03:15:25.533" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/30/how-curiosity-rover-took-selfie_n_5543343.html&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt; shared some explanations about how the photo was captured. The Rover had used ANOTHER arm to capture the selfies. NASA then collated the selfies to produce the image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.themarysue.com/curiosity-self-portrait/&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is the actual selfie taken with the camera from Curiosity's other arm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16852" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T08:56:00.927" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T08:56:00.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22452" CreationDate="2014-07-22T07:15:04.560" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;One would be mistaken by thinking the name of a condition determines whether the biology has been fully established or not.  For instance, Guillain–Barré syndrome, is still known as this, even though the biology is well known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fibromyalgia is a clearly recognised clinical syndrome for which the pathophysiology is gradually unravelling.  Patients start out with normal pain perception, and move to a state of hightened pain perception along with a host of other changes.  This may or may not respond to the usual treatment of aerobic exercise and cognitive based therapies, with so far, little good evidence for response to pharmacological agents ( though Naltrexone looks promising ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although the pathogenesis of fibromyalgia is not completely&#xA;  understood, research shows biochemical, metabolic, and&#xA;  immunoregulatory abnormalities. These substantiate the proposal that&#xA;  fibromyalgia can no longer be considered a subjective pain condition. [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of biological changes that can be detected:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The important biologic elements here include proinflammatory&#xA;  cytokines, the HPA axis, other neuroendocrine axes, and the autonomic&#xA;  nervous system. Growth hormone abnormalities are also thought to&#xA;  contribute to symptoms in fibromyalgia. [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There appears to be a genetic basis for fibromyalgia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High-throughput genotyping is rapidly identifying a series of&#xA;  single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) haplotypes that influence&#xA;  neurotransmitter levels and receptor levels in the brain and thus&#xA;  contribute to the various abnormalities in pain processing.[30] Such&#xA;  SNP haplotypes constitute vulnerability elements in the development of&#xA;  fibromyalgia and other central sensitivity syndromes. [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent study using Resting-state functional-connectivity MRI is also interesting showing network disruption in CNS processing [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study included 18 patients with fibromyalgia and 18 healthy&#xA;  individuals matched for age. They evaluated resting (intrinsic)&#xA;  connectivity in 3 brain networks: (1) the default mode network (DMN),&#xA;  which is most active at rest and is deactivated during performance of&#xA;  externally focused tasks; (2) the executive attention network (EAN),&#xA;  involved with cognitive processing of memory and attention; and (3)&#xA;  the medial visual network, which served as a control and is involved&#xA;  in processing visual information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fibromyalgia patients had greater connectivity within the DMN and&#xA;  right EAN and greater connectivity between the DMN and the insular&#xA;  cortex, a region of the brain that processes evoked pain. In addition,&#xA;  they found a direct link to ratings of self-reported spontaneous pain&#xA;  at the time of the scan and the extent of both right EAN and DMN&#xA;  connectivity to the insula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the researchers, the findings &quot;strongly implicate the&#xA;  insular cortex as being a key node in the elevated intrinsic&#xA;  connectivity in patients with fibromyalgia.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The results of this study provide direct evidence of disrupted&#xA;  intrinsic connectivity within multiple brain networks in patients with&#xA;  fibromyalgia,&quot; Dr. Napadow and colleagues conclude. Their approach&#xA;  &quot;represents a novel step forward in finding the neural correlates of&#xA;  spontaneous clinical pain,&quot; they add.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the difference between a disease and syndrome is often semantic, and doesn't contribute to management or understanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/329838-overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/329838-overview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/726425&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/726425&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19250" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T07:15:04.560" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22459" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-22T09:42:27.233" Score="1" ViewCount="105" Body="&lt;p&gt;There were a couple of incidence where passenger planes were &lt;em&gt;mistaken&lt;/em&gt; for fighter jets or military aeroplanes and were brought down with missiles. I am skeptical that if we have such an accurate missile, that can hit passenger planes 7 miles in the sky, can't they really identify them as what type of planes they are? May be superior vision devices or rador may be or otherwise?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am particularly referring to &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070518142130/http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=Minisite_Generic&amp;amp;content_type_id=1271&amp;amp;display_order=3&amp;amp;mini_id=1278&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;July 1988 incidence&lt;/a&gt; when US Carrier exploded an Iranian Airbus A300 by mistake (that it was F-14). Is it even possible to make such a blunder?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4813" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T13:15:20.507" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T13:15:20.507" Title="Can a commercial flight be mistaken for a fighter jet?" Tags="|aviation|military|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-07-22T13:33:10.127" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22411" CreationDate="2014-07-22T10:46:48.290" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-trained-by-israeli-mossad-nsa-documents-reveal/5391593&quot;&gt;The report&lt;/a&gt; you cite makes reference to an operation called &quot;The Hornet's Nest&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I was not able to find any reference to an operation by that name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No mention of a “hornet’s nest” plot can be found in Snowden’s leaked trove of U.S. intelligence documents, and even though Snowden has not publicly refuted the claim, it is safe to assume that the quoted interview never took place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://time.com/2992269/isis-is-an-american-plot-says-iran/&quot;&gt;Time.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears this rumor was started by &lt;a href=&quot;http://irna.ir&quot;&gt;irna.ir&lt;/a&gt; and made popular by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tehrantimes.com/&quot;&gt;tehrantimes.com&lt;/a&gt; running a front page on the story citing &lt;a href=&quot;http://irna.ir&quot;&gt;irna.ir&lt;/a&gt; as the source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21016" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T10:46:48.290" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22463" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-22T13:17:34.930" Score="10" ViewCount="1388" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I saw &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ispot.tv/ad/75pr/centrum-silver-your-eyes&quot;&gt;a commercial for Centrum&lt;/a&gt; that claims you can see the light of a single candle from ten miles away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was skeptical, but a trip to the internet claims that not only is that true, but you could actually see it from &lt;strong&gt;30&lt;/strong&gt; miles away. Most of what I found simply repeated that claim (some had varying numbers, but in the 10-30 range) with nothing to back it up. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/33895-human-eye.html&quot;&gt;One page&lt;/a&gt; detailed it a bit better, by giving some basic math based on the number of photons it takes to register a light in the eye. However, they still don't link to anything solid IMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously these numbers assume line-of-sight, since any distance over a few miles would be blocked by the horizon if on the Earth's surface. I also assume that &quot;the light from a single candle&quot; means roughly one &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candela&quot;&gt;candela&lt;/a&gt;, but nobody cares enough to clarify that I could find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main reason I'm skeptical is because I've seen ceremonial (small) bonfires on mountains a few miles away. Even with a much larger light and closer distance, they're pretty faint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any empirical evidence that human eyes can see a light source that small from that distance? This seems like a simple thing for people to test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19407" LastEditorUserId="19407" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T13:44:38.437" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T03:06:58.657" Title="Can we see a single candle X miles away?" Tags="|physiology|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22464" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-22T14:06:09.057" Score="3" ViewCount="1239" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read on several websites that a recent law compels North Korean men to cut their hair like Kim Jong Un does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where does this information come from? Is it reliable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example in Belgian press: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.levif.be/info/actualite/international/la-coree-du-nord-impose-une-unique-coupe-de-cheveux/article-4000571849522.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.levif.be/info/actualite/international/la-coree-du-nord-impose-une-unique-coupe-de-cheveux/article-4000571849522.htm&lt;/a&gt; (link in french)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20868" LastEditorUserId="20868" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T14:22:08.577" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T19:18:31.367" Title="Do North Korean men have to cut their hair like Kim Jong Un does?" Tags="|law|hair|north-korea|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22465" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-22T14:49:35.177" Score="9" ViewCount="267" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/world/middleeast/israels-iron-dome-system-is-at-center-of-debate.html?pagewanted=all&quot;&gt;New York Times, March 20&lt;/a&gt; about Israel's Air Defense System, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Dome&quot;&gt;Iron Dome&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Israeli officials initially claimed success rates of up to 90 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But a growing chorus of weapons experts in the United States and in Israel say their studies — based largely on analyses of hits and misses captured on video — suggest that Iron Dome destroyed no more than 40 percent of incoming warheads and perhaps far fewer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From such evidence, as well as from rocket and warhead basics, Mr. Lloyd estimates that the system succeeded 30 percent to 40 percent of the time in detonating enemy warheads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the Iron Dome system effective 90% of the time?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-22T15:22:48.900" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T15:22:48.900" Title="Is Israel's Air Defense System, Iron Dome, 90% successful?" Tags="|military|israel|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22466" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-22T15:57:28.347" Score="3" ViewCount="469" Body="&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gallupstrengthscenter.com/Home/en-US/Index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;their website&lt;/a&gt; Gallup claim that their Clifton StrengthsFinder test is able to accurately identify personal strengths. I am skeptical of this method because the test itself simply asks people how they view themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm curious what science, if any, there is to support the claims that Gallup is making.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gallup has been careful to not make very specific claims about their test on their website, which seems suspicious to me. They make a few claims about the utility of knowing the information the test is meant to provide, but no specific claims about the test being able to provide that information. However, there are some more specific claims in &lt;a href=&quot;http://strengths.gallup.com/private/Resources/CSFTechnicalReport031005.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this technical report&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="985" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T15:57:28.347" Title="Is Gallup's Clifton StrengthsFinder able to identify the strengths of an individual?" Tags="|cognitive-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22467" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-22T16:58:42.820" Score="7" ViewCount="733" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2014/07/video-of-rebel-buk-launchers-headed.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MISH'S&#xA;Global Economic&#xA;Trend Analysis&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the CBS program “Face the Nation,” Mr. Kerry referred to a video that the Ukrainians have made public showing an SA-11 unit heading back to Russia after the downing of the plane with “a missing missile or so.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video referenced by the New York Times was, in fact, posted on the Facebook account of the Ukrainian Interior Minister. The allegation was that the launcher was crossing the border with Russia.&amp;gt;However, going by the billboard and other features of the scenery, Russian bloggers and news sources claim to have identified the road in the video as having been taken in or near the town of Krasnoarmeisk (&amp;quot;Krasnoarmiysk&amp;quot; in Ukrainian), which has been under Kiev's control since May.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, the billboard is supposedly advertising a Krasnoarmeisk car dealership.  Also, one of the structures in the background is said to be a construction materials store on Gorkii Street, Krasnoarmeisk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that this town is (very roughly) 120 kilometers from the Russian border and 80 kilometers from where the Malaysian 777 went down.  And again, it has been under Kiev's control since May.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was the video in question taken in an area in Ukraine/Kiev control?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T20:31:21.300" Title="Was the MH17 video taken in Ukraine-held territory?" Tags="|video|ukraine|mh17|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22468" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22791" CreationDate="2014-07-22T17:22:45.290" Score="45" ViewCount="8065" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.giwersworld.org/opinion/9-words.phtml&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; by Matt Giwer saying that the cause of the Israeli-Arab war is that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Jews, [...] did in fact steal the land from the Palestinians. They actually bought and paid for at most 9% of it. In 1948 they took over 73% of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Israel own the lands it occupied in 1948, according to international law? Is the 73% figure correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2019-11-12T07:35:38.623" LastActivityDate="2019-11-12T07:35:38.623" Title="Did Jews &quot;take over&quot; 73% of their land from Palestinians?" Tags="|politics|israel|jews|palestine|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22468" CreationDate="2014-07-22T17:22:45.290" Score="68" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In 1947&lt;/strong&gt;, the United Nations voted to partition British Palestine Mandate territory, by allotting 55% to the Jewish population and 45% to the Arab population.&lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt;. The Palestinian Arabs and surrounding Arab states &lt;strong&gt;rejected&lt;/strong&gt; the division of the land on which they had settled and lived for years.&lt;sup&gt;(2)&lt;/sup&gt; (in the interest of fairness Jews were also settled and lived in that land for centuries), and the partition as designed by the UN was &lt;strong&gt;not implemented&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;sup&gt;(3)&lt;/sup&gt;. With the Mandate 'wind-down' approaching, armed conflict between elements of the Arab and Jewish populations increased rapidly&lt;sup&gt;(4)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In 1948&lt;/strong&gt;, the Jewish Agency officially announced the establishment of the State of Israel on the territory as defined by the partition plan. &lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; Rejecting that fact, the armies of the five neighbouring Arab states attacked Israel. The Israeli forces defeated the attacking Arab armies and in the process gained more land.&lt;sup&gt;(6)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In 1949&lt;/strong&gt;, Israel controlled 77% of the land (up from 55% as per the partition plan before the Arab states attacked): all sectors except the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. &lt;sup&gt;7&lt;/sup&gt;During these events more than half of Palestine’s native Arab population fled  (mostly under urging from neighbouring Arab leaders), 531 villages were destroyed, and eleven urban neighbourhoods  were emptied of their inhabitants. &lt;sup&gt;(8)&lt;/sup&gt;. 700,000 Palestinian Arab refugees resulted from these actions. &lt;sup&gt;9&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;References&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/9a798adbf322aff38525617b006d88d7/07175de9fa2de563852568d3006e10f3?OpenDocument&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Data from the Report of UNSCOP: 3 September 1947: CHAPTER 4: A COMMENTARY ON PARTITION&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Benny Morris (2008). &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war&lt;/a&gt;. Yale University Press. pp. 66, 67, 72. Retrieved 24 July 2013. &amp;quot; p.66, at 1946 &amp;quot;The League demanded independence for Palestine as a “unitary” state, with an Arab majority and minority rights for the Jews.&amp;quot; ; p.67, at 1947 &amp;quot;The League’s Political Committee met in Sofar, Lebanon, on 16–19 September, and urged the Palestine Arabs to fight partition, which it called “aggression,” “without mercy.” The League promised them, in line with Bludan, assistance “in manpower, money and equipment” should the United Nations endorse partition.&amp;quot; ; p. 72, at Dec 1947 &amp;quot;The League vowed, in very general language, “to try to stymie the partition plan and prevent the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Itzhak Galnoor (1995). &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=nvUNlwD9cd0C&amp;amp;pg=PA289&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Partition of Palestine: Decision Crossroads in the Zionist Movement&lt;/a&gt;. SUNY Press. pp. 289–. ISBN 978-0-7914-2193-2. Retrieved 3 July 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Benny Morris, Righteous Victims (Vintage Books, 2001), 196-214; John Quigley, The Case For Palestine, An International Law Perspective, Revised and Updated (Duke University Press, 2005) 39-44, 57-65&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://unispal.un.org/pdfs/DPI2499.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Question of Palestine and the United Nations&lt;/a&gt;, (U.N., 2008), 9, 10&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;John Quigley, The Case For Palestine, An International Law Perspective, Revised and Updated (Duke University Press, 2005) 39-44, 57-65; see also, Ari Shavit, My Promised Land, (Spiegel &amp;amp; Grau, 2013), 273-333 (For an example of the displacement, dispossession and murder of Palestinians in Lydda, July 1948)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;John Quigley, The Case For Palestine, An International Law Perspective, Revised and Updated (Duke University Press, 2005) 89; see also, Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall, (W.W. Norton &amp;amp; Company, 2001), 47 (“Israel had expanded its territory from 55 percent of Mandatory Palestine allocated to it by the United Nations to 79 percent.”); see also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Armistice_Agreements&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Armistice_Agreements&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, (One World Publications, 2008), xii-xiii.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unrwa.org/userfiles/2010011791015.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The United Nations and the Palestinian Refugees&lt;/a&gt;, (UNRWA, January 2007), 2, 6;  ; see also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees&lt;/a&gt;, see also, Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall, (W.W. Norton &amp;amp; Company, 2001), 54; Rabbi Michael Lerner, Embracing Israel/Palestine, (Tikkun Books, 2012), 123-139.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T07:38:07.027" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22470" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-22T18:07:36.800" Score="4" ViewCount="788" Body="&lt;p&gt;On Al-hadath News is this picture &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alhadathnews.net/archives/119615&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;posted&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Warning: Disturbing image&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ati0Y.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and claims that the Free Syrian Army posted this picture claiming it is &quot;[their] youngest hostage.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that the baby was taken hostage and photographed with a gun holding its head up towards the camera, with two more guns pointed at it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorDisplayName="user20862" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T01:32:47.237" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T20:00:00.107" Title="Did the Free Syrian Army take a (pictured) toddler hostage?" Tags="|war|syria|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22464" CreationDate="2014-07-22T19:18:31.367" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The haircut itself is called the 'Dear leader haircut' and is one of a small number of styles men can choose from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?cid=1103&amp;amp;MainCatID=11&amp;amp;id=20130223000071&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wantchinatimes.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Male university students in North Korea are now required to get the same haircut as their leader Kim Jong-un, it is reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The state-sanctioned guideline was introduced in the capital Pyongyang about two weeks ago, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rfa.org/korean/in_focus/hair-03252014095717.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Radio Free Asia reports&lt;/a&gt;. It is now being rolled out across the country&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-26747649&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC News Article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21016" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-22T19:18:31.367" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17042" CreationDate="2014-07-22T23:52:42.730" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it is not fair to say that &quot;a missed telegraph pole delivery&quot; was &quot;what caused&quot; World War II. Even if we are willing to give the Joker the benefit of doubt, that he meant &quot;one of the causes&quot;, the impact of that one missed delivery is much less significant than The Joker, or the web articles you quoted, imply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Poincare's decision to invade the Ruhr came at the end of a protracted, many-year battle with Germany over reparations, during which time Germany had defaulted repeatedly on their reparations. This problem was made worse for France by Britain's reluctance to enforce those reparations in the face of German inflation: Britain wanted France to reduce, or at least temporarily delay, those reparation payments, while France considered the issue non-negotiable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;France (and Belgium) had been arguing for the occupation of the Ruhr for much of 1922. One of the payments that Germany was supposed to be making regularly was timber deliveries; their default on one such payment gave the French government an excuse to invade. Poincare, by this point, was just looking for an excuse to force Germany to repay, so the actual event (the missed timber delivery) was almost incidental. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not seen anything to indicate what the undelivered timber was to be used for, though France was in the process of rebuilding their infrastructure from the war, and it's entirely possible that the shipment was either intended for, or consisted of, machined telegraph poles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Ref: Marks, Sally; &quot;The Myth of Reparations&quot;, &lt;em&gt;Central European History&lt;/em&gt;, Volume 11, Issue 3.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, (at least according to historian Gordon Martel) the invasion itself did not cause Germany's hyperinflation, which had started much earlier, and was mostly the reason why Germany defaulted in the first place. (German currency was so useless, France insisted on payment in real goods; those real goods were needed by Germany for its own industry, and without them, their currency just got worse.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;France also did not maintain its strong position over Germany for very long; France's currency tanked soon afterwards, Poincare subsequently lost power in 1924, and France withdrew in 1925. Poincare's successor was effectively bullied by the British and Americans into giving up much of their owed reparation payments, meaning that Germany arguably came out &lt;em&gt;better&lt;/em&gt; after the invasion than they started out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Germany, in fact, was in relatively good economic condition compared to France, since it suffered less damage from WWI. This is the main reason France was so reluctant to reduce their payments (with less rebuilding needed, France feared Germany would become the dominant European power before anyone else was strong enough to stop them -- which was almost true). German political opposition to the reparations, however, was very real, and existed long before the Ruhr occupation happened. Even if the occupation had never happened, and Germany had gotten its concessions in 1922 instead of 1924, there's no indication that the anti-reparations sentiment (which itself was just one small element of Hitler's rise to power) would have diminished at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Ref: Martel, Gordon; &lt;em&gt;The Origins of the Second World War&lt;/em&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=3xuZqwfrhRAC&quot;&gt;http://books.google.com/books?id=3xuZqwfrhRAC&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At best, the occupation may have &lt;em&gt;accelerated&lt;/em&gt; events that were already underway, but they certainly were not the cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just noticed this bit from Wikipedia in the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, the occupation of the Ruhr by the French  ... did more damage to the economy than the reparations payments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and realized I never addressed it in my answer, but it's addressed in the Martel book pretty well. The occupation of the Ruhr didn't do anything to the German economy per se. However, the German &lt;em&gt;response&lt;/em&gt; to that occupation was to implement an official policy of &quot;passive resistance&quot;, which included telling most of the factory workers in the area that they were no longer obligated to come to work (because their work would just be handed over to France). &lt;em&gt;That&lt;/em&gt; decision did some serious damage to the German economy, and did lead to some anti-Weimar riots, an eventual change in government, and a state of emergency. This was happening during the time that Hitler serving his jail sentence and writing &lt;em&gt;Mein Kampf&lt;/em&gt;, so he was undoubtedly influenced by those events. But, it was the actions of the democratic German government, more so than the French actions, that the right-wing parties were rallying against.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7998" LastEditorUserId="7998" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T18:36:37.100" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T18:36:37.100" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22476" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-23T05:45:22.550" Score="26" ViewCount="5295" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-case-for-spider-conservation-they-keep-pests-from-devouring-humans-food-supply/2014/07/21/07b0a21e-0b8c-11e4-8341-b8072b1e7348_story.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Washington Post article&lt;/a&gt;, Norman Platnick of the American Museum of Natural History is quoted as saying the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If spiders disappeared, we would face famine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spiders are primary controllers of insects. Without spiders, all of our crops would be consumed by those pests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kashmirobserver.net/news/heads-tails/we-all-die-less-then-5-year-without-spiders&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; that says the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we took spiders off the Earth, we would all die in less than 5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without all those hungry, carnivorous spiders, insect populations would explode, food crops would be decimated, ecological balances would be ravaged, and humans would probably starve within a matter of months – if they hadn’t already died from insect borne diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that humans would go extinct if spiders disappeared is bolstered by Platnick in &lt;a href=&quot;http://askabiologist.asu.edu/podcasts/spiderman-meets-spider-man&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an interview&lt;/a&gt; in which he questions if humans would even exist without spiders:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Norm: [...] And they are in fact the dominant predators of insects, and without them we'd be in dire straits. In many cases most of our crops, for example, would be totally destroyed by the insects that already do take a large toll on our crop production, but the spiders help control them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Biology: [...] What if there were no spiders on Earth, what would the world be like? Would many of the other living things still be here? Would we even be here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Norm: I'd say it's questionable whether we would be here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are spiders really that important to crops and humans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13812" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-05-19T22:35:00.957" Title="Would humans starve if spiders disappeared?" Tags="|agriculture|extinction-event|entomology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22477" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22463" CreationDate="2014-07-23T08:51:20.663" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;What you described sounds like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_threshold&quot;&gt;Absolute Threshold&lt;/a&gt; in neuroscience. It is commonly &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychology.about.com/od/glossaryfromatoz/g/absolutethresh.htm&quot;&gt;defined&lt;/a&gt; as &quot;The lowest amount of stimulus that a person can detect 50 percent of the time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to an experimental research conducted by Hecht, Shlaer, and Pirenne (1942), the smallest number of photons that could elicit a visual experience is 90 photons, while physiologically, human eye can detect as few as 9 photons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I don't really know how that amount of photons translated to a candle from 30 miles away, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3406000012.html&quot;&gt;Gale Encyclopedia of Psychology (2001)&lt;/a&gt; did give an example of Absolute Threshold for human vision as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The amount of light present if someone held up a single candle 30 mi (48 km) away from us, if our eyes were used to the dark. If a person in front of you held up a candle and began backing up at the rate of one foot (30 cm) per second, that person would have to back up for 44 hours before the flame became invisible.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, there is an empirical evidence for it. But it is highly unlikely for it to happen in real-life experience, as there are many other factors that influence our perception of a stimulus, such as motivation, expectation, adaptation to the stimulus, cognitive process, not to mention many other stimulus that we perceive and process in real-life experience at any given time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21262" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T09:02:39.097" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T09:02:39.097" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22479" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-23T15:45:06.643" Score="13" ViewCount="762" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many (western) sources claim that Putin (actively) supports the rebels in eastern Ukraine, more specifically the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donbass_People%27s_Militia&quot;&gt;Donbass People's Militia&lt;/a&gt;.  For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28421196&quot;&gt;BBC News writes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Russia was obviously supporting the militants in the Donbass region, while still pursuing a policy of plausible deniability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/07/enormous-array-of-facts-that-russia-supported-rebels-accused-of-shooting-down-plane-says-john-kerry/&quot;&gt;Kerry claims there is an enormous array of facts that Russia supported rebels&lt;/a&gt;, but remains vague.&#xA;However, when checking the collection Wikipedia has made for &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donbass_People%27s_Militia&amp;amp;oldid=618132779#Equipment&quot;&gt;the militants' war material&lt;/a&gt;, most of it appears to be stolen from military bases, captured, or even taken from museums.  Wikipedias sources are incomplete, but the table doesn't list anything that can only have come from Russia.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim that Putin supports the rebels in eastern Ukraine is a rather strong one with profound political implications, so it deserves to be studied carefully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What publicly available evidence is there for the claim that Russia supports the Donpass People's Militia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; By &lt;em&gt;support&lt;/em&gt;, I mean that the national government of Russia provides direct support, in the form of money, training, by sending personnel, or otherwise, to the rebels.  I am not skeptical of claims that Russian &lt;em&gt;volunteers&lt;/em&gt; are fighting with the rebels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T17:59:29.210" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T22:15:21.777" Title="Does or did Russia support the Donbass People's Militia?" Tags="|politics|russia|ukraine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-08-20T16:41:47.650" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22480" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22482" CreationDate="2014-07-23T16:13:28.540" Score="8" ViewCount="3163" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.celebritynetworth.com/richest-celebrities/directors/michael-moore-net-worth/&quot;&gt;Celebrity Net Worth&lt;/a&gt; website, this claim is made:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Michael Moore net worth: Michael Moore is a documentary filmmaker and author who has a net worth of $50 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?  This seems incredible to me because of his movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T17:53:48.360" Title="Is Michael Moore worth approximately $50 million?" Tags="|celebrities|wealth|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22480" CreationDate="2014-07-23T17:09:33.850" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is most likely to be true: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is mentionned and well-sourced on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moore&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moore married movie producer Kathleen Glynn on October 19, 1991. He&#xA;  filed for divorce on June 17, 2013. At the time of his divorce, he&#xA;  was estimated to have a &lt;strong&gt;net worth of $50 million&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, all sources point out to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.celebritynetworth.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.celebritynetworth.com/&lt;/a&gt;. But you should know that it is estimated. According to that website, he: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;sold a documentary to Warner Brothers for &lt;strong&gt;$3,000,000&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;released &lt;strong&gt;ten documentaries&lt;/strong&gt;, several books and a television show.&lt;sup&gt;(2)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reportedly generated an additional &lt;strong&gt;$17,000,0000&lt;/strong&gt; from Sicko.&lt;sup&gt;(3)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;received an advance of &lt;strong&gt;$1 million for “Dude Where’s My Country” and also a huge percentage from book sales&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;(4)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;earned &lt;strong&gt;$21,600,000&lt;/strong&gt; from Fahrenheit. &lt;sup&gt;(5)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gained &lt;strong&gt;$2,190,000&lt;/strong&gt; from DVD sales. &lt;sup&gt;(4)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the math, it is close to &lt;strong&gt;$50,000,000&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google provided this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=3&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;uact=8&amp;amp;ved=0CCAQFjAC&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsmax.com%2FTheWire%2Fmichael-moore-divorce-50m%2F2013%2F07%2F19%2Fid%2F516040&amp;amp;ei=n-vPU663AoWI7AbPs4GYBw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGnztjqMW8PuboNbQwtBgOZtg69VA&amp;amp;sig2=fpE6bwnZFmw_eX1Ep9H3_A&amp;amp;bvm=bv.71667212,d.ZWU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; also,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Xaxh2.png&quot; alt=&quot;hakuna matata&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (1) &quot;Roger &amp;amp; Me,&quot; commentary by Michael Moore in special features added in 2003 to the DVD. December 2003, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_%26_Me#History&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;also&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (2) Moore's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Moore&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; page. &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (3) See this &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jun/29/entertainment/et-moore29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; form LA times. &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (4) See this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celeb/director/michael-moore-net-worth/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt;. Not sure if reliable though. &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (5) &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12402807&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Film-maker Michael Moore sues Weinstein brothers&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. BBC. 9 February 2011. Retrieved 5 October 2011. &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T17:53:48.360" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T17:53:48.360" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22483" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-23T19:16:09.217" Score="15" ViewCount="607" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://powertochange.com/experience/sex-love/datingbadboys/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Definition:&lt;/a&gt; A bad boy is a man who seems outwardly attractive, but is unwilling to offer sacrificial love in a relationship. He is too immature and preoccupied with himself to share genuine compassion, concern, or acceptance. A bad boy lacks character and might exhibit the following behavior: lying, aloofness, irresponsible dreaming, fear of commitment, sexual promiscuity, addiction to substances or pornography, selfishness, hunger for power, disinterest in surrendering to God, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elie Daily wrote wrote a whole &lt;a href=&quot;http://elitedaily.com/women/every-girl-secretly-loves-tucker-max/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Women Love Bad Boys&lt;/strong&gt; and explained the reason why women are more attracted to bad boys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any experiemental or scientific studies that show that girls are more attracted to bad boys ? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20763" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T17:51:36.600" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T20:13:21.487" Title="Are women more attracted to &quot;bad guys&quot;?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2014-08-01T20:13:35.963" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22484" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-23T19:20:35.693" Score="9" ViewCount="550" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this troubling [not suitable for all audiences] &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/v/sBakqLUBWP0&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt;, you see a young man being shot. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2bb0lu/cellphone_video_captures_gaza_civilian_shot_and/cj3s0tv&quot;&gt;many claims on Reddit that it was fake&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2bh76w/the_video_of_a_young_unarmed_gazan_man_shot_dead/&quot;&gt;then claims that it was real&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a way to know for sure if this is real or not? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally have no clue (this is why I post it here)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a scientific way to prove / disprove it is real / fake? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this is a sensitive video and discretion is suggested. I'd be terribly sad if it is indeed real. My condolences to this person's family, and I condemn whomever shot him, if it turns out real. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8786" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-23T20:14:34.737" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T04:13:10.757" Title="Does this video show a sniper shooting a Palestinian?" Tags="|military|video|palestine|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22485" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-23T19:57:20.113" Score="8" ViewCount="391" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading a little on &lt;a href=&quot;https://space.stackexchange.com/a/4094&quot;&gt;spaceexploration.se&lt;/a&gt; and I came across the following comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of nonsense from Mars One is quite astounding. The number of people who have swallowed that nonsense hook, line, and sinker, is even more astounding. –  &lt;a href=&quot;https://space.stackexchange.com/users/2752/david-hammen&quot;&gt;David Hammen&lt;/a&gt; Apr 26 at 23:17&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MarsOne has made extremely improbable claims. They claim that they're going to get by with sending people to mars without recycling water, for example. Which means several tons per person of water that they really don't need to carry, in lieu of several dozen kilograms of equipment and several hundred kilograms of water. There are good reasons to carry that much water, but no good reasons to not carry the recycling gear and a few dozen liters less. –  &lt;a href=&quot;https://space.stackexchange.com/users/158/aramis&quot;&gt;aramis&lt;/a&gt; May 2 at 9:14&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On their site, the MarsOne team claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While complex, the Mars One Mission is feasible. The science and technology required to place humans on Mars exists today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the go into details about the technical aspects of the plan &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mars-one.com/mission/technical-feasibility&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. They further clarify on their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mars-one.com/mission/risks-and-challenges&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;risks and challenges page&lt;/a&gt; that they are not developing any new technology, but simply using things that already exist. Therefore, it should be a simple matter to check if we can actually do the things they want to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is their plan reasonable given the current state of space technology?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5027" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-23T19:57:20.113" Title="Is MarsOne a hoax, or are their claims reasonable?" Tags="|technology|space-flight|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-07-23T20:03:12.780" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13794" CreationDate="2014-07-24T00:58:22.140" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The cause of Arafat's death remains unclear till today. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Numerous theories have been suggested and they include: AIDS, polonium poisoning, cirrhosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2012, The &lt;strong&gt;French&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Swiss&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Russian&lt;/strong&gt; forensic teams all collected Arafat's body samples from the &lt;strong&gt;Palestinian&lt;/strong&gt; medical team. &lt;sup&gt; (1) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;French team&lt;/strong&gt; found traces of the &lt;em&gt;radioactive isotope polonium&lt;/em&gt; but concluded that Arafat died of natural causes.&lt;sup&gt; (2) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;Swiss team&lt;/strong&gt;  found levels of &lt;em&gt;polonium&lt;/em&gt; in Arafat's ribs pelvis 18 to 36 times the average, and they were 83% assertive that polonium poisoning occurred. &lt;sup&gt; (3) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar forensic test conducted by &lt;strong&gt;Russian team&lt;/strong&gt; said Swiss reports were inconclusive &lt;sup&gt; (4) &lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There goes the dispute about his death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All in all, the &lt;strong&gt;official statement announcing his death&lt;/strong&gt; did not succeed in determining a cause of death, only saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;mystery blood disorder&lt;sup&gt;(5)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus it is safe to disregard all the theories in this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We, the community of &lt;em&gt;skeptics.stackexchange.com&lt;/em&gt;, are not doctors nor pathologists, and we cannot determine or judge on the real cause of death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the answer to your question is: &lt;h1&gt; &lt;strong&gt;UNKNOWN&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/h1&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (1) &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/27/us-palestinians-arafat-idUSBRE8AP1A120121127&quot;&gt;Experts exhume Arafat, seek evidence of poison&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Reuters. Retrieved 27 November 2012. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/12/french-experts-rule-out-arafat-poisoning-2013123145211499109.html&quot;&gt;French experts rule out Arafat poisoning.&lt;/a&gt; Aljazeera. 04 December 2013. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (3) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.556656&quot;&gt;Swiss team: Arafat poisoned to death with polonium&lt;/a&gt;. Reuters/Haaretz, 6 November 2013. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (4) &lt;a href=&quot;http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/11/8/russian-study-callsarafatpoisoningclaimsunsubstantiated.html&quot;&gt;Russian study calls Arafat poisoning claims&lt;/a&gt; 'unsubstantiated' Aljazeera. November 8, 2013 &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (5) &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/11/12/1100131178126.html?from=storylhs&quot;&gt;Arafat's doctor calls for autopsy&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. The Sydney Morning Herald. 12 November 2004. &#xA;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T20:22:06.277" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T20:22:06.277" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22487" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22463" CreationDate="2014-07-24T03:06:58.657" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tau.ac.il/~kantor/QUIZ/96/A03.96.html&quot;&gt;This page, which includes relevant calculations, suggests a limit closer to 10km&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The calculations compare seeing a candle to seeing a 6th magnitude star. There's additional discussion assuming an ability to see 7th and 8th magnitude stars, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stargazing.net/david/constel/howmanystars.html&quot;&gt;6th is generally considered the naked eye limit&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even 10km strikes me as ambitious, since it does not take into account &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_seeing&quot;&gt;atmospheric seeing&lt;/a&gt; which would &quot;smear&quot; the candle into an extended object, lowering its &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_brightness&quot;&gt;surface brightness&lt;/a&gt;&quot; considerably. Additionally, while the page mentions light pollution, in most locations that would have a dominant effect (just as most nights, most of us cannot see 6th magnitude stars). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T03:06:58.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22489" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22492" CreationDate="2014-07-24T12:32:21.410" Score="50" ViewCount="27503" Body="&lt;p&gt;I stumbled across this claim pretty often in the last few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GQthA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the problem is that I wasn't able to reproduce it but maybe it was just because I rarely visit tall buildings with multiple floors (Or I did something completely wrong, which I doubt because you just have to hold down 2 buttons). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often you also find claims that this trick works with &lt;strong&gt;absolutely every elevator worldwide&lt;/strong&gt;. Now my question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it work? And if yes, are there any exceptions/limitations to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18504" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T02:26:19.020" Title="Does the &quot;Nonstop Elevator Hack&quot; work?" Tags="|security|elevators|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22491" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22505" CreationDate="2014-07-24T13:52:21.047" Score="8" ViewCount="1820" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many sources online seem to be claiming that, when in lack of Zyklon B, Nazis used their truck exhaust pipes directly as a source of gas. Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8708" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T05:25:08.900" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T05:25:08.900" Title="Did Nazis use alternatives to Zyklon B?" Tags="|world-war-ii|germany|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22492" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22489" CreationDate="2014-07-24T14:05:15.377" Score="50" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, this is nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/17/elevator-hack&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; from The New Yorker, which explored that claim. They asked some lift specialists about it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It’s just not so,” Charles Buckman, an elevator and escalator consultant in North Carolina, said the other day. “If it happens, it’s just happenstance.” He went on, “There’s no linkage in the control system between the door-control system and the floor-call system. ”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there's some more about it in the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course you could try it out yourself with different lifts, and chances are that some of them will bring you directly up to the floor you want, not because it works but because nobody else wanted to get on. This might then lead you to believe that it works on some lifts, even though it's really just chance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16700" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T14:05:15.377" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22494" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22497" CreationDate="2014-07-24T14:44:02.397" Score="8" ViewCount="2414" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/23/obamacare-insurance-uninsured-rate_n_5615052.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Huffington Post claims&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More Than 10 Million People Got Insurance Because Of Obamacare, Feds Say&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  The number of Americans without health insurance declined by 10.3 million because of Obamacare enrollment, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Harvard School of Public Health, published in The New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That represents a reduction in the uninsured rate for adults aged 18 to 64 from 21 percent last September to 16.3 percent this April, the HHS analysis concludes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EdXV0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/17/census-uninsured-2012_n_3941339.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;previous article&lt;/a&gt; from the Huffington Post it shows historical uninsured rates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ADj4x.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears by the second graph that there's been no change from the historical trend.  Have &quot;More Than 10 Million People Got Insurance Because Of Obamacare&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2014-07-24T20:12:32.533" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T20:12:32.533" Title="Did more than 10 million people get health insurance due to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare)?" Tags="|united-states|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22395" CreationDate="2014-07-24T15:13:38.243" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;A riot in the modern sense of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/riot&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;violent disturbance of the peace by the crowd&lt;/a&gt;, no. However, with that said, it is important to remember that the meaning of words do change with time. If we look at the aforementioned &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_English_Dictionary&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oxford English Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; we note the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1.3 archaic Uncontrolled revelry; rowdy behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back to the 1913 edition we can find the &lt;a href=&quot;http://1913.mshaffer.com/d/search/_words.word,riot&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;following entry for 'riot'&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wanton or unrestrained behavior; uproar; tumult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His headstrong riot hath no curb. Shak.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Excessive and exxpensive[sic] feasting; wild and loose festivity; revelry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Venus loveth riot and dispense. Chaucer. The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to- day. Pope.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The tumultuous disturbance of the public peace by an unlawful assembly of three or more persons in the execution of some private&#xA;  object.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To run riot, to act wantonly or without restraint.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word riot itself also appears to have an interesting history, again &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2011/08/riotous-words/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;noted by the Oxford English Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Riot has been in use in English since the beginning of the 13th&#xA;  century, with the initial meaning of contrariness, and went on to mean&#xA;  the pursuit of an extravagant lifestyle. It wasn’t until the end of&#xA;  the fourteenth century that it took on the meaning of ‘disturbance or&#xA;  civil unrest caused by a crowd’. This sense has stayed with us ever&#xA;  since (possibly because riots themselves have never really gone away),&#xA;  and also given rise to a number of related, riotous words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There doesn't appear to be any debate that there was rowdy behavior at the premiere of the show as it is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rite_of_Spring#Premiere&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;well documented on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; and the full version of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/17/arts/dance/rite-of-spring-1913.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1913 New York Times article&lt;/a&gt; which notes the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The Consecration of Spring&quot; was received with a storm of hissing. The&#xA;  manager M. Astrue however, was devised a novel method of silencing a&#xA;  demonstration. When hisses are mingled with counter-cheers, as they&#xA;  were the other night. M. Astruc orders the lights turned up. Instantly&#xA;  the bowing and hissing stop. Well-known people who are hostile to the&#xA;  ballet do not desire to appear in an undignified role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, while there is no evidence to support a riot in the modern sense of the term; however, as the word was understood at the time, the rowdy behavior of audiences very well could have been called a &quot;riot.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2017-09-21T14:12:03.567" LastActivityDate="2017-09-21T14:12:03.567" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22494" CreationDate="2014-07-24T15:13:55.383" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The source they list is a recent report from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsr1406753&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New England Journal of Medicine&lt;/a&gt;. The 10.3M number is given there, but there are a few other factors to consider.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your main concern seems to be about the historical trend. They say this about that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As compared with the baseline trend, the uninsured rate declined by&#xA;5.2 percentage points by the second quarter of 2014, a 26% relative decline from the 2012–2013 period. Combined with 2014 Census estimates&#xA;of 198 million adults 18 to 64 years of age,19 this corresponds to&#xA;10.3 million adults gaining coverage, although depending on the model and confidence intervals, our sensitivity analyses imply a wide range&#xA;from 7.3 to 17.2 million adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't clearly say what time period/method they use to get the &amp;quot;baseline trend&amp;quot;, so it's hard to give a precise figure, but it's clear that they're adjusting for &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; sort of previous trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also note that the major gains were in demographics consistent with the predicted effects of the law:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pattern of coverage gains was consistent with the effects of the&#xA;ACA, with major gains for persons likely to be eligible for expanded&#xA;Medicaid on the basis of their income and state of residence but&#xA;smaller and nonsignificant changes for low-income adults in states&#xA;without Medicaid expansion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolute gains were largest among young adults and Hispanics, two&#xA;groups with high uninsured rates at baseline. State-level estimates of&#xA;coverage gains were significantly associated with official HHS&#xA;enrollment statistics, showing that each percentage point of the state&#xA;population enrolling via the marketplaces was associated with a&#xA;half-point decline in the uninsured rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, they are careful to point out that the study is not perfect, and in the discussion section they talk about limiting factors, such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, the inherent lack of a control group precludes a causal&#xA;interpretation for these findings, and other unmeasured factors may&#xA;have contributed to these changes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, it looks like HuffPo did what most journalists do: Take a single number/soundbite from a paper and report it. There are confounding factors, and the number quoted is jut an estimate, but it's clear they have taken a lot into consideration. It's not just a WAG.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19407" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T15:13:55.383" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13794" CreationDate="2014-07-24T17:49:42.817" Score="8" Body="&lt;h3&gt;No one knows for sure.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His remains &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; exhumed in November 2012, and samples were taken by Swiss, French, and Russian research teams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Swiss&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Swiss report was made public in November of 2013.  It's available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/killing-arafat/swiss-forensic-report-arafat-death-201311671255163780.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; if anyone wants to crawl through all 108 pages of it.  According to the news media, they said that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;taking into account analytical limitations such as the time elapsed since Mr. Arafat’s death, its findings &amp;quot;moderately support the proposition&amp;quot; that the death was the consequence of polonium poisoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/world/middleeast/swiss-report-supports-theory-arafat-was-poisoned.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NY Times&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/06/world/meast/arafat-remains-polonium/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt; goes into a bit more detail on those &amp;quot;analytical limitations&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eight years passed between the death and the exhumation. Because polonium-210 has a half-life of just 138 days, its detection after eight years is &amp;quot;very difficult and subject to uncertainties.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effectively, their conclusion was that his body made the surroundings more radioactive.  They deliberately didn't &lt;em&gt;definitively&lt;/em&gt; conclude whether that was because he was deliberately or accidentally poisoned, or whether there was some other cause - just that it &lt;em&gt;supported&lt;/em&gt; the theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The French&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The french report was never released to the public, but had portions leaked anonymously and was spoken about by Arafat's widow.  Reportedly (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25205170&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/03/world/europe/france-arafat-death-probe/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/world/middleeast/tests-on-arafat-find-no-proof-of-radiation-poisoning.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NY Times&lt;/a&gt;), the team found higher-than-normal traces of polonium, but concluded he died from a &amp;quot;generalized infection&amp;quot;.  They concluded that the polonium came from the environment and made his remains radioactive after his death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Russians&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Russian report has also not been released to the public, and has been discussed even less than than the French.  There was an early leak (later denied) that they hadn't found any polonium at all, but they have officially said that he died of natural causes (not polonium poisoning) (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25518813&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/27/world/middleeast/russian-inquiry-finds-no-radiation-link-to-arafats-death.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NY Times&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to confuse things more, the BBC article has this interesting quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agency had completed its work, [the head of Russia's Federal Medical-Biological Agency, Vladimir Uiba] said, and there was general agreement with its findings. &amp;quot;Even the Swiss withdrew their statements and agreed with us, and the French confirmed our conclusions,&amp;quot; Mr Uiba was quoted as saying by Interfax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Francois Bochud, the head of the Lausanne institute that carried out the parallel Swiss inquiry, told AFP news agency the Russian findings had no scientific foundation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Where does this leave us?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As stated above, no one knows for sure.  As far as I can tell, both the French and Palestinian investigations (who both have access to the full reports) are still open, which implies that there was nothing obviously wrong with any of the reports.  No one has come forward with an explanation of why they disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His symptoms (according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cause_of_Yasser_Arafat%27s_death#History_of_illness&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;) are consistent with the effects that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/27/health/polonium-arafat-explainer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;polonium can cause&lt;/a&gt;, including liver and kidney damage, nausea, vomiting, and so on.  However, there are many conditions and diseases that would also cause those symptoms, so there's nothing conclusive there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;TLDR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's absolutely &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; that Arafat died due to polonium poisoning, but it's been way too long since 2004 to be able to prove it one way or the other.  The scientists can't agree, and no one else has more than theories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T23:15:13.233" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19744" CreationDate="2014-07-24T18:56:22.940" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Alkaline&quot; diet is a wrongly used term, it should be &quot;alkalizing.&quot; Alkalizing diet is the diet that alkalizes the urine — it raises the pH of the urine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most fruits and vegetables alkalize the urine (even when most fruits are slightly acidic, but note, not acidifying), and most meats and fats are acidifying, probably because of high amino acid and fatty acid content...Acidic urine promotes the growth of calcium-oxalate stones (by far the most common, about 80% of all stones), urate and cystine stones. Alkaline urine promotes the growth of calcium-phosphate stones. NOTE: Calcium-oxalate and calcium-phosphate stones are not the same, so it is not enough to say &quot;calcium&quot; stones...Alkalizing diet can (or may) help prevent stones that grow in acidic urine (calcium-oxalate, urate, cystine), but it can promote the growth of calcium-phosphate stones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3772648/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PubMed Central&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is probably potassium in fruits that makes them alkalizing. Here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nutrientsreview.com/minerals/potassium-kalium.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list of foods high in potassium&lt;/a&gt; (Nutrientsreview.com)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In several studies (see the Linus Pauling Institute link below) high potassium diet was associated with the lower risk of calcium-oxalate kidney stones, but &quot;associated&quot; does not already mean the cause-effect relationship. Also, it is often hard to say, was it potassium, alkalization or some other property of food that prevented kidney stones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Alkalizing, that is potassium-rich diet, may help prevent calcium-oxalate kidney stones, but more research is warranted. &lt;a href=&quot;http://lpi.oregonstate.edu/infocenter/minerals/potassium/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Linus Pauling Institute&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1831527/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this review&lt;/a&gt; (PubMed Central), acidifying, that is high-protein (meat) diet is associated with increased risk of urate kidney stones.  &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15288" LastEditorUserId="15288" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T07:10:25.437" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T07:10:25.437" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22501" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22502" CreationDate="2014-07-24T19:18:26.717" Score="27" ViewCount="13702" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is already &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4508/can-every-grain-of-sand-be-addressed-in-ipv6&quot;&gt;a question&lt;/a&gt; on this site comparing the number of IPv6 addresses to the number of grains of sand on earth, but my question is different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a famous quote that many in networking have heard before:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It isn't remotely likely that we’ll run out of IPV6 addresses at any time in the future. We could assign an IPv6 address to every atom on the surface of the Earth, and still have enough addresses left to do another 100+ earths.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this statement is correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number%20of%20atoms%20in%20the%20earth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;according to Wolfram&lt;/a&gt;, there are 1x10^50 atoms on earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the total number of IPv6 addresses &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;equals 3.4×10^38&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can IPv6 accommodate the atoms of 100+ more earths?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21292" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2017-03-31T16:53:22.707" Title="Are there enough IPv6 addresses for every atom on the surface of the Earth?" Tags="|networks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22501" CreationDate="2014-07-24T20:01:39.257" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;You misinterpreted the quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number of atoms on the &lt;em&gt;surface of earth&lt;/em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt; is &lt;strong&gt;1.26 x 10&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and the number of atoms on &lt;em&gt;earth&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://education.jlab.org/qa/mathatom_05.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;is&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;1.33 x 10&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;strong&gt;50&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; (does not concern us here). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The total number of IPV6 that we can assign is:  &lt;strong&gt;3.4 x 10&lt;sup&gt;38&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3.4 x 10&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;strong&gt;38&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; &gt; &lt;strong&gt;1.26 x 10&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;strong&gt;34&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is true and here is the full &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/other/4306822/IPV6-How-Many-IP-Addresses-Can-Dance-on-the-Head-of-a-Pin-&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;quote&lt;/a&gt; for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BUT, there are 6-billion people on the planet, so if everyone was&#xA;  assigned just one IP address, we’d run out and leave 1/3rd of the&#xA;  world without IP addresses. So they invented IPV6, a 128-bit value,&#xA;  which is 16-bytes long. Since they had to identify this to distinguish&#xA;  it from 4-byte values, the 1st byte has a 1-byte value that was never&#xA;  used in the 1st byte of the original 32-bit addresses.  So that leaves&#xA;  2&lt;sup&gt;120&lt;/sup&gt; possible IP addresses using IPV6. How big is that?  Well, several&#xA;  web sites say there are 1.33 x 10&lt;sup&gt;50&lt;/sup&gt; atoms in the earth.  That’s way&#xA;  bigger than 2&lt;sup&gt;120&lt;/sup&gt;.  But to make it come closer, I computed the number&#xA;  of atoms on the surface of the earth.  That turns out to be 1.26 x&#xA;  10&lt;sup&gt;34&lt;/sup&gt; atoms.  2&lt;sup&gt;120&lt;/sup&gt; is 1.33 x 10&lt;sup&gt;36&lt;/sup&gt;, which is still bigger by 10&lt;sup&gt;5&lt;/sup&gt; times.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;So we could assign an IPV6 address to EVERY ATOM ON THE SURFACE OF THE&#xA;  EARTH, and still have enough addresses left to do another 100+ earths.&#xA;  It isn’t remotely likely that we’ll run out of IPV6 addresses at any&#xA;  time in the future.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (1) The number of atoms on the surface = 4πr&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; x (1/2a)&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;. Planet's radius = 6378km, mean atomic radius of the common stuff averages about 100pm. Total= 1.27*10&lt;sup&gt;34 &lt;/sup&gt;. calculated by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/18484/paul&quot;&gt;paul&lt;/a&gt; (see the comments). &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T10:47:31.950" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22504" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-24T21:30:32.233" Score="6" ViewCount="1940" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently asked to participate in an exercise that involved a personality quiz whose questions (but not the particular formatting) were identical to this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://campusrec.unc.edu/sites/campusrec.unc.edu/files/Personality%20Test.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;True Colours Personality Test&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The description of outcomes and the paragraph on the first page don't come right out and make many clear falsifiable claims.  I suspect that is intentional, but they heavily imply that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A person's color type according to this quiz can help predict that person's behavior.  (&quot;Once you learn your color and that of your co-workers, you will have a better understanding of why they behave the way they do.&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don Lowry was/is a notable researcher in the field of psychology (&quot;a student of Keirsey&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quiz and the follow up discussion struck me as essentially similar to a horoscope reading, but here it's all wrapped up in a supposedly scientific approach instead of (overt) mysticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any legitimacy to either of the claims above?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:  I am intentionally leaving aside the potentially too-broad question about the general validity of Isabel Briggs-Myers', Katherine Briggs', or David Keirsey's work, but I realize a valid answer to this question might involve a comparison to more famous personality tests and the validity or invalidity of those more famous tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; To clarify, I am not asking whether this quiz (or others like it) have legitimate potential value in (say) a workplace.  I am asking only about the legitimacy of the specific claims above:  Has the predictive power of a person's &quot;color type&quot; been validated or falsified by experiment?  Is Don Lowry a notable researcher in the sense that he has (1) contributed to the field of psychology through publication in journals, or even (2) studied under a notable researcher as a graduate student or even as an undergraduate, contributing to &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; researcher's work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think Nate's answer below puts the second claim to rest with the conclusion that Don Lowry's qualifications in the field of psychology are not strong enough to &quot;give weight&quot; to the profiling system he developed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21302" LastEditorUserId="21302" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T21:29:46.350" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T21:29:46.350" Title="Does the &quot;True Colors Personality Quiz&quot; predict behavior?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22491" CreationDate="2014-07-24T22:01:55.203" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Nazis did use carbon monoxide (CO) as a lethal gas to kill prisoners, but it wasn't used as an alternative to Zyklon B, but the other way around, Zyklon B was chosen as an alternative to CO. They used CO both in mobile gas chambers (Gas Vans) and in stationary gas chambers (located in death and concentration camps).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They used CO from the exhausts of a truck engine to kill prisoners, mostly Jews. The method has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_van&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;, sourced to many sources, indicating that the first to use this method of execution were the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD&quot;&gt;NKVD&lt;/a&gt;, the soviet secret police.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The gas van was invented in the Soviet Union in 1936, by Isay Berg, the head of the administrative and economic department of the NKVD of Moscow Oblast which suffocated batches of prisoners with engine fumes in a camouflaged bread van while on the drive out to the mass graves at Butovo, where the prisoners were subsequently buried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, on their web page about the Nazis gassing operation state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union and Einsatzgruppe (mobile killing unit) mass shootings of civilians, the Nazis experimented with gas vans for mass killing. Gas vans were hermetically sealed trucks with engine exhaust diverted to the interior compartment. Use of gas vans began after Einsatzgruppe members complained of battle fatigue and mental anguish caused by shooting large numbers of women and children. Gassing also proved to be less costly. Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) gassed hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and mentally ill people. In 1941, the SS concluded that the deportation of Jews to killing centers (to be gassed) was the most efficient way of achieving the &quot;Final Solution&quot;. That same year, the Nazis opened the Chelmno camp in Poland. Jews from the Lodz area of Poland and Roma were killed there in mobile gas vans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Gas Vans were not a substitution for the Zyklon B gas chambers, but the other way around, as the page in USHMM continues to point out that the first stationary gas chambers also used carbon monoxide exhaust from engines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1942, systematic mass killing in stationary gas chambers (with carbon monoxide gas generated by diesel engines) began at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, all in Poland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that the Nazis switched to ZyKlon B because it was more efficient:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Nazis constantly searched for more efficient means of extermination. At the Auschwitz camp in Poland, they conducted experiments with Zyklon B (previously used for fumigation) by gassing some 600 Soviet prisoners of war and 250 ill prisoners in September 1941. Zyklon B pellets, converted to lethal gas when exposed to air. They proved the quickest gassing method and were chosen as the means of mass murder at Auschwitz. At the height of the deportations, up to 6,000 Jews were gassed each day at Auschwitz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="8708" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T12:39:51.380" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T12:39:51.380" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22504" CreationDate="2014-07-24T22:22:06.810" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;To address the second claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Businessweek&lt;/em&gt; has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=59449602&amp;amp;ticker=TUCL&amp;amp;previousCapId=26004&amp;amp;previousTitle=CAMBRIDGE%20HEART%20INC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;profile of Lowry&lt;/a&gt; which says that he holds a bachelor's in education from the University of Washington, but has no mention of any graduate degrees, which one would expect for a notable researcher.  Moreover, &lt;a href=&quot;http://keirsey.com/drdavidkeirsey.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Keirsey's profile from the company he founded&lt;/a&gt; says that he was a professor at California State University, Fullerton, but has no mention of any affiliation with the University of Washington.  Therefore, it does not appear that Lowry was a student of Keirsey in the usual academic sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2014-07-24T22:22:06.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22507" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-24T23:30:18.200" Score="2" ViewCount="279" Body="&lt;p&gt;On BreitBart.com the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breitbart.com/system/wire/ap_77b8b0aa3a834b069eb1aeb620e2570e&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt; is made:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Sen. John Walsh of Montana said Wednesday his failure to attribute conclusions and verbatim passages lifted from other scholars' work in his thesis to earn a master's degree from the U.S. Army War College was an unintentional mistake caused in part by post-traumatic stress disorder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I don't want to blame my mistake on PTSD, but I do want to say it may have been a factor,&amp;quot; the senator said. &amp;quot;My head was not in a place very conducive to a classroom and an academic environment.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has any research shown that PTSD can be a factor in causing one to plagiarize?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user20862" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T20:15:44.520" Title="Can PTSD be a factor in causing one to plagiarize?" Tags="|psychology|war|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22508" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22747" CreationDate="2014-07-24T23:43:23.997" Score="8" ViewCount="663" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the Cato Institute's website is this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/forest-services-tinderbox&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The heightened danger to national forests is, ironically, the result of longstanding federal efforts to suppress fires going back many decades. Those efforts have produced an enormous buildup of small trees, under-brush, and deadwood that provide “excess fuels” to feed flames. Before the policy of fire suppression, small fires in many forests cleared away excess fuels and thinned competing plant life, leaving these forests less susceptible to devastating fires like the ones of 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T16:49:28.907" Title="Is federal firefighting the cause for the increase of US forest fires and their severity?" Tags="|united-states|fire|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22512" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22489" CreationDate="2014-07-25T02:26:19.020" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's an optional extra&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've actually seen this working so I wasn't willing to accept the article linked. However I found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.otis.com/site/eg/OT_DL_Documents/OT_DL_DownloadCenter/Specifications/Specs%201-%20GeN2-Regen%20Brochure.pdf&quot;&gt;Specification for the Otis Elevator Company's GeN2 Regen&lt;/a&gt; elevator and on page 12 under the &lt;strong&gt;Special Functions&lt;/strong&gt; section there is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NSB - Non-stop button&lt;/strong&gt;: Once the NSB is pressed, all calls outside will not be registered, and the car moves directly to the destination floor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional lifts with this feature:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sigmaelevator.com/pdf/Freight%20&amp;amp;%20Car%20Elevator.pdf&quot;&gt;Sigma Freight &amp;amp; Car Elevator&lt;/a&gt; (p.12)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This proves that such a setting would be possible, and so even if this isn't true in all cases, &lt;strong&gt;a single elevator which had the non-stop button mislabelled as door close&lt;/strong&gt; would be enough to start this rumour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20874" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T02:26:19.020" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22467" CreationDate="2014-07-25T04:28:19.763" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly, &lt;strong&gt;there is no proof that the video was taken in Krasnoarmiysk&lt;/strong&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://russian.rt.com/article/41825&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claim by Russian defence ministry&lt;/a&gt; is based on the alleged fact that the banner has an address printed on it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/J0HCy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report didn't show how they managed to recover this address from the banner, and it seems like an explanation is due, as the image is very blurry. The banner itself seem to be identical to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.autoconsulting.com.ua/article.php?sid=30254&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; (which is spread as a part of their ad campaign):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/k3McN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Above the logo, there are two words in capital letters &quot;National autodealer&quot;. While it is very hard to say what's actually written on the street banner, the shape of things seem to match. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No other evidence (i.e., the coordinates of the exact place where the video was taken) was presented. So, the claim that there is a discernible address on a banner is highly doubtful and there is no reason to believe it is in Krasnoarmiysk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Below follows some speculation, because of the lack of more credible sources.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, there is some &lt;a href=&quot;http://ukraineatwar.blogspot.nl/2014/07/russian-transport-of-buk-that-shot-down.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;anecdotal&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://avva.livejournal.com/2788606.html?thread=107533566#t107533566&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;evidence&lt;/a&gt; that the video was taken in Luhansk (fully under control of rebels), as supported by streetview:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looks like the same pole:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/D6otn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and same buildings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/la2WX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;closer look:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Dici2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/h26l4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All in all, it is hard to say where the truth is, but it is certainly clear that the original claim is not supported by any reliable evidence and largely disputed. Even less can be said about the actual time when the video has been shot.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="14651" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T04:58:34.737" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T04:58:34.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22516" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22520" CreationDate="2014-07-25T04:34:38.520" Score="12" ViewCount="2783" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently from &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/1Marchella/status/492361948982280192&quot;&gt;Ultrafacts.tumblr.com&lt;/a&gt;, with a tweet version retweeted 137 times:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1916 an amendment was proposed to the Constitution that all acts of&#xA;  war would be put to a national vote. Anyone voting yes had to register&#xA;  as a volunteer for service in the United States Army.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was this amendment proposed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not an expert on US law, so I don't know what &quot;proposed&quot; means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried doing a Google search, but got a lot of user-generated content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T07:25:05.733" Title="Was an amendment proposed making everyone in favour of a war liable for military service?" Tags="|united-states|law|voting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22517" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-25T04:54:44.630" Score="16" ViewCount="5332" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any verifiable evidence that crabs, in fact, behave as if they possess &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;crab mentality&quot;&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The term “crab mentality” is used to describe a kind of selfish&#xA;  thinking that runs along the lines of “if I can't have it, neither can&#xA;  you.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Individually, the crabs could easily escape from the pot, but instead,&#xA;  they grab at each other in a useless &quot;king of the hill&quot; competition&#xA;  which prevents any from escaping and ensures their collective demise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that multiple crabs in a basket have a lower chance of escaping than an single crab in a basket, because they hinder each other in their own attempts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="14651" LastEditDate="2015-03-02T21:57:40.760" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T14:58:29.713" Title="Do crabs exemplify &quot;crab mentality&quot; behaviour?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|behavior|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22516" CreationDate="2014-07-25T05:02:15.720" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is true. See: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/03/us/washinton-talk-letters-to-congress-amend-the-constitution-let-us-count-the-ways.html&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/03/us/washinton-talk-letters-to-congress-amend-the-constitution-let-us-count-the-ways.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The petition, sent to Washington by a group of Nebraska residents in 1916, proposed an amendment requiring a national referendum before Congress could declare war. To dissuade votes for war, the petition proposed that all those who voted in favor of the United States entering World War I be willing to enlist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't been able to track down whether it was actually heard in congress, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T05:02:15.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22519" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22522" CreationDate="2014-07-25T05:18:05.770" Score="45" ViewCount="20423" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this image on Facebook, often these image macros are just made up, or misattributed quotes, what about in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image content:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;#Free Palestine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Zionist argument to justify Israel's present occupation of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history... not even in their own religion. - Malcom X&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would be my greatest sadness to see Zionists (Jews) do to Palestinian Arabs much of what Nazis did to Jews - Albert Einstein&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians. - Nelson Mandela&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the the Arabs. - Mahatma Ghandi&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7w6zi.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;quotes about notable people speaking to palestine&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorUserId="19053" LastEditDate="2021-06-08T02:33:07.013" LastActivityDate="2021-06-08T02:33:07.013" Title="Are these quotes by Malcom X, Albert Einstein, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict correct?" Tags="|quotes|mahatma-gandhi|palestine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22516" CreationDate="2014-07-25T05:20:06.903" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Articuno gives a source showing it was suggested by a group of citizens.  This answer addresses action taken in Congress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/08/a-referendum-on-a-declaration-of-war/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this very informative blog post&lt;/a&gt; by Robert Brammer, a librarian with the Library of Congress.  It appears that several pieces of legislation were introduced in the 64th Congress (1915-1917) that would have required a national referendum on declarations of war, and one of them would indeed have amended the constitution.  It was introduced in the Senate as &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.loc.gov/law/files/2013/07/64-S.J.Res_.-10.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;S.J. Res 10&lt;/a&gt; and in the House of Representatives as &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.loc.gov/law/files/2013/07/64-H.J.Res_.-128.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;H.J. Res 128&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;strong&gt;However, it contains no provision requiring military service for &amp;quot;yes&amp;quot; voters.&lt;/strong&gt;  (Neither do any of the non-amendment bills described in the blog post; I read them all.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who cannot easily read 98-year-old scanned documents, I've transcribed the joint resolutions here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;S.J. RES. 10.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;December 7, 1915.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Owen introduced the following joint resolution; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JOINT RESOLUTION&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein)&lt;/em&gt;, That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which, when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States, shall be valid to all intents and purposes as a part of the Constitution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Article XVII.  No war of aggression shall be waged by the Army or Navy of the United States, except upon a declaration of war by the Congress of the United States, ratified and approved by a majority vote of the majority of the  legal votes cast upon the question in a majority of the congressional districts of the United States.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;H. J. RES. 128.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;January 31, 1916.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Church introduced the following joint resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary and ordered to be printed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;JOINT RESOLUTION&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein)&lt;/em&gt;, That the following amendment be proposed to the legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of said legislatures, shall be valid as part of the Constitution, namely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Article I. Sec. 8, Division 11.  To declare war in cases of invasion or threatened invasion of the United States, or any of its insular possessions, by a foreign power, or in cases of insurrection or revolution within the United States, or any of its insular possessions, and in other cases where the matter of declaring war has first been submitted to the citizens of the United States at a special election called for that purpose and more than half of the citizens voting at said election have declared themselves in favor of declaring said war.  It shall also have the power to grant letters of marque and reprisal and make rules concerning captures on land and water.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Contextual note: Article I, Sec. 8 lists the &amp;quot;enumerated powers&amp;quot; of Congress; the original, and still current, text of Division 11 simply reads &amp;quot;To declare War, grant letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water&amp;quot;.  So as it stands, Congress may declare war unilaterally; the amendment would have restricted this unilateral power to cases of actual invasion or insurrection, and required a referendum otherwise.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Article V of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution_transcript.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Constitution&lt;/a&gt; lays out the procedure for amendments.  They must be &amp;quot;proposed&amp;quot; by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress, then &amp;quot;ratified&amp;quot; by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states.  (There is an alternative provision for proposing amendments via a convention; it has never been used.)  The above measure does not appear in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_proposed_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's list of proposed but unratified amendments&lt;/a&gt; (there have only been six), so evidently &lt;strong&gt;it was never &amp;quot;proposed&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt; in this formal sense.  (If someone can find a more authoritative source than Wikipedia they are welcome to edit it in.)  The italicized text about &amp;quot;two-thirds of each House concurring&amp;quot; appears to be hypothetical, describing what would be the case if it were to pass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blog post does not discuss the progress of any of the bills mentioned above; I suspect few if any of them ever made it out of committee to a floor vote.  Of course, if any had actually been enacted into law, we'd presumably know about it!  If anyone wants to know for sure what became of these bills, they are welcome to browse through the 1,577 pages of blurry text that constitute the &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/details/congressionalrec53iunit&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Congressional Record for 1916&lt;/a&gt; and let us know what they find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T05:58:23.610" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19771" CreationDate="2014-07-25T05:39:51.277" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;You've got two questions there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Did the NSA pay RSA Security $10 million to make Dual_EC_DRBG the default?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quite likely.  The way &lt;a href=&quot;https://blogs.rsa.com/news-media/rsa-response/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the statement by RSA Security&lt;/a&gt; is worded does not deny the core allegation of the Reuters report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RSA received $10 million in a deal that set the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation in the BSafe software&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Did the NSA pay 10 million dollars to the RSA to weaken their systems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably not.  The statement explicitly denies this (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recent press coverage has asserted that RSA entered into a “secret contract” with the NSA &lt;strong&gt;to incorporate a known flawed random number generator&lt;/strong&gt; into its BSAFE encryption libraries.  We categorically deny this allegation...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...but we also categorically state that we have never entered into any contract or engaged in any project &lt;strong&gt;with the intention&lt;/strong&gt; of weakening RSA’s products, or introducing potential ‘backdoors’ into our products for anyone’s use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two answers are not contradictory. In 2004, when the contract was reportedly signed, Dual_EC_DBRG was not &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; to be flawed.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.math.ntnu.no/~kristiag/drafts/dual-ec-drbg-comments.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;first paper showing a weakness in the algorithm&lt;/a&gt; was published in 2006, and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rump2007.cr.yp.to/15-shumow.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;first paper demonstrating that it could have a backdoor&lt;/a&gt; was published in 2007, although the theoretical possibility of an attack was known in 1997.  It's virtually certain that, if the contract exists, it makes no mention of the algorithm being flawed or weak, or incorporating a backdoor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21297" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T05:39:51.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22519" CreationDate="2014-07-25T06:04:19.023" Score="62" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MALCOLM X&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In short the zionist argument to justify Israel's present occupation&#xA;  of Arab Palestine has no intelligent or legal basis in history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Status: &lt;strong&gt;correct&lt;/strong&gt;. This quote is extracted from &lt;em&gt;&quot;ZIONIST LOGIC By Malcolm X Shabazz&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;(1) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ALBERT EINSTEIN&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It would be my greatest sadness to see Zionists do to Palestinian&#xA;  Arabs much of what Nazis did to Jews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Status: &lt;strong&gt;incorrect&lt;/strong&gt;. There is no recorded evidence that Einstein said this sentence - without forgetting also that Einstein  was a Cultural Zionist who supported the idea of a Jewish homeland &lt;sup&gt;(4)&lt;/sup&gt; and he actually got an offer to be the president of Israel in 1952.&lt;sup&gt; (5) &lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skepticaesoterica's &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepticaesoterica.com/debunking-fake-albert-einstein-quotes/&quot;&gt;opinion&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The motivation for this fake quote should be apparent. It would be&#xA;  beneficial to pro-Palestinian activists to show that a paragon of&#xA;  wisdom, and a Jew himself no less, was also pro-Palestinian and/or&#xA;  anti-Israel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NELSON MANDELA&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of&#xA;  the Palestinians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Status: &lt;strong&gt;correct&lt;/strong&gt;. Extracted from Mandela's speech at the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People&lt;sup&gt;(2)&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full quote: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When in 1977, the United Nations passed the resolution inaugurating&#xA;  the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian people, it&#xA;  was asserting the recognition that injustice and gross human rights&#xA;  violations were being perpetrated in Palestine. In the same period,&#xA;  the UN took a strong stand against apartheid; and over the years, an&#xA;  international consensus was built, which helped to bring an end to&#xA;  this iniquitous system. But we know too well that our freedom is&#xA;  incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians; without the&#xA;  resolution of conflicts in East Timor, the Sudan and other parts of&#xA;  the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MAHATMA GANDHI&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs&#xA;  to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and in-human to&#xA;  impose the Jews on the Arabs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Status: &lt;strong&gt;correct&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;sup&gt; (3) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt; (1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://law.wustl.edu/staff/taylor/protest/aaprp3.htm&quot;&gt;ZIONIST LOGIC&lt;/a&gt; By Malcolm X Shabazz (Edited and Reprinted From The Egyptian Gazette - Sept. 17, 1964) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anc.org.za/show.php?id=3384&quot;&gt;Address at The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People&lt;/a&gt; Nelson Mandela. 4 December 1997.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (3) Gandhi's Collected Works, Vol 74 (1938) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (4)  Stachel, John (2001-12-10). Einstein from 'B' to 'Z'. Birkhäuser Boston. p. 70. ISBN 0-8176-4143-2. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (5)  &quot;ISRAEL: Einstein Declines&quot;. Time magazine. 1 December 1952. Retrieved 31 March 2010. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T10:38:25.600" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T10:38:25.600" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22525" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22526" CreationDate="2014-07-25T10:04:02.013" Score="8" ViewCount="408" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/07/25/electricity-solarstorms-kemp-idINL6N0PZ5D120140725&quot;&gt;Reuters&lt;/a&gt;: The probability of a solar storm striking Earth in the next decade with enough force to do serious damage to electricity networks could be as high as 12 percent, according to solar scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the risk as high as the article suggests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T23:49:03.537" Title="Is there a 12% chance that a solar storm does damage to the electrical grid in the next decade?" Tags="|electronics|sun|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22525" CreationDate="2014-07-25T11:13:36.440" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has gone viral.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, the risk is high as the article suggests, this number was estimated (or calculated) by physicist Pete Riley, who receives fundings form  NASA, NSF, and DoD. His recent publications can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.predsci.com/portal/cv/rileyp.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a direct quote from NASA, this was &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;posted&lt;/a&gt; on July 25 2014:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In February 2014, physicist Pete Riley of Predictive Science Inc. published a paper in Space Weather entitled &amp;quot;On the probability of occurrence of extreme space weather events.&amp;quot;  In it, he analyzed records of solar storms going back 50+ years.  By extrapolating the frequency of ordinary storms to the extreme, he calculated the odds that a Carrington-class storm would hit Earth in the next ten years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer: &lt;strong&gt;12%&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Initially, I was quite surprised that the odds were so high, but the statistics appear to be correct,&amp;quot; says Riley.  &amp;quot;It is a sobering figure.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A severe storm could  inflict damage estimated at between $1 and 2 trillion, 20 times the cost of Hurricane Katrina, with recovery time between 4 and 10 years.&lt;sup&gt; (1) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're interested in more information, look at this &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/21jan_severespaceweather/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; by the National Academy of Sciences talking about the consequences of extreme solar storms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (1) Severe space weather events: understanding societal and economic impacts, 2008. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T11:35:07.623" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22529" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22532" CreationDate="2014-07-25T13:23:14.580" Score="8" ViewCount="453" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard claims such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People who have sex at least 2 times a week between the age of 20 and 30 are less likely to get cancer later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People who have too much sex are more likely to get cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these based on scientific results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20704" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T05:44:40.710" Title="Does the intensity of one's sex life influence the probability of getting cancer?" Tags="|cancer|sexuality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22530" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22536" CreationDate="2014-07-25T14:53:48.123" Score="58" ViewCount="26628" Body="&lt;p&gt;Harvey Silverglate has written a book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1594032556&quot;&gt;Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent&lt;/a&gt;, in which he claims, according to the Amazon blurb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have not only exploded in number, but, along with countless regulatory provisions, have also become impossibly broad and vague.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim has received some press recently when conservative intellectual Dinesh D'Souza invoked it to explain why he had been charged with violating campaign finance laws. Silverglate has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx&quot;&gt;web site&lt;/a&gt; where he lists some laws that he claims the average person might violate unwittingly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that the average American unwittingly commits three felonies a day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4216" LastEditorUserId="11591" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T21:21:31.260" LastActivityDate="2015-01-01T20:15:25.533" Title="Does the average American unwittingly commit three felonies a day?" Tags="|united-states|law|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22532" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22529" CreationDate="2014-07-25T15:51:51.037" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been multiple studies that have shown that frequent ejaculation in men reduces the risk of prostate cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two such studies are cited in this article from the Harvard Medical School:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harvardprostateknowledge.org/does-frequent-ejaculation-help-ward-off-prostate-cancer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does frequent ejaculation help ward off prostate cancer?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;29,342 men between the ages of 46 and 81 reported their average number of ejaculations per month in young adulthood (ages 20–29), in mid-life (ages 40–49), and in the most recent year. Ejaculations included sexual intercourse, nocturnal emissions, and masturbation. ... &lt;strong&gt;The scientists found that men who ejaculated 21 or more times a month enjoyed a 33% lower risk of prostate cancer compared with men who reported four to seven ejaculations a month throughout their lifetimes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An Australian study of 2,338 men came to a similar conclusion. In all, men who averaged 4.6 to seven ejaculations a week were 36% less likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer before the age of 70 than men who ejaculated less than 2.3 times a week on average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, at least one form of cancer (prostate cancer) is less likely for men who ejaculate more frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But before you rush out to bed as many women as possible in an attempt to stave off prostate cancer, bear in mind that other studies have found that the incidence of prostate cancer was positively correlated with the number of female sexual partners. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/153/12/1152.long&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sexual Factors and the Risk of Prostate Cancer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Risk estimates increased directly with the lifetime number of female sexual partners but not with male partners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="64" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T15:51:51.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22533" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22530" CreationDate="2014-07-25T16:15:12.580" Score="17" Body="&lt;h3&gt;Conflation of felony with federal crime&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all federal crimes are felonies &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3559&quot;&gt;18 U.S.C. § 3559&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Silvergate's hypotheticals&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.threefeloniesaday.com/Youtoo/tabid/86/Default.aspx&quot;&gt;Silvergate presents many hypotheticals&lt;/a&gt; that he claims are examples of people unwittingly committing a federal crime. However, in several examples, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fact+Situation&quot;&gt;fact patterns&lt;/a&gt; of the hypothetical differ in potentially material ways from the real life case law that he makes the analogy with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;clear packaging&quot; vs &quot;clear plastic bags&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;entering federally-protected wilderness &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; becoming lost vs entering federally-protected wilderness at an unspecified time&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;calling in sick vs no real life example and a quote from &lt;em&gt;obiter dictum&lt;/em&gt; in a &lt;em&gt;dissent&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_analogy&quot;&gt;false analogies&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Assessing the claim&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most generous interpretation would be &quot;The typical professional living in the US commits at least three federal crimes on 51% of days.&quot; However, we &lt;em&gt;cannot&lt;/em&gt; know whether this is true. We can't count the number of federal crimes committed that go un-caught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-07-25T17:46:34.130" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T17:46:34.130" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22534" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22553" CreationDate="2014-07-25T17:59:06.350" Score="6" ViewCount="4323" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a man who calls himself &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq05kzMRVzU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Max the Hacker&lt;/a&gt;. He appears in many Dutch videos filmed in the Netherlands, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3SdSYQGWrs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; in which he shows himself purporting to manipulate news readers' autocues on live television, and to change the speed limits on road signs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks fake to me. If one could do that, the world we live in would be chaotic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Max the Hacker really perform these hacks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13947" LastEditorUserId="25200" LastEditDate="2015-10-16T01:49:30.850" LastActivityDate="2015-10-16T01:49:30.850" Title="Did &quot;Max the Hacker&quot; manipulate autocues and traffic lights?" Tags="|criminology|hacking|netherlands|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22536" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22530" CreationDate="2014-07-25T20:05:35.013" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt;  Silvergate's choice of examples to introduce his book does not address the quoted thesis at all (that average professionals unknowingly commit felonies), and thus one can assume the whole book fails to support his thesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I skimmed the sections of his book available &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1594032556&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;on Amazon&lt;/a&gt;, and didn't see any proof for his claims.  Admittedly, this is only a sampling of the book, but the claims he does make don't justify his position.  For example, there is a section which begins &lt;code&gt;Consider some of the cases that will be discussed in more detail further on in this book:&lt;/code&gt;  I'll address each case he lists in this section, under the assumption that these are some of his strongest arguments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Text double-quoted below is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; quotes from his book, but rather my own short summary of what the charge was and a link to a relevant news article or Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Case #1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lawyer was convicted of obstruction of justice for destroying a laptop which had child porn on it which belonged to the former music director of his church.  He also pled guilty to knowing about and failing to report the music director's abuse of children.  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-12-17-1170752970_x.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Silvergate frames this as being indicted for destroying contraband rather than keeping it, and says &amp;quot;therefore holding, rather than destroying it, arguably would be criminal.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is really a lose-lose situation for the lawyer, because he knowingly took possession of contraband.  Either he's convicted for destroying evidence of a crime (and he was a lawyer, so knew it would be relevant), or he's convicted for possessing it in the first place.  (Side note: If he had turned it over, it's unlikely he would have been in any trouble for temporarily having someone else's laptop.) But this is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; a common situation, and most people will never encounter it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Case #2&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Milken#Indictment_and_sentencing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michael Milken&lt;/a&gt; pled guilty to six counts of securities and tax violations.  He may have been pressured to plea instead of fighting the charges by a promise from federal prosecutors &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; to prosecute his brother, who was indicted with him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Silvergate claims that one of these six was later ruled (in a trial against someone else in the conspiracy) not to constitute a crime.  I don't know which one, and without the full book, I can't research this more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Case #3&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen#Enron_scandal&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arthur Andersen &amp;amp; Company&lt;/a&gt; destroyed documents related to Enron before receiving a subpeona for them, and was convicted of obstruction of justice.  The Supreme Court later reversed this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Silvergate claims this was the &amp;quot;normal document-retention-and-destruction policy&amp;quot; of the company, which may be true.  However, to the best of my knowledge no &lt;em&gt;employees&lt;/em&gt; of AA&amp;amp;C were charged for the actions - just the company itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, this is one that &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; be part of the &amp;quot;three felonies a day&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Case #4&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Kurtz#2008_ruling&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Steve Kurtz&lt;/a&gt; was arrested for mail fraud for mailing non-infectious bacteria as part of art exhibit. In 2008, the charge was ruled &amp;quot;insufficient on its face&amp;quot;, meaning that the actions were not a crime in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Silvergate claims this charge was simply a way to justify the time spent investigating Kurtz for bioterrorism due to his art.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This one is irrelevant to Silvergate's argument.  Kurtz was convicted for something that wasn't a crime, and thus &lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt; be an example of a felony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Case #5&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not even going to research this one: The DoJ &amp;quot;reportedly looked into&amp;quot; indicting the &lt;em&gt;New York Times&lt;/em&gt; for espionage for their reporting of the NSA's warrantless surveillance programs.  Since it was just &amp;quot;looked into&amp;quot;, there's nothing relevant here.  Since it was (again) a company, there's doubly nothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This section concludes (actual quote from Silvergate):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are just a few of the prosecutions in which well-meaning professionals from all walks of life have been charged (or nearly charged) criminally for engaging in activities that most of us - lawyers and laymen alike - would consider lawful, often quite ordinary, and frequently socially beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, of the five example he gave, two were companies, one was a willful choice between offenses, and one is indeterminate.  In &lt;em&gt;none&lt;/em&gt; of these examples does he show why &lt;code&gt;The average professional ... has likely committed several federal crimes that day&lt;/code&gt;.  All of these are highly unusual circumstances, most of which are not crimes for the people who executed them.  It's possible he chose his examples poorly, but an introduction which fails to even &lt;em&gt;address&lt;/em&gt; your thesis is a good indication that the thesis won't be addressed sufficiently in the rest of the work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T20:13:47.947" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22507" CreationDate="2014-07-25T20:15:44.520" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe. A well known effect of PTSD is memory problems. It's possible that someone simply forgets to attribute quotes, certainly, especially if they have memory problems. It could be a factor but certainly not the cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although not all individuals who have been traumatized develop PTSD, there can be significant physical consequences of being traumatized. For example, research indicates that people who have been exposed to an extreme stressor sometimes have a smaller hippocampus (a region of the brain that plays a role in memory) than people who have not been exposed to trauma. This is significant in understanding the effects of trauma in general and the impact of PTSD, specifically since the hippocampus is the part of the brain that is thought to have an important role in developing new memories about life events&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/posttraumatic_stress_disorder/page3.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Posttraumatic Stress Disorder - What are the effects of PTSD?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-07-25T20:15:44.520" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22538" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-25T20:19:30.547" Score="20" ViewCount="1187" Body="&lt;p&gt;Greenpeace UK tweeted about the &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/GreenpeaceUK/status/492701761984286720&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UK having enough wind to power the country five times over&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MT @1010: The UK has enough wind to power the country five times over. Let's use it! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZJtiY.png&quot; alt=&quot;window power infographic&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a bit of Googling the only source for the data seems to be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fourwinds.coop/home.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wind energy company&lt;/a&gt;. That doesn't mean the data is false, but I'd like a more trustworthy source. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the UK really have a 2,000 TWH capacity for wind power as claimed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2285" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-05-01T19:03:26.130" LastActivityDate="2019-05-01T19:03:26.130" Title="Does the UK have enough wind to power the country five times over?" Tags="|united-kingdom|energy|wind-power|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22540" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22541" CreationDate="2014-07-26T06:18:50.113" Score="9" ViewCount="2645" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Mahatma Gandhi make racist statements?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In The Guardian article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/oct/17/southafrica.india&quot;&gt;Gandhi branded racist as Johannesburg honours freedom fighter&lt;/a&gt;, it's stated that he said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Many of the native [black] prisoners are only one degree removed from the animal and often created rows and fought among themselves.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and that Europeans sought to degrade Indian people in South Africa to the level of &quot;raw kaffir [a term which at least nowadays is an offensive term for black people], whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical because I usually hear about about his racism, along with other bad or abnormal things about Gandhi, from people antipathic to pacifism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T16:30:56.533" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T16:30:56.533" Title="Did Gandhi make racist statements about black prisoners?" Tags="|politics|quotes|racism|mahatma-gandhi|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22540" CreationDate="2014-07-26T06:18:50.113" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi#1890s&quot;&gt;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi#1890s&lt;/a&gt; confirms the second quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quotation given there is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be&#xA;  inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the&#xA;  level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole&#xA;  ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with&#xA;  and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the citation given is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Address given in Bombay (26 September 1896), Collected Works of Mahatma &#xA;  Gandhi, Vol. 1, p. 410 (Electronic Book), New Delhi, Publications Division &#xA;  Government of India, 1999, 98 volumes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding only hearing about these claims from his detractors, a seemingly sympathetic accounting of Gandhi confirms that Gandhi had these sentiments about black people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi#Gandhi_and_the_Africans&quot;&gt;Mahatma_Gandhi#Gandhi_and_the_Africans&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bhana and Vahed argue that Gandhi, at first, shared racial notions&#xA;  prevalent of the times and that his experiences in jail sensitized him&#xA;  to the plight of South Africa's indigenous peoples.[43]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;43 is a citation of Bhana, Surendra; Vahed, Goolam H. (2005). The making of a political reformer: Gandhi in South Africa, 1893–1914. Manohar. pp. 44–5, 149. ISBN 978-81-7304-612-4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-07-26T06:18:50.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22542" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22538" CreationDate="2014-07-26T12:16:49.917" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL:DR; Yes, the UK has potential wind resource to power itself many many times over. Yes, it could be five times as much (range: 4-200x). No, its technical potential harnessable wind resource is not 2000 TWh a year - it's much larger&lt;/strong&gt;, but we don't know how much more; it's probably in the range 10,000 - 80,000 TWh/y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For context, UK primary energy demand is of the order of 2500 TWh/y (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/digest-of-uk-energy-statistics-dukes#2013&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Digest of UK Energy Statistics 2013&lt;/a&gt;, p14); final energy consumption is about 1630 TWh/y (&lt;em&gt;ibid&lt;/em&gt;); electricity is currently around 376 TWh/y (&lt;em&gt;ibid&lt;/em&gt; p113). So it depends which of those figures you take, and which of the estimates you use: the potential wind resource is somewhere between four and 200 times the size needed to power the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much larger the potential wind resource is very unclear, because there's an enormous potential resource, but we don't know how much of it is technically accessible. There are several reasons for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;we don't know how densely we can site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statoil.com/en/TechnologyInnovation/NewEnergy/RenewablePowerProduction/Offshore/Hywind/Pages/HywindPuttingWindPowerToTheTest.aspx?redirectShortUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.statoil.com%2Fhywind&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;floating turbines&lt;/a&gt; - they only exist as prototypes at the moment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;we don't know how deep the waters are that we can harvest wind in. Although much of the UK's Exclusive Economic Zone is in waters of less than 700 metres depth, there are &lt;a href=&quot;http://vision.abpmer.net/renewables/map_default.phtml?config=wind&amp;amp;resetsession=groups,resultlayers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;extremely strong winds in deeper waters&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;we don't know how big the inter-array wake losses are if deployment ever got to saturation density. (see the discussion in the section &quot;The modelling methodology smackdown&quot; in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/15178/6236&quot;&gt;my answer here&lt;/a&gt;) Given the scale of the potential resource, we won't get to within 20% of saturation density for many decades. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.claverton-energy.com/two-terawatts-average-power-output-the-uk-offshore-wind-resource.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's one estimate of the UK &lt;strong&gt;offshore&lt;/strong&gt; wind potential&lt;/a&gt;, which estimates it at 2.2 TW of mean electrical output: with 8760 hours in the year, that's 20,000 TWh per year - more than ten times the number you've found. (graph is GW mean power - multiply by 8.76 to get the equivalent TWh/y for non-leap years). You might want to deduct 10% for shipping lanes, but that's just a guess at what the right % would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OGplX.gif&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OGplX.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Graph of wind availability by depth of water&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stuart Gatley's M.Eng (&quot;An investigation of the potential of offshore wind power in the UK, University of Nottingham, 2012) estimates the offshore resource as  being in the range 10,862-79,978 TWh/y (p56)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the offshore resource, which dwarfs the onshore resource. &quot;The UK onshore wind energy resource&quot;, ETSU R-99, F Brocklehurst, 1997, estimates the technical potential in the range 20-50GW mean power - that's 175 - 438 TWh/y. (that number is from memory: I don't have the report to hand; I'll verify that on Monday; but safe to say it gets lost in the rounding of the offshore wind resource)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2019-05-01T16:39:41.210" LastActivityDate="2019-05-01T16:39:41.210" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22544" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22546" CreationDate="2014-07-26T14:03:25.207" Score="6" ViewCount="2140" Body="&lt;p&gt;My parents always told me to rub firmly directly after I bruised myself, say after a hit with a blunt object (without damage to the skin). The explanation would be that this helps against haematomas and makes the bruise heal faster.&#xA;The habit of doing so has become second nature to me and I see many other people with the same habit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a physician and I can't make much sense of the explanation. Rethinking it now, I would rather suspect that rubbing makes it worse, because it could add further damage to the already torn tissue. But rubbing it &quot;feels&quot; better - which can of course be a placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question about an already formed haematoma, but about the moment directly after the bruising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21348" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T23:48:10.150" Title="Does rubbing a bruise help against haematomas?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22544" CreationDate="2014-07-26T21:49:27.213" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First things first: a bruise (layman's term) is a type of hematoma (medical term), by definition.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;Rubbing a bruise is not a part of the standard protocol for treating hematomas&lt;/b&gt;. The standard is RICE, which stands for Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several sources suggest that rubbing and other forms of massage in general may actually contribute to tissue damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &quot;Hepatic Hematoma after Deep Tissue Massage&quot; in &lt;em&gt;The New England Journal of Medicine&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;Massive Haematoma from Digital Massage in an Anticoagulated Patient: A Case Report&quot; in &lt;em&gt;Singapore Medical Journal&lt;/em&gt;,  and &quot;Haematoma Testes due to Traditional Massage in a Neonate,&quot; in  &lt;em&gt;Tropical Doctor&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;sup&gt;3,4,5,6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From Wikipedia: &quot;A bruise (layman's term), also called a contusion (medical term), is a type of hematoma of tissue in which capillaries and sometimes venules are damaged by trauma, allowing blood to seep, hemorrhage, or extravasate into the surrounding interstitial tissues.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140726205604/http://www.uhs.wisc.edu/health-topics/muscles-and-bone/rice.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;www.uhs.wisc.edu/health-topics/muscles-and-bone/rice.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ernst, E. “The Safety of Massage Therapy.” &lt;em&gt;Rheumatology&lt;/em&gt; (Oxford, England) 42, no. 9 (September 2003): 1101–6. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trotter, J. F. “Hepatic Hematoma after Deep Tissue Massage.” &lt;em&gt;The New England Journal of Medicine&lt;/em&gt; 341, no. 26 (December 23, 1999): 2019–20.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yeo, T. C., M. H. Choo, and M. B. Tay. “Massive Haematoma from Digital Massage in an Anticoagulated Patient: A Case Report.” &lt;em&gt;Singapore Medical Journal&lt;/em&gt; 35, no. 3 (June 1994): 319–20. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ram, S. P., K. Kyaw, and A. R. Noor. “Haematoma Testes due to Traditional Massage in a Neonate.” &lt;em&gt;Tropical Doctor&lt;/em&gt; 24, no. 2 (April 1994): 81–82.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Please note that this answer does not constitute medical advice. It is only meant to summarize published research related to the original claim and limited to the cited sources. Consult your physician about what these results may mean for your health.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-09-01T23:48:10.150" LastActivityDate="2015-09-01T23:48:10.150" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22549" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22561" CreationDate="2014-07-27T11:38:56.663" Score="27" ViewCount="1627" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true Coca-Cola once contained cocaine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To what extent and how similar was this to the street drug cocaine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Until 1903, the world-famous soft drink contained a significant dose&#xA;  of cocaine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/41975-does-coca-cola-contain-cocaine.html&quot;&gt;livescience.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21016" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T10:24:53.940" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T10:24:53.940" Title="Did Coca-Cola contain cocaine?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|drinks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22550" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22567" CreationDate="2014-07-27T11:48:27.190" Score="5" ViewCount="1055" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1860715_1860714_1860702,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Time.com&lt;/a&gt; article, Julius Caesar was kidnapped by pirates when he was 25.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He charmed them, telling his captors to double their ransom demand and joking about how he would punish them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this story true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21016" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-07-27T14:11:49.707" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T14:31:15.403" Title="Did Julius Caesar tell his captors to double their ransom demands?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22552" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22589" CreationDate="2014-07-27T17:56:08.467" Score="26" ViewCount="13519" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term &amp;quot;Prone masturbation&amp;quot; refers to men lying face down and thrusting their penis into or against the bed, pillow, or something else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://healthystrokes.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Healthy Strokes&lt;/a&gt; is claiming that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prone masturbation can reduce the ability of a male to have normal&#xA;sexual relations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&#xA;For males with a history of masturbating prone, to them prone&#xA;masturbation is like a computer keyboard and having intercourse is&#xA;like switching to a manual typewriter. Conventional (manual)&#xA;masturbation is more like using the manual typewriter. It does not put&#xA;as much pressure on the penis as prone masturbation. The pressure is&#xA;more the same as it is in intercourse. So for guys who are used to&#xA;ordinary masturbation, sex comes more naturally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&#xA;So, although occasional prone masturbation may not produce any&#xA;immediately noticeable negative effects, over time it can result in a&#xA;gradual or sudden loss of sexual function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The medical term for the alleged detrimental effects of prone masturbation is &lt;em&gt;Traumatic Masturbatory Syndrome (TMS)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific or experimental research verifying this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8542" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-06-03T09:23:45.287" Title="Is prone masturbation detrimental to your sex life?" Tags="|environmental-health|sexuality|masturbation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22553" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22534" CreationDate="2014-07-27T18:28:14.393" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;As is evidenced by the comments and current lack of answers over on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18438/is-beckhams-pepsi-beach-commercial-real&quot;&gt;this similar question&lt;/a&gt;, videos like this are inherently hard to debunk because, while they may have been faked, the acts they portray are theoretically possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, it is perhaps most important to point out that this appears to be a viral marketing campaign for &lt;a href=&quot;http://carriere.infosupport.com/studenten&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an IT training company in the Netherlands&lt;/a&gt;.  User &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/8755/redgrittybrick&quot;&gt;RedGrittyBrick&lt;/a&gt; pointed out &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18438/is-beckhams-pepsi-beach-commercial-real#comment-71418&quot;&gt;in the other thread&lt;/a&gt; that an &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reelseo.com/pepsi-shows-wrong-fake-viral-video/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;online video marketing guide&lt;/a&gt;&quot; explains that &lt;em&gt;&quot;One of the most popular ways for brands to reach huge audiences with online video is to create a clip that begs the question, 'Was that real or fake?'&quot;&lt;/em&gt;  In other words, these type of videos are most effective at advertising, and are routinely faked.  &lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://wefilm.com/cases/max-the-hacker-a-viral-legend&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Months&lt;/a&gt; after I initially wrote this answer, the company that produced the video released a statement admitting that it was a hoax.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/16121/sqb&quot;&gt;SQB&lt;/a&gt; reports on that in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/30419/1337&quot;&gt;another answer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, it is important to note that there is no evidence that Max the Hacker has ever gotten in legal trouble for his antics.  Surely at least one of these hacks must have broken at least one law in the Netherlands, and publicizing it to a series of YouTube videos with collectively millions of views would surely have gotten the attention of the authorities.  Yet, there have been no news reports of his arrest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thirdly, Max the Hacker is completely unknown to the security community.  I was unable to find a single paper or conference talk attributed to the guy.  Look at how much press and, more importantly, funding people like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/04/08/darpa-funded-researchers-help-you-learn-to-hack-a-car-for-a-tenth-the-price/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Charlie Miller have garnered from their car hacking research&lt;/a&gt;.  If Max the Hacker were really technically savvy enough to remotely control a Porsche, he would almost certainly be aware of the economic incentives to provide that research back to the community and/or contract with car manufacturers as opposed to risking arrest by commandeering a car &quot;for the lulz.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specific to the videos, there are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nsinternational.nl/en?utm_source=ns.nl&amp;amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;amp;utm_content=internationaalreizen_en&amp;amp;utm_campaign=alg_ns_web&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;no direct trains from any station in The Netherlands to Alicante&lt;/a&gt;.  Even if there was, the arrival boards at the stations are not digital; they are mechanical flip-boards:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vdEqE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Mechanical arrivals flip board.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the only explanation is that either Max physically opened the board and manually added a new tag for Alicante, which is highly unlikely, or that part of the video was edited in post-processing.  &lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/20730/hugo-zink&quot;&gt;Hugo Zink&lt;/a&gt; claims &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22534/did-max-the-hacker-manipulate-autocues-and-traffic-lights/22553?noredirect=1#comment114646_22553&quot;&gt;in the comments&lt;/a&gt; that since at least 2010 the arrival boards in The Netherlands have been digital.  I haven't ridden a train there since before 2010, so I cannot confirm.  Even if that's true, though, it only supports the fact that these videos were a hoax, because &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq05kzMRVzU#t=6m14s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the first video clearly depicts the flip-style boards at 6 minutes 14 seconds in&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Porsche that Max remotely controls appears to either be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_996&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;996&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_997&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;997&lt;/a&gt; Cabriolet.&#xA;While remotely controlling a car is theoretically possible (see Charlie Miller's research linked above, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/07/21/chinese_uni_students_pop_tesla_model_s/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;more recent work on the Tesla Model S&lt;/a&gt;), there always needs to be some mechanism for the remote controller to actuate the brakes and turn the steering wheel.  This is possible in cars like a Prius or Tesla that have lane-keeping assistance (that overrides the steering input) or emergency braking assistance (that automatically applies the brakes if the car senses an imminent crash).  Neither the 996 nor the 997 had any of these features.  Therefore, at a minimum, Max would have had to physically break into the vehicle and attach remote-controllable manual actuators to operate the steering and brakes.  Possible, but highly unlikely if the goal of the video was simply to impress his friends and the YouTube viewers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a relevant thread with some anecdotal evidence on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.governmentsecurity.org/forum/topic/27497-maxcornelisse-videos-true-or-fake/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this security forum&lt;/a&gt;. The consensus is that, while the hacks themselves are theoretically possible, the videos themselves are fakes; as a professional security researcher myself, I concur.  There are also some claims of evidence that Max is a part-time actor, however, I was unable to find hard evidence to support those claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; There was a specific request for an explanation of the plausibility of the cell phone text message hack.  There was &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-21/dc-21-presentations/DePerry-Ritter/DEFCON-21-DePerry-Ritter-Femtocell-Updated.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a talk at last year's DEFCON conference that demonstrated a well-known technology to do that: Femtocell man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks&lt;/a&gt;.  The idea is that you can set up a small mini-cell tower (which are cheaply available as commercial off-the-shelf consumer items these days) and hack it to force all cell phones within its range to associate with it instead of the real cell provider's cell towers.  Then you can send fake voice calls, text messages, etc., to all of the cell phones connected to it.  You can even alter the data that is being sent from the &quot;real&quot; cell-tower, on the fly.  For example, it has been demonstrated that you can alter the contents of a web page loaded on a smartphone.  The trouble with Max's video is that, in order to get every phone in the room to receive the text message (which is what was depicted in the video), he would have needed a separate hacked femtocell transmitter for each phone carrier company used in the room.  This is possible, but it would have required a lot of labor to set up, as each phone carrier potentially has a different encoding of text messages in their network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T13:01:23.603" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22555" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-27T21:57:49.503" Score="3" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;Various articles suggest that artificial sweeteners cause the body to respond with an increased insulin release, which may be associated with diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/03/splenda-blood-sugar-sucralose-insulin_n_3362122.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers found that consuming the sucralose was associated with higher blood sugar peaks and 20 percent higher insulin levels compared with consuming the water, though they noted more studies are needed to determine the actual health effects of a 20 percent increase in insulin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21374" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-27T23:43:07.153" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T10:17:57.313" Title="Do artificial sweeteners trigger insulin releases?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22557" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22558" CreationDate="2014-07-28T09:04:00.470" Score="4" ViewCount="1200" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the summer, there is always an increase in advertisements and public awareness campaigns to get people to wear suntan lotion, to reduce the risk of sunburn (naturally).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of these advertisements often say that it is still possible to get a suntan while wearing suntan lotion, presumably to encourage those with higher resistances to the sunrays (or those that are consious of the way they look) to still where sun lotion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can this be true? If you are being protected from sunburn, surely you are also protected from suntans? My understanding is that a suntan is just underdeveloped sunburn - likewise, sunburn is over exposed suntan, both being caused by the same exposure to the same UV rays. Is this not correct? If it is, how can protection from sunburn not also protect you from sun tans?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21378" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T09:49:29.490" Title="Is it possible to get a suntan while wearing suntan lotion?" Tags="|consumer-products|sun-exposure|sun|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22558" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22557" CreationDate="2014-07-28T09:49:29.490" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, if you use sunscreen. No, if you use sunblock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sunscreen absorbs an amount of radiation, but not all (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunscreen#Measurements_of_sunscreen_protection&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sun protection factor&lt;/a&gt; is used to measure effectiveness):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sunscreen [...] absorbs or reflects some of the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation on the skin exposed to sunlight and thus helps protect against sunburn [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sunscreen combines organic and inorganic chemicals to filter the light from the sun so that less of it reaches the deeper layers of your skin. Like a screen door, &lt;strong&gt;some light penetrates, but not as much&lt;/strong&gt; as if the door wasn't present [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sunblock reflects light:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sunblock, on the other hand, reflects or scatters the light away so that it doesn't reach the skin at all. The reflective particles in sunblocks usually consist of zinc oxide or titanium oxide [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sunscreens absorb both UV-A (the radiation that can lead to cancer) and UV-B (the radiation that leads to sunburns) and transforms them into heat [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia contributors, &amp;quot;Sunscreen,&amp;quot; Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sunscreen&amp;amp;oldid=618251463&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sunscreen&amp;amp;oldid=618251463&lt;/a&gt; (accessed July 28, 2014).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D. &lt;em&gt;How Does Sunscreen Work?&lt;/em&gt; Available from &lt;a href=&quot;http://chemistry.about.com/od/howthingsworkfaqs/f/sunscreen.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://chemistry.about.com/od/howthingsworkfaqs/f/sunscreen.htm&lt;/a&gt; (accessed 28.07.2014)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T09:49:29.490" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22555" CreationDate="2014-07-28T10:17:57.313" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is &lt;strong&gt;evidence&lt;/strong&gt; for what is provided in the article. And this evidence is extremely easy to find since this &lt;strong&gt;evidence&lt;/strong&gt; is linked from the Huffington Post &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/03/splenda-blood-sugar-sucralose-insulin_n_3362122.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take a look: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hby9p.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you click on &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2013/04/30/dc12-2221&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;journal Diabetes Care&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, you will find an academic/scholarly article. Guess what is the most important thing in academic/scholary articles? They have to pass an academic quality assessment before they can be published in an academic journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, they always start with an abstract which is a short summary of the article as well as a description of the objective, method, result and conclusion of the study. This is the abstract of the academic article Huffington Post took info from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;OBJECTIVE&lt;/strong&gt; Nonnutritive sweeteners (NNS), such as sucralose, have been&#xA;  reported to have metabolic effects in animal models. However, the&#xA;  relevance of these findings to human subjects is not clear. We&#xA;  evaluated the acute effects of sucralose ingestion on the metabolic&#xA;  response to an oral glucose load in obese subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS&lt;/strong&gt; Seventeen obese subjects (BMI 42.3 ± 1.6&#xA;  kg/m2) who did not use NNS and were insulin sensitive (based on a&#xA;  homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance score ≤2.6)&#xA;  underwent a 5-h modified oral glucose tolerance test on two separate&#xA;  occasions preceded by consuming either sucralose (experimental&#xA;  condition) or water (control condition) 10 min before the glucose load&#xA;  in a randomized crossover design. Indices of β-cell function, insulin&#xA;  sensitivity (SI), and insulin clearance rates were estimated by using&#xA;  minimal models of glucose, insulin, and C-peptide kinetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RESULTS&lt;/strong&gt; Compared with the control condition, sucralose ingestion&#xA;  caused 1) a greater incremental increase in peak plasma glucose&#xA;  concentrations (4.2 ± 0.2 vs. 4.8 ± 0.3 mmol/L; P = 0.03), 2) a 20 ±&#xA;  8% greater incremental increase in insulin area under the curve (AUC)&#xA;  (P &amp;lt; 0.03), 3) a 22 ± 7% greater peak insulin secretion rate (P &amp;lt;&#xA;  0.02), 4) a 7 ± 4% decrease in insulin clearance (P = 0.04), and 5) a 23 ± 20% decrease in SI (P = 0.01). There were no significant&#xA;  differences between conditions in active glucagon-like peptide 1,&#xA;  glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide, glucagon incremental&#xA;  AUC, or indices of the sensitivity of the β-cell response to glucose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CONCLUSIONS&lt;/strong&gt; These data demonstrate that sucralose affects the glycemic&#xA;  and insulin responses to an oral glucose load in obese people who do&#xA;  not normally consume NNS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Received October 29, 2012. Accepted March 5, 2013. © 2013 by the&#xA;  American Diabetes Association. Readers may use this article as long as&#xA;  the work is properly cited, the use is educational and not for profit,&#xA;  and the work is not altered. See&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/&lt;/a&gt; for details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full article is available for free &lt;a href=&quot;http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/early/2013/04/30/dc12-2221.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, feel free to read it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T10:17:57.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22549" CreationDate="2014-07-28T11:30:53.803" Score="37" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it true Coca-Cola once contained Cocaine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;; it did. &#xA;When created, Coca-Cola's two key ingredients were &lt;strong&gt;cocaine&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;caffeine&lt;/strong&gt;. Guess how the name Coca-Cola was derived? Since the &lt;strong&gt;cocaine&lt;/strong&gt; was derived from the &lt;em&gt;coca leaf&lt;/em&gt; and the &lt;strong&gt;caffeine&lt;/strong&gt; from &lt;em&gt;kola nut&lt;/em&gt;; the name lead to Coca-Kola; but later for marketing purposes, they changed the name &lt;em&gt;Coca-Kola&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;Coca-Cola&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;sup&gt; (1)&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sup&gt; (2)&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I'm curious as to if it contained cocaine and if so, to what extent?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;John Pemberton, founder of Coca Cola, used five ounces of coca leaf per gallon of syrup (0.64 mL per L), &lt;strong&gt;a SIGNIFICANT dose&lt;/strong&gt;. In 1891, businessman Asa Griggs Candler who bought Coca-Cola later,  claimed his formula ( heavily modified heavily from Pemberton's original) contained only a 10&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; of this amount.&lt;sup&gt; (3)&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, Coca-Cola once contained an estimated nine milligrams of cocaine per glass.&lt;sup&gt; (3)&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Livescience.com claim: Until 1903, the world-famous soft drink contained a significant dose&#xA;  of cocaine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;After 1904, Coca-Cola started using spent-leaves instead of fresh-leaves, aka, the leftovers of the cocaine-extraction process with trace levels of cocaine.&lt;sup&gt; (4)&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Today, Coca-Cola uses a cocaine-free coca leaf extract prepared in Stepan Company in New Jersey.&lt;sup&gt; (5)&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/0204.htm&quot;&gt;&quot;Coca-cola&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Pponline.co.uk. Retrieved March 13, 2011.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventions/a/coca_cola.htm&quot;&gt;&quot;The History of Coca Cola&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webcitation.org/5QDrW0eoP&quot;&gt;Archived&lt;/a&gt; from the original on July 10, 2007.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(3) Liebowitz, Michael, R. (1983). The Chemistry of Love. Boston: Little, Brown, &amp;amp; Co.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(4) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_033.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Is it true Coca Cola once contained cocaine?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webcitation.org/5msXBwkls&quot;&gt;Archived&lt;/a&gt; from the original on January 18, 2010. Retrieved February 27, 2007.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(5) May, Clifford D. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/01/business/how-coca-cola-obtains-its-coca.html&quot;&gt;How Coca-Cola Obtains Its Coca&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times&quot;&gt;The New York Times&lt;/a&gt;, July 1, 1988. Accessed April 11, 2008. &quot;A Stepan laboratory in Maywood, N.J., is the nation's only legal commercial importer of coca leaves, which it obtains mainly from Peru and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia. Besides producing the coca flavoring agent sold to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coca-Cola_Company&quot;&gt;The Coca-Cola Company&lt;/a&gt;, Stepan extracts &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocaine&quot;&gt;cocaine&lt;/a&gt; from the coca leaves, which it sells to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallinckrodt&quot;&gt;Mallinckrodt&lt;/a&gt; Inc., a St. Louis pharmaceutical manufacturer that is the only company in the United States licensed to purify the product for medicinal use.&quot; See links for more information.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2014-07-29T14:11:57.787" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T14:11:57.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22562" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22565" CreationDate="2014-07-28T11:50:57.347" Score="40" ViewCount="21982" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is widespread belief in my culture that we should not stay near door or windows during lightning. So people advise others to stay inside house with doors and windows closed to be safe from lightning. Is there any scientific basis for that idea of being hit by lightning when staying close to doors or windows?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19279" LastEditorUserId="8192" LastEditDate="2014-07-29T13:46:48.423" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T13:46:48.423" Title="Is it safe to stand by the windows during a thunderstorm?" Tags="|physics|safety|weather|lightning|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22563" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-28T11:59:40.537" Score="1" ViewCount="137" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is still pretty confusing who actually shot down the MH17 flight ? Many news websites claim that the Plane was shot down by Russian-backed Rebels,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is overwhelming, but largely circumstantial evidence that Russian-backed rebels mistakenly brought down the Boeing 777, killing&#xA;  all 298 people on board, having mistaken it for a Ukrainian military&#xA;  aircraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10993470/Putin-facing-multi-million-pound-legal-action-over-alleged-role-in-MH17-crash.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10993470/Putin-facing-multi-million-pound-legal-action-over-alleged-role-in-MH17-crash.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While other claims that it was indeed shot down by Ukrainian troops,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A source within the Ukrainian defense department claims that Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was accidentally shot down by Ukrainian&#xA;  troops during a military exercise near Donetsk which took place on&#xA;  July 17.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalresearch.ca/kiev-source-ukraine-accidentally-shot-down-mh17-during-exercises/5393441&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.globalresearch.ca/kiev-source-ukraine-accidentally-shot-down-mh17-during-exercises/5393441&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What really happened does any one has a clue ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21292" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2014-11-21T03:57:25.723" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T03:57:25.723" Title="Who fired rockets at Malaysian MH17 flight?" Tags="|aviation|mh17|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-07-28T12:31:52.290" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22565" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22562" CreationDate="2014-07-28T12:56:08.110" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not just your culture.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lightningsafety.noaa.gov/indoors.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Advice from the US National Weather Service&lt;/a&gt; includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stay away from windows and doors, and stay off porches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5962/do-open-windows-increase-the-chance-of-lightning-striking-the-house?rq=1&quot;&gt;answer to this related question&lt;/a&gt; (including the transcript of interview with meteorologist John Jensenius) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0623_040623_lightningfacts_2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this advice from National Geographic&lt;/a&gt; gives some reasons for the advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Metal frame windows and doors are good electrical conductors, but even glass can conduct lightning.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lightning strikes on the building or debris from nearby strikes can shatter glass in windows and doors causing flying glass.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lightning is often accompanied by other extreme weather including high winds and hail which can damage windows and doors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T12:56:08.110" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22550" CreationDate="2014-07-28T14:31:15.403" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Perhaps; but we will probably never know for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source for this story is &quot;The Life of Julius Caesar&quot; by the Greek historian Plutarch, who &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livius.org/caa-can/caesar/caesar_t01.htm&quot;&gt;writes&lt;/a&gt; in the very beginning (this is going to be a long quote, but it gives you an idea of the colorfulness of the story):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First, when the pirates demanded a ransom of twenty talents, Caesar burst out laughing. They did not know, he said, who it was that they had captured, and he volunteered to pay fifty. Then, when he had sent his followers to the various cities in order to raise the money and was left with one friend and two servants among these Cilicians, about the most bloodthirsty people in the world, he treated them so highhandedly that, whenever he wanted to sleep, he would send to them and tell them to stop talking.&#xA;  For thirty-eight days, with the greatest unconcern, he joined in all their games and exercises, just as if he was their leader instead of their prisoner. He also wrote poems and speeches which he read aloud to them, and if they failed to admire his work, he would call them to their faces illiterate savages, and would often laughingly threaten to have them all hanged. They were much taken with this and attributed his freedom of speech to a kind of simplicity in his character or boyish playfulness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, the ransom arrived from Miletus and, as soon as he had paid it and been set free, he immediately manned some ships and set sail from the harbor of Miletus against the pirates. He found them still there, lying at anchor off the island, and he captured nearly all of them. He took their property as spoils of war and put the men themselves into the prison at Pergamon. He then went in person to [Marcus] Junius, the governorof Asia, thinking it proper that he, as praetor in charge of the province, should see to the punishment of the prisoners. Junius, however, cast longing eyes at the money, which came to a considerable sum, and kept saying that he needed time to look into the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Caesar paid no further attention to him. He went to Pergamon, took the pirates out of prison and crucified the lot of them, just as he had often told them he would do when he was on the island and they imagined that he was joking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(You can also read &lt;a href=&quot;http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Caesar*.html&quot;&gt;a more classical translation&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, Plutarch is the source of a lot of the information we have about great men of ancient Greece and Rome. However, the venerable historian was born 90 years after Caesar's death, and perhaps 150 years after the purported events, when many details of Caesar's life have become legends and anecdotes, and might have lost some of their historic accuracy. There is also Suetonius' AD 121 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Julius*.html&quot;&gt;The Life of Julius Caesar&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, which gives a somewhat less enthusiastic account:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While crossing to Rhodes, after the winter season had already begun, he was taken by pirates near the island of Pharmacussa and remained in their custody for nearly forty days in a state of intense vexation, attended only by a single physician and two body-servants; for he had sent off his travelling companions and the rest of his attendants at the outset, to raise money for his ransom. Once he was set on shore on payment of fifty talents, he did not delay then and there to launch a fleet and pursue the departing pirates, and the moment they were in his power to inflict on them the punishment which he had often threatened when joking with them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, JC has lost most of his panache, became vexed, and the doubling of the ransom is not mentioned. However, Suetonius might (or might not) have taken this story from Plutarch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - to sum up - there is an ancient source for this story, but we do not know whether it is reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastActivityDate="2014-07-28T14:31:15.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22570" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-28T18:10:55.263" Score="1" ViewCount="337" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ibtimes site claims that the guy in this image is Igor Girkin, also know as 'Strelkov&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3Rjm2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Igor 'Strelkov ' Girkin (C) pictured in Visegrad in 1992 along with a&#xA;  Russian mercenary and a Bosnian Serb commanderwww.klix.ba&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Link to the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/igor-strelkov-key-mh17-crash-suspect-linked-massacre-3000-bosnian-muslims-1992-1458304&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/igor-strelkov-key-mh17-crash-suspect-linked-massacre-3000-bosnian-muslims-1992-1458304&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that this is true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of now, searching for &quot;Strelkov&quot; on Google leads to this article, as the first result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21395" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2014-07-28T19:02:54.493" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T22:07:45.400" Title="Is this Strelkov?" Tags="|russia|ukraine|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22571" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-28T19:32:19.807" Score="7" ViewCount="379" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104351710&quot;&gt;NPR article from 2009&lt;/a&gt; states that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Radin&quot;&gt;Dean Radin&lt;/a&gt; conducted a Love study that claimed to show a scientifically meaningful correlation between a husband thinking about a wife and her sensing it within two seconds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After running 36 couples through this test, the researchers found that when one person focused his thoughts on his partner, the partner's blood flow and perspiration dramatically changed within two seconds. The odds of this happening by chance were 1 in 11,000. Three dozen double blind, randomized studies by such institutions as the University of Washington and the University of Edinburgh have reported similar results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this real science?  Has the statistical analysis been properly conducted?  Is it really confirmed by 3 dozen double blind randomized studies at reputable institutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8467" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T13:39:34.857" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T13:39:34.857" Title="Has Dean Radin's Love study been independently confirmed by three dozen groups?" Tags="|psychology|cognitive-science|esp|dean-radin|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22572" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="48260" CreationDate="2014-07-28T19:33:03.953" Score="25" ViewCount="9516" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a very interesting Youtube Video &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;British Plugs Are Better Than All Other Plugs, And Here's Why&lt;/a&gt; that indicates some engineering reasons why the British power plug is safer than for example the American style power plug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see in the video there are a variety of features that ought to make the British plugs safer than American and other plugs, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the powered slots are shuttered until opened by a third safety-pin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the pins are covered partway down by an insulator so you cannot touch the metal pins when they are connected&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the plug has an independent fuse&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the internal wires are colour-labeled &amp;quot;bLue&amp;quot; for Left and &amp;quot;bRown&amp;quot; for Right&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the grounding wire is longer than the powered wires (so if the cable is yanked out the ground should be the last thing to disconnect)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The distance from pins to edge of plug is large to reduce risk of fingers getting near pins.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The cable exits at 90 degrees so that pulling the cable is less likely to pull the plug partially out.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ground pin is longer so last to unplug.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is part of a system that has switches on outlets so that appliances can be turned off at the wall (rather than leaving unplugged plugs lying on the floor).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The fuse is located so you have to unplug before changing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cables are clamped by a cord-grip&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these interesting and seemingly important engineering feats bear out in reality? Has anyone any got any statistics on the number of deaths and injuries from electrical plugs in Britain, and compared them to other areas that do not have these safety features in their power plugs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="55978" LastEditDate="2020-08-06T21:27:35.567" LastActivityDate="2020-08-06T21:27:35.567" Title="Are British plugs safer than all other plugs?" Tags="|safety|electronics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22395" CreationDate="2014-07-29T03:59:04.713" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is what Stravinsky has to say &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;At the performance, mild protests against the music could be heard from the beginning.Then, when the curtain opened on a group of knock-kneed and long braided Lolitas jumping up and down (Danse des adolescentes), the storm broke.&#xA;  Cries of 'Ta guele' came from behind me. I left the hall in a rage; I was sitting&#xA;  on the right near the orchestra, and I remember slamming the door. I have never again been that angry. The music was so familiar to me;  I loved it,and I could not understand why people who had not yet heard it wanted to protest in advance.I arrived backstage in a fury; there I saw Diaghilev switching the house lights on and off in the hope that this might quiet the hall. For the rest of performance I stood in the wings behind Ninjinsky and holding his jacket while he stood on a chair shouting numbers to the dancers, like a coxwain.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: A transcription  of a recording of Stravinsky talking about 'The Rite of Spring' which Thomas Kelly plays in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://greatteachers.harvard.edu/videos/thomas-kelly-stravinsky&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;lecture&lt;/a&gt; at around 28:40.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there are numerous videos on YouTube of Stravinsky talking about his works and his life in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18755" LastEditorUserId="18755" LastEditDate="2014-07-29T04:50:49.607" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T04:50:49.607" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22577" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-29T07:03:01.630" Score="1" ViewCount="387" Body="&lt;p&gt;At the San Diego Comic Con 2014, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRyHvgHW-wU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;there was what they call an hologram of Homer Simpson&lt;/a&gt;, but is this a real hologram? Or was it, perhaps, just a projection on the wall? I thought that the hologram technology was far from those kind of impressing results!? If it's really hologram technology, how does it work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19468" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T21:09:59.283" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T22:08:47.493" Title="Was a real hologram of Homer Simpson used at Comic Con 2014?" Tags="|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22579" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22584" CreationDate="2014-07-29T09:55:29.773" Score="8" ViewCount="811" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/air-algerie-plane-wreckage-remains-found-in-mali-after-crashing-in-rainstorm/story-fnizu68q-1227000625288&quot;&gt;early reports&lt;/a&gt; by witnesses to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Alg%C3%A9rie_Flight_5017&quot;&gt;Air Algérie Flight 5017&lt;/a&gt; crash claim that lightning caused the plane to crash:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A GROUP of herders who say they saw Air Algerie flight AH5017 crash claim it went down after being struck by lightning, local officials told Reuters.&#xA;  Louis Berthaud, a community counsellor in Gossi near where the plane carrying 116 people went down, said: “The herders were in the bush and saw the plane fall.”&#xA;  He added: “It must have been a storm and it was struck by lightning. They said it was on fire as it fell, before it crashed.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done a lot of research before I read this article. I know that planes are made of metals that are good conductors of electricity. From what I know, this means that the electricity will flow 'around' the outside of the plane and is essentially a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday%27s_cage&quot;&gt;Faraday cage&lt;/a&gt;. That means that the lightning itself won't be able affect the plane except for scorches on the outside. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can lightning ignite a fuselage or bring down a plane?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21407" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-29T10:32:02.787" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T14:38:30.433" Title="Can lightning bring down a plane?" Tags="|physics|aviation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22572" CreationDate="2014-07-29T10:59:18.617" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Has anyone any got any statistics on the number of deaths and injuries from electrical plugs in Britain, and compared them to other areas that do not have these safety features in their power plugs?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably not, many have looked for such data without success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is often used to record causes of death. This has some codes for electrocution but they do not distinguish deaths due to design of plug or outlet from deaths due to faults in cables or equipment for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are British plugs safer than all other plugs?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You cannot look at plugs in isolation, they are part of a system. In particular, BS1363 plugs are designed for use in UK electrical installations with wall-sockets that also meet compatible standards and are specifically designed for use with ring-mains circuits - which are standard in the UK but not used in almost all other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;British plugs do seem to have a greater number of safety features compared to other national standards of similar age (e.g. US plugs). In the absence of reliable and properly comparable statistics, any assessment of their actual relative safety must be a matter of subjective opinion or a theoretical engineering assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cpsc.gov//PageFiles/109822/electro.pdf&quot;&gt;Electrocutions associated with Electric Shocks&lt;/a&gt; - shows ICD codes used in USA etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://electrical.theiet.org/wiring-matters/18/plug-origin.cfm?type=pdf&quot;&gt;THE ORIGIN OF THE BS 1363 PLUG AND SOCKET OUTLET SYSTEM&lt;/a&gt; - lacks detail.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T10:59:18.617" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22584" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22579" CreationDate="2014-07-29T14:38:30.433" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is possible&lt;/strong&gt;, however unlikely in modern commercial aircraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of past incidents:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1963 – &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_214&quot;&gt;Pan Am Flight 214&lt;/a&gt;, was hit by lightning igniting the fuel. Crashed killing everyone onboard (81 people). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1973 – crash of an Ozark Airlines Fairchild FH227B in St. Louis, which killed 38 and injured six passengers and crew. A lightning strike on final approach was cited as a probable cause.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1985 – crash of a Delta Air Lines Lockheed L-1011-385 in Dallas/Fort Worth, which killed 135 and injured 30 passengers and crew. Lighting was cited as a contributing factor.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can it happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lightning Effects&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both the occupants of an aircraft and the aircraft itself are subject&#xA;  to the powerful effects of a lightning strike. The inherent structural&#xA;  design of an aircraft provides the occupants almost complete&#xA;  protection despite the massive amount of current involved. This&#xA;  protection is based on the principle known as the Faraday cage, first&#xA;  devised by the physicist Michael Faraday in 1836.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Faraday cage is a hollow enclosure made of conducting material, such&#xA;  as the hull of an aircraft. In the presence of a strong electric&#xA;  field, any electric charge will be forced to redistribute itself on&#xA;  the outside enclosure, but the space inside the cage remains&#xA;  uncharged. Thus, the metal hull of the aircraft acts as a Faraday&#xA;  cage, protecting the occupants from lightning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some aircraft are made of advanced composite materials, which — by&#xA;  themselves — are significantly less conductive than metal. To overcome&#xA;  this resulting safety problem, a layer of conductive fibers or screens&#xA;  is imbedded between layers of the composite material to conduct the&#xA;  lightning current.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regardless of hull material, the direct effects of lightning on the&#xA;  exterior can also include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Burning or melting at lightning strike points;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Increase in temperature;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Residual magnetism;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Acoustic shock effects;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Arcing at hinges, joints and bonding points; and,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Ignition of fuel vapors.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Accident data indicate that most of these effects are not serious.&#xA;  However, an estimated one-third to one-half of aircraft lightning&#xA;  strikes result in at least some minor damage. Lightning generally&#xA;  enters an aircraft at one location, usually an extremity, and leaves&#xA;  at another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Burn marks are found at the entry and exit point(s) of the strike,&#xA;  although exit points are not present if the energy was dissipated via&#xA;  wicks or rods — static dischargers whose primary purpose is to bleed&#xA;  off into the surrounding air the static charge build-up that occurs&#xA;  during normal flight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because many aircraft fly a distance equivalent to several times their&#xA;  own lengths during a lightning discharge, the location of the entry&#xA;  point can change as the discharge attaches to additional points aft of&#xA;  the initial entry point. The location of the exit points may also&#xA;  change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Therefore, for any one strike, there may be several entry or exit&#xA;  points.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Occasionally, in more severe strikes, electrical equipment or avionics&#xA;  may be affected or damaged. This potential problem is addressed in&#xA;  modern aircraft design by redundancy. The functions of most critical&#xA;  systems are duplicated, so a lightning strike is unlikely to&#xA;  compromise safety of flight. In most strike events, pilots report&#xA;  nothing more than a temporary flickering of lights or short-lived&#xA;  interference with instruments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The exception is the incidence of positive lightning. Positive&#xA;  lightning strikes — because of their greater power — are considerably&#xA;  more dangerous than negative lightning strikes. Few aircraft are&#xA;  designed to withstand such strikes without significant damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;source &lt;a href=&quot;http://flightsafety.org/aerosafety-world-magazine/june-2010/when-lightning-strikes&quot;&gt;Flight Safety Foundation „When Lightning Strikes”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2014-07-29T14:38:30.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22586" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22594" CreationDate="2014-07-29T18:29:17.343" Score="8" ViewCount="1609" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nobel winning economist, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amartya_Sen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amartya Sen&lt;/a&gt; has said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a&#xA;  functioning democracy,&quot; he wrote in &quot;Democracy as Freedom&quot;&#xA;  (Anchor, 1999)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/01/arts/does-democracy-avert-famine.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Does Democracy Avert Famine?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question: Is there any documented evidence for this statement?&#xA;A study proving that no functioning democracy has ever faced a famine would be an ideal proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definition of famine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While there are various definitions of famine, many experts say that&#xA;  there must be evidence of three specific outcomes before a famine can&#xA;  be declared:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;At least 20 percent of households face extreme food shortages with&#xA;  limited ability to cope. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The prevalence of global acute malnutrition must exceed 30 percent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Death rates must exceed 2 deaths per 10,000&#xA;  people per day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wfp.org/hunger/faqs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hunger&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18871" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T17:17:12.700" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T17:17:12.700" Title="Has a famine ever taken place in a functioning democracy?" Tags="|nutrition|economics|democracy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22552" CreationDate="2014-07-29T18:51:54.763" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The whole idea that prone masturbation is harmful started in 1998 when Dr. Lawrence I. Sank proposed a &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9509379&quot;&gt;theory&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; of sexual dysfunction called &lt;em&gt;Traumatic Masturbatory Syndrome (TMS)&lt;/em&gt; &lt;sup&gt; (1) &lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his journal article, Dr. Sank speculated that the habit of masturbating prone (while lying face down — tending to rub penis against your hand, the surface of the floor, bed, pillow, or whatever it is laying on, in order to ejaculate) was responsible for severe sexual problems, including anorgasmia (delayed orgasms) and erectile dysfunction, suffered by four men he examined. &lt;sup&gt; (1) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Sank, once the four men abandoned prone masturbation and learned to masturbate in a supine position using their hands  their masturbating prone habit, their anorgasmia and erectile dysfunction supposedly became a thing of the past (they were cured of their sexual dysfunction) &lt;sup&gt; (1) &lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sank's theory isn't widely recognized in the medical community and it is not generally accepted, because: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It experiences &lt;strong&gt;on only 4 guys&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sexual dysfunction can be &lt;strong&gt;caused by stressors in a person's emotional, psychological and/or physical&lt;/strong&gt; well-being anyway.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There has been &lt;strong&gt;no follow-up research&lt;/strong&gt; to see if his claims are valid (e.g prone masturbation causes male sexual dysfunction).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sources, however, give credence to the idea; but they do not prove anything:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;One sex therapist has condemned masturbation by rubbing against a pillow or mattress&lt;sup&gt; (2) &lt;/sup&gt; . &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some people suggested that masturbation could play in male psychogenic sexual dysfunction (MPSD), citing Sank as their authority&lt;sup&gt; (3) &lt;/sup&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Paul Joanides, a sex guide, quoted an unidentified urologist as saying:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It seems possible that some men who always masturbate face down have&#xA;  erection problems when trying to have sex with a woman.&lt;sup&gt; (4) &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to your question is: &lt;strong&gt;Inconclusive. More research needs to be done, in order to provide a scientific answer on this website.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(1) Lawrence I. Sank. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9509379&quot;&gt;Traumatic Masturbatory Syndrome.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 24(1): 37-42 (1998).&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(2) Eva Margolies. Undressing the American Male: Men with Sexual Problems and What Women Can Do to Help Them. New York: Penguin, 1994.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(3) Josie Lipsith, Damian McCann, and David Goldmeier. Male Psychogenic Sexual Dysfunction: The Role of Masturbation. Sexual and Relationship Therapy 18: 448-471 (2003).&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(4) Joanides, Paul (2004) Guide to Getting It On, p. 396&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T04:12:53.053" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T04:12:53.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22592" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22623" CreationDate="2014-07-29T22:00:47.200" Score="3" ViewCount="337" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his article &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drgreene.com/90-seconds-to-change-the-world/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;90 Seconds to Change the World&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, Dr. Alan Greene claims that when a baby is born, one-third of its blood is still in the placenta and that among other health benefits, delayed-cord clamping reduces the risk of iron-deficiency anemia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Immediate cord clamping results in up to 10x the risk of developing iron deficiency anemia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does Dr. Greene have science on his side as he makes these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3988" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T00:00:52.397" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T21:05:08.800" Title="Does delayed umbilical cord-clamping reduce the risk of anaemia?" Tags="|medical-science|birth|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22586" CreationDate="2014-07-30T00:25:52.567" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman&quot;&gt;No true Scotsman&lt;/a&gt;&quot; argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example there was the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)&quot;&gt;great famine in Ireland in the 1850s&lt;/a&gt; when it was part of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_of_Great_Britain_and_Ireland&quot;&gt;United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland&lt;/a&gt; which &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reform_Act_1832&quot;&gt;was clearly a democracy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2011/09/05/no-famine-has-ever-taken-place-in-a-democracy/&quot;&gt;explicitly excluded&lt;/a&gt; because it was not a &quot;functioning&quot; democracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example would be the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_front_during_World_War_II&quot;&gt;home fronts during World War II&lt;/a&gt;. Although many countries were not democratic, a few were, and famine and malnutrition was endemic in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, this was during a war, so it could be called a different case yet again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines&quot;&gt;list of famines&lt;/a&gt; clearly shows that famines have happened in many democratic countries, including the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My speculation is that this has much more to do with &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand&quot;&gt;functioning economies&lt;/a&gt; than functioning democracies. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-party_state&quot;&gt;Single-party states&lt;/a&gt; such as China, Vietnam or Eritrea have functioning economies but lack democracy, and as far as I know seem not to be having famines recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a functioning democracy is not needed to have a functioning economy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine#Causes&quot;&gt;Wikipedia has a section on the causes of famine&lt;/a&gt;: sure enough, government policy is a possible cause, but so are natural causes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many famines are caused by imbalance of food production compared to the large populations of countries whose population exceeds the regional carrying capacity &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes it clear why a functioning economy helps on both counts: a functioning economy is only possible if the government does not make economic policy mistakes (first cause), and a functioning economy generates, in all likelihood, a stronger agriculture and food abundance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T08:49:13.037" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T08:49:13.037" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22595" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22953" CreationDate="2014-07-30T03:53:43.157" Score="10" ViewCount="10711" Body="&lt;p&gt;This picture makes its rounds around blogs &amp;amp; forums recently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jVk9k.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it have any scientific backing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastActivityDate="2018-02-18T16:17:44.470" Title="Determining your ancestry through the shape of your feet?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22596" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22529" CreationDate="2014-07-30T05:44:40.710" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, for example you could consider &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cervicalcancer/detailedguide/cervical-cancer-risk-factors&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cervical cancer a sexually transmitted disease&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.glowm.com/section_view/heading/Epidemiologic%20Aspects%20of%20Uterine%20Cervix%20Cancer/item/225#1554&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;If you don't have sex&lt;/a&gt; (with others), you won't contract HPV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other types of HPV are called high-risk types because they are&#xA;  strongly linked to cancers, including cancer of the cervix, vulva, and&#xA;  vagina in women, penile cancer in men, and cancers of the anus, mouth,&#xA;  and throat in both men and women. The high-risk types include HPV 16,&#xA;  HPV 18, HPV 31, HPV 33, and HPV 45, as well as some others. There&#xA;  might be no visible signs of infection with a high-risk HPV until&#xA;  pre-cancerous changes or cancer develops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Doctors believe that a woman must be infected with HPV in order to&#xA;  develop cervical cancer. Although this can mean infection with any of&#xA;  the high-risk types, about two-thirds of all cervical cancers are&#xA;  caused by HPV 16 and 18.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="604" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T05:44:40.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22597" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T06:45:27.837" Score="1" ViewCount="622" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.campaignforwool.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/ACOUSTIC-PERFORMANCE.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This PDF document&lt;/a&gt; is claiming the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wool carpets may have some&#xA;  advantages over nylon carpets in this respect, particularly for&#xA;  low frequency noise, as is demonstrated in Figure 1.&#xA;  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pdMsW.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this indeed true? Will 2 carpets that differ only in material (wool vs synthetic fibre) have significant different acoustic properties?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4603" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T10:57:53.790" Title="Does a carpet made from wool have better acoustic properties than a synthetic carpet?" Tags="|sound|materials|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22599" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T12:05:17.973" Score="5" ViewCount="1865" Body="&lt;p&gt;from various sources around the internet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Daily Mail&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2709386/Is-theatre-haunted-CCTV-footage-captures-spooky-moment-chair-moves-hours-medium-s-show.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Is this theatre haunted? CCTV footage captures the spooky moment a chair moves all on its own... hours after a medium's show&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Get ready to feel a ghostly shiver down your spine. This is the&#xA;  haunting moment a chair was caught on CCTV apparently moving on its&#xA;  own in a closed theatre hours after a psychic finished his show. It&#xA;  was recorded at Brookside Theatre in Romford, Essex, at around 4am on&#xA;  Sunday. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Metro&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://metro.co.uk/2014/07/29/spooky-cctv-footage-captures-ghost-at-theatre-4813838/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Spooky CCTV footage captures ‘ghost’ at theatre&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Spooky CCTV footage has emerged from an Essex theatre that appears to show a &#xA;  chair moving all on its own – just hours after a psychic medium took&#xA;  to the stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the clip, recorded on security cameras at the Brookside Theatre in&#xA;  Romford on Sunday morning, a chair moves backwards unaided and a table&#xA;  appears to get pulled as orbs of light float across the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mirror&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/ghost-theatre-spooky-cctv-footage-3926273#ixzz38x7QIdkK&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Is this a ghost at theatre? Spooky CCTV footage shows chair MOVING all on its own&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This spooky video of ghostly goings on was recorded inside a closed theatre &#xA;  after a psychic medium's show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the CCTV footage, a chair mysteriously moves back unaided and&#xA;  unexplained beams of light float across the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was recorded at Brookside Theatre in Romford, Essex, on Sunday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Medium Roy Roberts, who performed at the theatre the previous night,&#xA;  believes the video could prove there's a resident ghost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8980" LastEditorUserId="8980" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T15:04:52.497" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T17:09:20.377" Title="Is this CCTV video about a chair moving by itself in Essex theatre fake?" Tags="|physics|video|ghosts|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22599" CreationDate="2014-07-30T13:14:41.967" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;To your question &quot;Is this video about a moving chair in Essex theatre truly a “direct proof of the paranormal”?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly not. A video on YouTube proves absolutely nothing at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To your question &quot;is it explainable by some more natural phenomena&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly. Video editing tools for example. Or even a simple wire could do the job perfectly on a video with a quality this bad. Why would you assume that for something which is this simple to explain, there is even a small chance that the &quot;supernatural&quot; or the &quot;paranormal&quot; is at work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4603" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T13:14:41.967" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22604" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="38690" CreationDate="2014-07-30T14:48:19.540" Score="19" ViewCount="2110" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;This is based on &lt;a href=&quot;https://politics.stackexchange.com/q/4605/2130&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; on Politics.SE.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's currently a &quot;Live the Wage Challenge&quot; which a former governor and several congresspeople are publicly doing (&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/07/what-happened-when-3-politicians-tried-to-eat-on-minimum-wage-budget/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;abcnews&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/07/a-mile-in-shoes-of-the-minimum-wage-worker-109418.html#.U9fYssZJMg0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;politico&lt;/a&gt;).  The challenge claims on their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livethewage.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;official site&lt;/a&gt; that out of the $290/week a full-time minimum wage worker in the United States makes, they have to pay an average of $176.48 for housing and $35.06 for taxes, leaving $77 for food, transportation, and other expenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoted from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ubassets.s3.amazonaws.com/live_the_wage.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Live the Wage information sheet&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;July 24, 2014 marks 5 years since the last time the federal minimum wage increased. For five &#xA;  years, the federal minimum wage has remained stagnant at $7.25 an hour, meaning a family &#xA;  supported by a worker earning the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line — which is &#xA;  the case for far too many Americans today. Our nation can’t wait any longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After average taxes and housing expenses, the approximate weekly budget&#xA;  for someone earning the federal minimum wage is $77. This is the budget you&#xA;  have to cover a week’s worth of your meals, groceries, transportation, and&#xA;  recreational spending. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aside from the fact their math is slightly off (&lt;code&gt;290 - 176.48 - 35.06 = 78.46&lt;/code&gt;), they also don't provide any sources for their &quot;averages&quot;.  So: &lt;strong&gt;Are there any sources to back up the claimed average housing/tax expenses?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:54:43.033" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T04:39:15.673" Title="Is $77/week the weekly budget for a minimum wage worker?" Tags="|united-states|politics|personal-finance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22605" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T15:14:21.607" Score="7" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know that there are a lot of studies out there that claim that organic food is not significantly different than nonorganic food in nutritional content, but this &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=%2FBJN%2FS0007114514001366a.pdf&amp;amp;code=12fba04b4d47d1e24579326df0a7aa58&quot;&gt;new study&lt;/a&gt; seems to challenge this claim. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this study legitimate? It is a meta-analysis, and uses many peer reviewed papers to come to it's conclusions, but are the methods correct? It just seems surprising to me, since the consensus seemed to be that organic food and nonorganic food are not significantly different, and this is not new research, but a meta-analysis, so how did it come to a different conclusion than the consensus? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18728" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2020-07-07T15:49:30.603" LastActivityDate="2020-07-07T15:49:30.603" Title="Does organic food have more antioxidants than nonorganic food?" Tags="|nutrition|organic-food|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22606" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T16:08:12.713" Score="9" ViewCount="743" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are conflicting claims of who was responsible for a rocket attack on an outpatient clinic at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shifa_Hospital&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;al-Shifa hospital&lt;/a&gt; and a nearby playground in Gaza on July 28, 2014&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idfblog.com/blog/2014/07/31/hamas-launches-rockets-civilians-gaza/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Israeli Defence Force claimed it was Palestinian terrorists&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.sky.com/story/1308990/israel-blames-hamas-for-gaza-childrens-deaths&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sky News&lt;/a&gt; says the  Israel Defence Forces (IDF) deny responsibility, but that Gaza locals suspect the Israelis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/07/deaths-as-israel-resumes-gaza-strikes-20147281452469626.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aljazeera&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/07/28/israel-denies-striking-gaza-hospital-park/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Blaze&lt;/a&gt; quote both sides denying responsibility and blaming the other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any objective evidence of whether the rocket(s) were launched by Hamas or by the IDF?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20991" LastEditorUserId="20991" LastEditDate="2015-10-20T15:51:02.900" LastActivityDate="2015-10-22T09:45:48.580" Title="Who fired the rocket that hit al-Shifa Hospital and playground in Gaza on July 28, 2014?" Tags="|israel|palestine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22607" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T16:41:33.957" Score="5" ViewCount="613" Body="&lt;p&gt;An article from the Associated Press, &lt;a href=&quot;http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_DEBT_STUDY?SITE=AP&amp;amp;SECTION=HOME&amp;amp;TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&amp;amp;CTIME=2014-07-29-00-12-33&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;STUDY: 35 PERCENT IN US FACING DEBT COLLECTORS&lt;/a&gt;, cites a study by the Urban Institute. The article states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study found that 35.1 percent of people with credit records had been reported to collections for debt that averaged $5,178, based on September 2013 records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[The Urban Institute] figures nearly match the 36.5 percent of people in collections reported by a 2004 Federal Reserve analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I could not find in short order either the Urban Institute or Federal Reserve studies referred to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not clear from the article whether 35% of Americans are currently in collections, or have at some point been in collections (and if it is at some point, how far back these statistics account for).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T22:26:28.473" Title="Are 35% of Americans currently in collections?" Tags="|united-states|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22608" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T18:15:14.157" Score="4" ViewCount="500" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking through some pictures after watching &quot;The Zero Theorem&quot; it crossed my mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16335" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T18:15:14.157" Title="Is there a way to tell if the sun is rising or setting by looking at a picture and not knowing which coast it was taken at?" Tags="|astronomy|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-07-30T20:18:38.307" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22609" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22611" CreationDate="2014-07-30T19:53:52.853" Score="5" ViewCount="1443" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a poster in our breakroom at work that states this about drinking water:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2 glasses of water in the morning helps internal organs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1 glass before meal helps digestion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1 glass before shower prevents high-blood pressure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1 glass before bed helps prevent strokes or heart-attacks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have had trouble finding evidence of any of these claims because the poster doesn't cite any sources and when I search myself I get mixed answers (not many peer-reviewed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21327" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T21:06:48.830" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T22:08:52.493" Title="Does drinking water at certain times help digestion, prevent high-blood pressure, strokes and heart-attacks?" Tags="|medical-science|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22611" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22609" CreationDate="2014-07-30T22:08:52.493" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;This poster that you saw recalls from my memory a famous email I received once:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HEART ATTACKS AND WATER !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How many folks do you know who say they&#xA;  don't want to drink anything before going to bed because they'll have&#xA;  to get up during the night. . . . . &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Very Important. From A Cardiac Specialist!&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Drinking water at a certain time maximizes its effectiveness on the body&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2 glasses of water after waking up - helps activate internal organs&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1 glass of water 30 minutes before a meal helps digestion&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1 glass of water before taking a bath - helps lower blood pressure&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1 glass of water before going to bed - avoids stroke or heart attack&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Dr. Virend Somers is a cardiologist from the Mayo Clinic, who is lead&#xA;  author of the report in the July 29, 2008 issue of the Journal of the&#xA;  American College of Cardiology.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most heart attacks occur in the day,&#xA;  generally between 6 a.m. and noon. Having one during the night, when&#xA;  the heart should be most at rest, means that something unusual&#xA;  happened. Somers and his colleagues have been working for a decade to&#xA;  show that sleep apnea is to blame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you take an aspirin or a baby aspirin once a day, take it at night. The reason: Aspirin has a 24-hour &quot;half-life;&quot; therefore, if&#xA;  most heart attacks happen in the wee hours of the morning, the aspirin&#xA;  would be strongest in your system.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;FYI, aspirin lasts a really long time in your medicine chest, for years, (when it gets old, it smells like vinegar). . . . &lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this message has gone viral online: circulated on social media and people's emails; the Mayo Clinic, on behalf of Dr. Somers, exposed the falseness of this circulating email, and they said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neither Dr. Somers nor Mayo Clinic contributed to this email, which&#xA;  contains some information that is inaccurate and potentially harmful.&#xA;  We recommend that you speak with your physician if you have specific&#xA;  questions.&lt;sup&gt;(2)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an online hoax that you should immediately disregard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/24/online-myths_n_3954799.html&quot;&gt;What Bad Advice Did This Heart Attack Survivor Get?&lt;/a&gt; Huffington Post.  09/24/2013 &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (2) Misleading Aspirin Email. &lt;a href=&quot;http://newsblog.mayoclinic.org/2010/02/28/misleading-aspirin-email-virend-somers-mayo-clinic/&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic News Network.&lt;/a&gt;  Feb 28, 2010 &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T22:08:52.493" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22607" CreationDate="2014-07-30T22:26:28.473" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Urban Institute report you're looking for is here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/413191-Delinquent-Debt-in-America.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/413191-Delinquent-Debt-in-America.pdf&lt;/a&gt;. See p. 4:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An alarming 35 percent of people with credit files have debt in&#xA;  collections reported in these files. This percentage is nearly&#xA;  identical to results from a 2004 analysis of credit bureau data by the&#xA;  Federal Reserve, which found that 36.5 percent of people with credit&#xA;  reports had debt in collections reported in their files (Avery et al.&#xA;  2004).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The citation is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Avery, Robert B., Paul S. Calem, and Glenn B. Canner. 2004. “Credit Report Accuracy and Access to Credit.” Federal Reserve Bulletin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may also want to look at the NY Fed's quarterly report on household debt and credit: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorkfed.org/regional/householdcredit.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.newyorkfed.org/regional/householdcredit.html&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21027" LastActivityDate="2014-07-30T22:26:28.473" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22613" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-30T23:33:31.897" Score="4" ViewCount="774" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The Population Reference Bureau estimates that approximately 107 billion people have ever lived.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097038/Are-really-people-alive-today-lived-Earth.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097038/Are-really-people-alive-today-lived-Earth.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that the above claim is a consequence of a crackpot calculation and I think that we will never know the true figure, so I'm skeptical of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's the truth? Have 107 billion people ever lived?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2014-07-30T23:40:17.217" LastActivityDate="2019-03-29T20:30:17.547" Title="Have 107 billion people lived?" Tags="|population|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22613" CreationDate="2014-07-31T00:03:32.750" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer to whether 107 billion people have ever lived is Yes, according to one experienced Senior Demographer (with more than 40 years experience in his field) who works, and writes for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prb.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Population Reference Bureau&lt;/a&gt; named Carl Haub.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He published a, by his own admission semi-scientific, paper in 2011 entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2002/HowManyPeopleHaveEverLivedonEarth.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?&lt;/a&gt; which he begins by explaining:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any estimate of the total number of people who have ever been born will depend basically on two factors: the length of time humans are thought to have been on Earth and the average size of the human population at different periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first factor he indicates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the United Nations Determinants and Consequences of Population Trends, modern Homo sapiens may have appeared about 50,000 B.C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and for the second:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Guesstimating the number of people ever born, then, requires selecting population sizes for different points from antiquity to the present and applying assumed birth rates to each period.&#xA;  [...]&#xA;  For the purposes of this exercise, it was assumed that a constant growth rate applied to each period up to modern times. Birth rates were set at 80 per 1,000 per year through 1 A.D. and at 60 per 1,000 from 2 A.D. to 1750. Rates then declined to the low 30s by the modern period. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The daily mail dutifully reproduced the authors data table&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xclR8.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xclR8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097038/Are-really-people-alive-today-lived-Earth.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source: daily mail&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until someone invents a time machine, and has the inclination to go back and census roughly 108 billion individuals, I'm not sure we're going to get a much better estimate. &lt;em&gt;Is that Khan with a double N, sir&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2019-03-29T20:30:17.547" LastActivityDate="2019-03-29T20:30:17.547" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22615" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19553" CreationDate="2014-07-31T02:37:28.833" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lung.org/associations/states/colorado/tobacco/marijuana.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;According to the American Lung Association&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;when equal amounts of marijuana and tobacco are smoked, marijuana deposits four times as much tar into the lungs. This is because marijuana joints are un-filtered and often more deeply inhaled than cigarettes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21440" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T03:13:07.510" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T03:13:07.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22412" CreationDate="2014-07-31T04:01:43.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile_bear&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bile_bear&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Chinese media reported an incident in which a mother bear, having escaped her cage, strangled her own cub and then killed herself by intentionally running into a wall.[14]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly an anecdote rather than a scientifically validated study, but animals are clearly capable of committing suicide. Or at least bears are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21441" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T08:07:12.107" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T08:07:12.107" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22619" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22599" CreationDate="2014-07-31T17:09:20.377" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The video is not definitive evidence of the presence of a ghost. We do not have definitive evidence of the contrary either, unless we could find someone who was present in the room at the time and that, say, checked for the presence of a thread used for pulling the chair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, we can rely on experience to tell us the most likely solution to the problem. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can say with an extremely high degree of confidence that chairs (and inanimate objects in general) do not move by themselves, because we witnessed endless times the event of a chair/object not moving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On rare occasions some of us may have witnessed an episode of a chair seemingly moving by itself, but we may have found that it was due to an earthquake, or to our neighbour drilling holes in the wall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the great majority of us have never witnessed the appearance of a ghost, and those who believe they have, have not been able to give definitive proof that they effectively did see a ghost. In a good many occasions, proof of the contrary can instead be found, for instance sleep paralysis is sometimes associated to hallucinatory experiences (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.users.qwest.net/~jcosta3/article_dragon.htm&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16571587&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence&lt;/em&gt;, and in this case there is hardly any evidence at all provided to prove that a ghost is involved. &#xA;We should go with the other, extremely more likely hypothesis: the video is a trick used to give some cheap publicity to the medium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that these are not the only possible hypotheses. The chair may as well had been moved because of an extradimensional being, a living human wearing a cloaking device, an earthquake, wind, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.users.qwest.net/~jcosta3/article_dragon.htm&quot;&gt;an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire&lt;/a&gt;, God, the neighbour drilling holes in the wall, someone listening to very very loud music, and so on. Many of these are even more unlikely than the ghost hypothesis, therefore we discard them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: here is definitive proof that my buddy can fly &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWMB279ZfP0&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWMB279ZfP0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T17:09:20.377" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22620" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22627" CreationDate="2014-07-31T17:34:08.530" Score="4" ViewCount="1444" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/statsandfact/posts/434058559958460&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Is this claim accurate&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before developing video games, Nintendo owned 'Love Hotels.' Private short-stay rooms that were used for sexual encounters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3480" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T01:31:38.610" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T01:31:38.610" Title="Did Nintendo own Love Hotels?" Tags="|history|videogames|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22592" CreationDate="2014-07-31T21:05:08.800" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, in preterm births and low/middle-income countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is good evidence that early cord clamping leads to hypovolaemia, anaemia and low iron stores in the neonate. [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be more important when it comes to preterm births [2, 5]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Delaying cord clamping was associated with fewer infants requiring transfusions for anaemia (seven trials, 392 infants; risk ratio (RR) 0.61, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.46 to 0.81), less intraventricular haemorrhage (ultrasound diagnosis all grades) 10 trials, 539 infants (RR 0.59, 95% CI 0.41 to 0.85) and lower risk for necrotising enterocolitis (five trials, 241 infants, RR 0.62, 95% CI 0.43 to 0.90) compared with immediate clamping. However, the peak bilirubin concentration was higher for infants allocated to delayed cord clamping compared with immediate clamping (seven trials, 320 infants, mean difference 15.01 mmol/L, 95% CI 5.62 to 24.40) [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If mother has anaemia, delayed clamping should be considered:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence from randomized controlled trials has shown that delayed cord-clamping is beneficial to infant iron status. [...] the association between the timing of cord-clamping and infant anaemia was modified by the mother's anaemia status. Significant benefits of delayed cord-clamping in preventing anaemia were found in infants born to anaemic mothers at both 4 months (aOR = 0.59, 95% CI 0.36-0.99) and 8 months (aOR = 0.38, 95% CI 0.19-0.76) of age [3].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A comment on the above quoted study gives some details on how delayed clamping contributes to baby blood volume:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Immediately after the birth of a baby, placental blood continues to flow in the direction of the child. The total fetoplacental blood volume is about 120 ml/kg of fetal weight, and the distribution of blood between fetus and placenta is roughly in a ratio of 2:1. This distribution remains unchanged if the cord is clamped early. Allowing placental transfusion to occur for at least 3 minutes results in greater infant blood volume (ratio 5:1). The rate of placental transfusion is influenced by the position of the delivered infant. From 10 cm above the level of the placenta (on the abdomen of the mother) to 10 cm below the level of the placenta (on the birthing bed), infants receive the maximum possible amount of blood for at least 3 minutes after birth. Keeping the infant 40 cm below the placenta hastens placental transfusion to near completion within 1 minute [4].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it also claims the severity of child anaemia due to cord-clamping is exaggerated and there are other factors involved:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From a pathophysiological viewpoint, it is difficult to understand how the haematological benefits of delayed cord-clamping extend so far into infancy. Earlier work on cord-clamping has shown that by the age of approximately 6 months the infant outgrows its fetal iron reserves.4,7 From that age onwards, the infant becomes dependent on exogeneous iron sources, including iron-enriched infant formulae and weaning foods. Intercurrent infections, especially those of the gastro-intestinal tract, disturb iron absorption and might even increase iron loss from the gut [4].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WHO recommends delayed cord clamping in low and middle-income countries:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As per the WHO recommendation, delayed cord clamping in low and middle-income countries, may be beneficial [3,4], as many studies have documented improved iron stores during the first half of infancy, especially in resources-limited settings where iron deficiency anemia is highly prevalent. However, the benefits of delayed cord clamping in all term infants in industrialized countries need to be weighed against the possible need for more infants developing jaundice and needing phototherapy, especially in settings where “early discharge” is commonly practiced [5].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hutchon DJ. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23075341&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Immediate or early cord clamping vs delayed clamping.&lt;/a&gt; J Obstet Gynaecol. 2012 Nov;32(8):724-9. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/01443615.2012.721030&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.3109/01443615.2012.721030&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 23075341. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rabe H, Diaz-Rossello JL, Duley L, Dowswell T. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22895933&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effect of timing of umbilical cord clamping and other strategies to influence placental transfusion at preterm birth on maternal and infant outcomes.&lt;/a&gt; Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2012 Aug 15;8:CD003248. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD003248.pub3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1002/14651858.CD003248.pub3&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 22895933. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Blouin B, Penny ME, Maheu-Giroux M, Casapía M, Aguilar E, Silva H, Creed-Kanashiro HM, Joseph SA, Gagnon A, Rahme E, Gyorkos TW. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23925280&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Timing of umbilical cord-clamping and infant anaemia: the role of maternal anaemia.&lt;/a&gt; Paediatr Int Child Health. 2013 May;33(2):79-85. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/2046905512Y.0000000036&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1179/2046905512Y.0000000036&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 23925280. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;van Rheenen P. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23925277&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Less iron deficiency anaemia after delayed cord-clamping.&lt;/a&gt; Paediatr Int Child Health. 2013 May;33(2):57-8. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/2046905513Y.0000000059&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1179/2046905513Y.0000000059&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 23925277. Full text &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/full/10.1179/2046905513Y.0000000059&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/full/10.1179/2046905513Y.0000000059&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Raju TN, Singhal N. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23164185&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Optimal timing for clamping the umbilical cord after birth.&lt;/a&gt; Clin Perinatol. 2012 Dec;39(4):889-900. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.clp.2012.09.006&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1016/j.clp.2012.09.006&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 23164185. Full text: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3835342/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3835342/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reference 3: Ceriani Cernadas JM. The WHO Reproductive Health Library. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2006. [last visited June 13, 2012]. Early versus delayed umbilical cord clamping in preterm infants: RHL commentary (last revised 7 March 2006) Cited from &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.who.int/rhl/pregnancy_childbirth/childbirth/3rd_stage/jccom/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://apps.who.int/rhl/pregnancy_childbirth/childbirth/3rd_stage/jccom/en/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reference 4:  The WHO Reproductive Health Library: Optimal timing of cord clamping for the prevention of iron deficiency anaemia in infants The World Health Organization (last update 2 March 2012) [last visited June 13, 2012]; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/elena/titles/cord_clamping/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.who.int/elena/titles/cord_clamping/en/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T21:05:08.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22624" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-31T21:21:14.857" Score="1" ViewCount="151" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the movie &quot;21 grams&quot;, it was said that one loses 21 grams of his/her weight exactly in the moment of death. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this amount of weight loss (21 grams) independent of person's physics, gender, etc?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11212" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T05:41:42.460" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T05:41:42.460" Title="Is it true that when a person dies he/she will lose 21 grams?" Tags="|mortality|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-07-31T22:14:14.393" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22577" CreationDate="2014-07-31T22:02:53.057" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It was likely the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper&amp;#39;s_ghost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pepper's Ghost effect&lt;/a&gt;, used several times since 2006 to project figures on-stage. (Gorillaz in 2006, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/16/tupac-hologram-av-concepts_n_1429316.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tupac in 2012&lt;/a&gt; and 2013, and Michael Jackson in 2014. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calling this effect a &quot;hologram&quot; is common, but a misnomer: (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/why-billboard-music-awards-michael-706269&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/behind-screen/why-billboard-music-awards-michael-706269&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The imagery of Jackson -- and previously Tupac during his &quot;performance&quot; at Coachella in 2012 -- was actually created with an old magician's trick using a mirror, a 2D effect known as &quot;Pepper's Ghost.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the Pepper's Ghost technique has been sufficient to produce this effect in the past, there is no reason to posit a technological leap for this instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T22:08:47.493" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T22:08:47.493" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22626" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-07-31T22:35:52.383" Score="11" ViewCount="2093" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/op-edge/177136-stepashin-glazyev-open-letter-cameron/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article which is an open letter to UK Prime Minister &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cameron&quot;&gt;David Cameron&lt;/a&gt; from former Russian President, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Stepashin&quot;&gt;Sergey Stepashin&lt;/a&gt;, and Russian Politician President, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Glazyev&quot;&gt;Sergey Glazyev&lt;/a&gt; regarding the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17&quot;&gt;Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 crash&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of it is claims with no sources or explanation to back them up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, at the start of article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;every day we are seeing more evidence emerging that supports Russian&#xA;  President Vladimir Putin’s statement made right after the crash that&#xA;  the plane was downed by Ukraine’s military.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this particular section, they refer to the plane being shot down by Ukrainian forces as fact:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] after they lured the Malaysian plane into a trap and downed it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, one part did interest me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;as well as the forced diversion of the plane from its regular flight&#xA;  path&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was the plane diverted from its normal path? If so, what was the the justification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21451" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T03:37:42.137" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T04:21:54.673" Title="Was MH17's flight path rerouted?" Tags="|aviation|russia|ukraine|mh17|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22620" CreationDate="2014-07-31T22:42:53.077" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears all modern references to this claim come from the book &lt;strong&gt;Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children&lt;/strong&gt; by David Sheff and published in 1993.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In it, he &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=b_N5FzzD3hsC&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;dq=sheff%20game%20Over&amp;amp;pg=PT38#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=love%20hotel&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The first product launched by the new company was a line of individually portioned instant rice.  Add water and - &lt;em&gt;presto!&lt;/em&gt; It was a dismal failure.  Yamauchi then opened a &quot;love hotel,&quot; with rooms rented by the hour.  The business was, for Yamauchi, a personal passion; it was said that he was one of his own best customers (his infidelities were well known - even by his wife, who ignored them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A taxi company Yamauchi started, Daiya, thrived, although he grew tired of negotiating with powerful taxi-driver unions, which demanded high salaries and expensive benefits for their members.  he soon folded that company and closed the doors of the love hotel.  he planned more changes as he move Nintendo again, this time to a larger building, a three-story structure of beige bricks with black door and window frames and bars on the windows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yamauchi had concluded that he wanted new businesses tha tcould take advantage of one of Nintendo's strongest assets, its &lt;em&gt;karuta&lt;/em&gt; distribution system, which reached into toy and department stores throughout Japan.  Nintendo's roots were in entertainment, and there would be no more rice or taxis or love hotels.  Yamauchi set Nintendo on a new course as an entertainment company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Google Books version doesn't include any references, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Over_%28book%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The book is notable in that the author extensively interviewed numerous established figures in the industry, such as Howard Lincoln, Nolan Bushnell, Shigeru Miyamoto (spelled as &quot;Sigeru&quot; in the book), Alexey Pajitnov, and others, including people who spoke anonymously. Despite the title, the book is fairly neutral; it mainly relates the history of the company while looking at both the positives and negatives of their business practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it's reasonable to assume that David Sheff &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; have enough sources for the story of the three attempts at diversifying to justify including them in his book.  However, I can't tell you what they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;There's also an interesting reference to them &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=b_N5FzzD3hsC&amp;amp;lpg=PP1&amp;amp;dq=sheff%20game%20Over&amp;amp;pg=PT116#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=love%20hotel&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, where the author is describing Yamauchi's relationship with his daughter&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastEditorUserId="7280" LastEditDate="2014-07-31T22:52:23.657" LastActivityDate="2014-07-31T22:52:23.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22626" CreationDate="2014-08-01T00:54:42.160" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it was flying its usual path, same as it was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/mh17/#3a8e78e&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;flying for months&lt;/a&gt; before the event. Here is the path of the same flight day before (a bit to the South):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/abScg.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the same flight on 13th of June (a bit to the North):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YDW32.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is the downed plane's flight path:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ELpaC.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is evident that such deviations are not atypical for this flight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="14651" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T04:21:54.673" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T04:21:54.673" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22630" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-01T14:45:09.723" Score="18" ViewCount="1748" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/ianmorris/2014/07/14/googles-chrome-web-browser-is-killing-your-laptop-battery/&quot;&gt;article on Forbes&lt;/a&gt; that says Google Chrome might be draining my laptop's battery because it brings the system into a mode that uses a tick rate of 1ms instead of 16ms, and is using up to 25% more battery power in the process. (And apparently, it doesn't leave that mode like it's supposed to until you close the application, instead of when you're done with the high performance units of work.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that a shorter time slice means more context switching, which would cause an increase in CPU usage, in turn causing increased battery consumption. But it doesn't seem to be sourced anywhere that it uses a whopping 25% more from that one setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to support that the decrease in time slice duration causes the dramatic battery use increase claimed in the article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2099" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T00:59:02.773" Title="Is Google Chrome killing my laptop battery?" Tags="|computers|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22632" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-01T15:15:05.683" Score="14" ViewCount="7948" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://what-if.xkcd.com/40/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;XKCD what-if?&lt;/a&gt;, the explosion of a pressure cooker is not dangerous in itself, the heat is the sole danger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They can explode, in a sense, but not as violently as you might fear (or hope). The pressure inside a consumer cooker doesn’t go above about two atmospheres—about the pressure inside a can of soda. Those levels can be dangerous, but they’re generally not high enough to cause the metal to violently rupture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blast couldn’t even fling the lid very far. If you mounted a rifle-style barrel on a pressure cooker, even in ideal circumstances it wouldn’t be able to fire the lid much faster than you could throw it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But then, this  fire department &lt;a href=&quot;http://bzgz.blogspot.com.es/2013/04/explosion-de-olla-rapida.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt; (in Spanish) warns of the risks of pressure cookers. This is an image after an accident:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fBPthm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it seems there was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lne.es/gijon/2012/08/16/profesora-embarazada-5-meses-muere-estallarle-olla-presion/1284841.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;case&lt;/a&gt; of a pregnant woman killed by head injuries, but it doesn't detail the accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence or studies which could clarify this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13743" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T06:07:04.923" Title="Can the explosion of a pressure cooker kill you?" Tags="|physiology|cooking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22633" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22632" CreationDate="2014-08-01T15:22:45.157" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;To say the explosion &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;can't&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; kill you seems a bit exaggerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1389167/Elderly-woman-leg-horrifically-severed-home-pressure-cooker-exploded.html&quot;&gt;Elderly woman has leg horrifically severed after home pressure cooker exploded&lt;/a&gt;, a woman died after the explosion of a pressurecooker severed her leg (but not immediately!).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a second report of the same incident that is a lot more comprehensible: &lt;a href=&quot;http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2011/06/08/miami-woman-dies-after-exploding-pressure-cooker-severs-her-leg/&quot;&gt;Miami Woman Dies After Exploding Pressure Cooker Severs Leg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So assuming a shrapnel makes it into your skull, cuts your throat or anything similar - I'd say the explosion can actually kill you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21463" LastEditorUserId="14432" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T02:32:46.750" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T02:32:46.750" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22634" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22630" CreationDate="2014-08-01T15:34:46.833" Score="17" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to support that the decrease in time slice duration&#xA;  causes the dramatic battery use increase claimed in the article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting a &lt;a href=&quot;http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/0/2/3027D574-C433-412A-A8B6-5E0A75D5B237/Timer-Resolution.docx&quot;&gt;technical paper&lt;/a&gt; released by Microsoft as part of their &lt;a href=&quot;http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/windows/hardware/dn550976&quot;&gt;hardware developer documentation&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Timers, Timer Resolution, and Development of Efficient Code&lt;/em&gt;:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the system timer interval is decreased to less than the default,&#xA;  including when an application calls &lt;code&gt;timeBeginPeriod&lt;/code&gt; with a resolution&#xA;  of 1 ms, the low-power idle states are ineffective at reducing system&#xA;  power consumption and system battery life suffers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;System battery life&#xA;  can be reduced as much as &lt;strong&gt;25 percent&lt;/strong&gt;, depending on the hardware&#xA;  platform. This is because transitions to and from low-power states&#xA;  incur an energy cost. Therefore, entering and exiting low-power states&#xA;  without spending a minimum amount of time in the low-power states can&#xA;  be more costly than if the system simply remained in the high-power&#xA;  state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/2455442/chromes-been-eating-your-laptops-battery-for-years-but-google-promises-to-fix-it.html&quot;&gt;PC world&lt;/a&gt;, a global reputable &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/&quot;&gt;computer magazine&lt;/a&gt; published monthly by IDG, Google has &lt;strong&gt;confirmed&lt;/strong&gt; the issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In any case, the new reports have finally gotten Google's attention.&#xA;  In a statement to PCWorld, &lt;strong&gt;the company noted that the bug has been&#xA;  assigned internally, and that the Chrome team is working to fix&#xA;  it&lt;/strong&gt;—though only after Morris shined a spotlight on the issue. The&#xA;  long-standing bug report has been bumped up to priority one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More details: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bug mentioned in Forbe's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/ianmorris/2014/07/14/googles-chrome-web-browser-is-killing-your-laptop-battery/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;, has been reported in &lt;a href=&quot;https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=153139&quot;&gt;Chrome's Chromium open-source project &lt;/a&gt; since September 29, 2012. This bug has grabbed &lt;strong&gt;7445 votes&lt;/strong&gt; from programmers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, Google's browser increases the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;system clock tick rate&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to 1ms as soon as you launch the browser and keeps it that way until it is completely shut-down. This means that the system's CPU needs to switch to 'wake up mode' 1000 times in 1 second, to attend to Chrome-related tasks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microsoft’s default setting for Windows is &lt;strong&gt;15.6ms&lt;/strong&gt;, which will wake the computer 64 times in 1 second.  Because Chrome forces the system clock resolution to &lt;strong&gt;1.0ms&lt;/strong&gt;, this causes substantial power drain, since this is much more frequent than usually observed with Microsoft's default setting. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, Chrome is waking the processor up &lt;em&gt;1,000 times per second&lt;/em&gt; instead of just &lt;em&gt;64 times per second&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="7280" LastEditDate="2014-08-01T21:29:58.523" LastActivityDate="2014-08-01T21:29:58.523" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22638" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-02T02:33:36.813" Score="15" ViewCount="1477" Body="&lt;p&gt;We are currently in the middle of the largest ever Ebola outbreak, with &lt;a href=&quot;http://nypost.com/2014/08/04/ebola-death-toll-hits-887-amid-record-outbreak/&quot;&gt;nearly 900 killed&lt;/a&gt; and more than 1,600 infected by the disease in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and now Nigeria. The disease's toll continues to rise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the big questions facing those of us in the United States reading about the outbreak in the news: &lt;strong&gt;What is the risk of Ebola spreading outside west Africa?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thomas Frieden, director of the Center for Disease Control &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/ebola-poses-little-risk-us-cdc-director-thomas-frieden-1645710&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Ebola poses little risk to the U.S. general population,” and that its spread across the U.S. &quot;is not in the cards,&quot; Frieden said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His authority, as head of one of the top infectious disease organizations in the world, gives us reason to take his word to heart. But what's the reasoning behind this declaration, and is it sound?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastEditorUserId="4070" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T21:21:52.980" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T21:52:00.553" Title="Does Ebola pose &quot;little risk to the U.S. general population&quot;?" Tags="|united-states|africa|ebola|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22639" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22638" CreationDate="2014-08-02T04:55:29.230" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs103/en/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WHO website&lt;/a&gt; has some good information about Ebola. In particular,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ebola then spreads in the community through human-to-human transmission, with infection resulting from &lt;strong&gt;direct contact&lt;/strong&gt; (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids. &lt;strong&gt;Burial ceremonies in which mourners have direct contact with the body of the deceased person can also play a role in the transmission of Ebola.&lt;/strong&gt; Men who have recovered from the disease can still transmit the virus through their semen for up to 7 weeks after recovery from illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Health-care workers have frequently been infected while treating patients with suspected or confirmed EVD. This has occurred through close contact with patients &lt;strong&gt;when infection control precautions are not strictly practiced.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and a little later on&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not always possible to identify patients with EBV early because initial symptoms may be non-specific. For this reason, it is important that health-care workers apply standard precautions consistently with all patients – regardless of their diagnosis – in all work practices at all times. These include basic hand hygiene, respiratory hygiene, the use of personal protective equipment (according to the risk of splashes or other contact with infected materials), safe injection practices and safe burial practices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Health-care workers caring for patients with suspected or confirmed Ebola virus should apply, in addition to standard precautions, other infection control measures to avoid any exposure to the patient’s blood and body fluids and direct unprotected contact with the possibly contaminated environment. When in close contact (within 1 metre) of patients with EBV, health-care workers should wear face protection (a face shield or a medical mask and goggles), a clean, non-sterile long-sleeved gown, and gloves (sterile gloves for some procedures).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/ebola-virus-what-how-spread-3934466&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;News articles&lt;/a&gt; have also reported other important information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The spread of the disease is worsened by mistrust of western medicine in some African communities&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some believe the outbreak is a hoax - or even that health workers are killing patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Dr Walsh says any cases that reached Britain would be far more manageable. He says: “Ebola is pretty containable with modern methods in modern countries. You won’t see a major outbreak in the UK.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, Ebola is scary because it has the potential to become a pandemic that kills millions or even billions of people as it can spread easily from person to person. However, it can only spread through direct contact. If people know this, then it is easy to prevent it from spreading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason it has spread so much already is, as news articles have reported, that the people of the region do not believe what they are being told. That means they continue to engage in unsafe behaviors, such as burial rituals in which they touch the body of someone who died of Ebola.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anyone in the US was diagnosed with Ebola then there would be quarantines put in place to completely isolate everyone who had come in contact with the person diagnosed. Also, anyone who began to show any symptoms of being sick would immediately be quarantined and tested for Ebola. Ebola is not contagious before symptoms begin to show, so these measures would effectively prevent any further spread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;More&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/31/health/ebola-isolation-treatment/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;another news article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Symptoms include fever, headache, diarrhea and vomiting. Some patients have trouble breathing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doctors are asking patients with these symptoms if they have traveled recently to the three countries primarily affected by the Ebola outbreak: Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. They're also asking if patients have been in contact with anyone else who has traveled to the region lately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Dr. Eric Legome, chief of emergency medicine at Kings County Hospital in New York] said hospitals have a low threshold to isolate patients, meaning anyone who is even remotely suspected of being infected will immediately be put in an isolated ICU room so health officials can run tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-ebola-containment-africa-outbreak-political-eco-20140804-story.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; does a decent job of explaining how containing Ebola has about as much to do with sociology as it is does epidemiology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We now have a case of a man being diagnosed with Ebola while being in the United States, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kctv5.com/story/26735800/first-ebola-patient-diagnosed-in-us-dies&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;he has just died&lt;/a&gt;. Because he was showing symptoms for multiple days before being diagnosed and quarantined, it is possible that he infected some of the people that he came in contact with. Within Ebola's incubation period of 21 days (October 29th, 2014), if anyone was infected they will begin showing symptoms. 21 days after those people recover (late November 2014) we will be able to know if those people infected any additional people. This will give us a good idea of how well the US healthcare system is able to handle Ebola, at least for small numbers of people infected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update (Oct 20th):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of today &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/20/ebola-dallas-nigeria/17599981/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;43 people are no longer being monitored&lt;/a&gt;, including the family of the man who died. Two nurses who took care of him were infected and are being treated. Within about 21 days we will know whether or not there will be any additional infections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/valuable-ebola-lessons-us-learn-nigeria/story?id=26323556&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nigeria has been declared free of Ebola&lt;/a&gt;. That article also mentions that Nigeria &amp;quot;has a robust health care system&amp;quot; already and did a good job of tracking the &amp;quot;nearly 900 people who were potentially exposed to Ebola&amp;quot;. As a result, there were only 20 confirmed cases of Ebola in Nigeria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read articles about what is being done in the United States, you'll frequently see them mention that the people who were exposed to Ebola are being monitored, such as the 43 people who are now known to not be infected. This suggests that the U.S. is doing a good job of containing Ebola, further strengthening the claim that the disease poses &amp;quot;little risk to the U.S. general population&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update (Nov 6th):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been no additional infections from the case in Dallas. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2014/11/06/texas-ebola-monitoring-ends/18599723/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;As of today&lt;/a&gt;, there is only one person who is still being monitored, and tomorrow will pass the maximum incubation period of Ebola.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cases of Ebola in Texas have given us what we previously lacked - evidence of whether or not an outbreak could be prevented. Even though Thomas Duncan (the man who died) was not quarantined while he was symptomatic, not a single member of the general public was infected by him or by the two nurses he did infect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you'd like to read a humorous article about why we don't need to worry, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/why-americans-need-to-calm-f234025-down-about-ebola/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cracked just did an article on it&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T21:19:37.493" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-02T11:03:06.277" Score="1" ViewCount="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;As seen in the link below headphones can damage hearing. Is this true? Could using noise canceling headphones and having the volume on low help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osteopathic.org/osteopathic-health/about-your-health/health-conditions-library/general-health/Pages/headphone-safety.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.osteopathic.org/osteopathic-health/about-your-health/health-conditions-library/general-health/Pages/headphone-safety.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21223" LastActivityDate="2014-08-02T11:03:06.277" Title="Does using headphones to listen to music damage hearing" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-08-02T12:54:18.357" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22648" CreationDate="2014-08-02T16:37:55.100" Score="2" ViewCount="582" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard somewhere that beer is safe to drink after being exposed to radiation (like after a nuclear explosion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true? And why would it be safe to drink it while water would not be safe to drink while beer is mostly made of water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21356" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-08-02T21:08:32.460" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T02:38:05.390" Title="Is beer safe after a nuclear event" Tags="|radiation|beer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22647" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-02T20:19:56.270" Score="32" ViewCount="2814" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim that exercise promotes beard growth is &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170603023048/http://jefffsbeardboard.yuku.com/reply/142163/Re-working-out-promotes-beard-growth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;common around the Internet&lt;/a&gt;. The explanation that is the most common is that heavy exercising increases the testosterone levels in the body and that in turn increases beard growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does exercise indeed increase the beard growth and if so is the &amp;quot;increased testosterone levels from training leading to increased beard growth&amp;quot; explanation correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17238" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2024-01-08T16:50:31.870" LastActivityDate="2024-02-07T22:03:30.467" Title="Does heavy exercising increase beard growth?" Tags="|hair|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22648" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22644" CreationDate="2014-08-02T23:14:22.343" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is true, the beer is safe to drink if it was closed. &lt;a href=&quot;http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/radionuclides.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;As it is would be with any food product, even water.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_contamination#Airborne_contamination&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;If they were open, both could be contaminated with radioactive material from the air.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Things are typically not made radioactive by exposure to electromagnetic radiation, which is the most likely case for your beer, unless it is near ground zero, &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/1957-The-Effect-of-Nuclear-Explosions-on-Commercially-Packaged-Beverages.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;like in the article provided by @Jason_C&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some of our food, like meat, is purposely exposed to x-ray radiation&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation#Impact_of_irradiation_on_food_chemistry&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;High energy electromagnetic radiation (gamma and x-ray) is ionizing, so it can affect atomic bonds and molecules, possibly producing different compounds (flavors) due to molecular breakdown.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If, by radiation, you mean neutron bombardment, then the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/1957-The-Effect-of-Nuclear-Explosions-on-Commercially-Packaged-Beverages.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Operation Teapot&lt;/a&gt; results show that only the bottles would have any &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_radioactivity&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;induced reactivity&lt;/a&gt;, i.e. they would have become slightly radioactive. Only a few of the beverages closest to GZ had an &quot;aged&quot; or off taste. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article mentions that the radio-nuclides produced on the bottles are short-lived (on the order of tens of hours) and the radiation levels recorded were 3000-4000 cpm, which is still pretty low &lt;a href=&quot;http://radiationnetwork.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(natural background radiation ~ 10-50 cpm).&lt;/a&gt;. So the bottles would be around natural levels in a few days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: When talking about radioactive materials, the material is either radioactive or contaminated, and the energy and particles given off are radiation. So radiation is never 'removed' or 'spread'. Only the material can be spread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/1957-The-Effect-of-Nuclear-Explosions-on-Commercially-Packaged-Beverages.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Effect of Nuclear Explosions on Commercially Packaged Beverages&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_irradiation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki Food irradiation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_radioactivity&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki Induced Radioactivity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_contamination#Airborne_contamination&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki Airborne Contamination&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://radiationnetwork.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Radiation Network&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/basicinformation/radionuclides.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EPA Info about Water Radioactivity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: If your beer gets nuked and survives, put in the fridge for a few days (decay time of bottle), then drink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15378" LastEditorUserId="15378" LastEditDate="2014-08-03T02:38:05.390" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T02:38:05.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22649" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-03T02:43:57.140" Score="13" ViewCount="1335" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://metro.co.uk/2013/04/30/are-atheists-more-generous-than-christians-this-homeless-mans-experiment-seems-to-suggest-so-3707441/&quot;&gt;Metro article&lt;/a&gt; reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are atheists more generous than Christians? This homeless man’s experiment seems to suggest so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some religions may say change comes from within, but this homeless man&#xA;  has come up with an ingenious way of determining which faith produces&#xA;  the most generous devotees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An image posted on Reddit shows the man with a sign bearing the&#xA;  message ‘which religion cares the most about the homeless?’ and nine&#xA;  begging bowls in front of him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each bowl is placed on top of a piece of paper bearing the words&#xA;  ‘Muslim’, ‘atheist’, ‘Jewish’, ‘Buddhist’, ‘spiritual’, ‘agnostic’,&#xA;  ‘pagan’, and ‘Christian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reddit user Ventachinkway, who uploaded the image, said: ‘When I&#xA;  passed him he proudly announced “The atheists are winning!”.’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many commenters drew attention to the fact that the US, where the&#xA;  picture was taken, is predominantly Christian, while others pointed to&#xA;  the carabiner apparently donated by a Buddhist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have also came across these:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/11/28/are-religious-people-really-more-generous-than-atheists-a-new-study-puts-that-myth-to-rest/&quot;&gt;article from Patheos&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Are Religious People Really More Generous Than Atheists? A New Study Puts That Myth to Rest.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hotair.com/archives/2012/05/01/confirmed-atheists-more-motivated-by-compassion-in-charitable-giving-than-believers-are/&quot;&gt;article from Hotair&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Confirmed: Atheists more motivated by compassion in charitable giving than believers are; Update: Numbers added&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are not reliable studies, but I wonder if there exist some good ones regarding the influence of religion on generosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies which corroborate or disprove this &quot;experiment&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T20:33:48.267" LastActivityDate="2015-07-29T21:22:17.980" Title="Are atheists more generous than Christians?" Tags="|religion|behavior|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22650" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22196" CreationDate="2014-08-03T02:48:14.263" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no way these things could work. Even if you could pull molecules through the skin, the skin on your feet would be the worst place to do it because it's the thickest. This would make more sense on the armpits, but still wouldn't be very effective. The major means of excreting substances from the body are through the urine or through the feces. This may require conjugating the molecule to make it more water soluble, or passing it into the bile, which gets dumped into the intestines and eventually becomes included in feces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References: Detox footpads are BS: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detoxification_foot_pads&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detoxification_foot_pads&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excretion pathways: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADME#Excretion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADME#Excretion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you don't trust wikipedia you can read what they cite. I have had 2 graduate courses in metabolism and toxicity of drugs and other molecules. Doesn't make me an expert, but enough to know detox footpads are crap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21487" LastEditorUserId="21487" LastEditDate="2014-08-03T06:45:57.237" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T06:45:57.237" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22652" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22659" CreationDate="2014-08-03T05:29:47.107" Score="18" ViewCount="3484" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a very famous proverb that &quot;BARKING DOGS SELDOM BITE&quot;. According to the saying: The dogs which bark too much in loud tone, bite very rarely. It implies that the people who threaten you more saying that they will harm you, often does so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, my friend was debating on this topic with me very furiously saying that there is no proof behind this saying. He also pointed out that he have seen dogs who both bark &amp;amp; bite actively and simultaneously. I just burst out laughing after hearing this cause it sounded so funny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I was just curious to know about how much truth is behind this proverb?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;:-) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21442" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-08-03T17:44:24.333" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T05:07:27.163" Title="Do barking dogs seldom bite?" Tags="|ethology|dogs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22653" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-03T05:53:03.110" Score="7" ViewCount="547" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is this explanation true/false/unverifiable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Seasons_Hotel_Moscow&quot;&gt;Four Seasons Hotel Moscow (Wikipedia)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The original hotel was notable for its use of two different designs for the wings off the central structure. The most popular (possibly apocryphal) explanation is that Shchusev submitted to Stalin a single drawing of the façade, with one half showing one design, and the other half a different designs for the wings of the building. However, Stalin put his signature exactly in the middle of the drawing, likely not observing the two choices. Afraid of informing Stalin that he had failed to select a design, the decision was made to simply constructed one wing of each on either side of the building. One included large windows and a more ornate façade, while the other maintained smaller windows and the simpler details of the rest of the hotel's façade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17967" LastEditorUserId="8192" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T19:27:51.210" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T19:27:51.210" Title="Stalin's absent-minded signature resulted in Hotel Moskva having two designs?" Tags="|soviet-union|architecture|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19261" CreationDate="2014-08-03T06:48:22.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;See this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/mind-read/sleep_cycle_app_precise_or&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nature blogpost&lt;/a&gt;, where one conclusion is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't even worry about waking up during the &quot;right&quot; stage of sleep. Research by Jewett and colleagues at Harvard suggests that the stage of sleep we've been woken from, despite what we perceive as sleep inertia, does not actually have an impact on cognitive performance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note though that the correct answer is probably &quot;We don't know.&quot; Sleep is one of the more poorly-researched areas in medical science. Perhaps this is why we have these conflicting claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17967" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T06:48:22.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22655" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18642" CreationDate="2014-08-03T07:42:56.610" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr Suicide in a shopping mall: True. Suicide because of too much shopping: Maybe.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://opinion.hexun.com/2013-12-09/160414722.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chinese news article&lt;/a&gt; reports that the police made this statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On December 7th (2013) at 15xx hrs, a male aged about 40, entered the Golden Eagle mall  through the south entrance and into the hypermarket, rushed up to the lift area of the 7th floor, jumped over the protective barrier and fell down, and died on the spot. The identity of the dead person is still being verified, will the victim's family and people with more information quickly communicate with the authorities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That a man committed suicide that day does not seem to be in doubt (&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Md937.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;photo of body&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as for why, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.163.com/13/1208/22/9FJU4QTQ00014JB5.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dec 8th 2013 Chinese news article&lt;/a&gt; reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Police: &amp;quot;Man jumped to his death because he found girlfriend's shopping purchases too expensive&amp;quot; - This may just have been hearsay/rumors from the internet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the cause of the man's jumping to his death, at present, the Internet's viral message is that &amp;quot;It was because he found girlfriend's shopping purchases too expensive&amp;quot;. But based on Jiangsu Television reporters' latest news from the police, this could just be hearsay - rumors - guesses - speculations from the internet - no proof of this claim is yet forthcoming. The police state that the true cause of the suicide is still being investigated and they welcome information from netizens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not been able to find a more recent news item on this matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Regarding the &amp;quot;shoes&amp;quot; bit, my feeling is that is merely an embellishment invented by the Daily Mail. The following story does show up on various Chinese message boards but not too many credible-looking Chinese news websites:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to witnesses, the pair were arguing, stating that they had shopped one storey after another for 5 consecutive hours, the man was already feeling very tired and wanted to go home, but the girlfriend insisted on continuing with the shopping. And so the pair started arguing, and the man loudly said, &amp;quot;You have more shoes than you can ever wear in a lifetime, and you still want to go to more shoe shops?&amp;quot; The girlfriend replied testily, &amp;quot;You petty miser, you're ruining the atmosphere of Christmas!&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The man seemingly could not stand this provocation, flinging in anger all the big and small shopping bags of new clothes on the floor, turned around, jumped over the protective barrier, and fell from the 7th floor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above story seems however to be an exact translation of the story given by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2520753/Chinese-boyfriend-jumped-death-girlfriend-insisted-going-clothes-shop.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dec 9th Daily Mail article&lt;/a&gt;. That the Daily Mail is the original source of this shoes story is corroborated by the fact that the above story (in Chinese) seems to appear on Chinese sites only on Dec 9th or 10th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And my opinion: Women being fanatical about shoes is an age-old stereotype in the West but I believe less so in China. Also, not many Chinese would be too upset about the atmosphere of Christmas being ruined, given that it is not usually celebrated.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another piece of evidence that the Daily Mail likely made up some details is this statement by some Chinese news websites (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ali213.net/news/html/2013-12/92060.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though the Daily Mail refers to this man as &amp;quot;Tao Hsiao&amp;quot;, it is unknown if this man is really surnamed Xiao [pinyin], the police have not given more details, and the man's identity remains temporarily a mystery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, contrary to the suggestion of the earlier answer here, there is no evidence that the couple ever broke up, prior to the man's unfortunate death.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17967" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T04:26:20.720" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22656" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22657" CreationDate="2014-08-03T09:06:21.527" Score="1" ViewCount="209" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In various cultures throughout the world there is the widespread belief that animals, including companion dogs, are more likely to bite when under the influence of a full moon&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dogexpert.com/full-moon-associated-with-dog-bites/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dogexpert.com/full-moon-associated-with-dog-bites/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;IDEAS that the moon inspires insanity in man and beast may be true say researchers who found that animals bite people more often when the moon is full.&#xA;  Doctors at Bradford Royal Infirmary recorded twice the number of animal bites on full moon days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1379112/Beware-of-the-dog-during-a-full-moon.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1379112/Beware-of-the-dog-during-a-full-moon.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seriously?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T09:06:21.527" Title="Do dogs bite more during a full moon?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|dogs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22656" CreationDate="2014-08-03T09:06:21.527" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/321/7276/1561?variant=full-text&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;In Australia&lt;/a&gt;, at least, they don't:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What is already known on this topic&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Farming folklore holds that dogs bite more at the time of full moons&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The research literature on the effect of lunar phase on human behaviour has mostly shown no association&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What this study adds&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In Australia no association exists between lunar phase and dog bites requiring hospital admission&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Barking mad? Another lunatic hypothesis bites the dust&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;BMJ 2000; 321 doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.321.7276.1561&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.321.7276.1561&lt;/a&gt; (Published 23 December 2000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T09:06:21.527" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22658" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16213" CreationDate="2014-08-03T09:11:43.903" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I happened to have access to the book &lt;em&gt;Suicide in Nazi Germany&lt;/em&gt;, so just to corroborate the earlier answers by reproducing some figures from the book. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From p. 209 and p. 213, we see that suicide rates in Germany throughout the 1930s was indeed around 27 - 29: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jjDoD.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus: He doesn't give corresponding figures for the war years for Germany as a whole, but does for Berlin (p. 220). It looks like Berlin's suicide rates were always higher than Germany's, but spiked up in 1945.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ctCpo.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, 18000 is perhaps not such a large number. There were about that many each year around 1980 (when Germany's population was comparable to 1930s Germany).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/a5fYA.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17967" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T09:11:43.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22652" CreationDate="2014-08-03T09:31:35.090" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Barks are one of the way in which dogs communicate. For example, some barks mean &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13795-dogs-bark-means-more-than-its-bite.html&quot;&gt;loneliness&lt;/a&gt; and can be methodically distinguished from other kinds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our experiment showed that dogs can perceive the difference between barks originating from different situations, thus barking is perhaps a communicative tool not only for dogs to humans, but for dogs to dogs as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dogs can discriminate barks from different situations&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Maros, Katalin et al.&lt;/em&gt;,&#xA;Applied Animal Behaviour Science , Volume 114 , Issue 1 , 159 - 167, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.appliedanimalbehaviour.com/article/S0168-1591(08)00042-7/abstract&quot;&gt;http://www.appliedanimalbehaviour.com/article/S0168-1591(08)00042-7/abstract&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the classic &quot;aggressive warning&quot; of a dog is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infopet.co.uk/pages/0130.html&quot;&gt;snarl or a growl, not a bite&lt;/a&gt;, and even this is not always associated with biting -- in other words, not all dogs that snarl, bite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Owners of dogs that growl and snarl are often worried about having an aggressive dog. Growling isn't always serious. Dogs sometimes growl in play with each other, and may growl in play with humans. There are also conversational growls, like grumbling comments, such as 'do you really have to groom me?' which don't lead to anything. The dog isn't really spooked or angry, just grumbling. It's when dogs are spooked, very aroused, that growling starts to become a problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dogs: Behavioural Problems&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infopet.co.uk/pages/0130.html&quot;&gt;http://www.infopet.co.uk/pages/0130.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion: there are many reasons why dogs bark, and aggression is only one of them. Biting is more associated with other signals, like growling, and even in those cases, it depends. Therefore, to an untrained human, it is probably &lt;strong&gt;true&lt;/strong&gt; that dogs that bark seldom bite, furthermore  experienced trainers and dog owners may be able to tell the difference between behaviors and predict which bark could lead to a bite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T09:31:35.090" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5426" CreationDate="2014-08-03T10:49:22.617" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the affluent world, when you cook for yourself, the cost of time forgone is very large, because hourly wages are very high (relative to the poorer parts of the world).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Take the US. Even if you make &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_States#Federal_minimum_wage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the minimum wage ($7.25/hr)&lt;/a&gt;, if it takes you 20 more minutes to prepare and cook your own food (and then clean up after and all that) as compared to getting something from McDonald's, that's $2.42 in wages you've forgone. With that money you could get two items from the dollar menu (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food/meal_bundles/dollar_menu.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;two McChickens say&lt;/a&gt;) and still have change leftover. And of course I haven't even counted the cost of your groceries, wear-and-tear on your cooking equipment, utilities, etc. that go towards making your own meal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17967" LastEditorDisplayName="user17967" LastEditDate="2014-08-03T13:04:00.577" LastActivityDate="2014-08-03T13:04:00.577" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22662" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22678" CreationDate="2014-08-03T13:48:47.067" Score="4" ViewCount="14348" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although I have been unable to come up with the proper quote, Eddie Izzard - himself a transvestite - has allegedly remarked that he's not a&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] drag queen or weirdo like J. Edgar Hoover and Hermann Göring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I was aware that Hoover has been known to cross-dress; but it's the first time I hear that remark in conjunction with Hermann Göring. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Eddie_Izzard&amp;amp;oldid=618435954#Transvestism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia supports that Izzard made this claim&lt;/a&gt; but none of the citations seem to confirm him saying it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In his show, Dress to Kill, Izzard describes himself as an &quot;executive&quot;, &quot;action&quot; and &quot;professional&quot; transvestite, as &quot;a male tomboy&quot; rather than a drag queen or a &quot;weirdo&quot; transvestite (he cites J. Edgar Hoover and Hermann Göring as examples of the latter). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any sources that confirm this, or was Eddie Izzard perhaps just making use of his artistic license to get his point across?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1408" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T01:19:24.593" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T15:58:46.170" Title="Was Hermann Göring a transvestite/cross-dresser?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22663" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-03T14:27:37.247" Score="2" ViewCount="2090" Body="&lt;p&gt;At around the 28 mins and 13 secs of Season 3, Episode 9, of the TV series Strike Back, Major Oliver Sinclair (portrayed by Rhashan Stone) claims the following, the truth of which I'd like to know. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any intelligence agency can monitor emails that has been sent and received. So if you want to avoid detection, leave it in the drafts box for someone to read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16959" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:54:45.380" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:54:45.380" Title="Can emails in draft box avoid detection?" Tags="|computers|security|email|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22663" CreationDate="2014-08-03T15:59:28.510" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Absolutely not. You can safely assume that an intelligence agency has access to your online mail box, including drafts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, this is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/the-nsas-overcollection-problem/517/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;leaked NSA document claiming that 500,000 online inboxes are snooped on every day&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Snowden again makes fun, in front of a community of peers, of using an online platform for espionage purposes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example of this, &lt;strong&gt;really a bad example when it comes to Opsec&lt;/strong&gt;, is this recent American spy who was discovered in Germany. He was apparently, allegedly, in the newspapers, suing for the United States against Germany. He then, I guess, wasn’t satisfied with what was going on so he said, “Hey, I’m going to shop myself to what I think are the Russians,” because he got an email — &lt;strong&gt;He was using gmail. Great, great OpSec there&lt;/strong&gt; — and he got an email that purpotd to be the Russian embassy, and they said, “Hey, you want to sell some documents?” And he said, “Oh, yeah, sure, sure.” And he sent them three classified documents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ellsbergsnowdentranscript.tumblr.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ellsbergsnowdentranscript.tumblr.com/&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/FGgo7MSJVVA?t=30m&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://youtu.be/FGgo7MSJVVA?t=30m&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an example: General Petraeus and his mistress used this system to swap private emails and were discovered by the FBI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FBI agents traced the alleged cyber harassment to Broadwell, the officials said, and discovered she was exchanging intimate messages with a private Gmail account. Further investigation revealed the account belonged to Petraeus under an alias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Petraeus and Broadwell apparently used a trick, known to terrorists and teenagers alike, to conceal their email traffic, one of the law enforcement officials said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than transmitting emails to the other's inbox, they composed at least some messages and instead of transmitting them, left them in a draft folder or in an electronic &amp;quot;dropbox,&amp;quot; the official said. Then the other person could log onto the same account and read the draft emails there. This avoids creating an email trail that is easier to trace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bigstory.ap.org/article/info-emerges-about-2nd-woman-petraeus-case&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://bigstory.ap.org/article/info-emerges-about-2nd-woman-petraeus-case&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the FBI has been snooping on these accounts after having established a just cause (in this instance, because some other emails had been sent). After that, it's game over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They learned that Ms. Broadwell and Mr. Petraeus had set up private Gmail accounts to use for their communications, which included explicit details of a sexual nature, according to U.S. officials. But because Mr. Petraeus used a pseudonym, agents doing the monitoring didn't immediately uncover that he was the one communicating with Ms. Broadwell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By late summer, after the monitoring of Ms. Broadwell's emails uncovered the link to Mr. Petraeus, prosecutors and agents alerted senior officials at FBI and the Justice Department, including Mr. Holder, U.S. officials say. The investigators never monitored Mr. Petraeus's email accounts, the officials say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324073504578113460852395852?mg=reno64-wsj&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887324073504578113460852395852.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324073504578113460852395852?mg=reno64-wsj&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424127887324073504578113460852395852.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T12:04:30.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22671" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="830" CreationDate="2014-08-04T01:52:42.607" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since this question was posted, there have been many more studies in the literature about the effects of DST. Here I just summarize the first 13 papers (some are gated) that show up on &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2010&amp;amp;q=Daylight%20Saving%20Time&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=1,5&quot;&gt;Google Scholar (&quot;Daylight Saving Time&quot;, with filter 'since 2010')&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My tl;dr conclusion: Most but not all say DST is bad.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Energy-related&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) uses a natural experiment in Indiana:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DST saves on electricity used for illumination but increases electricity used for heating and cooling. ... the latter effect is larger ... DST costs Indiana households an average of $3.29 per year in &lt;strong&gt;increased electricity bills&lt;/strong&gt;, which aggregates to approximately $9 million for the entire state. Finally, the social costs in terms of increased pollution emissions range between $1.7 and $5.5 million per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(11) finds that in India (which does not currently have DST) will benefit more by advancing the current Indian Standard Time by half an hour, than by adopting DST.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(12) finds that DST &lt;strong&gt;reduces electricity consumption&lt;/strong&gt; by at least 1.0% in both Norway and Sweden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sleep/Health/Accidents/Productivity-related&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) looks at data from Swedish Heart Intensive Care Admission and finds &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;an &lt;strong&gt;elevated incidence ratio of 1.039 [for Acute Myocardial Infarction]&lt;/strong&gt; for the first week after the spring clock shift forward.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) finds &lt;strong&gt;&quot;a dramatic increase in cyberloafing behavior&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4)'s abstract states very tentatively that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indirect evidence of an increase in traffic accident rates, and change in health and regulatory behaviours which may be related to sleep disruption suggest that &lt;strong&gt;adjustment to daylight saving time is neither immediate nor without consequence&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(5)'s abstract suggests that sleep-adjustment difficulties is severest for those who habitually sleep less than 7.5 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(6) looks at Finnish data and concludes: &quot;It seems that &lt;strong&gt;sleep deprivation after DST transition is not harmful enough to impact on occupational accident rates.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; (10) is by some of the same authors and has a similar conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(8) finds a &lt;strong&gt;&quot;rise in Road Traffic Collision related injury figures up to two weeks following the spring time transition.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; (9) seems to be just an updated version of (8) with the same conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(13) finds that &lt;strong&gt;DST lowers SAT scores&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Other&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(7) states there is an &lt;strong&gt;&quot;economically large negative daylight-saving effect in U.S. stock returns&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sources (Journal publication date in parentheses)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/REST_a_00131#.U97bEvmSwz4&quot;&gt;Does Daylight Saving Time Save Energy? Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Indiana&lt;/a&gt; (Nov 2011)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sleep-journal.com/article/S1389-9457(11)00383-2/fulltext&quot;&gt;Daylight saving time shifts and incidence of acute myocardial infarction – Swedish Register of Information and Knowledge About Swedish Heart Intensive Care Admissions (RIKS-HIA)&lt;/a&gt; (Mar 2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/journals/apl/97/5/1068/&quot;&gt;Lost sleep and cyberloafing: Evidence from the laboratory and a daylight saving time quasi-experiment.&lt;/a&gt; (Sep 2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smrv-journal.com/article/S1087-0792(12)00114-1/abstract&quot;&gt;The impact of daylight saving time on sleep and related behaviours&lt;/a&gt; (Aug 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(5) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/abs/10.1080/09291016.2012.692255&quot;&gt;Individual response to the end of Daylight Saving Time is largely dependent on habitual sleep duration&lt;/a&gt; (2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(6) &lt;a href=&quot;http://occmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/61/1/26.short&quot;&gt;Work-related accidents and daylight saving time in Finland&lt;/a&gt; (Nov 2010)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(7) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/17.01.PR0.112.1.89-99&quot;&gt;EFFECTS OF DAYLIGHT-SAVING TIME CHANGES ON STOCK MARKET RETURNS AND STOCK MARKET VOLATILITY&lt;/a&gt;  (Feb 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(8) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bjjprocs.boneandjoint.org.uk/content/93-B/SUPP_III/309.3.short&quot;&gt;DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME (DST) TRANSITION: THE EFFECT ON SERIOUS OR FATAL ROAD TRAFFIC COLLISION RELATED INJURIES&lt;/a&gt; (2011)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(9) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bjjprocs.boneandjoint.org.uk/content/94-B/SUPP_XVIII/94.short&quot;&gt;THE EFFECTS OF DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME (DST) TRANSITION ON SERIOUS OR FATAL ROAD TRAFFIC INJURIES IN GREAT BRITAIN: AN ANALYSIS OF TWO INDEPENDENT NATIONAL DATASETS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(10) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/2010/657167/abs/&quot;&gt;Daylight Saving Time Transitions and Road Traffic Accidents&lt;/a&gt; (2010)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(11) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421511010494&quot;&gt;Year-round daylight saving time will save more energy in India than&#xA;corresponding DST or time zones&lt;/a&gt; (March 2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(12) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421511002461&quot;&gt;The impact of daylight saving time on electricity consumption: Evidence from southern Norway and Sweden&lt;/a&gt; (June 2011)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(13) &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/npe/4/1/44/&quot;&gt;Detrimental effects of daylight-saving time on SAT scores&lt;/a&gt; (Feb 2011)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17967" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T01:52:42.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22672" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-04T03:40:58.153" Score="2" ViewCount="108" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read in the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.technologyreview.com/news/529006/23andme-tries-to-woo-the-fda/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;23andMe Tries to Woo the FDA&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;230:  Average number of studies in which a consenting 23andMe&#xA;  customer's genomic data is used&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no source to back up this number, which sounds to me as high. Is a consenting 23andMe customer's genomic data is used in 230 studies on average?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I especially wonder what they mean by studies: does a simple SQL query count? I am basically looking for more information around the number of studies of 23andMe customer's genomic data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T09:19:26.480" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T09:19:26.480" Title="Is a 23andMe customer's genomic data used in 230 studies on average?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22673" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-04T04:28:01.077" Score="2" ViewCount="178" Body="&lt;p&gt;Looking at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/07/31/national/science-health/experts-question-fukushima-thyroid-screening/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this story&lt;/a&gt; it says that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to a study conducted by the Cancer Institute Hospital in Tokyo from 1995 to 2009, a total of 283 papillary thyroid cancer patients chose not to have surgery and opted instead to be monitored on a regular basis. None died nor saw the cancer spread, according to the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/824519&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, perhaps referencing the above survey, says something slightly different:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since 2005, the Japanese group has treated all high-risk patients with total thyroidectomy (TT) plus radioactive iodine (RAI), while low-risk patients with unilateral PTC are given the option of either TT plus RAI or &quot;less-than-total&quot; thyroidectomy (LTT) — either lobectomy or subtotal thyroidectomy — along with routine central lymph-node dissection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I understand the technical terms, LTT in the second article implies removing the offending nodule, not the complete gland, which would suggest surgery, but on a smaller scale, whereas the first article implies people just get regular screening and no surgery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what is the truth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T15:07:22.907" Title="Is papillary thyroid cancer benign?" Tags="|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22663" CreationDate="2014-08-04T12:04:55.653" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short: &lt;strong&gt;if the draft mail is stored in the server&lt;/strong&gt;, it is saved there in a specific folder there like any other mail. So if the spying entity has access to the disk (as opposed to having access to the communications network) they have access to the drafts as well. Example: In maildir format (de-facto Unix standard) drafts are just a flag set by the user on the file that contains the message: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Flag &quot;D&quot; (draft): the user considers this message a draft; toggled at user discretion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most mail agents using maildir, anyway, does not use the D flag but create a .Drafts diretory inside the cur directory, which relates directly to the Drafts folder on the MUA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some instances where client-side encryption is used, for which drafts are stored encrypted on the server. They are still accessible to the spying entity, but not readable. This is not the case on any web-based mail provider that you can use from any browser. It is the case, however, with Lavaboom &lt;a href=&quot;https://lavaboom.com/en/tech-info#key-handling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://lavaboom.com/en/tech-info#key-handling&lt;/a&gt; which you can &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; use from several browsers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21331" LastEditorUserId="21331" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T13:08:58.827" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T13:08:58.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22675" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-04T12:56:21.723" Score="4" ViewCount="337" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard this idea many times, &lt;a href=&quot;http://youqueen.com/beauty/hair/how-to-make-your-hair-grow-faster-naturally/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brewer’s yeast contains many vitamins, minerals and proteins that are indispensable for your hair. The lack of these nutrients, instead, may cause weak, dull and brittle hair fibre, prone to breakage.&#xA;  The B-complex vitamins present in this yeast contain folic acid, riboflavin, niacin, thiamin and piroxin that are fundamental to hair structure, as well as to its growth, while minerals, such as calcium, copper, chromium and iron, help maintain hair color and prevent loss. Proteins found in the brewer’s yeast are beneficial for damaged and weak hair and necessary for proper hair nutrition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything proven regarding brewer’s yeast’s effect on hair (growth, volume…)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20868" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-04T13:29:12.627" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T13:29:12.627" Title="Does eating brewer’s yeast increase hair growth?" Tags="|natural-remedies|hair|yeast|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22676" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-04T13:12:04.447" Score="4" ViewCount="4081" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following letter is viral on the internet which advocates the noble rule of the fourth caliph of Islam, So is it really coming from UN?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vkpDX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;UN LETTER&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastEditorUserId="32459" LastEditDate="2017-06-21T17:25:18.780" LastActivityDate="2020-05-08T13:53:55.687" Title="Is the UN letter advocating the rule of Ali the fourth caliph authentic?" Tags="|islam|united-nations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22673" CreationDate="2014-08-04T14:36:50.140" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The papillary thyroid cancer is a carcinoma, which by definition is a malignant tumor [1, 4]. This is supported by tumor properties [2]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;multifocality&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;unencapsulated (not always!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it is not an aggressive cancer. This lead to those results from the quoted story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it is unlikely to invade blood vessels [3]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it does invade local lymph nodes, but with reduced malignant tissue [2]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;differentiated cancer [4]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;tends to grow &quot;very slowly&quot; [4]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is often treated successfully and rarely fatal [4]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;high 5-year survival rate (96.7 % overall and 99.7 % for local carcinoma [3])&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;distant spread is not common [5]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;low rate of clinical tumor recurrence [5]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia contributors, &quot;Carcinoma,&quot; Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carcinoma&amp;amp;oldid=619458389&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carcinoma&amp;amp;oldid=619458389&lt;/a&gt; (accessed August 4, 2014).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia contributors, &quot;Papillary thyroid cancer,&quot; Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Papillary_thyroid_cancer&amp;amp;oldid=615015671&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Papillary_thyroid_cancer&amp;amp;oldid=615015671&lt;/a&gt; (accessed August 4, 2014).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Luigi Santacroce, MD. Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma. Available from &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/282276-overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/282276-overview&lt;/a&gt; (accessed 04.08.2014)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;American Cancer Society. &lt;em&gt;Thyroid cancer.&lt;/em&gt; Available from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/cid/documents/webcontent/003144-pdf.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/cid/documents/webcontent/003144-pdf.pdf&lt;/a&gt; (accessed 04.08.2014)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;James Norman MD, FACS, FACE. &lt;em&gt;Papillary Cancer: Symptoms, Treatments, and Prognosis for Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma.&lt;/em&gt; Available from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.endocrineweb.com/conditions/thyroid-cancer/papillary-cancer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.endocrineweb.com/conditions/thyroid-cancer/papillary-cancer&lt;/a&gt; (accessed 04.08.2014)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T14:36:50.140" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22678" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22662" CreationDate="2014-08-04T15:58:46.170" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only possible clues which indicted that Göring might be transvestite are, sorted from most relevant to least relevant: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hermann Göring's biography written by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Irving&quot;&gt;David Irving&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/Goering/Goering_better.pdf&quot;&gt;Goring: A Biography&lt;/a&gt;, in which he confirms Göring was a &lt;em&gt;transvestite&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/Goering/Goering_better.pdf&quot;&gt;page 193&lt;/a&gt; you find,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nobody was celebrated with greater enthusiasm than Göring. “Göring,”&#xA;  Herbert Backe, the level-headed deputy to the minister of agriculture,&#xA;  told his wife after touring eastern Germany with the general in&#xA;  mid-May, “arrived at Breslau wearing a white air-force uniform. The&#xA;  citizenry went wild.” The cheers gave Göring the feeling of&#xA;  immortality: He was Germany - he was the law. The increasingly odd,&#xA;  sometimes even effeminate garments (many of them designed for him by&#xA;  Carin) were a part of his public image. &lt;strong&gt;He was at heart almost a&#xA;  transvestite, certainly an exhibitionist&lt;/strong&gt;. “Herbert,” Frau Backe wrote&#xA;  in her diary, “says that out in the Schorf Heath [around Carinhall] he&#xA;  always has a spear with him.”&lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The problem:&lt;/strong&gt; Irving's reputation as a historian has been discredited&lt;sup&gt;(2)&lt;/sup&gt; after he brought an unsuccessful libel case against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books. The English court found that Irving was an active &lt;strong&gt;Holocaust denier&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;antisemite&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;racist&lt;/strong&gt;, who&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism. &lt;sup&gt;(3)&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and he had,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately&#xA;  misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence. &lt;sup&gt;(3)(4)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Irving was also &lt;strong&gt;sentenced also to three years of imprisonment&lt;/strong&gt; in jail in accordance with the law prohibiting National Socialist activities.&lt;sup&gt;(5)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Biographical Encyclopedia of German Homosexuals&lt;/em&gt; (in Germany, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldcat.org/title/mann-fur-mann-biographisches-lexikon-zur-geschichte-von-freundesliebe-und-mannmannlicher-sexualitat-im-deutschen-sprachraum/oclc/724196532&quot;&gt;Biographisches Lexikon zur Geschichte von Freundesliebe und mannmännlicher Sexualität im deutschen Sprachraum&lt;/a&gt;) had no entry on Hermann Göring, but mentioned that Göring had a violet nightshirt.&lt;sup&gt;(6)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The 1988 television film, The Man Who Lived at the Ritz, based on A.E. Hotchner's novel featured Joss Ackland as a transvestite Hermann Göring; but it doesn't prove anything also.&lt;sup&gt;(7)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt; You can't conclude by proof or competent evidence that Hermann Göring was a transvestite or a cross-dresser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(1) &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.417.2870&quot;&gt;Goering: A Biography (1989)&lt;/a&gt; Find the free book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/Goering/Goering_better.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (2)&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;  - &quot;Conclusion on meaning 2.15 (vi): that Irving is discredited as a historian.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/David_Irving_v._Penguin_Books_and_Deborah_Lipstadt/II&quot;&gt;David Irving v. Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt/II&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;  - &quot;Deborah Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and director of The Rabbi Donald A. Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University. She is the author of two books about the Holocaust. Her book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory led to the 2000 court case in which she defeated and discredited Holocaust denier David Irving.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/understanding/justice.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Task of Justice &amp;amp; Danger of Holocaust Deniers&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State – Understanding Auschwitz Today. PBS.&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;  - &quot;If the case for competence applies to those who lack specialist knowledge, it applies even further to those who have been discredited as incompetent. For example, why ought we include David Irving in a debate aiming to establish the truth about the Holocaust, after a court has found that he manipulates and misinterprets history?&quot; Long, Graham (2004). Relativism and the Foundations of Liberalism. Imprint Academic. p. 80. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/1-84540-004-6&quot;&gt;ISBN 1-84540-004-6.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;  - Wyden 2001, Wyden, Peter (2001). The Hitler Virus: the Insidious Legacy of Adolf Hitler. New York: Arcade Publishing. ISBN 1-55970-532-9. p. 164. &quot;[Irving] claimed that Lipstadt's book accuses him of falsifying historical facts in order to support his theory that the Holocaust never happened. This of course discredited his reputation as a historian. [...] On 11 April, High Court judge Charles Gray ruled against Irving, concluding that he indeed qualified as a Holocaust denier and anti-Semite and that as such he has distorted history in order to defend his hero, Adolf Hitler.&quot;&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;  - &quot;In Britain, which does not have a Holocaust denial law, Irving had already been thoroughly discredited when he unsuccessfully sued historian Deborah Lipstadt in 1998 for describing him as a Holocaust denier.&quot; Callamard, Agnès (April 2007), &quot;Debate: can we say what we want?&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Monde_diplomatique&quot;&gt;Le Monde diplomatique&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (3) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/irving/article/0,,181049,00.html&quot;&gt;&quot;The ruling against David Irving&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. The Guardian (London). 11 April 2000. Retrieved 27 March 2010. &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (4) &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/709128.stm&quot;&gt;&quot;Hitler historian loses libel case&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. BBC News. 11 April 2000. Retrieved 2 January 2010. &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (5) &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/4733820.stm&quot;&gt;Holocaust denier Irving is jailed&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. BBC News (BBC). 20 February 2006. Retrieved 16 June 2009. &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (6) 2010 man for man - Biographical Dictionary of the History of friends and love man masculine sexuality in the German language . Berlin Lit-Verlag; 2 vols, 1732 pp. &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spezial:ISBN-Suche/9783643106933&quot;&gt;ISBN 978-3-643-10693-3&lt;/a&gt;. See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_f%C3%BCr_Mann_(Lexikon)&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_National_Library&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (7)The Man Who Lived at the Ritz. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094507/&quot;&gt;IMBD&lt;/a&gt;. 1989. &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastActivityDate="2014-08-04T15:58:46.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22679" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-04T17:09:47.873" Score="51" ViewCount="7175" Body="&lt;p&gt;While reading about recent evidence that casts strong doubt on whether Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas in 2004, was actually guilty I ran across the following statement in the Washington Post, quoting Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As the Supreme Court upheld the death penalty in Kansas in 2006, Justice Antonin Scalia declared that the opposition could not cite “a single case — not one — in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2014/08/03/fresh-doubts-over-a-texas-execution/?noredirect=on&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Excerpt from a Washington post article&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was rather surprised to read this, my impression from various news articles was that there are multiple cases where it is pretty clear that an innocent was executed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there no cases where it has been clearly shown that an innocent was executed in the United States? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-10-20T16:17:47.060" LastActivityDate="2018-10-20T16:17:47.060" Title="There isn't &quot;a single case - not one - in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit.”" Tags="|united-states|criminology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22680" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22679" CreationDate="2014-08-04T17:55:23.793" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;When approaching this question there are two items that need to be resolved, if the quote accurately quotes what &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonin_Scalia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Justice Antonin Scalia&lt;/a&gt; said and the second of which if the quote in its current context is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regards to wrongful executions in the United States, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrongful_execution#United_States&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia provides several well referenced examples&lt;/a&gt; of cases where serious doubt was raised after the execution and Samuel Gross &lt;a href=&quot;https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1183&amp;amp;context=articles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;provides another good summary&lt;/a&gt; from a legal perspective; however, in the case of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Tafero&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jesse Tafero&lt;/a&gt; (October 12, 1946 – May 4, 1990), was convicted of murder and executed via electric chair in the state of Florida. Walter Rhodes, later confessed to the shooting after Tafero's execution. Which discredits Justice Scalia's assertion of a single case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, is that exactly what Justice Scalia said? It turns out that this quote is from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_v._Marsh&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kansas v. Marsh&lt;/a&gt; case of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/05pdf/04-1170.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the exact quote&lt;/a&gt; from his concurring opinion was,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does not discuss a&#xA;  single case—not one—in which it is clear that a person was executed&#xA;  for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent&#xA;  years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be&#xA;  shouted from the rooftops by the abolition lobby. The dissent makes&#xA;  much of the new-found capacity of DNA testing to establish innocence.&#xA;  But in every case of an executed defendant of which I am aware, that&#xA;  technology has confirmed guilt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the ruling was decided in 2006 and the Tafero case occurred in 1990 the question of if a gap sixteen years makes a case recent or not is best left to the reader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-10-20T16:16:17.883" LastActivityDate="2018-10-20T16:16:17.883" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22684" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22686" CreationDate="2014-08-05T00:48:41.560" Score="10" ViewCount="1070" Body="&lt;p&gt;MIT claim to have invented a technology that, by using special video cameras, can detect vibrations and recover the sounds being played that cause those vibrations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;YouTube video: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKXOucXB4a8&quot;&gt;The Visual Microphone: Passive Recovery of Sound from Video&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/2clggi/mits_visual_microphone/&quot;&gt;Reddit discussion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seemed really sketchy to me. The biggest worry was the line about the vibrations only registering as changes in a &quot;hundredth of a pixel&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the vibrations caused by the music are so subtle that they move the plants leaves by less than a hundredth of a pixel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the vibrations were indeed that small, you would see no change in the image at all, because that's how pixels work- they're the smallest measurement recorded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, the YouTube channel (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzTOCqbACCbIPXuu9qZ-IdA&quot;&gt;Abe Davis's Research&lt;/a&gt;) has only one video uploaded to it, it's not on MIT's channel or anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any other supporting evidence that this is real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17462" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T09:12:11.547" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T17:27:26.837" Title="Did MIT develop software that can recover sounds from video of vibrating objects?" Tags="|technology|software|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22685" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22684" CreationDate="2014-08-05T03:20:40.890" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Video DSP Engineer, I can attest that it is definitely possible and practical to register motion of a fraction of a pixel. I've used such a technique myself (and this general notion is far from new, though its use to extract sound may indeed be). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider an image of a coin, say, 80 pixels wide; if it moves as a whole by, say, 1/10 pixel, there will be tiny but well coordinated changes in most of its hundreds of pixels, which can be mathematically analyzed; in fact, given a single frame from the video, you can analyze it and predict that if the coin moves, say 0.04 pixel to the left, then a particular pixel will get brighter (or dimmer) by a certain amount. Any individual prediction may not be accurate when compared to actual motion, but averaged over hundreds of pixels, you can get very good results, especially in ideal conditions (still camera, uniform lighting; good focus...). So you then mathematically work back by comparing the predictions to the actual changes, to estimate the motion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This technique &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_flow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_flow&lt;/a&gt; is one which can be used, and is similar in its approach to what I've described; here is another: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_correlation&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase_correlation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more difficult limitation is that you have onlr whatever number of audio 'samples' per second, depending on the frame rate. For conventional video, this number is typically in range 24 ... 60, which is too low to resolve interesting audio. The music samples on the web page &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/&quot;&gt;http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic/&lt;/a&gt; are all very low notes; however a sample rate of 2200 Hz is given. For applications where you want to understand speech, you'd want to have at least 1000-2000 samples per second, and up to 4000 or 8000 if you want to be able to identify the speaker by the sound of their voice. Refer to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_frequency&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_frequency&lt;/a&gt; -- but be aware that standard telephone processing uses 8kHz sampling, and is clearly more than adequate for clear speech of even higher-pitched voices with ability to recognize the speaker; lower sample rates can still yield intelligible speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper also discusses taking advantage of the 'rolling shutter' effect in a video camera to get more continuous audio information. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21494" LastEditorUserId="21494" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T12:39:21.697" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T12:39:21.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22684" CreationDate="2014-08-05T03:21:42.247" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is real work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Provenance&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors are Abe Davis (MIT), Michael Rubinstein (MIT, Microsoft), Neal Wadhwa (MIT), Gautham J. Mysore (Adobe), Fredo Durand (MIT), and William T. Freeman (MIT). (&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/VisualMic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Project website&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This work didn't come out of nowhere. Three of the authors overlap with &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.csail.mit.edu/mrub/vidmag/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper on Eulerian Video Magnification&lt;/a&gt;. That previous work was the focus of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/19940/can-the-xbox-kinect-sensor-accurately-assess-your-heart-rate-across-the-room&quot;&gt;previous question&lt;/a&gt; about detecting heart rate from small changes in video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work was peer reviewed and &lt;a href=&quot;http://s2014.siggraph.org/sites/default/files/S14_Advance_Program.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;accepted to SIGGRAPH 2014&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=3&amp;amp;topDomainID=2&amp;amp;subDomainID=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the highest ranked computer graphics conference in the world&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Plausibility&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding subpixel motion, a displacement of an object less than one pixel &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; affect the signal being received by all pixels in the image and most noticeably along the boundary. The effect of a point source of light in the world on the pixels of a camera depends on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_transfer_function&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;optical transfer function&lt;/a&gt; that describes how the light from that point is spread across the pixels of the camera. Movement of that point source of light will affect the light received at all pixels of the camera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They used a high frame rate camera (2200-20000 Hz) to allow reconstruction of the relevant frequencies. When they used a lower frame-rate camera (60 Hz), they took advantage of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_shutter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;rolling shutter&lt;/a&gt; in the camera to gather signal at a higher effective rate (61920Hz, but with missing samples) than the base frame rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user5582" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T17:27:26.837" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2359" CreationDate="2014-08-05T09:10:45.277" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are two more recent papers to support the notion that consumers do suffer from significant &quot;left-digit bias&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/devin.pope/research/pdf/Website_Inattention_Cars.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lacetera, Pope, &amp;amp; Snydor (2012)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; looks at US used car sales data. It finds a large and discontinuous drop in sales prices at each 10,000-mile mark of the odometer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, cars with odometer values between 79,900 and 79,999 miles are sold on &#xA;  average for approximately $210 more than cars with odometer values between 80,000 &#xA;  and 80,100 miles, but for only $10 less than cars with odometer readings between &#xA;  79,800 and 79,899.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/euz31.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2013/07/17/tobaccocontrol-2012-050943.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;MacKillop et al. (2013)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; surveys smokers and finds that smokers' self-reported probability of a quit attempt also jumps discontinuously each time the price of a pack of cigarettes crosses a dollar mark. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lMHVH.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These tend to support the notion that consumers have a left-digit bias. So do retailers tend to have 99-cent pricing &lt;strong&gt;because&lt;/strong&gt; they want to exploit this bias? I do not have data regarding retailers' &lt;strong&gt;motives&lt;/strong&gt;, but this seems to be a reasonable conclusion to make.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some competing explanations--such as that retailers do this mainly (i) to circumvent employee theft or (ii) because consumers like to receive change--can perhaps be rejected based on evidence that similar 99 cent pricing is common in e-commerce, where there are usually no cash register or coins to deal with. Examples: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167624513000450&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Hackl, Kummer, &amp;amp; Winter-Ebmer (2014)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/REST_a_00178#.U-CiMPmSwz4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Levy et al. (2011)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17967" LastEditorDisplayName="user17967" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T10:21:28.283" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T10:21:28.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22691" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-05T09:14:38.037" Score="13" ViewCount="950" Body="&lt;p&gt;A threat that has been talked about a lot recently is the concept of a &lt;strong&gt;terrorist sleeper cell&lt;/strong&gt;: Terrorists leading normal lives integrated into society for years, sometimes decades, until one day, they get &quot;activated&quot;, i.e. receive a call, letter, email etc. with instructions for executing some plot/attack. Not only have government agencies repeatedly made reference to such structures; they also feature prominently in most fiction about terrorism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleeper_cell&quot;&gt;The Wikipedia article on the subject&lt;/a&gt; is quite lengthy, and includes a whole section on sleeper cells as (allegedly) employed by al-Qaeda, but not a single example of an actual (planned or executed) terrorist act by such a unit; nor have I been able to find any concrete such examples anywhere else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My simple question is therefore for a &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;reliable source&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;* confirming that &quot;terrorist sleeper cells&quot; actually exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;* Note that given government agencies' recent history of deliberate misinformation on that subject, it is safe to say that a mere claim by such an agency of the form &quot;the threat is very real, we have evidence [but are not showing it to you]&quot; is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a reliable source.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21508" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:42:48.673" LastActivityDate="2016-01-08T10:03:53.873" Title="Do terrorist organizations have &quot;sleeper cells&quot;?" Tags="|terrorism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22692" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22694" CreationDate="2014-08-05T10:02:52.540" Score="35" ViewCount="7257" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yesterday, I went to my friend's house and as usual he was glued to his PS4 playin' video games.  When I asked him about it, he said that playing video games is a nice thing as it improves your reflexes &amp;amp; reaction time. It also sharpens your mind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am curious to know whether it is a true fact or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21442" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T11:17:13.680" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T11:17:13.680" Title="Do video games improve reflexes &amp; reaction time?" Tags="|videogames|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22693" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31971" CreationDate="2014-08-05T10:23:16.150" Score="8" ViewCount="858" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;common knowledge&quot; is that US went to war with Iraq in 2003 based on &quot;intelligence reports&quot; claiming that Iraq had active Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) programs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, some people deny that, stating that the intelligence community claimed that Iraq has no active WMDs programs, and that the Bush administration doctored its own intelligence which didn't come out of any of US intelligence agencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the US intelligence community suggest that Iraq had WMDs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2016-02-22T17:45:21.883" LastActivityDate="2016-02-22T23:13:27.940" Title="Did US intelligence community ever claim that Iraq had WMDs prior to 2003 inavsion?" Tags="|united-states|intelligence|weapons|iraq|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22692" CreationDate="2014-08-05T10:36:54.943" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Indeed there are studies showing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_shooter&quot;&gt;FPS&lt;/a&gt; to improve visuospatial processing and memory abilities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;State effects of action video-game playing on visuospatial processing efficiency and attention among experienced action video-game players&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although researchers have speculated action video gaming&#xA;  might induce the state of “flow experience”, most previous &#xA;  experimental studies have focused primarily on the long-term  (trait)&#xA;  effects of action video gaming, while overlooking  possible short-term&#xA;  (state) effects characterizing the “flow” state. The goal of the&#xA;  current research was to investigate the  state effects of action video&#xA;  games on visual-spatial  processing efficiency and visual-spatial&#xA;  attention. We  compared the baseline performance of experienced action&#xA;  video game players on two visual-spatial tasks and Attention  Network&#xA;  Test with their performance on these tasks  immediately after action&#xA;  video-gaming. The findings indicate half an hour of action video-game&#xA;  playing temporarily  boosted participants’ performances on tasks that&#xA;  require  visual memory, spatial transformations (mental rotation), and&#xA;  executive network of attention. The existence of such  enhanced&#xA;  cognitive states implies the possibility of  consciously accessing the&#xA;  latent resources of our brain and  boosting our attentional and visual&#xA;  capacity upon demand. Keywords: enhanced cognitive states,&#xA;  visual-spatial  processing efficiency, attention, action video game&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2012/papers/0367/paper0367.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;(source)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recent study from Oxford University claims that &lt;em&gt;&quot;Children who play video games for a short period each day seem to have small but significantly improved levels of development&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. However, they found negative effects associated with gaming for more than 3 hours a day. They did not attempt to establish causality. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Electronic Gaming and Psychosocial Adjustment&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RESULTS:&lt;/strong&gt; Low levels (&amp;lt;1 hour daily) as well as high levels (&gt;3 hours daily) of game engagement was linked to key indicators of&#xA;  psychosocial adjustment. Low engagement was associated with higher&#xA;  life satisfaction and prosocial behavior and lower externalizing and&#xA;  internalizing problems, whereas the opposite was found for high levels&#xA;  of play. No effects were observed for moderate play levels when&#xA;  compared with non-players.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CONCLUSIONS&lt;/strong&gt;: The links between different levels of electronic game engagement and psychosocial adjustment were small (&amp;lt;1.6% of variance)&#xA;  yet statistically significant. Games consistently but not robustly&#xA;  associated with children’s adjustment in both positive and negative&#xA;  ways, findings that inform policy-making as well as future avenues for&#xA;  research in the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/07/29/peds.2013-4021.abstract&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;(source)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-05T13:15:29.047" LastActivityDate="2014-08-05T13:15:29.047" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22696" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22728" CreationDate="2014-08-05T14:08:25.857" Score="13" ViewCount="1421" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a fairly wide spread belief within the Aikido community that all joint locks and some throws (or rather their break falls) are harmful to children. I am looking for actual evidence-based medicine justification to not do those joint locks/throws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question really focuses on medium to long term harm to the development of children's body. Adults can practice these locks for decades without any adverse effects as their bones, tendons, and so on are all finalised. On the other hand, kids bodies are still growing and might be much weaker to resist strain. That's the common view within the Aikido teaching world. I am looking for actual medical evidence of such. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, here are two common locks used in Aikido: kote gaeshi (supinating wristlock) and kote hineri (rotational wristlock). The former twists the write anti-clockwise, the latter clockwise if applied to the left hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FCrUB.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/FCrUBm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;kote gaeshi&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fzqe7.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Fzqe7m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;kote hineri&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both can be very painful in the short term but once the lock is released the pain disappears. The goal of locks is to either cause the body to move in a predefined way (to set up for a throw) or to pin the target so they are disinclined to resist the pin. The locks are safe to practice on adults: they do not cause any short, medium, or long term damage if applied correctly. Of course, they could do grievous damage if applied in haste on unsuspecting targets. But &lt;em&gt;damage is not the goal&lt;/em&gt;. Otherwise, we could not train! To be fair, pain is not the goal either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Maybe martial arts experts be better at answering this question so I &lt;a href=&quot;https://martialarts.stackexchange.com/q/4267/82&quot;&gt;asked&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://martialarts.stackexchange.com&quot;&gt;martialart.se&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11507" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:43.930" LastActivityDate="2017-10-27T14:52:55.073" Title="Are Aikido joint locks harmful to children?" Tags="|medical-science|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22697" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22774" CreationDate="2014-08-05T14:35:29.927" Score="6" ViewCount="4212" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/3242252/Drinking-too-much-coffee-could-shrink-womens-breasts.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; of 300 women done in the UK says that drinking 3 cups of coffee per day can cause a woman's breasts to shrink by an average of 17%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;drinking three or more cups a day was enough to cause a smaller breast size&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I question the study's methods.  It appears the study was done instantaneously, and did not measure the results of caffeine intake over time. Therefore, it seems at least plausible to me, that the correlation between breast size and coffee intake may be secondary, and there may not be a cause/effect relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps women with smaller breasts have a biological or social reason for stronger coffee cravings, for instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also seems possible that even if caffeine does affect breast size, it might happen during puberty, and the caffeine might cause breasts not to develop as fully.  Yet the article claims that caffeine can actually cause breast &lt;em&gt;shrinkage&lt;/em&gt;, not just under-development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there additional research (or a better summary of this study) which confirms the reported claims that drinking coffee does cause breasts to shrink in size?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-08-20T09:36:34.740" LastActivityDate="2016-08-21T23:51:35.783" Title="Does drinking coffee reduce breast size?" Tags="|biology|anatomy|caffeine|breast|breast-size|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22221" CreationDate="2014-08-05T16:47:25.517" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a Russian I would say that &lt;strong&gt;this is true.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's still a problem with any kind of paper proofs, because Chernobyl was a top-secret place and when the diaster happened, the government even tried to hide these news. &#xA;So, there are a lot of proofs from people who WERE there, but I don't think it's easy to find documents in open access.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The official version says that it really happened, and firefighters who understood that they won't survive took the place of other workers. Some of those people survived and got &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kremlin.ru/news/11082&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Order of courage&lt;/a&gt;, so this is actually the only proof anyone will need. I would surely say that it's not just a version, but the only existing opinion in Russia, because this disaster happened in the eyes of many people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Important note&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;links are in Russian, because as I checked they show deeper info than English sources. Anyway, &lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Google translate&lt;/a&gt; might help&lt;/em&gt; )&#xA;There're 2 opposite opinions on people's motivation to re-volunteer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Actually, there's information from some survivors who claim that they&#xA;were not informed about the radiation level (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rg.ru/2011/04/20/chernobyl.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article from big russian&#xA;newspaper&lt;/a&gt;). This seems&#xA;possible, because the government didn't do well on the first stages&#xA;of the disaster - they didn't immediately inform people or started&#xA;evacuation and seemed interested in just hiding it. So, probably some&#xA;licvidators re-volunteered, because they &lt;strong&gt;weren't informed that they&#xA;wouldn't survive such radiation doses.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the other hand, there were people who &lt;strong&gt;were well-informed&lt;/strong&gt; and&#xA;stayed because they thought if was right thing to do. &lt;a href=&quot;http://pripyat.com/people-and-fates/vydayushchiisya-pozharnyi-rossii.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This link&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;is about the Major firefighter, who stayed in the center of the disaster. There're may memories of firefighters, who share the same idea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;So, we have 2 quite opposite versions. Anyway, both sources prove that people DID stay in the disaster zone. You can decide which motivation seems more reliable fro you, but some of the survivors are still alive and say that the second version is true. So,  the second version of events is mostly supported by the public opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21516" LastEditorDisplayName="user21516" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T09:28:01.793" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T09:28:01.793" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22649" CreationDate="2014-08-06T01:41:55.463" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is complex. There have been a number of apparently contradictory studies in the area. Researchers have been trying to dig down and find the true factors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g. Is generosity to charities affected by the religion of the donor, the religiosity of the donor, the frequency of church attendance, or perhaps the number of opportunities the donor is offered (e.g. in church)? If you only consider secular charities, do the relations still hold? Are they universal or by country?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an entire section (page 6) dedicated to summarising the results in &lt;a href=&quot;https://generosityresearch.nd.edu/assets/17632/generosity_and_philanthropy_final.pdf&quot;&gt;A Literature Review of Empirical Studies of Philanthropy: Eight Mechanisms That Drive Charitable Giving&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Spoiler: Religion is not one of the eight mechanisms, but it affects them.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This 2007 paper does not (yet?) appear to have been peer-reviewed. It has been sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, which has a history of sponsoring controversial pro-religious studies. Nonetheless, it is certainly well-referenced, and I have based this answer on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic finding is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Positive relations between church membership &#xA;  and/or the frequency of church attendance with both secular and religious philanthropy appear in almost any article in which this relation was studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it isn't that simple, when you start digging.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at &lt;em&gt;secular&lt;/em&gt; giving, the relationship disappears or even inverts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you take people out of the religious context, the difference disappears:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fact that no relationship between giving and religiosity was found in these studies may indicate that either the religious context is crucial, or that the higher likelihood of being asked is the reason for heightened generosity of the religious, or both.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They cite a study that suggests both are somewhat true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also look at the relative generosity between different religious (especially Protestants versus Catholics), looking at both totals and proportions of income. They account for the difference in the style of solicitation. These issues are out-of-scope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general conclusion that I drew from the study - and I emphasize, this remains simplistic; see the report for more - is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the religious donate more than the non-religious - this extra is largely to non-secular charities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the more devout (as measured by church attendance) donate more than the less devout.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;this difference can largely be accounted for by social pressure and the number of times they are solicited for money, rather than positing that church-goers are more inherently generous in personality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T06:11:30.687" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T06:11:30.687" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8893" CreationDate="2014-08-06T04:33:19.323" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In  &lt;strong&gt;general terms, inbreeding is dangerous because it increases the chances of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homozygous#Homozygous&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;homozygosity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. This means that for a particular gene, identical alleles of the gene are present on both homologous chromosomes. &lt;strong&gt;Those individuals result of the inbreeding have more chances of having recessive or deleterious traits&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are generally 'invisible', they don't express physically, but they are present in the genes so if a person has two of them, they can become a manifest trait. Some examples of negative traits are reduced fertility, increased genetic disorders, lower birth rate, higher infant mortality  or loss of immune system function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can calculate the risk of recessive traits (an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.czerwonytrop.com/inb/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;example of inbreeding calculation for dogs&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.genetic-genealogy.co.uk/Toc115570144.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;more info here&lt;/a&gt;). It is greater when the parents are close relatives and lower for relationships between more distant relatives:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A measure of inbreeding of an individual A is the probability F(A)&#xA;  that both alleles in one locus are derived from the same gene in an&#xA;  ancestor. This probability F(A) is called the&#xA;  &quot;coefficient of inbreeding&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both the inbreeding and the coancestry coefficients can be defined for specific individuals or as average population values, but they assume no selection or are limited to neutral alleles, so the numbers are a simple statistical calculation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you &lt;strong&gt;want to know how inbred a population is&lt;/strong&gt;, you can use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_population_size&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;effective population size&lt;/a&gt;. You can note how the average &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding_coefficient&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;inbreeding coefficient&lt;/a&gt; changes from one generation to the next, and then define Ne as the size of the idealized population that has the same change in average inbreeding coefficient as the population under consideration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14740" LastEditorUserId="14740" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T15:21:55.283" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T15:21:55.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22706" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10180" CreationDate="2014-08-06T04:57:44.107" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related question with some general info about inbreeding: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8893/does-inbreeding-cause-severe-birth-defects&quot;&gt;Does inbreeding cause severe birth defects?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Inbreeding is dangerous because it increases the chances of&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zygosity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;homozygosity&lt;/a&gt;, which means that for a particular gene, identical&#xA;  alleles of the gene are present on both homologous chromosomes. Those&#xA;  individuals result of the inbreeding have more chances of having&#xA;  recessive or deleterious traits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Darwin's case in particular, the authors calculated the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_inbreeding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;coefficient of inbreeding&lt;/a&gt; for his children, which was &lt;em&gt;F 5 0.0630&lt;/em&gt; (more than &lt;strong&gt;6%&lt;/strong&gt; of their autosomal genome is expected to be homozygous). This is a &lt;strong&gt;moderate&lt;/strong&gt; value. According to the letters and the genetic analysis of 25 Darwin/Wedgwood families belonging to four consecutive generations, there is a &lt;strong&gt;statistically significant positive association between child mortality (death at or before the age of 10 years) and inbreeding coefficient&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three of Charles Darwin's six children with long-term marriage history suffered from infertility (&lt;a href=&quot;http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/5/1237.full?ijkey=b737ef44b379b5acef85d15c5eb7cc8e91875d86&amp;amp;keytype2=tf_ipsecsha&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Golubovsky&lt;/a&gt;). One of them died of tuberculosis, and it is suggested (&lt;a href=&quot;http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/5/4/574&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lyons&lt;/a&gt;) that inbreeding increases risk of &lt;strong&gt;tuberculosis infection&lt;/strong&gt; as well as invasive &lt;strong&gt;bacterial diseases&lt;/strong&gt; (cause of death of his last child, Charles Waring) in humans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The high childhood mortality might be a result of increased homozygosity of &lt;strong&gt;deleterious recessive alleles&lt;/strong&gt; produced by the consanguineous marriages within the Darwin/Wedgwood dynasty. Darwin's children had an increased risk of suffering the effects of detrimental recessive alleles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Darwin's children had a relatively high coefficient of inbreeding, so the risk of negative traits was higher for them. The high child mortality in his family could most likely had been caused by detrimental recessive alleles product of inbreeding.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14740" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T15:23:26.650" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22676" CreationDate="2014-08-06T05:21:19.067" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The source of the text of the above letter originates from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://playandlearn.org/reader.asp?Type=Articles&amp;amp;fn=225&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;facebook posting&lt;/a&gt; by a Shia advocacy organization, which went viral from there. The text in the letter in itself &lt;a href=&quot;http://search.un.org/search?q=Ali%20Bin%20Abi%20Talib&amp;amp;btnG=Search%20UN%20Website&amp;amp;output=xml_no_dtd&amp;amp;client=UN_Website_en&amp;amp;proxystylesheet=UN_Website_en&amp;amp;oe=UTF-8&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;adv=true&amp;amp;lr=lang_en&amp;amp;num=10&amp;amp;sort=score&amp;amp;Submit2=Search&amp;amp;ulang=en&amp;amp;entqrm=0&amp;amp;ud=1&amp;amp;exclude_apps=1&amp;amp;site=&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;does not appear&lt;/a&gt; in any UN archive or documents but &lt;a href=&quot;http://playandlearn.org/download/ahdr2002e.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this UN report&lt;/a&gt; does quote few of the sayings attributed to Ali the fourth caliph of Islam. But nothing claiming he was &quot;fairest&quot; governor in history of mankind and hence most likely this letter is a fabrication which uses publicly available signatures and letterheads of Kofi Annan. From historical evidences we know that only the governance of Muhammad and his 2nd caliph Umar were prominent, prosperous and set examples. The rule of Ali was marred by internal rebellion and uprisings carried over by his previous incumbent Uthman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastEditorUserId="32459" LastEditDate="2017-06-21T17:26:41.430" LastActivityDate="2017-06-21T17:26:41.430" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22709" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-06T05:30:23.543" Score="50" ViewCount="8891" Body="&lt;p&gt;In biology classes at school I was taught that O can be a donor to all blood types (given matching Rh group and other details), and AB can receive transfusion from any type. Quick googling seems to suggest this is true, at least theoretically &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_type#Universal_donors_and_universal_recipients&quot;&gt;for example, Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I recently came across a discussion thread (in Facebook) where more than one person (at least one of them went for internship as nurse) claims that this is only true in theory, in practice transfusion is only allowed for exact same blood type (e.g. AB can only receive from AB). And once in a while I receive chain message from friends saying something like &quot;My relative is in emergency, need AB donor urgently&quot; (or need A donor, or need B donor) despite they should be able to find O which is the most common blood type.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can I find an authoritative reference that mentions universal donor transfusion is regularly done without any problem, and the &quot;universal donor&quot; concept isn't just theoretical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*All these discussions and chain messages happen in Indonesia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21533" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T09:22:15.470" LastActivityDate="2016-07-21T12:12:49.320" Title="Is the O-type blood used as a universal donor?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22711" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22692" CreationDate="2014-08-06T08:20:34.707" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There actually is evidence that playing video games may improve&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;spatial orientation, memory formation and strategic planning as well as fine motor skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please see the study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131030103856.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Brain regions can be specifically trained with video games&lt;/a&gt;. Anyway, I doubt, that playing 24/7 may have an overall positive effect. There may be a training effect on some brain regions, but the benefit may easily be consumed by potential damages/declines of other regions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21534" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T08:20:34.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22709" CreationDate="2014-08-06T13:08:22.140" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anzsbt.org.au&quot;&gt;Australia and New Zealand Society of Blood Transfusion&lt;/a&gt; has published a document entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anzsbt.org.au/publications/documents/ANZSBT_Guidelines_Administration_Blood_Products_2ndEd_Dec_2011_Hyperlinks.pdf&quot;&gt;Guidelines for the Administration of Blood Products&lt;/a&gt;, which specifically deals with recommended practice for transfusions, rather than simply biological theory.  Section 5.4 is entitled &quot;Emergency red cells&quot; and states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In critical bleeding, and at the discretion of the treating clinician, there may be insufficient time to&#xA;  undertake full compatibility testing. It may be necessary to provide emergency group O red cells which&#xA;  may not be specifically labelled for the patient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The decision to use uncrossmatched blood components must balance the patient’s clinical need&#xA;  against the risk of potential adverse events such as a transfusion reaction due to pre-existing&#xA;  antibodies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes it clear that transfusion with type O red cells is accepted practice when it is not possible to test the patient's blood type; but that matched blood types are preferred when circumstances allow.  So this is one sense in which type O can be used as a universal donor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As comments below and other answers point out, transfusions of whole blood and plasma are a different story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastEditorUserId="6308" LastEditDate="2016-04-21T01:07:56.750" LastActivityDate="2016-04-21T01:07:56.750" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22715" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22709" CreationDate="2014-08-06T14:22:36.607" Score="41" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=cGBaz0hp_fcC&amp;amp;pg=PA45#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;The central problem is differentiating transfusion of whole blood, red blood cells, and plasma&lt;/a&gt;. Traditionally, when people speak of &quot;blood types&quot;, they're discussing their Red Blood Cell type. The plasma contains its own factors, which are generally opposite to that of the red blood cells. Thus, O- is a universal donor for RBC donations and AB+ for plasma. Plasma works the other way around. For whole blood transfusion, an exact match is necessary to avoid transfusion issues, although, as noted above, transfusion issues are considered to be a lesser problem than the blood loss in emergency situations. Since most modern blood blanks separate the RBC and plasma components, and re-mix them as necessary for transfusion, and the risks are higher for RBC incompatibility, the idea of O- being the universal donor is a handy shorthand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="6254" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T21:45:40.130" LastActivityDate="2014-08-06T21:45:40.130" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22719" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-06T20:27:35.827" Score="13" ViewCount="843" Body="&lt;p&gt;The relatively new drug for Hepatitis C, Sovaldi, has caused a rather large controversy about the appropriate price for medication. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/upshot/is-a-1000-pill-really-too-much.html?rref=upshot&quot;&gt;This NY Times article&lt;/a&gt; is one example of the controversy, citing the cost at $1,000 a pill, and $84,000 for a complete treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not asking about what price is appropriate, this is a much more complicated debate and entirely off-topic here. But I am interested in putting the price in context, and the official statement from Gilead paints a rather different picture than most of the articles in the press I read. They state in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gilead.com/~/media/Files/pdfs/Policy-Perspectives/Patient-Access-to-SOF-for-HCV-4-28-14.pdf&quot;&gt;policy position&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sovaldi was priced such that the total regimen cost is comparable to the previous standard of care regimen for genotype 1 patients with hepatitis C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that statement accurate? Is the cost for a complete treatment with Sovaldi comparable to the cost of the existing treatments for Hepatitis C?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="5" LastEditDate="2014-08-06T20:33:25.423" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T15:08:47.033" Title="Is the total cost of Sovaldi, the $1,000 pill, comparable to conventional long-term treatment?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22722" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-07T05:34:32.480" Score="11" ViewCount="1342" Body="&lt;p&gt;Peter T. Leeson makes multiple claims about economic and public health improvements since the collapse of its government in his paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peterleeson.com/better_off_stateless.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Better Off Stateless&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This paper investigates the impact of anarchy on Somali development. The data suggest that while the state&#xA;  of this development remains low, on nearly all of 18 key indicators that allow pre- and post-stateless welfare&#xA;  comparisons, Somalis are better off under anarchy than they were under government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The specific claims of improved welfare are included in Table 1 and show a variety of metrics. Do other metrics tell a different story? Are these metrics insufficient to establish an improvement in Somalia's development or quality of life according to standards of social science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://s16.postimg.org/a46j96ghx/Somalia_Development_Table1.png&quot; alt=&quot;Table 1&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8323" LastEditorUserId="8323" LastEditDate="2016-10-07T00:11:08.907" LastActivityDate="2016-10-31T11:12:42.063" Title="Has the average Somalian's quality of life improved under anarchy?" Tags="|economics|government|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22719" CreationDate="2014-08-07T13:11:11.687" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epidemic.org/thefacts/theepidemic/USHealthCareCosts/&quot;&gt;Dartmouth Medical School&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the cost per liver transplantation in the range of $280,000 for&#xA;  one year, liver transplantation for hepatitis C alone reaches a cost&#xA;  of nearly $300 million per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moreover, the average lifetime cost for hepatitis C, in the absence of&#xA;  liver transplant, has been estimated to be about $100,000 for&#xA;  individual patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3763475/&quot;&gt;According to the NIH&lt;/a&gt; (which does not mention liver transplants specifically):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lifetime cost of an individual infected with HCV in 2011 was estimated at $64,490. However, this cost is significantly higher among individuals with a longer life expectancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The big difference seems to be that Sovaldi is a &lt;em&gt;cure&lt;/em&gt; and has the entire cost occur within a treatment period of 12 or 24 weeks, whereas existing treatments consisted of &quot;managing&quot; the disease and spread out the cost over years or decades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14002" LastEditorUserId="14002" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T15:08:47.033" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T15:08:47.033" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22696" CreationDate="2014-08-07T15:13:34.227" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a martial artist of 10 years, and an ex-medical profession in the area of sports/physical therapy I have a fair bit of experience in the area and can safely say that joint locks categorically &lt;strong&gt;are&lt;/strong&gt; more dangerous to children than they are to grown adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite my experience you're not here for anecdotes, so let's dive into the facts. When a child is born, they are born with their 'bones' made largely of cartilage. As we grow our bones &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ossify&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, becoming harder and less prone to breakages (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17505122&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fracture risks peak in early adolescence&lt;/a&gt;). A similar process also occurs with our ligaments, which tighten and strengthen into maturity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because there are no direct studies done on joint locks in children (at least, not that I can find), I can concentrate on an example that mimics the forces you might see in a joint lock. The example I am going to concentrate on is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nursemaid&amp;#39;s_elbow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;radial head subluxation&lt;/a&gt;. A pulling motion on the elbow (imagine lifting a child up by the forearms), can cause progressive damage to the annular ligament in the elbow. This damage, as demonstrated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2393168&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;epidemiological studies&lt;/a&gt;, is much much more common in young children. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, this really concentrates on the effects of acute injuries. I can't justify with evidence the notion that any gentle joint locks (not causing immediate injury or tear to the ligaments), would cause any long term damage. But the point is, that any acute/traumatic injuries can cause long term problems, and these acute issue are much more common in children. As such, joint locks on children should be practiced only under strict supervision, but as long as you're careful I can find no evidence that the &lt;strong&gt;correct, careful and responsible&lt;/strong&gt; practice of joint locks would cause any long term issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21537" LastEditorUserId="21537" LastEditDate="2017-10-27T14:52:55.073" LastActivityDate="2017-10-27T14:52:55.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22730" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-07T16:28:12.087" Score="14" ViewCount="1681" Body="&lt;p&gt;In recently published video and press release &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Service_of_Ukraine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SBU (Security Service of Ukraine)&lt;/a&gt; claims that intended target for the SA-11 operated by Russian separatists was Russian Aeroflot flight SU2074 (aka AFL-2074) from Moscow to Larnaca, Cyrpus. They claim that their flight paths crossed over with just 500m of vertical separation just 11 minutes prior to MH17 being shot down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/92LkP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7r9Aj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;em&gt;Images from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssu.gov.ua&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.ssu.gov.ua&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allegedly this was supposed to serve as &lt;em&gt;casus belli&lt;/em&gt;, and provoke full scale Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/ntHj124vnIA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Whole video on YouTube (in Ukrainan)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sbu.gov.ua/sbu/control/en/publish/article?art_id=129860&amp;amp;cat_id=35317&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The press release in English&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssu.gov.ua/sbu/control/uk/publish/article?art_id=129834&amp;amp;cat_id=39574&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in Ukrainian&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This leaves few questions open:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any evidence to back factual claims in the press release (movement of SA-11, flight paths overlapping etc)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Has any of said evidence been verified or confirmed by independent sources (for example Western intelligence agencies)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the evidence sufficient to draw conclusion about intended target?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T11:25:08.173" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T20:40:30.173" Title="Was Aeroflot SU2074 intended target in MH17 shooting?" Tags="|russia|ukraine|mh17|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22731" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22737" CreationDate="2014-08-07T16:44:49.317" Score="2" ViewCount="952" Body="&lt;p&gt;In electrical safety, it is often considered dangerous to be in contact with the pins of a plug whilst plugging it in. Does the plug need to be fully in for conductivity between the pins and socket to occur, or does electricity flow through the plug before it has been fully pushed in? Would touching the pins whilst plugging in the plug result in an electric shock, or would the pins not conduct whilst not fully plugged in? Surely though, if it was this easy to be electrocuted then plugs and sockets would be made differently? Thank you for an contribution made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: This question concerns 3 pinned British plugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21558" LastEditorUserId="21558" LastEditDate="2014-08-07T21:49:35.167" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T22:21:57.420" Title="If I am holding the pins of a plug whilst plugging it in, will I be electrocuted?" Tags="|safety|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2014-08-07T23:24:05.597" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22732" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-07T16:58:19.263" Score="8" ViewCount="3959" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some web-sites say that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthextremist.com/onion-juice-for-hair-growth-and-reversing-grey/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;onion juice, applied topically, can promote hair growth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Closely related question&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/21995/does-garlic-improve-hair-growth-in-androgenetic-alopecia&quot;&gt;Does garlic improve hair growth in androgenetic alopecia?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21559" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2022-04-13T10:12:57.457" Title="Does onion juice increase hair growth?" Tags="|hair|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22732" CreationDate="2014-08-07T17:25:11.363" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a great many quirky &lt;em&gt;cures&lt;/em&gt; spread all over the internet and most of them have no evidence besides a series of bloggers boasting their benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this case however, it seems we might have a slight exception. In 2002, Sharquie K1, Al-Obaidi HK published a piece of research in the Journal of Dermatology called '&lt;em&gt;Onion juice (Allium cepa L.), a new topical treatment for alopecia areata&lt;/em&gt;' whereby they saw significant hair regrowth in patients suffering from alopecia  when treated with topical (applied to the skin) onion juice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12126069&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;*&lt;em&gt;The article is publicly available (&lt;em&gt;link corrected) as an abstract&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, and it seems from a quick glance that the research had fairly decent methodology despite a few obvious faults. It was single blinded and placebo-controlled, but there was no randomization of participants and the study only included 63 participants and the control group was much smaller than the intervention group. The placebo used was water, and as such wouldn't have had an even similar consistency or colour to the onion juice, which could have skewed the results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, the results were quite significant.  (P&amp;lt;0.0001)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the reason I haven't just said &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Yes, it does work&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; is because we have some things to consider. Firstly, the study has not been reproduced. There are no records of this being done again, which begs the question why? &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Publication bias&lt;/a&gt; means that if this was repeated and put into question we probably wouldn't have heard about it. Also, it was used to treat &lt;strong&gt;alopecia&lt;/strong&gt;, which is a rare cause of hair loss. Male pattern baldness (the most common cause) was not tested. Also, chronic and severe cases were excluded which suggests the participants of this study were already very likely to improve regardless of treatment. The lack of randomization in this case is a real issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, in conclusion; Unless you have recent onset mild or moderate alopecia there is no reason at all to suspect that this might work.&lt;/strong&gt; If you do have mild or moderate recent onset alopecia then there is a possibility it might work, but I wouldn't get your hopes up given there is only one piece of moderate, unrepeated research on a low number of participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21537" LastEditorUserId="21537" LastEditDate="2020-08-21T12:58:11.267" LastActivityDate="2020-08-21T12:58:11.267" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22735" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-07T18:43:29.380" Score="11" ViewCount="128914" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzfeed.com/josecuervo/10-reasons-why-you-should-be-drinking-more-tequila&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Buzzfeed&lt;/a&gt; article after witnessing excessive drunk crying. It claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike other forms of alcohol, tequila is not a depressant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a source, it quotes Esquire:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tequila is not a depressant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least it's not borne out by our research. Seldom is the time that tequila has left any of us nodding off over our plate or head lolling back on the couch, as can happen all too easily from an equivalent number of martinis. Instead, we find our mood to be elevated by the proper application of good tequila. This may have something to do with the previous entry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21427" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T04:33:57.193" Title="Is tequila a depressant?" Tags="|physiology|alcohol|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22737" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22731" CreationDate="2014-08-07T22:21:57.420" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The British standard for three pronged plugs is 'BS 1363'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A properly made and undamaged plug post 1984 shouldn't allow you to touch the 'live' section of the prongs while they're touching the contacts within the socket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because the prongs are coated with a non-conductive material up the the point you would be able to touch once the prongs complete the circuit within the socket.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BxTBL.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;British 3 Prong Plug coating&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Initially, BS 1363 did not require the line and neutral pins to have insulating sleeves. Plugs made to the recent revisions of the standard have insulated sleeves to prevent finger contact with pins, and also to stop metal objects (for example, fallen window blind slats) from becoming live if lodged between the wall and a partly pulled out plug. The length of the sleeves prevents any live contacts from being exposed while the plug is being inserted or removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sleeved pins became required by the standard in 1984.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_power_plugs_and_sockets_-_British_and_related_types#Pin_insulation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia Article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEfP1OKKz_Q&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; Youtube video lists some amazing saftey features of the British plug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21016" LastActivityDate="2014-08-07T22:21:57.420" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22738" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14813" CreationDate="2014-08-08T02:12:59.680" Score="46" Body="&lt;h3&gt;There is a so-called &amp;quot;red shift&amp;quot;, but it's caused by unreliable exit polls leaning blue, not fraud causing the actual results to shift red.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you had asked whether &lt;em&gt;polls in general&lt;/em&gt; showed a Democratic lean compared to the results, you would be getting a very different answer.  But since you specifically asked about exit polls, this is all about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ten-reasons-why-you-should-ignore-exit/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt;, which dates from shortly before the 2008 election,  discusses 10 reasons that exit polls aren't reliable.  They may be &lt;em&gt;informative&lt;/em&gt;, but you can't draw any statistical conclusions from them, even for something as basic as who won.  I'll quote sections that specifically address the &amp;quot;red shift&amp;quot; issue below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Exit polls have a much larger intrinsic margin for error than regular polls.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because of what are known as cluster sampling techniques. Exit polls are not conducted at all precincts, but only at some fraction thereof. Although these precincts are selected at random and are supposed to be reflective of their states as a whole, this introduces another opportunity for error to occur (say, for instance, that a particular precinct has been canvassed especially heavily by one of the campaigns). This makes the margins for error somewhere between 50-90% higher than they would be for comparable telephone surveys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a fact of life that almost no media coverage of poll results &lt;em&gt;ever&lt;/em&gt; discusses the error margins.  But that's where almost all the fluctuation in polling comes in.  If one poll predicts a candidate will get 47% of the vote +/- 1%, and another predicts that candidate will get 52% of the vote +/- 5%, then when the second poll is released all the media coverage will be about how much the candidate's position has improved, even though the error margins are so high that (in the absence of any other information), the candidate is really getting closer to 48% of the vote (and is thus likely losing).  Because exit polls have even &lt;em&gt;higher&lt;/em&gt; error margins than normal polls, their numbers are &lt;strong&gt;that much less reliable.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Error bars on statistical results are of huge importance.  I can say right now, over a year out from the next presidential election, that the Republican candidate will receive 51% of the vote, +/- 49%.  If the media were reporting on my prediction, they'd say that I said the as-yet-unnamed Republican was ahead... but I really said that it was way too uncertain to say anything at all (other than that the Republican &lt;em&gt;will&lt;/em&gt; get votes, because my floor was 2% total).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Exit polls have consistently overstated the Democratic share of the vote.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of you will recall this happening in 2004, when leaked exit polls suggested that John Kerry would have a much better day than he actually had. But this phenomenon was hardly unique to 2004. In 2000, for instance, exit polls had Al Gore winning states like Alabama and Georgia (!). If you go back and watch &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B0002JUXDS&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The War Room&lt;/a&gt;, you’ll find George Stephanopolous and James Carville gloating over exit polls showing Bill Clinton winning states like Indiana and Texas, which of course he did not win.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This builds on the first point.  Exit polls are unreliable, and (for reasons discussed below) lean Democratic.  Thus if the unreliable numbers are skewed one way, then the &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; results will appear to be skewed the other in comparison.  Thus what's really happening is not that the votes are suddenly going more red than they should, but &lt;strong&gt;the exit polls are bluer than they should be&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;4. Exit polls challenge the definition of a random sample.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the exit polls have theoretically established procedures to collect a random sample — essentially, having the interviewer approach every nth person who leaves the polling place — in practice this is hard to execute at a busy polling place, particularly when the pollster may be standing many yards away from the polling place itself because of electioneering laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5. Democrats may be more likely to participate in exit polls.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related to items #1 and #4 above, Scott Rasmussen has found that Democrats supporters are more likely to agree to participate in exit polls, probably because they are more enthusiastic about this election.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These two mostly stand by themselves, but together they sortof explain why exit polls lean Democratic.  In a busy polling place, even one where there's an even mix of people, if someone makes themselves more approachable by the pollster, they're more likely to be polled.  If more Democrats than Republicans are willing to be polled (the link to the proof of which is dead in the article, and the reasons are not discussed), then the results will obviously skew Democratic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6. Exit polls may have problems calibrating results from early voting.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to the conventional wisdom, exit polls will attempt account for people who voted before election day in most (although not all) states by means of a random telephone sample of such voters. However, this requires the polling firms to guess at the ratio of early voters to regular ones, and sometimes they do not guess correctly. In Florida in 2000, [absentee votes were substantially Republican], leading to an overestimation of Al Gore’s share of the vote, and contributing to the infamous miscall of the state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;7. Exit polls may also miss late voters.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By “late” voters I mean persons who come to their polling place in the last couple of hours of the day, after the exit polls are out of the field. ... this adds another way in which the sample may be nonrandom, particularly in precincts with long lines or extended voting hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So both people who voted before election day itself and those who come close to closing time aren't necessarily well represented.  I couldn't find any statistics on how these groups tend to vote overall, but they're certainly enough to introduce even more error into the exit poll results (even if they balance out from one year to another).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;In short, any claims that are based off of the difference between exit poll results and the actual results of an election are only showing how unreliable exit polls are.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article I quoted from finishes with a good summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;10. You’ll know the actual results soon enough anyway.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have patience, my friends, and consider yourselves lucky: in France, it is illegal to conduct a poll of any kind within 48 hours of the election. But exit polls are really more trouble than they’re worth, at least as a predictive tool. An independent panel created by CNN in the wake of the Florida disaster in 2000 recommended that the network completely ignore exit polls when calling particular states. I suggest that you do the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T02:12:59.680" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22739" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-08T03:44:50.637" Score="6" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;The paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.utexas.edu/law/wp/wp-content/uploads/centers/clbe/klick_grocery_bags_and_foodborne_illness.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Grocery Bag Bans and Foodborne Illness&lt;/em&gt; (Klick &amp;amp; Wright, 2012)&lt;/a&gt; claims that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our results suggest that the San Francisco ban led to between 5.4 and 15.8 additional&#xA;  deaths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The logic being that people rarely (if ever) wash their reusable bags and so these end up having a lot of bacteria, which can and does kill. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper received a lot of press attention at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several factors suggesting that their claim is not credible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shortly after, there was &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/SF-Health-Officer-MEMO-re-Reusable-Bag-Study_V8-FIN1.pdf&quot;&gt;this reply by Tomás J. Aragón, a health official&lt;/a&gt; to debunk the above paper (basically saying that while their hypothesis is plausible and merits attention, their study is not very good and provides no evidence in favor of their hypothesis). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Klick &amp;amp; Wright (2012) seems to have languished in unpublished form and has few citations (&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Grocery%20Bag%20Bans%20and%20Foodborne%20Illness&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=1%2C5&quot;&gt;2 on Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt; at time of writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any other evidence for or against their claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17967" LastEditorDisplayName="user17967" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T03:51:06.353" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T03:51:06.353" Title="Did SF grocery bag ban cause at least an additional 5.4 deaths a year due to bacteria in reusable grocery bags?" Tags="|nutrition|environmental-health|environment|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22679" CreationDate="2014-08-08T09:44:25.930" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just want to add a very recent &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/04/we-almost-certainly-execute-innocent-people-with-cruelty-this-isnt-justice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; in the Guardian&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... it would be unwise to assume that everyone condemned to death is guilty of a terrible crime: a new report from the Marshall Project explains how, only a decade ago, Texas executed a man who was almost certainly innocent – and did so in a way that makes it enormously unlikely that he was the only innocent man to die in the state’s high-volume execution chambers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and raise the question: What means &quot;clearly shown&quot; with respect to &quot;evidence&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Clear&quot; is a &lt;em&gt;relative&lt;/em&gt; term - clear for whom or from what kind of view - and furthermore is there no and can never be a status of absolute clearness! We live in a continuous world, where is &lt;em&gt;always&lt;/em&gt; uncertainty involved - no matter what you do. Therefore, to apply such a black-and-white term, you can just &lt;em&gt;reduce&lt;/em&gt; that uncertainty (in the eyes of the subject) to a level where the subject &lt;em&gt;perceives&lt;/em&gt; something as clear based on &lt;em&gt;his&lt;/em&gt; reality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is unclear to me what the subject involved here is. Is it clear in the eyes of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the commonality (in the sense of more than half of the statistical mean of the population - the average citizen)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the average politician high enough to speak in the name of the government (yes, I do distinct here)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the judge?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the jury?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tend to believe that subject here is the &lt;em&gt;judge&lt;/em&gt; but I also perceive it as a polemic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21078" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-10-20T16:16:48.800" LastActivityDate="2018-10-20T16:16:48.800" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22744" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22748" CreationDate="2014-08-08T14:55:42.640" Score="21" ViewCount="6308" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the Gateway Pundit, this claim by Chaldean-American businessman Mark Arabo is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/08/chaldean-christian-leader-isis-is-beheading-children-in-iraq-video/&quot;&gt;posted&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“There is a park in Mosul, where [ISIS] they actually beheaded children and put their heads on a stick and have them in the park,”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="1950" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T19:29:13.083" LastActivityDate="2017-04-28T12:17:01.967" Title="Is ISIS beheading children in Mosul, Iraq?" Tags="|children|islam|iraq|isis|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22709" CreationDate="2014-08-08T16:04:53.297" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's true that what is valid for packed red blood cell concentrates is not always valid for whole blood. However, if you want a practical real-life answer, we actually do keep O- packed red blood cell concentrates as an emergency decentralized reserve in operating theaters and emergency departments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;O negative is a universal donor in real-life practice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AB &lt;strong&gt;positive&lt;/strong&gt; is a universal receiver (since giving rhesus + blood to a rhesus - patient could potentially cause a harmful transfusion reaction)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Those 2 propositions above are a shortcut in the sense that blood contains a multitude of different antigens, not only ABO and rhesus factor. However, in an overwhelming majority of cases those propositions are valid because most other antigens (&quot;minor antigens&quot;) usually do not lead to clinically significant transfusion reactions even when mismatched (see below, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloodjournal.org/content/114/2/248.long?sso-checked=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One other issue that has not been discussed here, is that the patient's blood may also contain &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/134958-overview#a0101&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;irregular antibodies&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, which are routinely searched for before any whole blood-derived product transfusion (platelets, plasma, etc.). Those antibodies can appear as a consequence of a contact between the patient's organism and an external blood product, such as in the case of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3676886/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;history of multiple blood transfusions&lt;/a&gt;, or even by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3914752/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;immunization of the mother against her child's blood from contact during labor&lt;/a&gt;. That is the reason why &lt;strong&gt;only having blood group and rhesus is not enough for what is considered &quot;safe&quot; transfusion nowadays.&lt;/strong&gt; In my hospital for instance, we are required to have the patient tested for irregular antibodies, and that test must not be more than 96h old for transfusion in a non-immediate life threatening context. Untested O- packed red blood cells are left as a last resort, in case we do not have time to perform the required tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oh, and here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3935404/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;good authoritative reference&lt;/a&gt; on transfusion safety, if you want statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21568" LastEditorUserId="21568" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T11:59:14.450" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T11:59:14.450" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22746" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13777" CreationDate="2014-08-08T16:32:47.790" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;The maps from the original question are incorrect on the points that Sklivvz points out in his excellent answer, but correct on many important parts. The greatest fault of the original map is the lack of information about the cause, and that it does not show any disengagement by Israel - which did happen. The borders did not grow uniformly through time, sometimes the borders contracted, and the increase of land area happened in bursts: twice the result of (unsolicited) war, once the result of mutually signed agreements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Sklivvz points out in the end of his answer: &quot;It would be wildly misleading, though, not to mention that Israel was involved in many of these wars as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Israel&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;defending party&lt;/a&gt; and that they have been giving back control to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_National_Authority&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Palestinian National Authority&lt;/a&gt; of some of the land&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to explain the shortcomings of the map from the original answer with different maps, but I'd like to start off with the perception that land was stolen unilaterally by Israel as depicted here:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XUBPc.png&quot; alt=&quot;Anti-jewish depiction of border changes in Israel&quot;&gt;&#xA;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/mapstellstory.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/mapstellstory.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason this is actually not 'what really happened' is that the Israeli government did not go out and claim this land, they actually conquered as a result of several wars for which they were the defending party, not the aggressor, from 1948 through to 1980. Explained for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Arab%E2%80%93Israeli_War&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1948 Arab-Israeli war&lt;/a&gt; by this map:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XWTK0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Vox map of 1948 Arab-Israeli War&quot;&gt;&#xA;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vox.com/2014/7/17/5902177/9-questions-about-the-israel-palestine-conflict-you-were-too&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.vox.com/2014/7/17/5902177/9-questions-about-the-israel-palestine-conflict-you-were-too&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The borders changed again in 1948 after Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria emerged from the six-day war, instigated by Nasser &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/YZYBUdzJuqI?t=49m21s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;with great support of Arabs in several countries&lt;/a&gt;. The events leading up to this war included the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_Six-Day_War#Egyptian_Troop_Build-up_in_Sinai&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Egyptian Troop Build-up in Sinai&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_Six-Day_War#Removal_of_U.N._peacekeepers_from_Egypt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Removal of U.N. peacekeepers from Egypt by the Egyptian government&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_Six-Day_War#The_Straits_of_Tiran_closure&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Straits of Tiran closure closing off supply routes to Israel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_Six-Day_War#Jordan_joins_Egypt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jordan support for Egypt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_Six-Day_War#Arab_states_preparations&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arab States' armed forces mobilizing&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An informative documentary about this war is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZYBUdzJuqI&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Six Days in June&lt;/a&gt;. After these six days, the map looked like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yIyVh.gif&quot; alt=&quot;BBC News Six Days War - after&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following the Camp David accords in 1979, the Sinai was handed back to Egypt in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt%E2%80%93Israel_Peace_Treaty&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty&lt;/a&gt;, shrinking the borders of Israel down (one of the things that never happens in the original series of maps offered in this question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2000 map resulted from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_I_Accord&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oslo agreement&lt;/a&gt;, but is grossly understating the amount of Palestinian land resulting from those accords. The reason it looks so patchy is because of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Bank_Areas_in_the_Oslo_II_Accord&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the sub-division of the west bank into areas A, B, and C&lt;/a&gt;. The following map illustrates the sub-division of land on the West Bank as agreed upon in 2000:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AN7U3.png&quot; alt=&quot;West Bank areas A, B and C&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, one important part left out in the original map of occupied territory is the unilateral &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%27s_unilateral_disengagement_plan&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;disengagement from Gaza&lt;/a&gt; that Israel effectuated in 2005 as part of a road to peace. This disengagement included the destruction of Israeli settlements by the Israeli army, leaving no Israeli occupying force in Gaza. However, ccess between Egypt and Gaza as well as Isreal and Gaza is tightly &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;restricted&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20991" LastEditorUserId="20991" LastEditDate="2018-03-13T17:13:06.737" LastActivityDate="2018-03-13T17:13:06.737" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22508" CreationDate="2014-08-08T16:49:28.907" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In short, &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reference #1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recent history has seen an increasing trend of record-breaking wildfires on public forests and grasslands... Why so many large fires? “The most extensive and serious problem related to health of national forests in the interior West is the over-accumulation of vegetation, which has caused an increasing number of large, intense, uncontrollable and catastrophically destructive wildfires,” according to the General Accounting Office (1999). During the past 10,000 – 15,000 years, North American forests have evolved under the influence of humans and natural fire.(USDA Forest Service 2003) Indigenous people harvested timber and used fire for thinning and land clearing to meet their needs for shelter, hunting, gathering, and protecting their communities. &lt;strong&gt;In the arid West, where moisture is too scarce to support fungal decay, fire is the primary mechanism for removing dead trees and limbs from the forest floor. Climate factors and widespread wildfire suppression efforts, which became effective after World War II, have contributed to overgrown conditions over the past 75 years.&lt;/strong&gt; Many forests now require hands-on active management to restore fire-adapted ecosystems (Sebellius and Rosen, 2003)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fs.fed.us/publications/policy-analysis/fire-and-fuels-position-paper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fire and Fuels Buildup (U.S. Forest Service publication)&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reference #2:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One hundred years of fire suppression is partly to blame. To protect homes, local fire managers frequently set California's chaparral-covered hills ablaze. But the decades spent earnestly &amp;quot;masticating&amp;quot; (mechanically removing potential fire fuel) devil-red manzanitas with trunks as thick as thighs, and the repeated prescribed burns, replaced native chaparral with incendiary invasive species like cheatgrass, according to the USGS. (source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/weve-been-fighting-forest-fires-wrong-for-100-years-2013-1#ixzz39ordSefB&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;We've Been Fighting Forest Fires Wrong For 100 Years&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The decades of effort were for naught, finds a series of recent studies from the USGS and colleagues at the Conservation Biology Institute and several research universities.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frankly, the whole Business Insider article is filled with references and confirmations of the theory, I'm not sure citing more would further improve the asnwer but I would recommend reading the whole article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reference #3:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our understanding of fire’s role in the ecosystem continues to grow. With the success of fire prevention and its exclusion from the forest, &lt;strong&gt;natural fire cycles have been disrupted in eco-systems dependent upon or adaptive to fire disturbances&lt;/strong&gt;.  Increased tree densities, understory growth, and accumulation of flammable forest fuel have led to larger and more severe wildfires. The Yellowstone fires of 1988 are considered by some as a high profile example of such a wild-fire.  Since the 1980s, large wildfires in dead and dying forests have accelerated the rate of forest mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Susceptibility of trees to insects and disease has increased and many fire dependent species are threatened with extinction due to the exclusion of fire in their ecosystem.  &lt;strong&gt;Many forest managers have come to recognize how essential fire is in certain forest ecosystems.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long-leaf pine once covered nearly 70 million acres of the southeastern coastal plain of the United States.  Today, less than 5 million acres of this southern pine type remain Long-leaf pine forests are among the most fire dependent forest types in the world.  Most original long-leaf forests were regularly burned on a natural frequency of 2-7 years ignited by lightning. &lt;strong&gt;The suppression of wildland fires in long-leaf stands is thought by many to have seriously affected the integrity and health of this ecosystem.&lt;/strong&gt; During the past several decades, prescribed burning has become an accepted forest management practice for southeastern pine woods....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... Fire is essential for the longleaf-bluestem forest ecosystem occurring from Mississippi to east Texas and for the longleafslash, pine-wire, grass-saw palmetto ecosystems found insouth Georgia and much of Florida.  Without fire in these ecosystems, shade tolerant species invade the sites, displace the grasses and surpass the growth of pines.  Plants, such as orchids and pitcher plants, are benefited by fire. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fsm9_028958.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fire Management. Study Unit. Prepared by Rachel G. Schneider, USDA Forest Service (U.S. Forest Service publication)&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T16:49:28.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22744" CreationDate="2014-08-08T17:07:58.367" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are multiple news outlets reporting ISIS has beheaded children quoting the same source, Mark Arabo, and there is one source (catholic.org) that shows disturbing 'evidence' that seems to be misattributed, actually stemming from Syria. There is reason to be skeptical, as the recent news about the call for female genital mutilation by ISIS and some other grand claims &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/07/24/islamic_state_isn_t_circumcising_women_and_didn_t_steal_400_million_either&quot;&gt;were wrong too&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CNN posted &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.msn.com/world/video?videoid=2bfdecd8-28d6-bd10-3bdb-9fe0cecfe467&quot;&gt;an interview&lt;/a&gt; with Mark Arabo who claimed the fact, also posted &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/07/world/meast/iraq-isis-christian-city/index.html&quot;&gt;in a wider report&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel like nobody would be capable of such acts, you could watch the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsCZzpmbEcs&quot;&gt;VICE documentary about ISIS&lt;/a&gt; and be convinced otherwise within 9 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catholic.org/news/international/middle_east/story.php?id=56339&quot;&gt;This report from catholic.org&lt;/a&gt; holds images that ChrisW in the comments showed to have been published before, and seem to stem from the civil war in Syria. The veracity of any report is hard to determine. I would urge you to consider before following them, as a picture will never hold the full contextual information (as has become obvious within the comments to this answer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does seem like ISIS modus operandi to behead. They did so in a widely reported action where 50 Lebanese soldiers were murdered and beheaded, a video of which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4ec_1407378929&quot;&gt;emerged&lt;/a&gt;. Again, I advise caution gathering information on this subject, although this one seems quite trustworthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20991" LastEditorUserId="20991" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T18:51:25.810" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T18:51:25.810" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22730" CreationDate="2014-08-08T19:07:48.360" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the article, Russians mixed up place: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unian.net/politics/948645-nalivaychenko-vmesto-boeing-terroristyi-planirovali-sbit-samolet-aeroflota.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.unian.net/politics/948645-nalivaychenko-vmesto-boeing-terroristyi-planirovali-sbit-samolet-aeroflota.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I started with map and flight data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/mh17/#3d6095b&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/mh17/#3d6095b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Closest place named Pervomaiskyi: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/maps/place/47%C2%B059&amp;#39;22.6%22N+38%C2%B047&amp;#39;05.3%22E/@47.9947661,38.8704281,11z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/maps/place/47%C2%B059'22.6%22N+38%C2%B047'05.3%22E/@47.9947661,38.8704281,11z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just 5km away from where the MH17 disappeared.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then the Aeroflot (SU2074):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/su2074/#3d62ed7&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/su2074/#3d62ed7&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At approximately 13:07-13:09 UTC they were both quite close to Lozova, and paths crossed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, then the second Pervomaiske place:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/maps/place/48%C2%B005&amp;#39;47.2%22N+37%C2%B034&amp;#39;41.3%22E/@48.1027904,37.5982124,12z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/maps/place/48%C2%B005'47.2%22N+37%C2%B034'41.3%22E/@48.1027904,37.5982124,12z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The SU2074 actual flight path goes little east from Bahatyr. Measuring the distance from closest Pervomaisk to flight path is 60km at closest spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on the modification, the maximum range of Buk system missles is 24-50km.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, at least that does blew the &quot;Mistaken the place&quot; argument.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was the argument that &quot;Missle system was modified&quot;, and so on, but it is hard to imagine why anyone would rather enchance missle system from 50km to 60+km and not move closer to actual trajectory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: &lt;em&gt;Max range taken from wikipedia: The most capable missile can hit targets as far as 30 miles (48 km) and more than 80,000 feet (24,000 m) in altitude.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system#Comparison&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buk_missile_system#Comparison&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21570" LastEditorUserId="21570" LastEditDate="2014-08-08T19:15:01.040" LastActivityDate="2014-08-08T19:15:01.040" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22756" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22411" CreationDate="2014-08-09T10:13:16.143" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/497889048263147522&quot;&gt;Wikileaks&lt;/a&gt;, which is closely associated with Snowden, states that the story is false:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ground zero for false &quot;Snowden docs show ISIS leader trained by&#xA;  Mossad&quot; story goes back to last month in Algeria&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.algerie1.com/actualite/snowden-le-chef-de-leiil-al-baghdadi-a-ete-forme-par-le-mossad/&quot;&gt;http://www.algerie1.com/actualite/snowden-le-chef-de-leiil-al-baghdadi-a-ete-forme-par-le-mossad/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has also &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/497857218998726656&quot;&gt;tweeted&lt;/a&gt; the following, which would suggest it wouldn't want to deny the story if it were true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(ISIS, like other anti-Syrian militant groups may have received&#xA;  support from Israel, but released Snowden docs don't show it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T10:13:16.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22757" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-09T11:00:35.530" Score="4" ViewCount="290" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am teaching mathematics. And I want to collect as many evidences as I can to let my students know that mathematics is very important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accidentally I got a quote from Napoleon as follows.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Napoleon used to say that (quoted from &lt;a href=&quot;http://ecfor.rssi.ru/page23/page17/page27/page27.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there cannot be a great nation without great mathematics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Questions:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did Napoleon say that?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;What is the evidence of the correctness of Napoleon's statement about Mathematics above? In other words, was Napoleon right on his statement at that time (not necessarily up to now)?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6235" LastEditorUserId="6235" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T15:02:42.940" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T15:02:42.940" Title="Was Napoleon right that &quot;there cannot be a great nation without great mathematics&quot;?" Tags="|mathematics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2014-08-09T12:50:58.147" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22759" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22763" CreationDate="2014-08-09T12:22:56.610" Score="39" ViewCount="43950" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;David Blaine&lt;/strong&gt; (born David Blaine White; April 4, 1973) is an American magician, illusionist and endurance artist. He is best known for his high-profile feats of endurance, and has made his name as a performer of street and close-up magic. He has performed all over the world and has set and broken several world records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Blaine&amp;amp;oldid=616957474&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/david_blaine_how_i_held_my_breath_for_17_min&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;TED Talk video&lt;/a&gt;, Blaine describes what it took to hold his breath underwater for 17 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's fishy about this: Not only is Blaine an endurance artist, he's also a magician and illusionist. How can we know that Blaine really held his breath for 17 minutes? Do biologists/scientists think it is possible to do it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2022-12-14T20:44:50.267" LastActivityDate="2022-12-14T20:44:50.267" Title="Did David Blaine hold his breath for 17 minutes?" Tags="|biology|physiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22761" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-08-09T16:31:35.480" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-08-09T16:31:35.480" LastActivityDate="2014-08-09T16:31:35.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22762" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-08-09T16:31:35.480" Score="0" Body="ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) is a caliphate Islamic state declared over large swathes of Iraq and Syria and lead by its caliph Abu Bakr Baghdadi." OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T18:56:19.037" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T18:56:19.037" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22759" CreationDate="2014-08-09T19:11:54.577" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_apnea&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;David Blaine was recognized by Guiness as setting the world record for static apnea with O₂ in 2008&lt;/a&gt;. He held that record for several months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blaine set the record on the Oprah Winfrey Show; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/David-Blaines-World-Record-Video&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a video of the last few minutes&lt;/a&gt; can be found on the show's site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can hold one's breath for much longer if one breathes pure oxygen prior to the apnea. The Guinness record is now over 22 minutes (see link above). Enriched-gas breath holds are not one of the disciplines recognized by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.aidainternational.org&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AIDA&lt;/a&gt; but Blaine's record can be put in perspective against the &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; air record for &amp;quot;static apnea&amp;quot; of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.aidainternational.org/competitive/worlds-records&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;11m 35s&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Blaine set his O₂-based record some time after &lt;a href=&quot;https://divernet.com/home_diving_news/154806/why_blaine_breath_hold_bid_failed.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;failing&lt;/a&gt; to break the then-current 8m 58s static apnea record after spending 7 days submerged in New York City. While with a magician it would be foolish to rule out chicanery, his NYC failure and O₂-based record seem consistent with his claim of being (in addition to an illusionist) an endurance athlete with a very high level of discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apnea and extreme freediving are dangerous and even world-class athletes have &lt;a href=&quot;https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=125625&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;died during record attempts&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paper &lt;a href=&quot;https://divewise.org/science/brain-damage-competitive-freediving/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Brain Damage in Competitive Freediving&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not possible to conclude that the observed increase in S100B levels in serum in the present study reflects a serious injury to the brain, although the results raise some concerns considering negative long-term effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-08-13T22:25:27.513" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22767" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-10T02:40:39.373" Score="2" ViewCount="397" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read in countless magazines that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_B%C3%A1thory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Countess Elizabeth Báthory&lt;/a&gt; (1560-1640) was the most prolific serial killer and it is taken as accepted.&#xA;But it might also be possible that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elizabethbathory.net/Countess-Bathory-s-case.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bathory was framed&lt;/a&gt;! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is certain that some aspects of her persona were exaggerated, is it even possible that she did not even commit any murder and she was setup?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21583" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T09:37:20.343" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T09:37:20.343" Title="Was Elizabeth Báthory a serial killer?" Tags="|history|criminology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-08-10T03:00:44.753" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22770" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22771" CreationDate="2014-08-10T06:34:46.677" Score="106" ViewCount="17917" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard a theory that given the widespread incidence of cancer, a cancer cure probably already exists but has been hidden by major pharmaceutical companies to maximise revenue from expensive cancer treatment, since a cure would be one-off but treatment is life-long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancertreatmentwatch.org/q/conspiracy.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is There Really a Conspiracy&#xA;to Suppress Cancer Cures?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general story is that there is a conspiracy by the established medical industry to keep the cure for cancer hidden. This is the “cancer conspiracy” discussed on this page. The reasoning behind this theory typically goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Alleged Fact 1:&lt;/strong&gt; Cancer is a multi-billion dollar industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;+ Alleged Fact 2:&lt;/strong&gt; Treatment x cures cancer so well it would destroy that industry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;=&amp;gt; Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt; Some individuals, companies, and government organisations involved in the industry are suppressing the information about x to keep their industry thriving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zgdef.png&quot; alt=&quot;Comic strip with dialog between a man who has found the cure for cancer and a man who is &amp;quot;sorry to hear that&amp;quot; because they both would now be out of their jobs&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/040585_cure_for_cancer_gerson_institute_therapies.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sources for these claims&lt;/a&gt; have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whale.to/cancer/kelley/app3.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;rather questionable&lt;/a&gt;, and while I definitely don't believe them myself, out of curiosity, is there any evidence for this conspiracy theory?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21586" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T13:23:53.073" Title="Has the cure to cancer been hidden by pharmaceutical companies?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22770" CreationDate="2014-08-10T09:38:37.770" Score="191" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, this has no credibility whatsoever, for a number of very good reasons, each of which on its own would be sufficient to debunk the hypothesis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individual motivation:&lt;/strong&gt; people don't get into cancer research to get rich, but because they want to cure cancer, and for the prestige (&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16336146&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Among the factors that motivate researchers&lt;/a&gt;, the excitement of discovery stood out in terms of both high importance and satisfaction. Publications were viewed as more important research outcomes than patenting or commercial ventures.&quot;). Whoever found this cure would earn the gratitude and admiration of millions, achieve the biggest thing that is possible to achieve in the field they chose to dedicate their life to, and win a Nobel prize with absolute certainty (the American Cancer Society lists &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/research/acsresearchers/american-cancer-society-nobel-laureates&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;47 nobel laureates they have supported&lt;/a&gt;). No amount of money could match that.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Profit:&lt;/strong&gt; Just look at the current &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22719/is-the-total-cost-of-sovaldi-the-1-000-pill-comparable-to-conventional-long-t&quot;&gt;Sovaldi&lt;/a&gt; story where a cure for Hepatitis C was released - disease that is even more expensive to treat ($60,000 to $100,000 lifetime cost) than breast cancer (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10762744&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;$23,000 to $36,000&lt;/a&gt; lifetime cost). &quot;Major pharmaceutical companies&quot; are &lt;em&gt;competitors&lt;/em&gt; - and whoever were the first to patent this cure would have the biggest jackpot in the history of medicine and wipe the floor with the competition. You could price this cure at $10,000 or more and still have millions of customers, so tens of billions of profits! And it would even be a steady stream of revenue, as people would continue to get cancer - unless it's some sort of vaccination, in which case, even better, every person on the planet is your customer! So for the company who found the cure, releasing it &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; maximise revenue - and by not releasing it, they'd risk having the competition find it and release it first...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research doesn't work like that:&lt;/strong&gt; Medical research is a community effort and works incrementally. Intermediate results are constantly published because publication record is what determines a researcher's value, and it may even be &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-9134.2008.00193.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;done deliberately&lt;/a&gt; to discourage competitors. Developing a cure from first principles in complete secrecy is simply not how it's done. It would be too slow and it's not as if you know at the beginning that your end result will be something that you might want to keep secret.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Cancer doesn't work like that:&lt;/strong&gt; A singular &quot;cure for cancer&quot; will almost certainly never exist. That is because &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancercouncil.com.au/70762/research/research-news/latest-news/a-single-cure-for-cancer-freddy-sitas/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Cancer is not one, but hundreds of diseases.&lt;/a&gt; [...] Each cancer has to be considered and treated accordingly. Each type of cancer is biologically different from the other, and each causes a whole set of different problems, which must be treated in different ways.&quot; In fact, even one tumor of a single patient often consists of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mskcc.org/blog/what-tumor-heterogeneity&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;multiple strains&lt;/a&gt; of cancerous cells that respond differently to treatments! Pretty much the only treatments that work for many different cancers are the extremely crude ones: surgery (cut it out!) and radiotherapy (burn it with death rays!), both of which are also only efficient in specific circumstances (contained, solid tumors).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14002" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T11:05:33.670" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22772" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10381" CreationDate="2014-08-10T10:47:38.740" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;No - but it often &lt;em&gt;causes&lt;/em&gt; cancer. Not immediately, but years down the road. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=40658&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alkylating Agents as Environmental Carcinogen and Chemotherapy Agents&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alkylating agents are an important class of carcinogens. [...] On the other hand, alkylating agents are used in certain chemotherapy regimens&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/2026238-overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pathology of Therapy-Related Myeloid Neoplasms&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Therapy-related myeloid neoplasms(t-MN) are a heterogeneous group of&#xA;  clonal hematopoietic stem cell disorders that are directly related to&#xA;  previous cytotoxic chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14002" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T10:47:38.740" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22774" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22697" CreationDate="2014-08-10T13:40:32.610" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, the study in question, &lt;em&gt;Coffee intake and CYP1A2*1F genotype predict breast volume in young women: implications for breast cancer&lt;/em&gt;, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2579678/&quot;&gt;available online&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic answer is that &lt;strong&gt;the study provides no indication of an influence of coffee consumption on breast size&lt;/strong&gt;. The best summary I found in the paper reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our main finding was a significant interaction between coffee consumption, CYP1A2*1F genotype and breast volume among young healthy women who did not use hormonal contraceptives. This interaction was mainly driven by the fact that a moderate-to-high coffee intake was associated with lower breast volume in women with the C-allele. No association between coffee and breast volumes was observed in women with the CYP1A2*1F A/A genotype or in women who currently used hormonal contraception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means there is likely to be some connection between three factors: breast size, coffee consumption, and genotype. The authors do not make any claims about casualty in any direction, which makes sense as what they studies was the effect of coffee consumption on the cancer risk, which they expected to counteract the risks stemming from breast size. Whether the researcher really made the claims cited in the Telegraph, and if so, what these claims are based on, is an interesting but probably unanswerable question. However, it seems that the authors are at least partially responsible for this interpretation: the title of the paper explicitly talks about coffe intake predicting breast volume, something that the body of the article does not include. In fact, there is a previous study by the same leading author entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2361904/&quot;&gt;Insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF1) genotype predicts breast volume after pregnancy and hormonal contraception and is associated with circulating IGF-1 levels&lt;/a&gt;; once again, the body of the article uses weaker terms like &quot;interaction&quot; or &quot;association&quot;, not &quot;prediction&quot;. And causation is certainly not on the agenda anywhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T13:26:01.220" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T13:26:01.220" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22778" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22744" CreationDate="2014-08-10T21:34:21.033" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The mainstream news stories, reporting people who were there, are of Christians having been  expelled from Mosul, not of Christian children being murdered there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/International/2014/08/05/006-chretiens-irak-entrevue-cardinal-barbarin.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chrétiens d'Irak : rester ou partir?&lt;/a&gt; says (italics are the original french, followed by my translation from French to English):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Le cardinal Philippe Barbarin, archevêque de Lyon, revient d'une visite en Irak, où il a rencontré des chrétiens récemment chassés de Mossoul par les djihadistes.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cardinal Philippe Barbarin, archbishop of Lyon, returns from a visit in Iraq, where he met christians recently chased from Mosul by jihadists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;« Tout d'un coup, le prétendu calife de Mossoul a dit : &amp;quot;À partir du 18 juillet à 12 h, plus un seul chrétien dans la ville de Mossoul. Les maisons ne sont plus à vous, ce n'est plus votre ville, vous devez être partis&amp;quot;. »&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Suddenly the pretended Calif of Mosul said, &amp;quot;Starting from July 18 at noon, not a single Christian in the town of Mosul. The houses are no longer yours, it's no longer your town, you must be gone.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Les chrétiens ont fui à la hâte, emportant leurs enfants et leurs biens les plus précieux, explique l'archevêque. Cependant, aux postes de contrôle, à la sortie de la ville, « on a pris la voiture et on les a laissés partir avec le minimum de vêtements et rien rien rien dans les poches, rien du tout ».&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The christians hurriedly fled, taking their children and their most precious goods, explained the archbishop. However at the control points, at the exit from the town, &amp;quot;the took the car and they let them go with the minimum of clothes and nothing nothing nothing in the pockets, nothing at all.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Le cardinal souligne que pas un seul chrétien n'a perdu la vie, contrairement aux chiites, qui ont été massacrés en grand nombre par les sunnites. « C'est très surprenant. J'ai vu le patriarche leur dire : &amp;quot;Arrêtez de vous plaindre; pour les musulmans chiites, c'est pire que pour vous.&amp;quot; »&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The cardinal underlines that not a single Christian lost their life&lt;/strong&gt;, unlike the shiites who wre massacred in large numbers by the sunis. &amp;quot;It's very surprising. I saw the patriarch tell them &amp;quot;Stop complaining; for the shiite moslems, it's worse than for you.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story gives an example of why the Christians left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2014/08/09/1931965-tout-ce-qui-est-chretien-est-detruit.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tout ce qui est chrétien est détruit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;L'EIIL multiplie les exactions dans sa conquête des villes irakiennes, et chaque jour apporte un lot de témoignages effrayants. Ainsi, Bassam, qui a toujours vécu à Mossoul, vient juste de se réfugier en Turquie. «Tout ce que je possédais, l'État islamique l'a pris», raconte-t-il. «Ils sont venus chez moi et m'ont dit : «Tu vois ta femme, on revient avec un couteau, on lui ouvre le ventre, et on tue le bébé». Alors j'ai pris ma famille et je suis parti tout de suite», raconte cet homme, qui vivait avec sa femme enceinte, ses deux enfants en bas âge et ses parents. «Ils détruisent tout ce qui est chrétien, même les cimetières».&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ISIL multiples its exactions in its conquest of Iraqi towns, and each day brings frightening testimonies. Thus, Bassam, who has always lived in Mosul, has just come for refuge in Turkey. &amp;quot;Everything that I had, the islamic state took it&amp;quot;, he said. &amp;quot;They came to my house and told me, &amp;quot;You see your wife, we're coming back with a knife, we open her belly, and we kill the baby.&amp;quot; So I took my family and I left right away.&amp;quot; tells this man, who lived with his pregnant wife, his two young children, and his parents. &amp;quot;They destroy everything that's christian, even the cemetaries.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of today the only source for stories found on the first few pages of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=behead+children&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/search?q=behead+children&lt;/a&gt; are quoting Mark Arabo, and he doesn't justify his statement on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markarabo.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.markarabo.com/&lt;/a&gt; (he only provides a link to the same CNN interview) therefore IMO his specific statement quoted in the OP and question on CNN, i.e. that children are beheaded, systemtically or otherwise, in Mosul, is uncorroborated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.markarabo.com/single-post3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;his blog dated July 22, Mark Arabo&lt;/a&gt; wrote,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, images have gone viral that show a &amp;quot;Red Death Stamp&amp;quot; being placed outside of the homes of Iraqi Christians. This stamp is a reminder to all Christians that once the Holy Month of Ramadan ends, ISIL knows who you are, and your life is in their hands now. Because of this, 95% of Christians have left Mosul with about 5% remaining as converts to Islam. The red badge shown carries echoes of the Holocaust and the yellow badges placed on the arms, and outside the businesses of Jewish individuals. It is a frighteningly clear omen of what the future carries for these marked Christians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If his numbers are correct, that agrees with the previous assessment that no significant number of Christians were killed (instead, they were warned to flee, and they fled).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's seems little doubt that people who didn't flee would have been killed. For what it's worth there is good evidence that they were systematically warned to flee instead of or before being killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-10T21:34:21.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22779" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-10T22:00:00.697" Score="7" ViewCount="1125" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the Huffington Post, it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/10/yazidis-islamic-state-massacre_n_5665655.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claimed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis fleeing Sinjar and some who escaped death, and also crime scene images that show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic State have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar,&amp;quot; he said&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Some of the victims, including women and children were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?  If so, where is the evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T14:40:06.860" Title="Did ISIS bury women and children alive?" Tags="|islam|iraq|isis|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ClosedDate="2014-08-17T09:00:34.137" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22783" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-11T05:56:18.410" Score="8" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many news outlets seem to be reporting this story (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/06/technology/russian-gang-said-to-amass-more-than-a-billion-stolen-internet-credentials.html?_r=1#permid=12480847&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NY Times article&lt;/a&gt;) about Russian hackers allegedly acquiring billions of usernames and passwords.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Russian crime ring has amassed the largest known collection of stolen Internet credentials, including 1.2 billion user name and password combinations and more than 500 million email addresses, security researchers say.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The records, discovered by Hold Security, a firm in Milwaukee, include confidential material gathered from 420,000 websites, including household names, and small Internet sites. Hold Security has a history of uncovering significant hacks, including the theft last year of tens of millions of records from Adobe Systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the article is very vague, citing &amp;quot;nondisclosure agreements and a reluctance to name companies whose sites remained vulnerable&amp;quot; as the reason for not publishing any names. The article claims that an independent &amp;quot;security expert&amp;quot; has verified the authenticity of the data, but this expert is not identified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only source given in the entire article, as far as I can tell, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.holdsecurity.com/about/leadership/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alex Holden of Hold Security&lt;/a&gt;, a company that, if I'm not mistaken, stands to benefit from people being highly concerned about cyber security. This has led some to question whether the entire incident is a hoax, or even a sly marketing attempt by Hold Security:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, I expect security firms to make money for making the Internet more secure, but I am skeptical of a firm with a financial incentive in creating a panic to be the main source for a story that causes a panic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/08/05/huge-password-breach-shady-antics/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;by Forbes' Kashmir Hill&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any actual evidence to back up this story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14685" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:54:27.040" Title="Did Russian hackers obtain billions of passwords?" Tags="|computers|security|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22785" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-11T11:06:13.800" Score="37" ViewCount="577565" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the science-fiction film &lt;em&gt;Lucy&lt;/em&gt;, the titular character takes a drug called CPH4 that increases her brain capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writer and director of the film, Luc Besson, claims in several interviews that this drug is based on a real chemical compound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.craveonline.com/film/interviews/734585-lucy-luc-besson-on-philosophy-action-and-the-real-cph4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Interview from CraveOnline:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q:Tell me about the drug that makes Lucy superhuman. Is that based on anything real or is that entirely a fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: It’s totally real. It’s not a real name. CPH4 is a name that I invented, but it’s a molecule that the pregnant woman is making it after six weeks of pregnancy in very, very tiny quantities. But it’s totally real, and it’s true that the power of this product for a baby is the power of an atomic bomb. It’s real. It’s totally real. So it’s not a drug in fact, it’s a natural molecule that pregnant women produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vulture.com/2014/07/luc-besson-director-lucy-chat.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Interview from Vulture:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Q: Some people are complaining about the fact that the science behind your film — the whole idea that humans only use 10 percent of their brains — is not true. What’s your response to that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A: It’s &lt;em&gt;totally&lt;/em&gt; not true. Do they think that I don’t know this? I work on this thing for nine years and they think that I don’t know it’s not true? Of course I know it’s not true! But, you know, there are lots of facts in the film that are totally right. The CPH4, even if it’s not the real name — because I want to hide the real name — this molecule exists and is carried by the woman at six weeks of pregnancy. […]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does a similar chemical compound actually exist? What is it called? What does it do?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3187" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T10:23:18.897" Title="Is CPH4 from science fiction movie 'Lucy' real?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|chemistry|pharmaceutical|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22787" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-11T12:54:58.703" Score="3" ViewCount="631" Body="&lt;p&gt;A post by Chris Knox on Quora was &lt;a href=&quot;http://gothamist.com/2014/08/08/two_buck_chuck_producers_deny_alleg.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quoted&lt;/a&gt; on Gothamist, talking about Charles Shaw wine (aka &quot;Two Buck Chuck&quot;), says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And it not only grabs ripe grapes, but unripe and down right rotten ones as well and throws them all together. Add to that leaves, stems and any rodents, birds, or insects that may have made those vines their home—they all get thrown into the bin as well. And guess what? You think there's going to be any sorting when that truck arrives at the winery (or should I say processing facility)? Nope. Everything, and I do mean everything (including all those unripe grapes, rotten grapes, leaves, stems, birds, rodents, and insects) gets tossed into the crusher and transferred to large tanks to ferment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that &quot;Two Buck Chuck&quot; &quot;tosses&quot; &quot;rodents, birds, or insects&quot; &quot;into the crusher and transferred to large tanks to ferment&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20862" LastEditorDisplayName="user20862" LastEditDate="2014-08-11T13:43:15.500" LastActivityDate="2014-08-11T13:43:15.500" Title="Does Charles Shaw wine contain animal blood &amp; feces?" Tags="|nutrition|consumer-products|safety|blood|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22790" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-11T15:41:37.657" Score="2" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ziv0AysD4bE&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; of a presentation given at a climate-skeptic Heartland Institute conference, Don Easterbrook presents his view of recent climate history. He compares his own projections of future climate with IPCC forecasts and claims them to be superior since about 1999. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This comparison has been debunked (see this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/don-easterbrook-heartland-distortion-of-reality.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;SkepticalScience post&lt;/a&gt;) as a misrepresentation of IPCC results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, more interestingly, Easterbrook also presents paleoclimate reconstructions based on oxygen-isotope analysis of ice cores which he claims show both much higher and much lower temperatures in the past 15,000 years than other, more widely accepted paleoclimate reconstructions (the key discussion starts around 3:32 in the video). In particular he claims that the ice-core data are better at showing the well-known medieval warm period and the little ice age than tree ring proxies for temperature but also show periods over the last few thousand years that are significantly warmer than present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is clearly a contrarian view compared to the current mainstream consensus on historic climate (often dominated by tree-ring temperature proxies for the last millennium-ish). So are his ice-core based temperature reconstruction credible? and if not, why not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NB please let's keep the discussion to the question of O&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; isotope analysis of ice-core data and not get diverted into &lt;em&gt;ad-hominem&lt;/em&gt; attacks on Easterbrook's other opinions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T06:42:55.370" Title="Are Easterbrook's oxygen-isotope paleo-temperature reconstructions credible?" Tags="|climate-change|geology|climatology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22791" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22468" CreationDate="2014-08-11T15:42:11.627" Score="49" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Zionists “take over” 73% of their land from Palestinians?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Take over&amp;quot; is a bit vague, and subject to interpretation. The situation is muddled enough that it is not really valid to say &amp;quot;yes&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; to that objectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the question currently focuses on 1948, let's look at the immediate history lead up to, and following that period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1947, the United Nations passed &lt;a href=&quot;http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/7F0AF2BD897689B785256C330061D253&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Resolution 181&lt;/a&gt;, which outlined the establishment of a legally recognized Independant Arab State as well as the state of Israel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Palestinian Arabs refused to acknowledge or comply with Resolution 181:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;p. 396 The immediate trigger of the 1948 War was the November 1947 UN partition resolution. … The Palestinian Arabs, along with the rest of the Arab world, said a flat “no”… The Arabs refused to accept the establishment of a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. And, consistently with that “no,” the Palestinian Arabs, in November–December 1947, and the Arab states in May 1948, launched hostilities to scupper the resolution’s implementation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=J5jtAAAAMAAJ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Benny Morris (2008). 1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The land Israel declared the state of Israel territory was allocated to them by a UN-passed agreement.  Arguably, they were given the initial land, rather than taking it from the Palestinians (and since the Palestinian Arabs rejected the resolution that would grant them their own recognized independent state, the Palestinian independent state did not come into existence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the Arab-Israeli war, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Armistice_Agreements&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;armistice agreements&lt;/a&gt; increased the volume of land held by Israel, but did not give them ownership.  Again, &amp;quot;take over&amp;quot; is vague and arguable in this case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1948 they took over 73% of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The division that was supposed to occur according to Resolution 181 would have resulted in the Jewish State comprising roughly 5,500 square miles, or about 56 percent of Palestine. The Arab State was to be 4,500 square miles. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/myths3/MFpartition.html#2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While that source could be argued as biased, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.richardforer.com/writing/clarifying-zionist-myths/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;anti-zionist sources&lt;/a&gt; agree with the division being roughly 56% allocated to the Israelis, and 44% allocated to the Arabs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1949, Israel wound up with control over a significantly larger area than was outlined in the 1947 UN plan, but that was the result of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949_Armistice_Agreements&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;armistice agreements&lt;/a&gt; signed by the aggressor Arab states who had attacked Israel on the day it was formed.  Israel did not own this additional land, as the agreements were quite specific that the borders were temporary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The armistice agreements were intended to serve only as interim agreements until replaced by permanent peace treaties, but no peace treaties were actually signed until decades later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Israel own the lands it occupied in 1948, according to international law?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, not really.  However, the concept of international law simply did not apply to the situation in 1948.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;International law applies between nations and states, and the participation of members is generally consensual.  Consent is typically provided through the signing of treaties, and these treaties grant rights to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law#International_courts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Courts&lt;/a&gt; to provide rulings in areas of dispute.  There are numerous international bodies created by treaties adjudicating on legal issues where they may have jurisdiction. The only one claiming universal jurisdiction is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Council&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;United Nations Security Council&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UK had terminated their official oversight of the area by declaring the end of Mandatory Palestone on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandatory_Palestine#Termination_of_the_Mandate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;May 14, 1948&lt;/a&gt;, and therefore no international laws applying to the UK were applicable from that date, unless a new governing state or nation claiming control of part or all of the region were to sign a reciprocal treaty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the newly-founded state of Israel had signed no treaties with other nations regarding land-ownership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, the Palestinian Arabs had signed no such treaties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, at this point, no international law applied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Israel was recognized as a member state of the United Nations on &lt;a href=&quot;http://domino.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/1ce874ab1832a53e852570bb006dfaf6/0b3ab8d2a7c0273d8525694b00726d1b&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;May 11, 1949&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, even then the legal territory was not defined.  In September of 1949, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/C758572B78D1CD0085256BCF0077E51A&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;United Nations Concilliation Committee for Palestine&lt;/a&gt; put forth a number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/5ba47a5c6cef541b802563e000493b8c/426ab77c3c1b506d852563b9007023d8?OpenDocument&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recommendations&lt;/a&gt; regarding the establishment of a permanent regime in the area:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Commission has drawn up a plan which, in its opinion,can be applied in the present circumstances. &lt;strong&gt;This should not, however, be interpreted as in any way prejudging the final settlement of the territorial question in Palestine.&lt;/strong&gt; It is the considered opinion of the Commission that the provisions of the proposed Instrument are sufficiently flexible to make it possible for the Instrument, with certain modifications, to be &lt;strong&gt;applied to any territorial situation that might emerge from the final settlement of the Palestine problem&lt;/strong&gt;, and that it can be adopted by the General Assembly at its forthcoming session if the Assembly thinks fit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In view of the fact that the question of the demarcation line between the Arab and Jewish zones of the area of Jerusalem (article 2) is intimately connected with the final settlement of the Palestine problem, &lt;strong&gt;the Commission has not deemed it advisable for the present to make any proposal as to the actual demarcation line.&lt;/strong&gt; The Commission believes that the Instrument can be put into effect with the present armistice line as a &lt;strong&gt;provisional demarcation line&lt;/strong&gt;, without prejudice to the establishment of a definitive line at a later stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Emphasis mine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, to summarize:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;No, the Jews did not take 73% of their land from the Palestinians.  No, they did not legally own the land they occupied in the time period, but neither did the Palestinian Arabs or anyone else, as they were disputed territories not yet covered by international treaties or laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T19:36:35.200" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22735" CreationDate="2014-08-11T20:50:47.720" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A depressant &lt;strong&gt;slows down&lt;/strong&gt; the Central Nervous System. Example: alcohol.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A stimulant &lt;strong&gt;speeds up&lt;/strong&gt; the Central Nervous System. Example: nicotine.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tequila contains alcohol, so logically it should be classified as a depressant... but, there goes a famous claim saying that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unlike other forms of alcohol, tequila is not a depressant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it says that tequila is the only alcoholic drink that's a stimulant, not a depressant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The problem with this claim is that:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tequila.net/faqs/tequila/what-are-the-regulations-governing-tequila.html#chapter6&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tequila is most often made at a 38–40% alcohol content (76–80 proof), but can be produced between 31 and 55% alcohol content (62 and 110 proof).&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tequila's active ingredient is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tequila.net/faqs/tequila/what-are-the-regulations-governing-tequila.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ethanol&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol#Effects_on_the_central_nervous_system&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ethanol is a known  central nervous system depressant.&lt;/a&gt; As opposed to stimulating your brain, ethanol instead depresses it, causing lowers inhibitions and of course pleasure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, many people will argue that Tequila, a mix of alcohol and stimulants, has an overall effect which is not a depressant. This is FALSE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stimulants &amp;amp; Alcohol: &lt;strong&gt;A MASKING EFFECT&lt;/strong&gt; When you mix alcohol with stimulants, the stimulants mask the  effects&#xA;  of how your body is experiencing the alcohol. Depending on  how much&#xA;  is consumed, over the course of however many hours,  your Blood&#xA;  Alcohol Levels may feel inaccurate due to the fact the  stimulants are&#xA;  interrupting the body’s natural ability to process the  alcohol and&#xA;  send you the appropriate messages. &lt;sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.northeastern.edu/open/pdfs/Alcohol%20and%20drug%20interactions%20husky%20headlines%20JANUARY%2020121.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(ref)&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now they spoke about the masking effect only, but how do we know the alcohol will not have an overall effect of which is not depressant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a post by the &lt;em&gt;National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence&lt;/em&gt;, has announced that mixing energy drinks (stimulants with a lot of caffeine) with alcohol (depressant) can lead to “wide-awake drunkenness,” &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.attcnetwork.org/explore/priorityareas/science/tools/asmeDetails.asp?ID=691&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;where caffeine masks the feeling of drunkenness but does not decrease actual alcohol-related impairment&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, apparently there are &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt; clinical studies supporting tequila as a stimulant and/or not depressant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.banderasnews.com/0903/rr-soundsmart.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one popular myth that persists to this day, tequila does contain mescaline.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tequila&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tequila is a kind of mezcal&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezcal&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a distilled alcoholic beverage made from the maguey plant&lt;/a&gt;. Since mezcal's name is similar to mescaline, people probably thought tequila contained mescaline, and they thought mescaline is a stimulant (there is a controversy about this also). Despite the similar name, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.erowid.org/ask/ask.php?ID=2818&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mezcal does not contain mescaline&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/strong&gt; While tequila is made from a different plant than alcohols, it still has between 31% and 55% of alcohol. And the fact that it has between 31% and 55% of alcohol (and the possible lack of clinical studies supporting Tequila as a stimulant), it is enough to disprove that myth. At very low doses, and for certain people, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esquire.com/features/drinking/good-tequila-0809#slide-5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;it can appear as a stimulant since it suppresses certain inhibitions&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;but it's not, like all alcohols, it depresses the central nervous system.&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T00:44:21.487" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T00:44:21.487" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6788" CreationDate="2014-08-12T00:42:23.210" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just another article, by David Suzuki: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/queen-of-green/faqs/cleaning/does-vinegar-kill-germs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does vinegar kill germs?&lt;/a&gt;, which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. Acetic acid or white vinegar is a great disinfectant. It also acts as a deodorizer and cuts grease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And you can tackle household bacteria like salmonella, E. coli and other &amp;quot;gram-negative&amp;quot; bacteria with vinegar. Gram-negative bacteria can cause infections including pneumonia, bloodstream infections, wound or surgical site infections, and meningitis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncceh.ca/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Canada's National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health&lt;/a&gt;, the acid in vinegar crosses the cell membrane of bacteria and prompts a release of protons, which causes the cell to die. The new Heinz vinegar will smell stronger, but the odour disappears quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just thought it'd be worth noting on this post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T00:42:23.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="191" CreationDate="2014-08-12T13:06:56.403" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The conditions required for contrail persistence are ice-supersaturation. This means that the air is cold and humid enough that the water vapor will directly &quot;condense&quot; out of the air in the form of ice (the process is called &quot;deposition&quot;). Ice supersaturation is around 60-70% of the normally reported relative humidity, which applies to water&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, and this leads to the reason why you can't tell from the ground, deposition in most conditions only happens &lt;em&gt;on to&lt;/em&gt; ice. i.e. it requires some kind of seed, or nuclei, for the ice to form on. And for ice, this requires a specific molecular framework. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now actual condensation into liquid is less fussy about what types of nuclei are required. So once the relative humidity in the air goes over 100%, the water condenses out as liquid, and you'll get a cloud. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can have a cloudless sky that still has regions (usually in layers) that are ice-supersaturated, but not water supersaturated. When a plane flies through those regions, the water in the exhaust bumps up the humidity over 100%, liquid water droplets condense out. If it's below -40°C/-40°F (yes they are the same) then these droplets will freeze and &lt;em&gt;become ice crystal seeds&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a contrail starts as a bunch of seed crystals. If the air is ice-supersaturated, these crystals will grow (increasing in mass by a factor of 1,000 or more), and hence can persist for hours, and even spread out to cover the sky.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(1) [FAA, Contrail Microphysics, 2010.][1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/apl/research/science_integrated_modeling/accri/media/Contrail%20Microphysics.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/apl/research/science_integrated_modeling/accri/media/Contrail%20Microphysics.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21630" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T13:06:56.403" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22790" CreationDate="2014-08-12T14:04:30.863" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Easterbrooks main argument here has already been discussed at Skeptical Science, the article is &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepticalscience.com/10000-years-warmer.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  There are two main errors, the first is to treat Greenland as if it were representative of global temperatures.  The second, more important error is that apparently it is conventional in this field to treat 1950 as the &quot;present&quot; in this kind of study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are three main timescales used on the CD-ROM. For both GRIP and&#xA;  GISP2, these timescales are in years before present (yr BP) where year&#xA;  0 refers to northern hemisphere summer of the year 1950 A.D. For&#xA;  example, year 1989 (summer) is be referred to as the year &quot;-39 yr BP&quot;&#xA;  on this CDROM, following the convention of the radiocarbon dating&#xA;  method (see e.g. Stuiver and Reimer, 1993). It should be noted that,&#xA;  in general, GRIP publications have not used the A.D. 1950 convention.&#xA;  (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/document/notetime.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus the most recent datapoint in the GISP2 core is 95 years prior to that (i.e. 1855).  This means that none of the warming since 1855 in Greenland is shown on the chart, an hence some of the comments made by Easterbrook in his talk (at about 10:25) about a cooler periods from 1880 to 1915 and 1945 to 1977 are obviously nonsense, the ice core didn't &quot;end there&quot; as Easterbrook says, it ended in 1855.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of the SkS article updated the plot of the GISP2 ice core temp series, to add observed temperatures for 1855 and 2009 from another greenland temperature reconstruction (updated) from &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Box, Jason E., Lei Yang, David H. Bromwich, Le-Sheng Bai, 2009: Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Air Temperature Variability: 1840–2007. J. Climate, 22, 4029–4049. &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2009JCLI2816.1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1175/2009JCLI2816.1&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which clearly suggest that temperatures there now are warmer than they have been for the last 10k years, and that temperatures have been rising there very fast.  See the SkS article for details of how the two datasets were reconciled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/C7MDv.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main canard implied in Easterbrook's video is the idea that because there have been large changes in (especially regional) temperature in the distant past, when there were no anthropogenic carbon emissions, then carbon emissions now are not causing the changes in temperature.  This is a non-sequitur as both anthropogenic and natural forcings affect the climate, and climatologists know this and take it into account in their studies.  They have also studies past changes in climate, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=Younger%20Dryas&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Younger Dryas&lt;/a&gt;, indeed such events are helpful in the understanding of climate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T06:42:55.370" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T06:42:55.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22802" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-12T14:33:47.137" Score="4" ViewCount="1106" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24061152&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2013 study&lt;/a&gt; found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Soft multifocal contact lens wear resulted in a 50% reduction in the progression of myopia and a 29% reduction in axial elongation during the 2-year treatment period compared to a historical control group. Results from this and other investigations indicate a need for a long-term randomized clinical trial to investigate the potential for soft multifocal contact lens myopia control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet the website of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geteyesmart.org/eyesmart/diseases/myopia-nearsightedness/treatment.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The American Academy of Ophthalmology&lt;/a&gt; appears to doubt this: (All bolds are mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You &lt;strong&gt;may&lt;/strong&gt; have heard of a process called orthokeratology to treat myopia. It uses a series of hard contact lenses to gradually flatten the cornea and reduce the refractive error. Improvement of sight from orthokeratology is &lt;strong&gt;temporary&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16959" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-12T14:46:49.650" LastActivityDate="2024-02-05T18:03:35.433" Title="Does orthokeratology cure myopia?" Tags="|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22803" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22779" CreationDate="2014-08-12T14:58:56.063" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/isisnews3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The twitter account&lt;/a&gt; which supports Islamic state news has &lt;a href=&quot;http://justpaste.it/massacre_debunked&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;released a document&lt;/a&gt; which states that this and many other news reports spread by Iraqi officials were false, and implies that the Iraqi government intended that the reports should bring America into the war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The document includes tweets from &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Matthew__Barber&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an independent investigator&lt;/a&gt; which concur that reports of the massacre were false:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/myYc4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The document also links to refutation of other stories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://justpaste.it/mosul_debunked&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Islamic State burns down churches in Mosul&quot; DEBUNKED&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://justpaste.it/fatwa_debunked&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Islamic State publishes &quot;Female Genital Mutilation&quot; Fatwa DEBUNKED&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://justpaste.it/wahhabi_debunked&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Islamic State soldier forces marriage on 9 year old Christian girl DEBUNKED&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://justpaste.it/kurdish_lies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Many lies that originated from Kurdish Media and Activists DEBUNKED&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://justpaste.it/buried_debunked&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Islamic State buried young girls alive DEBUNKED&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For completeness sake, note that Matthew Barber later tweeted the following clarification:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1) To clarify: we don't yet know that the Iraqi HR minister spread a&#xA;  &quot;fake story;” we just know that a massacre didn't occur in Hatimiya,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2) from where I was receiving (true) reports of convert-or-die&#xA;  ultimatum. Many individual killings/killings of small groups are&#xA;  reported.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;3) Massacres may have occurred elsewhere. Al-Sudani’s report&#xA;  of large-scale kidnapping of women is corroborated by many accounts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&amp;amp;q=%23iraqilies%20&amp;amp;src=typd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;twitter hashtag&lt;/a&gt; devoted to refutation of such rumors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastEditorDisplayName="user11777" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T14:40:06.860" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T14:40:06.860" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22779" CreationDate="2014-08-12T18:45:12.597" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Huffington Post article is based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/10/us-iraq-security-yazidis-killings-idUSKBN0GA0FF20140810&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this 'exclusive' Reuters report&lt;/a&gt; dated &amp;quot;BAGHDAD Sun Aug 10, 2014 8:00am EDT&amp;quot;, which contains the sentence you quoted, i.e.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We have striking evidence obtained from Yazidis...&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/10/world/meast/iraq-crisis/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this slightly later article by CNN&lt;/a&gt; dated August 11, 2014 (Updated 1746 GMT), quotes a close (but not identical) source, i.e. this time a &amp;quot;spokesman&amp;quot; from the Iraqi human rights ministry rather than the minister himself, as saying,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Sunday, Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights spokesman Kamil Amin said it was possible that as many as 500 Yazidis had been killed. The ministry had also heard reports -- but had not confirmed -- that some had been buried alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It's difficult to be accurate about these numbers, but initially we have reported 500 Iraqi Yazidis have died from either ISIS direct killings or from starvation and dehydration,&amp;quot; Amin told CNN. &amp;quot;We have heard some reports from activists and local journalists that some families were buried alive.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CNN is unable to authenticate reports regarding the Yazidi death toll or the allegation that some were buried alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of the original &amp;quot;we have striking evidence&amp;quot; he is now being quoted as &amp;quot;we heard unconfirmed reports&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You asked, &amp;quot;Is this true? If so, where is the evidence?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This answer cannot tell you whether the reports are true: I posted this answer because it clarifies the evidence on which the claim was made (i.e. that the evidence was, allegedly, unconfirmed reports from activists and local journalists; and that CNN was unable to authenticate the reports).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-12T19:48:12.763" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22806" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22449" CreationDate="2014-08-13T00:26:22.917" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/07/19/Christian-Holocaust-Underway-in-Iraq-as-USA-and-World-Looks-On&quot;&gt;claim which is the subject of the OP&lt;/a&gt; justifies/calculates its own numbers by saying,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When U.S. troops invaded Iraq in 2003, there were at least 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. Over the last ten years, significantly in the last few months with the emergence of ISIS, that figure has dropped to about 400,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;In 2003?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Iraq&quot;&gt;Christianity in Iraq&lt;/a&gt;  article says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Iraq, Christians numbered about 1,500,000 in 2003, representing just over 5% of the population of the country. They numbered over 1.4 million in 1987 or 8% of the population.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's citation for its 1987 number is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irinnews.org/report/61897/iraq-christians-live-in-fear-of-death-squads&quot;&gt;IRAQ: Christians live in fear of death squads&lt;/a&gt; which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The last Iraqi census, in 1987, counted 1.4 million Christians, but many left during the 1990s when economic sanctions were imposed on the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has no citation for its 2003 number. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/download/&quot;&gt;CIA world factbook for 2003&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Population:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  24,683,313 (July 2003 est.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Religions:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Muslim 97% (Shi'a 60%-65%, Sunni 32%-37%), Christian or other 3%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... so &quot;1.5 million Christians in 2003&quot; looks like it could be an over-estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11669994&quot;&gt;This BBC article&lt;/a&gt; (also cited by the same Wikipedia article) says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before the Gulf War in 1991, they numbered about one million. By the time of the US-led invasion in 2003 that figure fell to about 800,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;In 2013?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia goes on to say,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After the Iraq War, it was estimated that the number of Christians in Iraq had dropped to less than 450,000 by 2013[2] - with estimates as low as 200,000.[3] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The citations for these numbers are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25514687&quot;&gt;a BBC article&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two bombs in Christian areas of the Iraqi capital Baghdad have killed at least 35 people, officials have said.&#xA;  One device exploded near a Catholic church when worshippers were leaving a Christmas Day service, killing 24. Another bomb ripped through a market, killing 11 more people.&#xA;  Christian leaders denied that the attacks had targeted worshippers.&#xA;  Iraq's ancient Christian community has more than halved in recent years, from an estimated population of 900,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/2014/07/iraqi-christians-and-west&quot;&gt;a The Economist article dated 2014&lt;/a&gt; which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exact figures about Iraqi Christianity are hard to come by. It is often asserted that about 400,000 to 500,000 Christians live in the country, down from a total before the 2003 war of perhaps 1.5m. Other observers think as few as 200,000 may be left. The majority of the remaining Christians live in the far north of the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;When was ISIS?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia, ISIS and/or its earlier incarnations have been active (e.g. claiming responsibility for bombings in Baghdad) going back to 2004.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summarizing the numbers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exact numbers are hard to determine (the last / most recent census was in 1987)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It would be more probable (but less spectacular) for the claim to say &quot;up to a million&quot; instead of &quot;more than a million&quot; (if the unreferenced &quot;1,500,000 in 2003&quot; is correct), or &quot;half a million&quot; (if the BBC's &quot;800,000 in 2003&quot; is correct).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The decline in population is contemporaneous with ISIS.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is it a holocaust, genocide?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title of the article is, &quot;SEBASTIAN GORKA: CHRISTIAN HOLOCAUST UNDERWAY IN IRAQ, USA AND WORLD LOOK ON&quot;; and the title of this Skeptics question includes the words, &quot;persecuted to death&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Iraq#Post-war_situation&quot;&gt;This section in Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; implies that by far the largest cause of the decline (i.e. hundreds of thousands of people) is emigration/exile, rather than being killed and/or a declining birth rate.&#xA;The numbers of (living) refugees are large, perhaps too large to be compatible with any wholesale or systematic killing, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As of 21 June 2007, the UNHCR estimated that 2.2 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighbouring countries with a large majority of them Christians, and 2 million were displaced internally, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria and Jordan each month. ... Half the Christian population has fled, with an estimated 330,000 to Syria and smaller numbers to Jordan. ... Apart from emigration, the Iraqi Christians are also declining due to lower rates of birth and higher death rates than their Muslim compatriots.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same section reports the killings of individuals and of dozens or hundreds of people, and not of hundreds of thousands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In comparison, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust&quot;&gt;The Holocaust&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Between 1941 and 1945 Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, communists, homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled and members of other groups were targeted and methodically murdered in the largest genocide of the 20th century. In total, of the approximately 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust, over 1 million were children.[4][5] Of the nine million Jews who had resided in Europe before the Holocaust, approximately two-thirds were killed.[6]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ex-Iraqi Christians are presumably mostly still alive: they're in exile, they're refugees. &quot;Genocide&quot; isn't the right word for it (though &quot;ethnic cleansing&quot; might be).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article quotes Dr. Sebastian Gorka as saying that America should &quot;do something&quot;, but the article doesn't say what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the statements in the media seem to be inciting war or military intervention ... and that might be the big lie: instead, perhaps what Christians need now is humanitarian aid, refugee status, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question asks whether they've been persecuted to &quot;death or exile&quot; -- they have mostly chosen exile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-08-13T01:37:46.563" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T01:37:46.563" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22809" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22812" CreationDate="2014-08-13T02:14:24.480" Score="10" ViewCount="1036" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jewsnews.co.il/2014/08/12/much-of-the-us-aid-to-yazidis-useless-because-it-was-dropped-from-15000ft-without-parachutes-and-exploded-on-impact/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.jewsnews.co.il/2014/08/12/much-of-the-us-aid-to-yazidis-useless-because-it-was-dropped-from-15000ft-without-parachutes-and-exploded-on-impact/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site claimed that water and food are dropped from 5000 meters without parachute and it exploded on impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical because even a government can't be this stupid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17021" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-11T07:06:53.097" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T07:06:53.097" Title="Did US troops drop aid without parachutes?" Tags="|united-states|military|iraq|isis|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22810" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-13T03:15:11.267" Score="19" ViewCount="1027" Body="&lt;p&gt;Around May 2014, Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian oil company &lt;a href=&quot;http://burisma.com/board-of-directors/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;announced that it had added Hunter Biden&lt;/a&gt; (US Vice-President Joe Biden's son) to its board of directors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This caused a small controversy in the media. &lt;a href=&quot;http://thefederalist.com/2014/05/13/9-questions-to-ask-about-bidens-work-with-a-gas-company-in-ukraine/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Federalist published a few reasons to be skeptical&lt;/a&gt; that it actually happened:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company’s website is…rough, at best, and the domain does not appear to have even been registered until 2010 even though the company was allegedly founded in 2002 and incorporated in 2006. And as recently as July of 2013, the website was not even written in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basic information about the business is also difficult to find. Joe Weisenthal of Business Insider noted on Twitter that the company lacked a profile in Bloomberg, an extensive database of business information, and had no Wikipedia presence whatsoever. Businessweek contained only a brief blurb about the company, stating that it was incorporated in 2006 and based in Cyprus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since then, the issue seems to have been forgotten in the media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any independent source (not from the company's own website) that confirms that Hunter Biden works in Ukraine for Big Oil?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21645" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2024-02-28T02:18:59.657" Title="Does Hunter Biden work for a Ukrainian oil company?" Tags="|united-states|ukraine|joe-biden|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22812" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22809" CreationDate="2014-08-13T06:24:03.307" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/4-20-147/fm4-20-147.pdf&quot;&gt;FM 4-20.147: Airdrop of Supplies and Equipment: Humanitarian Airdrop&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;EXTENDED TRI-WALL AERIAL DELIVERY SYSTEM (TRIADS). The&#xA;  TRIADS system is a corrugated tri-wall box rigged for static line deployment off&#xA;  the ramp of an aircraft using CDS procedures. Typical loads include loose&#xA;  Meals Ready-to-Eat (MREs) or Humanitarian Daily Rations (HDRs). Following&#xA;  deployment the caps of the box separate from the sleeve allowing the container’s&#xA;  content to scatter and freefall to the ground. TRIADS has a 1,375 pound load&#xA;  capacity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the military drop it without parachutes?  Almost certainly.  It's a standard method with standard procedures to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was it destroyed on impact?  Probably not.  A certain amount of breakage can be expected, from containers that fail to open properly, or from supplies that land badly.  If all the intact supplies have been removed, it would give the impression that everything was destroyed on impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21297" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T06:24:03.307" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22815" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22850" CreationDate="2014-08-13T10:57:59.237" Score="6" ViewCount="1022" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://publichealthwatch.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/how-a-computer-algorithm-predicted-west-africas-ebola-outbreak-before-it-was-announced/&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; claims that a computer algorithm predicted the recent (2014) Ebola outbreak 9 days before the World Health Organization announcement. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can read in the article the algorithm didn't identify the disease, only collected the data before the official announcement. Did it really have more information before the health organizations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17212" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T06:19:11.643" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T06:19:11.643" Title="Did a computer algorithm predict the 2014 Ebola outbreak 9 days before WHO?" Tags="|environmental-health|healthcare|forecasting|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22816" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22815" CreationDate="2014-08-13T11:27:59.997" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This sort of thing is an active research topic (a friend of mine works on it), for example social media can be mined to detect outbreaks of disease before it would normally be reported by health organisations.  Here is an example of a workshop held on this sort of thing (although in this case it was motivated via bioterrorism, rather than naturally ocurring events).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Social media and its dual use in biopreparedness: communication and&#xA;visualization tools in an animal bioterrorism incident.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sjöberg,&#xA;Elisabeth; Barker, Gary C; Landgren, Jonas; Griberg, Isaac; Skiby,&#xA;Jeffrey E; Tubbin, Anna; von Stapelmohr, Anne; Härenstam, Malin;&#xA;Jansson, Mikael; Knutsson, Rickard Biosecurity and bioterrorism :&#xA;biodefense strategy, practice, and science.  11 Suppl 1: S264-75;&#xA;2013.  (English).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article focuses on social media and interactive challenges for emergency organizations&#xA;during a bioterrorism or agroterrorism incident, and it outlines the&#xA;dual-use dilemma of social media. Attackers or terrorists can use&#xA;social media as their modus operandi, and defenders, including&#xA;emergency organizations in law enforcement and public and animal&#xA;health, can use it for peaceful purposes. To get a better&#xA;understanding of the uses of social media in these situations, a&#xA;workshop was arranged in Stockholm, Sweden, to raise awareness about&#xA;social media and animal bioterrorism threats. Fifty-six experts and&#xA;crisis communicators from international and national organizations&#xA;participated. As a result of the workshop, it was concluded that&#xA;emergency organizations can collect valuable information and monitor&#xA;social media before, during, and after an outbreak. In order to make&#xA;use of interactive communication to obtain collective intelligence&#xA;from the public, emergency organizations must adapt to social&#xA;networking technologies, requiring multidisciplinary knowledge in the&#xA;fields of information, communication, IT, and biopreparedness. Social&#xA;network messaging during a disease outbreak can be visualized in&#xA;stream graphs and networks showing clusters of Twitter and Facebook&#xA;users. The visualization of social media can be an important&#xA;preparedness tool in the response to bioterrorism and agroterrorism.&#xA;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23971817&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0083672&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; on Influenza surveillance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The particular tool involved in this question is HealthMap, and they provide a timeline of the Ebola outbreak &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthmap.org/ebola/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, which allows you to see what it was saying at different points in time.  HealthMap doesn't specifically predict outbreaks of disease, but what it does do is to find and collate relevant information from press reports and social media that allow potential outbreaks to be identified earlier than could be reasonable done manually.  It would be more accurate to say that HealthMap alerted us to a potential outbreak of some hemorrhagic disease 9 days earlier than the WHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T12:50:01.893" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22817" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-13T11:51:21.223" Score="8" ViewCount="463" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://uniraq.org/index.php?option=com_k2&amp;amp;view=item&amp;amp;id=2373:srsg-bangura-and-srsg-mladenov-gravely-concerned-by-reports-of-sexual-violence-against-internally-displaced-persons&amp;amp;Itemid=605&amp;amp;lang=en&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) press release it is claimed that 1500 Yazidi and Christian persons may have been forced into sexual slavery by ISIS. The source for these statements is the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Iraq &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/nmladenov&quot;&gt;Nickolay Mladenov&lt;/a&gt; and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.un.org/sg/management/senstaff_details.asp?smgID=174&quot;&gt;Zainab Hawa Bangura&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does their claim hold water?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20991" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T08:42:07.773" Title="Has ISIS forced 1500 Yezidis and Christians into sexual slavery?" Tags="|sexual-abuse|isis|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-08-18T08:00:37.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22785" CreationDate="2014-08-13T13:39:19.020" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CAUTION:&lt;/strong&gt; I believe this is a publicity statement by the director, not based in fact. The drug can't be known until he specifies it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Points to Consider&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The sixth week is time when the brain is started forming. In other words the glob of cells started forming brain and heart like organs. Cerebral cortex is formed and synapses starts connecting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If such kind of chemical actually exists, what it will be? &lt;strong&gt;It could be a substrate which bind any of the enzyme which helps in brain development or may be the enzyme itself (in both cases the enzyme is important)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now the real problem, there are tons of enzymes which binds 100 times more substrates, which is the one? &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My Guess:&lt;/strong&gt; Why not the one with &lt;strong&gt;highest production and a high activity?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Estradiol or its derivative:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a female steroid hormone in the family of Estrogen. It not only influence the sex in the embryo it also helps in neural development and Neuroprotection. &lt;a href=&quot;http://physrev.physiology.org/content/88/1/91&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Estradiol and the Developing Brain, by MARGARET M. McCARTHY, American Physiological Society, 2008&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2005 published paper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16084069&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Low-dose estradiol alters brain activity.&lt;/a&gt;, suggest that the low dose of this drug can actually alter the brain activity in adult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paper published in The Journal of Neuroscience, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jneurosci.org/content/26/41/10332.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Estrogen, Menopause, and the Aging Brain: How Basic Neuroscience Can Inform Hormone Therapy in Women&lt;/a&gt;, supports the theory that it can have a effect on mental age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: It's not the only possibility nor is the correct compound. But it is one of the many possibility.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other possibilities:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Substrates of &lt;a href=&quot;http://enzyme.expasy.org/EC/3.1.3.11&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fructose-1, 6-bisphosphatase&lt;/a&gt; can actually have effect on brain activity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Substrates of FMRP (fragile X mental retardation protein)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2989000/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Basics of Brain Development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ias.ac.in/jarch/jbiosci/4/167-173.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fructose-1, 6-bisphosphatase in human fetal brain and &#xA;liver during development&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21569" LastEditorUserId="21569" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T04:16:22.337" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T04:16:22.337" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22821" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22826" CreationDate="2014-08-13T13:52:38.443" Score="4" ViewCount="745" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Daily Mail claims that Moshe Feiglin, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, called for concentration camps in Gaza. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2715466/Israeli-official-calls-concentration-camps-Gaza-conquest-entire-Gaza-Strip-annihilation-fighting-forces-supporters.html#ixzz3AHCmvyBU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Israeli official calls for concentration camps in Gaza and 'the conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An Israeli official has called for &lt;strong&gt;concentration camps in Gaza&lt;/strong&gt; and&#xA;  ‘the conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all&#xA;  fighting forces and their supporters’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moshe Feiglin, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of&#xA;  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, posted the&#xA;  inflammatory message on his Facebook page at the weekend. [August 2-3 2014]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In case the Daily Mail is not notable, this claim was &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/499015991930540034&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;repeated&lt;/a&gt; by Nassim N Taleb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Israeli official calls for concentration camps in Gaza... but wait: Gaza IS a concentration camp! &lt;a href=&quot;http://dailym.ai/1ueKM89&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dailym.ai/1ueKM89&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elsewhere in the Daily Mail article, it's written that he called for camps for Gaza residents to be located until they leave Gaza:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the letter he expresses his desire for the IDF to find areas on the&#xA;  Sinai border to establish 'tent encampments...until relevant&#xA;  emigration destinations are determined.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did he advocate for concentration camps, in the meaning that is usually interpreted in modern times? That is, death camps like the ones set up by Nazi Germany for many racial and other groups, as opposed to internment camps such as those used for the internment of Japanese, German and Italian ethnicity people in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T12:38:08.860" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T15:30:44.663" Title="Did Moshe Feiglin call for concentration camps?" Tags="|quotes|israel|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-13T14:23:49.307" Score="17" ViewCount="1043" Body="&lt;p&gt;Questions about whether alcohol consumption is good for you or not have been asked here before (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1059/is-alcohol-beneficial-in-small-amounts&quot;&gt;Is alcohol beneficial in small amounts?&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8197/recommended-alcohol-drinking-quantity-are-they-just-making-it-up/8201#8201&quot;&gt;Recommended alcohol drinking quantity: are they just making it up?&lt;/a&gt; ).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a recent review of the evidence about alcohol in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/truth-wont-admit-drinking-healthy-87891/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pacific Standard&lt;/a&gt; which concludes that americans especially are too obsessed about the amount they drink and have poor quality public health advice on the subject makes an additional claim that deserves to be addressed (my highlight for the claim):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The more alcohol a society consumes, the fewer alcohol-related problems and alcohol-related deaths (including cirrhosis) it has&lt;/strong&gt;, since these societies, such as those in Southern Europe, integrate drinking with social life. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic argument notes that moderate drinking is good for you according to the mortality statistics. It then emphasises that binge drinking is the most harmful pattern of drinking. Then it argues that US public health advice tends towards encouraging people not to drink regularly thus instilling a general fear about addiction and an unwarranted general praise of the virtues of abstention. Which, in practice, doesn't work, skewing actual behaviours towards the worst drinking patterns (a little like the known problem with &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8041/does-abstinence-only-sex-education-reduce-the-frequency-of-teenage-sex-or-the-ra&quot;&gt;abstinence only sex education&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This argument leads on to the claim that I think deserves some skeptical analysis. It is derived from the idea that those with more sensible attitudes to booze both drink more and suffer fewer harms. More explicitly the question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do societies who consume more alcohol tend to suffer fewer harms as a result?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2017-09-19T16:02:41.703" Title="Do societies that are less abstemious have more sensible drinking patterns?" Tags="|medical-science|alcohol|epidemiology|public-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19539" CreationDate="2014-08-13T15:05:17.950" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;It was published as part of an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/wp-content/uploads/satevepost/what_life_means_to_einstein.pdf&quot;&gt;interview with Einstein in the Saturday Evening Post&lt;/a&gt; of October 1929 by George Sylvester Viereck. Einstein did not write it himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The interviewer quoted him, and wrote it down in English. Einstein presumably said it in German (his command of German being far superior to his &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeM9KR_O4yo&quot;&gt;command of English&lt;/a&gt;). The source for the quote is the translated version in English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exact quotation in the original language has not been preserved. Here is the translation that was published by the interviewer, Viereck: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Viereck: &quot;Do you look upon yourself as a German or as a Jew?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Einstein: &quot;It is quite possible, to be both. I look upon myself as a man.&#xA;  Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may not satisfy you to learn that the quote is attributed to Einstein by the interviewer, rather than being written by Einstein himself. However, Einstein reiterates the mindset in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.einstein-website.de/z_biography/credo.html&quot;&gt;&quot;My Credo&quot; (1932)&lt;/a&gt;. He also &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nRbyxVx3o0&quot;&gt;recorded this statement&lt;/a&gt;. In it, he says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am against any nationalism, even in the guise of mere patriotism.&#xA;  Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me&#xA;  unjust and pernicious, as did any exaggerated personality cult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smart man, that Einstein guy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20991" LastEditorUserId="20991" LastEditDate="2015-06-20T07:51:24.163" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T07:51:24.163" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22824" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-13T17:18:57.883" Score="20" ViewCount="2903" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://thechildrenofworld.blogspot.com/2013/04/exercise-that-helps-children-to-grow.html&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stretching is a great way to increase height. Get your child to start&#xA;  with simple stretches like the wall stretch. Make him stand against a&#xA;  wall with the back towards it. Raise hands in the air and stretch as&#xA;  far as possible. Then sit in the same position on the toes and stretch&#xA;  the leg muscles. Repeat the process 10 times. Another good stretch for&#xA;  the legs and back is to sit on the floor, legs wide apart. Then bend&#xA;  forward at the waist and stretch to touch the right toe. Your child&#xA;  can keep bending three to four times to stretch the leg muscle to the&#xA;  maximum. Then go back in the sitting position, and stretch to left&#xA;  toe. Toe-touching exercises are also great to elongate the spine and&#xA;  improving posture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have read and heard similar claims from &lt;a href=&quot;http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health/You-too-can-grow-taller/articleshow/19592799.cms&quot;&gt;other&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://thechildrenofworld.blogspot.com/2013/04/exercise-that-helps-children-to-grow.html&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any scientific studies showing that stretching help children grow taller?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastActivityDate="2023-09-02T01:48:49.697" Title="Does stretching help children grow taller?" Tags="|physiology|children|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22825" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22827" CreationDate="2014-08-13T20:20:08.427" Score="48" ViewCount="7778" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any credible evidence that Benjamin Franklin actually did his famous kite experiment? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/HD.11.029_%2810995364195%29.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21569" LastEditorUserId="21569" LastEditDate="2017-05-27T08:36:41.757" LastActivityDate="2017-05-27T08:36:41.757" Title="Did Benjamin Franklin perform an experiment by flying a kite in a lightning storm?" Tags="|physics|electromagnetism|experiments|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22821" CreationDate="2014-08-13T20:23:21.860" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can read &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/MFeiglin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;his Facebook&lt;/a&gt; post (1 August) with an initial line starting  ב&amp;quot;ה&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His main point is to kill all the radicals in Gaza, and force all the civilians to emigrate, or to declare loyalty to Israel and be treated like Arabs in East Jerusalem, then rebuilding an Israeli Jewish city like Jaffa in what is currently Gaza City and the previous Jewish settlements.  The key paragraph for this question is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;א - צה&amp;quot;ל יגדיר שטחים פתוחים על גבול סיני ובסמיכות לים בהם תתרכז&#xA;האוכלוסייה האזרחית- הרחק מהשטח הבנוי ואזורי השיגור והמנהור. באזורים&#xA;אלו יוקמו מחנות אוהלים עד לאיתור יעדי הגירה רלוונטיים. אספקת החשמל&#xA;והמים לאזורים שהיו מאוכלסים – תנותק.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which might roughly be translated as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A - The Israel Defence Forces should identify open spaces on the Sinai&#xA;border and close to the sea to gather the civilian&#xA;population away from built-up areas, rocket launch areas and&#xA;tunnels. These areas will be established as tent camps for relocation and&#xA;relevant migration objectives. Electricity and water supply to&#xA;inhabited areas should be disconnected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find description on English-language Israeli sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesofisrael.com/knesset-member-retake-gaza-put-civilians-in-tent-camps/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Times of Israel&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jpost.com/International/WATCH-CNNs-Blitzer-grills-Likud-MK-Feiglin-over-calls-for-Gaza-concentration-camp-370223&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Jerusalem Post&lt;/a&gt;, with the latter describing and linking to Feiglin's interview with CNN explaining what he meant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... his controversial proposal, in which he advocated for massing Palestinians into &amp;quot;an open space near the border with Sinai and adjacent to the sea&amp;quot; so that Israel could avoid civilian casualties and strike at rocket launchers ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When pressed by Blitzer as to whether Feiglin had urged Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to establish &amp;quot;concentration camps&amp;quot; for Palestinians, Feiglin said that he had pushed for a plan that would create &amp;quot;sheltered areas&amp;quot; for civilians in Gaza so as to provide a &amp;quot;humane&amp;quot; option that would allow Israel to more effectively crush Hamas rocket-launchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I want to give the Arabs in the Gaza Strip three choices,&amp;quot; Feiglin said. &amp;quot;Those who are fighting against us should be killed. Those who are launching rockets from kindergartens should be shot. Those who wish to leave the Gaza Strip – and our surveys indicate that 80 percent want to leave – should get the support from us and the international community to find a better place.&amp;quot;&#xA;&amp;quot;Those who want to stay can stay,&amp;quot; Feiglin said. &amp;quot;This is a plan [that allows] Israel to win this war.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Blitzer asked Feiglin whether he supported &amp;quot;tent encampments&amp;quot; for Gazans before they are &amp;quot;helped along to another destination,&amp;quot; the Likud MK replied: &amp;quot;Definitely.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T15:30:44.663" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22825" CreationDate="2014-08-13T21:24:13.247" Score="53" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is Frankin's letter of Oct 1 1752 saying that the kite experiment was performed successfully in Philadelphia, which was read to and published in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rstl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/47/565.full.pdf&quot;&gt;Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society&lt;/a&gt; a few months later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also Joseph Priestly's &lt;em&gt;The history and present state of electricity&lt;/em&gt; (written about 15 years later after discussions with Franklin) which &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/stream/historyandprese00priegoog#page/n262/mode/2up&quot;&gt;provides slightly more detail&lt;/a&gt; including the involvement of Franklin's son.  Apparently the kite was not struck by lightning but still carried a charge from the thunderstorm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not preclude Franklin from having invented the whole thing, written a letter about it and lied to Priestly, and then persuading his son (later the British Governor of New Jersey) not to disown the comments, but it does makes it more likely that the experiment actually happened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T21:24:13.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22828" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8273" CreationDate="2014-08-13T21:46:40.643" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually it might be the opposite for USA in contrast to Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3516050&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Immigration and Status Exchange in Australia and the United States&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kate H. Choi,* Marta Tienda, Deborah Cobb-Clark, and Mathias Sinning&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Princeton University&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3xHUP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shows, in USA: Homogamy &amp;gt; Hypogamy &amp;gt; Hypergamy&#xA;in Australia: Homogamy &amp;gt;  Hypergamy &amp;gt; Hypogamy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21569" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T21:46:40.643" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22829" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22809" CreationDate="2014-08-13T23:04:27.080" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/11024037/Iraq-crisis-It-is-death-valley.-Up-to-70-per-cent-of-them-are-dead.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The article in The Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; is dated August 10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.afcent.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123420720&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article from the US Air Force&lt;/a&gt; dated August 8 shows pictures of the pallets to be dropped over Sinjar, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.afcent.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/2014/08/140808-F-IO684-047.JPG&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this high-res photograph&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.afcent.af.mil/shared/media/photodb/photos/2014/08/140808-F-IO684-047.JPG&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5pNHs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  In that photograph, the black bags on top look like parachutes. Figure 3-7 on page 3-8 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/4-20-147/fm4-20-147.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this document&lt;/a&gt; is an illustration of a folded parachute. Page 1-1 of this document says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;b. LOW-COST AERIAL DELIVERY SYSTEM (LCADS). LCADS is a&#xA;  modified, lightweight A-22 system with no scuff pad, cover, or friction adapters&#xA;  on the lateral bands. It is rigged like a high-velocity A-22 load, but uses one of&#xA;  several special parachutes. LCADS is used for high-volume delivery of&#xA;  nonfragile items where airdrop equipment is not recoverable. LCADS has a&#xA;  2,200 pound load capacity. Chapter Three of this manual covers riggingLCADS&#xA;  for airdrop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A comment associated with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/DeptofDefense/photos/pcb.10152680718330719/10152680717625719/?type=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Facebook page&lt;/a&gt; (August 8 on the timeline of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/DeptofDefense&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.facebook.com/DeptofDefense&lt;/a&gt; if the preceding facebook link doesn't work) says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Christopher W. Graves&lt;/strong&gt; So are we using disposable plastic parachute deployment bags now to save costs and recycling..if so i think that is a really great idea..they should look into using and making disposable canopies too because once they are deployed we aren't getting them back to use again. And yes thank you troops from an old Rigger myself..I will be sure always!!!!&#xA;  1 · August 9 at 10:33am&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The third photo (in the series of five) from the Air Force article is captioned,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;U.S. Army Soldier parachute riggers from the 11th Quartermaster Co., 264th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 82nd Sustainment Brigade, palletize water for a humanitarian air drop Aug. 6, 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which also implies that parachutes were rigged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T01:10:27.910" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T01:10:27.910" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22830" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22735" CreationDate="2014-08-13T23:36:20.113" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alcoholic beverages have depressant effects, as the claim states. Ordinary, modern tequila is a normal liquor in this respect - I wouldn't expect any strange effect, besides some possible placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tequila is obtained from the distillation of fermented juice of agave plant, Agave tequilana, to which up to 49% (w/v) of an adjunct sugar, mainly from cane or corn, could be added. Agave plants require from 8 to 12 years to mature and during all this time cleaning, pest control, and slacken of land are required to produce an initial raw material with the appropriate chemical composition for tequila production. Production process comprises four steps: cooking to hydrolyze inulin into fructose, milling to extract the sugars, fermentation with a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae to convert the sugars into ethanol and organoleptic compounds, and, finally, a two-step distillation process. Maturation, if needed, is carried out in white oak barrels to obtain rested or aged tequila in 2 or 12 months, respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/pubmed/7736598&quot;&gt;Tequila production.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Cedeño M., Critical reviews in biotechnology 1995;15(1):1-11. Review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This other source also confirms that this is a myth and that other liquors exist made in different manner and with different similar plants, which is possibly the origin of the myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several misconceptions prevail regarding tequila [...] Last, to some, the name mescal may suggest that these beverages contain mescaline or related psychotropic alkaloids, with the result that their intoxicating properties are significantly different from those of other spirits. In fact, such alkaloids originate from various cactus species (Nobel 1994). The special physiological responses may be due to higher level of alcohols other than ethanol in certain products, or simply the result of immoderate consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00873100&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yeast communities in a natural tequila fermentation&lt;/a&gt;, Marc-André Lachance, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek August 1995, Volume 68, Issue 2, pp 151-160&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-08-13T23:36:20.113" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14262" CreationDate="2014-08-14T09:01:40.780" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;According to Dr. Rath&quot;&lt;/em&gt; reminded me of Linus Pauling and Matthias &lt;strong&gt;Rath&lt;/strong&gt;'s unified theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Matthias Rath&lt;/strong&gt; (born 1955 in Stuttgart, Germany) is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/12/matthiasrath.aids2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;controversial doctor&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7453449.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;businessman, and vitamin salesman&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Linus Pauling&lt;/strong&gt; (February 28, 1901 – August 19, 1994) was one of the most influential chemists in history and ranks among the most important scientists of the 20th century and has won two Nobel prizes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linus Pauling and Matthias Rath alerted the world to the cause of heart disease in 1989:  a chronic, sub-clinical vitamin C deficiency. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikigenes.org/e/ref/e/16737683.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;They said it was due to a missing liver enzyme caused by the ancient GULO genetic defect in primate DNA.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Linus Pauling's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hearttechnology.com/Pauling_Last_Published_Interview.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt; from his last interview: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think we can get almost complete control of cardiovascular disease,&#xA;  heart attacks and strokes by the proper use of (vitamin C and lysine)&#xA;  ... even cure it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On his death bed, former Congressman Berkelly Bedell responded to Pauling's therapy for heart disease with a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/pdfs/BerkBedell.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;letter&lt;/a&gt; claiming:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You have at least put my mind at ease, and I believe possibly saved my&#xA;  life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Accoding to the Official Pauling Therapy Web Site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulingtherapy.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PaulingTherapy.com&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1992/pdf/1992-v07n01-p005.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pauling/Rath Unified Theory Paper&lt;/a&gt; paper was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.paulingtherapy.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;first accepted by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, but then rejected and not published&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Owen Fonorow, co-founder of the Vitamin C Foundation, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/cardioc.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People have a right to be skeptical. Scams abound and people don't know what to believe and often rely on their doctors. &lt;strong&gt;Most highly educated people think it impossible that heart disease could be caused by a vitamin deficiency, and the entire medical profession and pharmaceutical industry somehow missed it.&lt;/strong&gt; However, the idea that a lack of vitamin C causes heart disease is not new. For some reason the early work, and the later Pauling/Rath theory and experiments, are ignored by medical science. We are thankful that Linus Pauling decided to film a lecture making these ideas available on video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many sites like &lt;a href=&quot;http://paulingtherapy.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paulingtherapy.com&lt;/a&gt;, claim also that the main reason that this important discovery has been ignored is economic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120716131325.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;increased dietary Vitamin C could help reduce heart disease, stroke and cancer&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;strong&gt;their hypothesis is not scientifically verified.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vitamin C Foundation&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/cardioc.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;concluded&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Neither the FDA nor the Medical Profession accept the proposition put&#xA;  forth by Pauling, Rath, Levy and others that the root cause of&#xA;  cardiovascular disease is an acute vitamin C deficiency at the site of&#xA;  the arterial lesion.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T14:05:39.103" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T14:05:39.103" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22838" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22250" CreationDate="2014-08-14T11:51:01.607" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the cited website and video, there is a claim that lemons alkalize the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is false. Lemons do not alkalize the body:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodscience.caes.uga.edu/extension/documents/fdaapproximatephoffoodslacf-phs.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pH of lemon juice is 2-2.6&lt;/a&gt;, so lemons are acidic, not alkaline.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The body uses pH buffers to avoid the pH of blood being changed: &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When an acid or base is added to the body, the buffers just&#xA;      mentioned bind or release H+, thereby minimizing the change in pH.&#xA;      Buffering in extracellular fluid [including blood] occurs rapidly, in minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.inkling.com/read/medical-physiology-rodney-rhoades-david-bell-4th/chapter-24/blood-ph-regulation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, neither acidic nor alkaline foods change pH of the blood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, from where the claims that lemons alkalize the body originate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lemons contain citrate:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Citrus fruits...contain natural citrate and the highest citrate level exists in lemon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/669/art%253A10.1007%252Fs00240-008-0152-6.pdf?auth66=1408351492_60fda096a8876886e21c48bc2e63634d&amp;amp;ext=.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Citrate supplements can be used to alkalinize &lt;em&gt;urine&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Citrates are used for alkalinization of urine (as alternatives to sodium bicarbonate) in conditions where long-term maintenance of an alkaline urine is desirable (e.g., management of uric acid and cystine calculi of the urinary tract).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugs.com/monograph/citrate-salts-citric-acid-citric-acid-monohydrate-potassium-citrate-potassium-citrate-monohydrate-sodium-citrate-sodium-citrate-and-citric-acid-sodium-citrate-dihydrate.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, this effect doesn't happen from drinking lemonade:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been known that citraturic effect of potassium citrate was due to net alkaline load produced by its oxidation to bicarbonate and its renal excretion. In spite of this, lemonade treatment has not caused urinary alkaline load due to low pH of lemon juice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/669/art%253A10.1007%252Fs00240-008-0152-6.pdf?auth66=1408351492_60fda096a8876886e21c48bc2e63634d&amp;amp;ext=.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lemons do not alkalize the body.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Citrate from &lt;em&gt;supplements&lt;/em&gt; alkalizes the urine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Citrate from &lt;em&gt;lemons&lt;/em&gt; does not alkalize the urine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15288" LastEditorUserId="15288" LastEditDate="2017-03-13T20:17:00.003" LastActivityDate="2017-03-13T20:17:00.003" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22841" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22821" CreationDate="2014-08-14T12:23:42.473" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chrome (my web browser) translates &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/MFeiglin/posts/700026723409779&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;his Facebook entry for August 10&lt;/a&gt; as saying the following,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to UNRWA's official site, of the 1.5 million residents of Gaza, 1.2 million already formally defined Refugees &amp;quot;and treated as such by the UN. therefore, be handled by the United Nations elsewhere, for example, as I suggested camps on the Sinai border, and the empty areas in the Gaza Strip. refugee is a refugee, or where he is now fighting there, be moved away for the sake of security. then you can conquer the Gaza Strip and Hamas to eliminate using the full force of the IDF fire, without going into tunnel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Z and houses booby-trapped - with minimal risk our soldiers. , but we - as usual - let our enemies have it both ways - both sovereign status in our country and refugee status at the same time. 's no wonder that we also eat the fish (missile) cheesy - that allegedly harmed sovereignty When we dropped them under siege - and expelled from the city (PR) as our response leads to damage in the &amp;quot;innocent refugees.&amp;quot; problem is they - not Hamas, not the world - the problem is us&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reasonable human could presumably provide a better/clearer translation than this, but IMO it's clear that the &amp;quot;camps&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;concentration camps&amp;quot; that he's &amp;quot;calling for&amp;quot; are not Nazi-style death camps: rather, they're United Nations-style refugee camps (or perhaps internment camps of the style used by the &amp;quot;Allies&amp;quot; in WW2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for how it was understood by its audience, consider &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/MFeiglin/posts/700026723409779?comment_id=700028733409578&amp;amp;offset=0&amp;amp;total_comments=277&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the following comment&lt;/a&gt; with 51 likes (again, translated into English by my browser):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smart just clear evidence of reality. Indeed, a refugee who like everywhere else in the world should be regulated status and get refugee status in a country that can absorb it, I do not see any problem with it I'm sure the people of Gaza get refugee visas happily in other countries&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moshe Feiglin replied to that comment with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/MFeiglin/posts/700026723409779?reply_comment_id=700032266742558&amp;amp;total_comments=9&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the following&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of spending billions of new terrorist state of Gaza, should take the trouble of donor countries, will invest 0, and absorb the refugees in their fields while generous support of Israel. It should Israel talk all the time. Difficult situation for you? Some refugees (rich!) Any country willing to receive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... which IMO opens him to the charge of wanting &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aethnic+cleansing&amp;amp;gws_rd=ssl&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ethnic cleansing&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; in the sense of &amp;quot;forced migration&amp;quot;; but not of &amp;quot;ethnic cleansing&amp;quot; in the sense of &amp;quot;killing, genocide&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Daily Mail article in the OP was published August 4 and says &amp;quot;He posted the message on his Facebook page at the weekend&amp;quot;, which presumably means &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/MFeiglin/posts/695450140534104&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;his Facebook entry of August 1&lt;/a&gt;. If you read that (in translation), the &amp;quot;tent camps&amp;quot; he's suggesting are intended to be zones of safety for civilians, which (removing or concentrating the civilians) would leave the IDF free to unleash destruction (to shell previously-populated or recently-depopulated) areas with maximum firepower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore &amp;quot;concentration camp&amp;quot; in the strict/literal sense of the term (avoiding its Nazi connotations), which I understand as meaning &amp;quot;a camp into which a population is geographically concentrated (whether by threat or by force)&amp;quot;, is indeed what he called for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The word &amp;quot;concentration camp&amp;quot; has a long history, and doesn't only mean a Nazi-style death camp: for example, they were &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War#Concentration_camps_.281900.E2.80.931902.29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;used in the Boer war&lt;/a&gt;; see also &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp#Concentration_camp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; on the meaning[s] of the term.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T12:29:46.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22842" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20024" CreationDate="2014-08-14T13:22:36.430" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;During her 1988 visit to the United States, educational psychologist &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Jensen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Professor Arthur Jensen&lt;/a&gt;, University of California, Berkeley, have tried to unlock the secret of her abilities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He published his work in Journal of Intelligence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://stepanov.lk.net/mnemo/jensen.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Speed of Information Processing in a Calculating Prodigy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: It's also the source of the answers in this post.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Could Shakuntala Devi actually perform these feats?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did she do it?  Answer is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It seems hard to believe, but the following is reported in the&#xA;  Guinness Book of Records (1982), which has a reputation for the&#xA;  authenticity of its claims: &lt;em&gt;&quot;Mrs. Shakuntala Devi of India&#xA;  demonstrated the multiplication of two 13-digit numbers of&#xA;  7,686,369,774,870 × 2,465,099,745,779 picked at random by the Computer&#xA;  Department of Imperial College, London on 18 June 1980, in 28 s. Her&#xA;  correct answer was 18,947,668,177,995,426,462,773,730.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If so, are there other living people who can do this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer. Only handful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Flansburg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scott Flansburg (born 1963)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_Lemaire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alexis Lemaire (born 1980)&lt;/a&gt;: 13th root of the 100-digit number in 3.635 Seconds&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mikebyster.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mike Byster (born 1959)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_Klein&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Willem Klein (born 1912, died 1986)&lt;/a&gt;: 73rd root of a 500-digit number in 2 minutes and 43 seconds&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2013/1104/Shakuntala-Devi-and-other-human-calculators&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shakuntala Devi and Other Human Calculators&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Was Shakuntala Devi was exceptional genius in comparison to normal people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer: Surprisingly &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;. Prof. Jensen's three experiment :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experiment 1: Raven Matrices.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Advanced Progressive Matrices (APM) is a highly g-loaded nonverbal&#xA;  test of abstract reasoning based on 36 multiple-choice items&#xA;  consisting of complex nonrepresentational figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Result:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She took 58 minutes to solve, which is within range of other people(students and older people) in the this study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...this measure of psychometric g, &lt;strong&gt;Devi is not exceptional, in marked&#xA;  contrast to her phenomenal calculating ability.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experiment 2: Digit Span.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Digit Span subtest of the WAIS was of particular interest because&#xA;  it involves the recall of a series of digits immediately following&#xA;  their auditory presentation at the rate of 1 digit per second.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Result:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Devi correctly recalled 9 digits forward and 4 digits backward. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The score is not exceptional, she was in 63rd Percentile according to her age group. But actually the test was faulty and she broke it in forward scoring of 9, but there is no percentile for forward and reverse, so, the lowest being 4. she is considered normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Experiment 3: Chronometric Tests&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same tests were taken by college student of ages 18-25, and older adults from 51-87 years. This group consisted mostly of university graduates and had a mean of ~15 year+ of formal education. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Result&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ToKPJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jensen's quotes on this test:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Her feats of calculation, with their extraordinary speed of processing&#xA;  numerical information, are of course so far beyond the normal&#xA;  distribution of capability in mental arithmetic that she is considered&#xA;  in a class with only a handful of the world's greatest mental&#xA;  calculations, past or present, on whose performance we have authentic&#xA;  records.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iSfTN31R6LU/Ung_4BdqQEI/AAAAAAAALiQ/y-6y7FfPrjk/s1600/India.JPG&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Google's tribute to Human Calculator&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21569" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-10T09:42:39.327" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T13:22:36.430" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17983" CreationDate="2014-08-14T17:14:48.557" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every year male elephant face a period called &lt;strong&gt;Musth&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Musth is a periodic condition in bull (male)&#xA;elephants, characterized by highly aggressive behavior and accompanied&#xA;by a large rise in reproductive hormones.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There chances that to overcome the high level of testosterone, they might (ahem) &amp;quot;trunk&amp;quot; themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rare behavior caught on camera, if you ever get to see an elephant&#xA;doing this you would at least know what he is up to. We were waiting&#xA;about 50 m away as this musth bull elephant slowly walked towards our&#xA;gypsy, flapping his ears and swinging his head. we were waiting for&#xA;the bull to display unpredictable, dominant, and excitable behavior,&#xA;but was amazed to see when he started pushing this huge tree and then&#xA;walked few steps and stood across the road. Then his penis protruded&#xA;out and he started to rub the tip of his penis under his own belly&#xA;vigorously for about 20 to 30 seconds. &lt;strong&gt;And then automatically&#xA;underwent in motion and postured as if he has climbed on top of a&#xA;female and ejaculated.&lt;/strong&gt;[3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They even show homosexuality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Homosexual behaviour is frequent in both sexes. As in heterosexual&#xA;interactions, this involves mounting. Male elephants sometimes&#xA;stimulate each other by playfighting and &amp;quot;championships&amp;quot; may form&#xA;between old bulls and younger males. Female same-sex behaviours have&#xA;been documented only in captivity where they are known to masturbate&#xA;one another with their trunks[4][5]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MOabZ.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MOabZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.indianaturewatch.net/images/album/photo/91504781053533a2905862.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;indianaturewatch.net&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musth&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://rep.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/rep/29/1/jrf_29_1_012.xml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PLASMA TESTOSTERONE LEVELS IN RELATION TO MUSTH AND SEXUAL ACTIVITY IN THE MALE&#xA;ASIATIC ELEPHANT, ELEPHAS MAXIMUS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170317161648/http://www.indianaturewatch.net/displayimage.php?id=473356&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt; Caught in Act 1 - Masturbating Musth Elephant&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.in/books?id=tmFJ1LhbVWcC&amp;amp;dq=isbn:1466809272&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=9qHtU6vMOcq78gXL3ILwDQ&amp;amp;redir_esc=y&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity, by Bruce Bagemihl&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21569" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2023-01-07T22:49:55.070" LastActivityDate="2023-01-07T22:49:55.070" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22846" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22470" CreationDate="2014-08-14T19:48:14.570" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to The Gospel Coalition - a Christian Organization that does report on the massive persecution of Christians worldwide, and which presumably would have the incentive to find this picture true, nonetheless they state &lt;strong&gt;this particular claim is &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegospelcoalition.org/article/factchecker-is-isis-beheading-children-in-iraq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;FALSE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The picture is clearly of a Yemeni child, not an Iraqi one.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Local reporters do not have this story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To wit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no doubt that &lt;a href=&quot;http://thegospelcoalition.org/article/the-faqs-persecution-of-christians-in-iraq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ISIS is persecuting the Christians in Mosul&lt;/a&gt; and other areas of Iraq. But almost all have already fled the city and the few that remain are continuing to leave the area. There are, however, journalists from Iraq and Western news agencies still in the city. Why have none of them taken photographs of these atrocities, or even reported on their occurrence? Why have such stories not been reported by the Christians who have fled to the cities controlled by the Kurds?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not to say there isn't massive persecution - Christians have pretty much been driven out of Mosul (old Ninevah, and the heart of the Christian Iraqi presence) but this direct photo is a fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This picture in particular showed in the context of a Syrian webpage. The article states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The photo originally appeared online April 11, 2014 on the Facebook page of a person from Yemen. Numerous people on that page attest that the clothes the child is wearing are obviously Yemeni. A few days later, though, the image started popping up on pro-Syrian Army websites claiming that it was an Armenian child who was taken by Syrian rebels. Whatever the original context for the photo, we know based on the date alone that it was not recently taken in Mosul or northern Iraq.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/Diary.Yamaniy/photos/a.317457881677738.73493.317413008348892/611685708921619/?type=1&amp;amp;stream_ref=10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is a facebook link to the picture, dated April 11, 2014:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5707" LastEditorUserId="5707" LastEditDate="2014-08-14T20:00:00.107" LastActivityDate="2014-08-14T20:00:00.107" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22815" CreationDate="2014-08-15T10:44:48.980" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Did Healthmap issue an alert about Ebola before the WHO announced an outbreak had been confirmed&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(question heavily paraphrased)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes (probably). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their alert was probably issued on the basis that one or more healthcare workers had blogged about their concerns that the illness they were confronting might be Ebola.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems the WHO wait for reports and confirmation before issuing announcements of an outbreak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(reference - see text of article linked in question) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Did a computer algorithm predict the 2014 Ebola outbreak&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The linked article is entitled &lt;em&gt;&quot;How A Computer Algorithm Predicted West Africa’s Ebola Outbreak Before It Was Announced&quot;&lt;/em&gt; and goes on to discuss Healthmap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim appears to be that Healthmap computer algorithms &lt;strong&gt;predicted&lt;/strong&gt; an Ebola outbreak 9 days before the WHO announced it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However Healthmap made no prediction saying something like  &quot;&lt;em&gt;there will be an Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 9 days time&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Healthmap issues alerts about recent historical events, it does not issue predictions about future events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the claim that Healthmap computer algorithms made a prediction is false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://publichealthwatch.wordpress.com/2014/08/10/how-a-computer-algorithm-predicted-west-africas-ebola-outbreak-before-it-was-announced/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article in question&lt;/a&gt; appears to be an entry on a personal blog written by &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://publichealthwatch.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a doctoral student working on my PhD in Social and Behavioral Health&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The body of the article doesn't attempt to support its headline. The claim in the headline may not be a serious or notable claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The body of the article supports a claim that Healthmap &lt;em&gt;announced&lt;/em&gt; possible cases of Ebola in West Africa before the WHO did. The article claims that Healthmap did this because Healthmap picks up on mentions of diseases in the personal blogs of healthworkers rather than only relying on official formal reports via national health agencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So how did a computer algorithm pick up on the start of the outbreak before the WHO? As it turns out, some of the first health care workers to see Ebola in Guinea regularly blog about their work. As they began to write about treating patients with Ebola-like symptoms, a few people on social media mentioned the blog posts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://healthmap.org/site/about&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;About Healthmap&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HealthMap, a team of researchers, epidemiologists and software developers at Boston Children's Hospital founded in 2006, is an established global leader in utilizing online informal sources for disease outbreak monitoring and real-time surveillance of emerging public health threats. The freely available Web site 'healthmap.org' and mobile app 'Outbreaks Near Me' deliver real-time intelligence on a broad range of emerging infectious diseases for a diverse audience including libraries, local health departments, governments, and international travelers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So its subject is near real-time monitoring of reports of health problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can sign up for email alerts. These are shown graphically on it's front page. A summary on that page counts numbers of alerts under various categories including &quot;Ebola(1543)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the Healthmap website I can find no predictions of future events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-08-15T15:52:19.860" LastActivityDate="2014-08-15T15:52:19.860" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22862" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22863" CreationDate="2014-08-16T10:30:59.377" Score="17" ViewCount="2515" Body="&lt;p&gt;This image is circulating on Facebook (at least among my South African friends). It strikes me as somewhere between an extraordinary claim and a completely vague claim. To what extent, if any, is this story true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZicJf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the late 1800s a baboon named Jack was employed by the railroad as a signalman in Cape Town, South Africa. He never once made a mistake and worked for the railroad until his death&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T13:26:51.070" Title="Did a baboon work for a South African railroad?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22862" CreationDate="2014-08-16T11:19:06.557" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes (but it was in Uitenhage, near Port Elizabeth, which is 700 km from Cape Town).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a detailed story about that here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earthfoot.org/lit_zone/signalmn.htm&quot;&gt;Jack the Signalman&#xA;by Pieter du Plessis ©&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The background details in the story should help you decide whether to believe it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It includes the following which says that he did &quot;work for the railroad&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jack has passed his test with flying colours and were duly employed by the authorities and from that day became known as Jack the Signalman. Bot not only did he get his monthly rations from the government but he also received an employment number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story doesn't provide physical evidence or eye-witness reports, but suggests where some might be found: it ends with,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During 1890 Jack got sick and contracted tuberculosis and died, Wide was inconsolable to the loss of his friend as they were inseparable. Jack’s skull is on display in the Albany Museum in Grahamstown and a photographic museum were established at the old Uitenhage station that can be visited on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays only.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://steam-locomotives-south-africa.blogspot.fr/2009/06/uitenhage-old-railway-station-museum.html&quot;&gt;This blog entry&lt;/a&gt; appears to be a visitor's account of their visit to old Uitenhage station. It has a section on Jack the signalman, and includes several photographs showing Jack and his master.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2209&amp;amp;dat=19901111&amp;amp;id=S7FKAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=WJQMAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=4727,2567222&quot;&gt;This link&lt;/a&gt; is to an article in The Telegraph dated November 11, 1990. It repeats (confirms) the story of Jack, and says that the original story of Jack was published in &quot;Nature, the science journal&quot;, in its July 24, 1890 issue. It says that Nature has just published a correction to that story (perhaps a record-breaking correction, being 100 years later): the correction being that Jack worked in Uitenhage in the Cape, not in Natal as Nature had originally reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Baboons are somewhat trainable (as shown for example in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTYrZ_Lh3Aw&quot;&gt;Baboon Training Pt. 2&lt;/a&gt; video on Youtube, and this story titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/animals/zoo-animals/baboons-words-120412.htm&quot;&gt;ZOO ANIMALS&#xA;Baboons Can Recognize Words&lt;/a&gt;, so the story isn't completely impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-08-16T20:24:30.460" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T20:24:30.460" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22864" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-16T11:37:11.593" Score="69" ViewCount="16510" Body="&lt;p&gt;This image is widely shared on &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Faizie143/status/500024223168208896&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;social media&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nrVnQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did they really do that? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The photo seems real because there is what appears to be Hebrew letters in the background and the uniforms look right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21713" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T10:08:43.313" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T11:03:47.387" Title="Did smiling, female Israeli soldiers pose with &quot;We kill Children&quot; placards during Gaza War?" Tags="|war|israel|photography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22864" CreationDate="2014-08-16T12:18:22.363" Score="181" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; No, the image is photo-shopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is shown by: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Finding an earlier published image which is extremely similar, aside from the content of the placard being Israeli flag (star of David) instead of a message; and no other changes aside from minor image processing ones (different compression ratio, minor cropping)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Preponderance of circumstantial evidence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Image processing evidence (image differences are consistent with photo editing being applied to produce the OP's Twitter image)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lack of evidence that Twitter image originated from an Israeli soldier despite 200+ reposts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evidence 1:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?tbs=sbi: &quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Image Search on this image&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the 200+ hits, NONE of them were from an Israeli or pro-Israeli website. The image resides exclusively in Arab or anti-Israeli social media feeds and blogs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that there are TWO data points here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;most of the image's copes seen on Twitter and FB are dated &lt;strong&gt;from August 3d and on&lt;/strong&gt;. I haven't found a single earlier image &lt;em&gt;(this isn't proof by itself, but a data point for proof in Evidence #2)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;NONE of the posts linked to the original source of the image on &quot;Israeli&quot; side to prove its originality. &lt;em&gt;(Circumstantial evidence)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evidence 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/StandWithUs/photos/pcb.10152272986332689/10152272984082689/?type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;VERY similar image&lt;/a&gt; was posted on an Israeli web site &lt;strong&gt;on July 31, 2014&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/StandWithUs/posts/10152272986332689&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;StandWithUs Facebook page&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AbiVB.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the image is nearly identical, save for placards being Israeli flag instead of the offensive message, and being slightly better quality subjectively (I didn't analyze EXIF data, however).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of right now, I have no formal proof for &quot;nearly identical&quot;, but seeking a good methodology to prove that.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evidence 3:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also compared EXIF info from 2 images : &lt;a href=&quot;http://regex.info/exif.cgi?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Ffbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net%2Fhphotos-ak-xfp1%2Ft1.0-9%2F10372507_10152272984082689_5047589069218126035_n.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2014/07/31 original&lt;/a&gt; vs &lt;a href=&quot;http://regex.info/exif.cgi?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fpbs.twimg.com%2Fmedia%2FBvBxYV-IIAAoFe1.jpg%3Alarge&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2014/08/xx twitter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.photometadata.org/meta-resources-field-guide-to-metadata#Original%20Transmission%20Reference&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Original Transmission Reference&lt;/a&gt; field (aka &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.photometadata.org/meta-resources-field-guide-to-metadata#Job%20Identifier&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Job Identifier&lt;/a&gt;)... while the Twitter one doesn't; which - while not a proof - is consistent with an image taken with a camera vs. one saved in image editing program. &lt;a href=&quot;https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/53528/is-it-possible-to-infer-that-an-image-is-a-photoshop-if-only-one-has-original-t?noredirect=1#comment93156_53528&quot;&gt;I asked for whether it's a valid conclusion on Photography.SE&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;(Circumstantial evidence)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evidence 4:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The overall quality of the presumed-original image is higher. For examples, the people in front of white car on the left have more defined skin tone on their hands, and overall the image looks sharper, despite being smaller file size as per EXIF data. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evidence 5:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The twitter image is SMALLER, it's cropped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The presumed-original, for example, shows a human shadow all the way on the right of the image missing from the photoshop copy (and the second word of the text is fully visible as opposed to being cut off at 1 letter); as well as the headlight of the white car on the left of the image.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evidence 6:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the women are holding are binders (you can see the binding spiral on top of them). Having a binder with a slogan used as a poster is not exactly normal or ever done (whereas putting a country flag on top of a binder is quite plausible). &lt;em&gt;(Circumstantial evidence)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UN-CITED ASSUMPTIONS&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That you can not easily change the posting date of a Facebook image (Evidence #2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or that Facebook itself isn't part of a cover-up by changing the date.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That the 2 images are indeed almost identical, aside from slight cropping and the placard content.  (Evidence #2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One one hand, human brain is known to be very good at assessing such similarity (again, citation needed) and clearly a vast majority of voters agree. On the other hand, that's not formal proof even so, and it's a logical fallacy to rely on &quot;majority of voters agree&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, I posted &lt;a href=&quot;https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/53620/seeking-a-way-for-authoritiative-proven-method-to-prove-that-two-photo-images&quot;&gt;a question on Photography.SE&lt;/a&gt; for a way to more formally compare 2 images. If it doesn't get closed as offtopic, I will apply whatever solution gets proposed here as further proof of this assumption.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That it's very hard to &quot;uncrop&quot; an image, or add quality. (Evidence #4/5).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(as opposed to cropping it and reducing quality due to lossy compression).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;People don't usually use pre-printed spiral binders to print posters as a rule. (Evidence #6).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:43:53.423" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T11:03:47.387" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22870" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-16T20:48:35.150" Score="38" ViewCount="14592" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was always told that I should cut off the black ending of a banana before eating, because it would be dangerous. Sources for this claim can for example be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://girlshowtoimpress.com/youll-get-sick-if-you-wont-cut-off-a-black-ending-of-the-banana/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (though that source is actually rebuking the claim, but I was not able to find any other online sources). Is it indeed true that eating this black ending is unhealthy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wVRKE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wVRKE.jpg&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.szwed.hekko.pl/inne.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source of the image&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21721" LastEditorUserId="18335" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T19:19:09.573" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T21:16:27.540" Title="Should I cut off black banana ending before eating?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|safety|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22872" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-16T23:14:20.177" Score="7" ViewCount="514" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many claims that the US created and funded the terrorist group known as &quot;Al-Qaeda&quot;. &lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA%E2%80%93al-Qaeda_controversy&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalresearch.ca/more-evidence-u-s-funds-al-qaeda-terrorists-in-syria/5376522&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=0228&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt; and so on...&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But how legitimate are those claims? Did the US &lt;strong&gt;really&lt;/strong&gt; create al-Qaeda?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21723" LastActivityDate="2014-08-16T23:14:20.177" Title="Did the US create and fund al-Qaeda?" Tags="|united-states|terrorism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2014-08-17T00:25:35.797" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22873" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22874" CreationDate="2014-08-17T00:51:50.487" Score="4" ViewCount="3076" Body="&lt;p&gt;On various web/quote pages for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quotes.net/quote/34375&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/24356.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, Horace is alleged to have said,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Make money, money by fair means if you can, if not, by any means make money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did he write this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did he intend this as advice, or is it quoted out of context?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the word &quot;make&quot; in this phrase have the meaning which &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/10894/2703&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; describes as the 3rd meaning of 'make', i.e. &quot;Increasing the amount of wealth in the world through productive work&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T01:50:10.933" Title="Did Horace say this quote about money?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22874" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22873" CreationDate="2014-08-17T01:43:50.550" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The phrase was discussed on Google Answers, &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/113236.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (a topic titled &quot;Q: A Question only Bobbyd should answer&quot; posted &quot;23 Nov 2002 10:38 PST&quot;), which identifies the phrase as coming from Epistles Book 1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A copy of the Latin phrase is found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/horace/epist1.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Isne tibi melius suadet, qui 'rem facias, rem,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  si possis, recte, si non, quocumque modo rem,'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My literal translation (translating 'rem' as 'money'):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is he to you better he who persuades, &quot;make money, money, if possible, uprightly, if not, by any means money&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/HoraceEpistlesBkIEpI.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another translation&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is he better for you who tells you: ‘Make cash,&#xA;  Honest cash if you can, if not, cash by any means,’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Did he write this?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistles_(Horace)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Horace's epistles&lt;/a&gt; are well-known, and the literal translation of what he said is close to the idiomatic translation in the OP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Did he intend this as advice, or is it quoted out of context?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quoted out of context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistles_(Horace)#Book_1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; summarizes the lines (by quoting summaries taken from a book) as,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;41-69 - Men will do and suffer anything to avoid poverty, but they will do nothing to gain virtue, which is more precious than gold. A clear conscience makes a man truly a king.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/HoraceEpistlesBkIEpI.htm#_Toc98156302&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a translation of the whole verse,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Money or virtue?&#xA;&#xA;Virtue is to flee vice, and wisdoms’ beginning is&#xA;Freedom from foolishness. See all your anxious thoughts&#xA;And risks to avoid what you deem the worst of evils,&#xA;Too meagre a fortune, some shameful lost election:&#xA;Eager for trade you dash off to farthest India,&#xA;Avoiding poverty with seas, shoals and flames:&#xA;Why not listen to, learn to trust, one wiser than yourself,&#xA;Cease to care for what you foolishly gaze at and crave?&#xA;What wrestler at village crossroads and country fairs&#xA;Would refuse the crown at mighty Olympia,&#xA;Given the hope, the prize of a dust-free victor’s palm?&#xA;Silver’s worth less than gold, gold’s worth less than virtue.&#xA;‘Citizens, O Citizens, first you must search for wealth,&#xA;Cash before virtue!’ So Janus’ arcade proclaims&#xA;From end to end, this saying old and young recite&#xA;Slate and satchel slung over their left shoulders.&#xA;You’ve a mind, character, eloquence, honour, but wait:&#xA;You’re a few thousand short of the needed four hundred:&#xA;You’ll be a pleb. Yet boys, playing, sing: ‘You’ll be king&#xA;If you act rightly.’ Let that be your wall of bronze,&#xA;To be free of guilt, with no wrongs to cause you pallor.&#xA;Tell me, please, what’s better, a Roscian privilege,&#xA;Or the children’s rhyme of a kingdom for doing right,&#xA;Sung once by real men like Curius and Camillus?&#xA;Is he better for you who tells you: ‘Make cash,&#xA;Honest cash if you can, if not, cash by any means,’&#xA;Just for a closer view of Pupius’ sad plays,&#xA;Or he who in person exhorts and equips you&#xA;To stand free and erect, defying fierce Fortune?&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's clear that he's not advising people to make money, whether correctly or otherwise: he is giving that as an example of bad advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Does 'make' here mean 'Increasing the amount of wealth in the world through productive work'?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Horace thinks it's a bad/dishonourable activity, whereas &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/10894/2703&quot;&gt;Ayn Rand's meaning of it&lt;/a&gt; is as something to be proud of&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The next set of lines include what should presumably be understood as the &quot;cash by any means&quot; method of making money:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                              What should I follow&#xA;Or whom? Some are eager for civil contracts: some&#xA;Hunt wealthy widows with fruits and titbits, or catch&#xA;Old men in nets to stock their reserves. With many&#xA;Interest quietly adds to their wealth.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's clear that the &quot;making money&quot; described by Horace should not be understood as an honourable and productive activity described by Ayn Rand, i.e. it has almost the opposite 'meaning'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T01:50:10.933" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22875" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-17T03:03:20.640" Score="11" ViewCount="1307" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Wikipedia article on &lt;strong&gt;Norman Borlaug&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with &lt;strong&gt;saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  .&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (&lt;em&gt;Wiki's reference&lt;/em&gt;:  The phrase &quot;over a billion lives saved&quot; is often cited by others in reference to Norman Borlaug's work (e.g., [1]). According to Jan Douglas here, Executive Assistant to the World Prize Foundation, the source of this number is Gregg Easterbrook's 1997 article &quot;Forgotten Benefactor of Humanity&quot;, the article states that the &quot;form of agriculture that Borlaug preaches may have prevented a billion deaths.&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Borlaug was also featured in an episode of Penn &amp;amp; Teller: Bullshit!, where he was referred to as the &quot;Greatest Human Being That Ever Lived&quot;. ...Penn ... says, &quot;Norman is the greatest human being, and you've probably never heard of him.&quot; In the episode — the topic of which was genetically altered food — &lt;strong&gt;he is credited with saving the lives of over a billion people.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have access to either the article mentioned in the reference or Penn and Teller material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it a reliable claim? Is there official scientific research and statistics backing the 1 billion number?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I don't mean to question the undeniable accomplishments of Norman Borlaug, merely the popular expression associated with him).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21713" LastActivityDate="2017-03-23T05:00:35.670" Title="Did Norman Borlaug save a billion lives?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22876" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-17T03:10:17.883" Score="4" ViewCount="265" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B001G7QFVO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amazon product description&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B001G7QFVO&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Boiron Homeopathic Medicine Calendula Gel for Burns, Scrapes and Skin Irritations, 2.6-Ounce Tubes (Pack of 3)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Use Calendula Gel to promote healing of minor burns, scrapes and skin irritations. Also relieves sunburn and minor cuts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any evidence (trials, research) that this gel does promote healing of minor burns?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question is &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; about efficacy of the specific product vs not using any product at all; leaving aside separate questions of whether homeopathy works in general and whether - assuming the gel is proven to work - the mechanism of its work is due to homeopathy as Boiron claims, or something completely different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21713" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-17T04:33:02.823" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T08:34:59.313" Title="Does Calendula Gel promote healing of minor burns?" Tags="|medical-science|homeopathy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22880" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22876" CreationDate="2014-08-17T08:34:59.313" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;First of all, I don't see how this is considered &quot;homeopathic&quot; because it is sold in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy#.22Active.22_ingredients&quot;&gt;1X concentration&lt;/a&gt;. This means that the active ingredient is 10% concentrated and thus the drug works like any other herbal product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, the plant itself is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendula_officinalis#Pharmacology&quot;&gt;known for its medicinal properties as an antiseptic&lt;/a&gt; - and not as a skin irritant as homeopathy would need it. This is obviously not a &quot;homeopathic&quot; medicine but a herbal medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More specifically to your question, there have been clinical studies, sponsored by Boiron but published on peer-reviewed journals attesting its efficacy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Calendula is highly effective for the prevention of acute dermatitis of grade 2 or higher and should be proposed for patients undergoing postoperative irradiation for breast cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jco.ascopubs.org/content/22/8/1447.short&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Phase III Randomized Trial of Calendula Officinalis Compared With Trolamine for the Prevention of Acute Dermatitis During Irradiation for Breast Cancer&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;P. Pommier &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt;, doi: 10.1200/JCO.2004.07.063, JCO April 15, 2004 vol. 22 no. 8 1447-1453&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That there is plenty of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378874109007740&quot;&gt;other scientific literature&lt;/a&gt; not contesting its value as a folk remedy for skin irritation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The toxicity of the component needs to be studied more according to a 2001 report, at least for large-scale cosmetic use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] it is concluded that the available data are insufficient to support the safety of these ingredients in cosmetic formulations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear, this should not be taken as a particularly warning sign as the component is relatively non-toxic in animal testing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acute toxicity studies in rats and mice indicate that the extract is relatively nontoxic. Animal tests showed at most minimal skin irritation, and no sensitization or phototoxicity. Minimal ocular irritation was seen with one formulation and no irritation with others. Six saponins isolated from C. officinalis flowers were not mutagenic in an Ames test, and a tea derived from C. officinalis was not genotoxic in Drosophila melanogaster. No carcinogenicity or reproductive and developmental toxicity data were available. Clinical testing of cosmetic formulations containing the extract elicited little irritation or sensitization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11558637&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Final report on the safety assessment of Calendula officinalis extract and Calendula officinalis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Int J Toxicol. 2001;20 Suppl 2:13-20.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T08:34:59.313" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22881" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-17T14:14:18.240" Score="5" ViewCount="1251" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://myculturedpalate.com/blog/2013/03/11/tea-bags-a-natural-remedy-for-pink-eye/&quot;&gt;http://myculturedpalate.com/blog/2013/03/11/tea-bags-a-natural-remedy-for-pink-eye/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;a href=&quot;http://altmedicine.about.com/od/healthconditionsdisease/a/pinkeye.htm&quot;&gt;http://altmedicine.about.com/od/healthconditionsdisease/a/pinkeye.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chamomile is also used in folk medicine to treat pink eye. Brewing a cup of chamomile tea, removing the tea bag and allowing it to cool, and placing the bag over your infected eye may help alleviate irritation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.streetdirectory.com/food_editorials/beverages/coffee/salt_teabags_and_coffee_home_remedies_for_pink_eye.html&quot;&gt;http://www.streetdirectory.com/food_editorials/beverages/coffee/salt_teabags_and_coffee_home_remedies_for_pink_eye.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quite a number of pink eye patients claim that tea bags work especially well for most sore eyes cases, specifically the black tea bags. This solution may also be combined with some amount of honey. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21713" LastEditorDisplayName="user21713" LastEditDate="2014-08-17T14:19:48.780" LastActivityDate="2016-07-07T14:59:14.227" Title="Are regular tea bags effective in treating pink eye?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22882" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22883" CreationDate="2014-08-17T20:20:26.183" Score="6" ViewCount="1231" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been forced to see an image countless times on my Facebook news feed.The picture shows this massive circle on a mans should that's bulging out and the circle has several honey comb like chambers with what appears to be a nested worm inside the middle of the honey comb cavern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I must warn you it's not pleasant, but &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/d2TCg.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here is the picture&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidently from the little bit I've gathered there is a soap in distribution that causes or caused people(s) to get a large parasite. There isn't much detail on what this whole story or parasite is other than the line, &quot;Retweet/Repost this before it spreads!&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not like medically-related topics - especially deformities like these. They just really give me goose bumps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone please shine some light on what exactly this disgusting thing is, whether or not its real, and if it is real how you know it's real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21732" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T00:19:41.127" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T00:19:41.127" Title="Is this an authentic photo of a parasite infection on a man's shoulder?" Tags="|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22882" CreationDate="2014-08-17T20:26:07.533" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/headshoulders.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; already covered this one. It's a composite image of a man and a lotus seed pod.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The static image accompanying the posts was the one displayed above, which allegedly pictures some form of bizarre injury or infection that befall a user of that brand of shampoo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image itself is a hoax, a fabrication that imitates a notorious fake photograph of a supposed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/photos/medical/breastrash.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;'breast rash&lt;/a&gt; caused by South American larvae' (created by merging a picture of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?newwindow=1&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;site=imghp&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;source=hp&amp;amp;biw=1600&amp;amp;bih=775&amp;amp;q=%22lotus+seed+pod%22&amp;amp;oq=%22lotus+seed+pod%22&amp;amp;gs_l=img.3..0l10.703.4614.0.4750.22.19.3.0.0.0.151.1526.15j4.19.0....0...1ac.1.48.img..1.21.1469.ciT7t23HS88&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lotus seed pod&lt;/a&gt; with a picture of a human shoulder) which has been circulating on the Internet since 2003 [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8323" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-17T20:32:07.983" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22885" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-17T21:59:59.090" Score="9" ViewCount="717" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9DvnP8Yn88&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt;, kinda went viral, the description says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Date of sighting: August 4, 2014 Location of sighting: International&#xA;  Space Station (ISS)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hey everyone, I was watching the live cam and caught this glowing disk&#xA;  in the distance. I took a screenshot of the UFO and enlarged it. It&#xA;  has a long line down its middle and a dome on its top, but is&#xA;  rectangle on its lower bottom. You can see the photos of this at my&#xA;  site, www.ufosightingsdaily.com NASA did go to blue screen as soon as&#xA;  they noticed the UFO. When they brought the cam back online again, the&#xA;  UFO was gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this indeed (as implied) a spaceship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13947" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T09:37:24.363" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T11:21:49.633" Title="Was an unidentified spaceship recorded by the International Space Station, August 4, 2014?" Tags="|ufo|nasa|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22886" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-17T22:04:54.920" Score="5" ViewCount="540" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/news/179844-osama-isis-iraq-letter/&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt;, originally posted on the daily mail, basically says that bin laden warned his people from ISIS, saying that they are brutal, you can read the article for more info. Is there any truth to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13947" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T10:21:12.963" Title="Did Bin Laden warned his people from ISIS?" Tags="|terrorism|isis|osama-bin-laden|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="27" ClosedDate="2014-08-18T10:21:17.293" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22888" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-17T23:34:06.340" Score="21" ViewCount="1134" Body="&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.which.co.uk/technology/news/how-clean-is-your-mobile-a-which-hygiene-investigation/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How clean is your iPad? – a “Which?” hygiene investigation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use them every day while eating lunch or a snack, but new Which? research has revealed tablets, smartphones and keyboards may have more bacteria lurking on them than an office toilet seat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iaeas.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iaeasm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;How clean is your tablet? Tablet: 600, Smartphone: 140, Toilet seat: &amp;lt;20 (Staphylococcus aureaus, amount in units per swab)&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;British watchdog &lt;em&gt;Which?&lt;/em&gt; claims that our smartphones, keyboards, and tablets are more contaminated with &lt;em&gt;Staphylococcus aureus&lt;/em&gt; than a public toilet seat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it seems a bit exaggerated, I wonder whether it is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T13:41:03.770" Title="Are smartphones, keyboards, and tablets more contaminated with Staphylococcus aureus than a public toilet seat?" Tags="|hygiene|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22889" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-18T02:56:19.367" Score="8" ViewCount="450" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a 2012 blog article at &lt;a href=&quot;http://mondoweiss.net/2012/11/dissecting-idf-propaganda-the-numbers-behind-the-rocket-attacks.html&quot;&gt;Mondoweiss&lt;/a&gt;, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were exaggerating the numbers of deaths from Hamas rockets: (abbreviated)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Number of rocket/mortar fatalities by year, 2006–2011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;            IDF claim   Established&#xA;    2006    9           4&#xA;    2007    10          2&#xA;    2008    15          8&#xA;    2009    2           0&#xA;    2010    5           1&#xA;    2011    3           2&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For 2006, it is unknown how the IDF transformed four rocket fatalities into nine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For 2007, it is unknown how the IDF transformed two fatalities into ten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For 2008, it is unknown how the IDF transformed eight fatalities into fifteen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For 2009, there were no deaths in Israel from Gaza rockets or mortars.  The only way to claim two fatalities would be to include the deaths of two soldiers engaged in a military invasion inside the Gaza Strip, which would be misleading for the message being conveyed by the infographic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For 2010, it is unknown how the IDF transformed one fatality into five.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus, for 2011, the IDF number is correct if we include an anti-tank missile strike on April 7.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the infographic, all of the IDF’s fatality numbers are exaggerated, with the exception of the fatality number for 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So whose numbers are accurate (if any)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T03:57:41.587" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T13:56:20.720" Title="Did the IDF inflate the numbers of rocket casualties?" Tags="|israel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22890" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-18T03:33:25.557" Score="23" ViewCount="7202" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been told that Carbon Dioxide (CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;) dissolved in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonated_water&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;carbonated water&lt;/a&gt; produces &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonic_acid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;carbonic acid&lt;/a&gt;, that can attack your tooth enamel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-113900/The-snacks-harm-teeth.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;believe it or not sparkling water is almost as damaging to your teeth as flavoured fizzy drinks.&#xA;  This is because your teeth are constantly being bathed in a weak acid solution containing carbon dioxide - thought to wear away our teeth. After repeated attacks over several years, this acid can erode the enamel - the hard part of our teeth made from calcium salts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that this is a significant cause of tooth damage, in the dosages one might expect to drink?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there are other questions asking about flavoured sodas (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6191/does-diet-soda-cause-tooth-decay&quot;&gt;Does (diet) soda cause tooth decay?&lt;/a&gt;), however, my question is about unsweetened and unflavoured tap water, that has been carbonated with CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21748" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2016-06-14T12:39:52.823" Title="Does unflavoured carbonated water cause damage to teeth?" Tags="|nutrition|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22896" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-18T12:35:34.213" Score="5" ViewCount="602" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.womenshealthmag.com/sex-and-relationships/morning-sex&quot;&gt;http://www.womenshealthmag.com/sex-and-relationships/morning-sex&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Morning sex can strengthen your immune system for the day by enhancing your levels of IgA, an antibody that protects against infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can morning sex strengthen your immune system for the day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T10:48:41.277" Title="Can morning sex strengthen your immune system for the day?" Tags="|sexuality|immune-system|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22896" CreationDate="2014-08-18T13:36:33.170" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article you link to quotes &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debby_Herbenick&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Debby Herbenick&lt;/a&gt; for this statement. There are studies showing the levels of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunoglobulin_A&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Immunoglobulin A&lt;/a&gt; (IgA) are increased after morning exercise and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15217036&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt; that indicate increased levels of IgA correlated with sexual activity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IgA has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/mi/journal/v1/n1/full/mi20076a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;shown&lt;/a&gt; to be vital in mucosal immunity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general, immunization or infection at mucous membranes resulted in high titer of protective antibodies at the mucosal site with absent or low titers in serum, whereas the reverse occurred with parenteral immunization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/mi/journal/v1/n1/full/mi20076a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mucosal Immunology (2008)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supporting the claim by Debby Herbenick, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15217036&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a study by Carl Charnetski and Francis Brennan&lt;/a&gt; showed a positive correlation between higher sexual activity and IgA levels in college students. Noting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Individuals in the frequent group showed significantly higher levels&#xA;  of IgA than the other three groups, which were comparable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(source: Psychol &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15217036&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rep. 2004 Jun;94(3 Pt 1):839-44.4&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there have been studies on the effects on the immune system in the broader category of physical exercise too. The positive effects found from such exercise indicate that the source effect is not purely from sex, but either additive or interactive with the effect from generic physical activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Findings indicated that long and intensive exercises weaken the&#xA;  immune system, while moderate and short drills strengthened this&#xA;  system. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3445646/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Asian J Sports Med. Sep 2012; 3(3): 185–192.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, it seems fair to assume a positive effect on IgA levels from morning sex. Based on the study by Hejazi and Hosseini, I'd advise the 'short drill' version to avoid an inadvertent negative effect stemming from endurance exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20991" LastEditorUserId="20991" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T10:48:41.277" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T10:48:41.277" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22890" CreationDate="2014-08-18T14:43:11.573" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11556958&quot;&gt;journal article&lt;/a&gt; on the topic found a negligible (but non-zero) effect of carbonated waters on tooth enamel. The claim in the Daily Mail is clearly in dissonance with the results from this study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dissolution levels with all of the mineral waters were very low and for several still waters were undetectable. (...) De-gassing of a sparkling mineral water reduced its dissolution, but the total levels were still relatively low suggesting that carbonation of drinks may not be an important factor per se in respect of erosive potential. The complex and heterogeneous mineral compositions of mineral waters could influence the dissolution equilibrium of apatite in enamel and controlled addition of several ions to ultrapure deionized water was investigated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11556958&quot;&gt;J Oral Rehabil. 2001 Aug;28(8):766-72&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that carbonated water harms teeth may be based on the fact that dissolving carbon dioxide in water results in some carbonic acid. However, this did not result significant enamel decay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When carbon dioxide is dissolved in water, small amounts of carbonic&#xA;  acid are formed, making the water slightly more acidic. However, when&#xA;  researchers soaked human teeth in various still and sparkling waters,&#xA;  they found that neither were harmful to the teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/health-fitness/healthy-eating/is-carbonated-water-bad-for-you?page=1&amp;amp;WT_mc_id=11052#sthash.75KuSkUy.dpuf&quot;&gt;Nutrition Diva: Is Carbonated Water Bad for You?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20991" LastEditorUserId="20991" LastEditDate="2014-08-18T15:01:10.677" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T15:01:10.677" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22875" CreationDate="2014-08-18T15:34:12.323" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there official scientific research and statistics backing the 1 billion number?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Penn and Teller video he was credited with saving a billion lives when he was awarded his Nobel prize (but I haven't found confirmation of that).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there's a book of which:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceheroes.com/images/stories/Book/Chapter5NormanBorlaug.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This chapter&lt;/a&gt; alleges that the number was 245 million.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=68&amp;amp;Itemid=116&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This web page&lt;/a&gt; claims that the number today is 280 million, and says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are numerous published reports that Norman Borlaug, through the green revolution, saved over a billion lives, but there seem to be no sources of statistics backing up these statements. They seemed to have arisen due to predicted apocalyptic famines. The famines were unlikely to have occurred on the scale predicted with or without the green revolution. However, this does not lessen the impact of the green revolution on mortality. Numerous studies have shown that childhood nutrition has an emphatic effect on childhood mortality and longevity. Gabriel Popkin, the science fact checker for the book, compiled statistics on the changes the green revolution brought to nutritional levels in children in parts of the world most affected by the green revolution, and its affect on childhood mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scienceheroes.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=44&amp;amp;Itemid=57&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This web page&lt;/a&gt; is from the statistician who explains how she determines the &quot;number of lives saved&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mention this to say that there one book (i.e. one piece of presumably-peer-reviewed evidence) titled &quot;Scientists Greater than Einstein&quot; which has an answer to this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T15:34:12.323" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22889" CreationDate="2014-08-18T15:40:04.450" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Going based on the list of deaths &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/statistics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;from this source&lt;/a&gt;, which provided many of the numbers used in the OP's linked article, it looks like it might be definitional difference, but I can't explain all the numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The numbers provided by the IDF are much closer to &lt;strong&gt;deaths by gunfire, rockets, explosives and other weaponry&lt;/strong&gt;, while the &quot;Established&quot; numbers match to just rocket attacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gsmb0.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note that &quot;Other&quot; deaths are violent too, but not included in my definition.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see that using this definition, the IDF numbers for 2006, 2008, and 2011 are actually accurate.  2010 also matches &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you include the 5 deaths by gunfire near Hebron (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/israeli_civilians/20100614&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;incident 1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btselem.org/israeli_civilians/20100901&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;incident 2&lt;/a&gt;).  Thus claiming that it's &lt;em&gt;just&lt;/em&gt; rocket fire is inaccurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that this analysis &lt;em&gt;does not cross reference other sources&lt;/em&gt;.  I don't know how accurate the B'Tselem information is, nor have I checked the IDF's offical numbers myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastActivityDate="2014-08-18T15:40:04.450" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-19T02:17:00.307" Score="2" ViewCount="247" Body="&lt;p&gt;It always seems odd that many famous people/celebrities seem to get off of crimes with barely a scratch or dent, yet ordinary people who get into trouble end up paying for it far longer than  others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Or am I just experiencing some confusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11227" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T02:17:00.307" Title="Do celebrities/famous people get preferential treatment when convicted of crimes?" Tags="|celebrities|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-08-19T06:31:30.743" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22909" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-19T09:12:57.450" Score="8" ViewCount="132" Body="&lt;p&gt;It may be an old wives tale (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.city-data.com/forum/health-wellness/626346-why-does-sound-feel-water-make.html&quot;&gt;http://www.city-data.com/forum/health-wellness/626346-why-does-sound-feel-water-make.html&lt;/a&gt;). Is there any truth to it? Need definitive sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8542" LastEditorUserId="8542" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T11:05:36.677" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T11:05:36.677" Title="Does Shh.. sound help kids to urinate?" Tags="|children|urine|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-08-19T17:29:23.260" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22913" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-19T18:45:17.063" Score="4" ViewCount="135" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.reuters.com/article/2009/05/07/uk-britain-death-nitschke-idUKTRE5466E320090507&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reuters article&lt;/a&gt; reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Nitschke&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr Philip Nitschke&lt;/a&gt;, who says he was the first doctor in the world to&#xA;  administer a legal, voluntary, lethal injection, said it is time for&#xA;  Britain and others to heed growing calls for choice about dying, and&#xA;  allow access to effective suicide drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That claim is echoed in other places, such as this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/may/08/assisted-suicide-euthanasia-philip-nitschke&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Guardian article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Philip Nitschke was the first doctor in the world to legally&#xA;  administer a lethal injection&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The event happened in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/26/world/australian-man-first-in-world-to-die-with-legal-euthanasia.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1996&lt;/a&gt;, which sounds pretty late to me. Is Philip Nitschke the first doctor in the world to administer a legal, voluntary, lethal injection?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds surprising to me because I would bet that at least some countries had some loophole or more lenient laws that didn't make euthanasia illegal. E.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_euthanasia#Uruguay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Uruguay&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since 1932 the Penal Code of Uruguay, article 37, accept Compassionate&#xA;  Homicide, the first legal document that include euthanasia. It's&#xA;  important to say that this legal document didn't use this&#xA;  denomination. In another article, 127, the judge could waive the&#xA;  doctor, if this action was made by patient pledge and the doctor had&#xA;  an honorable reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="7654" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T19:05:48.283" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T19:05:48.283" Title="Is Philip Nitschke the first doctor in the world to administer a legal, voluntary, lethal injection, in 1996?" Tags="|healthcare|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22479" CreationDate="2014-08-19T18:46:56.457" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few days ago correspondents of two British newspapers, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/14/russian-military-vehicles-enter-ukraine-aid-convoy-stops-short-border&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11035401/Russian-armoured-vehicles-and-military-trucks-cross-border-into-Ukraine.html&quot;&gt;The Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;, saw a column of 23 armored personnel carriers entering Ukraine from Russia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, volunteers are unable to buy that kind of military equipment without the assistance from Russian government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt; As pointed by the commenter @ChrisW, both articles have direct evidence there were Russian military vehicles in the convoy. For example, The Telegraph wrote: &lt;em&gt;While the APCs carried no visible markings the fuel tankers and soft-skinned trucks in the convoy bore black Russian military number plates.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21776" LastEditorUserId="21776" LastEditDate="2014-08-19T22:15:21.777" LastActivityDate="2014-08-19T22:15:21.777" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22917" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22927" CreationDate="2014-08-20T07:37:55.503" Score="57" ViewCount="8982" Body="&lt;p&gt;Slate published an article recently, titled &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/08/15/shark_attacks_threaten_google_s_undersea_internet_cables_video.html&quot;&gt;The Global Internet Is Being Attacked by Sharks, Google Confirms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Despite being catchy and all, most of the references seem to be other news outlets or actually contradict the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any sources supporting or contradicting that sharks are a threat to undersea cables?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13755" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2016-03-22T12:43:46.367" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T12:43:46.367" Title="Are sharks a threat to undersea cables?" Tags="|internet|oceanography|sharks|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22918" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-20T07:52:27.067" Score="2" ViewCount="124" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am well aware that &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/21985/have-giant-human-skeletons-been-found&quot;&gt;there is a question and answer&lt;/a&gt; on this site that debunks the existence of giant humans, but I am still fascinated by them when I read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epicadamwildlife.com/2013/06/29/giant-human-skeleton-discovered&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this report&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually I am skeptical of these claims, but now we have a youtube video purportedly showing the skull of a GIANT HUMAN, so this does make my belief waver somewhat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azjWu6Uva8k&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The giant human youtube link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the above report credible? Did giant human ever exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="214" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T07:52:27.067" Title="Did Giant Humans exist?" Tags="|archeology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-08-20T08:53:01.970" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22926" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-20T12:00:43.753" Score="5" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/08/20/media-making-up-the-mob-journalists-amid-protesters-in-ferguson-mo/&quot;&gt;Media making up the mob: Journalists amid protesters in Ferguson, Mo.&lt;/a&gt; in the Washington Post, it's claimed there's as many media staff as protestors in Ferguson:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Early Wednesday, Lowery estimated that the size of the group&#xA;  protesting and the media covering it was about even — between 100 and&#xA;  150 of each.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is repeated in the summary text for a &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/abbydphillip/status/502052531259052032&quot;&gt;tweet linking to the article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T12:00:43.753" Title="Is there as many media staff as protestors in Ferguson?" Tags="|united-states|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2014-08-20T16:42:05.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22917" CreationDate="2014-08-20T12:28:56.193" Score="69" Body="&lt;p&gt;Below are points of evidence supporting the fact that sharks are a threat to undersea cables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EVIDENCE 1:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The first report of sharks attacking cables came from the Canary Islands in 1985, when sharks' teeth were found embedded in an experimental cable. I found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1346&amp;amp;dat=19870612&amp;amp;id=7okwAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=k_sDAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=3853,4731528&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; in an old news paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/F9rU4.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iscpc.org/publications/ICPC-UNEP_Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; by the United Nations Environment Programme and the International Cable Protection Committee Ltd., &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fish, including sharks, have a long history of biting cables as identified from teeth embedded in cable sheathings. Barracuda, shallow- and deep-water sharks and others have been identified as causes of cable failure. Bites tend to penetrate the cable insulation, allowing the power conductor to ground with seawater. Attacks on telegraph cables took place mainly on the continental shelf and continued into the coaxial era until 1964. Thereafter, attacks occurred at greater depths, presumably in response to the burial of coaxial and fibre- optic cables on the shelf and slope. Coaxial and fibre-optic cables have attracted the attention of sharks and other fish. The best-documented case comes from the Canary Islands, where the first deep-ocean fibre-optic cable failed on four occasions as a result of shark attacks in water depths of 1,060–1,900 m [3,478 to 6,234 feet].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Marra, L.J., 1989. &lt;strong&gt;Shark bite on the SL submarine light wave cable&#xA;  system: History, causes and resolution.&lt;/strong&gt; IEEE Journal Oceanic&#xA;  Engineering 14: 230–237&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EVIDENCE 2:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;A famous report by New York Times back in 1987 reported that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/11/us/phone-company-finds-sharks-cutting-in.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the fibre optic cables linking the US&lt;/a&gt;, Europe and Japan were being nibbled persistently by sharks, causing phone and computer failures around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also reported what was presented in Evidence 1, but adding as extra Dr. Nelson's claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the report The finding that sharks are supersensitive to electrical&#xA;  signals, able to detect electric fields as faint as a few millionths&#xA;  of a volt per centimeter in water, is a recent significant discovery&#xA;  in marine science, Dr. Nelson said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sharks may detect a faint field near the cable and attack. &quot;Not&#xA;  knowing any better, they try to eat it,&quot; Dr. Nelson said. &quot;It's&#xA;  programmed in their genes. Whether the field comes from a cable or&#xA;  from a tin can, sharks are prone to behave as if they were&#xA;  encountering a food item, and try to eat it up.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EVIDENCE 3:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that the funniest battle now is not Google vs. Amazon or Google vs. Microsoft, but Google vs. Sharks. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the comments made by Dan Belcher, a product manager on Google's cloud team, during the opening keynote of the company's Cloud Roadshow in Boston last week; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.networkworld.com/article/2464035/cloud-computing/google-wraps-its-trans-pacific-fiber-cables-in-kevlar-to-prevent-against-shark.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google invests heavily in protecting its trans-continental infrastructure, including wrapping cables in Kevlar to thwart attacks by hungry sharks&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BONUS:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;A YouTube &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ex7uTQf4bQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; showing a shark biting a submarine cable during a survey operation. It was spotted by a remotely operated underwater vehicle.&#xA;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6Fj9w.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt; &#xA;The cause isn't clear why &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iscpc.org/publications/ICPC-UNEP_Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sharks bite cables&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reasons for the attacks are uncertain, but sharks may be encouraged by&#xA;  electro magnetic fields from a suspended cable strumming&#xA;  in currents. However, when tested at sea and in the&#xA;  laboratory, no clear link between attacks, electromagnetic&#xA;  fields and strumming could be established. This lack of&#xA;  correlation may reflect differences between the behaviour &#xA;  of the deep-water sharks responsible for the bites and &#xA;  that of the shallow-water species used in the experiments.&#xA;  Whatever the cause, cables have been redesigned to improve their protection against fish biting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE 2:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iscpc.org/publications/ICPC-UNEP_Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Submarine cables and the oceans: connecting the world report&lt;/a&gt;, external human aggression causes more faults for cables more than any other category,&#xA;with fishing accounting for nearly half of all reported faults. Anchoring is the second major cause of faults, with dredging, drilling, seabed abrasion and earthquakes also causing significant numbers. However, natural hazards including seabed abrasion, shark bites account for less than 10 per cent of all faults. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shark bites account for only  &lt;strong&gt;0.5%&lt;/strong&gt; for all faults. They're consider a threat, but it's a &lt;strong&gt;minor threat.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T16:06:06.450" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T16:06:06.450" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18135" CreationDate="2014-08-20T13:20:30.003" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, what is hangover? Hangover is a combination of symptoms, such as nausea and headache, which occur several hours after stopping drinking - that is when the blood alcohol levels start to approach zero; more symptoms and proposed mechanisms are listed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehealthstar.com/hangover.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question: Is there any correlation between the quality of the consumed alcoholic beverages and the likeliness of getting a hangover?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Methanol in alcoholic beverages may cause hangover. &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh22-1/54-60.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alcohol Hangover: Mechanism and Mediators&lt;/a&gt; &quot;Possible contributing factors to hangover: compounds other than alcohol in beverages, especially methanol.&quot; NOTE: This is their opinion, not a study result.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Alcoholic beverages high in congeners--byproducts of alcohol fermentation--(whisky, rum, red wine)--seem to cause hangover more often than those with less congeners:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20712591&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Whisky vs. vodka: a review&lt;/a&gt; In this 2010 review of studies, authors agree that &quot;...highest congener beverage (bourbon) results in more severe hangover ratings than does the beverage with essentially no congeners (vodka), although ethanol effects per se had a considerably stronger effect on hangover than did congener content.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://alcalc.oxfordjournals.org/content/43/2/124.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alcohol type and hangover severity&lt;/a&gt; Reported hangover severity (in decreasing order) after drinking of various beverages: brandy, red wine, rum, whisky, white wine, gin, vodka, beer, ethanol diluted in orange juice. According to the article, hangover severity is related to amount of congeners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion: Hangover may be caused by ethanol and by congeners, but, from studies available, there is insufficient evidence that alcohol beverage quality (&quot;well made&quot;, price) would be related to hangover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15288" LastEditorUserId="15288" LastEditDate="2017-01-05T13:26:22.503" LastActivityDate="2017-01-05T13:26:22.503" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22930" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21985" CreationDate="2014-08-20T15:41:49.113" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Adding to Articuno's answer, the reason no remains of the type have been found is because &lt;strong&gt;adult hominids taller than (about) 9 feet simply can't exist&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's about physics: &lt;strong&gt;If you double the height of any being, its surface area quadruples, and its volume triples.&lt;/strong&gt; While lengths scale linearly (x), areas scale quadratically (x^2) and volumes scale cubically (x^3). This means that a human as big as those in your examples would not reach adulthood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/11/121102-gigantism-ancient-skeleton-archaeology-history-science-rome/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;oldest remains of a person with gigantism&lt;/a&gt; are those of a man that lived close to Rome in third-century A.D. Gigantism itself is extremely rare (about three people in a million worldwide today).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Giants' can't exist because it's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu/lectures/scaling.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scaling issue&lt;/a&gt;. Galileo was one of the first to point it out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Galileo begins “Two New Sciences” with the striking observation that&#xA;  if two ships, one large and one small, have identical proportions and&#xA;  are constructed of the same materials, so that one is purely a scaled&#xA;  up version of the other in every respect, nevertheless the larger one&#xA;  will require proportionately more scaffolding and support on launching&#xA;  to prevent its breaking apart under its own weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you double all the dimensions of a stone building supported on stone pillars, the weights are all increased eightfold, but the supporting capacities only go up fourfold. This all applies to animals and humans too:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(Large) increase in height can be accomplished only by employing a&#xA;  material which is harder and stronger than usual, or by enlarging the&#xA;  size of the bones, thus changing their shape until the form and&#xA;  appearance of the animals suggests a monstrosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If humans were to be doubled in size, for example, their shape would need to change so much they would hardly be considered the same species.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14740" LastEditorUserId="14740" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T17:19:07.390" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T17:19:07.390" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22931" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22917" CreationDate="2014-08-20T15:43:19.410" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sharks are &lt;strong&gt;an extremely small threat&lt;/strong&gt; to undersea cable in regards to others causes as shown in the graphic below (from a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/22927/13755&quot;&gt;report cited in &lt;em&gt;@georgechalhoub&lt;/em&gt;'s answer&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MIEzD.png&quot; alt=&quot; Proportion of cable faults by cause, from a database of 2,162 records spanning 1959–2006&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Data&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proportion of cable faults by cause, from a database of 2,162 records spanning 1959–2006&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fishing 44.4%;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Anchor 14.6%;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Component 7.2%;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Abrasion 3.7% ;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Geological 2.6% ;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dredge/drill/pipeline 0.9% ;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fish bite 0.5% (include sharks) ;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iceberg 0.1% ;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other 4.8% ;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unknown 21.3%&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Take-away&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Geological causes damage cables more frequently than sharks' bites.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sharks' bites are only 5 times more frequent than iceberg damage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;14 fish bites (all species) in the last 50-60 years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reference&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iscpc.org/publications/ICPC-UNEP_Report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Submarine cables and the oceans: connecting the world's report&lt;/a&gt; (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/22927/13755&quot;&gt;report cited in &lt;em&gt;@georgechalhoub&lt;/em&gt;'s answer&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T10:28:50.867" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16324" CreationDate="2014-08-20T16:32:39.670" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I'll try to summarize why the evidence, in this case and other similar ones, is considered not conclusive&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas&quot;&gt;scientific community agrees on&lt;/a&gt; America being populated as late as 13-17k years ago, and as early as 40k: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The time range of 40,000–16,500 years ago is a hot topic of debate and&#xA;  probably will remain so for years to come. The few agreements achieved&#xA;  to date include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;the origin from Central Asia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;widespread habitation of the Americas during the end of the last glacial period, or more specifically what is known as the late glacial&#xA;  maximum, &lt;strong&gt;around 16,000–13,000 years before present&lt;/strong&gt; (One of many sources: &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/11/1106_031106_firstamericans.html&quot;&gt;Did First Americans Arrive By Land and Sea?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why &lt;a href=&quot;http://palaeo-electronica.org/2011_3/27_malde/back.htm&quot;&gt;those affirming Hueyatlaco is older than that&lt;/a&gt; (link to most comprehensive publication about the subject) are generally thought to be dealing with contaminated evidence. The biggest defender of this theory is Virginia Steen-McIntyre, who was a graduate in the 1966 excavations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The way these sites' antiquity is measured is usually '&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeological_horizon&quot;&gt;indirect&lt;/a&gt;', meaning that if &lt;strong&gt;stone tools&lt;/strong&gt; are found in a certain &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratum&quot;&gt;stratum&lt;/a&gt;, it's the stratum that gets dated, not the tools. The stratum where stone tools were found in Hueyatlaco was dated as older than 35,000 ybp by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14&quot;&gt;radiocarbon&lt;/a&gt; (animal or plant remains - only good for 'newer' datings) and 260,000 ybp, ± 60,000 years by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-uranium_dating&quot;&gt;uranium dating&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The discussion around the dates has to do with how trustworthy an indirect measurement like this is, when the value falls so off what's generally &lt;em&gt;agreed on&lt;/em&gt;. You can't date the tool itself because stones don't give any information about time of human manipulation (unless you have a known classification of technologies or styles). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/intrigue/1006&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;strata is not necessarily something static&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Steambeds and other natural phenomena, as well as animals digging caves, for example, can erode and change their structure. There is a number of documented reasons why you can end up with newer artefacts on older layers (I worked on a cave site that was almost impossible to date this way, because there were rat skeletons in every stratum, showing these animals had dug caves and moved all the materials around). The area around Hueyatlaco is subject to flooding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, unless you have tools can be dated by themselves (made of organic materials, for example), there is always space for speculation of &lt;em&gt;contamination&lt;/em&gt;. The rocks in that strata are that old, yes, but the tools on it seemingly are not. &lt;strong&gt;Affirming they are would be debunking what we know about Homo sapiens.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;current paradigm&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; states that the first populations for that part of the continent moved in about 13k to 40k years ago, these datings are considered to be not trustworthy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more references regarding archaeological contamination and the relationship between archaeology and geology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.radiocarbon.com/archaeology-contamination.htm&quot;&gt;Contamination of Archaeological Artifacts&lt;/a&gt; (Carbon 14 scope and limitations)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/benton.html&quot;&gt;Accuracy of Fossils and Dating Methods&lt;/a&gt; (About these and other dating methods)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/intrigue/1006&quot;&gt;Stratigraphy and Archaeology&lt;/a&gt; (Using strata in archaeology)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14740" LastEditorUserId="14740" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T21:49:17.197" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T21:49:17.197" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22933" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22938" CreationDate="2014-08-20T16:59:55.607" Score="8" ViewCount="1860" Body="&lt;p&gt;I wanted to check with a doctor whether I had tonsil stones or not, and for this an otolaryngologist was recommended to me as one of the best in my city. She said I don’t have any problems with tonsil stones, but instead prescribed some drugs to treat my ongoing pharyngitis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is that one of the 3 prescribed drugs is classified as a “homeopathic remedy” &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tonsilotren.com/wcm/mb/tonsilotren/en-en/tonsilotren/CinnabdsinPackCropped_300px.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;right on its packaging&lt;/a&gt;. As I understand it, depending on the country and specific drug in question some drugs with such labelling &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/831/does-homeopathic-zinc-zicam-help-with-the-common-cold&quot;&gt;may actually be somewhat effective&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, these are the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tonsilotren.com/wcm/mb/tonsilotren/en-en/how_tonsilotren_works/Ingredients_of_tonsilotren_and_their_action/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ingredients&lt;/a&gt; that this particular medicine consists of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Atropinum sulfuricum (12.5/250mg)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hepar sulfuris (10/250mg) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kalium bichromicum (50/250mg)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mercurius bijodatus (25/250mg)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Silicea (5/250mg)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And when I try searching for any of them online the first results I get are all homeopathy related promo materials. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has Tonsilotren been proven as an effective (more effective than placebo) treatment for pharyngitis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18514" LastEditorUserId="22504" LastEditDate="2019-12-25T19:01:38.477" LastActivityDate="2019-12-25T19:01:38.477" Title="Is Tonsilotren homeopathic medicine effective for the treatment of pharyngitis?" Tags="|homeopathy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22934" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22936" CreationDate="2014-08-20T17:20:44.337" Score="11" ViewCount="1200" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilingualism&quot;&gt;multilingualism&lt;/a&gt; (the use of more than one language by an individual or community), I read that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link reference was broken but finding the correct source wasn't difficult. They quote a work by G. Richard Melon, Paul Mellon University Professor of Applied Linguistics: &lt;em&gt;&quot;A Global Perspective on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fewer than 25% of the world's approximately 200 countries recognize&#xA;  two or more official languages, with a mere handful recognizing more&#xA;  than two (e.g., India, Luxembourg, Nigeria). However, despite these&#xA;  conservative government policies, &lt;strong&gt;available data indicate that there&#xA;  are many more bilingual or multilingual individuals in the world than&#xA;  there are monolingual.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have access to the full work and the digest doesn't disclose what that &quot;available data&quot; he used was and how he reached to that conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Are there more people in the world that speak more than one language then there are people that speak only one? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21796" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T01:27:40.497" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T01:27:40.497" Title="Do world's multilingual individuals outnumber monolingual ones?" Tags="|linguistics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22933" CreationDate="2014-08-20T17:40:43.783" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I got this off of an article here (via Google Translate): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vasezdravlje.com/izdanje/clanak/1874/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.vasezdravlje.com/izdanje/clanak/1874/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Friese K. H., Timen, GE, Zabalotny, SJ, Homeopathy bei Kindern myth Streptokokken-freier Tonsillitis, Der Kassenarzt 46 (6): 40-42 (2006)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;/// In Germany, the study on efficacy and tolerability Tonsilotrena in children with acute, nestreptokoknim tonsillitis. The study was double-blind and placebo-controlled, and was conducted on 158 patients, aged from six to 10 years, in which the symptoms reported in the past 48 hours. They observed the following symptoms: difficulty swallowing, sore throat, the amount of saliva (saliva), redness and fever. &lt;strong&gt;The conclusions of the study are to Tonsilotren significantly reduces all symptoms tonzilisa and tolerability was very good in 97.5 percent of cases.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T17:40:43.783" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22934" CreationDate="2014-08-20T18:18:33.803" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;My first thought after seeing your question was surprise that it was being asked, as I had heard the claim previously, and found it so much in agreement with my experience that I had assumed it true. However the evidence is actually rather more interesting than I would have guessed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Key results: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. There are fewer fluent bilinguals than monolinguals in the world&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. There are close to the same number of people with basic proficiency in a second language as there are people with proficiency in only one.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll start with the common sense argument you asked for: My experience is that anyone under 40 in Europe is likely to speak English, anyone I meet from India or Pakistan speaks English plus Urdu or Hindi, and significant fractions of the population in the US and China speak at least two languages (Often Spanish in the US, English and/or at least two Chinese dialects in China).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, looking into it more formally, it seems there are some problems with the definition of &quot;speaking&quot; a second language. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-bilingual/201209/how-many-are-we&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; has an interesting summary of the issues that arise in counting multilingual individuals. For instance, in the US, you're multilingual if you have some level of basic proficiency in a second language. In Switzerland, you're multilingual only if you have something like native proficiency in at least two. While most Swiss people I've met speak excellent English, as well as Swiss German and High German (indeed, most of them have received multi-year formal education in French, English, and High German), apparently most of them would claim to be monolingual on a census form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After floating around google scholar for a while, I conclude that these sorts of ambiguities on the parts of governments mean there isn't a good scientific estimate. We won't be able to get the exact numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, someone else already has made a good effort at an educated guess for fluent bilinguals, and is cited widely in the literature I did read. In 1997, George Weber published an article in a semi-scholarly setting on the relative &quot;strength&quot; of different languages. You can read a copy of it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/48897416/Top-Languages-The-World-s-10-Most-Influential-Languages-by-George-Weber-1997&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Among other things, this article considers a number of different estimates of the number of speakers of each language, including the total number of secondary speakers for the most popular ones, and presents a sort of &quot;consensus&quot; estimate from these different sources. This consensus estimate is widely cited elsewhere in the scholarly literature, despite it not being from a truely scholarly source. Here's the pertinent graph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0ogFt.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ballpark the total number of fully fluent secondary speakers of these languages at no more than 700 million based on the chart above. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CB0QFjAA&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FList_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers&amp;amp;ei=W-X0U9qVHKmi8AHr5IGACw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGAzvsGWDvj7JJ6_prLaD7oKYSH8Q&amp;amp;sig2=vn_UYQg5YYc14qsl3hPghA&amp;amp;bvm=bv.73231344,d.b2U&amp;amp;cad=rja&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's figures&lt;/a&gt; suggest that this number could be as high as 1.5 billion, but that's still far short of the 3-3.5 billion needed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since Lewis gathered his statistics in &quot;the early 1990's&quot;, when the world had a population of a little more than 5 billion, we can conclude that, for this stringent definition of bilingualism, there are far fewer bilinguals than monolinguals. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, other sources which use more relaxed definitions like &quot;use at least 2 languages per day&quot; offer evidence for why this claim exists. For example, this recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.equinoxpub.com/journals/index.php/SS/article/download/16039/14062&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; (preview only) is cited by others in support of this claim. However, I can't find a good scholarly source for this claim that I can actually read. I rate it as &quot;probable&quot;, given that something like a quarter of the world is bilingual under the very strict definition above. For instance, under this definition, my 10 hours of duolingo french, which I use to tease my wife (who is fluent in french) would possibly qualify me as &quot;bilingual&quot;. I might only say a few sentences per week in French, but this isn't a high bar, and I might claim &quot;daily&quot; use if the question was phrased correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastEditorUserId="18008" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T18:53:28.973" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T18:53:28.973" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22937" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19845" CreationDate="2014-08-20T18:30:09.600" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is not true&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of Palenque has been &lt;strong&gt;thoroughly surveyed, mapped and documented&lt;/strong&gt;. While not all areas have been excavated, there has been extensive analysis of the settlement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Exploration&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Palenque is considered a medium-sized site. &lt;strong&gt;It was surveyed and mapped in 2000&lt;/strong&gt; through a project called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayaexploration.org/research_pmp.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Palenque Mapping Project (PMP)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Completed in August of 2000, the Palenque Mapping Project was a three&#xA;  year program of survey and exploration at the ruins of Palenque,&#xA;  Chiapas, Mexico. The data gathered during the project has to date&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;resulted in the creation of what has been described as the most&#xA;  accurate and detailed map of maya ruins yet made.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayaexploration.org/pdf/pmp_map.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF map here&lt;/a&gt;. There are also two main works that derived from this mapping. I highly recommend both, but the first one is particularly enlightening:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayaexploration.org/pdf/dissertation_final_1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Palenque Mapping Project: Settlement and Urbanism in an Ancient Maya City&lt;/a&gt;, and&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayaexploration.org/pdf/creating_space_through_water.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Waters of Lakam Ha: A Survey of Palenque's Water Management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because Mayan cities were developed in an unplanned fashion, with places and palaces torn down and replaced frequently, their boundaries are often hard to determine. The PMP however documented &lt;strong&gt;1481 structures and over 16 linear kilometers of terracing&lt;/strong&gt;. Palenque seems to have had an &lt;strong&gt;extremely high settlement density&lt;/strong&gt; and one of the most extensive public works systems ever built by the Maya. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, how much of Palenque's total size was covered by this mapping project? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three areas that weren't explored because they are privately owned. These are, however, considered outskirts. The main centre is the one tourists can visit, and has been excavated and researched in depth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reconnaissance to the east, north, and south of Palenque’s plateau,&#xA;  though not  covered in this dissertation’s map, was sufficiently&#xA;  thorough to say with confidence  that settlement density in those&#xA;  direction drops off sharply&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So although it is not exactly know how much there is yet to be &lt;em&gt;explored&lt;/em&gt; (aerial images show a plateau that continues 1 km to the west), there is a general agreement &lt;strong&gt;that those areas will not be as settlement dense as the centre.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Excavation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Not all areas that were charted have been excavated&lt;/strong&gt;. Excavations are invasive and destructive, not to mention really expensive when done in the jungle, as trees keep growing and burying structures each year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's rare to find completely excavated cities, though, especially when newer structures have been built on top of old ones, and the land is in private hands. Maintenance can also be a big issue for these sort of sites. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.palenquepark.com/dig.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;biggest structures in Palenque&lt;/a&gt; have been explored to detail from 1922, however, and those can be considered representative of the city as a whole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see the &lt;strong&gt;full list of excavations&lt;/strong&gt; and investigations in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mesoweb.com/palenque/current_dig.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Palenque Project&lt;/strong&gt; website&lt;/a&gt;. Also, the map is impressive, so here's a smaller version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xmqzz.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14740" LastEditorUserId="14740" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T18:49:13.753" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T18:49:13.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22933" CreationDate="2014-08-20T20:19:55.600" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disclaimer:&lt;/strong&gt; I'm not your doctor, and further, I'm not any kind of doctor. Talk to one before you make medical decisions. However, I do have scientific and research training, and can assess the quality of the scientific evidence on this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There does not appear to be any current evidence for the effectiveness of Tonsilotren in treating any condition. For instance, a google scholar search for &quot;Tonsilotren&quot; returns no scholarly works at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At present, there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.controlled-trials.com/ISRCTN19016626&quot;&gt;clinical trial&lt;/a&gt; (mentioned in DVK's comment above) which is &lt;em&gt;exploring&lt;/em&gt; the effect of Tonsilotren for the treatment of tonsillitis. However, the description of this study explicitly states that it has no formal hypothesis. Further, the study is not blinded at all (i.e. there is no placebo control for Tonsilotren, and both the patients and the doctors know who is getting it, and who is not). The study is funded by the German Homeopathy Union.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All that said, most or all of the ingredients mentioned (though, as far as I can tell, not in exactly that combination or dosage level) have individually been shown to provide relief of pharyngitis by &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; studies. Other studies have found that they perform no better than placebo. A 2011 meta-study of these issues &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/51174449_Advances_in_homeopathy_and_immunology_a_review_of_clinical_research/file/109d686040ba8b08e407c391ab023231.pdf&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; summarizes these contradictory findings, but concludes with the upbeat message that, at least at low dilution levels, at least some homeopathic treatments might do something useful for ENT problems. A &lt;a href=&quot;http://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2006/479769.pdf&quot;&gt;related meta-study&lt;/a&gt; from 2006 focuses only on ENT treatment with homeopathic medication, and reaches somewhat similar conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, both meta-studies note that the current state of science for homeopathic medicine is somewhat lacking, because most homeopathic doctors are not interested in a scientific approach to research, and there is relatively little funding for independent study of the subject (i.e. studies not funded by homeopathic medical suppliers). Consequently, I remain pretty skeptical of this work, although I cannot rule out the possibility that, in these low-dilution doses, these medicines might be helpful for treating pharyngitis. I'd personally summarize the state of evidence as something akin to a cure suggested by rural grandparents. There might be something to it (your grandparents weren't born yesterday, and their past experience says it works), but there's not rigid &lt;em&gt;scientific&lt;/em&gt; evidence that it works better than a placebo. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastEditorUserId="18008" LastEditDate="2014-08-20T20:34:34.060" LastActivityDate="2014-08-20T20:34:34.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22940" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22941" CreationDate="2014-08-20T21:15:03.933" Score="8" ViewCount="507" Body="&lt;p&gt;In regard to the quote from the Metropolitan Police warning, is it an offence specifically under the terrorism legislation to watch a video? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Met police spokesperson &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We would like to remind the public that viewing, downloading or disseminating extremist material within the UK may constitute an offence under Terrorism legislation. &quot;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/20/watch-james-foleys-beheading-online-and-yoested_n_5694871.html&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21016" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-11T04:07:41.563" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T04:07:41.563" Title="Is viewing extremist material a terrorism offence?" Tags="|united-kingdom|terrorism|police|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22940" CreationDate="2014-08-20T22:42:04.237" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;is it an offence specifically under the terrorism legislation to watch a video?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Viewing a video is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt;, by itself, a criminal offense.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Viewing a video that was produced to promote terrorism is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt;, by itself, a criminal offense.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Viewing a terrorist training video with the intent to commit terrorist acts &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; a criminal offence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to legal commentator &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/ianbetteridge/timelines/502120492573417475&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;David Allan Green&lt;/a&gt;, the relevant act is the Terrorism Act 2006 sections 1 and 2&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Terrorism Act 2006 has three parts, the contents of parts 1 and 2 are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Part 1 Offences&#xA;  Encouragement etc. of terrorism&#xA;    1.Encouragement of terrorism&#xA;    2.Dissemination of terrorist publications&#xA;    3.Application of ss. 1 and 2 to internet activity etc.&#xA;    4.Giving of notices under s. 3&#xA;  Preparation of terrorist acts and terrorist training&#xA;    5.Preparation of terrorist acts&#xA;    6.Training for terrorism&#xA;    7.Powers of forfeiture in respect of offences under s. 6&#xA;    8.Attendance at a place used for terrorist training&#xA;  Offences involving radioactive devices and materials and nuclear facilities and sites&#xA;    9.Making and possession of devices or materials&#xA;    10.Misuse of devices or material and misuse and damage of facilities&#xA;    11.Terrorist threats relating to devices, materials or facilities&#xA;    12.Trespassing etc. on nuclear sites&#xA;  Increases of penalties&#xA;    13.Maximum penalty for possessing for terrorist purposes&#xA;    14.Maximum penalty for certain offences relating to nuclear material&#xA;    15.Maximum penalty for contravening notice relating to encrypted information&#xA;  Incidental provisions about offences&#xA;    16.Preparatory hearings in terrorism cases&#xA;    17.Commission of offences abroad&#xA;    18.Liability of company directors etc.&#xA;    19.Consents to prosecutions&#xA;  Interpretation of Part 1&#xA;    20.Interpretation of Part 1&#xA;Part 2 Miscellaneous provisions&#xA;  Proscription of terrorist organisations&#xA;    21.Grounds of proscription&#xA;    22.Name changes by proscribed organisations&#xA;  Detention of terrorist suspects&#xA;    23.Extension of period of detention of terrorist suspects&#xA;    24.Grounds for extending detention&#xA;    25.Expiry or renewal of extended maximum detention period&#xA;  Searches etc.&#xA;    26.All premises warrants: England and Wales and Northern Ireland&#xA;    27.All premises warrants: Scotland&#xA;    28.Search, seizure and forfeiture of terrorist publications&#xA;    29.Power to search vehicles under Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000&#xA;    30.Extension to internal waters of authorisations to stop and search&#xA;  Other investigatory powers&#xA;    31.Amendment of the Intelligence Services Act 1994&#xA;    32.Interception warrants&#xA;    33.Disclosure notices for the purposes of terrorist investigations&#xA;  Definition of terrorism etc.&#xA;    34.Amendment of the definition of “terrorism” etc.&#xA;  Other amendments&#xA;    35.Applications for extended detention of seized cash&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Section 6 Training is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;(2)A person commits an offence if—   &#xA;  (a)he receives instruction or training in any of the skills mentioned in&#xA;     subsection (3); and   &#xA;  (b)at the time of the instruction or training, he intends to use the skills&#xA;     in which he is being instructed or trained—&#xA;     (i)for or in connection with the commission or preparation of acts of &#xA;        terrorism or Convention offences; or&#xA;     (ii)for assisting the commission or preparation by others of such acts &#xA;         or offences. &#xA;(3)The skills are—   &#xA;  (a)the making, handling or use of a noxious substance, or of substances of &#xA;     a description of such substances;   &#xA;  (b)the use of any method or technique for doing anything else that is capable &#xA;     of being done for the purposes of terrorism, in connection with the commission &#xA;     or preparation of an act of terrorism or Convention offence or in connection &#xA;     with assisting the commission or preparation by another of such an act or &#xA;     offence; and   &#xA;  (c)the design or adaptation for the purposes of terrorism, or in connection &#xA;     with the commission or preparation of an act of terrorism or Convention &#xA;      offence, of any method or technique for doing anything.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems questionable that a judge and jury are likely to be persuaded that viewing any video of a beheading constitutes receiving training and unless there is evidence of intent to use this training, no conviction could result. There are other sections but I see no explicit suggestion in the text that viewing a video of a beheading is itself a terrorist offence under this act. Obviously, interpretation of law is a matter for courts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/20/met_police_reg_hack_is_not_a_terrorist_hes_not_even_a_naughty_boy/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Register&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watching the video could be used to build a case against us, we were told, but this act alone did not give plods enough evidence to lock the viewer in Belmarsh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Distribution is the issue,&amp;quot; the spokesman said. &amp;quot;Viewing the video could be taken into consideration if any other information comes to light.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So merely viewing the video is unlikely to lead to arrest. Unless you have already committed other acts that can be construed as evidence of disseminating materials that promote terrorism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T00:53:47.473" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22942" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-21T00:14:31.740" Score="2" ViewCount="5131" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10154524853115457&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Facebook video&lt;/a&gt; purports to show Trevor Ferrell light the end of a french fry, bite off the other end, and inhale smoke through the fry like a cigarette.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on to suggest that this is evidence that the food is not healthful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible? Does the video show a realistic situation? Does this mean the food is not healthful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21801" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T00:43:29.153" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T00:43:29.153" Title="Is it possible to smoke a McDonald's french fry like a cigarette?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2014-08-21T01:18:29.740" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22944" CreationDate="2014-08-20T23:59:22.167" Score="14" ViewCount="941" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just saw on Fifth Gear (a UK TV car show) that it was illegal to drive a dirty car in Belarus. A Google search revealed many other people believe this to be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone confirm it is true and explain why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21814" OwnerDisplayName="cantsay" LastEditorUserId="18230" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T12:20:30.543" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T14:02:07.270" Title="Is it illegal to drive with a dirty car in Belarus?" Tags="|traffic|driving|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22943" CreationDate="2014-08-21T11:36:20.377" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is true, but in a very unspectacular way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pdd.by/pdd/en/10/&quot;&gt;The official traffic laws state&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;10. The driver is prohibited to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;10.3 participate in road traffic on a vehicle covered with dirt (laminations), limiting the driver's field of vision and also making indiscernible the information on the registration plate at a distance of 40 meters and less&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So - yes, you can be fined (&lt;a href=&quot;http://pdd.by/pdd/resp/&quot;&gt;up to 300,000 Belarus Rubles&lt;/a&gt;, that is, up to about &lt;a href=&quot;http://byr.fxexchangerate.com/usd/300000-currency-rates.html&quot;&gt;30$&lt;/a&gt;) for having a dirty vehicle - but only if you can't see the road or the police can't see your licence plate. This is legislation the kinds of which have been seen in many a country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastEditorUserId="18230" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T14:02:07.270" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T14:02:07.270" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22946" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22947" CreationDate="2014-08-21T11:59:27.777" Score="11" ViewCount="1952" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this infographic in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baesystems.com/article/BAES_175799/aircraft-set-to-become-more-human-as-engineers-develop-smart-skins-which-can-detect-injury;baeSessionId=tvp4T1pPxB145s0vbnJ30LCxHLmB9fg7hVSSPctQsgXZ869K3hBD!-1101383713?_afrLoop=48610432795000&amp;amp;_afrWindowMode=0&amp;amp;_afrWindowId=null#%40%3F_afrWindowId%3Dnull%26_afrLoop%3D48610432795000%26_afrWindowMode%3D0%26_adf.ctrl-state%3Dfqn2y0lsp_4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article from BAE&lt;/a&gt;, they make the claim that the internet is predicted to have 50 billion non-human users by 2020.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bosIX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Infographic from BAE Press Release&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discounting the main purpose of the article, where do they get that claim from? Is this based in reality? What counts as a non-human &quot;user&quot; of the internet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T19:59:33.150" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T20:05:03.700" Title="Will there be 50 billion devices connected to the internet by 2020?" Tags="|internet|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22946" CreationDate="2014-08-21T12:48:01.253" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;First let's answer this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What counts as a non-human &quot;user&quot; of the internet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any electronic device connected to the internet. There are numerous types of devices that can be connected to the internet. Be it a laptop, printer, iPod touch, server, cellphone, tablet, television, google glass, desktop computer, etc....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;non-human user of the internet&lt;/em&gt; is simply a &lt;em&gt;device connected to the internet&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where do they get that claim from?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their claim seems to be extracted from an article from CISCO, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/innov/IoT_IBSG_0411FINAL.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How the Next Evolution of the Internet Is Changing Everything&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In CICSO's article, a description image has been posted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9szcZ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it has been explained: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Explosive growth of smartphones and tablet PCs brought the number of devices connected &#xA;  to the Internet to 12.5 billion in 2010, while the world’s human population increased to 6.8 billion, &lt;strong&gt;making the number of connected devices per person more than 1 (1.84 to be exact) for the first time in history&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Looking to the future, &lt;strong&gt;Cisco IBSG predicts there will be 25 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2015 and 50 billion by 2020&lt;/strong&gt;. It is important to note that these estimates do not take into account rapid advances in Internet or device technology; the numbers presented are based on what is known to be true today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Additionally, the number of connected devices per person may seem low. This is because the  calculation is based on the entire world population, much of which is not yet connected to the Internet. &lt;strong&gt;By reducing the population sample to people actually connected to the Internet, the number of connected devices per person rises dramatically.&lt;/strong&gt; For example, we know that approximately 2 billion people use the Internet today. Using this figure, the number of connected devices per person jumps to 6.25 in 2010, instead of 1.84. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this based in reality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You need to understand that it is an estimate, it might not be fully accurate. However, it is very reasonable as they explained here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In January 2009, a team of researchers in China studied Internet routing data in six-month  intervals, from December 2001 to December 2006. Similar to the properties of Moore’s Law,  &lt;strong&gt;their findings showed that the Internet doubles in size every 5.32 years&lt;/strong&gt;. Using &lt;strong&gt;this figure in combination with the number of devices connected to the Internet in 2003 (500 million, as  determined by Forrester Research)&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;the world population according to the U.S. Census  Bureau,&lt;/strong&gt; Cisco IBSG estimated the number of connected devices per person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...with an interesting reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While no one can predict the exact number of devices connected to the&#xA;  Internet at  any given time, the methodology of applying a constant&#xA;  (Internet doubling in size  every 5.32 years) to a generally&#xA;  agreed-upon number of connected devices at a  point in time (500&#xA;  million in 2003) provides an estimate that is appropriate for the &#xA;  purposes of this paper. Sources: “Internet Growth Follows Moore's Law&#xA;  Too,” Lisa  Zyga, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physorg.com/news151162452.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PhysOrg.com&lt;/a&gt;, January 14, 2009, &#xA;  ; George Colony, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoworld.com/t/platforms/forrester-ceo-web-services-next-it-storm-873&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Forrester Research  founder and chief executive officer&lt;/a&gt;, March 10, 2003, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T20:05:03.700" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T20:05:03.700" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22948" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-21T13:13:53.957" Score="3" ViewCount="521" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the top-voted answer of &lt;a href=&quot;https://hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/2804/why-not-sleep-with-your-head-facing-north-direction&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When we sleep in this position, iron from the whole body starts to congregate in our brain which can cause headache, Alzheimer’s Disease, Cognitive Decline, Parkinson disease and brain degeneration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wow, it seems a bit surreal, especially when &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3612/does-sleeping-with-our-heads-pointing-towards-north-pose-any-health-risks&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; other question say that it doesn't have any risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did research after 2011 arose new problem? Or is it that Hindu guy horribly wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:51:17.560" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T14:17:52.180" Title="Is sleeping with your head pointed north dangerous?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|magnetism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ClosedDate="2014-08-22T08:14:00.603" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22950" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22952" CreationDate="2014-08-21T13:37:58.853" Score="7" ViewCount="85049" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was younger I once choked on some food and started coughing heavily, my Dad then told me to raise my arm in the air in order to &quot;help raise the diaphragm&quot;. It actually helped with the coughing and  helped me breath better. Since then I'm used to doing it. Does that really help, are there any medical proof or is it a urban legend ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21813" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-22T02:43:48.247" LastActivityDate="2018-06-30T13:31:36.747" Title="Does raising your arm in the air help when you are coughing/choking on something?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22951" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22955" CreationDate="2014-08-21T15:10:51.577" Score="25" ViewCount="2051" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can drag up a bunch of different articles either claiming that the US Social Security system is or is not headed for insolvency. The most recent reference to the concept was in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/business-economy-financial-crisis/retirement-gamble/john-bogle-the-train-wreck-awaiting-american-retirement/&quot;&gt;PBS interview with John Bogle&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I start off, simply put, with Social Security, which has to be changed in gradual, small ways to become solvent again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the interview is discussing investments and retirement planning so this little blip isn't terribly significant to the interview as a whole. But the concept keeps popping up over and over again and it can be hard to sift through the various political biases in play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="6308" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T16:53:58.777" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T16:43:26.030" Title="Is Social Security headed for insolvency?" Tags="|united-states|economics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22952" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22950" CreationDate="2014-08-21T15:43:05.323" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;With arms raised oxygen uptake is increased for normal breathing, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1735251&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Couser JI, Martinez FJ &amp;amp; Celli BR (1992)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The increases in [oxygen uptake], [carbon dioxide production], [minute ventilation], and [tidal volume] during arm elevation persisted.&#xA;  for 2 min after arm lowering (...) We conclude that simple arm elevation during tidal breathing results in significant increases in metabolic and ventilatory requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Unless&lt;/em&gt; the esophagus is fully blocked Raising the arms will therefore increase oxygen uptake in healthy people, which may make you feel like you are not choking anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note though that raising the arms is &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not an appropriate method&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to help a person who is actually choking. Unless the person is able to breathe adequately the Heimlich maneuver &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000049.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;should&lt;/a&gt; be performed if coughing does not solve the problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[&lt;em&gt;warning&lt;/em&gt;, anecdotal] My tennis trainer always told us to put our arms up and breathe in when panting after a demanding exercise. During Yoga and other &lt;a href=&quot;http://byeyyoga.com/about/26-postures/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;'breathing exercises'&lt;/a&gt; the arms are usually also repositioned to either limit or maximize lung volume.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20991" LastEditorUserId="20991" LastEditDate="2015-06-17T10:24:33.673" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T10:24:33.673" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22953" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22595" CreationDate="2014-08-21T15:44:18.613" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no scientific backing for this classification.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is referenced as &quot;Greek&quot; is actually called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton&amp;#39;s_toe&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Morton's toe&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (name derived from the surgeon who described is as a foot syndrome), but it's so common that this congenital short first metatarsal bone is considered a normal variant of foot shape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In statuary and shoe fitting it has been called Greek foot, because it was an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyf3kq69NWs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;idealized form in Greek sculpture&lt;/a&gt;. It also persisted as an aesthetic standard through Roman and Renaissance periods:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2ufsb.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2ufsb.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Greek bronze statue of boxer at rest | © Joseph Uj/Flickr&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The relative length of the big and second toes varies continuously&lt;/strong&gt;, so &lt;a href=&quot;http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mythtoelength.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;there aren't just two categories of toe length&lt;/a&gt;. The mechanisms that determine how Morton's toe is inherited are determined by more than one gene, or by a combination of genetics and the environment. These mechanisms haven't proven to be specific to a geographic area, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omim.org/entry/189200&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as referenced by Kaplan&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14740" LastEditorUserId="14740" LastEditDate="2018-02-18T16:17:44.470" LastActivityDate="2018-02-18T16:17:44.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22955" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22951" CreationDate="2014-08-21T16:21:38.710" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, under the current rules and best available projections from US Federal government&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Social Security Administration's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssa.gov/retirementpolicy/projection-methodology.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;own projections&lt;/a&gt; from SSA's Office of the Chief Actuary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scheduled and Payable Benefits&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scheduled Benefits are those that current law promises. Payable Benefits are those that projected Trust Fund balances can finance. Payable benefits are an across the board reduction from Scheduled Benefits in a given year &lt;strong&gt;starting with the Trust Fund exhaustion in 2036, therefore Payable Benefits and Scheduled Benefits are the same in 2030. The SSA Actuaries estimate that the across the board reduction under a Payable baseline will be 21.8 percent in 2050 and 23.2 percent in 2070&lt;/strong&gt;. These reductions would apply to the final benefit amounts, not the average indexed monthly earnings (AIME) or the primary insurance amount (PIA). Both the Scheduled Benefits tables and the Payable Benefits tables compare the respective baseline to a policy option built on top of Scheduled Benefits&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of 2013, CBO (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbo.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Congressional Budget Office&lt;/a&gt;) projects that revenues will consistently lag outlays: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44972&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cbo.gov/publication/44972&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CBO projects that under current law, &lt;strong&gt;the DI trust fund will be exhausted in fiscal year 2017, and the OASI trust fund will be exhausted in 2033&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a trust fund’s balance fell to zero and current revenues were insufficient to cover the benefits specified in law, the Social Security Administration would no longer have legal authority to pay full benefits when they were due.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1994, legislation redirected revenues from the OASI trust fund to prevent the imminent exhaustion of the DI trust fund. In part because of that experience, it is a common analytical convention to consider the DI and OASI trust funds as combined. &lt;strong&gt;Thus, CBO projects, if some future legislation shifted resources from the OASI trust fund to the DI trust fund, the combined OASDI trust funds would be exhausted in 2031&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full publication has methodology and the data tables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3WW2z.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To further help illustrate the &amp;quot;headed&amp;quot; part, here is the projected SS Trust Fund reserve depletion years over 1985-2014 years from Social Security Adminitration &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/tr/2014/VI_B_LRact_bal.html#102806&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2014 OASDI Trustees Report&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; (Table VI.B1.—Long-Range OASDI Actuarial Balances  and Trust Fund Reserve Depletion Dates as Shown in the Trustees Reports for 1982-2014, Page 159).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I plotted the years as well as the trendline in Excel based on the last column in that table.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TaLTi.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I dropped 1982-1984, since 1982 projected 1983 insolvency while 1983-84 projected no insolvency at all; so the chart would go to +infinity if these were included.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T16:43:26.030" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22956" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26427" CreationDate="2014-08-21T17:35:34.370" Score="56" ViewCount="26708" Body="&lt;p&gt;About 40 years ago, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Ward&quot;&gt;Maurice Ward&lt;/a&gt;, a hairdresser and amateur chemist, developed a plastic that was said to be resistant to extreme heat. Able to withstand a laser beam that could produce a temperature of 10,000 Celsius. He called it &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlite&quot;&gt;Starlite&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The material became widely popular in 1993 when it was &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4nnLP--uTI&quot;&gt;shown on &lt;em&gt;Tomorrow's World&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Where it was applied to an egg that was blowtorched for five minutes. Afterwards the egg was removed, and cracked open to reveal it was still raw inside. The shell was also cool enough to touch. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maurice Ward passed away in 2011. He has never shared the formula for Starlite with anyone, and has never let samples of it out of his sight for fear of reverse engineering. NASA and other organizations have shown interest in the material. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't seem to find anything on Starlite besides the video and the now defunct website: starlitetechnologies.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is said that you can replicate Starlite's effect using a mix of eisenglass and chalk. When heat is applied, the mixture bubbles into an aerogel, leaving whatever surface it's on undamaged. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Starlite a hoax? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21820" LastEditorUserId="21820" LastEditDate="2014-08-21T17:58:04.587" LastActivityDate="2016-01-02T21:33:49.427" Title="Is Starlite a hoax?" Tags="|physics|materials|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22958" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22959" CreationDate="2014-08-21T20:05:00.350" Score="11" ViewCount="1296" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHyghcN9Sws&amp;amp;list=UUddn8dUxYdgJz3Qr5mjADtA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Youtube video&lt;/a&gt; claims that green tea &quot;is the best mouthwash&quot;, citing various medical studies that claim that green tea is more effective in reducing dental bacteria than various standard chemicals. Quick googling has found me &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18388413&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; of University of British Columbia researchers, which (at least to me as a complete medical noob) seems to support this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the advice to wash one's mouth with green tea medically plausible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sidenote: I found this &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/5109/is-placing-a-tea-bag-at-the-site-of-wisdom-tooth-extraction-beneficial&quot;&gt;earlier question&lt;/a&gt;, but it seems only loosely related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21822" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2021-02-12T05:56:40.940" Title="Does green tea help with dental hygiene?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22958" CreationDate="2014-08-21T20:19:20.437" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer:&lt;/strong&gt; Yes, it probably does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this referenced answer on &lt;a href=&quot;http://authoritynutrition.com/top-10-evidence-based-health-benefits-of-green-tea/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;authoritynutrition.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The catechins in green tea have other biological effects as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some studies show that they can &lt;strong&gt;kill bacteria&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;inhibit viruses&lt;/strong&gt; like&#xA;the influenza virus, potentially &lt;strong&gt;lowering your risk of infections&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1472-765X.1989.tb00255.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;31&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389172300800389&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;32&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22184430&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;33&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16137775&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;34&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streptococcus_mutans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Streptococcus mutans&lt;/a&gt; is the primary harmful bacteria in the mouth. It&#xA;causes plaque formation and is a leading contributor to cavities and&#xA;tooth decay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies show that the catechins in green tea can &lt;strong&gt;inhibit the growth of&#xA;streptococcus mutans&lt;/strong&gt;. Green tea consumption is associated with&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;improved dental health and a lower risk of caries&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.karger.com/Article/Abstract/261407&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;35&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf00031a017?journalCode=jafcau&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;36&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3184736/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;37&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22226360&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;38&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1607143&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;39&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://iadr.confex.com/iadr/2006Brisb/techprogram/abstract_82947.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;40&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another awesome benefit of green tea… multiple studies show that it&#xA;can &lt;strong&gt;reduce bad breath&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18388413&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;41&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search/display.do?f=1993/JP/JP93037.xml;JP9202479&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;42&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Bottom Line: The catechins in green tea may inhibit the growth of bacteria and some viruses. This can lower the risk of infections and lead to improvements in dental health, a lower risk of caries and reduced bad breath.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T06:32:53.193" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9457" CreationDate="2014-08-21T21:18:38.003" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Rory Sutherland is just mis-retelling his Eurostar example in that 2011 talk. In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ted.com/talks/rory_sutherland_sweat_the_small_stuff/transcript?language=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an earlier 2010 talk&lt;/a&gt;, he correctly quotes the cost as £6 billion, which is what was reported in the news as @Henry pointed out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21825" LastActivityDate="2014-08-21T21:18:38.003" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22964" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22966" CreationDate="2014-08-22T02:43:19.840" Score="16" ViewCount="2981" Body="&lt;p&gt;The US National Institute of Health &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000049.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recommend&lt;/a&gt; (in some, limited circumstances) the use of the Heimlich maneuver as first aid for choking victims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How to perform the Heimlich maneuver:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;First ask, &amp;quot;Are you choking? Can you speak?&amp;quot; DO NOT perform first aid if the person is coughing forcefully and able to speak -- a strong cough can dislodge the object.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stand behind the person and wrap your arms around the person's waist.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make a fist with one hand. Place the thumb side of your fist just above the person's navel, well below the breastbone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grasp the fist with your other hand.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Make quick, upward and inward thrusts with your fist.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Continue these thrusts until the object is dislodged or the victim loses consciousness.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I used to be a First Aid volunteer in Australia, and was explicitly admonished &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; to ever use the Heimlich maneuver, as it was considered dangerous and not evidence-based. Other techniques were taught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the Heimlich maneuver evidence-based for use as an appropriate first-aid technique for choking victims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T00:06:21.797" Title="Is the Heimlich maneuver the most appropriate response to choking?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22964" CreationDate="2014-08-22T08:48:59.250" Score="7" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Absence of evidence:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Richard M. Bradley, a member of the Red Cross' Preparedness, Health and Safety Services advisory council and an associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/21/heimlich-red-cross-fight/1566492/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To the best of my knowledge, after doing a pretty thorough literature search, no controlled studies exist comparing back blows to abdominal thrusts or anything else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The inventor of the &lt;strong&gt;Heimlich&lt;/strong&gt; maneuver, Henry Judah &lt;strong&gt;Heimlich&lt;/strong&gt;, a thoracic surgeon,  believes some of those lives could have been saved by his maneuver versus slapping someone on the back, he insisted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want to fight the Red Cross. But I don't want people dying needlessly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it seems that Heimlich lacks evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;QuackWatch&lt;/a&gt;, closely affiliated with the National Council Against Health Fraud, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/heimlich.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heimlich and his spokespeople  have regularly stated that &amp;quot;thousands of lives&amp;quot; have been saved by use of abdominal thrusting. However, they have produced no objectively collected, widely accepted data to support the claim. During the past year, the National Council Against Health Fraud has asked Heimlich &lt;strong&gt;several times for details on his allegedly successful cases&lt;/strong&gt;, but &lt;strong&gt;he has produced nothing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, AUSTRALIAN RESUSCITATION COUNCIL published a paper in 2010 saying that there is not enough scientific evidence to support the use of abdominal thrusts and their use is not recommended in first aid. &lt;sup&gt; (2) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, Dr. Robert S. Baratz, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmc.org/findaphysician/PhysicianProfile.php?id=iZmfpaSTm5ydpQ==&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a Certified Medical Review Officer&lt;/a&gt; and a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine, emergency medicine has published a paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cincinnatibeacon.com/index.php?/content/print/peter_heimlich_vindicated_american_heart_association_repudiates_henry_hemli/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;saying&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For years Henry Heimlich and his associates have promoted abdominal thrusts, the so-called Heimlich maneuver, as a first measure in the treatment of near-drowning.  Despite a lack of data, studies, and physiological or medical sense ,abdominal thrusts have been advocated by Dr. Henry Heimlich, regularly, in multiple venues.  Heimlich’s &lt;strong&gt;advocacy is based on his opinion&lt;/strong&gt;, using arguments, described by reporter Pamela Mills-Senn, who wrote an extensive review on the matter, and quoted recently, as “circular, using his own pronouncements to validate his theories.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/21/heimlich-red-cross-fight/1566492/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;William Terry Ray, director of the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing's Nurse Anesthesia program, looked at 40 years of research. The reviews concluded that a person may have to use the back blows as well as abdominal thrusts to relieve the obstruction, depending on what caused the person to choke.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ray &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/21/heimlich-red-cross-fight/1566492/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;noted&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No definitive study exists to support Heimlich's theory that slapping someone on the back can push an obstruction further down the throat. The literature on this is not conclusive either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/21/heimlich-red-cross-fight/1566492/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;added&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies cited in a review of research projects &amp;quot;used animals, cadavers&#xA;and anecdotal evidence.&amp;quot; But not living human subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;While the Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence, I found that the Heimlich maneuver (see below):&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;caused life-threatening complications reported in 32 cases reports.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;may cause injury, vomiting and aspiration and delay CPR for drowning victims.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;highly likely to cause bruising to the abdomen.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;may cause serious injuries, including fracture of the xiphoid or ribs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heimlich has also been at odds with the Red Cross over his claims that the maneuver could help drowning victims and someone suffering an asthma attack, surprisingly, later AHA warned against the use of the Heimlich maneuver for drowning rescue, and they said &lt;sup&gt; (4) &lt;/sup&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Attempts to remove water from the breathing passages by any means other than suction (e.g. abdominal thrusts or the Heimlich maneuver) are unnecessary and potentially dangerous.  The routine use of abdominal thrusts or the Heimlich maneuver for drowning victims is not recommended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence that water acts as an obstructive foreign body.  Maneuvers to relieve FBAO [Foreign Body Airway Obstructions]  are not recommended for drowning victims because such maneuvers are not necessary and they can cause injury, vomiting and aspiration and delay CPR.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The AHA Guidelines were based on a series of referenced scientific articles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2006, The Red Cross changed their recommendation, &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20060429202036/http://www.redcross.org/pressrelease/0,1077,0_314_5262,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ending their promotion of Heimlich maneuver as the &lt;strong&gt;primary&lt;/strong&gt; treatment for choking&lt;/a&gt;. They said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Highlights of the skills changes, as a result of the new data,&#xA;include: for CPR, students will now be instructed to perform cycles of&#xA;30 chest compressions and two breaths; and to aid a conscious choking&#xA;victim, utilize a series of five back blows and five abdominal&#xA;thrusts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, life-threatening complications associated with use of abdominal thrusts have been reported in 32 case reports.&lt;sup&gt; (1) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: even when done correctly, Heimlich maneuver can injure the person on whom it is performed. Bruising to the abdomen is highly likely and more serious injuries can occur, including fracture of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiphoid_process&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;xiphoid process&lt;/a&gt; or ribs.&lt;sup&gt; (3) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;To keep this answer objective, I will not give a conclusion.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (1) Koster RW, Sayre MR, Botha M, Cave DM, Cudnik MT, Handley AJ, Hatanaka T,&#xA;Hazinski MF, Jacobs I, Monsieurs K, Morley PT, Nola JP, Travers AH. Part 5: Adult&#xA;basic life support: 2010 International consensus on cardiopulmonary resuscitation and&#xA;emergency cardiovascular care science with treatment recommendations. Resuscitation&#xA;2010;81:e48–e70. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.resuscitationjournal.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.resuscitationjournal.com&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (2)  &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.resus.org.au/policy/guidelines/section_4/airway.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Australian(and New Zealand) Resuscitation Council Guideline 4 AIRWAY&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;. Australian Resuscitation Council (2010). Retrieved 2014-02-09. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (3) Broomfield, James (2007-01-01). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.discovery.com/encyclopedias/illnesses.html?article=671&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Heimlich maneuver on self&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Discovery Channel. Retrieved 2007-06-15. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (4) &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/full/112/24_suppl/IV-133&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Part 10.3: Drowning&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;. Circulation (American Heart Association) 112 (24): 133–135. 2005-11-25. doi:10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.105.166565. Retrieved 2008-04-04. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-22T09:52:08.277" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22964" CreationDate="2014-08-22T15:25:30.840" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope&lt;/strong&gt;: My answer comprises sources that support efficacy for the Heimlich Maneuver to alleviate choking, and sources that show a lack of evidence for a comparison with other methods. I consider only the risks and benefits in healthy individuals between the ages of 1 and 65 of the maneuver for  &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/872498-overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Foreign Body Airway Obstruction (FBAO)&lt;/a&gt;. I interpret 'most appropriate' as 'the method with highest patient survival rate'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Out of scope&lt;/strong&gt;: Drowning (which is not choking, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2012/05/heimlich_maneuver_drowning.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;even Heimlich&lt;/a&gt; has retracted support there), infants, the elderly, the sick, Heimlich's son hating him, Heimlich's personal flaws and support of controversial AIDS cures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Heimlich&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Henry Heimlich&lt;/a&gt; named &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/839294&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the maneuver&lt;/a&gt; (seen below) after himself, and has been a strong proponent of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/dr-heimlich-got-maneuver/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this invention&lt;/a&gt;, as well as of many other of his inventions, through his (again eponymous) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deaconess-healthcare.com/Heimlich_Institute/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Heimlich Institute&lt;/a&gt;. In a study performed by Heimlich and others investigating its efficacy he describes the intuitive reason it should work as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sudden elevation of the diaphragm compresses the lungs, which&#xA;  explosively forces air out through the trachea, ejecting the&#xA;  obstructing object&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Food-Choking%20and%20Drowning%20Deaths%20Prevented%20by%20External%20Subdiaphragmatic%20Compression&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Heimlich HJ, Hoffmann KA, Canestri FR. (1975)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9OcAP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Benefits&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Informally, many people have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.chicagotribune.com/keyword/heimlich-maneuver&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; to have survived after having been administered the Heimlich maneuver. Some people &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hcec.com/2013/choke-no-more-the-heimlich-maneuver-saves-lives/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reportedly&lt;/a&gt; still breathing after the technique include Ronald Reagan, Elizabeth Taylor and Goldie Hawn. Usually, &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.chicagotribune.com/keyword/heimlich-maneuver&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;these reports&lt;/a&gt; describe people choking on solid food items. Apart from the study below, I have found no non other scientific sources that showed statistics (other than Heimlich's own reports).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Foreign body airway obstruction represents a true emergency in adults,&#xA;  with a 3.3% mortality rate in the current study. The Heimlich maneuver&#xA;  was used frequently and with good success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Adult%20Foreign%20Body%20Airway%20Obstruction%20in%20the%20Prehospital%20Setting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Soroudi A. et al., 2011&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US National Library of Medicine &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000047.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;advocates&lt;/a&gt; using the technique after less dangerous methods have been exhausted. Their source for claiming so is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.us.elsevierhealth.com/emergency/rosen-emergency-medicine-concepts-and-clinical-practice-2-volume-set-expert-consult/9780323054720/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rosen's Emergency Medicine: Concepts and Clinical Practice&lt;/a&gt;. The maneuver is &lt;a href=&quot;http://cte.unt.edu/content/files/_HS/documents/curriculum/health_science/FBAO.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;still taught&lt;/a&gt; in many classes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reported Detractors&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Red Cross has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redcross.org/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m4240176_ConsciousChokingPoster_EN.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;published guidelines&lt;/a&gt; in 2006 that do still show the Heimlich maneuver. The change is that first slaps on the back are recommended, and only then abdominal thrusts (Heimlich). This has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/red-cross-recommendation-for-saving-chocking-victims-2013-2#ixzz3B6mYxJw8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; to be downgrading or detracting from the Heimlich maneuver. However:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Red Cross certainly isn’t discounting the use of abdominal&#xA;  thrusts. But we include back blows, abdominal thrusts and chest&#xA;  compressions in our training because there is no clear scientific&#xA;  evidence to say that one technique is more effective than the others&#xA;  when treating a choking victim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://redcrosschat.org/2013/01/22/choking-101/#sthash.rs70DLcV.dpuf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Red Cross' Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22heimlich%20maneuver%22%20complications%20%22foreign%20body%22&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=0%2C5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;many complications&lt;/a&gt; associated with the Heimlich maneuver, some severe, which has led to many people detracting from the method. All sorts of things in the abdomen can rupture when under high pressure. Realize that it should be used as a final solution, with care, much like CPR (which can break ribs or kill victims, too), in the event that it is administered. Care should be taken, too, when forcibly slapping someone on the back when choking (which can also even &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/70/1/120.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;lead to death&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Concluding&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no doubt within the scientific community that the Heimlich maneuver can lead to complications, neither is there doubt that it has been administrated to people choking whom thereafter were not choking anymore. There is not enough evidence to support the alternative presented by the Red Cross, but neither is there enough evidence to detract from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After combing through 40 years of research, William Terry Ray,&#xA;  director of the University of Cincinnati College of Nursing's Nurse&#xA;  Anesthesia program, told the Enquirer that &quot;there is no one definitive&#xA;  treatment to relieve an obstructed airway on a conscious person.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &quot;Business Insider: Health Medical&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/red-cross-recommendation-for-saving-chocking-victims-2013-2#ixzz3B6mYxJw8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Heimlich Is Horrified By The Red Cross' Protocol For Saving Choking Victims&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heimlich himself at 96 did administer his eponymous technique to a woman in his retirement home &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/27/dr-heimlich-performs-heimlich-manoeuvre-for-first-time-aged-96&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;with effective results&lt;/a&gt;, so he obviously still stands by his original claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20991" LastEditorUserId="20991" LastEditDate="2016-05-29T00:06:21.797" LastActivityDate="2016-05-29T00:06:21.797" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22970" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22994" CreationDate="2014-08-22T21:33:59.767" Score="28" ViewCount="4113" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church&quot;&gt;Westboro Baptist Church&lt;/a&gt; is notorious for picketing things like funerals and they generate a lot of attention by doing so. A common trend in discussions about the church goes something like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Someone should just beat all of them up&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No, don't! They'll sue you. They get most of their money from suing people that try to hurt them!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gist is that a significant portion of their organization are lawyers and they are consistently trolling people in an attempt to provoke an action that they can then sue over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this even close to reality? Does Westboro Baptist Church engage in a significant number of lawsuits over incidents at their activities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-23T01:04:28.970" LastActivityDate="2023-09-18T03:39:43.883" Title="Does the Westboro Baptist Church get most of their funding from lawsuits?" Tags="|united-states|politics|law|lawsuits|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22972" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-23T05:52:14.163" Score="4" ViewCount="245" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interaxon claim that their &amp;quot;brain-sensing headband&amp;quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.choosemuse.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Muse&lt;/a&gt;, together with an iOS or Android app, can provide a user with some feedback that can be used to train the brain to become more calm and less stressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A brain fitness tool that helps you do more with your mind, and more with your life, by helping you learn to manage stress, stay calm, and stay focused.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Improve your physical, emotional, and cognitive health. See and feel improvements in your mental state in areas such as focus, composure, productivity, motivation, and emotional intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can such a &amp;quot;brain-sensing&amp;quot; consumer product be used to manage stress and be thus beneficial for an individual's health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="799" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T09:04:29.873" Title="Can a &quot;brain-sensing headband&quot; be used to train to be less stressed?" Tags="|consumer-products|neurology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22974" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-23T09:20:42.627" Score="7" ViewCount="478" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard several times that the existence of private or &quot;charter&quot; schools near public schools in the US harms public schools specifically because it draws &quot;stronger&quot;(grade-wise or socioeconomically) students away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allegedly having &quot;stronger&quot; peers somehow helps the educational process of the &quot;weaker&quot; students. And building private schools which &quot;cream&quot; (see explanation below) the better students will negatively affect the performance of the students who are left in the public schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;E.g:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, research by Coleman et al. (1966) shows that “the&#xA;  socioeconomic level of a student’s school had more effect on his&#xA;  achievement than any other measurable factor except the socioeconomic&#xA;  level of his home” (Jencks 1973,100).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.corwin.com/upm-data/2990_11uar01.pdf#page=108&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;QUALITY, RACE, AND THE URBAN EDUCATION MARKETPLACE RECONSIDERED&lt;/a&gt; (page 273 (114 in pdf)) are based on this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coleman,J. S.,E. Q. Campbell,C. J. Hobson,J. McPartland,A. M. Mood,F.&#xA;  D.Weinfeld,and R. L. York. 1966. Equality of educational&#xA;  opportunity.Washington,DC: Government Printing Office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Article which has some data but it's almost 50 years old and might be not that relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering whether there's some (newer?) evidence (statistical or otherwise) to that claim being true (if true, &lt;strong&gt;how much effect&lt;/strong&gt; does it have).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given public school &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; that has some &quot;strong&quot; students, if some organization would open a private school &lt;em&gt;B&lt;/em&gt; and those &quot;strong&quot; students would be accepted to school &lt;em&gt;B&lt;/em&gt; and would be transferred there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Would the remaining students in school &lt;em&gt;A&lt;/em&gt; be affected by the absence of their &quot;stronger&quot; peers or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could maybe checked by comparing public schools with similar population prior to school &lt;em&gt;B&lt;/em&gt;'s appearance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I'm talking about &lt;strong&gt;&quot;creaming&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; I'm talking about the intentional and systematic use of selection criteria to choose which students attend a school (which is usually choosing the &quot;better&quot; students e.g better grades or better test results in some SAT-like test).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21840" LastEditorUserId="21840" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T13:43:44.910" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T13:43:44.910" Title="Does student selection by private schools negatively affect nearby public ones?" Tags="|united-states|education|children|sociology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="15" ClosedDate="2014-08-25T20:11:52.500" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22979" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-23T17:03:39.390" Score="15" ViewCount="1409" Body="&lt;p&gt;The other day my lecturer warned against underline or highlighting important lines in your textbook, as it increases your chances of distraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://guides.library.harvard.edu/sixreadinghabits&quot;&gt;Harvard Library&lt;/a&gt; makes a similar claim: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Throw away your highlighter: Highlighting can seem like an active reading strategy, but it can actually distract from the business of learning and dilute your comprehension.  Those bright yellow lines you put on a printed page one day can seem strangely cryptic the next, unless you have a method for remembering why they were important to you at another moment in time.  Pen or pencil will allow you do to more to a text you have to wrestle with.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true ??&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21177" LastEditorUserId="21177" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T17:43:12.127" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T06:56:22.847" Title="Does text highlighting distract from reading comprehension?" Tags="|reading|concentration|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22785" CreationDate="2014-08-23T19:22:44.680" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a group of molecule called Protocadherin-2 (Pcad-2) that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;become visible along the nerve fiber in the brain stem at the 8th week, and spread over the entire brain at the 11th week. At the 18th week, however, expression in the nerve fascicles, which had been visible by that time, was no longer visible or had decreased. These results suggest that Pcad-2 appears relatively early in the critical stage of development of the fetal CNS [central nervous system], and is involved in the induction, fasciculation, and extension of axons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This might explain the part where Lucy described something along the lines of cells talking to each other, forming communities that interact with each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/15327484/&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/15327484/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Axon meaning: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axon&quot;&gt;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21862" LastEditorUserId="21862" LastEditDate="2014-08-23T19:32:38.120" LastActivityDate="2014-08-23T19:32:38.120" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22986" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="22987" CreationDate="2014-08-24T21:24:34.290" Score="3" ViewCount="1072" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/8fact/photos/a.121125554748254.1073741828.120709694789840/274682389392569/?type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;image&lt;/a&gt; posted by 8fact:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OCREk.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Due to the discovery of many brain parasites, scientists say that a zombie apocalypse is actually possible. #8fact&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This pictured grabbed 11,085 shares and 34,942 likes so far on Facebook. I find it hard to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="16860" LastEditDate="2015-05-28T16:03:09.890" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T16:03:09.890" Title="Did scientists warn of the possibility of a zombie apocalypse?" Tags="|biology|extinction-event|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22986" CreationDate="2014-08-24T22:22:10.167" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is impossible to answer conclusively, since there's no definition provided for either &amp;quot;Zombie&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;Apocalypse&amp;quot;, or even &amp;quot;possible&amp;quot; (which includes things with miniscule probability, as long as they don't violate laws of nature). Nor of how many scientists said so and if it was in peer reviewed publication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, yes, &amp;quot;some&amp;quot; scientists said that - for some definitions - &amp;quot;zombie&amp;quot; &amp;quot;apocalypse&amp;quot; is &amp;quot;possible&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112964783/zombie-virus-could-be-reality-exclusive-100213/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt; - and also covered on &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/10/1001027-rabies-influenza-zombie-virus-science/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Geographic&lt;/a&gt; in great depth):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;“I think that the Zombie Virus already exists (almost): Rabies. Infection is nearly 100 percent lethal, i.e. it turns you into the walking dead (for a while at least), and it causes you to change your behavior by reprogramming you to bite other people to spread the infection. Now if only it kept the corpse walking around,” &lt;strong&gt;Jonathan D. Dinman, PhD, Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Maryland&lt;/strong&gt;, told redOrbit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, the rabies virus would need to be slightly altered, or would have to evolve, in a way to keep people kicking and screaming for their next victim rather than killing them off just a few days after symptoms occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_15643_5-scientific-reasons-zombie-apocalypse-could-actually-happen.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cracked.com has 5 other &amp;quot;possible&amp;quot; scenarios&lt;/a&gt;, most with nods to scientists discussing the possibility:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;toxoplasmosa gondii&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;datura stramonium/alcaloids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;growing brain stem from stem cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;nanobots&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T19:55:01.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22989" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-25T02:29:59.260" Score="9" ViewCount="526" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people believe that the shape of a wine glass affects the taste of the wine inside. From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.winemag.com/glassware-and-serving-basics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;representative article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Believe it or not, even a modestly decent wine will taste different in every glass! Some will mute the flavor, some will emphasize odd scents, some will have no scents at all. If you are fortunate, one glass will present the wine perfectly, and everyone will agree that this is how the wine is supposed to taste. This is a wine fact that almost defies belief—until you try it for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical. Is there any evidence to support this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/17770/does-canned-beer-taste-better-than-bottled-beer/17773#17773&quot;&gt;Does canned beer taste better than bottled beer?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3837" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T05:16:31.230" Title="Does the shape of a wine glass affect the taste of the consumed wine?" Tags="|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22990" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-25T03:39:25.867" Score="3" ViewCount="91" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read the question &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1092/is-it-harmful-to-your-eyes-to-read-in-dim-light&quot;&gt;Is it harmful to your eyes to read in dim light?&lt;/a&gt; and remembered that when I visited Kensington Palace a few years back there was a story that many of the servant girls who worked as seamstresses went blind - by age 22 or younger, if I remember correctly. The reason given was that they worked long hours doing detailed sewing by candlelight. Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/9123189/Kensington-Palaces-revamped-state-apartments.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;closest (slightly indirect) online reference to the claim&lt;/a&gt; I could find:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;they didn’t want to know how many seamstresses had lost their eyesight embroidering our magnificent court dresses&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/20405/have-textile-workers-created-such-finely-detailed-textiles-that-they-have-gone-b&quot;&gt;similar question was recently posed&lt;/a&gt; which seemed to support the argument that sewing in dim light harms one's eyes, and by following links in the answer I arrived at the paper entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/027753959580050Y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The linkage between Iranian patriarchy and the informal economy in maintaining women's subordinate roles in home-based carpet production&lt;/a&gt; where it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is usually inadequate light in most rural homes, and the weavers’ houses are damp, dark, and cramped. The average working life cycle of a highly skilled weaver is estimated at 13 years since the weavers lose their eyesight, in part, due to improper lighting. Some weavers who start very young suffer from different types of physical ailments exacerbated by the nature of their work. An older weaver in Najaf-Abad said, “I am losing my eyesight, see I have been weaving for many years.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/335/7633/1288.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;as noted by the BMJ&lt;/a&gt; in a previous question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Suboptimal lighting can create a sensation of having difficulty in focusing. It also decreases the rate of blinking and leads to discomfort from drying, particularly in conditions of voluntary squinting. The important counterpoint is that these effects do not persist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, I shall assume that the BMJ references the act of occasionally reading a book by torchlight under the bed-covers, whereas British stately homes had, and Iranian carpet-makers have people working day-in day-out in ill-lit spaces therefore providing little opportunity to rest one's eyes. Thus my question becomes &quot;Does long-term detailed work in low light permanently damage one's eyesight?&quot;, an issue not addressed by the BMJ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T02:31:26.890" Title="Does habitually performing detailed work in low light cause permanent eye damage?" Tags="|medical-science|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-08-25T07:29:05.560" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22991" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-25T06:40:17.633" Score="2" ViewCount="1288" Body="&lt;p&gt;Purcell Mountain Farms sell &quot;Quinoa flakes&quot;, which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.purcellmountainfarms.com/Organic%20Quinoa%20Flakes.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;they claim&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;retain all of the nutritional properties of the supergrain&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, an answerer at &lt;a href=&quot;http://askville.amazon.com/Quinoa-Flakes-regular-recipe/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=70476131&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Askville&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quinoa Flakes have been steamed, rolled and then flaked. &lt;strong&gt;Quinoa flakes&#xA;  have the same nutritional profile as whole Quinoa does&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that quinoa flakes have the same nutritional properties as whole quinoa?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21876" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T02:54:28.003" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T13:44:42.487" Title="Do quinoa flakes have the same nutritional profile as whole quinoa?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22993" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23005" CreationDate="2014-08-25T12:36:44.193" Score="17" ViewCount="15260" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Sir David Attenborough say the following about Israelis? From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arabnews.com/news/613156&quot;&gt;Israel has lost both the battle and the war&lt;/a&gt; (Wikipedia article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_News&quot;&gt;Arab News&lt;/a&gt;), but the quote has been circulating elsewhere as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am unaware of any animal that is as cruel as Israelis— not even&#xA;  crocodiles. They bomb schools, hospitals, refugee camps, orphanages,&#xA;  UN feeding stations, water works, power plants, ambulances, kids&#xA;  playing on the beach. They put millions of people in a siege. They&#xA;  shoot children going to school. They kidnap kids and harvest their&#xA;  organs. They inject prisoners with disease pathogens before releasing&#xA;  them. They murder by land, sea and air and worst of all, they slander&#xA;  their defenseless victims as ‘terrorists’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2014-08-25T21:35:07.577" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T13:23:25.280" Title="Did David Attenborough say that Israelis are more cruel than any animal?" Tags="|quotes|israel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22994" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22970" CreationDate="2014-08-25T13:19:10.500" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is absolutely no reason to believe there is any amount of truth to this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First off, several former members of Westboro with nothing to gain or lose have publicly said that this isn't true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of you guys want to know if it's true that the objective of the church is to piss people off to the point of violence, sue, and gain profit. the answer is no. :)&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;— Zach Phelps-Roper, former WBC member, from his &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2bvjz6/i_am_zach_phelpsroper_i_am_a_former_member_of_the/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reddit AMA&lt;/a&gt; last month&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is my belief that they actually believe what they preach. They have concocted such an elaborate doctrine and give no opportunity for the members to question it in their controlled environment.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;— Laura Drain, former WBC member in response to a question about this myth, in her &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18biq8/i_am_lauren_drain_former_westboro_baptist_church/c8dftzy/?context=8&amp;amp;depth=9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reddit AMA&lt;/a&gt; from last year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have not profited in any lawsuits. In fact, we lose - duh! You think anyone is going to willingly repay us the money they took from us when they drag us into court? Do you think a judge is going to award us monies?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;— Jael Phelps, Current WBC member in response to a question about this myth, from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/gcory/comment/c1mvz6c/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reddit AMA 3 years ago.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to these quotes several people have looked into the myth and have turned up nothing. While absence of evidence isn't always enough to disprove something, the very nature of this myth &lt;em&gt;requires&lt;/em&gt; an abundance of evidence. Trials are public record, even non-disclosed settlements are on record (although their text is not). Any legal filing would be easily uncovered and explored. Yet every single person who has chased after this comes up with nothing that could explain any significant sum of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several years ago, &lt;a href=&quot;https://stanfordreview.org/countdown-to-westboro-baptist-church-at-stanford-the-law-and-wbc/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Stanford Review&lt;/em&gt; explored this claim&lt;/a&gt; and, as everyone else before them, came up empty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally figure this myth to be a little bit of wishful thinking. For whatever reason, people consider the motivation of pure greed to be a little more tolerable than pure, unadulterated hate. Unfortunately, there simply is no reason to believe that this is anything but a myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21880" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2023-09-14T14:03:32.353" LastActivityDate="2023-09-14T14:03:32.353" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="22997" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31149" CreationDate="2014-08-25T15:21:23.213" Score="25" ViewCount="1147" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a ridiculously common trope in cop shows and movies. I've seen movies where either a cop or a druglord was able to rattle off purity statistics after just a taste. The good guys bust into a room and find a bunch of drug bricks. They stab a hole in one and then dab a bit of the white substance on their tongue declaring, &quot;Oh, this is the good stuff! X% pure!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this possible? Can any of the following attributes be discovered purely through taste?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Type of drug&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Quality of drug (presumably this is a mixed bag of potency and mixture?)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Place of origin&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T10:22:25.487" LastActivityDate="2015-12-17T17:49:08.917" Title="Can you determine the type or quality of illicit drugs by tasting them?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="22999" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6867" CreationDate="2014-08-25T19:41:05.470" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found the sentence whose Greek was referenced in comments in the OP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/stream/hippocrates04hippuoft#page/262/mode/2up/search/animal&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Regimen, XXIV&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The soul of man, as I have already said, being a blend of fire and water, and the parts of man, enter into every animal that breathes, and in particular into every man, whether young or old. But it does not grow equally in all;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Corpus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia lists this book&lt;/a&gt; as being &quot;Works of the age or spirit of Hippocrates&quot;. Note that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Hippocratic Corpus (Latin: Corpus Hippocraticum), or Hippocratic Collection, is a collection of around 60 early Ancient Greek medical works strongly associated with the physician Hippocrates and his teachings. They are, however, varied in content, age and style, and are largely of unknown authorship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hippocrates, or someone very like him and at about the same time, did say that&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The English translation cited in the OP is concise (abbreviated) and quite loose.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-08-25T19:41:05.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23000" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22170" CreationDate="2014-08-25T22:19:05.537" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The footage is real/live, as is the siren, though there wasn't actually an attack shown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/1991-01-23/news/mn-763_1_scud-attack&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's an LA Times article&lt;/a&gt; from January 23, 1991, discussing the attack:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The issue came to a head Tuesday morning after yet another air raid warning in Dhahran. CNN turned to a live report from Charles Jaco, who, over the scream of the air raid sirens, informed viewers that he knew only that an alarm had gone off and that under new Saudi restrictions, his cameras could not show anything other than the wall behind him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite the lack of either information or pictures, the CNN anchor continued to shoot questions at the obviously nervous Jaco as he stood in the open, repeatedly mopping his brow and occasionally twitching. At one point, as Jaco apparently caught a whiff of jet exhaust, he suddenly dove and slammed a gas mask over his face, handing the microphone to a colleague who, without gas mask, talked about how nervous people were and tried to reassure Jaco that his anxiety was understandable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interviewed later, Jaco said he had heard criticism from colleagues and acknowledged that &amp;quot;there were times I've blown it. . . . It disturbs me a lot, those that think I'm increasing the fear. I've got a family back home, too.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, there are records of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/missile/scud_info/scud_info_s04.htm#1.%C2%A0%20Summary&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scud being fired&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/missile/scud_info/scud_info_en.htm#to%20en%2061&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;January 23rd at 10:54 PM&lt;/a&gt; (You'll need to follow the citations from this link on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/web/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wayback Machine&lt;/a&gt; or a similar service as the GulfLINK web server appears to be offline)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21884" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T13:09:47.153" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23004" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23030" CreationDate="2014-08-26T08:11:13.710" Score="10" ViewCount="3237" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Malaysia, there is an ongoing (though &lt;a href=&quot;https://my.news.yahoo.com/lone-gaza-protester-outside-mcdonalds-085049524.html&quot;&gt;not entirely successful&lt;/a&gt;) boycott campaign of McDonald's, on the grounds that McDonald's is a &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;first tier corporate partner to the cause of Zionism&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and has provided&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;unrelenting support to further consolidate the existence of these illegal settlements and causing unabated oppression of the Palestinians. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://vpm.org.my/bds/32-why-boycott-mcdonalds&quot;&gt;Link&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What grounds are there for making such claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17967" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T11:58:02.500" Title="Is McDonald's supporting Israel?" Tags="|israel|mcdonalds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23005" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22993" CreationDate="2014-08-26T10:40:04.553" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;An anonymous person wrote a comment on July 21, 2014 on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/07/21/372201/israel-drops-phosphorus-bombs-on-gaza/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PressTV.ir&lt;/a&gt; that uses David Attenborough name. That comment was strongly upvoted and people made Facebook memes out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that social media activity the Arab News took it as fact for their article on August 8, 2014. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://toxicdrums.blogspot.de/2014/08/the-david-attenborough-hoax.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Toxic Drums&lt;/a&gt; analyses the case in more detail. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone could have written that comment and there's no reason to believe that it was David Attenborough. If David Attenborough wanted to say something on the issue the 88 year old would likely write an OPed in a newspaper instead of commenting on an Iranian news website. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2015-11-30T13:23:25.280" LastActivityDate="2015-11-30T13:23:25.280" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22170" CreationDate="2014-08-26T12:08:44.460" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The video &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afSzodfmjaE&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DEBUNKED: CNN Blue Screen/Green Screen Hoaxes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by AluminumTheory directly debunks this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as an anonymous Youtube video is hardly a credible source, I have cross-checked a couple of its claims below, and directly source them, if possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The &quot;stage&quot;&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AluminumTheory argues it is not a blue-screen stage (as claimed by the conspiracy theorists), but just blue-coloured walls from the Dhahran International Hotel. He compares number of photos and references a newspaper article to support this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To confirm this claim, let's start of with the nice newspaper article from The Free Lance-Star, a newspaper based in Fredericksburg, Virginia who had sent a couple of reporters to cover the war. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The entire article is worth the read, but copy pasting isn't possible, so I retyped most of it)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;A long frustrating trip to the middle east&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But we owe an explanation here. It's an explanation being shared by many of the 700 journalists who joined the safari to Saudi Arabia, only to be upstaged by CNN and its uninterrupted coverage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No doubt television has made you familiar with the Dhahran International Hotel--or at least the back side of it, where the television networks broadcast, where the Scud missiles are sighted and where the shelters are located.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Maybe you've wondered about those blue balloonlike structures forming the background of Charles Jaco's nightly CNN telecasts. Most thought they were radar domes or complex satellite communications equipment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They are the tops of the sun-screen shelters and cabanas surrounding the hotel swimming pool. They have that lofty look about them only because &lt;strong&gt;the networks have constructed tree-houselike broadcast platforms from plywood and 2-by-4s--each successive one built higher than the first--and they sit atop a miniature golf course initially designed for the enjoyment of the guests&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;I had more freedom reporting from East Berlin before the wall came down,&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&amp;amp;dat=19910216&amp;amp;id=r-JNAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=X4sDAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=1990,2850114&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google News Archive&lt;/a&gt;: The Free Lance-Star - Feb 16, 1991&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally it's possible to find photos of the location in Great Britain's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205189267&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Imperial War Museums archive&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Nf1IG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Satellite dishes erected by the international press corps at the International Hotel, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Satellite dishes erected by the international press corps at the International Hotel, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it boils down to is that all news agencies were forced to report from the same location (as actually mentioned by Jaco himself at one point in the video). The video is consistent with that location, and is not a blue-screen stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Multiple takes&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AluminumTheory shows that two parts of the video, labeled &quot;Take Two&quot; and &quot;Take Three&quot; were not separate takes, but actually the exact same footage that had been duplicated to make it seem more sinister.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He shows this by laying the two sections of the video next to each other, and showing they are identical. Proving this in text and images here is a bit hard, but in the YouTube video they are overlaid pretty nicely. As this would prove a deliberate intent to falsify the information I deemed it worthwhile to reproduce this result ('&lt;em&gt;peer review&lt;/em&gt; it', if you will):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QAyoo.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zooming in the waveforms overlapped to within reason of the MP3 encoding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is strong support to reinforce AluminumTheory's evidence that that these are not two separate takes, but the same footage manipulated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This video is a deliberate attempt to falsify information to attract visitors for &lt;em&gt;patriotportal.yolasite.com&lt;/em&gt;. The AluminumTheory video mentioned in the first paragraph continues with more photographic evidence, but the above three pieces of evidence were to me the most central ones, and are now properly attributed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another worthwhile thing about the video is that it puts into perspective the behaviour of Jaco to some extend and explain why they weren't allowed to make wide angle shots (they were right next to an airfield used by the military). Not to say that he didn't overreact in that segment, but it was a war zone after all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18335" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T07:07:08.023" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T07:07:08.023" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22991" CreationDate="2014-08-26T12:10:39.143" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Purcell Mountain Farms has the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.purcellmountainfarms.com/Organic%20Quinoa%20Flakes.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;nutritional values&lt;/a&gt; listed for their product on their webpage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Serving Size: cooked 1/2 cup (42 g)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calories 159      Calories from Fat 0      Total Fat 2.5 g 3.8%      Saturated Fat 0.3 g 1.3%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monounsaturated Fat 0.7 g      Polyunsaturated Fat 1 g      Cholesterol 0 mg 0%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sodium 9 mg 0.4%      Total Carbohydrate 29.5 g 9.8%      Dietary Fiber 3 g 12.3%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sugars 1 g      Protein 5.7 g 11.4%      Vitamin A 0%      Vitamin E 6.8%      Vitamin C 0%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calcium 2.6%      Iron 21.9%      Magnesium 22.4%      Phosphorus 17.5%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potassium 9%      Zinc 9%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/10352/2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Similar figures for one cup of cooked Quinoa&lt;/a&gt; adjusted to 1/2 cup:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Serving Size: cooked 1/2 cup (93 g)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calories 111      Calories from Fat 16      Total Fat 2 g 2.5%      Saturated Fat 0%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sodium 6.5 mg 0.5%      Total Carbohydrate 19.5 g 6.5%      Dietary Fiber 2.5 g 10.5%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Protein 4 g       Vitamin A 0%      Vitamin C 0%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calcium 1.5%      Iron 7.5%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, BOE calculations, it looks like the quinoa flakes have something additional added to supplement it, raising the number of calories in a serving as well ass adding more sodium, but also including more vitamins. Of course, it may also depend on what figures each is using for rounding things. The FDA has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/LabelingNutrition/ucm064932.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;rules&lt;/a&gt; but neither listing seems to be using them. Regarding supplementation, it's been pointed out in the comments that the quinoa flakes only state that quinoa flakes are present, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/LabelingNutrition/ucm064894.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FDA guidelines&lt;/a&gt; allow omission of enriching vitamins and minerals in they're the components of another item such as flour:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, FDA only requires that the label declare the vitamins A and C, and the minerals calcium and iron. The other enrichment vitamins and minerals must be declared when they are added directly to the packaged food (e.g., enriched bread), but not when the enriched product is added as an ingredient to another food. NOTE: It is necessary to declare the other vitamins and minerals in the ingredient list. However, if unenriched flour is used, and the enrichment nutrients are added separately, those nutrients (i.e., thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, and folic acid) would have to be declared on the Nutrition Facts label. 21 CFR 101.9(c)(8)(ii)(A)-(B) and 21 CFR 101.9(c)(8)(iv)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel like, if enriched quinoa flakes were your only ingredient, you'd have to admit to it, but I am not a lawyer, of course, so they might be dodging it that way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T12:34:22.757" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23009" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-26T17:00:23.987" Score="3" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/240105-does-soy-milk-lower-testosterone/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.livestrong.com/article/240105-does-soy-milk-lower-testosterone/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;seems to suggest that it is indecisive.&#xA;Is there concrete evidence for either side of the argument?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neither soy protein nor soy isoflavones had any effect on testosterone&#xA;  levels in adult men who consumed soy foods or products&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21891" LastEditorUserId="21891" LastEditDate="2014-08-26T17:13:24.917" LastActivityDate="2014-08-26T17:13:24.917" Title="Does soya milk decrease testosterone?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2014-08-27T06:55:50.047" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23010" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23018" CreationDate="2014-08-26T17:39:26.403" Score="10" ViewCount="987" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently discovered that some people put Animal Planet (or similar nature channel) on the TV when leaving a cat alone all day.  I'd never heard of this before, but I found many mentions of it while searching for more information.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cats that have been outside and seen the real thing often don’t react, but homebody indoor-only cats enjoy watching videos of fluttering birds, squirrels and other critters. There are a number of these videos available, including the original called “Video Catnip” by PetAVision, Inc. Alternately, find a nature television show such as on Animal Planet, and tune in for your cat’s viewing pleasure. &#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://cats.about.com/od/stressanxietyincats/a/separationanxietyincats.htm&quot;&gt;How to Solve Separation Anxiety in Cats - About.com&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don’t have any wildlife? Leave the TV tuned to a nature channel or Animal Planet, or pop a wildlife DVD into the player while you’re gone. You can find some that are made just for cats. &#xA;  &lt;sub&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://cattime.com/tips-for-leaving-cat-home-alone.html&quot;&gt;Tips for leaving cat home alone - cattime.com&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usually, the sites make the claim that it helps with separation anxiety.  Is there any research to support this?  Does this actually benefit the cat, or is it just something to make the owner feel better about leaving the cat alone?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastActivityDate="2020-06-03T09:30:19.740" Title="Is there any benefit to leaving Animal Planet on when leaving a cat alone?" Tags="|zoology|television|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23011" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22951" CreationDate="2014-08-26T22:39:22.470" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I tried to answer this question previously, and received a considerable amount of criticism.  @DVK Yes, your understanding of financial terms is correct.  However, Social Security does not use terms as you think it does.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/tr/2014/VI_B_LRact_bal.html#102806&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Solvency in Social Security considers the cashflows over 75 years.  You can see this on page 159 of the Trustees Report.&lt;/a&gt;  Social Security was solvent in 1983 and is not in 1985 and later.  It is a definition within Social Security.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The writer has a simple question.  The problem is that he misunderstands Bogle.  Bogle is talking about solvency in the context of Social Security.  The writer seems to be talking about in terms that DVK is using.  Bogle is not saying that Social Security is not &quot;headed for insolvency&quot;.  He is saying that with changes we can achieve solvency in the context of Social Security.  Two year later it isn't solvent anymore - and there are structural reasons for that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DVK, I am not confusing solvent and solved.  In fact, I separated the meanings clearly.  Many people confuse these words because solvent does not mean in Social Security what it means in finance - as immutable the meaning there it may have.  Social Security has its own accounting standards that are not like anything you have worked with.  If it did, Social Security would be insolvent today with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/tr/2014/VI_F_infinite.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;liabilities in excess of assets of 24.9 trillion - see page 192 of the 2014 Trustees Report&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21895" LastEditorUserId="2433" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T14:05:17.673" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T14:05:17.673" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23014" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-27T01:05:40.563" Score="16" ViewCount="1207" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Roman Catholic Church claims that St Peter was the first pope, which would imply that he was also one of the first bishops of Rome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some statements from the New Testament make this seem unlikely:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A church already existed in Rome when Paul wrote his epistle to them (Romans.) In it he greets many people by name, but not Peter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Galatians 2 describes Peter as the &quot;apostle to the circumcised&quot; and Paul as the &quot;apostle to the uncircumcised&quot;, suggesting that Peter's primary responsibility was for Jewish people, not the Romans.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some scholars, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.philologie.uni-bonn.de/philologie/personal/zwierlein/st_peter_in_rome.pdf&quot;&gt;Otto Zwierlein&lt;/a&gt; assert there is no evidence that Peter ever went to Rome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some may consider that since Peter is considered to be the first pope he was also by definition the bishop of Rome. Even if that was the case, I would like to know if there is any evidence that Peter had a specific and particular authority over Rome that was distinct from his authority as pope, and whether there is evidence that he lived in Rome for any substantial length of time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21255" LastEditorUserId="21255" LastEditDate="2015-01-23T00:15:27.277" LastActivityDate="2018-11-12T14:42:46.650" Title="Was St Peter a bishop of Rome?" Tags="|history|catholic-church|pope|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18490" CreationDate="2014-08-27T13:09:42.310" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is some evidence that refrigeration can help preserve aromas&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hrcak.srce.hr/index.php?show=clanak&amp;amp;id_clanak_jezik=48135&quot;&gt;K. MARIN et al.: New Aroma Index for Aroma Quality of Coffee During Storage, Food Technol. Biotechnol.&lt;/a&gt; ISSN 1330-9862 &#xA;(FTB-1827)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The samples stored in a&#xA;  refrigerator preserved their aroma for a longer time,&#xA;  with decreased staling rate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For consumers,&#xA;  an alternative to preserving their roasted coffee in&#xA;  airtight packages is to store it in a refrigerator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The staling of coffee was found to be the result of&#xA;  evaporation or degradation by oxidation of important&#xA;  coffee odourants, such as 2-methylpropanal, 3-methylbutanal,&#xA;  2,3-butanedione, 2-methylbutanal, methanethiol&#xA;  and 2-furfurylthiol, rather than of formation of off-flavour&#xA;  compounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study that might be slightly less relevant but whose conclusions seem at least consistent with the notion that lower temperatures preserve flavor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.hcmuaf.edu.vn/data/lhquang/file/Coffee/Effect%20of%20storage%20conditions.pdf&quot;&gt;EFFECT OF STORAGE CONDITIONS ON THE SENSORY&#xA;QUALITY OF GROUND ARABICA COFFEE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results indicate the importance of proper&#xA;  storage of ground coffee and the idea that freezer storage may be more&#xA;  effective at retarding some of the attribute changes during storage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T13:33:33.360" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T13:33:33.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23017" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-27T13:32:59.443" Score="7" ViewCount="597" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my area, there is a common belief that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conkers&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;conkers&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesculus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;horse chestnuts&lt;/a&gt;) spread throughout the house deter spiders from entering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A writer for &lt;a href=&quot;http://insects.about.com/b/2009/10/05/do-conkers-repel-spiders-prove-it.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;About.com&lt;/a&gt; heard similar tales:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a little more digging, I learned that conkers are thought to repel spiders indoors. An old wives' tale, if you'll pardon the expression, asserts that you should place horse chestnuts on windowsills and in corners of your rooms to keep spiders from entering the house. The conkers are thought to contain some kind of oil or chemical that spiders detest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wondered if this could be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've had a quick browse myself but can't find anything objective to confirm or deny.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do horse chestnuts deter spiders?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21537" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T19:38:55.517" Title="Do horse chestnuts deter spiders?" Tags="|entomology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23010" CreationDate="2014-08-27T14:06:43.187" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any research to support the notion that cats benefit from watching TV. I couldn't find any to contradict it either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did find that the Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery published &lt;a href=&quot;http://jfm.sagepub.com/content/15/3/219.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AAFP and ISFM Feline Environmental Needs Guidelines&#xA;Sarah L H Ellis et al.&#xA;DOI: 10.1177/1098612X13477537&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which seems a reasonably comprehensive guide to what a domesticated cat needs but which doesn't mention the provision of TV based audiovisual stimulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US National Institute for Health (NIH) published an article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3922041/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Environmental Enrichment for Indoor Cats&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recommendations to cat owners to house their cats indoors confer the responsibility to provide conditions that ensure good health and welfare. Cats maintain their natural behaviors, such as scratching, chewing, and elimination, while living indoors, and they may develop health and behavior problems when deprived of appropriate environmental outlets for these behaviors. This article divides the environment into five basic “systems” to enable identification of features that may benefit from improvement. It also addresses practical means of meeting cats’ needs in each of these systems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cats appear quite capable of living indoors, occasionally even in high population densities,1 especially when food resources are abundant.2 However, cats are captives in these environments, akin to zoo animals, and as with zoo animals, cats’ health and welfare may be affected by their surroundings.3 Cats also retain their natural investigatory and communication behaviors (e.g., scratching, chewing, elimination) when they live indoors. Because of this, they sometimes display undesirable behaviors when deprived of appropriate outlets for their expression&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't mention TV. The reference to zoo animals is probably about confined animals becoming &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/animals-in-zoos-being-driven-mad-by-captivity-survey-finds-widespread-evidence-of-hypnotic-repetitive-type-of-behaviour-caused-by-confinement-nicholas-schoon-reports-1430769.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;psychologically disturbed&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An article in Journal of Feline Medicine and Surgery (2009) 11, 901–912: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/38037189_Environmental_enrichment_practical_strategies_for_improving_feline_welfare/file/72e7e51fa2436a200b.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ENVIRONMENTAL ENRICHMENT&#xA;Practical strategies for&#xA;improving feline welfare&lt;/a&gt; includes this table&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NSGEj.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but cautions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While cats&#xA;  were found to watch the television, it is difficult&#xA;  to conclude that this behaviour improved&#xA;  the welfare of the individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A note of caution is warranted regarding situations&#xA;  where an animal cannot reach and/or&#xA;  interact with the source of stimulation (eg,&#xA;  items shown on a television screen or viewed&#xA;  out of a window), as such interventions may&#xA;  potentially induce frustration and related&#xA;  behaviours in some animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tentative conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of feline welfare, TV is no substitute for environmental support for a wider range of more normal cat activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-08-27T14:15:42.940" LastActivityDate="2014-08-27T14:15:42.940" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23020" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-27T16:32:44.517" Score="7" ViewCount="2514" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that cutting or grating vegetables with metal tools somehow reduces the vitamin content (or as it is sometimes stated &quot;it kills the vitamins&quot;). There are also commercials, which advocate glass or ceramic tools for preserving vitamins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen similar claims on the Internet (e.g., provided by @ChrisW: &lt;a href=&quot;http://mumteaching.com/2009/07/13/how-to-keep-the-vitamins-in-the-food-steel-knifes-destroy-vitamins/&quot;&gt;How to keep the vitamins in the food – STEEL KNIFES DESTROY VITAMINS&lt;/a&gt;), but I couldn't find any scientific studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are vitamins in food significantly affected by contact with metal utensils?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21905" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T01:07:33.893" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T00:12:45.977" Title="Does contact with metal surfaces reduce the vitamin levels of vegetables?" Tags="|nutrition|vitamins|vegetables|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23022" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-27T21:11:30.387" Score="7" ViewCount="593" Body="&lt;p&gt;'Of the 20 to 30 elevator-related deaths each year, most of them are maintenance-related — for example, technicians leaning too far into the shaft or getting caught between moving parts, and most of the rest are attributed to other kinds of accidents, such as people stepping blindly through doors that open into empty shafts or being strangled by scarves caught in the doors.' (Wikipedia)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However www.nationalmultumedia.com made the following claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Woman-drops-to-her-death-in-lift-plunge-30194663.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nationmultimedia.com/national/Woman-drops-to-her-death-in-lift-plunge-30194663.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A woman succumbed to severe injuries on Sunday night, &lt;strong&gt;in the first legally recognised death caused by a falling lift&lt;/strong&gt;. The accident happened on Saturday at a furniture showroom in Nakhon Ratchasima.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, according to 'The Nation', there is only one known death caused by a falling elevator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since it seems strange to me, I wonder whether that claim is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T02:13:28.770" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T02:13:28.770" Title="Is there only one known death caused by a falling elevator?" Tags="|elevators|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23023" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23022" CreationDate="2014-08-27T21:24:59.433" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are at least 7 other fatalities due to elevator falls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/15/news/la-heb-elevator-safety-death-201112115&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;LA Times reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A] 48-year-old elevator maintenance worker who died when an unfinished elevator suddenly dropped about 10 feet [...] [B]ecause the elevator car was much heavier than the man, it reached the bottom first and transferred kinetic energy to the man when he hit the floor – catapulting him about 20 feet back into the air. His fall from that height crushed his skull and caused his brain to hemorrhage[.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gendisasters.com/data1/pa/accidents/pittsburgh-donnellyelevatoraccident1903.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;4 killed on May 22, 1903, the Donnelly Building Elevator Accident&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just as the elevator reached that floor there was a crash and it fell to the bottom. Not one of the seventeen occupants escaped injury. The two heavy weights, each weighing a ton, fell on the victims after the elevator had reached the bottom. The dead were terribly crushed, and it was some time before they were identified. The accident is attributed to the overloaded elevator and a new elevator man who did not understand his business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www3.gendisasters.com/maine/12719/dover-foxcraft-me-elevator-drop-kills-two-dec-1946&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2 died on Dec 12, 1946, in Dover-Foxcroft, ME, from an elevator fall the previous day&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two of 12 women employes[sic] injured yesterday when an elevator dropped 35 feet in the American Woolen Company's Brown mill died today in a hospital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user5582" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T23:43:13.803" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T23:43:13.803" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23026" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23048" CreationDate="2014-08-28T03:55:31.963" Score="38" ViewCount="5664" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a comment on &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/193171/proper-term-for-knowing-four-or-more-languages#comment404760_193171&quot;&gt;English Language &amp;amp; Usage&lt;/a&gt;, also mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolingualism#cite_ref-17&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, and Chad Fowler's book &lt;a href=&quot;https://pragprog.com/book/cfcar2/the-passionate-programmer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Passionate Programmer&lt;/a&gt; (Related blog post by the author: &lt;a href=&quot;http://chadfowler.com/blog/2009/08/02/how-learning-a-second-language-changed-my-life/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Learning a Second Language Changed My Life&lt;/a&gt;, where he describes it as a joke he heard in India, which used to be a British colony)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you call someone who speaks one language? American.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are Americans more likely to be monolingual than people of other countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The joke doesn't provide a definition of what counts as &amp;quot;American&amp;quot;, in terms of whether immigrants to the United States count as American, or the children of immigrants, or only people whose parents were themselves born in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2021-01-17T00:29:14.410" Title="Are Americans more likely to be monolingual?" Tags="|united-states|language|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23028" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5465" CreationDate="2014-08-28T08:27:58.657" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;One way to have a &quot;gift&quot; for languages is to have been brought up bilingual (or at least exposed to a challenging monolingual situation). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Children whose neural pathways have been reinforced by a great deal of positive early experience--including a variety of language activities--will be better off when the brain's pruning process begins.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/ReadWithMe/makconn.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/ReadWithMe/makconn.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, it's been shown that music is also linked to language. Presumably, one with an ear for music will also have an ear for languages. But this can also be developed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Musicians have highly consistent auditory-neural responses,&quot; says Kraus. &quot;It may be that musical training – with its emphasis on rhythmic skills – can exercise the auditory-system, leading to less neural jitter and stronger sound-to-meaning associations that are so essential to learning to read.&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201309/musical-training-may-improve-brain-s-language-skills&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201309/musical-training-may-improve-brain-s-language-skills&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally: I grew up bilingual and picked up another four languages along the way (two fluent, two less so). For all of them, I had an easier/faster time with comprehension and pronunciation than those who had grown up only with one language.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21914" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T08:27:58.657" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23029" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23026" CreationDate="2014-08-28T09:57:25.403" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;SUMMARISED ANSWER&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be able to answer the question, a baseline measurement needs to be established. What does it mean to be multilingual/monolingual? How do you measure populations? Where does the data come from? Who is being compared in a &amp;quot;more likely&amp;quot; scenario? American to another Westerner, or to an average global citizen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are no reliable statistics to answer the question. So the only honest answer, unfortunately, is &lt;strong&gt;we don't know for sure.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, here are some points of reflection for those who want to explore the question from different angles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;DETAILED ANSWER&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/k6HuZ.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/k6HuZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;chart of bilingual countries&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://dana.org/uploadedImages/Images/Content_Images/Cerebrum-bilingual-Fig1-L.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;dana.org&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Viorica Marian Ph.D. and Anthony Shook &lt;a href=&quot;https://dana.org/article/the-cognitive-benefits-of-being-bilingual/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;compare&lt;/a&gt; US to EU bilingualism as part of a neurological study and created the graph comparison above. Based on statistics from the European Commission and the US Census, there is clearly a big gap, although there is also a distinction between speaking a language at home and having the skills to speak another language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;François Grosjean, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of psycholinguistics at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/life-bilingual/201209/how-many-are-we&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reflects&lt;/a&gt; also on the challenge of counting bilinguals, including the definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will present two examples of national censuses—the one in the United States and the one&#xA;in Switzerland—and show how quite official data can sometimes produce very surprising&#xA;results. In this instance, it would appear that there are proportionally more bilinguals&#xA;in the United States than in Switzerland, even though the latter country is known the&#xA;world over for the bi- or multilingualism of its inhabitants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, this is because of the way questions are phrased (specifically related to German vs. Swiss German dialect).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The outcome was that Swiss Statistics stated that a mere 15.8 percent of the Swiss&#xA;population is bi- or multilingual (less than the 20 percent found for the U.S.) when, in&#xA;fact, most Swiss people know several languages that they use frequently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/life-bilingual/201011/bilingualisms-best-kept-secret&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this piece&lt;/a&gt;, he also discusses the drivers and influencing factors in bilingualism. Asia as a general rule is pointed to as a place where multilingualism is a daily fact. Americans have less incentive/need to learn another language because English is the current global language of trade/commerce (as Greek and Latin have been in the past).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With these facts and the phrasing of the question &amp;quot;more likely&amp;quot;, the answer nudges to &amp;quot;Yes, Americans are more monolingual&amp;quot;, but Michael Erard writing for the NYT in 2012 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/opinion/sunday/are-we-really-monolingual.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;believes that it's still a toss up&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, the Stockholm University linguist Mikael Parkvall sought out data on global&#xA;bilingualism and ran into problems. The reliable numbers that do exist cover only 15&#xA;percent of the world’s 190-odd countries, and less than one-third of the world’s&#xA;population. In those countries, Mr. Parkvall calculated (in a study not yet published),&#xA;the average number of languages spoken either natively or non-natively per person is&#xA;1.58. Piecing together the available data for the rest of the world as best he could, he&#xA;estimated that 80 percent of people on the planet speak 1.69 languages — not high enough&#xA;to conclude that the average person is bilingual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multilinguals may outnumber monolinguals, but it’s not clear by how much. The average&#xA;American may be no more monolingual or less multilingual than any other average person&#xA;elsewhere on the planet. &lt;strong&gt;At the very least, we can’t say for sure — not in any language.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;[emphasis added]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Check out &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.wolframalpha.com/share/clip?f=d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427eqdjcfbegt2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Wolfram Alpha-generated&lt;/a&gt; overview of the spread of languages spoken in the USA at home. It has been noted by several that the home bias is a core weakness to the census data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21916" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2021-01-17T00:29:14.410" LastActivityDate="2021-01-17T00:29:14.410" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23030" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23004" CreationDate="2014-08-28T11:52:00.753" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;McDonald's Israel (distinct from McDonald's Corporate) supports Israel in the sense that it pays taxes and is a corporate citizen on the ground. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beyond that, it has not taken actions that could be classified as &quot;first tier corporate support to the cause of Zionism&quot; (which is simply a classification for donors to a specific organisation anyhow). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Israeli settlers (known for being staunch Zionists) &lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/news/mcdonald-israel-settlements-boycott-373/&quot;&gt;boycotted&lt;/a&gt; McDonald's for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesofisrael.com/mcdonalds-not-lovin-the-settlements/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; opening in West Bank settlements&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Israeli settlers are up in arms about McDonald’s refusal to build an outlet in the West&#xA;  Bank, calling to boycott the company’s entire operations in Israel. The chain cited a &#xA;  policy of “staying out of occupied territories” with other businesses joining in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, Omri Padan (the owner and general manager of McDonald's Israel) is one of the founders of Peace Now, an Israeli organisation that &lt;a href=&quot;http://peacenow.org.il/eng/content/settlements&quot;&gt;openly questions the wisdom of settlement strategy&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=10273&quot;&gt;Padan told Haaretz&lt;/a&gt; in 1998:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;McDonald’s-Israel has not nor will it open a branch in any Israeli settlement beyond the Green Line. Back when I was the general manager of Kitan Textiles, I told the board I would resign immediately if they moved to open a plant [in] the West Bank. I have the privilege of not needing to compromise on my principles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, McDonald's Israel has taken other business decisions that place it at odds with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald&amp;#39;s_Israel&quot;&gt;other issues important to Zionists&lt;/a&gt;, such as employing Jews on Saturdays, running non-Kosher outlets and more. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems that the Malaysian boycott claims are tenuous at best, and appear to be based on understanding the language used by a community organisation to describe local corporate sponsors as a literal description of larger geopolitical involvement.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21916" LastEditorUserId="21916" LastEditDate="2014-08-28T11:58:02.500" LastActivityDate="2014-08-28T11:58:02.500" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20405" CreationDate="2014-08-28T12:43:31.703" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a problem that is being addressed in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodweave.org/index.php?pid=9348&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rug industry&lt;/a&gt;. Gradual blindness is a challenge, however it is more related to the general working conditions (nutrition, dim light, etc.). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcgill.ca/clear/files/clear/publication_5_carpet_weaving_pakistan.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This research&lt;/a&gt; from McGill University documents the health hazards of carpet-weaving (for children) in Pakistan and indicates that blindness has indeed been a consequence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research has shown that the knotting of carpets is hazardous to the health of workers, particularly to children as they are more prone to develop skeletal problems due to poor posture, as well as impaired vision and blindness. Head-ache, blurring of vision, backache, abdominal pain, limb pains, and respiratory tract infections have been found to be more prevalent in carpet-weaving children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, in the right working environment, diminished sight is not inevitable (even if historically it has been commonplace). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21916" LastEditorUserId="21916" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T10:38:08.573" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T10:38:08.573" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23032" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23035" CreationDate="2014-08-28T14:31:43.723" Score="2" ViewCount="854" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fingerprints are often used by law enforcement to identify individuals, even with a partial print.  Are there any cases where people had the same fingerprints? Is there a limit to the number of unique fingerprints that can possibly exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17023" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T05:20:02.877" Title="Does everyone have a unique set of fingerprints?" Tags="|law-enforcement|forensics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-08-29T02:34:57.350" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23032" CreationDate="2014-08-28T19:55:43.120" Score="7" Body="&lt;h3&gt;In theory, no, but the odds for it happening are &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; low.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://biometrics.cse.msu.edu/Presentations/AnilJain_UniquenessOfFingerprints_NAS05.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This presentation&lt;/a&gt; has a slide with an overview of the literature on the subject. If I'm interpreting the chart copied below, estimations of the &lt;em&gt;possible&lt;/em&gt; configurations of fingerprints (i.e. the probability of a given fingerprint occurring)  range from &lt;strong&gt;1.45x10&lt;sup&gt;-11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; to &lt;strong&gt;1.20x10&lt;sup&gt;-80&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.  Given that the number of people who have ever lived is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Number_of_humans_who_have_ever_lived&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;estimated&lt;/a&gt; to be 100 billion to 115 billion (&lt;strong&gt;1.15x10&lt;sup&gt;11&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;), then it's mathematically possible for every human who ever lived to have unique fingerprints.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5gG2U.png&quot; alt=&quot;fingerprint probabilities&quot;&gt;&#xA;Since there's nothing which hands out fingerprints and ensures uniqueness, it's quite possible that there have been duplicates at some point.  However, the odds for duplicates &lt;em&gt;actually coming up&lt;/em&gt; in a real world scenario (i.e. two people living in the same country within the same general span of time, instead of anywhere in the world at any point in history) are infinitesimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Added to address comments:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;It's worth noting that all these probabilities are based on the &lt;em&gt;granularity&lt;/em&gt; of the method involved.  The &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=duUJEp4WbQ8C&amp;amp;pg=PA335&amp;amp;lpg=PA335&amp;amp;dq=galton+regions&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=Hj3wXY51JR&amp;amp;sig=w2zz-HLHe5nScS4USx_jNWbp8fY&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=nIYAVMyEOtDLggSZ44HQCg&amp;amp;ved=0CCcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=galton%20regions&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Galton method&lt;/a&gt;, for instance, seems to involve dividing the finger up into 24 regions, and identifying the most prominent feature of that region.  This leads to a fairly granular set of results, which, in turn, means that it's much easier to find someone else who would register as having the same set of fingerprints.  This would be roughly equivalent to a version of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;birthday problem&lt;/a&gt; where you're trying to find people who have the same birth month, instead of the same birthday.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Modern matching systems use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerprint_recognition#Minutia_features&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;minutia&lt;/a&gt; of the fingerprint to provide a much more accurate match.  My understanding of it is that there are 36 points selected based on finding certain features in a general area (i.e. five points of interest in this small section), and the precise relative location of each point to each other is what makes up the modern fingerprint record.  This produces a far more accurate digital record of the fingerprint, although still not a 100% perfect one.  Correspondingly, this makes the chances of finding two fingerprints considered to be a match much lower.  To extend the previous analogy, you're now trying to find two people who share a birth minute, not just a birth day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastEditorUserId="7280" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T05:20:02.877" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T05:20:02.877" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23039" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23040" CreationDate="2014-08-29T00:42:17.743" Score="20" ViewCount="3900" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm trying to find the source of the quote &quot;Success is dependent on&#xA;effort.&quot; There are lots and lots of quotation sites that attribute it to&#xA;Sophocles. However, I have yet to find a &lt;em&gt;single&lt;/em&gt; site that attributes&#xA;it to any particular &lt;em&gt;work&lt;/em&gt; of Sophocles, or to a witness who wrote of&#xA;Sophocles having said it. The page on Wikiquote, which does require&#xA;citations, doesn't have it, and no one's brought it up on the talk page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect all these sites are just copying each other, and no one has&#xA;any idea whether it's actually from Sophocles or not. Are there any&#xA;classics scholars out there who can supply a reliable source or a&#xA;reliable refutation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2023-04-26T12:58:14.037" LastActivityDate="2023-04-26T12:58:14.037" Title="Did Sophocles write &quot;Success is dependent on effort&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23039" CreationDate="2014-08-29T00:57:26.163" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quote is from &lt;em&gt;Electra&lt;/em&gt;: for example, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://classics.mit.edu/Sophocles/electra.html&quot;&gt;one translation&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ELECTRA&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Remember, nothing succeeds without toil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a bilingual version of it here, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0188:card=920&amp;amp;highlight=succeeds&quot;&gt;in English&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Electra&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [945] Remember, nothing succeeds without toil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0187:card=920&quot;&gt;in Greek&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ἠλέκτρα&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ὅρα, πόνου τοι χωρὶς οὐδὲν εὐτυχεῖ. [945]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Greek%E2%80%93English_Lexicon&quot;&gt;LSJ dictionary&lt;/a&gt; can help to give a more exact translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=po%29nou&amp;amp;la=greek#lexicon&quot;&gt;dictionary entries for πόνου&lt;/a&gt; suggest &quot;toil&quot;, &quot;labour&quot;, &quot;hard work&quot;; in Homeric language, the &quot;toil of battle&quot;; also &quot;stress&quot;, &quot;trouble&quot;, &quot;suffering&quot;; and &quot;pain, especially physical&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=eu%29tuxei&amp;amp;la=greek#lexicon&quot;&gt;dictionary entries for εὐτυχεῖ&lt;/a&gt; suggest to be &quot;prosperous&quot;, &quot;fortunate&quot;, &quot;well off&quot;, &quot;successful&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;εὐτυχεῖ was, apparently, also used in the sense of &quot;fare thee well&quot; in the close of letters, and on grave-stones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=xwris&amp;amp;la=greek#lexicon&quot;&gt;χωρὶς&lt;/a&gt; (&quot;without&quot;) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=ouden&amp;amp;la=greek#lexicon&quot;&gt;οὐδὲν&lt;/a&gt; (&quot;not one&quot; or &quot;none&quot;) are both negative words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the literal translation is some kind of double negative, as quoted above, for example (my translation):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Without toil, no success.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO this doesn't have quite the same several meanings as the English quoted in the OP.&#xA;My first thought, when I read the English phrase &quot;depends on&quot; in the OP, was,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;the more effort, the more success&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The English phrase &quot;dependent on&quot; has two meanings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One meaning is a discrete, binary or 'categorical' relationship, i.e.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;not one without the other&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A second meaning is a continuous function, i.e.,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;the more of one, the more of the other&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The English version of the phrase admits the second meaning as well as the first; but the Greek is only saying the first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do not know why it's a popular quote. Perhaps it suits someone's preconceptions or political agenda, e.g. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anthony-w-orlando/the-rich-arent-rich-becau_b_4791626.html&quot;&gt;the rich are rich because they worked harder than everyone else&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&#xA;IMO that meaning (comparative magnitude) isn't implied in the original, which is more like Yoda's &quot;Do. Or do not.&quot; (There is no try.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original also has, IMO, something of a dualist meaning: &quot;no success without effort&quot;.&#xA;In context, it seems almost a truism, (who knows, perhaps it was already a proverbial phrase in Sophocles' time):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chrysothemis&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  What do you urge, then, of those things that I am capable&#xA;  of doing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Electra&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  That you be brave in executing what I recommend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chrysothemis&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  If any good can be done, I will not refuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Electra&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  [945] Remember, nothing succeeds without toil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chrysothemis&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I know it, and I will share your burden with all my&#xA;  power.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T14:25:06.697" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T14:25:06.697" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23043" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="52216" CreationDate="2014-08-29T07:12:15.767" Score="19" ViewCount="1337" Body="&lt;p&gt;Arguably the most famous scene in &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt; is when Darth Vader reveals to Luke Skywalker that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; He is Luke's father.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to most sources, this surprise was kept secret to most of the crew and even the cast &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Empire_Strikes_Back#Production&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;during production&lt;/a&gt;, with Dave Prowse, the actor playing Darth Vader, delivering a fake line, the actual line being overdubbed. (Of course, Darth Vader wasn't voiced by him in the first place; all lines were overdubbed by James Earl Jones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Mark Hamill relates in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.soundandvision.com/news/100104hamill/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an interview&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But, for example, your big scene, one of the classic cinematic moments when Darth Vader divulges his true identity, is no longer a revelation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's such a great moment! The fake line that was put in there just to try and keep the secret was &amp;quot;You don't know the truth: Obi-Wan killed your father!&amp;quot; But as much as I enjoyed leaking false information, it was a wonderfully hard secret to keep because (Irvin) Kershner, the director, brought me aside and said &amp;quot;Now I know this, and George knows this, and now you're going to know this, but if you tell anybody, and that means Carrie or Harrison, or anybody, we're going to know who it is because we know who knows.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But recently, a newspaper clipping &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.retroist.com/2010/11/08/1978-style-star-wars-spoilers/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;surfaced&lt;/a&gt;, in which we read about Dave Prowse revealing this same surprise twist to about a thousand fans, two years before the release of &lt;em&gt;The Empire Strikes Back&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3V0wA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;A newspaper clipping in which Dave Prowse reveals the surprise to about a thousand fans&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have asked &lt;a href=&quot;https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/66661/19561&quot;&gt;a question about this on another stack&lt;/a&gt;, where somebody suggested it might possibly be fake. So that's my question here: is it real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16121" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2021-08-18T08:22:21.917" LastActivityDate="2021-08-19T00:12:38.727" Title="Is this newspaper clipping about Dave Prowse revealing a major Star Wars plot twist two years in advance, genuine?" Tags="|movies|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23043" CreationDate="2014-08-29T11:16:53.967" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It &lt;strong&gt;probably&lt;/strong&gt; isn't fake, because I was able to find a completely different independent  article quoting David Prowse, from the same event, with &lt;strong&gt;100% identical money quote: &amp;quot;son can't kill father, father can't kill son&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aGIBR.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aGIBR.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/X1lmB.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, most forums/posts discussing the topics are full of comments from people stating they saw the original article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's possible someone photoshopped this second image, the likelyhood is that the quote is accurate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2021-08-18T08:23:12.237" LastActivityDate="2021-08-18T08:23:12.237" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23046" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-29T14:22:04.513" Score="16" ViewCount="476" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to an article in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/aug/10/should-throw-away-my-pillows&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guardian&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of 2,200 men and women, only 18% knew they should replace their pillows every two years. The average person uses the same pillow for three years and two months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many – though not all – sleep experts say that if you fold your pillow in half and it doesn't spring open straight away by itself then it's dead: it can't support your head and neck, so bin it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there studies that support the notion that people who only replace their pillows every three years and two months or wait even longer to replace their pillows are likely to suffer from negative health effects as a result?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T10:42:17.087" Title="Should you regularly replace your pillow?" Tags="|sleep|ergonomics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23047" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-29T14:51:36.187" Score="3" ViewCount="222" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/355046-how-to-use-turmeric-to-lighten-skin/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;online herbal recipes&lt;/a&gt; which claim that turmeric helps to lighten skin color.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The power of turmeric mixed with the natural bleaching power of lime juice will make for an effective whitener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, this claim is heavily exploited to run many brands of turmeric skin creams advertised as skin whiteners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.in/search?q=turmeric%20whiten%20skin%20color&amp;amp;oq=turmeric%20whiten%20skin%20color&amp;amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.5411j0j7&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;es_sm=93&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A google search&lt;/a&gt; reveals hundreds of websites with these claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this scientifically validated with dermatological research studies? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastEditorDisplayName="user11777" LastEditDate="2014-08-31T18:00:02.887" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T18:00:02.887" Title="Does topical application of turmeric lighten skin color or make skin fairer?" Tags="|medical-science|dermatology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23026" CreationDate="2014-08-29T15:27:20.543" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least in the case of Europe and the U.S., statistics do exist that directly answer this question. Those statistics simply aren't the ones from the censuses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2013, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gallup.com/poll/163895/say-essential-immigrants-learn-english.aspx&quot;&gt;Gallop poll&lt;/a&gt; found that 34% of Americans could hold a conversation in at least one second language. In 2012, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_386_en.pdf&quot;&gt;European Commission survey&lt;/a&gt; found that 54% of Europeans could hold a conversation in at least one second language. So, at least when compared to Europeans, yes, Americans are somewhat more likely to be monolingual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21543" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T15:27:20.543" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23057" CreationDate="2014-08-29T18:17:03.557" Score="13" ViewCount="3105" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recall this claim being published in a newspaper a while back but time has buried it in the Interwebs, though it does come up from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?post=134846#134846&quot;&gt;time to time&lt;/a&gt; as e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Driving a jet ski for one hour will produce the equivalent amount of pollution as driving a new car 100,000 km. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My recollection was that the comparison was to a Honda Civic from the early 2000's, but I suppose the claim could be validated by a comparison to any small, new model of car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any merit to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt; The original claim appears to come from the California Air Resources Board, per Environmental Science: Problems, Connections and Solutions By G. Miller, Scott Spoolman, p. 357. It appears to be widely cited as such on the Internet, though I have yet to find the source material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="1792" LastEditDate="2014-08-30T00:20:07.980" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T01:00:24.137" Title="Do Jet Skis produce in an hour equivalent pollution to 100,000km of a new/small car?" Tags="|road-vehicles|environment|pollution|vehicle|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23051" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-29T19:26:47.540" Score="11" ViewCount="1362" Body="&lt;p&gt;We can find online several websites promoting phytotherapy, which claim that Turmeric (Curcuma) is as effective as Prozac for treating depression, and without its side effects, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dailyhealthpost.com/study-turmeric-more-effective-than-prozac-at-treating-depression/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;for example this one&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Study: Turmeric more Effective than Prozac at Treating Depression&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers with the Department of Pharmacology of Government Medical College in Bhavnagar, Gujarat, India compared the effects of turmeric and Prozac (fluoxetine), both used together and individually, in 60 patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While reading the researchers conclusions indicates one treatment (turmeric) is equally effective as Prozac, it doesn’t account for the negative effects of Prozac, which boost turmeric’s value considerably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above article quotes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23832433&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt;, published in &lt;em&gt;Phytotherapy Research&lt;/em&gt; revue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of whether this particular study is reliable (unless this is the only study that's ever been conducted on this subject), is the claim true, that &amp;quot;Turmeric more Effective than Prozac at Treating Depression&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20868" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T15:46:12.673" Title="Is Turmeric better than prozac to treat depression?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|depression|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23052" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23051" CreationDate="2014-08-29T20:21:35.650" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I don't have access to the full article, but the most interesting part of the abstract (to me) is the scale used to measure depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_Rating_Scale_for_Depression&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression&lt;/a&gt; used to be the standard test, and was created in 1960. This original test had &lt;a href=&quot;http://dcf.psychiatry.ufl.edu/files/2011/05/HAMILTON-DEPRESSION.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;17 questions&lt;/a&gt; (aka HRSD-17 or HAM-D17), and is the version used by the study mentioned. Since then, there have been several revisions to the test, with lengths varying from 6 to 29 items (none of these later revisions were used). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's important to note that while the test is supposed to rate &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; depressed you are (rather than &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you're depressed), Hamilton omitted certain symptoms from the test. As a result, he was skeptical that the test could be used for clinical studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IG707.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-75373-2_10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Hamilton Depression Scale and the Numerical Description of the Symptoms of Depression&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In recent years it has been criticized in several published papers, notably &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleID=177207&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale: Has the Gold Standard Become a Lead Weight?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; A particularly pointed passage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evaluation of item response shows that many of the individual items are poorly designed and sum to generate a total score whose meaning is multidimensional and unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while I do believe that the results published in the study are &lt;em&gt;accurate&lt;/em&gt;, it's hard to tell if they're &lt;em&gt;meaningful&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19407" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T20:21:35.650" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19298" CreationDate="2014-08-29T21:29:59.960" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Not to dispute any of the other answers, but it may be worth noting that saturation divers breathe a mixture of helium and oxygen regularly, as helium does not have the same effects as nitrogen (neither the &quot;nitrogen narcosis&quot; cognitive effect and it desaturates from the blood stream faster).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.theunderwatercentre.com/2012/01/what-is-saturation-diving/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What is saturation diving?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When in saturation the divers breathe a mixture of helium and oxygen (hence Mixed Gas), which saturates their body for the duration that they are at pressure (hence saturation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T21:42:55.990" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T21:42:55.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23055" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-08-29T22:53:11.557" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-08-29T22:53:11.557" LastActivityDate="2014-08-29T22:53:11.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23056" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-08-29T22:53:11.557" Score="0" Body="Questions about individuals taking their own lives. Please follow the site guidelines on this topic: own life. [This is a sensitive topic; please follow the site guidelines: https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2871/]" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2022-12-04T04:18:25.160" LastActivityDate="2022-12-04T04:18:25.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23057" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23050" CreationDate="2014-08-29T23:40:03.113" Score="21" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Driving a jet ski for one hour will produce the equivalent amount of pollution as driving a new car 100,000 km.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim seems to be &lt;strong&gt;INCORRECT&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;First, the claim appears to be credited to Stienstra (1998):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The state Air Resources Board is also considering taking statewide&#xA;  action against personal watercraft, after a staff report said that &lt;strong&gt;two&#xA;  hours of exhaust emissions from a Jet Ski is equivalent to the&#xA;  emissions created by driving a 1998 automobile 130,000 miles.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition, the amount of hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides released&#xA;  in the air by Jet Skis and outboard motors totaled 312 tons per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Jet Skis produce nine times the hydrocarbon emissions as outboard&#xA;  motors,&quot; said Russell Long of the Bluewater Network in San Francisco,&#xA;  which has led the national opposition to personal watercraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;But, after digging deeper, I was able to find the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/offroad/recmarine/msc98-08/workdoc2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;staff report&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an extract from the report published by Air Resources Board has been reviewed by the staff of the California Air Resources Board and approved for publication:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Applicability.&lt;/strong&gt; The proposed exhaust emission standards are applicable to outboard marine and personal watercraft engines,&#xA;  including jet boats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Emissions Impact.&lt;/strong&gt; Emissions of hydrocarbons (HC) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) from outboard and personal watercraft in 1997 totaled&#xA;  312 tons per day. This compares to 1,374 tons per day statewide for&#xA;  passenger cars. While reductions from gasoline SI marine engines are&#xA;  not included in California’s SIP as a planned measure for meeting&#xA;  attainment goals, the impact of outboard and personal watercraft&#xA;  engines on the state’s total emissions inventory makes control of this&#xA;  category of emissions necessary. Table 1 lists the relative&#xA;  contribution of outboard and personal watercraft exhaust emissions in&#xA;  California in tons per day. &lt;strong&gt;As a comparison to other sources, the&#xA;  exhaust emissions from two hours of personal watercraft operation is&#xA;  equivalent to the emissions from a 1998 passenger car operated over&#xA;  100,000 miles.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This regulation is also driven in part by concerns over discharge of unburned fuel into&#xA;  lakes, reservoirs and waterways. According to studies cited in the U.S. EPA gasoline SI marine engine rulemaking, conventional two-stroke engines discharge 25 to 30 percent of fuel unburned into the water. Recent attention focused on detection of methyl-tertiary-butyl-ether (MTBE) in drinking water supplies has caused a number of water quality agencies to consider restriction of two-stroke watercraft on particular waterways. Other gasoline constituents emitted into the water, including carcinogenic benzene and toluene, have also been of significant concern. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sxnJe.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look closer, it seems that Stienstra (1998) misinterpreted and/or misunderstood the english behind the report. With the help of our friends from &lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/194861/how-do-i-interpret-emissions-of-car-operated-over-in-this-sentence&quot;&gt;english.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;, it can be concluded that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The official report by Air Resources Board official said that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;As a comparison to other sources, the&#xA;  exhaust emissions from two hours of personal watercraft operation is&#xA;  equivalent to the emissions from a 1998 passenger car operated over&#xA;  100,000 miles.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it was paraphrased incorrectly  by Stienstra (1998):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After a staff report said that two hours of exhaust emissions from a Jet Ski is equivalent to the emissions created by driving a 1998 automobile 130,000 miles.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The correct interpretation (suggested by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/21996/senex&quot;&gt;@Senex&lt;/a&gt;) is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All the watercrafts operating in California together produce in 2 hours the same pollution as one car driven 100,000 km&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/a/194892/83058&quot;&gt;Explanation&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prior to what was quoted from the scientific report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Emissions of hydrocarbons (HC) and oxides of nitrogen (NOx) from outboard and personal watercraft in 1997 totaled 312 tons per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That number of tons per day equals 26 tons per 2 hours, which is close to the approximately 26 tons of CO₂E an average car emits while traveling 100,000km.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This figure arises as follows: From the EPA's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-resources/refs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;refs.html&lt;/a&gt;, section Miles driven by the average passenger vehicle per year, average car emissions are 4.20 x 10⁻⁴ metric tons CO₂E per mile. For 100,000 miles, that's a total of 42 metric tons CO₂E (CO₂ equivalent, which encompasses “carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, all expressed as carbon dioxide equivalents”). Emissions per 100,000 km is about 5/8 as much, or about 26 tons. (More precisely, 26.098 tons = 42 tons * 100000 miles/160934 km, but even two significant digits is too many.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; Stienstra, T. (1998, Jul 08). U.S. park service seeks ban on jet skis 950 square miles of bay area waters would be affected. San Francisco Examiner. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://search.proquest.com/docview/270486538?accountid=8555&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://search.proquest.com/docview/270486538?accountid=8555&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; The claim: &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;2 hours&lt;/strong&gt; of Jet Ski driving are equivalent to &lt;strong&gt;130,000 miles&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;2 hours&lt;/strong&gt; of Jet Ski driving are equivalent &lt;strong&gt;209,215 kilometers&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;1 hour&lt;/strong&gt;  of Jet Ski driving is equivalent to &lt;strong&gt;104,607.5 kilometers&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;1 hour&lt;/strong&gt;  of Jet Ski driving almost equivalent to &lt;strong&gt;100,000 kilometers&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T01:00:24.137" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23060" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="50579" CreationDate="2014-08-30T04:33:30.407" Score="5" ViewCount="2300" Body="&lt;p&gt;Hitler is reported to have been told by Carl Bosch in 1933 that if Jewish scientists were forced to leave Germany, physics and chemistry would be set back 100 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/act-news/women-scientists-at-csiro-losing-out-to-old-boys-club-20140824-107dfr.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; (in the comments section) to have replied &quot;Then we'll work a hundred years without physics and chemistry&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Soon no one, men or women, at the CSIRO or in university departments will have jobs anyway following the government's threat to cut research funding unless their destructive budget measures are adopted by the senate.&#xA;  There is no great difference between the threats of this government and the notorious statement of the German leader from the 1930s: &quot;Then we'll work a hundred years without physics and chemistry&quot; - his response shouted back to Carl Bosch (then still head of IG Farben, the pre-war chemical conglomerate), who had tried to advise him that if Jewish scientists were forced to leave the country both physics and chemistry would be set back 100 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did he say this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T10:50:41.917" LastActivityDate="2021-04-09T13:38:02.663" Title="Did Hitler say &quot;We'll work a hundred years without physics and chemistry&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|adolf-hitler|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23061" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23060" CreationDate="2014-08-30T04:33:30.407" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reported German quote is said to be &amp;quot;Dann wird das Reich eben einmal die nächsten hundert Jahre ohne Physik und Chemie auskommem&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The German Chemical Industry in the Twentieth Century&amp;quot; describes it as an anecdote, and cites &amp;quot;Karl Holdermann, Im Banne der Chemie: Carl Bosch, Leben und Werk&amp;quot; (Düsseldorf, 1953), 271-273.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know how reliable the cited book is. Someone more knowledgeable about chemistry, German history, or who is fluent in German may be able to dig deeper. Hopefully Germans in the 1950s weren't in the habit of making up bogus quotes to support their own beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="41728" LastEditDate="2021-04-07T10:22:14.510" LastActivityDate="2021-04-07T10:22:14.510" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23062" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-30T14:05:35.540" Score="10" ViewCount="948" Body="&lt;p&gt;The website &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthing.com&quot;&gt;Earthing&lt;/a&gt; [Warning: auto-playing video] sells earthing mats. The site states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Throughout history, humans walked barefoot and slept on the ground. But modern lifestyle [(shoes, beds, and living indoors)] has disconnected us from the Earth's energy. Fascinating new research [indicates that this disconnect from Earth's soil] may actually contribute to chronic pain, fatigue, and poor sleep that plague so many people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you watch the 2-minute introductory video on the site, you will see that the product is being marketed as a way to receive energy (electrical charge) from the Earth by connecting your body to the Earth's soil through the electrical ground-bus of your home's AC power system - so called &quot;earth grounding&quot; of your body. It states &quot;when you make direct contact with the earth, your body receives a charge of energy&quot; which the site claims is good for your health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question:&lt;/strong&gt; Do these products &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; work as claimed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if so, are they &lt;em&gt;guaranteed&lt;/em&gt; to be safe to use?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21947" OwnerDisplayName="etherice" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-12-14T00:39:50.007" LastActivityDate="2018-12-14T00:41:15.400" Title="Are earth-grounding mats (designed for connecting humans to earth-ground) effective and safe?" Tags="|environmental-health|electromagnetism|earthing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23067" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-08-30T23:34:49.627" Score="3" ViewCount="2767" Body="&lt;p&gt;Going into college this fall, I've heard various rumors about this. Some first hand from college students, some from people who spoke to college students, and some just rumors.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea is: sick kids are expensive, kids that crap a lot don't get sick as often, food that naturally is good for digestion is expensive, laxatives are cheap, &lt;strong&gt;therefore&lt;/strong&gt; laxatives should be put in the food.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do you guys think? Is there any solid evidence of this happening at a college? A quick google yields lots of results but it's hard to sift fact from fiction.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Per request, here are a couple examples. Most discredit this myth without any hard evidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/laxative.asp#xYspOx7LXMY2GYbg.99&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/college/admin/laxative.asp#xYspOx7LXMY2GYbg.99&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;Many students do notice once they're living on campus that their bathroom habits change — they find themselves having to go more frequently, and note that their output is greater in volume.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youniversitytv.com/news-edgy/4965-college-myths-debunked-corn-dogs-with-a-side-of-laxatives&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youniversitytv.com/news-edgy/4965-college-myths-debunked-corn-dogs-with-a-side-of-laxatives&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&quot;As delightful as your dining experience was, chances are you felt the results of that extra serving of corn a short time later as you were flooring it for the communal bathroom.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21950" LastEditorUserId="21950" LastEditDate="2014-08-31T01:10:19.810" LastActivityDate="2014-08-31T01:10:19.810" Title="Do College Cafeterias Put Laxatives in Their Food?" Tags="|nutrition|nutritional-supplements|university|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-08-31T19:14:18.143" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23071" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-01T05:54:36.787" Score="26" ViewCount="2778" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen some warnings regarding IR sensors and transmitters such as the 4th panel below for the Nintendo 3DS:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/S14hX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nintendo.com.au/support/files/3DSXL_Manuals/Nintendo_3DS_XL_Operations_Manual.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Operations Manual&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do not get too close to the infrared transceiver&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Looking directly into the infrared transceiver can lead to impaired vision and other problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if IR is lower frequency than visible light how can it be bad for your eyes? What are the possible adverse effects of looking straight into an IR transmiter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17993" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-09-02T09:03:08.443" LastActivityDate="2016-03-14T00:42:01.727" Title="Is looking at an IR transmitter bad for your eyes?" Tags="|environmental-health|consumer-products|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23072" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23073" CreationDate="2014-09-01T09:03:38.187" Score="40" ViewCount="27124" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a claim that I have seen on several &quot;Did You Know?&quot; lists so far. They all state that when a mosquito bites you, they also urinate on you at the same time &lt;s&gt;and that is what causes the area around the bite to swell, rather than the actual bite itself.&lt;/s&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.womansday.com/health-fitness/8-things-you-didnt-know-about-mosquitoes-119183&quot;&gt;woman's day&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While the average mosquito weighs about 2.5 milligrams, according to the AMCA, when they bite, they drink more than 5 milligrams—twice their body weight—of blood. For a 150-pound person, &quot;that's like drinking a 300-pound milkshake,&quot; says Dr. Sirot. Once filled to the brim with blood, mosquitoes often excrete waste so they can fly away. This process, known as diuresis, happens with all species—though the type of waste product varies. Mosquitoes that can transmit malaria (anopheles) excrete plasma, while those that can transmit dengue and yellow fever (aedes) excrete urine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it true that mosquitoes urinate on the victim when they bite?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the urination cause an allergic reaction leading to swelling around the bite area?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19018" LastEditorUserId="19018" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T02:06:26.150" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T03:47:47.550" Title="Do mosquitoes urinate on you when they bite you?" Tags="|biology|entomology|public-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23072" CreationDate="2014-09-01T09:59:09.137" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JKH93.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Mosquito Peeing, Photo credit: James Gathany on Public Health Image Library (PHIL), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention&quot;&gt;&#xA;(Photo by James Gathany, Public Health Image Library (PHIL), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it could be worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most blood-sucking insects urinate while they feed so they can avoid&#xA;  filling up on fluid and get more nutrients out of their meal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But some species of mosquito also do what is called preurination — they excrete drops of freshly ingested blood without extracting any of the nourishing blood cells. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/science/how-hungry-mosquitoes-cool-themselves.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt; article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2811%2901311-X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mosquitoes Cool Down during Blood Feeding to Avoid Overheating&lt;/a&gt; - Lahondère and Lazzari, Curr Biol. 2012&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pee is not the cause of the allergical 'itch'. The mosquito's saliva is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wisegeek.org/why-do-mosquito-bites-itch.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the cause of that effect&lt;/a&gt; - it injects it to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wisegeek.org/why-do-mosquito-bites-itch.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;prevent coagulation&lt;/a&gt; in the blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20991" LastEditorUserId="20991" LastEditDate="2014-09-01T16:04:19.580" LastActivityDate="2014-09-01T16:04:19.580" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23076" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-01T22:03:15.677" Score="10" ViewCount="79870" Body="&lt;p&gt;September 13, 2014 will mark the 18th anniversary of when &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupac_Shakur&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2Pac&lt;/a&gt; (born Tupac Amaru Shakur), famous American gangster rapper, was murdered in Las Vegas. There are many conspiracy theories behind his death and although most are not worth debating, there is one argument that might be true and can be objectively verified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As some people will know, Shakur changed his stage name from &amp;quot;2Pac&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;Makaveli&amp;quot; shortly before his death, having been inspired by work of the famous Italian historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Niccolò Machiavelli&lt;/a&gt;, while he was incarcerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A common claim among conspiracy theorists is that, in one of his works, Machiavelli advocated that one should fake one's own death at the age of 25, only to return 18 years later at the age of 43. See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://poeticphilosophy.hubpages.com/hub/Did-Tupac-Shakur-Fake-His-Own-Death&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this blog post about evidence that Shakur faked his own death&lt;/a&gt;. Quoting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Tupac Shakur was in prison, he had read a lot of books. In one of&#xA;his interviews, he mentions he had read a book on Machiavelli. Niccolo&#xA;Machiavelli was an Italian war strategist and had written many books&#xA;on war. He advocates in his book to fake your death to fool your&#xA;enemies. Niccolo faked his death and came back 18 years later to&#xA;baffle his enemies that he was still alive. Many believe, Tupac is&#xA;planning to come back in 2014 to play the same role as Machiavelli.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Niccoló Machiavelli did not fake his own death, so this cannot be entirely accurate, but is it true he advocated it (i.e. faking your death at age 25, then return 18 years later) in at least one of his books?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21220" LastEditorUserId="33095" LastEditDate="2023-08-19T08:20:00.487" LastActivityDate="2023-08-19T08:20:00.487" Title="Did Niccoló Machiavelli advocate to fake one's own death?" Tags="|history|literature|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23078" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-02T12:12:02.027" Score="11" ViewCount="1345" Body="&lt;p&gt;In many recipes, when it comes to add some lemon (or orange) zests, the authors advise to choose an organic fruit, because of the pesticides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know there is no proof that non-organic fruits and vegetables are more dangerous than organic ones, but I saw that &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/19750/20868&quot;&gt;UK Food Safe Agency seems to make a distinction&lt;/a&gt; between fruits that are going to be peeled off and the others, when it comes to testing the pesticide residues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You don't need to wash or peel fruit and vegetables that would not ordinarily be peeled before consumption (for example apples) because of pesticide residues, as no assumption is made that such foods are peeled when deciding whether a pesticide can be approved for use or setting a legal limit (maximum residue level, MRL).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Then, should we prefer organic lemons or oranges, when we want to use their skin in food?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: &lt;em&gt;I know there have been many questions here about organic vs non-organic food and safety, but my question is about this peculiar case.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Edit: Changed &amp;quot;no evidence&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;no proof&amp;quot;. It seems a better choice of word.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20868" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T11:40:20.460" Title="Should we prefer organic lemon and orange peels?" Tags="|nutrition|environmental-health|organic-food|fruit|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23082" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6548" CreationDate="2014-09-02T22:15:38.193" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They definitely repel fungus gnats. Do they repel other bugs? I have no idea.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sarah Zielinski, in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dryer-sheets-as-bug-repellant-40521023/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; on the &lt;em&gt;Smithsonian&lt;/em&gt; magazine website, provides a simple summary of the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cloyd RA, Marley KA, Larson RA, and Arieli B describe the details in a free 2010 &lt;a href=&quot;http://hortsci.ashspublications.org/content/45/12/1830.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;journal article&lt;/a&gt; published by the American Society for Horticultural Science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The researchers hypothesize that the bug-repelling ingredient in Bounce® original brand fabric softener dryer sheets may be linalool or beta-citronellol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the researchers used fungus gnats in their experiment. I don't know whether or not their findings also apply to bees or mosquitoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if you want to repel mosquitoes, you're probably better off choosing a product containing DEET. If you want to avoid getting stung by bees, I don't know how to advise you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6777" LastActivityDate="2014-09-02T22:15:38.193" CommentCount="1" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-09-02T22:15:38.193" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23083" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23085" CreationDate="2014-09-03T05:38:13.430" Score="4" ViewCount="494" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently watch Josh Kaufman's &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/5MgBikgcWnY&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TEDxCSU talk&lt;/a&gt; about his new book, The First 20 Hours.  Although his idea sounds reasonable, I coudn't find any mention of scientific research to back it up.  I know some research has been done on the 10,000 hour rule.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kaufman's claim: &quot;You can go from knowing absolutely nothing to performing noticeably well in a very short period of time: approximately 20 hours, often less.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any evidence to back up Kaufman's claim?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8683" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T11:02:43.897" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T11:02:43.897" Title="Can you generally learn any skill, noticeably well, with 20 hours practice?" Tags="|learning|cognitive-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ClosedDate="2014-09-04T10:37:36.847" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23083" CreationDate="2014-09-03T08:51:48.427" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The talk says that &quot;10,000 hours&quot; is, to within an order of magnitude, the amount of practice required to get expert-level performance: e.g. to be a professional athlete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It says that, conversely, with a bit of practice you can get really good, really quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20051219093945/direct.gov.uk/en/motoring/learnerandnewdrivers/practicaltest/dg_4022483&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The following&lt;/a&gt; is, I think, an example of the truth of that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Those who pass their driving test have had, on average, about 45 hours of professional training combined with 22 hours of private practice. Learners who prepare this way, with a combination of plenty of professional training and plenty of practice, do better in the test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Driving a car in traffic is (IMO) a reasonably complicated skill.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doing it well enough to pass the driver's license test is doing it reasonably well.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This statement from the British Government is presumably based on plenty of experience (experiment).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cited time (45 plus 22) is a bit higher than the &quot;20 hours&quot; you asked about; but it's very much the same order of magnitude (much closer to &quot;20 hours&quot; than to &quot;10,000 hours&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware though that the above is a (one) specific example, not a proof of the general case: it's &quot;a&quot; skill, not &quot;any&quot; skill.&#xA;The TED talk does actually say &quot;any&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... about any skill you can think of. Want to learn a language? Want to learn how to draw? Want to learn how to juggle flaming chainsaws? If you put 20 hours of focused, deliberate practice into that ting, you will be astounded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect it's also possible to come up with some counter-examples: for example, that nobody gets &quot;really good&quot; at writing chinese in anything like 20 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T09:10:47.767" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T09:10:47.767" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23086" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23078" CreationDate="2014-09-03T10:40:14.770" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The intended meaning of the quote you supplied is surely that if the outside of layer of a fruit or vegetable is commonly consumed then this would be taken in to account when setting a maximum residue level (MRL).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Zest of lemon and orange &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zest_%28ingredient%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;is&lt;/a&gt; commonly consumed and therefore those fruits must reasonably be included in the Food Standards Agency's claims about setting an appropriate MRL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And indeed, Annex 1 on page 4 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pesticides.gov.uk/Resources/CRD/Migrated-Resources/Documents/E/EU%20Regulation%20752-2014.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this PDF, which is an annex to COMMISSION REGULATION (EU) No 752/2014 &#xA;of 24 June 2014&lt;/a&gt;, says that the MRL for citrus fruit applies to &quot;Whole product after removal of stems&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This case isn't &lt;em&gt;peculiar&lt;/em&gt; and citrus zest is safe (if you accept the Food Standards Agency's claims).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21768" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T10:55:15.543" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T10:55:15.543" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23062" CreationDate="2014-09-03T17:46:59.733" Score="3" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Safety&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consumer products are guaranteed to be safe if they have the appropriate certifications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since they show no certifications on their site, for example on their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earthing.com/product_p/umck.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;product page&lt;/a&gt; or on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earthing.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=1835&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FAQ&lt;/a&gt;, I've asked their customer support and this is their response.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rX6aa.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is, in my opinion, quite suspicious, because on their website they claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the authorized Earthing products are specifically designed for safe, biological grounding of people. They have a built-in resistor that limits the flow of current in order to prevent the unlikely possibility that electricity would flow through the connecting wire and possibly hurt someone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either their product &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; electrical, and they need to provide certification, or it isn't, and then it should not need a resistor and other systems to prevent getting electrocuted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, do take notice that while you have to trust that I received that answer and I am being honest, you can check for yourself by using their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earthing.com/Articles.asp?ID=254&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;contact form&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the self-admitted absence of certifications to guarantee their claimed safeties are adequate (or present!), I consider it better to default to a caution position:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In theory, assuming wiring is done right the ground prong will contact the ground terminal in the outlet and that terminal is connected to the ground with a thick enough wire and touching it is as safe as touching a washer or fridge chassis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However you should not do that ever, because Murphy is out there...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://diy.stackexchange.com/questions/13402/is-it-safe-to-touch-the-ground-contact&quot;&gt;Is it safe to touch the ground contact?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fact, which, incidentally, is repeated on the web site (except, to convince they are different and safe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, there are no provided international guarantees that it is safe. However the company contends they are not needed. Use your best judgement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Effectiveness&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1652/does-earthing-reduce-oxidative-stress-and-inflammation&quot;&gt;focus of another question&lt;/a&gt;: it's disputed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also see &lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/301/1/012024&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Grounding &amp;amp; human health – a review&lt;/a&gt;, I A Jamieson, S S Jamieson, H M ApSimon and J N B Bell, for a meta review which shows inconclusive results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-12-14T00:41:15.400" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23076" CreationDate="2014-09-03T20:35:53.347" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, this is not a definitive answer, but until someone counters it (which I irrationally hope), I think it will be more than sufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All claims about Machiavelli advocating to fake your own death seem to link back to his work &lt;em&gt;The Art of War&lt;/em&gt; (not to be confused with Sun Tzu's work with the same title). Luckily there is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.goodreads.com/ebooks/download/99324.The_Art_of_War&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a more or less reliable copy of this work&lt;/a&gt; freely available. Searching for the following keywords did not yield any result: &lt;em&gt;year&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;death&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;25&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;18&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;43&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;fake&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;faking&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;age&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;false&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;deceased&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;demise&lt;/em&gt; (I also searched for the numbers written out in English). To be sure I did the same thing with his work &lt;em&gt;The Prince&lt;/em&gt; (which is sometimes cited as well). No results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me it seems &lt;strong&gt;highly&lt;/strong&gt; unlikely that he made any remarks at all on the subject of faking your own death to fool your enemies without using any of these words, let alone give a precise instruction manual on how and when to pull this trick off. So it seems the numbers and the story were made up by somebody after 2Pac's death, probably because people would believe it anyway if some famous large Wikipedia article philosopher and strategist was alleged to advocate it and not much people listening to 2Pac read Machiavelli.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21220" LastEditorUserId="21220" LastEditDate="2014-09-03T21:41:44.620" LastActivityDate="2014-09-03T21:41:44.620" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23094" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23100" CreationDate="2014-09-04T06:03:29.253" Score="10" ViewCount="1135" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirumalai_Krishnamacharya&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article about &lt;strong&gt;Tirumalai Krishnamacharya&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, the &quot;father of modern yoga&quot;, claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the 1920s, Krishnamacharya held many demonstrations to&#xA;  stimulate popular interest in yoga. These included &lt;strong&gt;suspending his&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;pulse&lt;/strong&gt;, stopping cars with his bare hands, performing difficult asanas,&#xA;  and lifting heavy objects with his teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had always assumed that the heart muscle was not subject to voluntary control, and thus stopping one's own heart would be an impossible feat, but there might be other ways to (seemingly) suspend the pulse as well, such as tightening blood vessels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it physiologically possible for a person to &quot;suspend their pulse&quot;?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21992" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T20:59:53.347" Title="Can a person &quot;suspend their pulse&quot;?" Tags="|physiology|yoga|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23095" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23107" CreationDate="2014-09-04T06:14:51.067" Score="47" ViewCount="9173" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/theorosendorf/status/507230080557662208&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This tweet has been making the rounds&lt;/a&gt; about the dangers of bad &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;kerning&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Uf5Zj.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Uf5Zj.png&quot; alt=&quot;&amp;quot;Cover your home in a click&amp;quot; advertisement&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supposedly the letters &quot;c&quot; and &quot;l&quot; are run together so that &quot;click&quot; looks like &quot;dick&quot; instead.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I call shenanigans. Surely &lt;em&gt;someone&lt;/em&gt; noticed the problem while the sign was going up? Has the image of the sign been modified from the original? Or is this an optical illusion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3837" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2018-02-24T03:19:12.337" LastActivityDate="2018-02-24T03:19:12.337" Title="Did Esurance put up a billboard saying &quot;Cover your home in a dick&quot;?" Tags="|advertising|photography|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23095" CreationDate="2014-09-04T07:10:52.093" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's real and was confirmed by esurance in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/esurance/status/507219093922279425&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tweet&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just in case the tweet gets removed later, here is a screenshot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QgLnJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to several sources online, the billboard was put in Chicago, not in New York:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redeyechicago.com/news/local/redeye-esurance-removes-chicago-billboards-with-nsfw-typo-20140903,0,7334907.story&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;redeye Chicago&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Esurance removes Chicago billboards with NSFW typo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/heres-a-big-billboard-that-says-dick-in-downtown-chicag-1630274958&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A blog post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here's A Big Billboard That Says Dick In Downtown Chicago&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="14622" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T14:32:28.683" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T14:32:28.683" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23099" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23094" CreationDate="2014-09-04T10:55:54.273" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although it cannot be disproven that he indeed stopped his heart, there are instances in which members of the public (and even nurses) were fooled to believe that someone would be able to. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;James Randi, together with Jose Luis Alvarez, created a persona called Carlos whose heart would purportedly stop during a possession. The hoax had been set up by James Randi and he explained in subsequent interviews that he had faked stopping his pulse by squeezing a rubber ball underneath his arms at the right moment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A description of the hoax and the media reaction to it can be found on page 26 of this document:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skeptics.com.au/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/theskeptic/2ndcoming/skepticism.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.skeptics.com.au/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/theskeptic/2ndcoming/skepticism.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;As the commenters point out, this is not a direct answer to the question but it shows that there are ways to achieve the effect of getting someone to believe that your heart has stopped that could be easier to achieve than actually stopping the heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21997" LastEditorUserId="22002" LastEditDate="2016-08-09T20:59:53.347" LastActivityDate="2016-08-09T20:59:53.347" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23100" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23094" CreationDate="2014-09-04T11:58:58.980" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;As noted by user21997, there is a simple magic trick involving a rubber ball under the arm. I've found a few references to being able to do the same thing with muscle control, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070528180647AAgRoCJ&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but that's still suspending the pulse, not the heart itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably of more interest to you would be this &lt;a href=&quot;http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/24/6/1319.full.pdf&quot;&gt;1961 paper exploring the ability to temporarily stop pulse and/or heart activity by four yogis&lt;/a&gt;. The closest the yogis managed was a cessation of pulse in the wrist, a quieting of cardiac sounds below detectable levels, and a measurable slowing of the heart in one case. In every case, further testing has proven that the heart was still beating. Furthermore, every method essentially used other muscles to change the heart rhythm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T11:58:58.980" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23103" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-04T15:25:45.117" Score="7" ViewCount="474" Body="&lt;p&gt;Midol's standard formula has three active ingredients: Acetaminophen, Caffeine, and Pyrilamine maleate (an antihistamine). Acetaminophen is readily available over the counter in both generic and brand names, often cheaper than Midol. Midol claims to be specifically formulated for menstrual pain, specifically &lt;a href=&quot;http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/files/2008/07/gender-bettys-gay-with-midol.jpg&quot;&gt;cramping&lt;/a&gt;. I have been advised by physicians to take Midol when undergoing procedures that might cause cramping outside of my period as well -- the most recent example being to help with uterine cramps caused by insertion of an IUD, which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://bedsider.tumblr.com/post/8480262100/no-pain-no-gain-the-iud-insertion-process&quot;&gt;common&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.womens-health.com/boards/birth-control/25168-copper-iud-pain.html&quot;&gt;advice&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aphroditewomenshealth.com/xf2/threads/emotional-trauma-after-iud-insertion-procedure.16897/&quot;&gt;given&lt;/a&gt; before and after the procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that Pyrilamine maleate (or any similar antihistamine) and/or caffeine reduce the severity, frequency, or duration of menstrual or uterine cramps? Or are those ingredients simply for nebulous mood and fatigue symptoms that can accompany menstruation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5027" LastEditorUserId="5027" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T16:06:02.293" LastActivityDate="2016-03-03T21:48:09.670" Title="Is Midol more effective than OTC painkillers when used to treat cramping?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23104" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-04T16:36:53.907" Score="3" ViewCount="382" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaQNy0Ef4YY&amp;amp;t=6m30s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TEDx talk about coffee&lt;/a&gt; claims that coffee is the #1 source of anti-oxidants in the US diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T11:39:37.000" Title="Is coffee the #1 source of anti-oxidants in the US diet?" Tags="|nutrition|coffee|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23105" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23104" CreationDate="2014-09-04T17:59:30.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Dr Joe Vinson, yes, or at least it was in 2005. I can't find an online text of the study, but it's &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/oncotimesuk/Fulltext/2005/11000/Research_into_antioxidants_brings_good_news_for.11.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reported/recapped&lt;/a&gt; in many places. I haven't seen a newer study that directly measures antioxidants in the US diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr Vinson measured in milligrams the top 10 sources of antioxidants consumed on average in the US diet. Coffee was far and away the number one source at 1,299 mg per day. Black tea, the second source, was not even close at 294 mg per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that's the amount &lt;em&gt;consumed&lt;/em&gt;, not necessarily &lt;em&gt;absorbed&lt;/em&gt; by the body:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr Vinson's study was an in vitro test, and he emphasized in an American Chemical Society news briefing that there are limitations to this kind of study, including not knowing how much of the antioxidant compounds are actually being absorbed by the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, unless the absorption rate is &lt;em&gt;vastly&lt;/em&gt; different for coffee/tea/fruit/etc, coffee should still come out on top. After coffee and tea, the next highest was bananas at only 76 mg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19407" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T17:59:30.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23095" CreationDate="2014-09-04T18:09:30.263" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;The image was stated to &lt;a href=&quot;http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/heres-a-big-billboard-that-says-dick-in-downtown-chicag-1630274958&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;have been photoshopped&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;UPDATE: Welp, the fun's over. Esurance contacted us today, and they're saying the image above is photoshopped. To be fair, we were incredulous when we first saw the photo, but decided to roll with it when we saw Esurance addressed the lady who first tweeted out the above image, and said they'd removed the billboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nNggL.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22010" LastEditorUserId="22010" LastEditDate="2014-09-04T18:20:19.350" LastActivityDate="2014-09-04T18:20:19.350" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23108" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23124" CreationDate="2014-09-04T19:15:24.110" Score="10" ViewCount="1570" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is said that it is difficult to kill a whale (at sea) in a humane way:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doc.govt.nz/publications/conservation/native-animals/marine-mammals/conservation-of-whales-in-the-21st-century/conserving-whales-a-challenge-for-the-21st-century/humane-killing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Experience has shown that it is very difficult to kill a whale at sea humanely; that is, by causing minimum pain or instantaneous death.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ifaw.org/united-states/our-work/whales/cruelty-whaling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Whales are the largest animals on the planet – which means killing one is no easy task. The practice of whale hunting is therefore one of unimaginable cruelty and suffering.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2512/2703&quot;&gt;is that true?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My reason for doubting this claim is that whales have large brains: so using a high powered rifle, why is it difficult to deliver a lethal shot to the brain? Will that not result in instantaneous death?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22011" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T16:38:42.083" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T00:24:20.230" Title="Is it very difficult to kill a whale at sea humanely?" Tags="|biology|zoology|guns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23111" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23112" CreationDate="2014-09-05T06:25:33.210" Score="18" ViewCount="7210" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read this article from a Facebook post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dailycurrant.com/2014/08/27/georgia-legalizes-handgun-vending-machines/&quot;&gt;Daily Current: Georgia Legalizes Handgun Vending Machines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was skeptical, but then I found this article which says the vending machine is in South Africa:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.toxel.com/tech/2009/09/04/17-most-unusual-vending-machines/&quot;&gt;Toxel: 17 Most Unusual Vending Machines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find them both difficult to believe. Can you buy a handgun from a vending machine in Georgia or South Africa?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="4301" LastEditDate="2020-05-27T17:22:09.527" LastActivityDate="2020-05-27T17:22:09.527" Title="Can you buy a gun from a vending machine in Georgia or South Africa?" Tags="|guns|south-africa|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23111" CreationDate="2014-09-05T06:55:15.970" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are two separate claims here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) The Daily Currant says Georgia has legalised handguns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, this is just a story from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Currant&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Currant&lt;/a&gt; which is a satirical magazine that invents stories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) That the image on the &quot;17 Most Unusual Vending Machines&quot; demonstrates that there is a vending machine that sells guns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, this is just an donation drive, using vending machines as an analogy for simple purchase. As it explains in small-print &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your donation will go to the Gun Control Alliance, for a gun-free South Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rkTYF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Original Ad&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.solman.net/stuff/Advertisements4.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-09-05T09:09:28.250" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T09:09:28.250" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23118" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-05T14:50:30.883" Score="3" ViewCount="280" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was speaking to my insurance agent yesterday afternoon taking care of some life insurance changes, and my agent congratulated me on my recent wedding (July) and inquired about my upcoming honeymoon to Rome. After the call ended, within a few minutes, I get the following push notification from an app I have on my phone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pmupB.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought that was pretty creepy, and a few others have mentioned that they think the application had access to the phone conversation I just had, but as a mobile developer myself I find this &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; unlikely, if not impossible, that this is the case, but I would be interested in knowing what could perhaps be some reasonable explanations. (I've tried contacting theChive, but no response yet.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll lay out the relevant facts below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have theChive, a photo sharing/entertainment app installed on my iPhone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At some point I may have shared something from the app to Facebook, giving them some amount of permissions over my Facebook account.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I likely posted/commented something on Facebook within the last month or two about my honeymoon plans to Rome.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I haven't been on the app in quite a while, probably a few months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone think of something more reasonable than &quot;they tapped my phone&quot;, and/or think of any other possibilities perhaps other than the Facebook/phone call coincidence angle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19627" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T14:50:30.883" Title="iOS app listening to my calls, or giant coincidence?" Tags="|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-09-05T15:49:33.850" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23111" CreationDate="2014-09-05T18:26:55.960" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's satire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, it cites &quot;NRA spokesman Elmer Fudd&quot;, which is clearly a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Fudd&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a fictional name&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's against &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atf.gov/files/publications/download/p/atf-p-5300-4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US federal law&lt;/a&gt; to buy a handgun from a dealer before an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atf.gov/files/forms/download/atf-f-4473-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ATF 4473 form&lt;/a&gt; is submitted and background checks have been completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22031" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T16:59:42.653" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T16:59:42.653" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23123" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19412" CreationDate="2014-09-05T19:08:11.800" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it can.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrGV7zKEdtU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; explains why it works&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This test works equally well for AA, AAA, C, D and 9 Volt alkaline&#xA;  batteries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is our understanding that the following chemical reactions occur&#xA;  and helps to explain our observations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A non-rechargeable alkaline battery begins life using zinc powder&#xA;  mixed into a gel containing a potassium hydroxide electrolyte&#xA;  separated from a paste of manganese dioxide powder mixed with carbon&#xA;  powder using a porous membrane. To minimize hydrogen outgassing an&#xA;  extra measure of manganese dioxide is added. As the battery discharges&#xA;  manganese dioxide powder changes to manganese oxide causing the&#xA;  powdered granules to bond both chemically and physically. This&#xA;  packed-sand consistency reduces the antibounce effect exhibited by the&#xA;  gel mixture when the battery was fully charged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/test-if-your-batteries-are-dead-by-dropping-them-on-a-h-1630525062&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://lifehacker.com/test-if-your-batteries-are-dead-by-dropping-them-on-a-h-1630525062&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17023" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T19:08:11.800" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23124" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23108" CreationDate="2014-09-05T20:38:56.810" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Commercial / scientific whaling is primarily done with explosive harpoons which were designed to be efficient:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each harpoon comes loaded with explosives that go off once they've penetrated about a foot into the flesh of the whale. The internal blast is supposed to cause enough brain damage to kill or knock out the whale within a few seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the whale survives the grenade harpoon, the gunner will usually pick up a high-powered rifle to finish the job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2006/06/how_do_you_kill_a_whale.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How do you kill a whale?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Minke whales that have been the primary target of whaling in recent decades are &lt;a href=&quot;http://acsonline.org/fact-sheets/minke-whale/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;relatively small (~8m) and fast moving&lt;/a&gt;. Presumably, this makes them harder to hit, but easier to kill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/whale-wars/about-whaling/whales-whaling-harpooned-whales-suffer.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Do Harpooned Whales Suffer?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Norway, as we mentioned, has worked particularly hard to improve Norwegian whalers' ability to hit the sweet spot as often as possible, through training classes and mandatory certification tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Norwegians and other vested parties have also conducted studies on ways to minimize time-to-death by analyzing which areas of whales' bodies are the most effective to target, what angle of fire delivers the best results, in addition to honing the technological improvements mentioned previously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the same article refers to witnesses who say that a poor shot can lead to suffering:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to some volunteers from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, it's not pretty. When members saw a whale harpooned in 2009, they claimed it took 25 excruciating minutes for the animal to die (and they say that when managed poorly, it can take much&#xA;longer).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Why is it difficult to deliver a lethal shot to the brain?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both the boat and whale are moving. The whale's head is primarily submerged and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvSTuLIjRm8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;high-powered rounds don't penetrate water very well&lt;/a&gt;. It seems logical that if a lethal shot was not difficult, whalers would have adopted the presumably-much-cheaper rifle round over the explosive harpoon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-05T22:25:04.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23127" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23108" CreationDate="2014-09-06T00:24:20.230" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &amp;quot;humane&amp;quot; killing is relative: some killings more humane, some less. Let's compare whaling with farming and with hunting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Farming&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The usual/legal standard for slaughtering farm mammals is to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/farm/slaughter/factfile&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;stun them (perhaps using a bolt gun) before bleeding them&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether that's always done successfully is &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/18132/2703&quot;&gt;another story&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The slaughter of farm animals using such methods is more-or-less widely seen as humane: legislation such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humane_Slaughter_Act&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Humane Slaughter Act&lt;/a&gt; implies that method is humane by definition and by law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Hunting&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://events.iwc.int/index.php/workshops/EPTOWCFSC2013/paper/viewFile/520/513/IWC-S13-EP14.PDF&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's a description of hunting&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During regular hunting of wild terrestrial game with&#xA;rifles, the projectiles are usually directed at the thorax area&#xA;to damage the circulatory system by injuring the heart, lungs&#xA;and/or main thoracic vessels. The animal loses&#xA;consciousness and subsequently dies from the impact shock&#xA;and/or the rapid fall in blood pressure by puncture of the&#xA;circulatory system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Whaling&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This method can't be used for whaling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this method cannot be&#xA;successfully used for euthanasia of whales during hunting as&#xA;the thorax is under water and water has a considerable&#xA;braking effect on a rifle projectile. In trials on dead common&#xA;minke whales, Øen (1995a) found that a 20mm 3 66mm&#xA;high-velocity bullet with impact energy of 60kJ, which is&#xA;about ten times the impact energy of the rifle projectiles&#xA;used in the present study, travelling 1m or more through&#xA;water before hitting the whale, stopped in the blubber. Only&#xA;direct hits went sufficiently deep into the animal to give the&#xA;potential to kill. A rifle bullet will therefore hardly&#xA;penetrate the blubber if it hits water first.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore a 'heart shot' can be used to attempt euthanasia only for a beached/stranded whale:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, for&#xA;euthanasia of stranded whales, which in many cases have&#xA;the thorax area out of the water, a rifle shot through the&#xA;heart or main vessels with sufficient ammunition, will&#xA;probably kill the animal rather quickly, although not&#xA;instantaneously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore they shoot for the brain as suggested in your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consequently, for the euthanasia of whales in water, the&#xA;primary target area for rifles is the brain and for a whale of&#xA;the size of a common minke whale a heavy, round nosed or&#xA;semi butt, full-jacketed bullet with high impact energy and&#xA;sectional density is recommended to avoid splintering,&#xA;ricocheting and deviation by passing hard tissue. The brain&#xA;of a common minke whale is approximately 20cm in length,&#xA;20cm in width and 15cm in height (Knudsen et al., 1999).&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;This is a relatively small target as it is exposed over water&#xA;only for a couple of seconds at a time.&lt;/strong&gt; However, the&#xA;shooting range is usually short and the results from the&#xA;present study demonstrated that the .375 and .458 missiles&#xA;caused fatal damage to the brain, and killed the animal&#xA;instantaneously or very rapidly also when it hit and&#xA;penetrated the skull as far as 20cm from the brain.&#xA;Consequently, when using the recommended .375 and .458&#xA;calibre bullets, the lethal hitting area will be larger than the&#xA;brain itself, increasing the potential for rapid kills.&#xA;Additionally, the study also demonstrated that hits in the&#xA;spine in the neck resulted in brain damage and very rapid&#xA;death. This was demonstrated even when the whale was hit&#xA;as far back as to the 2nd thoracical vertebrae.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whalers first hit the whale with an explosive harpoon. Reasons for using a harpoon might include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They travel through water better than a bullet&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They're an explosive weapon, not a kinetic weapon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A whale will sink when it's killed, so they want to spear it with a line to catch/hold it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rifle is used as the second/backup method if the harpoon strike didn't (in the opinion of the gunner) kill the whale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During hunting, the rifle is kept beside the marksman and&#xA;the whales are to be hauled in rapidly for control after the&#xA;impact of the harpoon. The rifle is usually fired from close&#xA;range and when the whale’s head is out of the water. The&#xA;hunter aims at the brain (Fig. 1), which, depending on the&#xA;size of the animal, lies 55 to 75cm behind the blowhole&#xA;(Knudsen et al., 1999). An illustration chart with the&#xA;position of the brain and aiming point from different&#xA;shooting angles and directions has been distributed to all&#xA;Norwegian whaling vessels. Rifle shots are fired at any&#xA;whales that show movement, if the flippers or jaws are not&#xA;relaxed or if the hunters suspect it may still be alive. In&#xA;2001, 79.6% of the animals were recorded instantaneously&#xA;dead from the grenade detonation (Øen, 2002).&#xA;Nevertheless, the hunters used the rifle on 45% of the&#xA;whales as many use the rifle as a matter of routine when the&#xA;whale is alongside the boat (Øen, 1995;2002).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So according to this, somewhere between 20% and 50% of the whales are not killed by the first (exploding) harpoon, and are finished by rifle a close range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Norway's technology is state of the art (i.e. others are worse).&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://iwc.int/private/downloads/cvf1007f2io0woosko0k0cgsg/workshop2003.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This 2003 IWC report says things like&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Norwegian grenades showed superiority in every&#xA;experiment. TTD of Norwegian grenades in every&#xA;experiment were shorter than Japanese grenade and&#xA;Instantaneous Death Rate (IDR) of Norwegian grenades in&#xA;every experiment were higher than for Japanese grenades.&#xA;Norwegian grenades showed excellent results especially for&#xA;small individuals. However, financial concerns may be the&#xA;most important factor related to the decision on whether or&#xA;not to introduce them to Japan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was commented that this was a very valuable and&#xA;interesting paper. In reply to a question about the possible&#xA;use of these bullets at shooting ranges of up to 50-100m,&#xA;ÿen answered that they had no experience of longer&#xA;distances since all the whales in Norway were shot at a&#xA;much shorter distance. In the present study the mean&#xA;shooting distance was 9.3m.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New Zealand indicated that the research presented tp&#xA;this Workshop suggested a current level of best practice for&#xA;determining the minimum specifications of rifles used to&#xA;kill whales (being a minimum calibre of .375 inches with&#xA;round nosed full metal jacketed bullets) and that it would&#xA;be appropriate to consider a broad implementation of these&#xA;best practice standards. While there was general agreement&#xA;that all countries should be encouraged to use the best&#xA;available techniques to kill whales, it was acknowledged&#xA;that there were substantial practical and financial&#xA;constraints for aboriginal subsistence whalers. It was&#xA;agreed that the Workshop had been constructive in striving&#xA;to improve whale killing methods and the encouragement&#xA;of the adoption of such measures would be warmly&#xA;welcomed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above are quotes from IWC and Norwegian papers. I used them because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They're first-hand or expert witnesses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are not overtly anti-whaling&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a longish page titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.whales.org/wdc-in-action/hunted-dead-or-still-alive&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HUNTED DEAD OR 'STILL' ALIVE&lt;/a&gt; which argues from the opposite point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has dozens of points to make (which you can read there but which I won't summarize here). One of them is this,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the 1999 IWC Workshop on Whale Killing Methods, one expert noted that ‘causing humane death without pain in meat animals usually includes the induction of instantaneous insensibility by stunning. Instantaneous in this context is embodied in European Union Legislation which requires a limit of about 100 milliseconds between stimulus (application of stunning device) and unconsciousness. The figure of 100 milliseconds is based on the pain perception delay of 100 to 150 milliseconds found in meat animals.’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly, modern whaling techniques do not come close to delivering ‘death without pain, stress or distress’. All current whaling methods include a chase and, even in hunts where more powerful killing weapons are used, irreversible insensibility or instantaneous death – the key to a humane kill – is still not achieved in a significant number of cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seems to be to be true, i.e. matching the evidence previously presented above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Humane&amp;quot; for farm mammals is defined as meaning near-instant unconsciousness&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This (being killed semi-immediately) doesn't happen for a large number (at least 20%) of the Norwegian whales&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The numbers are worse for non-Norwegian kills; for example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Norwegian whalers aim the explosive harpoon at the whale’s head, or just behind it, which results in a greater number of animals dying instantaneously (79.7% in 2001) and a shorter average time to death (2 minutes and 25 seconds). In contrast, their Japanese counterparts deliberately avoid the whale’s head in order not to damage the fragile “ear-plugs” which they collect as part of the study that supports their claim to be conducting ‘scientific whaling’. A strike to the body of the whale can cause extensive tissue and organ damage, but may deliver insufficient energy to the brain. Japan only achieved instantaneous death in 33% of its minke whale hunts in Antarctica in the 2001/2002 season and an average time to death of 3 minutes and 23 seconds. Since 2000, Japan has expanded its hunts to species much larger than minke whales (Bryde’s whales are at least twice as heavy, sei whales about five times heavier and male sperm whales are not only nearly six times heavier but have an entirely different anatomy). Despite this wide variation, Japan is believed to use the same size harpoon on each species, but refuses to provide data on the time they take to die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/arctic48-2-177.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Older techniques e.g. old-fashioned grenades&lt;/a&gt; used in 1995 resulted in some times-to-death of an hour or longer, and up to 40% of the whales not being landed (e.g. escaped wounded).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T00:24:20.230" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5465" CreationDate="2014-09-06T01:03:23.387" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several language aptitude tests, such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Language_Aptitude_Test&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Modern Language Aptitude Test&lt;/a&gt;. These are used by governments, militaries and companies to determine who is most likely to be able to successfully learn languages - these tests are usually for adults, though some are for children as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How exactly these tests measure language aptitude could be debated, but their effectiveness shows that whatever they do measure does correlate with a real increased likelihood of success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21255" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T01:03:23.387" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23129" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22989" CreationDate="2014-09-06T02:05:35.660" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The shape of the glass does influence the taste of the wine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.riedel.com/wine-tastings/tasting-calendar/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;glass tasting&quot; events&lt;/a&gt; where people do not come to taste different wines, but rather to try out different glass shapes and choose the one that works best for their Bordeaux or Syrah.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have attended one of these events, and even for a non-expert the difference of taste is clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The shape of the glass influences several things, among which :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How much the wine reacts with air (depending on the size of the&#xA;surface exposed to the air)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How and where the first drops of wine will hit the tongue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aromadictionary.com/articles/wineglass_article.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; lists two articles studying the effect of the shape of the glass on the aroma of the wine. Here are the finding from the first study :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Regardless of the wine type (red or white, clean or volatile), the&#xA;  total aroma intensity of the wine was highest in the Riedel Burgundy®,&#xA;  followed by the ISO, followed by the Riedel Chardonnay® glass.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The&#xA;  differences in aroma intensity were relatively small, being 1 point or&#xA;  less on a ten-point intensity scale.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Total intensity of aroma was highly correlated with the ratio of the glasses cup diameter to the diameter of its opening.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the second study :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Two of the glasses [...] produced a greater overall aroma on most of the characters under study (up to 64% stronger than the ISO).&#xA;  Interestingly, despite their differing dimensions [...].&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Glass 3 produced a similar aroma profile to the ISO glass despite it being very different in shape.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The DIN glass with its small cup and relatively wide opening resulted in aromas of less than 50% the strength of that produced by&#xA;  the ISO glass for most of the aromas assessed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;As per Cliff (2001), the intensity of aroma was highly correlated with the ratio of the glasses cup diameter to the diameter of its&#xA;  opening.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22035" LastEditorUserId="22035" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T05:16:31.230" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T05:16:31.230" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23132" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23133" CreationDate="2014-09-06T10:01:49.937" Score="18" ViewCount="6036" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/uk-police-arrested-parents-trying-to-stop-muslims-from-raping-their-children/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Front Page Mag&lt;/a&gt; (a blog for the conservative David Horowitz Freedom Center) quotes an unnamed report that UK authorities were complicit in the support of sexually abusive Muslims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The police did their part… for the Muslim rapists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;The report heard of two cases where fathers tracked down their&#xA;    daughters and tried to remove them from houses where they were being&#xA;    abused only to be arrested themselves when police were called.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that men were arrested in this way - trying to rescue their daughters from sexual abuse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17021" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T06:30:17.790" LastActivityDate="2020-11-29T15:22:14.543" Title="Were fathers arrested while trying to rescue their daughters from rape in Britain at least on two occasions?" Tags="|united-kingdom|sexual-abuse|police|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23132" CreationDate="2014-09-06T10:24:58.070" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;The text of the report can be &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rotherham.gov.uk/downloads/file/279/independent-inquiry-into-child-sexual-exploitation-in-rotherham&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;downloaded from here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report includes the following paragraph,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;5.9 In two of the cases we read, fathers tracked down their daughters and tried to&#xA;remove them from houses where they were being abused, only to be arrested&#xA;themselves when police were called to the scene. In a small number of cases (which&#xA;have already received media attention) the victims were arrested for offences such&#xA;as breach of the peace or being drunk and disorderly, with no action taken against&#xA;the perpetrators of rape and sexual assault against children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that no further specific details are forthcoming: for example, arrest records and police reports (unlike evidence presented in court) might not be available to the general pubic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Preface to the report says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Inquiry applied the definition of child sexual exploitation which is used in Government&#xA;guidance and is set out in Appendix 4, paragraph 48 of this report. The methodology&#xA;included reading a wide range of minutes, reports and case files&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I include the first quote above, as evidence for your &amp;quot;Is it true?&amp;quot; question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The report is higher-quality (i.e. more direct) evidence than the newspaper report you referenced; i.e. it shows that the quote in the newspaper report you cited was not misquoting the official report.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The report doesn't shed additional light on the 'editorializing' in the newspaper article, i.e. the &amp;quot;The police did their part… for the Muslim rapists&amp;quot; sentence.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report does not confirm or identify, for those two specific 'cases':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether the homes were of &amp;quot;Muslim rapists&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the specific type of &amp;quot;being abused&amp;quot; was&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The names of the victims of the abuse&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The names of the arrestees (the victims' fathers)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What they were arrested for.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report in question is titled &amp;quot;Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2014/september/urgent-question-on-child-sex-abuse-in-rotherham-2-september-2014/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The independent inquiry was commissioned by Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council in October 2013&lt;/a&gt; (Wikipedia says &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-24771229&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;it was commissioned in November 2013, citing this BBC article&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is (quoting its title) an inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The scope of its investigation included examining case files of child sexual exploitation cases, to determine whether officials (including police, Council, social workers, etc., in Rotherham) acted appropriately&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;c) Consider managerial and political oversight, leadership and direction, operational management practice including supervision, support and guidance and the roles and responsibilities of other parties including the Police, Crown Prosecution Service, health services, schools, parents, family and the Local Safeguarding Children Board.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e) Identify who in the Council knew what information when and determine whether that information was used effectively and in the best interests of protecting young people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;g) Ensure that the cases reviewed will include those identified in the national press.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was therefore important that the investigation be independent of the Council, which comissioned the report. The terms of its independence are stated in Appendix A (page 121) of the inquiry, as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Appendix 1: Terms of Reference for the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation 1997 - 2013&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That it be conducted by an independent person with appropriate skills, experience and abilities who has not previously been employed&#xA;by or undertaken work, either directly or indirectly, for Rotherham&#xA;Metropolitan Borough Council, nor is a relation of any member or&#xA;officer of the Council past or present. Prior to appointment the&#xA;independent person will be required to sign a declaration to that&#xA;effect. The person should be on a list of reputable persons&#xA;recommended to the Council by the Local Government Association.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The leader of the inquiry and author of the report is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexis_Jay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alexis Jay OBE&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alexis Jay is a Visiting Professor at the University of Strathclyde and the Independent Chair of the Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland (CELCIS).[1] Professor Jay is a former senior social worker.[2] She was previously Chief Social Work Adviser to the Scottish Government.[3] and a former president of the Association of Directors of Social Work.[4]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2005 she took up the post of Chief Social Work Inspector at the Social Work Inspection Agency (SWIA), a government organisation scrutinising all aspects of social services provided by local authorities in Scotland.[5] She served as Chief Executive and Chief Social Work Inspector until the functions of SWIA and the Care Commission were taken over by the Care Inspectorate in 2011. She then remained as Chief Social Work Adviser to the Scottish Government until early 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She led the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham, an investigation into child sexual abuse in the Metropolitan Borough of Rotherham in South Yorkshire.[3] She is the author of the investigation's report, published in August 2014.[6]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report was published in August 2014 (about two weeks ago as of today).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was subsequent to (i.e. preceded by) articles published in The Times, for example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On 24th September 2012, The Times reported Andrew Norfolk’s investigation into CSE in Rotherham.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;i.e. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/uk/crime/article3547661.ece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Police files reveal vast child protection scandal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="949" LastEditDate="2020-11-29T15:22:14.543" LastActivityDate="2020-11-29T15:22:14.543" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23111" CreationDate="2014-09-06T12:15:51.600" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can assure you (as a South African) that the vending machine in South Africa is a hoax. Gun control in South Africa, despite the reputation as an unsafe and violent country, is actually very well controlled (if you buy from an official source). You have to be licensed before purchasing a gun, and all guns have to be registered, etc. In South Africa, everyone is fingerprinted as part of their identity documents, and again when they purchase a gun license, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To purchase a gun you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.services.gov.za/services/content/Home/ServicesForPeople/Dealingwiththelaw/firearms/firearmlicence/en_ZA&quot;&gt;first need a license, for which you need to (from the SA Govt. website)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;complete a course (gun training)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pass the test to get a competency certificate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;use that certificate to apply for a license at your local police station&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you need a separate license for each gun that you own&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;you need to renew each license every 2 to 10 years, depending on the license type (which in part depends on the firearm itself)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(there is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saps.gov.za/services/flash/firearms/faq_applying.php&quot;&gt;a FAQ to help you&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I struggled to find government-based references for the procedure for purchasing a firearm. A specific &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hillcrestgunshop.co.za/how-to-obtain-a-firearm.html&quot;&gt;store in South Africa has the procedure documented though&lt;/a&gt;, and I have found official references to the documents listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To purchase a firearm you need:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;proficiency training&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pass the certificate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;select the firearm you want to purchase&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;using form &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.services.gov.za/services/webdav/Documents/SAPS/Application%20for%20a%20licence.pdf&quot;&gt;SAPS271 (pdf link)&lt;/a&gt; get the gun dealer to fill in the details of the firearm you want to purchase (including serial numbers (barrel, frame, receiver)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;take that form to the 'Designated Firearms Officer' at the police station to apply for the license (with your fingerprints, photos, etc.). as well as form &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saps.gov.za/services/flash/firearms/forms/english/e350a.pdf&quot;&gt;SAPS350a - Dealer's Return - Stock Received (pdf)&lt;/a&gt; which I believe is the &lt;code&gt;on-hold&lt;/code&gt; form the dealer uses to show you have purchased the firearm, and they are holding it for you until your license is approved.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Part of the process allows the Police to inspect your house to ensure the designated gun safe you have is adequate, etc. Also to perform background checks, and cross-reference fingerprints, etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once your license is approved, you can collect the firearm from the dealer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This process currently takes about 3 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Purchasing a gun legally in South Africa is a process that requires time, and collaboration between the gun dealer, the purchaser, and the police.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a vending machine selling guns just does not exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, is the law enforced? Well, yes, unless you go the illegal route....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A thriving, illegal, and anonymous black market does exist though. It is not hard to buy an illegal, unlicensed, and often high-quality gun, if you want to. (no link provided, but I have, in the past, been approached by a person in the street offering to sell me a gun (and other things))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is why this 'hoax' is both funny, and sad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22041" LastEditorUserId="22041" LastEditDate="2014-09-06T13:12:18.403" LastActivityDate="2014-09-06T13:12:18.403" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23136" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23138" CreationDate="2014-09-06T13:24:55.063" Score="30" ViewCount="4060" Body="&lt;p&gt;I &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.demotivateur.fr/article-buzz/70-facts-947&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;saw on the web&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;La probabilité que vous buviez un verre d'eau qui contient une molécule d'eau qui est également passée à travers un dinosaure est de quasiment 100%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This translates to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The probability that the glass of water you are drinking contains a water molecule that a dinosaur also drank is virtually 100%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19468" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T13:15:12.253" Title="Have you shared (one water molecule of) your glass of water with a dinosaur?" Tags="|mathematics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23136" CreationDate="2014-09-06T14:09:50.830" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is true – though it's &lt;em&gt;in principle&lt;/em&gt; a bit problematic to talk about individual water molecules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disregarding molecules for a moment: &lt;em&gt;almost all water on earth has been drunk by dinosaurs at some point&lt;/em&gt;. To quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://what-if.xkcd.com/74/&quot;&gt;from Randall Munroe's &quot;What If&quot; blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dinosaurs, as a taxonomic group, have been around for 230 million years, but their heyday was the mid-to-late Jurassic period. In this period, there were probably around 5 trillion kilograms of dinosaur alive at any given time.&lt;sup&gt;[11]&lt;/sup&gt; (...)&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  If we assume Jurassic dinosaur water requirements were similar to mammal ones,&lt;sup&gt;[13]&lt;/sup&gt; then this suggests dinosaurs drank something like 10&lt;sup&gt;22&lt;/sup&gt; or 10&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt; liters of water during the Mesozoic era—more than the total volume of the oceans (10&lt;sup&gt;21&lt;/sup&gt; liters).&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The average &quot;residence time&quot; of water in the oceans—the amount of time a water molecule spends there before moving into another part of the water cycle—is about 3,000 years,&lt;sup&gt;[14]&lt;/sup&gt; and no part of the water cycle traps water for more than a few hundred thousand years. This means we can assume that, over timescales of millions of years, Earth's water is thoroughly mixed—and dinosaurs had plenty of time to drink it all many times over.&#xA;  &lt;br&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  This means that while the chances are that most of the water in your soda has never been in another soda, almost all of it has been drunk by at least one dinosaur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To target your particular question in that light: the probability of any given water molecule to have been in a dinosaur is quite high, let's say more than 1/10. The probability of &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; such molecule in a glass of water is then less than (9/10)&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;, which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%289%2F10%29%5E%2810%5E23%29&quot;&gt;is &amp;lt; 10&lt;sup&gt;-10&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;: essentially impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, as eBusiness remarks, water molecules are subject to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-ionization_of_water&quot;&gt;self-ionisation&lt;/a&gt;. Individual molecules can't really be considered stable. If the half-life is anything short of millenia (and apparently &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-ionization_of_water#Mechanism&quot;&gt;it's no longer than a day&lt;/a&gt;), this means no water molecules have survived as such from cretaceous till now, which would render the answer of your question as &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you consider &quot;the same molecule&quot; as &quot;the same oxygen ion plus protons&quot; then the answer remains no: the question would then be, &lt;em&gt;if you recombine&lt;/em&gt; 10&lt;sup&gt;21+23&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;em&gt;water molecules from their atom components, how many will get back with their original partners?&lt;/em&gt; The answer is, none (for pairings of &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; atoms the expected value would be something small, for three the increase in possible failure combinations make it neglectable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This caveat doesn't apply if you consider a hydroxid ion as &quot;continued existence&quot; of water molecule, which I'd find quite reasonable since only a proton is lost – all electrons are kept with the oxygen, so the process is basically just like handing on electrons in a metal, where we also still speak of individual atoms that stay the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, it's a bit weird to reason about &quot;continuity&quot; of individual atoms or molecules at all, since quantum mechanics has it that indistinguishable things in a mixed state are &lt;em&gt;the same thing&lt;/em&gt;, so once you can't spatially separate the molecules they don't really exist as separate entities anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[11]&lt;/sup&gt;Jerzy Trammer, &lt;a href=&quot;http://agp.org.pl/table/pdf/61-2/trammer.pdf&quot;&gt;Differences in global biomass and energy use between dinosaurs and mammals&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Acta Geologica Polonia&lt;/strong&gt;, Vol. 61 (2011), No. 2, pp. 125–132&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[13]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/wat/wq/reference/foodandwater.html&quot;&gt;Animal weights and their food and water requirements&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[14]&lt;/sup&gt;K. L. Schulz, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esf.edu/efb/schulz/Limnology/hydrologic.html&quot;&gt;Water in the Biosphere&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5827" LastEditorUserId="5827" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T13:15:12.253" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T13:15:12.253" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23142" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-06T22:27:52.047" Score="26" ViewCount="4129" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this paper: &lt;a href=&quot;http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/llog/Turner1996.pdf&quot;&gt;Intelligence and the X chromosome&lt;/a&gt; by Gillian Turner, published by &lt;em&gt;The Lancet&lt;/em&gt; (a highly regarded medical journal) in 1996, the X chromosome is dominantly responsible for coding &quot;intelligence&quot; and &quot;intellectual function&quot;. Since a son inherits the X chromosome only from his mother, supposedly his intelligence is dominated by his mother's genes. At the closing paragraph the paper boldly claims (I added the bold and italic for emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In day-to-day practical evolutionary terms for our new millennium the&#xA;  male needs to remember that his primitive urges in mate selection are&#xA;  coded in his genome, and that they target current ideals of sexual&#xA;  attractiveness and youth. His frontal cortex should interpose&#xA;  reminding him that &lt;em&gt;his sons’ intelligence, if that is important to&#xA;  him, is &lt;strong&gt;solely&lt;/strong&gt; dependent on his partner,&lt;/em&gt; and that is mirrored in&#xA;  both her parents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am naturally skeptical of such sweeping claims. Has there been a follow up research to confirm, reject, or qualify this claim? (it's been almost 2 decades since the original paper) Is this conclusion commonly accepted by biologists? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick search found that this claim is repeated in the media and people's blogs, for example: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/brainy-sons-owe-intelligence-to-their-mothers-1339099.html&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Independent&lt;/em&gt;: Brainy sons owe intelligence to their mothers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Intelligent men owe their brains to their mothers, according to research published today in The Lancet. ... [Professor Gillian Turner] concludes that if a man wants smart sons his best bet is to marry a smart woman.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB835919711841023500&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Wall Street Journal&lt;/em&gt;: Heredity Theory Says in Males, Intelligence Comes From Mom&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sorry, Dad. You may be responsible for your son's big nose, but all the credit for the kid's genius goes to Mom... Boys inherit their intelligence from their mothers, according to Gillian Turner, an Australian geneticist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB835919711841023500&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; Turner, G. (1996). Intelligence and the X chromosome. &lt;em&gt;The Lancet&lt;/em&gt;, 347(9018), 1814-1815. &lt;a href=&quot;http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/llog/Turner1996.pdf&quot;&gt;[pdf]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21533" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2016-09-08T10:42:38.397" LastActivityDate="2016-09-11T11:05:25.777" Title="Do the mother's genes almost exclusively determine the sons' intelligence?" Tags="|intelligence|genetics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23145" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23147" CreationDate="2014-09-07T00:43:02.390" Score="4" ViewCount="2501" Body="&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://on.ted.com/j0Rmq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this TED talk&lt;/a&gt;, Jane McGonical states that Lydians invented games a few centuries ago, as dice games they would play to forget about famine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;12:14&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  So, I take my inspiration from something that happened 2,500 years ago. These are ancient dice, made out of sheep's knuckles. Right? Before we had awesome game controllers, we had sheep's knuckles. And these represent the first game equipment designed by human beings. And if you're familiar with the work of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, you might know this history, which is the history of who invented games and why. Herodotus says that games, particularly dice games, were invented in the kingdom of Lydia during a time of famine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She claimed this was in Herodotus writings. Can all of this be confirmed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16968" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T01:50:40.287" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T11:42:50.260" Title="Did the Lydians invent games?" Tags="|history|games|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23145" CreationDate="2014-09-07T02:18:34.573" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;She makes the same claim in her book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B004G8Q1Q4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World&lt;/a&gt;. There, she gives a reference: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rawlison, George trans., with Henry Rawlison and J. G Wilkinson. The History of Herodotus: A New English Version (New York: D. Appleton, 1861), 182 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofherodot01herouoft#page/180/mode/2up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofherodot01herouoft#page/180/mode/2up&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It can be confirmed by following the link provided that, assuming this is not a fake that somehow got into archive.org, the person writing under the name Herodotus indicated that the Lydians believed themselves to be the true creators of all games they share with the Greeks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Lydians have very nearly the same customs as the Greeks, with the exception that these last do not bring up their girls in the same way. So far as we have any knowledge, they were the first nation to introduce the use of gold and silver coin, and the first who sold goods by retail. They claim also the invention of all the games which are common to them with the Greeks. These they declare that they invented about the time when they colonised Tyrrhenia, an event of which they gave the following account. In the days of Atys the son of Manes, there was great scarcity through the whole land of Lydia. For some time the Lydians bore the affliction patiently, but finding that it did not pass away, they set to work to devise remedies for the evil. Various expedients were discovered by various persons ; dice, and huckle-bones, and ball, and all such games were invented, except tables, the invention of which they do not claim as theirs. The plan adopted against the famine was to engage in games one day so entirely as not to feel any craving for food, and the next day to eat and abstain from games. In this way they passed eighteen years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofherodot01herouoft#page/182/mode/1up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(pages 181-183, heading 94).&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So IF Herodotus is accurate in his account, and IF the Lydians are accurate in their telling of the story, then they invented dice, ball, and bone games, though not all games. The general shape of the story matches her account, but it's been embellished somewhat to make a point. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in the footnotes of the translation McGonical cited, the following note can be found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ball was a very old game, and it was doubtless invented in Egypt, as Plato says. It is mentioned by Homer (Od. viii. 372), and it was known in Egypt long before his time, in the twelfth dynasty, or about 2000 B.C, as were the [...] counters, used in a game resembling our draughts, with two sets of men, or &quot;dogs&quot;, of different colours. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofherodot01herouoft#page/180/mode/1up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(p. 181)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, while &lt;strong&gt;it is true that Herodotus said this&lt;/strong&gt;, it is &lt;strong&gt;doubtful that he was correct&lt;/strong&gt;. Logically, it follows that if they didn't even invent ball and dice games, they did not invent all games. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5027" LastEditorUserId="5027" LastEditDate="2014-09-07T02:27:38.193" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T02:27:38.193" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23145" CreationDate="2014-09-07T11:42:50.260" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dealing with the question of games (Yamikuronue has dealt with Herodotus thoroughly already) clearly we have no way of knowing who played games like Touch (what North Americans call Tag) in the prehistoric past. Neanderthals may well have done. But I think the sense of the question involves games with props, i.e. specially designed materials.  A good source on the history of board games is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Murray&quot;&gt;H.J.R. Murray's&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess&lt;/em&gt; (OUP 1951).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Murray gives several examples of games that are much older than envisaged by Herodotus. &quot;2,500 years ago&quot;. His earliest example is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.org/detail.aspx?id=455&quot;&gt;El-Mahasna game board&lt;/a&gt; from pre-dynastic Egypt. It is conceivable (but not in my view likely) that the board wasn't used for gaming, but it is almost identical to later boards that clearly were. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find a very precise date for the board. It's discovery was reported by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_R._Ayrton&quot;&gt;Edward Ayrton&lt;/a&gt; in his &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/details/cu31924020528935&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pre-Dynastic Cemetery at El Mahasna&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. He says that the graves ranged in date from the earliest pre-dynastic to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Dynasty_of_Egypt&quot;&gt;1st dynasty&lt;/a&gt;. Modern estimates place that date to about 3111BC (see Dee Michael et al., &lt;em&gt;An absolute chronology for early Egypt using radiocarbon dating and Bayesian statistical modelling&lt;/em&gt;, Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Science, 469 (2013), 20130395 &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2013.0395&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2013.0395&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ayrton thought the game was a &quot;sort of draughts&quot;. What about dice? Murray goes on to discuss other games such as &lt;em&gt;t'au&lt;/em&gt; which are evidenced back to the fifth dynasty (roughly 2500 to 2300BC) which are likely to have used dice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that clearly demonstrates the Lydians were not the first to invent games with props (and therefore games of any kind) even if Herodotus tells us they said they did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3059" LastActivityDate="2014-09-07T11:42:50.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23151" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23170" CreationDate="2014-09-07T18:10:08.920" Score="36" ViewCount="4207" Body="&lt;p&gt;When a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_transit&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;rapid transit&lt;/a&gt; ticket machine in Germany refuses to accept a coin, I've often seen the ticket-buyer scratch the same coin on the machine's metal surface before re-trying it. Some scratch with the coin's edge, some with a flat face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't always work, making me suspect &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;confirmation bias&lt;/a&gt;. Over time, it also causes a large round scratched patch adjacent to the coin slot, which could be enabling a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwagon_effect&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;bandwagon effect&lt;/a&gt;, reinforced by word-of-mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Removing static&quot; is the only theory I've heard for &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; the technique might work, but I'm skeptical as metal coins are conductive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a machine's coin-approval mechanism be influenced this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Significance support&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pension-sprachschule.de/general/rmv-ticket-machines-frankfurt/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This blog article&lt;/a&gt; contains a photo of a ticket machine in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Frankfurt&lt;/a&gt; badly scratched by the practice, and a text explanation. Here's &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xjHCX.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a photo of a metallic &quot;coin scratch pad&quot;&lt;/a&gt; reportedly installed on a ticket machine in Norwich, UK. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/22aa61/this_ticket_machine_has_a_scratch_pad_for/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;associated Reddit thread&lt;/a&gt; mentions the &quot;removing static&quot;-speculation, as do &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=38506.0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;these&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.railforums.co.uk/showthread.php?t=87197#5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt; independent forum threads. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7286" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T05:56:42.737" Title="Does rubbing a rejected coin against the ticket machine make it likelier to be accepted?" Tags="|economics|transportation|machines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23153" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23156" CreationDate="2014-09-08T01:48:21.220" Score="10" ViewCount="1625" Body="&lt;p&gt;I stumbled across the Amazon page for &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B000EVQWKC&quot;&gt;Haribo Sugar-Free Gummi Bears&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Reviews and Questions posted there were extremely entertaining, however I have my doubts as to if they are true or just some internet hoax. After all, why would Hairbo sell candy that causes these effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product does contain a disclosure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Safety Warning&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Consumption of some sugar-free candies may cause stomach discomfort and/or a laxative effect.  Individual tolerance will vary.  If this is the first time you’ve tried these candies, we recommend beginning with one-fourth of a serving size or less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But that doesn't seem to match the depth of some of the horror stories told about &quot;Satan's Diarrhea Hate Bears&quot; in the user reviews, or what I read from some brief Google searches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Phrases like &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Cramps, sweating, bloating beyond my worst nightmare.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Don't think of this as candy. Think of this as medication; a tasty alternative to nasty laxative teas&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Severe gastrointestinal pain which eventually led to gas, diarrhea, and vomiting&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Volcanic lava being forcefully ejected from my rear&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are sugar-free gummy bears, or more specifically the substance Lycasin used in them, really as deadly to your gastrointestinal tract as the internet seems to want me to believe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6971" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T16:13:30.090" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T11:08:28.773" Title="Do Sugar-Free Gummy Bears cause gastrointestinal distress?" Tags="|nutrition|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23155" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23157" CreationDate="2014-09-08T08:47:25.720" Score="31" ViewCount="5901" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tsunagujapan.com/20-things-you-do-not-know-about-japan/&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; and although majority of the items are believable, #5 is really shocking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that there are more than 50,000 alive people in Japan already over 100?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22064" LastEditorUserId="22029" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T17:06:58.147" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T20:33:47.390" Title="Are there more than 50,000 people in Japan over 100 years old?" Tags="|japan|life-expectancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23156" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23153" CreationDate="2014-09-08T08:48:36.787" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v56/n8/full/1601389a.html&quot;&gt;A study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition&lt;/a&gt; did find that Lycasin-sweetened candy did produce an increased prevalence of gastrointestinal symptoms (bloating, flatulence, rumbling, colic, and watery feces) in adults compared to a sucrose control and the prevalence increased with serving size (40g vs. 25g).  Isomalt candies also produced similar effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems plausible that if you ate considerably more of the candy (40g really isn't all that much.  I routinely see what are presumably intended as single-serving packages of candy 4 times that size or more), the symptoms would increase in prevalence and severity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T08:48:36.787" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23155" CreationDate="2014-09-08T09:07:46.567" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, yes.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/09/13/national/centenarians-set-to-hit-record-high-of-54397/#.VAWQpcWSyCk&quot;&gt;As of September 15, 2013, they reported that there were 54,397 persons over the age of 100&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/nearly-200-of-japans-oldest-citizens-missing-20100812-120zx.html&quot;&gt;Though they have previously had issues with their records&lt;/a&gt;, recording as alive persons that had actually died years before, such as the case of Sogen Kato, who was on their records as being alive for 30 years after his death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T09:07:46.567" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23164" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7542" CreationDate="2014-09-08T16:52:18.647" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Item 1&#xA;Check out the 2006 National Research Council publication, Fluoride in Drinking Water: A Scientific Review of EPA Standards. Here is the brief: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/materials-based-on-reports/reports-in-brief/fluoride_brief_final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://dels.nas.edu/resources/static-assets/materials-based-on-reports/reports-in-brief/fluoride_brief_final.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item 2&#xA;The vast majority of scientists were anti-fluoride in the beginning. Over the years, many leading pro-fluoridationists changed their opinions based on science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. John Colquhoun, Chief Dental Officer of Auckland was one. In this 1998 interview, he gives first hand account of how the data was manipulated to fit preconceived notions. Especially interesting is how the Hastings study changed methods and then threw out the control group because it didn't support the result they wanted: &lt;a href=&quot;http://fluoridealert.org/fan-tv/colquhoun/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://fluoridealert.org/fan-tv/colquhoun/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Item 3&#xA;People need to pay attention to KIDNEYS as well as cavities. &#xA;Renal Failure and Fluoride in the Oxford Journal of Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/1/411.1.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/1/411.1.full&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22074" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-09-08T17:33:23.943" LastActivityDate="2014-09-08T17:33:23.943" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23151" CreationDate="2014-09-09T02:16:05.827" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is probably not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-smart-are-vending-machines/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article for a short description of how these things are done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For coins, the machine measures diameter, thickness and number of ridges (on part of the circumference - not the whole edge) so you may think that grinding the coins would affect this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, because coins are treated pretty harshly - banging against each other in our pockets and purses, the machines have reasonably high tolerance bands and a coin has to be substantially damaged before it will be rejected in the first place. The whole point is to recognise the denomination and that the coin is domestic. Most coins worldwide are different enough that even with wide tolerance bands foreign coins get screened out. Australian and New Zealand 20c coins being a notable exception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more likely explanation is that the coins are fed in too fast for the machine to process and they will shunt the excess to the reject chute. Rubbing the coin will simply give the machine time to clear itself. So would counting to ten!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer above has, quite rightly, been criticized so I leave it here as a lesson to myself on what not to do. I will now approach this more rigorously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does a coin detector work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been unable to determine the exact model of detector used in rapid transit ticket machines in Germany. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_transit_in_Germany&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; indicates that there are 5 separate U-bahn operators and a single S-bahn operator - it is possible they all use the same detector, or maybe they don't, or maybe there are different detectors in use within each system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cranepi.com/en/products/view/102/&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; is a modern coin detector. According to the literature it tests &quot;40 measurements of coin parameters&quot;, for obvious reasons it doesn't enumerate them. Other products on the site check fewer parameters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_detector&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; general overview, we know that some of the parameters measured include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;weight&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;optical characteristics (diameter, thickness, ridges, head &amp;amp; tail embossing)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;alloy detection (through use of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect&quot;&gt;Hall Effect&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Hypothesis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coins that were initially rejected are, after being scratched on a metallic surface (either on the face or edge), more likely to be accepted on subsequent presentation than coins that were not scratched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evidence in support of the Hypothesis&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None (anecdotes are not evidence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible reasons why it may work&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the way coin detectors work, none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scratching a coin will not appreciably alter its mass, size and shape or the alloy it is made of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may remove some surface dirt but probably not enough to affect its optical signature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may damage the coin but this is more likely to increase rejection rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may remove or add static electricity, but none of the detection methods would be affected by this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the lack of evidence for the phenomenon and the lack of any physical mechanism by which it can occur we reject the hypothesis in favor of the alternative hypothesis - it doesn't do anything. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is not to say that people don't do the coin rubbing thing, at least in Europe - the blog article the OP cites is evidence of this. However, here in Australia I have neither heard of or witnessed the practice - a statement that you should disregard as mere anecdote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that the alternative hypothesis comes with a corollary - people are idiots. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17834" LastEditorUserId="17834" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T05:56:42.737" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T05:56:42.737" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23174" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-09T08:54:46.887" Score="16" ViewCount="840" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a claim by a German philosopher, named Max Scheler.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ein Affe, dem man eine Banane halb geschält in die Hand gibt, flieht vor ihr, während er sie ganz geschält frißt, ungeschält aber selber schält und dann frißt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translation by me:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A monkey/ape who is given a half peeled banana into his hand flees from it, whereas he eats it if it is fully peeled, or peels and eats it if it is not peeled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sometimes we use &quot;Affe&quot; interchangeably for monkey or ape, so I am not sure, what Scheler meant exactly. The text can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://anthropology.rinet.ru/old/library/sheler8-2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. I think the book is: Max Scheler (1928), &lt;em&gt;Die Stellung Des Menschen Im Kosmos&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical because of the first answer to this question: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-experiment-with-five-monkeys-a-ladder-a-banana-and-a-water-spray-condu&quot;&gt;Was the experiment with five monkeys, a ladder, a banana and a water spray conducted?&lt;/a&gt;, where an anthropology professor is cited:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you have bananas on a pole, you'll lose your bananas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.fastcompany.com/32476/please-dont-feed-consultants&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://m.fastcompany.com/32476/please-dont-feed-consultants&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So do monkeys/apes flee from half peeled bananas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15455" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2014-09-09T19:07:11.787" Title="Does a monkey/ape flee from half peeled bananas?" Tags="|ethology|behavior|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23175" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-09T12:58:23.760" Score="13" ViewCount="8801" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently seen a quote by one William Douglass, MD, making the rounds on facebook.  It sounded suspicious, so I found the original quote on his &lt;a href=&quot;http://douglassreport.com/2008/03/24/dr-douglass-health-newsletter/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;own website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who warned against FLUORIDATION used to be ridiculed, but guess what? In Scandinavia, in fact all of Europe, and nearly every other medically advanced nation, they have now banned the practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Know why? Because fluoride makes your body absorb extra aluminum . And where does the aluminum go? Your brain. And what metal shows up alarmingly in the brains of Alzheimer’s victims? You guessed it. (Hmm Maybe our health authorities have been drinking too much water?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first part of the quote is clearly &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/10717/3451&quot;&gt;false&lt;/a&gt;, which is perhaps why that part was omitted from the recent meme, which appears as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fluoride makes your body absorb extra aluminum . And where does the aluminum go? Your brain. And what metal shows up alarmingly in the brains of Alzheimer’s victims? You guessed it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical about fluoride's role in &amp;quot;making&amp;quot; your body absorb extra aluminum.  Presumably this means that it somehow makes your body more efficient at absorbing aluminum, or less efficient in eliminating aluminum, because that &amp;quot;extra aluminum&amp;quot; must come from somewhere.  Is there any research to support this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3451" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-04-04T15:39:33.873" Title="Does fluoride cause the body to absorb extra aluminum?" Tags="|medical-science|fluoride|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23177" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-09T18:44:28.433" Score="8" ViewCount="748" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/submachine-gun-usda-buy/2014/05/17/id/571905/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Newsmax&lt;/a&gt; reported on the USDA buying submachine guns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The U.S. Department of Agriculture is seeking to buy submachine guns — but isn't saying why it needs them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a solicitation filed on May 7, the department has a detailed list of specifications for its &amp;quot;commercial acquisition of submachine guns.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later, it mentioned&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The USDA isn't the only federal agency to seek weapons or ammunition in recent months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earlier this year, the U.S. Postal Service joined the list of federal agencies seeking to purchase what some Second Amendment activists say are alarmingly large quantities of ammunition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that the rate of ammunition purchases by the US government for 2014 is higher than previous years without explicit justification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T00:53:06.767" Title="Are US government agencies' ammo acquisitions unjustifiably large?" Tags="|united-states|government|guns|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23182" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-10T05:51:37.070" Score="7" ViewCount="2700" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4XpqnhehP0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt;, noted Pakistani scholar, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zameer_Naqvi&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Allama Zamir Akhtar Naqvi&lt;/a&gt; claims (in Urdu) that Napoleon wrote a letter or poem in honour of the historical figure [Imam Hussain] (a.s)(&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Husayn_ibn_Ali&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Husayn_ibn_Ali&lt;/a&gt;), during a war between the French and the English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is explained in English on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/karvanemurtaza/posts/554486194593521&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Facebook page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the eve of the war with the British, Napoleon wrote an elegy to Imam Hussain (a.s.) seeking his help which is beautifully translated into Urdu by Allama Zameer Akhtar Naqvi&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is used as evidence that Napoleon embraced Islam, and based his laws upon it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A comment on that video claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;it can be easily googled and more over it is preserved till now in the great french museum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Facebook page provides the following references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vide, Bonaparte et l'Islam by Cherfils from the Bibliotheque National De France, we find on pages 105 - 125; Vide, David Pidcock to The Sunday Telegraph, contrasting the French hysteric phobia of late with Napoleon Bonaparte's admiration for Islam; Vide, Lincoln: Money Martyred; Omni Publications 1935); Vide, Translations of French Poem by Allama Zameer Akhtar Naqvi&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot find any evidence. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have made a detailed translation of that Urdu poem, apparently translated from French by Allama Zameer Akhtar Naqvi, into English and is is over &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5sD2PI0YoRveG9FZ3p0VUhES2s/edit?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21177" LastEditorUserId="21177" LastEditDate="2014-09-11T15:54:56.010" LastActivityDate="2014-09-11T15:54:56.010" Title="Did Napoleon write an elegy to Imam Hussain(a.s)?" Tags="|history|islam|france|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23183" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-10T08:36:16.070" Score="2" ViewCount="145" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there a possibility in science where they'll be able to make something that will counteract or defeat drunkenness in such a way that if you get drunk you can drink something to make it go away real quick? Like curing a fever or a cough? Do you think it will be possible, if not now, but in the future, for something(maybe a drug) to alter the human body and remove the cause of drunkenness? So you can theoretically drink all you want, afterwards you'll drink something and then the drunkenness will go away?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22095" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T10:22:00.543" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T10:22:00.543" Title="Is it possible to cure drunkenness?" Tags="|medical-science|alcohol|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-09-10T08:43:34.447" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23153" CreationDate="2014-09-10T11:02:30.250" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Haribo sugarless gummy bears contain Hydrogenated Glucose Syrup (HGS) (brand name LYCASIN). Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.haribo.com/enUS/products/haribo/range/137/product/2515/title/sugarless-gummi-bears-bulk.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Haribo.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HGS, which is a sugar alcohol or polyol, can cause &quot;loss of appetite, occasional diarrhoea, cramps, and a &quot;bloated feeling&quot;. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inchem.org/documents/jecfa/jecmono/v20je13.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Inchem.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only HGS, but most other polyols used in &quot;no-sugar&quot; foods, mainly candies and gums, such as hydrogenated starch hydrolysates (HSH), isomalt, lactitol, maltitol, sorbitol and xylitol, but not erythritol, can cause abdominal bloating, excessive gas or diarrhea if consumed in excess. This happens because polyols are not digested in the human small intestine, so they pass to the large intestine where &quot;beneficial&quot; (normal) intestinal bacteria break them down into gases and other substances that can cause bloating and diarrhea.&#xA;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nutrientsreview.com/carbs/low-calorie-sugar-alcohols-polyols.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nutrientsreview.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a known issue and producers typically place warnings about side effects on the packages; not sure if Haribo does, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15288" LastEditorUserId="15288" LastEditDate="2014-09-10T11:08:28.773" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T11:08:28.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23104" CreationDate="2014-09-10T11:39:37.000" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is one 2004 study about antioxidants intake in Norwegian adults, because I believe the question is more about coffee than the United States, right?: &quot;The intake of coffee contributed approximately 11.1 mmol, followed by fruits (1.8 mmol), tea (1.4 mmol), wine (0.8 mmol), cereals (i.e., all grain containing foods; 0.8 mmol), and vegetables (0.4 mmol)...Surprisingly, the single greatest contributor to the total antioxidant intake was coffee.&quot; Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14988447&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a search result for &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/search/site/antioxidants&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;antioxidants&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in Cochrane Summaries. Conclusions of all 30 or so studies related to antioxidants are that there is insufficient evidence about their effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15288" LastActivityDate="2014-09-10T11:39:37.000" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23197" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-11T15:21:32.297" Score="4" ViewCount="727" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://happyhomemaker88.com/2009/05/02/recipe-for-homemade-citrus-enzyme-a-natural-cheap-effective-all-purpose-cleaner/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many recipes which call for using fruit peel anaerobic fermentation process&lt;/a&gt; to make a concentrated enzyme cleaner solution. So the question arises that does this recipe really have those &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cleanlink.com/casestudieswhitepapers/details/Green-Cleaning-Understanding-Bioenzymatic-Cleaners--24615&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cleaning  enzymes&lt;/a&gt; apart from the usual alcohol and how are these enzymes generated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://littlehouseinthesuburbs.com/2013/07/7-things-you-should-know-before-making-citrus-enzyme-cleaner.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This article says&lt;/a&gt; that it may not have enzymes but some other cleaning agents like vinegar and alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecowalkthetalk.com/blog/2011/03/04/responses-how-effective-are-garbage-enzymes/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A discussion from two independent researchers on this topic give seemingly contrasting positions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastEditorDisplayName="user11777" LastEditDate="2014-10-30T11:47:14.817" LastActivityDate="2021-12-22T07:41:20.707" Title="Does &quot;Garbage Enzyme cleaner&quot; contain enzymes?" Tags="|biology|cleaning|yeast|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23200" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-11T18:55:08.697" Score="4" ViewCount="321" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to yesmagazine.org's post &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/the-end-of-poverty/wealthy-capitalist-nick-hanauer-on-why-money-doesn-t-trickle-down&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Wealthy Capitalist on Why Money Doesn't Trickle Down&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By 2040, it is estimated that 48 percent of all American jobs will be low-wage service jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim also occurred again on thestanger.com's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/how-a-15-minimum-wage-would-make-everyone-richer/Content?oid=19138455&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By 2040, it is estimated that 48 percent of all American jobs will be low-wage service jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim has been repeated on many sites and I'm skeptical about it. While we certainly can't know that future, we can predict it. I would like to know if there is a scientific study or a statistical methodology explaining the reason behind this claim, and what backing does it have if it exists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="919" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T18:19:54.677" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T18:20:49.033" Title="Is it estimated that nearly half of USA jobs be low wage service jobs by 2040?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23201" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23205" CreationDate="2014-09-11T22:32:51.803" Score="23" ViewCount="2002" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wasn't sure how to phrase that title, but in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/did-a-high-ranking-whistleblower-really-reveal-that-the-cdc-covered-up-proof-that-vaccines-cause-autism-in-african-american-boys/#comment-264478&quot;&gt;comment&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/did-a-high-ranking-whistleblower-really-reveal-that-the-cdc-covered-up-proof-that-vaccines-cause-autism-in-african-american-boys/&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, someone stated that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The US ranks 30th in child birth mortality; 30th, not 5th or even 7th, 30th, behind most of Europe, Israel, Japan, and clearly 20+ other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and was responded to with this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes, and this is in part because these countries have different definitions of what constitutes “perinatal mortality”. The US classifies as stillbirths what other countries would not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really true? Does the US rank lower/worse on measures of infant survival because it define &quot;infant mortality&quot; differently from other countries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22107" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-11T07:17:42.650" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T07:17:42.650" Title="Does the US rank worse than other developed countries in infant mortality mostly because of differences in the definition of &quot;infant mortality&quot;?" Tags="|united-states|healthcare|public-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23202" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23208" CreationDate="2014-09-12T00:19:50.803" Score="15" ViewCount="2250" Body="&lt;p&gt;An article came across my attention describing the events on September 11th 2001 for &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heather_Penney&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Heather Penney&lt;/a&gt;, an F-16 pilot who had just finished training. She tells the story that she and her instructor went into the sky planning to take out a plane by crashing their F-16 into it, as the training planes were only fitted with dummy weapons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full story (from a 2011 Washington Post article) is here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/f-16-pilot-was-ready-to-give-her-life-on-sept-11/2011/09/06/gIQAMpcODK_story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;F-16 pilot was ready to give her life on Sept. 11&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am questioning several aspects of the story, such as the instructor targeting the cockpit instead of the tail (which to me, with my admitedly limited knowledge of planes, would seem like a better target):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“We don’t train to bring down airliners,” said Sasseville, now&#xA;  stationed at the Pentagon. “If you just hit the engine, it could still&#xA;  glide and you could guide it to a target. My thought was the cockpit&#xA;  or the wing.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And skipping pre-flight checks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Penney had never scrambled a jet before. Normally the pre-flight is a&#xA;  half-hour or so of methodical checks. She automatically started going&#xA;  down the list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Lucky, what are you doing? Get your butt up there and let’s go!”&#xA;  Sasseville shouted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also it baffles me that there would be training planes, but no armed aircraft anywhere in the region:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because the surprise attacks were unfolding, in that innocent age,&#xA;  faster than they could arm war planes, Penney and her commanding&#xA;  officer went up to fly their jets straight into a Boeing 757.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any more evidence that this event actually took place? Would the instructor not be reprimanded for this absurd plan (it seems absurd that breaking all the rules would be fine - heroes or not)? Also, without taking away from my respect for her personal heroism, was it a kamikaze mission considering the ejection seat? What about the chance of them actually having to go through with it - wouldn't there be a more capable US airforce unit that would've shown up before she got anywhere close?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20991" LastEditorUserId="20991" LastEditDate="2017-02-28T09:48:04.950" LastActivityDate="2017-03-01T01:03:05.323" Title="Was there a coordinated action on 9/11 to crash an unarmed F-16 into a hijacked plane?" Tags="|aviation|9-11|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23205" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23201" CreationDate="2014-09-12T05:58:17.303" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an article from the CDC on this titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db23.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Behind International Rankings of Infant Mortality: How the United States Compares with Europe&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. They show the different reporting requirements, and the US is indeed one of the countries with the strictest reporting requirements. But 14 out of 19 European Countries have the same reporting requirements as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors then compare only births after 22 weeks of gestation, which eliminates the differences in reporting between countries. The graph then looks like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zcgf2.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a lower rate than the uncorrected one, but still significantly higher than most European Countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors also explicitly state that the reporting differences are unlikely to be the cause of the low international ranking of the US:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2005, the United States ranked 30th in the world in infant mortality, behind most European countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, and Israel. There are some differences among countries in the reporting of very small infants who may die soon after birth. However, it appears unlikely that differences in reporting are the primary explanation for the United States’ relatively low international ranking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study further notes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main cause of the United States’ high infant mortality rate when compared with Europe is the &lt;strong&gt;very high percentage of preterm births&lt;/strong&gt; in the United States&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T16:27:40.553" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T16:27:40.553" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23206" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-12T06:07:05.003" Score="1" ViewCount="147" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does this picture demonstrate the actual proportions well (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://xkcd.com/1338/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;xkcd&lt;/a&gt;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6HR9q.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14651" LastEditorUserId="14651" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T06:35:48.130" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T06:35:48.130" Title="Do humans, pets and livestock drastically outweigh all other land mammals?" Tags="|population|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23207" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23210" CreationDate="2014-09-12T08:10:58.690" Score="8" ViewCount="26564" Body="&lt;p&gt;Synopsis from &lt;a href=&quot;http://claimsofreincarnation.blogspot.in/2009/12/gillian-and-jennifer-pollock.html&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1957, 11 year-old Joanna and 6 year-old Jacqueline Pollock were&#xA;  tragically killed in a car accident in Northumberland, England. They&#xA;  were sisters. A year later, their mother gave birth to twins Jennifer&#xA;  and Gillian. The younger twin, Jennifer, had birth marks on her body&#xA;  in exactly the same place as Jacqueline had them. The twins then&#xA;  started requesting toys belonging to the deceased girls which they had&#xA;  no prior knowledge of. The twins even asked to go to a park they have&#xA;  never been to before (but their deceased sisters have). A&#xA;  well-respected psychologist at the time, one Dr. Ian Stevenson,&#xA;  studied the case in-depth and concluded it was likely the twins were&#xA;  reincarnations of their departed sisters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/crabtreescompendiumofesoterica/nibiru-2012-onward-related/afterlife-investigation-life-after-death/consciousness-beyond-life-the-science-of-the-near-death-experience/reincarnation---jennifer-and-gillian-pollock-born-in-1958-in-hexham-england&quot;&gt;This link&lt;/a&gt; additionally gives details on the case and states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the age of five the girls abruptly ceased to seem conscious of the&#xA;  connection with what seemed to be their former lives and developed&#xA;  into normal, healthy children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Question is - was there any proof to debunk this story as a hoax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2027" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:42:31.833" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:42:31.833" Title="Were the Pollock twins reincarnated?" Tags="|reincarnation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23202" CreationDate="2014-09-12T14:09:32.027" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It was hasty, and based on mistaken intelligence, but it was coordinated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They knew about the WTC and the Pentagon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They (some of the command and control people) mistakenly thought that another airliner was incoming down the Potomac&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They launched fighters on what I'd call a &amp;quot;ready or not, here I come&amp;quot; basis, to intercept&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=heather_penney_garcia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=heather_penney_garcia&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jets Don't Launch until 10:42 and After - The exact times when the four pilots are authorized to get airborne and receive their mission instructions are unclear. But Sasseville and Penney Garcia will take off from Andrews at 10:42 a.m., with their planes armed only with guns, and no missiles (see 10:42 a.m. September 11, 2001). Rasmussen and Caine take off at 11:11 a.m., by which time their jets have been armed with missiles (see 11:11 a.m. September 11, 2001). [FILSON, 2003, PP. 82-84; 9/11 COMMISSION, 2004]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It cites &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/061512416X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Air War Over America: Sept. 11 Alters Face of Air Defense Mission&lt;/a&gt; which I suppose is credible and/or official: it's published by &amp;quot;Tyndall Air Force Base Public Affairs Office&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above says &amp;quot;armed only with guns&amp;quot;, but later it says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two pilots run out to their jets and climb into the cockpits. But their F-16s are armed only with “hot” guns and 511 rounds of non-explosive training practice (TP) ammunition. According to Sasseville: “They had two airplanes ready to go, and were putting missiles on numbers three and four. Maintenance wanted us to take the ones with missiles, but we didn’t have time to wait on those.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_ramming&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a long history of ramming planes&lt;/a&gt; (and because even I had prior knowledge of that tradition, it wouldn't surprise me if fighter pilots are well aware of it too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some indirect evidence (from the same historycommons.org source) is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The WTC and Pentagon attacks had already happened&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pilots are Lieutenant Colonel Marc Sasseville, Lieutenant Heather Penney Garcia, Captain Brandon Rasmussen, and Major Daniel Caine.&#xA;Pilot Waiting 'for Somebody to Task Me with Something' - Rasmussen will later recall that, although he and his colleagues at the unit had been aware of the attacks in New York, it is only after the Pentagon is hit (see 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001) that “we knew that we were going to be sticking around home and being quite busy.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The wing commander had briefed other pilots to use missiles (but, the missiles weren't ready/loaded)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rasmussen says that, after Sasseville and Caine receive authorization from their wing commander to get airborne and to use missiles, ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The brigadier general gave permission to these two pilots to make their own decision of whether to bring down the plane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to author Leslie Filson, before Sasseville and Penney Garcia head to their jets, Brigadier General David Wherley, the commander of the DC Air National Guard, gives them instructions, regarding their mission. As Wherley will later recall, “My translation of the rules [of engagement] to [Sasseville] was, ‘You have weapons free flight-lead control.’” “Weapons free” means the decision whether to shoot at a hostile aircraft rests with the lead pilot. Wherley says, “Do you understand what I’m asking you to do?” and both pilots respond, “Yes.” Wherley then tells them to be careful. “It was important for them to understand that this was weapons free,” he will recall. However, Sasseville will tell the 9/11 Commission that he does not remember receiving the rules of engagement he is supposed to follow until later on, after he has taken off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They didn't know there are other planes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sasseville and Penney Garcia are airborne about six minutes after reaching their jets. They are unaware that fighters launched from Langley Air Force Base are also flying over Washington, at around 20,000 feet (see (Between 9:49 a.m. and 11:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They thought something was coming which was why they launched immediately, ready or not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rookie Pilot 'Never Scrambled Before' - Penney Garcia, who is a rookie pilot, will later say: “I’d never scrambled before, I’d never done this. I was screaming to the maintainers to pull the chocks, and the guys were pulling the pins to arm the guns. We were going without INS [inertial navigation system].” Sasseville and Penney Garcia are airborne about six minutes after reaching their jets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Told to Look for Hijacked Plane - Over their radios, Sasseville and Penney Garcia receive instructions from their squadron to look for a hijacked aircraft approaching from the northwest and heading toward Georgetown (see (10:30 a.m.-10:40 a.m.) September 11, 2001). But, Sasseville will later recall, “We didn’t know what we were looking for—how high he was coming, or low, or where he was going.” He will say, “I don’t have the whole picture, but have word from Washington National Approach that something is coming.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fighters Launched due to False Report - The first three DCANG fighters to take off in response to the attacks are ordered to go after this alleged inbound aircraft. Lieutenant Colonel Phil Thompson, the chief of safety for the DC Air National Guard, will later recall: “We had something coming down the Potomac at low altitude. Brigadier General Wherley is standing here, and we’ve got the tower with the Secret Service agent, and they want us to launch anything we’ve got. And the general said, ‘Do it.’” DCANG pilot Billy Hutchison, who takes off at 10:38 a.m. (see (10:38 a.m.) September 11, 2001), will describe, “There was an aircraft coming down the Potomac that they needed me in the air for” that had to “be prevented from reaching the DC area.” He is told this aircraft is “coming from Pennsylvania.” And pilot Marc Sasseville, who, along with Heather Penney Garcia, takes off at 10:42 a.m. (see 10:42 a.m. September 11, 2001), later says: “We all realized we were looking for an airliner—a big airplane. That was Flight 93; the track looked like it was headed toward DC at that time.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T14:56:32.337" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23202" CreationDate="2014-09-12T14:27:39.710" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story seems to be inconsistent with the official account given by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;9/11 Commission Report&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the report, the only fighters scrambled during the attacks came from Otis Air Force Base (AFB) (see p.20) and Langley AFB (p.27).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Military controllers from the Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) were notified about problems with United 93 at 10:08 AM (p.31) but they believed there was a bomb on board.  They were not aware that the flight had been hijacked, nor that it was headed to Washington.  At 10:15 they were notified that it had crashed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fighters from Andrews AFB (the 113th Wing of the DC Air National Guard) were scrambled at 10:38 (p.44).  It seems unlikely that their orders would have been specifically to prevent United 93 from reaching Washington, given that controllers knew it had already crashed.  Also, the report indicates that the Andrews fighters were flying &quot;weapons free&quot; - they had been given authorization to shoot down hostile planes.  This would seem to imply that they actually had weapons with which to do so, though that is not clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T14:27:39.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23207" CreationDate="2014-09-12T15:23:00.077" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;While this answer doesn't address whether or not the story was a &lt;strong&gt;hoax&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;, it does summarize the commentary from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticreport.com/sr/?p=482&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this review of Dr. Ian Stevenson's book&lt;/a&gt; which discussed the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, Stevenson did not witness any of the sister's behavior himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 14 cases he cites [in the book, including the Pollock one,] rely on nothing more than anecdotes: all the “past life behavior” had been witnessed before the author met any of the players and so the veracity of the stories is hard to determine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[T]he author had got involved in none of these cases until some considerable time after the children were reported as remembering their prior lives. Thus they were all just anecdotes, although well documented and cross referenced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reviewer then notes that this story falls into the category of examples where the reincarnated person's identity was known, but the family of the deceased had contact with the &amp;quot;reincarnated&amp;quot; children.  (Or, as in this case, was the same family.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He then describes this case as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two twin girls (aged six and eleven) are tragically killed. The father was a strong believer in reincarnation, and was sure they would be reborn to his wife as twins. Twins are born, and between the ages of 2 and 4 they start making statements about their dead siblings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the father believed the twins were reincarnations of their dead sisters, it is likely that he talked about it in front of the baby girls. It’s also likely that friends and family talked about the tragic death of the previous two girls. It’s hardly surprising that the girls are reported to have talked about their “previous lives”. The parents could also be reading too much into the twins’ statements, or could be lying. We’ll never know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's often said among skeptics (and scientists in general) that &lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Extraordinary_claims_require_extraordinary_evidence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;.  In this case, the evidence is really quite weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the park example, for instance, it would have been trivial for the mother to have taken the children to a park with a friend, and to have said to the friend's parent something along the lines of &amp;quot;I don't like this park as much as the one that Jacqueline used to play in&amp;quot;.  One of the children, overhearing that, could then have asked to go to &amp;quot;the other park&amp;quot;.  Since the mother was primed to believe in the daughters' reincarnation, she'd then interpret that as &amp;quot;It's a park they'd never been to before!&amp;quot; rather than simply assuming the child heard of it from someone.  Five years later, when she's retelling the story to Stevenson, she no longer remembers her off-hand comment to her friend, and only remembers the request.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether that's an &lt;em&gt;accurate&lt;/em&gt; scenario, there's no way to say.  But it's a &lt;em&gt;plausible&lt;/em&gt; one, which is enough to require further proof of the extraordinary claims being made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-12T15:23:00.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23212" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-12T16:58:47.117" Score="4" ViewCount="522" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vegetarianism has been around for ages. Much of the vegetarian propaganda revolves around the aim of stopping cruelty to animals, it's one of the stated goals of the movement, if not the main one. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some examples of such claims::&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The average meat-eater consumes over 100 animals every year (or 270.0 pounds total). That means your decreasing the demand for slaughtered animals by 100 a year. Since about 7.3 million Americans are vegetarian, together we decrease the demand of animals slaughtered every year by 730 million (2 billion pounds of meat!) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20140531143037AA0pGkG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yahoo Answers&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A vegetarian saves more than 30 land animals each year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.countinganimals.com/how-many-animals-does-a-vegetarian-save/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Countinganimals.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By switching to a vegetarian diet, you can save more than 100 animals a year from this misery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peta.org/living/food/vegetarian-101/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PETA&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These quotes suggest, directly or indirectly, that people who do not eat meat have an impact on the number of slaughtered animals. Is there any evidence that the various herbivore movements have actually made any dent in the slaughter of animals in the food industry? Given their numbers and the time that they've been around, it would be reasonable to expect a visible effect by now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidence is available of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vegsoc.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=754&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;significant increase in meat-free sales&lt;/a&gt;. It's reasonable to expect a proportionate decrease in meat-based sales then, and a corresponding decrease in slaughter. Is there any evidence to the latter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8889" LastEditorUserId="8889" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T05:08:51.397" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T09:39:30.810" Title="Does vegetarianism cause any decline in the slaughter of animals in the food industry?" Tags="|vegetarianism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="21" ClosedDate="2014-09-15T09:29:14.600" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23213" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-12T18:52:52.003" Score="11" ViewCount="1898" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dumblaws.com/laws/united-states/montana&quot;&gt;dumblaws.com&lt;/a&gt;, in the US state of Montana,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is a felony for a wife to open her husband’s mail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That statement has no source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking in the Montana Code, I don't see anything under&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title 40 (Family Law), &lt;a href=&quot;http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/mtcode/40/2&quot;&gt;Chapter 2 (Husband and Wife)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title 45 (Crimes), Chapter 5 (Offenses Against the Person), &lt;a href=&quot;http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/mtcode/45/5/6&quot;&gt;Part 6 (Offenses Against the Family)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Title 45 (Crimes), Chapter 6 (Offenses Against Property), &lt;a href=&quot;http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/mtcode/45/6/3&quot;&gt;Part 3 (Theft and Related Offenses)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is the statement fabricated?  Am I looking in the wrong place?  Has the law been repealed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22115" LastEditorUserId="22115" LastEditDate="2014-09-12T18:59:56.637" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T01:53:13.163" Title="Is it a felony in Montana for a wife to open her husband's mail?" Tags="|united-states|law|marriage|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23213" CreationDate="2014-09-12T20:12:48.900" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Actually, it is a &lt;strong&gt;federal&lt;/strong&gt; crime to open another person's mail, regardless of whether you are related to them.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevant statute is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1703&quot;&gt;18 U.S. Code § 1703 - Delay or destruction of mail or newspapers&lt;/a&gt;, section (b), paragraph 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whoever, without authority, opens, or destroys any mail or package of newspapers not directed to him, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also illegal to take mail out of your box with intent to prevent it reaching someone else (§ 1702, emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whoever takes any letter, postal card, or package out of any post office or any authorized depository for mail matter, or from any letter or mail carrier, or which has been in any post office or authorized depository, or in the custody of any letter or mail carrier, &lt;strong&gt;before it has been delivered to the person to whom it was directed&lt;/strong&gt;, with design to obstruct the correspondence, or to pry into the business or secrets of another, or opens, secretes, embezzles, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no exception in the law for spouses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That said,&lt;/strong&gt; if it is your customary behavior to allow someone else (spouse or otherwise) to collect and open your mail, then that is a valid defense if they're ever prosecuted for opening your mail, and (barring hostile circumstances, such as going through a divorce) it's unlikely they would be punished.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once the mail has been delivered to the person to whom it is addressed (and in the case of a spouse that &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; simply be bringing it into the house - no matter who does so), then opening it appears to be considered theft/destruction of personal property, rather than of mail. &lt;sup&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=102758&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastEditorUserId="7280" LastEditDate="2014-09-14T01:53:13.163" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T01:53:13.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23215" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-12T21:19:27.000" Score="10" ViewCount="2101" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/afZ1K.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsRm8M-qOjQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Loose Change &amp;quot;documentary&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; claims at around 1:02:45 into the film that Osama Bin Laden immediately denied involvement in the attacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The U.S. government has consistently blamed me for being behind every [attack]. I would like to assure the world that I did not plan the recent attacks, which seems to have been planned by people for personal reasons. I have been living in the Islamic emirate of Afghanistan and following its leaders' rules. The current leader does not allow me to exercise such operations.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-Osama bin Laden, from a statement issued to Al Jazeera within days of the 9-11 attacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Osama Bin Laden deny involvement in the 9/11 attacks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1836" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T17:19:56.403" Title="Did Osama Bin Laden immediately deny involvement in the 9/11 attacks?" Tags="|9-11|osama-bin-laden|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23216" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23223" CreationDate="2014-09-12T23:18:39.220" Score="8" ViewCount="1145" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this quote, attributed to Martin Luther:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Idiots, the lame, the blind, the dumb, are men in whom the devils have established themselves: and all the physicians who heal these infirmities, as though they proceeded from natural causes, are ignorant blockheads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I first noticed this quote in a list of unverified quotes on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:Martin_Luther&quot;&gt;wikiquote&lt;/a&gt;, and searching online brings it up on many other sites: &lt;a href=&quot;http://thinkexist.com/quotation/idiots-the_lame-the_blind-the_dumb-are_men_in/181949.html&quot;&gt;thinkexist&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iwise.com/ciaRM&quot;&gt;iwise&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Demonic_possession&quot;&gt;rationalwiki&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.exchristian.net/2002/04/martin-luther-quotes.php&quot;&gt;exchristian&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciforums.com/Martin-Luther-The-Rebel-t-43973.html&quot;&gt;sciforums&lt;/a&gt; but none of these have a source. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22107" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T11:46:00.847" Title="Did Martin Luther refer to physicians who assume diseases come from natural causes as &quot;ignorant blockheads&quot; (or the German equivalent)?" Tags="|history|religion|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23217" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15452" CreationDate="2014-09-12T23:42:34.093" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is false to say that&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;if [Confucius] he scribbled a message people could read it as easily as they could a shopping list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two difficulties: (1) Difficulty in recognizing the script. (2) Difficulty in understanding the meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: This stone inscription is dated circa 374 BC (more than a century after Confucius died, so Confucius's writing would probably have been even more different). (&lt;a href=&quot;http://art.2222.idv.tw/%E6%9B%B8%E6%B3%95%E8%97%8F%E7%8F%8D/head/%E7%9F%B3%E9%BC%93%E6%96%87/head/%E9%97%9C%E6%96%BC%E7%9F%B3%E9%BC%93%E6%96%87.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1M0v9.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Read from top to bottom, right to left.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transliterated in modern Chinese script (traditional), it reads (now from left to right):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;田車孔安。鋚勒馯馯。●●既簡。左驂旛旛。右驂騝騝。吾以郪于原。吾戎止陜。宮車其寫。秀弓寺射。麋豕孔庶。麀鹿雉兔。其●又陳。其●奔奔。大車出各。亞●帛興。吾執而勿射。多庶(走樂)(走樂)。君子迺樂。&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(● = Indecipherable.&#xA;。 = Added full-stops, since in Classical Chinese there was no punctuation.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Difficulty #1: Recognizing the characters&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first two characters (田 and 車), for example, are quite recognizable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, the third and fourth characters (孔 and 安) are very different (at least to anyone familiar only with modern Chinese script).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, simply because the script was so different, it would be impossible for a modern Chinese person (without special training or education) to read this inscription &quot;as easily as a shopping list&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Difficulty #2: Understanding what the characters mean, individually and when strung together&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This second difficulty is far greater. To continue with one commenter's analogy  regarding Chinese/Japanese false friends, consider the following (Chinese characters: &quot;meaning in modern Mandarin Chinese&quot; v.s. &quot;meaning in Classical Chinese&quot;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;便宜: &quot;cheap, inexpensive&quot; v.s. &quot;adjective for something that one should do because it is to one's advantage&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;大风: &quot;big wind&quot; v.s. &quot;leprosy&quot; .&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;夫人: &quot;wife&quot; v.s. &quot;that person&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;婚姻: &quot;marriage&quot; v.s. &quot;relatives&quot;.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More examples &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_46c90e550100bxa6.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is admittedly rather more common for a modern Chinese person to have studied Classical Chinese than, say, a modern Englishman to have studied Old English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, the study is rarely to very great depth and mostly by rote. Bright high-school Chinese kids taking the &lt;em&gt;gaokao&lt;/em&gt; for example will have memorized tomes of texts by Confucius or Mencius regarding human nature or what-not. They can spit it back to you and tell you roughly what is meant, but only because they've been taught it and have committed it all to memory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if &quot;Confucius were to come back to life today&quot; and write down an actual shopping list, or ask for directions to the nearest Walmart, these same kids would not be able to comprehend it at all. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;P.S. Undue emphasis has been placed on the difference between traditional and simplified characters. This difference should never even have been mentioned in the context of this question, since it is so completely minuscule in comparison to the differences between say modern and ancient Chinese. It is akin to using the differences between American and British spelling as an analogy, when discussing the differences between modern English and Old English.&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://book.douban.com/review/6642077/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chinese internet user's book review&lt;/a&gt;, which dismisses this very Bill Bryson quote as &quot;laughable&quot;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This book is interesting, but filled with mistakes. Initially I thought that it was merely his limited understanding of Chinese that led him to make some laughable mistakes (&quot;If Confucius were to come back to life today, no one apart from scholars would understand what he was saying, but if he scribbled a message people could read it as easily as they could a shopping list.&quot;). Who knew that when he talked about the Eskimo, French, and Finnish languages, he would also make elementary mistakes, as pointed out by readers of those respective nations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also the comments, which all agree that Bryson's remark is simply wrong. Of course, these are just the opinions of some random modern Chinese people who happen to be on some online book review site; they may have no idea what modern Chinese people as a whole are like. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://book.douban.com/review/5362025/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is another Chinese book review with a similar remark.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit2: See also the top review of Bryson's book on &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0380715430&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;as many others have pointed out, every page is just error after factual error. Bryson simply does not understand how languages work, and whatever his sources are are frequently wrong. My favorite mistake is when he claims that in Finnish, there is only one swear word, ravintolassa, meaning &quot;in the restaurant&quot; (page 214). Now, ravintolassa DOES mean &quot;in the restaurant,&quot; but that's ALL it means. Finnish has plenty of native swear words (saatana, perkele, vittu, jumalauta, and more), and I still cannot imagine how Bryson came to the conclusion that, not only did it have only one, but that it was the word for &quot;in the restaurant.&quot; It's truly mind-boggling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, that many book reviewers consider Bryon's book to be riddled with errors does not mean this specific claim of his is false. But it does give us further reason to be very skeptical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17967" LastEditorDisplayName="user17967" LastEditDate="2014-09-21T16:52:56.967" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T16:52:56.967" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23215" CreationDate="2014-09-13T00:52:29.803" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although he initially denied involvement he later claimed responsibility, according to the New York Times reporting on a video released by Bin Laden in 2004:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Bin Laden] accused Mr. Bush of &amp;quot;misleading&amp;quot; the American people three years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Al Jazeera Web site said, and added that &amp;quot;we decided to destroy towers in America&amp;quot; because &amp;quot;we want to regain the freedom of our nation.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Associated Press said Mr. bin Laden also went on to say in the videotape: &amp;quot;God knows that it had not occurred to our mind to attack the towers, but after our patience ran out and we saw the injustice and inflexibility of the American-Israeli alliance toward our people in Palestine and Lebanon, this came to my mind.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/29/international/30osamaCND.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bin Laden Takes Responsibility for 9/11 Attacks in New Tape&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: This answer was posted in response to the original question which asked whether Bin Laden was both immediate &lt;strong&gt;and consistent&lt;/strong&gt; in denying involvement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T17:19:56.403" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23222" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22259" CreationDate="2014-09-13T08:10:46.613" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;See this article for more information on this. The study showed that memory is improved (irrespective of mood and arousal levels) when completing memory tasks with the smell of rosemary essential oils present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sci-news.com/medicine/article01000.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The study was completed by Dr Jemma McCready and Dr Mark Moss from the University of Northumbria, England&lt;/a&gt; and concludes that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results showed that participants in the rosemary-scented room performed better on the prospective memory tasks than the participants in the room with no scent. This was the case for remembering events and remembering to complete tasks at particular times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“There was no link between the participants’ mood and memory. This suggests performance is not influenced as a consequence of changes in alertness or arousal,” Dr McCready said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This would indicate that there is at least some validity to the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22118" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-14T03:10:13.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23216" CreationDate="2014-09-13T11:46:00.847" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found evidence for the first part of the quote, but not the second, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ccel.org/ccel/luther/tabletalk.v.xxv.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here in Table Talk&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I maintain that &lt;strong&gt;Satan produces all the maladies which afflict mankind&lt;/strong&gt;, for he is the prince of death. &lt;strong&gt;St Peter speaks of Christ as healing all that are oppressed of the devil. He not only cured those who were possessed, but he restored sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, strength to the paralytic; therefore I think all grave infirmities are blows and strokes of the devil,&lt;/strong&gt; which he employs as an assassin uses the sword or other weapon. So God employs natural means to maintain the health and life of man, such as sleep, meat, drink, etc. The devil has other means of injury; he poisons the air, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A physician repairs the work of God when damaged corporally&lt;/strong&gt;; we, divines, spiritually; we mend the soul that the devil has spoiled. The devil gives poison to kill men; a physician gives theriacum, or some other drug, to save them; so the creature, through creatures, helping creatures. Physic has not its descent and origin out of books; God revealed it; or, as Syrach says: “It cometh from the Most Highest; the Lord hath created medicines out of the earth.” Therefore we may justly use corporal physic, as God’s creature. Our burgomaster here at Wittenberg lately asked me, if it were against God’s will to use physic? for, said he, Doctor Carlstad has preached, that whoso falls sick, shall use no physic, but commit his case to God, praying that His will be done. I asked him: Did he eat when he was hungry? He answered, yes. Then, said I, even so you may use physic, which is God’s creature, as well as meat and drink, or whatever else we use for the preservation of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's more &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ccel.org/ccel/luther/tabletalk.v.xxxii.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on the subject of physicians here&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The physicians in sickness consider only of what natural causes the malady preceeds, and this they cure, or not, with their physic. But they see not that often the devil casts a sickness upon one without any natural causes.&lt;/strong&gt; A higher physic must be required to resist the devil’s diseases; namely, faith and prayer, which physic may be fetched out of God’s Word. The 31st Psalm is good thereunto, where David says: “Into thine hand I commit my spirit.” This passage I learned, in my sickness, to correct; in the first translation, I applied it only to the hour of death; but it should be said: My health, my happiness, my life, misfortune, sickness, death, etc., stand all in thy hands. Experience testifies this; for when we think, now we will be joyful and merry, easy and healthy, God soon sends what makes us quite the contrary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When I was ill at Schmalcalden, the physicians made me take as much medicine as though I had been a great bull. Alack for him that depends upon the aid of physic. I do not deny that medicine is a gift of God, nor do I refuse to acknowledge science in the skill of many physicians; but, take the best of them, how far are they from perfection?&lt;/strong&gt; A sound regimen produces excellent effects. When I feel indisposed, by observing a strict diet and going to bed early, I generally manage to get round again, that is, if I can keep my mind tolerably at rest. I have no objection to the doctors acting upon certain theories, but, at the same time, they must not expect us to be the slaves of their fancies. We find Avicenna and Galen, living in other times and in other countries, prescribing wholly different remedies for the same disorders. I won’t pin my faith to any of them, ancient or modern. &lt;strong&gt;On the other hand, nothing can well be more deplorable than the proceeding of those fellows, ignorant as they are complaisant, who let their patients follow exactly their own fancies; `tis these wretches who more especially people the graveyards. Able, cautious, and experienced physicians, are gifts of God.&lt;/strong&gt; They are the ministers of nature, to whom human life is confided; but a moment’s negligence may ruin every thing. No physician should take a single step, but in humility and the fear of God; they who are without the fear of God are mere homicides. I expect that exercise and change of air do more good than all their purgings and bleedings; but when we do employ medical remedies, we should be careful to do so under the advice of a judicious physician. See what happened to Peter Lupinus, who etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So he did say things of that sort, but his main insult was that they are &amp;quot;far from perfect&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He reserves the worst, &amp;quot;fellows ignorant as they are complaisant&amp;quot; for physicians who let their patients do whatever they want, not for physicians who think that ilness has natural causes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-13T11:46:00.847" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23228" CreationDate="2014-09-13T23:10:51.860" Score="15" ViewCount="769" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, as usual, another one of our friends on Facebook has decided to link to something &quot;denouncing the evils of the modern medical establishment&quot;, claiming that (among other things) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.robertscottbell.com/health-concerns/vaccine-fraud-what-about-psychiatric-fraud-staggering-by-jon-rappoport/&quot;&gt;there are no lab tests for mental disorders&lt;/a&gt; (presumably because apparently chemical imbalance is an urban legend).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't care so much about some of the other claims (frankly, if anybody is prescribing enough Ritalin to produce adverse effects they should have their license revoked), although they might be bonuses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, can you do a lab test for a mental disorder, and if not, what mitigating factors should be taken into account?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5445" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2018-02-13T10:36:35.023" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T11:07:55.260" Title="Are there laboratory tests for mental disorders?" Tags="|psychiatry|diagnostic-test|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23227" CreationDate="2014-09-13T23:57:57.770" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, can you do a lab test for a mental disorder, and if not, what mitigating factors should be taken into account?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A mental disorder typically manifests as a behavioural or mood disorder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnosis_of_schizophrenia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diagnosis of schizophrenia&lt;/a&gt;, for example: there isn't what you'd call a &amp;quot;lab test&amp;quot; to detect disorganized speech, disorganized behaviour, blunted affect, etc. -- these are behavioural (not neurochemical) symptoms/criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OTOH a doctor can give a person some prescription medication and see whether their symptoms improve: that's a kind of test: does the medicine work, have the desired effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The principal claim in the rant you cited seems to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“There is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bullshit. I mean, you just can’t define it.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well it is defined, for example by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DSM&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rant is right about a lot of things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Misdiagnosis is possible (e.g. several diseases may present as similar symptoms and require &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_diagnosis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Differential diagnosis&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Skilled/experienced diagnosis is recommended (people aren't supposed to self-diagnose)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Doctors can't be sure in advance which drugs if any will have the desired effect: it's a bit of an experiment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps this answers your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, I noticed this today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.podiatrytoday.com/when-a-patient-presents-with-a-painful-red-toe&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;When A Patient Presents With A Painful Red Toe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The three women had superficial frostbite. No laboratory test exists for frostbite as it is a clinical diagnosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_diagnosis#Concepts_related_to_diagnosis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clinical diagnosis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A diagnosis made on the basis of medical signs and patient-reported symptoms, rather than diagnostic tests&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think one would want to argue that &amp;quot;frostbite&amp;quot; for example doesn't exist or is an urban legend, nor blame it on the medical establishment, merely because it's diagnosed clinically rather than in a lab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-02-15T11:07:55.260" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23231" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-14T18:13:33.077" Score="20" ViewCount="108374" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://wingedwizard.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/solomon-island-tree-curse/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://wingedwizard.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/solomon-island-tree-curse/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BGygq.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Solomon Islands&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to some reports in the Solomon Islands of the pacific the islanders practice a special form of curse magic. If a tree needs to be cut down and it is too big to be chopped down, it is brought down by the combined efforts of the Islanders cursing negatively and yelling at the tree. This negative energy somehow damages the tree’s life energy the result being after about 30 days of getting cursed the tree dies off and falls to the ground!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this was also cited in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0986264/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Indian movie called &lt;em&gt;Taare Jameen Par&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know, is this claim true? Can trees die like this? And is this &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; practiced in Solomon Islands?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20770" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-01-12T10:24:30.440" Title="Do trees die of cursing in Solomon Islands?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23212" CreationDate="2014-09-15T09:06:43.907" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Considering the dramatic rise of meat consumption by the non-vegitarians I don't think the rather small percentage of vegitarians can make much of an impact as such.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Meat production and consumption in the industrialized world have radically increased since 1950. /../ In the U.S. there has been a 9% drop in consumption from 2007 to 2012 thanks to trendy low-meat diets and growing concern from customers over where meat comes from.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/how-we-eat-meat-around-the-world-2014-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.businessinsider.com/how-we-eat-meat-around-the-world-2014-1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Between 1961 and 2002, meat consumption has seen a large increase virtually worldwide. /../ The US and the UK are among the few countries whose meat consumption levels have remained relatively stable.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/meat-consumption-per-capita-climate-change&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02/meat-consumption-per-capita-climate-change&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20701" LastEditorUserId="20701" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T09:39:30.810" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T09:39:30.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23237" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22437" CreationDate="2014-09-15T11:51:21.933" Score="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note that the URIs of the reports by the Dutch Safety Board seem to change from time to time as apparently their website gets reorganised. I'll try to keep the links in this answer up to date.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Failing that, the main page on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/en/onderzoek/2049/investigation-crash-mh17-17-july-2014&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the investigation of the crash of Flight MH17&lt;/a&gt; seems to be stable enough and the reports are all linked from there. Another option is going to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/en/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the main site of the Dutch Safety Board&lt;/a&gt; and searching for &lt;code&gt;MH17&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Yes.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Tuesday, October 13, 2015, the Dutch Safety Board released &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/en/media/attachment/2018/7/10/debcd724fe7breport_mh17_crash.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the final report&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/en/onderzoek/2049/investigation-crash-mh17-17-july-2014&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;their investigation of the crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the report, the Board states that the plane was struck by a 9N314M warhead carried on a 9M38-series missile fired from a Buk surface-to-air missile system. The missile was fired from a region of about 320 square kilometres in the east of Ukraine.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Findings&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The combination of the recorded pressure wave, the damage pattern found on the wreckage caused by blast and the impact of fragments, the bow-tie shaped&#xA;fragments found in the cockpit and in the body of one of the crew members in the cockpit, the injuries sustained by three crew members in the cockpit, the analysis of the in-flight break-up, the analysis of the explosive residues and paint found, and the size and distinct, bow-tie, shape of some the fragments, led the Dutch Safety Board to conclude that the aeroplane was struck by a 9N314M warhead as carried on a 9M38-series missile and launched by a Buk surface-to-air missile system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;3.7 Source of the damage&lt;/em&gt;, page 137&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Findings&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The area from which the possible flight paths of a 9N314M warhead carried on a 9M38-series missile as installed on the Buk surface-to-air missile system could have commenced is about 320 square kilometres in the east of Ukraine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Further forensic research is required to determine the launch location. Such work falls outside the mandate of the Dutch Safety Board, both in terms of Annex 13 and the Kingdom Act ‘Dutch Safety Board’.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;3.8 Simulations to assess the origin of the damage&lt;/em&gt;, page 147&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Findings&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simulations showed that the observed damage and the modelled fragment&#xA;pattern resulted in an estimated detonation location of the warhead to the left and above of the cockpit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Simulations demonstrated that the detonation of a 70 kg warhead best matched the damage observed on the wreckage of the aeroplane.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The simulations performed indicated that the detonation location of a 9N314M warhead was in a volume of space that is less than one cubic metre and about four metres above the tip of the aeroplane’s nose on the left side of the cockpit.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The damage to the wreckage recovered was consistent with the predictions made by the simulation of the blast caused by the detonation of a 70 kg warhead.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above mentioned findings are consistent with the conclusion of the Dutch Safety Board that flight MH17 was struck by a 9N314M warhead as carried on a 9M38 series missile and launched by a Buk surface-to-air missile system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;3.10 Summary of the results of the simulations into the causes of the crash&lt;/em&gt;, page 150&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Also, in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/en/media/attachment/2018/7/10/42a34fdbd5b2report_mh17_abouttheinvestigation.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MH17 About the investigation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, the Board states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Russian Federation indicated that the aeroplane was downed by a missile that could have been fired from either the ground or an aeroplane. This standpoint deviated from what was jointly subscribed during the first and second meetings (also by the Russian Federation). The third meeting was closed with the joint conclusion (thus by the Russian Federation as well) that the aeroplane was hit by high-energy objects of a missile that detonated in front of and to the left of the cockpit. This joint conclusion is less far-reaching than the conclusions in the investigation report on the crash of flight MH17.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;1.4 Conducting the investigation&lt;/em&gt;, page 20&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even the least far-reaching conclusion that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; parties to the investigation agree on, is that&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;flight MH17 was shot down by a missile.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the plane has been partially reconstructed  in a hangar on the Gilze-Rijen airbase out of the found wreckage. It was shown at the release of the report. It was open to next of kin and journalists; I don't know if it is or has been open to the general public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On 26 May 2021, the judges in the criminal trial inspected the wreckage on that site, which was &lt;a href=&quot;https://nos.nl/artikel/2382358-rechters-in-strafzaak-mh17-kijken-zelf-bij-wrak-naar-inslagen-buk-raket&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;widely reported on&lt;/a&gt; (in Dutch) and even &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nu.nl/287350/video/live-rechters-van-mh17-proces-bekijken-wrakstukken-van-vliegtuig.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;live streamed&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;My original answer, based on the preliminary report:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/en/media/attachment/2019/1/10/prem_rapport_mh_17_en_interactief2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;preliminary report&lt;/a&gt; on the crash by the Dutch Safety Board reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the preliminary findings to date, no indications of any technical or operational issues were found with the aircraft or crew prior to the ending of the CVR and FDR recording at 13.20:03 hrs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The damage observed in the forward section of the aircraft appears to indicate that the aircraft was penetrated by a large number of high-energy objects from outside the aircraft. It is likely that this damage resulted in a loss of structural integrity of the aircraft, leading to an in-flight break up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Preliminary report - Crash involving Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200 flight MH17, chapter 3, Summary of findings, page 30&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This indicates that flight MH17 was indeed shot down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16121" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2022-03-23T17:01:20.293" LastActivityDate="2022-03-23T17:01:20.293" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23238" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-15T13:31:35.687" Score="9" ViewCount="2790" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the café where I work, somebody tried introducing pasta, spaghetti in particular, in place of purpose-made wooden sticks, for stirring hot drinks, as it was thought to be more &quot;environmentally friendly&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A number of other people recommend the same technique:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hawaiizerowaste.org/news/18/52/Skip-the-Coffee-Stirrer/#.VBbty_m1bYg&quot;&gt;County of Hawai‘i Department of Environmental Management&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each year, Americans throw away 138 billion straws and stirrers. But skipping the stirrer doesn’t mean drinking your coffee black. Simply put your sugar and cream in first, and then pour in the coffee, and it should be well mixed.  Determined to stir? Break off a piece of pasta from the cupboard! You can nibble after using it, compost, or throw away with less guilt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://myplasticfreelife.com/forum/plastic-free-alternatives/brilliant-alternative-to-coffee-stirrers/&quot;&gt;My Plastic Free life&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.todayshomeowner.com/video/how-to-reduce-waste-from-plastic-coffee-stir-sticks/#tabs-1&quot;&gt;Today's Homeowner&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was told it's more environmentally friendly* than using wooden stirring sticks, and I believe it. I haven't really run the numbers though. I don't know where to get the numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which of plastic, wood and pasta is more environmentally friendly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;For the purposes of discussion, take &quot;environmentally friendly&quot; to mean less air, water and land pollution, as a by-product of both production and disposal. Air pollution can be taken to include carbon emissions.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Additional note: this is expressly about aspects of the service industry, where the re-use of regular spoons doesn't meet hygiene standards and stirring implements are necessarily disposable. Somebody else added the &quot;grab it from your cupboard&quot; excerpt in order to demonstrate notability criteria for this site.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1659" LastEditorUserId="1659" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T10:37:56.433" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T10:37:56.433" Title="Is it more environmentally friendly to stir hot drinks with pasta?" Tags="|environment|energy-efficiency|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23239" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23240" CreationDate="2014-09-15T14:06:16.407" Score="84" ViewCount="19591" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim has been circulating on Facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/K8WDA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although marijuana is now legal in Colorado, I don't see any particular attraction to mile markers from this state, as US mile markers are pretty standard--at least along interstate highways (where this photo appears to have been taken).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, is there any truth to the claim that the&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; 420 mile marker has been a special target of theft?  And if so, did the CDOT change the mile marker as claimed in the photo?  I haven't done any in-depth investigation, but the low quality of the image makes it seem quite possible that it was doctored...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;The claim suggests that there is a single mile marker 420 in Colorado, which is clearly false, as, even if there is only a single (Interstate) highway long enough to have a mile 420, there would be one marker on each side of the road, one for east-bound traffic, one for west-bound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(A personal note: I'd rather steal a 419.99 mile marker myself....)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-09-15T16:53:06.753" LastActivityDate="2018-07-15T16:32:13.837" Title="Did Colorado replace any 420 mile markers with a 419.99 mile marker to deter theft?" Tags="|united-states|theft|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23239" CreationDate="2014-09-15T15:00:13.340" Score="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;In January 2014, &lt;a href=&quot;http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/12/22277341-colorado-changes-mile-420-highway-marker-to-stymie-stoner-heists&quot;&gt;NBC News did an interview&lt;/a&gt; with &quot;Amy Ford, the communications director at the Colorado Department of Transportation&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ford couldn’t say how many times the 420 sign had been lifted in its history but said, “It was stolen frequently enough that we decided to switch our tags.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Newspaper journalists aren't always the most reliable of information sources, but a direct interview with someone who appears to have the appropriate expertise and authority is the best I would expect to find on this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also include a second (uncredited) picture of the sign suggesting it isn't a simple photoshopped meme, but an extant sign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T15:00:13.340" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23241" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23239" CreationDate="2014-09-15T19:49:33.340" Score="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;Google Maps / Street View evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/maps/@39.2943446,-102.5925987,3a,75y,135.29h,75.49t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sVfMDHVB4R7WqDm5fm2hFAA!2e0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Missing sign on I-70 Eastbound in October 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/maps/@39.2946755,-102.5922251,3a,75y,318.01h,69.29t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sWRRjVtcuTutl-x-iLJqViw!2e0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;419.99 sign on I-70 Westbound in October 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Historical street view shows a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/maps/@39.2946733,-102.5921214,3a,70.4y,279.29h,88.26t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1snyzxgj9c4Eb--L9XQ8e5UA!2e0!5s20110901T000000!7i13312!8i6656&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;420 sign on I-70 Westbound in September 2011&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6575" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2018-07-15T16:32:13.837" LastActivityDate="2018-07-15T16:32:13.837" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15996" CreationDate="2014-09-15T22:32:28.813" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Queen of England as for the rest of Monarchy own no such land. The Civil purse act of 1837 stripped all ownership rights away from the Monarch Queen Victoria and her heirs and successors in exchange for a Civil pension. This included all the Land Rights she owned as part of the Crown. &#xA;Owning land is one thing in name, but the the economical benefits of that land such as rent, business income and sale value were transferred to the Exchequer in perpetuity. &#xA;Therefore as one may wish to look at the magna carta or any other documents, the defining document as to who owns all the land in the Commonwealth is governed by by the following piece of legislation.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1837/2/pdfs/ukpga_18370002_en.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1837/2/pdfs/ukpga_18370002_en.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22136" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-09-16T06:37:00.947" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T06:37:00.947" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23243" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="970" CreationDate="2014-09-15T22:40:37.863" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Skeptic's Dictionary includes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepdic.com/stevenson.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a 'skeptical' article about Ian Stevenson's work&lt;/a&gt;, which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There is nothing that could be discovered by this method that could ever falsify the reincarnation hypothesis.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stevenson spent a lifetime (well, from 1961, starting at about age 43) looking for stories which he couldn't prove to be false, and found some. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It says that he provided &quot;evidence, but not compelling evidence&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-09-15T22:40:37.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17965" CreationDate="2014-09-16T03:28:17.077" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the article, it says that 'The paper is made from elephant dung', not just infused with it. But in any case, you are right, that will kill the bacteria. The article doesn't contain any details on how the dung was treated, but they won't necessarily destroy the nutrient levels in the dung.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as it is, you can do this with nutrient-sterile paper if you want, the fertilizer isn't necessary. In fact, this is a very common practice these days (I'm a gardener). You can &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=seed%20tape&amp;amp;rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS572US572&amp;amp;espv=2&amp;amp;biw=1920&amp;amp;bih=955&amp;amp;source=lnms&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=faUXVOvRB-rlsATYmYGACw&amp;amp;ved=0CAcQ_AUoAA&amp;amp;dpr=1#tbm=shop&amp;amp;q=seed%20tape&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;easily buy seed tapes&lt;/a&gt;, or you can &lt;a href=&quot;http://onegreentomato.net/2011/03/02/seed-tape-a-tutorial/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;make them yourself.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And it does not need to be planted immediately, but won't last forever either. Every variety has different seed life expectations, so if stored in good conditions, refer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hillgardens.com/seed_longevity.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this convenient list&lt;/a&gt; of seeds and their longevity. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hillgardens.com/storeseeds.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is some information&lt;/a&gt; on the best storage methods for most seeds. For the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore is elephant dung in itself special?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess it could be called special in that it is not produced in quantity, compared to cattle or hogs, so it's not so common. Elephants also have a simple digestion system, so they &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elephantsforever.co.za/elephant-anatomy.html#.VBesq_ldW3Q&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;don't digest their fibrous diet very well&lt;/a&gt;, similar to a horse, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.izea.net/education/journal%2047%202011-educational-uses-of-elephant-dung.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the feces contain a good quantity of fiber&lt;/a&gt;. This makes the resulting feces very good as a paper substrate, and also makes it prime for garden use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the elephant only digests and makes good use of 40% of its intake, the intestine is also instrumental in the formation or faeces and the efficient absorption of water. The size of the faeces is often used to determine the age of the elephant as it retains the shape formed by the walls of the rectum, indicating its size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the elephant absorbs so few nutrients from the food it ingests, the dung is rich in nutrients and solid food matter. Therefore, it is beneficial to many other animals, as they are able to feed off of the relatively untouched constituents of the faeces. Common beneficiaries include dung beetles and many species of bird.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elephantsforever.co.za/elephant-anatomy.html#.VBesq_ldW3Q&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That explains why elephant dung is better suited to gardening paper than other manures would be. Usually the more simple the digestive system, the better the manure will be, in terms of nutrient content. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/quickref/fertilizer/nutrient_content.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(see example rating)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21275" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T03:28:17.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11104" CreationDate="2014-09-16T04:10:28.757" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe they were talking about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenospermocarpy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;stenospermocarpy&lt;/a&gt;. Stenospermocarpic watermelons (or any other plants) pollinate properly, but the embryo aborts at a very young age. This causes a seedless fruit, which also tends to be sweeter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Seedless banana and watermelon fruits are produced on triploid plants, whose three sets of chromosomes prevent meiosis from taking place and thus the plants cannot produce fertile gametes. Such plants can arise by spontaneous mutation or by hybridization between diploid and tetraploid individuals of the same or different species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seedless_fruit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;(reference)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So these watermelon plants don't produce male flowers, and it is necessary to plant a regular variety nearby, to pollinate the flowers. This could be why they were called female watermelons. But the male flowers never set fruit anyway, so all watermelons are from female flowers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the black spot, it has more to do with variety than anything else, and though it will vary with the individual, I can speculate that the folk wisdom you mentioned was noting that the varieties that are seedless tended to have a larger black spot than the others, but I haven't noticed this myself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21275" LastActivityDate="2014-09-16T04:10:28.757" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3257" CreationDate="2014-09-17T06:49:12.343" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;OP links to: &lt;a href=&quot;http://mashable.com/2011/05/09/sitting-down-infographic/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://mashable.com/2011/05/09/sitting-down-infographic/&lt;/a&gt; which refers to &lt;a href=&quot;http://mashable.com/2011/04/22/standup-desks/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://mashable.com/2011/04/22/standup-desks/&lt;/a&gt; which refers to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/215691-the-most-dangerous-thing-you-ll-do-all-day&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/215691-the-most-dangerous-thing-you-ll-do-all-day&lt;/a&gt; which refers to a published article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/4/e000828.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/2/4/e000828.full&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abstract Objectives To determine the impact of sitting and television&#xA;  viewing on life expectancy in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Design Prevalence-based cause-deleted life table analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Setting Summary RRs of all-cause mortality associated with sitting and&#xA;  television viewing were obtained from a meta-analysis of available&#xA;  prospective cohort studies. Prevalences of sitting and television&#xA;  viewing were obtained from the US National Health and Nutrition&#xA;  Examination Survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Primary outcome measure Life expectancy at birth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results The estimated gains in life expectancy in the US population&#xA;  were 2.00 years for reducing excessive sitting to &amp;lt;3 h/day and a gain&#xA;  of 1.38 years from reducing excessive television viewing to &amp;lt;2 h/day.&#xA;  The lower and upper limits from a sensitivity analysis that involved&#xA;  simultaneously varying the estimates of RR (using the upper and lower&#xA;  bounds of the 95% CI) and the prevalence of television viewing (±20%)&#xA;  were 1.39 and 2.69 years for sitting and 0.48 and 2.51 years for&#xA;  television viewing, respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusion Reducing sedentary behaviours such as sitting and&#xA;  television viewing may have the potential to increase life expectancy&#xA;  in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it MAY be dangerous. But it has not been proven in that article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22157" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T06:49:12.343" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23253" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-17T07:25:30.430" Score="3" ViewCount="327" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia explains that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Issels&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Josef Issels&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;was a German physician known for promoting an alternative cancer therapy regimen, the Issels treatment. He claimed to cure cancer patients who had been declared incurable by conventional cancer treatments. During Issels' lifetime, his methods were controversial, and in 1961 he was charged with fraud and manslaughter for allegedly promising fraudulent cancer cures and for the subsequent deaths of patients under his care who refused standard cancer treatment. An initial conviction on the manslaughter charge was overturned in 1964 on the grounds that Issels had genuinely believed that his therapy could cure cancer. The Issels treatment is currently considered unproven and ineffective as a treatment for cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have searched and found different opinions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,16023,1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cancer Compass&lt;/a&gt; has mixed testimony.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Iain Carstair's &lt;a href=&quot;http://iaincarstairs.wordpress.com/2013/12/25/the-santa-barbara-mission/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Science And Religion Blog&lt;/a&gt; gives an anecdote of how the treatment worked for him and claims that some doctors planning an interview for a documentary discussed a strategy to dismiss the claims. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there scientific evidence that the technique used by Josef Issels - i.e. Issels Combination Therapy - is more effective than conventional treatments?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17021" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-09-17T13:41:53.090" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T13:41:53.090" Title="Is Issels Combination Therapy an effective method to treat cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23255" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22241" CreationDate="2014-09-17T14:33:16.567" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholera&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cholera is an infection of the small intestine caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, if a watermelon or any water contains that bacterium, you will get cholera from consuming it. The combination does not matter. If you consume things that don't contain this bacterium, you will not get cholera, no matter which things or in which combination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14002" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T20:12:38.230" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T20:12:38.230" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23259" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-17T19:36:57.977" Score="2" ViewCount="1834" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend recently posted the following, &quot;...the World Health Organization  classifies starvation as 2000 calories per day or less for women.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked around on the WHO's website but couldn't find anything saying this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that the WHO actually made this statement?  If so, where can I find it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If not, is there a definition for starvation that is based solely on calories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13825" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T06:28:31.213" Title="How many calories is starving?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23261" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23259" CreationDate="2014-09-17T23:25:34.683" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Did&lt;/em&gt; they?  It's easy to find people claiming they made the statement, but I've been unable to find a quote that actually traces back to the WHO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are they likely to have made the statement?  No.  According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5304a3.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a CDC study&lt;/a&gt;, in the United States (a location not generally considered a hotbed of starvation), the average adult woman in the year 2000 consumed 1877 kcal/day, far below the 2000 kcal/day threshold the WHO supposedly uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/nutrition/publications/en/nut_needs_emergencies_text.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2100 kcal/day&lt;/a&gt; in the report found by Geobits is a &lt;em&gt;population average&lt;/em&gt;: averaging across everything from a newborn baby to an adult male performing heavy physical labor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a definition for starvation based solely on calories?  Probably, considering the number of people who like defining things, but I doubt anyone would take it seriously.  Virtually everyone (eg. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fao.org/hunger/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the FAO&lt;/a&gt;) defines &quot;starvation&quot;, &quot;chronic hunger&quot;, or &quot;undernourishment&quot; as simply &quot;insufficient energy intake to meet energy needs&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21297" LastActivityDate="2014-09-17T23:25:34.683" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23262" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-18T03:43:58.610" Score="15" ViewCount="586" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Touchi-Peters&quot;&gt;James Touchi-Peters&lt;/a&gt; recently claimed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vice.com/read/this-guy-is-creating-a-facebook-for-rich-people-917?utm_source=vicefbus&quot;&gt;in a Vice article&lt;/a&gt; that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One out of every 200 people on the planet makes more than a million dollars a year. That’s one half of one percent of the world population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That unsubstantiated statistic struck me as dubious.  A quick Google search revealed that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire#Number_of_millionaires_in_the_world&quot;&gt;only about 12 million people in the world have an overall &lt;em&gt;net worth&lt;/em&gt; of at least $1 million&lt;/a&gt; (that's fewer than 2 people out of every thousand).  I would imagine that the majority of people making $1 million per year are likely to have a net worth greater than $1 million.  For what James Touchi-Peters claims to be true, wouldn't it imply that the majority of high earners are spending/losing the majority of their income each year?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does one out of every 200 people on the planet make at least $1 million USD per year?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1337" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T23:20:04.600" Title="Does 0.5% of the world's population make at least $1 million USD per year?" Tags="|wealth|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-01-15T09:11:39.070" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23259" CreationDate="2014-09-18T06:28:31.213" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starvation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The basic cause of starvation is an imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure. In other words, the body expends more energy than it takes in. This imbalance can arise from one or more medical conditions and/or circumstantial situations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we can consider starvation as mbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure, it totally depends on person's age, weight, gender, etc. To get the basic notion of starvation for certain person you can calculate BMR by different &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basal_metabolic_rate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BMR estimation formulas&lt;/a&gt;. Everything that below BMR usually can be considered starvation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22156" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T06:28:31.213" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23267" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7477" CreationDate="2014-09-18T13:37:28.383" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;  Or, to be quite precise, since you can't prove a negative, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bashouan.com/puBashous.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;there's no known work of Basho's that contains such a poem&lt;/a&gt;.  In fact, while the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oku_no_Hosomichi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Narrow Road to the Deep North&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; passes through Matsushima, there are no known Basho haiku at all about the place, although his disciple and fellow traveler &lt;a href=&quot;http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9D%BE%E5%B3%B6#.E4.BD.9C.E5.93.81&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sora did write one&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, the first known appearance of the haiku in question is the collection &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kotenseki/html/ru04/ru04_04988/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Matsushima Zushi&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (松島図誌), edited by Komon Sakurada (櫻田虎門) and first published in the 3th year of Bunsei (1820), over a hundred years after Basho's death in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matsuo_Bash%C5%8D&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1694&lt;/a&gt;.  On &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kosho/ru04/ru04_04988/ru04_04988_p0035.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;spread 35&lt;/a&gt;, to the right of the fold, this contains the following poem:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;松嶋や さてまつしまや 松嶋や&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Matsushima-ya / Sate Matsushima ya / Matsushima ya&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is credited to Tawara-bō (田原坊, &quot;Boy from Tawara&quot;) of Sagami Province (相模国, today's Kanagawa, west of Tokyo), an obscure &lt;em&gt;kyoka&lt;/em&gt; (&quot;crazy poem&quot;) poet known today more or less solely for apparently composing this poem.  Change the &lt;em&gt;sate&lt;/em&gt; (さて, &quot;now&quot;) to &lt;em&gt;aa&lt;/em&gt; (ああ, &quot;ah&quot;), use &lt;em&gt;kanji&lt;/em&gt; for all three Matsushimas, and you get the canonical version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;松島や ああ松島や 松島や&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Matsushima ya / Ah, Matsushima ya / Matsushima ya&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And veering into speculation, since Matsushima is associated with Basho but they didn't have any poems, this was popularly adopted as one since it was simple, memorable and of suitably obscure origins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15184" LastEditorUserId="15184" LastEditDate="2014-09-18T23:26:14.990" LastActivityDate="2014-09-18T23:26:14.990" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23227" CreationDate="2014-09-18T15:58:45.200" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are no biological markers of any kind for any DSM defined disorders. See for example the official statement from the chair of the DSM-5 task force:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madinamerica.com/2013/05/chair-of-dsm-5-task-force-admits-lack-of-validity/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.madinamerica.com/2013/05/chair-of-dsm-5-task-force-admits-lack-of-validity/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David Kupfer, Chair of the DSM-5 Task Force,  while defending the DSM as a useful diagnostic tool in a press release,  concedes that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“biological and genetic markers that provide precise diagnoses that can be delivered with complete reliability and validity” are still “disappointingly distant. We’ve been telling patients for several decades that we are waiting for biomarkers. We’re still waiting.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The popular mainstream theory is that the DSM describes &amp;quot;symptoms&amp;quot; of &amp;quot;diseases&amp;quot;, but there is no scientific evidence of any kind to prove the existence of any underlying &amp;quot;disease&amp;quot; for any of the symptomologies described in the DSM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In light of the fact that no lab test can be done, we need to be very careful with how we define or describe people as being &amp;quot;mentally ill.&amp;quot; The DSM-defined disorders, when looked at more carefully, tend to be extremely subjective and laden with cultural values and prejudices about what constitutes proper behavior and proper modes of thinking or feeling. For this reason, we need to be much more careful about forcing people to take &amp;quot;treatments,&amp;quot; and look more towards how to provide voluntary options for support and help to people who are suffering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22180" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-02-14T13:36:34.867" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23273" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-18T16:09:25.317" Score="4" ViewCount="1357" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is that women need more sleep than men because they do more multi-tasking during the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2528920/Women-DO-need-sleep-men-Multi-tasking-means-brains-longer-recover.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2528920/Women-DO-need-sleep-men-Multi-tasking-means-brains-longer-recover.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22183" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T11:48:52.487" Title="Do women need more sleep than men?" Tags="|sleep|gender|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23275" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23278" CreationDate="2014-09-19T01:27:50.897" Score="8" ViewCount="916" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was sent an article (am a bit of a future evolution fan), entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://mentalfloss.com/article/30795/5-signs-humans-are-still-evolving&quot;&gt;5 Signs Humans Are Still Evolving&lt;/a&gt;, from a website called &quot;MentalFloss&quot; - and as it is not peer-reviewed, I am a bit dubious of its claims, one in particular was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One estimate says 35 percent of the population is born without wisdom teeth, and some say they will disappear altogether.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They link to the HowStuffWorks page &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/evolution/no-wisdom-teeth2.htm&quot;&gt;Are wisdom teeth becoming obsolete?&lt;/a&gt;, in which there is a lot of uncertainty, but they state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some experts say it's possible these teeth will eventually disappear&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence to support the claim that an estimated 35% of the population are born without wisdom teeth, and especially, is there scientific evidence to suggest that they are disappearing in an evolutionary sense?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user22186" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T15:33:06.153" Title="Are wisdom teeth disappearing?" Tags="|evolution|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23277" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4622" CreationDate="2014-09-19T13:16:40.917" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been several experiments that measure the effectiveness of unsubscribing from spam, which concluded &lt;strong&gt;in favor of unsubscribing&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Kenneth Ladd Seldeen, a researcher with a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, has set up the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Used in this experiment were two web based email accounts. Email accounts were tracked for 45 days to determine normal levels of incoming spam email. One account averaged roughly 350 emails per day and after 45 days, unsubscribe links were clicked at a rate of 20 links per day. A second account averaged 3-10 emails a day and after 45 days all emails were clicked unsubscribe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results can be seen on his website, where Seldeen writes: &quot;unsubscribing reduced average emails from 350 to about 80 per day, a decrease of nearly 80%.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Michael Dayah, a web developer from Knoxville, Tennessee writes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I decided to test this hypothesis with one of the decade-old e-mail accounts on this domain, which received about 300 messages a day. On January 22, I began following every unsubscribe link in these messages. And I’m not talking about legitimate newsletters like NewEgg or MarketWatch, I’m talking about ShamWow and Acai Berry opt-outs. Within just a few days, the spam volume reduced to only 80 messages a day.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, the &lt;em&gt;Proceedings of IFIP Summer School on Risks &amp;amp; Challenges of the Network Society&lt;/em&gt; from 2004 contain a paper by Swedish researchers, who write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a second experiment we investigated if unsubscribing to spam emails generated new spam. In all 219 spam were investigated and 182 of them allowed the user to unsubscribe. By transporting the spam massages to a newly-configured e-mail account with a &quot;clean&quot; environment it was possible to investigate the impact of unsubscribing from spam. During a four-week period we did not receive a single spam in return.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20140919123956/http://www.scientificameriken.com/spam1.asp&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20140919123956/http://www.scientificameriken.com/spam1.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20140919125112/http://essays.dayah.com/spam-unsubscribe-not-harmful/&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20140919125112/http://essays.dayah.com/spam-unsubscribe-not-harmful/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jacobsson, Andreas, and Bengt Carlsson. &quot;Privacy and spam: Empirical studies of unsolicited commercial e-mail.&quot; In &lt;em&gt;Proceedings of IFIP Summer School on Risks &amp;amp; Challenges of the Network Society&lt;/em&gt;. 2004.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2014-09-19T13:43:34.353" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T13:43:34.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23275" CreationDate="2014-09-19T15:33:06.153" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that if the claim is tweaked slightly, there is some evidence to support it. Originally it says &quot;&lt;em&gt;born without wisdom teeth&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, which to me sounds like they are missing &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; of their wisdom teeth. I haven't seen any studies that show that high a rate for that. Also, I believe everybody is &quot;born&quot; without them, since they generally don't start forming until age ten or so. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it's changed to &quot;&lt;em&gt;will not develop one or more wisdom teeth&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, that's a bit easier to find support for. While &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.e-jds.com/article/S1991-7902(12)00054-2/pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this study&lt;/a&gt; was mainly looking at specific ethnic variations, they also include a table showing various studies done from 1954 to 2010:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mk0js.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;Prevalence&quot; column shows the rate where one or more third molars (wisdom teeth) are missing. You can see that only one of them (Lee et al, 2009) tops 35%, but there are several that get somewhat close. So even if 35% is a bit high, it's probably correct to say &quot;One estimate says...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evolutionary aspect is trickier, but it's clear that the trait is inheritable. Sampling shows that it varies tremendously by ethnicity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on large samples, agenesis of third molar ranged from 0.2% in Bantu speakers from Angola (6) to nearly 100% in Mexican Indians (7). Evidence supporting a genetic etiology for tooth agenesis and their shape is well established (8–10).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/103/15/5676.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The study&lt;/a&gt; that's from goes on to examine specific mutations in the PAX9 gene and their effects relating to dentition, in case you're interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that it &lt;strong&gt;doesn't&lt;/strong&gt; say &quot;they will disappear&quot;, just that their formation is based on an inheritable trait. It could go either way from here, as always.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19407" LastActivityDate="2014-09-19T15:33:06.153" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23279" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-19T21:42:14.787" Score="16" ViewCount="692" Body="&lt;p&gt;British newspaper The Daily Mail published &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2746321/Jack-Ripper-unmasked-How-amateur-sleuth-used-DNA-breakthrough-identify-Britains-notorious-criminal-126-years-string-terrible-murders.html&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; claiming that Russell Edwards was able to identify murderer Jack the Ripper thanks to DNA evidence retrieved from a shawl found at one of the victims' place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article emphasizes the advanced scientific techniques involved in the DNA sequencing of the 126 year old samples and boldly claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DNA evidence has now  shown beyond reasonable doubt which one of six&#xA;  key suspects commonly cited in connection with the Ripper’s reign of&#xA;  terror was the actual killer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the techniques and processes decribed in the article reliable enough to establish the killer's identity with 100% confidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11122" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T14:14:46.487" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T14:46:08.390" Title="Has Jack the Ripper been identified?" Tags="|criminology|dna|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23281" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-20T13:05:57.370" Score="6" ViewCount="527" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/opinion/sunday/should-we-all-take-a-bit-of-lithium.html&quot;&gt;NyTimes&lt;/a&gt;: Although it seems strange that the microscopic amounts of lithium found in groundwater could have any substantial medical impact, the more scientists look for such effects, the more they seem to discover. Evidence is slowly accumulating that relatively tiny doses of lithium can have beneficial effects. They appear to decrease suicide rates significantly and may even promote brain health and improve mood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there good evidence that increased doses of lithium in drinking water have those effects?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T16:04:34.840" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T23:14:06.253" Title="Do higher rates of lithium in groundwater lead to a decreased suicide rate?" Tags="|environmental-health|suicide|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23281" CreationDate="2014-09-20T23:08:57.430" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been several studies produced about the effects of lithium on humans, several are summarised in the Psychology Today's article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201201/could-you-have-lithium-deficiency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Could You Have a Lithium Deficiency?&lt;/a&gt; (Deans, 2012).  This article has links to several peer-reviewed surveys and articles that support the notion that trace amounts of lithium already present or added to drinking water can have beneficial neurological effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of major examples are from studies performed in Japan and Texas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Japanese study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3151375/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Low-dose lithium uptake promotes longevity in humans and metazoans&lt;/a&gt; (Zarse et al. 2011), found that longevity is inferred by&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our findings indicate that low-dose Li+ exposure causes reduced mortality in &lt;em&gt;C. elegans&lt;/em&gt;, and that these life span-extending capabilities of low-dose Li+ can be observationally translated into reduced overall mortality in humans that have been exposed to comparable amounts of Li+ in a similar long-term fashion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: as the authors mention, directly testing the longevity on humans was impractical for their study, so they used a widely used analogue &lt;em&gt;C. elegans&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of decreasing the rates of suicide, a direct study was made for the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19407280&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lithium levels in drinking water and risk of suicide.&lt;/a&gt; (Ohgami et al. 2009), who, in their abstract stated that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We found that lithium levels were significantly and negatively associated with SMR averages for 2002-2006. These findings suggest that even very low levels of lithium in drinking water may play a role in reducing suicide risk within the general population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The SMR they refer to is the suicide &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardized_mortality_ratio&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;standardised mortality rate&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An earlier wider study performed in Texas in the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1699579&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lithium in drinking water and the incidences of crimes, suicides, and arrests related to drug addictions.&lt;/a&gt; (Schrauzer and Stresther, 1990), found that there is a statistically significant case that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using data for 27 Texas counties from 1978-1987, it is shown that the incidence rates of suicide, homicide, and rape are significantly higher in counties whose drinking water supplies contain little or no lithium than in counties with water lithium levels ranging from 70-170 micrograms/L&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent article from a study performed in Greece, &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12011-013-9815-4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lithium in the Public Water Supply and Suicide Mortality in Greece&lt;/a&gt; (Giotakis et al. 2013), concluded that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results indicate that there is a tendency for lower suicide rates in the prefectures with high levels of lithium in drinking water&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user22186" LastEditorDisplayName="user22186" LastEditDate="2014-09-20T23:14:06.253" LastActivityDate="2014-09-20T23:14:06.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23287" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-21T09:41:11.320" Score="10" ViewCount="1652" Body="&lt;p&gt;Peter Moore, a francophone Canadian Youtuber, says &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aAnWAACF4Q&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in a Youtube video&lt;/a&gt; that there was an electoral fraud during the referendum about the independance of Scotland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the ballot paper looked like this…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zetVm.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;…two main arguments are used by Peter Moore to prove a fraud during this referendum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1/ He shows us a video where a person in charge of sorting votes takes some &quot;Yes&quot; checked ballots to put them in the &quot;No&quot; stack. This seems weird given how simple these ballot papers look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BkwAA.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2/ On Sky News a &quot;No&quot; stack has been shown to viewers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/a0UoB.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;…Even if we can clearly see some ballots with the &quot;Yes&quot; option checked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rXSjf.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these images legit (are they connected to the referendum for the independance of Scotland), and if so, do they prove an electoral fraud in favor of the &quot;No&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20868" LastEditorUserId="29579" LastEditDate="2019-04-20T05:20:06.970" LastActivityDate="2019-04-22T08:27:52.827" Title="Was there an electoral fraud during the referendum for the independance of Scotland?" Tags="|politics|united-kingdom|voting|democracy|scotland|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23287" CreationDate="2014-09-21T09:54:25.003" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The stacks of votes come from Dundee, where, according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/scotland-independence-referendum-videos-claim-vote-definitely-fix-1466219&quot;&gt;Yes campaign&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the &quot;Yes&quot; campaign in Dundee has clarified that the image in question merely shows votes waiting to be counted - not ones that have been counted already.&#xA;  They tweeted: &quot;To clarify, ballot papers have not yet been sorted in Yes/No and are just resting on table where No will go once sorted. No need to worry.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that Dundee voted &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecourier.co.uk/news/local/dundee/dundee-votes-yes-in-independence-referendum-1.583541&quot;&gt;Yes to independence&lt;/a&gt; and their representative claims there was no impropriety with the counting, I find it implausible that the vote there was rigged in favour of voting No!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know where the first image you have is from though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7188" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T09:54:25.003" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23289" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-21T11:23:28.907" Score="12" ViewCount="1256" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just about any weight loss coach/program I've ever seen say that drinking a lot of water (exact amount vary) combined with a low-calorie diet helps with losing weight (compered to the diet alone)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does drinking more water have any effect on weight loss?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some sources of this claim on the web (found via search, I'm asking because I've heard the claim off-line) - including the well-respected source for medical information CNN :-) - &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/08/23/drink.water.lose.weight/index.html&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fitsugar.com/Drink-More-Water-Lose-Weight-26604218&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://simple-nourished-living.com/2014/07/23-ways-to-drink-more-water-for-weight-loss-success/&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.womenshealthmag.com/weight-loss/drinking-water-to-lose-weight&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that every source gives different reasons why drinking lots of water is so important - a sure sign of reliable scientific fact &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19418" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T17:48:45.927" Title="Does increasing water intake during a diet help with weight loss?" Tags="|nutrition|water|weight-loss|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23290" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-21T12:46:56.150" Score="7" ViewCount="2417" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's commonly said that if you hold a chicken's beak to the ground and draw a straight line in front of it, it will stare at the line and not move. There's no shortage of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqZZ95L2n7o&quot;&gt;footage&lt;/a&gt; on youtube to prove that it does seem to work. But have any scientific studies been done to verify and/or explain the effect? Could it just be that gently holding a chicken's head to the ground is what causes the effect, and the line is irrelevant? I've tried looking through places like Wiley with keywords like &quot;chicken hypnosis&quot; but I really have no idea how to find this kind of literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22206" LastActivityDate="2014-09-21T12:46:56.150" Title="Can chickens be hypnotized by drawing a line in front of them?" Tags="|ethology|hypnotism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23292" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-21T14:15:14.617" Score="3" ViewCount="604" Body="&lt;p&gt;When one searches the Internet for the biggest killers in world history, the general consensus seems to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mao (~60m fatalities)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stalin (~30m fatalities)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hitler (~10m fatalities)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However most sources refer to publications and estimates made by specific historians, which vary greatly (often by many millions - see Wikipedia entry on Stalin as a good example) between one another - which makes me wonder how much of that is based on sound data, and how much are really just historical &quot;guesses&quot;. &#xA;So my question follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How accurate (in historical terms) are all these estimates and, in particular, are there any peer-reviewe papers that can provide a systematic breakdown of their basic component numbers (i.e. deaths due to direct orders, particular failed policies, war efforts etc.) incl. data sources and error margins for each component?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example sources:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answers.com/Q/Who_is_the_Biggest_killer_in_world_history&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.answers.com/Q/Who_is_the_Biggest_killer_in_world_history&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;... and a ton of other websites :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22169" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T09:37:12.877" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T09:37:12.877" Title="How accurate are estimates of death tolls attributed to Hitler, Stalin and Mao Zedong?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-09-22T09:50:13.863" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23293" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-21T15:03:01.473" Score="16" ViewCount="17629" Body="&lt;p&gt;When rice is washed, the wash water becomes whitish due to the starchy powder in the skin of unwashed rice. I've often heard or read, usually in water-saving, money-saving, or gardening tips, that the water used to wash rice is beneficial for plants as it fertilizes the soil. There are also various anecdotes on the internet suggesting the use of rice water to water plants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150430011122/http://concretecanopy.blogspot.com/2010/03/rice-water.html/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Concrete Canopy: Rice-water&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://researchprojectricewater.blogspot.com.au/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Can Rice Water Replace fertilizer in plant growth?&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenculturesg.com/forum/index.php?/topic/12005-rice-water-as-fertilizer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Green Culture: rice water as fertilizer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ehow.com/facts_7716656_rice-water-good-plants.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is Rice Water Good for Plants?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surprisingly though, given how often I've heard this claim, I hadn't been able to find much serious researches regarding this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any truth to this claim? Does watering plants with rice water produces better plants than watering plants with plain tap water? How does it compare with regular, commercially produced fertilizers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="542" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-12-08T19:42:40.747" LastActivityDate="2020-03-24T16:07:03.017" Title="Is rice water a good fertilizer?" Tags="|biology|water|plants|agriculture|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23297" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-21T17:40:39.627" Score="8" ViewCount="2297" Body="&lt;p&gt;My questions concerns a population, more significant than simply exterminating an individual cockroach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claim: &lt;a href=&quot;http://pest.tips.net/T003494_Kill_Roaches_with_Baking_Soda_and_Sugar.html&quot;&gt;http://pest.tips.net/T003494_Kill_Roaches_with_Baking_Soda_and_Sugar.html&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you're concerned about pesticides in your home because you have pets and children, you can use a simple solution of sugar and baking soda to kill them. Neither substance is harmful to humans or pets, but the solution is lethal for roaches. The sweet smell of sugar entices the roach out of hiding to eat it, as well as the baking soda. Then, when the roach drinks water, the baking soda reacts, creating gas inside of the roach which causes its stomach to burst, killing the roach. Since other roaches feed on dead roaches, they also acquire the fatal substance and subsequently die. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-and-totally-bio-pest-control/&quot;&gt;http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-and-totally-bio-pest-control/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Counterclaim: p 5 of 6, &lt;a href=&quot;http://lancaster.unl.edu/pest/roach/roach10eng.pdf&quot;&gt;http://lancaster.unl.edu/pest/roach/roach10eng.pdf&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bran, baking soda, and baking powder.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  An old wives’ tale says that if you feed bran to insects,&#xA;  the bran will swell up inside the insect and it will&#xA;  die. There are similar claims made about baking&#xA;  soda and baking powder, common leavening agents&#xA;  used in baking. Bran, baking powder, and baking&#xA;  soda will not cause cockroaches to die&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16959" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-24T08:52:23.700" LastActivityDate="2017-05-07T22:57:40.633" Title="Does baking soda eliminate a cockroach infestation?" Tags="|natural-remedies|chemistry|entomology|pesticides|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23302" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23289" CreationDate="2014-09-22T00:20:27.697" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2010/10/18/does_drinking_water_with_meals_help_with_digestion/&quot;&gt;some evidence&lt;/a&gt; that drinking a large amount before eating a meal will help because it makes you feel more full, thus leading to eating less food, but sipping it during your meal doesn't help much because the water is absorbed much faster than the food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People sometimes drink water with meals to promote a feeling of&#xA;  fullness, in hopes of helping limit how much they eat. Kuo says that&#xA;  this probably doesn't work if you just sip water with a meal, because&#xA;  liquid passes through the stomach much more quickly than food and so&#xA;  doesn’t have time to stretch the stomach and provide that feeling of&#xA;  fullness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your best chance for that effect is to drink a lot of water just&#xA;  before a meal, and then eat fairly quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A small recent study by researchers at Virginia Tech supports this&#xA;  idea, finding that dieters who drank two eight-ounce glasses of water&#xA;  before meals lost more weight than those who didn’t.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2010/august/clinical-trial-confirms-effectiveness-of-simple-appetite-control-method.html&quot;&gt;http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2010/august/clinical-trial-confirms-effectiveness-of-simple-appetite-control-method.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“We are presenting results of the first randomized controlled intervention trial demonstrating that increased water consumption is an effective weight loss strategy,” said Brenda Davy, Ph.D., senior author on the study. “We found in earlier studies that middle aged and older people who drank two cups of water right before eating a meal ate between 75 and 90 fewer calories during that meal. In this recent study, we found that over the course of 12 weeks, dieters who drank water before meals, three times per day, lost about 5 pounds more than dieters who did not increase their water intake.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study included 48 adults aged 55-75 years, divided into two groups. One group drank 2 cups of water prior to their meals and the other did not. All of the subjects ate a low-calorie diet during the study. Over the course of 12 weeks, water drinkers lost about 15.5 pounds, while the non-water drinkers lost about 11 pounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thermogenesis, the idea that you burn calories by drinking cold water because your body has to work to heat it up, currently is discredited due to the evidence showing that it accounts for a few calories at most if you constantly drink ice water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, there is some small benefit found in substituting water for other beverages simply because water has no calories, so drinking a glass of water instead of a glass of juice or cola is a net difference in calories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="19346" LastEditDate="2014-09-22T11:39:49.333" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T11:39:49.333" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23303" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-22T01:21:14.373" Score="13" ViewCount="283" Body="&lt;p&gt;My pastor today preached an illustration which he received from John Upton, head of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptist_World_Alliance&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Baptist World Alliance&lt;/a&gt;, a large missions organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He tells this story (paraphrased) in order to illustrate that churches should seek to build bridges rather than walls with his community.  I'd like to know if this is true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Ireland, there is an old church that was built in the center of a village, near several pubs. In this part of town, traffic is tight, as one would expect, and when the pubs were built, not enough planning went into them.  In particular, the pubs did not provide sufficient toilet facilities for their patrons, and so a problem began to arise: On Saturday nights, too many patrons for too few loos led said patrons to relieve themselves in the church yard.  As you might expect, this was a problem for the church.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally, the church called a meeting to figure out what could be done.  The first thought was to build a wall - a large wall. Discussions went on about whether it should be a stone wall or a iron fence - but eventually, a voice spoke from the back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that we don't really need a wall - what we need is toilets!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One by one, the church members came around to the idea, and they decided to build toilets facing the street so patrons could relieve themselves in private. Members even volunteered to take shifts cleaning the toilets, in order to keep them used.  This being a small church, eventually the need grew so great that most of the church was involved at some point in the night.  After some time, this church realized that with so many of them serving at night, that they may as well have their services to coincide with this volunteer project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so, they did just that.  To this day, the church holds its services at 3am in order to clean the restrooms. By cleaning up the restrooms, they are able to model for their community what Jesus did for them - namely clean up their mess.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a nice story, and a great illustration - if its true :)  What I couldn't find on Google was reports of any Irish churches with services at 3am and a public toilet ministry.  That said, this isn't unreasonable to assume that a ministry would develop this way either - and it wouldn't necessarily be on the church's website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence, internet or not, of a church in Ireland that holds services in the middle of the night, in order to coincide with a &amp;quot;toilet ministry?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5707" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T18:57:40.463" Title="Is there a church in Ireland that has as its ministry providing toilets for local pub patrons?" Tags="|toilets|ireland|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23304" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23323" CreationDate="2014-09-22T10:53:25.857" Score="2" ViewCount="1251" Body="&lt;p&gt;Right now, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/09/22/jasmine-tridevil-surgery-third-breast-total-recall-style_n_5859776.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;various&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/1014/Bizar/article/detail/3752374/2014/09/22/Vrouw-laat-derde-borst-implanteren.dhtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;news&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bild.de/news/ausland/brust-operation/us-amerikanerin-hat-drei-brueste-37724000.bild.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sites&lt;/a&gt; are running an item about a woman calling herself Jasmine Tridevil, who supposedly has had a third breast implanted, resembling a character from the movie &lt;em&gt;Total Recall&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true, or are the pictures photoshopped and is it a hoax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ot4TN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;A selfie of Jasmine Tridevil, showing her three breasts&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16121" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2023-08-05T15:06:44.380" LastActivityDate="2023-08-05T15:06:44.380" Title="Did Jasmine Tridevil have a third breast added surgically?" Tags="|beauty|body-modification|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7602" CreationDate="2014-09-22T12:38:04.923" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;An article recently published by the BBC debunks this myth: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29281253&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29281253&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim was originally made by Harvard University professor Edward O Wilson, and the German biologist Bert Hoelldobler, in their 1994 book Journey To The Ants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They based their estimate on an earlier one by British entomologist C B Williams, who once calculated that the number or insects alive on earth at a given moment was one million trillion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;If, to take a conservative figure, one percent of this host is ants, their total population is ten thousand trillion,&amp;quot; wrote Wilson and Hoelldobler. &amp;quot;Individual workers weigh on average between 1 to 5 mg, according to the species. When combined, all ants in the world taken together weigh about as much as all human beings.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wilson and Hoelldobler's calculation is based on the idea that the average human weighs a million times more than the average ant. So how well does that stand up to scrutiny? The average adult human weighs 62kg, so that would make the average ant about 60mg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There are ants that weigh 60mg, but they're really the big ants,&amp;quot; says Francis Ratnieks, Professor of Apiculture at the University of Sussex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The common ants which live in British gardens weigh about 1mg or 2mg.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article there also points out that nobody really knows the actual number of ants in the world:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experts from the Natural History Museum, Bristol University's Ant Lab, and BWARS (Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording Society), among others, say there is no realistic estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Coupled with the fact that Wilson and Hoelldobler's own calculation is wrong:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even by Wilson and Hoelldobler's own figures, their calculation is wrong. There are 7.2 billion humans on the planet today - if we take everyone over the age of 15, they weigh a combined total of about 332bn kg. If we imagine there are 10,000 trillion ants in the world, weighing an average of 4mg, their total weight comes to just 40bn kg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't seem to hold true that this idea holds any weight. However it was possibly true at one point in history:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I think if we went back 2,000 years, certainly the ants would've outweighed the humans... but at roughly the time that America became independent [1776], or a little bit before that, that's when we humans became more impressive in our weight than the ants,&amp;quot; he says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We must also remember that humans are getting fatter all the time. We're not just increasing in population, we're increasing in fatness, so I think we've left the ants behind.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1793" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-22T12:38:04.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23306" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23320" CreationDate="2014-09-22T17:00:38.887" Score="19" ViewCount="2911" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw a video posted on Facebook where Wendell Pierce accused white men of intentionally infecting natives with smallpox by giving them infected blankets. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A cursory read of &lt;a href=&quot;http://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/plag/5240451.0001.009/--did-the-us-army-distribute-smallpox-%20blankets-to-indians?rgn=main;view=fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper published by the University of Michigan&lt;/a&gt; suggests it's false. Is there any evidence that this claim might actually be true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22218" LastEditorUserId="26340" LastEditDate="2015-10-12T19:40:02.283" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T19:40:02.283" Title="Were Native Americans given blankets intentionally contaminated with smallpox?" Tags="|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19128" CreationDate="2014-09-22T19:42:40.267" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are two studies that say &lt;strong&gt;getting&lt;/strong&gt; the flu (for real, not vaccine) reduces cancer risk in some types of cancer by 30% or more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2066354&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Common infections in the history of cancer patients and controls. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol. 1991;117(4):339-44.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The association between the frequency of manifest infectious diseases and cancer risk was investigated in a case-control study at Heidelberg, FRG. A total of 255 cases with carcinomas of the stomach, colon, rectum, breast, and ovary, as well as 255 population controls and 230 hospital controls were interviewed using a standard questionnaire. Controls were matched to the cases for age, sex, and region of residence at the time of the interview. A history of common colds or gastroenteric influenza prior to the interview was found to be associated with a decreased cancer risk. Thus the odds ratios for &quot;three or more common colds per year (on average)&quot; versus &quot;no common cold within the last 5 years prior to the interview&quot; were 0.18 (95% CI = 0.05-0.69) and 0.23 (95% CI = 0.06-0.89) relative to population controls and hospital controls, respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10389745&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Role of medical history in brain tumour development. Results from the international adult brain tumour study. Int J Cancer. 1999 Jul 19;82(2):155-60.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was a statistically significant inverse association between glioma and all allergic diseases combined (RR = 0.59, 95% CI 0.49-0.71); this was also observed for specific allergic conditions, namely, asthma and eczema. Subjects who reported a history of infectious diseases (e.g., colds, flu) showed a 30% reduction in risk (RR = 0.72, 95% CI 0.61-0.85).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncolytic_virus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The wikipedia entry for oncolytic virus&lt;/a&gt; has this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An oncolytic virus is a virus that preferentially infects and kills cancer cells.[1][2] As the infected cancer cells are destroyed by lysis, they release new infectious virus particles to help destroy the remaining tumour.[3] Oncolytic viruses are thought not only to cause direct destruction of the tumour cells, but also to stimulate host anti-tumour immune responses.[4][5]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;AND a list of 9 current clinical trial using oncolytic viruses as cancer treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22220" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2017-06-12T16:41:27.477" LastActivityDate="2017-06-12T16:41:27.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15573" CreationDate="2014-09-23T05:45:46.233" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The right answer to this question is yes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://banzaiskydiver.com/banzai-skydiving-world-record/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yasuhiro Kubo&lt;/a&gt; is the Guinness World Record holder for banzai skydiving. And yes, it is a real sport. &#xA;As for the first part of the question, Guinness Book of World Records Editor &lt;a href=&quot;http://freakonomics.com/2008/05/30/the-guinness-book-of-world-records-editor-answers-your-questions/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Craig Glenday&lt;/a&gt; stated that Yasuhiro Kubo is the record holder. To clear up a misunderstanding, Glenday describes the key element of Banzai skydiving is the wait, “throwing your parachute out of the door, then waiting as long as possible before jumping after it.” You have to wait. Then he says, “the longest wait yet is, incredibly, 50 seconds by Yasuhiro Kubo of Japan.” &#xA;Now is it a sport? Yes it is a sport, &lt;a href=&quot;http://banzaiskydiver.com/banzai-skydiving/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Banzai Skydiving&lt;/a&gt; is an extreme sport that was started in Japan. It consist of climbing to jump altitude, 10,000ft., throwing your parachute out the door, wait 2 seconds, and then jump after it. Kubo waited 50 seconds. So the sport itself started in Japan. Skydiving by definition is a sport. So there is the right answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22224" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T05:45:46.233" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23313" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-23T12:35:40.787" Score="2" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always been a bit intrigued by hypnotherapy. I'd like to be more productive and more focused. I find in short bursts I can be extremely focused and get a lot done and other times I can find it hard to stop my mind from wandering and waste time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is, should I consider hypnotherapy to try help me become more focused, has anyone tried this before with positive or no results?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22230" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T12:35:40.787" Title="Can hypnotherapy help focus/productivity" Tags="|hypnotism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2014-09-23T15:41:52.550" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23315" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23318" CreationDate="2014-09-23T17:28:13.553" Score="2" ViewCount="714" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read an article that says scientists have developed a pill that will make this possible, you take one pill with every meal and you'll no longer need to wipe after a bowel movement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This new technology released in pill form, is consumed with every meal&#xA;  and will save time and money for everyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gomerblog.com/2013/09/no-wipe-poop/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.gomerblog.com/2013/09/no-wipe-poop/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any reference of these pills anywhere else, you'd think something this amazing would find it's way into other news sources. Is this a hoax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21500" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T20:16:17.673" Title="No Wipe Poo - Possible?" Tags="|medical-science|hygiene|toilets|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-09-23T20:45:58.393" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23316" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-23T17:35:06.407" Score="10" ViewCount="1299" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it or is it not possible to predict &quot;with a fair degree of accuracy&quot; one's nationality through one's handwriting?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, it's possible.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is possible for a trained expert in handwriting to tell with a fair degree of accuracy the nationality ... of any one who executes writing of any kind.&#xA;  - &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=5oFDAAAAIAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA169&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Disputed Handwriting&lt;/em&gt;, 1909&lt;/a&gt;: Jerome B. Lavay, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors of this &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186%2F1687-5281-2014-10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2014 paper&lt;/a&gt; develop a handwriting recognition system. Looking at  handwriting samples from 8 nationalities (≥ 30 samples each), its system correctly predicts the nationality of the writer 48% of the time (as opposed to a 12.5% random prediction rate).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &lt;a href=&quot;http://latinaish.com/2010/09/01/escritura-y-diferencias/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;webpage&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many handwriting experts claim you can’t tell a person’s ethnicity or nationality by their handwriting, but again, I say this isn’t true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, it's not.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphology#Gender_and_handwriting&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The published studies on ... nationality ... and their relationship to handwriting have had mixed results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainwriting.com/Common_Questions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;webpage&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Handwriting cannot tell someone's age, race, gender, religion, nationality, whether someone is right or left handed, and it cannot predict the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://handwritinglense.com/16-Limitations_of_Handwriting_Analysis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Another&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A graphologist will not be able to determine the nationality of the writer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is motivated by my anecdotal experience that for some specific handwriting styles, it is possible to identify the nationality of the writer, even without any special training or equipment/software. Example: One particular handwriting style (in English) seems to be used only by people from China. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17967" LastEditorUserId="16860" LastEditDate="2015-05-28T17:02:48.937" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T17:02:48.937" Title="Is it possible to identify one's nationality through one's handwriting?" Tags="|graphology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23317" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-23T20:13:34.223" Score="10" ViewCount="560" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a conversation with a colleague, it was suggested that common cooking oils such as olive oil will &quot;go rancid&quot; when heated, causing them to break down, for them to lose their nutritional value, and for them to become in some way bad for you. Further, it was suggested that coconut oil is the only oil that does not suffer from this behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://authoritynutrition.com/healthy-cooking-oils/&quot;&gt;Authority Nutrition&lt;/a&gt; somewhat supports this claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When it comes to high heat cooking, coconut oil is your best choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthwyze.org/index.php/component/content/article/539-why-rancid-healthy-oils-are-more-dangerous-than-the-bad-oils.html&quot;&gt;Healthwyze&lt;/a&gt; contradicts it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Coconut oil should only be used in low heat or no heat recipes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is coconut oil suitable for high temperature cooking? Is it the 'best' at avoiding going rancid when cooked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1669" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T00:18:43.947" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T00:19:48.180" Title="Is coconut oil the best for high-temperature cooking?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23318" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23315" CreationDate="2014-09-23T20:16:17.673" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's a fake.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gomerblog.com/disclaimer/&quot;&gt;gomerblog.com's own disclaimer&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Gomerblog.com is strictly a satirical and fake news blog site.&lt;/strong&gt;  All articles are &lt;strong&gt;fake&lt;/strong&gt; and not intended to diagnosis medical&#xA;  conditions or to give medical advice.  Please see a real medical&#xA;  website or your doctor for diagnosis and any medical advice. Please&#xA;  don’t take any advice from our website.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;[...]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;All names and descriptions of people are fictitious except for those&#xA;  of public figures, who are the subject of satire. Any resemblance to&#xA;  actual persons or events is purely coincidental.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4885" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T20:16:17.673" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23289" CreationDate="2014-09-23T21:39:51.660" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good analysis by Sean Duggan. I would like to take a look at Thermogenesis a bit closer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's start with Metabolism &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Metabolism&lt;/strong&gt; refers to biochemical processes that occur with any living&#xA;  organism - including humans - to maintain life. These biochemical&#xA;  processes allow us to grow, reproduce, repair damage, and respond to&#xA;  our environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anabolism and catabolism&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anabolism&lt;/strong&gt; is the building up of things - a succession of chemical&#xA;  reactions that constructs or synthesizes molecules from smaller&#xA;  components, usually &lt;strong&gt;requiring energy&lt;/strong&gt; in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Catabolism&lt;/strong&gt; is the breaking down of things - a series of degradative&#xA;  chemical reactions that break down complex molecules into smaller&#xA;  units, and in most cases &lt;strong&gt;releasing energy&lt;/strong&gt; in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Metabolism and body weight&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In simple terms, our body weight is a result of catabolism minus&#xA;  anabolism. In other words, the amount of energy we release into our&#xA;  bodies (catabolism) minus the amount of energy our bodies use up&#xA;  (anabolism).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The excess energy is stored either as fat or glycogen&lt;/strong&gt; (stored as&#xA;  carbohydrate mostly in the liver, and also in the muscles).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One gram of fat produces 9 calories (kcal), compared to 4 kcal from&#xA;  protein or carbohydrate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/8871.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What is metabolism? How do anabolism and catabolism affect body weight?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BMR and RMR&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The basal metabolic rate (BMR) represents the energy needed to support the basic cost of living. &#xA;  The BMR is typically measured in the morning after an overnight fast&#xA;  and lying down for 30 minutes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;RMR (Resting Metabolic Rate)  is any time of day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The largest number of calories expended by most people (except for&#xA;  athletes during heavy training) is from the resting metabolic rate&#xA;  (RMR)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ncrc.appstate.edu/sites/ncrc.appstate.edu/files/Nieman-Your%20Metabolism-NCRC.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Your Metabolism: Facts and Fables&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this study (refers to changes in RMR levels):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The novel finding in this study is that &lt;strong&gt;drinking 500 ml of water&#xA;  increases metabolic rate by 30%&lt;/strong&gt; in both men and in women. The increase&#xA;  in metabolic rate was observed within 10 min after completion and&#xA;  reached a maximum 30–40 min after water drinking. The effect was&#xA;  sustained for more than an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on our measurements, we estimate that increasing water&#xA;  ingestion by 1.5 liters would augment daily energy expenditure by&#xA;  approximately 200 kJ. &lt;strong&gt;Over 1 yr, energy expenditure would increase by&#xA;  73,000 kJ (17,400 kcal), the energy content of 2.4 kg adipose tissue.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipose_tissue&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;adipose tissue&lt;/a&gt; = fat&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jc.2003-030780&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Water-Induced Thermogenesis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion as far as I understood this topic: Drinking water does increase metabolic rate for a short period of time, contributing to the additional energy expenditure of the human body (ie burning calories). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15722" LastEditorUserId="15722" LastEditDate="2014-09-23T21:47:41.400" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T21:47:41.400" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23320" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23306" CreationDate="2014-09-23T21:50:45.247" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the 1763 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Pitt#Biological_warfare&quot;&gt;Siege of Ft. Pitt&lt;/a&gt; Captain Simeon Ecuyer gave representatives of the besieging Delawares two blankets and a handkerchief from the smallpox ward:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Out of our regard to them we gave them two blankets and a handkerchief out of the Small Pox Hospital. I hope it will have the desired effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/stream/fortpittlettersf00darl#page/n103/mode/2up&quot;&gt;https://archive.org/stream/fortpittlettersf00darl#page/n103/mode/2up&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Should there be any ambiguity about &quot;the desired effect&quot;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;In a letter to Colonel Henry Bouquet dated July 7, 1763, [Lord Jeffery] Amherst writes &quot;Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians?&quot; In a later letter to Bouquet Amherst repeats the idea: &quot;You will do well to try to inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.amherst.edu/library/archives/faq#lordjeff&quot;&gt;https://www.amherst.edu/library/archives/faq#lordjeff&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia article about the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Fort_Pitt#Biological_warfare&quot;&gt;Siege of St. Pitt&lt;/a&gt; says that these blankets were probably not the actual mechanism by which the Delawares were exposed and infected, but the intention is clear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The post linked to in the question relates to a different accusation, regarding events in 1837.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2014-09-23T21:50:45.247" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23321" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-24T00:09:43.973" Score="5" ViewCount="294" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.autonews.com/article/20140105/OEM11/301069995/diesel-struggles-to-clear-air-on-dirty-reputation&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt;, dated Jan 5, 2014, makes a rather vague claim that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Companies such as Volkswagen AG, Chrysler Group and General Motors have invested billions to make that happen, outfitting vehicles with systems that cut tailpipe emissions by about 99 percent from a decade ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that it is physically impossible to reduce tailpipe emissions by 99% without reducing fuel (and/or air) intake by roughly the same amount.  This suggests to me that the claim is probably talking about some specific aspect of emissions (such as particulate matter, or greenhouse gasses, or something).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did these car companies manage to reduce tailpipe emissions, or some meaningful aspect of them, for diesel engines, between roughly 2004 and 2014?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T09:20:36.830" Title="Did Volkswagen, Chrysler and/or GM cut diesel tailpipe emissions by ~99% over a decade?" Tags="|road-vehicles|environment|energy-efficiency|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23323" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23304" CreationDate="2014-09-24T08:30:55.007" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Prosthesis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Google search finds several different pictures of Jasmine Tridevil, which suggests it is not a case of a simple photoshopping of one image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least one reporter claims to have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wtsp.com/story/news/local/2014/09/22/tampa-woman-claims-to-add-3rd-breast/16083847/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;interviewed&lt;/a&gt; Jasmine Tridevil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some reports (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/florida-woman-breast-hoax-article-1.1949712&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.viralglobalnews.com/entertainment/jasmine-tridevil-woman-three-breasts-fake/17588/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;) that suggest Jasmine Tridevil is using a prosthesis&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Alisha Jasmine Hessler, once filed a complaint under that name with&#xA;  the airport in Tampa, FL. Among the stolen items was a “three breast&#xA;  prothesis[sic].”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T08:36:32.817" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T08:36:32.817" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23321" CreationDate="2014-09-24T08:50:05.440" Score="8" Body="&lt;h1&gt;No they haven't, nor have they claimed so.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Precis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journalist or editor didn't do their job correctly and made a mistake. The figure refers to particulates, not to other important emissions and not to all emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Important emissions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As others have noted, important tailpipe emissions include gases like CO2 which manufacturers quote figures for because governments impose taxes based on those emissions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in the UK, manufactures brochures always give the CO2 emissions in g/km&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hCmDm.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Tailpipe emissions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An old 1943 report &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1531320/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;published by NIH&lt;/a&gt; contains this table&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/C08IC.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is clear that although 80% of what is emitted through the tailpipe is nitrogen, few of us have much interest in that, it doesn't affect what we breathe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However you can see that the engine converts oxygen to CO2 at a rate depending on engine load. This CO2 is emitted through the tailpipe and is therefore a tailpipe emisssion. CO2 emission reduction is the subject of International treaties and the subject of government regulation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an internal combustion engine, it isn't possible to reduce the total output mass by 99% unless you reduce the input mass by a similar amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Diesel Particulate emissions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are a health hazard and so are of interest to consumers, manufacturers, regulators and to any journalists capable of accurate reporting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although not a reliable source, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_particulate_filter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wall-flow diesel particulate filters usually remove 85% or more of the soot, and under certain conditions can attain soot removal efficiencies approaching 100%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Volvo &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.volvocars.com/uk/top/support/Pages/Diesel-Particulate-Filter.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wall-flow diesel particulate filters usually remove 85% or more of the soot, and can at times (heavily loaded condition) attain soot removal efficiencies of close to 100%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This suggests that the reporter who wrote the Autonews article, or their editor, made a mistake and wrote &lt;em&gt;&quot;tailpipe emissions&quot;&lt;/em&gt; instead of &lt;em&gt;&quot;tailpipe emissions of diesel particulates under heavily loaded conditions&quot;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This kind of sloppy and innumerate journalism isn't exactly rare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-09-24T09:20:36.830" LastActivityDate="2014-09-24T09:20:36.830" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23326" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-25T10:03:17.297" Score="11" ViewCount="2224" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=Muslims+are+allowed+to+deceive+non-muslims+through+a+practise+called+Taqiyya.&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&amp;amp;channel=fflb&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pretty notable claim&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples (the sites are, predictably, pretty anti-Islamic to put it mildly, so the language at the links may be harsh to extreme)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taqiyya (&quot;al Taqiyya&quot;) is the Muslims' license to lie to infidels in order to camouflage Islam's holy war strategy (jihad) to conquer the world. The strategy mentioned&#xA;  through orders and solicitations in the Quran 3:28 and other Islamic writings and reference applies to all Western countries and against all infidels people (non-muslims) who is not&#xA;  Islamic and therefore seen as a constant threat to Islam. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://sites.google.com/site/muslimdeception/taqiyya&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Question: Are Muslims permitted to lie?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Summary Answer: Muslim scholars teach that Muslims should generally be truthful to each other, unless the purpose of lying is to &quot;smooth over differences.&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  There are two forms of lying to non-believers that are permitted under certain circumstances, taqiyya and kitman.  These circumstances are typically those that advance the cause Islam - in some cases by gaining the trust of non-believers in order to draw out their vulnerability and defeat them.  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/quran/011-taqiyya.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Muslims lie when it is in their interest to do so and “Allah” will not hold them accountable for lying when it is beneficial to the cause of Islam. They can lie without any guilt or fear of accountability or retribution. A lie in the defense of Islam is approved even applauded in their “holy” books. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.muslimfact.com/bm/terror-in-the-name-of-islam/islam-permits-lying-to-deceive-unbelievers-and-bri.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An evidence confirming this would be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An unambiguous historical or Quranic example of a lie to a non-Muslim that was officially explained away as &quot;OK&quot; because of Taqiyya.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A fatwa from a notable and important religious leader stating this concept. (as in, more notable than an imam at a single mosque with 500 followers). A specific proof of author's notability is required.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An evidence denything this would be again a statement from an equally notable and important religious leader indicating that using Taqiyya is contrary to Islam and is a sin. The statement must be internally-oriented (e.g. aimed at Muslim followers of said leader, not at non-Muslim foreigners).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorUserId="32459" LastEditDate="2016-04-29T11:15:19.357" LastActivityDate="2016-04-29T11:15:19.357" Title="Are Muslims allowed to deceive non-Muslims through a practice called Taqiyya?" Tags="|islam|religious-texts|quran|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23327" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23328" CreationDate="2014-09-25T17:57:30.093" Score="17" ViewCount="1044" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep hearing this argument that if you powered down all the appliances you normally leave on standby (TV, hifi, set top box, DVD/Blu ray player, computer, etc) you'll &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/experts/article-2057727/How-does-cost-leave-household-appliances-standby.html&quot;&gt;save nearly £90 a year&lt;/a&gt; in electricity bills.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the table in the linked article claims 10 watts as the standby power of a typical TV.  My understanding is that EU regulations limit TV power consumption in standby mode to 1 watt maximum so I decided to do a little digging.  My TV is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnet.com/products/lg-50pg60/specs/&quot;&gt;old 50 inch plasma&lt;/a&gt;, which I know guzzles electricity when powered up, &#xA;but I never suspected it of using a great deal of power when in standby.  As confirmed by the specs, it uses 1 watt in standby as opposed to 10 as claimed in the This Is Money article.  I've not checked the specs of other appliances on that list yet but given the results for my power-hungry TV I think the rest of the figures are highly questionable as well.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet the advice I keep hearing advocates turning appliances completely off instead of leaving them in standby.  This advices gets trotted out on fairly regular intervals by the national papers (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/bills/article-2767966/I-turn-oven-5-mins-dinner-s-ready-don-t-mind-leaving-TV-standby-Ten-tricks-cut-energy-bills-families-challenged-cut-usage.html&quot;&gt;as recently as today&lt;/a&gt;).  My power supplier also makes similar suggestions along with replacing bulbs with energy saving bulbs, which does seem a reasonable measure as the house I recently moved into was outfitted with 8x50 watt halogen spotlights in the kitchen and I've not noticed any real downside to replacing them with equivalent LED bulbs that use 5.5 watts.  44 watts to light the kitchen versus 400 seems like a pretty significant win.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet, no matter how often I hear this advice I remain unconvinced.  Can you really save £90 a year by turning everything completely off instead of leaving it all in standby, or are the figures vastly inflated for other products as they turned out to be for my TV?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't make significant savings this way, then what do the power companies, etc, have to gain by continuing to circulate advice that (if the figures for all appliances have been inflated by a factor of 10) would save you a tenner a year at best?  I could speculate on possible motives (getting us all to agree to having smart meters installed, trying to put off investment in power plants and national grid as long as possible, shifting the blame unto us if/when power supply starts to become constrained in the future, etc), but levelling accusations of that nature feels like falling foul of conspiracy-theorist thinking.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2992" LastEditorUserId="2992" LastEditDate="2014-09-25T18:11:08.510" LastActivityDate="2018-08-26T11:00:57.630" Title="Are claims about saving power by turning appliances off instead of leaving them in standby accurate?" Tags="|energy|energy-efficiency|fuel-economy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23328" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23327" CreationDate="2014-09-25T19:35:26.967" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Answer:&lt;/strong&gt; Yes, you can save that much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;£90 really isn't that much over the course of a year - about 25 pence per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.comparemysolar.co.uk/electricity-price-per-kwh-2013-comparison-of-e-on-edf-npower-british-gas-scottish-and-sse/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The price of electricity in the UK in 2013 averages 17.2 pence per kWh&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That means over the course of one day, you need to save 1.45 kWh (kilowatt hours) in order to save 25 pence. You can accomplish that by reducing your average energy consumption by 60 watts. According to these numbers, having switched those lights from 400 watts total to 44 watts total should be saving you over £500 each year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://standby.lbl.gov/data/summary-table/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This nice table&lt;/a&gt; shows the power consumption of different devices while in sleep or standby modes. In particular, they found that a desktop computer uses 21.13 watts while in sleep mode compared to 2.84 while off. If you happen to have three desktop computers, then turning them all off will just about get you to the 60 watts needed to save £90.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the variability in power consumption between the various types of devices, how much money you can save will obviously depend on what devices you have, but it does not take too many devices to be able to reduce power consumption by 60 watts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21196" LastEditorUserId="3733" LastEditDate="2018-08-26T11:00:57.630" LastActivityDate="2018-08-26T11:00:57.630" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23326" CreationDate="2014-09-26T03:15:46.350" Score="19" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Are Muslims allowed to deceive non-muslims through a practice called Taqiyya?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taqiyya&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia says&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Islam, taqiyya تقية (alternative spellings taqiyeh, taqiya, taqiyah, tuqyah) is a form of religious dissimulation,[1] or a legal dispensation whereby a believing individual can deny his faith or commit otherwise illegal or blasphemous acts while they are in fear or at risk of significant persecution.[2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it's not &amp;quot;non-muslims&amp;quot; who are allowed to be deceived. Ibid. says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The doctrine of taqiyya was developed at the time of Ja'far al-Sadiq (d. 148 AH/765 AD), the sixth Imamiya Imam. It served to protect Shi'ites when Al-Mansur, the Abbasid caliph, conducted a brutal and oppressive campaign against Alids and their supporters.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;An evidence confirming this would be an unambiguous historical or Quran example of a lie to a non-Muslim that was officially explained away as &amp;quot;OK&amp;quot; because of Taqiyya&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ibid.,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 16th century Spain, following the end of the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula in 1492, Muslims and Jews were persecuted by the Catholic Monarchs and forced to convert to Christianity or face expulsion. The principle of taqiyya became very important for Muslims during the Inquisition in sixteenth century Spain, as it allowed them to convert to Christianity while remaining crypto-Muslims, practicing Islam in secret. In 1504, Ubayd Allah al-Wahrani, a Maliki mufti in Oran, issued a fatwā allowing Muslims to make extensive use of taqiyya in order to maintain their faith.[2][26][27][28]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://islam.stackexchange.com/q/16977&quot;&gt;What does Shia mean by taqiyya?&lt;/a&gt; whose answer starts with,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taqiyya is usually translated to dissimulation which means to hide your true feelings or intentions, especially by lying. Taqiyya has been a common survival tactic among Shiites during the periods where they lived under hostile, repressive tyrants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shiites throughout history especially during Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties were often put under severe persecution and were often murdered for their devotion to the Pure Household of the Prophet and for their refusal to pledge allegiance to Ummayyad and Abbassid tyrants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another question &lt;a href=&quot;https://islam.stackexchange.com/q/2468&quot;&gt;Is concept called Taqiyya in Islam for propagation of Islam around the world?&lt;/a&gt; similar to the one originally asked here, was closed by two moderators with the following comments:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that Sunnis do not believe this at all and find it abhorrent. Also most of the sentences in this question are incorrect in mainstream (modern and historical) Sunni Islam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not seem to match the Shi'a practice of taqiyya either. It is unclear exactly what flavor of Islam is being referenced here, and the question should be reworked so it can be properly answered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before it was closed, though, it was answered 3 times, with answers like the ones, above for example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taqiyyah is permitted for a Muslim only if there is fear of being killed for exposing beliefs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T10:20:39.453" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23332" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-26T04:31:08.557" Score="4" ViewCount="253" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenyarn.com/benefits.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GreenYarn&lt;/a&gt; sel a number of products, such as clothing with bamboo charcoal particles are embedded in the fiber.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Health: Bamboo charcoal absorbs chlorine in water and let minerals&#xA;  out, making your skin smooth. Also, the charcoal entirely warms up&#xA;  your body with infrared ray effect, easing stiff shoulders, lumbago,&#xA;  and poor circulation. Bamboo charcoal also absorbs bad odor and toxic&#xA;  substances, and emit negative ion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does wearing bamboo charcoal improve your skin or warm your body more than other clothes (or even other charcoals)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-06-17T11:01:06.650" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T11:01:06.650" Title="Does Bamboo Charcoal clothes help to improve one's health?" Tags="|healthcare|clothing|chlorine|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23333" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-26T04:37:32.520" Score="1" ViewCount="1362" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxy.co.kr/eng/product/hama/ha_sub01.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This advert for Thirsty Hippo Basic Tub&lt;/a&gt; claims it is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;composed of calcium chloride maintains living conditions pleasant by eliminating moisture and bad smells of the air from a closet, wardrobe, vehicle, stereo-case,etc&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Will it eliminate moisture and bad smells of the air?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-06-17T11:06:21.090" LastActivityDate="2018-06-17T13:42:58.520" Title="Does Calcium Chloride remove bad smells?" Tags="|consumer-products|natural-remedies|chlorine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23334" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-26T04:52:02.387" Score="6" ViewCount="969" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/426584-foods-that-reduce-gas-and-bloating/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.livestrong.com/article/426584-foods-that-reduce-gas-and-bloating/&lt;/a&gt;) mentions that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If your gas and bloating is caused by unhealthy bacteria in your digestive tract, foods that contain probiotics can help solve the problem. According to registered dietitian Kristi King, writing on the Huffington Post website, probiotics contain healthful bacteria that crowd out the bad bacteria in your gut. Look for products, such as yogurt and kefir, that note “live and active” cultures on the package.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, do probiotics help to remove gas and bloating?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastEditorUserId="8600" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T20:20:06.240" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T20:20:06.240" Title="Do probiotics help to reduce gas and bloating" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23335" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-26T05:19:39.687" Score="6" ViewCount="441" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/geeksrulz/status/515303326993235970&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://twitter.com/geeksrulz/status/515303326993235970&lt;/a&gt; (53 retweets, 22 favorites)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;#heyasio Some men fight for what is right, and achieve greatness. Others care only for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hAlrL.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Text below&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his Uni days, Abbott referred to Mandela as a &amp;quot;terrorist&amp;quot;, and implied he should be kept in jail. He then toured South Africa on a Rugby scholarship, supporting the apartheid movement, and in direct contravention of sporting bans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brought to you by the left wing, radical, bastard Socialists at &amp;quot;The barricades&amp;quot;. Look us up on Facebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some men fight for what is right, and achieve greatness. Others care only for themselves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims are also stated in the blog post &lt;a href=&quot;http://theaimn.com/callow-shallow/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Callow or shallow?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When Abbott was President of the Students’ Representative Council at&#xA;Sydney University, he wrote in Honi Soit that Voluntary Student&#xA;Unionism “would finally stop all students being taxed so the SRC can&#xA;fund groups such as International Socialists, &lt;strong&gt;South African&#xA;Terrorists&lt;/strong&gt;, the Spartacists, Lidcombe Health Workers Collective etc.&#xA;which are quite irrelevant, not to say obnoxious, to student&#xA;purposes.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and also&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anti-Apartheid activity was alive and well in Australia at this time.&#xA;Many Australians supported fundraising efforts for the ANC, and&#xA;participated in anti-Apartheid demonstrations throughout the 1960s and&#xA;1970s. The racially exclusive Springboks were banned from playing in&#xA;Australia between 1974 and the end of Apartheid in 1994. In 1981, the&#xA;Fraser government refused permission for the aircraft carrying the&#xA;Springboks to a tour of New Zealand to refuel on Australian territory.&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Abbott, however, accepted a rugby scholarship to tour South Africa&lt;/strong&gt; in&#xA;what former Federal Labor Minister Barry Cohen described as a&#xA;“universally acknowledged… promotional tour of Apartheid”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Abbott refer to Mandela as a terrorist, and imply he should be kept in jail, and did he tour South Africa during sporting bans against apartheid South Africa?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical, because it sounds very similar to claims made about &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16745/was-david-cameron-linked-to-hang-nelson-mandela-posters-in-the-1980s&quot;&gt;David Cameron&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-05-28T19:34:05.947" Title="Did Abbott oppose Mandela, and play rugby in South Africa during apartheid?" Tags="|australia|nelson-mandela|tony-abbott|south-africa|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23336" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-09-26T05:21:18.143" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-09-26T05:21:18.143" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T05:21:18.143" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23337" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-09-26T05:21:18.143" Score="0" Body="The 28th Prime Minister of Australia, from 2013 to 2015." OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2015-10-12T15:17:35.280" LastActivityDate="2015-10-12T15:17:35.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23339" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23340" CreationDate="2014-09-26T08:21:38.180" Score="2" ViewCount="1736" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read an &lt;a href=&quot;http://answering-christianity.com/adam_90_feet_tall.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; claiming that our ancestors were taller than us. their reasoning can be summarized as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The smaller the planet, the lesser its gravity and the bigger and taller its creatures will be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The earth was much smaller and it keeps expanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22254" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T14:23:02.593" Title="Were our ancestors taller than us" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23340" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23339" CreationDate="2014-09-26T09:57:22.250" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, according to the fossil record, most past human species were similar heights or shorter than modern humans, research suggests that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;suggests that the height of the Homo genus remained more or less stable for 2 million years until the appearance of a &amp;quot;ground-breaking species in this sense&amp;quot; in Africa just 200,000 years ago. These were the Homo sapiens, who were initially significantly taller than any other species that existed at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iEuAm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image and quote source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120606075323.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Homo heidelbergensis was only slightly taller than the Neanderthal&lt;/a&gt; (2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple more examples are in the diagram below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ypvK6.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://palaeoblog.blogspot.com.au/2009_11_01_archive.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blog of Michael J. Ryan, Ph.D.&#xA;Head of Vertebrate Paleontology, Cleveland Museum of Natural History&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, according to the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-we-getting-taller/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why are we getting taller as a species?&lt;/a&gt; (1998), we, as a species are getting taller, due to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most geneticists believe that the improvement in childhood nutrition has been the most important factor in allowing humans to increase so dramatically in stature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But importantly, they state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the trend toward increasing height has largely leveled off, suggesting that there is an upper limit to height beyond which our genes are not equipped to take us, regardless of environmental improvements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the basis of this notion, the theory that the Earth was smaller in the past, explained in the answer &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6377/was-the-earth-originally-smaller-and-ocean-free/6384#6384&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some further references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;José-Miguel Carretero, Laura Rodríguez, Rebeca García-González, Juan-Luis Arsuaga, Asier Gómez-Olivencia, Carlos Lorenzo, Alejandro Bonmatí, Ana Gracia, Ignacio Martínez, Rolf Quam. Stature estimation from complete long bones in the Middle Pleistocene humans from the Sima de los Huesos, Sierra de Atapuerca (Spain). Journal of Human Evolution, 2012; 62 (2): 242 DOI: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2011.11.004&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. Wu, X. Collilieux, Z. Altamimi, B. L. A. Vermeersen, R. S. Gross, I. Fukumori. Accuracy of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame origin and Earth expansion. Geophysical Research Letters, 2011; 38 (13) DOI: 10.1029/2011GL047450&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user22186" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user22186" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T14:23:02.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23341" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23334" CreationDate="2014-09-26T16:04:57.860" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently there is no conclusive answer addressing this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probiotics are used more and more for symptoms relief of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As probiotics have shown benefit and possess a favorable adverse-effect profile, their use may represent an option for symptom relief in patients with IBS. However, additional data are necessary before probiotics can become a standard of care in the treatment of IBS, a complex and chronic condition [1].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results are highly variable as another paper agrees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clearly, some probiotics have considerable potential in the management of IBS; however, the benefits are likely to be strain-specific. Preliminary studies suggest low doses of prebiotics may improve symptoms of IBS, although further robust clinical trials are required [2].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yet there are some conditions in which probiotics have shown benefits. These include [3]:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Antibiotic-associated diarrhea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Clostridium difficile colitis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Infectious diarrhea in both adults and children&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(Inflammatory bowel disease - but with variable efficacy)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same study [3] questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the delivery method of probiotics&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the dose&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;interaction between probiotic and immune system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;treatment duration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A newer study agrees on all of the above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Promising results have been found and in some, indications such as maintenance of remission of ulcerative colitis and pouchitis guidelines recommend therapy with probiotics already today. However, many open questions still remain and the urgent need for high-quality trials requires much more research in the future [4].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wilhelm SM, Brubaker CM, Varcak EA, Kale-Pradhan PB. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18363533&quot;&gt;Effectiveness of probiotics in the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome.&lt;/a&gt; Pharmacotherapy. 2008 Apr;28(4):496-505. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1592/phco.28.4.496&quot;&gt;10.1592/phco.28.4.496&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 18363533. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whelan K. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21892075&quot;&gt;Probiotics and prebiotics in the management of irritable bowel syndrome: a review of recent clinical trials and systematic reviews.&lt;/a&gt; Curr Opin Clin Nutr Metab Care. 2011 Nov;14(6):581-7. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/MCO.0b013e32834b8082&quot;&gt;10.1097/MCO.0b013e32834b8082&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 21892075.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Elizabeth C. Verna and Susan Lucak. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3002586/&quot;&gt;Use of probiotics in gastrointestinal disorders: what to recommend?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; Therap Adv Gastroenterol. Sep 2010; 3(5): 307–319. doi:  10.1177/1756283X10373814. PMCID: PMC3002586 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kruis W. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24246993&quot;&gt;Probiotics.&lt;/a&gt; Dig Dis. 2013 Nov 14;31(3-4):385-7. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1159/000354706&quot;&gt;10.1159/000354706&lt;/a&gt;. PubMed PMID: 24246993. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19552" LastActivityDate="2014-09-26T16:04:57.860" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23344" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-27T00:59:26.060" Score="2" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard a number of people talking about some serious and seemingly implausible allegations that the Sandy Hook shooting was an elaborate hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the sources for these claims I have found compiled on Wikipedia which I will post for the time being:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting_conspiracy_theories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting_conspiracy_theories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the claims below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The FBI reported that no murders occurred at Sandy Hook &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infowars.com/fbi-says-no-one-killed-at-sandy-hook/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Video taken of the father of one of the victims shown smiling only a day after the event &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neonnettle.com/features/333-fbi-evidence-shows-sandy-hook-shooting-could-have-been-elaborate-hoax&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A number of tweets about the incident have timestamps that occurred after the event occurred &lt;a href=&quot;http://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/?s=sandy+hook+tweets&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The event was a joint government-media operation to garner support for an assault weapons ban. &lt;a href=&quot;http://beforeitsnews.com/conspiracy-theories/2013/01/evidence-sandy-hook-school-shooting-staged-by-factions-of-us-government-and-mainstream-media-3-2447784.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many other claims I have heard verbally spoken that I have yet to find sources on...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The children are all still alive and have been spotted at public events, baseball games and even photos showing one of the children at the white house after the event&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Adam Lanza is not and never has been a real person, that his birth and death certificate are unavailable and evidence suggests all known photos of him were computer generated.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some memorial sites and fund-raising sites for the victims appeared or were registered days before the shooting event occurred.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not even going to give credence to some of the ridiculous anti-semitic theories that are floating around this.  The only thing I can say is that if this were some elaborate plot pulled off by the Obama administration to ban assault weapons then it failed miserably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there hard evidence to dispel some of these absurd theories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6794" LastActivityDate="2014-09-27T00:59:26.060" Title="Was the Sandy Hook massacre an elaborate hoax? (and other conspiracies)" Tags="|government|weapons|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-09-27T01:28:41.500" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23345" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-27T12:18:36.617" Score="12" ViewCount="1001" Body="&lt;p&gt;SBS's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/01/20/comment-coward-punch-outrage-eclipses-domestic-violence&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;19.1% of women had experienced sexual violence since the age of 15&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SBS is generally a credible source and data looks like it has been compiled from the government data but I find it incredible that this data is of a developed country like Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's hard to imagine that nearly 1 in 5 adult women have been sexually assaulted and that there are over 500,000 incidents of violent abuse towards women per year. For a country of 20 million people (and 10 million women) that's one in 20 women per year!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are these statistics true? If so, is there any explanation to explain this high percentage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22261" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2014-09-28T14:43:09.203" LastActivityDate="2017-09-22T07:28:08.527" Title="Is there rampant sexual assault of women in Australia?" Tags="|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23350" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-09-28T00:58:52.227" Score="10" ViewCount="328" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.missamerica.org/scholarships/purpose.aspx&quot;&gt;official website for Miss America Organization&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Miss America Organization is one of the nation's leading&#xA;  achievement programs and the &lt;strong&gt;world's largest provider of scholarship&#xA;  assistance for young women&lt;/strong&gt;. Last year, the Miss America Organization&#xA;  and its state and local organizations made available more than $45&#xA;  million in cash and scholarship assistance. This assistance is not&#xA;  just for the handful of young women who become Miss America, but is&#xA;  available to the over 12,000 young women who compete in the state and&#xA;  local competitions as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Miss America Organization  the world's largest provider of scholarship assistance for young women?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastActivityDate="2014-09-28T00:58:52.227" Title="Is Miss America Organization the world's largest provider of scholarship assistance for young women?" Tags="|finance|school|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23354" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23359" CreationDate="2014-09-29T08:48:36.010" Score="14" ViewCount="3244" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a discussion with a friend about the sometimes poor working conditions in China and especially the electronics market. Now what really surprised me was his statement that Apple and other companies installed &quot;Nets to prevent suicide&quot; around their factories. These should basically catch workers that leap off the building because of the poor working condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found some articles about it (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103798/Revealed-Inside-Apples-Chinese-sweatshop-factory-workers-paid-just-1-12-hour.html&quot;&gt;Like this one&lt;/a&gt;), but most of them don't go into detail about the nets and I feel like these nets could be there for another reason as well. So is this really true? Do Chinese factories really have these nets for that reason or is it for another purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18504" LastEditorUserId="8600" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T20:08:49.450" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T20:08:49.450" Title="Does Apple install suicide prevention nets at their Chinese factories?" Tags="|china|apple-inc|suicide|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23358" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23363" CreationDate="2014-09-29T17:13:31.397" Score="37" ViewCount="10505" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following image has been making the rounds on social media:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y0msg.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is the infographic even accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If so is the conclusion it's pushing backed up by valid statistics? (that there's a clear correlation between the gun problem (as defined by firearm deaths per 100,000 people) and Democratic-party voters? Or is it more of a case of cherry-picking specific areas that fit the desired pattern?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The infographic's exact claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most crimes and murders are committed in the cities of America and by the constituency of the Democratic Party&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T00:24:16.903" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T00:24:16.903" Title="Is there a correlation between voting for the Democratic Party and gun crimes in the USA?" Tags="|united-states|politics|guns|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23359" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23354" CreationDate="2014-09-29T17:44:14.937" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Foxconn did indeed install &quot;suicide nets&quot;. And they worked. It's a well known fact that many people wanting to commit suicide are not thinking straight and can be stopped if anything interferes with their plans. Taking an action that saves lives when it is obvious that this action is opening the company up to attacks by all internet trolls is surely commendable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To put this into perspective: According to Wikipedia, the suicide rate of Foxconn workers was at all times a lot lower than the average rate in China, and lower than the suicide rate in each of the 50 states of the USA, and actions like suicide nets have improved things further. Also, suicide by jumping from a building is a very rare thing to happen in the USA (2% of suicides), while it seems quite common in China (in Hong Kong more than 50%), so suicide nets would be very unexpected in the USA; gun control is 50 times more effective at preventing suicides. Obviously in the living conditions at Foxconn, suicide by gun or by taking tablets won't work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is documentation available in Apple's 2011 &quot;supplier responsibility report&quot; on page 18 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2011_Progress_Report.pdf&quot;&gt;https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_SR_2011_Progress_Report.pdf&lt;/a&gt; Quote: &quot;In August 2010, the independent team presented its findings and recommendations to Terry Gou and senior executives from Foxconn and Apple. The team commended Foxconn for taking quick action on several fronts simultaneously, including hiring a large number of psychological counselors, establishing a 24-hour care center, and even attaching large nets to the factory buildings to prevent impulsive suicides. The independent team also found that Foxconn had worked openly with many outside experts and government officials in reacting to the crisis. Most important, the investigation found that Foxconn’s response had definitely saved lives.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19183" LastEditorUserId="19183" LastEditDate="2014-09-29T17:58:08.780" LastActivityDate="2014-09-29T17:58:08.780" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23358" CreationDate="2014-09-29T18:38:00.893" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, the American firearm-deathrate &lt;a href=&quot;http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/firearms-death-rate-per-100000/&quot;&gt;according to this table&lt;/a&gt; is 10.1 per 100,000 people, but the yellow swatches in the Infographic are, according to the legend, areas that have less than that rate. Conversely, the &lt;em&gt;entire states&lt;/em&gt; of Lousiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Wyoming, Montana... well, actually, 30 entire states ... should be colored in green (indicating above-average deathrates). Alaska, which has a statewide deathrate of 20.4 per 100,000, should be in pale blue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The infographic may &lt;em&gt;still&lt;/em&gt; be true, since it &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be that the areas in the infographic are very violent places in an otherwise tranquil sea of peace and love, but the lowest-deathrate states (including the NY/NJ/CT tristate area and Massachusetts, despite the graphics highlighting them) are considered liberal / Democratic. So it doesn't seem &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; Democrats &quot;are incapable of living peacefully with anyone&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps the creator of the Infographic was trying to create an argument, not so much about political affiliation, but some other characteristic. I wonder what characteristic a person spewing agitprop about &quot;Democrat inner cities&quot; could mean? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T22:20:37.997" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T22:20:37.997" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23317" CreationDate="2014-09-29T21:12:30.177" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coconut Oil does suffer from this behaviour, and its smoke point is 175 +/- 4&amp;deg;C which is lower than other common cooking oils:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/248511136_Emissions_of_volatile_aldehydes_from_heated_cooking_oils/file/72e7e5290f8e56f0e5.pdf&quot;&gt;Emissions of volatile aldehydes from heated cooking oils&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the temperature of the oil was above its smoke point, the emission of volatiles drastically increased, implying that oils with low smoke point, such as coconut, are not useful for deep-frying operations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  So, your friend and Health Nutrition are wrong. Healthwyze is right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1299" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-02T00:19:48.180" LastActivityDate="2014-10-02T00:19:48.180" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23358" CreationDate="2014-09-29T21:55:22.790" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;The info-graphic says there's a problem in &quot;Democrat Inner Cities&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, inner cities in general are Democratic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here's a liberal source saying so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/09/1274795/-Democrats-are-from-cities-Republicans-are-from-exurbs&quot;&gt;Democrats are from cities, Republicans are from exurbs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Princeton's Robert Vanderbei put together &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671294/infographic-a-3-d-map-of-where-votes-were-cast-most&quot;&gt;a fantastic 3-d map&lt;/a&gt; in 2012, which I'd recommend that you take some time to explore, that visualizes the country with blue skyscrapers towering over pink plains, reflecting the heavy concentration of votes in urban areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Here's an anti-liberal source saying so:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boycottliberalism.com/Commentary/Crime.htm&quot;&gt;Violent Crime and Murder in America &#xA;Blame Democrats!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That being said- inner cities are not Republican strong holds regardless of the state. Please note that even in red states (Republican states)- the inner cites are voting in high numbers for Democrats. Do you think the residents of Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, New York, Philadelphia are voting for Republicans? They are voting in much higher percentages for Democrats. I am making a blanket statement- but the percentages back this statement. As a result- it is fair to say that most crimes and murder in America are being committed by Democrats - because the percentages of Democrats in these areas far exceed the number of Republicans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the correlation is, &quot;Cities (urban voters) are Democratic&quot; and &quot;Inner cities have (gun deaths) violence&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't think this is evidence that the (relatively very few) murderers themselves (less than 1% of the population) vote Democratic or Republican; so I don't see a connection between &quot;voting Democratic&quot; and &quot;gun crime&quot;, except that both (voting and crime) happen in (all) cities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T21:40:28.970" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T21:40:28.970" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23366" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23370" CreationDate="2014-09-30T08:59:59.527" Score="1" ViewCount="529" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this post on a Facebook page, this couple lost 500 pounds of weight in 2 years. Is it real or just a fake post?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jZ0kA.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21177" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T04:59:06.637" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T04:59:06.637" Title="Did this couple lose 500 pounds of weight in 2 years?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23369" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5480" CreationDate="2014-09-30T11:48:55.547" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm afraid the US government and AAPL are very different things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apple does not have its own currency, nor powers to raise taxes, so its capacity to effect change on its environment is largely determined by its cash pile. It is now, like Porsche, essentially a hedge fund with a retail arm (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braeburn_Capital&quot;&gt;Braeburn Capital&lt;/a&gt;, AAPL's fund, for the story read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-09-30/presenting-worlds-biggest-hedge-fund-you-have-never-heard&quot;&gt;this article on zerohedge&lt;/a&gt;. Also &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7843262.stm&quot;&gt;the story of Porsche's billions&lt;/a&gt; on BBC News)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US government, by contrast, has rather more resources at its disposal. The balance is negative (as with probably every country) in that it has $10tn debt and $3tn reserves. But that doesn't entirely matter; the markets will continue to buy Treasury bonds by choice, and if they stopped the government could start forcing them to hold bonds. The US government has other resources; the US economy and the taxes it can raise, military resource, positive international relations, and importantly its strong history of not defaulting on debts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unlike a retail company, a government would be chastised for running a positive balance; why are you taxing everyone so much if you don't need the money? Only absolute monarchies and dictatorships extract more money from the populous than they need. The caveat here is that recently AAPL did return some of its cash pile, at the prompting of some of its investors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comparing the cash reserves is also fallacious in that the US government (by which I include Congress) can print more money if it needs it, as long as the effect isn't strongly inflationary, whereas AAPL cannot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really the US government is more like the property management company of a rich gated community. It doesn't matter that the property management company has a relatively small reserve; if resource were needed for security or maintenance, the community would come up with it. The US apparently has a net worth of about $123tn, whereas Apple has total equity of $123bn, so 1/1000th of the value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22288" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T11:48:55.547" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23370" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23366" CreationDate="2014-09-30T11:58:16.917" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Their story was told on several news outlets:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/lifestyle/2013/09/husband-and-wife-lose-over-500-pounds-together/&quot;&gt;ABC News&lt;/a&gt; -- &quot;Husband and Wife Lose Over 500 Pounds Together&quot; (September 17, 2013)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/16/i-lost-weight-justin-lauren-shelton_n_3719785.html&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt; -- &quot;I Lost Weight: Justin And Lauren Shelton Lost More Than 500 Pounds Together&quot; (September 16, 2013)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2423614/Husband-wife-reveal-unbelievable-transformation-losing-combined-524-POUNDS-19-months.html&quot;&gt;Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt; -- &quot;Husband and wife reveal their unbelievable transformation after losing a combined 524 POUNDS in 19 months&quot; (September 17, 2013)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.today.com/video/today/53023582#53023582&quot;&gt;Today (NBC News)&lt;/a&gt; -- &quot;Husband, wife lose more than 500 pounds&quot; (September 16, 2013)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe that's sufficient evidence: the standard for this site requires that the evidence referenced in an answer must be better than the evidence presented/questions in the OP; I hope that national news stories (in this answer) are better, more fact-checked, than an unknown Facebook page (in the OP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T12:16:52.700" LastActivityDate="2014-09-30T12:16:52.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23374" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23421" CreationDate="2014-09-30T17:03:08.173" Score="7" ViewCount="673" Body="&lt;p&gt;Of late, and perhaps it is simply the circles I wade through, I have been hearing that there is an imbalance between the decrease in the number of men who wish to get married and the number of women who want to get married.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most recent marriage figures I've seen do suggest that marriage desirability is decreasing: there are fewer people getting married today than there were 20 years ago (citation needed), but there are more people living together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, most of the sites I have seen discuss why there is a discrepancy without justifying the belief with statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question, then, is, &quot;Is there a study or group of studies which suggest that the declining occurrence of marriage is caused by a decrease in willingness of men to marry instead of a decrease in willingness in both parties?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some references for the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-smith/8-reasons-men-dont-want-t_b_3467778.html&quot;&gt;Not only has this woman written this article&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1594036756&quot;&gt;she also has a book on the topic.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.everydayhealth.com/columns/dr-laura-berman-on-love-and-sex/why-men-dont-want-to-get-married/&quot;&gt;This site claims that men want to get married less&lt;/a&gt;, but fails to address whether this is gender specific, and also fails to cite sources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://channels.isp.netscape.com/men/package.jsp?name=fte/notmarried/notmarried&quot;&gt;The assertion can be read by implication in this article, too.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5105" LastEditorUserId="5105" LastEditDate="2014-09-30T17:54:02.093" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T16:46:06.353" Title="Is the declining desirability of marriage gender specific?" Tags="|united-states|marriage|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23379" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26462" CreationDate="2014-10-01T08:33:23.567" Score="18" ViewCount="8602" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eat like a king in the morning, a prince at noon, and a peasant at dinner&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abovementioned proverb doesn't mention how, for example, &lt;code&gt;eating like a king&lt;/code&gt; is defined nor does it contain any reason why one should do it, but it is safe to assume that following it would be seen as &lt;strong&gt;healthier&lt;/strong&gt; than any other distribution / relation of the amount eaten per mealtime, assuming that we eat three times a day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Here are some sources to show that this is a notable claim:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2282413/A-large-lunch-small-dinner-really-IS-key-keeping-trim.html&quot;&gt;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2282413/A-large-lunch-small-dinner-really-IS-key-keeping-trim.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/diana-moran/healthy-eating-advice-diana-moran_b_5379697.html&quot;&gt;http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/diana-moran/healthy-eating-advice-diana-moran_b_5379697.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In books:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;q=Eat+breakfast+like+a+king%2C+lunch+like+a+prince+and+dinner+like+a+pauper!&amp;amp;gws_rd=ssl&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;q=Eat+breakfast+like+a+king%2C+lunch+like+a+prince+and+dinner+like+a+pauper!&amp;amp;gws_rd=ssl&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1047" LastEditorUserId="1047" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T19:09:13.960" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T12:49:13.033" Title="Is it healthy to &quot;Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper&quot;?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23380" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-01T09:02:09.577" Score="2" ViewCount="521" Body="&lt;p&gt;Every time I use it, it always seems to give exactly the speed my ISP is advertising +-1%, whereas other services (that actually do something, but happen to report the speed at which they do so) have only half or less the speed. Also it doesn't seem to be affected by running torrents. Speedtest gives some info &lt;a href=&quot;https://support.speedtest.net/entries/20862782-How-does-the-test-itself-work-How-is-the-result-calculated-&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; about cutting off the top 10% and the bottom 30% of speeds, then averaging. Does that really result in doubling the actual speed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides personal expeirience, I have also heard various stories of how either speedtest.net is paid by the ISP to report the speed you paid for or that the ISP prioritizes speedtest data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18013" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T09:02:09.577" Title="Does speedtest.net give an unbiased answer?" Tags="|internet|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-10-01T10:58:14.160" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23381" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23382" CreationDate="2014-10-01T11:21:56.753" Score="7" ViewCount="2591" Body="&lt;p&gt;From twitter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Australia's 'HATE' against JPN; War memorial hall in Sydney require&#xA;  visiters to trample down JP flag./ @mizubasyo シドニ&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/o7dFe.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Example photo in question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;シドニ&quot; is Japanese for &quot;Sydney&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this photo from a war memorial in Australia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T11:53:57.047" Title="Did a war memorial in Australia have a Japanese flag on the floor to trample?" Tags="|japan|world-war-ii|australia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23382" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23381" CreationDate="2014-10-01T11:21:56.753" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was noted by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masamune_Wada&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Masamune Wada&lt;/a&gt;, a Japanese politician belonging to the centre-right &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_Party&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Your Party&lt;/a&gt;. A tweet about the photo, and mentioning Masamune Wada, can be seen &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/mizubasyo/status/387578066169364480&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; The &lt;a href=&quot;http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%92%8C%E7%94%B0%E6%94%BF%E5%AE%97&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Japanese language Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; about him, translated via Google Translate, says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;September 2013, the Australian War Memorial visit time, World War II&#xA;  on the floor of the corner of the Rising Sun flag and discovered that&#xA;  video is being projected, the museum and the Australian government&#xA;  protests &lt;code&gt;[6] [5]&lt;/code&gt; . After that, the Australian government in response&#xA;  to the proposal from Current Australian Embassy of Japan, withdrew a&#xA;  projection of the video until October 15 &lt;code&gt;[8]&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even without relying upon Wikipedia, it's possible to conclude the image is genuine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doing a google search for the image gave pages such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://2ch.ki9.biz/archives/18383.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://2ch.ki9.biz/archives/18383.html&lt;/a&gt;, which also had the following image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/a0AOv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;another image, with surroundings as well&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this image, the flag (the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_Sun_Flag&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rising Sun Flag&lt;/a&gt;, not the ordinary &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Japan&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Flag of Japan&lt;/a&gt;) can be seen on the floor. However, it is part of a exhibition about World War II, and in this instance it can be walked around if one so wishes. (That being said, I'm rather surprised that a war memorial let a flag be projected upon the floor - I thought they would treat flags, even enemy ones, more sensitively than that)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That image can be seen at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theroadtoanywhere.com/a-sombre-experience-at-the-australian-war-memorial-canberra/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A sombre experience at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra&lt;/a&gt;, (not Sydney) a blog post by Dean Wickham showing several photos from the memorial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2014-10-01T11:53:57.047" LastActivityDate="2014-10-01T11:53:57.047" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23386" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-03T02:25:30.157" Score="2" ViewCount="511" Body="&lt;p&gt;For the Hindu festival of Dashain, we strip the hair from a sacrificed goat with hot water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was told that the water should be constantly heated. If it is allowed to cool before reheating, it becomes useless and it can't be used to strip the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19279" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T07:45:54.430" LastActivityDate="2023-07-03T10:52:31.930" Title="Is reheated water less effective for skinning goats?" Tags="|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23345" CreationDate="2014-10-03T04:46:22.700" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR: Yes, statistical evidence does suggest so.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to page 7 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ausstats.abs.gov.au/ausstats/subscriber.nsf/0/056A404DAA576AE6CA2571D00080E985/$File/49060_2005%20(reissue).pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the 2005 Personal Safety Study&lt;/a&gt; by the Australian Bureau of Statistics,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;17%&lt;/strong&gt; (1,293,100) of women experienced sexual assault&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where sexual assault is defined as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sexual assault includes acts of a sexual nature carried out against a person's will through the use of physical force, intimidation or coercion, or any attempts to do this. Unwanted sexual touching is excluded from sexual assault.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; As ChrisW noted, there is a 2012 version of the report, which lists the rate at &lt;strong&gt;19%&lt;/strong&gt;, suggesting that the SBS simply copied the ABS number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 2:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aifs.gov.au/acssa/statistics.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another survey&lt;/a&gt;, the International Violence Against Women Survey: the Australian Component (2004) reported  that &quot;12% of women reported experiencing sexual violence by an intimate partner (current or former) over their lifetimes&quot; and that &quot;27% of women reported sexual violence by non-intimates such as other close family members, relatives, friends, colleagues and strangers (although a number of women reported violence from both intimate partners and others)&quot;, which implies that the total number of women who reported sexual violence could be anywhere from &lt;strong&gt;27% to 39%&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21702" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2017-09-22T07:28:08.527" LastActivityDate="2017-09-22T07:28:08.527" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8807" CreationDate="2014-10-03T07:06:07.370" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general consensus was the Olympic class ships were &quot;practically&quot; unsinkable, or &quot;virtually&quot; unsinkable, or various other qualifiers that most members of the travelling public tended to ignore.  In the worst case it was believed these ships would take days to sink, plenty of time for a safe evacuation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, according to Walter Lord's first Titanic book, &lt;em&gt;A Night To Remember&lt;/em&gt;, A 1911 edition of the magazine &lt;em&gt;Shipbuilder&lt;/em&gt; stated that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the captain can, by simply moving an electric switch close the&#xA;  watertight doors throughout and make the vessel practically unsinkable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In his second Titanic book, &lt;em&gt;The Night Lives On&lt;/em&gt;, he attributes the above quotation to &lt;em&gt;The Irish News&lt;/em&gt; and The &lt;em&gt;Belfast Morning News&lt;/em&gt; article, TITANIC DESCRIBED, but also states that the &lt;em&gt;Shipbuilder's&lt;/em&gt; article has words to the same effect)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But at the time people thought most modern ships were practically unsinkable so it wasn't really outstanding for Titanic to share that label too.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also mentioned in &lt;em&gt;A Night To Remember&lt;/em&gt;, Captain Smith granted an interview to an unnamed New York newspaper after completing the maiden voyage of the RMS Adriatic (the last of the &quot;Big Four&quot; that were the predecessors of the Olympic class) in 1907:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I will say that I cannot imagine any condition which could cause a&#xA;  ship to founder. I cannot conceive of any vital disaster happening to&#xA;  this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone beyond that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.titanicinquiry.org/BOTInq/BOTReport/BOTRepBOT.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;British Board of Trade regulations&lt;/a&gt; (which had last been revised in 1906 when the 20,000 ton Adriatic was fitting out) made it legal for steamers over 10,000 Tons to vastly under-provision lifeboat places, it would seem that few people in 1912 seriously believed that any modern ship would sink before other ships reached her.  If a ship did sink the expectation was that it would take days to happen, and other ships would arrive and loan their lifeboats to the stricken vessel to make up the shortfall in boat capacity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, this is exactly what happened when the 15,000 ton &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rms-republic.com/index1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RMS Republic&lt;/a&gt; sank.  That ship took over a day to sink and aside from those killed in the initial collision, everybody got off safely and were transferred to rescue ships long before that happened.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vz49X.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;RMS Republic sinking&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like Titanic, Republic was a White Star ship, and had been built by Harland and Wolff.  While considerably smaller, she would have employed similar construction techniques and general layout of safety features of her larger successor. And like her successor, she was also considered &quot;practically unsinkable&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a personal note, I can't help feeling sometimes that you almost have to admire the innocent optimistic arrogance of the Edwardians.  It's charmingly quaint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UPDATE: I now have a primary source for the claim that the Titanic was expected to remain buoyant for a long time after an accident so I'm updating my answer to include it.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;amp;v=G4ETLFVSZFc#t=1451&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ruth Blanchard's mother was apparently nervous about sailing on the Titanic&lt;/a&gt;, due to it being a new, untested ship.  The purser reassured her that should the ship be damaged, her watertight compartments were certain to keep her afloat until help arrived.  This is an interesting remark because it supports the &quot;unsinkable with caveats&quot; view that appeared to be common at the time.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2992" LastEditorUserId="2992" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T22:25:59.303" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T22:25:59.303" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23390" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23393" CreationDate="2014-10-03T17:04:04.840" Score="10" ViewCount="797" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/stevie-wonder-is-not-blind-the-evidence-1641795715?utm_source=recirculation&amp;amp;utm_medium=recirculation&amp;amp;utm_campaign=fridayAM&quot;&gt;this lifehacker&lt;/a&gt; article, there is a group of &quot;Stevie Wonder Truthers&quot; who believe that Stevie Wonder is not actually blind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, Boy George, in particular, said that Stevie Wonder was able to locate him in a room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that Stevie Wonder is legally blind, per the definition of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindness#Legal_definition&quot;&gt;legal blindness&lt;/a&gt; in the United States?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5707" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-10-04T00:15:50.883" LastActivityDate="2014-10-04T21:51:03.637" Title="Is Stevie Wonder blind?" Tags="|celebrities|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23391" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-03T17:15:21.400" Score="3" ViewCount="440" Body="&lt;p&gt;My bag of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simply7snacks.com/quinoa-chips-sea-salt/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Simply7™ Quinoa chips&lt;/a&gt; is based on quinoa flour and contains a significant amount of added starch. It claims to have 9 grams of protein/12 grams of carbs, a 3:4 ratio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nQfiG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, pure Quinoa has only 8 g protein per 34 grams non-fiber carbs, see:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/10352/2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/10352/2&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;This is a less than a 1:4 ratio. There are no other ingredients that add a significant amount of protein. Does it really have that much protein?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22333" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-10-03T20:42:53.470" LastActivityDate="2015-09-25T02:30:55.363" Title="Quinoa chips are too high in protein?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23393" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23390" CreationDate="2014-10-03T23:46:23.063" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.loc.gov/disabilityawareness/profiles/wonder.html&quot;&gt;The Library of Congress &gt; National Disability Employment Awareness Month &gt; Featured Profile: Stevie Wonder&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Born in Saginaw, Michigan in 1950, Stevie Wonder became blind shortly after birth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thebiographychannel.co.uk/biographies/stevie-wonder.html&quot;&gt;The Biography Channel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His first album, 'Little Stevie Wonder the 12 Year Old Genius', made the child a huge star, and gave Stevie a number one hit with single 'Fingertips'. The following year, he enrolled in the Michigan School for the Blind, where he studied classical piano.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-10-03T23:46:23.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23395" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-04T13:07:37.493" Score="18" ViewCount="703" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=5WsAAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA229&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An 1825 piece&lt;/a&gt; claims: &lt;em&gt;The following inscription is written, in large characters, over the principal gate of the city of Agra, in Hindostan:&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In the first year of the reign of king Julief, two thousand married couple were separated, by the magistrate, with their own consent. The emperor was so indignant, on learning these particulars, that he abolished the privilege of divorce. In the course of the following year, the number of marriages in Agra was less than before by three thousand; the number of adulteries was greater by seven thousand; three hundred women were burned alive for poisoning their husbands; seventy-five men were burned for the murder of their wives; and the quantity of furniture broken and destroyed, in the interior of private families, amounted to the value of three millions of rupees. The emperor re-established the privilege of divorce.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above story is repeated in later papers and books about divorce: &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?ei=ge8vVJCSA5WryATdmoDwDQ&amp;amp;id=Q6goAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;dq=blake%20%22road%20to%20reno%22%20julief%20divorce&amp;amp;focus=searchwithinvolume&amp;amp;q=king%20julief&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blake (1962, pp. 80-81)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/uwolr7&amp;amp;div=5&amp;amp;id=&amp;amp;page=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Foster (1968, p. 36)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;ved=0CCAQFjAA&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.commonlaw.uottawa.ca%2Findex2.php%3Foption%3Dcom_sobi2%26sobi2Task%3Ddd_download%26fid%3D955%26Itemid%3D842&amp;amp;ei=bO4vVJ-UKtevyAT3wYKoAw&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNH6VdNcNOcIG9JLSyn9kOYb3uhD-g&amp;amp;sig2=Bg0K9Kbf5HiADZKtWm86Cw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wires (1976, p. 358)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=FzxZ2YgfD_0C&amp;amp;pg=PA183&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Riley (1991)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does or did such an inscription ever exist?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, as a follow up question, if the inscription never did exist, does the story contained in the fictitious inscription have any basis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17967" LastEditorDisplayName="user17967" LastEditDate="2020-05-29T03:26:37.817" LastActivityDate="2020-05-29T03:26:37.817" Title="Was there inscribed over the gate of Agra this story about divorce?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23400" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-05T15:23:41.760" Score="11" ViewCount="13710" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just came across this claim in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/news/letters/21621686-letters-editor&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;letter&lt;/a&gt; to The Economist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He worked the line&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SIR – &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21618846-european-unions-neighbourhood-more-troubled-ever-europes-ring-fire&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Charlemagne&lt;/a&gt; considers it “safe to assume that Johnny Cash… gave&#xA;little thought to European foreign policy” (September 20th). Actually,&#xA;Cash worked as a radio operator with the US Airforce Security Service&#xA;between 1950 and 1954 in Germany, intercepting Soviet Army&#xA;transmissions. It is said that he was the first to pick up news of&#xA;Stalin’s death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is safe to assume that he would have been very aware of&#xA;European foreign policy at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Andreas Haberbeck&#xA;Jeddah, Saudi Arabia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another example of this claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Johnny Cash Was The First American To Know About Stalin's Death&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's right, the man in black, discovered that Soviet Union Premier,&#xA;Joseph Stalin, died before US president Dwight Eisenhower even knew.&#xA;He was working as a radio operator for the military at the time of&#xA;Stalin's death and was the first person to receive the message. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.upvenue.com/article/1471-7-interesting-facts-about-johnny-cash.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Upvenue.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TIL [Today I Learnt] that Johnny Cash was the first American to hear about Joseph&#xA;Stalin's death, while working as a decoder for the US Army&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/za8t7/til_that_johnny_cash_was_the_first_american_to/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reddit&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems like this claim originated from Cash himself, in his 1997 autobiography (quoted &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.matthewaid.com/post/18219506281/johnny-cash-radio-intercept-operator&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Air Force taught me the things every military service imparts to&#xA;its enlisted men … plus one skill that’s pretty unusual: if you ever&#xA;need to know what one Russian is signaling to another in Morse code,&#xA;I’m your man. I had such a talent for that particular line of work and&#xA;such a good left ear, that in Landsberg, where the United States Air&#xA;Force Security Service ran radio intercept operations worldwide, I was&#xA;the ace. I was who they called when the hardest jobs came up. I copied&#xA;the first news of Stalin’s death. I located the signal when the first&#xA;Soviet jet bomber made its first flight from Moscow to Smolensk; we&#xA;all knew what to listen for, but I was the one who heard it. I&#xA;couldn’t believe that Russian operator. He was sending at thirty-five&#xA;words a minute by hand, a rate so fast I thought it was a machine&#xA;transmitting until I heard him screw up. He was truly exceptional, but&#xA;most of his comrades were fast enough to make the best Americans sound&#xA;like amateurs, sloppy and slow. It didn’t matter, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=6qaANnvGwGkC&amp;amp;pg=PA1951-IA2&amp;amp;dq=%22I%20was%20who%20they%20called%20when%20the%20hardest%20jobs%20came%20up.%20I%20copied%20the%20first%20news%20of%20Stalin%E2%80%99s%20death.%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=yGAxVODfCML2yQSNp4HIDQ&amp;amp;ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22I%20was%20who%20they%20called%20when%20the%20hardest%20jobs%20came%20up.%20I%20copied%20the%20first%20news%20of%20Stalin%E2%80%99s%20death.%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;later biography&lt;/a&gt; of Cash writes however:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While he was, in fact, at Landsberg on March 5, 1953, the day Joseph&#xA;Stalin died, his comment in &lt;em&gt;Cash: The Autobiography&lt;/em&gt; that &amp;quot;I was who&#xA;they called when the hardest jobs came up. I copied the first news of&#xA;Stalin's death&amp;quot; brings a wry smile to the faces of those who worked&#xA;with him. &amp;quot;That's nonsense,&amp;quot; says one. &amp;quot;He didn't understand Russian,&#xA;and if it came in code we wouldn't have been able to decipher it&#xA;anyway. It created a certain aura about his skill that in my view was&#xA;directly related to his celebrity.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: True or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17967" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2023-09-07T21:24:31.587" Title="Was Johnny Cash the first American to learn of Stalin's death?" Tags="|history|musicians|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23404" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23405" CreationDate="2014-10-06T09:46:17.397" Score="22" ViewCount="17743" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just saw this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a woman in Hong Kong discovers her husband isn’t being faithful, she is legally allowed to kill him but she can use nothing except for her hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omgfacts.com/lists/7375/In-Hong-Kong-a-woman-is-allowed-to-kill-her-cheating-husband-but-she-can-only-use-her-bare-hands&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20868" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-10-06T09:58:25.197" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T20:14:39.353" Title="Is it lawful for a cheated woman to kill her husband with her bare hands in Hong Kong?" Tags="|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23404" CreationDate="2014-10-06T10:32:03.110" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it isn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chapter of the law of Hong Kong regarding murder is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.hk/blis_ind.nsf/WebView?OpenAgent&amp;amp;vwpg=CURALLENGDOC*212*100*212.1#212.1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;212 OFFENCES AGAINST THE PERSON ORDINANCE&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't say anything about cheated wife, and the only circumstances which are specifically excused are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No punishment shall be incurred by any person who kills another by misfortune, or in his own defence, or lawfully in any other manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.hk/blis_ind.nsf/CURALLENGDOC/76B9A43F8A0BB655C8256483002846E9?OpenDocument&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;section 212.8, Excusable homicide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;section &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.hk/blis_ind.nsf/CURALLENGDOC/CD4B84D77C6EA955C82564830028473A?OpenDocument&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;212.13, Attempting to administer poison, or shooting, or attempting to shoot or drown, etc., with intent to murder&lt;/a&gt; specifically says that strangulation and suffocation, which are probably the easiest ways to kill a person with bare hands, are unlawful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any person who-&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) attempts to administer to, or attempts to cause to be administered to or to be taken by, any person any poison or other destructive thing; or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) shoots at any person; or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(c) by drawing a trigger or in any other manner, attempts to discharge any kind of loaded arms at any person; or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(d) attempts to drown, &lt;strong&gt;suffocate&lt;/strong&gt;, or &lt;strong&gt;strangle&lt;/strong&gt; any person,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with intent in any of such cases to commit murder, shall, whether any bodily injury is effected or not, be guilty of an offence triable upon indictment, and shall be liable to imprisonment for life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;emphasis mine&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And section &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.hk/blis_ind.nsf/CURALLENGDOC/B9615CC51109FBC0C825648300284741?OpenDocument&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;212.14, Attempting to commit murder by means not specified&lt;/a&gt; covers every type of murder means and methods by saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any person who, by any means other than those specified in any of the preceding sections, attempts to commit murder shall be guilty of an offence triable upon indictment, and shall be liable to imprisonment for life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've also gone over the chapters regarding family law and marriage, chapters: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.hk/BLIS_IND.NSF/WEBVIEW?OPENAGENT&amp;amp;CAP=CURALLENGDOC*178&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;178&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.hk/BLIS_IND.NSF/WEBVIEW?OPENAGENT&amp;amp;CAP=CURALLENGDOC*179&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;179&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.hk/BLIS_IND.NSF/WEBVIEW?OPENAGENT&amp;amp;CAP=CURALLENGDOC*181&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;181&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.hk/BLIS_IND.NSF/WEBVIEW?OPENAGENT&amp;amp;CAP=CURALLENGDOC*182&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;182&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of them mention anything about such a case. It's reasonable to expect a law regarding allowing a cheated wife to kill her husband, to appear in either the Family Law or the Murder and Violence chapters of the law book. And such a law or case doesn't appear there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, one must remember that the HK law is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Hong_Kong&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;based on the British law&lt;/a&gt;, which doesn't and never did permit such an act.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/news/getting-it-wrong-media-rushes-to-report-on-supreme-courts-health-care-decision/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;other cases&lt;/a&gt;, a court ruling was misinterpreted by the media, creating a false myth which continues to live on-line through &amp;quot;shocking facts&amp;quot; sites, none of them giving a source for their claim. Moreover, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/hongkong/1367864/Cheating-men-fuel-building-boom-in-China.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; cited by the site appearing in the question says that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her federation is demanding new rules to plug loopholes in the country's outdated marriage law that allows cheating spouses the freedom to have affairs without risking punishment in the courts. In response the Guangdong provincial government has announced that local courts will allow women, including residents of Hong Kong, whose husbands have taken second wives, to sue the other woman for compensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under the new laws, any man found to be living with a woman who is not his legal wife could be sentenced to two years in a labour camp. The laws would also allow a woman whose husband has formed a second relationship to claim half of all the property he has given to the other wife, even if it is held in the other woman's name. In doing so the courts ruled that the purchase of items such as houses, cars and other gifts for a mistress or a prostitute is in violation of the marital relationship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citing the current status of the law regarding adultery without mentioning anything about murder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Under the current circumstances, where no such law appears in the law book under the Family Law and Bodily Harm sections, and none of the sites claiming the claim cite sources, a reasonable conclusion is that this is simply not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T20:14:39.353" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23408" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23409" CreationDate="2014-10-06T18:47:35.947" Score="3" ViewCount="430" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim is by David Feinstein, pH.D. in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.innersource.net/ep/images/stories/downloads/Acupoint_Stimulation_Research_Review.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Acupoint stimulation in treating &#xA;psychological disorders: Evidence of efficacy&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;[.pdf]&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially it is a claim that stimulating &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acupuncture&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;acupuncture points&lt;/a&gt; during the mental exploration of an emotional problem &lt;em&gt;rapidly produces desired changes in the neurochemistry&#xA;involved in that problem&lt;/em&gt; [pg 18 on source above].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is allegedly the cornerstone of &quot;energy psychology&quot; - but I find no convincing, peer reviewed, empirical experiments on the field. All I could find was one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22122622&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; that doesn't seem to claim proof, positive or negative, for the &quot;field.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to the claim, supported by a peer-reviewed medical publication?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5970" LastActivityDate="2019-08-21T23:46:13.917" Title="Does tapping on &quot;acupoints&quot; during an emotional problem change chemistry in the brain?" Tags="|psychology|energy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23408" CreationDate="2014-10-06T21:31:29.823" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since brain chemistry is an incredibly complex, vast, and, most importantly, unknown topic, nobody can answer the question itself. Brain chemicals show interdependencies much beyond our current understanding, especially with regards to psychological states and conditions. So we cannot answer the question much beyond saying: maybe. But what we can do is evaluate the specific claims the author (Feinstein) makes, and see what the references he is providing for them state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feinstein provides two references to studies he interprets as discussing the beneficial effect of &quot;acupoints&quot; on brain chemistry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second, &lt;a href=&quot;https://s3.amazonaws.com/eft-academic-articles/CortisolFinal.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Church, D., Yount, G., &amp;amp; Brooks, A. (in press). The effect of Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) on stress biochemistry: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.&lt;/a&gt;, is reported to show that &quot;the treatment significantly reduced cortisol levels&quot;. This is indeed what Church et al. report; cortisol levels fell on average by ~25%. It fell by only ~15% in the alternative treatment group (a therapeutic interview). However, it also fell by 15% in the control (no treatment) group, so basically, they compared &quot;EFT&quot; (supposedly similar to &quot;acupoints&quot;) to something that had no meaningful effect on cortisol. However, in itself, touching leading to cortisol decrease is not surprising, as e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16162447&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;massages lead to lowered cortisol levels&lt;/a&gt; - by, it seems, on average over 30%.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Furthermore, cortisol is not a prototypical &quot;brain chemical&quot;. Its main effect is probably regulating blood sugar, and generally nutrient metabolism. It can be used as an index of stress, but a slight and short-term decrease in cortisol is not necessarily what I'd universally consider a &quot;desirable change in brain chemistry&quot;. However, it can be a used as a proxy of transient relaxation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first reference is much more vague; Feinstein writes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Biochemical effects of acupoint stimulation are also being identified, with neurotransmitters, endorphins, and other brain chemicals apparently being influenced by tapping (Ruden, 2005). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking up &lt;a href=&quot;http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.126.4122&amp;amp;rep=rep1&amp;amp;type=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ruden&lt;/a&gt;, we find: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we would like to speculate about a potential mechanism for tapping of the fear response&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that is indeed what he does. Ruden speculates, which is okay, but that's the extent of it. He cites no direct research on the question itself, reports no actual empirical results of direct tests of his ideas. So, &quot;do acupoints decrease desirable changes in brain chemistry&quot;? Maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, let it be said that the Feinstein paper presents some truly horrible statistical methods and is an insult to the idea of meta-analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19114" LastActivityDate="2014-10-06T21:31:29.823" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23410" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-06T23:29:02.807" Score="7" ViewCount="776" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading in the South Africa newspapers about the awful &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Synagogue_Church_building_collapse&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;church building collapse&quot;&gt;church building collapse&lt;/a&gt; of the popular prophet T. B. Joshua in Nigeria lead me to the claims of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaco_van_der_Westhuyzen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;Jaco van der Westhuyzen&quot;&gt;Jaco van der Westhuyzen&lt;/a&gt; regarding T. B. Joshua's miraculous healing powers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From an early age I was very religious. Both my parents were Dutch Reformed Christians. But it was not until 2000 that faith healing and TB Joshua, the Nigerian they call 'the Prophet', came into my life. I had just broken into the Springbok team when I ruptured my posterior cruciate ligament playing against Western Province one Sunday in August 2000. The doctor took X-rays and said I needed to have an operation that Wednesday...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Towards the end of the service about 300 of us gathered in what they call the 'healing line'. The Prophet walked down the line, identifying illnesses. When he came to me, he said I should remove my leg brace. He looked at me and it was like he had x-ray vision, like he could see immediately what was wrong with my knee. Moving his hands around as if he was tugging a rope, he seemed to pull out all the dirt and other stuff that was in my knee. Then he said to me: 'Stand up and run.' The brace had been on for weeks and running should have been impossible. Well, I trusted my faith and started to run - and at full speed. There was no pain. Back home I had another x-ray, and it showed the ligament was fine. The doctor could not believe or explain it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://observer.theguardian.com/osm/story/0,,1140742,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one of many sources&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is routinely quoted in otherwise respectable newspapers as fact. It caught my skeptical attention because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;faith healing, obviously&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the claimant is a reasonably well-known public figure&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the claim seems testable due to before/after medical examinations&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;claimant resumed his professional playing career&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I have been unable to find more details other than the oft-quoted bits above or super short summaries of the miracle. Can anyone help unravel the mystery of the Springbok Knee?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8419" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-09-01T15:44:35.593" LastActivityDate="2023-10-01T16:09:00.960" Title="Was Jaco van der Westhuyzen's knee faith-healed by TB Joshua?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|religion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23412" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23345" CreationDate="2014-10-07T02:29:38.963" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The statistics SBS quoted are as @raptortech97 cited from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the official statistician of the Commonwealth of Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer the other arm of your question, they are generally in line with statistics reported by other OECD countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/SV-DataSheet-a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Centre for Disease Control&lt;/a&gt; puts the lifetime rate at 18.4% for US women:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nearly 1 in 5 (18.3%) women and 1 in 71 men&#xA;  (1.4%) reported experiencing rape at some time in&#xA;  their lives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has for 2011 per annum (not lifetime) rates for &quot;Sexual violence&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/statistics/crime.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Sexual violence&quot; means rape and sexual assault; including sexual offences against children &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the warning that cross-country comparisons are problematic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please note that when using the figures, any cross-national comparisons should be conducted with caution because of the differences that exist between the legal definitions of offences in countries, or the different methods of offence counting and recording.                                                                                            &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has Australia at 25 per 100,000 women per annum. Of the 29 OECD countries in the sample (Denmark, Korea and the United States are not included; Iceland and Turkey have no data for the relevant year and adopting a 2011 census figure of 62.3 million for UK population), Australia ranks 18th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, unfortunately the statistics are true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more unfortunately, they are not particularly high by OECD comparisons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17834" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T06:34:51.637" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T06:34:51.637" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23415" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-07T08:57:13.177" Score="5" ViewCount="971" Body="&lt;p&gt;As shared on Facebook: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wakeup-world.com/2014/05/31/arthritis-cure-found-in-nature/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wake Up World: Arthritis Cure Found in Nature?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article claims that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boron&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;boron&lt;/a&gt; kills amoebae that cause rheumatoid arthritis. It also claims that areas of the world that have higher boron concentrations in the soil have lower rheumatoid arthritis rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did you know that there is a direct correlation between the incidence of arthritis and the presence of trace mineral boron in the body? [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Newnham also found quite a bit of evidence relating the correlation of boron concentration in certain geographical areas and the development of not just rheumatoid arthritis, but common arthritis as well. He found that in certain areas of Australia, where drinking water contained high levels of boron, there were no incidence of arthritis in humans and animals! [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, worldwide evidence is now starting to link low intake of boron with increased levels of arthritis &lt;strong&gt;— proof that arthritis is a symptom of nutritional deficiencies and not simply a “normal” process of aging&lt;/strong&gt;, as the medical industry would have us believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to recommend some types of food that are (allegedly) high in boron.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there evidence that increased ingestion of boron reduces the incidence or severity of rheumatoid arthritis?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I'm less fussed about whether the proposed mechanism (i.e. boron kills arthritis-causing amoebae) works as to whether the treatment has been proven effective.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-11-22T09:47:46.457" Title="Is arthritis a symptom of boron-deficiency in the diet?" Tags="|nutrition|environmental-health|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23416" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-07T10:29:20.433" Score="5" ViewCount="370" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.capital.fr/enquetes/revelations/son-remede-contre-le-sida-les-labos-n-en-veulent-pas-964514&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article (in French)&lt;/a&gt; on the (usually respectable) website, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.capital.fr/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Capital&lt;/a&gt;, Robert Vachy discovered an drug named Amovir which destroys &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_envelope&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;viral envelopes&lt;/a&gt;. According to the article, the anti-viral drug was tested at the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteur_Institute&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pasteur Institute&lt;/a&gt; back in 1996 and was found to kill 99.99% of viruses tested. Jean-Claude Chermmann, one of the co-discoverers of HIV, claimed that &quot;Mr. Vachy has a new and very promising drug.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am highly skeptical of the claims in this article for the following reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There seems to be no scientific publication neither by &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=Robert+Vachy&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=1%2C5&amp;amp;as_vis=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Robert Vachy&lt;/a&gt; nor about &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=Amovir&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amovir&lt;/a&gt;. There are however some answer to his readers' comments at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inserm.fr/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Inserm&lt;/a&gt; (a national institutde of medical research) and a few &lt;a href=&quot;http://worldwide.espacenet.com/searchResults?ST=singleline&amp;amp;locale=en_EP&amp;amp;submitted=true&amp;amp;DB=worldwide.espacenet.com&amp;amp;query=Robert+Vachy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;patents in his name&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The article was updated with some comments by the Pasteur Institute stating that Mr. Vachy submitted two antiviral molecules for testing back in 1996, and both were shown to be antiviral during &lt;em&gt;in vitro&lt;/em&gt; testing, but neither were able to prevent replication of HIV.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any evidence that Amovir (or any drug produced by Robert Vachy) is an effective anti-viral drug?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2086" LastEditorUserId="2086" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T14:25:23.607" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T03:57:31.393" Title="Is Amovir an effective anti-viral drug?" Tags="|pharmaceutical|drug-development|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23417" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23420" CreationDate="2014-10-07T14:11:06.793" Score="6" ViewCount="1829" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to hear that dogs can be given vegetarian dog food, but that cats need meat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure therefore how to interpret the following PETA claim about cats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peta.org/living/companion-animals/vegetarian-cats-dogs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vegetarian Cats and Dogs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you have been feeding your companion animals commercial pet foods, you may be jeopardizing their health. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cats are often more finicky than dogs, and their nutritional requirements are more complicated. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;James Peden found vegetarian sources of both taurine and vitamin A, plus arachidonic acid, another essential feline nutrient. He then developed veterinarian-approved supplements Vegecat™ and Vegekit™ to add to his recipes. These recipes are probably the healthiest way to feed cats a vegan diet at this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What evidence is there for the healthiness of vegetarian cat food?&lt;/strong&gt; Is it &amp;quot;more healthy&amp;quot; (for the cat), or &amp;quot;as healthy&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;less healthy&amp;quot; than a control (e.g. than some other commercial cat food[s]).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, according to this little page, vegetarian cat food seems complicated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The cited Vegecat™ and Vegekit™ are &amp;quot;added to his recipes&amp;quot; rather than being pre-bought cat food&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Later it suggests you add &amp;quot;digestive enzymes&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;cooked or processed food&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Later it says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you decide to prepare your own vegetarian dog or cat food, we recommend that you read Vegetarian Cats &amp;amp; Dogs to ensure that you understand the nutritional needs of dogs and cats. Do not rely on this factsheet for complete information. The book has several recipes and helpful hints. If your library or bookstore doesn’t have it, you can order it from Harbingers of a New Age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So can you actually even buy, does anyone make and sell commercially, a vegetarian cat-food?&lt;/strong&gt; Or is this a realm of home-cooked experimentation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm willing to consider answers/evidence which include almost any (non-strict) definition of &amp;quot;vegetarian&amp;quot;: even including for example milk or shell-fish; but not meat and meat by-products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-12-10T05:47:08.780" Title="Can domestic cats be healthy as vegetarians?" Tags="|nutrition|zoology|vegetarianism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2153" CreationDate="2014-10-07T15:19:37.637" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;A new study did find that in &lt;a href=&quot;http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/06/11/study-adults-raised-by-same-sex-parents-worse-off/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;25 of 40 social and economic measures&lt;/a&gt; that children raised by a gay parent had worse outcomes than children raised by two biological parents. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ionainstitute.eu/pdfs/1-s2.0-S0049089X12000610-main.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;New Family Structures Study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas at Austin surveyed 3,000 people between the ages of 18-39. Of the 3,000, 175 people said their mother had a same-sex relationship while 73 said the same about their father.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Out of the people surveyed, more people raised under gay parents were arrested, have a lower level of household income and also said they were negatively impacted growing up than those under biological parents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T13:52:55.087" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23417" CreationDate="2014-10-07T15:40:44.427" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a link to an article about feline diet evolving idiosyncratic needs:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?FromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=607588&amp;amp;fileId=S0954422402000070&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Idiosyncratic nutrient requirements of cats appear to be diet-induced evolutionary adaptations*&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The nutrient requirements of domestic cats support the thesis that their idiosyncratic requirements arose from evolutionary pressures arising from a rigorous diet of animal tissue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cats can't eat the wrong food without detriment to health. While science can certainly create an artificial food for any living thing with enough time and research, most people don't research a cat food well enough to understand the pros and cons fully.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Food manufacturers are held to certain standards. While I'm not sure about the recent developments, historically they bear two main concerns as listed in this link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/7996232&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Association of American Feed Control Officials Dog and Cat Food Nutrient Profiles: substantiation of nutritional adequacy of complete and balanced pet foods in the United States.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first means is by formulating the food so that nutrient levels fall within the ranges as established in the AAFCO Dog and Cat Food Nutrient Profiles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second means of substantiation is through the conduct of feeding trials following AAFCO protocols.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beware that secondary dietary concerns are not enforced (for example there are no dietary restrictions on nutrient density that I know of, leaving them eating far too many calories to satisfy their basic needs).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Commercial pet foods have the main benefit of providing essential nutrients, but they do so (usually if not always) in the cheapest way possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22364" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T19:17:57.713" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23421" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23374" CreationDate="2014-10-07T16:36:20.443" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The share of young men (ages 18 to 34) who say that having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives has dropped six percentage points since 1997, from 35% to 29%. For women, the opposite effect occurred, as the share voicing this opinion rose from 28% to 37%.   (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-number/young-men-and-women-differ-on-the-importance-of-a-successful-marriage/&quot;&gt;Pew Research&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that is is age-limited, and &quot;expect a successful marriage&quot; can be parsed &lt;strong&gt;quite liberally&lt;/strong&gt; (e.g. may exclude people who want to marry but expect an unsuccessful marriage; OR may include people who don't want to marry but think that if they do, it will be successful).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was another survey (or 2) of people at OKCupid and/or match.com, several thousand people sized. Their methodologies looked suspect enough that I didn't bother citing either (for one thing, any respondents to dating online site survey are already self-selected into a giant bias. People who don't want to marry are all on Tinder or whatnot :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2014-10-07T16:46:06.353" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T16:46:06.353" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2153" CreationDate="2014-10-07T17:00:03.893" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR Version:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some significant problems with the APA's claim in 2005 that there are no negative effects. Further research (with larger sample sizes, more representative participants, more outcomes analyzed, and longer-running) is necessary to determine if there are negative effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a good paper titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1937762&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Same-Sex Parenting and Children’s Outcomes: A Closer Examination of the American Psychological Association’s Brief on Lesbian and Gay Parenting&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. They give a pretty good summary of what they are looking at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;The overarching question of this paper is: Are the conclusions of the research presented in the 2005 APA Brief on “Lesbian and Gay Parenting” valid and precise, based on the cited scientific evidence? In the present paper, seven questions are posed, examined, and addressed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;(1) How culturally, ethnically, and economically diverse were the gay/lesbian households in the published literature behind the APA Brief?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;(2) How many studies of gay/lesbian parents had no heterosexual comparison group?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;(3) When there were comparison groups, which groups were compared?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;(4) Does a scientifically-viable study exist to contradict the APA’s published&#xA;  statement that &quot;not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents&#xA;  to be disadvantaged&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;(5) What types of outcomes have been investigated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;(6) What do we know about the long-term outcomes of children of lesbian and&#xA;  gay parents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;(7) Have the studies in this area committed the type II error and prematurely&#xA;  concluded that heterosexual couples and gay and lesbian couples produce similar parental outcomes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2005 APA Brief in question states that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant respect relative to children of heterosexual parents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the paper points out multiple significant flaws in the research referenced by that brief. The paper does not question the validity of the research done, but it does show how we should be highly skeptical of the claim made by the APA until further research has been done.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding what the paper found for each of the seven questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In summary response to Question 1 (&quot;How culturally, ethnically, and&#xA;  economically diverse were the gay/lesbian households in the published literature behind the APA Brief?&quot;), the reader may ascertain that none of the cited articles (pp. 23–45) focus on African-American, Latino, or Asian-American families. Further, many studies do not include any minority individuals or families. Finally, comparison studies on children of gay fathers were almost non-existent as well. By their own reports, social researchers examining same-sex parenting have repeatedly selected non-representative, homogeneous samples of privileged lesbian mothers to represent all same-sex parents. This pattern across three decades of research raises significant questions regarding lack of diversity and lack of generalizability in the same-sex parenting studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How many studies of gay/lesbian parents had no heterosexual comparison group? (This is actually the response for question two)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of the 59 publications cited by the APA in the annotated bibliography section entitled ―Empirical Studies Specifically Related to Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children‖ (pp. 23–45), 33 involved a heterosexual comparison group. In direct response to Question 2, 26 (44.1 percent) of the studies on same-sex parenting did not include a heterosexual control group. In well-conducted science, it is important to have a clear comparison group before drawing conclusions regarding differences or the lack thereof. We see that nearly half of the ―Empirical Studies Specifically Related to Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children‖ referenced in the APA Brief allowed no basis for&#xA;  comparison between these two groups (see Table A). To proceed with precision, this fact does not negate the APA claim. It does, however, dilute it considerably as we are left with not 59, but 33, studies with heterosexual comparison groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When there were comparison groups, which groups were compared?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because children in marriage-based intact families have historically fared better than children in cohabiting, divorced, step, or single-parent families on the above outcomes, the question of what &quot;groups&quot; researchers selected to represent heterosexual parents in the same-sex parenting studies becomes critical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In total, in at least 13 of the 33 comparison studies listed in the APA Brief’s list of &quot;Empirical Studies&quot; (pp. 23–45) that include heterosexual comparison groups, the researchers explicitly sampled &quot;single parents&quot; as representatives for heterosexual parents. The repeated (and perhaps even modal) selection of single-parent families as a comparison heterosexual-parent group is noteworthy, given that a nonpartisan Child Trends (2002) review has stated that &quot;children in single-parent families are more likely to have problems than are children who live in intact families headed by two biological parents.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As we return to the APA’s section of 33 published &quot;Empirical Studies&quot; (pp. 23– 45) that directly involve heterosexual comparison groups, we see that the repeated, and perhaps modal, practice of same-sex parenting researchers has been to use single parents as heterosexual representatives. Nebulously defined &quot;mothers&quot; and &quot;couples&quot; are frequently used as heterosexual comparison groups, but only in rare cases are explicitly intact, marriage-based families used as the group representing heterosexual parents. This is important because the intact, marriage-based family is the family form consistently associated with best children’s outcomes in large-scale research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it appears much of the research has found children raised by homosexual parents to be comparable in outcomes to children raised in conditions known to be sub-optimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Question 4 asked: Does a scientifically viable study exist to contradict the APA’s published statement that &quot;not a single study has found children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged&quot;? The answer is yes. Sarantakos (1996) controlled for &quot;education, occupation, and socio-economic status&quot; and then, based on teacher reports, compared marriage-based families with homosexual families and found nine significant differences—with children from marriage-based families rating higher in eight areas. By objective standards, compared with the studies cited by the APA Brief, the Sarantakos study was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a) The largest study to examine children’s outcomes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;b) One of the most comparative (only about five other studies used three&#xA;  comparison groups), and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;c) Perhaps the most comprehensively triangulated study (five data sources)&#xA;  conducted on same-sex parenting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Accordingly, this study deserves the attention of scientists interested in the question of homosexual and heterosexual parenting, rather than the dismissal it received from APA. As we conclude the examination of Question 4, let us review a portion of APA’s&#xA;  published negation of Sarantakos’ study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;[Children Australia, the journal where the article was published] cannot be&#xA;considered a source upon which one should rely for understanding the state of&#xA;scientific knowledge in this field, particularly when the results contradict&#xA;those that have been repeatedly replicated in studies published in better&#xA;known scientific journals.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Patterson and the APA dismissed the Sarantakos study, in part, because it contradicted the &quot;no significant difference&quot; findings that had been &quot;repeatedly replicated in studies published in better known scientific journals.&quot; For other scientists, however, the salient point behind Sarantakos’ findings is that the novel comparison group of marriage-based families introduced significant differences in children’s outcomes (as opposed to the recurring &quot;no difference&quot; finding with single-mother and &quot;couple&quot; samples). Additional studies with intact, marriage-based families as the heterosexual comparison group are conspicuously rare in the APA Brief’s list of &quot;Empirical Studies Specifically Related to Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children&quot; (pp. 23–45).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In response to the present article’s Question 5 (what types of outcomes have been investigated for children of gay/lesbian families?), it may be concluded: In the same-sex parenting research that undergirded the 2005 APA Brief, it appears that gender-related outcomes were the dominant research concern, to the neglect of other important outcomes. To be more precise, Table A lists several categories of information regarding 59 published empirical studies; one of these categories is the &quot;outcome studied.&quot; More than 20 studies have examined gender-related outcomes, but there was a dearth of peer-reviewed journal articles from which to form science-based conclusions in myriad areas of societal concern including: intergenerational poverty, criminality, college education and/or labor force contribution, drug/alcohol abuse, suicide, sexual activity and early childbearing, and eventual divorce as adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did any peer-reviewed, same-sex parenting study cited by the 2005 APA Brief (pp. 23–45) track the societally significant long-term outcomes into adulthood? No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible that &quot;the major impact&quot; of same-sex parenting might &quot;not occur during childhood or adolescence...[and that it will rise] in adulthood as serious romantic relationships move center stage&quot;? Is it possible that &quot;when it comes time to choose a life mate and build a new family&quot; that the effects of same-sex parenting will similarly &quot;crescendo&quot; as they did in Wallerstein’s study? It is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From a scientific perspective, the unfortunate answer to the question regarding the long-term (i.e., adult) outcomes of lesbian and gay parenting is that we have no empirical basis for responding, because not a single peer-reviewed comparison study has followed same-sex parented children across time and into mid-adulthood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have the studies in this area committed the Type II error?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Same-sex parenting studies have not employed large enough samples to overcome the possibility, or probability, of the Type II error, thereby &quot;substantially increasing [the] likelihood&quot; of failing to find differences. Further, significant critiques provided by social research methodology specialists Lerner and Nagai (2001) were not cited in the 2005 APA Brief. If the conclusion to be drawn is that there are no parenting differences between same-sex and heterosexual couples, such a conclusion cannot be drawn at the present time, given this problem with the Type II error, pervasive in the same-sex parenting literature.&#xA;  The APA Publication Manual urges researchers to &quot;take seriously the statistical power considerations&quot; and &quot;routinely provide evidence&quot; of adequate statistical power and effect sizes, however, a review of the 59 articles cited in the APA Brief (pp. 23-45), revealed that only a few complied. Further examination indicated that of the comparison studies, zero studies reached the &quot;minimum requirement&quot; of 393 to detect a small effect size. Indeed, only two comparison studies reached half of the minimum requirement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, here's their overall conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We now return to the overarching question of this paper: &lt;em&gt;Are we witnessing the emergence of a new family form that (unlike cohabiting, divorced, or single-parent families) provides a context for children that is equivalent to the intact family?&lt;/em&gt; Even after an extensive reading of the same-sex parenting literature, the author cannot offer a high confidence, data-based &quot;yes&quot; or &quot;no&quot; response to this question. The data are insufficient to support a strong claim either way, and thus insufficient to produce a definitive binary statement. Such a statement would not be grounded in science. Representative, large- sample studies are needed—many of them, including high quality longitudinal studies (i.e., Table B). Although some same-sex opponents have made &quot;egregious overstatements&quot; and, conversely, some same-sex parenting researchers seem to have implicitly contended for an &quot;exceptionally clear&quot; verdict of &quot;no difference&quot; between same-sex and heterosexual parents since 1992, a closer examination leads to the conclusion that strong assertions, including those made by the APA, were not empirically warranted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The scientific conclusions in this domain will be clearer as researchers: (a) move from small convenience samples to larger nationally representative samples, (b) increasingly examine critical societal and economic concerns that emerge during adolescence and adulthood, (c) include more diverse same-sex families (e.g., gay fathers, racial minorities, and those without middle-high socioeconomic status), (d) include intact, marriage-based heterosexual families as comparison groups, and (e) acknowledge and respond to experts’ methodological critiques in the effort to refine and add validity and rigor to findings. In connection with this latter point, it is particularly vital that statistical power no longer be ignored. Taking these steps will help lead the field towards more nuanced and scientifically informed responses to significant questions affecting families and children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ionainstitute.eu/pdfs/1-s2.0-S0049089X12000610-main.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2500537&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt; that show negative effects. They attempt to use more random samples in order to avoid self-selection bias. Neither can conclusively say what is causing the negative effects - from the former:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although the findings reported herein may be explicable in part by a variety of forces uniquely problematic for child development in lesbian and gay families—including a lack of social support for parents, stress exposure resulting from persistent stigma, and modest or absent legal security for their parental and romantic relationship statuses—the empirical claim that no notable differences exist must go. While it is certainly accurate to affirm that sexual orientation or parental sexual behavior need have nothing to do with the ability to be a good, effective parent, the data evaluated herein using population-based estimates drawn from a large, nationally-representative sample of young Americans suggest that it may affect the reality of family experiences among a significant number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21196" LastEditorUserId="21196" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T19:57:54.607" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T19:57:54.607" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23423" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20660" CreationDate="2014-10-07T17:04:50.613" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The closest thing anyone has ever produced to proof that monkeys are eaten alive is this &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20071017013132/http://maxent.org/ch/monkey_brains_ad.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1998 article in Apple Daily&lt;/a&gt;, a popular Hong Kong newspaper. It shows an unconscious monkey about to be decapitated, and then a photo of the brains, clearly from the same meal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ck5SJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Monkey brains&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;However&lt;/strong&gt;, there is a crucial thing missing here: the monkey was &quot;alive&quot; (all meat is alive before it is killed...) but it was knocked out and was never &lt;strong&gt;eaten alive&lt;/strong&gt;; the patrons did not scoop the brains out of a screaming monkey, which is how the gruesome legend usually goes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The translator of the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20071017013155/http://maxent.org/ch/monkey_brains.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; that he had never once heard of a town where monkey brains could actually be eaten from a living, breathing monkey. He had often heard of this as a second-hand rumor, and occasionally as something experienced in childhood, but there was never a specific village or town named where the practice existed. He therefore dubbed this a myth made up to scare urbanites. Locals will tell urbanites, &quot;it's a very backwards place, they eat live monkey brains over there,&quot; and then gleefully repeat the macabre myth, but it's very rare for anyone to ever say they had some for themselves. (When I was in Japan, I was personally told that there was a live monkey brain restaurant in the back streets of Fukuoka -- invitation-only, of course. Someone had modified the common rumor to make it local.) The Apple Daily story even says that they had the story told to them with an apology that the practice no longer exists. In a part of the world with many unusual foods, such a rumor apparently can apply to anywhere remote enough and has entertainment value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I agree with the translator that the specific question asked about &quot;traditional cuisine&quot; can be answered with a firm &quot;no&quot;. Monkeys are sometimes available for purchase at the market in southwest China, Vietnam and Malaysia, and I suppose it's not out of the question that a monkey could be beaten into submission and eaten live, but live monkey brains have never been &quot;on the menu&quot; as local cuisine and no one has ever been able to point to a specific location where they can be eaten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major roadblock to such &quot;traditional cuisine&quot; comes up in Apple Daily's follow-up story in 2001. They returned to the monkey brain village and wrote that &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.today/eLGxb&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the practice was still ongoing&lt;/a&gt;. But they also reported that monkeys at the bazaar knew the fate that awaited them and did not take it sitting down. I believe this poses the biggest problem to eating live monkey brains: it will not be a pleasant experience if the monkey fails to cooperate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastEditorUserId="22367" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T23:44:57.827" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T23:44:57.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23424" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14090" CreationDate="2014-10-07T18:16:09.030" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2018 update: Please see the other two answers for evidence that the photo attached below is of the sign being &lt;em&gt;repainted&lt;/em&gt;. Newspaper sources don't directly attest to this, but there was widespread censorship at the time.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it has been spread far and wide that this occurred, and some even date it to Ginza in 1948, this is the actual sign that appeared in Ginza that year:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2hHzQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Toshiyo Oda&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see, there are no issues with the spelling, although print and cursive have been mixed. Perhaps someone saw the second cursive &quot;L&quot; and misread the message at first, then passed the chuckle along to their friends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I Googled this to see if anyone had written about it in Japanese, and found the following: &quot;When I saw the words 'Japan Instant Construction Company' written in Japanese I couldn't help laughing. On the left is written 'Marvelously Superfast Construction From Scratch'. Everyone likes to say that their company gets the job done fast, but 'instant construction' is a real accomplishment. Like instant ramen!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastEditorUserId="22367" LastEditDate="2018-04-16T00:18:57.030" LastActivityDate="2018-04-16T00:18:57.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16234" CreationDate="2014-10-07T19:47:09.683" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have done much research into Jewish settlement in imperial Japan but I have never once seen the claim that Jews seriously proposed a link of pan-Asian brotherhood. It is true that some of the &lt;em&gt;Japanese&lt;/em&gt; who rescued them believed in some kind of pan-ethnic brotherhood, such as Norihiro Yasue (my article outlining his ideology is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.academia.edu/7555920/Divine_Scripts_and_Lost_Histories_in_Japanese_Esoterica&quot;&gt;on academia.edu&lt;/a&gt;), but this was not the explicit reason given for rescuing Jews. The actual reason for the policy was humanitarian need and the duty to grant asylum to political refugees. In the early 1930s, it seems, some Japanese officials wanted to create a Jewish colony in Manchuria to attract their money, but that ended up having little influence on the status quo that emerged when World War II and the Holocaust actually began.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the visas to get to Japan were written by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiune_Sugihara&quot;&gt;Chiune Sugihara&lt;/a&gt; and you can read about his motivations for yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the humorous quote, Wikipedia points out that &quot;orientalim&quot; is not good Yiddish and it is unlikely that he actually said this, regardless of what was actually said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastActivityDate="2014-10-07T19:47:09.683" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23426" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20660" CreationDate="2014-10-07T20:20:05.237" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question in the title differs from the question in the text. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to the title question is &quot;Yes&quot;: It is certainly part of traditional cuisine some places in the world, if perhaps exceedingly rare or luxurious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example: The &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%85%AB%E7%8F%8D#.E6.B8.85.E4.BB.A3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;man han quan xi&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (or the Manchu-Han Full Course), indulged in by Qing Emperors, consisted of such treats as: Camel's Hump, Bear's Paw, Monkey Brain, Gorilla Lip, Elephant Trunk, Leopard Foetus, Rhinoceros Tail, and Deer Sinew. These are merely the Eight Treasures from the Mountain. There are also several other sets of Eight Treasures that one must assemble before one can call it the Full Course. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These other treasures consist also of a long list of other very exotic things, most of which are no longer commonly eaten by most Chinese people. With the exceptions of Bird's Nest and Shark's Fin (which are totally bizarre things to eat for non-Chinese people, but which are still very common).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.tvbs.com.tw/entry/484838&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2004 article&lt;/a&gt; claims that it can still be found in Guangxi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This other &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.tvbs.com.tw/entry/484902&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2004 article&lt;/a&gt;, also by TVBS, reports that a monkey was adopted by the Taoyuan County Department of Agriculture, only after members of the public saw it with its head shaven and being offered &quot;for sale&quot; and bought it out of sympathy and then gave it to the Department. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Taoyuan County Department of Agriculture confirmed for the first&#xA;  time that there are Taiwanese people eating monkey brains for&#xA;  nourishment ... The police suspect that there are criminal parties who&#xA;  are rearing monkeys for this purpose and so, besides monitoring these&#xA;  activities closely, the police also wish to remind the public, that gluttony&#xA;  may lead to one becoming an accomplice to the crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/t3vdZ.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another bulletin board posting with &lt;a href=&quot;http://bbs.tiexue.net/post_4457528_1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a seemingly very detailed, though uncorroborated story&lt;/a&gt; about a live monkey brain being served in a Guangdong restaurant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baike.com/wiki/%E6%BB%A1%E6%B1%89%E5%85%A8%E5%B8%AD&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;baidu article&lt;/a&gt; describes the supposed procedure used traditionally (100+ years ago):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The monkey brain serving table must be specially made. In the centre&#xA;  is cut a hole, through which the monkey's head can emerge, tie up its&#xA;  limbs, and tightly secure it beneath the table, have only the monkey's&#xA;  head emerge, its head hair has already been shaven previously, when&#xA;  eating, the owner uses a hammer to crack the skull, then use a knife&#xA;  to pry open the skull, pour out the brain liquid, and the guests then&#xA;  each use a silver ladle to serve themselves, and eat all of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This 2012 English language article tells us that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/china-cracks-down-monkey-brain-other-wild-animal-delicacies-916161&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;China Cracks Down On Monkey Brain And Other Wild Animal Delicacies&quot;&lt;/a&gt; (though it doesn't claim that it's &lt;em&gt;live&lt;/em&gt; monkey brains that are being cracked down upon).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer to the question in the text (&quot;Is there really such a somewhat common practice?&quot;) is probably &quot;No&quot;: Nowhere can it be called &quot;somewhat common&quot;. (It is however of course possible that I am neglecting some undiscovered tribes in the Amazon or what-not, or some far-flung Chinese village somewhere which likes to indulge in this traditional cuisine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17967" LastEditorDisplayName="user17967" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T22:10:57.223" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T22:10:57.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23429" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9179" CreationDate="2014-10-07T23:54:58.080" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been trying to find that same answer. Results are totally mixed. A report I have that went from 1986-1989 showed nearly 100% effectiveness among those wearing the masks. That said the locals have never liked the idea (especially honey collectors who claimed the mask affected their ability to work) so there may be a bias against it. They said it was only effective for six months which counters the official reports. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reports below are the only official sources on this matter and until I find evidence elsewhere I would believe them first. Using this technique against other big cats has never been studied. I myself live in mountain lion country and made a DIY eyespot mask to make me feel safer.&#xA;I have never uncovered a official document showing that the technique lost effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vinodrishi.blogspot.com/2011/05/man-mask-and-maneater.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;MAN, MASK AND MANEATER&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1989/09/05/science/face-masks-fool-the-bengal-tigers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Face Masks Fool the Bengal Tigers&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fatcyclist.com/2008/11/24/how-not-to-get-eaten-by-a-mountain-lion/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Not to Get Eaten by a Mountain Lion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22375" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2018-04-13T14:29:44.837" LastActivityDate="2018-04-13T14:29:44.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19937" CreationDate="2014-10-08T05:02:40.500" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Well, yes and no. The earliest biographies of St. Patrick do relate how he defeated druids and magicians, sometimes in supernatural warfare. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vita_tripartita_Sancti_Patricii&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vita tripartita Sancti Patricii&lt;/a&gt; has several stories like the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Enna saw the druids (magi) wishing to kill Patrick, and he said to his&#xA;  son Conall, &quot;Go and protect Patrick, that the magi may not kill him.&quot;&#xA;  Patrick perceived them, and ethereal fire burned them, to the number&#xA;  of nine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the much later legend about getting rid of &quot;snakes&quot; (which didn't exist in the first place) really is a story about a massive group of venomous creatures who were driven off a hill, as we learn in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_of_Furness&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jocelyn&lt;/a&gt;'s 12th century &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18482/18482-h/18482-h.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Life of Patrick&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even from the time of its original inhabitants, did Hibernia labor&#xA;  under a threefold plague: a swarm of poisonous creatures, whereof the&#xA;  number could not be counted; a great concourse of demons visibly&#xA;  appearing; and a multitude of evil-doers and magicians. And these&#xA;  venomous and monstrous creatures, rising out of the earth and out of&#xA;  the sea, so prevailed over the whole island that they not only wounded&#xA;  men and animals with their deadly sting, but slayed them with cruel&#xA;  bitings, and not seldom rent and devoured their members. And the&#xA;  demons, who by the power of idolatry dwelled in superstitious hearts,&#xA;  showed themselves unto their worshippers in visible forms; often&#xA;  likewise did they, as if they were offended, injure them with many&#xA;  hurts; unto whom, being appeased with sacrifices, offerings, or evil&#xA;  works, they seemed to extend the grace of health or of safety, while&#xA;  they only ceased from doing harm. And after was beheld such a&#xA;  multitude of these, flying in the air or walking on the earth, that&#xA;  the island was deemed incapable of containing so many; and therefore&#xA;  was it accounted the habitation of demons, and their peculiar&#xA;  possession. Likewise the crowd of magicians, evil-doers, and&#xA;  soothsayers had therein so greatly increased as the history of not any&#xA;  other nation doth instance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And the most holy Patrick applied all his diligence unto the&#xA;  extirpation of this threefold plague; and at length by his salutary&#xA;  doctrine and fervent prayer he relieved Hibernia of the increasing&#xA;  mischief. Therefore he, the most excellent pastor, bore on his&#xA;  shoulder the staff of Jesus, and aided of the angelic aid, he by its&#xA;  comminatory elevation gathered together from all parts of the island&#xA;  all the poisonous creatures into one place; then compelled he them all&#xA;  unto a very high promontory, which then was called Cruachan-ailge, but&#xA;  now Cruachan-Phadruig; and by the power of his word he drove the whole&#xA;  pestilent swarm from the precipice of the mountain headlong into the&#xA;  ocean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is interesting how these early hagiographies have been completely forgotten. Even Wikipedia repeats the confused muddle posed in this question about &quot;snakes possibly meaning pagans&quot;. St. Patrick's tussles with druids are well-documented in sources dating to soon after his lifetime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T05:02:40.500" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19869" CreationDate="2014-10-08T11:26:42.660" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A patent filed by them clearly mentions that the system generates a non-holographic 3-D images.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents/US8500284&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.google.com/patents/US8500284&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is a holographic display then they must have had speckles in the reconstruction. Which tells that it is a kind of volumetric projection. But anyways it is a good and useful piece of technology in this decade. And our wait for a holographic display continues....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22378" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T11:26:42.660" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23434" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23435" CreationDate="2014-10-08T13:10:39.160" Score="38" ViewCount="23913" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been told this many times (in the UK). It's even mentioned in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe_tossing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some also say that shoes hanging from the wires advertise a local&#xA;  crack house where crack cocaine is used and sold&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/N00Y4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that this is true? It seems to be a bit of an urban myth to me. The reference in the wikipedia article is a little....weak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14708" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T10:21:44.500" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T10:21:44.500" Title="Does a pair of trainers (shoes) hanging on a telephone wire mean the house nearby is a crack den?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|culture|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23434" CreationDate="2014-10-08T13:25:25.447" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Snopes.com includes it as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/crime/gangs/sneakers.asp&quot;&gt;legend&lt;/a&gt; and includes a large number of other possible reasons with the most likely one is that most people do it because they think it looks cool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All across the United States, you'll encounter discarded shoes hanging from wires, poles, and trees. Theories as to what these shoes signify abound, but, contrary to what one hears, there's no one right answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's possible that some drug users might use it as a signal, but if so, they're going to be largely lost in the noise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-08T14:05:37.217" LastActivityDate="2014-10-08T14:05:37.217" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23436" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32510" CreationDate="2014-10-08T19:26:41.117" Score="9" ViewCount="5121" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omgfacts.com/lists/3834/Women-blink-nearly-twice-as-much-as-men&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;OMGfacts&lt;/a&gt; : Blinking is a reflex that is started by a sudden noise. Studies show that women react more quickly then [sic] men to these sudden noises, and blink both twice as hard and often as men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factalerts.com/women-blink-more-than-men/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;factalerts&lt;/a&gt; : Essentially, women blink more often than men due to the higher levels of the hormone estrogen within their system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-14T14:03:15.797" Title="Do women blink more than men?" Tags="|biology|gender|ophthalmology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23434" CreationDate="2014-10-09T05:52:32.340" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Shoes (probably &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; those ones, specifically) mark a gang's turf. This practice is in decline, however gangs selling drugs, is not. Source, living in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/07/14/despite-recent-shootings-chicago-nowhere-near-u-s-murder-capital/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chicago&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It might appear to be a juvenile prank, but it's not,&amp;quot; said Matt Smith, spokesman for the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation. &amp;quot;My experience is that it's somehow announcing the availability of drugs, not something we think should be out there.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smith said his department works with the Chicago police to take down the shoes, acting on complaints referred from the city's 311 help and information line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The city had 1,200 requests last year to remove gym shoes, balloons and other objects from wires, down from just over 3,000 in 2007, said Phillip Hampton, director of 311 services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We take those very seriously,&amp;quot; Hampton said. &amp;quot;We enter the complaint, and we let the experts at Streets and Sanitation provide the follow-up.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smith said the city tries to salvage part of the shoes, recycling them into the rubber strips that line public gardens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We haven't seen a lot of this,&amp;quot; said Chicago Police spokeswoman Monique Bond. &amp;quot;It's something that has been seen in the past. It was termed 'old school.'&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Chicago police source who worked in the gang unit for decades said the shoes can have different meanings depending on the neighborhood. A particular shoe might be a marker of drug sales, like a calling card or uniform.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-January 22, 2009|By Ofelia Casillas, TRIBUNE REPORTER and Tribune reporter Angela Rozas contributed to this report. &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2009-01-22/news/0901200280_1_shoes-drug-sales-urban-legends&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Urban Legends ... Or Real Threats&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Graffiti identifies gang territory, spooks rivals, and communicates messages from one gang member to another and from one gang to another. Another method that gangs use to mark out their territory is by draping a pair of tennis shoes that have been tied together by their laces over telephone wires or high in tree limbs. This can be done by the gang to mark its territory or by a rival gang to show disrespect of another gang's turf. The brand of shoe or color of shoe lace will denote the gang which has 'thrown the shoes.'&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.missouristate.edu/michaelcarlie/what_i_learned_about/gangs/graffiti_and_other_identifiers.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Into The Abyss&lt;/a&gt;: A Personal Journey into the World of Street Gangs, by Mike Carlie, Ph.D.Copyright © 2002 Michael K. Carlie&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;shoes on a wire&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shoes%20on%20a%20wire&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;urbandictionary.com&lt;/a&gt;, (the only entry, +111, -68)&#xA;Places where you see shoes that are thrown on a telephone wire indicate drug houses or places where you can purchase drugs.&#xA;Hey, look, shoes on a wire! Finally we have found a place to buy drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22385" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T00:16:38.437" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2262" CreationDate="2014-10-09T10:06:58.770" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24953910&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-24953910&lt;/a&gt; describes how a group of four men in Kenia hunted down two cheetahs who kept killing their goats, over a distance of just four miles. After four miles the animals were so exhausted that they couldn't run anymore and were caught alive. So it's definitely possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19183" LastEditorUserId="19183" LastEditDate="2014-10-09T14:35:49.517" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T14:35:49.517" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23443" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-09T10:09:09.833" Score="12" ViewCount="535" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/colonoscopy_still_gold_standard_for_preventing_colon_cancer_johns_hopkins_expert_says&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Colonoscopy Still ‘Gold Standard’ For Preventing Colon Cancer, Johns Hopkins Expert Says&lt;/a&gt; mention that the colonoscopy is the gold standard in detecting colon cancer even though there are still other tests that help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A colon cancer expert at Johns Hopkins says that a colonoscopy remains underused by Americans but remains the test of choice for preventing the number-two cancer killer overall. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“People shouldn’t be afraid. The days of discomfort, doubt and danger often associated with a colonoscopy are long gone.  And, most importantly, it saves lives,” adds Kalloo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, another article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutsense.org/crc/crc_transcript.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;COLONOSCOPY: IS IT WORTH THE RISK?&lt;/a&gt; says otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So our desire to prevent it isn't surprising, especially when we are told that regular colonoscopies after age fifty make colorectal cancer &amp;quot;more than 90% curable — but only if you get tested in time.&amp;quot; [2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actually, this is a lie! Screening colonoscopies do not prevent or materially reduce anyone's risk of colorectal cancer regardless of age. And if anything, they may actually increase your overall risk of cancer, and not just colorectal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, another article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/detection/colorectal-screening&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Standard Colonoscopy&lt;/a&gt; mentions&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even though this test is highly sensitive, it still may not detect all small polyps, nonpolypoid lesions, or cancers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is colonoscopy the gold standard in detecting colon cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-11-21T17:30:55.213" Title="Does colonoscopy screening reduce the risk of death due to colon cancer?" Tags="|cancer|healthcare|epidemiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22476" CreationDate="2014-10-09T12:55:17.547" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nope. If insects ran rampant and ate everything, we could just eat them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dels.nationalacademies.org/resources/static-assets/banr/AnimalProductionMaterials/LessMeat.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Could Less Meat Mean More Food?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Nutritionally, it is excellent food,” says Arnold van Huis, an&#xA;entomologist at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. “It’s&#xA;the same or even better than conventional meat, fish, or poultry.”&#xA;Just 100 grams of caterpillars can provide all of an adult’s recom-&#xA;mended daily protein, along with iron, B vitamins, and other&#xA;essential nutrients, he says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insect cuisine has become quite trendy, though the push is in its infancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are bug &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/9rngH6hP4L8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cooking shows&lt;/a&gt; and even attempts to brew &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=&amp;amp;t=24462&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;insect beer&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insects provide plenty of nutritional value.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/6678/1/jb06047.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The nutritional value of fourteen species of edible&#xA;insects in southwestern Nigeria &lt;/a&gt;&#xA;This study revealed that some of the insects which are pests also have high nutritional qualities. Protein content of insects especially caterpillars has been studied from Central Africa (Richards, 1939), South Africa (Quinn, 1959; Dreyer, 1982) and South America Dufour, 1987)... The results of this study confirm the fact that insects are indeed a good source of protein and other nutrients. The consumption of non-toxic insects therefore, should be encouraged. Insects are traditional foods in most cultures, playing an important role in human nutrition and have much nutrient to offer. They can be reared for their high nutritional qualities and sold to the populace&#xA;that regards them as delicacies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The added protein would help because most countries suffer from a protein deficiency. In addition, the insect harvest would help contain or reduce the plant matter consumed, leaving enough to add variation to the human diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like with everything else, humanity would adapt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22364" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-09T12:55:17.547" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23449" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-09T19:17:37.653" Score="13" ViewCount="3263" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/42-incredibly-weird-facts-youll-want-to-tell-people-down-the#35d9r5j&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;buzzfeed&lt;/a&gt; The Romans used to clean and whiten their teeth with urine. Apparently it works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T16:06:55.853" Title="Did some Romans clean their teeth with urine?" Tags="|history|dentistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23451" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23449" CreationDate="2014-10-09T22:56:18.250" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to wikipedia and the sources cited there, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urine_therapy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;yes they did&lt;/a&gt;.  And yes it worked.  Urine contains urea, which decomposes into ammonia, which is a modern day cleaner, and is even used in lots of toothpaste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be used more as a whitener than a cleaning agent. The Roman poet Catullus &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/from-gunpowder-to-teeth-whitener-the-science-behind-historic-uses-of-urine-442390/?no-ist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wrote&lt;/a&gt; of it. People are still using it in rare &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.curezone.org/forums/am.asp?i=2036070&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cases&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_QCYdQWmFA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; about it. Romans used urine to clean and whiten their teeth, they collected urine, and used it for many other purposes.  They even enacted taxes on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22400" LastEditorUserId="22400" LastEditDate="2015-10-20T16:06:55.853" LastActivityDate="2015-10-20T16:06:55.853" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23455" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23463" CreationDate="2014-10-10T14:18:13.350" Score="24" ViewCount="7383" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iowastatedaily.com/opinion/article_60628078-4ffa-11e4-9acd-4f87fa15f4b2.html&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; argues that small farmers are being hurt because Monsanto are allowed to sue farmers whose fields are found to contain crops grown from Monsanto seeds when royalties were not paid. Many farmers claim these seeds had blown into their fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Private and family farmers are able to decide whether they will be using GMOs or non GMOs for their crops, or they can choose to be organic. However, if Monsanto’s GMO seeds are to blow over the fence from a Monsanto farm to a farm that does not use Monsanto’s seeds, Monsanto sues the farmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Supreme Court case in 2011 ruled against 80 farmers that were working to prohibit Monsanto from suing farmers who have inadvertently had their fields contaminated with Monsanto seeds. Because the farmers are being sued at such a high rate and for so much money, Monsanto has the capability of causing many farmers to go bankrupt, literally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/usa/monsanto-patents-sue-farmers-547/&quot;&gt;article in RT&lt;/a&gt; claims that Monsanto will only sue farms whose fields contain over 1% Monsanto crops when royalties were not paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The US Supreme Court upheld biotech giant Monsanto’s claims on genetically-engineered seed patents and the company’s ability to sue farmers whose fields are inadvertently contaminated with Monsanto materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The high court left intact Monday a federal appeals court decision that threw out a 2011 lawsuit from the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association and over 80 other plaintiffs against Monsanto that sought to challenge the agrochemical company’s aggressive claims on patents of genetically-modified seeds. The suit also aimed to curb Monsanto from suing anyone whose field is contaminated by such seeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a June 2013 ruling, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, DC said it was inevitable, as the farmers’ argued, that contamination from Monsanto’s products would occur. Yet the appeals panel also said the plaintiffs do not have standing to prohibit Monsanto from suing them should the company’s genetic traits end up on their holdings &quot;because Monsanto has made binding assurances that it will not 'take legal action against growers whose crops might inadvertently contain traces of Monsanto biotech genes (because, for example, some transgenic seed or pollen blew onto the grower's land).'&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are farmers being sued because they legitimately had seeds blow into their fields?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22405" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-10T14:31:21.020" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T22:34:04.593" Title="Have farmers been sued because Monsanto seeds are blowing into their fields?" Tags="|agriculture|monsanto|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23456" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23455" CreationDate="2014-10-10T14:52:43.070" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Monsanto &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/saved-seed-farmer-lawsuits.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;admits to having sued 145 farmers on their website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since 1997, we have only filed suit against farmers 145 times in the United States. This may sound like a lot, but when you consider that we sell seed to more than 250,000 American farmers a year, it’s really a small number. Of these, we’ve proceeded through trial with only eleven farmers. All eleven cases were found in Monsanto’s favor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their assertion is that these are not cases of seed &quot;blowing onto fields&quot;, and, in the sampling of court cases they provide on their website, it's pretty clear that they attempt to find (and generally succeed in doing so) eyewitness testimony and physical evidence that the farmers are intentionally saving seed and replanting it in violation of the agreement they signed to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in all likelihood, &lt;strong&gt;No, Farmers are not being sued for seeds blown into their fields&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastActivityDate="2014-10-10T14:52:43.070" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18028" CreationDate="2014-10-10T18:55:24.443" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought the quote above was pretty damning too, until I read the context around it.  In the letter the quote was taken from was defending himself from charges brought against him, and directly before and after that quote he was criticising the colonists who had come with that only wanted to take what they could get from the land and leave...I'll quote some... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I should know how to remedy all this, and the rest of what has been said and has taken place since I have been in the Indies, if my disposition would allow me to seek my own advantage, and if it seemed honorable to me to do so, but the maintenance of justice and the extension of the dominion of Her Highness has hitherto kept me down. Now that so much gold is found, a dispute arises as to which brings more profit, whether to go about robbing or to go to the mines. A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I assert that the violence of the calumny of turbulent persons has injured me more than my services have profited me; which is a bad example for the present and for the future. I take my oath that a number of men have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water in the sight of God and of the world; and now they are returning thither, and leave is granted them.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reading this in context, it  seems in stead to be an example Columbus was using of what others were doing, and not an example of how he was perpetuating this.  I'm not suggesting that he did not use slaves at all, or did not contribute to the abuse of slave women, who would have been vulnerable to abuse... but this last quote does not seem to be, if you read it in context, praising the idea of selling women slaves as a profitable endevor, but in stead describing what he saw as the moral depravity of the men who he had been governing, and a support for what he had said earlier, that...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It would be a good thing if people should go from Castile, and also if it were known who and what they are, and if the country could be settled with honest people.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the first example, it does seem more troubling, but it is possible that he gave her to him to be a servant, and not to be used/abused in that manner.  (Though it does seem unlikely that he would be totally ignorant of this happening...especially if the cabin referred to was one on his ship, not quarters in their encampment).  But the second quote, when read in context, seems to say that he was opposed to people doing this, in stead of encouraging it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not a fan of Columbus, but as a lover of history I'm just trying to get at the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22408" LastEditorUserId="22408" LastEditDate="2014-10-11T19:34:15.083" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T19:34:15.083" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23459" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="53031" CreationDate="2014-10-10T21:59:23.583" Score="0" ViewCount="612" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read a few claims that Microcurrent Therapy is effective to treat tendinitis, as illustrated below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20161209090547/http://www.drwhitaker.com/what-is-microcurrent-therapy/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;What is Microcurrent Therapy?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Each tissue type in your body has its own signature electrical&#xA;frequency, which may be disrupted by injury or disease. Microcurrent&#xA;therapy simply restores normal frequencies within the cells, resulting&#xA;in remarkable improvements in pain, inflammation and function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Conditions Is Microcurrent Therapy Good For?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tendon and ligament pain&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.groupon.com/deals/gg-painmaster-microcurrent-therapy-patch-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PainMaster Microcurrent-Therapy Patch&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Helps increase blood flow and reduce inflammation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcurrent_electrical_neuromuscular_stimulator#Effectivity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page on Microcurrent electrical neuromuscular stimulators&lt;/a&gt; contains a succinct section on effectivity but it lacks references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study by a neuroretinologist in the late 1980s suggested that&#xA;microcurrent stimulation of acupuncture points for the eye had&#xA;positive effects in slowing and even stopping progression of macular&#xA;degeneration[citation needed]. This treatment is used to treat both&#xA;the Wet and Dry forms of AMD. This study was based on Ngok Cheng's&#xA;research on the increased amounts of ATP levels in living tissue after&#xA;being stimulated with microcurrent.[7] Several similar studies are&#xA;currently under way and other studies have shown there are benefits&#xA;(with specific microcurrent polarities and frequencies) on the healing&#xA;of tendon and bone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Microcurrent Therapy effective to treat tendinitis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-02-17T12:51:16.167" LastActivityDate="2022-02-17T20:26:45.847" Title="Is Microcurrent Therapy effective to treat tendinitis?" Tags="|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23455" CreationDate="2014-10-11T01:00:43.503" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Monsanto_Canada_Inc._v._Schmeiser&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All claims relating to Roundup Ready canola in Schmeiser's &lt;strong&gt;1997&lt;/strong&gt; canola crop were dropped prior to trial and the court only considered the canola in Schmeiser's 1998 fields. Regarding his 1998 crop, Schmeiser did not put forward any defence of accidental contamination. The evidence showed that the level of Roundup Ready canola in Mr. Schmeiser's 1998 fields was 95-98% (See paragraph 53 of the trial ruling[4]). &lt;strong&gt;Evidence was presented indicating that such a level of purity could not occur by accidental means.&lt;/strong&gt; On the basis of this the court found that Schmeiser had either known &quot;or ought to have known&quot; that he had planted Roundup Ready canola in 1998. &lt;strong&gt;Given this, the question of whether the canola in his fields in 1997 arrived there accidentally was ruled to be irrelevant.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Schmeiser never purchased Roundup Ready Canola nor did he obtain a license to plant it.&lt;/strong&gt;  Yet, in 1998, tests revealed that 95 to 98 percent of his 1,000 acres of canola crop was made up of Roundup Ready plants.  &lt;strong&gt;The origin of the plants is unclear.  They may have been derived from Roundup Ready seed that blew onto or near Schmeiser’s land, and was then collected&lt;/strong&gt; from plants that survived after Schmeiser sprayed Roundup herbicide around the power poles and in the ditches along the roadway bordering four of his fields. The fact that these plants survived the spraying indicated that they contained the patented gene and cell. The trial judge found that &lt;strong&gt;“none of the suggested sources [proposed by Schmeiser] could reasonably explain the concentration or extent of Roundup Ready canola of a commercial quality”&lt;/strong&gt; ultimately present in Schmeiser’s &lt;strong&gt;[&lt;em&gt;1998&lt;/em&gt;]&lt;/strong&gt; crop ((2001), 202 F.T.R. 78, at para. 118). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Possession of a patented object or an object incorporating a patented feature may constitute “use” of the object’s stand-by or insurance utility and thus constitute infringement.  Possession, at least in commercial circumstances, raises a rebuttable presumption of “use”.  While intention is generally irrelevant to determining whether there has been “use” and hence infringement, &lt;strong&gt;the absence of intention to employ or gain any advantage from the invention may be relevant&lt;/strong&gt; to rebutting the presumption of use raised by possession. &#xA;  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/2147/index.do&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lexum.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was sued for growing plants, from the seeds harvested from plants, that may or may not have legitimately grown from seeds blown onto his field, while using Roundup for an intrinsic advantage. Using glyphosate as a means to isolate a species with the intention of replanting it constitutes patent infringement, provenance notwithstanding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22385" LastEditorUserId="22385" LastEditDate="2014-10-12T22:34:04.593" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T22:34:04.593" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23455" CreationDate="2014-10-11T07:17:55.400" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Schmeiser, the farmer in the original case, noticed one year that a section of his crop was not killed by Roundup. He saved the seed from that section and planted his crop following year with that seed. That resulted in over 95% of his crop being Roundup ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The trial judge rejected the suggestion that it was the product of seed blown or inadvertently carried onto the appellants’ land.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was a finding of fact in the Schmeiser case: the 95-98% coverage of Roundup ready crop on Schmeiser's land was not the result of scattering due to wind.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The court &lt;em&gt;did not&lt;/em&gt; hold that &quot;it didn't matter how Monsanto's genetically altered canola got into [the] field&quot;. How the patented canola got into 95-98% factored heavily in the decision. Had Schmeiser not intentionally planted this stuff, he could have rebutted the presumption of use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a defendant in possession of a patented invention in commercial circumstances may rebut the presumption of use by bringing credible evidence that the invention was neither used, nor intended to be used, even by exploiting its stand-by utility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: The judgement of the Supreme Court of Canada in &lt;a href=&quot;http://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/2147/index.do&quot;&gt;Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser, [2004] 1 S.C.R. 902, 2004 SCC 34&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monsanto hasn't sued a single person for wind-blown seed. In fact, the first thing they will do for a farmer in this situation is offer to destroy/retrieve the plants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/10/18/163034053/top-five-myths-of-genetically-modified-seeds-busted&quot;&gt;The Salt NPR Blog: Top Five Myths of Genetically Modified Seeds Busted&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A group of organic farmers, in fact, recently sued Monsanto, asserting that GMOs might contaminate their crops and then Monsanto might accuse them of patent infringement. The farmers couldn't cite a single instance in which this had happened, though, and the judge dismissed the case. [...] &lt;strong&gt;The company asserts, in fact, that it will pay to remove any of its GMOs from fields where they don't belong.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tc8gtZgGko&quot;&gt;Skeptic's Guide to the Galaxy Podcast Excerpt: Monsanto Myths&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;The US Supreme Court upheld biotech giant Monsanto’s claims on genetically-engineered seed patents and the company’s ability to sue farmers whose fields are inadvertently contaminated with Monsanto materials.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a pet peeve of mine when media misconstrues the holding of a court decision, so I'll spend quite a bit of time dissecting this part of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't prove a negative, but to the best of my knowledge (I've followed this area closely for years), the US Supreme Court have never upheld Monsanto's &quot;ability to sue farmers whose fields are inadvertently contaminated with Monsanto materials&quot;. To the best of my knowledge, this question has never reached the US Supreme Court. The most relevant cases are &lt;em&gt;Organic Seed v. Monsanto&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Bowman v. Monsanto&lt;/em&gt;. The court &lt;em&gt;denied certiorari&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;Organic Seed v. Monsanto&lt;/em&gt;. It left intact &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/stories/opinions-orders/12-1298.Opinion.6-6-2013.1.PDF&quot;&gt;this decision&lt;/a&gt; by the CAFC. In &lt;em&gt;Bowman v. Monsanto&lt;/em&gt;, the question was regarding &lt;em&gt;intentional&lt;/em&gt; use, the first-sale doctrine, patent exhaustion, and the patent holder's exclusive right to &lt;em&gt;make&lt;/em&gt; the patented invention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If anything, leaving the CAFC decision intact acts &lt;em&gt;against&lt;/em&gt; Monsanto's ability to sue farmers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Monsanto has made binding assurances that it will&#xA;  not “take legal action against growers whose crops might&#xA;  inadvertently contain traces of Monsanto biotech genes&#xA;  (because, for example, some transgenic seed or pollen&#xA;  blew onto the grower’s land)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If we rely on Monsanto’s&#xA;  representations to defeat the appellants’ declaratory&#xA;  judgment claims (as we do), those representations&#xA;  are binding as a matter of judicial estoppel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monsanto even was the one to suggest that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;if the court&#xA;  writes an opinion that relies on the representations that I&#xA;  made in my letter, in response to their letter, then I think&#xA;  it would be binding as a matter of judicial estoppel&quot; (quoting from Monsanto's representative at oral argument)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In sum, Monsanto’s binding representations remove&#xA;  any risk of suit against the appellants as users or sellers&#xA;  of trace amounts (less than one percent) of modified seed.&#xA;  The appellants have alleged no concrete plans or activities&#xA;  to use or sell greater than trace amounts of modified seed,&#xA;  and accordingly fail to show any risk of suit on that basis.&#xA;  The appellants therefore lack an essential element of&#xA;  standing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, Organic Seed Growers wanted a declaratory judgement in their favour preventing law suits from Monsanto relating to trace amounts of patented product in their fields. Monsanto has promised that they will not sue for trace amounts of patented product in fields, and the Organic Seed Growers have not shown that they use or sell more than would be considered &quot;trace&quot;. The court held that Monsanto's promise is binding, so Organic Seed Growers do not have &quot;standing&quot; (a connection to harm).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22413" LastEditorUserId="22413" LastEditDate="2014-10-11T16:28:48.067" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T16:28:48.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23465" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-11T21:40:56.827" Score="2" ViewCount="316" Body="&lt;p&gt;Oliver North posted this image on &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/OliverNorthFNC/status/520664937455038464&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;twitter&lt;/a&gt; and wrote &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Turkish soldier &quot;visiting&quot; an ISIS anti-aircraft unit at Kobani.&#xA;  They look way too friendly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ka1d8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Oliver North&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the description of the image correct? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22418" LastActivityDate="2014-10-11T21:40:56.827" Title="Turkish soldier with ISIS?" Tags="|politics|isis|turkey|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-10-12T09:35:01.287" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20511" CreationDate="2014-10-12T11:19:18.460" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Having let some time pass for investigation, the apparent conclusion here is &lt;strong&gt;No, it's not credible.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Washington Post article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/09/7-papers-4-government-inquiries-2-news-investigations-and-1-court-ruling-proving-voter-fraud-is-mostly-a-myth/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;7 papers, 4 government inquiries, 2 news investigations and 1 court ruling proving voter fraud is mostly a myth&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which admittedly takes a very strong editorial opinion on the matter, links to exactly what it claims to.  Of note are the four government investigations, since they include North Carolina (as asked about) and Kansas (as the state which was running the investigative database):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kansas' secretary of state &lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:O4MXrVTbtxAJ:https://www.supportthevoter.gov/files/2013/09/SOS-Kris-Kobach-PCEA-Presentation.pptx+&amp;amp;cd=4&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ct=clnk&amp;amp;gl=us&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;examined 84 million votes&lt;/a&gt; cast in 22 states to look for duplicate registrants. In the end 14 cases were referred for prosecution, representing 0.00000017 percent of the votes cast.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/04/02/3753199/nc-election-officials-identify.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;10-year 'death audit'&lt;/a&gt; in North Carolina turned up a grand total of 50 instances in which a vote may have been attributed to a deceased person, most likely due to errors made by precinct workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/05/12/3856897_group-ids-four-state-lawmakers.html?rh=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; describes an investigation where three NC state representatives and one state senator were found to have matching names and dates of birth with registered voters in other states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while the original article used enough &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;weasel words&lt;/a&gt; that it's not &lt;em&gt;technically&lt;/em&gt; wrong, the scale of fraud it described is grossly exaggerated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-12T11:19:18.460" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23479" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-13T12:43:05.830" Score="12" ViewCount="1532" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Daily Telegraph article is headlined &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8534796/Women-take-more-sick-days-than-men.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Women take more sick days than men&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It cites a recent (2011) unnamed report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yesterday Lawrence Christensen, of leading mutual healthcare organisation Benenden Healthcare Society, which commissioned the report, said: &quot;The age-old debate between the sexes continues as our research shows a difference between them when it comes to taking sick leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The representative study of 1,000 men and 1,000 women quizzed them on their attitudes and behaviours towards feeling ill, having to take time off work and drew gender comparisons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It found the average adult takes three and a half days off work a year because of illness - or 141 during their working life - with men taking 140 and women, 189.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the pattern of women taking more sick days than men generalize beyond their sample?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="14651" LastEditDate="2014-10-15T02:12:56.493" LastActivityDate="2014-10-15T02:12:56.493" Title="Do women take more sick days than men?" Tags="|gender|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23482" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-14T05:59:47.583" Score="17" ViewCount="1635" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, a female officer, Lt. Saavik, is frequently addressed as &quot;Mister Saavik&quot;. &lt;strong&gt;It is claimed that this follows some real-life military (in particular, US Navy) tradition&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=3155885&amp;amp;postcount=18&quot;&gt;Source 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/women-in-star-trek-being-called-mr.51753/#post-1249077&quot;&gt;Source 2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090625194824AAFwpIk&quot;&gt;Source 3&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the US Navy the rank of an officer determines how they may be addressed in certain situations - Ensigns, Lieutenants (and JG Lts) may be addressed as &quot;Mister -----&quot;, regardless of gender. Recognition of the rank earned, the role and not the gender.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, various people who have actually served in the US Navy claim that this is not the case (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=3155914&amp;amp;postcount=20&quot;&gt;Source 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://star-trek.answers.wikia.com/wiki/After_the_Kobayashi_Maru_test,_why_did_Kirk_call_Saavik_mister_when_Saavik_was_obviously_a_female&quot;&gt;Source 2&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well, I gotta tell ya shipmates I must disagree with some of the above due to personal experience, and I have served in many commands with many officers both male and female. In my entire U.S. Navy career of almost 20 years, I never heard a female officer refered to as &quot;Mister.&quot; I heard many male officers refered to as such but never a female. And it wasn't just Lieutenants, it was any non-flag rank officer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16044" LastActivityDate="2017-02-22T00:59:06.647" Title="Is (or was) there a military service where women are officially addressed as &quot;Mister&quot;?" Tags="|military|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23486" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-14T20:00:32.903" Score="5" ViewCount="316" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/upshot/when-the-guy-making-your-sandwich-has-a-noncompete-clause.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this story about non-compete clauses for low wage jobs&lt;/a&gt;, the New York Times reported, &quot;&lt;em&gt;American businesses are paying out a historically low proportion of their income in the form of wages and salaries.&lt;/em&gt;&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4499" LastEditorUserId="637" LastEditDate="2014-10-18T00:29:24.973" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T00:29:24.973" Title="Are US businesses paying historically low proportions of income as wages?" Tags="|united-states|economics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23490" CreationDate="2014-10-14T21:56:04.203" Score="2" ViewCount="122" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ortho.usc.edu/en/Center_for_Sports_Medicine/Elbow.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;USC Website&lt;/a&gt; that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tennis elbow surgery is considered successful in 80% to 90% of&#xA;  patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds to me like a high number, there is no reference and the page was written by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaos.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons&lt;/a&gt;, who might be biased toward the usefulness of surgeries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastActivityDate="2014-10-15T03:39:45.333" Title="Is tennis elbow surgery considered successful in 80% to 90% of patients?" Tags="|healthcare|surgery|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23479" CreationDate="2014-10-14T22:06:46.787" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best place to look for this kind of information is France.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insee.fr/fr/themes/document.asp?id=2279&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;INSEE study published in May 2008 - n°408-409&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.insee.fr/fr/ffc/docs_ffc/ecostat_b.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reference: Chaupain-Guillot, Sabine, Olivier Guillot, and François-Charles Wolff. &quot;Les absences au travail: une analyse à partir des données françaises du Panel européen des ménages; suivi d'un commentaire de François-Charles Wolff.&quot; Economie et statistique 408.1 (2007): 45-80.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;D'après les chiffres de la dernière vague d'enquête française du Panel&#xA;  européen des ménages, réalisée à l'automne 2001, un salarié sur dix a&#xA;  été au moins un jour absent de son travail, pour raisons de santé ou&#xA;  non, au cours des quatre dernières semaines. Durant la période&#xA;  1994-2001, cette proportion a peu varié. &lt;strong&gt;Les femmes sont un peu plus&#xA;  nombreuses que les hommes à s'absenter. Ce constat vaut pour&#xA;  l'ensemble des absences comme pour les seuls arrêts maladie.&#xA;  Toutefois, s'agissant du nombre d'épisodes de maladie ou du nombre&#xA;  total de jours de maladie au cours des douze derniers mois, il n'y a&#xA;  guère de différence entre hommes et femmes.&lt;/strong&gt; Pour analyser les effets&#xA;  des caractéristiques individuelles sur la probabilité d'absence au&#xA;  travail, séparément chez les hommes et chez les femmes, des&#xA;  régressions sur données en coupe (2001) et sur données longitudinales&#xA;  (1998-2001) ont été mises en oeuvre. Trois facteurs ont un rôle&#xA;  déterminant : l'état de santé, le degré de satisfaction dans l'emploi&#xA;  et, chez les femmes, les contraintes de conciliation entre vie&#xA;  familiale et vie professionnelle. Dans le cas des hommes, on observe&#xA;  une relation négative entre le salaire horaire estimé et la&#xA;  probabilité d'avoir été en arrêt maladie, à un moment ou un autre,&#xA;  durant les douze derniers mois. Chez les femmes, en revanche, la&#xA;  probabilité d'absence ne semble guère dépendre du niveau de&#xA;  rémunération.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gtranslation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Women are slightly more likely than men to be absent . This applies to&#xA;  all absences as well as sick leave taken separately. However, regarding the number of&#xA;  episodes of illness or the total number of sick days in the last&#xA;  twelve months, there is little difference between men and women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(man = homme, woman = femme, man + woman = ensemble, number of days = nombre de jours)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UtDVB.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reference: Inan, C. &quot;Les absences au travail des salariés pour raisons de santé: un rôle important des conditions de travail.&quot; Dares analyses 9 (2013): 1-10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://travail-emploi.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/2013-009.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.directmatin.fr/france/2013-02-21/arret-maladie-qui-sabsente-le-plus-au-boulot-383446&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;news article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Les femmes sont plus touchées par le phénomène que les hommes, quel&#xA;  que soit leur âge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gtranslation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Women are most affected by the phenomenon than men, which  of age .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Proportion of employees absent for health reasons by age and sex:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Epg0r.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastActivityDate="2014-10-14T22:06:46.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23487" CreationDate="2014-10-15T03:39:45.333" Score="4" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Definitions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of &amp;quot;successful&amp;quot; is a little unclear here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it mean &amp;quot;restored to full health&amp;quot;? Clearly not, because the next line of the article states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it is not uncommon to see a loss of strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it mean &amp;quot;removed all pain&amp;quot;? In that case, the answer is no. (See below.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps it merely means &amp;quot;patient felt better than before&amp;quot; or even &amp;quot;patient ended up no worse&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Surgery As Last Resort&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the original link, and the cites below, treat surgery as a last resort, when other less-invasive treatments have failed. As such, it isn't fair to compare its effectiveness to other treatments. Its value is in how well it treats those patients for whom the less dangerous methods have failed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;No good evidence in 1992&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1992, some researchers tried to perform a meta-analysis to establish the evidence before or against surgery and other techniques for &amp;quot;lateral epicondylitis of the elbow&amp;quot; (which is more commonly known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennis_elbow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tennis elbow&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;H Labelle; R Guibert; J Joncas; N Newman; M Fallaha; and CH Rivard, &lt;em&gt;Lack of scientific evidence for the treatment of lateral epicondylitis of the elbow. An attempted meta-analysis&lt;/em&gt;, J Bone Joint Surg Br September 1992 vol. 74-B no. 5 646-651&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They weren't impressed with the evidence they found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;we therefore concluded that there was insufficient scientific evidence to support any of the current methods of treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Limited evidence in 2010.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2011 (based on earlier data), a systematic review was performed by a Cochrane team:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Buchbinder R, Johnston RV, Barnsley L, Assendelft WJJ, Bell SN, Smidt N. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD003525/MUSKEL_surgery-for-elbow-pain-tennis-elbow#sthash.AKJrMa04.dpuf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Surgery for lateral elbow pain&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2011, Issue 3. Art. No.: CD003525. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD003525.pub2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They looked at a couple of found &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; evidence that some of the surgical techniques lead to people giving lower pain/disability scores afterwards than other surgical techniques.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to a small number of studies, large heterogeneity in interventions across trials, small sample sizes and poor reporting of outcomes, there was insufficient evidence to support or refute the effectiveness of surgery for lateral elbow pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Implications for practice&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a paucity of high quality evidence to either support or discourage the use of surgical interventions for lateral elbow pain. Patients undergoing surgical procedures for lateral elbow pain should do so in the knowledge that it is still an unproven treatment modality in this condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the definitions are unclear, there doesn't seem to be evidence to support the claims made that 80-90% of surgeries being successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can decide for yourself whether the Center for Sports Medicine is properly informing potential patients of the risks, as recommended by Cochrane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-15T03:39:45.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23494" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-15T11:21:12.487" Score="23" ViewCount="3284" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a common trope which has been going round for years that there are a series of chalk-marks used by burglars to indicate possible targets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been multiple news stories about this over the years, which I believe make this notable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/dec/03/burglars-code-chalk-marks-wall&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is your home about to be burgled?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2259445/Police-reveal-symbols-used-burglars-help-fellow-criminals-target-rich-vulnerable-homes.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The secret language of crime&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/da-pinchi-code-burglars-use-2252905&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Da-pinchi code (*&lt;em&gt;groan&lt;/em&gt;*)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The questions is, has there ever been a verified case of a burglar admitting to the use of these codes? Either in actually marking the location of a property themselves, or seeing the code already marked and using that information to choose the target of a burglary?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many news stories quote the &quot;Surrey Police&quot; in the UK. But even a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.surrey.police.uk/SearchResults/tabid/60/Default.aspx?Search=burglar+codes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;search on their website&lt;/a&gt; brings back nothing significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="28827" LastEditDate="2016-06-24T14:55:17.720" LastActivityDate="2017-12-01T15:12:54.160" Title="Are &quot;burglar codes&quot; used to target homes for crime?" Tags="|criminology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23496" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-15T16:59:14.147" Score="1" ViewCount="730" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Agenda Project&lt;/em&gt; is a US liberal advocacy group, founded by author and strategist, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erica_Payne&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Erica Payne&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Payne &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/13/politics/ebola-agenda-project-ad/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that thousands of deaths overseas due to Ebola, were due to Republican policies towards cutting government spending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Payne said that there's &amp;quot;no question&amp;quot; that the Ebola death on U.S. soil would not have happened if Republicans weren't so focused on cutting government spending.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both the CDC and NIH were impacted by the sequester, across-the-board spending cuts that went into effect in 2013 when Republicans and Democrats in Congress could not come to an agreement on specific cuts that would offset the automatic slashing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://officeofbudget.od.nih.gov/pdfs/FY15/Mechanism%20Detail%20for%20Total%20NIH%20FY%202000%20-%20FY%202013-Publish.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The National Institute of Health (NIH) Budget summary&lt;/a&gt; for 2000-2013 seems to show that spending for the NIH went up in the years Republicans controlled the White House, and has only gone &lt;em&gt;down&lt;/em&gt; since Democrats took the White House.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just bottom line numbers from the PDF:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;year:   2000      |  2001      |  2002      |  2003      |  2004      |   2005     |  2006&#xA;&#xA;total: 17,813,739 | 20,513,056 | 23,188,233 | 26,739,904 | 28,099,772 | 28,626,151 | 28,532,979&#xA;&#xA;year:   2007      |  2008      |  2009      |  2010      |  2011      |  2012      |  2013&#xA;&#xA;total: 29,033,869 | 29,319,954 | 30,206,690 | 31,036,218 | 30,630,328 | 30,802,123 | 29,129,085&#xA;&#xA;(numbers in thousands, so first number is 17.8 billion US$)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did cuts happen to the NIH and CDC?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have those cuts hurt the CDC's and NIH's effort to fight ebola?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Were those cuts due to Republican policies?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14819" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T16:25:53.390" Title="Did Republicans cut the budget of NIH and CDC in years leading up to Ebola?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23497" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23507" CreationDate="2014-10-15T17:26:03.137" Score="8" ViewCount="462" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/11/fashion/steve-jobs-apple-was-a-low-tech-parent.html&quot;&gt;an article on the New York Times website&lt;/a&gt; that stated Steve Jobs limited his kids' use of technology at home:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“So, your kids must love the iPad?” I asked Mr. Jobs, trying to change&#xA;  the subject. The company’s first tablet was just hitting the shelves.&#xA;  “They haven’t used it,” he told me. “We limit how much technology our&#xA;  kids use at home.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later the article mentions addictiveness to technology as a potential danger:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The dangers he is referring to include&lt;/strong&gt; exposure to harmful content&#xA;  like pornography, bullying from other kids, and perhaps worse of all,&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;becoming addicted to their devices&lt;/strong&gt;, just like their parents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has too much technology use from children shown negative effects such as addiction? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17047" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-10-15T22:57:34.497" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T10:21:46.403" Title="Can the use of technology result in addiction in kids?" Tags="|technology|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23499" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23503" CreationDate="2014-10-15T22:23:54.967" Score="4" ViewCount="861" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was discussing homeopathy with my regular doctor today, and she said that one of her coworkers, during her education, learned about homeopathy and alternative medicine in addition to other medical topics. Apparently, this coworker learned about alternative medicine in medical school!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any mainstream medical schools that teach their students about alternative medicine and homeopathy as well as mainstream medical practice? If so, what do these school teach about the topics, and does this suggest that homeopathy has some credibility? If not, how can I best understand my doctor's coworker's experience?  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homeopathyschool.com/Courses/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is an example of one place that teaches homeopathy.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen the questions indicating that homeopathy is pseudoscience. I'm asking whether homeopathy is taught in medical schools, which is a different question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17313" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2014-10-18T14:44:40.273" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T06:29:08.380" Title="Are there mainstream medical schools that teach homeopathy or alternative medicine?" Tags="|homeopathy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23496" CreationDate="2014-10-15T23:18:28.727" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Did cuts happen?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have those cuts hurt the CDC's and NIH's effort to fight ebola?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Were those cuts made by Republicans?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an answer to the first question (only).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2014/03/25/86369/erosion-of-funding-for-the-national-institutes-of-health-threatens-u-s-leadership-in-biomedical-research/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Erosion of Funding for the National Institutes of Health Threatens U.S. Leadership in Biomedical Research&lt;/a&gt;,&#xA;look at the second graph -- the NIH spending &lt;strong&gt;in constant dollars&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Y3ziX.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been declining for a decade now.  The graph is more alarmist than it needs to be but you can see the trend anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13464" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-10-16T09:06:09.640" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T09:06:09.640" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23502" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-16T02:40:17.510" Score="10" ViewCount="282" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vacuum wine stoppers are very popular, but I don't know how effective they actually are. I've been unable to find any scientific results. I have found plenty of people who have bought the products and think they &quot;work great&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found plenty of companies selling the products who claim that they do something, even claiming that it &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B000GA3KCE&quot;&gt;keeps wine fresh for up to 2 weeks&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, and I've found plenty of wine blogs and posts of people who claim that the vacuum stoppers do nothing or even &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thewinedoctor.com/advisory/buystoreopenbottles.shtml&quot;&gt;deteriorate the wine further&lt;/a&gt; (but there's always the chance they just don't like the idea). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only link I've found to a research paper on the idea came from &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnonwine.com/2009/12/17/friends-dont-let-friends-vacu-vin/&quot;&gt;someone taking the negative position&lt;/a&gt;, however the site where the research paper was suppose to be no longer exists. Does anyone here have some better data or explanation of the effectiveness of these devices? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10468" LastEditorUserId="10468" LastEditDate="2014-10-17T13:48:00.723" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T13:14:38.560" Title="Do vacuum wine stoppers help preserve wine?" Tags="|chemistry|alcohol|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23499" CreationDate="2014-10-16T03:27:30.107" Score="9" Body="&lt;h2&gt;UK Universities have taught homeopathy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; universities have since moved away from teaching Homeopathy and other pseudo-sciences, David Colquhoun's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dcscience.net/&quot;&gt;Improbable Science Blog&lt;/a&gt; documented a few examples in the UK around 2008.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story was picked up by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/401581.article&quot;&gt;The Times&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Compiled by trawling the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service and university websites, they conclude that 43 institutions offer a total of 155 &quot;unscientific&quot; courses in areas including homoeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture, Ayurvedic medicine, aromatherapy, Naad yoga (healing through music) and general complementary medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was also picked up by Nature: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dcscience.net/colquhoun-nature-07.pdf&quot;&gt;Article&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dcscience.net/giles-nature-2007.pdf&quot;&gt;Special Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dcscience.net/?p=260&quot;&gt;Thames Valley University&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thames Valley University is one of those shameful institutions that offer Bachelor of Science degrees in homeopathy. They don’t stop there though. They’ll teach you several other forms of make-believe medicine. Among these is “nutritional medicine”. This is taught at the Plaskett Nutritional Medicine College which is now part of Thames Valley University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Are they reputable?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question as to whether they are reputable is troublesome, partly because that isn't a well-defined idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the Thames Valley University, mentioned above, (and now part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_West_London&quot;&gt;University of West London&lt;/a&gt;) was a proper accredited public university, not some backyard operation. It now (in its modern form) has over 47,000 students. Is that sufficient to be considered &quot;reputable&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another aspect is that a university may have many departments which have varying reputations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/&quot;&gt;Complete University Guide league tables&lt;/a&gt; as a proxy for reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Westminster&quot;&gt;University of Westminster&lt;/a&gt; (mentioned in the articles, about 24,000 students) is ranked in the &quot;leagues tables&quot; as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/westminster/performance&quot;&gt;4th best university in the UK&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;in the area of Complementary Medicine&lt;/em&gt;. So, it has a good reputation for complementary medicine!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, however, it rates 96th overall (out of 123). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Lincoln&quot;&gt;University of Lincoln&lt;/a&gt; offers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lincolncollege.ac.uk/courses/bsc-herbal-medicines&quot;&gt;a BSc in Herbal Medicine&lt;/a&gt; and is overall ranked 55th of 123, which I think could fairly be described as reputable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-16T12:40:25.660" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T12:40:25.660" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23505" CreationDate="2014-10-16T04:21:00.280" Score="4" ViewCount="769" Body="&lt;p&gt;I always had a poor view of the healthfulness of chocolate, but recently I came across an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/8fact/photos/a.121125554748254.1073741828.120709694789840/295364543991020/?type=1&amp;amp;permPage=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;8fact image&lt;/a&gt; which says otherwise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bvV8bm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Eating dark chocolate every day reduces the risk of heart disease by one third #8fact&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it true that eating dark chocolate reduces the risk of heart diseases by one third?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22461" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-16T05:05:06.683" LastActivityDate="2020-01-07T16:47:26.740" Title="Does eating dark chocolate reduce the risk of heart diseases?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23505" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23504" CreationDate="2014-10-16T06:54:22.987" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In several studies, chocolate consumption was associated with decreased risk of heart disease. Association does not already mean the cause-effect relationship, though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The supposedly beneficial nutrients in chocolate are flavonoids, which are found in higher amounts in dark than in milk chocolate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3039704/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PubMed Central&lt;/a&gt; (2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cocoa and particularly dark chocolate are rich in flavonoids and &lt;strong&gt;recent studies have demonstrated blood pressure lowering effects of dark chocolate&lt;/strong&gt;....consumption of chocolate is inversely related with prevalent coronary heart disease in a general population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/88/1/58.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition&lt;/a&gt; (2008)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The acute ingestion of both &lt;strong&gt;solid dark chocolate and liquid cocoa improved endothelial function and lowered blood pressure&lt;/strong&gt; in overweight adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/81/3/611.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The American Journal of Nutrition&lt;/a&gt; (2005)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dark, but not white, chocolate decreases blood pressure&lt;/strong&gt; and improves insulin sensitivity in healthy persons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other studies, no effect of chocolate on heart disease was identified:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/72/4/1059.1.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition&lt;/a&gt; (2000)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...chocolate specifically &lt;strong&gt;was not shown to affect risk of coronary heart disease.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/87/4/872.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition&lt;/a&gt; (2008)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This investigation &lt;strong&gt;failed to support the predicted beneficial effects of short-term dark chocolate and cocoa consumption&lt;/strong&gt; on any of the neuropsychological or cardiovascular health-related variables.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or insufficient evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;6&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1360667/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PubMed Central&lt;/a&gt; (2006)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...flavonoids are likely protective against coronary heart disease mortality. The &lt;strong&gt;highest priority now is to conduct larger randomized trials&lt;/strong&gt; to definitively investigate the impact of chocolate consumption on long-term cardiovascular outcomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD008893/HTN_effect-of-cocoa-on-blood-pressure&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cochrane Summaries&lt;/a&gt; (Meta-analysis of 20 studies, 2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the effect of cocoa products on blood pressure in adults when consumed daily for a minimum of two weeks...a small but statistically significant blood pressure reducing effect of -2.8 mm Hg systolic and -2.2 mm Hg diastolic...&lt;strong&gt;more trials are required.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion: When the effects of dark chocolate in some studies seem to be small and of questionable clinical significance (a relatively small drop--2.8 mm Hg--of blood pressure) and inconsistent (no benefits in some studies), for me, there is insufficient evidence about the beneficial effects of dark chocolate on heart disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15288" LastEditorUserId="15288" LastEditDate="2014-10-17T20:52:49.110" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T20:52:49.110" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18573" CreationDate="2014-10-16T09:14:25.260" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000292.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Medline Plus&lt;/a&gt;, a common cause of hemorrhoids is straining during the bowel movements. Straining can be due to constipation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16405552&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt; (A systematic review and meta-analysis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Trials of fiber show a consistent beneficial effect for symptoms and bleeding in the treatment of symptomatic hemorrhoids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insoluble fiber absorbs water and makes stools softer, but quite surprisingly, it seems a &lt;strong&gt;soluble fiber may provide better constipation relief&lt;/strong&gt; than insoluble fiber. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nutrientsreview.com/carbs/dietary-fiber-soluble-insoluble.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nutrientsreview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In individuals with irritable bowel syndrome, insoluble fiber may even worsen constipation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0269-2813.2004.01862.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiley Online Library&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indeed, in some cases, &lt;strong&gt;insoluble fibres may worsen the clinical outcome&lt;/strong&gt; [in constipation-type IBS]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion: High-fiber diet may help prevent constipation and thus hemorrhoids, but in some people with irritable bowel syndrome, insoluble fiber can worsen constipation and thus potentially worsen hemorrhoids symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dietary fiber can have a stool-softening effect only when consumed with sufficient amount of water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15288" LastEditorUserId="15288" LastEditDate="2014-10-17T07:37:53.403" LastActivityDate="2014-10-17T07:37:53.403" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23507" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23497" CreationDate="2014-10-16T10:06:09.173" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer depends on how you define all the key terms, especially &amp;quot;technology&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;addiction&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Probably the closest thing to an official definition of addiction can be found in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychiatry.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Psychiatric Association&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsm5.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders&lt;/a&gt;, last updated to version 5 in 2013. The list of addictions contains substance addictions and gambling addiction. On this grounds, the answer would be: &lt;strong&gt;No, there are no universally recognized addictions caused by new technology.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the decision not to include things like internet addiction and computer addiction into the list was controversial. Opinions such as &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=99602&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Internet addiction appears to be a common disorder that merits inclusion in DSM-V&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, in an editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry, were (and are) widespread. You can go through the references and you will see: &lt;strong&gt;There are many mainstream researchers who consider new technologies such as computers and the internet to be able to produce addiction.&lt;/strong&gt; The same holds for addiction in children/adolescents (&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10802-014-9851-3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2009.0079&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;examples&lt;/a&gt;). However, note that mainstream researchers do not claim that any, or even some specific large amount of technology use is sufficient to cause (or constitute) an addiction; one can spend 12 hours a day in front of a computer and still not meet the addiction criteria. Also, the consensus (and the reason those addictions are not yet official) seems to be that &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2719452/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carefully controlled studies are required to settle these controversies [about the status of internet addiction]&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Td926.png&quot; alt=&quot;Internet addiction in action&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside: There are many definitions of addiction. As a represantative and relatively short example, here's one from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asam.org/for-the-public/definition-of-addiction&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Society of Addiction Medicine&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addiction is a primary, chronic disease of brain reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry. Dysfunction in these circuits leads to characteristic biological, psychological, social and spiritual manifestations. This is reflected in an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief by substance use and other behaviors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addiction is characterized by inability to consistently abstain, impairment in behavioral control, craving, diminished recognition of significant problems with one’s behaviors and interpersonal relationships, and a dysfunctional emotional response. Like other chronic diseases, addiction often involves cycles of relapse and remission. Without treatment or engagement in recovery activities, addiction is progressive and can result in disability or premature death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is perhaps the more important question of what constitutes technology, what you mean with the broader &amp;quot;negative effects&amp;quot;, and whether these negative effects are really that bad. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2010/02/dont_touch_that_dial.single.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A favourite article of mine&lt;/a&gt; lists, among others, the following concerns with new technology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;exhaustion of children's brains and nervous systems&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;social isolation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the mental confusion and actual harm produced by information overload&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the loss (from disuse) of memory and the inability to distinguish&#xA;fact from fiction, especially for children&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The corresponding culprit technologies, all new back then, are schools, newspapers, printing, and - from Socrates - writing itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To conclude on a personal note: I find at least some of the claims probable. It seems to make sense that writing diminishes our exercise, and therefore mastery, of memory. I certainly remember less phone numbers than I did before the age of mobile phones and ubiquitous contact directories. I also know a few people who might well have a reading addiction, or - worse - a writing addiction. But do we really want to give up writing, just to be able to remember things we do not need to remember any more if we do write?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-16T10:21:46.403" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23508" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-16T10:17:51.130" Score="4" ViewCount="645" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.juicecleansehq.com/colon-cleansing/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Colon Cleansing – 3 Recipes Creating a Buzz&lt;/a&gt; includes 4 (sic) recipes that &quot;cleanse the colon&quot; to &quot;get rid of any sort of harmful toxins&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Apple Juice High Fiber Colon Cleansing Recipe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Lemon Ginger Colon Cleansing Recipe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Papaya and Flaxseed Colon Cleansing Recipe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Colon Cleansing Soup Recipe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every one of these are types of a natural colon cleanse recipes that you can attempt to be able to obtain a nice relief from constipation, and to get rid of any sort of harmful toxins or excess materials which may be clogging up your colon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does juice help to get rid of any sort of harmful toxins?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-16T12:22:00.140" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T21:32:53.873" Title="Does drinking juice help to remove toxins?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23513" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-17T16:04:26.270" Score="36" ViewCount="3907" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.faa.gov/passengers/fly_safe/turbulence/&quot;&gt;FAA&lt;/a&gt; states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To keep you and your family as safe as possible during flight, FAA&#xA;  regulations require passengers to be seated with their seat belts&#xA;  fastened: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When the airplane leaves the gate and as it climbs after take-off.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;During landing and taxi. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whenever the seat belt sign is illuminated during flight. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why is it important to follow these safety regulations? Consider this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In nonfatal accidents, in-flight turbulence is the leading cause of injuries to airline passengers and flight attendants. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Each year, approximately 58 people in the United States are injured by turbulence &gt; while not wearing their seat belts.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;From 1980 through 2008, U.S. air carriers had 234 turbulence accidents*, resulting in 298 serious injuries and three fatalities. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Of the 298 serious injuries, 184 involved flight attendants and 114 involved passengers. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;At least two of the three fatalities involved passengers who were not wearing their seat belts while the seat belt sign was illuminated. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Generally, two-thirds of turbulence-related accidents occur at or above 30,000 feet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is quite possible that the FAA is correct to say that wearing a seatbelt while flying reduces the risk of death and injury. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is: If this be true, what precisely (quantitatively, statistically) is the magnitude of this safety benefit? This includes ALL possible sources of risk of injury or death, including turbulence, crashes, and anything else conceivable (e.g. slightly reduced risk of someone drunk pulling you out of your seat and throwing you out of the plane).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A possible statistic might be something like: Number of deaths avoided, per 1 million hours with seatbelt fastened, when seatbelt light is on (as compared to not fastening the seatbelt when the light is on).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How in turn does this compare to other safety measures that most people do not take, but ought to (at least according to some experts)? For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthline.com/health/cold-flu/mask&quot;&gt;wearing a mask to reduce the risk of death from flu&lt;/a&gt;. If, while in public, I wear a mask for 1 million hours, presumably my risk of death from flu decreases a little. How does this compare to the benefit from my fastening my airplane seatbelt for 1 million hours?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or, as another example, wearing a helmet while cycling to reduce the risk of death from a cycling accident, which, again, is a recommendation by some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user17967" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-10-21T14:44:01.160" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T14:44:01.160" Title="Does fastening airplane seatbelts reduce the risk of death and injury?" Tags="|safety|aviation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23514" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23518" CreationDate="2014-10-17T20:06:55.340" Score="1" ViewCount="629" Body="&lt;p&gt;Louie Helm of &lt;a href=&quot;http://rockstarresearch.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rockstar Research Magazine&lt;/a&gt; blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://rockstarresearch.com/most-multivitamins-have-these-2-toxic-minerals-in-them/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;argues that&lt;/a&gt; that the human body doesn't need Chromium nor Manganese and, therefore, there is no need to have them in multivitamin supplements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This leaves Chromium and Manganese as the most commonly recommended minerals that still make their way into most multivitamins despite having no proposed mechanisms of action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that an accurate reflection of the current science?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-18T01:51:57.000" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T01:51:57.000" Title="Do Chromium or Manganese supplements have any benefits?" Tags="|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23513" CreationDate="2014-10-17T20:49:13.830" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unlike seatbelts found in cars, a seatbelt on an airplane isn't there to save you if the plane slams front first into the ground or is hit by a missile.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's there to keep you safe in the event the plane makes a sudden move or has a minor accident.  This commonly happens when flying through turbulence.  Sudden movements could also happen during a bad takeoff or landing.  If you aren't strapped in and the plane drops a hundred feet then you will be in a short free fall that would separate you from your chair.  Once things were back under control you &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; land back in your chair, or you could land on top of a fellow passenger or elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/why-you-keep-your-seatbelt-on-in-a-plane-2013-7&quot;&gt;Why you should keep your seat belt on in a plane&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/09/tech/bellini-airplane-seat-belts/&quot;&gt;Apparently This Matters: Airplane seat belts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following link is to a story about a plane that hit turbulence and dropped all of 60+ feet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-chaos-on-singapore-airlines-flight-2013-6&quot;&gt;Chaos on Singapore airlines flight&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FAA states that 58 people in the US per year (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.faa.gov/passengers/fly_safe/turbulence/&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;) are injured due to not wearing their safety belt when a plane experiences turbulence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From 1980 through 2008, there were 234 turbulence &quot;accidents&quot; in which 298 people sustained serious injury and 3 died.  At least 2 of those deaths were due to failure to wear the seat belt.  With a bit more research you might be able to locate the number of miles flown in the US during that time period, but I suspect it's a rather large number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=14195&quot;&gt;Federal Aviation Authority Fact Sheet&lt;/a&gt; contains a breakdown of crew and passenger injuries caused by turbulence from 2002 through 2013.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13187" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-18T01:56:10.107" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T01:56:10.107" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23518" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23514" CreationDate="2014-10-18T01:01:54.893" Score="4" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Chromium:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite popular claims in nutritional literature, there is no&#xA;definitive evidence that chromium (Cr) is an essential element for&#xA;human or animal nutrition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;2012 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119951438.eibc0040.pub2/abstract;jsessionid=63E6EEECFA45C1AFB98A793E782D86B3.f01t01?systemMessage=Wiley%20Online%20Library%20will%20be%20disrupted%20on%20the%2018th%20October%20from%2010%3A00%20BST%20%2805%3A00%20EDT%29%20for%20essential%20maintenance%20for%20approximately%20two%20hours%20as%20we%20make%20upgrades%20to%20improve%20our%20services%20to%20you&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&amp;amp;deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chromium - biological relevance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chromium plays a role in insulin physiology, and severe chromium&#xA;deficiency can lead to insulin resistance. Chromium supplementation&#xA;may be beneficial in rare cases of prolonged total parental nutrition&#xA;when standard chromium supplementation is lacking[6]. Despite the lack&#xA;of sufficient evidence that chromium supplementation improves glycemic&#xA;control[28,29], chromium is still widely marketed as an effective&#xA;supplement for improving glycemic control in patients with type 2&#xA;diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;2014 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3990317/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chromium does not belong in the diabetes treatment arsenal: Current evidence and future perspectives&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the animal studies, our results suggest that blood Cr(III)&#xA;concentrations as high as 480–580 μg/L are not associated with any&#xA;responses. For each of the three health endpoints considered in this&#xA;analysis (hematological, hepatic, and renal) no adverse effects were&#xA;observed below 3,700 μg/L. Some hematological responses were observed&#xA;at 3,700 μg/L, and adverse effects clearly occurred at 7,500 μg/L.&#xA;These findings can be used to assess potential health risks to&#xA;individuals with elevated blood Cr(III) concentrations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;2014 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10408444.2014.926472&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Correlation of blood Cr(III) and adverse health effects: Application of PBPK modeling to determine non-toxic blood concentrations&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chromium can play an important role in human physiology, but if you do not have severe chromium deficiency (which is rare) you should not consume chromium nutritions, because you don't need it, and because it can cause hepatic and renal damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Manganese:&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD) is a critical component of the&#xA;antioxidant system tasked with protecting the oxidant-sensitive&#xA;mitochondrial compartment from oxidative stress. Since global knockout&#xA;of MnSOD results in significant cardiac and neuronal damage leading to&#xA;early postnatal lethality, this approach has limited use for studying&#xA;the mechanisms of oxidant stress and the development of disease in&#xA;specific tissues lacking MnSOD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ars.2013.5293&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Use of the Cre/loxP System to Study Oxidative Stress in Tissue-Specific Manganese Superoxide Dismutase Knockout Models&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For humans manganese is both an essential trace element and, at higher&#xA;doses, a toxic metal. Due to the ubiquitous occurrence of manganese in&#xA;foodstuff, in industrial countries daily dietary uptake is higher as&#xA;compared to the estimated daily requirement. Therefore manganese&#xA;deficiency is extremely rare. In contrast chronic manganese toxicity,&#xA;affecting primarily the central nervous system, is more prevalent.&#xA;Thus manganese occupational and dietary overexposure has been shown to&#xA;cause progressive, permanent, neurodegenerative damage, resulting in&#xA;syndromes similar to idiopathic Parkinson's disease.&#xA;To date modes of manganese neurotoxic action are poorly understood and&#xA;in most studies oxidative stress is postulated as the underlying&#xA;mechanism. The present study searched on the cellular level for a&#xA;molecular mechanism behind manganese-induced neurotoxicity and&#xA;investigated bioavailability, cytotoxicity and genotoxicity of MnCl2,&#xA;as well as its impact on the DNA damage response in human cells (HeLa&#xA;S3) in culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2010/em/c0em00252f#!divAbstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manganese inhibits poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation in human cells: a possible mechanism behind manganese-induced toxicity?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Manganese certainly plays an important role in human physiology, but if you don't have manganese deficiency (which is rare either), then you should not consume manganese nutritions, because too much manganese can cause neural damage. It has a small genotoxicity either, so huge amounts in long term may cause cancer, but I guess you would die before that because of the the neural damage. ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13981" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T01:01:54.893" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19393" CreationDate="2014-10-18T02:48:44.260" Score="0" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can food type have any effect on weight loss even though net calories&#xA;  would remain constant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely it can in many ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calories and absorption are very different things. You eat x calories, but your gut absorbs y% of that. As HappySpoon already mentioned the absorption rate depends on the gut flora as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fibre content of the food can speed up your gut motion and probably decrease the y, while meat poor in dietary fiber can slow down your gut motion and increase the y.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2014 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=9251172&amp;amp;fileId=S2048679014000068&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Consuming foods with added oligofructose improves stool frequency: a randomised trial in healthy young adults&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fibre content and sweeteners can change the gut flora.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2013 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/14/12/23993/htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Xylitol Affects the Intestinal Microbiota and Metabolism of Daidzein in Adult Male Mice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your low kcal diet can change the gut flora as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These results show that the nutrient load is a key variable that can&#xA;  influence the gut (fecal) bacterial community structure over short&#xA;  time scales. Furthermore, the observed associations between gut&#xA;  microbes and nutrient absorption indicate a possible role of the human&#xA;  gut microbiota in the regulation of the nutrient harvest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2011 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/94/1/58.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Energy-balance studies reveal associations between gut microbes, caloric load, and nutrient absorption in humans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So your preferred food can change your gut flora and so the absorption too. Your gut can possibly absorb more or less calories...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If your food does not contain enough minerals, like zinc, or your gut flora causes an inflammation which prevents the absorption of zinc, then you will have zinc deficiency, and so your leptin level will elevate. After that you will develop a leptin resistance, so you will be always hungry, and it will be much harder to stick to your diet. The same thing happens if you develop an insuline resistance somehow possibly with fast sugars. Note that this is just a very small part of the story, human physiology is a very complicated thing... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Western diet, comprised of highly refined carbohydrates and fat&#xA;  but reduced complex plant polysaccharides, has been attributed to the&#xA;  prevalence of obesity. A concomitant rise in the consumption of&#xA;  fructose and sugar substitutes such as sugar alcohols, artificial&#xA;  sweeteners, even rare sugars, has mirrored this trend, as both&#xA;  probable contributor and solution to the epidemic. Acknowledgement of&#xA;  the gut microbiota as a factor involved in obesity has sparked much&#xA;  controversy as to the cause and consequence of this relationship.&#xA;  Dietary intakes are a known modulator of gut microbial phylogeny and&#xA;  metabolic activity, frequently exploited to stimulate beneficial&#xA;  bacteria, promoting health benefits. Comparably little research exists&#xA;  on the impact of ‘unconscious’ dietary modulation on the resident&#xA;  commensal community mediated by increased fructose and sugar&#xA;  substitute consumption. This review highlights mechanisms of potential&#xA;  host and gut microbial fructose and sugar substitute metabolism.&#xA;  Evidence is presented suggesting these sugar compounds, particularly&#xA;  fructose, condition the microbiota, resulting in acquisition of a&#xA;  westernized microbiome with altered metabolic capacity. Disturbances&#xA;  in host–microbe interactions resulting from fructose consumption are&#xA;  also explored.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2012 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2012.01009.x/abstract?systemMessage=Wiley%20Online%20Library%20will%20be%20disrupted%20on%20the%2018th%20October%20from%2010%3A00%20BST%20%2805%3A00%20EDT%29%20for%20essential%20maintenance%20for%20approximately%20two%20hours%20as%20we%20make%20upgrades%20to%20improve%20our%20services%20to%20you&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&amp;amp;deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gut microbial adaptation to dietary consumption of fructose, artificial sweeteners and sugar alcohols: implications for host–microbe interactions contributing to obesity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Zinc (Zn) deficiency and obesity are global public health problems. Zn&#xA;  deficiency is associated with obesity and comorbid conditions that&#xA;  include insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. However, the function&#xA;  of Zn in obesity remains unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our results demonstrate that Zn deficiency increases leptin production&#xA;  and exacerbates macrophage infiltration into adipose tissue in obese&#xA;  mice, indicating the importance of Zn in metabolic and immune&#xA;  dysregulation in obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2013 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://jn.nutrition.org/content/143/7/1036.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zinc Deficiency Augments Leptin Production and Exacerbates Macrophage Infiltration into Adipose Tissue in Mice Fed a High-Fat Diet&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In obesity, anorectic responses to leptin are diminished, giving rise&#xA;  to the concept of “leptin resistance.” Increased expression of protein&#xA;  tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) has been associated with the&#xA;  attenuation of leptin signaling and development of cellular leptin&#xA;  resistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2011 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550413111003573&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Elevated Hypothalamic TCPTP in Obesity Contributes to Cellular Leptin Resistance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13981" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T02:48:44.260" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23524" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14715" CreationDate="2014-10-18T04:25:49.110" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/taiwanese-gambling-ring-bets-cancer-patients-die-article-1.1268176&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;One newspaper article&lt;/a&gt; is asserting that some betting is from individuals with a legitimate financial interest, while others others are not:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Legitimate financial interest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The manager of one game house claims that the patients are willing&#xA;  participants in the betting craze, hoping that the money will help pay&#xA;  off medical bills or funeral costs, the Mirror reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not legitimate financial interest, more like gambling&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The punters can also place combination bets, linking together the&#xA;  expected life spans of several different patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr. Ho said that his customers range from life insurance agents, to&#xA;  relatives, police and even doctors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the newspaper article is too tabloid to be regarded as reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Twitter search for &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&amp;amp;q=Taiwan%20gambling%20die&amp;amp;src=typd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Taiwan gambling die&lt;/a&gt; isn't giving many, if any, news articles subsequent to the initial allegations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the government investigated the claims, and found sufficient evidence to prosecute, and that prosecution got covered by English language media, you'd get more recent matches in Twitter. This is looking somewhat doubtful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T04:25:49.110" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23526" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-18T14:38:17.773" Score="7" ViewCount="8619" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://perezhilton.com/teddyhilton/2013-12-31-ethiopian-girl-kidnapped-lions-guarded-saved&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;story goes&lt;/a&gt;, with a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPXFm3_qpIQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;youtube video&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 12-year-old girl was kidnapped in Ethiopia, beaten, and almost forced into an awful and disgusting marriage, but luckily, that marriage didn't happen because she was saved by LIONS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... Here's what the police said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“[The lions] stood guard until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went back into the forest. If the lions had not come to her rescue, then it could have been much worse. Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force them to accept the marriage. Everyone thinks this is some kind of miracle, because normally the lions would attack people.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where did this story originate? Is that source reputable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-05-25T02:09:50.400" Title="Did lions in Ethiopia save a 12 year old girl from rape?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23529" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-18T19:13:50.567" Score="5" ViewCount="74" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accountability_partner&quot;&gt;accountability partner&lt;/a&gt; is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a person who coaches another person in terms of helping the other person keep a commitment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.daily-seven.com&quot;&gt;Daily Seven&lt;/a&gt; is an example of a site that offers an accountability partner service - ringing you at set times to remind you to stay on task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Involving a dispassionate third party in your habit formation gets you better results. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anybody know of any scientific studies which show that using accountability partners can effectively help someone to to build a habit or do something? (I'm particularly interested in studies that show that using strangers as accountability partners can do this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22486" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-19T01:43:17.243" LastActivityDate="2014-10-19T01:43:17.243" Title="Do &quot;accountability partners&quot; increase the chance of achieving personal commitments?" Tags="|productivity|lifestyle|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23526" CreationDate="2014-10-18T19:28:28.467" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Where did this story originate? Is that source reputable?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the BBC's version of it: &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4116778.stm&quot;&gt;Kidnapped girl 'rescued' by lions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sergeant Wondmu Wedaj told the media from Bita Genet, some 560 kilometres (348 miles) south-west of the capital, Addis Ababa, that they found the girl alive but shocked and terrified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest it doesn't say that the lions deliberately rescued her, but that they chased off her kidnappers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://islandofspice.blogspot.ca/2005_10_01_archive.html&quot;&gt;This reprint of an Associated Press article&lt;/a&gt; adds,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The girl, missing for a week, had been taken by seven men who wanted&#xA;  to force her to marry one of them, said &lt;strong&gt;Sgt. Wondimu Wedajo, speaking&#xA;  by telephone from the provincial capital of Bita Genet&lt;/strong&gt;, about 350&#xA;  miles southwest of Addis Ababa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She was beaten repeatedly before she was found June 9 by police and&#xA;  relatives on the outskirts of Bita Genet, Wondimu said. She had been&#xA;  guarded by the lions for about half a day, he said. &quot;They stood guard&#xA;  until we found her and then they just left her like a gift and went&#xA;  back into the forest,&quot; Wondimu said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If the lions had not come to her rescue, then it could have been much&#xA;  worse. Often these young girls are raped and severely beaten to force&#xA;  them to accept the marriage,&quot; he said. &lt;strong&gt;Tilahun Kassa, a local&#xA;  government official who corroborated Wondimu&lt;/strong&gt;, said one of the men had&#xA;  wanted to marry the girl against her wishes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-10-18T19:28:28.467" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23531" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-18T19:47:12.570" Score="7" ViewCount="369" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.humantouch.com/massage-chair-benefits.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.humantouch.com/massage-chair-benefits.html&lt;/a&gt; make a series of claims regarding the health benefits from regularly using a massage chair:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regular massage offers &lt;strong&gt;several measurable health benefits&lt;/strong&gt; that&#xA;  help promote everyday health. By &lt;strong&gt;increasing circulation&lt;/strong&gt;, your body&#xA;  can pump more oxygen and nutrients to tissues and vital organs, which&#xA;  promotes faster healing and a return to a health state. Regular&#xA;  massage also &lt;strong&gt;stimulates the lymph system&lt;/strong&gt; – the body's natural&#xA;  defense against toxic invaders – to help avoid sickness and promote an&#xA;  overall sense of wellbeing. And massage prompts the body to &lt;strong&gt;release&#xA;  endorphins&lt;/strong&gt;, the body's natural painkiller, easing sore, tired&#xA;  muscles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beyond physical benefits, massage helps &lt;strong&gt;reduce stress, anxiety and&#xA;  fatigue&lt;/strong&gt;, and allow the body and mind to be better in tune. This is&#xA;  significant when considering both short- and long-term stress triggers&#xA;  changes in the body increasing the likelihood of getting sick, raising&#xA;  the risk of serious conditions like heart disease, and can make&#xA;  problems we already have worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In summary, the cumulative effects of regular massage can &lt;strong&gt;strengthen&#xA;  and tone the entire body to help prevent unnecessary strains and&#xA;  injuries that might otherwise occur due to excess tension&lt;/strong&gt;. Never has&#xA;  something so comfortable, indulgent and convenient helped so many&#xA;  people feel better, play better and perform better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see that many of those claims are echoed on other popular health websites. Are they all true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am aware of &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/2961/7654&quot;&gt;Are there health benefits from traditional massage therapy?&lt;/a&gt;, but this question focuses on  massage &lt;em&gt;chairs&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="25693" LastEditDate="2017-09-14T17:12:52.493" LastActivityDate="2017-09-14T17:12:52.493" Title="Are there health benefits from using a massage chair on a regular basis?" Tags="|healthcare|massage|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23533" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-19T03:15:33.127" Score="26" ViewCount="3509" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard this recently from a friend who claims every hair stylist they've ever spoken to tells them this. After some searching I've found several articles claiming it and several more claiming it's nonsense, but I didn't find any studies. So the question is, does getting regular trimmings (where a &quot;trim&quot; involves cutting off a very small amount of hair, say less than an inch) once every month or so have any observable effect on the growth rate of your hair? If so, how much? And if not, what is the origin of this idea?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally I'm looking for studies that directly compared hair growth between people who got regular controlled trimmings and people who didn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A note about the question marked as duplicate: that question is explicitly about hair on the body &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; than the head, whereas I'm asking specifically about hair &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; on the head. I don't think any of the answers for that question apply here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sourced articles claiming that regular light trimmings to reduce split ends promotes hair growth:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stylecraze.com/articles/how-to-grow-hair-faster-15-tricks-that-worked-for-me/&quot;&gt;Style Craze&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Split ends are one of the major reasons which inhibit hair growth. If your hair is dry and damaged, then you are bound to have split ends. Trim your hair every 3 months to get rid of split ends and encourage hair growth. Remember – never prick your split ends as it would further aggravate your problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymakeover.com/trends/hair/how-to-make-your-hair-grow-faster/&quot;&gt;Daily Makeover&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You will most likely only need to cut 1/2 an inch at each hair appointment, but if this tip seems counter-productive to your goal, then remember this fact from Danielle Bucco-Regazzi, Farouk Systems Creative Artist, “Healthy hair grows faster than dead hair!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.refinery29.com/how-to-grow-long-hair&quot;&gt;Refinery 29&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Being in the beauty industry for more than ten years, I frequently speak with women with long hair who never want to get cuts to keep their length in tact. It’s a complete myth. Letting your hair grow out without ever getting it cut will deter your hair from growing at its optimal rate. All women should get cuts every six to eight weeks to promote healthy hair: The two-month trim routine will benefit your hair health and promote growth by keeping the ends nice and fresh. And, if you suffer from breakage, the split will only climb further up the shaft until it's cut. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22174" LastEditorUserId="22174" LastEditDate="2014-10-20T07:23:45.543" LastActivityDate="2016-04-12T14:24:54.463" Title="Does trimming your hair regularly make it grow faster?" Tags="|hair|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23534" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14564" CreationDate="2014-10-19T05:32:08.923" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no evidence that Comic Sans works well for dyslexics; it appears to be a myth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a ton of commonly used fonts that are great for dyslexia, like Helvetica, Courier, Arial, and Verdana. The biggest factor in readability for dyslexics isn't font anyway, it's context: for example, the line height and kerning, the amount of white space on the page, the colors and contrast, and the design grid of the page. No font alone is going to be able to address the bigger factors, although they can certainly help. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, there's information here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://creativemarket.com/blog/2014/05/14/is-comic-sans-easier-for-dyslexic-users-to-read&quot;&gt;https://creativemarket.com/blog/2014/05/14/is-comic-sans-easier-for-dyslexic-users-to-read&lt;/a&gt; about a study that found the four above-mentioned fonts worked well for dyslexic readers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It didn't test Comic Sans, but it did test OpenDyslexic, which was inspired by Comic Sans. They found that OpenDyslexic did not perform as well as the others mentioned because it caused fixation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least one dyslexic blog noted, as well, that the study doesn't necessarily demonstrate that these commonly used fonts are better; it may also be the case that if dyslexic readers have experience using a particular font, it is easier for them to read text in that font in the future. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study itself can be read here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/sites/default/files/good_fonts_for_dyslexia_study.pdf&quot;&gt;http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/sites/default/files/good_fonts_for_dyslexia_study.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Or on one of the authors' websites, which also includes the study in a slideshow format: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.luzrello.com/DysWebxia.html&quot;&gt;http://www.luzrello.com/DysWebxia.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their main conclusion is that font types do have an impact -- which is interesting, because we tend to leap straight past &quot;do font types have an impact&quot; all the way to &quot;which ones&quot;, possibly partly because it's the easiest thing to change in a document. Their strongest findings seem to be that use of italic fonts in general and Arial Italic in particular should be avoided because they decrease readability (with the Arial version &quot;significantly decreasing&quot; it). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, they note that reading out loud is what would be most likely to improve with specially designed fonts like OpenDyslexic, and that they did not do an out loud test. I didn't see anything about WHY that's all that would improve with specially designed fonts, though. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22488" LastEditorUserId="22488" LastEditDate="2014-10-22T00:18:02.113" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T00:18:02.113" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23537" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-19T22:09:28.310" Score="3" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;This page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://eatonchiro.net/about-us/services---techniques.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eaton Chiropractic&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Massage therapy addresses a variety of health conditions, the most&#xA;  prevalent being stress-related tension, which, experts believe,&#xA;  accounts for 80%-90% of disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same claim is echoed &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=xperts%20believe%20stress-related%20tension%20accounts%20for%2080%25-90%25%20of%20disease.&amp;amp;oq=xperts%20believe%20stress-related%20tension%20accounts%20for%2080%25-90%25%20of%20disease.&amp;amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.289j0j4&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;es_sm=122&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on many websites&lt;/a&gt;. Do stress-related tension accounts for 80%-90% of disease?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-10-19T23:33:25.340" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T14:15:10.893" Title="Does stress-related tension account for 80%-90% of disease?" Tags="|healthcare|stress|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23539" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-20T03:12:30.433" Score="5" ViewCount="508" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/INTJ&quot;&gt;INTJs are one of the rarest of the sixteen psychological types and account for approximately 1-2% of the population&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia claims that the INTJ personality type (as defined by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator&quot;&gt;Myers-Briggs Type Indicator&lt;/a&gt;) is one of the rarest and roughly 1-2% of the population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seem this claim elsewhere online before, without citations, but always similarly low (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.16personalities.com/intj-personality&quot;&gt;0.8%&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.personalitypage.com/demographics.html&quot;&gt;2.9%&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.capt.org/mbti-assessment/estimated-frequencies.htm&quot;&gt;2-4%&lt;/a&gt;, etc).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there research backing up the relative rareness of the INTJ personality type?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9086" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-20T03:37:52.727" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T20:19:22.567" Title="Is only 1-2% of the population in Myers-Briggs' INTJ category?" Tags="|cognitive-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23540" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-20T06:35:30.397" Score="1" ViewCount="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/ProductsandMedicalProcedures/InVitroDiagnostics/HomeUseTests/ucm125834.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Fecal Occult Blood&lt;/a&gt; mention&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You will need to test your feces from three separate bowel movements. These bowel movements should be three in a row, closely spaced in time to minimize the time you need to be on the special diet. This is necessary because if you have polyps, they may not bleed all the time. You improve your chances of catching any bleeding if you sample three different bowel movements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/colon_polyps/article.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Colon polyp facts&lt;/a&gt; mention&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Only a small proportion of polyps cause symptoms or signs. When they do, the symptoms and signs usually are the result of bleeding from the polyp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it imply that having more stool test improve chances in catching bleeding?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastEditorUserId="20924" LastEditDate="2014-10-20T09:28:47.413" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T09:28:47.413" Title="Does having more stool test help to improve chances in catching polyps bleeding?" Tags="|healthcare|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23541" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-20T06:53:01.830" Score="2" ViewCount="447" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article &lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/drugs-alcohol/understanding-secondhand-smoke-ga3.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Surgeons General's Report on Secondhand Smoke&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The health effects of secondhand smoke exposure are more pervasive than we previously thought,&quot; Carmona said in his report. &quot;The scientific evidence is now indisputable: Secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance. It is a serious health hazard that can lead to disease and premature death in children and nonsmoking adults.&quot; This is a bold claim, but the evidence backs up Carmona.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Children are especially vulnerable. Because they are still developing physically and tend to have higher breathing rates -- and, in turn, higher quantities of smoke entering their bodies -- children are especially at risk around secondhand smoke. According to the Environmental protections agency, secondhand smoke will:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Increase the number of asthma attacks and severity of symptoms in 200,000 to 1,000,000 children with asthma.&#xA;  Cause between 150,000 and 300,000 lower-respiratory-tract infections among children (under 18 months of age).&#xA;  Be responsible for respiratory-tract infections that result in 7,500 to 15,000 hospitalizations of children each year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and this article (&lt;a href=&quot;http://copd.about.com/od/livingwithcopd/a/secdhandsmlke2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Protect Yourself From Secondhand Smoke&lt;/a&gt;) mention&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Take vitamin C. It may have something that counteracts the effects of smoking in the lungs.&#xA;  ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drink Green tea - same as above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does eating Vitamin C and drinking green tea helps to counteract the effects of secondhand smoke?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T07:35:21.113" Title="Does eating Vitamin C and drinking green tea helps to counteract the effects of secondhand smoke?" Tags="|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23543" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23537" CreationDate="2014-10-20T14:15:10.893" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a partial truth to the claim, but it is still mostly inflated. Stress is a surprisingly important factor in our body's ability to ward off infections and viruses, but it is most certainly not the sole reason for the outcome. Regarding cancer, the causal link between stress and cancer seems weak, but stress can cause people to engage in activities which increase their cancer risk (smoking, unhealthy eating, etc). If you want to include stress as a &quot;cause&quot; for disease if it contributes to an unhealthy behavior which &lt;strong&gt;is&lt;/strong&gt; directly correlated with a disease (stress =&gt; smoking =&gt; lung cancer), then the claim is easier to validate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2367104/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The association of psychosocial stress and bacterial vaginosis in a longitudinal cohort&lt;/a&gt; - &quot;Increased psychosocial stress is associated with greater bacterial vaginosis prevalence and incidence independent of other risk factors.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2367104/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Can psychological stress cause cancer?&lt;/a&gt; - &quot;Evidence from experimental studies does suggest that psychological stress can affect a tumor’s ability to grow and spread. For example, some studies have shown that when mice bearing human tumors were kept confined or isolated from other mice—conditions that increase stress—their tumors were more likely to grow and spread (metastasize). In one set of experiments, tumors transplanted into the mammary fat pads of mice had much higher rates of spread to the lungs and lymph nodes if the mice were chronically stressed than if the mice were not stressed. Studies in mice and in human cancer cells grown in the laboratory have found that the stress hormone norepinephrine, part of the body’s fight-or-flight response system, may promote angiogenesis and metastasis.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/109/16/5995&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chronic stress results in glucocorticoid receptor resistance (GCR)&lt;/a&gt; - &quot;After covarying the control variables, those with recent exposure to a long-term threatening stressful experience demonstrated GCR; and those with GCR were at higher risk of subsequently developing a cold.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1580" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T14:15:10.893" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23544" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23545" CreationDate="2014-10-20T14:54:52.513" Score="30" ViewCount="4781" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adfmedia.org/News/PRDetail/9364&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article from &amp;quot;ADF&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/10/18/can-ministers-who-make-a-living-by-conducting-weddings-be-required-to-conduct-same-sex-weddings/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this in the Washington Post&lt;/a&gt;, the city of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeur_d%27Alene,_Idaho&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Coeur d'Alene&lt;/a&gt; is requiring the Knapps, an ordained couple, to conduct same sex weddings or face penalties for discrimination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Donald and Evelyn Knapp are apparently ordained ministers who run The Hitching Post, a chapel in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, at which they conduct weddings. (This strikes me as quite similar to many ministers’ practice of charging to officiate weddings when they are invited to do so at other venues.) Coeur d’Alene has an ordinance banning discrimination based on, among other things, sexual orientation in places of public accommodation. Earlier this year, after a federal judge in Idaho held that Idaho had to recognize same-sex weddings, a City of Couer d’Alene deputy city attorney was quoted by a local TV station (KXLY) as saying,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“For profit wedding chapels are in a position now where last week the ban would have prevented them from performing gay marriages, this week gay marriages are legal, pending an appeal to the 9th Circuit,” Warren Wilson with the Coeur d’Alene City Attorney’s Office said….&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“If you turn away a gay couple, refuse to provide services for them, then in theory you violated our code and you’re looking at a potential misdemeanor citation,” Wilson said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; case or is there something that I'm missing? Is this law actually being enforced in Coeur d'Alene?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This law seems precisely tailored to prey on the fears of pastors like myself. It seems amazingly broad, and the stories have a whiff of sensationalism.  If real, this seems like an religious liberty v. discrimination case that would ultimately be very far reaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5707" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-23T13:13:32.680" Title="Is Idaho forcing pastors to conduct same-sex weddings or face penalties?" Tags="|united-states|religion|law|sexuality|marriage|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23544" CreationDate="2014-10-20T16:14:41.313" Score="42" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is Idaho forcing pastors to conduct same-sex weddings or face penalties?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes and no:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a real (albeit recent) story&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is a lawsuit, and it is in Idaho&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The people involved are &quot;ordained Christian ministers&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a city (Coeur D'Alene) ordinance, not the state's (Idaho)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;That the city &quot;would&quot; enforce the bylaw is the opinion of the Deputy City Attorney&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The lawsuit is a restraining order and injunction to prevent the city's enforcement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The ordinance says that &quot;Religious corporations and associations&quot; are excepted from the by-law, and that the by-law doesn't intend to alter or abridge other laws like the First Amendment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The ordinance is meant to force commercial businesses, which provide services to the public, to do so without discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and/or gender identity/expression.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It applies to commercial businesses, religious entities are exempt.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that the place in question is a for-profit business and not a church&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The counter-claim seems (in my opinion) to be that the wedding service, decoration and accessories, as well as the pastors, are &quot;religious&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is it being enforced?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is online evidence that the lawsuit exists, and that the ordinance exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw no evidence that the city is enforcing the law &lt;strong&gt;yet&lt;/strong&gt;. The following paragraphs of the lawsuit say that according to the city attorney, the law &quot;would&quot; apply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;317&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Knapp asked if the Coeur d’Alene anti-discrimination ordinance required him &#xA;  and the Hitching Post to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wilson or Gridley responded that the Coeur d’Alene ordinance would require Mr. &#xA;  Knapp to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies and that Mr. Knapp was not exempt from this &#xA;  requirement. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lawsuit is asking for a restraining order and an injunction, among other things, so to some extent it is pre-emptive (perhaps a small extent: they do seem to have reason to believe that the law would be enforced given time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Do the ordinance and lawsuit exist?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adfmedia.org/files/KnappComplaint.pdf&quot;&gt;copy of the lawsuit&lt;/a&gt; which is linked in the first article of the OP, dated 10/17/2014, quotes city &quot;Ordinance §9.56&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't necessarily found the ordinance online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using Google I found two links which are labeled as the &quot;proposed ordinance&quot;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://media.spokesman.com/documents/2013/06/2720_001.pdf&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://opencda.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/LGBT-Ordinance.pdf&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdaid.org/files/Administration/IFHC%20sexual%20orient%20handout%20CdA.pdf&quot;&gt;And, here is an extract&lt;/a&gt; of the ordinance from the official Coeur d'Alene web site: this extract only includes the portion which prohibits discrimination when renting housing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Does the ordinance 'force pastors'?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both copies of the &quot;draft legislation&quot; include a section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;9.56.040: EXCEPTIONS&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A. Notwithstanding any other provision herein, nothing in this Chapter is intended to alter or&#xA;  abridge other rights, protections, or privileges secured under state and/or federal law. This&#xA;  ordinance shall be construed and applied in a manner consistent with First Amendment&#xA;  jurisprudence regarding the freedom of speech and exercise of religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;B. This chapter does not apply to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Religious corporations, associations, educational institutions, or societies.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the lawsuit, there's a city attorney who thinks that the ordinance applies to weddings; for example, the lawsuit quotes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/may/15/ministers-diverge-in-opinion-on-lifting-of-idahos/&quot;&gt;this newspaper article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I think that term is broad enough that it would capture (wedding) activity,” city attorney Warren Wilson said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some further relevant paragraphs from the lawsuit include (the &lt;strong&gt;emphasis&lt;/strong&gt; is mine),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;286&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;That article stated the following (emphasis added): &#xA;  Wedding venues that turn away gay couples may violate local laws, such as Coeur &#xA;  d’Alene’s prohibition on discrimination based on sexual orientation. The &#xA;  provision adopted by the City Council last year applies to housing, employment &#xA;  and places of public accommodation, including businesses that render public &#xA;  services. “I think that term is broad enough that it would capture (wedding) &#xA;  activity,” city attorney Warren Wilson said. Similar laws have applied to florists, &#xA;  bakeries and photographers that have refused to work on same-sex weddings in &#xA;  other states, Wilson noted. “Those have all been addressed in various states and &#xA;  run afoul of state prohibitions similar to this,” he said. “I would think that the &#xA;  Hitching Post would probably be considered a place of public accommodation &#xA;  that would be subject to the ordinance.” &lt;strong&gt;In Washington, no clergy person is &#xA;  required to marry a couple if doing so would violate the dictates of their faith &#xA;  tradition. Idaho does not have a similar exemption in place, but religious entities &#xA;  are exempt from the Coeur d’Alene ordinance, so pastors in the city are not &#xA;  obligated to perform same-sex weddings. But any nonreligious business that hosts &#xA;  civil ceremonies would fall under the city law&lt;/strong&gt;, Wilson said. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;308&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Knapp asked Wilson if the Coeur d’Alene anti-discrimination ordinance required him and the Hitching Post to perform same-sex&#xA;  wedding ceremonies.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Knapp also asked if he was exempt from the ordinance since he was an  ordained minister. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wilson responded that Mr. Knapp would have to perform same-sex wedding  ceremonies because of the Coeur d’Alene ordinance. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wilson also responded that Mr. Knapp was not exempt from the ordinance  because the Hitching Post was a business and not a church&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A large part of the lawsuit consists of evidence which tries to prove that the Knapps and the business are religious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-10-21T13:13:16.427" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T13:13:16.427" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23547" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-20T18:06:31.393" Score="2" ViewCount="129" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2006-08-27/news/27459834_1_cri-computer-workstation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;news article&lt;/a&gt; from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Times&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Economic Times&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;15-25% of all computer users worldwide (both vocational and recreational) are estimated to have computer-related injuries (CRI). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same, unreferenced claim is echoed &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=A+survey+of+500+software+professionals+at+Hyderabad+in+2000+revealed+that+over+50%5C%25+had+symptoms+of+established+RSI.&amp;amp;oq=A+survey+of+500+software+professionals+at+Hyderabad+in+2000+revealed+that+over+50%5C%25+had+symptoms+of+established+RSI.&amp;amp;aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64l3.159j0j4&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;es_sm=122&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on many websites&lt;/a&gt;. Do 15-25% of all computer users worldwide (both vocational and recreational) have some computer-related injury (CRI)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="7654" LastEditDate="2014-10-20T18:29:23.853" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T18:29:23.853" Title="Do 15-25% of all computer users worldwide (both vocational and recreational) have some computer-related injury (CRI)?" Tags="|computers|healthcare|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23548" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-20T18:52:10.853" Score="3" ViewCount="467" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found these two articles that mention that taking SSRI for depression can actually make the depression worse. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true? Can Tardive Dysphoria (delayed depression) be caused by SSRI?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mad-in-america/201106/now-antidepressant-induced-chronic-depression-has-name-tardive-dysphoria&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mad-in-america/201106/now-antidepressant-induced-chronic-depression-has-name-tardive-dysphoria&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/2014/04/08/antidepressants-make-things-worse-in-the-long-term/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.behaviorismandmentalhealth.com/2014/04/08/antidepressants-make-things-worse-in-the-long-term/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They seem pretty convincing and I can't find anything against it but if it's true, it basically means that depression treatment is going back to the 60's before SSRI were invented (or it should even though that's billions in losses for big pharma).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22503" LastEditorUserId="22503" LastEditDate="2014-10-20T21:27:17.547" LastActivityDate="2014-10-20T21:27:17.547" Title="Can SSRI make things worse in the long term or cause delayed depression?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|psychiatry|medications|depression|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23550" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-21T01:02:52.697" Score="5" ViewCount="3049" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are various sources that say that fetuses have rapid eye movement in the womb and they might be dreaming during REM sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists who follow the fetus's daily life find that it spends most of its time not exercising these new abilities but sleeping. At 32 weeks, it drowses 90 to 95% of the day. Some of these hours are spent in deep sleep, some in REM sleep, and some in an indeterminate state, a product of the fetus's immature brain that is different from sleep in a baby, child, or adult.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During REM sleep, the fetus's eyes move back and forth just as an adult's eyes do, and many researchers believe that it is dreaming. DiPietro speculates that fetuses dream about what they know--the sensations they feel in the womb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199809/fetal-psychology&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/199809/fetal-psychology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is said that babies have rapid eye movement in the womb in the later months that indicates that maybe (just maybe) they are dreaming. What does a fetus who has never seen anything dream of? This is what I wonder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thestir.cafemom.com/pregnancy/157203/7_amazing_things_babies_do&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://thestir.cafemom.com/pregnancy/157203/7_amazing_things_babies_do&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it proven that babies (or fetuses) in the womb dream? Is there any extensive research about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21976" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T01:02:52.697" Title="Do babies dream in the womb?" Tags="|biology|psychology|pregnancy|dreaming|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2014-10-29T10:49:19.913" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23551" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23541" CreationDate="2014-10-21T01:47:55.747" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, there is no conclusive answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is because in the first article, Nathan Pennell, MD, PhD, a doctor at the Taussig Cancer Institute at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, expressed caution at the findings &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Certainly no one has shown a definitive association between drinking green tea and lung cancer,&quot; he tells WebMD. And some antioxidants have not borne out as cancer preventives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also, the second and third article mention that there is no significant evidence that shows that green tea counteract the effects of of secondhand smoke even though the fourth article by Andrew Weil, M.D mention that green tea help to protect the body from common toxic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First Article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/news/20100112/green-tea-may-cut-smokers-lung-cancer-risk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Green Tea reduce lung cancer risk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While Lin says the best way to avoid lung cancer is to stop smoking, green tea appears to reduce risk. &quot;Green tea can protect them from lung cancer risk, a cup or more a day,&quot; she says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second Article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9806160&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The effects of phenethyl isothiocyanate, N-acetylcysteine and green tea on tobacco smoke-induced lung tumors in strain A/J mice.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Green tea extract did not reduce lung tumor multiplicity in animals treated with a single dose of NNK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third Article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/44800504_Green_tea_extract_supplement_inhibition_of_HMGB1_release_in_rats_exposed_to_cigarette_smoke&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Green tea extract supplement inhibition of HMGB1 release in rats exposed to cigarette smoke.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, treatment with GTE (green tea extract) did not reduce cotinine levels in all groups. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/id/QAA291836&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Concerned About Secondhand Smoke&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To help minimize the effects of secondhand smoke, try equipping your home or at least individual rooms with high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters. I also suggest doing breathing exercises in a smoke free area and taking saunas and steam baths to help rid your body of toxins (remember to drink plenty of water when you do). Increase your intake of fiber-rich fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Take my daily antioxidant regimen, which includes vitamin C, E, mixed carotenes, and the mineral selenium, to help maintain your body's natural defenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition, you might try herbs that help the body protect itself from common toxins, especially green tea, ginger, and turmeric. These herbs are readily available in health food stores. Researchers reported that the herbal compounds in this formula can be highly effective in inhibiting the activation of carcinogens in cigarette and environmental smoke&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastEditorUserId="20924" LastEditDate="2014-10-21T07:35:21.113" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T07:35:21.113" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23556" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-21T12:52:03.427" Score="16" ViewCount="1846" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard several times that dogs could detect cancer before it was detected by humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dogsdetectcancer.org/dogs-detect-cancer-blog/can-dogs-smell-cancer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Can Dogs Smell Cancer?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are many published studies that prove dogs can detect cancer through breath samples, and scientists and doctors are trying to come up with a breathalyzer test that works as good as the dogs nose. So far, the only ones that can smell cancer in early stages, are the dogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true? If so, how can it be explained and which types of cancers are concerned? Can they sniff it directly on people, and not only on human secretions samples (urine, blood…)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20868" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-06-22T19:47:31.093" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T19:47:31.093" Title="Can dogs detect human cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|zoology|cancer|dogs|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23560" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28409" CreationDate="2014-10-21T15:02:16.633" Score="3" ViewCount="1005" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/246786.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scottish study in 2012&lt;/a&gt; claimed that heavy black tea drinkers are at higher risk for prostate cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new study from Scotland has found that men who are heavy tea drinkers may be at higher risk for prostate cancer. However, the researchers point out their study was not designed to find causes, so all they can say is that heavy tea drinking is linked to a higher risk for prostate cancer and not necessarily the cause of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Study leader Dr Kashif Shafique of the Institute of Health &amp;amp; Wellbeing at the University of Glasgow, told the media:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;We don't know whether tea itself is a risk factor or if tea drinkers are generally healthier and live to an older age when prostate cancer is more common anyway.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Most previous research has shown either no relationship with prostate cancer for black tea or some preventive effect of green tea,&amp;quot; said Shafique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But &lt;a href=&quot;http://consciouslifenews.com/men-drink-black-tea-reduce-prostate-cancer-risk-13/1163383/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;contradictory opinions&lt;/a&gt; can be found too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Men: Drink Black Tea to Reduce Prostate Cancer Risk by 1/3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a new study out of the Netherlands indicates something as simple as drinking tea could help reduce prostate cancer risk by 1/3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers found that drinking five or more cups of tea each day could reduce prostate cancer risk by one-third. The study concluded: “In conclusion, dietary flavonoid intake and black tea consumption were associated with a decreased risk of advanced stage prostate cancer.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that drinking black tea has an effect on prostate cancer risk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22515" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T10:28:25.210" Title="Does drinking black tea increase prostate cancer risk?" Tags="|nutrition|cancer|tea|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23561" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-21T17:38:38.653" Score="4" ViewCount="439" Body="&lt;p&gt;None of the statistics I've seen on airbags' impact on safety/crash survival make any mention of seat belt usage. I think it's obvious that airbags make a big difference overall, but given the likely prevalence of seat belt misuse or non-use, it's not clear whether they provide significant benefit in the case where the driver/passenger is properly buckled in. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How strong is the evidence for their use in this case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1795" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-10-22T14:49:29.083" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T14:49:29.083" Title="Do airbags reduce the risk of death or serious injury, assuming seatbelt is properly worn?" Tags="|safety|vehicle|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23563" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23556" CreationDate="2014-10-21T19:06:28.663" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/277012.php&quot;&gt;Dogs 'sniff out prostate cancer with 98% accuracy,' study finds&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A new study from Italian researchers, presented at the 109th Annual&#xA;  Scientific Meeting of the American Urological Association in Orlando,&#xA;  FL, found that specially trained dogs were able to detect prostate&#xA;  cancer from urine samples with 98% accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For their study, the team wanted to see whether two highly trained&#xA;  dogs were able to detect prostate cancer-specific VOCs in the urine&#xA;  samples of 677 participants. Of these, 320 had prostate cancer ranging&#xA;  from low-risk to metastatic and 357 were healthy controls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uamshealth.com/News/UAMSResearchersUseScent-TrainedDogstoDetectThyroidCancer&quot;&gt;UAMS Researchers Use Scent-Trained Dogs to Detect Thyroid Cancer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The dogs were then presented with urine samples from patients — some with thyroid cancer and some with benign nodules — and asked to indicate whether each sample had thyroid cancer or not. Their results were compared to a surgical pathology diagnosis and matched in 30 of 34 cases, or 88.2 percent accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least for some types of cancer it seems to work.  The cancers make chemicals the body doesn't make naturally, the dogs can smell them.  Since it's an area of ongoing research a list of what types is going to be subject to change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13464" LastEditorUserId="22547" LastEditDate="2015-03-10T20:45:58.537" LastActivityDate="2015-03-10T20:45:58.537" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5122" CreationDate="2014-10-21T19:49:50.807" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer, possible, but probably no. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mayo Clinic is currently of the position that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...it is theoretically possible to have a negative-calorie food, but&#xA;  there are no reputable scientific studies to prove that certain foods&#xA;  have this effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/weight-loss/expert-answers/negative-calorie-foods/faq-20058260&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/weight-loss/expert-answers/negative-calorie-foods/faq-20058260&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Snopes has taken down their celery article - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/celery.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/celery.asp&lt;/a&gt; - now goes to the odd ingredients page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Straight Dope's article just consisted of the writer eating celery? Not very conclusive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19408" LastActivityDate="2014-10-21T19:49:50.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23566" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-21T22:49:39.083" Score="45" ViewCount="11332" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2007, did Barrack Obama declare that the USA &quot;was no longer a Christian Nation&quot;?  This was in an email asking Christians to band together against Obama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22527" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-22T02:54:28.733" LastActivityDate="2016-11-19T16:08:47.977" Title="Did Obama say the USA is &quot;no longer a Christian Nation&quot;?" Tags="|united-states|politics|quotes|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23566" CreationDate="2014-10-21T23:08:51.757" Score="83" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmC3IevZiik&quot;&gt;Youtube video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation – at least, not just. We are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, and a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factcheck.org/2008/08/obama-and-the-christian-nation-quote/&quot;&gt;Obama and the “Christian Nation” Quote&lt;/a&gt;, which says it was spoken on June 28, 2006, and says that according to his prepared remarks he was meant to say (which would have been smoother),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, &lt;strong&gt;we are no longer just a Christian nation&lt;/strong&gt;; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is a link to the complete text of the speech:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://obamaspeeches.com/081-Call-to-Renewal-Keynote-Address-Obama-Speech.htm&quot;&gt;TOPIC: Our Past, Our Future &amp;amp; Vision for America&lt;br&gt;&#xA;June 28, 2006&lt;br&gt;&#xA;“Call to Renewal' Keynote Address”&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It opens with his reaction to someone who claimed that, &quot;Jesus Christ would not vote for Barack Obama. Christ would not vote for Barack Obama because Barack Obama has behaved in a way that it is inconceivable for Christ to have behaved.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end he shares two prayers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;a prayer that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;a hope that we can live with one another in a way that reconciles the beliefs of each with the good of all&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-10-22T13:29:28.367" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T13:29:28.367" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23569" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23561" CreationDate="2014-10-22T06:48:49.037" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am not sure where you are hearing or looking for statistics to assert that airbags don't help if someone is buckled in.  My very first google result was from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199204163261616&quot;&gt;National Institute of Health&lt;/a&gt;, in 1992 already had good statistics:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Driver deaths in frontal crashes were 28 percent lower in cars equipped with air bags than in cars equipped with manual lap-shoulder belts only (Citation: Zador PL, Ciccone MA. Driver fatalities in frontal impacts: comparisons between cars with air bags and manual belts. Arlington, Va.: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, 1991)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhtsa.gov/people/injury/airbags/208con2e.html&quot;&gt;National Highway Traffic Safety Administration&lt;/a&gt; goes on to say this particular item (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Concerning overall injury reduction, for serious injury, &lt;em&gt;the air bag plus lap-shoulder belt (when used) and manual lap-shoulder belts alone both provided about 60 percent reduction in injury risk,&lt;/em&gt; while automatic belts exhibited 37 percent effectiveness when they were used. The estimated effectiveness of the air bag alone was 7 percent (not statistically significant). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all well and good, however, the main benefit of airbags is the brain injury prevention.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3601033&quot;&gt;This paper at PubMed specifically relates&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Air bags prevent the violent whiplash motion of the head in a frontal crash, resulting in a more controlled deceleration of the brain. Wrenching forces exerted on the cervical spine are attenuated, and the face is protected from contact with hard or lacerating surfaces. Furthermore, compliance is not a problem with air bags.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the statistics I have found are prior to 1995, which is before the introduction of side and various other airbags (versus just front airbags).  A critique that has been leveled at airbags in the past is that they were really  only effective in front impacts (which was true prior to the introduction of the various other airbags). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monash.edu.au/miri/research/reports/atsb160.html&quot;&gt;Monash University concludes that padding on all surfaces (such as provided by airbags) goes a great way towards reducing brain injury&lt;/a&gt; (although they also recommend drivers wear helmets if they really want to be safe).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Estimated harm benefits are also given for other protective measures such as air bags alone, both front and side-mounted bags, and improved seat belt systems and penetration resistant side window glazing. The benefits are presented in terms of the savings per vehicle for two discount rates, 5 and 7 per cent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2014-10-22T08:54:19.523" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T08:54:19.523" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23572" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14147" CreationDate="2014-10-22T11:21:06.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;An example is given at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.irishexaminer.com/analysis/fiction-imitates-real-life-in-a-case-of-true-inspiration-172752.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.irishexaminer.com/analysis/fiction-imitates-real-life-in-a-case-of-true-inspiration-172752.html&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bell once remarked to an astonished outpatient: “I know you are a beadle and ring the bells on Sundays at a church in Northumberland somewhere near the Tweed.” “I’m all that,” said the man, “but how do you know? I never told you.” The outpatient left, bewildered. Bell turned to his students: “Did you notice the Northumbrian burr in his speech, too soft for the south of Northumberland? One only finds it near the Tweed. And then his hands. Did you not notice the callosities on them caused by the ropes? Also, this is Saturday, and when I asked him if he could not come back on Monday, he said he must be getting home tonight. Then I knew he had to ring the bells tomorrow. Quite easy, gentleman, if you will only observe and put two and two together.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice that he got information in several ways. The dialect, the callosities and asking about the day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20701" LastEditorUserId="20701" LastEditDate="2014-10-22T15:14:33.637" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T15:14:33.637" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23577" CreationDate="2014-10-22T15:09:27.620" Score="4" ViewCount="701" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard on the radio the other day about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;helminthic therapy&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crohn%27s_disease&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Crohn's Disease&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Helminthic therapy, a type of immunotherapy, is the treatment of autoimmune diseases and immune disorders by means of deliberate infestation with a helminth or with the ova of a helminth. Helminths are parasitic worms such as hookworms and whipworms.&#xA;  Helminthic therapy consists of the inoculation of the patient with specific parasitic intestinal nematodes (helminths). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that a feasible alternative for, say, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adalimumab&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Humira&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3856" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-22T17:05:37.767" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T17:22:58.713" Title="Does Helminthic Therapy help in the treatment of Crohn's Disease?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23577" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23574" CreationDate="2014-10-22T17:17:00.003" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cochrane.org/about-us&quot;&gt;Cochrane Collaboration&lt;/a&gt; do systematic reviews of the published scientific evidence - they look at all the information that is available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This year, they looked at this issue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Garg SK, Croft AM, Bager P. &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD009400/IBD_helminth-therapy-worms-for-induction-of-remission-in-inflammatory-bowel-disease&quot;&gt;Helminth therapy (worms) for induction of remission in inflammatory bowel disease.&lt;/a&gt; Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2014, Issue 1. Art. No.: CD009400. DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD009400.pub2 &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question asks about Crohn's disease, but they looked further - at IBD:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is comprised of two disorders: ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. These disorders have both distinct and overlapping symptoms, but the underlying cause remains incompletely understood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They only found two moderately small trials, and neither of them were able draw any strong conclusions about the safety or the effectiveness of the treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently, there is insufficient evidence to allow any firm conclusions regarding the effectiveness and safety of helminths used to treat patients with IBD. The only information available relating to clinical improvement in patients with active ulcerative colitis comes from one small study. We do not know how safe helminths are when used in patients with ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as of January 2014, it was too early to say whether such a treatment is going to work or is going to be safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just for completeness, &lt;a href=&quot;http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD006893/IBD_tumor-necrosis-factor-alpha-antibody-for-maintenance-of-remission-in-crohns-disease&quot;&gt;Cochrane looked into Adalimumab&lt;/a&gt; (a.k.a. Humira) too:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The current evidence suggests that the TNF-alpha blocking agents infliximab, adalimumab, and certolizumab pegol are effective maintenance therapy in Crohn's disease. However, the use of these medications needs to be weighed against the potential risk of serious side effects, particularly infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-22T17:22:58.713" LastActivityDate="2014-10-22T17:22:58.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23579" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23580" CreationDate="2014-10-23T03:40:18.087" Score="40" ViewCount="41930" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many sources that claim that it is illegal to pronounce Arkansas incorrectly and you can be fined for doing so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My favorite law is one designed to get Northerners into trouble. That's right folks, if you mispronounce Arkansas (Ar-kan-saw) you're in for a fine or jail time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://littlerock.about.com/cs/factsfun/a/strangelaws.htm&quot;&gt;http://littlerock.about.com/cs/factsfun/a/strangelaws.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s strictly prohibited to pronounce “Arkansas” incorrectly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dumblaws.com/laws/united-states/arkansas&quot;&gt;http://www.dumblaws.com/laws/united-states/arkansas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? Is it mentioned in Arkansas State Laws?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;As a subnote, Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas#Etymology&quot;&gt;mentions&lt;/a&gt; the below:&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;In 1881, the pronunciation of Arkansas with the final &quot;s&quot; being silent was made official by an act of the state legislature after a dispute arose between Arkansas's then-two U.S. senators as one favored the pronunciation as /ˈɑrkənsɔː/ AR-kən-saw while the other favored /ɑrˈkænzəs/ ar-KAN-zəs.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21976" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T10:13:38.147" Title="Is it against the law to mispronounce Arkansas?" Tags="|united-states|law|language|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23579" CreationDate="2014-10-23T03:51:13.783" Score="65" Body="&lt;p&gt;The name, Arkansas, is a French pronunciation of a Siouxan word meaning &amp;quot;land of downriver people&amp;quot;. It is pronounced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;/ˈɑrkənsɔː/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ar-kən-saw&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1881, the Arkansas General Assembly passed &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/stream/proceedingsofleg00ecle/proceedingsofleg00ecle_djvu.txt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Concurrent Resolution No. 4.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The resolution was further modified in 1947 as &lt;em&gt;Arkansas Code 1 April 105&lt;/em&gt;, and reads thusly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas,&#xA;confusion of practice has arisen in the pronunciation of the name of&#xA;our state and it is deemed important that the true pronunciation&#xA;should be determined for use in oral official proceedings. And,&#xA;whereas, the matter has been thoroughly investigated by the State&#xA;Historical Society and the Eclectic Society of Little Rock, which have&#xA;agreed upon the correct pronunciation as derived from history, and the&#xA;early usage of the American immigrants. Be it therefore resolved by&#xA;both houses of the General Assembly, that the only true pronunciation&#xA;of the name of the state, in the opinion of this body, is that&#xA;received by the French from the native Indians and committed to&#xA;writing in the French word representing the sound. It should be&#xA;pronounced in three (3) syllables, with the final &amp;quot;s&amp;quot; silent, the &amp;quot;a&amp;quot;&#xA;in each syllable with the Italian sound, and the accent on the first&#xA;and last syllables. The pronunciation with the accent on the second&#xA;syllable with the sound of &amp;quot;a&amp;quot; in &amp;quot;man&amp;quot; and the sounding of the&#xA;terminal &amp;quot;s&amp;quot; is discouraged by Arkansans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full explanation of the debate leading up to this resolution can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.netstate.com/states/intro/ar_intro.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;read here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, this resolution was just to make the proper pronunciation &amp;quot;official&amp;quot;. You'll notice that the language of the resolution uses words like &amp;quot;should&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;discouraged&amp;quot;, not &amp;quot;must&amp;quot;. &lt;strong&gt;So no, it's not illegal to pronounce Arkansas incorrectly.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/why-we-pronounce-kansas-and-arkansas-differently-2014-2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Both Arkansas and Kansas derive their names from the Native-American Kansa tribe&lt;/a&gt; (pronounced as Kan-SAW). Kansas is an English spelling of the tribe's name, leading to the current pronunciation. Arkansas is french, and the trailing &amp;quot;s&amp;quot; is therefore silent. This is why the official pronunciation of Arkansas sounds more like the original Native American word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22552" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T04:24:04.710" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23582" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23588" CreationDate="2014-10-23T06:35:03.297" Score="13" ViewCount="3663" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen a number of articles claiming that contrary to what one might expect, American men are raped more often than women when one takes in to account prison rape. Is this accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amren.com/news/2013/10/more-men-are-raped-in-the-us-than-women-figures-on-prison-assaults-reveal/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Via amren.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More men are raped in the U.S. than woman, according to figures that include sexual abuse in prisons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2008, it was estimated 216,000 inmates were sexually assaulted while serving time, according to the Department of Justice figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is compared to 90,479 rape cases outside of prison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2449454/More-men-raped-US-women-including-prison-sexual-abuse.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Via dailymail.co.uk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8323" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T17:14:40.253" Title="Are men raped at a higher rate than women, after considering prison rape?" Tags="|united-states|gender|sexual-abuse|violence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23583" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-23T06:41:49.297" Score="8" ViewCount="1090" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYUQQgogVeQY8cMQamhHJcg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CinemaSins&lt;/a&gt; (a YouTube channel of movie critiques) often points out movies that 'instantly make themselves unavailable for in-flight viewing due to plane-crash sequence' (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCFmCMur7tQ#t=1m45s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;their review of Fight Club&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true; are there guidelines that major carriers follow for entertainment selection? Are depicted incidents with private craft (e.g. a Cessna) okay?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="190" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2020-05-11T18:57:39.340" LastActivityDate="2020-05-11T18:57:39.340" Title="Are movies with aircraft incidents not shown on planes?" Tags="|aviation|movies|censorship|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23586" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23583" CreationDate="2014-10-23T12:10:29.613" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not aware of entire movies being rejected, but scenes can get deleted. This happened with &quot;Rain Man&quot;. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/1989-06-29/entertainment/ca-3726_1_airlines-plane-rain-man&quot;&gt;Uneasy Airlines Get Final Cut on 'Rain Man'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Passengers on at least 15 different airlines have been treated to&#xA;  Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise's Academy Award-winning road trip in&#xA;  &quot;Rain Man&quot; since the beginning of June, but the crucial scene that&#xA;  propels them on their highway odyssey in the first place has been&#xA;  edited right out of the picture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I think it's a key scene to the entire movie. That's why it's in&#xA;  there,&quot; Levinson told the Associated Press. &quot;Without that scene, it&#xA;  comes down to this: You basically lose an enormous impact of the film.&#xA;  That scene tells you that they, mechanically, are forced to drive&#xA;  across country and, secondly, that Charlie can only push Raymond so&#xA;  far because he knows what will happen.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And at least a passenger organisation (not an airline organisation) has guidelines about this. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theaustralian.com.au/travel/you-censored-what-curious-cuts-to-in-flight-films/story-e6frg8rf-1226127272232?nk=d999919ef538efbd880105086fa521fd&quot;&gt;Curious cuts to in-flight films&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Airline Passenger Experience Association sets out a quick&#xA;  checklist of standards of what’s considered appropriate mid-air&#xA;  viewing: “No airline crash scenes or references to airline disasters;&#xA;  caution in depicting or referencing terrorism or; no nudity/sex&#xA;  scenes; no profanity; no racist comments or denigrating references to&#xA;  cultures, religions, or nationalities; caution in depicting violence,&#xA;  drug and physical abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T12:10:29.613" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23587" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3532" CreationDate="2014-10-23T13:27:19.130" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The recirculated air is often given as an example, but according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boeing.com/boeing/commercial/cabinair/facts.page#4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.boeing.com/boeing/commercial/cabinair/facts.page#4&lt;/a&gt; &quot;The efficiency of HEPA filters to remove bacteria and viruses (.01 to .1 microns) is greater than 99 percent.&quot; so the air in an aircraft is probably cleaner than most other air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34708785/ns/travel-travel_tips/t/airplane-air-not-bad-you-think/#.VEkB0sm0Qbw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nbcnews.com/id/34708785/ns/travel-travel_tips/t/airplane-air-not-bad-you-think/#.VEkB0sm0Qbw&lt;/a&gt; it says &quot;On average, cabin air is completely refreshed 20 times per hour, compared with just 12 times per hour in an office building. On most aircraft, air is also circulated through hospital-grade HEPA filters&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20701" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T13:27:19.130" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23588" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23582" CreationDate="2014-10-23T14:08:43.797" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2449454/More-men-raped-US-women-including-prison-sexual-abuse.html&quot;&gt;Daily Mail article&lt;/a&gt; actually did a good job of providing a source of the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/oct/24/shame-our-prisons-new-evidence/?pagination=false&quot;&gt;The Shame of Our Prisons: New Evidence&lt;/a&gt;&quot; from the New York Review of books which provided a good jumping off point. Doing a fair one to one comparison for this can be tough due to reporting rates, namely that it is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics#Under-reporting&quot;&gt;under reported&lt;/a&gt;. In this case though, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bjs.gov/&quot;&gt;Bureau of Justice Statistics&lt;/a&gt; published the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/svpjri1112.pdf&quot;&gt;Sexual Victimization in Prisons and Jails Reported by Inmates, 2011–12&lt;/a&gt;&quot; report that summarized the findings as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among the 91,177 adult prison and jail inmates participating in the&#xA;  NIS-3 sexual victimization survey, 3,381 reported experiencing one or&#xA;  more incidents of sexual victimization in the past 12 months or since&#xA;  admission to the facility, if less than 12 months. Since the NIS-3 is&#xA;  a sample survey, weights were applied for sampled facilities and&#xA;  inmates within facilities to produce national level and facility-level&#xA;  estimates. The estimated number of prison and jail inmates&#xA;  experiencing sexual victimization totaled 80,600 (or 4.0% of all&#xA;  prison inmates and 3.2% of jail inmates nationwide) (table 1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the report does not distinguish  between male and female for the 97,177 adult prison and jail figure, but it does provide the following detailed breakdown,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/u50wU.png&quot; alt=&quot;Table from BJS report&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the same year, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/violent-crime/rape&quot;&gt;FBI Crime in the United States 2012 report for forcible rape&lt;/a&gt; that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There were an estimated 84,376 forcible rapes reported to law&#xA;  enforcement in 2012. This estimate was 0.2 percent higher than the&#xA;  2011 estimate, but 7.0 percent and 10.1 percent lower than the 2008&#xA;  and 2003 estimates, respectively. (See Tables 1 and 1A.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where forcible rape is defined as,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Forcible rape, as defined in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR)&#xA;  Program, is the carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her&#xA;  will. Attempts or assaults to commit rape by force or threat of force&#xA;  are also included; however, statutory rape (without force) and other&#xA;  sex offenses are excluded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which implies that on a basic level that the reported rate of forcible rapes against females is slightly higher than the aggregate 80,600 estimate for prison and jail populations across males and females. However, since the FBI data is limited to females we are going to need to look for a more inclusive source of data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/&quot;&gt;CDC&lt;/a&gt; has the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/&quot;&gt;National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey&lt;/a&gt; which breaks things out by gender, sexual orientation, and on the basis of lifetime and 12-month rates. For the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1.htm?s_cid=ss6308a1_e&quot;&gt;Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Violence, Stalking, and Intimate Partner Violence Victimization — National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, United States, 2011&lt;/a&gt;&quot; the following was reported,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/krrFN.png&quot; alt=&quot;Table of data from the NISVS report&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is where it is important to note the methodology for the NISVS from their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_SOfindings.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF report&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey is a national&#xA;  random digit-dial telephone survey of non-institutionalized English-&#xA;  and/or Spanish-speaking U.S. population aged 18 or older. NISVS uses a&#xA;  dual-frame sampling strategy that includes both landlines and cell&#xA;  phones. The survey was conducted in 50 states and the District of&#xA;  Columbia and was administered from January 22, 2010 through December&#xA;  31, 2010. In 2010, a total of 18,049 interviews were conducted (9,970&#xA;  women and 8,079 men) in the U.S. general population. This includes&#xA;  16,507 completed and 1,542 partially completed interviews. A total of&#xA;  9,086 females and 7,421 males completed the survey. Approximately&#xA;  45.2% of interviews were conducted by landline telephone and 54.8% of interviews were conducted using a respondent’s cell phone. The sexual&#xA;  orientation of the sample included 96.5% females identied as&#xA;  heterosexual, 2.2% bisexual, and 1.3% lesbian. For males, 96.8%&#xA;  identied as heterosexual, 1.2% bisexual, and 2.0% gay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus it should be noted that incarcerated persons would not have been included in the NISVS data and I didn't see anything that indicated former incarceration status of the persons surveyed so that can not be taken into account either. However, given the basic summary findings of the NISVS,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the United States, an estimated 19.3% of women (or &gt;23 million&#xA;  women) have been raped during their lifetimes (Table 1). Completed&#xA;  forced penetration was experienced by an estimated 11.5% of women.&#xA;  Nationally, an estimated 1.6% of women (or approximately 1.9 million&#xA;  women) were raped in the 12 months before taking the survey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An estimated 1.7% of men (or almost 2.0 million men) were raped during&#xA;  their lifetimes; 0.7% of men experienced completed forced penetration.&#xA;  The case count for men reporting rape in the preceding 12 months was&#xA;  too small to produce a statistically reliable prevalence estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it should be noted that there are limitations associated with the NISVS data,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The findings of this report are subject to at least five limitations.&#xA;  First, the overall response rate for the 2011 NISVS survey was&#xA;  relatively low (33.1%). However, the cooperation rate was high&#xA;  (83.5%), and multiple efforts were made to reduce the likelihood of&#xA;  nonresponse and noncoverage bias. These included a nonresponse&#xA;  follow-up in which randomly selected nonresponders were contacted&#xA;  again and offered an increased incentive for participation as well as&#xA;  the inclusion of a cellular telephone sample. Second, although NISVS&#xA;  captures a broad range of self-reported victimization experiences, it&#xA;  is likely that the estimates presented underestimate the prevalence of&#xA;  sexual violence, stalking, and intimate partner violence (18). Victims&#xA;  who are involved in violent relationships or who have recently&#xA;  experienced severe forms of violence might be less likely to&#xA;  participate in surveys or might not be willing to disclose their&#xA;  experiences because of unresolved emotional trauma or concern for&#xA;  their safety, among other reasons. Third, a telephone survey might be&#xA;  less likely to capture some populations that could be at higher risk&#xA;  for victimization (e.g., persons living in nursing homes, military&#xA;  bases, prisons, or shelters, or those who are homeless). Fourth,&#xA;  self-reported data are vulnerable to recall bias because respondents&#xA;  might believe that events occurred closer in time than they did in&#xA;  actuality (i.e., telescoping), and this type of bias might&#xA;  particularly affect 12-month prevalence estimates. Finally, follow-up&#xA;  questions were designed to reflect the victim's experience with each&#xA;  perpetrator across the victim's lifetime and there were limitations&#xA;  associated with how these questions were asked. Respondents were asked&#xA;  about the impact from any of the violence inflicted by each&#xA;  perpetrator. Therefore, the impact of specific intimate partner&#xA;  violence behaviors cannot be assessed. Also, because victims' reports&#xA;  of the age and relationship at the time any violence began with each&#xA;  perpetrator were used, it was not always possible to assess the age or&#xA;  relationship at the time specific types of intimate partner violence&#xA;  occurred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although based upon review other reports associated with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_the_United_States&quot;&gt;Wikipedia survey on the topic&lt;/a&gt; it appears that these limitations likely apply to all mass surveys of this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the assumption that most rapes go unreported as indicated by the NISVS data I find it to be implausible that even with BJS prison statistics that the rate of rapes of males would be higher than for females. One thing to note though is that the BJS information seems to indicate that most victims in prison are repeatably raped while the NISVS data seems to indicate singular reports so that might be a distinction that would need further investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-10-23T17:14:40.253" LastActivityDate="2014-10-23T17:14:40.253" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23591" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-23T18:53:55.727" Score="10" ViewCount="1040" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://moneymorning.com/ext/articles/rickards/55-billion-gamble.php?iris=252777&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;“Buffett's $55 Billion Gamble is a Bet on&#xA;U.S. Collapse, Warns CIA Economist”&lt;/a&gt;, a number of billionaires have taken a cash position on their holdings at the expense of stocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article details the transactions as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a new SEC filing, Buffett is sitting on $55 billion in cash through his company Berkshire Hathaway. This is highly unusual behavior from a man often called &amp;quot;the world's greatest investor.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the biggest cash hoard the company has ever amassed, in the 40 years he's been in charge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jim Rogers recently admitted to Yahoo! that he is staying far away from U.S. stocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New filings also revealed billionaire George Soros' massive short position on the S&amp;amp;P 500.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alleged reason for the cash hoarding and shorting of the stocks is that these billionaires have inside information on a forthcoming and massive financial calamity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Jim Rickards, the CIA's Financial Threat and Asymmetric Warfare Advisor, they are taking emergency measures now before a historic economic meltdown strikes - one he, and many of his colleagues at the U.S. Intelligence Community, fear is unavoidable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Everybody knows we have a dangerous level of debt. That's no secret,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;But all signs are now flashing bright red that our chickens are about to come home to roost.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have these billionaires taken a cash (or contra-stock) position on their holdings?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, it would be interesting to reference any explanation of their position and strategy in the light of an expected massive impending U.S. financial calamity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T01:30:14.847" Title="Are Jim Rogers, George Soros, Warren Buffet converting their stocks into cash holdings?" Tags="|united-states|economics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23593" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-23T21:53:35.470" Score="4" ViewCount="896" Body="&lt;p&gt;He calls it the &quot;Boiling Water Challenge&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Link to video: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev-E6F1g3NE&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev-E6F1g3NE&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is real, what condition is this man in now? I would guess that he'd be lucky to be alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22570" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T02:01:12.303" Title="Is this video of a man pouring boiling water on himself real?" Tags="|video|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2014-11-03T02:51:40.123" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23597" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3710" CreationDate="2014-10-24T03:07:38.683" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; truth behind this, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/vision/Galileo.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Andrew Young, who cites numerous papers in his research&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thermal damage (not really a “burn”) is possible under conditions of a&#xA;  partial eclipse, when only a little of the Sun is exposed, and the&#xA;  pupil opens up to adapt to the low overall light level; but it is&#xA;  unlikely in normal daytime conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He then goes on explaining how cases vary depending on age (younger people are more likely to damage their eyes than middle-aged people due to filtering) and other factors, such as drugs that dilate the pupils.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, did Galileo go blind from looking at the Sun through his&#xA;  telescope? The answer is, “Certainly not.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to injure your eyes by looking at the Sun? The answer&#xA;  is “Yes, but you have to work at it under normal circumstances.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Can you become totally blind from looking at the Sun with the naked&#xA;  eye? The answer, according to Mulder, and from the cases of solar&#xA;  retinitis in the literature, is “No.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is solar eye damage permanent? The answer seems to be, “Only if it is&#xA;  severe.” About half the people with small scotomas recover from them&#xA;  completely after some months or years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't intend to minimize the seriousness of solar eye damage;&#xA;  victims often lose the ability to read normal-sized print, for&#xA;  example. But draconian pronouncements that “you should NEVER look at&#xA;  the Sun” or assertions that you can become permanently and completely&#xA;  blind are an over-reaction to the actual hazard. Sunsets can be viewed&#xA;  safely, both with the naked eye and with binoculars, and most people&#xA;  are already aware of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, don't look at the Sun for &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; long (more than a few seconds) during an eclipse; in non-eclipse times, looking at the Sun should be done in moderation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22574" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T03:07:38.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23598" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23599" CreationDate="2014-10-24T07:15:04.970" Score="-3" ViewCount="3835" Body="&lt;p&gt;This website claims the images of mermaid washed in the sea shore.. Do Mermaid exists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plug.ng/photos-dead-mermaid-washed-shore-leaks-internet/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.plug.ng/photos-dead-mermaid-washed-shore-leaks-internet/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relevant information found in discovery and animalplanet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/mermaids-exist-and-they-are-seismicly-sensitive-131210.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://news.discovery.com/earth/oceans/mermaids-exist-and-they-are-seismicly-sensitive-131210.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/mermaids/videos/mermaids-evidence.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/mermaids/videos/mermaids-evidence.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/49740/u-s-confirms-existence-of-mermaids/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/49740/u-s-confirms-existence-of-mermaids/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jkMDQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10867" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-24T07:26:38.070" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T11:33:12.237" Title="Are these photos strong evidence of mermaids?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23598" CreationDate="2014-10-24T11:33:12.237" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;They appear to be movie props, for Pirates of the Caribbean IV: On Stranger Tides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://beyondthemarquee.com/21355/mermaid-bodies-by-joel-harlow-for-pirates-of-the-caribbean-on-stranger-tides-photo-michael-spatola/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This movie-related website&lt;/a&gt; has a nice image:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WK6po.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Mermaid props&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The foreground prop mermaid appears to be the top image on the plug site, and the image included in the question appears to be the background mermaid here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the mermaids appear to match the general aesthetic seen in the concept art (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.killerfilm.com/articles-2/read/concept-art-for-the-mermaids-in-pirates-of-the-caribbean-onstranger-tides-66821&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mentioned here&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wisjV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;mermaid concept art&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Incidentally, my cousin's husband got to work on these props!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5445" LastActivityDate="2014-10-24T11:33:12.237" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23602" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-24T18:38:28.167" Score="15" ViewCount="1291" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been going around that the US government was responsible for creating Ebola in order to test their Bioweapons as stated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/09/11/largest-liberian-newspaper-us-government-manufactured-ebola-aids-virus/&quot;&gt;CBS news&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The largest newspaper in Liberia published a conspiracy theory accusing the United States of intentionally engineering the Ebola and AIDS viruses in bioterrorism research labs and infecting Africans with the virus through vaccinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems a little off the wall. Is there actually any evidence to disprove this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22582" LastEditorUserId="22582" LastEditDate="2014-10-24T20:13:04.987" LastActivityDate="2014-10-27T04:50:56.813" Title="Did the US Government invent ebola to test bioweapons in Africa?" Tags="|united-states|biology|terrorism|ebola|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23602" CreationDate="2014-10-24T21:37:05.827" Score="34" Body="&lt;h2&gt;EBOV, SUDV, RESTV, TAFV, and BDBV&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The natural reservoir for ebolaviruses is undetermined&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3322747/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;, but the current hypothesis is bats, as several bat species have been discovered capable of carrying the disease without getting sick&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/qas-pets.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Index cases of filovirus family disease outbreaks are relatively easy to determine, and in almost every outbreak since 1976, the index case has been a single person handling an infected animal. (The exception being a combination of MARV and RAVV&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; at the Durba gold mine in 1998&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3322747/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;.) If ebolaviruses were distributed to Africans via US vaccinations, there would not be singular index cases for the outbreaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;HIV and AIDS&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is generally accepted that the two types of HIV are mutations of two types of SIV&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3234451/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;. Hunters and vendors of &amp;quot;bushmeat&amp;quot; are frequently exposed to and contract SIV&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3367631/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;, and although SIV is a comparatively weak disease that can be destroyed by the human immune system, repeated exposure over a short time period can mutate it into HIV – multiple cases of this mutation process has led to multiple subtypes of HIV. (Also note that apparently SIV is only found in African apes and monkeys, hence the concentration in and spread of HIV in Africa&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3234451/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two major theories about the spread of HIV, which requires high-risk transmission channels:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Colonialism in the early 1900s&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to some genetic studies of HIV, it may date back to approximately 1910&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3682493/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;. Colonial cities in Africa in that time period had high incidences of prostitution and genital ulcer disease&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009936&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;; up to 45% of the female population of Kinshasa worked as prostitutes in the 1920s. The combination of the promiscuity and ulcers vastly increases the incidence and risk of HIV transmission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Unsafe medical practices after WWII&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the 1950s, multiple use metal syringes were rapidly replaced with single use plastic syringes. However, in the developing world (including sub-Saharan Africa), many of these plastic syringes were used repeatedly, often without even attempts to sterilize them&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1088484/pdf/TB010911.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;. Additionally during the period, UNICEF launched an eradication campaign against Yaws, such that by the mid-60s 75% of sub-Saharan households had received an injection within a two-week period. Combined, this may have been the impetus for or assisted the existing spread of HIV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am confident in stating that the chance that the US manufactured any ebolavirus or any variant of HIV is zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I am confident in stating that the chance that the US was responsible for the &lt;em&gt;spread&lt;/em&gt; of any ebolavirus is zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The US is not &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;solely&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; responsible for the spread of HIV via vaccinations. However, there is a possibility that vaccination campaigns launched by the UN in the 1950s and 60s may have &lt;strong&gt;inadvertently&lt;/strong&gt; spread HIV among the population (and as a member of the UN, US citizens most certainly helped in at least some parts of those campaigns).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be noted, however, that the unsafe medical practices which would have directly contributed to the spread of HIV were generally conducted by Africans with little or no medical training in the wake of the breakup of European colonialism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Abbreviations&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;EBOV: Ebola virus&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;SUDV: Sudan virus&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;RESTV: Reston virus&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;TAFV: Taï Forest virus&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;BDBV: Bundibugyo virus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MARV: Marburg virus&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;RAVV: Ravn virus&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;These two diseases are in the filovirus family, but they are not ebolaviruses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;HIV: Human immunodeficiency virus&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;AIDS: Acquired immune deficiency syndrome&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;SIV: Simian immunodeficiency virus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;References&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3322747/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ecologic and Geographic Distribution of Filovirus Disease&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/transmission/qas-pets.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Questions and Answers about Ebola and Pets&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3234451/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Origins of HIV and the AIDS Pandemic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3367631/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Central African Hunters Exposed to Simian Immunodeficiency Virus&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3682493/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Direct Evidence of Extensive Diversity of HIV-1 in Kinshasa by 1960&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009936&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;High GUD Incidence in the Early 20&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; Century Created a Particularly Permissive Time Window for the Origin and Initial Spread of Epidemic HIV Strains&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1088484/pdf/TB010911.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Serial human passage of simian immunodeficiency virus by unsterile injections and the emergence of epidemic human immunodeficiency virus in Africa&lt;/a&gt; (pdf)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16003" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-27T04:50:56.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23197" CreationDate="2014-10-26T02:43:31.113" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What chemicals can be produced from orange peels?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=viAtAgAAQBAJ&amp;amp;lpg=PA138&amp;amp;dq=%22Biorefinery%20of%20waste%20orange%20peel%22&amp;amp;pg=PA138#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22Biorefinery%20of%20waste%20orange%20peel%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Books&lt;/a&gt; summary of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/07388550903425201&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent review article&lt;/a&gt; informs me that the article says that the chemicals that can plausibly be made from orange peels include D-limonene, pectin, ethanol, methane, and pectinase. The reason I assume this list is complete is because it comes from a review article summarizing everything that orange juice manufacturers are trying to do to recycle orange peels. If you could make eco-friendly Windex from them, the Tropicana company would be jumping on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can these chemicals help in cleaning?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, ethanol is great for cleaning stuff and D-limonene smells like orange. But I believe you figured this out yourself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am satisfied from the review article above that the only enzyme easily extractable from orange peels is pectinase, which helps break down fruit fibers into sugars. You can use it to make liquor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Orange peels and sugar make a natural ethanol solution that smells nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-26T02:43:31.113" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23607" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-26T08:45:27.850" Score="8" ViewCount="1079" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2831672/Playing-Lego-is-brain-booster-a-new-study-says.html&quot;&gt;The Sun&lt;/a&gt; reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PLAYING with Lego can make people BRAINIER, bosses claimed yesterday.&#xA;  A study found that those who are experts with the toy building bricks are more agile with their hands and solve problems faster than the average person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can playing with some plastic pieces increase a child's IQ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22397" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-10-26T09:26:15.313" LastActivityDate="2014-10-26T09:26:15.313" Title="Does Lego increase a child's IQ?" Tags="|intelligence|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23612" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-27T07:34:29.113" Score="8" ViewCount="583" Body="&lt;p&gt;The magazine &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clarionproject.org/news/islamic-state-isis-isil-propaganda-magazine-dabiq&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dabiq&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabiq_(magazine)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;generally thought&lt;/a&gt; to be a propaganda magazine produced by the proponents on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_State_of_Iraq_and_the_Levant&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant&lt;/a&gt; (a.k.a. ISIS, ISIL or IS).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Islamic State (ISIS) regularly puts out a glossy propaganda magazine aimed at recruiting jihadists from the West. It is sophisticated, slick, beautifully produced and printed in several languages including English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Dabiq' as it is called, bills itself as &amp;quot;a periodical magazine focusing on the issues of tawhid (unity), manhaj (truth-seeking), hijrah (migration), jihad (holy war) and jama'ah (community). It will also contain photo reports, current events, and informative articles on matters relating to the Islamic State.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, an answer on a &lt;a href=&quot;https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/6174/does-isis-justify-its-attacks-based-on-the-actions-of-others/6175#6175&quot;&gt;Politics.SE&lt;/a&gt; question suggests:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read their magazine &amp;quot;Dabiq&amp;quot;, you even may come under first impression that it is anti-ISIS propaganda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the magazine produced by ISIS? Or is it a hoax by ISIS's opponents to discredit ISIS along the lines of the Russian secret police producing &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protocols_of_the_Elders_of_Zion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Protocols of the Elders of Zion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-02-07T10:58:48.230" Title="Is &quot;Dabiq&quot; an ISIS-produced magazine?" Tags="|media|isis|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23617" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-28T11:22:42.477" Score="12" ViewCount="1452" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some sites make the claim that Boeing has installed an uninteruptible ground-controlled autopilot in aircraft such as the 777 with registration 9M-MRO used for missing flight MH370.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notable claims (that this system is already installed and could have been misused):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/08/07/flight-control-boeings-uninterruptible-autopilot-system-drones-remote-hijacking/&quot;&gt;Boeing’s ‘Uninterruptible Autopilot System’, Drones &amp;amp; Remote Hijacking&lt;/a&gt; - 21stCenturyWire.com&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Honeywell_Uninterruptible_Autopilot&quot;&gt;Boeing HoneyWell Uninterruptible Autopilot&lt;/a&gt; - Wikipedia.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US7142971&quot;&gt;System and method for automatically controlling a path of travel of a vehicle&lt;/a&gt; - Google Patents&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/diagrams-boeing-patents-anti-terrorism-auto-land-system-for-hijacked-210869/&quot;&gt;Boeing patents anti-terrorism auto-land system for hijacked airliners&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.standard.co.uk/news/new-autopilot-will-make-another-911-impossible-7239651.html&quot;&gt;New Autopilot will make another 911 impossible&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Boeing's patent was registered in 2003, so dates after the 2001 9-11 attacks. But also after the 2002 delivery date of the 777 registered as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airfleets.net/ficheapp/plane-b777-28420.htm&quot;&gt;9M-MRO&lt;/a&gt; which was used for flight MH370.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that any Boeing aircraft are, or have been, fitted with this sort of system prior to delivery to airlines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2014-10-28T11:29:32.557" LastActivityDate="2023-07-03T05:53:07.140" Title="Is a Boeing Honeywell ‘Uninterruptible’ Autopilot System pre-installed on any in-service airliners?" Tags="|aviation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23618" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-28T16:13:32.963" Score="5" ViewCount="903" Body="&lt;p&gt;I stumbled upon the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdevice.eu/en/certificates/article-65.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Automatic Non-invasive Express Screening Analyzer (ANESA)&lt;/a&gt; device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the description it reads&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ANESA Automatic Non-invasive Express Screening Analyzer determines the state of organism, its functional, hemodynamic balance, water - and gas exchange from position of homeostasis, which is interrelated with fermentation and immunologic correction. Determines metabolizm and patologies of nerve, heart and circulatory systems, internal organs, supporting and motoring systems, blood circulation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The non-invasive test for a short time from 3 to 12 minutes, after that you get 130 parameters which characterizes the state of the human body. Among these there are several indicators what would otherwise be determined only by surgery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this is either a technological wonder or just an other scam. What drew my attention is that they claim this device got an &amp;quot;Award of the German Academy of Natural Sciences&amp;quot; (and &amp;quot;Crystal Diploma of the Ministry of Health United Arab Emirates&amp;quot;, whatever this means).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also states that it is certified in EU, Ukraine and Russia, although they don't explicitly state what is certified to do. In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdevice.eu/en/certification_in_es/page-1/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;page&quot;&gt;page&lt;/a&gt; about their certification they state something I cannot really comprehend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find anything remotely scientific about this device with a casual search on-line so I thought I should ask here. So, does anyone know anything about it and whether it can diagnose pathologies that would normally take surgery to detect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18750" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-01-31T07:56:05.130" Title="Can ANESA be used to diagnose pathologies?" Tags="|medical-science|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23619" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23620" CreationDate="2014-10-28T17:21:07.840" Score="34" ViewCount="12667" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_disease&quot;&gt;&quot;Ebola Virus Disease&quot;&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No specific treatment for the virus is available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus&quot;&gt;&quot;Ebola Virus&quot;&lt;/a&gt; also states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no cure for Ebola, but if people get care quickly from&#xA;  doctors and nurses at a hospital, more of them live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how are there news articles telling us of people with Ebola who have been cured?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have a myriad of news articles describing people in the U.S and around the world. afflicted with Ebola that have now been cured:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/28/health/us-ebola/index.html?hpt=hp_t1&quot;&gt;Dallas nurse Amber Vinson&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recovered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/24/texas-nurse-ebola-nina-pham-release-test-negative&quot;&gt;Dallas nurse Nina Pham&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cured&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/experimental-ebola-treatments-primer-article-1.1986203&quot;&gt;Nebraskan journalist Ashoka Mukpo&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cured&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/docs-declare-ebola-patients-kent-brantly-nancy-writebol-no-risk-n185626&quot;&gt;American missionary Nancy Writebol&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cured/Recovered? (&lt;em&gt;See link above&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://time.com/3270016/ebola-survivor-kent-brantly/&quot;&gt;Dr. Kent Brantly&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cured/Recovered? (&lt;em&gt;See link above&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/spain-woman-free-ebola-virus-2nd-test-shows-26345120&quot;&gt;Spanish nurse assitant Teresa Romero&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Recovered&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.voanews.com/content/french-ebola-patient-recovers/2472644.html&quot;&gt;Unnamed French nurse&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cured&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there really no treatment for the disease? Then how are these people surviving? How are they getting treated? I am especially confused by the wording the articles use.  Some use the word &quot;surviving&quot; to describe some people's incidents with the disease, which would imply that they had not been cured, but some articles also state they &quot;were cured&quot;, which would imply there exists a cure for Ebola.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11227" LastEditorUserId="11227" LastEditDate="2014-10-28T22:59:48.223" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T17:01:02.323" Title="Is there a cure for Ebola?" Tags="|ebola|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23620" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23619" CreationDate="2014-10-28T17:31:16.990" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are not many types of &amp;quot;specific&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiviral_drug&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Antiviral drug&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ebola is treated as described &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_disease#Treatment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;later in the Wikipedia article you quoted&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Treatment is primarily supportive in nature. These measures may include management of pain, nausea, fever and anxiety, as well as rehydration via the oral or by intravenous route. (etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If professional care is not possible, guidelines by WHO for care at home have been relatively successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Intensive care is often used in the developed world. This may include maintaining blood volume and electrolytes (salts) balance as well as treating any bacterial infections that may develop. Dialysis may be needed for kidney failure, and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation may be used for lung dysfunction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T17:44:07.347" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23621" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23619" CreationDate="2014-10-28T18:46:49.253" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no cure just as there is no cure for the flu.  You get sick, you don't die, and eventually you get better.  With proper medical care(IV fluids in large quantities) Ebola kills 30% of the people who get it. Even with poor medical treatment it &quot;only&quot; kills 70% of the people who get it.  Ebola isn't instant death for everyone who gets it, some survive, and with proper care even more people survive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2014/10/23/358363535/why-do-ebola-mortality-rates-vary-so-widely&quot;&gt;http://www.npr.org/2014/10/23/358363535/why-do-ebola-mortality-rates-vary-so-widely&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21398" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T18:46:49.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23619" CreationDate="2014-10-28T18:46:59.823" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is evidence that blood transfusions from recovered patients are effective.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/179/Supplement_1/S18.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/179/Supplement_1/S18.long&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article above reports testing such blood transfusions on 8 infected patients, of which a single one died. This fatality rate is 12.5% vs the normal rate of 80% in that outbreak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this current outbreak several patients in the US have been treated with the blood of recovered ebola patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ebola patients that have recovered have antibodies in their blood. These antibodies allow our immune system to identify and eliminate viruses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22624" LastEditorUserId="18786" LastEditDate="2014-10-30T10:01:01.593" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T10:01:01.593" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23623" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23619" CreationDate="2014-10-28T20:46:47.427" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, but there is a substantial investment being made on a vaccine&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drug makers stand to make $1 billion in federal contracts to develop stockpiles of &#xA;  Ebola vaccines and treatments for the U.S. government. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/28/news/companies/ebola-drug-billion/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These, however, are experimental vaccines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The World Health Organization (WHO) announced plans on October 24 to produce millions of doses of two experimental Ebola vaccines by the end of 2015. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/millions-of-doses-of-ebola-vaccine-to-be-ready-by-end-of-2015/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scientific America&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18012" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T20:46:47.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23624" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23619" CreationDate="2014-10-28T20:49:41.340" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;An experimental drug called ZMapp, a combination of three &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoclonal_antibody&quot;&gt;monoclonal antibodies&lt;/a&gt;, exists. It showed great promise in treating rhesus macaques&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7520/full/nature13777.html&quot;&gt;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7520/full/nature13777.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;but its use in humans so far has been too limited to be statistically significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The supplies of ZMapp have currently been exhausted. Its developer, Mapp Biopharmaceutical, has recently contracted with the US government (Health and Human Services; Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response; Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority) to develop and manufacture ZMapp. The contract is worth $24.9 million initially (but can be extended).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mappbio.com/10-update.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.mappbio.com/10-update.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2014pres/09/20140902b.html&quot;&gt;http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2014pres/09/20140902b.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Profectus BioSciences has received $28M in funding to develop and produce their VesiculoVax vaccine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.profectusbiosciences.net/pdfs/releases/2014%201022%20Profectus%20Ebola%20HHS%20BARDA.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.profectusbiosciences.net/pdfs/releases/2014%201022%20Profectus%20Ebola%20HHS%20BARDA.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2014pres/10/20141016a.html&quot;&gt;http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2014pres/10/20141016a.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other vaccines in the works as well, such as VSV-EBOV (Canada's National Microbiology Lab), an effort by Crucell (funding via US government, NIH, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), a rabies-based vaccine via Thomas Jefferson University, and a vaccine from Immunovaccine, Inc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3122" LastEditorUserId="3122" LastEditDate="2014-10-29T06:36:42.540" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T06:36:42.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23625" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-28T22:20:11.760" Score="4" ViewCount="484" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an interesting report from a company called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snoopwall.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SnoopWall&lt;/a&gt; that is detailed in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8xz8xKEFvU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this YouTube video from a Special Report with Bret Baier with Fox News.&lt;/a&gt; In the report &amp;quot;Cybersecurity Expert&amp;quot; Gary Miliefsky, who works for SnoopWall, says phrases such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The top ten flashlight apps today that you can download from the Google Play store are all malware. They are malicious, spying, snooping, and stealing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been tracking down where the stolen data is going and I've found three countries so far: China, India, and Russia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They use this data pretty much for criminal purposes, but if a nation state wants to collect a lot of information on Americans this is a great way to do it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To get rid of the problem you have to not only uninstall the flashlight apps, but you also need to factory reset your phone because the apps also install Trojans that remain there and wait to run and operate in the background while you are doing important things like mobile banking or reading your contacts list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the video Miliefsky refers to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snoopwall.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Flashlight-Spyware-Appendix-2014.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Flashlight Apps Threat Assessment Report (PDF)&lt;/a&gt;. The report appears to simply list the permissions that each app requests when you first install it. Whether that is a real threat or not does not seem to actually be discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/flashlight.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes seems to have the same sentiment as others in the security industry&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that a given app has access to data doesn't necessarily mean the app is actually using that data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what evidence is there to actually suggest that the top ten flashlight apps are collecting users' data and sending it off to China, India, and Russia for criminal purposes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the above quotes are paraphrased from the youtube video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-28T22:20:11.760" Title="Are the top ten flashlight apps maliciously stealing data and sending it to China, India, and Russia?" Tags="|mobile-phones|security|malware|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-11-07T02:47:33.947" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23627" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19625" CreationDate="2014-10-29T02:25:55.927" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently the link between heart disease and red meat is found. It is L-carnitine. In short, there are gut bacteria that &quot;eat&quot; L-carnitine  and produce a substance called TMAO, which causes atherosclerosis. For more information check &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/new-study-links-l-carnitine-in-red-meat-to-heart-disease-201304176083&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; page or just google &quot;L-carnitine  TMAO&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18750" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T02:25:55.927" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23629" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-29T12:18:14.513" Score="2" ViewCount="417" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/05/06/concern-for-equality-linked-to-logic-not-emotion/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Concern for equality linked to logic, not emotion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;by Lisa Wade, PhD, May 6, 2014, at 09:00 am&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A new &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jneurosci.org/content/34/12/4161&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; finds that people with high “justice sensitivity” are&#xA;  using logic, not emotions.  Subjects were put in a fMRI machine, one&#xA;  that measures ongoing brain activity and shown videos of people acting&#xA;  kindly or cruelly toward a homeless person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some respondents reacted more strongly than others — hence the high&#xA;  versus low justice sensitivity — and an analysis of the high&#xA;  sensitivity individuals’ brain activity showed that they were&#xA;  processing the images in the parts of the brain where logic and&#xA;  rationality live.   “Individuals who are sensitive to justice and&#xA;  fairness do not seem to be emotionally driven,” &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140328102909.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;explained&lt;/a&gt; one of the&#xA;  scientists, “Rather, they are cognitively driven.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, no:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Activists aren’t angry, they reasonably object to unjust circumstances&#xA;  that they understand all too well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Lisa Wade's PhD is in &lt;a href=&quot;http://lisa-wade.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sociology&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A screenshot of this blog post has received at least 515 retweets and 421 favorites on &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/9027km/status/526426201007878148&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;twitter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim seems surprising for me, because I suspect that there are some people who are extremely intelligent but are absolute monsters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I would have thought that if someone with a strong justice sensitivity witnessed someone acting cruelly, they'd engage the parts of the brain associated with logic to try to ascertain why someone was behaving cruelly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is concern for equality linked to logic, not to emotion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2014-10-29T12:26:12.663" LastActivityDate="2014-11-04T11:36:01.850" Title="Is concern for equality linked to logic, not emotion?" Tags="|psychology|politics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23630" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-29T12:34:52.333" Score="11" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;The anti-malarial drug &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mefloquine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mefloquine&lt;/a&gt; (aka Lariam, Mephaquin or Mefliam) is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chicagonow.com/uncommon-sense/2014/06/mefloquine-toxicity-ptsd-cure-worse-than-malaria-20140626/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;known to frequently induce strong neurologic side effects&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard a number of times that this drug would fail to get regulatory approval, if it were introduced today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the claim can be found in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ktipp.ch/artikel/d/albtraum-im-ferienparadies/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this (Swiss-German) article&lt;/a&gt;, which appeared in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ktipp.ch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ktipp&lt;/a&gt;, a Swiss consumer protection magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Heute würde Lariam nicht mehr zugelassen, ist Experte Ashley Croft überzeugt. Kürzlich wies er nach: Vor der Zulassung wurde Lariam fast nur an Einheimischen getestet, die an Malariaerreger gewöhnt sind - nicht aber an Touristen. Die Behörden drückten ein Auge zu. Dies sei «verantwortungslos», so Croft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Erst mehrere Jahre nach der Zulassung machte Roche Studien mit Touristen. Die Ergebnisse waren niederschmetternd. Eine Studie kam zum Schluss: Über drei Viertel bekamen Probleme mit den Nerven oder der Psyche. Die meisten waren harmlos, etwa Kopfschmerzen oder schlechte Träume. Einige Teilnehmer litten aber auch an Depressionen oder Panikattacken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laut Rudolf Stoller von der Schweizer Zulassungsstelle Swissmedic war Lariam damals eine «wichtige Alternative» gegen Malaria. «In der Zwischenzeit», so Stoller, «sind die Anforderungen an die Zulassung eines Medikamentes aber tatsächlich höher geworden.»&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basic English translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today Lariam would no longer be approved, expert Ashley Croft is convinced. Recently he showed: Before admission Lariam was almost solely tested on locals, who are accustomed to the malaria pathogen - but not on tourists. The authorities turned a blind eye. This was &amp;quot;irresponsible&amp;quot;, says Croft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was not until several years after the admission that Roche made studies involving tourists. The results were devastating. One study concluded: More then three-quarters developed problems with nerves or psyche. Most were harmless, such as headaches or bad dreams. However, some participants also suffered from depression or panic attacks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taken from Rudolf Stoller from the swiss Admission Board Swissmedic: Back then Lariam was an &amp;quot;important alternative&amp;quot; against malaria. &amp;quot;In the meantime&amp;quot;, says Stoller, &amp;quot;the requirements for approval of a drug have actually become higher.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this be verified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22640" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T10:20:15.940" Title="Would Mefloquine be approved under today's regulations?" Tags="|medical-science|law|pharmaceutical|malaria|medications|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19625" CreationDate="2014-10-29T20:09:56.307" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Question: Does red meat increase the risk of heart disease?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My answer: Consumption of red meat was associated with increased risk of heart disease in some, but not all, studies, which suggests that &lt;strong&gt;some common red meat ingredient, like sodium or other preservatives, rather than red meat by itself &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; be the actual risk factor.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://circheartfailure.ahajournals.org/content/7/4/552.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://circheartfailure.ahajournals.org/content/7/4/552.long&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;A prospective study in Swedish men, 2014&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;strong&gt;processed&lt;/strong&gt; red meat consumption, but not unprocessed red meat, is associated with an increased risk of heart failure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In above study, the suggested, but not yet proven, risk factors in processed meat included preservatives: sodium, nitrites and phosphates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2803089/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2803089/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Meat intake and mortality: a prospective study of over half a million people, 2009&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Red and processed meat&lt;/strong&gt; intakes were associated with &lt;strong&gt;modest increases&lt;/strong&gt; in cardiovascular disease mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In some studies, red meat was &lt;strong&gt;not associated&lt;/strong&gt; with heart disease:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nel.gov/vault/2440/web/files/DietaryPatterns/DPRptFullFinal.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nel.gov/vault/2440/web/files/DietaryPatterns/DPRptFullFinal.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Systematic review, 2014&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence of a relationship...characterized by &lt;strong&gt;red and processed meat&lt;/strong&gt;...and an increased risk of cardiovascular disease is &lt;strong&gt;limited and less consistent.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19364995&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19364995&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Systematic review, 2009&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Insufficient evidence&lt;/strong&gt; of association is present for intake of...saturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids...&lt;strong&gt;meat,&lt;/strong&gt; eggs and milk [and the risk of coronary heart disesae].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22333876&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22333876&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;A prospective study in Japan, 2012&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Moderate meat consumption,&lt;/strong&gt; up to ~100 g/day, was &lt;strong&gt;not associated&lt;/strong&gt; with increased mortality from ischemic heart disease, stroke or total cardiovascular disease among either gender&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, saturated fat (usually high in red meat) may not be associated with heart disease&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1846638&amp;amp;resultClick=3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1846638&amp;amp;resultClick=3&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Systematic review, 2014&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Current evidence does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage...low consumption of total saturated fats.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15288" LastEditorUserId="15288" LastEditDate="2014-10-29T21:06:32.287" LastActivityDate="2014-10-29T21:06:32.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23619" CreationDate="2014-10-29T20:33:41.360" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no cure for Ebola. There is a difference between the words mentioned, &lt;strong&gt;survived&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;recovered&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;cured&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;disease-free&lt;/strong&gt;. Unfortunately, these words are used interchangeably (in a colloquial context} by some (&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; all!) in the media. One &lt;strong&gt;DOES&lt;/strong&gt; become &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_147884.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ebola free but that is NOT equivalent to survived or recovered initially&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ebola victims who survive -- the virus kills 60 to 90 percent of those&#xA;  it infects -- first must... spend weeks, if not months, regaining&#xA;  their strength and body weight following the ravages of Ebola ... and&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;ought&lt;/strong&gt; to emerge from their struggle with immune resistance against future Ebola infection. They also will likely feel some echoes of the&#xA;  overwhelming pain that Ebola infection causes. There's not a lot that&#xA;  doctors can do ... besides monitoring patients' vitals, providing pain&#xA;  medications, and encouraging them to eat and drink.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Survival&lt;/strong&gt; and full &lt;strong&gt;recovery&lt;/strong&gt; is possible for Ebola patients although future immunity is not certain. Ebola patients are the least likely to become reinfected though (same source as above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for being disease-free, &lt;strong&gt;Ebola can hide in reservoirs in the bod&lt;/strong&gt;y. It has been found in the urine and semen of people from one to two months following recovery. Eventually the virus &lt;strong&gt;does&lt;/strong&gt; go away. (See same source.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding cures in this specific part of the question, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;So how are there news articles telling us of people with Ebola who have been cured?&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, see &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm410086.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;FDA warns consumers about fraudulent Ebola treatment products&quot;&gt;FDA warns consumers about fake Ebola cures&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since the outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa, the FDA has seen&#xA;  and received consumer complaints about a variety of products claiming&#xA;  to either prevent the Ebola virus or treat the&#xA;  infection...Unfortunately, during outbreak situations, fraudulent&#xA;  products that claim to prevent, treat, or cure a disease all too often&#xA;  appear on the market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4301" LastEditorUserId="2004" LastEditDate="2014-10-31T17:01:02.323" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T17:01:02.323" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23641" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-30T13:43:33.300" Score="2" ViewCount="192" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of sites and people declaring the benefits of Bee Pollen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few examples from this site specifically site that the benefits are caused because the pollen will reduce inflammation.  Are there studies that confirm this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skin Soother - Bee pollen is often used in topical products that aim&#xA;to treat inflammatory conditions and common skin irritations like&#xA;psoriasis or eczema. The amino acids and vitamins protect the skin and&#xA;aid the regeneration of cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Respiratory System - Bee pollen contains a high quantity of&#xA;antioxidants that may have an anti-inflammatory effect on the tissues&#xA;of the lungs, preventing the onset of asthma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prostate Aid - Men who suffer from benign prostate hyperplasia can&#xA;find relief by using bee pollen. Bee pollen can help reduce&#xA;inflammation to stop frequent urges to urinate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://foodmatters.tv/articles-1/10-amazing-health-benefits-of-bee-pollen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://foodmatters.tv/articles-1/10-amazing-health-benefits-of-bee-pollen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17023" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T13:43:33.300" Title="Does Bee Pollen reduce inflammation?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|herbalism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-30T14:36:33.240" Score="7" ViewCount="1331" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been some health concerns raised (mainly through word of mouth) with regards to the toxicity of chicken haunches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, in the industrial breeding and rearing of chickens many harmful chemicals, excessive antibiotics and growth hormones are injected into chickens and the injection is conventionally done at the haunch (also known as the &quot;chicken tip&quot;), hence consumers are warned not to consume the chicken tip. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from &lt;a href=&quot;http://gaoweiming.blogspot.sg/2012/12/what-part-of-chicken-is-best-not-to-eat.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some random blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Chicken tip: also known as &quot;chicken butt&quot;, &quot;chicken haunch, refers to&#xA;  the long tail of the parts of the upper end of the chicken butt, juicy&#xA;  meat. This part of the lymph glands concentrated, to be swallowed by&#xA;  macrophages in the lymph glands of bacteria and viruses, and even&#xA;  carcinogens, but can not be broken down, so that the toxins will&#xA;  settle in the haunch. Over time, the chicken tip became large&#xA;  warehouse storage of viruses, bacteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much truth is there to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally I'm a little sceptical because I find it unlikely industrial breeders inject each chicken individually as opposed to injecting the chemicals into water or feed instead. Also, I have some degree of confidence in food safety authorities. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21586" LastEditorUserId="21586" LastEditDate="2017-01-03T06:35:05.593" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T07:08:33.123" Title="Are chicken haunches especially toxic?" Tags="|safety|toxicology|public-health|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23643" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-10-30T15:12:31.883" Score="8" ViewCount="344" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the Mayor of New York City, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www1.nyc.gov/office-of-the-mayor/news/493-14/mayor-de-blasio-signs-new-law-lowering-new-york-city-s-default-speed-limit-25-mph#/0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;De Blasio&lt;/a&gt;: (my emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Excessive speed contributes to 25 percent of roadway fatalities on New York City Streets and is the leading cause of motor vehicle crashes. &lt;strong&gt;Reducing vehicle speed from 30 to 25 mph doubles the likelihood of a pedestrian surviving a crash&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He seems to be saying that the expected number of pedestrian deaths would go down to half of what it is currently (which the numbers I've seen don't agree on, so I'll ask a separate question for that.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What percentage of current pedestrian deaths would be expected to be avoided with a 5mph reduction in the speed limit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a more explicit quote with a subtly different claim, from later in the article:  (my emphasis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Because of the leadership of Mayor de Blasio, this life-saving measure is now law,” said Department of Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg. “&lt;strong&gt;Dropping the default speed limit by 5 mph may not seem like a lot, but it cuts the chances of pedestrians dying from being hit by a vehicle in half.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="6236" LastEditDate="2014-10-30T20:35:48.290" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T20:49:11.820" Title="Would lowering the speed limit in NYC by 5mph lower the number of pedestrian deaths by a factor of 2?" Tags="|road-vehicles|law|safety|mortality|traffic|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23644" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23651" CreationDate="2014-10-30T15:37:53.837" Score="3" ViewCount="798" Body="&lt;p&gt;In researching my &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/23643/would-lowering-the-speed-limit-in-nyc-by-5mph-lower-the-number-of-pedestrian-dea&quot;&gt;other question&lt;/a&gt;, I found a hard time getting all the sources of numbers of deaths to agree with each other. Some of the numbers I found are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;168 pedestrians and 10 cyclists killed in 2013&lt;/strong&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/01/31/nypd-16059-pedestrians-and-cyclists-injured-178-killed-in-traffic-in-2013/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/01/31/nypd-16059-pedestrians-and-cyclists-injured-178-killed-in-traffic-in-2013/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;183 pedstrians and 9 cyclists killed in 2013&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;from the same author!&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/10/29/nyc-pedestrian-and-cyclist-traffic-injuries-hit-five-year-high-in-2013/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.streetsblog.org/2014/10/29/nyc-pedestrian-and-cyclist-traffic-injuries-hit-five-year-high-in-2013/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;in 2013, cars in New York City killed 286 people.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.villagevoice.com/2014-02-05/news/nyc-pedestrian-deaths/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.villagevoice.com/2014-02-05/news/nyc-pedestrian-deaths/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;173 pedestrians killed in 2013&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/pedestrian-deaths-auto-strikes-rise-nyc-article-1.1577396&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/pedestrian-deaths-auto-strikes-rise-nyc-article-1.1577396&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;In 2013, 176 pedestrians were killed in traffic in New York, according to police statistics.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/nyregion/vow-to-end-traffic-deaths-vs-reality-of-city-streets.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/nyregion/vow-to-end-traffic-deaths-vs-reality-of-city-streets.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As no two numbers agree, who's telling the truth, and why don't they all have the same numbers? They are all claiming to use data provided by the police. Does it make sense that the NYPD would give out five different versions of numbers at different times?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T14:04:04.703" Title="How many pedestrians die a year in NYC from being hit by a car?" Tags="|road-vehicles|mortality|traffic|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23643" CreationDate="2014-10-30T20:26:02.163" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The two quotes say subtly different things. The second quote is much harder to examine, because talking about changes in speed limits without any information on compliance levels is useless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'll tackle the first quote, that risk of fatality halves when vehicle speed is 11.2 m/s (25mph, 40km/h) instead of 13.4 m/s (30mph, 48km/h).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And that's &lt;strong&gt;true&lt;/strong&gt;, at least according to a recent study used by the UK's Department for Transport in its official research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NJEiV.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is one logistic regression equation for probability of fatality, when vehicle speed was v km/h.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roughly speaking, that works out at 3.5% for 25 mph, and 7% for 30 mph.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121105134522/http://www.dft.gov.uk/publications/rsrr-theme5-report-16/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Relationship between Speed and Risk of Fatal Injury: Pedestrians and Car Occupants&lt;/a&gt;, UK Department for Transport research report, 2010, quoting: Rosen E. and Sander, U. (2009) &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2009.02.002&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pedestrian fatality risk as a function of car impact speed&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;Accident Analysis and Prevention, 41, 536–542.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="6236" LastEditDate="2014-10-30T20:49:11.820" LastActivityDate="2014-10-30T20:49:11.820" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23648" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23649" CreationDate="2014-10-31T09:01:57.977" Score="6" ViewCount="7164" Body="&lt;p&gt;Was inbreeding responsible for haemophilia in royal families in Europe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Inbreeding#Political_and_financial_motivations&quot;&gt;Rationalwiki&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;One general result of this inbreeding in the European royal families&#xA;  was the concentration of the disease hemophilia in the males&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/haemophilia.html&quot;&gt;&#xA;  [3]&lt;/a&gt;. So much so that hemophilia was known as the Royal disease&#xA;  until after World War II.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answer posted in another Stack Exchange:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the biggest problems reestablishing humanity with a group that&#xA;  small is a lack of genetic diversity. People make jokes about&#xA;  inbreeding because it can be a serious problem, leading to birth&#xA;  defects and genetic diseases. Read up on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haemophilia#European_royalty&quot;&gt;haemophilia among European&#xA;  Royalty&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2022-08-15T05:54:08.137" Title="Was inbreeding responsible for haemophilia in royalty?" Tags="|medical-science|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23649" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23648" CreationDate="2014-10-31T10:36:00.317" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes and no:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Haemophilia is heritable&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Breeding was responsible for it in royal families&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Not necessarily &amp;quot;inbreeding&amp;quot; though&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The relevant fact are stated in Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haemophilia_in_European_royalty&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Haemophilia in European royalty&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Britain's Queen Victoria, through two of her five daughters (Princess Alice and Princess Beatrice), passed the mutation to various royal houses across the continent, including the royal families of Spain, Germany and Russia. Victoria's son Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany suffered from the disease. For this reason, haemophilia was once popularly called &amp;quot;the royal disease&amp;quot;. Tests of the remains of the Romanov imperial family show that the specific form of haemophilia passed down by Queen Victoria was probably the relatively rare Haemophilia B.[1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sex-linked X chromosome disorder manifests almost entirely in males, although the gene for the disorder is located on the X chromosome and may be inherited from either mother or father. Expression of the disorder is much more common in males than in females. This is because, although the trait is recessive, males only inherit one X chromosome, from their mothers. Thus if the haemophilia gene is transmitted on it, there is no possibility for the male to inherit a haemophilia-free gene from his father to mask or dilute the symptoms. By contrast, a female who inherits a gene for haemophilia on one of her X chromosomes will also have inherited a second X chromosome from the other parent which is likely to carry a haemophilia-free gene that would prevent full expression of symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Females who inherit the gene for Haemophilia A or B from both parents would be expected to manifest full symptoms, similar to those seen in affected males, but this is extremely rare. Despite frequent inter-marriage among royalty, no case of such double inheritance is known among Queen Victoria's descendants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Queen Victoria had it&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Breeding passed it into other royal families&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes, it was because of &amp;quot;inbreeding&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt; that it was passed to several royal families -- if other royal families had intermarried more with commoners there would have been less chance for Queen Victoria's genes to affect every other royal family&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It expressed in males but, &lt;strong&gt;no there was not enough &amp;quot;inbreeding&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt; (i.e. two affected X chromose) for it to ever express in females&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T10:36:00.317" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23651" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23644" CreationDate="2014-10-31T13:31:37.007" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The numbers are, broadly speaking, consistent. The lower number of pedestrian deaths reported for 2013, were from Jan and Feb 2014: that's when you'd expect that number to be provisional, and to under-estimate the total. As 2014 progressed, better data and late returns would have been compiled, leading to a rise in the numbers. So the 183 is probably about right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe that the Village Voice number of 286 refers to people killed, not just pedestrians. That would include cyclists, motorcyclists, car drivers, and car passengers. It's also very close to the pedestrian fatality figure (287) for New York State (rather than just city) - source as below, page &lt;em&gt;vi&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exactly what consists of a traffic fatality, and what does not, might on the face of it seem to be an obvious distinction. But it's not. It might be 10 days after a collision before the consequential death. Or 3 months. Someone might die 2 years later, due to complications arising after a collision. An arbitrary line has to be drawn somewhere. And it's not always possible to keep track of someone's health after a collision: there might not be any institution tasked with owning that tracking and follow-up. Those are some of the reasons why figures for 2013 traffic fatalities would change during the course of 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Within the FARS (Fatality Analysis Reporting System) system used to analyse traffic fatalities, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Help/Terms.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;definition&lt;/a&gt; used is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A Police-reported Crash Involving A Motor Vehicle In Transport On A Trafficway In Which At Least One Person Dies Within 30 Days Of The Crash&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example of a provisional figure being increased: from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.safeny.ny.gov/annualRpt/2013GTSCAnnualReport.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New York State 2013 Highway Safety Annual Report&lt;/a&gt;, page &lt;em&gt;iii&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the 2011 AIS data file was finalized, the number of alcohol-related injuries increased from 5,447 to 6,121.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="6236" LastEditDate="2014-10-31T14:04:04.703" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T14:04:04.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23652" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23654" CreationDate="2014-10-31T16:29:19.077" Score="4" ViewCount="5837" Body="&lt;p&gt;For 2013's Halloween, there's an ad on the internet about a Pepsi can with a Coke costume, stating it's “scary”, to which Coca Cola responds with “Everybody wants to be a hero”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4Tbgp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Pepsi vs Coke Halloween 2013&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, so good, but the only reference I have been able to find is both images side by side, with a “via 9GAG.com” legend on the side.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering that 9GAG is not a reliable source and anybody can upload images there, I'm skeptical about these ads. Are they real? Did Coca Cola really respond in such a way to Pepsi?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22675" LastEditorUserId="22675" LastEditDate="2014-10-31T18:03:05.183" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T21:55:48.470" Title="Is this Halloween campaign from Pepsi and Coca Cola real?" Tags="|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23652" CreationDate="2014-10-31T21:55:48.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first one is apparently real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fooddive.com/news/coke-fans-halloween-response-to-pepsi-ad-goes-viral/190208/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://adsoftheworld.com/media/outdoor/pepsi_halloween&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; claim it's from a specific (Belgian) ad agency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Advertising Agency: Buzz in a Box, Brussels, Belgium  &#xA;Creative Directors / Art Directors: Gregory Defay, Quentin Gascard  &#xA;Photographer: Jekyll n' Hyde  &#xA;Additional credits: Account Manager: Tu Anh Ha  &#xA;Published: October 2013  &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first image doesn't have the 9GAG logo; and &quot;Coca Cola&quot; is mispelled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That ad agency currently features &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzinabox.be/works_34.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a different Pepsi ad&lt;/a&gt; (showing that the agency has Pepsi as a client).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-10-31T21:55:48.470" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23656" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23664" CreationDate="2014-11-02T02:00:48.843" Score="5" ViewCount="1081" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://freeassangenow.org/faq&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://freeassangenow.org/faq&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://justice4assange.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://justice4assange.com/&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why do the UK and Sweden disobey international law?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a conflict between the United Kingdom’s obligations to the 1951 UN refugee convention and its obligations under the European Arrest Warrant system. It is established law that these conflicts are to be resolved in favour of the higher obligation which is to the 1951 convention. The United Kingdom says it has a treaty obligation to extradite Assange to Sweden even though he has not been charged with an offense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rather than following international law, the United Kingdom has chosen to interpret the conflict in favor of its geopolitical alliances. The United Kingdom has a history of breaking international law in this manner, for example, in its invasion of Iraq, its cooperation with US rendition operations, and its facilitation of global mass spying via its intelligence service GCHQ. Sweden is also a party to these last two violations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the UK and Sweden in violation of international law with respect to detaining Julian Assange?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T08:45:19.343" Title="Are the UK and Sweden in violation of international law with respect to detaining Julian Assange?" Tags="|law|united-kingdom|law-enforcement|sweden|julian-assange|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23657" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-02T04:46:39.080" Score="5" ViewCount="292" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2812605/Halloween-really-evil-says-Vatican-replaced-HOLYWEEN.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Daily Mail wrote&lt;/a&gt; that the Vatican claims that Halloween is evil and dangerous for young people and there are more animal sacrifices, desecrations of cemeteries and thefts of sacred bones happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Catholic Church has called for Halloween to be scrapped and replaced with 'Holyween' - a night in which children would attend prayer vigils and dress up as saints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Vatican's first official conference of exorcists warned of a danger to young people at Halloween when there is an increase in occult activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Father Aldo Buonaiuto, of the International Association of Exorcists, says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;'Many say Halloween is a simple carnival, but in fact there is nothing innocent or fun about it - it is the antechamber to something much more dangerous. There are always more evil rituals, animal sacrifices, desecrations of cemeteries and thefts of sacred bones at the time of the 31 October. Participating in Halloween is 'like an initiation into the occult',&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, Do more &amp;quot;animal sacrifices, desecrations of cemeteries and thefts of sacred bones&amp;quot; happen at Halloween?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;Note: I updated the original question to make it on-topic based on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2963/why-do-you-put-a-question-on-hold-after-op-shows-an-effort-to-improve-it&quot;&gt;this Meta discussion&lt;/a&gt;. Thanks for the help and suggestions.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21976" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T04:58:33.720" Title="Do more &quot;animal sacrifices, desecrations of cemeteries&quot; happen at Halloween?" Tags="|religion|vatican|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23660" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-02T19:10:51.037" Score="3" ViewCount="646" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found the following claim on the website of an offroad motorcycle course company:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over 95% of the world's roads are unpaved, so if you don't like to (or can't) ride in the dirt, you'll find yourself confined to a mere 5% of the planet. Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmwoffroadacademy.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BMW Off-Road Academy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It sounds like just another made-up-on-the-spot statistic that is there to entice motorcyclists into taking their off-road courses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there any basis to this number? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How would you even arrive at such&#xA;a number? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What qualifies as a road? &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;From the moment is it ridable by&#xA;motorcycle? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Or is every hacked path through the jungle also&#xA;considered a road? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What about the fifty-meter passageway between the&#xA;major roads near my house (I'm sure if you add all of these kinds of&#xA;roads all over the planet up, that you'd have quite a few hundred of&#xA;thousands of kilometres of road).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only data that I have been able to find related to this is &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.ROD.PAVE.ZS&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on the website of the World Bank&lt;/a&gt;, and this data seems to, in no way, point at &gt;95% of unpaved roads all over the world: &#xA; - If 36,4% of all roads in Afghanistan (not exactly the most industrialised country in the world) are paved, how can 95% of the world's road be unpaved? &#xA; - The lowest number in the table, 7%, for Kenya, is the only one that comes even close to 95% of the roads being unpaved, in that specific country (not at all the whole world). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Besides, I also have serious reservations about these data: the same methodological concerns that I outlined above apply (what is considered a road?), but also the fact that some countries seem to have 100% paved roads make it seem unreliable. Not a single unpaved road in Denmark, Austria, and France? Having hiked thousands of kilometres in France, I can personally testify that this is false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10622" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2014-11-02T22:55:25.627" LastActivityDate="2014-11-02T22:55:25.627" Title="Are 95% of the world's roads unpaved?" Tags="|road|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-02T21:19:41.547" Score="21" ViewCount="1627" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seems to be an agreement that sharp knives are much safer than dull ones when you are cutting vegetables, meat, anything you cut with a chefs knife when you cook and prepare food. The reason for it seems to be that you have to use less force and its less chance for its to slip when you cut stuff. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are sharper knives safer, when considering for example that cutting yourself with a sharp are potentially much more serious than with a dull knife? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a range of websites putting forth the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lifehacker.com/5849430/all-the-perils-of-your-kitchen-and-how-to-protect-yourself%20Lifehacker&quot;&gt;Lifehacker&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://asian-fusion.com/704/why-sharp-knives-are-safer-than-dull-ones/&quot;&gt;Asian fusion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sharpeningsupplies.com/Is-a-sharp-knife-safer-W9.aspx&quot;&gt;Sharpeningsupplies.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thekitchn.com/kitchen-safety-why-a-sharp-kni-150287&quot;&gt;thekitchn.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All sites just put forth the claim, but no research is stated, just their opinions on why the claim is true. So that makes me suspicious, where did the claim originate, and is there done any sound research on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14688" LastEditorUserId="8192" LastEditDate="2014-11-09T04:16:00.683" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T21:51:16.863" Title="Are sharp knives safer to use than dull knives for preparing food when cooking?" Tags="|safety|cooking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23660" CreationDate="2014-11-02T22:27:50.980" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Maybe there's a basis, but if so, it doesn't come from official statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2085rank.html?countryname=United%20States&amp;amp;countrycode=us&amp;amp;regionCode=noa&amp;amp;rank=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CIA World Factbook on roadways&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;United States&lt;/a&gt; (#1) and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;China&lt;/a&gt; (#3) have 7,758,605 km of paved roads in their official road networks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;USA Roadways:&#xA;&#xA;total: 6,586,610 km&#xA;country comparison to the world: 1&#xA;paved: 4,304,715 km (includes 76,334 km of expressways)&#xA;unpaved: 2,281,895 km (2012)&#xA;&#xA;China Roadways:&#xA;&#xA;total: 4,106,387 km&#xA;country comparison to the world: 3&#xA;paved: 3,453,890 km (includes 84,946 km of expressways)&#xA;unpaved: 652,497 km (2011)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order for the claim to be true, there needs to be at least 155,172,100 km of unpaved road in the world.  The total length of the roads on that list is around 64,000,000 km, but as the Factbook itself notes, it's an underestimate of the total road length (the stats for Brazil, for example, don't include urban roads).  Even so, with the huge contribution of paved roads from the US and China, the list would need to be off by a factor of at least 3 (consisting entirely of unpaved roads) for the world's roads to be 95% unpaved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(And as for dirt roads in France, the World Factbook doesn't have a paved/unpaved breakdown for it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21297" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-02T22:50:38.117" LastActivityDate="2014-11-02T22:50:38.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23664" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23656" CreationDate="2014-11-02T23:20:15.277" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;An editorial opinion (16 August 2012) from The Guardian was that Assange is not entitled to protection under the 1951 UN refugee convention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/aug/16/julian-assange-wikileaks-refugee-protection&quot;&gt;Refugee protection does not apply to the WikiLeaks founder and it is wrong of him to claim it&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As defined by the United Nations convention on refugees, a refugee is&#xA;  a person who &quot;owing to well founded fear of being persecuted for&#xA;  reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular&#xA;  social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his&#xA;  nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to&#xA;  avail himself of the protection of that country&quot;. A little later on,&#xA;  the text of the convention specifically states that refugee status&#xA;  &quot;&lt;strong&gt;shall not apply to any person with respect to whom there are&#xA;  serious reasons for considering that … he has committed a serious&#xA;  non-political crime outside the country of refuge&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whatever views one may have about Julian Assange as a WikiLeaks&#xA;  activist, it is clear that in legal and moral terms he cannot properly&#xA;  be described as a refugee. [...] Since Mr Assange is wanted by the&#xA;  courts in Sweden for the specific and proper purpose of answering two&#xA;  allegations of sexual assault, which is in anyone's language a serious&#xA;  non-political crime, it is also clear that he is specifically&#xA;  disbarred from being treated as a refugee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;None of this fundamental aspect of Mr Assange's status was discussed&#xA;  in any serious way on Thursday by the Ecuadorian foreign minister etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-18521881&quot;&gt;The BBC has a similar opinion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which both the UK&#xA;  and Ecuador have ratified, says that its protections do not apply to&#xA;  &quot;any person with respect to whom there are serious reasons for&#xA;  considering that… he has committed a serious non-political crime&#xA;  outside the country of refuge prior to his admission to that country&#xA;  as a refugee&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The allegations faced by Mr Assange in Sweden are sexual assault and&#xA;  rape - serious non-political crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, in appears that Assange and Ecuador both claim that Assange's asylum in the embassy is justified by his being a refugee. It's not clear that theirs was a legally-justified decision. The Guardian suggests that Ecuador's decision was political/diplomatic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ecuador has found a way to tweak the tail of the imperialist lion, but the law is not on Ecuador's side and, in the end, the law should be upheld.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_Authority#Extradition_process&quot;&gt;This Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; summarizes Assange's pleadings in UK courts. The courts ruled against Assange, even at the Supreme Court level when the cause was appealed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Extradition hearing&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The extradition hearing took place on 7–8 and 11 February 2011 before&#xA;  the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court sitting at Belmarsh&#xA;  Magistrates' Court in London.[46][47] Assange's lawyers at the&#xA;  extradition hearing were Geoffrey Robertson QC and Mark Stephens,&#xA;  human rights specialists, and the prosecution was represented by a&#xA;  team led by Clare Montgomery QC.[48] Arguments were presented as to&#xA;  whether the Swedish prosecutor had the authority to issue a European&#xA;  Arrest Warrant, the extradition was requested for prosecution or&#xA;  interrogation, the alleged crimes qualified as extradition crimes,&#xA;  there was an abuse of process, his human rights would be respected,&#xA;  and he would receive a fair trial if extradited to Sweden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Extradition decision&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The outcome of the hearing was announced on 24 February 2011, when the&#xA;  extradition warrant was upheld.[49][50][51] Senior District Judge&#xA;  Howard Riddle found against Assange on each of the main arguments&#xA;  against his extradition.[52] The judge said &quot;as a matter of fact, and&#xA;  looking at all the circumstances in the round, this person (Mr&#xA;  Assange) passes the threshold of being an accused person and is wanted&#xA;  for prosecution.&quot;[52] Judge Riddle concluded: &quot;I am satisfied that the&#xA;  specified offences are extradition offences.&quot;[52]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-03T00:11:35.197" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T00:11:35.197" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23667" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23669" CreationDate="2014-11-03T12:07:41.437" Score="3" ViewCount="944" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0062014102&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Holographic Universe&lt;/a&gt;, Michael Talbot describes how Tom was standing next to his daughter when receiving the hypnotic suggestion that she is no longer visible to him. Then, according to Talbot:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tom could no longer see his daughter, even though she was standing next to him&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tom could read something that was covered from his field of view by her body&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The simplest explanation is of course that Tom was an accomplice of the hypnotist. Let us assume for a moment that he was not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is (1) plausible, given what is known scientifically about hypnosis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence at all of a phenomenon like (2) other than Talbot's anecdote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22634" LastEditorUserId="22634" LastEditDate="2014-11-03T12:21:38.310" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T15:02:25.610" Title="Can hypnosis make things subjectively disappear?" Tags="|hypnotism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23668" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-03T13:15:19.613" Score="11" ViewCount="447" Body="&lt;p&gt;A news piece by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kwch.com/news/local-news/saline-county-divided-on-fluoride-issue/29485640?fb_action_ids=10152887206267990%2C494957887313553&amp;amp;fb_action_types=og.comments&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;KWCH 12&lt;/a&gt; in Wichita Kansas about a local community voting on whether to cease water fluoridation quotes local dentist, Doctor Allison Lesko, as saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on which grade level they were, anywhere from 90 to 200 percent increase in cavities within that five years. So this is something that we are going to see and we obviously don't want to see that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote appears to be referring to a previous community (or communities) which ceased water fluoridation and had a 90-200% increase in cavities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question:  &lt;strong&gt;Is there a documented case of a community observing a 90-200% increase in cavities after the cessation of artificial water fluoridation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;NOTE:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have only found studies comparing two cities (one with, one without artificial fluoridation), or very large-scale (i.e. national) scale statistics which show an overall decrease in cavities over time, but which is too general to account for the cessation of fluoridation in individual communities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am looking specifically for a case study where artificial water fluoridation was ceased, and cavities increased over the following 5 years, as claimed in the quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T20:18:54.223" Title="Has cessation of water fluoridation lead to a 90-200% increase in cavities in children?" Tags="|united-states|dentistry|fluoride|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23667" CreationDate="2014-11-03T14:32:47.353" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Negative hallucinations under hypnosis are a decently documented phenomena. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1990-03578-001&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Suggested negative visual hallucinations in hypnotic subjects: When no means yes.&#xA;Spanos, Nicholas et al&lt;/a&gt; write:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;45 undergraduates with high scores on the objective dimension of the Carleton University Responsiveness to Suggestion Scale were hypnotized. Ss were given the suggestion that they would see a blank sheet of paper on opening their eyes. On the paper was a clearly visible number 8. Only 15 Ss repeatedly reported seeing nothing on the page. In a posthypnotic interview designed to subtly pressure Ss into giving accurate descriptions, all but 1 of the 15 negative hallucinators reported correctly that the target was the number 8. Findings demonstrate the rarity of negative hallucination responding and its correlation with indexes of hypnotizability. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's no easy phenomena but it exists well enough to be documented in studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as (2) goes, I'm not aware of this being well demonstrated. If the person however already knows what written on the page and they should be able to see the page, they will tell you what's written on the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's like seeing colors of objects at the rand of your normal visual field. Those objects don't appear to be colorless but your eyes can only perceive colors near the center of your visual field. The colors that you see at the rand of your visual field are the best effort your brain makes to determine the color of those objects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T14:32:47.353" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23671" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23672" CreationDate="2014-11-03T16:40:50.803" Score="0" ViewCount="704" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a recent creationist video, he oh-so-subtly mentioned that there was the isotope &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;carbon-14 (&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;C)&lt;/a&gt; not only in all layers of strata, but in equal amounts too, and that this was somehow proof of a world-wide flood. I have attempted to find a peer-reviewed scientific article regarding old rocks with carbon, but I've yet to find one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot, for the life of me, seem to find the video. I'll try my best, but I did find one article by the same guy:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://creationsciencehalloffame.org/2013/05/08/science/carbon-dating-believers-true-friend/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://creationsciencehalloffame.org/2013/05/08/science/carbon-dating-believers-true-friend/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22702" LastEditorUserId="17804" LastEditDate="2016-05-03T17:43:23.717" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T14:43:19.367" Title="Is Carbon-14 found in all strata?" Tags="|young-earth-creationism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23672" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23671" CreationDate="2014-11-03T17:34:15.597" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is virtually no &lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;C in rocks more than a few hundreds of thousands of years old as &lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;C is radioactive with a half-life of only about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5,730 years&lt;/a&gt;.  There is negligible &lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;C in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/outreach/isotopes/c14tracer.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fossil fuels&lt;/a&gt; (such as coal) for a start, which directly contradicts any claim that the &lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;C is the same in all strata. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Addendum: While the article linked in the question states that &lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;C is found in fossil fuels and rock strata, it is notable that there is no evidence or citation provided allowing this to be verified.  There are however papers that would support this claim, for instance this one&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Baumgardner, John R., et al. &quot;Measurable &lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;C in fossilized organic materials: confirming the young earth creation-flood model.&quot; Proceedings of the fifth international conference on creationism. Vol. 2. Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA, 2003. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Measurable-14C-in-Fossilized-Organic-Materials.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pdf&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I wouldn't regard this as being a peer-reviewed scientific conference.  If it were published in a regular scientific journal it would be rather different.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note also that (as pointed out by @DavePhD in the comments below), small amounts of &lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;C may be formed in &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; rock strata by other mechanisms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorUserId="17804" LastEditDate="2016-05-04T14:43:19.367" LastActivityDate="2016-05-04T14:43:19.367" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23673" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23668" CreationDate="2014-11-03T20:10:02.200" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cannot confirm the above, but there are plenty of examples where cavities rates went DOWN when fluoridation ended, for example:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9758426&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Caries frequency before and after discontinuation of water fluoridation in Kuopio, Finland&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In spite of discontinued water fluoridation, no indication of an increasing trend of caries could be found in Kuopio. The mean numbers of fluoride varnish and sealant applications decreased sharply in both towns between 1992 and 1995. In spite of that caries declined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMID: 9758426&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11153562&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Patterns of dental caries following the cessation of water fluoridation” [Canada]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The prevalence of caries (assessed in 5,927 children, grades 2, 3, 8, 9) decreased over time in the fluoridation-ended community while remaining unchanged in the fluoridated community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMID: 11153562&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10601780&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Caries prevalence after cessation of water fluoridation La Salud, Cuba&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the past, caries has usually increased after cessation of water fluoridation. More recently an opposite trend could be observed: following the cessation of drinking water fluoridation, in contrast to an expected rise in caries prevalence, DMFT and DMFS values remained at a low level for 6-9-year-olds and to decrease for 10/11-year-olds. In the 12/13-year-olds, there was a significant decrease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMID: 10601780&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11014515&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Decline of caries prevalence after the cessation of water fluoridation in the former East Germany&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In contrast to the anticipated increase in dental caries following the cessation of water fluoridation in the cities Chemnitz and Plauen, a significant fall in caries prevalence was observed. This corresponded to the national caries decline and appears to be a new population-wide phenomenon. There is still no explanation for the pattern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMID: 11014515&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12244360&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;…dental caries in 12-year-old children residing in cities with and without fluoridated water supply… [São Paulo, Brazil]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was no statistically significant difference between DMFT in municipalities of the same size, regardless of the presence or absence of fluoride in the water supply… Prevalence of caries in the region was ‘high’, with a DMFT of 4.82, thus failing to reach the goals set for the year 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMID: 12244360&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18756850&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The fluoride content of drinking water and caries experience in 15-19 year old school children in Iba-dan, Nigeria&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;955 students aged 15-19 years randomly selected from eleven secondary schools in Ibadan metropolis were examined for dental caries. The fluoride level of the different water sources was between 0.02 and 0.03 ppm. [only] Forty-four (4.6%) of the children had dental caries. In conclusion, both the fluoride level and caries prevalence were low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMID: 18756850&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17436973&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prevalence and severity of dental caries in adolescents… [Mexico]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In an analysis of caries severity (DMFT &gt; or = 4), both adolescents with very mild/mild and moder-ate/severe dental fluorosis have higher caries severity. Fluoride exposure (measured through fluorosis presence) does not appear to be reducing the caries prevalence (DMFT &gt; 0) or caries severity (DMFT &gt; or = 4) in these high-altitude communities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMID: 17436973&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[The effects of a break in water fluoridation [11 months] on the development of dental caries and fluorosis” &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10728978&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Durham, North Carolina&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was concluded that while the break had little effect on caries, dental fluorosis is sensitive to even small changes in fluoride exposure from drinking water, and this sensitivity is greater at 1 to 3 years of age than at 4 or 5 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PMID: 10728978&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22704" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2014-11-03T20:18:54.223" LastActivityDate="2014-11-03T20:18:54.223" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23677" CreationDate="2014-11-04T03:15:27.360" Score="15" ViewCount="7876" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/challenger.asp&quot;&gt;this Snopes page&lt;/a&gt; recently, which presents the claim that the astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger survived until the crew compartment hit the water, and then debunks it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the cabin depressurized immediately, the crew would have lived about 6 to 15 seconds after the blast; if not, they might have survived for the full two minutes and forty-five seconds it took the cabin to fall 65,000 feet back to Earth. They most certainly could not have lived through the crushing 207 mph impact with the waters off the Florida coast, which negates the wilder versions of &quot;survived astronauts&quot; rumors that had them still alive for hours (and even days) under the sea, waiting for rescuers who could not reach them in time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the arguments presented against the claim sound fairly good (especially considering that the &quot;tape&quot; was from a tabloid), I'd like some more assessments. How long did the astronauts stay alive? Were some alive when the crew compartment hit the water?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-11-05T00:20:04.170" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T11:59:45.713" Title="How long did the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger survive?" Tags="|nasa|forensics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23675" CreationDate="2014-11-04T09:41:32.987" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;In summary;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The cause of death of the Challenger astronauts cannot be positively determined;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The forces to which the crew were exposed during orbiter breakup were probably not sufficient to cause death or serious injury; and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The crew possibly, but not certainly, lost consciousness in the seconds following orbiter breakup due to in-flight loss of crew module pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://history.nasa.gov/kerwin.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The crew compartment was only destroyed by hitting the water, roughly 200 seconds after the initial breakup of Challenger&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space-shuttle.com/challenger1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The official report of the Challenger disaster can be found in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/genindex.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Report of the PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident&lt;/a&gt;, however the pertinent part can be found in &lt;a href=&quot;https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v3appo.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Appendix O : NASA Search, Recovery and Reconstruction Task Force Team Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The structural evaluation established clearly that the crew module, including most of its outer shell, remained essentially intact until impact with the water and that the module was fragmented extensively from extreme overload and inertial forces associated with water impact. The structural deformations and fragmentations indicate that the module struck the water in a slight nose down and steep left bank attitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, there is evidence that 3 crew members activated their personal egress air pack (PEAP) indicating that there was a period of consciousness post-incident:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The separation of the crew compartment deprived the crew of Orbiter-supplied oxygen, except for a few seconds supply in the lines. Each crew member's helmet was also connected to a personal egress air pack (PEAP) containing an emergency supply of breathing air (not oxygen) for ground egress emergencies, which must be manually activated to be available. Four PEAP's were recovered, and there is evidence that three had been activated.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://history.nasa.gov/kerwin.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An estimate of the length of time for the crew module to hit the water after the incident is therefore the best estimate of how long they survived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several large objects were tracked by radar after the shuttle disintegrated. One such object, classified as &amp;quot;Object D,&amp;quot; hit the water 207 seconds after launch about 18 nautical miles east of launch pad 39B. This apparently was the crew cabin&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space-shuttle.com/challenger1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a haunting image included in the report, the lower of the 3 arrows indicating the intact crew compartment separating from the left wing (top arrow) and main engine (center arrow)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v1p34.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T09:16:50.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23679" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23687" CreationDate="2014-11-04T10:40:58.127" Score="20" ViewCount="5735" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read &lt;a href=&quot;http://9gag.com/gag/a8b7GW3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this 9gag post&lt;/a&gt; (Okay, 9gag isn't really reliable for facts), where it says :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4zZAZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then checked it at &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (Again, not the most reliable, really, but it does the job when necessary), and found out that it became a &quot;dump site&quot; for radioactive material.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that you would die by being near the lake for an hour, or any other short amount of time? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22064" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-11-05T07:07:12.273" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T15:20:58.573" Title="Is standing near Lake Karachay for an hour fatal?" Tags="|environmental-health|mortality|pollution|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23681" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-04T12:58:40.063" Score="23" ViewCount="1558" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is common to see marketing for exercise routines that claim to target fat deposits in a particular part of the body. Examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fitnessmagazine.com/workout/abs/exercises/beat-belly-fat/&quot;&gt;9 Moves to Beat Belly Fat for Good&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shape.com/fitness/workouts/lose-pooch-best-exercises-lower-abs&quot;&gt;8 moves to melt off that pesky layer of lower-belly fat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://livewell.jillianmichaels.com/exercises-target-cellulite-thighs-4473.html&quot;&gt;Exercises to Target Cellulite in the Thighs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is there any science behind this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that certain exercises will target certain muscle groups, and can therefore specifically tone your thighs, stomach, legs, biceps, etc, which may make the selected body area look more attractive by some criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But do specific exercises actually &lt;strong&gt;burn fat from particular parts of the body&lt;/strong&gt; more than from others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2014-11-23T20:15:41.230" Title="Do specific exercises target specific fat deposits?" Tags="|biology|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23682" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="37534" CreationDate="2014-11-04T15:35:21.947" Score="39" ViewCount="3573" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Psychology.Wikia page &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Correlation_between_intelligence_and_social_deficiency&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Correlation between intelligence and social deficiency&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abnormally high intelligence, 3 or more standard deviations above the mean, tends to correlate strongly with poor social skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim backed by studies (especially studies beyond &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~ara/media/WEIRDinScience.pdf&quot;&gt;WEIRD&lt;/a&gt; subjects)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-03-09T09:15:08.873" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T02:11:39.190" Title="Does extremely high intelligence correlate with poorer social skills?" Tags="|psychology|intelligence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23681" CreationDate="2014-11-04T15:40:02.110" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no science to back up targeted fat loss, in fact there are studies to refute it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yalescientific.org/2011/04/targeted-fat-loss-myth-or-reality/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.yalescientific.org/2011/04/targeted-fat-loss-myth-or-reality/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two major factors: First,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;fat contained in fat cells exists as triglycerides. Muscle cells, however, cannot directly use triglycerides as fuel.  It must be broken down to glycerol and free fatty acids, which then enter the bloodstream.  As a result, the fat broken down to be used as fuel during prolonged exercise can come from anywhere in your body, not just the part that is being worked the most.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;many of the exercises commonly associated with spot reduction do not actually burn many calories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is some science that supports a very tiny amount of spot-shaping to be possible, but it's very miniscule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/are-blood-flow-and-lipolysis-in-subcutaneous-adipose-tissue-influenced-by-contractions-in-adjacent-muscle-in-humans-research-review.html/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/are-blood-flow-and-lipolysis-in-subcutaneous-adipose-tissue-influenced-by-contractions-in-adjacent-muscle-in-humans-research-review.html/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;working a given muscle for 30 minutes at low to moderate intensities did increase fat cell lipolysis in blood flow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the measured changes in blood flow and lipolysis, the researchers estimate that, in 30 minutes of local exercise, an additional .6-2.1 milligrams (one milligram is one thousandth of a gram) per 100 grams of adipose tissue adjacent to contracting muscle was mobilized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First let’s assume that you’re carrying a whopping 5 kg (11.1 pounds) of fat in a specific area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If local exercise can mobilize 0.6-2.1 milligrams of fat per 100 grams of fat mass, that works out to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;0.6-2.1 mg/100 grams * 1000 grams/kg * 5 kg = 30-105 milligrams of fat.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Or 0.03-0.1 gram of extra fat mobilized in 30 minutes of activity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, a single pound of fat (0.454 kg) contains about 400 grams of fat so our hypothetical 11.1 pounds of fat contains 4,440 grams of fat.  And 30 minutes of local activity mobilized at most 0.1 gram of fat.  Whoo hoo.  You’ll be ripped in about 1000 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22400" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-04T18:40:43.947" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23684" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23699" CreationDate="2014-11-04T17:25:13.577" Score="4" ViewCount="765" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is claimed that about 25 million meteors enter Earth's atmosphere each day and most of them burn up and turn into dust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;About 25 million meteors enter the Earth's atmosphere every day (duck!). Most burn up and about 1 million kilograms of dust per day settles to the Earth's surface.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/ast121/lectures/lec18.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Oregon, Astronomy 121 lectures&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You can see five or six meteors each hour from any given vantage point on Earth when atmospheric conditions allow. Up to 25 million meteors arrive each day, dropping about 100 tons of material. Most meteors are composed of debris left behind by comets as they orbit the Sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pibburns.com/catastro/meteors.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pib Burns personal site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Earth is bombarded with millions of tons of space material each day. Most of the objects vaporize in our atmosphere&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://space-facts.com/asteroids/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chris Jones' Space Facts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true? Is the number really that high? Is there any research about the measurement of this number? A source with details?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21976" LastEditorUserId="21976" LastEditDate="2014-11-14T02:13:25.460" LastActivityDate="2014-11-14T02:13:25.460" Title="Do 25 million meteors enter Earth's atmosphere each day?" Tags="|astronomy|earth|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23686" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-04T17:57:12.203" Score="7" ViewCount="684" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some cloves in apples have recently appeared in our office. Apparently they will repel fruit flies. They look exactly like the result of following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-House-Flies-with-Cloves&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;these instructions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/P2IUT.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest that this would really repel fruit flies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22714" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T15:22:04.163" LastActivityDate="2019-11-19T14:42:11.233" Title="Do cloves in an apple repel fruit flies" Tags="|natural-remedies|entomology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23679" CreationDate="2014-11-04T18:13:14.693" Score="22" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ONE HOUR &lt;strong&gt;ANYWHERE&lt;/strong&gt; NEAR IT AND YOU'RE DEAD&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim is probably too broad and the information is outdated, but the general idea is correct. A quick search revealed a few relevant details:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/lake-karachay&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atlas Obscura&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the lake is so polluted that its waters will kill a human within an hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://basementgeographer.com/lake-karachay-mayak-and-chelyabinsk-40-a-look-at-the-most-contaminated-place-on-earth/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Basement Geographer&lt;/a&gt; (which is referencing a broken link):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;spending just an hour on its shores would result in certain death&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The radiation level in the region near where radioactive effluent is discharged into the lake was 600 röntgens per hour (approximately 6 Sv/h) in 1990&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Basement Geographer, the last reactor in the area closed in 1990, so the radiation will only have gone down since then. Also, I didn't see any information as to the radiation levels any place other than where the radioactive waste enters the lake. As such, I don't know what the current levels of radiation are at various places around and in the lake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something else to consider is how good water is at stopping radiation. According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://what-if.xkcd.com/29/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;XKCD What-If blog&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For the kinds of radiation coming off spent nuclear fuel, every 7 centimeters of water cuts the amount of radiation in half.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, Randall looked at a scenario where the radioactive material is not mixed with the water. In Lake Karachay the radioactive material is not contained, but the radiation from the material at or near the bottom of the lake would not reach you unless you were underwater. If all (or at least most) of the radioactive material has settled to the bottom in the decades since they stopped dumping waste into the lake, then it might actually be safe to float in the middle of the lake (getting past the radioactive shores would still be a problem, however).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So other than going to Lake Karachay with a geiger counter, we can't know for sure whether or not there are areas where the radiation levels are safe. There is a lot of radioactive material there, so it is almost certain that there are parts of the lake or the area around it where you could receive a lethal dose of radiation within hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, the lake in the picture looks like a fine place to visit - the healthy trees, the size of the lake, and the island (see Basement Geographer for satellite image of the lake) make it obvious that that isn't a picture of Lake Karachay. It is actually &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Ship_(island)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Phantom Ship, an island in Crater Lake, Oregon, USA&lt;/a&gt;. [Hat tip: @ChrisW]. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.castlesphotos.com/2013/03/phantom-ship/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;photo of the lake&lt;/a&gt; appears to be the original (or at least derived from the same source):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iURT1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21196" LastEditorUserId="21196" LastEditDate="2014-11-07T15:20:58.573" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T15:20:58.573" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23688" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23675" CreationDate="2014-11-04T19:47:31.803" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;They might well have been (even &quot;probably were&quot;) alive until impact with the ocean, but it's unknowable whether they were conscious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://history.nasa.gov/kerwin.html&quot;&gt;Here is a NASA letter &lt;/a&gt; whose purpose is to summarize what's known about the deaths of the astronauts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's written by &quot;Joseph P. Kerwin&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_P._Kerwin&quot;&gt;an astronaut/physician, M.D.&lt;/a&gt;). It says (I quote extracts from it below),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The findings are inconclusive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the forces to which the crew were exposed during Orbiter breakup were &lt;strong&gt;probably not sufficient to cause death or serious injury&lt;/strong&gt;; and&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the crew &lt;strong&gt;possibly, but not certainly, lost consciousness in the seconds&lt;/strong&gt; following Orbiter breakup due to in-flight loss of crew module&#xA;  pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The forces on the Orbiter at breakup were probably too low to cause&#xA;  death or serious injury to the crew&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Medical analysis indicates that these accelerations are survivable,&#xA;  and that the probability of major injury to crew members is low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The separation of the crew compartment deprived the crew of&#xA;  Orbiter-supplied oxygen, except for a few seconds supply in the&#xA;  lines.  Each crew member's helmet was also connected to a&#xA;  personal egress air pack (PEAP) containing an emergency supply of&#xA;  breathing air (not oxygen) for ground egress emergencies, which&#xA;  must be manually activated to be available.  &lt;strong&gt;Four PEAP's were&#xA;  recovered, and there is evidence that three had been activated&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is possible, but not certain, that the crew lost consciousness due&#xA;  to an in-flight loss of crew module pressure.&#xA;    Data to support this is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The accident happened at 48,000 feet, and the crew cabin was at that altitude or higher for almost a minute.  At that altitude, without an&#xA;  oxygen supply, &lt;strong&gt;loss of cabin pressure would have caused rapid loss of&#xA;  consciousness&lt;/strong&gt; and it would not have been regained before water impact.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;PEAP activation could have been an instinctive response to unexpected loss of cabin pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If a leak developed in the crew compartment as a result of structural damage during or after breakup (even if the PEAP's had been&#xA;  activated), the breathing air available would not have prevented rapid&#xA;  loss of consciousness.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The crew seats and restraint harnesses showed patterns of failure which demonstrates that all the seats were in place and occupied at&#xA;  water impact with all harnesses locked.  This would likely be the case&#xA;  had rapid loss of consciousness occurred, but it does not constitute&#xA;  proof.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Impact damage was so severe that no positive evidence for or against&#xA;  in-flight pressure loss could be found.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The explosion probably didn't kill them&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they lost cabin pressure they would have lost conciousness (their &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Egress_Air_Pack&quot;&gt;PEAPs&lt;/a&gt; would not have been enough)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;NASA tried but failed to determine whether cabin pressure was lost:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Impact damage to the windows was so extreme that the presence or&#xA;  absence of in-flight breakage could not be determined. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for exactly how they they might have survived, the letter also says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are uncertainties in our analysis; &lt;strong&gt;the actual breakup&lt;/strong&gt; is not&#xA;  visible on photographs because the Orbiter was hidden by the gaseous&#xA;  cloud surrounding the external tank. The range of most probable&#xA;  maximum accelerations is from 12 to 20 G's in the vertical axis. These&#xA;  accelerations were quite brief. In two seconds, they were below four&#xA;  G's; in less than ten seconds, the crew compartment was essentially in&#xA;  free fall. &lt;strong&gt;Medical analysis indicates that these accelerations are&#xA;  survivable, and that the probability of major injury to crew members&#xA;  is low.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;After vehicle breakup, the crew compartment continued its upward&#xA;  trajectory, peaking at an altitude of 65,000 feet approximately 25&#xA;  seconds after breakup. It then descended striking the ocean surface&#xA;  about two minutes and forty-five seconds after breakup at a velocity&#xA;  of about 207 miles per hour&lt;/strong&gt;. The forces imposed by this impact&#xA;  approximated 200 G's, far in excess of the structural limits of the&#xA;  crew compartment or crew survivability levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrary to what Snopes says, it says that if the cabin depressurized the crew would have &quot;rapid loss of consciousness and it would not have been regained before water impact&quot;; whereas Snopes says they would have died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary I suspect they lived for 2 minutes and 45 seconds after the break-up, were killed on impact with the ocean, and may or may not have been conscious during the free fall.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-05T11:59:45.713" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T11:59:45.713" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23689" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-04T21:24:37.973" Score="2" ViewCount="262" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since Edward Snowden's initial revelations last year, it has become nearly an article of faith that the National Security Agency has routinely and systematically eavesdropped on the electronic communications of many or most US citizens, to the point where many people simply assume that any phone call, email, or text message they receive has probably been intercepted and analyzed by the government. However, when I look into these revelations, including tracing them back to their sources of first reporting, I usually find that what they really say falls into one or more of the following categories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;i&gt;The NSA does a lot of spying and has the capacity to collect and store vast amounts of electronic data.&lt;/i&gt; Most of the big headline-grabbing stories fall into this category, which seems scary but actually says very little. We should not be surprised that the NSA has a vast infrastructure devoted to signals intelligence; that is its mission. The NSA may well have the capability to turn a portion of that infrastructure toward domestic surveillance, but by itself that fact is meaningless. I &lt;i&gt;could&lt;/i&gt; just go out and start running over people with my car; that fact is significantly less interesting than the question of whether I actually &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; it or not.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;i&gt;The NSA casts too wide of a dragnet and/or is too sloppy with what it collects.&lt;/i&gt; It may well be that the NSA happens to pick up a lot of domestic communications along the way as it collects international signals, and analysts may end up paying attention to some communications they shouldn't, and I would agree that those things are bad. But incidental overreach is not in the same category as intentional overreach, or even reckless disregard. Bearing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hanlon's razor&lt;/a&gt; in mind, I would want to see more than this to reach any conclusions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;i&gt;Courts are too willing to sign off on blanket warrants for data collection.&lt;/i&gt; This certainly seems to be true, but if anything, it actually obviates the presumption of illegality, it doesn't support it. In that case, to paraphrase Michael Kinsley, the scandal isn't what's illegal—the scandal is what's legal.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disregarding such false positives, then, what evidence is there that, currently or in the recent past, the NSA as an entity has deliberately spied on communications between US citizens that took place domestically and did not involve foreign nationals, in violation of US law?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22716" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-11T07:15:56.530" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T07:15:56.530" Title="Does the NSA deliberately and systematically spy on US citizens without warrants?" Tags="|united-states|surveillance|nsa|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2014-11-05T02:16:48.573" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23692" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23679" CreationDate="2014-11-05T01:06:05.297" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;It was true in 1990 (narrowly true, not true &quot;everywhere&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On &lt;a href=&quot;http://docs.nrdc.org/nuclear/files/nuc_01009302a_112b.pdf&quot;&gt;page 10 of this PDF&lt;/a&gt; (which has &quot;page 519&quot; printed in the header of the page), which is on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Resources_Defense_Council&quot;&gt;Natural Resources Defense Council&lt;/a&gt; web site, it confirms &lt;strong&gt;600 roentgens per hour (death in one hour)&lt;/strong&gt;, citing a (presumably Russian) document titled &lt;em&gt;Practical rehabilitation of territories contaminated as a result of implementation of nuclear material production defense&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's at a specific place (where the effluent is discharged into the lake).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same paragraph suggests that radiation levels are less elsewhere on the shore (e.g. &lt;strong&gt;20 rems/hour&lt;/strong&gt;), and fall quickly as you move away from the lake shore (e.g. &lt;strong&gt;600 mrem/hour&lt;/strong&gt; at 10 metres from the lake shore).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next page says they that were covering the lake with concrete and emptying it of water in &lt;strong&gt;1991&lt;/strong&gt;, and expecting to finish doing that by &lt;strong&gt;1995&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Soviet Union &quot;collapsed&quot; in about 1991.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672329/&quot;&gt;Overview of Dose Assessment Developments and the Health of Riverside Residents Close to the “Mayak” PA Facilities, Russia&lt;/a&gt;, which is dated 2009, says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Plans exist to fill in and cap R9 [i.e. Lake Karachay] with hollow concrete blocks, gravel, and soil and clay layers in an effort to stabilise the site and stop the groundwater contamination plume. Only partial infilling is believed to have occurred to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given how much the dose varied at its peak I expect that even &quot;partial infilling&quot; will have made an orders-of-magnitude difference to the 'peak' exposure levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-05T13:46:26.793" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T13:46:26.793" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23693" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-05T07:55:06.963" Score="5" ViewCount="2376" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some claim the founder of North Korea, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il-sung&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kim Il-Sung&lt;/a&gt;, was an imposter who adopted the name of another leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Article from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/kim-il-sung.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;globalsecurity&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;South Korea claims that the present-day ruler of North Korea is an&#xA;  imposter who stole the name of a revered patriot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Il-sung&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is much controversy about Kim's political career before the&#xA;  founding of North Korea, with some sources indicating he was an&#xA;  imposter. Several sources indicate that the Kim Il-sung name had&#xA;  previously been used by a prominent early leader of the Korean&#xA;  resistance, Kim Kyung-cheon (김경천).[12][page needed]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There appear to be two historical figures whom both changed their birth names to Kim Il-Sung: the Kim Kyung-cheon (Korean independence activist) and Kim Sŏng-ju (the founder of North Korea, who this question is about). Admittedly both were politically active in Korea and had the same name, but this doesn't mean one stole the others identity. Can anyone identify some events where Kim Song-ju tried to make people believe he was Kim Kyung-cheon or take credit for his work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="14333" LastEditDate="2014-11-13T07:00:57.750" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T07:05:51.343" Title="Was the North Korean leader, Kim Il-Sung, an imposter?" Tags="|history|north-korea|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23695" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7209" CreationDate="2014-11-05T08:47:35.460" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The human immune system needs exposure to antigens (external organism that have entered the body) in order to function properly. The danger of using hand sanitizers excessively (especially in young children) is that the immune system does not get to experience as many antigens as it would without the use of sanitizer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A simple graphic illustrates how the system works in principle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PlzY1.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Without the antigen present, the immune system is less equipped to deal with the threat. This becomes far more serious after the age of 30-35 when adults lose their ability to recognise new antigens in the body and must rely on previous recognised antigens. This is a major factor in the reason why the elderly are far more susceptible to infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The current advice is to expose yourself to as many antigens (safely) as possible, before you reach the ages of 30-35. Hand sanitizer compromises your ability to equip your immune system to deal with threats later in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Beck, Gregory; Gail S. Habicht (November 1996). &quot;Immunity and the Invertebrates&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/14330708_Immunity_and_the_invertebrates/links/00b49519b9b5c04406000000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;). Scientific American 275 (5): 60–66. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican1196-60. Retrieved 5 November 2014.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22719" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-15T22:38:39.430" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T22:38:39.430" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23696" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-05T20:14:04.400" Score="5" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Re-Timer website &lt;a href=&quot;http://re-timer.com/treatment/winter-blues/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;states&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re-Timer is a wearable light therapy device for Winter Blues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Winter Blues is a low-mood experienced primarily during the winter months. Symptoms can include loss of energy, weight gain and difficulty concentrating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers from Flinders University state that Winter Blues is the result of a mis-timed circadian rhythm. Their research shows that bright light visual stimulation (light which enters the eyes), can change timing of the sleep-wake rhythm. Bright light therapy has been used to treat the range of conditions caused by a mis-timed body clock including winter blues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Simply wear Re-Timer for 30 minutes per day in the morning to help alleviate symptoms of winter blues such as low energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re-Timer is the only portable light therapy device which emits a patented green light proven to be superior for treating winter blues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A significant body of research has compared the efficacy of different wavelengths to treat winter blues. Green light provides a treatment effect superior to that of red light and similar to that seen in previous studies with white light. (Oren, Brainard et al. 1991)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder whether the device alleviates Winter Blues symptoms as advertised; specificaly, whether its &amp;quot;patented (?!) green light&amp;quot; is indeed more effective then &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14568/do-light-boxes-help-seasonal-affective-disorder&quot;&gt;standard light boxes&lt;/a&gt;, whether the lower brightness is really compensated by proximity of the device to the eyes and &amp;quot;optimal light delivery&amp;quot;, and whether 30 minutes' use per day suffices. Specific evidence for this or a similar device would be perfect; if not available, general evidence as to the feasibility of such an approach would also be relevant. Any remarks on these and other claims are also welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T07:33:22.400" Title="Does the &quot;Re-Timer&quot; device help to alleviate &quot;winter blues&quot;?" Tags="|medical-science|consumer-products|psychiatry|light|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23697" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23700" CreationDate="2014-11-05T20:29:54.983" Score="14" ViewCount="1026" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/11/04/chill-out-liberals-the-republicans-took-the-senate-and-thats-terrible-for-them/&quot;&gt;this blog post&lt;/a&gt; (mostly because I was procrastinating and I got click-baited), and this particular statement jumped out at me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Remember, the higher the turnout, the worse Republicans do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really the case? Is there a statistically significant correlation between how many people come out to vote and how poorly Republican candidates fare in elections?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8765" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-11-06T03:12:11.010" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T05:10:23.267" Title="Is voter turnout inversely correlated with Republican success?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23699" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23684" CreationDate="2014-11-05T22:53:37.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The number of meteors is almost impossible to estimate, as it depends on the sizes you are considering. Dinosaur killers only hit once every hundred million years or so, city-killers every hundred years or so. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wiki page&lt;/a&gt; about major impact events gives some estimated frequencies for large meteorites. The latest known ones were at &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tunguska&lt;/a&gt; (1908) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteor&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chelyabinsk&lt;/a&gt; (2013). More may have landed in the oceans. Fortunately, the Chelyabinsk meteor burned up high in the atmosphere; otherwise its effect might have been similar to Tunguska. At the other end of the scale, the number of micron-sized meteors is uncountable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fireballsinthesky.com.au/fact-sheets/what-is-the-desert-fireball-network/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;automated camera networks&lt;/a&gt; to count the number of meteors and, by triangulation, to determine the direction each one came from. We know that some of them come in so-called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteor_shower&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;meteor showers&lt;/a&gt;, which are associated with extinct comets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is easier to estimate the total amount of meteoric material that hits the earth and your quote of &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/01mar_meteornetwork/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;100 tons/day&lt;/a&gt; is towards the lower end of the estimate range. 100 tons/day is 36,500 tons/year. Estimates vary widely and range from &lt;a href=&quot;http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Meteors&amp;amp;Display=OverviewLong&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;15,000&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=470&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;70,000 tons/year&lt;/a&gt;. Another way of looking at these numbers is the estimate that roughly &lt;a href=&quot;http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=470&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;100 meteorites heavier than 10 grams fall per million square kilometers per year&lt;/a&gt;, or one per year in an area the size of a small country. This is not something you'll notice readily, and is presumably one of the reasons why until &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteorite#Meteorites_in_history&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;about 1800&lt;/a&gt; scientists believed that meteorites were earth rocks, not space rocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A steady 35,000 tons per year since the birth of earth would amount to about 1.5*10^14 kg which is insignificant compared to the total mass of the earth of 5.97*10^24 kg. I know that the bombardment was much heavier at the beginning - but then, as part of the bombardment the earth also lost an entire moon! Another way of looking at these numbers is the estimate that roughly &lt;a href=&quot;http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=470&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;100 meteorites heavier than 10 grams fall per million square kilometers per year&lt;/a&gt;, or 1 per year in an area the size of a small country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastEditorUserId="6710" LastEditDate="2014-11-05T23:59:17.663" LastActivityDate="2014-11-05T23:59:17.663" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23700" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23697" CreationDate="2014-11-05T23:32:45.810" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on previous studies of elections, it tends to be because the nonvoting population, or those who tend to come out and vote only in presidential elections/amendments of interest, tend to lean more towards the democratic side.  This usually comes down to quite a few factors, one of which is demographics; the Democratic party tends to garner much more support from younger generations, who overall have been found to not be as politically active.  This difference is especially significant for the midterm elections, and is a theoretical reason for why democrats have in recent history done so poorly during these elections. An especially telling aspect of this is this statistic: Nonvoters favor Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by a wide margin (59% to 24%) (while keeping in mind that voting for the president may not be indicative of voting for a Democratic congressman over a Republican congressman). What all this means is that, given all nonvoters turning up at the polls or at least in equal proportions based on the gathered data, the Democrats would benefit significantly more than the Republicans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.people-press.org/2012/11/01/nonvoters-who-they-are-what-they-think/&quot;&gt;http://www.people-press.org/2012/11/01/nonvoters-who-they-are-what-they-think/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.people-press.org/2014/10/31/the-party-of-nonvoters-2/&quot;&gt;http://www.people-press.org/2014/10/31/the-party-of-nonvoters-2/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But to tie this into your question, there is no actual &quot;correlation&quot; that one can establish with any meaningful degree of accuracy, because there isn't enough meaningful data for it.  The best you can do is establish conjecture through the information that is available. The claim that a greater volume of people typically identifying as nonvoters showing up would be more beneficial for the Democrats than the Republicans is accurate, if there was equal distribution, but that doesn't necessarily mean that a greater influx of voters would have turned the favor towards the Democrats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19435" LastEditorUserId="19435" LastEditDate="2014-11-06T05:10:23.267" LastActivityDate="2014-11-06T05:10:23.267" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20199" CreationDate="2014-11-06T02:23:02.700" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a claim that's repeated at many web sites (if I take for granted that &quot;average life expectancy is about 75 years&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example the first few results found by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=amish%20life%20expectancy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;searching for &quot;amish life expectancy&quot; on google&lt;/a&gt; include the following.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gerontology.umaryland.edu/documents/Advances_in_Aging_fall031.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Researchers Study the Genetics of Longevity&#xA;in the Old Order Amish&lt;/a&gt; (from gerontology.umaryland.edu)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The current life expectancy of members&#xA;  of the Old Order Amish community is&#xA;  about 72 years, nearly the same as the life&#xA;  expectancy of the average American.&#xA;  Nearly, that is, except for two significant&#xA;  differences. First, among the Amish, the&#xA;  72-year life expectancy is for men and&#xA;  women, while in the general population&#xA;  women tend to outlive men by about&#xA;  seven years. Second, the Amish have had&#xA;  a 72-year life expectancy not only for the&#xA;  past few decades, as have most&#xA;  Americans, but for the last&#xA;  300 years—since they settled in the&#xA;  United States in the 1700s, when most&#xA;  people living in America were dying in&#xA;  their 40s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/the-amish-obesity-studies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;THE AMISH OBESITY STUDIES&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What makes the Amish such fertile ground for study on subjects such as weight loss is because they all live the same way they lived 300 years ago. They still plow their fields with horses, don't drive cars, use lanterns for electricity and only use telephones in a dire emergency. Their life expectancy is right at the US average even though they avoid modern medicine whenever they can...but the life expectancy of the Amish has been 72 or greater for almost 300 years, even when ours was 40 and they still eat like our ancestors did too, which is pretty much whatever they want. We don't recommend the Amish Diet, but there is much to be learned from the studies that measure their physical activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11503162&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Heritability of life span in the Old Order Amish.&lt;/a&gt; (from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Analyses were conducted on 1,655 individuals, representing all those born prior to 1890 and appearing in the most widely available genealogy, surviving until at least age 30 years, and with known date of death. Mean age at death (+/-SD) in this population was 70.7 +/- 15.6 years, and this did not change appreciably over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary it's very similar, or perhaps less by fewer than 10 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T01:27:26.627" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T01:27:26.627" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23706" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-06T17:04:35.267" Score="3" ViewCount="306" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Watson&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rebecca Watson&lt;/a&gt;, a cohost on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theskepticsguide.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Skeptics Guide to the Universe&lt;/a&gt; podcast, recently made a claim that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hillspet.com.au/en-au/health-conditions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hill's Science Diet&lt;/a&gt; was not a healthy choice to feed to your cat.   She later explained her answer on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepchick.org/2014/10/the-science-of-cat-food/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a recent episode of The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, we discussed some research that (unsurprisingly) found that adding a whiff of “science” to your advertisement may result in better sales. I joked about how I used to feed my cats Science Diet because “science” was right there in the name, until I did some research and realized that it was overpriced crap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I started feeding my cats primarily wet food. I chose Science Diet because it was recommended by one of my vets as well as a shelter where I picked up my previous two cats. And seriously, the other reasons were pure marketing: it has the word “science” in it, and it costs more than the stuff at the supermarket. It must be good, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, honestly, it’s probably good enough. I don’t think feeding a cat Science Diet is an awful thing, especially if it’s the wet food. But it’s not the smartest thing, by a long shot.&#xA;The problem is that dry food is, well, dry. It doesn’t contain the water that cats need to thrive. You can supplement that with a water dish, but it can still lead to urinary problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My wife and I are both new cat owners, having adopted a cat a few months ago.  Our vet actually specifically recommended Science Diet dry food, saying he feeds it to his own cats.  In the process of researching cat food, I realized the pet food industry has the potential of making pseudoscientific claims and selling snake-oil to worried pet owners for double or triple the price of conventional pet food.  I'm trying to figure out the best way to investigate this claim.  I'm particularly worried about poor decisions due to the argument from authority fallacy and there is a lot of contradictory information out there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22733" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-07T02:34:34.960" Title="Is Science Diet cat food brand a nutritionally poor and relatively unhealthy option for cats?" Tags="|nutrition|zoology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15440" CreationDate="2014-11-06T17:51:51.223" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Later in the interview, Warren responds to a critique with the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I get your point, maybe it’s only four cents on $7.19. But if your entrees are $14.40 we’ll see how fast I can do the math — are you telling me you can’t raise your prices by eight cents?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warren's quick math implies that an entrée that costs twice as much &lt;em&gt;now&lt;/em&gt; would still cost twice as much after an increase in minimum wage — this implies that it scales with entrée price. Where the specific four cents comes from is somewhat of a mystery but it amounts to a roughly 0.6% increase in retail price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(As an aside, it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; clear is that this system is not completely accurate due to differing overhead costs on various entrées. The costs of producing a $7.19 entrée are not half of the costs of producing a $14.40 entrée. So a literal interpretation of adding a 0.6% increase to each meal wouldn't be strictly accurate. But I suspect Warren's point is that there is a buffer in the profit margin to fully absorb a wage increase.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This 0.6% increase is hotly contested and various other numbers have been suggested by articles that dig into the topic. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-02/this-is-what-would-happen-if-fast-food-workers-got-raises&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BusinessWeek&lt;/a&gt; has this statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A look at company-operated McDonald’s and Burger King outlets shows profit margins above 10 percent. Still, labor expenses at these locations exceed profits, so suddenly raising the hourly wage to $15 would slam margins. Based on recent restaurant financials, &lt;strong&gt;if payroll costs doubled and other expenses didn’t decrease, menu prices at McDonald’s would have to go up about 25 percent to offset the increase&lt;/strong&gt;. That would mean paying up to an extra $1 for a Big Mac, likely sending price-sensitive consumers elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2014/09/higher-fast-food-wages-higher-fast-food-prices&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Heritage.org&lt;/a&gt; ran a similar article also looking at a minimum wage increase to $15/hr:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the average cook in a fast-food restaurant earned $9.04 an hour in 2013. The SEIU’s push for $15 an hour would consequently raise fast-food wages by at least 66 percent. &lt;strong&gt;Paying $15 an hour would raise fast-food restaurants’ total costs by approximately 15 percent.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast-food restaurants could not pay this additional amount out of their profits. &lt;strong&gt;The typical restaurant has a profit margin of just 3 percent before taxes.&lt;/strong&gt; That works out to approximately $27,000 a year — less than the annual cost of hiring one full-time employee at $15 an hour. In order to raise wages, fast-food restaurants must raise prices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article later concludes that the price increase would be 38%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warren's suggestion of $10.10 would obviously have a much smaller impact than the $15 discussed above. The BusinessWeek article does address this briefly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of the public debate, however, is focused on raising wages to considerably less than the much-hyped $15 an hour. &lt;strong&gt;Wicks-Lim and 99 other economists signed a petition in July to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.50.&lt;/strong&gt; They say the increase in costs for restaurants would equal about 2.7 percent of sales. &lt;strong&gt;Wicks-Lim adds that companies could then make up the difference through price increases (say, a nickel more for a burger), reduced employee turnover, productivity gains, and slower raises for the highest-paid employees.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &amp;quot;nickel more&amp;quot; sounds suspiciously close to Warren's four cent increase. Thankfully, BusinessWeek provided a link to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/resources/Minimum_Wage_petition_website.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;petition (PDF warning)&lt;/a&gt;. Here is the greater context for the nickel increase:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On average, even fast-food restaurants, which employ a disproportionate share of minimum wage workers, are likely to see their overall business costs increase by only about 2.7 percent from a rise today to a $10.50 federal minimum wage. &lt;strong&gt;That means, for example, that McDonalds could cover fully half of the cost increase by raising the price of a Big Mac, on average, from $4.00 to $4.05.&lt;/strong&gt; The remaining half of the adjustment could come through small productivity gains or a slightly more equal distribution of companies’ total revenues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This petition is the most authoritative claim I've seen on the subject and it makes me feel rather confident that Warren's claim is completely off-base. The menu price increase is over twice as high (1.25% instead of 0.6%) but the petition explicitly notes that this only covers &lt;em&gt;half&lt;/em&gt; of the cost. They estimate the total cost would be 2.7 percent. To completely cover that cost with menu price increases, a $4.00 Big Mac would cost $4.10 and Warren's $7.19 combo meal would cost $7.38 — an increase of 19 cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although Warren is proposing a smaller minimum wage, her example also cuts the menu price increase in half and completely ignores the other half of the impact. While it is possible that Warren understands that her four cent suggestion is only covering half of the needed increase, the claim as represented in this question seems to have no hint of this extra requirement. It means the $10.10 minimum wage + 0.6% price increase is supposed to accomplish the same effect as a $10.50 minimum wage + 2.7% price increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those curious, the proposal linked to a more thorough document that reveals the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/resources/minwage_notesjune19.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source for all of their calculations (PDF warning)&lt;/a&gt;. A quick snippet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use the numbers in Table A1 to produce a scatterplot with the size of the minimum wage increase on the x-axis, and the size of the business cost increase to sales on the y-axis. We find that the curve with the following equation best fits the data points (with an R2 of 0.73):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;y = 0.0454 x^0.6363&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We use this equation to extrapolate that the business cost increase relative to sales figure given a 44.8-percent minimum wage hike would be 2.7 percent (&lt;code&gt;0.0454 x 0.448^0.6363 = 0.027&lt;/code&gt;). Therefore, a price increase sufficient to cover half of this rise in costs would amount to a 1.35% (2.7%/2). For a $4.00 Big Mac, a 1.35% increase equals about 5 cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 44.8-percent minimum wage hike is simply &lt;code&gt;10.50 / 7.25 = 1.448&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to hit Warren's numbers, you would need this equation to result in 0.6% instead of 2.7%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;y = 0.0454 x^0.6363&#xA;0.006 = 0.0454 x^0.6363&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=solve+0.006+%3D+0.0454+x%5E0.6363+for+x&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WolframAlpha reveals&lt;/a&gt; that this solves at 0.042 or 4.2%. A minimum wage hike of 4.2 percent would be $7.55/hr. This means Warren is claiming that a $10.10 minimum wage is doing the work of $7.55/hr. It isn't even close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So let's be charitable to Warren and assume she knew this was only supposed to cover half of the extra costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;0.012 = 0.0454 x^0.6363&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This results in a minimum wage hike of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=solve+0.012+%3D+0.0454+x%5E0.6363+for+x&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;12.4%&lt;/a&gt; or $8.15/hr. Still not quite right. Unless Warren's suggestion has some other way for McDonald's to cope with the price increase, this still isn't very plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To run the numbers the other way, a minimum wage hike to $10.10 is a 39.3% increase:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;y = 0.0454 0.393^0.6363 = 0.0250592...&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warren's 0.6% price hike leaves 1.9% of the price increase remaining. I'm sure if push comes to shove, McDonald's could figure something out but the implication that adding four cents to their meals would solve the issue is very misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2433" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T15:34:59.363" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23712" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-07T11:22:14.530" Score="6" ViewCount="243" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people claim that unscrupulous employers have used drug tests as a cover to use a woman applicant or employee's urine to determine if she is pregnant (or has other medical conditions that might lead to claims on the group health insurance).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.aclu.org/racial-justice_womens-rights/workplace-drug-testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ACLU claims&lt;/a&gt; that in the Washington DC police department admitted it had done this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1988, the Washington, D.C. Police Department admitted it used urine samples collected for drug tests to screen female employees for pregnancy - without their knowledge or consent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this one case is true, is this something that happened many times, or is it an isolated incident?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3988" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-11-12T17:21:18.213" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T17:21:18.213" Title="Has a company ever used a drug test as a cover to test for pregnancy or disease?" Tags="|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-11-12T17:21:29.430" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23714" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-07T16:41:31.977" Score="3" ViewCount="241" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does paper use contribute to deforestation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many people and groups insist that it does because large amounts of trees are cut down to produce paper. Thus some amount of the forest lost every year must be the consequence of paper consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other people insist that the trees used to produce paper are farmed, planted and cut down for the purpose of producing paper. Thus the net less of forest has nothing to do with paper consumption, as those tree were only planted to produce paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who is correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2430" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T21:09:38.257" Title="Does using paper contribute to deforestation?" Tags="|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-11-08T02:14:12.400" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23715" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23716" CreationDate="2014-11-07T18:20:12.210" Score="33" ViewCount="7546" Body="&lt;p&gt;I received this screenshot which is actually a post on Facebook by 8facts. It claims that humans nearly became extinct 70,000 years ago when the population sunk to 2,000. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/v2QqS.png&quot; alt=&quot;Screenshot of claim&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that this claim is correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21177" LastEditorUserId="13812" LastEditDate="2014-11-11T00:54:48.403" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T00:54:48.403" Title="Did humans almost become extinct about 70,000 years ago?" Tags="|history|extinction-event|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23715" CreationDate="2014-11-07T18:26:09.443" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Possibly, but maybe not as severe as suggested.  Basically the eruption of the Toba supervolcano caused a volcanic winter that decimated the human population at the time.  There is evidence of this in the human genome.  DNA mutates at a reasonably steady rate, so by looking at the genetic diversity of humans we can see that the population must have been very homogenous (i.e. small) at some point around 60K years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;differentiation of modern humans ☆&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stanley H. Ambrose&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DOI: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/jhev.1998.0219&quot;&gt;10.1006/jhev.1998.0219&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The “Weak Garden of Eden” model for the origin and dispersal of modern&#xA;  humans (Harpendinget al., 1993) posits that modern humans spread into&#xA;  separate regions from a restricted source, around 100 ka (thousand&#xA;  years ago), then passed through population bottlenecks. Around 50 ka,&#xA;  dramatic growth occurred within dispersed populations that were&#xA;  genetically isolated from each other. Population growth began earliest&#xA;  in Africa and later in Eurasia and is hypothesized to have been caused&#xA;  by the invention and spread of a more efficient Later Stone Age/Upper&#xA;  Paleolithic technology, which developed in equatorial Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Climatic and geological evidence suggest an alternative hypothesis for&#xA;  Late Pleistocene population bottlenecks and releases. The last glacial&#xA;  period was preceded by one thousand years of the coldest temperatures&#xA;  of the Later Pleistocene (&lt;strong&gt;∼71–70 ka&lt;/strong&gt;), apparently caused by the&#xA;  eruption of Toba, Sumatra. &lt;strong&gt;Toba was the largest known explosive&#xA;  eruption of the Quaternary. Toba's volcanic winter could have&#xA;  decimated most modern human populations, especially outside of&#xA;  isolated tropical refugia.&lt;/strong&gt; Release from the bottleneck could have&#xA;  occurred either at the end of this hypercold phase, or 10,000 years&#xA;  later, at the transition from cold oxygen isotope stage 4 to warmer&#xA;  stage 3. The largest populations surviving through the bottleneck&#xA;  should have been found in the largest tropical refugia, and thus in&#xA;  equatorial Africa. High genetic diversity in modern Africans may thus&#xA;  reflect a less severe bottleneck rather than earlier population&#xA;  growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Volcanic winter may have reduced populations to levels low enough for&#xA;  founder effects, genetic drift and local adaptations to produce rapid&#xA;  population differentiation. If Toba caused the bottlenecks, then&#xA;  modern human races may have differentiated abruptly, only 70 thousand&#xA;  years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, Wikipedia's article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory&quot;&gt;Toba catastrophe theory&lt;/a&gt; links to a BBC News article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2975862.stm&quot;&gt;When humans faced extinction&lt;/a&gt;. This BBC News article gives the 70,000 and 2,000 figures, so that may well be the source of the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Humans may have come close to extinction about 70,000 years ago,&#xA;  according to the latest genetic research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers from Stanford University, US, and the Russian Academy of&#xA;  Sciences compared 377 microsatellite markers in DNA collected from 52&#xA;  regions around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The small genetic diversity of modern humans indicates that at some&#xA;  stage during the last 100,000 years, the human population dwindled to&#xA;  a very low level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was out of this small population, with its consequent limited&#xA;  genetic diversity, that today's humans descended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Estimates of how small the human population became vary but 2,000 is&#xA;  the figure suggested in the latest research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If this is the case, humanity came very close to extinction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-11-09T20:30:38.030" LastActivityDate="2014-11-09T20:30:38.030" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23717" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23715" CreationDate="2014-11-07T19:23:30.557" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found a few sources on the subject that discuss the hypothesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first is by &lt;a href=&quot;http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/17/1/2.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hawks et. al.&lt;/a&gt;. On the second page,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2-Myr Bottleneck&#xA;There are many reasons to believe that there may&#xA;have been a number of severe population size bottlenecks&#xA;on the lineage leading to living humans, principally&#xA;because of the many speciation events that must&#xA;have occurred. The diversity of the Pliocene hominid&#xA;fossil record, beginning with the large samples from Aramis&#xA;and Kanapoi 4.0–4.4 MYA (White, Suwa, and Asfaw&#xA;1994; Leakey 1995; Leakey et al. 1998), indicates&#xA;that ours is just the most recent of a wide array of hominid&#xA;species that once existed. The demographic effects&#xA;of such speciations can be expected to have been intense,&#xA;probably involving significant founder effects due&#xA;to small population sizes, and they eradicated evidence&#xA;of earlier speciations, such as the chimpanzee-hominid&#xA;divergence. In turn, we expect that any genetic evidence&#xA;of these early hominid speciations would have been covered&#xA;up by the most recent significant bottleneck. We&#xA;believe this bottleneck could have been the speciation&#xA;event at the beginning of the lineage leading to living&#xA;human populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A paragraph in the conclusion puts it (in my opinion) a little better:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the currently available genetic, paleontological,&#xA;and archaeological data are consistent with a bottleneck&#xA;in our lineage more or less at about 2 MYA. At the&#xA;moment, genetic data cannot disprove a simple model&#xA;of exponential population growth following such a bottleneck&#xA;and extending through the Pleistocene. Archaeological&#xA;and paleontological data indicate that this model&#xA;is too oversimplified to be an accurate reflection of&#xA;detailed population history, and therefore we conclude&#xA;that genetic data lack the resolution to validly reflect&#xA;many details of Pleistocene human population change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the next sentence is a bit different:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is one detail these data are sufficient&#xA;to address. Both genetic and anthropological data&#xA;are incompatible with the hypothesis of a recent population&#xA;size bottleneck. Such an event would be expected&#xA;to leave a significant mark across numerous genetic loci&#xA;and observable anatomical traits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the problem is that the genes of modern humans aren't quite what they should be if there was a bottleneck. Yes, they are very similar, as they should be if there was a bottleneck, but they aren't &lt;em&gt;extremely&lt;/em&gt; similar, as they should be if there was such a recent bottleneck. In other words: Humans are genetically similar to each other, as are all species, but they aren't quite as &amp;quot;identical&amp;quot; as one would expect would be the case after a bottleneck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jqjacobs.net/anthro/paleo/bottleneck.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; efficiently summarizes a paper by Stanley Ambrose (which Dikran Marsupial was discussing). Here is the concluding paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ambrose concludes that bottlenecks occurred among genetically isolated human populations because of a six-year long volcanic winter and subsequent hyper-cold millennium after the cataclysmic super-eruption of Toba. This volcanic winter played a role in recent human differentiation. The resultant combination of founder effects and genetic drift may account for low human genetic diversity as well as population differences associated with so-called races. The bottleneck hypothesis offers an explanation for why humans exhibit so little genetic variation, yet superficially appear diverse. It also affords an explanation for the apparent recent coalescence of mtDNA and African origins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: an eruption by the Toba volcano led to a volcanic winter, leading to bottlenecks in humans in many areas. The lack of genetic variation in humans today is evidence of such a bottleneck at some point in time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/10/22/163397584/how-human-beings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NPR&lt;/a&gt; has a slightly less dull take on the issue. Here's a short excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Toba, The Supervolcano&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once upon a time, says Sam [Kean], around 70,000 B.C., a volcano called Toba, on Sumatra, in Indonesia went off, blowing roughly 650 miles of vaporized rock into the air. It is the largest volcanic eruption we know of, dwarfing everything else...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That eruption dropped roughly six centimeters of ash — the layer can still be seen on land — over all of South Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian and South China Sea. According to the Volcanic Explosivity Index, the Toba eruption scored an &amp;quot;8&amp;quot;, which translates to &amp;quot;mega-colossal&amp;quot; — that's two orders of magnitude greater than the largest volcanic eruption in historic times at Mount Tambora in Indonesia, which caused the 1816 &amp;quot;Year Without a Summer&amp;quot; in the northern hemisphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why did this hurt humans? The ash and clouds hurt ecosystems around the world, making less food for humans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With so much ash, dust and vapor in the air, Sam Kean says it's a safe guess that Toba &amp;quot;dimmed the sun for six years, disrupted seasonal rains, choked off streams and scattered whole cubic miles of hot ash (imagine wading through a giant ashtray) across acres and acres of plants.&amp;quot; Berries, fruits, trees, African game became scarce; early humans, living in East Africa just across the Indian Ocean from Mount Toba, probably starved, or at least, he says, &amp;quot;It's not hard to imagine the population plummeting.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T20:01:14.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23714" CreationDate="2014-11-07T21:09:38.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;They're both correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-tarbotton/disney-paper-sourcing_b_1958578.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Victory for Forests: Disney Stands Up for Endangered Forests and Animals&lt;/a&gt; (from November 2012) which says, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today, Disney adds its significant voice to the growing chorus of&#xA;  companies demonstrating that there's no need to sacrifice endangered&#xA;  forests in Indonesia or elsewhere for the paper we use every day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rainforest Action Network began working with Disney in 2010 after lab&#xA;  tests found that its children's books were printed with rainforest&#xA;  fiber from Indonesia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This shows that some wild forest is still being harvested for paper, and implies that there are other/alternative sources of paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-11-07T21:09:38.257" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23720" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-07T23:57:07.320" Score="4" ViewCount="2820" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep running into a (quite frankly daft) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic_alternative_theories#Gardiner.27s_Ship_That_Never_Sank&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;conspiracy theory regarding the sinking of the Titanic&lt;/a&gt;. It posits that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Olympic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RMS Olympic&lt;/a&gt; was secretly swapped in to replace the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;RMS Titanic&lt;/a&gt; and was deliberately sunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The motivations given tend to be either &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._P._Morgan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;J.P. Morgan&lt;/a&gt; wanted to assassinate his rivals, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Star_Line&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;White Star Line&lt;/a&gt; were perpetrating an insurance fraud to try to recoup losses from the damage caused to the Olympic in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Olympic#Hawke_collision&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a previous collision with HMS Hawke&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of these claims are easy to debunk, but one that seems to keep cropping up regards the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Californian&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SS Californian&lt;/a&gt; - a ship that was nearby the Titanic when it hit the iceberg, but, controversially, didn't respond to the distress signals in a timely manner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that the Californian was intended to act as a rescue ship for the passengers, and was (deliberately) carrying a cargo of items that would have been useful for a rescue attempt - variously reported as lifebelts, sweaters and warm clothing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The SS Californian's cargo manifest is said to provide evidence for this, and hence evidence that the Californian was intended as a rescue ship and that the Titanic sinking was deliberate, but I have been unable to locate it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was the SS Californian intended to be a rescue vehicle?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2992" LastEditorUserId="3178" LastEditDate="2020-02-03T20:37:59.657" LastActivityDate="2020-02-04T08:08:05.897" Title="Was SS Californian intended to be a rescue vehicle for the passengers of a deliberately-sunk Titanic?" Tags="|history|titanic|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23721" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23723" CreationDate="2014-11-08T01:16:55.430" Score="7" ViewCount="1905" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/11/07/361219361/how-a-tilt-toward-safety-stopped-a-scientists-virus-research&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;story on NPR&lt;/a&gt; today about how new safety concerns affected one scientist's research on corona viruses.  The fear is that scientists may make viruses more contagious and therefore dangerous to people in the event the viruses escape the laboratory, so the U.S. government halted funding of some research pending further review.  From the transcript:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But [virologist] Baric says, when it comes to SARS and MERS, there are key differences between people and mice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No. 1, mice don't sneeze,&amp;quot; says Baric, so they don't transmit these diseases through the air. And he says the process of adapting these viruses to mice actually makes the germs less able to infect human cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was very surprised to learn that mice do not sneeze.  A Google search produces video of a mouse supposedly sneezing plus many articles and blog posts about sneezing mice and what you can do to help them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who's right?  &lt;strong&gt;Do mice sneeze?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5965" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T10:11:57.073" Title="Do mice sneeze?" Tags="|biology|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23723" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23721" CreationDate="2014-11-08T10:26:07.843" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, I have seen mice sneezing, although probably it is less common then in humans (but they are nocturnal animals, so maybe sneezing is more common at night?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, mice are used to study respiratory pathologies. A search for &quot;sneezing mice&quot; on Pubmed results, as of today, in 115 papers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25119881&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nasal sensitization with ragweed pollen induces local-allergic-rhinitis-like symptoms in mice.&lt;/a&gt; - Kato et al., PLoS One 2014&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Repeated nasal sensitization with ragweed induced an increase in sneezing over time (Figure 1B). The frequency of sneezing at later time points was comparable to systemically sensitized mice, an AR and systemic atopy mode&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure 1B looks like:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/owRoi.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Sneezing in mice - Kato et al. 2014&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure 5A reports similar results in different mouse strains.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, from &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25027946&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Establishment and characterization of an experimental mouse model of allergic rhinitis&lt;/a&gt;, Ko et al. 2014&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As mentioned above, mice, such as balb/c, B10.S, and c57BL/6, are the most common animals used in studies of AR. In addition to mice, guinea pigs or brown Norway rats have also been used. Mice provide an easy means of assessing allergic symptoms such as sneezing or nasal rubbing (represents the motion due to itching), while rats may be a better choice if nasal obstruction is the target response for measure. In other words, if observation for active motion such as sneezing and nasal rubbing is considered important, mice, especially balb/c, might be very good candidates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(note: AR = allergic rhinitis, c57BL/6 is the typical black laboratory mouse, while balb/c is the classic white one)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastActivityDate="2014-11-08T10:26:07.843" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23724" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27849" CreationDate="2014-11-08T12:21:07.667" Score="6" ViewCount="1080" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife recently gave birth and the taking of arnica homeopathic tablets seems to be widely recommended to help with bruising. We've seen it suggested online, several midwives have told her to take them, and even a doctor has mentioned it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything to suggest arnica tablets reduce bruising?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22751" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-26T16:05:55.910" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T08:10:44.320" Title="Do Arnica homeopathic tablets reduce bruising?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|herbalism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10699" CreationDate="2014-11-08T20:53:07.030" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tfcbooks.com/tesla/1898-11-17.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here is his paper&lt;/a&gt; submitted to the American Electro-Therapeutic Association:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another observation which promises to lead to much more useful results&#xA;  is the following:  As before remarked, by adopting the method&#xA;  described, the body of a person may be subjected without danger to&#xA;  electrical pressures vastly in excess of any producible by ordinary&#xA;  apparatus, for they may amount to several million volts, as has been&#xA;  shown in actual practice.  Now, when a conducting body is electrified&#xA;  to so high a degree, small particles, which may be adhering firmly to&#xA;  its surface, are torn off with violence and thrown to distances which&#xA;  can be only conjectured.  I find that not only firmly adhering matter,&#xA;  as paint, for instance, is thrown off, but even the particles of the&#xA;  toughest metals are torn off.  Such actions have been thought to be&#xA;  restricted to a vacuous enclosure, but with a powerful coil they occur&#xA;  also in the ordinary atmosphere.  The facts mentioned would make it&#xA;  reasonable to expect that this extraordinary effect which, in other&#xA;  ways, I have already usefully applied, will likewise prove to be of&#xA;  value in electro-therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A primary source on the corporation he founded is &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=5UQ_AQAAMAAJ&amp;amp;dq=%22Tesla%20Electrotherapeutic%20Company%22&amp;amp;pg=PA889#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22Tesla%20Electrotherapeutic%20Company%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastActivityDate="2014-11-08T20:53:07.030" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23729" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14780" CreationDate="2014-11-09T05:21:19.610" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is generally accepted that often being sick or being predisposed to sickness will lead to a shorter life span and that those who have a bolstered immune system will fair better in the long run. You will live longer if you &lt;em&gt;stay&lt;/em&gt; healthy. Environment, culture and ethnicity are likely much larger factors in longevity than pets. For whatever correlative reason however, statistics do show a slight increase in the level of health for individuals who have owned pets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“We think the exposure to pets somehow matures the immune system so when the child meets the microbes, he might be better prepared for them,” says Dr. Eija Bergroth, a pediatrician at Kuopio University Hospital in Finland who led current study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kids with dogs fared better than those with cats: Overall, &lt;strong&gt;babies who lived with a dog were 31% more likely to be healthy in their first year than babies without a dog; kids from homes with cats were 6% more likely to be healthy than those in cat-free families.&lt;/strong&gt; -&lt;em&gt;Study: Why Dogs and Cats Make Babies Healthier&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthland.time.com/2012/07/09/study-why-dogs-and-cats-make-babies-healthier/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;healthland.time.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3317329/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NCBI&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Cat ownership and the Risk of Fatal Cardiovascular Diseases&lt;/em&gt;.&#xA;-Adnan I Qureshi, MD, Muhammad Zeeshan Memon, MD, Gabriela Vazquez, PhD, MS, and M Fareed K Suri, MD&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The data regarding pet ownership and physical health has not been consistent.&lt;/strong&gt; Friedmann et al.3 demonstrated that pet owners with medical heart conditions had a higher survival after 1 year of follow-up. A post-hoc analysis of Cardiac Arrhythmia Suppression Trial,4 again demonstrated lower mortality at 1 year after recruitment with pet ownership. However, there is paucity of data regarding this relationship derived from general population with almost no study addressing the risk of stroke. &lt;strong&gt;We performed this study to determine the effect of pet ownership on fatal cardiovascular events in a nationally representative cohort of persons followed for mean period of 13.4±3.6 years.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... Age, cholesterol, race/ethnicity and cigarette smoking were associated with cat ownership. Same characteristics in addition to gender and systolic blood pressure were associated with dog ownership. After adjustment for potential confounders, &lt;strong&gt;a significantly lower RR for death due to MI was observed in participants with past cat ownership&lt;/strong&gt; (RR, 0.63; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.44 to 0.88) compared with those without cats as pet at any time (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3317329/table/t3-jvin-2-1-135/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Table 3&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We found an independent association between cat ownership and risk of fatal MI [heart attacks] in the present cohort study. The protective effect may be related to a spontaneous relaxing effect with buffering effect on autonomic reactivity to acute stressors, and/or classical conditioning of relaxing response.1, 6, 7 &lt;strong&gt;We cannot exclude that this effect may be an indirect effect i.e. personalities of cat owners may have traits that are protective towards cardiovascular diseases independent of cat ownership.&lt;/strong&gt; The study did not allow us to quantitate cat exposure in terms of years, intensity of physical interaction, and nature of interaction (tactile or visual). &lt;strong&gt;We only found the relationship between past cat ownership and fatal cardiovascular events. It is possible that cat ownership at an early age in life may be more protective than at a later age when sub clinical cardiovascular disease has already occurred.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;J Vasc Interv Neurol. Jan 2009; 2(1): 132–135.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22385" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T10:20:43.573" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23731" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-09T08:19:30.160" Score="13" ViewCount="1653" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tell people you want to purchase a motorcycle and the usual response is &quot;I hope you have your will made out&quot; or &quot;I don't want you to die&quot; or similar. The implication is that motorcycle riding is more risky than car driving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per mile driven, are motorcycle riders more likely to die, more likely to get in an accident, or more likely to get in a severe accident, than the average driver of a four-wheel car? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To simplify things, I hope, let's limit the comparison to riders with a helmet, assuming that helmets reduce the risk of fatal accidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3837" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-11-10T15:34:25.267" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T16:14:25.033" Title="Is it more dangerous to ride a motorcycle [with a helmet] than to drive a car?" Tags="|safety|driving|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23731" CreationDate="2014-11-09T10:46:05.827" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Per mile driven, are motorcycle riders more likely to die, more likely to get in an accident, or more likely to get in a severe accident, than the average driver of a four-wheel car?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle_safety#Accident_rates&quot;&gt;Motorcycle safety: Accident rates&lt;/a&gt; article starts with,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in 2006, &lt;strong&gt;13.10 cars out of 100,000&lt;/strong&gt; ended up in fatal crashes. The rate for motorcycles is &lt;strong&gt;72.34 per 100,000&lt;/strong&gt; registered motorcycles.[1] Motorcycles also have a higher fatality rate per unit of distance travelled when compared with automobiles. Per vehicle mile traveled, motorcyclists' risk of a fatal crash is 35 times greater than a passenger car.[1] In 2004, figures from the UK Department for Transport indicated that motorcycles have &lt;strong&gt;16 times the rate of serious injuries&lt;/strong&gt; compared to cars, and double the rate of bicycles.[2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Another worthwhile question may ask whether helmets reduce the risk of a fatal accident.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Concussion and brain damage, as the head violently contacts other vehicles or objects. Riders wearing an approved helmet reduce the risk of death by 37 percent.[33]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also gloves, boots, goggles, jacket, pants, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you choose to get a motorcycle I would suggest you carefully research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What the consequence of an accident are, from a motorcycle, if you have one&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How easy it is to get in an accident, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;75% of accidents were found to involve a motorcycle and a passenger vehicle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;In the multiple vehicle accidents, the driver of the other vehicle violated the motorcycle right-of-way and caused the accident in two-thirds of those accidents.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How to avoid becoming part of the accident statistics (careful training etc.).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people claim that motorcycling can become relatively safe for you:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;David Edwards of Cycle World wrote, &quot;Here's the thing: motorcycles are not dangerous,&quot; saying that if a rider has a license, attends riding schools, wears all the gear all the time (ATGATT), and develops an accident avoidance sixth sense, motorcycling can become safe; &quot;... do all of these things, &lt;strong&gt;become really serious about your roadcraft&lt;/strong&gt;, and you'll be so under-represented in accident statistics as to become almost bulletproof.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_findings_in_the_Hurt_Report&quot;&gt;List of findings in the Hurt Report&lt;/a&gt; is quite interesting. Although (as stated above) it shows that, more often than not, it's the car driver's fault, that (it's being the driver's fault) doesn't help you to avoid accidents. Fortunately the list also gives many ways in which motorcyclists contribute to accidents, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conspicuity of the motorcycle&lt;/strong&gt; is a critical factor in the multiple vehicle accidents, and accident involvement is significantly reduced&#xA;  by the use of motorcycle headlamps-on In daylight and the wearing of&#xA;  high visibility yellow, orange or bright red jackets.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Motorcycle riders between the &lt;strong&gt;ages of 16 and 24&lt;/strong&gt; are significantly Overrepresented in accidents; motorcycle riders between the ages of 30&#xA;  and 50 are significantly underrepresented.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The motorcycle riders involved in accidents are &lt;strong&gt;essentially without training&lt;/strong&gt;; 92% were self-taught or learned from family or friends.&#xA;  Motorcycle rider training experience reduces accident involvement and&#xA;  is related to reduced injuries in the event of accidents.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;More than half of the accident-involved motorcycle riders had &lt;strong&gt;less than 5 months experience on the accident motorcycle&lt;/strong&gt;, although the&#xA;  total street riding experience was almost 3 years. Motorcycle riders&#xA;  with dirt bike experience are significantly underrepresented in the&#xA;  accident data.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Motorcycle riders in these accidents showed &lt;strong&gt;significant collision avoidance problems&lt;/strong&gt;. Most riders would overbrake and skid the rear&#xA;  wheel, and &lt;strong&gt;underbrake the front wheel&lt;/strong&gt; greatly reducing collision&#xA;  avoidance deceleration. The ability to countersteer and swerve was&#xA;  essentially absent.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;likelihood of injury is extremely high&lt;/strong&gt; in these motorcycle accidents; 98% of the multiple vehicle collisions and 96% of the&#xA;  single vehicle accidents resulted in some kind of injury to the&#xA;  motorcycle rider; 45% resulted in more than a minor injury.&#xA;  (subsequent item talk about protective gear like gloves and boots and&#xA;  crash bars etc)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seventy-three percent&lt;/strong&gt; of the accident-involved motorcycle riders used no eye protection, and it is likely that the &lt;strong&gt;wind on the&#xA;  unprotected eyes contributed an impairment of vision&lt;/strong&gt; which delayed&#xA;  hazard detection.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So apparently there are things you can do to make it less dangerous for you in particular: perhaps starting with getting professional training, safety gear, communicating with other road users, learning what you can and cannot do with brakes and steering in an emergency, refraining from emergencies, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-10T16:14:25.033" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T16:14:25.033" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23735" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-09T15:59:32.250" Score="4" ViewCount="307" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/2lqzn6/club_that_ernest_hemingway_used_to_use_to_beat/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some guy on reddit&lt;/a&gt;, Hemingway used to beat drunks with a club in a bar in Key West. Supposedly the club is exhibited in that bar and still has blood on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ApDx0.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Hemingway&amp;#39;s supposed drunk-beating club&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did he?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if he did, was that club the one he used?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22634" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2020-10-01T09:02:25.840" LastActivityDate="2020-10-01T09:02:25.840" Title="Did Hemingway beat drunks with a club at a bar in Key West?" Tags="|united-states|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23739" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-09T21:44:01.870" Score="4" ViewCount="510" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is the famous quote by Steve Jobs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things&#xA;  in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and&#xA;  you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It&#xA;  reinforced my sense of what was important—creating great things&#xA;  instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of&#xA;  history and of human consciousness as much as I could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to have &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.de/search?q=apple+success&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;worked out rather well for him&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.famousscientists.org/14-famous-scientists-inventors-who-experimented-with-drugs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Francis Crick, John C. Lilly, Kary Mullis, Ralph Abraham, Stephen Jay Gould&lt;/a&gt; which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many famous scientists and inventors of all ages have admitted to taking psychedelic drugs. Some of them have even &lt;strong&gt;claimed that recreational drugs enhance creativity, inventiveness and intelligence&lt;/strong&gt;, while others have gone one to advocate drug usage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this is anecdotal cherry-picked evidence and full of the various biases; LSD-using underachievers are most likely go quite underreported in the media and &quot;Hey I did it without LSD!&quot; isn't the most popular way to start a Nobel acceptance speech.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a positive correlation between trying LSD at least once and high achievement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22634" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T10:19:29.120" LastActivityDate="2015-11-11T22:45:00.170" Title="Does LSD use correlate with high achievement?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23741" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-10T02:32:05.867" Score="2" ViewCount="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20000621/benefits-of-eating-fruit&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An Apple a Day May Really Keep the Doctor Away&lt;/a&gt; mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using colon cancer cells treated with apple extract, Liu and colleagues found that 50 milligrams of apple extracted from the skins decreased the cancer cell growth by 43%, while the same amount of extract from the flesh of the apple decreased cancer cell growth by 29%. Likewise, 50 milligrams of extract from apples with the skin on decreased liver cancer cell growth by 57%, compared to 40% for samples extracted from apples without the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the antioxidants in an apple are in the skin, which might have cancer-fighting properties. Researchers think it's better to get antioxidants from fruits and vegetables than from dietary supplements. These naturally occurring plant chemicals, or phytochemicals, may work together to fight cancer and other disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T02:32:05.867" Title="Does eating the apple skin alone help to reduce cancer cells and liver cancer?" Tags="|cancer|healthcare|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23743" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-10T02:52:22.923" Score="4" ViewCount="491" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oddee.com/item_98612.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;10 Fascinating Facts About Farting&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People Pass Gas About 14 Times Per Day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wondergressive.com/gas-in-the-body-2/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fart, Burp, and Embrace Gas!&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Catapulting gaseous elements out of your orifices 13 to 21 times a day is average. Farting and burping even 30 times a day is, unfortunately for us, still a normal occurrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/heartburn-gerd/tc/gas-bloating-and-burping-topic-overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gas, Bloating, and Burping - Topic Overview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Burping 3 or 4 times after eating a meal is normal and is usually caused by swallowing air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All people pass gas, but some people produce more gas than others. It is normal to pass gas from 6 to 20 times a day. Although this may embarrass or annoy you, excess intestinal gas usually is not caused by a serious health condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these estimates accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T21:47:00.633" Title="Do humans normally pass gas 6 to 21 times per day?" Tags="|biology|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23579" CreationDate="2014-11-10T10:13:38.147" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;If this was a valid law, it should be possible to point to a successful prosecution made under its provisions. There hasn't been one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason this myth has grown legs is because of an article introduced into the Arkansas legal code in 1881. The article in question, which I have reproduced below, is taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/arcode/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lexisnexis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1-4-105.  Pronunciation of state name.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas, confusion of practice has arisen in the pronunciation of the name of our state and it is deemed important that the true pronunciation should be determined for use in oral official proceedings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, whereas, the matter has been thoroughly investigated by the State Historical Society and the Eclectic Society of Little Rock, which have agreed upon the correct pronunciation as derived from history and the early usage of the American immigrants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Be it therefore resolved by both houses of the General Assembly, that the only true pronunciation of the name of the state, in the opinion of this body, is that received by the French from the native Indians and committed to writing in the French word representing the sound. It should be pronounced in three (3) syllables, with the final &amp;quot;s&amp;quot; silent, the &amp;quot;a&amp;quot; in each syllable with the Italian sound, and the accent on the first and last syllables. The pronunciation with the accent on the second syllable with the sound of &amp;quot;a&amp;quot; in &amp;quot;man&amp;quot; and the sounding of the terminal &amp;quot;s&amp;quot; is an innovation to be discouraged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HISTORY: Concurrent Resolution No. 4, Acts 1881, p. 216; C. &amp;amp; M. Dig., § 9181a; Pope's Dig., § 11867; A.S.A. 1947, § 5-102.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the provision in the code merely describes the unfavoured pronunciation as &amp;quot;an innovation to be discouraged&amp;quot;. That doesn't make that pronunciation &lt;em&gt;illegal&lt;/em&gt; — it merely states the official opinion and preference of the state legislature at the time this article was included in the Arkansas legal code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may also be of interest that in the neighbouring state of Kansas (where I actually live), there are several place names that include the word &lt;em&gt;Arkansas&lt;/em&gt;, like Arkansas City. Here, those place names are actually pronounced as written (though &lt;em&gt;Arkansas City&lt;/em&gt; is more often than not simply shortened to 'Ark City' in speech, which renders the pronunciation of the end of the word a moot point).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22770" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T10:13:38.147" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23748" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-10T10:15:30.687" Score="8" ViewCount="661" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is ELF (extremely low frequency) radiation emitted by the electrical appliances' battery's current considered to have adverse health effects, or &#xA;is this radiation too low to be considered?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to keep the focus specifically on mobile phones and tablets, and please take in account that those devices are put on 'airplane mode' to eliminate the RF radiation emitted by 3g and Wifi. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore this question address the effects of ELF only from a mobile phone or tablet running on battery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The existence of some scientific papers show this may be a valid concern. For example,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19264460&quot;&gt;Cell phone radiation: Evidence from ELF and RF studies supporting more inclusive risk identification and assessment&lt;/a&gt; implies there may be a risk to be identified and assessed&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bem.21827/abstract&quot;&gt;Assessment of extremely low frequency magnetic field exposure from GSM mobile phones&lt;/a&gt; implies, at least, that there is such a thing as ELF magnetic field exposure from mobile phones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22766" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2014-11-10T15:22:06.177" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T12:03:43.990" Title="Does extremely low frequency radiation from mobile phones and tablets have adverse health effects?" Tags="|environmental-health|electromagnetism|radiation|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23749" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20156" CreationDate="2014-11-10T18:22:48.827" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the evidence is credible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Grossman_%28author%29&quot;&gt;David Grossman&lt;/a&gt;, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journal.dnd.ca/vo9/no2/16-engen-eng.asp&quot;&gt;retired U.S. military psychologist&lt;/a&gt; who &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.killology.com/bio.htm&quot;&gt;specializes in the psychology of killing&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.killology.com/article_agress&amp;amp;viol.htm&quot;&gt;source of this claim&lt;/a&gt; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.L.A._Marshall&quot;&gt;S. L. A. Marshall&lt;/a&gt;, in his 1947 book &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0806132809&quot;&gt;Men Against Fire&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grossman says of the further evidence he gathered to support the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ardant du Picq's surveys of French officers in the 1860s and his&#xA;  observations about ancient battles (Battle Studies, 1946), John Keegan&#xA;  and Richard Holmes' numerous accounts of ineffectual firing throughout&#xA;  history (Soldiers, 1985), Holmes' assessment of Argentine firing rates&#xA;  in the Falklands War (Acts of War, 1985), Paddy Griffith's data on the&#xA;  extraordinarily low firing rate among Napoleonic and American *Civil&#xA;  War regiments (Battle Tactics of the American Civil War, 1989), the&#xA;  British army's laser reenactments of historical battles, the FBI's&#xA;  studies of nonfiring rates among law enforcement officers in the 1950s&#xA;  and 1960s, and countless other individual and anecdotal observations,&#xA;  all confirm Marshall's fundamental conclusion that human beings are&#xA;  not, by nature, killers. Indeed, from a psychological perspective, the&#xA;  history of warfare can be viewed as a series of successively more&#xA;  effective tactical and mechanical mechanisms to enable or force&#xA;  combatants to overcome their resistance to killing other human beings,&#xA;  even when defined as the enemy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22634" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T18:22:48.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23750" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23755" CreationDate="2014-11-10T19:30:36.530" Score="13" ViewCount="5218" Body="&lt;p&gt;A google search on frequency hopping gives numerous results crediting Ms. Lamarr (and George Antheil) for frequency hopping and spread spectrum technologies and further, suggests we wouldn't have WiFi or bluetooth had it not been for them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is one such headline and article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/shortcuts/2011/dec/04/hedy-lamarr-wifi&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;If it wasn't for Hedy Lamarr, we wouldn't have Wi-Fi&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10966" LastEditorUserId="10966" LastEditDate="2017-10-18T21:41:49.480" LastActivityDate="2023-10-16T12:26:47.550" Title="Did Hedy Lamarr and George Antheil invent frequency hopping or spread spectrum communications?" Tags="|radio|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23750" CreationDate="2014-11-10T19:48:24.853" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;She certainly played a role, see&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;D Kahn, &quot;Cryptology and the origins of spread spectrum: Engineers during World War II developed an unbreakable scrambler to guarantee secure communications between Allied leaders; actress Hedy Lamarr played a role in the technology&quot;,  Spectrum, IEEE, Volume:21, Issue 9, pages 70 - 80, doi &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MSPEC.1984.6370466&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10.1109/MSPEC.1984.6370466&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;abstract: The author describes the development of the scrambler called SIGSALY during World War II that was used for conversations between Churchill and Roosevelt and provides an early example of spread-spectrum communication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were granted a patent on the frequency hopping idea (2,292,387).  I don't think it is really true to say that we wouldn't have WiFi or bluetooth without their invention though, which was IIRC intended to prevent jamming of radio guided torpedos by varying the frequency of the signal in a pseudorandom way.  The frequency hopping used in cellphones etc switches between frequencies, but that is about the only real similarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is lots of material on this, google for &quot;Lamarr patent&quot;; the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr#Frequency-hopping_spread-spectrum_invention&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; entry explains it quite well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect that many of the engineers that developed WiFi may well have heard about frequency hopping from wartime propaganda stories about Lamarr's invention, rather than from reading Tesla's patent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2014-11-11T13:45:19.607" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T13:45:19.607" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23752" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23743" CreationDate="2014-11-10T20:57:45.353" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ajg/journal/v93/n11/full/ajg1998522a.html&quot;&gt;Evaluation of an extremely flatulent patient: Case report and proposed diagnostic and therapeutic approach&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A study involving 25 healthy subjects ingesting their ad libitum diets indicated that gas was passed an average of 10 times/day with an upper limit of normal (mean plusminus 2 SD) of 20 times/day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was linked to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8554251&quot;&gt;The relation of passage of gas an abdominal bloating to colonic gas production.&lt;/a&gt; as the primary source.  On a study of 25 participants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Participants passed gas 10 +/- 5.0 times per day (mean +/- SD) during the placebo period&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1378885/pdf/gut00587-0087.pdf&quot;&gt;Investigation of normal flatus production in healthy volunteers&lt;/a&gt;, they reported a median of 8 events over a 24 hour period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22733" LastEditorUserId="22733" LastEditDate="2014-11-10T21:47:00.633" LastActivityDate="2014-11-10T21:47:00.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23753" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23759" CreationDate="2014-11-10T22:29:42.533" Score="8" ViewCount="25451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've read on many pest control websites that if you catch a mouse in your home that they must be taken 1+ miles away, otherwise they will easily make their way back to their old home (ie. your house).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I live in a suburban street in an urban part of London. How could a mouse realistically find its way back to my house if I dumped it in the local park, 0.2 miles away?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XEaq1.png&quot; alt=&quot;Cropped screenshot of Mousetraps.org.uk&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mousetraps.org.uk/mouse-traps/Single-Catch-Live-Mouse-Trap&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.mousetraps.org.uk/mouse-traps/Single-Catch-Live-Mouse-Trap&lt;/a&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;em&gt;(dead link)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The unharmed mouse should then be taken 2 miles away from the house and released.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pestkill.org/mice/home/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://pestkill.org/mice/home/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mind that you should reveal mice at least 1 mile from your house because they can come back to the house easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://conversation.which.co.uk/energy-home/humane-pest-control-for-mice-infestations-at-home/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://conversation.which.co.uk/energy-home/humane-pest-control-for-mice-infestations-at-home/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humane, live-catch traps are something of a pain (mice have a homing instinct, so you have to release them miles away).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1835" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-04-24T15:30:32.813" Title="Can mice find their way back to your home from 1+ miles away?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23750" CreationDate="2014-11-11T01:57:41.567" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, they did not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frequency hopping was not only known but was in use decades before Ms. Lamarr and Mr. Antheil came up with a different way to do it. Though they were rightly given a patent for an interesting way to do frequency hopping they most certainly were not its inventors. The technologies we use today would be here just as they are now had the inventors never been born.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jonathan Zenneck's book Wireless Telegraphy (German, 1908, English translation McGraw Hill, 1915) is one of the first public documents mentioning frequency hopping - a full 34 years before Lamarr and Antheil's patent. And it has been written that Germany was using this technology in 1918 against the British (see the EE Times article referenced below.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents/US723188&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Patent #US723188&lt;/a&gt; by none other than Nikolai Tesla in 1903 does not use the phrase &amp;quot;frequency hopping&amp;quot; though it describes changing wireless frequencies to avoid interception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents/US1869659&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Patent #US1869659&lt;/a&gt;  by Willem Broertjes submitted in 1929 and issued in 1932 (a decade before Lamarr and Antheil's) describes what would become known as frequency hopping spread spectrum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The essential feature of the invention resides in the fact that messages are transmitted by means of a group of frequencies (working frequencies) known to the sender and receiver alone, and alternated at will during transmission of the messages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, here is an article from EE Times noting their accomplishment but demonstrating they did not invent the technology: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1279374&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A short history of spread spectrum&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nikola Tesla, the prolific Serbian-American inventor and radio pioneer, filed a U.S. patent, granted on March 17, 1903 which doesn’t mention the phrase “frequency hopping” directly, but certainly alludes to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such an interesting idea didn’t escape the military’s attention of course, and by 1915, the Germans were making use of primitive frequency hopping radio to stop the British eavesdropping on their conversations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lamarr, together with co-inventor George Antheil, a pianist and Hollywood composer, came up with a system for radio control of torpedoes. The idea was not new, but Lamarr’s concept of frequency hopping to prevent the intended target from jamming the controller’s transmissions was.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the concept of frequency hopping is used in spread spectrum communications there is no evidence either inventor had a role in SIGSALY or any other spread spectrum project.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents/US2292387&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;patent #US2202387&lt;/a&gt; does not discuss spread spectrum in any way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&#xA;Personally, my first exposure to frequency hopping was the RT-1209 military HF radio in 1988.  It used frequency hopping to prevent detection, interception, and resistance to jamming.  It used a preset set of frequencies to 'hop' between.  This sequence was determined using a 'time of day' word that was programmed into the radios wishing to communicate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WiFi on the other hand did not come into existence until 1998 - more than a decade after the military radio had already been fielded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, this is not to diminish Ms. Lamarr - she did much to be proud of and it should be acknowledged. Instead this is meant to diminish the erroneous claims made by others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10966" LastEditorUserId="1835" LastEditDate="2023-10-16T12:26:47.550" LastActivityDate="2023-10-16T12:26:47.550" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23757" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26343" CreationDate="2014-11-11T05:00:30.720" Score="26" ViewCount="18501" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some sources claim that Malian soldiers arrived in the Americas in 1311 CE.  For example, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siliconafrica.com/terra-nullius/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Silicon Africa: 100 African Cities destroyed by Europeans&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Malian sailors got to America in 1311 AD, 181 years before Columbus. An Egyptian scholar, Ibn Fadl Al-Umari, published on this sometime around 1342. In the tenth chapter of his book, there is an account of two large maritime voyages ordered by the predecessor of Mansa Musa, a king who inherited the Malian throne in 1312. This mariner king is not named by Al-Umari, but modern writers identify him as Mansa Abubakari II.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csu.edu/dosa/AAMRC/news1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;100 things that you did not know about Africa&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Malian sailors got to America in 1311 AD, 181 years before Columbus. An Egyptian scholar, Ibn Fadl Al-Umari, published on this sometime around 1342. In the tenth chapter of his book, there is an account of two large maritime voyages ordered by the predecessor of Mansa Musa, a king who inherited the Malian throne in 1312. This mariner king is not named by Al-Umari, but modern writers identify him as Mansa Abubakari II. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bornblackmag.com/discovery.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Born Black Magazine&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Citing the book written by the famous Egyptian scholar, Ibn Fadi Al-Umari in 1342, there were two large voyages across the Atlantic Ocean preceding that of Columbus. Both Expeditions were pioneered by one man, Abubakari or to give him his rightful name, Mansa (King) Abubakari II. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact#Africans&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia only has this to say about it&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;North African sources describe what some consider to be visits to the New World by a Mali fleet in 1311.&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1068950.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;sup&gt;[&lt;code&gt;71&lt;/code&gt;]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. According to these sources, 400 ships from the Mali Empire discovered a land across the ocean to the West after being swept off course by ocean currents. Only one ship returned, and the captain reported the discovery of a western current to Prince Abubakari II; the off-course Mali fleet of 400 ships is said to have conducted both trade and warfare with the peoples of the western lands. It is claimed that Abubakari II abdicated his throne and set off to explore these western lands. In 1324, the Mali king Mansa Musa is said to have told the Arabic historian, Al-Umari that &quot;his predecessors had launched two expeditions from West Africa to discover the limits of the Atlantic Ocean.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All seem to source the claim to a 1342 book by Ibn Fadi Al-Umari, but the sources who describe this account seem to be mostly from an African perspective.  That doesn't mean it's false, but I wonder why I don't get &quot;normal&quot; history sites when looking for this.  Is this account of history generally accepted among historians, or should it be categorised as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudohistory&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pseudohistory&lt;/a&gt;?  Or is it more subtle than that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BBC Source - &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1068950.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/1068950.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2016-09-07T01:23:57.403" LastActivityDate="2023-11-20T19:55:33.120" Title="Did Malian sailors reach the Americas in 1311 CE?" Tags="|history|africa|" AnswerCount="5" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23758" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-11T05:48:00.177" Score="31" ViewCount="11336" Body="&lt;p&gt;In an article, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://motherboard.vice.com/read/yes-forcing-an-anaconda-to-eat-a-human-on-tv-is-a-bad-idea&quot;&gt;Yes, Forcing an Anaconda to Eat a Human on TV Is a Bad Idea&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, the &quot;world’s foremost expert on anacondas&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anacondas.org/&quot;&gt;Jesús Rivas&lt;/a&gt; claims: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The concern is that all that these shows do is to paint the snakes as&#xA;  the bad guys,&quot; he added. &quot;&lt;strong&gt;While anacondas might be able to eat a&#xA;  person, this has not been confirmed as a reality, to my knowledge&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  (basically because snake and humans overlap very little). &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there no verified cases of humans being eaten by an anaconda?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-11-11T07:47:00.223" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T09:52:24.200" Title="Has a human ever been eaten by an anaconda?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23759" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23753" CreationDate="2014-11-11T06:32:16.983" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &amp;quot;Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal&amp;quot; issued by the CDC, there is &lt;a href=&quot;https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/5/1/99-0125_article&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a report of a trial&lt;/a&gt; that involved one pinyon mouse (P. truei) and 19 deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trial apparently demonstrated that when removed from the location of the infestation and dislocated at to different distances ranging between 50m and 1200m (0.03 miles to 0.75 miles), adult deer mice made their way back almost every time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other age groups of deer mice took a longer time to return (up to two weeks) but many of them were found near the original location within 24 hours of release[[2]].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quotes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some rodents have been documented to move similar distances (e.g., 1,200 m), but they took more than 2 weeks to complete the trek [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1382692?uid=3737616&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21105166815993&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Homing ability, site fidelity, and navigational proficiency of rodents are well documented [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2423331?uid=3737616&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21105166815993&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://landscape.forest.wisc.edu/LandscapeEcology/Articles/v05i04p219.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1382692?uid=3737616&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21105166815993&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ostfeld RS, Manson RH. Long-distance homing in meadow voles, (Microtus pennsylvanicus). J Mammal. 1996;77:870–3.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;3 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2423331?uid=3737616&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;sid=21105166815993&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Teferi T, Millar JS. Long distance homing by the deer mouse, Peromyscus maniculatus. Can Field Nat. 1993;107:109–11&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;4 &lt;a href=&quot;http://landscape.forest.wisc.edu/LandscapeEcology/Articles/v05i04p219.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Robinson WL, Falls JB. A study of homing of meadow mice. Am Midl Nat. 1965;73:188–224.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All credits to the editors of EID Journal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22767" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-04-24T15:30:32.813" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23758" CreationDate="2014-11-11T09:11:18.017" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;As of 1999, there were two documented attacks by green anacondas (Eunectes murinus) on humans. Neither human was eaten, see &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anacondas.org/strike.htm&quot;&gt;Predatory attacks of green anacondas (Eunectes murinus) on adult human beings&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Herptological Natural History&lt;/em&gt;. 6(2): 158-160:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In my experience catching anacondas of all sizes, I have found that&#xA;  large individuals are very unlikely to attack when disturbed. Indeed,&#xA;  to the present I have caught and processed more than 120 animals&#xA;  larger than 4 meters and none tried to bite until I (or one of my&#xA;  helpers) had either, dragged the animal out of the water by its tail,&#xA;  or secured a firm grip on the animal’s neck (Rivas 1999). Large&#xA;  individuals tended to swim away when disturbed. Recaptured animals&#xA;  are, if anything, even more skittish than naive ones and try to escape&#xA;  as soon as they detect the proximity of the researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the concluding sentence though,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although anacondas are not &quot;man-eaters&quot; by nature, they are&#xA;  generalists and will take any prey that they can subdue and swallow.&#xA;  Thus, the potential exists for anacondas to prey on people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wildlifezone.wordpress.com/about/&quot;&gt;credible source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; explains why human consumption by anaconda is unlikely and remains &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wildlifezone.wordpress.com/land-of-the-anaconda/&quot;&gt;undocumented as of 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; see section six, &lt;em&gt;Did they ever try and eat you?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unmuseum.org/bigsnake.htm&quot;&gt;Pythons and especially reticulated pythons&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; are a different matter; a 10 year-old was swallowed in 2002 in South Africa, and in the 1970’s a Portugese soldier was found inside the stomach of a python.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4301" LastEditorUserId="4301" LastEditDate="2014-11-11T18:55:09.660" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T18:55:09.660" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23762" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23771" CreationDate="2014-11-11T12:07:44.950" Score="11" ViewCount="1179" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rtvoost.nl/nieuws/default.aspx?nid=202775&amp;amp;cat=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to the Dutch news site RTV Oost&lt;/a&gt;, an employee at the hospital Isala Klinieken in Zwolle was making fries in a place where that was not allowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to not be caught, he put up signs saying &quot;no entry - ebola&quot;. The story has been picked up by many, if not all, Dutch news sources. Is the story true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11892" LastEditorUserId="34404" LastEditDate="2017-10-24T10:15:25.797" LastActivityDate="2021-08-18T08:18:57.633" Title="Did a hospital employee put up &quot;ebola&quot; signs to cover up he was making fries?" Tags="|ebola|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23763" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20455" CreationDate="2014-11-11T15:14:51.377" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jl/2014/832729/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The paper has now been retracted&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article titled “Why Fish Oil Fails: A Comprehensive 21st Century Lipids-Based Physiologic Analysis” &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jl/2014/832729/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, published in Journal of Lipids has been retracted as a result of an undeclared competing interest on the part of the manuscript’s author.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this doesn't directly speak to the accuracy of the paper, it does speak to the author's willingness to lie (or lie by omission) for personal gain which in turn casts doubt on the authenticity of the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://retractionwatch.com/2014/11/12/know-how-to-recognize-pseudoscience-whistleblower-fills-in-the-blanks-on-fish-oil-retraction/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;There's a blog post including an email from the guy who triggered the investigation that lead to the retraction.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some selected quotes that do directly discuss the accuracy of the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article was filled with vast numbers of references, and highly detailed mechanistic explanations, but surprisingly little empirical evidence to back these up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author made numerous logical errors and wild extrapolations. He repeatedly drew conclusions that didn’t follow from his premises. He used appeal to authority, toward the vague entity of “21st century lipid science”… This is the kind of language I would expect in marketing, not biochemistry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11387" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T12:12:40.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23764" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23071" CreationDate="2014-11-11T18:19:18.640" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a brief &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wickedlasers.com/laser-tech/WhyisIRbad.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;description&lt;/a&gt; of why IR can be dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite not being visible, IR rays can still pass through the anterior&#xA;  structures of the eye and reach the retina.  Since you are unable to detect IR, there will not be any blink or aversion reflex to protect your eyes from damage. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting too close and staring into an IR transmitter is effectively the same as getting too close and staring into a flashlight - the mechanism of injury is the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual standards for IR protection can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ussafety.com/?page=infrared&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22790" LastActivityDate="2014-11-11T18:19:18.640" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23765" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23177" CreationDate="2014-11-11T19:53:26.397" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The U.S. Government Accountability Office &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-14-119&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;examined&lt;/a&gt; this question and found that, no, acquisition of ammunition by government agencies is not increasing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) annual ammunition&#xA;  purchases have declined since fiscal year 2009 and are comparable in&#xA;  number to the Department of Justice's (DOJ) ammunition purchases. In&#xA;  fiscal year 2013, DHS purchased 84 million rounds of ammunition, which&#xA;  is less than DHS's ammunition purchases over the past 5 fiscal&#xA;  years....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this report focuses primarily on the Department of Homeland Security, a comparison to the ammunition acquisitions made by the Department of Justice is made on page 23 of the report (page 28 of the PDF).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edited:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding justification:  &quot;justified&quot; is, of course, subjective.  But I will include some context.  According to the above-linked GAO report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DHS's ammunition purchases over the 6-year period equates to an&#xA;  average of 1,200 rounds purchased per firearm-carrying agent or&#xA;  officer per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firearm training classes in the U.S., such as those offered by &lt;a href=&quot;http://aliastraining.com/handgunandcarbineclasses.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alias Security&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.combatshootingandtactics.com/courses.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Combat Shooting and Tactics&lt;/a&gt;, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.costaludus.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Costa Ludus&lt;/a&gt;, can use anywhere from 200 to 600 rounds in a full day's worth of training (look at the course descriptions at each of the links above - they will include a &quot;round count&quot; so that students know how much ammunition to bring to class).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if agents attended a day-long class that used 300 rounds of ammunition per day, they would be able to spend four days a year with their firearms training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22790" LastEditorUserId="22790" LastEditDate="2014-11-13T00:53:06.767" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T00:53:06.767" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23767" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="41639" CreationDate="2014-11-12T03:09:49.510" Score="36" ViewCount="36049" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across the following image today(I'm just posting it as a link because the image is fairly large):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://themetapicture.com/why-monty-python-was-so-great/&quot;&gt;http://themetapicture.com/why-monty-python-was-so-great/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image says that in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Life_of_Brian&quot;&gt;Monty Python's Life of Brian&lt;/a&gt;, during &quot;Biggus Dickus&quot; scene, the guards were extras who weren't told what was going to happen, and that they wouldn't be paid if they laughed.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally, I looked the scene up on Youtube, and there are multiple comments claiming the same thing.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K8_jgiNqUc&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K8_jgiNqUc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, the scene is better if you believe that the guard actors were really told not to laugh, but I am somewhat doubtful for the following reasons&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This claim smells like the sort of rumor that people might hear and spread without vetting it much.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Throughout the scene, for the most part, the guards are containing their laughter, but at the very end, the guards are laughing animatedly as though they were no longer trying to contain themselves.  One would expect, that if they were really told not to laugh throughout the scene, they would continue to try to not laugh.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any official information on this rumor?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10811" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2016-06-20T16:30:05.707" LastActivityDate="2018-07-05T10:11:04.650" Title="In the movie &quot;Life of Brian&quot;, were the guard extras told that they couldn't laugh?" Tags="|movies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23758" CreationDate="2014-11-12T07:48:17.433" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Snakes need to categorize their prey visually into &quot;swallowable&quot; / &quot;not swallowable&quot;. This is reasonably because if they have started to swallow there is generally no way back because of the preys anatomy (Horns, Legs ..) and their jaws. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since big snakes won't stalk and round their prey before attack they need to use first vision to do the above mentioned characterization. The vision of a standing human will be confusing and most likely distracting because the frontal view of an upright person of 1.8m would suggest a much bigger body in any other species that would be &quot;un-swallowable&quot; by the snake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People that are attacked by big snakes with non-defensive intention were most likely not standing or walking upright. This fits well with the reporting of  (little) children beeing caught and reports on hunting communities in south asia were more man than woman had been attacked by reticulated pythons ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.thatpetplace.com/thatreptileblog/2012/01/30/people-as-python-prey-giant-snakes-attack-150-kill-6-in-philippines/#.VGMOtFaEW2x&quot;&gt;http://blogs.thatpetplace.com/thatreptileblog/2012/01/30/people-as-python-prey-giant-snakes-attack-150-kill-6-in-philippines/#.VGMOtFaEW2x&lt;/a&gt; ) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To lastly answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been reports on pythons and anacondas killing humans (most likely children) but they are rare and suggesting that humans aren't an usual prey of snakes. The rational above might clarify why this is the case.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22797" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T07:48:17.433" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23762" CreationDate="2014-11-12T09:03:12.877" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the hospital itself, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150409055038/http://www.isala.nl/over-isala/nieuws/reactie-berichtgeving-schorsing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;yes, it did happen&lt;/a&gt; (preserved by the &lt;em&gt;Wayback Machine&lt;/em&gt;; contents in Dutch).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Reactie Isala op berichtgeving over schorsing medewerker&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Donderdag 6 november 2014&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;​Er heeft zich binnen Isala een ontoelaatbaar incident voorgedaan dat aanleiding heeft gegeven tot een intern onderzoek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Het incident betreft het frituren in het OK-complex waarbij briefjes zijn opgehangen met een verwijzing naar Ebola om deze actie te verhullen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dit is op geen enkele wijze in overeenstemming met de normen en waarden van Isala.  Daarom neemt Isala dit zeer hoog op en zijn er maatregelen genomen die hebben geleid tot een schorsing van een medewerker. Bij drie andere betrokken medewerkers is een aantekening in hun dossier gemaakt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We willen graag benadrukken dat de patiëntveiligheid niet in het geding is geweest.  Nadat het incident zich heeft voorgedaan is de betreffende ruimte in het OK-complex volledig gereinigd, voordat er weer operaties hebben plaatsgevonden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translation (mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Reaction by Isala to news about suspension employee&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thursday, November 6, 2014&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;An unacceptable incident has occurred within Isala that has led to an internal investigation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The incident concerns frying in the OR complex while putting up notes referencing Ebola to conceal this action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is in no way in accordance with the standards and values of Isala. Therefore Isala has taken this very seriously and has taken measures that have led to suspension of an employee. Three other employees involved have received a note on their records.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We would like to emphasize that patient safety has not been compromised. After the incident occurred, the room involved was cleaned thoroughly before another surgery took place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16121" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2021-08-18T08:18:57.633" LastActivityDate="2021-08-18T08:18:57.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23777" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23661" CreationDate="2014-11-12T21:51:16.863" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.libertymutualgroup.com/omapps/ContentServer?c=cms_document&amp;amp;pagename=LMGResearchInstitute/cms_document/ShowDoc&amp;amp;cid=1138369848931&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; from Liberty Mutual regarding a study one of their researches did on this subject entitled &amp;quot;Is a Sharper Knife a Safer Knife?   Liberty Mutual Researchers Investigate&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study findings, published in &lt;em&gt;Applied Ergonomics&lt;/em&gt; (Vol. 24, pp 375-382), indicated that blade sharpness did indeed have a significant impact on grip and cutting forces... In fact, the researchers found that cutting time, grip force, and cutting moments with a sharp knife were 20 to 30 percent lower than with a dull knife.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These findings strongly suggest suggest two important conclusions: 1) A sharp knife is indeed a safer knife, because it reduces the forces that potentially contribute to repetitive strain injuries; and 2) sharper blades improve efficiency by reducing cutting time...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original journal article can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003687003000413&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22733" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-12T21:51:16.863" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23779" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-13T04:09:37.067" Score="6" ViewCount="796" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/world/europe/ukraine-russia-military-border-nato.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt; and many other media have reported that Russia invaded Ukraine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A senior NATO official confirmed on Wednesday what Ukrainian military officials and monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have been saying for days now: Russian troops and military equipment are crossing the border into Ukraine, seemingly preparing for renewed military action, though what exactly remains unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Russia denies it completely. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/news/204895-russia-ukraine-military-nato/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;RT.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Russia has denied NATO claims that its army has crossed into eastern Ukraine in the past few days, calling them groundless, the Defense Ministry said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“We have stopped paying attention to the groundless accusations made by NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, US General Philip Breedlove, of the ‘observed’ Russian military columns allegedly invading Ukraine,” said Defense Ministry official representative, General-Major Igor Konashenkov on Wednesday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He gave a reminder of earlier and similar NATO claims, which have not been backed by any evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“[We have] repeatedly stressed that there was and is no evidence supporting Brussels’ regular trumpeting over the alleged presence of Russian forces in Ukraine,” Konashenkov said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence aside from NATO that Russia has sent its military into Ukraine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T04:09:37.067" Title="Has Russia invaded Ukraine?" Tags="|war|military|russia|ukraine|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2014-11-13T05:14:35.930" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23780" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-13T15:10:14.067" Score="2" ViewCount="413" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's 'revealed' in many religious scriptures that man was created from clay:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answering-christianity.com/life_from_clay.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Life from clay&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://miraclesofthequran.com/scientific_59.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Creation from clay&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an interesting article in New Scientist titled, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4307#.VGTFpzSUdmM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clay's matchmaking could have sparked life&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How reliable is this article? Is there any recent advancement to confirm/refute such claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18802" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-13T16:43:47.310" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T16:43:47.310" Title="Life (i.e. cells) originated from clay" Tags="|biology|religion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23782" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23780" CreationDate="2014-11-13T16:33:59.640" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#Current_models&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's 'Abiogenesis' article&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is still no &quot;standard model&quot; of the origin of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It mentions several models or hypotheses, among which is at least one (not very successful) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#Clay_hypothesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Clay hypothesis&lt;/a&gt; (beyond the hypothesis you mentioned in the OP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The experiment which you mentioned in the OP is mentioned in that Wikipedia article too, in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#Protocells&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Protocells&lt;/a&gt; section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 2012 study led by Armen Mulkidjanian of Germany's University of Osnabrück, suggests that inland pools of condensed and cooled geothermal vapour have the ideal characteristics for the origin of life.[145] &lt;strong&gt;Scientists discovered in 2002 that by adding a montmorillonite clay to a solution of fatty acid micelles (lipid spheres), the clay sped up the rate of vesicles formation 100-fold.[142]&lt;/strong&gt; So this one mineral can get precursors (nucleotides) to spontaneously assemble into RNA and membrane precursors to assemble into membrane.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Montmorillonite clay&quot; might also help to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis#Pre-RNA_world&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;synthesize RNA&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James Ferris's studies have shown that clay minerals of montmorillonite will catalyze the formation of RNA in aqueous solution, by joining activated mono RNA nucleotides to join together to form longer chains.[138] Although these chains have random sequences, the possibility that one sequence began to non-randomly increase its frequency by increasing the speed of its catalysis is possible to &quot;kick start&quot; biochemical evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-11-13T16:33:59.640" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23787" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23788" CreationDate="2014-11-14T02:18:06.493" Score="6" ViewCount="4901" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is claimed that it is against the law to sell dolls that do not have human faces in France.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is illegal to sell an ET doll in France. They have a law forbidding the sale of dolls that do not have human faces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bearspub.com/trivia/weird_laws.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://bearspub.com/trivia/weird_laws.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;France, which is a country that is known for creating some of the most lovely porcelain dolls in the world, has a strict law involving the creation and sale of dolls. All over the country, &lt;strong&gt;it is illegal to sell dolls that do not have human faces.&lt;/strong&gt; This means that if dolls have human bodies, their faces must also be easily recognized as humans. As a result, you will never see a doll in France that looks like an alien or other kind of non-human creature. No matter the shop, any dolls that are sold must have faces that are human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.yurtopic.com/society/legal/strange-laws.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.yurtopic.com/society/legal/strange-laws.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21976" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-16T21:52:00.343" Title="Is it illegal to sell dolls that do not have human faces in France?" Tags="|law|france|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23787" CreationDate="2014-11-14T02:33:09.050" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's an ET doll being sold on a French web site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.figurines-cine.com/et-lextra-terrestre-/897004368-et-lextra-terrestre-replique-poupee-et-stunt-puppet-91-cm--634482550625.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;E.T. L´EXTRA-TERRESTRE RÉPLIQUE POUPÉE E.T. STUNT PUPPET 91 CM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/v6qE3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe that doesn't cont as a &quot;human&quot; body, but whatever. I Googled for for poupee+stroumph and found them being sold on ebay.fr&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3Ujxt.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO this shows that if there is such a law, it's not enforced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's this comment on &lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-201806.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a straightdope user forum&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Good suggestion, A Monkey With a Gun. It prompted me to do some&#xA;  googling. The first thing I found was actually a Canadian proposal&#xA;  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parl.gc.ca/36/1/parlbus/chambus/house/bills/private/C-374/C-374_1/361282bF.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.parl.gc.ca/36/1/parlbus/chambus/house/bills/private/C-374/C-374_1/361282bF.html&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;  for a law making it an offense to sell a doll (poupée) with the&#xA;  encouragment to have it suffer degrading treatment. The explanation&#xA;  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parl.gc.ca/36/1/parlbus/chambus/house/debates/220_1999-05-03/han220_1105-f.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.parl.gc.ca/36/1/parlbus/chambus/house/debates/220_1999-05-03/han220_1105-f.htm&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;  mentions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pourquoi a-t-on mis le mot «poupée» dans ce projet de loi? C'est parce&#xA;  que les mots ont un sens dans notre langue. En français, le mot&#xA;  «poupée» veut dire tout objet ayant une forme humaine.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why is the word 'doll' used in this proposal? It is because words have&#xA;  a meaning in our language. In french, the word 'doll' (poupée) means&#xA;  an object having a human form.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This seems to confirm your suspicion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then I checked Legifrance&#xA;  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/html/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/html/index.html&lt;/a&gt;), which should contain&#xA;  all French laws. The search function only got me one law, the 'Arrêté&#xA;  06 juillet 1995', listing movie titles, one of which was 'Maison de&#xA;  poupée' (Doll house). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on this, I do call bullshit, with the proviso that there may be&#xA;  a different regulationt that isn't law and/or isn't listed on&#xA;  Legifrance, or that the OP's source meant a different word (which&#xA;  would however be unlikely given the earlier Canadian quote). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I guess this is the best we can do at the moment, since it is hard to&#xA;  prove something doesn't exist. Maybe clairobscur, if he drops by, can&#xA;  enlighten us.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It suggests that perhaps there's a law which &lt;strong&gt;defines&lt;/strong&gt; a doll as being &quot;something with a human face&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Pub=Hansard&amp;amp;Mee=220&amp;amp;Language=f&amp;amp;Parl=36&amp;amp;Ses=1#LINKT1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The 3rd May 1999 edition of Hansard&lt;/a&gt; is where that legal definition was discussed in Canadian Parliament in French (in the context of a rejected law making it illegal to sell dolls towards which the buyers are encouraged to be cruel).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I confirm that my search for &quot;poupée&quot; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/initRechTexte.do&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/initRechTexte.do&lt;/a&gt; using &quot;Rechercher ces mots parmi les mots du texte (depuis 1990)&quot; returns nothing -- or more precisely it returns 31 hits, none of which are related to the alleged law in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000028678598&amp;amp;fastPos=2&amp;amp;fastReqId=877068435&amp;amp;categorieLien=id&amp;amp;oldAction=rechTexte&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This one&lt;/a&gt; does say &quot;Poupées représentant uniquement l'être humain&quot; but what it's doing is saying that (among many other things) &quot;dolls which represent humans&quot; have a reduced tariff, in a trade agreement between Serbia and the EEC&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000366876&amp;amp;fastPos=26&amp;amp;fastReqId=849562773&amp;amp;categorieLien=id&amp;amp;oldAction=rechTexte&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This one&lt;/a&gt; says that &quot;poupées&quot; and &quot;peluches&quot; (i.e. &quot;dolls&quot; and &quot;plush toys&quot;) are two of the types of thing made by the industry of games and toys.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-16T21:52:00.343" LastActivityDate="2014-11-16T21:52:00.343" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23789" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-14T05:10:48.240" Score="3" ViewCount="475" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several fact-sheets and web-sites claim the cause of stomach cancer is unknown:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases_conditions/stomach-cancer-overview&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cleveland Clinic: Stomach Cancer - Cancer Institute Overview&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The exact cause of stomach cancer is unknown,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=85&amp;amp;ContentID=P00393&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;University of Rochester Medical Center: Stomach Cancer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The exact cause of stomach cancer is unknown, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idph.state.il.us/cancer/factsheets/stomach.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Illinois Department of Public Health: Stomach Cancer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even though the exact cause of stomach cancer is unknown, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These sites go on to list some of the risk factors that are associated with a higher chance of stomach cancer, including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gastritis (stomach inflammation)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pernicious anemia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gastric polyps, and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;gastric (peptic) ulcer.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(amongst many others)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the cause of stomach cancer known?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-11-14T11:47:21.863" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T16:06:05.013" Title="Is the cause of stomach cancer known?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23793" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23797" CreationDate="2014-11-14T14:50:39.800" Score="27" ViewCount="15662" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today on facebook I saw a claim under the heading of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://playboy.com/articles/mind-blowing-history-facts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;11 mind blowing facts from history&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very first one states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GGBdw.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Adolf Hitler's remaining relatives made a pact to never have children, so that the family dies out forever.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical that it was a conscious &quot;pact&quot; that the family made (although I suppose that Hitler's bloodline is dying out based on what I have found).  So is this a fact, or just a post hoc statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-11-14T18:17:33.437" LastActivityDate="2016-03-21T03:18:54.107" Title="Did Adolf Hitler's family make a pact to ensure the line died out?" Tags="|history|adolf-hitler|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23789" CreationDate="2014-11-14T16:19:13.897" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cancer is not a single disease, but the term for a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=3&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;uact=8&amp;amp;ved=0CDIQFjAC&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cancer.org%2Fcancer%2Fcancerbasics%2Fwhat-is-cancer&amp;amp;ei=GKJsVOexKYnfaP2OgDg&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNHSV7nrmvWks1s8-DK0O45b3mVlOQ&amp;amp;sig2=-ch95HaIRlQp4b4L9dJWTA&amp;amp;bvm=bv.80120444,d.d2s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;range of different diseases&lt;/a&gt; with the same ultimate symptom: cells that grow in an uncontrolled manner and which can invade other tissues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cancers can be caused by a huge array of environmental factors, but the tissue type where the cancer occurs will have different levels of environmental exposure. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=3&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;uact=8&amp;amp;ved=0CEAQFjAC&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mayoclinic.org%2Fdiseases-conditions%2Fskin-cancer%2Fbasics%2Fcauses%2Fcon-20031606&amp;amp;ei=WKJsVPXJBMK6aa23gOgI&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNH3sMEsD__9QSJP_k0RzImBnIRcAw&amp;amp;sig2=paUpIEoi7jD4m4oXj-Yhew&amp;amp;bvm=bv.80120444,d.d2s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Damage by UV radiation&lt;/a&gt;, for example, is a common cause of skin cancer, but almost for cancers of internal tissues such as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=3&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;uact=8&amp;amp;sqi=2&amp;amp;ved=0CDsQFjAC&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cancer.org%2Fcancer%2Fovariancancer%2Fdetailedguide%2Fovarian-cancer-what-causes&amp;amp;ei=eqJsVI6uKcbpaM7BgrAJ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGX06A29gWqV6yNxG_E6d3tji0BhA&amp;amp;sig2=m6JKhxeGcLt-xqRJC8-D6A&amp;amp;bvm=bv.80120444,d.d2s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ovaries&lt;/a&gt;, because the skin is the only tissue which is exposed to UV from sunlight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the case of stomach cancer, a variety of environmental cues suggest themselves, including diet and certain &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicobacter_pylori&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;infections&lt;/a&gt;. However, it's impossible to pin down a single cause of stomach cancer, just like it's impossible to pin down a single cause for almost any cancer. The possible range of causes is too diverse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the literal answer is that yes, the cause of stomach cancer is unknown. But the question itself is not terribly meaningful. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: The OP asked if this meant there was no way of tracing a specific individual cancer back to its cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not really - my apologies for a poor explanation of my point. The problem is more one of how things are grouped and classified. It's possible in occasional cases to discover the originial cause of a specific instance of cancer (the reasons why deserve an answer in themselves) - but because different individuals presenting stomach might have different root causes, you can't say that stomach cancer has a single cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an analogy. Imagine there's an interruption to the internet service to your house. If it's short, you'll probably never know (or care) what the root cause is. But if not, there could be lots of reasons. Your router could be faulty. There could be a power out at the local exchange. An important pylon somewhere might have blown down in a storm. A shark might have chowed down on a vital ocean cable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question about stomach cancer is akin to asking &quot;is the cause of internet outages known?&quot; as though there's only one possible cause when there are many. And each individual instance can likely be traced to one of a number of different causes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20863" LastEditorUserId="20863" LastEditDate="2014-11-19T16:06:05.013" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T16:06:05.013" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23797" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23793" CreationDate="2014-11-14T17:10:51.240" Score="34" Body="&lt;h2&gt;It's a slight exaggeration, but the core appears to be true.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_family#Post-World_War_II&quot;&gt;has a page&lt;/a&gt; on the Hitler family and what happened to it, which sources a lot of its information from &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.com/0954154401&quot;&gt;The Last of the Hitlers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by David Gardner.  In that book, he tracks down and interviews the surviving members of the family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;First generation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hitler had a sister, a half-brother, and a half-sister who survived into adulthood and could have had children.  None of them lived past 1960, although both half-siblings had children.  He also had two sister-in-laws.  One sister-in-law never married and never had any kids.  The other had one daughter, who committed suicide in 1971 (for unrelated reasons).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's highly unlikely there was any sort of &quot;pact&quot; in this generation - all Hitler's siblings (of all sorts) had children or not based on their own lives, and wouldn't have that decision affected by his reputation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Second generation&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As previously mentioned, Hitler had a niece through Eva Braun who committed suicide before having any kids.  The more interesting (and relevant) people are the five children between his two half-siblings.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia (again) summarizes it as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of [his half-sister's] children, Leo Rudolf Raubal Jr had one son, Peter Raubal, in 1931; Elfriede Raubal married Dr. Ernst Hochegger in 1937 and had a son, Heiner Hochegger, in 1945; and Geli Raubal committed suicide without issue in 1931. Both Peter and Heiner have had no children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Hitler's half-brother,] William Patrick, married Phyllis Jean-Jacques in 1947 in the US, where they had four children. Alexander Adolf Stuart-Houston (1949), Louis Stuart-Houston (1951), Howard Ronald Stuart-Houston (1957), and Brian William Stuart-Houston (1965) have all had no children; none of them married, with the exception of Howard, who died in a car crash in 1989.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;So was there a pact?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question now is whether Peter Raubal, Heiner Hochegger, and Alexander, Louis, Howard and Brian Stuart-Houston had a pact not to have children.  This is where the book by David Gardner, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1382115/Getting-to-know-the-Hitlers.html&quot;&gt;an accompanying article&lt;/a&gt; come in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Stuart-Houstons (who live in New York) likely have had no connection to their cousins Peter and Heiner (who live in Europe), as their father very much wanted to distance himself from his family.  Peter is also in his 80's and Heiner is in his late 60's.  As neither of them have had children, it's possible they independently decided not to have any, but it's unlikely it was part of any sort of pact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, that leaves the three living Stuart-Houstons - the ones most likely to have made a pact.  Gardner writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;None of the three sons has married, and there are no children. Alex initially denied that there had been a pact between the brothers to ensure that the Hitler line was not continued. Then he told me: &quot;Maybe my other two brothers did [make a pact], but I never did.&quot; It was just one more contradiction to add to the many that already cloud his family history.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/10/end-hitlers-family-line-pact-sons-hitlers-nephew-never-children/&quot;&gt;another source&lt;/a&gt;, he also wrote that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They didn’t sign a pact, but what they did is, they talked amongst themselves, talked about the burden they’ve had in the background of their lives, and decided that none of them would marry, none of them would have children. And that’s… a pact they’ve kept to this day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's likely that while there is no formal &quot;pact not to have children&quot;, all the siblings agreed that they didn't want to burden a child with their background.  In other words, &lt;strong&gt;it's not a pact to make the family die out, it's a mutual understanding that any children they may have would have a very hard life.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastEditorUserId="7280" LastEditDate="2014-11-23T05:22:53.663" LastActivityDate="2014-11-23T05:22:53.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23799" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-14T19:29:38.067" Score="32" ViewCount="6566" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots of references to the claim that people have stolen power through inductive coupling on the Internet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most common claim it that it was a farmer somewhere that noticed electricity induced by the high voltage power lines nearby through wires in his barn or his barbed wire fence and he expanded on the idea to build a coil to power his barn and/or his house and that's when he was caught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;i have heard a story that a farmer that had a barn under some&#xA;  high power lines and was able to steal electricity by having an induction&#xA;  coil under the roof. He was caught when the electric company noticed the&#xA;  drain in power. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=9291&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I know a power line engineer - he says it gets done every so often - but if it's enough to light say, a full barn, the power company can usually measure the loses, and they start looking - he actually sent a link to an article where someone was arrested for theft. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://cellar.org/showthread.php?t=14259&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In another case, an engineer living at a military base in England lived in a house near a radar installation. He installed induction coils in his attic that generated electricity from the radar beam. Controllers in the radar facility noticed a strange shadow on their screens and he was caught. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.industrytap.com/electromagnetic-harvesters-free-lunch-or-theft/1805&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have even been a couple of &lt;a href=&quot;https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/138499/can-the-wire-of-a-high-voltage-power-line-be-used-as-the-primary-coil-of-an-air#comment280329_138499&quot;&gt;references&lt;/a&gt; in StackExchange &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3520/is-it-possible-to-obtain-current-indirectly-from-power-lines/18372#comment11393_3520&quot;&gt;comments&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But none of the references I've seen have given enough specific details to verify the story, so it sounds like an urban legend that has no basis in fact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone ever been arrested or otherwise caught by the power company by stealing power through inductive coupling through a coil of wire or long wire running parallel to the power lines? (Note that I'm not talking about physically tapping into power lines to steal power, just inductive coupling that does not touch the power lines or electrical towers). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does seem to be theoretically possible to access some small amount of power from high &#xA;voltage lines, even while some distance away from the power lines, but has anyone actually stolen enough power this way to get detected by the power company and/or arrested?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know of a documented case where power was stolen in this way and the thief was caught?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13418" LastEditorUserId="18853" LastEditDate="2015-09-20T23:26:24.470" LastActivityDate="2015-09-21T04:52:24.627" Title="Has anyone been caught using inductive coupling to steal power?" Tags="|electromagnetism|theft|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23800" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-14T22:55:00.197" Score="5" ViewCount="531" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen claims that one shouldn't be an organ donor because you may be declared dead by mistake and have organs harvested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/ny-woman-declared-brain-dead-woke-up-moments-before-organs-harvested&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Life Site&lt;/a&gt; article gives a few anecdotal examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SYRACUSE, NY, July 9, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A woman who was pronounced brain dead by doctors unexpectedly woke up just as her organs were about to be removed for transplant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2008, a 45-year-old Frenchman revived on the operating table as doctors prepared to “harvest” his organs for donation, following cardiac arrest. In the subsequent investigation by the hospital’s ethics committee, a number of doctors admitted that such cases, while rare, were well known to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That same year, a “brain dead” 21-year-old American, Zack Dunlap, was about to have his organs harvested when his two sisters, both nurses, decided to test the hospital’s theory that his brain was no longer functioning. Family members poked his feet with a knife and dug their fingernails under his nails, provoking strong reactions by Dunlap and proving he was conscious. He recovered completely. He later related that he was conscious and aware as doctors discussed harvesting his organs in his presence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prolifehealthcare.org/organ-donation-refusal-may-save-your-life-julie-grimstad.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prolife Health Care Alliance&lt;/a&gt; article flat out recommends that one should not be an organ donor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Should I refuse to be an organ donor?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I notice that many of the examples seem... suspect to me.  In most cases, it seems that there was no actual danger of organs being harvested because the doctors had not reached the point where they would allow organ harvesting to begin, nor had the final prior-to-organ-harvesting safety tests been performed.  For example, at least one example in the above link confuses 'clinical death' with 'can not be saved', despite the fact that hospitals regularly bring people back from the (clinically) dead, and thus no hospital would be considering having organs harvested due to a patent 'merely' being clinically dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there at least one example of a situation where harvesting of organs was imminent, with no final tests or safety precautions which would have had a likely chance of detecting life prior to harvesting, in which the patient was found to have been alive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8366" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-15T02:11:01.903" Title="Has an organ donor ever been at risk of having organs harvested before a sudden recovery?" Tags="|medical-science|public-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23800" CreationDate="2014-11-15T02:11:01.903" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a news article about the first story in your first reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2013/07/st_joes_fined_over_dead_patien.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;St. Joe's &quot;dead&quot; patient awoke as docs prepared to remove organs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to fit the criteria you'e looking for, i.e.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;None of those signs stopped the organ-harvesting process. It wasn't until Burns was wheeled into the OR on Oct. 20, 2009, opened her eyes and looked at the lights above her that doctors called it off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-11-15T02:11:01.903" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23802" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-15T03:18:24.277" Score="11" ViewCount="1183" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very often claimed (by both government energy efficiency experts and water-heater sellers/service people) that calcified heating elements in electrical water heaters lead to much higher energy bills for water heating. Numbers often wildly ranging from 30% to over 400% percent increase in electrical power bills. Thus, it is important that water heaters get serviced yearly to clean out the sedimentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I can see why calcification on and around heating element is bad, as it would be acting as thermal insulation between itself and water, which would:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;prolong the time needed for heating element to heat the full tank of water (due to slower transfer of heat)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;reduce life of heating element due to it overheating (as thermostat shutoff would be delayed due to previous point.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I do not see why it would cause &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; increase in energy usage?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that calcified water heater elements would use up more electrical energy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit1:&lt;/strong&gt; example claims &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/how-to/intro/0,,20351985,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flushing sediment from the tank improves efficiency&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://waterheatertimer.org/How-to-clean-sediment-out-of-electric-water-heater.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Efficiency of electric heater stays at 99% until sediment reaches bottom element - cleaning tank and replacing lower element restores full efficiency, regular flushing to prevent sediment build-up also maintains efficiency&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.waterheaterrescue.com/pages/WHRpages/English/Longevity/sediment-in-hot-water-heaters.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sediment...lowers the energy efficiency of the tank&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.instructables.com/id/Water-Heater-Maintenance/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;robbing your water heater's efficiency and costing you in the long run&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ottawacitizen.com/homes/Water+heaters+need+maintenance/7953593/story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The more minerals in the bottom of your tank, the less effectively your water heater will work&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.getreadygear.com/pages/clean-hotwater-heater.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sediment in the bottom of your heater...affect the operating efficiency of your hot water heater which costs you money&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://miloc.hr/rectorkovi-savjeti-grijanje/vijest/stvarni-trosak-kamenca/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;croatian: 40% loss on 6,4mm thick lime&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mojaradionica.com/Kamenac_u_potisnom_bojleru.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;serbian: 30% more energy use on 4mm thick lime&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.enu.fzoeu.hr/ee-savjeti/racionalno-koristenje-vode&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;croatian energy efficiency goverment agency: up to 10% energy loss per 1mm lime&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17823" LastEditorUserId="17823" LastEditDate="2014-11-27T01:20:10.807" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T01:20:10.807" Title="Do calcified water heaters use more energy?" Tags="|physics|energy-efficiency|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23803" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-15T08:49:13.927" Score="7" ViewCount="1370" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lifesite News (a Canadian conservative Christian pro-life &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_Life_Coalition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;news source&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/a-mass-sterilization-exercise-kenyan-doctors-find-anti-fertility-agent-in-u&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But it is the five-vaccination regime that is most alarming. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“The only time tetanus vaccine has been given in five doses is when it is used as a carrier in fertility regulating vaccines laced with the pregnancy hormone, Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) developed by WHO in 1992.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is HCG that has been found in all six samples sent to the University of Nairobi medical laboratory and another in South Africa. The bishops and doctors warn that injecting women with HCG , which mimics a natural hormone produced by pregnant women, causes them to develop antibodies against it. When they do get pregnant, and produce their own version of HCG, it triggers the production of antibodies that cause a miscarriage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“We knew that the last time this vaccination with five injections has been used was in Mexico in 1993 and Nicaragua and the Philippines in 1994,” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;said Dr. Ngare. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“It didn’t cause miscarriages till three years later,” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;which is why, he added, the counterclaims that women who got the vaccination recently and then got pregnant are meaningless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ngare said WHO tried to bring the same anti-fertility program into Kenya in the 1990s. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“We alerted the government and it stopped the vaccination. But this time they haven’t done so.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was even followed up by: &#xA;John W. Oller … Wahome Ngare et al.: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.scirp.org/html/81838_81838.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;HCG Found in WHO Tetanus Vaccine in Kenya Raises Concern in the Developing World&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, Open Access Library Journal, Vol.04 No.10 (2017), Article ID:81838, 10.4236/oalib.1103937 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is a World Health Organisation (WHO) tetanus vaccination campaign in Africa actually a covert sterilisation campaign?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that's not answerable yet, then alternatively what evidence is for historical and/or circumstantial claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Explaining the history of using HCG in vaccines to prevent pregnancy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Confirming whether the WHO (or any similar organization) has ever done this (used HCG in vaccines to prevent pregnancy) surreptitiously, whether accidentally or deliberately, in the past?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Confirming whether it's true that the current program in Kenya is using a &quot;five injection&quot; regime, and whether that regime is only associated with the HCG vaccines and not usual tetanus vaccines.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4122" LastEditorUserId="41728" LastEditDate="2020-04-20T13:59:07.797" LastActivityDate="2020-04-20T13:59:07.797" Title="Is the WHO tetanus vaccination campaign a covert sterilisation campaign?" Tags="|vaccines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23803" CreationDate="2014-11-15T16:21:17.037" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: &lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long answer: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, as you may notice, the CCPLNS article does not reference any other news source aside from a follow-up on the same site saying that the Kenyan authorities are investigating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that doesn't make you suspicious right off the bat, you haven't been paying attention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, let's google it, shall we? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.nl/search?q=kenya%20investigating%20WHO%20tetanus%20vaccine&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8&amp;amp;aq=t&amp;amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;amp;client=firefox-a&amp;amp;channel=fflb&amp;amp;gfe_rd=cr&amp;amp;ei=1mhnVNHBJoivOt-PgdAK&quot;&gt;Google terms: &quot;kenya investigating WHO tetanus vaccine&quot;&lt;/a&gt; sounds like it should cover things nicely. Let's see what we get...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://c-fam.org/turtle_bay/congress-should-investigate-tainted-tetanus-vaccine-sterilizing-kenyan-women/&quot;&gt;top&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://c-fam.org/turtle_bay/c-fam-exclusive-unicef-denies-giving-kenyan-women-birth-control-vaccine-without-knowledge/&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt; hits are from C-Fam; the first is a loudly denouncing opinion piece that basically repeats the accusation several times and then treats them as fact while the second is an interview with UNICEF's chief of communications that denies the allegations in general and specifics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most salient point here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;C-Fam&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Have you seen the test results of the tetanus vaccine from the&#xA;  Kenya Catholic Doctors Association which found the tetanus vaccine&#xA;  laced with hCG?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Elder: Yes. The tests were done in hospital laboratories in Kenya. The&#xA;  staff in these laboratories could not however tell whether the samples&#xA;  were vaccines or not, &lt;strong&gt;as this was not declared to the testing&#xA;  laboratories by the Catholic Doctors Association&lt;/strong&gt;. The laboratories&#xA;  tested the samples for hCG using analyzers used for testing human&#xA;  samples like blood and urine for pregnancy. There is no laboratory in&#xA;  Kenya with the capacity to test non-human samples like vaccine for&#xA;  hCG. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll get back to this in a bit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Then we get to a somewhat less biased source, the Washington Post, who has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/11/14/the-tense-standoff-between-catholic-bishops-and-the-kenyan-government-over-tetanus-vaccines/&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; to say: &#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; been an accusation made by the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Kenyan Health Ministry is denying the allegations, as are the WHO and UNICEF.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This isn't the first time the KCCB has made allegations like this regarding vaccines;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The KCCB claims to have proof, but KHM and the others are disputing the veracity:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The science here is a little complex, but in short: Critics believe&#xA;  that the vaccines contain the Beta-hCG hormone, which in high doses,&#xA;  and administered in a particular way, may cause complications in&#xA;  pregnancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both the bishops and health officials agree that if present, the&#xA;  hormone has no business being in the vaccine doses. But it's unclear&#xA;  whether the results of the tests ordered by the bishops are correct —&#xA;  and if they are, whether the samples contain enough of the hormone to&#xA;  have a contraceptive effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although the actual test results haven't been released to the public&#xA;  by the bishops, the Catholic News Agency says it has seen a copy. And,&#xA;  the wire service writes, while &quot;copies of the lab results obtained by&#xA;  CNA do show positive test results for the presence of the beta-hCG,&#xA;  reference levels given on the lab reports show that levels present in&#xA;  the vaccines &lt;strong&gt;are within 'normal values' for healthy men and women.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;UNICEF, which also says it's seen the results, added another note of&#xA;  caution, arguing that &lt;strong&gt;the labs testing the samples for the Catholic&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;groups were not informed that they were testing a vaccine&lt;/strong&gt; and used&#xA;  &quot;analyzers used for testing human samples like blood and urine for&#xA;  pregnancy&quot; to look for the presence of the hormone, which happens to&#xA;  be the very same one detected by pregnancy tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same point again. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be hard to explain to someone who doesn't have at least /some/ science grounding, but the principle at play here is that if you don't don't know what you're testing, the results are meaningless. It's like asking a vet to diagnose your pet and giving  him a verbal list of symptoms and &quot;forgetting&quot; to disclose whether you're talking about your Maine Coon cat or your Chiahuahua dog -- the same set of symptoms can have &lt;em&gt;wildly&lt;/em&gt; different conclusions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finally, there's a link to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/medical/disease/tetanus.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; which does a more thorough job of debunking this than I can.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2828" LastEditorUserId="2828" LastEditDate="2014-11-15T19:23:18.697" LastActivityDate="2014-11-15T19:23:18.697" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23807" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-15T22:18:24.353" Score="12" ViewCount="2161" Body="&lt;p&gt;Gleb Tsipursky claims in his article &lt;a href=&quot;http://intentionalinsights.org/how-do-you-live-happily-ever-after-when-theres-a-love-triangle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;How Do You Live Happily Ever After When There’s A Love Triangle?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moreover, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/strictly-casual/201404/whos-really-interested-in-alternate-relationships&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;research&lt;/a&gt; on poly relationships show that people with &lt;a href=&quot;http://spr.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/03/31/0265407514529065.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;consensual non-monogamous relationships&lt;/a&gt; are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relationships/open-relationships-reduce-jealousy-12-surprising-facts-about-non-monogamy?page=0%2C1&amp;amp;paging=off#bookmark&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;happier&lt;/a&gt;, especially with their sex lives, than those who are in traditional monogamous relationships, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://oro.open.ac.uk/17251/1/downloadfile.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;communicate more openly&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-07-04T12:48:15.853" LastActivityDate="2017-07-10T14:02:19.657" Title="Are polyamorous people happier?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|happiness|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23810" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-16T02:10:57.583" Score="9" ViewCount="1612" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/real-reason-for-toxic-wheat-its-not-gluten/&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; makes the claim that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Standard wheat harvest protocol in the United States is to drench the wheat fields with Roundup several days before the combine harvesters work through the fields as withered, dead wheat plants are less taxing on the farm equipment and allows[sic] for an earlier, easier and bigger harvest&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article speaks in broad generalizations, and uses scary but vague phrases like &quot;standard protocol&quot; and &quot;drench&quot; to support its claims.  To what extent, if any, is the claim true that roundup is applied to non-GMO crops (specifically wheat) shortly before harvest? And for bonus points, if this is common in the US, is it uncommon elsewhere (as implied by the claim)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="9094" LastEditDate="2014-11-17T18:04:38.940" LastActivityDate="2014-11-17T21:34:03.423" Title="Do US farmers apply Roundup to non-GMO wheat crops 7-10 days before harvest?" Tags="|united-states|agriculture|monsanto|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23812" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-16T02:49:05.293" Score="5" ViewCount="350" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://elitedaily.com/life/science-behind-cold-sleeping/837884/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elite Daily&lt;/a&gt;, there may be some health benefits to sleeping in a room at  between 60-67°F (15-19°C)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, they cite &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24954193&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Temperature-acclimated brown adipose tissue modulates insulin sensitivity in humans.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; to claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;lowering your thermostat a few degrees before bed can help decrease your risk of certain metabolic diseases, such as diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, colder-sleepers also burned more calories throughout their day, as Gretchen Reynolds of the New York Times writes. In conjunction, these two relationships could lessen the risk of diabetes and other types of metabolic conditions, over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the first study is very small (n=5 men), leading me to ask the following question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does sleeping in &amp;quot;cold&amp;quot; temperatures - e.g. 15-20°C - reduce the risk of diabetes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2086" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T10:33:04.443" Title="Does sleeping in a cold room reduce the risk of diabetes?" Tags="|physiology|sleep|diabetes|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23814" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23825" CreationDate="2014-11-16T06:43:04.143" Score="12" ViewCount="2830" Body="&lt;p&gt;My health &quot;textbook&quot; says that one pound (454 g) of fat contains 3,500 [kilo-]Calories (14,000 kJ). It provides no references for this statistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;calorie&lt;/em&gt; is a unit of measure that indicates the amount of energy gained from food or expended through activity. Each time you consume 3,500 calories more than your body needs to maintain weight, you gain a pound of storage fat. Conversely, each time your body expends an extra 3,500 calories, you lose a pound of fat. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I couldn't find any results when I searched online to verify this linking back to a credible resource, nor could I find any that denied it linking back to a credible resource. It claims that burning off a pound of fat requires creating a dietary deficit which will consume 3500 Calories. There seems to be an assumption in many online sources as well that 3500 Calories is roughly equivalent to a pound of fat. See:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/05/3500-calories-one-pound-fat-calorie-burn_n_2806578.html&quot;&gt;3,500 calories equals a pound of fat?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zoeharcombe.com/the-knowledge/1lb-does-not-equal-3500-calories/&quot;&gt;1lb does not equal 3,500 calories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caloriesperhour.com/tutorial_pound.php&quot;&gt;What it takes to lose a pound&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/weight-loss/in-depth/calories/art-20048065&quot;&gt;Counting calories&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last two links make the unreferenced assumption that one pound equals 3500 calories, while the first two seem to both question its veracity and simultaneously justify it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's really going on here? Is a pound of fat equivalent to 3500 Calories?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(I put &quot;textbook&quot; in quotes because this book has been verifiably &lt;em&gt;completely incorrect&lt;/em&gt; about information in the past, and tends to link to... rather unofficial websites, blog posts, and tabloids on health in its references.)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user13259" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-07T10:46:44.110" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T10:46:44.110" Title="Does consuming a surplus 3,500 calories lead to the gain of one pound of body fat?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23815" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23810" CreationDate="2014-11-16T11:16:53.447" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is actually true, dessication with glyphosate seems to be an established practice. From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.glyphosate.eu/news/pre-harvest-use-glyphosate-recent-austrian-decision&quot;&gt;Glyphosate Task Force&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the joint dossier submitted by the Glyphosate Task Force (GTF) for the renewal of approval of glyphosate in the EU, pre-harvest application of glyphosate (both for weed control and harvest aid) was included amongst the representative uses of the herbicide for which the GTF wishes to obtain renewed approval. A full risk assessment submitted with the dossier shows no concerns for consumers (dietary), operators or the environment for pre-harvest uses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The part about farm equipment is true as well:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The presence of green crop materials can make harvesting difficult by putting an extra strain on farm machinery, resulting in increased fuel and labour costs. In addition, high moisture content in grains can lead to problems when storing the harvest including mould growth and condensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Austria has banned the practice:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under the provisions of its national plant protection legislation, the Austrian Parliament voted on July 5th 2013 to ban the use of glyphosate-based herbicides as a pre-harvest maturation tool for crops used in food and feed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Glyphosate Task Force is obviously not an impartial group, it is composed of companies that produce or sell glyphosate like Monsanto. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They cite &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/3130.pdf&quot;&gt;a report by EFSA&lt;/a&gt;, the European Food Safety Authority that shows that the maximum residue levels for glyphosate were not exceeded. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The practice of applying glyphosate before the harvest exists, but that does not necessarily mean that the conclusions from that in the linked article are true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastActivityDate="2014-11-16T11:16:53.447" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23817" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23814" CreationDate="2014-11-16T15:56:44.933" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;3500 is an average/approximation that attempts to take into account all the considerations mentioned in the comments and more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;human fat is mixed with other types of tissue, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;fat grams actually fall in a range of calories, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not everything eaten is absorbed, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the fat content of foods is not consistent, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I could eat somewhere between 3000 and 4000 calories without burning any, I could expect to gain &lt;em&gt;about&lt;/em&gt; a pound of stored fat. If I could burn somewhere between 3000 and 4000 calories without eating anything in the meantime, I could expect to lose &lt;em&gt;around&lt;/em&gt; a pound of stored fat. However, those statements are approximate and impossible to implement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ars.usda.gov/SP2UserFiles/Place/80400525/Data/Classics/ah74.pdf&quot;&gt;This USDA document&lt;/a&gt; (dated 1973)&#xA;describes how the calorie contents and nutrient components of specific foods were determined. Using a &quot;bomb calorimeter&quot;, a sample of the food is burned and the heat produced is used to heat a known quantity of water. The temperature of the water is measured before and after and the number of [kilo-]calories of energy produced by the food sample can be computed from that difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those numbers are published in USDA &quot;Standard Reference&quot; documents that manufacturers and researchers (in the US, anyway) use to compute calorie numbers for actual foods based on weight and nutrient content (how many fat grams, protein grams, carb grams are in the food). That's the information that winds up on packaged food nutrition labels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the nutrient and calorie content of food can vary. Here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/LabelingNutrition/ucm063113.htm&quot;&gt;an FDA document&lt;/a&gt; that discusses that issue. So you can't eat the food sample that was measured and we can't measure the food sample that you ate, and there's no guarantee they contain the same number of calories per unit of weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most foods that we eat are not pure fat. Oils and lard come closest, but who eats oil or lard alone? We normally eat a mixture of fat, protein, and carbohydrate. A healthy diet includes a fair amount of fiber. The more fiber consumed, the more calories pass through and are excreted rather than absorbed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the average person, trying to remember to record every single calorie consumed is overwhelming. The mint I snagged off my co-worker's desk? The cookies somebody brought to a meeting that I wasn't expecting that I ate three of? (and how could I possibly know how many calories are in a homemade cookie?) The extra soda yesterday afternoon because I was falling asleep? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in practical terms, on a day to day basis, it's extremely difficult to account for all the variables and accurately track one's caloric intake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, it's next to impossible to accurately track one's caloric expenditure. As we exercise and become more fit, the body becomes more efficient. An exercise that burned 400 calories a few months ago may only burn 300 or 250 today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another piece of conventional wisdom (called out in the HuffPost article linked in the question) is that a gram of fat contains 9 calories. Again, the 9 cal/gram number is an average. Zoe Harcombe points out in her article linked in the question that she found references for a range from 8.7 to 9.5 for this value. There are 454.5 grams in a pound (based on 2.2 pounds in 1 Kg = 1000 grams). 9 * 454.5 =~ 4090. So according to that, there are &lt;em&gt;approximately&lt;/em&gt; a little over 4000 calories in a pound of fat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another place we can look for a reference is online food calorie databases like calorieking.com or nutritiondata.com. I went to nutritiondata.com and looked up &quot;olive oil&quot;. One of the hits is &quot;Oil, olive, salad or cooking&quot;, which is listed as having 884 calories per 100 grams. (884/100) * 454.5 =~ 4018 calories. Other types of fat (canola oil, peanut oil, lard) give similar numbers. Scrolling to the bottom of the page, I see &quot;Source: Nutrient data for this listing was provided by USDA SR-21.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Googling &quot;USDA SR-21&quot;, I find this page: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=18880&quot;&gt;http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=18880&lt;/a&gt; which says that &quot;SR&quot; stands for &quot;Standard Reference&quot; and the current version is SR-27, so one of the most respected online sources for nutrition information (nutritiondata.com) is six versions behind the most recent data. This is the &quot;Standard Reference&quot; document I mentioned earlier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the original numbers are estimates based on averages from bomb calorimeter measurements made some time in the past. Those estimates are then extrapolated and crunched and rejiggered and reported to more significant digits than is justifiable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Often calorie numbers are bandied about and used in computations as if they are accurate to 1% or so. Actually, I believe the error is typically on the order of 30% to 50%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5510" LastActivityDate="2014-11-16T15:56:44.933" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23820" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27178" CreationDate="2014-11-16T17:17:47.737" Score="35" ViewCount="5263" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://invention.smithsonian.org/centerpieces/edison/000_story_02.asp&quot;&gt;this webpage&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1879, after testing more that 1600 materials for the right filament, including coconut fiber, fishing line, and even hairs from a friend's beard, Edison and his workers finally figured out what to use for the filament--carbonized bamboo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a little surprised it took Edison that many tries to get it right. 1600 different materials is quite a lot. Did Edison go through about 1600 tests? Are there any first-hand accounts that prove it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: the page does say that Edison took detailed notes (40,000 pages, apparently), so I would think he would have a detailed chronology and record of the tests there.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-04-22T07:22:06.763" LastActivityDate="2018-04-22T07:22:06.763" Title="Did Thomas Edison test 1600 materials for the filament of his light bulb?" Tags="|physics|thomas-edison|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23821" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-17T00:53:51.733" Score="2" ViewCount="233" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm 8 weeks into a leadership programme led by a man from an innovation leadership company based in Oslo, Norway. Recently the group was introduced to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kinesiology.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;kinesiology&lt;/a&gt;. I watched a documentary series episode on NRK and kinesiology seemed like BS according to the show. I am interested in a fair and balanced answer from a well educated skeptic: is this just a belief or is it scientifically grounded?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I experienced was applied kinesiology. He pushed my arm downwards and linked this to my subconsciousness somehow. The question stands. I won't link to their website. I prefer everything being anonymous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22852" LastEditorUserId="22852" LastEditDate="2014-11-18T22:16:22.570" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T22:16:22.570" Title="What's the deal with applied kinesiology?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-11-17T02:40:47.913" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23825" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23814" CreationDate="2014-11-17T14:17:11.913" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, it is important to remember that food labeling is not a particularly exact science. Unless completely artificially manufactured, most food is anyway subject to regional or seasonal variations in energy content. Food labeling regulations usually define carbohydrates and protein to have an energy density of 4 kcal/g and fat to have 9 kcal/g. The US regulations can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=101.9&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, the EU regulations is &lt;a href=&quot;http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CONSLEG:1990L0496:20081211:EN:PDF&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and other countries are likely to operate with the same numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that &quot;storage fat&quot; in your quote is a colloquial expression for adipose tissue, the next important question is the fat content of adipose tissue. The exact composition of adipose tissue varies significantly between persons, but I've often seen the number 87% be used for the average lipid (fat) content. This number is e.g. used in Wikipedia's article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipose_tissue&quot;&gt;adipose tissue&lt;/a&gt;, it's also used in &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.de/books?id=og04BAAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA78&amp;amp;lpg=PA78&amp;amp;dq=adipose%20tissue%2087%25&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=W4KXSw-rjw&amp;amp;sig=OU_CVEPWAO_NCmxaZgnQ8Zz6Zg0&amp;amp;hl=de&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=7P9pVODCJunXyQP2_oCIBg&amp;amp;ved=0CC8Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=adipose%20tissue%2087%25&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diabetesdaily.com/wiki/Calorie&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, but without any reference to a source for this number. When examining scientific research, most publications quote much lower numbers, e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/22/7/829.abstract&quot;&gt;George L. Baker: Human Adipose Tissue Composition and Age&lt;/a&gt;, finding the lipid content to be between 40% and 75%:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lipid content of adipose tissue accounted for only about 40% of&#xA;  adipose tissue weight in the newborn period and increased with&#xA;  increasing age to 75% in the adult. Concentrations of water, nitrogen,&#xA;  and DNA declined with age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if we stay with the energy density of 9 kcal/g and assume adipose tissue to contain 87% fat, one pound (454 g) of adipose tissue would contain 395 g of fat, which again contains 3555 kcal of energy (quite close to the claim). It is also often assumed that 1g of fat contains 37 kJ of energy (another estimate, not quite equivalent to 9 kcal). Using that estimate, 395 g of fat would contain 14615 kJ of enery, which converted to calories is 3491 kcal and even closer to the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found this publication: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2376744/&quot;&gt;‘Kevin D. Hall: What is the Required Energy Deficit per unit Weight Loss?’&lt;/a&gt;, in which the exact claim (‘an ... energy deficit of 3500 kcal is required per pound of body weight loss’) is compared to a more exact estimation and real world data. At least for the test subjects used in this article, the actual energy deficiency required for one pound of body weight loss varies between 1300 kcal and 4000 kcal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastEditorUserId="8188" LastEditDate="2014-11-18T15:41:31.127" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T15:41:31.127" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23810" CreationDate="2014-11-17T16:27:06.470" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a news story about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sunflowernsa.com/magazine/details.asp?ID=496&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pre harvest application of glyphosate on (non-GMO) sunflowers&lt;/a&gt;.  Thus it's been done in a commercial setting in the USA at least once.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've been able to find many university agricultural extension notices, like this one on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.agprofessional.com/news/Pre-harvest-weed-control-in-row-crops-275170581.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;pre-harvest application of herbicides in 2014&lt;/a&gt;  this one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/cpr/weeds/98-reasons-not-to-use-glyphosate-on-seed-fields-6-30-11&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reminding people not to use herbicides on seed crops&lt;/a&gt;, and this one that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extension.umn.edu/agriculture/small-grains/harvest/preharvest-management/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;directly mentions wheat&lt;/a&gt;  which are consistent with the idea that this is relatively normal practice, at least in some areas (northern plains seems prevalent) and under some weather conditions. However, I have not been able to find any reliable information on the overall prevalence of this practice in the USA or elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The (Canadian) Monsanto &lt;a href=&quot;http://roundup.ca/_uploads/documents/MON-Preharvest%20Staging%20Guide.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pre-Harvest Staging Guide&lt;/a&gt; (yes, theres an &lt;a href=&quot;https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/preharvest-staging-guide/id913616851?mt=8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;app for that!&lt;/a&gt;) includes wheat, along with 8 other crops.  Note that this includes instructions for application to non-GMO crops as well as a minor reference to some RoundupReady ones.  As of 2014,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monsanto.com/gmwheat/pages/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;GMO (RoundupReady) &lt;em&gt;wheat&lt;/em&gt; is not used commercially in the USA&lt;/a&gt;; thus any commercial application on wheat is non-GMO.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as Europe goes, it seems that this practice is performed in the UK, resulting in about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hgca.com/media/185527/is02-pre-harvest-glyphosate-application-to-wheat-and-barley.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10% of bread samples having detectable glyphosate residues&lt;/a&gt; (at levels below the maximum allowed by regulation).  Fabian's answer indicates that Austria has taken a different route.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9094" LastEditorUserId="9094" LastEditDate="2014-11-17T21:34:03.423" LastActivityDate="2014-11-17T21:34:03.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23828" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-18T05:26:33.607" Score="8" ViewCount="272" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people claim that dreams can be &amp;quot;interpreted&amp;quot; to learn information about the dreamer and/or their future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dreammoods.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dream Moods&lt;/a&gt; offer assistance with interpreting symbols found in dreams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nail Clipper&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To see or use a nail clipper in your dream implies that you need to rid something that is holding you back. It is time to move forward and grow. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamdictionary/n.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that these interpretations are more valid than random associations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22157" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T12:59:38.673" Title="Can dreams be interpreted to obtain novel information?" Tags="|dreaming|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23829" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-18T15:18:38.800" Score="4" ViewCount="451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ay1sB.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;how-to guide&lt;/a&gt; (not exactly a reliable source, I know) that claims that e.g. stretching your legs to the point of pain to increase flexibility also increases your general tolerance to pain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Increase your pain threshold&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The best way to increase your pain tolerance is to get used to it.&#xA;  Practice by inflicting pain on yourself, while trying to keep a straight face.&#xA;  Do this whenever you're alone, (it freaks people out).&#xA;  Don't cut yourself or prick yourself with needles, I just stretch my legs.&#xA;  It serves two purposes, it makes you more flexible and it inflicts a great deal of sharp pain for as long as you can bear it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this scientifically valid in any way? Or would, let's say, doing leg press repetitions to the point of lactic acid burning be as painful as before?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21893" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-18T23:30:21.437" LastActivityDate="2014-11-18T23:30:21.437" Title="Could pain through stretching increase general pain tolerance?" Tags="|physiology|pain|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23830" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23831" CreationDate="2014-11-18T17:54:43.517" Score="65" ViewCount="14916" Body="&lt;p&gt;An image showing a jet firing at MH17 in the Ukraine has surfaced recently and was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/15/us-ukraine-crisis-mh17-images-idUSKCN0IZ0EU20141115&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;broadcast&lt;/a&gt; by the official Russian state news channel, Channel One Russia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xV4k3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could this image be real?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an analysis that claims the image is &quot;geometrically impossible&quot; but I'm finding the argument hard to follow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XCFPU.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it really impossible that this image was taken by a drone? the whole business about the lens type, distance or zoom not mattering seems suspicious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Theres also a russian version of this image: &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nEDFP.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22869" LastEditorUserId="2295" LastEditDate="2018-12-02T17:02:37.830" LastActivityDate="2018-12-02T17:02:37.830" Title="Is this photo of a jet firing at MH17 a fake?" Tags="|russia|ukraine|mh17|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23830" CreationDate="2014-11-18T18:32:23.740" Score="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the BBC, one of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11232683/Russia-says-MH17-was-shot-down-by-plane-missiles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/15/us-ukraine-crisis-mh17-images-idUSKCN0IZ0EU20141115&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;news&lt;/a&gt; outlets &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30064374&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reporting on this&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several commentators pointed out that the &amp;quot;Malaysia&amp;quot; logo on the plane from the photograph was &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Brown_Moses/status/533303915123834881/photo/1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in the wrong place&lt;/a&gt;. Maksim Kats, a Russian blogger, said the plane in the picture looked like a slightly altered version of the one that tops the search results if you Google &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/max_katz/status/533359491904188416&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Boeing view from above&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; in Russian. It also happens to be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boeing.com/boeing/companyoffices/gallery/images/commercial/767200-01.page&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;publicity photo&lt;/a&gt; of a Boeing 767, not a 777, which was shot down over Ukraine in July.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others noted that the fighter jet &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/AthertonKD/status/533301245642297344&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;looked different&lt;/a&gt; from an Su-25 - the type which the Russian media had consistently claimed shot down MH17.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were also claims that the shape of clouds in the satellite image proved that it actually came from a Google Earth photo of the area taken on &lt;a href=&quot;http://std3.ru/ef/48/1415986904-ef48042a7af999a2c5af0cb219d1e6f4.JPG&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;28 August 2012&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The consensus is that the image seems to be fake.&lt;/strong&gt; You can also find a detailed report in English on the investigative site &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2014/11/14/russian-state-television-shares-fake-images-of-mh17-being-attacked/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;bellingcat&lt;/a&gt;, which also talks about the maps being stitched together:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overlaying the image with known data points about the MH17 flight path and debris gives the following results, showing the aircraft in the picture off the reported course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is clear that the satellite map imagery is created from a composite of different satellite map imagery. Part of imagery is from historical Google Earth imagery, ... Other imagery is from Yandex maps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To explain the geometry in the OP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The plane is much bigger than the ground behind it: therefore the plane is much closer to the camera than the ground is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you look at something distant through the magnifying lens, that magnifies what you're looking at and magnifies the background behind it. The so-called &amp;quot;perspective&amp;quot; is &amp;quot;flattened&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you look at something close (using less magnification, because it's closer) it's bigger than the background behind it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Something that's half-way between the camera and the background will appear to be twice as big as the background. In the case of this picture the plane is about 60 times bigger than the city, so it's relatively very close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the camera and the plane are close to each other, and we know the distance of the plane to the ground, then we know the distance of the camera to the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also we know how wide the plane is. If a big plane occupies only 25% of the picture when the camera is very close to the plane, that would imply that the picture had a huge field of view (315 degrees). For example, imagine an object that's one meter wide. Stand one meter in front of it. Now imagine taking a picture where the object only occupies 20% of the photo: to do that it would need to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panorama&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;panoramic&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T09:38:48.087" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23832" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-18T20:28:31.387" Score="10" ViewCount="323" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-siege-of-julian-assange-is-a-farce-a-special-investigation&quot;&gt;investigation of the Assange case&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, has refused to come to London to question Assange about allegations of sexual misconduct in Stockholm in 2010 - &lt;strong&gt;even though Swedish law allows for it and the procedure is routine for Sweden and the UK&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this, in fact, routine procedure for Sweden and the UK?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2014-11-19T11:11:58.057" LastActivityDate="2014-11-19T11:11:58.057" Title="Is it routine for Sweden prosecutors to travel to the UK to question people they are looking to arrest?" Tags="|law|united-kingdom|sweden|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23837" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-19T17:49:37.100" Score="8" ViewCount="320" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bullrunwaiver.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bull Run Waiver.org&lt;/a&gt; is a political group opposed to covering drinking water reservoirs in Portland, Oregon. They making a number of claims that closed reservoirs introduce greater health risks than the existing open-air reservoirs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Particularly, they are concerned about:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;higher levels of radon and chloroform being trapped in the water/pipes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;higher levels of anaerobic bacteria due to lower dissolved oxygen levels.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;higher levels of NDMA as it won't be broken down by sunlight.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;higher levels of nitrite and nitrate, from bacteria as it won't be broken down by sunlight.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;higher levels of microbial growth as they won't be disinfected by sunlight.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, on &lt;a href=&quot;http://bullrunwaiver.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;their website&lt;/a&gt; in the section 'Public health benefits summary of open reservoirs' they say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Covering or burying the reservoirs will eliminate the natural Radon and trihalomethane gas removal process we currently enjoy in our open reservoir drinking water system. Open reservoirs provide a natural healthy barrier to unwanted gases and chemicals entering the drinking water distribution system. Covering or burying the reservoirs will give Radon along with other toxic and carcinogenic chemicals only one place to vent; our homes, schools, and work places.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these claims of the health risks of covered reservoirs true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22892" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-11-20T00:00:47.410" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T00:00:47.410" Title="Do covered [drinking water] reservoirs cause health risks compared to open-air reservoirs?" Tags="|environmental-health|chemistry|water|public-health|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23843" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7013" CreationDate="2014-11-20T14:39:13.640" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a link I found where some kids did a test&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/print_project_1372_122&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/print_project_1372_122&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22916" LastActivityDate="2014-11-20T14:39:13.640" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23845" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2014-11-20T18:18:00.070" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Malaysia Airlines Flight 17&lt;/a&gt; (MH17) was an international flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that crashed on 17 July 2014. All aboard the plane (283 passengers and 15 crew) died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onderzoeksraad.nl/uploads/phase-docs/701/b3923acad0ceprem-rapport-mh-17-en-interactief.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;preliminary report&lt;/a&gt; by the Dutch Safety Board, it was &quot;penetrated by a large number of high-energy objects from outside the aircraft&quot; which is a very cautious way of saying it was shot down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time of the crash, MH17 was flying over eastern Ukraine, an area where pro-Russian separatist rebels were fighting the Ukraine government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No one has claimed the attack on MH17 yet, and many questions remain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16121" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2014-11-21T03:57:32.297" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T03:57:32.297" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23846" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2014-11-20T18:18:00.070" Score="0" Body="MH17 was an international flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur that went down on 17 July 2014 over disputed territory in Ukraine, a war zone at that moment. All aboard the plane perished." OwnerUserId="16121" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2015-10-14T10:42:29.570" LastActivityDate="2015-10-14T10:42:29.570" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23848" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23852" CreationDate="2014-11-20T21:13:42.103" Score="5" ViewCount="2746" Body="&lt;p&gt;Wiktionary &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/rape_van&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;defines&lt;/a&gt; a rape van as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A vehicle with a large interior body having no windows or blocked&#xA;  windows, for which it would be easy to lure or force a person inside&#xA;  and thereafter conceal their presence in the vehicle in order to&#xA;  enable the commission a sexual assault against that person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Citations:rape_van#English&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;citations page&lt;/a&gt;, many of the citations given seem to be either within fiction, urban legend style anecdotes, or used as a metaphor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition to condemnations of male sexuality, Dines offered&#xA;  questionable horror stories about pornography's atrocities, like this:&#xA;  Rape vans are roaming the streets of New York. Women are dragged into&#xA;  the vans and raped on camera; when their attackers sell the rape&#xA;  videos in commercial outlets, the women have no legal recourse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are rape vans real, or an urban legend?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T13:48:13.663" Title="Are rape vans real?" Tags="|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23849" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-21T09:50:21.963" Score="8" ViewCount="670" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today I read a &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/Funny_Truth/status/535681607986708480/photo/1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;tweet from @Funny_Truth&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XKi28.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Tweet image&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Don't wet your toothbrush after you put toothpaste. Water will reduce the healthy benefits of toothpaste.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true? If it is what does actually happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19279" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-11-21T12:17:41.963" LastActivityDate="2014-11-24T13:32:36.070" Title="Does wetting your toothbrush have health effects?" Tags="|environmental-health|chemistry|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23850" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23849" CreationDate="2014-11-21T10:13:28.803" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, water actually improves the positive effects of brushing your teeth.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The water activates and solubilizes the non-ionic surfactants and detergents in the toothpaste. These both cleanse the mouth, fight bacteria, and enable more even spread of the paste through the oral cavity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The water mixes with the abrasives in the toothpaste and softens their cutting power. This lets them still attack plaque while not scouring your teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/12eb6q/my_hygienist_just_told_me_not_to_put_water_on/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22922" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-11-24T13:32:36.070" LastActivityDate="2014-11-24T13:32:36.070" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23273" CreationDate="2014-11-21T11:48:52.487" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Despite the controversy, it's hard to find conclusive evidence linking gender to different sleep needs.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/men-and-women-sleep-differences&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;WebMD article&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;seems to claim that there have been no conclusive results in recent studies, as seen below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Right now, we don’t even know whether men need more sleep than women, or vice versa. “There’s no nationally representative data [on gender differences],” says Michael Twery, PhD, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research, a division of the National Institutes of Health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast to that, the National Sleep Foundation &lt;em&gt;does&lt;/em&gt; cite &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1246029/Who-REALLY-needs-sleep--men-women-One-Britains-leading-sleep-experts-says-answer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;yet another Daily Mail article&lt;/a&gt; making similar assertions such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'Women tend to multi-task  -  they do lots at once and are flexible  -  and so they use more of their actual brain than men do. Because of that, their sleep need is greater.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Last, yet not least, it's interesting to note that there seems to be a stronger correlation between sleep deprivation in women and cardiovascular health problems, according to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://corporate.dukemedicine.org/news_and_publications/news_office/news/10256&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Duke Medicine publication&lt;/a&gt;, suggesting that there are differences related to the effects of gender upon sleep and health. However, as previously said by Dr Twery, the data is not representative on a national scale, considering there were only 210 test subjects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers studied 210 apparently healthy, middle-aged men and women without any history of sleep disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, it is highly unlikely to jump to any conclusions yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22922" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T11:48:52.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23848" CreationDate="2014-11-21T13:48:13.663" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are several cases where windowless vans have been used in kidnappings for sex crimes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I list a few examples below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Caution: The stories may be distressing.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2013, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://fox8.com/2013/02/21/ohio-child-luring-warning-includes-local-case/&quot;&gt;Ohio Attorney General warned parents&lt;/a&gt; of one or more suspects who were approaching children and had been unsuccessfully trying to entice them into a white van:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In each case, the suspect has approached girls and boys between the ages of nine and 15 while driving a white, windowless panel van, which could be a commercial vehicle. The driver has then encouraged the kids to talk with him and get into the van.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately these attempts were unsuccessful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1989, &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-12-16/news/8903180569_1_child-pornography-child-porn-case-lewd-photographs&quot;&gt;a man was sentenced to prison&lt;/a&gt; for manufacturing child pornography:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thoma lured the boy into his windowless van in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on Chicago`s South Side, where the boy lived, and offered him money to pose, Romza-Kutz said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1979, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Bittaker_and_Roy_Norris&quot;&gt;&quot;Toolbox Killers&quot;&lt;/a&gt; killed five southern Californian teenagers. Wikipedia explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bittaker purchased a silver 1977 GMC cargo van in February 1979. The vehicle was windowless on the sides and had a large passenger-side sliding door. According to Bittaker, when viewing this sliding door, he realized he or Norris could &quot;pull up [to a teenage girl] real close and not have to open the doors all the way.&quot; (Bittaker and Norris would nickname this van &quot;Murder Mac&quot;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After unsuccessfully attempting to entice Schaefer into their van with alternate offers of marijuana and a lift home, Bittaker and Norris drove further ahead and parked alongside a driveway. Norris then exited the vehicle, opened the passenger-side sliding door and leaned into the van, with his head and shoulders obscured from view behind the door. When Lucinda Schaefer passed the van, Norris exchanged a few words with her before dragging her into the van and closing the door. Using a ruse they would repeat in most of their subsequent murders, Bittaker turned the radio up to full volume as Norris bound the victim's arms and legs and gagged her with duct tape&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar techniques were used for their other victims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Wikipedia references a number of &quot;true crime&quot; books - I have been unable to confirm these passages.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T13:48:13.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23853" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-21T21:10:54.923" Score="19" ViewCount="1374" Body="&lt;p&gt;I only caught 2 seconds of it on the TV news, but I heard President Obama claim that what he was doing with respect to Immigration Policy was not novel and in fact X-number of prior presidents had done the same thing (so we should all just chill out).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWbh4oBD-Gk&quot;&gt;Video of Obama's speech at Del Sol High School&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/11/21/1346603/-President-Obama-s-remarks-on-immigration-Del-Sol-High-School-Las-Vegas-NV&quot;&gt;Transcript&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But the actions I’ve taken are not only lawful, they’re the kinds of actions taken by every Republican President and every Democratic President for the past half century.  (Applause.)  Ronald Reagan took action to keep families together.  The first President Bush took action to shield about 40 percent of undocumented immigrants at the time.  This isn’t something I’m doing as if it’s never been done.  This kind of thing has been done before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are actions taken by prior presidents comparable to what President Obama is doing with regards to immigration as he claims they are?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3256" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-11-21T23:59:17.360" LastActivityDate="2014-11-23T16:19:38.570" Title="Have prior U.S. Presidents used executive actions to change immigration policy" Tags="|united-states|immigration|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23854" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-21T21:22:29.763" Score="4" ViewCount="4959" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across this article from Facebook where &lt;a href=&quot;http://udumakalu.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/to-get-husbands-pastor-undresses-and-kisses-female-church-members-asses-at-beach/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this site&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;strong&gt;Warning&lt;/strong&gt;: Site contains nudity) claims a pastor asked his female members who are spinsters to a beach where they were asked to undress and were kissed on their behinds as a sign for them to receive their prospective husbands which they quickly agreed to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this fake? I can't imagine this actually happening. Here is the picture of it supposedly happening, I erased all indecencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iNmo3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21732" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T04:58:18.073" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T04:58:18.073" Title="Did a pastor undress and kiss his female church members' behinds to help them find a husband?" Tags="|christianity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23853" CreationDate="2014-11-21T22:03:44.103" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;I would say the answer is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/21/us/politics/obamas-immigration-decision-has-precedents-but-may-set-a-new-one.html?_r=0&quot;&gt;yes and no&lt;/a&gt;.  I think you need to parse it into several different questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Has this been done before? &amp;mdash; Yes.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, on numerous occasions the President has extended &quot;Executive Amnesty&quot;.  Here are a sampling (not at all inclusive) of such actions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eisenhower&lt;/strong&gt;:  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v25n3/v25n3p3.pdf&quot;&gt;600,000 Cubans were allowed to immigrate fleeing Castro&lt;/a&gt;. (PDF File)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reagan&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1982/07/07/world/state-dept-reverses-policy-on-ethiopian-exiles-in-us.html&quot;&gt;Allowed 15,000 Ethiopians to stay in the US rather than be deported&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/23143114?uid=3739800&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;uid=3739256&amp;amp;sid=21105265161543&quot;&gt;He also deferred deportation of the children of 100,000 families&lt;/a&gt;.  This was an expansion to an amnesty bill that had been passed by congress before, which had granted amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bush&lt;/strong&gt; (G.H.W.): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/05/nyregion/new-policy-aids-families-of-aliens.html&quot;&gt;Deferred deportation of 1.5 Million spouses and children&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clinton&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_12939&quot;&gt;Expedited citizenship of people who served in the Gulf War&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bush&lt;/strong&gt; (GW): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2002-07-08/pdf/02-17273.pdf&quot;&gt;Also expedited citizenship for people serving in the military&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;So should we all just chill out? &amp;mdash; That's not answerable.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What about the part, as you so elegantly and colloquially stated:&#xA;&quot;(so we should all just chill out?)&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Due to the numerous precedents, calling for actions such as impeachment or a government shut down are partisan bickering and not at all called for.  Sadly, we don't have any way to measure if we really should be chill, or concerned.  The main considerations and issues as I have been able to gather from the talking heads are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will the newly minted legal status cause a burden on the welfare system?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will newly minted tax payers help the US tax base?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will this alleviate stresses and demands on the immigration courts and other services involved with processing immigrants?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Will this keep families together?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does the scope of this make it somehow intrinsically different?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At this point, we have no way of specifically answering these questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is this exactly the same as previous times? &amp;mdash; No.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the &quot;no&quot; portion of the answer, I think the main difference is simply a matter of scale at this point: the Pew Hispanic Center estimated in March 2006 the number of illegal migrants in the US to range between &lt;a href=&quot;http://pewhispanic.org/files/factsheets/17.pdf&quot;&gt;11.5 and 12 million&lt;/a&gt;, all of whom may not be concerned by this executive order (the number being tossed about in various media outlets is 5 million). This action has the potential to affect more people than any other executive amnesty that I am aware of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-23T16:19:38.570" LastActivityDate="2014-11-23T16:19:38.570" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23854" CreationDate="2014-11-21T22:09:16.650" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;All links below potentially contain nudity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cknnigeria.com/2014/11/pastor-undresses-and-kiss-female-church.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;earliest occurrence of this image I could find&lt;/a&gt; is dated Wednesday, November 19, 2014 (found via search on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cknnigeria.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cknnigeria.com&lt;/a&gt; hinted by &quot;photo from CKN&quot; attribution via &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lamzat.com/2014/11/pastor-caught-ass-licking.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lamzat&lt;/a&gt; via &lt;a href=&quot;http://bit.ly/1uLNrr0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;GIS&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All other mentions of this story and Google-indexed images appear to be YouTube, social media, or other blogs picking up on this. As far as I can tell, the CKN article appears to be the origin of the story, all photo credits that I could find are rooted at CKN. The article itself does not go into detail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The world is truly coming to an end..It has been revealed that the pastor in this picture asked his female members who are spinsters to a beach where they were asked to undress and were kissed on their ass as a sign for them to receive their prospective husbands which they quickly agreed to..Can you imagine such madness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CKN does not cite the origin of the image in their article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While CKN does run stories of corruption among pastors, the comments there are also mostly incredulous and the story does not contain concrete information; certainly not enough information to verify that it is true. It really could be a picture of anything, the context is completely unknown, and any claims of its origin are entirely unreliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the comment about the man in the background: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It just looks to be a &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OGfKO.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cup of some sort&lt;/a&gt;, with a similar color to the water, a coincidental (but not strange) alignment with the edge of his pants, and detail lost due to camera quality and image compression. This also makes sense given his pose, and the context (it is reasonable to stand in the water while holding a drink). In any case I can't imagine why any reasonable fakery in this image would result in that particular glitch, or why an image such as this would be faked in the first place (as it contains no visible indication that the claimed story is true anyways -- there would be no gain).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21485" LastEditorUserId="21485" LastEditDate="2014-11-21T22:26:50.803" LastActivityDate="2014-11-21T22:26:50.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23858" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23872" CreationDate="2014-11-22T09:10:34.313" Score="11" ViewCount="445459" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I had a glance at this post from #8Fact on Facebook claiming that when you cry out of happiness, the first tear drop comes from your right eye, when you cry out of pain it comes from your left, and when you are frustrated, tears come from both eyes simultaneously.  Has this been proved experimentally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZxBu9.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a person cries and the first drop comes from the right eye, it's happiness.  Left eye, pain.  Both, frustration.  #8FACT&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21177" LastEditorUserId="6523" LastEditDate="2014-11-22T21:06:28.867" LastActivityDate="2016-03-10T22:20:15.460" Title="Is the reason for crying related to which eye releases tears first?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23859" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-22T09:58:47.167" Score="15" ViewCount="871" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the installation of blue lights at specific locations on station platforms reduce the incidence of suicide...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;at that location?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;using that particular method ('suicide by train')?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;overall?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The references below include a paper on the subject, but I only have access to the abstract (not the full paper) and I'm not familiar with the field of study, so I don't know how much trust to put in it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the press reports describe a range of suicide prevention measures being put into practice, and I wonder whether the study had effectively isolated the effect of the blue lights from the effects of the other measures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm also interested in whether there is any other evidence to support (or disprove) this surprising but not totally impossible claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Refs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/jr-installs-anti-suicide-lighting-on-platforms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;JR installs anti-suicide lighting on platforms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jad-journal.com/article/S0165-0327(14)00474-1/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does the installation of blue Lights on train platforms shift suicide to another station?: Evidence from Japan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jad-journal.com/article/S0165-0327(13)00680-0/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reconsidering the effects of blue-light installation for prevention of railway suicides&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/social_affairs/AJ201210190016&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Railways trying music, lighting, patrols to prevent suicides&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update 29 Sep 2015: Rail companies here in the UK are now also installing anti-suicide &quot;blue LED lights that reportedly have a calming effect.&quot; (&lt;em&gt;The Guardian&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/29/samaritans-network-rail-prevented-1000-suicides-three-years&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Samaritans and Network Rail initiative ‘prevented 1,000 suicide attempts in three years’&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, 29 Sep 2015) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22504" LastEditorUserId="22504" LastEditDate="2015-10-01T00:35:04.790" LastActivityDate="2015-10-01T11:04:24.933" Title="Do blue lights on railway platforms reduce suicide?" Tags="|psychology|suicide|transportation|light|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23860" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24039" CreationDate="2014-11-22T14:53:19.040" Score="7" ViewCount="1435" Body="&lt;p&gt;The abstract for this paper on PubMed, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18202447&quot;&gt;Historical evidence for a pre-Columbian presence of Datura in the Old World and implications for a first millennium transfer from the New World&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Datura (Solanaceae)is a small genus of plants that,for long, was thought to occur naturally in both the New and Old Worlds. However, recent studies indicate that all species in the genus originated in the Americas. This finding has prompted the conclusion that no species of Datura could have been present in the Old World prior to its introduction there by Europeans in the early 16th century CE. Further, the textual evidence traditionally cited in support of a pre-Columbian Old World presence of Datura species is suggested to be due to the misreading of classical Greek and Arabic sources. As a result, botanists generally accept the opinion that Datura species were transferred into the Old World in the post-Columbian period. While the taxonomic and geographic evidence for a New World origin for all the Datura species appears to be well supported, the assertion that Datura species were not known in the Old World prior to the 16th century is based on a limited examination of the pre-Columbian non-Anglo sources. We draw on old Arabic and Indic texts and southern Indian iconographic representations to show that there is conclusive evidence for the pre-Columbian presence of at least one species of Datura in the Old World. Given the systematic evidence for a New World origin of the genus, the most plausible explanation for this presence is a relatively recent but pre-Columbian (probably first millennium CE) transfer of at least one Datura species, D. metel, into the Old World. Because D. metel is a domesticated species with a disjunct distribution,this might represent an instance of human-mediated transport from the New World to the Old World, as in the case of the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the possibilities seem to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's &lt;em&gt;endemic&lt;/em&gt; to several continents since &lt;em&gt;time immemorial&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pre-Columbian transfer&lt;/em&gt; by humans to the Old World, &quot;probably&quot; in the &lt;em&gt;first millennium CE&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Post-Columbian transfer&lt;/em&gt; by humans to the Old World (well into the &lt;em&gt;second millennium CE&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question&lt;/strong&gt; includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How good is the evidence for this thesis? How good is this paper in particular? Do other experts agree or disagree with it?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Including any other papers as well as this paper, what are the earliest clear/convincing testimonies/evidence for the existence of Datura in the Old World?&#xA;Is there any chance that it existed in India in the centuries BCE?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reasons why &lt;strong&gt;I'm skeptical&lt;/strong&gt; include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I don't know how to evaluate or search academic/scientific literature, which some other people on this site are said to be good at doing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Apparently this paper supposes and/or claims to be evidence for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact&quot;&gt;Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact&lt;/a&gt; which Wikipedia says is &quot;controversial&quot;, &quot;debatable&quot;, and sometimes called &quot;fringe science&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I know very little, in general, about the Origin of the (botanical) Species, so I don't have strong preconception about the likelihood that a species might be endemic on both land-masses&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Datura is poisonous and entheogenic, so I presume it should exist in Ayurvedic and/or other historic texts? IMO isn't it likely that many (perhaps all) historians cannot be familiar with all these texts? There's a language problem, i.e. the texts presumably exist in many languages. How well has this paper done a literature search on a millenium's worth of texts over a whole continent, which has who-knows-how-many languages? How confident can they be that whichever antique text they cite identifies Datura and not something else? Has anyone else been able to finesse the whole &quot;historical literature&quot; question using another tool, e.g. archaeology of seeds or something like that?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-30T12:16:46.877" LastActivityDate="2020-07-09T06:28:30.993" Title="When is the origin of Datura in India?" Tags="|history|plants|india|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23862" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23863" CreationDate="2014-11-22T22:34:35.680" Score="14" ViewCount="6277" Body="&lt;p&gt;This should be an easy  one, but I wanted to ask so we have confirmation or refutation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This image is making the rounds on facebook:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wZchl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Emancipation Proclamation Fact&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how factual is this statement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2014-11-28T05:42:57.330" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T05:42:57.330" Title="Was the Emancipation Proclamation an Executive Order that bypassed Congress and freed 3 million slaves?" Tags="|history|politics|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23863" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23862" CreationDate="2014-11-22T22:58:22.563" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; calls it a &quot;Presidential Proclamation&quot;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Emancipation Proclamation was a presidential proclamation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=69880&quot;&gt;the text of it&lt;/a&gt; he claims that his authority for doing so was as C-in-C in time of war:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It says &quot;proclamation&quot; all over the place:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Proclamation 95 - Regarding the Status of Slaves in etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;By the President of the United States of America&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A Proclamation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Whereas on the 22d day of September, A.D. 1862, a proclamation was etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It includes some important &quot;orders&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, &lt;strong&gt;I do order&lt;/strong&gt; and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are and henceforward shall be free, and &lt;strong&gt;that the executive government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense; and I recommend to them that in all cases when allowed they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places and to man vessels of all sorts in said service&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is opinion saying that Proclamations &quot;carry the same force of law as executive orders&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Presidential Proclamations Project at the University of Houston&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A presidential proclamation&lt;/strong&gt; is “an instrument that states a condition, declares a law and requires obedience, recognizes an event or triggers the implementation of a law (by recognizing that the circumstances in law have been realized)” (Cooper 2002, 116). In short, presidents &lt;strong&gt;“define” situations&lt;/strong&gt; or conditions on situations &lt;strong&gt;that become legal or economic truth. These orders carry the same force of law as executive orders – the difference between the two is that executive order are aimed at those inside government while proclamations are aimed at those outside government.&lt;/strong&gt; The administrative weight of these proclamations is upheld because they are often specifically authorized by congressional statute, making them “delegated unilateral powers.” Presidential proclamations are often dismissed as a practical presidential tool for policy making because of the perception of proclamations as largely ceremonial or symbolic in nature. However, the legal weight of presidential proclamations suggests their importance to presidential governance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The National Archives seem to think they're similar enough that they put them in the same book: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/chapter.html&quot;&gt;Codification of Presidential Proclamations and Executive Orders Chapters&lt;/a&gt; although they're listed separately in each chapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently a source for the claim in the OP is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/20/nancy-pelosi-compares-obama-to-lincoln-emancipatio/&quot;&gt;Nancy Pelosi, quoted in the Washington Times&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday compared President Obama’s planned executive action on immigration reform to President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Remember, President Lincoln said, ‘public sentiment is everything,’” the Democrat said at a press conference, Breitbart reported. “I wish the Republicans would at least give the public a chance to listen to what the president is trying to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“And also does the public know the Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order?” Mrs. Pelosi continued. “People have to understand how presidents have made change in our country, Congress catching up, and in the case of Ronald Reagan, improving upon what Congress has done.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary I think that this was both:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A proclamation to the people&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An order to the executive branch and the military&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-22T23:46:39.207" LastActivityDate="2014-11-22T23:46:39.207" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23862" CreationDate="2014-11-22T22:59:35.490" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As this question is a just fact checking on a non-recent topic I am going to commit the 'sin' of quoting wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Emancipation Proclamation was a &lt;strong&gt;presidential proclamation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Emanipation Proclamation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to political science professor Phillip J. Cooper, a presidential proclamation &amp;quot;states a condition, declares a law and requires obedience, recognizes an event or triggers the implementation of a law (by recognizing that the circumstances in law have been realized)&amp;quot;.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Presidents define situations or conditions on situations that become legal or economic truth. These orders carry the same force of law as executive orders — the difference between the two is that executive orders are aimed at those inside government while proclamations are aimed at those outside government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The administrative weight of these proclamations is upheld because they are often specifically authorized by congressional statute, making them “delegated unilateral powers”. Presidential proclamations are often dismissed as a practical presidential tool for policy making because of the perception of proclamations as largely ceremonial or symbolic in nature. However, the legal weight of presidential proclamations suggests their importance to presidential governance.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order#Presidential_proclamation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Executive Order on presidential proclamations&lt;/a&gt;, so summarizing the picture is technically not true, although it must also be noted that the two concepts are commonly confused as Wikipedia has a link at the top of both presidential proclamations and executives orders with a &amp;quot;Do not confuse with&amp;quot; link to the other article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sources wikipedia is citing btw are (decided to include wikipedia instead of the below link becaues it just included that bit more information and context):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Phillip J. Cooper. 2002. By Order of The President. University of Kansas Press. Page 116. &lt;br&gt;&#xA; &lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.polsci.uh.edu/database/aboutproc.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Presidential Proclamations Project&lt;/a&gt;, University of Houston, Political Science Dept., Retrieved 2009-12-07&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18335" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-22T22:59:35.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23865" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-22T23:37:28.640" Score="2" ViewCount="125" Body="&lt;p&gt;Facebook is a great source of notable claims.  Another one today is this picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZNg07.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Claims about Owsley County, Kentucky&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seem to be three separate claims in this picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is Owsley County 99%+ white?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is Owsley County 95% republican?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does Owsley County have the highest usage of SNAP benefits (and by what measure is that claim even made? per capita?)?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="386" LastActivityDate="2014-11-22T23:37:28.640" Title="Are these claims about Owsley County, KY factual" Tags="|united-states|politics|welfare|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-11-23T00:31:04.720" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23866" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23853" CreationDate="2014-11-22T23:52:34.877" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer is more &quot;no&quot; than yes, though it's more murky than 100% clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/nov/21/barack-obama/are-barack-obamas-immigration-moves-kinds-actions-/&quot;&gt;Politifact analysis&lt;/a&gt; that Larian referenced includes the &lt;strong&gt;most relevant&lt;/strong&gt; fact (and few other less relevant ones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The most important factor pointing to the answer being &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; is as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question asks whether Presidents &quot;used executive actions to &lt;strong&gt;change&lt;/strong&gt; immigration policy&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, that is admittedly a bit of a vague wording (change can mean adjust, or drastically change), but the reason why the whole thing was so controversial was a very specific fact, i.e.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Obama did it in &lt;em&gt;direct contradiction&lt;/em&gt; to the wishes and intent of legislative branch&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Politifact says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What was Congress’ role? Critics argue that Obama’s action is&#xA;  different because he did it &lt;strong&gt;in the face of opposition from Congress&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  (at least from the House), whereas the Reagan and Bush orders were&#xA;  largely undertaken to fix &quot;loose ends,&quot; as Krikorian characterizes&#xA;  them, from a specific immigration law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The American Immigration Council cites several examples in which&#xA;  legislation was pending at the time the presidents took their action,&#xA;  including parole for orphans (under Eisenhower), Cubans fleeing Fidel&#xA;  Castro (presidents Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B.&#xA;  Johnson) and deferred action for battered immigrants (President&#xA;  Clinton).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Still, &lt;strong&gt;there’s broad agreement that the degree of tension between&#xA;  Congress and the president was unusually large under Obama&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That includes the incoming House, incoming Senate, and even standing House if you reflect the facts that they don't have enough votes to pass such a bill over a filibuster attempt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;incoming&quot; part is especially important as the executive action's timing was clearly driven by the fact of partisan change in 2015 incoming Senate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, he effectively wrote a new law in that action, at least in spirit even if he can somehow lawyer out of that characterization in front of SCOTUS on a technicality&lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This specific point is what makes Obama's executive drastically different from &lt;strong&gt;every other&lt;/strong&gt; prior immigration related executive order, all of which were done &lt;strong&gt;in line&lt;/strong&gt; with the overall wishes of the law as passed by legislature, or at least the will of the legislature in spirit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some were to plug holes in existing legislation (usually small ones, except for G.H.W.Bush's)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even Bush Sr's action - which was the only one remotely similar to what Obama did by either scale OR scope - was done (quoting politifact) in context of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was a &lt;strong&gt;consequence of a 1986 immigration overhaul that granted legal status for many, but not all, illegal immigrants&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some were to speed up outcomes in context of &lt;strong&gt;pending&lt;/strong&gt; legislation that they were in line with.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, some other factors make this order &lt;em&gt;almost&lt;/em&gt; unprecedented, with exception of G.H.W. Bush's order - meaning it was drastically different from 38 out of 39 precedents that the pro-amnesty side cites to support Obama:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Size&lt;/strong&gt; is drastically different:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At between 4 million and 5 million potential beneficiaries, Obama’s is easily the biggest such action ever taken by a president, at least in raw numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The rest of them being well less than a million and usually well under 100k - and the only ones above 100k being clear refugee situations out of warzones)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only outlier was G.H.W. Bush's where the size ranges &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationalreview.com/article/392887/obamas-unprecedented-amnesty-mark-krikorian&quot;&gt;from 150k&lt;/a&gt; and 1.5Mil depending on which partisan you ask.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Scope&lt;/strong&gt; is drastically different:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many of the past presidential actions were targeted at specific populations that were experiencing humanitarian or political crises in their home country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Obama’s, by contrast, targets broad classes of people of any nationality. Broader, less country-specific actions are not unprecedented -- the Reagan and George H.W. Bush actions were roughly similar in design. But numerically, they account for a distinct minority of the 39 examples in the American Immigration Council’s report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What undocumented immigrants could receive&lt;/strong&gt; is drastically different:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Krikorian notes that Obama has not just deferred deportation for certain undocumented immigrants but gone a step further, allowing them to receive work permits and other related benefits, such as Social Security numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; outlier here is, again, G.H.W. Bush's executive order.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, these extra factors not related to Congressional agreement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;point to a &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; based on Obama's own wording (&quot;&lt;strong&gt;every Republican President and every Democratic President&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;) &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;but &quot;yes&quot; to a narrower-scoped premise that he wasn't at least the first president to do something similar (G.H.W. Bush did something similar - But he was the &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; one and he &lt;strong&gt;did NOT do so in opposition to legislative branch&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;[1] - Obama administration has a history of sliding things by SCOTUS on a technicality that contradicts the spirit of things. The most substantial was of course a SCOTUS challenge to Obamacare, which SCOTUS upheld &lt;strong&gt;solely&lt;/strong&gt; because individual mandate - the central part of the law - was claimed to be a tax in the letter of the law... whereas the architect of Obamacare &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/11/11/obamacare-architect-lack-transparency-was-key-because-stupidity-american/?intcmp=HPBucket&quot;&gt;directly admitted that it was NOT a tax&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-23T01:34:40.240" LastActivityDate="2014-11-23T01:34:40.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23868" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-23T01:23:59.993" Score="10" ViewCount="628" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://mic.com/articles/104096/there-s-a-suicide-epidemic-in-utah-and-one-neuroscientist-thinks-he-knows-why&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;There's a Suicide Epidemic in Utah — And One Neuroscientist Thinks He Knows Why&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... Despite ranking as America's happiest state, &lt;strong&gt;Utah has disproportionately high rates of suicide and associated mood disorders compared to the rest of the country&lt;/strong&gt;. In fact, it's the No. 1 state for antidepressant use. These polarized feelings of despondency and delight underlie a confusing phenomenon that Perry Renshaw, a neuroscientist at the University of Utah investigating the strange juxtaposition, calls the &amp;quot;Utah paradox.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Utah residents and experts are aware of the paradox, often attributing gun use, low population density and the area's heavy Mormon influence as potential factors. But Renshaw thinks he's identified a more likely cause for the Utah blues: altitude.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Renshaw believes that altitude has an impact on our brain chemistry, specifically that it changes the levels of serotonin and dopamine, two key chemicals in the brain that help regulate our feelings of happiness. America's favorite antidepressants (and party drugs) work by controlling the level of these chemicals in the brain. The air in Utah, one could say, works just like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article cites:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/appi.ajp.2010.10020289&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2011 study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, a group of researchers, including Renshaw, analyzed state suicide rates with respect to gun ownership, population density, poverty, health insurance quality and availability of psychiatric care. &lt;strong&gt;Of all the factors, altitude had the strongest link to suicide&lt;/strong&gt; — even the group of states with the least available psychiatric care had fewer suicides than the highest-altitude states, where psychiatric care was easier to find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article and study detail the methodology and underlying theory, but I am interested here in knowing whether the statistics correlating altitude with suicide are corroborated in places outside the USA (where deviations are not explained by other factors).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we see similarly relatively higher suicide rates in the mountains of Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia, Africa, and South America?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Altitude, Gun Ownership, Rural Areas, and Suicide, The American Journal of Psychiatry, Volume 168 Issue 1, January 2011, Namkug Kim, et al.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T01:43:59.833" Title="Is suicide caused by or correlated with living at high altitude?" Tags="|psychology|environmental-health|geography|suicide|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23858" CreationDate="2014-11-23T09:42:53.667" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;My favorite podcast dedicated a rather long and thorough segment to this a while back in 2013-03-16. I think the result was that this could not be reproduced in studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the &quot;both eyes at once&quot; bit is a twist I hadn't heard of before today. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Podcast link: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trcpodcast.com/trc-236-crying-ghost-orbs-napoleon/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.trcpodcast.com/trc-236-crying-ghost-orbs-napoleon/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Cross link: same topic on Snopes: &lt;a href=&quot;http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=71167&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Crying left and right&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit 2014-11-25&lt;/strong&gt;: Transcript from podcast episode below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;[05:55/38:24] Pat Roach:&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://torontoeyecare.com/jnolfi.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Doctor Nolfi&lt;/a&gt; is a well respected optometrist and recognised lecturer within the vision care industry. He’s the co-founder of the Toronto eye care clinic […].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;[06:20/38:24] Pat Roach:&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;So I wrote Jerry a note […] I think you’ll find his response interesting. […]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;[07:15/38:24] Pat Roach quoting Jerry Nolfi:&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;Based on my knowledge of the tearing system there appears to be no logical reason for each eye to discriminate its tearing function based on the emotional stressor/stimuli. I just don’t see it and the statement must be a myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;[08:10/38:24] Pat Roach:&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;What I really needed was an expert on crying. And I actually found one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[…]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;[08:20/38:24] Pat Roach:&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;So doctor &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/webwijs/show/vingerhoets-1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;“Ad Vingerhoets”&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;is a psychology professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. He’s one of the few psychologists in the world to actually have studied crying. […]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;[10:55/38:24] Pat Roach:&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;He had videos of people starting to cry and he was willing to have students analyse whether or not it was the left or the right eye based on the specific stimuli.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[…]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;[11:04/38:24] Pat Roach quoting Dr. Ad Vingerhoets:&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;Here’s a report about our observations.&#xA;Ten participants cried during a “Loss” scene while watching a movie. And three participants cried during a “Reunion” scene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Elan Dubrovski:&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;Aah!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Adam Gardner:&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;What was the movie?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;Pat Roach:&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;He didn’t mention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;[11:21/38:24] Pat Roach:&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;In two of the participants who cried during the reunion scene, tears dropped first from the right eye and then [in] the third participant they dropped at the same moment from both eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;[11:30/38:24] Pat Roach:&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;During the “loss” scene tears started falling down first from the left eye in six of the participants and the right eye in four of the participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;[11:40/38:24] Elan Dubrovski:&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;Seems pretty close to even.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;[11:44/38:24] Pat Roach:&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;He goes on to say: &lt;em&gt;“So I conclude there is no clear connection between which eye cries first and the specific antecedent. Hope this helps. Best regards, Ad.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[…]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;[11:50/38:24] Pat Roach:&lt;/code&gt;&#xA;So while that’s not a very big sample size, I think the fact that Dr. Vingerhoets’ team has found exceptions to this, quote, “fact”, coupled with Dr. Nolfi’s opinion we can draw some fairly strong conclusions: This is a myth and [it] appears we here at TRC, with the kind help of these two doctors, are the first to really bust it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22814" LastEditorUserId="22814" LastEditDate="2016-01-20T13:01:56.513" LastActivityDate="2016-01-20T13:01:56.513" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23873" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23544" CreationDate="2014-11-23T11:46:47.627" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a word, &quot;no&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recent news includes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kxly.com/news/north-idaho-news/hitching-post-switching-to-religious-corporation-to-avoid-samesex-marriages/29267160&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hitching Post switching to 'religious corporation' to avoid same-sex marriages&lt;/a&gt;, which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, on October 6, the Knapps filed paper work with the State of Idaho&#xA;  claiming they are now a &quot;religious corporation.&quot; Gridley said that if&#xA;  they now fall under that distinction they would not violate the&#xA;  ordinance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;At that time they were not a religious corporation, so the facts have&#xA;  changed from the time we talked to them originally to what they are&#xA;  now,&quot; Gridley said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exemption from the ordinance is because they are now a &quot;religious corporation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ordinance applies to secular businesses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Coeur d'Alene city attorney confirmed in a letter Monday that&#xA;  ordained ministers operating a for-profit wedding chapel are in&#xA;  violation of a city ordinance for declining to marry same-sex couples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The letter states that &quot;if they are providing services primarily or&#xA;  substantially for profit and they discriminate in providing those&#xA;  services based on sexual orientation then they would likely be in&#xA;  violation of the ordinance.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same story is told in &lt;a href=&quot;http://boisestatepublicradio.org/post/coeur-dalene-says-hitching-post-exempt-gay-rights-law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Coeur d'Alene Says Hitching Post Is Exempt From Gay Rights Law&lt;/a&gt;, which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Initially, the city said its anti-discrimination law did apply to the&#xA;  Hitching Post, since it is a commercial business. Earlier this week,&#xA;  Coeur d'Alene city attorney Mike Gridley sent a letter to the Knapps’&#xA;  attorneys at the Alliance Defending Freedom saying the Hitching Post&#xA;  would have to become a not-for-profit to be exempt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But Gridley said after further review, he determined the ordinance&#xA;  doesn’t specify non-profit or for-profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“After we've looked at this some more, we have come to the conclusion&#xA;  they would be exempt from our ordinance because they are a religious&#xA;  corporation,” Gridley explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Court filings show the Hitching Post reorganized earlier this month as&#xA;  a “religious corporation.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It adds (the following opinion from the ACLU, not from the city attorney),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Leo Morales of the ACLU of Idaho said the exemption makes sense as&#xA;  long as the Hitching Post primarily performs religious ceremonies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“However, if they do non-religious ceremonies as well, they would be&#xA;  violating the anti-discrimination ordinance,” Morales said. “It's the&#xA;  religious activity that's being protected.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know but is it possible that, in the States, the decision whether to prosecute is at all political? If so it may be that political will is not in favour of prosecution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE, 10/24/14, 11 a.m.:&lt;/strong&gt; The group that helped create Coeur d'Alene's anti-discrimination ordinance says the Hitching Post shouldn't have to perform same-sex marriages. The Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations says in a letter to the mayor and city council that the Knapps fall under the religious exemption in the law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-23T13:13:32.680" LastActivityDate="2014-11-23T13:13:32.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23877" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23884" CreationDate="2014-11-23T23:41:34.907" Score="19" ViewCount="4219" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://speisa.com/modules/articles/index.php/item.122/sweden-passes-law-to-criminalize-any-criticism-of-immigration.html&quot;&gt;Sweden passes law to criminalize any criticism of immigration&lt;/a&gt; which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A new law will come into effect in Sweden after Christmas 2014, that will allow people to be prosecuted for criticizing immigration or politician’s unwillingness to tackle the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this is not the only source claiming that, I feel that the reality is a bit more complex than the version presented by media. The claim that one of the most developed of european countries would abolish freedom of speech seems very unrealistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the article blowing the issue out of proportion?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20708" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-25T16:22:33.453" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T15:01:43.760" Title="Will criticizing immigration be illegal in Sweden?" Tags="|politics|immigration|sweden|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15734" CreationDate="2014-11-24T01:11:43.643" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2003 a review of the risks of body piercing was produced by a European Commission Joint Research Centre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gesundheit-nds.de/downloads/risksandhealth.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Risks and Health Effects from Tattoos, Body Piercing and Related Practices&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While they reviewed the literature, and list a number of health risks involved with body-piercings, there is no mention of fat, obesity or weight-gain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I conclude this is &quot;evidence of absence&quot; of studies showing that weight-gain is a risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I found the report to be less convincing than, say, a Cochrane Collaboration review. They didn't take the effort to demonstrate their search methods were exhaustive and clear from bias. Nonetheless, it was described as a &quot;competent review&quot; by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_risk/committees/sccp/documents/out230_en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scientific Committee on Cosmetic Products and Non-food Products Intended for Consumers&lt;/a&gt;, so I have accepted it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-11-24T01:11:43.643" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23877" CreationDate="2014-11-24T03:48:27.217" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Will criticizing immigration be illegal in Sweden?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe not, that simply criticizing immigration will not be illegal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Because see &lt;strong&gt;What about 'free speech'?&lt;/strong&gt; below.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because I don't see (in the described change to the law) such a big change to the law.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_Democrats&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sweden Democrats party&lt;/a&gt; have and will presumably continue to communicate their anti-immigration policy. They are legal and hold 14% of the seats in parliament:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Sweden Democrats or Swedish Democrats (Swedish: Sverigedemokraterna, SD) are a far-right,[13][14][21][22] right-wing populist,[5][10] and anti-immigration[23][24][25][26] political party in Sweden that was founded in 1988.[27] &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Sweden Democrats continued this success in the 2014 general election, polling 12.9% and winning 49 (14% of) seats in parliament.[18] The party remains isolated and excluded from influence by all other parties in the Riksdag.[33]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Sweden Democrats believe that the current Swedish immigration and integration policies have been a failure.[68][69] SD is the only party in the Swedish Parliament without an integration policy.[70][71] They oppose integration because etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Because the committee says that they aren't changing law about what's &quot;free&quot; versus &quot;illegal&quot; speech, they're only changing law to allow increased opportunity or public prosecution.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary of changes to the existing laws&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is what was said in (or by, or to) Swedish Parliament about the &quot;new law&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Previous/already-existing laws:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Sweden there are (i.e. there have been and there remain) some insults which you are not allowed to say about a person, in person and in public&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The victim of such an insult can (privately) initiate a court action (I think a &quot;civil court&quot; action)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The public prosecutor can choose to initiate court action (i.e., I think, &quot;criminal court&quot; action) in &quot;special circumstances&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;These new changes amend the existing laws, in the following ways:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to the Committee it slightly allows more intervention by public authorities against slander and insults on the internet (I'm not sure how; perhaps that's the changes to the law about speech which crosses the Swedish national border on the internet, or perhaps it's the change from prosecutors doing it in &quot;special circumstances&quot; to their doing it when it's in the &quot;public interest&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Previously the public prosecutor could intervene only in &quot;special circumstances&quot; (which might I think mean, for example, when there's &quot;insult to anyone with allusion to his or her race etc.&quot;). Now instead of there needing to be that &quot;special circumstance&quot; the public prosecutor can initiate action if it's in the &quot;public interest&quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The public prosecutor will be especially likely to do that if the victim is a minor&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When a private person brings an action and loses, they no longer need to pay the opposing/defending party's costs, if there was a &quot;particular reason&quot; for the trial.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I introduce some references as evidence and quote from them, below. The quoted text is auto-translated from the Swedish using Google Translate. Some of it has been edited by Swedes as mentioned in comments below.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Cited references to these details&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The news article which is referenced/questioned in the OP says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Member of Parliament Andrew Norlén, member of the Constitutional Committee, has been pushing the issue and he says it will rapidly become a deterrent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“I do not think it takes very many prosecutions before a signal is transmitted in the community that the internet is not a lawless country, the sheriff is back in town” Norlén said during a one-sided ‘debate’ on the issue in Swedish parliament.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore that news article is referring to the following law, which Andreas Norlén introduced to Parliament in &lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;js=y&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.riksdagen.se%2Fsv%2FDokument-Lagar%2FKammaren%2FProtokoll%2F_H10999%2F&amp;amp;edit-text=&amp;amp;act=url&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the following brief speech, which I quote below as follows in its entirety&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;9 § Some changes in &lt;strike&gt;pressure&lt;/strike&gt; press and the freedom of expression&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Constitutional committee's report 2013/14: KU17&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Some changes in pressure and the freedom of expression (Prop. 2013/14: 47)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  was preferred.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Anf. 13 Andreas Norlén (M):&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr President We in the constitutional committee is unanimous on this&#xA;  report, which deals with some changes in pressure and the freedom of&#xA;  expression. It contains proposals for constitutional amendments and&#xA;  some other important legislative changes. There is therefore reason to&#xA;  say anything about it in this House, although we totally agree. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have a particular interest in the issue because I was a member of&#xA;  the Freedom of Expression Committee, therefore, the government report&#xA;  which presented the investigation report, which forms the basis of the&#xA;  proposals we are now debating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The aim of the key proposals which this report is to some extent&#xA;  adapting Swedish legislation to the development of society that has&#xA;  meant that the number of defamation offenses has increased&#xA;  exponentially in our country in recent years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The concept of defamation offenses sounds a bit archaic. It has an&#xA;  archaic ring to it, but it involves conduct which constitutes a&#xA;  painful reality for thousands of people in our country, not least for&#xA;  many young people. I am thinking primarily on the gross violations&#xA;  that every day affects many people on the internet in the form of&#xA;  insults, slander, insult, and everything whatever it may be.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The development of the Internet has led to the tremendous&#xA;  opportunities in terms of communication and new services. It has&#xA;  changed our world for the better, but it has also brought&#xA;  unprecedented opportunities for violations of other people -&#xA;  violations that may very common and which often causes a lot of great&#xA;  suffering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A starting point in Swedish law is that the criminal libel, slander&#xA;  and insult, it is the plaintiff - that the victims of the crime - to&#xA;  prosecute. This will still be the starting point even after the&#xA;  legislative changes we are proposing, but it introduces some&#xA;  modifications. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is quite obvious that the step for the person being insulted and&#xA;  attacked on the Internet - even if there are serious violations - to&#xA;  bring a private prosecution against the person who made these&#xA;  observations are often very long. The vast majority of violations goes&#xA;  obeivrade past.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then, the problem is that respect for the rule of law and the rules&#xA;  that are against slander and insult risk of erosion. &lt;strong&gt;The Internet is&#xA;  not a lawless country. It applies the same rules and regulations about&#xA;  how we should behave towards each other when we act on the internet&#xA;  that when we act in the real world and not moving in the virtual&#xA;  reality. Slander and also insult is just as illegal on the internet as&#xA;  it is when you meet on the square.  With these amendments, we give&#xA;  public prosecutor little more opportunity to intervene and criminal&#xA;  action rather than submit to the individual to make their case and&#xA;  bring private prosecutions. To the public prosecutor to initiate legal&#xA;  prosecution for defamation or insult, it has clean lagtekniskt&#xA;  hitherto required to for specific reasons warranted in the public&#xA;  interest. Now changed this so that the requirement for special reasons&#xA;  deleted.&lt;/strong&gt; Suffice it to say that it should be warranted in the public&#xA;  interest. It involves some extension of the general prosecution law. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What could it be about? What could it be for societal interests that&#xA;  are evident? Yes, that's if it's particularly serious violations or&#xA;  violations may be particularly large spread, for example, that they&#xA;  take place via the internet. But it can also be in the interests of&#xA;  the individual, that is, the individual objective has been very hard&#xA;  hit by deeds. There may also be a reason for criminal action. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The government also claims in the bill that the fact that a young&#xA;  person is affected may be another reason for the public prosecutor&#xA;  must intervene.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is great changes. They make it a little better opportunities for&#xA;  public prosecutors and police to intervene. I do not think that it&#xA;  requires very few prosecutions before sending a signal to the&#xA;  community that the internet is not a lawless country - the sheriff is&#xA;  back in town, if you want to put it a little slängigt. I hope that&#xA;  police and prosecutors are using the new opportunities and ensure the&#xA;  prosecution of a number of criminal defamation on the Internet, in a&#xA;  way that makes respect for the rule of law can be strengthened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With that, Mr President, I call assent to the proposal in the report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also a description of these to the law, in the following Constitutional Committee report on the Swedish Parliament web site, from which I quote a few paragraphs below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;js=y&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.riksdagen.se%2Fsv%2FDokument-Lagar%2FUtskottens-dokument%2FBetankanden%2F201314Nagra-andringar-pa-tryc_H101KU17%2F%3Fhtml%3Dtrue&amp;amp;edit-text=&amp;amp;act=url&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Report 2013/14: KU17 Some changes in freedom of press and speech&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The bill also proposed giving individuals a stronger procedural position of libel and increased protection for privacy. The Government proposes that the requirement in the Criminal Code on the specific reasons for the criminal action for defamation and insult is removed. This means that the prosecuting attorney and the attorney general will increasingly be able to assist individuals such as has been slandered on the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The government also makes proposals which implies that the plaintiff should be able to avoid paying the opposite party in a pressure or freedom of expression when the plaintiff's action was dismissed but he or she has had particular reason to be tried.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is a description of the current law:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When it comes to prosecution for slander, coarse slander and insult are special provisions in Chapter 5. § 5, first paragraph Criminal Code. Under this provision, these crimes are not prosecuted by someone other than the plaintiff. In the case of defamation, rough defamation or certain types of insult - such as insult to anyone with allusion to his or her race, color, national or ethnic origin or religious belief - and the offense is against someone under eighteen years, or if otherwise the plaintiff states the offense, may prosecutor to prosecute if there for specific reasons deemed necessary in the public interest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new law is,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If a defamation crimes directed against someone who is under eighteen years of age or if the injured party in another case indicates the offense, the prosecutor would receive a prosecution if this is called the public interest and other conditions for prosecution are met. The Government's proposal means that the requirement for a special reason to prosecute these cases to be removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As reasons for the proposal, the Government states that, in particular Internet enabled a very large and rapid dissemination of information. The information is easily searchable and often remain on the internet for a long time. This is according to the government, of course, generally positive from the Freedom of Expression and Democracy perspective, but not when it concerns criminal messages such as slander. It can be assumed that the large and rapid spread, along with the fact that the data remains on the internet and are searchable for a long time, results in a different and more difficult consequences for those who consider themselves vilified than other more traditional publications. It has also recently been recognized that the climate in various discussion forums are hard and that many, especially young people, &quot;hung out&quot; on the web in a way that can affect them significantly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Especially in the light of these developments, the Government considers, like the Committee, that there is reason to strengthen individuals' procedural protection when exposed to defamation or insult by the general somewhat greater extent than at present responsible for defamation offenses prosecuted criminally. Freedom of expression suggests that it should be done by the possibility of criminal proceedings for defamation and insult expanded. The Government agrees with the Committee's proposal. &lt;strong&gt;A slight extension of the possibility of public prosecutions allow inter alia something more intervention by public authorities against slander and insults on the internet. Such crimes are most common on websites that are not covered by the Freedom of Speech. The Committee, however, the changes apply not only to those sites but also on the constitutionally protected area and for slander and insults that take other forms.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some of the respondents remarked that the proposal is likely to cause a greater caution in the media because of the increased risk of public prosecution and thus have a negative impact on freedom of expression.&lt;/strong&gt; The Government believes that the media's concerns are based on the assumption that the public prosecution will be brought in more cases than before, which may lead to more convictions. Hence, the media is affected when making a decision about publishing or not. &lt;strong&gt;The Government considers that this concern should not be exaggerated.&lt;/strong&gt; There is no question of an extension of the criminal area, but it is only about an increased opportunity for public prosecution. In this context it should also be noted that JK shall observe the so-called instruction, which according to the government means that one must assume that the JK will not intervene in cases other than when it is really justified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What about 'free speech'?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OP/question says, &quot;The claim that one of the most developed of european countries would abolish freedom of speech seems very unrealistic&quot;, but I think that &quot;freedom of speech&quot; (as that is 'commonly understood') is a peculiar and mostly-American law (e.g. because of the First Amendment there). Many other countries including &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#Sweden&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sweden have laws against 'hate speech'&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sweden prohibits hate speech, and defines it as publicly making statements that threaten or express disrespect for an ethnic group or similar group regarding their race, skin colour, national or ethnic origin, faith, or sexual orientation.[58][59] The crime does not prohibit a pertinent and responsible debate (en saklig och vederhäftig diskussion), nor statements made in a completely private sphere.[60] There are constitutional restrictions pertaining to which acts are criminalized, as well limits set by the European Convention on Human Rights.[61] The crime is called Hets mot folkgrupp in Swedish which directly translated can be translated to Incitement (of hatred/violence) towards population groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally find it regrettable that &quot;freedom of speech&quot; is interpreted as &quot;freedom to hate on people&quot; (but who am I to criticize). It's currently easy to find web sites which appear to hate on immigrants to Sweden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sweden also has existing &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#Sweden&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;laws against 'defamation'&lt;/a&gt; (which I won't quote here: there are several of them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What about 'democracy'?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia says (I repeat),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The crime does not prohibit a pertinent and responsible debate (en saklig och vederhäftig diskussion), nor statements made in a completely private sphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I suppose that a statement like the following from the article referenced in the OP,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Without freedom of speech there can be no democracy. If you are not allowed to say certain things then parties that support your ideas cannot exist and Sweden is at high risk of turning into a communist USSR-like country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... is not necessarily true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I say &quot;not necessarily true&quot; because &lt;em&gt;other&lt;/em&gt; countries manage to have hate-speech laws, without being called &quot;a communist USSR-like country&quot; (except perhaps by the odd American: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Canadianism#United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Soviet Canuckistan&lt;/a&gt;&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Germany has a (legal) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Democratic_Party_of_Germany&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;political party that's anti-immigration&lt;/a&gt;, notwithstanding also having anti-Nazi laws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-28T15:01:43.760" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T15:01:43.760" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23877" CreationDate="2014-11-24T18:36:19.953" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;As ChrisW already pointed out, both the disposition from the &quot;Committee on the Constitution&quot; (including some background information and reasoning behind the law changes) and the changes and amendments themselves can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.riksdagen.se/sv/Dokument-Lagar/Utskottens-dokument/Betankanden/201314Nagra-andringar-pa-tryc_H101KU17/?html=true&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; in Swedish. Since the changes and amendments are embedded as images instead of printable text, it is not possible to run these through a translator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The changes are in fact not very substantial. Most modifications are just a modernization of the language, there are some clarifications to existing regulations and then perhaps two modifications, which have obviously been picked up by the right wing press and liberally interpreted. Without making any changes to what is actually forbidden, the amendments of the law opens up for the public prosecutor under more liberal limitations than before, to press charges without involvement of the insulted person or persons and it opens up for a possibility for allegedly insulted persons to try their case in court without the risk of having to pay the opponent's costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not a lawyer and it is difficult to provide a proper translation of the legalese text of the law, but I'll try to explain the modifications here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modifications to the law on freedom of press&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 1, § 6: Clarification, that a printed matter is not considered to be for publication in Sweden, just because it is sent from Sweden to intended recipients abroad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 1, § 9: Amendment that recipients of credit and solvency status reports must have a justified requirement for such information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 10 and 13: Only modernization of the language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modifications to the law on freedom of speech&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 1, § 10: Clarification, that a technical recording is not considered to be published or broadcast in Sweden, just because it is sent from Sweden to intended recipients abroad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 10, § 2: Without context, it is not obviously clear what the modifications refers to, but it is yet another clarification regarding statements made outside Sweden but intended for recipients within Sweden and vice versa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modifications to the penal code&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 5, § 5: In this paragraph, it is regulated in which cases the public prosecutor is allowed to initiate criminal proceedings without any charge or report from the recipient(s) of the alleged insults. The modification is that the &quot;special circumstances&quot; required in the old law text are removed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Old text: &quot;... the public prosecutor is allowed to initiate criminal proceedings under special circumstances, if this seem required from a public point of view ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;New text: &quot;... the public prosecutor is allowed to initiate criminal proceedings, if this seem required from a public point of view ...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Modifications to regulations concerning freedom of press and freedom of speech&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 10, § 4: The amendment opens up for the court to decide that the losing party must only cover their own costs if it is in the public interest to prove the case in a court.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8188" LastActivityDate="2014-11-24T18:36:19.953" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23885" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23862" CreationDate="2014-11-24T19:34:46.220" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim has 3 parts. one is somewhat true, one is true; one - the most relevant one in the context of the image and the quote - is &lt;strong&gt;false&lt;/strong&gt;. Let's see the breakdown:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim: E.P. Was an Executive Order&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evaluation: &lt;strong&gt;This is true in a technical but non-notable sense, and false in the only context that would make this image/quote notable&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, it was a type of presidential action that is closely linked to and frequently bundled with Executive Orders (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/23863/1044&quot;&gt;excellent answer from @ChrisW&lt;/a&gt; for details).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;strong&gt;nobody ever contested that President couldn't issue Executive Actions, nor that Emancipation proclamation wasn't one&lt;/strong&gt;. The reason this claim is at all notable is not merely the classification of the action, but the constitutional context it was taken under. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that according to the site policy &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1234/are-opposite-claims-need-to-be-notable-too&quot;&gt;the counter-claim should be notable&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, not just the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, it was NOT an executive action that was similar to the kind that the quoted person (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/nov/20/nancy-pelosi-compares-obama-to-lincoln-emancipatio/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nancy Pelosi&lt;/a&gt;) referred to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Emancipation proclamation was very explicitly done under the President's War Powers, and directly and purposefully limited to the Confederate states that were a belligerant combatant at the moment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by &lt;strong&gt;virtue of the power in me vested as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority etc&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is drastically different in Constitutional scope from any normal Executive Orders, most specifically, the one Pelosi was referring to - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uscis.gov/immigrationaction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Barak Obama's 2014 orders&lt;/a&gt; - which were NOT applicable to actions aganist an armed rebellion in his capacity as CiC.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim: E.P. declared that 3 million slaves were free&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evaluation: &lt;strong&gt;true&lt;/strong&gt; based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;un-referenced Wikipedia statement&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... but as the Union army took control of Confederate regions, the Proclamation provided the legal framework for freeing more than 3 million slaves in those regions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim: E.P. was &quot;bypassing Congress&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evaluation: 100% false, both in technical legal sense &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; in the spirit of things.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that again, this is the critical part of the claim. &lt;strong&gt;Nobody objects to the fact that Emancipation proclamation was an Executive Order&lt;/strong&gt; (and therefore the first part of the claim is by itself offtopic for Skeptics.SE). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The controvercy and the notability of both the claim and the subject matter stems specifically from 2014 orders being done &quot;bypassing Congress&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, let's look at technical legal sense &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; the spirit of things of E.P.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a technical legal sense, it was not &quot;bypassing Congress&quot;, because - as a wartime action limited to enemy combatants - it was 100% constitutionally in President's purvue and NOT in any way in Congress's purvue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is indicated both in the wording of the Proclamation itself:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by &lt;strong&gt;virtue of the power in me vested as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority etc&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... as well as by later research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Proclamation was based on the president's constitutional authority as commander in chief of the armed forces (src: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/emancipation-proclamation-freedoms-first-steps&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Emancipation Proclamation: Freedom's first steps&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. National Endowment for the Humanities. Retrieved 2013-06-27)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, in a sense of the spirit, it was also NOT bypassing Congress, since Congress at the time was most likely &lt;strong&gt;in support&lt;/strong&gt; of such an action&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have direct data for support of Emancipation in &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; Confederate Southern states as of 1862, but the one piece of legislature we do know about supports this assertion (h/t @NateEldredge):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_Compensated_Emancipation_Act&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862&lt;/a&gt;, which freed slaves in the District and compensated their former owners. According &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.visitthecapitol.gov/assets/uploads/files/education/district_of_columbia_compensated_emancipation_act_of_1862.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;to this document (PDF) (page 8)&lt;/a&gt;, in April of 1862 it &lt;strong&gt;passed the House 92-38 and the Senate 29-14&lt;/strong&gt;, and Lincoln signed it into law&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important fact to not is that - at the time of Emancipation proclamation - the Congress &lt;strong&gt;did NOT seat the delegates from Confederate states&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;shall then be in rebellion against the United States; and the fact that any State or the people thereof shall on that day be in good faith represented in the Congress of the United States by members chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified voters of such States shall have participated shall, in the absence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive evidence that such State and the people thereof are not then in rebellion against the United States &lt;em&gt;(E.P., Paragraph II; and further reference can be found on Wikipedia under Civil War article detailing Congressmen from Southern states withdrawing from Congress)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on 13th Amendment&lt;/a&gt; notes that a lot of opposition that Lincoln had to overcome in the House for passing it in 1865 (it sailed through the Senate 38 to 6) was - first of all - SMALL (majority of the House supported it even in the first vote, 93 in favor and 65 against); and second of all, rooted in the politics of the thing (State's rights) and NOT opposition to emancipation per se:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With no Southern states represented, &lt;strong&gt;few members of Congress pushed moral and religious arguments in favor of slavery&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Democrats who opposed the amendment generally made arguments based on federalism and state's rights&lt;/strong&gt; (&lt;em&gt;src: Benedict, &quot;Constitutional Politics, Constitutional Law, and the Thirteenth Amendment&quot; (2012), p. 179.&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this should be enough to prove the point, but to get more historical data I also posted on History.SE: &quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/17239/what-was-the-congressional-level-of-support-for-emancipation-proclamation&quot;&gt;What was the congressional level of support for Emancipation Proclamation?&lt;/a&gt; &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:47:51.013" LastActivityDate="2014-11-24T19:45:49.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23886" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-25T03:53:34.817" Score="4" ViewCount="3596" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading about reducing wine and came across a claim that alcohol itself has no flavor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But, what about the alcohol? Ethanol, or ethyl alcohol—the byproduct of yeast fermentation—has no flavor of its own. By that I mean it does not trigger any receptors in the tongue or nose. It does have a effect, which results from the alcohol interacting with the cells in the mouth. If you are planning on using a wine in cooking, particularily if it will be reduced or simmered, the alcohol should have no effect on flavor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalgourmet.com/food/egg/egg1197/wineflav.html#ixzz3K35jKKo6&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Does Wine Get Its Flavor?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, from my past experience, that's simply not true. Or if it is, where does the bad flavor of strong spirits come from? It's more than just the &quot;burn&quot; of the alcohol, if I mixed everclear with water to where it was around the same strength of wine, it would taste nasty. Why is that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22958" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-11-25T08:22:20.150" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T17:06:01.890" Title="Does ethanol activate any taste or smell receptors?" Tags="|alcohol|cooking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23889" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-25T21:49:47.120" Score="5" ViewCount="820" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inquisitr.com/1413862/michael-brown-robbery-conspiracy-theory/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Inquisitr&lt;/a&gt; reports that there is a conspiracy theory regarding the alleged robbery by shooting victim &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michael Brown&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The theory claims that the video, claimed by the police to prove Brown robbed a store, is not from August 2014as claimed, but from June. Enlarged stills of the video are used to demonstrate this&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the video from August 9th as the police claim? Does it actually show Michael Brown robbing a store?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T12:45:26.840" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T12:56:56.653" Title="Does a video show Michael Brown robbing a store in Ferguson the day he was shot?" Tags="|united-states|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23891" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23892" CreationDate="2014-11-25T22:18:21.623" Score="6" ViewCount="694" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3bxxE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Text below&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/BondiHipsters/photos/a.332842453444735.76452.311976212198026/814468865282089/?type=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hey Tony brah... Hahve [sic] you been buying Facebook likes? ...&#xA;  Either thaht [sic] of [sic] you're really popular with 18-34 year olds&#xA;  from New Delhi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q6iTW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Page from Facebook discussed by the Bondi Hipsters&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the Facebook 'likes' Abbott has received from India real, or fake? (I'm not really concerned whether Abbott bought the likes, or whether they were fake likes from a like farm liking pages at random to make themselves look less suspicious.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2015-10-08T20:07:56.673" LastActivityDate="2015-10-08T20:07:56.673" Title="Are (former Australian Prime Minister) Tony Abbott's Indian Facebook likes fake?" Tags="|australia|india|tony-abbott|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23892" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23891" CreationDate="2014-11-25T22:18:21.623" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Mainstream media reports suggest the fandom is genuine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/so-like-likable-tony-abbotts-facebook-popularity-soars-thanks-to-narendra-modi-20141125-11tv7c.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;So, like, likable: Tony Abbott's Facebook popularity soars thanks to Narendra Modi&lt;/a&gt; indicates that Indian PM Narendra Modi has a lot of facebook fans, and getting mentioned by him may have slashdotted Abbott:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But a spokeswoman for Mr Abbott said the increased traffic was genuine&#xA;  and that no &quot;likes&quot; or advertising had been purchased for the Facebook&#xA;  page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It is no secret that the Prime Minister hosted a number of world&#xA;  leaders in recent times, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra&#xA;  Modi,&quot; she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;These visits attracted large international audiences to the Prime&#xA;  Minister's social media channels, thus generating a spike in organic&#xA;  engagement with the page.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Earlier this month Mr Modi posted photos with Mr Abbott during his&#xA;  visit to Australia for the G20 summit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr Modi has more than 25 million Facebook likes and 8.17 million&#xA;  Twitter followers. A selfie with Mr Abbott posted to his Facebook&#xA;  account with the a caption that read &quot;With my friend Tony Abbott at&#xA;  the MCG&quot; received more than 710,000 likes and was shared more than&#xA;  11,600 times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other photos of the two leaders also received hundreds of thousands of&#xA;  likes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr Modi is particularly popular with young Indians and has been dubbed&#xA;  the &quot;rock star Prime Minister&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/tony-abbotts-facebook-popularity-skyrockets-all-thanks-to-one-selfie/story-fnjwnhzf-1227134478482&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tony Abbott’s Facebook popularity skyrockets all thanks to one selfie&lt;/a&gt; argues that Abbott's spike in popularity coincided with a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/narendramodi/photos/a.10150164299700165.421791.177526890164/10154915702750165/?type=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;November 18 selfie&lt;/a&gt; with Modhi (note: false bottom graph)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note: graph is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pedestrian.tv/news/arts-and-culture/tony-abbott-is-mystifyingly-popular-in-new-delhis-/a0fa3d74-3935-40d5-b505-d705a509db03.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tony Abbott is Mystifyingly Popular in New Delhi's Facebook Community&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oS5pN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;New improved graph - y axis values not truncated&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pedestrian.tv/news/arts-and-culture/tony-abbott-is-mystifyingly-popular-in-new-delhis-/a0fa3d74-3935-40d5-b505-d705a509db03.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tony Abbott is Mystifyingly Popular in New Delhi's Facebook Community&lt;/a&gt; (by Pedestrian.tv) notes that his Indian likes are still in the minority:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Statistics gleaned from social media analysis site Social Bakers&#xA;  indicate that somehow, even if the popular majority of Prime Minister&#xA;  Abbott's fans are 18-34 year old New Delhi residents, his newfound New&#xA;  Delhi fan base only accounts for 15.5% of his total audience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-pages/216342268645-tony-abbott&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Socialbakers&lt;/a&gt; has looked at Tony Abbott's popularity by country:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Australia 287 887 fans, 72.8%&#xA;India 61 287 fans, 15.5%&#xA;United States 5 005 fans, 1.3%&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No other country had more than 1% of his fan base.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2014-11-27T02:15:22.263" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T02:15:22.263" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23802" CreationDate="2014-11-26T05:57:06.270" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Calcification's effect on water heater efficiency depends on the design of the water heater and the type of calcification. &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/23802/do-calcified-water-heaters-use-more-energy&quot;&gt;The question&lt;/a&gt; referred specifically to electric water heaters, however, some of the links were referring to gas water heaters. In a gas water heater, the burner is usually located under and outside of the tank and heats a heat exchanger on the bottom of the tank that transfers heat to the water in the tank. In this configuration, sediment at the bottom of the tank can significantly effect efficiency because it insulates and prevents some of the heat from the burner from being transferred into the water (the heat instead is transferred to the air around the bottom of the burner compartment). Some of the links cited are referring to this effect in gas water heaters, not an electic water heater.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an electric water heater, the element(s) generally are located inside the tank some distance from the bottom of the tank. Sediment on the bottom of the tank has little effect on efficiency, in fact, the sediment may actually provide additional insulation for the small amount of heat that can be lost out of the bottom of the tank. If there is so much sediment at the bottom of the tank that it builds up high enough to cover the heating element, the element will quickly overheat and burn out because the large amount of heat it produces will not be transferred quickly to the water (it will be concentrated in the sediment around the element instead).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calcification can form on the heating element itself if the anode is not properly maintained. In this case, the minerals can act as an insulator around the element, however, the insulating effect is minimal. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_thermal_conductivities&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Limestone actually has a higher thermal conductivity than water&lt;/a&gt; itself (although water in the liquid state transfers heat more quickly because of convection). The tiny insulating effect of the calcification around the element will cause the element to operate at a slightly higher temperature. This has multiple, but insignificant effects. First, the higher temperature will cause that heat to transfer more quickly through the calcification (although not as fast as it would if the element were in direct contact with the water). Second, the higher temperature will cause more heat to conduct through the flange and the electrical supply wires connected to the element assembly. Some of that heat will eventually be lost through the wire's insulation and into the the ambient air around the wire. Third, the extra heat in the wire will slightly &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistivities_of_the_elements_%28data_page%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;increase the resistivity&lt;/a&gt; of the wire as a conductor (assuming copper or aluminum wire). That extra resistance will cause a tiny increase in heat loss from the wire. There is another very insignificant effect in that there will be a little more of a time delay in the heat from the element eventually being &quot;seen&quot; by the thermostat. This increase in the hysteresis of the system will mean that the water temperature will cycle to a very slightly higher temperature and thus there will be a very slight increase of general heat loss through the tank's insulation. (This is the same effect as setting the temperature a tiny bit higher: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_equation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The higher the water temperature, the more heat is lost through the walls of the tank.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of those effects of direct calcification on the element are insignificant compared to the amount of heat involved in heating a hot water heater, so it is safe to say that direct calcification on the electric heating element has no significant effect on efficiency. The website that claimed that there could be a 40% loss of efficiency was also selling some kind of product to prevent it, so I would question the validity of the claims from that website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22935" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T13:59:28.693" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23896" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23897" CreationDate="2014-11-26T07:46:20.897" Score="-1" ViewCount="351" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that antibiotics will become useless in the future because the diseases are gaining  resistance to them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When will this happen and how this works exactly? What if someone never used antibiotics or used them rarely, will he/she be still affected?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22973" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T15:01:19.683" Title="When will humans become immune to antibiotics?" Tags="|medical-science|antibiotic-resistance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-11-26T13:59:58.790" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23896" CreationDate="2014-11-26T07:50:57.647" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The problem isn't that humans are becoming immune to antibiotics, the problem is that the things you wish to kill are. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When those (bacteria) are immune, it doesn't matter if you have never used antibiotics: it matters that the bacteria do not care about them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with overuse of antibiotics is (in short) that you kill off all the bacteria that can't handle it and the ones that can are getting all the food and space: example is MSRA: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, so it is resistant to Methicillin (an antibiotic). Which is bad for you as it will not respond to that medicin. This will be a problem regardless of your history with the drug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the big problem: overuse of antibiotics is not as big an issue for the individual as it is for the group, and so it's hard to put a stop to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The information about this topic is easy to find, but to add some references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/consumer-health/in-depth/antibiotics/art-20045720&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/consumer-health/in-depth/antibiotics/art-20045720&lt;/a&gt; highlighting the fact that the problem is resistant bactaria, not humans&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jsmf.org/about/s/smf-norms.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.jsmf.org/about/s/smf-norms.pdf&lt;/a&gt; highlighting the issue (and cause) early on in the intrduction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/mrsa/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cdc.gov/mrsa/&lt;/a&gt; information about MRSA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastEditorUserId="83" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T15:01:19.683" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T15:01:19.683" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23898" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23902" CreationDate="2014-11-26T09:25:37.660" Score="4" ViewCount="507" Body="&lt;p&gt;This statement is attributed to Darren Wilson, the policeman who &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Michael_Brown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;shot Michael Brown&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“It is with deep sympathy that I come to you today. What happen, has happened and I can’t do anything about it. I wouldn't change anything because I felt as though I would have died if I didn't take action on that black kid. This has nothing to do with race. But in all honesty I don't think he would have attacked me like that if he was of a different background. He was very aggressive. I wanted to get those cigarillo’s back from him that he stole, but he simply wouldn’t let them go. He punched me several times and it felt like a huge black gorilla was pouncing on my face. I thought my face was going to explode. As you can tell from the photos, they are very gruesome and I wish this on no one. I am truly sorry that I killed Michael Brown. I didn’t want to shoot him so many times. I felt maybe two or even three shots would have done the job. I have a child and I wouldn’t want my child to go through what Brown went through, it was just an awful situation. But I do apologize for everything if my actions hurt anyone. This situation has made me a better man; I am just grateful that I can now watch my child grow. So please I ask all of you for peace.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this statement genuine?  In internet searching I have only found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hiphophangover.com/index.php/14-world-news1/66-darren-wilson-issues-apology-to-mike-brown&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one source&lt;/a&gt; for it and it does not seem a very legitimate source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22974" LastEditorUserId="22974" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T13:29:18.740" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T13:51:24.260" Title="Did Darren Wilson make this statement?" Tags="|politics|quotes|police|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-11-27T19:49:14.530" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23899" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23900" CreationDate="2014-11-26T10:03:40.767" Score="17" ViewCount="6609" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have met the idea in conversation on multiple occasions that human hair is dangerous to eat in moderate to large quantities as it will build up in the digestive tract causing a blockage in the digestive tract. Is there any evidence that this is the case? According to this answer on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answers.com/Q/Why_is_hair_not_digestible&quot;&gt;answers.com&lt;/a&gt; keratin is not digestible by humans but surely that isn't the same as potentially causing a blockage as keratin is just a fibrous protein structure which I would have thought would not have been on a scale to cause a blockage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22832" LastEditorUserId="22832" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T11:28:13.843" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T11:38:50.220" Title="Can eating human hair cause a blockage in the digestive tract?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23900" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23899" CreationDate="2014-11-26T11:38:50.220" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Trichobezoar, a hair ball in the proximal gastrointestinal tract, is a rare condition almost exclusively seen in young females. Human hair is resistant to digestion as well as peristalsis due to its smooth surface. Therefore it accumulates between the mucosal folds of the stomach. Over a period of time, continuous ingestion of hair leads to the impaction of hair together with mucus and food, causing the formation of a trichobezoar. [...] &lt;strong&gt;In addition, incidentally, parts of the tail can break off and migrate to the small intestine, causing intestinal obstruction&lt;/strong&gt; [...] When not recognized, the trichobezoar continues to grow in size and weight due to the continued ingestion of hair. This increases the risk of severe complications, such as gastric mucosal erosion, ulceration and even perforation of the stomach or the small intestine. In addition, intussusception, obstructive jaundice, protein-losing enteropathy, pancreatitis and even &lt;strong&gt;death&lt;/strong&gt; have been reported as complications of (unrecognized) trichobezoar in the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2856853/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gorter RR, Kneepkens CM, Mattens EC, Aronson DC, Heij HA (May 2010). &amp;quot;Management of trichobezoar: case report and literature review&amp;quot;. Pediatr. Surg. Int. 26 (5): 457–63&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14002" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T11:38:50.220" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23889" CreationDate="2014-11-26T12:35:50.413" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The still shots of single video frames, presented in the &lt;em&gt;Inquisitr&lt;/em&gt; article look ambiguous or incorrect. The month digit is unclear. It doesn't look like an eight and there is no other eight for comparison. Even the sixes (6) look different from each other in a given frame! The &quot;six oddity&quot; may be an optical illusion due to different hues of background imagery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in context of the actual 1 min 30 sec video clip, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/ferguson-police-release-surveillance-video-related-to-michael-brown-shooting/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CBS News surveillance video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, the numbering &lt;code&gt;8 09&lt;/code&gt; is very visible throughout the footage. The numbering is not unclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scene is clearly a confrontation inside a store, although it is not entirely obvious what the altercation is about. Michael Brown shoves past, then turns on and shoves again, hard, a slight, middle-aged man who seems to be a worker at the store, trying to bar the door with his arm outstretched.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4301" LastEditorUserId="4301" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T12:56:56.653" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T12:56:56.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23898" CreationDate="2014-11-26T13:41:43.530" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Darren Wilson didn't make that statement as it contains factual inaccuracies. First, regarding this,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I have a child and I wouldn’t want my child to go through what Brown&#xA;  went through, it was just an awful situation. But I do apologize for&#xA;  everything if my actions hurt anyone. This situation has made me a&#xA;  better man; I am just grateful that I can now watch my child grow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Darren Wilson has no children, neither by his first wife nor his current wife nor another woman, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2847548/Ferguson-cop-Darren-Wilson-married-fellow-police-officer-month.html&quot;&gt;For better or worse: Killer cop Darren Wilson MARRIED a fellow police officer last month&lt;/a&gt;  via &lt;em&gt;Daily Mail UK&lt;/em&gt; (25 November 2014):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wilson married his first wife Ashley Brown in Old Monroe, Missouri in&#xA;  October 2011 but divorced last year. They had no children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Next, both CNN and Black News quote an &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/michael-brown-shooting/darren-wilson-says-he-feels-remorse-michael-brown-killing-ferguson-n256511&quot;&gt;ABC News video&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wilson told ABC that he was sorry for the loss of life but that he was&#xA;  simply doing his job and following his training.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Via &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blacknews.com/news/officer-darren-wilson-abc-news-interview-conscious-clear-michael-brown101.html&quot;&gt;Black News&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Officer Darren Wilson Defends Shooting Michael Brown — Says “I’m&#xA;  Sorry… But My Conscience is Clear”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Via &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/25/us/darren-wilson-interview/&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Darren Wilson says he's sorry but his conscience is clear&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot find any source for the verbiage in the excerpt, other than &lt;em&gt;Hip Hop Hangover&lt;/em&gt;. In fact, Darren Wilson does has not issued &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; apology for the shooting at all. The &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/09/25/ferguson-police-chief-to-michael-browns-family-im-truly-sorry/&quot;&gt;Ferguson Chief of Police apologized to Michael Brown's family&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; in September 2014, but Wilson has not done so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4301" LastEditorUserId="4301" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T13:51:24.260" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T13:51:24.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23886" CreationDate="2014-11-26T17:06:01.890" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alcohol chains are highly volatile and the resulting vapors are detectable by the human olfactory sense as odor.  Ethanol is the least detectable, but still registers above chance levels according to the linked study as listed in the abstract which does not require membership/subscription to read, but for ease I will link and quote the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ABSTRACT We explored in humans concentration-detection functions for the odor of the homologous n-alcohols ethanol, 1-butanol, 1-hexanol, and 1-octanol. These functions serve to establish structure-activity relationships, and reflect the pharmacology of the olfactory sense at the behavioral level. We tested groups of 14 to 17 subjects (half of them females), averaging 31 to 35 years old. An 8-station vapor delivery device (VDD8) presented the stimulus under a three-alternative forced-choice procedure against carbon-filtered air. The VDD8 was built to meet the demands of typical human sniffs in a short-term (&amp;lt;5 s) olfactory detection task, and to accurately control odorant generation, delivery, and stability. Actual stimulus concentration was quantified by gas chromatography before and during testing. The functions obtained were log normally distributed and were accurately modeled by a sigmoid (logistic) function, both at the group and at the individual level. Sensitivity to ethanol was the lowest and to 1-octanol the highest. Functions became steeper with increasing carbon chain length. For all alcohols the concentration detected halfway between chance and perfect detection (threshold) was at the ppb (or nM) level. Females were slightly more sensitive than males. Intersubject variability across participants was between one and two orders of magnitude. The present odor thresholds were lower than many reported in the past but their relative pattern across alcohols paralleled that in our earlier data and in compilation studies. A previously described quantitative structure-activity relationship for odor potency holds promise to model thresholds that, like those obtained here, best reflect the intrinsic sensitivity of human olfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/5594519_Human_olfactory_detection_of_homologous_n-alcohols_measured_via_concentration-response_functions&quot;&gt;study: alcohol chain odor detection by humans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22982" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T17:06:01.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23904" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23909" CreationDate="2014-11-26T19:36:10.383" Score="5" ViewCount="821" Body="&lt;p&gt;The headline of this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/11/24/the-single-chart-that-shows-that-grand-juries-indict-99-99-percent-of-the-time/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Washington Post article&lt;/a&gt; advertises:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The single chart that shows that federal grand juries indict 99.99 percent of the time&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chart itself compares the number of cases that were rejected by a federal grand jury (apparently 11) versus the number of cases U.S. prosecutors pursued (apparently 162,350).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These numbers don't seem comparable, because it is my understanding that only a subset of pursued cases are handed on to a grand jury to decide if they should be prosecuted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When federal grand juries convene, do 99.99% of them indict the defendant?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22979" LastEditorUserId="22979" LastEditDate="2014-11-27T04:36:15.537" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T04:36:15.537" Title="Do 99.99% of federal grand juries indict?" Tags="|united-states|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23907" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-26T22:02:44.883" Score="7" ViewCount="412" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foehn_wind&quot;&gt;Föhn winds&lt;/a&gt; are dry, warm winds which occur in the lee of mountain ranges. According to Wikipedia föhn winds have been long associated with negative health impacts, especially in German-speaking Europe, where the term Föhnkrankheit (English: Föhn-sickness) has long been used...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Anecdotally, residents in areas of frequent föhn winds report&#xA;  illnesses ranging from migraines to psychosis. The first clinical&#xA;  review of these effects was published by the Austrian physician, Anton&#xA;  Czermak in the 19th century. A study by the&#xA;  Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München found that suicide and&#xA;  accidents increased by 10 percent during föhn winds in Central Europe.&#xA;  The causation of Föhnkrankheit (English: Föhn-sickness) is yet&#xA;  unproven. Labeling for preparations of aspirin combined with caffeine,&#xA;  codeine and the like will sometimes include Föhnkrankheit amongst the&#xA;  indications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wiki article is weakly cited, so what evidence is there to support föhn sickness, and by what physical mechanisms is it thought likely to cause ill effects, when dry and warm conditions are generally held to be beneficial (within certain limits) to health?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22986" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-11-26T23:55:53.490" LastActivityDate="2014-11-26T23:55:53.490" Title="Do Föhn winds cause migraines and mental illness?" Tags="|environmental-health|weather|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23908" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-27T00:04:02.527" Score="3" ViewCount="639" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://americanlivewire.com/2014-11-26-traditional-thanksgiving-meals-top-4500-calories-average/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Traditional Thanksgiving Meals Top 4,500 Calories On Average&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A recent study reported that the average Thanksgiving meal will consist of about 4,500 calories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The traditional Thanksgiving dinner in America can consist of a Turkey, Ham, Mashed Potatoes, Yams, Stuffing, Green Beans, Cranberry Sauce, Gravy, Pumpkin Pie, Rolls, and all kinds of other goodness. Some families will eat the traditional pumpkin pie, while others may also indulge in some pecan pie or sweet potato pie. Whatever your favorite, you may be sure to gorge yourself tomorrow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the claim, about the number of calories, true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22987" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T20:53:22.470" Title="Does the average American Thanksgiving meal contain 4,500 Calories?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23904" CreationDate="2014-11-27T01:52:11.587" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think the following imply that all charges which are a) federal b) capital charges are determined by Grand Jury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://campus.udayton.edu/~grandjur/stategj/abolish.htm&quot;&gt;Federal Grand Jury&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that federal charges for capital and infamous crimes be brought by a indictment returned by a grand jury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_juries_in_the_United_States#Grand_Jury_Clause&quot;&gt;Grand Jury Clause&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that &quot;No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger . . . .&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As or difference between &quot;capital charge&quot; and &quot;felony&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Grand_jury&quot;&gt;this reference says&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently, federal law permits the trial of misdemeanors without indictments.[6] Additionally, in trials of non-capital felonies, the prosecution may proceed without indictments if the defendants waive their Fifth Amendment right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that implies that grand juries approve all federal felony charges, not just capital charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statistics are found in Table 2.3 on page 12 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fjs10st.pdf&quot;&gt;Federal Justice Statistics 2010 -&#xA;Statistical Tables&lt;/a&gt; which says there were 30,000 times when U.S. attorneys declined to prosecute, of which 11 were because the grand jury return &quot;No true bill&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;162,350 doesn't appear in that document. It appears to have been calculated by subtracting 30,670 not prosecuted (in Table 2.3) from 193,021 suspects (top of Table 2.2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Table 4.1 shows that most although not all of these cases were felonies (thus presumably indicted by grand jury per the Fifth Amendment).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't understand why Table 4.1 lists a total of 99,921 &quot;cases commenced&quot;, instead of 162,000. Still, those numbers are the same order of magnitude: and even 11/99,921 indeed implies 99.99%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are other references saying almost the same thing as the Washington Post,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_juries_in_the_United_States#Grand_Jury_Clause&quot;&gt;Rubber stamp for the prosecution&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the American Bar Association (ABA), the grand jury has come under increasing criticism for being a mere &quot;rubber stamp&quot; for the prosecution without adequate procedural safeguards. ... at the mercy of very well trained and experienced federal prosecutors. Grand jurors often hear only the prosecutor's side of the case and are usually persuaded by them. Grand juries almost always indict people on the prosecutor's recommendation.[48] A chief judge of New York State’s highest court, Sol Wachtler, once said that grand juries were so pliable that a prosecutor could get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich.”[49] And William J. Campbell, a former federal district judge in Chicago, noted: “[T]oday, the grand jury is the total captive of the prosecutor who, if he is candid, will concede that he can indict anybody, at any time, for almost anything, before any grand jury.”[50]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-11-27T03:11:16.990" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T03:11:16.990" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23910" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-27T02:43:57.900" Score="0" ViewCount="375" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Conspiracy in Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have heard from different sources (crazy people), that certain companies suppress better technology in favor of profits. For instance car tires and light-bulbs that last 100 times longer than current ones, for the same price. Some people even believe the multiple manufacturer collaborate on this, like a cartel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Arguments For the Conspiracy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They would lose money, due to reduced replacement of; light-bulbs or tires.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Arguments Against the Conspiracy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It would be hugely profitable to sell the better, longer lasting; light-bulbs or tires, as it would instantly dominate the market and other brands would become inferior.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone heard this? or have any insight into how this started? or other examples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the way, I'm fully aware this is probably just a rumor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22988" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-11-28T18:12:12.810" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T18:12:12.810" Title="Is some better technology suppressed in favor of profits?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="20" ClosedDate="2014-11-27T19:48:11.943" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23913" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23914" CreationDate="2014-11-27T06:48:10.407" Score="154" ViewCount="57351" Body="&lt;p&gt;This image has been making the rounds on the internet, with the following caption:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is a ship-shipping ship, shipping shipping ships.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WyUEo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image collected from 9gag.com showing the ship-shipping ship, shipping shipping ships.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The obvious question being: is this statement correct or is the picture photoshopped? And yes, I spent quite a bit of time searching around, but reverse image search only turns up the same image with the same caption all over the internet for me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18335" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2015-09-29T19:30:42.637" LastActivityDate="2022-12-07T09:26:21.167" Title="Is this a ship-shipping ship, shipping shipping ships?" Tags="|transportation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23914" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23913" CreationDate="2014-11-27T07:54:30.367" Score="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears to be a picture of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Blue_Marlin&quot;&gt;MV Blue Marlin&lt;/a&gt; - in fact it is written on the middle of the stern of the ship. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blue Marlin is a semi-submersible heavy lift ship from Dockwise Shipping of the Netherlands. Designed to transport very large semi-submersible drilling rigs above the transport ship's deck, [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this information, it is not hard to find other photos of the ship making the same or similar trips, so the chance that this has been significantly photoshopped seems remote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba7eOMhtu9I&quot;&gt;YouTube - Amazing Transport Vessel - Blue Marlin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jalopnik.com/5897529/this-is-a-ship-carrying-a-ship-carrying-a-ship-carrying-a&quot;&gt;Jalopnik -  This is A Ship Carrying A Ship Carrying A Ship Carrying A...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://twistedsifter.com/2012/04/blue-marlin-giant-ship-that-ships-other-ships/&quot;&gt;Twisted Sifter -  Blue Marlin: The Giant Ship That Ships Other Ships&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-11-27T12:19:55.373" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T12:19:55.373" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23915" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31983" CreationDate="2014-11-27T09:39:25.373" Score="9" ViewCount="1061" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been &lt;a href=&quot;https://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/offbeat/a/25625002/swiss-group-wants-sausage-dogs-to-be-petted-not-eaten/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;stories lately of a petition&lt;/a&gt; presented to the Swiss government asking them to outlaw the eating of cats and dogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/30205410&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This BBC article&lt;/a&gt; includes a claim from Tomi Tomek that 3% of the Swiss population eats cat or dog meat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A petition with 16,000 signatures has been handed to the Swiss parliament, calling for the government to stop people eating &amp;quot;domestic animals&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Around three percent of the Swiss secretly eat cat or dog,&amp;quot; said Tomi Tomek, founder and president of animal protection group SOS Chats Noiraigue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cat appears on traditional Christmas menus in some areas of Switzerland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11387" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-02-23T23:37:05.247" Title="Do 3% of the Swiss eat dogs and cats?" Tags="|nutrition|dogs|switzerland|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23920" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-27T18:06:35.773" Score="22" ViewCount="4795" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, more than all transportation combined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/&quot;&gt;http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fao.org/ag/magazine/0612sp1.htm&quot;&gt;Fao.org. Spotlight: Livestock impacts on the environment.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18335" LastActivityDate="2021-08-31T22:19:11.133" Title="Is animal agriculture responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation?" Tags="|climate-change|agriculture|transportation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23921" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-27T18:08:30.103" Score="20" ViewCount="8337" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One hamburger requires 660 gallons of water to produce – the equivalent of 2 months’ worth of showers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/&quot;&gt;http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.epa.gov/healthywaters/2012/03/virtual-water-real-impacts-world-water-day-2012/&quot;&gt;Catanese, Christina. “Virtual Water, Real Impacts.” Greenversations: Official Blog of the U.S. EPA. 2012.&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.friendsoftheriver.org/site/PageServer?pagename=50ways&quot;&gt;“50 Ways to Save Your River.” Friends of the River.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18335" LastActivityDate="2017-02-01T18:06:00.070" Title="Does one hamburger take more water to produce than 2 months worth of showering?" Tags="|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23922" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-27T18:13:35.913" Score="8" ViewCount="2338" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A farm with 2,500 dairy cows produces the same amount of waste as a city of 411,000 people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/&lt;/a&gt; per &lt;a href=&quot;http://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPURL.cgi?Dockey=901V0100.txt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“Risk Assessment Evaluation for Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.” U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – Office of Research and Development. 2004.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18335" LastActivityDate="2023-01-25T03:30:23.957" Title="Do 2500 cows produce more waste than 411000 people" Tags="|cows|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18420" CreationDate="2014-11-27T18:27:11.753" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nobel laureate physicist Robert Coleman Richardson who is famous for his work on Helium-3:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In 1996, the US Congress decided to sell off the strategic reserve and the consequence was that the market was swelled with cheap helium because its price was not determined by the market. The motivation was to sell it all by 2015,&quot; Professor Richardson said. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Professor Richardson also believes that party balloons filled with helium are too cheap, and they should really cost about $100 (£75) to reflect the precious nature of the gas they contain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Once helium is released into the atmosphere in the form of party balloons or boiling helium it is lost to the Earth forever, lost to the Earth forever,&quot; he emphasised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/why-the-world-is-running-out-of-helium-2059357.html&quot;&gt;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/why-the-world-is-running-out-of-helium-2059357.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a scientist he's in a far more neutral position to put these claims forward than the Balloon Association, as they have a direct benefit from claiming it's not being wasted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And regarding to the speculation that this Helium would be less pure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For large-scale use, helium is extracted by fractional distillation from natural gas, which can contain up to 7% helium. Since helium has a lower boiling point than any other element, low temperature and high pressure are used to liquefy nearly all the other gases (mostly nitrogen and methane). The resulting crude helium gas is purified by successive exposures to lowering temperatures, in which almost all of the remaining nitrogen and other gases are precipitated out of the gaseous mixture. Activated charcoal is used as a final purification step, usually resulting in 99.995% pure Grade-A helium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium#cite_note-enc-8&quot;&gt;Wikipedia per The Encyclopedia of the Chemical Elements (to which I don't have access)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There apparently is a fairly generic process that can succesfully  purify helium (which is a lot harder with some other chemicals) and thus it's the exact same Helium that balloon sellers are using and that is used in other fields.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18335" LastEditorUserId="18335" LastEditDate="2014-11-28T00:34:38.250" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T00:34:38.250" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23910" CreationDate="2014-11-27T19:02:50.833" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is actually some precedence for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several auto manufacturers are now producing electric cars. However, the customer experience reported anecdotally but also &lt;a href=&quot;http://insideevs.com/consumer-reports-dealers-clueless-comes-plug-vehicles/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;measurably&lt;/a&gt; (meta article) by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2014/04/dealers-not-always-plugged-in-about-electric-cars-secret-shopper-study-reveals/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Consumer Reports&lt;/a&gt; (original statistics) has shown that some dealerships are less than enthusiastic about actually &lt;em&gt;selling&lt;/em&gt; them. And more to the point, they're certainly not going to go out of their way to steer you towards them. The Consumer Reports study was made by asking the dealerships straight up that the secret shopper wanted their electric model, just to see which ones would go out of their way to actively discourage or even prevent the customer from buying one. They weren't going into the shops and asking for a hatchback that was good on gas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, there are two reasons for this. The first is that in spite of their higher sticker prices, commission is actually considerably lower. This is in no small part because the manufacturers are trying to reduce their cost to compete with similar gas models. The second is that the dealerships' business model relies less on car sales and far more on selling maintenance. Unfortunately for the dealerships though, EV maintenance is little more than tire rotation and replacing windshield washer fluid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tesla &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-on-teslas-auto-dealer-model-2014-3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;had already forseen this problem&lt;/a&gt; (Elon Musk quote: &quot;Every other electric car maker that went that route went out of business.&quot;), and ditched that sales model entirely. They have non-commissioned salespeople, and don't charge a premium for service. It's one of the reasons that Tesla sales have been exceeding Nissan Leaf sales, in spite of the fact that the base Model S is over twice as expensive. Consumer polls &lt;a href=&quot;http://insideevs.com/plug-vehicle-buyers-typically-satisfied-dealership-experience-tesla-exception-rule/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;have shown&lt;/a&gt; that the customer experience at Tesla stores has been overwhelmingly more positive than other EV purchases at dealerships. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well that's all well and good for electric cars, but what about light bulbs and tires and other consumer goods that need to be replaced on a regular basis, but probably shouldn't be?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be honest, that's probably an issue with cost. Washing machines for example, have gotten increasingly unreliable &lt;em&gt;overall&lt;/em&gt; for decades. However, the average cost of them has likewise gone down. The buying public has a tendency towards buying big ticket items that are cheaper because that's the one they can afford at the time, as opposed to the one that's three times the cost but will last ten times as long. Those washing machines that last a lifetime are still being sold, but they come with a price tag that's much higher, and sales of those models aren't that great. Or look at shoes (sneakers and runners in particular), and the way pretty much everyone &quot;knows&quot; that you have to replace them at least once a year. This didn't used to be the case at all, and shoe repair shops used to flourish by just replacing the soles of shoes. But a pair of properly repairable shoes isn't cheap, nor easy to come by. The fact of the matter is that in the marketplace, cheaper almost always wins. Expensive and more reliable can make a profit sometimes too, but the road is littered with companies that were outsold by brands that were cheaper and high volume. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3458" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T19:02:50.833" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23920" CreationDate="2014-11-27T19:39:32.270" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;  In fact, some sources calculate that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) figure is actually an &lt;em&gt;underestimate&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A frequently cited study on the topic is Steinfeld et al. (2006).  This is the FAO study already mention in the question.  It has &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?cites=1259841689011590744&amp;amp;as_sdt=2005&amp;amp;sciodt=0,5&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5600 citations on Google Scholar&lt;/a&gt;, although &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com/results/citedbyresults.url?sort=plf-f&amp;amp;cite=2-s2.0-45749087307&amp;amp;refeid=2-s2.0-40249097758&amp;amp;src=s&amp;amp;imp=t&amp;amp;sid=3F3B985BD643695FF7CA535615818E4C.aXczxbyuHHiXgaIW6Ho7g%3a490&amp;amp;sot=cite&amp;amp;sdt=a&amp;amp;sl=0&amp;amp;origin=reflist&amp;amp;refstat=dummy&amp;amp;txGid=3F3B985BD643695FF7CA535615818E4C.aXczxbyuHHiXgaIW6Ho7g%3a49&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;only 40 in the more conservative Scopus&lt;/a&gt;.  I am not sure if it is peer-reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To judge its quality, we could look at what other scientific studies have to say about it.  To pick one, here it is summarised by Koneswaran et al. (2008):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although much evidence has been amassed on the negative impacts of animal agricultural production on environmental integrity, community sustainability, public health, and animal welfare, the global impacts of this sector have remained largely underestimated and underappreciated. In a recent review of the relevant data, Steinfeld et al. (2006) calculated the sector’s contributions to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and determined them to be so significant that—measured in carbon dioxide equivalent—the emissions from the animal agricultural sector surpass those of the transportation sector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FAO report is also cited by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://report.mitigation2014.org/drafts/final-draft-postplenary/ipcc_wg3_ar5_final-draft_postplenary_chapter11.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IPCC AR WG3&lt;/a&gt; report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent study by Goodland and Anhang (not peer reviewed, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scopus.com/results/citedbyresults.url?sort=plf-f&amp;amp;cite=2-s2.0-78751680037&amp;amp;refeid=2-s2.0-78751684838&amp;amp;src=s&amp;amp;imp=t&amp;amp;sid=3F3B985BD643695FF7CA535615818E4C.aXczxbyuHHiXgaIW6Ho7g%3a910&amp;amp;sot=cite&amp;amp;sdt=a&amp;amp;sl=0&amp;amp;origin=reflist&amp;amp;refstat=dummy&amp;amp;txGid=3F3B985BD643695FF7CA535615818E4C.aXczxbyuHHiXgaIW6Ho7g%3a91&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cited by at least 19 Scopus-indexed studies&lt;/a&gt;) claims that the FAO study actually &lt;em&gt;underestimates&lt;/em&gt; livestock's contribution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A widely cited 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Livestock's Long Shadow, estimates that 18 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions are attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs, and poultry. But recent analysis by Goodland and Anhang finds that livestock and their byproducts actually account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/study-claims-meat-creates-half-of-all-greenhouse-gases-1812909.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article in The Independent&lt;/a&gt; which discusses the Goodland and Anhang paper.  A further study is by Garnett (2011) (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are no studies that quantify GHG emissions arising from the entire global food chain, there have been estimates of GHGs attributable to global agricultural production. &lt;strong&gt;The IPCC estimates agriculture’s direct impacts to stand at about 10–12% of global emissions&lt;/strong&gt; (5100–6100 MTCO2 eq); &lt;strong&gt;this excludes emissions resulting from fuel use, fertiliser production and agriculturally induced land use change&lt;/strong&gt; (Smith et al., 2007).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The figure rises to up to 30% when additional emissions from fuel use, fertiliser production and agriculturally induced land use change are included&lt;/strong&gt;; land use change alone accounts for 6–17% (Bellarby et al., 2008).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One regional analysis for Europe finds that food accounts for 31% of the EU-25’s total GHG impacts&lt;/strong&gt;, with a further 9% arising from the hotel and restaurants sector (European Commission, 2006). At the national level, developed country studies find food consumption contributes between 15% and 28% to overall national emissions (Garnett, 2008, Defra, 2009, Audsley et al., 2010, Swedish Environment Protection Agency, 2010, Regional Activity Centre for Cleaner Production, 2008, Nieberg, 2009, Kim and Neff, 2009 and Consuming Australia, 2007). Fig. 2 shows the breakdown of emissions at each stage in the supply chain for the UK food system. &lt;strong&gt;One UK study (Audsley et al., 2010) additionally quantifies emissions associated with food consumption-induced land use change and finds that this increases the food chain’s overall GHG contribution by 66%&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the Garnett paper considers both animal and non-animal agriculture, so these figures cannot be directly compared.  However, they go on to state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since livestock utilise around 80% of the world’s agricultural land (FAO, 2009) &lt;strong&gt;and generate the bulk of the sector’s GHGs&lt;/strong&gt;, there is a perception that efforts to raise livestock yields can generate both environmental and commercial benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary: exact methodologies differ and it can be difficult to compare figures, a literature survey did not show significant disagreement with the FAO study.  Do trucks with animals count as animal agriculture?  Do trucks with meat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies that I found that disagreed rather considered that the FAO &lt;em&gt;underestimated&lt;/em&gt; animal-agriculture-induced emissions, than that they overestimated it.  So: &lt;strong&gt;Yes, animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than transportation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Steinfeld H, Gerber P, Wassenaar T, Castel V, Rosales M, de Haan C. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fao.org/publications/card/en/c/9655af93-7f88-58fc-84e8-d70a9a4d8bec/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Koneswaran, G., &amp;amp; Nierenberg, D. (2008). Global Farm Animal Production and Global Warming: Impacting and Mitigating Climate Change. Environmental Health Perspectives, 116(5), 578–582. &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.11034&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1289/ehp.11034&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang&lt;/em&gt;. Livestock and Climate Change, World Watch Magazine, November/December, Volume 22, No. 6. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldwatch.org/files/pdf/Livestock%20and%20Climate%20Change.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Online PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Tera Garnett&lt;/em&gt;. Where are the best opportunities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the food system (including the food chain)?  In: Food Policy, Volume 36, Supplement 1, January 2011, Pages S23–S32, &lt;a href=&quot;https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2010.10.010&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi:10.1016/j.foodpol.2010.10.010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. Note that when people say &lt;em&gt;emissions&lt;/em&gt;, they often mean &lt;em&gt;net emissions&lt;/em&gt;, i.e. total sources minus total sinks.  As the two are constantly in flux, total emission as such is not very meaningful (and quite hard to determine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="38403" LastEditDate="2021-08-31T22:19:11.133" LastActivityDate="2021-08-31T22:19:11.133" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23926" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23922" CreationDate="2014-11-27T20:58:59.937" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Searching the document shows that the actual numbers put forth by EPA are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Animal farms produce as much &lt;strong&gt;manure&lt;/strong&gt; as small and medium-size cities. A farm with 2500 dairy cattle is similar in waste load to a city of 411,000 people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote on cowspiracy.com takes this entirely out of context and talks about generic waste instead of specifically about manure. Additionally this difference is not surprising as even a Turkey produces 13x as much manure per year as a human. What biological difference causes this huge difference I do not however know.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18335" LastActivityDate="2014-11-27T20:58:59.937" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23862" CreationDate="2014-11-28T02:10:03.377" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are 3 claims here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mostly True&lt;/strong&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/research/guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Archives&lt;/a&gt; notes that Proclamations are used to to communicate special observances and commemorative dates while Executive Orders manage the operations of government. Although the Emancipation Proclamation (EP) doesn't appear on. Lincoln's list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/executive_orders.php?year=1862&amp;amp;Submit=DISPLAY&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;presidential executive orders&lt;/a&gt;, people use the terms interchangeably.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Executive Orders&lt;/strong&gt; are signed documents, numbered consecutively, through which the President of the United States manages the operations of the Federal Government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Proclamations&lt;/strong&gt; are signed documents, numbered consecutively, through which the President of the United States communicates information on holidays, commemorations, special observances, and trade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The Emancipation Proclamation bypassed Congress.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;False.&lt;/strong&gt; The Emancipation Proclamation was enforcing the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Confiscation_Act#SEC._9.&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Second Confiscation Act&lt;/a&gt; passed by congress in July 17, 1862. Lincoln specifically refers to the act in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/american_originals_iv/sections/transcript_preliminary_emancipation.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation&lt;/a&gt;. The EP only applied to the states the Union was at war with. This was within his power as Commander-in-Chief (CiC) of the armed forces to execute the law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Sec.9. And be it further enacted, That all slaves of persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the government of the United States, or who shall in any way give aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking refuge within the lines of the army; and all slaves captured from such persons or deserted by them and coming under the control of the government of the United States; &lt;strong&gt;and all slaves of such persons found on (or) being within any place occupied by rebel forces and afterwards occupied by the forces of the United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude and not again held as slaves.&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lincoln wasn't bypassing Congress. In fact, because &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/charters_of_freedom_11.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lincoln feared&lt;/a&gt; that after the war, states could reinstate slavery, that only a fraction of all the slaves were freed, he promoted passage of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;13th Amendment&lt;/a&gt; that would abolish slavery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;The Emancipation Proclamation declared 3 million slaves free.&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Half true&lt;/strong&gt;. The Emancipation Proclamation only applied to states in rebellion. This 3 million number comes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1860 census&lt;/a&gt;, and is the highest possible number of slaves freed by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured_documents/emancipation_proclamation/transcript.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Emancipation Proclamation&lt;/a&gt;. If you only include the states specified as in rebellion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And exclude the states the Union controlled (Kentucky, Maryland, Tennessee, Missouri, Delaware, and parts of Louisiana/Virgina), the 3.9 million slaves reduces the maximum to the range of 2.4 million-3.2 million. A clearer image of this &lt;a href=&quot;http://cdn.loc.gov/service/gmd/gmd386/g3861/g3861e/cw0013200.jp2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;slave population density map&lt;/a&gt; might make the maximum number of slaves the Emancipation Proclamation &lt;strong&gt;could&lt;/strong&gt; apply to more precise. While Lincoln did &lt;strong&gt;declare&lt;/strong&gt; these slaves free, they were under the control of the Confederate States of America and not subject to his declaration &lt;strong&gt;until&lt;/strong&gt; Union troops conquered territory (see SEC 9).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The official number actually freed isn't known. The autobiography by James McPherson, [Marching Toward Freedom: The Negro in the Civil War, 1861-1865] puts the number at around half a million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Thousands of slaves in areas near the Northern army camps left their plantations and went over to the Yankees the first chance they had. More than half a million of the 3,500,000 slaves in the Confederacy came into Union lines and gained freedom during the war.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/01/a-mighty-act-the-150th-anniversary-of-the-emancipation-proclamation.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Harold Holzor&lt;/a&gt; came up with the same estimate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the end, precisely how many enslaved people the document alone actually freed remains unanswerable. By reliable estimates, the number may approach 500,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lincoln scholar &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2001-03-04/topic/0103030122_1_emancipation-proclamation-abraham-lincoln-slavery&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mark Neely Jr.&lt;/a&gt; contends that the Proclamation freed 200,000:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abraham Lincoln and his Secretary of State William Seward maintained that the Emancipation Proclamation freed at least 200,000 slaves by February 1865.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T02:16:18.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23929" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-28T05:16:31.473" Score="10" ViewCount="1685" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the November 26 issue of &lt;em&gt;Mishpacha Magazine&lt;/em&gt;, there was an interview with Joseph Wippl (a former CIA agent, now a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bu.edu/experts/profiles/joseph-wippl/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Professor at Boston University&lt;/a&gt;) in which he said that only 40 countries have real rule of law, and the rest don’t have an independent judiciary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The magazine &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pull_quote&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pull quote&lt;/a&gt; read,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are only about 40 countries in the world that function under the rule of law. The remainder do not even have an independent judiciary.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &amp;mdash; Prof. Joseph Wippl&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a photo of the quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dG5k3m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Wippl quote&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Unfortunately I don’t have an internet source. It was in a print interview with him which I can’t find online.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not asking about the veracity of the quote (I accept that Wippl actually said it). I want to know whether what he said is accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-01T23:21:41.860" LastActivityDate="2014-12-04T13:25:10.013" Title="Do only 40 countries have rule of law?" Tags="|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23931" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23932" CreationDate="2014-11-28T10:41:43.667" Score="11" ViewCount="1029" Body="&lt;p&gt;To my knowledge wife sales on Wednesbury market were a bit of a family legend my great-grandfather used to tell. However, it seems to be more widely spread than that. I have found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.peterleeson.com/Wife_Sales.pdf&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; which tries to explain the reasons for wife sales and indeed indicates that they were conducted on Wednesbury market?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a spoof article (it doesn't seem to be from an academic journal)? Are wife sales (and in particular wife sales on Wednesbruy market) a myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22832" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T11:46:48.333" Title="Did men sell their wives on Wednesbury market?" Tags="|history|marriage|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23931" CreationDate="2014-11-28T11:46:48.333" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;They are not a myth, no.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Wife selling in England was a way of ending an unsatisfactory marriage&#xA;  by mutual agreement that probably began in the late 17th century, when&#xA;  divorce was a practical impossibility for all but the very wealthiest.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_selling_(English_custom)&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_selling_(English_custom)&lt;/a&gt; -(I know, wikipedia isn't 100%)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was simply due to women had no real rights when married, and marriage wasn't registered, so men could just &quot;pass on&quot; the woman and the marriage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source that list a series of claimed evens of such sales: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ontalink.com/history/18th_century/regions/British/wife_selling.html&quot;&gt;http://www.ontalink.com/history/18th_century/regions/British/wife_selling.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dated 1720 from an old magazine known as &quot;Lloyd's,&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;We were lately&#xA;  witnesses of a case of wife-selling in an old town in South&#xA;  Staffordshire. It appeared that the husband had set his affections on&#xA;  another woman, and his wife hearing of it, had very justly showed&#xA;  their displeasure in a variety of ways; whereupon the husband, who was&#xA;  a collier, took her to the marketplace, and sold her to the highest&#xA;  bidder for five shillings. There was much excitement in the crowd&#xA;  which assembled to witness the act, and the affair ended with a good&#xA;  deal of drinking at the expense of the husband and the purchaser.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While no clear indication of sales happening in Wednesbury market, the fact it was supposedly a marked during the time these wife sales are said to happen, indicates it is quite possible. While I can't find exact moment of when the area became an actual market, there is a reference to a time indicating things started to happen:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In 1315, coal pits were first recorded, which led to an increase in&#xA;  the number of jobs. Nail making was also in progress during these&#xA;  times.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wednesbury&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wednesbury&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22976" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T11:46:48.333" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23933" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23935" CreationDate="2014-11-28T12:07:57.647" Score="14" ViewCount="1456" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following claim was made in &lt;a href=&quot;http://citizengo.org/en/13831-condemn-neonatal-infanticide&quot;&gt;a petition&lt;/a&gt; that made me sceptical:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every year, children are born alive at the time of the abortion procedure after the 20th week of pregnancy in Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the source page does not cite any trustworthy references, can anyone prove or disprove  it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content-nw/full/117/1/22/T1&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; cited in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_viability#Limit_of_viability&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; (but blocked by a paywall), embryos reach 50% chance of survival at the 24th week, assuming proper care is available. In this light, I think it is quite an extraordinary claim that it would be a regular occurrence for an infant to survive a procedure that was designed to end its life, four weeks before that date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19515" LastEditorUserId="46077" LastEditDate="2018-10-12T11:47:40.153" LastActivityDate="2018-10-14T18:23:38.793" Title="Do abortion procedures ever result in live births?" Tags="|abortion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23934" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23929" CreationDate="2014-11-28T15:28:23.440" Score="12" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Rule of law&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking for independent evidence (i.e. other than the claim referenced in the OP), there are the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Worldwide Governance Indicators&lt;/a&gt;&quot; from the World Bank, which include a measure of &quot;rule of law&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/rl.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rule of Law&lt;/a&gt; PDF is an overview of how they measure &quot;rule of law&quot;. It includes not only &quot;independent judiciary&quot; but many dozens of other measures including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Extent of crime&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speed of justice&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Compensation for state expropriation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Intellectual property rights&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The public's trust in the system&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tax evasion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether there's a &quot;parallel economy&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Whether court orders are enforced&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;etc. etc. etc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to be a sliding scale (not a boolean measure) from more to less rule of law. You can't easily say, &quot;these have it and these don't&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx?fileName=wgidataset.xlsx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dataset/spreadsheet shows&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The usual suspects i.e. the Scandinavian countries are at the top of the list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The usual suspect i.e. Somalia at the bottom of the list&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I sort all countries in the spreadsheet by their 2013 &quot;Rank&quot; score, then the following are in the top 50:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NORWAY&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SWEDEN&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;FINLAND&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;DENMARK&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NEW ZEALAND&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AUSTRIA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NETHERLANDS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SWITZERLAND&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LUXEMBOURG&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AUSTRALIA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SINGAPORE&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CANADA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;IRELAND&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GREENLAND&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JERSEY, CHANNEL ISLANDS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UNITED KINGDOM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ICELAND&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GERMANY&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;LIECHTENSTEIN&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;HONG KONG SAR, CHINA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;UNITED STATES&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ANDORRA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;JAPAN&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BELGIUM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ANGUILLA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;FRANCE&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CHILE&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MALTA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ARUBA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ESTONIA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;AMERICAN SAMOA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BERMUDA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;GUAM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;FRENCH GUIANA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;TAIWAN, CHINA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;QATAR&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PORTUGAL&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CZECH REPUBLIC&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;BARBADOS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CYPRUS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SPAIN&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SLOVENIA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ISRAEL&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MONACO&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;SAN MARINO&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;KOREA, REP.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MAURITIUS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PALAU&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;CAYMAN ISLANDS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;MARTINIQUE&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Countries that are not in the top 50 include&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Greece (78)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Italy (81)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;India (101)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;China (128)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Russian Federation (160)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Judicial independence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the subject of (specifically) judicial independence instead of (more generally) rule of law:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The UN &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/IndependenceJudiciary.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary&lt;/a&gt; says that it was,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adopted by the Seventh United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders held at Milan from 26 August to &#xA;  6 September 1985 and endorsed by General Assembly resolutions 40/32 of 29 November 1985 and 40/146 of 13 December 1985&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that implies that the General Assembly at least pays lip service to an &quot;independent judiciary&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civil_and_Political_Rights&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights&lt;/a&gt; signed by virtually every country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislationline.org/documents/action/popup/id/7736&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Article 14 of this&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All persons shall be equal before the courts and tribunals. In the determination of any criminal charge against him, or of his rights and obligations in a suit at law, everyone shall be entitled to a fair and public hearing by a competent, &lt;strong&gt;independent and impartial tribunal established by law&lt;/strong&gt;. The press and the public may be excluded from all or part of a trial for reasons of morals, public order (ordre public) or national security in a democratic society, or when the interest of the private lives of the parties so requires, or to the extent strictly necessary in the opinion of the court in special circumstances where publicity would prejudice the interests of justice; but any judgement rendered in a criminal case or in a suit at law shall be made public except where the interest of juvenile persons otherwise requires or the proceedings concern matrimonial disputes or the guardianship of children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the &lt;em&gt;prima facie&lt;/em&gt; evidence is that virtually all countries have (or claim to have, or agree to have) an independent judiciary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The World Bank's Governance Indicators referenced above use the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIRI_Human_Rights_Data_Project&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cingranelli Richards Human Rights Database and Political Terror Scale&lt;/a&gt; (CIRI) for its measure of judicial independence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CIRI measures judicial independence on a scale of from 0 to 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;0= 50+ violations (least respect for human right)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1= 1-49 violations (some respect for human right)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;2= 0 violations (full respect for human right)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Data was collected from 1981-2011 for the respective countries and each unit is referred to as a &quot;country-year&quot;. A country-year is a single snapshot of space and time for the given country. Other variables, such as the political rights indicators, are scored based on respect for the human right by the same scale, with 0 indicating the least respect and 2 the most respect. The CIRI database uses the annual country reports from the US State Department and Amnesty International as its primary sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I sort that database then the following 65 countries are rated &quot;2&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Andorra&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Antigua and Barbuda&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Australia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Austria&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Barbados&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Belgium&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Belize&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bhutan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Botswana&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Canada&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cape Verde&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chile&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Croatia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cyprus&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Czech Republic&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Denmark&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dominica&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Estonia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Finland&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;France&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Germany&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grenada&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hungary&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iceland&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ireland&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Israel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Japan&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kiribati&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Korea, Republic of&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lesotho&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Liechtenstein&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lithuania&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Luxembourg&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Malawi&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Malta&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Marshall Islands&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mauritius&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Micronesia, Federated States of&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monaco&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Namibia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nauru&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Netherlands&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;New Zealand&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Norway&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Palau&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Papua New Guinea&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Poland&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Portugal&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Saint Kitts and Nevis&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Saint Lucia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Saint Vincent and the Grenadines&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Samoa&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;San Marino&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Slovenia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Solomon Islands&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;South Africa&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Suriname&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sweden&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Switzerland&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Trinidad and Tobago&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tuvalu&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;United Kingdom&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;United States of America&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vanuatu&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I conclude that the &quot;only 40&quot; claimed in the OP is untrue, or uses who-knows-what standard of measurement, or ignores smaller countries from its count, as well as not counting countries like the Bahamas, Greece, Italy, Singapore, and Taiwan, which for whatever reason only scored a &quot;1&quot; (i.e. neither &quot;2&quot; nor &quot;0) on the CIRI report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="4396" LastEditDate="2014-12-04T13:25:10.013" LastActivityDate="2014-12-04T13:25:10.013" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23933" CreationDate="2014-11-28T16:14:34.797" Score="22" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Evidence from the USA says it can happen&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_termination_of_pregnancy#Methods&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;implies that live birth can happen unless the fetus is deliberately killed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the USA, fetal demise is usually induced by ultrasound-guided intracardiac injection of hypertonic saline, digoxin, or some other heart-stopping agent before the beginning of any late-term abortion procedure.[25] The possibility of unsuccessful feticide—resulting in birth of a live infant—is a malpractice concern.[26][27]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 2002 the USA signed a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born-Alive_Infants_Protection_Act&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Born-Alive Infants Protection Act&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Born Alive&quot; is defined as the complete expulsion of an infant at any stage of development that has a heartbeat, pulsation of the umbilical cord, breath, or voluntary muscle movement, no matter if the umbilical cord has been cut or if the expulsion of the infant was natural, induced labor, cesarean section, or induced abortion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Death following live birth caused by abortion is given the ICD-10 underlying cause description code of P96.4; data are identified as either fetus or newborn. Between 1999 and 2013, in the U.S., &lt;a href=&quot;http://wonder.cdc.gov/ucd-icd10.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the CDC recorded 531 such deaths for newborns&lt;/a&gt;, approximately &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5808a1.htm?s_cid=ss5808a1_e&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;4 per 100,000 abortions&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Induced labour without explicit feticide is sometimes practiced in Europe&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6235557.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Europe's abortion rules&lt;/a&gt; says that &quot;12 weeks&quot; is the usual limit for most countries, but up to 24 weeks in the United Kingdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Abortion/Pages/How-is-it-performed.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How an abortion is carried out&lt;/a&gt; (by the NHS in the UK) says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Late abortion (20-24 weeks)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are two options for a late abortion carried out at 20-24 weeks.&#xA;  Both require an overnight stay in hospital and are described below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Surgical two-stage abortion – stage one stops the heartbeat of the foetus and softens the cervix. Stage two is carried out the following&#xA;  day and involves removing the foetus and surrounding tissue. Both&#xA;  stages are carried out under general anaesthetic.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Medically induced abortion – this is similar to a late natural miscarriage and involves the medicine, prostaglandin, being injected&#xA;  into your womb, making it contract strongly (as in labour).&#xA;  Contractions can last six to 12 hours. You will remain awake during&#xA;  the procedure and will be given medicines to help control the pain if&#xA;  needed. D&amp;amp;E may then be used to ensure the womb is completely empty.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The latter procedure doesn't do anything to specifically kill the fetus, therefore it can result in &quot;live birth&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At 20 weeks the fetus weighs 10 oz (300 g) and is 7&quot; (18 cm) long.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baby2see.com/development/week20.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Week Twenty: The halfway point&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Your baby now weighes about 11 ounces and at roughly 7 inches long they are filling up more and more of the womb. Though still small and fragile, the baby is growing rapidly and could possibly survive if born at this stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_alive_rule#United_Kingdom&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in the UK&lt;/a&gt; the fetus is not considered a separate person until after it is born.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Law Lords concurred that a fetus, although protected by the law in a number of ways, is legally not a separate person from its mother in English law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The BBC reports that live births happen in practice&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2007 article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6574873.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;One in 30 aborted foetuses lives&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One in 30 foetuses aborted for medical reasons is born alive, a 10-year study at 20 UK hospitals has found.&#xA;  Most of these babies with disabilities were born between 20 and 24 weeks of pregnancy and all lived for no more than a few hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article continues,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Safeguards&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Usually, the foetus will not survive the procedure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said it had&#xA;  &quot;very strong&quot; guidelines on terminations of pregnancy after 22 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the guidelines, after 22 weeks and beyond, if there are&#xA;  signs of major foetal abnormality and the patient has requested an&#xA;  abortion, the patient should be offered feticide, where a lethal&#xA;  injection is administered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The patient has every right to refuse this course of action. If the&#xA;  baby is born alive, palliative care should be provided till the baby&#xA;  dies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Theoretically, such an event could result in a doctor being accused of&#xA;  murder if a &quot;deliberate act&quot; - that is, legal abortion - were to be&#xA;  followed by a live birth and the subsequent death of the child because&#xA;  of immaturity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article concludes,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It would be wrong to imply from this retrospective study, that if&#xA;  women undergo a medical induction abortion at under 24 weeks'&#xA;  gestation for reasons aside from foetal abnormality, that this is at&#xA;  all likely to result in a live birth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Doctors working in abortion care have for some years now followed the&#xA;  Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologist's guidance, that the&#xA;  foetal heart is stopped before a medical induction abortion around 22&#xA;  weeks' gestation.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She added: &quot;To end a wanted pregnancy because of severe foetal&#xA;  impairment is, understandably, a very difficult choice for women and&#xA;  couples.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A spokeswoman from the charity Antenatal results and Choices said:&#xA;  &quot;Feticide is technically demanding and stressful for parents and&#xA;  professionals alike.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Enforcing the procedure in cases where death is the inevitable&#xA;  outcome either as a means to reduce apparent perinatal mortality&#xA;  figures or to satisfy those who do not support the legal availability&#xA;  of abortion will not benefit anyone.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="46077" LastEditDate="2018-10-14T18:23:38.793" LastActivityDate="2018-10-14T18:23:38.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23921" CreationDate="2014-11-28T18:01:58.013" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm going to assume a quarter pound (113 g) burger with no cheese or other added feature. This being the case the bread can be neglected as the water-cost of beef is going to dominate. I'm also assuming that the unit of volume being used is the American gallon and not the imperial gallon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is definitely going to depend upon how you raise the livestock as grass-feeding requires much less water than grain-feeding. That being said there is research out there on this. Estimates vary quite widely as you might expect given the in-built problem of how the cattle are farmed. The results per burger (to the nearest whole number): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;111 gallons (418 litre)[1]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;480 gallons (1816 litres)[2] &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;405 gallons (1534 litres)[3] &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;621 gallons (2352 litres)[4]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;616 gallons (2331 litre)[5]. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] is a global average estimate, [1], [3] and [5] are based on American data and [4] is based on Japanese data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, although I'm not sure where the number 660 gallons (~2500 litre) is coming from, it appears to be in a believable range. Taking an average of these numbers gives you 447 gallons (1690 litres). The vegan sites' estimate is close to the upper values of this group of studies. Maybe a bit high.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Waterwise[6] (a UK-based NGO dedicated to water efficiency and conservation) a normal shower uses 2.05 American gallons/minute (7.75 litres/minute) and a power shower uses 4.49 American gallons/minute (17 litres/minute). Using their 660 gallons estimate, in an average month (30.42 days) of once daily showering, if you use a power shower and you have a shower for less than 4.83 minutes, you use less water than when you eat a hamburger. If you use a normal shower you can enjoy rather longer daily ablutions; anything less than 10.58 minutes will mean you have used less water than eating a hamburger. For 2 months half those times. I suppose it is plausible to have a daily 5 minutes with a normal shower. That would mean using less water use in 2 months of showering than in eating a hamburger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Beckett, J. L., and J. W. Oltjen. (1993) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalofanimalscience.org/content/71/4/818.full.pdf&quot;&gt;'Estimation of the water requirement for beef production in the United States.'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The model estimates 3,682 L of developed &#xA;  water per kilogram of boneless meat for beef cattle &#xA;  production in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Chapagain, A.K. and A.Y. Hoekstra (2003) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Report13.pdf&quot;&gt;‘Virtual water trade: A quantification of virtual water flows between nations in relation to international trade of livestock and livestock products’&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Table 4.4 says the world average of Virtual water content  is 15206 m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&#xA;/ton) for &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bovine meat and meat offal not else specified, &#xA;  excluding livers, prepared or preserved &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] Zimmer, D. and Renault, D. (2003) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Report12.pdf&quot;&gt;‘Virtual water in food production and global trade: Review of methodological issues and preliminary results’&lt;/a&gt; (section 5)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[4] Oki, T.; Sato, M.; Kawamura, A.; Miyake, M.; Kanae, S., and Musiake, K. (2003) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.waterfootprint.org/Reports/Report12.pdf&quot;&gt;'Virtual water trade to Japan and in the world'&lt;/a&gt; (section 15): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[5] Kreith, M. (1991) &lt;a href=&quot;http://irrisoft.org/cms/fileadmin/content/irrig/general/kreith_1991_water_inputs_in_ca_food_production-excerpt.pdf&quot;&gt;'Water inputs in California food production'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[6] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.waterwise.org.uk/news.php/11/showers-vs.-baths-facts-figures-and-misconceptions&quot;&gt;Water Wise&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22832" LastEditorUserId="22832" LastEditDate="2014-12-02T18:20:32.940" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T18:20:32.940" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23938" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-28T20:13:04.333" Score="5" ViewCount="550" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Chapter 3 of Rachel Carson's seminal book, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Silent Spring&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (1962):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FOR THE FIRST TIME in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death. In the less than two decades of their use, the synthetic pesticides have been so thoroughly distributed throughout the animate and inanimate world that they occur virtually everywhere. They have been recovered from most of the major river systems and even from streams of groundwater flowing unseen through the earth. Residues of these chemicals linger in soil to which they may have been applied a dozen years before. They have entered and lodged in the bodies of fish, birds, reptiles, and domestic and wild animals &lt;strong&gt;so universally that scientists carrying on animal experiments find it almost impossible to locate subjects free from such contamination.&lt;/strong&gt; They have been found in fish in remote mountain lakes, in earthworms burrowing in soil, in the eggs of birds—and in man himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is it almost impossible for scientists to find animals that are not contaminated by chemicals? &lt;strong&gt;(By chemicals, Carson generally means insecticides and pesticides.)&lt;/strong&gt; Has the natural ecological cycle spread synthetic chemicals to all corners of the planet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carson also goes on to say that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They occur in the mother’s milk&lt;/strong&gt;, and probably in the tissues of the unborn child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to suggest that breast milk is also now similarly contaminated? In most women around the world?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2014-12-02T20:29:08.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T20:29:08.730" Title="Is it almost impossible to find animals that are not contaminated by chemicals?" Tags="|biology|environmental-health|chemistry|ecology|pollution|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23940" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23938" CreationDate="2014-11-28T23:55:35.903" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;You are presenting two claims in your question, please split it up appropriately. I will hereby address your second claim. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969798000084&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Research from 1986 to 1997&lt;/a&gt; indeed confirms that some pesticides and insecticides can indeed be found in breast milk:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Between summer 1995 and summer 1997 the median PCB concentration level was 0.502 mg/kg, the median DDT level 0.202 mg/kg, the median HCB level 0.065 mg/kg and the median β-HCH level 0.036 mg/kg, all values expressed on a fat basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now technically some of these chemicals can be used for different things then pesticides and insecticides as well, that's their most common usage and would explain their presence in breast milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not going to make a judgement call how bad these (relatively small) amounts realistically are, though &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Higher HCB and β-HCH concentration levels were associated with lower birth weights of female infants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the good news is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The median concentration levels decreased by 80–90% during the past 12 years and the median PCB levels by 60%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cursory browsing through &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=pesicides%20breast%20milk&amp;amp;btnG=&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=0%2C5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;other research&lt;/a&gt; seems to confirm the presence of these chemicals in breast milk as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18335" LastActivityDate="2014-11-28T23:55:35.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23942" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23938" CreationDate="2014-11-29T01:28:19.703" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring&quot;&gt;Wikipedia says&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Silent Spring&lt;/em&gt; was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, but it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, led to a nationwide ban on DDT for agricultural uses,[2] and inspired an environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.[3][4]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Has the natural ecological cycle spread synthetic chemicals to all corners of the planet?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Insects are low on the food chain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you get articles like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/f70-172#.VHkfs9LF9Zk&quot;&gt;Significance of the Food Chain in DDT Accumulation by Fish&lt;/a&gt; which say,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brook trout accumulated approximately 10 times more of the available DDT from the food than directly from the water. Since, in aquatic environments, the concentration of DDT is usually much higher in the food chain than in the water, we suggest that the food chain is the major source of DDT for fish in natural waters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/etc.5620160315/abstract;jsessionid=85E9FE73058EE28ADB9E992C643F2D5F.f01t01?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot;&gt;PCBS, DDE, DDT, and TCDD-EQ in two species of albatross on Sand Island, Midway Atoll, North Pacific Ocean&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Concentrations of total polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and organochlorine insecticides, including the 1 1,1-trichloro-2, 2′-bis-p-chlorophenyl-ethane (DDT) complex, were measured in the plasma of chicks and adults and in eggs of Laysan albatrosses (Diomedea immutabilis) and black-footed albatrosses (Diomedea nigripes) in &lt;strong&gt;a remote area of the central North Pacific Ocean&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is there evidence to suggest that breast milk is also now similarly contaminated? In most women around the world?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/2/179.full.pdf&quot;&gt;Worldwide trends in DDT levels in human breast milk&lt;/a&gt; (whose &lt;a href=&quot;http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/2/179.short&quot;&gt;abstract is here&lt;/a&gt;) shows DDT being detected in &quot;Other Regions&quot; which include Papua New Guinea and Kenya; as well as in diverse other countries, in North America, Latin America, Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-11-29T01:28:19.703" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23943" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23972" CreationDate="2014-11-29T03:48:45.257" Score="14" ViewCount="5417" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Rupert Murdoch's &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/rupertmurdoch/status/538499345868652546&quot;&gt;twitter account&lt;/a&gt; (906 retweets, 205 favorites, with a tweet &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/mrbenjaminlaw/status/538503802303688704&quot;&gt;criticising&lt;/a&gt; it getting 50 retweets and 56 favorites)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moses film attacked on Twitter for all white cast. Since when are&#xA;  Egyptians not white?  All I know are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do modern-day Egyptian people, such as the ones Murdoch claims to know, look like what white people look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Egyptian people from biblical times (the time at which the exodus is supposed to have happened) look like what white people look like?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T15:23:31.390" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T15:23:31.390" Title="Did ancient Egyptians look white?" Tags="|race|egypt|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23944" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25133" CreationDate="2014-11-29T07:06:44.037" Score="12" ViewCount="1265" Body="&lt;p&gt;On BBC three's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lErO9lp201Q&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Free Speech&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Does ‘rape culture’ exist in the UK?&lt;/strong&gt;, James Delingpole, Executive Editor Breitbart London made a claim (4:10 mark) that was followed by boos from the audience and a charge of spreading lies from fellow panelist Nelufar Hedayat:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[James Delingpole]: One of the points you made, you referred I think to the grooming gangs in Rochdale and in Rotherham, and it's not just in the north it's in Telford, in Norfolk it has happened. We have got these organized gangs, mostly of Muslim origin. I think we just need, [...] . It's a fact!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Nelufar Hedayat]: It is also a fact that a majority ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[James Delingpole] Can you let me finish, thank you very much. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Nelufar Hedayat]: It's outrageous. You're spreading lies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[James Delingpole]: You outrageously interrupt me. I am not spreading lies. Why dont you read ...,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Nelufar Hedayat]: How could you possibly do that. I am just telling you what the member of that audience... they are screaming at you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[James Delingpole]:  why don't ...., why don't you read the newspapers. If you look at the names that have come up in the court cases you will find that most of them are of Kashmiri/Pakistani origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Host]: Nullify. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[James Delingpole]: You talk about rape culture. It's a very pretty state of affairs when the police and the social workers would not deal with this problem, because they were too embarrassed about being called racist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2014-12-06T01:40:31.477" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T16:49:43.037" Title="Are members of organized rape gangs in the UK mostly of Kashmir / Pakistani origin?" Tags="|criminology|united-kingdom|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23945" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23985" CreationDate="2014-11-29T11:41:02.337" Score="3" ViewCount="616" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.animalsaustralia.org/media/opinion.php?op=288&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Captain Paul Watson: Fear and Loathing of Sharks in Western Australia&lt;/a&gt;, Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson (warning: Islamophobic content elsewhere in the article) says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, we humans slaughter some 70 million sharks annually&#xA;  primarily to supply a few affluent Chinese with a bowl of tasteless&#xA;  soup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are sharks primarily hunted for Chinese cuisine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2016-03-22T12:28:45.607" LastActivityDate="2016-03-22T12:28:45.607" Title="Are sharks primarily hunted for Chinese cuisine?" Tags="|nutrition|china|sharks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23951" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-30T02:31:06.063" Score="18" ViewCount="11225" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menstruation#cite_ref-29&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; states, without a particularly satisfying &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/179464-ways-to-shorten-a-menstrual-cycle/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;, that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some sources say that achieving orgasm helps the uterus contract and expel the lining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does quote some other opinions there, though quick Googling yields &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090504171433AAPgNax&quot;&gt;people who buy this theory&lt;/a&gt;. What data can we find on the matter? Is this true? Does orgasm really trigger menstruation? If so how close temporally are the two events? How do they know that menstruation wouldn't have started when it did anyway?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23033" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-02-03T22:01:11.473" LastActivityDate="2018-02-04T20:15:41.103" Title="Does orgasm trigger menstruation?" Tags="|physiology|sexuality|human-reproduction|menstrual-cycle|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23953" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="47717" CreationDate="2014-11-30T17:02:11.277" Score="4" ViewCount="608" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been told that some experiments done by Nazi doctors became the precursor for some early work in radiotherapy and other cancer treatments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although, this may very easily be Nazi sympathizer propaganda. Maybe someone with actual knowledge of the beginnings of cancer research can enlighten me as to whether there is any truth to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15977" LastEditorUserId="15144" LastEditDate="2020-05-31T06:48:19.693" LastActivityDate="2020-05-31T10:08:24.350" Title="Was research by Nazi doctors use as a precursor for some cancer treatments?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|germany|ethics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23954" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-11-30T18:02:33.860" Score="9" ViewCount="1408" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is the often cited claim on the internet that giving legal advice will make you liable for damages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Didn't previously quote an actual claim, but one of the answers is such a perfect example that I will be quoting that one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only a court can make you liable for damages. There is nothing to stop anyone from suing anybody for anything. But if you give incorrect advice, then it may become more likely that a court may find you liable. Of course a professional can provide incorrect advice too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This advice should not be taken as legally representative, and you should seek legal advice in order to receive a professional opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;- iantresman (CC license)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the only legal case I was able to find was &lt;a href=&quot;http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/cyber/ccarch/2002/02/01/sinrod.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one under US jurisdiction&lt;/a&gt; where it was ruled that giving generic advice was not unauthorized practice of law. So, to prevent this question from asking legal advice: have there been any cases anywhere in the world where somebody was made to pay for damages because he provided (generic) legal advice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be very clear here, I am talking about &lt;em&gt;non&lt;/em&gt;-lawyers giving legal advice (being a lawyer comes with a whole lot more responsibilities in some countries).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18335" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T16:41:26.227" Title="Does giving legal advice make you liable?" Tags="|law|lawsuits|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23959" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23963" CreationDate="2014-12-01T02:47:12.980" Score="117" ViewCount="30560" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this picture on Facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eQYCV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Bald Eagle apparently flying upside-down&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It definitely doesn't come from a particularly credible source (I F***ing Love Science), but I'm curious if that picture is genuine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My mother claims that the legs, wings and head appear &quot;unnaturally twisted&quot; based on her past experience caring for Eagles and other raptors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13928" LastEditorDisplayName="user32299" LastEditDate="2018-08-31T15:29:54.403" LastActivityDate="2018-08-31T15:29:54.403" Title="Is this picture showing an eagle flying upside-down genuine?" Tags="|biology|photography|birds|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23960" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23959" CreationDate="2014-12-01T04:02:10.990" Score="128" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's definitely possible for an eagle to be upside down during flight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a Youtube video titled &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID_pGjD2pkw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Bald Eagle barrel roll&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. It shows some eagles playing or fighting or something and doing barrel&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; rolls in the process. The picture you found could just be a well-timed photograph that happened during the middle of this eagle's roll.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a gif showing a closer shot of a bird doing a roll mid-flight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1xC2z.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Do a barrel roll!&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's one with bald eagles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BAD8s.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Bald eagles dance&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;1. Might not technically be barrel rolls, but that doesn't really matter. You get the idea.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21196" LastEditorUserId="21196" LastEditDate="2015-07-02T17:23:19.737" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T17:23:19.737" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23954" CreationDate="2014-12-01T15:34:43.170" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Legal advice is by definition not generic. Legal advice is applying the law to a particular set of real facts and giving a conclusion upon which you can reasonably expect the other party to rely. I will assume this is what you are asking about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Law Society of Upper Canada maintains &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lsuc.on.ca/with.aspx?id=2147486087&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a list of prosecutions of people performing the unauthorized practice of law&lt;/a&gt;. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lsuc.on.ca/uploadedFiles/Professional_Regulation/Dzelme%20Order.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this case&lt;/a&gt; in particular: He was enjoined to cease the practice of law including providing advice or performing legal research &quot;verbally, in writing, over the internet, or by video&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good review of the unauthorized practice of law via the internet can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.minnesotalawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Rotenberg_MLR.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23059" LastEditorUserId="7286" LastEditDate="2014-12-01T16:41:26.227" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T16:41:26.227" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23959" CreationDate="2014-12-01T15:50:10.640" Score="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;This image can be attributed to &lt;a href=&quot;http://pamswildimages.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pam Mullens&lt;/a&gt; a Canadian wildlife photographer sometimes going by the pseudonym &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redbubble.com/people/eaglehunter&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EagleHunter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This image and other photos of eagles flying in interesting and unusual poses can be found on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pamswildimages.com/eagles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;eagle page&lt;/a&gt; of her portfolio site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aJL06.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/loIL6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/feRfZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pXjPc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I contacted Pam and she had this to say on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can tell you this image is real and not doctored in anyway. I have spent many years with Eagles and this air flip is something they do when hunting, it's not flying upside down, it is a flip that happens in a matter of seconds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16720" LastEditorUserId="16720" LastEditDate="2018-08-31T14:58:26.863" LastActivityDate="2018-08-31T14:58:26.863" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23964" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23966" CreationDate="2014-12-01T18:47:50.440" Score="21" ViewCount="6460" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend of mine told my wife that carbon dating is unreliable because it has been performed on live humans and indicated that the test subject(s) are 4000 years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this claim? I'm having a hard time finding anything about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22711" LastEditorUserId="22711" LastEditDate="2014-12-01T19:59:36.947" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T11:47:11.083" Title="Has carbon dating indicated that live humans are 4000 years old?" Tags="|biology|chemistry|radiation|archeology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23966" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23964" CreationDate="2014-12-01T20:08:04.360" Score="46" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating&quot;&gt;The use of Carbon-14 for dating&lt;/a&gt; is not completely precise. In general, 500 years is the minimum and 50,000 years is the maximum due to the need to calibrate for background C-14 levels, and to have sufficient breakdown to establish the half-life proportions but not so much that the sample is too small to measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, &lt;a href=&quot;http://nij.gov/journals/269/pages/carbon-dating.aspx&quot;&gt;they're using Carbon-14 dating on recent human remains in forensic science&lt;/a&gt; , although the technique works best on bodies around the 1940s to 1960s due to the increased presence of C-14 due to atomic bomb testing. Currently, the atmospheric levels of C-14 are dropping again, so the method will be less feasible for people deceased after that point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the difficulty of dating samples less than 500 years old, I could readily see your friend, or the person who gave him that information, latching on to the idea of less aged items being hard to date and the actual figure involved getting enlarged with the telling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T20:08:04.360" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23967" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-01T21:46:48.150" Score="1" ViewCount="403" Body="&lt;p&gt;Immigration policy is a hot topic in UK politics, but is it actually costing British jobs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23067" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T23:49:33.850" Title="Is immigration causing unemployment among low-skill workers in the UK?" Tags="|europe|immigration|unemployment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23968" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23967" CreationDate="2014-12-01T21:47:29.007" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure the British have such a big problem with unskilled migrants as they like to think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This report highlights the trends in the UK low-skilled job market from the 80s/90s to 2013:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/333083/MAC-Migrants_in_low-skilled_work__Full_report_2014.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Migrants in low-skilled work&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Migration Advisory Committee&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Full Report&#xA;July 2014&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to suggest that migration patterns are consistent across the skill spectrum and that migrants have not significantly or unfairly displaced UK born workers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a selection from chapters 3 (&quot;Recent migration to the UK and factors affecting this&quot;) and 4 (&quot;Employment in low-skilled work&quot;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.4 Migrants accounted for approximately 16 per cent of all low-skilled employment aged 16-64 in the UK, slightly above the&#xA;  overall share of the population but broadly in line with their share&#xA;  of all employed persons, regardless of skill level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;3.8 One million migrants in low-skilled work in 2013 have come to the UK within the last ten years. Half of these came from Central and&#xA;  Eastern Europe, following EU enlargement in 2004 and 2007. Over&#xA;  300,000 came from Poland, who account for around one in six of all&#xA;  migrant workers in low-skilled employment and almost one in three of&#xA;  those who arrived since 2004. Even so, by 2013 migrants from Central&#xA;  and Eastern Europe still accounted for little more than a quarter of&#xA;  all foreign born workers in low-skilled occupations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4.4 We also considered the ‘hollowing out’ of the labour market and while the evidence is not definitive, there have clearly been&#xA;  substantial changes in the type of jobs available. This has important&#xA;  implications for the composition of the labour force by gender and&#xA;  progression up the skill ladder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4.5 While the overall UK employment rate has been stable since 2000, there have been important shifts by gender and age. The employment of&#xA;  UK-born aged 50 to 64 has increased, while the employment of other&#xA;  UK-born groups has declined. These changes in employment correspond to&#xA;  changes in population, with the exceptions of the 50 to 64 age group,&#xA;  for whom employment has increased more than the growth in population,&#xA;  and the under 25 age group, for whom population increased but both&#xA;  employment and participation fell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4.6 It might be thought that the decline in employment for the under 25 age group is associated with greater competition with migrants for&#xA;  low-skilled jobs. While this is possible we note that the youth&#xA;  unemployment rate is comparable to 30 years ago when there was far&#xA;  less migration. There are other factors to consider as well, such as&#xA;  the increase in the number of 16 to 24 year olds choosing to stay in&#xA;  education, which therefore affects the number that will be in work and&#xA;  participating in the labour force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4.21 The decline in low skilled employment among the UK-born was more than offset by a 2 million increase in high skilled working.&#xA;  High-skilled employment among migrants also expanded considerably from&#xA;  1 million in 1997 to 2.3 million by 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4.54 In contrast to the older age group, while employment of men and women aged under 25 has decreased, their population has increased.&#xA;  This results in large decreases in their employment rates of 14&#xA;  percentage points for men aged under 25 and nine percentage points for&#xA;  women aged under 25. We explore reasons for these changes, such as&#xA;  greater participation in tertiary education, just below in section&#xA;  4.6.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4.55 Overall, between 1997 and 2013 the employment rate for the 16 to 64 UK- born population has increased by half a percentage point and&#xA;  this would have been affected by the recession post-2008. Changes in&#xA;  population and participation rates by gender and age have been largely&#xA;  offsetting such that overall the UK-born employment rate appears to&#xA;  have been relatively unaffected during the period of significant and&#xA;  rapid migration to the UK. However, although the overall measure has&#xA;  hardly changed, there have been some important shifts by gender and&#xA;  age, where employment has increased for some groups and decreased for&#xA;  others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4.63 It is possible that a contributing factor to the changes in youth unemployment and NEET rates is the increase in migration to the UK&#xA;  during the mid-2000s. This is particularly relevant for low-skilled&#xA;  employment, since as Office for National Statistics (2014k) points&#xA;  out, young people are more likely to work in the lowest skilled jobs,&#xA;  particularly elementary occupations and sales and customer service&#xA;  occupations. Young people could, therefore, experience greater&#xA;  competition for such jobs, due to the increase in migrants also&#xA;  looking for work in these areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4.64 However, at national level the youth unemployment rate has been at similar levels before, during a time of much lower migration. The&#xA;  unemployment rate for 16 to 24 year olds was the same in 1984 as it&#xA;  was in 2013 (Office for National Statistics (2014k)). In fact, the&#xA;  proportion of the total population of 16 to 24 year olds who are&#xA;  unemployed is lower in 2013 than it was in 1984, 13 per cent compared&#xA;  to 15 per cent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4.86 Many 16 to 24 year olds will not want to pursue further academic study. It is important for this group that they are able to gain&#xA;  requisite skills through vocational education and work experience.&#xA;  Wolf (2011)’s comprehensive review of vocational education in England&#xA;  “found conclusive evidence of serious problems in current provision:&#xA;  problems which impact directly on young people and their futures,” and&#xA;  came to the damning conclusion that “too many of our young people are&#xA;  being short-changed.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4.110 It might be considered that the decline in employment for the under 25 age group is primarily due to greater competition with&#xA;  migrants for low-skilled jobs. While this is possible we note that the&#xA;  youth unemployment rate is comparable to 30 years ago when there was&#xA;  far less migration and that the state of the economy and level of&#xA;  demand play important roles in labour market outcomes for 16 to 24&#xA;  year olds. In addition, academic attainment, work experience and soft&#xA;  skills all play a role in determining a young person’s access to&#xA;  employment and training opportunities. Basic qualifications,&#xA;  especially English and mathematics, are incredibly important for their&#xA;  employment prospects. There is evidence to suggest that the skills of&#xA;  young people in these areas are placing them at a disadvantage in&#xA;  today’s labour market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23067" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-12-01T23:49:33.850" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T23:49:33.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23969" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23959" CreationDate="2014-12-01T21:58:10.457" Score="78" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a normal bird &quot;thing&quot;. It's known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiffling&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;whiffling&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whiffling is a term used in ornithology to describe the behavior whereby a bird rapidily descends with a zig-zagging, side-slipping motion. Sometimes to whiffle, a bird flies briefly with its body turned upside down but with its neck and head twisted 180 degrees around in a normal position. ... This erratic motion resembles a falling leaf, and is used to avoid avian predators or may be used by geese (family Anatidae) to avoid a long, slow descent over an area where wildfowling is practised.[2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen it quite often, usually (in the case of our pond) when geese are coming in over high trees and want to lose altitude rapidly without gaining (much) airspeed. Apparently eagles do it for play/fighting (notice how the bird that rolls inverted sticks his legs up with talons extended). Kinda fun to watch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/goose-flies-upsidedown-28481231.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Goose flies upside-down&lt;/a&gt; article in the Belfast Telegraph has a photo of a goose doing it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9pPDg.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2080" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-12-01T23:39:42.480" LastActivityDate="2014-12-01T23:39:42.480" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23943" CreationDate="2014-12-02T10:47:55.297" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Please let me start with a small rant. This tweet is, in my opinion, outright ignorant and quite distasteful:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Assumption that modern Egyptians are the same as Ancient Egyptians. I doubt that he personally knows any Ancient Egyptians.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;All I know are&amp;quot; is not representative sample of population of 80+ million nation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He drives original complaints to absurdity. The concept of race is rather vague, while you can discuss what skin tone did/do Egyptians have, they surely didn't look like people of Western European descent who portray them in the upcoming movie.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find that the question of whether any given ethnic group is white or not lacks any scientific merit or any merit actually. The demarcation line between &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RV2qd.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;races&lt;/a&gt; seems to move rather freely depending on which point one tries to make. Some &lt;em&gt;whites&lt;/em&gt; are rather dark skinned and some &lt;em&gt;non-whites&lt;/em&gt; have fair skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So back to Egyptians, here is a small sample of Egyptian phenotype.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5omrz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia gives excellent summary with links to sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In general, various DNA studies have found that the gene frequencies&#xA;of modern North African populations are intermediate between those of&#xA;the Horn of Africa and Eurasia, though possessing a greater genetic&#xA;affinity with the populations of Eurasia than they do with Africa. The&#xA;present population of the Sahara is Caucasoid in the extreme north,&#xA;with a fairly gradual increase of Negroid component as one goes south.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_history_of_Egypt#DNA_studies_on_modern_Egyptians&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_history_of_Egypt#DNA_studies_on_modern_Egyptians&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Definition of Race Categories Used in the US 2010 Census:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“White” refers to a person having origins in any of the original&#xA;peoples of Europe, &lt;strong&gt;the Middle East, or North Africa&lt;/strong&gt;. It includes&#xA;people who indicated their race(s) as “White” or reported entries such&#xA;as Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Arab, Moroccan, or Caucasian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The race and ethnicity of Ancient Egyptians has been a controversial topic for a while, again Wikipedia gives a good summary with sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is now largely agreed that Dynastic Egyptians were indigenous to the Nile area. ...&#xA;In addition, peoples from the Middle East entered the Nile Valley&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stuart Tyson Smith writes in the 2001 Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient&#xA;Egypt that &amp;quot;Any characterization of race of the ancient Egyptians&#xA;depends on modern cultural definitions, not on scientific study. Thus,&#xA;by modern American standards it is reasonable to characterize the&#xA;Egyptians as 'black', while acknowledging the scientific evidence for&#xA;the physical diversity of Africans.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy#Position_of_modern_scholarship&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_race_controversy#Position_of_modern_scholarship&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now back to the Exodus movie. Regardless of the specific skin tone of Ancient Egyptians, actors of Western European descent bear little resemblance to the actual features of current-day people of that region.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="874" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T16:37:07.290" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23977" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-02T14:43:11.520" Score="26" ViewCount="7603" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/12/joe-scarborough-loses-it-over-liberal-medias-misinformation-on-ferguson-video/&quot;&gt;Joe Scarbrough&lt;/a&gt; blasted the media and the St. Louis Rams for coming onto the field in a silent protest in support of Michael Brown. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SCARBROUGH: Yeah, guys came out, hands up don’t shoot for the St. Louis Rams. &#xA;  Here’s a video of it. And what is so remarkable is they might as well have come out with a flying saucer attached to all of their heads in solidarity with Michael Brown being transported to Venus on a flying saucer. Because that happened as much as that happened. That’s according to grand jury testimony. That’s according to witnesses. They are using his accomplice in the robbery that was with him at the time who also claimed that Michael Brown was shot in the back. And for some reason, the media attaches to these narratives that will stir up further protests. And I got to say, I just got to a tipping point this weekend…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do witnesses in the grand jury testimony/forensic evidence contradict the account given by Michael Brown's acquaintance who was with him at the time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;According to grand jury testimony, were Michael Brown's hands up when he was shot?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-12-03T17:23:06.723" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T13:52:07.267" Title="Were Michael Brown's hands up when he was shot according to grand jury testimony?" Tags="|united-states|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23978" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23977" CreationDate="2014-12-02T14:55:11.117" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;There were multiple witnesses that gave testimony, with conflicting testimonies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vox.com offers &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/26/7295595/eyewitnesses-ferguson-grand-jury&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A one-chart summary of every Ferguson eyewitness's grand jury testimony&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vox.com/xpress/2014/11/26/7295595/eyewitnesses-ferguson-grand-jury&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UCFoN.png&quot; alt=&quot;Chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the third column from the right, it can be seen 12 witnesses (in 16 interviews) said that Michael Brown put his hands up when fired upon, two said he didn't, and many didn't know or were not asked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Taking a simple majority of eyewitnesses statements isn't a safe method of determining the truth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-02T23:10:52.007" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T23:10:52.007" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23977" CreationDate="2014-12-02T14:55:43.763" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the Washington Post article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/12/01/witness-10-proves-darren-wilson-had-a-reasonable-belief-he-needed-to-shoot/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Witness 10 proves Darren Wilson had a reasonable belief he needed to shoot Michael Brown&lt;/a&gt; (which cites &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1371062-grand-jury-volume-6.html#document/p167&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this document which claims to be a transcript of the grand jury testimony&lt;/a&gt;), there was an independent (i.e. other than Officer Darren Wilson) witness (named as &quot;Witness 10&quot;) who testified that Michael Brown's hands weren't up, and that he was charging not surrendering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting the Washington Post,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;He did turn, he did some sort of body gesture, I’m not sure what it was, but I know it was a body gesture. And I could say for sure &lt;strong&gt;he never put his hands up&lt;/strong&gt; after he did his body gesture, he ran towards the officer full charge.&#xA;    ... And when he stopped, that’s when the officer ceased fire and when he ceased fired, Mike Brown started to charge once more at him. When &lt;strong&gt;he charged once more&lt;/strong&gt;, the officer returned fire with, I would say, give an estimate of three to four shots. And that’s when Mike Brown finally collapsed…. (166:21-167:18).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With regard to the body gesture, Witness 10 explained: “All I know is it was not in a surrendering motion of I’m surrendering, putting my hands up or anything, I’m not sure.  If it was like a shoulder shrug or him pulling his pants up, I’m not sure.  I really don’t want to speculate [about] things….” (180:5). But “[i]mmediately after he [Brown] did his body gesture, he comes for force, full charge at the officer” (180:16). Ultimately, in the view of Witness 10, the officer’s life was in jeopardy when Brown charged him from close range (206:4).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/ferguson-witnesses/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Did Michael Brown charge?&#xA;Eyewitnesses paint a muddled picture&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A since-deleted comment asked why the Washington Times might have &quot;cherry-picked&quot; this witness over others: &lt;em&gt;Why do you believe that &quot;witness 10&quot; is more trustworthy than others?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer that question/comment, (at the risk of quoting too much of it) some reasons why the Washington Times article focuses on Witness 10 include the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It's sufficient (for the defence) if one reasonable person has the same belief as the defendant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Missouri law allows a person to use deadly force defending himself when he has a “reasonable belief” he needs to use deadly force. The law goes on to define a reasonable belief as one based on “&lt;strong&gt;grounds that could lead a reasonable person in the same situation to the same belief&lt;/strong&gt;.” Unsurprisingly, Officer Darren Wilson testified to the grand jury that he reasonably believed he needed to use deadly force to defend himself against Michael Brown. But the clinching argument on this point is that &lt;strong&gt;other reasonable people — i.e., some credible eyewitnesses — agreed with Wilson&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It would be difficult to discuss in detail the testimony of all of several dozen eyewitnesses. But a defendant raising self-defense &lt;strong&gt;need not show that his interpretation was the only one; rather he need only show that it was a reasonable one&lt;/strong&gt; — i.e., a conclusion a reasonable person could reach based on all the facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Against that backdrop, I want to review in detail the testimony of &lt;strong&gt;one seemingly reasonable and neutral observer&lt;/strong&gt; — Witness No. 10. If his objective assessment was that Officer Wilson acted appropriately, that would be &lt;strong&gt;strong evidence demonstrating that Wilson’s belief was reasonable&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that any so-called &quot;strong evidence&quot; might be enough to make an at-trial conclusion of &quot;innocence because of reasonable doubt&quot; almost inevitable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ultimately, in the view of Witness 10, the officer’s life was in jeopardy when Brown charged him from close range (206:4).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under Missouri law, this testimony by itself (even apart from any other evidence) would have provided a sound basis for the grand jury to decline to return any charges against Wilson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Witness 10 is not contradicted by forensics evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moreover, Witness 10′s version of the facts is quite credible. Witness 10 saw a “confrontation,” and Mike Brown’s DNA was later found inside the car. Indeed, Witness 10 was afraid that Brown might have killed the police officer inside the car when he heard the firing of a single shot. (The ballistics evidence shows two shots were fired at the car, so that is a point of difference.) Witness 10 then describes Wilson pursuing Brown but not firing any shots along the way. Here again, the ballistics tracks this testimony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally, Witness 10 describes Wilson firing a series of shots as Brown charged forward.  This conforms to the physical evidence showing that the bullet wounds  to Brown’s body and head came from the front and that they had a downward trajectory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Witness 10 provides independent corroboration of Officer Wilson's testimony:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Witness 10 not only gave this testimony to the grand jury under oath on Sept. 23, but also much earlier. On Monday, Aug. 11 — two days after the shooting — he gave a recorded interview to two St. Louis County Police detectives. This was before any autopsy had been completed and before the media had reported other physical evidence. Witness 10′s later grand jury testimony is consistent with the statement he gave the police just 48 hours after the shooting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perhaps even more important for those trying to get to the bottom of what happened is that Witness 10′s sworn testimony tracks almost perfectly the sworn testimony of Darren Wilson. For example, Witness 10 describes Wilson pursuing but not firing at Brown initially, until Brown turned and charged. Moreover, Witness 10 describes an initial series of shots, Brown stopping, Wilson stopping firing, and then Brown resuming his charge.  Wilson gave the same testimony, talking about a “pause” between a first and second round of shots (vol. 5, 229:1) — only to be forced to fire by Brown’s final rush.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In sum, Witness 10 had a clear view of all the events. He gave testimony that tracked not only Officer Wilson’s testimony, but also the ballistic evidence. He gave a (recorded) statement to the police very shortly after the events. He did not know Michael Brown or Officer Wilson. And, for those who deem this important, he was reportedly an African American.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The grand jury had an opprtunity to assess the relative credibility of each witness:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PBS acknowledged that its chart “doesn’t reveal who was right or wrong about what happened that day, but it is a clear indication that perceptions and memories can vary dramatically.” This concession is required, because a fair assessment (such as the grand jury was tasked with making) involves not simply toting up the number of witnesses on competing sides, but determining the quality of their accounts. The grand jury observed the demeanor of all of the witnesses and, perhaps even more important, had other evidence (including physical evidence) to sort out which witnesses were giving credible testimony.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Washington Times also claims that other witnesses weren't impartial, and may for example have been subject to witness intimidation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why should Witness 10′s testimony be believed over other accounts? Sadly, Witness 10 gives a clear explanation about how at least some of these conflicting accounts developed.  He explained that immediately after the shooting, he began&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“observing the chaotic [situation], how it got so chaotic so quick[ly], and different point of views on, it didn’t add up to what I actually witnessed. I felt very uncomfortable and … I would probably estimate I was down on the scene maybe five to 10 minutes … just observing everything and how the uproar became about so quickly”(vol. 6, 190:16).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When he started saying what he had seen, some in the crowd became verbally “violent” toward him (204:3) and started directing racial slurs toward him (206:10). The next day, Witness 10 felt even more uncomfortable after he had&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“seen all the rioting.   I just felt bad about the situation. I knew that I needed to come forward to let the truth be told” (192:6).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And so, “after seeing the rioting,” he called St. Louis County Police:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;“So I went down to the police station and I felt uncomfortable then just walking past all the protesting that was going on, but I knew it was the right thing to do. It is an unfortunate situation, but I know God put me in this situation for a reason” (192:21).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Witness 10 also spoke poignantly of trying to bring some comfort to Michael Brown’s family:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;I came forward to bring closure to the family and also for the police officer because … with me knowing actually what happened … I know it is going to be a hard case and a hard thing to prove with so many people that’s saying the opposite of what I actually seen. I just wanted to bring closure to the family not thinking that hey … they got away with murdering my son. I do know that there is corruption in some police departments and I believe that this was not the case. And I just wanted to bring closure to the family (194:22).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Witness 10 also told the grand jury about a continuing concern for safety in testifying:  “Within my [redacted] family … [t]hey fear for my safety or our family’s safety” (206:2).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Given the intimidation campaign that Witness 10 described, it is not surprising that PBS would find that a slight majority of the statements tracked the narrative that the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” protesters were relying on. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Some of the other witness testimony seems less reliable:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More helpful than the PBS chart is the collection of testimony from The Post. With links to the underlying grand jury testimony, a reader can click on the competing statements and read them in their entirety.  But here is one overall assessment of what can be found among the testimony: “An Associated Press review of thousands of pages of grand jury documents reveals numerous examples of statements made during the shooting investigation that were inconsistent, fabricated or provably wrong. For one, the autopsies ultimately showed Brown was not struck by any bullets in his back.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But as I have tried to explain in this post, the issue that the grand jury ultimately had to decide was whether Officer Wilson’s assessment of the danger he faced was a reasonable one. Witness 10 was a reasonable person. He thought Wilson faced such a danger. Unless there was good reason to doubt this witness’s apparently fair-minded assessment, Officer Wilson was entitled to use deadly force in self-defense, and the grand jury plainly did the right thing in declining to indict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-12-05T13:52:07.267" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T13:52:07.267" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23980" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23943" CreationDate="2014-12-02T17:23:10.500" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three ways of currently trying to define what skin color &lt;em&gt;ancient&lt;/em&gt; Egyptians had: History records, DNA and language. All three seem to agree on Egyptians having a darker complexion, however the exact skin color - like it happens with almost any person - is impossible and useless to define in a white-black dichotomy. The conclusion in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/23972/14740&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; is absolutely correct, we are using modern cultural definitions where scientific evidence might not be conclusive (or relevant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What Egyptians &lt;a href=&quot;https://abagond.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/how-black-was-ancient-egypt/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;said about themselves&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Herodotus said Egyptians had black skin and woolly hair, which is how he said the Ethiopians looked too. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Aristotle called both the Ethiopians and Egyptians black. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Bible calls both the Ethiopians and Egyptians &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan_%28son_of_Ham%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;sons of Ham&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The Egyptians saw themselves as belonging to their own race, different from blacks to the south – but also  different from all&#xA;  their other neighbours. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;On the other hand: They called themselves &lt;em&gt;kemet&lt;/em&gt; - “black”, though some say it just means they are from the land of black soil (the&#xA;  Nile). &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;They said they came from the land of Punt – a place they drew as having elephants and giraffes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What the DNA says:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2008, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._O._Y._Keita&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;S. O. Y. Keita&lt;/a&gt; wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;There is no scientific reason to believe that the primary ancestors&#xA;  of the Egyptian population emerged and evolved outside of northeast&#xA;  Africa.... The basic overall genetic profile of the modern population&#xA;  is consistent with the diversity of ancient populations that would&#xA;  have been indigenous to northeastern Africa and subject to the range&#xA;  of evolutionary influences over time, although researchers vary in the&#xA;  details of their explanations of those influences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What the language says:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That language came to Egypt &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.taneter.org/ethiopia.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;from Ethiopia&lt;/a&gt; about 12,000 years ago. However, the term is not exclusive to the modern country of Ethiopia. According to early Greek writers, Ethiopia was an empire originally situated between Ta-Seti in Lower Kemet and the confluence of the White and Blue Niles. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ethiopia is the English transliteration of the Greek word &quot;Αιθιοπα&quot;&#xA;  (or Aithiopia) which originates from the Greek word &quot;Αιθιοψ&quot; or&#xA;  &quot;aithiops&quot; which literally means &quot;charred or burnt.&quot; &quot;Aithiops&quot; is in&#xA;  fact composed of &quot;αιθιω&quot; (meaning &quot;I burn&quot;) and &quot;ωψ&quot; (meaning face or&#xA;  complexion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Claudius Ptolemy (90 - 168 AD), a Roman citizen who lived in&#xA;  Alexandria, used &quot;Ethiopia&quot; as a racial term. In his Tetrabiblos: Or&#xA;  Quadripartite, he tried to explain the physical characteristics of&#xA;  people around the world saying, &quot;They are consequently black in&#xA;  complexion, and have thick and curled hair...and they are called by&#xA;  the common name of Aethiopians.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14740" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T15:30:09.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22153" CreationDate="2014-12-02T19:22:04.647" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question doesn't seem quite right: Farmers do better yes, but it's farmworkers that the quote is about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the relevant &lt;a href=&quot;http://ftepr.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fair Trade, Employment and Poverty Reduction (FTEPR)&lt;/a&gt; project reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftepr.org/wp-content/uploads/FTEPR-Final-Report-19-May-2014-FINAL.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fairtrade, Employment and &#xA;Poverty Reduction in Ethiopia &#xA;and Uganda&#xA;April 2014&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ftepr.org/wp-content/uploads/FTEPR-Final-Report-Appendices-April-11th-2014-FINAL.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Appendices&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a straight comparison between workers at Fairtrade Certified and Non-Certified farms, yes, the workers have worse conditions and are paid less.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's grab an example of Ethiopian flower sites from the report's appendices:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Average daily wages male [Certified]&lt;/strong&gt;: 8.7&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Average daily wages female [Certified]&lt;/strong&gt;: 9.9&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Average daily wages male [Uncertified]&lt;/strong&gt;: 14.6&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Average daily wages female [Uncertified]&lt;/strong&gt;: 14.0&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So looking at it that way, the answer is yes. On average, you're better off being a random worker at an uncertified farm than at a Fairtrade certified farm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Workers at Fairtrade certified farms are also less likely to be part of trade unions, more likely to have their pay delayed, less likely to have clean toilets or showers, less likely to give paid medical care and more likely to suffer physical/sexual abuse or threat at workplace. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is misleading! Fairtrade doesn't pick their suppliers randomly. They tend to buy from smaller farms and small businesses in poorer areas. It's like comparing the wages of employees of small startups vs Google. Large efficient companies can be quite good employers because it can be more cost effective to treat employees better. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Fairtrade's defence also has some basis. Non-Fairtrade Small-Scale perform even worse than Fairtrade Small-Scale farms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To quote part of the conclusions of the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reasons for Fairtrade’s failure to make a clear positive difference to wages and conditions, or to the amount of work offered, are fairly clear. They have to do – especially in the production of “smallholder” commodities – with what this research suggests has been in the past a wilful denial of the significance of wage labour and an obsessive concentration on producers/employers and their organisations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fairtrade focus on farmers (i.e. small business owners with land), not on workers. It runs into the same problem as trickle-down economics. They assume that if farmers get a better price, then that will trickle down to their employees. That isn't a safe assumption. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The appendix also mentions another certification - MPS-Socially Qualified &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.my-mps.com/en/certificates-producer/mps-sq&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MPS-SQ&lt;/a&gt; farms which appear to do much better for workers on a lot of these measures, as their focus for certification is on employees rather than employers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23087" LastEditorUserId="22266" LastEditDate="2018-06-11T01:24:30.407" LastActivityDate="2018-06-11T01:24:30.407" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23908" CreationDate="2014-12-02T19:44:02.803" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you break it down by the numbers, it seems to be closer to the 3K than 4,5K, but the variation can be huge depending on what drinks and snacks there are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to research from the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caloriecontrol.org/articles-and-video/feature-articles/stuff-the-bird-not-yourself&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Calorie Control Council&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, the average&#xA;  American may consume more than 4,500 calories and a whopping 229 grams&#xA;  of fat during a typical holiday gathering from snacking and eating a&#xA;  traditional Thanksgiving dinner with turkey and all the trimmings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the detail:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The average holiday dinner alone can carry a load of 3,000 calories.&#xA;  And many nibble through another 1,500 calories, downing appetizers and&#xA;  drinks before and after the big meal. Combined, that's the equivalent&#xA;  of more than 2 1/4 times the average daily calorie intake and almost 3&#xA;  1/2 times the fat -- with 45 percent of calories from fat. &lt;strong&gt;The average&#xA;  person may consume enough fat at a holiday meal to equal three sticks&#xA;  of butter.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.caloriecontrol.org/articles-and-video/feature-articles/stuff-the-bird-not-yourself&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This is the original source&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question is about the number of calories in a typical Thanksgiving meal, we can try to calculate the calories for each individual food using the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/show/4152?qlookup=14003&amp;amp;max=25&amp;amp;man=&amp;amp;lfacet=&amp;amp;new=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;USDA values&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What constitutes a traditional Thanksgiving meal? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Turkey seller Butterball, itself a holiday institution for many&#xA;  families for years, recently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/11/prweb12342957.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;conducted an online regional holiday&#xA;  survey&lt;/a&gt; to collect data about Thanksgiving preferences. It found the&#xA;  top five side dishes Americans must have on their Thanksgiving table&#xA;  are mashed potatoes (95 percent), cranberry sauce (81 percent),&#xA;  candied sweet potatoes (63 percent), green bean casserole (59 percent)&#xA;  and gravy (41 percent).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their approximate values according to the USDA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Turkey: 189 c / 100 gr &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mashed potatoes: 88 c / 100 gr &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yams (no sugar): 118 c / 100 gr &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cranberry Sauce: 150 c / 100 gr &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pumpkin Pie: 243 c / 100 gr&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If someone has 300 gr of Turkey, that alone is almost 600 calories (without the filling or gravy), add a couple of pumpkin pies, you are already over the thousand. With rolls, alcohol and snack you might get to the 4500, or not. There is a lot of variation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, the single meal is over the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/chq/pages/1126.aspx?categoryid=51&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;daily recommended ingestion&lt;/a&gt;, which is around 2000-2500 calories a day. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14740" LastEditorUserId="14740" LastEditDate="2014-12-02T20:53:22.470" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T20:53:22.470" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23985" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23945" CreationDate="2014-12-02T20:35:39.923" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes: the finning trade is estimated to be larger than the commercial shark-meat trade.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X13000055&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Global catches, exploitation rates, and rebuilding options for sharks; Worm et al.&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clarke et al. [9] used trade auction records from Hong Kong to estimate that the total mass of sharks caught for the fin trade. Estimates ranged between 1.21 and 2.29 Mt (million metric tons) yr−1 with a median estimate of 1.70 Mt yr−1 in the year 2000. This amounted to more than four times the reported shark catch from FAO at that time [9].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jTlj1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Fig 2 from ref. article&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Estimating global shark mortality for the year 2000. Included are reported (from FAO) and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) landings as well as shark discards. Total mortality was calculated as the total catch minus the number of sharks which survived discarding. All figures were rounded to nearest 1000 metric tons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this figure, note &quot;Finned: 908,000 [tons]&quot; out of a total mortality of 1,445,000 tons. There is no &quot;Died post-release&quot; breakdown of finned sharks since:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Discarded sharks that are finned suffer 100% mortality&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastActivityDate="2014-12-02T20:35:39.923" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16784" CreationDate="2014-12-02T22:47:29.370" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no extradition treaty between the US and Russia. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.state.gov/s/l/treaty/faqs/70138.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The state department FAQ&lt;/a&gt; says, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Where can I find a list of countries with which the United States has&#xA;  extradition treaties?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You may find a list of these countries at 18 U.S.C. § 3181.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link is to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/71600.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/71600.pdf&lt;/a&gt;, which makes no mention of Russia. So if you're prepared to accept the US Government's word for it, Russia is not a country with which the US has an extradition treaty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway I don't believe that what you quote actually contains a claim by Obama that Russia is not abiding by international law. It certainly doesn't specify what the legal nature of the breach might be, if there is a breach involved either in &quot;talking about potentially offering Snowden asylum&quot;, or in actually offering it. It doesn't claim that Russia would be required to extradite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What it says is, that Russia should abide by international law. Or, literally, it just says that it is expected that they will recognise that they should abide. This &quot;claim&quot; is of course true as far as it goes, which isn't far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19548" LastEditorUserId="19548" LastEditDate="2014-12-04T10:07:28.553" LastActivityDate="2014-12-04T10:07:28.553" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23988" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23989" CreationDate="2014-12-03T01:26:49.580" Score="12" ViewCount="1290" Body="&lt;p&gt;An image circulating on Facebook makes the claim (among others) that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The food stamp program has the lowest fraud fraud [sic] rate of any federal government program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zCduY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that the food stamp program (which is now called &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assistance_Program&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SNAP&lt;/a&gt;) is (or was, when it went by the Food Stamp name) the program with the lowest rate of fraud of any US federal government program?  And if so, by what metric (as I can imagine there might be multiple ways to measure fraud, not to mention different types of fraud which may not be directly comparable)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T03:16:23.670" Title="Does SNAP have the lowest rate of fraud of any federal program in the US?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23988" CreationDate="2014-12-03T02:50:20.567" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The fraud rate isn't known, but it doesn't have the lowest percentage of improper payments.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An August 2014 GAO report &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/665383.pdf&quot;&gt;SNAP Enhanced Detection Tools and Reporting Could Improve Efforts to Combat Recipient Fraud&lt;/a&gt; notes that the fraud rate is unknown, but notes an improper payment rate of 3.4% for fiscal year 2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to a September 2012 U.S. Department of Agriculture Office of Inspector General (USDA OIG) report, &lt;strong&gt;the magnitude of program abuse due to recipient fraud is unknown because states do not have uniform ways of compiling the data that would provide such information&lt;/strong&gt;. Therefore, in the report, the USDA OIG recommended that FNS determine the feasibility of creating a uniform methodology for states to calculate their recipient fraud rate.8 As FNS seeks to address this recommendation, it is legally required to monitor its potential improper payments of SNAP benefits. The agency estimated an improper payment or error rate of the program at 3.4 percent, which represented an estimated $2.6 billion in wrongful payments, in fiscal year 2013.9 The percentage represents benefits distributed in error due to administrative as well as recipient errors, not all of which can be attributed to fraud. However, due to the large dollar amount involved in improper payments, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has placed SNAP on its list of high-error programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This ranks &lt;a href=&quot;https://paymentaccuracy.gov/high-priority-programs&quot;&gt;SNAP 11th out of 13&lt;/a&gt; high-error programs (i.e. those programs that have +$750 million in improper payments) behind PELL grants and Retirement, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (RSDI)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2014-12-03T03:16:23.670" LastActivityDate="2014-12-03T03:16:23.670" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23993" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24022" CreationDate="2014-12-03T10:40:09.847" Score="1" ViewCount="4326" Body="&lt;p&gt;Years ago, I received a chain email containing an inspirational story about a man applying for the position of 'office boy' at Microsoft, being rejected for not having an email address, and then going on to be a successful businessman owning a conglomerate of fruit shops. Today, I received another copy as a Linkdein pulse article:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linkedin.com/e/v2?e=13gy47-i2vsvnox-52&amp;amp;a=view_article_detail&amp;amp;midToken=AQFexLDFEB7Gzg&amp;amp;ek=b2_content_ecosystem_digest&amp;amp;li=214&amp;amp;m=recommended_articles&amp;amp;permLink=20141018194359-195367652-a-jobless-man-applied-for-the-position-of-office-boy-at-microsoft&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A jobless man applied for the position of 'office boy' at Microsoft&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I'm sorry,&amp;quot; said the HR manager. &amp;quot;If you don't have an email, that means you do not exist. And we cannot hire persons who do not exist.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Five years later, the man became one of the biggest food retailers in the U. S.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story seems absurd to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an accurate biographical story of a real person?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15466" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T01:13:57.907" Title="Did a successful businessman once fail an interview for a menial Microsoft job for having no email?" Tags="|microsoft|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23994" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="23995" CreationDate="2014-12-03T14:01:20.457" Score="28" ViewCount="2922" Body="&lt;p&gt;In its own &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_109141.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fact sheet&lt;/a&gt; NATO denies Russia's claims that NATO promised not to expand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Russian officials claim that US and German officials promised in 1990 that NATO would not expand into Eastern and Central Europe, build military infrastructure near Russia’s borders or permanently deploy troops there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No such pledge was made, and no evidence to back up Russia’s claims has ever been produced. Should such a promise have been made by NATO as such, it would have to have been as a formal, written decision by all NATO Allies. Furthermore, the consideration of enlarging NATO came years after German reunification. This issue was not yet on the agenda when Russia claims these promises were made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is NATO's claim, that it never promised not to expand into Eastern and Central Europe, correct?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2020-03-03T20:58:46.157" Title="Did NATO promise not to expand into Eastern and Central Europe?" Tags="|politics|military|russia|europe|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23995" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23994" CreationDate="2014-12-03T15:36:37.407" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update March 2020:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;It's five years later, and and eagle-eyed commenter &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/23994/did-nato-promise-not-to-expand-into-eastern-and-central-europe/23995?noredirect=1#comment214118_23995&quot;&gt;pointed out&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;a href=&quot;https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some documents on the matter have been declassified&lt;/a&gt;. Those seem to confirm my original conclusion: there were quite a few promises in oral discussions and meetings by Western foreign ministers, prime ministers and presidents. They were rarely stated precisely, but at the very least strongly implied NATO would not expand eastwards. However, there is still no evidence of a statement by NATO itself or a written promise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Original answer:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somehow, most of my answers tend to begin with &quot;this is a complicated issue&quot;. As &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/2703/chrisw&quot;&gt;ChrisW&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/23994/did-nato-promise-not-to-expand-into-eastern-and-central-europe#comment92805_23994&quot;&gt;suspected&lt;/a&gt;, there are no indications that NATO, as an organization, has made any formal promises; but there is plenty of evidence that top-level Western officials made public and private promises that NATO would not expand eastwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The German magazine &quot;SPIEGEL&quot; has run &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-s-eastward-expansion-did-the-west-break-its-promise-to-moscow-a-663315.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a detailed article on this topic&lt;/a&gt; in 2009, when Russian then-President Dmitri Medvedev raised the issue of a broken NATO promise. My answer is largely based on this; it states interviews with many of the protagonists as well as access to documents from the German Ministry of Foregn Affairs as well as other western archives as its sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for formal NATO statements: Had any existed, surely there would be evidence of that in the West as well as numerous references from Russia. As it is, the Russian officials complaining about the NATO expansion tend not to make such claims. There have been claims of less formal promises made by the NATO, such as this one &lt;a href=&quot;http://eng.kremlin.ru/transcripts/8498&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;made by Vladimir Putin in 2007&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2014/11/06-nato-no-promise-enlarge-gorbachev-pifer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as Steven Pifer points out&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://nato.int/docu/speech/1990/s900517a_e.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the statement was a bit different&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This will also be true of a united Germany in NATO. The very fact that we are ready not to deploy NATO troops beyond the territory of the Federal Republic gives the Soviet Union firm security guarantees. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here, Mr. Woerner is clearly talking about the Federal Republic as opposed to the GDR; no non-German NATO troops were to be deployed in the Eastern part of Germany according to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Final_Settlement_with_Respect_to_Germany&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is considerable variation of opinion on whether promises have been given by Western officials during the negotiations and the overall period of transition. The SPIEGEL quotes the last foreign minister of the USSR, Edward Shevardnadze, as saying no promises have been made; the same position is held by then-foreign minister of West Germany, Mr. Genscher, and the US Secretary of State, Mr. Baker. The Soviet President, Michail Gorbatchev, however, claims that of course promises had been made, and Jack Matlock, then the US ambassador in Russia, confirms that Moscow had received a &quot;clear commitment&quot;. SPIEGEL also quotes from archival documents; Genscher is to have told Shevardnadze in February 1990: &quot;It is clear to us then NATO will not expand eastwards&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On January 31 1990, Genscher already said in a public speech that a unified Germany would be a firm part of the Western world; however, there would be no expansion of the NATO towards the East. Genscher later explained that he was afraid of a situation similar to the 1956 Hungary uprising, when the insurgents' stated desire to join NATO provided the excuse for the Soviet Union to crack down. The US and British foreign ministers agreed with this line of diplomacy. On February 8 1990, in the Kremlin, Baker promised &quot;no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east&quot;, should the Soviets ascent to a NATO membership for a united Germany.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are also quotes showing that, at least internally, Baker and Genscher regarded this to be a policy for the very next future, not for all times. And there is no evidence of a formal or ratified decision by any NATO member state to oppose a NATO extension to the East; that is, while the foreign ministers seem to have made such promises, especially in the early stages of negotiations, no government or parliament officially endorsed them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is the question of why the Soviet leaders and negotiators, described in the SPIEGEL article as insisting &quot;that everything be documented in writing, even when all that was at issue was the fate of Soviet military cemeteries in East Germany&quot;, did not request a written guarantee of NATO not expanding to the East. Gorbachev and a few others claimed the idea was plainly unthinkable at the time, so the issue did not arise. On the other hand, it might well be that the Western powers did not want to bind themselves on that issue. We just do not know and, if there is no release of new classified information in East or West, will probably not know for a while.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastEditorUserId="18230" LastEditDate="2020-03-03T20:58:46.157" LastActivityDate="2020-03-03T20:58:46.157" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="23996" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23977" CreationDate="2014-12-03T16:08:02.390" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;The witness testimonies are mixed as to whether his arms were up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from those witness testimonies there's forensic evidence, which includes the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1370849-2014-5143-autopsy-report.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;medical examiner's report&lt;/a&gt;, which describes (among other things) the entry and exit of gunshot wounds to the arm, as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a gunshot wound of the upper ventral right arm. There is a gunshot exit wound of the upper dorsal right arm. There is a gunshot entrance wound of the dorsal right forearm.  There is a gunshot exit wound of the medial ventral right forearm. There is a tangential (graze) gunshot wound of the right bicep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the purpose of this question we can ignore the wound to the hand which, due to the presence of gunpowder stippling, likely occurred in the vehicle. We know the above three gunshot wounds did not occur inside the vehicle as they would exhibit stippling from such close range. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pathologyexpert.com/boards/forensics/gsw.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stippling is found in gunshot wound&lt;/a&gt;s of less than 30 inches (76cm) distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The entrance and exit wounds to the arm are due to two single shots, entering and exiting the arm:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;em&gt;ventral&lt;/em&gt; side of the &lt;em&gt;upper&lt;/em&gt; arm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;em&gt;dorsal&lt;/em&gt; side of the &lt;em&gt;lower&lt;/em&gt; arm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quick primer on the medical terminology used. The ventral surface of the human body is the front of the body with the palm of the hand facing forward, as this picture shows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lKf85.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Body symmetry image showing words used to describe locations on the human body.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;From section 27.2 of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://philschatz.com/biology-book/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Openstax Biology book&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cc-by-4.0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="919" LastEditorUserId="919" LastEditDate="2014-12-05T12:42:10.383" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T12:42:10.383" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="23999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-03T21:27:22.280" Score="23" ViewCount="1369" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cuba is frequently cited as an example of a country which has great healthcare considering its limited economic resources.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/salim-lamrani/cubas-health-care-system-_b_5649968.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Salim Lamrani, &lt;em&gt;Cuba's Health Care System: a Model for the World&lt;/em&gt;, Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the UN's World Health Organization, Cuba's health care system is an example for all countries of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Cuban health system is recognized worldwide for its excellence and its efficiency. Despite extremely limited resources and the dramatic impact caused by the economic sanctions imposed by the United States for more than half a century, Cuba has managed to guarantee access to care for all segments of the population and obtain results similar to those of the most developed nations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article goes on citing statistics of an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;infant mortality of 4.76/1000&lt;/a&gt; and a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;health expectancy of 79.4 years&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/06/201265115527622647.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lucia Newman, &lt;em&gt;The truths and tales of Cuban healthcare&lt;/em&gt;, Al Jazeera&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Much of this praise is well-deserved. Despite its scarce resources, Cuba has one of the world's lowest infant mortality rates - just slightly lower than that of the US. Life expectancy is 77.5 years, one of the world's highest. And until not so long ago, there was one doctor for every 170 citizens - the highest patient-per-doctor ratio in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Others, however, state that all is not as good as it seems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cuba/health-myth.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Review, The Myth of Cuban Healthcare&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then there is the real Cuban system, the one that ordinary people must use — and it is wretched. Testimony and documentation on the subject are vast. Hospitals and clinics are crumbling. Conditions are so unsanitary, patients may be better off at home, whatever home is. If they do have to go to the hospital, they must bring their own bedsheets, soap, towels, food, light bulbs — even toilet paper. And basic medications are scarce. In Sicko, even sophisticated medications are plentiful and cheap. In the real Cuba, finding an aspirin can be a chore. And an antibiotic will fetch a fortune on the black market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the Q&amp;amp;A, the kids spouted at him [&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armando_Valladares&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cuban exile Ermando Valladeres&lt;/a&gt;] the usual line about Cuba: health care, literacy, and blacks. They had been carefully taught it by their teachers. And Valladares answered, in essence, “It’s all untrue — a pack of lies. But even if it were true: Can’t a country have those things without dictatorship, without tyranny, without gulags, without torture — with freedom?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to reconcile the two.  By objectively measurable indicators, such as access to (preventive) care, health expectancy, infant mortality etc., does Cuban healthcare perform better than the healthcare for countries of comparable economic strength?  Or is there verifiable evidence that this is primarily a very well-constructed façade set up by the authorities in Cuba?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-10-14T00:08:15.537" Title="Does the Cuban healthcare system perform better than those of countries of similar economic strength?" Tags="|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24004" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24035" CreationDate="2014-12-04T03:28:12.103" Score="14" ViewCount="922" Body="&lt;p&gt;The snowball approach to debt repayment involves paying down the smallest debt first, followed by the next smallest, and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If one were instead able to and follow through with paying down debt in order of highest to lowest interest rate, you'd pay the total debt down more quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One proponent of the snowball method says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;people trying to reduce debt need &quot;quick wins&quot; (i.e., no more bills from creditors paid off in full) in order to remain motivated toward debt reduction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really the case? Has it been demonstrated that people need quick wins? Do people following the snowball method have more success than those following the mathematically optimal highest-to-lowest-interest-rate strategy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23059" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T18:07:01.073" Title="Has the snowball approach to debt repayment been shown to have any advantages?" Tags="|psychology|personal-finance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24005" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24007" CreationDate="2014-12-04T03:56:38.867" Score="65" ViewCount="14829" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/tables/trends/cig_smoking/&quot;&gt;the CDC&lt;/a&gt;, smoking prevalence among US adults (18+) has decreased quite a bit over the years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1974: 37.1% of the population&#xA;1980: 33.2&#xA;1990: 25.5&#xA;2000: 23.3&#xA;2010: 19.3&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/lungb.html&quot;&gt;cancer.gov&lt;/a&gt; the rates of new cases of lung cancer in the US haven't consistently gone down over the years:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;1975: 52.5/100,000 people&#xA;1980: 60.7&#xA;1990: 68.1&#xA;2000: 64.1&#xA;2010: 57.3&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If smoking causes lung cancer - according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/basic_info/risk_factors.htm&quot;&gt;the CDC&lt;/a&gt; &quot;cigarette smoking is linked to about 90% of lung cancers&quot; - shouldn't such a clear decline in the number of smokers have also caused a clear decline in the incidence of lung cancer? How have experts/doctors/medical scientists/etc. addressed these statistics, if at all? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23128" LastEditorUserId="23128" LastEditDate="2014-12-04T04:28:29.230" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T12:53:49.353" Title="If smoking causes lung cancer, why has a decline in smoking not led to a decline in lung cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|united-states|cancer|smoking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24005" CreationDate="2014-12-04T04:36:55.940" Score="114" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/lungb.html&quot;&gt;cancer.gov&lt;/a&gt; site you referenced says that the median age of diagnosis is 70. That implies that you smoke and then, &lt;em&gt;later in life/time&lt;/em&gt;, you may be diagnosed with cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, for example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/types/lung/incidence/uk-lung-cancer-incidence-statistics&quot;&gt;Lung cancer incidence statistics&lt;/a&gt; from the UK says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trends in lung cancer&lt;/strong&gt; incidence rates reflect &lt;strong&gt;past trends in cigarette smoking&lt;/strong&gt; prevalence. Smoking rates peaked earlier in males than in females, so lung cancer rates in men have been decreasing for some decades, but &lt;strong&gt;this decrease is yet&lt;/strong&gt; to start in women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/types/lung/incidence/uk-lung-cancer-incidence-statistics#trends&quot;&gt;Figure 1.2 in your cancer.gov&lt;/a&gt; report shows that cancer rates for all people &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; been decreasing steadily, since 1992, and since 1986 for men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-04T12:29:18.173" LastActivityDate="2014-12-04T12:29:18.173" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24010" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3049" CreationDate="2014-12-04T11:45:19.757" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's the short description of the methodology adopted in several up-to-date researches, as it's described in &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.fr/books?id=Q13qPII2VDUC&amp;amp;lpg=PA225&amp;amp;ots=-BW40cKwTS&amp;amp;dq=In%20direct-looking%20experiments%2C%20people%20work%20in%20pairs%2C%20with%20a%20subject%20and%20a%20looker&amp;amp;pg=PA225#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=In%20direct-looking%20experiments,%20people%20work%20in%20pairs,%20with%20a%20subject%20and%20a%20looker&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Science Set Free: 10 Paths to New Discovery&lt;/em&gt;&#xA; by Rupert Sheldrake&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Since the 1980s the sense of being stared at has been investigated experimentally both through direct looking and also through closed circuit television (CCTV). In the scientific literature it is variously referred to as “unseen gaze detection” or “remote attention” or “scopaesthesia” (from Greek skopein, to view, and aisthetikos, sensitive).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In direct-looking experiments, people work in pairs, with a subject and a looker. In a randomized series of trials, blindfolded subjects sit with their backs to the lookers, who either stare at the back of their necks, or look away and think of something else. A mechanical signal—a click or a beep—marks&#xA;  the beginning of each trial. Within a few seconds the subjects guess whether they are being looked at or not. Their guesses are either right or wrong, and are recorded immediately. A test usually consists of twenty trials.&#xA;  These tests are so simple that a child can do them, and thousands of children already have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the 1990s, this research was popularized through New Scientist magazine, BBC TV and Discovery Channel TV, and many tests were conducted in schools and as student projects at universities. Altogether, tens of thousands of trials were carried out. The results were remarkably consistent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Typically, about 55 percent of the guesses were right, as opposed to 50 percent expected by chance. Although the effect was small, because it was so widely replicated it was highly significant statistically. In more rigorous experiments subjects and starers were separated by windows or one-way mirrors, eliminating the possibility of subtle cues by sound or even smell. They were still able to tell when they were being watched.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dean Radin published a meta-analysis of 60 different super-visioned experiments conducted over 33,357 trial tests, titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deanradin.com/FOC2014/Radin2005MetaStaring.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Sense of Being Stared At: A Preliminary Meta-Analysis&lt;/a&gt;. The result is a 54% chance of hit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is clear that the mean hit rate stabilizes to just over 54%, where&#xA;  50% is expected by chance. The FEM weighted mean effect size was significantly&#xA;  above chance, &lt;em&gt;e&lt;/em&gt; = 0.089 ± 0.003 (mean ± standard error), z = 32.5,&#xA;  p = 10&lt;sup&gt;–232&lt;/sup&gt;, and the distribution of effects was significantly heterogeneous,&#xA;  Q = 763.3 (58 df), p = 10&lt;sup&gt;–232&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23114" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-04T23:49:09.623" LastActivityDate="2014-12-04T23:49:09.623" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24013" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24042" CreationDate="2014-12-04T17:21:14.200" Score="9" ViewCount="2925" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some sources claim that Colonel Sanders of KFC was rejected for at least a 1000 times before some restaurant agreed to sell his chicken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, the book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=8UDJAwAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA100&amp;amp;dq=%22Colonel+Sanders%22+%221009+times%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=e_GAVMHeEeSwmAXZnYG4BA&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22Colonel%20Sanders%22%20%221009%20times%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Life Lessons for the Teenage Girl&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The famous secret chicken recipe of Harland David Sanders (better known as Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame) was rejected 1009 times before being accepted by a restaurant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this famous business-story have any factual basis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23144" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-04T23:46:01.757" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T22:00:50.530" Title="Was Colonel Sanders rejected by 1009 restaurants before he started his first franchise?" Tags="|commerce|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24019" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23994" CreationDate="2014-12-04T22:39:04.190" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this article (which is pretty thin on formal sources such as documents or memoirs), there was never a &lt;strong&gt;written&lt;/strong&gt; (and thus formal) promise, but there were oral indications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141845/mary-elise-sarotte/a-broken-promise&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;A Broken promise? What the West Really Told Moscow About NATO Expansion&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Documents also show that the United States, with the help of West Germany, soon pressured Gorbachev into allowing Germany to reunify, without making any kind of written promise about the alliance’s future plans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three days later, in Moscow, Baker talked NATO with Gorbachev directly. During their meeting, Baker took handwritten notes of his own remarks, adding stars next to the key words: “End result: Unified Ger. anchored in a ´changed (polit.) NATO -- ´whose juris. would not move ´eastward!” Baker’s notes appear to be the only place such an assurance was written down on February 9, and they raise an interesting question. If Baker’s “end result” was that the jurisdiction of NATO’s collective-defense provision would not move eastward, did that mean it would not move into the territory of former East Germany after reunification?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... As with Baker’s meeting with Gorbachev, &lt;strong&gt;no written agreement emerged&lt;/strong&gt;. After hearing these repeated assurances, Gorbachev gave West Germany what Kohl later called “the green light” to begin creating an economic and monetary union between East and West Germany -- the first step of reunification....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastActivityDate="2014-12-04T22:39:04.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23993" CreationDate="2014-12-05T01:13:57.907" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story referenced in the OP ends as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The man replied: ' I don't have an email.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The broker was dumbfounded. &quot;You don't have an email, and yet have&#xA;  succeeded in building an empire. Can you imagine what you could have&#xA;  been if you had an email?,&quot; he exclaimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The man thought for a while, and replied, &quot;an office boy at&#xA;  Microsoft!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a famous short story called &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sinden.org/verger.html&quot;&gt;THE VERGER (by W. Somerset Maugham)&lt;/a&gt;, from much earlier in the century (probably the 1930s), whose ending is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;You see it's like this, sir, I [didn't learn how to read and write].&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The manager stared at him as though he were a prehistoric monster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;And do you mean to say that you've built up this important business&#xA;  and amassed a fortune of thirty thousand pounds without being able to&#xA;  read or write? Good God, man, what would you be now if you had been&#xA;  able to?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;I can tell you that sir,&quot; said Mr. Foreman, a little smile on his&#xA;  still aristocratic features. &quot;I'd be verger of St. Peter's, Neville&#xA;  Square.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The stories seem to me similar, in content (creating a retail business empire), and even in their narrative structure (dialog).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that the latter is famous, earlier, and (presumably) fictional doesn't prove that the later story (referenced in the OP) is also fictional; but I think it's fictional (clearly intended to be allegorical or inspirational), and so I present THE VERGER as 'evidence', and let you be the judge of what you think is probable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll add that various details in the referenced story seem to me improbable (e.g. people buying tomatoes, even for tens of dollars let alone thousands of dollars, which are being sold door-to-door by a stranger at two times their supermarket price) ... but I'm no expert at selling tomatoes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's some kind of trope: newspaper boy makes a fortune by selling newspapers, ends up owning the newspaper empire. Here you have the guy owning the supermarket chain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are true, real-life stories of people (including poor immigrants) who made a living (if not a fortune) by long, hard work and retail sales; but I don't think this is one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T01:13:57.907" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24033" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-05T19:55:34.333" Score="1" ViewCount="227" Body="&lt;p&gt;what if our brain really works at more than 50%.In Lucy movie they were telling about the drug name CPH4 or they tell that it will produce at the time of pregnancy when women is at 5 or 6 months.Is this true a drug CPH4 really produce at the time of pregnancy if it is true then is it really helpful for increasing our brain power or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23180" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T19:55:34.333" Title="CPH4 is exist or not" Tags="|medical-science|biology|psychology|neurology|computers|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-12-05T22:36:52.630" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24035" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24004" CreationDate="2014-12-05T22:38:21.367" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is an interesting question. I've seen this idea bandied about personal finance blogs and forums before, and always thought it was a bit nutty, since, as noted in the comments to this question, paying off the debt with the highest interest rate first will minimize both total payments and time until you are debt free. Despite this, it is a notable claim, and one that is widely repeated (at least in my experience).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It turns out this strategy has been studied very recently by the US &quot;National Bureau of Economic Research&quot; (NBER), which appears to be a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/info.html&quot;&gt;think-tank&lt;/a&gt; devoted to economic policy issues. They claim to be &quot;non-partisan&quot;, though I have no way of verifying this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/w20125.pdf&quot;&gt;The introduction of their working paper&lt;/a&gt; (page 1) provides a good synopsis of the claim and reasons why it might be true. The claim was popularized by radio host Dave Ramsey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper also cites a &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.ama.org/doi/abs/10.1509/jmr.11.0272&quot;&gt;2012 analysis&lt;/a&gt; of data gathered from a debt collections agency, which showed that the snowball method was actually an extremely effective strategy for people in arrears. The number of accounts closed so far turns out to be a strong predictor of closing more accounts, regardless of the dollar amounts on the individual accounts. The dollar amounts paid off so far, in contrast, were not predictive. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2012 study already answers the question empirically (&lt;strong&gt;yes, at least for people sent to collections agencies&lt;/strong&gt;, the snowball is effective), but the 2014 study investigates why this might be in much more detail, and proposes a full mathimatical model for the actions of human agents in paying off the debt (it looks like a great read, and doesn't seem to be paywalled). They also offer experimental results on a different set of tasks, showing that humans both i) perform tasks faster (voluntarily) when the tasks are ordered from fastest to slowest instead of slowest to fastest or randomly ii) humans are more likely to complete the entire set of tasks when they are ordered from shortest to longest than the other way round (71% completion rate vs. 48%!), or randomly (71% vs. 58%!). Interestingly, although past research found that, given the choice, humans prefer to pay off debt by ordering it from smallest to largest, in this study humans who were allowed to order their tasks actually preferred to do that largest ones first, even though this was less efficient!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastActivityDate="2014-12-05T22:38:21.367" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23860" CreationDate="2014-12-06T12:44:53.850" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;EDIT... there is good information on wiki: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_metel#America_or_Asia_?_Resolution_of_controversy_over_continent_of_origin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_metel#America_or_Asia_?_Resolution_of_controversy_over_continent_of_origin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;How good is the evidence presented in the thesis?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thesis does not draw upon molecular phylogeny evidence. Like DNA evidence in court, DNA phylogeny is considered to be much more compelling evidence than 1000 year old witness accounts. Most scientific studies to determine when speciation occured is nowdays done by molecular analysis rather than scientific fossil and morphological evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Abstract presumes that, because there is established Datura in the old world, it must have arrived by human transport. That is an scientifically weak assumption. Datura belongs to the family Solenaceae, i.e. tomatos, potatos, of which most occur in the Americas, of which many occur in the old world i.e. Madrake. It is not an unreasonable assumption, and is not fringe science. Pre-Colombian exchange of DNA is an ongoing field of science: Genome-wide Ancestry Patterns in Rapanui Suggest Pre-European Admixture with Native Americans. Current Biology, 2014 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2014.09.057&#xA;Old World iconography of Solenaceae:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/actahort745.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/actahort745.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also molecular studies of solenaceae available online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;What evidence is there that Datura existed in the old world?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have searched for you, and have found various phylogenetic studies of Datura species and solenaceae, and have not found any unrefuteable evidence that Datura existed in the old world, save for references to old texts with varying interpretations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best study is the phylogeny for natural hybridization of Datura species Systematic Botany, Volume 38, Number 3&#xA;which studies the genetics of Jimsonweed, purported to have existed in India in the PubMed paper, but he doesn't report any evidence for the timing of the arrival of Jimsonweed in India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many scientific papers studying history which are more historical conjecture and historical research papers than scientific.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186%2F2241-5793-21-11#page-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1186%2F2241-5793-21-11#page-1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quality scientific paper studing the age of the first plants would rely on a clear painting or description from an old source, carbon dating, or DNA, and for the moment, the best evidence for pre-colombian arrival of Datura species is historical conjecture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Datura did arrive in Asia, it could have done so by trade in the many hundreds of years that the Behring strait was accessible 14000 years ago, in return journeys from northern California. Guides and adventurers may have done the journey multiple times and brought proofs of the strange plants and animals they encountered in the new world. To prove if and when arrived is difficult using books more than 500 years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23102" LastEditorUserId="23102" LastEditDate="2020-07-09T06:28:30.993" LastActivityDate="2020-07-09T06:28:30.993" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23860" CreationDate="2014-12-06T14:26:14.757" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Attacking this purely from the angle of locating pre-Columbian mentions of any species of datura in the Old World, here's one example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From page 201 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fairfield.edu/lassochannel/academic/profile/index.lasso?id=50&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ronald M. Davidson&lt;/a&gt;'s book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=n_VquVQvnBwC&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moreover, many of the siddha scriptures discuss ointments and drugs, especially those applied to the eyes or feet. The use of the various species of datura (especially &lt;strong&gt;datura fastuosa&lt;/strong&gt;) is particularly evident. Sometimes termed the “crazy datura” (unmattadhattura) or “Śiva's datura,” it was generally employed as a narcotic paste or as wood in a fire ceremony and could be easily absorbed through the skin or the lungs.&lt;sup&gt;103&lt;/sup&gt; The seeds of this powerful narcotic, termed “passion seeds” (candabīja), are the strongest elements and contain the alkaloids hyoscine, hyoscyamine, and atropine in forms that survive burning or boiling. In even moderate doses, datura can render a person virtually immobile with severe belladonna-like hallucinations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Datura fastuosa is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_metel#Black_daturas_.28Datura_metel_.27Fastuosa.27.29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;variety of Datura metel&lt;/a&gt;. Davidson's provided reference for the above section reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kṛṣṇayamāri-tantra IV.45, IX.4 (seeds)&lt;/strong&gt;; Sampuṭa, To. 381, fols. 121b5, 128a6; Saṃvarodaya-tantra X.36, XXVII.10–14; Mahākāla-tantra, in Stablein 1976, pp. 169, 267, 275–277; Vajramahābhairava-tantra, in Siklós 1996, p. 83; Guhyasamāja XV.81.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the &quot;Krishnayamari-tantra&quot; (which apparently concerns &quot;seeds&quot;) is the source of his assertion, I came across the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu/4267123/Fragments_of_the_Sahaj%C4%81lokapa%C3%B1jik%C4%81_A_Critical_Edition_of_the_IASWR_Manuscript&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;following paper&lt;/a&gt; by another academic, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tantric-studies.uni-hamburg.de/en/people/dr-kenichi-kuranishi.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Kenichi Kuranishi&lt;/a&gt;, in which he notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Kṛṣṇayamāritantra&lt;/strong&gt;, which is categorized in the Yogottaratantra category, most likely &lt;strong&gt;dates to from the ninth to the tenth century&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; The tantra consists of eighteen chapters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The reference discusses the dating in more detail.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if these gentlemen are to be believed, then &lt;em&gt;D. metel&lt;/em&gt; was in use in India in the first millennium CE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2014-12-06T18:45:37.347" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T18:45:37.347" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24041" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25161" CreationDate="2014-12-06T15:40:16.830" Score="20" ViewCount="3750" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-21236690&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;I heard recently that cats have hunted numerous species to extinction&lt;/a&gt;, but I couldn't find a reliable source for this. Several sources say that they &lt;strong&gt;have been blamed&lt;/strong&gt; for these extinctions, but is there any reliable source showing that this is true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cats are one of the top threats to US wildlife, killing billions of animals each year, a study suggests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors estimate they are responsible for the deaths of between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and 6.9-20.7 billion mammals annually&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The domestic cat's killer instinct has been well documented on many islands around the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Felines accompanying their human companions have gone on to prey on the local wildlife, and &lt;strong&gt;they have been blamed for the global extinction of 33 species.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23192" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-09-16T20:57:33.890" Title="Have cats hunted at least 33 species to extinction?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24042" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24013" CreationDate="2014-12-06T21:52:22.993" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was a manager for KFC for a few years.  They fly all managers down for training in Kentucky and we all hear the history of KFC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story short:  He developed the recipe on his own while caring and cooking for siblings when his mother joined the workforce after the death of his father during the depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fast forward to 1930 when he was working out of a Shell gas station, serving food to travelers who started coming more for the chicken than the Gas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there, due to rations imposed by World War II, he moved around as a cook for other establishments and cafeterias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;finally, around 1950 (give or take a year or 2), a friend of his in Utah by the name of Pete Harman opened a restaurant and as a 'congratulations', Sanders visited him and offered to make him dinner in his own establishment.  He made him chicken using his secret recipe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Harman though it was so good, he went into a deal with Sanders to sell the chicken, keep the recipe secret, and share the profits (becoming Sanders' first franchise, which is still standing today). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fun fact:  In that era, there were many restaurants that had signs like &quot;fried chicken&quot;, &quot;hamburgers&quot;, etc.  To stand apart, and because Sanders was from KY, Harman put &quot;Kentucky Fried Chicken&quot; on the sign to his restaurant, which is where the name comes from.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question, no.  He was not rejected that many times (to the best of my knowledge) because he wasn't actively trying to work in restaurants.  He kind of fell into the food business by chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Check the Wikipedia page for more info and many references : &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders&quot;&gt;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23195" LastEditorUserId="23195" LastEditDate="2014-12-06T22:00:50.530" LastActivityDate="2014-12-06T22:00:50.530" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24044" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24045" CreationDate="2014-12-07T01:35:31.973" Score="21" ViewCount="6074" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am rather surprised to read &lt;a href=&quot;http://speisa.com/modules/articles/index.php/item.454/sweden-to-become-a-third-world-country-by-2030-according-to-un.html&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;Sweden to become a Third World Country by 2030, according to UN&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2010 Sweden had the 15th place in the HDI rankings but according to UN forecasts,  Sweden will be #25 in 2015, and in 2030 on the 45th place.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Sweden is one of few countries with such a sharp deterioration from what it had in 2010.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What makes me very suspicious is the very right-wing political propaganda in the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sweden's leftist establishment and media believe a cornerstone of their perfect society is multiculturalism: large scale immigration from some of the poorest, most backward nations on earth. Swedes who disagree with that plan risk being labeled racist, fascist, even Nazi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does &lt;a href=&quot;http://ww.rrojasdatabank.info/HDRP_2010_40.pdf&quot;&gt;the UN study&lt;/a&gt; justify the contents of the article (concrete risk of becoming a third-world country due to multiculturalism)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T17:38:35.927" Title="Is Sweden's economy deteriorating fast?" Tags="|economics|politics|sweden|united-nations|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24045" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24044" CreationDate="2014-12-07T02:58:46.147" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Page 41 of the referenced study/document does claim that, per its projections/algorithms, Sweden's HDI will drop, from 0.949 to 0.906 (e.g. to 45th place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;45th place is &lt;strong&gt;relatively low-ish&lt;/strong&gt; (for comparison, currently Portugal is in about 45th place) but not &quot;third world&quot; ... the &lt;strong&gt;absolute HDI&lt;/strong&gt; is still above 0.9 ... part of the reason why it's projected to be relatively low is that HDI of other countries are expected to rise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My initial answer was as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strike&gt;The document talks about how it calculates but doesn't explain it well/clearly enough for me to understand.&#xA;The document doesn't include the actual calculations for Sweden, only the result of the calculations.&lt;/strike&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I think I understand it now, as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The start of the document says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The model was developed by creating “cohorts” of countries and then by&#xA;  applying demography’s hypothetical cohort approach to observed 1970-2005 country-level&#xA;  changes in HDI. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the brown lines (cohort 4) on page 45, one of those is downward: I presume that's Sweden; that Sweden's HDI dropped just before the study period; and that Sweden is the only country in its cohort whose HDI dropped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because Sweden's HDI dropped, the projection is for it to keep on dropping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because other countries were rising in the 2005-2010 period, their HDIs are projected to keep on rising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sweden's HDI continuing to drop for 20 years (projected from 2010 through 2030) contrasted with other country's HDI rising for 20 year, is enough to drop Sweden's HDI to 45th place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Yes it says 45th place&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No that's not 3rd-world&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a naive estimate, based on the assumption that because Sweden's HDI dropped recently it will continue to drop for the next 20 years, and that because other countries rose recently they will continue to rise for the next 20 years.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even according to the report, even if you accept the report, Sweden is not &quot;dropping fast&quot;: it's dropping a little. Dropping even &quot;just a little&quot; adds up if it's projected over 20 years; and looks relatively worse when almost all other countries are rising. But above 0.9 is still good in absolute terms: it's not &quot;deteriorating fast&quot;, it's more like going from &quot;top of the high HDI group&quot; to &quot;middle of the high HDI group&quot;, with the number of countries in the &quot;high HDI group&quot; increasing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Perhaps more importantly, the purpose of the paper (for which the paper's methods of projecting was chosen) was to look at the HDI progression of cohorts (i.e. groups of similar countries), not of individual countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact the whole paper might be a red herring, in that according to footnote 8 on page 29, the document references the following for its 2030 projections:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; Daponte, B. Osborne and Hu, Difei. “Technical Note on Re-Calculating the HDI Using Projections of&#xA;  Components of the HDI.” April 2010. UNDP/Human Development Report Office. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that this is the paper which would explain why Sweden's HDI was, uniquely, calculated as dropping; but I haven't found a copy of this document so I can't review it. But even without knowing how Sweden's drop in HDI was calculated, there enough information (explained in this answer) to see how little this alleged drop matters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A different more recent document i.e. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/Country-Profiles/SWE.pdf&quot;&gt;Sweden&#xA;HDI values and rank changes in the 2013 Human Development Report&lt;/a&gt; shows that Sweden's HDI is currently rising (and has always been rising, never falling).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This document also says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rank of Sweden’s HDI for 2011 based on data available in 2012 and methods used in 2012 was 7&#xA;  out of 187 countries. In the 2011 HDR, Sweden was ranked 10 out of 187 countries. However, it is&#xA;  misleading to compare values and rankings with those of previously published reports, because the&#xA;  underlying data and methods have changed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary I don't think that the &quot;Hypothetical Cohort Model of&#xA;Human Development&quot; document is a reliable predictor of bad HDI for Sweden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-12-07T04:35:36.093" LastActivityDate="2014-12-07T04:35:36.093" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24049" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-07T17:16:16.860" Score="4" ViewCount="296" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I realize this question is quite like &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1854/do-graduates-from-private-secondary-schools-perform-better-in-college-than-gradu&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; one, but I want to focus more on the college GPA and then relate it to two older studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a few decades old study which show that &lt;em&gt;public&lt;/em&gt; school graduates perform better academically than do private school graduates. The newest of the following studies came in 1963.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/27529860&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; compares students at Randolph-Macon College.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00223980.1948.9917385?journalCode=vjrl20#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; compares students at Harvard, from 1948.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors of this &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/edu/54/2/118/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; administered a &quot;Personal Values Inventory&quot; test to many students and concluded that &quot;private school students do less well because as a group they are lower in scholastic aptitude and in motivation.&quot; This is from 1963.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the question I link to, a study is cited which notes there is no real difference in achievement after controlling for income and background. As far as I can tell, this didn't include observations like college GPA. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the results from the old studies I link to above reliable? Are they also persistent trends? I could not find many newer studies. Were these patterns which have died out as admissions has become more &quot;fair.&quot; The consistency with which public school graduates did better in college might suggest that adcoms favored pedigree to the point of admitting lower quality students when they came from a private school.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23205" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2014-12-07T17:16:16.860" Title="Do private school students attain lower GPAs in college than &quot;equal&quot; public school students?" Tags="|education|sociology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24050" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24054" CreationDate="2014-12-07T20:12:52.700" Score="10" ViewCount="8026" Body="&lt;p&gt;While talking about scary things and war, my girlfriend acted surprised when she found that I don't know what &amp;quot;Nikolayev gas&amp;quot; is. When I opened up wikipedia and didn't find&#xA;anything she told me that it doesn't matter, that I can find it on blogs. So I did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Note: The text and images behind the links below contain horror themes, and &lt;strong&gt;may be disturbing to some readers&lt;/strong&gt;.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The story&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story of the &amp;quot;Russian Sleep Experiment&amp;quot; appears on a number of websites, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.russiansleepexperiment.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;russiansleepexperiment.com&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/The_Russian_Sleep_Experiment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;creepypasta.com&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://4chanlit.wikia.com/wiki/Classics:The_Russian_Sleep_Experiment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4chan forums&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soviet researchers from the late 1940s kept five people awake for fifteen days using an experimental gas structured stimulant. This was in term called “The Russian Sleep Experiment” They were kept in a sealed environment to carefully observe their oxygen intake so the Nikolayev gas didn’t kill them, since it was toxic in large concentrations. This has been before the existence of closed circuit cameras therefore they had only microphones and 5 inch thick glass porthole sized windows into the holding chamber to monitor and keep track of them. The holding chamber was stocked with various publications, cots to sleep on but no bedding, running water and toilet, and adequate dried food to last all five for upwards of a month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it appears to be a fictional horror story, which I find ridiculous and unrealistic, and yet there appear to be many people who believe it (such as my girlfriend, and commenters on the forums). The name of the original author is not published.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The image&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://weheartit.com/entry/127021513&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;disturbing manipulated image&lt;/a&gt; (also pops up on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.cz/search?q=russian%20sleep%20experiment&amp;amp;num=40&amp;amp;newwindow=1&amp;amp;safe=off&amp;amp;biw=1366&amp;amp;bih=595&amp;amp;source=lnms&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=w9aEVKyBI8mAUffXg_gP&amp;amp;ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;appropriate google search keys&lt;/a&gt;) that often appears along with the story as it is republished. I'm not sure where exactly it joined the story (which doesn't speak of any images and which describes different visual appearance than the one image depicts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this story true? If (as I expect) it is not true, are the original sources of the story and image available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11660" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-26T11:32:32.577" Title="Did the &quot;Russian Sleep Experiment&quot; happen?" Tags="|world-war-ii|russia|experiments|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24051" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-07T22:07:12.190" Score="12" ViewCount="24546" Body="&lt;p&gt;In discussions and articles about the death of Eric Garner I encountered several people denying that he was actually choked and couldn't breathe. The essence of that argument most often was that &quot;if you can talk, you can breathe&quot;, claiming that repeatedly saying &quot;I can't breathe&quot;, as Eric Garner did according to the video evidence, is proof that he wasn't actually choked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nypd-chokehold-victim-eric-garner-complicit-in-own-death-union-says/&quot;&gt;A CBS News repeats this claim as well:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Garner was overweight and in poor health. Police and their supporters&#xA;  argue that if he could repeatedly say, &quot;I can't breathe,&quot; as he did&#xA;  several times, it means he could breathe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it actually a case that people simply cannot speak if they are choked? Or is this wrong, and you can still asphyxiate while being able to talk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Existing health issues certainly can play a role here, I think answers for healthy as well as people with relevant health issues like asthma would be interesting here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-07T22:30:29.327" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T03:05:57.577" Title="Is being able to talk evidence that you can breathe?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24051" CreationDate="2014-12-07T22:23:56.123" Score="20" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Is being able to talk evidence that you can breathe?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asthma guidelines (the victim was asthmatic) say you might talk a little even if you can't breathe enough:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asthmaaustralia.org.au/Asthma_emergency.aspx&quot;&gt;Asthma emergency&lt;/a&gt; page from &quot;Athsma Australia&quot; says that symptoms of a &quot;life-threatening&quot; emergency include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gasping for breath&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unable to speak or 1-2 words per breath&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Confused or exhausted&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Turning blue&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Collapsing&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;May no longer have wheeze or cough&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not responding to reliever medication&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO being able to say &quot;I can't breathe&quot; is compatible with &quot;1-2 words per breath&quot; symptom.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/asthma-attack/basics/symptoms/con-20034148&quot;&gt;When to seek emergency medical treatment&lt;/a&gt; on the Asthma attack page of the Mayo Clinic says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Seek medical attention right away if you have signs or symptoms of a&#xA;  serious asthma attack, which include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Severe breathlessness or wheezing, especially at night or in the early morning&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The inability to speak more than short phrases due to shortness of breath&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Having to strain your chest muscles to breathe&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Low peak flow readings when you use a peak flow meter&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, IMO I would characterize &quot;I can't breathe&quot; as &quot;a short phrase&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;What does 'choked and couldn't breathe' mean?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comments below this answer suggests misunderstandings about the word &quot;choke&quot; (in the question and in the actual event).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chokehold&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; says that there are two kinds of choke-hold (i.e. &quot;air choke&quot;, and &quot;blood choke&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This BBC article suggests that use of the word &quot;chokehold&quot; in a police/reporting context is ambiguous, and could mean either: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30324852&quot;&gt;Eric Garner death: What next for the chokehold?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Choking is also a general/imprecise term for non-specific asphyxiation&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I watched &lt;a href=&quot;http://nydn.us/1nh2KXr&quot;&gt;the video&lt;/a&gt; it seemed to me that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He said he couldn't breathe, after being taken to the ground.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;While (as long as) the alleged choke-hold was being applied, which was for about 10 seconds, he said nothing intelligible/recorded.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's consistent with the news report (note the word &quot;after&quot; in the following report):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 400-pound asthmatic Staten Island dad died Thursday after a cop put him in a chokehold and other officers appeared to slam his head against the sidewalk, video of the incident shows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” Eric Garner, 43, repeatedly screamed after at least five NYPD officers took him down in front of a Tompkinsville beauty supply store when he balked at being handcuffed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Within moments Garner, a married father of six children with two grandchildren, stopped struggling and appeared to be unconscious as police called paramedics to the scene. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't want my interpretation of the video to be part of this answer, but I say this in order to explain a limit/limitation of my answer.&#xA;When I answer &quot;yes&quot; (i.e. that it's possible that he couldn't breathe enough, that he was &quot;choking&quot; even though he could say a few words) that is because, IMO:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The victim may still have &quot;been choking&quot; even while he was no longer &quot;being choked&quot;, while he was complaining that he couldn't breathe. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Choking&quot; does not necessarily mean &quot;continuous/deliberate compression of the trachea&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;That isn't want the question is asking (the question doesn't presume that interpretation of choking)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the question did imply/require that interpretation of choking, then this answer wouldn't be relevant.&#xA;IMO the question is asking about &quot;choking&quot; as a synonym for &quot;asphyxiating&quot;.&#xA;The victim was asthmatic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-12-10T03:05:57.577" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T03:05:57.577" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24050" CreationDate="2014-12-08T02:06:51.303" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story claims,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abdominal organs below the ribcage of all four test subjects had been removed. While the heart, lungs and diaphragm remained in place, the skin and most of the muscles attached to the ribs had been ripped off, exposing the lungs through the ribcage. All the blood vessels and organs remained intact, they had just been taken out and laid on the floor, fanning out around the eviscerated but still living bodies of the subjects. The digestive tract of all four could be seen to be working, digesting food. It quickly became apparent that what they were digesting was their own flesh that they had ripped off and eaten over the course of days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a picture of the major arteries and veins in the abdomen (from Encyclopaedia Britannica):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6ui3S.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Parts of the human circulatory system that highlight arterial supply and venous drainage of the organs.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect you can see that it's not possible to remove organs without cutting arteries; and that common knowledge will tell you (i.e. I don't need to reference the fact that) it would not be possible for the body nor for the organs to live for several days after severing blood vessels like the hepatic artery and vein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The surgeon presiding stated repeatedly that it should be medically possible for the patient to still be alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T02:06:51.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24055" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24059" CreationDate="2014-12-08T02:29:59.503" Score="13" ViewCount="22274" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this fact on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omgfacts.com/lists/9785/80-of-Soviet-males-born-in-1923-died-in-WWII&quot;&gt;OMG Facts&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;80% of Soviet males born in 1923 died in WWII.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not surprisingly, Russia was the country with the highest WW2 causalities, with over 21 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find any source for the figure beyond fact-list websites. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22223" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-08T02:56:10.593" LastActivityDate="2016-02-05T18:38:01.013" Title="Did 80% of Soviet males born in 1923 die in WWII?" Tags="|history|world-war-ii|soviet-union|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24056" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24092" CreationDate="2014-12-08T04:23:42.677" Score="43" ViewCount="3726" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/fury-at-dna-pioneers-theory-africans-are-less-intelligent-than-westerners-394898.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;James Watson&lt;/a&gt; Nobel Prize winner for his discovery of the structure of DNA made the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/11261872/James-Watson-selling-Nobel-prize-because-no-one-wants-to-admit-I-exist.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;following claim&lt;/a&gt; in a 2007 Sunday Times interview:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;[I am] inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He told the newspaper people wanted to believe that everyone was born with equal intelligence but that those “who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/news/210059-watson-dna-nobel-racist/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;James Watson&lt;/a&gt; has been ostracized since his 2007 remarks, and has sold his Nobel Prize for income.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watson’s racial theories of IQ have some academic support, such as in Richard J. Herrnstein’s and Charles Murray’s controversial book 'The Bell Curve,' this remains one of the most contentious  [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I am not a racist in a conventional way,” he told the Financial Times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“I apologize...the [Sunday Times] journalist somehow wrote that I worried about the people in Africa because of their low IQ – and you're not supposed to say that.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does IQ testing show that blacks on average score worse than whites?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6862" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T15:07:30.220" Title="Does IQ testing show that blacks on average score worse than whites?" Tags="|intelligence|race|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24058" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24060" CreationDate="2014-12-08T11:57:09.040" Score="48" ViewCount="10359" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/bankableinsight/status/540925405142999041&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tweet&lt;/a&gt; by @bankableInsight (3,639 retweets, 1,662 favorites), reported by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&amp;amp;objectid=11370360&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NZ Herald&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a Russian priest sprinkling holy water on the central bank's&#xA;servers in an attempt to stop the fall of ruble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/t0Bai.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image in question&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are Russia's central bank's servers being sprinkled with holy water by a Russian priest in this photo?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/ivanassen/status/540971733139066880&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This tweet&lt;/a&gt; says that the photo is from 2013 or earlier, but doesn't indicate what the photo is of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T04:56:34.680" Title="Did a Russian Orthodox priest sprinkle holy water on Russia's Central Bank's servers?" Tags="|russia|christianity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24059" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24055" CreationDate="2014-12-08T12:24:44.617" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;That seems high? &#xA;I expect &quot;80%&quot; possible and even plausible, but the one piece of data which I'm going to present (below) suggests &quot;40%&quot;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's data referenced in &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.williams.edu/Economics/faculty/brainerd-rfwomen.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Uncounted Costs of World War II:&#xA;The Effect of Changing Sex Ratios on Marriage&#xA;and Fertility of Russian Women&lt;/a&gt;, which says there ended up being a male/female sex ratio of 0.6 to 1 for that cohort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO that implies that &quot;80%&quot; is a bit high (because 80% would imply a 0.2 to 1 ratio assuming no women died). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On page 5,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Russian demographers calculate that the probability of surviving&#xA;  between 1941 and 1946 for men aged 25 to 34 fell from .96 – the probability in the absence of&#xA;  the war based on 1940 mortality rates – to .61 (Andreev et. al. 1993). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While women in the prewar Soviet Union already contended with sex ratios below 1.0 – likely&#xA;  due to the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, World War I (1914-1917), civil war (1918-1922) and&#xA;  the political purges of the 1930s, all of which disproportionately affected men – the sex ratio fell&#xA;  dramatically for individuals born around 1925, from .91 to .65 for the 20-29 age group. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But these are numbers for Russia, not the whole Soviet Union:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The data and figures in this and following sections are for the Russian republic (the RSFSR)&#xA;  rather than the Soviet Union as a whole, since the empirical analysis uses Russian census data and&#xA;  primarily focuses on the Russian republic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to imagine most of the men of fighting age dying, in places like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad#Effect_on_the_city&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Leningrad&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Russia accounts for maybe &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union#Population&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;half the population of the USSR&lt;/a&gt;, the next largest being the Ukraine. Given that there was mass conscription I'm going to guess that Russian losses were representative of those of the USSR as a whole (though it also wouldn't surprise me if Ukrainian casualties were higher).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still I don't see how or from where to infer 80%. Perhaps (I speculate) the pre-war army was nearly annihilated, and that every man born in 1923 was (aged 18 in 1941 and) a conscript in that army:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The surprise attack on&#xA;  the woefully unprepared Red Army led to devastating losses for the Soviet Union in the early&#xA;  phase of the war: within the first six months, the Red Army had lost nearly 5 million men – the&#xA;  size of the Soviet Union’s entire prewar army – and had lost territory equal to the size of the&#xA;  United States between the East Coast and Springfield, Illinois (Glantz 2005). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Soviet Union mobilized all possible resources in its subsequent fight for survival and&#xA;  ultimate victory. The need for manpower dictated a significant loosening of the age and&#xA;  nationality restrictions on conscription of Soviet citizens; it is reported that men “well under” the&#xA;  age of 18 and exceeding 55 years of age were conscripted into the Red Army, with Russians and&#xA;  non-Russians alike required to serve (Glantz 2005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One anomaly that is not explained is there is an apparent discontinuity in the graph for Figure 3 on page 30:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Vuvm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But perhaps that's not proof that the numbers are 'off the scale' then, but rather it's because there are no census numbers for that date-range (&quot;at age 20&quot;), because it's while the war is actually happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-12-08T14:38:15.887" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T14:38:15.887" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24058" CreationDate="2014-12-08T15:10:24.007" Score="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The photo is from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/victor.nasochevsky/posts/608130312543316&quot;&gt;a 2013 Facebook post&lt;/a&gt;; the author states that the pictures were taken at the 2001 opening of the Russian server/payment company &lt;a href=&quot;http://rapida.ru/&quot;&gt;Rapida&lt;/a&gt;. Judging from the context, the servers/switches were treated as part of a large-scale whole-office holy sprinkling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I hope as hell the racks were watertight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastEditorUserId="18230" LastEditDate="2014-12-08T17:35:15.400" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T17:35:15.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24061" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24062" CreationDate="2014-12-08T16:54:25.343" Score="4" ViewCount="1822" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/05/us-usa-newjersey-threat-idUSKCN0JJ2AM20141205&quot;&gt;Bomb threats&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/fugitive-calls-bomb-threat-idaho-school-evade-cops-article-1.2037363&quot;&gt;are&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.courant.com/breaking-news/hc-bristol-bomb-threat-1206-20141205-story.html&quot;&gt;common&lt;/a&gt;. Most alleged bomb threats also turn out to be fake. While done for various reasons, they serve as an effective denial-of-service attack and waste lots of manpower and resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there ever been any bomb threats where real explosives were found to have been planted, or led law enforcement to a suspect with an explosives stash or the capability/knowhow of making explosives? I am skeptical, because it seems counterproductive for a genuine bomber to tip off the authorities that there is, in fact, a bomb ready to go off.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not asking about a terrorist group making a vague threat to kill or blow up their enemies, I'm referring to threats made for a specific time and place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7040" LastEditorUserId="7040" LastEditDate="2014-12-08T21:06:53.953" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T21:06:53.953" Title="Have there ever been any real, credible bomb threats?" Tags="|terrorism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24062" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24061" CreationDate="2014-12-08T17:13:49.277" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/1997-04-19/news/mn-50393_1_code-words&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;IRA Code Words Spell Real Threat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;This is the Irish Republican Army. A bomb is set to go off at the train station in 40 minutes' time. The code word is Shamrock.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anti-terrorist specialists in Northern Ireland say the IRA began using the code words in the early 1970s, when bomb threats were so common that police had no way of knowing which were serious and which were pranks. The practice later spread to Protestant militants, who devised authenticating codes of their own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/phone-codes-that-prove-bomb-threats-are-real-1275833.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Phone codes that prove bomb threats are real&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of code-words is essential to the police if they are to save lives before a bomb explodes. But officers need to be sure the codes come from &amp;quot;genuine&amp;quot; terrorists, rather than cranks and time-wasters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The procedure for organising codes has been long established. Codes alter periodically by agreement between the Provisionals and the security forces, both sides knowing that a failure in communications could be catastrophic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T17:24:07.763" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24063" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20045" CreationDate="2014-12-08T22:20:27.563" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;To properly answer this question definitively, we would need the results of a five-year long study. That would be very expensive and of limited value, and I was doubtful that one would exist. Proving the non-existence of studies is practically impossible, but a technique that we have accepted here before at Skeptics.SE is finding an appropriate expert who has performed a literature search and who explained that such studies are missing or lacking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, the 2009 book &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books?id=txh0LpjjhkoC&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Contraceptive Technology&lt;/a&gt; by James Trussell and Anita L. Nelson, M.D., 19th Edition, covers this topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Chapter 3 (page 28) they explain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We confine attention to the first-year probabilities of pregnancy solely because probabilities for longer durations are generally not available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, as of 2009, there is no definitive answer to your question...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... however, as a bonus, the authors &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; go on (in the same passage) to warn that the simplistic mathematical models being proposed in the question are inappropriate. [Emphasis theirs, paragraph breaks mine.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are three main points to remember about the effectiveness of contraceptive methods over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first and last points support the simple multiplication method, with caveats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the risk of pregnancy during either perfect or typical use of a method should remain constant over time &lt;em&gt;for an individual woman&lt;/em&gt; with a specific partner, providing that her underlying fecundity and frequency of intercourse do not change (although it is possible that the risk for a woman could decline during typical use of certain methods because she learns to use her method correctly and consistently).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second point, however, shows it to be overly-simplistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second, in contrast, the risk of pregnancy during typical use of a method will decline over time &lt;em&gt;for a group of users&lt;/em&gt;, primarily because those users prone to fail do so early, leaving a pool of more diligent contraceptive users, those who are relatively infertile, or those who have lower coital frequency. This decline will be far less pronounced among users of those methods with little scope for imperfect use. The risk of pregnancy during perfect use for a group of users should decline as well, but this decline will not be as pronounced as that during typical use, because only the relatively more fecund and those with higher coital frequency are selected out early. For these reasons, the probability of becoming pregnant for a group of users during the first year of use of a contraceptive method will be higher than the probability of becoming pregnant during the second year of use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third, probabilities of pregnancy cumulate over time. Suppose that 15%, 12% and 8% of women using a method experience contraceptive failure during years 1, 2, and 3, respectively. The probability of not becoming pregnant &lt;em&gt;within&lt;/em&gt; 3 years is calculated by multiplying the probabilities of not becoming pregnant for &lt;em&gt;each&lt;/em&gt; of the 3 years: 0.85 times 0.88 times 0.92, which equals 0.69. Thus, the percentage of becoming pregnant within 3 years is 31% (=100% - 69%)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The lesson here is that differences among probabilities of pregnancy for various methods will increase over time. For example, suppose that each year the typical proportion of women becoming pregnant while taking the pill is 8% and while using the diaphragm is 16%. Within 5 years, 34% of pill users and 58% of diaphragm users will become pregnant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-08T22:59:34.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24065" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24073" CreationDate="2014-12-08T23:13:18.637" Score="11" ViewCount="8737" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a story about quitting eating sugar (or about verifying that you can do something before you order someone else to do it), which is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/08/5-things-i-learn-from-gandhi/&quot;&gt;attributed here to the Mahatma Gandhi&lt;/a&gt;, and which is told as if Gandhi himself were the actor in the story. The story ends with,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gandhi says to the boy, “you must stop eating sugar. It’s very bad for&#xA;  you.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The boy has such respect for Gandhi that he stops and lives a healthy&#xA;  life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The woman is confused and asks him, “Gandhi, please tell me: why did&#xA;  you want me to wait two weeks  to bring back my son.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gandhi said, “Because before I could tell your son to stop eating&#xA;  sugar. I had to stop eating sugar first.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every search result on the first page of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=gandhi+sugar&quot;&gt;https://www.google.com/search?q=gandhi+sugar&lt;/a&gt; repeats this story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've previously read that story &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-the-pleasantries-of-the-incredible-mullah-nasrudin/chapanal004.html&quot;&gt;attributed to Nasrudin by Idries Shah&lt;/a&gt;. Nasrudin is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasreddin&quot;&gt;approximately 13th century&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does this story pre-date Gandhi's life?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Did Gandhi tell this story, and if so did he portray himself as the main actor in it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T16:30:19.850" LastActivityDate="2016-05-06T06:53:32.287" Title="Did Gandhi tell this story about sugar?" Tags="|quotes|mahatma-gandhi|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24067" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24068" CreationDate="2014-12-09T01:58:27.347" Score="14" ViewCount="918" Body="&lt;p&gt;In almost every article I've read about the decision of the grand jury not to bring charges over the death of Eric Garner, it's taken for granted that the jury did see the video footage of his death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any &lt;em&gt;evidence&lt;/em&gt; confirming that this assumption is actually true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we &lt;em&gt;know&lt;/em&gt; that the prosecutor did definitely show that video as evidence of how Mr Garner died?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are two examples (among many) of commentary which assume that the grand jury did see the video before reaching their verdict:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/12/economist-explains-3&quot;&gt;The Economist&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...it seems shocking that the video of the police officer using the deadly chokehold was not enough to warrant an indictment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/eric-garner-grand-jury-didnt-see&quot;&gt;The New Yorker&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;New York needs to know why the grand jury turned away from what&#xA;  everyone else saw&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10630" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-12-09T02:34:17.753" LastActivityDate="2014-12-13T12:08:15.743" Title="Was the Eric Garner grand jury shown the video of his death?" Tags="|united-states|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24068" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24067" CreationDate="2014-12-09T01:58:27.347" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is a partial answer I found while researching the question.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ramsey Orta, who shot the video, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/eric-garner-grand-jury-rigged-man-filmed-chokehold-article-1.2033257&quot;&gt;reported to the NY Daily News&lt;/a&gt; that he was invited to discuss the video with the grand jury - and that they did show the video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not clear if this is the first or only time the jurors saw the video, and it's also not made certain that the whole video was shown. He doesn't mention precisely  which parts were shown, and he suggested that his discussion of the video was cut short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“They actually cut my time short,” Orta said. “My lawyer told me I was&#xA;  supposed to be in there for at least a half an hour and I only stayed&#xA;  maybe 10 minutes.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He does mention his surprise that the jurors asked no questions about the police actions or how Garner died, but instead focused on the very start - on what Garner (and Orta) had been doing before the police approached:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The whole thing was just about Eric — why was he selling cigarettes,&#xA;  did you know he was selling cigarettes?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“What was Eric doing there? Why was Eric there? Nothing pertaining to the cop choking him,”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;One grand juror asked me, ‘If you knew he was selling cigarettes, why didn’t you tell him the cops was there?’&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Maybe three [jurors asked questions], that’s all. The rest of them, they weren’t even worried about nothing.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this is evidence that at least some of the video was shown - but it does leave two things unknown:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's not certain from this alone that the whole video was shown&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's not certain that the video was ever presented as being evidence of how Mr Garner died. Orta's account would also fit the video being presented only in the context of some other element of the case, such as the reasons for Garner being initially approached by the police.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10630" LastEditorUserId="10630" LastEditDate="2014-12-09T02:12:39.227" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T02:12:39.227" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24069" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-09T02:32:24.447" Score="31" ViewCount="2012" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this &lt;a href=&quot;http://missivesfromghosts.tumblr.com/post/104384871583/tonight-the-nypd-tricked-protesters-into-helping&quot;&gt;tumblr post&lt;/a&gt; (with over 50,000 notes, so it's notable), which says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tonight the NYPD tricked protesters into helping them by driving empty ambulances through the crowd. We thought they were transporting real sick people and let them through. Instead they were there to [sic] corrall us and to get supplies through to the NYPD. The moment the ambulances got through the roads the march had blocked, they pulled over, turned their sirens off, and the cops starting pulling supplies out the back. Supplies they then used to start arresting people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the NYPD use an ambulance to transport supplies and trick protesters in this way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastActivityDate="2017-11-19T01:00:24.217" Title="Did the NYPD use an ambulance to trick protesters into cooperating?" Tags="|united-states|police|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-09T02:53:59.710" Score="18" ViewCount="2829" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/2014/12/obama-becomes-first-president-write-computer-program/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a recent Wired article&lt;/a&gt;, US President Barack Obama was the first president to write code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;President Barack Obama told the world that everyone should learn how to code. And now he’s putting his money where his mouth is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Earlier today, to help kick-off the annual Computer Science Education Week, Obama became the first president ever to write a computer program. It was a very simple program—all it does is draw a square on a screen&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Partovi says the president himself didn’t complete the tutorial from start to finish, but instead went from station to station watching the students work. He did, however, complete some of the exercises, which involved both using Google’s Blockly tool, and writing a line of code using the programming language JavaScript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wondering whether that is truth or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2409" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T01:54:06.547" Title="Is Obama the first President of the US to write a computer program?" Tags="|history|united-states|barack-obama|programming|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24073" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24065" CreationDate="2014-12-09T10:44:07.707" Score="11" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Did Gandhi tell this story&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems doubtful&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He was a vegetarian, did not drink tea or coffee and preferred uncooked food.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;He was willing to lead by example but not always in advance of his advice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is no obvious source or references for the origin of this story.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The story has an enormous amount of variation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Vegetarianism&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gandhifoundation.net/about%20gandhi5.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gandhi was a strict vegetarian&lt;/a&gt;, it seems unlikely he was in the habit of sprinkling sugar on his food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From his writings about &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Collected_Works_of_Mahatma_Gandhi/Volume_I/1891#Interview_to_.22The_Vegetarian.22_I&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the food of India&lt;/a&gt; it is clear that he had on occasion eaten end enjoyed sweets made with sugar&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, nuts take the place of English sweets. Children eat a great quantity of sugared nuts. They are also largely used on &amp;quot;fruit days&amp;quot;. We fry them in butter, and even stew them in milk. Almonds are supposed to be very good for the brain. I will just point out one of the various ways in which we use the cocoanut. It is first ground and then mixed with clarified butter and sugar. It tastes very nice. I hope some of you will try at home those coconut sweet balls as they are called.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However it seems very unlikely that a strict vegetarian, living mostly on uncooked vegetables, who (at least later in life) endured many long fasts, would have had any doubts that he could give up sugar for a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Leading by example&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Times of India tells a &lt;a href=&quot;http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Gandhis-experiments-with-food/articleshow/5083955.cms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;related story&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throughout Gandhi's correspondence, this is a constant thread; in one letter he'd be writing to the Viceroy, in the next he would be telling one of his followers what to eat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gandhi never forced anyone to follow his diets. On the contrary, he advised a follower who had been inspired by him to turn vegetarian, but whose wife was resisting, that it was his duty to buy his wife meat. Gandhi was adamant that people could not be forced but could be persuaded, by extremely strong emotional blackmail if necessary. He did exactly that once when Kasturba fell sick. He told her to stop eating pulses and salt. She asked him sarcastically if he was capable of doing that. He replied that he would do just that for a year, at which Kasturba pretty much had to acquiesce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if Gandhi didn't give up pulses and salt for a period before advising Kasturba to do so, it seems inconsistent that he would need to prove to himself or to others &lt;em&gt;in advance&lt;/em&gt; that he could give up sugar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Inconsistencies&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I checked a few of the stories, none of which say exactly where or when Gandhi said this. They tend to vary considerably&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The period is any of: three days, one week, two weeks or three months.&#xA;Usually the child is a boy but in at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blogandrew.com/gandhis-sugar-addiction/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;one example&lt;/a&gt; it is a girl.&#xA;What Gandhi says to the child varies quite a bit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Young man, you must stop eating sugar. It is not good for you, and it is very troubling to your mother when you eat it.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;My boy, you must stop eating sugar&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;You must stop eating sugar.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;you must stop eating sugar. It’s very bad for you.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;You must stop eating sugar immediately.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;You really should stop eating sugar, as your mother wishes.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Don’t eat sugar.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gandhi told him it would be best if he quit eating so much sugar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;Boy, you should stop eating sugar. It is not good for your health.&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems almost every reporting of this story has unique embelishments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is probable that Gandhi spoke in a language other than English (It has been reported he knew half a dozen languages used in India) - so it's plausible the story would  have been translated into English several times. Even so, the variations seem excessive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These variations suggest that there isn't a single written source that has been accurately repeated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reported Sources&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One blogger &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2012/08/14/be-the-change-where-did-this-saying-come-from/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reports&lt;/a&gt; the following sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The story is in Al Gore's book &amp;quot;Earth in the Balance&amp;quot;. 1992. which references&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&amp;quot;The Great Turning&amp;quot;, by Craig Schindler and Gary Lapid (Bear and Company, 1989).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently the latter doesn't give a specific reference but the bibliography mentions Gandhi's autobiography - however the blogger can find no trace of the story in Gandhi's autobiography.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T23:03:50.353" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24077" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-09T14:17:45.883" Score="4" ViewCount="856" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his 2014 book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://us.macmillan.com/warwhatisitgoodfor/ianmorris&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;War! What Is It Good For?&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, historian &lt;a href=&quot;http://ianmorris.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ian Morris&lt;/a&gt; writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ten thousand years ago, there were only about six million people on earth. On average they lived about thirty years and &lt;strong&gt;supported themselves on the equivalent of less than two modern American dollars per day&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, in theory &quot;less than $2&quot; might, of course, mean anything down to one cent, but I think it is reasonable to suppose that Morris means that the income was slightly lower than $2, or he would have written a specific lower number. This makes me wonder. The world bank &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.worldbank.org/topic/poverty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sets the global poverty line at $1.25 a day&lt;/a&gt;, and estimates about 15% of the world's population to earn less. This means that an average stone age person earned per day, in a sense, more than about a billion people living today, and would not be considered poor by today's standards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, my audio recording of Morris' book does not contain any references. Is there indeed evidence indicating that the average human income 10000 years ago was living on not much less than $2 a day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastEditorUserId="6523" LastEditDate="2014-12-10T08:56:06.203" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T08:56:06.203" Title="Did stone age people have an income of slightly below $2 a day?" Tags="|history|economics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2014-12-11T10:51:09.813" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24067" CreationDate="2014-12-09T17:18:56.993" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to CNN, the Grand Jury saw at least 4 videos: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We now know the Grand Jury saw four videos...&quot; – &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlcnuVtxneg&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;amp;t=1m7s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eric Garner video: What the grand jury saw (1:07)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlcnuVtxneg&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;amp;t=1m7s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlcnuVtxneg&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;amp;t=1m7s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23246" LastActivityDate="2014-12-09T17:18:56.993" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24077" CreationDate="2014-12-10T00:35:33.350" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did stone age people have an income of slightly below [USD]2[] a day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.  &quot;Income&quot; is an anachronistic way to deal with hunter-gatherer or settled resource extraction or early agricultural people.  Income is concept that relates to accounted earnings, which develop in antiquity and medieval times, but most strongly in early modernity with the birth of capitalism as a social relation.  As &quot;income&quot; as a concept or as a social relation didn't exist, people did not earn incomes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ten thousand years ago, there were only about six million people on earth. On average they lived about thirty years and supported themselves on the equivalent of less than two modern American dollars per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10000BP appears to be meso-lithic, and Galor O, Moav O 2007, The neolithic revolution and contemporary variations in life expectancy, Working Paper, Brown University, Department of Economics 2007-14 &lt;a href=&quot;http://hdl.handle.net/10419/80105&quot;&gt;http://hdl.handle.net/10419/80105&lt;/a&gt; indicates that the lifespan was around 30, including infant mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The crux of the question is: was meso-lithic life equivalent to less than USD2 per day?  In particular, the concept of an equivalence between USD2 in 2014 in the United States where wage labour in advanced industrial capitalism is the way of life, and the way of life of pre-agricultural meso-lithic humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the material relating to the attempt to form a long run wage price series in England, and from the general work regarding long run attempts to explain &quot;inflation&quot; and acceptable standards of living (cf: Measuringworth.com 's paper-sets):  it is unreasonable to equate standards of living in the meso-lithic with a monetary income in an advanced industrial wage labour society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The history of ways of living, and the social organisation of ways of living (including waged labour, and purchase of social necessities on an open market), strongly favour not making broad comparisons across time in terms of different ways of organising society.  The anachronisms involved become counter-productive in the extreme, and hide the actual ways in which people live.  Even in very short stretches of time, between 1800 and 1850, subsistence and how people experienced activity vary considerably such that ideas as to whether &quot;work&quot; is onerous in capitalism is a difficult question (EP Thompson 1967, Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism, widely reprinted but first in &lt;em&gt;Past &amp;amp; Present&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;USD2 in 2014 has no meaning in terms of how meso-lithic humans sustained themselves.  Meso-lithic humans lacked wage labour, a cash economy, commodities for purchase.  They did not support themselves on the equivalent of less than USD2 a day; as how they supported themselves has no comparable value to the methods of support that USD2 entails.  The quote is a sloppy metaphor that produces more confusion than clarity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23254" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T00:35:33.350" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24086" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24089" CreationDate="2014-12-10T09:54:02.587" Score="10" ViewCount="5806" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=94840&amp;amp;page=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;circulated some time ago&lt;/a&gt;, and it occasionally comes back to life within social media, that once a woman found a chicken head inside her child's chicken nuggets at McDonald's. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/86A2V.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Photos&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did this really happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10646" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-10T12:52:36.757" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T12:52:36.757" Title="Did a woman find a chicken head in her McNuggets?" Tags="|commerce|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24087" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24088" CreationDate="2014-12-10T10:04:49.793" Score="0" ViewCount="666" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are claims that blackle.com conserves energy given that it is darker themed and produces less light. There is a counter under the search box that constantly increases. But in today's era of computers, laptops, tablets etc does it really conserver anything? Yes screen brightness affect battery life but does it make any big of an effect? In laptops which are plugged in? In desktop computer monitors which consume the same power anyhow as long as they are showing something? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the scientific facts behind this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it really does conserve energy, will I (as an end user), by using it, actually see any benefits on my electric bill?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10646" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T12:05:36.713" Title="Is there any proof that blackle.com conserves energy?" Tags="|economics|electromagnetism|energy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2014-12-10T12:14:59.660" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24088" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24087" CreationDate="2014-12-10T12:05:36.713" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It all depends on the technology; displays where each pixel produces light, such as LED or plasma displays, obviously should consume less energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not true, however, for the common back-lit LCDs: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://techlogg.com/2010/05/black-vs-white-screen-power-consumption-24-more-monitors-tested/17&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://techlogg.com/2010/05/black-vs-white-screen-power-consumption-24-more-monitors-tested/17&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe the black webpage may consume more energy than usual white google. Anyway, the effect of monitor is negligible compared, e.g., to the additional CPU power spent on running animated flash ads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23260" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T12:05:36.713" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24086" CreationDate="2014-12-10T12:23:08.263" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;It was covered &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=94840&quot;&gt;by ABC&lt;/a&gt; and referenced &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-09/will-mcdonalds-mighty-wings-fly&quot;&gt;by Business Week&lt;/a&gt;. There's also three stories from the local paper which first broke the news:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/dailypress/doc/343013149.html?FMT=ABS&amp;amp;FMTS=ABS:FT&quot;&gt;Chicken Head Found In Wing Box Mother Still Dealing With Her Discovery&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/dailypress/doc/343058396.html?FMT=ABS&amp;amp;FMTS=ABS:FT&quot;&gt;What Harm, This Fouled-Up Fryer?&lt;/a&gt; (Peninsula Health District says that there's nothing physically wrong with eating a fried chicken head).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/dailypress/doc/343041731.html?FMT=ABS&amp;amp;FMTS=ABS:FT&quot;&gt;USDA Officer Says He Can't Explain Fried Chicken Head&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/dailypress/doc/343046468.html?FMT=ABS&amp;amp;FMTS=ABS:FT&quot;&gt;No Comment, Please Chicken Head Finder Lays Low&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I would say that it is true that a woman claimed to have found a chicken head in her meal, but how it got there is not known.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;There's no reporting on any court case, although it might have happened too long after the event to be considered newsworthy. I looked for cases in the town's civil court with the name Ortega, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://epwsgdp1.courts.state.va.us/gdcourts/nameSearch.do&quot;&gt;drew a blank&lt;/a&gt;. I might be looking in the wrong place, as I don't know if the civil court would be the correct place for such a hearing. As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/horrors/food/friedrat.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes points out&lt;/a&gt;;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Katherine Ortega has posed for a number of photos of her holding the chicken head, which may work against her if she tries to seek compensatory damages for psychological harm arising out of the incident. A jury will have a difficult time believing she is now nauseated by chicken or has difficulty sleeping after being presented with photographic evidence of her repeatedly and voluntarily handling the offensive item.&quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in all likelihood, there was a chicken head, but there was no court case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6414" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T12:23:08.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24092" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24056" CreationDate="2014-12-10T17:29:10.883" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/PPPL1.pdf&quot;&gt;30 years of research on race differences in cognitive ability&lt;/a&gt; (2005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Currently, the &lt;strong&gt;1.1 standard deviation difference&lt;/strong&gt; in average IQ between Blacks&#xA;  and Whites in the United States is not in itself a matter of empirical dispute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://maginationpress.com/pubs/journals/releases/amp-67-2-130.pdf&quot;&gt;More recently&lt;/a&gt;, it has been observed that &quot;[t]he IQ gap between&#xA;Blacks and Whites has been reduced by 0.33 SD&quot;. They describe the gap further:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is important to note that there is a dramatic decline&#xA;  of Black IQ with age. Four-year-old Blacks are only about&#xA;  5 points below Whites of the same age, whereas at age 24,&#xA;  Blacks are 17 points below Whites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23045" LastEditorUserId="23045" LastEditDate="2014-12-11T02:49:17.990" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T02:49:17.990" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24094" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-10T17:51:00.757" Score="28" ViewCount="4242" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard multiple times that &quot;one should never cut raw meat on a wooden cutting board nor mix it using a wooden spoon.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason most often cited is that apparently bacteria can survive in the wood's pores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodsafety.wisc.edu/assets/pdf_Files/Care%20and%20Cleaning%20of%20Butcher%20Blocks%20and%20Wooden%20Cutting%20Boards.pdf&quot;&gt;this PDF&lt;/a&gt; from the University of Wisconsin–Madison where it is written: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Using.&lt;/strong&gt; Avoid cutting raw meat or poultry directly on a butcher block or&#xA;  wooden cutting board. Instead, place a plastic cutting board on the&#xA;  wooden surface and use the plastic board as the cutting surface. This&#xA;  will protect the wood and prevent it from becoming contaminated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth in this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10629" LastEditorUserId="10629" LastEditDate="2014-12-10T21:52:27.587" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T23:31:18.263" Title="Is it dangerous to use wooden cutlery and cutting boards with raw meat?" Tags="|hygiene|cooking|disease|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24095" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24102" CreationDate="2014-12-10T18:55:47.610" Score="6" ViewCount="1182" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many consumers in the European Union are afraid of switching to Euros since it (reportedly) means increased prices on most products. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baltic-course.com/eng/analytics/?doc=99189&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;For example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In order to address consumers' concerns about price increases and&#xA;  abusive practices during the changeover period, a campaign called the&#xA;  Memorandum on Good Business Practice upon the Introduction of the Euro&#xA;  was launched in August.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any causation between switching currencies and a significant increase in prices?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23144" LastEditorUserId="23144" LastEditDate="2014-12-11T13:40:25.507" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T13:40:25.507" Title="Did switching to a common currency cause prices to go up in European countries?" Tags="|europe|currency|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24096" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="24097" CreationDate="2014-12-10T22:06:59.793" Score="8" ViewCount="7783" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/welcome-to-the-fuetch&quot;&gt;this Buzzfeed article&lt;/a&gt; (#11):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientists are making videos out of human memories&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with some suspicion GIFs that purport to show the result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thepublicscience.tumblr.com/post/40703948617/animusascendant-space-tart&quot;&gt;Other sites make similar claims.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buzzfeed references &lt;a href=&quot;http://gallantlab.org/&quot;&gt;Gallant Labs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can we record human memories like a film?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22832" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-10T22:43:36.350" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T23:38:35.740" Title="Does technology exist that can read memories from human brains?" Tags="|medical-science|technology|memory|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24096" CreationDate="2014-12-10T22:48:48.063" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, definitely not to the degree that the Buzzfeed article implies. Those videos are from research by Jack Gallant at Berkeley, and are showing estimates of what a subject is &lt;em&gt;currently&lt;/em&gt; watching in an fMRI scanner. Essentially they use a large amount of training data to build a model of the what visual features activate different brain locations, then try to work backwards from brain activity to the most likely video the subject is watching. Note that they construct these most-likely videos by averaging together YouTube clips, so some of the structures you see in the videos are artifacts from the input videos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has been work from Berkeley as well as other labs on trying to decode memories, which has had some success but is far from a video recording - for example, they can predict above chance which of 5 pictures a subject is thinking about. Using data from current or near-future brain imaging technology, it is unlikely that any analysis method will be able to reconstruct videos from memories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Wired article, &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/2014/04/brain-scan-mind-reading/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientists Can’t Read Your Mind With Brain Scans (Yet)&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, has a decent summary of the current state of the field:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most “mind-reading” studies so far have focused on the here and now. “Vision is by far the easiest thing to work with,” said Jack Gallant, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley. Gallant’s lab has done some of the most eye-catching work in this area, including a 2011 study that used fMRI scans to decode video imagery as people watched clips cut from Hollywood films (see video below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They're unable to read memories yet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If decoding what people see and what they’re just about to do next is where the field is now, and decoding mental imagery is what’s on the horizon, Gallant says there’s yet another type of decoding that’s more like the distant frontier: decoding old memories. “If I ask you to picture your first grade teacher, you might be able to recall his or her name and call up a pretty rough mental image,” he said. “That information is buried in your brain, but you probably hadn’t thought about it for years,” Gallant said. Scientists don’t understand how old memories are encoded in our brains well enough to decode them, but some day they might.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you’re starting to feel a panic attack coming on, take a deep breath and relax. Scientists are very, very far from being able to dredge up those best-forgotten memories from your grade school days (or worse, junior high). They don’t even want to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23274" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T23:38:35.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24098" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24094" CreationDate="2014-12-10T23:31:18.263" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/faculty/docliver/Research/cuttingboard.htm&quot;&gt;research at UC-Davis&lt;/a&gt;, quite the opposite is true.  The key finding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our safety concern was that bacteria such as Escherichia coli O157:H7&#xA;  and Salmonella, which might contaminate a work surface when raw meat&#xA;  was being prepared, ought not remain on the surface to contaminate&#xA;  other foods that might be eaten without further cooking. We soon found&#xA;  that disease bacteria such as these were not recoverable from wooden&#xA;  surfaces in a short time after they were applied, unless very large&#xA;  numbers were used. New plastic surfaces allowed the bacteria to&#xA;  persist, but were easily cleaned and disinfected. However, wooden&#xA;  boards that had been used and had many knife cuts acted almost the&#xA;  same as new wood, whereas plastic surfaces that were knife-scarred&#xA;  were impossible to clean and disinfect manually, especially when food&#xA;  residues such as chicken fat were present.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All species of hardwood tested were found to have &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriostatic_agent&quot;&gt;bacteriostatic&lt;/a&gt; or antibacterial properties that plastic lacks, which compensated for the inability to easily clean the wood's pores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21297" LastActivityDate="2014-12-10T23:31:18.263" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24099" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25116" CreationDate="2014-12-11T01:09:40.690" Score="12" ViewCount="9458" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are lots and lots of people on the web repeating a claimed quote&#xA;by Neil Gaiman, with some variations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A book is a dream [that] you hold in your hand[s].&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Very few of these people bother to cite a source. Those who do, cite&#xA;some other web page. No one seems to be citing something actually&#xA;written by Neil Gaiman, or an interview with him, or a tweet, or&#xA;anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did he really say or write this? Where?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-11T02:50:12.280" LastActivityDate="2017-06-26T15:59:25.253" Title="Did Neil Gaiman say &quot;A book is a dream you hold in your hand&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24100" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-11T01:25:37.187" Score="57" ViewCount="61494" Body="&lt;p&gt;Frequently, &quot;Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.&quot;  is seen attributed to Oscar Wilde: e.g., &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=yOkN0biH6AUC&amp;amp;pg=PA14&amp;amp;dq=%22about%20sex%20except%20sex%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=te-IVJS_KtWeyASgkIGgAQ&amp;amp;ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22about%20sex%20except%20sex%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=_gQtAgAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PT39&amp;amp;dq=%22about%20sex%20except%20sex%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=te-IVJS_KtWeyASgkIGgAQ&amp;amp;ved=0CCgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22about%20sex%20except%20sex%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=qWIEAAAAMBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA87&amp;amp;dq=%22about%20sex%20except%20sex%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=te-IVJS_KtWeyASgkIGgAQ&amp;amp;ved=0CD4Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22about%20sex%20except%20sex%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. This seems unlikely to me, for several reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I can't find any instances of the quote that date from more than about fifteen years ago. The oldest of them already seem to quote it as a well-known dictum, so it's probably older than &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt;, but a hundred years is an awfully long time to go without googleable citations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nobody seems to have any idea where Oscar would have said it, if in fact he did.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It just sounds wrong: specifically, I would expect a post-Freudian source.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know what the actual source of this quote is?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21941" LastActivityDate="2019-02-04T20:37:14.987" Title="What is the original source of &quot;Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24056" CreationDate="2014-12-11T01:25:48.547" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think James Watson's claim is that there is a difference, and that that difference is caused by genetics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quoted claim includes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;inherently gloomy about the prospect of &lt;strong&gt;Africa&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;people wanted to believe that everyone was &lt;strong&gt;born&lt;/strong&gt; with equal intelligence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His claim appears to be contrary to current summaries on the matter, for which Wikipedia summarizes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#Genetics_of_race_and_intelligence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Genetics of race and intelligence&lt;/a&gt; ends with,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 2005 literature review article by Sternberg, Grigorenko and Kidd stated that no gene has been shown to be linked to intelligence, &quot;so &lt;strong&gt;attempts to provide a compelling genetic link of race to intelligence are not feasible at this time&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.[109] Hunt (2010, p. 447) and Mackintosh (2011, p. 344) concurred, both scholars noting that &lt;strong&gt;while several environmental factors have been shown to influence the IQ gap, the evidence for a genetic influence has been circumstantial, and according to Mackintosh negligible&lt;/strong&gt;. Mackintosh however suggests that it may never become possible to account satisfyingly for the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors. The 2012 review by the Nisbett et al. (2012) concluded that &quot;Almost no genetic polymorphisms have been discovered that are consistently associated with variation in IQ in the normal range&quot;. Hunt and several other researchers however maintain that genetic causes cannot be ruled out and that new evidence may yet show a genetic contribution to the gap. Hunt concurs with Rushton and Jensen who considered the 100% environmental hypothesis to be impossible. Nonetheless, Nisbett and colleagues (2012) consider &lt;strong&gt;the entire IQ gap to be explained by the environmental factors&lt;/strong&gt; that have thus far been demonstrated to influence it, and Mackintosh does not find this view to be unreasonable.[22]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These statements are more recent than the 2007 claim in the OP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary they're not ruling out the possibility of new evidence in the future (for the theory that a difference in average IQ is genetic instead of environmental), however &quot;several environmental factors have been shown to influence the IQ gap&quot;, and genetic factors haven't been isolated such that they'd reliably predict these differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2019-06-26T09:49:31.323" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T09:49:31.323" CommentCount="2" CommunityOwnedDate="2014-12-11T01:25:48.547" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="24102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24095" CreationDate="2014-12-11T02:39:25.993" Score="11" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Yes &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; No&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to numerous studies &lt;strong&gt;some of more visible prices&lt;/strong&gt; go up significantly, however overall the price increase is very limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OECD paper analyzing the subject few months before Slovakia switched to Euro and predicting what effect it could have on Slovak economy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;THE EURO CHANGEOVER IN THE SLOVAK REPUBLIC:&#xA;IMPLICATIONS FOR INFLATION AND INTEREST RATES&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;by&#xA;Felix Hüfner and Isabell Koske&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cash changeover can be expected to lead to significant price&#xA;increases in a number of sectors, most notably in sectors related to&#xA;recreational activities. The impact on the aggregate HICP, however, is&#xA;likely to be small. Applying the experience of existing euro area member countries&#xA;on the case of the Slovak Republic, the cash changeover is estimated to increase&#xA;aggregate consumer prices by 0.32 percent between July 2008 and July 2009.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aW2uk.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Most empirical studies on the price level effect of the euro&#xA;changeover focus on individual euro area member countries&lt;/strong&gt;. Examples&#xA;include: Buchwald et al. (2002), Chlumsky and Engelhardt (2002) and&#xA;Deutsche Bundesbank (2002, 2004) for &lt;strong&gt;Germany&lt;/strong&gt;; Folkertsma et al. (2002)&#xA;for the &lt;strong&gt;Netherlands&lt;/strong&gt;; National Bank of Belgium (2002) for &lt;strong&gt;Belgium&lt;/strong&gt;;&#xA;Pollan (2002) for &lt;strong&gt;Austria&lt;/strong&gt;; Santos et al. (2002) for &lt;strong&gt;Portugal&lt;/strong&gt;; and,&#xA;more recently, Eurostat (2007) and the Institute of Macroeconomic&#xA;Analysis and Development (IMAD) (2007) for &lt;strong&gt;Slovenia&lt;/strong&gt;; and Eurostat&#xA;(2008) for &lt;strong&gt;Malta&lt;/strong&gt;. These studies commonly find that price increases&#xA;were not a general phenomenon but limited to certain categories of&#xA;goods and services, so that their impact on aggregate consumer price&#xA;inflation was modest. &lt;strong&gt;Most studies estimate the effect at around 0.2&#xA;to 0.3 percent&lt;/strong&gt; which is in line with the estimate published by&#xA;Eurostat (2003) for the euro area as a whole (see Table 1).&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Nonetheless, prices have risen markedly in some sectors, particularly&#xA;in some service sectors where the above mentioned studies have&#xA;singled out restaurants and catering, hairdressers, cinemas, and dry&#xA;cleaning as sectors with significant price increases.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Actual effect in Slovakia was even lower than predicted in the paper, overall price hike of 0.2%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T02:46:20.650" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24100" CreationDate="2014-12-11T03:07:33.927" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is that it was first said by Oscar Wilde.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oscar Wilde died &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde&quot;&gt;30 November, 1900&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=sex&quot;&gt;first recorded use&lt;/a&gt; of &quot;sex&quot; as a noun to refer to sexual intercourse was by D.H. Lawrence in 1929.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The attribution to Wilde of the quote (as it stands) is anachronistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/What-did-Oscar-Wilde-mean-when-he-said-Everything-in-the-world-is-about-sex-except-sex-Sex-is-about-power/answer/Marina-Gorbenko&quot;&gt;Hat-tip to this Quoran&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T03:07:33.927" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20860" CreationDate="2014-12-11T03:49:41.177" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;1 is true as common knowledge.&#xA;2 is true by common knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 is incorrect.  Scriveners formed the deposit / lending hierarchy prior to goldsmiths, but didn't issue instruments. (470)  Goldsmiths issued notes on hand on deposits in relation to money, not valuable goods, deposited and deposited with full authority to the goldsmith. (474)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3a Goldsmiths issued notes in relation to lending real money on bills of exchange. (475)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3b These goldsmiths were known as &quot;exchanging goldsmiths&quot; rather than &quot;working goldsmiths&quot; though the exchanging goldsmiths evolved directly from working goldsmiths. (474)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4 The primary trade in notes was between goldsmiths as partially clearing trust networks. (474ff)  Though their notes became generally acceptable to settle debts.  (478)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4a While goldsmiths were private actors, who invented a system of notes where notes exceeded the fraction reserved in actual cash (474ff)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4b They were utterly dependent upon state bills, their ability to reclaim their working capital being based on reclaiming debts signed over to them that they endorsed for real money (474ff)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;4c The 1672 Stop of the Exchequer, where the government refused to pay capital falling due for a year, and instead paid only interest, broke many Goldsmiths, caused a run on the notes, and resulted in the dishonouring of Goldsmith's notes (478)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Geva, Benjamin (2011) &lt;em&gt;The Payment Order of Antiquity and the Middle Ages: A Legal History.&lt;/em&gt; Bloomsbury 474-485.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23254" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T03:49:41.177" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24105" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-11T04:21:32.013" Score="22" ViewCount="771" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 1962 book &quot;Silent Spring&quot; by Rachel Carson was instrumental at affecting public opinion against &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT&quot;&gt;DDT&lt;/a&gt; and other pesticides culminating on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Restrictions_on_usage&quot;&gt;banning DDT all over the world&lt;/a&gt;. While Carlson has many detractors, ecology militants would label them as being mercenaries at service of industrial interests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/summ02/DDT.html#The%20Silent%20Spring%20Fraud&quot;&gt;Bring Back DDT, and Science With It!&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Marjorie Mazel Hecht:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The campaign to ban &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT&quot;&gt;DDT&lt;/a&gt; got its start with the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962. Carson’s popular book was a fraud. She played on people’s emotions, and to do so, she selected and falsified data from scientific studies, as entomologist Dr. J. Gordon Edwards has documented in his analysis of the original scientific studies that Carson cited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jpands.org/vol9no3/edwards.pdf&quot;&gt;DDT: A Case Study in Scientific Fraud&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Dr. J. Gordon Edwards:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The chemical compound that has saved more human lives than&#xA;  any other in history, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT&quot;&gt;DDT&lt;/a&gt;, was banned by order of one man, the&#xA;  head of the U.S. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Protection_Agency&quot;&gt;Environmental Protection Agency&lt;/a&gt; (EPA). Public&#xA;  pressure was generated by one popular book and sustained by&#xA;  faulty or fraudulent research. Widely believed claims of&#xA;  carcinogenicity, toxicity to birds, anti-androgenic properties, and&#xA;  prolonged environmental persistence are false or grossly&#xA;  exaggerated. The worldwide effect of the U.S. ban has been&#xA;  millions of preventable deaths..&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All my life I was told &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT&quot;&gt;DDT&lt;/a&gt; (and pesticides in general) accumulates on the body across the whole food chain with severe consequences to the environment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT&quot;&gt;DDT&lt;/a&gt; really significantly less harmful than the current &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Environmental_Protection_Agency&quot;&gt;EPA&lt;/a&gt; official position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[update] I'm new here, would appreciate if you hint why are you downvoting so I can improve my questions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11264" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2014-12-12T17:40:03.720" LastActivityDate="2014-12-20T23:49:17.190" Title="Is DDT significantly less harmful than claimed by the EPA?" Tags="|medical-science|pesticides|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="24106" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24100" CreationDate="2014-12-11T04:36:53.577" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;From an article by Robert Alan Glick in the 2002 book &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=ELvXIm5vkqgC&amp;amp;pg=PA118&amp;amp;dq=%22sex%20is%20about%20power%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=yB2JVO3mEsmqgwSRqYHgCA&amp;amp;ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22sex%20is%20about%20power%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Constructing and Deconstructing Woman's Power&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Summarizing Freud and all of psychoanalysis most succinctly, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Michels&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Robert&#xA;  Michels&lt;/a&gt; (personal communciation) wryly suggested: &quot;Everything is&#xA;  about sex, except sex: sex is about power.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the book's bibliography isn't available for free on Google Books, so whether this quote can be traced back to a primary source remains to be seen. But it certainly feels like something Michels would've said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19381" LastEditorUserId="19381" LastEditDate="2019-02-04T20:37:14.987" LastActivityDate="2019-02-04T20:37:14.987" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25106" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25107" CreationDate="2014-12-11T07:06:28.797" Score="8" ViewCount="1787" Body="&lt;p&gt;There were news saying that France has issued or released a postal stamp of LTTE chief Prabhakaran. I am wondering if such stamps were issued by the French postal services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the some sources reporting the story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lankacnews.com/english/news/four-l-t-t-e-stamps-released-with-prabakarans-image&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lanca C news&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://defence.pk/threads/4-stamps-issued-in-france-with-ltte-leader-prabhaharan-picture.150350/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A forum post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/slain-ltte-chief-turns-up-on-french-postal-stamps/1/166737.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;India Today&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Were postal stamp depicting LTTE symbols and its chief, Prabhakaran, released by government of France?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is there an online postal stamp bureau published and managed by the Government of France, where we can surf through all postal stamps and their governmental approvals?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About LTTE and Prabakaran:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;LTTE - Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and Prabakaran in the leader, mentor and chief of this organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Although there are a lot of extremist and rebel groups in this world, few of the are rebellious but not terror organization like LTTE&quot; - Hillary Clinton.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This organization was started for civil rights that are ran towards democracy in SriLanka. It was supported and funded by Indian government until the death of Rajiv Gandh. Srilanka is not 100% democratic country, like USA, UK and India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23276" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-05-24T21:07:49.680" LastActivityDate="2017-05-24T21:07:49.680" Title="Were postal stamp depicting LTTE symbols and its chief, Prabhakaran, released by government of France?" Tags="|france|mail|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25107" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25106" CreationDate="2014-12-11T08:02:32.730" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Post stamps bearing the image of Prabhakaran and other LTTE symbols were issued in France, not by the French government but by private users using the ability to create personalized post stamps from an image uploaded by a user. The French government has issued an apology for this, as they consider LTTE to be a terrorist organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Images of the stamps (from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/ltte-stamps-la-poste-apologised-for-mistake-says-paris-embassy-of-sri-lanka/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Colombo Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/piLf5.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ambafrance-lk.org/Press-release-regarding-the&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The declaration&lt;/a&gt; in the site of the French Embassy in Colombo:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Following reports published in different newspapers regarding the issuance in France of stamps bearing pictures and symbols of the LTTE, the Embassy of France in Sri Lanka wishes to inform the media and the Sri Lankan public that no such stamp is part of the official philatelist programme of France, neither on sale in the French post offices. The French Postal services, “La Poste”, offers an online service through which customers can order limited quantities of personalized stamps under their responsibility and under specific conditions. It appears that individuals have used this service to order the above mentioned stamps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“La Poste” recognized that they failed to detect that the conditions had not been met and that some of these stamps have been printed by mistake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Having been informed by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs that LTTE is a movement which has been listed since 2006 as a terrorist organization by the European Union, “La Poste” assures that no such stamp will be printed further.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since 1991, le “Groupe La Poste”, of which French postal services are a part, is an independent public, industrial and commercial institution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the 4th of January 2012, the French Ambassador has reconfirmed the elements of the press release in a TV interview at the SLRC channel , and added :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;em&gt;It is a very unfortunate and regrettable error for which La Poste apologized to the SL Embassy in Paris.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I would like to seize the opportunity of this voice cut with Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation to reaffirm that France strongly condemns all form of terrorism all over the world and that the French government could in no way have supported an initiative aiming at backing the LTTE.&lt;/em&gt; &quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same happened to Norway in 2012, and they also issued an apology to the Sri Lancan government:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mea.gov.lk/index.php/media/news-archive/3321-norwegian-authorities-apologizes-for-issuing-ltte-stamps-calls-ltte-images-illegal-inappropriate-and-improper&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sri Lankan Ministry of External Affairs site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Norwegian Postal Authority, Posten Norge, has issued an apology to the Sri Lankan Ambassador in Oslo, Mr. E. Rodney M. Perera, for the recent issuance of LTTE stamps in Norway.  In his letter addressed to the Ambassador of Sri Lanka, the President  &amp;amp; CEO of Posten Norge, Mr. Dag Mejdell, states, inter alia,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is of utmost importance to us that these stamps [featuring LTTE symbols] are not related to any official stamp issue by Posten Norge.  This is related to a production of “personal stamps” which can be ordered through our webshop by anyone, choosing a personal image by themselves.  All orders related to personal stamps are checked by us, and it is our policy never to produce stamps showing “illegal, inappropriate or improper” images.  Unfortunately, we regret to learn that the order in question passed our quality and assurance control without being stopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These stamps were ordered in a very small quantity.  The customer has been informed that the order is violating the conditions for ordering personal stamps and the user account has been closed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Please accept our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused by having delivered personal stamps with the LTTE image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in Canada in 2011 a similar attempt was made but the Canadian postal services identified it and rejected the request, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymirror.lk/news/16069-canada-post-rejected-original-request-for-personalised-pro-ltte-stamp.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Mirror&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The original request for a personalised pro-LTTE postage stamp in Canada depicting ‘Tamil Eelam’ had been turned down by the Canadian postal service in May 2011, the Canadian High Commission in Colombo said yesterday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A spokesperson for the Canadian High Commission when contacted by the Daily Mirror said, “The original request for the personalised stamp in question was submitted to Canada Post through its Picture Postage website in May 2011. The submission was rejected and the payment was returned to the requester. The representative advised that officials of Picture Postage had determined that the image was not appropriate as a Canadian postage stamp.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Such a stamp was never in legal Canadian circulation. Further investigation of Canada Post’s internal records confirmed that no other requests of this nature had been received since May 2011,” the spokesperson added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2014-12-11T09:06:10.287" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T09:06:10.287" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25110" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24095" CreationDate="2014-12-11T11:02:16.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am Italian, and can confirm that most of the prices doubled in the two years after the introduction of the Euro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the first year we had double currency, with merchants forced to show both prices. In that period prices stayed basically unchanged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the second year the double pricing stopped and most commodities went up rapidly. The merchants played on the habits of people and visual impact of prices. I'll try to explain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Say a piece of bread was 500 Lire (Italy's currency). People are used to see 500 on the price tag. Post Euro, the bread was 50 cents. Now people would still see &quot;5&quot; and unconsciously think it's the same price.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the same logic behind X.99 prices: people tend to see just the first digit, so 4.99 &quot;feels&quot; like 4 instead of 5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This way, raises went (almost) unnoticed, until people people found their purse was much lighter at the end of the month. 1 EUR was 1936.27 Lire hence selling bread at 50 euro cents is 968.14 Lire i.e. almost double price!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Friends from Spain and Greece confirmed the same happened to their countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the page &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aduc.it/comunicato/prezzi+aumento+pane+responsabili+commercianti_12447.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.aduc.it/comunicato/prezzi+aumento+pane+responsabili+commercianti_12447.php&lt;/a&gt; you can read an official report from ADUC (Italy's Consumers Association) where it states that the price of bread went up from 1.03 to 2.5 EUR/Kg between 1995 and 2006 (an increase of 380%). The news also states that the increase in prices was due to merchants rather than increase in resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;PRICE TREND OF BREAD AND WHEAT IN ITALY&#xA;Price in euro per Kg&#xA;1985 - wheat 0,23; bread 0,52&#xA;1990 - wheat 0,19 (-18%); bread 0,83 (+60%)&#xA;1995 - wheat 0,16 (-31%); bread 1,03 (+98%)&#xA;2006 - wheat 0,15 (-35%); bread 2,5 (+380%)&#xA;2007 - wheat 0,22 (-5%); bread 2,7 (+419%)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23278" LastEditorUserId="23278" LastEditDate="2014-12-11T11:08:19.510" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T11:08:19.510" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25112" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25114" CreationDate="2014-12-11T13:55:34.410" Score="70" ViewCount="15301" Body="&lt;p&gt;A travel advertisement aired on the radio in Italy states that it is &quot;perfectly legal&quot; to be topless in New York City; is this true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ad doesn't say anything else useful to the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22932" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2014-12-12T09:25:31.157" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T20:49:25.873" Title="Is it &quot;perfectly legal&quot; to walk topless in New York City?" Tags="|united-states|law|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25114" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25112" CreationDate="2014-12-11T14:08:06.330" Score="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes it is perfectly legal.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is based on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://naturisteducation.org/Toni_Egbert_Library/State_Supreme_Courts/NY_v_Santorelli/ny_v_santorelli.html&quot;&gt;Santorelli case&lt;/a&gt;, in which Ramona Santorelli was arrested for baring in public &quot;that portion of the breast which is below the top of the areola&quot;. She was acquitted after the case went to the New York Court of Appeals (the highest court in New York) in 1992 on the grounds of equal protection. Since then there have been many similar cases decided the same way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In February 2013, the New York City Police Department issued a command to all its officers through their daily roll call. It reminded officers that they are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/nyregion/a-police-roll-call-reminder-women-may-go-topless.html?_r=0&quot;&gt;not to cite or arrest a woman for public lewdness, indecent exposure or any other section of the Penal Law for “simply exposing their breasts in public&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of references for this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gotopless.org/topless-laws&quot;&gt;GoTopless&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/new-york-city-topless-laws/&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topfreedom#New_York&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/16/nyregion/a-police-roll-call-reminder-women-may-go-topless.html&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/09/the-social-and-legal-arguments-for-allowing-women-to-go-topless-in-public/279755/&quot;&gt;The Atlantic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2015-03-24T20:49:25.873" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T20:49:25.873" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25115" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-11T14:52:06.427" Score="16" ViewCount="598" Body="&lt;p&gt;BBC, in a piece detailing an interview with former Vice President Dick Cheny on Fox News, quotes the former statesman as saying that Bush was &amp;quot;Fully-Informed&amp;quot; on the techniques:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Former US President George W Bush was &amp;quot;fully informed&amp;quot; about CIA interrogation techniques condemned in a Senate report, his vice-president says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speaking to Fox News, Dick Cheney said Mr Bush &amp;quot;knew everything he needed to know&amp;quot; about the programme, and the report was &amp;quot;full of crap&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;President Bush &amp;quot;knew everything he needed to know, and wanted to know&amp;quot; about CIA interrogation, he said. &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;He knew the techniques... there was no effort on my part to keep it from him&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;He was fully informed.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30427211&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC - President George W Bush 'knew everything' about CIA interrogation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's an incongruity in these satements though.  &amp;quot;Fully-informed&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;knew everything he needed to know&amp;quot; suggest two very different levels of information on what was going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much would Bush, as President of the United States, known about the treatment of prisoners?  How much, legally, would he have been required to know?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, was George W Bush aware of the &amp;quot;enhanced interrogation&amp;quot; techniques being used by the CIA - including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and environmental manipulation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18012" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T19:31:54.313" Title="How fully-informed was President George W Bush about CIA interrogation techniques?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2014-12-20T15:10:32.003" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24099" CreationDate="2014-12-11T15:02:48.870" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot find the source of the original quote.   However Neil &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/neilhimself/status/512613634674270209&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;retweeted&lt;/a&gt; an image that showed the quote and said &quot;beautiful.&quot;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/o0Cp3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this is from his verified Twitter account and he did not deny he is the source of the quote, I think it is safe to assume he said it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22733" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T15:02:48.870" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25118" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8146" CreationDate="2014-12-11T18:48:13.433" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;The exact situation is that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_of_the_company&quot;&gt;The directors of a company are legally obligated to act in the interests of the Company and its members.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is built into most legal systems, and is intended to prevent directors managing companies for their own benefit, rather than the owners or shareholders. However it doesn't have to be interpreted narrowly, such as maximizing share price at a given time. Also if a company is explicitly set up for some purpose other than maximizing profit then the directors must work towards that purpose. In many jurisdictions it is explicitly written into law that directors must take into account factors other than profit. For example the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Companies_Act_2006&quot;&gt;UK Companies Act 2006&lt;/a&gt; lays down specific factors that a director must take into account in their decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T18:48:13.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25120" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22132" CreationDate="2014-12-11T23:04:26.040" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim ultimately traces back to a May 30, 2000, article published by AlterNet, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alternet.org/story/9257/pot_shrinks_tumors%3B_government_knew_in_%2774&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pot Shrinks Tumors; Government Knew in '74&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor_Wears_No_Clothes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a book first published in 1985&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The AlterNet story claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1974 researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institute of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice -- lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The DEA quickly shut down the Virginia study and all further cannabis/tumor research, according to Jack Herer, who reports on the events in his book, &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jackherer.com/thebook/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Emperor Wears No Clothes&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;quot; In 1976 President Gerald Ford put an end to all public cannabis research and granted exclusive research rights to major pharmaceutical companies . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That book offers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jackherer.com/thebook/chapter-seven/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;somewhat more detail&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A tumor is a mass of swollen tissue. Researchers at the Medical College of Virginia discovered that cannabis is an incredibly successful herb for reducing many types of tumors, both benign and malignant (cancerous).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The DEA and other federal agencies had ordered these tumor studies done after hearing erroneous reports of possible immunicological problems associated with cannabis smoke. But, in 1975, instead of health problems, an apparent medical breakthrough occurred and successful tumor reductions were recorded!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Following this remarkably positive discovery by the Medical College of Virginia, orders were immediately handed down by the DEA and the National Institutes of Health to defund all further cannabis/tumor research and reporting! Millions of Americans who might be alive today are dead because of these and other DEA orders regarding marijuana.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1996 and 2006, the Medical College of Virginia again applied to receive grants for cannabis research and again were turned down by the DEA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The referenced paper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/55/3/597&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Antineoplastic activity of cannabinoids&lt;/a&gt;, was actually published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 1975. Copies of it found on the Internet state that it was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supported by Public Health Service grant DA00490 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Health Services &amp;amp; Mental Health Administration; by a grant from the Alexander and Margaret Stewart Trust Fund; and by an institutional grant from the American Cancer Society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All information I could find as to whether the DEA defunded cannabis research in 1975 ultimately refer back to one of these two sources. As far as I can tell, though, the paper itself was never suppressed &lt;em&gt;per se&lt;/em&gt;; it was indeed published and was (and still is) available in the academic literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7866" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-11T23:04:26.040" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25123" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25130" CreationDate="2014-12-12T18:16:53.460" Score="6" ViewCount="1057" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7i-JIw1zig#t=5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UK panel show, Question Time&lt;/a&gt;, a politician says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, if you have a country in which the population goes up as a direct result of immigration, what you find is not a shortage of green fields [...] you find a shortage of primary school place, you find a shortage of GP surgeries [...] you find congestion [...] What you find is [...] the general quality of life for the mass of population has gone down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on to specify immigration in the UK since 1990 as an example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/its-not-all-bad-britain-fares-well-in-international-quality-of-life-index-9234133.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quality of life rankings&lt;/a&gt; suggest Britain doesn't have a serious problem with quality of life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support the claim that countries with population growth due to immigration suffer from lowered quality of life standards (e.g. the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Human Development Index&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10728" LastEditorUserId="10728" LastEditDate="2014-12-13T20:08:35.507" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T05:00:04.993" Title="Do high immigration levels lower quality of life standards?" Tags="|economics|immigration|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25126" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-13T08:49:19.497" Score="11" ViewCount="556" Body="&lt;p&gt;As reported &lt;a href=&quot;http://mic.com/articles/105864/this-south-african-the-nbsp-daily-show-nbsp-guest-just-schooled-america-on-africa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, (and &lt;a href=&quot;http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/09/02/20486508-the-wealth-inequality-between-white-and-black-households-in-the-us-surpasses-the-one-in-aparthied-era-south-africa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) white/black wealth inequality is worse now in the US than it was under Apartheid South Africa.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The figures brought up during the segment are &lt;a href=&quot;http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/09/02/20486508-the-wealth-inequality-between-white-and-black-households-in-the-us-surpasses-the-one-in-aparthied-era-south-africa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;backed up&lt;/a&gt;, too. America's income inequality gap has gotten worse in the past decade — the average white household has a net worth of $110,500, compared to just $6,314 for the average black household, according to the 2011 Census. And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/31/opinion/sunday/nicholas-kristof-after-ferguson-race-deserves-more-attention-not-less.html?smid=tw-share&amp;amp;_r=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;per the &lt;em&gt;New York Times&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, white Americans own 18 times more than black Americans. The gap in apartheid South Africa? 15 times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly, is this true?  If so in terms of what? Income, net worth or land ownership.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5838" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2020-05-28T20:55:52.930" LastActivityDate="2020-05-28T20:55:52.930" Title="Is racial income inequality currently in US worse than it was in Apartheid South Africa" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25128" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-13T12:05:38.903" Score="5" ViewCount="337" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theinertia.com/environment/confronting-paul-watson-and-sea-shepherd/&quot;&gt;Confronting Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd&lt;/a&gt;, Tetsuhiko Endo writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a March 2012 article in Nature, Christopher Costello and Steven&#xA;  Gaines from the University of California, point out that the&#xA;  international whaling industry makes no more than $31 million a year&#xA;  while major anti-whaling NGOs spend around $25 million.  What have&#xA;  whales gotten out of all this anti-whaling money?  Hunting rates that&#xA;  are twice as high as they were in 1990.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=(Gaines%2C%20Steven%5BAuthor%5D)%20AND%20Costello%2C%20Christopher%5BAuthor%5D&quot;&gt;pubmed search for the two authors&lt;/a&gt;, the Nature article referred to is  presumably &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7380/full/481139a.html&quot;&gt;Conservation science: A market approach to saving the whales&lt;/a&gt; (paywalled) (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v481/n7380/481139a/metrics&quot;&gt;paper metrics&lt;/a&gt; - tweeted by 50, picked up by 4 news outlets, in the 82 percentile of Nature papers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm suspicious that Endo, or the authors of the Nature paper itself, is comparing two different numbers, such as overall turnover in the anti-whaling activism and the net profit on the part of whaling, to make the numbers look similar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is anti-whaling activism almost as big an industry as the whaling industry?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to be clear, I'm only talking about comparing anti-whaling activism to the whaling industry, not about comparing either of them to alternative commercial utilisation of whales (for example whale watching being an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/watching-the-whale-watchers/5628798&quot;&gt;A$2.1 billion a year industry&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-12-13T12:05:38.903" Title="Is anti-whaling activism almost as big an industry as the whaling industry?" Tags="|economics|politics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25129" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25201" CreationDate="2014-12-13T19:04:49.280" Score="11" ViewCount="4849" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDsI-zk6gfE#t=207&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt;, by &quot;Truthstream Media&quot; tells us the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;As we watch Television, we become susceptible to subliminal messaging because we stop emitting alpha waves and start emitting beta waves&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In between the dissolve cuts for the subtitles on the video, messages such as &quot;Government is God&quot; are subliminally shown.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm most interested in the latter, where in the video the original video is slowed down. They cite this video, but is there any proof proving that these sign-offs really did contain these messages? &lt;a href=&quot;http://truthstreammedia.com/1960s-subliminal-video-of-national-anthem-hides-mkultra-message-to-obey-government/&quot;&gt;The accompanying article links&lt;/a&gt; to one or two amateur sources, and talks about 60's and 70's CIA Brain-control missions (&quot;MKUltra&quot;) but again I see no primary, strong sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23315" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2014-12-14T01:10:00.537" LastActivityDate="2017-08-20T14:28:38.683" Title="Did a broadcast of the US National Anthem in the 60's use subliminal messaging?" Tags="|united-states|government|television|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25123" CreationDate="2014-12-13T19:53:26.093" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The statement provides only two reasonable measure of 'quality of life' - availability of primary school places, and number of doctors per person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The percentage of children in primary school has remained constant from 1990 to now, since attendance at primary schools is compulsory, and local authorities are mandated to provide them. The number of children not in primary school is limited to those who are illegally prevented from attending by their parents, and the very few who are actually in transition between schools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS&quot;&gt;number of physicians per thousand persons in the UK&lt;/a&gt; was 1.6 in 1990. In 2014 it was 2.8, an &lt;strong&gt;increase of 75%&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion: &lt;strong&gt;The statement is entirely false according to any measurable quantity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2014-12-13T19:53:26.093" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25133" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23944" CreationDate="2014-12-13T21:53:02.797" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;CEOPS (Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre) issued a report that deals in part with the UK &quot;grooming gangs&quot;. With regard to the ethnic make-up of these gangs, they say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ethnicity descriptors remain imprecise and as not all police forces&#xA;  responded to CEOP’s information request, the data is  incomplete.&#xA;  Using broad groupings, all ethnicities were represented in the sample,&#xA;  however, a disproportionate number of offenders were reported as&#xA;  Asian. Of the 52 groups for which usable ethnicity data was provided,&#xA;  26 (50%) comprised all Asian offenders, 11 (21%) all white offenders,&#xA;  9 (17%) groups comprised offenders from multiple ethnicities, 4 (8%)&#xA;  comprised all black offenders and there were 2 (4%) groups of&#xA;  exclusively Arab offenders. &lt;strong&gt;Of the 306 offenders whose ethnicity was&#xA;  provided for type 1 offending, a total of 75% were categorised as&#xA;  Asian&lt;/strong&gt;, 17% were categorised as white, and the remaining 8% were&#xA;  categorised as black (5%) or Arab (3%). This is in contrast to those&#xA;  identified in type 2 group offending, who were reported as exclusively&#xA;  of white ethnicity.&#xA;   From &lt;a href=&quot;http://ceop.police.uk/Documents/ceopdocs/CEOP_TACSEA2013_240613%20FINAL.pdf&quot;&gt;Threat Assessment of Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse&lt;/a&gt; (p.18)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23322" LastEditorUserId="6862" LastEditDate="2014-12-13T22:48:30.477" LastActivityDate="2014-12-13T22:48:30.477" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25135" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25123" CreationDate="2014-12-14T09:16:57.223" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think for the purpose of this question, a country with extremely high immigration rates compared to the UK would be better for illustrating the effects of immigration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1990, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Singapore#Statistics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Singapore&lt;/a&gt; had 10% of its population as immigrants who did not possess permanent resident status or above. In 2012, this has risen to around 30%. Compared to the UK (at 13%), Singapore has had a far greater amount of immigration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the meantime, Singapore's HDI &lt;a href=&quot;http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/SGP&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;has risen from 0.75 to 0.9.&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;Other metrices show more or less the same trend of a vastly improving quality of life, which was &lt;strong&gt;strongly correlated&lt;/strong&gt; with the increase in immigrant number. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, there has been increased numbers of people campaigning to restrict immigration in Singapore in recent years, just like the UK. I cannot help but be reminded of #firstworldproblems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T09:16:57.223" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23944" CreationDate="2014-12-14T09:36:53.720" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Based on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/statistics/criminal-justice-stats/sexual-offending/overview-sexual-offending-jan-2013-tables.zip&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;UK Ministry of Justice data&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nYrHO.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the ethnic origin of rapists in prison for rape and other sex offences is &lt;strong&gt;overwhelmingly&lt;/strong&gt; white. Therefore, the question, as phrased, has the clear answer of &lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, to address the point that Pakistanis are more likely to be rapists than the average Briton, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_the_United_Kingdom&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;demographics&lt;/a&gt; of the UK show that Pakistanis make up ~2% of the population in 2011, and they are grouped with Chinese under Asian or Asian British (7%). 559 out of 9850 sex offenders in 2011 were Asian British or Chinese, therefore we can say that Asian British, the group which contains Pakistanis, was actually &lt;strong&gt;under-represented&lt;/strong&gt; in the population of sex offenders. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="14582" LastEditDate="2014-12-14T16:49:43.037" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T16:49:43.037" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23964" CreationDate="2014-12-14T10:54:35.533" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &quot;live human&quot; would &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating#Principles&quot;&gt;by definition&lt;/a&gt; have an age of 0 on the carbon dating scale, since the carbon in the live human is in active exchange with the environment, and hence the C14:C12 ratio would be identical to the baseline. Carbon dating scales measure the changes in this ratio after death of the organism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This will be true even if humans somehow are capable of actively removing C14 from their bodies, the baseline would be set to that of a live human. One of the first steps in measurement of radiocarbon age is to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating#cite_note-:0-13&quot;&gt;find a valid baseline&lt;/a&gt;, usually from measuring a living organism. One of the comments above is especially relevant in this aspect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not directly relevant to this question I would add the caveat that the organsism used to be airbreathing, and did not feed on waterbreathers to a large extent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since waterbreathing organisms contain different ratios of C14:C12, the baseline would have to be adjusted, if you are measuring C14 in a mummified fish, for example, the first step would be normalising the C14 ratios to a recently dead (fresh) fish. &lt;a href=&quot;http://sciencenordic.com/fish-corrupt-carbon-14-dating&quot;&gt;This link&lt;/a&gt; explains why this has to be done:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hard water contains high levels of calcium carbonate. Carbonate contains carbon, including carbon-14. However, depending on ocean water circulation, fish and other living creatures can incorporate 'older' carbonate (with less carbon-14) into their bodies. When these organisms die and fossilise, they appear to be much older than they actually are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=roEsBAAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA4&amp;amp;lpg=PA4&amp;amp;dq=14c%20normalisation&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=AUG0lwrdLt&amp;amp;sig=zzLJBCTtmN-xLICnyiXok25iPII&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=1HaNVPn8JNGWavT9gsAH&amp;amp;ved=0CDkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=14c%20normalisation&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;This book&lt;/a&gt; about radiocarbon dating of the Iceman also used a set of standards (wood samples), it having already been shown that humans and trees have comparable C14 ratios when alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, saying that a human was measured to have an age of 4000 using carbon dating would be equivalent to saying that you placed a thermometer into a bowl of melting ice and measured the temperature to be 50 degrees Celsius: the measurement instrument is incorrectly calibrated, or otherwise nonfunctional. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="14582" LastEditDate="2014-12-14T11:47:11.083" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T11:47:11.083" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25138" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7209" CreationDate="2014-12-14T18:16:45.957" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;While it is nearly impossible to carry out an experiment on whether hand sanitiser usage will cause the immune system to misfire/fail, there have indeed been peer-reviewed experiments carried out on the fact that significant reduction in exposure to infections/antigens (a likely result of overuse of hand sanitisers) may result in a hampered immune system, which may lead to autoimmune diseases. This is known as the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis&quot;&gt;hygiene hypothesis&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Epidemiological data suggests that immigrants to relatively &quot;clean&quot; countries, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ppul.10323/abstract;jsessionid=69B685F704EEFDE681BBC8D3370F6471.f01t01&quot;&gt;Australia&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://emph.oxfordjournals.org/content/2013/1/46&quot;&gt;the UK&lt;/a&gt; suffer from additional risk of autoimmune diseases. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2249.2010.04139.x/full&quot;&gt;It has been suggested&lt;/a&gt; that living in a &quot;clean&quot; country increases the risk of developing autoimmune diseases, presumably due to the reduced exposure to microbes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among adolescents who were migrants to Australia, the prevalence of asthma symptoms was higher than that reported using a similar methodology in their country of origin. Asthma symptom prevalence was related to residence time in Australia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, correlation does not imply causation. Therefore, research has been done to associate the hygiene hypothesis on the molecular and cell biology levels. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the molecular/cell biology viewpoint, it has also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa020057&quot;&gt;been shown&lt;/a&gt; that reduced exposure to bacterial endotoxins (a product of bacteria) was correlated an increase in hay fever and other autoimmune diseases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Endotoxin levels in samples of dust from the child's mattress were inversely related to the occurrence of hay fever, atopic asthma, and atopic sensitization. Nonatopic wheeze was not significantly associated with the endotoxin level. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The introduction of lipoproteins found in bacterial cell walls into mice &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jimmunol.org/content/174/2/1097&quot;&gt;was also shown&lt;/a&gt; to reduce inflammation caused by allergic asthma in mice. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mucosal administration&#xA;  of OprI at the time of allergen challenge suppressed eosinophilic&#xA;  inflammation in the airways, and this suppression was sustained&#xA;  after a second allergen challenge&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There has also been some &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/co-pulmonarymedicine/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2005&amp;amp;issue=01000&amp;amp;article=00004&amp;amp;type=abstract&quot;&gt;contradictory evidence&lt;/a&gt; on the hygiene hypothesis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Serologic evidence of exposure to certain gastrointestinal pathogens (eg, hepatitis A virus) has been inversely associated with either allergen sensitization or asthma in some, but not all, recent studies. Although heavy infestation with certain parasites (eg, helminths) is protective against allergen sensitization, there is conflicting evidence regarding the relation between parasitic infection and asthma. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, the hygiene hypothesis is certainly not a fully accepted scientific theory, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/co-allergy/Fulltext/2014/10000/The_evolution_of_the_hygiene_hypothesis__the_role.4.aspx&quot;&gt;further research will likely shed more light on this&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies are elucidating that susceptibility involves genetic variants and environmental exposures, alteration of our microbiome and potentially large-scale manipulation of the environment over the past century. Many of the findings reviewed are preliminary and will need confirmation, but exciting new paradigms and hypotheses are emerging as a result of these preliminary findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastActivityDate="2014-12-14T18:16:45.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25143" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8623" CreationDate="2014-12-15T07:27:09.857" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you're thinking about &amp;quot;lifespan after retirement&amp;quot; rather than &amp;quot;dying before retirement&amp;quot;, then it's not true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything I see on firefighter health indicates there's no meaningful difference in mortality rates of public safety employees and other government workers.  CalPERS (California Public Employees' Retirement System) produced an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.calpers.ca.gov/eip-docs/employer/retiree-ben-trust/experience-study.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;experience study&lt;/a&gt; and little difference was found for police and firefighters vs. the other public employees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PhdY8.png&quot; alt=&quot;Life Expectancy Table&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the differences in mortality between miscellaneous members and safety&#xA;members were not material, we are recommending to continue the use of the same&#xA;post-retirement mortality tables for all members.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Politifact fact-checking site used this study (and the lack of other evidence) to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politifact.com/rhode-island/statements/2011/aug/14/robert-barber/retired-police-captain-says-law-enforcement-office/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;conclude a similar claim was false&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Statistically,&amp;quot; [Barber] said, &amp;quot;law-enforcement officers die 10 years earlier than the general population.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the latest California study, police officers were actually expected to live a bit longer than other state employees. In Oregon, the combined life expectancy for police and fire was only slightly less than average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We rate Barber's statement as False.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23333" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T15:17:41.723" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25146" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-15T14:13:13.760" Score="7" ViewCount="1162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was looking for information about common colds and this URL came up on page 1 via Google search:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/11/22/the-common-cold-simple-strategies-for-prevention-and-treatment.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Vitamin D and Other Simple, Inexpensive Tricks to Cure a Cold&lt;/a&gt; (on mercola.com)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a section in it titled &lt;strong&gt;Hydrogen Peroxide: A Simple Trick to Beat a Cold&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't advise over-the-counter medications, but one simple treatment you can try that is surprisingly effective against upper respiratory infections is hydrogen peroxide. Many patients at my Natural Health Center have had remarkable results in curing colds and flu within 12 to 14 hours when administering a few drops of 3 percent hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) into each ear. You will hear some bubbling, which is completely normal, and possibly feel a slight stinging sensation. Wait until the bubbling and stinging subside (usually 5 to 10 minutes), then drain onto a tissue and repeat with the other ear. A bottle of hydrogen peroxide in 3 percent solution is available at any drug store for a couple of dollars or less. It is simply amazing how many people respond to this simple, inexpensive treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It details a process to administer 3% Hydrogen Peroxide that reduces the cold to a 12-14 hour duration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim valid?  It seems a bit dangerous to drop (even highly diluted) Hydrogen Peroxide into one's ear?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3989" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2017-03-02T04:27:06.323" LastActivityDate="2017-03-02T04:27:06.323" Title="Can Hydrogen Peroxide administered via ear drops reduce the duration of the common cold?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25151" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19173" CreationDate="2014-12-15T22:32:12.413" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The makers of Zyprexa were sued, in a class action suit, by people claiming it gave them diabetes. They paid to settle the suit. 18,000 people. Make of that what you will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/prescription/4496-eli-lilly-faces-more-drug-injury-lawsuits-over-zyprexa/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eli Lilly Faces More Drug Injury Lawsuits Over Zyprexa&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Back in 2007, Eli Lilly, the maker of Zyprexa, agreed to pay out $500 million to settle 18,000 lawsuits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/lawsuit/zyprexa.html#.VI9ju9LF9nM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zyprexa linked to Diabetes, Hyperglycemia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to The New York Times (January 5, 2007), in 2007, Eli Lilly agreed to pay up to $500 million to settle 18,000 lawsuits alleging patients developed diabetes or other serious side effects after taking Zyprexa. By early 2007, according to the newspaper, Lilly had agreed to pay at least $1.2 billion to approximately 28,500 people who alleged the use of Zyprexa caused them harm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23348" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-12-15T22:44:05.740" LastActivityDate="2014-12-15T22:44:05.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19173" CreationDate="2014-12-16T01:57:58.163" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The number of deaths mentioned in this claim seems extremely large to me, and I wonder how the authors arrived at this number and how credible it is.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors of the article use the following book as a reference for that number:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1846198844&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the relevant passage from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.radcliffehealth.com/sites/radcliffehealth.com/files/samplechapter/gotzsche_chpt18.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a sample chapter&lt;/a&gt; of the book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let’s estimate how many people Lilly has killed with Zyprexa. In 2007, it was&#xA;  reported that more than 20 million people had taken Zyprexa.&lt;sup&gt;78&lt;/sup&gt; A meta- analysis&#xA;  of the randomised trials of olanzapine and similar drugs given to patients with&#xA;  Alzheimer’s disease or dementia showed that 3.5% died on drug and 2.3% on&#xA;  placebo (P = 0.02).&lt;sup&gt;79&lt;/sup&gt; Thus, for every 100 patients treated, there was one additional&#xA;  death on the drug. Elderly patients are often treated with several drugs&#xA;  and are more vulnerable to their harms, which means that the death rate is&#xA;  likely higher than in younger patients. However, the reviewed trials generally&#xA;  ran for only 10–12 weeks, and most patients in real life are treated for years.&#xA;  Further, drugs like Zyprexa are most used in the elderly, and as deaths are often&#xA;  underreported in trials, the true death rate is likely higher than shown in the&#xA;  meta- analysis. One death in a hundred therefore seems a reasonable estimate&#xA;  to use. I therefore estimate that 200 000 of the 20 million patients treated with&#xA;  Zyprexa have been killed because of the drug’s harms. What is particularly saddening&#xA;  is that many of these patients shouldn’t have been treated with Zyprexa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of the book cites the following two sources when deriving that answer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;20 million patients&quot; from this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1781986/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lilly investigated in US over the marketing of olanzapine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sums involved could be substantial because olanzapine has been Eli Lilly's best overall seller since its introduction in 1996, with total sales of more than $30bn (£15bn; €23bn). &lt;strong&gt;More than 20 million patients have taken the drug.&lt;/strong&gt; Olanzapine was the largest single drug expenditure of California's Medi-Cal programme in 2005, costing almost $250m.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;An approximately 1% increased risk of death from this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=201714#REF-JRV50021-26&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Risk of Death With Atypical Antipsychotic Drug Treatment for Dementia&#xA;Meta-analysis of Randomized Placebo-Controlled Trials&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Death occurred more often among patients randomized to drugs (118 [3.5%] vs 40 [2.3%].  The OR by meta-analysis was 1.54; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.06-2.23; P = .02; and risk difference was 0.01; 95% CI, 0.004-0.02; P = .01).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author of the book is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_C._G%C3%B8tzsche&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Peter C. Gøtzsche&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peter C. Gøtzsche is a Danish medical researcher, and leader of the Nordic Cochrane Center at Rigshospitalet in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has written numerous reviews within the Cochrane collaboration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2014-12-16T12:25:40.120" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T12:25:40.120" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25155" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2790" CreationDate="2014-12-16T18:45:30.120" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;One example is known as a &lt;strong&gt;number form&lt;/strong&gt; ... certain people think of numbers in geometric ways, not in words.  Number forms were first documented and named by Galton 1881.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_form&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5125" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T18:45:30.120" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25156" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-16T22:12:12.480" Score="1" ViewCount="484" Body="&lt;p&gt;In their newest &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNXvduPr4Mw&amp;amp;list=UU2Uhn0GOuErIBhOA3T79Mkg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; the &quot;FCKH8&quot; company claim that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1 out of 4 women will be the victim of domestic violence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this indeed the case for women in the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-11T07:06:08.877" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T07:06:08.877" Title="Will 1 out 4 women be a victim of domestic violence?" Tags="|united-states|criminology|violence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25157" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25156" CreationDate="2014-12-16T22:12:12.480" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've reached out to FCKH8 asking for their sources for the figure, sadly, they haven't answered me yet (~ 2 weeks at the time of writing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The figures in different publications are around the 25% figure for women, and this figure is confirmed by studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many sources citing the 1 in 4 statistic. It seems that the source for many of those claims is the survey &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nij.gov/publications/pages/publication-detail.aspx?ncjnumber=181867&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence: Findings From the National Violence Against Women Survey&lt;/a&gt;, published by the Department of Justice, which states in its abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among the survey findings are that intimate partner violence is pervasive in U.S. society, with nearly 25 percent of surveyed women and 7.6 percent of surveyed men reporting that they were raped and/or physically assaulted by a current or former spouse, cohabiting partner, or date at some time in their lifetime; 1.5 percent of surveyed women and 0.9 percent of surveyed men said the were raped and/or physically assaulted by a partner in the previous 12 months. Based on these estimates, this report indicates that approximately 1.5 million women and 834,732 men are raped and/or physically assaulted by an intimate partner annually in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The survey was published in the year 2000 and it analyzes data from November 1995 to May 1996, so its conclusions are about data which is almost 20 years old. Nonetheless it's cited in many credible places: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanbar.org/groups/domestic_violence/resources/statistics.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The American Bar Association&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/infographic.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The CDC&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncadv.org/files/DomesticViolenceFactSheet(National).pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The National Coalition against Domestic Violence&lt;/a&gt; and others. The CDC used this survey as a source on their 2003 study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/ipvbook-a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Costs of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in the United Stated&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there are some sources which claim a different figure, one example is the CDC itself, who, in their 2010 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_executive_summary-a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey summary report&lt;/a&gt; put a higher figure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More than 1 in 3 women (35.6%) and more than 1 in 4 men (28.5%) in the United States have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;[...]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About 1 in 4 women (24.3%) and 1 in 7 men (13.8%) have experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner (e.g., hit with a fist or something hard, beaten, slammed against something) at some point in their lifetime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second figure is closer to the original 1 in 4 figure.The two sources do have different definitions of domestic abuse; the 2000 survey talks about rape and/or physical assault while the 2010 source also adds stalking. Even Though some of the sources that cite the 2000 study add stalking to their definition of domestic abuse. The 2000 survey does touch and expand on stalking in its body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T22:12:12.480" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25158" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17811" CreationDate="2014-12-16T22:47:02.207" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A 2008 article published in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Immunology states, &quot;The crucial position of the gastrointestinal system is testified by the huge amount of immune cells that reside within it. Indeed, gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT) is the prominent part of mucosal-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT) and represents almost 70% of the entire immune system; moreover, about 80% of plasma cells [mainly immunoglobulin A (IgA)-bearing cells] reside in GALT.&quot; &#xA;(Src: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2515351/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2515351/&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question about what they are counting it would appear to be a percentage of the total immune cells in the body. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, this is from the ABSTRACT portion of the paper and they do not provide further references to their sources. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2009 article found in 'Seminars in Immunology' opens with the following statement, &quot;IgA is the most abundant immunoglobulin isotype produced in the body (around 3 g/day) and it is estimated that around 80% of all IgA-antibody-secreting cells (ASCs) reside in the gut mucosa [1,2].&quot; &#xA;(Src: &lt;a href=&quot;http://vonandrian.hms.harvard.edu/Publications/2009/Mora_2009.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://vonandrian.hms.harvard.edu/Publications/2009/Mora_2009.pdf&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, when I try to follow their references both articles require access permissions that I do not have, but maybe you have more permissions than I do and call pull them up, they are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] Suzuki K, Ha SA, Tsuji M, Fagarasan S. Intestinal IgA synthesis: a primitive&#xA;form of adaptive immunity that regulates microbial communities in the gut.&#xA;Semin Immunol 2007;19(2):127–35. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17161619&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17161619&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Macpherson AJ, Slack E. The functional interactions of commensal bacteria&#xA;with intestinal secretory IgA. Curr Opin Gastroenterol 2007;23(6):673–8. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17906446&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17906446&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23355" LastActivityDate="2014-12-16T22:47:02.207" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25159" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-16T23:23:38.320" Score="29" ViewCount="934" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some advocates of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming&quot;&gt;pair programming&lt;/a&gt; suggest that two software engineers working on a single feature together - at the same desk, at the same computer - will create software that is more correct - that is, closer to specification and more bug-free - than two solo developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One study I have seen cited is an investigation by Laurie Williams at the University of Utah, indicating a 15% reduction in bugs at the cost of 15% more man-hours to complete the story. Other sources suggest a figure of 30% either way, but I cannot find a source for these citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, a 2007 Norwegian study involving around 300 professional developers indicated that pair programming did not have an appreciable benefit on quality and speed, but did have a strong negative effect on effort required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the evidence here? Most of the papers I can find have either small sample sizes or an academic setting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23356" LastEditorUserId="23356" LastEditDate="2014-12-20T17:00:37.530" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T17:47:17.677" Title="Does pair programming improve the correctness of software?" Tags="|programming|programming-productivity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24041" CreationDate="2014-12-17T13:57:40.370" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first claim in your article &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The authors estimate they are responsible for the deaths of between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and 6.9-20.7 billion mammals annually&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;comes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v4/n1/full/ncomms2380.html%3FWT.mc_id%3DFBK_NCOMMS?message-global=remove&amp;amp;WT.mc_id=FBK_NCOMMS&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abcbirds.org/abcprograms/policy/cats/pdf/Loss_et_al_2013.pdf&quot;&gt;full-text&lt;/a&gt;), where the authors state (table 2) that domestic cats are responsible for the deaths of 1.4-3.7 billion bird deaths and a much larger number of mammal deaths in the US and Europe combined. They also state that the majority of these deaths are caused by unowned/feral cats. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a meta-study examining the existing literature on domestic cats with some novel analyses, and assuming that you agree with their analysis, this claim is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second claim is that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Felines accompanying their human companions have gone on to prey on the local wildlife, and they have been blamed for the global extinction of 33 species.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is a slight misinterpretation of a statement in &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02464.x/abstract&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://bio.research.ucsc.edu/people/croll/pdf/Medina_2011.pdf&quot;&gt;full-text&lt;/a&gt;) paper that states &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on our database, feral cats on islands have contributed to 33 (13.9%) of the 238 global bird, mammal, and reptile extinctions (including species extinct in the wild but extant in captivity) recorded by the IUCN Red List.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this says is that cats have &lt;em&gt;contributed&lt;/em&gt; to, but are not solely responsible for these extinctions. Be aware though, that the paper is talking about extinctions in island fauna, which are often a special case because of restricted ranges and limited population sizes, especially when it comes to endemics. Such extinctions have been ascribed to several introduced predators (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/extinctions/page-4&quot;&gt;rodents, ferrets/minks&lt;/a&gt;), not just cats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14672" LastEditorUserId="14672" LastEditDate="2014-12-17T14:02:58.673" LastActivityDate="2014-12-17T14:02:58.673" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25162" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25203" CreationDate="2014-12-17T17:48:51.253" Score="11" ViewCount="4366" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Saint Charbel Makhluf&lt;/strong&gt;, O.L.M. (or Sharbel Maklouf),[1] (Arabic: مار&#xA;  شربل‎, May 8, 1828 – December 24, 1898) was a Maronite monk and priest&#xA;  from Lebanon. During his life he obtained a wide reputation for&#xA;  holiness and he has been canonized by the Catholic Church. [Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charbel_Makhluf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being an open atheist and having a skeptical personality in Lebanon causes me to have a lot of debates with my Christian friends. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With almost every single atheist/theist debate, Lebanese Christians always come claim that  &lt;strong&gt;Saint Charbel Makhluf&lt;/strong&gt;'s body remained intact (not damaged or impaired in any way; complete) for 50 years - which seems biologically impossible to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charbel_Makhluf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the years 1950 and 1952 his tomb was opened and his body still had&#xA;  the appearance of a living one.The official site mentions: In&#xA;  this century his grave has been opened four times, the last time being&#xA;  in 1955, and each time &quot;it has been noticed that his bleeding body&#xA;  still has its flexibility as if it were alive&quot;; no mentioning of later&#xA;  openings. The Catholic Tradition website says: &lt;strong&gt;Father Joseph&#xA;  Mahfouz, the postulator of the cause, certified that in 1965 the body&#xA;  of Saint Charbel was still preserved intact with no alteration&lt;/strong&gt;. In&#xA;  1976 he again witnessed the opening of the grave; this time the body&#xA;  was completely decomposed. Only the skeleton remained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless whether experts and doctors would or would not give medical explanations for the incorruptibility and flexibility of his body, is there any credible scientific evidence which would show that Saint Charbel Makhluf's body remained intact?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-17T23:50:05.703" LastActivityDate="2016-11-20T16:16:53.887" Title="Did Saint Charbel Makhluf's body remain intact for 50 years?" Tags="|biology|religion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25167" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25170" CreationDate="2014-12-18T15:07:03.167" Score="8" ViewCount="2232" Body="&lt;p&gt;My friend just send me this video of a baseball bat mysteriously standing up after being thrown. He claims it happened but I say its fake:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjpb5AXUNSE&quot;&gt;Baseball bat standing up in a fake looking way&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did this happen or is it a fake video?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="863" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-12-18T15:32:40.817" LastActivityDate="2014-12-19T17:39:20.053" Title="Did this baseball bat stand up after been thrown?" Tags="|united-states|sport|video|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25170" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25167" CreationDate="2014-12-18T15:34:56.043" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is from a September 12, 2007 game. Braves vs Mets. Martin Prado is the batter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discussion of the event happened online in the weeks following.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forum.ebaumsworld.com/archive/index.php/t-225664.html&quot;&gt;Example discussion at Ebaum's World, September 26, 2007.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The announcer was surprised, saying &quot;that would never happen in 100 years&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was reported in &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120916215845/http://www.aolnews.com/2007/09/18/step-up-and-watch-the-amazing-bat-control-of-martin-prado/&quot;&gt;AOL News&lt;/a&gt; (via Web Archive) on September 18, 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other video angles of this event have been taken down from YouTube because of Major League Baseball copyright claims: &lt;a href=&quot;http://atlanta.metblogs.com/2007/09/17/martin-prado-bat-man/&quot;&gt;http://atlanta.metblogs.com/2007/09/17/martin-prado-bat-man/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this doesnt prove this, it explains the lack of alternate angles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is another instance of this almost happening: &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/Wonpmn4nycQ&quot;&gt;http://youtu.be/Wonpmn4nycQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is to lower the threshold of evidence for people who think this is impossible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is somebody discussing it the day sfter (&lt;a href=&quot;http://nextyear.blogspot.ca/2007/09/tapes-n-tapes.html?m=1&quot;&gt;http://nextyear.blogspot.ca/2007/09/tapes-n-tapes.html?m=1&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After Martin Prado grounded out to second (and dropped the bat in a way that it bounced up and landed perfectly on its end -- baseball can be funny sometimes, and not just in the important stuff)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That was the following day. You can see it is little more than a mention to the baseball community. This was an important late season game. Prado was brought in for this one at-bat in the ninth and his team lost. The significance of this game far outweighed the unimportant bat balancing thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for why the camera doesn't zoom in, they use a fixed view camera over the plate for strike zone analysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fallacy that doubters seem to be making is anomaly hunting.. They have an idea of what &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have been the reaction without an understanding of the context of that at-bat or the game in the playoff hunt. Absense of evidence is only evidence of absense if the evidence really should be there. In this case, the things doubters say are missing are reasonable to be missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/anomaly-hunting-and-the-umbrella-man/&quot;&gt;http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/anomaly-hunting-and-the-umbrella-man/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What constitutes an anomaly? Well, anything you want to count as an anomaly. There are no specific criteria. In practice the criterion is – it seems weird to me. This then opens the door to confirmation bias. Seek and ye shall find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23059" LastEditorUserId="23059" LastEditDate="2014-12-19T17:39:20.053" LastActivityDate="2014-12-19T17:39:20.053" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25173" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25185" CreationDate="2014-12-18T20:39:34.743" Score="14" ViewCount="3147" Body="&lt;p&gt;In light of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/nuclear/nuclear-vulnerability-sends-belgians-scrambling-for-winter-power-supplies&quot;&gt;potential upcoming power shortages&lt;/a&gt; in Belgium, there are a lot of &quot;tips&quot; going around to save power during the cold months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of them is to thaw out the ice in the deep freezer as, according to one of the power companies, a layer of ice one millimeter thick would increase power use by 5%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/4xgxQcX1GfA?t=31s&quot;&gt;Electrabel Video&lt;/a&gt; (Dutch)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/ObwMXwsS9RU?t=31s&quot;&gt;Electrabel Video&lt;/a&gt; (French)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that the 1 mm of ice could increase power use by 5%, or that more energy is used by an iced-up freezer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3508" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-12-20T13:22:33.343" LastActivityDate="2014-12-20T14:40:42.223" Title="Does a deep freezer use more energy when there is a layer of ice in it?" Tags="|consumer-products|electromagnetism|energy-efficiency|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25175" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-19T03:39:28.360" Score="6" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;From this article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nemechekconsultativemedicine.com/?page_id=1415&quot;&gt;Excess Stomach Acid Mimics Hunger&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reducing your carbohydrate intake to 20-25% of your total caloric intake has a dramatic improvement in the diseases arising from insulin resistance as well as improving your neurological functioning.  Your triglyceride and HDL cholesterol levels improve, your blood pressure will be greatly reduced and your blood sugar levels will normalize as your body’s response to insulin to improves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does keeping your carbohydrate intake to 20-25% of your total caloric intake reduce insulin-resistance diseases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-19T06:38:32.323" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T10:26:58.140" Title="Does keeping your carbohydrate intake at 20-25% of your total caloric intake reduce insulin-resistance diseases?" Tags="|medical-science|diabetes|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25176" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-19T03:57:11.467" Score="6" ViewCount="9878" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/15634/1/Instant-Gas-Relief--Causes-and-Cures.html&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However on the other end of the spectrum having your stomach empty can also cause gas as that empty stomach area fills up with air.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true or just an old wives tale?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2014-12-19T13:44:08.983" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T12:49:16.590" Title="Does an empty stomach cause gas?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25181" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-19T21:33:46.150" Score="24" ViewCount="1039" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've often heard that adding just a few drops of filtered, room termperature water to scotch helps to &quot;bring out the flavor and the aroma.&quot; The scotch guy at my store told me it involves a chemical reaction; that barley is a tightly wound grain, and the water causes the molecules to unwind. Here's a slightly more technical explanation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nowadays just about everyone agrees that a little (emphasis on&#xA;  ‘little’) water helps a whisky (especially subtle or floral single&#xA;  malts) ‘open up’ in the glass. A chemical reaction occurs between the&#xA;  water and the tightly-wound chains of amino acids in the whisky. They&#xA;  literally unravel, releasing new flavor compounds and esters (volatile&#xA;  compounds that smell like flowers and fruits). How much water? I&#xA;  generally use a straw to pick up some water (you remember playing with&#xA;  fast-food straws as a kid, right?) and drop 4 or 5 drops into my&#xA;  glass. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://scotchnoob.com/2011/03/09/water-ice-or-neat/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... place about a half-teaspoon of good quality, room temperature water in&#xA;  the single malt. I keep a bottle of such in my single malt cabinet.&#xA;  Now quickly swirl the contents a couple of times and nose again. If&#xA;  the whisky has much character, you will now most likely have to move&#xA;  your glass farther from your nose. There may be an intense release of&#xA;  aromas from the malt- or maybe not so intense. This robust release of&#xA;  aromas is due to the old Chemistry 104 term called &quot;heat of solution.&quot;&#xA;  In effect, this rule states that when two chemicals are mixed, they&#xA;  may &quot;take on&quot; or &quot;release&quot; energy, thus becoming cooler or warmer. In&#xA;  the case of a whisky and water mix, the solution becomes slightly&#xA;  warmer, thus releasing the ethyl alcohols which contain much of the&#xA;  aroma of the single malt. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scotchdoc.com/tsd/ask/&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not knowing much about chemistry, I'm tempted to take anyone's word for it that invokes the old &quot;Chemistry 104&quot; rule. But is it really true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22711" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T03:31:07.210" Title="Does water bring out the flavor and aroma in scotch?" Tags="|chemistry|alcohol|drinks|taste|smell|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15095" CreationDate="2014-12-20T14:08:25.533" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to be a small underestimation. A more precise estimate would be more than 5%, around 6%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It turns out that people study the prevalence of hair color to understand which genes are related to it -- this gives us access to prevalence data for different hair colors, and -- in the US -- this seems to be around 10-12% for blonde hair of Americans of European descent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Wf3xa.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;distribution of hair color in US&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Han J, Kraft P, Nan H, Guo Q, Chen C, et al. (2008) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1000074&amp;amp;representation=PDF&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies Novel Alleles Associated with Hair Color and Skin Pigmentation.&lt;/a&gt; PLoS Genet 4(5): e1000074. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000074&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study needs these numbers to be representative to exclude systematic bias in the choice of people with different hair colors, but they refer to American of European descent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This, and the observation that the different studies give very similar numbers, leads me to conclude that a believable estimate (relative to European-descent Americans) lies between 10.7% and 12.7%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, of course there are other ethnicities in the US. Interestingly in large part they are basically completely non-blonde. Thus we can correct the numbers and get a minimum estimate easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762137.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this list&lt;/a&gt; we can see that there were 148,471,345 US nationals of European descent in 2011. This means between 15.9 and 18.9 million blonde Americans. Given that there were a total of 310 million Americans, we can estimate that in percentage, blondes are between 5.1% and 6.0%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-12-20T16:55:31.357" LastActivityDate="2014-12-20T16:55:31.357" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25173" CreationDate="2014-12-20T14:40:42.223" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In general, frosting has generally a negative effect on cooling. How much depends on the air flow in the freezer, as cold air has to reach every part of the contents easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;Frost formation&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Water vapour deposited from the air leads to frost&#xA;  formation and has a great influence on heat transfer with&#xA;  the following positive factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The latent heat (sublimation of water vapour)&#xA;  increases the heat transfer coefficient at the initial stages&#xA;  of frosting. The influence of the latent heat is included by&#xA;  introduction of the 'sensible heat factor', i.e. the ratio&#xA;  between the total transferred and the sensible heat&#xA;  amount. With this factor it is possible to calculate by&#xA;  approximation the nominal cooling capacity from the&#xA;  'dry' cooling capacity. Manufacturers often correct with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q&lt;sub&gt;0o&lt;/sub&gt; = 1.25*Q&lt;sub&gt;dry&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The heat transfer is further improved by the fact that&#xA;  the ice crystals in the beginning lead to an enlargement&#xA;  and more roughness of the surface.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These advantages however are soon followed by the&#xA;  following disadvantages.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The poor heat conduction coefficient of the growing&#xA;  frost layer decreases the heat transfer. The evaporation&#xA;  temperature goes down or must be kept constant by a&#xA;  larger cooling surface.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The frost formation reduces the air flow rate and&#xA;  enlarges the pressure drop. The air flow rate decreases fast&#xA;  or slowly, depending on the fan characteristic. This can&#xA;  result in too low an exit temperature and an undesired&#xA;  increase of the non-homogeneity of the air condition in&#xA;  the refrigerated area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/g8nXd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;frost effects&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C. H. M. Machielsen and H. G. Kerschbaumer, &lt;a href=&quot;http://repository.tudelft.nl/assets/uuid:91f11223-854f-4685-aff1-76359b8d3f04/elseng_machielsen_1989.pdf?origin=publication_detail&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Influence of frost formation and defrosting on the performance of&#xA;air coolers: standards and dimensionless coefficients for the&#xA;system designer&lt;/a&gt;. Rev. Int. Froid 1989 Vol 12 Septembre 283 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article further explains that there's an optimal frequency at which automated defrosting should happen: on one hand one would like to maximize the benefits of defrosting, but on the other automatic defrosting has a cost, because it slightly heats up the contents to remove the frost. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the authors refer to automatic defrosting, manual defrosting has even higher costs in terms of increasing temperature, because of course it means bringing the unit to room temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Does frosting decrease efficiency significantly? Yes, and the negative effect increases with time.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is regular defrosting a good practice? Yes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is it possible to make a general statement that even 1mm of frost generates so-and-so costs? No, as the article shows, specific measurements are necessary to determine the exact effects of frost in a particular unit, and to determine when to apply defrosting in order to minimize cost.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal take on the article is that defrosting once a year in winter is a good thing, but that the claimed efficiency losses are dubious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-12-20T14:40:42.223" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25176" CreationDate="2014-12-20T14:55:36.017" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article is partially correct. According to WebMD there are 9 conditions associated with hunger and increased passing gas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Hunger and Increased passing gas&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 9 conditions associated with hunger and increased passing gas. The links below will provide you with more detailed information on these medical conditions from the WebMD Symptom Checker and help provide a better understanding of causes and treatment of these related conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Constipation (child)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Constipation is having less than three bowel movements a week, causing hard stools, abdominal pain and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Constipation (adult)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Constipation is having less than three bowel movements a week, causing hard stools, abdominal pain and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Gas pains&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Belching or passing gas clears gas from the digestive tract, but when gas is stuck it causes abdominal pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Irritable bowel syndrome&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Irritable bowel syndrome is a common condition that causes painful spasms and cramping in the large intestine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Lactose intolerance&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lactose intolerance, or the inability to digest lactose, leads to gas, bloating, and other symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Giardiasis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Giardiasis is an infection of the small intestine causing diarrhea, gas, bloating, nausea and stomach cramps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Insulin reaction (hypoglycemia)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An insulin reaction is the result of low blood sugar and causes anxiety, hunger, shaking, dizziness, and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia)&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Low blood sugar, or low glucose levels, causes shakiness, anxiety, clammy skin, irritability, hunger, and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Malnutrition&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Malnutrition occurs when the body isn't getting enough nutrients; sometimes the condition is life-threatening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://symptomchecker.webmd.com/multiple-symptoms?symptoms=hunger%7Cincreased-passing-gas&amp;amp;symptomids=547%7C176&amp;amp;locations=66%7C24&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hunger and Increased passing gas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;correlation is not causation&lt;/a&gt;, and in most of these cases being hungry is not identified as the (direct) cause of increased passing gas, but as a common symptom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-20T14:55:36.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25188" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24105" CreationDate="2014-12-20T23:49:17.190" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;DDT is quite nasty. Here are is an example of a 2010 study about the toxicity of DDT metabolites -- after they have been found in measurable concentrations in Germany. It is an in-vitro study, so take it with caution:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All the DDT metabolites tested did not exhibit dioxin-like activities in RTL-W1 cells, but show cytotoxic and estrogenic activities. Based on the results of the in vitro assays used in our study and on the reported concentrations of DDT metabolites in contaminated sediments, such substances could, in the future, pose interference with the normal reproductive and endocrine functions in various organisms exposed to these chemicals. Consequently, there is an urgent need to examine more comprehensively the risk of environmental concentrations of the investigated DDT metabolites using in vivo studies. However, this should be paralleled also by periodic evaluation and monitoring of the current levels of the DDT metabolites in environmental matrices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bernhard Wetterauer, Mathias Ricking, Jens C. Otte, et al. &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11356-011-0570-9&quot;&gt;Toxicity, dioxin-like activities, and endocrine effects of DDT metabolites—DDA, DDMU, DDMS, and DDCN&lt;/a&gt;. Environmental Science and Pollution Research &#xA;Volume 19, Issue 2 , pp 403-415 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There aren't many studies on human becase... it's a known poison. So what studies we have are either on other mammals, or on humans that have been inadvertently contaminated with it (DDT plant workers for example)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Numerous studies have been conducted on the effects of DDT and related compounds in a variety of&#xA;  animal species, but the human data are somewhat limited. Most of the information on health effects in&#xA;  humans comes from studies of workers in DDT-manufacturing plants or spray applicators who had&#xA;  occupational exposure to DDT over an extended period and also from some controlled exposure studies&#xA;  with volunteers. Epidemiological studies of the general population are also available. Because of&#xA;  limitations inherent to all epidemiological studies, disease causality cannot be determined from them;&#xA;  however, epidemiological studies have been conducted that allow the evaluation of the potential role of&#xA;  DDT and related compounds in specific health outcomes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp35.pdf&quot;&gt;TOXICOLOGICAL PROFILE FOR DDT, DDE, and DDD&lt;/a&gt;. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES - Public Health Service - Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is a great, extremely detailed and well documented article on the known effects of DDT. It is updated to very recently, and in it you can find plenty of statements that flat-out contradict Dr. Evans, like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Occupational exposure to DDT was associated with increased lung cancer in a case control study of the Uruguayan work force (De Stefani et al. 1996). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that many health effect have been studies for many molecules in the same family, with similar effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion: there's no doubt that DDT has many negative health effects and its banning seems justified - this has been confirmed in many studies, including recent ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-12-20T23:49:17.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25189" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22870" CreationDate="2014-12-21T00:28:54.950" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, you needn't cut off the end of the banana unless it's rotten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a two main reasons why bananas turn black.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Bananas keep on maturing even when they have been harvested. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/91/4/1436.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This happens through enzymes and oxydation&lt;/a&gt; and it's part of the normal life cycle of the fruit. In fact, a slightly over-ripe fruit is likely more nutritious because of higher sugar content. If your banana is simply ripening, you can eat it, it's oxidized and not rotten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In ripening banana (Musa sp. [AAA group, Cavendish subgroup] cv Valery) fruit, the concentration of glycolytic intermediates increased in response to the rapid conversion of starch to sugars and CO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fungi of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colletotrichum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Colletotrichum&lt;/a&gt; family (and in particular &lt;em&gt;Colletotrichum musae&lt;/em&gt; is the banana-specific one) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idosi.org/wjas/wjas7(6)/17.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;are endemic on vegetables and cause rot.&lt;/a&gt; One well known effect is tip rot in bananas. Probably these fungi are not particularly toxic (this is my assumption), but the normal &amp;quot;avoid rotten food&amp;quot; advice applies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-21T00:28:54.950" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25190" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-21T03:12:52.703" Score="22" ViewCount="3469" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/PolicePoliceACP/status/546020531665772544&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://twitter.com/PolicePoliceACP/status/546020531665772544&lt;/a&gt; (1754 retweets, 705 favorites)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cop Stops Cop From Choking a Handcuffed Man, She Was Then Beaten/Fired&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Read more &gt;&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://thefreethoughtproject.com/police-departments-good-cops-buffalo-officer-fired-stopping-brutality/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://bit.ly/1DQqUAT&lt;/a&gt; #PolTwt&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wv5sv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Text below&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This cop [Officer Carol Horne] tried to stop this cop [Officer Gregory&#xA;  Kwiatkowski] from beating and choking a handcuffed suspect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She was then beaten &amp;amp; fired.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;She says: &quot;I don't regret it, I'd do it again&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And is now fighting to keep her pension after 19 years on the force.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;SHARE if you wish more cops had integrity like this woman&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is preventing police abuse an accurate and complete description of Horne's actions, and was she fired soon afterwards and denied her pension?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2014-12-22T00:15:21.837" Title="Did a cop get fired after stopping police abuse?" Tags="|united-states|police|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25191" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25190" CreationDate="2014-12-21T03:43:36.190" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cariol Horne says she intervened in the other officer's interaction with a suspect. &#xA;She was fired. She was been denied pension, as she was fired before the date at which it would be awarded. &lt;a href=&quot;http://wivb.com/2014/12/09/fired-police-officer-may-get-pension-back/&quot;&gt;Source: WIVB TV: Council won’t restore officer’s pension&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find anything showing she was beaten.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her claim is that the other officer punched her and was unnecessarily punching and choking the suspect.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://countercurrentnews.com/2014/12/new-york-cop-was-fired-and-denied-pension-for-trying-to-stop-fellow-officer-from-choking-suspect/#&quot;&gt;Source: Counter Current News: New York Cop Was Fired and Denied Pension For Trying To Stop Fellow Officer From Choking Suspect&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other officer, Greg Kwiatkowski, says that Cariol was the aggressor against him. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politicalaffairs.net/embattled-white-police-officer-lashes-out-at-horne/&quot;&gt;Source: Political Affairs: Embattled White Police Officer Lashes out at Horne&lt;/a&gt;&#xA; (I don't think this difference between their stories was ever resolved.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kwiatkowski sued Cariol for defamation relating to her description of this event and won: &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.wgrz.com/news/article/109161/13/Police-Lieutenant-Vindicated?fullsite=true&quot;&gt;Source: WGRZ TV: Police Lieutenant Vindicated&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23059" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-22T00:15:21.837" LastActivityDate="2014-12-22T00:15:21.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25198" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28687" CreationDate="2014-12-22T04:40:07.973" Score="12" ViewCount="2803" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following anecdote has gone viral, seen as a gaffe by someone ignorant of the atomic bombing of the city.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-morning-catchup-a-battlebus-poll-a-surprising-secrecy-advocate-and-a-majestic-gaffe-9571679.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The morning catch-up: a Battlebus poll, a surprising secrecy advocate and a majestic gaffe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finally (thanks to &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/iainmacintosh/status/482877398728589312&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Iain Macintosh&lt;/a&gt;), Daniel Finkelstein in&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4132564.ece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Saturday's Times&lt;/a&gt; (pay wall), recalls William Hague's visit to&#xA;  Japan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He went with a group of MPs, and one of them had a pressing question&#xA;  to ask the mayor of Hiroshima. “Everywhere else we’ve been in Japan,”&#xA;  said the MP, “the streets have been higgledy-piggledy. Yet here in&#xA;  Hiroshima your streets are laid out in a well-organised grid. How did&#xA;  you achieve that?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The mayor paused and quietly responded: “We had some help. From the&#xA;  Americans.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finkelstein &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Dannythefink/status/483246338382249984&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;insists&lt;/a&gt; the story is true, but he won't say who the&#xA;  former MP is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Help&quot; is is being used rather ironically here, as can be seen by the pause. It means the city being the target of an atomic bomb. As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sideswipe/news/article.cfm?c_id=702&amp;amp;objectid=11285602&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;described&lt;/a&gt; in the NZ Herald:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A commenter who lived in Hiroshima says the story rings true,&#xA;  explaining that residents of the city are &quot;prone to joking about the&#xA;  American-assisted urban renewal project of 1945&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like the commenter, I suspect the conversation did take place. However, I don't know if the explanation, that the USA bombed Hiroshima, eliminating virtually all buildings, enabling the government to start from scratch and change the layout of its streets, is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Hiroshima change the layouts of its streets subsequent to the war, using the opportunity based on buildings being damaged or destroyed by the bombing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-07-16T00:38:13.513" LastActivityDate="2023-03-02T01:51:55.063" Title="Did Hiroshima change the layout of its streets subsequent to the war?" Tags="|japan|world-war-ii|nuclear-weapons|hiroshima-nagasaki|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25200" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25208" CreationDate="2014-12-23T01:09:53.440" Score="20" ViewCount="4164" Body="&lt;p&gt;After requesting some quotes on computers in China-based global trade site Ali Baba, a friend of mine was bombarded with offers via email.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see an example in the image bellow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prices are too good to be true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is it a scam?&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Can a Macbook Pro cost US$ 230? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If so, how can these companies sell at such a low price?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is this economically possible to sell those products at that price?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT:&lt;/strong&gt; The email came from a &lt;strong&gt;szlc-electonic.com&lt;/strong&gt; domain. That page is down, and it doesn't match the seemingly legit lctech-inc.com nor hktdc.com, both reported by Google as being Shenzhen Technology. It seems to indicate that the email originators are trying to impersonate Shenzhen LC Technology which doesn't sell laptops.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The screen capture:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/P5DtD.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21796" LastEditorUserId="21796" LastEditDate="2014-12-24T00:09:30.527" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T15:57:17.233" Title="Are these suppliers providing Macbook Pros for only US$230?" Tags="|computers|china|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25129" CreationDate="2014-12-23T01:17:53.280" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Don't trust it to be true: it's almost certainly a fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The original is likely here and has no messages (but better colors!):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/O1EeF.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;original still image&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/index.php?c=3104&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.fuzzymemories.tv/index.php?c=3104&lt;/a&gt; -- It's an uncut segment, jump to 3m43s for the anthem)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the clip &lt;em&gt;seems&lt;/em&gt; original and is &lt;em&gt;clearly&lt;/em&gt; from the 80's.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A 3rd party analysis, which includes a slow down, is available on youtube: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PxDZI-6O-w&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PxDZI-6O-w&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It contains the signature of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMZ_rQKAy7c&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;original uploader (Naomi)&lt;/a&gt;, which I found by using Google's advanced search (this is also confirmed by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infowars.com/real-or-hoax-1960s-subliminal-national-anthem-video-says-obey-government/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;infowars&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;BUY MKNAOMI&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The account is an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-isc8o96riPqCNGxheCWrw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;anonymous account&lt;/a&gt;, has only uploaded that video, contains a clear reference to its secret contents but does not mention them. If the uploader was not aware of the contents, then it would be uncanny that their username coincides with the contents. If they were aware, then why not mention in the description? My speculation is because they wanted to play the &quot;discovered by chance&quot; card. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I salvaged this reel of film from a TV station that used to sign of with it during the 1960s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another video debunk &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj5b_z5kGvg&amp;amp;index=198&amp;amp;list=PLojvTRr2YYfbQ7mDoEVoh_8AHBn4KYCMd&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While anything is possible, and showing an &lt;em&gt;undoctored&lt;/em&gt; copy does not indeed &quot;prove&quot; that the example is a fake... an anoyomous upload on youtube certainly does not &quot;prove&quot;, at all, that there was a subliminal message in this clip in the 60's. At the &lt;em&gt;very least&lt;/em&gt; a third party analysis of the original master is necessary to provide convincing proof that this could be the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T01:53:33.120" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T01:53:33.120" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25200" CreationDate="2014-12-23T01:31:49.083" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's likely a scam:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apple's products have fixed prices and, for example, a MD711CH costs around 1000US$ in &lt;a href=&quot;http://store.apple.com/cn/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;China&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4NN5W.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there is a large &quot;fakes&quot; industry in China. They even have tons of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/technology/pda/2011/jul/21/fake-apple-store&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fake Apple stores&lt;/a&gt;!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LODLn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T01:31:49.083" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25162" CreationDate="2014-12-23T01:49:25.417" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, it was well preserved but it was clearly not in perfect conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.saintcharbel-annaya.com/home.php?lgid=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;official site&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; does not claim that he had the appearance of a recently deceased, in fact it was firstly &amp;quot;perspiring sweat &amp;amp; blood&amp;quot; and then it was merely &amp;quot;whole&amp;quot;, however they claim magical lights and miraculous healings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After his death spiritual lights radiated from his tomb the reason for which his corpse which was perspiring sweat &amp;amp; blood; was transferred into a special coffin, after the permission of the Maronite patriarchate, and he was placed in a new tomb, inside the monastery. At that point groups of Pilgrims flocked soliciting his intercession. God blessed many of these by healing them and endowing them by other spiritual blessings.&#xA;In the year 1925, a petition was raised to canonize him and declare his sanctity before his Beatitude Pope Bios XI, by father superior Ighnatious Dagher Tannoury, &amp;amp; his Vicar father Martinous Tarabay, where his plea was accepted as well as father Nehemtallah Kassab Elhardidni and Sister Rafca Elrayess in the year 1927. In 1950 the grave of St. Charbel was opened, in the presence of the Official Committee &amp;amp; Certified Doctors. They verified the wholeness of the corpse, and they wrote a medical report and put it in a box inside the coffin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The actual opening of the tomb and the video was filmed in 1950 and you can judge by yourself (warning: there's a cadaver in the video!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Ss4ES8D40&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Ss4ES8D40&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T01:49:25.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25205" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-23T06:07:56.763" Score="2" ViewCount="617" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question doesn't duplicate &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/831/16959&quot;&gt;the more limited one on Zicam&lt;/a&gt;; I ask here about zinc in general. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/common-cold/expert-answers/zinc-for-colds/faq-20057769&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mayo Clinic&lt;/a&gt; (from which I quote below) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/zinc-lozenges-cold-remedy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WebMD&lt;/a&gt; are skeptical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since then, research has turned up mixed results about zinc and colds&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possibly yes:&lt;/strong&gt; See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/news/2012/05may/Pages/Zinc-shortens-common-cold.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NHS&lt;/a&gt;  (from which I quote below)  and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/sarah-knapton/10600246/Zinc-not-Vitamin-C-is-best-for-fighting-colds.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For many years, it has been suggested that zinc supplements could relieve the symptoms of the common cold, but there was little clarity until a 2011 evidence review. This recent review suggested a modest reduction in the length of symptoms, although the results were not entirely conclusive. In a bid to help clarify the matter, researchers have conducted another review of evidence on this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16959" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T06:07:56.763" Title="Does zinc help with colds and flus?" Tags="|medical-science|common-cold|flu|zinc|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2014-12-23T11:34:10.003" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25206" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-23T10:16:44.883" Score="3" ViewCount="3828" Body="&lt;p&gt;Decorated mathematician &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benoit_Mandelbrot&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Benoit B. Mandelbrot&lt;/a&gt;, who first coined the term &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fractals&lt;/a&gt;, allegedly gave himself the middle initial &lt;em&gt;B&lt;/em&gt;, representing again his full name. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did he in fact ever legally adopt this addition as a pseudonym or is this likely a myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23423" LastEditorUserId="23423" LastEditDate="2014-12-27T17:32:35.030" LastActivityDate="2014-12-27T17:32:35.030" Title="Does the 'B' in 'Benoit B. Mandelbrot' stand for 'Benoit B. Mandelbrot'?" Tags="|mathematics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2014-12-23T10:55:46.303" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25207" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-23T14:00:03.847" Score="24" ViewCount="2163" Body="&lt;p&gt;This site has &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6656/is-the-increasing-availability-of-high-speed-internet-pornography-reducing-sex-c&quot;&gt;previously&lt;/a&gt; dealt with the question of whether porn use reduces bad sexual behaviour, sex-crime. A recent Washington Post story, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/21/americans-arent-getting-married-and-researchers-think-porn-is-part-of-the-problem/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Americans aren’t getting married, and researchers think porn is part of the problem&lt;/a&gt;, suggests that the rise of free Internet porn may contribute to the declining rate of marriage in young adult males. In particular the story suggests:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team of researchers ... determined that the rise of free Internet pornography is not only correlated with a pronounced decline in percentage of young adult males who are married, but might actually be contributing to the trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They argue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In order to test the hypothesis, Malcolm adjusted for a number of variables, including age, income, education, religiosity, and employment, all of which have been shown to correlate with marriage. He also adjusted for the possibility marriage has an impact on pornography use, and never the other way around.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The researchers, while careful to say that their findings fall short of being conclusive, insist that the relationship between the two also &amp;quot;likely runs in the direction that we assert.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this plausible? Is the research reliable, are their stats any good and are the results compatible with other evidence (e.g. behaviour in countries other than the USA)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-11-07T12:56:20.277" Title="Is the spread of internet porn reducing marriage rates?" Tags="|sexuality|marriage|pornography|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25200" CreationDate="2014-12-23T14:01:02.570" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.computerworld.com/article/2513587/apple-mac/macbook-air-more-profitable-than-other-apple-laptops--says-analyst.html&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; claims that in 2010, the &quot;Bill Of Material&quot; for the cheapest MacBook Air was $718. So if, for example, Foxconn decided to buy some extra parts and do an extra shift to produce some MacBook Airs on their own and sold them at cost, they would cost $718. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Bill Of Materials has probably gone down since then, but even so there is no way that a halfway legitimate business could sell a MacBook Air for $255. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19183" LastEditorUserId="11254" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T19:46:07.853" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T19:46:07.853" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25211" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25159" CreationDate="2014-12-23T17:41:27.820" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;I took a look at three different research works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. The Costs and Benefits of Pair Programming&lt;/strong&gt;, by Alistair Cockburn and Laurie Williams, from University of Utah. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.pomona.edu/classes/cs121/supp/williams_prpgm.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Link to paper&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems the research metodology used was interviews as well as revisiting previous studies made in the univertisy, which se&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the conclusions, quoted from previews works (properly aknowledged) state that a &quot;15% less defects&quot; for every one thousand lines of code.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Significantly, the resulting code has about 15% fewer defects. (These&#xA;  results are statistically significant.) Figure 2 shows the&#xA;  post-development test cases the students passed for each program –&#xA;  essentially the percentage of the instructor’s test cases passed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aEcZY.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Effectiveness of PairProgramming:A Meta-Analysis&lt;/strong&gt; (Hannay,Dyba,Arisholm and Sjøberg), from the University of Oslo, Norway. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idi.ntnu.no/grupper/su/publ/ebse/R11-pairprog-hannay-ist09.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Link to paper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It uses a much more scientific approach, with systematic reviews and mata-analisys and has lots or charts and tables obtained after number crunching. It states in its conclusions that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pair programming may also have a time gain on simpler tasks. By&#xA;  cooperating, programmers may complete tasks and attain goals that&#xA;  would be difficult or impossible if they worked individually. Junior&#xA;  pair programmers, for example, seem able to achieve approximately the&#xA;  same level of correctness in about the same amount of time (duration) as senior individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the negative side:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Effective Pair Programming Practice - An Experimental Study&lt;/strong&gt; (Yanamadala and Madina),  Blekinge Tekniska Hogskola, Sweden. &lt;a href=&quot;http://cisjournal.org/journalofcomputing/archive/vol3no4/vol3no4_2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Link to paper&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main result of this study is that the pair programming practice&#xA;  used by the subjects, instead of solo programming, did not&#xA;  significantly affect branch coverage or mutation score indicator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal experience is that PP does have a positive impact in code quality and/or correctness whenever the knowledge gap between programmers is not too big.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21796" LastEditorUserId="21796" LastEditDate="2014-12-23T17:47:17.677" LastActivityDate="2014-12-23T17:47:17.677" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23724" CreationDate="2014-12-24T10:24:30.717" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/homeopathy/Pages/Introduction.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;According to the NHS,&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 2010 House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report on homeopathy said that homeopathic remedies perform no better than placebos, and that the principles on which homeopathy is based are &quot;scientifically implausible&quot;. This is also the view of the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that homeopathy has been shown to be no different from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;placebo&lt;/a&gt; (i.e. a negative control treatment). This implies that the only effects generated by the homeopathic &quot;treatment&quot; are due to the placebo, and not the &quot;treatment&quot; itself. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in the comments, from a chemical viewpoint, any dilution above 12C contains such a low dilution that no molecules of the original chemical remain in the supposed &quot;medicine&quot;, and therefore there is no scientific basis for homeopathy being a plausible remedy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO, the best counter to any homeopath is that tap water is an unimaginably strong homeopathic remedy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/homeopathic-remedies-all-the-benefits-of-tap-water-at-a-million-times-the-price-102413.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;literally everything possible&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2011/12/your-perfect-homeopathy-kit-for-christmas.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;including dinosaurs&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="14582" LastEditDate="2014-12-24T10:30:14.383" LastActivityDate="2014-12-24T10:30:14.383" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25217" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25221" CreationDate="2014-12-24T13:32:48.917" Score="65" ViewCount="19196" Body="&lt;p&gt;Project Censored have an 2010 article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.projectcensored.org/11-the-media-can-legally-lie/&quot;&gt;The Media Can Legally Lie&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States. [...] During their appeal, FOX asserted that there are no written rules against distorting news in the media. They argued that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxbghsuit.com/&quot;&gt;reporter&lt;/a&gt;, as well as a number of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.relfe.com/media_can_legally_lie.html&quot;&gt;other&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.librarygrape.com/2009/06/court-fox-news-has-first-amendment.html&quot;&gt;liberal&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.philly2philly.com/politics_community/politics_community_articles/2009/6/29/4854/fox_news_wins_lawsuit_misinform_public&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt; also claim pretty much the same thing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Competitive_Politics&quot;&gt;Centre for Competitive Politics&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.campaignfreedom.org/2009/11/03/fox-lies-videotape-debunking-an-internet-myth/&quot;&gt;contests&lt;/a&gt; this claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clearly, the story that FOX News got a court ruling in favor of its right to “lie” in its news broadcasts has become something of a&#xA;  talking point among the cable news channel’s detractors. There’s only&#xA;  one problem – the story as popularly told is completely false, and is&#xA;  based almost exclusively on hysteria, hyperbole, and half-truths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was indeed a lawsuit filed by journalists Jane Akre and Steve&#xA;  Wilson over their dismissal from FOX affiliate WTVT in Tampa, Florida.&#xA;  After that fact, however, the story is far different than how it is&#xA;  popularly portrayed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/foxlies.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes also rejects this claim&lt;/a&gt; but its main reasons were that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The TV channel involved in the suit was not the main Fox News channel, but an affiliate . (IMO, this is a cop-out.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The issue at hand was not day-to-day programming, but a special episode involving Monsanto and bovine growth hormone (which seemed to be irrelevant to the question at hand.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fox News did not invoke First Amendment for its right to lie (which was not asserted by the claims.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it did not cover the issue on whether Fox News won the second lawsuit, or if it even involved &quot;the right to lie&quot;. In an example of a poor answer from Snopes, their quotation was not relevant to their claim that Fox News did not win the second lawsuit on &quot;the right to lie&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Snopes also links to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://caselaw.findlaw.com/fl-district-court-of-appeal/1310807.html&quot;&gt;2003 judgment&lt;/a&gt;, which reversed the 1998 award. However, I was unable to fully understand the legalese behind this judgment, nor was I able to find a source which clears this up properly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being uninitiated in American politics, which article(s) is/are more valid? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-20T14:54:38.533" LastActivityDate="2019-10-11T15:57:15.723" Title="Did Fox News win a court case for the right to lie?" Tags="|united-states|politics|court-case|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25218" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9007" CreationDate="2014-12-24T13:49:54.850" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/SafetyHealth/ProductSafetyInformation/ucm130321.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;According to the FDA&lt;/a&gt;, it would appear that this (rather dubious-sounding claim) is in fact true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After going through some details on the 90-day rat oral study, the FDA claims that no further studies are required, due to the fact that the 90-day study has shown there is no biological availability, and therefore no activity of rbGH on rats. (emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FDA believes that the available data confirm that biologically significant amounts of rbGH are not absorbed in humans following the consumption of milk from cows treated with rbGH. &lt;em&gt;Oral toxicity studies of longer duration are not necessary&lt;/em&gt; because rbGH at dietary levels found in the milk of rbGH-treated cows is not significantly biologically available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2014-12-25T10:42:11.557" LastActivityDate="2014-12-25T10:42:11.557" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25221" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25217" CreationDate="2014-12-24T16:03:26.870" Score="88" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, pretty much every part of that statement is false:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;TL;DR&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Fox News&quot; wasn't involved in this case in the first place. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The 2003 court case being cited (an appeal) was &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; about the &quot;right to lie&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was about the right to not pay whistleblower protection money which are independent of the wrongdoing, over &lt;strong&gt;accusations&lt;/strong&gt; of distorting news.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, before the legal win, the station had to pay whistleblower protection money &lt;strong&gt;independently of whether the &quot;lie&quot; accusation had any merit whatsoever&lt;/strong&gt; - merely on the strength of whistleblower making the accusation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the win, that whistleblower award was removed, because FCC's &quot;don't lie&quot; rule didn't qualify under things that one can blow the whistle on and be protected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the court did NOT say anything about the right (or the absence thereof), to lie on the part of news organization. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Merely on the right of an employee to get paid if you accuse someone of lying while being employed by them; and be protected from firing over that accusation.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Independently of that court case win, the FCC determined that the station wasn't lying in the first place, so the original accusations of &quot;lying&quot; were baseless. So did the lower court, in 2000, where all of the &quot;lie&quot; claims were rejected.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;In detail&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fox News wasn't even involved in the first place. The case involved &lt;em&gt;WTVT&lt;/em&gt;, which was a Fox &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_affiliate&quot;&gt;Network Affiliate station&lt;/a&gt;. In other words, they shared a parent corporate entity, but were two completely different companies (and, less importantly, prior to January 1997 wasn't even owned by Fox). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can equally make the case that it was Simpsons that &quot;won the court case&quot;. Or for that matter, that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Entertainment_Group#Motion_picture&quot;&gt;Star Wars did&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, whether that matters or not is a matter of subjective opinion. Strictly speaking, the claim as usually formulated is wrong because the people making the statements very clearly and purposefully are trying to tie in Fox News channel to the story, by using &quot;Fox News&quot; term instead of &quot;Fox affiliate&quot; or &quot;Fox Entertainment&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the rest of the claim is 100% false as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The legal case is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTVT&quot;&gt;very clearly delineated on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;100% of claims by Wilson and almost all by Akre were &lt;em&gt;rejected by the court&lt;/em&gt; outright in original 2000 hearing. &lt;em&gt;The rejection specifically included 100% of their claims that WTVT &quot;lied&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;One claim by Akre was sustained, but importantly, it was a very, very legally specific claim (note the emphasized part):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] but siding with one aspect of Akre's complaint, awarding her $425,000 and agreeing that Akre was a whistleblower because she believed there were violations of the Communications Act of 1934 and because she planned on reporting the station to the Federal Communications Commission. Reason magazine, referring to the case, noted that Akre's argument in the trial was that Akre and Wilson believed &lt;em&gt;news distortion occurred, but that they did not have to prove this was the case&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, the court did NOT rule that WTVT had the &quot;right to lie&quot; - &lt;em&gt;they ruled that although the claimants did not provide evidence that WTVT lied in the first place&lt;/em&gt;, they were not required to provide such proof to get whistle-blower protection. IOW, the claim was awarded regardless of what WTVT did or didn't do.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Then even that last claim by Akre was overturned in 2003 appeal (and what the usual Fox News bashing statement refers to). Again, the claim that was overturned on appeal very specifically was NOT related to &lt;em&gt;whether&lt;/em&gt; WTVT lied, but merely the fact that Akre only had to &lt;em&gt;believe&lt;/em&gt; that they lied, without proving it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] WTVT, who successfully argued that the FCC policy against falsification was not a &quot;law, rule, or regulation&quot;, and so the whistle-blower law did not qualify as the required &quot;law, rule, or regulation&quot; under section 448.102 [...] Because the FCC's news distortion policy is not a &quot;law, rule, or regulation&quot; under section 448.102, Akre has failed to state a claim under the whistle-blower's statute.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To simplify the legalese, the 2003 ruling wasn't that &quot;WTVT had the right to lie&quot;: it was that Akre had no right to whistle-blower protection, because there was no law to  violate, to whistle-blow about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/foxlies.asp&quot;&gt;Snopes put it&lt;/a&gt;, even FCC conclusively indicated there was no lying on the network's part:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ultimately, the &lt;em&gt;FCC concluded in 2007&lt;/em&gt; that the conflict between Akre and Wilson and the affiliate boiled down to an &quot;editorial dispute ... &lt;em&gt;rather than a deliberate effort by WTVT to distort news&lt;/em&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now, in the interests of fairness, in the USA, under First Amendment protection, there's a pretty wide latitude as far as news sources' ability to lie, so the actual statement &quot;there is a right to lie&quot; is not fully inaccurate. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, that is a topic which had nothing to do with the court case being discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The court did find that FEC news distortion policy is not a &quot;law, rule, or regulation&quot; &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://floridatrialattorneys.net/lawyer/Section-V-Floridas-Whistleblower-Act-F.S.-448.102_cp9469.htm&quot;&gt;under the whistle-blower laws&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. But:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;it did &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; establish a general law about &quot;right to lie&quot;, outside of whistle blower protection arena under Florida Law, based on the wording. It merely stated that the specific FCC policy wasn't a law, &lt;em&gt;for the purposes of 448.102&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;it didn't say that the policy is invalid, or can't be applied to the station if the station indeed was found to be distorting the news or lying.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And the ruling very specifically did &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; in any way imply that WTVT lied in the first place. Which was further reinforced in light of FCC's 2007 ruling.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now, if one wants to make an accurate claim, and protest news distortion, the court case's outcome &lt;em&gt;did&lt;/em&gt; make it theoretically harder to find out about lying in the future, by making people potentially less willing to report lying to FCC due to the fact that doing so would NOT protect them as whistleblowers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As a side note, at the risk of falling into a &lt;em&gt;Poisoning the well&lt;/em&gt; fallacy, we also need to consider the trustworthiness of the original source. Apparently, Wilson does have a pattern of accusing people of wrongdoing with no proof as part of his &quot;journalism&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... a report by Wilson resulted in an FCC challenge to WXYZ's license. Wilson had reported that a group of Michigan business and political leaders had consorted with underage prostitutes in Costa Rica. But the reporter admitted on air that &quot;we have no proof&quot; that the named Michigan men had engaged in illicit behavior ... (&lt;a href=&quot;http://cltampa.com/tampa/wilson-akres-fcc-challenge-dismissed/Content?oid=2027397#.VJroCf0kAw&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;As another side note (also not very relevant to the case being examined), the original reporting in question concerned the &quot;dangers&quot; of rBGH and was basically an environmentalist-based anti-Monsanto hit piece, contradicted by scientific evidence. So the underlying truthfulness of the two sides of the dispute that led to this is VERY much in question and not as clear cut as the claims imply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not an expert, but a (seemingly-neutral) source I was able to find - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/othercarcinogens/athome/recombinant-bovine-growth-hormone&quot;&gt;cancer.org&lt;/a&gt; - states that rBGH isn't exactly as bad as one would believe from the reporting in question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is not clear that drinking milk produced using rBGH significantly increases IGF-1 levels in humans or adds to the risk of developing cancer &lt;em&gt;{{note: one point omitted in the summary is that drinking soy milk increases IGF-1 as well, so causality with rBGH is suspect}}&lt;/em&gt;. More research is needed to help better address these concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The increased use of antibiotics to treat rBGH-induced mastitis does promote the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but the extent to which these are transmitted to humans is unclear. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_somatotropin#Human_health&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; notes: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Food and Drug Administration,[9] World Health Organization,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/foxlies.asp&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt; and National Institutes of Health[10] have independently stated that dairy products and meat from BST-treated cows are safe for human consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FDA is specifically quoted as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FDA rBST labeling guidelines state, &quot;FDA is concerned that the term 'rbST free' may imply a compositional difference between milk from treated and untreated cows rather than a difference in the way the milk is produced. Without proper context, such statements could be misleading. Such unqualified statements may imply that &lt;em&gt;milk from untreated cows is safer or of higher quality than milk from treated cows. Such an implication would be false and misleading&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2014-12-25T16:11:56.790" LastActivityDate="2014-12-25T16:11:56.790" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25222" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25228" CreationDate="2014-12-24T18:49:46.383" Score="58" ViewCount="32978" Body="&lt;p&gt;At a young age, I remember being told by a teacher that if there are five or more native Americans in a group, it is legal to shoot them, because it is considered a war party. The teacher told me that this was an old law which is still in effect today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a few references, but I don't know how credible they are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dumblaws.com/laws/united-states/south-dakota&quot;&gt;Dumb Laws Web Site&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;South Dakota:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If there are more than 5 Native Americans on your property you may shoot them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Spearfish, South Dakota:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If three or more Indians are walking down the street together, they can be considered a war party and fired upon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Stupid Laws Web Site&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stupidlaws.com/shoot-native-americans-more-than-five-on-your-property/&quot;&gt;Iowa&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You may shoot Native Americans if more than five of them are on your property.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stupidlaws.com/if-there-are-more-than-5-native-americans-on-your-property-you-may-shoot-them/&quot;&gt;South Dakota&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If there are more than 5 Native Americans on your property you may shoot them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stupidlaws.com/a-group-of-5-or-more-native-americans-are-to-be-considered-a-raiding-party-and-may-be-killed-on-the-spot/&quot;&gt;Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A group of 5 or more Native Americans are to be considered a raiding party and may be killed on the spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could this actually be true? If it is, then does that mean there would be no repercussions for murdering a group of innocent people in cold blood?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I hope nobody is evil enough to go out and do this.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23329" LastEditorUserId="8192" LastEditDate="2014-12-25T22:07:17.060" LastActivityDate="2017-05-30T07:15:12.950" Title="Is it legal to shoot groups of Native Americans in some US States?" Tags="|united-states|law|racism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25223" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25222" CreationDate="2014-12-24T22:50:41.030" Score="67" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.keloland.com/newsdetail.cfm/spearfish-clears-war-party-law/?id=39201&quot;&gt;This 2005 Keloland news article&lt;/a&gt; tackles the claims about South Dakota, especially Spearfish, South Dakota.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It showed there was no such law in Spearfish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Spearfish Mayor Jerry Krambeck said, &quot;And of course we researched as far as back as we possibly could and this was totally false.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And there was was no such law in South Dakota:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several websites also accuse the state of South Dakota of having a war party law. However, officials in Pierre say there's no such law on the books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, Spearfish then passed a resolution saying that there isn't any law to that effect, but even if there was it was officially overturned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, for at least one of the places where this is claimed, it's false. I couldn't find good info about the others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22487" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-25T00:49:48.497" LastActivityDate="2014-12-25T00:49:48.497" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25224" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-24T23:27:51.933" Score="17" ViewCount="6027" Body="&lt;p&gt;In season 2, episode 7 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ahctv.com/tv-shows/black-ops&quot;&gt;Black Ops&lt;/a&gt;, the narrator asserts that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In one year, Seal Team Six fired more rounds than the entire Marine Corps ammunition allowance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thats a pretty impressive statistic, but it kind of comes out of the blue and has no citations. They also don't define what exactly the ammunition allowance is (does practice fire count?) Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21714" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-25T00:52:30.177" LastActivityDate="2017-04-25T13:09:55.643" Title="Did Seal Team Six fire more rounds in one year than the entire Marine Corps's ammunition allowance?" Tags="|united-states|military|guns|weapons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25222" CreationDate="2014-12-25T07:33:46.650" Score="90" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even if such a law were still on the books somewhere in the U.S., it would be superseded by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States&lt;/a&gt; which states (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Section 1:&lt;/strong&gt; All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. &lt;strong&gt;No State shall&lt;/strong&gt; make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor &lt;strong&gt;deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All people within the jurisdiction of any U.S. state are ensured equal protection under the law, so any law saying that it's legal to shoot native Americans in a situation where it wouldn't otherwise be legal to shoot someone would be unconstitutional and unenforceable. Such a law would certainly be struck down by the courts if a case arose in which it were judicially reviewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[D]oes that mean there would be no repercussions for murdering a group of innocent people in cold blood?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Absolutely not, for the above reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21543" LastEditorUserId="21543" LastEditDate="2017-02-08T21:32:22.877" LastActivityDate="2017-02-08T21:32:22.877" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25229" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25230" CreationDate="2014-12-25T11:01:11.173" Score="9" ViewCount="1789" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the common arguments for legalised abortion is that abortions will continue anyway despite being illegal and these illegal abortions will lead to higher rates of maternal death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/this-country-banned-abortion-and-now-abortion-promoters-cant-believe-their&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This, somewhat partizan, site&lt;/a&gt; claims that there have been natural experiments that have tested this idea and found it wanting. Specifically the site claims that the ban on abortion in Chile led to &lt;em&gt;lower&lt;/em&gt; maternal death rates supposedly refuting the common argument. The site argues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Outlaw abortion and abortion won’t stop. Women will just do it illegally and women will die!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or so the argument goes… But facts are pesky things, and they show that the opposite is true in Chile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site also claims this is observed elsewhere:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s not sheer coincidence that Malta, The Republic of Ireland, and Chile, all of which have prohibited abortion, have lower maternal mortality rates than the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the statistics quoted correct? And, more importantly, do they show that banning abortion is good for women as it reduces maternal mortality?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T22:46:29.803" Title="Did banning abortion in Chile lead to lower maternal mortality?" Tags="|law|mortality|sexuality|abortion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25230" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25229" CreationDate="2014-12-25T11:44:15.723" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can find plenty of evidence of the &lt;em&gt;opposite&lt;/em&gt; to be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Before the 1966 law went into effect,&#xA;  the Romanian maternal mortality rate was&#xA;  similarto those ofother Eastern European&#xA;  countries. Afterward, abortion-related&#xA;  maternal mortality increased to a level 10&#xA;  times that of any other European country&#xA;  (Figures 2 and 3). For the decade 1980 to&#xA;  1989, the average Romanian maternal&#xA;  mortality rate was 150 maternal deaths per&#xA;  100 000 live births.6 Many women obtained&#xA;  abortion illegally, and every year&#xA;  approximately 500 otherwise-healthy&#xA;  women of childbearing age died from postabortion&#xA;  hemorrhage, sepsis, abdominal&#xA;  trauma, and poisoning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P Stephenson, M Wagner, M Badea, and F Serbanescu. &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.82.10.1328&quot;&gt;Commentary: the public health consequences of restricted induced abortion--lessons from Romania&lt;/a&gt;. American Journal of Public Health October 1992: Vol. 82, No. 10, pp. 1328-1331.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When abortion is made legal, safe, and easily accessible, women’s&#xA;  health rapidly improves. By contrast, women’s health deteriorates&#xA;  when access to safe abortion is made more difficult or illegal&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;David A Grimes, Janie Benson, Susheela Singh, Mariana Romero, Bela Ganatra, Friday E Okonofua,&#xA;Iqbal H Shah &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/topics/unsafe_abortion/article_unsafe_abortion.pdf&quot;&gt;Unsafe abortion: the preventable&#xA;pandemic&lt;/a&gt;. The Lancet&#xA;Sexual and Reproductive Health Series, October 2006.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Illegal abortion is responsible for up to half of maternal deaths and consumes a large proportion of health resources in many developing countries, particularly in Africa and Latin America. The legal situation of abortion in a country does not influence the abortion rate, but illegality is associated with a much greater risk of complications and death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Faúndes A, Hardy E. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9253669&quot;&gt;Illegal abortion: consequences for women's health and the health care system&lt;/a&gt;. Int J Gynaecol Obstet. 1997 Jul;58(1):77-83.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article with regards to Chile might be this (unfortunately I can't find the body, and the abstract does not make the claims you mention):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Foro Red de Salud y Derechos Sexuales y Reproductivos; .Red Salud de las&#xA;Mujeres Latinoamericanas y del Caribe &lt;a href=&quot;http://bases.bireme.br/cgi-bin/wxislind.exe/iah/online/?IsisScript=iah/iah.xis&amp;amp;src=google&amp;amp;base=LILACS&amp;amp;lang=p&amp;amp;nextAction=lnk&amp;amp;exprSearch=587029&amp;amp;indexSearch=ID&quot;&gt;Humanized care of unsafe abortion in Chile: monitoring as practical women's citizenship&lt;/a&gt;: Santiago de Chile; Foro Red de Salud y Derechos Sexuales y Reproductivos­Chile; 2003. 26 p. tab.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I've also found this peer-reviewed criticism (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to a 2001 Ministry of Health Quality of Life and Health Survey,12 in 1990 there were 44,468 hospitalisations for abortion (spontaneous and induced), while in 2001, there were 34,479, a decrease of 22%. While the author (Shepard) could not duplicate the full methodology of the original study, her estimates, using the same correction and multiplier factors, suggest that the total number of abortions may also have decreased by 22% in 2001, with a 9% decrease in the abortion rate in Chile.6 Both decreases occurred during a period in which the population of women of fertile age rose by 23%. This decrease in abortions of 22% is higher than the 16% decrease in births during the same period. &lt;em&gt;These estimates should be taken with caution&lt;/em&gt;, since they are based on hospital data, and experts attribute the reduction of hospitalisation related to abortion to the increasing use of aseptic procedures and antibiotic therapy among clandestine abortion providers, the increasing availability of misoprostol and increased contraceptive use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BL Shepard, L Casas Becerra &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rhm-elsevier.com/article/S0968-8080(07)30328-5/pdf&quot;&gt;Abortion Policies and Practices in Chile:&#xA;Ambiguities and Dilemmas&lt;/a&gt;. Reproductive Health Matters 2007;15(30):202–210&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2014-12-25T11:44:15.723" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25231" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-25T14:55:32.027" Score="6" ViewCount="4908" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many games and stories that draw upon medieval history tend to claim that priests use maces &lt;strong&gt;because they do not spill blood&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mace_(club)#European_Middle_Ages&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia provides a citation for this on the Mace page&lt;/a&gt;, as does &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleric_%28character_class%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the page on the Cleric class (uncited)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is popularly believed that maces were employed by the clergy in warfare to avoid shedding blood &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleric_%28character_class%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; (sine effusione sanguinis). The evidence for this is sparse and appears to derive almost entirely from the depiction of Bishop Odo of Bayeux wielding a club-like mace at the Battle of Hastings in the Bayeux Tapestry, the idea being that he did so to avoid either shedding blood or bearing the arms of war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that priests or other members of the clergy used maces and other blunt weapons in combat, as opposed to edged weapons, &lt;strong&gt;for this specific reason&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2014-12-25T15:23:25.437" LastActivityDate="2014-12-25T15:23:25.437" Title="Did priests use maces because they did not spill blood?" Tags="|history|weapons|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="16" ClosedDate="2014-12-25T15:15:54.277" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9400" CreationDate="2014-12-25T19:06:12.870" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most likely he did not. There's no direct evidence (because it's impossible to prove the negative and there's no exhaustive &amp;quot;collection of 100% of things Ailes ever said in print or orally&amp;quot; like there's for someone like George Washington).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, the evidence seems to be on the debunking side:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Most of the time the claim is posted, it's posted with zero details or evidence (e.g. no citation or details of attribution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I verified this by following every single link from the first 4 Google pages searching for the quote (there were &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=%22The%20truth%22%20is%20whatever%20people%20will%20believe.&amp;amp;ie=utf-8&amp;amp;oe=utf-8#q=%22The%20truth%20is%20whatever%20people%20will%20believe%22&amp;amp;start=30&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;only 40 search results for me&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The ONLY times any details are provided, they are &amp;quot;he said it in 1984 book&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6079613591&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, THAT specific claim can be tested... and is &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;false&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That specific quote &lt;strong&gt;can&lt;/strong&gt; be found in a 1984 book. Except, it was in a book &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Knows_%28novel%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;God Knows&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; by Joseph Heller, (more well known as the author of &amp;quot;Catch-22&amp;quot;), as can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Heller&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WikiQuote&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is whatever people will believe is the truth. Don't you know history?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the contrary, Ailes' listed &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ailes#Bibliography&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bibliography on Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; has no 1984 books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-25T19:06:12.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25235" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-25T20:35:40.723" Score="4" ViewCount="704" Body="&lt;p&gt;A related question (&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1803/does-drinking-warm-or-hot-water-aid-in-digestion&quot;&gt;Does drinking warm or hot water aid in digestion?&lt;/a&gt;) asks about the effects of hot water on digestion. I recently came across an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/12-unexpected-benefits-drinking-hot-water.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; that claimed a much larger set of benefits. Are there any non-digestive effects of drinking hot water? Or, are there non-digestive effects that are caused by the digestive effects of hot water?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23452" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-07-04T15:52:42.937" Title="Does drinking hot water have positive health effects?" Tags="|natural-remedies|water|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25237" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-25T22:32:42.003" Score="2" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across this image recently, that claims the existence of a code known by criminals. The post does not mention the area where this code is supposedly used, but it can be inferred it pertains to unorganized burglars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2gaeA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;criminal chalk code&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's easy to think that this code would go out of vogue with the Internet, but even so there's something about the idea I find too romantic to be true. Here's a similar code used in the episode of Mad Men titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://madmen.wikia.com/wiki/The_Hobo_Code&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Hobo Code&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YGn7U.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;mad men hobo code&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many more images like this found on the web. I mentioned I find the idea too romantic to be true, here's why:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The code is supposed to be known by a certain class (caste?) of people, not shared between friends. &quot;Doing a solid&quot; to unknown hobos or criminals, if such a person oneself, seems awfully well-intended, seeing that there's nothing to be gained by it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The code must be secret to have the intended effects. It is very easy to leak.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Once leaked, it could be gamed by the police or anyone else. Even &quot;legitimate&quot; code consumers can set up traps for their fellow hobos or brothers-in-crime. Thus, people would learn not to rely on it that much.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will allow that it's possible for such a code to have existed at some point, before being written off as a Bad Idea&lt;sup&gt;TM&lt;/sup&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question: Has there ever been any evidence of symbols marking property, that is known to describe the property's owners or content, intended to be used by criminals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23454" LastActivityDate="2014-12-25T22:32:42.003" Title="Does the &quot;chalk code&quot; exist?" Tags="|criminology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2014-12-25T22:34:35.950" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25248" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-26T11:14:11.843" Score="7" ViewCount="690" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people, especially in India, soak almonds overnight before eating them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people claim this has health benefits. For example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.md-health.com/Soaked-Almonds.html&quot;&gt;MD-Health&lt;/a&gt; claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;when soaked, almonds release enzyme inhibitor that protects the seed till germination.  As a result, it's easier for people to digest the fruit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/509747-why-do-people-soak-almonds-in-water/&quot;&gt;Livestrong&lt;/a&gt; agrees and further claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Softer almonds are easier to digest, which increases the amount of nutrients your body can absorb from the nut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are soaked almonds easier to digest than unsoaked almonds?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23464" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-27T12:09:49.963" LastActivityDate="2014-12-27T12:09:53.133" Title="Are soaked almonds easier to digest than unsoaked almonds?" Tags="|nutrition|cooking|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25249" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-26T16:20:13.253" Score="27" ViewCount="2646" Body="&lt;p&gt;The common opinion I have heard is that parental divorce has negative effects on children. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divorce#Effects_of_divorce_on_children&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; has a section on &quot;Effect of divorce on children&quot; with all effects listed being negative, and several references. There is also a &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00JJ9QYO4&quot;&gt;notable study&lt;/a&gt; on the subject - a book detailing the results has been featured on the Time magazine cover. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this information, people automatically conclude that divorce should be avoided, for the benefit of the children. I don't have peer reviewed evidence for this, but I know several couples still living together for that reason only. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I remember reading somewhere - I don't remember where exactly - that the observation of negative effects may be correct, but the conclusion to &quot;stay together&quot; is not. Specifically, the argument was that it's the conflict between the parents which harms the children, and the harm is not diminished if a dysfunctional couple continues to live together instead of divorcing. Sadly, I don't remember where I read this counter-argument, or whether it was based on good evidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, let's assume a couple which already has a very bad relationship. If they divorce, their children have higher odds of experiencing negative effects later in life. But the question is, do you know of any evidence which will show that the negative effects correlate better with another variable present in conflicted couples (e.g. witnessing parenting conflict, or maybe abrasive parents' personality which causes both the divorce and the children's harm) than with the divorce itself? Is there reason to believe that, once the marriage has deteriorated to the point that the partners would prefer to end it, a decision to divorce will not change the children's odds of long-term negative effects? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can consider the typical long-term negative effects found in the literature on children suffering from the parents' divorce, such as life satisfaction or the instability of personal relationships. Information on the short-term effects (e.g. falling grades in the divorce period) is also interesting, but I think most parents would accept such effects if they know that they will go away. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1694" LastEditorUserId="1694" LastEditDate="2014-12-26T19:01:38.057" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T12:09:03.367" Title="Does staying married &quot;for the kids' sake&quot; benefit the kids?" Tags="|sociology|divorce|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25250" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25251" CreationDate="2014-12-26T18:11:38.427" Score="5" ViewCount="1672" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my friends claimed that Russians used alcohol heavily in WW2 to manipulate their troops into being less cautious and to increase their aggression. This was supposed to be especially true in cases with Russian &quot;rush&quot; tactics where they used lots of poorly trained and equipped soldiers to swarm German troops. Alcohol should have helped with actually making Russian soldiers willingly perform this tactics. His argument was that Russian alcohol was relatively cheap, so that Russians could afford it and that death thread by Russian officers were not enough for soldiers to attack German troops while being poorly equipped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm highly skeptical of his claims, because I think that alcohol was considered luxury in WW2, especially among soldiers. And that producing it just to manipulate soldiers would be too expensive. But I would agree it could be used as a reward to boost morale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth about his claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21831" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2014-12-26T23:57:48.220" LastActivityDate="2017-01-07T12:30:53.243" Title="Did Russia use drunkenness to promote soldier aggression in WW2?" Tags="|alcohol|world-war-ii|russia|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25250" CreationDate="2014-12-26T19:31:53.940" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't find anything that proves they gave away alcohol &quot;heavily&quot; to influence their behavior but they apparently gave 100g Vodka to every soldier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zeit.de/reisen/2011-12/michael-mueller-st-petersburg-wodka&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Die Zeit&lt;/a&gt;, a german newspaper claims: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the second world war soldiers received their daily 100 gram&#xA;  ration, which should strengthen the fighting spirit and put some into&#xA;  dependence.&#xA;  (own translation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Im Zweiten Weltkrieg bekamen die Soldaten ihre tägliche&#xA;  Hundert-Gramm-Ration, die den Kampfgeist stärken sollte und manchen in&#xA;  die Abhängigkeit führte.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally the site &lt;a href=&quot;http://wodkablog.de/entstehung-geschichte-wodka/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wodkablog.de&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To keep the soldiers happy in the second world war, they received 100&#xA;  gram vodka per day. But it is a fact that in many battles there were&#xA;  simply too less new supplies and they could not fulfill&#xA;  the official requirements. Anyway even nowadays many vodka&#xA;  manufacturers refer to this fact and they claim Vodka to have played a&#xA;  big role in the triumph over the fascism.&#xA;  (own translation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Um die Soldaten im Zweiten Weltkrieg bei Laune zu halten, wurde ihnen&#xA;  pro Tag 100 Gramm Wodka zugeteilt. Fakt ist jedoch, dass in vielen&#xA;  Schlachten schlichtweg der Nachschub an Proviant fehlte und die&#xA;  amtliche Vorgabe daher nur selten eingehalten werden konnte. Trotzdem&#xA;  berufen sich noch heute etliche russische Wodkahersteller auf diese&#xA;  Tatsache und schreiben „dem Wässerchen“ sogar große Anteile am Sieg&#xA;  über den Faschismus zu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Russian writer Victor Erofeyev describes the effect of vodka on the&#xA;  Russian people in a 2002 letter from Moscow: ‘It seems to punch a hole&#xA;  directly into the subconscious, setting off a range of odd gestures&#xA;  and facial expressions. Some people wring their hands; some grin&#xA;  idiotically or snap their fingers; others sink into sullen silence.&#xA;  But no one, high or low, is left indifferent. More than by any&#xA;  political system, we are all held hostage by vodka.’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He goes on to argue that the daily ration of vodka given to Russian&#xA;  soldiers during the Second World War was ‘as important as Katyusha&#xA;  rocket launchers in the victory over Nazism’. Were the fierce Red Army&#xA;  soldiers so fearless because they were tanked up on strong vodka?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the Winter War, there were several reports of attacking Russians&#xA;  being drunk. The daily ration (100g) was not much, but if you were to&#xA;  save your daily rations for a special occasion you would certainly&#xA;  feel the effect. Not that one would have to resort to scrimping and&#xA;  saving later during the Second World War, when the ration was upped&#xA;  and the distribution of vodka – among Red Air Force pilots too – was&#xA;  liberal and largely encouraged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.military-history.org/articles/war-culture-military-drinking.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.military-history.org/articles/war-culture-military-drinking.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17986" LastEditorUserId="17986" LastEditDate="2014-12-26T19:36:54.803" LastActivityDate="2014-12-26T19:36:54.803" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25256" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-28T02:28:59.177" Score="9" ViewCount="1038" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://noisyroom.net/blog/2014/12/08/36-dead-bankers-this-year-and-counting/&quot;&gt;This blog&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I would call a rash of 36 deaths – grizzly murders, accidents and questionable suicides – in one year… suspicious. And that’s just this year. If you look back, this has been going on since at least 2011. So far, 36 bankers have died this year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It then goes on to make a list of all the bankers who've had mysterious deaths. Two questions, really: is the list accurate, i.e. are all those people actually bankers and did they all die in the manner claimed, and mainly is this unusual given the number of bankers worldwide and the rate of such incidents in the general population? Are bankers more likely to die in a &quot;suspicious&quot; manner than other people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastActivityDate="2015-01-03T12:43:26.207" Title="Have 36 bankers died in 2014 from accidents, suicide, and murder?" Tags="|mortality|banking|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25262" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26405" CreationDate="2014-12-29T01:45:59.013" Score="25" ViewCount="2926" Body="&lt;p&gt;The always fascinating Daily Mail came out with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2095549/Right-wingers-intelligent-left-wingers-says-controversial-study--conservative-politics-lead-people-racist.html&quot;&gt;a rather surprising article&lt;/a&gt; where it claims a Canadian experiment, or review, concluded that people with less-than-average childhood intelligence tend to vote right-wing, and furthermore that this is a causal relationship&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Individuals with lower abilities may gravitate towards right-wing ideologies that maintain the status quo. It provides a sense of order.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this reporting the scientific article correctly? Is the article reputable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="3178" LastEditDate="2020-08-25T21:54:55.493" LastActivityDate="2020-08-25T21:54:55.493" Title="Do less-intelligent people vote right-wing because they feel safe?" Tags="|politics|intelligence|voting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25268" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-29T16:03:10.773" Score="1" ViewCount="415" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that many Russian nationalists and neo-paganists currently believe that swastika was a Solar symbol or a symbol of fortune in ancient Slavic folklore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are multiple paintings by nationalist painters and other art that features swastika.&#xA;Examples of articles which claim that swastika was an ancient Slavic symbol:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nasled.org/vera/Simvoly.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nasled.org/vera/Simvoly.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://s-mahat.ru/cgi-bin/index.cgi?cont=26&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://s-mahat.ru/cgi-bin/index.cgi?cont=26&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dazzle.ru/spec/svastika4.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.dazzle.ru/spec/svastika4.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slavianin.ru/svastika/stati/svastika-drevniy-slavyanskiy-simvol.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.slavianin.ru/svastika/stati/svastika-drevniy-slavyanskiy-simvol.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvLJdbSUVXQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvLJdbSUVXQ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZTetihA5RI&amp;amp;feature=related&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZTetihA5RI&amp;amp;feature=related&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This film claims that swastica is &quot;the most ancient symbol of the Slavs&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54Eq0-PWH0U&amp;amp;feature=related&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54Eq0-PWH0U&amp;amp;feature=related&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand the advocates of these theories explain the fact that swastika is not widely represented in museums of ancient Slavic culture by the claim that it is due to a conspiracy by the Bolshevicks/Jews/ZOG to hide items with swastika from the people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what is the reality. Was swastika ever a Slavic symbol before WWII?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6248" LastActivityDate="2014-12-29T17:28:18.493" Title="Was swastika a popular symbol among Slavs and/or Proto-Indo-Europeans?" Tags="|history|religion|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25270" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-29T20:10:16.653" Score="3" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Karl May's book Winnetou III describes Old Shatterhand crawling almost dead trough the Llano Estacado desert. Near perishing, he encounters enourmous field of dry cactuses. Then he burns the cactuses and the heat causes clouds to be formed and eventually rain begins. Is such thing possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23508" LastEditorUserId="23508" LastEditDate="2014-12-29T20:27:59.670" LastActivityDate="2014-12-29T20:48:02.983" Title="Is it possible to make it rain in the desert by burning cactus fields?" Tags="|physics|weather|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2014-12-30T14:58:43.280" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25274" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25282" CreationDate="2014-12-30T03:40:33.180" Score="8" ViewCount="1390" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read this article on a 'health news' site:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/mit-researcher-glyphosate-herbicide-will-cause-half-of-all-children-to-have-autism-by-2025/#sthash.C8EWLSzN.gbpl&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://healthimpactnews.com/2014/mit-researcher-glyphosate-herbicide-will-cause-half-of-all-children-to-have-autism-by-2025/#sthash.C8EWLSzN.gbpl&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, it states that an MIT researcher has said that half of all children will have autism by 2025 because of the widespread use of glyphosate herbicides (like Roundup). I am pretty much ignoring the 'half of all children' part of the claim since it assumes that the rate of increase in prevalence will continue at a steady pace, and I don't accept that assumption (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/195/is-there-an-autism-epidemic?rq=1&quot;&gt;Is there an autism epidemic?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the main claim that glyphosate causes autism, the researcher has published a graph that shows a correlation between the rate of autism diagnoses and the use of glyphosate (&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/glyphosate/glyphosate.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://people.csail.mit.edu/seneff/glyphosate/glyphosate.html&lt;/a&gt;). I would think that the increase in autism should track about 2 to 4 years after the increase in glyphosate (since autism is usually diagnosed around that age), but I'm not sure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the rest of the article isn't really related to the claim made in the headline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is there indeed a strong correlation between glyphosate and autism, and if so, is there anything to indicate a causal relationship between the two?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23512" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2018-12-20T12:31:24.263" Title="Do glyphosate-based herbicides cause autism?" Tags="|united-states|environmental-health|autism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25276" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-30T04:26:26.933" Score="8" ViewCount="6563" Body="&lt;p&gt;Walking through Chinatown, I occasionally notice men whose faces appear shaved except for a collection of uncut hairs sprouting from a facial mole. I don't know what came over me today, but I decided to Google this phenomenon, and I stumbled upon &lt;a href=&quot;http://ask-a-chinese-guy.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-is-it-with-hairy-moles-people-in.html&quot;&gt;a blog post at a site called &quot;Ask A Chinese &lt;del&gt;Guy&lt;/del&gt; Girl&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moles in Chinese society are something to do with luck, it is much like the superstition of Cantonese people around Chinese New year, the lack of 4th floors or any other floor with a number 4 in it. Moles too can determine, luck and life. Thus if you have an unlucky mole on your face you get it removed. If you have a lucky one then you don't remove it simple as, and you especially leave it alone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author includes a graphic of lucky and unlucky moles:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ICUav.gif&quot; alt=&quot;Lucky and unlucky moles in Chinese culture&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also included is a full index explaining each mole's significance. For instance, a mole at location 21 correlates with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tend to have foot problems. Need to prevent water-related accidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where does this mole map come from? Is it authentic? What's really up with the cultural practice of letting mole hair grow long?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4070" LastActivityDate="2014-12-30T04:26:26.933" Title="In Chinese culture is it good luck to let facial mole hair grow long?" Tags="|hair|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25280" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25284" CreationDate="2014-12-30T14:32:19.347" Score="19" ViewCount="1894" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this Flanders Today (a local  Belgian newspaper) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flanderstoday.eu/innovation/electric-cars-emit-nearly-same-particles-new-car-petrol&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;em&gt;dead link, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20210101022050/http://www.flanderstoday.eu/innovation/electric-cars-emit-nearly-same-particles-new-car-petrol&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;archive on archive.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a new small car on petrol in the city creates less fine dust than an electric car of average size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The researcher, Bruno Van Zeebroeck, claims that this is because&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fine dust is created not just by a car’s motor but also by the wearing out of tyres and braking. Those so-called non-exhaust emissions are higher in electric cars because most of them are heavier than other kinds of cars. These non-exhaust emissions are a particular problem in the city, where drivers brake often.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] Van Zeebroeck pointed out that the test didn’t examine the smallest particles of fine dust, which are the most harmful to human health. These particles are mostly emitted by diesel-fuelled cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I can’t find any research that backs up this claim. Is there any truth in this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: to be clear I'm not interested in possible dust particle emissions from electricity generation, but only emissions that stem from using the car so from tyre wear and braking of electric cars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13674" LastEditorUserId="34796" LastEditDate="2022-09-01T09:04:10.103" LastActivityDate="2022-09-01T09:04:10.103" Title="Do electric cars create more fine dust pollution than comparable petrol cars?" Tags="|environmental-health|road-vehicles|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25282" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25274" CreationDate="2014-12-30T16:52:45.177" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a good article that seems much more unbiased. It looks like there is no real scientific link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2014/05/09/anti-gmo-activists-claim-autism-linked-to-organic-foods-and-coffee-not-gmos-or-glyphosate/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Is there evidence supporting a link between autism and GMOs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, whether you are searching for a link between autism and GMOs or autism and glyphosate, your findings can be summarized in one brief sentence: “there is no data that I could find”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Throughout the course of doing research for this piece, I contacted several research scientists including my former lab, which is now one of Canada’s leading autism research laboratories and part of a project that is sequencing the genomes of ten thousand ASD patients (note that I am not an ASD research scientist). My request for an opinion on the topic was passed from one research scientist to the next and across the board, I got the same message: “there is no evidence-based data we are aware of”. That is not to say that a link does not exist or may not be identified in the future, but as I write this article, there is no credible research linking GMOs to autism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] The onus is on the researcher to disprove the null hypothesis, i.e. to prove that something exists or that there is a link. Until that point in time, there is no link.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] The link is a classic case of association with no causation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There’s a plethora of items whose prevalence or use has increased during the past 20 years: the number of electronics we own, the number of pedicures women get, the amount of coffee we drink, etc, and each would make an equally convincing graph if their rate was compared to the incidence of ASD over time. This is not to say that glyphosate should not be studied; yet until a link is identified, its association with ASD is equivalent to that of eating organic food, whose salves have also risen in tandem with the increase in incidences of autism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23521" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2014-12-30T17:28:21.767" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25283" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2080" CreationDate="2014-12-30T18:42:05.907" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are three different theories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the QWERTY system, the most frequently used keys are far apart, so the type arms do not get tangled up so fast&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the QWERTY system, it was easy to type the work &quot;typewriter&quot; very fast, in order for sales reps to impress their prospects&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The QWERTY system was designed to make it HARDER for typists to type fast, so they would make less errors&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://smartbeard.com/history-of-the-typewriter/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://smartbeard.com/history-of-the-typewriter/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23523" LastActivityDate="2014-12-30T18:42:05.907" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25280" CreationDate="2014-12-30T18:55:04.470" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;They certainly do not create &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; particulate emissions&lt;/strong&gt;, but they might not create that much less than a gasoline powered car, depending on the model of car considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, what was previously thought? According to point IV.a.55 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://assembly.coe.int/ASP/Doc/XrefViewHTML.asp?FileID=8607&amp;amp;&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this report&lt;/a&gt; the council of Europe's standing committee on Science and Technology, electric vehicles produce no fine particulate emissions. The report is dated 1998 however, so things may have changed since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new study (perhaps 'review' or 'article' would be better? It's a think tank's internal publication, not peer reviewed) can be read in full &lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;prev=search&amp;amp;rurl=translate.google.ca&amp;amp;sl=nl&amp;amp;u=http://www.tmleuven.be/project/fijnstof/belang_niet-uitlaat_fijn_stof_emissies_lang.pdf&amp;amp;usg=ALkJrhhJNoMwgGgIAYQ3o1DUPiWmAqYA8A&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but you need to look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tmleuven.be/project/fijnstof/belang_niet-uitlaat_fijn_stof_emissies_lang.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dutch version&lt;/a&gt; for the graphs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The very first section already answers our question. The author never claims that electric cars produce &lt;em&gt;more&lt;/em&gt; particulate emissions than ordinary cars. The title of the section says it all: &quot;Electric cars produce almost as much particulate matter (PM) [as] modern petrol or diesel cars&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first graph in this section solidifies this. The electric cars considered all have lower total PM emissions than any of the similarly sized cars that are not EVs, though only modestly lower for the most part. A small gasoline car produces slightly less emissions than a medium sized EV however.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figures 3 and 4 suggest that the reason the advantage is so small now is because tighter emissions standards have dramatically reduced PM from cars over the last 25 years. So when the council of Europe report was written, it probably was fair to say that electric vehicles had no PM emissions at all (as compared to existing gasoline powered cars), but this is apparently no longer true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The last part of the section concerned with emissions seems very badly done to me, and at best is educated speculation. The author tries to mathematically compute an estimate for the increase in PM emissions from the extra weight of an electric car, but uses an unsourced formula with very nice round numbers, that I believe is likely to have been made up on the spot (33.33% factors for everything?). Even this slipshod analysis finds that the electric version of a normal family car is no worse than the gasoline version for PM emissions, and smaller EVs are much better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the whole, I think &lt;strong&gt;the news story ought to have been: &quot;Emissions Standards so Good that Gasoline Cars Now Competitive with EVs!&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; which is still exciting, but doesn't mislead the reader into thinking this was always the case, or that it's an argument against EVs in and of itself (remember, EVs are unchanged at the level of PMs that Council of Europe considered to be zero. It's that gasoline powered cars have dropped by &gt; 75% for gasoline, and even more for diesel since the report was written).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Edit: Some of the original links have rotted. The Dutch report's title was &lt;em&gt;belang niet uitlaat fijn stof emissies&lt;/em&gt;, which translates to &lt;em&gt;The Importance of Fine Dust Emissions&lt;/em&gt;. The author is Bruno Van Zeebroeck. There is currently a version up &lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;amp;sl=nl&amp;amp;u=https://www.scribd.com/document/371978602/Belang-Niet-uitlaat-Fijn-Stof-Emissies&amp;amp;prev=search&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. I cannot find the Council of Europe's Report now, because it was indexed by a doi that not longer points at anything.). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastEditorUserId="18008" LastEditDate="2020-02-06T02:37:47.633" LastActivityDate="2020-02-06T02:37:47.633" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="25285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25280" CreationDate="2014-12-30T19:43:07.613" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The source of electricity may be a bigger issue than tyres and brakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Economist&lt;/em&gt; had a recent article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21636715-why-electric-car-may-be-much-dirtier-petrol-one-cleaner-what&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Cleaner than what? Why an electric car may be much dirtier than a petrol one&quot;&lt;/a&gt;.  It concluded &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall, the research shows that electric cars are cleaner than those that rely on internal-combustion engines only if the power used to charge them is also clean. That is hardly a surprise, but the magnitude of the difference is. How green electric cars really are, then, will depend mainly on where they are driven. In France, which obtains more than half its power from nuclear stations, they look like a good bet. In China—which is keen on electric cars, but produces some 80% of its electricity from coal—rather less so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was pointing at a recent article &quot;Life cycle air quality impacts of conventional and alternative light-duty transportation in the United States&quot; by Christopher W. Tessuma,&#xA;Jason D. Hill, and Julian D. Marshall in  PNAS  vol. 111 no. 52,  18490–18495, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/111/52/18490.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;doi: 10.1073/pnas.1406853111&lt;/a&gt;, which included the following chart&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3CFBI.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fig. 2. Air quality health impacts in the United States for each scenario: attributable increases in annual mortality (upper scale) and the resulting monetized health impacts (lower scale). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2014-12-30T19:43:07.613" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25287" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2014-12-31T16:23:09.293" Score="9" ViewCount="2825" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.milk.co.uk/page.aspx?intPageID=71&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Milk contains vitamin B12&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There appears to be conflicting advice over whether heating milk will reduce its B12 content.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthcare.utah.edu/healthlibrary/related/doc.php?type=19&amp;amp;id=vitaminb-12&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this healthcare site&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vitamin B12 is stable at room temperature and therefore does not need to be refrigerated. It is not destroyed by cooking. &lt;strong&gt;Vitamin B12 resists breakdown even at boiling point of water for several hours.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?196-50-ways-to-develop-B12-deficiency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a poster in this Vegan forum&lt;/a&gt; provides some (referenced) quotes which claimed that boiling milk reduces B12 content:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prolonged cooking, including boiling of cow's milk, destroys B12.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, about 70% of B-12 is still present after cow's milk is boiled for 2-5 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does boiling of milk reduce its B12 content?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17988" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T07:10:49.210" Title="Does boiling milk reduce the Vitamin B12 content?" Tags="|healthcare|milk|vitamins|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25293" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-01T19:58:37.847" Score="36" ViewCount="3463" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a claim circulating on Facebook that space shuttles couldn't fly near the end of the year because its onboard computers could not handle a year turnover.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching for the claim, I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10459-y2klike-fears-create-shuttle-scheduling-crunch.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Y2K-like fears create shuttle scheduling crunch&lt;/a&gt;, which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The space shuttle's computer software is about 30 years old and does&#xA;  not recognise when the calendar year switches. On 1 January 2007, for&#xA;  example, it will think it is day 366 of 2006 - a problem NASA calls&#xA;  'year-end rollover'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To reset the time, the shuttle's main computers would have to be&#xA;  'reinitialised', which would mean a period without navigation updates&#xA;  or vehicle control, a situation NASA obviously wants to avoid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a programmer I know I should always store time as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Unix timestamp&lt;/a&gt; or some other T+x time representation, so I don't need to deal with timezones or other stuff. I only need to convert to or from actual date and time when presenting it or when parsing user input.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I cannot believe NASA made such a mistake in that critical software.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16862" LastEditorUserId="1760" LastEditDate="2015-01-10T19:07:33.857" LastActivityDate="2015-01-10T19:07:33.857" Title="Were the Space Shuttle's computers incapable of handling end-of-year roll-overs?" Tags="|programming|space-flight|nasa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25295" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26330" CreationDate="2015-01-01T22:24:35.167" Score="14" ViewCount="1753" Body="&lt;p&gt;Turkish president Erdogan recently claimed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30067490&quot;&gt;Muslims discovered the Americas&lt;/a&gt; in 1178 A.D. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Muslims discovered the Americas more than three centuries before Christopher Columbus, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said. [...] Mr Erdogan also said &quot;Muslim sailors arrived in America in 1178&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading the article led to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sunnah.org&quot;&gt;As-Sunnah Foundation&lt;/a&gt;; a religious institution promoting similar claims. The original article quoted by the BBC is now offline, but still available through &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20060717071607/http://www.sunnah.org/history/precolmb.htm&quot;&gt;archive.org&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BBC article does not seem to give Erdogan’s claims much credence; saying the early European explorers’ descriptions of “mosques” and “infidels” are of native Mesoamerican temples and religions. However, that does not actually refute the claims; why could the early descriptions not literally be mosques and Muslims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other dismissals, such as that the Vikings discovered the Americas even earlier, also do not refute later Islamic discovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there convincing evidence that Muslims discovered the Americas in the 12th century A.D.?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4971" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-06T12:26:29.860" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T03:57:12.243" Title="Did Muslims discover the Americas in the 12th century A.D.?" Tags="|history|turkey|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25296" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-01T22:50:40.727" Score="14" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many shampoos contain vitamins.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.co-operativepharmacy.co.uk/Elvive-Shampoo-Vitamax-250ml/id-3083821&quot;&gt;Elvive Vitamax shampoo&lt;/a&gt; for example, is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Elvive-Shampoo-Multi-Vitamins-250ml/dp/B001B23882%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q%26tag%3Dduc08-21%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB001B23882&quot;&gt;variously promised&lt;/a&gt; to contain &quot;Vitamin pro-B5&quot; which&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;makes hair full of vitality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this additive useful?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1056" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-01-02T16:44:15.817" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T09:19:25.563" Title="Does shampoo containing pro-B5 affect the appearance of hair?" Tags="|hair|vitamins|cosmetics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25297" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25293" CreationDate="2015-01-02T00:03:43.893" Score="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;From an archive from NASASpaceflight.com (which is not an official NASA web site), &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20080418182718/http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/content/?cid=5026&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA solves YERO problem for shuttle&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;By Chris Bergin, 2/19/2007 6:35:00 PM&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Shuttle orbiters can now enjoy a happy New Year's Eve on orbit, following the recommendation to implement a YERO (Year End Rollover) solution that was recently designed by NASA engineers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The recommendation, which was presented in the form of a 45 page presentation to the all-powerful PRCB (Program Requirements Control Board), involves the implementation of a modification to flight software on the orbiters, and new ground procedures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is a synopsis, see the hyperlink above for the &amp;quot;full story&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-02T09:13:07.220" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25302" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-02T10:16:59.743" Score="1" ViewCount="536" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article &lt;a href=&quot;http://drhyman.com/blog/2010/09/16/5-simple-steps-to-cure-ibs-without-drugs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;5 Simple Steps to Cure IBS Without Drugs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Get rid of the unwanted visitors in your small bowel. Ask your doctor to prescribe rifaximin (Xifaxin) and take two 200 mg tablets three times a day for seven to 10 days. This is often the best way to deal with the chronic bacterial overgrowth that causes bloating and irritable bowel syndrome.  You may also need an anti-fungal such as nystatin or fluconazole for two to four weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does taking two 200 mg rifaximin (Xifaxin) tablets three times a day for seven to 10 days helps to deal with chronic bacterial overgrowth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20924" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-01-02T12:36:28.683" LastActivityDate="2015-01-02T16:50:36.327" Title="Does rifaximin (Xifaxin) treat irritable bowel syndrome?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25305" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25302" CreationDate="2015-01-02T16:50:36.327" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick search on Google Scholar found &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10620-007-9839-8#page-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;several&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1004409&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;relevant&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ajg/journal/v101/n2/abs/ajg200665a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2009 review of the research found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rifaximin improved global symptoms in 33 – 92% of patients and eradicated SIBO in up to 84% of patients with IBS, with results sustained up to 10 weeks post-treatment. Rifaximin caused a lower number of adverse events compared with metronidazole or levofloxacin and may have a more favorable adverse event profile than systemic antibiotics, without clinically relevant antibiotic resistance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1517/13543780902780175&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Review of rifaximin as treatment for SIBO and IBS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This is not a medical self-help site. See a doctor for personalised advice if you suffer from the symptoms of IBS (or any serious disease).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-01-02T16:50:36.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25249" CreationDate="2015-01-02T17:16:34.393" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's times like this, on issues like this, that I'm most saddened by the restriction of access to academic literature. Being privileged with access to such material, I'll provide at least some citations and quotes from this restricted pool of research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will draw liberally from an excellent review that was accepted for publication in 1998, &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&amp;amp;aid=10669&amp;amp;fileId=S0021963098003394&quot;&gt;The Adjustment of Children with Divorced Parents: A Risk and&#xA;Resiliency Perspective&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The linked article specifically addresses the question at hand: is it better to stay together or get a divorce?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here I shall quote directly (less than 1 page of 13 with snippits noted and emphasis added, though the entire article is so very applicable):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Should Parents Stay Together for the Sake of the Children?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the most frequently asked questions about divorce is whether it&#xA;  is better for parents to remain in an unsatisfying, conflict-ridden&#xA;  marriage for the sake of the children or to divorce. Research in two&#xA;  areas has been used to address this question: the first involves&#xA;  research on the adjustment of children whose parents will later&#xA;  divorce; the second involves research on the impact of marital&#xA;  conflict on the adjustment of children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Children whose parents will later divorce are already showing problems&#xA;  in adjustment many years before the divorce (Amato &amp;amp; Keith, 1991a;&#xA;  Block et al., 1989; Cherlin et al., 1991; Hetherington, in press b).&#xA;  This has been attributed to the deleterious effects of marital&#xA;  dissatisfaction and conflict on children’s adjustment, to the fact&#xA;  that a difficult, maladjusted child may erode marital happiness, and&#xA;  to possible underlying genetic links between divorce proneness and&#xA;  problem behavior in parents and children. Personality problems in a&#xA;  parent, such as emotionality and lack of self-regulation that lead&#xA;  both to divorce and inept parenting, may also be genetically linked to&#xA;  behavior problems in children (Jocklin, McGue, &amp;amp; Lykken, 1996; McGue &amp;amp;&#xA;  Lykken, 1992).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Children in families with high marital conflict exhibit many of the&#xA;  same problems in adjustment as those in divorced families, with&#xA;  externalizing disorders being most commonly reported. However, all&#xA;  conflict is not the same in its consequences for child development.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Conflicts about the child and to which the child is directly exposed,&#xA;  or conflicts that involves physical violence or in which the child&#xA;  feels caught in the middle, are the most harmful (see Davies &amp;amp;&#xA;  Cummings, 1994, for a review).&lt;/strong&gt; [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Offspring from happily married harmonious parents show fewer problems&#xA;  and greater well-being than those in divorced families or in families&#xA;  with high marital discord or distress (Amato &amp;amp; Booth, 1991; Amato et&#xA;  al., 1995; Hetherington, in press b; Simons &amp;amp; Associates, 1996).&#xA;  Immediately after divorce, children in divorced families exhibit more&#xA;  problems in adjustment than those in highconflict nondivorced families&#xA;  (Hetherington, in press b). The stress and changes accompanying the&#xA;  divorce transition take their toll. However, as children adapt to&#xA;  their new situation in a single-parent household, the pattern of&#xA;  differences changes. When divorce is associated with increased stress,&#xA;  conflict, and adversity, children, adolescents, and young adult&#xA;  offspring show more problems in divorced families than in&#xA;  high-conflict nondivorced families (Amato et al., 1995; Hetherington,&#xA;  in press b). When divorce is associated with a move to a more&#xA;  harmonious, less stressful situation, children in divorced families&#xA;  are similar in adjustment to those in intact families with&#xA;  nondistressed marital relations and are higher in social&#xA;  responsibility and cognitive agency and lower in externalizing and&#xA;  internalizing than those in high-conflict distressed marriages (Amato&#xA;  et al., 1995; Hetherington, in press b). High levels of conflict have&#xA;  more adverse effects on the adjustment of children in divorced than in&#xA;  nondivorced families, perhaps because a second residential parent is&#xA;  not available to serve as a protective buffer and because of fewer&#xA;  resources and higher rates of stressful life events in divorced&#xA;  motherheaded families (Hetherington, in press b). In addition,&#xA;  although by 2 years after divorce girls do equally well in&#xA;  low-conflict divorced mother-headed families and in lowconflict&#xA;  nondivorced families, there is some evidence that boys do less well in&#xA;  the former (Hetherington, in press b), perhaps because of the lack of&#xA;  a male role model or because of the coercive interactions in which&#xA;  divorced mothers and sons frequently become involved and the lack of&#xA;  effective control exhibited by many divorced mothers with their sons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The evidence in response to the controversy about staying together for the sake of the children suggests that if conflict is going to&#xA;  continue it is better for children to remain in an acrimonious&#xA;  two-parent household than to suffer divorce. If there is a shift to a&#xA;  more harmonious household a divorce is advantageous to both boys and&#xA;  girls. However, even with low acrimony between the divorced parents,&#xA;  boys in low-conflict divorced families are disadvantaged over those in&#xA;  low-conflict nondivorced families.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, if I may crudely summarize dozens of studies: less fighting, more harmony, less conflict, less stress = better lives (for children and adults)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem, as it relates to divorce or staying together, is neither staying together nor divorcing brings any requirement for attaining any of the above beneficial outcomes. Some people get divorced and bitterly fight just as much (or even more) than when they were married, even though they were in terrible conflict during the marriage. In such a situation the children will be harmed regardless, and whatever reduces their exposure to violence, conflict, and stress is best - however that can be obtained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If parents provide a stable, harmonious, low-stress environment for the children, the research seems to indicate getting a divorce is not necessarily helpful to the children and may be more harmful. This however assumes that the situation is actually all these positive things - fighting behind closed doors that the children still hear and experience, especially when the fighting is about the child themselves, is not such a positive environment at all. Strong self-regulation and absolute rule-following by both parents is required, and this sort of discipline and consciousness is not something all that commonly encountered - but it is absolutely possible. Some people claim great surprise as adults when their parents get a divorce and learn that their parents weren't really all that interested in being married for years - but I do not find research that addresses this in a satisfying way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, it is noted that the adjustment level of the children prior to divorce is greatly predictive of how well a child will adjust post-divorce. To quote again:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Stresses associated with their parents’ marital transitions tend to exacerbate problems in already troubled and poorly adjusted children&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  (Block et al., 1989; Elder, Caspi, &amp;amp; Nguyen, 1992; Hetherington, 1989,&#xA;  1991). In contrast, children who are intelligent, competent, and who&#xA;  have an easy temperament, high self-esteem, an internal locus of&#xA;  control, and a good sense of humor are more likely to evoke positive&#xA;  responses and support from others and to be able to adapt to new&#xA;  challenges and stressful life experiences (Hetherington, 1989, 1991).&#xA;  In fact, children with these characteristics may be enhanced in future&#xA;  social problem solving and adaptability by having encountered and&#xA;  coped with moderate levels of stress under supportive conditions&#xA;  (Hetherington, 1989, 1991). &lt;strong&gt;The psychologically rich may get richer&#xA;  and the poor get poorer in dealing with the challenges of divorce.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, I leave it to the words of Hetherington and Stanley-Hagan:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite some inconsistent findings regarding divorce, answers to many&#xA;  of the most frequently asked questions about divorce raised at the&#xA;  beginning of this article have emerged in the past decade. Although&#xA;  children in divorced families, in comparison to those in nondivorced&#xA;  families, are at risk for developing more social, emotional,&#xA;  behavioral, and academic problems, most eventually emerge as&#xA;  reasonably competent, well-functioning individuals. The great&#xA;  diversity in response to divorce is related to the interaction of risk&#xA;  and protective factors associated with individual characteristics of&#xA;  the child and the family and extrafamilial environment. &lt;strong&gt;Parents can do&#xA;  a great deal to moderate the effects of stress on children by&#xA;  maintaining authoritative parenting and minimizing conflict.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Interparental conflict undermines both the quality of parenting and&#xA;  the adjustment of the child and leads to diminished contact and child&#xA;  support by noncustodial fathers.&lt;/strong&gt; Contact with authoritative&#xA;  noncustodial fathers under conditions of low conflict can have&#xA;  beneficial effects for children, especially for boys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The family environment with the fewest risks for unsuccessful child&#xA;  socialization is a happy, intact, twoparent family.&lt;/strong&gt; Children are at&#xA;  risk for developing problems in adjustment when they grow up in either&#xA;  a conflicted two-parent home or in a single-parent home. &lt;strong&gt;However,&#xA;  children adjust better in a harmonious singleparent household than in&#xA;  an acrimonious two-parent household. There is little support for the&#xA;  position that children benefit from remaining in a conflictual intact&#xA;  household if divorce will diminish conflict and if authoritative&#xA;  parenting can be maintained. In the absence of conflict and with a&#xA;  custodial parent who is able to provide a positive parenting&#xA;  environment despite the stresses inherent in single-parent roles,&#xA;  children in divorced families are likely to be competent and well&#xA;  adjusted.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;These conditions may be difficult to attain. The stresses encountered&#xA;  during and following divorce should not be minimized and for some&#xA;  parents and children they are pervasive and persistent.&lt;/strong&gt; Moreover, the&#xA;  few systematic studies of interventions for divorced parents and their&#xA;  children suggest that when adverse outcomes occur they may be&#xA;  difficult to modify through educational or short-term therapeutic&#xA;  interventions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is much more to know and to research, but we appear to have some answers from the combined research. As we might have suspected, divorce is a difficult decision with a great deal of certain costs and uncertain potential benefits. It can be beneficial to children and adults in some situations, but it cannot be hoped to be a panacea or that absolves anyone of responsibility to provide a positive, stable, low-stress, low-conflict environment for their children. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11957" LastEditorUserId="11957" LastEditDate="2015-01-02T17:33:35.507" LastActivityDate="2015-01-02T17:33:35.507" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25256" CreationDate="2015-01-02T18:10:07.467" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are plenty of online sources to confirm this list is accurate.  I spot checked a few (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2617028/Bank-manager-27-washes-dead-Hoboken-harbor-month-went-missing-training-half-marathon.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Andrew Jarzyk&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://nypost.com/2014/02/18/jpmorgan-bankers-suicide-is-3rd-mysterious-death-for-company/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Li Junjie,Gabriel Magee, Ryan Henry Crane&lt;/a&gt;) and others have links to sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether this is unusual, suicidal bankers are not unusual:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the first batch of suicides early this year, Fortune Magazine wrote that banker suicides are not a new phenomenon. Clusters are known to occur whenever hardship strikes the industry, such as during the Great Depression or the Great Recession of a few years ago. In addition, sensationalistic reports of the deaths may lead to copycat fatalities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), bankers appear to be more prone to suicide than any other profession, barring “engineers and scientists.” For the years 1999, 2003, 2004 and 2007, there were 329 suicides among workers in the finance sector, Fortune reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rt.com/usa/207463-citigroup-miller-death-suicide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://rt.com/usa/207463-citigroup-miller-death-suicide/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears over 90% of the list are suicides, natural causes such as heart attacks, plane crashes, road accidents and so on.  I found some that look suspicious (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hln.be/hln/nl/957/Binnenland/article/detail/2142925/2014/12/05/Lichaam-van-vermiste-bankier-uit-Haaltert-aangetroffen-in-Noordzee.dhtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Geert Tack&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2609479/Horror-banker-wife-nine-year-old-nephew-assassinated-drive-shooting-outside-home-Belgium.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Benoit Philippens&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wcvb.com/news/police-investigating-death-of-massmutual-executive/29893228&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Melissa Millan&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2841465/Citigroup-executive-42-dead-bathtub-Manhattan-apartment-throat-slit.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Shawn Miller&lt;/a&gt;), but they're nothing to link them or support an overall claim of suspicious activity.  Given that &amp;quot;bankers&amp;quot; is a group comprising many hundreds of thousands (maybe millions) of people it's a sad fact that some of those people will die unexpectedly in any given year. I don't think there's enough evidence to suggest a conspiracy or widespread foul play.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="914" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-03T12:43:26.207" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25309" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18473" CreationDate="2015-01-02T19:53:45.023" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some background from a portion of the book &lt;a href=&quot;http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/science/soviet-space-dogs.pdf&quot;&gt;Soviet Space Dogs&lt;/a&gt; suggests that this claim was most likely propaganda written as a response to the protests described in the answer above, but offers no proof for or against the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The international press accused the Soviet totalitarian regime of&#xA;  inhumanity, and suggested that General Secretary Khrushchev should&#xA;  have been sent into orbit instead. In response, the Soviet press wrote&#xA;  about the hypocrisy of capitalist morality, the exploitation of entire&#xA;  nations in the colonies, and racism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In his book Trecioji dolerio puse (The Third Side of a Dollar, 1964),&#xA;  Albertas Laurinciukas, an American correspondent for the newspaper&#xA;  Selskaia Zhizn (Country Life), mentions the following anecdote. In the&#xA;  aftermath of Laika’s launch the United Nations received a letter from&#xA;  a group of women in the state of Mississippi, who condemned the&#xA;  inhumane treatment of dogs in the USSR, suggesting that if it were&#xA;  absolutely necessary to send a living being into space, why not send a&#xA;  group of Negro children, (of whom there were plenty in their town),&#xA;  rather than a poor dog. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s hard to imagine that such a letter ever really existed , but the&#xA;  USSR’s official anti-racism policy was a strong weapon in the Cold War&#xA;  against the USA. Regardless of these arguments, Soviet ideology was&#xA;  faced with a serious dilemma. Since denying Laika’s death was&#xA;  impossible, their only viable option was to immortalise her.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23554" LastEditorUserId="23554" LastEditDate="2015-01-02T21:59:20.133" LastActivityDate="2015-01-02T21:59:20.133" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25311" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25256" CreationDate="2015-01-03T00:55:10.493" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The list of deceased people, and the circumstances of their deaths, are substantially correct with some small errors - but that's to be expected in any reportage.&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;David Bird, 55, long-time reporter for the Wall Street Journal working at the Dow Jones news room — Still missing, but his credit card has been used in Mexico. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://wallstreetonparade.com/2014/01/david-bird-wall-street-journal-reporter-goes-missing-after-reporting-for-three-months-on-oil-glut-in-u-s/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;] [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nj.com/morris/index.ssf/2014/07/family_of_david_bird_six_months_after_disappearance_words_cant_describe_the_anguish.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Six months later&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tim Dickenson, a U.K.-based communications director at Swiss Re AG — Unknown circumstances. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/wall-street-journal/london-rocked-by-city-suicides/story-fnay3ubk-1226813289625&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;William Broeksmit, 58, former senior manager for Deutsche Bank — He was found hung at a house. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2589569/Retired-investment-banker-hanged-Kensington-mansion-severe-distress-bank-investigation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ryan Henry Crane, age 37, JP Morgan — Unknown circumstances. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-13/ryan-crane-jpmorgan-equities-trading-executive-dies-at-37.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;[Confirmed]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Li Junjie, 33, Hong Kong JP Morgan — He jumped to his death from a 30 story building. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2563866/JPMorgan-banker-leaps-death-skyscraper-Hong-Kong-second-suicide-firm-matter-weeks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Gabriel Magee, 39, age JP Morgan employee — He jumped 500 ft from the top of the bank’s headquarters in central London. Magee had made plans earlier that day for dinner. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2633973/U-S-IT-worker-obsessed-idea-committing-suicide-lead-waking-parallel-universe-jumped-death-JP-Morgans-500ft-London-HQ.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Circumstances of death confirmed&lt;/a&gt;, but not the dinner plans detail.]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mike Dueker, 50, who had worked for Russell Investments — He fell down a 50 foot embankment in what police are describing as a suicide. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com.au/russell-investments-economists-dead-2014-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Richard Talley, 57, was the founder and CEO of American Title (real estate titles) — Said to have committed suicide by shooting himself with a nail gun. Talley was found “with eight nail gun wounds to his torso and head” in his own garage. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2553964/CEO-commits-suicide-nail-gun-company-investigation.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;James Stuart Jr. 70, Former National Bank of Commerce CEO was found dead in Scottsdale, AZ — Unknown cause of death. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://journalstar.com/news/local/james-stuart-jr-prominent-lincoln-banker-found-dead/article_83eb5e00-8f16-5da6-b60b-ed151d6aa396.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jason Alan Salais, 34 year old IT Specialist at JP Morgan since 2008 — Died from a heart attack. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.claytonfuneralhomes.com/obits/?p=5385&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed all but cause of death&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Autumn Radtke, 28, CEO of First Meta, a Singapore-based virtual currency trading platform — Jumped from a 25 story building. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2756256/Coroner-bitcoin-exchange-CEO-committed-suicide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Eddie Reilly, 47, investment banker, Vertical Group, NY — Jumped in front of a LIRR train. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2579769/Manhattan-trader-throws-commuter-train-mark-11th-suicide-financial-professionals-year-alone.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kenneth Ballando, 28, investment banker, Levy Capital, NY — Jumped from the 6th story of his apartment building. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2583385/Banker-28-kills-TWELFTH-finance-suicide-year.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Joseph A. Giampapa, 55, corporate bankruptcy lawyer, JP Morgan Chase — Run over by a van. [&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.intellihub.com/jp-morgan-bankruptcy-lawyer-killed-van-biking-13th-banker-dead/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jan Peter Schmittmann, 57, voormalig topbestuurder ANB/AMRO, Laren, Nederland — Suspected murder/suicide. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-07/police-probe-deaths-of-former-abn-banker-wife-daughter.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Juergen Frick, 48, CEO Bank Frick &amp;amp; Co AG, Liechtenstein — He was shot to death. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/bank-chief-jrgen-frick-shot-dead-by-robin-hood-of-liechtenstein-9249327.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Benoît Philippens, 37, directeur BNP Parisbas Fortis Bank, Ans, Belgium — She was shot to death. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2609479/Horror-banker-wife-nine-year-old-nephew-assassinated-drive-shooting-outside-home-Belgium.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;, but it was a &quot;he&quot; not a &quot;she&quot;. His wife and nephew were also killed.]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lydia…, 52, banker Bred-Banque-Populaire, Paris — Jumped from the 14th floor of her office’s Paris Headquarters. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/paris-female-banker-jumps-her-death-office-window-after-clash-bosses-1446021&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Andrew Jarzyk, 27, banker, PNC Bank, NY — Found floating in the Hudson River, drowned. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2617028/Bank-manager-27-washes-dead-Hoboken-harbor-month-went-missing-training-half-marathon.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carlos Six, 61, Hoofd Belastingdienst en lid CREDAF, België — Unknown cause of death. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inmemoriam.be/nl/2014-05-06/carlos-six/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Jan Winkelhuijzen, 75, Commissaris en Fiscalist (voormalig Deloitte), Nederland — Murder/suicide suspected. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nltimes.nl/2014/06/05/elderly-couple-committed-suicide-middenbeemster/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Death confirmed&lt;/a&gt;, but cause thought to be suicide pact, not murder/suicide]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Richard Rockefeller, 66, John D. Rockefeller, America — Plane crash. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wsj.com/articles/richard-rockefeller-dies-in-plane-crash-near-westchester-county-airport-in-new-york-1402674448&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;, but he wasn't a banker.]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mahafarid Amir Khosravi (Amir Mansour Aria), 45, bankeigenaar, zakenman en derivatenhandelaar, Iran — Khosravi was executed by hanging in Evin Prison in Tehran on May 24, 2014. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/man-executed-after-biggest-bank-fraud-in-iranian-history-9432824.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;, but he wasn't a banker, he was convicted for &lt;strong&gt;defrauding&lt;/strong&gt; banks.]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lewis Katz, 76, banker, America — Plane crash. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.philly.com/2014-06-03/news/50275819_1_longport-mayor-nicholas-russo-hanscom-field-katz-academy-charter-school&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt; but he wasn't a banker, he owned newspapers.]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Julian Knott, Directer Global Operations Center JP Morgan, 45, America — Unknown circumstances, but he and his wife were found unconscious before both passed away. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-10/jpmorgan-tech-executive-killed-wife-before-suicide-police-say.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;, although it doesn't appear that his role was related to finance, but to technology.]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Richard Gravino, IT Specialist JP Morgan, 49, America — Cause of death unknown. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/heraldtribune/obituary.aspx?pid=171525702&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thomas James Schenkman, Managing Director Global Infrastructure JP Morgan, 42, America — Cause of death unknown. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/newsday/obituary.aspx?pid=170964261&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Nicholas Valtz, 39, Managing Director Goldman Sachs, NY, America — He was found floating with his kite board. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-22/goldman-sachs-managing-director-nicholas-valtz-found-dead.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Therese Brouwer, 50, Managing Director ING, Nederland — She died in the downing of Malaysian Air Flight MH17. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-07-23/therese-brouwer-ing-energy-deals-banker-died-in-ukraine-crash.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tod Robert Edward, 51, Vice President M &amp;amp; T Bank, America — Ruled accidental death. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://obits.pennlive.com/obituaries/pennlive/obituary.aspx?pid=172330832&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thierry Leyne, 48, investor banker Anatevka S.A., Israël — Suicide. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-24/thierry-leyne-hedge-fund-partner-of-strauss-kahn-dies-at-49.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Calogero Gambino, 41, Managing Director Deutsche Bank, America — Suicide. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/25/us-deutsche-bank-suicide-idUSKCN0IE08U20141025&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shawn D. Miller, 42, Managing Director Citigroup, NY, America — He was found dead with his throat slashed in the bathtub. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2841465/Citigroup-executive-42-dead-bathtub-Manhattan-apartment-throat-slit.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Melissa Millian, 54, Senior Vice President Mass Mutual, America — Stabbed to death. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wcvb.com/news/police-investigating-death-of-massmutual-executive/29893228&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Confirmed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thieu Leenen, 64, Relatiemanager ABN/AMRO, Eindhoven, Nederland — Unknown cause of death. [&lt;strong&gt;Unconfirmed&lt;/strong&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Geert Tack, 52, Private Banker ING, Haaltert, Belgium — Drowning. [&lt;strong&gt;Unconfirmed&lt;/strong&gt;]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A rather broad definition of banker has been used - including people working for independent hedge funds and people working for banks but not involved in finance. A few names clearly do not belong on the list as bankers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is insufficient evidence here to demonstrate that there is (a) a conspiracy targeting bankers, or (b) an unexpected increase in suicides. That would require showing that there are significantly more deaths than might be normally expected in this ill-defined group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As this issue gets reported, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Werther Effect&lt;/a&gt; (as discussed &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/20373/are-discussions-about-suicide-themselves-suicide-triggers&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) may cause additional deaths, in the absence of any other cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;sup&gt;*&lt;/sup&gt; The last two entries I failed to confirm. There were many articles about the people, but they were in Dutch and I was unable to establish that they were from reputable news sources, rather than conspiracy theory sites. I'd appreciate any Dutch speakers confirming these two.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This hasn't been a pleasant topic to research. If you are troubled by thoughts of suicide, please contact your local doctor or an organisation like the Samaritans or Lifeline in your area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-01-03T00:55:10.493" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25313" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-03T14:50:17.217" Score="3" ViewCount="1483" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fereydoon_Batmanghelidj&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. F. Batmanghelidj&lt;/a&gt; (as described &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.watercure2.org/histamines.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), salt effectively acts as an antihistamine, by suppressing the release of histamines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The best natural antihistamine is salt, according to Dr. Batmanghelidj If we take too much water and don't take enough salt for our water intake, the body will release histamine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I see this claim repeated all over the web.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific basis to this?  Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23561" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-01-03T15:00:45.820" LastActivityDate="2015-01-03T15:12:43.873" Title="Is salt an antihistamine?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25315" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25313" CreationDate="2015-01-03T15:12:43.873" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the contrary, several studies say that increasing salt intake increases the reactivity of the body to histamine, and may worsen asthma:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1833904/?page=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1833904/?page=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1679339/?page=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1679339/?page=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although another study questioned this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC475179/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC475179/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But no one actually says that salt prevents the release of histamines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastActivityDate="2015-01-03T15:12:43.873" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25316" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-04T03:45:11.907" Score="6" ViewCount="9042" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most reviews for &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B008BLFNLG&quot;&gt;Fiber One Chewy bars&lt;/a&gt; appear united that the Chicory Root Extract causes great amount of flatulence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tasted good but had no idea why I suddenly had such painful and relentless gas. This is not normally an issue with me. When I read the label I didn't see anything that seemed like it would cause such a problem. Then I realized that the first ingredient on the list was something I didn't recognize: Chicory Root Extract. I Googled it and discovered that it is actually a mild laxative and well known for causing terrible gastric issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these claims exaggerated or is Chicory Root Extract indeed known to cause such symptom?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23224" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-01-04T05:40:10.047" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T15:06:31.507" Title="Does Chicory Root Extract cause high flatulence?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25318" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25324" CreationDate="2015-01-04T04:05:38.503" Score="16" ViewCount="1771" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lactose intolerance varies with race and region, but, comparing the percentage levels of intolerance vs. non-intolerance, it could be inferred that it's more normal for most adults to be lactose intolerant than not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; quotes some referenced &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&amp;amp;pid=S0100-879X2007001100004&amp;amp;lng=en&amp;amp;nrm=iso&amp;amp;tlng=en&quot;&gt;journal article from 2007&lt;/a&gt; as follows (which itself appears to reference another article from 1994, behind a paywall, so, I have no idea whether they've misinterpreted it or not):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adult-type hypolactasia is characterized by a fall of lactase activity levels to 5 to 10% of birth levels occurring during childhood and adolescence. The condition affects more than 75% of the population worldwide&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the claim above true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can it be interpreted that it is normal for adults to be lactose intolerant, and &lt;strong&gt;abnormal to not be lactose intolerant&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23224" LastEditorUserId="23224" LastEditDate="2015-01-04T16:23:25.680" LastActivityDate="2018-07-16T23:18:57.853" Title="Are most adults lactose intolerant?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25319" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4217" CreationDate="2015-01-04T09:09:28.357" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As for &quot;increasing immune system&quot;, there may actually be some truth in that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here, we show that prolonged fasting reduces circulating IGF-1 levels and PKA activity in various cell populations, leading to signal transduction changes in long-term hematopoietic stem cells (LT-HSCs) and niche cells that promote stress resistance, self-renewal, and lineage-balanced regeneration. Multiple cycles of fasting abated the immunosuppression and mortality caused by chemotherapy and reversed age-dependent myeloid-bias in mice, in agreement with preliminary data on the protection of lymphocytes from chemotoxicity in fasting patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/abstract/S1934-5909(14)00151-9&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/abstract/S1934-5909(14)00151-9&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;(I do not have access to the full article, and the summary does not give the actual results nor methodology). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-06/uosc-fts060214.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-06/uosc-fts060214.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22157" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-06T12:32:45.690" LastActivityDate="2015-01-06T12:32:45.690" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25318" CreationDate="2015-01-05T03:58:07.920" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. Most adults, worldwide, are lactose-intolerant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found many papers explaining this, but perhaps the most convincing that I found is this one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/10/36&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A worldwide correlation of lactase persistence phenotype and genotypes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, some background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ability of adult humans to digest the milk sugar lactose - lactase persistence - is a dominant Mendelian trait that has been a subject of extensive genetic, medical and evolutionary research. Lactase persistence is common in people of European ancestry as well as some African, Middle Eastern and Southern Asian groups, but is rare or absent elsewhere in the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, this &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; been studied carefully; it isn't just a misunderstanding.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper attempts to identify to what extent the &lt;em&gt;known&lt;/em&gt; genetic causes can explain the known differences in prevalence of lactase persistence (i.e. milk &lt;em&gt;tolerance&lt;/em&gt;)/&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An estimated 65% of human adults (and most adult mammals) downregulate the production of intestinal lactase after weaning. Lactase is necessary for the digestion of lactose, the main carbohydrate in milk, and without it, milk consumption can lead to bloating, flatulence, cramps and nausea. Continued production of lactase throughout adult life (lactase persistence, LP) is a genetically determined trait and is found at moderate to high frequencies in Europeans and some African, Middle Eastern and Southern Asian populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, most adults become incapable of digesting milk as they get older.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper includes a link to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/supplementary/1471-2148-10-36-s1.xls&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;spreadsheet&lt;/a&gt; with 227 locations, and the prevalence of lactase persistence, so the raw data is there to check their estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also provide a figure (of the &quot;Old World&quot; - excluding the Americas) to help you visualise it. (Note: This diagram shows the proportion of people who CAN digest milk.):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cdr47.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Interpolated Map of Old Words LP phenotype frequencies&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As can be seen, vast areas of the old world are green and blue - where the majority of adults are lactose intolerant. Nonetheless, larger parts of Europe have a higher prevalence of lactase persistence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; explains that this understanding has been fairly recent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;until the 1960s, the prevailing assumption in the medical community was that tolerance was the norm and intolerance was either the result of milk allergy, an intestinal pathogen, or else was psychosomatic (it being recognised that some cultures did not practice dairying, and people from those cultures often reacted badly to consuming milk). Two reasons were given for this perception. Firstly, many Western countries have a predominantly European heritage, so have low frequencies of lactose intolerance, and have an extensive cultural history of dairying. Therefore, tolerance actually was the norm in most of the societies investigated by medical researchers at that point. Secondly, within even these societies, lactose intolerance tends to be under-reported: genetically lactase nonpersistent individuals can tolerate varying quantities of lactose before showing symptoms, and their symptoms differ in severity. [...] &lt;strong&gt;Subsequent research revealed intolerance was more common globally than lactase persistence&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to the question about whether lactose intolerance can be interpreted as &quot;abnormal&quot;, I reject the categorisation as having a moral component that the data cannot support. It is not abnormal to be taller than 6 foot (1.83m), despite that describing a minority of people. It is not abnormal to not be born in Asia, despite that describing a minority of people. It is not abnormal to have a phenotype that allows the production of lactase into adulthood, even if those adults are in the minority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T03:58:07.920" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25325" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2112" CreationDate="2015-01-05T10:13:46.917" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;K-Ar dating is sometimes tricky, but if you understand what you are doing, the results are generally reliable. Geologists avoid dating glassy, polydeformed or very altered rocks with K-Ar, because these are known to sometimes be problematic . A lot of the difficulties with the K-Ar method outlined by the other user here are addressed by the newer &lt;a href=&quot;http://hbar.phys.msu.su/gorm/dating/ivanov-et-al-sial.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;40Ar/39Ar method which allows for&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;stepwise degassing and the generation of isochrons - initial argon composition and concentration become less important&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;much better uncertainties&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;measurement of K and Ar on the same sample aliquot&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;degassing patterns which can indicate whether an aliquot has lost or gained Ar&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the 40Ar/39Ar method yields results which are considered to be more robust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icr.org/research/index/researchp_as_r01/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;original claims&lt;/a&gt; behind the Ngauruhoe volcanic rocks from the Institute for Creation Research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icr.org/research/index/researchp_as_r01_tbl_4/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;data in Table 4&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;you will see that only a very very small portion of the 40Ar is radiogenic&#xA;(Column 40Ar*) between 1.7 and 4 percent, relative to the total 40Ar. The rest is assumed to be atmospheric; the atmospheric 40Ar is subtracted from the total 40Ar: 40Ar* = 40Ar(tot)-295.5*36Ar (because in atmosphere the 40Ar/36Ar ratio was assumed to be 295.5 during these determinations)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been some adjustments to the known exact composition of atmospheric argon used for corrections, it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703706018679&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;now considered to be 40Ar/36Ar&lt;/a&gt; = ~298.56 rather than 295.5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Normally this does not matter too much because we work with old rocks which host much more 40Ar* relative to 40Ar(tot) and this correction is somewhat negligible. However for very young rocks like these it is a problem. If you redo the maths and calculate the ages with the ratio of 298.56 and propagate errors properly, you will find that most or all of them overlap with 0 age at the two sigma level, thus correctly dating the rocks of this volcano at their known age. Which means that in this case, the K/Ar method just measured zero ages. Because it is not precise enough for young rocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23580" LastEditorUserId="23580" LastEditDate="2015-01-05T11:58:51.203" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T11:58:51.203" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25326" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30184" CreationDate="2015-01-05T16:45:52.420" Score="16" ViewCount="42429" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently having a conversation with my mother-in-law and four sisters-in-laws, the subject of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegel_exercise&quot;&gt;Kegel exercise&lt;/a&gt; was brought up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I stated that one of the recommended ways to start strengthening your pelvic floor is to halt your urination for a few seconds and then continue. The five of them told me that it leads to increased in UTIs. They all claimed to have been told this by their respective gynaecologists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, after researching this myself, the only thing I found was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthline.com/health/kegel-exercises#ForWomen3&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; which states that you should try it, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, you should use this method for learning purposes only. It is not a good idea to start and stop your urine regularly, or to frequently do Kegel exercises when you have a full bladder. Incomplete emptying of the bladder can raise your risk for a urinary tract infection (UTI).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Web MD, and other medical sites, all state that holding a full bladder for a long time may cause a UTI, but since you're just stopping the flow for a few seconds, and then continuing to empty your bladder, I don't see the issue. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-01-05T23:54:26.847" LastActivityDate="2016-12-16T02:29:45.137" Title="Does stopping urination mid stream lead to urinary tract infections?" Tags="|medical-science|healthcare|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25327" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25326" CreationDate="2015-01-05T17:14:08.680" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most sources consider it a helpful exercise for continence (and possibly potency): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/mens-health/in-depth/kegel-exercises-for-men/art-20045074&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/mens-health/in-depth/kegel-exercises-for-men/art-20045074&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.simonfoundation.org/About_Incontinence_Treatment_Options_Kegels_for_Men.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.simonfoundation.org/About_Incontinence_Treatment_Options_Kegels_for_Men.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://urology.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=524&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://urology.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=524&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/urinary-incontinence-oab/kegel-exercises-treating-male-urinary-incontinence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.webmd.com/urinary-incontinence-oab/kegel-exercises-treating-male-urinary-incontinence&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urologyteam.com/male-urology/kegel-exercises&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.urologyteam.com/male-urology/kegel-exercises&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find a reputable source that considers it harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23582" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T17:14:08.680" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25328" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25329" CreationDate="2015-01-05T19:30:27.710" Score="38" ViewCount="4511" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/06/police-body-cam-privacy-recorded-cops&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; quotes Matt Pearce as saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Remember that in Ferguson, there are huge, huge, huge numbers of outstanding warrants. More warrants than residents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? How could that be possible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T13:00:21.903" Title="Are there more outstanding warrants in Ferguson than residents?" Tags="|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25328" CreationDate="2015-01-05T19:48:21.537" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/08/28/1325453/-In-2013-Ferguson-gave-out-10-000-more-arrest-warrants-than-people-in-Ferguson#&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NPR report&lt;/a&gt; states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2013, the municipal court in Ferguson — a city of 21,135 people — issued 32,975 arrest warrants for nonviolent offenses, mostly driving violations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They cite this table from a document on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.courts.mo.gov/file.jsp?id=68845&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Missouri Courts website&lt;/a&gt; - see the last line of the snippet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jzsht.png&quot; alt=&quot;Snippet of table showing outstanding warrants&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-01-05T23:42:39.523" LastActivityDate="2015-01-05T23:42:39.523" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25330" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="25331" CreationDate="2015-01-07T01:22:54.603" Score="53" ViewCount="33248" Body="&lt;p&gt;In personal finance articles I frequently find quotes injected to attribute some further relevance to one's position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the years, I've read Einstein quoted as saying that 'compound interest was one of man's greatest inventions', or other variations on this theme. In Tony Robbins recent tome (600 pages to write what would fit in a short magazine article) he offered this Einstein line. I'd like to know if it was made up or if Einstein ever said anything close to this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI - Robbins' exact line was &quot;Compound interest is such a powerful tool that Albert Einstein once called it the most important invention in all of human history.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2499" LastEditorUserId="2499" LastEditDate="2015-01-08T10:45:45.787" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T10:45:45.787" Title="Did Einstein ever remark on compound interest?" Tags="|economics|quotes|albert-einstein|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="25331" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25330" CreationDate="2015-01-07T02:06:35.730" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's &lt;strong&gt;Unlikely&lt;/strong&gt;  that Einstein ever said this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/quotes/einstein/interest.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;snopes page on this quote&lt;/a&gt; claims that the earliest reference to it is in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1983/05/27/arts/weekender-guide-friday-calvin-hampton-farewell.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1983 New York Times column&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EINSTEIN REVISITED&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Asked once what the greatest invention of all times was, &lt;strong&gt;Albert Einstein is said to have replied, ''compound interest.''&lt;/strong&gt; His playful sense of humor and other aspects of his personality -as well as his genius - form the subject of a bus tour Sunday to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, N.J., where the physicist worked during the last 20 years of his life. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I managed to find an earlier version of this quote from 1978 in &lt;em&gt;Bank Performance Annual, Warren, Gorham &amp;amp; Lamont, 1978, p509&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/c0Nzg.png&quot; alt=&quot;1978 version of compound interest quote&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that Einstein died in 1955, it is still unlikely that it is attributable to him. Einstein is a common target for mis-attributed quotes due to being a widely recognised &amp;quot;genius&amp;quot; figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it's not an attributed quote, this &amp;quot;fun&amp;quot; question from the back of &lt;em&gt;The American Mathematical Monthly&lt;/em&gt;, Vol. 46, No. 9, Nov., 1939, p595, invites readers to show off their Einsteinian skills by determining what has stumped mathematicians:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jRYBG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The correct answer is &lt;em&gt;d&lt;/em&gt;, and sadly not compound interest). Could it have been a question like this which was the seed from which the (likely) mis-attributed quote grew?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote investigator also found &lt;a href=&quot;http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/31/compound-interest/#more-2923&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some earlier quotes claiming that compound interest is the &amp;quot;greatest invention&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, but none of them involve Einstein in any way until well after his death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T08:52:06.793" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26330" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25295" CreationDate="2015-01-07T03:57:12.243" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In case anyone is coming here from Google, here is the usual way this legend is repeated in copy-and-paste files:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1178: A Chinese document known as the Sung Document records the voyage&#xA;  of Muslim sailors to a land known as Mu-Lan-Pi (America). Mention of&#xA;  this document is contained in the publication, The Khotan Amirs, 1933.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea where this utterly garbled retelling came from, but the original source of this claim is here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2718572&quot;&gt;Mu-lan-p'i: A Case for Pre-Columbian Transatlantic Travel by Arab Ships&lt;/a&gt; by Hui-lin Li.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source that article uses translates Mu-lan-p'i as &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/stream/chaujukuahiswork00chao#page/142/mode/2up&quot;&gt;Murabit, that is, Morocco&lt;/a&gt; and discusses all kinds of bizarre things that can be found there. Indeed, Mu-lan-p'i is very close to &quot;Mu-ra-bi&quot;. Hui-lin Li objects that all of the exceedingly curious things in the source can be explained as American products: the &quot;grains of wheat three inches long&quot; are corn; the &quot;six-foot melon&quot; is a pumpkin. Hui-lin Li does not offer his opinion on the &quot;rice and wheat kept in silos&quot;, but assures us that such things as &quot;a 'peach' weighing two catties, a 'citron' weighing over twenty catties [12 kg / 27 lb], and a 'lettuce' weighing as much as over ten catties [6 kg / 13 lb]&quot; are all real fruits because &quot;nearly all of [the] accounts of natural products&quot; in this book &quot;were real and identifiable&quot;. He supposes, for example, that the &quot;citron&quot; refers to an 30-pound variety of pineapple. In the final paragraph of the article, he backtracks from his entire argument and says that in fact this is a description of Spain and Morocco mixed with little bits of America, and that the information is &quot;necessarily vague and inaccurate in detail.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally find this hypothesis slightly unconvincing. Surely proponents of trans-Atlantic contact can do better than this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bonus: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/did-ibn-farrukh-discover-america-in-999-ce&quot;&gt;Did Ibn Farrukh Discover America in 999 CE?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As Buenaventura Bonnet explained in a 1944 Spanish-language journal article, from which I have borrowed the above facts, “The real author of the forged manuscript is none other than Don Manuel Ossuna Saviñón himself” (my translation). Buenaventura Bonnet debunks the story point for point, noting errors of chronology, errors in French library referencing, and more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T03:57:12.243" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26331" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-07T05:32:35.637" Score="0" ViewCount="434" Body="&lt;p&gt;Long ago, an enthusiastic cyclist claimed to me that a human on a bike was more efficient than a fish in water. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would guess that the relevant measure of efficiency would be something like mD/E, where m=body mass, D=distance traveled, and E=energy consumed. Presumably we should compare a bike on level ground to a fish swimming horizontally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user4216" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T10:46:59.290" Title="Is a human on a bike more efficient than a fish in water?" Tags="|biology|physics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-01-07T12:06:31.527" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26331" CreationDate="2015-01-07T09:15:19.520" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer: Yes, but it depends on the size of the fish and the cyclist, and their speeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a nice &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/110/44/17904/F1.expansion.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;published summary for energy cost (J/(kg * m)) for fish, and running or flying animals&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/110/44/17904&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this paper in PNAS&lt;/a&gt; which suggests that large fish are more efficient swimmers in terms of energy cost per unit of mass per unit of distance. According to this summary, typical values are ~1.5 J/(kg * m). Fish mass will relate more or less directly to their size and aerodynamic resistance. Bigger fish IE sharks will probably be more efficient still but I suppose it is hard to perform experiments on them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding cycling, the problem is that the mass actually has only a minor effect on the pedaling efficiency on flat ground. &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00376658#page-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; shows that energy cost for unit distance follows the relationship of (E = (0.606*V^2) + 29.56) where E is the energy cost in J/m and V is the air speed in m/s, on a racing bycicle with normal wheels.&#xA;For an enthusiastic cyclists speed of 30 km/h = 8.33 m/s, we thus have an energy cost of 71.6 J/m which may be approx ~1 J/(kg*m) if our cyclist weighs ~72 kg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus, a 72 kg cyclist on a race bike at 30km/h is about ~30 percent more efficient in terms of movement energy than a ~ 1 kg fish swimming at average speed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23580" LastEditorUserId="23580" LastEditDate="2015-01-07T10:46:59.290" LastActivityDate="2015-01-07T10:46:59.290" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26336" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-07T18:45:02.857" Score="7" ViewCount="513" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://cnet.com/news/over-or-under-the-science-of-toilet-paper-orientation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Over or under? The science of toilet paper orientation&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://dailyinfographic.com/over-or-under-the-great-toilet-paper-debate-infographic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Over or under? The great toilet paper debate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... some studies suggest that the answer is more than coincidence. For&#xA;  instance, people who orient their rolls “over” are more organized and&#xA;  characterized as over-achievers. ... This group represents 70 percent&#xA;  of the people who actually care that much about toilet paper. The&#xA;  remaining 30 percent of this peculiar study group are the “unders”.&#xA;  Characterized as “laid-back”, “artistic”, and “dependable”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there really evidence that one's preference has any correlation with one's personality, and if so, why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="308" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2016-05-30T18:42:08.447" LastActivityDate="2016-05-30T18:42:08.447" Title="Is toilet paper roll orientation related to personality?" Tags="|toilets|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26337" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26339" CreationDate="2015-01-07T19:00:22.450" Score="9" ViewCount="1393" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's an article titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://munchies.vice.com/articles/vegetarians-who-eat-fish-are-actually-onto-something&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vegetarians Who Eat Fish&lt;/strong&gt; Are Actually Onto Something&lt;/a&gt; which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I’m out besmirching Malibu’s pristine sands to decide if pescetarianism—a vegetarian diet supplemented only by fish—has more to it than guilt-free sushi. &lt;strong&gt;We’ve all met the vegetarian who casually mentions that he or she eats fish&lt;/strong&gt;. Logic aside, it’s a fairly common mindset with arguments based on ethics, environmentalism, and health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true to say that in American English (where the referenced article was written), the word &quot;vegetarian&quot; is often used to identify people or diets which &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; include eating fish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23224" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-03-13T11:10:06.933" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T11:10:06.933" Title="Is it common that North Americans who call themselves 'vegetarian' eat fish?" Tags="|nutrition|vegetarianism|culture|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26338" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26337" CreationDate="2015-01-07T19:09:21.670" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Between 60% - 66% of people who self identify are in fact not vegetarians as they consume all 3 types of meat on a regular basis, fish, red meat, and poultry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Take a 2002 Times/CNN poll on the eating habits of 10,000 Americans. Six percent of the individuals surveyed said they considered themselves vegetarian. But when asked by the pollsters what they had eaten in the last 24 hours, 60% of the self-described &quot;vegetarians&quot; admitted that that had consumed red meat, poultry or fish the previous day&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animals-and-us/201109/why-are-there-so-few-vegetarians&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;people who lie about being a vegetarian.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-08T09:28:50.007" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T09:28:50.007" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26337" CreationDate="2015-01-07T20:21:16.110" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vrg.org/journal/vj2013issue4/2013_issue4_DIETITIANS_and_VEGETARIANISM.php&quot;&gt;Vegetarian Resource Group&lt;/a&gt; summarizes a survey: &quot;of the self-identified vegetarians (32 total), 75% do not eat meat, fish or poultry, which we classify as vegetarian, while &lt;strong&gt;25% do eat meat, fish or poultry&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/survey-60-of-self-proclaimed-vegetarians-ate-meat-yesterday-2013-6&quot;&gt;A survey of 10,000 Americans&lt;/a&gt; 6% (600) of them self-reported to be vegetarian, and that 60% of the &quot;vegetarians&quot; reported having eaten meat within the last 24 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/626S.long&quot;&gt;US department of agriculture did a similar survey&lt;/a&gt; of 13,000 Americans and found that &quot;there were &lt;strong&gt;334 individuals 6 y of age and older who identified themselves as vegetarians&lt;/strong&gt;. Of these, 120 reported no meat, and &lt;strong&gt;214 reported some meat&lt;/strong&gt; (≥ 10 g meat, fish, or poultry) on either or both recall days.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These survey results somewhat conflict, with the Vegetarian Resource Group reporting only 25% of self-identified vegetarians eating meat, but with the larger surveys supporting the claim that &quot;most&quot; self-identified vegetarians eat meat. We should give the larger, independent studies more weight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23045" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-01-11T14:45:15.827" LastActivityDate="2015-01-11T14:45:15.827" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26343" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23757" CreationDate="2015-01-08T00:29:36.140" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll try and take a stab at this, though I don't know if I have found enough non-circumstantial evidence to prove my conclusion. However, I also doubt that anyone without knowing Arabic or French and having access to select universities around the world could come up with more, as those are the only translations of Ibn Fadi's book I could find.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My conclusion: That this is a false claim based on research of the supposed source of the claim Ibn Fadl Al-Umari.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My only clear evidence comes from here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20180901151227/http://cartographic-images.net:80/Cartographic_Images/226.1_al-Umari.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cartographic-Images.net (archived)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see on the maps in the text there is no mention or thought of anything to the west of Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading though the text, which is about the veracity of a specific set of maps. The maps are attributed to our above author Ibn Fadl Al-Umari, and an encyclopedia he compiled in 1342 from papers he had written in the late 1330's. The thought is that the maps are authentic and accurate copies of the originals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems odd to me that someone who is the only attributed source for this claim, and someone who is a known important source of information on the African kingdoms of the time, would leave out any and all indication of a land to the west of Africa if he had a credible enough source to include the story in his encyclopedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Alright so that wasn't as solid as I wanted but its only source material from his encyclopedia I could get my hands on.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source 2:&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=D52OAwAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PT796&amp;amp;lpg=PT796&amp;amp;dq=Masalik%20al%20absar%20fi%20mamalik%20al%20amsar&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=8xdVrMQVa3&amp;amp;sig=lwMy6Cv0c1tMwcmEFs8bOzn-l18&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=58CtVLGTD4HnoASoz4HACw&amp;amp;ved=0CDgQ6AEwBjgK#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=1311&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A search of Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia&#xA;edited by Jennifer Speake&lt;/a&gt;. This encyclopedia cites our author (Ibn Fadi) serval  times in her work, not surprising since he had created his own maps and encyclopedia, and makes no mention to any expedition in 1311 by the Mali to the Americas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source 3: It is curious that a search for the author brings up many references to his work and autobiographies, clearly he is known in historical circles, yet none of them from legitimate sources mention his supposed story of the huge discovery of a land to the west by the Mali. Obviously a lack of evidence is not clear proof of no evidence but it does seem suspicious.*&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source 4: This focuses on a general search of medieval Mali. If the claim that Mali found the Americas is not included in a search then the single most mentioned Masa (king) from this time period is Masa Musa, and his incredible pilgrimage to Mecca. It is remarkable that such a well written about king does not get introduced (as far as I could find in several hours of research) with the story of his predecessor abdicating his throne to him so that he could travel across the atlantic to a new world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the wikipedia article quoted above, according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/398420/Musa&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;encyclopedia britannica&lt;/a&gt; Ibn Fadi did not come to Cairo until 12 years after Musa Mansa, and so could not have heard the story directly from the King, further casting doubt on the veracity of the story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally I'll finish with the great find from @Tor-Einar Jarnbjo:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's article on &amp;quot;Abu Bakr II&amp;quot; also writes: &amp;quot;The consensus among&#xA;mainstream archaeologists, anthropologists, ethnohistorians,&#xA;linguists, and other modern pre-Columbian scholars is that there is no&#xA;evidence of any such voyage reaching the Americas...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;*&lt;a href=&quot;http://chssp.ucdavis.edu/programs/soe-4-mali-final.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Found some material from here including direct quotes from Ibn Fadi&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14819" LastEditorUserId="36637" LastEditDate="2023-11-12T23:56:49.887" LastActivityDate="2023-11-12T23:56:49.887" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26347" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-08T07:30:04.870" Score="0" ViewCount="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;On many devices such as smartphones there is an option for &quot;airplane mode&quot;. When enabled all wireless forms of communication are turned off. The idea is this is somehow safer to the airplane, but is it? For example is there any evidence to backup the claim that cell phone signals interfere with aircraft? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T09:05:01.743" Title="Is there any legitimate reason as to why airplane mode should be used?" Tags="|aviation|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-01-08T09:14:10.817" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26350" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26437" CreationDate="2015-01-08T10:53:30.343" Score="8" ViewCount="838" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, some news organisations (Le Monde linking &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2015/01/08/washington-post-opinions-section-publishes-controversial-charlie-hebdo-cartoon/&quot;&gt;to this blog in the Washington Post&lt;/a&gt;) mention that &lt;em&gt;New York Times&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;AP&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;CNN&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;MSNBC&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;The Telegraph&lt;/em&gt; (and apparently other news groups) have &quot;shunned&quot; images that contained certain depictions that could have been construed as offensive by some followers of a certain religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same WP blog presented the New York Times' explanation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under Times standards, we do not normally publish images or other material deliberately intended to offend religious sensibilities. After careful consideration, Times editors decided that describing the cartoons in question would give readers sufficient information to understand today’s story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the New York Time have this explicit policy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24616" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T04:26:11.547" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T04:26:11.547" Title="Does the New York Times refuse to publish material that offends religious sensibilities?" Tags="|politics|quotes|media|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="23" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25287" CreationDate="2015-01-08T15:48:07.313" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many studies show the evolution of vitamin in milk while heating. You may even compare heating methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lib3.dss.go.th/fulltext/Journal/J.agri.food%20chem/1998/no.1p1-360/1998v46no1p206-210.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;In this article&lt;/a&gt;, the evolution of B12 vitamin is drawn (figure 1). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GsE3Cl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the loss of vitamin that occurs while heating the milk up to 100°C is only around 10% of the total B12 vitamin. Prolongated heating will really lower the concentration though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24618" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-08T18:01:05.610" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T18:01:05.610" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26354" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-08T16:47:46.970" Score="8" ViewCount="180" Body="&lt;p&gt;My macroeconomics professor claimed&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to one researcher, only one in seven medical interventions is supported by reliable scientific evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick Google search shows the quote from the book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=oLr8QGdoCG4C&amp;amp;pg=PA95&amp;amp;lpg=PA95&amp;amp;dq=one%20in%20seven%20medical%20interventions%20is%20supported%20by%20reliable%20scientific%20evidence&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=VJG0HTLt-f&amp;amp;sig=9k4rtgjZduEceOpQws2p77z2SLc&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=nrCuVKukG4mpyATOkIHICA&amp;amp;ved=0CCAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=one%20in%20seven%20medical%20interventions%20is%20supported%20by%20reliable%20scientific%20evidence&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Macroeconomics: A Contemporary Approach&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. However, the book just refers to another source. Is this claim actually verifiable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15087" LastEditorUserId="1760" LastEditDate="2015-01-10T19:07:12.677" LastActivityDate="2015-01-10T19:07:12.677" Title="Is only one in seven medical interventions supported by reliable scientific evidence?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-01-09T22:25:11.840" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9701" CreationDate="2015-01-08T16:48:27.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book does in fact say that on page 197 (I own it). The full paragraph reads: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If the potassium-argon ages of a group of rocks agree with the stratigraphic sequence determined on the basis of physical relationships of fossil evidence, then the probability is good that radiometric ages are reliable. An example of this are the data in table 7-7. For single age measurements of units that either overlie or underlie beds containing fossils, the fossil evidence only places an upper or lower limit on the age determination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same section, titled &quot;Evaluation of age data&quot;, also suggests duplicate measurements, preferably from different minerals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All data that scientists produce are, and should be, carefully examined for consistency. Dalrymple and Lanphere also suggest that several samples should be measured to be more able to identify problematic samples. If anything, this is good scientific practice, rather than taking a single measurement at face value. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my own experience (I run an Argon geochronology lab), the approximate age of a sample is useful input to select the correct standards. The reason is analogous to trying to measure millimeters with a yardstick. If you calibrate your machine to measure very large amounts of Argon and you chose small sample size consequently, to have less gas load on the detectors, a young sample will then yield very large errors. It is possible and usually yields accurate, but less precise results (meaning larger error margins). The reasons for this are detailed in McDougall and Harrison: &quot;Geochronology and Thermochronology by the 40Ar/39Ar method&quot;. We geochronologists strive to provide users with the best results possible. The exact age is irrelevant for the measurement, but it is useful to know it within an order of magnitude (millions of years, hundreds of millions of years or billions of years, for example).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mantleplumes.org/ArAr.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here for some examples where a geochronologist suggests that we should throw out more dates&lt;/a&gt; ! Simply because according to him, some labs have less stringent statistical requirements to accept an age. Although this particular paper addresses Ar/Ar dating, typically K/Ar method provides less tools to check for internal consistency and alteration, although in most cases K/Ar dates and Ar/Ar dates will yield similar results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23580" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-01-08T17:03:57.380" LastActivityDate="2015-01-08T17:03:57.380" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26361" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="35395" CreationDate="2015-01-09T08:30:49.407" Score="15" ViewCount="2124" Body="&lt;p&gt;The term &lt;em&gt;essential&lt;/em&gt; implies that a nutrient is &lt;a href=&quot;https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/002399.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;required for the body to work properly&lt;/a&gt; and that the consequences of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid#Effects_of_deficiency&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;deficiency&lt;/a&gt; are serious. Examples are the 13 essential vitamins and the essential amino acids. What evidence shows that &quot;essential fatty acids&quot; (EFAs) are just as essential? What defines a &quot;deficiency&quot;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please emphasize evidence for &lt;strong&gt;ALA&lt;/strong&gt; (n-3 linolenic acid).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15454864&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2004 PubMed article&lt;/a&gt; claims, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First it was shown that the differentiation and functioning of&#xA;  cultured brain cells requires omega-3 fatty acids. It was then&#xA;  demonstrated that alpha-linolenic acid (&lt;strong&gt;ALA&lt;/strong&gt;) deficiency alters the&#xA;  course of brain development,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It unfortunately it does not give us numbers for how much ALA is required or what exactly constitutes a deficiency.  Can anyone find these?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10227" LastEditorUserId="10227" LastEditDate="2016-10-10T10:50:37.903" LastActivityDate="2016-10-10T10:50:37.903" Title="Does the body require essential fatty acids for good health?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26361" CreationDate="2015-01-09T12:17:19.423" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the so-called &amp;quot;essential fatty acids&amp;quot; are, indeed, essential&amp;quot; (i.e. required, but unable to be manufactured by the human body.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question includes a link to the Wikipedia page for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_fatty_acid&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;essential fatty acids&lt;/a&gt; which defines them (in humans) as : alpha-linolenic acid and linoleic acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_fatty_acid#Essential_fatty_acids&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;same page&lt;/a&gt; explains the history of the research into them, describing a number of experiments that identified them as essential.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 1950s Arild Hansen showed that infants fed skimmed milk developed essential fatty acid deficiency. It was characterized by an increased food intake, poor growth, and a scaly dermatitis, and was cured by the administration of corn oil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later work by Hansen randomized 426 children, mainly black, to four treatments: modified cow's milk formula, skimmed milk formula, skimmed milk formula with coconut oil, or cow's milk formula with corn oil. The infants who received the skimmed milk formula or the formula with coconut oil developed essential fatty acid deficiency signs and symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] patients undergoing intravenous nutrition with glucose became isolated from their fat supplies and rapidly developed biochemical signs of essential fatty acid deficiency (an increase in 20:3n-9/20:4n-6 ratio in plasma) and skin symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia page pretty much answers the question, but I followed up a couple of sources, so I wasn't only relying on unreliable secondary sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;M. C. RIELLA, M.D.; J. W. BROVIAC, M.D.; M. WELLS, Ph.D.; and B. H. SCRIBNER, M.D., F.A.C.P., &lt;a href=&quot;http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=689930&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Essential Fatty Acid Deficiency in Human Adults During Total Parenteral Nutrition&lt;/a&gt;, Ann Intern Med. 1975;83(6):786-789. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-83-6-786&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This paper described three case studies of patients malnourished by a deficiency in  linoleic acid. It explained they suffered &amp;quot;skin lesions, characterized by dryness and scaly appearance&amp;quot; until they were administered with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipid_emulsion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Intralipid&lt;/a&gt; that contains linoleic acid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It appears that the daily requirement for linoleic acid in the adult, particularly during the period of rapid anabolism, has not been clearly established.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.issfal.org/news-links/resources/publications/PUFAIntakeReccomdFinalReport.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;analysis of recommended dietary intake&lt;/a&gt; from 2004 summarises some of the literature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prospective cohort studies examined the effect of the intake of dietary fat and ω3 PUFA&#xA;from plants on coronary heart disease in humans. [...] After adjustment for&#xA;non-dietary risk factors and total fat intake, intake of ALA was significantly negatively&#xA;correlated with risk of myocardial infarction (relative risk 0.41 for a 1% increase in&#xA;energy from ALA, P &amp;lt; 0.01).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-09T12:17:19.423" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26365" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-10T09:38:02.240" Score="18" ViewCount="1023" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgasm#Clitoral_and_vaginal_categories&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's article of Orgasm&lt;/a&gt; it suggests vaginal stimulation isn't sufficient for women's sexual pleasure:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kinsey found that most of the women he surveyed could not have vaginal orgasms.[59] He &quot;criticized Freud and other theorists for projecting male constructs of sexuality onto women&quot; and &quot;viewed the clitoris as the main center of sexual response&quot; and the vagina as &quot;relatively unimportant&quot; for sexual satisfaction, relaying that &quot;few women inserted fingers or objects into their vaginas when they masturbated&quot;. He &quot;concluded that satisfaction from penile penetration [is] mainly psychological or perhaps the result of referred sensation&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that most women cannot have vaginal orgasms (i.e. orgasm from vaginal stimulation alone)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23295" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-10-26T14:10:41.907" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T14:10:41.907" Title="Are most women incapable of orgasm through vaginal stimulation alone?" Tags="|physiology|sexuality|human-reproduction|masturbation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26366" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26367" CreationDate="2015-01-11T01:39:36.913" Score="8" ViewCount="1783" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was recently reading through a rather popular elementary/junior high school textbook &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B00AAW5ECC&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;A History of Us: The New Nation&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. On page 167, the author, Joy Hakim, says of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Buchanan&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;James Buchanan&lt;/a&gt; (the 15th president of the United States):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... In fact, he didn't do much of anything as president. When Congress passed a bill that would have created some colleges, Buchanan vetoed the bill. He said the country didn't need more education. There were already too many educated people, said Buchanan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This piqued my interest, so I went and read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=68368&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Buchanan's veto bill&lt;/a&gt; on the subject, but I didn't find anything like the supposed quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Buchanan&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; on Buchanan states the exact opposite:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Buchanan greatly valued education but believed that colleges were the duty of state governments rather than the central government, as expressed in his veto of a bill to grant land for colleges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It is extremely doubtful, to say the least, whether this bill would contribute to the advancement of agriculture and the mechanic arts--objects the dignity and value of which can not be too highly appreciated.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Buchanan really say &amp;quot;there were too many educated people&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T00:17:39.243" Title="Did James Buchanan say there were &quot;too many educated people in the world&quot;?" Tags="|history|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26366" CreationDate="2015-01-11T07:50:12.647" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read the text of the veto and found nothing like this. He did say this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now no consideration could be presented of a stronger character to&#xA;  induce the American people to brave the difficulties of frontier life&#xA;  and to settle upon these lands and to purchase them at a fair price&#xA;  than to give to them and their children an assurance of the means of&#xA;  education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, I found these quotations elsewhere:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Education lies at the very root of all our Institutions,--it is the&#xA;  foundation upon which alone, they can repose in safety. Shall the&#xA;  people be educated, is a question not of mere policy; but it is a&#xA;  question of life &amp;amp; death, upon which the existence of our present form&#xA;  of Government stands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Address, June, 1828, on the Establishment of Common Schools&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The best mode of preventing crimes is to educate the people, and&#xA;  instruct them in their moral and religious duties; therefore, Congress&#xA;  possess power to establish a general system of education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speech, May 9, 1842, on the United States Courts&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastEditorUserId="17804" LastEditDate="2017-04-29T00:17:39.243" LastActivityDate="2017-04-29T00:17:39.243" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26368" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-11T12:44:13.897" Score="0" ViewCount="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/fruit.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/fruit.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/12/the-best-way-to-eat-fruit_n_2114888.html?ir=India&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/12/the-best-way-to-eat-fruit_n_2114888.html?ir=India&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org/eating-fruit-on-an-empty-stomach&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fruitsandveggiesmorematters.org/eating-fruit-on-an-empty-stomach&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;debunk this while there is a plethora of sites supporting this claim. What's the bottom line? I am not referring to &quot;combining fruits&quot;, I am just plain interested in say, is it healthier to eat an apple on an empty stomach or after a meal ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24640" LastActivityDate="2015-01-11T12:44:13.897" Title="Is eating fruits in an empty stomach healthier?" Tags="|fruit|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-01-11T14:07:01.370" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26370" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-11T13:37:33.140" Score="97" ViewCount="21081" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/01/09/robert-spencer-no-go-zones-are-incubators-islamic-jihad&quot;&gt;this Hannity interview&lt;/a&gt; on Fox News on 9 January, 2015, American author &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Spencer_%28author%29&quot;&gt;Robert Spencer&lt;/a&gt; said that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So in France they have set up - the French government lists on a public web-site -751 no-go areas, where essentially the police have no authority, the French state has no authority and Islamic law prevails&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there such regions listed by the French government?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had a hard time finding official data regarding this issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24642" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-10-30T11:54:28.697" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T18:24:24.027" Title="Are there officially pronounced &quot;no-go&quot; Islamic zones in France?" Tags="|religion|islam|france|" AnswerCount="6" CommentCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26371" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26370" CreationDate="2015-01-11T16:21:31.063" Score="150" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR: Those regions are poor areas considered as priority for public help by the French government to reduce inequalities. It has nothing to do with Islamic law or police patrols.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a French citizen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So what are the ZUS (&lt;em&gt;Zone Urbaine Sensible&lt;/em&gt;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are sensitive urban areas where the French government wants the local politics to put in effort. Those are poor neighborhoods and they are classified as ZUS, to encourage companies to settle into those areas - e.g. by offering tax breaks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ZUS areas were created by the law &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000196404&amp;amp;dateTexte=&amp;amp;categorieLien=id&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Loi no 95-115 du 4 février 1995&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Article 2:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Les zones urbaines sensibles sont caractérisées par la présence de&#xA;  grands ensembles ou de quartiers d'habitat dégradé et par un&#xA;  déséquilibre accentué entre l'habitat et l'emploi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roughly translated in English:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ZUS (Sensitive Urban Area) are characterized by the presence of large&#xA;  housing estates or deteriorated residential areas and an accentuated&#xA;  imbalance between housing and employment&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in the official texts, these zones have nothing to do with Islam or police.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is an official French organization that observes the ZUS: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onzus.fr&quot;&gt;ONZUS&lt;/a&gt; (National Observatory for ZUS areas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regular reports are provided on different subjects concerning ZUS; for instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onzus.fr/theme/demographie&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (French text).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found on the ONZUS site a report on life in the ZUS: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cairn.info/resume.php?ID_ARTICLE=INSO_141_0024&quot;&gt;Portrait statistique des zones urbaines sensibles&lt;/a&gt; (ZUS statistical portraits).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is my summary list of key topics that are discussed in this report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Une ségrégation touchant d’abord les immigrés d’Afrique&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Une mobilité résidentielle importante&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Un parc de logements sociaux ancien&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Une surreprésentation des familles nombreuses et monoparentales&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Un taux de chômage deux fois plus important en ZUS&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Une population plus jeune et des revenus très modestes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Persistance et reproduction des inégalités scolaires&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Segregation primarily affecting the immigrants from Africa&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Important amounts of residential mobility&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Aging social (i.e. subsidized or low-rent) housing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;An above-average number of large and single-parent families &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Twice as much unemployment in the ZUS than in other areas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Younger population and very modest incomes&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Persistence and reproduction of educational inequalities&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this is a good summary of life in the ZUS. Note that there is no &quot;Islamic law&quot; mentioned. It's not something important or characteristic of the ZUS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, someone could argue this is a political view and maybe someone with other political views would create another report. But I think these reports are made by honest researchers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of classified areas like these in France. For instance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ZRR: &quot;Zone de revitalisation rurale&quot; (rural revitalizing areas) for poor agricultural areas in the country. (No islamic law there also.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;ZEP: &quot;Zone d'éducation prioritaire&quot; (priority education area) for schools that are in poor neighborhoods and may need extra money. (Yes, they are often located inside ZUS)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, here is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://sig.ville.gouv.fr/atlas/ZUS/&quot;&gt;list of ZUS from the French government&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One example of a ZRU (a sub-category of ZUS) from that list is La Reynerie/Bellefontaine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Haute Garonne (31)    Toulouse    La Reynerie, Bellefontaine. ZRU&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a poor neighborhood with a lot of immigrants, a majority of them from North-Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the &lt;a href=&quot;http://sig.ville.gouv.fr/atlas/ZUS/fichiers/zus159.pdf&quot;&gt;map of this area from the French Government&lt;/a&gt;, you can see the &lt;em&gt;Université&lt;/em&gt; (University), and &lt;em&gt;Col Ec.&lt;/em&gt; (junior high school) and &lt;em&gt;Ec.&lt;/em&gt; (school) which are in France the symbol of the french republic laws and the french state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.fr/maps?q=reynerie+google+map&amp;amp;bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&amp;amp;biw=1280&amp;amp;bih=963&amp;amp;dpr=1&amp;amp;um=1&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=D-uyVP-KNoXZauDsgvgC&amp;amp;ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ&quot;&gt;Google Map&lt;/a&gt; of the area, you can see &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.fr/maps/place/Reynerie,+31100+Toulouse/@43.5674917,1.4000842,19z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x12aeba360d90ad35:0xb8ef6e5fcc067ced&quot;&gt;Témoins de Jéhovah: Jehovah witness building&lt;/a&gt;, which is evidence that Islamic law does not apply in the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="417" LastEditorUserId="4747" LastEditDate="2015-06-12T20:39:38.187" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T20:39:38.187" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26372" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-11T18:34:38.800" Score="11" ViewCount="1015" Body="&lt;p&gt;Conspiracy news site, YourNewsWire, posted an &lt;a href=&quot;http://yournewswire.com/police-chief-in-charge-of-paris-attacks-commits-suicide/&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; claiming that Commissioner Helric Fredou, the French policeman investigating the Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris last week, took his own life last Thursday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have done a few searches on his name but can find no information on him except for references to his suicide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was he in charge of the case? Is this news story true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24645" LastEditorUserId="3837" LastEditDate="2015-01-13T22:11:43.447" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T22:11:43.447" Title="Did the policeman in charge of the Charlie Hebdo investigation take his own life?" Tags="|terrorism|france|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26375" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26372" CreationDate="2015-01-11T20:47:26.740" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found one other source for it: &lt;a href=&quot;http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150111/1016754353.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150111/1016754353.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Helric Fredou, 45, suffered from depression and experienced burn out.&#xA;  Shortly before committing suicide, he met with the family of a victim&#xA;  of the Charlie Hebdo attack and killed himself preparing the report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I have not been able to find it from any news source that I know of and find reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And then I found it on this site: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.intellihub.com/police-commissioner-investigating-charlie-hebdo-attack-commits-suicide-writing-report/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.intellihub.com/police-commissioner-investigating-charlie-hebdo-attack-commits-suicide-writing-report/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... Which looks like a site for conspiracy theorists... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21714" LastActivityDate="2015-01-11T20:47:26.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26372" CreationDate="2015-01-12T02:33:49.120" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there was a policeman named Helric Fredou who died. The earliest source seems to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150111/1016754353.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://sputniknews.com/europe/20150111/1016754353.html&lt;/a&gt; , which I don't know how trustworthy they are, but this source confirms it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pontiactribune.com/police-commissioner-investigating-hebdo-shooting-commits-suicide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://pontiactribune.com/police-commissioner-investigating-hebdo-shooting-commits-suicide/&lt;/a&gt; by linking to the police union's site&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The commissioner’s depression, reportedly, was the reason for his suicide.  Police Commissioner Helric Fredou was 45 years old, and single with no children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Police Union released an official statement recognizing his death. The statement, found on their &lt;a href=&quot;http://le-scpn.fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Message-2015-01-D%C3%A9c%C3%A8s-de-notre-coll%C3%A8gue-Helric-FREDOU.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;, reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On this particular day of national mourning , police commissioners are newboth hit hard by the tragic death of one of their own.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The Union of Commissioners of the National Police would like to present its most sincere condolences to the relatives of Helric.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In these difficult times , we have a special thought for all his colleagues and classmates , many of which we expressed their emotion and grief.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;We will keep you informed of how his funeral will be organized and the initiatives we take to honor his memory and support his family.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The website linked is &lt;a href=&quot;http://le-scpn.fr&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://le-scpn.fr&lt;/a&gt;, which a quick wikipedia search shows to be official &lt;a href=&quot;https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicat_des_commissaires_de_la_Police_nationale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicat_des_commissaires_de_la_Police_nationale&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statement is in French, but I've run it through Google Translate &lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com/?ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;client=tw-ob#auto/en/C%27est%20%20avec%20%20une%20%20infinie%20%20tristesse%20%20que%20%20nous%20%20avons%20%C3%A9t%C3%A9%20%20inform%C3%A9s%20%20ce%20%20matin%20%20dud%C3%A9c%C3%A8s%20%20de%20notre%20coll%C3%A8gue%20Helric%20FREDOU%2C%20affect%C3%A9en%20qualit%C3%A9%20de%20Directeur%20Adjoint%20du%20Service%20R%C3%A9gional%20de%20Police%20Judiciaire%C3%A0%20Limoges.En%20ce%20jour%20particulier%20de%20deuil%20national%2C%20les%20commissaires%20de%20police%20sont%20une%20nouvelle%20fois%20touch%C3%A9s%20de%20plein%20fouet%20par%20la%20disparition%20tragique%20de%20l%27un%20des%20leurs.Le%20%20%20Syndicat%20%20%20des%20%20%20Commissaires%20%20%20de%20%20%20la%20%20%20Police%20%20%20Nationale%20%20%20tient%20%20%20%C3%A0%20%20%20pr%C3%A9senter%20%20%20ses%20condol%C3%A9ances%20les%20plus%20sinc%C3%A8res%20aux%20proches%20d%27Helric.Dans%20%20ces%20%20moments%20%20difficiles%2C%20%20nous%20%20avons%20%20une%20%20pens%C3%A9e%20particuli%C3%A8rement%20%20%C3%A9mue%20%20pourtous%20%20ses%20%20coll%C3%A8gues%20%20de%20%20travailet%20%20ses%20%20camarades%20%20de%20%20promotion%2C%20%20dont%20%20beaucoup%20%20nous%20%20ont%20t%C3%A9moign%C3%A9%20leur%20%C3%A9motion%20et%20leur%20peine.Nous%20vous%20tiendrons%20inform%C3%A9s%20de%20la%20fa%C3%A7on%20dont%20seront%20organis%C3%A9es%20ses%20obs%C3%A8ques%20ainsi%20que%20des%20initiatives%20que%20nous%20prendronsafin%20d%E2%80%99honorer%20sa%20m%C3%A9moire%20et%20soutenir%20ses%20proches.&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is with great sadness that we were informed this morning by our colleague dudécès Helric Fredou, affectéen Deputy Director of Police Regional quality of service Judiciaireà Limoges.En this particular day of national mourning, police commissioners again hit hard by the tragic death of one of leurs.Le Union of Commissioners of the National Police would like to present its sincere condolences to the relatives of Helric.Dans these difficult times, we have special thoughts pourtous its colleagues workand his classmates, many of which showed their emotion and their peine.Nous will keep you informed of how his funeral will be organized and the initiatives we prendronsafin to honor his memory and support his family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in conclusion, &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, there is sufficient evidence that this happened including a primary source, and it's not just a wacky conspiracy theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I can't get official confirmation that they were working on the Hedbo case, and I'll look some more later. Consider this half the answer for now.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T02:59:41.770" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26383" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26370" CreationDate="2015-01-12T11:58:57.500" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's a very straightforward reference: The French &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCode.do;jsessionid=DED5BD267C37780B7D645BC107F55B9B.tpdjo06v_2?cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006070719&amp;amp;dateTexte=20150112&quot;&gt;penal law&lt;/a&gt;. Specifically, Article 113-2 makes this law applicable to the full territory of the French republic.&#xA;And of course it does not employ that thieves get their hands cut off etc. (cf. Article 131).&#xA;As a consequence the French state &lt;em&gt;must&lt;/em&gt; act against any attempts to install islamic law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22545" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T11:58:57.500" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26384" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-12T15:26:43.473" Score="6" ViewCount="1401" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard on a Fox News commercial that &quot;winter babies are better at music&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if there are any studies on this subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23295" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-01-13T00:19:46.223" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T01:41:50.940" Title="Are winter babies better at music?" Tags="|music|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26372" CreationDate="2015-01-12T16:37:21.850" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Helric Fredou was the second-in-command of the Limoges &lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_r%C3%A9gional_de_police_judiciaire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SRPJ&lt;/a&gt; (regional branch of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_France#Judicial_policing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;judicial police&lt;/a&gt;) . I can't find his nomination but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexteArticle.do?idArticle=JORFARTI000028429559&amp;amp;cidTexte=JORFTEXT000028429551&amp;amp;categorieLien=id&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; is a 2014 administrative decision that cites him in this role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicat_des_commissaires_de_la_Police_nationale&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;national police superintendent's union&lt;/a&gt; published a short &lt;a href=&quot;http://le-scpn.fr/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Message-2015-01-D%C3%A9c%C3%A8s-de-notre-coll%C3%A8gue-Helric-FREDOU.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;note&lt;/a&gt; which only mentions Helric Fredou's death, without stating any cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Highlighting relevant passages from an &lt;a href=&quot;http://france3-regions.francetvinfo.fr/limousin/2015/01/08/limoges-suicide-d-un-commissaire-de-police-626916.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; published by regional television &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;France 3&lt;/a&gt; quoted by &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/26372/did-the-policeman-in-charge-of-the-charlie-hedbo-investigation-take-his-own-life#comment96751_26372&quot;&gt;Oddthinking&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;un commissaire du SRPJ de Limoges s'est donné la mort la nuit dernière dans son bureau avec son arme de service. Une information confirmée par sa hiérarchie. On ignore à cette heure les raisons de son geste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My translation: “A superintendent of the Limoges SRPJ killed himself last night in his office with his service weapon. This information was confirmed by the police hierarchy. The reasons for his gesture is not presently known.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Le commissaire Fredou, comme tous les agents du SRPJ travaillait hier soir sur l'affaire de la tuerie au siège de Charlie Hebdo. Il avait notamment enquêté auprès de la famille de l'une des victimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Superintendent Fredou was working on the Charlie Hebdo killings affair, like all of the agents of the SRPJ. In particular, he had participated in an inquiry with the family of one of the victims.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is &lt;em&gt;a&lt;/em&gt; policeman in charge of the Charlie Hebdo investigation, not “the”&lt;/strong&gt;. He did not have any leading role in the investigation, he was just one of many policemen investigating. He had a history of depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Selon le syndicat de la police le commissaire était dépressif et en situation de burn out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“According to the police union, the superintendent was depressive and feeling burnt out.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;En novembre 2013, le commissaire Fredou avait découvert le corps sans vie de son collègue, numéro 3 du SRPJ de Limoges qui s'était également suicidé avec son arme de service dans son bureau. Il avait lui aussi 44 ans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“In November 2013, superintendent Fredou had discovered the lifeless body of a colleague, third in the Limoges SRPJ hierarchy, who had also committed suicide with his service weapon in his office. He was 44 years old as well.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find the declaration from the union mentioned by the news article. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://le-scpn.fr/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/53-2014.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;November 2014 message from said union&lt;/a&gt; highlights suicide of police superintendent as a concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find any article with more recent information. This is to be expected if this is genuinely a suicide for which the Charlie Hebdo was at most a triggering factor, not the primary cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The claim that a police superintendent by this name committed suicide on the given date is true.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The claim that he was involved in the Charlie Hebdo investigation is true.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The claim that he was &lt;em&gt;in charge of&lt;/em&gt; the investigation is false.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The claim of correlation between the Charlie Hebdo killings and Mr Fredou's suicide is correct. The implied claim of causation is undecided. The implied claim of primary causation is false.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="525" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-01-12T16:37:21.850" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20565" CreationDate="2015-01-12T18:31:25.353" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The way most Japanese fishing companies actually do this is a process called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikejime&quot;&gt;Ikejime&lt;/a&gt;. There are a few different ways to do this but they are all basically the same cause brain death and/or paralysis in the fish in a specific way, in order to keep the fish fresh. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sushifaq.com/sushiotaku/2014/08/26/kaimin-katsugyo-acupuncture-fish-sushi/&quot;&gt;Kaimin Katsugyo&lt;/a&gt; which uses acupuncture to keep fish alive but docile, this seems to be much more of a speciality thing though which does make the fish caught this way rather valuable. Fish caught this way are usually sold to higher end sushi restaurants. Although with this method I can't find any documents produced by actual fisheries that use this method. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One actual Ikejime method &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/trade/APEC_Air.pdf&quot;&gt;recommended&lt;/a&gt; by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Fisheries Working Group for air transport is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a cut is made toward the front of the flatfish severing the major artery and the spinal cord. Placement of the cut is made to preserve the greatest amount of flatfish flesh. This paralyzes the flatfish. A second cut is made in the tail to hasten the removal of blood. Flatfish are then chilled slowly to maintain circulation and facilitate the bleeding process. After the flatfish have been bled, they are transferred to a salt/ice water slurry and chilled to 12 °C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anglers-secrets.com/how-to-keep-fish-fresh/&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is another link that explains this process for use by amateur fishermen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there isn't really a issue that Japanese fisherman have to travel great lengths to find fresh fish, as Japan itself has, arguably, some of the most &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_reefs_in_Japan&quot;&gt;extensive artificial reefs in the world to combat this&lt;/a&gt;. I've just posted the Wikipedia article on this portion, as the references there are good and this wasn't what was asked. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22806" LastEditorUserId="22806" LastEditDate="2015-01-13T13:16:54.153" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T13:16:54.153" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26389" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-12T20:39:53.553" Score="10" ViewCount="334" Body="&lt;p&gt;An example here at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1042577628591401304?mg=reno64-wsj&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB1042577628591401304.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WSJ&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.thomasnet.com/IMT/2003/04/dummy_thermosta&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, but seen around the internet (often grouped together with anecdotes about dummy &amp;quot;walk&amp;quot; buttons and elevator &amp;quot;close door&amp;quot; buttons):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking for an office thermostat that actually works? Good luck and Godspeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may never find it. The controls for your company's heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) are likely hidden in the office ducts. If you do spy a thermostat, it's probably locked, or encased behind shatterproof glass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Richard Dawson, an HVAC specialist from Homer, Ill., who has several landlord clients, says too many office workers feel their environment is &amp;quot;anything but what they want it to be.&amp;quot; Better to install a dummy when they're out to lunch, he figures. He estimates that 90% of office thermostats are dummies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there reliable numbers on whether the majority (&amp;gt;50%) of apparently user-adjustable thermostats (in offices which appear to have them) usually 'dummies'?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T15:22:08.403" Title="Are 'user-adjustable' thermostats in offices usually 'dummies'?" Tags="|work|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26390" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-12T21:03:08.163" Score="4" ViewCount="664" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/why-most-food-labels-are-wrong-about-calories&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;A calorie isn't a calorie&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Starch becomes more resistant to digestion when it is allowed to cool and sit after being cooked, because it crystallizes into structures that digestive enzymes cannot easily break down. So stale foods like day-old cooked spaghetti, or cold toast, will give you fewer calories than the same foods eaten piping hot, even though technically they contain the same amount of stored energy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the papers they cite seem to be behind paywalls, but is there really that significant of a difference just from bread going stale? Or is this more like the assertion that &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/13903/does-drinking-cold-water-help-to-reduce-weight&quot;&gt;drinking cold water increases metabolic rates, but the values are so significant as to be lost in the noise&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T00:01:28.227" Title="Does stale toast contain fewer digestible calories than hot toast?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26391" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-12T23:23:37.683" Score="11" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;Social psychologist &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Cuddy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amy Cuddy&lt;/a&gt; gave a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TED talk&lt;/a&gt; in which she claims that adopting certain postures:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com.au/power-poses-interview-body-language-2014-3#high-power-posing-is-about-opening-up-cuddy-says-you-stretch-and-expand-your-body-to-take-up-as-much-space-as-possible-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Business Insider Australia summarised it this way&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her research showed that standing or sitting a certain way, even for two minutes, raises testosterone levels and lowers the stress hormone cortisol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These immediate changes in your body chemistry can affect the way you do your job and interact with other people. They might even have an impact on your chances of success.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24679" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-04-11T21:03:26.467" Title="Does &quot;power posing&quot; affect testosterone and cortisol levels?" Tags="|biology|physiology|sociology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26394" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26370" CreationDate="2015-01-13T08:22:35.207" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I looked down the list&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sig.ville.gouv.fr/atlas/ZUS/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atlas des Zones urbaines sensibles (Zus)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of those places you could walk around if you wanted to. Fire crews would probably need to be accompanied by the police in some of them if they were to attend a fire. In a number, such as the quartiers nord of Marseille only reinforced police units would be safe entering but they are not total no go areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a TV documentary (in French) about &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/f57ZJWi5Orw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;policing in the quartiers nord&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you can see there is an active but ad-hoc police presence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lesinrocks.com/2013/02/18/actualite/a-marseille-en-patrouille-avec-les-renforts-de-manuel-valls-11362901/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In this article, &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;A Marseille, en patrouille avec les renforts de Manuel Valls&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, you can read that the French state wants to &amp;quot;reestablish French republic order&amp;quot; in the quartiers nord; implying that there is an issue with the writ of the French state in some sectors. And &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/marseille-certains-quartiers-ont-ete-desertes-par-la-police_1155296.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;l'Express&lt;/a&gt; talks of police free zones with the new right wing Mayor of the 7th district &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metronews.fr/marseille/le-fn-veut-un-referendum-pour-les-quartiers-nord-de-marseille/mnkD!KBdgGFM8EN9GI/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;saying that Marseille city hall refuses foot patrols&lt;/a&gt; in the senstive areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- edited May 2015&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this passage written by a civil servant&lt;a href=&quot;http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxime_Tandonnet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;6&lt;/a&gt; recounting his time working for Nicolas Sarkozy. The quote is from Au Coeur du Volcan if you want to go and read it.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.fr/Au-coeur-volcan-Carnets-2007-2012/dp/2081336618&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;5&lt;/a&gt; Here a public servant clearly states that parts of Seine St Denis are a No Go Zone for the authorities. Now that's not the 751 Zep mentioned by the Americans but one can imagine that there are other Seine St Denis in France. Given the date it should be possible to identify the prefect, it could be Claude Baland or Nacer Meddah or more likely Christian Lambert.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was the bi-weekly meeting of the security chiefs. Sarkozy paced the room, frowning, you could feel the storm approaching. &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Where are we with drug dealers in St Denis&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;, he asked the prefect. &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;We need to take back control of the apartment blocks, one by one, make it impossible for the dealers to operate. A guy driving round in a new BMW 7 series, well the tax authorities should be asking where the money is coming from. I'm controlled all the time by the IRS, they say its for my protection.&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Yeah, you must be one of the most protected people in the country&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;, chuckled the interior minister.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prefect hemmed and hawed &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;it's not easy, the place is full of illegals, squats, slums and shanty towns everywhere, its the third world, it is almost impossible to operate down there, &lt;strong&gt;it is a no go zone for the authorities&lt;/strong&gt;, totally chaotic. When we do arrest an illegal the courts release them&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;. Another minister interjected &amp;quot;it is impossible to send anyone back, we know where they come from but we can't get visas from their embassies, they don't want them, without a visa we can't put them on a plane.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- Note (see Chris' comment below). This comment makes no claims about religious affiliations, it is just a claim made about no go zones on France to illustrate that even the French authorities make such claims at times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- edited November 2016&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term &amp;quot;no go zone&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;une zone de non-droit&amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/du-grain-moudre/y-t-il-des-zones-de-non-droit&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;7&lt;/a&gt; is being used more frequently in France now following the Bataclan and Nice attacks and in particular after the attack at the Crossroads of Viry-Châtillon in the suburbs of Paris. The Viry-Châtillon attack has left a policeman in a very serious condition after a patrol had their cars firebombed. The point of contention is a crossroads that is under the control of gangs who charge motorists a &amp;quot;toll&amp;quot; to pass through. Apparently the gangs have controlled the crossroads for 3 years without the police being able to reestablish order. It is effectively a no-go zone for normal policing and people. The attack has led to demonstrations by the police throughout France, they claim that the justice system doesn't take gang crime seriously. Even French President Hollande has joined the debate accusing judges of &amp;quot;cowardice&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;hiding&amp;quot; by &amp;quot;playing the virtuous&amp;quot;; although he later backed down&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lci.fr/politique/lachete-de-la-justice-hollande-recoit-deux-magistrats-pour-s-expliquer-sur-ses-propos-2007396.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;8&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;-- edited November 2018 --&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The French government, having long denied there was a problem of no-go zones in France has now made &lt;em&gt;la Reconquête Républicaine&lt;/em&gt; official government policy&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.interieur.gouv.fr/Actualites/Police-de-securite-du-quotidien/Lancement-des-Quartiers-de-Reconquete-Republicaine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;9&lt;/a&gt;. In his resignation speech former interior minister Gerard Collomb warned that in certain areas of France&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;the situation is very bad, yes, today, it is really the law of the jungle, &lt;strong&gt;traffikers and radical islamists have replaced the French republic&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/kDZIvGrJ8kM&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;11&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More seriously he foresees France slipping into civil war, this is what he told a journalist recently:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation in France &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;is very worrying, what I read each morning in notes from the police reflects a very pessimistic situation. The relationship between people is very tough, no one wants to live together.&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Journalist&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;the new law on immigration only tackles illegal immigration, there are more than 200,000 legal migrants a year coming to France&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Yes it is true, we are going step by step but that is a problem, we don't need any more immigration in France. The communities are confronting each other more and more and it is getting very violent, there is a risk of partition, I don't want to worry people but there is little time left, it is hard to say but within five years we'll be beyond the point of no return, afterwards....&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://actu17.fr/dici-a-5-ans-la-situation-pourrait-devenir-irreversible-leffrayant-constat-de-gerard-collomb-sur-linsecurite/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;10&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24686" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-11-01T14:14:03.627" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26399" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26400" CreationDate="2015-01-13T16:53:37.607" Score="2" ViewCount="1364" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licio_Gelli#Nomination_for_Nobel_Prize_in_Literature&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; it's stated that Licio Gelli&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1996, Gelli was nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in&#xA;  Literature, supported by Mother Teresa and Naguib Mahfouz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The references give some (little) evidence to this claim -rather curious, considering that there is almost no mention of his work as writer. I'd like to find out it this is really true - both the nomination and the people who supposedly supported him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2834" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T17:40:19.380" Title="Was Licio Gelli nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature?" Tags="|history|literature|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26399" CreationDate="2015-01-13T17:40:19.380" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason there seems to be little evidence is because nominees are intentionally kept secret for 50 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/literature/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nobel Prize&lt;/a&gt; site (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are the nominations made public?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  The statutes of the Nobel Foundation restrict disclosure of information about the nominations, whether publicly or privately, for 50 years. &lt;em&gt;The restriction concerns the nominees and nominators&lt;/em&gt;, as well as investigations and opinions related to the award of a prize.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone involved in the nomination/selection process is restricted from disclosing it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, people suck at rules, so there are naturally anecdotes about who was nominated. The problem then is sorting that out from the wild speculation that also happens. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sources given by Wikipedia are in Italian, so I can't assess their accuracy very well. I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.philipwillan.com/portale/?q=node/13&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;another source&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...In 1995 his name was even put forward for the Nobel Prize for Poetry, but the committee proved insensitive to his literary merits, despite letters of recommendation from the Dante Alighieri Prize Committee, presided over by Cardinal Silvio Oddi, the Ministry of Culture of the Kyrghyz Republic, the director of the Literary Institute of Uzbekistan and the Senate of the University of Oradea in Romania. ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but it claims that he was nominated in 1995, and lists different supporters. This is not to say that both couldn't be true, but I don't believe you're going to find hard evidence either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19407" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T17:40:19.380" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26402" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-13T18:29:20.537" Score="70" ViewCount="12465" Body="&lt;p&gt;I needed to sharpen a pair of scissors, so I did a quick Google search to learn the technique.  I was very surprised to find a number of sites suggesting that scissors can be sharpened by cutting a piece of aluminum foil.  It doesn't make any sense to me, and I didn't bother to try it.  But there were enough references that I'm curious whether anyone has ever actually tested the claim and formed a conclusion.  I found an assortment of comments from people saying it works or doesn't work, but nothing convincing either way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/photos/0,,20513767_20994193,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;This Old House&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; makes the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fold a sheet of foil several times and cut through it with a pair of dull scissors to sharpen the blades.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqjFIwU_LUQ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Aluminum Foil to Sharpen Scissors&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;is a YouTube video illustrating the technique.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8436" LastEditorUserId="41398" LastEditDate="2017-08-04T13:52:59.403" LastActivityDate="2018-11-13T21:46:36.193" Title="Can you sharpen scissors by cutting Aluminum foil?" Tags="|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26403" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="88" CreationDate="2015-01-13T20:05:36.443" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Latest study confirms that the chances increase due to a variety of factors &lt;strong&gt;diminishing immune response&lt;/strong&gt;, at least in mouse cells:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/02/1411030112.abstract&quot;&gt;Temperature-dependent innate defense against the common cold virus limits viral replication at warm temperature in mouse airway cells&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (Ellen F. Foxman, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1411030112)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... To gain insight into the mechanism of temperature-dependent growth, we compared the transcriptional response of primary mouse airway epithelial cells infected with rhinovirus at 33 °C vs. 37 °C. &lt;strong&gt;Mouse airway cells infected with mouse-adapted rhinovirus 1B exhibited a striking enrichment in expression of antiviral defense response genes at 37 °C relative to 33 °C, which correlated with significantly higher expression levels of type I and type III IFN genes and IFN-stimulated genes (ISGs) at 37 °C&lt;/strong&gt;. Temperature-dependent IFN induction in response to rhinovirus was dependent on the MAVS protein, a key signaling adaptor of the RIG-I–like receptors (RLRs). Stimulation of primary airway cells with the synthetic RLR ligand poly I:C led to greater IFN induction at 37 °C relative to 33 °C at early time points poststimulation and to a sustained increase in the induction of ISGs at 37 °C relative to 33 °C. Recombinant type I IFN also stimulated more robust induction of ISGs at 37 °C than at 33 °C. Genetic deficiency of MAVS or the type I IFN receptor in infected airway cells permitted higher levels of viral replication, particularly at 37 °C, and partially rescued the temperature-dependent growth phenotype. &lt;strong&gt;These findings demonstrate that in mouse airway cells, rhinovirus replicates preferentially at nasal cavity temperature due, in part, to a less efficient antiviral defense response of infected cells at cool temperature&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting one of the study authors (Akiko Iwasaki):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Altogether,&quot; she added, &quot;these temperature effects can result in an 100-fold difference in the level of cold virus&quot; at 33C compared with 37C after three days - enough to turn an asymptomatic viral population into sneezing, runny-nosed misery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastActivityDate="2015-01-13T20:05:36.443" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25262" CreationDate="2015-01-13T22:13:31.147" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;The referenced study is here: Gordon Hodson and Michael A. Busser, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pss.sagepub.com/content/23/2/187&quot;&gt;Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Psych Science 2012. User March Ho also linked to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fraw.org.uk/files/anarchism/hodson_busseri_2012.pdf&quot;&gt;pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a real study in a respected journal, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that their data collection and analysis was sound. The specific hypothesis they test is that 1) lower cognitive abilities in childhood predict higher levels of prejudice in adulthood, and 2) that this is largely because lower cognitive abilities in childhood predict a socially right-wing ideology in adulthood, which in turn predicts higher levels of prejudice. Cognitive ability is represented in terms of a &quot;g&quot; factor (based on previous research). They also regressed out socioeconomic status and education, so any effects should be independent of these covariates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data (from two UK) surveys seems to largely support their claims (Table 1). Lower cognitive abilities predict higher levels of prejudice (column c) and a more socially right-wing ideology (column a), which in turn predicts higher levels of prejudice (column b). Taking into account this &quot;indirect&quot; route through right-wing ideology explains most of the correlation between childhood cognitive abilities and prejudice, except in one of the four datasets (women in the BCS) (column c').&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since they are following the same subjects from childhood (10-11 years old) to adulthood (30-33 years old), they argue that this is showing a type of (weak) causation. The study is correlational and not interventional, but does show prediction longitudinally (across time).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These results from large, nationally representative data sets provide converging evidence that lower g in childhood predicts greater prejudice in adulthood and, furthermore, that socially conservative ideology mediates much of this effect. Our model tests are particularly compelling because in both the NCDS and the BCS, the measurement of childhood intelligence preceded the assessment of adulthood prejudice by at least two decades. Moreover, all predictive effects were independent of socioeconomic status and education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also used data from a laboratory setting in the US to come to similar conclusions, but I'll skip that since it's not part of the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried to find specific criticism of this article, and the only page I could come up with is by &lt;a href=&quot;http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=5118&quot;&gt;William Briggs&lt;/a&gt;. This author does not seem to understand the results of the study, for example he states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What makes the study ludicrous, even ignoring the biases, manipulations, and qualifications just outlined, by the authors’ own admission the direct effect size for “g” on “racism” is only -0.01 for men and 0.02 for women. Utterly trivial; close enough to no effect to be no effect, their results statistically “significant” only because of the massive sample size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not correct. The direct effect of &quot;g&quot; (cognitive ability) on racism is in fact trivial, and is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; statistically significant. This is one of the main points of the study, that the effect of cognitive ability on racism is explained through the mediation of right-wing ideology (leaving little additional direct correlation between cognitive ability and racism).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Briggs does have a reasonable complaint that there was some experimental flexibility in the way the analysis was conducted, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the NCDS (pdf), there were about 50 questions, of which only 13 were used. A “conservative”, then, is whatever Hodson and Busseri say it is. The same thing goes for what a “racist” is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is possible that the questions were cherry-picked from the survey data to give the best correlation, but without knowing a ton about the surveys it's hard to know if this could be true (are there many questions for which it is debatable whether they relate to ideology?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speculation about &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt; this effect occurs is less well-founded - for example, your question about whether this has to do with &quot;feeling safe&quot; is not well-answered by this study. Certainly the reporting has overstated some of the conclusions and mechanisms by which this is occurring. But the study itself appears to be sound and have reasonable data in support of its conclusions. Note that the correlations they find are not massive, e.g. there are many subjects with low cognitive ability who do not end up with a conservative ideology, and many subjects with conservative ideologies who are not racially prejudiced (correlations are in the ~0.4 range). They are, however, capturing a statistically significant trend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23274" LastEditorUserId="23274" LastEditDate="2015-01-14T18:21:15.110" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T18:21:15.110" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26413" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26370" CreationDate="2015-01-14T09:44:53.213" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been stated as false by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/nogozones.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt; for United States, &lt;em&gt;France&lt;/em&gt;, and Britain.&#xA;Steven Emerson, who spread such a rumour about Birmingham, have apologized for it.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-30773297&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The French embassy stated that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Of course it is not true to say that there are no-go areas in France. To give you an idea of how wide of the mark those comments are, we could compare them to those by the American journalist who recently said that non-Muslims simply did not go any longer to Birmingham: in both cases those statements are obviously totally untrue.&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jan/13/nigel-farage-ukip-no-go-zones-non-muslim-france-charlie-hebdo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(The Guardian)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dQFbW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Central Toulouse Bellefontaine one of the alleged no-go areas in France.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20701" LastEditorUserId="20701" LastEditDate="2015-01-16T15:14:20.307" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T15:14:20.307" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26415" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-14T12:58:18.627" Score="3" ViewCount="323" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard many times from friends that &lt;a href=&quot;http://jalopnik.com/yes-warm-your-damn-car-up-if-its-cold-1678251730&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;after starting up the engine of a car you have to wait a few minutes for it to warm up before driving off&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;I also heard that this only applies to engines that include a turbo intercooler of some sort.  Is there any scientific data that backs this? What are the actual problems (if any) of not doing this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10646" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-01-14T13:09:17.057" LastActivityDate="2015-01-14T13:49:14.687" Title="Do I need to wait for my car to warm up before driving off?" Tags="|road-vehicles|technology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-01-14T13:46:26.293" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26416" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26464" CreationDate="2015-01-14T13:00:57.273" Score="12" ViewCount="927" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some support that driving while under the influence of marijuana is safer than driving when drunk, saying that people who drive high always drive at slower speeds so even if they cause an accident, it's a much safer one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has any research been done on this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://seattletimes.com/html/nationworld/2022939165_marijuanaimpairmentxml.html&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence suggests we may not have as much to fear from stoned driving as from drunken driving. Some researchers say that limited resources are better applied to continuing to reduce drunken driving. Stoned driving, they say, is simply less dangerous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much of this is true? What evidence exists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10646" LastEditorUserId="7286" LastEditDate="2015-01-14T20:55:45.810" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T16:46:18.547" Title="Is driving stoned safer than driving drunk?" Tags="|road-vehicles|safety|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26418" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3430" CreationDate="2015-01-14T16:43:01.920" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The literature on this goes back to the original Whitney &amp;amp; Mehlhaff paper, which studied &amp;quot;the traumatic injuries sustained by any animal falling from a substantial height.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whitney, Wayne O., Cheryl J. Mehlhaff, &lt;em&gt;High-rise Syndrome in Cats&lt;/em&gt;, JAVMA, Vol. 191, No.11, PP. 1309-1403, 12/1/87.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study documents injuries and outcomes in 132 cats that had fallen two or more stories and were taken to the authors (New York City veterinarians) for treatment.  Its main objective is to explain why and how most of these cats survived and to describe the nature of their injuries.  The authors were surprised at one observation and speculated as to its reason:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... the rate of injury was approximately linear up to a distance fallen of approximately 7 stories.  Surprisingly, these injury rates did not continue to increase with falls of &amp;gt;7 stories, and the fracture rate decreased. ... A possible explanation for this phenomenon ... is ... during free fall, cats have a unique ability to quickly minimize postural torque, rotation, and tumbling to maintain a feet-first landing position.   An averaged-sized (4-kg), horizontally outstretched cat maximizes drag and achieves a terminal velocity of approximately 60 mph after falling approximately 5 stories.  Cats falling from higher heights do not accelerate beyond this speed, but continue to fall at terminal velocity.   It was surprising, however, that the fracture rate decreased in cats falling &amp;gt;7 floors.  To explain this, we speculate that until a cat achieves terminal velocity it experiences acceleration and reflexively extends its limbs, making them more prone to injury.  After terminal velocity has been reached, however, ... the cat might relax and orient its limbs more horizontally, much like a flying squirrel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There exists a far better explanation&lt;/strong&gt; and it requires no such (wholesale) speculation: &lt;em&gt;the cats treated by veterinarians are not representative of cats who fall out of buildings.&lt;/em&gt;  There is a high likelihood of a blatant &lt;em&gt;selection bias&lt;/em&gt;: cats who fell but were uninjured were not admitted to this study; cats who fell, were injured, and survived had good chances of entering the study; and cats who wound up as bloody smears on the sidewalk would never have appeared.  This alone casts doubt on all general conclusions about &amp;quot;high-rise syndrome&amp;quot; based on this study (and comparable subsequent ones).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further evidence in support of this explanation is the authors' observation &lt;em&gt;en passant&lt;/em&gt; that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The syndrome is seen predominantly in young cats...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These would have the greatest chances of survival among the general cat population.  Older cats who fell generally didn't make it to the vets' office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the obvious physical relationship between height of fall and shock of impact, we can therefore predict that the cats in this study who fell more than a few stories were the lucky ones, not the typical ones.  &lt;strong&gt;Thus, there is no valid way to draw conclusions from trends seen in this study to any actual phenomenon.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both this and a subsequent study report 90% survival.  This, of course, is the survival rate among the cats who did not die before reaching the vet.  (Kapatkin, Amy S., David T. Matthiesen, &lt;em&gt;Feline High-Rise Syndrome,&lt;/em&gt; Compendium for Continuing Education, Vol. 13, No. 9, pp. 1389-1403, 9/91.)  What should we conclude from this?  Only that if you can get your injured cat alive to the vet within a couple of hours after its fall, it will have excellent chances of living due to the vet's skills in emergency diagnosis and treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The only conclusion about high-rise syndrome that can be supported by this evidence&lt;/strong&gt; is that cats &lt;em&gt;who survive the veterinarian's treatment&lt;/em&gt; could have fallen from practically any height.  The other conclusions that people have drawn--the &amp;quot;parachute&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;flying squirrel&amp;quot; theories, that cats will survive falls from any height, etc.--are not supported by this study (nor by any followup studies I had been able to locate in 2006 when I investigated this matter).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Afterward&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Depending on your mood, you may find it either amusing or disheartening that pure speculation can quickly enter textbooks as received fact.  A popular and well-respected physics textbook (Halliday, Resnick, and Walker, &lt;em&gt;Fundamentals of Physics&lt;/em&gt;, 7th Edition, Part I, p. 123.  J. Wiley &amp;amp; Sons, 2005) not only incorporates the Whitney &amp;amp; Mehlhaff explanation wholesale, it amplifies it and makes it more plausible by adding details that nobody could possibly have observed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to calculations, ... a cat must fall about six floors to reach terminal speed.  Until it does so, [the gravitational force exceeds the drag force] and the cat accelerates downward because of the net downward force.  ... Because the cat also senses the acceleration, it is frightened and keeps its feet underneath its body, its head tucked in, and its spine bent upward, making [the effective cross-sectional area of its body] small, [the terminal velocity] large, and injury likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if the cat does reach [the terminal velocity] during a longer fall, the acceleration vanishes and the cat relaxes somewhat, stretching its legs and neck horizontally outward and straightening its spine (it then resembles a flying squirrel).  These actions increase [the effective cross-sectional area of its body] and thus also, by [the drag coefficient equation], the drag.  The cat begins to slow because now [the drag force exceeds the gravitational acceleration] (the net force is upward), until a new, smaller [terminal velocity] is reached.  The decrease in [the terminal velocity] reduces the possibility of serious injury on landing.  Just before the end of the fall, when it sees it is nearing the ground, the cat pulls its legs back beneath its body to prepare for the landing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a good story, but it's merely a statement of faith, not science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24698" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-10-28T13:21:51.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26421" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-14T21:51:27.813" Score="3" ViewCount="436" Body="&lt;p&gt;Potential first-aiders can be afraid to adminster CPR, over fear of being sued for damages (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2013/03/bakersfield_cpr_denial_can_you_be_sued_for_performing_cpr.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ref 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/news/10260905.CPR__debunking_some_myths/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ref 2&lt;/a&gt; &quot;many people are put off [..] for fear of [..] getting sued&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been such cases of people in the USA receiving CPR and suing the first aider who administered CPR? If so, what was the outcome?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24726" LastEditorUserId="22504" LastEditDate="2015-01-15T11:19:01.613" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T11:19:01.613" Title="Have there been US legal cases where CPR patients sued their savior?" Tags="|medical-science|lawsuits|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="12" ClosedDate="2015-01-14T22:26:34.577" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26422" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26428" CreationDate="2015-01-14T23:33:04.230" Score="6" ViewCount="961" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/ShujaRabbani/status/553441299051732993&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;@ShujaRabbani&lt;/a&gt; (9 January 2015, 528 retweets, 467 favorites)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If France wants to prove her honesty in believing in their 'Freedom',&#xA;  show us that you will not force Muslim women to take off their scarves&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/saladinahmed/status/553028656634032128&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Saladin Ahmed&lt;/a&gt; (8 January 2015, 2976 retweets, 2495 favorites)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;These savages need to learn that free expression is sacred in the&#xA;  west!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That must be why Muslim women in France can't wear headscarves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/BreshnaAfghan/status/553993632932720640&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;@BreshnaAfghan&lt;/a&gt; (11 January 2015, 76 retweets, 58 favorites)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;it's about freedom of expression in France&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wait a minute, the same France which has banned the hijab?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;#&lt;/code&gt;FrancetheHypocrisy&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;code&gt;#&lt;/code&gt;CharlieHebdo”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are Muslim headscarves banned in France?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T04:18:33.633" Title="Are Muslim headscarves banned in France?" Tags="|islam|clothing|france|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26423" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-15T01:08:05.577" Score="5" ViewCount="390" Body="&lt;p&gt;Acupuncturist and author, Esther Gokhale promotes (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1luKAS_Xcg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TEDx Talk&lt;/a&gt;) the &lt;a href=&quot;http://gokhalemethod.com/gokhale-method&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Gokhale Method&lt;/a&gt; for preventing back-pain by adopting encouraging better posture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Gokhale Method uses healthy posture and movement to help you regain your structural integrity and regain a pain-free life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We can re-learn what we once knew:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Our ancestors knew how to move without pain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Babies know how to move without pain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Some cultures still know how to move without pain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The web-site promises to help with a range of problems, including lower back pain, knee pain, neck pain, bursitis, headaches, RSI, sciatica, scoliosis, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is apparently based on the observation that indigenous people do not suffer back pain, but carry themselves in a posture with a &quot;j-shaped spine&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that the Gokhale Method improves any of the listed problems?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-19T12:01:37.557" LastActivityDate="2015-11-19T12:01:37.557" Title="Does the Gokhale Method improve spine-related medical conditions?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26422" CreationDate="2015-01-15T01:57:27.187" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr/13/ta/ta0524.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the following law&lt;/a&gt; (the subject of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt;) which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nul ne peut, dans l’espace public, porter une tenue destinée à dissimuler son visage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pour l’application de l’article 1er, l’espace public est constitué des voies publiques ainsi que des lieux ouverts au public ou affectés à un service public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;L’interdiction prévue à l’article 1er ne s’applique pas si la tenue est prescrite ou autorisée par des dispositions législatives ou réglementaires, si elle est justifiée par des raisons de santé ou des motifs professionnels, ou si elle s’inscrit dans le cadre de pratiques sportives, de fêtes ou de manifestations artistiques ou traditionnelles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No-one can, in public, wear clothing intended to hide their face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;In public&amp;quot; means on public roads, in places open to the public or for a public service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This interdiction doesn't apply if the clothing is prescribed or authorized by legislation, if it's justified for health reasons or professional motives, or in the context of sportive practices, festivals, or artistic or traditional shows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/societe/20140701.OBS2253/la-cedh-va-trancher-sur-l-interdiction-du-voile-integral-en-france.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In 2014 a test case before the European Court of Human Rights ruled to allow this law&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;La Cour admet qu'il y a une &amp;quot;ingérence permanente&amp;quot; de la France dans l'exercice des droits que [sic] la requérante, mais que cette ingérence poursuit deux des buts légitimes énumérés dans les articles 8 et 9 : la&#xA;&amp;quot;sécurité&amp;quot; ou la &amp;quot;sûreté&amp;quot; publiques, et la &amp;quot;protection des droits et libertés d'autrui&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The court admits that there's a &amp;quot;permanent intrusion&amp;quot; of the French state into the exercise of the plaintiff's rights, but that this intrusion pursues two of the legitimate goals enumerated in articles 8 and 9: the public &amp;quot;security&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;safety&amp;quot;, and the &amp;quot;protection of the rights and liberties of others&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T02:04:00.253" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26426" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-15T03:17:10.110" Score="4" ViewCount="559" Body="&lt;p&gt;The New South Wales state government's Health department has a fact sheet about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/Infectious/factsheets/Pages/Lyme_disease.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lyme disease&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lyme disease is caused by the bacterium &lt;em&gt;Borrelia burgdorferi&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Typical symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, sore muscles and joints, and a characteristic skin rash called erythema migrans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although locally-acquired Lyme borreliosis cannot be ruled out, there is little evidence that it occurs in Australia. There is a continuing risk of overseas-acquired Lyme disease being imported into NSW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The web-site provides no references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sydneylymeclinic.com/lyme-disease/lyme-in-australia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sydney Lyme Clinic&lt;/a&gt; claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite the ever-growing evidence of Lyme disease infections contracted within Australia, the existence of Lyme disease bacteria in Australian ticks is denied by the NSW Government. All other governments in Australia have a broader view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to provide references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comments on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/14548/does-chronic-lyme-exist&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; suggest the threat of Lyme disease attracts quacks, making me unsure who to trust.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an existing risk of contracting locally-acquired Lyme disease within Australia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2019-04-21T06:59:48.567" Title="Is Lyme Disease endemic in Australia?" Tags="|medical-science|australia|disease|epidemiology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22956" CreationDate="2015-01-15T03:23:23.023" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll attempt to answer this in accordance with the meta post &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2198/how-should-unfalsifiable-claims-be-handled&quot;&gt;How should unfalsifiable claims be handled?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bobson pointed out &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5158972/Starlite-the-nuclear-blast-defying-plastic-that-could-change-the-world.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an interesting article&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;em&gt;The Telegraph&lt;/em&gt; entitled &quot;Starlite, the nuclear blast-defying plastic that could change the world.&quot; The article heavily relies on Ward's metaphorical testimony on the issue, and does not cite sources, although it appears to be comprehensive. All quotes here are from that article unless otherwise stated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article claims that three tests were made by reliable government bodies, two in Britain and one in the United States. I have not been able to confirm that any ever took place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article says in several places that the British military was doing tests on the material. Apparently,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The defence establishment was watching. In July that year, Ward was invited to the British Atomic Weapons Establishment at Foulness, and the egg went nuclear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, then, the AWE should have some information on it, right?  Well, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awe.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;their website&lt;/a&gt; is rather user-friendly. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awe.co.uk/search/?q=starlite&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a search&lt;/a&gt; for &quot;starlite&quot; turns up empty. However, they have a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awe.co.uk/document-library/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;document library&lt;/a&gt; . . . which is also full of null results. In that library, there is a pdf for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awe.co.uk/app/uploads/2014/10/Historical-documents.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;historical documents&lt;/a&gt;. It lists various types of files that may be released. The supposed tests were in 1990; there are only a handful of file types that cover that year, and none are to be found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was another series of tests done in 1993 at a different location:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In tests at the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment in Malvern, Starlite was pulsed with lasers that would normally have burned through polymer. Instead, as Pohling-Brown reported in a widely-read article in International Defence Review in 1993, 'Starlite showed little damage to the surface, merely small pits with the approximate diameter of the beam and with little evidence of melting.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, according to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Signals_and_Radar_Establishment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, RSRE no longer &lt;em&gt;existed&lt;/em&gt; in 1993. At that point, it became part of the Defence Research Agency. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/record?catid=120&amp;amp;catln=2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;British National Archives&lt;/a&gt; supposedly have records of the RSRE. However, those only lead up to 1991. After that, no information is accessible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The DRA does not appear to have a public website, so next I went to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-defence&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Ministry of Defence&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/search?q=starlite&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A search&lt;/a&gt; for &quot;starlite&quot; yielded one article featuring the word &quot;starlit.&quot; Not promising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I then tried &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.janes.com/magazines/ihs-janes-international-defence-review&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;International Defence Review&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.janes.com/article/search?query=starlite&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another search&lt;/a&gt; for &quot;starlite&quot; turned up only results for something &lt;em&gt;else&lt;/em&gt; named &quot;starlite.&quot; Furthermore, the magazine is &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; peer-reviewed, and the article would &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have been written by those who actually carried out the tests. I sincerely doubt its reliability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, there could very well be classified records of the experiments. Yet in the article, Ward said,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'They'd been trying to get something to withstand a nuclear flash for 45 years, and we did it in five minutes.' Ward was reluctant to take part at first. 'I was happy with my egg. It was just a challenge and I didn't want to lose.' This was a different league. Starlite-coated eggs were subjected to light-energy sources that simulated a nuclear flash, equivalent to a temperature of 10,000 C. 'They did it twice and it was still there. Charred, but intact.' The Foulness equipment couldn't keep up. 'I said to one scientist, &quot;Are we doing all right?&quot;, and he burst out laughing. He said, &quot;Normally, we do a test every couple of hours because we have to wait for it to cool down. We're doing it every 10 minutes, and it's sat there laughing at us.&quot;'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the project was so top-secret, there's no way Ward would have been allowed to tell anyone that; &lt;em&gt;The Telegraph&lt;/em&gt; would not have been allowed to publish - I'm guessing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ward also talks about Professor Keith Lewis, who was involved in some of the tests and reportedly told Ward &quot;that it [starlite] does all sorts of things.&quot; I have not been able to find anything on Lewis - his university affiliation, his government involvement, or any other details. Searches for the quote lead back to this article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, NASA was involved:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In June 1991, a sample was sent to White Sands atomic weapons testing site in New Mexico, in the care of the SAS, and subjected to a simulated nuclear onslaught. 'It was classed as the biggest bang in town. I've seen a video [on which] it shredded forest to sawdust, rolled some tanks around, stripped an aircraft into pieces.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more interestingly,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;spokesman Rudi Narangor revealing that 'We have done a lot of evaluation and … we know all the tremendous possibilities that this material has.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote has nothing to back it up. &lt;a href=&quot;http://nasasearch.nasa.gov/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&amp;amp;sc=0&amp;amp;query=narangor&amp;amp;m=&amp;amp;affiliate=nasa&amp;amp;commit=Search&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A search on NASA&lt;/a&gt; for &quot;Narangor&quot; yields nothing . . . because the name is actually &quot;Naranjor.&quot; Searches for this turn of no results. I'm inclined to believe that if the test ever took place, the results are classified . . . which doesn't explain Naranjor and his quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P_s pointed out &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.muckrock.com/foi/united-states-of-america-10/documents-related-to-the-fire-resistant-material-starlite-14709/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a document request&lt;/a&gt; made to NASA by Michael Anthony Greshko. In it, he asks for documents relating to starlite, Ward and Naranjor. In return, he received two replies from Judi Hoolingsworth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://muckrock.s3.amazonaws.com/foia_files/15-HQ-F-00176.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The first&lt;/a&gt; includes this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, Rudi Naranjor is no longer employed by NASA and Headquarters email records from either time period you requested do not exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://muckrock.s3.amazonaws.com/foia_files/15-MSFC-F-00191_initial_determination.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The second&lt;/a&gt; is along the same lines. No documents related to Naranjor or that supposed test are accessible to the public. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.invivovision.com/staff_naranjo.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt;, though appears to be Naranjo, but the page is &quot;In Memory of a friend.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am by no means an expert, and so just because I was unable to find anything doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. But there is nothing in the public records of &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; of the agencies that supposedly tested starlite, which is suspicious. I would actually be very surprised if anything about those tests in &lt;em&gt;The Telegraph&lt;/em&gt; was true, because it seems ridiculous that governments would allow something as valuable as this become public. But that's merely opinion. The facts seem to be nonexistent here, and so it appears that starlite has not been tested by a reliable independent, outside source, or that any of the claims made by Ward in the article are true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim about the AWE laser test seemed at first to be referring to their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awe.co.uk/what-we-do/science-engineering-technology/orion-laser-facility/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Orion laser facility&lt;/a&gt;. The article claims that starlite was tested at 10,000 degrees Celsius. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awe.co.uk/app/uploads/2014/07/ORION-Fact_Sheet.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Orion&lt;/a&gt; has a capacity of 10 million degrees (I'm guessing that's in Celsius, too, but that's huge on any scale). &lt;em&gt;However&lt;/em&gt;, the AWE also mentions the HELEN laser, which was operational for 25 years and was possibly used in the experiment described. Indeed, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iwpctm.org/proceedings/IWPCTM5/papers/Oades_Goldsack_etal.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; from 1996 indicates that HELEN was operational in 1991 and was most likely the one used. &lt;a href=&quot;http://johnabelling.webspace.virginmedia.com/flyers_past/flyers_2007_q4/AWE.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; notes that HELEN can achieve temperatures in excess of 100eV, which, using &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronvolt#Temperature&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; conversion, is well over 10,000 degrees Celsius. It appears, therefore, that the claimed temperature was achievable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have yet to find information about the alleged RSRE laser.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:58.097" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T19:31:29.117" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26428" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26422" CreationDate="2015-01-15T03:26:13.647" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim isn't accurate - you won't be prosecuted for wearing a headscarf in public. However, it might be a misinterpretation or conflation of one or two things that do exist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering&quot;&gt;French ban on face covering&lt;/a&gt;. This prohibits the wearing of clothing that entirely covers the face, unless there is a specific reason for it. The stated rationale is not to do with religion, but security and social interaction. This ban does not apply to clothing that is on the head, but does not cover the face. As such, a religious headscarf would not be banned, though a burqa would be.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_law_on_secularity_and_conspicuous_religious_symbols_in_schools&quot;&gt;French law on secularity and conspicuous religious symbols in schools&lt;/a&gt;. This applies to French public (government operated) schools, and bans &quot;conspicuous&quot; religious symbols. This does include religious headscarves. However, the ban, at least in theory, applies to symbols of many religions, not just those of Islam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2015-01-15T04:18:33.633" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T04:18:33.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26429" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-15T04:50:40.287" Score="17" ViewCount="1720" Body="&lt;p&gt;An article at mercola.com entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/06/17/measles-vaccine-failure.aspx#_edn5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Outspoken Vaccine Advocate States Measles Vaccine Can't Prevent Measles Outbreaks&lt;/a&gt; makes the claim that (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because &lt;strong&gt;vaccine antibodies are different from naturally acquired measles antibodies&lt;/strong&gt;, young vaccinated moms today cannot give longer lasting naturally acquired measles antibodies to their newborns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For that sentence, it cites an editorial from the Vaccine Journal, entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardjennersociety.org/wp-content/uploads/The-re-emergence-of-measles1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The re-emergence of measles in developed countries: Time to develop the next-generation measles vaccine?&lt;/a&gt;, but that article doesn't appear to mention anything about natural versus vaccine antibodies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, please put aside all of the other issues in the pro/anti-vaccine debate, and help me find an answer to this specific claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any difference between vaccine antibodies and naturally acquired antibodies, specifically for the measles?  If no data on the measles is available, general data on other antibodies will be an acceptable proxy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2017-03-03T10:22:18.617" LastActivityDate="2018-05-21T15:48:23.003" Title="Are vaccine antibodies different than natural antibodies?" Tags="|biology|vaccines|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26431" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="39811" CreationDate="2015-01-15T10:27:08.407" Score="2" ViewCount="782" Body="&lt;p&gt;A work colleague has been taking Okra to treat his type 2 diabetes. There are many article over the internet claiming the benefits of Okra for the treatment of diabetes, including (but not limited to) a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/medical/homecure/okra.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Snopes article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is a bit of truth to this claim in the sense that okra (also known as lady's finger, bendi, and gombo) does possess some anti-diabetic properties, namely that the viscosity of okra's carbohydrates helps to slow the uptake of sugar into the blood by reducing the rate at which sugar is absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, I've been completely unable to find any attempt at actual research trials. Even the Snopes article references two books and a newspaper article (non-primary sources).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure that I might not be looking at this from the wrong angle. Is there any evidence that Okra is an effective treatment for diabetes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21537" LastEditorUserId="21537" LastEditDate="2015-01-15T12:01:29.867" LastActivityDate="2017-10-24T13:54:00.003" Title="Can Okra treat Diabetes?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|healthcare|diabetes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26432" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22430" CreationDate="2015-01-15T11:10:05.667" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a bit of a stretch. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fema.gov/media-library-data/20130726-1622-20490-0781/thunderstormsfactsheet_finalrev2_5_07.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FEMA describes&lt;/a&gt; most of that advice as a last resort: &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you feel a tingle, and you are in the open, &lt;em&gt;then&lt;/em&gt; assume that position, meant to minimize damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, FEMA and all other sources that I've seen clearly spell out that you need to find shelter, and that's the best way to ensure your safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you feel your hair stand on end (which implies that lightning is about to strike), squat low to the ground on&#xA;the balls of your feet. Place your hands over your ears and your head between your knees. Make yourself the&#xA;smallest target possible and minimize your contact with the ground. DO NOT lie flat on the ground.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ready.gov/thunderstorms-lightning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ready.gov&lt;/a&gt; agrees:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;During Thunderstorms and Lightning&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If thunderstorm and lightning are occurring in your area, you should:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Avoid hilltops, open fields, the beach or a boat on the water.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Take shelter in a sturdy building. Avoid isolated sheds or other small structures in open areas.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good summary on how to survive a lightning storm is provided by [Live Science]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;How to survive a lightning strike&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best way to survive, of course, is to avoid a lightning strike.&#xA;The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) recommends people&#xA;follow the 30/30 rule: If, after seeing lightning, you can't count to&#xA;30 before hearing thunder, get inside a building immediately (because&#xA;the lightning storm is close). And don't go outside until 30 minutes&#xA;after the last clap of thunder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're caught outdoors in a forest during a lightning storm, seek&#xA;shelter in a low area under a dense growth of small trees. Avoid tall&#xA;trees, since lightning tends to strike the tallest object in an area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you're in an open area, go to a low area, like a valley or a ravine&#xA;(but be alert for flash floods). If you're in a boat in open water,&#xA;get to land as quickly as possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if you feel your hair stand on end, that means lightning is about&#xA;to strike. &lt;em&gt;As a last resort, immediately squat down on the balls of&#xA;your feet, cover your ears with your hands (to minimize hearing loss)&#xA;and put your head between your knees.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(my &lt;em&gt;emphasis&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/38313-how-to-survive-a-lightning-strike.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Survive a Lightning Strike&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T11:10:05.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8580" CreationDate="2015-01-15T11:24:38.133" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Likely not (beyond the normal static shock associated with rubber conveyor belts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can bring two pieces of evidence I find convincing even though not as definitive as a full blown experiment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This video which shows a Kindle safely going through an X-Ray machine at an airport without damage: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBg_5G2YEDg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBg_5G2YEDg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The expert opinion of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-cape.eng.cam.ac.uk/people/daping-chu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Professor Daping Chu&lt;/a&gt;, Head of the Photonics &amp;amp; Sensors Group in the Electrical Engineering Division, Cambridge University Engineering Department.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I don’t think the radiation used in an airport scanner would ever be strong enough to damage an electronic ink display,” said Professor Daping Chu, Chairman of the University of Cambridge centre for Advanced Photonics. &quot;But you can get a build up of static inside these machines, caused by the rubber belt rubbing. If that charge were to pass through a Kindle, it’s conceivable that it could damage the screen.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/amazon/8900034/Amazon-Kindles-damaged-by-airport-scanners.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Amazon Kindles 'damaged by airport scanners' -- The Telegraph&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T11:24:38.133" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6133" CreationDate="2015-01-15T11:45:03.737" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a scientifically studied, yet not fully explained phenomenon which affects around 2% of population around specific foci. There's is a good review of studies on low frequency noise which dedicates a full chapter to &amp;quot;The HUM&amp;quot; and its effect&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;11&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The HUM&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;11.1 Occurrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Hum is the name given to a low frequency noise which is causing persistent complaints, but often cannot be traced to&#xA;a single, or any, source. If a source is located, the problem moves&#xA;into the category of engineering noise control and is no longer &amp;quot;the&#xA;Hum&amp;quot;, although there may be a long period between first complaint and&#xA;final solution. The Hum is widespread, affecting scattered&#xA;individuals, but periodically a Hum focus arises where there are&#xA;multiple complaints within a town or area. There has been the Bristol&#xA;Hum (England), Largs Hum (Scotland), Copenhagen Hum (Denmark),&#xA;Vancouver Hum (Canada), Taos Hum (New Mexico USA), Kokomo Hum (Indiana&#xA;USA) etc. A feature of these Hums is that they have been publicised in&#xA;local and national press, so gathering a momentum which otherwise&#xA;might not have occurred.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://westminsterresearch.wmin.ac.uk/4141/1/Benton_2003.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Review of Published Research on  Low Frequency Noise and its Effects&lt;/a&gt; -- Report for Defra by Dr Geoff Leventhall&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to answer your question: yes, there is a scientifically known phenomenon called the &amp;quot;Taos HUM&amp;quot;, but it is not necessarily a real sound -- it is only measured by its health consequences, which are certainly real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T11:45:03.737" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26436" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26463" CreationDate="2015-01-15T18:45:24.573" Score="7" ViewCount="1120" Body="&lt;p&gt;I thought small dogs lived longer than large dogs, then I stumbled on this &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/5702/417&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt; about heart beats and longevity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the following table:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gEbwP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Large dogs are said to live longer than small dogs. Which is contrary to some beliefs, like in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pethealthnetwork.com/dog-health/dog-checkups-preventive-care/do-small-dogs-live-longer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So who is right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="417" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2015-01-18T16:39:12.283" Title="Do small dogs live longer than large dogs?" Tags="|zoology|life-expectancy|dogs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26350" CreationDate="2015-01-15T20:00:22.970" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason why the OP posted was, &amp;quot;Since I could not find the source of this statement&amp;quot;, and the OP only wants to know whether the policy exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a quote from a more recent article, published by the New York Times:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/14/world/europe/new-charlie-hebdo-has-muhammad-cartoon.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Charlie Hebdo’s Defiant Muhammad Cover Fuels Debate on Free Speech&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some American newspapers, including The New York Times, did not reproduce the Charlie Hedbo cartoons that mocked Islam. &lt;strong&gt;The Times called the decision an editorial judgment that reflected its standards for content that is deemed offensive and gratuitous.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The decision drew criticism from some free-speech advocates who called it cowardly in the face of a terrorist attack, which the newspaper disputed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Actually, we have republished some of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, including a caricature of the head of ISIS, as well as some political cartoons,” Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement. “&lt;strong&gt;We do not normally publish images or other material deliberately intended to offend religious sensibilities&lt;/strong&gt;.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is exactly the same text as quoted in the OP;&#xA;what makes this a legitimate answer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's attributed (i.e. to &amp;quot;Dean Baquet, executive editor of The Times&amp;quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's published on the web site of the NY Times itself (instead of in a blog of the Washington Post)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T21:51:57.673" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7287" CreationDate="2015-01-15T21:20:53.557" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question reminded me of the xkcd &lt;a href=&quot;http://what-if.xkcd.com/35/&quot;&gt;what-if post&lt;/a&gt; which mentions that &quot;If an unused charger isn’t warm to the touch, it’s using less than a penny of electricity a day&quot;, but without references. Searching more I found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/Frugal/comments/19pyin/dont_bother_unplugging_unused_chargers_to_save/&quot;&gt;reddit thread&lt;/a&gt; following the xkcd post, which has lots of links, including to pages &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.withouthotair.com/c11/page_68.shtml&quot;&gt;68&lt;/a&gt; and on of the free (Creative Commons) book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.withouthotair.com/&quot;&gt;&quot;Sustainable Energy—without the hot air&quot;&lt;/a&gt;[1], which was already linked to in a comment by Benjol on this thread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Page 72 of the book mentions the study &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=4218757&quot;&gt;Calorimetry for power conversion in mobile telephone chargers&lt;/a&gt;[2] conducted in the University of Cambridge used calorimetry and found power consumption of &lt;strong&gt;0.472W&lt;/strong&gt;, and thus approximately &lt;strong&gt;0.011kWh per day&lt;/strong&gt; in a popular Nokia charger, and similar results for other chargers. A follow-up study was performed a few years later &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1282814&quot;&gt;&quot;Precision Calorimetry for the Accurate Measurement of Losses in Power Electronic Devices&quot;&lt;/a&gt;[3] that validated the methods used in the original study, and actually cites &quot;Sustainable Energy—Without the Hot Air&quot; as a reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] MacKay, David JC. &quot;Sustainable Energy—Without the Hot Air, 2008-Dec 2. Cambridge (UK): UIT.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[2] Weier, S., and R. A. McMahon. &quot;Calorimetry for power conversion in mobile telephone chargers.&quot; In Universities Power Engineering Conference, 2007. UPEC 2007. 42nd International, pp. 986-991. IEEE, 2007.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3] Weier, Sven, Mohsin A. Shafi, and Richard McMahon. &quot;Precision calorimetry for the accurate measurement of losses in power electronic devices.&quot; Industry Applications, IEEE Transactions on 46, no. 1 (2010): 278-284.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14467" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T21:20:53.557" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26439" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-15T22:07:09.913" Score="7" ViewCount="316" Body="&lt;p&gt;An often recited quip, both in my home and in popular culture, is &quot;They don't make them like they used to.&quot; Most recently, the quote was brought up when our refrigerator stopped dispensing filtered water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there data to back up the claim that quality (as measured by longevity) in refrigerators has decreased over time, from the 1960s to the 2010s?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24740" LastEditorUserId="24740" LastEditDate="2015-01-16T02:37:06.140" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T08:36:01.523" Title="Have refrigerators become less reliable over time?" Tags="|engineering|machines|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-15T23:31:08.637" Score="5" ViewCount="596" Body="&lt;p&gt;On the show Real Time with Bill Maher (Jan 9, 2015), Jay Leno (a guy that seems knowledgeable about cars) made this very interesting statement 37 minutes in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A 1977 Ford Galaxy, one of those big ones. Park it on the street, with the engine off...pollutes more than a Ford Fusion going down the road at 60 miles an hour.[...]Because A) the gas tank is [unclear part] vented, closed, so it just goes to atmosphere. The plastic used, ever notice old cars when they sit in the sun, the windshield gets all clouded up, and it's grease because it's gas, it's toxic gas, coming off the plastics and the oil used to make that. They don't use any of that anymore.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Transcription was made by myself so you'll have to bear with it. We could probably compare a car from the 70s versus a recent one.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone have any source for such a statement? Maybe some numbers backing this statement. I assume that Jay Leno didn't consider the manufacturing of the new car or the recycling of the old one, so that part can be ignored. I would assume one could only consider atmospheric pollution. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24616" LastActivityDate="2015-01-15T23:31:08.637" Title="Does an old car with engine turned off pollute more than a new car going 60 mph?" Tags="|road-vehicles|quotes|pollution|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2015-01-16T23:59:17.363" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26441" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26426" CreationDate="2015-01-16T02:20:53.723" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR: Yes, Lyme disease exists in and can be contracted in Australia. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lymedisease.org.au&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lyme Disease Association of Australia (LDAA)&lt;/a&gt; performed a study of 224 cases of Lyme disease in Austalia. Many of those are suspected to have contracted the disease overseas, but 25% had never left Australia prior to contracting the disease(1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is from their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lymedisease.org.au/about-lyme-disease/myths-surrounding-lyme-disease-in-australia/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lyme Disease Myths web page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The misconception that Lyme disease does not exist in Australia is&#xA;  based on a study in 1994 by Russell and Doggett (Richard C. Russell, Stephen L. Doggett).  There were numerous&#xA;  problems with this study and it’s methodology, which are the focus of&#xA;  an upcoming article in the Medical Journal of Australia.  By contrast&#xA;  Willis was able to identify the bacteria that causes Lyme Disease in&#xA;  Australian ticks in 1995.  In addition to this Carly and Pope found an&#xA;  Australian strain of Borrelia, Borrelia Queenslandica in 1962. A 1959&#xA;  study by Mackerras isolated Borrelia on Australian fauna – kangaroos,&#xA;  wallabies and bandicoots, this was also omitted.  Adding to this is&#xA;  the fact that a large number of diagnosed Lyme Disease patients in&#xA;  Australia have never travelled out of Australia.  More study&#xA;  desperately needs to be done on Lyme Disease in Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&#xA;1.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lymedisease.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/ldaa-lyme-disease-_australian-patient-experience-in-2012-22nov12.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lyme Disease Patient Experience 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="5487" LastEditDate="2015-01-16T02:59:54.733" LastActivityDate="2015-01-16T02:59:54.733" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26442" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26429" CreationDate="2015-01-16T02:41:52.343" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Natural vs &quot;Artificial&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All vaccines contain the same components as a &quot;natural&quot; infection, immunologically speaking: either a virus (killed or weakened); or a weakened bacterial toxin (toxoid); or the antigen-bearing part of the virus/bacterium (subunit); or a poor antigen attached to a carrier protein (conjugate)&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/conversations/downloads/vacsafe-understand-color-office.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vaccines.gov/basics/types/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;. This is because of the way the immune system works and because the purpose of a vaccine is to teach the body's own immune system to detect threats and hence eliminate them before they can lead to an infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Antibodies and lymphocytes are made by the body itself, and they are no different in &lt;em&gt;nature&lt;/em&gt; to what it would produce in the event of an infection a) because the stimulus is the same (even in an infection, the immune system responds to the antigen, not the entire organism--antigens are how the body distinguishes between self and non-self); and b) because the immune system is limited in the type of cells and antibodies it can produce. It can only produce those according to the blueprints in our DNA and they are specific to the antigen, not the vehicle/entire organism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Comparison of Immune Response&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned above, the cells are the same, the antigens are the same. That means a lymphocyte specific for a particular antigen will live for the same duration of time and function in the same way, regardless of the mode by which the immune system was exposed to the antigen. This is how we develop long-term immunity, whether by infection or by vaccination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, during an infection there are significant numbers of actively replicating/reproducing viruses or bacteria and/or a much larger quantity of toxins in the system whereas vaccines inject smaller amounts of weaker/dead organisms or antigen-bearing substances. This advantage is the body can eliminate the antigen more quickly, safely, and effectively than it can during an infection. The disadvantage, particularly in case of vaccines with killed viruses, is that the antigens are gone from the system sooner and so &lt;em&gt;relatively&lt;/em&gt; fewer memory cells are made. (Vaccines using live viruses induce a higher, longer lasting immune response because the antigens persist longer&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/immunization/documents/Elsevier_Vaccine_immunology.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.) Remember, each memory cell lasts just as long as it is naturally supposed to--there may simply be somewhat fewer of them than made during an infection. This is perfectly acceptable since the purpose of a vaccine is not to provoke a greater response to itself but to keep the immune system prepared to mount a greater and more effective/co-ordinated response to the actual threat, should the system ever come across it. This is like the difference between war and war games.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Transfer of Maternal Antibodies&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whatever the stimulus for their production, the body only makes 5 different classes of antibodies; and only 2 of these can be passed on from mother to child. The first, IgG, crosses the placental barrier while the child is in utero. These antibodies are responsible for the passive immunity that provides infants some protection up to 6-9 months of age. The other antibody, IgA, is naturally found in body secretions in varying quantities. There is a small amount of it present in breast milk, but it cannot be absorbed by the gut because human infants do not have a porous stomach lining. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Impact of Maternal Antibodies on Measles&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding measles in particular, the only information I could find was it has been noted that vaccination before passive immunity from maternal antibodies wears off (~6-9 months) may lead to the mother's antibodies inactivating the vaccine before it has a chance to induce an immune response in the virus.&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/immunization/documents/Elsevier_Vaccine_immunology.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt; There was no mention of a difference in this interaction depending on whether the mother's immunity was the result of a vaccination or an infection (keeping in mind, of course, that there is no difference in the antibodies but there may be a slight difference in memory cell/antibody levels). Other than that, there is no noted interaction between maternal antibodies and vaccinations or indeed the actual measles virus after passive immunity wanes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Further Reading/Sources:-&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.immune.org.nz/immunisation/immune-system-vaccination&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Immune System and Vaccination | Immunisation Advisory Centre&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/conversations/downloads/vacsafe-understand-color-office.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Understanding How Vaccines Work (PDF) | CDC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/immunization/documents/Elsevier_Vaccine_immunology.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vaccine Immunology (PDF) | WHO&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vaccines.gov/basics/types/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vaccine Types | Vaccines.gov&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18647" LastEditorUserId="18647" LastEditDate="2018-05-21T15:48:23.003" LastActivityDate="2018-05-21T15:48:23.003" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26429" CreationDate="2015-01-16T07:41:01.787" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;In both cases, infection and vaccination, the antibodies are generated by the body. Since the antibodies can target different epitopes and there are different types of antibodies, it is possible for the strength of the immune response to be different and the composition could be different as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article cites a paper that actually supports the statement to some degree:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Children of mothers vaccinated against measles and, possibly, rubella have lower concentrations of&#xA;  maternal antibodies and lose protection by maternal antibodies at an earlier age than children of mothers in communities&#xA;  that oppose vaccination. This increases the risk of disease transmission in highly vaccinated populations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The duration of protection&#xA;  against measles was 3.3 months for newborns in the&#xA;  general population and 5.3 months for newborns in the orthodox&#xA;  Protestant communities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/04/29/infdis.jit143.full.pdf+html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Waning of Maternal Antibodies Against Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Varicella in Communities With Contrasting Vaccination Coverage&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; Sandra Waaijenborg et al, 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They measured a difference that indicates that the vaccine-induced protection is not as long-lasting in newborns. They also speculate about the reason for this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most&#xA;  likely explanation for this is that MMR vaccine induces lower&#xA;  antibody levels than natural infection with measles, mumps,&#xA;  and rubella and that antibody levels of vaccinated cohorts are&#xA;  no longer boosted by exposure to wild-type infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even though this particular aspect is correct, it doesn't support the conclusion of the  mercola.com article. Just because the vaccine isn't perfect doesn't mean that it is useless. The conclusion from the cited article is that the vaccine schedule must be adapted to protect newborns, not that vaccines are useless. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a reminder on the danger of the measles, and the benefit of the vaccine I'll just quote from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwardjennersociety.org/wp-content/uploads/The-re-emergence-of-measles1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the article in Vaccine&lt;/a&gt; you linked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just a decade ago, in 2000, measles killed&#xA;  an estimated 777,000 people a year worldwide. In 2010, measles&#xA;  killed only 160,000 worldwide—a testament to widespread use of&#xA;  vaccine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5" LastEditorUserId="26675" LastEditDate="2017-03-03T12:53:01.130" LastActivityDate="2017-03-03T12:53:01.130" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26447" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28103" CreationDate="2015-01-16T17:46:13.153" Score="17" ViewCount="15256" Body="&lt;p&gt;Robert &quot;Two Eagles&quot; Green of the (reorganised) &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patawomeck&quot;&gt;Patawomeck&lt;/a&gt; Native American tribe is widely quoted with a joked about progress:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/article/where-the-white-man-went-wrong&quot;&gt;Where the white man went wrong&lt;/a&gt;, Examiner, 2012&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Indian Chief, “Two Eagles,” was asked by a white government official, “You have observed the white man for 90 years. You’ve seen his wars and his technological advances. You’ve seen his progress, and the damage he’s done.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Chief nodded in agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The official continued, “Considering all these events, in your opinion, where did the white man go wrong?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Chief stared at the government official for over a minute and then calmly replied. “When white man find land, Indians running it. No taxes, No debt, Plenty buffalo, Plenty beaver, Clean Water; Women did all the work, Medicine man free. Indian man spend all day hunting and fishing; All night having sex.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then the chief leaned back and smiled. “Only white man dumb enough to think he can improve system like that.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;examiner.com mentions that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even though Two Eagles was well known enough to be interviewed for a 2005 movie, &quot;The New World&quot; and for the “Conversations with Crazy Horse” web book and audio book combo, no biographies for this chief exist online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a genuine quote from Two Eagles?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15511" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-01-17T01:10:20.643" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T12:28:44.267" Title="Did Two Eagles tell this joke?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26450" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26454" CreationDate="2015-01-16T21:06:35.567" Score="9" ViewCount="4755" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2006/07/28/The-Age-of-Autism-Amish-bill-introduced/UPI-35321154110819/#ixzz2d2Myqlkt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This 2006 article&lt;/a&gt; - after making conjectures about autism and vaccinations suggests that autism rates &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be lower for (unvaccinated) Amish children, and offers some anecdotal evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I have not seen autism with the Amish,&amp;quot; said Dr. Frank Noonan, a family practitioner in Lancaster County, Pa., who has treated thousands of Amish for a quarter-century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You'll find all the other stuff, but we don't find the autism. We're right in the heart of Amish country and seeing none, and that's just the way it is.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article points out the conclusions of a study wouldn't prove a link between vaccination and autism, but calls for such a study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a relevant study showing that the autism is low among Amish?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="293" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T17:30:16.470" Title="Do the Amish have a lower rate of autism?" Tags="|medical-science|vaccines|autism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2015-01-17T13:15:31.703" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26454" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26450" CreationDate="2015-01-17T07:49:57.940" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;While researching this question, everything I found tied back to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2006/07/28/The-Age-of-Autism-Amish-bill-introduced/UPI-35321154110819/#ixzz2d2Myqlkt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Olmsted article&lt;/a&gt;. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish_anomaly&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's article about the &amp;quot;Amish anomaly&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; it mentions that these claims (of the Amish having a lower prevalence of autism) &amp;quot;originate primarily from columns by Dan Olmsted&amp;quot;. Rather than simply demonstrating the claim's notability, that article is actually a source of the claim. I haven't found anything that shows whether or not autism is significantly less common among the Amish, but I have found information that gives good reason to be skeptical of Olmsted's claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://factsnotfantasy.com/vaccines.php#Population_X_and_Vaccines_Autism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;The Truth About The 'Evils' Of Vaccination&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, Dan Olmsted (the author of the article you linked to) was wrong in that the Amish do vaccinate their children but may be somewhat correct about autism being less prevalent among them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pro-disease anti-vaxers claim the Amish do not vaccinate and do not have autism. This stems from a lie by Dan Olmsted from Age of Autism. The Amish do, in fact, vaccinate, and it appears that their rates of autism may be lower than in the general population (perhaps indicating a genetic root?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The link to the source of that particular claim is broken, but the name of the article in the broken link is &amp;quot;the Amish anomaly&amp;quot;. Searching for that led me to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/amishvax.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Olmsted Lied, People Laughed: The 'Amish Anomaly' hoax&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which makes Olmsted's claims seem quite dubious:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, by Olmsted’s admission, Noonan is openly a practitioner of &amp;quot;alternative medicine&amp;quot;, which makes him potentially biased. Nor is he the only source with this problem. Dick Warner, a salesman Olmsted was mocked for quoting in the June 2 article &amp;quot;A Glimpse of the Amish&amp;quot;, sold &amp;quot;natural health&amp;quot; products as well as water filters. Dr. Lawrence Leichtman, reportedly instrumental in guiding Olmsted to six Amish children with autism, was featured in the April 2005 issue of Alternative Medicine. Heng Wang, another prominently cited source, may also have &amp;quot;alternative health&amp;quot; ties: The site of his DDC clinic lists nutrition and special diets as among its services, without going into details. (The site reports that the clinic was founded on the initiative of mothers who, for unspecified reasons were unsatisfied with services at Holmes Morton’s Clinic for Special Children.) This preponderance of &amp;quot;alternative health&amp;quot; sources raises questions not only about the objectivity of the article, but also the extent of Olmstead’s personal research. This is a good point to note a comment by Kevin A. Strauss to Autism NewsBeat: &amp;quot;I don’t think he spent much time in Lancaster County.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, complaining about bias will not help address Olmsted’s claims. With regards to Noonan’s quote, I am convinced that it is in one way or another, spurious. For one thing, the listed location of his practice is a single suite, an improbably small space for treating &amp;quot;thousands&amp;quot; Amish or otherwise. For another, Noonan’s practice is not particularly accessible to the Amish. Ephrata has a well-documented Mennonite community, but I can find no reference to a directly adjacent Amish population, unless one counts the Peaceful Valley Amish Furniture store. By all indications, the Amish population is concentrated south and east, closer to Strasburg and Lancaster itself (both filming locations for Witness). Thus, it is very unlikely that Noonan ever had more than occasional contact with the Amish in a professional capacity, except possibly with a small subset of the Amish who are either relatively geographically isolated from the rest, or who prefer his practice over larger facilities closer at hand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any event, Olmsted’s claims quickly collapsed in the eyes of science and his peers. Olmsted himself admitted that the Amish have some autistics and that at least some vaccinate. Even his strikingly qualified claims were disproved virtually as soon as others investigated. In March 2006, Drs. Kevin Strauss, Holmes Morton and others documented 9 autistic Amish children, which could raise the autism rate of the Lancaster Amish community Olmsted supposedly investigated to almost 1/5,000 all by themselves. In December 2006, a study found that 84% of Amish parents reported vaccinating their children. As criticism spread to Olmstead’s journalist peers, his honesty was directly challenged. In 2007, the Columbia Journalism Review concluded &amp;quot;that Olmsted has made up his mind on the question and is reporting the facts that support his conclusions.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this remarkable bit of &amp;quot;newspeak&amp;quot;, Olmsted does exactly what Prometheus speculated happened in the original articles: &amp;quot;Mr. Olmsted found autistic children, but didn’t count them – either because he either didn’t feel that they had real autism or because it conflicted with his forgone conclusion.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2011/06/23/peds.2009-2599.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's the abstract for the study&lt;/a&gt; that found &amp;quot;85% of Amish parents surveyed accept some immunizations&amp;quot;. One clarification to note is that the 85% figure is for Amish parents who gave at least some of their children at least one vaccine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found the &lt;a href=&quot;http://photoninthedarkness.blogspot.com/2006/03/how-to-seek-and-not-find.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog post by Prometheus&lt;/a&gt; referred to in &amp;quot;Olmsted Lied...&amp;quot;. The post links to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa052773&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the study by Strauss et. al&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-17T17:30:16.470" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26459" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26370" CreationDate="2015-01-17T19:57:52.907" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;As others say the regions are poor regions which the French government has identified as needing more help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/fox-news-insulted-france-france-hit-back-with-spectacular-takedown--gkwOC2tljg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Independent newspaper&lt;/a&gt; has an article in English covering the French satirical TV show Le Petit Journal response to this,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This includes reporters going to some of the areas and interviewing people&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and re the zones&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The show’s host Yann Barthès also noted the map used by Fox was taken from the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Statistics and the areas were urban zones identified for social development rather than “no-go zones”. “It has nothing, I repeat, nothing to do with security, religion or whatever bulls**t Fox says.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;a href=&quot;http://linkis.com/www.youtube.com/GjYr2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FOX news&lt;/a&gt; have apologised for the errors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1132" LastEditorUserId="1132" LastEditDate="2015-01-18T18:53:42.710" LastActivityDate="2015-01-18T18:53:42.710" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26460" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26483" CreationDate="2015-01-17T21:49:26.413" Score="8" ViewCount="33877" Body="&lt;p&gt;After some googling, I found &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081019173507AALSCcz&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a Yahoo Answers posting&lt;/a&gt; that claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Smelling alcoholic beverages will not get you drunk quickly but it will get you going. Alcohol evaporates at a lower temp that water. So if you are holding, for instance, a brandy or other beverage in a class with no ice, alcohol fumes will out - especially if you are warming it with your palms. Breathing the fumes, the alcohol will enter you lungs and, from there, the blood stream along with oxygen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since there are no references or any other proof that the statment is more than a personal guessing, I'm looking for a better/more profound answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My question therefore is:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can alcohol enter my blood stream solely by smelling alcoholic drinks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If yes, which beverages (alcohol level %) would I have to breath and for how long to get a significant amount of blood alcohol level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="526" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T10:19:11.357" LastActivityDate="2022-07-05T07:23:36.003" Title="Does smelling alcohol makes you drunk?" Tags="|medical-science|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26462" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23379" CreationDate="2015-01-18T07:12:35.513" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is evidence to suggest that eating breakfast like a king is beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23512957&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;High caloric intake at breakfast vs. dinner differentially influences weight loss of overweight and obese women.&lt;/a&gt; concludes that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High-calorie breakfast with reduced intake at dinner is beneficial and might be a useful alternative for the management of obesity and metabolic syndrome.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusions: Breakfast led to increased satiety through increased fullness and PYY concns. in breakfast skipping' adolescents. A breakfast rich in dietary protein provides addnl. benefits through redns. in appetite and energy intake. These findings suggest that the addition of a protein-rich breakfast might be an effective strategy to improve appetite control in young people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chemport.cas.org/cgi-bin/sdcgi?APP=ftslink&amp;amp;action=reflink&amp;amp;origin=wiley&amp;amp;version=1%2E0&amp;amp;coi=1%3ACAS%3A528%3ADC%2BC3cXos1equ7k%3D&amp;amp;md5=ac1c0457218e8bdb290528cd275bd454&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The addition of a protein-rich breakfast and its effects on acute appetite control and food intake in breakfast-skipping' adolescents&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results suggest that the morning intake association with reduced total intake is macronutrient specific, with morning carbohydrate, fat and protein intake associated with reduced daily carbohydrate, fat and protein intake, respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17537291&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The time of day and the proportions of macronutrients eaten are related to total daily food intake.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The initial and sustained feelings of fullness following protein consumption at breakfast suggests that the timing of protein intake differentially influences satiety during ER [Energy Restriction].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19283886&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Increased dietary protein consumed at breakfast leads to an initial and sustained feeling of fullness during energy restriction compared to other meal times.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24765" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-01-18T16:18:18.017" LastActivityDate="2015-01-18T16:18:18.017" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26436" CreationDate="2015-01-18T07:30:57.403" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, small dog breeds tend to live longer than larger breeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/10619607&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Longevity of British breeds of dog and its relationships with sex, size, cardiovascular variables and disease:&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;smaller dogs had longer lifespans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034528806001226&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Statistical analysis regarding the effects of height and weight on life span of the domestic dog:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A negative correlation was observed between height and longevity (r = −0.603, p &amp;lt; 0.05), and between weight and longevity (r = −0.679, p &amp;lt; 0.05). Weight was the significant predictor of life span (p &amp;lt; 0.001), revealing that breeds smaller by weight generally live longer than heavier breeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jez.b.21116/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Do large dogs die young?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In most animal taxa, longevity increases with body size across species, as predicted by the oxidative stress theory of aging. In contrast, in within-species comparisons of mammals and especially domestic dogs (e.g. Patronek et al., '97; Michell, '99; Egenvall et al., 2000; Speakman et al., 2003), longevity decreases with body size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24765" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-01-18T16:39:12.283" LastActivityDate="2015-01-18T16:39:12.283" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26416" CreationDate="2015-01-18T07:37:53.340" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12404625&quot;&gt;Marijuana, alcohol and actual driving performance&lt;/a&gt; found that a 0.04 g/dL alcohol concentration resulted in minor impairment, while 200 mg/kg THC resulted in moderate impairment, and the two combined even at lower doses resulted in the most severe impairment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It really depends on what dose you're trying to compare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24765" LastEditorUserId="24765" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T16:54:32.650" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T16:54:32.650" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26466" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2204" CreationDate="2015-01-18T07:59:00.447" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16824545&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The effectiveness of reducing illegal blood alcohol concentration (BAC) limits for driving: Evidence for lowering the limit to .05 BAC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; supports this idea, saying &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;strong evidence in the literature that lowering the BAC limit from .10 to .08 is effective, that lowering the BAC limit from .08 to .05 is effective, and that lowering the BAC limit for youth to .02 or lower is effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24765" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-01-18T16:21:03.897" LastActivityDate="2015-01-18T16:21:03.897" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26467" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26469" CreationDate="2015-01-18T12:57:49.193" Score="13" ViewCount="969" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKTORFmMycQ&quot;&gt;a video against animal cruelty&lt;/a&gt;, a woman talks about the tricks food industry has been using for decades. One subject in particular intriges me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the 1950s there was a very important innovation in food, the instant mix cake.&lt;/strong&gt; One of my personal favourites. When they were first brought out all you needed to do was to add a little bit of water, who's not going to love that? Well actually &lt;strong&gt;no one loved it&lt;/strong&gt;, no one bought the bloody things. So they did a bit of research and what they found was that the main consumer, &lt;strong&gt;the target consumer&lt;/strong&gt;, the housewife, &lt;strong&gt;felt that it was cheating&lt;/strong&gt;. They didn't want to pass off such an easy thing as their own baking to their partners, their husbands, their families, whatever. &lt;strong&gt;So what did the producers have to do? They had to make it harder, so now you had to add water and an egg. And sales eggsploded!&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(at 1:00 in the video)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Food industry made it harder to cook these instant cakes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;People were ashamed to trick their guests.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Once they made it harder to cook, sales exploded.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20868" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2015-01-18T21:12:30.753" LastActivityDate="2015-01-18T21:12:30.753" Title="Did food industry make their instant cakes harder to cook in the '50s?" Tags="|nutrition|sociology|marketing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26467" CreationDate="2015-01-18T16:34:39.647" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Snopes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/cakemix.asp&quot;&gt;investigated this claim&lt;/a&gt; and concluded it was False.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although there's a grain of truth to this claim, the legend that sprouted from it is a different kind of fruit: a marketing innovation did revive flagging sales of cake mixes, but it wasn't the innovation most people think it was. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Snopes provides quotes to demonstrate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the addition of dried eggs caused internal debate from the beginning. Requiring eggs wasn't an afterthought.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Cake sales were initially strong (from introduction to 1953), but growth slowed between 1956-1960.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fresh eggs produce a superior product.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Different major companies used different strategies, without one dominating over the other.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The marketing solution to the analysis that suggested that cake making was considered cheating was not to remove dried egg, but to emphasize icing and decoration to customize the cake.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Snopes go on to claim, without references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What ultimately ensured the long-term success of instant cake mixes was a declining exposure to the art of cooking. [...]  As fewer and fewer home cooks learned to recognize the difference between from-scratch cakes and mix cakes, the longevity of the latter was assured. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-01-18T16:34:39.647" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18909" CreationDate="2015-01-18T16:43:50.473" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is lots of academic research on what is called shape writing or vector typing that is relevant to your question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pro.sagepub.com/content/56/1/1591.short&quot;&gt;Shape Writing on Tablets: Better Performance or Better Experience?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; used Swype and found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No significant difference was found in typing speed between the two input methods&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also specific to Swype, the study &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abledata.com/abledata.cfm?pageid=160377&amp;amp;ksectionid=160164&amp;amp;atlitid=206987&quot;&gt;Swype vrs Conventional On-Screen Keyboards: Efficacy Compared&lt;/a&gt;&quot; found &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results showed that the prototype Swype was as fast as the standard on-screen keyboard running with word prediction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;Both studies noted that users had a subjective preference for Swype, but as you can see, no gains were found versus using a standard on screen QWERTY keyboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24765" LastEditorUserId="24765" LastEditDate="2015-01-18T16:53:45.810" LastActivityDate="2015-01-18T16:53:45.810" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26472" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-18T16:54:47.070" Score="14" ViewCount="805" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/09/why-girls-get-better-grades-than-boys-do/380318/&quot;&gt;The Atlantic&lt;/a&gt;, it's not even a question whether it's true. It's just a question of knowing why. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the article it's based on &quot;369 studies involving the academic grades of over one million boys and girls from 30 different nations.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14975" LastEditorUserId="14975" LastEditDate="2015-01-18T17:03:23.373" LastActivityDate="2016-01-26T16:07:31.020" Title="Do girls get better grades than boys at school?" Tags="|education|gender|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26478" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26479" CreationDate="2015-01-19T02:41:35.890" Score="4" ViewCount="718" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100516224919AAqgR5K&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This Yahoo answer&lt;/a&gt; citing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scienceandyou.org/articles/ess_14.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this dead source&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20080115124111/http://www.scienceandyou.org/articles/ess_14.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mirror&lt;/a&gt;) claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It may be a coincidence but the only known portrait of Hooke which had&#xA;  been housed in the President's office, was mysteriously lost as were&#xA;  the records of much of Hooke's work. In Newton's defense it could be&#xA;  argued that the lack of acknowledgment for Robert Hooke and his&#xA;  contribution to science could be blamed on Hooke himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs4fn.org/alife/hooked.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; even claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His feud with Issac Newton meant that when Newton took over as the&#xA;  President of the Royal Society he destroyed all the pictures of Hooke.&#xA;  However The Royal Society have kindly provided us with picture of some&#xA;  of the remaining sketches of Hooke to include in this page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was any of Hooke's works lost, and was Isaac Newton responsible for the loss?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="5079" LastEditDate="2015-01-20T13:52:25.800" LastActivityDate="2015-01-20T13:52:25.800" Title="Was Isaac Newton responsible for the loss of Robert Hooke's work?" Tags="|history|art|scientific-papers|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26478" CreationDate="2015-01-19T02:41:35.890" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Other sources only mention the portrait, but answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/357/did-isaac-newton-burn-robert-hookes-picture&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; question whether a portrait of Hooke even existed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As does the &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.royalsociety.org/history-of-science/2010/12/03/hooke-newton-missing-portrait/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Royal Society&lt;/a&gt; itself, despite quoting a visitor that mentioned Hooke's portrait. The visitor might have meant the portrait of Theodore Haak:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But before we pronounce Newton guilty of destroying Royal Society&#xA;  property, we need to consider the fundamental question of whether a&#xA;  portrait of Hooke existed in the first place. &lt;strong&gt;None of the evidence on&#xA;  this point is really conclusive.&lt;/strong&gt; There are two pieces of evidence to&#xA;  suggest there was a portrait. The first comes from Hooke’s diary, or&#xA;  memorandum book, in which he recorded his daily life in some detail&#xA;  for long periods from the 1670s to 1690s. In an entry for 16 October&#xA;  1674 he wrote ‘At Garaways. Left off taking tobacco — Mr Bonust drew&#xA;  picture.’ Garaways was a coffee-house much visited by Hooke, but ‘Mr&#xA;  Bonust’ is a rather mysterious figure who only appears once in the&#xA;  diary. The first editors of the diary suggested that this was one&#xA;  ‘Bownest’, whose portrait of ejected minister Arthur Jacksonis housed&#xA;  in the National Portrait Gallery in the form of an engraving by David&#xA;  Loggan. Hooke was interested in art, and visited various painters,&#xA;  including Mary Beale, who painted his friend and colleague Robert&#xA;  Boyle, and the miniaturist Mary Moore, mother of Hooke’s friend&#xA;  Richard Waller(himself an accomplished artist). However if Mr Bownest&#xA;  did draw Hooke’s picture in 1674, this is the only reference Hooke&#xA;  made to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The second piece of evidence is a description of a visit to the Royal&#xA;  Society’s premises in 1710 by a German traveller, Zacharias Conrad von&#xA;  Uffenbach. Like many other scientifically-minded travellers of the&#xA;  day, von Uffenbach was keen to see the famous Royal Society – but the&#xA;  reality was a severe disappointment for him. After being shown the&#xA;  Repository and meeting rooms at Gresham College, he wrote dismissively&#xA;  in his travel-journal,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“the finest instruments and other articles [lie] . . . not only in no&#xA;  sort of order or tidiness but covered with dust, filth and coal-smoke,&#xA;  and many of them broken and utterly ruined. If one inquires after&#xA;  anything, the operator who shows strangers round . . . will usually&#xA;  say: ‘A rogue had it stolen away’, or he will show you pieces of it,&#xA;  saying: ‘It is corrupted or broken’; and such is the care they take of&#xA;  things! . . . Finally we were shown the room where the Society usually&#xA;  meets. It is very small and wretched and the best things there are the&#xA;  portraits of its members, of which the most noteworthy are those of&#xA;  Boyle and Hoock.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Von Uffenbach, a foreign visitor briefly shown the Society’s meeting&#xA;  room, is the only person to make such a reference to Hooke’s portrait.&#xA;  James Yonge, who visited the Society in November 1702 and was elected&#xA;  FRS at the time, recorded seeing ‘divers original pictures’ in the&#xA;  Council Room. He listed eleven portraits, including those of Robert&#xA;  Boyle and Theodore Haak, but Hooke’s was not among them. It seems&#xA;  unlikely that Yonge would have overlooked Hooke’s picture if it was&#xA;  there. Hooke was Yonge’s first contact at the Society: the two men had&#xA;  corresponded for many years and Yonge referred to Hooke in his journal&#xA;  as ‘my old friend’.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other sources in which we might expect to find a mention of Hooke’s&#xA;  portrait are curiously silent on the subject. The inventory of Hooke’s&#xA;  possessions after his death does not include a portrait. Richard&#xA;  Waller, who wrote the first biography of Hooke in the preface to his&#xA;  edition of Hooke’s papers, printed two years after Hooke’s death,&#xA;  never mentioned a portrait. Neither did Hooke’s second posthumous&#xA;  editor, William Derham. And if a portrait did exist, there is no&#xA;  evidence that it was given to the Royal Society. The minutes of the&#xA;  Society’s meetings, in which gifts such as portraits were often (but&#xA;  not always!) recorded, say nothing about a portrait of Hooke, and&#xA;  neither do any other lists of donations in the period. Hooke himself,&#xA;  who was very protective of his scientific reputation and prestige,&#xA;  never spoke of donating his own portrait to the Society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The absence of any corroborating evidence must cast some doubt on von&#xA;  Uffenbach’s claim to have seen a portrait of Hooke at Gresham&#xA;  Collegein 1710. Was he shown Theodore Haak’s portrait and misheard the&#xA;  name? Hooke was the more famous Fellow and von Uffenbach may have&#xA;  assumed the Society had his portrait. I think we can say that although&#xA;  Hooke may have had his picture taken, it is unlikely to have been&#xA;  hanging in the Society’s meeting room at Gresham College. &lt;strong&gt;And Newton?&#xA;  He’s definitely off the hook.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...despite stating earlier that none of the evidence is conclusive, the Royal Society concludes with a definite. Also lending credence to Uffenbach's claim that property was lost (presumably including sketches), is that the article links to Theodore Haak are dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:51:33.053" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T02:49:03.017" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26480" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26481" CreationDate="2015-01-19T12:26:25.600" Score="2" ViewCount="350" Body="&lt;p&gt;Youtube contains &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=banned+commercials&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;numerous&lt;/a&gt; videos claiming they contain &quot;banned&quot; commercials. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oddee.com/item_96990.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Other&lt;/a&gt; websites claim to post &quot;banned&quot; print commercials, such as the famous &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1378906/Second-hand-car-ad-pulled-using-Tom-Fords-image-tagline-You-know-youre--really-care.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;You know you're not the first&lt;/a&gt; ad from BMW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that commercials may actually be &quot;banned&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23144" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T12:33:10.773" Title="Are any commercials &quot;banned&quot; for public display?" Tags="|advertising|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26481" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26480" CreationDate="2015-01-19T12:33:10.773" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. For example, last year, the UK's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_Standards_Authority_%28United_Kingdom%29&quot;&gt;Advertising Standards Authority&lt;/a&gt; banned a TV advert by payday lender &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonga.com&quot;&gt;Wonga&lt;/a&gt;, (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29530615&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;). Other banned adverts include those for e-cigarettes (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-2830869/E-cigarette-advert-banned.html&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;), and many that were not banned at the time, but would be banned today (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzfeed.com/patricksmith/insane-magazine-adverts-that-would-never-get-made-today#.ok7m4Kpw5&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23042" LastActivityDate="2015-01-19T12:33:10.773" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26483" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26460" CreationDate="2015-01-19T12:44:29.590" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even with a small amount of looking it seems that this is true, and very effective at getting you drunk, as the alcohol vapor gets directly into the bloodstream from the lungs, when done improperly it can lead very easily to alcohol poisoning. Although when done correctly it is can be a useful treatment for Pulmonary edema. Links &lt;a href=&quot;https://healthland.time.com/2013/06/05/smoking-alcohol-the-dangerous-way-people-are-getting-drunk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://themedicinejournal.com/articles/the-truth-behind-vaporizing-and-inhaling-alcohol/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is all true as long as the alcohol is being vaporized, the question is asking about simply smelling alcohol will get you drunk or not. This will not get you drunk as you'd be relying on the alcohol to evaporate into the air naturally and inhale that. This is explained here by a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.winespectator.com/articles/45994&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wine expert&lt;/a&gt; who explains that it would take days if not weeks for enough alcohol to evaporate to change the alcohol content of a wine. Which demonstrates that if you were to try and get drunk simply through inhaling the evaporated alcohol it would likely take a long time to get enough alcohol. This may not be as true for spirits above 150 proof(75% alcohol content) but even then drinking it would be more effective. Even with the stronger spirits you'd still have to get around the fact that most of the alcohol vapors will be dispersed into the air as opposed to when actually vaporizing it where they are collected and inhaled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also for those curious how long it takes for alcohol to evaporate into the air you can check out this &lt;a href=&quot;https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/2571/how-long-does-it-take-for-a-thin-layer-of-ethanol-to-evaporate&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; on the chemistry stack exchange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22806" LastEditorUserId="526" LastEditDate="2022-07-05T07:23:36.003" LastActivityDate="2022-07-05T07:23:36.003" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26486" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-19T22:12:44.150" Score="33" ViewCount="3614" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Exodus&quot;&gt;Book of Exodus&lt;/a&gt; describes a movement of the Hebrews from Egypt, through the desert, and into the Palestine/Israel region.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also describes a number miracles, such as the ten plagues and the parting of the Red Sea, but they are not the subject of this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a lot of debate as to whether the mass migration happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was there ever a migration of people from Egypt that settled around Palestine and became what would become the kingdom of Israel?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorUserId="42644" LastEditDate="2022-05-26T20:06:08.900" LastActivityDate="2022-05-26T20:06:08.900" Title="Did the Hebrew exodus from Egypt ever happen?" Tags="|history|religious-texts|bible|egypt|judaism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26527" CreationDate="2015-01-20T03:23:41.470" Score="17" ViewCount="4604" Body="&lt;p&gt;My housemates don't want me setting up a home server because of fire hazard, I've seen very little, if anything, pointing to desktops causing fires, just laptop batteries (&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/15792/24790&quot;&gt;Can overheating laptops cause fire?&lt;/a&gt;). I've got this system all set up with Proxmox and if that was in vain... (I accidentally started the OS setup with the installer flash drive on a USB 1.1 port so it took FOREVER)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I guess the question is... if I had a desktop on 24/7 unsupervised, would there be a non-negligible chance for it to catch on fire assuming stock CPU cooler, no overclock, PSU not near full capacity, dusting/compressed air regularly, and standard maintainence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24790" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2016-12-29T11:28:44.350" Title="Do desktop computers catch fire (often)?" Tags="|environmental-health|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16347" CreationDate="2015-01-20T14:41:46.870" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are Arabic languages taught at Japanese universities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. You can study Arabic at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tufs.ac.jp/english/education/ug/studies/arabic.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is part of their English-language page about Arabic Studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Arabic is an official language of the United Nations and is spoken in many countries around the world. It also plays a significant role in Islam as the language of the Koran. Unfortunately, not many people in Japan understand the language, thus making it very difficult to directly hear the voice of the Arab world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a Japanese-language page related to Arabic &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tufs.ac.jp/common/fs/asw/ara/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (not equivalent to the English-language page).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindujagruti.org/news/13946.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;first link&lt;/a&gt; in the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the University of Japan Arabic or any Islamic language is not taught.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apart from Arabic, I'm not aware of there being such a thing as an &quot;Islamic language&quot;, and the consensus on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://islam.stackexchange.com/questions/21545/apart-from-arabic-is-there-such-a-thing-as-islamic-languages&quot;&gt;Islam Stack Exchange&lt;/a&gt; is that there's no such thing as an Islamic language other than Arabic. However, if they think languages spoken in predominantly Muslim countries are &quot;Islamic languages&quot;, then Indonesian would be one, and it is taught at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tufs.ac.jp/english/education/ug/studies/indonesian.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the same university as mentioned above&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:49:13.127" LastActivityDate="2016-04-30T10:38:25.993" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26489" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-20T16:38:47.960" Score="8" ViewCount="462" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since roughly &lt;a href=&quot;http://theworldsgreatestbook.com/how-many-spaces-after-a-period/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1960&lt;/a&gt;, the typographical style has shifted from &lt;em&gt;two spaces after a period&lt;/em&gt; to &lt;em&gt;one space after a period&lt;/em&gt;. Some people have claimed that the old convention of two spaces can improve &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_reading&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;speed reading&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Found in comments for &lt;a href=&quot;http://theworldsgreatestbook.com/how-many-spaces-after-a-period/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the same article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am a speed reader (trained and practicing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comprehension being equal, I can read faster with double spacing between sentences. It is a tested and quantifiable fact, and this is generally true for the majority of speed readers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also &lt;a href=&quot;http://painintheenglish.com/case/2708/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Speed readers] read in word &amp;quot;chunks&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;grabs&amp;quot;, but doesn't that actually suggest that double-spacing after periods improves readability? Most people absorb maybe two to three, perhaps up to five words per &amp;quot;chunk&amp;quot;, not two or more sentences per chunk. Having sentences separated by spaces would make it easier to &amp;quot;grab&amp;quot; the words in related groups according to sentence structure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also remember reading a claim on Facebook that &amp;quot;studies&amp;quot; show that double spaces improve speed reading, but I can't find that claim any more.  The first quote above seems to suggest the same, though (talking about the &amp;quot;quantifiable fact&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies which actually show this claim to be true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;EDIT&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been brought up in comments below that &amp;quot;speed reading&amp;quot; is not a well defined term. For the purpose of this question, I'm willing to entertain any reasonable definition of the term, even possibly including &amp;quot;self-identified speed readers.&amp;quot; But I do expect an answer to specifically address &amp;quot;speed readers&amp;quot;, since the claim clearly makes the distinction between &amp;quot;speed readers&amp;quot; and the implied &amp;quot;average&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;non-speed reader&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T04:21:50.970" Title="Do two spaces after a period make speed reading easier?" Tags="|reading|typography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26493" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26489" CreationDate="2015-01-21T03:35:46.107" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Though not addressing any sort of &quot;speed&quot; reading, a review of literature suggests no statistically significant difference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csloh.com/research/pdf/2002_IVLA.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Loh et al.&lt;/a&gt; studied 66 college students in 2002.  They found the mean times to read passages with two spaces after each period was longer than reading passages with one space, but with their small sample size were unable to conclude statistical significance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We have concluded that there was not enough&#xA;  evidence to suggest that a significance difference&#xA;  exists in an on-screen reading task, between text&#xA;  formatting using single space or double space in&#xA;  sentence separation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study by &lt;a href=&quot;http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/47993129/effects-text-spacing-screen-reading-time-comprehension&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ni et al. in 2009&lt;/a&gt; found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The results showed that there is insufficient evidence to support the claim that a significant performance difference exists, in an on-screen reading task, between text formatting using single space, double space, or triple space in sentence separation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24765" LastEditorUserId="24765" LastEditDate="2015-01-21T18:42:13.223" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T18:42:13.223" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26494" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-21T03:52:54.010" Score="11" ViewCount="2336" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zxhsV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This image is going around Facebook, and reads (emphasis original):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pimps wear lots of gold jewelry&lt;/strong&gt; bought at pawn shops to &quot;re-pawn&quot; for bail money since &lt;strong&gt;cash is confiscated upon arrest but jewelry is not.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I question the claim that cash is confiscated upon arrest. Is this true under normal circumstances?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image doesn't mention a jurisdiction, but I'm assuming from the context that it's probably talking about (at least) the United States. Realizing that is still a very large and varied area, lets just focus on whether cash is automatically confiscated upon arrest of anyone charged with sex trafficking (or similar charges) in any US jurisdiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="22367" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T02:26:23.263" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T16:29:24.120" Title="Is cash confiscated upon arrest in the US?" Tags="|united-states|law|prostitution|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26495" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-21T09:54:15.937" Score="5" ViewCount="1235" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EIOcD.png&quot; alt=&quot;95% of all fossils are marine invertebrates&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this claim in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlPiwMOyoe4#t=733&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Creationist YouTube video&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;95% of all fossils are marine invertebrates.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Of the remaining 5%, 95% are algae and plant fossils.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  95% of the remaining 0.25% are other invertebrates.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The remaining 0.0125% include all vertebrates (mostly fish).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (punctuation and capitalization mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more occurrences/variations of the claim:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At least 95 percent of all animal fossils are of marine invertebrates.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icr.org/article/real-nature-fossil-record/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.icr.org/article/real-nature-fossil-record/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the real world, about 95 percent of all fossils are marine invertebrates, mostly shellfish (i.e., clams). Of the remaining 5 percent, 95 percent are algae and plant fossils (0.05 x 0.95, or 4.75 percent of the total) and 5 percent (0.05 x 0.05, or 0.25 percent of the total) are insects and other non-marine invertebrates and vertebrates. Of the remaining 0.25 percent of the total, 95 percent are insects and other non-marine invertebrates and only 5 percent (0.05 x 0.0025, or 0.0125 percent of the total) are vertebrate fossils (mostly fish; and finally, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.creationsciencetoday.com/24-Standard_Geologic_Column.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.creationsciencetoday.com/24-Standard_Geologic_Column.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This last quote has a source &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Morris, J.D. (2003). Is the Big Bang Biblical? Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 108–109; and Morris, J.D. (1994). The Young Earth. Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 70. Statistics provided by paleontologist Kurt P. Wise, Ph.D. Geology (Paleontology).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this claim in &quot;The Young Earth&quot; and partially in &quot;Is the Big Bang Biblical&quot; both (on Google books) without any references, so it seems to dead end with Morris. (Kurt Wise is apparently a prominent Young-Earth Creationist.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The order of frequencies seems plausible to me (if leaving out trace fossils) but the break down of 5% of 5% of 5% feels a bit contrived.&#xA;So, what's the relative representations of these families in the fossil record?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T04:26:04.613" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T04:26:04.613" Title="Do marine invertebrates outnumber plants in the fossil record 19:1?" Tags="|evolution|young-earth-creationism|fossil-record|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26496" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26494" CreationDate="2015-01-21T14:40:57.593" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's rather common, yes, if we are to believe the idea of Asset forfeiture. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This applies, but is not limited, to terrorist activities, drug&#xA;  related crimes, and other criminal and even civil offenses. ... The&#xA;  purpose of asset forfeiture is to disrupt criminal activity by&#xA;  confiscating assets that potentially could have been beneficial to the&#xA;  individual or organization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may not apply to all states, but it happens. Also, it may not be &quot;automatic&quot;, because the cops can choose not to enforce it. But regarding sex trafficking, where money is the core reason, cash is almost guaranteed to be confiscated as it's earned in illegal matters. Again, though, it may depend on state/where you live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also leaves the image to be false, as cops seem to be able to confiscate almost &lt;em&gt;anything&lt;/em&gt;, including jewelry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Federal and most state laws allow both civil and criminal asset&#xA;  forfeitures.  In civil asset forfeiture, action is taken against a&#xA;  person’s property or assets, not against an individual.  A person’s&#xA;  property is the target of the legal proceeding, and the owner is&#xA;  secondary.  The owner does not have to be arrested or convicted of a&#xA;  crime to have his property taken.  By contrast, criminal forfeitures&#xA;  occur against a person after conviction for an underlying criminal&#xA;  offense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quote source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ij.org/part-i-policing-for-profit&quot;&gt;http://www.ij.org/part-i-policing-for-profit&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional sources I found regarding this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jalopnik.com/5913416/cops-can-confiscate-money-and-property-from-law-abiding-citizens&quot;&gt;http://jalopnik.com/5913416/cops-can-confiscate-money-and-property-from-law-abiding-citizens&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22976" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2015-01-21T17:39:58.600" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T17:39:58.600" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19836" CreationDate="2015-01-21T17:45:21.087" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;Tim Bray &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/timbray/status/506146595650699264&quot;&gt;says on Twitter&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Phil [Karlton] said it, I reported it, someone else added on the “off-by-one”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leon Bambrick replies that he added off-by-one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24815" LastActivityDate="2015-01-21T17:45:21.087" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26501" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-21T21:48:47.533" Score="5" ViewCount="478" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://thisisthinprivilege.tumblr.com/faq#q3&quot;&gt;Thin Privilege FAQ&lt;/a&gt; explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Weight is about 50% - 80% heritable (sources disagree, but here’s a study that shows it to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/87/2/398&quot;&gt;77% heritable&lt;/a&gt;). Height, for comparison, isn’t 100% heritable (I’ve seen it pegged in the 70% - 80% range but I still need to dig up this source).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems dubious to me that height and weight have similar heritability (unless I'm misunderstanding what heritability means).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24817" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-01-21T22:31:10.570" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T05:19:13.370" Title="Is height about as heritable as obesity?" Tags="|genetics|obesity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26502" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="40332" CreationDate="2015-01-21T23:11:03.960" Score="5" ViewCount="855" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/lachlan/status/557953943356317696&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;twitter&lt;/a&gt;, a tweet that's going viral, including among climate change skeptics (action against climate change is being discussed at Davos):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The cognitive dissonance in the first &amp;amp; last sentences of this excerpt&#xA;  is something to behold&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2015-01-21/billionaire-greene-goes-long-on-u-s-while-bemoaning-jobs-crisis.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2015-01-21/billionaire-greene-goes-long-on-u-s-while-bemoaning-jobs-crisis.html&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;  …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoted section (emphasis added myself):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“&lt;strong&gt;America’s lifestyle expectations are far too high and need to be&#xA;  adjusted so we have less things and a smaller, better existence&lt;/strong&gt;,”&#xA;  Greene said in an interview today at the World Economic Forum in&#xA;  Davos, Switzerland. “We need to reinvent our whole system of life.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 60-year-old founder of Coral Gables, Florida-based Florida&#xA;  Sunshine Investments said his biggest fund was up more than 20 percent&#xA;  last year with bets on Apple Inc. (AAPL), Google Inc. (GOOG), bank&#xA;  stocks and mortgage-backed securities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I’m remarkably long for my level of pessimism,” he said. “Our economy&#xA;  is in deep trouble. We need to be honest with ourselves. We’ve had a&#xA;  realistic level of job destruction, and those jobs aren’t coming&#xA;  back.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Greene, who flew his wife, children and two nannies on a private jet&#xA;  plane to Davos for the week&lt;/strong&gt;, said he’s planning a conference in Palm&#xA;  Beach,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's article on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Greene&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jeff Greene&lt;/a&gt; indicates that he's a billionaire, so he can afford a private jet plane, and that he has a luxury yacht, which means that he's likely to own and use a private jet plane. It also indicates that he's politically active.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main thing I'm skeptical about is whether the first sentence is incorrect and/or taken out of context. The Bloomberg article doesn't link to a transcript of the interview in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2018-01-02T17:54:49.850" Title="Did someone using a private jet tell Americans their expectations are too high?" Tags="|politics|quotes|climate-change|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26503" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26506" CreationDate="2015-01-21T23:35:41.833" Score="30" ViewCount="28443" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a claim that as of today, a lot of African countries are forced to pay a significant percentage of their income to France, and this is the cause of widespread hunger in Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.siliconafrica.com/france-colonial-tax/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;14 African Countries Forced by France to Pay Colonial Tax For the Benefits of Slavery and Colonization&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of January 2014, 14 african countries are obliged by France,&#xA;through a colonial pact, to put 85% of their foreign reserve into&#xA;France central bank under French minister of Finance control. They are&#xA;effectively putting in 500 Billion dollars every year to the French&#xA;treasury. African leaders who refuse are killed or victim of coup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a similar claim here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.worldbulletin.net/news/152967/french-colonial-tax-still-enforce-for-africa&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;French colonial tax still enforce for Africa&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What made me suspicious is that these claims appear to copy each other, and mostly appear on conspiracy theorist and black supremacist websites. The English grammar is questionable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these claims have a basis in reality? If yes, are they accurate or are they exaggerated/misleading?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conducting a google search for &amp;quot;former french colony still paying tax&amp;quot; yields a number of claims, but not on major news sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-16T03:15:43.730" Title="Do African countries have to pay a &quot;colonial tax&quot; to France?" Tags="|france|africa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26503" CreationDate="2015-01-22T09:04:28.320" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a news article from April 2014,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-04-17/african-monetary-union-stirs-criticism-of-france&quot;&gt;African Monetary Union Stirs Criticism of France&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A hoard of cash sits in the Bank of France: $20 billion in African money held in trust by the French government and earning just 0.75 percent interest. Now economists and politicians from 14 Central and West African countries say they want their funds returned and an arrangement dating back to the days of France’s colonial empire ended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;France holds the money to guarantee that the CFA franc, the currency used in the 14 nations, stays convertible into euros at a fixed exchange rate of 655.957. The compulsory deposits started more than half a century ago, when the then-colonies had to place all their financial reserves in the French Treasury. The deposit requirement has dropped over the decades: Today the African members entrust 50 percent of their reserves to Paris.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article matches the claim which is quoted in the OP, in a couple of ways, notably that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are 14 African countries involved&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They are putting a large fraction of their foreign reserves into France.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO these two matches are sufficient to show that the news article in this answer matches the notable claim identified in the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this article doesn't match (i.e. it denies or contradicts) the claim in other ways,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's a fraction of their reserves: it's not a 'tax' or an income tax&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It says 50% of their reserves, not 85%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It says &quot;a hoard of $20 billion&quot; not &quot;effectively 500 Billion dollars every year&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No mention of assassinating African leaders who don't comply &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 14 countries in question are presumably those whose currency/money is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_African_CFA_franc&quot;&gt;West African CFA franc&lt;/a&gt; (8 countries) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_African_CFA_franc&quot;&gt;Central African CFA franc&lt;/a&gt; (6 countries).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least one of the articles referenced in the OP also mentions colonial-era debt. Repaying debt is not the same thing as keeping foreign reserves to stabilize/guarantee currency exchange rates ... but &quot;debt&quot; is not the quoted notable claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether countries &quot;have to&quot; do this, IMO the following is evidence that the various countries are &lt;strong&gt;able to leave&lt;/strong&gt; this scheme and/or that they may &lt;strong&gt;choose to join&lt;/strong&gt; it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFA_franc#Changes_in_countries_using_the_franc&quot;&gt;CFA franc - Changes in countries using the franc&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over time, the number of countries and territories using the CFA franc has changed as some countries began introducing their own separate currencies. A couple of nations in West Africa have also chosen to adopt the CFA franc since its introduction, despite the fact that they were never French colonies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1960: Guinea leaves and begins issuing Guinean francs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1962: Mali leaves and begins issuing Malian francs&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1973: Madagascar leaves (in 1972, according to another source) and begins issuing its own francs the Malagasy franc, which ran concurrently with the Malagasy ariary (1 ariary = 5 Malagasy francs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1973: Mauritania leaves, replacing the franc with the Mauritanian ouguiya (1 ouguiya = 5 CFA francs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1974: Saint-Pierre and Miquelon leaves for French franc&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1975: Réunion leaves for French franc [7]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1976: Mayotte leaves for French franc [8]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1984: Mali rejoins (1 CFA franc = 2 Malian francs)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1985: Equatorial Guinea joins (1 franc = 4 bipkwele)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1997: Guinea-Bissau joins (1 franc = 65 pesos)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know who is responsible for choosing the exchange rate (which almost never varies).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFA_franc#Exchange_rate&quot;&gt;CFA franc - Exchange rate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The CFA franc was created with a fixed exchange rate versus the French franc. This exchange rate was changed only twice: in 1948 and in 1994.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The value of the CFA franc has been widely criticized as being too high, which many economists believe favours the urban elite of the African countries, which can buy imported manufactured goods cheaply at the expense of farmers who cannot easily export agricultural products. The devaluation of 1994 was an attempt to reduce these imbalances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a few quotes from the Bank of France on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.banque-france.fr/eurosysteme-et-international/zone-franc/presentation-de-la-zone-franc.html&quot;&gt;Présentation de la Zone franc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;La Zone franc regroupe 14 pays d'Afrique sub-saharienne1, les Comores et la France. Bâtie sur les liens historiques étroits qui unissent la France aux pays africains, la Zone franc est issue de la volonté commune de ces pays de maintenir un cadre institutionnel qui a contribué à la stabilité du cadre macroéconomique : &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;La coopération monétaire entre la France et les pays africains de la Zone franc est régie par quatre principes fondamentaux : garantie de convertibilité illimitée apportée par le Trésor français, fixité des parités, libre transférabilité et centralisation des réserves de change. En contrepartie de la garantie du Trésor français, les trois banques centrales sont tenues de déposer une partie de leurs réserves de change sur un compte dit « d'opérations », ouvert dans les livres du Trésor.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Le fonctionnement du compte d'opérations a été formalisé par des conventions signées entre les autorités françaises et les représentants des banques centrales de la Zone franc. Ils fonctionnent comme des comptes à vue ouverts auprès du Trésor français et sont rémunérés.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;La coopération entre la France et les pays de la Zone franc se traduit notamment par la tenue, deux fois par an, des Réunions des ministres des finances des pays de la Zone franc.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Franc zone joins 14 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, the Comoros,&#xA;  and France. Built on the historic ties which unite France with the&#xA;  African countries, the franc zone is born from the common desire of&#xA;  these countries to maintain an institutional framework which has&#xA;  contributed to the stabiliy of the macroeconomic framework:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The monetary cooperation between France and the African countries of the franc zone is ruled by four fundamental principles: guarantee of&#xA;  unlimited convertibility brought by the French treasury; fixed&#xA;  exchange rate; free transferability; and centralization of the&#xA;  exchange reserves. In counterpart to the guarantee of the French&#xA;  Treasury, the three central banks are required to deposit a portion of&#xA;  their reserves in an &quot;operations&quot; account, open on the books of the&#xA;  [French] Treasury.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The functioning of the operations account has been formalized by conventions signed between the French authorities and representatives&#xA;  of the central banks of the franc zone. They act like open accounts on&#xA;  the French Treasury and are remunerated.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The cooperation between France and the countries of the Franc zone is notably made manifest by holding, twice a year, the Meeting of the&#xA;  ministers of finance of the countries of the franc zone.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Monetary_Union&quot;&gt;African Monetary Union&lt;/a&gt; is being discussed or proposed for the distant future e.g. the 2020-2030 kind of timeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="386" LastEditDate="2015-01-25T03:24:26.723" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T03:24:26.723" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26508" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26370" CreationDate="2015-01-22T11:09:39.510" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fox News, who originally broadcast the claim, and Steve Emerson, who made these claims on Hannity, have retracted and apologised for the claims, explaining they are in error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/paris-to-sue-fox-news-as-le-petit-journal-takes-the-mickey-over-nogo-zones-comment-20150121-12un2c.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sydney Morning Herald reported&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fox was abject in its apologies, as was Emerson. Julie Banderas, a Fox anchor, said that &amp;quot;over the course of this last week, we have made some regrettable errors on air regarding the Muslim population in Europe, particularly with regard to England and France.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Now this applies especially to discussions of so-called no-go zones, areas where non-Muslims allegedly are not allowed in and police supposedly won't go,&amp;quot; Banderas continued. &amp;quot;To be clear, there is no formal designation of these zones in either country and no credible information to support the assertion that there are specific areas in these countries that exclude individuals based solely on their religion.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apologies were issued on-air three other times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;I haven't been able to reconcile where Robert Spencer, as opposed to Steve Emerson, comes into this, and the original link is no longer working to double-check that I got that detail right while editing the question.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T11:09:39.510" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26509" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-22T11:19:55.480" Score="2" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.change.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/getinvolved/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;organizations&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amnestyusa.org/get-involved/take-action-now&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amnesty.org.uk/actions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;international petitions&lt;/a&gt; as a way to influence decisions by governments. Amnesty International's German site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amnesty.de/was-sind-urgent-actions?destination=node%2F5309&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;explicitly states&lt;/a&gt; that such &quot;urgent actions&quot; are an effective way to save lives. As evidence, they state that for 35% of urgent actions run in 2007, positive results have been achieved; however, there is no indication of whether those positive results were a consequence of the actions, or would have occurred anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there any evidence on whether international petitions, either on-line or in written form, have an influence on government decision-making?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to point out cases that might be special in that the petitioner has an obvious influence on the decision-maker. This might be because he is a voter writing to his own government (explicitly or implicitly threatening note to re-elect it unless it does what he wants); or because he is in a position to make other threats (e.g. of attacks such as in the recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Interview_%282014_film%29#Cancellation_of_wide_theatrical_release&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Interview events&lt;/a&gt;). I am interested in other cases: Can I, as a non-citizen, influence decisions made by the governments of Iran, Russia or the US?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18230" LastEditorUserId="18230" LastEditDate="2015-01-25T09:27:26.223" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T09:27:26.223" Title="Do internet-based petitions to foreign governments have an influence?" Tags="|politics|activism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2015-01-22T12:59:29.153" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26510" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-01-22T12:23:23.063" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T12:23:23.063" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T12:23:23.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26511" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-01-22T12:23:23.063" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about claims based in France, or limited to France." OwnerUserId="18230" LastEditorUserId="18230" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T20:40:04.863" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T20:40:04.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26512" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-01-22T12:24:28.103" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-01-22T12:24:28.103" LastActivityDate="2015-01-22T12:24:28.103" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26513" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-01-22T12:24:28.103" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for claims which apply to the country of Russia or the Commonwealth of Independent States." OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-01-30T10:31:46.520" LastActivityDate="2016-01-30T10:31:46.520" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26515" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16490" CreationDate="2015-01-22T15:58:07.283" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Probably not.&lt;/strong&gt; There doesn't appear to be any evidence of the exploding stomach phenomenon.  And most evidence to be found points in the opposite direction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Seeds are a natural food source.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This is a study of the diet of one type of Ant in Oklahoma.  And seeds are listed as an important dietary item.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://handle.nal.usda.gov/10113/11737&quot;&gt;http://handle.nal.usda.gov/10113/11737&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At grassland and pasture sites, seeds (17.2 and 15.7%, respectively) were&#xA;  important foraged items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is grain substantially different than flour for ants?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The size of the particles swallowed must be smaller than typical flour.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ijera.com/papers/Vol2_issue3/KZ2318391842.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.ijera.com/papers/Vol2_issue3/KZ2318391842.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ars.usda.gov/sp2UserFiles/Place/60360510/publications/Glancey_et_al-1981(M-1351).pdf&quot;&gt;https://www.ars.usda.gov/sp2UserFiles/Place/60360510/publications/Glancey_et_al-1981(M-1351).pdf&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Almost all wheat flour particles are larger than the esophagus of the ant (~45µm). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can ants eat solid food? Regurgitate?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;THE INFRABUCCAL POCKET OF A FORMICINE ANT: A SOCIAL FILTRATION DEVICE&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/psyche/1962/025068.pdf&quot;&gt;http://downloads.hindawi.com/journals/psyche/1962/025068.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;This paper goes into how the ants feed, if I may summarize.  The ants feed on liquid food (workers, at least, can't feed on solid food). Relatively large solid pieces are caught in a special cavity, when this cavity is full, the particles are ejected as a single pellet.  The filtered food is regurgitated and shared with other workers, who in turn also filter the food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Actual measurements made with species of Formica, fed on food labelled with radioactive&#xA;  tracer, have shown that the crop contents from single foragers may become shared by an entire colony in a matter of hours (Wilson and Eisner, I957). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Anything Else?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The closest I could find about feeding flour in particular to ants just involved using it as bait for collecting specimens.  No mention of exploding stomachs was made.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tropecol.com/pdf/open/PDF_41_1/kp41110.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.tropecol.com/pdf/open/PDF_41_1/kp41110.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Meat, flour and sugar baits were used on the soil surface and buried to examine species composition of the ant fauna in three separate tropical forests in Brazil, and to control for the effect of the regional faunal pool. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caveats&lt;/strong&gt; These papers look mostly at the worker caste of the red imported fire ant.  Results could be different for different types of ants.  This assumes nothing special about the flour besides being ground seed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion,&lt;/strong&gt; Making the assumption that the reason people think their stomachs will explode is because the rice/flour will expand once in contact with water, rupturing the stomach (violently?), I think I have presented enough evidence to show that this won't be the case.  The food must already be in contact with water before consumption.  Seeds are naturally eaten by ants. Ants constantly regurgitate their food to share with each other.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastEditorUserId="17572" LastEditDate="2015-01-23T07:54:57.580" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T07:54:57.580" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26519" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-23T01:20:33.667" Score="2" ViewCount="187" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/article_21926_5-bs-health-myths-people-still-believe-thanks-to-one-guy.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cracked article about health risk myths&lt;/a&gt;. The first entry was interesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Myth #5] Salt Causes High Blood Pressure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] Countless more recent studies have utterly failed to back up the relationship between salt intake and high blood pressure. [...] The truth is that science is still trying to figure out what causes high blood pressure -- maybe it is salt for some people, or just certain types of salt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I followed the other links there:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/we-only-think-we-know-the-truth-about-salt.html?pagewanted=all&amp;amp;_r=2&amp;amp;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times: We only think we know the truth about salt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-the-war-on-salt/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American: It's Time to End the War on Salt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The links indicate that there isn't a real long-term relationship between salt and high blood pressure. They do support a short-term blood pressure/salt relationship (salt increases blood pressure), but then so does, in the short term, exercise and caffeine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a reason why salt is labelled as having a long-term negative impact on blood pressure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24819" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T03:42:25.010" Title="Is there a link between blood pressure and salt intake?" Tags="|environmental-health|public-health|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" FavoriteCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-09-24T16:05:08.150" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26520" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="415" CreationDate="2015-01-23T01:54:09.073" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, The relationship between sodium intake and hypertension is extremely well studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does sodium intake affect hypertension?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Double-blind study of three sodium intakes and long-term effects of sodium restriction in essential hypertension.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2573761&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2573761&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  20 patients with mild hypertension (average supine blood pressure without treatment, 164/101 mm Hg) reduced their salt intake to 50 mmol (3 g) per day for a month. They then entered a 3 month double-blind randomised crossover study of three levels of sodium intake: 200, 100, and 50 mmol per day. Blood pressure was significantly reduced on the middle and lowest sodium intakes. The average fall in blood pressure from the highest to the lowest sodium intake was 16/9 mm Hg. Patients continued to restrict their sodium intake for a further year. In 16 of the 20 patients blood pressure remained well controlled with salt restriction alone. Supine blood pressure at 1 year was 142/87 (SE 3/2) mm Hg with a 24 h urinary sodium excretion of 54 (7) mmol. These results show a progressive blood pressure fall as salt intake is reduced and that, in many patients with mild essential hypertension, blood pressure can be controlled without the need for drug therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More recent examples confirming the correlation:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;(these are the first four results I got on scholar.google.com key words: [sodium intake hypertension] 2011 or more recent. The fifth result was specific to Chinese adults so I stopped there.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/early/2012/05/15/CIRCULATIONAHA.112.096115.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2012&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over time, higher sodium intake is associated with increases in SUA and UAE. Among individuals with higher SUA and urine UAE, a higher sodium intake is an independent risk factor for developing hypertension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1412113&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2014&lt;/a&gt;)(correspondence, specifically deals with some of the recent &quot;confusion&quot; that the question refers to.  I don't feel that I am qualified enough to interpret any further but I recommend looking at it.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After the IOM report was released, the TOHP data showed a direct, progressive relationship between lower sodium intake (down to intake below 1500 mg per day) and lower cardiovascular risk and there was no indication of a J-shaped curve&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/130/4/611.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2012&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sodium intake is positively associated with SBP and risk for pre-HBP/HPB among US children and adolescents, and this association may be stronger among those who are overweight/obese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f1326&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2013&lt;/a&gt;) (Meta-Analysis)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High quality evidence in non-acutely ill adults shows that reduced sodium intake reduces blood pressure and has no adverse effect on blood lipids, catecholamine levels, or renal function, and moderate quality evidence in children shows that a reduction in sodium intake reduces blood pressure. Lower sodium intake is also associated with a reduced risk of stroke and fatal coronary heart disease in adults. The totality of evidence suggests that most people will likely benefit from reducing sodium intake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So, is this just for hypertensive individuals or everyone?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In another study &quot;&lt;em&gt;Effects on blood pressure of reduced dietary sodium and the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM200101043440101&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJM200101043440101&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;participants ate foods with high, intermediate,&#xA;  and low levels of sodium for 30 consecutive days&#xA;  each, in random order.&#xA;  ...&#xA;  The effects&#xA;  of sodium were observed in participants with&#xA;  and in those without hypertension, blacks and those of&#xA;  other races, and women and men.&#xA;  ...&#xA;  As&#xA;  compared with the control diet with a high sodium&#xA;  level, the DASH diet with a low sodium level led to a&#xA;  mean systolic blood pressure that was 7.1 mm Hg&#xA;  lower in participants without hypertension, and 11.5&#xA;  mm Hg lower in participants with hypertension.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Finally, what's the association of heart disease with blood pressure?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Blood pressure, stroke, and coronary heart disease. Part 1, Prolonged differences in blood pressure: prospective observational studies corrected for the regression dilution bias.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1969518&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1969518&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Within the range of DBP studied (about 70-110 mm Hg), there was no evidence of any &quot;threshold&quot; below which lower levels of DBP were not associated with lower risks of stroke and of CHD. ... prolonged differences in usual DBP of 5,7.5, and 10 mm Hg were respectively associated with at least 34%, 46%, and 56% less stroke and at least 21%. 29%, and 37% less CHD. ... The DBP results suggest that for the large majority of individuals, whether conventionally &quot;hypertensive&quot; or &quot;normotensive&quot;, a lower blood pressure should eventually confer a lower risk of vascular disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study was particularly focused on diastolic, so here are a couple that are concerned with systolic as well. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/100/4/354.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/100/4/354.short&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://hyper.ahajournals.org/content/13/5_Suppl/I2.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://hyper.ahajournals.org/content/13/5_Suppl/I2.short&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In conclusion,&lt;/strong&gt; hypertensive and normotensive (all) people who cut back on their sodium(salt) intake should experience a lower (and thereby safer) blood pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastEditorUserId="17572" LastEditDate="2015-01-24T03:42:25.010" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T03:42:25.010" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26521" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10885" CreationDate="2015-01-23T09:08:53.623" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR&lt;/strong&gt; It doesn't seem to be the case that organ donars would be intentionally harvested when they could have lived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This fact sheet by Southwest Transplant Alliance explains...&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.organ.org/v2/assets/documents/brochures/Brochure_DonationAfterCardiacDeath.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.organ.org/v2/assets/documents/brochures/Brochure_DonationAfterCardiacDeath.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DCD (Donation After Cardiac Death)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DCD is an option for families of patients with severe brain&#xA;  injuries, who do not meet the criteria for brain death. After&#xA;  the decision has been made that the patient has no chance of&#xA;  survival and the family has decided to withdraw treatment, the&#xA;  family is offered the option of Donation After Cardiac Death. If&#xA;  the family agrees, the patient is moved to an operating room&#xA;  where support is withdrawn. In some situations, support may&#xA;  be withdrawn in the intensive care unit/ICU. Once the patient’s&#xA;  heart stops beating, the physician declares death. Following&#xA;  an additional five minutes of waiting to ensure the heart does&#xA;  not start beating again, organ recovery begins. The organs are&#xA;  then recovered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;DBD (Donation After Brain Death)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;According to the article DBD is similar but the patient does meet the criteria for Brain Death. In this way, it's similar to the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-Brain death is declared by a physician&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -Patient is on ventilator until organs are recovered&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -Transplant team recovers organs&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  -Heart, lungs, liver, pancreas, kidneys and intestines can be recovered&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On the other side of the coin&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;As this news article points out, mistakes happen.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/patient-wakes-doctors-remove-organs/story?id=19609438&quot;&gt;http://abcnews.go.com/Health/patient-wakes-doctors-remove-organs/story?id=19609438&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;After looking through the linked report, it seems the article might be a bit sensational in claiming&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...Burns opened her eyes at the last minute, saving herself from the organ harvest procedure...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/148583905/U-S-Centers-for-Medicare-and-Medicaid-Services-report-on-St-Joe-s&quot;&gt;http://www.scribd.com/doc/148583905/U-S-Centers-for-Medicare-and-Medicaid-Services-report-on-St-Joe-s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the patient began showing signs of neurological improvement and so the DCD was not further pursued. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also not clear if things would have been different if the family hadn't decided on organ donation.  But it does make sense that they might be less inclined to pull her back from the brink of death considering it was an attempted suicide. (she succeeded a couple years later)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Caveats&lt;/strong&gt; I imagine it's in the vested interest of an organ donation non-profit to paint things better than they are.   This answer is focused on the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt; Organs are only harvested from donors after the decision has been made that the patient has no chance of survival.  Mistaken assessments are made, but this doesn't mean the plug wouldn't be pulled anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastActivityDate="2015-01-23T09:08:53.623" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26523" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27461" CreationDate="2015-01-24T00:08:02.353" Score="23" ViewCount="16655" Body="&lt;p&gt;When I was 13, my sister and I spent the summer on a dairy farm. We worked in the creamery, where (twice a day) we bottled fresh raw milk, as well as cleaned all the equipment. It was really a fun summer overall. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One evening we had a very bad thunderstorm. It knocked out the power and curdled all the milk in the creamery. My uncle was visibly distressed, but my aunt made it memorable by serving us all (by candlelight) fresh milk curds and brown sugar (something I was reluctant to try but ended up really enjoying). She matter-of-factly explained that sometimes &quot;electrical storms&quot; did that, and it was just an accepted risk. We had all the curds and brown sugar or maple syrup we wanted for a few days, and a lot was given away as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next morning we had to call all the customers to tell them there would be no milk that day. It was the only time that happened, though there were other storms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm a wife, and I'm not young, but this is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; an old wives' tale. It wasn't a matter of &lt;em&gt;spoiling&lt;/em&gt;. Our milk was all fresh. Milk that came in from the barn was filtered, rapidly cooled in a special apparatus to (very cold - I'm sure I once knew the temperature but don't recall any more), bottled immediately while cold (the bottles were room temperature), and refrigerated. After we met the demand for the next day's milk with a couple of dozen to spare, excess milk was fed to the calves. Any bottle of milk older than 24 hours was marked, and if not sold within one more day, was tossed. But that evening, &lt;em&gt;every&lt;/em&gt; bottle of milk curdled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just accepted all these years that thunderstorms could curdle milk, until I ran across it today, where it was labeled an old wives' tale. The only support I could find (besides &lt;em&gt;old&lt;/em&gt; newspaper articles discussing it) was a blurb on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=16693.0&quot;&gt;Naked Scientists website&lt;/a&gt; stating&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Electrostatic fields within a certain range can break up emulsions by polarising droplets and causing them to coalesce head to tail. During the build-up to a lightning discharge, the field strength will presumably pass through this range and may cause exposed milk to separate into its aqueous and fatty components. Milk in a metal container would be shielded from the field and remain emulsified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our refrigerators had metal cases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I like yoghurt and sour cream, I've had milk animals and made yoghurt and cheese, but I can't tolerate even slightly sour milk. None of my milk ever curdled, and we have plenty of storms where I live (we have at least a dozen storm-related power outages a year, some lasting days). What I had back then wasn't spoiled milk, it was separated right in the bottle into fresh curds and whey (like when making cheese).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've googled this and can't find a decent paper, so I'm posting here. How can thunderstorms curdle milk?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT – Reference for notability: &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2209&amp;amp;dat=19370602&amp;amp;id=3RtAAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=pqQMAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=6233,2437391&amp;amp;hl=en&quot;&gt;&quot;Thunderstorm Curdled Milk Puzzle Still Baffles Science&quot;, The Telegraph (June 2, 1937)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24840" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-06-18T07:07:53.087" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T07:07:53.087" Title="Can thunderstorms curdle milk?" Tags="|biology|chemistry|milk|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26525" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26530" CreationDate="2015-01-24T04:12:00.553" Score="40" ViewCount="30128" Body="&lt;p&gt;While searching for a different image on Google, I came across this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OGI1u.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Ghandi against vaccines&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The text in the image reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vaccination is a barbarous practice and one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conscientious objectors to vaccination should stand alone, if need be, against the whole world, in defense of their conviction.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Mahatma Gandhi&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I only found one credible source that even talks about Gandhi being against vaccination&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. I did read a comment on a pro-vaccine article that states he was against the mistreatment of animals in the production of vaccines. That makes some sense and might be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If he did indeed say it, when and where was it? If not, where did this originate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.neh.gov/humanities/2013/januaryfebruary/feature/pox-in-the-city&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Pox in the City&lt;/em&gt; - neh.gov&lt;/a&gt; says only this about it: &amp;quot;Gandhi dismissed vaccinations as 'filthy . . . harmful . . . little short of taking [eating] beef.'&amp;quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vaccine-injury.info/history-of-vaccination.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This is the original page containing the infographic on vaccine-injury.info.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/anti-vaccine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The quote is repeated on goodreads.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-05-03T01:05:20.910" Title="Did Gandhi call vaccination a barbarous practice?" Tags="|quotes|vaccines|mahatma-gandhi|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26501" CreationDate="2015-01-24T10:49:41.803" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It looks like for young people (20's) both height and adiposity hover around .80. But as people get older genetic factors become less important for adiposity but remain somewhat stable (around .80) for height.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Twin Study of Human Obesity&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=359582&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=359582&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Height, weight, and body mass index (BMI) were assessed in a sample of 1974 monozygotic and 2097 dizygotic male twin pairs. Concordance rates for different degrees of overweight were twice as high for monozygotic twins as for dizygotic twins. Classic twin methods &lt;strong&gt;estimated a high heritability for height, weight, and BMI, both at age 20 years (.80,.78, and.77, respectively) and at a 25-year follow-up (.80,.81, and.84, respectively).&lt;/strong&gt; Height, weight, and BMI were highly correlated across time, and a path analysis suggested that the major part of that covariation was genetic. These results are similar to those of other twin studies of these measures and suggest that human fatness is under substantial genetic control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Cross-sectional Examination of Height, Weight, and Body Mass Index in Adult Twins&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/50A/4/B237.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/50A/4/B237.short&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A cross-sectional twin design was used to study the developmental nature of genetic and environmental influences on height, weight, and body mass index. The sample of same-sex adult male and female twins consisted of 586 monozygotic and 447 like-sex dizygotic twin pairs &lt;strong&gt;aged 18 to 81 years&lt;/strong&gt;. Means and variances suggested normative age differences for all three physical variables. Biometrical model-fitting with maximum likelihood methods of parameter estimation indicated that the general best-fitting model across the age groups for height, weight, and body mass index was one in which the genetic effects were additive and the environmental effects were from nonshared, idiosyncratic experiences. The best-fitting cross-sectional biometrical model for height, weight, and body mass index indicated that additive genetic variance remained stable while &lt;strong&gt;nonshared environmental variance increased with age&lt;/strong&gt;. This increase in environmental variance but stable genetic variance resulted in &lt;strong&gt;decreasing heritability with age for height (heritability ranging from 0.89 in the youngest group to 0.87 in the oldest), weight (heritability ranging from 0.86 in the youngest group to 0.70 in the oldest), and body mass index (heritability ranging from 0.82 in the youngest group to 0.63 in the oldest).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastEditorUserId="17572" LastEditDate="2015-01-29T05:19:13.370" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T05:19:13.370" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26527" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26487" CreationDate="2015-01-24T13:28:22.103" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do desktop computers catch fire often?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nfpa.org/~/media/Files/Research/Fact%20sheets/office_fact_sheet.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.nfpa.org/~/media/Files/Research/Fact%20sheets/office_fact_sheet.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2007-2011, there were an estimated 730 reported U.S. home structure fires involving office equipment per year...&#xA;  [of these] Computers [accounted for] 48%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In 2007-2011, there were an estimated 630 reported U.S. non-confined non-home structure fires involving office equipment per year...&#xA;  [of these] Computers [accounted for] 36%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a little calculation: 48% of 730 + 36% of 630 = 350 + 227 = &lt;strong&gt;577 computer fires per year.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;[Note that this category is a bit confusingly worded, I'm not sure what constitutes &quot;office equipment&quot; but I couldn't find computers in any other category, so they may all be accounted for in this one.]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So computers seem to catch fire on average &lt;strong&gt;about once every 15 hours in the US&lt;/strong&gt;. (2007-2011)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the risk non-negligible?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nfpa.org/~/media/Files/Research/NFPA%20reports/Occupancies/oshomes.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.nfpa.org/~/media/Files/Research/NFPA%20reports/Occupancies/oshomes.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the five-year period of 2007-2011, U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of &lt;strong&gt;366,600 home structure fires per year&lt;/strong&gt;. ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Leading Causes of Home Structure Fires: 2007-2011&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Cooking equipment 43%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Heating equipment 16%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Intentional 8%&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Electrical Distribution and Lighting equipment 6%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A little more math:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;43% of 366,600 = 157,638 US home fires caused by cooking equipment&lt;br&gt;&#xA;48% of 730 = 350 US home fires caused by computers (see above)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;350/157,638 = 1 : 450&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;You are 450 times as likely to have a (reported) US home fire from cooking equipment than a computer.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe you could just eat out one more day per year instead of cooking, this should satisfy your safety conscious room-mates by mitigating the added risk of an extra computer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastActivityDate="2015-01-24T13:28:22.103" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26530" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26525" CreationDate="2015-01-24T22:52:52.743" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes he said it (assuming that the translation from the Hindi, and Project Gutenberg, can be trusted).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote can be found early in &amp;quot;Chapter VI - CONTAGIOUS DISEASES: SMALL-POX&amp;quot; of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40373/40373-h/40373-h.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A GUIDE TO HEALTH BY MAHATMA GANDHI&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Translated from the Hindi&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;BY&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;A. RAMA IYER, M.A.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Published in Madras in 1921 and republished as a Project Gutenberg EBook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exact quotes (copy and pasted from Project Gutenberg) are,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vaccination is a barbarous practice, and it is one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time, not to be found even among the so-called savage races of the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those who are conscientious objectors to vaccination should, of course, have the courage to face all penalties or persecutions to which they may be subjected by law, and stand alone, if need be, against the whole world, in defence of their conviction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI here are some other quotes from the introduction and first two chapters of the same source. I chose quotes which don't really agree with my more 'modern' understanding of physiology. The added &lt;strong&gt;emphasis&lt;/strong&gt; in each passage is mine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We have got into the habit of calling in a doctor for the most trivial diseases. Where there is no regular doctor available, we take the advice of mere quacks. We labour under the fatal delusion that no disease can be cured without medicine. This has been responsible for more mischief to mankind than any other evil. &lt;strong&gt;It is of course, necessary that our diseases should be cured, but they cannot be cured by medicines.&lt;/strong&gt; Not only are medicines merely useless, but at times even positively harmful. For a diseased man to take drugs and medicines would be as foolish as to try to cover up the filth that has accumulated in the inside of the house. The more we cover up the filth, the [Pg 5] more rapidly does putrefaction go on. The same is the case with the human body. Illness or disease is only Nature’s warning that filth has accumulated in some portion or other of the body; and it would surely be the part of wisdom to allow Nature to remove the filth, instead of covering it up by the help of medicines. &lt;strong&gt;Those who take medicines are really rendering the task of Nature doubly difficult.&lt;/strong&gt; It is, on the other hand, quite easy for us to help Nature in her task by remembering certain elementary principles,—by fasting, for instance, so that the filth may not accumulate all the more, and by vigorous exercise in the open air, so that some of the filth may escape in the form of perspiration. And the one thing that is supremely necessary is to keep our minds strictly under control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus considered, we may conclude that that man alone is perfectly healthy whose body is well formed, whose teeth as well as eyes and ears are in good condition, whose nose is free from dirty matter, whose skin exudes perspiration freely and without any bad smell, whose mouth is also free from bad smells, whose hands and legs perform their duty properly, who is neither too fat nor too thin, and whose mind and senses are constantly under his control. As has already been said, it is very hard to gain such health, but it is harder [Pg 11] still to retain it, when once it has been acquired. &lt;strong&gt;The chief reason why we are not truly healthy is that our parents were not.&lt;/strong&gt; An eminent writer has said that, if the parents are in perfectly good condition their children would certainly be superior to them in all respects. &lt;strong&gt;A perfectly healthy man has no reason to fear death; our terrible fear of death shows that we are far from being so healthy.&lt;/strong&gt; It is, however, the clear duty of all of us to strive for perfect health. We will, therefore, proceed to consider in the following pages how such health can be attained, and how, when once attained, it can also be retained for ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The world is compounded of the five elements,—earth, water, air, fire, and ether. So too is our body.&lt;/strong&gt; It is a sort of miniature world. Hence the body stands in need of all the elements in due proportion,—pure earth, pure water, pure fire or sunlight, pure air, and open space. &lt;strong&gt;When any one of these falls short of its due proportion, illness is caused in the body.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most important portion of the body is the stomach. &lt;strong&gt;If the stomach ceases to work even for a single moment, the whole body would collapse.&lt;/strong&gt; The work of the stomach is to digest the food, and so to provide nourishment to the body. Its relation [Pg 13] to the body is the same as that of the steam engine to the Railway train. The gastric juice which is produced in the stomach helps the assimilation of nutritious elements in the food, the refuse being sent out by way of the intestines in the form of urine and fæces. On the left side of the abdominal cavity is the spleen, while to the right of the stomach is the liver, whose function is the purification of the blood and the secretion of the bile, which is so useful for digestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-25T00:24:48.933" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26532" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30622" CreationDate="2015-01-25T04:12:48.947" Score="32" ViewCount="16227" Body="&lt;p&gt;The image below went somewhat viral:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z8j5X.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Remove child before washing&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It shows a clothes label with the text &quot;Remove child before washing&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an actual clothes label of an actual commercially available piece of clothing?  Or is it a joke — either through digital photo editing, or by producing a fake clothes label?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-04-29T02:35:21.437" LastActivityDate="2022-08-14T02:32:52.997" Title="Is this &quot;Remove child before washing&quot; clothes label real?" Tags="|consumer-products|photography|clothing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26535" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26537" CreationDate="2015-01-25T18:11:24.570" Score="6" ViewCount="834" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know to what extend this list is trustable:&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wikiislam.net/wiki/List_of_Killings_Ordered_or_Supported_by_Muhammad&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikiislam.net - List of Killings Ordered or Supported by Muhammad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the sources credible and backed up with solid information? And if not, are there any other sources for the listed claims that are?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which (if not all) of these claims are most likely to be true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24851" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2015-01-27T22:26:12.097" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T22:26:12.097" Title="Is this list of Killings Ordered or Supported by Muhammad accurate?" Tags="|religion|islam|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-01-28T00:25:42.273" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26536" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-25T19:21:08.787" Score="11" ViewCount="1738" Body="&lt;p&gt;The charity Oxfam recently launched a media campaign about global inequality with the startling statistic (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxfam.org.uk/get-involved/campaign-with-us/our-campaigns/inequality-and-poverty?intcmp=hp_325even_it_up-info_2015-01-19&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; on their website):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...inequality is rising: the combined wealth of the richest 1 per cent will overtake that of the other 99 per cent of people next year...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21640444-oxfam-causes-stir-stat-wrong-yardstick&quot;&gt;The Economist&lt;/a&gt; is skeptical:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Oxfam’s projection should be treated with caution. The charity uses a straight-line projection of the trend in wealth shares in 2010-14 to forecast that just 50m adults will hold the majority of the world’s household wealth by next year. That is both too simplistic and arbitrary. If Oxfam had based its forecast on the trend in 2000-14, then the crossover point would have been 2035.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also point out that the method Oxfam uses puts too much emphasis on the very top earners and ignores major gains in wealth for the middle earners of the world's income distribution. And they don't use the best metric for wealth. Other estimates about the distribution of wealth suggest that extreme poverty has been dropping quickly (see, for example,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gapminder.org/videos/dont-panic-end-poverty/&quot;&gt;GapMinder&lt;/a&gt;) in contrast to the Oxfam claim that the wealth of the poor is declining.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is the Oxfam statistic right and will the richest 1% now have more than the rest of us put together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the question was first asked Oxfam had &lt;em&gt;projected&lt;/em&gt; the result and this cause some confusion. But in 2016 they announced (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/18/richest-62-billionaires-wealthy-half-world-population-combined&quot;&gt;Guardian report here&lt;/a&gt;) that their claim was already true. They added the statistic that the richest 62 people now had more wealth than the poorest 50% of the world's population. I don't think this changes the question as both claims are about the shape of the distribution of wealth. So the question is are Oxfam's claims about the distribution of wealth true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Another Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oxfam have turned this exercise into an annual jamboree of shocking statistics. Their latest claim (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jan/16/worlds-eight-richest-people-have-same-wealth-as-poorest-50&quot;&gt;reported in the Guardian in January 2017&lt;/a&gt;) is that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;World's eight richest people have same wealth as poorest 50%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their methodology has been criticised before, is this estimate any better than the others?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS I've updated the title to match the &lt;em&gt;latest&lt;/em&gt; claim. However, &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; the claims are based on the same analysis so a good answer should address all of the different versions Oxfam have presented over time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2017-01-16T11:14:08.450" LastActivityDate="2017-01-16T13:06:33.510" Title="Do the world's eight richest people have as much wealth as the poorest 50%" Tags="|economics|wealth|poverty|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26537" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26535" CreationDate="2015-01-25T19:28:01.660" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The earliest biography of Muhammad was written about 100 years after his death, so any historicism is on slightly shaky grounds. None of these stories would be accepted by &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; Muslims -- there is a lot of room for plausible deniability. I don't think this question is answerable in the form &quot;did Muhammad really do this&quot; or &quot;would all Muslims agree that Muhammad did this?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the real question you're wondering about is probably more like the following: &lt;strong&gt;how many of these deaths were attributed to Muhammad &lt;em&gt;by Muslims&lt;/em&gt; soon after his death, for the reasons given in the article?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer: &lt;strong&gt;all of them&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where you see the words &quot;Sirat Rasul Allah&quot; on the list of primary sources in this table, this refers to Ibn Ishaq's early biography of Muhammad, which is the source for probably 90% of any biographical information anyone has ever found about Muhammad. Muslims often doubt the historical veracity of the stories in this book: for example, it contains poetry ascribed to people who were not poets, and the Satanic Verses story which many Muslims discount. But non-Muslims should be in a state of doubt about everything said about and attributed to Muhammad, and this &quot;Sirat Rasul Allah&quot; was indeed written by a Muslim, and much of the book has been reused in other biographies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A typical example of the story behind the WikiIslam article can be found in the Wikipedia article on one of the first deaths named, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_%27Afak&quot;&gt;Abu 'Afak&lt;/a&gt;. Ibn Ishaq's &quot;Sirat Rasul Allah&quot; says that Muhammad ordered this killing himself. Another account, by an historian named Al-Waqidi, says that one of Muhammad's followers killed Abu 'Afak on his own initiative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One can debate endlessly over which of these stories is more plausible. There can be no resolution to that. But did an early Muslim, and an intelligent historical writer, state that Muhammad directly ordered the killing? Yes. So it was within the range of plausibility in the early Muslim community.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either way, no one claims that anyone was admonished for this murder of a poet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastEditorUserId="22367" LastEditDate="2015-01-26T00:21:52.217" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T00:21:52.217" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26538" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-25T20:01:47.080" Score="5" ViewCount="287" Body="&lt;p&gt;When the numbers were counted several prominent observers of climate claimed that the year 2014 was the hottest ever. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/2014-officially-hottest-year-on-record/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt; reported:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s official: 2014 has taken the title of hottest year on record. That ranking comes courtesy of data released Monday by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), the first of four major global temperature recordkeepers to release their data for last year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The climate skeptic community responded with a critique. For example, Lewis Page (an author who has often reported climate skeptical views) in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/19/no_scientific_consensus_on_2014_hottest_year_on_record_claims/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Register&lt;/a&gt; argued (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But in fact, detecting a global average temperature rise - of less than a degree since the 1880s, as all sides agree - among thousands upon thousands of thermometer readings from all over the world and spanning more than a century is no simple matter. The temperature at any given location is surging up and down by many degrees each day and even more wildly across a year. It can be done, across a timescale of decades, &lt;em&gt;but trying to say that one year is hotter or colder than the next is to push the limits of statistics and the available data.&lt;/em&gt; This sort of thing is why the battle over global temperatures tends to be so hotly debated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They argue that, when measurement uncertainty is taken into account, we can't clearly say that 2014 was the warmest. The source is what sound like a fairly clear statement from the (not recently noted for their climate skeptical position) &lt;a href=&quot;http://static.berkeleyearth.org/memos/Global-Warming-2014-Berkeley-Earth-Newsletter.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project (BEST)&lt;/a&gt; (my emphasis):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our best estimate for the global temperature of 2014 puts it slightly above (by 0.01 C) that of the next warmest year (2010) but by &lt;strong&gt;much less than the margin of uncertainty&lt;/strong&gt; (0.05 C). Therefore it is impossible to conclude from our analysis which of 2014, 2010, or 2005 was actually the warmest year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clearly climate skeptics will want to spin this a different way from climate campaigners. But is their interpretation fair given the way disinterested scientists &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; quote statistical results? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2015-01-27T22:53:34.477" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T22:53:34.477" Title="Was 2014 the hottest year on record?" Tags="|climate-change|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-01-26T08:40:36.170" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26542" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-26T02:56:54.020" Score="4" ViewCount="255" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was watching a health program on TV last night that was looking at skin aging, and they flashed up a panel showing various causes of skin aging. Along with the usual culprits of sunlight, smoking and drinking, there was also smartphones and computers listed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking around the web, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report-is-your-smartphone-ageing-you-2050865&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this (slightly quackish?) site claiming&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;studies have shown that excessive use of cell phones can affect the skin too. “Often referred to as ‘Tech Neck’, it is usually associated with the posture one assumes while using the phone. One constantly looks down and forward for hours causing the neck muscles to contract, thereby increasing the pull on the facial skin particularly over the jowl area. This increases the formation of wrinkles, possibility of skin sagging and also leads to a double chin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/9869/6397&quot;&gt;previous answer&lt;/a&gt; dealt with the question of temporary wrinkles becoming permanent, and it was a &quot;probably true&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11338225/Smartphones-and-tablets-cause-skin-wrinkling-condition-dubbed-tech-neck.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Telegraph has a more detailed look&lt;/a&gt;, but it sounds a bit too much like an advert for:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Beauty brand Yves Saint Laurent claims it is has invented the first cream which tackles ‘tech-neck’ with a new molecule to boost elasticity of the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, has there been some new research into this that makes specifically mobile phone users (rather than desk workers in general) more susceptible to &quot;tech neck&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6397" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T06:26:11.147" Title="Do smartphones and computers cause skin to age via &quot;tech neck&quot;?" Tags="|mobile-phones|dermatology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26543" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-26T05:29:07.177" Score="15" ViewCount="516" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/9578/do-police-officers-have-monthly-quotas-of-traffic-tickets-to-write&quot;&gt;related question about police quotas&lt;/a&gt; suggests there are quotas (some openly, some not) in some jurisdictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/17/hacker-checks-open-government-data-do-police-officers-have-quotas-for-traffic-tickets/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Venture Beat Article&lt;/a&gt; strongly suggests that more tickets are issued at the end of each month, as police officers try to meet their quotas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The data certainly shows a lumpiness. It doesn’t show an average number of tickets issued on each day or in each week. In fact, the date shows more tickets issued near the end of the month — and the beginning of the month.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4666125&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hacker News discussion, in which these statistics are challenged&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Warning, bad science!&#xA;  Looking at the last plot, you can't conclude that police give out more tickets at the end of the month, unless you also conclude that police like to give out tickets around the 8th, and don't like to give out tickets around the 11th of each month. Problem is, there are no error bars, if there were, it'd probably show that there is no significant evidence for the hypothesis. The error of the mean of the last plot is probably comparable to the signal itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there higher quality studies to examine this question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21541" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T08:38:38.977" Title="Do police issue more citations near the end of each month?" Tags="|politics|police|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26547" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-26T10:59:41.217" Score="3" ViewCount="221" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've bought a steam cleaner, because my partner's very keen on the idea of not using 'chemicals' to clean with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have used it a few times (it seems to fall to me, mostly) - I have to say, I'm still not convinced it does much good. I mean, for all it's rather therapeutic to blast things with jets of steam, I'm still not sure it's really doing anything much more profound than spraying hot water all over the place. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've tried to figure out a definitive answer as to whether they do any good, but have found a fairly steady stream of marketing propaganda and anecdata. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My &lt;em&gt;observation&lt;/em&gt; is that it doesn't do much more than a spray bottle of water. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is anyone able to help me confirm whether 'steam cleaning' is actually beneficial or effective when compared to more standard cleaning methods? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23012" LastEditorUserId="23012" LastEditDate="2015-01-26T11:54:59.057" LastActivityDate="2015-01-26T11:54:59.057" Title="Is steam cleaning any more effective than 'normal' cleaning?" Tags="|cleaning|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-01-26T19:34:24.283" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26551" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-26T19:36:34.290" Score="4" ViewCount="143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard that if you wash your hair in every day, your hair will fall out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This magazine article,&#xA;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/beauty/hair-loss-dos-and-donts-for-men-who-are-going-bald/story-fnet0435-1226748810731&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hair loss dos and don'ts for men who are going bald&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DON'T WASH YOUR HAIR EVERY DAY&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most men don't need to wash their hair every day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too much shampoo or conditioner on a daily basis breaks down the natural structure of your hair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that shampoos harm the hair or the head skin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24861" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T15:41:18.630" Title="Can the shampoos harm the hair or the head skin?" Tags="|hair|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-01-27T18:30:06.303" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26554" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26556" CreationDate="2015-01-27T05:06:59.257" Score="10" ViewCount="963" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://amzn.to/1wyzEC3&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Third Ear&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, author Chris Lonsdale makes the following claim in chapter 14:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some years ago, scientists did a very interesting experiment. They placed a single, live, heart cell into a Petri dish in a lab. This lonely little cell was beating for a while, then, slowly, the strength of the beat declined, getting slower and weaker, until it finally stopped. Dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know very little about biology and anatomy, but the idea that a single, isolated heart cell, with no attached nervous system, can beat, strikes me as dubious.  Is there any truth to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T08:24:30.540" Title="Do individual heart cells &quot;beat&quot; when isolated?" Tags="|biology|anatomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26556" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26554" CreationDate="2015-01-27T07:27:51.963" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014482763800087&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; studies single mouse heart cells. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is behind a paywall, but the abstract clearly states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Summary&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Single beating cells may be prepared from the young rat heart.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;These cells may beat for up to 40 days.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, we can easily conclude that, yes, it is in fact possible to do so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um596AiB3ME&quot;&gt;video evidence&lt;/a&gt; of a single heart cell beating. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure what the point of the author is, as cells often die in culture, especially if the culture medium is not replaced. In fact, if he was trying to emphasise loneliness, the heart cell would actually be expected to grow into a muscle fiber of beating cells, as quoted from the same paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Single independently beating cells grow into synchronously beating nets of cells and eventually develop into beating fibers. Synchrony depends upon protoplasmic contact. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-01-27T08:24:30.540" LastActivityDate="2015-01-27T08:24:30.540" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-27T18:19:56.957" Score="12" ViewCount="10877" Body="&lt;p&gt;A popular blender brand, &lt;a href=&quot;http://vitamix.com&quot;&gt;Vitamix&lt;/a&gt;, claims that &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vitamix.com/~/media/Files/Global/Media%20Center/Media-Relations/StoryStarters/Household/Vitamix-ARA-Boomers.pdf&quot;&gt;The 5200’s&#xA;powerful blades pulverize the cell walls of whole fruits and&#xA;vegetables, releasing the full nutrients found in the seeds&#xA;and skin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They stop short of saying that the food is healthier, but they are clearly implying that nutrients are released that might not otherwise be. Many health oriented blogs do suggest that breaking down cell walls is important to extract the full nutrition from foods to release the nutrition and help your body to digest and absorb nutrients:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blenderdude.com/articles/vitamix-blendtec-blenders/&quot;&gt;http://blenderdude.com/articles/vitamix-blendtec-blenders/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The more powerful the blender, the greater its ability to aid the body&#xA;  in releasing properties otherwise locked inside these particular cell&#xA;  walls should be.  A blender delivering over 1 actual horsepower of&#xA;  mechanical energy should be strong enough to rupture an exponentially&#xA;  greater number of cells in our whole foods than a traditional&#xA;  household blender, releasing a greater percentage of phytonutrients ... A strong &#xA;  blender’s ability to rupture cell structure potentially yields a&#xA;  substantially greater increase in the percentage of phytonutrients&#xA;  into the bloodstream that would otherwise go unutilized.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rawfoodlife.com/blendtecvsvitamix.html&quot;&gt;http://www.rawfoodlife.com/blendtecvsvitamix.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the blades in these powerful machines hit your spinach, kale, bananas,&#xA;  almonds and everything else with a powerful force that literally&#xA;  explodes the cell walls of your ingredients, instantly releasing all&#xA;  the dense nutrients and flavors trapped inside. That would be hard for&#xA;  your stomach to do even if it wasn't already compromised by a lifetime&#xA;  of cooked, processed foods&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://leanstrongbody.com/nutribullet-review-the-good-the-great-and-the-oh-my-god-this-machine-is-awesome/&quot;&gt;http://leanstrongbody.com/nutribullet-review-the-good-the-great-and-the-oh-my-god-this-machine-is-awesome/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The NutriBullet helps your system bypasses the “breaking down phase”&#xA;  in the stomach because the machine breaks apart the cell walls of the&#xA;  food you blend, so when you consume what you make, the phytonutrients,&#xA;  micronutrients, and other key nutrients and vitamins get into the&#xA;  blood stream in the fastest most efficient way possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to these claims? I assume that the digestive system is designed to break down these cell walls to absorb nutrients, so is there any value in doing it in a blender? (note that I'm not questioning the value of pulverizing hard to digest foods with a hard shell like Flax seeds, but &quot;normal&quot; fruits and vegetables).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13418" LastActivityDate="2017-04-02T12:47:08.007" Title="Does blending food to &quot;break down the cell walls&quot; make it healthier?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26562" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26567" CreationDate="2015-01-28T05:49:16.840" Score="4" ViewCount="584" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read that granite tiles emit radioactive radon gas, which is a health hazard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24883" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-01-28T13:23:16.317" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T14:17:56.170" Title="Do granite tiles emit radioactive radon gas?" Tags="|environmental-health|radiation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26564" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-28T08:44:17.750" Score="13" ViewCount="539" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEG-ly9tQGk&quot;&gt;So lately i've discovered a Video&lt;/a&gt; which went incredibly viral (20 mil views in a week). It's an amateurish filmed video called &quot;A new level of archery&quot; about the Danish archer Lars Andersen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I have to admit that the stunts look impressive and somewhat real but it's possible to manipulate everything in videos which is why I'm wondering about whether these stunts were actually performed or not. Maybe CG or other tricks were used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the stunts real? Some things just look almost impossible like splitting an arrow in two while on the move or catching an arrow mid-air while firing it before landing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18504" LastEditorUserId="18504" LastEditDate="2015-01-28T13:31:26.037" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T14:07:01.663" Title="Did Lars Andersen perform the stunts in &quot;A new level of archery&quot;?" Tags="|video|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26566" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-28T13:21:08.357" Score="3" ViewCount="39" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cold weather is usually considered to be one of the causes of common cold, flu, influenza, pneumonia etc., especially in winter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, many believe that these illnesses may be mainly caused not by low temperatures, but by other factors which are by themselves correlated with cold weather, such as lower humidity and the obvious fact that we tend to stay in close, crowded places a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/its-actually-true-cold-weather-can-actually-cause-colds-study-finds/article22301997/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Some&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/112/3/827.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://fampra.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/6/608.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;argue&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17705968&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;that&lt;/a&gt; lower temperatures facilitate the reproduction of rinoviruses (and/or increase in other negative factors), while &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/03/08/173816815/flu-risk-and-weather-its-not-the-heat-its-the-humidity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;others&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2012/10/29/does-being-cold-give-you-a-cold/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;seem&lt;/a&gt; to &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1003194&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;suggest&lt;/a&gt; that this may be related, for example, with humidity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the great amount of people who are affected by cold and supposedly cold-related illnesses, I was surprised to see that there is not actually a great amount of information and studies on the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The general public feeling that cold causes colds may not be accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone provide additional data, information, and experimental evidence on whether exposure to cold (continuous exposure, not sudden repeated brief exposure to cold environments) actually cause colds?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24887" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T13:21:08.357" Title="Is there a correlation between cold and illnesses generally perceived as cold-related?" Tags="|medical-science|healthcare|immune-system|common-cold|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-01-28T14:21:37.280" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26567" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26562" CreationDate="2015-01-28T13:54:41.490" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The EPA article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/radiation/tenorm/granite-countertops.html&quot;&gt;Radiation Protection - Granite Countertops and Radiation&lt;/a&gt; confirms that granite tiles do in fact emit radon gas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Any type of rock could contain naturally occurring radioactive&#xA;  elements like radium, uranium and thorium. Some pieces of granite&#xA;  contain more of these elements than others, depending on the&#xA;  composition of the molten rock from which they formed. If present,&#xA;  these radioactive elements will decay into radon, a colorless,&#xA;  odorless, radioactive gas which may be released from the granite over&#xA;  time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the amount of radon emitted by granite tiles (for example in countertops) is highly unlikely to be a health risk&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, since granite is generally not very porous, less radon is&#xA;  likely to escape from it than from a more porous stone such as&#xA;  sandstone. It’s important to know that radon originating in the soil&#xA;  beneath homes is a more common problem and a far larger public health&#xA;  risk than radon from granite building materials. Also, any radon from&#xA;  granite countertops in kitchens or bathrooms is likely to be diluted&#xA;  in the typical home since those rooms are usually well ventilated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition to radon, the other natural radioactive material in the&#xA;  granite can emit radiation. However, it is extremely unlikely that&#xA;  granite countertops in homes could increase the radiation dose above&#xA;  that the normal, natural background dose that comes from soil and&#xA;  rocks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-01-28T14:17:56.170" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T14:17:56.170" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26568" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-28T14:12:27.063" Score="2" ViewCount="172" Body="&lt;p&gt;Supposedly, for certain music track are used any frequencies that the human ear can not hear , but the brain can. And this the frequencies create pleasant feelings, which is why more people choose a song. What do you think about it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Links: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;vice.com/read/i-tried-to-get-high-using-digital-drugs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=22591.0&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24861" LastEditorUserId="24861" LastEditDate="2015-01-28T14:49:26.867" LastActivityDate="2015-01-28T14:49:26.867" Title="Can the special sound frequency make addiction?" Tags="|neurology|music|addiction|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-01-28T16:18:57.207" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26583" CreationDate="2015-01-28T18:15:22.570" Score="20" ViewCount="4695" Body="&lt;p&gt;Our Young-Earth Creationist physics teacher stated that he does not believe that man actually stepped on the moon. &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1128/has-man-walked-on-the-moon/1331#1331&quot;&gt;That topic has been well covered here.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of his arguments, however, was that gravity on the moon was not strong enough for astronauts to leave their footprints there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22260" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2018-06-21T23:32:06.330" Title="Did astronauts leave footprints on the moon?" Tags="|physics|astronomy|moon|nasa|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26574" CreationDate="2015-01-29T10:08:29.107" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;People have stepped on the Moon when they went there and left footprints, so we've plenty of photographic evidence of their footsteps on the Moon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, it turns out that people do leave footprint in dust, even if they weigh less, like a child leaves footprints on Earth while &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.moonconnection.com/moon_gravity.phtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;weighing as much as a man on the Moon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Pictures taken from the Moon itself&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Aldrin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Buzz Aldrin&lt;/a&gt; has plenty of pictures of his footprints on the moon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/W5YcV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Buzz Aldrin's footstep&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_11_bootprint.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Buzz Aldrin's footstep&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/80JpX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Aldrin walks on the surface of the Moon during Apollo 11&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aldrin_Apollo_11_original.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aldrin walks on the surface of the Moon during Apollo 11&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Pictures taken with a telescope&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This pictures were taken by a satellite (LRO) with a telescope, from &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space.com/12846-apollo-moon-landing-sites-flags-footprints.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;On the Moon, Flags &amp;amp; Footprints of Apollo Astronauts Won't Last Forever&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0qzFE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Apollo 12 landing site&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Apollo 12 landing site&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2Zbs4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Apollo 14 landing site&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;Apollo 14 landing site&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T10:15:49.190" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26574" CreationDate="2015-01-29T13:11:16.813" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/space/5833633/Apollo-11-Moon-landing-conspiracy-theories-debunked.html&quot;&gt;Apollo 11 Moon landing: conspiracy theories debunked&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following reasons have all been offered as proof that the Moon&#xA;  landings which began with Apollo 11's touchdown on July 20 1969 were&#xA;  faked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5) The footprints in the fine lunar dust, with no moisture or&#xA;  atmosphere or strong gravity, are unexpectedly well preserved, as if&#xA;  made in wet sand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lack of wind on the moon means the footprints in fine, dry lunar&#xA;  dust aren’t blown away in the way they would be if made in a similar&#xA;  substance on Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://mythbustersresults.com/nasa-moon-landing&quot;&gt;Mythbusterresults.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A clear footprint cannot be made in vacuum because there is no&#xA;  moisture to hold its shape.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BUSTED&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Build Team first tested whether&#xA;  dry or wet sand made a more distinguishable footprint by stepping in&#xA;  them with an astronaut boot. It was clear that the wet footprint had&#xA;  more detail than the dry footprint. They then placed sand similar in&#xA;  composition to the Moon’s soil in a vacuum chamber and stepped on it&#xA;  with an astronaut boot, which made a clear print. The reason provided&#xA;  for this was that the unique composition of lunar soil allows it to&#xA;  behave differently than terrestrial soil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also listed in Wikipedia under &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories&quot;&gt;Moon landing conspiracy theories&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, I'm not totally happy with the quality of the sources. The Telegraph is a general purpose newspaper, and the person who wrote the article doesn't seem to be scientist. Likewise, the Mythbusters are not expert scientists. Similarly with Wikipedia...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2015-01-29T16:30:21.650" LastActivityDate="2015-01-29T16:30:21.650" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26586" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-29T16:09:30.297" Score="20" ViewCount="779" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/10/24/demonic-males-podcast/&quot;&gt;Art of Manliness podcast&lt;/a&gt; titled &quot;Demonic Males with Dr. Richard Wrangham&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wrangham&quot;&gt;Richard Wrangham&lt;/a&gt; makes the claim, starting about 28 minutes into the podcast that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If there was ever a clash between what men wanted to do and women&#xA;  wanted to do, then the authority always resides with the men. In that&#xA;  sense, every single human society is patriarchal. By the way this not&#xA;  just some man saying this, if you take a book edited by two strong&#xA;  feminists called &quot;Women, Culture and Society&quot; in the 1980's and&#xA;  endless chapters by women anthropologists and everyone agrees there&#xA;  are no matriarchal societies.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This strikes me as a very bold claim and as such, is it generally accepted within the peer-reviewed anthropological community that there are no matriarchal human societies either now or in the historical record? Conversely, is there any strong support from researchers of feminist theory to refute this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Note that the quote might be a bit off since there is no transcript for the podcast, and I believe the book is &quot;Women, Culture and Society&quot; edited by Michelle Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2016-02-11T20:46:39.643" Title="Are there no matriarchal societies?" Tags="|anthropology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26587" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-01-29T20:56:26.780" Score="18" ViewCount="2567" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fb-13.sfglobe.com/2015/01/28/this-man-has-5-duis-how-his-friends-try-to-change-him-totally-amazing/?src=share_fb_new_33557&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also, despite popular belief, &quot;Only time will sober a person up. Drinking strong coffee, exercising or taking a cold shower will not help.&quot; So, if you're buzzing but think you'll be alright after a caffeine binge and frigid shower - think again.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've heard various forms of claims on both sides of this issue.  That drinking coffee, doing exercise, a cold shower, eating greasy food, etc, will help one sober up faster. Also that nothing, other than time, will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the truth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can imagine that only time will help reduce one's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_alcohol_content&quot;&gt;BAC&lt;/a&gt;, which is the legal definition of drunkenness for the purpose of driving in most (or all?) locations. But my own experience suggests that a brisk walk, cold water, cold air, caffeine, etc, can help me &lt;em&gt;feel&lt;/em&gt; less intoxicated.  Are there multiple phenomenon at play here, which might lend credibility to both sides of the claim?  Is there any objective measure by which some activity, other than simply waiting, can make one more sober?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2015-02-02T17:10:45.257" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T06:37:52.180" Title="Does drinking coffee, or any other activity, help sober a person?" Tags="|biology|alcohol|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27044" CreationDate="2015-01-29T22:57:37.180" Score="25" ViewCount="20316" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_floss&quot;&gt;Floss:&lt;/a&gt; Dental floss is a cord of thin filaments used to remove food and dental plaque from between teeth. The floss is gently inserted between the teeth and wiped along the teeth sides, especially close to the gums or underneath them. In dentistry, floss is classed as an interdental (between teeth) cleaning aid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On various youtube video I hear opposite opinions regarding the best order of flossing and brushing. And if we're at it, then what about mouthwash?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought that the best practice is to go from the coarse to the fine, i.e. first brush, then floss, then mouthwash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Mark Burhenne (&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://askthedentist.com/&quot;&gt;Ask the Dentist&lt;/a&gt;&quot;) - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIJvqkj8c0s&amp;amp;t=1m30s&quot;&gt;How to Floss the Right Way&lt;/a&gt; - argues brush then floss.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Scott Frey - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freysmiles.com/blog/view/floss-brush-or-mouthwash-first&quot;&gt;FreySmiles&lt;/a&gt; argues Floss then brush then mouthwash&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Zak - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.everydayhealth.com/dental-health/nighttime-oral-care/guide-to-nighttime-oral-health.aspx&quot;&gt;everydayHealth&lt;/a&gt; argues it doesn't matter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.14219/jada.archive.2004.0217&quot;&gt;Sharma et. al., 2004&lt;/a&gt; recommends brush then floss then mouthwash.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://doi.org/10.1902/jop.2006.050362&quot;&gt;Zimmer et. al., 2006&lt;/a&gt; recommends mouthwash &lt;em&gt;instead&lt;/em&gt; of floss&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24903" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-15T23:53:18.950" LastActivityDate="2021-08-02T13:05:18.183" Title="Is it better to floss before or after brushing the teeth?" Tags="|hygiene|dentistry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26612" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6219" CreationDate="2015-02-01T13:08:37.450" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The full Newsweek article is available over at: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rsr.org/newsweek-1987&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://rsr.org/newsweek-1987&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a creationist, I asked the article's authors, Larry Martz and Ann McDaniel, for information on that statistic. The statistic is invalid as their replies and the information at that link should make obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1987 Martz &amp;amp; McDaniel wrote,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;By one count there are some 700 scientists with respectable academic credentials (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientist) who give credence to creation-science, the general theory that complex life forms did not evolve but appeared &amp;quot;abruptly.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To a request for more details, on June 12, 2012 Ann McDaniel replied to Real Science Radio:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Bob – I wish I had the notes for that story, but I don’t have everything from 25 years ago, and I don’t remember. So sorry that I cannot help you.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On April 1, 2013 Larry Martz wrote,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Mr. Enyart, ... I was the New York writer on this story, working from reports from Ann McDaniel and others who weren't named in the byline, along with whatever telephone reporting I did myself. I don't remember which of them came up with that figure, or what its provenance was. It might well have been Ginny Carroll, who was Newsweek's principal reporter on Christian religious affairs; but sad to say, Ginny is dead. Your conjecture seems entirely reasonable, but none of us can confirm it... I think you are probably safe to use your conjecture for the source, along with 'probably.' best, larry martz&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob Enyart also spoke with Glen Wolfram, the CRS membership director who has served in that position since the 1980s. Wolfram agreed with Enyart's conclusion that Newsweek was likely referring to the publicly known number of scientist members of CRS. He provided published membership records from throughout the 1980s. &lt;strong&gt;Over the five years from mid-1982 to mid-1987, the average CRS membership was about 2,000 with 36 percent being voting members, that is, having earned a postgraduate science degree. So there were an average of 710 &amp;quot;scientists with respectable academic credentials&amp;quot; as members of CRS in the years leading up to that Newsweek article, which number was undoubtedly the source for that 1987 report.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The late Roger Ebert may have been remembering the fabricated claim that nearly 100% of scientists reject design when he put the percent at &amp;quot;99.975&amp;quot;. As for the 99.86, that percentage was, possibly unintentionally, arrived at by some who incorrectly calculated a percentage based on the &amp;quot;count&amp;quot;. So Real Science Radio hereby ask evolutionists to help us creationists by correcting anyone who still promotes that incorrect 99.86%. Thanks!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24932" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-02-01T13:21:06.043" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26622" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25181" CreationDate="2015-02-02T07:17:26.607" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The phenomenon is real, but the first explanation is wrong. For an account of what happens, help yourself to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/21902&quot;&gt;very good answer at the Seasoned Advice StackExchange&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, there are various droplets in scotch that take up or release molecules relevant to taste and odour, depending on the alcohol concentration in the surrounding liquid. This is a physical process, there are no chemical reactions involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;cooling&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and adding water can have the effect of both masking certain flavors by forcing them out of solution, and enhancing others by promoting their release back into solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This contradicts the second explanation, which relies on warming to improve the experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24937" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:33:29.713" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T03:31:07.210" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26623" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-02T09:59:07.410" Score="5" ViewCount="904" Body="&lt;p&gt;What's the current state of knowledge concerning health risks caused by Bluetooth headsets?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What has been confirmed so far?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I lack the expertise to evaluate which reports are trustworthy and which are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Additionally, some people may suffer from hypersensitivity to the&#xA;  microwave radio frequencies, causing them to get headaches just from&#xA;  turning a phone on or being in a room with someone on a phone or&#xA;  headset. According to the United States Food and Drug Administration,&#xA;  the US Federal Communications Commission, and the United Kingdom&#xA;  National Radiological Protection Board, all available scientific&#xA;  research shows that mobile devices are safe, but further research is&#xA;  necessary. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wisegeek.org/do-bluetooth-headsets-cause-cancer.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastEditorUserId="16362" LastEditDate="2015-02-03T09:11:05.193" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T09:11:05.193" Title="Do Bluetooth headsets pose any health risks?" Tags="|medical-science|safety|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26625" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26623" CreationDate="2015-02-02T13:58:12.610" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;After some googling, this seems to be the current state of knowledge, which is not specifically about Bluetooth headsets but wireless electronic devices in general:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No negative effects of short-term use were found&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Research on effects of long-term use hasn't been done yet or is in progress, respectively&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;My sources&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Trustworthy&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Bluetooth uses the wave spectrum between 2.402 GHz and 2.480 GHz&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Image source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://theconversation.com/wireless-spectrum-is-for-sale-but-what-is-it-11794&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://theconversation.com/wireless-spectrum-is-for-sale-but-what-is-it-11794&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sfOsS.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/569/do-mobile-phones-have-anything-to-do-with-brain-cancer&quot;&gt;Do mobile phones have anything to do with brain cancer?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Seem trustworthy&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth#Health_concerns&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth#Health_concerns&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_electronic_devices_and_health&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_electronic_devices_and_health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/20001/do-cellphone-towers-cause-health-issues?rq=1&quot;&gt;Do cellphone towers cause health issues?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22127/are-there-signification-health-risks-with-long-term-use-of-headphones-on-a-cellp&quot;&gt;Are there signification health risks with long term use of headphones on a cellphone?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/3070/does-home-wifi-expose-you-to-less-radiation-than-using-the-3g-on-your-cell-phone/4152?s=1|0.0547#4152&quot;&gt;Does home-WiFi expose you to less radiation than using the 3G on your cell-phone?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Don't know whether it's trustworthy&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120321034840AALrBGt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120321034840AALrBGt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16362" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-02-02T19:31:16.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26627" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26630" CreationDate="2015-02-02T15:33:01.910" Score="20" ViewCount="7259" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that the health risks of hand washing after urinating are greatly exaggerated in the world.  I understand that hand washing after defecation is an entirely different story as fecal matter contains very harmful microbes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it is dangerous, I'm wondering why so few people contract disease from performing oral sex on unwashed genitalia?  It would seem to me that the unwashed genital would be harboring far more bacteria than the hand that touched it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23062" LastActivityDate="2015-02-04T23:07:31.670" Title="Are there health risks to not washing hands after urinating?" Tags="|public-health|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26628" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-02T15:42:55.560" Score="2" ViewCount="1822" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.masterzhou.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Master Zhou Ting-Jue&lt;/a&gt; appeared on &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That%27s_Incredible!&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;That's Incredible&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; in the early 1980s. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Amongst his claims were that Qi gong allowed him to raise the temperature of a piece of aluminum foil. See this &lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/vkfvv9lEXPM?t=3m21s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this video demonstrate that Master Zhou can remotely heat a piece of aluminium foil using only chi?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24928" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-02-02T21:00:05.297" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T17:15:45.663" Title="Can Master Zhou use Qi Gong to heat aluminium foil?" Tags="|chi|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26630" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26627" CreationDate="2015-02-02T18:14:16.973" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2012/251483/&quot;&gt;Yes.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the abstract (highlighting is mine): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Harmful microorganisms can be transferred to hands from contaminated surfaces people come into contact in daily life. Contaminated hands can transmit disease to one self as well as to others. A study was done to determine the extent to which hand hygiene practices and toilet door knobs contribute to the bacterial load of hands of toilet users in a medical school. Swabs were taken from a randomly selected sample of 60 medical students for bacterial count from both hands before and after toilet use and from door knobs of six toilets. Only 40 (66.7%) claimed they washed hands with soap. Significantly more females (83%) used soap to wash hands compared to males (50%). &lt;strong&gt;Bacterial load in the hands of both males and females showed an increase after toilet use. The increase was significant among male students. The dominant hand had a significantly higher bacterial load than the other.&lt;/strong&gt; The mean bacterial load of male toilet door knobs (12 CFU/cm2) were significantly higher than of female toilet door knobs (2.5 CFU/cm2) ( &amp;lt; 0.0 5). Staphylococcus aureus was isolated from the hands of 21 students. Toilets and washrooms should be designed so as to eliminate the sources of contamination of the hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0008422&quot;&gt;are differences between circumcised and uncircumcised men regarding the bacteria found on and inside the urinary tract&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Circumcision was associated with a significant change in the overall microbiota (PerMANOVA p = 0.007) and with a significant decrease in putative anaerobic bacterial families (Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test p = 0.014). Specifically, two families—Clostridiales Family XI (p = 0.006) and Prevotellaceae (p = 0.006)—were uniquely abundant before circumcision. Within these families we identified a number of anaerobic genera previously associated with bacterial vaginosis including: Anaerococcus spp., Finegoldia spp., Peptoniphilus spp., and Prevotella spp.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm honestly not certain whether any of those fall under the heading of &quot;harmful bacteria&quot;. The paper is focusing more on aspects of a health penile microbiome and its effects on HIV transmission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CDC have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/handwashing/why-handwashing.html&quot;&gt;their own things to say&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Feces (poop) from people or animals is an important source of germs like Salmonella, E. coli O157, and norovirus that cause diarrhea, and it can spread some respiratory infections like adenovirus and hand-foot-mouth disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it looks like they focus on transmission through fecal bacteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cecil Adams, of &lt;em&gt;Straight Dope&lt;/em&gt; fame, did do &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1043/why-are-men-supposed-to-wash-their-hands-after-urination&quot;&gt;a column on this subject&lt;/a&gt;, including discussing cunnilingus and fellatio:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What you may not know is that washing will not make the coliform bacteria go away. They're holed up in the pores of your skin and nothing short of sandblasting — certainly not your morning shower — is going to get them out. Showering merely gets rid of the ones that have strayed onto the surface. The bacteria won't do much harm if they stay put, but when you urinate your fingers come in contact with Mister P. long enough for the coliform bacteria in your pores to hop aboard. Your fingers subsequently touch lots of other infectible items. If you don't wash your hands with soap and water (soap gets rid of the skin oil that the bacteria stick to) … hello, Typhoid Mary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... the truth is you can catch lots of bugs via oral sex. Many of them are transmitted by, or have their transmission facilitated by, coliform or other fecal bacteria or, for that matter, fecal viruses. There's no point in stopping now though. You can catch most of the same germs from intercourse, kissing, or simply holding hands.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leaving aside that &lt;em&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/em&gt; is entertainment material, and often somewhat inaccurate, take it with a grain of salt, but it fits with what the other sources say, that it's fecal bacteria, that it's all over your genitals, and casual rinsing isn't going to make it go away. Oral sex isn't really adding that much largely because, well, most of us are pretty smeared in fecal bacteria as it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I honestly was surprised to find so little actual evidence that hand-washing helped. I knew that anti-bacterial soap has been shown to be no better than regular soap, and that hot water only helps in terms of reducing the amount of soap film on your hands, but I really did expect handwashing to have a higher impact on health in this case. Still extremely useful for surgery, less useful after the bathroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="19346" LastEditDate="2015-02-04T11:10:53.973" LastActivityDate="2015-02-04T11:10:53.973" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26632" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26627" CreationDate="2015-02-03T00:03:27.600" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article claims that you should wash your hands, for two reasons: &lt;a href=&quot;http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/health/painter/2007-11-04-yourhealth_N.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yes, washing hands works&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's based on interviewing experts, not based on studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I took these objections to three experts&lt;/strong&gt;: Stephen Luby, a researcher with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Judy Daly, a Salt Lake City microbiologist and spokeswoman for the American Society for Microbiology; and Susie Craig, a food-safety and hand-washing educator with the Washington State University Extension Service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what they said on the key issues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Why should men wash their hands after every restroom use?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I've heard men say that it's nothing but Victorian prudery&amp;quot; to ask them to wash after urinating, Luby says. &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;And we cannot show them studies&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; that prove doing so will protect them or others from illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two reasons given are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the experts still recommend washing, for two reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reason one: You may pick up more germs than you think, from doors, flush handles and other surfaces, and from your own body. &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Your gastrointestinal tract is close by&lt;/strong&gt;,&amp;quot; Daly says. &amp;quot;It all fits together, and you can't see where the microorganisms are.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reason two: &lt;strong&gt;The restroom, stocked with sinks, soap and water, is a convenient place to wash off bacteria and viruses your hands accumulate elsewhere during the day&lt;/strong&gt;. Studies do show groups of people who wash their hands regularly get fewer gastrointestinal and respiratory illnesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T00:03:27.600" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26635" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26628" CreationDate="2015-02-03T05:36:43.917" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;(I'm assuming you refer to the scene with the thermograph in the orthopedic surgeon's office.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The man in the lab coat is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.warbrittonassociates.com/doctors/michael-roback-m-d&quot;&gt;Dr. Michael D Roback&lt;/a&gt;, the other man is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.masterzhou.com/&quot;&gt;Zhou Ting-Jue&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Colin Wright offers as explanation &lt;a href=&quot;http://anamericanatheist.org/2013/08/21/investigating-woo-master-zhou-qigong-healer-debunked/&quot;&gt;&quot;a dilute strong base such as sodium hydroxide&quot;&lt;/a&gt; in the water, reacting with the aluminium foil to generate the heat. While this is not positive proof that Zhou is a fraud, it shows that there is an alternative explanation that is at least as credible as the one initially claimed. Lacking further information and/or more reliable expert opinions, the video cannot be considered a &quot;demonstration&quot; of remote heating &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; through Qigong, so the answer is &quot;no&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24937" LastEditorUserId="24937" LastEditDate="2015-02-03T17:15:45.663" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T17:15:45.663" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26638" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-03T14:13:46.387" Score="3" ViewCount="292" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his song, &lt;em&gt;The Fence&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Minchin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tim Minchin&lt;/a&gt; makes the claim that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;dogs have a larger carbon footprint than a four-wheel drive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/VGErC6QQdoc?t=4m43s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YouTube video of &lt;em&gt;The Fence&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this actually the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="34" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-02-06T23:46:12.407" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T11:48:35.940" Title="Does a dog have a larger carbon footprint than a SUV?" Tags="|environment|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-02-24T11:43:00.287" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26639" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26698" CreationDate="2015-02-03T14:34:36.033" Score="9" ViewCount="1381" Body="&lt;p&gt;A teacher once told me that after detecting a new scent, you will only be able to smell it for a few minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? If so, why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the precise length of time one can smell, and does it differ by scent? Also, what &quot;resets&quot; the time--for example, would leaving the room then returning enable one to smell the scent again?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15364" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T15:47:22.407" Title="Does the nose stop smelling a scent after a few minutes?" Tags="|physiology|smell|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26642" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-03T23:06:54.543" Score="3" ViewCount="1633" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have been discussing smoking with a fellow who states that for all the decades of study of the tobacco leaf, still nobody has managed to find what part of the process of smoking the tobacco leaf causes lung cancer. He pointed out that so far most of the evidence is from epidemiological studies, which can only show correlations, but not causation, and he pointed out flaws in some of these. For example, he said in one of them - the original epidemiological study, I believe - that showed that 90% of people with lung cancer are smokers, it was the case that 90% of the population were smokers, so the study could with as much certainty have said that 90% of the people with broken legs were smokers therefore smoking causes broken legs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He pointed out that already many cancers that were previously attributed to smoking, such as throat and cervical cancer, have actually been found to be caused by a virus (HPV). So given there has been no causal link discovered, it may very well be that something other than tobacco, such as a virus, causes lung cancer, and hence humanity is missing a huge opportunity to find the actual cause for lung cancer and thus avert untold suffering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found one New York Times that states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The findings, published today in the journal Science, report the first evidence from the cell biology level linking smoking to lung cancer. The scientists say a chemical found in cigarette smoke has been found to cause genetic damage in lung cells that is identical to the damage observed in many malignant tumors of the lung.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The findings reported today establish the long-missing link, in the opinion of experts in the field of cancer genetics, and may also play a role in pending litigation about smoking illnesses and passive smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that part is true, this means that at the very least, no causal link had been discovered before the article was published, in October 1996.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...] the scientific team exposed human lung cells to the chemical BPDE, a powerful carcinogen that is produced in the body from the breakdown of benzo$(a$)pyrene, a chemical in tobacco smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two researchers [...] examined the p53 gene and found that molecules of BPDE had bound chemically to the p53 DNA at precisely the three points that had already been identified as mutational hot spots in lung cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If correct this means that &lt;code&gt;benzo(a)pyrene&lt;/code&gt; is the chemical found in tobacco which, when smoked, causes lung cancer. Link to the paper itself: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8832894&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Preferential formation of benzo[a]pyrene adducts at lung cancer mutational hotspots in P53.&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the fellow said that they thought they had discovered the causal link but later had to retract it. The NY Times article is written that it is pretty cut and dried, but I have found indicators that it isn't. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.labath.eu/addendum.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This rebuttal by Lauren A. Colby&lt;/a&gt;, published 9 days after the NY Times article, points out several flaws in the study (severely edited for length):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors of the article start out by pointing out that, in about 60% of lung cancer cases, there is mutational damage to the p53 gene [...] This is another way of saying, of course, that in 40% of lung cancer cases, there is no damage to the gene, meaning that people can get lung cancer even if their p53 genes are in perfect condition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors did not study any actual human lung cancers. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors of the study apparently concede that [Benzo(a)pyrene (BAP)] [...] is not terribly carcinogenic [...]; it must be converted to BAPDE. There is no evidence that the lungs, themselves, can metabolize BAP into BAPDE. Even if they could, the amount of BAP reaching the lungs from cigarette smoke is dwarfed by the amount reaching the lungs in the blood supply [...] from consumption of burnt food. [...] The study could just as well be said to prove an indirect link between the consumption of burnt food and lung cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further evidence: [This FAQ] about benzo(a)pyrene, last updated in 2009, states that &amp;quot;Benzo[a]pyrene is a probable cancer-causing agent in humans.&amp;quot; Why 'probable' if it has been proven, as the 1996 study claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is he right? Is there no as-yet proven causal link between smoking and lung cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23128" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T23:36:25.707" Title="What is the *causal* link between smoking and lung cancer?" Tags="|medical-science|cancer|smoking|epidemiology|causality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2015-02-04T03:49:22.053" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26642" CreationDate="2015-02-03T23:36:25.707" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The modern, public information is that tobacco smoke contains &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;many&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; chemicals which cause cancer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/about-smoking/facts-figures/whats-in-a-cigarette.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Lung Association&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are approximately 600 ingredients in cigarettes. When burned, they create more than 7,000 chemicals. At least 69 of these chemicals are known to cause cancer, and many are poisonous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/healthyliving/smoking-and-cancer/whats-in-a-cigarette/smoking-and-cancer-whats-in-a-cigarette&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cancer Research UK&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some cancer-causing chemicals in tobacco smoke and their other common uses&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Tar - a mixture of dangerous chemicals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Arsenic - used in wood preservatives&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Benzene - an industrial solvent, refined from crude oil&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Cadmium - used in batteries&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Formaldehyde - used in mortuaries and paint manufacturing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Polonium-210 - a highly radioactive element&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Chromium - used to manufacture dye, paints and alloys&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;1,3-Butadiene - used in rubber manufacturing&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons - a group of dangerous DNA-damaging chemicals&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Tobacco-specific nitrosamines - a group of carcinogens only found in tobacco&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Acrolein - used as a chemical weapon in World War 1  - and acetaldehyde - used in the industrial production of acid&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/tobaccocancer/questionsaboutsmokingtobaccoandhealth/questions-about-smoking-tobacco-and-health-cancer-and-health&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Cancer Society&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Tobacco smoke is made up of more than 7,000 chemicals, including over 70 known to cause cancer (carcinogens).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2015-02-03T23:36:25.707" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26645" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-04T12:12:57.990" Score="20" ViewCount="7553" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had an interesting chat today with a young woman from a traditional circus family, who explained she could not grow up to become a lion tamer, because lions could smell when women are menstruating and are then likely to attack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this claim quite surprising, and sure enough, while there have been female lion-tamers, the claim was repeated on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boxingscene.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-433882.html&quot;&gt;Boxing Scenes forum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[A female lion-tamer] told me that the reason most lion tamers are men is because they can smell the menstruation on a female and it causes them to go crazy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-356880.html&quot;&gt;Straight Dope Discussion board&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I remember a Pop-Up Video show which said during the taping of the video for &quot;Like a Virgin&quot;, Madonna was asked by the lion tamer if she was menstruating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an old circus legend? Is it true that menstruating women are more likely to suffer attacks from lions? Or is there some other story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2018-02-03T22:01:22.887" LastActivityDate="2018-03-02T10:58:24.867" Title="Can lions sense menstruating women?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|menstrual-cycle|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26647" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23943" CreationDate="2015-02-04T19:46:50.750" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Modern Egyptians have been depicted in a different answer above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ancient Egyptians have been depicted on temple walls, tombs and in other archaeological sites in Egypt. These depictions consistently show the Egyptians as having a tan complexion, straight black hair and black eyes. Examples of this can be found in Rickerby, Stephen. &quot;Original painting techniques and materials used in the tomb of Nefertari.&quot; Art and Eternity: The Nefertari Wall Paintings Conservation Project, 1986–1992 (1993): 43-53. This paper shows extensive examples of Egyptian wall paintings and discusses the pigments and colorations involved. Here is a naturalistic fresco from an early New Kingdom tomb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sglRM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ruling class in Egypt from which Ramesses presumably originated may have differed from the common people and been somewhat lighter in skin, but still tan. The mummies from the New Kingdom suggest a relatively light skinned complexion for the Pharoahs. Interestingly enough the statues depicting the same pharoahs look like conventional Egyptians and do not resemble their mummies. The reason for this is unknown. For scholarship on this subject, see for example: Harris, J. E. and Hussien, F. (1991), The identification of the Eighteenth Dynasty royal mummies; a biological perspective. Int. J. Osteoarchaeol., 1: 235–239.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also ÏURCÛ, FRANK J. &quot;Were the Ancient Egyptians Black or White?.&quot; (1989). Center for Online Judaic Studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24966" LastEditorUserId="24966" LastEditDate="2015-02-04T21:45:02.277" LastActivityDate="2015-02-04T21:45:02.277" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26650" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-04T21:13:27.157" Score="6" ViewCount="3256" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following up from the lions-attacking-menstruating-women question, I read an account that claimed male orangutans will rape a human woman, especially if she is in menstruated. Are there verified occurrences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of source with this claim: Walking with the Great Apes by Sy Montgomery (2009) Page 151&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24966" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-02-05T09:22:56.697" LastActivityDate="2017-02-23T22:33:34.963" Title="Do orangutans rape women?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26654" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-04T22:50:07.163" Score="5" ViewCount="466" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many school texts and other popular sources claim Thales of Miletus conducted experiments in electricity, showing amber to attract feathers, for example, supposedly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I can find no verifiable source for this anywhere. I have looked in Pliny, Theophrastus, Diogenes Laertius and other authors who mention Thales and NONE of them say anything about doing experiments with amber. (Note that no writings of Thales himself exist). I am beginning to think this is pure apocrypha, this story.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: in medieval times Arab scientists often quoted (and misquoted) ancient Greek authors and their sometimes-bogus statements have been then transmitted into English. I am beginning to suspect that could be the case here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this amber-experiment story in a verifiable ancient Latin source or is this Arab fiction?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24966" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T06:27:32.047" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T06:27:32.047" Title="Did Thales conduct experiments in electricity?" Tags="|history|physics|greece|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26656" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26677" CreationDate="2015-02-05T00:32:13.270" Score="4" ViewCount="1048" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S1.long&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, most of the drop in the measles death rate occurred in the United States prior to the introduction of vaccines because of better health care and nutrition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That fact is quoted &lt;a href=&quot;http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-vaccine-scaremongers.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and summarized provocatively as,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Note that even in the ABSOLUTE WORST CASE, which is a completely unvaccinated scenario with 90 percent infection rates that assumes absolutely no improvement in health care in 55 years, we're talking about 450 deaths per year.  Realistically, we're probably talking around 200, given the advancements in medical technology. THAT is what all the pro-vaccine scaremongers are going on about. Americans would do better to ban bicycles, as they would save three times more lives per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given modern health care and nutrition, is the health risk of measles without vaccines comparable to the dangers of bicycle riding in the United States?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seems a surprising statistic given the fervor behind the recent measles outbreak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24947" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-02-05T02:51:16.893" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T15:16:51.310" Title="Would measles be no great health risk in the US, even without vaccines?" Tags="|vaccines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26657" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26654" CreationDate="2015-02-05T00:47:11.653" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I guess it's this sentence from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lives_of_the_Eminent_Philosophers/Book_I#Thales&quot;&gt;Diogenes Laërtius&lt;/a&gt; (3rd century CE),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aristotle and Hippias affirm that, arguing from the magnet and from amber, he attributed a soul or life even to inanimate objects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T00:47:11.653" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26658" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26659" CreationDate="2015-02-05T02:09:30.277" Score="36" ViewCount="8546" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a news headline so unusual it can't be true:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.9news.com.au/world/2015/02/05/04/51/buddhists-claim-mummified-monk-is-not-dead&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Buddhists claim mummified monk is 'not dead, just meditating'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Senior Buddhists say a mummified monk found preserved in Mongolia last week is actually in a deep meditative trance and not dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some attribute this fact to cold weather but Dr Barry Kerzin, a physician to Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, told the Siberian Times the monk was in a rare state of meditation called &amp;quot;tukdam&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that a mummified monk is not dead but in a state of deep meditation. All evidence points to the monk being dead and preserved, but claims of life are being taken seriously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this monk alive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T04:55:59.727" Title="Is this 90 year old mummy &quot;not dead, just meditating&quot;?" Tags="|religion|mortality|meditation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26658" CreationDate="2015-02-05T02:33:27.830" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr Kerzin (who reportedly made the claim) might have been misunderstood by the reporter and/or the editor of the article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It might be truer to say that he is dead &lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt; meditating (for some suitably vague definition of &amp;quot;him&amp;quot;, given that the self is difficult to define and that Tibetan Buddhists believe in a continuing existence after death and rebirth).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following are the first three definitions of &amp;quot;tukdam&amp;quot; which I found using Google.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rigpawiki.org/index.php?title=Tukdam&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tukdam&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tukdam (Wyl. thugs dam) is an honorific term for meditative practice and experience that is frequently used to refer to the period &lt;strong&gt;following the death of a great master&lt;/strong&gt;, during which time they are absorbed in luminosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.benchen.org/en/the-passing-of-tenga-rinpoche/parinirvana/239-simply-amazing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Parinirvana --&#xA;Kyabje Tenga Rinpoche's Tukdam has ended&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On 3 April, at 3:15 p.m., Kyabje Tenga Rinpoche chose to end the state of Tukdam, which is the deep meditative composure that some realized masters enter into &lt;strong&gt;after the demise of their physical bodies&lt;/strong&gt;, after three and a half days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rangjung.com/authors/tribute_from_Khenchen_Trangu_Rinpoche.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Interview with Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche after the passing of Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, tukdam comes about when someone has rested evenly in luminous wakefulness during his life, usually called samadhi, and occurs to the same degree as his experience. &lt;strong&gt;When he then passes away&lt;/strong&gt;, there is what we call 'the mingling of the mother and child luminosities,' which means that the ground luminosity and the luminosity of that person's practice mingle indivisibly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At that moment, the experience of luminous wakefulness is very strong and one simply remains in its composure naturally, meaning that high lamas or someone with deep experience and realization will naturally dissolve into or expand into this state of samadhi. When the ground luminosity dawns by itself, they recognize it, and then remain in equanimity - that is what is called 'remaining in tukdam.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No doubt an ordinary person also experiences the ground luminosity, but because of not having trained in it during their life, they don't recognize this ground luminosity, and failing to recognize, they are therefore unable to remain in tukdam. On the other hand, great masters naturally mingle the mother and child luminosities, - in the very moment the ground luminosity unfolds within their direct experience, they acknowledge this basic state and remain in samadhi ­ this is called 'remaining in tukdam.'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is due to the strength of the samadhi that the body heat doesn't disappear completely, that the skin color doesn't fade, and that the body is able to remain in an upright sitting posture. Due to such visible signs, we are able to conclude that the person is in tukdam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T02:33:27.830" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26661" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-05T03:12:02.717" Score="8" ViewCount="339" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.safetyreflectors.com/education.html&quot;&gt;http://www.safetyreflectors.com/education.html&lt;/a&gt; has some claims about reflectors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies have proven that the risk of being hit by a motorist in the dark is eight times lower when wearing a safety reflector. The use of reflectors has been shown to increase the visibility of pedestrians by a factor of five. - Federal Highway Administration&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm suspicious of the site both because it's obviously trying to sell something, and because almost all the talking points are irrelevant. The &lt;em&gt;only&lt;/em&gt; thing that matters is how much risk is being reduced by reflectors, so mentioning a bunch of other facts seemed fishy. I also couldn't find the original source of the Federal Highway Administration statement, or any studies that seemed relevant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So how much risk is actually reduced by wearing reflectors, if any?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I'd much prefer an answer in terms of miles walked if possible. I'd also like some explanation on how confounders are ruled out; maybe people who wear reflectors are more likely to also be more careful about where they walk and pay attention to their surroundings more or something. There probably haven't been any controlled studies of this for ethical reasons, so I'd really like to know how you can in principle get these numbers. Also, how would they know how often reflectors are used?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastEditorUserId="15980" LastEditDate="2015-02-05T05:09:25.770" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T06:18:38.283" Title="How effective are reflectors at preventing pedestrian deaths?" Tags="|road-vehicles|safety|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26662" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26661" CreationDate="2015-02-05T05:45:25.787" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As of 2004, the answer is &quot;Science does not know.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This conclusion comes from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kwan I, Mapstone J., &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15003574&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Visibility aids for pedestrians and cyclists: a systematic review of randomised controlled trials&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Accid Anal Prev. 2004 May; 36(3):305-12. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randonneursportugal.pt/conteudos/recursos/Visibility%20aids%20for%20pedestrians%20and%20cyclists%20a%20systematic.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This review looked at 1991 potential reports, and selected 29 papers about 37 trials. None of the reports that were found&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[quantified] the effect of visibility aids on the occurrence of pedestrian and cyclist-motor vehicle collisions and injuries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They acknowledged the difficulty in conducting such trials. They noted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;results of the trials do suggest that visibility aids influence drivers' reaction, detection and recognition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, they were forced to conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Visibility aids have the potential to improve detection and recognition and would merit further development to gain public acceptance. However, the impact of visibility aids on pedestrian and cyclist safety is unknown and needs to be determined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, an answer like this is inherently subject to new data coming in and overthrowing it, especially as it was published a decade ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T05:45:25.787" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26664" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26686" CreationDate="2015-02-05T14:10:03.113" Score="1" ViewCount="1360" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are couple of websites that claim that one's favorite color accurately predicts one's personality. For example; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/personality-color.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/personality-color.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given website makes statements such as;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If your favorite color is red, you are action oriented with a deep&#xA;  need for physical fulfillment and to experience life through the five&#xA;  senses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if there is truth in such statements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20773" LastEditorUserId="4020" LastEditDate="2015-02-05T18:42:37.333" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T21:24:35.033" Title="Can one's favorite color accurately predict one's personality?" Tags="|psychology|colors|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26661" CreationDate="2015-02-05T16:28:42.620" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although focussed on cyclists and not pedestrians, recent research from the University of Skövde concludes: it depends.  The research appears to be ongoing.  In 2014, they published a study where they researched what subconscious visual cues determine the intent of cyclists in traffic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6816539&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hemeren, Paul E., Mikael Johannesson, Mikael Lebram, Fredrik Eriksson, Kristoffer Ekman, and Peter Veto. &quot;The use of visual cues to determine the intent of cyclists in traffic.&quot; In Cognitive Methods in Situation Awareness and Decision Support (CogSIMA), 2014 IEEE International Inter-Disciplinary Conference on, pp. 47-51. IEEE, 2014.&lt;/a&gt;.  This appears to be based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lansforsakringar.se/globalassets/aa-global/dokument/ovrigt/aa-om-oss/forskning/rapport-uppmarksamhet-hos-bilforare-i-mote-med-oskyddad-trafikant.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a lengthy report in Swedish&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, they investigated what visual enhancements help motorists to see this.  I haven't found a peer-reviewed study for the second part.  All I found specifically for the reflectors is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.his.se/Nyheter-och-kalender/Nyhetslista/Alla-nyheter/Falsk-sakerhet-med-reflexvast/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;press release in Swedish&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some cyclists were wearing no reflectors at all, others were wearing some reflectors, and others were wearing reflectors at body places deemed optimal according to previous research.  Their conclusion is that it is very important where on the body the reflectors are worn. From the press release:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;– Det vi har sett i vår forskning är till exempel att reflexvästen ger en falsk säkerhet nattetid, då den inte på något sätt hjälper bilisten att tolka cyklistens rörelseinformation, säger Paul Hemeren, doktor i kognitionsvetenskap vid Högskolan i Skövde. Sätter man däremot en reflexrand bak på hjälmen, som fortsätter i ett lodrätt streck ner på ryggen, skapar man en linje som bryts av när cyklisten vrider på huvudet. Detta visar att cyklisten med stor sannolikhet ska svänga. Förstärker man dessutom kroppens andra leder med reflexer når man ett ännu bättre resultat. Med vår forskning kan vi påvisa hur man som cyklist kan synas ännu bättre i trafiken. Detta har ingen kartlagt tidigare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;What we have seen in our research is that for example a reflective vest gives a false security at night, because it doesn't help motorists to judge the movement information by cyclists, says Paul Hemeren, doktor in cognitive sciences at the University College of Skövde.  However, if one puts reflectors on the rear of the helmet, that continues straight down over the back, then one creates a line that breaks when the cyclist turns their head.  This shows that the cyclist very likely will turn.  If one additionally enhances visibility of other body parts with reflectors, one gets an even better result.  With our research we can show how cyclists can be even more visible in traffic.  Nobody has systematically looked at this before.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The press release also states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Resultaten av forskningen är väldigt tydliga. Om reflexerna är placerade så att de förstärker cyklistens omedvetna rörelsemönster gör det att testpersonerna kan göra korrekta bedömningar av cyklistens avsikter i upp till 97 procent av fallen– även nattetid. Helt utan reflexer ligger testpersonernas träffsäkerhet strax över 70 procent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The result of the research is very clear.  If the reflectors are placed so that they enhance the cyclist's unconscious movements, the test persons are able to make correct judgements of the cyclist's aims in up to 97% of the cases — including at night.  Without reflectors the correct rate is slightly above 70%.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2015-02-05T16:36:06.617" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T16:36:06.617" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26669" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="651" CreationDate="2015-02-05T17:08:16.900" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Fingerprint matching is of two types: matching a perfect print to a known person and matching a &quot;latent&quot; print (lifted from a crime scene) to a database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may want to read this document: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncjrs.gov/App/Publications/abstract.aspx?ID=247306&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS)&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&#xA;National Criminal Justice Reference Service by KR Moses. This describes the FBI system in detail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that there is usually a human component involved. Often the database will return a list of multiple hits, then an expert human goes through the list and decides if there is a match. This is a subjective process and can result in a wrong identification. Also, in the case of latent print, you may get no hit at all, even if the subject who made the print is in the database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the subject is in the datase, &lt;strong&gt;there is a 75% chance of identification&lt;/strong&gt; of a latent print, according to the manual I cited above. Note that often latent prints have to be pre-processed by expert humans to even start a search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a courtroom the situation is completely different. In that case, you have a known suspect and a latent print. In this case, you do not need to search a database of 100s of millions of prints, you just need to compare the latent print to the suspects prints. A human expert is required to do this because usually latent prints are fragmentary, distorted or have other problems. Once again, it is a subjective process. However, in the case of a suspect, the chance that the accused would coincidentally have prints similar enough to the latent print to confuse a human is low, so usually a human expert's confidence they match is consider strong evidence. There is no firm statistic on the accuracy of the such matches because it is completely dependent on the skill of the human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because of the birthday paradox the chance of any one person having prints that are more or less statistically indistiguishable from someone else's is significant across the 7 billion people on the earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, note that there is a bias factor. In a courtroom a human expert, paid by the prosecution, will often be willing to make a match on a print fragment that would be completely unmatchable by an semi-automated system such as FBI's AFIS. Also, you can PROVE such bias by get lists of potential matches out of AFIS and then forcing the examiner to choose among them, which in the case of a fragmentary latent print may often be impossible to do successfully. Unfortunately, most defense attorneys are not aware of how to do this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One general test of a range of examiners to determine proficiency on high-quality latent prints resulted in a false positive rate of 0.8%. Another NIST study in 2011 using expert, experienced examiners resulted in a false positive rate of 0.2% and a false negative rate of 10.9%. For more info see the report by NIST &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nist.gov/oles/upload/latent.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Latent Print Examination and Human Factors: Improving the Practice through a Systems Approach.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (February 2012)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24966" LastEditorUserId="24966" LastEditDate="2015-02-05T18:05:54.840" LastActivityDate="2015-02-05T18:05:54.840" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26671" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26682" CreationDate="2015-02-05T19:36:14.017" Score="8" ViewCount="741" Body="&lt;p&gt;After I had discussed the lack of improvisation in classical music with a friend, he showed me &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/time-return-improvisation-its-classical-roots/&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wqxr.org/&quot;&gt;WQXR.org&lt;/a&gt; (the website of a classical music radio station), which claimed that Mozart often improvised his music:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Improvisation is a nearly obsolete art in classical music these days.&#xA;  But virtuosos used to improvise all the time. Mozart freely improvised&#xA;  on his own tunes, Liszt would strike up an aria from a Wagner opera&#xA;  and embellish it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the claim that Mozart improvised music (presumably in concert) true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23404" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T03:23:27.683" Title="Did Mozart improvise?" Tags="|history|music|musicians|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26674" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26661" CreationDate="2015-02-06T06:18:38.283" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The info is a blending of truth and fiction.&#xA;Reflectors do increase the visibility profile of a person who is wearing a best or some other such item. The fiction comes in the inclusion of inattentive and distracted drivers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Imagine being run over by a truck while jogging on a road, while you are wearing the best and clothing with reflective materials. The devices were effective, the was the driver who was texting or watching the game on his device.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human error is always the unblown factor, and it will always be so. Distracted people are the inevitable dynamic of limitation when it comes to safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24978" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T06:18:38.283" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26677" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26656" CreationDate="2015-02-06T14:36:06.233" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's no way to know &lt;em&gt;for sure&lt;/em&gt; what the toll of a modern measles outbreak in the US would be. However, it seems the author of that article used only the facts that would support his case. The article he cites when coming to his conclusion is &lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S1.long&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Measles Elimination in the United States&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the numbers he uses from 1956-1960:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Not all cases were reported to the public health system; from 1956 to 1960, an average of 542,000 cases were reported annually.By the late 1950s, even before the introduction of measles vaccine, measles-related deaths and case fatality rates in the United States had decreased markedly, presumably as a result of improvement in health care and nutrition. From 1956 to 1960, an average of 450 measles-related deaths were reported each year (∼1 death/ 1000 reported cases)...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we have 450 deaths from 542,000 reported cases, or &lt;strong&gt;0.83/1000&lt;/strong&gt;. This is where the article gets the 450 number, claiming this represents the &lt;strong&gt;worst case scenario&lt;/strong&gt;,  since public health and medicine has gotten better.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it completely ignores a more recent outbreak pointed out &lt;em&gt;in the same paper&lt;/em&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, a resurgence of measles occurred during 1989–1991, again demonstrating the serious medical burden of the disease. More than 55,000 cases, 123 deaths, and 11,000 hospitalizations were reported. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the logic used, the death rate &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have been lower after ~30 years, due to advances in medicine. Instead, we have &lt;strong&gt;2.24/1000&lt;/strong&gt;, not quite three times the rate in the late 50s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, these numbers could be a bit off, since they are using the number of &lt;em&gt;reported&lt;/em&gt; cases, but it seems clear that the author found the one number that supported his point and didn't bother with the others (and just pulled &lt;strong&gt;200&lt;/strong&gt; from nothing but an unfounded assumption).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for bicycles, the number most often used is probably the 677/year, reported by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhtsa.gov/Bicycles&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NHTSA for 2011&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A total of 677 pedalcyclists were killed in motor vehicle crashes in 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I think it's important to note that as &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/26656/would-measles-be-no-great-health-risk-in-the-us-even-without-vaccines#comment97962_26656&quot;&gt;gerrit commented&lt;/a&gt;, that number is specifically for &lt;strong&gt;motor vehicle crashes&lt;/strong&gt;. I can't find a number for how many deaths are caused &lt;em&gt;by bicycles&lt;/em&gt; per year, but my assumption is that it's much lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also ignores that far more people ride bicycles in the course of a year than contract measles (even before vaccines). The &lt;a href=&quot;http://nbda.com/articles/industry-overview-2013-pg34.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Bicycle Dealers Association&lt;/a&gt; has this to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;35.6 million Americans age seven and older were estimated to have ridden a bicycle six times or more in 2013, according to the National Sporting Goods Association. This number was down 9.4% from 2012 that had 39.3 million participants. The peak participation year was 1995, with 56.3 million participants. It should be noted that the age limit on this number eliminates millions of young people who ride bicycles with wheel sizes 19&quot; and under. It also does not count those who rode a bicycle fewer than six times in the year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Taking these numbers at face value, bicycles have a death rate of &lt;strong&gt;0.02/1000&lt;/strong&gt;, which is about 40 times lower than measles. While the true number of bicycle riders may be a bit above or below that estimate, the rate is nowhere close.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, as mentioned in the comments, this is only the &lt;em&gt;death&lt;/em&gt; rate. There are other complicating factors (20% hospitalization rate in 1989-1991, for example), which I believe makes this a false comparison at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19407" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T15:16:51.310" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26678" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-06T16:16:11.247" Score="2" ViewCount="570" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a terrible cold last week, and bought &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.otrivin.nl/product/otrivin-zoutoplossing-plus-eucalyptus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Otrivin Zoutoplossing Plus Eucalyptus&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (site in Dutch) nasal spray to help with the congtion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This particular type contains a salt solution and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eucalyptus&lt;/a&gt;; it worked in so far as that it made me feel better, however, the packaging (as well as the website) also claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Otrivin Zoutoplossing Plus met Eucalyptus heeft bovendien een zuiverende werking die je neusholten vrijmaakt van in het slijm verstrikte bacteriën en virussen. Helpt zo de ontwikkeling van verdere infecties te voorkomen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which translates to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This product also has a purifying effect which clears your nasal cavity from bacteria &amp;amp; viruses that are stuck in the mucus. This helps prevent further infections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? There are no studies cited, and none of the other brands make this claim, in fact, even other nasal sprays from the same brand (such as those with only a salt solution or Xylometazoline) don't make this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1056" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-03-19T00:59:09.807" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T23:26:13.427" Title="Can nasal spray with eucalyptus help prevent further infections?" Tags="|medical-science|natural-remedies|common-cold|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26681" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11226" CreationDate="2015-02-06T21:07:13.053" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a problem with Mutual Funds. When the market declines, some people unload the funds and the manager has to liquidate to give them their money, i.e. sell into a declining market. Conversely when markets are climbing, the managers have to invest the incoming cash into the climbing stock prices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a structural disadvantage to MFs, in addition to the drag from fees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 1000s of references to this problem. Here is one:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Mutual_funds:_additional_costs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Mutual_funds:_additional_costs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sorry I am new here and just adjusting to your rules.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24927" LastActivityDate="2015-02-06T21:07:13.053" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26682" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26671" CreationDate="2015-02-07T00:11:31.720" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, he did, prolifically. See for instance this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3824946?sid=21105802898173&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=3737536&amp;amp;uid=4#page_scan_tab_contents&quot;&gt;article about a 2011 presentation&lt;/a&gt; by a Harvard Professor of Music, called &lt;em&gt;Improvising Mozart&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Mozart's time, his reputation was based first on&#xA;  his skill in improvisation, second on his skill as a&#xA;  performing pianist, and only third on his compositions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Improvisation is still an important skill for classical musicians, especially organists and those involved in early music. Its absence from conventional recitals is the result of (oft-deserved) adulation of the masterworks of previous eras, which the professional is hesitant to play with. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24987" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-02-07T00:51:19.633" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T00:51:19.633" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26664" CreationDate="2015-02-07T19:15:41.773" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was a hot topic for some time in the late 1960's and early 1970's I think, with academic books like &quot;The Luscher Color Test&quot; (Luscher &amp;amp; Scott, 1971) being published. The Luscher Color Test being a personality test based entirely on color preference. This is probably what current online personality tests that use color preference are based on, but most of this old literature is not very easy to access.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-173513558/color-and-personality-strong-s-interest-inventory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;More recent research by Rense Lange and Jason Rentfrow (2007)&lt;/a&gt; indicates that there is definitely a correlation between color preference and personality traits when you look at a large group of people. To some extent, it is possible to actually predict personality traits from color preference. Regarding color preference and the Sixteen Personality Factor questionnaire, Lange and Rentfrow state: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;respondents’ color preferences provide powerful&#xA;  predictors of their personalities. The highest correlation is obtained for&#xA;  Factor H (Social Boldness).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there is definitely &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; truth to the idea, but using only color preference is not optimal when trying to predict personality traits. It would be of more value as one predictor in a larger set of predictors, when trying to predict a person's personality somewhat accurately.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;For more on this subject, see &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-173513558/color-and-personality-strong-s-interest-inventory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Color and Personality: Strong's Interest Inventory and Cattell's 16PF&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24991" LastEditorUserId="24991" LastEditDate="2015-02-07T21:24:35.033" LastActivityDate="2015-02-07T21:24:35.033" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26687" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="289" CreationDate="2015-02-07T22:59:43.273" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer the question: &lt;strong&gt;Yes, ethanol is a general anaesthetic drug&lt;/strong&gt; (at least when administered intravenously, which is what most studies are about).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the dosage: It is mentioned that app. 2 to 3 ml/kg of absolute ethanol are required intravenously to induce anesthesia. (Dundee 1970).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A re-evaluation of alcohol as an intravenous anaesthetic for minor&#xA;  gynaecological surgery in fit patients revealed an unacceptably high&#xA;  incidence of undesirable sequelae. (Isaac et al, 1971)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a bad anesthetic drug.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dundee JW. &lt;a href=&quot;https://journals.lww.com/anesthesia-analgesia/Citation/1970/05000/Intravenous_Ethanol_Anesthesia__A_Study_of_Dosage.30.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Intravenous ethanol anaesthesia: a study of dosage and blood levels.&lt;/a&gt; Anesth Analg 1970; 49:467-75&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Isaac M, Pandit SK, Dundee JW, Galway JE. &lt;a href=&quot;https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1399-6576.1971.tb05457.x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Intravenous ethanol anaesthesia: a study of sequelae and their implications.&lt;/a&gt; Acta Anaesthesiol Scand 1971; 15:141-55.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24993" LastEditorUserId="34796" LastEditDate="2019-02-17T00:49:07.037" LastActivityDate="2019-02-17T00:49:07.037" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26690" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20001" CreationDate="2015-02-08T09:59:51.390" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Cell towers, cellphones, microwave ovens, radio towers, TV towers, etc... work using non ionising radiation (with frequency that is less than visible light) like microwave radiation and radio. So they don't cause cancer but produce heat. Still I personally prefer not accepting this because it's not 100% confirmed.&#xA;&quot;The radiation emitted by mobile phones falls into the category of non-ionising radiation – lower energy radiation that doesn’t have enough energy to damage our cells. Visible light, infrared, microwaves and radio waves are all forms of non-ionising radiation.&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.physics.org/article-questions.asp?id=84&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.physics.org/article-questions.asp?id=84&lt;/a&gt; states that no damage is caused by non-ionising radiation like infrared received on huge amounts daily from the sun. In contrast, ionising radiation like ultraviolet, X rays, gamma rays can ionise an object - i.e. they gave enough energy to pull an electron out of the atom. This type of radiation causes damage. The article also stresses on the idea that a banana produces ionising radiation since it contains a lot of potassium (a radioactive element). So it is more dangerous than your phone, but still not dangerous enough to kill you. Your body can deal with such small amounts normally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24997" LastEditorUserId="24997" LastEditDate="2015-02-09T05:52:38.657" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T05:52:38.657" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26691" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26639" CreationDate="2015-02-08T10:12:14.280" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;This phenomenon is called olfactory adaptation. It basically means that your nose gets adapted to the smell so that you feel like it's not even there. For instance, when you go to the toilet to poop, you don't usually feel the smell and that's because it becomes &quot;normal&quot; for your olfactory system. But when you exit the toilet and reenter in a short period of time, you will feel the smell again. &quot;Olfactory fatigue, also known as odor fatigue or olfactory adaptation, is the temporary, normal inability to distinguish a particular odor after a prolonged exposure to that airborne compound&quot;&#xA;(&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olfactory_fatigue&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olfactory_fatigue&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24997" LastEditorUserId="24997" LastEditDate="2015-02-08T15:32:18.433" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T15:32:18.433" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26698" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26639" CreationDate="2015-02-08T22:59:33.313" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is true - the process is called habituation. It depends on how frequent (odor exposure [or sniffs] per minute) a smell is registered. Habituation can last from less than ten minutes up to at least 30 minutes (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2919830/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chaudhury et al., 2010&lt;/a&gt;). As mentioned in the link, different parts of the olfactory system appear to be involved, but it is mainly explained through receptor activation on the cell membrane of neurons. There is a limited number of receptors that wait for signaling molecules or odorants (odor molecules) to attach, much like the game musical chairs. Habituation is thought to be more a product of receptor activity at neurons that transfer the information than sensory neurons that receive the odorants. With time, receptors go back to their original states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether this differs by scents depends on several factors. There is great variation in individual scent acuity (see Kandel et al., Principles of Neural Science (5th ed.), ch. 32) from human to human, but frequency of exposure is a likely candidate, as well as salience - how strongly a smell affects us. We are more sensitive to smells that provide an evolutionary benefit by promoting survival, such as the smell of a burning forest. Perhaps habituation is less likely if it does us more harm than good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6933" LastActivityDate="2015-02-08T22:59:33.313" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26703" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-09T12:59:24.527" Score="3" ViewCount="296" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/20/marinaleda-spanish-communist-village-utopia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; and many &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/world/europe/26spain.html?_r=2&amp;amp;pagewanted=all&amp;amp;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livetravelenjoy.com/a-city-where-everyone-works-there-is-no-police-and-the-salary-is-1200-euros/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;others&lt;/a&gt;, the Spanish city of Marinaleda is a socialist utopia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article claims that the mayor and city organizes raids against the local grocery stores to steal food for the poor, provide affordable housing and working at the cities communal farms. The morality of this, I leave to a lesser forum, what I'm intersted in is weather this is actually true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there really low unemployment compared to the rest of spain?&#xA;Is the city mounting a pile of debt?&#xA;Are the heavily dependent on subsidies?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5625" LastEditorUserId="5625" LastEditDate="2015-02-09T13:12:03.627" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T13:12:03.627" Title="Is the city of Marinaleda a socialst utopia?" Tags="|economics|politics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2015-02-09T13:23:35.907" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26704" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26678" CreationDate="2015-02-09T15:11:20.773" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If we are to focus on the fact it contains Eucalyptus, quite likely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Eucalyptus oil has antibacterial effects on pathogenic bacteria in the respiratory tract. &lt;strong&gt;Inhaled eucalyptus oil vapor is a&#xA;  decongestant and treatment for bronchitis.&lt;/strong&gt; Cineole controls airway&#xA;  mucus hypersecretion and asthma via anti-inflammatory cytokine&#xA;  inhibition. Eucalyptus oil also stimulates immune system&#xA;  response by effects on the phagocytic ability of human monocyte&#xA;  derived macrophages&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_oil&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucalyptus_oil&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The medicinal Eucalyptus Oil is probably &lt;strong&gt;the most powerful antiseptic&#xA;  of its class&lt;/strong&gt;, especially when it is old, as ozone is formed in it on&#xA;  exposure to the air. &lt;strong&gt;It has decided disinfectant action&lt;/strong&gt;, destroying&#xA;  the lower forms of life.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;The oil is sprinkled on the handkerchief and inhaled frequently&lt;/strong&gt;, for&#xA;  catarrh colds and to prevent infection.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/e/eucaly14.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.botanical.com/botanical/mgmh/e/eucaly14.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Oil of eucalyptus resembles the other essential oils in its action,&#xA;  though at one time credited with a specific action in malaria and&#xA;  fevers. &lt;strong&gt;It is employed as an antiseptic&lt;/strong&gt;...&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.henriettes-herb.com/eclectic/bpc1911/eucalyptus_oleu.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.henriettes-herb.com/eclectic/bpc1911/eucalyptus_oleu.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it is described as an antiseptic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;... are antimicrobial substances that are applied to living&#xA;  tissue/skin to &lt;strong&gt;reduce the possibility of infection&lt;/strong&gt;, sepsis, or&#xA;  putrefaction. Antiseptics are generally distinguished from antibiotics&#xA;  by the latter's ability to be transported through the lymphatic system&#xA;  to destroy bacteria within the body, and from disinfectants, which&#xA;  destroy microorganisms found on non-living objects.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the oils from the plant is able to be used against and even prevent infections, also considering its ability to be inhaled for effect (see reference), it is highly likely the nasal spray will have the described effect on preventing infection, provided it is used correctly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22976" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T15:11:20.773" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26705" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-09T16:29:29.733" Score="7" ViewCount="2213" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.copticchurch.net/topics/thecopticchurch/sacraments/6_matrimony.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this quote&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jerome&lt;/a&gt; (I don't know in what book he originally wrote it):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even the pigeons and doves don't take another partner if their companions pass away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't take Jerome's statement to mean that it has literally never ever happened in history. I think a better interpretation would be that he's saying pigeons and doves &lt;em&gt;very rarely&lt;/em&gt; take a mate after the death of their companion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? I turn to &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/460131/pigeon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Encyclopedia Britannica&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; for more information here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pigeons are monogamous; i.e., they mate for life, and the survivor accepts a new mate only slowly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is, &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt; slowly? Is it &lt;em&gt;rare&lt;/em&gt; for a survivor to find a new mate, as Jerome claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To restate, the claim of Jerome's that I'm seeking evaluation of is composed of the following: Pigeons and doves mate for life and only very rarely seek a new partner while their current mate is alive. Moreover, they are no more likely to seek a new partner &lt;em&gt;even after their mate has died&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I'm &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; seeking evaluation of, is any discussion of &quot;marriage&quot; as a construct within the animal kingdom, or a rigidly literal reading of his statement that they &quot;don't [&lt;em&gt;ever!&lt;/em&gt;] take another partner.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In examining the claim, it may be useful to examine whether the answer varies depending on the species of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbidae&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pigeon and dove&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16860" LastEditorUserId="16860" LastEditDate="2016-12-17T13:48:20.360" LastActivityDate="2016-12-17T13:48:20.360" Title="Do pigeons and doves refrain from mating after their lifelong mate dies?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|birds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26707" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26705" CreationDate="2015-02-09T21:14:56.037" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Their monogamy does seem to be a well-established claim but not that they never form another pair-bond:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source you quote doesn't support St Jerome's claim. So you could probably drop &quot;and &lt;strong&gt;never&lt;/strong&gt; remarry&quot; part of the question title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pigeons are monogamous; i.e., they mate for life, and the survivor accepts a new mate only slowly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/460131/pigeon&quot;&gt;Encyclopedia Britannica&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many long-lived birds form long-term pair bonds, but they sometimes divorce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4535440?sid=21105301811621&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=3738032&quot;&gt;Experiments in pair-bond stability in domestic pigeons (Columba livia domestica)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you might expect (?) - it's complicated&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here, the probability of divorce in domestic pigeons (Columba livia) was tested experimentally, and separately for both male and female. Breeding success and pair bond duration of pairs was manipulated. After separation from the mate for up to 60 days the subject (female or male) was allowed to court to a new mate for 4 hours. Then the subject was given a choice between the old and the new mate presented simultaneously on either side of the experimental cage. A further possibility to choose between the two mates was given in later stage in the familiar aviary. Female subjects without breeding success showed little courtship towards the old male, especially when they had nest-cooed a lot to the new male during the four hours exposure. In the latter cases they chose the new male in the experimental choice situation. The preference for the old mate in the choice situation by females with breeding success was positively related to the duration of the previous pair bond. All females that had been paired for at least 200 days (N = 11), chose their old males. On the other hand, 86% of the females that had been paired for less than 152 days, chose the new male. Forty percent of the male subjects with breeding success preferred the new female in the experimental choice situation. This preference was especially shown by males that had performed frequent nest-cooing during the four hours exposure period. In the aviary, however, all males with or without breeding success reoccupied their nest at once and started nest-cooing and finally courted the female which was able to defend access to the nest against other females. This was always the male's former mate. Males preferred to occupy a nest over courting with any particular female.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2015-02-09T21:21:09.710" LastActivityDate="2015-02-09T21:21:09.710" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26708" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-10T04:46:00.987" Score="6" ViewCount="245" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR:&lt;/strong&gt; Please see the question title above for the question. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;All of the following is optional.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/#comment-642141D4-9BA0-9E0B-141AC31245C7CA77&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source:&lt;/a&gt;  ... &lt;em&gt;The Science of Paper versus Screens&lt;/em&gt;, 2013 April 11, by Ferris Jabr, &lt;em&gt;Scientific American&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/#comment-CDCCCC02-EC9B-ED02-7C6A11CB33AA1396&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[Source in the affirmative]&lt;/a&gt;: [User 'billfalls'  commented:] I was surprised to see no reference to the research reported by Jakob Nielsen, the expert on website usability. Empirical studies he cites, performed by himself and others, show that reading on a screen is more tiring and &lt;strong&gt;is remembered more poorly than reading on paper&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/#comment-642141D4-9BA0-9E0B-141AC31245C7CA77&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;[Source in the negative:]&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;  [User 'EdgarManhattan' commented:] The studies cited in this article are just chronicling the transition from paper to electronic media ... They are finding the awkward places that will be smoothed out by advancing technology and the constant cycling of human generations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... I'm comfortable with reading on a good monitor or on an ebook, although I'm in a demographic that supposedly prefers paper. But a lot of paper books have unpleasant fonts. And a lot of books are printed in awkward sizes, on badly chosen paper. Only a small subset of printed books are actually a pleasure to read. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/#comment-642141D4-9BA0-9E0B-141AC31245C7CA77&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source:&lt;/a&gt;  ... &lt;em&gt;Why the Smart Reading Device ... May Be … Paper&lt;/em&gt;, 2014 May 1, by Brandon Keim, wired.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evidence affirming the question:&lt;/strong&gt; ...In the meantime, other research does suggest possible differences. A 2004 study found that students &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169814103000271?np=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;more fully remembered&lt;/a&gt; what they’d read on paper. Those results were echoed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581904001089&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;by an experiment that looked specifically at e-books&lt;/a&gt;, and another by psychologist Erik Wästlund at Sweden’s Karlstad University, who found that students &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563204000202?np=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;learned better when reading from paper&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evidence negativing the question:&lt;/strong&gt; ... Rakefet Ackerman at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has found that students reading on paper and screen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/2014/05/reading-on-screen-versus-paper/iew3.technion.ac.il/~ackerman/papers/Ackerman%20&amp;amp;%20Lauterman%20in%20press%20-%20A%20metacognitive%20analysis%20of%20learning%20texts%20under%20time%20pressure%20on%20screen%20vs.%20on%20paper.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;may think differently about their own learning processes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;.... the science is far from settled. A study by psychologist Sara Margolin of Brockport University found &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/acp.2930&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;no difference in reading comprehension&lt;/a&gt; in students reading paper, computer screens and e-readers. “It’s really a matter of personal preference,” said Margolin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another study of students using paper and electronic textbooks &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131512002953?np=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;found no significant differences&lt;/a&gt; — and for some readers, such as those with dyslexia who find it easier to concentrate on small sections of text, Thomson found that e-readers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0075634&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;may already be superior to paper books&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16959" LastEditorDisplayName="user16959" LastEditDate="2015-03-24T18:25:22.870" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T18:25:22.870" Title="Do you understand (reading comprehension) more from reading on paper than on screen?" Tags="|reading|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26711" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26720" CreationDate="2015-02-10T16:57:14.810" Score="14" ViewCount="358" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.petspyjamas.com/getty-dog-owners-vs-cat-owners-unbelievable-facts/9/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blog.petspyjamas.com/getty-dog-owners-vs-cat-owners-unbelievable-facts/9/&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;9. Cat owners have a lower chance of developing allergies&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When cats enthusiastically rub themselves against your legs, it isn’t&#xA;  just out of affection or a desire for food. Those clever cats are also&#xA;  helping to boost your immune system, and are particularly great for&#xA;  triggering allergy immunity in babies. No wonder they were worshipped&#xA;  as gods in ancient Egypt!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22980" LastEditorUserId="8192" LastEditDate="2015-02-14T17:51:33.830" LastActivityDate="2016-07-19T19:15:10.233" Title="Do cat owners have a lower chance of developing allergies?" Tags="|zoology|immune-system|allergies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26712" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-10T19:06:54.217" Score="19" ViewCount="19709" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've gotten an e-mail to this effect a couple of times now, mainly centering around the story behind the song &quot;Amazing Grace&quot;. The basic idea is that old Negro spirituals were based on the black keys of the piano because slaves weren't permitted to touch the white keys. Amazing Grace was written by a former slaver, and the assertion is that he heard the tune from his slaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds like total BS. First off, there's no piano out on the cotton plantation, and the slaves' quarters were very unlikely to have had one either. Second, a house slave might be trained to play piano for the enjoyment of the household, but in that case, it seems equally unlikely that the tutor would only teach the student the black keys. Lastly, the black keys, when played in sequence, form a pentatonic scale (not the only one but the easiest one), and this scale is common not only in certain African tribal forms, but in numerous European and Asian cultures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone have any proof or disproof of this thesis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5997" LastActivityDate="2022-12-09T14:29:39.973" Title="Were slaves only allowed to play the black keys of a piano?" Tags="|music|racism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26712" CreationDate="2015-02-10T19:22:30.300" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;For one thing, &quot;Amazing Grace&quot; isn't an old Negro spiritual.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Per &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Grace&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, the words were written by a British sailor (involved in the slave trade) who later became a clergyman.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;He only wrote the words: they were set to a number of tunes, with the current one not used until about half a century after its composition.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;It in turn was likely derived from old British melodies.  (It's not an uncommon practice for hymns to steal tunes from secular/traditional music: perhaps the best known example is Greensleeves/What Child Is This?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23188" LastEditorUserId="4092" LastEditDate="2015-02-10T22:46:05.207" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T22:46:05.207" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26714" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-10T19:24:01.127" Score="12" ViewCount="1230" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard of many claims about soda water itself containing carbonic acid (as claimed by a teacher I had in high school) and having a generally high pH that's enough to destroy one's teeth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.huffpost.com/entry/diet-soda-teeth-similar-to-meth-photos_n_3348158?guccounter=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; from Huffington Post cites a study that concludes that consumption of diet soda can have devastating effects on teeth similar to that of a meth user.  However, this study seems to have only included a group of 3 subjects, only one of which drank diet soda.  It also did nothing to prove that the condition of the subject's teeth were caused by the diet soda he drank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's the one study that I see referenced in any articles that make claims about diet soda and tooth decay.  The full study is &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160729184809/http://www.agd.org/media/142832/ma13_bassiouny.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.  I am skeptical about the 3rd case report, because if diet soda was indeed causing this person's teeth to decay to such a degree, the person clearly wasn't competent enough to see the correlation and cease consumption.  The person may not have been brushing &amp;amp; flossing, but the study says nothing about her dental hygiene.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of the sites and articles that make claims about the acidity of soda don't provide any information on the pH of soda or other beverages.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.campsmile.com/toothy-tips/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This one does&lt;/a&gt;, however.  It puts various beverages on a spectrum between water and battery acid. As for diet sodas, the lowest (Diet Pepsi) has a pH of 3.05 in contrast to that of battery acid (1.0) and water (7.0).  Their source for this data is the Minnesota Dental Association.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure I can accept this proposed spectrum since battery acid, which is sulfuric acid, is highly-caustic whereas carbonic acid is relatively weak.  So unless my understanding of the science is flawed, a solution of carbonic acid with a pH of 3.05 =/= a solution of sulfuric acid with a pH of 3.05.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am mostly skeptical because I often have diet sodas and have been drinking them for over a decade; my teeth are in great condition.  Granted, I do brush and floss frequently, and the rest of my diet is very low on sugar and carbohydrates that would feed bacteria like streptococcus mutans, which are the biggest players in tooth decay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20697" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-27T16:25:45.300" LastActivityDate="2019-11-06T11:30:22.423" Title="Is diet soda as bad for your teeth as regular soda or methamphetamine?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|chemistry|dentistry|soda|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26715" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-10T19:52:19.903" Score="3" ViewCount="157" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here are the basics of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.catholiceducation.org/en/culture/catholic-contributions/the-miracle-of-lanciano.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;miracle of Lanciano&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One day, a certain monk was offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.&#xA;  Although we do not know his identity, an ancient document described&#xA;  him as ...versed in the sciences of the world but ignorant in that of&#xA;  God. Apparently, he had been plagued by doubts about&#xA;  transubstantiation: he agonized over whether the bread and wine&#xA;  changed substantially into the Body and Blood of our Lord at the words&#xA;  of consecration, and whether our Lord was truly present in the Holy&#xA;  Eucharist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This time, when the monk pronounced the words of consecration, the&#xA;  host was miraculously changed into flesh and the wine into blood. The&#xA;  monk was awestruck. Weeping joyously, he regained his composure. He&#xA;  called the congregation around the altar and said, O fortunate&#xA;  witnesses, to whom the Blessed God, to confound my unbelief, has&#xA;  wished to reveal Himself visible to our eyes! Come, brethren, and&#xA;  marvel at our God, so close to us. Behold the Flesh and Blood of our&#xA;  Most Beloved Christ. Those who witnessed the miracle soon spread the&#xA;  news throughout the surrounding area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flesh and blood were preserved for posterity. Later on, the Catholic church investigated it more:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most thorough study occurred in 1970-71. Pope Paul VI permitted a&#xA;  series of scientific studies on the precious relics to verify their&#xA;  nature. Dr. Odoardo Linoli, professor of anatomy and pathological&#xA;  histology, chemistry and clinical microscopy, and head physician of&#xA;  the hospital of Arezzo, conducted the study. He was assisted by Dr.&#xA;  Ruggero Bertelli, professor emeritus of human anatomy at the&#xA;  University of Siena. The analyses were performed in accord with&#xA;  scientific standards and documented, and Dr. Bertelli independently&#xA;  corroborated Dr. Linolis findings. In 1981, using more advanced&#xA;  medical technology, Dr. Linoli conducted a second histological study;&#xA;  he not only confirmed the findings but also gathered new information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically I'm interested in an evaluation of the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The integrity of the investigations done by Dr. Linolis and those who preceded him. If this piece of the question is too subjective to answer well, that's an acceptable answer.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The accuracy of this statement: &quot;The blood, if taken from a cadaver, would have deteriorated rapidly. Given that these samples were centuries old, free of preservatives, and never hermetically sealed in the reliquaries, they should have deteriorated.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The accuracy of this statement: &quot;Only the skill of a trained pathologist could have obtained such a sample, a tangential cut of the heart a round cut, thick on the outer edges and lessening gradually and uniformly to the central area.&quot; And do they mean a trained pathologist in modern times or at the time of the miracle?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16860" LastActivityDate="2015-02-10T19:52:19.903" Title="How should we evaluate the evidence for the miracle of Lanciano?" Tags="|catholic-church|miracle|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-02-10T22:41:40.183" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26716" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-10T23:51:14.207" Score="8" ViewCount="5071" Body="&lt;p&gt;As always, Facebook makes for easy skeptics' fodder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1AGXh.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Elvis Presley once asked his limo driver, &quot;Do you own this limo or do you work for the company?&quot; He responded, &quot;I work for the company.&quot; Elvis said &quot;Well, you own it now.&quot; The limo driver's tip was the limo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;source&quot; mentioned in the image doesn't have &lt;a href=&quot;http://unbelievablefactsblog.com/search/elvis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;any results&lt;/a&gt; when I search for &quot;Elvis&quot;, and all of the info I do find there doesn't actually show any sources for any of their claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did this happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For bonus points, what was the resolution? (Did the limo company agree to sell the limo to Elvis to gift to the driver, etc?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T13:14:05.773" Title="Did Elvis Presley ever tip a limo driver with a limo?" Tags="|celebrities|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26717" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-11T01:37:53.537" Score="3" ViewCount="325" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my friends told me he stopped using soap years ago and I never smelt anything bad. I wanted to test it and changed my shower routine to just warm water and thoroughly using my hands to scrub my body. The results were amazing,  I didn't notice any increase in odor and showering took less time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact my body odor seems to have decreased significantly. So much so, that after days where I don't sweat a lot I frequently skip showering entirely without any bad effects. And it's not due to not being able to smell myself as it has been confirmed by my partner. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still wash my hands with soap to prevent the spread of disease. And I can also understand the use of soap if you get so dirty that water alone doesn't get the grime off. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is why I'm curious if there is any evidence that using soap on the body does any good? Or do we just do it because everyone has been drilled since childhood with the belief they would be dirty without soap? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe cosmetic companies spread this idea to sell their perfumed soaps? Their commercials certainly keep it alive. Interestingly I'm now much more aware of the perfumed odor emitted by people who use a lot of soap, sometimes it's even somewhat repelling to me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25023" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-02-11T02:10:40.373" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T02:10:40.373" Title="Does soap help prevent body odor?" Tags="|hygiene|healthcare|cosmetics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-04-23T17:12:25.697" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26718" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-11T03:09:09.713" Score="1" ViewCount="399" Body="&lt;p&gt;I am pretty sure wikipedia is right about it being founded on May 1st 1776, but they don't reference this. Can someone provide a reliable website, preferably by authored by a historian, that can confirm this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25025" LastEditorUserId="25025" LastEditDate="2015-02-11T10:58:02.470" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T10:58:02.470" Title="Is/was there an illuminati founded in 1776?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26720" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26711" CreationDate="2015-02-11T04:48:22.613" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The evidence is somewhat mixed. Maybe. In summary, there is conflicting evidence. None of the evidence here is particularly strong. I conclude that cat exposure is neither associated with a strong benefits nor detriments, or we might expect to see more consistent results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these studies are sufficient to show causality - merely suggestive correlation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Mild evidence that cats are good&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;HESSELMAR, Åberg, Åberg, ERIKSSON and BJÖRKSTÉN (1999), &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-2222.1999.00534.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does early exposure to cat or dog protect against later allergy development?&lt;/a&gt;. Clinical &amp;amp; Experimental Allergy, 29: 611–617. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2222.1999.00534.x&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was only a survey but it found cat exposure was negatively correlated to allergies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Children exposed to pets during the first year of life had a lower frequency of allergic rhinitis at 7–9 years of age and of asthma at 12–13 years. Children exposed to cat during the first year of life were less often SPT positive to cat at 12–13 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Evidence that cats are mildly evil&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Syed Hasan Arshad, David Wallace Hide, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/009167499290077F&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effect of environmental factors on the development of allergic disorders in infancy&lt;/a&gt;, Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Volume 90, Issue 2, August 1992, Pages 235-241, ISSN 0091-6749, DOI 10.1016/0091-6749(92)90077-F.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exposure to animal dander did not influence the prevalence of clinical disorder, but positive SPT reaction to cat dander was more prevalent in infants who were exposed to cats and/or dogs (p = 0.04)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So cat exposure isn't associated with serious allergy problems, but is associated with subclinical ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Evidence that cats are mild&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://adc.bmj.com/content/68/6/724.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Infant feeding, wheezing, and allergy: a prospective study.&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;M L Burr, E S Limb, M J Maguire, L Amarah, B A Eldridge, J C Layzell, T G Merrett&#xA;Arch Dis Child 1993;68:6 724-728 doi:10.1136/adc.68.6.724&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was a study focussed on cow's milk, but as an aside:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allergic disease was not associated with exposure to tobacco smoke, house dust mite antigen, or cats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So cat exposure is UNcorrelated with allergies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Susanne Lau, Sabina Illi, Christine Sommerfeld, Bodo Niggemann, Renate Bergmann, Erika von Mutius, Ulrich Wahn, the Multicentre Allergy Study Group, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673600028427&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Early exposure to house-dust mite and cat allergens and development of childhood asthma: a cohort study&lt;/a&gt;, The Lancet, Volume 356, Issue 9239, 21 October 2000, Pages 1392-1397, ISSN 0140-6736, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(00)02842-7.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, no relation between early indoor allergen exposure and the prevalence of asthma, wheeze, and bronchial hyper-responsiveness was seen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, cat exposure is UNcorrelated with allergies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T17:35:22.373" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26722" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26718" CreationDate="2015-02-11T09:13:11.773" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The source is actually linked in the article, although confusingly it has reference number [3] instead of [1] as marked in the paragraph where the statement is made:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Illuminati (plural of Latin illuminatus, &quot;enlightened&quot;) is a name given to several groups, both real and fictitious. Historically, the name refers to the Bavarian Illuminati, an Enlightenment-era secret society founded on May 1, 1776. The society's goals were to oppose superstition, obscurantism, religious influence over public life and abuses of state power. &quot;The order of the day,&quot; they wrote in their general statutes, &quot;is to put an end to the machinations of the purveyors of injustice, to control them without dominating them.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;[1]&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Illuminati&lt;/a&gt;, Wikipedia&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On May 1, 1776, the new organization was founded, under the name of the Order of the Illuminati. with a membership of five all told. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/anti-masonry/stauffer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New England and the Bavarian Illuminati&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Vernon L. Stauffer Ph.D., New York 1918&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book seems reputable, see for example this review:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The well-known reaction of American feeling from sympathy with&#xA;  the French Revolution to horror of its excesses and the panic made by&#xA;  the strident radicals of the new Democratic Clubs on this side of the&#xA;  ocean is not a new story, but it becomes new when read in the ample&#xA;  detail and interesting co-ordination of Dr. Stauffer's study--a work of&#xA;  admirable scholarship and excellent literary form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/1836396?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Reviewed Work: New England and the Bavarian Illuminati by Vernon Stauffer&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; by Francis A. Christie, The American Historical Review, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Oct., 1919), pp. 120-121&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T09:13:11.773" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26724" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-11T11:51:05.040" Score="3" ViewCount="594" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://creation.com/werner-living-fossils&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, creationist Dr Carl Werner claims that modern animals are found fossilized in the same layers as dinosaurs, which is evidence against evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrary to popular belief, modern types of birds have been found, including: parrots, owls, penguins, ducks, loons, albatross, cormorants, sandpipers, avocets, etc. When scientists who support evolution disclosed this information during our TV interviews it appears that they could hardly believe what they were saying on camera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It includes a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5eTNoTHewY#action=share&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video interview&lt;/a&gt; of evolutionary paleontologist, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Clemens,_Jr.&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr William Clemens&lt;/a&gt; where he claims they have been finding modern birds in the late cretaceous and their findings have also been published in Nature. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the students here, Tom Stidham, has beeing going through our collectionsd from the late Cretaceous looking for the remains of birds, and wgar they're finding is that there is at that time, in the late Cretaceous quite a diversity of modern groups of birds. Tom has just had a little article published in Nature in which he describes a late Cretaceous parrot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the science community accept that &quot;modern&quot; birds existed during the late &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cretaceous&lt;/a&gt;? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25025" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-02-11T12:04:56.450" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T13:13:46.700" Title="Did modern birds exist during the Cretaceous period?" Tags="|evolution|paleontology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26725" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26716" CreationDate="2015-02-11T12:32:25.860" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;A possible source for this is probably &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_King&quot;&gt;Larry King&lt;/a&gt;, the TV host. On an episode of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_King_Live&quot;&gt;Larry King Live&lt;/a&gt; aired on Jan 14, 2005, he &lt;a href=&quot;http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0501/14/lkl.01.html&quot;&gt;relates the following anecdote&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;KING&lt;/em&gt;: We'll ask in a minute what you each think might have been his strangest habit. Quick Elvis Presley story. &lt;strong&gt;I never met Elvis, but met Colonel Parker.&lt;/strong&gt; Elvis Presley worked in Miami Beach once, at the Miami Beach Convention Center. He flew into Miami International Airport, a helicopter brought him over to Miami Beach at the helipad. A limo picked him up at the helipad and drove him 10 blocks to the convention center, where he performed. He got back in the limo to go back to the helicopter. When he got back to the helicopter, he said to the limo driver, &quot;do you own this limo or do you work for the company?&quot; And he said, &quot;I work for the company.&quot; And he said, &quot;you now own it.&quot; The limo driver's tip was the limo. We'll be right back.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Larry King appears to suggest that he got this story off &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Tom_Parker&quot;&gt;Colonel Tom Parker&lt;/a&gt;, Elvis' manager.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea if the driver eventually got the limo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2015-02-11T13:14:05.773" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T13:14:05.773" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26727" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26724" CreationDate="2015-02-11T13:13:46.700" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's article &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_birds&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Modern birds&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It is generally agreed that the Neornithes evolved in the Cretaceous Period&lt;/strong&gt; and that the split between the Palaeognathae and Neognathae, and then the split between Galloanserae (fowl) and the other Neognathae, occurred before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (&lt;strong&gt;the earliest fossil remains confidently referred to the Neornithes come from the possible galliform Austinornis, dated to about 85 mya&lt;/strong&gt;,[3] though the 130 million year old Hauterivian age Gallornis straeleni may also be a neornithine[4]), but there are different opinions about whether the radiation of the remaining neognathes occurred before or after the extinction of the other dinosaurs.[5] This disagreement is in part caused by a divergence in the evidence, with molecular dating suggesting a Cretaceous radiation and fossil evidence supporting a Tertiary radiation. Attempts made to reconcile the molecular and fossil evidence have proved controversial.[5][6]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2015-02-11T13:13:46.700" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26729" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-11T13:50:41.923" Score="8" ViewCount="627" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Alan Turing's decryption team develop an statistical analysis algorithm to decide whether to use information from decrypted Enigma messages without risking the Germans to find out that they had broken the code, as depicted in the film The Imitation Game?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have thought those decisions were made at a much higher level. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/12/03/the_imitation_game_fact_vs_fiction_how_true_the_new_movie_is_to_alan_turing.html&quot;&gt;Some sources&lt;/a&gt; claim that the scene in the movie where they decide not to save the brother of one of the members of the team so that the Germans don't suspect that the code has been broken, is fiction. However, there is a scene later where Turing suggests to Menzies (the head of British secret intelligence) that they could develop a method based on statistical analysis to decide when to use the code, only so that they could win the war, but not too much so that the Germans never find out that the code has been broken. The actual meeting between Turing and Menzies probably did not occur, since Turing &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/12/03/the_imitation_game_fact_vs_fiction_how_true_the_new_movie_is_to_alan_turing.html&quot;&gt;did not meet him&lt;/a&gt;. But the question remains whether Turing (or any of the codebreakers) ever helped to develop or suggested to develop such a statistical analysis. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ew.com/article/2014/11/28/fact-checking-the-film-imitation-game&quot;&gt;Other sources&lt;/a&gt; claim that in fact, it was Menzies who came up with Ultra, which was the name given to the system to determine which messages to use. Did Alan Turing, or any of the mathematicians in his team, have anything to do with Ultra? Exactly who were the people (besides Menzies) involved in the development of Ultra?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4524" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T14:28:09.680" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T14:28:09.680" Title="Was Turing's team involved in the development of the Ultra system to determine which decrypted Enigma messages to act upon?" Tags="|world-war-ii|alan-turing|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26730" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26731" CreationDate="2015-02-11T14:05:03.693" Score="57" ViewCount="10993" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen a couple of Turing's papers, but never have found one called &quot;The Imitation Game&quot;. The Imitation Game seems to be a name used by Turing to refer to his test to decide whether an intelligent entity of some sorts is machine or man (a.k.a., the Turing's test). But I haven't found any published paper with that name. So, did Turing ever publish a paper called The Imitation Game?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4524" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T14:27:55.873" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T14:27:55.873" Title="Did Alan Turing publish a paper called The Imitation Game (as claimed in the movie)?" Tags="|history|alan-turing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26731" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26730" CreationDate="2015-02-11T14:51:44.183" Score="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt; but also &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;. In the 1950 edition of &quot;Mind&quot;, Turing published &quot;Computing Machinery and Intelligence&quot; (doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433&quot;&gt;10.1093/mind/LIX.236.433&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2251299?sid=21105837920053&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=4&quot;&gt;JSTOR&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://loebner.net/Prizef/TuringArticle.html&quot;&gt;text&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csee.umbc.edu/courses/471/papers/turing.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;) on the subject of artificial intelligence. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_Machinery_and_Intelligence&quot;&gt;Wikipedia has a good overview&lt;/a&gt; of the article and its implications; however, if you refer to the article itself you will note that the first section is titled &quot;The Imitation Game&quot;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. The Imitation Game&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I propose to consider the question, &quot;Can machines think?&quot; This should&#xA;  begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms &quot;machine&quot; and&#xA;  &quot;think.&quot; The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as&#xA;  possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous,&#xA;  If the meaning of the words &quot;machine&quot; and &quot;think&quot; are to be found by&#xA;  examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the&#xA;  conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, &quot;Can&#xA;  machines think?&quot; is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a&#xA;  Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a&#xA;  definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely&#xA;  related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while it was not the title of the paper, it was used as a section title in the paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="25044" LastEditDate="2015-02-12T18:05:09.597" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T18:05:09.597" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26733" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-11T16:20:03.240" Score="4" ViewCount="294" Body="&lt;p&gt;In diagrams, It is common to depict geological periods to be directly on top of each other with fossils of that period within them. When looking for evidence of this, I have only found examples of trilobites and shells. However it is common to see this sort of ordering depicted with dinosaurs in them &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/complex_life/fossil_record.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange1/current/lectures/complex_life/fossil_record.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In high school my teacher said that at the grand canyon we find no fossils at the bottom, further up we find shells, above that we find jellyfish, then fish, then reptiles, then mammals. After doing research I found out that this was not the case. Now I suspect that diagrams that depict this ordering of the fossil record with dinosaurs maybe deception or at least a representation of the fossil record that can be easily misinterpreted by laymen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are there any examples of this sort of ordering?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I know the wording of the question is quite terrible. Feel free to edit it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25025" LastEditorUserId="25025" LastEditDate="2015-02-12T04:02:24.223" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T04:02:24.223" Title="Are there any geological periods found on top of each other that have dinosaurs of that period with in them?" Tags="|evolution|geology|paleontology|fossil-record|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="18" ClosedDate="2015-02-12T01:41:35.910" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26734" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-11T23:10:18.670" Score="0" ViewCount="769" Body="&lt;p&gt;Australia is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.convictcreations.com/culture/egalitarianism.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;often seen&lt;/a&gt; as an egalitarian country, or as a country which used to be egalitarian, but whose egalitarianism is &lt;a href=&quot;http://thenewdaily.com.au/money/2014/02/17/fair-go-dead/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;under threat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the first source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It would be fair to say that Australia is one of the most egalitarian&#xA;  nations in the world. While many countries celebrate the ideal of&#xA;  human equality, arguably none has it so culturally engrained as&#xA;  Australia. The ideological bias towards equality is most clearly seen&#xA;  in the language that Australians use to communicate with each other.&#xA;  In comparison to other English speakers, Australians tend to be far&#xA;  more informal; readily using the same language when dealing with a&#xA;  boss, an elderly person, friend or rapscallion. In a famous example,&#xA;  when cricketer Dennis Lillee met the Queen, he greeted her with a&#xA;  handshake and a friendly “g’day, how ya go’in”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the second source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Australians have long cherished egalitarianism as a defining — if not&#xA;  the defining — characteristic of our national culture. We like to&#xA;  think of our country as a place where anyone can improve their lot in&#xA;  life through hard work, determination and resourcefulness. We embrace&#xA;  the underdog, cut tall poppies down to size, and go to great lengths&#xA;  to distance ourselves from what we see as the rigid class system of&#xA;  our British forebears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But as the experience of Sharma — and a raft of statistics —&#xA;  demonstrate, it’s harder for those on the margins of society to get&#xA;  ahead than many Australians would like to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do objective studies confirm that compared to other countries, Australia is or was an egalitarian country?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T06:24:35.670" Title="Is or was Australia an egalitarian country?" Tags="|sociology|australia|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-02-13T03:35:01.857" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26735" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26771" CreationDate="2015-02-11T23:40:40.227" Score="6" ViewCount="1077" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084970&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Imitation Game&lt;/a&gt;, most of the staff portrayed on-screen were male, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Clarke&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joan Clarke&lt;/a&gt; faced sexist assumptions that because she was a woman, she was in the wrong room when she tried to go into the examination room for the cross-word solving test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, a prominent programmer, Amy Wibowo, disputes this portrayal (from Twitter, slightly re-written):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was really disappointed in the erasure of women code breakers at&#xA;Bletchley Park. For example, Joan Clarke wasn't an anomaly. There were&#xA;many women working on breaking the code and they were just not present&#xA;in the movie. I hate intelligent women in science and mathematics&#xA;being portrayed as anomalies when it is historically inaccurate. Women&#xA;get told all the time they &amp;quot;aren't wired for logical thinking&amp;quot; when&#xA;the truth is that computing used to be considered women's work. To&#xA;show how egregious omission of women cryptanalysts in the imitation&#xA;game was, Wikipedia says staff was 80% women.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bletchley_Park&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were staff at Bletchley Park predominantly male, especially the ones involved with the most highly skilled aspects of the decryption effort?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="34347" LastEditDate="2022-04-17T03:13:55.397" LastActivityDate="2022-04-17T03:13:55.397" Title="Were staff at Bletchley Park predominantly male?" Tags="|history|united-kingdom|world-war-ii|sexism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26736" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26735" CreationDate="2015-02-12T00:58:47.710" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Part of a collection for the Bletchley Park Trust, this document called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/exhibit/the-women-of-bletchley-park/QQZ2YSRa?hl=en&amp;amp;position=0%2C26&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Women of Bletchley Park (1938-1945)&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, authored by Gillian Mason (Bletchley Park’s Curator) says &quot;At its peak, nearly twelve thousand people worked at Bletchley Park and its associated outstations; the majority of these were women aged between 18 and 24.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3970" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T00:58:47.710" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26737" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26762" CreationDate="2015-02-12T03:06:34.903" Score="11" ViewCount="914" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Wired has published article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/2015/02/tech-companies-and-vaccines/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;The Sickeningly Low Vaccination Rates at Silicon Valley Day Cares&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, in which they claim ridiculously low vaccination rates in daycare centers associated with some of Silicon Valley's tech giants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5HWG2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Google and Cisco claim these numbers to be inaccurate, and claim to have no PBEs (personal belief exemptions).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T22:11:30.967" Title="Do Silicon Valley tech workers' kids have low vaccination rates?" Tags="|medical-science|united-states|vaccines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26739" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26734" CreationDate="2015-02-12T03:37:10.487" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;As @Oddthinking has pointed out, the term &quot;egalitarian&quot; is ill-defined; does &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarianism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;egalitarian&lt;/a&gt; mean:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;equality of opportunity, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;equality of outcomes?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you have decided on this, do you mean equality in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;income,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;wealth,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;political power,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;social standing,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;education,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;health,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;body mass index (just kidding)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your first quote and the first paragraph of the second quote appear to refer to &quot;Australian egalitarianism&quot; as a social construct - an equality of outcome in social interactions i.e. one person is not better than another because of distinctions in birth, wealth or education.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first article is clear and consistent and is to my mind, as an Australian, what is meant by &quot;Australian egalitarianism&quot;. This is and always has been a relative measure - Australian interactions are less formal than European and even American - titles and honorifics (even Mr &amp;amp; Ms) are rare outside of very formal situations and anyone can be addressed as &quot;mate&quot; - regardless of sex, ethnicity or social status. I know this makes my sister-in-law (an Austrian) extremely uncomfortable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What we are dealing with here is a cultural identity or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.convictcreations.com/research/myths.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;myth&lt;/a&gt; - like all myths it is about how should be - not about how they are or were. Just as Americans want to believe in &quot;the land of the free&quot; and the French in &quot;libertie, egalitie and fraternitie&quot;,  Australians want to believe that their society is fair and equitable - it isn't, never has been, never will be. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the second part refers to an &lt;em&gt;equality of economic opportunity&lt;/em&gt; and the article as a whole generally conflates these two very different definitions of egalitarianism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Equality of economic outcome&lt;/em&gt; is easier to measure than &lt;em&gt;equality of economic opportunity&lt;/em&gt; so lets get that out of the way first, see &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/6523.0Main%20Features22009-10?opendocument&amp;amp;tabname=Summary&amp;amp;prodno=6523.0&amp;amp;issue=2009-10&amp;amp;num=&amp;amp;view=&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/Previousproducts/6523.0Main%20Features22009-10?opendocument&amp;amp;tabname=Summary&amp;amp;prodno=6523.0&amp;amp;issue=2009-10&amp;amp;num=&amp;amp;view=&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2013/Economic-Roundup-Issue-2/Economic-Roundup/Income-inequality-in-Australia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2013/Economic-Roundup-Issue-2/Economic-Roundup/Income-inequality-in-Australia&lt;/a&gt; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theconversation.com/income-and-wealth-inequality-how-is-australia-faring-23483&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://theconversation.com/income-and-wealth-inequality-how-is-australia-faring-23483&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From these, income inequality has increased slightly over the past 40 years by some measures but Australia was about in the middle of the OECD countries then and is still in the middle now. So it has changed but not a lot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second article you cite is talking generally about &lt;em&gt;equality of economic opportunity&lt;/em&gt; and specifically cites a paper by Dr Leigh which is at best tangential to the anecdotal case the article is about. That paper compares intergenerational income mobility between fathers and sons who were &lt;strong&gt;both&lt;/strong&gt; born in Australia. It is worth quoting the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Combining four surveys conducted over a forty year period, I calculate intergenerational earnings&#xA;  elasticities for Australia, using predicted earnings in parents’ occupations as a proxy for actual&#xA;  parental earnings. In the most recent survey, the elasticity of sons’ wages with respect to fathers’&#xA;  wages is around 0.2. Comparing this estimate with earlier surveys, I find little evidence that intergenerational&#xA;  mobility in Australia has significantly risen or fallen over time. Applying the same&#xA;  methodology to United States data, I find that Australian society exhibits more intergenerational&#xA;  mobility than the United States. My method appears to slightly overstate the degree of intergenerational&#xA;  mobility; if the true intergenerational earnings elasticity in the United States is 0.4–0.6&#xA;  (as recent studies have suggested), then the intergenerational earnings elasticity in Australia is&#xA;  probably around 0.2–0.3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What this says is that there is &lt;em&gt;greater&lt;/em&gt; intergenerational equality of economic opportunity in Australia than in the US and that this has &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; changed significantly over time. Put another way, what your father earned has less impact on what you earn in Australia than in the US. This of course cuts both ways - social mobility is not always upwards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is then used as a basis for decrying the economic opportunities of a person who is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; born in Australia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;has a father who presumably was &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; born in Australia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;not educated in Australia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is a relatively recent immigrant&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;from an English as a second language country&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;working in an unskilled job.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The proposition that because this person does not earn a lot and has little prospect of bettering themselves; therefore Australia is no longer egalitarian is riddled with logical fallacies, both formal and informal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17834" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T03:37:10.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26734" CreationDate="2015-02-12T06:24:35.670" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR: &lt;strong&gt;Australia has a strong adherence to egalitarianism within social circles which isn't necessarily reflected in income.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Economically Diverse&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Australia has a wide variety of socioeconomic &quot;classes&quot; like most societies. Although not clearly divided into classes (like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Indian Caste System&lt;/a&gt;) there is a distinct income scale. For example, the 6th wealthiest female (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/pictures/fkem45edj/gina-rinehart/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the beautiful Gina Rinehart&lt;/a&gt; - $17B) is Australian and yet poverty is not &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Australia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;uncommon&lt;/a&gt; with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_Australia#Incidence_of_poverty_in_Australia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some estimating 13%&lt;/a&gt; below the poverty line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Socially Uniform&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, (and I feel like this is where the quoted articles are coming from) within social groups there is a strong urge to &quot;be the same&quot;, to not stand out. In Australia (and other Anglo-based nations), this is known as &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tall Poppy Syndrome&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tall poppy syndrome is the term used to...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...describe a social phenomenon in which people of genuine merit are&#xA;  resented, attacked, cut down, or criticised because their talents or&#xA;  achievements elevate them above or distinguish them from their peers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term is often used with negative connotations eg. When a friend has a better car, house, wife, etc it is common that they will be riled because of the item that distinguishes them from their peers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tall poppy syndrome has a positive side with Australia's &quot;underdog&quot; culture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Australia and New Zealand's usage of the term has evolved and is not&#xA;  uniformly negative. In Australia, a long history of &quot;underdog&quot; culture&#xA;  and profound respect for humility in contrast to that of Australia's&#xA;  English feudal heritage results in a different understanding of &quot;tall&#xA;  poppy syndrome&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw an excellent example of this in the news recently. A woman experienced some negative situation and the community gathered around her family and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/02/09/19/04/community-comes-together-for-a-surprise-renovation-rescue&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;built her a new home&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T06:24:35.670" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26741" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-12T07:22:12.297" Score="5" ViewCount="327" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-addicti_b_6506936.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; suggests that most of the addiction is due to the environment, not the actual chemical effects on the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the article claims that the common thinking, as encapsulated in the below quote, is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are strong chemical hooks in these drugs, so if we stopped on&#xA;  day twenty-one, our bodies would need the chemical. We would have a&#xA;  ferocious craving. We would be addicted. That's what addiction means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How much of this is grounded in research published in peer-reviewed, high impact-factor journals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10335" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-02-12T11:23:43.783" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T11:23:43.783" Title="Are heroin/cocaine not as physically addictive as previously claimed?" Tags="|medical-science|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26744" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14187" CreationDate="2015-02-12T12:07:30.810" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The supreme court of Sweden  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.svd.se/naringsliv/hd-bade-tur-och-skicklighet-i-poker_6068229.svd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;decided&lt;/a&gt; that poker (texas holdem) is a game of both skill and chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The article headline and subtitle are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HD: Både tur och skicklighet i poker&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pokerspelet texas holdem handlar både om tur och skicklighet, slår Högsta Domstolen (HD) fast i en ovanlig dom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which in English via Google translate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HD: Both luck and skill in poker&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Poker game texas holdem matter of both luck and skill, hitting the Supreme Court (HD) caught in an unusual sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The court decided that while the game is a game mostly of chance in a tournament form it is a game of skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20701" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-02-12T20:23:42.397" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T20:23:42.397" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26745" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11024" CreationDate="2015-02-12T13:49:20.877" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I asked this question a couple of years ago, and while the &quot;Have recommended calorie intakes increased significantly over the years&quot; was easily enough answered in the affirmative (see the updates in the question), the &quot;is it due to food industry lobbying?&quot; part was less clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I see the BMJ has just published a damning report &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h231&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sugar: spinning a web of influence&lt;/a&gt;&quot; which highlights enough conflict of interest amongst SACN experts for me to consider that part answered too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8497" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T13:49:20.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26746" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-12T16:16:38.580" Score="14" ViewCount="3693" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several British news reports (including the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01nw21b&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;BBC &quot;Bleeding trees&quot;&lt;/a&gt;) describe trees issuing red blood-like liquid when cut.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once the stuff of myth and legend, modern day eye-witnesses now catch on camera blood pumping from the trunks of trees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is linked to biblical accounts (Book of Ezra).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have any of these instances been validated? Examined by reputable botanists and established as not likely to be hoaxes? I wouldn't expect tabloid speculation from the BBC, but have not found any corroborating sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rjzi helpfully points out that dragon trees are known for red sap.  However, but the video is not exclusively about dragon trees (indeed, they're not mentioned).  Yews are specifically mentioned, and unnamed trees in Australia with rough bark that does not seem to match the dragon tree.  My question is, are there reputable accounts of trees not known for having red sap nevertheless appearing to bleed.  E.g., perhaps there's a fungus known to gives tree sap a red color?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user3150" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:20:08.657" LastActivityDate="2016-04-05T10:20:08.657" Title="Have there been documented cases of &quot;blood pumping from the trunks of trees&quot;?" Tags="|bible|plants|religious-texts|miracle|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26746" CreationDate="2015-02-12T16:31:52.970" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracaena_cinnabari&quot;&gt;Dracaena cinnabari&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (Socotra dragon tree or dragon blood tree) is well known for having a distinct red sap or resin and there are a number of other plants that also exhibit similar &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon&amp;#39;s_blood&quot;&gt;Dragons's Blood&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. As noted in the Wikipedia article on Dragon's Blood:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The dragon's blood known to the ancient Romans was mostly collected&#xA;  from D. cinnabari, and is mentioned in the 1st century Periplus (30:&#xA;  10. 17) as one of the products of Socotra. Socotra had been an important trading centre since at least the time of the Ptolemies.&#xA;  Dragon's blood was used as a dye, painting pigment, and medicine&#xA;  (respiratory and gastrointestinal problems) in the Mediterranean&#xA;  basin, and was held by early Greeks, Romans, and Arabs to have&#xA;  medicinal properties. Dioscorides and other early Greek writers&#xA;  described its medicinal uses.[3]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[3]: Casson, L. 1989. The Periplus Maris Erythraei. Princeton University Press, pp. 69, 168-170. ISBN 0-691-04060-5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T16:31:52.970" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26753" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26746" CreationDate="2015-02-12T20:35:02.837" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;You can see quite a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=A%20cut%20tree%20bleeds&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;few videos on YouTube&lt;/a&gt; which show trees pumping out blood-coloured sap. They include &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B0muxPzP_4&amp;amp;list=PLVIg3aK5LW1iYgNy7hxwwLyTSwy6XBKa3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;videos cited&lt;/a&gt; by the BBC programme (&lt;em&gt;Nature’s Weirdest Events&lt;/em&gt;) in the OP's question. However, from the looks of &lt;a href=&quot;http://metro.co.uk/2014/06/19/natures-weirdest-events-sees-scientists-baffled-by-bleeding-tree-phenomenon-4768859/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this report&lt;/a&gt;, the programme, after some generous speculation goes on to offer the following explanation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And presenter Chris Packham added that it was by no means an isolated incident, with reports of ‘bleeding trees’ occurring across the world and everything from disease to ‘the supernatural’ being blamed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news is that there does seem to be an explanation for the weird goings-on – with rising sap in the springtime apparently responsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘The sap is at high pressure until the leaves open and begin to evaporate the water, any injury releases this pressure,’ Packham explained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‘This apparent ‘bleeding’ can look distressing, but it may be the tree';s way of trying to heal.’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://phys.org/news/2013-09-scientists-traumatized-trees-dont-death.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here are some people&lt;/a&gt; of a scientific bent confirming that trees release sap to heal. As rjzii's answer notes, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracaena_cinnabari&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;trees do exist&lt;/a&gt; with blood red sap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Corymbia_calophylla_kino.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here is an image&lt;/a&gt; of the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corymbia_calophylla&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marri&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; tree of Australia leaking a red blood-like gum named &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino_(gum)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kino&lt;/a&gt;:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uw3SR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Copious flow of kino from a wound near the base of the trunk of a Corymbia calophylla (Marri)&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/macarthur/damaged-gum-tree-makes-for-gruesome-sight-in-picturesque-burragorang-valley/story-fngr8h70-1226854959851?nk=35edd536ec4825072e8311d39ecee548&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's a report&lt;/a&gt; in an Australian paper on a gum tree in NSW &amp;quot;bleeding&amp;quot; due to an attack by borers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-02-12T20:35:02.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26755" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14181" CreationDate="2015-02-13T07:40:39.360" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The supreme court of Sweden  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.svd.se/naringsliv/hd-bade-tur-och-skicklighet-i-poker_6068229.svd&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;decided&lt;/a&gt; that poker (texas holdem) is a game of both skill and chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The article headline and subtitle are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HD: Både tur och skicklighet i poker&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pokerspelet texas holdem handlar både om tur och skicklighet, slår Högsta Domstolen (HD) fast i en ovanlig dom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Which in English via Google translate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;HD: Both luck and skill in poker&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Poker game texas holdem matter of both luck and skill, hitting the Supreme Court (HD) caught in an unusual sentence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The court decided that while the game is a game mostly of chance in a tournament form it is a game of skill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20701" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T07:40:39.360" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26757" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-13T12:15:36.463" Score="15" ViewCount="1193" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/david-leyonhjelm-gives-magna-carta-lesson/story-fn59niix-1227217874467&quot;&gt;speech&lt;/a&gt; by Australian politician David Leyonhjelm, but I've heard it elsewhere many times:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The senator borrowed other stories from history in the speech, opening&#xA;  with details of the old practice of using ducking stools to detect&#xA;  witchcraft. Ducking involved tying a woman to a chair and dunking her&#xA;  in water. If she floated, she was a witch. If she sank, she wasn’t,&#xA;  but she was probably dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucking_stool#Use_in_identifying_witches&quot;&gt;mentions this&lt;/a&gt;, but it cites a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/11/AR2006071101218.html&quot;&gt;newspaper article&lt;/a&gt; for support, which isn't a reliable enough reference for this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TV Tropes is &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BurnTheWitch&quot;&gt;skeptical&lt;/a&gt; of this belief, and related versions. It explicitly states that some people are of the belief that testing for witchcraft involved the suspect either drowning and being declared innocent posthumously, or floating and being executed for witchcraft, and describes that belief as erroneous. It also says ducking chairs aren't involved. Unfortunately, TV Tropes isn't a sufficiently reliable source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &quot;swimming&quot; of witches, one of the most famous methods of&#xA;  interrogating a suspected witch, had the virtue of being both&#xA;  pointless and redundant. Popular belief makes it out as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MortonsFork&quot;&gt;Morton's&#xA;  Fork&lt;/a&gt;, saying that if the 'witch' floated, they'd pull her out and kill&#xA;  her. If the &quot;witch&quot; drowned, on the other hand... well, they were&#xA;  still dead, they just weren't a witch. Actually she would be tied to a&#xA;  rope: if she did float, they would pull her out, and the fact would be&#xA;  regarded as incriminating (of course sometimes they wouldn't do quick&#xA;  enough, and she'd still drown-&quot;floating&quot; could also be achieved by&#xA;  trickery with the ropes). If she sank, they would pull her out all the&#xA;  same, but cleared of charges. The ducking stool is an unrelated,&#xA;  non-lethal device of punishment where a woman was ducked in cold water&#xA;  for being a public nuisance of some sort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not really worried about whether ropes were used, or whether the ducking stool was used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did testing for witchcraft involve a scenario which was guaranteed (say &gt;90% probability) to be fatal to the suspect, either because they drowned, or because they would get executed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2016-10-25T16:52:23.597" Title="Did witchcraft testing inevitably result in death by either drowning or execution?" Tags="|religion|government|criminology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26758" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-13T12:54:15.553" Score="5" ViewCount="549" Body="&lt;p&gt;Uberfacts, a Twitter account with 9.43M followers &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/uberfacts/status/365310701453062148&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;strong&gt;80%&lt;/strong&gt; of a child's intelligence is acquired from the mother. How true is this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://factually.gizmodo.com/uberfacts-is-still-full-of-lies-1664836449&quot;&gt;Gizmodo&lt;/a&gt; doesn't do a very good job of debunking this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;FALSE. This fun fact is a favorite of those who think that intelligence is mostly genetic, and yet &lt;a href=&quot;http://sheerazgul.wordpress.com/2013/08/07/thank-your-parents-if-youre-smart-up-to-80-of-a-childs-intelligence-is-inherited/&quot;&gt;don't cite&lt;/a&gt; any reliable sources. That 80 percent figure seems to be pulled from thin air, no doubt an incredibly warped version of something that may actually be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T12:54:15.553" Title="Is approximately 80% of a child's intelligence acquired from the mother?" Tags="|intelligence|genetics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2016-09-09T07:26:34.360" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26759" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26761" CreationDate="2015-02-13T16:29:15.863" Score="30" ViewCount="20998" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently I stumbled upon the image of the young &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150214164137/https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRX5CWPqBFi3NDK8M0bz7fEQXTuWm8JFXJ0TgvedOzyLnMUdfYz&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pope Francis wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Could this be real?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm guessing this is fake, but I am at work and can't do a complete research about it. The reason I find this may be fake is mostly due to this image found on google:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vBZ6B.jpg&quot; width=&quot;250&quot; height=&quot;350&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this one could be the fake one as well (although this is quite unlikely).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25057" LastEditorUserId="36637" LastEditDate="2019-02-05T17:19:00.977" LastActivityDate="2019-02-05T17:19:00.977" Title="Was Pope Francis a Black Sabbath fan in his youth?" Tags="|catholic-church|photography|celebrities|pope|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26761" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26759" CreationDate="2015-02-13T17:15:49.757" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, he couldn't have been.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was born in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Francis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1936&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sabbath&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Black Sabbath&lt;/a&gt; was most famous in his 40's (1970's).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the picture he is wearing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassock&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;cassock&lt;/a&gt;, which clearly does not normally have Black Sabbath images printed on top, and he's clearly in his late 20's or early 30's.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the poster depicted as the t-shirt image&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3T9km.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;t-shirt image&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;shows the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Reality&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Master of Reality&lt;/a&gt; logo from 1971. The pope would have been 35 in that year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pUfzT.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the picture without the poster is from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/27/old-pope-francis-photos_n_4453648.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1966&lt;/a&gt;, way before Black Sabbath was even founded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An image from 1966 of the Argentine seminarian Jorge Mario Bergoglio in the El Salvador School, where he taught literature and psychology in Buenos Aires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T17:15:49.757" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26737" CreationDate="2015-02-13T22:11:30.967" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;TLDR: This is embarrassingly bad statistical analysis on Wired's part. Proper replacement headline options: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Child Vaccination Rates Follow Normal Distribution&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Study Shows Silicon Valley Parenting Is Average&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, on to dissection. A direct quote form the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Of 12 day care facilities affiliated with tech companies, six—that’s&#xA;  half—have below-average vaccination rates, according to the state’s&#xA;  data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Full stop right here. Think for a moment on this question: what percentage of people have below-average intelligence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What does average mean? Statistically, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www4.uwsp.edu/psych/stat/5/CT-Var.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;average is the typical, most representative score&lt;/a&gt;. In a normal distribution, approximately half the scores will be above the average while approximately half will be below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how many day care facilities should we expect to have below-average vaccination rates? About half. And how many will have above-average rates? Um, about half. And what does the chart say?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aTyKO.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quick, new headline:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Amazingly High Vaccination Rates at Silicon Valley Day Cares&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After all, half of all silicon valley day cares have above-average vaccination rates, right?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK, perhaps I'm being overly harsh here about a minor...total demonstrated lack of understanding of statistics that should be part of the first four weeks of an undergraduate course in statistics. Maybe it's just a silly error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later they claim one terrible daycare has only a ~40% immunization rate, which is obviously a very significantly low score. Why is it that one so low?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But Google has a simple explanation—a representative chalked it up to&#xA;  old data. “In 2013-2014, these two childcare facilities had&#xA;  immunization rates of 98 percent and 81 percent,” says a Google&#xA;  spokesperson, emphasizing that immunization is important to the&#xA;  company. “&lt;strong&gt;The reported numbers for the current year are lower simply&#xA;  because many parents have not yet provided updated immunization&#xA;  records&lt;/strong&gt;. We’ve asked them all to do this, so we can update the&#xA;  figures.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this claim is true, then the previous year immunization rate was extremely high and should have a headline of how great Google Parents are at vaccinating their kids. Yet the present rate has said to have fallen to half the previous year levels? That's not a statistical trend - that can only be explained by throwing out half the kids and getting a whole new set with extra-ordinarily low rates of vaccination. Is that claimed in the article?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, and the writer of the article doesn't claim - or apparently investigate - if this perfectly reasonable sounding explanation is true or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, there is another glaring error in the article - all throughout the article it cites information as being direct, these-kids-definitely-aren't-vaccinated - but that's not apparently the case! &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;The data refers to the percentage of parents who have provided medical documentation establishing that their child has been vaccinated to their childcare facility.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; Big brother isn't in play here - Wired Magazine does not have access to private medical records. The report of evidence is not on child vaccination, but on paperwork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So finally, I propose the best possible headline that this report and data as written can possible support:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Parents In Silicon Valley Don't Keep Up On Bureaucratic Paperwork That Does Not Clearly Impact the Safety Or Health of Their Children&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Governmental Data Too Out Of Date And Incomplete To Draw Wide-Reaching, Judgmental, Damning Conclusions&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now there's an article I can get behind. I obviously have no future in journalism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11957" LastActivityDate="2015-02-13T22:11:30.967" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26763" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26794" CreationDate="2015-02-14T02:24:08.430" Score="23" ViewCount="1704" Body="&lt;p&gt;From: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0115-zuckerman-secular-parenting-20150115-story.html#page=1&quot;&gt;How secular family values stack up&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many psychological studies show that secular grownups tend to be less vengeful, less nationalistic, less militaristic, less authoritarian and more tolerant, on average, than religious adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this statement true? Are there many studies that say this? Are they good studies? Are there other studies that bring these conclusions into question?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-02-18T02:09:24.700" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T11:51:56.943" Title="Are secular/atheist adults less vengeful, nationalistic, militaristic, authoritarian and more tolerant?" Tags="|united-states|psychology|religion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26764" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26793" CreationDate="2015-02-14T02:31:08.947" Score="49" ViewCount="6912" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0115-zuckerman-secular-parenting-20150115-story.html#page=1&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt; by latimes.com, &quot;How secular family values stack up&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Atheists were almost absent from our prison population as of the late 1990s, comprising less than half of 1% of those behind bars&lt;/strong&gt;, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons statistics. This echoes what the criminology field has documented for more than a century — the unaffiliated and the nonreligious engage in far fewer crimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has the criminology field indeed documented the statistics (or other source of fact) that indicate that unaffiliated and nonreligious people engage in far fewer crimes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, according to authority, what is meant by &quot;far fewer&quot;? And &quot;crime&quot;? (All crime? Violent crime?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-08T21:09:33.813" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T10:17:21.240" Title="Do atheists commit far fewer crimes?" Tags="|united-states|religion|mortality|criminology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26766" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-14T11:10:32.693" Score="4" ViewCount="1101" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Indian Government is &lt;a href=&quot;http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/Sale-of-swine-flu-vaccines-goes-up/articleshow/46170461.cms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;openly&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://udaipurtimes.com/kadha-distributed-huge-numbers-21-patients-swine-flu-return-home/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;distributing&lt;/a&gt; an Ayurvedic Kadha ( concoction) that claims to reduce the chances of contracting Swine Flu. They're doing this along with the sale of vaccines for Swine Flu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This concoction has the following recipe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Ingredients:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;7 &lt;strong&gt;Cardamoms&lt;/strong&gt; ( Elaichi)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;7 &lt;strong&gt;Cloves&lt;/strong&gt; ( Laung)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;7 &lt;strong&gt;Holy Basil&lt;/strong&gt; leaves ( Tulsi)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 small piece of &lt;strong&gt;Fresh Ginger&lt;/strong&gt; ( Adrak)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1/4 small spoon of &lt;strong&gt;Turmeric Powder&lt;/strong&gt; ( Haldi)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1 medium sized piece of &lt;strong&gt;Cinnamon&lt;/strong&gt; (Dal Chini)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1/4 small spoon of &lt;strong&gt;Black Salt&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Directions:&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Put all ingredients in 4 cups of water.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Boil this till 3 cups have evaporated and you have 1 cup remaining.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Strain this liquid and store it in a glass bottle.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Consume 2 spoons of this liquid for 3 days after your morning ablutions on an empty stomach.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ayurvedatreatments.co.in/ayurvedatreatments/index.php/indian-herb-tulsi-can-prevent-swine-flu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;few&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://zeenews.india.com/home/tulsi-can-help-keep-swine-flu-away-ayurvedic-experts_534519.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;blogs&lt;/a&gt; also claim that Tulsi is supposed to have anti-flu properties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25067" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-02-07T19:08:51.647" Title="Can this Ayurvedic concoction reduce chances of swine flu?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|natural-remedies|disease|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26770" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26764" CreationDate="2015-02-14T21:02:22.240" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;To the best of our inadequate data, the answer is Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2013/07/16/what-percentage-of-prisoners-are-atheists-its-a-lot-smaller-than-we-ever-imagined/&quot;&gt;A FOIA request&lt;/a&gt; shows prisoners who identify as Atheist are 1/10 to 1/20th (depending on whose survey we look at for rates of atheism) as common in prison as in the general population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13464" LastActivityDate="2015-02-14T21:02:22.240" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26735" CreationDate="2015-02-14T22:12:52.407" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Large numbers of women worked at BP. The most highly skilled parts of the decryption effort were mostly carried out by men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Film&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In &quot;The Imitation Game&quot;,&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The film gives a very different account of the work compared to accounts written by people who worked there. There were a lot more people involved in inventing new techniques and methods and in making breakthroughs. It wasn't just Alan Turing more or less all on his own. BP also worked on more than just Enigma and more than just Naval Enigma - the subject of Hut 8 which Turing led for a period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Workers at BP&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Were staff at Bletchley Park predominantly male,&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Chapter 8 p139‡ of &lt;strong&gt;&quot;The Hut Six Story&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, Gordon Welchman describes some of the workers. One of the principle types of machine used was called the &quot;Bombe&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No outside could be allowed inside after bombes had been delivered. The machines themselves were operated by members of the Women's Royal Naval Service, who were called &quot;Wrens&quot;. ... &#xA;  When Gayhurst became operational, bringing the total to some forty to forty-six bombes, it was still felt that the limit would be about seventy bombes, which would require suitable accommodation for some seven hundred Wrens. ...&#xA;  No one could have anticipated that the number of bombe Wrens would rise to around two thousand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not all women at BP were operating the bombes of course, but the above may be suggestive of the types of tasks for which some, perhaps many, women were employed at BP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The Most Highly Skilled&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;especially the ones involved with the most highly skilled aspects of the decryption effort?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When you write &quot;most highly skilled aspects of the decryption process&quot; you are probably thinking of cryptanalysts, not the more mundane (though vital) work of people why typed ciphertext into Enigma (actually British &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typex&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Typex&lt;/a&gt;) machines using settings/keys obtained by the cryptanalysts. Decryption is trivial by comparison with working out the key.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many of the jobs, though skilled, did not require knowledge of cryptanalysis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To understand the task of the Wren operators we must first consider the initial setup of a bombe in accordance with a menu prepared in Hut 6. ...&#xA;  The in-out and out-in terminals of  nine double-ended scramblers would be connected by twenty-six way cables to the diagonal board in accordance with the diagram. ... The letters under the crib positions indicate initial positions of the top, middle and bottom drums of the bombes scramblers for the start of the run. ... When a drop was sensed, ... indicators would tell a Wren which letter of the test register was involved ... Having noted all this information, which was reported to Hut 6, the Wren operator would reactivate the drive mechanism for the middle and bottom drums ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recruitment of young women went on even more rapidly than that of young men. We needed more of them to staff the Registration room, the Sheet-stacking room and the decoding room. .... with the whole of Bletchley Park looking for qualified women, we got a great many recruits of high calibre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people named by Welchman in connection with work inside Hut 6 were all male - from what I've read (though I may have missed something)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Chapter 2 p21‡ of &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Station X&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, Michael Smith, writes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At  lunchtime, most of the codebreakers, including Barbera Abernethy, would troop out onto the lawn in front of the hous to play rounders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, earlier he writes that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Barbera Abernethy joined GC&amp;amp;CS in August 1937 at the age of sixteen, she was fluent in French, German and Flemish and when Deniston asked for a new typist, she found herself dispatched to Broadway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it isn't clear whether the most appropriate use was made of the skills available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Chapter 14 p114‡ of &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Code Breakers, the inside story of Bletchley Park&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; chapter 14 is by Joan Murray, who wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My next promotion was apparently harder to negotiate, possibly because of my sex, although there was another female mathematical cryptanalyst, working in the cottage. ...&#xA;  Inevitably the duller routine clerical work was done by women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Chapter 6 p82‡ of &lt;strong&gt;&quot;Enigma and its Achilles Heel&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; by Hugh Skillen, he reports Jean Alington in 3L (Hut 3 Liaison) as saying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We three women graded every German Enigma signal that came into the hut. ...&#xA;  We each prepared a weekly news sheet for Mr Churchill on the areas we were covering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there were women working on important jobs, but the accounts&#xA;all make it seem they were a minority of those doing (arguably) the most skilled work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;References&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The Hut Six Story, Gordon Welchman, 2000, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?vid=ISBN0947712348&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ISBN 0 947712 34 8&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Enigma-Achilles-Heel-Hugh-Skillen/dp/0951519018&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Enigma and it's Achilles Heel&lt;/a&gt;, Hugh Skillen, 1992, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?vid=ISBN0951519026&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ISBN 0 9515190 2 6&lt;/a&gt; †&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Station X, Micheal Smith, 1998, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?vid=ISBN0752271482&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ISBN 0 7522 7148 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Enigma, Hugh Sebag-Montefiore, 2000, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?vid=ISBN0753811308&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ISBN 0 75381 130 8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Code Breakers, F.H. Hinsley &amp;amp; Alan Stripp, 1993, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?vid=ISBN019285304X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ISBN 0 19 285304 X&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;† This is the ISBN printed on the book I own. It is now associated with a different title by the same author. I don't know if it is the same book retitled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;‡ Page numbers refer to my UK (usually paperback) copy and may not apply to other printings in other countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2015-02-15T12:29:24.563" LastActivityDate="2015-02-15T12:29:24.563" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26775" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="41793" CreationDate="2015-02-15T09:18:08.997" Score="11" ViewCount="483" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my colleagues at work is vegan, and I became curious about why vegans don't eat honey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After a search on the internet I found a website explaining &lt;a href=&quot;http://vegetus.org/honey/honey.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;why honey is not vegan&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However what baffled me was the claim that &lt;a href=&quot;http://vegetus.org/honey/ecology.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;bees are harmful to the environment&lt;/a&gt;. This goes against my general knowledge about the role of bees on nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ultimately, however, the reduction of honeybee populations would be positive because they crowd out native bee species. Honeybees are not native to North America. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Honeybees steal pollen and nectar from other pollinators, but honeybees are not necessarily the best pollinators in natural ecosystems. Bees wet the pollen with saliva making it less likely to be transferred to a plant. They also travel to many different types of plants so the pollen doesn't necessarily get to the right plant&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So to summarize, do honeybees prevent native pollinators, inlcuding native bees from effectively pollinating plants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25079" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-08-18T18:01:25.393" Title="Do honeybees disrupt native pollinators in North America?" Tags="|united-states|environment|entomology|bees|canada|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26782" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-16T03:06:00.040" Score="6" ViewCount="1991" Body="&lt;p&gt;This site &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breastfeeding-problems.com/smoking-and-breastfeeding.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mothers that cannot quit smoking marijuana ( who have a marijuana&#xA;  dependency )  can continue to breastfeed as long as they do not expose&#xA;  their babies to the secondhand smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if it is dangerous for a person to smoke marijuana while breast feeding? I have been told by many sources that is okay. I have watched documentaries that say it is okay. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25086" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T20:47:33.657" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T04:01:45.740" Title="Is smoking marijuana while breast feeding dangerous?" Tags="|medical-science|parenting|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26784" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30222" CreationDate="2015-02-16T12:14:48.377" Score="22" ViewCount="2226" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following graphic is doing the rounds on Facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9YyYU.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9YyYUm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;3250: number of staff at DWP investigating benefit fraud of £1.2bn, 300: number of staff at HMRC investigating tax evasion of £70bn+&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the graphic give an accurate representation of the comparative headcount/effort/resources that the UK government (as a whole) puts into investigating these two things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To what extent are the two things - benefit fraud and tax evasion - directly comparable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Background info:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;'benefits' (BrEng) = 'welfare' (AmEng)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;DWP = Department of Work and Pensions (the central government department that pays benefits)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;HMRC = Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (the central government department that collects taxes)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source is given in the graphic as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/nw_nicholas/status/420485474139246592&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://twitter.com/nw_nicholas/status/420485474139246592&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is a twitter post by &lt;a href=&quot;http://nicholaswilson.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nicholas Wilson&lt;/a&gt; saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr Ethical &lt;br&gt;&#xA;‏@nw_nicholas &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;.@UKuncut DWP has 3000+ staff for benefit fraud of £1.2bn; HMRC has 300 staff for tax evasion of £70bn+  &lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9NPRK.png&quot; alt=&quot;Sections of text which are stated to be from DWP and HMRC&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image tweeted by ‏nw_nicholas gives the source for the first section of text as ‏&amp;quot;From the DWP&amp;quot; with a blt.ly shortened URL, which resolves to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://compass.port.ac.uk/UoP/file/1f9193d1-7dc7-455a-a7a0-23441e2ac44e/1/Fraud_Criminal_Justice_IMSLRN.zip/page_02.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://compass.port.ac.uk/UoP/file/1f9193d1-7dc7-455a-a7a0-23441e2ac44e/1/Fraud_Criminal_Justice_IMSLRN.zip/page_02.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is a page on &amp;quot;Fraud and the Criminal Justice System&amp;quot;, (c) University of Portsmouth, 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know who is the author of the text on that page (which ‏@nw_nicholas cites in the image on twitter), although a Google search for &amp;quot;the 7500 overestimates the actual number of fraud&amp;quot; turns up no results other than that page itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Portsmouth University has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.port.ac.uk/institute-of-criminal-justice-studies/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Institute of Criminal Justice Studies&lt;/a&gt;, perhaps that's related to the document somehow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second document cited by Nicholas Wilson is this PDF published by HMRC: &lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121204171507/http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/budget-updates/march2012/tax-evasion-report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Closing in HMRC’s approach to tax evasion&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;and the quote he gives is accurate (p11), although of course &amp;quot;more than 300&amp;quot; isn't &lt;em&gt;exactly&lt;/em&gt; the same thing as 300 (but surely if the number were much higher than 300 then the HMRC document would use that higher number).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22504" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-09-30T20:23:06.310" Title="Does the UK government have only 300 staff investigating tax evasion of £70bn+ vs 3250 staff investigating benefits (welfare) fraud of £1.2bn?" Tags="|economics|politics|government|taxes|welfare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26786" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-16T13:58:26.803" Score="7" ViewCount="28560" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10205860252285671&amp;amp;set=a.2061544298418.2128935.1239027168&amp;amp;type=1&amp;amp;fref=nf&quot;&gt;this claim on Facebook&lt;/a&gt; a few times recently (it has 116k shares right now):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was just reminded of a TIP for avoiding the flu when I worked in the&#xA;  hospitals many years ago. Swab inside of each nostril with Triple&#xA;  Antibiotic cream or gel before leaving your home. (Most germs enter&#xA;  the system through breathing.) I used this tip when my son was a baby&#xA;  and immune deficient and they use it in our assisted living&#xA;  communities during flu season. Just had to share!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any validity to this claim? My initial thought is that flu is viral, meaning an antibiotic ointment wouldn't have any effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1950" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T11:05:15.703" LastActivityDate="2017-12-27T17:57:50.803" Title="Can triple antibiotic ointment in the nostrils prevent flu?" Tags="|medical-science|flu|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26788" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26782" CreationDate="2015-02-16T19:22:10.563" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugs.com/breastfeeding/cannabis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cannabis use while Breastfeeding&lt;/a&gt;, an article on drugs.com:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although published data are limited, it appears that active components&#xA;  of marijuana are excreted into breastmilk in small quantities. Data&#xA;  are from random breastmilk screening rather than controlled studies&#xA;  because of ethical considerations in administering marijuana to&#xA;  nursing mothers. Concern has been expressed regarding marijuana's&#xA;  possible effects on neurotransmitters, nervous system development and&#xA;  endocannabinoid-related functions.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugs.com/breastfeeding/cannabis.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;[2] One &lt;strong&gt;long-term study found&#xA;  that daily or near daily use might retard the breastfed infant's motor&#xA;  development&lt;/strong&gt;, but not growth or intellectual development.[3] This and&#xA;  another study[4] found that occasional maternal marijuana use during&#xA;  breastfeeding did not have any discernable effects on breastfed&#xA;  infants, but &lt;strong&gt;the studies were inadequate to rule out all long-term&#xA;  harm&lt;/strong&gt;. Although marijuana can affect serum prolactin variably, it&#xA;  appears not to adversely affect the duration of lactation. Other&#xA;  factors to consider are the possibility of positive urine tests in&#xA;  breastfed infants, which might have legal implications, and &lt;strong&gt;the&#xA;  possibility of other harmful contaminants in street drugs&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Marijuana use should be minimized or avoided by nursing mothers&#xA;  because it &lt;strong&gt;may impair their judgment and child care abilities&lt;/strong&gt;. Some&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;evidence indicates that paternal marijuana use increases the risk of&#xA;  sudden infant death syndrome in breastfed infants&lt;/strong&gt;. Marijuana &lt;strong&gt;should&#xA;  not be smoked by anyone in the vicinity of infants because the infants&#xA;  may be exposed by inhaling the smoke&lt;/strong&gt;. Because breastfeeding can&#xA;  mitigate some of the effects of smoking and little evidence of serious&#xA;  infant harm has been seen, it appears preferable to encourage mothers&#xA;  who use marijuana to continue breastfeeding while minimizing infant&#xA;  exposure to marijuana smoke and reducing marijuana use.[5]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So: It you want a final answer, it is &lt;strong&gt;maybe&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Schuel H, Burkman LJ, Lippes J et al. N-acylethanolamines in human reproductive fluids. Chem Phys Lipids. 2002;121:211-27. PMID: 12505702&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fernandez-Ruiz J, Gomez M, Hernandez M et al. Cannabinoids and gene expression during brain development. Neurotox Res. 2004;6:389-401. PMID: 15545023&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Astley SJ, Little RE. Maternal marijuana use during lactation and infant development at one year. Neurotoxicol Teratol. 1990;12:161-8. PMID: 2333069&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tennes K, Avitable N, Blackard C et al. Marijuana: prenatal and postnatal exposure in the human. NIDA Res Monogr. 1985;59:48-60. PMID: 3929132&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hill M, Reed K. Pregnancy, breast-feeding, and marijuana: A review article. Obstet Gynecol Surv. 2013;68:710-8. PMID: 25101905&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T19:22:10.563" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26790" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-16T20:16:46.383" Score="3" ViewCount="3539" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.caring.com/articles/7-ways-to-avoid-getting-sick-when-you-fly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This site claims&lt;/a&gt; that this action will &lt;em&gt;help&lt;/em&gt; prevent you getting sick during air-travel:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;try applying a small amount of Neosporin or petroleum jelly just inside the nostrils (use a Q-tip if your hands aren't freshly washed).Experts say the antibacterial action of Neosporin is unlikely to present much of a barrier when used in this way, but it never hurts to moisturize the inside of the nose&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any validity to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/26786/can-triple-antibiotic-ointment-in-the-nostrils-prevent-flu&quot;&gt;Can triple antibiotic ointment in the nostrils prevent flu?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="553" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T21:33:54.723" Title="Does a physical barrier such as Vaseline help prevent a cold or flu during air-travel?" Tags="|medical-science|common-cold|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26792" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-16T22:31:55.233" Score="4" ViewCount="645" Body="&lt;p&gt;Living in the Middle East, I've had many discussions with fundamentalists and Islamists about freedom of speech. They have often claimed that freedom of speech in the West is a myth because denying the Holocaust took place is illegal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that really the case in the West?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20763" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-02-16T22:47:58.577" LastActivityDate="2015-02-16T22:48:03.467" Title="Is Holocaust denial illegal in the West?" Tags="|politics|world-war-ii|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="24" ClosedDate="2015-02-16T22:48:14.133" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26764" CreationDate="2015-02-17T00:15:47.747" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;It depends.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author did publish a peer-reviewed article in 2009 discussing the issue, with sources. I've verified most of the sources and they seem to be reliable and reputable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h1&gt;Criminality and Moral Conduct&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In many people’s minds – and as expressed so clearly in Psalm 14 cited at the outset of&#xA;  this essay – atheism is equated with lawlessness and wickedness, while religion is equated with morality and law-abiding behavior. Does social science support this position?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although some studies have found that religion does inhibit criminal behavior (Baier&#xA;  and Wright 2001; Powell 1997; Bainbridge 1989; Elifson et al. 1983; Peek et al. 1985)&#xA;  others have actually found that religiosity does not have a significant effect on inhibiting criminal behavior (Cochran et al. 1994; Evans et al. 1996; Hood et al. 1996). ‘‘The claim that atheists are somehow more likely to be immoral,’’ asserts Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi (2007, 306), ‘‘has long been disproven by systematic studies.’’&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Admittedly, when it comes to underage alcohol consumption or illegal drug use,&#xA;  secular people do break the law more than religious people (Benson 1992; Gorsuch&#xA;  1995; Hood et al. 1996; Stark and Bainbridge 1996). But when it comes to more serious&#xA;  or violent crimes, such as murder, there is simply no evidence suggesting that&#xA;  atheist and secular people are more likely to commit such crimes than religious people.&#xA;  After all, America’s bulging prisons are not full of atheists; according to Golumbaski&#xA;  (1997), only 0.2 percent of prisoners in the USA are atheists – a major underrepresentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If religion, prayer, or God-belief hindered criminal behavior, and secularity or atheism fostered lawlessness, we would expect to find the most religious nations having the lowest murder rates and the least religious nations having the highest. But we find just the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Murder rates are actually lower in more secular nations and higher in more religious&#xA;  nations where belief in God is deep and widespread (Jensen 2006; Paul 2005; Fajnzylber&#xA;  et al. 2002; Fox and Levin 2000). And within America, the states with the highest murder&#xA;  rates tend to be highly religious, such as Louisiana and Alabama, but the states with&#xA;  the lowest murder rates tend to be among the least religious in the country, such as Vermont and Oregon (Ellison et al. 2003; Death Penalty Information Center, 2008). Furthermore, although there are some notable exceptions, rates of most violent crimes tend to be lower in the less religious states and higher in the most religious states (United States Census Bureau, 2006). Finally, of the top 50 safest cities in the world, nearly all are in relatively non-religious countries, and of the eight cities within the United States that make the safest-city list, nearly all are located in the least religious regions of the country (Mercer Survey, 2008).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/Zuckerman_on_Atheism.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being: How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, Phil Zuckerman, Sociology Compass 3/6 (2009): 949–971, 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2009.00247.x&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, his argument is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There's tons of studies, but a lot of contradictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We can say with certainty that religion is a good influence on drug use and other &quot;vicimless&quot; crimes -- they are called &quot;anti-ascetic&quot; crimes in the literature I've read.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is no clear signal that religion inhibits violent crimes (there are many articles disagreeing with each other, lots of discussion about confounding factors, questionable methodologies, etc.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Atheists are majorly underrepresented in prisons, although of course this doesn't prove the point, but certainly disproves that atheism &lt;em&gt;causes&lt;/em&gt; criminal behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There's a negative correlation between large scale atheism and crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;More secular countries have lower violent crime rates. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;More secular US states have the lowest violent crime rates, more religious US state the highest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The safest cities are either in less-religious countries or when in the US they are in less-religious states.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My personal opinion is that many of these studies tend to be poorly constructed. For example many studies on crime rely on objectionable proxy variables which are then contested by other studies. Is reporting that &quot;one doesn't trust policemen&quot; a reliable indicator of delinquency? Is religious literacy a good proxy for religiousness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This particular article attempts to put together what we know about the subject of atheism, but of course its argument can't be stronger than its sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-09T10:17:21.240" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T10:17:21.240" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26794" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26763" CreationDate="2015-02-17T01:18:55.377" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;The author published a peer-review article with sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/Zuckerman_on_Atheism.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Atheism, Secularity, and Well-Being: How the Findings of Social Science Counter Negative Stereotypes and Assumptions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, Phil Zuckerman, Sociology Compass 3/6 (2009): 949–971, 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2009.00247.x&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But more significantly, when we actually compare the values and beliefs of atheists and secular people to those of religious people, the former are markedly less nationalistic, less prejudiced, less anti-Semitic, less racist, less dogmatic, less ethnocentric, less close-minded, and less authoritarian (Greeley and Hout 2006; Sider 2005; Altemeyer 2003, 2009; Jackson and Hunsberger 1999; Wulff 1991; Altemeyer and Hunsberger 1992, 1997; Beit-Hallahmi 2007; Beit-Hallahmi and Argyle 1997; Batson et al. 1993; Argyle 2000).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an analysis of the sources I could read, unfortunately some of them are books which I can't access at the moment. I don't know to what level the books would support the author's point, however the article &lt;em&gt;has&lt;/em&gt; been peer reviewed, the books &lt;em&gt;seem&lt;/em&gt; scholarly, well reviewed and in-depth. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0471037060/ref=rdr_ext_tmb&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Psychology of Religion: Classic and Contemporary: Classic and Contemporary Views&lt;/a&gt; as an example of such a book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Racism&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Studies are reported of university students, and of their parents, that found that religious fundamentalism correlated quite highly with religious ethnocentrism, as well as with-to lesser degrees-hostility toward homosexuals and prejudice against various racial-ethnic minorities. Also, fundamentalist students reported receiving strong training in identifying with the family religion from an early age. But, by comparison, they reported virtually no stress being placed on their racial identification. It is suggested that strong, early emphasis of the family religion may reinforce Tajfel's minimal group effect and produce a template for &amp;quot;us-them&amp;quot; discriminations that facilitates acquiring later prejudices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob Altemeyer, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1207/S15327582IJPR1301_03&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;RESEARCH: Why Do Religious Fundamentalists Tend to be Prejudiced?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, Volume 13, Issue 1, 2003.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Authoritarianism&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, religious fundamentalism and nonquesting are linked with authoritarianism and prejudice toward a wide variety of minority groups. Possible explanations for these relationships are discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bob Altemeyer &amp;amp; Bruce Hunsberger, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15327582ijpr0202_5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Authoritarianism, Religious Fundamentalism, Quest, and Prejudice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, Volume 2, Issue 2, 1992&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Anti-Semitism&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a classical study of ethnocentrism and antiSemitism,&#xA;the scores of those respondents reporting no religious affiliation&#xA;were found to be lower than members of most religious groups (Adorno et&#xA;al. 1950). The authors summarized the findings as follows: 'it appears that&#xA;those who reject religion have less ethnocentrism than those who seem to&#xA;accept it' (1950, p. 213). These findings have been confirmed many times&#xA;since.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi and Michael Argyle, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://m.friendfeed-media.com/2ba3f0dc999785ccc05497948afc7d1c9f56816a&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The psychology of religious behaviour, belief and experience&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, Routledge, 1997&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T11:51:56.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26795" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20100" CreationDate="2015-02-17T11:17:00.857" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Can&lt;/em&gt; they form near the the equator?  Yes.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cyclone_Agni&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cyclone Agni&lt;/a&gt; from 2004 is probably the best example of this: according to the India Meteorological Department, it was 1.5 degrees north of the equator when it became a tropical cyclone, and before it reached that strength, the circulation center may have crossed the equator twice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is it normal?&lt;/em&gt;  No.  There are any number of sources that will tell you that tropical cyclones normally form at least 5 degrees poleward of the equator (eg. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/IPCC/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this NOAA page&lt;/a&gt; (warning: contains Geocities-style web design)); most of these trace back to work by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_M._Gray&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;William Gray&lt;/a&gt;, but the general situation can be summarized by the following image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UdXSv.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Tropical Cyclone tracks from 1945 to 2006, showing a distinct gap at the equator&quot;&gt;&#xA;Image by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tropical_cyclones_1945_2006_wikicolor.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia user Citynoise&lt;/a&gt; using NOAA data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21297" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T11:17:00.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26796" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13850" CreationDate="2015-02-17T15:12:00.920" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aides, congressmen, and outside groups all contribute to the wording of bills. However, it doesn't matter who puts the words to paper because it is the congress member that is responsible and accountable for them. The congress member introduces the bill. Congress introduces amendments. And congress votes on the bill. This does not bypass the democratic process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/11/11/243973620/when-lobbyists-literally-write-the-bill&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/11/11/243973620/when-lobbyists-literally-write-the-bill&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Allard says before you think lobbyists are running Washington, consider this: Word choices in a bill have to be vetted and approved by lots of eyeballs in a long lawmaking process. So it's the members of Congress who voted for the bill — not the lobbyists — who have to take ownership over the final language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;So where it comes from — whether they see it on the back of a cereal box or on the Today show or on NPR or out of a lawyer who's acting as a lobbyist's word processor — doesn't matter, because if the member is proposing it, they are responsible for it and they have to make the case for why it's advisable,&amp;quot; Allard says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25001" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-02-17T17:38:07.847" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26797" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-17T17:03:43.307" Score="13" ViewCount="933" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2014, a news story erupted over a dispute between Netflix and Comcast over connectivity and distribution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comcast was accused of deliberately blocking or restricting Netflix traffic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, 100,000 people signed an &lt;a href=&quot;http://act.boldprogressives.org/sign/petition_netflix/?source=huff&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;online petition&lt;/a&gt; to the FCC:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Don't let Comcast block Netflix or other online innovators for their own profit! Support the strongest Net Neutrality protections possible -- and keep Obama's promise.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Washington Post's headline (for example) linked this to the issue net neutrality:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This hilarious graph of Netflix speeds shows the importance of net neutrality&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sYJMQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there have been conflicting reports, that indicate that it was just a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnet.com/news/comcast-vs-netflix-is-this-really-about-net-neutrality/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;specific, infrastructure problem&lt;/a&gt; (see the &amp;quot;What's really happening with Netflix traffic?&amp;quot; section).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, Netflix is attaching a fire hose to the Comcast network, which is only equipped to handle connections the size of garden hoses. The gushing fire hose of content can't possibly be funneled into the few garden hose ports that are available. So packets are dropped and the service is degraded.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Netflix could fix this problem in one of two ways. It could pay for a fire hose connection instead of taking the garden hose connection that it can get through a standard peering relationship with Comcast. The large connection would accommodate the Netflix traffic. The other option is to distribute its traffic more evenly among other CDNs that are delivering traffic to Comcast. In this case, the video traffic could get onto the Comcast network via the many garden hoses already connected to the Comcast network.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, did Comcast do something to throttle Netflix's bandwidth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="9094" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-07-13T22:12:38.963" Title="Did Comcast attempt to coerce Netflix by slowing down its traffic?" Tags="|united-states|economics|networks|net-neutrality|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26799" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-18T06:25:05.193" Score="7" ViewCount="2061" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=756699784340323&quot;&gt;Video link here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's awesome, weird, and unbelievable at the same time. If it was edited, I'm not sure how they did it. It LOOKS authentic but I would want confirmation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyone who has more info on this video?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22064" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T07:03:34.533" Title="Is this video of a boxing kangaroo match authentic?" Tags="|zoology|video|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26801" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26799" CreationDate="2015-02-18T07:03:34.533" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can't prove that this video is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; faked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I can do is show that boxing matches between humans and kangaroos are not at all extraordinary, and hence the evidence we require to accept that this video is genuine is relatively low, and we can provisionally accept it as probably genuine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Boxing matches between humans and kangaroos used to be a fairly common side-show event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://esnpc.blogspot.com.au/2014/10/australias-boxing-kangaroo-from.html&quot;&gt;Early Sports and Pop Culture History Blog&lt;/a&gt; attributes the first occurrence to around 1891 in Philadelphia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soon, in New South Wales in Australia it became entertainment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jack the Fighting Kangaroo has taken up his position as a public entertainer at the Waxworks, where he gives an exhibition of his warlike instincts every afternoon at three o’clock, and every evening at nine - his antagonist being Professor Lindermann – for whom the kangaroo entertains such a feeling of respect – or admiration – which ever it may be – that he never takes a mean advantage of his opponent – which says a good deal for the kangaroo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.southsearepublic.org/article/3/read/australian_vexillology/&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; makes an unreferenced claim that coincides with my understanding:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the late 1800's troupes would travel the country towns in outback Australia with boxing kangaroos. Local lads would pay to fight a kangaroo that had boxing gloves over its claws.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some historical films that featured kangaroo boxing from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_Kangaroo_(film)&quot;&gt;1895&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boxing_Kangaroo&quot;&gt;1896&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While rare, these events still happen. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kctv5.com/story/20960007/kangaroo-boxing-catches-attention-of-police&quot;&gt;2013&lt;/a&gt; a bout caused controversy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is reasonable to believe that the video is not faked because its contents are not impossible or even unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T07:03:34.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26804" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26809" CreationDate="2015-02-18T16:29:58.763" Score="8" ViewCount="856" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakir_Naik&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Zakir Naik&lt;/a&gt; says, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today we have come to know that tobacco in any form smoking chewing etc, is the second largest cause of death. &lt;strong&gt;The first largest cause of death of is alcoholism.&lt;/strong&gt; Several billions [sic] of people die every year. It is the single leading cause of death. More than terrorism, more than war. Every year millions of people die. The second largest cause of death is tobacco. According to the World Health Organization, every year more than four million people only because of tobacco.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://youtu.be/QMKfBm2P5Eo?t=1m29s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;YouTube video of the talk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume his use of billions was a mistake, and address the content of the message. Is alcoholism generally worse than smoking on a global scale?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2016-12-31T10:48:45.067" LastActivityDate="2016-12-31T10:48:45.067" Title="Do more people die of drinking related complications than smoking related complications?" Tags="|medical-science|mortality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26805" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-18T16:31:01.263" Score="18" ViewCount="2255" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the Globe &amp;amp; Mail article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/its-true-the-rich-really-are-ruder/article23044015/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;“It’s true: The rich really are ruder”&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Psychologist Paul Piff has coined a memorable label for the phenomenon: the &lt;strong&gt;Asshole Effect&lt;/strong&gt;. Prof. Piff and his colleagues have shown that there is a &lt;strong&gt;reliable correlation, across a range of scenarios, between wealth and inconsiderate behaviour&lt;/strong&gt;. Wealthy people are more likely to exhibit rudeness in cars, take more than equal shares of available goods, and think they deserve special treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Piff confirms experimentally the arguments of Aaron James’s 2012 book Assholes: A Theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has Piff, or any other researcher, convincingly compiled evidence that indicates that rudeness correlates with wealth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any indication that the source of the wealth affects the outcome - from inheritance, to earnings, to lotteries?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T03:23:31.067" Title="Is the “Asshole Effect” a phenomenon correlated with wealth?" Tags="|psychology|behavior|wealth|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26805" CreationDate="2015-02-18T19:12:17.730" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes,&lt;/strong&gt; Piff has compiled evidence of correlation between wealth/social class versus narcissism, entitlement, and unethical behaviour.  Whether this evidence is convincing I leave to anyone studying the details of the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psp.sagepub.com/content/40/1/34.short&quot;&gt;Piff, Paul K. &quot;Wealth and the Inflated Self Class, Entitlement, and Narcissism.&quot; Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 40.1 (2014): 34-43. DOI: 10.1177/0146167213501699&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this paper, Piff describes a number of experiments based on questionnaires.  Some of the studies recruited participants through the internet, whereas others used undergraduate students.  In one experiment, controlling for factors like gender and ethnicity, he interviewed 195 adults on questions related to entitlement, and questions related to social class.  He correlated the two, and found that &lt;em&gt;As predicted, higher social class was associated with increased scores on the PES, r(178) = .17,p = .021&lt;/em&gt;.  In another study, he correlated question related to entitlement to objective measures on social class, such as parental education.  Here, he found that &lt;em&gt;Central to my hypothesis, parental educational attainment—an objective indicator of social class—was positively associated with scores on the PES, r(93) = .22, p = .036&lt;/em&gt;.  Three more studies are also described in the paper.  In the conclusions, he posits further research is needed to test his hypothesis it is relative and not absolute wealth that controls entitlement and narcissism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another paper,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086&quot;&gt;Piff, Paul K., Daniel M. Stancato, Stéphane Côté, Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton, and Dacher Keltner. &quot;Higher social class predicts increased unethical behavior.&quot; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 11 (2012): 4086-4091.&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the abstract summarises:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals. Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, Piff has published research showing correlations between social class and entitlement.  Whether this is a cause-and-effect relationship is a different question.  A full list of his publications is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://media.wix.com/ugd/80ea24_6a15475fd5b3b65e0d195eda883593c1.pdf&quot;&gt;on his website&lt;/a&gt;.  See also reports on &lt;a href=&quot;http://planetsave.com/2013/12/23/a-rigged-game-of-monopoly-reveals-how-feeling-wealthy-changes-our-behavior-ted-video/&quot;&gt;rigged monopoly games&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2015-02-18T19:25:11.107" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T19:25:11.107" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26809" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26804" CreationDate="2015-02-18T20:42:36.040" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The notable claim, strictly speaking, is that alcohol &quot;is the single leading cause of death&quot; (not whether it's &lt;em&gt;generally worse&lt;/em&gt; than smoking, the meaning of which is undefined). It seems the World Health Organization says differently. Linked from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/topics/alcohol_drinking/en/&quot;&gt;their alcohol page&lt;/a&gt; is the page &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/features/qa/66/en/&quot;&gt;&quot;Q&amp;amp;A: Is harmful use of alcohol a public health problem?&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which features the statistic&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2012, 5.1% of the global disease burden was due to the harmful use of alcohol, and an estimated &lt;strong&gt;3.3 million people&lt;/strong&gt; died from alcohol related conditions that year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Contrast this to the stat on their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/topics/tobacco/qa/en/&quot;&gt;&quot;Q&amp;amp;A: Tobacco&quot; page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tobacco epidemic is the leading preventable cause of death. It kills nearly &lt;strong&gt;six million people&lt;/strong&gt; per year, of whom more than five million are users or ex-users and more than 600 000 are nonsmokers exposed to second-hand smoke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ergo, no, it is not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17804" LastActivityDate="2015-02-18T20:42:36.040" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26813" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-19T18:48:19.140" Score="3" ViewCount="149" Body="&lt;p&gt;How many times did you hear your mother tell you, &quot;Put on a jacket or you're going to catch a cold!&quot; or &quot;Come in out of the rain before you catch cold!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also a fairly common trope in Jane Austen-esque type movies that someone will be out in the rain and succumb to a high fever as a direct result to the chill.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to being cold directly correlating to fever or general illness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23062" LastEditorUserId="6308" LastEditDate="2015-02-20T12:27:03.767" LastActivityDate="2015-02-20T12:27:03.767" Title="Is there any correlation between temperature and illness?" Tags="|biology|disease|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2015-02-19T23:04:50.810" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26815" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-19T20:17:09.840" Score="1" ViewCount="270" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lately I've seen news like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/active/mens-health/11383790/Beer-could-help-protect-brain-from-Parkinsons-and-Alzheimers.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; saying that drinking beer could prevent Alzheimer's disease. On the other hand, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alzheimers.net/2014-01-02/foods-that-induce-memory-loss/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;alzheimers.net&lt;/a&gt; website lists beer as one of many things that can actually &lt;em&gt;increase&lt;/em&gt; the risk of getting it and advises to remove beer from elders' diets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is drinking an advisable thing to do in order to avoid these diseases?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24619" LastEditorUserId="24619" LastEditDate="2015-02-19T20:32:08.593" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T07:08:33.043" Title="Does drinking beer help to prevent Alzheimer/Parkinson diseases?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26816" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27184" CreationDate="2015-02-20T02:25:40.213" Score="51" ViewCount="17029" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Brand&quot;&gt;Russell Brand&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6TSfs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Screencast with Russell Brand&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Every election in American history has been won by the party with the most money to campaign.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume that he means every presidential election.  Has every presidential election in U.S. history been won by the party with the most money to campaign?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit:&lt;/strong&gt; To make this question answerable, let's stick to elections recent enough where campaign financing is publicly available.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2019-07-03T10:22:26.927" LastActivityDate="2019-07-03T10:22:26.927" Title="Has every U.S. presidential election been won by the campaign with the most money?" Tags="|united-states|politics|economics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26821" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="38171" CreationDate="2015-02-20T07:56:20.800" Score="8" ViewCount="689" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, there's been an incident involving frozen berries handled in China spreading Hepatitis A in Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are responding to this by arguing for better labeling of where food products are from, so that people can choose not to buy food from &amp;quot;risky&amp;quot; countries, with the implication that the hepatitis A incident was made more likely by it being handled in China.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2015/02/infected-berries-highlight-deficiency-food-labeling/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example claim&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The infected berries, which are thought to have come from China, have angered local growers, who claim that they are being placed at a competitive disadvantage by having to comply with stringent safety and environmental standards that do not apply overseas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Problems around food safety are particularly pervasive in China, where up to 90% of groundwater is said to be polluted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is food handled in China but available in Australia less safe than the same item grown and handled in Australia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-05-01T21:29:22.280" Title="Is food handled in China but available in Australia less safe than food handled in Australia?" Tags="|nutrition|safety|china|australia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-20T08:23:29.287" Score="14" ViewCount="736" Body="&lt;p&gt;Sources such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://metro.co.uk/2009/08/10/beggars-earning-73000-a-year-328306/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Metro&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/shane-warren-speegle-says_n_1694577.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/beggar-scams-kentucky-town-article-1.1275097&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;NY Daily News&lt;/a&gt; have cited examples of professional beggars, who are said to earn close to six-figure amounts yearly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2255/how-much-money-do-beggars-make&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Straight Dope&lt;/a&gt; mentions (regarding how much beggars earn):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In short, it's pretty hard to get good data on the issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any reliable sources that show the actual existence of these professional beggars who earn six figure amounts (when converted to USD) yearly? [&quot;Six-figure&quot; means between $100,000 and $999,999 per year.] Additionally if possible, how prevalent are these professional beggars (as a percentage of total beggars?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="14582" LastEditDate="2015-02-24T22:19:20.257" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T16:24:45.627" Title="Do professional beggars earn six-figure amounts yearly?" Tags="|society|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20645" CreationDate="2015-02-21T10:25:14.777" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;In brief summary, &quot;Yes, but.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To answer my own question, there is some real research on vegetarian diets for canines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.une.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0015/30471/brown-raan-2009-vegetarian-dog.pdf&quot;&gt;Nutritional and ethical issues regarding&#xA;vegetarianism in the domestic dog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Citation: W.Y. Brown, Recent Advances in Animal Nutrition – Australia 17 (2009))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many dog owners wish to feed their dogs a vegetarian&#xA;  diet for the same ethical reason that they themselves are&#xA;  vegetarian. To meet this demand, there are an increasing&#xA;  number of vegetarian diets and recipes available for&#xA;  dogs. However, proof for their claims of nutritional&#xA;  adequacy is often lacking. There is little doubt that a&#xA;  dog’s nutritional requirements can be met from a diet that&#xA;  does not contain meat; however, the difference between&#xA;  the amino acid profiles of plant and animal proteins&#xA;  must be considered. It has been shown that exercising&#xA;  dogs may develop anaemia when fed unbalanced plantprotein&#xA;  diets but will remain in good health if the meatfree&#xA;  diet is correctly balanced. Many plant ingredients&#xA;  contain high levels of non-starch polysaccharides and&#xA;  other anti-nutritive factors, which may reduce the&#xA;  availability of some nutrients. A diet devoid of animal&#xA;  ingredients is also likely to be of low palatability to&#xA;  dogs. All diets should be correctly formulated to meet&#xA;  nutrient requirements based on chemical analysis and&#xA;  predicted or measured apparent digestibility, should be&#xA;  sufficiently palatable to ensure adequate dietary intake&#xA;  and should maintain good health when consumed. If&#xA;  a vegetarian diet meets all of these criteria, then it is&#xA;  a suitable diet for the dog, irrespective of the owner’s&#xA;  motivation for feeding a vegetarian diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The nutritional adequacy of a diet, vegetarian or&#xA;  otherwise, should be based on the ability of the diet&#xA;  to meet nutritional requirements. Palatability and&#xA;  digestibility are key considerations. A large number of&#xA;  dogs are currently fed meat-free diets, and there is a&#xA;  small but growing niche market for vegetarian pet foods.&#xA;  The major pet food manufacturers are unlikely to enter&#xA;  this market until there is greater acceptance of this type&#xA;  of product. Should this eventuate, it is hoped that their&#xA;  participation will ensure that the nutritional adequacy&#xA;  of commercial vegetarian dog foods is validated by&#xA;  recognised feeding protocols and digestibility trials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19054" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-02-21T10:51:17.890" LastActivityDate="2015-02-21T10:51:17.890" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26828" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26831" CreationDate="2015-02-21T15:46:31.000" Score="49" ViewCount="7041" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a common belief, sometimes used to shame women - that virgins have 'tight' vaginas and women who partake in more sexual intercourse have 'loose' vaginas due to permanent stretching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25130" LastEditorUserId="38714" LastEditDate="2018-06-30T18:58:50.407" LastActivityDate="2019-04-13T05:09:29.063" Title="Does frequent sex cause vaginas to become permanently stretched?" Tags="|physiology|sexuality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26830" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-22T00:10:57.827" Score="7" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;While doing research today I run into this piece:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.d.umn.edu/~jetterso/documents/Helgasonetal.2008.pdf&quot;&gt;An Association Between the Kinship&#xA;and Fertility of Human Couples&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Previous studies have reported that related human couples tend to produce more children than&#xA;  unrelated couples but have been unable to determine whether this difference is biological or&#xA;  stems from socioeconomic variables. Our results, drawn from all known couples of the&#xA;  Icelandic population born between 1800 and 1965, show a significant positive association&#xA;  between kinship and fertility, with the greatest reproductive success observed for couples related at&#xA;  the level of third and fourth cousins. Owing to the relative socioeconomic homogeneity of&#xA;  Icelanders, and the observation of highly significant differences in the fertility of couples&#xA;  separated by very fine intervals of kinship, we conclude that this association is likely to have a&#xA;  biological basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After investigating further I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/322/5908/1634.2.full&quot;&gt;response that extends and reinforces the finding&lt;/a&gt; using a different measure - martial radius:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both studies corroborate the hypothesis that the superposed contrary forces of inbreeding and outbreeding depression have an effect on human fertility. The coincidence of the conclusions of these two independent large-scale studies suggests that this is a general phenomenon in human populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/322/5908/1634.3.full&quot;&gt;This response&lt;/a&gt;, however, calls the marital radius metric into question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are these studies representing? Does they argue acceptably for or against the case? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25132" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-02-22T04:25:08.867" LastActivityDate="2015-02-22T04:25:08.867" Title="Does marrying a relative confer fertility benefits?" Tags="|marriage|fertility|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26831" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26828" CreationDate="2015-02-22T16:21:23.827" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are excerpts from an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/all-about-sex/201109/the-rare-truth-about-tight-and-loose-women&quot;&gt;article written for Psychology Today&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Rare Truth About &quot;Tight&quot; and &quot;Loose&quot; Women&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Post published by Michael Castleman M.A. on Sep 16, 2011 in All About&#xA;  Sex&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many women complain that their vaginas are &quot;too tight&quot; or &quot;too loose,&quot;&#xA;  and many men raise the issue about lovers. Notions of vaginal&#xA;  tightness and looseness are fraught with mythology. Many people&#xA;  believe that (1) the virgin vagina is extremely tight, (2) that loss&#xA;  of virginity permanently loosens it, (3) that frequent sex loosens it&#xA;  further (so don't be promiscuous, girls!), and (4) that childbirth&#xA;  loosens the vagina even more and possibly forever after. The truth is&#xA;  considerably different.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The vagina's tightly folded muscle tissue is very elastic, like an&#xA;  accordion or the mouth. Try this: Pull the corners of your mouth out&#xA;  toward your ears then let go. What happens? The mouth immediately&#xA;  snaps back to its pre-stretched state because the tissue is elastic.&#xA;  Do it 100 times. There's no permanent stretching. The mouth quickly&#xA;  returns to its pre-stretched state and no one would ever know you'd&#xA;  stretched it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The same goes for the vagina, with two exceptions I'll discuss&#xA;  shortly. When it's at rest–all the time except sexual arousal and&#xA;  childbirth–the vagina's muscle tissue remains tightly folded like a&#xA;  closed accordion. Anxiety makes the vaginal musculature clench even&#xA;  tighter. That's why young girls sometimes have problems inserting&#xA;  tampons. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As women become sexually aroused, vaginal muscle tissue relaxes&#xA;  somewhat. Biologically, this makes perfect sense. Evolution is all&#xA;  about facilitating reproduction. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, arousal-related vaginal loosening does NOT produce a big open&#xA;  cavity like the inside of a sock.  If the vagina feels &quot;too tight&quot;&#xA;  during lovemaking, the woman is either (1) not interested in sex, or&#xA;  (2) she has not had enough warm-up time to allow her vaginal&#xA;  musculature to relax enough for comfortable insertion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After relaxing during sex, vaginal muscle tissue naturally&#xA;  contracts—tightens—again. &lt;em&gt;Intercourse does NOT permanently stretch&#xA;  the vagina.&lt;/em&gt; (my emphasis) This process, loosening during arousal and&#xA;  tightening afterward, happens no matter how often the woman has sex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The vagina stretches a great deal during childbirth, like an accordion&#xA;  opened all the way. Post-partum does it re-tighten completely? Yes,&#xA;  usually, at least in young women, that is, women in their late teens&#xA;  and early twenties. Within six months after delivery, the typical&#xA;  young woman's vagina feels pretty much how it was before she gave&#xA;  birth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now for the two exceptions. If you stretch elastic a great deal, over&#xA;  time, it fatigues and no longer snaps back entirely. That can happen&#xA;  to the vaginas of young women after multiple births. Their vaginal&#xA;  muscles fatigue and no longer fully contract. In addition, aging&#xA;  fatigues vaginal muscle. Whether or not women have given birth, as&#xA;  they grow older, they may complain of looseness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Michael Castleman MA is not a doctor, however as a journalist he has written about sexuality and sex research for 36 years. He has answered more than 10,000 sex questions for Playboy, other magazines, WebMD, and other sites.  From 1991 to 1995, Castleman answered all the sex questions submitted to the Playboy Advisor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an answer to a related question in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sarilocker.com/advice/qa.php?id=282&quot;&gt;column written by Dr. Sari Locker&lt;/a&gt; about sex with large penises, she writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The tightness of a woman’s vagina is not related to the size of the&#xA;  penises that have been inside it. It’s a myth that a woman’s vagina&#xA;  becomes permanently stretched out from having sex with a man with a&#xA;  large penis. After each sexual encounter, the vagina contracts to its&#xA;  original size, and it has no lasting stretching from a large penis.&#xA;  The only way that a woman’s vagina may stretch significantly is after&#xA;  she has a baby.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sari Locker:, MS, MA, PhD, is a sexologist, sex educator, relationship educator, author, television personality, advice columnist, guest lecturer, and teaches psychology courses at Columbia University.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3970" LastEditorUserId="3970" LastEditDate="2015-02-22T18:02:46.107" LastActivityDate="2015-02-22T18:02:46.107" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26832" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-22T17:32:38.983" Score="8" ViewCount="327" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is widely assumed that the most important factor leading to large family sizes and fast population growth is the lack of availability of contraception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Tim Worstall's book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://kindle.amazon.com/work/chasing-rainbows-agenda-defeats-independent-ebook/B003VM2WVY/B007H8CPVA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Chasing Rainbows&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...the availability of contraception only explains 10% of the changes in total fertility&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data behind this is sourced from an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/1994/03/01/000009265_3961006132547/Rendered/PDF/multi0page.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;old world bank report&lt;/a&gt; (pdf).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does modern contraception only account for 10% of the reduction in fertility we observe in actual populations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2015-02-23T20:59:40.947" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T20:59:40.947" Title="Does the availability of modern contraception only explain 10% of human fertility reduction?" Tags="|human-reproduction|contraception|population|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7855" CreationDate="2015-02-23T08:18:01.317" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It &lt;a href=&quot;http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/26140/0000216.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;has been hypothesised&lt;/a&gt; from experimental evidence that the shorter syllable lengths of words in Chinese allow one to memorise larger numbers than one would otherwise be able to in English (all Chinese number terms from 1-10 are monosyllabic)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Chinese subjects, at all grade levels, remembered at least 2 more&#xA;  digits, on average, than did American or Japanese subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Personally, I prefer to use Chinese for mental calculations for exactly this reason, despite being more fluent in English. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, it is likely that the number system pronunciation has some effect on at least one part (the mental storage and recall of numbers) of math performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastActivityDate="2015-02-23T08:18:01.317" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26841" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26851" CreationDate="2015-02-23T15:54:07.770" Score="19" ViewCount="1849" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there an independent verification of the claims made by University of Buckingham researchers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/554074/Alien-seed-sent-Earth-aliens-Scientists-baffled&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/554074/Alien-seed-sent-Earth-aliens-Scientists-baffled&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor Wainwright said the structure is made from the metals titanium and vanadium with a “gooey” biological liquid oozing from its centre.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He said there are several theories as to where it came from, the first being it is a complete microorganism programmed to propagate alien life on Earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“It is  a ball about the width of a human hair, which has filamentous life on the outside and a gooey biological material oozing from its centre,” he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“We were stunned when X-ray analysis showed that the sphere is made up mainly of titanium, with a trace of vanadium.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“One theory is it was sent to Earth by some unknown civilisation in order to continue seeding the planet with life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Professor Wainwright and his team found the object in dust and particulate matter collected from the stratosphere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He sent balloons 27km into the sky to collect debris from space and isolated several particles he claims are proof of life in space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-03-26T14:44:35.700" Title="Did scientists in UK find a sphere that is of extraterrestrial origin which contains alien biota?" Tags="|biology|aliens|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26847" PostTypeId="7" CreationDate="2015-02-24T12:37:40.840" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;If you are familiar with Stack Exchange, but a new user on Skeptics.SE, &lt;a href=&quot;http://meta.skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/welcome-to-new-users&quot;&gt;we have an exhaustive introduction for you on meta&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-02-24T12:37:40.840" LastActivityDate="2015-02-24T12:37:40.840" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26851" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26841" CreationDate="2015-02-24T23:21:14.277" Score="26" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there an independent verification of the claims made by University of Buckingham researchers?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. Currently. Google Scholar only finds two &lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?cites=7304778795020622411&amp;amp;as_sdt=2005&amp;amp;sciodt=0,5&amp;amp;hl=en&quot;&gt;citations&lt;/a&gt; of this 2013 article. Both are by co-authors of the original article. In fact both citations seem (at least superficially) to be the same article repeated twice with minor variations in title.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Journal of Cosmology appears in a list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarlyoa.com/individual-journals/&quot;&gt;Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access journals&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The journal does not seem to command universal respect for its standards of peer review:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;University of Minnesota biology professor PZ Myers [wrote]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It isn't a real science journal at all, but is the ginned-up website of a small group of crank academics obsessed with the idea ... that life originated in outer space and simply rained down on Earth,&quot; Myers writes on his science blog. &quot;It doesn't exist in print, consists entirely of a crude and ugly website that looks like it was sucked through a wormhole from the 1990s, and publishes lots of empty noise with no substantial editorial restraint.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.technewsworld.com/story/72006.html&quot;&gt;technewsworld&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/?s=journal+of+cosmology&quot;&gt;pharyngula&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-02-25T07:38:38.633" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T07:38:38.633" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26852" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-25T01:20:06.590" Score="4" ViewCount="270" Body="&lt;p&gt;The report&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Video: Storm in Saudi Arabia (or Dubai) causes money to rain. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emirates247.com/news/region/video-storm-in-saudi-arabia-or-dubai-causes-money-to-rain-2015-02-24-1.582033&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Emirates 24|7 News, February 24, 2015&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;claims that a recent dust storm in Saudi Arabia contained, briefly, bank notes flying in the wind. NASA's Earth Observatory has taken this report at face value and &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=85370&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;included it in its feature of the dust storm itself&lt;/a&gt;, but I'm not quite sure how much to trust it. Is there additional confirmation of this event from more official sources?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16271" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T04:55:44.433" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T04:55:44.433" Title="Did a dust storm in Saudi Arabia cause it to &quot;rain&quot; money?" Tags="|economics|meteorology|saudi-arabia|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26855" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26822" CreationDate="2015-02-25T16:06:48.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is very difficult to give an estimate. Beggars in Sweden are estimated to make 80 SEK (about 9.6 USD) an hour&lt;a href=&quot;http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=114&amp;amp;artikel=5470390&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SR&lt;/a&gt; or between 1000-2000 SEK a month&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.svd.se/nyheter/inrikes/myter-om-tiggare_3494176.svd?sidan=4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;SvD&lt;/a&gt; that would give an annual income of 2875 USD. Quite far from six figures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Five or six years ago the Stockholm police checked beggars on commuter trains. They concluded that the beggars could get together between ten and forty kronor in quarter of an hour. It was later used to conclude that that beggars could get together 800 kronor in one day. Nowadays the Stockholm police believe that profit has gone down to 300-500 per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, according to different estimates of voluntary organizations can provide around one thousand to two thousand kronor a month, according to Michael Anefur (Government's National Homelessness Coordinator).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20701" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T16:24:45.627" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26856" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19417" CreationDate="2015-02-25T18:11:49.790" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ironically, the answer itself lies in anti-semitism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Semite&quot; itself does indeed come from &quot;Shem&quot;; according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9780470670606.wbecc0054/abstract;jsessionid=10E2CE377016A6766AE30A05CAC28364.f03t02?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;August Ludwig von Schlözer is generally credited with the origin of the name Semite in 1781. Von Schlözer derived the term from Shem, the eldest son of Noah (Gen. 5:32; 6:10; 9:18; 10:1; 1 Chron. 1:4), to describe a family of related languages.&quot; So it's not literally intended to suggest that everyone &quot;semitic&quot; is descended from Shem; the use of the name is just a cutesy (by academic standards) way to group the language family together. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly, the term itself became more anti-semitic the more connected to Judaism it became. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Semitic&quot; itself initially referred to the linguistic family, rather than to any one group of people (other than perhaps the peoples who spoke semitic languages). But soon enough it would make the jump to specifically referring to Judaism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 1840s, Ernest Renan, an avid French philosopher and linguist, began studying Semitic languages. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Renan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;In 1847, he obtained the Volney prize&lt;/a&gt; for the manuscript of his &quot;General History of Semitic Languages.&quot; His writings still grouped people together in linguistic groups, but had a strongly racist focus: he would blur the lines between language and race, referring frequently to the supposed superiority of the &quot;Indo-European race&quot; over the &quot;Semitic race&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(To give you some idea of his thoughts: he would later combine his studies of theology and philology in his book &quot;The Life of Jesus,&quot; published in 1863, in which he &quot;claimed Jesus was able to purify himself of Jewish traits &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Renan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;and that Jesus became an Aryan&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; He claimed, &quot;I am therefore the first to recognize that the Semitic race, compared to the Indo-European race, truly represents an inferior combination of human nature.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He was certainly &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the first to claim these anti-semitic views. But you can see how smoothly the transition was made from &quot;semitic languages&quot; to &quot;Jews are bad, mmkay?&quot; in these very anti-semitic times.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term at the time for Renan's feelings, in German, was not &quot;anti-semitic&quot;, it was the extremely straightforward &quot;Jew-hatred&quot; (&quot;Judenhass&quot;). But it was actually his own racist views that would lead to the invention of the term we now use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Anti-semitic&quot; was first used in 1860 by German Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider, and didn't solely mean &quot;opposition to Jewishness&quot; - it was &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism#Etymology_and_usage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a criticism of Ernest Renan's contrast of Semites and Indo-Europeans&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; In other words, it still referred to the entire family of people using Semitic languages, although there was certainly no pretense that that &lt;em&gt;didn't&lt;/em&gt; include the Jewish community. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term comes from the German. Steinschneider coined it as antisemitisch, but nineteen years later, proto-Nazi Wilhelm Marr would coin it as antisemitismus -- essentially the same word. Marr needed a word that was more divorced from its visceral racism than &quot;Jew-hatred&quot;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anti-Semitism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wiktionary's page on anti-Semitism notes&lt;/a&gt; that he used the term &quot;to make hatred of the Jews seem rational and sanctioned by scientific knowledge.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL;DR: These terms have nothing to do with thinking people are descended from Shem. And everything to do with assembling faux-scientific and faux-historical &quot;evidence&quot; for anti-semitism. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22488" LastActivityDate="2015-02-25T18:11:49.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26862" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26970" CreationDate="2015-02-26T22:06:17.660" Score="12" ViewCount="823" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this Fox News article, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/health/2015/02/26/13-ways-to-stop-drinking-soda-for-good/?intcmp=features&quot;&gt;13 ways to stop drinking soda for good&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, they claim diet pop has been linked with depression in women. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;diet drinks have many of the same health risks as regular soft drinks, including tooth decay and bone thinning, and they've also been linked to heart disease and depression in women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is something I've never heard before in the debate for or against diet soda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-02-27T02:26:17.747" LastActivityDate="2015-03-08T20:52:06.840" Title="Are diet soft drinks linked to depression in women?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26863" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-26T22:57:04.580" Score="25" ViewCount="1357" Body="&lt;p&gt;My mother has told me that if your body needs a certain vitamin, you will find you feel like eating fruits that include that vitamin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you have lack of Vitamin C, you'll get a craving to eat an orange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24861" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-02-27T02:00:44.863" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T02:05:55.263" Title="Does the human body crave missing vitamins?" Tags="|nutrition|physiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26865" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26887" CreationDate="2015-02-27T01:35:21.700" Score="17" ViewCount="1910" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzfeed.com/catesish/help-am-i-going-insane-its-definitely-blue&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Buzzfeed&lt;/a&gt;, and other social media, are buzzing about this image:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/eJDpZ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Magic Dress&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I see this image, I can only see a gold and white dress. However, others claim that the dress is actually black and blue in colour. Going by the Buzzfeed survey (as unreliable as it might be), 70% of users viewing the image believe it to be gold and white while 30% believe otherwise. &lt;a href=&quot;http://swiked.tumblr.com/post/112166688660/bellasfault-swiked-katze-geht-meow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some people&lt;/a&gt; (also see the comments to this question) find that the dress changes colour for them. Is the dress black and blue in colour? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moderator note: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2924/faq-what-constitutes-original-research?cb=1&quot;&gt;Original research&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2929/faq-what-are-theoretical-answers?cb=1&quot;&gt;theoretical answers&lt;/a&gt; will be removed according to site policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25182" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-16T15:46:58.097" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T21:51:12.970" Title="Is this dress blue and black in colour?" Tags="|colors|optical-illusions|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="29" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19317" CreationDate="2015-02-27T13:41:04.940" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;TCS, a Swiss automobile club, has performed such tests in 2013. The study itself has not been published, but I have received a copy on request and the permission to show below table extracted from it. Other references to this study (in German) can be found in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tcs.ch/de/der-club/media/touring/artikel/2013/motor-abschalten.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article in their monthly magazine&lt;/a&gt;, a&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.motor-abschalten.ch/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;campaign to encourage switching off the engine&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.umweltnetz-schweiz.ch/neuigkeiten/aktuelles/1247-ratgeber-motor.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;similar articles&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2UY9G.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translations: The left column shows the tested car model, its year of construction, and the type of fuel (Benzin for gasoline). The second column shows the measured consumption in grams per warm start, the third column the presence of a start-stop-system (ja=yes, nein=no). The right column indicates after how many seconds switching the engine off saves fuel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, you should switch off your engine when you expect that your stop lasts for 5-10 seconds or more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This test focuses only on fuel-efficiency. Comparing the fuel savings with potential service cost is unrealistic in my view, as fuel prices vary widely (in time due to the oil price and by location due to taxes and subsidies) and should also include external costs related to emissions as well as fines (60 CHF in Switzerland for not switching off, though rarely enforced).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20884" LastActivityDate="2015-02-27T13:41:04.940" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26876" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-27T23:14:02.730" Score="23" ViewCount="946" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like a number of other countries, Pakistan is no longer allowing the usage of unregistered SIM cards for mobile telephony:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/9718441/Pakistan-cracks-down-on-terrorism-tool-mobile-sim-cards.html&quot;&gt;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/9718441/Pakistan-cracks-down-on-terrorism-tool-mobile-sim-cards.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasoning is that this measure is supposed to lead to a decrease in terrorist activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence for or against this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25194" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2015-03-03T21:39:11.377" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T21:39:11.377" Title="Does mandatory registration of SIM cards reduce terrorism?" Tags="|mobile-phones|terrorism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26878" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-28T01:54:55.340" Score="7" ViewCount="315" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read a few articles that claim that being able to speak second a language has various benefits to the mind, including preventing or delaying Alzheimer's disease,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19279" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-03-01T09:55:43.377" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T17:02:13.533" Title="Does bilingualism prevent Alzheimer's?" Tags="|neurology|language|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26879" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-02-28T04:15:03.777" Score="2" ViewCount="189" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is there any danger to humans from co-habitating with a housecat that poops in a litterbox, and occasionally cleaning out that litterbox? Assuming you use litter you can find at the pet store, and have a cat without extraordinary circumstances, like rabies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/041255_kitty_litter_bentonite_clay_harmful_ingredients.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.naturalnews.com/041255_kitty_litter_bentonite_clay_harmful_ingredients.html&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most common cat litters contain ingredients proven to be harmful when exposed to humans and animals. The use of sodium bentonite clay and silica gel in litters coupled with the threat of alfatoxins in grain based cat litters calls for discretion when purchasing this common household item.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there are health dangers, what steps can be taken to avoid health risks?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3837" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T01:40:43.393" Title="Can kitty litter cause adverse health effects in humans?" Tags="|zoology|public-health|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26881" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-02-28T09:01:29.577" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;More information is available on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25178" LastEditorUserId="25178" LastEditDate="2015-03-01T13:25:36.090" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T13:25:36.090" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26882" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-02-28T09:01:29.577" Score="0" Body="In traditional belief and fiction, a ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that can appear, in visible form or other manifestation, to the living." OwnerUserId="25178" LastEditorUserId="25178" LastEditDate="2015-03-01T13:26:29.707" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T13:26:29.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6738" CreationDate="2015-02-28T13:31:57.067" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is indeed an interesting question so I'll attempt to answer it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many articles posted on the internet &lt;strong&gt;claim&lt;/strong&gt; that the color red makes you hungry, and they claim that junk food giants (like KFC) use this color in their logos, those articles include: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.examiner.com/article/red-color-stimulates-appetite&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Examiner.com&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ask.com/science/red-yellow-make-hungry-185c9f22bb9bc92f#full-answer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ask.com&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/04/03/hunger-causes-walls_n_3007712.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Huffingtonpost.ca&lt;/a&gt;,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://azscience.org/never_stop_wondering/video/why_do_the_colors_red_and_yellow_make_you_hungry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Azscience.org&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dailyinfographic.com/the-psychology-of-colors-infographic&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dailyinfographic.org&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://nrlbeiser.wikispaces.com/Restaurant+music,+color,+and+decor?responseToken=0b290fbd500e3c17c20b8c91e832073e5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wikispaces.com&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rustybee.com/why-red-and-yellow-are-so-popular-for-kitchen-colors/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rustrybee.com&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omgfacts.com/lists/4532/The-color-red-is-scientifically-proven-to-make-you-hungry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;omgfacts.com&lt;/a&gt; and sometimes they announce extraordinary unferenced claims like this one on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thegloss.com/2011/03/28/fashion/why-red-makes-you-hungry-other-things-you-didnt-know-about-color/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;thegloss.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has to do with the way it affects your brain. &lt;strong&gt;Red releases&#xA;  endorphins into your system that stimulate the appetite.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most of them give reference to this article (who apparently is offline now):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colorschemer.com/blog/2007/07/17/why-food-companies-use-red-colors/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.colorschemer.com/blog/2007/07/17/why-food-companies-use-red-colors/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, I could get a version from Wayback Machine, you can see it &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130215112529/http://www.colorschemer.com/blog/2007/07/17/why-food-companies-use-red-colors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article is small, unreferenced and full of logical falacies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, they say that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What do Safeway, Walgreens, and Costco have in common? The obvious&#xA;  answer is that they are all large operated American supermarkets. But&#xA;  do you think it’s any coincidence that these three grocery stores –&#xA;  along with others like Winn-Dixie, Wawa, Giant, and Supervalu – all&#xA;  use red in their logo?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interesting, they mention a list of junk-food restaurants (or supermarkets) who list red in their logo as a proof that they Red makes you hungry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also forget to mention restaurants that don't use red in their logos, like:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Subway&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Taco Bell &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dunkin Donuts&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Applebee's&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;On the border&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Shake snack&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Just salad&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;White Castle&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Panera&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Starbucks&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Little Caesars&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Carvel &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The list goes on...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;If you google any name from the list, you would see that the logo doesn't have a red colour.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.logomaker.com/blog/2014/10/15/color-red-wont-make-hungry-unless-youre-fish/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;With the help of Rob Marsh&lt;/a&gt;, I found an interesting &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0059134&amp;amp;representation=PDF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;academic article&lt;/a&gt; called &quot;Impact of color on marketing&quot;. They found out that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;red light stimulates feeding, as in humans, most likely by affecting&#xA;  central control centers, but the extra feeding is not converted into&#xA;  growth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study proves that red stimulates hunger in fish, and also claim that it stimulates hunger in humans by referencing to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Satyendra Singh, (2006) &quot;Impact of color on marketing&quot;, Management&#xA;  Decision, Vol. 44 Iss: 6, pp.783 - 789&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you dig in Singh's &lt;a href=&quot;http://personal.stevens.edu/~rchen/creativity/impact%20of%20color%20on%20marketing.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The red color stimulates appetite because of its effect on our&#xA;  metabolism, making red a popular color choice among fast-food&#xA;  restaurants.... This is an important strategy for formal restaurants to increase their sales&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you would notice bizarre thing about this paper is that this claim is unreferenced. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, I found a referenced academic article by Appetite which actually say the opposite: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://moodle.zhaw.ch/pluginfile.php/404472/mod_resource/content/0/R/GIS_0047_Genschow_2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The color red reduces snack food and soft drink intake&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on evidence that the color red elicits avoidance motivation&#xA;  across contexts (Mehta &amp;amp; Zhu, 2009), two studies investigated the&#xA;  effect of the color red on snack food and soft drink consumption. In&#xA;  line with our hypothesis, participants drank less from a red labeled&#xA;  cup than from a blue labeled cup (Study 1), and ate less snack food&#xA;  from a red plate than from a blue or white plate (Study 2). The&#xA;  results suggest that red functions as a subtle stop signal that works&#xA;  outside of focused awareness and thereby reduces incidental food and&#xA;  drink intake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enough said. You may look into the studies, they seem convincing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, answering your question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the color red make you hungrier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not according to scientific evidence. &lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/118286264686230590440?rel=author&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rob Marsh&lt;/a&gt;, an entrepreneur and expert with logos had an interesting &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.logomaker.com/blog/2014/10/15/color-red-wont-make-hungry-unless-youre-fish/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;opinion&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you’ve had a positive experience with these brands, they may&#xA;  trigger an “I’d love a blizzard and fries right about now” kind of&#xA;  response. But it has very little to do with the color red.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Color meaning is situational.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Seeing a brand new red restaurant logo isn’t likely to make you hungry&#xA;  (at least until you connect it to a positive eating experience). And&#xA;  it probably won’t raise your heart rate. But it might catch your&#xA;  attention—especially if the red stands out from the surrounding&#xA;  environment. That’s what red does best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So you can probably forget those color psychology posters and&#xA;  recommendations. Including ours. When it comes to color, a lot of&#xA;  what’s said is conjecture or just plain wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-04T18:27:16.630" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T18:27:16.630" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26886" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26862" CreationDate="2015-02-28T16:56:10.193" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Diet soft drinks and depression are linked to adults (this includes women too).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on a study by U.S. National Institute of Mental Health,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study analyzed more than 250,000 U.S. adults aged 50 to 71 who answered questions about their beverage consumption between the years 1995 and 1996. 10 years later (from 2004 to 2006), the same people were asked if a doctor had diagnosed them with depression since the year 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People who regularly drank 4 or more cans of any type of soda a day were 30 percent more likely to get diagnosed with depression than people who didn't. The risk of depression was especially high for people who drank diet soda — a &lt;strong&gt;31%&lt;/strong&gt; increased risk compared to a &lt;strong&gt;22%&lt;/strong&gt; increased risk for those who drank regular soda, the study said.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;SOURCE: Honglei Chen, M.D., Ph.D., investigator, epidemiology branch,&#xA;  U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences; Eva Redei,&#xA;  Ph.D., professor, psychiatry, Northwestern University Feinberg School&#xA;  of Medicine, Chicago; American Beverage Association, news release,&#xA;  Jan. 8, 2013; news release, American Academy of Neurology, Jan. 8,&#xA;  2013&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-01T16:22:49.820" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T16:22:49.820" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26887" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26865" CreationDate="2015-02-28T17:14:59.617" Score="19" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is the dress black and blue in colour?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;TL:DR;  Colour-Constancy illusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The dress in real life&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes. The original dress is black and blue. The dress has been identified and there are many professional photographs which show its colours unambiguously. See reports referenced below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The dress in the photograph&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The photograph being circulated is a very poor snapshot which appears to be overexposed and has incorrect colour-balance. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pixel data values&lt;/a&gt; are mostly described as predominantly blue and brown. But this is not as relevant as many of us might at first suppose. See references below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The dress on your computer screen&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The hues on your computer screen will vary considerably, more so for the probable majority of people who don't perform regular &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-calibrate-your-monitor/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;colour-calibration&lt;/a&gt; of their computers and who don't concern themselves with limited gamuts and other technical issues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this answer will not take this factor into account, there is evidence of other factors that are probably adequate in themselves to explain what is happening.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The dress in your brain's visual system&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The colour perceived by a human visual system depends to a surprisingly large extent on context and in particular about what clues exist concerning ambient lighting, shadows and other circumstances. This is the subject of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698910004402&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;colour-constancy in human vision&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The processing in the brain attempts to maintain colour constancy regardless of the actual frequency of light falling on the retina from an object. In other words, regardless of any actual RGB values of an image on a screen. The human visual system (which is mostly in the brain, not the eye) does not faithfully measure incident RGB values and present those to conscious levels of thought.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ambiguous context can cause the brain's visual system to &amp;quot;incorrectly&amp;quot; interpret the colour. A better way to express this would be that there are two sets of different real-life physical dresses and lighting conditions that will produce the same photographic (or retinal) image. Your brain has too few contextual cues to disambiguate the situation and therefore settles on an arbitrary interpretation that depends mostly on your viewing circumstances and physiology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;BBC reports&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The BBC reproduced the conditions of the photo and interviewed a Professor John Barbur of the Applied Vision Research Centre, City University London. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31666458&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially it is claimed that this overexposed photograph represents an edge-case in human visual perception, our visual systems vary considerably from person to person and our brain's interpretation of the image can vary greatly depending on context - background in the photograph, lighting in our viewing position and so on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beau Lotto, a professor of neuroscience at University College London, says &amp;quot;the brain has evolved not to see absolutes, but to see the difference between things.&amp;quot; Because colours that appear in sunlight look different from those that appear under streetlights, for example, our brains have to focus on the relationship between colours, not the colours themselves. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-31659395&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Newspaper reports&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Guardian newspaper has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2015/feb/27/the-dress-blue-black-white-gold-vision-psychology-colour-constancy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; where Marie Rogers, a PhD student with the Sussex Colour Group discusses colour-constancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our everyday lives, there are many changes in the colour of the light illuminating our surroundings. For example, the yellow glow of an incandescent light bulb versus the blue-ish hue of a fluorescent light. The light that an object reflects to the eye is a combination of both the colour of the object itself and the spectrum of the light source, which may vary. The brain is able to disentangle these two things and decide what colour the object is. Simply put, objects appear the same colour even if the light illuminating them changes – a concept known as colour constancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, how does the brain keep colours constant? One way is by using reference points. For example, say you know your mug is white, but the light being reflected from the mug is slightly red. The brain can then discount a certain amount of red tint from the rest of the scene you are seeing. Other contextual knowledge may come into play, for example you are drinking coffee by the window at dawn. It makes sense for the light to be red-tinted as the illumination source is the sunrise. This is known as top-down processing. All of our perceptual experiences are informed by this kind of processing, resulting from context and previous knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The New York Times has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/02/28/science/white-or-blue-dress.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; that illustrates this cognitive process with respect to the dress in the photograph. Their sources are given as &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;Laurence T. Maloney, New York University; Eugene Switkes, U.C. Santa Cruz; Qasim Zaidi, SUNY College of Optometry; Journal of the Optical Society of America A.&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Research&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalofvision.org/content/3/5/4.short&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Journal of Vision - Surface color perception under two illuminants: The second illuminant reduces color constancy&lt;/a&gt; - describes how the presence of two sources of illumination can reduce colour-constancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is likely the troublesome photograph included both ambient lighting and a photographic flashgun. Viewing conditions will vary for people vieing images on the Internet. The image lacks clear/unambiguous colour cues in it's background&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it's a kind of chromatic visual illusion, in some ways similar to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_vase&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;figure-ground&lt;/a&gt; illusion, where the brain struggles to settle on one of two possible interpretations of an image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Other References&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AskAQwOBvhc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ASAPSCIENCE video&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/49000/how-can-the-dress-optical-illusion-be-accurately-reproduced-on-other-images&quot;&gt;How can the “dress” optical illusion be accurately reproduced on other images?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T19:46:38.720" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26889" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10737" CreationDate="2015-02-28T21:39:51.913" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Even in cases where the dog isn't a physical deterrent, dogs tend to bark at strangers. This barking can alert owners who can in turn arm themselves or call the police. It is hard to imagine a situation where a dog makes theft more likely. The worst case is that the dog simply fails to deter a thief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, a dog can provide a deterrent effect, or sometimes just no effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;On average, burglarized houses are less likely to have dogs than are non-burglarized houses, suggesting that dog ownership is a substantial deterrent.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/e07021611.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/e07021611.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Most big breeds, unless they're trained as guard dogs, aren't barkers. What you want are 'yappers,' small dogs that make a lot of noise.&quot; -Walter Shaw, reformed cat burglar&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/big-dogs-other-mistakes-54581&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/big-dogs-other-mistakes-54581&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Only one thing will deter most burglars: a dog.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1991-07-14/news/9101250909_1_burglars-palm-beach-county-pickings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1991-07-14/news/9101250909_1_burglars-palm-beach-county-pickings&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Having a dog is a huge deterrent. Ironically, burglars are far more likely to avoid a house with a small dog than a big one — small dogs tend to be nervous and less easy to trick into calming down. They’re less trustful and bark louder and longer.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scambusters.org/homeburglary.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.scambusters.org/homeburglary.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8163" LastActivityDate="2015-02-28T21:39:51.913" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26890" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23556" CreationDate="2015-02-28T22:03:38.983" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are quite a number of published studies showing that dogs can be trained to do this with high accuracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20970246&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Olfactory detection of prostate cancer by dogs sniffing urine: a step forward in early diagnosis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The dog completed all the runs and correctly designated the cancer samples in 30 of 33 cases. Of the three cases wrongly classified as cancer, one patient was rebiopsied and a PCa was diagnosed. The sensitivity and specificity were both 91%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16484712&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Diagnostic accuracy of canine scent detection in early- and late-stage lung and breast cancers.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Among lung cancer patients and controls, overall sensitivity of canine scent detection compared to biopsy-confirmed conventional diagnosis was 0.99 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.99, 1.00) and overall specificity 0.99 (95% CI, 0.96, 1.00). Among breast cancer patients and controls, sensitivity was 0.88 (95% CI, 0.75, 1.00) and specificity 0.98 (95% CI, 0.90, 0.99). Sensitivity and specificity were remarkably similar across all 4 stages of both diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Training was efficient and cancer identification was accurate; in a matter of weeks, ordinary household dogs with only basic behavioral &quot;puppy training&quot; were trained to accurately distinguish breath samples of lung and breast cancer patients from those of controls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25264338&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Olfactory system of highly trained dogs detects prostate cancer in urine samples.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For dog 1 sensitivity was 100% (95% CI 99.0-100.0) and specificity was 98.7% (95% CI 97.3-99.5). For dog 2 sensitivity was 98.6% (95% CI 96.8-99.6) and specificity was 97.6% (95% CI 95.9-98.7). When considering only men older than 45 years in the control group, dog 1 achieved 100% sensitivity and 98% specificity (95% CI 96-99.2), and dog 2 achieved 98.6% sensitivity (95% CI 96.8-99.6) and 96.4% specificity (95% CI 93.9-98.1). Analysis of false-positive cases revealed no consistent pattern in participant demographics or tumor characteristics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23957595&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Can dogs smell lung cancer? First study using exhaled breath and urine screening in unselected patients with suspected lung cancer.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With an intensified training procedure, the exhaled breath and urine tests showed sensitivity rates of 56-76% and specificity rates of 8.3-33.3%, respectively, in our heterogeneous study population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23188" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-06-22T19:33:02.233" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T19:33:02.233" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26892" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26906" CreationDate="2015-03-01T10:00:18.727" Score="20" ViewCount="3489" Body="&lt;p&gt;A lot of my friends (especially creationist ones) tell me that if planet earth was one kilometer closer to the sun, it would heat up too much and life wouldn't exist. On the other hand, if planet earth was one kilometer farther from the sun, it would freeze up and life wouldn't be able to survive, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, my answer was that life developed and adapted to earth's conditions and not the other way around. I was curious, however, if their claim about earth's position is correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example sources of claim: &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100624215212AAUGApv&quot;&gt;Yahoo Answers question&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/fundiessaythedarndestthings/forum/topics/facebook-religionscience-fail?xg_source=activity&quot;&gt;Facebook linked by Fundies Say the Darndest Things&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/ApSci/posts/10150385402055605&quot;&gt;Facebook post by Aperture Science&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://factsfromfiction.blogspot.ca/2012/06/if-earth-was-ten-feet-closer-to-sun.html&quot;&gt;Blog debunking the claim&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110117171951AAb2xs3&quot;&gt;Someone citing their priest&lt;/a&gt;, and others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22260" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2017-01-14T01:28:25.637" LastActivityDate="2017-01-14T01:28:25.637" Title="Would life not exist on Earth if it was one kilometer closer to, or farther from, the sun?" Tags="|evolution|astronomy|earth|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26895" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26901" CreationDate="2015-03-01T19:25:09.857" Score="31" ViewCount="9369" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an old urban legend that Harrison Ford was actually the janitor on the set of &lt;em&gt;Star Wars&lt;/em&gt;, and was standing in for the actor that was supposed to play Han Solo.  The execs liked him so much they cast him on the spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23062" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-12-24T12:12:30.377" LastActivityDate="2017-12-24T12:12:30.377" Title="Was Harrison Ford the janitor or carpenter on the set of Star Wars?" Tags="|movies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26897" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-03-01T20:20:04.170" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-03-01T20:20:04.170" LastActivityDate="2015-03-01T20:20:04.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26898" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-03-01T20:20:04.170" Score="0" Body="The science that studies the lands, the features, the properties, and the phenomena of the sea." OwnerUserId="48266" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-07-30T18:54:41.360" LastActivityDate="2019-07-30T18:54:41.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26899" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-01T21:08:55.533" Score="2" ViewCount="470" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is a widespread proposition on multiple fitness websites that joints are better able to withstand compressive forces than shear forces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.precisionnutrition.com/all-about-the-squat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Precision Nutrition&lt;/a&gt;&#xA; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://bootcampmilitaryfitnessinstitute.com/exercises/the-bodyweight-squat/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Boot Camp Military Fitness&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I can't find any evidence that this is true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From first-hand experience I do believe it to be true. Take the leg extension, a commonly used isolation (single-joint) exercise that involves extension of a weight. All I've gotten from the leg extensions were joint pains. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who have exercised using these machines vs a squat/push-up, I think we can agree the latter is less harmful on the joints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So where is the scientific evidence for this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15511" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-03-02T01:58:19.180" LastActivityDate="2024-03-26T16:03:15.450" Title="Can joints withstand greater compressive forces than shear forces without injury?" Tags="|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26900" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-02T06:53:48.563" Score="10" ViewCount="10754" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blarney_Stone&quot;&gt;Blarney Stone&lt;/a&gt; is a stone set into the wall of a castle in Ireland. There is a local tradition that kissing the stone will grant eloquence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was told by the tour guides in multiple locations in Ireland (Dublin, Cork, Galway) that locals urinate on the stone, and this can be corroborated in many (relatively unreliable) sources online, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=000099;p=1&quot;&gt;Snopes Boards&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060721101859AAzQp4p&quot;&gt;Yahoo Answers&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://annaswanderingagain.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/fyi-local-irish-people-pee-on-blarney.html&quot;&gt;some blogs&lt;/a&gt;. In any case, I did not partake in the tradition not because of that but because of the fear of saliva-borne disease. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any reliable sources that show this? I initially wanted to post this on Travel, but I think it can already be answered there with the sources given. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="14582" LastEditDate="2015-03-02T09:38:38.257" LastActivityDate="2016-06-26T20:23:42.813" Title="Do Irish locals urinate on the Blarney Stone?" Tags="|travel|ireland|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26901" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26895" CreationDate="2015-03-02T07:00:51.753" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;Harrison Ford was not a janitor on the set of Star Wars — but he was a carpenter working between movie roles on the set.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ford already had some 20 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000148/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1&quot;&gt;movie and TV credits&lt;/a&gt; (including guest starring roles in eight TV series) before he did Stars Wars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However that wasn't enough to support his family on, so he turned to carpentry to supplement his income. Despite having no experience as a carpenter, he got a job building a recording studio for Sergio Mendes. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifetimetv.co.uk/biography/biography-harrison-ford&quot;&gt;Ford was recommended to other Hollywood types as “Carpenter to the Stars”&lt;/a&gt;, building a deck for Sally Kellerman and working as a stagehand for the rock group The Doors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1972, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Ford&quot;&gt;Ford was hired to build cabinets at George Lucas' home.&lt;/a&gt; He was then picked by Lucas for a role in American Graffiti. The success of this film, which was written and directed by Lucas, helped finance his Star Wars film (which he also wrote and directed).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ford, still working as a carpenter, was on the set of Stars Wars when &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/actors-who-got-their-big-break-later-in-life-2014-2#harrison-ford-was-a-full-time-carpenter-until-35-2&quot;&gt;Lucas recognized him from his role on American Graffiti&lt;/a&gt;. He was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com/harrison-ford-reddit-ama-from-carpenter-to-han-solo-in-star-wars-2014-4&quot;&gt;first asked to stand in for other actors&lt;/a&gt; auditioning for the parts. Later he was asked to read for the part of Han Solo himself. He was picked over stars such as Nick Nolte, Kurt Russell and Christopher Walken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/22xh4j/i_am_harrison_harrison_ford_ama/cgrc8pk&quot;&gt;Reddit AMA&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I had helped George Lucas audition other actors for the principle [sic] parts, and with no expectation or indication that I might be considered for the part of Han, I was quite surprised when I was offered the part. My principle [sic] job at the time was carpentry, I had been under contract as an actor at Columbia and Universal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3970" LastEditorUserId="3970" LastEditDate="2015-03-03T00:07:46.020" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T00:07:46.020" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26903" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="570" CreationDate="2015-03-02T11:31:13.443" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Permanent damage to the retina has been shown to occur in ~100 seconds&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=3269&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=3269&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar statement: &quot;sungazing at bright midnoon for 100 s can produce a threshold lesion.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: W. T. Ham, Jr., H. A Mueller, and D. H. Sliney&#xA;Retinal sensitivity to damage from short wavelength light&#xA;Nature 260, 153-155 (1976) - cited here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/vision/Galileo.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/vision/Galileo.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="90" LastEditorUserId="90" LastEditDate="2015-03-02T11:53:41.917" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T11:53:41.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26892" CreationDate="2015-03-02T14:04:56.673" Score="47" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstellar_habitable_zone&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Goldilocks zone (&amp;quot;Circumstellar habitable zone&amp;quot;)&lt;/a&gt; is a real thing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In astronomy and astrobiology, the circumstellar habitable zone (CHZ), or simply the habitable zone, colloquially known as the Goldilocks zone, is the region around a star within which planetary-mass objects with sufficient atmospheric pressure can support liquid water at their surfaces. The bounds of the CHZ are calculated using the known requirements of Earth's biosphere, its position in the Solar System and the amount of radiant energy it receives from the Sun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it's rather more than one kilometre wide:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Estimates for the habitable zone within the Solar System range from 0.725 to 3.0 astronomical units, though arriving at these estimates has been challenging for a variety of reasons. Numerous planetary mass objects orbit within, or close to, this range and as such receive sufficient sunlight to raise temperatures above the freezing point of water. However their atmospheric conditions vary substantially. The aphelion of Venus, for example, touches the inner edge of the zone and while atmospheric pressure at the surface is sufficient for liquid water, a strong greenhouse effect raises surface temperatures to 462 °C (864 °F) at which water can only exist as vapour. The entire orbits of the Moon, Mars, and numerous asteroids also lie within various estimates of the habitable zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Converted into kilometers, that's &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;Estimates for the habitable zone within the Solar System range from about a hundred million to about half a billion kilometres&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pR8Ce.png&quot; alt=&quot;Estimated_extent_of_the_Solar_Systems_habitable_zone&quot; /&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;In this diagram, dark green is the minimum estimate, light green is the maximum (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumstellar_habitable_zone#mediaviewer/File:Estimated_extent_of_the_Solar_Systems_habitable_zone.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;image source&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And so it's not at all unusual to find planets within that zone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On November 4, 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt; of sun-like stars and red dwarf stars within the Milky Way Galaxy. 11 billion of these estimated planets may be orbiting sun-like stars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;strong&gt;the implied claim that the existence of an Earth-like planet within the habitable zone is unlikely to have occurred anywhere in the universe purely by chance (and therefore is proof of purposeful creation), seems pretty clearly &lt;em&gt;false&lt;/em&gt; to me, because there look to be approximately 40 billion counter-examples&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/science/cosmic-census-finds-billions-of-planets-that-could-be-like-earth.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Far-Off Planets Like the Earth Dot the Galaxy&lt;/a&gt;, New York Times&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One out of every five sunlike stars in the galaxy has a planet the size of Earth circling it in the Goldilocks zone — not too hot, not too cold — where surface temperatures should be compatible with liquid water, according to a herculean three-year calculation based on data from the Kepler spacecraft by Erik Petigura, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/110/48/19273.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Prevalence of Earth-size planets orbiting Sun-like stars&lt;/a&gt;, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We find that 22% of Sun-like stars harbor Earth-size planets orbiting in their habitable zones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.latimes.com/science/la-sci-earth-like-planets-20131105-story.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Milky Way may host billions of Earth-size planets&lt;/a&gt;, LA times&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1 in 5 stars like the one at the center of the solar system hosts a planet capable of holding liquid water on its surface and — if it had the right chemical ingredients — supporting life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One should also remember that our type of life is not the only possible type of life. Perhaps there are other forms of life for which an Earth-like planet would be &lt;em&gt;outside&lt;/em&gt; their habitable zone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/space/planetary-habitable-zones-defined-by-alien-biochemistry-111118.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alien Life May Live in Various Habitable Zones&lt;/a&gt;, Discovery.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;in the cosmological context there’s no obvious reason why life has to be exclusively dependent on a water-based environment. Life could be so opportunistic and adaptable it may simply work with whatever liquid is at hand. Alternative solvents considered by astrobiologists include dihydrogen (a simple molecule composed of two hydrogen atoms), sulfuric acid, dinitrogen, formamide, and methane, among others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If so, this antiquates the notion of a narrow habitable zone encircling billions of stars in our galaxy. Depending on your flavor of life, there could be multiple habitable zones around the sun and other stars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's even possible that life - our own kind of water-based life - may exist within our own solar system but outside of the 'Goldilocks zone', perhaps getting its energy from sources other than the sun. Jupiter's moon &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_%28moon%29#Potential_for_extraterrestrial_life&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Europa&lt;/a&gt; is often considered as a candidate for for life:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many scientists believe Europa is the best location in our solar system to find existing life. It has a subsurface ocean in contact with rock, an icy surface that mixes with the ocean below, salts on the surface that create an energy gradient, and a source of heat (the flexing that occurs as it gets stretched and squeezed by Jupiter's gravity).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-362&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clay-Like Minerals Found on Icy Crust of Europa&lt;/a&gt;, JPL 2013&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words: Europa could have fish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If they're intelligent fish, perhaps they chat amongst themselves about how they came to live in a place where the conditions for life exist, and whether such a thing could happen by chance or must be a matter of design.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also: the 'weak &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;anthropic principle&lt;/a&gt;'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22504" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T18:39:11.163" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26905" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26878" CreationDate="2015-03-02T15:12:17.160" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I want to stress the fact that there is difference between &lt;em&gt;delaying&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;preventing&lt;/em&gt;. The articles I have read online claim that bilingualism may delay Alzheimer's progression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those claims are actually true, since there is some evidence online suggesting that bilingualism may (and not will) slow Alzheimer's Progression. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3033609/&quot;&gt;There is an academic article published by NIH in 2010 which has been cited by 144 other articles:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Objectives:&lt;/strong&gt; There is strong epidemiologic evidence to suggest that&#xA;  older adults who maintain an active lifestyle in terms of social,&#xA;  mental, and physical engagement are protected to some degree against&#xA;  the onset of dementia. Such factors are said to contribute to&#xA;  cognitive reserve, which acts to compensate for the accumulation of&#xA;  amyloid and other brain pathologies. We present evidence that lifelong&#xA;  bilingualism is a further factor contributing to cognitive reserve.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Methods:&lt;/strong&gt; Data were collected from 211 consecutive patients diagnosed&#xA;  with probable Alzheimer disease (AD). Patients' age at onset of&#xA;  cognitive impairment was recorded, as was information on occupational&#xA;  history, education, and language history, including fluency in English&#xA;  and any other languages. Following this procedure, 102 patients were&#xA;  classified as bilingual and 109 as monolingual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results:&lt;/strong&gt; We found that the bilingual patients had been diagnosed 4.3&#xA;  years later and had reported the onset of symptoms 5.1 years later&#xA;  than the monolingual patients. The groups were equivalent on measures&#xA;  of cognitive and occupational level, there was no apparent effect of&#xA;  immigration status, and the monolingual patients had received more&#xA;  formal education. There were no gender differences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions:&lt;/strong&gt; The present data confirm results from an earlier study,&#xA;  and thus we conclude that lifelong bilingualism confers protection&#xA;  against the onset of AD. The effect does not appear to be attributable&#xA;  to such possible confounding factors as education, occupational&#xA;  status, or immigration. Bilingualism thus appears to contribute to&#xA;  cognitive reserve, which acts to compensate for the effects of&#xA;  accumulated neuropathology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Source: Craik FIM, Bialystok E, Freedman M. Delaying the onset of&#xA;  Alzheimer disease: Bilingualism as a form of cognitive reserve.&#xA;  Neurology. 2010;75(19):1726-1729. doi:10.1212/WNL.0b013e3181fc2a1c.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010945211001043&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; found that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bilingualism appears to contribute to increased CR, thereby delaying&#xA;  the onset of AD and requiring the presence of greater amounts of&#xA;  neuropathology before the disease is manifest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With no doubt, more research is actually needed before it's completely understood how cognitive reserve works to delay the onset of Alzheimer's disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So answering your question: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does bilingualism prevent Alzheimer's disease?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily. There is a link between bilingualism and Alzheimer's disease, but it has not been proven that bilingualism prevents Alzheimer's disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-02T17:02:13.533" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T17:02:13.533" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26906" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26892" CreationDate="2015-03-02T17:25:47.103" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;Their claim is incorrect. On an astronomical scale, one kilometer is a very small value. In fact, Earth's orbit regularly varies by far more than 1km.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Earth&amp;amp;Display=Facts&quot;&gt;NASA's Solar System Exploration website's&lt;/a&gt; facts and figures,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Perihelion (closest)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Metric: 147,098,291 km &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Imperial: 91,402,640 miles &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Scientific Notation: 1.47098 x 10&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; km (0.983 A.U.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Aphelion (farthest)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Metric: 152,098,233 km &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Imperial: 94,509,460 miles &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Scientific Notation: 1.52098 x 10&lt;sup&gt;8&lt;/sup&gt; km (1.017 A.U.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, Earth's distance from the Sun varies by 5 million kilometers during a single year. A change of one kilometer would not be noticeable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25147" LastEditorUserId="22504" LastEditDate="2015-03-02T23:34:10.303" LastActivityDate="2015-03-02T23:34:10.303" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26907" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26927" CreationDate="2015-03-02T17:46:03.363" Score="20" ViewCount="4195" Body="&lt;p&gt;Attempting to prove to me that Judaism is the only true religion, a friend of mine read to me from a book titled, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/9659123108&quot;&gt;The Coming Revolution&lt;/a&gt;, that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zohar&quot;&gt;Zohar&lt;/a&gt; (a 2nd/3rd century CE commentary on the Torah allegedly written by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_bar_Yochai&quot;&gt;Rabbi Simeon bar Yochai&lt;/a&gt;) uses a highly accurate value for the duration of the full moon cycle (29.530588853), centuries before this calculation could be made by modern calculators. How true is this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My Google &quot;skills&quot; were unable to find who was the first person in history to come up with the calculation (NASA?). The only thing I could find, more or less related is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.torahcode.net/first_els/first_els.shtml&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt; using &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematria&quot;&gt;Gematria&lt;/a&gt; to calculate the moon cycle. But honestly, I'm not too sure what to make of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Note:&lt;/strong&gt; Some people think the Zohar was written by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_de_Le%C3%B3n&quot;&gt;Moses de León&lt;/a&gt; in the 13th century which, if true, would still be ages before NASA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25218" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T11:20:10.683" LastActivityDate="2022-02-21T18:31:09.943" Title="Did a Jewish rabbi precisely calculate the duration of the full moon cycle 1800 years ago?" Tags="|religion|religious-texts|moon|judaism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26909" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="650" CreationDate="2015-03-03T00:41:59.793" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several prominent instances of humans creating crop circles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim 1: Doug Bower and Dave Chorley&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most famous claims of human-made crop circle come from Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, &lt;a href=&quot;http://pages.uoregon.edu/msiuo/taylor/human_response/CropCircles(physicsworld).pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;who claimed in 1991&lt;/a&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; to have started making the formations in 1978, in England. The duo stated that they enhanced their creations in response to theories by meteorologist Terence Meaden that atmospheric phenomena were the causes of the crop circles. Meaden's ideas soon became more imaginative and unlikely, and so Bower and Chorley eventually made a &amp;quot;crop circle&amp;quot; with rectangles in an attempt to prove that the designs were not the result of natural phenomena.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article reporting on the circles also notes that after the Bower and Chorley made their announcement in 1991, a large number of crop circles began appearing in England, giving evidence for a host of copycats. Statistically, this is strong evidence that humans must be responsible for at least &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of the formations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://laughingsquid.com/circlemakers-society-of-modern-day-crop-circle-makers/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;, the duo used&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;very simple crop-crushing tools of a wooden plank, rope and a baseball cap “fitted with a loop of wire to help them walk in a straight line”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim 2: The Circlemakers&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other teams have made crop circles. Quoting &lt;a href=&quot;http://pages.uoregon.edu/msiuo/taylor/human_response/CropCircles(physicsworld).pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the first article&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One such team is known as the Circlemakers, and when – in a rare breach of secrecy – it allowed BBC filmmakers to document its construction of a 100-circle roulette pattern in 1998, team members were observed physically implanting circles at the remarkable rate of one every minute. Circlemaker Will Russell summarized their motivation: “To push the boundaries of what people think is humanly possible”, while his colleague Rod Dickinson stressed that this rate was sufficient to imprint the Triple Julia pattern in one night.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The methods these groups use utilize readily accessible materials and techniques:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Traditional circle-makers employed “stompers” (wooden planks attached to two hand-held ropes), string and garden rollers, plus bar stools to allow artists to vault over undisturbed crops. Despite their primitive appearance, stompers are a surprisingly efficient tool for flattening crops, especially when driven by skilled hands. However, modern designs have evolved beyond the traditional requirement that stalks be flattened rather than broken: formations now feature stalks that are carefully sculpted to create intricate textures within the geometries. For example, the stalks in each of the circles of the Triple Julia pattern formed a spiral. Multiple layers of bent stalks can also be woven together, creating shadowy textures that evolve over days in the sunlight due to the stalks’ phototropic responses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some members of the group have published &lt;a href=&quot;http://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/2133/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a book&lt;/a&gt; on making crop circles, and Circlemakers' official website has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.circlemakers.org/guide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;basic guide&lt;/a&gt; on construction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim 3: The 1992 International Crop Circle Making Competition&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/7955868/Crop-circle-conundrum.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; mentions the competition, saying&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But a display of circle-making by a team of young engineers who won the 1992 International Crop Circle Making Competition was a revelation to the maverick biologist, Rupert Sheldrake: ‘For flattening the crop, they used a roller consisting of a piece of PVC piping with a rope through it, pushing it with their feet. To get into the crop without leaving footprints, they used two lightweight aluminium stepladders with a plank between them, acting as a bridge. For marking out a ring, they used a telescopic device projecting from the top of an aluminium stepladder. A string was attached to the end of it in such a way that by holding the string and walking in a circle around this central position a perfect ring could be marked out without leaving any trace on the ground in the middle.’ That’s complicated kit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rupert Sheldrake was one of those who started the one-time-only competition. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sheldrake.org/files/pdfs/Cropcircles_Michellany.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;He later wrote about it:&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The competitors had to arrive at the tent by 9pm, when they were given the final rules and instructions. They were free to work in their plots in the hours of darkness, between 10pm and 3am, when they had to leave the field. During this period, members of the organising group were patrolling the area to make sure there was no sabotage of other people’s plots by contestants or by anyone else, and after all the teams had left the field, the area was guarded by Sir Francis Dashwood’s gamekeepers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The experiment was conclusive. Humans could indeed make all the features of state-of-the-art crop formations at that time. Eleven of the twelve teams made more or less impressive formations that followed the set design. The contest was reported in most of the British newspapers and on radio and TV. Some people jumped to the conclusion that all crop circles must be hoaxes. The sceptics were pleased with the outcome, although they had been so sceptical about the competition itself and had refused to cooperate in its organization. Ridley’s team was the only one that did not attempt to follow the set design, pducing a question mark instead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the competition I took part in many interviews, in which I pointed out that although the results showed that it was possible to hoax crop circles, it did not prove that all were hoaxes. The fact that it is possible to forge a £50 note does not prove that all £50 notes are forgeries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sheldrake finishes on a different note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost everyone now agrees that most crop circles are human made. But some enthusiasts still believe that a minority are created by non-human agencies. Surprisingly, there was an article about them in the scientific journal Nature on June 10, 2010, called ‘The Crop Circles Evolves.’ The summary reads: “A growing underground art movement combines mathematics, technology, stalks and whimsy.” But even this scientifically acceptable account has not managed to expel all mystery. The details of the bent stems suggest to the author of the Nature article that “some patterns may have been sculpted using microwave generators, such as masers or magnetrons from microwave ovens.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So humans can absolutely create crop circles, and have done so many times in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there have been records of crop circles appearing long before Bower and Chorley (who, while obviously not the first crop-circle-makers, started the recent trend).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_circle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; lists claims from&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1674/1678 - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/26540-crop-circles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A woodcut&lt;/a&gt; depicts a farmer's story of a &amp;quot;mowing devil&amp;quot; who cut his field. It's not really in line with future instances, though.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1686 - Robert Plot, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext04/nhwil10.txt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a lengthy historic tome&lt;/a&gt;, discusses findings of such circles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1880 - John Rand Capron writes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iccra.org/Historical%20Research/Storm%20Effects_Nature_1880_J_Rand_Capron.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a letter to &lt;em&gt;Nature&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; about seeing crop circles.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1932 - E. C. Curwen &lt;a href=&quot;http://listofied.com/7-possible-explanations-for-crop-circles/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;photographs one&lt;/a&gt; and publishes it in &lt;em&gt;Sussex Notes and Queries&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1967 - In Duhamel, Alberta, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/ufo/002029-1200.01-e.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;crop circles appeared in a farmer's field&lt;/a&gt; and could not be explained as human activity:&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the investigator talked about the possibility of the marks being left by a wheel, it is clear in the report that the marks were more likely left by a 135-ton aircraft or spacecraft.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are obviously not the only pre-Bower-and-Chorley circles, but they are examples that could not be explained by human activity. It is true that in most cases thorough investigations were not carried out (with the possible exception of the Duhamel report), so humans could still be the culprits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to coleopterist, I saw &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/06/090615-stonehenge-tombs-crop-circles.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; National Geographic article on ancient &amp;quot;crop circles&amp;quot;. It discusses old structures in (ironically) southern England that are thought to be 6,000 years old. The structures are barrows - mass tombs where certain members of a tribe were buried. The odd thing? Only &lt;em&gt;parts&lt;/em&gt; of people were buried in barrows. This one has not yet been excavated, but its contents may be the same as that of other barrows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another interesting article on crop circles can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/20562126?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Every summer in England crop circles make the news for a few days. But journalists never really attempt to &amp;quot;solve&amp;quot; the question of who is responsible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been clear proofs that humans can easily make crop circles, and many of the early ones in England were indeed the work of humans. Evidence (i.e. the explosion in the number of circles after Bower and Chorley admitted they had  made the circles) exists to show that most of the later ones seem to be human-made, and many people have in fact admitted to making crop circles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been earlier reports involving potentially supernatural events, but investigations into them were either nonexistent or too lax to provide any conclusive information (again, with the exception of the instance in Duhamel). So yes, &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; crop circles are man-made, especially recent ones in the U.K., as you alluded to - and can be made with a variety of simple methods, as described above - but we can never know who made some of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;Warning: Large-ish file that could take some time to load.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;Meaden eventually admitted that the designs could not all be attributed to natural causes.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked over &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstor.org/stable/20562126?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; again, which deals with archaeological connections to crop circles. I found one very interesting passage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As is well known, buried archaeological features are capable of affecting growth of crops above them, especially cereals. Plants growing over a ditch, for instance, in dried conditions will have longer stems and a greater leaf area than those in the rest of the field. If there is a storm, long-stemmed plants with a lot of leaves will catch the wind and be blown over first, thereby producing patterns of archaeological (and geological) significance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article goes on to say that this is highly unlikely to produce crop circles, though it could produce smaller formations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-02-04T05:33:28.690" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26912" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26876" CreationDate="2015-03-03T04:57:48.997" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gsma.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;GSM Association&lt;/a&gt; in 2013 has published white paper, which strongly suggests that there is &lt;strong&gt;no evidence proving any reduction in crime or terrorism&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gsma.com/publicpolicy/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/GSMA_White-Paper_Mandatory-Registration-of-Prepaid-SIM-Users_32pgWEBv3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Mandatory Registration of Prepaid SIM Card Users&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/r8qaA.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpts from summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An increasing number of governments have&#xA;  recently introduced mandatory registration&#xA;  of prepaid SIM card users, primarily as a&#xA;  tool to counter terrorism and support law&#xA;  enforcement efforts. However, to date there is&#xA;  no evidence that mandatory registration leads&#xA;  to a reduction in crime.&#xA;  A number of other governments, including&#xA;  those of the United Kingdom, the Czech&#xA;  Republic, Romania and New Zealand,&#xA;  have considered mandating prepaid SIM&#xA;  registration but concluded against it.&#xA;  While these governments’ detailed policy&#xA;  assessments have not been published, reports&#xA;  have highlighted the absence of evidence —&#xA;  in terms of providing significant benefits for&#xA;  criminal investigations — as a key reason for&#xA;  rejecting this policy. In Mexico, mandatory&#xA;  SIM registration was introduced in 2009&#xA;  and repealed three years later after a policy&#xA;  assessment showed that it had not helped&#xA;  with the prevention, investigation and/or&#xA;  prosecution of associated crimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 3 of the aforementioned white paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While there is no doubt that criminals and&#xA;  terrorists use prepaid SIM cards to help stay&#xA;  anonymous and avoid easy detection, to&#xA;  date there has been no empirical evidence to&#xA;  indicate that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Mandating the registration of prepaid&#xA;  SIM users leads to a reduction in criminal&#xA;  activities; and&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The lack of any registration of prepaid SIM&#xA;  users is linked to a greater risk of criminal or&#xA;  terrorist activities.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact, a publicly available policy assessment&#xA;  report from Mexico showed that mandatory&#xA;  SIM registration—introduced there in 2009—&#xA;  had failed to help the prevention, investigation&#xA;  and/or prosecution of associated crimes. As&#xA;  a result, policymakers decided to repeal the&#xA;  regulation three years later (see case study 1).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The absence of a link between mandatory&#xA;  SIM registration and crime reduction suggests&#xA;  that criminals who are determined to remain&#xA;  anonymous will use other means to obtain&#xA;  active SIM cards or simply buy them from abroad&#xA;  and roam on their own countries’ networks.&#xA;  A number of governments, including in Canada,&#xA;  the Czech Republic, New Zealand, Romania&#xA;  and the United Kingdom have considered the&#xA;  merits of mandating prepaid SIM registration but&#xA;  subsequently concluded against introducing it.&#xA;  In the United Kingdom for example, this issue&#xA;  was considered in detail by an expert group&#xA;  of law enforcement representatives, security&#xA;  and intelligence agencies and communications&#xA;  service providers following the terrorist attack&#xA;  on London in July 2005. A confidential report&#xA;  by experts concluded that &lt;em&gt;“the compulsory&#xA;  registration of ownership of mobile telephones&#xA;  would not deliver any significant new benefits&#xA;  to the investigatory process and would dilute&#xA;  the effectiveness of current self-registration&#xA;  schemes.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the European Union, some Member States&#xA;  have adopted measures requiring SIM card&#xA;  registration, and the European Commission (EC)&#xA;  invited all Member States in 2012 to provide&#xA;  evidence of the actual or potential benefit&#xA;  of such measures. Following examination of&#xA;  the responses, Cecilia Malmström, European&#xA;  Commissioner for Home affairs noted that:&#xA;  &lt;em&gt;“At present there is no evidence, in terms of&#xA;  benefits for criminal investigation or the smooth&#xA;  functioning of the internal market, of any need&#xA;  for a common EU approach in this area.”&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Case study of Mexico mentioned above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Mexico, mandatory SIM registration was&#xA;  introduced in 2009 but repealed three&#xA;  years later after a policy assessment &#xA;  showed that it had not helped the&#xA;  prevention, investigation and prosecution of&#xA;  associated crimes. The reasons cited by the&#xA;  senate for repealing the regulation included:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(i) Statistics showing a 40 per cent increase&#xA;  in the number of extortion calls recorded&#xA;  daily and an increase of eight per cent&#xA;  in the number of kidnappings between&#xA;  2009 and 2010;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(ii) The appreciation that the policy was&#xA;  based on the misconception that&#xA;  criminals would use mobile SIM cards&#xA;  registered in their names or in the name&#xA;  of their accomplices. The report&#xA;  suggests that registering a phone not&#xA;  only fails to guarantee the accuracy of&#xA;  the user’s details but it could also lead&#xA;  to falsely accusing an innocent victim of&#xA;  identity theft;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(iii) The acknowledgement that mobile&#xA;  operators have thousands of&#xA;  distributors and agents that cannot&#xA;  always verify the accuracy of the&#xA;  information provided by users;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(iv) Lack of incentives for registered users&#xA;  to maintain the accuracy of their&#xA;  records when their details change,&#xA;  leading to outdated records;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(v) The likelihood that the policy&#xA;  incentivised criminal activity (mobile&#xA;  device theft, fraudulent registrations&#xA;  or criminals sourcing unregistered SIM&#xA;  cards from overseas to use in their&#xA;  target market); and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(vi) The risk that registered users’ personal&#xA;  information might be accessed and&#xA;  used improperly. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T04:57:48.997" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26913" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-03T05:23:55.110" Score="11" ViewCount="546" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skepticalscience.com/polar-bears-global-warming.htm&quot;&gt;Skeptical Science and many other sources&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In conclusion, the reason polar bears have been classed as threatened comes from the impacts of future climate change on the bears’ habitat. Current analysis of subpopulations where data is sufficient clearly shows that those subpopulations are mainly in decline. Further habitat degradation will increase the threats to polar bears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=susan+crockford+polar+bears&quot;&gt;Susan Crockford is frequently named&lt;/a&gt; as collecting evidence for the claim that polar bears are doing well, despite a reduction in sea ice.  Crockford is adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, Canada.  For example, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://polarbearscience.com/about-2/&quot;&gt;her blog&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://polarbearscience.com/2013/08/18/polar-bears-have-not-been-harmed-by-sea-ice-declines-in-summer-the-evidence/&quot;&gt;Polar bears have not been harmed by sea ice declines&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Polar bear numbers overall have increased, despite the appearance of a ‘stable’ global population since 2001 and significant declines in Arctic sea ice coverage in summer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These claims appear to be well-sourced with links to research, from blog posts such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://polarbearscience.com/2013/02/26/ten-good-reasons-not-to-worry-about-polar-bears/&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://polarbearscience.com/2013/08/18/polar-bears-have-not-been-harmed-by-sea-ice-declines-in-summer-the-evidence/&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;.  Blog posts themselves are, of course, not peer-reviewed, but it does appear to contain a lot of links to peer reviewed science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the claims by Susan Crockford and others make sense?  Is there substantial evidence to support the claim that polar bears are doing well despite a decline in sea ice?  Or is the evidence solid that sea ice decline does substantially theaten the survival of polar bears?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg2/WGIIAR5-Chap28_FINAL.pdf&quot;&gt;IPCC AR5 WG2, Section 28.3.2.2.2&lt;/a&gt; (PDF, 7.0 MiB, 46 pages) states that &lt;em&gt;projected extinction of polar bears is unlikely&lt;/em&gt;, so I'm not entirely sure to what extent the claims by Susan Crockford are in disagreement with scientific consensus as collected by IPCC, which is surprisingly short on polar bears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastActivityDate="2015-10-06T13:17:17.490" Title="Are polar bears doing well despite a reduction in sea ice?" Tags="|climate-change|ecology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26914" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26917" CreationDate="2015-03-03T06:04:51.600" Score="8" ViewCount="19377" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Bezmenov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yuri Bezmenov&lt;/a&gt;, was a former &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGB&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;KGB&lt;/a&gt; agent who defected to the USA, and is well known for his claims that the KGB was/is involved in an attempt to &quot;brainwash&quot; the USA through &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5It1zarINv0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ideological subversion&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia references a Windsor Public Library obituary listing dated January 7, 1993; however, I cannot find any sources that back up this claim, and I cannot find sources that document the circumstances surrounding his death.  I am thus skeptical of this claim that Yuri died in 1993, and I have heard from some that he may still be alive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone please provide evidence that documents whether he indeed did die in 1993 at the age of 54, and from what cause?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10784" LastEditorUserId="2804" LastEditDate="2015-10-18T21:16:07.367" LastActivityDate="2016-01-31T07:43:35.927" Title="Is Yuri Bezmenov still alive?" Tags="|politics|espionage|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26917" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26914" CreationDate="2015-03-03T08:05:28.617" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I have to agree that Wikipedia's source &lt;em&gt;Windor Public Library&lt;/em&gt; isn't that convincing. The only thing that Windor Public Library provided was this &lt;a href=&quot;http://projects.windsorpubliclibrary.com/digi/obits/results.php?lname=Schuman&amp;amp;fname=Tomas%20D&amp;amp;maiden=&amp;amp;spouse=&amp;amp;m1=0&amp;amp;y1=0&amp;amp;m2=0&amp;amp;y2=0&amp;amp;lim=25&amp;amp;search=Search&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;database entry&lt;/a&gt;:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rEGR1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best evidence which could be provided here is a Death Certificate, but it seems you won't find that easily online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many users have been skeptical about his death and they have expressed their thoughts &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Yuri_Bezmenov&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/32405750/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111029211430AAkiA4H&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found an &lt;a href=&quot;http://search.proquest.com/docview/254023823?accountid=8555&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; published on  06 Jan 1993, by The Windsor Star, a newspaper, which seems seem to be pretty reputable, it has been published on &quot;&lt;strong&gt;proquest.com&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. It has an abstract, can be cited and used in research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you can't access the article (due to country restriction or sign up/login) I have exported it to my GDrive &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dmym4cK6ABRU5lNlZpYVlGVEE/view?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article explicitly mentions that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 52-year-old Russian propaganda expert - who recently taught at the&#xA;  University of Windsor - &lt;strong&gt;died Tuesday at Grace Hospital of a massive&#xA;  heart attack following a life-long fight with alcoholism&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article ended without mentioning an exact date of death:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mr. Schuman moved to Windsor following his divorce in 1989&lt;/strong&gt; and began&#xA;  teaching public relations at the University of Windsor two years&#xA;  later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Just before Christmas, he was in Montreal for a brief visit with his&#xA;  ex-wife Tess and their two children, 14-year-old Tanya and 10-year-old&#xA;  Jonathan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He died two weeks later.&lt;/strong&gt; The funeral is scheduled for Friday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But we can estimate: So, 1989 + 2 years == 1991 or 1992 which seem pretty close to the time of death date by Window Public Library: Jan 7, 1993.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, is that enough to prove that he died? Not necessarily, you have to remain skeptical;  even if I provide you with a death certificate, it is well known that the guy has been a KBG spy with a fake name, which makes a faked death possible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-10-26T17:53:03.400" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T17:53:03.400" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26918" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26919" CreationDate="2015-03-03T08:38:17.260" Score="109" ViewCount="31100" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://uk.businessinsider.com/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2?r=U&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; claims that no ancient language anywhere in the world had the word for &quot;blue&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, that for instance Homer described the sea as &quot;wine-dark&quot;, and that the color blue has only appeared more recently in languages, more or less at the same time all-over the world. But doesn't bother to say us &lt;em&gt;when&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also claim that &lt;strong&gt;the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himba_people&quot;&gt;Himba people&lt;/a&gt; in Namibia cannot distinguish blue from green, but can somehow see some shades of green we cannot&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, the first claim seems like completely insane, may have a small seed of truth but overall is made-up: I really don't think it's possible for all the population on Earth to suddenly have the same genetic change at the same moment, especially if it's not even something that would give you a great advantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second claim may be true: some regional genetic difference is entirely possible… but since the article on wikipedia doesn't explicitly mention such a thing, I'm not sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried googling but unsurprisingly I find a whole bunch of articles about the dressgate, and nothing else.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone shed some light on this? Specifically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is the first claim as fake as it sounds?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;if it contains some seed of truth, which is it?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;what about the second claim?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: I've found in an Italian-Latin dictionary the word &quot;caeruleum&quot; for &quot;blue&quot;, but it isn't useful, since as far as I know it could have been medieval Latin (though I doubt it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4350" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-03-03T16:14:21.253" LastActivityDate="2015-07-25T11:12:51.370" Title="Could people perceive the color blue in ancient times?" Tags="|physiology|neurology|perception|colors|linguistics|" AnswerCount="8" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26918" CreationDate="2015-03-03T10:24:04.250" Score="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;If Homer talks about the dark-wine sea, it seems he also talks about the &quot;blue eyebrows of Poseidon&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.de/books?id=advUAAAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA56&amp;amp;lpg=PA56&amp;amp;dq=poseidon%20blue%20eyebrows&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=ukwqMjh7o1&amp;amp;sig=o3f-Xp345AxSSi0zVZoXpgMcFb0&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=1In1VILSOYT2UJTXgPgO&amp;amp;ved=0CEkQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=poseidon%20blue%20eyebrows&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;You can read here about Homer's colorful descriptions&lt;/a&gt; that helped orators remember the verses of his poems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cyan&quot;&gt;κυανό&lt;/a&gt; is known to be &quot;blue&quot; for ancient greeks and became &quot;cyan&quot; in english.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.de/books?id=nY-5r76h7SwC&amp;amp;pg=PA466&amp;amp;lpg=PA466&amp;amp;dq=%CE%BA%CF%85%CE%B1%CE%BD%CF%8C%20homer&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=nzRLdxxrER&amp;amp;sig=mTwEpo2KgRqSeVaaqyjC9jdz77I&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=lIr1VJbPO8PyUvmzgogH&amp;amp;ved=0CCEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%CE%BA%CF%85%CE%B1%CE%BD%CF%8C%20homer&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;this book about Homer writing&lt;/a&gt;, κυανό entry represents &quot;smalt, blue glass&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems that the ancient greeks did know the blue color. So a lot of this article does not make sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;( as for Latin which came later, caeruleum is used in Julius Caeasar's Gallic Wars to describe the face painted enemy. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/jcsr/dbg5.htm&quot;&gt;5:14&lt;/a&gt; &quot;a bluish color&quot;. ) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="417" LastEditorUserId="417" LastEditDate="2015-03-03T13:49:13.353" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T13:49:13.353" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26920" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26918" CreationDate="2015-03-03T10:26:21.293" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found the following words in the Latin dictionary at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/&quot;&gt;http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;caesĭtĭus (-cĭus ), a, um, adj. id., I. [select] bluish, dark blue:&#xA;  “linteolum,” Plaut. Ep 2, 2, 46; cf. Doed. Syn. III. p. 17.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;cūmātĭlis (cȳm- ), e, adj. from κῦμα, with the Lat. ending ilis. I.&#xA;  Adj., of the waves: “deus,” i. e. Neptune, Commod. 10, 1.— B. Esp.,&#xA;  sea-colored, water-colored, blue: colos, Titin. ap. Non. p. 548, 11&#xA;  (Com. Rel. v. 114 Rib.).— II. Subst.: cūmātĭle , is, n., a bluish&#xA;  garment, Plaut. Ep. 2, 2, 49.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indĭcus , a, um, adj. India, I.of India, Indian: “elephanti,” Ter.&#xA;  Eun. 3, 1, 23: “pecudes,” Mart. 5, 37, 5: “cornu,” i. e. ivory, id. 1,&#xA;  73, 4: “aqua,” Ov. P. 1, 5, 80: “margarita,” Petr. 55. — Subst.:&#xA;  Indĭcum , i, n., indigo, a blue pigment for dyeing and painting, Plin.&#xA;  33, 13, 67, § 163; 35, 6, 26, § 40.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;venetus adj., sea-colored, of a marine blue: cucullus, Iu.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=caeruleum&amp;amp;la=la#lexicon&quot;&gt;definition for caeruleum&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I. Lit., dark-colored, dark blue, dark green, cerulean, azure, κυάνεος; poet. epithet of the sky, of the sea, and other similar objects (as dark, opp. albus and marmoreus color, Lucr. 2, 771 sq., and syn. with ater, Verg. A. 3, 64; v. under II. A.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... and later on says it doesn't just mean of the sky&quot; and &quot;of the sea&quot; but is also used for other blue objects ... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;D. Of other darkblue objects: “omnes se Britanni vitro inficiunt, quod caeruleum efficit colorem, atque hoc horridiores sunt in pugnā aspectu,” Caes. B. G. 5, 14: “an si caeruleo quaedam sua tempora fuco Tinxerit. idcirco caerula forma bona'st?” Prop. 2, 18, 31 sq. (3, 11, 9 sq.); Mart. 11, 53, 1: “olearum plaga,” Lucr. 5, 1372; draco. Ov. M. 12, 13' angues, Verg. G. 4, 482; “colla,” id. A. 2, 381: “serpens,” Ov. M. 3, 38: “guttae (serpentis),” id. ib. 4, 578: vestis. Juv. 2. 97: “vexillum,” Suet. Aug. 25: “flos (heliotropi),” Plin. 22, 21, 29, § 57: “oculi (Germanorum),” Tac. G. 4; hence Germania pubes, Hor. Epod. 16, 7.—Hence, subst.: caerŭlĕum , i, n., a blue color, steel-color, both natural and artificial, Plin. 33, 13, 57, § 161 sq.; 35, 6, 28, § 47; Vitr. 7, 111; 9, 1.—&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... (blue objects such as for example steel, and that first bit about the British is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Anthem_of_the_Ancient_Britons&quot;&gt;presumably about woad&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of caeruleum is attributed to Caesar, Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, and Pliny, i.e. classical and not just medieval Latin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T10:26:21.293" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26921" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26918" CreationDate="2015-03-03T11:00:42.707" Score="89" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first claim is based on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Color_Terms:_Their_Universality_and_Evolution&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;research of Berlin and Kay &quot;Basic Color Terms&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, which posits the hypothesis that languages evolve colour terms in the following order, and therefore that ancient languages did not possess separate terms for blue and green:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stage I: Dark-cool and light-warm &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stage II: Red&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stage III: Either green or yellow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stage IV: Both green and yellow&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stage V: Blue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stage VI: Brown&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Stage VII: Purple, pink, orange, or gray&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple counterexamples were found after the original paper was published (and many of them have been posted here), and the authors have relaxed these constraints to be non-absolute, but more towards a general path languages evolve in. The claim as written in the article that no ancient language had the word &quot;blue&quot; is incorrect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I performed a literature review on the Himba experiment when I saw that article for the first time last week, and it was shown &lt;a href=&quot;https://cdn.fbsbx.com/hphotos-xpf1/v/t59.2708-21/11031788_643988322371672_512588878_n.pdf/PSY_davidoff-robertson-dev-color-categories_2002.pdf?oh=edbe2c3abf99dac50d95f1d1d99bcc6a&amp;amp;oe=54F806D2&amp;amp;dl=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in this paper&lt;/a&gt; that the Himba could in fact distinguish the two colours as shown in the video, because their 5-term colour vocabulary had a colour boundary straddling the two shades of green. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors specifically attempted to reduce the conflating effect of genetic differences as a factor by measuring the ability to distinguish shades with respect to age of the children. Children of equal age (and therefore linguistic ability) were tested, and the differences between English and Himba speakers increased with age, therefore making it less likely that genetics were at play here. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/QxhoJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="22266" LastEditDate="2015-03-05T20:26:56.257" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T20:26:56.257" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26922" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26918" CreationDate="2015-03-03T11:02:17.063" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Concerning the second claim, the differences seem to be cultural/linguistic, not genetic according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/monitor/feb05/hues.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; from the American Psychological Association:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study tracked color naming, comprehension and memory in two populations over three years. Researchers led by Debi Roberson, PhD, of the University of Essex, compared young English children with children of the seminomadic, cattle-herding Himba tribe in northern Namibia, a country on Africa's southwest coast. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Roberson and her colleagues first wanted to test two opposed hypotheses of color categorization--universalist (the idea that we categorize and remember colors the same way around the world, in keeping with the structure of our visual system) versus relativist (the idea that color perception depends upon culture and language). They did this by observing how children acquired color categories over time in two different languages and cultures. Second, the researchers hoped to systematically compare how the two groups of children learned by tracking over time how they mentally organized color as well as how they named and comprehended color terms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Across cultures, the children acquired color terms the same way: They gradually and with some effort moved from an uncategorized organization of color, based on a continuum of perceptual similarity, to structured categories that varied across languages and cultures. Over time, language wielded increasing influence on how children categorized and remembered colors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a good chance that the first claim can be explained by the same phenomenon: what colors we &amp;quot;perceive&amp;quot; depends apparently a lot on what colors we have words for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14002" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T13:57:40.443" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26923" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26918" CreationDate="2015-03-03T13:13:36.890" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ancient Hebrew has the word &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D7%AA%D7%9B%D7%9C%D7%AA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;תכלת&lt;/a&gt; for blue (or more specifically, azure), as attested to in the Bible:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/9943#v=38&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Numbers 15:38&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Speak to the children of Israel and you shall say to them that they shall make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments, throughout their generations, and they shall affix a thread of &lt;strong&gt;sky blue [wool]&lt;/strong&gt; on the fringe of each corner.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;דַּבֵּר אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם וְעָשׂוּ לָהֶם צִיצִת עַל כַּנְפֵי בִגְדֵיהֶם לְדֹרֹתָם וְנָתְנוּ עַל צִיצִת הַכָּנָף פְּתִיל &lt;strong&gt;תְּכֵלֶת&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/9889#v=6&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Exodus 28:6&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and they shall make the ephod of gold, &lt;strong&gt;blue&lt;/strong&gt;, purple, and crimson wool, and twisted fine linen, the work of a master weaver.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;וְעָשׂוּ אֶת הָאֵפֹד זָהָב &lt;strong&gt;תְּכֵלֶת&lt;/strong&gt; וְאַרְגָּמָן תּוֹלַעַת שָׁנִי וְשֵׁשׁ מָשְׁזָר מַעֲשֵׂה חשֵׁב:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So we see that ancient people certainly could perceive the color blue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24692" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T13:13:36.890" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26925" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26918" CreationDate="2015-03-03T15:25:41.070" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;This addresses the second claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 4 types of photoreceptive neurons in your eye. One is the rod, which is sensitive to green but creates a black/white percept (for &quot;scotopic&quot; or night-adjusted vision) and the other 3 are cones with various types of rhodopsin, a receptor that is sensitive to photons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a normal, unmutated (non-colorblind) person, the 3 types of rhodopsin are attuned to the colors red, green, and blue. The brain synthesizes various patterns of activation of these neurons to create percepts of other colors, such as the &quot;non-real&quot; color magenta, which corresponds to no single light wavelength. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of other steps between the initial capturing of a photon and the brain telling you &quot;I see a specific color&quot;, and of course these could be mutated as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That all goes to say that normal humans will definitely be able to see the color blue. Mutation of the photoreceptors in the eye will actually cause colors that are not blue (or green or some other color, depending on the mutation) to be perceived as blue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the claim that the Himba people cannot distinguish between blue and green is reasonable. The simplest explanation would be that they have the same/similar rhodopsin in both what are normally blue-attuned and green-attuned cones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim that they can see additional shades of green also makes sense, but would require a mutation farther down the visual pathway. If the mutation were only in the cones, the labeled-line theory would state only that blue and green would be indistinguishable (or would appear as each other arbitrarily). Figuring out the exact mutation that could increase the number of color percepts would be a lot more difficult. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are discs of neural tissue that are subdivided into wedges in the visual cortex. Broadly speaking, the number of wedges is equivalent to the number of colors that can be perceived. A mutation here could theoretically add, subtract, or change perception of colors. The neural circuitry is a little too high-order for me to comment on much more specifically.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to comment on neuroplasticity and its role in color perception.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neuroplasticity can certainly affect how colors are perceived by the brain. Again, because the circuitry is so incredibly convergent and/or divergent as well as high order the exact effects are not well understood. However, because rhodopsin is attuned via the chemical properties of its constituent parts, the ability to create a neural response to a certain color of light is &quot;hard wired&quot;. Because different types of rhodopsin are connected via separate labeled lines to the brain, these stimuli are also intrinsically distinguishable from each other. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cacace, Anthony T. &quot;Expanding the biological basis of tinnitus: crossmodal origins and the role of neuroplasticity.&quot; Hearing research 175.1 (2003): 112-132.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Neuroplasticity (reorganization or re-mapping) appears to be a normal consequence of the brain’s response to injury (Chen et al., 2002). However, it is not always possible to predict a priori whether injury-induced plasticity will be compensatory or pathologic. Plastic changes may be limited to modality specific brain areas and/or crossmodal effects may be involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is generally acknowledged that neuroplasticity is most robust in early stages of development, but continues throughout the life span. In the neonatal period, evidence that functional crossmodal circuits can be induced experimentally between central visual and central auditory areas has been used as evidence that one sensory system may be substituted for another&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Salzmann, Matthias F. Valverde, et al. &quot;Color blobs in cortical areas V1 and V2 of the new world monkey Callithrix jacchus, revealed by non-differential optical imaging.&quot; The Journal of Neuroscience 32.23 (2012): 7881-7894.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In each of the three monkeys (M1, M2, M3) used for this study, visual stimulation with red/green flicker of a low temporal frequency of 1.5 Hz resulted in intrinsic signal maps showing a patchy columnar-like distribution of signal peaks in primary and secondary visual areas (Fig. 2A,C,E). The patches were clearly segregated from neighboring patches by zones of low intrinsic signal responses indicating low stimulus specificity. Thus, these patterns showed the typical appearance of functional color domain patterns reported in previous studies in the macaque monkey (Lu and Roe, 2008). In contrast, black/white flicker presented to the same animals resulted in maps without obvious pattern formation (Fig. 2B,D,F). However, we found faint spots of increased stimulus responses in area V2 of cases M1 and M3 that roughly matched with patches seen in the red/green condition maps (see arrows). This colocalization is consistent with results reported for the macaque monkey that color and luminance stimuli activate the same functional regions in V2 (Roe et al., 2005a).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reference: &lt;a href=&quot;http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s2/chapter14.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://neuroscience.uth.tmc.edu/s2/chapter14.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Color Vision&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Color vision is the ability to detect differences in the wavelengths of light is called color vision. Clinically it may be tested with an Ishihara chart: a chart with spots of different colors that are spatially organized to form numbers that differ for ``normal” and color-blind eyes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As mentioned above, the human has a trichromatic visual system, whereby visible colors can be created by a mixture of red, green and blue lights. The most common form of color blindness results in a confusion of red and green shades (i.e., red-green color blindness). Most cases of color blindness result from an absent or defective gene responsible for producing the red or green photopigment (protanopia, the lack of red; and deuteranopia, the lack of green). As these genes are located on the X chromosome, color blindness is more common in males than in females.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Rods and Cones&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rods are responsible for the initiation of the scotopic visual process. &#xA;  Rods contain the photopigment rhodopsin, which breaks down when exposed to a wide bandwidth of light (i.e., it is achromatic). &#xA;  Rhodopsin is also more sensitive to light and reacts at lower light levels than the color sensitive (chromatic) cone pigments. &#xA;  have longer outer segments, more outer segment disks and, consequently, contain more photopigment. &#xA;  are more sensitive to light and function at scotopic (low) levels of illumination. &#xA;  dominate in the peripheral retina (Figure 14.21A), which is color insensitive, has poor acuity (Figure 14.21B), but is sensitive to low levels of illumination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cones are responsible for the initiation of the photopic visual process. Cones contain photopigments that breakdown in the presence of a limited bandwidth of light (i.e., cone photopigments are chromatic). &#xA;  are color sensitive. &#xA;  are less sensitive to light and require high (daylight) illumination levels. &#xA;  are concentrated in the fovea (Figure 14.21A) &#xA;  in the fovea have image of the central visual field projected on them. &#xA;  in the fovea are responsible for photopic, light-adapted vision (i.e., high visual acuity and color vision) in the central visual field (Figure 14.21B)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Color perception in the visual cortex&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fss.uu.nl/psn/web/people/personal/dumoulin/PDFs/Wandell-Encyclopedia-2009.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.fss.uu.nl/psn/web/people/personal/dumoulin/PDFs/Wandell-Encyclopedia-2009.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The basis for the relationship between functional&#xA;  specialization and perceptual experience originated in&#xA;  neurological findings: damage to specific extrastriate&#xA;  regions in ventral cortex leads to specific visual disabilities.&#xA;  Four cortical regions in which damage can&#xA;  produce a specific perceptual deficit are illustrated in&#xA;  Figure 8. The neurological deficits illustrated here are&#xA;  inability to recognize faces and interpret facial&#xA;  expressions (prosopagnosia or face blindness), loss&#xA;  of color vision of cerebral origin (cerebral achromatopsia),&#xA;  loss of motion perception (akinetopsia), and&#xA;  loss of the ability to read whole words (alexia). The&#xA;  neurological literature has focused on acquired forms&#xA;  of these deficits, but prosopagnosia also exists in a&#xA;  congenital (developmental) form; it is possible that&#xA;  the other dysfunctions may be discovered in developmental&#xA;  form as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Figure 8. Regions of ventral visual cortex associated with specific&#xA;  neurological deficits. Regions implicated in specific visual&#xA;  impairments are indicated: the inability to recognize faces (prosopagnosia;&#xA;  red), to detect motion (akinetopsia; blue), to read words&#xA;  (alexia), and color blindness (achromatiopsia; green). fMRI measurements&#xA;  aimed at isolating these functions typically yield strong&#xA;  activations at these corresponding cortical regions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Labled-line theory&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfitzake/Lectures/DMED/SensoryPhysiology/GeneralPrinciples/CodingTheories.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfitzake/Lectures/DMED/SensoryPhysiology/GeneralPrinciples/CodingTheories.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The brain associates a specific modality (the adequate stimulus) with a signal coming from a specific receptor e.g., &quot;light&quot; is detected by the photoreceptors, even if the stimulus is pressure on the eye&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the cortex , perception is localized by modality, resulting in specific cortical areas for each sensation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21542" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-21T01:57:33.220" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T01:57:33.220" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26927" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26907" CreationDate="2015-03-03T16:38:25.237" Score="35" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/947923/jewish/Kiddush-HaChodesh-Chapter-Six.htm#3&quot;&gt;Maimonidies (12th Century) puts it at 29.530594.&lt;/a&gt; His source is the Talmud (Bavli RH 25a) (~7th century quoting a rabbi from the 2nd century).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For the curious the precise number given is 29 days, 12 hours, and 793/1080 of an hour.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, lunar cycles can be calculated pretty accurately even in ancient times by counting between total solar eclipses. Consider (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_eclipses_in_antiquity&quot;&gt;from here&lt;/a&gt;) the two solar eclipses from Portugal on July 19, 418 and December 23, 447. As long as someone remembered that there were 364 lunar months between them, they could easily calculate a lunar month length of 29.53021 (accurate to 3 decimal places). With a longer gap between eclipses and more accuracy of when during the day it occurred, even more places can be calculated. This is certainly something the Greeks were capable of doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(FWIW Maimonidies himself states that he got all his numbers from the Greeks (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/947935&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Laws of New Moons&lt;/em&gt; 17:24&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sacred-texts.com/jud/gfp/gfp150.htm&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Guide to the Perplexed&lt;/em&gt; 3:14&lt;/a&gt;)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6962" LastActivityDate="2015-03-03T16:38:25.237" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26936" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10622" CreationDate="2015-03-04T10:48:44.190" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;It helps to think about it like laundry. In a washing machine one might assume dirt, oil, and debris comes loose through agitation alone. However, wouldn't the clothing act like a thick, giant filter keeping the oil, dirt, and debris on clothing when the water is drained? If not, wouldn't running a a single rinse cycle clean your clothes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First you have to understand how soap works. To accomplish that you need to understand what hydrophyllic and hydrophobic compounds are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nearly all compounds fall into one of two categories: hydrophilic ('water-loving') and hydrophobic ('water-hating'). Water and anything that will mix with water are hydrophilic. Oil and anything that will mix with oil are hydrophobic. When water and oil are mixed they separate. Hydrophilic and hydrophobic compounds just don't mix.&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edinformatics.com/interactive_molecules/soap.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;(What is Soap)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The cleansing action of soap is determined by its polar and non-polar structures in conjunction with an application of solubility principles. The long hydrocarbon chain is non-polar and hydrophobic (repelled by water). The &amp;quot;salt&amp;quot; end of the soap molecule is ionic and hydrophilic (water soluble).&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edinformatics.com/interactive_molecules/soap.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;(What is Soap)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When grease or oil (non-polar hydrocarbons) are mixed with a soap- water solution, the soap molecules work as a bridge between polar water molecules and non-polar oil molecules. Since soap molecules have both properties of non-polar and polar molecules the soap can act as an emulsifier. An emulsifier is capable of dispersing one liquid into another immiscible liquid. This means that while oil (which attracts dirt) doesn't naturally mix with water, soap can suspend oil/dirt in such a way that it can be removed. The soap will form micelles (see below) and trap the fats within the micelle. Since the micelle is soluble in water, it can easily be washed away. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edinformatics.com/interactive_molecules/soap.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;(What is Soap)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The purpose of cleaning dishes is to remove debris, sugars, salt, oils, protiens and fats which would otherwise serve as a medium for bacterial growth. Soap is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://sci-toys.com/ingredients/detergents.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;surfacant&lt;/a&gt; and attaches to the water. So, as @Anno2001 mentioned in his comment without knowing the reason, the action that allows dirty soap mixed with water to slide off an object via gravity is due to polarity,and the hydrophyllic / hyrophobic properties of soap and water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, technically no, it isn't unhealthy. Even if detergent with known toxic chemicals were used, it still wouldn't adhere to the surface and be consumed later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bringing it back to the washing machine analogy, a measure is given for the proper amount of detergent to use. The same knowledge applies to dish soap.  However, common sense needs to be applied, since soap to water ratios or instructions aren't on given for dish soap.* Experience and tactility tells us when we've used too much soap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This fact can be peer-reviewed and replicated by enough people using a search engine &amp;quot;how to use dish soap&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;what are the instructions for dish soap.&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25242" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T10:48:44.190" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-04T11:46:41.723" Score="10" ViewCount="718" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/singapore-is-the-most-expensive-city-in-the-world/story-e6frfq80-1227248332865&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, Singapore is now the most expensive city in the world &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can that be true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I haven't been to Singapore for about 10 years but last time I was there, whilst it wasn't third world prices but it wasn't super expensive either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, I have recently been to Paris and Hong Kong which are both in the top 10 and I would actually consider them quite cheap. Definitely been to many other cities that are more expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, I live in Sydney and petrol is definitely not $1.83/ltr and a $30 bottle of wine would be some fairly fancy stuff - you could easily get a decent bottle for under $15.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the article, the claim comes from the Economist (although the actual research is behind a paywall). Granted all I've got is really experience as a tourist, is there any truth to this article at all?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25250" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:40:22.453" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:40:22.453" Title="Is Singapore the most expensive city in the world?" Tags="|economics|singapore|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26940" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-04T15:16:33.050" Score="2" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've run into the statement, usually on pet forums, that you shouldn't feed peanut butter to dogs or small rodents like hamsters or rats  because it's a choking hazard (I've also heard long-term health claims, but I don't want to address that here). However, I've been baiting mouse and rat traps with peanut butter for years. It's very common to find traps with bait missing the next day, but I've never seen an animal dead next to the trap who may have choked to death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any verified cases of animals choking on peanut butter, whether they live or die from the experience? Or better, any statistics on how likely it is to happen vs times the animal eats peanut butter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23591" LastActivityDate="2015-03-04T15:16:33.050" Title="Is peanut butter a choking hazard for animals?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26942" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-04T18:27:23.823" Score="6" ViewCount="5955" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few Muslim friends claimed that putting your head to the ground like what you would do during Muslim prayers helps you by discharging your head from positive electromagnetic charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally have very weak knowledge when it comes to the field of physics and I was curious to know if this claim is correct or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our body receives a huge amount of electromagnetic waves daily from electrical equipment which have become indispensable part of our lives. These also include equipment such as street lights over which we have no control. As result we are charged with electromagnetic waves round the clock causing problems such as headache, feeling of uncomfortable, laziness and at times pain. The question is how we overcome this inevitable modern day problem. A non Muslim scientist in Europe who had done extensive research into this issue concluded that the best way to remove the positive electromagneticcharge which hurts the body is by placing the forehead on the ground. This helps discharge the harmful positive electromagnetic charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In fact this is somewhat similar to the grounding of the buildings where any positive electromagnetic signals such as thunder discharged through the ground. According to this research and findings the best way to put the forehead on the ground is by positioning to the centre of the earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://archives.dailynews.lk/2010/12/17/fea50.asp&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22260" LastActivityDate="2016-04-15T15:40:38.507" Title="Does putting our head to the ground remove &quot;positive electromagnetic charges&quot;?" Tags="|physics|islam|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26947" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-05T01:31:30.377" Score="8" ViewCount="1130" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_games&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;According to Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, Tetris by Electronic Arts is the best selling video game ever made.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With 100 million downloads, it sold 17.46 million copies more than the next best selling game, Wii Sports on the Nintendo Wii, which sold 82.54 million copies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2014-04-08-tetris-now-at-425-million-paid-mobile-downloads&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a news article&lt;/a&gt; that raises the sale count to 425 million copies, which would mean that Tetris sold five times more copies than the next best selling video game.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Android store only shows 10 million downloads, and my question is simply &lt;strong&gt;whether the claim of 100 million sales is plausible&lt;/strong&gt; because Android is the most popular mobile platform, and so would logically account for the majority of the sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are clearly other factors to consider, such as sales of Tetris variants with different &quot;power ups&quot;, as well as all the other mobile platforms that it was released on. However, if the claim is real, then these extra versions must make up the missing 90% of the 100 million sales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/e2frq.png&quot; alt=&quot;Tetris on the Google Play Store&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user25258" LastEditorDisplayName="user25258" LastEditDate="2015-03-07T13:15:07.547" LastActivityDate="2020-05-12T19:08:20.870" Title="Is Tetris by Electronic Arts the best selling video game on mobile?" Tags="|mobile-phones|marketing|software|videogames|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26937" CreationDate="2015-03-05T05:27:46.187" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr No, this is only true when restricted to expatriates&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is important to look at what exactly the report looks at. In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/more-singapore-stories/story/singapore-slider-clarke-quay-20141231&quot;&gt;summary to the report&lt;/a&gt;, they state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The&#xA;  Worldwide Cost of Living survey&#xA;  enables human resources line managers and expatriate&#xA;  executives to compare the cost of living in 140 cities in 93 countries and calculate fair compensation&#xA;  policies for relocating employees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The survey gathers detailed information on the cost of more than 160 items-from food, toiletries and&#xA;  clothing to domestic help, transport and utility bills--in every city. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This says two things: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The report is aimed at prices for relocating expatriates. The prices might be different for locals or permanent residents. In the case of Singapore for instance, a big part of the population lives in heavily subsidised &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore&quot;&gt;public housing&lt;/a&gt;, which is not easily available for foreigners. Of course that is a very bad example, as the index of The Economist does not include housing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The index is based on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://help.worldwidecostofliving.com/AbouttheEIUWorldwideCostofLivingsurvey/Howisthecostoflivingindexcalculated.aspx&quot;&gt;list of items&lt;/a&gt; purchased in every country. This again might be biased, as this assumes a very simplistic argument, that people will use the same goods everywhere on the world. In the case of Singapore for instance, driving is indeed very expensive, but public transport is widely available and used and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.priceoftravel.com/595/public-transportation-prices-in-80-worldwide-cities/&quot;&gt;not very expensive at all&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So while it is probably fair to say, that Singapore is the most expensive city in the world for expatriates buying items corresponding to the index, the report does not let us conclude that it is the most expensive city for the general population. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While cost of living is a difficult thing to define and measure, there are other efforts to compare it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Numbeo has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/&quot;&gt;crowd-sourced index of prices&lt;/a&gt;, which puts Singapore way beyond the most expensive country (Switzerland), by more than 30%, even considering accommodation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/content/big-mac-index&quot;&gt;Big-Mac index&lt;/a&gt; (not to be taken too seriously though), equally issued by The Economist puts Singapore even lower.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Another collaborative project &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/index&quot;&gt;Expatistan&lt;/a&gt; puts Singapore on the 7th rank.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also note that most comparisons neglect &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates&quot;&gt;taxes&lt;/a&gt;, which are lower in Singapore (maximum 20%) than for instance in Norway (up to almost 50%).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, it is safe to conclude that Singapore is indeed an expensive place to live but by most standards not the most expensive one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16700" LastActivityDate="2015-03-05T05:27:46.187" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26953" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-05T23:59:28.380" Score="14" ViewCount="844" Body="&lt;p&gt;Newspapers have recently reported that research shows that Global Warming can now be assigned as a major contributor to the ongoing conflict in Syria. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/climate-change-key-in-syrian-conflict--and-it-will-trigger-more-war-in-future-10081163.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Independent&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Climate change was a key driver of the Syrian uprising, according to research which warns that global warming is likely to unleash more wars in the coming decades, with Eastern Mediterranean countries such as Jordan and Lebanon particularly at risk...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...the Syria conflict is the first war that scientists have explicitly linked to climate change. Researchers say that global warming intensified the region’s worst-ever drought, pushing the country into civil war by destroying agriculture and forcing an exodus to cities already straining from poverty, an influx of refugees from war-torn Iraq next door and poor government, the report finds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mainstream press seem convinced the link exists and similar stories have appeared in most newspapers.  How confident can we be that the Syrian conflict was exacerbated by climate change as the media seem to claim? Is the science solid and is the newspaper interpretation of it sound?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T06:46:18.160" Title="Did global warming exacerbate the Syrian conflict?" Tags="|climate-change|war|syria|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26959" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26918" CreationDate="2015-03-06T16:48:40.250" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lapis lazuli is a blue semi-precious stone that was mined in Mesopotamia in ancient times as early as the 7th millenium BC, see  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=P_Ixuott4doC&amp;amp;pg=PA86&amp;amp;dq=Lapis+lazuli+++mines+in+the+Badakhshan&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=sW6_TvWKBIKr8AOTn623BA&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=2&amp;amp;sqi=2&amp;amp;ved=0CDkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Lapis%20lazuli%20%20%20mines%20in%20the%20Badakhshan&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=P_Ixuott4doC&amp;amp;pg=PA86&amp;amp;dq=Lapis+lazuli+++mines+in+the+Badakhshan&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=sW6_TvWKBIKr8AOTn623BA&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=2&amp;amp;sqi=2&amp;amp;ved=0CDkQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Lapis%20lazuli%20%20%20mines%20in%20the%20Badakhshan&amp;amp;f=false&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lapis beads are found at neolithic burials and on the eyebrows of the funeral mask of Tutankhamun. From the middle ages, powdered lapis lazuli called &quot;ultramarine&quot; was imported to Europe for use by artists such as Vermeer who used it in paintings such as &quot;Girl with a Pearl Earring&quot; (1665). The Wikipedia article &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapis_lazuli&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapis_lazuli&lt;/a&gt; shows enough examples of artworks modern and ancient to convince me that people have always prized this blue pigment, implying they must have perceived its colour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25281" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T16:48:40.250" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26962" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1954" CreationDate="2015-03-06T20:56:12.760" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to Larian LaQuella’s answer, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797611427045&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this recent study&lt;/a&gt;¹ investigated the impact of the a country’s religiosity on the psychological benefits of being religious. In brief, they used data gathered from an online-dating site and investigated the correlations between social self-esteem or psychological adjustment on the one hand and religiosity on the other hand in some European countries. They mainly found positive correlations but these in turn were correlated with the religiosity of the respective country, with the correlations being very low or non-existant, e.g., in Sweden. They conclude:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall, believers claimed greater social self-esteem and&#xA;  psychological adjustment than nonbelievers did. However,&#xA;  culture qualified this effect. Believers enjoyed psychological&#xA;  benefits in countries that tended to value religiosity, but did&#xA;  not differ from nonbelievers in countries that did not tend to&#xA;  value religiosity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10943-013-9739-5&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Another study&lt;/a&gt;² reports that it failed to replicate this effect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Analysis of data from the European Social Survey revealed no significant interactions between country-level religiosity and individual religiosity in predicting psychological well-being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately I do not have access to this paper to provide further details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&#xA;¹ Gebauer et al., &lt;em&gt;Psychological Science&lt;/em&gt; 23.2 (2012): 158–160.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;² Pirutinsky, &lt;em&gt;Journal of Religion and Health&lt;/em&gt; 52.3 (2013): 782–784.&#xA;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16889" LastActivityDate="2015-03-06T20:56:12.760" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26963" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8135" CreationDate="2015-03-06T22:18:39.800" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Personal computers are possibly one of the most empowering tool humanity has ever created. They're tools of communication, creativity, and they can be shaped by the user.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, of course they &quot;computers&quot; come with various negative effects. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18064965&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;One negative effect is affecting your eyesight.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Computer users (including me) have reported many eyesight problems like &lt;strong&gt;blurred vision&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;redness in the eyes&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;fatigue&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;eye strain&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;dry eyes&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;irritated eyes&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;double vision&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;vertigo/dizziness&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;polyopia&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;difficulty refocusing the eyes&lt;/strong&gt; resulting from computer display.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The medical community had to create a term for all those eyesight problems, which is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Computer vision syndrome (CVS) &lt;/h1&gt; &#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is defined by the American Optometric Association as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the complex of eye and vision problems related to near work which are experienced during, or related to, computer use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt; Who gets effected by CVS? &lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Somewhere between &lt;strong&gt;50%&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;90%&lt;/strong&gt; of the people who spend three hours or more a day at a computer as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21197801&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_for_Occupational_Safety_and_Health&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a total of 795 students, aged between 18 and 25 years, from five universities in Malaysia filled a &lt;a href=&quot;http://nepjol.info/index.php/NEPJOPH/article/view/8707&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;questionnaire survey study regarding&lt;/a&gt; the duration of daily continuous use of computer, symptoms of CVS,... &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ninety percent&lt;/strong&gt; of university students in Malaysia experienced symptoms related to CVS, which was seen more often in those who used computer for more than 2 hours continuously per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt; Does it affect children too? &lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been reported by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2776336/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;National Center for Biotechnology Information&lt;/a&gt; that children get affected by it. The study reported that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Children can experience many of the same symptoms related to computer&#xA;  use as by adults. Extensive viewing of the computer screen can lead to&#xA;  eye discomfort, fatigue, blurred vision and headaches, dry eyes and&#xA;  other symptoms of eyestrain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been mentioned also here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18064965&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Barar A, Apatachioaie ID, Apatachioaie C, Marceanu-Brasov L.&#xA;  Ophthalmologist and computer vision syndrome. Oftalmologia.&#xA;  2007;51:104–109.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17595478&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bali J, Navίn N, Thakur BR. Computer vision syndrome: a study of the&#xA;  knowledge, attitudes and practices in Indian ophthalmologists. Indian&#xA;  J Ophthalmol. 2007;55:289–294.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt; Is CVS Permanent? &lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently it &lt;strong&gt;seems&lt;/strong&gt; that there is no clinical evidence linking computer use results to permanent vision problems. So, it is unlikely that the use of computers causes permanent changes or damage to the eyes or visual system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;World Health Organization. Provisional statements of WHO working group&#xA;  on occupational health aspects in the use of visual display units. VDT&#xA;  News, 3(1):13,1986. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mutti DO, Zadnik K. Is computer use a risk factor for myopia? J Am&#xA;  Optom Assoc, 67(9):521-30, 1996.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt; I am still skeptical how do you know those eye symptoms resulted from a computer screen? &lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21197801&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; compared &lt;em&gt;computer&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;hardcopy conditions&lt;/em&gt; with regard to blurred vision during a task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;30 normal subjects read identical text (same size, contrast, viewing angle, luminance) aloud either from a &lt;strong&gt;desktop computer screen&lt;/strong&gt; or a &lt;strong&gt;printed hardcopy page&lt;/strong&gt; at a viewing distance of 50 cm for 20 minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Immediately following completion of the reading task, subjects completed a written questionnaire asking about their level of ocular discomfort during the task.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Significant differences in median symptom scores were reported with&#xA;  regard to blurred vision during the task (t = 147.0; p = 0.03) and the&#xA;  mean symptom score (t = 102.5; p = 0.04).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Symptom scores mean:&lt;/strong&gt; observations on discrepancies when defining symptoms using words and numbers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Symptoms following sustained computer use were significantly worse than those reported after hard copy fixation under similar viewing conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt; What is the most important factor leading to the syndrome? &lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That most important factor is &lt;strong&gt;the angle of gaze at the computer monitor&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twenty-eight people participated in an experiment and measured:&#xA;The distance from the eye to the computers' monitor (A)&#xA;the computers' monitor height (B)&#xA;and visual axis height (C)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;D was defined as B (the computers' monitor height) - C (visual axis height)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Angles of gaze to the computer monitor, could be found by, angle=tan(-1)(D/ A).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then they divided angles into two groups: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Group 1: participants with angles of gaze ranging from 0 degrees to 13.9 degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Group 2: participants gazing at angles larger than 14 degrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistical analysis of the evaluated variables was made. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15580914&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;results&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Computer users in both groups used more tear supplements (as part of&#xA;  the syndrome) than expected. This association was statistically&#xA;  significant (p&amp;lt;0.10). Participants in Group 1 reported more pain than&#xA;  participants in Group 2. Associations between the CVS and other&#xA;  personal or ergonomic variables were not statistically significant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt; Link between computer/cellphone use and Nearsightedness (known also as myopia) &lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8888885&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pubmed mentions that:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clinical studies of myopic progression and transient myopia among VDT&#xA;  users are considered, as is television viewing as a risk factor for&#xA;  juvenile myopia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2013/08/28/myopia-control-clinic/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dr. Maria Liu&lt;/a&gt;, head of the new Myopia Control Clinic at UC Berkeley’s School of Optometry said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are a number of factors involved in the increase of myopia, but&#xA;  I have no doubt that changes in lifestyle over the past several&#xA;  decades that include more time spent indoors and the early use of&#xA;  handheld computers play a big role.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The problem with smartphones and iPads is that kids often hold them&#xA;  closer to their eyes than they would a book, and they can become&#xA;  totally absorbed for hours at a time. The working distance for&#xA;  handheld devices is much closer than it is for laptops and TV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kohtzandspurling.com/#!computer-vision-syndrome/c24p0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Many EyeCare agencies and  mention too that:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many eye doctors who specialize in children’s vision say sustained&#xA;  computer use puts kids at higher risk for childhood myopia&#xA;  (nearsightedness). They point out that, though myopia affects&#xA;  approximately 25% of the U.S. population, nearly 50% of adult computer&#xA;  users with a college education are nearsighted. Computer use,&#xA;  especially among youngsters whose eyes are still changing, may be the&#xA;  reason for this disparity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Research seems to support this theory. A study of 253 children between&#xA;  the ages of 6 and 10 at the University of California at Berkeley&#xA;  School of Optometry found a strong correlation between the amount of&#xA;  time young children spend on the computer and their development of&#xA;  nearsightedness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8888885&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;But, in the end there is no compelling evidence which proves computer use causes myopia.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which really means that there is absence of evidence, but not necessarily evidence of absence. It is still a theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt; Takeaway: &lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A very important &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aoa.org/Documents/optometrists/effects-of-computer-use.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; (referenced, clear, and simple) by American Optometric Association.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Information for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aoa.org/patients-and-public/caring-for-your-vision/protecting-your-vision/computer-vision-syndrome?sso=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cause, diagnosis and the treatment&lt;/a&gt; for CVS by American Optometric Association.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;YouTube video about &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMF9GNvzwK0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How to Protect your Eyes from Computer Vision Syndrome&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-08T15:25:03.303" LastActivityDate="2015-03-08T15:25:03.303" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26964" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27009" CreationDate="2015-03-07T04:52:06.907" Score="2" ViewCount="657" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm aware of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/450/does-water-swirl-the-opposite-way-on-the-other-hemisphere/451#451&quot;&gt;previous answer&lt;/a&gt; to this question. But my question is concretely about &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=951137708254936&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;. Is it fake? How? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16803" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-03-14T15:10:08.637" Title="Water swirl according to hemisphere: video" Tags="|physics|water|video|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26967" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26953" CreationDate="2015-03-07T15:40:58.840" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question is still badly worded.  If the question is whether &quot;the Syrian conflict was caused by climate change as the media seem to claim?&quot; then the answer is clearly no, and the media article linked in the question does not actually even make that claim.  To quote the author of the study from the Independent article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Added to all the other stressors, climate change helped kick things&#xA;  over the threshold into open conflict,” said report co-author Richard&#xA;  Seager, of Columbia University in New York.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, it was a contributing factor, but it would be an exaggeration to claim it was the cause.  This is also bourne out by a quote from another author:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Whether it was a primary or substantial factor is impossible to know,&#xA;  but drought can lead to devastating consequences when coupled with&#xA;  pre-existing acute vulnerability,” said lead author Colin Kelley, who&#xA;  did the work at Columbia but is now the University of California,&#xA;  Santa Barbara.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now there is another quote from Prof. Seager&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“I think this is scary and it’s only just beginning. It’s going to&#xA;  continue through the current century as part of the general drying of&#xA;  the Eastern Mediterranean – I don’t see how things are going to&#xA;  survive there,” Professor Seager added.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However this is not a statement about the cause of the current conflict, it is a statement of how he thinks the climate will develop in this region.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether the science is sound, there have been previous papers on this particular topic, with similar findings, e.g.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peter H. Gleick, 2014: Water, Drought, Climate Change, and Conflict in Syria. Wea. Climate Soc., 6, 331–340. doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00059.1&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00059.1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such replication, where different authors study the same issue and come to similar conclusions, is part of the process to scientific acceptance of an idea that only &lt;strong&gt;starts&lt;/strong&gt; with the publication of a paper in a peer-reviewed journal.  So I would say that the indications so far are that the science is probably sound.  Of course there are some that are unwilling to accept the findings of studies based on computer models, however the use of such models is widespread in science (not just climatology), without raising similar objections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update: There are also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter12_FINAL.pdf&quot;&gt;indications&lt;/a&gt; in the most recent IPCC WG1 report that there are projected hydrological implications of climate change for the middle east, which would be in accordance with the two studies mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Annual surface evaporation is projected to increase as global&#xA;  temperatures rise over most of the ocean and is projected to change&#xA;  over land following a similar pattern as precipitation. Decreases in&#xA;  annual runoff are &lt;em&gt;likely&lt;/em&gt; in parts of southern Europe, the Middle&#xA;  East, and southern Africa by the end of the 21st century under the&#xA;  RCP8.5 scenario.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and that this was not a new finiding for AR5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the AR4, 21st century model-projected runoff consistently showed&#xA;  decreases in southern Europe, the Middle East, and southwestern USA&#xA;  and increases in Southeast Asia, tropical East Africa and at high&#xA;  northern latitudes. The same general features appear in the CMIP5&#xA;  ensemble of GCMs for all four RCPs shown in Figure 12.24, with the&#xA;  areas of most robust change typically increasing with magnitude of&#xA;  forcing change.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically I think this is just another case of the media exaggerating a scientific story, but also of reading more into the media article than is actually there.  This happens all of the time, because we are &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; subject to cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2015-03-07T16:22:13.097" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T16:22:13.097" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26968" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="26972" CreationDate="2015-03-07T16:13:26.337" Score="4" ViewCount="1410" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that granite has formed in a matter of hours as described (and explained) in &amp;quot;Fingerprints of creation&amp;quot; by Robert Gentry (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.halos.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.halos.com/&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following simple analogy will show how these polonium microspheres — or halos — contradict the evolutionary belief that granites formed as hot magma slowly cooled over millions of years. To the contrary, this analogy demonstrates how these halos provide unambiguous evidence of both an almost instantaneous creation of granites and the young age of the earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A speck of polonium in molten rock can be compared to an Alka-Seltzer dropped into a glass of water. The beginning of effervescence is equated to the moment that polonium atoms began to emit radiactive particles. In molten rock the traces of those radioactive particles would disappear as quickly as the Alka-Seltzer bubbles in water. But if the water were instantly frozen, the bubbles would be preserved. Likewise, polonium halos could have formed only if the rapidly &amp;quot;effervescing&amp;quot; specks of polonium had been instantly encased in solid rock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An exceedingly large number of polonium halos are embedded in granites around the world. Just as frozen Alka-Seltzer bubbles would be clear evidence of the quick-freezing of the water, so are these many polonium halos undeniable evidence that a sea of primordial matter quickly &amp;quot;froze&amp;quot; into solid granite. The occurrence of these polonium halos, then, distinctly implies that our earth was formed in a very short time, in complete harmony with the biblical record of creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25291" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T17:58:57.233" Title="Did granite form instantly?" Tags="|geology|earth|young-earth-creationism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26970" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26862" CreationDate="2015-03-07T16:21:41.907" Score="12" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll go through the papers I used one by one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chen et al.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Honglei Chen et al. conducted a study for the NIH (later presented at a meeting of the American Academy of Neurology). The study noted that people who regularly drink soda (i.e. four cups or more per day) are 30% more likely to develop depression later in life (and the effect was amplified by diet soda). The authors surveyed over 250,000 people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seemed to be a very strong correlation at work, and given the size of the survey pool, it didn't seem like a fluke. But the researchers were very quick to note - as were critics - that the study was not proof that drinking soda leads to depression. An association is not the same as proof of causality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Walton et al.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several psychologists monitored 40 patients over a short span. Some had a prior history of depression; others did not. Some in each group took aspartame, a common sweetener. The result showed that those with prior depression were more likely to have it exaggerated by consuming aspartame; those without it showed a slight increase in depression-like symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ledochowski et al.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study is for comparison, because fructose is not used in diet sodas but in regular sodas. I was curious as to whether or not the same symptoms would be found - and, surprisingly, they were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Austrian researchers studied 53 patients over four weeks. These patients had gastroenterological issues which caused them to have fructose malabsorption. Over the study, women with the condition taking fructose developed several symptoms, including signs of depression. Other health issues were noted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;So what?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All three studies seemed to draw a strong conclusion between diet soda/soda (or ingredients in it) and depression, as well as other possible symptoms. There seems to be a strong causal relationship. However, the one downside is that these studies have not been replicated by other groups! The methodology has not been addressed either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm wavering on whether to say yes or no on this. I hate to not draw a definite conclusion, but I have to agree with what many of the articles wrote: More research is needed. But if any of these results &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; confirmed by another study, then I'd say that there is indeed a good chance that diet soda can cause depression. So I'm leaning towards &quot;yes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter what the answer, it won't hurt you to stop drinking diet soda. Or regular soda for the matter. However, you should always consult a physician before making any (significant) changes to your diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Answer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chen et al.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study was done by the NIH, which analyzed cases of depression (or lack thereof) in 250,000 adults. georgechalhoub gave quite a nice summary of that study. The media jumped on the story (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/01/09/nih-study-links-soda-with-depression&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;US News &amp;amp; World report&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_22340970/can-drinking-diet-soda-lead-depression&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;San Jose Mercury News&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-lisa-young/soda-depression_b_2458366.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;, and, of course, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/01/08/drinking-soda-linked-to-depression/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fox news&lt;/a&gt;). Newspapers love stories like this, so I'm not surprised the study made the news. What I &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; surprised about was that some of the articles said that causality was &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; truly addressed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Huffington post article was written by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-lisa-young/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Lisa Young&lt;/a&gt;, a nutritionist and adjunct professor at NYU.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Young wrote&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So, what do we make of this study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study doesn't show that soda causes depression, but rather found an association between the two -- soda drinkers were more likely to be diagnosed with depression. It is important not to confuse the two.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here is what I told the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nydailynews.com/diet-soda-drinkers-depressed-article-1.1236431&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;New York Daily News&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; when called to comment on the study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;It's hard to tell from this single study what the exact connection between sweetened drinks and mood might be -- but either way, you're better off cutting back, says Lisa Young, Ph.D, R.D., an NYC-based nutritionist and adjunct professor in the department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at NYU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&quot;I'm not a fan of diet soda, but I don't think it's the soda alone that's causing depression,&quot; she told the Daily News. &quot;The thing about soda is, you don't often drink it alone -- you drink it with junk food. You're not getting enough fiber and protein with that sugar, and your blood sugar not being stable could throw off your mood.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;Diet soda drinkers who are focused on weight loss might also be blue from feeling like they're struggling with their weight, she said. &quot;You're getting that false sense of sweetness, so you're never really satisfied,&quot; which could lead to continued cravings, she said. &quot;[The soda] could be safe, but I think it puts you into this pattern of not really eating healthfully.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/could-diet-soda-cause-clinical-depression-586801/?no-ist&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Smithsonian.com&lt;/a&gt; also discussed the study&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does this mean you should stop drinking diet Coke and starting chugging coffee immediately? Probably not. This type of suggested link between two seemingly unrelated factors is an ideal time to bring up the difference between causation and correlation. Do the ingredients in both diet sodas and normally-sweetened drinks trigger changes in brain chemistry that lead to depression? Or are people with the tendency to become depressed simply more likely to drink these beverages in the first place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Without the full paper, it’s hard to know for sure—we don’t know if the study’s authors controlled for all relevant factors, making sure to compare study participants who were alike in all ways except for their beverage consumption. As a result, a third, unrelated factor may cause people to both drink more soda and become depressed more frequently. Since the study is backward-looking, it’s especially hard to rule this out: The researchers can’t go back to 1996 and make sure to ask the participants every potentially relevant question to ensure that all potentially important factors have been taken into consideration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Additionally, the fact that an association was found for both regular and diet sodas makes a causative link seem less likely. For that to be the case, either both sugar and aspartame must trigger depression, but at different frequencies, or a third ingredient in both sodas is responsible, but is somehow modulated by the presence of the natural or artificial sweetener.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also interesting was the article in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_22340970/can-drinking-diet-soda-lead-depression&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;San Jose Mercury News&lt;/a&gt;. Here's a short excerpt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The researchers do not say that soda causes depression — they did not determine whether people who are likely to become depressed are also simply more likely to drink soda in the first place, and the study did not control for all relevant factors, such as socioeconomic status. What they did find was that people who drank more than four cans or cups of soda per day were 30 percent more likely to develop depression over the course of the 10-year study than people who drank no soda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/26087-diet-soda-depression-risk.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;livescience&lt;/a&gt; also wrote about it, and touched upon the same things:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study only found an association, and did not determine whether or not diet soda or fruit drinks caused depression. Although the researchers took into account factors that could affect the results, such as age, sex, education, smoking status, physical activity, body mass index (BMI) and energy intake, it's possible other circumstances, such as a family history of depression or stressful life events, could explain the association.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for a meta-analysis of all that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just quoted specific excerpts from the articles discussing the study. Aside from the article written by Dr. Young (and the one she was quoted in), all the articles showed the study in a good light. It got a fairly good reaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Smithsonian.com commented that it would be difficult to analyze the study, given that it was not yet available. I still can't seem to find it. Chen has done other work on depression and diet (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2914462/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;; abstract &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20310050&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hold on. Look at part of the livescience quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although the researchers took into account factors that could affect the results, such as age, sex, education, smoking status, physical activity, body mass index (BMI) and energy intake . . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at part of the abstract of the study I listed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;. . . adjusted for age, gender, educational level, marital status, smoking, and coffee drinking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That sounds pretty similar, if not the same. But the paper's not quite the same. Dang. And it doesn't look like any of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2914462/citedby/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the papers that cite it&lt;/a&gt; are what we're looking for. Neither are any of the papers that &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; paper cites (of course, the paper we're looking for was published &lt;em&gt;after&lt;/em&gt; this one). So it seems that the situation for us is the same as the situation for Smithsonian.com.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For fun, I'll quote a passage from the article discussing its own methodology&lt;sup&gt;s&lt;/sup&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Major strengths of our study include the large sample size, long period of exposure assessment, and detailed information on potential confounders and effect modifiers. The analyses were however retrospective in nature. Selection bias cannot be ruled out if depressed individuals with PD were less likely to participate in the follow-up survey compared to depressed individuals without PD; if true the observed odds ratios are likely underestimated. Recall bias could also be a concern as PD patients might be more likely to recall or report depression than the PD-free participants. Although we could not directly evaluate potential impacts from this bias, our additional analysis excluding individuals with poor health status who might be more likely to over report depression, showed similar results. In such a large cohort, we had to rely on the self-report to identify depression and PD diagnoses as well as the years of first diagnoses. Misdiagnosis and under reporting are therefore unavoidable. Our ongoing verification study of PD diagnosis showed that 88% of PD cases were validated with information from their treating neurologists. Although we did not validate self-reported depression, nor did we have data on antidepressant use, in other validation studies self-reported diagnosis of depression was deemed fairly reliable compared to medical record review or specialist interview 16 and self-reports have been used in other longitudinal studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So interviewing patients with Parkinson's disease has some issues that can never be adjusted for. How ironic. Some of these problems could crop up in the study we're interested in if similar methods were used, but the issues directly related to PD would not be applicable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the study found that depression and drinking diet soda can go hand-in-hand, but causality was not established. That's my conclusion, as I play devil's advocate here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Walton et. al.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find any other studies that discuss the first study (Young's rebuttal doesn't &lt;em&gt;quite&lt;/em&gt; count), so I looked at some others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2011/03/14/diet-coke-and-depression/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; page led me to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mcmanweb.com/diet_coke.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; page. Which quoted a letter discussing a study. The lengths I go to to get sources for my answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the core of all these links was an analysis of aspartame, approved by the FDA (according to the latter article):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The FDA approved aspartame for use in certain dry foods in 1981 and for soft drinks in 1983. In 1996, it removed all restrictions, allowing use in all food products, including ones exposed to heat, which separates the main ingredients. The FDA has set an acceptable daily limit of 50 mg per kg of body weight, which assumes that aspartame can safely replace all sucrose sweeteners in the diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aspartame is a sweetener, used in, among other things, some diet sodas&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;. Studies have linked it to a whole bunch of health problems (those poor lab rats!).  Dr. Ralph Walton did a study on aspartame in 1993:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fine, but can those who suffer depression or bipolar disorder be considered part of the general population? In 1993, Dr Walton, who is a psychiatrist, conducted a study of 40 patients with unipolar depression and a similar number without a psychiatric history. The subjects were given 30 mgs per kg of body weight a day of aspartame or a placebo for 20 days (about equal to daily consumption if it completely replaced sugar).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thirteen individuals completed the study, then an institutional review board called the project to a halt &quot;because of the severity of reactions within the group of patients with a history of depression.&quot; In a smaller, shorter crossover design, &quot;again there was a significant difference between aspartame and placebo in number and severity of symptoms for patients with a history of depression, whereas for individuals without such a history there was not.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Accordingly, the author concluded that &quot;individuals with mood disorders are particularly sensitive to this artificial sweetener and its use in this population should be discouraged.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As to further particulars of the study, based on the eight depressed subjects and five healthy subjects who completed it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Three quarters of the patients with a history of depression taking aspartame reported feeling depressed vs none of the healthy subjects taking aspartame and about 40 percent of both groups taking a placebo. The 40 percent is probably a statistical aberration owing to the small numbers who completed the study. Nevertheless, the figures consistently show the depressed/aspartame group experiencing an array of symptoms in far greater numbers and severity, including: fatigue, nausea, headache, trouble remembering, insomnia, and other symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wow. That seems pretty definitive. Yet the article fully admits that peer review is necessary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Remarkably, Dr Walton’s study is the only one we have related to both mood and aspartame. It would be helpful to get a second opinion, but no one else since, apparently, has tried to either replicate or refute his results. This may be due to the political and funding climate. &quot;The NutraSweet company,&quot; Dr Walton told this writer, &quot;clearly tried to block our study.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ah, sounds like the cigarette companies. But something in me doubts that Walton's explanation is the full story, although it could very well be true. Conclusion: More peer review is needed, but it seems pretty conclusive. If it's right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are, of course, other articles discussing the study. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.opednews.com/articles/New-York-Psychiatrist-Exho-by-Dr-Ralph-Walton--090812-518.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This one&lt;/a&gt; is a letter written by Dr. Walton. In it, he writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That study was published in Biological Psychiatry in 1993 (a copy of the paper is enclosed). It demonstrated that individuals with mood disorders are particularly sensitive to aspartame and experienced an accentuation of depression and multiple physical symptoms. I had expected that the difficulties experienced by patients receiving aspartame would be fairly subtle (the dose of 30mg/kg/day was well below the 50mg/kg/day that the F.D.A. considered &quot;safe&quot;). I was not prepared for the severity of the reactions and for obvious ethical reasons cannot perform any further human studies with aspartame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two years after the publication of that study I was contacted by a producer for &quot;60 Minutes&quot; and asked if I would be willing to be interviewed by Mike Wallace for a segment on aspartame. During that interview Mike challenged me on my assertion that there were major problems with this sweetener in view of the fact that the bulk of the medical literature attested to it's safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I responded that one had to look carefully at study funding - that virtually all of the studies claiming safety were funded by the industry, whereas independently funded studies invariably identified one or more problems. When he challenged me to prove this I prepared a chart correlating study outcome and funding source. This chart was aired on the 60 Minutes segment, and is enclosed, with further discussion of this entire issue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That might be an interesting interview to watch. Perhaps I can find a transcript.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/aspartame.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Article #2&lt;/a&gt; is also a letter. And a very opinionated one, too. I don't have room (or time, I think) to summarize it, but it gives a lot of different studies regarding the effects of aspartame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpwhi.com/letter_to_fsu_concerning_chemical_imbalance_study.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Article #3&lt;/a&gt; is written by the same person (Dr. Betty Martini), this time to Florida State University. It rehashes the same points . . . but it links to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mindfully.org/Health/Aspartame-Adverse-Reactions-1993.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Walton's study&lt;/a&gt; (co-authored by Robert Hudak and Ruth J. Green-Waite, who seem to have missed out on the excitement)!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's look over it, shall we?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The project design called for the recruitment of 40 patients with a history of treatment for recurrent major depression, currently doing wall with a Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (RPRS) rating of no greater than 6 at the time of the study. Subjects were recruited by word of mouth, and by a posting and distribution of the study protocol and informed-consent statements among patients, attending physicians, administrative and nursing staff, and medical students at the Western Reserve Care System.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not the best recruiting system. Note also that the study only showed that patients with depression &lt;em&gt;could have that depression worsened&lt;/em&gt; by aspartame. That's not quite the same as directly linking aspartame to depression in otherwise happy individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the NutraSweet company didn't do too much to block the study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NutraSweet Company denied the request from the authors to purchase aspartame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each participant monitored his own symptoms using a checklist, one of which was provided for each week of the study. Listed symptoms were: headache, nervousness, dizziness, trouble remembering, binge eating, lower back pain, nausea or upset stomach, feeling blue or depressed, insomnia, uncontrollable temper outburst, and other (to be specified by the subject). For each symptom the participant had to assign the following point value on a daily basis: 0 = not present; 1 = mild (symptom occurs but does not disrupt activities); 2 = moderate (symptom occurs but can be controlled whether by medication or other means; 3 = severe (symptom occurs and disrupts daily activities).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Each participant monitored his own symptoms&lt;/em&gt; . . . I hope that &quot;he&quot; is not being used literally (but in place of &quot;he or she&quot;). If it's only studying male patients, then this is irrelevant to your question, though still interesting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a table:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;                          Patients &#xA;                          with history        Nondepressed &#xA;                          of depression       volunteers           &#xA;                          Placebo  Aspartame  Placebo    Aspartame&#xA;&#xA;   Headache               63% (5)  88% (7)    80% (4)    20% (1)&#xA;   Nervousness            25% (2)  63% (5)    0%         0°k&#xA;   Dizziness              13% (1)  25% (2)    40% (2)    0%&#xA;   Trouble remembering     0%      63% (5)    0%         20% (1)&#xA;   Binge eating           13% (1)  13% (1)    0%         0%&#xA;   Lower back pain        25% (2)  25% (2)    20% (1)    0%&#xA;   Nausea                 25% (2) 100% (8)    40% (2)    20% (1)&#xA;   Depression             38% (3)  75% (6)    40% (2)    0%&#xA;   Insomnia               38% (3)  50% (4)    20% (1)    20% (1)&#xA;   Temper                  0%      25% (2)    20% (1)    0%&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;   More energy             0%     25% (2)     20% (1)    20% (I)&#xA;   Fatigue                 0%     25% (2)      0%        20% (1)&#xA;   Malaise                 0%     38% (3)      0%        20% (1)&#xA;   Weight loss            13% (1)  0%          0%        0%&#xA;   Pain in eye            13% (1)  0%          0%        0%&#xA;   Negative thoughts       0%     13% (1)      0%        0%&#xA;   Bad taste in mouth      0%     13% (1)      0%        0%&#xA;   Swollen lips            0%     13% (1)      0%        0%&#xA;   Facial numbness         0%     13% (1)      0%        0%&#xA;   Conjunctival hemorrhage 0%     13% (1)      0%        0%&#xA;   Weight gain             0%     13% (1)      0%        0%&#xA;   Irritability            0%     25% (2)      0%        0%&#xA;   Less sleep              0%     0%          20% (1)    0%&#xA;   Diarrhea                0%     0%          20% (1)    20% (1)&#xA;   Nightmares              0%     0%           0%        40% (2)&#xA;   More sleep              0%     0%           0%        20% (1)&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The numbers in parentheses (e.g. &quot;(1)&quot;) indicate the number of people who reported that symptom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;nondepressed volunteers&quot; column is what we're interested in, and it's not too convincing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the study's meta-analysis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The lack of validation of the extensive anecdotal reports of adverse reactions to aspartame by double-blind studies may reflect the fact that, to date, such studies have not been performed on what we feel is an especially vulnerable population-individuals with mood disorders. In this study even people who believed that they had problems with aspartame (three of the nondepressed volunteers) did not demonstrate significant differences from placebo, whereas patients with a history of depression and no awareness of aspartame intolerance did demonstrate significant adverse reactions. Although there are some long-term studies, (Leone et al 1989) 1- or 2-day challenges, such as those of Schiffman et al (1987), may not be long enough for difficulties to emerge. In this study, patients most often began to report significant symptoms after day 2 or 3. A 1- or 2-day challenge also does not replicate common patterns of daily consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ledochowski et al.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found a third study on the website of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201105/could-soda-and-sugar-be-causing-your-depression&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Psychology Today&lt;/a&gt;. It was conducted by researchers in Europe, but it studied the effects of regular soda, not diet soda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Turns out that in Central Europe, a large percentage (30-50%) of the population suffers from certain types of carbohydrate malabsorption .  I asked a friend of mine, an academic gastroenterologist who just left Johns Hopkins, what she thought the percentage of Americans was, and she felt it was 15-20%.  In fructose malabsorption(link is external), the GLUT5 transporter in the small intestine doesn't take up fructose as efficiently as it could.  That means lots of undigested fructose floats down to the colon, feeding the bacteria there and leading to bloating, cramping, and diarrhea - basically the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. It is diagnosed via testing for excess hydrogen in the exhaled breath after a fructose load of 50mg. A similar test can show if someone has lactose intolerance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well, the researchers in Central Europe took a hundred or so &quot;otherwise healthy volunteers&quot; who had complained about gastrointestinal distress at a doctor's visit. None were on medication (except oral contraception) or had any signs of chronic or serious illness. They were given a standard scale test for depression (the Beck Depression Inventory) a fructose malabsorption test, then, a week later, a lactose malabsorption test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let's cut to the chase - a positive test for fructose malabsorption corresponded to depressed women, but not men. Lactose malabsorption alone didn't matter in either sex, but the 12% of women in the study who were both fructose and lactose malabsorption positive were by far the most depressed. The normal female controls had an average depression score of 7.5 - the combined malabsorption women had an average score of 14.6. That's a huge difference, and the data between the unaffected individuals and the carbohydrate malabsorbers hardly overlap at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aha! Finally, something that says that women are affected by sugars (fructose, in this case). And there's an explanation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Turns out that fructose (and lactose) can react chemically with tryptophan, the amino acid precursor for our important happy chemical, serotonin. The sugars can degrade tryptophan so that there isn't as much available to be absorbed into the body. And, indeed, fructose malabsorbers have lower levels of tryptophan in the serum than normal controls. And, hey, turns out they have lower serum zinc and folic acid too - both of these findings are associated with depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But why would the symptoms of depression be confined to women? The researchers postulated that estrogen made the big difference. Estrogen activates an enzyme called hepatic tryptophan 2,3 dioxygenase that shifts the metabolism of tryptophan from making serotonin (happy) to making kynurenic (not happy). Women already have lower serum levels of tryptophan than men do (which may be part of the reason why we are more vulnerable to depression in the first place), so screwing up whatever available tryptophan in the diet with fructose may lead to even lower levels, and thus depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once again, the lack of peer review is troubling:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Well.  All of that is observational data, and correlation does not equal causation.  All we have to hang our hats on is a small study from Austria in 2000.  In this study, folks with known fructose malabsorption were put on a low-fructose diet, which reduced their depression scores by 65% after 4 weeks.  The findings were more pronounced in women than in men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I looked up the study, whose abstract can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11099057&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Something interesting is noted in the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fifty-three adults (12 males, 41 females)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, the number of women in the study shouldn't affect the percentage, but still. That's quite the disparate comparison.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was able to get the study on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fructose.at/pdf/works/11099057.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a pdf&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Patients&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From 100 patients who presented at our office for a medical health check, 53 individuals with gastrointestinal complaints were consecutively chosen to participate in this follow-up study on the basis of the H2-breath test results (see below). Sigmoideoscopy was previously performed in most of these patients because of chronic gastrointestinal complaints, and negative results were reasons for a further checkup in our office. For those who had not had sigmoideoscopy, this examination was prescribed to rule out inflammatory bowel diseases. The otherwise healthy outpatients, aged from 17 to 75 years (mean, 44.8  14.5), gave informed consent to participate in the clinical trial with fructose-reduced diet which was approved by the local ethics committee. There were 12 male (range, 23–75 years; mean 42.3  14.6) and 41 female patients (range, 17–73 years; mean, 45.6  14.6).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No information is given as to how these 100 made it to the office, so the applicant pool cannot be fully analyzed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Diagnosis of fructose malabsorption was established by H2-breath test after oral fructose load with 50 g fructose given in 250 ml of tap water. All H2-breath tests were performed between 0800h and 0830h after a 12-h overnight fast. Breath-H2 was measured using a Bedfont gastrolizer (Bedfont Ltd., Kent, UK), which had been validated by several authors (11–13). Breath-H2 was monitored before fructose load and in 30 min intervals for at least 2 h after fructose load. Maximum breath-H2 concentrations were registered and the differences from baseline values were calculated yielding the operating parameter DH2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the paper's meta-analysis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this study, no control group could be included, because most of the studied subjects had gastrointestinal complaints, and we could not stay away from dietary interventions for ethical reasons. Thus, it cannot fully be excluded that a placebo effect could have contributed to the observed amelioration of symptoms, e.g. the improvement of BDI after dietary change. However, the first set of data was obtained at the end of the pre-intervention period, and the patients were asked to estimate the parameters of gastrointestinal symptoms using an arbitrary analogous scale retrospectively. During this period it is unlikely that the individuals changed their dietary behavior, therefore one can consider the study presented here as a preliminary follow-up investigation which outlines the consequences of a fructose-reduced diet. Furthermore, a dietary observation period of 4 weeks may compensate a potential bias owing to instantaneous amelioration of symptoms. Because all scores were measured exactly 4 weeks apart, it can be ruled out that in females the menstrual cycle would have had a major influence on the outcome of depression scores or meteorism scores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;I say this to emphasize that she's not just a layman. This isn't a proper scientific rebuttal, but it isn't by  Joe Schmo, either.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;The study found that there were benefits to drinking coffee. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/01/08/drinking-soda-linked-to-depression/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fox News&lt;/a&gt; wrote, &quot;Coffee and tea contain antioxidants and phytochemicals, which promote health and well-being.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/16237-coffee-caffeine-consumption-depression-risk-women.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;livescience&lt;/a&gt; also mentioned another study that agrees with this result.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&quot;PD&quot; is short for &quot;Parkinson's disease,&quot; the target of the study.&lt;/sub&gt;&#xA;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sub&gt;Yes, in both Pepsi and Coke.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="22247" LastEditDate="2015-03-08T20:52:06.840" LastActivityDate="2015-03-08T20:52:06.840" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26972" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26968" CreationDate="2015-03-07T17:58:57.233" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a paper which was written to refute Gentry's theory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/gentry.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Polonium Haloes&amp;quot; Refuted&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;A Review of &amp;quot;Radioactive Halos in a Radio-Chronological&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;and Cosmological Perspective&amp;quot; by Robert V. Gentry&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;by Thomas A. Baillieul&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Copyright © 2001-2005&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;[Last Updated: April 22, 2005]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It introduces rocks as follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;About the Rocks&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Geologists classify rocks into three main categories - sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic - based on the way in which they form. Sedimentary rocks are secondary in formation, being the product of precursor rocks (of any type).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Igneous rocks form from molten material, and are further subdivided into two main categories, the volcanic rocks which form from lava extruded at or near the surface; and plutonic rocks which form from magma, deep within the crust. Both types of igneous rocks comprise a mixture of different minerals. As igneous rocks cool, mineral crystals form following a specific sequence. The crystals develop an interlocking texture with some of the trace minerals becoming completely surrounded by later forming crystals. Volcanic rocks, because they are able to cool and crystalize rapidly, have a very fine-grained texture; the individual mineral grains are too small to see easily with the naked eye. Plutonic rocks on the other hand cool very slowly, on the order of a million years or more for some deeply buried and insulated magmas. The mineral grains in these rocks can grow very large and are readily distinguished in hand samples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the above, granite, being a &amp;quot;plutonic&amp;quot; rock, will have cooled very slowly (more slowly than a volcanic rock), i.e. over many thousands of years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above description is consistent with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plutonic%20rock&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Merriam Webster's dictionary definition of 'plutonic rock'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;plutonic rock&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;:  an igneous rock (as granite) of holocrystalline granular texture regarded as having solidified at considerable depth below the surface&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-07T17:58:57.233" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1954" CreationDate="2015-03-08T00:26:48.270" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of studies and peer-reviewed books (e.g. Norris and Inglehart, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cambridge.org/au/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/comparative-politics/sacred-and-secular-religion-and-politics-worldwide-2nd-edition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;; Stolt &lt;em&gt;et al&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2011.00777.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Economic Inequality, Relative Power, and Religiosity&lt;/a&gt;) which identify a link between religiosity and material insecurity. If you live in a place where with harsher poverty, or which is more economically unequal, then religiosity tends to be higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some notable exceptions, such as China and Vietnam, which have harsh poverty but low religiosity. This can be explained by the government effectively suppressing religion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It explains what we see Scandinavia: there is no need for religiosity since those societies are fairly equal. It also explains the United States, which is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one of the most economically unequal developed countries in the world&lt;/a&gt;. In fact, it's even true of individual states in the US: states with higher economic inequality tend to be more religious, and states with lower economic inequality tend to be less so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it seems like a plausible theory that if things are bad, religion helps you cope with it. Opiate of the masses, indeed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11258" LastEditorUserId="11258" LastEditDate="2015-03-08T03:32:52.927" LastActivityDate="2015-03-08T03:32:52.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26975" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-08T16:12:57.417" Score="3" ViewCount="559" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Willie_Soon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Willie Soon&lt;/a&gt; recently co-authored a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scibull.com:8080/EN/abstract/abstract509579.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; that criticised the big computer models used for many projections of future climate (which in turn have fed the IPCC process that drive consensus climate policy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of comment in the mainstream media focuses on a claim that Soon is guilty of failing to disclose a major conflict of interest. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/21/climate-change-denier-willie-soon-funded-energy-industry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Guardian summarises&lt;/a&gt; thus:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Greenpeace has suggested Soon also improperly concealed his funding sources for a recent article, in violation of the journal’s conflict of interest guidelines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The company was paying him to write peer-reviewed science and that relationship was not acknowledged in the peer-reviewed literature,” Davies said. “These proposals and contracts show debatable interventions in science literally on the behalf of Southern Company and the Kochs.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In letters to the Internal Revenue Service and Congress, Greenpeace said Soon may have misused the grants from the Koch foundation by trying to influence legislation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Willie Soon fail to disclose a conflict of interest with the fossil fuel lobby?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T04:52:03.213" Title="Did Willie Soon fail to disclose a conflict of interest with the fossil fuel lobby?" Tags="|climate-change|climatology|fossil-fuel|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26907" CreationDate="2015-03-08T21:42:25.073" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The measurement of the mean lunar month as 29 days, 12 hours, and 793/1080 of an hour is (in this notation) first found in &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=lENWAgAAQBAJ&quot;&gt;Treatise on the Computation of the Chronology of the Jews and their Festivals&lt;/a&gt; by the Muslim astronomer &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu%E1%B8%A5ammad_ibn_M%C5%ABs%C4%81_al-Khw%C4%81rizm%C4%AB&quot;&gt;al-Khwarizmi&lt;/a&gt; in the 9th century, then by the Muslim &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab%C5%AB_Ray%E1%B8%A5%C4%81n_al-B%C4%ABr%C5%ABn%C4%AB&quot;&gt;al-Biruni&lt;/a&gt; in the 10th/11th century, then by the Jewish scholar &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_bar_Hiyya&quot;&gt;Bar Hiyya&lt;/a&gt; in the 11th century, and by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maimonides&quot;&gt;Maimonides&lt;/a&gt; in the 12th century.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The equivalent value in base-sixty notation is given already by Ptolemy (2nd century AD), quoting Hipparchus (2nd century BC), who had it from the ancient Babylonians, so it goes back a long way. The passage in the Talmud (B. RH 25a) quoting Gamaliel as putting the measurement of the month at 29 days, and half a day, and two thirds of an hour, and 73 parts is now generally considered to be an interpolation. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/0198270348.001.0001/acprof-9780198270348&quot;&gt;Sacha Stern, Calendar and community. A history of the Jewish calendar second century BCE – tenth century CE&lt;/a&gt;, Oxford, 2001, p. 201.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25220" LastEditorUserId="25220" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2015-08-31T19:52:52.107" LastActivityDate="2015-08-31T19:52:52.107" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26978" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-08T22:21:01.160" Score="32" ViewCount="28431" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Raw Food Family, with almost half a million likes, made &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/TheRawfoodfamily/photos/a.201018504399.159750.182394089399/10152472759644400/?type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; on June 15, 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pAxnN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;FLUORIDE: Did you Know&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It claims,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In 1955, Crest became the first fluoride toothpaste.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fluoride calcifies the pineal gland, otherwise known as your 3rd eye which literally has rods and cones, just like your other eyes!&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Fluoride is so toxic that it &lt;em&gt;[sic]&lt;/em&gt; considered Hazardous Waste by the EPA.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hitler fluoridated the water in the concentration camps to sedate the prisoners. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/14042/3835&quot;&gt;FALSE&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fluoride is the same ingredient in rat poison and Prozac&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;According to Dr. Bill Osmunson, there's the same equivalence of fluoride in an 8 ounce glass of fluoridated tap water as there is in a &quot;pea sized&quot; amount needed to call the Poison Control Center, as recommended on the back of any fluoridated toothpaste.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there fluoride in rat poison and Prozac?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2018-08-28T15:36:10.963" Title="Is fluoride an ingredient in Prozac and rat poison?" Tags="|fluoride|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26979" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26978" CreationDate="2015-03-08T22:39:17.073" Score="75" Body="&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Fluoride&amp;quot; is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoride#Cavity_prevention&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fluoride-containing compounds, such as sodium fluoride or sodium monofluorophosphate&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prozac aka the fluoxetine molecule &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoxetine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;contains fluorine atoms&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first &amp;quot;rat poison&amp;quot; I thought of was warfarin which &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warfarin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;doesn't contain fluorine atoms&lt;/a&gt;, but looking through a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodenticide#Other&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of other rat poisons&lt;/a&gt; there's at least one i.e. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoroacetamide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fluoroacetamide&lt;/a&gt; which does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although it's true I think it is a slightly silly statement (perhaps analogous to saying that meat and broccoli contain carbon atoms which are an ingredient of the Ebola virus).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fluorine is chemically similar to chlorine (i.e. they are both &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halogen&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;halogens&lt;/a&gt;). Chlorine too could be used to make dangerous substances, e.g. poison gas, but it's also a main ingredient of common table salt aka sea salt aka sodium chloride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the comments to/below this answer said that it's important to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Learn that the dose makes the poison&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Have a sense of proportion about the amount of fluorine being talked about&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The adage that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dose_makes_the_poison&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the dose makes the poison&lt;/a&gt; has been known for at least &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;500 years&lt;/a&gt;. People can even die from having &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;too much water&lt;/a&gt;, but that fact &lt;em&gt;must not&lt;/em&gt; be used as an argument to stop ingesting water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That adage about 'the dose' happens to be true of an actual &amp;quot;rat poison&amp;quot; too, where for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warfarin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;warfarin&lt;/a&gt; (introduced in 1948 as a pesticide against rats and mice) is prescribed medicinally to humans (in carefully administered doses) as an anticoagulant e.g. to treat thrombosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's not to say though &amp;quot;that fluoride is a rat poison&amp;quot; is true. Fluorine is an atom, one the elements, which can be used to make diverse chemical compounds (most of which are not rat poison). It's probably better to view fluoride as a type of salt or mineral.&#xA;It is true that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_fluorosis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;excessive fluoride&lt;/a&gt; is bad for you. This kind of 'excessive' fluoride can occur naturally in some water, or occur as a result of industrial contamination: but the amount of fluoride that's recommended when it's added to drinking water is not 'excessive'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fluoride is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halogen#Biological_role&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a component of the human body&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fluoride anions are found in ivory, bones, teeth, blood, eggs, urine, and hair of organisms. Fluoride anions in very small amounts are essential for humans. There are 0.5 milligrams per liter of fluorine in human blood. Human bones contain 0.2 to 1.2% fluorine. Human tissue contains approximately 50 parts per billion of fluorine. A typical 70-kilogram human contains 3 to 6 grams of fluorine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the quantity that is usually in the human body: i.e. &lt;strong&gt;3 to 6 grams&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amount of fluorine in fluoridated drinking water &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_fluoridation_controversy#Safety&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;is relatively small&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The World Health Organization recommends a guideline maximum fluoride value of 1.5 mg/L as a level at which fluorosis should be minimal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1.5 mg/L is equivalent to 1.5 g/ton, (i.e. a ton of drinking water to get &lt;strong&gt;1.5 grams&lt;/strong&gt; of fluorine).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One more comment -- even though &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2924/2703&quot;&gt;original research&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2929/2703&quot;&gt;theoretical answers&lt;/a&gt; are not allowed I hope these (trivial) calculations may be allowed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Toothpaste typically contains less than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dentalhealth.ie/dentalhealth/teeth/fluoridetoothpastes.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1,500 ppm F&lt;/a&gt; (I see mine contains 1,440 ppm).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parts-per_notation#Overview&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Parts-per notation&lt;/a&gt; means by weight:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, it is common to equate 1 gram of water with 1 mL of water. Consequently, ppm corresponds to 1 mg/L&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore toothpaste has approximately 1000 times the concentration as the maximum recommended concentration in water (which was quoted as &amp;quot;1.5 mg/L&amp;quot; above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &amp;quot;pea-sized&amp;quot; spot of toothpaste might be about 1 cubic centimetre i.e. 1 gram. An &amp;quot;eight-ounce&amp;quot; glass is water is about 200 grams. So the following statement seems to be to be true, within about a factor of 5:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;an 8 ounce glass of fluoridated tap water as there is in a &amp;quot;pea sized&amp;quot; amount&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(My calculation, which depends on the definition of &amp;quot;pea-sized&amp;quot;, was that the toothpaste has about as much fluoride as 5 glasses of water).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I &lt;em&gt;don't&lt;/em&gt; think is true is that these are a poisonous quantity. My fluoridated toothpaste (I'm in France) doesn't mention poison at all. If there's any poison warning label on toothpaste in North America, perhaps that's in case some child sucks down a whole tube of toothpaste as if it's candy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This Medscape article on &lt;a href=&quot;http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/814774-overview#a0156&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fluoride toxicity&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2011, the American Association of Poison Control Centers reported 20,977 exposures involving toothpaste with fluoride, 18,564 of them in children under the age of 6 years.[3] Only 376 cases were actually treated in the emergency department. Moderate effects were seen in 45 cases, and major effects were seen in one case. No deaths were reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Death may result from ingesting as little as 2 g of fluoride in an adult and 16 mg/kg in children. Symptoms may appear with 3-5 mg/kg of fluoride. Estimated toxic dose for fluoride ingestion is 5-10 mg/kg. The estimated lethal dose is 5-10 g (32-64 mg/kg) in adults and 500 mg in small children. One death from ingestion of fluoride toothpaste was reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers in 2002. No deaths were reported in 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that any 2-year-old child &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/growthcharts/data/set1clinical/cj41l017.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;weighs more than 10 kg&lt;/a&gt;, then &amp;quot;Symptoms may appear&amp;quot; with 30 mg fluoride.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If a tube of toothpaste contains 70 ml or 100g of toothpaste, then I think it contains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1,500 ppm =&amp;gt; 1,500 mg/L&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;100g =&amp;gt; 0.1 L&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;therefore 150 mg total per tube.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So (you can double-check my calculation to verify that I haven't dropped a decimal place) a whole tube of toothpaste contains 150 mg which &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; enough to cause symptoms in a 2-year-old child.&#xA;&amp;quot;The estimated lethal dose is 500 mg in small children&amp;quot; implies that 4 whole tubes of toothpaste should be lethal in small children. &amp;quot;5-10 g (32-64 mg/kg)&amp;quot; means that the lethal dose for an adult is about 10 times higher than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Getting back to the topic (i.e. Prozac), a common &lt;a href=&quot;http://reference.medscape.com/drug/prozac-sarafem-fluoxetine-342955&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dosage for Prozac 20 mg/day&lt;/a&gt;. Estimating that a pea-sized spot of toothpaste contains 1.5 mg of fluoride, I think that means that even if fluoride were actually Prozac it isn't concentrated enough in toothpaste, even if you swallow it, for it to have any effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T09:39:10.303" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2557" CreationDate="2015-03-09T05:29:07.410" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bit late for the party but here is your answer: &lt;strong&gt;fish pedicure has good benefits on, it comes with minor risks also.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/hygiene/body/fish_pedicures.html&quot;&gt;For those who do not know what fish pedicure is:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A &lt;strong&gt;fish pedicure&lt;/strong&gt;, also known as a &lt;strong&gt;fish spa&lt;/strong&gt;, involves patrons dipping&#xA;  their feet in a tub of water filled with small fish called Garra rufa.&#xA;  Garra rufa are sometimes referred to as “&lt;strong&gt;doctor fish&lt;/strong&gt;” because they eat&#xA;  away dead skin found on peoples’ feet, leaving newer skin exposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lancet in 1989 mentioned one unusual alternative treatment for Psoriasis which is so-called ‘Doctorfish of Kangal’. These fish feed on the skin scales of bathers, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10920584&quot;&gt;reportedly reducing illnesses such as psoriasis and atopic dermatitis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems also that a spa in Turkey has been offering a fish pedicure service for more than 100 years, to treat serious skin conditions in 3,000 patients every year, such as psoriasis and eczema. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2007/apr/10/healthandwellbeing.health2&quot;&gt;In 1988 it seems that it became an official treatment center for people who have psoriasis.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But fish pedicure could transfer bacteria and diseases to you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CDC has published a report by U.K.’s Centre for Environment, Fisheries &amp;amp; Aquaculture Science, which investigated the types of bacteria associated with fish pedicure. Results showed &lt;a href=&quot;http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/18/6/11-1782_article&quot;&gt;that those fish carried strains of several bacteria that could cause soft tissue infections for people with open sores, skin cuts, underlying medical conditions such as diabetes, AIDS, cancer, or advanced age.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Warwick D, Warwick J. The doctor fish—a cure for psoriasis? Lancet.&#xA;  1989;335:1093–4.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T05:29:07.410" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26982" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26587" CreationDate="2015-03-09T06:37:52.180" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobriety&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;In this answer, soberity is defined as:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the condition of not having any measurable levels, or effects from&#xA;  mood-altering drugs especially alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It seems that mixing stimulants with alcohol has a masking effect:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Stimulants &amp;amp; Alcohol: A MASKING EFFECT When you mix alcohol with&#xA;  stimulants, the stimulants mask the effects of how your body is&#xA;  experiencing the alcohol. Depending on how much is consumed, over the&#xA;  course of however many hours, your Blood Alcohol Levels may feel&#xA;  inaccurate due to the fact the stimulants are interrupting the body’s&#xA;  natural ability to process the alcohol and send you the appropriate&#xA;  messages. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.northeastern.edu/open/pdfs/Alcohol%20and%20drug%20interactions%20husky%20headlines%20JANUARY%2020121.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;(ref)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a post, the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence has announced that mixing energy drinks (stimulants with a lot of caffeine) with alcohol (depressant) can lead to “wide-awake drunkenness,” &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.attcnetwork.org/explore/priorityareas/science/tools/asmeDetails.asp?ID=691&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;where caffeine masks the feeling of drunkenness but does not decrease actual alcohol-related impairment&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And as you already know caffeine is stimulant. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, caffeine masks the feeling of drunkenness but does not decrease the actual alcohol-related impairment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still not convinced?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2009, someone wanted to study the effects of drinking caffeine after alcohol. &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main.doiLanding&amp;amp;doi=10.1037/a0017610&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mice were given alcohol followed by the human equivalent of 8 cups of coffee. After the caffeine they seemed more alert, but they were still much worse than sober mice at getting round a maze.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still skeptical because it is study about rats not humans, right? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, it is true that caffeine takes away some of that fatigue when you are sober. To &lt;strong&gt;show that you might believe you’re sober when you’re not&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18439201&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NIH studied American college students from 2008&lt;/a&gt;. They found out that those who chose drinks containing both alcohol and caffeine, aka energy drinks, were twice as likely to get hurt in an accident and more than twice as likely to accept a lift with a driver who was over the limit. This effect was independent of the amount of alcohol consumed. This is an early study on the topic in which the students choose their own drinks and reported themselves how much they’d drunk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does illustrate how caffeine could fool people into thinking they're sobering up, and some of the potentially disastrous consequences.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, I have showed that caffeine won't make you sober, what about any other activity such as exercise? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is also no!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your body takes a certain amount of time to metabolize alcohol. The time required (on average one hour) is dependent on the quantity of alcohol &lt;strong&gt;dehydrogenase&lt;/strong&gt;, a famous enzyme, that is present. You cannot make this enzyme more abundant or more effective by drinking coffee, exercising or praying to any flying spaghetti monster; it won't speed up the process. More information and evidence in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/AA72/AA72.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NZX5xl.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T06:37:52.180" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26975" CreationDate="2015-03-09T06:54:59.600" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;note&lt;/strong&gt;: This question was originally much longer and quoted section 1 of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.heartland.org/willie-soon&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this response&lt;/a&gt; by The Heartland Institute. My comments here are in reference to those claims. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Heartland Institute's claims about conflict of interest policies and funding disclosure, at least, are incorrect. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scibull.com:8080/EN/column/column131.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;conflict of interest policy for &lt;em&gt;Science Bulletin&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Authors must disclose all relationships or interests that could influence or bias the work. Examples of potential conflicts of interests that are directly or indirectly related to the research may include but not limited to the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Research grants from funding agencies (please give the research funder and the grant number)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Honoraria for speaking at symposia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Financial support for attending symposia&#xA;  [...]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Support from a project sponsor&#xA;  [...]&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In addition, interests that go beyond financial interests and compensation (non-financial interests) that may be important to readers should be disclosed. These may include but are not limited to personal relationships or competing interests directly or indirectly tied to this research, or professional interests or personal beliefs that may influence your research. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Funding is mentioned on the same page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Acknowledgments:&#xA;  Acknowledgments of grants, funds, people, etc. should be placed in a separate section before the reference list. The names of funding organizations should be written in full.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In lay writing, an &quot;acknowledgements&quot; section is optional and usually informal, but in scientific writing it's a formal part of the paper with explicit rules.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim that Soon did not receive the grant funding directly is irrelevant. It's rare for academics to receive funding directly. Grants are almost always made in the name of the researcher's institution, and the institution almost always keeps a large portion to cover their costs. Similarly, it's not relevant that the Smithsonian approved the grant, because no one is claiming that there was something wrong with the grant. The claim is that it needed to be disclosed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6444" LastEditorUserId="6444" LastEditDate="2015-03-12T15:26:21.633" LastActivityDate="2015-03-12T15:26:21.633" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26984" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-09T10:35:12.487" Score="2" ViewCount="902" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Disclaimer&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a precursor to the question &quot;Is the solunar theory real?&quot; - which I'm  hoping to answer. So I fully understand if you don't believe that the question lives up to the forum's standards. But I have access to data that could prove or disprove the theory given the secret formula. I am also aware that there are many studies that examine the relationship between moon phases and fishing, but this question is about the specific theory that the gravity of the sun and moon would have a combined influence on fishing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Challenge&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Find a general formula that: Given latitude,longitude and date finds (at most) two major &quot;solunar periods&quot; for that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Given&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A table of daily solunar periods for a given month at a given location and some clues on the formula.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Background&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a popular theory among sport fishermen called the Solunar Theory. It was invented in the 1930:s by John Alden Knight and it postulates that the movement of the sun and moon affect fishing and hunting. It claims that there are periods during the day, solunar periods, that yield considerably better fishing and hunting results. This seems farfetched but is likely an extrapolation from the fact that salt water fishing is affected by ocean tides. Several web sites publish these tables as a guide for fishermen, but &lt;strong&gt;no one has been able to prove or disprove the theory for 80 years&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to calculate these solunar periods and I examined several implementations of the solunar theory including &lt;a href=&quot;http://solunar.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://solunar.com&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://kevinboone.net/README_solunar.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://kevinboone.net/README_solunar.html&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/solunar/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://sourceforge.net/projects/solunar/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of these implementations gave widely different results when tested on the same day and location.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, I have bought a table of solunar periods from the original publisher of the solunar theory. It claims to follow the theory of mr Knight but does not explain how these times are calculated. The interesting problem is finding the general formula for calculating these periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Clues&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading the book &quot;Moon up - Moon down&quot; by J.A. Knight gives the following clues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are usually two major and two minor periods each day.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sometimes, there is one period missing which is explained by the fact that the lunar day is slightly longer than 24 hours.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The minor periods are exactly in between the major ones, i.e. we only need to calculate the major periods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the book, Knight implies that the major periods are based on the hypothetical times of low and high tide if the earth was completely covered with water.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On p.20, he says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I tried making up a Solunar schedule by determining the resultant of the two forces-the pull of the moon and the pull of the sun-and using as the Solunar period the time that this force was applied directly to our particular longitude-either overhead or underfoot.[...] This schedule proved to be more satisfactory than the one concocted from the use of tidal times, although it still was far from being exact&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On p.54, he says: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the times of full moon and dark of the moon, the moon and sun are functioning in unison, they, at those times being approximately &quot;in line&quot;. That being the case, the resultant of the directions of pull of the heavenly bodies comes pretty close to being the true Solunar period. As the month progresses, the directions of pull of the moon and of the sun move farther apart each day so that, at the times of first quarter, they are approximately at right angles to each other. At these times, the moon can be considered to be the complete control. These are the times where the &quot;moon-up moon-down&quot; system seems to be the correct method of timing. In setting up the schedule, these four times of the month are used as key points. Just at what time of the month the sun ceases to act in conjunction with the moon and just at what point the moon becomes the full control, I cannot say with any authority. This much I do know. By averaging the times of the Solunar periods between these four key points, so that the progression from day to day is smooth, the resultant schedule comes about as close to the true schedule as it is possible to come without knowing the absolute cause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Data&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To find the formula I have a table of Solunar periods for 2015 at the location: Beverly Hills, latitude 34.09663, longitude -118.4124&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwvk-8toPklLZkQ3VXBoNU5yY0E/view?pli=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwvk-8toPklLZkQ3VXBoNU5yY0E/view?pli=1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The major periods for March 2015 are below&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;day p1     p2&#xA;01  7:35    19:55&#xA;02  8:15    20:40&#xA;03  9:00    21:20&#xA;04  9:40    22:00&#xA;05  10:15   22:40 Full moon&#xA;06  11:05   23:30&#xA;07  11:50   --:--&#xA;08  12:15   13:35&#xA;09  2:00    14:25&#xA;10  2:50    15:15&#xA;11  3:40    16:05&#xA;12  4:35    17:00&#xA;13  5:30    17:55 Last Quarter&#xA;14  6:20    18:45&#xA;15  7:10    19:40&#xA;16  8:05    20:30&#xA;17  8:55    21:25&#xA;18  9:50    22:15&#xA;19  10:40   23:10&#xA;20  11:30   --:-- Dark moon&#xA;21  0:00    12:30&#xA;22  1:05    13:30&#xA;23  2:05    14:35&#xA;24  3:10    15:30&#xA;25  4:00    16:25&#xA;26  5:05    17:30&#xA;27  5:55    18:20 First Quarter&#xA;28  6:40    19:05&#xA;29  7:25    19:50&#xA;30  8:05    20:30&#xA;31  8:50    21:10&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can anyone suggest a formula that explains these numbers given a location and a date? Preferably one that is computationally feasible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25314" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T10:35:12.487" Title="What formula gives the solunar periods of the Solunar Theory?" Tags="|physics|moon|sun|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-03-09T12:41:33.043" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26986" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-09T13:28:28.597" Score="3" ViewCount="2534" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some websites claim that Internation Women's Day in on March 8th to celebrate a famous strike by female textile workers in New York.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g.: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.womenaid.org/events/iwd/iwdeverywomen.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Woman Aid&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1857&#xA;  The first recorded organised action by working women anywhere in the world took place in New York on March 8, 1857, when hundreds of women in the garment and textile factories staged a strike in protest of low wages, long working hours, inadequate pay, inhumane working conditions and the lack of the right to vote. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or even &lt;a href=&quot;http://libguides.longwood.edu/content.php?pid=5377&amp;amp;sid=33668&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this book&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On March 8, 1857 women in the garment industry marched through New York City to protest their 12 hour a day sweatshop working conditions. Many were beaten by police. Two years later, again in March, they formed their own union. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women&amp;#39;s_Day&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;International Women's Day&lt;/a&gt; entry has a different explanation about why March 8th was choosen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There was no specific strike happening on March 8, despite later claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was there a major protest in March 8th, 1857?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4146" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-03-10T11:37:28.513" LastActivityDate="2015-03-10T11:37:28.513" Title="Did women in New York textile factories strike on March 8, 1857?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26987" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26947" CreationDate="2015-03-09T14:47:48.173" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a different &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_(Electronic_Arts)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; page, the one for this very game, the initial release was September 12, 2006 for the iOS, with an Android release only coming out in September 1, 2011, almost a full five years later.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which such a large difference in release dates, iOS would make up the majority of downloads for this app, not Android.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This couples with the fact that there were two separate events where the app was removed from the App Store and Google Play, though they were fairly close together and shortly after the Android release, so they aren't as likely to have had as much of an impact as the release dates. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the 100 million downloads report was made on Jan 21, 2010 according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ea.com/news/tetris-game-surpasses-100-million-mobile-downloads&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reference&lt;/a&gt; linked to that claim.  While this doesn't prove that the 100 million sales statistic is accurate, it proves that the 10 million Android downloads are irrelevant to this claim, because this claim was made &lt;strong&gt;prior&lt;/strong&gt; to any Android release. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18012" LastEditorUserId="18012" LastEditDate="2015-03-09T18:20:52.480" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T18:20:52.480" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26988" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-09T17:04:57.860" Score="1" ViewCount="3049" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Iglesias_Turri%C3%B3n&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pablo Iglesias&lt;/a&gt;, the leader of Spanish anti-establishment party &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podemos_%28Spanish_political_party%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Podemos&lt;/a&gt; (trans. &lt;em&gt;&quot;we can&quot;&lt;/em&gt;), post this sentence on Twitter, as shown in screenshots which went viral?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BQLg9.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BQLg9.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Twitter screenshot&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Preguntémonos si es lógico que el esfuerzo humano de los celadores y&#xA;  celadoras sea menos recompensado que el de la casta médica.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(trans.) &quot;Lets ask ourselves if it's logical that human effort of the &#xA;  orderlies is paid less than that of the medical cast&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Pablo_Iglesias_/status/575929006316519424&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;another tweet Iglesias claims&lt;/a&gt; that above screenshot is fake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25318" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2019-03-31T19:05:26.443" LastActivityDate="2019-04-02T13:43:33.157" Title="Did Pablo Iglesias post this sentence on twitter?" Tags="|politics|spain|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="26989" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26978" CreationDate="2015-03-09T18:24:28.807" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &quot;poisonous&quot; aspect has already been addressed, but what about that &quot;pineal gland&quot; claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pineal gland is located in the brain of vertebrates, and regulates sleep patterns through the production of melatonin. As this is related to both daily and seasonal light changes, the gland does act on visual information, but that information comes from the retina, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/otherendo/pineal.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;not from itself&lt;/a&gt;. The concept of a &quot;third eye&quot; is addressed related to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/15490/21066&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pineal gland accumulates both calcium and fluoride, and this accumulation is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11275672&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;correlated with age&lt;/a&gt;. This process is thought to be related to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theodora.com/anatomy/the_pineal_body.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hormone changes during sexual development&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajronline.org/doi/pdf/10.2214/ajr.122.3.503&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; notes that the process seems to be more related to &quot;constitution&quot; than &quot;environmental factors&quot;, since the incidence of calcification seemed to differ with race but not with socioeconomic factors. One would expect a strong correlation with socioeconomic factors if water fluoridation were to blame.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21066" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T18:24:28.807" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26990" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-09T19:08:14.327" Score="2" ViewCount="18484" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, a reputable Lebanese &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJL-BB9UJh8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;talk show&lt;/a&gt; discussed trendy lebanese adult performer, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/who-mia-khalifa-everything-you-4921882&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mia Khalifa&lt;/a&gt;. They claimed that she is supported by her husband, Feras Antoon, a Syrian man she met in the Middle East. They claimed he owns PornHub, a popular porn tube site with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/pornhub.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alexa rank 74&lt;/a&gt;, and cheated the system to bring her up to the top PornHub rank. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pornhub &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/miakhalifa/status/549074594103955456&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tweeted&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Congrats @MiaKhalifa currently the #1 ranked pornstar on Pornhub&#xA;  taking the crown from Lisa Ann 》》&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many other people were skeptical that the ranking was obtained fairly. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/who-mia-khalifa-everything-you-4921882&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; said: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mia Khalifa is currently the number one porn star on website PornHub,&#xA;  despite only starting making films a few months ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the video, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJL-BB9UJh8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ميا خليفة تبناها سوري&lt;/a&gt; (&quot;Mia Khalifa adopted by a Syrian&quot;), one journalist made these claims of dishonesty, without revealing her sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What was bizarre to me, is that they claimed that Feeras Antoon is the owner and CEO of MindGeek. They showed a Facebook profile to support their claim that he's CEO of ManWin. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it hart to believe that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindGeek&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MindGeek&lt;/a&gt; (a billion-dollar company which owns: PornHub, YouPorn, RedTube and Babes.com Brazzers, Digital Playground, Reality Kings, Twistys, and Men.com, along with other 100 professional sites) would be support dishonestly tweaking the ranking system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical mainly about two claims here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1) Feeras Antoon funded Mia Khalifa and helped her cheat her way to number 1 on PornHub.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2) Feeras Antoon is actually the CEO and owner of MindGeek.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we prove claim #2 is false we would know that claim #1 is false too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-03-10T11:32:40.450" LastActivityDate="2017-01-19T18:55:58.010" Title="Did Feeras Antoon cheat porn star Mia Khalifa up to number 1 on PornHub?" Tags="|pornography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26991" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26990" CreationDate="2015-03-09T19:42:57.510" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Feeras Antoon is actually the CEO and owner of MindGeek&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Feeras Antoon is (&lt;a href=&quot;https://ca.linkedin.com/pub/feras-antoon/26/930/729&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;according to his LinkedIn profile&lt;/a&gt;) currently CEO at Manwin Canada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/webwelt/article112037545/YouPorn-lebt-weiter-auch-ohne-seinen-Chef.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this 2012 article in &lt;em&gt;Die Welt&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; he controls the largest number of the approximately 1000 Manwin employees and seems to have acted to keep the whole enterprise running while Fabian Thylmann was &quot;sitting in custody&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dass die Seiten ohne Störung weiterbetrieben werden, dürfte vor allem an Feras Antoon liegen, dem Geschäftsführer der kanadischen Manwin-Filiale. Antoon hat das Kommando über den größten Teil der insgesamt rund 1000 Mitarbeiter der Manwin-Gruppe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translated from the German by Google Chrome:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That the sides will continue to operate without interference, probably due to Feras Antoon, CEO of the Canadian Manwin branch. Antoon has command of the largest of the approximately 1,000 employees of Manwin group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even if he is not CEO and owner of MindGeek, he seems to be one its top leaders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T19:42:57.510" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26993" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25229" CreationDate="2015-03-09T22:46:29.803" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bit late in the day but in case it is helpful: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The prohibition of abortion in Chile did not improve Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR) but neither did it have any effect. In other words access to abortion did not make women safer (at least in the Chilean context). &#xA;see this study for the details: &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0036613&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0036613&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They did conclude that women's education level had an effect along with healthcare access and better sanitation infrastructure.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a strong argument against those who say abortion makes women safer, suggesting that the improvements in MMR seen in some countries that have introduced abortion may be rooted in improving conditions in education, health etc. This might explain why many of the countries with strictest abortion rules have poor maternal health as they are often poor with bad education, health access and sanitation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be able to conclude all this definitively though research would have to be done into each country in order to show which factors are most responsible and to adjust for the effect of these in judging the effect of abortion on women's health. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25320" LastActivityDate="2015-03-09T22:46:29.803" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26997" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-10T08:42:58.920" Score="1" ViewCount="81" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.2simtv.com/ru/article/16-5-sovetov-dlja-prodlenija-jizni-akkumuljatora-na-ustroystvah-pod-upravleniem-os-android&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here is a page&lt;/a&gt; with tips on how to decrease power consumption of a smartphone (in Russian). One of the tips is to use black background for Google search.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder whether it actually decreases battery consumption given that the screen uses liquid crystals and the highlighting diods work the same way even if all the screen is black.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6248" LastActivityDate="2015-03-10T08:42:58.920" Title="Does white background increase battery consumption of a smartphone?" Tags="|technology|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-03-10T11:21:08.013" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="26999" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27055" CreationDate="2015-03-10T22:36:48.083" Score="15" ViewCount="9242" Body="&lt;p&gt;NTT DoCoMo (the largest Japanese telecom company)'s &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/docomo_cs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;customer service department&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/docomo_cs/status/573332159911612416/photo/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recently tweeted an image&lt;/a&gt; purportedly showing the harmful effects of overusing smartphones:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pf1rF.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To me, at least, the photo looks suspiciously doctored, and I was not aware of any reason why the relatively light weight of a smartphone can cause such a deformity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Google Translate of the tweet information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[Finger is deformed! ? ] ... Also depending on how to hold the smartphone to become &quot;text thumb injury&quot;. So that it is not too much a burden on a particular finger, but please take the time to time how to hold a change or break.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Native Japanese speakers are welcome to suggest edits and/or provide a proper translation, but it seems quite clear (to a Chinese speaker) that they are suggesting that the finger deformity is caused by holding the smartphone. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The belief of &quot;smartphone pinky&quot; being a real phenomenon is also corroborated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.rocketnews24.com/2015/03/11/is-smartphone-pinky-is-the-new-text-claw-overuse-of-mobile-devices-found-to-cause-finger-deformity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rocket News 24&lt;/a&gt; (an English blog about Japan) which cites the above Twitter post, as well as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=smartphone%20pinky&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Urban Dictionary&lt;/a&gt;, which attests that the deformation is permanent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T14:33:09.953" Title="Can overuse of smartphones cause the pinky finger to become deformed?" Tags="|technology|ergonomics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27006" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-11T10:04:47.207" Score="1" ViewCount="275" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is like a hypothetical question .&#xA;Can the whole world have only one time everywhere .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What are the consequences if it were to be ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25346" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T10:19:17.013" Title="What is the importance of having different timezones all over world" Tags="|law|time|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-03-11T11:17:33.930" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27007" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27006" CreationDate="2015-03-11T10:19:17.013" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Could the world have only one time zone? Yes, it could.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, everyone could use &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Swatch Internet Time&lt;/a&gt; or simply &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UTC&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Epoch time&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The drawback would be that breakfast would happen at completely different times in different countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if the world used UTC (and nothing else) then Australians would get out of bed in the morning at something like 10pm. They'd have breakfast at 11pm and set out for work at midnight. The sun would go down at maybe 6am (or something like that). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Noon (going by the sun) would be in the middle of the night (going by the clock). The morning (by the sun) would be in the evening (by the clock) and the evening would be in the morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This could be confusing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there's no legal requirement (that I'm aware of) for a country to use a timezone which matches the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diurnal_cycle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;diurnal cycle&lt;/a&gt; at their particular position on the planet. It would just be weird not to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22504" LastActivityDate="2015-03-11T10:19:17.013" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26964" CreationDate="2015-03-11T20:22:25.963" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The video is likely fake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Watch closely how he pours the bucket.  We don't see him pour it the first time.  However, the second time, he pours it into the left side of the sink (from his perspective).  This causes the water to have a clockwise motion (since it flows upwards on the left side).  The second time, he pours it into the right side of the sink.  This causes the water to have a counterclockwise motion (since it flows upwards on the right side).  It is likely that the first time, he poured it into the middle.  The nature of the hoax is covered in more detail by astronomer and skeptic Dr. Phil Plait at &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/03/27/flushing-out-an-equatorial-fraud/#.VQE-2FmtiS8&quot;&gt;The Bad Astronomy Blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a similar trick I saw in Kenya, where they turn one way before putting a bucket down on side of the equator, turn the other way on the other side, and put it down without turning at all in the middle.  Dr. Phil Plait also covers this hoax in his book, &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.de/books?id=eInnwg77gbkC&amp;amp;pg=PA21&amp;amp;lpg=PA21&amp;amp;dq=coriolis%20effect%20kenya%20hoax&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=e4LhsY5UiP&amp;amp;sig=8Z19voRwkhopHcRtzPhxdCrs9_I&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=0j4BVfehJ4ipOpe_geAK&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=coriolis%20effect%20kenya%20hoax&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Bad Astronomy (google books link to the chapter)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24973" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-03-12T09:40:16.410" LastActivityDate="2015-03-12T09:40:16.410" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27012" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-11T23:18:08.257" Score="13" ViewCount="3549" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is quite clear that &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7440/was-the-passport-of-one-of-the-9-11-terrorists-found-while-nothing-else-from/7441#7441&quot;&gt;objects from the planes that hit the World Trade Center&lt;/a&gt; were recovered after the attack on 9/11. It is also clear that nobody inside the planes could have survived the crash, and few human remains were found in the aftermath. Curiously enough, though, Snopes gives a claim (marked as &quot;undetermined&quot;) that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/rumors/hands.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a pair of handcuffed hands&lt;/a&gt; was found&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;atop one of the neighboring buildings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Snopes quotes &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20070327214337/http://www.amny.com/news/local/groundzero/ny-nycuff152367641sep15,0,1025711.story&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; (originally on &lt;em&gt;Newsday&lt;/em&gt;). The claims were apparently backed up by &quot;police sources;&quot; I have not been able to find those sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also said that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hands were cataloged Friday at the medical examiner's office at 30th Street and First Avenue, which is the main facility for the painful and painstaking process of identifying the dead and establishing the cause of death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyc.gov/html/ocme/html/home/home.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The official site&lt;/a&gt; of the medical examiner, however, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nyc.gov/html/ocme/html/WTCRepository/WTC_Repository.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;does not give information about specific remains&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a related claim that the body of a flight stewardess was found - with her hands bound. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/sep/13/september11.usa35&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Guardian&lt;/em&gt; claims&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Close by was the body of a woman believed to be a stewardess, whose hands were tied with wire, Fox News said. Police could not confirm the reports.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/15/us/after-attacks-trade-center-heart-rending-discoveries-digging-continues-lower.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The New York Times&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another [rescue worker], in one of the most searing discoveries among the ruins, found the body of a flight attendant, her hands bound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a091401severedhands&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; led me to these last two sources, and suggests that the two claims (bound severed hands and stewardess's body) could be versions of the same claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_11#Aftermath&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; repeats the claim, but gives no new sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that putting these sources together could make for an answer to this question of &quot;inconclusive,&quot; but I sincerely doubt that there is no other trustworthy evidence on the issue, though I have not been able to find it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was a severed pair of handcuffed hands and/or a handcuffed flight stewardess's body recovered after 9/11?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should add that I'm not skeptical about minor remains being recovered - that seems plausible. I &lt;em&gt;am&lt;/em&gt; skeptical that &lt;em&gt;handcuffed&lt;/em&gt; or otherwise restrained remains were found. Given the other events on-board the planes (i.e. the death of the crew in some cases), it seems odd that someone (presumably) would go to the trouble of restraining someone when knocking them out or killing them would be much simpler. It could be that one of the terrorists was restrained, but the reports seem to imply the opposite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, this is (educated) speculation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T21:30:48.673" Title="Was a pair of handcuffed hands found near the World Trade Center after 9/11?" Tags="|9-11|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27014" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10940" CreationDate="2015-03-12T09:20:44.083" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Back in 2012 this probably wasn't answerable, now after Gazelle's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gazelle.com/thehorn/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Water-Damage-Prevention-and-Recovery.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;research which was conducted in 2014&lt;/a&gt; I can attempt to answer this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The good news:&lt;/strong&gt; it prevents it from dying.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The bad news:&lt;/strong&gt; it isn't the most effective (more like least effective).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gazelle, an eCommerce company, which lets people sell their used cell phones and pays consumers for used or broken electronic devices, performed a series of tests in a quest to find out the most effective way to fix a water-damaged cell phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;White rice (uncooked) was able to turn on a cellphone but it wasn't the most effective: cat litter, instant couscous, and open-air sponge, silica gel all performed better than uncooked white rice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Open-air sponge - 7.6 mL lost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Silica gel - 6.1 mL lost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Cat litter - 5.5 mL lost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instant couscous - 5.0 mL lost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instant rice - 5.0 mL lost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Instant oatmeal - 5.0 mL lost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uncooked white rice - 4.0 mL lost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Sealed-container sponge - 0.7 mL lost&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You may look at this table too, instant rice turned on a water-damaged iPhone 4. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/79OSn.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2016-04-15T12:39:22.857" LastActivityDate="2016-04-15T12:39:22.857" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27015" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-12T15:56:42.533" Score="23" ViewCount="3716" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have a part-time job at a place where printing, copying, scanning, faxing, and shredding happens every day. Thus, we have about two large cabinets with about 56 reams of paper (packs of 500 sheets) in each cabinet. Of course, even though we use paper every day, we don't use &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; much, so many reams of paper go untouched for nearly 2 months. Then, when the new supply of paper comes in, they usually go right in the more-empty cabinet, leaving the full cabinet (of 2 month old paper) untouched for yet another 2 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My coworker (secretary, some lady) keeps telling me that I should make sure to not just keep taking paper from one cabinet, but rather alternate between the two. When I ask her why, she says &quot;because the paper gets old and yellow.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;On what time-scale is this true/significant? If the paper is in a closed cabinet, sealed inside a paper-cover, wouldn't it essentially not change for hundreds of years (if untouched)?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't help but think that this is just some common misconception/myth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25357" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T08:30:53.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T08:30:53.183" Title="Does copy paper become &quot;old and yellow&quot;?" Tags="|consumer-products|chemistry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27018" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27015" CreationDate="2015-03-12T16:29:30.510" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Your co-worker is right, normal paper deteriorates due to its acidity and due to oxidation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Paper in Europe was originally made from cellulose sourced from linen&#xA;  and cotton rags. This made strong paper structures, owing to the long&#xA;  cellulose chains. The degree of polymerisation - a measure of the&#xA;  average number of glucose molecules in a polymer chain - is high for&#xA;  papers made from linen (3500) and cotton (1000-3000), and this means&#xA;  the chains are tightly bound into the fibrils and fibres by extensive&#xA;  hydrogen bonding. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, following the invention of the printing press and the&#xA;  enormous surge in demand for paper in the nineteenth century, most&#xA;  paper in our hands today is made from cellulose extracted from wood&#xA;  pulp. Cotton and linen sourced cellulose is now usually reserved for&#xA;  special purposes such as banknotes and artists' materials. While wood&#xA;  is a much more readily available source, the resulting paper has&#xA;  shorter cellulose chains (with a degree of polymerisation around&#xA;  600-1000) and a weaker structure. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wood also contains a variety of other carbohydrates and lignin. Lignin&#xA;  is a three-dimensional polymeric material that gives woody plants&#xA;  their physical strength. However, it reduces the strength of paper by&#xA;  interfering with the way the cellulose fibres assemble. For low value&#xA;  paper items, such as newspapers, cheap books and ephemera (material&#xA;  produced for one-off use but now of historical importance), the wood&#xA;  pulps would only be minimally purified to remove lignin. This means&#xA;  they are often the most fragile and rapidly deteriorating materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Quoted from Michael Seery on the Website of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rsc.org/education/eic/issues/2013March/paper-conservation-cellulose-acid-hydrolysis.asp&quot;&gt;Royal Society of Chemistry&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, however, this becomes a problem after decades of storage. Storing paper in a closed cabinet a few months longer than necessary will not affect its quality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16419" LastActivityDate="2015-03-12T16:29:30.510" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27019" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27020" CreationDate="2015-03-12T18:31:34.637" Score="16" ViewCount="4377" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a video going viral online and some people are claiming it is legitimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depicts an Apple employee mocking Apple's new MacBook for not having any type-A USB ports (used for normal USB) and for having a weak CPU.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can find it here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHZ8ek-6ccc&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHZ8ek-6ccc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How can I identify the source of this clip and verify if it is authentic or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3989" LastEditorUserId="1760" LastEditDate="2015-03-13T21:33:45.563" LastActivityDate="2015-03-28T23:20:41.593" Title="Is this video showing an Apple engineer discussing the new MacBook (2015) authentic?" Tags="|technology|video|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27020" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27019" CreationDate="2015-03-12T19:11:54.137" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;The video doesn't seem to be authentic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video is used as a parody worldwide, it is international and labeled as a &quot;video meme&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The series of the meme is called : &lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/el-risitas-interview-parodies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;El Risitas&quot; Interview Parodies&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What the meme-creator does is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;ignore the content of the video&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;pick any subject prone to criticism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;create the fake subtitles (usually using a video editor like Premiere Pro)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The video has extremely funny laughs as you see, with the combination of fit subtitles you get one extraordinary satirical meme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, we used it in my university to criticize our university's rules and regulations, you can see our video &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Xq0YykJbVA&amp;amp;list=LLejLqIAjsAS0ELFOrncyZOQ&amp;amp;index=31&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zCi2U.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another viral video was: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Q5FXvp6pw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pancho Aréna stadionavató&lt;/a&gt;, criticising football results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to reference this &lt;a href=&quot;http://444.hu/2013/10/14/ki-francesco-zombori-es-miert-nyerit/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hungarian article&lt;/a&gt; which helped me figure out the name of the person found in the video meme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm mentioning the &lt;a href=&quot;https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/32054/help-me-identify-the-source-of-this&quot;&gt;movies.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt; community for helping me find the original video.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It turns out the guy's name is &lt;a href=&quot;https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Risitas&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Juan Joya Borja&lt;/a&gt;, who is an Actor and a comedian Spanish known for appearing in the programs of Jesus Quintero and in films like Torrente 3: El protector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He's commonly known as &quot;Risitas&quot; or &quot;El Risitas&quot;, literally meaning &quot;little laughs&quot; or &quot;giggles&quot;, due to the way he laughs during his jokes and stories. He became very known in Spain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see the original video &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDiB4rtp1qw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; with English subtitles &lt;a href=&quot;http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/el-risitas-interview-parodies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;where&lt;/a&gt; he:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;was interviewed by host Jesus Quintero on the Spanish-language&#xA;  television program Ratones Coloraos, and he burst into laughter&#xA;  after telling a humorous anecdote about throwing kitchen pans into the&#xA;  sea while working at a beach restaurant as a young man (shown below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:54:04.793" LastActivityDate="2015-03-28T23:20:41.593" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27022" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26805" CreationDate="2015-03-13T03:23:31.067" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, I'd like to thank Oddthinking for calling me out on the flaws in my first response to this. Of course that response took me five minutes and this one took me 90 minutes :). Hopefully, you'll find this a bit more informative.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2011, Paul Piff and others released a paper summarizing studies that purport to show that &quot;that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals&quot;. Piff's paper can be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086.full&quot;&gt;http://www.pnas.org/content/109/11/4086.full&lt;/a&gt;. I find this work to be flawed in many ways which I intend to enumerate below. I don't intend for this to be a full, systematic analysis, as I find that a partial review is enough to discount that papers position. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One consistent problem with Piff is that he frequently displays narrow and opinionated ideas of ideal behavior. He does not spend any time at all discussing any sort of foundation of ethics. But his paper often relies on ideas founded in ethics. For example, we find this early in the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Political and social battles are often fought with words. For example, governments will use the words terrorist or freedom fighter to label groups exhibiting the exact same behaviors depending on whether we wish that group to be our allies. Piff does not define the word &quot;greed&quot; here. Instead it appears he wishes to use it to induce an emotional reaction: hardly the thing one would expect from a scientific study. &quot;Greed&quot; is a word that enters the realm of economics and is best understood from that perspective. I don't have time or space here to discuss that fully, however, in short, wealth is gained by satisfying the wants of others. In the free market, to earn wealth, you must be able to supply goods or services that others want, and do that in an efficient enough manner so that not only are your customers happy and your expenses paid (likely including the creation of jobs, improving the lives of others), but there is profit left over. Piff does not discuss this subject at all in this paper. He also does not discuss the fact that 95% of high wealth households give to charity and the income group with the largest donation rate as a percentage of income are those making 10$ million or more a year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Piff paragraphs  build up pictures of the wealthy as some kind of alien monsters: &quot;less cognizant of others&quot;, &quot;worse at identifying the emotions that others feel&quot;, &quot;more disengaged during social interactions&quot;, &quot;more likely to engage in unethical behavior&quot;, &quot;less generous and altruistic&quot;, &quot;more selfish&quot; and finally concluding &quot;These findings suggest that upper-class individuals are particularly likely to value their own welfare over the welfare of others&quot;. Aren't there other possible explanations for all this? Humans are not ant-like creatures, but individuals. Some individuals are more thinking while others are more feeling. What if being &quot;more disengaged during social interactions&quot; is a necessary part of being a successful business owner? If some people are wired that way and we all benefit from that persons contribution to business, is that bad? This is another example where Piff's starts from the assumption regarding some ideal human behavioral state. Regarding his mentioning that the wealthy are &quot;less generous&quot; I will point you to a graph below and you can make up your own mind. The differences are actually quite small.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nccs.urban.org/nccs/statistics/Charitable-Giving-in-America-Some-Facts-and-Figures.cfm&quot;&gt;http://nccs.urban.org/nccs/statistics/Charitable-Giving-in-America-Some-Facts-and-Figures.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the next paragraph, Piff mentions 5 more studies damning greed, which I've already discussed above. Just two points here: one, he again and again appeals to ethics, but doesn't mention any foundation of ethics. For example, what if the self interest of the wealthy leads to an overall improvement in the lives of the general population, but also an increase in inequality? Certainly Marxists and classical liberals will differ greatly on the answer to this. Piff wants to start from the assumption &quot;self interest is bad&quot; as FACT and build on that. But rather than being fact, it is instead a highly contentious and debatable contention.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My discussions so far are based on introductory material in this study. I have not begun to comment on the studies themselves. But, I think it's important to see that Piff's paper so far is very opinion based which leads me to believe the study is likely to find exactly what he was looking for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first study, observers stood at a busy intersection and determined when drivers &quot;cut off&quot; other drivers and correlated that to to &quot;vehicle status&quot;. I find numerous problems with this study: First, the study assumes that &quot;vehicles are reliable indicators of a person's social rank and wealth&quot;. While this may be generally true, I've also found that the wealthy often don't drive high end cars and that poor do. Piff again makes sweeping assumptions about individuals. &quot;Cut off&quot; in this study appears to mean &quot;did not follow right-of-way guidelines&quot;. This is certainly a judgement call to some extent. Piff mentions that the observers were &quot;blind to the hypotheses of the study&quot;, however this could be problematic. Isn't it possible that there is a tendency for left-leaning Berkeley students to be biased here? They were &quot;blind to the hypotheses&quot; but then asked to tell us &quot;when the rich people cut off other drivers&quot;. Call me suspicious, especially given Piff's other tendencies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Piff makes a few assumptions in this study I'm not comfortable with. One is that San Francisco traffic laws represent some ideal ethical approach to driving. Is it possible that some believe in these standards more than others? To Piff this behavior is &quot;unethical&quot;. But others might simply say it shows lack of patience. Additionally, perhaps a lack of patience correlates with other behaviors that make for successful business owners, entrepreneurs and capitalists. Piff again paints a narrow, opinion-based set of acceptable behaviors. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another flaw that is exposed here is the tendency for Piff to take these somewhat mundane behaviors and make broad assumptions from them. Is it really true that someone who is in more of a rush at an intersection would also, for example, do nothing if they saw someone in trouble at the side of the road? PIff does not mention this nuance, and I'm left with having to think he believes this to be true. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in another study, students are playing a game of monopoly. Some students are given an advantage that allows them to win. From this, Piff simply expects us to accept that the same would be true no matter how much wealth is involved or the situation over all. You can find a Ted talk video from Piff discussing the monopoly study here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ8Kq1wucsk&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ8Kq1wucsk&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In that study, there is a point where some video of the students is shown where Piff claims the winning students are being &quot;mean&quot;.  You can find a transcript here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_piff_does_money_make_you_mean/transcript?language=en&quot;&gt;http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_piff_does_money_make_you_mean/transcript?language=en&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find Piff's words and the monopoly game very difficult to reconcile. Piff finds it &quot;rude&quot; and apparently unacceptable that the winning students act happier, more outgoing and &quot;eat more pretzels&quot; than the losing players. &quot;Rude&quot; to Piff is making the following statements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have money for everything.&#xA;You owe me 24 dollars. &#xA;You're going to lose all your money soon. &#xA;I have so much money, it takes me forever. &#xA;I'm going to buy out this whole board. &#xA;You're going to run out of money soon. &#xA;I'm pretty much untouchable at this point.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only must we accept Piff's system of ethics, but we must also believe that a game of monopoly is predictive of more important ethical decisions. In fact, Piff makes the following statement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Now this game of Monopoly can be used as a metaphor for understanding society and its hierarchical structure&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find the above statement to be, at best, ridiculous and at worst, a condemnation of Piff as a researcher in his field of study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to admit, that's as far as I went in reviewing this study. Finding it flawed at nearly every turn, I do not think it worthwhile to read and comment on it fully, and this write up is getting a bit long anyway. And Frankly, I find it morally reprehensible that citizens of California and San Francisco had to pay for this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25321" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T03:23:31.067" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27023" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27025" CreationDate="2015-03-13T08:44:15.060" Score="12" ViewCount="681" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a TEDxTalk, Brian Kateman, the Assistant Program Manager of the Earth Institute Center for Environmental Sustainability &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJJtRWFL_gw&amp;amp;t=844&quot;&gt;claimed&lt;/a&gt; that a huge number of those who identified themselves as vegetarians fail to stick to their diet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A separate study found among those who consider themselves to be a vegetarian nearly 2/3 of them had indicated that they recently eaten meat when they asked to recall their diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He goes on with the TEDxTalk defining these people as &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reducetarian.com/&quot;&gt;reducetarians&lt;/a&gt;&quot; rather than vegetarians, though the above claim is what I am skeptical of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is this study that he is referring to? And is it valid only in the USA? There is no mention of it on the reducetarian website either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25236" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2015-03-13T11:09:33.470" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T13:55:42.157" Title="Do 2/3 of &quot;vegetarians&quot; fail to stick to a vegetarian diet?" Tags="|vegetarianism|meat|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27025" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27023" CreationDate="2015-03-13T12:35:55.447" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using sources from the answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/26337/is-it-common-that-north-americans-who-call-themselves-vegetarian-eat-fish&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surveys do apparently exist that support Brian Kateman's contention that about 2/3 of &lt;em&gt;Americans&lt;/em&gt; who consider themselves vegetarian have recently consumed meat. However, there are a couple of caveats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a 2011 article titled &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animals-and-us/201109/why-are-there-so-few-vegetarians&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Why Are There So Few Vegetarians?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (with the subtitle, &quot;Most &quot;vegetarians&quot; eat meat. Huh?&quot;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Take a 2002 Times/CNN poll on the eating habits of 10,000 Americans. Six percent of the individuals surveyed said they considered themselves vegetarian. But when asked by the pollsters what they had eaten in the last 24 hours, &lt;strong&gt;60% of the self-described &quot;vegetarians&quot; admitted that that had consumed red meat, poultry or fish the previous day.&lt;/strong&gt; In another survey (link is external), the United States Department of Agriculture randomly telephoned 13,313 Americans. Three percent of the respondents answered yes to the question, &quot;Do you consider yourself to be a vegetarian?&quot; A week later the researchers called the participants again and this time asked what they had eaten the day before. The results were even more dramatic than the Times/CNN survey: &lt;strong&gt;this time 66% of the &quot;vegetarians&quot; had eaten animal flesh in the last 24 hours.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While I cannot find the 2002 poll, the above article &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/626S.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;does link to a 2003 paper&lt;/a&gt; that analyses the data from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ars.usda.gov/Main/docs.htm?docid=14392&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Continuing Survey of Food Intake &lt;strong&gt;(1994–1996, 1998)&lt;/strong&gt; (CSFII)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; conducted by the Department of Agriculture (USDA). It's therefore research that is 12 years old on data that is between 16 and 20 years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper notes that rather than researchers calling participants &quot;a week later&quot; (as in the article),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The dietary intake data from the survey were collected on 2 nonconsecutive days, 3–10 d apart, through an interviewer-administered 24-h recall using a multiple-pass interviewing strategy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IOW, the interviewees were asked the questions twice on different days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/78/3/626S/T1.expansion.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;includes the following table&lt;/a&gt; that summarises the relevant responses of 13,313 Americans aged 6 or above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/egmnP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, out of the 13,313, 334 were self-identified vegetarians of which 214 had consumed more than 10g of &quot;meat&quot; the previous day. This pegs the number of self-identified vegetarians at 2.5% of the sample and self-identified vegetarians who ate meat the previous day at 64% which is close to Brian Kateman's claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, &quot;meat&quot; in the survey implies &quot;meat, poultry, or fish&quot;. We therefore have no idea of knowing if these vegetarians were having a &quot;meat relapse&quot; or if they are of those (significant number of) vegetarians that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pescetarianism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;consider fish&lt;/a&gt; or white meat to be OK, but not red meat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The terms &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-vegetarianism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;semi-vegetarian and flexitarian&lt;/a&gt; already exist for the practice of reducing meat, seafood, and poultry intake. Reducetarian appears to be a neo-neologism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-03-13T13:55:42.157" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27033" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27163" CreationDate="2015-03-14T01:51:46.250" Score="3" ViewCount="651" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've found &lt;a href=&quot;http://tab.bz/antipsychotics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many web-sites that warn against anti-psychotics&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But antipsychotic treatment has a negative impact on the brain, so … we must get the word out that they should be used with great care, because even though they have fewer side effects than some of the other medications we use, they are certainly not trouble free and can have lifelong consequences for the health and happiness of the people and families we serve. - &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/09/12/loss-of-brain-tissue-in-schizophrenia-tied-to-antipsychotics/59443.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the truth about those products? Do they have negative lifelong consequences concerning neurons impairment, hormones level?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8708" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-28T13:46:39.110" LastActivityDate="2015-03-28T23:57:24.390" Title="Do antipsychotics have persistent negative effects on the brain?" Tags="|neurology|psychiatry|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27034" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16710" CreationDate="2015-03-14T02:48:37.653" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/a/4915/8214&quot;&gt;chemistry.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hydrofluoric acid is toxic and corrosive, but actually isn't that&#xA;  strong of an acid compared to other hydrohalic acids; the fluorine has&#xA;  a very good orbital overlap with hydrogen and is also not very&#xA;  polarizable, therefore it resists to readily donate its proton.&#xA;  Hydrochloric acid is much stronger, and as it has several uses from&#xA;  pH-balancing pool water to preparing concrete surfaces, it's available&#xA;  by the gallon from any hardware store. However, it isn't very good at&#xA;  dissolving bodies either; while it will eventually work by breaking&#xA;  down the connective tissues, it will make a huge stink and take&#xA;  several days to dissolve certain types of tissues and bones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The standard body-dissolving chemical is lye aka sodium hydroxide. The&#xA;  main source is drain clog remover, because most drain clogs are formed&#xA;  by hair and other bio-gunk that accumulates naturally when humans&#xA;  shower, exfoliate etc. It works, even though the body's overall&#xA;  chemistry is slightly to the basic side of neutral (about 7.35-7.4),&#xA;  because the hydroxide anion is a strong proton acceptor. That means&#xA;  that it strips hydrogen atoms off of organic molecules to form water&#xA;  (alkaline hydrolysis, aka saponification), and as a result, those&#xA;  organic molecules are turned into simpler molecules with lower melting&#xA;  points (triglycerides are turned into fatty acids, saturated fats are&#xA;  dehydrogenated to form unsaturated fats, alkanes become alcohols,&#xA;  etc). Sodium hydroxide is also a ready source of the sodium ion;&#xA;  sodium salts are always water-soluble (at least I can't think of a&#xA;  single one that isn't). The resulting compounds are thus either&#xA;  liquids or water-soluble alcohols and salts, which flush down the&#xA;  drain. What's left is the brittle, insoluble calcium &quot;shell&quot; of the&#xA;  skeleton; if hydrolyzed by sodium hydroxide, the resulting calcium&#xA;  hydroxide (&quot;slaked lime&quot;) won't dissolve completely but is relatively&#xA;  easy to clean up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:06.483" LastActivityDate="2015-03-14T02:48:37.653" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27036" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="38184" CreationDate="2015-03-14T12:13:49.967" Score="13" ViewCount="6137" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Mahatma Gandhi say&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most violent weapon on earth is the table fork.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example of the quote as a heading image of the twitter account &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.donotlink.com/e3bm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;@Cutwitts&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EHyTd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Text included in quote above&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2017-05-03T13:58:28.287" Title="Did Gandhi say &quot;The most violent weapon on earth is the table fork&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|mahatma-gandhi|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27037" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26964" CreationDate="2015-03-14T14:48:53.177" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;While TheBlackCat's answer (+1) is fully sufficient, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v196/n4859/pdf/1961080b0.pdf&quot;&gt;letter&lt;/a&gt; that appeared in Nature describes the authors experiments which show that (in Boston) if you set up the experiment &lt;strong&gt;very&lt;/strong&gt; carefully, you can show that the Coriolis force reliably dictates the direction in which water drains from a basin specifically designed to negate other influences (see also southern hemisphere replication in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v207/n5001/abs/2071084a0.html&quot;&gt;Nature letter&lt;/a&gt;).  However, the rotation was only counterclockwise if you let the water settle for 24 hours and only started 12-15 minutes after opening the drain.  The interesting fact is that the letter concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Incidentally, those who claim to have seen the direction of swirl&#xA;  change as a ship crosses the equator are surely pressing the case too&#xA;  far.  At the equator the Coriolis forces vanish, and &lt;strong&gt;it would be&#xA;  virtually impossible to perform a valid experiment a short distance&#xA;  from the equator&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; [&lt;strong&gt;emphasis&lt;/strong&gt; mine]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Coriolis acceleration is proportional to the sine of the latitude (see e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect#Rotating_sphere&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;) so the last place on Earth the direction of draining would be dictated by the Coriolis force would be a couple of meters from the Equator.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, we can be certain that the demonstration in the video is a trick, in the sense that it is not a legitimate demonstration that the direction of the vortex is governed by the rotation of the earth.  The Coriolis effect is way too small to have created a vortex of that speed that quickly, and also the effect vanishes as you approach the equator anyway!  The effect in this case is almost certainly due to the fact that the water is poured into the basin from the side that produces the desired vortex direction.  This is something that was dealt with in the properly performed experiment by pouring the water into the vessel to create an initial rotation in the &lt;strong&gt;wrong&lt;/strong&gt; direction, that would have to be overcome by the Coriolis force. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18604" LastEditorDisplayName="user18604" LastEditDate="2015-03-14T15:10:08.637" LastActivityDate="2015-03-14T15:10:08.637" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27040" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27041" CreationDate="2015-03-14T23:44:23.843" Score="25" ViewCount="25054" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim, apparently originating with the Canadian New Democratic Party, states that under the Harper government, the number of protected lakes and rivers has dropped dramatically:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IKwXj.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Photo with superimposed text&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Facebook this image has received &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/MeganLeslieMP/photos/a.417383082982.197959.28349247982/10152342008527983/?type=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1924 likes, 43030 shares, and many comments&lt;/a&gt;.  The text on the image is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Canada went from &lt;strong&gt;2.5 million&lt;/strong&gt; protected lakes and rivers, down to &lt;strong&gt;just 159&lt;/strong&gt; under the Conservatives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A caption along with the image reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Navigable Waters Protection Act, gutted. Fisheries Act, stripped. Environmental Assessment Act, repealed. Meanwhile mining applications are being fast-tracked and 10 billion litres of mine tailings are leaking into BC waterways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim correct? Is there any reasonable interpretation of the legislative changes made by the Canadian Conservative government, through which these numbers are accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2015-03-20T21:13:51.673" LastActivityDate="2015-07-26T06:47:29.780" Title="Did Canada go from 2.5 million protected lakes and rivers, to just 159?" Tags="|politics|environment|canada|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27041" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27040" CreationDate="2015-03-15T01:49:00.693" Score="31" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The figures are correct. However, the definition of &quot;protected&quot; in the claim is very specific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Harper Government decided to remove protection of &lt;em&gt;navigation&lt;/em&gt; for all bodies of water in Canada. These bodies were formerly protected by the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/N-22/page-2.html#docCont&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1882 Navigable Water Protection Act&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original Navigable Waters Protection Act protected the lakes from any construction that might interfered with navigation of any body of water in Canada. This included dams, bridges and other blockages to transportation popping up without the government’s approval. Now, such government approval is not needed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: These protections of &lt;em&gt;navigation&lt;/em&gt; differ from the protections against &lt;em&gt;environmental impact&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;New Act&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new industry-friendly Navigable Protection Act was launched in 2012 and eliminated these protections for the vast majority of water bodies in Canada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The government presented and explained the new 2012 Jobs and Growth Act in this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scribd.com/doc/110796992&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;457 page PDF document&lt;/a&gt;, showing 97 lakes, 62 rivers and 3 oceans that will be protected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/472468-navigation-protection-act-lakes-and-rivers.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This excerpt below&lt;/a&gt; includes a sample of the protected lakes/rivers (out of the 97+62 total).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2FXtG.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Environmental Protections Remain&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the Environmental Assessment Act was replaced by a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ceaa-acee.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=en&amp;amp;n=16254939-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;new one&lt;/a&gt;, many canadians claimed it was repealed, gutted or stripped; however the Canadian Government announced that environmental protection still applies anyway. All the lakes/rivers/oceans &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140227232404/http://tc.gc.ca/eng/mediaroom/backgrounders-npa-6911.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;will still have environmental protection&lt;/a&gt; through environmental laws, as reported by the government:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;FROM AN ENVIRONMENTAL PERSPECTIVE, OUR WATERS WILL CONTINUE TO BE PROTECTED THROUGH THE CANADIAN ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT ACT 2012, THE CANADIAN ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION ACT, THE SPECIES AT RISK ACT, AND THE FISHERIES ACT.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Controversy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ecojustice.ca/breaking-down-yet-another-attack-on-canadas-environmental-laws/#sthash.BOkfqBVX.dpuf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ecojustice.ca&lt;/a&gt; reported that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By comparison, Canada is estimated to contain nearly &lt;strong&gt;32,000&lt;/strong&gt; major&#xA;  lakes and more than &lt;strong&gt;2.25 million rivers&lt;/strong&gt;: The NPA would exclude &lt;strong&gt;99.7&#xA;  per cent&lt;/strong&gt; of Canada’s lakes and more than &lt;strong&gt;99.9 per cent of Canada’s&#xA;  rivers&lt;/strong&gt; from federal oversight. Notably absent from the proposed&#xA;  schedule are significant rivers in British Columbia, such as the&#xA;  Kitimat and Upper Fraser Rivers, which lie along the path of the&#xA;  proposed Northern Gateway pipeline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, Nathan Cullen, NDP House Leader and MP for Skeena Bulkley Valley, criticized the new Navigational Protect Acted, a labelled it as a top issue of the 2012 in his year-end conference saying (97+62=159):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It means the removal of almost every lake and river we know from the&#xA;  Navigable Waters Protection Act. From one day to the next we went from&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;2.5 million protected&lt;/strong&gt; lakes and rivers in Canada to &lt;strong&gt;159 lakes and rivers&lt;/strong&gt; protected. The Skeena is one of the few that was saved but none&#xA;  of its tributaries. You name the river, you name the lake and it is no&#xA;  longer protected by this act, and this has nothing to do with the&#xA;  budget that the government rammed through, it has everything to do&#xA;  with pipelines, because you are able to now are able to ruin&#xA;  navigation and not trigger an environmental assessment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Number of Canadian Lakes and Rivers&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might be skeptical about the large number of lakes of Canada. The number of lakes is estimated at close to 31,752 &lt;a href=&quot;http://atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/learningresources/facts/lakes.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;by the Atlas of Canada&lt;/a&gt;, with 561 lakes with a surface area larger than 100 km&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the number of rivers, there are plenty that they couldn't fit into one Wikipedia page, so they were &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_of_Canada&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;split by province&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1948, Alexander De Buford attempted to travel as many Canadian waterways as possible. He travelled  250,000 rivers and thousands of lakes. After Buford's death the count of rivers in Canada is still &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.funtrivia.com/en/subtopics/Canada-By-the-Numbers-338896.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;unknown&lt;/a&gt; but is now estimated to be over 2.25 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All the lakes and rivers will be protected by those acts: the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the Species at Risk Act, and the Fisheries Act but not by 1882 old Navigable Water Protection Act which required approval for any works that may affect navigation on navigable waters in Canada (with the exception of 159 lakes/rivers and 3 oceans). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-16T18:12:13.320" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T18:12:13.320" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27043" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26590" CreationDate="2015-03-15T18:50:11.570" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The ADA's stance is overly diplomatic because it is a political entity and not a scientific resource so I wouldn't expect them to provide productive clinical guidance one way or another. Creating well controlled longitudinal studies with a sufficient sample size to evaluate the clinical benefit of a particular oral hygiene regimen is unreasonable and never going to happen so we are left to rely on the literature detailing the pertinent biochemistry to base our clinical decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that fluoride needs to penetrate into the plaque fluid effectively to do its job (much of this is impeded by plaque thickness). Since your toothbrush bristles don't get all the way between teeth, the best way to maximize its bioavailability is to floss and then brush. Ideally this is followed by a fluoridated mouthwash instead of rinsing with water to maximize the benefit of fluoride. Toothpaste is has good substantivity and a higher fluoride concentration that OTC fluoridated mouthwashes so it is the key fluoride delivery vehicle in the process.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first study cited in your question is an industry sponsored paper meant to help sell Listerine, the second doesn't quite conclude that mouthwashes are a substitute for floss merely that they are a key component of a well rounded hygiene regimen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Combing through the evidence critically overwhelmingly supports the fact that floss, brush, mouthwash produces the most effective biochemistry for fluoride to do its job.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I guess it serves me right for not citing my comments in a skeptics forum. Here are a few relevant citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This study and others show the synergistic effect of a fluoridated mouthwash after brushing: Duckworth, R. M., Horay, C., Huntington, E., &amp;amp; Mehta, V. (2009). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19776569&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effects of flossing and rinsing with a fluoridated mouthwash after brushing with a fluoridated toothpaste on salivary fluoride clearance&lt;/a&gt;. Caries Research, 43(5), 387–390.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Limitations of penetrance of fluoride into plaque biofilms: Watson, P. S., et al. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15840782&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Penetration of fluoride into natural plaque biofilms&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; Journal of dental research 84.5 (2005): 451-455.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25394" LastEditorUserId="24903" LastEditDate="2015-03-17T12:31:33.223" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T12:31:33.223" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27044" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26590" CreationDate="2015-03-15T23:15:34.813" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bottom line:&lt;/strong&gt; It doesn't matter if you floss before or after brushing your teeth. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question has been debated &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=www.ada.org%20flossing%20pdf&amp;amp;oq=www.ada.org%20flossing%20pdf&amp;amp;aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60l2.2562j0j4&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;es_sm=119&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8#newwindow=1&amp;amp;q=flossing%20before%20or%20after&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;endlessly within the dental community.&lt;/a&gt; On this site it is really hard to conclude which one is better due to many different papers like you cited and many different points of views from dentists and professionals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will cite one answer only from the &lt;strong&gt;American Dental Assosiation&lt;/strong&gt;, the nation's &lt;strong&gt;largest dental association&lt;/strong&gt; and the &lt;strong&gt;leading source of oral health related information for dentists&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The American Dental Association has concluded is that it’s fine to do it in both ways. What sequence you use doesn't really matter as long as you do the job, they &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ada.org/en/science-research/ada-seal-of-acceptance/product-category-information/floss-and-other-interdental-cleaners&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Either way is acceptable as long as you do a thorough job&lt;/strong&gt;. However, &lt;strong&gt;if you use dental floss before you brush, the fluoride from the toothpaste has a better chance of reaching between teeth&lt;/strong&gt;. Some people brush their teeth and unfortunately skip flossing because they think their mouth feels clean or they may be short on time or tired and flossing is postponed. That’s not a good idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also seems that ADA has come up with this conclusion because as it seems there is no conlcusive evidence on which one is better, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dentabout.com/floss-before-after-brushing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;dentabout.com&lt;/a&gt; reported:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no hard evidence as to whether it’s better to floss before or&#xA;  after you brush, therefore it doesn’t really matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2016-08-05T00:22:32.347" LastActivityDate="2016-08-05T00:22:32.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27045" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-16T03:06:42.603" Score="3" ViewCount="646" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have there been any conclusive studies that found negative (or positive) effects from viewing internet pornography on a regular basis? Certainly a google search turns up a lot of results but most aren't scientific and relate to religion. I've heard claims about how no such company would sponsor such a study as it isn't profitable, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/sex/6709646/All-men-watch-porn-scientists-find.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt; have not had enough men who had never viewed porn to continue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/5-reasons-you-need-watch-porn/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; claiming porn is not bad but actually healthy and it does site a few sources but certainly seems biased. Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://fightthenewdrug.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;site&lt;/a&gt; on the negative effects of porn consumption however, a lot of the sited facts don't directly relate to negative (or positive) effects or porn itself (for example just because the brain releases dopamine when viewing porn isn't a negative thing). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T03:06:42.603" Title="Is regularly viewing internet pornography unhealthy?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|pornography|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-03-16T03:39:51.530" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27046" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27036" CreationDate="2015-03-16T09:25:47.197" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is no way meant to be a complete answer but I think it is a good starting point.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mkgandhi.org/bk123.htm&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a list of all(?) the books on and by M. K. Gandhi. I think it is quite a reliable website. You can easily find the PDF of most of these books online.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the list, the two books, which are on the topic of vegetarianism (If that is the context he meant it in), are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/moralbasis_vegetarianism.pdf&quot;&gt;The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mkgandhi.org/ebks/diet_and_diet_reform.pdf&quot;&gt;Diet and Reform&lt;/a&gt; (It is quite possible that I am looking at a strictly smaller subset). There is no mention of the word 'fork' in any of these two books. Maybe the quote was paraphrased? I just searched the PDF using Adobe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is entirely possible that the quote was verbal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18755" LastEditorUserId="18755" LastEditDate="2015-03-16T09:34:42.157" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T09:34:42.157" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27048" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15542" CreationDate="2015-03-16T11:12:11.373" Score="2" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are tomatoes associated with increased risk of prostate cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's quite the opposite. Tomatoes are associated with decreased risk of prostate cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to look at this peer-reviewed &lt;a href=&quot;http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2014/07/12/1055-9965.EPI-14-0322.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt;, it was carried out by researchers from the University of Bristol, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Bristol Nutrition Biomedical Research Unit, Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge and the University of Oxford and funded by the NIHR and Cancer Research UK.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The large and huge study showed that there is a clear association between the &lt;strong&gt;consumption of more than 10 portions of tomatoes per week&lt;/strong&gt; and an &lt;strong&gt;18% reduction in risk of prostate cancer&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vanessa Er, from the School of Social and Community Medicine at Bristol University, even said it with her own words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our findings suggest that tomatoes may be important in prostate cancer&#xA;  prevention&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you don't want to read the study, you can view a summary &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/08August/Pages/Tomato-rich-diet-reduces-prostate-cancer-risk.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;about it here&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140827100218.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastActivityDate="2015-03-16T11:12:11.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27049" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27051" CreationDate="2015-03-16T13:29:06.730" Score="28" ViewCount="5191" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is the specific, unreferenced claim I'm referring to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Olympia, Washington, where the town has a SOGI provision, a man who identifies as a woman frequently uses the women’s showers and locker room at a local state college that shares its facilities with a children’s swim club. Despite frequent complaints about indecent exposure in front of girls as young as 6 years old, the non-discrimination law prevents the college from banning this man from the women’s locker rooms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brnow.org/Opinions/Guest-Columns/February-2015/Don-t-do-it-Charlotte&quot;&gt;Tami Fitzgerald&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost identical quotes can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://baptistnews.com/culture/social-issues/item/29844-proposed-bathroom-bill-raises-baptist-ire-in-n-c&quot;&gt;Baptist News Global&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eventbrite.com/e/dont-do-it-charlotte-rally-tickets-15801363303&quot;&gt;an EventBrite event&lt;/a&gt;,  &lt;a href=&quot;http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2015/02/charlotte-gender-neutral-bathrooms-proposed-2974020.html&quot;&gt;Before It's News&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christianexaminer.com/article/franklin.graham.call.mayor.city.council.to.vote.no.on.charlotte.transgender.bill.today/48480.htm&quot;&gt;Christian Examiner&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://billygraham.org/story/franklin-graham-speaks-out-on-transgender-restroom-proposal/&quot;&gt;Billy Graham Evangelistic Association&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/48402-franklin-graham-speaks-bluntly-about-transgender-bathrooms&quot;&gt;Charisma News&lt;/a&gt; (all dated fairly recently).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is simply: is the claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it very hard to believe a transgender woman would be willing to expose herself, let alone to 6-year old girls.  I also feel that indecent exposure laws would still apply, transgender or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25398" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T07:38:20.673" Title="Does a transgender woman in Olympia, Washington receive frequent complaints about indecent exposure in the women’s showers and locker room?" Tags="|gender|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27051" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27049" CreationDate="2015-03-16T14:01:10.610" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this appears to be at least partly true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a &lt;a href=&quot;http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/college-allows-transgender-man-to-expose-himself-to-young-girls.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;column&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Starnes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Todd Starnes&lt;/a&gt; in Fox News Radio:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Little girls should not be exposed to naked men, period,” said David Hacker, senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom. A group of concerned parents contacted the legal firm for help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hacker said a 45-year-old male student, who dresses as a woman and goes by the name Colleen Francis, undressed and exposed his genitals on several occasions inside the woman’s locker room at Evergreen State College.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Students from nearby Olympia High School as well as children at a local swimming club share locker rooms with the college.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to a police report, &lt;strong&gt;the mother of a 17-year-old girl complained after her daughter&lt;/strong&gt; saw the transgender individual walking naked in the locker room. &lt;strong&gt;A female swim coach&lt;/strong&gt; confronted the man sprawled out in a sauna exposing himself. She ordered him to leave and called police.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The coach later apologized when she discovered the man was transgendered but explained there were girls using the facility as young as six years old who weren't used to seeing male genitals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later in the same article,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Clearly, allowing a person who is biologically a man to undress and expose himself to young girls places those girls at risk for emotional distress and harm,” [Hacker] wrote in a letter to the college. “Any reasonable person would view this as dangerous to the young girls involved. &lt;strong&gt;The fact that this individual was sitting in plain view of young girls changing into their swimsuits&lt;/strong&gt; puts you and Evergreen on notice of possible future harm.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starnes' article (going by the comments, dated November 1, 2012) references an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kirotv.com/news/news/transgender-woman-told-leave-womens-locker-room/nSWT4/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;October 5, 2012 news report&lt;/a&gt; (and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kirotv.com/videos/online/transgender-woman-says-she-was-discrimated-against/vfgT6/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt;) by a Seattle TV station named &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KIRO-TV&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;KIRO-TV&lt;/a&gt; which might be the original source. The Kiro TV report however makes no reference to six year olds and only notes that high school swim teams use the facilities. Even the lawyer quoted in the Starnes article only mentions &amp;quot;young girls&amp;quot; being exposed to male genitalia presumably referring to the (17-year-old) high school girl(s) in the incident; only the apologetic swim team coach brings up six-year-olds being &lt;em&gt;potentially&lt;/em&gt; exposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going by the fact that a &amp;quot;group of concerned parents&amp;quot; took legal counsel, we can probably conclude that there were a number of complaints made to Evergreen State College. However, there do not appear to be any online reports (or updates) on this issue after November 2012 which suggests that there haven't been any further complaints.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This makes Tami Fitzgerald's February 2015 claim (in the OP) of &amp;quot;frequent complaints about indecent exposure in front of girls as young as 6 years old&amp;quot; very likely a gross exaggeration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other articles on this story include those on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2012/11/transgender_student_in_evergreen_locker_room_draws_letter_from_arizona_alliance_defending_freedom.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Seattle Weekly&lt;/a&gt;, an &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/11/transgender-student-in-womens-locker-room-raises-uproar/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ABC News blog&lt;/a&gt;, and a piece (with pictures) in the UK's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2227562/Colleen-Francis-Outrage-transgendered-woman-permitted-use-college-womens-locker-room-exposing-himself.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt;. Some of these articles refer to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KOMO-TV&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Komo TV&lt;/a&gt; report (that I have been unable to unearth) which might have more information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;P.S. While I am unfamiliar with the process, comments below the Kiro TV story note that Colleen Francis appears to be undergoing &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormone_replacement_therapy_(male-to-female)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hormone replacement therapy&lt;/a&gt; and a side profile in the video does reveal significant breast development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T07:38:20.673" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27055" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26999" CreationDate="2015-03-16T21:20:32.883" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Short answer, no. It is possible to sustain Repetitive Stress Injuries (RSI) from smartphone usage, much like the early traumas of &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/22/AR2005042201739.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Blackberry Thumb&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_thumb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Nintendonitis&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, but these will not create permanent deformity of the fingers. As covered in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://snopes.com/politics/medical/smartphonepinky.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Snopes article on the phenomenon&lt;/a&gt;, the most likely explanation for people posting pictures of their ostensible damage is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.childrenshospital.org/conditions-and-treatments/conditions/clinodactyly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;clinodactyly&lt;/a&gt;, a common slight curvature of the fingers caused by genetics which most people are unaware that they have until they look.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="19346" LastEditDate="2015-03-17T14:21:56.450" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T14:21:56.450" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27056" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27060" CreationDate="2015-03-17T01:49:00.360" Score="20" ViewCount="881" Body="&lt;p&gt;On this Saint Patrick's Day, I was pondering on this thought:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's a common belief that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick#St._Patrick_banishes_all_snakes_from_Ireland&quot;&gt;Saint Patrick rid Ireland of snakes&lt;/a&gt; - by chasing them into the sea. It's true that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reptiles_of_Ireland&quot;&gt;Ireland doesn't have native snakes&lt;/a&gt;. But snakes are renown for being cold blooded and Ireland is renown for being cold - making them incompatible (I would have thought). It's likely that Ireland never had snakes to begin with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any physical evidence that Ireland ever had snakes? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-08-03T15:48:11.683" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T15:48:11.683" Title="Did Ireland ever have snakes?" Tags="|ireland|snakes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27060" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27056" CreationDate="2015-03-17T10:11:43.477" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It's likely that Ireland never had snakes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140315-saint-patricks-day-2014-snakes-ireland-nation/&quot;&gt;This article by national Geographic&lt;/a&gt; says that there is no evidence of them having ever been there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Monaghan, who has trawled through vast collections of fossil and other records of Irish animals, has found no evidence of snakes ever existing in Ireland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most likely explanation is that Ireland has been cut off from the mainland since the last ice age, when it would have been too cold for them to exist. As the climate warmed, snakes were unable to migrate to Ireland as they did to Britain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T10:11:43.477" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27065" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8367" CreationDate="2015-03-17T23:57:35.397" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'll get this out there before I go on: &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/25oct_aviationswx/&quot;&gt;people in aircraft (and spacecraft) are susceptible to harmful radiation&lt;/a&gt; from solar activity, because Earth's atmosphere does not provide significant shielding at the altitudes that most airplanes fly at. According to NASA, radiation levels an airplane traveling at the height that most passenger planes fly at are about ten times as great as those on the ground. Solar activity can multiply &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; amount by another ten, making aircraft pretty bad places to be during a solar storm - if you get unlucky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Magnetic_Storms_Affect_Humans_As_Well_As_Telecommunications.html&quot;&gt;Studies on cosmonauts on &lt;em&gt;Soyuz&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Mir&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; supposedly show that geomagnetic storms cause&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a change of pulse and blood pressure, vegetative disorders, reduction of heartbeat rate variability and the power of respiratory undulations, and in a more irregular heartbeat pattern. Reactions varied depending on the duration of the flights and an ability of cosmonauts to adapt themselves to the new environment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study is downloadable via pdf &lt;a href=&quot;https://duckduckgo.com/l/?kh=-1&amp;amp;uddg=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scirp.org%2Fjournal%2FPaperDownload.aspx%3FpaperID%3D20022&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Quoting directly from the conclusion,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this paper it is shown for the first time that geomagnetic disturbances have a specific influence on autonomic regulation of blood circulation in cosmonauts during the flight dependently of duration of weightlessness conditions. Magnetic storms change the regulation of the vascular tonus and affect the autonomic balance both during their direct action and during the post time in the nearest 24 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;. . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the initial stage of a long space flight (on the 2nd day and at the end of the 1st month flight), the effect of magnetic storms reconstructs the mechanism of regulation of the vascular tonus and changes the activity of the subcortical cardio-vascular center. This results in the development of a general non-specific stress reaction, which is characterized by enhanced tonus of the sympathetic nervous system (increased heart rate, reduced spectrum power of respiratory waves, etc.) and by involvement of the higher levels of physiological control in regulation processes. The reconstruction of regulation processes may be followed by increase of instability of the sinus node of accompanied by increased occurrence of the heart rhythm arrhythmias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At the end of six-month flight, the magnetic storm may cause an activation of the parasympathetic regulation as a result of destabilization of the previously established autonomic homeostasis. In this period, the autonomic regulation system is under functional strain due to long duration flight in weightlessness. Any additional stress associated with the magnetic storm is likely to lead to a short-term over-strain of the regulation mechanisms. Thus, the reaction to the magnetic storm depends on the initial functional background, in particular on the state of the autonomic regulation mechanisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The group of cosmonauts who landed on the day of a magnetic storm displayed variations in the tonus of vascular regulation 4 - 8 hours after landing, consisting of increased heart rate against the background of deviations in the mechanism of autonomic regulation. It implies the deceleration of re-adaptation processes, which is of great practical importance for planning the recovery procedures after a long space flight.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most people, however, are not in Earth orbit, and so are not affected by the same levels of radiation that the cosmonauts were.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Babayev, &lt;em&gt;Solar and Geomagnetic Activities and Related Effects on the Human physiological and Cardio-Health State: Some Results of Azerbaijani and Collaborative Studies&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://fedgeno.com/documents/solar-and-geomagnetic-activities-and-related-effects-on-the-human-physiological-and-cardio-health-state.pdf&quot;&gt;An analysis of four separate studies was carried out by a member of the Azerbaijani National Academy of Sciences&lt;/a&gt;. The study analyzed prior papers, which partly used &quot;electroencephalographic (EEG) investigations&quot;, and found that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is experimentally established that in middle latitudes weak and moderate geomagnetic storms do not cause significant changes in the human brain bio-electrical activity and exert only stimulating influence meanwhile severe disturbances of geomagnetic field (storms) cause negative influence, significantly disintegrate functionality of brain, activate braking processes and amplify the negative emotional background of an individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was found that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Changes in geomagnetic conditions mostly affect the activity of regulating systems,&#xA;  which are related to high cortical mechanisms of regulation and sub-cortical integrative apparatuses responsible for organization of routine activity of an organism, and for&#xA;  adaptation to changes of a physical environment (Babayev &amp;amp; Allahverdiyeva 2005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Interestingly enough, another conclusion was that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is high correlation between cosmic ray activity (CRA) (neutron data on the surface of Earth) and number of traffic accidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another experiment was mentioned in the study.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The experiment was based on a method of electrical conductivity measurements of biologically active (acupunctural) points of human skin. The method (electroacupunctural method by Dr. R.Voll) is very sensitive to current state of an organism and characterizes the functional condition of different organs and systems and enables expressing so-called Health Status of Group in the units, suitable for comparison with meteorological and physical parameters. Measurements were carried out daily with permanent group of functionally healthy persons (Moscow - 19, Yakutsk - 22, Baku - 12 volunteers). Daily monitoring of nervous, endocrine, lymphatic systems; blood, lungs, thick and thin intestine, heart and parenhimatic organs, allergy and hypophisis was conducted simultaneously with analyses of space weather (parameters of SA and GMA), as well as local meteorological parameters (temperature, atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind speed, etc.). It was found that: (i) human reaction to sharp changes of external parameters evolves like typical stress-reaction with hyperfunction and depression phases; (ii) the lower the latitude, the more the human body becomes susceptible to changes of meteorological parameters (especially humidity and temperature), the less sensitive it is to changes of GMA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More results from a different study were mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The conclusion is that both SCD (sudden cardiac death) mortality and AMI (acute myocardial infarction) occurrence increase in high CRA (cosmic ray activity) (neutron) levels, and GMA (geomagnetic activity) and CRA could be considered as two of the most significant regulating factors in human homeostasis. Not only high levels, but also low levels of GMA influence the number of considered acute cardiac events (Stoupel et al. 2008).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A final study was analyzed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results revealed statistically significant increments for the mean systolic and diastolic blood pressure values of the group with geomagnetic activity increase. ABP (arterial blood pressure) values started increasing two days prior to geomagnetic storms and kept their high values up to two days after the storms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Azerbaijani paper's conclusions were simple:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Weak and severe geomagnetic storms affect the functional state (bioelectrical activity)&#xA;  of the human brain in a different way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Geomagnetic storms amplify the negative emotional background of an individual and&#xA;  can affect, for example, the brain of a driving person, thus increasing the risk of an&#xA;  accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Parameters reflecting a state of vegetative sphere of a human being significantly differ and are dependent on the strength of geomagnetic disturbances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Heart rate dynamics (variations) of a human can be affected by space weather changes&#xA;  like variations in geomagnetic activity and cosmic ray intensity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Different types of geomagnetic storms (i.e., magnetic-cloud origin or caused by high-&#xA;  speed solar wind streams) affect cardio-vascular system in different ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Russian Academy of Sciences&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Magnetic_Storms_Affect_Humans_As_Well_As_Telecommunications.html&quot;&gt;A Russian study&lt;/a&gt; also found that heart problems increased around the time of geomagnetic storms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Medical statistics for Moscow show that 70% of all micro variations, caused by geomagnetic disturbances, are accompanied by an abnormally high incidence of heart attacks (a growth of about 13%), and blood-strokes (7.5% growth). The low and extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields destabilize the heartbeat, leading to a sudden death or infarction. Medical experts have finally explained why heart attacks take a heavy toll before a magnetic storm - because micro variations begin 24 hours before the storm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be found at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18225664&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt;, but, alas, the full text is not accessible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Possible mechanisms&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm still not convinced, because there has to be an explanation for such a claim. It's all well and good to claim a cause-and-effect, but in this case, a proposed mechanism would be really nice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, there are some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://io9.com/5893284/scientific-evidence-that-geomagnetic-storms-are-making-you-sick&quot;&gt;Cryptochromes&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8367/do-solar-flares-and-or-geomagnetic-storms-affect-human-health#comment99906_8367&quot;&gt;Slaviks mentioned this&lt;/a&gt;, and I would love to see an answer based on that resource, which is astoundingly excellent. I'll stick to the explanation I found, which is that the chemical is related to our ability to sense magnetic fields, and geomagnetic storms mess with it, &lt;a href=&quot;http://io9.com/5814137/our-eyes-are-theoretically-capable-of-sensing-magnetic-fields&quot;&gt;messing with our circadian rhythms&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[David] Close instead argues that the vestigial human cryptochrome compass system alters stress response in the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothalamic%E2%80%93pituitary%E2%80%93adrenal_axis&quot;&gt;which regulates much of the body's activities&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.feelguide.com/2015/03/17/severe-geomagnetic-storm-flares-causing-widespread-sleep-disturbances-othe-human-health-effects/&quot;&gt;Pineal Gland&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt; I have not been able to confirm whether the biochemical reactions involve cryptochrome, but I did learn that, apparently, geomagnetic activity affects the pineal gland in the brain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today’s monster geomagnetic storm, and the explosion of solar flares and coronal mass ejections over the past week, have been wreaking havoc on people’s moods, sleeping patterns, and a host of other human health effects. Many people are experiencing disturbances and disturbances with their circadian rhythms, waking up around 2am and having trouble getting back to sleep. “Solar storms desynchronize our circadian rhythm (biological clock). The pineal gland in our brain is affected by the electromagnetic activity, and [solar storms cause] the gland to produce excess melatonin, the brain’s built in ‘downer’ that helps us sleep. ‘The circadian regulatory system depends on repeated environmental cues to [synchronize] internal clocks,’ says psychiatrist Kelly Posner, Columbia University. ‘Magnetic fields may be one of these environmental cues.’ ”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is expanded upon &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.messagetoeagle.com/solarflareshumanhealth.php#.VQi8GmdMvIV&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm convinced that there &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; be interference with circadian rhythms, and there can certainly be drastic effects on people in airplanes and spacecraft, but there is not a wide range of &lt;em&gt;definitive&lt;/em&gt; evidence that there are other effects as drastic as claimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastActivityDate="2015-03-17T23:57:35.397" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27067" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16419" CreationDate="2015-03-18T04:59:45.470" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chi running, which focuses on running form can indeed reduce injuries by virtue of the fact that most running injuries are results of poor running form, too much too soon or overuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of making contact with the ground with the joints bent so as to reduce the impact on the joints and to leverage the soft tissue of the legs to both absorb the impact as well as propel the body forward can reduce injuries, it is easily understandable when considering that soft tissue (ligaments,tendons and muscle) heals and strengthens itself faster because of the higher blood flow when compared to the low to inexistent blood flow to various parts of hard tissue(bone) and joints.&#xA;Avoiding over-striding by making contact with the ground right below the center of gravity is also one of the ideas that helps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This combined with minimalist to barefoot footwear can strengthen the bones, tendons, ligaments and muscles of the feet, lower legs, upper legs, hips etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Care should be taken however, not to push too hard, too soon as strengthening takes time and regardless of the type of running style, overuse can cause injuries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25425" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T04:59:45.470" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27068" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-18T11:07:56.790" Score="4" ViewCount="885" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dog is generally accepted a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_best_friend_%28phrase%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mans best friend&lt;/a&gt; and the most loyal and faithful pet. It was found in a study that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/48696-origins-of-cat-domestication.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cats became domesticated for treats&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that possible that loyalty of a dog is in fact its way of sticking to the source of food and anyone can take a dog from its owner by giving it food?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Man's best friend&amp;quot; is a phrase referring to domestic dogs,&#xA;highlighting their close relations, loyalty, and companionship with&#xA;humans within many societies. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man%27s_best_friend_%28phrase%29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Loyalty: Loyalty is faithfulness or a devotion to a person, country,&#xA;group, or cause. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Friendship: Friendship is a relationship of mutual affection between&#xA;two or more people. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is observed that dog follow its owner, obey the orders and stick with the owner everywhere. This behavior of dog make people call dog a &lt;em&gt;Loyal&lt;/em&gt; (as in loyalty between people) animal or even a man's best friend (as in friendship between people).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does dog really show these behaviors or is it just people, who find the dog's behavior and way of sticking to the source of food, call it loyalty and friendship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-22T16:05:22.367" Title="Are dogs loyal to their owners?" Tags="|psychology|dogs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2015-03-19T23:03:11.127" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27070" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-18T12:24:48.647" Score="21" ViewCount="2212" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently these three journalists all died within a couple days of each other (Feb. 11 to 12, 2015). The implication of some rumours going around is that these folks were killed because they have evidence showing that the CIA had some involvement in 9/11.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://lainfo.es/en/2015/02/19/authors-died-documentary-about-us-action-in-11-s/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;several web-sites discussing this&lt;/a&gt;, with excerpts such as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The [three plus Brian Williams] presented documents required for access to confidential documents file Kremlin (Russian Government headquarters) containing evidence linked to the attacks occurred on September 11, 2001.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The work of the four journalists sought to discover the truth of the attack on the twin towers. David Carr was who devised to make the film after seeing the audiovisual documentary Citizenfour and study each confession exanalista CIA Edward Snowden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Were these three collaborating on an investigation into the CIA in relation to 9/11? If so, is there any reason to believe they had any persuasive evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aN3dM.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Bob, Ned and David&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T12:39:25.147" Title="Were three journalists (Bob Simon, Ned Colt and David Carr) investigating a plausible relation between the CIA and 9/11?" Tags="|media|9-11|cia|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27071" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10966" CreationDate="2015-03-18T12:55:09.733" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, Muhammad existed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In his book, &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.de/books?id=sEbHAgAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PT2&amp;amp;lpg=PT2&amp;amp;dq=0-87850-125-8&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=9Yhxv2fWex&amp;amp;sig=Xgr9Wc1WKSYQxQy3PtS8h_MpWKE&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=bm4JVdS2N8zsaPKagbgG&amp;amp;ved=0CDEQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=0-87850-125-8&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Seeing Islam as Others Saw It&lt;/a&gt;, Robert G. Hoyland discusses numerous contemporary non-islamic sources that reference Muhammad. The details &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/176224?sid=21106155234263&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;uid=2&amp;amp;uid=3737864&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;align quite well with somewhat later islamic sources,&lt;/a&gt; which gives them quite a bit of credibility.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Then God raised up against the sons of Ishmael, as the sand and sea shore, whose leader was Muhammad. Neither walls nor gates, armour or shield, withstood them, and they gained control over the entire land of the Persians. (Pre-Islamic Persian chronicle, 660 a.D.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The details of his life and teachings are, however, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eurobuch.com/buch/isbn/905460056X.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;murky&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22634" LastEditorUserId="22634" LastEditDate="2015-03-19T09:58:39.147" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T09:58:39.147" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27068" CreationDate="2015-03-18T17:37:09.497" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Robin McKie. &lt;em&gt;How hunting with wolves helped humans outsmart the Neanderthals&lt;/em&gt;. The Guardian. March 1, 2015:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dogs are humanity’s oldest friends, renowned for their loyalty and abilities to guard, hunt and chase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sir John Lubbock, 1889:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That the dog is a loyal, true, and affectionate friend must be gratefully admitted&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Science Friday:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;how did they [dogs] become such loyal companions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Barbara Hannah. The Archetypal Symbolism of Animals: Lectures Given at the C. G. Jung Institute, Zurich, 1954-1958. p 18:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The dog, through domestication and his affectionate and loyal nature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/8405-dogs-dogs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;livescience.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Their loyal and obedient behavior ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://phys.org/news/2014-03-explore-dog-barks.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;phys.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dogs — they're loyal...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25353" LastActivityDate="2015-03-18T17:37:09.497" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27073" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-18T18:15:32.160" Score="9" ViewCount="1066" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article I read states that in adults over the age of 65 diet soda consumption triples waist circumference gain over people who did not consume diet sodas. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rttnews.com/2472153/study-diet-soda-may-be-making-you-fat.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Study: Diet Soda May Be Making You Fat&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to a study published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, people who daily drank diet soda for about 10 years gained almost triple the abdominal fat than those who did not drink diet soda.The waist circumferences of diet soda drinkers gained about 2.11 centimeters, while non-users gained 0.77 centimeters around the waist. Daily consumers gained a whopping 3.04 centimeters, while occasional users' waist increased 1.76 cm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-30T23:05:11.107" LastActivityDate="2019-11-08T08:29:16.103" Title="Is diet soda making older people fat?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|obesity|soda|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27074" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27073" CreationDate="2015-03-18T18:50:39.777" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25780952&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diet soda intake is associated with long-term increases in waist circumference in a biethnic cohort of older adults&lt;/a&gt; is the journal article they're citing. The article you quoted is slightly incorrect in that the increase in waist circumference is what triples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adjusted for initial WC, demographic characteristics, physical activity, diabetes mellitus, and smoking, mean interval ΔWC of DS users (2.11 cm, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.45-2.76 cm) was almost triple that of nonusers (0.77 cm, 95% CI = 0.29-1.23 cm) (P &amp;lt; .001). Adjusted interval ΔWCs were 0.77 cm (95% CI = 0.29-1.23 cm) for nonusers, 1.76 cm (95% CI = 0.96-2.57 cm) for occasional users, and 3.04 cm (95% CI = 1.82-4.26 cm) for daily users (P = .002 for trend). This translates to ΔWCs of 0.80 inches for nonusers, 1.83 inches for occasional users, and 3.16 for daily users over the total SALSA follow-up. In subanalyses stratified for selected covariates, ΔWC point estimates were consistently higher in DS users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, correlation does not equal causation, so it may be that diet soda makes older people fat. It might be that fat old people drink more diet soda. It's also possible that there is some other factor or factors that both measures are influenced by. The article merely notes an association.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a striking dose-response relationship, increasing DSI (&lt;em&gt;Diet Soda Intake&lt;/em&gt;) was associated with escalating abdominal obesity, a potential pathway for cardiometabolic risk in this aging population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-10-30T23:06:08.773" LastActivityDate="2019-10-30T23:06:08.773" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27076" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-19T10:13:04.433" Score="13" ViewCount="1203" Body="&lt;p&gt;On February 12 this year the organizers of the Subversive Festival 2013 in Zagreb, Croatia, &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/MEUWxNifJJ8?t=39m50s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;uploaded a video to YouTube&lt;/a&gt; showing a speech of Yanis Varoufakis, who is now the Greek minister of finance. In the video he seems to show his middle finger:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/MEUWxNifJJ8?t=39m50s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mpBbr.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Yanis Varoufakis showing his middle finger&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Sunday Varoufakis &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/mZu7DHS3_kM?t=25m44s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claimed in a German TV show&lt;/a&gt; that the video &lt;em&gt;was doctored&lt;/em&gt;, causing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/stinkefinger-varoufakis-beklagt-sich-ueber-jauch-sendung-a-1023742.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;huge uproar&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/varoufakis-obszoene-geste-den-deutschen-den-stinkefinger-zeigen-13486740.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in the&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2015-03/varoufakis-stinkefinger-jauch-twitter-zagreb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;German media&lt;/a&gt;. The video was analyzed by journalists all claiming the video is real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yesterday evening another German TV show &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx-1LQu6mAE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;uploaded a video claiming they indeed faked the finger&lt;/a&gt; (English subtitles available), including a quite convincing making-of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx-1LQu6mAE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Onhow.png&quot; alt=&quot;Neo Magazin faking video&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now which is the real version?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25437" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:38:55.770" LastActivityDate="2019-05-25T04:06:26.617" Title="Is the video of Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis showing a middle finger fake?" Tags="|video|greece|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27080" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27076" CreationDate="2015-03-19T17:07:49.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, the video is real, but it was taken out of context.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second German TV-Show is &lt;a href=&quot;http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZDFneo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a well known satire show&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;amp;v=Vx-1LQu6mAE#t=486&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;they freely admit from 8.06 to 8.30 in their video (German with English subtitles)&lt;/a&gt;, presumably for legal reasons, that their doctoring is a joke. He follows up criticizing Günther Jauch, the host of the first TV show, for taking Varoufakis' gesture out of context in order to stir anger for populist reasons. Here are is the subtitle transcript from the time range above:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear editorial staff of Günther Jauch, Yanis Varoufakis is wrong, you did not falsify the footage. You simply took it out of context and gave him the runaround, so that the average german could pursue their passion for being angered. &quot;Foreigner. Out of Europe you go! He's poor and takes our money! That's just not possible! We are the bosses in here!&quot; That's what you did. The rest is our effort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/yanisvaroufakis/status/577598813050929153&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Varoufakis posted a link to a version of the entire clip he considers authentic&lt;/a&gt;. The clip contains some very intelligent analysis of the situation, and provides ample context. However, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&amp;amp;v=MEUWxNifJJ8#t=2428&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the finger is clearly visible&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the finger is clearly a colorful element of style, context suggests he is using it to protest how the German government's plan benefits greek and german banks at the expense of greek and german taxpayers, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/eurokrise-hat-die-eu-griechenland-gerettet-oder-banken-a-1018964.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a claim which is undisputed&lt;/a&gt;. Der Spiegel writes, in a slightly edited Google translation of the article summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Varoufakis' thesis is that the Troika aid was not an act of solidarity of European citizens and taxpayers with the Greek people, but an act of self-help of the European financial sector at the expense of EU citizens. This thesis can not simply be dismissed out of hand. Reason enough to call the self-righteousness German Wutbürger (anger-driven citizens) into question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why Varoufakis attempted to counter Jauch's attack with the doctoring claim, rather than pointing out that he was taken out of context, is unclear. The simplest explanation, in the opinion of the answerer, is that he is inexperienced at dealing with attacks on his character, has no access to expensive political advisors to train him, was taken by surprise, and is now forced to roll with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It looks like the host of the satire show is actively helping to seed doubt about the video's authenticity in order to support Varoufakis by using ambigious language and tonality while technically stating the truth. Here is a translation of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRvfZmwwHF0&amp;amp;app=desktop&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recently uploaded statement&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our video is 100% real. Whoever claims the opposite is a liar. As an apology and gesture of goodwill towards our European friends, Günther Jauch and the Bild newspaper's editorial staff should immediately to leave the Euro zone of their own accord. The accusation that our video were a manipulated fake-fake fake-fake-fake has no merit whatsoever. We would never friviously expose a necessary journalistic debate about a two year old middle finger that was taken out of context to ridicule.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the video detailing fakery is indeed a 100% real piece of satire, just as claimed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22634" LastEditorUserId="22634" LastEditDate="2015-03-19T17:53:36.887" LastActivityDate="2015-03-19T17:53:36.887" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27081" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-19T21:05:12.630" Score="4" ViewCount="209" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've recently had &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nd:YAG_laser&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nd:YAG laser&lt;/a&gt; therapy on my knee. Despite being totally skeptical about it, the net effect I've experienced is really positive and beneficial: I've had long-lasting pain relief after just 20 minutes of stimulation to my knee ligament that had a pretty bad injury (II level, with 30% of broken fibers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an example of the claims that are made about Nd:YAG laser therapy for the knee:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study indicates that the laser is capable of antagonizing the experimentally induced arthrosic phenomenon to stimulate the neochodronrogenic activity with the formation of hyaline cartilage and to induce synovial hyperplasia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was therefore observed [...] the high intensities have a neochondrogenic and synovial hyperplastic effect as well as the anti-inflammatory effect.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://laserkneeinstitute.com/yag_laser.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've hear that those specific NIR frequencies are absorbed by the mithocondria and increase ATP production, as well as an analgesic effect induced by the production of&#xA;beta-endorphin at a synaptic level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have been unable, however, to find unbiased (non-sponsored) evidence for the effectiveness and the biological effects of Nd:Yag laser therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this therapy any more than effective than just warming the affected area?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7993" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-08-03T13:55:31.147" Title="Does Nd:YAG laser help tissue regeneration and pain relief?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27082" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-19T22:30:30.973" Score="36" ViewCount="10212" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the Michigan-based Ferris State University's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/origins.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia&lt;/a&gt;, this is an excerpt of the text of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/pdfs-docs/origins/al_literacy.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1965 Alabama Literacy Test&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;39&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If it were proposed to join Alabama and Mississippi to form one state, what groups would&#xA;  have to vote approval in order for this to be done?________________________________&#xA;  ________________________________________________________________________ &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Vice President presides over ____________________________________________.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Constitution limits the size of the District of Columbia to ____________________&#xA;  ______________________________________________________________________.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have found several Jim-Crow-era literacy tests like this, but I am skeptical because none show the original documents to be read, and they have ridiculously difficult questions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a genuine example of a literacy test that was officially used to determine voter eligibility?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25445" LastEditorUserId="34796" LastEditDate="2018-05-02T08:49:28.977" LastActivityDate="2021-03-03T02:53:45.680" Title="Is this a genuine 1965 literacy test?" Tags="|history|united-states|racism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27083" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5226" CreationDate="2015-03-20T00:19:02.987" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only video in that Daily Mail article is of Mark McAllister.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/dailybrew/television-reporter-mark-mcallister-opens-epilepsy-two-years-221652228.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yahoo News&lt;/a&gt; the producers called 911, he went to hospital and was diagnosed with epilepsy. That's corroborated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20141231073443/http://globalnews.ca/author/mark-mcallister/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;his biography&lt;/a&gt; on his employer's website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In March of 2011, Mark experienced a seizure while reporting live during Global Toronto’s News Hour. He was diagnosed with epilepsy soon after and has since become an ambassador for raising awareness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's in Toronto, Canada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2024-01-16T14:22:49.877" LastActivityDate="2024-01-16T14:22:49.877" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27085" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27082" CreationDate="2015-03-20T03:23:36.860" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;This will be answered through an argument of authority. While, I do not expect this community to accept the answer, I'm sure it will help.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the University of Oklahoma, it is true. Professor John.J.Chiodo regave the &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/C/John.J.Chiodo-1/teach_alabama.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quiz&lt;/a&gt; in 1996 where it had this objective: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Students take and score the 68 items of the 1965 Alabama Literacy Test to experience in a small way the frustration and the injustice this kind of test produced (45 minutes).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you see in the snapshot it has the same answer keys you had for the first quiz:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7E97Z.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/literacy_popup.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;PBS and member stations, America’s largest classroom and the nation’s largest stage for the arts and a trusted window to the world&lt;/a&gt;, posted this quiz online called &lt;strong&gt;The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow. Tools and Activities | PBS&lt;/strong&gt;, with the same question of the original quiz as you posted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WcWeo.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The American Bar Association reposted the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/insights_law_society/constitution_test_and_handouts.authcheckdam.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;test&lt;/a&gt;:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oUsY9.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Quiz is also found in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.lb/books?id=A040TtQxLNAC&amp;amp;pg=PA75&amp;amp;lpg=PA75&amp;amp;dq=If%20a%20person%20is%20indicted%20for%20a%20crime,%20name%20two%20rights%20which%20he%20has&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=ve3sNFUXaZ&amp;amp;sig=keaCDEBCliM6xQu7LjbnKFDwiiw&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=lo4LVYH1FcbZap20gIAF&amp;amp;ved=0CC8Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=If%20a%20person%20is%20indicted%20for%20a%20crime%2C%20name%20two%20rights%20which%20he%20has&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; called &lt;strong&gt;Toward a Literacy of Promise: Joining the African-American Struggle&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5ybvb.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quiz is found on hundreds of university archives, for example, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://abspd.appstate.edu/sites/abspd.appstate.edu/files/inst_pics/1965%20Alabama%20Literacy%20Test.docx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;version&lt;/a&gt; is found on Appstate.edu and the same question is found on uncw.edu &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.uncw.edu/smithrw/200/ConstitutionTest.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;too&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Update:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;em&gt;skeptis.se&lt;/em&gt; member, &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/2703/chrisw&quot;&gt;ChrisW&lt;/a&gt;, pointed out, that the exam you mentioned might be one of the many exams that you are questioning, and suggested another similar exam with same level difficulty (if not worse), the test's name is Louisiana Literacy Test, also mentioned by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/question/feb12/literacytest.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ferris.edu&lt;/a&gt;. Snapshot: &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/N1mcN.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The good news about this exam is state of tennessee itself posted a version of it! Here is the link (notice &lt;em&gt;blackhistory&lt;/em&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tennessee.gov/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/pdfs/Voter%20Test%20LA.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.tennessee.gov/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/pdfs/Voter%20Test%20LA.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tn.gov/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/jimcrow.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.tn.gov/&lt;/a&gt; reported also: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another insidious method of eliminating African American votes &lt;strong&gt;was the use of literacy tests&lt;/strong&gt;. Surviving copies of these tests &lt;strong&gt;indicate that they were designed to cause the test taker to fail&lt;/strong&gt;. One commonly used &lt;strong&gt;test asked the voter to explain complex passages from the United States Constitution&lt;/strong&gt;; &lt;strong&gt;another test asked confusing, ambiguous questions&lt;/strong&gt; that could be interpreted in a number of ways, so that every answer could be judged as wrong; some tests were so long, &lt;strong&gt;no one could finish them in the allotted time&lt;/strong&gt;. Some voting places offered “help” – a Tennessee law made it possible for illiterate voters to obtain help marking their ballots . . . if they had voted in 1857! Thus &lt;strong&gt;black voters were not permitted to receive help&lt;/strong&gt;, while illiterate white voters were protected, at least for a while. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also giving many test samples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Literacy &amp;amp; Voter test examples&quot; &#xA;    - Voter registration for Alabama  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;    - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tn.gov/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/pdfs/Voter%20reg%20ALA.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[VR ALA]&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;    - Voter tests for Alabama   &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;    - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tn.gov/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/pdfs/Voter%20Test%20AL1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[1]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tn.gov/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/pdfs/Voter%20Test%20AL2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[2]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tn.gov/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/pdfs/Voter%20test%20AL3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[3]&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tn.gov/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/pdfs/Voter%20Test%20AL4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[4]&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;    - Voter registration for  Mississippi &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tn.gov/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/pdfs/Voter%20reg%20MS%201955.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[VRMiss]&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;    - Louisiana Literacy Test  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;    - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tn.gov/tsla/exhibits/blackhistory/pdfs/Voter%20Test%20LA.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;[LALiteracyTest]&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;VERY IMPORTANT: VERY WELL REFERENCED REPORT &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/question/july13/literacy.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;AUTHETNTIC LITERACY TEST&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T18:46:05.593" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27086" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-20T06:25:41.407" Score="15" ViewCount="5038" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Facebook group &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/FeministsAgainstVaccination&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Feminists Against Vaccination&lt;/a&gt; have posted an anti-vaxx advert:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qlGZA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;] &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/FeministsAgainstVaccination/photos/a.1662919010602024.1073741827.1662044917356100/1675330549360870/?type=1&amp;amp;fref=nf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their first injection was a vaccination. Protect your children from vaccinations. Vaccinations leave a lasting psychological belief that injecting is benefical. Studies have shown that children who are vaccinated are 85% more likely to inject heroin than those who are not. Vaccinations. Don't lose your child to drugs. Call 1-800-128-093 for more information. WWW.SOMETHINGAWFUL.COM&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this advert is likely to be a hoax and/or satire - i.e. not merely factually incorrect, but posted as a joke - based on the following circumstantial evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Something Awful watermark (which doesn't prove it originated there)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Phone number is too short for the North American Numbering Plan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Spelling error: &amp;quot;benefical&amp;quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No anti-vaxx organisation name.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The logo in the right corner is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businessinsider.com.au/the-15-worst-corporate-logo-fails-2014-1?op=1#catholic-churchs-archdiocesan-youth-commission-2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;independently famous for being inappropriate&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The premise that vaccinations leave a lasting psychological belief is extraordinary, and the huge size of the claimed effect is over the top.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of this proves anything definitively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't spend enough time reading Feminists Against Vaccinations to confirm whether they posted this in good faith. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Poe's Law applies here.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have seen Facebook friends post it - not believing it was true, but thinking it was a genuine propaganda. This other &lt;a href=&quot;http://pikdit.com/i/til-vaccinations-make-you-a-drug-addict-x-post-from-cringepics/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt; also seems to accept that this is genuine anti-vaxx propaganda.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My motivation: It would be nice to have a definitive takedown, here at Skeptics.SE, to show that this is not genuine anti-vaxx propaganda, so I can link to it the next time I see this on Facebook. Is there evidence that this is a hoax originating from Something Awful, rather than from an anti-vaxx organisation? As a good skeptic, however, I try to keep an open mind to the evidence. If people can demonstrate that it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; a real advert, that would be a good answer. If they can further show that there &lt;em&gt;are&lt;/em&gt; high-quality studies showing this effect, I would be flabberghasted, and willing to change my mind about vaccine risks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-21T13:14:17.650" Title="Is this claim that &quot;vaccinations are associated with heroin use&quot; made in good faith?" Tags="|vaccines|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="16" ClosedDate="2015-03-20T21:57:01.073" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27089" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27086" CreationDate="2015-03-20T14:29:13.497" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The meme claims that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;children who are vaccinated are 85% more likely to inject heroin than those who are not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because the claim didn't mention which type of vaccines will cause heroin injection, and had the slogan &quot;protect your children from vaccinations&quot;, the meme's target was all vaccines, therefore paraphrasing the claim would lead to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Any vaccine given to children will make them inject more heroin than others.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is not true, because there has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/110/22/9036.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one vaccine (at least) which blocks compulsive intake of heroin&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the report, scientists at The Scripps Research Institute have reported successful preclinical tests of a new vaccine against heroin. The scientific report concluded that the vaccine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;can be used in conjunction with available treatment options. Thus, our vaccine represents a promising adjunct therapy for heroin addiction, providing continuous heroin antagonism, requiring minimal medical monitoring and patient compliance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The meme also claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Vaccinations leave a lasting psychological belief that injecting is beneficial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The following is far from being true because according to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Centers for Disease Control&lt;/a&gt; (cdc.gov) and Prevention (CDC), vaccine side effects are minor and &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;go away within a few days&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth noting that: The &lt;a href=&quot;http://vaers.hhs.gov/index&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System&lt;/a&gt; (VAERS), which serves to report, analyze and make incidences of adverse side effects of vaccines, reported many serious effects of vaccine such as permanent disability, or death. However, the website does not cite down any psychological effect of vaccines, not even one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The meme also notes a website at the left corner, &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&amp;amp;ion=1&amp;amp;espv=2&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8#q=something%20awful&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;somethingawful.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, noting copyright owner or producer of the meme, which makes the meme classified as a parody/humour meme:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/U5vt4.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going through the website, I could easily find &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.somethingawful.com/photoshop-phriday/antivaccination-ads-mccarthy/1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the rest of memes&lt;/a&gt;, along with the heroin meme. For example, they have a meme saying, that vaccines cause homosexuality:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/voJpRl.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And another meme is saying that vaccines cause everything single disease in this world:&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Z4h8O.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Creators of those memes refer to themselves as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Awful&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Goons&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems also that they have weekly activity called &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.somethingawful.com/photoshop-phriday/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;photoshop phriday&lt;/a&gt;&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;where Goons will modify existing images to create parodies through using  image-editing softwares (like Adobe Photoshop).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This meme was be debunked through this approach:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hypothesis: All vaccines cause increased heroin injection.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Findings: One vaccine caused decreased heroin injection.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Conclusion: Therefore, not all vaccines cause increased heroin injection. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is false, regardless of whether it is made as a parody or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-21T13:14:17.650" LastActivityDate="2015-03-21T13:14:17.650" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27091" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14691" CreationDate="2015-03-20T17:45:22.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, some ingredients in certain lip balms can dry out your lips.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/beauty/lips-smile/why-your-lips-are-chapped?print=true&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;An article on WebMD&lt;/a&gt; includes this quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some lip treatments do more harm than good, says Steven K. Grekin, DO,&#xA;  clinical associate professor of dermatology at Des Moines University&#xA;  College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery in Iowa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Many ingredients can cause dryness and irritation, including&#xA;  eucalyptus, menthol, and camphor,&quot; Grekin says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25452" LastActivityDate="2015-03-20T17:45:22.827" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27093" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27162" CreationDate="2015-03-21T02:52:41.543" Score="18" ViewCount="2580" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my neighbourhood, there is one of these inconsiderate people who has a loud motorcycle. I've already told him that his motorbike wakes me up, and he politely apologizes, but then does nothing about it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was looking online for options about what to do about this situation, and I came across a lot of heated debate. In that debate, I saw basically two arguments in defense of loud motorcycles. One was, &quot;no one should ever tell me what I can and can't do,&quot; and the other was, essentially, &quot;motorcycles have to be extra loud so that people in cars take more notice of them, so it's a safety issue.&quot; For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straight.com/life/loud-pipes-irritate-enhance-motorcycle-riders-safety&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, and various posts in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2m013c/eli5_why_are_motorcycles_built_to_be_so_loud_why/&quot;&gt;this Reddit discussion&lt;/a&gt; make the safety claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any concrete evidence at all to support the claim that a loud motorcycle gets noticed in traffic in any way that makes it safer than a quieter bike? Are there any studies that show the opposite or that there is no statistical difference in safety between bikes of different volumes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7180" LastEditorUserId="7180" LastEditDate="2015-03-21T14:58:44.187" LastActivityDate="2019-04-01T14:52:37.623" Title="Do loud motorcycles prevent accidents?" Tags="|safety|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27096" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31390" CreationDate="2015-03-21T16:54:00.467" Score="25" ViewCount="4871" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his 1983 book &quot;Jews and Judaism in the United States&quot;, Rabbi Marc Raphael said: &quot;in all the American colonies, whether French (Martinique), British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to jewishencyclopedia.com: &quot;The cotton-plantations in many parts of the South were wholly in the hands of the Jews, and as a consequence slavery found its advocates among them&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/910-agriculture&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/910-agriculture&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8GAqa.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/q1qV6.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can someone provide concrete data on the matter?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23210" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2019-11-12T07:31:44.263" LastActivityDate="2019-11-12T07:31:44.263" Title="Did Jews own most of the plantations that deployed slaves in the United States?" Tags="|united-states|slavery|jews|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27097" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14691" CreationDate="2015-03-21T17:23:36.150" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The question as you posed it was whether &quot;lip balm&quot; in general can make skin dryer. Lip balm can have any number of ingredients. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skintherapyletter.com/2001/6.13/2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A long list can be found here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;ChapStick&lt;/strong&gt;, the most common brand of lip balm, contains petroleum jelly/petrolatum. A textbook on the subject, &lt;em&gt;Dry Skin and Moisturizers&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=JpfgVgb62nsC&amp;amp;lpg=PA256&amp;amp;ots=fltlA_zlxk&amp;amp;dq=%22Mineral%20oil%20and%20petrolatum%20%E2%80%93%20reliable%20moisturizers.%22&amp;amp;pg=PA252#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;states&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;Petrolatum blocks the evaporation of water from the skin (transepidermal water loss, TEWL), thus keeping the stratum corneum &lt;strong&gt;well hydrated&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; (In other words, ChapStick is mostly the same as Vaseline, and there is nothing harmful about putting Vaseline on your lips.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A scientific study cited on that page showed petrolatum to have superior abilities at retaining moisture in the skin compared to herbal remedies like the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.burtsbees.com/Ingredients/nature-ingredients,default,pg.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;active ingredients (?) of Burt's Bees organic lip balm&lt;/a&gt;. Burt's Bees provides an example active ingredient of salicylic acid. Of this, the &lt;em&gt;Dry Skin and Moisturizers&lt;/em&gt; book &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=JpfgVgb62nsC&amp;amp;lpg=PA256&amp;amp;ots=fltlA_zlxk&amp;amp;dq=%22Mineral%20oil%20and%20petrolatum%20%E2%80%93%20reliable%20moisturizers.%22&amp;amp;pg=PA163#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=salicylic&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;states&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;It should be remembered that salicylic acid preparations may be irritating and can cause systemic toxicity if applied to large areas of damaged skin.&quot; Elsewhere in the book, it's recommended to avoid giving salicylic acid to children. &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=JpfgVgb62nsC&amp;amp;lpg=PA256&amp;amp;ots=fltlA_zlxk&amp;amp;dq=%22Mineral%20oil%20and%20petrolatum%20%E2%80%93%20reliable%20moisturizers.%22&amp;amp;pg=PA5#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=salicylic&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;And there's more&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The treatment of the various familial ichthyoses requires exfoliating&#xA;  agents, often wrongly called keratolytics, aimed at removing excessive&#xA;  horn. These include α-hydroxy acids, &lt;strong&gt;salicylic acid, propylene&#xA;  glycol, urea,&lt;/strong&gt; and mixtures of these. These same agents may be&#xA;  harmful on the dry face, often causing neurosensory reactions such as&#xA;  itching, burning, and stinging as well as scaling and redness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two doctors quoted in this question and other answer may also be discussing the many possible adverse effects associated with herbal balms. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chapstick.com/products/medicated?product=medicated&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Some flavors&lt;/a&gt; of ChapStick contain menthol or camphor, which can cause allergic or other reactions in some people. A highly cited summary paper on this is available: &lt;a href=&quot;http://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2133.2000.03822.x&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adverse effects of herbal drugs in dermatology&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/12257124_Adverse_effects_of_herbal_drugs_in_dermatology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;PDF&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Other popular remedies that can cause dermatological side-effects include St John’s Wort, kava, &lt;strong&gt;aloe vera, eucalyptus, camphor&lt;/strong&gt;, henna and yohimbine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastEditorUserId="22367" LastEditDate="2015-03-21T17:29:30.707" LastActivityDate="2015-03-21T17:29:30.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27102" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16710" CreationDate="2015-03-22T11:53:22.943" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;It isn't the amount of HF that is notable it is whether HF will work &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt; in this context. HF sounds like a good way to dissolve bodies as it has a fearsome and dangerous reputation in chemistry. But that reputation is based on the fact that it is a dangerous biological poison not on its ability to &quot;dissolve&quot; flesh. It is, in fact, a &lt;em&gt;weak&lt;/em&gt; acid and not that good as a way to turn flesh into a flushable mush. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From my answer on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/4877/is-it-actually-possible-to-dispose-of-a-body-with-hydrofluoric-acid&quot;&gt;chemistry.se&lt;/a&gt; site (explaining the script choice):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I think the use of Hydrofluoric Acid was script-driven rather than fact driven: it sounds scary rather than being a good choice. Also it allows for the possibility of the darkly comic bathtub scene where the acid dissolves a ceramic bath because Jessie ignores Walter's instructions (which establishes Walter's expertise and Jessie's lack of it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, we don't have to rely on theory here, the experiment has been done. Periodic Videos tested the idea using raw chicken legs and several flesh-dissolving alternatives. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oipksRhISfM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt; shows that, while HF has some remarkable effects on flesh, dissolving it into a mush isn't something it does quickly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incidentally, chemistry.se tagged this, amusingly, as everyday-chemistry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:57:06.483" LastActivityDate="2015-03-22T11:53:22.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27103" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27112" CreationDate="2015-03-22T16:37:29.593" Score="24" ViewCount="18320" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regardless of whether The Illuminati (plural of Latin illuminatus, &amp;quot;enlightened&amp;quot;) is/was real or fictitious, many people online seems to be claiming that in one episode of Ducktales this scene appears:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lXTd3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the corner of the image, one can read &amp;quot;Ask about illuminati&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example this site has an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/03/25/disneys-ducktales-exposed-ask-about-illuminati/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; called &lt;strong&gt;Disney’s Ducktales Exposed: “Ask About Illuminati”&lt;/strong&gt; where they make the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I’m not trying to prove the existence of the Illuminati with this article. I just wanted to point out a few interesting observations. This episode of Disney’s “Ducktales” was aired in the 1980’s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And they point out the image, they also link to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0NAheMXhAk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;YouTube&lt;/a&gt; video showing the Ducktales scene, which seems to be the current source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The publisher of the video (which received 300K views since 3 years), is receiving full advertisements from YouTube, and seems to be linking to for-profit-website, it does raise suspicions of whether this really happened in the show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other articles claiming the same thing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dutchsinse.com/pay-no-attention-to-that-man-behind-the-curtain-ask-about-illuminati/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=83e_1343674397&amp;amp;comments=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know if this was really introduced by the producer, Disney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2022-02-02T11:34:02.900" LastActivityDate="2022-02-02T11:34:02.900" Title="Does Disney's Ducktales say &quot;Ask About Illuminati&quot;?" Tags="|illuminati|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27112" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27103" CreationDate="2015-03-23T15:49:43.847" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgx-i2HUjyU&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Iy0YUcs_I&quot;&gt;versions&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ft9z5iFBDgY&quot;&gt;Episode &quot;Yuppy Ducks&quot;&lt;/a&gt; on youtube alone, along with some on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.trilulilu.ro/video-animatie/ducktales-3x13-yuppy-ducks&quot;&gt;other video-sharing&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x16qyvo_ducktales-s02e008-073-yuppy-ducks_fun&quot;&gt;websites&lt;/a&gt;, all of which show the exact same in-place (presumed) joke/easter egg. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unless all those bored video editors have gone to a &lt;em&gt;lot&lt;/em&gt; of trouble, I think we can safely say that the answer to your primary question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I just want to know if this is real or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is almost certainly &lt;strong&gt;YES&lt;/strong&gt;, this existed in the original airing of this particular episode of Duck Tales.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5167" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-03-23T15:55:51.500" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T15:55:51.500" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27113" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26988" CreationDate="2015-03-23T16:21:46.977" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The exact version of the claim in question is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Preguntémonos si es lógico que el esfuerzo humano de los celadores y celadoras sea menos recompensado que el de la casta médica&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After reports  by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rmedica.es/edicion/228/por-alusiones&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;rmedica.se&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.es/2015/03/12/pablo-iglesias-casta-medica_n_6853222.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;huffgingtonpost.se&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redaccionmedica.com/noticia/un-supuesto-tuit-de-pablo-iglesias-revoluciona-a-los-medicos-79244&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;redaccionmedica.com&lt;/a&gt;, it can be said to be notable now.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many members have also posted the exact version of the claim on Pablo Iglesias's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/IglesiasTurrionPablo/posts/836609346411473&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;wall&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gmGoml.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has also hit reddit with three posts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://i.reddit.com/r/podemos/comments/2ys1v7/pablo_iglesias_desmiente_que_escribiera_un_tuit/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pablo Iglesias desmiente que escribiera un tuit contra la &quot;casta médica&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/podemos/comments/2yk3h9/critica_de_pablo_iglesias_a_los_m%C3%A9dicos_o_fake/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Critica de Pablo Iglesias a los médicos o fake&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/podemos/comments/2yhqzk/qu%C3%A9_pregunta_para_el_cambio_en_andaluc%C3%ADa_le/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;¿Qué pregunta para el cambio en Andalucía le harías a Teresa Rodríguez? #CanalSur22M&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which led Pablo Iglesias to &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/Pablo_Iglesias_/status/575929006316519424&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;deny&lt;/a&gt; it, as mentioned by member &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/3790/vartec&quot;&gt;vartec&lt;/a&gt;:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/p7rSb.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As skeptics, we can't be 100% positive which exact version of the fake tweet was circulated (though there is only one being mentioned). But most likely the tweet is false and fabricated (or any other one with the word &lt;strong&gt;casta médica&lt;/strong&gt; in it), especially that we have a denial by the politician in which he labelled the tweet with his own words: the &lt;em&gt;casta médica&lt;/em&gt; tweet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2015-03-23T16:21:46.977" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27122" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-24T18:14:26.223" Score="12" ViewCount="770" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://perfscience.com/content/2141506-officials-banned-use-term-%E2%80%98climate-change%E2%80%99-florida&quot;&gt;Perfscience.com&lt;/a&gt; has reported in a article that officials of the state of Florida were told they are not allowed to use the words &quot;climate change&quot; or &quot;global warming&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Officials at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection have claimed that they are not allowed to use the terms &quot;climate change&quot; or &quot;global warming&quot; in any official communications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand we have other claims saying this is not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do we have any hard evidence that in fact people were forbidden from using the terms &quot;climate change&quot; or &quot;global warming&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-24T18:24:00.020" LastActivityDate="2017-01-03T13:49:27.347" Title="Are state officials in Florida prevented from saying the term &quot;climate change&quot;?" Tags="|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27123" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27126" CreationDate="2015-03-24T18:29:04.403" Score="86" ViewCount="78464" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been shown this image a few times:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wjjA7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Obama in front of a Muslim Prayer Curtain&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Naturally, it's a little ridiculous, because there are surely at least a thousand pictures of him near an American flag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it &lt;em&gt;is&lt;/em&gt; making a claim that the yellowish curtain behind Obama is some kind of Muslim prayer related thing. Is that accurate? If someone can find the location of this photograph that will probably tell us exactly what, if any, meaning the curtain has, besides showing somebody's serious lack in decent decor tastes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-24T21:55:22.383" LastActivityDate="2023-04-23T17:03:54.433" Title="Is the curtain behind Obama in this picture a &quot;muslim prayer curtain&quot;?" Tags="|united-states|politics|barack-obama|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27125" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27128" CreationDate="2015-03-24T19:11:52.137" Score="4" ViewCount="678" Body="&lt;p&gt;During the UK's recent solar eclipse we were constantly reminded that we should never look directly at the sun because it could damage your eyesight permanently, that you should only look at the eclipse through specialist filters, with a pin-hole camera, and so on.  One outlet even recommended using a kitchen colander!  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But I also remember Richard Feynman writing in his book (Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman) that he didn't bother with the heavily darkened goggles they had given everyone who was present at the Trinity test to observe the detonation.  He wrote that the only component of the blast that could physically damage your eyes was the UV emissions, and that an ordinary car windscreen was perfectly capable of blocking all the potentially harmful wavelengths.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They gave out dark glasses that you could watch it with. Dark glasses!&#xA;  Twenty miles away, you couldn't see a damn thing through dark glasses.&#xA;  So I figured the only thing that could really hurt your eyes (bright&#xA;  light can never hurt your eyes) is ultraviolet light. I get behind a&#xA;  truck windshield, because the ultraviolet can't go through glass, so&#xA;  it would be safe, and I could see the damn thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't it true that it's the UV emissions of the sun that also make it dangerous to look at?  Therefore, wouldn't you be safe using an ordinary sheet of glass to observe the sun?  Or are there other things the sun emits that can also damage eyesight and which aren't blocked by ordinary glass? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2992" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-24T20:34:07.103" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T23:27:59.413" Title="Do you need specialist filters to look at the sun?" Tags="|physics|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27126" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27123" CreationDate="2015-03-24T19:17:46.990" Score="165" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim that Obama is standing in front of a &lt;strong&gt;Muslim prayer curtain&lt;/strong&gt; is false. This meme has gone really viral and has been debunked on over 10 websites online. The picture that you see is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whitehousemuseum.org/furnishings/piano.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;taken&lt;/a&gt; in the East Room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Room#CITEREFWestKotz1973&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The East Room&lt;/a&gt;, designed for &amp;quot;public audience&amp;quot;, is an events and reception room in the White House, the home of the President of the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What you see behind Obama is simply:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;gold silk lampas curtains&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20151231004317/http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_obama_press_conference.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; that those &lt;strong&gt;gold silk lampas curtains&lt;/strong&gt; have been in the East Room since the John F. Kennedy administration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were designed by noted ballet and theatrical designer Jo Mielziner:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mielziner crafted a stage which took up a full third of the East Room, and featured cream white-painted pilasters matching the room's architecture. Mileziner originally wanted the stage's curtains to have the same fabric used for the East Room drapes. But when he learned of the cost, he settled for &lt;strong&gt;American-made&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;gold silk curtains&lt;/strong&gt; instead. The larger stage took eight men three days to set up. &lt;sup&gt; (1) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In September 2003, during the administration of George W. Bush, minor refurbishment were made to the East Room, and gold silks were replaced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Committee for the Preservation of the White House had become &lt;strong&gt;dissatisfied with the golden silk swag valances installed during the Reagan presidency&lt;/strong&gt;. The Kennedy-era Old World Weavers Empire-style &lt;strong&gt;gold draperies were replaced with nearly identical ones&lt;/strong&gt;, but the &lt;strong&gt;swags were made 12 inches&lt;/strong&gt; (30 cm) deeper to make them appear more substantial. The room was repainted in the same warm cream color it had for the last century. The &lt;strong&gt;refurbishment cost $200,000&lt;/strong&gt;, and was paid for by &lt;strong&gt;private donations to the White House Endowment Fund&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;sup&gt; (2) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a photo of Lyndon B. Johnson's daughter, Lynda Johnson, wedding in the East Room (source: &lt;em&gt;celebritybrideguide.com&lt;/em&gt;) back in 1967. Note the gold curtains in the background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lAQ4D.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Wedding of Lynda Johnson and Chuck Robb in the East Room, with golden curtains visible in the background&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another picture of Gerald Ford, the 38th U.S. President, being sworm as a president in 1974, also clearly shows gold curtains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CTbRQ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Golden curtains in the background of Gerald Ford's swearing-in&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a picture of Bush standing in front of a gold silk:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1youY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;George Bush and Andrew Wyeth standing in front of gold curtains&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/TheFacebookDelusion/comments/1qlyo4/my_rebuttal_to_all_the_obamas_muslim_prayer/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reddit&lt;/a&gt; responded to the meme in its own way (with another meme):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ikYfJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;A meme showing former U.S. officials with the golden curtains, and Obama walking away with the caption &amp;quot;I am even being blamed for the curtains... Are you serious...?&amp;quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, according to members of &lt;a href=&quot;https://islam.stackexchange.com/questions/23599/what-is-a-muslim-prayer-curtain&quot;&gt;islam.se&lt;/a&gt;, there is no such thing as a &lt;strong&gt;Muslim prayer curtain&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;So, the claim that President Obama has a so-called a &lt;em&gt;Muslim prayer curtain&lt;/em&gt; is not only erroneous but ridiculous too.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (1) West, J.B.; Kotz, Mary Lynn (1973). Upstairs at the White House: My Life With the First Ladies. New York: Coward, McCann &amp;amp; Geoghegan. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/069810546X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ISBN 069810546X&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (2) Koncius, Jura (September 25, 2003). &amp;quot;Open Door Policy At the White House&amp;quot;. The Washington Post. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="38113" LastEditDate="2023-04-23T17:03:54.433" LastActivityDate="2023-04-23T17:03:54.433" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27125" CreationDate="2015-03-24T20:55:20.720" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This paper, for example, lists cases of solar retinopathy which suffered by people who were using glass (smoked glass, stained glass, sunglasses, etc.):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC1207471&amp;amp;blobtype=pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brit. J. Ophthal. (I969) 53, 534&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Visual prognosis after solar retinopathy&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;P. A. MAcFAUL&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Injury is most likely to occur only on determined&#xA;fixation, and even when this lasts for only a brief period permanent visual damage may&#xA;result. There is no generally available means of protection against the injurious effect of&#xA;radiation. The results of this and previous studies show that all the so-called protective&#xA;devices, such as sun glasses, filters, smoked or stained glass, or old negatives do not give&#xA;effective protection and may even facilitate injury by prolonging the time of exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a second opinion, this paper (from NASA's web site) claims that you need a filter which attenuates visible and infrared light:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/eclipse/990811/text/eye-safety.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Observing the Eclipse&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Eye Safety And Solar Eclipses&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;B. Ralph Chou, MSc, OD&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Associate Professor, School of Optometry, University of Waterloo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exposure of the retina to &lt;strong&gt;intense visible light&lt;/strong&gt; causes damage to its light-sensitive rod and cone cells. The light triggers a series of complex chemical reactions within the cells which damages their ability to respond to a visual stimulus, and in extreme cases, can destroy them. The result is a loss of visual function which may be either temporary or permanent, depending on the severity of the damage. When a person looks repeatedly or for a long time at the Sun without proper protection for the eyes, this photochemical retinal damage may be accompanied by a thermal injury - &lt;strong&gt;the high level of visible and near-infrared radiation causes heating&lt;/strong&gt; that literally cooks the exposed tissue. This thermal injury or photocoagulation destroys the rods and cones, creating a small blind area. The danger to vision is significant because photic retinal injuries occur without any feeling of pain (there are no pain receptors in the retina), and the visual effects do not occur for at least several hours after the damage is done [Pitts, 1993].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Sun can only be viewed directly when &lt;strong&gt;filters specially designed&lt;/strong&gt; to protect the eyes are used. Most such filters have a thin layer of chromium alloy or aluminum deposited on their surfaces that attenuates both visible and near-infrared radiation. A safe solar filter should transmit &lt;strong&gt;less than 0.0003% (density~4.5)10 of visible light (380 to 780 nm) and no more than 0.5% (density~2.3) of the near-infrared radiation (780 to 1400 nm)&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/eclipse/990811/figures/figure_24.gif&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Figure 24&lt;/a&gt; shows the spectral response for a selection of safe solar filters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the most widely available filters for safe solar viewing is &lt;strong&gt;shade number 14 welder's glass&lt;/strong&gt;, which can be obtained from welding supply outlets. A popular inexpensive alternative is &lt;strong&gt;aluminized mylar manufactured specifically for solar observation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-24T23:27:59.413" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27130" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14231" CreationDate="2015-03-25T00:17:52.417" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;It was stated this was the case in a BBC Documentary in North Korea: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSrcLC6Zz54&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;amp;t=1m46s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSrcLC6Zz54&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;amp;t=1m46s&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is by no means the answer: There may well, however been a translation error that they do not want to turn it off, instead of being unable to. Perhaps even it is only the case with certain (new?) homes in Pyongyang. Indeed in the documentary the journalist says &quot;every kitchen in the block&quot; rather than &quot;everyone kitchen in North Korea&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It obviously seems unrealistic that such signals could be broadcast throughout North Korea, let alone have the electricity to power these radios.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also worth mentioning that North Korean radios are sealed once brought; if the seal is broken you are deemed a political prisoner for trying to listen to South Korea radio. This is apparently checked by random spot checks. This could be used to enforce the rules against turning fitted radios off?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whilst it wouldn't be practical for all houses to have this propaganda distribution mechanism, a lot certainly could. I am still very sceptical that this is one thing that has literally been taken from Nineteen Eighty Four and attributed to North Korea, maybe in order for a journalist to make the sinister nature of it more obvious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25506" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T00:17:52.417" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27137" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27056" CreationDate="2015-03-25T10:54:56.677" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There never were any snakes in Ireland because Ireland took a long time to thaw out from the Ice Age Britain and the rest of Europe froze out before Ireland and as you know a snake is a reptile and reptiles like the warm climate and the snakes in Britain cant swim to Ireland&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25518" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-03-25T11:16:52.737" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T11:16:52.737" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27138" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-25T11:36:38.277" Score="5" ViewCount="599" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Use-cow-urine-to-clean-offices-says-Maneka-Gandhi/articleshow/46682574.cms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Times of India reports&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Union minister Maneka Gandhi has asked her ministerial colleagues to opt for a &amp;quot;natural disinfectant'' made from extracts of cow urine instead of the &amp;quot;chemically bad'' one in government offices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a letter to her colleagues in the council of ministers Gandhi has proposed a switch to 'gaunyle' - cleaning liquid made from cow urine extracts, arguing that it &amp;quot;environment-friendly&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I am really curious about whether this is effective as a disinfectant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25141" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2023-11-27T22:04:00.457" Title="Does gaunyle, derived from cow urine, work as a disinfectant?" Tags="|zoology|hygiene|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27139" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10831" CreationDate="2015-03-25T13:18:45.470" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://brock911.wikia.com/wiki/The_Looming_Tower:Chapter_8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lawrence Wright’s 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Looming Tower”&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To them, the Crusades were a continual historical process that would&#xA;  never be resolved until the final victory of Islam. They bitterly&#xA;  perceived the contradiction embodied by Islam's long, steady retreat&#xA;  from the gates of Vienna, where &lt;strong&gt;on September 11 — that now resonant&#xA;  date — in 1683, the king of Poland began the battle that turned back the&#xA;  farthest advance of Muslim armies&lt;/strong&gt;. For the next three hundred years,&#xA;  Islam would be overshadowed by the growth of Western Christian&#xA;  societies. Yet bin Laden and his Arab Afghans believed that, in&#xA;  Afghanistan, they had turned the tide and that Islam was again on the&#xA;  march.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/03/september11.usa2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Christoppher Hitchens had the same idea&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I now think I can provide a more persuasive explanation, however. &lt;strong&gt;It&#xA;  was on September 11 1683 that the conquering armies of Islam were met,&#xA;  held, and thrown back at the gates of Vienna.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In our culture, the episode is often forgotten or downplayed, except&#xA;  by Catholic propagandists like Hilaire Belloc and GK Chesterton. But&#xA;  in the Islamic world, and especially among the extremists, it is&#xA;  remembered as a humiliation in itself and a prelude to later ones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25520" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T13:18:45.470" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27140" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27147" CreationDate="2015-03-25T14:11:04.693" Score="6" ViewCount="1290" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/03/25/male-nurse-gender-pay-gap-women-nursing/70419356/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent article on USA Today&lt;/a&gt; claims that on male nurses make more than female nurses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;even in an occupation that women overwhelmingly dominate, they [women] still earn less than men&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The gender gap for registered nurses' salaries amounts to a little over $5,000 yearly on average and it hasn't budged in more than 20 years. That pay gap may not sound big — it's smaller than in many other professions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article also states that only 10% of all nurses are male and 90% are female.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am not sure whether this true or not. Is there any evidence to support the above claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T00:43:12.950" Title="Are male nurses salaries higher than female nurses salaries?" Tags="|united-states|economics|gender|employment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27141" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27142" CreationDate="2015-03-25T14:46:56.420" Score="55" ViewCount="19933" Body="&lt;p&gt;This video on Facebook shows someone using an &quot;electromagnetic radiation detector&quot; to show that the new energy-efficient light bulbs give off alarmingly dangerous amounts of radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=802884819723892&quot;&gt;https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=802884819723892&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't &quot;electromagnetic radiation&quot; a fancy word for &quot;light&quot;?  Wouldn't any light bulb give off electromagnetic radiation by definition?   What does the &quot;Alarm&quot; in this video indicate? What would the detector show if used on an incandescent bulb?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I understand that electromagnetic radiation includes not only visible light but also dangerous frequencies such as X-rays and microwaves. What frequencies are being detected here? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also understand that there may be any number of other reasons to believe that these bulbs are dangerous or ecologically unsound or inefficient.  I'm not asking about that.  Just about the evidence given by this video. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17388" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T19:37:12.160" Title="Does this video of electromagnetic radiation from energy efficient bulbs indicate any danger?" Tags="|radiation|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27142" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27141" CreationDate="2015-03-25T16:41:13.710" Score="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;From watching the video (and pausing it at 15 seconds), I saw that the detector had the label &lt;code&gt;DT-1130&lt;/code&gt; printed on the front of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ERvFn.png&quot; width=&quot;300&quot; &gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google turned up that this was an HDE product, product code HDE-S73, as seen for sale here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1TX0K36476&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DT-1130 50Hz - 2000Hz Electromagnetic Radiation Detector EMF Nuclear Gamma Microwave Exposure Detector&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The product description (which I also checked on eBay and Amazon) showed that the advertized frequency range detectable by the device ranges from 50Hz to 2GHz (2,000MHz).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, the detector he is using is not capable of detecting gamma radiation, or even Ultra Violet radiation. Heck, it can't even detect &lt;em&gt;visible light.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The detector he is using detects electromagnetic radiation in frequencies ranging from 50Hz to 2GHz (2,000MHz). This ranges from 'Super Low Frequency' to 'Ultra High Frequency.' Don't let the names confuse you, 'Ultra High Frequency' is still a Radio Wave, which is lower frequency than visible light, or even the infrared light they use to keep food warm. If you are old enough to remember it... 'UHF' was a television carrier frequency range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visible light ranges from 430 - 720 THz. We don't start getting into the really exciting (read: dangerous) forms of electromagnetic radiation until we get up above the PHz (PetaHertz) range. And the really, really nasty stuff has a frequency measured in ExaHertz.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See...the device he is using is the same thing that ghost hunters use to look for 'EMF emissions.' And you don't see those guys walking around in radiation suits. If he stuck that detector inside of a nuclear reactor...it wouldn't be able to detect the dangerous radiation coming off of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, there are other examples that show that a CFL bulb simply cannot produce enough Power to generate high frequency EM...but even if they did, this guy could prove nothing with his detector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to remember that 'Electromagnetic Radiation' is not a bad thing until you get to the very, very high frequencies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Information on EMF pulled from standing high-school-level knowledge of Physics, cross-checked with Wikipedia)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;ADDENDUM&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To clarify as to why low frequency radiation in the doses created by a lightbulb is non-harmful to the human body:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EM Radiation is commonly divided into 'ionizing' and 'non-ionizing' radiation. This distinction is meant to clarify which forms of EM radiation have sufficient energy to ionize atoms (stripping off electrons) or break chemical bonds. The standard frequency limit at which EM Radiation is considered ionizing is anything higher than 2.39 Petahertz (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/ionize_nonionize.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;). Ionizing radiation is hazardous, increasingly so the higher energy it has (higher frequency = higher energy). Our detector tops out at being able to detect low-frequency Microwave radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Microwave radiation is not capable of causing ionization...it simply doesn't have enough energy (&lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/mod3.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;). It is thought that prolonged exposure to higher energy microwave radiation (such as that used in RADAR) may cause long term issues. But our detector only picks up the lower edge of that radiation band (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1469943/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;). Low energy microwave radiation and those of lower frequency are potentially harmful in that they are capable of causing heating within tissue (hence how a microwave heats food). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anything in the 'Radio' band is considered potentially harmful at heavy enough concentrations. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specific_absorption_rate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Specific Absorption Rate&lt;/a&gt; for details. As I do not possess the equipment to measure the variables I need for the SAR of a CFL bulb, I have to theorize a bit. A detailed reading of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/radio-frequency-safety&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FCC's policies on Radio Safety&lt;/a&gt; showed me that in order to get dangerous levels of Radio emission, you either need to be standing close to a very powerful radio broadcast antenna (like a radio station would use) or need to be pressed right up against something that is dedicated to throwing out radio waves for a prolonged period of time. In short, the amount of broadband radiation added by a lightbulb would be completely negligible compared to what is being broadcast by, say, your WiFi router, cell phone, and heating system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For further reading on the safety of Non-ionizing radiation in doses below what ANSI declares to be the SAR limit, please see the following...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://iopscience.iop.org/0031-9155/37/4/001&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Non-ionizing radiation safety: radiofrequency radiation, electric and magnetic fields&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s004200050181&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Exposure to extremely-low-frequency electromagnetic fields and radiofrequency radiation: cardiovascular effects in humans&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/peh-emf/en/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WHO Hub on EMF Research&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25527" LastEditorUserId="25527" LastEditDate="2015-03-26T15:38:17.040" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T15:38:17.040" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27144" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-25T21:32:16.247" Score="2" ViewCount="133" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the article &quot;Dolphin hunt claim denied&quot; (page 3 of mX Sydney, 25 March 2015), Australia for Dolphins chief executive Sarah Lucas refers to &quot;the violent and unsustainable dolphin hunts in Taiji&quot;. The article doesn't specify what &quot;unsustainable&quot; means.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not skeptical of the claim the hunt is violent (killing any animal for food is violent), but I am skeptical of the claim the hunt is non-sustainable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried doing a search for dolphin hunting being unsustainable, and only got hits from organizations related to the abolition of dolphin hunting, rather than organizations concerned about the conservation of species or ecosystems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is dolphin hunting in Taiji unsustainable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2015-03-25T21:32:16.247" Title="Is dolphin hunting in Taiji unsustainable?" Tags="|environment|japan|dolphins|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27145" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27146" CreationDate="2015-03-25T23:42:22.037" Score="10" ViewCount="2784" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/25/opinion/run-rubio-run.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/25/opinion/run-rubio-run.html&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the Constitution effectively prohibits the election of a president and vice president from the same state, Mr. Rubio can’t hide behind the “fig leaf,” as the Miami pollster Fernand Amandi put it, that he is really angling for the No. 2 spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United States, can a president and vice president be from the same state?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Snopes (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/history/american/vicepresident.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.snopes.com/history/american/vicepresident.asp&lt;/a&gt;) says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claim:   The U.S. Constitution requires presidential and vice-presidential candidates to be from different states.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Status:   False.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25536" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T01:21:32.410" Title="Can the president and vice president of the United States be from the same state?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27146" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27145" CreationDate="2015-03-26T00:04:21.423" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_United_States_of_America#Section_1_2&quot;&gt;Article II, section 1 of the Constitution&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United&#xA;  States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four&#xA;  Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same&#xA;  Term, be elected, as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof&#xA;  may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of&#xA;  Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the&#xA;  Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an&#xA;  Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed&#xA;  an Elector.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot&#xA;  for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of&#xA;  the same State with themselves....In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nothing in there about the President and Vice-President being from different states, just that no elector can pick both a President and a Vice-President from the same state as the elector.  The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Additional_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Amendment_XII&quot;&gt;Twelfth Amendment&lt;/a&gt; modifies this to specify distinct votes for President and Vice-President, but retains the same &quot;not the same state&quot; clause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21297" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T00:04:21.423" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27147" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27140" CreationDate="2015-03-26T00:43:12.950" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The current incarnation of the question merely asks if there is evidence to support the claim of a gender pay gap in nurses in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is easily demonstrated as the article provides a link to a study published as a Research Letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ulrike Muench, PhD, RN; Jody Sindelar, PhD; Susan H. Busch, PhD; Peter I. Buerhaus, PhD, RN, &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2208795&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Salary Differences Between Male and Female Registered Nurses in the United States&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, JAMA. 2015;313(12):1265-1267. doi:10.1001/jama.2015.1487.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study looked at &lt;em&gt;two&lt;/em&gt; large longitudinal surveys (one from 1988-2008, the other from 2001-2013). As reported, in more recent one, the 10% male figure is correct (20,616 men of 205,825 Registered Nurses).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As reported, the gender pay gap accounted for a little over $5,000 p.a. and hasn't changed over a twenty year period. (Note: that period ended in 2008, not 2013.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Both surveys showed that the unadjusted male salaries were higher than female salaries during every year. [...] No statistically significant changes in female vs male salary were found over time. Using the [older survey], regression analysis estimated an overall adjusted earnings difference of $5148 (P &amp;lt; .001)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Confounding factors they considered for the regression analysis include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;demographic factors, work hours, experience, work setting, clinical speciality, job position, survey year, state of residence and other factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the quoted excerpts in the USA Today newspaper article are backed by the referenced journal article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T00:43:12.950" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27148" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-26T00:48:09.817" Score="15" ViewCount="1861" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia_Experiment&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Philadelphia Experiment&lt;/a&gt; forms the basis for a claim that in 1943 &lt;a href=&quot;http://skepdic.com/philadel.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the U.S. Navy attempted to use &quot;speculative physics&quot; to render a ship, the U.S.S. &lt;em&gt;Eldridge&lt;/em&gt;, invisible&lt;/a&gt;. Allegedly, they were successful. There are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rense.com/ufo/philahoax.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some pretty detailed accounts&lt;/a&gt; of the whole thing. This last one includes a wave of rebuttals and attacks from both sides. A thorough analysis can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_08_1_vallee.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the sources explain that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq21-1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Navy denies it all&lt;/a&gt;. The link given, though, is dead, and there have been allegations that there's a conspiracy at work. On the other hand, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-mysteries.com/philadelphia_e.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quotations from the U.S. Navy on the subject&lt;/a&gt; exist. Quoting part of one,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over the years, the Navy has received innumerable queries about the so-called &quot;Philadelphia Experiment&quot; or &quot;Project&quot; and the alleged role of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) in it. The majority of these inquiries are directed to the Office of Naval Research or to the Fourth Naval District in Philadelphia. The frequency of these queries predictably intensifies each time the experiment is mentioned by the popular press, often in a science fiction book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The genesis of the Philadelphia Experiment myth dates back to 1955 with the publication of The Case for UFO's by the late Morris K. Jessup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some time after the publication of the book, Jessup received correspondence from a Carlos Miquel Allende, who gave his address as R.D. #1, Box 223, New Kensington, Pa. In his correspondence, Allende commented on Jessup's book and gave details of an alleged secret naval experiment conducted by the Navy in Philadelphia in 1943. During the experiment, according to Allende, a ship was rendered invisible and teleported to and from Norfolk in a few minutes, with some terrible after-effects for crew members. Supposedly, this incredible feat was accomplished by applying Einstein's &quot;unified field&quot; theory. Allende claimed that he had witnessed the experiment from another ship and that the incident was reported in a Philadelphia newspaper. The identity of the newspaper has never been established. Similarly, the identity of Allende is unknown, and no information exists on his present address.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;. . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Personnel at the Fourth Naval District believe that the questions surrounding the so-called &quot;Philadelphia Experiment&quot; arise from quite routine research which occurred during World War II at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Until recently, it was believed that the foundation for the apocryphal stories arose from degaussing experiments which have the effect of making a ship undetectable or &quot;invisible&quot; to magnetic mines. Another likely genesis of the bizarre stories about levitation, teleportation and effects on human crew members might be attributed to experiments with the generating plant of a destroyer, the USS Timmerman. In the 1950's this ship was part of an experiment to test the effects of a small, high-frequency generator providing l,000 hz instead of the standard 400hz. The higher frequency generator produced corona discharges, and other well known phenomena associated with high frequency generators. None of the crew suffered effects from the experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ONR has never conducted any investigations on invisibility, either in 1943 or at any other time (ONR was established in 1946.) In view of present scientific knowledge, ONR scientists do not believe that such an experiment could be possible except in the realm of science fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole idea seems like a load of rubbish, especially since the principles the experiment would be based on are extremely unsound. I'm quite skeptical about the claim, but I'm not fully convinced that it was fake, because there are claims that the ship's logs (which purportedly put the ship somewhere completely different, far from Philadelphia) were falsified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, there doesn't seem to be a neutral (i.e. not by the Navy or the original claimants) record of the actions of the U.S.S. &lt;em&gt;Eldridge&lt;/em&gt; during this time period, which for me would be the clincher. At least, I can't find one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the Philadelphia Experiment ever take place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="22247" LastEditDate="2015-07-18T22:24:46.173" LastActivityDate="2017-02-27T18:58:52.413" Title="Did the Philadelphia Experiment ever take place?" Tags="|history|transportation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27149" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27141" CreationDate="2015-03-26T01:31:14.140" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Long story short, this is utter nonsense. As &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/27142/21543&quot;&gt;guildsbounty's answer&lt;/a&gt; mentions, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1TX0K36476&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this thing claims a range of 50 Hz - 2 GHz&lt;/a&gt;. That's just an RF (radio frequency) broadband detector. Using a broadband detector to detect RF (or lower frequency) emissions from electronics is perfectly legitimate, but detecting emissions doesn't mean it's dangerous. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/radiationexposureandcancer/radiofrequency-radiation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The American Cancer Society&lt;/a&gt; has a page summarizing the findings on whether microwave RF energy is carcinogenic. They claim no link to have been found by most studies. If you are worried about the health effects of RF energy, though, then you've got much bigger problems than this light bulb, such as your cell phone, radio stations, Wi-Fi, microwave ovens, etc. Also, this detector claims to go down to 50 Hz. This means that it will pick up the e-m field around standard alternating current power lines, which typically operate at 50 Hz or 60 Hz (depending on your location,) including the very wire from which this light bulb is getting its power supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Broadband detectors are normally used for detecting RF emissions either to prevent electromagnetic interference (EMI), detect radio transmitters, or simply to measure signal strength for a known signal. Texas Instruments &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ti.com/paramsearch/docs/parametricsearch.tsp?family=analog&amp;amp;familyId=2128&amp;amp;uiTemplateId=NODE_STRY_PGE_T&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;makes broadband detectors&lt;/a&gt;, for instance, primarily for use in electrical engineering. Other companies, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reiusa.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Research Electronics&lt;/a&gt;, make &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reiusa.net/cgi-bin/main.cgi?action=viewprod&amp;amp;ct=products&amp;amp;pct=CPM&amp;amp;num=CPM-700&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;broadband detectors for finding unwanted transmitters&lt;/a&gt;, such as bugging devices or unauthorized cell phones in secure areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the name of the product is absurd. While it can detect microwaves, it cannot detect anything even remotely resembling gamma radiation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; lists the starting frequency for gamma rays at 10 exahertz, which is about 10&lt;sup&gt;10&lt;/sup&gt; times higher frequency than the range supported by this device. Gamma radiation is a product of nuclear decay and is very dangerous. Microwave radiation has nothing whatsoever to do with nuclear decay and is not known to be dangerous, aside from its ability to heat things up (e.g. it's dangerous to, say, stick your head in a microwave oven and turn it on, but that's because of the ~1,000 Watts of power being dissipated into you, which would be dangerous regardless of frequency.) Gamma rays (and X-rays) are a form of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ionizing radiation&lt;/a&gt; and do cause cancer, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/radiationexposureandcancer/xraysgammaraysandcancerrisk/x-rays-gamma-rays-and-cancer-risk-do-xrays-and-gamma-rays-cause-cancer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;ACS&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/about/what_is_ir/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WHO&lt;/a&gt;. Microwave radiation (and anything below ultraviolet light) are non-ionizing and do not carry the same risks (see ACS/WHO articles above.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Disclosure: I work for Research Electronics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21543" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2016-01-27T19:37:12.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27153" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27141" CreationDate="2015-03-26T11:09:38.900" Score="-5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, the previous answers take a poorly-worded Newegg product listing as an accurate description of the product, which is a shame. Look closely at the actual product photograph and see that it claims to be an &quot;Electromagnetic radiation detector&quot; which is an accurate description. It appears (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0098KMM5Y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; alternative Amazon listing) to cover a frequency range from 50Hz up to 2GHz, which is of interest to domestic users with devices operating in the radio- and microwave spectrum. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exposure safety limits of this part of the EMR spectrum are under intense debate because it is the part of the spectrum used by mobile phones, DECT, WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee (including 'smart' meters) as well as your domestic microwave oven. Without opening the 'conspiracy' can of worms, there are massive commercial interests which utilize this spectrum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Australia, exposure limits are regulated by ARPANSA. The &quot;Radiation Protection Standard for Maximum Exposure Levels to Radiofrequency Fields - 3 kHz to 300 GHz (2002)&quot; and supporting material can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arpansa.gov.au/Publications/codes/rps3.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;downloaded here&lt;/a&gt;. Exposure is limited to less than 10,000mW/m2. Other countries have other limits - a good list is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.c4st.org/images/documents/thermal_charts.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Note for interest that Russia and China limits are 100x less than the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The radiation from wireless devices is quantified as 'Specific Absorption Rates' in W/kg. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icnirp.org/cms/upload/publications/ICNIRPemfgdl.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The 1998 guidelines&lt;/a&gt; from ICNIRP (International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection) state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exposure to more intense fields, producing SAR values in excess of 4&#xA;  W/kg, can overwhelm the thermoregulatory capacity of the body and&#xA;  produce harmful levels of tissue heating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ICNIRP guidelines form the basis for country-specific regulations, for instance the Australian ARPANSA &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arpansa.gov.au/pubs/rps/rps3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Radiation Protection Standard: Maximum Exposure Levels to Radiofrequency Fields – 3 kHz to 300 GHz&quot;&lt;/a&gt; notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This Standard is based on the guidelines developed by the ICNIRP committee&#xA;  (ICNIRP 1998).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can look up, for example, the maximum SAR generated for different mobile devices - an iPhone 6 has a measured maximum SAR value of 1.18 (depending on the precise model) &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.apple.com/legal/rfexposure/iphone7,2/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;see here&lt;/a&gt;. Note also that the text instructs: &quot;Carry iPhone at least 5mm away from your body to ensure exposure levels remain at or below the as-tested levels.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other answers have pointed out that the radiation in this part of the spectrum is non-ionising, but they inaccurately conclude that it is harmless or inert. There are many scientific studies that show biological effects from radio- and/or microwave radiation well below current exposure limits. One of the most comprehensive reviews of the literature was performed by the BioInitiative Working Group, revised in 2012. Access that material &lt;a href=&quot;http://bioinitiative.info/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is scientific research to the biological mechanisms for EMF exposure to cause biological effect. For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23802593&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt; reviews 23 studies of the interaction of EMF radiation with the voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs). &#xA;The author of this paper says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The paper goes on to consider how VGCC activation can produce two well-documented &#xA;  responses to EMF exposure: stimulating of bone growth and the production of single &#xA;  stranded DNA breaks in EMF-exposed cells. &#xA;  In 2011 the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs193/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;World Health Organization classified&lt;/a&gt; cell phone radiation as “2b - possibly carcinogenic”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people develop &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_hypersensitivity&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity&lt;/a&gt;, making them feel physical symptoms when exposed to electromagnetic fields. In Sweden, this can be officially recognised as a 'functional impairment' and treated accordingly. While the direct cause of electromagnetic sensitivity has not yet been established &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25205214&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This paper from 2014&lt;/a&gt; suggests myelin damage from EMF exposure may help explain it, saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall, evidence from in vivo and in vitro and epidemiological studies suggests an &#xA;  association between RF-EMF exposure and either myelin deterioration or a direct impact &#xA;  on neuronal conduction, which may account for many electrohypersensitivity symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The type of device demonstrated in this video can be very useful for those that wish to understand their environmental exposure to radio- and microwave EMR. These devices are not laboratory-grade but can be used as a useful tool. They can measure both power (mW/m2) or field strength (V/m). The video demonstrates that the high-frequency switching circuits used to drive compact fluorescent globes actually emits EMR at levels significantly higher than background. However, I can't tell what unit of measurement is being used, nor the frequency range being measured.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to the substance of the question asked: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;can the detector measure 'dangerous radiation'? The detector measures EMFs up to and including the microwave spectrum. Scientific evidence exists for thermal effects and non-thermal biological effects of microwave EMF radiation. Radiation exposure limits for this part of the spectrum are regulated. This device does not measure Standard Absorption Rate (SAR), therefore the device can only indicate the presence of EMF radiation and provide a relative measurement. It does not show the frequency of the radiation detected. It cannot be used to determine 'danger'.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is the video showing 'dangerous' radiation? The video shows that the CFL globe is emitting radiation which is detected by the device. We cannot conclude that the radiation is dangerous.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is the video showing that CFL globes are dangerous emitters of radiation? Given that radiation intensity falls as the inverses-square of distance, we can't see what the radiation levels are at 'normal' operating distances from the globe. We cannot conclude that the radiation from the globe is dangerous.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my personal take: I would think twice about putting that globe in my underpants all day long. However, I have held my own EMF detector (A Cornet ED65 'Electrosmog meter', range 100Mhz-8Ghz) next to spiral CFL and round CFL in my home and not detected any increase in reading. In my opinion there are many other domestic EMF sources that would be more concerning. I would be more concerned about the light spectral quality, flicker and mercury content of these lights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edit notes&lt;/strong&gt;: thanks for the feedback on my response. I hope I have provided more adequate citation for the statements made in this answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25543" LastEditorUserId="25543" LastEditDate="2015-04-04T07:15:00.290" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T07:15:00.290" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27158" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27208" CreationDate="2015-03-26T13:51:36.860" Score="5" ViewCount="1300" Body="&lt;p&gt;GHB is illegal and has received considerable media attention as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/news/ghb/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;highly dangerous recreational drug&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.life-enhancement.com/magazine/article/76-the-truth-about-ghb-steven-fowkes-testifies-to-the-california-state-legislature-committee&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;June 1997 article by Life Enhancement Magazine&lt;/a&gt;, that endorses the use of GHB as a safe and effective anti-anxiety medication (along with a few other claims).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because it works to relieve anxiety and depression so rapidly and is so safe, GHB has been recommended by healthcare professionals as the anti-anxiety/antidepressant agent of choice for potentially suicidal patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is it? Highly dangerous substance of abuse, or safe effective medication that was a victim of mass hysteria?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22634" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-03-26T14:15:14.267" LastActivityDate="2015-04-01T13:45:34.790" Title="Is GHB safe to consume?" Tags="|medical-science|safety|recreational-drugs|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27159" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27158" CreationDate="2015-03-26T15:02:37.023" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, in tiny doses, but should be avoided.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GHB (4-hydroxybutanoic acid) actually occurs naturally in our bodies, most in our central nerve system. It can also be found in wine, beef and in almost all animals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;...is a naturally occurring substance found in the human central nervous system, as well as in wine, beef, small citrus fruits, and in&#xA;  small amounts in almost all animals.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The danger is in the dose. It's really hard to determine what is a proper dose. A user dose can be from 0,5 grams to 5 grams. Negative effects can be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Headaches, dizziness, vomit and loss of breath control. Possibly even death.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another issue is that the solutions you find the substance in can differ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is used in minor doses to combat narcolepsy. The dose I can find is about 25mg/kg, or 2.25g twice per night, 3-4 hrs between the takes. ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-950-gamma-hydroxybutyrate%20(ghb).aspx?activeingredientid=950&amp;amp;activeingredientname=gamma-hydroxybutyrate%20(ghb)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source 1&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugs.com/dosage/xyrem.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source 2&lt;/a&gt; ) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;The only common medical applications for GHB today are in the&#xA;  treatment of narcolepsy and more rarely alcoholism.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short, it &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be consumed safely, but the amount must be quite small to avoid too hard of an impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;GHB tends to cause rapid unconsciousness at doses above 3500 mg, with single doses over 7000 mg often causing life-threatening&#xA;  respiratory depression, and higher doses still inducing bradycardia&#xA;  and cardiac arrest. Other side-effects include convulsions (especially&#xA;  when combined with stimulants), and nausea/vomiting (especially when&#xA;  combined with alcohol)&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-Hydroxybutyric_acid&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia - GHB&lt;/a&gt; (All quotes from here)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fhi.no/eway/default.aspx?pid=239&amp;amp;trg=List_6212&amp;amp;Main_6157=6263:0:25,6397&amp;amp;MainContent_6263=6464:0:25,6414&amp;amp;List_6212=6218:0:25,6421:1:0:0:::0:0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Norwegian institute for folk health&lt;/a&gt; (In Norwegian!)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22976" LastEditorUserId="22976" LastEditDate="2015-03-26T18:09:19.877" LastActivityDate="2015-03-26T18:09:19.877" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27093" CreationDate="2015-03-26T17:19:14.843" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a rider myself I'm sure there's a lot of different opinions but let me answer a few points here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;motorcycles have to be extra loud so that people in cars take more notice of them&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; true. If anything, manufacturers try to make bikes quieter, more fuel efficient and more eco-friendly. For example, Harley Davison, a company know for gas-guzzling, loud motorcycles has been working on an electric bike for quite a few years now with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuhPZTrSmBw&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; title=&quot;See video&quot;&gt;next to no sound&lt;/a&gt;, mere inaudible for someone driving a car.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The argument alone about sound is irrelevant as when learning to drive you're taught that bikes are a hazard in your blind spot (see diagram).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aGWPu.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aGWPu.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Car blind spots&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;(source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ridesafewith.me/images/blindspot/blindspots.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ridesafewith.me&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I dug around various automotive sites and found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.autoevolution.com/news/most-common-motorcycle-myths-debunked-part-1-45969.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; (meta below), which may not be a scientific study as sorts but covers your question moderately well and gives a general consensus.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Loud pipes save lives&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This myth is originated in the very biking world and is has a lot of&#xA;supporters among both riders and custom aftermarket exhaust pipes&#xA;manufacturers. Basically, those who claim that loud pipes save lives&#xA;assume that the louder the noise a motorcycle makes on the road, the&#xA;more chances they have of being noticed by other road-colleagues and&#xA;thus less likely the occurrence of an accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth behind such a claim disproves this myth on so many levels:&#xA;simple, common physics, common sense or plain reason can bring in&#xA;countless reasons because this is just a myth. Let's tread the path of&#xA;physics a bit and analyze what's happening from a strictly mechanical&#xA;point of view.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Motorcycle exhausts openings are facing towards the rear of the bike,&#xA;and it's obviously to the back where the gases and all the noise are&#xA;directed. Assuming that the noise a motorcycle makes travels in an&#xA;omnidirectional manner is just wrong, because noise is air (or other&#xA;gases, for what's worth) in movement. With the air/ gas jest directed&#xA;towards the rear of the bike, it's there where all the noise goes. And&#xA;if you don't believe this, just 'start your engine in the open and&#xA;then check the noise levels when facing the bike and behind it,&#xA;alternatively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When riding at higher speeds, things are even worse, because you're&#xA;not only remaining close to the place where all the exhaust gases&#xA;start to make noise hitting the mass of air, but you're traveling&#xA;further from that zone as you advance on the road. Aftermarket&#xA;exhausts can also be almost as silent as stock ones.&#xA;A loud vest or&#xA;jacket can help others see you better.&#xA;High-visibility helmets are good if you want to&#xA;be seen on the road.&#xA;Now, having established that pipes generate a lot&#xA;more noise behind the bike than in front of it, claiming that loud(er)&#xA;pipes would help getting you noticed by the man driving the car in&#xA;front sounds just silly. A loud exhaust pipe could come in handy when&#xA;splitting the lanes at low speed, letting the drivers in front of you&#xA;know “something is approaching” and maybe preventing them from cutting&#xA;you off or opening the doors. Analyzing the crash reports, statistics&#xA;indicate that around 77% of the hazards come in front of the biker,&#xA;and only 3% approach from behind. What's next, front-facing exhausts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having installed modified pipes on a bike may indeed make it sound a&#xA;lot different, with a touch of more aggressive tone, and could, beyond&#xA;any shadow of doubt, make the rider feel better about him/herself and&#xA;his or her machinery. Cool pipes make any bike look better, there's&#xA;too much truth in here to start a debate; but along with the mean&#xA;looks come a lot of other things...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Common sense urges us to think about noise pollution: while a rider&#xA;might believe that the new sound of the bike is the most beautiful&#xA;music in the world, many others might (and will) strongly disagree.&#xA;Throttling the bike at 11PM thundering down the alley will simply&#xA;increase the prejudice most non-bikers have against us, the riders.&#xA;For most people, this sound is as pleasant as a dumpster truck on a&#xA;Sunday at 5 AM, after returning from a party and getting one hour of&#xA;sleep.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding “it's my bike and I'll do with it as I see fit” is not helping;&#xA;au contraire, it just makes a very lame excuse for making excessive&#xA;noise. Owning a motorcycle does not come with the right to break the&#xA;noise regulations, and even though a racing exhaust might receive&#xA;clearance for installation on common bikes, this brings little comfort&#xA;to the passers-by and traffic-fellows. It's just a matter of being&#xA;polite and care for those around you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25556" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-04-01T14:52:37.623" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27163" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27033" CreationDate="2015-03-26T18:37:25.290" Score="2" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Evidence of brain shrinkage:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoted &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madinamerica.com/2013/06/antipsychotics-and-brain-shrinkage-an-update/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;from&lt;/a&gt; Dr. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joanna_Moncrieff&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Joanna Moncrieff&lt;/a&gt;, a Senior Lecturer in psychiatry at University College London and a practising consultant psychiatrist, since she did the research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2011, researchers, led by the former editor of the American Journal of Psychiatry, Nancy Andreasen, [...] found a strong correlation between the level of antipsychotic treatment someone had taken over the course of the follow-up period, and the amount of shrinkage of brain matter as measured by repeated MRI scans. The group concluded that &lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;antipsychotics have a subtle but measurable influence on brain tissue loss&amp;quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21300943&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ho BC, Andreasen NC, Ziebell S, Pierson R, Magnotta V. Long-term Antipsychotic Treatment and Brain Volumes: A Longitudinal Study of First-Episode Schizophrenia. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2011 Feb;68(2):128-37.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt; &#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2005, another American group, led by Jeffrey Lieberman who headed up the CATIE study, published the largest scanning study up to that point of people with a first episode of psychosis or schizophrenia. The study was funded by Eli Lilly, and consisted of a randomised comparison of Lilly’s drug olanzapine (Zyprexa) and the older drug haloperidol. Patients &lt;strong&gt;were scanned at the start of the study, 12 weeks and one year later and patients’ scans were compared with those of a control group of ‘healthy’ volunteers&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At 12 weeks haloperidol-treated subjects &lt;strong&gt;showed a statistically significant reduction of the brain’s grey matter&lt;/strong&gt; (the nerve cell bodies) compared with controls, and at one year both olanzapine- and haloperidol-treated subjects &lt;strong&gt;had lost more grey matter than controls&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In both haloperidol and olanzapine treated patients,however, there was a consistent effect that was diffuse and visible in most parts of the brain hemispheres.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15809403&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lieberman JA, Tollefson GD, Charles C, Zipursky R, Sharma T, Kahn RS, et al. Antipsychotic drug effects on brain morphology in first-episode psychosis. Arch Gen Psychiatry 2005 Apr;62(4):361-70.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experiment on monkey (could be helpful):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems as if Eli Lilly and its collaborators were so confident about their preferred explanation, that they set up a study to investigate the effects of olanzapine and haloperidol in macaque monkeys. &lt;strong&gt;This study proved beyond reasonable doubt that both antipsychotics cause brain shrinkage.&lt;/strong&gt; After 18 months of treatment monkeys treated with olanzapine or haloperidol, at doses equivalent to those used in humans, had approximately 10% lighter brains than those treated with a placebo  preparation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15756305&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dorph-Petersen KA, Pierri JN, Perel JM, Sun Z, Sampson AR, Lewis DA. The influence of chronic exposure to antipsychotic medications on brain size before and after tissue fixation: a comparison of haloperidol and olanzapine in macaque monkeys. Neuropsychopharmacology 2005 Sep;30(9):1649-61.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Moncrieff presented more evidence too (12 papers) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madinamerica.com/2013/06/antipsychotics-and-brain-shrinkage-an-update/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;concluded&lt;/a&gt; at the end:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should antipsychotic users and their families and carers make of this research? Obviously it sounds frightening and worrying, but the first thing to stress is that the &lt;strong&gt;reductions in brain volume that are detected in these MRI studies are small&lt;/strong&gt;, and it is not certain that changes of this sort have any functional implications. &lt;strong&gt;We do not yet know whether these changes are reversible or not&lt;/strong&gt;. Of course the &lt;strong&gt;value of antipsychotics has been much debated&lt;/strong&gt; on this site and elsewhere, and their utility almost certainly depends on the particular circumstances of each individual user, so it is impossible to &lt;strong&gt;issue any blanket advice&lt;/strong&gt;. If people are worried, they need to &lt;strong&gt;discuss the pros and cons of continuing to take antipsychotic treatment with their prescriber&lt;/strong&gt;, bearing in mind the difficulties that are associated with coming off these drugs. People &lt;strong&gt;should not stop drug treatment suddenly, especially if they have been taking it for a long time&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People need to know about this research because it indicates &lt;strong&gt;that antipsychotics are not the innocuous substances that they have frequently been portrayed as&lt;/strong&gt;. We still have no conclusive evidence that the disorders labeled as schizophrenia or psychosis are associated with any underlying abnormalities of the brain, but &lt;strong&gt;we do have strong evidence that the drugs we use to treat these conditions cause brain changes&lt;/strong&gt;. This does not mean that taking antipsychotics is not sometimes useful and worthwhile, despite these effects, but &lt;strong&gt;it does mean we have to be very cautious indeed about using them&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-28T23:57:24.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27164" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27167" CreationDate="2015-03-26T20:06:51.560" Score="25" ViewCount="2573" Body="&lt;p&gt;This image can be found on &lt;a href=&quot;http://9gag.com/gag/a9Ly8VW?ref=fbp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;9GAG&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/9gag/photos/a.109041001839.105995.21785951839/10153337359886840/?type=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/vjM15m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;People who use a lot of swear words tend to be more honest and trustworthy, human behavioral studies suggest.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/profanity&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Profanity is defined by Merriam-Webster&lt;/a&gt; as &quot;an offensive word&quot; or &quot;offensive language&quot;. It is also called bad language, strong language, coarse language, foul language, bad words, vulgar language, lewd language, swearing, cursing, cussing, or using expletives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim seems pretty simple and straight-forward, but I couldn't find any studies verifying the validity of 9GAG's claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="16860" LastEditDate="2016-01-18T17:28:11.503" LastActivityDate="2019-04-18T14:14:35.847" Title="Is profanity correlated with trustworthiness and honesty?" Tags="|psychology|language|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27164" CreationDate="2015-03-26T20:58:41.897" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;Doesn't look like it. The most likely source of the quote is &lt;em&gt;The Science of Swearing&lt;/em&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2012/may-june-12/the-science-of-swearing.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Timothy Jay and Kristin Janschewitz&lt;/a&gt; or possibly Dr. Neel Burton's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201205/hell-yes-the-7-best-reasons-swearing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hell Yes: The 7 Best Reasons for Swearing&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; or possibly the summation by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psych2go.net/people-swear-lot-tend-honest-loyal-upfront-friends/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Psych2Go&lt;/a&gt; which draws on both of them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic premise that is put forth is that those who cuss are seen as more loyal, trustworthy, and upfront. As such, those who swear may make better friends. Their work suggests that extroverted people and those with Type A personalities swear more (Jay &amp;amp; Janschewitz, 2012), which could be one contributing factor to why those who swear are seen as more trustworthy and loyal. Their research also suggests that the increase in swearing in general, and specifically the use of cussing as a way to speak with friends, may contribute to this image (Burton, 2012).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, after searching for additional research on the subject, no corroborating studies could be found that can validate this claim. Additionally, Jay and Janschewitz have drawn these conclusions about swearing through observation. The major limitation to observation is that, when it is not scientifically validated, it is simply that – an observation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://badpsych.tumblr.com/post/55885010495/are-people-who-use-a-lot-of-swear-words-more&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bad Psychology&lt;/a&gt; blog has weighed in, saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The short answer is: This fact was probably made up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 15 minute Google search yielded many hits, but as always (and you'll start seeing this as a pattern with such &amp;quot;facts&amp;quot;) none of the websites included legitimate sources. They all claim that studies or psychologists say something…but they never—&lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt;—source their claim. And when they do included [sic] &amp;quot;sources,&amp;quot; they usually lead to pages where people are just speculating or spreading the same claim &lt;em&gt;without&lt;/em&gt; primary sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-01-02T03:55:33.823" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27168" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-26T21:05:11.660" Score="1" ViewCount="378" Body="&lt;p&gt;The common claim is that the quality of traditional telephony is sufficient for the application and that every other solution offering more quality is probably just a marketing ploy. Imagine this situation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Someone from tech support finally called our office via phone for the device in the server room that was beeping really loud. The caller said he couldn't hear anything beeping on his end. The device is quiet again, but how can this be? Some hotlines play music when they put you on hold, so this is hard to believe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt; This happened to me and I was the one who called the office to analyse whats going on with the UPS that showed up in our monitoring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25476" LastEditorUserId="25476" LastEditDate="2015-04-04T12:46:36.560" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T12:46:36.560" Title="Are there certain sounds that cannot be heard through the phone?" Tags="|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-03-26T21:06:25.457" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27169" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27168" CreationDate="2015-03-26T21:05:11.660" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there are sounds that cannot be heard through the phone. Despite audible artefacts we usually forget that traditional solutions used in telephony have clear limitations, which may be why the caller struggled to come up with a good explanation why he wasn't hearing anything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While you are able to listen to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_on_hold&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;remains of normal music&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_box&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;use a whistle&lt;/a&gt;, the system may be unable to transmit the beeping of a Piezo tweeter usually used in non-HiFi electronics to emit alarms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No matter how loud the tweeter is, &lt;strong&gt;if the frequency is beyond the capabilities of a standard codec like &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.711&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;G.711&lt;/a&gt;, you won't hear it&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a rare case where it's not about perceived quality, but a completely missing signal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can experiment with a program like &lt;a href=&quot;http://audacity.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Audacity&lt;/a&gt; to generate a frequency sweep, to test your hearing or certain codecs and devices. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Warning:&lt;/strong&gt; Be careful with this, start with &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; low volume and consider that your neighbours might not enjoy it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25476" LastEditorUserId="22504" LastEditDate="2015-03-28T11:09:31.753" LastActivityDate="2015-03-28T11:09:31.753" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27171" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14373" CreationDate="2015-03-27T02:34:44.833" Score="-6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the evidence is overwhelming that the criminal justice system is biased against men. The best study is by Sonja Starr, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1164&amp;amp;context=law_econ_current&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Estimating Gender Disparities in Federal Criminal Cases&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; published in 2014 in the American Law and Economics Review. The site acrosswalls.org has a more general review of &lt;a href=&quot;http://acrosswalls.org/notes/sentencing-bias-against-men/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sex bias against men in criminal sentencing&lt;/a&gt;. These studies don't go into the deeper issue of bias against men in the definition of what's a crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25563" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T02:34:44.833" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27172" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-27T03:05:36.380" Score="27" ViewCount="3656" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is widely believed that regular exercise helps people become fitter, stronger and healthier. For example, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Activity_Guidelines_for_Americans#Health_benefits_of_regular_physical_activity&quot;&gt;Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Regular physical activity is one of the most important things you can do for your health&lt;/strong&gt;. It can help: [...] reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease; reduce your risk for type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome; reduce your risk of some cancers; strengthen your bones and muscles; improve your mental health and mood; improve your ability to do daily activities and prevent falls, if you're an older adult; increase your chances of living longer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Indeed, there is plenty of evidence that exercise is &lt;em&gt;correlated&lt;/em&gt; with lower incidence of various diseases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it could be that people who are born naturally healthy (and have a genetically lower risk of these diseases) also are genetically coded to have more energy, and therefore exercise more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Put another way, somebody who is sick and tired all the time is less likely to exercise, but this doesn't mean the lack of exercise caused their illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any convincing evidence that this is a &lt;strong&gt;causal relationship&lt;/strong&gt; from exercise to health, e.g. from randomized controlled trials? I am not interested in observational studies that show people who exercise are healthier - that much is very clear. I am interested in studies that prove that exercise directly causes health benefits such as those claimed above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25564" LastEditorUserId="25564" LastEditDate="2015-03-29T03:01:28.853" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T15:49:44.913" Title="Does exercise make you healthier?" Tags="|disease|physical-fitness|causality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27175" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27172" CreationDate="2015-03-27T11:34:56.317" Score="44" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Besides,&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;taking away your stress&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;exercise is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S37/28/70Q72/index.xml?section=topstories&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;proven&lt;/a&gt; to increase concentrations of norepinephrine, a chemical that can moderate the brain’s response to stress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and boosting happy chemicals&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;usually within five minutes after moderate exercise you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/12/exercise.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;get&lt;/a&gt; a mood-enhancement effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and alleviating long-term depression&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;data suggests that active people are less depressed than inactive people, those who were active and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/monitor/2011/12/exercise.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;stopped&lt;/a&gt; tend to be more depressed than those who maintain or initiate an exercise program&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and improving your self-confidence&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;regardless of weight, sexual orientation, gender, or age, exercise can quickly elevate a person's perception of his or her attractiveness: &lt;a href=&quot;http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/03/19/exercise-improves-self-esteem-in-overweight-kids/4839.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;self-confidence and self-worth&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and preventing cognitive decline&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;exercising boosts the chemicals in the brain that support and prevent degeneration of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jneurosci.org/content/30/15/5368.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hippocampus&lt;/a&gt;, an important part of the brain for memory and learning, which would prevent Alzheimer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and reducing anxiety&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the warm and fuzzy chemicals that are released after exercise can help people with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adaa.org/living-with-anxiety/managing-anxiety/exercise-stress-and-anxiety&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;anxiety disorders&lt;/a&gt; calm down&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and help controlling addiction&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;we all are addicted to something, right? Whether it is drugs, alcohol, internet, food or sex, exercise can help in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2829243/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;addiction recovery&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and unleashing your creativity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is reported that one gym session can boost creativity for up to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ric.edu/faculty/dblanchette/exercisearticle.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;two hours afterwards&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and reducing the chances of developing heart disease, stroke, and diabetes&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is reported by over &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/staying-active-full-story/#references&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;11 scientific articles&lt;/a&gt; that bicycling and walking reduce your chance of getting all those diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and making you lose weight&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17557987&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;you&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12525233&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;don't&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20591106&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;need&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3406229/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;evidence&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19127177&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;for&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20083615&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;that&lt;/a&gt;? &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15925949&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;do&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25606816&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;you&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and promoting better sleep&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;regular physical activity can help you &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/fitness/in-depth/exercise/art-20048389?pg=2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fall asleep faster&lt;/a&gt; and sharpen your sleep. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and lowering risk of all the following&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/fitness/Pages/Whybeactive.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;up&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/216370/dh_128210.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;to a 35% lower risk of coronary heart disease and stroke&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;em&gt;up to a 50% lower risk of type 2 diabetes&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;up to a 50% lower risk of colon cancer&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/34/Supplement_2/S210.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;up to a 20% lower risk of breast cancer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2010/08/20/physical-activity-reduces-the-risk-of-early-death.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a 30% lower risk of early death&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.excarbs.com/why-exercise/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;up to an 83% lower risk of osteoarthritis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;up to a 68% lower risk of hip fracture&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;a 30% lower risk of falls (among older adults)&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15626549&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;up to a 30% lower risk of depression&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2738400/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;up to a 30% lower risk of dementia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and preventing osteoporosis&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weight-bearing exercises, like running, walking and weight-lifting, help lower your odds of getting &lt;a href=&quot;http://nof.org/exercise&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;osteoporosis&lt;/a&gt; as you grow older&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and reducing the severity of asthma&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;swimming is one of the best exercises for people with asthma, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaaai.org/conditions-and-treatments/library/asthma-library/asthma-and-exercise.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;exercise&lt;/a&gt;  helps in fewer or milder asthma attacks overall and a need for less medication.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and promoting a healthy pregnancy&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Relaxation exercises and Kegel exercise that strengthen the pelvic muscles and back &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/pregnancy-week-by-week/multimedia/pregnancy-exercises/sls-20076779&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;exercises&lt;/a&gt; are all important for pregnant women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and having anti-ageing effects&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;exercise might be the best &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429905.300-exercise-may-be-the-best-antiageing-pill.html#.VRU_lJOUc4Q&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;anti-ageing&lt;/a&gt; pill according to many scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and improving your sex life&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The medical research &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ejhs.org/volume7/fitness.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;points&lt;/a&gt; towards it: the fitter you are, the better your sex life is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;and ignoring the fact that physical inactivity is twice as deadly as obesity&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;from recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/20150114/lack-of-exercise-more-deadly-than-obesity-study-suggests&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;there is no evidence that exercise makes you healthier at all.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;UPDATE:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OP updated his question saying he's asking about &lt;strong&gt;causation&lt;/strong&gt; and not &lt;strong&gt;correlation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;1) there is a lack of evidence that a causal link between physical exercise and good mental health exists.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.lb/books?id=-HXeZsX2L0sC&amp;amp;pg=PA10&amp;amp;lpg=PA10&amp;amp;dq=causal+relationship+from+exercise+to+health&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=YDWwDQwtdS&amp;amp;sig=7iwwSQzQnRGdIqrFTQkihKmYwJM&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=SxMbVZbeF8KdsAGon4PQDQ&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=causal%20relationship%20from%20exercise%20to%20health&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; called &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Workplace Health: Employee Fitness And Exercise&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; provides a great summary to a series of studies which concluded that there is a lack of causal relationship between physical exercise and mental health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/bLQvy.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another large cross-sectional research&lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt;, scientists and researchers were able to prove that physical exercise is correlated with lower risk of depression, however, fortunately for people against physical exercise, they couldn't prove a causal link between the two, researchers said they:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;are not able to make any firm conclusions on the direction of causation in any of the associations described&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NHS &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/news/2010/11November/pages/exercise-linked-to-lower-depression.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blogged&lt;/a&gt; about the study and said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In general, &lt;strong&gt;this study adds to the evidence that exercise is good for mental health&lt;/strong&gt;, although in isolation &lt;strong&gt;it does not prove a causal link between the two&lt;/strong&gt;. It should be discussed in the context of what else is known about the benefits of exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Digging deeper, I found that, according to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/sgr/pdf/chap4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;governmental report&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;2) there is a causal link between physical exercise and reduction in risk in all-cause mortality, all CVDs combined, CHD, hypertension, colon cancer, and NIDDM.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Causality&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The studies reviewed in this chapter indicate that&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;physical activity&lt;/strong&gt; is associated with a reduction in risk&#xA;  of &lt;strong&gt;all-cause mortality&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;all CVDs combined&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;CHD&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;hypertension&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;colon cancer&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;NIDDM&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To evaluate whether the information presented is sufficient to&#xA;  infer that these associations are causal in nature, &lt;strong&gt;it is&#xA;  useful to review the evidence according to Hill’s&#xA;  classic criteria for causality&lt;/strong&gt; (Hill 1965; Paffenbarger&#xA;  1988).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Strength of Association.&lt;/em&gt; The numerous estimated&#xA;  measures of association for cardiovascular outcomes&#xA;  presented in this chapter generally &lt;strong&gt;fall within the&#xA;  range of a 1.5- to 2.0-fold increase in risk of adverse&#xA;  health outcomes associated with inactivity&lt;/strong&gt;. This&#xA;  range represents a &lt;strong&gt;moderately strong association&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;  similar in magnitude to the relationship between&#xA;  CHD and smoking, hypertension, or elevated cholesterol.&#xA;  The associations with NIDDM, hypertension,&#xA;  and colon cancer have been somewhat smaller&#xA;  in magnitude. The difficulty in measuring physical&#xA;  activity may lead to substantial misclassification,&#xA;  which in turn would bias studies toward finding less&#xA;  of an effect of activity than may actually exist. On the&#xA;  other hand, not controlling for all potential confounders&#xA;  could bias studies toward finding more of&#xA;  an effect than may actually exist. Efforts to stratify&#xA;  studies of physical activity and CHD by the quality of measurement have found that the methodologically&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;better studies showed larger associations than those&#xA;  with lower quality scores&lt;/strong&gt; (Powell et al. 1987; Berlin&#xA;  and Colditz 1990). In addition, &lt;strong&gt;cardiorespiratory&#xA;  fitness, which is more objectively and precisely measured&#xA;  than the reported level of physical activity,&#xA;  often is also more strongly related to CVD and&#xA;  mortality&lt;/strong&gt;. Measures of association between physical&#xA;  activity and health outcomes thus might be stronger if&#xA;  physical activity measurements were more accurate.&#xA;  Consistency of Findings. Although the epidemiologic&#xA;  studies of physical activity have varied greatly&#xA;  in methodology, in ways of classifying physical activity,&#xA;  and in populations studied, &lt;strong&gt;the findings have&#xA;  been remarkably consistent in supporting a reduction&#xA;  in risk as a function of greater amounts of&#xA;  physical activity, or conversely, an increase in risk as&#xA;  a function of inactivity&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Temporality.&lt;/em&gt; For most of the health conditions&#xA;  included in this chapter (all-cause mortality, CVD,&#xA;  CHD, hypertension, NIDDM), &lt;strong&gt;longitudinal data from&#xA;  cohort studies have been available and have confirmed&#xA;  a temporal sequence in which physical activity&#xA;  patterns are determined prior to development of&#xA;  disease&lt;/strong&gt;. For obesity and mental health, fewer longitudinal&#xA;  studies have been conducted, and findings&#xA;  have been more equivocal. &lt;strong&gt;Perhaps the strongest&#xA;  evidence for temporality comes from two studies of&#xA;  the effect of changes in activity or fitness level.&lt;/strong&gt; Men&#xA;  who became more active or more fit had a lower&#xA;  mortality rate during follow-up than men who remained&#xA;  inactive or unfit (Paffenbarger et al. 1993;&#xA;  Blair et al. 1995).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Biological Gradient.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Studies of all-cause mortality,&#xA;  CVD, CHD, and NIDDM have shown a gradient&#xA;  of greater benefit associated with higher amounts of&#xA;  physical activity.&lt;/strong&gt; Most studies that included more&#xA;  than two categories of amount of physical activity&#xA;  and were therefore able to evaluate a dose-response&#xA;  relationship &lt;strong&gt;found a gradient of decreasing risk of&#xA;  disease with increasing amounts of physical activity&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  (see Tables 4-1 through 4-8).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Biologic Plausibility.&lt;/em&gt;&#xA;  Evidence that physiologic effects of physical activity have beneficial consequences&#xA;  for CHD, NIDDM, and obesity is abundant&#xA;  (see Chapter 3, as well as the biologic plausibility&#xA;  sections of this chapter). &lt;strong&gt;Such evidence includes&#xA;  beneficial effects on physiologic risk factors for&#xA;  disease, such as high blood pressure and blood&#xA;  lipoproteins, as well as beneficial effects on circulatory&#xA;  system functioning, blood-clotting mechanisms,&#xA;  insulin production and glucose handling,&#xA;  and caloric balance.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Experimental Evidence.&lt;/em&gt; Controlled clinical trials&#xA;  have not been conducted for the outcomes of mortality,&#xA;  CVD, cancer, obesity, or NIDDM. However,&#xA;  randomized clinical trials have determined that&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;physical activity improves these diseases’ risk factors,&#xA;  such as blood pressure, lipoprotein profile,&#xA;  insulin sensitivity, and body fat.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The information reviewed in this chapter shows&#xA;  that the &lt;strong&gt;inverse association between physical activity&#xA;  and several diseases is moderate in magnitude&lt;/strong&gt;, consistent&#xA;  across studies that differed substantially in&#xA;  methods and populations, and biologically plausible.&#xA;  A dose-response gradient has been observed in&#xA;  most studies that examined more than two levels of&#xA;  activity. For most of the diseases found to be inversely&#xA;  related to physical activity, &lt;strong&gt;the temporal&#xA;  sequence of exposure preceding disease has been&#xA;  demonstrated.&lt;/strong&gt; Although controlled clinical trials&#xA;  have not been conducted (and are not likely to be&#xA;  conducted) for morbidity and mortality related to&#xA;  the diseases of interest, controlled trials have shown&#xA;  that activity can improve physiologic risk factors for&#xA;  these diseases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;From this large body of consistent information, it is reasonable to conclude that physical activity is causally related to the health outcomes reported here&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;References:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; Layman, E. M. (1960). Contribution of exercise and sport to mental health and social adjustment. In Science and medicine of exercise and sports, ed. W.R. Johnson, New York &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; Cureton, T. K. (1963) Improvement of  psychological state by means of exercise programs. Journal of the Association for Physical and mental rehabilitation, 17, 14-25.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; Chernen, L., FRIEDMAN, S., GOLDBERG, N., FEIT, A., KWAT, T. and STEIN, R. (1995) Cardiac disease and ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; &#xA;Morgan, W.P. and O'Connor, P. J. (1988) Exercise and mental health. In Exercise adherence: its impact on public health, ed. R.K. DISHMAN. Champaign.&#xA;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; (1) Harvey SB, Hotopf M et al. &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/abstract/197/5/357&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Physical activity and common mental disorders.&lt;/a&gt; The British Journal of Psychiatry (2010) 197: 357-364 &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-02T15:49:44.913" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T15:49:44.913" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23820" CreationDate="2015-03-27T20:40:25.813" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Form Thomas Edison's May 14th, 1904 article in &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=hUAiAQAAMAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA23711&amp;amp;dq=vegetable%20growths%20and%20ransacked%20the%20world&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=s78VVbdChauDBJeShPgB&amp;amp;ved=0CCsQ6AEwAzgK#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=vegetable%20growths%20and%20ransacked%20the%20world&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Scientific American Supplement No. 1480, page 23711&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I soon ascertained why and started a man off for Japan on a bamboo hunt. Before I got through I had tested no fewer than 6,000 vegetable growths, and had ransacked the world for the most suitable bamboo. The use of bamboo was maintained for many years...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same passage also appears in the 1904 &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=XVpNAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;q=vegetable%20growths%20and%20ransacked%20the%20world&amp;amp;dq=vegetable%20growths%20and%20ransacked%20the%20world&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=rLsVVZHmMcmxggT-8ICgAQ&amp;amp;ved=0CEwQ6AEwCQ&quot;&gt;Electrical World and Engineer volume 43, page 432&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So at least you have a clear 111 year old statement from a first hand witness, Edison himself, that he did test more than 1,600 materials.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A really great resource to address your question is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=qUYOAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA1&amp;amp;dq=edison%20bamboo%20tested&amp;amp;ots=74DgIfVwv5&amp;amp;sig=nXSAvq2udKWit-Eq8f89bc5VK5s#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=fibres&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;The life and inventions of Thomas Alva Edision&lt;/a&gt;&quot; 1894 by William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson and Antonia Dickson.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This book has extreme details including many photographs and even a microscopic photograph of the worldwide hunt for fibers.  As summarized on page 226: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;no fewer than 80 varieties of bamboo and 3,000 kinds of vegetable fibre were tested &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you see the photographs in this book and read the quotes from Mr. Racilton who went to Ceylon and India to find fibers for Edison, I think you will be convinced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-03-30T16:02:53.357" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T16:02:53.357" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23820" CreationDate="2015-03-27T21:17:24.300" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://languor.us/did-edison-say-wasted-not-all-i-now-know-x-substances-will-not-work-filament-my-lamp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Someone has investigated&lt;/a&gt; the authenticity of the anecdote that this number is often a part of.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source that notes that Edison did test 1,600 materials is a 1910 biography titled, &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=u8UXBQAAQBAJ&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Edison, his Life and Inventions&lt;/a&gt; by a Frank Lewis Dyer, &amp;quot;General Counsel for The Edison Laboratory And Allied Interests&amp;quot;. The foreword notes that much of the information in the book has been compiled based on Edison's own written and oral statements as well as contributions from his associates. As Edison died only in 1931, this book was actually written during his lifetime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From page 605:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &amp;quot;try everything&amp;quot; spirit of Edison's method is well illustrated in this early period by a series of about sixteen hundred resistance tests of various ores, minerals, earths, etc., occupying over fifty pages of one of the note-books relating to the metallic filament for his lamps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, a contemporary employee/associate of Edison &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=u8UXBQAAQBAJ&amp;amp;q=sixteen%20hundred#v=snippet&amp;amp;q=sixteen%20hundred&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;confirms&lt;/a&gt; that 1600 various materials were tested for his light bulb and this is based on a notebook used to record the experiments at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IOW, the claim is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-27T21:17:24.300" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27180" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27181" CreationDate="2015-03-28T00:15:40.157" Score="12" ViewCount="3275" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are people with depression more likely to commit murder than people without depression?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2015/mar/27/andreas-lubitzs-germanwings-crash-mental-health-stigma-depression?CMP=twt_gu&quot;&gt;Claims about Andreas Lubitz's mental health only serve to stigmatise depression&lt;/a&gt;, Pete Etchells writes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Depression does not make you want to kill people&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I can’t believe I’m having to write this. “Why on Earth was he allowed&#xA;  to fly?”, Daily Mail? &lt;strong&gt;Because there’s no reason to suggest that people&#xA;  with depression – and again, we don’t know if Lubitz actually had&#xA;  depression at the time – are a risk for the wider population.&lt;/strong&gt; More&#xA;  generally, it’s the other way around. A study in the Lancet Psychiatry&#xA;  last year found that people with mental illness in the UK were more&#xA;  likely to be victims of murder than people in the general population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2018-01-08T09:09:26.843" Title="Are people with depression more likely to commit murder?" Tags="|psychiatry|violence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27181" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27180" CreationDate="2015-03-28T06:06:36.390" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that people with depression are more likely to commit murder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this study, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1600918&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Homicide is strongly correlated to depression and not to mania&lt;/a&gt;, the authors concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Typical manic episodes could be the cause of penal infractions, usually benign. In contrast, &lt;strong&gt;forensic studies show a close relationship between depression, suicide and homicide&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Killers (16-28%) are often depressed when they commit a crime.&lt;/strong&gt; In the UK and USA, 4-35% of killers commit suicide immediately after their crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In another study, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2375438&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The role of depression in couples involved in murder-suicide and homicide.&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;, the authors concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twelve couples in cases of murder-suicide were compared to 24 couples in cases of homicide during the period 1978 to 1987 in Albuquerque, N.M. Data were obtained from police, the courts, hospital records, and interviews with friends and family of the deceased. &lt;strong&gt;The most striking findings were that perpetrators of murder-suicide were depressed (75%) and men (95%), while perpetrators of homicide were not depressed and one-half were women.&lt;/strong&gt; The data indicate that the murder-suicide and homicide groups are two different populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for recent studies, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_151162.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a new study&lt;/a&gt; suggested that people with depression might be more likely to commit a violent crime than those without depression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers analyzed data from &lt;strong&gt;more than 47,000 people in Sweden who were diagnosed with depression&lt;/strong&gt; and followed for an average of three years. They were compared to &lt;strong&gt;more than 898,000 gender- and age-matched people without depression&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People with &lt;strong&gt;depression were five to six times more likely than those in the general population to harm others or themselves&lt;/strong&gt;, according to the researchers at Oxford University in England.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-01-08T09:09:26.843" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27182" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-28T14:40:46.193" Score="5" ViewCount="4156" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard people say that assuming tomorrow's weather will be the same as today's is as good as, or better, than meteorological models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hpLxIJ9LwRgC&amp;amp;pg=PA12&amp;amp;lpg=PA12&amp;amp;dq=weather+predictions+are+no+better+than+assuming+tomorrows+weather+is+going+to+be+the+same&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=aVmU0u2-a3&amp;amp;sig=FubSYWwb6erc5qy2ZeEle4bK_gs&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=e5MXVYrtE8LlaLTWgdgO&amp;amp;ved=0CC4Q6AEwBg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=weather%20predictions%20are%20no%20better%20than%20assuming%20tomorrows%20weather%20is%20going%20to%20be%20the%20same&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; says people assume is the best way&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geoffkirby.co.uk/Weather/Reliability/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;site&lt;/a&gt; claims that it's 40% accurate.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone tested the accuracy of this model and compared it to modern weather predictions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25590" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-03-29T06:02:05.537" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T13:39:27.957" Title="Is assuming that tomorrow's weather will be the same as today a good model?" Tags="|weather|meteorology|forecasting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27183" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-28T14:52:58.620" Score="18" ViewCount="2174" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vegkitchen.com &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vegkitchen.com/tips/10-reasons-why-brown-rice-is-the-healthy-choice/#KxraDA0fxkRLPSOo.99&quot;&gt;say&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brown rice is better for you than white&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other side:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ancestral-nutrition.com &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ancestral-nutrition.com/why-white-rice-is-healthier-than-brown-rice/&quot;&gt;say&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;White Rice Is Healthier Than Brown Rice&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My wife tells me that there is a very large, quantifiable difference between the the two.   But looking at the nutrition information on the bag, there is minimal difference; I say they are about the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am confused now, which one is healthier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25591" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-28T14:57:16.500" LastActivityDate="2015-04-05T02:39:53.270" Title="Is brown rice healthier than white rice?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27184" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26816" CreationDate="2015-03-28T15:13:08.937" Score="42" Body="&lt;h3&gt;No, it isn't true.&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most clear example is 1964.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &quot;Presidential Elections: Strategies and Structures of American Politics&quot; at page 65:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Barry Goldwater's losing campaign spent $17.2 million, significantly more than Johnson's $12 million expenditure&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book references the statement to: Herbert E. Alexander and Harold B. Meyers, “The Switch in Campaign Giving,” &lt;em&gt;Fortune&lt;/em&gt;, November 1965, 103–8.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theawl.com/2012/11/presidential-fundraising-adjusted-for-inflation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another source&lt;/a&gt; has the following list and says it is from New York magazine but independently verified (winners are in bold, the second candidate spent more):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1960&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;John F. Kennedy: $9.8 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Richard Nixon: $10.1 million&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1964&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Lyndon Johnson: $8.8 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Barry Goldwater: $16 million&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1968&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Hubert Humphrey: $11.6 million&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Richard Nixon: $25.4 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1972&lt;br&gt;&#xA;George McGovern: $30 million&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Richard Nixon: $61.4 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1976&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Jimmy Carter: $33.4 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Gerald Ford: $35.8 million&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1980&#xA;Jimmy Carter: $49 million&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Ronald Reagan: $57.7 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1984&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Walter Mondale: $66.7 million&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Ronald Reagan: $67.5 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1988&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Michael Dukakis: $77.3 million&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;George H.W. Bush: $80 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1992&lt;br&gt;&#xA;George H.W. Bush: $92.6 million&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Bill Clinton: $92.9 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1996&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Bill Clinton: $108.5 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Bob Dole: $110.2 million&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2000&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Al Gore: $127.1 million&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;George W. Bush: $172.1 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2004&lt;br&gt;&#xA;John Kerry: $328.5 million&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;George W. Bush: $367.2 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2008&lt;br&gt;&#xA;John McCain: $350.1 million&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;Barack Obama: $745.7 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While there are a few other example in the list of the losing candidate spending slightly more, 1964 is the only clear example of the losing candidate spending significantly more.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From another point of view, Ross Perot certainly could have outspent Clinton and Dole if he wanted to.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Update 2016: according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://metrocosm.com/2016-election-spending/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;What Trump and Hillary Spent vs Every General Election Candidate Since 1960&lt;/a&gt; the following is spending by each candidate in real dollars from 1960-2016:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BrABQ.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BrABQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fec.gov/disclosurep/pnational.do&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Federal Election Commission says&lt;/a&gt; Clinton 563.9 million, Trump 328.4 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2019-07-03T09:18:07.747" LastActivityDate="2019-07-03T09:18:07.747" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14090" CreationDate="2015-03-28T17:08:37.737" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;While the accepted answer shows that one poster did not misspell election, there were &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2004669948/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;other such posters&lt;/a&gt;.  Even the caption refers to &quot;signs painted all over Tokyo boosting MacArthur&quot;.  There was even &lt;a href=&quot;http://bowshrine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/PA-12003661.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a different sign on another side of the same building&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Jack Seward's 1971 book: &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Japanese.html?id=lZPalph2Sk4C&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Often Misunderstood, Sometimes Surprising, and Always Fascinating Culture and Lifestyles of Japan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A group of ardent Japanese supporters of the already aging general arranged to have a gigantic banner hoisted high over the busy Hibiya intersection in downtown Tokyo, just where MacArthur could see it when he emerged from his office in the Dai Ichi Building. Bearing in mind that the Japanese tend to confuse the &quot;r&quot; and the &quot;l&quot; in English, try to visualize these six-foot high letters emblazed on the banner:&#xA;  &quot;WE PRAY FOR MACARTHUR'S ERECTION!&quot;   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the story isn't true it is at least traceable to Jack Sewards 1971 book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more on Jack Seward, see his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tokyoweekender.com/2010/12/jack-seward-1924-2010/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;obituary in the Tokyo Weekender&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jack Seward, a legendary authority on Japan and a U.S. military veteran, passed away on November 10, 2010 at the age of 86 in Houston, Texas from post-stroke complications. A man of great intelligence, Jack leaves behind a legacy of international accomplishment and service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Born John Neil Seward Jr. in Houston on October 11, 1924, ‘Jack’ grew up in Dallas and upon graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1941, started attending the University of Oklahoma.  During this period, an act of chance introduced him to his life-long connection to Japan — while spending several summers with his father John Seward Sr. working on the Frank Phillips ranch in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, two Japanese co-workers started to teach him some Japanese language.  &lt;strong&gt;At the age of 18, he volunteered for active duty in the U.S. Army, and upon discovering his knowledge of Japanese, the Army enrolled him in a special military intelligence training unit on Japan&lt;/strong&gt; at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor where he graduated two years later second in his class.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Jack served under General Douglas MacArthur’s staff command during the occupation of Japan&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;This was the beginning of his 25 years spent living in Japan&lt;/strong&gt;.  After his tenure in the Army, he served in the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency as part of their Asian operations ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1963, Jack married Aiko “Jean” Morimoto of Shikoku, and together had two sons. Over the course of these years, he built his reputation as a leading Japan expert and linguist, obtained a doctorate’s degree following post-graduate studies at the University of Hawaii, and also commenced pursuing his interest in writing books...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So Jack Steward was in the position to have personal knowledge of the misspelling event, and repeated this account in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tokyoweekender.com/1982/12/english-language-signs-a-supreme-puzzlement/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;17 December 1982 article&lt;/a&gt; and  multiple books, including an illustration in &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=hCTRAgAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PT1&amp;amp;dq=Strange%20But%20True%20Stories%20from%20Japan&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=ADQbVaDMD8HboATsgoDwAQ&amp;amp;ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Strange%20But%20True%20Stories%20from%20Japan&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Strange But True Stories from Japan&lt;/a&gt; showing the misspelling on a banner streched across a street, which is inconsistent with the sign painted on the building.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Toshiyo Odo was the leader of the 1948 campaign in Japan for MacArthur, and as you can seen below his spelling skills where not the best: &quot;PERSOUNELS&quot;, &quot;lipps&quot;, &quot;alied&quot;, &quot;personuels&quot;, &quot;personels&quot;, &quot;humouraus&quot;, &quot;personnels&quot;.  If he could misspelll personnel four different ways in one sign, it is possible he could have misspelled &quot;election&quot; in another sign as Jack Seward has stated.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/EHdiJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-04-01T15:08:29.157" LastActivityDate="2015-04-01T15:08:29.157" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27186" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27033" CreationDate="2015-03-28T23:51:15.923" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;IMO when George quoted from Dr. Moncrieff's article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madinamerica.com/2013/06/antipsychotics-and-brain-shrinkage-an-update/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Antipsychotics and Brain Shrinkage: An Update&lt;/a&gt;, he chose the wrong paragraph to use as a summary, and I think that this paragraph is the better summary,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;What should antipsychotic users and their families and carers make of this research? Obviously it sounds frightening and worrying, but the first thing to stress is that the reductions in brain volume that are detected in these MRI studies are small, and it is not certain that changes of this sort have any functional implications. We do not yet know whether these changes are reversible or not. Of course the value of antipsychotics has been much debated on this site and elsewhere, and their utility almost certainly depends on the particular circumstances of each individual user, so it is impossible to issue any blanket advice. If people are worried, they need to discuss the pros and cons of continuing to take antipsychotic treatment with their prescriber, bearing in mind the difficulties that are associated with coming off these drugs.(12) People should not stop drug treatment suddenly, especially if they have been taking it for a long time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2015-03-28T23:51:15.923" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27189" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-29T19:26:58.350" Score="2" ViewCount="405" Body="&lt;p&gt;The responses to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/30n9x0/what_will_you_argue_to_the_death/cpu8olt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this reddit post&lt;/a&gt; make me think that it is a popular belief that holes in pot lids make water boil faster. The claim is that by lowering pressure, the water boils at a lower temperature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I had always assumed they were there solely for convenience and safety - steam buildup can be a hazard - and that releasing steam would make it take &lt;em&gt;longer&lt;/em&gt; to boil. I also don't see the pressure getting high enough to matter, but I don't know how the physics works out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there truth to this claim? Might holes in pot lids make water boil faster?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21596" LastActivityDate="2015-03-29T22:13:23.947" Title="Do holes in pot lids make water boil faster?" Tags="|physics|water|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-03-30T00:21:00.917" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27192" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2523" CreationDate="2015-03-29T22:20:48.540" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/sugar-substitutes-linked-to-obesity-1.15938&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;new study&lt;/a&gt; at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, artificial sweeteners cause a change in our intestinal flora (the bacteria in our gut, which play a major role in our digestion, immune system, etc). This in turn causes glucose intolerance, which leads you to eat more, and can lead to metabolic disorders. As a result you put on more weight and become prone to diseases like diabetes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence at this point is not fully conclusive, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://app3.scientificamerican.com/article/artificial-sweeteners-may-change-our-gut-bacteria-in-dangerous-ways/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;according to one expert&lt;/a&gt;, it is certainly compelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6710" LastActivityDate="2015-03-29T22:20:48.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27194" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-03-30T03:08:18.913" Score="5" ViewCount="487" Body="&lt;p&gt;Washington.edu reported &lt;a href=&quot;http://staff.washington.edu/griffin/musclephys.txt&quot;&gt;that&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Muscle cell number is affected by exercise level while young&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and elitefitness.com &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/womens-fitness-female-bodybuilding-training/can-muscle-cells-increase-number-223312.html&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a trainee in the early stages of training would increase cell number&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where an unreferenced page on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscle&quot;&gt;wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; said the opposite:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Contrary to popular belief, the number of muscle fibres cannot be increased through exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which one is true, I'm a little bit confused?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Note: I'm not asking about the increase in the cells' myofibril count, but the increase in the numbers of cells themselves.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25570" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-30T09:22:47.920" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T14:56:29.503" Title="Does exercise affect the number of muscle cells?" Tags="|physiology|physical-fitness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27194" CreationDate="2015-03-30T10:02:19.553" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is evident that muscle growth happens through exercise. This article, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2222798&quot;&gt;Muscle growth and exercise&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; explains that there are three mechanisms involved:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;by an increase in muscle cell numbers, &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;by an increase in muscle fiber diameter, and &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;by an increase in fiber length. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, your question is whether the first mechanism is affected by exercise. The others are not related to the count of the cells, but how large each cell is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract goes on to explain:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Growth in cell numbers&lt;/strong&gt; is limited to the &lt;strong&gt;prenatal&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;immediately postnatal period&lt;/strong&gt;, with the animals and man being born with or soon reaching their full complement of muscle cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the answer to the question is &lt;strong&gt;no, exercise does not increase the number of muscle cells.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exercise does, however, increase muscle mass, by increasing the size and count of the components that make up each cell:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thus, &lt;strong&gt;growth occurs&lt;/strong&gt; by either hypertrophy of the existing muscle fibers &lt;strong&gt;by adding additional myofibrils to increase the muscle mass&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;by adding new sarcomeres to the ends of the existing muscle fibers to increase their length&lt;/strong&gt;. Both of these mechanisms occur during the growth process. &lt;strong&gt;Growth in the girth of the muscle fibers appears to take place by splitting of the myofibrils&lt;/strong&gt;. This may be stimulated by development of stress creating an unequal pressure with splitting at the Z-band and development of additional SR and T-tubule systems. This adds to the diameter or girth of myofibers without any hyperplasia. The &lt;strong&gt;growth in length occurs at either end of the fibers and results in addition of new sarcomeres&lt;/strong&gt;. In both cases, new myofibrillar protein must be synthesized and deposited in the muscle cells. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What determines adding sarcomeres and myofibrils?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You guessed right: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.austincc.edu/sziser/Biol%202404/2404LecNotes/2404LNExII/Muscle%20Physiology.pdf&quot;&gt;Exercise&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Exercise stimulates the increase in myofibrils which increase the overall size of muscle cells.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well exercised muscles can not only add more size but can also develop more &lt;strong&gt;mitochondria&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;myoglobin&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;glycogen&lt;/strong&gt; and a &lt;strong&gt;higher density of capillaries&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nutrition (especially protein intake) also plays an important role in muscle growth, but growth &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.austincc.edu/sziser/Biol%202404/2404LecNotes/2404LNExII/Muscle%20Physiology.pdf&quot;&gt;cannot occur without&lt;/a&gt; exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-03-30T10:48:12.100" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T10:48:12.100" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27183" CreationDate="2015-03-30T12:34:46.240" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The USA Rice Federation provided a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usarice.com/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=627&amp;amp;Itemid=256&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;comparison&lt;/a&gt; table for many types of rice:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/etjqgl.png&quot; alt=&quot;USA Rice Federation table&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The information in this table was taken from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, 2002. USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 15 (August, 2002).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the measure of 46.25 grams grams of &lt;strong&gt;brown&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;white&lt;/strong&gt; long-grain cooked rice, you can conclude from the table that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Brown rice&lt;/strong&gt; is  2.7x richer in dietary fiber than &lt;strong&gt;white rice&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;White rice&lt;/strong&gt; has almost same number of carbohydrates with &lt;strong&gt;brown rice&lt;/strong&gt; (negligible).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The number of calories is almost the same&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For minerals, the brown rice is richer than white rice.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as you see, &lt;strong&gt;brown rice&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;white rice&lt;/strong&gt; have similar amounts of calories and carbohydrates, so there might not be a huge difference after all, right? Not really, the main differences between the two forms of rice &lt;strong&gt;lie in processing and nutritional content&lt;/strong&gt;, researched by a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_rice&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; page:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When only the outermost layer of a grain of rice &lt;strong&gt;(the husk)&lt;/strong&gt; is removed, brown rice is produced. To &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sbaf.in/history.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;produce&lt;/a&gt; white rice, the next layers underneath the &lt;strong&gt;husk&lt;/strong&gt; (the bran layer and the germ) are removed, leaving mostly &lt;strong&gt;the starchy endosperm&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several vitamins and dietary minerals are lost in this removal and the subsequent polishing process. A part of these missing nutrients, such as &lt;strong&gt;vitamin B1&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;vitamin B3&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;iron&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sometimes, &lt;strong&gt;they are added back into the white rice making it &quot;enriched&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2001/aprqtr/21cfr137.350.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;as food suppliers in the US are required to do so by the Food and Drug Administration&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/81/1/64&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One mineral not added back into white rice is magnesium&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;; one cup (195 g) of cooked long grain brown rice contains 84 mg of magnesium while one cup of white rice contains 19 mg.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the bran layer is removed to make white rice, the oil in the bran is also removed. &lt;strong&gt;Rice bran oil may help lower LDL cholesterol&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/health-gains-from-whole-grains/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health&lt;/a&gt; reported that eating two or more servings of brown rice weekly seems to be associated with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes. They also report that eating five or more servings of white rice per week is associated with an increased risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scientists examined rice consumption and diabetes risk in 39,765 men and 157,463 women in three large studies. They analyzed responses to questionnaires completed every four years about diet, lifestyle, and health conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-05T02:39:53.270" LastActivityDate="2015-04-05T02:39:53.270" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27202" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28743" CreationDate="2015-03-30T13:45:18.797" Score="29" ViewCount="20504" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://thoughtcatalog.com/hok-leahcim/2014/04/31-psychological-life-hacks-that-you-can-exploit-to-give-yourself-an-advantage-in-social-settings/&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;strong&gt;31 Psychological Life Hacks That You Can Exploit To Give Yourself An Advantage In Social Settings&lt;/strong&gt; by thoughtcatalog, it said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a group of people laugh, people will instinctively look at the person they feel closest to in that group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is repeated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://distractify.com/people/psychological-life-hacks/&quot;&gt;distracity&lt;/a&gt; in a post showing psychological life hacks that'll make you more successful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the claim is widely and internationaly believed, a simple google query will show &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=When+a+group+of+people+laugh%2C+people+will+instinctively+look+at+the+person+they+feel+closest+to+in+that+group.&amp;amp;oq=When+a+group+of+people+laugh%2C+people+will+instinctively+look+at+the+person+they+feel+closest+to+in+that+group.&amp;amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.496j0j7&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;es_sm=119&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot;&gt;you&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I often catch myself looking at good friends or someone I'm interested in when laughing. But does this apply to the majority of people? I'm really skeptical of this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18504" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-03-30T14:10:15.423" LastActivityDate="2015-08-13T14:41:43.710" Title="Will people automatically look at the person they feel closest to when laughing?" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27204" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27206" CreationDate="2015-03-30T15:03:33.007" Score="4" ViewCount="7371" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's an old saw, your parents telling you to eat your gelatin because it will make your hair and nails strong. There are sites on the internet stating &lt;a href=&quot;http://wellnessmama.com/7419/gelatin-uses/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;similar&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://thecrunchymoose.com/gelatin/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt;, but they're usually the same sort of site trying to sell the latest super-herb, so I have my doubts. As for parents, well, these are the same parents who'll tell you to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/04/the_odd_body_crusts_curls/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;eat your crusts to get curly hair&lt;/a&gt;. So, is there any proof that eating gelatin improves hair and nail strength? And, since it's mentioned in links above and could also be a vector, does topical treatment fare any better?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="19346" LastEditDate="2015-03-30T16:04:28.407" LastActivityDate="2017-03-10T07:34:34.033" Title="Does gelatin aid hair and nail growth?" Tags="|nutrition|hair|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27204" CreationDate="2015-03-30T16:21:49.823" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I did a quick google search on this one and the first result I got back was this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livestrong.com/article/488800-does-drinking-knox-gelatin-help-with-peeling-nails/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; which explains the history of knox gelatin and when it started being used as a supplement to allegedly increase nail strength which was around the 1950s. Here is the main section that explains why this myth is false and why gelatin doesn't help nails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nails and Food&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gelatin does contain some protein. However, if protein were&#xA;  responsible for improving brittle, peeling nails, gelatin would be a&#xA;  poor choice, given the fact that other foods are much higher in&#xA;  protein. Eating or drinking gelatin won't strengthen weak nails, nor&#xA;  will soaking your hands in gelatin. Peeling nails are rarely caused by&#xA;  nutritional deficiencies. As long as you eat a healthy, varied diet&#xA;  abundant in essential nutrients, your diet won't affect nail quality.&#xA;  Peeling nails are more frequently caused by external factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nail Tips&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Peeling nails are usually the result of repeatedly getting them wet&#xA;  and letting them dry again. Washing your hands and doing certain&#xA;  household chores — washing dishes, scrubbing the bathtub and watering&#xA;  the lawn — make nails brittle and dry. A better investment than&#xA;  gelatin is a good moisturizer that contains lanolin or alpha-hydroxy&#xA;  acids. Protect your nails by wearing cotton-lined rubber gloves when&#xA;  doing housework. Limit the number of times you change your nail polish&#xA;  and use acetone-free polish remover when you do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is explains that Gelatin while containing some protein won't do much for nails since that isn't what is responsible for improving your nails. This is because nails are usually weakened by external factors such as nail polish, nail polish remover, and being wet for long periods of time. So no gelatin will not increase nail strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is another link &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hooked-on-nails.com/naturalnails.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; that better explains what the nails are made up of how they grow, and what determines their strength. Here is the specific portion refutuing the claim that nails can be strengthened by certain foods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some people erroneously believe that eating certain foods or using&#xA;  special creams, oils or lotions will increase the growth rate.&#xA;  Although the nail plate requires certain nutrients for proper growth,&#xA;  there is very little evidence that eating any particular food will&#xA;  cause them to grow faster. Creams, oils and lotions are sometimes sold&#xA;  as ‘growth accelerators’, although these claims are false, misleading&#xA;  and illegal. No cosmetic product may claim that it can alter or change&#xA;  any body function. These products and others are only for beautifying&#xA;  the nail plate, and only medical drugs can make such claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this is talking about growth the same idea applies to the hardness&#xA;the food you eat does not affect your nails in any noticeable way, unless&#xA;you are malnourished or have a medical condition. Also while the biotin solution&#xA;mentioned in the livestrong one which isn't supported but the rest of the livestrong stuff based on strength of nails is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: Updated with a new link as livestrong isn't reliable, but the new source from a educational website for nail technicians agrees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22806" LastEditorUserId="22806" LastEditDate="2015-03-31T12:19:42.300" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T12:19:42.300" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27208" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27158" CreationDate="2015-03-30T17:32:42.883" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;GHB is a fairly safe medication &lt;strong&gt;as long as it's not mixed with alcohol or other depressants, which can be fatal&lt;/strong&gt;. An overdose can cause deep, unresponsive sleep with lowered respiration, but even at high doses it doesn't depress respiration enough to be dangerous (this is distinct from alcohol and opiates, which cause increasing respiratory depression with increasing dosage). Many sources refer to this state as a &quot;coma,&quot; but this is either a misunderstanding or deliberate misrepresentation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another potential source of confusion is that GHB is naturally present in the body, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/20464160_Gammahydroxybutyrate_an_endogenous_regulator_of_energy_metabolism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;and may be produced in large quantities as a protective factor against hypoxia&lt;/a&gt;. This means that when an individual dies due to unrelated causes, such as a heart attack, an autopsy may find elevated levels of GHB. I'm convinced that this was what occurred in the case of Hillory Farias, the woman whose death led to the federal ban on GHB even though there was no evidence that she'd actually taken GHB, but this is non-peer-reviewed speculation on my part.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you look at human and animal research on GHB that was done before the late 90s, when the media started associating it with drug-war hysteria, you'll see researchers routinely administering doses in the supposedly dangerous 3-5g range with no reports of serious adverse reactions (see below for some examples). Concerns only developed when it was perceived as a &quot;party drug&quot; or a &quot;date-rape drug.&quot; Since then its Schedule I status has curtailed research, but it continues to be used in research on narcolepsy and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19462303&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reducing the effects of alcohol withdrawal&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One complication is that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/235226421_Synergy_of_Ethanol_and_a_Natural_SoporificGamma_Hydroxybutyrate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;GHB can increase the depressant effects of alcohol&lt;/a&gt;, leading to potentially fatal alcohol intoxication. This is the likely mechanism behind nearly all reported GHB fatalities. Thus, it can be true that GHB is dangerous in the context of uncontrolled recreational use, even though it's also true that it's not particularly dangerous when used on its own. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sources&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/20464160_Gammahydroxybutyrate_an_endogenous_regulator_of_energy_metabolism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gammahydroxybutyrate: an endogenous regulator of energy metabolism.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9239423&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Simultaneous stimulation of slow-wave sleep and growth hormone secretion by gamma-hydroxybutyrate in normal young Men.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/235226421_Synergy_of_Ethanol_and_a_Natural_SoporificGamma_Hydroxybutyrate&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Synergy of Ethanol and a Natural Soporific—Gamma Hydroxybutyrate&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19462303&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid versus clomethiazole for the treatment of alcohol withdrawal syndrome in a medical intensive care unit: an open, single-center randomized study.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/15586726_EEG_changes_during_sedation_with_gamma-hydroxybutyric_acid]&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EEG changes during sedation with gamma-hydroxybutyric acid&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6444" LastEditorUserId="6444" LastEditDate="2015-04-01T13:45:34.790" LastActivityDate="2015-04-01T13:45:34.790" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8367" CreationDate="2015-03-30T19:54:22.890" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, geomagnetic activity affects health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, geomagnetic activity has been found to cause strokes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24757102&quot;&gt;Geomagnetic storms can trigger stroke: evidence from 6 large population-based studies in Europe and Australasia&lt;/a&gt; Stroke 2014 Jun; 45(6):1639-45 reports a 11,453 person study spanning 1981-2004.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;exposure to geomagnetic storms (with Ap Index &gt;60) on an individual level increases the relative risk of stroke by 19% across all ages (95% CI, 11%–27%) and by 37% (95% CI, 21%–54%) across those aged &amp;lt;65 years&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18810718&quot;&gt;Timing of life-threatening arrhythmias detected by implantable cardioverter-defibrillators in relation to changes in cosmophysical factors&lt;/a&gt; Cardiology Journal&#xA;2008, Vol. 15, No. 5, pp. 437–440 finds that geomagnetic activity provides a health benefit and hypothesizes that :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;higher CRA [cosmic ray acitivity], which occurs at&#xA;  times of lower GMA [geomagnetic activity] and lower solar activity [20],&#xA;  contributes to electrical heart instability, especially&#xA;  in patients with damaged heart muscles as a consequence&#xA;  of repeated AMI or ischemic cardiomyopathy,&#xA;  as in our series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, because the Earth's surface is more protected form cosmic rays during times of increased geomagnetic activity, problems caused by comsic rays are reduced during high geomagnetic activity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and the review article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16943895&quot;&gt;Cardiac Arrhythmia and Geomagnetic Activity&lt;/a&gt; Indian Pacing Electrophysiol J. 2006 Jan-Mar; 6(1): 49–53 similarly finds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there is an inverse relationship between the frequency of cardiac arrhythmic events and SCD [Sudden Cardiac Death] and the level of daily GMA [Geomagnetic Activity]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the various studies, we can presume that the GMA has some protective effect on cardiac arrhythmias and SCD &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So overall, yes geomagnetic activity affects health, but there can be beneficial affects and negative affects.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastActivityDate="2015-03-30T19:54:22.890" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27210" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3316" CreationDate="2015-03-31T06:24:28.427" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The evidence is finally in!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new article, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2210883&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Association Between Apple Consumption and Physician Visits:&#xA;Appealing the Conventional Wisdom That an Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, shows the outcome of a trial that examined:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the relationship between eating an apple a day and keeping the doctor away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: There is no attempt to show causation here, just correlation between US adults reporting the equivalent of a small apple daily (n=753 apple eaters, 7,646 non-apple-eaters), and the proxy measures: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;no more than 1 visit (self-reported) to a physician during the past year; secondary outcomes included successful avoidance of other health care services (ie, no overnight hospital stays, visits to a mental health professional, or prescription medications).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After &quot;adjusting for sociodemographic and health-related characteristics&quot;, they concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evidence does not support that an apple a day keeps the doctor away;&lt;/strong&gt; however, the small fraction of US adults who eat an apple a day do appear to use fewer prescription medications.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[I carefully note the publication date is March 30th, not April 1st.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T06:24:28.427" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27213" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6664" CreationDate="2015-03-31T12:05:09.860" Score="-3" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an article by Michael Dye is repeated in several places on the Internet. It quotes a number of experts, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Oski&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Frank Oski&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frank Oski, M.D., author of Don't Drink Your Milk! is the Director of the Department of Pediatrics of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief of the Johns Hopkins Children's Center. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 19 medical textbooks and has written 290 medical manuscripts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the first chapter of his book, Dr. Oski states, &amp;quot;The fact is: the drinking of cow milk has been linked to iron-deficiency anemia in infants and children; it has been named as the cause of cramps and diarrhea in much of the world's population, and the cause of multiple forms of allergy as well; and the possibility has been raised that it may play a central role in the origins of atherosclerosis and heart attacks.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another outspoken critic of cow's milk is Dr. William Ellis, a retired osteopathic physician and surgeon in Arlington, Texas, who has researched the effects of dairy products for 42 years. Dr. Ellis is listed in Marquis' Who's Who in the East, Leaders of American Science, the Dictionary of International Biography and Two Thousand Men of Achievement. Dr. Ellis says dairy products are &amp;quot;simply no good for humans... There is overwhelming evidence that milk and milk products are harmful to many people, both adults and infants. Milk is a contributing factor in constipation, chronic fatigue, arthritis, headaches, muscle cramps, obesity, allergies and heart problems.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Christiane Northrup, a gynecologist in Yarmouth, Maine, states, &amp;quot;Dairy is a tremendous mucus producer and a burden on the respiratory, digestive and immune systems.&amp;quot; Dr. Northrup says when patients &amp;quot;eliminate dairy products for an extended period and eat a balanced diet, they suffer less from colds and sinus infections.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25625" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-03-31T13:27:27.107" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10063" CreationDate="2015-03-31T14:35:31.443" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been a burst of popular presss articles saying that wearing a scarf that covers the mouth and nose can prevent the common cold by keeping the upper respritory tract temperature high and making it less suitable for the virus.  For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/06/cold-prevention-nose_n_6423638.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Common Cold Could Be Prevented by Wearing a Scarf over the Nose&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual basis for these articles is the journal article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/112/3/827.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Temperature-dependent innate defense against the common cold virus limits viral replication at warm temperature in mouse airway cells&lt;/a&gt; PNAS vol. 112, pages 827–832. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-05-22T23:11:27.243" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T23:11:27.243" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27220" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27226" CreationDate="2015-04-01T05:04:07.930" Score="8" ViewCount="12629" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goodreads.com &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/94983-you-can-kill-a-man-but-you-cant-kill-a&quot;&gt;referenced&lt;/a&gt; the quote to the &lt;strong&gt;Greek philosopher Sophocles&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brainyquote.com &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/medgarever101375.html&quot;&gt;referenced&lt;/a&gt; the quote to &lt;strong&gt;Medgar Evers.&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Who did said this quote? Valid sources (like books, papers) would convince me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25644" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-01T05:19:07.890" LastActivityDate="2015-04-01T22:16:09.497" Title="Who said &quot;You can kill a man but you can't kill an idea&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27223" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27224" CreationDate="2015-04-01T13:01:11.380" Score="52" ViewCount="24310" Body="&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20151014231951/http://naoisedolan.com/tampontax/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;comic by artist Naoise Dolan&lt;/a&gt; published March 2015 has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/lauracoryton/status/577598111926861824&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;circulating heavily&lt;/a&gt; on social media:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The world according to the UK government:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Men’s razors are taxed as necessities because you need to avoid stubble&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Women’s sanitary products are taxed as luxuries because you don’t need to avoid getting covered in your own blood&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the tax on tampons is true but the bit about razors being VAT-free as an essential strikes me as being unlikely. Googling it finds claims from both sides:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recognise that razors are zero-rated, and judging by many Conservative Members the opportunity to shave every day is a human right. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2015-10-26b.84.0#g115.0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;—Stella Creasy MP&lt;/a&gt;, speaking in Parliament October 2015&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second MP made the same claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is absurd that while men's razors, children's nappies and even products like Jaffa Cakes, exotic meats and edible cake decorations are free from VAT. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34649495&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;—Alison Thewliss MP&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are razors (specifically men's razors if there's any difference) really VAT-free in the UK?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/20igd.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/20igd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25649" LastEditorUserId="16201" LastEditDate="2022-06-06T19:11:15.330" LastActivityDate="2023-08-27T23:11:39.233" Title="Are razor blades tax-free in the UK?" Tags="|united-kingdom|gender|taxes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27223" CreationDate="2015-04-01T13:31:01.957" Score="97" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Value Added Tax in the United Kingdom is based upon the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/vat-rates&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;standard rate of 20%&lt;/a&gt; as of 4 January 2011. This means that unless something falls into a listed category for a reduced rate or an exemption, then the VAT is 20%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based upon a review of the United Kingdom's HM Revenue &amp;amp; Customs listings for &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/rates-of-vat-on-different-goods-and-services&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;VAT rates on different goods and services&lt;/a&gt; this claim appears to be &lt;strong&gt;false&lt;/strong&gt;. Currently, women's sanitary protection products are covered by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-notice-70118-womens-sanitary-protection-products/vat-notice-70118-womens-sanitary-protection-products#products-and-rates&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;VAT Notice 701/18&lt;/a&gt; which stipulates a VAT rate of 5%. Since there is no listing for razors in the exemption list that I was able to find we must assume that they would have a VAT rate of 20%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, safety razor blades are listed as a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/trade-tariff/commodities/8212200000&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;commodity subject to a trade tariff&lt;/a&gt;, with the following notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The commodity code for importing is 8212200000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Importing from outside the EU is subject to a third country duty of&#xA;2.70 %.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goods are subject to VAT standard rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This can be further born out by examining the cost of purchasing razor blades in the United Kingdom for which we see fees such as those with Edwin Jaggar which shows that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edwinjagger.co.uk/Accessories/DE+Safety+Razor+Blades.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;10 Personna Platinum DE Razor Blades&lt;/a&gt; cost £2.00 or £1.67 (ex. Tax) which corresponds to the VAT rate of 20%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-05-25T09:38:35.510" LastActivityDate="2022-05-25T09:38:35.510" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27220" CreationDate="2015-04-01T22:16:09.497" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;At least the sentiment if not the exact phrasing pre-dates Medgar Evers (who lived from 1925 to 1963).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a book titled &lt;em&gt;The Russian Pendulum&lt;/em&gt; by Arthur Bullard published by Macmillan in 1919,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The armies of Tchaikovsky, Denikin, and Kolchak may enter Moscow and hang a few hundred of the Bolshiviki, but that will not kill the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or from &lt;em&gt;Life&lt;/em&gt; magazine in 1951,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fact is that he was out to destroy the ideas that Churchill stood for. He has told me many times: it is ideas he wants to kill, not men, but in order to kill the idea it is necessary to attack the man.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Dublin Review (Page 260) Nicholas Patrick Wiseman - 1845&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You may kill a few individuals, but you cannot kill an idea. An idea is immortal. In the midst of tempests an idea attains the stature of a giant, and like a diamond shines with a new light at every repercussion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mining Congress Journal (Page 446) - 1920&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These thirty-seven murders are the natural result of such sentiments as have been expressed by the sensational press in defining its attitude toward so- called radicalism. Their slogan has been &quot;You cannot kill an idea.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vanity Fair (Page 20) - 1915&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You may kill a man, but you cannot kill an idea, and nationality is the most vital sort of idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2015-04-01T22:16:09.497" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27228" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27223" CreationDate="2015-04-02T07:25:32.690" Score="31" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is &lt;strong&gt;false&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, this &lt;a href=&quot;http://gov.uk/trade-tariff/commodities/8212200000&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;official reference&lt;/a&gt; says of safety razor blades:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Goods are subject to VAT standard rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VAT rates are set out &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gov.uk/rates-of-vat-on-different-goods-and-services&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I expect the 'grain of truth' is that some aspects of health are VAT exempt (see boxes marked health and healthcare above), for instance dispensed prescriptions and incontinence pads. I expect the logic is that neither sanitary products nor razor blades are to treat a medical condition. Neither, for instance, is toothpaste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, as per the above link, VAT of on sanitary products is at a reduced rate of 5%. This reduced rate of VAT on sanitary products was due to a campaign in culminating 2001 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stylist.co.uk/people/lucy-mangan/vat-on-tampons-should-not-be-axed&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;poor reference&lt;/a&gt;). Prior to this VAT on sanitary products was at the normal rate (which from memory was then 17.5% but is now 20%). As far as I can tell the VAT rate on razor blades did not change (save for changes in the general rate of VAT); therefore the claim is unlikely to have been true in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The provisions of what may and may not be at reduced rate VAT are set by the EC, specifically within Article 98 and Annex III of the principal EC VAT directive (2006/112/EC), the relevant section of which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn02683.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;pharmaceutical products of a kind normally used for health care, prevention of illnesses and as treatment for medical and veterinary purposes, including products used for contraception and sanitary protection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25120" LastEditorUserId="25120" LastEditDate="2016-10-05T07:16:25.653" LastActivityDate="2016-10-05T07:16:25.653" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27182" CreationDate="2015-04-02T13:03:47.420" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/21/we-can-only-forecast-the-weather-a-few-days-into-the-future/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blogger Randal Olson&lt;/a&gt; reproduced a chart from Nate Silver's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/159420411X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Signal and the Noise&lt;/a&gt; which in turn has based on data from &lt;a href=&quot;http://ForecastWatch.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ForecastWatch&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SGSAR.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ignore the orange line; it is irrelevant for this discussion. (Just for illustration: It is based on a similar idea of predicting that it will be hot on your birthday, because it has been hot on your previous birthdays.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blue line represents Persistence - the concept in the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The grey line represents commercial quality forecasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The higher the line, the worst the estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The blue line is always higher than the grey line - a delta of about 2.5&amp;nbsp;&amp;deg;F (about 1.5&amp;nbsp;&amp;deg;C) after 1 day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on this, we can conclude that, although Persistence isn't a terrible model (predicts with an error of only about 5.5&amp;nbsp;&amp;deg;F, or 3&amp;nbsp;&amp;deg;C), it performs much more poorly than a professional weather estimate on temperature forecasts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-02T13:39:27.957" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T13:39:27.957" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27230" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-02T16:33:49.063" Score="7" ViewCount="568" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a study, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22030439&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Are parents in the UK equipped to provide adequate burns first aid?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, the proper first aid for a burn is to &amp;quot;STOP the burning&amp;quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;S&lt;/strong&gt;trip hot clothes and jewelry&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;T&lt;/strong&gt;urn on the cool tap&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;O&lt;/strong&gt;rganize medical assistance&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;strong&gt;P&lt;/strong&gt;rotect burn with cling film or clean cloth&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the forth point the authors claim that (p 441) it is inappropriate to protect the burn using butter, milk, antiseptics, toothpaste, &lt;em&gt;ointments, or other creams&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although (92%) 173/188 of parents overall stated they would&#xA;cover the burn with a clean dry cloth or plastic film, there was&#xA;a significant difference between ethnic groups. Significantly&#xA;greater rates of application of inappropriate topical agents&#xA;were suggested by ethnic minority parents (27% White&#xA;respondents 42% of Other Ethnicities) ( p = 0.01). Inappropriate&#xA;answers included butter, milk, &lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;antiseptic or other creams&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;,&#xA;ointment, cooking oil and toothpaste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The appropriate way is to use a plastic film or clean cloth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is certainly well documented that using products like butter or toothpaste is inappropriate, but &lt;strong&gt;what is the evidence for the claim that one shouldn't use any other form of (burn) cream or ointment?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason for my question is the existence of a variety of burn ointments that claim to help. According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vanderbilthealth.com/burncenter/30606&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vanderbilt Burn Center&lt;/a&gt; one can apply for example Bacitracin which is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugs.com/cdi/bacitracin-ointment.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ointment&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; Link to the full study &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dmym4cK6ABQkRmQzFnLTc2X0k/view&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25659" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T18:07:44.483" Title="No creams or ointments for first aid of a child with a large scald?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27231" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-02T19:17:45.163" Score="1" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've repeatedly heard the claim, often from anti-fructose advocates, that there is a skyrocketing prevalence of two formerly rare disorders: non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and juvenile type 2 diabetes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/us/study-reveals-sizable-increase-in-diabetes-among-children.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Study Reveals Sizable Increase in Diabetes Among Children - New York Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110402163427.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;New data show non-alcoholic fatty liver disease will reach epidemic status in the US - ScienceDaily&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/831939&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Global Effort to Address the Epidemic of Fatty Liver Disease - Medscape&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if the historical data on these conditions is comparable to the data we're getting today. If screening methods became more sensitive, testing became more frequent, or diagnostic criteria changed, you could see more cases even if the underlying health conditions hadn't changed. This would be similar to the ostensible &quot;autism epidemic&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_autism#Changes_with_time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;which turned out to mostly reflect change in diagnostic practices&lt;/a&gt;. It seems especially possible for NAFLD, since &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-alcoholic_fatty_liver_disease#Signs_and_symptoms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it is mostly asymptomatic&lt;/a&gt;. Type 2 diabetes, while it has more effects on health, can also be missed during the early stages if doctors don't think to look for it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's plenty of primary source material on these claims, but I haven't reviewed enough to know whether the methods used are reliable. I'd like to know if there's solid evidence for these four claims: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Incidence of juvenile type 2 diabetes is increasing. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Incidence of NAFLD is increasing. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Juvenile type 2 diabetes was, until recently, very rare. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;NAFL was, until recently, very rare.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(these are logically distinct claims, but I'm putting them in the same question because I expect much of the same evidence to apply.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6444" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T20:29:41.730" Title="Non-alcoholic fatty liver and juvenile type 2 diabetes: rising incidence or just more diagnosis?" Tags="|diabetes|public-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27232" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27231" CreationDate="2015-04-02T19:17:45.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As a partial answer, I found this journal article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022347612010013&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Increasing Prevalence of Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Among United States Adolescents, 1988-1994 to 2007-2010&lt;/a&gt;. The authors diagnosed NAFLD using weight and liver enzymes that were recorded as part of a study on a large, representative sample of adolescents (NHANES). Since they made the diagnosis based on archival data that was collected for other purposes, there's no concern about changes in sampling or diagnosis between the two timepoints. They found that &quot;Suspected NAFLD prevalence (SE) rose from 3.9% (0.5) in 1988-1994 to 10.7% (0.9) in 2007-2010 (P &amp;lt; .0001)&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's only a single study but it had a very large sample, a standard diagnostic method, and strong, medically significant findings. I consider it good evidence that NAFLD is increasing dramatically, at least in adolescents. It doesn't prove that NAFLD was previously very rare -- 3.9% is a fairly high prevalence, but we don't know whether it was already rapidly increasing prior to 1988. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6444" LastActivityDate="2015-04-02T19:17:45.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27233" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-02T22:38:40.577" Score="12" ViewCount="1489" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have often seen figures claiming that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Gear_%282002_TV_series%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Top Gear&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;’s estimated worldwide audience is 350 million &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-32052736&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(e.g here)&lt;/a&gt;. I don't doubt that it's a popular show, but that seems a little high to me. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It reminds me of a common misconceptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the Super Bowl is watched by a billion people worldwide, when that is only the &lt;em&gt;potential&lt;/em&gt; audience and the real figure is closer to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/02/the-super-bowl-is-not-watched-by-anywhere-near-a-billion-people-every-year/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;100 million&lt;/a&gt;, almost all of whom live in North America. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;how the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton was supposedly going to draw 2 billion viewers, but it was probably more like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sportingintelligence.com/2011/05/08/revealed-royal-wedding%E2%80%99s-real-tv-audience-closer-to-300m-than-2bn-because-sport-not-royalty-reigns-080501/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;300 million&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another factor which makes me skeptical is that Top Gear only draws about 5 million viewers in the UK &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/top-gear-records-best-opening-audience-for-three-years-as-6m-viewers-tune-in-for-new-series-9104801.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on a good day&lt;/a&gt;, or less than 10% of the country's population. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For Top Gear to draw &lt;strong&gt;350 million viewers&lt;/strong&gt; worldwide, that would mean &lt;em&gt;it is drawing 5% of the entire world's population&lt;/em&gt; - a remarkably small drop-off, considering how many people in the world don't even own a television, let alone be interested in a show in a foreign language with many specifically British cultural references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have to stress the fact, that the real version of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-secret-behind-the-hit-tv-car-show-top-gear-21-10-2010/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claim&lt;/a&gt; is: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The British automotive show is seen by 350 million viewers in 170 countries every week.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is what I'm skeptical about. (Not that, in overall 350 million people have seen the show.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25663" LastEditorUserId="8192" LastEditDate="2015-10-17T22:36:11.083" LastActivityDate="2019-08-01T05:57:58.807" Title="Does &quot;Top Gear&quot; have 350 million viewers worldwide?" Tags="|television|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27234" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27230" CreationDate="2015-04-03T00:30:00.227" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This answer assumes that the claim is about whether you shall put creams and oitments as a first aid in minor burns.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;First aid is what you do before/until an ambulance arrives with a paramedic.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Applying creams to minor burns as a first aid:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on claims from authoritative medical websites, &lt;strong&gt;it is not recommended nor appropriate to apply &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; types of creams on burns.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;National Health Service (NHS), which is the largest and the oldest single-payer healthcare system in the world, mentioned on their website reported in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Burns-and-scalds/Pages/Treatment.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cool the burn with cool or lukewarm water for 10 to 30 minutes, ideally within 20 minutes of the injury occurring. Never use ice, iced water &lt;strong&gt;or any creams&lt;/strong&gt; or greasy substances such as butter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;MedlinePlus, which is a National Institutes of Health website, warned in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/patientinstructions/000662.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt; to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;not use &lt;strong&gt;cream&lt;/strong&gt;, lotion, oil, cortisone, butter, or egg white.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many sites advised to put &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mayoclinic.org/first-aid/first-aid-burns/basics/art-20056649&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;hydrocortisone cream&lt;/a&gt; on burn like &lt;em&gt;mayoclinic.org&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apply moisturizer, aloe vera lotion or gel, or &lt;strong&gt;low-dose hydrocortisone cream, which may provide relief in some cases.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;sup&gt; (unreferenced) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, it has been warned not to use on burns by Truven Health Micromedex, the official producer of the drug, information delivered by website &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drugs.com/cons/hydrocortisone-cream-topical-application.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;drugs.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This medicine is for use on the skin only. Do not get it in your eyes, nose, mouth, or vagina. &lt;strong&gt;Do not use it on skin areas that have cuts, scrapes, or burns. If it does get on these areas, rinse it off right away with water.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Aafp.org &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aafp.org/afp/2000/1101/p2029.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;advised&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Soak the burn in cool water. Then treat it with a skin care product like &lt;strong&gt;aloe vera cream&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem with this claim is that aloe vera is a gel not a cream, there is a slight &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skinacea.com/retinoids/gel-vs-cream-retinoids.html#.VR3QDJOUcSM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;difference&lt;/a&gt;, aloe vera gel has been proven to be effective for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23894900&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;burns&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Applying ointments to minor burns as a first aid:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on claims from authoritative medical websites, &lt;strong&gt;it is not recommended nor appropriate to apply &lt;em&gt;ointments&lt;/em&gt; on burns.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stjohn.org.nz/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.stjohn.org.nz/&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stjohn.org.nz/First-Aid/First-Aid-Library/Burns/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DO NOT apply creams, &lt;strong&gt;ointments&lt;/strong&gt;, lotions or butter to any burn injury because infection may occur and complicate the injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization of 57,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists, and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety, and well-being of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults, said in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://stonebridgepediatrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Fire-Safety_HE0295.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do not break any blisters. This could allow bacteria into the wound. Never put grease (including butter or &lt;strong&gt;medical ointments&lt;/strong&gt;) on the burn. Grease holds in heat, which may make the burn worse. It also makes the burn harder to examine by medical personnel later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Since all claims so far seem authoritative, here is some evidence which show that creams or ointments are not appropriate as a first aid:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a very notable &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3038405/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; by US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, it is reported in &lt;em&gt;PRE-HOSPITAL CARE&lt;/em&gt; paragraph, &lt;em&gt;THERMAL BURNS&lt;/em&gt; sub-paragraph, that you shall not put any types of ointments or creams, section 10:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/85xsS.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study added also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Moreover, removal of such substances might also be difficult and painful to the patient.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Some history:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another study, &lt;strong&gt;a review of first aid treatments for burn injuries&lt;/strong&gt;,  was hidden behind a paywall, now it is on my &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dmym4cK6ABWnhLM2xJVHo0dVU/view?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;google drive&lt;/a&gt; reviewed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;common first aid and pre-hospital treatments for burns (water—cold or warm, ice, oils, powders and natural plant therapies), possible mechanisms whereby they might work and the literature which supports their use.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dmym4cK6ABWnhLM2xJVHo0dVU/view?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the time of the earliest first aid recommendations (1880)&#xA;[3,39,67], it was suggested that burnt surfaces should be&#xA;protected from air, &lt;strong&gt;and anointed well with oil (lamp oil, salad&#xA;oil, castor oil or carron oil from a chemist)&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;painted over with&#xA;grease or butter, with carbolic acid or thymol added to the oily&#xA;cotton wool dressing.&lt;/strong&gt; The use of oil was probably based on the&#xA;common perception at the time that immediate treatment of&#xA;burns was needed to prevent exposure to the air, not only to&#xA;alleviate pain [36], but also to prevent further damage as&#xA;described by Martin in 1886 [39]: ‘‘&lt;strong&gt;Fatal damage may be done in&#xA;a few moments by exposing a badly burnt chest, or abdomen,&#xA;to the air before anything is ready to cover it with.&lt;/strong&gt;’’. Oils and&#xA;fats on the skin form a very effective air barrier.&#xA;By 1901, &lt;strong&gt;the recommendations for first aid treatment of&#xA;burns/scalds were clearly segregated depending on wound&#xA;depth&lt;/strong&gt; [37], with treatment of flour, whiting or powdered chalk&#xA;recommended for burns where the skin was ‘‘merely reddened’’,&#xA;compared to covering with &lt;strong&gt;oils (carron, olive, salad,&#xA;linseed, almond or cod-liver)&lt;/strong&gt;, Vaseline1, lanoline or cold cream&#xA;when the skin was blistered or charred. &lt;strong&gt;Around the 1940s belief&#xA;had changed that local application of oils and ointments to the&#xA;skin was not beneficial and made secondary treatment by the&#xA;doctor/surgeon more difficult [68].&lt;/strong&gt; Instead, first aiders were&#xA;instructed to cover the burnwith a clean or sterile cloth and send&#xA;the patient to hospital or a first aid post (military).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can read the &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dmym4cK6ABWnhLM2xJVHo0dVU/view?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;full study&lt;/a&gt; and find appropriate references there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Conclusion: You shall never use creams or ointments as a first aid for any burn.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T18:07:44.483" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27237" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-03T19:02:43.387" Score="2" ViewCount="207" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are vertical farms a “a global solution” to the world’s urban food needs.&quot; - Professor Dickson Despommier or just bad math written large?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vertical farms are portrayed as amazing solutions, but I can't find any real numbers on how viable they look to be. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/gordon-graff-demonstrates-that-vertical-farms-can-actually-work.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What I have found is exceedingly vague&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://theconversation.com/vertical-farms-offer-a-bright-future-for-hungry-cities-26934&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A few other sites&lt;/a&gt; discussing them &lt;a href=&quot;http://weburbanist.com/2015/04/02/plantlab-urban-farms-40-times-more-productive-than-open-fields/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;also seem to promise a great deal&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is there a resource out there where we could see how vertical farming actually stacks up to traditional methods? Is it just a high initial cost, is it a high unit cost, is it a viable super high end production for the wealthy idea? Is there any more to this idea then just a few journalists looking for a feel good story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25286" LastEditorUserId="25286" LastEditDate="2015-04-03T20:04:28.133" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T20:04:28.133" Title="Is vertical farming viable?" Tags="|environment|technology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-04-03T19:53:48.963" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27238" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27239" CreationDate="2015-04-03T19:35:34.513" Score="9" ViewCount="1194" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw &lt;a href=&quot;http://qz.com/375807/scientists-prove-you-can-bounce-a-battery-to-test-if-its-still-good/&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; this morning, and while it seemed fairly legitimate, I was skeptical about it. The claim is that if you drop a battery (flat end down) it will bounce higher/longer if the charge is gone then if it's fresh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I figure if I had a volt-meter or the like I could probably test this myself, but I don't. A bit of googling didn't provide any results that I had a high amount of confidence in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2247" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-03T20:38:39.323" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T13:49:47.920" Title="Can bouncing batteries tell you if they are charged or not?" Tags="|physics|battery|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27239" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27238" CreationDate="2015-04-03T19:47:47.517" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, bouncing batteries tell you if they are charged or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim started with this YouTube &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_m6p99l6ME&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YQgVy.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How To Test a AA battery, Easiest Way For Any Battery Fast, Easy!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After it went viral, scientists in the US have been curious, and later they confirmed that a simple bounce test can be used as a technique if a battery is charged.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A team led by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.princeton.edu/mae/people/faculty/steingart/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daniel Steingart&lt;/a&gt; of Princeton University, published their paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2015/TA/c5ta01576f#!divAbstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, you can read it &lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dmym4cK6ABYTg1Z3Q3T3FySmc/view?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As quoted by the study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Recently there has been popular interest in the tendency of&#xA;an alkaline AA battery to bounce after being dropped on its end&#xA;when discharged to full capacity&lt;/strong&gt;, compared to a flat landing&#xA;with minimal bounce when the battery is “as-received”. In this&#xA;paper the coefficient of restitution (COR) of an alkaline AA&#xA;battery is measured at various depths of discharge by dropping&#xA;the battery in a controlled fashion and observing the subsequent&#xA;bouncing, and the change in COR is then compared to&#xA;spatially resolved energy-dispersive X-ray diffraction (EDXRD)&#xA;that was performed in situ on equivalent alkaline AA batteries.&#xA;Our measurements show that this simple bounce test provides a&#xA;considerable amount of information of the structure of the&#xA;battery's Zn anode, rivaling the sensitivity of in situ EDXRD in&#xA;detection of ZnO formation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This discovery shows that nondestructive&#xA;acoustic testing of batteries can provide valuable&#xA;information about a battery's health and state of charge (SOC).&#xA;Studies performed on other bobbin cell geometries (AAA, C and&#xA;D alkaline cells) yield similar results.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bounce-a-battery-to-learn-if-it-is-still-good-really-video/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;scientificamerican.com&lt;/a&gt;, Daniel Steingart said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We needed XRD to explain why the bounce changes this way, but once the correlation is made, a secondary &lt;strong&gt;school physics experiment can indicate where and how reactions are occurring in the battery&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T12:29:15.090" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27240" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-03T20:32:40.190" Score="8" ViewCount="1232" Body="&lt;p&gt;In  &lt;em&gt;Indiscrete Thoughts&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gian-Carlo_Rota&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gian-Carlo Rota&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It cannot be a complete coincidence that several outstanding logicians of the twentieth century found shelter in asylums at some point in their lives: Cantor, Zermelo, Gödel and Post are some.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elsewhere, he hints that the rate of mental illness among logicians is much higher than the general population. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do logicians suffer from mental illness at significantly higher rates than the population at large (or other similar groups, such as academics)? If so, is there an accepted explanation for this association?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14928" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-04T22:44:42.953" LastActivityDate="2015-04-11T14:03:51.873" Title="Is being a professional logician associated with serious mental health issues?" Tags="|history|psychology|mathematics|psychiatry|logic|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27244" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-04T03:37:42.520" Score="14" ViewCount="4670" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2010, Clifford Nass &lt;a href=&quot;http://cuindependent.com/2010/09/23/german-drivers-refuse-directions-for-female-voice-gps/18290&quot;&gt;was quoted&lt;/a&gt; as making a claim about BMW's GPS systems:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In his book titled “The Man Who Lied to His Laptop” published in 2010, Clifford Nass, a communications professor at Stanford University, writes that BMW recalled GPS systems after finding out that German drivers would not take directions from a female voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hoaxorfact.com/Technology/bmw-recalled-its-gps-system-as-german-men-refused-to-take-directions-from-female-voice.html&quot;&gt;HoaxOrFact&lt;/a&gt; confirmed this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This incident happened in late 1990s, when BMW was flooded with calls from German men saying they do not want to take directions from a woman; as a result of which, BMW was forced to recall the female-voiced navigation system on its 5 Series cars. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find it hard to believe that there would be enough complaints to warrant a 'product recall' simply based on the GPS voice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The earliest source I can find seems be based on Clifford Nass's claims in 2010. I find it odd that there doesn't seem to be any mention of this incident before then, considering the recall took place in the late 1990s. I would think a product recall would warrant mention around the time it was issued.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25677" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-04T04:10:56.133" LastActivityDate="2022-05-28T23:24:08.570" Title="Did BMW recall their GPS system due to its female voice?" Tags="|germany|sexism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27247" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-04T13:29:06.993" Score="24" ViewCount="5719" Body="&lt;p&gt;I came across this tweet of which I'm skeptical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I ask: Had Iraq use of electricity 5000 years ago? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JDzQol.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-10-14T22:44:08.507" LastActivityDate="2017-02-10T20:05:04.660" Title="Did Iraq have the use of electricity 5000 years ago?" Tags="|history|iraq|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27244" CreationDate="2015-04-04T15:08:28.200" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following has been mentioned a paper study &lt;sup&gt;(1)&lt;/sup&gt; published in 2006, four years before Clifford's book was released:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Driver safety and information from afar: An experimental driving&#xA;  simulator study of wireless vs. in-car information services&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cars have changed from pure transportation devices &lt;strong&gt;to fully interactive, voice-based systems.&lt;/strong&gt; While voice interaction in the car has&#xA;  previously required on-board processing, the growing speed and ubiquity of wireless technologies now enable interaction with a distant&#xA;  source. &lt;strong&gt;Will the perceived source of the information influence driver safety, responses to the information, and attitudes toward the&#xA;  computer system and car?&lt;/strong&gt; A between-participants experimental design (N=40) of computer proximity—in-car vs. wireless—using an&#xA;  advanced car simulator, found that people’s driving behavior, verbal responsiveness, and attitudes are affected by computer proximity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Extacted Content: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A combination of real world mishaps and controlled&#xA;  experimental studies has shown that several factors&#xA;  significantly affect driver responses to voice interfaces in&#xA;  cars, including perceived voice gender, emotion, and even age. &lt;strong&gt;The BMW 5-series released in Germany included a&#xA;  voice-based navigational system, featuring a computergenerated&#xA;  voice with female characteristics.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Although these&#xA;  drivers were well-aware that the voice was computer generated,&#xA;  they reacted with gender stereotyped responses,&#xA;  ultimately rejecting the female voice and demanding a&#xA;  product recall.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BMW switched the&#xA;  female voice to a male voice and re-cast the navigational&#xA;  system voice in the role of a co-pilot.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, you can find the claim in Clifford's book published in 2005:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Wired for speech : how voice activates and advances the human-computer relationship / Clifford Nass and Scott Brave.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also in this book:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Macneil, R., Cran, W., 2004. Do you speak American? Nan A. Talese.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Both books can be bought from Amazon or Google Books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; &#xA;1. Driver safety and information from afar: An experimental driving&#xA;simulator study of wireless vs. in-car information services. Leila Takayama, Clifford Nass. Department of Communication, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA. 2006.&#xA;(&lt;a href=&quot;https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7dmym4cK6ABbkhVMHpaZjBxYlE/view?usp=sharing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Link&lt;/a&gt;)&#xA;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-06T13:09:19.897" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T13:09:19.897" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27252" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27247" CreationDate="2015-04-04T18:21:20.993" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems that the artifact in question is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad_Battery&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Baghdad Battery&lt;/a&gt;, a set of metal and ceramic pieces that resemble a battery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1938, &lt;a href=&quot;http://unmuseum.mus.pa.us/bbattery.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wilhelm Konig, the first to analyze them, investigated these objects&lt;/a&gt;, and wrote a paper (&lt;em&gt;Ein galvanisches Element aus der Partherzeit? In: Forschungen und Fortschritte. Heft 1, Nr. 14, 1936, S. 8–9&lt;/em&gt;) in which he speculated that the objects had been used as a battery. It appeared to be backed up by independent tests by Willard Gray and Arne Eggebrecht (independent of each other), which used reproductions to generate about two volts. Eggebrecht claimed to have used the reproductions to electroplate metal; according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_11.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other researchers though, have disputed these results and have been unable to replicate them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There does not exist any written documentation of the experiments which took place here in 1978,&amp;quot; says Dr Bettina Schmitz, currently a researcher based at the same Roemer and Pelizaeus Museum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The experiments weren't even documented by photos, which really is a pity,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I have searched through the archives of this museum and I talked to everyone involved in 1978 with no results.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have, however, been numerous attempts to eke some electricity out of replicas, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/mythbusters-database/ancient-batteries/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a Mythbusters episode&lt;/a&gt;, but even those have been disputed. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theironskeptic.com/articles/battery/battery.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Iron Skeptic&lt;/a&gt; is particularly harsh on their attempt, although that criticism may just be opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Had Iraq . . . electricity . . .?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is a &amp;quot;Yes.&amp;quot; The issue is that nobody is sure what the battery could have been used for.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/everyday-tech/battery1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HowStuffWorks&lt;/a&gt; has an interesting section on the Baghdad Battery, speculating (as all the other sources do) about how the battery could have been used. Some possibilities include electroplating and pain treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No wires have been discovered (in fact, it is not known exactly where the Baghdad Battery is from, though its general location is known - near Khujut Rabu), so it would have been difficult to use! So the answer to the question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Had Iraq use of electricity . . .?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is possibly a &amp;quot;No.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On to the full question. The age of the battery is disputed, but some archaeologists date it to about 200 years B.C. As written &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.corrosion-doctors.org/Batteries/Baghdad-Battery.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 2,200-year-old clay jar found near Baghdad, Iraq, has been described as the oldest known electric battery in existence. The clay jar and others like it are part of the holdings of the National Museum of Iraq and have been attributed to the Parthian Empire — an ancient Asian culture that ruled most of the Middle East from 247 B.C. to A.D. 228. The jar itself has been dated to sometime around 200 B.C.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_11.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;World Mysteries quotes&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Although this collection of objects is usually dated as Parthian, the grounds for this are unclear,&amp;quot; says Dr St John Simpson, also from the department of the ancient Near East at the British Museum.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The pot itself is Sassanian. This discrepancy presumably lies either in a misidentification of the age of the ceramic vessel, or the site at which they were found.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, the battery is most likely about 2000 years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the answer to&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Had Iraq use of electricity 5000 years ago?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;appears to be (based on what we know) a &amp;quot;No.&amp;quot;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-10-14T19:00:09.433" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27253" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27247" CreationDate="2015-04-04T18:37:02.283" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;Firstly these items although real are not 5,000 year old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Professor Simpson of the near eastern department of the British museum points out that the original excavation was poorly recorded and that the style of pottery is Sassanian period which is roughly from 220ce to 650ce (BBC article 2003).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was some speculation that the Sassanians who were fine craftsmen had knowledge of electroplating but Paul Craddock of the British Museum points out there is no evidence of that hypothesis (BBC &lt;em&gt;The Riddle of Baghdad's Batteries&lt;/em&gt; 2003).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;David Scott of the Getty Conservation Institute writes (in &lt;em&gt;Copper and Bronze in Art&lt;/em&gt;, 2002, Getty publications) also that there is not a shred of evidence for Sassanian era electroplating.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Scholars including those mentioned have speculated on the use of these items but have reached no firm conclusion. Professor Elizabeth Stone (a renowned expert of ancient Iraq who carried out the first foreign archeological dig in Iraq in twenty years) points out she does not know anyone in her field of studies that supports the battery claim (march 23 2012, interview with Flatow for &lt;em&gt;Science Friday&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I have personally checked through my own book shelves for any mention of such items pre-Sassanian, I looked through Joan Oates revised edition of &lt;em&gt;Babylon&lt;/em&gt; and also G.leicks &lt;em&gt;Mesopotamia the Invention of the City&lt;/em&gt; and neither (despite mentioning many pre-Sassanian discoveries) mention anything like the items in question.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I also referred to my copy of the archaeologist Kenneth Feder's &lt;em&gt;Frauds Myths and Mysteries&lt;/em&gt; who (on page250) points out that the experiments that suggest they were batteries are methodologically flawed. Feder also points out that there are no other artifacts that point to the ancients having electricity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In short while the jury is out (I won't go into the other speculated ideas for these items) on exactly what these items are, the archaeological consensus is that they are very very unlikely to be batteries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a afterthought and somewhat separate matter it appears these items are among those lost in the aftermath of operation Iraqi Freedom; let's hope they are found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25682" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-04-04T19:20:57.837" LastActivityDate="2015-04-04T19:20:57.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27238" CreationDate="2015-04-05T08:24:19.577" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This paper &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bnl.gov/isd/documents/88597.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bouncing Alkaline Batteries: A Basic Solution&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;  confirms the causal link between battery bounce characteristics and state of charge for selected battery chemistries and describes the mechanism imvolved. They say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The coefficient of restitution of alkaline batteries has been shown to increase as a function of&#xA;depth of discharge. In this work, using non-destructive mechanical testing, the change in coefficient&#xA;of restitution is compared to in situ energy-dispersive x-ray diffraction data to determine the cause&#xA;of the macroscopic change in coefficient of restitution. The increase in coefficient of restitution&#xA;correlates to the formation of a percolation pathway of ZnO within the anode of the cell, and that&#xA;the coefficient of restitution saturates at a value of 0.63 ± .05 at 50% state of charge when the&#xA;anode has densified into porous ZnO solid. Of note is the sensitivity of coefficient of restitution to&#xA;the amount of ZnO formation that rivals the sensitivity of in situ energy-dispersive x-ray diffraction&#xA;spectroscopy.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;and     &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In this paper the coefficient of restitution (COR) of an alkaline AA battery is measured at various&#xA;depths of discharge by dropping the battery in a controlled fashion and observing the subsequent bouncing. Our&#xA;measurements show that this simple bounce test can provide a considerable amount of information of the structure of&#xA;the battery’s Zn anode, rivaling the sensitivity of in situ energy-dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDXRD) in detection&#xA;of ZnO formation. This discovery shows that non-destructive acoustic testing of batteries can provide valuable&#xA;information about a battery’s health and state of charge (SOC).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;And   &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The densification of the anode affects the mechanical properties of the battery. The COR, which measures&#xA;the elasticity of a collision between an object and a rigid object, is one such mechanical property that can be determined&#xA;as shown in Eq. 5.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;COR = sqrt(h2/h1)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;where h1 is the drop height, and h2 is the maximum bounce height determined from Eq. 1. Using the bounce test&#xA;described previously, the COR of alkaline batteries was measured through full discharge&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Authors institutions:&lt;/strong&gt; Andlinger Center for Energy and The Environment,&#xA;Princeton University, , Department of Physics, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, University of New York Energy Institute, New York, New York, Department of Chemical Engineering, City College of New York, New York, New York, Sustainable Technologies Division, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York, National Synchrotron Light Source, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA††&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;______________________________________________________&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It definitely works for Alkaline batteries, which is what the detailed explanation relates to. THe probable reasons are well explained by the information provided by georgechalhoub. I'm just adding the observations of an experienced competent professional observer [tm] :-).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am an electrical engineer with a Masters degree in EE and 50+ years experience with electronics. (Yes, we did have electronics &quot;way back then&quot;).  I, too, was extremely sceptical when I read of this phenomenon. However, testing with dozens (probably ~= 50) of AA Alkaline batteries of a number of brands and states of charge showed and extremely large difference between fully charged and well used batteries. I did not carry out extensive tests with varying degrees of use - batteries here tend to be new, moderately well used or well used. Flattened to within a few mAh of their life tend to be thrown out asap.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a means of sorting through a bag of mixed batteries to find unused ones this method works superbly. It is probably no quicker than using a test meter, bt hard flat surfaces are often easier to come by than multimeters &quot;in the field&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are a series of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrGV7zKEdtU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reasonably well done experiments&lt;/a&gt; and battery dis-assemblies in a you tube video. This appears convincing but, of course, could be &quot;cooked&quot; if anyone wanted to spend the very extensive effort required to falsify results. There is no good reason to disbelieve what is shown here, but it's not peer reviewed and doesn't have a recognised institution name on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4566" LastEditorUserId="4566" LastEditDate="2016-11-03T13:49:47.920" LastActivityDate="2016-11-03T13:49:47.920" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27260" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-05T09:08:35.647" Score="5" ViewCount="688" Body="&lt;p&gt;I own a copy of the card game &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sjgames.com/burninhell/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Burn In Hell&lt;/a&gt; by Steve Jackson Games.  There is a card in the game for the anarchist &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mikhail Bakunin&lt;/a&gt;.  He is caricatured with one eye shut, bearing resemblance to portraits I have found online, but with gritted teeth and a fuse on top of his head, as if his entire head is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=fuse%20bomb&amp;amp;source=lnms&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=mMkgVd_8EMjDsAXjj4HIBg&amp;amp;ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&amp;amp;biw=1159&amp;amp;bih=732&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;fuse bomb&lt;/a&gt;.  The card classifies him as a &quot;Murderer&quot;; other cards with that classification include John Wilkes Booth and Agrippina Minor.  The card also attributes &quot;Wrath&quot; (of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;seven deadly sins&lt;/a&gt;) to Bakunin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The brief biography on the reverse of the card makes a claim that gave me a chuckle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bakunin called for the abolition of all state structures, even&#xA;  anarchist structures -- some believe he even bombed anarchist meetings&#xA;  out of a feeling that anarchists shouldn't &lt;em&gt;have&lt;/em&gt; meetings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the only explicit claim in the bio on the card that he bombed or murdered anyone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For context, the rest of the card's bio seems to check out.  For copyright reasons I'd rather not post the complete text, but it mentions &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin#Early_years&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;his military service early in life&lt;/a&gt;, some details of his &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin#Switzerland.2C_Brussels.2C_Prague.2C_Dresden_and_Paris&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;involvement in various insurrections&lt;/a&gt; in nineteenth century Europe which I was able to verify, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ditext.com/woodcock/bakunin.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quoted him in verbatim agreement with this source&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Let us put our trust in the eternal spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unsearchable and eternally creative source of all life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the question is simply: Is the claim that Mikhail Bakunin is a &quot;Murderer&quot; guilty of &quot;Wrath&quot; true or arguably true?  And was Bakunin ever involved in any bombing, either of an anarchist meeting specifically or of anyone generally?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And if the claim is false, can its origin be traced to any source contemporary to his time (perhaps from those who opposed his ideas)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23317" LastEditorUserId="23317" LastEditDate="2015-04-06T18:34:08.840" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T18:34:08.840" Title="Was Mikhail Bakunin a murderer?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27264" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27308" CreationDate="2015-04-05T18:25:37.387" Score="5" ViewCount="937" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a post going around facebook about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/03/al-shabaab-atrocity-kenyan-officials-under-fire-for-failure-to-protect-students&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the recent terrorist attack in Kenya&lt;/a&gt; with the following pictures &lt;em&gt;(spoiler'ed for queezy stomachs)&lt;/em&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Warning, graphic images (18+):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote class=&quot;spoiler&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5Q74l.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;picture 1&quot; /&gt;&#xA; &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZbrBo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the following description:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A vicious murderous massacre of university students took place in Kenya in Africa a few days ago by Islamic terrorist group Al-Shabab with over 147 dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But unlike the Je Suis Hebdo massacre in France when the WORLD STOPPED the WORLD is happily enjoying their Easter festivities with NO MARCH BY WORLD LEADERS in Narobi or Garissa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And our own African Union, African leaders and Religious Leaders especially within the Moslem community are as silent as DEATH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these really pictures from that attack?  The second one in particular looks very unnatural - everyone is face-down, packed together tight, almost no blood, no apparent physical injuries, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried googling the images, but most of the results seem to be non-credible news sources &lt;em&gt;(though most are in foreign languages, so it's hard for me to tell)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="249" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T04:51:35.530" Title="Are these pictures of the recent terrorist attack in Kenya (NSFW)?" Tags="|terrorism|africa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27270" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-06T08:06:03.190" Score="7" ViewCount="1761" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did this person say this, as reported by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.awaken.com/2012/10/when-the-iron-bird-flies/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Awaken.com&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the earth.&amp;quot; — Guru Padmasambhava of Tibet, 8th Century&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They made a movie out of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6507" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-05-18T10:35:46.740" LastActivityDate="2022-05-18T10:42:57.797" Title="Did Guru Padmasambhava say &quot;When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the earth&quot;?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26486" CreationDate="2015-04-06T10:28:17.550" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his essay, &lt;a href=&quot;https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/history-ideas/2015/03/was-there-an-exodus/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Was There an Exodus?&lt;/em&gt;, Joshua Berman&lt;/a&gt; states that the book of Exodus was written by someone intimately familiar with the structure of early Egyptian dynastic life; and that the Biblical account is supported by recent archaeological discoveries that could not have been known at the time when the Old Testament was compiled:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is rich evidence that West-Semitic populations lived in the&#xA;eastern Nile delta—what the Bible calls Goshen—for most of the second&#xA;millennium. Some were slaves, some were raised in Pharaoh’s court, and&#xA;some, like Moses, bore Egyptian names.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;We know today that the great&#xA;pharaoh Ramesses II, who reigned from 1279 to 1213 BCE, built a huge&#xA;administrative center out of mudbrick in an area where large Semitic&#xA;populations had lived for centuries. It was called Pi-Ramesses. Exodus&#xA;(1:11) specifies that the Hebrew slaves built the cities of Pithom and&#xA;Ramesses, a possible reference to Pi-Ramesses. The site was abandoned&#xA;by the pharaohs two centuries later.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the exodus account, pharaohs&#xA;are simply called “Pharaoh,” whereas in later biblical passages,&#xA;Egyptian monarchs are referred to by their proper name, as in “Pharaoh&#xA;Necho” (2 Kings 23:29). This, too, echoes usage in Egypt itself,&#xA;where, from the middle of the second millennium until the tenth&#xA;century BCE, the title “Pharaoh” was used alone.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The names of various&#xA;national entities mentioned in the Song at the Sea (Exodus&#xA;15:1-18)—Philistines, Moabites, Edomites, et al.—are all found in&#xA;Egyptian sources shortly before 1200 BCE; about this, the book of&#xA;Exodus is again correct for the period.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The stories of the exodus and&#xA;the Israelites’ subsequent wanderings in the wilderness reflect sound&#xA;acquaintance with the geography and natural conditions of the eastern&#xA;Nile delta, the Sinai peninsula, the Negev, and Transjordan.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The book&#xA;of Exodus (13:17) notes that the Israelites chose not to traverse the&#xA;Sinai peninsula along the northern, coastal route toward modern-day&#xA;Gaza because that would have entailed military engagement. The&#xA;discovery of extensive Egyptian fortifications all along that route&#xA;from the period in question confirms the accuracy of this observation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the relevant sources and a much more in-depth look at the specific issue of a possible Egyptian origin for elements of the Exodus story, see the linked article.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this evidence is not meant to support any kind of supernatural occurrence, nor the exodus of 2 million which is hard to imagine under any non-supernatural circumstances. But the idea that a group of people left Egypt and settled in Israel around 1200 BCE is a reasonable one and the Bible shows evidence of conveying an oral account of a real occurrence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastEditorUserId="57202" LastEditDate="2021-03-02T22:59:34.660" LastActivityDate="2021-03-02T22:59:34.660" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27274" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-06T16:05:14.390" Score="23" ViewCount="2001" Body="&lt;p&gt;Two separate people claimed in answers and comments on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/26764/do-atheists-commit-far-fewer-crimes&quot;&gt;Do atheists commit far fewer crimes?&lt;/a&gt; that atheists have higher income than religious people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sklivvz &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/26764/do-atheists-commit-far-fewer-crimes#comment98430_26770&quot;&gt;wrote&lt;/a&gt; about criminals in the USA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[..] For example, wealth can give you better lawyers and less chance of landing in jail, and we know for a fact that &lt;strong&gt;atheists tend to be wealthier...&lt;/strong&gt; [..]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Granted, this specifically mentions wealth, but I'm interpreting it as having a higher &lt;em&gt;&quot;economic ability to fund a defense counsel&quot;&lt;/em&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DVK &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/26764/do-atheists-commit-far-fewer-crimes#comment98398_26764&quot;&gt;wrote&lt;/a&gt; (and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/26769/23&quot;&gt;repeated&lt;/a&gt;) about the USA:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there's a definite correllation between atheism and higher income.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I in turn contested this idea by linking to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_and_religion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's Wealth and Religion&lt;/a&gt; page, but I think it would be good to have a proper answer with proper citations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The graph on Wikipedia, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.sg/books/about/Religion_in_a_Free_Market.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Religion in a Free Market&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; shows non-religious people just marginally ahead of the the average. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9sXYL.png&quot; alt=&quot;&amp;quot;Income Ranking by Religious Group - 2000&amp;quot; by Rcragun&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that atheists and/or non-religious people as a group earn more than religious people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;DVK and Sklivvz are talking about the USA, but research from countries other than the US is welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I've assumed that because non-religious people involves millions of people spread over a vast geographic area means there won't be a uneven concentration of wealth to the point where income doesn't need to be considered, therefore &lt;strong&gt;I'm only asking about income&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think claims made by two separate notable users on skeptics.SE makes the question notable and certainly helps the internal consistency of the site. These have been done in the past, but if some rule has changed where these are no longer allowed I will research an outside notable claim.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="631" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T09:16:38.913" Title="Do non-religious people make more money?" Tags="|religion|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27276" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27286" CreationDate="2015-04-06T17:18:17.217" Score="18" ViewCount="891" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/homeschooling/socialization-tackling-homeschoolings-s-word/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Socialization: Tackling Homeschooling’s “S” Word&lt;/a&gt; on the PBS web site, claims,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mainstream perception of homeschool students is that they are an antisocial bunch, toiling away lonely hours at a kitchen table with only their parents for friends. But homeschoolers themselves will tell you that socialization—the “S-word,” as some call it—is really a nonissue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;National Home Education Research Institute president Brian Ray agrees. He says socialization is not a problem for the vast majority of homeschool students, many of whom are involved in community sports, volunteer activities, book groups or homeschool co-ops. “Research shows that in terms of self-concept, self-esteem and the ability to get along in groups, homeschoolers do just as well as their public school peers,” says Ray.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the title asks, are home schooled kids more likely to be less socially adept than non-home schooled kids?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21907" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T20:18:46.047" Title="Do homeschooled kids lack socialization skills?" Tags="|united-states|education|school|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27277" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="41940" CreationDate="2015-04-06T17:33:13.463" Score="25" ViewCount="1370" Body="&lt;p&gt;In several articles, such as &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fastcoexist.com/3043858/world-changing-ideas/the-science-of-why-you-should-spend-your-money-on-experiences-not-thing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Science Of Why You Should Spend Your Money On Experiences, Not Things&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://elitedaily.com/news/world/people-spend-money-experiences-instead-things-much-happier/983208/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;People Who Spend Money On Experiences Instead Of Things Are Much Happier&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the claim is made that people who use their money (and, presumably, their time), to buy experiences, rather than physical goods, are happier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are repeatedly told that we should buy trips instead of cars and tours instead of smart phones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the evidence cited seems rather flimsy to me. From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fastcoexist.com/3043858/world-changing-ideas/the-science-of-why-you-should-spend-your-money-on-experiences-not-thing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the first article&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How adaptation affects happiness, for instance, was measured in a study that asked people to self-report their happiness with major material and experiential purchases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, my question is: Is it true that people are happier overall when they spend money on experiences rather than physical goods, and is there good evidence to support this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17130" LastEditorUserId="36995" LastEditDate="2018-07-15T15:16:26.400" LastActivityDate="2018-08-05T18:23:13.403" Title="Are people happier when they spend money on experiences rather than physical objects?" Tags="|psychology|happiness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27278" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27260" CreationDate="2015-04-06T18:18:13.233" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the result of my own research into the question.  In summary, I failed to find any materials online to substantiate the claim that Mikhail Bakunin was a murderer or that he bombed anarchists, or bombed anyone at all.  However, I also found a conspicuous absence of information on what he did during his involvement in various uprisings in Europe in the 1840s and afterwards.  If not for the political and philosophical implications, I might conclude the claim is false presumptively; but there is an apparent conflict of interest at play that gives me pause.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would conclude the claim is false if I were to find any of these, but I have found none so far:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A sympathetic or neutral source on Bakunin that documents fine-grained details of his participation in the uprisings and &quot;abortive revolutions&quot; of the 1840s, that does not include any murders or bombings&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A critical source on Bakunin that criticizes others for their participation in leftist violent uprisings, but criticizes Bakunin only for his ideas&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Documentation of past, publicized claims against Bakunin, contemporary to his time or shortly afterwards, in which he was accused of murder or bombings, that were later debunked&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The use of &quot;some believe&quot; in the claim is clearly suspicious, though perhaps forgivable if the claim is in fact true; after all it is just a card game.  But I hesitate to dismiss the claim out of hand for two main reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, the rest of the card's bio seems to check out, as documented in the question.  Even the first part of the questionable claim (that he &quot;called for the abolition of all state structures&quot;) seems to be justified by discussions I found of his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/bakunin/sp001862.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;philosophical differences with Karl Marx&lt;/a&gt; (see &quot;Marx&quot; section) and his other contemporaries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Secondly, and crucially, I found little discussion of &lt;em&gt;what Bakunin did other than write and talk about these issues&lt;/em&gt; during his life.  And yet, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ditext.com/woodcock/bakunin.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;according to this source&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bakunin ... saw himself primarily as a man of action, although his action was rarely successful and his life was punctuated by abortive revolutions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most specific information I can find on his actions is from the same source:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The years of the revolutions in Europe -- 1848-1849 -- were the most dramatic period of Bakunin's life. He was an enthusiastic partisan of the uprising in France; later in 1848 he fought on the barricades of Prague, and in March 1849, he took a leading part, with Richard Wagner, in the Dresden revolution.  He was captured there and, after periods in Saxon and Austrian prisons and twice being sentenced to death and reprieved, he was handed over to the Russian authorities, who imprisoned him in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Six years there ruined his health. In 1857 he was sent to exile in Siberia, and in 1861 he escaped, via Japan and the United States, to western Europe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So he &quot;was an enthusiastic partisan&quot; in one uprising, &quot;fought&quot; in another and &quot;took a leading part&quot; in another.  This leaves me to wonder, what does that mean exactly?  It's noteworthy enough to draw multiple death sentences and hard labor in exile, and mention in multiple modern biographical articles, and yet completely non-specific in the online record as far as I can discover.  It's weird.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In comparison, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin#Imprisonment.2C_.22confession.22.2C_and_exile&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many specific details&lt;/a&gt; of Bakunin's social contacts are documented &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Bakunin#Switzerland.2C_Brussels.2C_Prague.2C_Dresden_and_Paris&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;from the same period&lt;/a&gt;.  Including this fawning commentary from Wikipedia on the final stages of his impressive escape from Siberia to western Europe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Boston, Bakunin visited Karol Forster, a partisan of Ludwik&#xA;  Mieroslawski during the 1848 Revolution in Paris, and caught up with&#xA;  other &quot;Forty-Eighters&quot;, veterans of the 1848 revolutions in Europe,&#xA;  such as Friedrich Kapp. He then sailed for Liverpool arriving on&#xA;  December 27. Bakunin immediately went to London to see Herzen. That&#xA;  evening he burst into the drawing-room where the family was having&#xA;  supper. &quot;What! Are you sitting down eating oysters! Well! Tell me the&#xA;  news. What is happening, and where?!&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To see what I was hoping to find, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevara#Invasion.2C_warfare.2C_and_Santa_Clara&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many specific details&lt;/a&gt; of Fidel Castro's invasion of Cuba are documented, including certain of Che Guevara's specific actions in the heat of battle.  Had I found similar fine-grained details of Bakunin's exploits, I could more easily conclude that the claim by Steve Jackson Games is false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But with this gap, the claim amounts to an unsubstantiated rumor on which the historical/biographical data I can find is fascinatingly silent.  Despite the description of Bakunin as a &quot;man of action&quot; who believes that destruction is a force of creation, and despite many allusions to his &lt;em&gt;involvement&lt;/em&gt; in multiple insurrections, there seems to be a glaring omission in online materials of what exactly his actions &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I should say that all of the sources I have considered for biographical and literary study of Bakunin are either neutral or sympathetic: Wikipedia, academic-looking sites, and (apparently) socialism or anarchism sites.  I have not found any information on Bakunin that takes a critical or contrary viewpoint of his writings or deeds.  Even finding a website highly critical of Bakunin's ideas, and that criticizes the deeds of Che Guevara and other leftists, &lt;em&gt;but does not mention Bakunin being a murderer or bomber&lt;/em&gt;, would probably convince me the claim is false.  But I have found nothing like this either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Could it be that those who might devote time and resources to documenting the written works and biography of Bakunin online might also choose to omit certain acts on his part that might today be &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;viewed&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;disapprovingly&lt;/a&gt;?  Is there only oral tradition, and no documentary source, remaining of Bakunin's acts which somehow found its way onto this card?  Or did Steve Jackson Games simply invent this murderer/bomber description of Bakunin out of whole cloth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Right now, I'm not really sure which to be more skeptical of: the game card, or the treatment of Bakunin in online sources in a strictly respectful and academic tone, lacking fine-grained details of his actions during the various civil unrests he participated in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23317" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T18:18:13.233" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27279" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19926" CreationDate="2015-04-06T21:06:49.877" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;So, in order to answer this question, I actually asked my father, who happens to work for Habitat For Humanity in NJ. While this cannot be considered definitive for all Habitat branches, it at least speaks to what I believe to be the norm. What follows is his quote in entirety:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Work is done by volunteers under close supervision.  I had to rebuild a closet in Newark that I built with another equally unskilled volunteer because we did it wrong but was fine once we left.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Morris Habitat has big group of &amp;quot;Friday faithful&amp;quot; many of whom are either retired construction people or had long experience doing their own work.  They are better than most workers on commercial efforts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If Habitat had to hire people very often they would never get projects done because the homeowner pays only a fraction of what a commercial build would cost.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do hire but they are mostly specialists like licensed electricians and like since we only get licensed volunteers on occasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that second to last sentence is perhaps the most significant – Habitat would need to spend significantly more money and would simply be unable to afford to have commercial builders as a rule. While it is possible that some contributed work is thrown out and replaced, having that as normative behavior would make these projects cost-prohibitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5105" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-06T21:06:49.877" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27284" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2761" CreationDate="2015-04-07T01:35:51.103" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs%2024&amp;amp;version=NIV&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Proverbs 24&lt;/a&gt;, New International Version translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[17] Do not gloat when your enemy falls;&#xA;  when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice,&#xA;  [18] or the Lord will see and disapprove&#xA;  and turn his wrath away from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is similar to the attributed quotation.  As a Protestant minister who championed a cause that placed himself and those around him in mortal danger, it is quite plausible that MLK saw fit to paraphrase and discuss this proverb and its application to life from time to time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, the quotation &quot;Darkness cannot drive out darkness&quot; from the accepted answer can be considered a paraphrase of the Gospel of Mark, chapter 3:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[23] So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in&#xA;  parables: &quot;How can Satan drive out Satan? [24] If a kingdom is divided&#xA;  against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. [25] If a house is divided&#xA;  against itself, that house cannot stand....&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This pattern would also explain why other speakers and authors have similar quotations; perhaps they are paraphrasing the same passages, or even giving second-degree or third-degree attributions.  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.weegy.com/?ConversationId=6E9F4501&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Some people&lt;/a&gt; attribute the &quot;house divided against itself&quot; proverb to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%27s_House_Divided_Speech&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Abraham Lincoln&lt;/a&gt;, for example.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23317" LastActivityDate="2015-04-07T01:35:51.103" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27276" CreationDate="2015-04-07T13:19:52.580" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Searching around a bit, I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0974407801&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; which looks something like a meta-something of the question, though slightly dated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have access to it other than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christianpost.com/news/researchers-say-socialization-no-longer-an-issue-7552/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;where&lt;/a&gt; I saw it quoted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Susan McDowell, author of &quot;But What About Socialization? Answering the&#xA;  Perpetual Home Schooling Question: A Review of the Literature,” has&#xA;  researched 24 studies on the socialization of homeschoolers, according&#xA;  to Bristol Herald Courier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It’s a non-issue today,&quot; said McDowell, who earned Ph.D. in&#xA;  educational leadership from Vanderbilt University. &quot;All the research&#xA;  shows children are doing well.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2192" LastEditorUserId="2192" LastEditDate="2015-04-09T13:19:05.607" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T13:19:05.607" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27291" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27292" CreationDate="2015-04-07T16:30:55.840" Score="55" ViewCount="18263" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been a photo circulating everywhere claiming that RockStar, producer of the famous game GTA V, tweeted the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yzs9H.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I saw it on my &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/TheCimsonFucker/status/386946326971179008&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;twitter feed&lt;/a&gt;, on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/i-still-cant-play-gta-online.453414785/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this forum&lt;/a&gt; and on this  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26582&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also saw it here under the title of &lt;a href=&quot;http://likealaugh.org/laugh/21958&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rockstar Games being awesome&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it might have been created as a joke, it might be also true and many people are believing it and arguing that it is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also one member who was arguing sent this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/03/10/rockstar-issues-statement-regarding-gta-online-issues&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;ROCKSTAR ISSUES STATEMENT REGARDING GTA ONLINE ISSUES&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I want to know if it is authentic or not. Did Rockstar Games post this tweet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user25733" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-07T21:31:19.413" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T14:28:35.050" Title="Did Rockstar Games post this tweet about EA games?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27291" CreationDate="2015-04-07T16:39:12.520" Score="126" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of pieces of evidence that demonstrate that the picture above is not a real tweet from Rockstar, but a hoax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Missing Verification Tick&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can compare the image in the question with an example of a tweet &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/RockstarGames/status/385871041391636480&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;actually made on that &#xA;date&lt;/a&gt; (and verified via&#xA;the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20131006094104/https://twitter.com/RockstarGames&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wayback Machine's archive&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gAJoU.png&quot; alt=&quot;example tweet&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the example tweet shows &lt;strong&gt;a blue tick&lt;/strong&gt;, which indicates the identity of the account has been &quot;verified&quot; (authenticated) by Twitter. The hoax tweet does not show the blue tick. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20131006094104/https://twitter.com/RockstarGames&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wayback machine&lt;/a&gt;  confirms that that the RockStar Games' twitter account was verified at the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Too Long&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twitter famously limits each tweet to 140 characters. The hoax exceeds that length.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's what happens if you try to type in the same message on Twitter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rgvHy.png&quot; alt=&quot;Example form submission&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is too long to be accepted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Numbers incorrectly formatted.&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Twitter has always formatted numbers larger than 999 with a separator, e.g. &lt;code&gt;2,543 favorites&lt;/code&gt;. In the hoax, the commas are missing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Putative creator known:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reverse Google Image search suggests the source is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.funnyjunk.com/Ea/funny-pictures/4827378/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;funnyjunk.com&lt;/a&gt;. It seems that the creator of this meme is &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.funnyjunk.com/user/kingxddd&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;kingxddd&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, a 19-year-old man, ranked 13th on that site. His friends responded to him with similar fake screenshots:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CBBMfl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/aANF4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Simple to fake&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technique to create a realistic fake tweet is well known: the famous, cut-and-paste-one-line-of-code-to-make-any-website-editable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Add this code as a link bookmarked on Google Chrome:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;javascript:document.body.contentEditable='true'; document.designMode='on'; void 0&#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Once you click on the bookmark, any web page will be editable live through the browser. I was able to easily make this fake tweet:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Kdfp1.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-10T14:28:35.050" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T14:28:35.050" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27299" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-08T13:22:10.303" Score="9" ViewCount="362" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://izvestia.ru/news/582380&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Russian media&lt;/a&gt; has reported that members of the Russian legislature have claimed that Germany's reunification was in fact an &amp;quot;annexation&amp;quot; of East Germany by the West and thus they have no right to criticize Russia's annexation of Crimea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Госдума разберется с аннексией Восточной Германии&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Комитет по международным делам рассмотрит вопрос об «аннексии Германской Демократической Республики Федеративной Республикой Германия в 1989 году»&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wonder to what extent this is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Planck_Encyclopedia_of_Public_International_Law&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Annexation is the forcible acquisition of a state's territory by&#xA;another state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, did East Germany consent to the unification or was it incorporated by force or international pressure?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6248" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-08T14:46:03.830" Title="Was Germany's reunification an annexation?" Tags="|history|politics|germany|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="15" ClosedDate="2015-04-08T13:47:39.253" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27301" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="127" CreationDate="2015-04-08T16:23:30.060" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, a nocebo study did find that rashes could appear on the wrong arm due to suggestion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As this was a question whose &amp;quot;trail runs dry&amp;quot;, I figured I'd give context to how I found it, first, but I have found the study in question, and before I continue, here's the interesting line in the summary at the end:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The effect of suggestion upon the development of contagious dermatitis was proven to be statistically significant at the 0.1% level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So as I said, before I reference the paper, here's how I found it. First, I went to Google Scholar and did a search using the most important words in the context - Lacquer Tree Nocebo. The first result I found (this was scholar.google.com.au, so it might vary by region) was called &amp;quot;Placebo, meaning, and health&amp;quot;, but wasn't available freely... fortunately, the same article was available a few links further down, and the paper in question is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fammed.wisc.edu/sites/default/files/webfm-uploads/documents/research/placeboreview.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. A quick search found &amp;quot;Lacquer&amp;quot; in a sentence with &amp;quot;46&amp;quot; as a reference number, and in the Reference List, we find&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;46&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Ikemi Y. A psychosomatic study of contagious dermatitis. &lt;em&gt;Kyoshu Journal of Medical Science&lt;/em&gt; 1962;&lt;strong&gt;15&lt;/strong&gt;:335-50.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which, given the date of 1962, was clearly going to be the original paper... and indeed, Google Scholar found the article itself, available &lt;a href=&quot;http://eurekamag.com/pdf/029/029759605.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;s&gt;here&lt;/s&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.kzoo.edu/barth/math105/placebo62.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. (UPDATE: the original link no longer works, but I've found an alternative, for those who want to see it - you can always do a google search for the title of the article, if the new link fails)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full summary at the end says this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An experimental study on the effect of suggestion on the outbreak of contagious der­matitis induced by wax trees and lacquer trees has been performed with fifty-seven male subjects, aged fifteen to eighteen years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I: In the leaf-contact experiment, in 13 subjects with &amp;quot;strong reaction&amp;quot; reported on the questionnaire, the definite effect of suggestion was seen in&#xA;84.6% of the subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;II: In the experimental application of the extract of the poisonous trees in&#xA;15 subjects with a &amp;quot;moderate reaction&amp;quot; reported on the questionnaire, the effect of suggestion was seen in 56.2% of the subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;III: In the leaf-contact experiment, in the dark room in 5 subjects with &amp;quot;no previous experience&amp;quot; reported on the questionnaire, the effect of suggestion was seen in 40.0% of the subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IV: In the leaf-contact experiment in the dark room and experimental application of the extract with 16 subjects with &amp;quot;no previous reaction&amp;quot; reported on the questionnaire the effect of suggestion was seen in 23.5% of the subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;V: In the summary of the results of the above experiments, the reactivity was actually seen in as high as 89.5% of the subjects. In 35.3% constitutional factors seem to play the dominant role with the exception of 2 cases where the effect of suggestion also was distinctly seen. In 51.0%, suggestion clearly predominates over the constitutional factors. The percentage of subjects who showed no reaction to either suggestion or poison was 13.7% (Table 13).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VI: The effect of suggestion upon the development of contagious dermatitis was proven to be statistically significant at the 0.1% level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VII : The percentage of allergic family history was higher in the group of allergic reac­tion than in the auto-suggestive group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;VIII: Skin pathology of acute eczema was produced by the conditioning procedure and the histological findings of thus induced skin reaction were proven to be similar to the skin pathology produced by actual contact with the lacquer extract.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I had to manually correct my pdf reader's interpretation of the content (which, among other things, kept interpreting percent symbols as &amp;quot;96&amp;quot;, and it saw &amp;quot;III&amp;quot; as &amp;quot;IH&amp;quot;). As such, I may have missed a couple of corrections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And although it doesn't prove anything, I feel it is worth noting that it is referenced in a number of books on the subject, so I'm assuming that if flaws were found in the experiment, they would be well-known. But I could be mistaken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other interesting thing, which isn't in the summary section, is that the control leaf was a Chestnut leaf, and there were two distinct &amp;quot;poisonous&amp;quot; leaves - from the Japanese Wax Tree, and from the Chinese Lacquer Tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25723" LastEditorUserId="25723" LastEditDate="2022-10-18T12:12:22.393" LastActivityDate="2022-10-18T12:12:22.393" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27302" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27303" CreationDate="2015-04-08T20:31:36.947" Score="32" ViewCount="4894" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The home-educated typically score 15 to 30 percentile points above public-school students on standardized academic achievement tests.&quot; &lt;em&gt;Brian D. Ray, Ph.D.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nheri.org/research/research-facts-on-homeschooling.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried finding a primary source for statements like this and wasn't able to; just more links to secondary sources mostly by Dr. Ray. A lot of home education studies are also fairly outdated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21907" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-09T20:19:00.340" LastActivityDate="2022-02-26T01:47:13.277" Title="Do homeschooled kids perform better academically?" Tags="|united-states|education|school|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27303" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27302" CreationDate="2015-04-08T20:49:42.987" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;em&gt;Homeschooling in Full View: A Reader&lt;/em&gt; (Cooper, 2005) p. 4 (internal citations omitted):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies done by dozens of researchers during the past 20 years examined the academic achievement of the home-educated. [...] the homeschooled have scored, on average, at the 65th to 80th percentile on standardized academic tests in the United States and Canada, compared to the public school average of the 50th percentile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This references the work of Brian Ray, which the question already mentions, but also  &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hslda.ca/assets/pdf/summary-final.pdf&quot;&gt;Home Education in Canada: A Summary of the Pan-Canadian Study on Home Education 2003&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (Van Pelt/CCHE, 2003).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over 94% of home-educated students scored&#xA;  above the Canadian norm for both grade equivalency and&#xA;  basic skills.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The average home-educated Canadian student in grades&#xA;  one through eight ranks in the 81st percentile in reading, 76th&#xA;  percentile in language and 74th percentile in mathematics. The&#xA;  mean (average) percentile ranks for home-educated students&#xA;  in grades nine through 12 were, in reading 85th, in language&#xA;  84th and in mathematics 67th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These results are correlational, not interventional. (CCHE, 2003), for example, simply distributed packages to 5,800 home-educating families across Canada and invited them to participate in a 16-page survey and self-administer Canadian Achievement Tests.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED439141.pdf&quot;&gt;The Correlational Relationship Between Homeschooling Demographics and High Test Scores&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (Burns, 1999), Burns notes that the &quot;vast majority&quot; of homeschooled students have married, biological parents with higher than average incomes and educations, and &quot;watch much less television than their publicly schooled counterparts&quot;. These characteristics have each been shown to influence academic achievement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could only find one study that attempted to control for any of these other factors. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1493090?sid=21106394967633&amp;amp;uid=4&amp;amp;uid=2&quot;&gt;Home schooling: The ameliorator of negative influences on learning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (Ray, 2000) found that &quot;children in homeschool families with low income and in which the parents have little education are scoring, on average, above state-school averages&quot; (quote from &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ682480.pdf&quot;&gt;Homeschoolers on to College&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; (Ray, 2004)). Ray is president of the National Home Education Research Institute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In my opinion, &lt;em&gt;that&lt;/em&gt; there is a difference seems established enough, given the independent results by Ray and Van Pelt, even though they are both associated with home education centres/institutes. The research could be be more convincing and produce a more accurate estimate of the magnitude of the effect if it used more representative sampling methods and removed self-reporting. &lt;em&gt;Why&lt;/em&gt; there is a difference has not been well studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2015-04-09T00:18:14.267" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T00:18:14.267" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27305" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27307" CreationDate="2015-04-09T14:15:14.093" Score="27" ViewCount="8378" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.il/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&amp;amp;ion=1&amp;amp;espv=2&amp;amp;es_th=1&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8#q=men%20can%20eat%20their%20wives&quot;&gt;some news reports&lt;/a&gt;, a leading Muslim leader in Saudi Arabia has permitted men to eat their wives (the whole thing, or only part if that's all they need) if they get hungry enough. This is apparently the mufti Abdul Aziz ibn Abdullah Al-Asheikh. The reasoning is so that they &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/saudi-grand-mufti-issues-fatwa-permitting-man-chop-off-eat-wife-event-extreme-hunger-1495591&quot;&gt;&quot;become one as their bodies will fuse together after the husband eats his wife&quot;.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the mufti, or another religious leader, really issue a fatwa (Islamic ruling) that men can eat their wives if they get hungry enough?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24692" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-09T20:12:31.713" LastActivityDate="2015-04-17T06:32:19.127" Title="Did the Saudi mufti issue a fatwa saying that men can eat their wives?" Tags="|islam|saudi-arabia|cannibalism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27306" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9788" CreationDate="2015-04-09T16:48:32.077" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;The passage in question &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alim.org/library/quran/ayah/compare/4/34/men-are-given-authority-over-women-and-corrective-measures-for-disobedient-women-and-arbitration-in-family-disputes&quot;&gt;is this one&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;الرِّجَالُ قَوَّامُونَ عَلَى النِّسَاءِ بِمَا فَضَّلَ اللَّهُ بَعْضَهُمْ عَلَىٰ بَعْضٍ وَبِمَا أَنْفَقُوا مِنْ أَمْوَالِهِمْ ۚ فَالصَّالِحَاتُ قَانِتَاتٌ حَافِظَاتٌ لِلْغَيْبِ بِمَا حَفِظَ اللَّهُ ۚ وَاللَّاتِي تَخَافُونَ نُشُوزَهُنَّ فَعِظُوهُنَّ وَاهْجُرُوهُنَّ فِي الْمَضَاجِعِ وَاضْرِبُوهُنَّ ۖ فَإِنْ أَطَعْنَكُمْ فَلَا تَبْغُوا عَلَيْهِنَّ سَبِيلًا ۗ إِنَّ اللَّهَ كَانَ عَلِيًّا كَبِيرًا&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;—Surah 4. An-Nisaa, Ayah 34&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source page goes on to helpfully offer the following interpretations of the above passage in four reputed translations of the Quran.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Asad&quot;&gt;Muhammad Asad&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Message_of_The_Qur%27an&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Message of The Qur'an&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (1980):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MEN SHALL take full care of women with the bounties which God has bestowed more abundantly on the former than on the latter, and with what they may spend out of their possessions. And the righteous women are the truly devout ones, who guard the intimacy which God has [ordained to be] guarded. And as for those women whose ill-will you have reason to fear, admonish them [first]; then leave them alone in bed; &lt;strong&gt;then beat them&lt;/strong&gt;; and if thereupon they pay you heed, do not seek to harm them. Behold, God is indeed most high, great!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From Muhammad Farooq-i-Azam Malik's &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0911119809&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Al-Qur'an: Guidance for Mankind&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (1997):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Men are overseers over women because Allah has given the one more strength than other, and because men are required to spend their wealth for the maintenance of women. Honorable women are, therefore, devoutly obedient and guard in the husband's absence what Allah require them to guard their husband's property and their own honor. As to those women from whom you fear disobedience, first admonish them, then refuse to share your bed with them, and then, &lt;strong&gt;if necessary, beat them&lt;/strong&gt;. Then if they obey you, take no further actions against them and do not make excuses to punish them. Allah is Supremely Great and is aware of your actions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmaduke_Pickthall&quot;&gt;Marmaduke Pickthall&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meaning_of_the_Glorious_Koran&quot;&gt;The Meaning of the Glorious Koran&lt;/a&gt; (1930):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath men the one of them to excel the other, and because they spend of their property (for the support of women). So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, &lt;strong&gt;and scourge them&lt;/strong&gt;. Then if they obey you, seek not a way against them. Lo! Allah is ever High Exalted, Great.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_Yusuf_Ali&quot;&gt;Yusuf Ali&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_Qur%27an:_Text,_Translation_and_Commentary&quot;&gt;The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation and Commentary&lt;/a&gt; (1934):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Men are the protectors and maintainers of women because Allah has given the one more (strength) than the other and because they support them from their means.    Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient and guard in (the husband's) absence what Allah would have them guard. As to those women on whose part ye fear disloyalty and ill-conduct admonish them (first) (next) refuse to share their beds &lt;strong&gt;(and last) beat them (lightly)&lt;/strong&gt;; but if they return to obedience seek not against them means (of annoyance): for Allah is Most High Great (above you all). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three out of the four translations use the word &lt;em&gt;beat&lt;/em&gt; while the fourth prefers &lt;em&gt;scourge&lt;/em&gt;. Both the modern translations prefer &lt;em&gt;beat&lt;/em&gt;. As for &lt;em&gt;scourge&lt;/em&gt;, the following is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/scourge&quot;&gt;current dictionary definition&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;historical&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Whip&lt;/strong&gt; (someone) as a punishment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Cause &lt;strong&gt;great suffering&lt;/strong&gt; to&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Re: &quot;historical&quot;, considering that Pickthall's translation is from 1930, here's the &lt;a href=&quot;http://machaut.uchicago.edu/?resource=Webster%27s&amp;amp;word=scourge&amp;amp;use1913=on&amp;amp;use1828=on&quot;&gt;entry for &lt;em&gt;scourge&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; from the 1913 Webster:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To &lt;strong&gt;whip severely&lt;/strong&gt;; to lash.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To &lt;strong&gt;punish with severity&lt;/strong&gt;; to chastise; to afflict, as for sins or faults, and with the purpose of correction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;To harass or afflict &lt;strong&gt;severely&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has a (generously referenced) page dedicated to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_domestic_violence&quot;&gt;Islam and Domestic Violence&lt;/a&gt; with sections on interpretations that support/do not support wife-beating. From the &quot;to beat&quot; section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some Islamic scholars and commentators have emphasized that beatings, even where permitted, are not to be harsh or some even contend that they should be &quot;more or less symbolic.&quot; According to Abdullah Yusuf Ali and Ibn Kathir, &lt;strong&gt;the consensus of Islamic scholars is that the above verse describes a light beating&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &quot;not to beat&quot; section on a different possible translation of the word in question (&lt;em&gt;idribu&lt;/em&gt;) to possibly mean &quot;go away&quot; rather than &quot;beat&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This translation is negated however by the fact that most definitions of &lt;em&gt;daraba&lt;/em&gt; in Edward William Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon are related to physical beating and that when the root word &lt;em&gt;daraba&lt;/em&gt; and its derivatives are used in the Qur'an in relation to humans or their body parts, it exclusively means physically beating or striking them, e.g. in Qur'an 2:7337:93, 8:12, 8:50, 47:4 and 47:27.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;(I have not followed up on any of the provided references.)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/10/19/uae.court.ruling/&quot;&gt;legal interpretation from the UAE&lt;/a&gt; (2010):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A court in the United Arab Emirates says &lt;strong&gt;a man is permitted under Islamic law&lt;/strong&gt; to physically discipline his wife and children as long as he leaves no marks and has tried other methods of punishment, the country's top court ruled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(In the case being ruled on, a man caused injuries that left marks on his wife and daughter and was therefore convicted.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, yes, this passage (Surah 4:34) of the Quran advises men to physically discipline (possibly &quot;lightly&quot;) their disobedient wives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastActivityDate="2015-04-09T16:48:32.077" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27305" CreationDate="2015-04-09T17:26:26.377" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim:&lt;/strong&gt; Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, issued a fatwā permitting man to chop up and eat wife in event of extreme hunger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Status&lt;/strong&gt;: False&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It's reported that the claim first appeared on a satire news website.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The fatwā is not found on the Sheikh's website.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The official press agency of the Saudi Arabia government quotes the Sheikh's denying it is true.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Other religious officials are quoted as saying that such a view could not come from any Muslim, let alone a scholar.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A news article by &lt;a href=&quot;http://arabic.cnn.com/middleeast/2015/04/09/khaled-shaya-saudi-wife-mufti&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN arabic&lt;/a&gt; reported that Khalid ben Abdel-Rahman El-Shaye, assistant secretary general of the Global Commission for Introducing the Messenger, affiliating to the Muslim World League said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;الحقيقة أن هذا الكلام مختلقٌ ومفترى على سماحة الشيخ من أساسه، فهو كلام ممجوجٌ وتصورٌ سقيمٌ لا يمكن أن يصدر من أي مسلم أو مسلمة، فضلاً عن عالم جليل وشيخ كبير يرجع إليه المسلمون في بقاع شتى في شؤون دينهم. والقصد من اختلاقه التشويش والإساءة.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The truth is that this is fabricated and made up from its basis. These ill thoughts cannot come from any Muslim, regardless of a great scholar who Muslims refer to from around the world. Their aim is to create harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.spa.gov.sa/details.php?id=1348054&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;official Saudi Press Agency&lt;/a&gt; quotes the Sheikh's explicitly saying that the claim is false:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/R7C2H.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Sheikh, denied that fatwā attributed to him claiming that &amp;quot;eat women meat in the event of severe hunger,&amp;quot; stressing that this false claim aims stand behind the leadership against attempts to distract the nation from the Nile.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;He said his eminence in a statement to Saudi Press Agency:&lt;/strong&gt; This false fatwā comes in the context of distorting the image of Islam, which is the highest human affair and generosity, without exception, man or woman, and kept the rights to his religion and himself and his mind and presented, citing words of Almighty God (O ye who believe that the news come to you punk Vtbinwa that Tsibwa folk in ignorance of what you did repentant).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Grand Mufti stressed the urgent need to unite the community and strengthen its resolve against the common enemy that lurks nation, &lt;strong&gt;and not to pay attention to the lies and falsehoods promoted in order to destabilize society&lt;/strong&gt;, and dispersing its objectives, and the Nile from our country and the Muslim countries.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.binbaz.org.sa/fatawa&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;official&lt;/a&gt; website of Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, binbaz.org.sa, shows no evidence of any fatwā of that kind:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/K2BSJ.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onislam.net/english/news/middle-east/484865-no-saudi-fatwa-on-eating-wife.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; that the alleged fatwā, has actually appeared first on a &lt;strong&gt;satire website&lt;/strong&gt; in a Northern-African Arab country, has stoked controversy as many shared it over various social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A fatwā in the Islamic faith is the term for the legal opinion or learned interpretation that the Sheikhul Islam, a qualified jurist or mufti, can give on issues pertaining to the Islamic law. &lt;sup&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatwa&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T09:35:02.747" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27308" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27264" CreationDate="2015-04-09T20:05:31.833" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this BBC article today, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-32236022&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kenya student killings: BBC gains access to Garissa dormitories&lt;/a&gt;, the poster image for the video appears to be a picture of the same room/location as the second photograph shown above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2tp7T.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That implies that at least the second photograph in the OP are &quot;really pictures from that attack&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source of the images appears to be a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/yawbuobu.ernest/posts/10152962424128462&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Facebook post&lt;/a&gt; by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/yawbuobu.ernest&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nana Yaw Buobu&lt;/a&gt; (who &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=291751&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;appears to be Ghanaian&lt;/a&gt;). The photos have been credited to him by two large media outlets. One is Brazil's &lt;a href=&quot;http://g1.globo.com/mundo/noticia/2015/04/campanha-no-twitter-mostra-quem-sao-vitimas-de-ataque-no-quenia.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Globo&lt;/a&gt; (a part of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grupo_Globo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Grupo Globo&lt;/a&gt;) and the other is India's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.indiatimes.com/news/world/where-is-our-jesuischarlie-ask-african-terror-victims-sympathizers-231617.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Indiatimes&lt;/a&gt; (a part of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Internet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Times Internet&lt;/a&gt;). An excerpt from the machine-translation of the Globo piece reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also generated reviews two photos posted on Facebook that show stacked bodies in what would be the will of the university after the attack. Nana Yaw Buobu, who posted the image, said in a recent post on your profile that was criticized for disseminating the image, but that reproduction has made ​​people around the world returned his eyes to the atrocity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2015-04-10T14:43:26.890" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T14:43:26.890" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-04-09T20:13:59.453" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15449" CreationDate="2015-04-10T14:35:15.737" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/9259043/North-Korea-executes-three-people-found-guilty-of-cannibalism.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;North Korea 'executes three people found guilty of cannibalism'&lt;/a&gt; reports:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the 230 defectors interviewed by the Korean Institute for National Unification told of witnessing executions of people who had either eaten or sold human flesh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and describes three specific executions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, at the at the 2004 5th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights &amp;amp; Refugees in Poland, one of the 5 defectors to testify was Kim Hyeok and, as reported in &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2004/03/02/2004030261016.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Defectors Tell of Cannibalism, Torture, Lost Families&lt;/a&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;22-year-old Kim Hyeok, who was born in Cheongjin, North Hamgyeong Province, lost his parents at an early age and was raised in an orphanage. When he was teenager, he began crossing back and forth across the Chinese border in order to make a living. At the age of 16, he was caught and forced to spend time in prison. While he was in prison, he saw an engineer -- a university graduate -- brought in on charges of eating children. &amp;quot;At first, I thought, 'How can a person eat other people?' But as I starved, I began to experience hallucinations in which people appeared as beasts, too. I became extremely frightened of myself.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/leaked-north-korean-files-reveal-citizens-selling-human-flesh-food-645064&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported by the International Business Times&lt;/a&gt;, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.calebmission.co.kr/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Caleb mission&lt;/a&gt; obtained a copy of a 791 page North Korean law enforcement manual that goes through 721 crimes/situations.  5 of the 721 involve cannibalism, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One case involved a guard named Lee Man-sung, who killed his roommate with an axe when he was sleeping, ate part of the corpse and then sold the rest on the market describing it as lamb meat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, form the LA Times 12/25/2000 article &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2000/dec/25/local/me-5271&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mr. President, Don't Shake Hands With Kim Jong Il&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Clinton should know about Jang Gil-Su, a 15-year-old who risked being shot as he escaped to China. He and 14 members of his family are in hiding there, desperate to avoid the Chinese police who return North Korean refugees to face punishment, even death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jang's is a chilling case. Over the last three years, he has drawn and annotated 120 pictures of everyday life in his country. The Center for Saving Gil-Su's Family, headed by Prof. Dongkyu Kim of Korea University, gave these drawings to me, and they have been published in Seoul in book form. They show families eating anything to survive: pine bark, snakes, rats. A man at a market stall--&amp;quot;Man selling human flesh at a farmers market in Hoeroung city,&amp;quot; writes Jang.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human flesh? &amp;quot;Saram hoki&amp;quot; (cannibalism), other refugees tell us. All of the North Koreans we interviewed knew about it. Gil-Su's picture of a dismembered child in a cooking pot says more than any of the numbing statistics. &amp;quot;There are many cases of killing people and eating the flesh,&amp;quot; a refugee told us. &amp;quot;You eat it, without knowing it's human flesh,&amp;quot; a teenage orphan added. &amp;quot;You're so hungry, you just eat it.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T20:41:51.487" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27315" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-10T15:56:21.577" Score="4" ViewCount="198" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Jefferson&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Jefferson&lt;/a&gt; was designed to reproduce a strain of genetically-modified anthrax isolated by Russian scientists during the 1990s. It was disclosed (together with &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Bacchus&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Bacchus&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Clear_Vision&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Project Clear Vision&lt;/a&gt;) in a September 4, 2001 article in The New York Times (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/04/world/us-germ-warfare-research-pushes-treaty-limits.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/04/world/us-germ-warfare-research-pushes-treaty-limits.html&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the anthrax attacks happened after 9/11 both terror attacks were often connected. But could it be that the anthrax attacks had nothing to do with 9/11? Instead somebody felt threatened by the disclosure of the biological weapons programs by the New York Times and started the anthrax attacks quite independently not because of 9/11, but instead because of 9/4?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3199" LastActivityDate="2015-04-10T15:56:21.577" Title="Could the 2001 anthrax letter attacks been connected to the disclosure of Project Jefferson?" Tags="|biology|9-11|terrorism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-04-10T17:13:12.510" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27316" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18247" CreationDate="2015-04-11T01:45:10.583" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The supposed quote was really a paraphrase originally by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Gustav_Binderup&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Charles Binderup&lt;/a&gt; 19 March 1937 in the House of Representatives (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Congressional_Record_Volume_81_Part_3.djvu/154&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Congressional Record—House 81:2528&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was Henry Ford who said in substance this: 'It is perhaps well enough that the people of the nation do not know or understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above was also published in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unz.org/Pub/SocialJustice-1937apr19-00008&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;19 April 1938 Social Justice on page 10&lt;/a&gt; where it is attributed to &quot;Representative Charles G. Binderup of Nebraska&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1957 opinion article by Russell Maguire &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1957oct-00079?View=PDF&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Internationalists Gain Power&lt;/a&gt;&quot; in the American Mercury  volume 85 pages 79-80 states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It was Henry Ford, Sr., who said in substance, &quot;It is perhaps well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later sources may make this sound like an exact quote, but &quot;in substance&quot; makes clear it is not an exact quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What Henry Ford definitely did write in his 1922 book &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=8elRmsxDBWsC&amp;amp;pg=PA179&amp;amp;dq=%22%20sound%20money%20that%20it%20is%20a%20serious%20question%20how%20they%20would%20regard%20the%20system%20under%20which%20they%20live%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=0ahUKEwjjr56hpoHMAhVDu4MKHYDUAW8Q6AEILDAD#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22%20sound%20money%20that%20it%20is%20a%20serious%20question%20how%20they%20would%20regard%20the%20system%20under%20which%20they%20live%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;My Like and Work&lt;/a&gt; at page 179 is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The people are naturally conservative.  They are more conservative than the financiers. Those who believe that the people are so easily led that they would permit the printing presses to run off money like milk tickets do not understand them. It is the innate conservation of the people that has kept our money good in spite of the fantastic tricks which financiers play-and which they cover up with high technical terms.&#xA;  The people are on the side of sound money.  They are so unalterably on the side of sound money that it is a serious question how they would regard the system under which they live, if they once knew what the initiate can do with it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, it seems that a paraphrasing of Henry Ford has been mistakenly identified as an exact quote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2016-04-09T10:19:54.167" LastActivityDate="2016-04-09T10:19:54.167" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27322" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-11T17:51:14.010" Score="11" ViewCount="6038" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently had this article come across my newsfeed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://themadmanchronicles.com/2014/01/26/radiated-milk-sold-in-black-neighborhoods-the-art-of-slow-genocide/&quot;&gt;Radiated Milk Sold in Black Neighbourhoods&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I always wondered about the high rates of cancer and diabetes in my&#xA;  neighborhood, and in other Black neighborhoods.  These diseases are&#xA;  not inherent in people of African descent. [...] I long believed environmental factors&#xA;  played a huge part in the mortality rate of my beloved Harlem&#xA;  residents… so to come across this  … as you can imagine, floored me&#xA;  and left me speechless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Below, an unsourced video snippet with an unnamed woman speaking about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/01/08/nyregion/20060109_DIABETES_GRAPHIC.html&quot;&gt;this infographic&lt;/a&gt; of diabetes in New York.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;after Chernobyl, [...] the state milk boards are taking the most contaminated radioactive milk from dairies near nuclear power plants and they're shipping that into Black inner-city communities [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She implies that this is causing diabetes, as part of a deliberate genocide effort by the government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the milk sold in inner-city communities in New York more highly contaminated by radioactivity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18903" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-06-18T07:14:05.917" LastActivityDate="2017-10-05T03:49:24.533" Title="Is radioactive milk being sold in inner-city black neighbourhoods in New York?" Tags="|united-states|milk|public-health|diabetes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27334" CreationDate="2015-04-11T18:38:29.080" Score="7" ViewCount="2493" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is commonly claimed that Pope Gregory IX said the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Fire&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;annual Holy Fire miracle in Jerusalem&lt;/a&gt; is a fake. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This backed up by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Holy_Fire&amp;amp;oldid=656002903#Criticism&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Holy Fire&lt;/a&gt; Wikipedia page. Unfortunately, the reference for that claim leads to an article that no longer exists, but we can look it up through a web archive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article from &lt;em&gt;The Tablet&lt;/em&gt;, &quot;the international Catholic weekly&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20110604035833/http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/3458&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After Pope Gregory IX denounced the Holy Fire as a fraud and barred Franciscans from having anything to do with it, the Franciscans' Holy Land chronicles became peppered with scathing accounts of the ceremony. A fifteenth-century Franciscan, Fra Francesco Suriano, detailed the unruly emotionalism he witnessed before observing: 'The said fire, however, does not descend in truth (and in the opinion of us friars), although all the nations save us friars feign this falsehood to be true.' &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Pope Gregory IX ever claim the Holy Fire is fake? Is &lt;em&gt;The Tablet&lt;/em&gt; a reputable source for this claim, and if not, what other reputable sources are available?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Related Question&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4295/does-a-miracle-of-spontaneous-holy-fire-occur-in-a-jerusalem-church-every-year&quot;&gt;Does a miracle of spontaneous &amp;quot;holy fire&amp;quot; occur in a Jerusalem church every year?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3786" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T02:09:09.680" Title="Did Pope Gregory IX call the Holy Fire a fraud?" Tags="|religion|quotes|catholic-church|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27325" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-11T23:23:13.730" Score="3" ViewCount="239" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is it true that in Russia, citizens have an obligation to send copy of all of their private encryption keys to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Security_Service&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Federal Security Service&lt;/a&gt; (FSB), even without receiving a specific demand? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Someone replied on the chat:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/21047851#21047851&quot;&gt;http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/21047851#21047851&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25805" LastEditorUserId="25805" LastEditDate="2015-04-12T00:17:46.560" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T00:17:46.560" Title="Do Russians need to disclose their encryption keys to the Federal Security Service?" Tags="|law|russia|cryptography|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2015-04-11T23:35:24.147" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27323" CreationDate="2015-04-12T02:37:38.380" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim:&lt;/strong&gt; In 1238, Pope Gregory IX denounced the Holy Fire as a fraud.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Truth or hoax?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lets follow claims, starting with &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;. All links can be found at the bottom of the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Wikipedia:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GVJMk.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Wikipedia referenced The Tablet:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/2XW5c.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;The Tablet linked Victoria Clark's book:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/1FKFR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Victoria Clark's book let me to Frank Hill Perrycoste's book:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/c0M9w.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Frank Hill Perrycoste's book led me to Gavin I. Langmuir's book:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tGd2m.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Htc27.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Gavin I. Langmuir's book let me to Nicholas Vincent's book:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9joHUl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Nicholas Vincent's book referenced letters of Pope Gregory IX:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/teybz.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Continued in Chris's answer&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; Wikipedia: available directly &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Fire&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/sup&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt; The Tablet: available through WayBack Machine &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20110604035833/http://www.thetablet.co.uk/article/3458&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/sup&gt; &#xA;&lt;sup&gt; The Far-Farers: A Journey from Viking Iceland to Crusader Jerusalem by Victoria Clark: available through Amazon &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B005Q64BXA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The Holy Blood: King Henry III and the Westminster Blood Relic By Nicholas Vincent partially available through &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.lb/books?id=H8F28cKVdwAC&amp;amp;pg=PA78&amp;amp;dq=Pope+Gregory+IX+the+Holy+Fire+fraud+1238&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=G9EpVbv7H9DTaMCPgfgL&amp;amp;ved=0CBwQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Books&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;sup&gt; Toward a Definition of Antisemitism By Gavin I. Langmuir available by &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.lb/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=3md6PVqRKTEC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PR9&amp;amp;dq=Langmuir+Toward+a+Definition&amp;amp;ots=ndAFOuA46g&amp;amp;sig=lNRvrRMw5CrBLK4u7kf2Mq4OXWQ&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=snippet&amp;amp;q=pope%20gregory&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Books&lt;/a&gt;: On the Influence of Religion Upon Truthfulness: Being Two Chapters from an ...&#xA; By  &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.lb/books?id=N0UTAQAAMAAJ&amp;amp;sitesec=buy&amp;amp;source=gbs_atb&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Frank Hill Perrycoste&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-13T02:09:09.680" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T02:09:09.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27328" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-12T05:37:26.410" Score="30" ViewCount="2390" Body="&lt;p&gt;The very common advice for immediate treatment of an injury is R.I.C.E. &amp;mdash; rest, ice, compression and elevation &amp;mdash; to reduce swelling. But why should we try to reduce the natural swelling response? When I pose the question on Google, many results merely repeat the details on &lt;em&gt;how&lt;/em&gt;, simply assuming that the swelling is a disease rather than a symptom:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/tc/swelling-home-treatment&quot;&gt;webmd.com/pain-management/tc/swelling-home-treatment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patient.co.uk/health/ice-and-heat-treatment-for-injuries&quot;&gt;patient.co.uk/health/ice-and-heat-treatment-for-injuries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthline.com/health/sports-injuries/treatment&quot;&gt;healthline.com/health/sports-injuries/treatment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://lecom.edu/healthynews.php/injuries-to-ice-or-to-heat/76/0/2818/13542&quot;&gt;lecom.edu/healthynews.php/injuries-to-ice-or-to-heat/76/0/2818/13542&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Treat-Swelling&quot;&gt;wikihow.com/Treat-Swelling&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/first-aid/ice-or-heat-for-injury.htm&quot;&gt;health.howstuffworks.com/medicine/first-aid/ice-or-heat-for-injury&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some &lt;em&gt;appear&lt;/em&gt; to address the question &lt;em&gt;why&lt;/em&gt;, but with circular logic &amp;mdash; because ... excessive swelling. Some with &quot;sideways&quot; logic &amp;mdash; to stop the pain, but ignoring the fact that there might not be any pain or that the pain may actually be less than the discomfort resulting from applying the ice. Or that &lt;em&gt;chronic&lt;/em&gt; swelling can be problematic, but that is a completely different time scale than the recommended application of RICE (months versus hours):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/inflammation-good-or-bad.267645/&quot;&gt;physicsforums.com/threads/inflammation-good-or-bad&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=420185&quot;&gt;boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=420185&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationwidechildrens.org/swelling-bodys-reaction-to-injury&quot;&gt;nationwidechildrens.org/swelling-bodys-reaction-to-injury&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coolrunning.com.au/forums/?showtopic=4984&quot;&gt;coolrunning.com.au/forums/?showtopic=4984&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ask.metafilter.com/210794/Why-stop-the-swelling&quot;&gt;ask.metafilter.com/210794/Why-stop-the-swelling&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple mention the study by Lan Zhou and a team at the Neuroinflammation Research Center at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio that &quot;found that some inflammation is needed for tissue healing&quot;, suggesting that maybe everyone else has got it wrong for all those years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/rehab/a/rice.htm&quot;&gt;sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/rehab/a/rice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1324096/Ice-injury-prevent-healing-Swelling-turned-head.html&quot;&gt;dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1324096/Ice-injury-prevent-healing-Swelling-turned-head&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do you know of &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; significant scientific studies that even suggest that suppressing the swelling response to injury speeds or otherwise improves the body's healing process (assuming pain is not an issue)?&#xA;I'm skeptical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18405" LastActivityDate="2016-07-09T16:47:44.907" Title="Why should we try to reduce swelling after injury?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27329" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-12T05:49:06.307" Score="15" ViewCount="3393" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently saw this tweet by What The F*** Facts:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xemuFl.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Canada, if you have half of a $20 bill, it is worth $10. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-05-20T15:23:36.057" LastActivityDate="2018-05-20T15:23:36.057" Title="If you have half of a Canadian $20 bill, is it worth $10?" Tags="|law|canada|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27330" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-12T07:55:13.140" Score="2" ViewCount="437" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found a video a video on youtube :&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugyrzr5Ds8o&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugyrzr5Ds8o&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Carl Segan on Hindu Civilization,&#xA;Can anyone confirm if this footage is really from Carl Sagan?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25100" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-14T21:17:09.690" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T21:17:09.690" Title="Is this video by Carl Sagan?" Tags="|astronomy|video|carl-sagan|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27332" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27329" CreationDate="2015-04-12T10:39:05.257" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only source on the web that I've found which says so is &lt;a href=&quot;https://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090418160700AA5Zhfb&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090418160700AA5Zhfb&lt;/a&gt; from 2009 which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A genuine note that has become worn or sustained minor damage in circulation can be exchanged for full face value. These notes are classified as unfit notes and may have small pieces missing or small holes (less than 20 per cent of the note missing in both cases), have been torn, have heat damage affecting less than 20 per cent of the note, have adhesive tape on them or have been stapled or defaced. These notes can continue to be offered and accepted in transactions because they are worth full face value. The BOC asks banks, other authorised deposit-taking institutions and cash centre operators, to remove unfit notes from circulation when they are returned to them by their customers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The BOC adopts the following policy: &#xA;  For determining the value of damaged notes where pieces are missing: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If less than 20 per cent is missing: The note is regarded as unfit and full face value is paid, even if the note is otherwise worn. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If between 20 per cent and 80 per cent is missing: The note is regarded as incomplete and value is paid in proportion with the percentage remaining, e.g. half face value if half the note is present, even if the note is otherwise worn. The presence or absence of specific features such as the serial number(s) or the clear window is not a factor when determining value. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;If more than 80 per cent is missing: No value is paid. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That seems to be to be a genuine quote (e.g. IMO the factual reasoning is plausible, and so is the literary style, as is the BOC contact information including a bilingual email address at the bottom of the quote), but I haven't found (using Google) a copy of it from a more official source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For what it's worth, &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.com/ZG5E&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://docs.com/ZG5E&lt;/a&gt; contains a copy of a document which includes near-identical wording (except &quot;RBA instead of &quot;BOC&quot;) that purports to be from the Reserve Bank of Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T10:39:05.257" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27333" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27328" CreationDate="2015-04-12T11:36:38.393" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;From a review article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aafp.org/afp/2006/1115/p1714.html#sec-3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Acute Ankle Sprain: An Update&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excessive swelling and pain can limit an examination up to 48 hours after injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, and others recommend cryotherapy for ankle sprains, and there appears to be no strong evidence against this therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One study of compression with cryotherapy for inversion ankle sprains suggests that patients with focal compression recover function earlier, but the study was too small to draw definitive conclusions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;compared with placebo, NSAIDs were associated with improved pain control and function, decreased swelling, and more rapid return to activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My takeaway is that there are practical reasons to reduce swelling (diagnostics), and some evidence connecting ice and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonsteroidal_anti-inflammatory_drug&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NSAIDs&lt;/a&gt; with better recovery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two controlled NSAID trials referred to are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Slatyer MA, Hensley MJ, Lopert R. A randomized controlled trial of piroxicam in the management of acute ankle sprain in Australian Regular Army recruits. The Kapooka Ankle Sprain Study. Am J Sports Med. 1997;25:544–53.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Petrella R, Ekman EF, Schuller R, Fort JG. Efficacy of celecoxib, a COX-2-specific inhibitor, and naproxen in the management of acute ankle sprain: results of a double-blind, randomized controlled trial. Clin J Sport Med. 2004;14:225–31.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another review &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://startingstrength.com/articles/misinflammation_sullivan.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stopping the Spread of Misinflammation&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, presents a more uncertain summary. It is not peer reviewed, but in my opinion, a fair assessment of the research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It lists a bunch of studies evaluating either NSAID or cryotherapy and their results. The author attempted to include all human studies involving NSAID or cryotherapy interventions from the previous 20 years. The results are mixed: some studies support their use, others do not. Even if you disagree with the author's interpretation of each study (this is something peer review would have helped check), there are 10s of references to look further into if you are interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion of that review article is that this is an open scientific question, and I agree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Acute ankle sprain: an update&amp;quot; did not claim strong evidence in support of cryotherapy, and only mentioned two studies in support of NSAIDs, without stating whether negative studies were sought out. The non-peer reviewed review article found that outcomes have been very mixed. I can't find a more definitive or more recent review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T18:07:02.020" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27334" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27323" CreationDate="2015-04-12T12:22:27.937" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;Following George's research I found the reference in Volume 2 of the &lt;em&gt;Registres de Grégoire Ix&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/cul/texts/ldpd_6385313_002/pages/ldpd_6385313_002_00000467.html?toggle=image&amp;amp;menu=maximize&amp;amp;top=&amp;amp;left=&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Example URL&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KzQMm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My transcription of that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eidem -- intellecto &quot;quod canonici sepulchri Jerosolimitani, ignem in idem sepulchrum de celo in vigilia in Pasche descendere et Redemptorem nostrum Dominum Jhesum Christum inibi incarceratum fuisse dicentes, locum conflicti carceris sub certo pretio, non sine ignominia divini nominis, venalem exponunt&quot; -- mandat quatenus tales praesumptiones de cetero prohibeat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My translation of that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also -- to the understanding that &quot;because the canons of the sepulchre of Jerusalem, [the fire] [in that sepulchre] [from the sky] [during the vigil of Passover] [to descend] [and] [the saying] [our Redeemer the Lord Jesus Christ] [in it was imprisoned], [a place] [of conflict] [of the prison] [for a fixed price], not without disgrace to the divine name, they expose for sale&quot; -- [either 'the mandate' or 'he requires'] [to that extent] [such presumptions] [henceforth] [he prohibits].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, taking a literal reading of what he wrote, his complaint seems to be not that the fire is a hoax (i.e. a false miracle): but rather it's that the practice involved selling something, which brings ignominy on God's name. It's not solidly clear to me what's being sold, but I think what's being sold is the place i.e. standing-room in the sepulchre for witnesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consider for example this quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gregory_IX&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;from the WIkipedia entry about Gregory IX&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Gregory was a supporter of the mendicant orders which he saw an excellent means for counteracting by voluntary poverty the love of luxury and splendour which was possessing many ecclesiastics. He was a friend of Saint Dominic as well as Clare of Assisi.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does he call it a fraud or a hoax?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe not: I don't see his saying that. I can only see that he says that what's prohibited are the &lt;em&gt;praesumptiones&lt;/em&gt; (or in English &quot;presumptions&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=praesumptio&amp;amp;la=latin#lexicon&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;definition of the post-classical&lt;/a&gt; meaning of that word is,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Boldness, confidence, assurance, audacity, presumption&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dicolatin.com/XY/LAK/0/PRAESUMPTIONES/index.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this definition&lt;/a&gt; which says that by the 5th century the word means &quot;&lt;em&gt;témérité&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (i.e. impertinence, audacity, cheek).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's similar to the second of Google's definitions of the English word,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;presumption&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;an idea that is taken to be true on the basis of probability.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;behaviour perceived as arrogant, disrespectful, and transgressing the limits of what is permitted or appropriate.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;IMO he doesn't seem to be saying that the belief is wrong, but rather that the behaviour (of selling places) is disrespectful and/or ignominious and therefore should be prohibited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it clearly says that it's prohibited because of the canons' selling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-04-12T16:20:12.047" LastActivityDate="2015-04-12T16:20:12.047" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17539" CreationDate="2015-04-12T14:31:15.353" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is some truth to this claim although I would not rate the study which I source here as high-quality evidence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Chen AL, Chen TJ, Braverman ER, Acuri V, Kemer M, Varshavskiy M, Braverman D, Downs WB, Blum SH, Cassel K, Blum K., &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19004418&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hypothesizing that marijuana smokers are at a significantly lower risk of carcinogenicity relative to tobacco-non-marijuana smokers: evidenced based on statistical reevaluation of current literature.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, J Psychoactive Drugs. 2008 Sep;40(3):263-72.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Male and female [marijuana and tobacco smokers] had a lower probability of developing lung cancer than did [tobacco-only smokers].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a primary study using statistical modeling. It showed correlation, not causation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keep in mind that they only looked at lung cancer while smoking tobacco increases the risk for several other types of cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For biological plausibility of these claim I might refer to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Robert Melamede, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.harmreductionjournal.com/content/2/1/21&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cannabis and tobacco smoke are not equally carcinogenic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, Harm Reduction Journal 2005, 2:21  doi:10.1186/1477-7517-2-21&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cannabis smoke contains cannabinoids whereas tobacco smoke contains nicotine. Available scientific data, that examines the carcinogenic properties of inhaling smoke and its biological consequences, suggests reasons why tobacco smoke, but not cannabis smoke, may result in lung cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although only a side-note, tobacco companies use low-quality fertilizer which may contain radioactive elements:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1350448708002060&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1350448708002060&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: I would like to add a quotation by a large meta analysis by &lt;a href=&quot;http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/cebp/24/1/15.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huang et al. 2015&lt;/a&gt;. After listing several reasons why smoking cannabis should cause cancer they state that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In view of the above findings, a null association between marijuana use and lung cancer is somewhat surprising because marijuana smoke contains known carcinogens in amounts com-parable with those found in tobacco smoke (49). Although the generally smaller amounts of marijuana that are regularly smoked compared with tobacco might appear to explain the null association of marijuana with lung cancer, the absence of a dose–response relationship between marijuana use and lung cancer,in contrast to the strong dose–response relationship noted for tobacco (16), would argue against this explanation. A more likely explanation is a tumor-suppressant effect of THC and other cannabinoids evident in both cell culture systems and animal models of a variety of cancers, as reviewed by Bifulco and colleagues (57). These antitumoral effects (antimitogenic, proa-poptotic, and antiangiogenetic) could possibly counteract the tumor-initiating or tumor-promoting effects of the carcinogens within the smoke of cannabis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25068" LastEditorUserId="25068" LastEditDate="2019-04-21T14:59:39.347" LastActivityDate="2019-04-21T14:59:39.347" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27336" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12486" CreationDate="2015-04-12T15:02:07.573" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a very detailed analysis in &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150906132919/http://cdn.colorado.gov/cs/Satellite?blobcol=urldata&amp;amp;blobheadername1=Content-Disposition&amp;amp;blobheadername2=Content-Type&amp;amp;blobheadervalue1=inline%3B%20filename%3D%22Parental%20Rights%20State%20Law%20Table.pdf%22&amp;amp;blobheadervalue2=application%2Fpdf&amp;amp;blobkey=id&amp;amp;blobtable=MungoBlobs&amp;amp;blobwhere=1251865795731&amp;amp;ssbinary=true&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A State-By-State Examination of the Parental Rights of Fathers Who Conceive a Child by Rape&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Really there is no substitute for going through each state's law individually, because the statutory language placing limitations on parental rights in cases of rape varies greatly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The phrasing in the title question &quot;Do 31 states give rapist fathers visitation rights&quot; is too vague to precisely answer.  The answer is totally different depending upon whether the question is construed as &quot;do 31 states have no way to prevent a rapist father from having visitation?&quot;, versus, &quot;do 31 have some possibility of allowing a rapist father to have visitation?&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only a few states seem to absolutely bar the possibility of a rapist father having visitation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;California law is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No person shall be granted custody of, or visitation with, a child if the person has been convicted under Section 261of the Penal Code [rape or unlawful intercourse] and the child was conceived as a result of that violation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Louisiana&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a proceeding in which visitation of a child is being sought by a parent, if the child was conceived through the commission of a felony rape, the parent who committed the felony rape shall be denied visitation rights and contact with the child.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other states are less absolute:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Idaho&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The court may grant an order terminating the relationship and may rebuttably presume that such termination of parental rights is in the best interests of the child where: (a) The parent caused the child to be conceived as a result of rape, incest, lewd conduct with a minor child under the age of sixteen (16) years, or sexual abuse of a child under the age of sixteen (16) years&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;South Dakota&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If it is in the best interest of the child, the court may prohibit, revoke, or restrict visitation rights to a child for any person who has caused the child to be conceived as a result of rape or incest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going through the table in the reference, 20 states have some degree of legislation concerning restricting the custody or visitation of a rapist father (not including laws solely concerning adoption).  These are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;California&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Connecticut&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Idaho&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Iowa&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kansas&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Louisiana&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Maine&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Michigan&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Missouri&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Montana&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nevada&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;New Jersey&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;North Carolina&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Oklahoma&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Oregon&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pennsylvania&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;South Dakota&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Tennessee&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Texas&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Wisconsin&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So 20 states have legislation that addresses custody and/or visitation rights (beyond adoption related legislation) in cases of rape; however, less than 20 absolutely prohibit a rapist father from having any possibility of visitation or custody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the other 30 states, 18 have no specific law addressing parental rights of rapist fathers, and 12 have adoption-related legislation restricting the rights of rapist fathers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2016-03-27T19:45:30.847" LastActivityDate="2016-03-27T19:45:30.847" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27338" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-12T16:25:18.593" Score="21" ViewCount="32969" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Quora there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Why-it-is-advisable-not-to-drink-water-while-standing&quot;&gt;an answer&lt;/a&gt; that states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientifically, drinking while standing lets water hit the lower part of the esophagus strongly, &amp;amp; by time this leads to a dilation and relaxation of the sphincter that connects the esophagus and stomach, which finally leads to a medical condition called &quot;GERD: GastroEsophageal Reflux Disease&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover it is forbidden, or at least advised against, in Islamic Law, and some scholars &lt;a href=&quot;http://islamqa.info/en/143966&quot;&gt;suggest&lt;/a&gt; that it is for health reasons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25812" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2015-04-13T18:32:48.780" LastActivityDate="2023-07-22T19:45:41.187" Title="Is drinking while standing unhealthy?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27341" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27347" CreationDate="2015-04-12T18:11:48.950" Score="3" ViewCount="26177" Body="&lt;p&gt;This image just popped up on my Facebook wall because someone shared it. To me, it sounds ludicrous.&#xA;It said this: &lt;strong&gt;This is an X-ray of a 2 week old puppy.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rJE7g.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the entire Facebook post:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an X-ray of a 2 week old puppy. Look at how far the bones have&#xA;to grow before they become a proper bony joint! This is why you should&#xA;never let puppies jump, walk up/down stairs, over exercise or over&#xA;train. Doing to much impact activity at a young age will cause serious&#xA;issues later in life, or even at a young age as hip dysplasia and&#xA;other orthopaedic conditions are rising in puppies! Remember the puppy&#xA;rule for every month increase activity by 5 minuets! For example an 8&#xA;week old puppy only needs 10 minuets physical activity a day a 6 month&#xA;old only needs 30 minuets a day of physical activity!!&#xA;*physical activity includes - going for a walk, training, playing fetch, running, playing with other dogs etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Enjoy your new puppy but remember you wouldn't make a 6 month old baby&#xA;run a mile a day so don't make your puppy either!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the bones aren't joined together, how would a puppy ever be able to stand?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25815" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T11:05:33.927" Title="Are the bones of puppies not joined at 2 weeks old?" Tags="|dogs|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27347" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27341" CreationDate="2015-04-13T03:14:55.123" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Vetstream says about puppies and their bones: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vetstream.com/watkinsandtasker/html/factsheets/dog/24_265463.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.vetstream.com/watkinsandtasker/html/factsheets/dog/24_265463.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why is bone injury in pups serious?(back to top)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Puppies and young dogs have enormous healing potential and bone fractures, once treated, can heal rapidly and completely. When a puppy is born the ends of each bone are soft and it is from these soft parts that the bone continues to extend as the puppy grows. These areas are called the growth plates. Because the growth plates are softer they are a weak point of the bone in the growing animal. Once a dog reaches adult size the growth plates close and become bony. Any damage to the growth plates of bones prevents the bone from growing normally. If this happens to the bones in the leg this can have severe consequences and limb shortening or deformity can result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How growth plate should look like on xray? And where are &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartilage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cartilage tissues&lt;/a&gt; (which are no radiopaque - they will not stop xray photons and are not imaged on xray photos --- &quot;Cartilage does not absorb x-rays under normal In vivo conditions&quot;)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is blog post &lt;a href=&quot;https://jsillers6760.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/june-2010-volume-six-number-1/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://jsillers6760.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/june-2010-volume-six-number-1/&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&quot;Bone Growth in Canines&quot; (Articles by Dr. James Sillers)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the formation of long bones, there is one basic principle to remember: &lt;strong&gt;most bones start off as cartilage and then that cartilage is replaced by bone.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Early on, the &lt;strong&gt;embryonic skeleton is mainly made up of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyaline_cartilage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hyaline cartilage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. At some point, this cartilage starts to be replaced with bone. The cartilage is con­sidered to simply be a model for the shape the bone should take on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The long bones grow in length by a different pro­cess. As mentioned above, most bones start off as cartilage and then that cartilage is replaced by bone. This is how the long bones grow longer. At the &lt;em&gt;end of each long bone is located an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphyseal_plate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;epiphyseal disk&lt;/a&gt; that we refer to as a growth plate.&lt;/em&gt; This growth plate is composed of cartilage. The cartilage within the growth plate is continually dividing, sometimes faster than at other times. As it makes more cartilage, the older cartilage is replaced by bone. As more and more bone is formed, the length of the bone becomes longer. During pu­berty hormones stimulate the growth plate to divide at a faster rare causing rapid growth in the length of the bones. After puberty the bones stop growing because hormones cause all of the cartilage within the growth plate to become ossified (bone).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Author of the blog has several xray images for puppies. At sewen weeks  growth plates are like thin lines in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;metaphysis&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://jsillers6760.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/clip_image0022.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://jsillers6760.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/clip_image0022.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the left side you will see radiographs taken of a puppy seven to eight weeks of age. &lt;em&gt;The arrows point to the major growth plates&lt;/em&gt; seen in the radio­graph. Compare the radiographs taken of the puppy to the radiograph taken of the same view on an adult dog. Notice that the growth plates can no longer be seen. The age of a pup when the growth plates are closed depends on the breed of dog and which growth plate one is evaluating. The growth plates in larger breeds of dogs close at an older age than smaller breeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Xray of 7, 9 week pups and adult: &lt;a href=&quot;https://jsillers6760.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/clip_image00261.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://jsillers6760.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/clip_image00261.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The arrows are pointing to the open growth plates located in the pelvis and rear legs. Compare the radiographs token of the puppies to the radiographs of the adult dog with closed growth prates on the right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Xray of 7week pup and adult dog: &lt;a href=&quot;https://jsillers6760.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/clip_image0028.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://jsillers6760.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/clip_image0028.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In earliest stages of bone development, there is no calcium here, and bone is invisible in typical X-Ray. Then there are three centers of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ossification&lt;/a&gt; (osteogenesis), first is primary center in the middle of the bone, and then two epiphyseal centers are formed at both ends of bone. LifeMap has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://media.discovery.lifemapsc.com/pub/uploadedFiles/PanskyImages/chapter65_1.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;picture of bone development&lt;/a&gt; from  MEDICAL EMBRYOLOGY Book by BEN PANSKY, Ph.D, M.D. chapter &lt;a href=&quot;http://discovery.lifemapsc.com/library/review-of-medical-embryology/chapter-65-bone-histogenesis-secondary-ossification-centers-and-joint-development&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;65. Bone Histogenesis: Secondary Ossification Centers and Joint Development&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia lists several ages for human bone development in &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossification&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Third month of fetal development -    Ossification in long bones beginning&#xA;  Fourth month of fetal development -   Most primary ossification centers have appeared in the diaphyses of bone.&#xA;  Birth to 5 years - Secondary ossification centers appear in the epiphyses&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At 1 month after birth human has joints made not of bone tissue, but of hyaline cartilage, which gives only light shadow on xray images: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2013/04/22/10659039/humanknee.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ww1.prweb.com/prfiles/2013/04/22/10659039/humanknee.png&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some guidelines for puppies and their soft bones by Jane Killion &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.puppyculture.com/appropriate-exercise.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.puppyculture.com/appropriate-exercise.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Growth plates gradually thin as hormonal changes approaching puberty signal the growth plates to close.  In puppies, this closure is normally completed by approximately 18 months old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Until the growth plates close, they’re soft and vulnerable to injury.  After sexual maturity, the growth plates calcify and the rapid cell division ends.  The growth plate becomes a stable, inactive, part of the bone, now known as an epiphyseal line.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;..   Injury to a growth plate can result in a misshapen or shortened limb which, in turn, can create an incorrect angle to a joint which can make the puppy more prone to yet more injuries when he grows up.&#xA;  In addition to having soft growth plates at the end of long bones, a puppy’s bones in general are “softer.”&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  ... you may find yourself clutching your puppy, afraid to let him move lest he breaks a limb.  Relax!  Not only is appropriate exercise not dangerous for your puppy, exercise has been shown to increase bone density in children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jumping off of beds and couches are major causes of  spiral fractures in puppies - we are constantly on guard until our puppies reach two years old and keep them off furniture and beds unless we’re there to help them off.  We also use heavy carpet pads and carpets around all furniture and beds to cushion impact, should a young (or old) dog slip by and get up on a high piece of furniture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Probably the biggest cause of growth plate and soft tissue injury is repetitive exercise with a young puppy.  So, until he’s about 18 months old, long hikes and walks are out and lots of free-play sessions are in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Speaking of hikes,  if you’re an outdoorsy type of person, you should bring your puppy along on hikes - its great socialization for puppies under 12 weeks old, and great enrichment for older puppies. But just like when you take a small child on a walk,  be prepared to carry your puppy a good portion of the way.  If you’re jogging or walking on a manicured trail or paved park road, consider investing a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.puppyculture.com/images/stroller1.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;puppy stroller&lt;/a&gt; to put your tyke in for most of the walk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10996" LastEditorUserId="10996" LastEditDate="2015-04-13T03:48:54.807" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T03:48:54.807" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27348" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17229" CreationDate="2015-04-13T05:00:21.837" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is paper &quot;Development of oil formation theories and their importance for peak oil&quot; (2010) - &lt;a href=&quot;http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:338107/FULLTEXT01.pdf&quot;&gt;http://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:338107/FULLTEXT01.pdf&lt;/a&gt; about oil origins and their relations for finite oil supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abiotic petroleum formation theories are largely irrelevant to the debate about peak oil,&#xA;  unless it is assumed that the most extreme version of the abiotic oil theory, namely the &quot;strong one&quot; is a reality. However, such spectacular claims necessitate comprehensive and convincing evidence. In what might be a reasonably realistic version of the abiotic theory, massive abiotic oil discoveries and their rapid development would be able, at most, to postpone the date of the peak by some years or decades in the weak case, but it would not be able to remove the notion of an ultimate production peak at some time. Peak oil is a matter of extraction rates and flows, not oil formation theories. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With biogenic formation there are algae and bit of plants (no animals) were buried and converted into oil in some specific conditions (no oxygen, depth no more than 5 km, specific temperature) in &lt;strong&gt;several hundreds millions of years&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Usual oil production can lift only up to 20-40 % of oil in the underground (with massive water flooding of reservoir), this is called &lt;em&gt;oil recovery factor&lt;/em&gt;. Only very expensive and rare process, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_oil_recovery&quot;&gt;Enhanced oil recovery&lt;/a&gt; will change this percentage to 30-60.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human extracted around 15-20% of this in &lt;strong&gt;1 hundred years&lt;/strong&gt;; the rate of extraction is &lt;strong&gt;millions time faster&lt;/strong&gt; than rate of formation. In next 50-100 years it may be possible to extract 15-20% more of oil; more then half can't be extracted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For abiotic oil genesis the paper gives two variants, weak and strong. Weak have no difference for finite oil from biogenic; and strong have no evidence to be true. Also, human will increase production rate while he can, and sometimes out extraction rate will be greater than any replacing rate (same peak of oil, just bit later):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &quot;weak&quot;  abiotic oil theory: oil is abiotically formed at rates not higher than those that petroleum geologists assume for oil formation according to the conventional biogenic&#xA;  theory. &#xA;  The &quot;strong&quot; abiotic theory: oil is formed at a speed sufficient to replace the oil&#xA;  reservoirs as we deplete them, that is, at a rate something like 10 000 times faster than&#xA;  known in conventional petroleum geology. In some cases, this version of theory claims&#xA;  that there exist true &quot;oceans of oil&quot; deep within the earth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Author's description of both theories:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The weak abiotic theory does not change the fact that we are extracting oil much faster&#xA;  than it is being generated. For this reason, it does not change the fundamentals of peak oil theory. Nor does it remove the concept of a production peak at some point. In fact, one can easily swap biogenic petroleum formation theory for weak abiotic oil genesis and still derive the same type of arguments for a coming peak since it is production flows that matter. Mankind is still using oil much faster than it is regenerated by nature and sooner or later the oil reserves will be depleted and force the onset of decline and peak production, regardless of biogenic or weak abiotic oil formation theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Strong abiotic oil genesis is a completely different topic, as it would imply that oil is created naturally at least as fast as we are currently extracting it or even faster. In the most convenient (from a human viewpoint) version of the theory, the wells being exploited today are connected to ultra-deep reservoirs that slowly (or rapidly) refill them. In this version, the theory allows for a virtually endless plateau production at some level of oil consumption. However, at some point production will eventually match the creation rate and, consequently, limit oil utilization. Therefore, the arrival of a maximum sustainable production level is still valid but it would be a plateau rather than a peak. This occurrence would likely postpone the &quot;end of oil&quot; far into the future and cause it to occur only when futuristic energy sources ought to have been invented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It goes without saying, however, that &lt;em&gt;even the most enthusiastic supporter of the abiotic&#xA;  oil theory cannot show any evidence for the &quot;strong&quot; version&lt;/em&gt; of the theory, at least in the papers published in scientific journals. It is another matter in the popular press, where wild claims have often been made. Such &lt;em&gt;claims are more the result of wishful thinking than any quantitative evaluation&lt;/em&gt; based on scientific methodology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, &lt;strong&gt;there will be peak&lt;/strong&gt;, when humankind will produce some amount of oil per day (around 95-100 millions of barrels), and after this event oil production will decline. There will be a lot of oil underground, but with time it is harder  and harder to get it out. Under &quot;harder&quot; I mean several things: high price of oil (100 $ / barrel or 200$ / barrel) is not enough to keep 95 mbbl/day level of production; we need to invest some energy into EOR processes and oil lifting. There is last point - when you need to invest same amount of energy to get the barrel which is equal to the energy of this oil barrel (EROEI = 1) - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested&lt;/a&gt; (PS: biodiesel and Ethanol corn have 1.3 EROEI which is very low; shale oil was estimated at EROEI=3, and Canadian bitumen tar sands was estimated as EROEI=3).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS: Fortune article you linked was about &lt;strong&gt;White Tiger Field&lt;/strong&gt;. Online copy of article &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/02/17/337289/index.htm&quot;&gt;http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2003/02/17/337289/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;  and &lt;strong&gt;oil is in basement rock (it is true)&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;With the White Tiger Field in Vietnam, 90% of the production is coming from basement rock, where there were never any fossils,&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but the &lt;strong&gt;next phrase is false:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;What they've been teaching us in school about oil coming from fossils is wrong.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia says that Tiger has its oil in granite, but the original source of this oil is fossil &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%E1%BA%A1ch_H%E1%BB%95_oil_field&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%E1%BA%A1ch_H%E1%BB%95_oil_field&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bạch Hổ is not the only oil field convincingly shown to be hosted in granite;[3] however, inspection of the seismic profile of the area shows faulted basement passive margin which is sealed by an onlapping sedimentary sequence.[4][5]&#xA;  It is plausible that the &lt;strong&gt;oil has migrated laterally&lt;/strong&gt; from the lowermost, mature sediments &lt;strong&gt;into the fault systems within the granite&lt;/strong&gt;. The seismic profile shows a definite basement horst with onlapping sedimentary source rocks, draped by a reservoir seal.[6] This trap view would see the oil migrate up the horst bounding faults from the lower source units, into the trap unit draped over the top.&#xA;  Upon examination of the source rock and oil content, petrogeologists have emphasized that the &lt;strong&gt;oil's components indicate a lacustrine organic&lt;/strong&gt; facies with lipid-rich, &lt;strong&gt;land-plant debris and fresh-water algal material, refuting theories of abiogenic origin&lt;/strong&gt; in this area.[4]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia has wrong link for [4], the correct one is &lt;a href=&quot;http://archives.aapg.org/explorer/2005/02feb/vietnam.cfm&quot;&gt;http://archives.aapg.org/explorer/2005/02feb/vietnam.cfm&lt;/a&gt; (can somebody fix it?) - DAVID BROWN, Offshore Plays Boosting Production. Vietnam Finds Oil in the Basement, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Association_of_Petroleum_Geologists&quot;&gt;AAPG&lt;/a&gt; EXPLORER, February 2005 &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wallace G. Dow, an AAPG member and consultant in The Woodlands, Texas, calls the Cuu Long oil &quot;paraffinic, classic lacustrine crude&quot; expelled into fractured basement from lower source rock.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The oils in the basement are virtually identical to the oils in the sandstone sitting around the basement,&quot; Dow said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;This is the key -- they migrate updip through faults into the basement, in horst blocks,&quot; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dow emphasized that the oil's components indicate a lacustrine organic facies with lipid-rich, land-plant debris and fresh-water algal material, refuting theories of abiogenic origin in this area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10996" LastActivityDate="2015-04-13T05:00:21.837" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27351" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27338" CreationDate="2015-04-13T15:16:32.660" Score="71" Body="&lt;h1&gt;How swallowing works&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swallowing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Swallowing&lt;/a&gt; is how food and liquid normally move from the mouth to the stomach via the esophagus. It is initiated by a voluntary formation of a &lt;em&gt;bolus&lt;/em&gt; (clump) of food and/or liquid and its movement to the rear of the mouth. That triggers an &lt;em&gt;involuntary&lt;/em&gt; reaction that leads to the remainder of the swallowing reflex, including occlusion of the pharynx and larynx (protecting your breathing path) and presentation of the esophageal opening. Eventually, the bolus reaches the esophagus and is carried to the stomach via &lt;em&gt;esophageal peristalsis&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bolus does not fall down the esophagus; it is carried down the esophagus by waves of muscular contractions. The function of peristalsis is to &amp;quot;propel swallowed food or fluid into the stomach&amp;quot;. (Patterson, 2006).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nature.com/gimo/contents/pt1/images/gimo13-v1.mov&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This video&lt;/a&gt; is a videofluoroscopy of swallowing and esophageal peristalsis. The content is a barium sulfate suspension. (Video from Patterson, 2006.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qqBNs.gif&quot; alt=&quot;videofluoroscopy of swallowing and esophageal peristalsis&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Speed of peristalsis&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Patterson, 2006):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The peristaltic velocity averages about 3 cm/sec in the upper esophagus, then accelerates to about 5 cm/sec in the mid-esophagus, and slows again to approximately 2.5 cm/sec distally.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That speed is affected by the viscosity and body position (among other things).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Dooley &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt;, 1988) found that &amp;quot;increasing bolus viscosity [...] elicited a slowing of wave velocity, an increase in wave duration, and a prolongation of lower esophageal sphincter relaxation&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Dooley &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt;, 1989) found that &amp;quot;in the upright position, the water bolus caused an increased velocity of propagation in the &lt;em&gt;proximal esophageal segment&lt;/em&gt; that was associated with a shortening of lower esophageal sphincter relaxation time and reductions in amplitude and duration of contraction&amp;quot;. The proximal esophageal segment is the segment nearest the mouth. In other words, the finding was that the upright position increased the speed of the peristalsis at the beginning of the swallow, not the end. They say, &amp;quot;we can conclude that [for nonviscous liquids] the peristaltic wave travels faster through the more proximal esophagus and slows to its normal rate (or slower) in the distal esophagus with assumption of the upright position.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/labVe.png&quot; alt=&quot;Speed of peristalsis of a nonviscous fluid&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Figure from (Dooley, 1989)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In their methods, &amp;quot;upright&amp;quot; meant seated and it was compared against supine (laying down).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any studies that showed that the speed of peristalsis differed between sitting and standing subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The claim&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientifically, drinking while standing lets water hit the lower part of the esophagus strongly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Water doesn't &lt;em&gt;hit&lt;/em&gt; any part of the esophagus. It is carried by the esophagus and in contact with it the entire time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which finally leads to a medical condition called &amp;quot;GERD: GastroEsophageal Reflux Disease&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My review of GERD research (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3058591/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://farncombe.mcmaster.ca/documents/ArmstrongCurrOpinPharmacol200556589-95.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180330071552/http://gsresidency.surgery.med.ubc.ca/files/2014/01/Rosemurgy_Gastroesophageal-Reflux-Disease_2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;, and many others &lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=gastrointestinal%20reflux%20disease&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) doesn't reveal any speculation that standing while drinking has any connection to the onset of GERD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is possible that the claim (that standing while drinking leads to GERD) is true, the proposed mechanism isn't consistent with our knowledge of how swallowing works and I can't find any studies demonstrating or even speculating about the effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;References&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;William G. Patterson. &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20200806125449/https://www.nature.com/gimo/contents/pt1/full/gimo13.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Esophageal peristalsis&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;. GI Motility online (2006) doi:10.1038/gimo13&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C. P. Dooley, B. Schlossmacher, J. E. Valenzuela. &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://journals.physiology.org/doi/abs/10.1152/ajpgi.1988.254.1.g8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Effects of alterations in bolus viscosity on esophageal peristalsis in humans&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;. American Journal of Physiology - Gastrointestinal and Liver Physiology Published 1 January 1988 Vol. 254 no. 1, G8-G11&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C. P. Dooley, B. Schlossmacher, J. E. Valenzuela. &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2582978/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Modulation of esophageal peristalsis by alterations of body position. Effect of bolus viscosity&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;. Digestive Diseases and Sciences. 1989 Nov;34(11):1662-7.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorUserId="6886" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2023-07-22T19:45:41.187" LastActivityDate="2023-07-22T19:45:41.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27352" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27354" CreationDate="2015-04-13T16:47:01.597" Score="60" ViewCount="9561" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.dotcommerce.ro/2011/04/you-think-you-had-bad-luck-think-again.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt; by dotcommerce.ro called &lt;em&gt;You think you had bad luck ? Think again!&lt;/em&gt; this story was mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It’s either a case of the worst luck in history or the best:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1829, a ship called The Mermaid was four days away from her destination of Sydney, Australia, when a massive storm struck and drove the ship into a reef. All twenty-two people on board survived and were able to swim to safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three days later, the Swiftsure rescued them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Five days later, the Swiftsure sank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Victims from both ships were rescued by the schooner Governor Ready.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three hours later, the Governor Ready caught fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Comet pulled everyone from lifeboats and brought them aboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Five days later, the Comet sank. (The crew went for help in the longboat, leaving the passengers floating in the water.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eighteen hours later, the mail boat Jupiter pulled everyone out of the ocean.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In under twelve hours, the Jupiter sank.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everyone was rescued by the passenger vessel The City of Leeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Four days later, The City of Leeds docked in Sydney, Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bad luck was that five ships were lost—the good luck was that not a single person died.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This tale is copied elsewhere on the web, but it's never backed up by references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as I'm concerned, it isn't true. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wrecksite.eu/wreck-search.aspx?&amp;amp;se=NsmKW1NwBo8mw/vM95+aWQ==&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wrecksite.eu&lt;/a&gt; has a record of a ship called the &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt; that sank in 1829, but it's a European site and &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt; is a common ship name (as evidenced by the other results), so its bearing on the disaster is doubtful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia's convenient &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_1829&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of shipwrecks in 1829&lt;/a&gt; mentions &lt;em&gt;Swiftsure&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Governor Ready&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Comet&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;Jupiter&lt;/em&gt;, but they wrecked so far apart as to be implausible for the tale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25825" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-01-01T03:35:39.973" Title="Were Mermaid passengers shipwrecked by 5 different vessels before being successfully rescued?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27353" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27352" CreationDate="2015-04-13T17:44:41.363" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y5gBV.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/y5gBVm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;HMS Mermaid&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;The HMS Mermaid&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The account is largely true.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Royal Navy's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Mermaid_(1817)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;HMS Mermaid&lt;/a&gt; (after a distinguished career) did &lt;a href=&quot;https://dmzapp17p.ris.environment.gov.au/shipwreck/public/wreck/wreck.do?key=2868&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sink&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;https://anmm.wordpress.com/2009/12/21/a-model-tale/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1829&lt;/a&gt;. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_National_Maritime_Museum&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Australian National Maritime Museum&lt;/a&gt; salvaged the wreck in 2009 and wrote about the ship (and the subsequent misfortune) in its quarterly magazine, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anmm.gov.au/learn/library-and-research/signals-magazine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Signals&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from page 17 of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://issuu.com/anmmuseum/docs/signals_86&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;March-April-May issue&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That afternoon at 1730, during another attempt to drive the vessel over the reef, Mermaid rolled over onto her beam ends and within a few minutes the hull was breeched. At 2000 hours the crew abandoned ship and took to the boats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On 24 June 1829, &lt;strong&gt;after 11 days&lt;/strong&gt; in the open boats, the crew were rescued by the small schooner &lt;strong&gt;Admiral Gifford&lt;/strong&gt;. On account of overcrowding, the survivors were transferred to the much larger wooden brig &lt;strong&gt;Swiftsure&lt;/strong&gt; on 3 July – and on board this vessel they were promptly wrecked again off Cape Sidmouth, just 18 hours later! According to &lt;em&gt;The Sydney Gazette&lt;/em&gt; of 26 November 1829, the crew of the Mermaid was to endure &lt;strong&gt;two further shipwrecks&lt;/strong&gt; (on &lt;strong&gt;Governor Ready&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Comet&lt;/strong&gt;) before being landed at Port Raffles. Here they embarked on the government brig &lt;strong&gt;Amity&lt;/strong&gt; which sailed westwards for King George Sound, before finally returning some of the crew to Sydney five months later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sportdiver.com/keywords/hm-schooner-mermaid/wreck-finds-hm-schooner-mermaid&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An interview with the museum's curator&lt;/a&gt; reiterates this account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there's no mention in this write-up of the mail boat, &lt;em&gt;Jupiter&lt;/em&gt; or the &lt;em&gt;City of Leeds&lt;/em&gt;. But an &lt;em&gt;Admiral Gifford&lt;/em&gt; is mentioned. Some other minor details are also in conflict. However, it is true that at least four of the ships involved were wrecked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A different source, a copy of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Australian_(1824_newspaper)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Australian&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/36867550&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;25 November, 1829&lt;/a&gt; does note that a ship named &lt;em&gt;Jupiter&lt;/em&gt; did crash into reefs off Cairncross Island and suffer serious damage. It also notes the wrecks of the &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Comet&lt;/em&gt;, and &lt;em&gt;Swiftsure&lt;/em&gt;. The &lt;em&gt;Admiral Gifford&lt;/em&gt; also eventually had rudder problems :o&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.environment.gov.au/topics/heritage/historic-shipwrecks/australian-national-shipwreck-database&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Australian National Shipwreck Database&lt;/a&gt; does not include any vessels named Jupiter either. The four wrecks mentioned in the National Maritime Museum account do have entries along with maps (&lt;a href=&quot;https://dmzapp17p.ris.environment.gov.au/shipwreck/public/wreck/wreck.do?key=2868&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mermaid&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://dmzapp17p.ris.environment.gov.au/shipwreck/public/wreck/wreck.do?key=3170&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Swiftsure&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://dmzapp17p.ris.environment.gov.au/shipwreck/public/wreck/wreck.do?key=2565&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Governor Ready&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://dmzapp17p.ris.environment.gov.au/shipwreck/public/wreck/wreck.do?key=2338&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Comet&lt;/a&gt;) pinpointing their wrecks (which are in relative proximity to each other).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Okc7E.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Okc7Em.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Governor Ready sinking&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;sub&gt;The crew abandon a sinking &lt;em&gt;Governor Ready&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ANMM's article references a &lt;a href=&quot;http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/2193945&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;26 November 1829 article&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Gazette&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sydney Gazette (and New South Wales Advertiser)&lt;/a&gt; (an &amp;quot;official publication of the government of New South Wales&amp;quot;) which reads as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Captain Nolbrow, who is well known here as an old commander, trading to our shores, arrived by the Calista. He has been singularly unfortunate, more so than we ever remember to have heard of in the instance of any surviving shipwrecked mariner. He sailed from Sydney in the Mermaid, Colonial Government cutter, for Port Raffles, which settlement, our readers are aware, the Government of the sister Colony has, by order from home, caused to be evacuated. &lt;strong&gt;On entering Torres' Straits, the Mermaid got a-shore and was lost.&lt;/strong&gt; All on board saved, upon a rock. In &lt;strong&gt;three days&lt;/strong&gt; the ship &lt;strong&gt;Swiftsure&lt;/strong&gt;, which sailed from this port, hove in sight, and took on board Captain Nolbrow and his crew. In three days she got on shore and was wrecked, all on board saved. In a day or two the &lt;strong&gt;Governor Ready&lt;/strong&gt;, also from this port, passing within sight, took the shipwrecked people onboard, and was in three days himself wrecked, but all the people saved. The ship &lt;strong&gt;Comet&lt;/strong&gt;, also from this port, soon after took the whole of the collected crews of the lost ships on board, and was herself wrecked also in a day or two, but all the people saved. At last the ship &lt;strong&gt;Jupiter&lt;/strong&gt;, also from this port, came in sight and taking all on board steered for Port Raffles, at the entrance of which harbour she got on shore and received so much damage that she may be said to half wrecked. There however, Captain Nolbrow found the Government brig &lt;strong&gt;Amity&lt;/strong&gt; in which he embarked, and strange to say this vessel also was, as we have stated in the former part of this article, nearly wrecked in Gage's Roads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This piece published only a few months after the event does conform just about completely with the story as related in the OP. The &lt;em&gt;Jupiter&lt;/em&gt; is stated to have &amp;quot;half-wrecked&amp;quot; and even the &lt;em&gt;Amity&lt;/em&gt;, &amp;quot;nearly wrecked&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T16:08:45.890" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27352" CreationDate="2015-04-13T18:54:05.700" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Braidwood_Wilson&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Thomas Braidwood Wilson&lt;/a&gt; of the Royal Geographical Society kept a daily log published in 1835 as &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=YcwNAAAAQAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA83&amp;amp;dq=%22Swiftsure%22+%22governor+ready%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=Bf0rVfnGAfWLsQS80oD4Cg&amp;amp;ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=snippet&amp;amp;q=mermaid&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Narrative of a Voyage Round the World; Comprehending an Account of the Wreck of the Ship Governor Ready in Torres Straits&lt;/a&gt;, which together with other first-hand accounts prove that the story in the OP is largely false:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt; wrecked 13 June 1829.  &quot;The crew took to the whale-boat, and, after three days, were picked up by the schooner Admiral Gifford, and shortly afterwards sent on board the Swiftsure; which ship was, on July 5th, wrecked off Cape Sidmouth&quot; (quoting from page 83).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Swiftsure&lt;/em&gt; crews were brought to land at Raffles Bay by the &lt;strong&gt;Resource&lt;/strong&gt; 22 July 1829.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Amity&lt;/em&gt; was in port at Raffles Bay when the &lt;em&gt;Resource&lt;/em&gt; arrived and had been expecting the &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt;, but the &lt;em&gt;Resource&lt;/em&gt; came instead.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A detailed first-hand account of the wreck of the &lt;em&gt;Governor Ready&lt;/em&gt; is also given, but this was an earlier event.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Governor Ready&lt;/em&gt; was irreparably damaged at 2:45 PM 18 May 1829 (see page 12).  The crew travels in three of their smaller boats (skiff, jolly-boat, long-boat) until they meet the docked &lt;em&gt;Amity&lt;/em&gt; on 02 June 1829 (see pages 45-49).  At this point the crew of the &lt;em&gt;Governor Ready&lt;/em&gt; separates, Captain Young going to Batavia on the long boat, and Dr. Wilson going to Raffles Bay on the &lt;em&gt;Amity&lt;/em&gt;.  The &lt;em&gt;Amity&lt;/em&gt; reaches Raffles Bay 2PM 31 June 1829 (see page 71).   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that the author Dr. Wilson was actually aboard the &lt;em&gt;Governor Ready&lt;/em&gt; when the wreck occurred, and personally met with the master of the &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt; when the &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt; crew arrived on the &lt;em&gt;Resource&lt;/em&gt;, the portion of the story in the question concerning the &lt;em&gt;Governor Ready&lt;/em&gt; is inaccurate.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the &lt;em&gt;Comet&lt;/em&gt;, as reported in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/32876206/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;19 October 1829 London Times&lt;/a&gt;, explaining that the second officer and a seaman of the Comet arrived in Cowes on 17 October (on the &lt;em&gt;Maria&lt;/em&gt; having departed Batavia 30 June) to account for the wreck of the Comet to her owners and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 2nd officer stated that the Comet sailed from Sydney for Batavia on the 13th of April, made Torres Strait on the 5th of May. On the 6th at 4 a. m., thick weather, struck on a reef ... and was a complete wreck, the surf running so high that no boat could be put out obliged the crew to remain three days exposed ...subsisting on raw beef; at the expiration of that time succeeded ...steered north for Murray's Island, at 4PM saw it, and a brig at anchor; at 6 got on board, which proved to be the Fairfield, of Aberdeen, Captain Both, who recieved us politely, and attended to our immediate wants  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the &lt;em&gt;Jupiter&lt;/em&gt;, in the same article the 2nd officer continues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;on the 14th of May the Fairfield spoke the ship Jupiter...which had struck on Boot reef...she was proceeding to Calcutta for repairs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2nd officer further states: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prior to the Maria's leaving Batavia, Captain Young, formerly of the ship Governor Reading [sic], of London, had arrived there with part of his crew, that ship having been unfortunately wrecked on a shoal in the vicinity of Murray's Island&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the order of events is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6 May 1829&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Comet&lt;/em&gt; wrecks (crew rescued by &lt;em&gt;Fairfield&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;14 May 1829&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Jupiter&lt;/em&gt; is proceeding to Calcutta for repairs&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;18 May 1829&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Governor Ready&lt;/em&gt; wrecks (crew eventually reaches the &lt;em&gt;Amity&lt;/em&gt; 02 June) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;13 June 1829&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt; wrecks (crew eventually rescued by the &lt;em&gt;Admiral Gifford&lt;/em&gt;, transferred to &lt;em&gt;Swiftsure&lt;/em&gt;)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5 July 1829&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Swiftsure&lt;/em&gt; wrecks (crew rescued by &lt;em&gt;Resource&lt;/em&gt;)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;22 July 1829&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;em&gt;Resource&lt;/em&gt; brings crews of &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Swiftsure&lt;/em&gt; to port at Raffles Bay where the &lt;em&gt;Amity&lt;/em&gt; is expecting the &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this timeline is can be seen that the story in the OP is very inaccurate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That the &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Swiftsure&lt;/em&gt; crews were transferred to the &lt;em&gt;Resource&lt;/em&gt; rather than the &lt;em&gt;Governor Ready&lt;/em&gt; is further corroborated by  a letter from Samuel Nolbrow, the captain of the &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt; published in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/8644632&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;30 October 1829 Colonial Times article&lt;/a&gt;, which further confirms:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Governor Ready&lt;/em&gt; wrecked 3PM on 18 May 1829. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt; was abandoned 8PM 13 June 1829&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Swiftsure&lt;/em&gt; was lost 4 July 1829 and crew was rescued by &lt;em&gt;Resource&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Date of &lt;em&gt;Comet&lt;/em&gt; wreck is not stated, but article says crew was rescued by the &lt;em&gt;Fairfield&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As further confirmation see the first hand account of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collet_Barker&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Collet Barker&lt;/a&gt;, commander of the Raffles Bay settlement publishied as &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?ei=Tm8tVcHOM7eOsQTi8YGQDw&amp;amp;id=NYugAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;dq=swiftsure%20mermaid%20resource&amp;amp;focus=searchwithinvolume&amp;amp;q=resource&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Commandant of Solitude: The Journals of Captain Collet Barker, 1828-1831&lt;/a&gt;, which explains that Dr. Wilson first wrecked on the &lt;em&gt;Governor Reidy&lt;/em&gt; [sic], and came to Raffles Bay on the &lt;em&gt;Amity&lt;/em&gt;.  Then on 22 July the &lt;em&gt;Resource&lt;/em&gt; arrived with the crews of the &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Swiftsure&lt;/em&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, published in &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=pSpAAQAAMAAJ&amp;amp;q=swiftsure%20resource%20nolbrow&amp;amp;dq=swiftsure%20resource%20nolbrow&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=V61YVctZyeywBdeIgKgG&amp;amp;ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Historical Records of Australia: Despatches and papers relating to the settlement of the states&lt;/a&gt;, Australia Parliament Joint Library Committee, at page 835, is a 22 August 1829 letter from Collet Barker:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...loss of the Mermaid, which I regret to state was wrecked in Torres Strait on the 13 June.  Her crew were all saved and were brought here by the Resource, the Master of which wished to have left them in consequence of being short of provisions and having with him the crew of another wrecked vessel, the Swiftsure. He consented however to take them except the Master, Mr. Nolbrow, on my supplying them with thirty two days provisions. I ordered Mr. Nolbrow on board the Amity and receiving an urgent request from Mr. Hastings,&#xA;  Chief Mate, and Thos. Long, Seaman, to be allowed to go to Sydney, I also ordered them a passage in the same vessel&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the Jupiter arrived in Calcutta 5 July 1829, as recorded at &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=rCkoAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=Asiatic%20Journal%201830&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=No1bVcXwKqLasASY0YGwCg&amp;amp;ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=jupiter&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;page 32 of The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China and Australasia, vol. 1, January-April 1830&lt;/a&gt; and was not unrepairable but instead was in service in the Persian Gulf by May of 1830 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=9xoYAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA87&amp;amp;dq=jupiter%20persian%20weldy&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=1O9dVfeOIpf_sATjhIGQAg&amp;amp;ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=jupiter%20persian%20weldy&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Calcutta Magazine and Monthly Register, October 1830, page 87&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also in the above volume of Asiatic Journal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Swiftsure, Johnson, of London, from New South Wales, was wrecked 4th July Torres Straits. The crew and passengers were saved by the Resource, Smith, and had arrived at the Mauritius 17th Aug., with part of the cargo, stores &amp;amp;c.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary the first hand accounts of Dr. Wilson, captain Nolbrow, and Collet Barker all show that the only true parts of the story are that the &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt; wrecked, the crew was rescued by the &lt;em&gt;Swiftsure&lt;/em&gt; which also wrecked and both crews were rescued.  It is also true that the &lt;em&gt;Governor Ready&lt;/em&gt; and &lt;em&gt;Comet&lt;/em&gt; wrecked in the same time period, but these were earlier events, and the &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt; crew was not rescued by these ships.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The inaccurate tale in the OP originates from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/2193945&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;26 November 1829 story&lt;/a&gt; in the Sydney Gazette, which could easily be mistaken for the truth, but for the existence of &lt;em&gt;Mermaid&lt;/em&gt; Captain Nolbrow's 30 October 1829 letter published in the Colonial Times, the day-by-day accounts of Dr. Wilson and Collet Barker, and the account of 2nd officer of the &lt;em&gt;Comet&lt;/em&gt; in the 19 October 1829 London Times.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The evidence agrees with the conclusion of maritime historian &lt;a href=&quot;http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/bateson-charles-henry-9452&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Charles Bateson&lt;/a&gt;, as stated in his book &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=U9E3AQAAIAAJ&amp;amp;q=%22Australian%20Shipwrecks:%201622-1850%22%20ridiculous&amp;amp;dq=%22Australian%20Shipwrecks:%201622-1850%22%20ridiculous&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=xd4vVZiFLMTjsAS8o4GgAQ&amp;amp;ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Australian Shipwrecks: 1622-1850&lt;/a&gt; at page 87: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...both crews were rescued by the Resource which landed them at Port Raffles...statement that crews of the Mermaid and Swiftsure were taken aboard the Governor Ready and after the latter's wreck all three crews were wrecked in the Comet and finally, along with the Comet's crew, in the Jupiter, is ridiculous &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-05-21T15:02:21.983" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T15:02:21.983" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22888" CreationDate="2015-04-13T21:16:09.717" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim's numbers of 600, 140, and 20 need to be put in context. The 600-count was on a &quot;&lt;em&gt;particularly dirty tablet&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, not the typical tablet. They go on to say the &quot;&lt;em&gt;typical toilet seat&lt;/em&gt; we tested had a Staphylococcus count of less than 20 units&quot;. That greatly weakens the claim, but the general message it conveys is supported by other studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In (Scott 2008), they found that 14% of toilet seats, 15% of kitchen phones, and 13% of phones in general tested positive for &lt;em&gt;S aureus&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In (Scott 2009), they counted occurrences of &quot;coagulase-negative (CN) &lt;em&gt;Staphylococcus&lt;/em&gt; sp, methicillin-sensitive &lt;em&gt;Staphyloccus aureus&lt;/em&gt; (MSSA) and MRSA, &lt;em&gt;Pseudomonas&lt;/em&gt; sp, and members of the &lt;em&gt;Enterobacteriaceae&lt;/em&gt;.&quot; The 25th percentile, median, and 75th percentile counts for the surfaces in question were found to be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Toilet bowl&lt;/strong&gt;: 0, 0, 4.7&amp;times;10&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Toilet seat&lt;/strong&gt;: 0, 0, 80&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Kitchen phone&lt;/strong&gt;: 0, 40, 450&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those two studies don't directly address the exact claim in question. They compared toilet seats to fixed household and office phones, not mobile phones. (Scott 2008) only looked at percentage of surfaces that were contaminated, not bacterial counts, and (Scott 2009) reported bacterial counts, but not isolated to &lt;em&gt;Staphylococcus aureus&lt;/em&gt;. However, the claim in the question is not contradicted by these studies' findings. For example, the kitchen phones were found to have a higher bacterial count (across all species of interest) than the toilet seat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Walia 2014) gives an explanation: &quot;they come into contact with more parts of our body and a wider range of bacteria than toilet seats&quot;, and &quot;this type of bacteria multiply at high temperatures and our phones are perfect for breeding these germs, as they’re kept warm and cozy in our pockets, handbags and brief cases&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bacterial contamination of mobile phones is a recognized risk in the clinical setting. (Visvanathan 2012) says, &quot;It is concerning that these devices have been found to harbor such a variety of multidrug-resistant pathogens&quot;, and &quot;Mobile phone decontamination to reduce the risk of cross contamination has been widely advocated.&quot; Only 50.9% of patients &quot;had ever cleaned their phones&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What should you do about this? Just use an alcohol wipe. &quot;Decolonization with 70% isopropyl alcohol is simple, cheap, and induces a proven significant reduction of bioburden in most reported studies&quot; (Visvanathan 2012).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;References&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scott, E., Duty, S., &amp;amp; Callahan, M. (2008). A pilot study to isolate Staphylococcus aureus and methicillin-resistant S aureus from environmental surfaces in the home. American journal of infection control, 36(6), 458-460.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scott, E., Duty, S., &amp;amp; McCue, K. (2009). A critical evaluation of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus and other bacteria of medical interest on commonly touched household surfaces in relation to household demographics. American journal of infection control, 37(6), 447-453.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Visvanathan, A., Rodrigues, M. A., Brady, R., &amp;amp; Gibb, A. P. (2012). Mobile phone usage in the clinical setting: Evidence-based guidelines for all users is urgently required. American journal of infection control, 40(1), 86-87.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Walia, S. S., Manchanda, A., &amp;amp; Narang, R. S. (2014). Cellular telephone as reservoir of bacterial contamination: myth or fact. Journal of clinical and diagnostic research: JCDR, 8(1), 50.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-10-21T13:41:03.770" LastActivityDate="2015-10-21T13:41:03.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27358" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-14T18:16:27.700" Score="2" ViewCount="3789" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.finitro.fr/finitro-forte-plus-10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This advertisement for a product&lt;/a&gt; says (French original, followed by my translation into English),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finitro Forte Plus montre des résultats surprenants dans le traitement de l'arthrite, de l'arthrose et d'autres problèmes d'articulation, et il est considéré comme le traitement le plus efficace dans le monde entier !&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Conserve la souplesse des articulations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Préserve la solidité des os.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Soulage la douleur.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Soutient la lubrification des articulations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Aide à préserver un cartilage sain.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Pour la construction du nouveau cartilage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;L'élément de reconstruction des articulations.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Comment fonctionne Finitro Forte Plus ?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Finitro Forte Plus est le seul complément alimentaire contenant de la glucosamine, de la chondroïtine et du  Collagène de Type II  , qui est le principal composant du cartilage. Le supplément de ce Collagène de Type II d'excellente qualité permet d'inverser la détérioration du cartilage responsable de l'arthrite. Il inhibe aussi la réponse auto-immune chez les personnes souffrant de rhumatismes, ce qui permet de réduire l'inflammation des articulations. Finitro Forte Plus contient aussi du MSM et des herbes qui ont un effet anti-inflammatoire puissant et, par conséquent, la plupart des personnes qui en prennent remarquent une nette diminution de leurs douleurs articulaires en l'espace de quelques jours.  Finitro Forte Plus est le remède le plus puissant contre les douleurs articulaires.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My translation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... shows surprising results in the treatment of arthritis, arthrosis, and other problems of the articulation, and is considered as the most effective treatment in the entire world!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;hr&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Preserves the suppleness of the joints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Preserves the solidity of the bones&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Relieves pain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Supports the lubrication of the joints&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Helps to preserve a healthy cartilage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;For the construction of new cartilage&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How does Finitro Forte Plus work?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... is the only dietary complement containing &lt;strong&gt;glucosamine&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;chondroitin&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;type 2 collagen&lt;/strong&gt;, which is the principal component of cartilage. The supplementation of this type 2 collagen permits the reversal of the deterioration of the cartilage responsible for arthritis. It also inhibits the auto-immune response with people suffering from rheumatisms, which allows to reduce the inflammation of the articulations (joints). This medicine (named &quot;Finitro Forte&quot;) also contains &lt;strong&gt;MSM&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;herbs which have a powerful anti-inflammatory effect&lt;/strong&gt; and, consequently, most people who take of it notice a distinct reduction of their joint pain in the space of a few days. It's the most powerful remedy against joint pain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ingredients are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.finitro.fr/ingredient&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;listed on this page&lt;/a&gt; and include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Collagen type 2&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Glucosamine sulphate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Chondroitin sulphate&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Harpagophytum procumbens (commonly called &quot;devil's claw&quot;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Boswellia serrata (resin from the incense tree)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Phellodendron amurense Rupr (derived from chinese cork-oak)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Méthylsulfonylméthane (MSM)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Omega 3 fatty acids&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Hyaluronic acid (the principal component of synovial fluid, acts as a joint lubricant)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;DL-α-tocopherol (Vit E)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Urtica dioica (aka the great nettle has a purifying effects)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Magnesium&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I think that glucosamine etc. are widely sold, and I think this is a fairly typical advertisement. But I'm skeptical, because, am I right in thinking that there's no effective treatment for arthritis? Also, collegen for exampe is a type of protein, isn't it, and doesn't everyone synthesize all their protein from the essential amino acids in their diet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question: is there any evidence that this product (whether you call it medicine or dietary supplement) in particular, and/or any other similar product, and/or any of the component of this product, are an effective treatment and/or have any of the beneficial effects claimed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-15T02:18:47.007" LastActivityDate="2021-07-06T22:54:21.487" Title="Is Finitro Forte Plus an effective treatment for arthritis?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27330" CreationDate="2015-04-14T21:16:43.707" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it's an episode of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos:_A_Personal_Voyage&quot;&gt;Cosmos: A Personal Voyage&lt;/a&gt; by Carl Sagan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Cosmos: A Personal Voyage is a thirteen-part television series written by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan, and Steven Soter, with Sagan as presenter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That video is a part of episode 10: &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0760462/?ref_=ttep_ep10&quot;&gt;The Edge of Forever&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A copy of that episode can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1h5ogx_carl-sagan-s-cosmos-e10-the-edge-of-forever_tv&quot;&gt;found on DailyMotion&lt;/a&gt;, and that clip starts at 34m50s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note: the cosmology in the video is a bit dated (the episode is 35 years old!)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2015-04-14T21:16:43.707" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27361" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-15T00:14:30.820" Score="9" ViewCount="358" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can write English well, and can also understand it well (provided someone speaks i a known accent.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For improving my spoken English I have got audio books. I can understand what I am being told by the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are many claims on the internet that reading while listening improves your language skills, for example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Read and listen simultaneously&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading text yourself while you listen to someone speak can prove to be a great strategy for improving your pronunciation. You can instantly pronounce exactly the way you hear the other person speak and also read the text so you remember how to pronounce those words in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/improveenglishpronunciation.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How to Improve Your English Pronunciation&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From - &lt;a href=&quot;http://successfulenglish.com/2010/01/the-power-of-reading-and-listening/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://successfulenglish.com/2010/01/the-power-of-reading-and-listening/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read and listen at the same time. There are benefits to seeing and hearing new language at the same time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the above link they are talking about the fluency of spoken English.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so, I if read the book parallely while listening to the same, is my &lt;strong&gt;spoken (ability to speak)&lt;/strong&gt; English going to be improved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5341" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T16:07:00.723" Title="Does reading what you listen parallely improve your ability to speak English?" Tags="|language|learning|cognitive-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27363" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-15T01:13:14.120" Score="5" ViewCount="477" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know of someone who cannot seem to wear watches without them breaking much quicker than expected. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This person was told it is because their body is producing too much electricity and that by putting nail polish on the reverse of the watch to block the current the watch would work. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also this straight dope thread:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've heard people claim that wrist watches stop working for them after a very short period of time. They replace the batteries, switch watch brands and styles, etc., but to no avail -- every watch quits on them. Even when well taken care of and not dropped, damaged, or submerged, they seem to die after a few months of wearing them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=545968&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Why do wrist watches stop working for some people?&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that, for some people, wrist watches break very often?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25840" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-15T09:13:07.963" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T09:13:07.963" Title="Do watches break very often for some people?" Tags="|consumer-products|electromagnetism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27364" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27365" CreationDate="2015-04-15T03:13:43.417" Score="16" ViewCount="1016" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the New York Times: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/magazine/her-majestys-jihadists.html?smid=tw-nytimes&amp;amp;_r=0&quot;&gt;Her Majesty’s Jihadists&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Her Majesty’s Jihadists&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More British Muslims have joined Islamist militant groups than serve&#xA;  in the country’s armed forces. How to understand the pull of jihad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and from the body of the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ifthekar’s story would become an iconic one of the foreign jihad in&#xA;  Syria. It was recounted to me by Shiraz Maher, a senior research&#xA;  fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization&#xA;  (I.C.S.R.), an innovative institute at King’s College London. Here, a&#xA;  handful of researchers have been charting, following and, in some&#xA;  cases, interacting directly with foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq —&#xA;  through text-messaging and smartphone apps — in hopes of understanding&#xA;  their motivations and their worldview. The center now monitors some&#xA;  700 of the 20,000 foreign fighters from 90 countries around the world.&#xA;  (Foreigners make up half of ISIS’s total fighting force.) An estimated&#xA;  4,000 are from Western nations, some 600 to 700 from Britain alone.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;More British Muslim men have joined ISIS and the Nusra Front than are&#xA;  serving in the British armed forces.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have more British Muslim men joined the Islamist groups ISIS and Nusra Front than are serving the British armed forces?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T17:25:07.213" Title="Have more British Muslims joined Islamist groups than serve in British armed forces?" Tags="|war|united-kingdom|islam|isis|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27365" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27364" CreationDate="2015-04-15T03:13:43.417" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The figures vary. There may or may not be more British Muslims serving Britain than Islamist groups, but figures indicate that Muslims are under-represented in the armed forces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From The Guardian, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/06/british-army-recruit-muslims-low-number-iraq-afghanistan&quot;&gt;British army aims to recruit more Muslims after worries over low numbers&lt;/a&gt; (talking about the army, not the armed forces as a whole)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are 480 Muslims in the army out of an overall strength of 88,500&#xA;  – 0.54%, an increase from 300 in 2008. Muslims comprise about 4.4% of&#xA;  the UK population according to the 2011 census.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An opinion piece &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/muslims-in-the-armed-forces-a-proud-tradition-9226715.html&quot;&gt;Muslims in the armed forces: A proud tradition&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite this, the figures in absolute terms are still small, with&#xA;  around 650 Muslims in the 200,000-strong military making up less than&#xA;  1 per cent of its ratio strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the BBC: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-12504162&quot;&gt;UK's Muslim soldiers ‘fighting extremists not Muslims'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With more than 600 Muslims in the British Armed Forces, do those that&#xA;  are deployed on the front line in Afghanistan have to reconcile their&#xA;  beliefs in order to fight hardline Islamic Taliban militants?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Caveats:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;I haven't critically examined the number of British Muslims serving Islamist groups.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Could estimates about the number of British Muslims in the armed forces be incorrect? Maybe there's people who are Muslim, but haven't mentioned their religious affiliation to those collecting statistics.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Some of those serving the British Armed Forces may be women. It's possible the Islamists have more men, but the British Armed Forces have more people overall.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2015-04-15T21:09:48.377" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T21:09:48.377" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27366" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-15T06:51:51.070" Score="7" ViewCount="22384" Body="&lt;p&gt;I started to write an answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/27328/why-should-we-try-to-reduce-swelling-after-injury&quot;&gt;Why should we try to reduce swelling after injury?&lt;/a&gt; along the following lines:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;There is another reason why suppressing the swelling in response to injury can be important:&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;The swelling makes photographs (X-rays or MRI, I don't remember) harder to interpret. When you arrive at the doctor or first aid and there is no reason to immediately take action, they make make you wait (or your MD will tells you to 'come back tomorrow') to let the swelling subside before taking a picture.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;I heard this in my first aid class last week.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then I tried to find references, but failed to do so - too many hits on the search terms I tried. So I thought I'd better ask ;-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Does a swelling make an X-ray photograph or MRI scan harder to interpret?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it e.g. increase the chance of missing a hair fracture on the scan/photo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user22865" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T07:42:37.277" Title="Does a swelling make an X-ray photograph or MRI scan harder to interpret?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27368" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20313" CreationDate="2015-04-15T12:28:19.013" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The story is false and circulated as a joke on Facebook first and somebody took it too seriously ...&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/jokeoftheday999/posts/10152389120818465&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.facebook.com/jokeoftheday999/posts/10152389120818465&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;..read more about false story research done by...&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.indiacurrents.com/articles/2014/10/12/my-experiment-truth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.indiacurrents.com/articles/2014/10/12/my-experiment-truth&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25847" LastActivityDate="2015-04-15T12:28:19.013" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26942" CreationDate="2015-04-16T04:22:51.327" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;The only thing I can think of that would be a &quot;positive electromagnetic charge&quot; is a missing electron -- static electricity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The body is a pretty good conductor of electricity, &lt;strong&gt;much&lt;/strong&gt; better than the skin.  If it can discharge through your head being on the ground then it can discharge just about as easily from any body part touching the ground--or, more commonly, any grounded object.  (Say, a faucet in any building with metal water pipes.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The body has resistance to current flow. More than 99% of the body's resistance to electric current flow is at the skin. Resistance is measured in ohms. A calloused, dry hand may have more than 100,000 Ω because of a thick outer layer of dead cells in the stratum corneum. The internal body resistance is about 300 Ω, being related to the wet, relatively salty tissues beneath the skin. The skin resistance can be effectively bypassed if there is skin breakdown from high voltage, a cut, a deep abrasion, or immersion in water [...]. The skin acts like an electrical device such as a capacitor in that it allows more current to flow if a voltage is changing rapidly. A rapidly changing voltage will be applied to the palm and fingers of one's hand if it is holding a metal tool that suddenly touches a voltage source. This type of contact will give a much greater current amplitude in the body than would otherwise occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2763825/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2763825/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13464" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-16T05:52:58.147" LastActivityDate="2015-04-16T05:52:58.147" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27373" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-16T14:04:14.930" Score="11" ViewCount="1617" Body="&lt;p&gt;This morning I received a phone call from an unknown caller. I punched the number in Google to see if any hits came up. Unfortunately all I got was the long list of services that show up promising to give you more details on who owns the number if you pay for their service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;a href=&quot;https://directory.youmail.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Youmail directory&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20141112043808/http://www.youmail.com:80/directory/area/301/252&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;archive&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If I were to pay money and sign up for this (or any other reverse phone look up service), would I actually get the name/address/details of the person who owns that number, or would it be a waste of money? If it does work, how do they get that information (e.g. how would they know my cell phone number belongs to me, if I've never publicly listed that information)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8760" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-11-21T13:23:28.233" LastActivityDate="2022-11-21T13:29:38.117" Title="Do reverse phone lookup services work?" Tags="|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27379" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="53528" CreationDate="2015-04-17T02:07:16.607" Score="22" ViewCount="7921" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen several versions of this story.  An aquarium (or pet store, or rich fish collector) noticed that fish were mysteriously vanishing from a tank at night.  After this happened a few times, someone decided to stay overnight to try to find out what was happening.  They discovered that an octopus was getting out of its tank, crawling along the floor to an adjacent tank, eating a fish from the other tank, then returning to its own tank before morning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that octopuses can survive outside the water for some time and that they are notorious escape artists, but this story seems like an urban legend to me.  Is there any proof that it actually happened?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Researchers and aquarium attendants tell tales of octopuses that have tormented and outwitted them. Some captive octopuses lie in ambush and spit in their keepers' faces. Others dismantle pumps and block drains, causing costly floods, or flex their arms in order to pop locked lids. Some have been caught sneaking from their tanks at night into other exhibits, gobbling up fish, then sneaking back to their tanks, damp trails along walls and floors giving them away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://discovermagazine.com/2003/oct/feateye&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Through the Eye of an Octopus — An exploration of the brainpower of a lowly mollusk&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Discover&lt;/em&gt;, October 2013. &lt;/sub&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25870" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2017-10-24T13:15:56.370" LastActivityDate="2022-07-08T05:57:01.340" Title="Did an octopus visit another tank to hunt?" Tags="|zoology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27389" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2274" CreationDate="2015-04-17T17:31:24.883" Score="27" Body="&lt;p&gt;This answer only applies to the United States, which has federal law, and laws for each state and territory. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://ctas-eli.ctas.tennessee.edu/printpdf/book/export/html/1352&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a University of Tennessee document&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is &lt;strong&gt;no constitutional right to make a telephone call upon arrest&lt;/strong&gt; or completion of booking. Cannon v.&#xA;  Montgomery County, 1998 WL 354999 (E.D. Pa. 1998). See also Dietzen v. Mork, 101 F.3d 110 (Table)&#xA;  (7th Cir. 1996) (declining to hold that an arrestee has an absolute constitutional right to a telephone call);&#xA;  State Bank of St. Charles v. Camic, 712 F.2d 1140, 1145 n. 2 (7th Cir.) (&quot;[T]here is no constitutional requirement&#xA;  that a phone call be permitted upon completion of booking formalities.&quot;), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 995&#xA;  (1983); Hodge v. Ruperto, 739 F.Supp. 873, 876 (S.D. N.Y. 1990) (There is no constitutional requirement&#xA;  that a detainee be permitted a telephone call upon completion of booking formalities.). The right to make a&#xA;  telephone call occurs only when certain constitutional rights are implicated, for example the right to consult&#xA;  with counsel. Dietzen, 101 F.3d 110, citing Tucker v. Randall, 948 F.2d 388, 390-391 (7th Cir. 1991).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;where &quot;constitutional right&quot; means the United States constitution (as opposed to a state constitution).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, each state needs to be considered individually as to which telephone rights are afforded persons arrested.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-171.html#NRS171Sec153&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;In Nevada:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NRS 171.153  Right of person arrested to make telephone calls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1.  Any person arrested has the &lt;strong&gt;right to make a reasonable number of completed telephone calls&lt;/strong&gt; from the police station or other place at which the person is booked immediately after the person is booked and, except where physically impossible, no later than 3 hours after the arrest. Such telephone calls may be limited to local calls, except that long distance calls may be made by the arrested person at his or her own expense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2.  A reasonable number of calls must include one completed call to a friend or bail agent and one completed call to an attorney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;NRS 171.1537  Arrest of person with disability: Right to communicate by mail or telephone.  When a person with a disability is detained in custody, the detaining authority shall make available a reasonable means of communication, at least pencil and paper, and at least two envelopes and first-class postage stamps. If the person with a disability so requests, the proper officer of the detaining authority shall make on the person’s behalf the same number and kind of telephone calls which a person arrested is authorized by law or custom to make and shall mail any letters written by that person.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/cacode/PEN/3/2/3/5/s851.5&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Similarly in California:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(a) (1) Immediately upon being booked and, except where physically impossible, no later than three hours after arrest, an arrested person has the right to make &lt;strong&gt;at least three completed telephone calls&lt;/strong&gt;, as described in subdivision (b). (2) The arrested person shall be entitled to make at least three calls at no expense if the calls are completed to telephone numbers within the local calling area or at his or her own expense if outside the local calling area. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(b) At any police facility or place where an arrestee is detained, a sign containing the following information in bold block type shall be posted in a conspicuous place: The arrestee has the right to free telephone calls within the local calling area, or at his or her own expense if outside the local calling area, to three of the following: (1) An attorney of his or her choice or, if he or she has no funds, the public defender or other attorney assigned by the court to assist indigents, whose telephone number shall be posted. This telephone call shall not be monitored, eavesdropped upon, or recorded. (2) A bail bondsman. (3) A relative or other person. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(c) As soon as practicable upon being arrested but, except where physically impossible, no later than three hours after arrest, the arresting or booking officer shall inquire as to whether the arrested person is a custodial parent with responsibility for a minor child. The arresting or booking officer shall notify the arrested person who is a custodial parent with responsibility for a minor child that he or she is entitled to, and may request to, make two additional telephone calls at no expense if the telephone calls are completed to telephone numbers within the local calling area, or at his or her own expense if outside the local calling area, to a relative or other person for the purpose of arranging for the care of the minor child or children in the parent's absence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(d) At any police facility or place where an arrestee is detained, a sign containing the following information in bold block type shall be posted in a conspicuous place: The arrestee, if he or she is a custodial parent with responsibility for a minor child, has the right to two additional telephone calls within the local dialing area, or at his or her own expense if outside the local area, for the purpose of arranging for the care of the minor child or children in the parent's absence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(e) These telephone calls shall be given immediately upon request, or as soon as practicable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(f) The signs posted pursuant to subdivisions (b) and (d) shall make the specified notifications in English and any non-English language spoken by a substantial number of the public, as specified in Section 7296.2 of the Government Code, who are served by the police facility or place of detainment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(g) The rights and duties set forth in this section shall be enforced regardless of the arrestee's immigration status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(h) This provision shall not abrogate a law enforcement officer's duty to advise a suspect of his or her right to counsel or of any other right. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(i) Any public officer or employee who willfully deprives an arrested person of any right granted by this section is guilty of a misdemeanor. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/nycode/CPL/TWO/H/180/180.10#sthash.LttmIfJZ.dpuf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The defendant has a right ....(b) To communicate, free of charge, by letter or by telephone, for the purpose of obtaining counsel and informing a relative or friend that he has been charged with an offense&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartIV/TitleII/Chapter276/Section33A&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Massachusetts:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Section 33A. The police official in charge of the station or other place of detention having a telephone wherein a person is held in custody, shall permit the use of the telephone, at the expense of the arrested person, for the purpose of allowing the arrested person to communicate with his family or friends, or to arrange for release on bail, or to engage the services of an attorney. Any such person shall be informed forthwith upon his arrival at such station or place of detention, of his right to so use the telephone, and such use shall be permitted within one hour thereafter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.touchngo.com/lglcntr/akstats/statutes/title12/chapter25/section150.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alaska:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(b) Immediately after an arrest, a prisoner shall have the right to telephone or otherwise communicate with the prisoner's attorney and any relative or friend, and any attorney at law entitled to practice in the courts of Alaska shall, at the request of the prisoner or any relative or friend of the prisoner, have the right to immediately visit the person arrested. This subsection does not provide a prisoner with the right to initiate communication or attempt to initiate communication under circumstances proscribed under AS 11.56.755 .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lpdirect.net/casb/crs/16-3-402.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Colorado:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;16-3-402. Right to communicate with attorney and family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) Persons who are arrested shall have the right to communicate with an attorney of their choice and a member of their family by making &lt;strong&gt;a reasonable number of telephone calls&lt;/strong&gt; or by communicating in any other reasonable manner. Such communication shall be permitted at the earliest possible time after arrival at the police station, sheriff's office, jail, or other like confinement facility to which such person is first taken after arrest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) If the accused is transferred to a new place of custody, his right to communicate with an attorney and a member of his family is renewed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2.5) If the victim is able to demonstrate through the use of caller identification or other credible evidence that the incarcerated defendant has called the victim from the jail or correctional facility in violation of the protection order issued pursuant to section 18-1-1001, C.R.S., or in violation of any other valid protection order or emergency protection order in effect, the defendant shall not be entitled to further telephone calls except to such defendant's attorney, which calls shall be placed by a jail or correctional facility staff member. If the defendant was arrested for violating an order not to contact certain family members, the right to contact those family members by telephone shall be prohibited, and the jail or correctional facility staff shall place all outgoing telephone calls that the defendant wishes to make that are not identified in the protection order as prohibited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/histatutes/5/38/803/I/803-9&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hawaii:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It shall be unlawful in any case of arrest for examination: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) To unreasonably refuse or fail to make a reasonable effort, where the arrested person so requests and prepays the cost of the message, to send a telephone, cable, or wireless message through a police officer or another than the arrested person to the counsel or member of the arrested person's family&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?ActID=1966&amp;amp;ChapterID=54&amp;amp;SeqStart=3100000&amp;amp;SeqEnd=4200000&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Illinois:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sec. 103-3. Right to communicate with attorney and family; transfers. &#xA;      (a) Persons who are arrested shall have the right to communicate with an attorney of their choice and a member of their family by making a &lt;strong&gt;reasonable number of telephone calls&lt;/strong&gt; or in any other reasonable manner. Such communication shall be permitted within a reasonable time after arrival at the first place of custody. &#xA;      (b) In the event the accused is transferred to a new place of custody his right to communicate with an attorney and a member of his family is renewed &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://coolice.legis.iowa.gov/Cool-ICE/default.asp?category=billinfo&amp;amp;service=IowaCode&amp;amp;ga=83&amp;amp;input=804.20&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Iowa:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;804.20  COMMUNICATIONS BY ARRESTED PERSONS.&#xA;           Any peace officer or other person having custody of any person&#xA;        arrested or restrained of the person's liberty for any reason&#xA;        whatever, shall permit that person, without unnecessary delay after&#xA;        arrival at the place of detention, to call, consult, and see a member&#xA;        of the person's family or an attorney of the person's choice, or&#xA;        both.  Such person shall be permitted to make a &lt;strong&gt;reasonable number of&#xA;        telephone calls&lt;/strong&gt; as may be required to secure an attorney.  If a call&#xA;        is made, it shall be made in the presence of the person having&#xA;        custody of the one arrested or restrained.  If such person is&#xA;        intoxicated, or a person under eighteen years of age, the call may be&#xA;        made by the person having custody.  An attorney shall be permitted to&#xA;        see and consult confidentially with such person alone and in private&#xA;        at the jail or other place of custody without unreasonable delay.  A&#xA;        violation of this section shall constitute a simple misdemeanor.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/2935.20&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ohio:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;2935.20 Right to counsel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After the arrest, detention, or any other taking into custody of a person, with or without a warrant, such person shall be permitted forthwith facilities to communicate with an attorney at law of his choice who is entitled to practice in the courts of this state, or to communicate with any other person of his choice for the purpose of obtaining counsel. Such communication may be made by &lt;strong&gt;a reasonable number of telephone calls&lt;/strong&gt; or in any other reasonable manner. Such person shall have a right to be visited immediately by any attorney at law so obtained who is entitled to practice in the courts of this state, and to consult with him privately. No officer or any other agent of this state shall prevent, attempt to prevent, or advise such person against the communication, visit, or consultation provided for by this section. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whoever violates this section shall be fined not less than twenty-five nor more than one hundred dollars or imprisoned not more than thirty days, or both. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://law.justia.com/codes/tennessee/2010/title-40/chapter-7/part-1/40-7-106&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tennessee:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No person under arrest by any officer or private citizen shall be named in any book, ledger or any other record until after the person has successfully completed &lt;strong&gt;a telephone call to an attorney, relative, minister or any other person&lt;/strong&gt; that the person shall choose, without undue delay. One (1) hour shall constitute a reasonable time without undue delay. However, if the arrested person does not choose to make a telephone call, then the person shall be booked or docketed immediately. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, according to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tn.gov/sos/rules/1400/1400-01.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tennessee Minimum Standards for Local Adult Correctional Facilities&lt;/a&gt; rule 1400-01-.14(1)  &quot;The detainee shall be allowed to complete at least &lt;strong&gt;one (1) telephone call&lt;/strong&gt; to the person of his choice.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://texreg.sos.state.tx.us/public/readtac$ext.TacPage?sl=R&amp;amp;app=9&amp;amp;p_dir=&amp;amp;p_rloc=&amp;amp;p_tloc=&amp;amp;p_ploc=&amp;amp;pg=1&amp;amp;p_tac=&amp;amp;ti=37&amp;amp;pt=9&amp;amp;ch=291&amp;amp;rl=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Texas:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Each facility shall have and implement a written plan, approved by the commission, governing the availability and use of inmate telephones. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) Immediately after booking, but in no case later than four hours after arrival, a person shall be permitted to make &lt;strong&gt;at least two completed telephone calls&lt;/strong&gt;. Toll calls should be made on a prepaid or collect basis. A free telephone shall be available for local calls for those inmates who otherwise would be unable to complete the two required calls. Facilities may have a special line reserved for inmate use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) Each facility shall provide for reasonable access, both local and long distance, between an inmate and his/her attorney, family, and friends. This may be on a prepaid or collect basis. The plan shall contain procedures for the handling of emergency calls.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously this answer would be too long going through every state, not to mention other jurisdictions, but basically rights vary from state to state.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Tennessee, it does seem that you have the right to exactly one telephone call, while other states give the right to a higher number, unspecified number or &quot;reasonable number&quot;, but there is no federal requirement that in every state you have the right to a phone call.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Unless you read the state law for a particular state, don't assume you have a right to a phone call.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, regarding Wyoming, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.officer.com/t126697-2/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;discussion on a police officers forum&lt;/a&gt; to the effect that there is no right to a phone call in Wyoming: &quot;I checked and according to our county attouney[sic] it is a privaledge[sic] here.&quot; The officer also acknowledges not letting a person who requested a telephone call have a telephone call at that time. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And regarding Minnesota, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.avvo.com/legal-answers/do-you-have-a-right-to-make-a-phone-call-after-bei-1117387.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;attorney Christian Ryan Peterson states&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;There is no right to a phone call. Your phone privileges depend on the rules of the jail where you are being held&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://docjt.ky.gov/Magazines/Issue%2034/KLE_Summer2010_legal%20myths.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kentucky state government publication&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;MYTH: An arrested subject has a&#xA;  constitutional right to a phone call.&#xA;  FACT: Even discounting the simple fact that telephones&#xA;  didn’t exist when the U.S. or Kentucky Constitution&#xA;  was ratified, there is no legal requirement that an&#xA;  arrested subject be permitted to call anyone. Most&#xA;  jails do provide telephones, of course, but they often&#xA;  charge a fee or require a collect call for their use, so&#xA;  that the subject may contact an attorney or a&#xA;  family member. However, it is not actually required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T16:40:59.150" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T16:40:59.150" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27390" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-17T19:47:45.677" Score="11" ViewCount="1013" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously no one can know the future with certainty. But several articles make statements regarding more women graduating with medical degrees than men and that in the near future more doctors will be women rather than men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/letters/todays-letters-admit-it-canada-needs-more-male-doctors&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For many years now, Canada’s population of female doctors has been&#xA;  growing at a far greater rate than its male doctors.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However they don't cite any sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news-medical.net/news/20111130/More-female-doctors-than-male-gender-equality-or-feminization-of-the-profession.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;New research asks if medicine is fast becoming a woman’s domain. In&#xA;  the UK, female doctors are set to outnumber their male counterparts by&#xA;  2017,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though this isn't Canada.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guelphmercury.com/opinion-story/4777752-female-physicians-not-to-blame-for-canada-s-doctor-shortage/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;And because the proportion of family practitioners who are male&#xA;  continues to decline — about 60 per cent of new medical students are&#xA;  female — we can look forward to the problem of accessing care getting&#xA;  worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This doesn't have references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any reliable sources that have statistics regarding the amount of medical students who intend to work in Canada, and compare the ratios of males to females or something like that? If the topic is too broad I'm most curious about GPs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2019-04-25T01:41:39.553" LastActivityDate="2019-04-27T03:22:24.960" Title="In Canada, will there soon be more female doctors than male doctors?" Tags="|medical-science|gender|employment|canada|sexism|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27390" CreationDate="2015-04-17T22:43:03.380" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cma.ca/En/Pages/canadian-physician-statistics.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Canadian Medical Association's statistics&lt;/a&gt; (which counts all doctors in Canada, not just CMA members), as of January 2015, there are more male doctors than there are female doctors.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cma.ca/Assets/assets-library/document/en/advocacy/04AgeSexPrv.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Out of the 78,657 doctors in Canada, 30,814 are female, 47,766 are male, and 77 are unknown&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at only doctors under 35, women significantly outnumber men 3,693 to 2,387, and of of the 2,804 new MDs in 2014, 1,584 were women. Additionally, the majority of new doctors have been women since 2001. As such, it does look like female doctors will eventually outnumber male doctors if the current trend continues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.cma.ca/Assets/assets-library/document/en/advocacy/06SpecSex.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Looking at specialties, women currently make up a majority of some specialties, such as Geriatric Medicine and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, whereas men make up a majority of almost all surgical specialisties and also form the majority of Family Medicine practitioners&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though CMA's statistics don't seem to include an age/sex/specialty breakdown to verify the 3rd statement as to whether the percentage of female family medicine specialists is growing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13967" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2015-04-22T17:45:24.150" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T17:45:24.150" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27392" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-18T02:44:29.123" Score="21" ViewCount="24016" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the Netherlands, citizens with disabilities receive money from the Government as part of the 'Hookers for the Handicapped' program, to pay for sexual services up to 12 times a year. This move has drastically reduced depression among the disabled, many of whom have never had a chance to explore their sexuality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I ran into this one on &lt;em&gt;Facebook&lt;/em&gt;, where people were talking about it as if it were true. I couldn't find it on &lt;em&gt;Snopes&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16869" LastEditorUserId="16121" LastEditDate="2018-07-03T16:20:16.623" LastActivityDate="2018-07-04T12:16:07.027" Title="Does the Netherlands goverment fund 'Hookers for the Handicapped'?" Tags="|politics|prostitution|netherlands|welfare|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27394" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-18T08:36:15.887" Score="23" ViewCount="4786" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;em&gt;There's No Tomorrow&lt;/em&gt; video, they affirm several things about solar panels (and a lot of other things).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one I'm the most curious about is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All the world's photovoltaic solar panels generate as much electricity as two coal power plants.&#xA;  The equivalent of between 1 and 4 tons of coal are used in the manufacture of a single solar panel. […]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main question I'm interested about is the second sentence: &lt;strong&gt;Does it really require 1 to 4 tons of coal to create only one solar panel?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's so much that it seems crazy to me, but I might be wrong.&#xA;A few Google's searches didn't yield any interesting/satisfying answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They do give some sources in the script, but not about the main question I'm interested about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the other hand, they do give a source for the first statement (that is: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0618239774&quot;&gt;Paul Roberts, &quot;The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World&quot; (2004) p. 191&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;) but I don't know what it is worth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Sources:&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part of the script concerned is here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.incubatepictures.com/notomorrow/script_2_energy.shtml&quot;&gt;http://www.incubatepictures.com/notomorrow/script_2_energy.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see the part of the video I'm mentioning here: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg#t=880&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOMWzjrRiBg#t=880&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11663" LastEditorUserId="11663" LastEditDate="2015-04-18T12:11:18.120" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T20:42:06.843" Title="Are 1 to 4 tons of coal required to create only one solar panel?" Tags="|technology|energy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27394" CreationDate="2015-04-19T03:36:03.673" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. A typical home panel might consume the electricity released from about 1/2 a ton of coal. (&lt;strong&gt;Update&lt;/strong&gt;: Or 1/6 a ton of coal, if you use combustion energy rather than electrical generation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://gcep.stanford.edu/pdfs/symposium2012/MikDale_Symp2012_web.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Energy Balance of the Photovoltaic (PV) Industry:&#xA;Is the PV industry a net electricity producer?&lt;/a&gt;, the Cumulative Energy Demand for photovoltaic cells ranges from around 1 kWh per watt of PV capacity to around 6 kWh/W (although there are outliers that drive those costs up to as much as 15kWh/W). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://pureenergies.com/us/how-solar-works/solar-panel-output/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Solar Panel Output: What’s the Average?&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The average solar panel output ranges from about 175 W to about 235 W, with an exceptionally powerful solar panel measuring 315 W. Among the top ten manufacturers, the average wattage of a panel is about 200 W.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiplying 200W per panel by the high-but-not-outlier cost of 6kWh/W suggests that it might require around 1200kWh to produce.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=coal_use&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Energy Information Sheets&lt;/a&gt; a ton of coal produces around 2000kWh of electricity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update:&lt;/strong&gt; Per @DavePhd's comment, a more common way to measure the &quot;energy in a ton of coal&quot; is to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/coalequivalent.htm%20and%20convertunits.com/from/kWh/to/tonne+of+coal+equivalent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the combustion energy of 8141kWh / ton&lt;/a&gt;. This makes the statement closer to &quot;A typical home panel might consume the energy released from about 1/6 a ton of coal.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The previously referenced &quot;The Energy Balance of the Photovoltaic (PV) Industry: Is the PV industry a net electricity producer?&quot; article addresses what seems to be the root question, which is whether, and when, PV panels become net-energy positive. The author's conclusions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The PV industry almost certainly became a net power provider by 2015.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The industry will ‘pay back’ the electricity consumed in its early growth by 2018.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="2033" LastEditDate="2016-05-31T20:20:19.290" LastActivityDate="2016-05-31T20:20:19.290" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27399" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27419" CreationDate="2015-04-19T07:55:10.683" Score="38" ViewCount="10785" Body="&lt;p&gt;Josephine Fairley wrote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-business/10943167/Chiltern-Firehouse-Theres-nothing-to-stop-employers-hiring-beautiful-people.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a column in the Telegraph&lt;/a&gt; claims that it is perfectly legal to hire only beautiful people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But while it's illegal to discriminate on the grounds of gender, sex, race, religion, age or disability, there's nothing on the statute book that says an employer can't be looksist. Politically incorrect, yes. But illegal? Uh-uh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Isn't it illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex or age? I know there are exceptions for actors but the article isn't about movies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_occupational_qualifications&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bona fide occupational qualifications&lt;/a&gt; is very relevant. For example, in Northumberland Country Council's &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.northumberland.gov.uk/idoc.ashx?docid=6298a3fe-0945-488c-97b0-f3bb27b8e14d&amp;amp;version=-1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Genuine Occupational Qualifications: General Guidance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; with respect to the UK situation (GOQ is Genuine Occupational Qualification):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;GOQs are interpreted very narrowly by the courts since it is a&#xA;derogation from the principle of equal treatment, and can only be&#xA;claimed where the work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is restricted to one sex for reasons of physiology or authenticity in dramatic performance or other entertainment&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is restricted to one sex to preserve privacy and decency&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is in a private home and would lead to physical or social contact with or knowledge of intimate details of someone living there&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;requires living in single sex accommodation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is in a single sex establishment&#xA;requires the promotion of personal welfare or educational services&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;is outside the UK&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;requires the employment of married couples.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some exceptions, such as modelling. This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.era-comm.eu/oldoku/Adiskri/05_Occupational_requirements/2009_Pitt_EN.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;essay on European law&lt;/a&gt; explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One obvious example would be authenticity in relation to acting,&#xA;modelling and  other occupations where appearance is important.  In&#xA;Commission v Germany the  ECJ noted that the laws and practices of&#xA;Member States were similar with regard to exemptions relating to&#xA;singing, acting, dancing and artistic or fashion modelling.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is worth reading on in that document too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25868" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T13:14:46.837" Title="Is it legal to hire only beautiful people?" Tags="|law|work|europe|discrimination|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27401" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27392" CreationDate="2015-04-19T08:01:03.180" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The same story also occurs at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/12/disabled-people-valid-sexual-partners&quot;&gt;The Guardian&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of her clients, Chris Fulton, 29, who has cerebral palsy and&#xA;  muscular dystrophy, has launched a campaign calling on the government&#xA;  to introduce a Netherlands-style grant scheme in which citizens with&#xA;  disabilities receive public money to pay for sexual services up to 12&#xA;  times a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And here is a relevant story from 1992 on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/04/news/04iht-sex_.html&quot;&gt;New York Times&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a preliminary decision last month, the Raad van State ruled that&#xA;  the municipality of Noordoostpolder must pay a monthly stipend of 65&#xA;  guilders ($38) to a handicapped man who has reportedly suffered mental&#xA;  anguish from the absence of sexual contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The money is to be used to defray the cost of a once-a-month visit to&#xA;  a &quot;sexual aid worker&quot; who charges 150 guilders for a 90-minute&#xA;  session.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25868" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-19T11:30:30.093" LastActivityDate="2015-04-19T11:30:30.093" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27399" CreationDate="2015-04-19T10:28:03.993" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not specifically illegal at all, but there are very specific limits that need to be taken into account.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;In Europe&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are some specific characteristics which are protected. See the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_discrimination_law_in_the_European_Union&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EU directive on work discrimination&lt;/a&gt;, which covers only:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Race or ethnic origin,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sex&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Pregnancy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sexual orientation&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Religion or belief&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Disability (physical or mental, including HIV status)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Age&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;In UK&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Which grounds of discrimination are explicitly prohibited in national law? All grounds covered by national law should be listed, including those not covered by the Directives. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Discrimination is explicitly prohibited under British legislation in relation to what are now categorised as “protected characteristics” by the Equality Act 2010:  age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity and “race” (including colour, nationality and ethnic or national origins), religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.non-discrimination.net/content/media/2013-UK-Country%20report%20LN_final.doc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.non-discrimination.net/countries/united-kingdom&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;European network of legal experts in gender equality and non-discrimination&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Exceptions&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These protected characteristics have sensible exceptions: for example, if you are hiring for a religious congregation, you can discriminate on religion. If you are hiring for a mining job you can discriminate for some disability, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1) A person (A) discriminates against another (B) if, because of a protected characteristic, A treats B less favourably than A treats or would treat others.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (2) If the protected characteristic is age, A does not discriminate against B if A can show A’s treatment of B to be a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (3) If the protected characteristic is disability, and B is not a disabled person, A does not discriminate against B only because A treats or would treat disabled persons more favourably than A treats B.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (4) If the protected characteristic is marriage and civil partnership, this section applies to a contravention of Part 5 (work) only if the treatment is because it is B who is married or a civil partner.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (5) If the protected characteristic is race, less favourable treatment includes segregating B from others…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.non-discrimination.net/content/media/2013-UK-Country%20report%20LN_final.doc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.non-discrimination.net/countries/united-kingdom&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;European network of legal experts in gender equality and non-discrimination&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Indirect discrimination&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discriminating on physical appearance can result in a discrimination against age, gender, disability or other protected characteristics. This is called indirect discrimination:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indirect discrimination is when there’s a practice, policy or rule which applies to everyone in the same way, but it has a worse effect on some people than others. The Equality Act says it puts you at a particular disadvantage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/wales/discrimination_w/discrimination_unlawful_conduct_e/ge12_indirect_discrimination.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Citizens Advice Bureau&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether the discrimination is direct or not, it's still considered discriminatory by the Equality Act 2010 (in UK). Of course, the same disclaimers for direct discrimination apply do indirect discrimination:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indirect discrimination can sometimes be lawful. The Equality Act says it’s not indirect discrimination if the person applying the practice, policy or rule, can show there’s a good enough reason for it. They would need to be able to prove this in court, if necessary. This is known in legal terms as objective justification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Other countries&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/27419/96&quot;&gt;Francis Davey&lt;/a&gt;'s answer for France and &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/27409/96&quot;&gt;nomen agentis&lt;/a&gt;'s answer for the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discriminating against physical appearance is not specifically illegal. It is only illegal (in UK) if:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;it actually results in a discrimination against a protected characteristic (gender, age, etc...)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;such discrimination does not have an &quot;objective justification&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T11:39:27.227" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27407" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27410" CreationDate="2015-04-19T16:00:54.893" Score="31" ViewCount="8460" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.koi-hai.com/Default.aspx?id=557860&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article&lt;/a&gt; (since deleted, &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150421123629/http://www.koi-hai.com/Default.aspx?id=557860&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;backup here&lt;/a&gt;) came to my eye recently.&#xA;The article glosses over the exploits of a citizen of British India who, purportedly, rose from utter obscurity to becoming an ace flier. A quote of some of the article is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dattatray Laxman Patwardhan was born at Ratnagiri on 10th July, 1883.&#xA;   [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1914 The First World War Starts&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When the First World War started in 1914, Dattu went to Britain's &quot;War&#xA;   Office&quot; and secured an assignment in &quot;Ambulance Corps.&quot; Considering&#xA;   his sincerity, he was promoted as a &quot;Soldier&quot; in &quot;Sussex&quot; Brigade. He&#xA;   got trained in handling the latest weapons, guns and cannons. So he&#xA;   was dispatched to France to fight on the actual battlefield.&#xA;   Afterwards, he was promoted to Royal Air Force and acquired skill to&#xA;   fly Cargo and Bomber aircrafts and became an ace pilot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Bombing Berlin in the Mist&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taking advantage of thick mist, Dattu bombed Berlin directly. Ducking&#xA;  the anti-aircraft fire, Dattu played havoc and straightway bombed the&#xA;   &quot;Kaiser Palace.&quot; He was honoured as the first Bomber Pilot in the&#xA;   world to bomb Berlin! King George the Fifth himself decorated Dattu by&#xA;   pinning on his coat the Military Award and Award of Valour. He was&#xA;   presented with &quot;Sword of Military Honour.&quot; At that time, Dattu&#xA;   informed King Majesty of England that he was in fact Dattatray Laxman&#xA;   Patwardhan and gained entry in the army by adopting the Anglo-Indian&#xA;   name of &quot;D Lacman Pat&quot;! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article only cites names, and obscure/ambiguous decorations - nothing concrete.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A google search to match the name against the place during World War I - failed to yield a positive result. The language used in the article too somehow doesn't ring true; could simply be poor linguistic skill on the part of the journalist though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was this Indian, in fact, the first allied aviator to strike Berlin during the Great War? As a corollary, who was the first allied aviator to strike Berlin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Links:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/20471470/1857933068/name/STORY__OF_FIRST_AVIATOR.doc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/20471470/1857933068/name/STORY__OF_FIRST_AVIATOR.doc&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150421123629/http://www.koi-hai.com/Default.aspx?id=557860&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://web.archive.org/web/20150421123629/http://www.koi-hai.com/Default.aspx?id=557860&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/MerchantNavy/conversations/messages/21886&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/MerchantNavy/conversations/messages/21886&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=144682722360101&amp;amp;story_fbid=173706769457696&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=144682722360101&amp;amp;story_fbid=173706769457696&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5036" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2015-06-30T03:37:05.410" LastActivityDate="2019-11-04T14:18:11.607" Title="Was this Indian from British India the first to strike Berlin during World War I?" Tags="|history|aviation|war|india|world-war-i|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27399" CreationDate="2015-04-19T16:17:25.683" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;Can employers make hiring decisions on the basis of attractiveness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the United States, discrimination by non-government employers is constrained by statute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Statutes&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Age Discrimination in Employment Act&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Age Discrimination in Employment Act is implemented in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/29/621&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;29 U.S.C. § 621-634&lt;/a&gt;. It prohibits &amp;quot;arbitrary age limits&amp;quot;. It applies to employers who have at least twenty employees (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/29/630&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;§630&lt;/a&gt;), and only prohibits discrimination against people at least forty years old (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/29/631&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;§631&lt;/a&gt;). This act doesn't prohibit differentiation &amp;quot;where the differentiation is based on reasonable factors other than age&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/29/623&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;§623&lt;/a&gt;). There is no case law that uses this act to prohibit discrimination based on attractiveness via its &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;disparate impact&lt;/a&gt; on an age group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Civil Rights Act&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Title VII of the Civil rights act is implemented in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/chapter-21&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;42 U.S.C. Chapter 21&lt;/a&gt;. It applies to employers who have more than fifteen employees (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;§2000e&lt;/a&gt;). It prohibits the &amp;quot;fail[ure] or refus[al] to hire [...] because of an individual's [...] sex...&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e-2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;§2000e-2&lt;/a&gt;) unless sex is a &amp;quot;bona fide occupational qualification reasonably necessary to the normal operation of that particular business or enterprise&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e-2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;§2000e-2&lt;/a&gt;). There is also a &amp;quot;business necessity&amp;quot; defence in disparate impact cases (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e-2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;§2000e-2&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Example case&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://casetext.com/case/wilson-v-southwest-airlines-co&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wilson v. Southwest Airlines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The question was &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;whether femininity, or more accurately female sex appeal, is a bona fide occupational qualification (&amp;quot;BFOQ&amp;quot;) for the jobs of flight attendant and ticket agent with Southwest Airlines&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether sex is a BFOQ is a very fact-intensive analysis and &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;depends, in large part, upon an analysis of the employer's particular business&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The court ruled against Southwest, finding that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Southwest's particular operations results in the conclusion that being female is not a qualification required to perform successfully the jobs of flight attendant and ticket agent with Southwest. Like any other airline, Southwest's primary function is to transport passengers safely and quickly from one point to another.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the ability of the airline to perform its primary business function, the transportation of passengers, would not be jeopardized by hiring males.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to whether female attractiveness could be considered part of the primary business function,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That Southwest's female personnel may perform their mechanical duties &amp;quot;with love&amp;quot; does not change the result. &amp;quot;Love&amp;quot; is the manner of job performance, not the job performed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Southwest's argument that its primary function is &amp;quot;to make a profit,&amp;quot; not to transport passengers, must be rejected. Without doubt the goal of every business is to make a profit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[S]ex does not become a BFOQ merely because an employer chooses to exploit female sexuality as a marketing tool or to better ensure profitability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Discussion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Employers with fewer than fifteen employees can discriminate based on sex and age, and therefore, attractiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For employers covered by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (at least twenty employees) or the Civil Rights Act (at least fifteen employees), hiring based on attractiveness such that it results in a sex or age discrimination would require evidence of a BFOQ or a business necessity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Such a showing isn't impossible. However, simply stating that the the goal wasn't sex or age discrimination, but rather, attractiveness discrimination, doesn't protect against a disparate impact claim. The employer would have to demonstrate that &amp;quot;sexual entertainment is the primary product or service of a business&amp;quot;, which is challenging (Manley, K. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1160&amp;amp;context=djglp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The BFOQ Defense&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Duke Journal of Gender Law &amp;amp; Policy. 2009.).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the &lt;em&gt;Hooters&lt;/em&gt; hypothetical that has come up in other answers and comments, (Manley, 2009) argues that &amp;quot;[i]f taken to court, it is unlikely that Hooters could successfully defend its hiring practices based upon the BFOQ, considering that its primary business is not the selling of sexual entertainment&amp;quot; because &amp;quot;[w]hile the female servers may be preferred by the&#xA;majority of customers and thus increase business, Hooters primary business is&#xA;the serving of food and beverages to customers, not the serving of sex appeal&amp;quot;, similar to the Southwest flight attendants. (What Hooters' primary business is is a question of fact that would be determined at trial.) &amp;quot;Even if a company uses sex to market services or products, that alone is not enough to permit a BFOQ defense&amp;quot; (Manley, 2009). To allow a BFOQ defence based on an employer's desired &lt;em&gt;manner&lt;/em&gt; or &lt;em&gt;means&lt;/em&gt; of achieving its primary business purpose would render the statute inoperative, and the BFOQ exception would &amp;quot;swallow the rule&amp;quot; (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://casetext.com/case/phillips-v-martin-marietta-corporation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Phillips v. Martin Marietta&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; 400 U.S. 542 (1971)).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-20T17:00:08.703" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27410" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27407" CreationDate="2015-04-19T20:03:05.327" Score="80" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Although the person named existed and served in the Royal Flying Corps, the story itself is very likely not true.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First the good news. &quot;Dattabraya Laxuman Patwardhan&quot; certainly existed and was apparrently a member of the Royal Flying corps. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/31251/data.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;London Gazette of 25 March 1919&lt;/a&gt; records his appointment to the temporary honorary rank of Second Lieutenant. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.airpowerstudies.org.uk/publications/air_power_review/APRVol11No1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Spring 2008 edition of Air Power Review&lt;/a&gt; quotes  Somnath Sapru from his 2006 work 'Skyhawks' that &quot;During the latter part of&#xA;the war, he [Patwardhan] was transferred to the&#xA;Royal Flying Corps and was on a number of&#xA;missions over enemy territory. &quot;. However the Air Power Review author states that he has been unable to find any more details of his service. &lt;a href=&quot;https://livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/6619132#facts&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This record of First World War service&lt;/a&gt; shows the enlistment in 1915 of &quot;Dattatreya Laxman Patwardhan&quot;, unit (RAF/RFC), but lists his place of birth as United Kingdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately there are also many reasons to discard the specific story in the question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Google has revealed no other official sources of the story, although there are a number of online tellings of the story (mostly of the self-editing kind), they cite no official sources.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Records show that there was no RFC/RAF bombing raid on Berlin during WWI. In fact the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handley_Page_V/1500&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Handley Page V/1500&lt;/a&gt; was introduced specifically to give the RAF the capability to bomb Berlin, but the Armistice was signed before it could make its first attack.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/flying-high-on-its-achievements/article5211933.ece&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Hindu writes about Indians in the RFC&lt;/a&gt; and says: &quot;Of the five Indians who applied for a commission into the RFC between November 1916 and April 1917, Lieutenant Srikrishna Welingkar, Lieutenant Eroll Chunder Sen, Lt. Indra Lal Roy, DFC and Lt. Hardit Singh Malik saw action on the Western front.&quot; Our man Patwardhan is not one of the four named. The fifth is not named, but if he did not 'see action on the Western Front&quot; he could not have bombed Berlin.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Indians-who-lorded-over-European-skies-in-WWI/articleshow/44717029.cms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Times of India calls Sardar Hardit Singh Malik the first Indian pilot&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally the story as told in the article has many suspicious errors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is claimed he was promoted to &quot;soldier&quot;. Soldier is not a rank in the British military.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is claimed he was part of the &quot;Sussex Brigade&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_infantry_brigades_of_the_First_World_War&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;There was no such brigade in the First World War&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;acquired skill to fly Cargo and Bomber aircrafts&quot;. There was no such thing as a cargo aircraft in World War I.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;became an ace pilot&quot; Nobody with this name appears in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_War_I_flying_aces_from_India&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;list of ace flyers from India.&lt;/a&gt; (And it is vanishingly unlikely that a bomber pilot becomes an 'ace')&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;It is claimed that Dattu was awarded the &quot;Military Award, the Award of Valour and the Sword of Military Honour&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders,_decorations,_and_medals_of_the_United_Kingdom#Decorations&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;No such decorations exist in the British military.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;When any medal is presented personally by the King, there is an official record of it. No record of this occurrence exists.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Patwardhan says he 'gained entry in the army by adopting the Anglo-Indian name of &quot;D Lacman Pat&quot;'. This would be unnecessary, since other Indians joined the army without the need of a name change.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The story ends by saying &quot;J. R. D. Tata is always referred to as &quot;India's First Pilot.&quot;. In fact J. R. D. Tata was only the first licensed pilot, and plenty of wartime pilots predate him.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As per The Hindu article, there certainly were Indian pilots during WWI. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thegazette.co.uk/all-notices/content/332&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lt Indra Lal Roy joined the RFC in 1917 and became India's first flying ace&lt;/a&gt;, being awarded the genuine, existing medal of the Distinguished Flying Cross.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2019-11-04T14:18:11.607" LastActivityDate="2019-11-04T14:18:11.607" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27411" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27425" CreationDate="2015-04-19T21:12:41.097" Score="43" ViewCount="11369" Body="&lt;p&gt;Steve Jobs &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0m3sPU8sVU&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claimed on video&lt;/a&gt; that a bicycling human is more efficient at locomotion than any other species can manage.  He repeated it &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmuP8gsgWb8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;separately on video&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.waynekirkwood.com/images/pdf/Steve_Jobs_When_We_Invented_the_Personal_Computer.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in writing&lt;/a&gt;. The quote is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Bicycle.txt&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;still&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brainpickings.org/2011/12/21/steve-jobs-bicycle-for-the-mind-1990/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;oft&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://dcurt.is/the-glass-bicycle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;repeated&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/combustion/bicycles-for-our-minds&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A poster print run raised 5k USD on Kickstarter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a transcription:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think one of the things that really separates us from the higher primates is that we’re tool builders. I read a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The condor used the least amount of energy to move a kilometer. And humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list. It was not too proud of a showing for the crown of creation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That didn’t look so good. But then, somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And a man on a bicycle completely blew the condor away, completely off the top of the chart. And that’s what a computer is to me. What a computer is to me, is it’s the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with. It’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is &lt;em&gt;a human on a bicycle&lt;/em&gt; really overwhelmingly more efficient at moving from place to place than &lt;em&gt;any other species&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7286" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-08-14T13:05:43.030" Title="Does a human on a bicycle travel more efficiently than any other species?" Tags="|biology|technology|energy-efficiency|bicycles|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27418" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-20T17:43:01.120" Score="23" ViewCount="49128" Body="&lt;p&gt;I remember hearing an old legend growing up that Noah Webster (author of the American Dictionary) memorized the entire bible. The claims seem dubious and difficult to prove.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone ever memorized the entire bible and proven it somehow? Either by reciting great portions of it or perhaps reciting the whole thing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21907" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-04-05T10:11:12.230" LastActivityDate="2016-04-10T05:49:28.997" Title="Has anyone ever memorized the entire bible?" Tags="|bible|memory|religious-texts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27419" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27399" CreationDate="2015-04-21T11:19:31.670" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Using &amp;quot;illegal&amp;quot; in the casual was that Josephine Fairley intends it (see below for more on this), the answer is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In some European Countries: Yes, it is &amp;quot;illegal&amp;quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In all EU Countries: It is highly likely to be &amp;quot;illegal&amp;quot;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Specific countries&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In France, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticle=LEGIARTI000028650462&amp;amp;cidTexte=LEGITEXT000006072050&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Article L1132-1 of the Code du Travail&lt;/a&gt; (&amp;quot;the labour code&amp;quot;) prohibits discrimination in employment (including recruitment) by reason of the prospective employee's physical appearance &amp;quot;de son apparence physique&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are circumstances when an employer may justify discrimination on grounds of physical appearance, but that is also true of all the other grounds of prohibited discrimination, so it is &amp;quot;illegal&amp;quot; to discriminate on the grounds of physical appearance (including attractiveness) in France in the same sense that it is &amp;quot;illegal to discriminate on the grounds of gender&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the rest of this answer I will ignore the possibility of justification. I am treating Josephine Fairley's claim as meaning &amp;quot;it will be at first sight unlawful...&amp;quot; subject to justification, rather than that it will always be unlawful, because that would not be true of discrimination on grounds of gender etc either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some systems of anti-discrimination law have a fixed list of &amp;quot;protected characteristics&amp;quot;. French law is such a system, which happens to include &amp;quot;physical appearance&amp;quot;. Belgium is similar, prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of physical characteristics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For reference, a table of EU countries' list of such protected characteristics is found on pages 12-13 of &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/justice/discrimination/files/comparative_analysis_2013_en.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Developing anti-Discrimination Law in Europe&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (European Commission, DG Justice, October 2013).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From that list it will be clear that some jurisdictions have an open-ended list. For example Germany which prohibits discrimination for a number of reasons including &amp;quot;... or any other ground&amp;quot;. Such an open-ended list may be interpreted by the country's courts as prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of attractiveness. I am not able to read German, so I am not familiar with German law on this point - given that the question asks about law in Europe in general, I won't try to research it. The OP can always ask elsewhere if they wish to know more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Europe in general&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32000L0078&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Directive 2000/78/EC&lt;/a&gt; (&amp;quot;the Employment Equality Framework Directive&amp;quot; sometimes known as just the &amp;quot;Framework Directive&amp;quot;) requires EU Member States to prohibit discrimination on certain specific grounds (religion, belief, disability, age or sexual orientation, see Article 1). These grounds, along with race or ethnic origin (protected by &lt;a href=&quot;http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32000L0043&amp;amp;from=en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Directive 2000/43/EC&lt;/a&gt;) and sex (protected, now, by &lt;a href=&quot;http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32006L0054&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Directive 2006/54&lt;/a&gt;) are a minimum level of protection required of all Member States, which is why France and Belgium are able to expressly protect additional characteristics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All three directives prohibit indirect as well as direct discrimination, defined to mean a situation where an apparently neutral provision (i.e. on that is not directly discriminatory) puts someone at a &amp;quot;particular disadvantage&amp;quot; because, for example, of their sex, age or race. Indirect discrimination may also be justified in certain circumstances.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem for an employer of being &amp;quot;lookist&amp;quot; is that almost any criterion of attractiveness will inevitably put some people at a particular disadvantage because of one of the protected characteristics, particularly age and disability, but also race, sex etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, most (though not all) ways of assessing physical beauty will treat more young people as being &amp;quot;beautiful&amp;quot; than older people. I am not saying (as one commenter complains) that only young people are beautiful, but that an older person is more likely to be disadvantaged in a comparison of physical beauty. Similar remarks apply to disability (especially where the disabled person is obese) and race.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;UK Solicitors Shoosmiths (riffing off a reference to Abercrombie &amp;amp; Fitch being investigated in France for their attractiveness policy) discuss just this problem from the point of view of British discrimination law. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shoosmiths.co.uk/client-resources/discrimination-is-the-next-big-thing-lookism-5819.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Their view&lt;/a&gt; is that it is very risky for an employer to try to discriminate on grounds of attractiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of the kind of mess you can get yourself is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8200140.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;English Employment Tribunal victory&lt;/a&gt; of a girl discriminated against by Abercrombie &amp;amp; Fitch because she had a prosthetic arm. Note that this case does not set a precedent (it is a first tier case) and that it is about discrimination in employment rather than refusal to hire, but I think it makes the point neatly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My own view, which probably does not carry much weight on Skeptics but is based on having quite a bit of experience in British discrimination law and having fought many cases, is that it will be rare for it to be safe to discriminate on the grounds of attractiveness without an &amp;quot;objective justification&amp;quot; such a justification would have to be proportionate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;On the meaning of the word &amp;quot;illegal&amp;quot;&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being pedantic, the term &amp;quot;illegal&amp;quot; is usually used by lawyers to refer to an action which has a criminal sanction. It is illegal to steal. Some jurisdictions do make discrimination illegal (for example the French penal code makes discriminating on grounds of physical characteristics &lt;em&gt;in the supply of goods and services&lt;/em&gt; a criminal offence).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in most cases employment discrimination is not a crime. For example, in England and Wales, employment discrimination is a civil wrong (technically known as a &amp;quot;tort&amp;quot;). The discriminated party may be able to sue for damages for discrimination, but the discriminator does not face criminal prosecution. This is the reason for the scare quotes around the word &amp;quot;illegal&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A second layer of pedantry, which I have alluded to above but which has been pressed in comments, is that &amp;quot;it's illegal to discriminate on the grounds of gender&amp;quot; is not true in general. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/schedule/9/part/1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;There are circumstances&lt;/a&gt; when gender (or as the UK legislation puts it &amp;quot;sex&amp;quot;) discrimination in employment may be permitted, namely when the discriminator can prove that it is an occupational requirement &lt;strong&gt;and&lt;/strong&gt; a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if the employee can show (and in Great Britain there are rules on the reversal of the burden of proof at an early stage) that there has been discrimination, the employer must justify it. I am using &amp;quot;illegal&amp;quot; to mean essentially this: if you do this, you must be able to prove that you are justified (in the sense I have explained) or you will be committing a wrong (a tort or delict or however the particular system of law classifies it).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't quite the same thing as walking out of a shop with items being &amp;quot;illegal&amp;quot; unless you bought them - that is a more complex situation involving the law of theft as well as rules on personal property ownership. I won't get into that here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think it is reasonable to test Josephine Fairley's claim using the same notion of &amp;quot;illegal&amp;quot; as she does.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3059" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T13:14:46.837" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27421" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-21T11:59:15.387" Score="3" ViewCount="120" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few years ago a yogi from India made the headlines claiming that he hadn't eaten for over 7 decades. It was said that he was under observation for 2 weeks in a hospital and allegedly was never seen ingesting any food or water, or going to the toilet. It was also reported that he had only limited contact with water while gargling and bathing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any documented scientific evidence that this yogi's claim is true? or has the claim been disproved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of sources for the story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://bodyodd.nbcnews.com/_news/2010/05/10/4380027-70-years-without-eating-starving-yogi-says-its-true?lite&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bodyodd.nbcnews.com/_news/2010/05/10/4380027-70-years-without-eating-starving-yogi-says-its-true?lite&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/south-asia/holy-man-who-never-eats-baffles-scientists-in-india&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/south-asia/holy-man-who-never-eats-baffles-scientists-in-india&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18452" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T11:59:15.387" Title="The Yogi that Never Eats, is it true?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-04-21T12:11:57.263" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27422" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27418" CreationDate="2015-04-21T14:40:52.720" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;There were many reports claiming that people have memorized the entire bible. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;15 years ago, Baptist Press released an article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bpnews.net/5466&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; that Nadine Hammonds, a blind woman, has memorized the New Testament&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nadine says it took her about three years to get the memorization done. She had memorized Scripture all her life, so she did have a history of Scripture knowledge, but &lt;strong&gt;her goal of memorizing the whole New Testament only took shape the last few years&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In 2007, Church &amp;amp; Ministry &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christianpost.com/news/man-uses-photographic-memory-to-preach-the-bible-40648/&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; that Charles Matlock, 59, is known as the “Walking Bible of West Tennessee” has memorized most of the Bible and uses his gift to preach as a traveling evangelist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Matlock said he started to memorize the Scriptures when he was 12 years old. He recalled memorizing his homework one day and thinking to himself that he could also memorize Scripture.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Dr. William Evans wrote a book called &lt;a href=&quot;http://memorizethebible.com/&quot;&gt;How to Memorize the Bible&lt;/a&gt; in 1919. It is reported:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. Evans memorized the entire King James version of the Bible plus the New Testament of the American Standard Version. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site also has two chapters teaching how to memorize the bible by Dr. Evans:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although written in 1919, Dr. Evans’ scripture memorization techniques are still used today. Most books and websites that attempt to sell memorization techniques are largely using Dr. Evan’s ideas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;His techniques for memorizing the Bible are simple, clear, practical and have immediate benefit. They work regardless of your age.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The most famous person who is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zoominfo.com/p/Van-Impe/139844268&quot;&gt;said&lt;/a&gt; to have memorized the entire bible is Jack Van Impe:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Regarding his extraordinary memory in regard to Bible verses, &lt;strong&gt;Van Impe has said that he has memorized 14,000 verses, and that it took him 35,000 hours to do so&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jack Van Impe recites has own website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jvim.com/scripturememorization.htm&quot;&gt;also&lt;/a&gt; along with methods:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eager to have others memorize the Bible, &lt;strong&gt;Dr. Van Impe has been willing to share the method that has made him&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;The Walking Bible.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First, he prepares index cards with Bible verses on one side and the references on the other. He generally prepared 50 cards at a time. Others might not want to make that many. The important thing is to get a start with some set number of verses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He suggests choosing verses by subject or doctrine, not by chapter. &lt;strong&gt;At one time, he tried memorizing by chapter, but found himself less able to use the verses quickly.&lt;/strong&gt; He would lose valuable time working through a number of verses to get to the one he needed. Memorizing by subject or doctrine is more liable to bring verses to mind when a given subject is raised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://gooddoctrine.weebly.com/book-reviews.html&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; that John Goetch the Executive vice president at West Coast Baptist College has memorized over 14,000 verses and still does one per day as he is running his 5 miles at 5:30 A.M: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As an added bonus, a special section devoted entirely to the subject of memorizing scripture is included.  Dr. Goetsch has personally committed over 14,000 verses to memory.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also has a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0972650628&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; on amazon (called: Homiletics from the Heart: Preaching God's Word God's Way) explaining his methods of memorizing the bible. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;How To Memorize The Entire Bible In No Time Flat is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B00C7CZRDO&quot;&gt;book&lt;/a&gt; by Adam Houge teaching how to memorize the entire bible.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;9 Months ago, is has been reported by the Baptist Press also, that a pastor memorized 35 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bpnews.net/42986/pastor-memorizes-35-books-of-bible&quot;&gt;books&lt;/a&gt; of the bible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But Davis, pastor of First Baptist Church in Durham, N.C., will tell you there is one book that has captured his heart; it is the Bible. And his desire to know God's Word has led him to memorize 35 of its books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those reports claiming that some people have memorized most if not all the New Testament of the Bible are weak evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From a skeptical point of view, the question of &quot;Has anyone memorized the whole Bible?&quot; might be provable but is definitely unfalsifiable since it cannot be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of any physical experiment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-21T23:03:14.597" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T23:03:14.597" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27424" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-21T15:41:51.310" Score="2" ViewCount="313" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The documentary hypothesis&lt;/a&gt; is a hypothesis which proposes  that the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) was derived from originally independent, parallel and complete narratives, which were subsequently combined into the current form by a series of redactors.After R.N. Whybry's book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_Pentateuch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Making of the Pentateuch&lt;/a&gt; the support for the documentary hypothesis &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentary_hypothesis#Weakening_of_support&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;has been weakened.&lt;/a&gt; and numerous other models have been proposed. However, has the documentary hypothesis completely refuted as per the &lt;a href=&quot;http://creation.com/debunking-the-documentary-hypothesis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;apologetic claims&lt;/a&gt; ? (Another criticism can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2010/09/24/the-documentary-hypothesis.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; )Even if documentary hypothesis is invalid, does it imply that Moses is really author of Pentateuch and King David is author of Psalms ? (I have not asked this on Mi Yodeya or Christianity Stack exchange as it is for &quot;committed&quot; Jews and Christians respectively. )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25929" LastActivityDate="2015-04-21T15:41:51.310" Title="Has the documentary hypothesis become invalid?" Tags="|history|religion|bible|catholic-church|christianity|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-04-21T23:11:39.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27425" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27411" CreationDate="2015-04-21T16:46:04.620" Score="33" Body="&lt;p&gt;The quoted statement says &quot;energy to move a kilometer&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On an &quot;energy to move a kilometer&quot; basis, the statement is definitely false.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.learner.org/jnorth/search/MonarchNotes3.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Acccording to Dr. Karen Oberhauser&lt;/a&gt;, a tagged monarch butterfly has been confirmed to travel 265 miles in one day.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.learner.org/jnorth/tm/monarch/FlightPoweredEnergyQ.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Much Fuel Do Monarchs Burn?&lt;/a&gt; reporting Dr. David Gibo's research:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On 140 milligrams of fat a monarch butterfly has enough energy to continuously flap its wing flying for 44 hours and to soar or glide for 1040 hours! &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the butterfly is using at most 3 milligrams per hour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For comparative human statistics, use &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.myfitnesspal.com/exercise/lookup&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this excercise calorie calculator&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a 110 pound (50kg) human:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;bicycling 16-20 miles per hour 599 dietary calories (kilocalories) are used per hour.  This corresponds to 67 grams (67,000 milligrams) fat per hour.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;bicycling at an unspecific &quot;greater than 20 mph&quot; racing speed is 798 calories per hour.&#xA;This corresponds to 89 grams (89,000 milligrams) fat per hour.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Humans use more than 1000 times as much energy per kilometer as monarch butterflies, even considering the record distance on a bicycle for a day is 521 miles, about twice the butterfly's record. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: although the quoted statement clearly says &quot;energy to move a kilometer&quot;, and nowhere suggests that mass moved should be considered, another way to consider efficiency is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(energy used)/((mass of organism)(distance traveled))&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On this basis, swimming animals have been found to be the most efficient animals.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9MLRs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/110/44/17904.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;All credit to Brad J. Gemmell, Passive energy recapture in jellyfish contributes to propulsive advantage over other metazoans&lt;/a&gt; Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA volume 110 pages 17904–17909.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As reported in &lt;a href=&quot;http://jeb.biologists.org/content/208/7/1329.full#T1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Eel migration to the Sargasso: remarkably high swimming efficiency and low energy costs&lt;/a&gt;, the eel is very efficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Particularly, its efficiency is calculated to be 0.5 kilojoules/kilometer/kg.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's compare this to a human bicycling.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll use a 50 kg human, 29 kph (18 mph), 599 kilocalories per hour.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;599 kilocalories/hr is 2500 kilojoules/hr.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This corresponds to 86 kilojoules/kilometer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or 1.7 kilojoules/kilometer/kg&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Eel is more efficient by a factor of 3.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(From the jellyfish article it can also been seen that a species of jellyfish has about the same efficiency of the eel.  Large marine animals such as whales do not seem to have been considered.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1748-7692.2008.00255.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Swimming speed, respiration rate, and estimated cost of transport in adult killer whales&lt;/a&gt;, which shows that at an optimal speed of around 3 meters/second, killer whales have an efficiency of 0.78 kilojoules/kilometer/kg. Better than a human on a bicycle, but not quite as good as an eel.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=ClAttEBYLHsC&amp;amp;pg=PA103&amp;amp;lpg=PA103&amp;amp;dq=whale%20%22cost%20of%20transport%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=mfPaNZH0Or&amp;amp;sig=QSnZYezMynLjxyiFvDZPQ6wsxyY&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=caY3VeyFIbe1sQSv_oDIAw&amp;amp;ved=0CEwQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=whale%20%22cost%20of%20transport%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Energy in Nature and Society: General Energetics of Complex Systems&lt;/a&gt; by Vaclav Smil, at page 103&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;for a 15-t gray whale is 0.4 J/m kg (if this exponent holds than a baleen whale would need [less than] 0.1 J/m kg)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/04/16/1500316112.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Comparative analyses of animal-tracking data reveal&#xA;ecological significance of endothermy in fishes&lt;/a&gt; which shows some sharks have efficiency in the 0.1-0.2 J/m kg range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In conclusion, a human on a bicycle is NOT the most efficient.&lt;/strong&gt;  Whether the quote is analyzed literally on an &quot;energy to move a kilometer&quot; basis, or alternatively as energy per distance per mass of organism, there are more efficient species.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-04-22T16:48:37.623" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T16:48:37.623" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27428" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-22T05:24:41.777" Score="11" ViewCount="1017" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.meforum.org/meq/pdfs/3434.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that just a week before the September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland, Hitler asked:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Hitler say this quote or something along those lines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question is not about the actual genocide, but only whether Hitler said this quote or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: Wikipedia has &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obersalzberg_Speech#The_Armenian_quote&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a section&lt;/a&gt; discussing this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1053" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-22T12:39:56.267" LastActivityDate="2015-04-22T12:39:56.267" Title="Did Hitler say &quot;Who speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?&quot;" Tags="|quotes|adolf-hitler|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27431" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-22T06:29:51.987" Score="2" ViewCount="538" Body="&lt;p&gt;EDIT: after too broad closure, split into:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/27529/is-it-true-that-falun-gong-practicioners-dont-go-to-hospital-when-they-need-it&quot;&gt;Have many Falun Gong practitioners forgone medical treatment and died of treatable causes as a result?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Chinese government has made lots of publicity against &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Falun Gong&lt;/a&gt;, but they have a political agenda so they are not a good source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But of course, we cannot rely on Falun Gong related sources either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So are there other external sources that claim that Falun Gong is good or bad, either for believers' well being, or for society in general?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular is it worse / better than other religions, specially those with similar number of believers? Falun Gong claims 200M believers today, many sources claim 70M at the time of the ban in China, so I think it is safe to assume that there are at least lower tens of millions. Other religions can be found &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only obvious concern I can see is the possibility that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Hongzhi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Li Hongzhi&lt;/a&gt;, the only prophet of the religion, is actually evil or crazy, given the large amount of power he has over believers. But I haven't seen evidence of that so far. And the same could be asked about Jesus?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DISCLAIMER: my girlfriend does Falun Gong. I don't, and I'm agnostic. I only want the truth. I am however for freedom of religion, unless the religion in question causes serious harm to believers or society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17311" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T08:35:52.757" Title="Is Falun Gong worse for its practitioners and society than other religions like Christianity?" Tags="|religion|china|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2015-04-22T06:30:50.920" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27373" CreationDate="2015-04-22T18:22:00.493" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some phone lookup services work pretty much well. The most evident application and service is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Truecaller&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just like Whatsapp and Facebook, Truecaller was part of the internet revolution. Some people say it is the largest mobile phone community for mobiles. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truecaller&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Truecaller can&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;find contact details globally given name or telephone number&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When a user registers for Truecaller, names and numbers from their contact list are uploaded to the service's servers for other users to look up. If you've given your phone number to a friend of yours, who saved your phone number in their contact list, and who downloaded the application; truecaller will automatically get your number. As more users register, truecaller indexes more numbers and names in their database.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of April 2016, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.truecaller.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Truecaller's official website&lt;/a&gt; reports to have 2 billion numbers in its index, a screenshot from my phone:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6n28I.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6n28I.png&quot; alt=&quot;search over 2 billion phone numbers&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Do phone lookup services like Truecaller work?&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Truecaller has always worked for me (anectodal evidence), I have to list public reports (which might be considered as evidence) which show that Truecaller works:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://techverse.net/identify-unknown-callers-phone-truecaller-android-ios/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Techverse.net&lt;/a&gt; has reported&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using it is very simple, just install the Truecaller app on your phone from the links provided at the bottom of this page and as long as your phone is connected to an internet connection, &lt;strong&gt;Truecaller will be able to accurately identify any unknown number and provide you details such as the owners name and the place where the number is registered.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.bgr.in/news/truecallers-latest-update-lets-users-magically-search-phone-numbers-from-anywhere-without-opening-the-app-346768/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bgr.in&lt;/a&gt; has reported:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In essence with the Auto Search, &lt;strong&gt;users will now be able to get information on a number mentioned anywhere like a website, email or text message&lt;/strong&gt;. All a user has to do is select the phone number, and hit “Copy,” and Truecaller will pop up the contact information related to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/technology/gadgets/its-a-smart-world-out-there/article6174204.ece&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;thehindu.com&lt;/a&gt; has reported also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mrinal M., a young entrepreneur and a photography enthusiast, swears by the Nokia Creative Studio application in his Nokia Lumia 525 because the software makes even photos taken using low-end mobile phone cameras look amazing with a unique set of filters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;”Another application which comes in handy is Truecaller – which helps track calls from unknown numbers. Being a food-delivery entrepreneur, I handle a large number of calls each day, mostly from people who call me for enquiries. &lt;strong&gt;Truecaller identifies these callers for me.&lt;/strong&gt;” he says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.lb/books?id=7Pl3BwAAQBAJ&amp;amp;dq=does%20truecaller%20work&amp;amp;source=gbs_similarbooks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;PROF. Review&lt;/a&gt; reported in a book published on Google Books:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Truecaller is replacing the phonebook to make it more intelligent and useful. &lt;strong&gt;It lets you search beyond your existing contact list, identify unknown incoming calls,&lt;/strong&gt; block calls you don't want to receive, and make personal contact suggestions based on time and place – so you never have to leave the service to find the right contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;mobileentertainmentforum.org reported:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After installing TrueCaller on an Android, Symbian, iPhone, or Windows phone, a main screen will pop up showing the three main options: call filter, search, and update phone book. &lt;strong&gt;The search function lets users search for public numbers, which can be saved to the phone book instantly.&lt;/strong&gt; Call filter also has a database of phone numbers which have previously been tagged as spam by other users and will notify you when a blocked number is attempting to access the phone. Of course, a user can always put any number they want into the call filter data bank and avoid talking to individuals to whom they do not wish to speak.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In early 2014, Truecaller received a $18.8 million &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.truecaller.com/blog/truecaller-sequoia-funding-and-partners-with-yelp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;investment led by Sequoia Capital&lt;/a&gt;. In October of the same year, they received $60 million from Niklas Zennstrom's Atomico &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/08/us-sweden-truecaller-financing-idUSKCN0HX1PX20141008&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;investment firm&lt;/a&gt; and from Kleiner Perkins Caufield &amp;amp; Byers. This gives a possible indication also that the service works.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2022-11-21T13:29:38.117" LastActivityDate="2022-11-21T13:29:38.117" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9695" CreationDate="2015-04-22T18:47:37.217" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A bit of context. Mr Mihalovic is not a doctor, but an anti-vaccine advocate and a &quot;naturopath&quot; -- in other words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;David Mihalovic is an ND, which stands for “naturopathic doctor” or, more appropriately, “not a doctor”. According to himself he “specializes in vaccine research.” It is, however, unclear where that research is published – there are no hits on Pubmed, for instance – though he does write propaganda for the anti-vaccine website Medical Voices Vaccine Information Center. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://americanloons.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/945-david-mihalovic.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://americanloons.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/945-david-mihalovic.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know if this quote is made up or not, but the most similar thing I could find is this image which is about &quot;synergistic&quot; toxicity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/C2vXY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;synergistic toxicity&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://preventdisease.com/news/14/051514_9-Ways-Vaccines-Reducing-Immunity-Inducing-Immune-Overload-In-Children.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://preventdisease.com/news/14/051514_9-Ways-Vaccines-Reducing-Immunity-Inducing-Immune-Overload-In-Children.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He referst to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3463891/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; which was written by authors in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170075/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;undisclosed conflict of interest&lt;/a&gt;, they are funded by anti-vaccination propaganda groups. In any case, the &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/05/16/vaccines-and-infant-mortality-rates/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article has been thoroughly debunked&lt;/a&gt;, and, if you think of it, it also contradicts the claim of Mihailovic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mihalovic claims that some vaccines, when used together, are toxic/deadly: a bit like two-part glue, if you like. The authors of the debunked article claim that the &lt;em&gt;number&lt;/em&gt; of shots is relevant -- which is ludicrous, of course -- and that they found a linear relationship between the number of shots taken (they call them &quot;vaccines&quot;, but it's not what they are) and infant mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's also another link that &lt;a href=&quot;http://preventdisease.com/news/14/051514_9-Ways-Vaccines-Reducing-Immunity-Inducing-Immune-Overload-In-Children.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims that vaccines cause type I diabetes&lt;/a&gt;, but that seems off-topic with respect to the original claim. Unsurprisingly, it's also written by a person which holds patents on &quot;methods of testing vaccines for their ability to cause diabetes and methods of preventing diabetes&quot;, in other words, who has an open interest in making such claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL:DR;&lt;/strong&gt; Vaccines are safe. Lack of vaccination is irresponsible and causes harm to children and immunocompromised groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-04-23T10:55:22.430" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T10:55:22.430" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27436" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27437" CreationDate="2015-04-22T21:19:40.773" Score="6" ViewCount="612" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32411491&quot;&gt;BBC reports&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Planes including the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and the Airbus 350 and A380&#xA;  have a &lt;b&gt;single network&lt;/b&gt; that is used by both pilots to fly the plane and&#xA;  by passengers for their wi-fi connections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do these airlines actually use same network for both, or is it just some journalistic simplification without fully understanding technicalities?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-23T00:41:25.833" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T05:55:37.847" Title="Do airliners use single physical network for both avionics and passenger wifi access?" Tags="|aviation|security|hacking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27436" CreationDate="2015-04-22T21:54:09.477" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The recent news reports are based primarily on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gao.gov/assets/670/669627.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO)&lt;/a&gt;. See page 19:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to cybersecurity&#xA;experts we interviewed, Internet connectivity in the cabin should be&#xA;considered a direct link between the aircraft and the outside world, which&#xA;includes potential malicious actors. FAA officials and cybersecurity and&#xA;aviation experts we spoke to said that increasingly passengers in the&#xA;cabin can access the Internet via onboard wireless broadband systems.&#xA;One cybersecurity expert noted that a virus or malware planted in&#xA;websites visited by passengers could provide an opportunity for a&#xA;malicious attacker to access the IP-connected onboard information&#xA;system through their infected machines. According to five cybersecurity experts, the threat of malicious activity by trusted insiders also grows with&#xA;the ease of access to avionics systems afforded by IP connectivity if&#xA;proper controls, such as role-based access, are not in place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report doesn't get more specific about what types of attacks were analyzed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/M8p0p.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This setup is supported by follow-up journalism by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2015/04/15/399937756/gao-report-warns-inflight-wi-fi-may-leave-aircraft-vulnerable-to-hacking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NPR&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/14/politics/gao-newer-aircraft-vulnerable-to-hacking/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CNN&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, in an interview with Forbes, Dr. Phil Polstra, a pilot and professor of digital forensics clarifies that despite this being the same physical network, he disagrees that this is a vulnerability:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a one-way communication. Even if someone were able to send information back toward the avionics, they aren’t listening for information from the in-flight entertainment systems… Since the computer doesn’t try and read information on those wires it is not likely to be useful to an attacker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Stephen Cobb, from ESET, goes further and says that control systems are not even on the same physical network (from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/news/story/1.3042166&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CBC&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, the flight control system, which transmits and receives signals from navigational aids such as satellites, is separated from passenger Wi-Fi through &amp;quot;air gapping,&amp;quot; says ESET's Cobb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, there is some confusion as to the extent to which the systems are air-gapped, says Cobb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I find this source suspect, though, given that Cobb seems to be conflating the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_flight_control_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;flight control system&lt;/a&gt; with the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_management_system&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;flight navigation system&lt;/a&gt;. Also, in the intervening paragraph, the article author considers an extra firewall a means of &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_gap_(networking)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;air gapping&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;, which isn't consistent with standard usage of that term. These two discrepancies make this source less reliable in my opinion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Boeing has said that they are &amp;quot;employing a combination of solutions that involved some physical air-gapping of the networks as well as software firewalls&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/2015/04/hackers-commandeer-new-planes-passenger-wi-fi/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wired&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are places where the networks are not touching, and there are places where they are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, even taking the GAO report at face value, whether this is the same &amp;quot;network&amp;quot; depends on what level of network you're considering. At the physical level, it appears that yes, some systems are on the same network. According to Polstra, this doesn't hold if you consider the &amp;quot;network&amp;quot; to be a higher level of abstraction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T05:55:37.847" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27440" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-23T06:29:03.123" Score="4" ViewCount="6581" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://healthywildandfree.com/this-is-what-happens-when-you-put-cut-up-onions-in-your-socks-while-you-sleep/#sthash.FFow3vYH.dpbs&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This is what happens when you put cut up onions in your socks while you sleep&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;when you sleep with onions on your feet, inside your socks,  the following happens:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Purify your blood: Phosphoric acid from the onions as it’s applied and absorbed through trans-dermal means purifies the blood.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kills bacteria, germs and pathogens: Onions (and garlic) have strong anti-bacterial and anti-viral benefits!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is any of that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25428" LastEditorUserId="19407" LastEditDate="2015-04-25T00:57:37.920" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T02:22:35.173" Title="Does placing onions on one's feet purify the blood and kill bacteria, germs and pathogens?" Tags="|natural-remedies|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27441" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27443" CreationDate="2015-04-23T07:52:45.530" Score="4" ViewCount="2521" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an image of Frank Sinatra floating around the internet in its usual unattributed copyright-infringing fashion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xZiwP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Frank Sinatra at 10 years old&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No doubt there are pictures out there of Frank Sinatra as a young boy, but my questions is is &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; picture of Frank Sinatra in his iconic &quot;fedora and suit&quot; real, or is it photoshopped together from a photo of a young Frank Sinatra, and a child styling his iconic look?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there an original source for this photograph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14542" LastEditorUserId="14542" LastEditDate="2015-04-23T07:59:47.893" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T10:19:11.337" Title="Is this photograph of Frank Sinatra as a 10 year old real?" Tags="|history|photography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27442" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27444" CreationDate="2015-04-23T09:14:03.220" Score="69" ViewCount="13777" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_1438_18-terrifying-truths-only-select-insiders-know/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;recent image&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;em&gt;cracked.com&lt;/em&gt; claims that the Red Cross grosses USD 2.1 billion a year from selling blood. It also claims that the Red Cross is a business which sells donated blood for $400 a pint.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/k16nN.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any verifiable sources for this claim that the Red Cross sells such quantities of blood?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-06-04T01:23:57.873" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T01:23:57.873" Title="Does the Red Cross sell $2.1 billion worth of blood annually?" Tags="|healthcare|blood|charities|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27441" CreationDate="2015-04-23T10:19:11.337" Score="8" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there an original source for this photograph?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fortunately, there is. This photo is originated from an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.antiquecollectorsclub.com/us/store/productdatasheet/9781851498031&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;official source&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Frank Sinatra was honored with an official $1,500 book limited with 1,000 copies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5PV5X.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book's description is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;official&lt;/strong&gt; luxury &lt;strong&gt;book&lt;/strong&gt; to commemorate the Frank Sinatra centenary, limited to just 1000 copies, in a deluxe clam-shell box, &lt;strong&gt;accompanied by a previously unpublished photograp&lt;/strong&gt;h, taken and &lt;strong&gt;authenticated&lt;/strong&gt; by Nancy Sinatra Sr. Each book contains &lt;strong&gt;a numbered certificate of authenticity&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;signed by Sinatra's children - Nancy Sinatra, Frank Sinatra Jnr., and Tina Sinatra.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book is signed by the whole family:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This spectacular 400-page book - which comes in luxury clam-shell case - &lt;strong&gt;is signed by Nancy Sinatra, Frank Sinatra Jnr., and Tina Sinatra&lt;/strong&gt; and includes a rare and unpublished signed print of a photograph of Frank Sinatra taken by Nancy Sinatra Snr (see&#xA;  image below, middle of the row).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the page, many preview pictures are found along with the picture you're skeptical about.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gl3bL.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, the book is available officially on &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1851498036&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon&lt;/a&gt; along with the picture also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yYszH.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Who shot the image?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;officialnj350.com &lt;a href=&quot;http://officialnj350.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Frank-Sinatra-and-the-Hoboken-Four.-It-Happened-Here-New-Jersey.-Image-Credits.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt; in a PDF document that Michael Ochs Archives shot the image and it is published on Getty Images.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gMps7.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this photograph of Frank Sinatra as a 10 year old?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not necessarily. It is Frank Sinatra, but it is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.buzzfeed.com/leonoraepstein/this-photo-of-a-young-frank-sinatra-will-make-you-go-omg#.jgk8LvJ2Z&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; that the picture is undated. He could be 8, 10 or 12, etc... The article says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Behold: It’s Frank Freakin’ Sinatra as a young boy. The photo is undated, however Frank looks to be about 10-years-old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T10:19:11.337" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27444" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27442" CreationDate="2015-04-23T10:19:54.597" Score="116" Body="&lt;p&gt;I assume this is referring to the American Red Cross, because that is where &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracked.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cracked.com is based&lt;/a&gt;. Note also that describing the Red Cross as &quot;a business&quot; is somewhat misleading. It is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Red_Cross&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;foundation&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Red Cross &lt;em&gt;do&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2006/09/the_business_of_blood.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sell blood to hospitals&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Yes. All the centers that supply blood for transfusions—whether they're part of the American Red Cross or not—sell their products to cover operating expenses. Local hospitals work out contracts with regional suppliers or their local Red Cross facility. [...] All blood suppliers are nonprofits, and the prices they charge follow the cost of production. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is not a secret, or if it is, it is a badly kept one! The American Red Cross finances are published. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redcross.org/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m43540127_2014_TheAmericanNationalRedCrossFS.PDF&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2014 audited financial statements&lt;/a&gt; gives a peek into their operations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zgVv8.png&quot; alt=&quot;Snippet from books&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 2014 financial year, they made $1.89 billion revenue from &quot;Products and Services: Biomedical&quot;, down slightly from $2.04 billion in 2013. &lt;em&gt;[Note: The figures are in thousands of US dollars, so, for example, '1,889,790' corresponds to $1.89 billion.]&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems the $2.1 billion figure quoted is approximately correct.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sounds like a lot of revenue, but it is expensive to collect and distribute blood. How expensive? Look at the operating expenses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Sotgs.png&quot; alt=&quot;Another snippet from books&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Biomedical services cost $1.98 billion in operating costs in 2014. This was not a source of profits in that year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like many viral infographics, this one gives one large figure that sounds scary, but nothing to compare it to. The figure is approximately right, but put into context, it is not as disturbing, and paints the American Red Cross in a better light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-23T13:03:50.267" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T13:03:50.267" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27445" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27440" CreationDate="2015-04-23T12:09:37.097" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Alright so I did some minor investigating into onions and phosphoric acid. As it turns out these claims are bogus. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Firstly thinking that putting onions on your feet would purify your blood is just simply impossible as the liver and kidneys handle that. More so Phosphoric acid is more of a irritant than anything else its commonly found in soft drinks,  in the link found &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Phosphoric_acid#section=Top&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; you can find a compound summary for phosphoric acid from pubchem, and if your interested you can find many more possible uses of phosphoric acid at [wikipedia].&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphoric_acid#In_medicine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt; &#xA;More so if Phosphoric acid is found commonly in soda then drinking soda should help purify our blood which is clearly not the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now for the second claim I've found a link &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bestfoodfacts.org/food-for-thought/onions-cure-flu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; that targets it pretty well.&#xA;The relevant portion. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr. MacDonald: No, onions do not absorb bacteria. The idea that a vegetable would attract and suck into itself bacteria from the air is not even logical. The onion may turn black because it would eventually rot from both cell breakdown events and bacterial contamination if you left it out, not because it absorbs germs. Onions and garlic are slightly acidic, which could have antibacterial effects if you rubbed the juice on things, but these are much less effective than bleach or chemical antibiotics. Eating these vegetables provides antioxidants that can have health benefits, but they are unlikely to prevent or cure disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Dr. MacDonald is talking about onions sucking the bacteria out of the air, the point is still the same Onions would at best have a minor antibacterial affects at best, and even then only if you rubbed the acids on yourself, and in which case there are far better antibacterial agents. On the other hand though eating onions and garlic does actually have health benefits that can strengths your immune system to help resist or prevent illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To conclude sleeping with onions touching your feet or anywhere else for that matter isn't going to do much, although eating them will give you some health benefits. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22806" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T12:09:37.097" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27525" CreationDate="2015-04-23T13:15:10.320" Score="11" ViewCount="3871" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/elaine-forced-to-sell-home-due-to-led-lights-31164731.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Irish Independent&lt;/a&gt; details the claims of a woman saying she is sensitive to LED light, and that it causes her nausea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article explains that neurologists, opticians and ophthalmologists found nothing medically wrong with her. That still leaves psychosomatic effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence of people being sensitive to light specifically from LEDs, beyond psychosomatic symptoms?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23267" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-24T12:14:10.647" LastActivityDate="2022-04-23T15:26:41.600" Title="Are people physically sensitive to light from LEDs over other sources?" Tags="|medical-science|environmental-health|ophthalmology|light|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27447" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27458" CreationDate="2015-04-23T13:19:03.747" Score="8" ViewCount="585" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.faithinamerica.org/reparative-therapy/&quot;&gt;There&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hrc.org/resources/entry/the-lies-and-dangers-of-reparative-therapy&quot;&gt;have&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://cswr.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2010_vol1_pg8_horner.pdf&quot;&gt;been&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drdoughaldeman.com/doc/ScientificExamination.pdf&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/50453-why-gay-conversion-therapy-harmful.html&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_therapy&quot;&gt;conversion therapy/reparative therapy&lt;/a&gt; to convert homosexuals into heterosexuals is harmful or potentially harmful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does it actually cause harm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21903" LastEditorUserId="21903" LastEditDate="2015-04-24T09:48:02.540" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T19:33:45.717" Title="Does Conversion Therapy cause harm?" Tags="|sexuality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27449" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-23T15:23:38.633" Score="40" ViewCount="1554" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/26468/6071&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;How do Mormon missionaries learn foreign languages so quickly?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; it is claimed that LDS (Mormon) missionaries spend only up to ten weeks in languge learning, and that most are &quot;fluent&quot; within one year. These missionaries receive this training together at the Missionary Training Centre, Utah, which means they will be studying many languages together, outside of a speech community for those languages. By comparison, most Protestant missionaries spend 2-3 years in language learning, and if possible this time is spent in a society where the language they're learning is spoken regularly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2014/06/07/319805068/lessons-from-the-language-boot-camp-for-mormon-missionaries&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NPR story&lt;/a&gt; claims that the LDS school is recognised as one of the best language instruction school in the world. It quotes one student who says that 5 weeks at their school gets you to where you would be in three years at a university, and that nine weeks at the LDS school is equivalent to 64 weeks at a US army school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It says that their teaching strategy is focused on contextual learning rather than memorization, which is definitely how many experts say language should be taught. But the time spent at the school sounds incredibly short. Is there any independent evidence that the students of the Missionary Training Centre actually become fluent to the level that the students of other missionary, government or commercial schools take a couple of years to reach?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21255" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:56:43.530" LastActivityDate="2015-10-31T09:50:30.667" Title="Are LDS missionaries taught languages to a level of fluency in under three months which takes other schools years?" Tags="|language|christianity|lds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27453" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-23T22:21:52.497" Score="1" ViewCount="166" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard before that if a sniper shot a .50 calibre bullet at you from a great distance and missed, but the bullet went past your head, that the concussion from the bullet flying by could still kill you, &quot;&lt;em&gt;literally take your head off&lt;/em&gt;&quot; were the words my source used. My source was the son of a contract defence worker at the Tonapah Airforce base (Area 51) who also happened to be an independent arms dealer in Nevada, so I typically trust his knowledge about weapons, but is there any truth to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23245" LastActivityDate="2015-04-23T22:21:52.497" Title="Can the concussion of a .50 calibre bullet from a sniper shot kill you even if the bullet misses?" Tags="|physics|guns|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-04-24T01:08:58.067" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27458" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27447" CreationDate="2015-04-24T05:53:39.473" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a very &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/therapeutic-response.pdf#__utma=149406063.220788723.1429797326.1429797326.1429797326.1&amp;amp;__utmb=149406063.1.10.1429797326&amp;amp;__utmc=149406063&amp;amp;__utmx=-&amp;amp;__utmz=149406063.1429797326.1.1.utmcsr=google|utmccn=(organic)|utmcmd=organic|utmctr=(not%20provided)&amp;amp;__utmv=-&amp;amp;__utmk=31438271&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;scientific&lt;/a&gt; report from American Psychological Association Task Force on the &lt;em&gt;Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation&lt;/em&gt;, the question of&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are SOCE harmful? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;was studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the scientific report has explicitly said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In our review, we considered &lt;strong&gt;only peer-reviewed&#xA;  research&lt;/strong&gt;, in keeping with current standards for&#xA;  conducting scientific reviews (see Khan, Kunz, Kleijnen,&#xA;  &amp;amp; Antes, 2003), &lt;strong&gt;which exclude the grey literature and&#xA;  lay material&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their report reviewed many experiments, they are summarized here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Early Studies: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Early research on efforts to change sexual orientation&#xA;  focused heavily on interventions that include aversion&#xA;  techniques. Many of these studies did not set out to&#xA;  investigate harm. Nonetheless, &lt;strong&gt;these studies provide&#xA;  some suggestion that harm can occur from aversive&#xA;  efforts to change sexual orientation&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonexperimental Studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the study conducted by Bancroft (1969) , he reported&#xA;  the &lt;strong&gt;intervention had harmful effects on 50% of the&#xA;  16 research subjects who were exposed to it&lt;/strong&gt;.  Quinn,&#xA;  Harrison, and McAllister (1970) and Thorpe et al.&#xA;  (1964) also reported &lt;strong&gt;cases of debilitating depression,&#xA;  gastric distress, nightmares, and anxiety.&lt;/strong&gt; Herman and&#xA;  Prewett (1974) reported that following treatment, their&#xA;  research participant began to engage in &lt;strong&gt;abusive use of&#xA;  alcohol that required his rehospitalization&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experimental Studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In McConaghy and Barr’s (1973) experiment, &lt;strong&gt;1&#xA;  respondent of 46 subjects is reported to have lost all&#xA;  sexual feeling and to have dropped out of the treatment&#xA;  as a result&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Two participants reported experiencing&#xA;  severe depression&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;4 others experienced milder&#xA;  depression during treatment&lt;/strong&gt;. No other experimental&#xA;  studies reported on iatrogenic effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quasi-experimental Studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;None reported on adverse events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recent Studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some recent studies document that &lt;strong&gt;there are people who&#xA;  perceive that they have been harmed through SOCE&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  (Beckstead &amp;amp; Morrow, 2004; Nicolosi et al., 2000;&#xA;  Schaeffer et al., 2000; Schroeder &amp;amp; Shidlo, 2001; Shidlo&#xA;  &amp;amp; Schroeder, 2002; Smith et al., 2004), &lt;strong&gt;just as other&#xA;  recent studies document that there are people who&#xA;  perceive that they have benefited from it&lt;/strong&gt; (Beckstead &amp;amp;&#xA;  Morrow, 2004; Nicolosi et al., 2000; Pattison &amp;amp; Pattison,&#xA;  1980; Schaeffer et al., 2000; Spitzer, 2003).Many participants in studies by Beckstead and Morrow (2004) and Shidlo and Schroeder (2002) &lt;strong&gt;described experiencing&#xA;  first the positive effects and then experiencing or&#xA;  acknowledging the negative effects later&lt;/strong&gt;.  Among&#xA;  those studies reporting on the perceptions of harm, the&#xA;  reported negative social and emotional consequences&#xA;  include self-reports of &lt;strong&gt;anger, anxiety, confusion,&#xA;  depression, grief, guilt, hopelessness, deteriorated&#xA;  relationships with family, loss of social support, loss&#xA;  of faith, poor self-image, social isolation, intimacy&#xA;  difficulties, intrusive imagery, suicidal ideation,&#xA;  self-hatred, and sexual dysfunction&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Studies from both periods&#xA;  indicate that attempts to&#xA;  change sexual orientation&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;may cause or exacerbate&#xA;  distress and poor mental&#xA;  health in some individuals&lt;/strong&gt;,&#xA;  including depression and&#xA;  suicidal thoughts. The lack&#xA;  of rigorous research on the&#xA;  safety of SOCE represents&#xA;  a serious concern, &lt;strong&gt;as&#xA;  do studies that report&#xA;  perceptions of harm&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there is a correlational link between &quot;conversion therapy&quot; and &quot;harm&quot; but not a causal link. Note that this is not a question of whether &quot;conversion therapy&quot; works or not, but only whether it causes harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-24T19:33:45.717" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T19:33:45.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27459" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27460" CreationDate="2015-04-24T08:58:40.260" Score="4" ViewCount="843" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drmalcolm.ca/ptsd-plus.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recent research has determined that &quot;&lt;strong&gt;exposure therapy&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, a specialized&#xA;  form of cognitive-behaviour therapy that includes adjusting harmful&#xA;  cognitions (thoughts) &lt;strong&gt;is the only form of therapy that is known to&#xA;  deal effectively with PTSD&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to know the source of this information and how one could say &quot;it's the only therapy that works&quot;. I was consider asking it on &lt;a href=&quot;https://cogsci.stackexchange.com/&quot;&gt;cogsci.stackexchange.com&lt;/a&gt; but I thought this site might be a better fit. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is exposure therapy the only effective way of treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:56:17.773" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T16:36:30.120" Title="Is exposure therapy is the only effective treatment of PTSD?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27460" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27459" CreationDate="2015-04-24T09:56:24.657" Score="9" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is exposure therapy the only effective way of treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two claims here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exposure therapy is an effective way of treating PTSD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Exposure therapy is the only effective way of treating PTSD.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is it an effective way?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psy-journal.com/article/S0165-1781(14)00951-2/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;short-term psychotherapy&lt;/a&gt; originally designed to treat depression, but is now used for a number of mental illnesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CBT has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ801196&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;proven&lt;/a&gt; to be an effective treatment for PTSD and is currently  the &lt;a href=&quot;http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ801196&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;standard of care for PTSD&lt;/a&gt; by the United States Department of Defense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exposure therapy is one &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy#cite_note-14&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;modern form&lt;/a&gt; of CBT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Numerous &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.baojournal.com/BAT%20Journal/VOL-4/BAT-4-1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt; have demonstrated its effectiveness in treating PTSD; apa.org &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/research/action/exposure.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 1980's, Dr. Terence M. Keane and his colleagues &lt;strong&gt;found that exposure therapy was effective in treating the PTSD symptoms of Vietnam War veterans&lt;/strong&gt;. Exposure therapy, previously known as imaginal flooding therapy, &lt;strong&gt;involves carefully exposing the patient to prolonged and repeated imagined images of the trauma until the images no longer cause severe anxiety&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research by Dr. Edna B. Foa and her colleagues showed that exposure therapy was effective in reducing PTSD symptoms of rape victims, including persistent fear.&lt;/strong&gt; The improvements were seen immediately after exposure therapy, and were shown to be sustained during a three-month follow-up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Citation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keane, T. M. &amp;amp; Kaloupek, D. G. (1982). Imaginal flooding in the treatment of a posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 50, 138-140.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Keane, T. M., Fairbank, J. A., Caddell, J. M., &amp;amp; Zimering, R. T. (1989). Implosive (flooding) therapy reduced symptoms of PTSD in Vietnam combat veterans. Behavior Therapy, 20, 245-260.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claim: valid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Is it the only effective way?&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_stress_disorder#Psychological&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's article&lt;/a&gt; claims that there are several types of psychotherapy with strongly demonstrated efficacy,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The psychotherapy programs with the strongest demonstrated efficacy include &lt;strong&gt;cognitive behavioral programs&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;variants of exposure therapy&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;stress inoculation training (SIT)&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;variants of cognitive therapy (CT)&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR)&lt;/strong&gt;,[79] &lt;strong&gt;mindfulness-based meditation&lt;/strong&gt;[80] and many combinations of these procedures.[81]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to say that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EMDR and trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TFCBT) were recommended as first-line treatments for trauma victims in a 2007 review; however, &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;the evidence base [for EMDR] was not as strong as that for TFCBT ... Furthermore, there was limited evidence that TFCBT and EMDR were superior to supportive/non-directive treatments, hence it is highly unlikely that their effectiveness is due to non-specific factors such as attention.&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;[82] A meta-analytic comparison of EMDR and cognitive behavioral therapy found both protocols indistinguishable in terms of effectiveness in treating PTSD; however, &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;the contribution of the eye movement component in EMDR to treatment outcome&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot; is unclear.[83]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we take for example EMDR, meta-study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0005791612001000&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;concluded that there is evidence&lt;/a&gt; that it is effective:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is now considered evidence based practice in the treatment of trauma symptoms.&lt;/strong&gt; Yet in a previous meta-analysis, no significant effect was found for the eye movement component. However methodological issues with this study may have resulted in a type II error. &lt;strong&gt;The aim of this meta-analysis was to examine current published studies to test whether eye movements significantly affect the processing of distressing memories.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other than psychological treatments, medications including fluoxetine and paroxetine &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1192%2Fbjp.bp.114.148551&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;might&lt;/a&gt; improve symptoms in a small amount.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claim: not fully valid. While exposure therapy (form of CBT) is an effective therapy; it is not the only one there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-24T16:36:30.120" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27461" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26523" CreationDate="2015-04-24T12:53:29.763" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;A correlation between thunderstorms and the souring or curdling of milk has been observed for hundreds of years.  According to the 1685 book &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=wVQ6AAAAcAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA29&amp;amp;dq=thunder%20milk&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=VCM-VdWYFszdsAW-7IDwAw&amp;amp;ved=0CCoQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=thunder%20milk&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Paradoxal Discourses of F. M. Van Helmont: Concerning the Macrocosm and Microcosm, Or the Greater and Lesser World, and Their Union&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now that the Thunder hath its peculiar working, may be partly perceived from hence, that at the time when it thunders, Beer, Milk, &amp;amp;c. turn fower in the Cellars ... the Thunder doth everywhere introduce corruption and putrefaction&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the 1800s the mainstream explanation was that there is no causal effect of thunderstorms on the souring of milk.  Exemplary of the mainstream scientific explanation is the 12 June 1858 article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lightning-and-milk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lightning and Milk&lt;/a&gt;&quot; Scientific American volume 13, issue 40.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;although it has long been known to us, and almost every other person we suppose, that milk is liable to become sour during thunder storms. We attribute this influence to the state of the atmosphere, not the thunder concussions, as it is well known that the weather is generally sultry or hot just prior to a thunder storm, and this warm condition of the air is very favorable to the development of lactic acid in the milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nonetheless, there were scientific investigations in the late 1800s and early 1900s concerning alternative theories of a causal relationship, all the while the mainstream explanation being that there is only a correlation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One alternative explanation was that ozone formed by lighting directly, or by enhancing the growth rate of bacteria, caused increased souring.  See for example.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/1766770?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Souring of Milk During Thunder-Storms&lt;/a&gt;&quot; &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt; Vol. XVIII, No. 425, pages 178-179, from 1891.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another alternative explanation put forward in &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2208165/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thunder and Sour Milk&lt;/a&gt;&quot; British Journal of Medicine vol. 2 page 651, from 1890, is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;viewed in relation to the experiments of Professor Lodge, confirmed&#xA;  by myself, on the precipitation of smoke by the static&#xA;  spark, and stated in my book on Static Electricity in Medicine, it&#xA;  is a fair inference that atmospheric dust, together with organic&#xA;  germs, are thus precipitated during a thunderstorm, the precipitation&#xA;  of the latter causing the rapid souring of milk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(It is now well known that bacteria are present in clouds and fall during storms.  See the 2013 NPR story &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2013/01/29/170459317/bird-plane-bacteria-microbes-thrive-in-storm-clouds&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Bird, Plane, Bacteria? Microbes Thrive In Storm Clouds&lt;/a&gt; and &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/14299-bacteria-create-rain-snow-hail.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Surprising Find: Live Bacteria Help Create Rain, Snow &amp;amp; Hail&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=GzVCAQAAMAAJ&amp;amp;pg=RA8-PA40&amp;amp;dq=milk%20sours%20thunderstorms&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=XTY6VfzQF87isASakoDoDQ&amp;amp;ved=0CCgQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=milk%20sours%20thunderstorms&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Influence of Thunderstorms on Milk&lt;/a&gt;&quot; The Creamery and Milk Plant Monthly, Volume 11, page 40 from 1922, has data from days with and without thunderstorms, and shows much (factor of 10) greater bacterial levels in milk on days with thunderstorms, relative to other summer days.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It speculates that the falling air pressure associated with thunderstorms causes an increase in bacteria in the cow's udder, and emphasizes that temperature was constant.  This article also discusses the influence of ozone, produced by lightning, on the growth rate of bacteria.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these alternative explanations gained acceptance. For example According to a University of Nebraska &amp;amp; US Department of Agriculture publication &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3948&amp;amp;context=extensionhist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Milk in Your Meals&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, (1946)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another fallacy is that thunderstorms cause milk to sour. In reality&#xA;  the souring was probably due to the warm weather that is associated&#xA;  with thunderstorms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After pastuerization and refrigeration became widespread, eliminating bacteria growth, interest in this issue almost disappeared.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Still, the prestigious medical journal &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673651932795&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Lancet, 18 August 1951, page 278&lt;/a&gt; discusses &quot;The old observation that milk clots more readily in a thunderstorm&quot; and says the work of Trillat is &quot;worth repeating with the more exact methods available today&quot;.  Trillat had investigated the possibility that not just temperature, but also atmospheric pressure of a storm, can influence the growth rates of bacteria in milk. (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=iOoxAQAAMAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PP16&amp;amp;lpg=PP16&amp;amp;dq=Trillat%20milk%20thunderstorm&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=_xlEjFztnc&amp;amp;sig=fO6BPM53JQPNdk2piMediAmlu1U&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=_kU-VYbhBLDnsASeyYHQBA&amp;amp;ved=0CCYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Trillat%20milk%20thunderstorm&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;English summary of Trillat's research here&lt;/a&gt;) Original French paper is &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/CadresFenetre?O=NUMM-3107&amp;amp;I=647&amp;amp;M=tdm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Étude sur les causes du caillage du lait observé pendant les périodes orageuses&lt;/a&gt;&quot; in COMPTES RENDUS &#xA;DES SÉANCES DE L'ACADÉMIE DES SCIENCES 26 February 1912. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-04-27T14:51:07.360" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T14:51:07.360" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27462" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-24T14:15:03.207" Score="5" ViewCount="276" Body="&lt;p&gt;In its &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/medical_devices/publications/en/Donation_Guidelines.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Guidelines for Donations of Health Care Equipment&lt;/a&gt;, the WHO says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sense among some biomedical&#xA;  engineers and health care professionals who have extensive work experience in these countries is&#xA;  that &lt;strong&gt;less than 30%, perhaps as low as 10%, of used equipment ultimately becomes operational.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The number is quite vague and unreferenced. What percentage of used/refurbished medical equipment donated to developing countries ultimately becomes operational?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7654" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-26T05:38:26.023" LastActivityDate="2018-10-08T18:37:11.127" Title="Does less than 30% of donated used medical equipment ultimately become operational?" Tags="|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4187" CreationDate="2015-04-24T15:06:39.013" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=keng9ELAE2IC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=Manual%20of%20Forensic%20Emergency%20Medicine&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=0ahUKEwj0y9bjs6PaAhWDY98KHcsQAOsQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=tampon&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Manual of Forensic Emergency Medicine&lt;/a&gt; by Ralph Riviello at page 118:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are many enduring myths and misconceptions about the hymen.  It is essential to note that first coitus does not result in any hymenal injury in a significant percentage of patients.  Tampon use, sports, and prior pelvic examination do not cause hymen injury&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book cites &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8021768&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hymenal findings in adolescent women: Impact of tampon use and consensual sexual activity&lt;/a&gt;&quot; Journal of Pediatrics vol. 125, pages 153-160 as the source of this information.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article specifically states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the presence of these complete clefts was not related to participation in sports&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article further finds:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;81% of examined females who reported not being virgins had completely cleaved hymens.  (This means that it can not be determined that someone is a virgin, because even if she is not the hymen could still be intact.)  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only 11% of tampon users and 5% of pad only users who reported being virgins had completely cleaved hymens. (The authors did not find this to be a statistically significant difference but &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9670493&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Can tampon use cause hymen changes in girls who have not had sexual intercourse? A review of the literature&lt;/a&gt;&quot; Forensic Science International vol. 94 pages 147-153 explains that depending upon criteria, this could be a significant difference).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, one can see from this data that there is about a 19% chance that a young woman can have an intact hymen despite not being a virgin; and a 5-11% chance of having a cleaved hymen despite being a virgin.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review article above similarly says 16% chance of an intact hymen despite not being a virgin; and 10% chance of having a cleaved hymen despite being a virgin.  It explains that the possible reasons for hymen cleft beside intercourse are: congenital irregularity; penetrative injury as a child; insertion of tampons; insertion of objects (such as vibrator); or digital penetration by either self or a partner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The review concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Discretion is indicated when physicians are required to testify, remembering that both the sexually active and the never-sexually-active groups of adolescent girls include some with hymen clefts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, no, examining a hymen is not a reliable way to determine virginity.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Going back to the issue of sports, since a bounty has been placed with a request for more information on this topic:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=3DZtAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;dq=Child%20Abuse%3A%20Medical%20Diagnosis%20and%20Management%20recessed%20in%20the%20vestibule&amp;amp;focus=searchwithinvolume&amp;amp;q=bicycling&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Child Abuse: Medical Diagnosis and Management&lt;/a&gt; (2001), Reese and Ludwig editors, quoting from pages 235-236:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The hymenal membrane is recessed in the vestibule, protecting it from direct trauma; hence the implausibility of injury to the membrane from athletic activity such as bicycling, horseback riding, or gymnastics.  The common misconception that the athletic activities cause injury to the hymen has no scientific support&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2018-04-05T15:04:44.150" LastActivityDate="2018-04-05T15:04:44.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27468" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27470" CreationDate="2015-04-25T07:21:51.100" Score="18" ViewCount="4024" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I have been arguing with people opposing the use of vaccines. One google search query led me to an &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthimpactnews.com/2015/zero-u-s-measles-deaths-in-10-years-but-over-100-measles-vaccine-deaths-reported/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; claiming that are death cases by measles vaccines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The  &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthimpactnews.com/2015/zero-u-s-measles-deaths-in-10-years-but-over-100-measles-vaccine-deaths-reported/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; goes on claiming that measles vaccines kill over 100 people annually.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is more interesting, is the graph they present:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/c3jch.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Measles deaths graph&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This graphs claims that the vaccine was introduced after the disease was under control already, arguing it was pointless to have the vaccination program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am really skeptical of the two claims above. I know that there was an outbreak in 1990 of measles but I would like to know if the following is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8106" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-04-25T11:34:57.307" LastActivityDate="2015-04-25T11:34:57.307" Title="Was measles vaccine introduced after the disease was under control" Tags="|united-states|vaccines|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27470" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27468" CreationDate="2015-04-25T10:26:57.830" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me compare that data (i.e. a death rate of less than 1 in 100,000) with data reported elsewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to reference &lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/189/Supplement_1/S4.full&quot;&gt;The Clinical Significance of Measles: A Review&lt;/a&gt; which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the United States, mortality from measles decreased from 25 per 1000 reported cases in 1912 [209, 210] to 1 per 1000 reported cases in 1962 [211]. In New York State, measles mortality decreased by &gt;15-fold long before the introduction of measles vaccination (figure 2) [212]. US and UK case-fatality rates were ∼1 per 1000 reported measles cases from the 1940s through the 1980s 3, 124, 133, 211]. During the past 13 years in the United States, the case-fatality rate has averaged 3 per 1000 reported measles cases (table 2). This increase is most likely due to more complete reporting of measles as a cause of death, HIV infections, and a higher proportion of cases among preschool-aged children and adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A naive reading of the data I referenced would suggest that the death rate is 50 times higher than claimed in the OP (because mine measures deaths per 1000 instead of deaths per 100,000 -- compare &quot;25 per 1000 reported cases in 1912&quot; with the approximately 12 per 100,000 shown in the graph in the OP).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the reason for that discrepancy is probably that mine is measuring deaths per person who gets the disease, whereas the other is measuring deaths per person per year. If we assume that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everyone used to get the disease once&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Everyone who survived it was immune and didn't get it again&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Every who survived it lived for approximately 50 years&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... then that would explain the lower death rate per year (i.e. lower by a factor of 50).&#xA;For example, compare with this &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate&quot;&gt;List of causes of death by rate&lt;/a&gt; which claims that the death rate for &lt;strong&gt;all causes&lt;/strong&gt; (cancer, all accidents, heart disease, all infection diseases, war, etc.) is only 916 per 100,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore I think these two sets of data are more-or-less in agreement.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My reference agrees that the death rate declines during the 20th century&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;My reference notes there's now a 21st century death rate. The death rate would be too small to show up on the graph in the OP: because the graph in the OP measures death per whole population per year, and because in the 21st century most of the population is vaccinated (and so, immunized) so the disease rate is low in the whole population. However the disease rate (and therefore the death rate) is higher in the subset of the population that isn't vaccinated. My reference claims that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the past 13 years in the United States, the case-fatality rate has averaged 3 per 1000 reported measles cases&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a bit higher than &quot;∼1 per 1000 reported measles cases from the 1940s through the 1980s&quot;, which suggests that the disease is not exactly &quot;under control&quot; due to 21st century medicine (except by vaccines, if you accept vaccination).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elsewhere in that article it explains that the death rate is higher in developing countries:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Developing countries. Measles remains a leading cause of death and disability-adjusted life-years lost [214]. Community-based studies during the 1970s and 1980s revealed measles case-fatality rates of 3%–34% [215–217], 10–20 times those in industrialized countries. In 2000, the World Health Organization estimated that 30–40 million persons developed measles, resulting in 777,000 deaths, most in sub-Saharan Africa [218]. This estimate was based on expected case fatality rates. Another approach based on verbal autopsies gives a lower estimate of the number of measles-associated deaths [219, 220].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;High case-fatality rates in developing countries are due to a young age at infection, crowding, underlying immune deficiency disorders, vitamin A deficiency, and lack of access to medical care. Before the introduction of measles vaccines, one-third of children in many developing countries were infected in the first and second years of life, and most children were infected before age 5 years [195, 221, 222]. An estimated 125 million preschool-aged children are estimated to have vitamin A deficiency, placing them at high risk for death, severe infection, or blindness as a result of measles [197].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The disease is treatable (not to mention preventable):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In recent years, the use of vitamin A therapy for children with measles, prompt antibiotic therapy for pneumonia, and older age at time of infections have contributed to the lower case-fatality rates (⩽1%) in some developing countries (figure 3) 223–228]. In Latin America [229] and southern Africa [230], achieving high vaccination rates has reduced measles mortality in these regions to near zero.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that &quot;death&quot; is not the only potential complication which results from measles: there's also a also risk of non-fatal pneumonia, encephalitis, ocular complications (keratitis, corneal scarring, blindness), and malnutrition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, the numbers in the graph are true but the answer depends on what you mean by &quot;under control&quot;: i.e. before vaccines were introduced, the disease was still pandemic, but they'd learned how to treat everyone who became ill, such that with enough medical care they could keep most people from actually dying of the disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-04-25T11:27:31.000" LastActivityDate="2015-04-25T11:27:31.000" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27471" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27474" CreationDate="2015-04-25T10:59:12.990" Score="23" ViewCount="28027" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard it said on multiple occasions that &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/https://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=20100309035449AA7vfcX&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the word &lt;em&gt;Butterfly&lt;/em&gt; was originally &lt;em&gt;Flutterby&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, but that it was either misread or mispronounced and somehow ended up being recorded as &lt;em&gt;Butterfly&lt;/em&gt; instead.&#xA;I did a quick google and found the following for the word's etymology:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Old English, from butter + fly; perhaps from the cream or yellow colour of common species, or from an old belief that the insects stole butter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com.au/search?q=butterfly+etymology&amp;amp;oq=butterfly+etymology&amp;amp;aqs=chrome.0.69i59j0l2.5249j0j4&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome-mobile&amp;amp;espvd=1&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;google&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I did not find reference to the term &lt;em&gt;Flutterby&lt;/em&gt; in any dictionary definitions, but did read &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2008/02/a-swallowtail-by-any-other-name.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; which addresses the &lt;em&gt;Flutterby&lt;/em&gt; word and states that the author is not aware of any such origin, and dismisses the idea as nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it likely or at least possible that the word &lt;em&gt;Butterfly&lt;/em&gt; did in fact start as some variant or analogue of &lt;em&gt;Flutterby&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25893" LastEditorUserId="25893" LastEditDate="2017-09-26T18:14:27.933" LastActivityDate="2023-05-08T20:05:00.253" Title="Does the word &quot;butterfly&quot; stem from an erroneous transcription of &quot;flutterby&quot;?" Tags="|etymology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26523" CreationDate="2015-04-25T14:09:57.820" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This answer is currently a li'l sketchy.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=16693.0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;forum thread from August 2009&lt;/a&gt; referred to in the OP contains a post that includes a copy of the following article from July 17, 2009:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Didn't you know, milk goes sour when there are thunderstorms around?&amp;quot; I was surprised to hear this old canard during the recent spell of thundery weather. I can't remember having heard it for ten or twenty years, which illustrates how changing lifestyles have seen off some old myths. In this case we no longer associate sour milk with thunder because most of us have fridges. Let me explain why.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was a deeply-held notion until at least the 1960s, notwithstanding a widely publicised laboratory experiment which had been conducted way back in &lt;strong&gt;1913&lt;/strong&gt; by Professor &lt;strong&gt;D.G. Duffield and Mr J.A. Murray&lt;/strong&gt;. Maintaining an ambient temperature of 20°C, two flasks of milk were connected to a discharge tube through which an electrical current was passed for an hour, &lt;strong&gt;simulating repeated lightning discharges&lt;/strong&gt;, and the air thus affected was bubbled through the milk containers. The artificial lightning was repeated at regular intervals thereafter, for up to nine hours after the beginning of the test. Several slightly differing tests were carried out, with variations in the intensity and frequency of the discharge, and variations in the speed of air passing through the milk. A 'control' flask of milk was kept at an identical temperature in order to provide a sample of the fluid not affected by the electrical discharges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The results showed that, in all the test variations, the level of acidity - the sourness - rose less quickly in the 'electrified' milk samples compared with the 'control' sample. In other words milk actually sours less quickly in thundery weather, according to the Duffield and Murray experiment.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Milk goes sour due to bacteria - bacilli acidi lactici - which produce lactic acid. These bacteria are fairly inactive at low temperatures, which is why we keep milk in the fridge and it remains drinkable for several days even after opening. Once the temperature climbs above 7°C, however, the bacteria multiply with increasing rapidity until at 50°C conditions become too hot for them to survive. The myths concerning souring in thundery weather probably arose because most thundery activity in Britain occurs during hot and humid summer weather with only a limited cooling off at night. During such episodes the temperature increases sharply inside houses, even in the coolest rooms such as pantries and larders, to levels probably not matched at any other time of the year. Thus in pre-refrigerator days the milk would go off within 12 hours of it being opened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should also be borne in mind that during the earlier decades of the twentieth century it could take three or four days for milk to get from the farm to the urban doorstep, adding to the problem. The introduction of pasteurisation in the early 1900s added 12 to 24 hours to the life of milk and resulted in a marked drop in infant mortality rates in the hot summer of 1906 compared with the heatwaves of 1900 and 1901.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The byline for the copy-pasted article credits a Philip Eden who is probably a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Eden&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;British weather journalist/historian&lt;/a&gt; of some note who has written articles for a number of websites. But I have been unable to locate the above article anywhere else. It does not appear to be available any more.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the paper used by Eden as a basis for his article does exist. In &lt;strong&gt;1914&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.asap.unimelb.edu.au/bsparcs/physics/P000375p.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;W.&lt;/strong&gt; G. Duffield&lt;/a&gt; and J. A. Murray did publish a paper titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.birpublications.org/doi/abs/10.1259/jrs.1914.0004&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Milk and Electrical Discharges&lt;/a&gt; in the journal of the London Röntgen Society. The paper is however stuck behind a paywall with only the following preview available:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The experiments to be described originated from a curiosity to test the popular belief that the &lt;strong&gt;electrical conditions during a thunderstorm are responsible for the rapid souring of milk.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our method was to pass air containing the products of an electric spark discharge through milk, and to observe the effect upon the rate at which the acidity increased; the …&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.in/books?id=KSVWAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;q=%22Milk%20and%20electrical%20discharges%22&amp;amp;dq=%22Milk%20and%20electrical%20discharges%22&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Books copy&lt;/a&gt; is only available in snippet view. But there appears to be sufficient circumstantial evidence to suggest that this 101-year-old paper cited in the Eden's article is legitimate. Extending this confidence to the rest of the article, (electrical discharges during) thunderstorms do not promote curdling in milk. If anything, they retard it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-25T14:09:57.820" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27473" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6605" CreationDate="2015-04-25T14:20:53.357" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to declassified FBI documents, there was information from an informant claiming Adolf Hitler arrived in Argentina via submarine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/e0FOu.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ynjon.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YZ6P6.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NRMHG.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yTIHR.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Adolf Hitler live till 1962? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't immediately say from these documents, there's a lot to work through and the quality is fairly poor, but the FBI certainly found it plausible that Adolf Hitler was still alive after the fall of Berlin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler/adolf-hitler-part-01-of-04/at_download/file&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FBI Vault Hitler 1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler/adolf-hitler-part-02-of-04/at_download/file&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FBI Vault Hitler 2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler/adolf-hitler-part-03-of-04/at_download/file&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FBI Vault Hitler 3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://vault.fbi.gov/adolf-hitler/adolf-hitler-part-04-of-04/at_download/file&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FBI Vault Hitler 4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at Wikipedia:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Different versions of Hitler's fate were presented by the Soviet Union&#xA;  according to its political desires. In the years immediately following&#xA;  1945, the Soviets maintained Hitler was not dead, but had fled and was&#xA;  being shielded by the former western allies.[51] This worked for a&#xA;  time to create doubt among western authorities. The chief of the U.S.&#xA;  trial counsel at Nuremberg, Thomas J. Dodd, said: &quot;No one can say he&#xA;  is dead.&quot; When President Harry S. Truman asked Stalin at the Potsdam&#xA;  Conference in August 1945 whether or not Hitler was dead, Stalin&#xA;  replied bluntly, &quot;No&quot;. But by 11 May 1945, the Soviets had already&#xA;  confirmed through Hitler's dentist, Hugo Blaschke, and his dental&#xA;  technician that the dental remains found were Hitler's and&#xA;  Braun's.[52] In November 1945, Dick White, then head of&#xA;  counter-intelligence in the British sector of Berlin (and later head&#xA;  of MI5 and MI6 in succession), had their agent Hugh Trevor-Roper&#xA;  investigate the matter to counter the Soviet claims. His findings were&#xA;  written in a report and published in book form in 1947.[53]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In May 1946, SMERSH agents recovered from the crater where Hitler was&#xA;  buried two burned skull fragments with gunshot damage. These remains&#xA;  were apparently forgotten in the Russian State Archives until 1993,&#xA;  when they were re-found.[54] In 2009 DNA and forensic tests were&#xA;  performed on the skull fragment, which Soviet officials had long&#xA;  believed to be Hitler's. According to the American researchers, the&#xA;  tests revealed that the skull was actually that of a woman less than&#xA;  40 years old. The jaw fragments which had been recovered in May 1945&#xA;  were not tested.&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YZ6P6.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Adolf_Hitler&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia on the Death of Adolf Hitler&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Musmanno&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michael Mussmanno&lt;/a&gt; wrote in his book &lt;code&gt;Ten Days to Die&lt;/code&gt; that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Russia must accept much of the blame that Hitler did not die in May&#xA;  1945.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_F._Byrnes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;James F. Byrnes&lt;/a&gt; wrote in his book &lt;code&gt;Speaking Frankly&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While in Potsdam at the conference of the Big Four, Stalin left his&#xA;  chair, came over and clicked his liquor glass with mine in a very&#xA;  friendly manner.  I asked what was his theory about the death of Adolf&#xA;  Hitler and he replied - Hitler is not dead.  He escaped either to&#xA;  Spain or Argentina.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14234" LastEditorUserId="14234" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T13:51:02.983" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T13:51:02.983" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27474" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27471" CreationDate="2015-04-25T15:50:52.527" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Flutterby was (or is) used by children as an expression for butterfly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.lb/books?id=c1NFAQAAIAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA203&amp;amp;dq=%22dingbat%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=NL1ZU6qcEoSHyAT5rYHoCQ&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=snippet&amp;amp;q=flutterby&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dialect Notes, Volume 4&lt;/a&gt; was published by American Dialect Society in 1917. It mentions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some instances of the transposition of syllables [...] are pillercat for caterpiller and flutterby for butterfly in the usage of children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the word for butterfly is not derived from that usage. Butterfly comes from the Old English &quot;buttorfleoge&quot;, according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&amp;amp;search=butterfly&amp;amp;searchmode=none&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;etymonline.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;butterfly (n.): Old English buttorfleoge, evidently butter (n.) + fly (n.), but of obscure signification. Perhaps based on the old notion that the insects (or witches disguised as butterflies) consume butter or milk that is left uncovered. Or, less creatively, simply because the pale yellow color of many species' wings suggests the color of butter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.lb/books?id=vGRQAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;q=butterfleoge&amp;amp;dq=butterfleoge&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=47U7VdX5C4SwUZTugOgF&amp;amp;ved=0CD0Q6AEwBg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Newsletter and Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, Volumes 15-17&lt;/a&gt; also confirms that the origins of butterfly are unknown:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Why is a butterfly called a butterfly in Britain? According to the &lt;em&gt;Oxford English Dictionary&lt;/em&gt;, the reason is unknown! However, two possible derivations are offered: (1) from the Anglo-Saxon &lt;em&gt;butterfleoge&lt;/em&gt; (literally butterfly) so called after the yellow species, and/or from the Old Dutch &lt;em&gt;boterschijte&lt;/em&gt; (butter-shit) from the colour of the excretion of Cabbage White!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does the word “butterfly” stem from an erroneous transcription of “flutterby”? Is it likely or at least possible that the word Butterfly did in fact start as some variant or analogue of Flutterby?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not really. The newsletter and Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, Volumes 15-17 suggested &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.lb/books?id=vGRQAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;q=butterfleoge&amp;amp;dq=butterfleoge&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=47U7VdX5C4SwUZTugOgF&amp;amp;ved=0CD0Q6AEwBg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;two possible derivations&lt;/a&gt; and none had your claim.  Books and references suggest that butterfly stem from butterfleoge; the rest is unknown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-26T16:48:06.253" LastActivityDate="2015-04-26T16:48:06.253" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27475" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27494" CreationDate="2015-04-25T19:49:50.047" Score="20" ViewCount="2594" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Armenian Genocide&lt;/a&gt; is explained in Wikipedia as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the Ottoman government's systematic extermination of its minority Armenian subjects inside their historic homeland, which lies within the territory constituting the present-day Republic of Turkey. The total number of people killed as a result has been estimated at between 800,000 to 1.5 million&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 100 year anniversary of the start of the Genocide was commemorated recently.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I always believed that the Armenian Genocide really happened; but I realized that I never checked what evidence is there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The governments of Turkey and Azerbaijan deny that the Ottoman authorities attempted to exterminate the Armenian people. The Turkish government acknowledges that during World War I many Armenians died, but counters that Muslim Turks died as well, and claims that the number of Armenian victims has been inflated, and that massacres were committed by both sides as a result of inter-ethnic violence and the wider conflict of World War I.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on to list at least 14 &amp;quot;prominent scholars&amp;quot; who deny the Armenian Genocide, and contrasts that with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The overwhelming majority of historians as well as academic institutions on Holocaust and Genocide Studies recognize the Armenian Genocide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of 2015, the governments of twenty-six countries, including Russia, France, and Germany, as well as forty-three states of the United States of America, have recognized the events as 'genocide'. The governments of Turkey and Azerbaijan deny the Armenian Genocide.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the killings are legally considered 'genocide', is there verifiable historical evidence showing that the estimated number of Armenians were systematically killed?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-03-29T15:29:51.597" Title="Did the Ottoman government kill ~1 million Armenians during and after World War I?" Tags="|history|turkey|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27476" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26523" CreationDate="2015-04-26T03:28:44.490" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 1968 NASA, through the assistance of the Israel Program for Scientific Translation, translated from Russian the 1964 book &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.org/stream/nasa_techdoc_19690003053/19690003053_djvu.txt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Earth in the Universe&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, with chapters written by top Soviet scientists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a chapter written by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Chizhevsky&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Prof. A. L. Chizhevskii&lt;/a&gt;, who was honorary president of the first International Congress of Biophysics and Biocosmics held in New York, wrote (quoting pages 295-296):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is known that a minimum amount of electro- &#xA;  magnetic energy may markedly lower the stability of the dispersed phase &#xA;  of certain colloidal fluids. Experiments have shown that radio waves from &#xA;  telegraphic transmitters caused relatively rapid precipitation of the solid &#xA;  phase of certain colloids, yet the field intensity is only of the order &#xA;  of 0.001 to 0.00001 of the intensity of the so-called electrical &#xA;  interference. When placed in sheet-iron chambers the same colloids were &#xA;  not affected by radio transmitters (Wilke and Miiller). &lt;strong&gt;It has been known &#xA;  for a long time that milk curdles considerably faster on days with &#xA;  marked atmospheric- electrical disturbances (thunderstorms) than on other &#xA;  days. It was experimentally proved that the curdling is quite independent &#xA;  of bacterial processes. Evidently, under the effect of the factors mentioned above, syneresis and disruption of the protein- colloid system occurs in the milk. Experimental coagulation of milk by treatment with short waves was reported, thus excluding from the process any thermal phenomena&lt;/strong&gt; (Kerber, Goetinck). Similar observations were made on various gels and emulsions in which the suspended phases precipitated during thunder storms (Wedekind and others).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statement in the OP attributed to the nakedscientists.com really originates from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg15320698.300-the-last-word.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;15 February 1997 issue of New Scientist&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sour cream &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q: One evening in the summer of 1994 I retired to bed with a glass of milk. During the night there was a tremendous thunderstorm with plenty of lighting and the following morning the remainder of the milk had curdled into a solid mass. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My elderly relatives who remembered pre-refrigerator days held it as common knowledge never to leave milk out in a thunderstorm. I had never heard of this. What process had taken place? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A: Electrostatic fields within a certain range can break up emulsions by polarising droplets and causing them to coalesce head to tail. During the build-up to a lightning discharge, the field strength will presumably pass through this range and may cause exposed milk to separate into its aqueous and fatty components. Milk in a metal container would be shielded from the field and remain emulsified. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-04-26T13:14:25.477" LastActivityDate="2015-04-26T13:14:25.477" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27477" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-03T03:49:53.193" Score="11" ViewCount="1075" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the National Geographic series &quot;&lt;em&gt;Jesus: Rise To Power&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, it seemed as if some Christians actively sought out martyrdom. One anecdote it mentioned, featuring Arrius Antoninus, is also mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Paganism#Persecution_from_the_2nd_century_to_Constantine&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some early Christians sought out and welcomed martyrdom.&lt;/strong&gt; Roman&#xA;  authorities tried hard to avoid Christians because they &quot;goaded,&#xA;  chided, belittled and insulted the crowds until they demanded their&#xA;  death.&quot; According to Droge and Tabor, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;in 185 the proconsul of Asia,&#xA;  Arrius Antoninus, was approached by a group of Christians demanding to&#xA;  be executed.&lt;/strong&gt; The proconsul obliged some of them and then sent the rest&#xA;  away, saying that if they wanted to kill themselves there was plenty&#xA;  of rope available or cliffs they could jump off.&quot; &lt;strong&gt;Such seeking&#xA;  after death is found in Tertullian's Scorpiace or in the letters of&#xA;  Saint Ignatius of Antioch but was certainly not the only view of&#xA;  martyrdom in the Christian church.&lt;/strong&gt; Both Polycarp and Cyprian, bishops&#xA;  in Smyrna and Carthage respectively, attempted to avoid martyrdom. (emphasis added)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also mentioned a woman who was supposed to be killed by a gladiator, but the gladiator refused to kill her, so she pulled the sword on her neck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know that martyrdom is a concept in Christianity, but I didn't think that Christians sought out martyrdom. Is there any evidence showing that Christians did seek out martyrdom during the Roman empire?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" OwnerDisplayName="Andrew Grimm" LastEditorUserId="21255" LastEditDate="2015-04-26T13:04:00.277" LastActivityDate="2015-04-26T13:04:00.277" Title="Did Christians seek out martyrdom during the Roman empire?" Tags="|christianity|ancient-rome|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27478" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27477" CreationDate="2015-04-03T07:20:59.993" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Martyrs were honoured from earliest times, and Christian tradition certainly says that some notable Christians sought out and hoped for martyrdom. While some of these tales seem fanciful, no doubt others did seek out the honour of martyrdom and the glory they hoped for in the next life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alvar Ellegard says, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B008SMFB0G&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Jesus One Hundred Years Before Christ&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, page 202, Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, was taken prisoner by the Roman authorities and put on a ship to be taken to Rome, where he expected, and in fact eagerly desired, to die as a martyr.  On its way, the ship stopped at Smyrna, where delegations from various churches in Asia Minor visited him. There are problems with this account that raise doubts about its historicity, and therefore whether Ignatius really sought martyrdom. And even the story of Polycarp &lt;em&gt;avoiding&lt;/em&gt; martyrdom may not be historical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adrian Hastings tells in &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B005YXUBPC&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;A World History of Christianity&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; page 25, that a number of very insignificant people, led by a man named Speratus, came from the small, now unidentifiable town of Scillium in July 180 and were brought before the proconsul Saturninus in Carthage, charged with the practice of an illicit religion.  The proconsul was reluctant to order their execution and begged them to 'return to a right mind' or, at least, think it over for 30 days, but they remained adamant in adherence to ‘the religious rites of the Christians’ and there refusal to honour the Roman gods. Of course many other Christians throughout imperial history recanted and lived.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story of voluntary martyrdom under Arrius Antoninus  comes from Tertullian, in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0160-0220,_Tertullianus,_Ad_Scapulam_[Schaff],_EN.pdf&quot;&gt;Ad Scapulam&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; chapter V. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25153" OwnerDisplayName="Dick Harfield" LastActivityDate="2015-04-03T07:20:59.993" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27471" CreationDate="2015-04-26T12:34:26.710" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;To show &lt;em&gt;flutterby&lt;/em&gt; is the origin of &lt;em&gt;butterfly&lt;/em&gt;, it would need to precede it in time.  With the OED pointing to Old English versions of &lt;em&gt;butterfly&lt;/em&gt;, and Shakespeare using it several times, perhaps best known in King Lear Act 5 Scene 3&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;laugh at gilded butterflies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;this seems unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are very few examples of &lt;em&gt;flutterby&lt;/em&gt; in literature and even fewer claims as to its original use.   The earliest I could do was a 1867 book by American journalist &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_M._Pomeroy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Marcus M. &amp;quot;Brick&amp;quot; Pomeroy&lt;/a&gt; called &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KJMdeykvpycC&amp;amp;pg=PA210&amp;amp;dq=%22flutterby%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=ItI8VabUIYGuUba4g_AM&amp;amp;ved=0CDYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22flutterby%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Nonsense&lt;/em&gt;, which contains the lines&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Beautiful as a flutterby,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And none could compare&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With my pretty little charmer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And her rich, wavy hair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not prove there was not an earlier form, but &lt;em&gt;flutterby&lt;/em&gt; looks like a easy and pretty, and perhaps even frequent, spoonerism of &lt;em&gt;butterfly&lt;/em&gt; which never really entered the English language.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-26T12:34:26.710" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27480" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27482" CreationDate="2015-04-26T13:15:12.540" Score="22" ViewCount="20260" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/yN6PW.png&quot; alt=&quot;Picture of Poe with claim&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Edgar Allan Poe predicted the future. His only novel is about 4 shipwrecked men who run out of food and eat the cabin boy, Richard Parker. 46 years after it published, a yacht sank in real life and 3 of the 4 survivors also decided to eat the cabin boy... name Richard Parker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This claim has been virally repeated in several places across the Internet, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/FreakyTheory&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;@FreakyTheory&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://wtffunfact.com/post/117385918256/edgar-allan-poe-and-richard-parker-coincidence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WTF Fun Fact&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes the claim that Edgar Allan Poe's novel, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Narrative_of_Arthur_Gordon_Pym_of_Nantucket&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, predicted a shipwreck in which three of the four crew members would succumb to cannibalism and eat the cabin boy named Richard Parker. The supposed shipwreck happened 46 years after the books publishing in 1838, which would make the year 1874. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did this shipwreck really happen, and did its details match the book's story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26000" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-27T06:43:08.620" LastActivityDate="2016-11-09T22:47:28.383" Title="Did Edgar Allan Poe predict a shipwreck?" Tags="|history|psychics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27482" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27480" CreationDate="2015-04-26T13:50:41.813" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, an episode of cannibalism involving a cabin boy named Richard Parker did happen 46 years after Poe wrote the novel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The shipwreck is that of the English yatch &lt;em&gt;Mignonette&lt;/em&gt;, which became a famous criminal case (&lt;em&gt;R v Dudley and Stephens&lt;/em&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Dudley_and_Stephens&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Wikipedia page for the case&lt;/a&gt; points out:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The case is familiar among lawyers in the common law jurisdictions — that is, England and many, though not all, former British territories — and is universally studied by law students in such jurisdictions. Simpson observed that, though many murderers have become household names in Britain, the case is surprisingly unfamiliar to the public at large.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It became better known in 1974 when Arthur Koestler ran a competition in The Sunday Times, in which readers were invited to send in the most striking coincidence they knew of. The winning entry pointed out that in Edgar Allan Poe's novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, published in 1838, decades before the Mignonette sank, four men are cast adrift on their capsized ship and draw lots to decide which of them should be sacrificed as food for the other three. The loser was the sailor who had proposed the idea: the character's name was Richard Parker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Richard Parker is the name of several people in real life and fiction who became shipwrecked, with some of them subsequently being cannibalised by their fellow seamen. Writer Yann Martel in his 2001 novel Life of Pi picked up on these occurrences, surmising &amp;quot;So many Richard Parkers had to mean something&amp;quot;, and included a shipwrecked Bengal tiger called &amp;quot;Richard Parker&amp;quot; in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, Poe did predict the future, in the sense that he (sort of) did write about something before it happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there seems to be an &amp;quot;implied&amp;quot; claim, that Poe did that using some sort of psychic powers, which needs to be addressed as well. Since there is no scientific proof that psychic abilities exist (see &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8501/do-psychic-abilities-work&quot;&gt;Do psychic abilities work?&lt;/a&gt; and references within), this would be quite an extraordinary claim, which would be much interesting, but would also require extraordinary evidence to support it. Alas, as for many psychic powers described so far, the most likely explanation is that it was just a coincidence; this is reinforced by the fact:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The coincidence stops at the fact that the cabin boy was cannibalized after a shipwreck. The details of the death of the boy are different:&#xA;in the novel Richard Parker proposes to draw lots and is killed as a consequence, while the real Richard Parker was sick (possibly in a coma?) when he was killed. Also the names of the other people on the boat are different. If Poe were able to see the future, he would have &amp;quot;seen&amp;quot; the correct names. The obvious counter-answer to this is that he couldn't see the future quite clearly, but then the onus of proof is on whoever says he was a psychic to prove this... (this becomes very quickly a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;there is a dragon in my garage&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; argument).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Richard Parker is a common name, shared by various &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Parker&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;well known people&lt;/a&gt; as well as generally common in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_common_surnames_in_North_America&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;general&lt;/a&gt;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.galbithink.org/names/us200.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;population&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shipwrecks &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_shipwrecks_by_year&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;were fairly common&lt;/a&gt; at the time, often even several per month (varies year by year, possibly because not all were recorded?).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, as for many other supposedly psychic/supernatural events, &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=fFNDiJFUb3QC&amp;amp;lpg=PT231&amp;amp;ots=FaynEovGIP&amp;amp;&amp;amp;pg=PT231#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;there is a much simpler explanation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4092" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T09:43:55.823" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27484" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27491" CreationDate="2015-04-27T01:40:24.760" Score="6" ViewCount="969" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is the vehicle depicted below some form of US military armored vehicle modified for use on railroads? Is it an MRAP so modified? Is it self-powered or simply able to be towed by a locomotive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/C3RiI.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image of armored vehicle captioned as modified MRAP&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26006" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T09:17:01.370" Title="Is this a US military armored vehicle modified for railroad use?" Tags="|united-states|military|transportation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27489" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26486" CreationDate="2015-04-27T03:22:33.070" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The overwhelming consensus of scholars, based on sound evidence, is that the Exodus from Egypt never happened as described in the Bible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; describes the Exodus as the founding myth of Israel, but says most histories of ancient Israel no longer consider information about it recoverable or even relevant to the story of Israel's emergence. A century of research by archaeologists and Egyptologists has found no evidence which can be directly related to the Exodus captivity and the escape and travels through the wilderness, and most archaeologists have abandoned the archaeological investigation of Moses and the Exodus as &quot;a fruitless pursuit&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_for_the_Exodus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rationalwiki&lt;/a&gt; says Exodus is now accepted by scholars as having been compiled in the eighth–seventh centuries BCE from stories dating possibly as far back as the thirteenth century BCE, with further polishing in the sixth to fifthth centuries BCE, as a theological and political manifesto to unite the Israelites in the then‐current battle for territory against Egypt. Archaeologists from the nineteenth century onwards were  surprised not to find any evidence whatsoever for the events of Exodus, and by the 1970s, archaeologists had largely given up regarding the Bible as any use at all as a field guide.  The archaeological evidence of local Canaanite, rather than Egyptian, origins of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel is &quot;overwhelming,&quot; and leaves &quot;no room for an Exodus from Egypt or a 40‐year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ariel Lewin says, in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0892368004&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Archaeology of Ancient Judea and Palestine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, page 8, that researchers have concluded that there could not have been a mass exodus from Egypt followed by a dramatic conquest of Canaan in the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries BCE, the period the Bible attributes to the Exodus. Lester L. Grabbe says, in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/056703254X&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ancient Israel&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, pages 86-88, a careful look at the text shows that it does not reflect the fifteenth or thirteenth centuries BCE but the seventh or eighth, and goes on to say that despite the efforts of some fundamentalist arguments, there is no way to salvage the biblical text as a description of a historical event. Carol A. Redmount says in 'Bitter lives', published in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0195139372&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Oxford History of the Biblical World&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, page 63, recent research indicates that even more of the extant Exodus account than previously thought comes from periods during or after the Israelite monarchy or even the Exile. She believes that the biblical Exodus account was never intended to function or to be understood as history in the present-day sense of the word.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is simply no evidence for the biblical Exodus. Grabbe says (page 85) there is nothing in Egyptian texts that could be related to the story in the Book of Exodus. If the Exodus is historical, then the biblical conquest of Canaan must also be historical, and therefore there must be archaeological evidence of widespread destruction occurring within a short period of time. Lawrence E. Stager says in 'Forging an Identity: The Emergence of Ancient Israel', published in &lt;em&gt;The Oxford History of the Biblical World&lt;/em&gt;, page 97, that of the thirty one cities said to be taken by Joshua and the Israelites, twenty have been plausibly identified with excavation sites. Of these, only Bethel and Hazor exhibit synchronous discontinuities such as destruction layers, and it is even debated whether the destruction of Hazor XIII was as late as that of Late Bronze Age Bethel. Instead, most historians now believe that the Israelite settlers were themselves Canaanites who, in the thirteenth century, settled in the hitherto sparsely populated hinterland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Merneptah Stele is the first Egyptian record of Israelites as a distinct people, and is dated to the reign of the Egyptian king Merneptah (1213 to 1203). The stele claims the Israelite settlements were wiped out (&quot;&lt;em&gt;Israel is laid waste and his seed is not&lt;/em&gt;&quot;), but this crucial event gets no mention in the Bible. Perhaps by the time the story of the Exodus was being written, this disaster had long been forgotten. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25153" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T03:22:33.070" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23014" CreationDate="2015-04-27T07:56:18.710" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the best sources  on the history of the early Catholic Church is John W. O’Malley, S.J., Church historian, Catholic priest, university professor in the theology department of Georgetown University and author of &lt;em&gt;A History of the Popes&lt;/em&gt;. In referring to his book, we must remember that O’Malley is a priest and therefore can not directly contradict Catholic doctrine, which includes that Peter went to Rome and was executed there.  Incidentally, the term pope was never used during the first century, so Peter could not have been the first &quot;pope,&quot; whether or not he was the first bishop of Rome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;O’Malley says, on page 8 of &lt;em&gt;A History of the Popes&lt;/em&gt;, no one piece of evidence states in straightforward and unambiguous language either that Peter went to Rome or that he died there. Nevertheless he believes the circumstantial evidence is persuasive. Part of that evidence is in &lt;em&gt;First Peter&lt;/em&gt;: &quot;&lt;code&gt;By Silvanus, a faithful brother as I regard him, I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God: stand fast in it. She [your sister church] who is in Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, and so does my son Mark.&lt;/code&gt;&quot; He says that, by referring to &quot;Babylon&quot; the passage suggests, or even indicates, that Peter was in Rome at the time the letter was written, which was probably about the year 63. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;O’Malley acknowledges this letter might not have been written by Peter himself, but claims it was at least written under his inspiration.  He surprisingly overlooks that the reference to ‘Babylon’ is an anachronism before 70 CE, when Jews and Christians began to refer to Rome as Babylon because of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. If &lt;em&gt;2 Peter&lt;/em&gt; is pseudepigraphical, which O’Malley acknowledges may be the case, and if the reference to Babylon is one piece of evidence that would place its authorship long after Paul's death, then O’Malley's &quot;persuasive&quot; evidence is unconvincing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another notable Catholic source is Francis A. Sullivan SJ, author of &lt;em&gt;From Apostles to Bishops&lt;/em&gt;.  He says on page 15 of &lt;em&gt;From Apostles to Bishops&lt;/em&gt;, that there exists a broad consensus among scholars, including most Catholic ones, that  Rome most probably continued to be led well into the second century by a college of presbyters. The apostles were missionaries and founders of churches; there is no evidence, nor is it at all likely, that any one of them ever took up permanent residence in a particular church as its bishop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25153" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T07:56:18.710" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27491" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27484" CreationDate="2015-04-27T09:17:01.370" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost certainly not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google and Tineye reverse image searches both trace back to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.flickr.com/photos/potjie/3405993963/&quot;&gt;this image&lt;/a&gt; on Flickr, which describes it as a &quot;Padda&quot; armored patrol vehicle used by the South African railways.  Google image searching on variations of &quot;padda armored vehicle&quot; bring up similar-looking images such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.flickr.com/photos/77106958@N08/6908287975/&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;.  Perhaps there's mass confusion between a jerry-rigged rail MRAP and the &quot;Padda&quot; (there's precedent: the depicted vehicle has also been misidentified as a rail-adapted version of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casspir&quot;&gt;Casspir&lt;/a&gt; landmine-protected vehicle), but more likely, it's exactly what the Flickr caption says it is.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21297" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T09:17:01.370" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27494" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27475" CreationDate="2015-04-27T15:08:19.227" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;Whether or not the mass-killings of the Armenians are legally considered 'genocide' or '&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;democide&lt;/a&gt;' (or another legal jargon term) is a geo-politically contentious issue. Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/27475/did-the-ottoman-government-kill-1-million-armenians-during-and-after-world-war&quot;&gt;explains&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, denies the word genocide as an accurate term for the mass killings of Armenians that began under Ottoman rule in 1915. It has in recent years been faced with repeated calls to recognize them as genocide. To date, twenty-three countries have officially recognized the mass killings as genocide, a view which is shared by most genocide scholars and historians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't propose to get dragged into that. Here I only use the term &quot;genocide&quot; when quoting others. Instead, the question is about how many Armenians were killed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We cannot expect a peer-reviewed list of all of the victims that we can count up. Instead, we need to rely on estimates, based on agreed assumptions, drawing together evidence from a large number of sources, cross-validated to give us some trust in the result.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One such estimate is described by a (former) American professor of Political Science, Rudolph Rummel in the 1998 book, &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/3825840107&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Statistics of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP5.HTM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chapter 5&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author acknowledges the difficulty in collecting data where the Turkish government suppresses dissent and the Armenian scholars and allies exaggerated the extent and falsified documents for propaganda reasons. However, this doesn't mean there were no killings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sheer weight of all this material in English alone, in some ways as diverse and authoritative as that on the Holocaust, is such that the invalidity or falsification of some of it can hardly effect the overall conclusion that a genocide took place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rummel collates information from a number of sources, over a number of years, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB5.1A.GIF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;showing how his calculates his estimates&lt;/a&gt;. He also shows how they are consistent with other methods of making estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He breaks down the outcomes in a number of ways - deaths versus refugees versus total population, foreign versus domestic, Armenians versus Greeks versus Others. The figure we are interested in here is the &quot;Total Armenian Genoicde&quot; in row 467 of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.TAB5.1B.GIF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Figure 5.1B&lt;/a&gt; which estimates between 1914 and 1923 the number of &lt;strong&gt;Armenian deaths&lt;/strong&gt; due to mass killings by the Turkish Government and Kemal Nationalists were between &lt;strong&gt;809,000 and 3,582,000 (with a mid-point estimate of 2,102,000.)&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the estimates quoted by Wikipedia are in the same range (if anything, conservative) as a careful, independent estimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T15:13:09.770" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27495" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27471" CreationDate="2015-04-27T16:41:40.060" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=7iIRAAAAYAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA622&amp;amp;dq=buterflege&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=QV8-Vaj-G8-yyAT_7YD4Ag&amp;amp;ved=0CFIQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=817&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Earliest English Texts&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, which &quot;is intended to include all the Old-English texts up to about 900&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The words for butterfly are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;buturfliogo&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;buterflege &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;buturfliogae&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is clear that &quot;butter&quot; followed by &quot;fly&quot; is the word order also long ago as is known.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I could use help editting this answer, because I don't fully understand the reference)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T16:41:40.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27496" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="32368" CreationDate="2015-04-27T21:47:18.337" Score="21" ViewCount="1326" Body="&lt;p&gt;A The Independent of London &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/the-rise-and-rise-of-sudoku-473598.html&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;The rise and rise of Sudoku&lt;/em&gt;, claimed that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] sales of pencils in Britain are reported to have risen 700 per cent on the back of the Sudoku boom. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;em&gt;700% increase&lt;/em&gt; seems objectively a disproportionate increase; additionally, that article evokes an unproven correlation between Sudoku and such an increase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did a 700 percent increase in pencil sales occur in Britain on the back of the Sudoku boom?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8702" LastEditorUserId="8192" LastEditDate="2015-05-02T15:44:03.310" LastActivityDate="2016-04-04T16:11:29.970" Title="Did a 700 percent increase in pencil sales occur in Britain on the back of the Sudoku boom?" Tags="|commerce|games|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27498" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27503" CreationDate="2015-04-27T22:37:20.907" Score="4" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;All over social media we see pictures of mostly women who show before and after pictures of body wraps, claiming they lost weight, or reduced cellulite, fat burners, or many other claims.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some offer up very vague claims like &lt;a href=&quot;http://thisworksbodywrap.com/do-it-works-body-wraps-really-work-or-is-it-a-scam/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this vendor&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although people do end up losing body weight while using them, our wraps work by firming, toning, tightening, slimming and contouring the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do body wraps actually do any of these things?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-28T00:59:39.937" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T05:45:17.600" Title="Do body wraps have slimming effects?" Tags="|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27500" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7340" CreationDate="2015-04-27T23:29:44.233" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reverend Donald Cozzens argues in his book, &lt;em&gt;The Changing Face of the Catholic Priesthood&lt;/em&gt; that that the Catholic priesthood has become a gay profession.  I have not read &lt;em&gt;The Changing Face of the Catholic Priesthood&lt;/em&gt;, but Donald L. Boisvert and Robert E.Goss say in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com.au/books/about/Gay_Catholic_Priests_and_Clerical_Sexual.html?id=hWkHRpryiakC&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gay Catholic Priests and Clerical Sexual Misconduct&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, page 2, that Cozzens cites studies from 1989 which estimate that 48.5 per cent of Catholic priests and 55.1 per cent of seminarians are gay. Surveys have indicated that around 50 per cent of priests, both heterosexual and homosexual, are not celibate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Robert E. Goss says in his paper, 'Always a Bride, Never a Groom', published in &lt;em&gt;Gay Catholic Priests and Clerical Sexual Misconduct&lt;/em&gt;, pages 123-4, that shortly after his ordination, Goss met another Jesuit, and they fell in love. The two priests wanted to exchange vows to live together in union.  With friends in attendance, another priest friend celebrated mass, where they formally blessed the rings they had exchanged months before in a quiet bedroom ritual. Of course one man does not make 20-50 per cent of the church, but Goss reports widespread acceptance among the Jesuits and a willingness of leaders to close their eyes to the facts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are examples of homosexual senior clergy and, for example,  allegations of homosexuality by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Spellman#Allegations_of_homosexuality&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cardinal Spellman&lt;/a&gt; are well documented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25153" LastActivityDate="2015-04-27T23:29:44.233" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27501" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5252" CreationDate="2015-04-27T23:54:24.020" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Lourdes receives over 80,000 pilgrims a year, of whom approximately 7000 people in more than a century have sought to have cures confirmed as miracles. Terrence J. McNally says in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1441510524&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;What Every Catholic Should Know About Mary&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, page 28, that only 68 of these have been declared as scientifically inexplicable by both the Lourdes Medical Bureau and the Catholic Church, a number so small as to suggest that these cases were likely to have been cured or gone into remission anyway. On this view, the cures or remissions were entirely by chance, without even a placebo effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25153" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-04-29T03:00:16.797" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T03:00:16.797" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27502" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2835" CreationDate="2015-04-28T00:30:06.143" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Catholic Church approved the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatification_of_Pope_John_Paul_II&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;beatification of the late Pope John Paul II&lt;/a&gt; after a Catholic nun, Marie Simon-Pierre, reported being cured of Parkinson's disease after praying to John Paul II. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatification_of_Pope_John_Paul_II#Criticism_of_beatification&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia reports&lt;/a&gt; that the validity of the beatification has been criticised on a number of grounds, including a suggestion that the unusual rapidity with which it proceeded might be intended to deflect criticism of John Paul's failure to respond effectively to the scandal of sexual abuse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be certain a miracle cure occurred, we would have to be certain Sister Marie Simon-Pierre ever really suffered from Parkinson's disease, but this has yet to be proven. The disease usually affects people much older than Simon-Pierre and can not be demonstrated with certainty other than by an autopsy. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_disease#Diagnosis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;There is no lab test&lt;/a&gt; that will clearly identify the disease, but brain scans are sometimes used to rule out other disorders that could give rise to similar symptoms. The progress of the illness over time may reveal it is not Parkinson's disease, and some authorities recommend that the diagnosis be periodically reviewed.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150512174934/http://www.parkinsoninfo.org/about-parkinsons-disease/how-is-it-treated/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;People diagnosed with Parkinson's may be given levodopa&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_disease#Diagnosis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;resulting relief of motor impairment tends to confirm diagnosis&lt;/a&gt;. It would seem that either Simon-Pierre was not given this treatment, or that it was ineffective, since she says, &quot;From April 2, 2005, I began to worsen week by week, I grew worse day by day.&quot; This does not necessarily prove that she did &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; have Parkinson's disease, but is one ground for doubt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_disease#Diagnosis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Diagnosis of Parkinson's disease&lt;/a&gt; can at best be established from the presence of a number of indicators, two of which are response to levodopa for at least five years and clinical course of at least ten years.  Sister Simon-Pierre reports a period of around four years from initial diagnosis to cure, but does not mention levodopa treatment, so this does not tell us whether this test was considered. Again, since she only had symptoms for four years from the time of diagnosis, the second text fails. It is possible, particularly given the early onset (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicinenet.com/parkinsons_disease/article.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Most individuals with Parkinson's disease are diagnosed when they are 60 years old or older, but early-onset Parkinson's disease also occurs&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;), that Sister Simon-Pierre suffered from another neurological disease which has similar symptoms as Parkinson's but which can be cured. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sister Simon-Pierre insisted that her cure was complete and instantaneous, but has never publicly explained who first diagnosed her with Parkinson's disease and how that diagnosis was confirmed. After the miracle, we of course have investigations that show her free of the disease, although there are unconfirmed reports that she subsequently had a relapse. What is really important is not whether she is free of Parkinson's disease now, but whether she ever suffered from the disease in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25153" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2017-08-02T18:08:23.633" LastActivityDate="2017-08-02T18:08:23.633" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27503" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27498" CreationDate="2015-04-28T03:43:05.810" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;U.S. Food and Drug Administration&lt;/em&gt; has warned against using body wraps as a method of weight reduction, in a report published in 1982:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who can blame the fretfully flabby for being lured by the promise of losing inches without doing anything more strenuous than popping a pill or wrapping up the offending flesh?&lt;/strong&gt; Who can resist ads for body wraps that promise &quot;to burn away fat even while you sleep,&quot; to &quot;lose 4-6 inches the first day?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They go on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Food and Drug Administration has investigated a number of these products and has taken action against several promoters of &lt;strong&gt;wrapping devices&lt;/strong&gt; and latex exercise or sweat suits for making unsubstantiated medical or therapeutic claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They continue:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Such treatment will cause a loss of inches and perhaps pounds due to profuse perspiration. &lt;strong&gt;But the reductions are temporary.&lt;/strong&gt; The fluid is soon replaced by drinking or eating. &lt;strong&gt;But rapid and excessive fluid loss is potentially dangerous because it can bring on severe dehydration and can upset the balance of important electrolytes in the body.&lt;/strong&gt; ... Wraps have no effect on fat deposits and will not dissolve fat, even temporarily. Fat is not broken down by perspiration, only when fewer calories are consumed than are needed to meet the body's energy requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A leaflet for the product claims: &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Lose up to two inches from those problem areas in just one hour.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; An advertisement adds, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Its gentle warmth penetrates into your skin and helps melt fatty deposits.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; But, as with other wraps, any weight or inches that disappear are lost from perspiration. (See &quot;Fat Won't Melt,&quot; an Update in the November 1981 FDA Consumer.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20040206053958/http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/cos-822.html&quot;&gt;Judith Willis, FDA Consumer November 1982&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See more: &quot;Body Wraps Come with Strings Attached,&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=126814&amp;amp;page=1&quot;&gt;ABC News&lt;/a&gt;, July 26, 2009&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-04-28T05:45:17.600" LastActivityDate="2015-04-28T05:45:17.600" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27602" CreationDate="2015-04-28T09:43:03.053" Score="18" ViewCount="5956" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard that it's unhealthy to eat the yogurt that sticks to the lid because it contains aluminium. Scraping it off with a spoon is even worse than licking it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that this is true? What about food that sticks to aluminium foil?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, this is not a common issue in the English-speaking world. Googling for &quot;yogurt lid unhealthy&quot; reveals this question as the 7th entry and, except for one &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailyedge.ie/the-burning-question-do-you-lick-the-yoghurt-foil-lid-or-not-511978-Jul2012/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;poll&lt;/a&gt;, all other hits are about yogurt in general. In Germany, this issue is apparently &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=joghurtdeckel+ablecken&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;much hotter&lt;/a&gt;. Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stern.de/gesundheit/2-tatsache-oder-trugschluss-ist-es-schaedlich-den-joghurtdeckel-abzulecken-2124352.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stern (news magazine)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.n-tv.de/wissen/frageantwort/Ist-Joghurtdeckel-ablecken-schaedlich-article316738.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;n-tv (news channel)&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abendblatt.de/ratgeber/wissen/article117741495/Ist-es-gesundheitsschaedlich-Joghurtdeckel-abzulecken.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Abendblatt (newspaper)&lt;/a&gt;, and a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fid-gesundheitswissen.de/experten/dr-michael-spitzbart/ernaehrung-sind-alu-joghurtdeckel-schaedlich/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;health portal&lt;/a&gt; discussing the problem. They all conclude that it's not true, but don't provide sources for their claims.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'll quote from these articles to show the relevance of the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stern.de/gesundheit/2-tatsache-oder-trugschluss-ist-es-schaedlich-den-joghurtdeckel-abzulecken-2124352.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;stern.de&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Daneben bewegt viele Menschen aber die Sorge, ob beim Ablecken Aluminium aufgenommen wird[...]&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Many people are moved by the fear that aluminium is absorbed through licking&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haushaltstipps.net/tipps/fuehrt-das-joghurtdeckel-ablecken-zu-alzheimer.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;haushaltstipps.net&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Aluminium steht im Verdacht, an der Entstehung von Alzheimer beteiligt zu sein, und Joghurtdeckel bestehen aus diesem Metall. So hört man viele Eltern ihre Kinder ermahnen, dass sie die Joghurtdeckel auf keinen Fall ablecken sollen.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Aluminium is suspected to play a role in the development of Alzheimer's and yogurt lids are made of this metal. Thus, many parents warn their children to never lick the lids.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fid-gesundheitswissen.de/experten/dr-michael-spitzbart/ernaehrung-sind-alu-joghurtdeckel-schaedlich/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fid-gesundheitswissen.de&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Diese Frage wird immer wieder gestellt, es kursieren sogar Gerüchte, dass der Deckel nicht nur Alu abgeben würde. Häufig wird davor gewarnt, solche Alu-Deckel abzulecken, weil er Antibiotika, Konservierungsstoffe oder aber lösliches Gift enthalte.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;This question is asked again and again, there are even rumors that the lid dispenses not only aluminium. Often it is warned not to lick the lids because they contain antibiotics, preservatives or soluble poisons.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17806" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-05-09T00:30:44.670" LastActivityDate="2019-05-09T00:32:05.980" Title="Is it unhealthy to lick the lid of a yogurt cup?" Tags="|nutrition|aluminum|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27505" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="36875" CreationDate="2015-04-28T11:15:40.940" Score="12" ViewCount="1336" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/beauty/sun/sun-exposure-skin-cancer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WebMd&lt;/a&gt; claimed in a post that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exposure to sun causes most of the wrinkles and age spots on our faces. Consider this: One woman at age 40 who has protected her skin from the sun actually has the skin of a 30-year-old!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does spending time in the sun make us look older? Does it increase wrinkles and age spots in our faces?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-01-25T03:42:15.097" Title="Does sunlight cause most of the wrinkles on our faces?" Tags="|environmental-health|sun-exposure|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27508" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27510" CreationDate="2015-04-28T17:28:57.027" Score="12" ViewCount="1125" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2015/03/was-there-an-exodus/&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; article by &lt;a href=&quot;http://biu.academia.edu/JoshuaBerman&quot;&gt;Joshua Berman&lt;/a&gt; claims that &quot;The Anglo-Saxon conquest of Britain in the 5th century, the Arab conquest of Palestine in the 7th century, even the Norman invasion of England in 1066: all have left scant if any archaeological remains&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any archaeological evidence corroborating the Norman Invasion of 1066?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14928" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2015-04-29T09:36:46.330" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T09:51:26.517" Title="Is there any archaeological evidence for Norman Invasion of Britain in 1066?" Tags="|history|archaeology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27509" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-28T17:55:55.030" Score="10" ViewCount="699" Body="&lt;p&gt;A number of stories have been breaking on the internet from various sources (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/140606-NASA-May-Have-Accidentally-Stumbled-Across-Warp-Fields&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Escapist&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://sputniknews.com/us/20150425/1021360503.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sputnik News&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2015/04/nasa-is-it-on-the-verge-of-discovering-warp-bubbles-enabling-dreams-of-interstellar-travel.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Daily Galaxy&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iflscience.com/space/warp-drives-mars-and-back-time-lunch&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;IFL Science!&lt;/a&gt; etc.) with claims along the following from The Escapist,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Skip ahead to this month, where we have a propulsion device that&#xA;  somehow produces microwaves to generate thrust. According to posts on&#xA;  NASASpaceFlight.com, someone at NASA wondered where the thrust came&#xA;  from and used a tool to measure variances in light's path-time. What&#xA;  this tool recorded is that when lasers are fired through the EmDrive's&#xA;  resonance chamber, some of the beams start moving faster than the&#xA;  speed of light. If everything checks out - and on the surface the math&#xA;  does - it means the EmDrive is producing some kind of warp field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These claims appear to be independent of &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/10949/is-nasa-working-on-warp-drive&quot;&gt;previous claims&lt;/a&gt; that NASA was working on a warp drive. Additionally, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;EmDrive&lt;/a&gt; appears to have largely been met with skepticism and over on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/23725/is-the-emdrive-or-relativity-drive-possible&quot;&gt;Physics Stack Exchange site&lt;/a&gt; the physics also appear to debunk the drive as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, are these claims groundless and has there been any official response from NASA yet?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6629" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T16:25:07.693" Title="Has NASA discovered a possible &quot;warp-like&quot; drive using the EmDrive?" Tags="|space-flight|nasa|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27508" CreationDate="2015-04-28T18:08:00.517" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_London&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tower of London&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Her Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress, known as the Tower of London, is a historic castle located on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. [...] It was founded towards the end of 1066 as part of the Norman Conquest of England. The White Tower, which gives the entire castle its name, was built by William the Conqueror in 1078, and was a resented symbol of oppression, inflicted upon London by the new ruling elite.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a picture of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Tower_(Tower_of_London)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;White Tower&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OvuZW.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main building material is Kentish rag-stone, though some local mudstone was also used. &lt;strong&gt;Although little of it survives, Caen stone was imported from northern France to provide details in the Tower's facing&lt;/strong&gt;, much of it replaced by Portland stone in the 17th and 18th centuries under the direction of architect Inigo Jones.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course there's a lot more: &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_architecture&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Norman architecture&lt;/a&gt; in Britain; coins, minted by William the Conqueror; the Domesday book... I wanted to post the above as just one example of something which probably shouldn't be described as &amp;quot;scant if any archaeological remains&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author might have been thinking more of a claim such as the following (i.e. not &amp;quot;no evidence for the invasion&amp;quot; but rather &amp;quot;no remains from the battle&amp;quot;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/archaeology/9632922/Are-bodies-of-10000-lost-warriors-from-Battle-of-Hastings-buried-in-this-field.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Are bodies of 10,000 lost warriors from Battle of Hastings buried in this field?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ever since the 1066 battle that led to the Norman Conquest, history has recorded the event as happening at what is now Battle Abbey in the East Sussex town.&#xA;But although some 10,000 men are believed to have been killed in the historic conflict, no human remains or artefects from the battle have ever been found at the location.&#xA;This has given rise to several historians to examine alternative sites for the battle that was a decisive victory for William the Conqueror and saw the death of King Harold.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T09:51:26.517" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27511" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-28T18:38:11.397" Score="6" ViewCount="259" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is one of those &quot;remedies&quot; you can find everywhere: if you have trouble with cats in your flower beds, cats leaving their droppings in your garden (or burying their poop) you should use your coffee grounds to repel them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a question (without a satisfying answer as far as I'm concerned) about it on sister-site &lt;a href=&quot;https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/13796/do-coffee-grounds-in-gardens-deter-cats&quot;&gt;gardening &lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, but there are a lot of references to be found (see below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I did NOT find however is any solid evidence, references to actual research, etc etc, so the obvious skeptical question is: Is this an actual working solution? Do coffee grounds repel cats?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(btw: there are several other items mentioned in various locations that might merit their own question, but I thought it might be too much to try and (dis)prove them all in one question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1) &lt;a href=&quot;https://gardening.stackexchange.com/questions/13796/do-coffee-grounds-in-gardens-deter-cats&quot;&gt;Gardening stackexchange: do coffee grounds in gardens deter cats?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;2) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Repel-Cats&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.wikihow.com/Repel-Cats&lt;/a&gt; (casually mentioned amongst others)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;3) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alleycat.org/Deterrents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.alleycat.org/Deterrents&lt;/a&gt; (also, casually) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;4) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ehow.com/how_2228385_keep-cats-away-home-remedies.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ehow.com/how_2228385_keep-cats-away-home-remedies.html&lt;/a&gt; (with the warning sign &quot;home remedy&quot;)&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;&lt;sup&gt;5) &lt;a href=&quot;http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/pets/catpoop.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/pets/catpoop.html&lt;/a&gt; (some more places with -amongst others- coffee as a solution)&lt;/sup&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="83" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:42:28.573" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T23:30:29.037" Title="Are coffee grounds effective as a cat repellent?" Tags="|zoology|household|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27515" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27516" CreationDate="2015-04-29T10:19:56.753" Score="50" ViewCount="54104" Body="&lt;p&gt;A video uploaded on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKe4fshETQ4&quot;&gt;YouTube&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Richard Dawkins irritated by irrationality&lt;/em&gt;, pictured a debate with Richard Dawkins and Deepak Chopra on whether God exists or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chopra:&lt;/strong&gt; You said that atoms get together to create complexity, how does it get&#xA;  together?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dawkins:&lt;/strong&gt; By processes which are well understood in biology and science.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chopra:&lt;/strong&gt; Is it randomness or intelligence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dawkins:&lt;/strong&gt; Not intelligence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dawkins:&lt;/strong&gt; You can't sit there and say that the hard problem of consciousness,&#xA;  and it is a very hard problem, is solved by saying that a single cell has consciousness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chopra:&lt;/strong&gt; All of that are expressions of awareness as consciousness and influence everything&#xA;  that we experience in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dawkins:&lt;/strong&gt; You think a single cell has that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chopra:&lt;/strong&gt; A single cell has a form of awareness. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dawkins:&lt;/strong&gt; Do you think an atom has that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chopra:&lt;/strong&gt; According to Freeman Dyson yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dawkins:&lt;/strong&gt; (irritated) Freeman Dyson says an atom has awareness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Chopra:&lt;/strong&gt; Yes sir! Check it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dawkins:&lt;/strong&gt; If Freeman Dyson ever said that atoms are aware then he's wrong,&#xA;  I don't think he said it, I think he should sue you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Freeman Dyson is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson&quot;&gt;notable&lt;/a&gt; and retired  theoretical physicist and mathematician, known for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Freeman Dyson ever say that atoms have awareness?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="7606" LastEditDate="2015-04-30T13:17:22.777" LastActivityDate="2020-07-19T06:58:10.893" Title="Did Freeman Dyson say that atoms have awareness?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27516" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27515" CreationDate="2015-04-29T11:13:01.657" Score="54" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, he might have suggested something that could be interpreted along those lines. But it becomes largely a question of semantics of what Dyson means by &amp;quot;mind&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from p.249 of Dyson's 1979 autobiography, &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0465016774&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Disturbing the Universe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is remarkable that mind enters into our awareness of nature on two separate levels. At the highest level, the level of human consciousness, our minds are somehow directly aware of the complicated flow of electrical and chemical patterns in our brains. At the lowest level, the level of single atoms and electrons, the mind of an observer is again involved in the description of events. Between lies the level of molecular biology, where mechanical models are adequate and mind appears to be irrelevant. But I, as a physicist, cannot help suspecting that there is a logical connection between the two ways in which mind appears in my universe. I cannot help thinking that our awareness of our own brains has something to do with the process which we call &amp;quot;observation&amp;quot; in atomic physics. That is to say, I think our consciousness is not just a passive epiphenomenon carried along by the chemical events in our brains, but is an active agent forcing the molecular complexes to make choices between one quantum state and another. &lt;strong&gt;In other words, mind is already inherent in every electron, and the processes of human consciousness differ only in degree but not in kind from the processes of choice between quantum states which we call &amp;quot;chance&amp;quot; when they are made by electrons.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether Dyson is suggesting that each atom or electron is &amp;quot;aware&amp;quot; or if chance is (conscious) choice is subject to interpretation. His use of &amp;quot;mind&amp;quot; is in the following context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;When we are dealing with things as small as atoms and electrons, the observer or experimenter cannot be excluded from the description of nature.&lt;/strong&gt; In this domain, Monod's dogma, &amp;quot;The cornerstone of the scientific method is the postulate that nature is objective,&amp;quot; turns out to be untrue.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we deny Monod's postulate, this does not mean that we deny the achievements of molecular biology or support the doctrines of Bishop Wilberforce. We are not saying that chance and the mechanical rearrangement of molecules cannot turn ape into man. We are saying only that if as physicists we try to observe in the finest detail the behavior of a single molecule, the meaning of the words &amp;quot;chance&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;mechanical&amp;quot; will depend upon the way we make our observations. The laws of subatomic physics cannot even be formulated without some reference to the observer. &lt;strong&gt;&amp;quot;Chance&amp;quot; cannot be defined except as a measure of the observer's ignorance of the future. The laws leave a place for mind in the description of every molecule.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He later ties this in with the question of the existence of God:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Being a scientist, trained in the habits of thought and language of the twentieth century rather than the eighteenth, &lt;strong&gt;I do not claim that the architecture of the universe proves the existence of God. I claim only that the architecture of the universe is consistent with the hypothesis that mind plays an essential role in its functioning.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We had earlier found two levels on which mind manifests itself in the description of nature. On the level of subatomic physics, the observer is inextricably involved in the definition of the objects of his observations. On the level of direct human experience, we are aware of our own minds, and we find it convenient to believe that other human beings and animals have minds not altogether unlike our own. Now we have found a third level to add to these two. &lt;strong&gt;The peculiar harmony between the structure of the universe and the needs of life and intelligence is a third manifestation of the importance of mind in the scheme of things. This is as far as we can go as scientists.&lt;/strong&gt; We have evidence that mind is important on three levels. We have no evidence for any deeper unifying hypothesis that would tie these three levels together. As individuals, some of us may be willing to go further. &lt;strong&gt;Some of us may be willing to entertain the hypothesis that there exists a universal mind or world soul which underlies the manifestations of mind that we observe. If we take this hypothesis seriously, we are, according to Monod's definition, animists. The existence of a world soul is a question that belongs to religion and not to science.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He appears to have also remarked on &amp;quot;three levels of mind&amp;quot; in his 1988 book, &lt;em&gt;Infinite in all directions&lt;/em&gt;. Quoting from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Metaphysics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dyson's Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dyson has suggested a kind of cosmic metaphysics of mind. In his book &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_in_All_Directions&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Infinite in All Directions&lt;/a&gt; he writes about three levels of mind: &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;The universe shows evidence of the operations of mind on three levels. The first level is the level of elementary physical processes in quantum mechanics.&lt;/strong&gt; Matter in quantum mechanics is [...] constantly making choices between alternative possibilities according to probabilistic laws. [...] The second level at which we detect the operations of mind is the level of direct human experience. [...] [I]t is reasonable to believe in the existence of a third level of mind, a mental component of the universe. If we believe in this mental component and call it God, then we can say that we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus&amp;quot; &lt;em&gt;(p. 297)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As his autobiography's jacket proclaims below, such statements won Dyson a &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templeton_Prize&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Templeton Prize&lt;/a&gt; in 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Kb5Mo.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-29T13:07:28.093" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27517" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6529" CreationDate="2015-04-29T12:45:36.157" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ken Jennings did some research on this for his book, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=udIPAQAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA54&amp;amp;lpg=PA54&amp;amp;dq=ken%20jennings%20plastic%20bag&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=QCowv4Bo8K&amp;amp;sig=Odmro3oLCAL4SwV3E9VxaFIEdR4&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=vs9AVdu0DseaNsepgIgK&amp;amp;ved=0CDkQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=ken%20jennings%20plastic%20bag&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Because I Said So!: The Truth Behind the Myths, Tales, and Warnings Every Generation Passes Down to Its Kids&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. The figure above about 25 deaths per year is correct, but it does omit the fact that almost all of the deaths involved dry cleaning or trash bags where the child crawled in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that plastic bags still kill about twenty-five American kids per year, almost 90 percent of whom are infants. The typical encounter a larger trash bag or dry-cleaning bag, which an infant crawls or falls into, or pulls over their face .... please note that garden-variety shopping bags, the kind you're most likely to have around, are generally blameless, and older kids are safe around bags no matter what.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Admittedly, he doesn't provide sources or statistics for how he got the &quot;typical encounter&quot;, but in other parts of the book, such as &quot;poisoned Halloween candy&quot; or &quot;running with scissors&quot;, he breaks down his examples by showing that he did diligent research and looked at the individual cases, so I'm apt to believe that the details here were covered as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's probably worth noting that a substantial amount of his book is dedicated to the idea that many of these behaviors are indeed potentially hazardous, but that the risk has been so exaggerated that people are spending needless time worrying about something that isn't likely to happen when they could be spending that time protecting against plausible dangers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="19346" LastEditDate="2015-04-30T09:56:29.510" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T09:56:29.510" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27519" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18764" CreationDate="2015-04-29T15:27:06.577" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=N7jvAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;q=copyright%20dates%20movie%20%22roman%20numerals%22%20hide&amp;amp;dq=copyright%20dates%20movie%20%22roman%20numerals%22%20hide&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=vmFDVZaLBtCJNqj7gdAI&amp;amp;ved=0CDQQ6AEwAQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American Legion Magazine&lt;/a&gt; (March 1949), page 23:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;they're playing down the fact that these are old pictures. So the movie goer pays his money to see a movie-usually it has big names and these are played up-and he finds he's been rooked by an old turkey that he wouldn't have paid a dime to see ten years ago....Of course every picture has a copyright date in the first few feet of film along with the credits. But credits are flashed on the screen quickly and the date is in Roman numerals which are not easily read.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=TtcqAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;q=roman%20numeral%20%22copyright%20dates%22%20movies&amp;amp;dq=roman%20numeral%20%22copyright%20dates%22%20movies&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=LPZAVcjfBYadgwS4ioE4&amp;amp;ved=0CD4Q6AEwAw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Reveal the Facts&quot;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Educational Film and Audio-visual Guide&lt;/em&gt; (1962) volume 41, page 305:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We thought we were joking when we told the representative &#xA;  of one of the leading film producers it was the fault of his company that school systems had inadequate budgets for the purchase of films. You can imagine the height to which his eyebrows raised on that one! But as we discussed the idea, there seemed to be some &#xA;  truth in it.  Now after much further thought, we're inclined to &#xA;  believe the idea is also worthy of your consideration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The point is this. By the standards that are applied to textbooks, &#xA;  most of our educational film library collections are filled with &#xA;  out-of-date and obsolete materials. A principal cause of this woeful situation is that producers have insisted - and still insist - upon concealing the copyright facts of the films they produce.  They use the smallest size, most illegible letters available, and &lt;strong&gt;conceal the dates in deceptive Roman numerals, hoping that nobody will every realize when the film was made.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/stream/educationalscree40chicrich#page/304/mode/2up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alternative link to article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Likewise, from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?ei=TlxDVeL4LYeiNt2VgNgM&amp;amp;id=mRs_AAAAIAAJ&amp;amp;dq=copyright%20dates%20films%20%22roman%20numerals%22&amp;amp;focus=searchwithinvolume&amp;amp;q=best%20way&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Manual of Film Evaluation&lt;/a&gt; (1967) published by the Educational Film Library Association, at page 10:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Date (This is the hardest item to obtain - - &lt;strong&gt;producers often conceal&lt;/strong&gt; it of fail to mention it at all.  If the film is copyright, there will be a copyright date somewhere in the titles.  &lt;strong&gt;It will be written in minute Roman numerals and tucked away at the corner of one of the credit titles and will remain on the screen for a split second only.&lt;/strong&gt;  The best way to find it is to run the titles through a viewer until you find a date.  Another method is to check the Library of Congress cards if available.  A third is to...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even in &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?ei=KXRDVZKMHoWwggSUuoGgDA&amp;amp;id=d-ruAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;dq=movie%20copyright%20date%20%22roman%20numerals%22&amp;amp;focus=searchwithinvolume&amp;amp;q=adept&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The nature of mathematics&lt;/a&gt; (1967) by Frederick H. Young at page 28:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When a motion picture is to be shown on television the date is invariably given in Roman numerals and is shown for a very brief interval.  Because most of the viewers are not adept at reading Roman numerals, they are not alerted by the sight of MCMXXXIV for a few seconds on the screen that they are about to be subjected to a 1934 movie&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, form &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=CEpQAQAAIAAJ&amp;amp;q=roman%20numeral%20%22copyright%20dates%22%20movies&amp;amp;dq=roman%20numeral%20%22copyright%20dates%22%20movies&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=LPZAVcjfBYadgwS4ioE4&amp;amp;ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Flicks, Flacks, and Flux: Tides of Taste in the Onomasticon of the Moving Picture Industry&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Names: Journal of the American Name Society&lt;/em&gt; (1975), vol. 23, pages 221-280, by &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_R._N._Ashley&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Leonard R. N. Ashley&lt;/a&gt;, quoting from page 273:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Few people bother to notice these credits and (like the &lt;strong&gt;copyright dates—traditionally expressed in Roman numerals so as not to be too easily read, for no one in this day of reissued movies and television sales wishes to &quot;date&quot; them&lt;/strong&gt;) they are more for legal purposes than for the public.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maneyonline.com/doi/abs/10.1179/nam.1975.23.4.221&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;alternative link to article&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=tNBZAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;q=%22same%20time%20to%20conceal%20it,%20as%20happens%20with%20the%20dates%20on%20films.%22&amp;amp;dq=%22same%20time%20to%20conceal%20it,%20as%20happens%20with%20the%20dates%20on%20films.%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=FblDVZbrC5H1gwS4loHYBg&amp;amp;ved=0CCYQ6AEwAA&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Modern Australian Usage&lt;/a&gt; (1993) by Nicholas Hudson at page 277:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are four problems with Roman numerals:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1)Comprehension Very few people regularly come across, and can hence read fluently, any numbers beyond twelve; so they should not be used in any sequence going further than this unless the intention is to give the information (if, say, required to do so by law) yet at the same time to conceal it, as happens with the dates on films&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So for over 65 years it has been recognized that this is the reason.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T17:40:13.367" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T17:40:13.367" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27521" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27522" CreationDate="2015-04-29T19:17:09.510" Score="20" ViewCount="31664" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just saw this on Facebook, thought I'd better check that it's for real before sharing. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xm4tqm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter preformatted text here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;His pointed finger circled my puckered love cave. 'Are you ready for this?' he mewled, smirking at me like a mother hamster about to ear her three-legged young.&quot; - 50 Shades of Grey&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T10:35:44.913" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T10:35:44.913" Title="Does this line appear in 50 Shades of Grey?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27522" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27521" CreationDate="2015-04-29T20:22:27.007" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer: no, this quote doesn't appear in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To prove that to yourself all you have to do is an experiment, you need to download a neat searchable version of the book anywhere online, open it in Chrome or any PDF reader, Ctrl+F or Cmd+F, and attempt to find the quote. One can see that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The word &lt;strong&gt;hamster&lt;/strong&gt; doesn't occur anywhere in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The word &lt;strong&gt;cave&lt;/strong&gt; doesn't occur anywhere in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The verb &lt;strong&gt;pucker&lt;/strong&gt; doesn't occur anywhere in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The term &lt;strong&gt;legged young&lt;/strong&gt; doesn't occur anywhere in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, this quote seems to be extracted from Re-Living The Dream by member &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fanfiction.net/u/3281821/87JPR87&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;87JPR87&lt;/a&gt; rated Fiction M (Mature) published on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10255899/70/Re-Living-The-Dream&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fanfiction.net&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;''What? It's good!''&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;''More like Fifty shades of awful...'' She mumbled, idly flipping through the pages, snorting as she read through it. ''Listen to this; '&lt;strong&gt;His pointer finger circled my puckered love cave. &amp;quot;Are you ready for this?&amp;quot; he mewled, smirking at me like a mother hamster about to eat her three-legged young.&lt;/strong&gt;'...''&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bryan snorted loudly opposite her as the rest of the table descended into laughter, Alexa continuing her rant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;''Puckered love cave? I mean, what the actual fuck? I've read better stuff on a bathroom stall... 'He's going to kiss me there!'... 'He gives me a wicked grin, the effects of which travel all the way down there'.. Clitoris! Just say it!''&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is clear now that the quote is fictional.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, this quote is fake and does not appear anywhere in the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T17:39:15.850" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27525" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27446" CreationDate="2015-04-30T00:37:44.157" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, it is recognised as a potential problem: &lt;a href=&quot;https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5618050&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;LED lighting flicker and potential health concerns: IEEE standard PAR1789 update&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The IEEE Standards Working Group, IEEE PAR1789 “Recommending practices for modulating current in High Brightness LEDs for mitigating health risks to viewers” has been formed to advise the lighting industry, ANSI/NEMA, IEC, EnergyStar and other standards groups about the emerging concern of flicker in LED lighting. This paper introduces power electronic designers for LED lighting to health concerns relating to flicker, demonstrates that existing technologies in LED lighting sometimes provide flicker at frequencies that may induce biological human response, and discusses a few methods to consider when trying to mitigate unintentional biological effects of LED lighting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The physiological pathway is that all humans are sensitive to flickering light - the range of sensitivity in both frequency and intensity varies by individual. At normal mains frequencies (50 or 60Hz) the vast majority of the population is insensitive but some people are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This 2011 (unpeer-reviewed?) article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.e3tnw.org/Documents/2011%20IES%20flicker%20paper%20poplawski-miller-FINAL.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Exploring flicker in Solid‐State Lighting:  &#xA;What you might find, and how to deal with it&lt;/a&gt; discusses it further, showing the different sorts of flickering that occurs from different types of light sources, plus a brief summary (with references) of some of the health effects flickering can cause, including this excerpted list:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Headaches and eyestrain&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Neurological problems including photosensitive epilepsy&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Reductions in visual performance&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Distraction&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Disruptive behaviors in individuals with autism&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17834" LastEditorUserId="26375" LastEditDate="2022-04-23T15:26:41.600" LastActivityDate="2022-04-23T15:26:41.600" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27526" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22441" CreationDate="2015-04-30T01:50:16.017" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160630124628/http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/07/09/3458101/f35-boondoggle-fail/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reference linked&lt;/a&gt; in the OP says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the full amount spent on the F-35 at its disposal, the U.S. could afford to purchase every person on the streets a $664,000 home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the reference states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On any given night in 2013, the Department of Housing and Urban Development concluded, there were an estimated 600,000 homeless Americans living on the streets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reference states that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;current acquisition price-tag of $398.6 billion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;$398.6 billion divided by 600,000 = $664,333&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is clear that the reference is arriving at the statement &amp;quot;the U.S. could afford to purchase every person on the streets a $664,000 home&amp;quot; by dividing the total acquisition cost by the estimated number of homeless people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The flaw in the statement is the $398.6 billion is not money that has been spent.  Instead, this is the money expected to be spent through 2037.  As explained in the Reuters article &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/11/us-lockheed-fighter-report-idUSBRE92A13R20130311/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pentagon needs $12.6 billion per year through 2037 for F-35&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the Pentagon was expected to shell out $316 billion through 2037 on the remaining development and purchase of the radar-evading warplane, on top of billions of dollars already spent, for a total program cost of around $400 billion&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the fact that only $84 billion (not $398.6 billion ) has been spent so far makes the value $664,000 (or $600,000) be an exaggeration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, &lt;strong&gt;that fact that the OP is written in past tense terms (&amp;quot;vast amounts spent on the airplane so far&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;money spent&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;could have been given a $600,000 home&amp;quot;) but then uses future spending through 2037 to arrive at the $600,000 figure, makes the claim in the OP false.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2023-12-05T18:42:41.400" LastActivityDate="2023-12-05T18:42:41.400" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27529" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-30T07:59:49.490" Score="8" ViewCount="593" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Chinese government is notably opposed to &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falun_Gong&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Falun Gong&lt;/a&gt;. In 1999, they were &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20150430091841/http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1999-11-05/news/9911041104_1_falun-gong-china-s-harsh-crackdown-tiananmen-square&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quoted in the Sun Sentinel&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the government charged that Falun Gong was responsible for the deaths of 1,400 people -- many of whom died because they had stopped taking medication. In the past, Falun Gong's founder, Li Hongzhi, has admonished his followers to forgo traditional treatments for disease, arguing that true practitioners did not need drugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do many Falun Gong practitioners eschew traditional medical treatments, and has that led to many deaths?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same question &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-evidence-that-Falun-Gong-teaches-that-you-should-not-seek-professional-medical-treatment&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;on Quora&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17311" LastEditorUserId="17311" LastEditDate="2015-05-02T06:30:18.597" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T06:30:18.597" Title="Have many Falun Gong practitioners forgone medical treatment and died of treatable causes as a result?" Tags="|religion|public-health|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27530" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27531" CreationDate="2015-04-30T09:42:46.057" Score="14" ViewCount="863" Body="&lt;p&gt;Saw this on my Facebook today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xsgI1.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Agent Orange&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Agent Orange wasn't invented by Monsanto... The primary manufacturer wasn't Monsanto. It was Dow Chemical. When Dow couldn't manufacture it fast enough, the government turned to overflow suppliers, including Hercules, the Diamond Shamrock Corporation, Uniroyal (the tire manufacturer), Thompson Chemical Company, and, yes, Monsanto (the chemical company). **But strangely, only Monsanto gets blamed for it -- you never see folks boycotting Uniroyal tires over Agent Orange!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Text from &amp;quot;Is Monsanto evil?&amp;quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/Is-Monsanto-evil/answer/Franklin-Veaux&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.quora.com/Is-Monsanto-evil/answer/Franklin-Veaux&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://FB.COM/PROVACCINESHILLS&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FB.COM/PROVACCINESHILLS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Conversely, Wikipedia claims in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto#1960s_and_1970s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an unreferenced statement&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 1960s and 1970s, Monsanto was one of the most important producers of Agent Orange for United States Armed Forces operations in Vietnam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T16:11:25.240" Title="Was Monsanto the primary manufacturer of Agent Orange?" Tags="|war|monsanto|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27531" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27530" CreationDate="2015-04-30T10:41:14.870" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The amounts of agent orange, in units of 55-gallon (208 liter) drums by company is as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dow 78,235&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monsanto 67,065&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hercules 49,945&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thompson-Hayward Chemical (T.H. Agriculture and Nutrition ) 21,055&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diamond Alkali /Shamrock 12,555&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US Rubber (Uniroyal) 11,635&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thompson Chemicals 7,185&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Agrisect 1,875&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hoffman-Taff 410&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above data is from table 2.2 (page 44) of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.springer.com/us/book/9780387874852&quot;&gt;The History, Use, Disposition and Environmental Fate of Agent Orange&lt;/a&gt; by A. L Young (2009).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book also repeats this data in table 5.6 (page 173), breaking it down by fiscal year.  For the first two years, 1963 and 1964, Monsanto was the only supplier. The statement in the OP &quot;When Dow couldn't manufacture it fast enough, the government turned to overflow suppliers&quot; is thusly untrue.   In 1965, Dow and Hercules joined Monsanto in the production effort.  The other companies started still latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Dow produced more Agent Orange, it produced agent orange with a lower concentration of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin&quot;&gt;dioxin&lt;/a&gt; contamination. The same book provides data in table 5.11 (page 183), for each of the top 5 producers, broken down by year. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;At Monsanto, dioxin concentration ranged from 1.04-11.53 ppm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diamond Alkali/Shamrock 0.53-8.27 ppm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dow: undetectable to 0.63ppm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thomas-Hayward: 0.32ppm&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hercules: undetectable to 0.03ppm (undetectable in 47 of 48 samples)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there was vast variance in the concentration of the toxic substance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin&quot;&gt;dioxin&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1984, several companies that manufactured agent orange reached a settlement with veterans who had sued for damages due to agent orange exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The companies involved and percent payment was as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Monsanto: 45.5%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Dow: 19.5%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Diamond Shamrock: 12%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Hercules 10%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;T.H. Agriculture and Nutrition 6%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Uniroyal 5%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Thompson Chemical 2%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The percentages being &quot;according to a formula based on the amount of Agent Orange each firm produced and how much the substance was contaminated with dioxin&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above data and quote is from &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1876&amp;amp;dat=19840513&amp;amp;id=T0MsAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=QM4EAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=4993,3623075&amp;amp;hl=en&quot;&gt;Spartanburg Herald-Journal 13 May 1984 page A5&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, &lt;strong&gt;Dow produced more agent orange than any other company, Monsanto being a close second.&lt;/strong&gt;  Monsanto settled for the most liability, based upon a formula that also considered how contaminated each company's agent orange was with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzodioxin&quot;&gt;dioxin&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T16:11:25.240" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T16:11:25.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27532" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-30T12:36:06.107" Score="6" ViewCount="507" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this website: &lt;a href=&quot;http://listverse.com/2010/01/14/10-more-enigmas-that-defy-explanation/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;10 Enigmas&quot;&gt;10 Enigmas&lt;/a&gt;, there was a boy called &quot;Donnie Decker&quot; (number 1 on the list in the website), born in 1983, who could make it rain at will.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an extract from that story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dubbed the Rain Boy in 1983, Donnie Decker ..... complained, Donnie explained that he could make it rain when he wanted to, and proved his point by dumping rain on the jailor on duty. Eventually, he was released from jail and found a job as a cook at a local restaurant. His present whereabouts is unknown – as is the cause of the mysterious rain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While most of the stories on this list are semi-believable or seem to have some basis in fact, I find this one very hard to swallow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surely someone with this kind of ability would not only be more well-known, but have been studied further by medical / government / military institutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds incredibly far-fetched and I'm wondering where they're getting this information form. Did such a person really exist? Could he (can he still) make it rain at will?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Various versions of his story have been repeated on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ghosttheory.com/2013/03/03/don-decker-poltergeist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;many&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://unsolved.com/archives/don-decker&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paranormal&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://beforeitsnews.com/strange/2013/12/donny-decker-the-rain-man-demon-possessed-teleknisis-or-hoax-2453368.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sites&lt;/a&gt;, including &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.historicmysteries.com/don-decker-rain-man/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a longer version at Historic Mysteries&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2439" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-04-30T17:54:43.043" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T17:54:43.043" Title="Did Donnie Decker exist and could he make it rain at will?" Tags="|weather|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27534" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-30T20:38:18.747" Score="6" ViewCount="1121" Body="&lt;p&gt;My professor said that the Anarchist Cookbook (a collection of recipes for bombs, etc.) was created by the government, who inserted deliberate errors to make sure that budding insurgents would blow themselves up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I thought the book was written by William Powell, now a schoolteacher, and that the errors were innocent mistakes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found a &lt;a href=&quot;http://strangefamousrecords.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38737&amp;amp;sid=da23906d602bafecc147b76cb2cad6df&quot;&gt;few&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150402/15274630528/fbi-uncovers-another-its-own-plots-senator-feinstein-responds-saying-we-should-censor-internet.shtml#c905&quot;&gt;people&lt;/a&gt; discussing this view on the internet. Is William Powell a front, or was he sponsored by the government in some way?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26067" LastActivityDate="2015-04-30T20:38:18.747" Title="Was the Anarchist Cookbook created by the FBI/CIA to sabotage insurgency?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27535" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-30T22:05:19.050" Score="15" ViewCount="846" Body="&lt;p&gt;Joel Spitzer, an anti-smoking counsellor, &lt;a href=&quot;http://whyquit.com/joel/Joel_04_02_law_of_addiction.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claimed on whyquit.com&lt;/a&gt; that there is a law of addiction which is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The law of physiological addiction states administration of a drug to an addict will cause reestablishment&#xA;  of chemical dependence upon the addictive substance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Years ago, I have read this and completely believed it, but today I read it again and it didn't click.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This alleged &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com.lb/search?q=Administration+of+a+drug+to+an+addict+will+cause+reestablishment+of+chemical+dependence+upon+the+addictive+substance.&amp;amp;oq=Administration+of+a+drug+to+an+addict+will+cause+reestablishment+of+chemical+dependence+upon+the+addictive+substance.&amp;amp;aqs=chrome..69i57&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;es_sm=119&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;law of addiction&lt;/a&gt; is now being mentioned everywhere, even in books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find this claim on any authoritative websites, nor found any studies which mentioned or said this claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where does it this law come from, or what does science say about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="16700" LastEditDate="2015-11-13T08:57:59.513" LastActivityDate="2018-08-13T14:28:17.120" Title="Does giving a drug to a former addict cause reestablishment of chemical dependence?" Tags="|physiology|recreational-drugs|addiction|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27536" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-04-30T23:23:48.403" Score="13" ViewCount="1305" Body="&lt;p&gt;Aidsorigins.com mentioned in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.Aidsorigins.com/origins-aids-pandemic&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt; that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The oral polio vaccine (OPV) theory of origin of AIDS proposes that an&#xA;  experimental OPV made in a unique manner was administered to nearly&#xA;  one million Africans in the 1957-1960 period, leading to the infection&#xA;  of perhaps 10 to 500 people from the former Belgian Congo and&#xA;  Ruanda-Urundi with the pandemic strain of HIV-1, thus initiating the&#xA;  AIDS pandemic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This hypothesis was notable enough to be represented at a Royal Society symposium on AIDS origins in September 2000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this hypothesis supportable by &lt;em&gt;scientific evidence&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user26068" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-03T00:02:28.510" LastActivityDate="2016-02-04T16:54:59.447" Title="Did an experimental Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV) cause the AIDS pandemic?" Tags="|medical-science|vaccines|epidemiology|hiv-aids|africa|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27539" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-01T01:10:24.627" Score="7" ViewCount="467" Body="&lt;p&gt;I seem to clearly remember hearing many years ago that Spam (&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/u15r7s.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;) sued Microsoft (or AOL, or another popular email service at the time) for using the word 'spam' to refer to junk email. They said it was of detriment to their brand.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Searching now, however, I can't find any info about a lawsuit; and only a small amount of information about their dissatisfaction with the matter (although sales purportedly increased afterwards).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the true story behind this? Was there a lawsuit or settlement in the 90's?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11930" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T18:48:32.477" Title="Did Spam sue a 'popular email service' in the early days of the internet?" Tags="|nutrition|copyright|lawsuits|email|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27540" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27539" CreationDate="2015-05-01T01:41:30.770" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The company that makes Spam is called Hormel. I couldn't find any reference to them suing Hotmail, but around 2007 they did sue a company called Spam Arrest that made email filtering software, claiming their trademark was being infringed. They lost. &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.startribune.com/business/11904166.html&quot;&gt;Here is a story from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There may have been other such lawsuits as well, but this is the one that seems to be most prominently discussed on the Internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T01:41:30.770" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27541" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27539" CreationDate="2015-05-01T07:55:51.257" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nate Eldredge's answer is pretty accurate so far; here are more details.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The popular email service which was target by &lt;em&gt;Hormel Foods Corp (HRL.N)&lt;/em&gt;, owner of SPAM (food) is &lt;em&gt;Spam Arrest LLC&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spam Arrest LLC, which is a provider of software and services aimed at stopping email spam, said it won a five-year legal battle against Hormel Foods Corp (HRL.N) to keep its trademark; reuters &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/11/28/hormel-spamarrest-lawsuit-idUSN2856002320071128&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A three-judge panel found that Hormel's trademark:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;does not extend to computer software for filtering spam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One additional note, is that hotmail (renamed Outlook) today uses the word &quot;Junk&quot; instead of &quot;Spam&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T18:48:32.477" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T18:48:32.477" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27543" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-01T13:45:56.433" Score="6" ViewCount="2306" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://gawker.com/5907337/zoo-keeper-helps-constipated-monkey-pass-peanut-by-licking-its-butt-for-an-hour&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This gawker article&lt;/a&gt; claims that a zoo keeper licked a monkey's anus for an hour in order help it pass an peanut. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Being too big to pass through the monkey's system naturally, the peanut had to be extracted manually. Apparently, that meant licking it out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Any truth to this story?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T13:50:13.163" LastActivityDate="2015-05-31T17:05:27.040" Title="Did a Chinese zookeeper lick a monkey's anus for an hour in order to save its life?" Tags="|zoology|china|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27545" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27509" CreationDate="2015-05-01T16:25:07.693" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;I believe that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/34cq1b/the_facts_as_we_currently_know_them_about_the/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this post&lt;/a&gt; on reddit/r/futorology is a decent overview of the current state of affairs (sources are provided &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/34cq1b/the_facts_as_we_currently_know_them_about_the/cqua3ti&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). To sum up, there are two similar machines being tested, EmDrive and Cannae Drive, both of which claim to produce thrust by pumping microwaves into a cavity, without expelling any propellant. The inventors have various theories for why this should work, none of which are well-grounded in physics theory or experimentation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is some early, preliminary evidence that these devices do in fact produce thrust. For example, here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emdrive.com/yang-juan-paper-2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a technical report&lt;/a&gt; from a Chinese team on EmDrive:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;creating a propellantless microwave propulsion system can produce a net thrust; when the microwave source output is 2.45GHz, with a microwave power of 80-2500W, the propulsion produced by the thruster is located in the range of 70-720mN, and the total measurement error is less than 12%&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another test claimed to show space-time distortion effects using &quot;a modified Michelson device,&quot; but I haven't seen any clear description of this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most likely explanation for the results so far is that these devices do generate thrust, but through some known physics that have not yet been well controlled for. However it has not yet been conclusively demonstrated that the inventors' claims of propellantless thrust are false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23274" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T16:25:07.693" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27546" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27543" CreationDate="2015-05-01T16:34:29.580" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;This news appears to be reported from Wuhan Evening News, Wuhan, China, you can see the video &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liveleak.com/ll_embed?f=ba0c97ceb987&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/R5zkSl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Liveleak.com &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=4cc_1335953663&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The 55-year-old teacher zhang help overcome with warm water will a little HeiYeHou bottom clean, and then began to use the tongue keeps licking, has been lick for more than an hour, until the little monkey pull out one peanut. Peanuts from, zhang help overcome this just smiled with satisfaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Huffington Post &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/03/zoo-keeper-licks-monkeys-butt_n_1475873.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt; and said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bangsheng claims the monkey was too small for medication to help it pass the peanut, so licking was the only way to help it -- after washing its bottom with warm water, Orange News reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for as I am concerned, having found that Wuhan Evening News reported this news, it be would be unsound to make conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastActivityDate="2015-05-01T16:34:29.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27549" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27550" CreationDate="2015-05-01T18:53:40.600" Score="14" ViewCount="4214" Body="&lt;p&gt;My wife just came back from a breastfeeding clinic where the health visitor admonished mothers for shaking their breastmilk rather than stirring it when preparing a bottle. Apparently it &quot;denatures the proteins&quot;. This reeks of pseudoscience, but a five minute Google yielded a startling number of references that claim the same. Here are a couple of examples:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bflrc.com/ljs/breastfeeding/shakenot.htm&quot;&gt;http://www.bflrc.com/ljs/breastfeeding/shakenot.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.breastfeedingplace.com/breast-milk-handling-stirred-not-shaken/&quot;&gt;http://www.breastfeedingplace.com/breast-milk-handling-stirred-not-shaken/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any science to back this up, or is it just a myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26081" LastEditorUserId="26081" LastEditDate="2015-05-01T19:30:04.817" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T00:09:13.880" Title="Does shaking breastmilk damage it?" Tags="|parenting|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27550" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27549" CreationDate="2015-05-01T20:12:56.780" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quoting from the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022030238930218&quot;&gt;Effect of Shaking on Lipolysis of Cow's Milk&lt;/a&gt;&quot; Journal of Dairy Science Volume 21, Issue 11, November 1938, Pages 671–682 (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eufinger (10) showed that the titratable acidity of &lt;strong&gt;human&lt;/strong&gt; milk increased several fold upon shaking for a few hours, and that the increase was associated with the presence of fat since the acidity did not increase when skimmilk was shaken&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Goes on to explain that two other &quot;investigators observed a marked increase in surface tension as a result of shaking human milk&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So this confirms that a chemical change occurs due to shaking; however, it does not confirm that protein denaturation occurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipolysis&quot;&gt;lipolysis&lt;/a&gt; is the hydrolysis of triglycerides into glycerol and fatty acids.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, generally speaking, proteins can be denatured by shaking.  For example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=KIRTCpMHU28C&amp;amp;pg=PA486&amp;amp;lpg=PA486&amp;amp;dq=%22protein%20denaturation%22%20shaking&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=PJAfneQT4b&amp;amp;sig=VR_NkTPvVY3b4prW-9qaJPByumU&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=P-xDVdDLDcGrgwSo0YD4BQ&amp;amp;ved=0CCwQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22protein%20denaturation%22%20shaking&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Cell Culture Technology for Pharmaceutical and Cell-Based Therapies&lt;/a&gt; (2005) explains at page 486:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;shaking increases the air/liquid interface ... and often leads to protein denaturation.  Several proteins are susceptible to denaturation by shaking, including human growth hormone (hGH) and recombinant factor XIII, both of which form insoluble complexes after shaking&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=ivz2BwAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PR3&amp;amp;dq=Solution%20Behavior%20of%20Surfactants:%20Theoretical%20and%20Applied%20Aspects,%20Volume%202&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=JBVEVYf4J8S_ggSb14GYDQ&amp;amp;ved=0CCYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=shaking&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Solution Behavior of Surfactants: Theoretical and Applied Aspects, Volume 2&lt;/a&gt; (1982)at page 1501:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indeed it is likely that all proteins may be affected by shaking although not to the same extent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-05-02T00:09:13.880" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T00:09:13.880" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27554" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-01T23:00:26.283" Score="17" ViewCount="1781" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCSWbTv3hng&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This collegehumour video claims&lt;/a&gt; that the practice of circumcision in the  US, outside of Jewish and Muslim religions, comes from the puritanical Victorian era, where it was seen as a measure to discourage masturbation, by reducing its pleasurability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-09-30T22:59:11.577" LastActivityDate="2017-10-10T10:43:52.407" Title="Is the practice of circumcision in the US an attempt to stop masturbation?" Tags="|medical-science|history|masturbation|circumcision|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27555" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27561" CreationDate="2015-05-02T04:53:04.467" Score="22" ViewCount="16142" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a lot of claims that there have only been 26 days of peace since 1945.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answers.com/Q/How_many_days_peace_has_the_world_had_since_1945&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How many days peace has the world had since 1945? &lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe none, because there has always been some form of war at sometime, in some place. No, in total 26 days of peace since 1945. A little sad.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence for this claim for only 26 days of peace since 1945.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19453" LastEditorUserId="34678" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2022-03-03T07:52:42.007" LastActivityDate="2022-03-03T07:52:42.007" Title="Have there been only 26 days of peace since 1945?" Tags="|war|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27556" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27557" CreationDate="2015-05-02T05:31:54.193" Score="4" ViewCount="611" Body="&lt;p&gt;A claim has been circulating on &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/mmaencyclopedia/status/594163334808608768&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Twitter&lt;/a&gt; with an attached image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dear Boxing Fans: This is the guy you are supporting tomorrow, from&#xA;  the hand of his young son. #MayweatherPacquiao&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oyLgM.png&quot; alt=&quot;Photo in question&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not asking whether the allegations described in the report is genuine (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Mayweather,_Jr.#Criminal_convictions&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;very plausible&lt;/a&gt;). I'm wondering whether the excerpt of the report is genuine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-02T13:30:52.487" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T13:34:45.987" Title="Is this an excerpt of a police report by Floyd Mayweather's son?" Tags="|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27557" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27556" CreationDate="2015-05-02T09:13:00.783" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;It appears that this document is perfectly genuine. It was reported by USA Today in 2014 but today the  testimonials from the son went viral, the police report is split into 5 parts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://i.usatoday.net/sports/Investigations-and-enterprise/Mayweather-Documents_Part1.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Temporary Restraining Order&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://i.usatoday.net/sports/Investigations-and-enterprise/Mayweather-Documents_Part2.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Incident report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://i.usatoday.net/sports/Investigations-and-enterprise/Mayweather-Documents_Part4.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Koraun Mayweather's (Floyd Meriweather's son) testimonial&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://i.usatoday.net/sports/Investigations-and-enterprise/Mayweather-Documents_Part5.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Josie Lynn Harris's testimonial&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the second part of the son's testimonial:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gIyf4.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the first part of the mother's testimonial:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YAuYR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the first part of the temporary restraining order: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LO8br.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Incident report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fKCqz.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Read the rest of the full detailed story on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/boxing/2014/11/18/floyd-mayweather-josie-harris-domestic-abuse/19221605/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;USA Today&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-02T13:34:45.987" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T13:34:45.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27558" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-02T11:53:35.540" Score="4" ViewCount="327" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some Brazilians love to say that we are a dishonest country (which some people call &lt;em&gt;Jeitinho Brasileiro&lt;/em&gt;). Someone even created an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeitinho&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; on Wikipedia for this so-called behaviour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't believe that dishonesty is inherent to any country or culture, but I've never seen any good study that endorse this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rd.com/slideshows/most-honest-cities-lost-wallet-test/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this experiment&lt;/a&gt; where they &quot;lost&quot; 12 wallets with $50 on purpose in 16 cities. It's clear that there are some problems with this experiment. For instance, 12 wallets is a small number for scientific purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ibtimes.com/worlds-most-dishonest-travelers-come-these-nations-1209273&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, which was a survey asking some travellers around the globe about their honesty. The problem with this is that they just asked people hoping that everybody would answer honestly (&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/2910/are-people-more-likely-to-give-honest-responses-to-surveys-when-anonymous?rq=1&quot;&gt;relevant question on Skeptics&lt;/a&gt;). Also, honest people might be more willing to answer this survey than dishonest people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26085" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T16:44:00.387" Title="Is dishonesty more prevalent in certain cultures/countries?" Tags="|psychology|behavior|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-05-02T15:25:54.037" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27559" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-02T12:51:49.057" Score="2" ViewCount="340" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a video on Facebook by the Young Turks that claims 3000 black people were killed by the KKK, but there is a text &quot;UPDATE&quot; under the video that corrects it to 300. Other &lt;a href=&quot;http://tulsahistory.org/learn/online-exhibits/the-tulsa-race-riot/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt; I saw online agree with this updated number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BUT, there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/09/12/before-911-the-terrorist-plane-attack-against-black-people-america-doesnt-talk-about/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;another video&lt;/a&gt; I had seen before where a black commentator on Fox tells a white commentator that up to 4000 blacks were killed in an aerial attack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to know the the historically accepted number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22218" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-03T12:45:13.450" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T12:45:13.450" Title="How many people died at the Tulsa Race Riot?" Tags="|history|united-states|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-05-02T16:07:09.247" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27560" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27555" CreationDate="2015-05-02T14:09:44.757" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This claim is made in &lt;a href=&quot;http://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/10248/1/10248.pdf&quot;&gt;REGIONAL CONFLICTS IN THE THIRD WORLD: DIMENSIONS,&#xA;CAUSES, PERSPECTIVES&lt;/a&gt; (1988) by MIR A. FERDOWSI of Third World Research Section at  the Geschwister - Scholl Institute University of Munich, published in &lt;em&gt;Law and State: A Biannual Collection of Recent German Contributions to These Fields&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is at page 32&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;since the Second World War the globe has only been without a war for a&#xA;  few days, to wit, for 26 days in September 1945&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, a 1974 version of the claim is &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=l58kAQAAIAAJ&amp;amp;q=%2226%20days%22%20%22September%201945%22&amp;amp;dq=%2226%20days%22%20%22September%201945%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=yUJFVa_sE8uegwTJo4GYCg&amp;amp;ved=0CCIQ6AEwAQ&quot;&gt;Proceedings of the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs&lt;/a&gt; at page 287:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;there were only 26 days (between 2 and 29 September 1945) during these thirty years when there was no war waged the whole world over&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The significance of 2 September 1945 was the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan&quot;&gt;formal surrender of Japan&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Ho Chi Minh also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/vietnam-independence-proclaimed&quot;&gt;declared Vietnam independent 2 September 1945.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Vietnam_(1945%E2%80%9346)&quot;&gt;conflict in Viet Nam&lt;/a&gt; had started by 13 September 1945&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_National_Revolution&quot;&gt;revolution in Indonesia&lt;/a&gt; started 17 August 1945 and continued through 1949.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It depends where you draw the line between war and peace, but it seems there was significant conflict during September 1945, rather than 26 days of world peace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-05-02T21:54:16.530" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T21:54:16.530" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27561" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27555" CreationDate="2015-05-02T15:56:41.160" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to give a straight answer to the question, because if we define peace as the absence of war (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;), we still have the problem of the nebulous &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;definition of war&lt;/a&gt;. Does war include guerilla wars, civil wars, insurgencies and other forms of conflict? Does war have a clearly defined start and end date?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, when did World War II end? While the Japanese ceased-fire and announced surrender in August 1945, signed the paperwork in September 1945, signed the peace treaty in 1951, and were no longer occupied by the US in 1952. Some argue that some countries never signed a peace treaty, but just stopped fighting, so are technically still at war. [&lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081122163435AANbSuL&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reference&lt;/a&gt; - not a strong source, but this isn't controversial.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notwithstanding that, I am taking advantage of the looseness of the quote in the question, which uses a very broad &amp;quot;some sort of war&amp;quot;, to include Civil Wars and Rebellions. The following conflicts overlapped each other, leaving no days where the entire world was at peace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1942-1954, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukbalahap_Rebellion&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hukbalahap Rebellion&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1944-1947, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_insurgency_in_Palestine&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jewish Insurgency in Palestine&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1942-1949, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ukrainian Insurgency&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1944-1956, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guerrilla_war_in_the_Baltic_states&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guerilla war in the Baltic States&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1948-1960, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayan_Emergency&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Malayan Emergency&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1955-1975, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vietnam War&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1960-1996, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_Civil_War&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Guatemalan Civil War&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;1991-2002, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Leone_Civil_War&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sierra Leone Civil War&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;2001-present, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%93present)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;War in Afghanistan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These are, by no means, the only conflicts during that time, but I picked some of the longer conflicts to cover the entire period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2022-02-28T13:49:16.730" LastActivityDate="2022-02-28T13:49:16.730" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27563" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-02T23:32:42.137" Score="4" ViewCount="240" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've been listening to hypnosis tracks on spotify recently. &lt;a href=&quot;https://play.spotify.com/album/72M9Zl3IkQ23SAO7xdDVut&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Example (warning: Spotify).&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Almost all of these tracks start with a disclaimer telling you not to listen to the track while driving or operating heavy machinery. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that hypnosis tracks can actually be dangerous, or is this just marketing?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorUserId="19053" LastEditDate="2015-05-02T23:45:15.470" LastActivityDate="2015-05-02T23:45:15.470" Title="Is listening to hypnosis tracks dangerous while driving?" Tags="|hypnotism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27564" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27536" CreationDate="2015-05-02T23:56:08.310" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different theories have emerged to hypothesize about origins for the &lt;strong&gt;human immunodeficiency infection (HIV) and (AIDS)&lt;/strong&gt;, with theories emerging from coincidental acts to evidently intentional acts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Oral Polio Vaccine (OPV)&lt;/em&gt; theory is one of those theories.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Edward Hooper&lt;/strong&gt;, is a British &lt;em&gt;writer&lt;/em&gt; best known for his book, &lt;strong&gt;The River&lt;/strong&gt;, which investigated the origins of AIDS and made a case for the OPV AIDS hypothesis, which states that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(00)04536-0/fulltext#article_upsell&quot;&gt;AIDS virus&lt;/a&gt; was accidentally created by scientists testing an &lt;em&gt;experimental polio vaccine (OPV)&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source: Edward Hooper, The River, Little Brown and Company, 1999, ISBN 0-316-37261-7.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His theory speculated that early bunches of the oral polio antibody (OPV) developed in societies of chimpanzee kidney cells, tainted with a chimpanzee infection, were the first wellspring of HIV-1 in Central Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are the studies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Chimpanzee's DNA not found&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists have analyzed five samples of OPV in storage at the Wistar Institute, including one from a batch used in the Belgian Congo between 1958 and 1960, they didn't find any chimpanzee's DNA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(00)04536-0/fulltext#article_upsell&quot;&gt;The Lancet&lt;/a&gt;. Volume 357, No. 9265, p1343, 28 April 2001&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Mechanism of transmission seems highly unlikely&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A third possibility is that multiple strains of SIV were transmitted from chimpanzees to humans at about the same time in the 1940s or 1950s (Parallel Late Transmission hypothesis). It has been suggested that parallel transmission could have occurred through contamination of poliovirus vaccines with multiple SIVs. Poliovirus was cultured in chimpanzee kidney cells and oral polio vaccines were administered in Central Africa between 1957 and 1960 (7). &lt;strong&gt;However, this mechanism of transmission seems highly unlikely given the small number of chimpanzee kidneys used for preparing oral polio vaccines, the rarity of SIV infections in chimpanzee populations, and the lack of known strains of SIVcpz (the SIV strain that infects chimpanzees) in the cluster of M-group viruses.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source: Hillis DM (2000). &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dnai.org/media/bioinformatics/hiv/origins_of_hiv_02.doc&quot;&gt;AIDS. Origins of HIV&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Science 288 (5472): 1757–9. doi:10.1126/science.288.5472.1757.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Dispelling one proposed route of transmission&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now, results of PCR analyses presented to a packed auditorium at London's Royal Society on 12 September should clarify the ‘how’ by &lt;strong&gt;dispelling one proposed route of transmission—that HIV-1 entered the human population inadvertently in the late 1950s through trials of an oral polio vaccine (OPV) grown in chimpanzee kidney cells contaminated with SIV&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source: Birmingham K (2000). &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nm/journal/v6/n10/full/nm1000_1067.html&quot;&gt;Results make a monkey of OPV-AIDS theory&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Nat Med 6 (10): 1067.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Circulating virus is phylogenetically distinct from all strains of HIV-1&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite strong evidence to the contrary, speculation continues that the AIDS virus, human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), may have crossed into humans as a result of contamination of the oral polio vaccine (OPV). This 'OPV/AIDS theory' claims that chimpanzees from the vicinity of Stanleyville--now Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo--were the source of a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIVcpz) that was transmitted to humans when chimpanzee tissues were allegedly used in the preparation of OPV. &lt;strong&gt;Here we show that SIVcpz is indeed endemic in wild chimpanzees of this region but that the circulating virus is phylogenetically distinct from all strains of HIV-1, providing direct evidence that these chimpanzees were not the source of the human AIDS pandemic.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source: Worobey M, Santiago M, Keele B, Ndjango J, Joy J, Labama B, Dhed'A B, Rambaut A, Sharp P, Shaw G, Hahn B (2004). &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15103367&quot;&gt;Origin of AIDS: contaminated polio vaccine theory refuted&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Nature 428 (6985): 820&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Death sentence for the OPV theory (Coffin was prepared also):&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At an unusual Royal Society meeting in London last September, a controversial theory that a contaminated polio vaccine triggered the AIDS epidemic was all but &lt;strong&gt;PRONOUNCED DEAD&lt;/strong&gt;. Now, a paper in this issue (see p. 743) and three more in this week's issue of Nature collectively nail the lid on the &lt;strong&gt;COFFIN OF THE THEORY&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source: Cohen J (2001). &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/292/5517/615.1&quot;&gt;AIDS origins. Disputed AIDS theory dies its final death&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. Science 292 (5517): 615&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-03T09:51:49.987" LastActivityDate="2015-05-03T09:51:49.987" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27566" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27575" CreationDate="2015-05-03T18:54:04.730" Score="34" ViewCount="14804" Body="&lt;p&gt;I stumbled upon &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20150503224212/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manahel_Thabet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Wikipedia page of Manahel Thabet&lt;/a&gt; recently. Here are some extracts from the Wikipedia page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;At the age of 25, she earned her first PhD in Financial Engineering magna cum laude, making her the youngest person and the only Arab ever to attain such distinction.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;She went on to earn a second PhD in 2012, this time with a major in quantum mathematics.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;In 2012, Thabet developed a formula that measures distance in space without the use of light. The formula was considered ground breaking in the field of quantum mathematics and is 350 pages of numbers, calculations, and equations.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A google search would suggest that she is quite popular in some circles (&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/manahelthabet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;and she has 50k followers on Twitter&lt;/a&gt;). But are things written on her Wikiepdia page facts?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a student of mathematics, I've never heard of the phase &quot;quantum mathematics&quot; being an actual term to describe the branches of mathematics used in quantum mechanics, or the study of mathematical objects coined with phases begin with &quot;quantum&quot; (such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_group&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quantum group&lt;/a&gt;). Thus I find it strange for one to &quot;major in quantum mathematics&quot;. Or perhaps I am just ignorant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I went on looking for the papers she published. I was particularly interested in the methodology she devised for measuring distance which involves a &quot;350 pages&quot; formula. Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/general/dubai-woman-s-space-formula-takes-world-by-storm-1.1024095&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article on gulfnews.com&lt;/a&gt; about how the formula &quot;takes world by storm&quot; (but not about the formula itself).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://ssrn.com/abstract=2355164&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Measuring Distances in Space by Manahel A. R. Thabet&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;American Educational Research Association (AERA)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Abstract:       Determining distances in space is a technical&#xA;  phenomenon; astronomers are trying to come up with a correct way to do&#xA;  it. It is not easy for most of us to imagine the truly immense scale&#xA;  of the universe. “Scale,” in this case, refers to the size of an&#xA;  object compared with its surroundings or another object (McGaugh).&#xA;  Distances in the space are vast from one celestial body to another;&#xA;  for instance, it takes a light signal 10.5 years to travel to the&#xA;  nearest star that has planets (Bonnet, 1992). The fact that light&#xA;  travels 30000 times faster than any fastest rockets renders human&#xA;  beings unable to reach to some planets even if they travelled their&#xA;  entire lifetime. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To determine space distance, several methods with different variations&#xA;  are used or have been proposed. These methods, unfortunately, have&#xA;  faults. In this research, I clearly explain several of these methods&#xA;  and their faults and errors. We will also observe the universe as&#xA;  being three-dimensional and flat as explained in Euclidean: Euclidean&#xA;  means that all the geometry and lines (that are taught in mathematics&#xA;  and physics) properties applies. Measuring distance from earth to&#xA;  celestial bodies like star, sun and moon help astronauts to determine&#xA;  the size of the universe; also it helps to estimate the age of&#xA;  universe. Therefore it is important to use correct methods in&#xA;  estimating space distance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This appears to be more of an article for layman audiences. It brought up &lt;a href=&quot;http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/stdcand.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the standard candle approach&lt;/a&gt; for measuring cosmological distances (page 18) without discussing it extensively. And &lt;a href=&quot;http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011AAS...21733721E&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the expanding photosphere method (EPM)&lt;/a&gt; was not even mentioned. It does not seem to be the paper I was looking for. But this was all I could find after numerous Google searches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could find neither the allegedly groundbreaking formula, nor any solid evidence that it actually exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arabianbusiness.com/the-100-most-powerful-arab-women-2015-583884.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arabianbusiness.com ranked her as the 15th most powerful Arab woman in 2015&lt;/a&gt;. But is it true she has written a &quot;350 pages&quot; formula to measure distance in space without the use of light? If so, where is it published and how can one find it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A side question: which graduate school did she attend for her Ph.D in &quot;quantum mathematics&quot;? I couldn't find any information regarding that either. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26092" LastEditorUserId="26092" LastEditDate="2018-06-03T14:09:03.193" LastActivityDate="2018-06-03T14:09:03.193" Title="Did Manahel Thabet develop a groundbreaking formula to measure distance in space without the use of light?" Tags="|physics|mathematics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27567" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-03T20:24:44.133" Score="2" ViewCount="205" Body="&lt;p&gt;Have there been any studies or exist any statistics on how often people fail to somehow intervene in the event of an emergency where violence is involved? I'm primarily interested in North America (and exclusively interested in developed nations). For example how often does it happen that an assault takes place where even though there are witnesses, not one phones for police (as in the case with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Kitty_Genovese&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kitty Genovese&lt;/a&gt;)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question pertains to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect#Kitty_Genovese&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;bystander effect&lt;/a&gt;. Basically I'm asking what is the prevalence of it, in the sense is it more likely than not for someone to somehow assist when clearly someone needs help?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a psychology class I took we were taught this is the reason for the bystander effect:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MtETM.gif&quot; alt=&quot;steps required to intervene&quot;&gt;  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I personally don't find this a convincing argument, as it seems all they did was break things down into small steps. For example step #3 is almost negligible because simply calling 911 isn't assuming too much responsibility. And for #4 you just need to know the number 911. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14333" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-04T03:45:54.163" LastActivityDate="2015-05-04T03:45:54.163" Title="How often do witnesses fail to report violent crimes as they are occuring?" Tags="|psychology|criminology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-05-04T07:23:40.057" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27568" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-03T21:15:11.713" Score="6" ViewCount="1299" Body="&lt;p&gt;The German polyglot Emil Krebs &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emil_Krebs&quot;&gt;allegedly mastered 68 languages&lt;/a&gt;. Which, frankly, I find unbelievable. Unfortunately, I cannot find any reliable and convincing source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there solid evidence that Emil Krebs mastered 68 languages?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual number of languages is rather unimportant, it is the order of magnitude that strikes me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: Upon request, I have removed all my research from the question. You might want to have a look at the edit history.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26094" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-03T21:33:02.177" LastActivityDate="2016-06-27T18:13:28.927" Title="Did Emil Krebs master 68 languages?" Tags="|history|neurology|linguistics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27569" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27570" CreationDate="2015-05-04T00:32:40.820" Score="9" ViewCount="617" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/02/us/lord-of-the-flies-baltimore/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An article from CNN&lt;/a&gt; says about West Baltimore:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the older black men were gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I asked 28-year-old Zachary Lewis about the absence of older men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;There ain't no more 'Old Heads' anymore, where you been?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We hear about the absence of black men from families, but what happens when they disappear from an entire community? West Baltimore delivered the answer to that question this week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I walked through my old streets, it was filled with nothing but black young women, children and teenage boys. It was as if an alien spaceship had come in the night and spirited all the older black men away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, a bit of hyperbole (&amp;quot;no more old heads&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;disappear from an entire community&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;spirited all the older black men away&amp;quot;), but is the general message supported by evidence? I couldn't find this thesis supported by other news sources, and don't know how to search the social science literature for evidence concerning this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there a relative dearth of older black men in West Baltimore?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T12:42:23.240" Title="Is there a relative dearth of older black men in West Baltimore?" Tags="|united-states|race|population|demographics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27570" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27569" CreationDate="2015-05-04T11:34:37.800" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this is true in some west Baltimore neighborhoods. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, in the &lt;strong&gt;Druid Heights&lt;/strong&gt; neighborhood, there are few older men. Only 35 out of 1570 (2.2%) are men over the age of 64.  Yet 195 (12.4%) are women over 64. (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://baltimore2006to2010acsprofiles.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/druid-heights.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;page 2 here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The age data is not broken down by race, but 1520 of 1570 (97%) were black)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For comparison, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-09.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;in the 2010 census&lt;/a&gt;, 5.6% of the US population was men over age 64; and 7.4% was women over age 64.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;Harlem Park&lt;/strong&gt;, only 130 out of 3800 (3.4%) are men over the age of 64. (3780 (99%) are black.) Yet 475 (12.5%) are women over 64.  (See &lt;a href=&quot;https://baltimore2006to2010acsprofiles.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/harlem-park.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;page 2 here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;strong&gt;Panway&lt;/strong&gt;, only 10 out of 1380 (0.7%) are men over the age of 64. Yet 125 (9%) are women over 64.  (100% were black.) Even looking at the entire adult (over 18) population, only 37% are men.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://baltimore2006to2010acsprofiles.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/panway-braddish-avenue.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The news story refers to a specific place, adjacent the playing fields of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/maps/search/frederick+douglass+high+school+baltimore/data=!4m2!2m1!4b1?dg=oo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fredrick Douglass High School&lt;/a&gt;. (&quot;I practically lived on the playing fields at Frederick Douglass High School, which became a focal point for the riots.&quot;)&#xA;The Panway neighborhood discussed above would be about 300 meters to the west of the playing fields. The neighborhood actually containing the school would be the &lt;strong&gt;Mondawmin&lt;/strong&gt; neighborhood.  Mondawmin has a very normal 5.6% men over 64 years old (but 14.6% are women over 64). However, &lt;strong&gt;only 37% of adults (over 18) are male&lt;/strong&gt;.  See &lt;a href=&quot;https://baltimore2006to2010acsprofiles.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/mondawmin.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;page 2 here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6FPFe.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Baltimore, depending upon neighborhood, life expectancy varies by over 20 years.  Even considering both men and woman together, life expectancy is below 64 years in the Druid Heights neighborhood (at the extreme left in the graph).  At the extreme right is the wealthy Roland Park neighborhood.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://health.baltimorecity.gov/sites/default/files/Life_Expectancy_2011.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source of image&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even more extreme variation is seen looking at mortality rates for young and middle age adults in different Baltimore neighborhoods, in data availible from the &lt;a href=&quot;http://bniajfi.org/indicators/all&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Baltimore Neighborhood Indicator Alliance&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, for ages 25-44, the mortality rate per 10,000 was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Greater Roland Park&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2013: 2.1&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2012: 2.1&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2011: 3.2  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Greater Mondawmin&quot;  (which would include both Panway and Mondawmin)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2013: 29.3&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2012: 38.1&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2011: 41.0  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Upton/Druid Heights&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2013: 34.2&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2012: 49.3&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2011: 51.7  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, these mortality statistics are not broken down by race and sex, but Mondawmin, Upton, and Druid Heights are almost exclusively black neighborhoods.  The person interviewed in the story (as well as the reporter who is speaking of his own former neighborhood) has good reason refer to &quot;pine boxes&quot;, because an abnormally high number of people do die young in his neighborhood.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as the &quot;big numbers&quot; mentioned in the story, the violent crime rate per 1,000 is given by the same source by neighborhood:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Greater Roland Park&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2013: 2.3&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2012: 2.0&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2011: 3.7  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Greater Mondawmin&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2013: 29.3&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2012: 25.3&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2011: 22.0  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &quot;Upton/Druid Heights&quot;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2013: 21.9&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2012: 28.7&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2011: 26.8  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T12:42:23.240" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T12:42:23.240" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27571" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-04T19:56:43.520" Score="6" ViewCount="725" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is alleged that Nikita Khrushchev said the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quoteland.com/author/Nikita-Khrushchev-Quotes/1962/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;following&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When all the world is socialist, Switzerland will have to remain capitalist, so that it can tell us the price of everything.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Nikita Khrushchev say the following? If not, I'm also interested in knowing who said this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26107" LastEditorUserId="6308" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T01:43:22.293" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T01:43:22.293" Title="Did Nikita Khrushchev make this remark about Switzerland?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27572" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27601" CreationDate="2015-05-04T22:36:02.447" Score="7" ViewCount="7057" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just saw &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=988160074550430&amp;amp;set=a.130165043683275.14332.100000693395987&amp;amp;type=1&quot;&gt;this facebook post&lt;/a&gt; claiming that vinegar and essential oils can repel ticks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a spray bottle, mix 2 cups of distilled white vinegar and 1 cup of water. To make a scented solution so you do not smell like bitter vinegar all day, add 20 drops of your favorite essential oil.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Eucalyptus oil is a calm, soothing scent that also works as a tick repellent, while peppermint and citrus oils give off a strong crisp scent that also repel ticks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After mixing the solution, spray onto clothing, skin, and hair before going outdoors. Reapply every four hours to keep ticks at bay, and examine your skin and hair when back inside to make sure no ticks are on the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A quick search also led me to a post on MDJunction &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdjunction.com/forums/lyme-disease-support-forums/tips/10741380-essential-oils-to-kill-ticks&quot;&gt;&quot;Essential Oils to Kill Ticks&quot;&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Natural alternatives for pest relief are in great demand. Essential oils are a popular choice, and some can repel ticks even if they don't kill ticks.&#xA;  In 2004, Swedish researchers Gardulf, Wohlfart and Gustafson found that the mosquito repellent Citriodiol lessened tick attacks on people by 34 percent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The essential oils most commonly promoted as tick repellents include clove, eucalyptus, lavender, lemon, geranium, palmarosa, pennyroyal, rose and sweet myrrh.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, other sources such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.outdoors.org/publications/outdoors/2012/equipped/tick-off-most-effective-tick-repellents.cfm&quot;&gt;outdoors.org&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/ticks/avoid/on_people.html&quot;&gt;the CDC&lt;/a&gt; do not mention these at all - they only mention &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEET&quot;&gt;DEET&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permethrin&quot;&gt;permethrin&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do vinegar and essential oils actually repel ticks?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21196" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-12-17T17:45:27.113" LastActivityDate="2018-09-26T18:21:27.757" Title="Can vinegar and essential oils repel ticks?" Tags="|biology|alternative-medicine|vinegar|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27573" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1182" CreationDate="2015-05-05T01:18:52.190" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a statement &lt;a href=&quot;http://longevity3.stanford.edu/blog/2014/10/15/the-consensus-on-the-brain-training-industry-from-the-scientific-community/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;released&lt;/a&gt; by the Stanford University Center on Longevity and the Berlin Max Planck Institute for Human Development, there is no solid scientific evidence to back up the promise that brain training video games make you smarter. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Signed by 70 of the world’s leading cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists, the statement minces no words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The strong consensus of this group is that the scientific literature does not support claims that the use of software-based “brain games” alters neural functioning in ways that improve general cognitive performance in everyday life, or prevent cognitive slowing and brain disease.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The statement also cautions that although some brain training companies:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;present lists of credentialed scientific consultants and keep registries of scientific studies pertinent to cognitive training…the cited research is [often] only tangentially related to the scientific claims of the company, and to the games they sell.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional Information: See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-training-doesn-t-make-you-smarter/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T01:18:52.190" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27574" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27576" CreationDate="2015-05-05T03:44:38.003" Score="4" ViewCount="1282" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been an article circulating on social media which says that a 1982 study implicates baby powder usage in ovarian cancer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As early as 1982, studies have shown a link between baby powder and ovarian cancer in women. Findings have shown that women using talc­based powders are 300 times more likely to be diagnosed with cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthyfoodstar.com/this-powder-is-causing-cancer-in-10000-women/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source: Talcum powder allegedly causing cancer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26110" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T08:09:30.387" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T08:20:56.823" Title="Does baby powder cause ovarian cancer?" Tags="|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27575" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27566" CreationDate="2015-05-05T05:42:01.917" Score="31" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Did Manahel Thabet develop a groundbreaking formula to measure distance in space without the use of light?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;NO! This extraordinary claim which came from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manahel_Thabet&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 2012, Thabet &lt;strong&gt;developed a formula that measures&lt;/strong&gt; distance in space without the use of light.[2] The &lt;strong&gt;formula was considered ground breaking&lt;/strong&gt; in the field of quantum mathematics and is 350 pages of numbers, calculations, and equations.[2]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is not based on reality, it is paraphrased and misleading.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wikipedia source [2] referenced the gulfnews.com's &lt;a href=&quot;http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/general/dubai-woman-s-space-formula-takes-world-by-storm-1.1024095&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Dubai women's space formula takes world by storm&lt;/em&gt; which said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dr Manahel Thabet may soon join the ranks of the scientists and discoverers she's spent her life looking up to. The Yemeni national has created a formula that &lt;strong&gt;may prove ground-breaking in the world of quantum mathematics&lt;/strong&gt;. It could forever change the dynamics of what we consider space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The gulf article said that she is &lt;em&gt;may soon join the ranks of the scientists and discoverers&lt;/em&gt;, while Wikipedia paraphrased it as &lt;em&gt;she redefined&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The gulf article said that has &lt;em&gt;created a formula that may prove ground-breaking&lt;/em&gt;, while Wikipedia paraphrased it as she developed a &lt;em&gt;groundbreaking working formula in the field of quantum mathematics&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But is it true that she wrote a &quot;350 pages&quot; formula to measures distance in space without the use of light? If so, where is it published and how can one find it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Good question. Now, we're asking about whether she wrote a 350 pages formula, regardless whether it is scientifically correct or not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is reported in another gulf article &lt;a href=&quot;http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/society/dubai-resident-brings-arab-genius-into-equation-1.1137564&quot;&gt;called&lt;/a&gt; Dubai resident brings Arab genius into equation that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Having worked on the 350-page formula relating to ‘Structure Variation Hyper Arithmetical Sort Operators and Applications’ &lt;strong&gt;for a few years now, Manahel along with her team is trying to redefine the method of measuring distances across the universe using new particles&lt;/strong&gt;. Her formula, which has caught the attention of space agencies such as &lt;strong&gt;Nasa and the French space agency&lt;/strong&gt;, could help scientists and space researchers measure distances in space in the absence of light.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is good to start saying that Manahel A. R. Thabet's scholarly papers are not numerous. She has only seven papers in her &lt;a href=&quot;http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=1951914&quot;&gt;record&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Among her seven published papers, only the paper you mentioned studied the &quot;measure of distance in space&quot;. If she had ever developed a groundbreaking formula to measure distance in space it would be on this paper, but it wasn't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, where is this mysterious formula? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that Dr Thabet is trying to &lt;a href=&quot;http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/general/dubai-woman-s-space-formula-takes-world-by-storm-1.1024095&quot;&gt;sell&lt;/a&gt; her formula to NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administratio). Dr Tabet is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://ae.linkedin.com/pub/dr-manahel-thabet/15/ab9/a4a&quot;&gt;founder&lt;/a&gt; and President of Smart Tips Consultants, a business which existed since 8 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today, the Dubai-based President of Smart Tips, a consulting firm, &lt;em&gt;is negotiating rights to this formula with Nasa&lt;/em&gt;, the French space agency, as well as other space agencies, astro-physicists, etc, all want the honor of developing her formula. &quot;&lt;strong&gt;For now, I'm still deciding who would be the best entity to adopt this equation&lt;/strong&gt;,&quot; says 32-year-old Manahel, the youngest person in the world with a PhD in Financial Engineering.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will find not the formula anywhere online, since it is reported that negotiation rights are still made with NASA - that is, if it exists in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T08:33:05.233" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T08:33:05.233" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27576" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27574" CreationDate="2015-05-05T08:20:56.823" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2008, there was a critical review of the evidence that using talcum powder in the perineal region might cause ovarian cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Muscat JE, Huncharek MS, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18287871&quot;&gt;Perineal talc use and ovarian cancer: a critical review.&lt;/a&gt; Eur J Cancer Prev. 2008 Apr;17(2):139-46. doi: 10.1097/CEJ.0b013e32811080ef.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full-text of a draft submission for the paper is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3621109/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It found that, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;several studies had found an association. &lt;em&gt;(Keep reading, there is a twist!)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the relative risk was about 1.3 - which means 30% more likely, not 300 times more likely.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;although talc has a similar classification to asbestos, it is not carcinogenic like asbestos.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the studies had a number of holes (e.g. inconsistent dose-response effects), raising concerns about their validity as evidence of causation.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;there are inconsistencies between these findings and other studies of the safety of talc.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude that these findings are NOT enough to conclude that talcum powder causes ovarian cancer:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Talc is not genotoxic. Mechanistic, pathology and animal model studies have not found evidence for a carcinogenic effect. In summary, these data collectively &lt;strong&gt;do not indicate that cosmetic talc causes ovarian cancer&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T08:20:56.823" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27577" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="30070" CreationDate="2015-05-05T10:25:55.003" Score="11" ViewCount="1022" Body="&lt;p&gt;The BBC published an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/health-19659985&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; arguing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People with lower intelligence are more likely to be unhappy than their brighter colleagues&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that an accurate description of what we know about the correlation between happiness and intelligence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2018-01-28T18:21:32.527" LastActivityDate="2018-01-28T18:21:32.527" Title="Are smarter people more likely to be happy?" Tags="|intelligence|happiness|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27578" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-05T10:30:42.380" Score="17" ViewCount="801" Body="&lt;p&gt;Michael Poh &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/how-to-increase-happiness/&quot;&gt;writes&lt;/a&gt; on the blog HONGKIET:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When we smile, there are some biological processes that somehow trick our brain into thinking we’re happy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being happy can make one smile is obvious. Is it also well established that smiling can make one happy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2015-11-27T11:28:42.000" LastActivityDate="2017-07-17T15:35:18.647" Title="Does smiling make us more happy?" Tags="|psychology|happiness|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27579" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27580" CreationDate="2015-05-05T10:46:19.030" Score="16" ViewCount="2102" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people have claimed that dogs can be trained to detect &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoglycemia&quot;&gt;hypoglycemia&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.icandog.org/diabetes-assistance-dogs&quot;&gt;For example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, we have discovered that dogs have the ability to smell chemical changes in our bodies when someone's blood sugar starts to get low. We can make the most of this amazing ability with special training designed to forewarn the onset of hypoglycemia crisis. With a simple but telling nudge, a trained dog alerts their person to a low blood sugar attack that they did not know was coming. A quick test, a little sugar, and everyone can go on with their day, no crisis, no emergency, just the wonderful feeling of security and independence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence of this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26111" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T12:48:53.257" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T15:09:51.490" Title="Is it possible to train dogs to detect hypoglycemia?" Tags="|environmental-health|dogs|diabetes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27580" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27579" CreationDate="2015-05-05T13:02:22.877" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is difficult to prove that it is &lt;em&gt;impossible&lt;/em&gt; to train dogs to detect hypoglycemia. All that can be done to disprove this claim is to show systematic efforts to train dogs have failed, and that no-one has been able to demonstrate that it is possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2013, such an attempt was tried:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/36/7/e98.full.pdf&quot;&gt;Can Trained Dogs&#xA;Detect a&#xA;Hypoglycemic Scent&#xA;in Patients With&#xA;Type 1 Diabetes?&lt;/a&gt;, doi: 10.2337/dc12-2342&#xA;Diabetes Care July 2013 vol. 36 no. 7 e98-e99&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This was just a letter, and probably did not pass a full peer-review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They took three dogs that had already been trained by an organisation, and whose owners and trainers believed were capable of detecting hypoglycemic skin swabs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Trained dogs were&#xA;  largely unable to identify skin swabs obtained&#xA;  from hypoglycemic T1D subjects.  [...] To our knowledge, this is&#xA;  the first controlled study to address&#xA;  whether dogs can detect a hypoglycemic&#xA;  scent, though there are anecdotal and case&#xA;  reports suggesting that dogs can respond to&#xA;  hypoglycemia (2–4). Our results addressed&#xA;  only whether there is a detectable hypoglycemia&#xA;  scent on the skin. In future studies, it&#xA;  may be helpful to include behavioral elements,&#xA;  such as studies in the presence of&#xA;  human companions. It might also be helpful&#xA;  to obtain swabs from the usual human&#xA;  companions of the dogs. We found that&#xA;  trained dogs were unable to correctly identify&#xA;  skin swabs obtained during hypoglycemia&#xA;  in subjects with T1D. Further studies&#xA;  are needed to address the role of other factors&#xA;  that the animals might use, such as&#xA;  behavioral cues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the lack of evidence, so far, it seems that trained dogs are not to be trusted. This  provisional position might change if people can find other cues that trigger the dogs, or other ways of training dogs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given that blood glucose meters, while arguably not as cute as a dog, are &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose_meter&quot;&gt;fairly cheap and fairly accurate&lt;/a&gt;, it seems dog trainers will have a large hurdle to train dogs to be sufficiently sensitive and specific to warrant their use.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T13:02:22.877" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27581" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27583" CreationDate="2015-05-05T14:33:39.903" Score="6" ViewCount="392" Body="&lt;p&gt;Top stories this week include this: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/beards-contain-more-poo-toilet-5631899&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Some Beards Contain More Poo Than a Toilet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2015-05-05T17:49:54.183" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T17:49:54.183" Title="Are some beards dirtier then toilets?" Tags="|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27582" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27579" CreationDate="2015-05-05T15:09:51.490" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it possible to train dogs to detect hypoglycemia?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Two studies suggest that dogs can detect hypoglycemia.  The mechanism whereby they detect this state is unknown - the example linking scent, for instance, may be a baseless supposition for marketing purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19040375&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2008 paper&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Canine responses to hypoglycemia in patients with type 1 diabetes&lt;/strong&gt; the conclusion states, &lt;em&gt;&quot;The findings suggest that behavioral reactions to hypoglycemic episodes in pet owners with type 1 diabetes commonly occur in untrained dogs. Further research is now needed to elucidate the mechanism(s) that dogs use to perform this feat.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the training component of your question was not evaluated in this study, but a later &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23950905&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2013 paper&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Investigation into the value of trained glycaemia alert dogs to clients with type I diabetes&lt;/strong&gt; concluded that &lt;em&gt;&quot;Based on owner-reported data we have shown, for the first time, that trained detection dogs perform above chance level.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; Further it showed that &lt;em&gt;&quot;dogs alerted their owners, with significant, though variable, accuracy at times of low and high blood sugar&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It does appear possible to train dogs to detect hypoglycemia conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="919" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T15:09:51.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27583" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27581" CreationDate="2015-05-05T15:21:38.230" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a bit more information in an article by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/05/how-filthy-is-your-beard/392258/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Atlantic&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A news team &amp;quot;swabbed the whiskers of a handful of local men and took the results to Quest Diagnostics&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This wasn't a study. They don't report their selection/sampling method or their sample contamination-prevention protocols.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article even goes on to ask a good skeptical question: &amp;quot;But are these results typical? Are they limited to these few unfortunate Albuquerqueans?&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They conclude that &amp;quot;there probably is some truth to the idea that a beard, like any other body part, can get pretty funky if you let it&amp;quot; and that washing it well is good enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not surprising (at least to me) beards do shed more bacteria if rustled than clean shaven skin. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10651682&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The effect of facial hair and sex on the dispersal of bacteria below a masked subject&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2015/may/04/no-need-for-men-to-get-flush-faced-about-faeces-in-beards&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Guardian&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; also did a followup to this story:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is true that human faeces are partially composed of gut bacteria, it’s not accurate to describe those bacteria on their own as faeces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further, even if this was a properly conducted scientific study with a large number of samples and published in a reputable journal, there wouldn’t necessarily be any cause for concern.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human skin is home to great diversity of microbes, and it’s not unheard of for types of bacteria normally found in the gut, such as E. coli, to be also found on the skin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If some beards have more poo in them than toilets, the samples that were the source of the recent news didn't show that and it was disingenuous to report that there is poo in beards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T15:38:50.187" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27585" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27554" CreationDate="2015-05-05T16:47:16.813" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's a great article about the history of circumcision and the arguments on both sides &lt;a href=&quot;http://mosaicscience.com/story/troubled-history-foreskin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, (also the core of it (without author's opinion) is excerpted &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/02/24/the-troubled-history-of-the-foreskin/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;).  It's worth noting that neither Mosaic nor Ars Technica are scholarly journals, nor is this an academic paper - rather, this is science journalism with references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the origins of circumcision in the West, the article says (links and emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The best-known circumcision ritual, the Jewish ceremony of &lt;em&gt;brit milah&lt;/em&gt;,&#xA;is also thousands of years old. It survives to this day, as do others&#xA;practised by Muslims and some African tribes. But American attitudes&#xA;to circumcision have a much more recent origin. As medical historian&#xA;David Gollaher recounts in his book &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0465026532&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Circumcision: A History of the&#xA;World’s Most Controversial Surgery&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, early Christian leaders abandoned&#xA;the practice, realising perhaps that their religion would be more&#xA;attractive to converts if surgery wasn’t required. Circumcision&#xA;disappeared from Christianity, and the secular Western cultures that&#xA;descended from it, for almost two thousand years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then came the Victorians. One day in 1870, a New York orthopaedic&#xA;surgeon named Lewis Sayre was asked to examine a five-year-old boy&#xA;suffering from paralysis of both legs. Sayre was the picture of a&#xA;Victorian gentleman: three-piece suit, bow tie, mutton chops. He was&#xA;also highly respected, a renowned physician at Bellevue Hospital, New&#xA;York’s oldest public hospital, and an early member of the American&#xA;Medical Association.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the boy’s sore genitals were pointed out by his nanny, Sayre&#xA;removed the foreskin. The boy recovered. Believing he was on to&#xA;something big, Sayre conducted more procedures. His reputation was&#xA;such that when he praised the benefits of circumcision – which he did&#xA;in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ama.nmtvault.com/jsp/viewer.jsp?doc_id=Transactions%2Fama_arch%2FAD200001%2F00000026&amp;amp;page_name=230&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Transactions of the American Medical Association&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and elsewhere&#xA;until he died in 1900 – surgeons elsewhere followed suit. Among other&#xA;ailments, Sayre discussed patients whose foreskins were tightened and&#xA;could not retract, a condition known as phimosis. Sayre declared that&#xA;the condition caused a general state of nervous irritation, and that&#xA;circumcision was the cure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His ideas found a receptive audience. &lt;strong&gt;To Victorian minds many mental&#xA;health issues originated with the sexual organs and masturbation. The&#xA;connection had its roots in a widely read 18th-century treatise&#xA;entitled &lt;a href=&quot;http://english.byu.edu/facultysyllabi/KLawrence/ONANIA.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Onania, or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution, and All Its&#xA;Frightful Consequences, in Both Sexes, Considered. With Spiritual and&#xA;Physical Advice to Those Who Have Already Injur’d Themselves By This&#xA;Abominable Practice&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. The anonymous author warned that masturbation&#xA;could cause epilepsy, infertility, “a wounded conscience” and other&#xA;problems. By 1765 the book was in its 80th printing.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later puritans took a similar view. Sylvester Graham associated any&#xA;pleasure with immorality. He was a preacher, health reformer and&#xA;creator of the graham cracker. Masturbation turned one into “a&#xA;confirmed and degraded idiot”, he declared in 1834. Men and women&#xA;suffering from otherwise unlabelled psychiatric issues were diagnosed&#xA;with masturbatory insanity; treatments included clitoridectomies for&#xA;women, circumcision for men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's more in that vein, but it then concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;By the turn of the 20th century the Victorian fear of masturbation had waned, but by then circumcision become a prudent precaution, and one increasingly implemented soon after birth.&lt;/strong&gt; A desire to prevent phimosis, STDs and cancer had turned the procedure into medical dogma. Antiseptic surgical practices had rendered it relatively safe, and anaesthesia made it painless. Once a procedure for the relatively wealthy, circumcision had become mainstream. By 1940, around 70 per cent of male babies in the United States were circumcised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is very much a US-focused phenomenon, though:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[W]hat’s more remarkable is that American parents are almost alone in the Western world in their desire to separate boys from their foreskins for reasons other than religion. This difference of opinion is decades old. It began in 1949, when a British paediatrician and scientist named Douglas Gairdner published the first investigation of the rationale for circumcision in English-speaking countries. He found the procedure to be unwarranted.... By 1958, the circumcision rate in the United Kingdom had fallen to close to 10 per cent. Excluding British men who are circumcised for religious reasons, the rate is now 6 per cent or lower.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The situation is much the same elsewhere in Europe. The Victorian focus on circumcision was concentrated in English-speaking countries, and its popularity never spread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;TL;DR&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;18th-century Victorian attitudes towards sex may have generated an interest in circumcision, but late-19th century medical science led to its widespread adoption in the United States.  The rest of the world isn't nearly as interested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7280" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T16:47:16.813" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27589" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14016" CreationDate="2015-05-05T19:18:13.347" Score="1" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there a global absolute threshold above which earning more doesn't make you happier?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;. Or, more cautiously, if there is such a threshold, it is so high that it can't be detected in the currently available data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using recent data on a broader array of countries, we establish a clear positive link between average levels of subjective well-being and GDP per capita across countries, and find no evidence of a satiation point beyond which wealthier countries have no further increases in subjective well-being. We show that the estimated relationship is consistent across many datasets and is similar to the relationship between subject well-being and income observed within countries. Finally, examining the relationship between changes in subjective well-being and income over time within countries we find economic growth associated with rising happiness. Together these findings indicate a clear role for absolute income and a more limited role for relative income comparisons in determining happiness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Betsey Stevenson &amp;amp; Justin Wolfers, 2008. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://ideas.repec.org/a/bin/bpeajo/v39y2008i2008-01p1-102.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Economic Growth and Subjective Well-Being: Reassessing the Easterlin Paradox&lt;/a&gt;,&quot; Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 39(1 (Spring), pages 1-102&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14928" LastActivityDate="2015-05-05T19:18:13.347" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27590" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27592" CreationDate="2015-05-05T19:24:58.353" Score="103" ViewCount="15419" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2015/05/introducing-beyond-coding-free-professional-skills-training-for-emerging-devs-in-nyc/&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow blog post&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With nearly five open jobs for every available software developer, the need for qualified technical talent is higher than ever.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have seen this claim repeated many times, with different numbers cited, but I've not been able to get down to any underlying factual source for these claims. In this case, the article links to another non-authoritative press article about &lt;em&gt;agile&lt;/em&gt; developers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the number of open jobs surpass the number of developers &quot;on the market&quot;? Does this depend on skill or experience?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8139" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-06T15:37:47.753" LastActivityDate="2018-06-12T02:05:05.190" Title="Are there more open jobs than available developers?" Tags="|united-states|economics|software|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27592" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27590" CreationDate="2015-05-06T00:23:01.403" Score="76" Body="&lt;p&gt;A report which was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epi.org/publication/bp359-guestworkers-high-skill-labor-market-analysis/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;issued&lt;/a&gt; by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Policy_Institute&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Economic Policy Institute&lt;/a&gt; in 2013, analyzed the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) labor market and workforce and the supply of high-skill temporary foreign workers, who serve as “guestworkers.” A programmer (or a software developer) is indeed in the core of this market.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their research proved that colleges are already producing far more graduates than the STEM market is absorbing on and concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In our research we find that &lt;strong&gt;there is no lack of domestic graduates or existing domestic STEM workers to fill available STEM jobs&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But it turns out that the job gap and growth opportunity is in computer science, not in STEM.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the chart below, computer science is the only STEM field where there are more jobs than students. The data below comes from the  National Science Foundation, comparing jobs data and projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to student data from the National Science Foundation.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LStEa.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Science Foundation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite all of the excitement STEM, it turns out that when you exclude computer science from STEM, you see that the remaining STEM fields have too many students, and not enough jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, code.org &lt;a href=&quot;https://code.org/stats&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;predicted&lt;/a&gt; there would be 1,000,000 more jobs than graduates in 2020:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/W7QoU.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gySkItxiJn_vwb8HIIKNXqen184mRtzDX12cux0ZgZk/pub&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;From&lt;/a&gt; the 2010 - 2012 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.bls.gov/&lt;/a&gt;, across all industries we are adding 136,620 jobs per year in computing. Subtract 40,000 annual computer science graduates (see NSF data below) and you get roughly a gap of 100,000 jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;100,000 jobs adds up over 10 years to 1mm jobs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, there The Job/Student gap in Computer Science seems to be &lt;a href=&quot;https://code.org/stats&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;real&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source for the job data comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.bls.gov/&lt;/a&gt;. Projections for job openings and replacements in computing jobs is 1,366,200 jobs from 2010 - 2020. Projections for all other STEM jobs combined (engineering, life sciences, physical sciences, social sciences) is 908,700 jobs over the same period. This is a 60:40 ratio of jobs in Computing vs the rest of STEM.  The source for the students data comes from the College Board, surveying 2012 AP examination participation (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/ap/data/participation/2013&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/ap/data/participation/2013&lt;/a&gt;), shows that of the 1,379,585 AP math and science exams taken by US high school students in 2013, only 29,555 were computer science exams. This is a 2:98 ratio of students in computer science vs the rest of STEM&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But this is all one slice of the puzzle. That is, because almost half of developers don't have a degree in computer science, a survey by StackOverFlow &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/opbvn.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;48% of respondents never received a degree in computer science&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, the number of programmers in the US are estimated based on their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-programmers.htm#tab-6&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;employment&lt;/a&gt;, it would be really hard to estimate the number of programmers who don't have a degree and compare them with the number of jobs available to give you a neat conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T08:11:47.480" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27594" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27590" CreationDate="2015-05-06T01:46:14.737" Score="20" Body="&lt;p&gt;The issue is mostly raised in the context of tech talent being brought to US on H1B visas. They are good proxy for showing how many openings are there, as the companies struggling to find talent on local market, would search abroad. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.aier.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Research/pdf/AIER_issueBrief_H1BVisas.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;H1B Jobs: Filling the Skill Gap&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;,  &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Institute_for_Economic_Research&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Institute for Economic Research&lt;/a&gt;, Briefing document, May 2014&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The H1B visa is intended to allow high-skilled workers to come to the&#xA;  U.S. for three years with a three-year extension. While there is&#xA;  currently an annual cap of 65,000 new worker visas that can be issued,&#xA;  each year companies’ requests often far exceed this cap within days&#xA;  after the application opens on April 1. (As of April 7, 2014, 172,500&#xA;  H1B petitions were received by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration&#xA;  Services.) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In 2013 businesses made 909,465 certified requests for H1B visas.&#xA;  Table 1 on the left shows that the top 10 demanded H1B occupations&#xA;  were in either computer technology or finance, representing 77 percent&#xA;  of the total, or 700,000.&lt;/strong&gt; The rest were in fields that ranged from&#xA;  medical professionals and scientists to teachers and business&#xA;  administration analysts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Computer technology jobs, including computer programmers and software&#xA;  developers, accounted for 647,653, or 71 percent of all visas&#xA;  requested.&lt;/strong&gt; Accountants, auditors, and financial and management&#xA;  analysts accounted for 53,433, or about 6 percent of all visas&#xA;  requested.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's safe assumption to make, that &lt;strong&gt;number of open positions is &lt;em&gt;at least&lt;/em&gt; as big as number of requests for H1B visa. Request can only be made once candidate is actually offered the job.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another good indicator, that H1B correlate to shortage of tech talent is the fact that in years following the dot-com crash of 2001, the numbers used dropped significantly, as the local talent became available. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ifw2e.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course the counter-argument is, that there isn't any shortage and companies only bring in foreigners to pay them less than American talent. This is false, as part of H1B visa process is getting approval for &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_Condition_Application&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Labor Condition Application (LCA)&lt;/a&gt; from the Department of Labor. Two significant preconditions to falsify that thesis are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;employer must prove that they cannot find candidates with same skills on local market&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prior to filing any petition for a H-1B nonimmigrant pursuant to the application, the employer took or will take good faith steps to meet industry-wide standards to recruit US workers for the job for which the nonimmigrant is sought, offering compensation at least as great as that required to be offered to the non-immigrant. The employer will (has) offer(ed) the job to an equally or better qualified US worker.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;the wages must be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foreignlaborcert.doleta.gov/pwscreens.cfm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;above prevailing wages for same position in same region&lt;/a&gt; (for example you cannot bring a software developer to San Francisco on H1B and pay them &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.flcdatacenter.com/OesQuickResults.aspx?code=15-1132&amp;amp;area=41884&amp;amp;year=15&amp;amp;source=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;less than $114,400/year&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The employer must attest, and may need to furnish documentation upon&#xA;  rest, to show that the non-immigrant workers on behalf of whom the&#xA;  application is being made will be paid at or above both these numbers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The wage paid to other employees in the company who do the same work.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;The prevailing wage for that occupation in the geographical area.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The employer must make similar attestation regarding non-wage benefits&#xA;  offered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2013/05/10-h1b-visas-stem-rothwell-ruiz&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a 2013 study&lt;/a&gt; has found that H1b-ers are paid on average more than native US workers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;H-1B visa holders earn more than comparable native-born workers&lt;/strong&gt;.  H-1B&#xA;  workers are paid more than U.S. native-born workers with a bachelor’s&#xA;  degree generally ($76,356 versus $67,301 in 2010) and even within the&#xA;  same occupation and industry for workers with similar experience. &#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;This suggests that they provide hard-to-find skills.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another set of counter arguments is that if there was shortage, then why don't wages increase and unemployment decrease?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These arguments also fail the fact check. According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://resources.dice.com/report/dice-tech-salary-survey-results-2013/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;data from Dice&lt;/a&gt;, just in 2012 alone the salaries grew 5.3% YtY, way above national average. Unemployment among software developers was 3.8%, less than half of national average.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="32497" LastEditDate="2016-07-26T11:58:49.703" LastActivityDate="2016-07-26T11:58:49.703" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27599" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27566" CreationDate="2015-05-06T13:19:34.133" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.classmates.com/people/Manahel-Thabet/8708984594&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Classmates.com lists her&lt;/a&gt;, with a photograph, as having attended a &amp;quot;DePaul Academy, Chicago IL&amp;quot; from 1992-1996 for high school.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.illinoishsglorydays.com/id720.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DePaul Academy high school&lt;/a&gt; in Chicago that closed in 1968 and was all boys, but I'm not aware of another.  This high school was originally part of the DePaul University, and based upon the information discussed below, it appears that the person entering the photo into classmates.com confused the high school with the university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20070905005791/en/Calypte-Opens-Dubai-Office#.VUpnHhtFBjo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;news release by Calypte Biomedical Corporation on 5 September 2007&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ms. Manahel Thabet, newly appointed President of the Dubai Office, completed her post graduate studies in Commerce in 1996 prior to joining the United Nations. She spent eight years with several NGO’s in the MENA region before serving as an Investment Advisor for the largest bank in the UAE for two years. More recently she has run a fund management company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://prabook.org/web/person-view.html?profileId=341572&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;another source&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thabet, Manahel was born October 14, 1974 in Yemen. Daughter of Abdulrahman Thabet and Najat Qussami.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Education: M with honors, De Paul University, USA, 1996; Certified finance engineering UAE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(but also says she was at DePaul from &amp;quot;2000-1996&amp;quot;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Career: Chief Executive Officer Al Salasa, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, since 2003; investment advisor National Bank Of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 2001—2003&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She is &lt;a href=&quot;http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/general/dubai-woman-s-space-formula-takes-world-by-storm-1.1024095&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;photographed here&lt;/a&gt; with apparent DePaul University diplomas in the background.  As observantly pointed out by ChrisW, the upper diploma contains the typo &amp;quot;Universtity&amp;quot;.  As pointed out in ChrisW's deleted answer, the video &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd-8YVCha2E&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr Manahel Thabet, the Queen of Bourse&lt;/a&gt; zooms in on this diploma at 2:42, showing it is a December 2008 diploma for Doctor of Science in financial engineering from the DePaul Universtity [sic] School of Commerce.  It also contains the phrase &amp;quot;with appertain thereto&amp;quot; rather than the usual &amp;quot;which appertain thereto&amp;quot;.  The School of Commerce has been renamed &lt;a href=&quot;https://driehaus.depaul.edu/Pages/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Driehaus College of Business&lt;/a&gt;, and does not indicate offering such degree, but you could contact the school and ask if they ever offered such a degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.depaul.edu/academics/graduate/programs/Pages/default.aspx#&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DePaul offers PhDs in only a few fields&lt;/a&gt;: Computer Science, Psychology and Philosophy.  An &amp;quot;Executive Doctorate in Business Administration (EDBA)&amp;quot; is also offered. No other doctoral progams are offered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another mention of Manahel Thabet is that she is thanked as a friend in the January 2009 &lt;a href=&quot;http://bspace.buid.ac.ae/handle/1234/231&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;thesis of Sara Nizar Abuljadayel&lt;/a&gt; of British University in Dubai:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To my Father (Nizar Abuljadayel), my Mother (Najiah Bin Laden), My Brother (Loai), my elder sister (Haifa), my Younger Sister (Nouf), My cousins (Kholoud Kurdi, Abeerand Hala Bin Laden, Lujain) and my friends (Manahel Thabet...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally speaking, if someone has a PhD, their thesis can be found in library catalogs, like the one above.  But searching for Manahel Thabet in Google Scholar shows only 8 articles with no indication of peer review, plus the thesis in which she is thanked as friend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.depaul.edu/university-catalog/colleges-and-schools/class/academics/graduate/Pages/doctoral-programs.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DePaul University clearly states&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All doctoral dissertations are to be published through ProQuest and entered into DePaul University’s institutional repository&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whereas the arabianbusiness.com article in the OP states &amp;quot;Dr Thabet’s Name was engraved in the wall of honor of the Royal Society of Science in UK in recognition to her massive role promoting human intelligence&amp;quot;; it is the Royal Society of Medicine Wall of Honour and placement of one's name on the wall is instead &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rsm-wallofhonour.com/application-discount.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;obtained for a donation of 2,500 pounds&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the OP her affiliation is stated as &amp;quot;American Educational Research Association&amp;quot;.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aera.net/Membership/MembershipCategories/tabid/10229/Default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Affiliation is obtained&lt;/a&gt; for a fee of $55 (or $180 for a higher level).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The term &amp;quot;quantum mathematics&amp;quot; is used by some universities.  For example there is the University of Oxford &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.qmac.ox.ac.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Centre for Quantum Mathematics and Computation&lt;/a&gt;. I've never seen a university refer to a degree as being in &amp;quot;quantum mathematics&amp;quot;, but hypothetically&#xA;if someone had a PhD in mathematics, with their thesis being on quantum mathematics, it might be reasonable for them to say they have a PhD in quantum mathematics. However, a search of the phrase &amp;quot;PhD in quantum mathematics&amp;quot; only yields one person claiming to have such a degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally getting to the main question, quoting the &lt;a href=&quot;http://gulfnews.com/news/uae/general/dubai-woman-s-space-formula-takes-world-by-storm-1.1024095&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dubai Woman's Space formula takes World by Storm&lt;/a&gt;, Thabet is quoted as stating (emphasis added):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A few years ago, scientists discovered the existence of &lt;strong&gt;dark matter, a substance that eats the light&lt;/strong&gt;.... All the equations and formulas we have today to measure two points in the universe are through the speed of light. Our ability to measure point A to point B in the universe has been disturbed by the dark matter...&#xA;My equation aims to solve this issue by measuring the distance between Point A and B without using light as a means of measurement&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This statement represents a misunderstanding of dark matter.  In fact, &lt;a href=&quot;http://home.web.cern.ch/about/physics/dark-matter&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;as stated by CERN&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[dark matter] does not absorb, reflect or emit light&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This misunderstanding of dark matter is extremely profound, and serves to reveal her level of understanding of physics and astronomy.  The defining feature of dark matter is that it does not interact with light and hence must be inferred from gravitational interaction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-22T18:45:06.437" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27601" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27572" CreationDate="2015-05-06T14:14:20.667" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;This does appear to be reasonably supportable. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The essential oil bit if not so much the vinegar. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0367326X06000438&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0367326X06000438&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Arthropod repellency, especially tick (Ixodes ricinus), exerted by extract from Artemisia abrotanum and essential oil from flowers of Dianthus caryophyllum&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A toluene extract of southernwood (Artemisia abrotanum) and the&#xA;  essential oil from flowers of carnation (Dianthus caryophyllum )&#xA;  exerted pronounced a repellent effect both against ticks (nymphs of&#xA;  Ixodes ricinus) and yellow fever mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1570-7458.1995.tb01965.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1570-7458.1995.tb01965.x/abstract&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Cleome monophylla essential oil and its constituents as tick (Rhipicephalus ppendiculatus) and maize weevil (Sitophilus zeamais) repellents&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article is about Callosobruchus chinensis (bean weavils) but it's likely that other insects will be harmed in a similar way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jos/57/3/57_3_171/_article&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jos/57/3/57_3_171/_article&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The findings of the present study indicate that the essential oils of&#xA;  N.sativa, A. graveolens, C. cyminum, I.verum , P. nigrum, M. fragrans&#xA;  and T. ammi are toxic to the larva and adults of the Callosobruchus&#xA;  chinensis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After fumigation, these essential oils reduce oviposition,egg&#xA;  hatchability, pupal formation and adult emergence of the insect. These&#xA;  also prevent infestation rate in experimental condition suggesting&#xA;  chronic toxicity of the essential oils.  Therefore, these essential&#xA;  oils may prove effective when used as protectant for infestation in&#xA;  pulse grains. Furthermore, isolation and characterization of the oil&#xA;  constituents will provide complete insight into the pesticidal&#xA;  activity and will help in the preparation of formulations against the&#xA;  pulse beetle, Callosobruchus chinensis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23087" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T14:14:20.667" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27602" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27504" CreationDate="2015-05-06T21:10:21.533" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to a statement/paper from the CDC (American government), the effects oral exposure to small amounts of aluminum causes no significant harm. Large amounts are linked to Alzheimer's and kidney stones in some studies (others dispute this), but this is mostly in reference to waste dumps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also in the same paper &quot;You cannot avoid exposure to aluminum because it is so common and widespread in the environment.&quot; in reference to eating aluminum in foods. In conclusion, exposure to aluminum is inevitable, and while the process of licking a lid will cause you to ingest some, it will not be enough to be hazardous. Unless you are eating the lids whole, and several a day, you should be fine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=1076&amp;amp;tid=34#bookmark05&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How can aluminum affect my health?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26120" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-05-09T00:32:05.980" LastActivityDate="2019-05-09T00:32:05.980" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27603" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16257" CreationDate="2015-05-06T21:30:09.423" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the 1700's English cities faced overpopulation, increased crime, increased poverty, and no where to hold criminals who had only committed petty theft. The basis of the British penal colonies/transportation of criminals to colonies stems from the transportation act of 1717. Looking at sources about this document increased colonial population was not a concern at the time. However this specifically related to north american colonies. Now from the early 1700's till the American Revolution the majority of petty theft criminals where shipped off to NA. At the time of the Revolution this ceased as the Americans no longer were accepting British criminals. The British then had to resort to using left over ships or &quot;hulk&quot;s to house the 10's of thousands of criminals. Looking for a new place to ship these criminals they set their eyes on Australia. Again from all accounts this was not about colonization , this was about removing overpopulated peoples, petty theft, out of their over crowded jails, once in the new world prisoners were given similar treatment as those transported to the NA colonies by the transportation act. Essentially they worked like slaves for the &quot;real&quot; settlers for part if not all of their sentence till released on good behavior or the end of their sentence and then would join the population as free citizens since the option to go back to England was typically far to expensive. Its very clear they were never meant to be the &quot;colony&quot; nor was their an intentional shift to send more women convicts, the influx of women conflicts comes from the easing up of the &quot;bloody code&quot; and other laws to lessons the amounts of hangings for relativity petty crimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-australian-penal-colony-established&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source 1&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source 2&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/convicts-and-the-british-colonies/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source 3&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Act_1717&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;transportation act 1717&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloody_Code&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bloody code&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user26129" LastEditorUserId="23255" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T13:51:07.137" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T13:51:07.137" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27604" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15087" CreationDate="2015-05-06T21:40:09.363" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this study by Texas a&amp;amp;m fire ants dislike and are poisoned by citric acid, so the citric acid from lemon peels would probably also stop/kill fire ants. The article lists orange peels and citrus peels but not lemons specifically. &lt;a href=&quot;https://insects.tamu.edu/fireant/materials/factsheets_pubs/pdf/fapfs012.2002rev.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user26129" LastEditorUserId="23255" LastEditDate="2015-05-06T21:45:33.763" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T21:45:33.763" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27605" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27606" CreationDate="2015-05-06T22:03:27.450" Score="5" ViewCount="723" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's often said that a strong solar storm can burn out the biggest transformers which would take months to replace.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If these transformers are so critical, I can't believe they don't have any safety measures. Eg. cutting them off from the grid when they overheat to cool them down, so we would have a short blackout instead of months without elecricity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16862" LastActivityDate="2023-08-05T09:07:11.023" Title="Can a strong solar storm knock out our power grids for months?" Tags="|physics|sun|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27606" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27605" CreationDate="2015-05-06T22:27:54.440" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/23jul_superstorm/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NASA says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multi-ton transformers damaged by such a storm might take years to repair.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This effect has been observed on a small scale (&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/06may_carringtonflare/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;nasa.gov&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A similar flare on March 13, 1989, provoked geomagnetic storms that disrupted electric power transmission from the Hydro Québec generating station in Canada, blacking out most of the province and plunging 6 million people into darkness for 9 hours; &lt;em&gt;aurora-induced power surges even melted power transformers in New Jersey&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another &lt;a href=&quot;http://adsbit.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1859MNRAS..20...13C&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carrington-class&lt;/a&gt; flare would dwarf these events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Department of Homeland Security &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/rma-geomagnetic-storms.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;issued a risk assessment&lt;/a&gt; in 2011 that said (p. 3):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recent estimates state that 300 large extra-high-voltage transformers in the United States would be vulnerable to geomagnetically induced currents. Damage to an extra-high-voltage transformer from geomagnetically induced currents could take months or even a year to repair and cost in excess of $10 million.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T22:27:54.440" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27607" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27628" CreationDate="2015-05-06T22:31:14.730" Score="23" ViewCount="2150" Body="&lt;p&gt;After watching &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKORsrlN-2k&amp;amp;t=193s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elon Musk's presentation&lt;/a&gt; regarding the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerwall_%28Tesla%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tesla Powerwall&lt;/a&gt;, I had a question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On his diagram of the USA, he claims that a &quot;tiny blue square&quot; on the top of Texas that consists of solar farms would be enough energy to power the united states. I've watched documentaries, that claim it should be 10 times that size. This seems absurd right? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That blue square there is the land area that's needed to transition the United States to a zero-carbon electricity situation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TCcVg.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26138" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T14:10:03.890" LastActivityDate="2016-06-06T21:00:17.533" Title="Does the amount of land needed to get the USA to zero-carbon electricity correspond to a small area of Texas?" Tags="|united-states|electromagnetism|energy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27608" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27578" CreationDate="2015-05-06T23:10:35.360" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is an experiment that you can try for yourself with a group of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Papers:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ps.40.020189.001341&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ps.40.020189.001341&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/rev/96/3/395/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/rev/96/3/395/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26142" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2017-07-17T15:35:18.647" LastActivityDate="2017-07-17T15:35:18.647" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27609" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="74" CreationDate="2015-05-06T23:29:43.487" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;There's quite a few techniques/approaches that are combined under the umbrella of 'NLP' and I suppose efficiency and effectiveness of those can vary from one to another, but there are certainly some interesting studies that show noticeable effect sizes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19505969&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Neurolinguistic programming used to reduce the need for anaesthesia in claustrophobic patients undergoing MRI.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The main outcome measures were the ability to tolerate a successful MR examination after neurolinguistic programming, the reduction of median anxiety scores produced by neurolinguistic programming, and models of costs for various imaging pathways. Neurolinguistic programming allowed 38/50 people (76%) to complete the MR examination successfully. Overall, the median anxiety score was significantly reduced following the session of neurolinguistic programming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1620774&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Neurolinguistic programming training, trait anxiety, and locus of control.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study reports on within-person and between-group changes in trait anxiety and locus of control as measured on the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and Wallston, Wallston, and DeVallis' Multiple Health Locus of Control immediately following a 21-day residential training in neurolinguistic programming. Significant with-in-person decreases in trait-anxiety scores and increases in internal locus of control scores were observed as predicted. Chance and powerful other locus of control scores were unchanged. Significant differences were noted on trait anxiety and locus of control scores between European and U.S. participants, although change scores were similar for the two groups. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that this training may lower trait-anxiety scores and increase internal locus of control scores. A matched control group was not available, and follow-up was unfortunately not possible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2385721&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effect of neurolinguistic programming training on self-actualization as measured by the Personal Orientation Inventory.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study reports within-person changes on self-actualization measures of the Personal Orientation Inventory following a 24-day residential training in neurolinguistic programming. Significant positive mean changes were found for 18 master practitioners on nine of the 12 scales and for 36 practitioners on 10 of the 12 scales. Findings are consistent with the hypothesis that training increases individual self-actualization scores.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is form just a cursory look at PubMed search results.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26143" LastActivityDate="2015-05-06T23:29:43.487" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27612" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27617" CreationDate="2015-05-07T01:59:51.260" Score="10" ViewCount="1963" Body="&lt;p&gt;Public Policy Polling reported in an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/04/conspiracy-theory-poll-results-.html&quot;&gt;an opinion poll&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;that: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4% of voters say they believe “lizard people” control our societies by gaining political power&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lizard people are also known as reptilians.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that (and other results) from this poll reliable? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-07T06:07:23.450" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T06:50:44.337" Title="Do 4% of Americans say they believe in &quot;lizard people&quot;?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27613" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27645" CreationDate="2015-05-07T02:18:10.987" Score="13" ViewCount="1726" Body="&lt;p&gt;I just read on a site &lt;a href=&quot;http://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/bdodge/scaffold/gg/titan.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;about Greek mythology&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It may seem odd for Metis to have been pregnant with Athena but, never mentioned as her mother. This is because the classic Greeks believed that children were generated solely from the fathers sperm. The women was thought to be nothing more than a vessel for the fetus to grow in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did any notable ancient Greek writers (or philosophers) claim that a child would be born just because of the sperm, and the mothers were just recipients for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16860" LastEditorUserId="16860" LastEditDate="2016-12-17T13:58:14.327" LastActivityDate="2016-12-17T13:58:14.327" Title="Did classical Greeks claim that children are solely products of the father's sperm?" Tags="|history|quotes|human-reproduction|greece|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27614" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27613" CreationDate="2015-05-07T03:17:02.217" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This is absolutely true. The theory is called &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preformationism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Preformationism&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/strong&gt; and was widely (though not exclusively) believed in some form from Ancient Greek times until the 17th century. Pythagoras and Aristotle are among the philosophers associated with this theory.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some qualifications: spermatozoa were not known to exist until the invention of the microscope. However it was widely believed that the 'essence' of the child came from the father, and the mother provided 'material for growth'. The theory does not also claim that &quot;a child would be born just because of the sperm&quot;. The father's 'seed' still has to be 'planted' in a mother, which was assumed to be an essential part of the process. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There were also people who believed the reverse, that the child's essence came from the mother, with the father providing the 'trigger' to make it grow. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T18:27:57.333" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T18:27:57.333" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27616" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16763" CreationDate="2015-05-07T04:59:42.573" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as I know there has only been one successful &quot;plot&quot; foiled, involving &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/do_nsas_bulk_surveillance_programs_stop_terrorists&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a San Diego cab driver who gave $8,500 to an al-Qaeda affiliate&lt;/a&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.newamerica.net/publications/policy/do_nsas_bulk_surveillance_programs_stop_terrorists&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;archive.org version&lt;/a&gt;). Note that the source may have some bias even though it claims to be nonpartisan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26120" LastEditorUserId="2280" LastEditDate="2015-07-16T03:03:18.240" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T03:03:18.240" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27617" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27612" CreationDate="2015-05-07T06:50:44.337" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Results from this poll seem to be reliable. Public Policy Polling (PPP) who is a U.S. polling firm based in Raleigh, North Carolina released a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2011/PPP_Release_National_ConspiracyTheories_040213.pdf&quot;&gt;PDF report listing the results of a national survey looking at common conspiracy theories&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The exact question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Do you believe that &lt;strong&gt;shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining political power to manipulate our societies&lt;/strong&gt;, or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Answers: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do:&lt;/strong&gt; 4%  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Do not:&lt;/strong&gt; 88%  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Not sure:&lt;/strong&gt; 7% &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wire.com &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thewire.com/national/2013/04/12-million-americans-believe-lizard-people-run-our-country/63799/&quot;&gt;took&lt;/a&gt; the findings and arranged them from most-to least-believed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conspiracy&lt;/strong&gt;    &lt;em&gt;Percent believing&lt;/em&gt; Number of Americans believing &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;JFK was killed by conspiracy&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;nbsp; &lt;em&gt;51 percent&lt;/em&gt;    160,096,160  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Bush intentionally misled on Iraq WMDs&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;em&gt;44 percent&lt;/em&gt;    138,122,178  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Global warming is a hoax&lt;/strong&gt;    &lt;em&gt;37 percent&lt;/em&gt;    116,148,195  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Aliens exist&lt;/strong&gt;    &lt;em&gt;29 percent&lt;/em&gt;    91,035,072  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;New World Order&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;28 percent&lt;/em&gt;    87,895,931  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Hussein was involved in 9/11&lt;/strong&gt;    &lt;em&gt;28 percent&lt;/em&gt;    87,895,931  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;A UFO crashed at Roswell&lt;/strong&gt;    &lt;em&gt;21 percent&lt;/em&gt;    65,921,948  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Vaccines are linked to autism&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;em&gt;20 percent&lt;/em&gt;    62,782,808  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;The government controls minds with TV&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;em&gt;15 percent&lt;/em&gt;    47,087,106  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Medical industry invents diseases&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;em&gt;15 percent&lt;/em&gt;    47,087,106  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;CIA developed crack&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;14 percent&lt;/em&gt;    43,947,966  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Bigfoot exists&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;em&gt;14 percent&lt;/em&gt;    43,947,966  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Obama is the Antichrist&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;13 percent&lt;/em&gt;    40,808,825  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;The government allowed 9/11&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;11 percent&lt;/em&gt;    34,530,544  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Fluoride is dangerous&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;em&gt;9 percent&lt;/em&gt; 28,252,264  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;The moon landing was faked&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;em&gt;7 percent&lt;/em&gt; 21,973,983  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Bin Laden is alive&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;em&gt;6 percent&lt;/em&gt; 18,834,842  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Airplane contrails are sinister chemicals&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;em&gt;5 percent&lt;/em&gt; 15,695,702  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;McCartney died in 1966&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;em&gt;5 percent&lt;/em&gt; 15,695,702  &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Lizard people control politics&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;em&gt;4 percent&lt;/em&gt; 12,556,562  &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The PDF report also mentioned that isurveyed 1,247 registered voters and has a margin of error of 2.8 percent: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PPP surveyed &lt;strong&gt;1,247 registered American voters&lt;/strong&gt; from March 27th to 30th. The margin of&#xA;  error for the overall sample is &lt;strong&gt;+/-2.8%&lt;/strong&gt;. This poll was not paid for or authorized by any&#xA;  campaign or political organization. PPP surveys are conducted through automated&#xA;  telephone interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for Public Policy Polling (PPP), it can be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/track/hire-ppp-track.html&quot;&gt;considered as accurate&lt;/a&gt; since a Fordham University &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/11/the-most-accurate-polls-of-148876.html&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; released ranked the firm first among 28 organizations for the accuracy of its final, national estimates. It also a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/track/hire-ppp-track.html&quot;&gt;great track record and history in being accurate&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastActivityDate="2015-05-07T06:50:44.337" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27624" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="43750" CreationDate="2015-05-07T13:51:31.053" Score="2" ViewCount="1083" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yet another quote that zillions of people have repeated all over the&#xA;web, with no one giving a source. It's attributed to Jonas Salk, and the&#xA;two main variations I've found are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have&#xA;conquered my nightmares because of my dreams.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;I have had dreams and I have had nightmares. I overcame my&#xA;nightmares because of my dreams.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikiquote cites &lt;em&gt;Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions&#xA;for Spiritual Healing&lt;/em&gt; by Larry Chang, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=-T3QhPjIxhIC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Books&lt;/a&gt; shows the&#xA;quote on page 254. The Wikiquote version and Chang's version differ from&#xA;each other and from both the versions above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know whether Salk actually wrote or said some such quote,&#xA;and where? I'm not prepared to take Larry Chang's word for it when he&#xA;doesn't cite a source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1615" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T22:59:45.527" LastActivityDate="2019-04-13T06:21:45.313" Title="Did Jonas Salk say &quot;I have had dreams and I have had nightmares&quot;, etc.? Where?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27628" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27607" CreationDate="2015-05-07T20:14:43.507" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Summary: yes, the area shown is reasonable, as a visualisation of the surface area of panels required to generate electricity equal to total US electricity consumption, on a multi-year average: that area of panels would generate 500 GW, which is above the current US annual average electricity consumption of 425 GW&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Calculations below are taken from &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/energy/2015/05/21/fact-checking-elon-musks-blue-square-how-much-solar-to-power-the-us/&quot;&gt;this blogpost&lt;/a&gt; at the Energy Institute, University College London.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Thales Pereira has pointed out in the comments on the question, the claim could be taken to mean that that area of PV would displace fossil fuel, and supplement the existing zero-carbon options on the US grid (hydro, nuclear, wind). That would make it an slightly weaker claim. I've assumed that it's the strong version of the claim: that that area would be the same amount of power as total US demand, even before considering existing hydro, nuclear and wind generation. If the stronger claim is valid, then the weaker claim automatically follows.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US electricity consumption is about 425 GW on average&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The area shown is 10,000 km&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;, in NW Texas&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Eyeballing &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@36.1319996,-111.4659995,6z&quot;&gt;this google map&lt;/a&gt; and comparing with the graphic in the question: using the scale in the bottom-right corner, the square is about 100km along the side&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pip.2573&quot;&gt;Table 2 of Green et al's &lt;em&gt;Solar cell efficiency tables (Version 45)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; gives the best module as being 24% efficient, giving a PV capacity per unit area of 0.24 GW/km&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;PVWatts gives a capacity factor for Amarillo, Texas, of 21%&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10,000 km&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; x 0.24 GW/km&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; x 21% = 500 GW&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is more than current US electricity consumption of 425 GW.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So yes, the area shown is reasonable, as a visualisation of the surface area of panels required to generate electricity equal to total US electricity consumption, on a multi-year average.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6236" LastEditorUserId="6236" LastEditDate="2015-09-09T20:36:35.133" LastActivityDate="2015-09-09T20:36:35.133" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27630" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-07T22:02:03.413" Score="4" ViewCount="46007" Body="&lt;p&gt;This picture has been making the rounds on Twitter today.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dDdxD.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Judging off the second bullet point, I assume that the tests being talked about are ones that are given in college. Is it true that, if someone dies during a test, everyone else present passes?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the second bullet point states that, should a university (or its library) be destroyed, all current students graduate with honors. Is this claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26000" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T17:11:45.750" Title="If someone dies during a test, does everyone else pass?" Tags="|university|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2015-05-07T23:23:26.413" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27631" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27630" CreationDate="2015-05-07T22:08:41.970" Score="10" Body="&lt;h1&gt;The image&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That image is a screenshot of the Wikipedia article entitled &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pass_by_catastrophe&amp;amp;oldid=661312222&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pass by catastrophe&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;. As of 14:43, 7 May 2015, it reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pass by catastrophe refers to any number of popular urban legends in academia claiming that if some particular catastrophic event occurs, students whose performance could have been affected by the event are automatically awarded passing grades [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are are no references in the article supporting the claim that this is an urban legend, let alone the claim that pass by catastrophe is a policy at any university.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Policy&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've sampled the examination policies of several institutions and have failed to find a &amp;quot;pass by catastrophe&amp;quot; clause in any of them:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/registrar/students/end-qtr-exam-policy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Stanford&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://provost.upenn.edu/policies/pennbook/2013/02/13/rules-governing-final-examinations&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;UPenn&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washington.edu/students/reg/examguide.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Washington&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://catalog.gmu.edu/content.php?catoid=5&amp;amp;navoid=104#final_exams&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;George Mason University&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.brown.edu/academics/college/support/faculty/final-exams&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brown&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.miami.edu/index.php/registrar/calendar/final_exam_policy/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Miami&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://catalog.oregonstate.edu/ChapterDetail.aspx?key=371&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oregon State University&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://registrar.utexas.edu/students/exams/policies&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of Texas&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.student.liu.se/tenta/regler?l=en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Linköping University&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://students.ubc.ca/enrolment/exams/exam-policies&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;University of British Columbia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/exams/guidance&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oxford&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/exams&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;broader&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://scheduling.rutgers.edu/fallfinals.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rutgers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Practice&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At York University, a strike caused class cancellations, and exams were &lt;em&gt;postponed&lt;/em&gt; &amp;quot;into the summer&amp;quot;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/03/02/u-of-t-students-left-scrambling-as-teaching-assistants-go-on-strike.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;York suspends classes, exams and academic activities during strike&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Toronto Star. March 2, 2015)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At Harvard, a bomb threat caused exams to be &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;cancelled, with grading and rescheduling options varying for each course&lt;/em&gt;&amp;quot;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2013/12/16/final-exams-rescheduled-threats/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Final Exams Cancelled, Postponed, and, In Some Cases, Continued Anyway Amid Bomb Scare&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. The Harvard Crimson. December 16, 2013)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Some students] had the option of taking the exam at a rescheduled time this week or at the start of next semester, or not taking the exam at all and accepting their current grade. For its part, LS1a required students in the evacuated Emerson Hall exam sitting to make up their missed exams Monday evening or in early spring.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At York University, a fire caused exams to be postponed. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2010/12/13/exams_cancelled_residence_evacuated_after_york_u_fire.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Exams cancelled, residence evacuated after York U fire&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Toronto Star. December 13, 2010.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Monday afternoon blaze damaged steam boilers and generators used to heat most campus buildings, so the university was forced to postpone exams and send students to alternate accommodation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T17:11:45.750" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27632" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-07T22:14:48.347" Score="15" ViewCount="2688" Body="&lt;p&gt;Making stealth kills with a throwing knife is a common trope in popular culture, from movies like Rambo, 'realistic' spy novels like Jason Bourne to video games like &lt;a href=&quot;http://farcry.wikia.com/wiki/Throwing_Knife&quot;&gt;Far Cry 4&lt;/a&gt;. Additionally, several sources claim that they were utilized by special forces for similar purposes. The defense website, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/world/russia/spetsnaz-equipment.htm&quot;&gt;GlobalSecurity.Org&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The practice of silent killing is an important skill to the&#xA;  spetsnazovets. During the Soviet period, the entrenching tool was&#xA;  commonly seen as the usual weapon of choice for killing an opponent&#xA;  from a distance. The shovel could be thrown or, if close enough,&#xA;  swung, to kill an opponent quickly. Penetration by a sharp entrenching&#xA;  tool spade was usually sufficient to cause severe internal injuries&#xA;  and immediate death. ... ... In the early 1990's, elite troops&#xA;  gradually turned away from the entrenching tool and began to rely more&#xA;  heavily on various specially-designed knives and bayonets. Knife&#xA;  throwing became an important part of the soldier's training in his&#xA;  basic course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is further corroborated by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_knife#cite_note-CRA-2&quot;&gt;wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; on ballistic knives which cites pg 45-46 of Steve Crawford's &quot;Deadly fighting skills of the world&quot; as saying that Soviet Doctrine emphasized on the use of the thrown knife for making silent kills at 5-6 paces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I still feel a little skeptical as I can't imagine how this would be possible without the victim screaming. An instantaneous kill seems challenging as well given the protective chest muscle and rib cage surrounding the heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15834" LastEditorUserId="5167" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T14:26:00.137" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T14:26:00.137" Title="Can a thrown knife be used to kill silently?" Tags="|weapons|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27634" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27636" CreationDate="2015-05-08T04:56:52.377" Score="49" ViewCount="74614" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is making the rounds on social networks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hZRDK.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;DID YOU KNOW&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Over 20 Navy SEALs who (allegedly) &quot;killed&quot; Osama Bin Laden are now dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this (today as in 8 May 2015)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14234" LastEditorUserId="34347" LastEditDate="2022-03-11T03:09:55.527" LastActivityDate="2022-03-12T09:55:44.947" Title="Are over 20 of the US Navy SEALs who killed Bin Laden now dead?" Tags="|united-states|military|osama-bin-laden|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27635" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-08T09:33:42.067" Score="4" ViewCount="268" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr. Abboud Assaf, one of the most notable psychiatrists in Lebanon, said in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.drabboudassaf.com/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Common Misconceptions:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  Psychiatric Disorders are incurable&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are psychiatric disorders (e.g. depression) curable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T09:44:31.370" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T14:27:35.227" Title="Are psychiatric disorders curable?" Tags="|psychiatry|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27636" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27634" CreationDate="2015-05-08T09:54:15.397" Score="83" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;strong&gt;not true&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In August 2011, 38 people &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Chinook_shootdown_in_Afghanistan&quot;&gt;died in a single helicopter crash&lt;/a&gt;, including 15 members of NAVY SEALs' Team 6. The accident has been described as &lt;em&gt;&quot;the worst battlefield calamity in [the team's] history&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. A U.S. Boeing CH-47 Chinook military helicopter was shot down while transporting a quick reaction force attempting to reinforce an engaged unit of Army Rangers in Wardak province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. This is what the above image and caption is referring to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We do not know the exact makeup of the team that killed Osama, however according to official sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All but two of the SEALs [killed in the crash] were from SEAL Team 6, the unit that killed Osama bin Laden, although military officials said none of the crash victims was on that mission in Pakistan against the al-Qaida leader.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image above has used a photo collage from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2011/aug/12/portraits-navy-seals-killed-helicopter-crash/56288/&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, which also contains the above quote. Confirmation of this can also be found in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/08/06/afghanistan.nato.helicopter.crash/&quot;&gt;report by CNN&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-14430735&quot;&gt;BBC&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/08/06/7281148-taliban-shoots-down-us-helicopter-killing-dozens-of-us-soldiers&quot;&gt;NBC&lt;/a&gt; and in other sources. Specifically, an article in &lt;a href=&quot;http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/military/2011-08-07-naval-special-warfare-reaction-afghanistan_n.htm&quot;&gt;USA Today&lt;/a&gt; explains that the men killed belonged to the &lt;em&gt;Gold Squadron&lt;/em&gt;, while the soldiers involved in the assassination belonged to the &lt;em&gt;Red Squadron&lt;/em&gt;. Team 6 has four line squadrons: Blue, Gold, Red and Silver, plus a reconnaissance unit known as Black Squadron. Furthermore each squadron is divided into three &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troop&quot;&gt;troops&lt;/a&gt;. The crash wiped out an entire troop in Gold Squadron.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; The image above represents people who have died in a helicopter crash, a lot of them were members of SEAL Team 6 but none of them was involved in the assassination of Osama.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover as Philipp pointed out in the comments, SEAL Team Six (United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group) isn't a small group and has roughly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2011/08/09/139227207/military-faces-challenge-in-rebuilding-seal-team-6&quot;&gt;around 200 people&lt;/a&gt; amongst its ranks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18368" LastEditorUserId="18368" LastEditDate="2015-05-21T14:14:13.503" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T14:14:13.503" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27637" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27635" CreationDate="2015-05-08T10:41:47.473" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, some psychiatric disorders are curable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was chatting to a research psychologist once about treatability of mental disorders. She told me specific phobias are easily treated with a high success rate with a single session with a therapist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/000579679500028V&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one example study&lt;/a&gt; that looked at arachnophobes, and agrees that a single session with a therapist is effective.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The proportion of clinically significant improved patients at follow-up was 80% in the therapist-directed group&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For completeness, yes, &quot;specific phobia&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dsm5.org/research/documents/lebeau_sp.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;is recognised&lt;/a&gt; by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual_of_Mental_Disorders&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DSM&lt;/a&gt;, so it can be safely considered a mental/psychiatric disorder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unreferenced Aside: I was very surprised, and asked if phobias are so easy to treat, why are there people still suffering from them? Apparently, people convince themselves that, while they have a phobia, they aren't &lt;em&gt;suffering&lt;/em&gt; from it, and don't seek treatment. I offer no evidence of this; it is an appeal to an unnamed authority, but I found it interesting, nonetheless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T14:27:35.227" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T14:27:35.227" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27638" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27634" CreationDate="2015-05-08T11:33:41.907" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;Like most conspiracy theories, this claim is &lt;strong&gt;unfalsifiable&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The identities of the SEALs involved in the assault on Bin Laden's compound were not released to the press or the public -- in fact, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mediaite.com/online/fox-news-outs-member-of-navy-seal-team-that-killed-osama-bin-laden/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the one time FOX News attempted to out one of them&lt;/a&gt; they caught a great deal of flak over it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those identities are classified information, and without knowing who they are it's pretty much impossible to conclusively state whether any of them are alive or dead.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, conversely, the person who made this claim is working from the same lack of information - if he or she is capable of conclusively stating that 20 of them are dead, he or she would have to know their identities first... In which case they have access to highly classified information and probably shouldn't be spouting it on the internet as a meme.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in conclusion, either the originator of the claim is ignorant and made it up out of whole cloth, or they're not and at an absolute minimum violating multiple laws dealing with classified information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fact that (as MMM points out) they're using an image that pertains to an unrelated incident certainly indicates the former, but either way this isn't answerable without more information than the people on this site are likely to have access to -- and even if any of us did, we'd be legally bound to deny having it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2828" LastEditorUserId="2828" LastEditDate="2022-03-12T09:55:44.947" LastActivityDate="2022-03-12T09:55:44.947" CommentCount="25" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27639" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-08T15:14:28.133" Score="3" ViewCount="746" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.slashdot.org/story/15/05/08/1414226/top-advisor-to-australian-govt-says-climate-change-is-a-un-conspiracy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Top Advisor To Australian Gov't Says Climate Change is a UN Conspiracy (slashdot.org)&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/climate-change-a-unled-ruse-says-tony-abbotts-business-adviser-maurice-newman-20150508-ggwuzt.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Climate change a UN-led ruse, says Tony Abbott's business adviser Maurice Newman (The Sydney Morning Herald)&lt;/a&gt;, Maurice Newman, the top business advisor to conservative Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's a well-kept secret, but 95 per cent of the climate models we are told prove the link between human CO₂ emissions and catastrophic global warming have been found, after nearly two decades of temperature stasis, to be in error ... This is not about facts or logic. It's about a new world order under the control of the UN.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This appears to have been sourced from a report reported in the conservative news source, &lt;a href=&quot;http://dailycaller.com/2014/02/11/report-95-percent-of-global-warming-models-are-wrong/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Daily Caller&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Former NASA scientist Dr. Roy Spencer says that climate models used by government agencies to create policies “have failed miserably.” Spencer analyzed 90 climate models against surface temperature and satellite temperature data, and found that more than 95 percent of the models “have over-forecast the warming trend since 1979, whether we use their own surface temperature dataset (HadCRUT4), or our satellite dataset of lower tropospheric temperatures (UAH).”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any basis for concluding that anywhere around 95% of climate models have been found to be in error in the way Spencer suggests?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="1792" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T21:59:25.363" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T21:20:12.173" Title="Have 95% of climate models over-forecast the global warming trend?" Tags="|climate-change|united-nations|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" ClosedDate="2015-05-10T14:14:24.587" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27640" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-08T16:51:51.147" Score="3" ViewCount="1439" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Balloon Council, a pro-balloon lobbying organization, makes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theballooncouncil.org/education-network/environment/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the following claims&lt;/a&gt; on its website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A latex balloon is made from 100 percent organic material and is 100 percent biodegradable. Stress caused by inflation starts this decomposition cycle. Exposure to sunlight accelerates the process – oxygen and ozone continue the molecular attack, even in the dark. Deterioration is clearly evident within a few hours – it begins to oxidize or &quot;frost&quot;—and soon the balloon will break apart. Research has shown that under similar conditions latex decomposes at the same rate as an oak leaf.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So essentially, I question whether or not latex balloons are biodegradable and to what extent (how, for example, do they compare to oak leaves)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastEditorUserId="16860" LastEditDate="2016-12-01T06:28:28.450" LastActivityDate="2016-12-01T06:28:28.450" Title="Are latex balloons biodegradable?" Tags="|environment|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27641" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27661" CreationDate="2015-05-08T18:06:03.417" Score="6" ViewCount="39649" Body="&lt;p&gt;Floating around the introwebs, thought it was pure nonsense. Can anyone back me up here?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lJLM6m.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image of women in a sauna, with text&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you're trying to quit smoking, go to a sauna 3 days in a row.&#xA;  You'll sweat out the addictive toxins and it will be easier to quit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;fb/david avocado wolfe&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26138" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-10T08:26:26.783" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T11:18:38.803" Title="Will visiting a sauna help you quit smoking?" Tags="|smoking|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27643" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27578" CreationDate="2015-05-08T20:24:12.807" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;, as we all know, smiling releases &quot;feel-good&quot; chemicals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The feel good neurotransmitters dopamine, endorphins and serotonin are&#xA;  all released when a smile flashes across your face as well. This&#xA;  not only relaxes your body, but it can lower your heart rate and blood&#xA;  pressure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201206/there-s-magic-in-your-smile&quot;&gt;https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201206/there-s-magic-in-your-smile&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, since the 70's, experiments involving forcing subjects to smile and measuring the results have shown us that just the stimulation of the muscles used to smile causes this effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The researchers say their findings suggest smiling during brief&#xA;  periods of stress may help reduce the body's stress response,&#xA;  regardless of whether the person actually feels happy or not.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/isnt-what-i-expected/201207/try-some-smile-therapy&quot;&gt;https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/isnt-what-i-expected/201207/try-some-smile-therapy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, even a faked smile can make you happier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29638" LastEditorUserId="29638" LastEditDate="2015-05-08T20:45:06.577" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T20:45:06.577" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27645" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27613" CreationDate="2015-05-08T20:36:50.300" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/alcmaeon/#Sleep&quot;&gt;This says&lt;/a&gt; that the claim is a &quot;popular Greek view&quot; followed by Aristotle:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Contrary to a popular Greek view, which regarded the father alone as providing seed&lt;/strong&gt;, a view that would be followed by Aristotle (Lloyd 1983, 86 ff.), Alcmaeon may have argued that both parents contribute seed (DK, A13) and that the child takes the sex of the parent who contributes the most seed (DK, A14). It has recently been suggested, however, that our sole source for these views (Censorinus) is mistaken and that, while Alcmaeon thought that both the male and female contributed to the child, only the male contributed seed (Leitao 2012: 278–79), the female contributing menses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1572/1572-h/1572-h.htm&quot;&gt;Here is a quote&lt;/a&gt; of translation of Plato's &lt;em&gt;Timaeus&lt;/em&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wherefore also in men the organ of generation becoming rebellious and masterful, like an animal disobedient to reason, and maddened with the sting of lust, seeks to gain absolute sway; and the same is the case with the so-called womb or matrix of women; the animal within them is desirous of procreating children, and when remaining unfruitful long beyond its proper time, gets discontented and angry, and wandering in every direction through the body, closes up the passages of the breath, and, by obstructing respiration, drives them to extremity, causing all varieties of disease, until at length the desire and love of the man and the woman, bringing them together and as it were plucking the fruit from the tree, &lt;strong&gt;sow in the womb, as in a field, animals unseen by reason of their smallness&lt;/strong&gt; and without form; these again are separated and matured within; they are then finally brought out into the light, and thus the generation of animals is completed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Generation_of_Animals/Book_I&quot;&gt;Here is a quote&lt;/a&gt; from Aristotle on the &lt;em&gt;Generation of Animals&lt;/em&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That, then, the female does not contribute semen to generation, but does contribute something, and that this is the matter of the catamenia, or that which is analogous to it in bloodless animals, is clear from what has been said, and also from a general and abstract survey of the question. For there must needs be that which generates and that from which it generates; even if these be one, still they must be distinct in form and their essence must be different; and in those animals that have these powers separate in two sexes the body and nature of the active and the passive sex must also differ. If, then, the male stands for the effective and active, and the female, considered as female, for the passive, &lt;strong&gt;it follows that what the female would contribute to the semen of the male would not be semen but material for the semen to work upon&lt;/strong&gt;. This is just what we find to be the case, for the catamenia have in their nature an affinity to the primitive matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://classics.mit.edu/Aeschylus/eumendides.html&quot;&gt;Here is a quote&lt;/a&gt; from the Eumenides (Athena speaking),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mine is the right to add the final vote,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And I award it to Orestes' cause.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  For me no mother bore within her womb,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  And, save for wedlock evermore eschewed,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  I vouch myself the champion of the man,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Not of the woman, yea, with all my soul,-&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;In heart, as birth, a father's child alone&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Thus will I not too heinously regard&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  A woman's death who did her husband slay,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The guardian of her home; and if the votes&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Equal do fall, Orestes shall prevail.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Ye of the judges who are named thereto,&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  Swiftly shake forth the lots from either urn. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2015-05-08T20:36:50.300" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27649" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-09T05:57:32.547" Score="4" ViewCount="326" Body="&lt;p&gt;War is often said to be the mother of invention. However does the statement actually hold water? Is there statistical evidence suggesting that the rate of inventions increase during wartime periods?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This idea has been a topic of significant speculation. For example, it is the topic of the book &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fruits-War-Military-Accelerates-Technology/dp/1416502076/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;qid=1431170072&amp;amp;sr=8-16&amp;amp;keywords=war%20invention&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Fruits of War: How Military Conflict Accelerates Technology&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; which argues:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Since man first wielded a stick in anger, war and conflict have been prime movers in the progress of science and technology... Michael White demonstrates in this superbly wide-ranging and brilliant history of innovation, almost all major technological developments can be traced back to times of war.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A slightly more skeptical tone is adopted by the website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ingenious.org.uk/Read/Conflict/Waristhemotherofinvention/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ingenious.org.uk&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some inventions, such as the bouncing bomb or napalm, are genuine wartime inventions, but many military breakthroughs, including tanks and radar, were already being developed before war broke out. Is war the mother of invention or a hothouse for innovations?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is war a significant driver of technological invention or innovation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26183" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2015-05-09T11:22:27.290" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T11:22:27.290" Title="Does war accelerate invention?" Tags="|war|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-05-09T08:24:32.440" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27650" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-09T09:57:22.043" Score="3" ViewCount="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have seen various varieties of pro-biotic yoghurt drinks on the shelves in supermarkets. For those unfamiliar - they are claimed to contain bacteria that is beneficial to the human body and specifically the digestive system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is evidence to suggest that the contents of the gut/intestine are relevant to the digestion and processing of nutrition. Such as: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ofid.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/1/ofv004.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ofid.oxfordjournals.org/content/2/1/ofv004.full&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However what sets my skeptic running is when I see claims:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://activia.us.com/probiotics-benefits/digestive-health&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://activia.us.com/probiotics-benefits/digestive-health&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;may&lt;/strong&gt; help reduce the frequency of minor digestive issues like bloating, gas, discomfort and rumbling, when consumed twice per day for four weeks as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Emphasis mine). &#xA;There are many things that &lt;em&gt;may&lt;/em&gt; help you, as part of a healthy and balanced diet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/diet/benefits-of-yogurt&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.webmd.com/diet/benefits-of-yogurt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Miguel Freitas, PhD, medical marketing manager for Dannon Co., says the benefits associated with probiotics are specific to certain strains of these &quot;good&quot; bacteria. Many provide their benefits by adjusting the microflora (the natural balance of organisms) in the intestines, or by acting directly on body functions, such as digestion or immune function. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://foodmatters.tv/articles-1/6-healing-benefits-of-probiotics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;6 benefits of probiotic yoghurts&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But is there any research to substantiate the general claim that 'probiotic yoghurt drinks improve health' and for bonus points - any research indication &lt;em&gt;which ones&lt;/em&gt; actually make a difference, given different bacteria in each? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23012" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-09T12:31:39.383" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T12:31:39.383" Title="Is there any research which supports the use of probiotic yogurts?" Tags="|nutrition|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-05-09T12:45:27.157" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27651" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-09T10:08:31.340" Score="3" ViewCount="148" Body="&lt;p&gt;My partner suffers from &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Myalgic Encephalopathy&lt;/a&gt; (ME) otherwise known as Chronic Fatigue Sydrome. It is a condition that remains not particularly well understood, even to the point where there doesn't seem to be any diagnosable root cause - just a collection of symptoms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the treatments we've had suggested is called the &lt;a href=&quot;http://lightningprocess.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lightning Process&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Reducing allostatic load is considered to vital for improving chronic health conditions (Logan &amp;amp; Barksdale, 2008);  the Lightning Process does this by teaching you how to spot when the [Physical Emergency Response] is happening and how you can calm this response down, allowing your body to re-balance itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.actionforme.org.uk/get-informed/publications/interaction-magazine/read-selected-ia-articles/treatments/alternative-approaches/lightning-process-your-experiences&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Action for ME&lt;/a&gt; charity describe the Lightning Process as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a training program (not a therapy) that combines concepts from Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), hypnotherapy and life coaching.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to combine all the things that make me skeptical - it works for some, not for others, and therefore makes me suspicious that it might be a program based on the placebo effect. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies as to the outcomes of this process that indicates its efficacy?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23012" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-09T15:48:01.367" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T15:48:01.367" Title="Does the &quot;Lightning Process&quot; successfully treat Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|healthcare|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27652" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27639" CreationDate="2015-05-09T12:09:59.393" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The simple answer to this question is yes.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the debate has been significantly obscured because the majority of contributors to it have chosen what appear to be poor ways of testing the claim with actual data (which is not, in principle, hard as the key data from models and observations are accessible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Climate skeptics have used time series plots to compare models to observations but these are beset by bad choices of the normalisations for temperature anomalies and are a poor way to compare the underlying patterns due to the noisy nature of temperature time series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the claims Spencer makes here &lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/14/90-climate-model-projectons-versus-reality/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WattUpWithThat&lt;/a&gt; and a good critique of the errors &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/02/roy-spencers-latest-deceit-and-deception.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are ways of simplifying the comparison that don't suffer from these defects and these have been done by people who don't seem to have the same partisan desire to reach a particular conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This picture from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n9/full/nclimate1972.html?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201309&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nature&lt;/a&gt; article is the clearest analysis that avoids the various obfuscations possible when looking at noisy time series data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tgk36.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;nature chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The choice made by these authors is to compare just the average extent of warming over a period rather than the noisy time series. This appears to avoid some of the choices that make the time series comparison so obfuscating and controversial. Their result seems to show that most models really do overestimate the actual amount of warming over recent years. In their words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recent observed global warming is significantly less than that simulated by climate models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In somewhat more detail the authors talk about the statistics like this (my highlights):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The evidence, therefore, indicates that the &lt;em&gt;current generation of climate models (when run as a group, with the CMIP5 prescribed forcings) do not reproduce the observed global warming over the past 20 years&lt;/em&gt;, or the slowdown in global warming over the past fifteen years. This interpretation is supported by statistical tests of the null hypothesis that the observed and model mean trends are equal, assuming that either: (1) the models are exchangeable with each other (that is, the ‘truth plus error’ view); or (2) the models are exchangeable with each other and with the observations (see Supplementary Information). Differences between observed and simulated 20-year trends have p values (Supplementary Information) that drop to close to zero by 1993–2012 under assumption (1) and to 0.04 under assumption (2) (Fig. 2c). Here we note that the smaller the p value is, the stronger the evidence against the null hypothesis. On this basis, the rarity of the 1993–2012 trend difference under assumption (1) is obvious. Under assumption (2), this implies that such an inconsistency is only expected to occur by chance once in 500 years, if 20-year periods are considered statistically independent. Similar results apply to trends for 1998–2012. In conclusion, we reject the null hypothesis that the observed and model mean trends are equal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="3943" LastEditDate="2015-05-09T21:20:12.173" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T21:20:12.173" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27653" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27654" CreationDate="2015-05-09T12:50:47.990" Score="7" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://lepharmachien.com/intoxication-alimentaire/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; called “8 façons de t’intoxiquer à un barbecue” (which could be translated by “8 ways to poison yourself at a barbecue”), a Canadian skeptic talks about sprout seeds :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/PHW60.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would translate that by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As for raw sprouts (bean sprouts, alfalfa, etc.), they are such 'nests' for bacteria that they should not be eaten by children or elderly people... I'm serious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This guy, does not give any source for that (hum).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true? Is there a scientific consensus about this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20868" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-05-09T13:47:48.770" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T17:09:34.030" Title="Are sprout seeds safe to eat?" Tags="|nutrition|safety|organic-food|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27654" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27653" CreationDate="2015-05-09T17:09:34.030" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously whether they are &quot;safe&quot; is a subjective standard, so unless you quantify it, the title question is unanswerable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foodsafety.gov/keep/types/fruits/sprouts.html&quot;&gt;Here is an article from http://foodsafety.gov&lt;/a&gt;, which is published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which discusses the risks of bacterial contamination in sprouts.  It contains a recommendation which echoes your claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Children, the elderly, pregnant women, and persons with weakened immune systems should avoid eating raw sprouts of any kind (including alfalfa, clover, radish, and mung bean sprouts).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6308" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T17:09:34.030" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27659" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="402" CreationDate="2015-05-09T22:39:46.110" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to be highly variable and condition-specific, although this latest review of reviews has some interesting results (mind you that's in paediatric population):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25950453&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Efficacy and safety of acupuncture in children: An overview of systematic reviews.&lt;/a&gt; (highlighting is mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We included 24 systematic reviews, comprising 142 RCTs with 12787 participants. Only 25% (6/24) reviews were considered to be high quality (10.00 ± 0.63). High-quality systematic reviews and Cochrane systematic reviews tends to yield neutral or negative results (P=0.052, 0.009 respectively). &lt;strong&gt;The efficacy of acupuncture for five diseases (Cerebral Palsy (CP), nocturnal enuresis, tic disorders, amblyopia and pain reduction) is promising.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;It was unclear for Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), mumps, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), asthma, nausea/vomiting and myopia&lt;/strong&gt;. Acupuncture is not effective for epilepsy. Only six reviews reported adverse events (AEs) and no fatal side effects were reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26143" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-09T22:39:46.110" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27660" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27641" CreationDate="2015-05-10T08:05:39.557" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reason one feels physical addiction is because one is physically addicted to a substance, which is not a &quot;toxin&quot;.  For coffee drinkers, the substance is caffeine, which occurs naturally in coffee beans.  For heroin addicts, the substance is the opium derivative that occurs naturally in opium poppies (or is synthesized chemically to resemble opium, but close enough). For cigarette smokers, the substance is nicotine which occurs naturally in tobacco leaves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When denied the substance that one is addicted to, one may feel some amount of &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/info/addiction/signs-of-addiction.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;when body levels of that substance go below a certain level the patient has physical and mood-related symptoms&quot;&gt;physical withdrawal&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. There's nothing that a regular smoker needs to do, e.g. using a sauna, to rid the body of nicotine. Stop smoking cigarettes, and the nicotine is quickly metabolized out of your body. That's when you experience some physical discomfort, such as crankiness, maybe shakiness and increased appetite. You'll feel cravings for nicotine, which will eventually go away if you don't smoke cigarettes. &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uamshealth.com/canyousweattoxinsoutofyourbody&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Can you sweat toxins out of your body? University of Arkansas Medical School&quot;&gt;Using a sauna doesn't make the process of withdrawing quicker&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By forcing your body to perspire through heat exposure... you can&#xA;  cause your kidneys to save water and actually hang on to any toxins&#xA;  that may be circulating in your system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same myth is cited for heroin and occasionally caffeine, that &quot;sweating out the toxins&quot; will make the withdrawal process easier. Your body naturally metabolizes these substances just fine. It is the absence of having them in your body, when you are accustomed to having a constant blood level, that causes discomfort. The process of withdrawal and recovery can't be accelerated by &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/6068-sweat-lodges-deadly-cleansing.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Sweat Lodges Can Be Deadly But Not Cleansing&quot;&gt;using a sauna, or by sweating&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Steam rooms and sweat lodges can be warm and relaxing — but are they&#xA;  cleansing? Contrary to popular belief, there is no scientific basis&#xA;  for the idea that people can &quot;sweat out&quot; toxins or impurities from the&#xA;  body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This myth may or may not have originated from Scientology in the early 1970s, but Scientology certainly perpetuated it. Carnegie Mellon University has an entire website devoted to L. Ron Hubbard's junk science, with a section about the &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Narconon/junkscience.htm#toxins&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot; title=&quot;Narconon Junkscience toxins&quot;&gt;pseudoscience of sweating out toxins&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Purification Rundown and New Life Detoxification Program both rely&#xA;  on the same fundamental principle - that the body can be purified of&#xA;  toxins stored in body fat, by flushing out the toxins and excreting&#xA;  them from the skin. The first element of the programme, running, is&#xA;  intended to &quot;get the blood circulating deeper into the tissues where&#xA;  toxic residuals are lodged and thus act to loosen and release the&#xA;  accumulated harmful deposits and get them moving.&quot; Immediately&#xA;  afterwards, four or five hours of sauna time is used to &quot;flush out the&#xA;  accumulations which have now been dislodged&quot;, with the toxins sweated&#xA;  out through the skin... This, however, falls foul of the problem that&#xA;  sweating simply is not a major route for excreting toxins. Most abused&#xA;  drugs are eliminated from the body by detoxification through the&#xA;  liver, the kidney, or occasionally the lungs. Even if Hubbard's&#xA;  therapy did manage to flush toxins out of fat tissue and into the&#xA;  bloodstream, they would pass through the kidneys and so be excreted in&#xA;  urine. They would have no chance to enter the sweat glands en masse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hubbard claimed that drugs were stored as &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Narconon/junkscience.htm#fats&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;residual in human fat&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;, i.e. that they are fat-soluble. The problem with this claim is that all drugs are not fat soluble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4301" LastEditorUserId="4301" LastEditDate="2015-05-17T11:18:38.803" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T11:18:38.803" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27661" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27641" CreationDate="2015-05-10T12:21:57.467" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr Going to a sauna does not speed up removing toxins from the body caused by smoking.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.cancer.org/healthy/stayawayfromtobacco/guidetoquittingsmoking/guide-to-quitting-smoking-why-so-hard-to-quit&quot;&gt;American Cancer Society&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Different factors affect how long it takes the body to remove nicotine&#xA;  and its by-products. In most cases, regular smokers will still have&#xA;  nicotine and/or its by-products, such as cotinine, in their bodies for&#xA;  about 3 to 4 days after stopping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Many other sources say nicotine remains in your body for 3 days. This quote with up to 4 days is one of the higher estimates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So technically, going to a sauna for 3 days and not smoking will rid the toxins, such as nicotine and cotinine from your body. However, going swimming in a sewer or watching TV will do the same thing as long as you are not smoking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23329" LastActivityDate="2015-05-10T12:21:57.467" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27662" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="40006" CreationDate="2015-05-10T13:18:10.983" Score="30" ViewCount="19846" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this claim several times:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Q: Why are there so many unfinished houses in Greece?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A: as long as the house is not finished, they don't have to pay building tax for it. So the leave it unfinished in order to evade this tax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10990" LastActivityDate="2018-12-21T03:31:45.407" Title="Do Greeks evade taxes by not finishing their houses?" Tags="|economics|taxes|greece|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27663" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-10T14:19:10.763" Score="7" ViewCount="542" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've always heard that an avocado could ripen faster if put in a paper bag.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These claims can be found in many places on the internet :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodtip&amp;amp;dbid=16&quot;&gt;The best way to ripen avocados&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wikihow.com/Ripen-an-Avocado&quot;&gt;How to ripen an avocado&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a quote from the first link :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Place unripe avocados in a brown paper bag to ripen. This traps the ethylene gas they produce and helps them to ripen. A firm avocado placed in a paper bag will ripen at room temperature in about three to six days. As the fruit ripens, the skin color will darken.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20868" LastEditorUserId="20868" LastEditDate="2015-05-10T15:16:15.407" LastActivityDate="2016-07-18T09:33:27.533" Title="Does an avocado ripen faster in a paper bag?" Tags="|nutrition|physics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27667" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17655" CreationDate="2015-05-10T23:21:17.670" Score="-2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spencer's chart has serious problems but other analysis says the answer is that most models are currently overestimating warming.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The debate has been significantly obscured because the majority of contributors to it have chosen what appear to be poor ways of testing the claim with actual data (which is not, in principle, hard as the key data from models and observations are accessible).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Climate skeptics have used time series plots to compare models to observations but these are beset by bad choices of the normalisations for temperature anomalies and are a poor way to compare the underlying patterns due to the noisy nature of temperature time series.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the claims Spencer makes here &lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/14/90-climate-model-projectons-versus-reality/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;WattUpWithThat&lt;/a&gt; and a good critique of the errors &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/02/roy-spencers-latest-deceit-and-deception.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But there are ways of simplifying the comparison that don't suffer from these defects and these have been done by people who don't seem to have the same partisan desire to reach a particular conclusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This picture from a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n9/full/nclimate1972.html?WT.ec_id=NCLIMATE-201309&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nature&lt;/a&gt; article is the clearest analysis that avoids the various obfuscations possible when looking at noisy time series data:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Tgk36.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;nature chart&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The choice made by these authors (and it is worth noting that they are not skeptics and published in a prestigious mainstream journal) is to compare just the average extent of warming over a period rather than the noisy time series. This appears to avoid some of the choices that make the time series comparison so obfuscating and controversial. Their result seems to show that most models really do overestimate the actual amount of warming over recent years. In their words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recent observed global warming is significantly less than that simulated by climate models.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In somewhat more detail the authors talk about the statistics like this (my highlights):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The evidence, therefore, indicates that the &lt;em&gt;current generation of climate models (when run as a group, with the CMIP5 prescribed forcings) do not reproduce the observed global warming over the past 20 years&lt;/em&gt;, or the slowdown in global warming over the past fifteen years. This interpretation is supported by statistical tests of the null hypothesis that the observed and model mean trends are equal, assuming that either: (1) the models are exchangeable with each other (that is, the ‘truth plus error’ view); or (2) the models are exchangeable with each other and with the observations (see Supplementary Information). Differences between observed and simulated 20-year trends have p values (Supplementary Information) that drop to close to zero by 1993–2012 under assumption (1) and to 0.04 under assumption (2) (Fig. 2c). Here we note that the smaller the p value is, the stronger the evidence against the null hypothesis. On this basis, the rarity of the 1993–2012 trend difference under assumption (1) is obvious. Under assumption (2), this implies that such an inconsistency is only expected to occur by chance once in 500 years, if 20-year periods are considered statistically independent. Similar results apply to trends for 1998–2012. In conclusion, we reject the null hypothesis that the observed and model mean trends are equal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion is that most models (or, perhaps, most results from the ensemble of models) predict more warming that has actually happened. Whether this is a significant problems for models will become more obvious in the next few years as observational data accumulates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2019-02-13T23:14:24.547" LastActivityDate="2019-02-13T23:14:24.547" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27673" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-11T10:00:25.847" Score="2" ViewCount="445" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV-mlTfM070&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;extremely popular and numerously mirrored lecture&lt;/a&gt;, Dr. Michael Greger presents &quot;proofs&quot; that humans should not consume dairy milk and meat at all, because it is destructive to health in numerous aspects, and by drinking it we effectively shorten our lifespan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, re. cancer, between time 20:58 and 21:30 he asks &quot;how low does our consumption of animal products have to go?&quot; and answers that &quot;only vegans&quot; (not &quot;vegetarians&quot; or &quot;meat-eaters&quot;) have significantly lower levels of circulating IGF-1.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are dairy milk and meat destructive to human health? Does the average human live longer if dairy milk and meat is abstained?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17948" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-11T10:43:20.087" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T11:18:51.893" Title="Does dairy milk and meat decrease your overall health and make you live less?" Tags="|nutrition|mortality|vegetarianism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2015-05-11T15:15:19.487" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27675" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="45859" CreationDate="2015-05-11T11:09:41.527" Score="9" ViewCount="711" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've just found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/05/01/scientific-study-shows-meditators-collapsing-quantum-systems-at-a-distance/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article, which links to this study, &lt;a href=&quot;http://deanradin.com/evidence/Radin2012doubleslit.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Consciousness and the double-slit interference pattern: Six experiments&lt;/a&gt;, which says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;By contrast,&#xA;  factors associated with consciousness, such as meditation experience, electrocortical markers of&#xA;  focused attention, and psychological factors including openness and absorption, significantly&#xA;  correlated in predicted ways with perturbations in the double-slit interference pattern. The results&#xA;  appear to be consistent with a consciousness-related interpretation of the quantum measurement&#xA;  problem.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this peer reviewed evidence that human consciousness can modify quantum states at distance?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16626" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2020-02-07T05:12:04.380" LastActivityDate="2020-02-07T05:33:26.490" Title="Can meditators collapse Quantum Systems at a distance?" Tags="|quantum-mechanics|dean-radin|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27678" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-11T14:18:15.153" Score="5" ViewCount="613" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a wide range of opinions and articles on this question, and here are some excerpts from a blog on the point &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/artificial-weather-revealed-post-9-11-flight-groundings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Artificial Weather Revealed by Post 9-11 Flight Groundings&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the August 2002 edition of Nature, which is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary journal, a report was published titled &amp;quot;Contrails reduce daily temperature range,&amp;quot; where scientists discuss how &amp;quot;a brief interval when the skies were clear of jets unmasked an effect on climate.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is a link to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atmos.washington.edu/%7Erennert/etc/courses/pcc587/ref/Travis-etal2002_Nature.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;original Nature article&lt;/a&gt;), which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DTRs for 11–14 September 2001 measured&#xA;at stations across the United States&#xA;show an increase of about 1.1 C over&#xA;normal 1971–2000 values (Fig. 1). This is in&#xA;contrast to the adjacent three-day periods,&#xA;when DTR values were near or below the&#xA;mean (Fig. 1). DTR departures for the&#xA;grounding period are, on average, 1.8 C&#xA;greater than DTR departures for the two&#xA;adjacent three-day periods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would therefore appear that airplane activity causes net cooling, at least for the places where the temperatures were measured (which conclusion is also restated by Christian Science Monitor, below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, elsewhere in the blog:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But according to Dahl, the immediate problem we face from climate change is global drying, not global warming ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But Dahl says today's precipitation enhancement programs are worsening the problem of climate change, and even in the best-case scenarios, we will not be able to meet our growing water needs through weather modification.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I think it's this simple,&amp;quot; said Dahl in an interview. &amp;quot;Clouds affect the weather and the climate. We are making artificial clouds. So yes, we are changing the climate, and this movie shows that clouds made by jets are accelerating these changes far more than the buildup of CO2 or methane, and are in fact the primary factor in anthropogenic climate change.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which appears to be suggesting that the primary problem of climate change is aridification, which is primarily caused by jet streams.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a NOVA/pbs article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/contrail-effect.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Contrail Effect&lt;/a&gt; from 2006 which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These results suggest that contrails can suppress both daytime highs (by reflecting sunlight back to space) and nighttime lows (by trapping radiated heat). That is, they can be both cooling and warming clouds. But what is the net effect? Do they cool more than they warm, or vice versa? &amp;quot;Well, the assumption is a net warming,&amp;quot; Travis says, &amp;quot;but there is a lot of argument still going on about how much of a warming effect they produce.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent article, 2011, &lt;a href=&quot;http://phys.org/news/2011-03-airplane-contrails-worse-co2-emissions.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Airplane contrails worse than CO2 emissions for global warming: study&lt;/a&gt; states, citing a study in Nature Climate Change by Dr. Ulrike Burkhardt and Dr. Bernd Karcher from the Institute for Atmospheric Physics at the German Aerospace Centre:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They have discovered that aviation contrails play a huge role in the impact on the climate and an even greater impact than that created by the CO2 emissions produced. While the CO2 emissions from airplanes account for around three percent of the annual CO2 emissions from all fossil fuels and change the radiation by 28 milliwatts per square meter, the aviation contrails are responsible for a change of around 31 milliwatts per square meter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another article by The Christian Science Monitor, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2010/0201/Airplane-contrails-and-their-effect-on-temperatures&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Airplane contrails and their effect on temperatures&lt;/a&gt; states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As it turns out, [contrails] also impact temperatures at Earth's surface, although by how much and in which direction — up or down — is still being worked out.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the real effect was in daytime highs, which were much higher. That would seem to indicate that, contrary to prevailing thinking, contrails might have a net cooling effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which is all to say that while there seems to be a consensus that contrails have a climate change impact, the jury seems out - at least in the mainstream media articles that came up - on &lt;em&gt;what&lt;/em&gt; that effect is. The claims, at least as I have read them from the above, would seem to include that contrails:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;reduce daily highs (by reflecting the sun's energy);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;prevent nighttime lows (as greenhouse gasses do);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;cause global aridification (which is worse than global warming);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;increase warming more than just CO2 (because of extra pollutants);&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;increase warming more than CO2 at lower altitudes.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;The over-arching claim appears to be that contrails result in either a net decrease in global temperature owing to the effect in #1, or a net increase owing to the balance of the claims.&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there more consensus among the scientific community on the effect of contrails, especially from the perspective of the net effect?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may be that I have misstated or overlooked a claim above, and please feel welcome to edit (if you have that capability) to rectify, or otherwise comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(As an aside, I am curious whether the contrail effect is related to the &lt;a href=&quot;/questions/17655&quot;&gt;ostensible 20 year lull in rising temperatures.&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-11T14:54:40.477" Title="How are airplane contrails linked to climate change?" Tags="|climate-change|aviation|climatology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27680" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27683" CreationDate="2015-05-11T16:22:58.843" Score="21" ViewCount="1263" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Clinic&quot;&gt;Cleveland Clinic&lt;/a&gt; claimed on a &lt;a href=&quot;http://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases_conditions/hic_Genital_Warts/hic_Understanding_HPV&quot;&gt;page about HPV&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;HPV that affects the genitals is very common. As many as 20 million people are thought to have an active HPV infection at any given time, and as many as 5.5 million new cases of genital HPV infection occur in the United States each year. &lt;strong&gt;Most men and women — about 80 percent of sexually active people — are infected with HPV at some point in their lives, but most people never know they have the virus.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The post is poorly referenced, and it sounds like an exaggeration to say that 80% of sexually active people get infected with HPV. Is that number arrived at in good faith?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="16860" LastEditDate="2016-01-18T19:22:49.653" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T19:22:49.653" Title="Do 80 percent of sexually active people get infected with HPV?" Tags="|sexuality|disease|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27683" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27680" CreationDate="2015-05-11T18:34:51.700" Score="19" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 20 million people in the United States at a given time figure is definitely too low.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/204/4/566.long&quot;&gt;Prevalence of Genital Human Papillomavirus Among Females in the United States, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2003–2006&lt;/a&gt; Journal of Infectious diseases (2011) vol. 204 pages 566-573.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall prevalence of any HPV type as measured by HPV DNA positivity by the LA assay was 42.5% (95% CI, 40.3%–44.7%) among 14–59-year-old US females...this represents 39.5 million (95% CI, 37.4–41.5 million) noninstitutionalized females aged 14–59 years in the United States with prevalent HPV infection &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;53.8% of females age 20-24 tested positive for HPV.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now can 80% in a life time be correct?  A key point is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the prevalence of any HPV significantly increased after 14–19 years of age, peaking in young women 20–24 years of age. The observed age distribution in this study supports the body of epidemiologic evidence that suggests that first HPV infection is acquired shortly after a woman becomes sexually active [cites to references 20–22]. We also found that HPV prevalence continued to gradually but significantly decrease through 59 years of age. Age-related reductions in HPV prevalence are likely attributable to a variety of factors, including clearance over time, decreased incidence as a result of changes in sexual activity, and acquired immunity from previous infection. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In otherwords, without any treatment, people become no-longer infected with the virus.  Therefore, significantly more women than the 53.8% will become infected at some point. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/151/12/1158.long&quot;&gt;Mathematical Model for the Natural History of Human Papillomavirus&#xA;Infection and Cervical Carcinogenesis&lt;/a&gt; for more information about the rate at which the virus disappears from the body.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the 53.8% includes those who have never been sexually active.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, there are many different strains of HPV, and while the study tried to test for the major ones, testing 37 strains, there are still other strains that were not tested for. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the study only tested for genital virus, there is also oral and anal HPV.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So yes, it seems very reasonable to estimate 80% for women.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a specfic reference to the 80% number see the CDC report to congress &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/std/hpv/2004hpv-report.pdf&quot;&gt;Prevention of Genital Human Papillomavirus Infection&lt;/a&gt; which states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It has been estimated that at least 50% of sexually active men and women acquire genital HPV infection at some point in their lives; a recent estimate suggests that 80% of women will have acquired genital HPV by age 50 [cites to references 15 and 16]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above part of the answer is really limited to HPV strains associated with sexual transmission.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more recent study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3993818/&quot;&gt;Human Papillomavirus Community in Healthy Persons, Defined by Metagenomics Analysis of Human Microbiome Project Shotgun Sequencing Data Sets&lt;/a&gt; J Virol. 2014 May; 88(9): 4786–4797 considered a broader spectrum of HPV strains than the earlier studies above.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;148 strains of 176 known strains were explicitly considered in the study.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The &lt;strong&gt;overall HPV prevalence was 68.9%&lt;/strong&gt; and was highest in the skin (61.3%), followed by the vagina (41.5%), mouth (30%), and gut (17.3%).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Considering this new study, if 69% of people have HPV detectable by the method of this study at a given moment, 80% in a lifetime is almost certainly an underestimate. The 80% number was based upon older studies that only detected a small percentage of the strains and sampled fewer regions of the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T13:33:27.060" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T13:33:27.060" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27686" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18539" CreationDate="2015-05-12T00:29:49.857" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the few published papers on the relationship between Stack Overflow and productivity finds that active GitHub users &quot;ask fewer questions and provide more answers than others&quot; on the site.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; The authors write that users who ask questions &quot;distribute their work in less uniform way,&quot; than those who do not (indicating interruption). But, they also note that &quot;despite interruptions incurred&quot; Stack Overflow activities correlate positively with participation and commit rates on GitHub. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, there's evidence that Stack Overflow tends to cause interruptions (as a stand in for loss of productivity),&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; but people who code a lot (on GitHub) also tend to contribute to SO, and the other way around. The relationship between GitHub and SO participation is in this way used to approximate impact on productivity.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither this study nor the studies it cites provide direct evidence for or against Carmack's claims. Fundamentally, the authors conclude that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite the popularity of Stack Overflow, its role in the work cycle of open-source developers is yet to be understood: on the one hand, participation in it has the potential to &lt;em&gt;increase the knowledge of individual developers&lt;/em&gt; thus improving and speeding up the development process. On the other hand, participation in Stack Overflow may interrupt the regular working rhythm of the developer, hence also possibly &lt;em&gt;slow down the development process&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Because the original claim argues for value through productivity, under conditions where the impact of SO on productivity &quot;is yet to be understood&quot; in systematic study, it (the original claim) remains speculative and not supported by evidence beyond anecdote.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Vasilescu, B., V. Filkov, and A. Serebrenik. “&lt;a href=&quot;http://bvasiles.github.io/papers/socialcom13.pdf&quot;&gt;StackOverflow and GitHub: Associations between Software Development and Crowdsourced Knowledge.&lt;/a&gt;” In 2013 &lt;em&gt;International Conference on Social Computing&lt;/em&gt; (SocialCom), 188–95, 2013.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Goal: Is participation in Stack Overflow related to productivity of GitHub &#xA;developers?&quot; (p.188)  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&quot;Here, following Adams et.al., we look at only one, but representative, facet of productivity.&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Emphasis mine.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T17:17:39.723" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T17:17:39.723" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27688" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-12T01:42:16.840" Score="3" ViewCount="164" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw an article or two about the phenomenon of well off upper class families having large families. It claimed that his broke the trend of increased economic status resulting in smaller families that has been occurring in developed and developing countries for the last 400 years or so. Is this trend actually documented? How strong is the correlation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26199" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T01:42:16.840" Title="Does increasing the middle class result in lower birth rates?" Tags="|economics|population|birth|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-05-12T13:44:48.923" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27689" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27703" CreationDate="2015-05-12T02:42:36.657" Score="7" ViewCount="3646" Body="&lt;p&gt;I notice on &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_religious_populations&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; that it lists the total number of Jewish adherents at ~14 million, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations_by_number_of_members#Restorationism_and_Non-Trinitarianism_-_41_million&quot;&gt;it lists&lt;/a&gt; the number of adherents in the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormonism) at ~15.3 million. Are there really more Mormons in the world then there are Jews? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23245" LastEditorUserId="21255" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T02:19:00.753" LastActivityDate="2015-07-28T08:39:57.010" Title="Are there more Mormons in the world than Jews?" Tags="|religion|sociology|judaism|lds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="18" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27692" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-12T12:13:11.267" Score="11" ViewCount="3038" Body="&lt;p&gt;After someone told me that Ostrich eggs repel Spiders I had to google it. I haven't been able to find a scientific explanation but throughout the Internet there are a lot of articles that mention it somewhere.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultan_Ahmed_Mosque&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article about this Mosque&lt;/a&gt; mentions that Ostrich eggs were used to prevent cobwebs in the building.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do Ostrich eggs really repel spiders? And if yes, why exactly?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18504" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T08:55:41.103" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T18:23:36.250" Title="Do Ostrich Eggs repel Spiders?" Tags="|natural-remedies|entomology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27694" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22824" CreationDate="2015-05-12T12:22:00.340" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This issue was discussed in the 12/23/2009 New York Times article &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/world/asia/23seoul.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;South Korea Stretches Standards for Success&lt;/a&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Times cites &quot;Yoon Myoung, a top researcher Consumers Korea&quot; stating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There is no clinical proof or other evidence that these treatments really work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wanted a more scientific source, however, and found the following article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022347600700941&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Short stature and delayed puberty in gymnasts: Influence of selection bias on leg length and the duration of training on trunk length&lt;/a&gt; Journal of Pediatrics vol. 136, pages 149-155.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This research studied gymnasts who had been training from a few months to 10 years.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sitting height decreased (relative to the normal population) with increased years of training. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though gymnasts with 0-2 years of training showed no significant difference from the normal population, every single gymnast with more than 2 years of training had decreased sitting height, ranging from 0.2 to 2.8 standard deviations below normal.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Leg length was not influenced by duration of training, so this is trunk length that is being influenced.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So gymnasts, who obviously stretch more than average, become shorter relative to the general population.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T12:34:24.763" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T12:34:24.763" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27695" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27708" CreationDate="2015-05-12T13:40:21.190" Score="21" ViewCount="1992" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was almost eaten alive by my wife after she found out I heated our baby's dinner in a microwave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The concern is that microwave heating is uneven and it could make a super hot spot in breast milk or formula that could burn the baby's mouth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babycenter.com/404_can-i-heat-formula-in-a-microwave_1334516.bc&quot;&gt;Baby Center pedatrician&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I don't recommend it because it's not safe. A microwave oven heats unevenly, basically from the inside out, so it's possible that the formula could be very hot in the middle of the bottle but barely lukewarm on the outside where you can feel it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/HealthEducators/ucm089629.htm&quot;&gt;FDA&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Heating breast milk or infant formula in the microwave is not recommended. Studies have shown that microwaves heat baby's milk and food unevenly. This results in &quot;hot spots&quot; that can scald a baby's mouth and throat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does heating breastmilk in a microwave for 10-20 seconds makes the milk dangerously hot compared to conventional heating?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26221" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-06-18T07:10:58.790" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T12:27:12.930" Title="Does microwaving breast milk cause dangerous hot spots?" Tags="|medical-science|milk|microwaves|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27696" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-12T17:47:40.863" Score="2" ViewCount="603" Body="&lt;p&gt;I used to teach a 7 day stop smoking program, it was 15 steps a day that &lt;em&gt;if&lt;/em&gt; you could do for 7 days straight, you'd be a non-smoker by the end of it. The program was all about turning off mental switches that triggered cravings. I was teaching the program  with a new teaching partner to one person who was struggling with the 15 steps, my new partner introduced a drastic 24hr option he knew of, and had apparently had remarkable success with, that he claimed was 100% effective, but came with some amount of risk...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He said that if you were to boil a pack of cigarettes, and drink it like tea, that you would be a non-smoker over night. The rationale was that there is a deadly dose of nicotine in a pack of cigarettes, if you were to extract it and inject it into your blood stream it could kill you, but most of the nicotine in cigarettes gets burnt away while smoking, so by boiling your cigarettes you get as much of the pure nicotine out as possible. After drinking the tobacco sludge, the subject is required to smoke one last cigarette, but because their body is overloaded with nicotine, it responds with violent vomiting (assuming you made it as far as lighting the cigarette before vomiting). From that day after, all the mental switches that used to trigger cravings, instead trigger the memory of that awful mortal illness cause by that nicotine sludge, and you never smoke again.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The guy never went through with the 24hr option, but I know of at least one smoker I worked with at a different job who apparently tried it years later after telling him about it one day. He came back the next morning and said, &lt;em&gt;&quot;That cigarette potion you told me about, it works, I tried it, it make me sicker than a dog, and then I was up all night trying to clean the smoke smell out of my house.&quot;&lt;/em&gt; He apparently spent the next couple days scrubbing his house down from top to bottom with all sorts of chemicals, and washed all his clothes to try and get the smell out, I think he even said he had to throw some stuff away just because he couldn't get rid of the smell. Months later he said the slightest hint of an ash tray still made him want to gag. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really as effective as it's supposed to be? I can't find anything online that either confirms or busts this as a myth. Seems to me if it is as effective as is claimed, then it'd put nicorette and all those other expensive stop smoking drugs out of business, and free a lot of people from the clutches of nicotine addictions if it became more widely known about. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23245" LastEditorUserId="23245" LastEditDate="2015-05-12T17:54:04.433" LastActivityDate="2015-05-12T17:54:04.433" Title="Can you quit smoking overnight by drinking a dangerous dose of nicotine?" Tags="|smoking|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="18" ClosedDate="2015-05-13T01:07:20.770" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27697" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-12T21:20:39.303" Score="2" ViewCount="401" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;English Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; is pretty clear and uncompromising on the topic of homeopathy, as you can see below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Homeopathy is a &lt;strong&gt;form of alternative medicine&lt;/strong&gt; created in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann. [...] Homeopathy is pseudoscience. It is not effective for any condition, and no homeopathic remedy has been proven to be more effective than placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Czech Wikipedia sounds much less clear (the structure of the introduction is very similar on both version allowing me to translate sentences that are almost directly linked to the same position in the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Homeopathy is a treatment method &lt;strong&gt;used mostly&lt;/strong&gt; in alternative medicine. [...] Effectivity of this method or function of it's principles were never reliably scientifically proven - on the contrary numerous studies failed to prove that homeopathy is more effective than placebo; this leaves homeopathy in the medicine no less than a controversial topic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In original:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Homeopatie je léčebná metoda &lt;strong&gt;používaná zejména&lt;/strong&gt; v alternativní&#xA;  medicíně. [...] Účinnost metody ani fungování jejích&#xA;  principů nebyly spolehlivě vědecky prokázány, naopak v rozsáhlých&#xA;  studiích se nepodařilo potvrdit, že by měla homeopatie účinek lepší&#xA;  než placebo; homeopatie je tedy v medicínském kontextu přinejmenším&#xA;  kontroverzní záležitostí.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Emphasis is mine in all three quotations in order to highlight the different way Czech Wikipedia describes the topic. While we're really talking about 2 words, these two words on Czech wikipedia leave open space for the interpretation that the homeopathic method are sometimes used in official medicine, and therefore are deemed to be working in some situations. I doubt that but I'm not very knowledgeable about the topic of homeopathy and how it's approached.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically my question is whether the word &lt;strong&gt;mostly&lt;/strong&gt; on the Czech Wikipedia isn't just misleading. And therefore, whether there are other than alternative treatments methods that use homeopathy as &lt;strong&gt;serious tool to help patients&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;paid form health insurance&lt;/strong&gt; and therefore official for our purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11660" LastEditorUserId="11660" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T12:00:08.420" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T12:00:08.420" Title="Is homeopathy ever used in official medicine?" Tags="|medical-science|alternative-medicine|homeopathy|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2015-05-12T23:56:49.243" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27698" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-12T22:02:48.273" Score="4" ViewCount="488" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently found this video, which purports to show the Muslim cleric Bandar al-Khaibari denying heliocentrism. &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9Jp_XCvVto&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9Jp_XCvVto&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I am skeptical that the person depicted in the video is actually displaying such an egregious degree of ignorance of physics, and find it more likely that the video was either mistranslated or taken out of context. There were a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/saudi-muslim-cleric-claims-the-earth-is-stationary-and-the-sun-rotates-around-it-10053516.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;number&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=5&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;uact=8&amp;amp;ved=0CC4QFjAE&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theweek.co.uk%2Fmiddle-east%2F62588%2Fsaudi-cleric-proves-the-earth-does-not-rotate-video&amp;amp;ei=xndSVaqTMoX2UqmIgKAN&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNHUVjb8OFNtF2rLthtAecJ91lFcWg&amp;amp;sig2=g_i9B9HhCxmYK-VNuRx95w&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;of&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=8&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;uact=8&amp;amp;ved=0CEIQFjAH&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworldnews%2Fmiddleeast%2Fsaudiarabia%2F11419428%2FWatch-Saudi-cleric-tells-students-Earth-does-not-rotate.html&amp;amp;ei=xndSVaqTMoX2UqmIgKAN&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNF7Nl-5krmph_omzm7myeBmcRtntw&amp;amp;sig2=bXhTwgEZtbhmEHvfxX_2fw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt; covering the issue, but all of them seemed to depend on that one single translation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the translation of this video valid, given the context in which the cleric was speaking?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T10:08:48.163" Title="Is this video of a Muslim cleric denying heliocentrism authentic?" Tags="|religion|video|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="18" ClosedDate="2015-05-13T11:37:06.280" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27700" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-13T03:09:45.343" Score="2" ViewCount="971" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://cancertutor.com&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CancerTutor.com&lt;/a&gt; claims to be a website for &quot;alternative&quot; cancer treatments, denouncing standard treatments like chemotherapy or radiation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the first glance, it seems like your typical quackery website, with all the telltale signs like &quot;Big Pharma&quot; conspiracies and two or more exclamation points after every sentence. And while its website looks polished enough, it's affiliated with the Independent Cancer Research Foundation, whose &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.new-cancer-treatments.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; doesn't look nearly as legitimate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What's strange is the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;I can't find anything online discrediting the site, and&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It appears &lt;em&gt;very&lt;/em&gt; high in Google Search rankings to be just another medical fraud. Search &quot;chemotherapy risks,&quot; and you should find the website near the very top.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the question is this: is CancerTutor.com reliable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21962" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T20:53:58.160" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T20:53:58.160" Title="Is CancerTutor.com reliable?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|cancer|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-05-13T03:29:30.753" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27703" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27689" CreationDate="2015-05-13T09:26:26.007" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, this seems to be right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jewishdatabank.org/studies/downloadFile.cfm?fileid=3113&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; which states worldwide Jewish population to be estimated at about 13,8 million in 2013. &#xA;At the latest LDS General Conference (April 2015), the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/04/statistical-report-2014?lang=eng&quot;&gt;statistical report&lt;/a&gt; stated 15,3 million members at the end of 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that as I said in the comments, we are comparing apples to oranges here. Jewish population grows mainly through births, while LDS membership grows through births and convert baptisms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16734" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T09:26:26.007" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27704" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27705" CreationDate="2015-05-13T11:45:13.083" Score="11" ViewCount="1839" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/TheKnowledge/status/593936133358276609&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://twitter.com/TheKnowledge/status/593936133358276609&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Japan. Top: One Month After Hiroshima, 1945. Bottom: One Month After&#xA;  The Earthquake and Tsunami, 2011. Incredible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Bmact.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Image in tweet&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the images genuine, and stemming from the events mentioned?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-07-16T00:36:42.943" LastActivityDate="2017-07-16T00:36:42.943" Title="Is this tweet about classes one month after the Hiroshima bombing, and the 2011 tsunami accurate?" Tags="|education|japan|world-war-ii|nuclear-weapons|hiroshima-nagasaki|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27705" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27704" CreationDate="2015-05-13T11:45:13.083" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The first image can be seen at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=42110&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hiroshima Peace Media Center&lt;/a&gt;, in an article titled &quot;Hiroshima: 70 Years After the A-bombing: Students study in open-air classrooms in “A-bomb desert”&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you click on the first image, you get the following caption:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An open-air classroom at Noboricho National School. A female teacher&#xA;  stands in front of the students. The boy in the center of the third&#xA;  row, gazing at the camera, is Kengo Kurata. Far left is Fukuya&#xA;  department store, and far right is Hiroshima Nagarekawa Methodist&#xA;  Church. This photo was taken by Stephen Kelen, a war correspondent,&#xA;  between April and May 1946. (Mr. Kelen died in 2003 at the age of 91.)&#xA;  (Courtesy of the Hiroshima Municipal Archives)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was not an isolated incident. From the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/virtual/VirtualMuseum_e/visit_e/est_e/panel/A4/4105_1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Open-air Classrooms&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the shade of trees and out in the blazing sun, teachers and&#xA;  students could be seen diligently studying in classrooms made by&#xA;  placing the few surviving desks and chairs on straw mats on the&#xA;  ground. Open-air classrooms were common at many schools after the&#xA;  A-bombing, but they were not the pleasant break from regular classes&#xA;  we know today. The scene surrounding the students was utter&#xA;  devastation---the charred A-bomb desert punctuated here and there by&#xA;  the shells of ferro-concrete buildings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second photo can be seen in the Reuters article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/21/us-japan-idUSTRE72A0SS20110421&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Japan makes no-go nuclear zone, PM faces more criticism&lt;/a&gt;, and was taken a month and a bit after the earthquake and tsunami in 2011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Nishitaga Elementary School children attend lessons in a temporary&#xA;  classroom at a school gymnasium divided by corrugated cardboard in&#xA;  Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, April 19, 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise, both images are genuine, and depict the aftermath of the two disasters mentioned in the tweet. The first photo was several months, rather than one month after the atomic bombing, but is still a remarkable photo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2015-08-02T06:43:27.780" LastActivityDate="2015-08-02T06:43:27.780" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27706" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-05-13T12:15:07.817" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T12:15:07.817" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T12:15:07.817" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27707" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-05-13T12:15:07.817" Score="0" Body="The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki near the end of World War II." OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T15:14:38.873" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T15:14:38.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27708" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27695" CreationDate="2015-05-13T12:23:36.403" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are local hot spots if you don't mix the milk after microwaving.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Babies really do get burned by microwaved milk; there is an actual danger the medical community is trying to prevent when giving advice not to microwave milk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The danger is due to a combination of hot spots within the milk and the container being cooler than the milk itself.  If someone just feels the outside of the container they may misapprehend the temperature of the milk, resulting in the baby being burned.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1518698&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Microwave heating of infant formula: a dilemma resolved&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Pediatrics&lt;/em&gt; (1992) vol. 90 pages 412-415.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Microwave heating of infant formula is a common practice despite concerns of infant scalding....Topmost portions reached a mean temperature of 44.7 +/- 1.7 degrees C and 43.0 +/- 2.4 degrees C for all types of 240-mL and 120-mL bottles, respectively. Topmost temperatures were significantly hotter than temperatures reached at other sites. Routine mixing resulted in formula temperatures which could safely be fed to infants (35.4 +/- 0.3 degrees C and 33.9 +/- 0.2 degrees C for 240-mL and 120-mL bottles, respectively).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6502333&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Risk factors for microwave scald injuries in infants.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Journal of Pediatrics&lt;/em&gt; (1984) vol. 105 page 864-867.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An infant sustained second- and third-degree scald burns of the oropharynx from drinking formula heated in a microwave oven. The circumstances leading to the scald injuries were recreated. Factors contributing to the injury included the volume of formula, the initial temperature of the formula, and the temperature gradient between the liquid core and the bottle surface after microwave heating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1432494&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Burns associated with the use of microwave ovens.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Journal of Microwave Power and Electromagnetic Energy&lt;/em&gt; (1992) vol. 27, pages 160-163.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;burns can result from the ingestion of microwave heated food because consumers may overlook the differential temperature gradients within foods and between the food and the container.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other related articles are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3219045&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Burns by ingestion of milk warmed-up in a microwave oven&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Archives of French Pediatrics&lt;/em&gt; 1988 vol. 45 page 439.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23606998&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Aerodigestive tract burn from ingestion of microwaved food.&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Case Reports of Emergency Medicine&lt;/em&gt; (2013) article 781809. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2018-02-28T12:27:12.930" LastActivityDate="2018-02-28T12:27:12.930" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27710" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-13T13:56:00.017" Score="3" ViewCount="162" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was once told by a professor at a prestigious university (paraphrase):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the average software development workplace, the best programmer is 30 times faster than the&#xA;  worst programmer.  So if it takes the office's best programmer&#xA;  one day to write some particular code, it will take that same office's&#xA;  worst programmer an entire month to write the same code.  These two&#xA;  programmers will often be making roughly the same salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?  Are there any references or studies to corroborate this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23329" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T08:29:57.300" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T08:29:57.300" Title="Is it true that the best programmer in the office is 30 times faster than the worst programmer in the office?" Tags="|programming|programming-productivity|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-05-13T14:17:51.563" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27712" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27714" CreationDate="2015-05-13T16:10:57.030" Score="21" ViewCount="5227" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I just found out about a Canadian woman who gave birth on an Air Canada flight on her way to Tokyo on mothers day. In this article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ada-guan-b-c-woman-who-gave-birth-on-plane-didn-t-know-she-was-pregnant-1.3070338&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ada Guan, B.C. woman who gave birth on plane, didn't know she was pregnant&lt;/a&gt;, it states,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...depending on where Chloe [the infant] was born along the route, she&#xA;  could be eligible for American citizenship if she was born above&#xA;  Hawaii in addition to Canadian citizenship&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that really a thing? Does the USA grant citizenship to whomever is born in their airspace? The child has been given Canadian citizenship because the flight originated in Canada, but she was technically born at 35,000 ft somewhere over the pacific ocean &lt;em&gt;(What's her birth certificate going to say? Place of Brith: 27.362444, -161.294046 at 35,000', or &quot;International Waters&quot;?)&lt;/em&gt; Would a child be eligible for a US passport if born in the &lt;em&gt;stratosphere&lt;/em&gt; somewhere over Hawaii? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From discussion in Comments: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Either that flight took one heck of a detour, the reporter didn't get their facts straight, or Hawaii is in the Bering Sea. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7cPfC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23245" LastEditorUserId="23245" LastEditDate="2015-05-13T21:42:27.293" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T21:42:27.293" Title="Does the USA grant citizenship to whomever is born in their airspace?" Tags="|politics|birth|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="17" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27713" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27712" CreationDate="2015-05-13T16:30:35.180" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, a child born within 12 nautical miles of the US (which applies to airspace as well) is in US territory. Under jus soli, a child born in US territory can be granted a US citizenship.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Twelve Nautical Mile Limit: The territorial sea of the United States&#xA;  was formerly three nautical miles. (See, e.g., Cunard S.S. Co. v&#xA;  Mellon, 262 U.S. 100, 122, 43 S. Ct. 504, 67 L. Ed. 894 (1923).)&#xA;  However, the three-mile rule was changed by a Presidential&#xA;  Proclamation in 1988, implementing the territorial-sea provision of&#xA;  the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea. (Presidential&#xA;  Proclamation 5928, signed December 27, 1988, published at 54 Federal&#xA;  Register 777, January 9, 1989.) As decreed by that Proclamation, the&#xA;  territorial sea of the United States henceforth extends to 12 nautical&#xA;  miles from the baselines of the United States determined in accordance&#xA;  with international law. (The Proclamation also stated that the&#xA;  jurisdiction of the United States extends to the airspace over the&#xA;  territorial sea.) (See Gordon, Immigration Law and Procedure, Part 8&#xA;  Nationality and Citizenship, 92.03(2)(b) territorial limits.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/86755.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/86755.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29638" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T16:30:35.180" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27714" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27712" CreationDate="2015-05-13T16:33:31.563" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;Page 7 of this Foreign Affairs Manual, titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/86755.pdf&quot;&gt;ACQUISITION OF U.S. CITIZENSHIP BY&#xA;BIRTH IN THE UNITED STATES&lt;/a&gt;, says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“The rules applicable to vessels obviously apply equally to airplanes. Thus a child&#xA;  born on a plane in the United States or flying over its territory would acquire&#xA;  United States citizenship at birth.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2015-05-13T16:33:31.563" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27715" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27751" CreationDate="2015-05-13T23:28:58.703" Score="11" ViewCount="1118" Body="&lt;p&gt;In answer to a question on Parenting.SE about &lt;a href=&quot;https://parenting.stackexchange.com/questions/18950/what-can-help-a-seven-year-old-boy-cope-with-night-terrors-and-being-constantly&quot;&gt;helping a child cope with night terrors&lt;/a&gt;, a user posted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Here's what you do For the little guy. For his night terrors give him&#xA;  1 to 2 small square of dark chocolate candy 2 to 3 hours before&#xA;  bedtime every night. Believe me this works it's stops the trigger of&#xA;  any night terrors from happening. Now remember it must be dark&#xA;  chocolate candy Of high grade percentage. His fears will stop once his&#xA;  night terrors are gone. I encourage all parents with children that&#xA;  have night terrors to try dark chocolate. It's cheap and it works.&#xA;  Remember this is a daily regiment before bedtime. If you stop the&#xA;  daily regiment the night terrors will come back again. Give it a shot&#xA;  help your kids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As proposed remedies go this one seems pretty harmless, but it's nice to have researched, evidence-based answers (especially for a claim that is so completely effective). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All I can find with a web search is anecdotal evidence, typically comments left on forums or blog posts (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/archive/index.php/t-133446.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nourishedhealth.com/my-story-gluten-intolerance/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). (Some say it's Hershey's special dark, others don't mention a brand, just &quot;dark chocolate&quot;.) There is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJLMOzcByRU&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt; which also suggests cocoa powder for diabetics. Most say it should be used regularly before sleeping, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.madeformums.com/forum/schoolchildren/4-year-old-with-night-terrors/108826.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;one says to give it when a child wakes up&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any research suggesting dark chocolate is a useful treatment for night terrors?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19066" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:41:15.657" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T19:28:47.957" Title="Does eating dark chocolate eliminate night terrors?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|sleep|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27716" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27352" CreationDate="2015-05-14T01:02:23.230" Score="-4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding these various shipwrecks, there are a number of very early reports within merely the time needed for the various eyewitnesses to reach  the towns where these reports originated.  There, nevertheless, does appear to be discrepancies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report of Nov. 26, 1829 in the SIDNEY GAZETTE seems to contradict the report in a previous edition .  Is this a mistaken article or is it a different report of the event by a different witness? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We cannot say that it is the result of a gradual embellishment over time, nor can we say that it is story surfacing at a much later time.  It is a version of the event that exists close to the beginning side by side with the other.  Moreover, it is a version that does not seem to have been challenged in later editions of the newspaper. In fact it is the version that largely survived in Australian history (for example: IN THE EARLY DAYS; J.J. Knight, Brisbane, 1895). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;History is made up not only of the official reports of the big people: Governors, Captains and officers; it includes as well the testimony of the little people: sailors, passengers and even convicts.   Their input also has a right to be evaluated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the same newspaper, in a later edition, publishes a somewhat different account, it usually means that someone reading the prior edition wishes to correct the record, add something else, or present his or her own version of how things happened. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most here (in this discussion) agree, at least, that after the Mermaid sank June 12/13, they were saved by the Admiral Grifford and then transferred to the Swiftsure, which also became disabled.  The combined crews (along with some of the cargo) were brought by the Resource and let off at Port Raffles where they met up with Dr. Wilson, newly returned from Coupang on the Amity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From there the Amity took Captain Nolbrow and &quot;some of the crew&quot; westward to Swan River on the west side of Australia, and then, aboard the Calista, eastward along the south side of Australia,  to Albany and King George Sound, then on to Hobart (Tasmania) where Captain Nolbrow leaves a report of these events published by the local newspaper.  Then they proceeded northward  along the east side of Australia to Sidney. Some ships there, like the Amity encountered various difficulties and delays at Swan River and thus Nolbrow continues on the Calista and reportedly other crew as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26157" LastEditorUserId="26157" LastEditDate="2015-05-21T17:22:52.023" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T17:22:52.023" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27717" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27718" CreationDate="2015-05-14T02:32:25.813" Score="29" ViewCount="8010" Body="&lt;p&gt;This was recently posted on 9gag:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Gdo7nm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1977, we received a signal from outer space, which lasted 72 seconds. We still do not know how or whence it came.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did we receive such a signal in 1977?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16332" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-14T04:03:05.873" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T10:29:39.270" Title="Did we receive a signal from outer space in 1977?" Tags="|astronomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27718" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27717" CreationDate="2015-05-14T04:09:28.080" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, there was a famous narrowband signal detected in 1977, which became known as the &quot;Wow! signal&quot;. Whether it came from outer space is unknown.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The original astronomer wrote a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bigear.org/Wow30th/wow30th.htm&quot;&gt;30th Anniversary Report&lt;/a&gt; on the signal in 2007, which covers a lot of the technical details.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wikipedia &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow!_signal&quot;&gt;adequately covers the topic&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Brian Dunning of the Skeptoid Podcast &lt;a href=&quot;http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4342&quot;&gt;examined the evidence&lt;/a&gt; in 2012 to give a readable summary. In short, while its origins are unknown, and several conjectures have been rejected, there is no evidence that it came from aliens.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-05-14T04:09:28.080" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27721" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-14T14:45:43.957" Score="8" ViewCount="688" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was reading Quora and came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://qr.ae/fnXsH&quot;&gt;this answer&lt;/a&gt; in my reader's digest. The question is &lt;strong&gt;What are some psychological facts that most people don't know?&lt;/strong&gt; and the answer has ten items. The one that caught my attention was #7:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;7&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Posting a calorie chart in restaurants leads people to choose less healthy foods.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The other nine items are either things I've already known, or they're plausible. This one, however, is surprising. Is there any evidence to back this up, and if so, what is it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8765" LastEditorDisplayName="user32299" LastEditDate="2018-08-16T09:19:55.383" LastActivityDate="2023-05-13T20:21:16.830" Title="Do calorie charts in restaurants affect peoples' choice of foods?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27723" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27724" CreationDate="2015-05-15T01:32:54.840" Score="20" ViewCount="3413" Body="&lt;p&gt;This came across my social media feed:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/H38iA.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;USGS Earthquakes since 1973&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;U.S. Geological Earthquakes Survey&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  1973 - 4,539 Earthquakes&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  1974 — 4,528 Earthquakes&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  2000 — 19,131 Earthquakes&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  2010 — 23,040 Earthquakes&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  2011 — 22,392 Earthquakes&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  2013 — 89,622 Earthquakes&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  2014 — 118,404 Earthquakes&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  2015 — Over 36,000 Earthquakes...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/discoverministry/photos/a.747025615309644.1073741830.119435758068636/996288083716728/?type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;One pastor&lt;/a&gt; gave this some context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Earthquakes on the rise, USGS stats confirm. Jesus predicted 2000 yrs ago, &quot;And GREAT EARTHquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and FEARFUL sights and great signs shall there be from HEAVEN.&quot; (Luke 21:11) Christians, signs BELOW being fulfilled...now watch for signs from ABOVE!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The data seems to be a little selective, and I assume earthquake detection instruments have increased in both number and sensitivity since 1973.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are earthquakes numbers increasing significantly and consistently since 1973?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5487" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-15T11:26:50.667" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T18:07:25.603" Title="Are Earthquakes on the rise?" Tags="|united-states|geology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27724" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2015-05-15T02:10:28.720" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The title of this 2011 paper pretty much answers the question by itself: &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/109/3/717.abstract&quot;&gt;Global risk of big earthquakes has not recently increased&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(For the record: Peter M. Shearer and Philip B. Stark, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1118525109 PNAS January 17, 2012 vol. 109 no. 3 717-721)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They noted that there had been an increase in large earthquakes in 2004-2011, and some other apparent clustering, and looked back over the data since 1900 to see if there was sufficient statistical evidence to suggest that large earthquakes were occurring more frequently, or whether it could just be explained by chance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our conclusion that the global threat of large earthquakes has not recently increased is based both on the lack of statistical evidence that regionally declustered seismicity is temporally heterogeneous on a global scale and on the implausibility of physical mechanisms proposed to explain global clustering. [...] The recent elevated rate of large earthquakes has increased estimates of large earthquake danger: The empirical rate of such events is higher than before. However, there is no evidence that the rate of the underlying process has changed. In other words, there is no evidence that the risk has changed, but our estimates of the risk have changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While this focussed on large (Magnitude 7 and above) earthquakes, rather than all measured earthquakes, like the source infographic did, I think this is appropriate because (a) it lowers any effect caused by sampling error reduced as more numerous and more sensitive equipment is produced and (b) &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/mag_vs_int.php&quot;&gt;magnitude 1 and 2 tremors&lt;/a&gt; aren't what people are thinking when they hear the word 'earthquake'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T02:10:28.720" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27726" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27733" CreationDate="2015-05-15T09:40:44.400" Score="26" ViewCount="8085" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of my favourite information snippets to dish out to unsuspecting friends is that there are roughly only 10 recorded cases of rabies survival without vaccination, while it's estimated that around 160 people die from the virus every day. This also means more people die every couple of hours than there are known non-vaccination survivors (take that, anti-vacciners!). Coupled with it being a very nasty way to die, this factoid acts as a pretty effective conversation killer (yes, I sometimes &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be that guy).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, I soon realised that the data I was dishing out (10 survivors, 160 deaths a day) had simply been heard from random sources, and I had no idea if they were actually founded or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is: Does rabies in fact kill practically 100% of people who contract it, with around 100 deaths per day and only a single- or double-digit number of people having survived it &lt;strong&gt;after symptoms developed&lt;/strong&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Claim: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf2bObJGFkg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf2bObJGFkg&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: It would also be interesting to learn what percentage of people who are vaccinated still die from rabies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25619" LastEditorUserId="25619" LastEditDate="2015-05-21T08:32:21.643" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T08:32:21.643" Title="Does rabies have an almost 100% mortality rate with around 160 deaths per day?" Tags="|medical-science|mortality|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27727" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-15T10:15:47.323" Score="9" ViewCount="1349" Body="&lt;p&gt;A friend online showed a picture that said &quot;Half of all domestic violence is perpetrated by women&quot; and referenced a paper called &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/V71-Straus_Thirty-Years-Denying-Evidence-PV_10.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Thirty Years of Denying the Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence: Implications for Prevention and Treatment&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also referenced the following as evidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/sep/05/men-victims-domestic-violence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Guardian: More than 40% of domestic violence victims are male, report reveals&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.medicaldaily.com/domestic-violence-against-men-women-more-likely-be-intimate-terrorists-controlling-behavior-290662&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Medical Daily: Domestic Violence Against Men: Women More Likely To Be 'Intimate Terrorists' With Controlling Behavior In Relationships&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that half of physical domestic abuse is perpetrated by women?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21903" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-16T03:09:31.843" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T03:09:31.843" Title="Is half of all domestic violence committed by women against men?" Tags="|gender|violence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-05-16T03:56:37.833" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27728" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27727" CreationDate="2015-05-15T10:25:38.767" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;This article performed by the University of Bristol; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bristol.ac.uk/sps/people/marianne-hester/pub/9852445&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.bristol.ac.uk/sps/people/marianne-hester/pub/9852445&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nr-foundation.org.uk/downloads/Who-Does-What-to-Whom.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.nr-foundation.org.uk/downloads/Who-Does-What-to-Whom.pdf&lt;/a&gt; seems to disagree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In it's conclusion it includes this statement: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A vastly greater number of incidents were attributed to men, as&#xA;  either sole or dual perpetrators.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I've found multiple uses of the term &quot;Gender Symmetry&quot; which means to say that actually there are an even number of female and male perpetrators. &lt;a href=&quot;http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/8/11/1332.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/8/11/1332.short&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/12/11/1003.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/12/11/1003.short&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems to me that perhaps there is a bit of ambiguousness. There seems to be multiple studies supporting gender symmetry in abuse but then multiple studies that show the majority of abusers to be male.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25619" LastEditorUserId="25619" LastEditDate="2015-05-15T11:20:38.410" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T11:20:38.410" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27730" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-15T13:18:51.190" Score="2" ViewCount="461" Body="&lt;p&gt;This suggest that someone from european lineages, can tell its origin from the shape of its feet. Does it really work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/0RshNm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16332" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T01:34:41.947" Title="Can we tell our origin based on foot phenotype?" Tags="|biology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ClosedDate="2015-05-15T16:26:58.587" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27732" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27726" CreationDate="2015-05-15T14:14:59.463" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Rabies/Pages/Treatment.aspx&quot;&gt;one of a number of sites about rabies treatment&lt;/a&gt;. The page explains the perhaps surprising statistics.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have been exposed to rabies, for example bitten by a rabid&#xA;animal, but have not developed rabies symptoms, the the usual&#xA;treatment is a rabies vaccine course and/or rabies immunoglobin.&#xA;Rabies treatments when you have not developed symptoms are very successful.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If you have symptoms of rabies, treatment usually focuses on making you as comfortable as possible. This is because rabies is almost always fatal when it reaches this stage. There is an experimental treatment called the Milwaulkee Protocol, but it has been effective in only three cases where symptoms have developed.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This explains the situation. Your 100% fatality quote is accurate, provided you are talking about only people who have symptoms. &lt;strong&gt;Rabies is indeed almost always fatal once it reaches the symptoms stage. Only 3 people are known to have survived after symptoms. With prompt treatment (i.e. vaccination) as soon as exposure is suspected it is highly curable.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People are sometimes confused because the rabies vaccine is most given as a treatment, i.e. after exposure, and not before exposure like most vaccines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/jeanna-giese-rabies-survivor/&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rabies is 100 percent preventable with vaccinations if patients receive them before the onset of symptoms&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2015-05-15T16:15:27.720" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T16:15:27.720" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27733" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27726" CreationDate="2015-05-15T14:16:15.043" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/scitable/blog/viruses101/is_rabies_really_100_fatal&quot;&gt;According to the website of the journal Nature&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jeanna Geise was only 15 years old when she became the world's first known survivor of Rabies without receiving any vaccination. Her miraculous survival has not only challenged a time-honored scientific fact, but has also brought about a new method of Rabies treatment, known as the Milwaukee Protocol. It had long been thought that Rabies is 100% fatal in humans who are not vaccinated. However, to the surprise of the medical world, Jeanna showed that fatal the virus can be beaten sans vaccination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So prior to 2004, the disease was 100% fatal without receiving a vaccination. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &quot;receiving a vaccination&quot; includes receiving a vaccination after being bitten by the rabid animal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For a recent (April 2015) update see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899707115001059&quot;&gt;Temporal evolution on MRI of successful treatment of rabies&lt;/a&gt; which explains 3 people have now survived, having received the Milwaukee protocol, while 26 have died despite such treatment.  So still very fatal, but not 100% fatal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As far as deaths, an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.niaid.nih.gov/news/events/meetings/Viral%20Infections/Documents/wilde.pdf&quot;&gt;NIH presentation&lt;/a&gt; states over 55,000 deaths per year world wide, specifically including:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;India 19,200&lt;br&gt;&#xA;China 2,217&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Rest of Asia 9,328&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Africa  23,979&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-05-15T18:09:11.713" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T18:09:11.713" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27734" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27723" CreationDate="2015-05-15T14:25:34.430" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot confirm the numbers in the original image, although some of the recent numbers appear to be roughly consistent with &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/eqstats.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;USGS numbers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the general point seems to be correct: the number of earthquakes has been increasing per year.  But, the pastor is not correct: the number of &quot;great&quot; earthquakes is not increasing (see the response by Oddthinking).  That is, the number of small earthquakes has been increasing by a large factor in some areas, almost certainly due to humans (wastewater injection wells from fracking, etc), while the number of large earthquakes has not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/induced/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this USGS site&lt;/a&gt; shows that the rate of earthquakes from much of the US was roughly constant until the year 2000, but has been rapidly increasing since then.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Utwbl.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wichita.ogs.ou.edu/documents/OGS_Statement-Earthquakes-4-21-15.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This study&lt;/a&gt; from Oklahoma, a hotbed of fracking, concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The seismicity rate in 2013 was 70 times greater than the background seismicity rate observed in Oklahoma prior to 2008.  While unlikely, this rate could have been potentially   explained by natural variations in earthquake rates from naturally occurring swarms.  The   seismicity rate is now about 600 times greater than the background seismicity rate, and is very unlikely the result of a natural process.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not exactly clear on how these large, local increases in earthquakes would change the global number of earthquakes, but it should make the original claim plausible.    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20695" LastEditorUserId="20695" LastEditDate="2015-05-15T18:07:25.603" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T18:07:25.603" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27735" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27726" CreationDate="2015-05-15T14:33:42.543" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Googleing &quot;Rabies kills 160 people daily&quot; returns multiple results that seem to reference the same study. However good old BBC actually linked to it thankfully. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;loss of human lives (approximately 59,000 annually)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(April 16 2015, Estimating the Global Burden of Endemic Canine Rabies, multiple authors) &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0003709&quot;&gt;http://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0003709&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding the number of actual survivors Reading through the Milwaukee Protocol article on Wikipedia produced this result:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some critics say those survivors (5 out of 36 survival rate)...&#xA;  despite no documented survivors before them&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee_protocol#Survival_hypotheses&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milwaukee_protocol#Survival_hypotheses&lt;/a&gt; This seems to suggest that there are 5 known survivors but it's only implied and doesn't have proper citation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Look at DavePhD's and DJClayworth's answers for information about fatality rates.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25619" LastEditorUserId="25619" LastEditDate="2015-05-15T14:38:43.823" LastActivityDate="2015-05-15T14:38:43.823" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27738" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-15T23:30:27.723" Score="2" ViewCount="807" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a pseudoclaim that the oxygen level in the air drops at night and in the early morning (before dawn), and that the change is of sufficient magnitude to influence health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26270" LastEditorUserId="26270" LastEditDate="2015-05-16T03:59:45.697" LastActivityDate="2015-05-16T03:59:45.697" Title="Does the oxygen level in the air drop at night or in the early morning?" Tags="|medical-science|environmental-health|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-05-16T03:01:26.327" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27740" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27632" CreationDate="2015-05-16T15:05:37.153" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;As far as US Special Forces training, the most efficient means to silently kill using a knife would be from behind, in between the ribs puncturing the lungs, using the off hand to cover the mouth and lower the fighter to the ground. Or through the use of a garrote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knife throwing isn't practical in use for many reasons. Limited range and supply, along withe the fact that if you have time to aim, you have time to close the distance or engage in a different means. Any hasty use of a throwing knife greatly decreases your chance of striking a killing blow, and the last thing you need is a piece of metal clanking around if you miss, while trying to maintain noise discipline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Historically, however Spetsnaz have been rumored to use spring-loaded knives as projectiles (aside from Deadliest Warrior, not much historical data is provided on this), however it was doubtfully intended for silent purposes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spetsnaz Ballistic Knife &lt;a href=&quot;http://deadliestwarrior.wikia.com/wiki/Ballistic_Knife&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://deadliestwarrior.wikia.com/wiki/Ballistic_Knife&lt;/a&gt;; Not to be confused with &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS-2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRS-2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user26274" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-05-17T09:59:09.040" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T09:59:09.040" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27741" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27743" CreationDate="2015-05-16T22:11:37.077" Score="33" ViewCount="3655" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/Kye2oX-b39E?t=10m15s&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;talk show&lt;/a&gt; Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, John Oliver was arguing against the death penalty and showed the following image claiming that the death penalty cost more than $300m per execution in California:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zONT8.png&quot; alt=&quot;Costs of capital punishment in California. Total costs since 1978: $4 billion; costs per execution: $308 million. Source: Los Angeles Times, 2011&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Costs of capital punishment in California.&lt;br /&gt;Total costs since 1978: $4 billion&lt;br /&gt;Cost per execution: $308 million&lt;br /&gt;Source: Los Angeles Times, 2011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2017-01-05T08:40:20.593" LastActivityDate="2017-03-25T15:08:54.937" Title="Does the death penalty in California cost more than $300m per execution?" Tags="|united-states|criminology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27742" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16122" CreationDate="2015-05-17T00:37:11.083" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The professor, Brian Ford, included this claim in his book, &lt;em&gt;Secret Weapons: Death Rays, Doodlebugs and Churchill's Golden Goose&lt;/em&gt;. But that book is not a reliable source. I personally know it to have included a hoax copied from Wikipedia, the non-existent &amp;quot;Japanese death squad&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Unit 773&amp;quot;. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=U8WcAwAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA157&amp;amp;lpg=PA157&amp;amp;dq=%22Unit%20773%22%20%22Japanese%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=YdiWNElyZr&amp;amp;sig=gQVw0Ch1s7NlI_Gf556uZfA_KQE&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=7x_EU4OAIY2KyASXt4GoCA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22Unit%20773%22%20%22Japanese%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;page&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual source of the claim is Stanley Lovell's 1963 book &lt;em&gt;Of Spies and Stratagems&lt;/em&gt;. He describes the plot in a jocular tone (quite appropriate to 1963, actually), and it's not clear how seriously it was actually executed, or if he is in fact describing real events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My favorite attack on Adolf Hitler was a glandular approach. America’s top diagnosticians and gland experts agreed with me that he was definitely close to the male-female line. His poor emotional control, his violent passions, his selection of companions like Röhm, all led me to feel that a push to the female side might do wonders. The hope was that his moustache would fall off and his voice become soprano.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hitler was a vegetarian. At Berchtesgaden, the vegetable garden that supplied his melodramatic Eagle’s Nest on the rocky peak had to have gardeners. A plan to get an O.S.S. man there, or an anti-Nazi workman, was approved. I supplied female sex hormones and, just for variety’s sake, now and then a carbamate or other quietus medication, all to be injected into der Führer’s carrots, beets or whatever went up to his larder.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since he survived, I can only assume that the gardener took our money and threw the syringes and medications into the nearest thicket. Either that or Hitler had a big turnover in his “tasters”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless, we have to conclude that there was in fact such a plot, because the guy in charge says so!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T00:42:40.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27743" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27741" CreationDate="2015-05-17T05:12:16.250" Score="44" Body="&lt;p&gt;That image sources &quot;Los Angeles Times, 2011&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I assume that is referring to &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/20/local/la-me-adv-death-penalty-costs-20110620&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Death penalty costs California $184 million a year, study says&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, published by the Los Angeles Times on June 20, 2011:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Taxpayers have spent more than $4 billion on capital punishment in California since it was reinstated in 1978, or about $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out since then, according to a comprehensive analysis of the death penalty's costs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study counted &quot;the additional costs of capital trials, enhanced security on death row and legal representation for the condemned&quot; and found that these &quot;added $184 million to the budget each year&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study referred to by the LA times, and the ultimate source of this claim is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/LoyolaCalifCosts.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Executing the Will of the Voters?: &#xA;A roadmap to mend or end the California legislature's multi-billion dollar death penalty debacle&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, by Alarcon and Mitchell, 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Starting at p. S99, they outline the items included in the extra costs they attribute to California's capital punishment program. At p. S110, they give a summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pre-trial investigation and trial costs: 1.94 billion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Direct appeal and state &lt;em&gt;habeas corpus&lt;/em&gt;: 925 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Federal &lt;em&gt;habeas corpus&lt;/em&gt;: 156 million&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Costs of incarceration: 1.02 billion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Total: 4.04 billion&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These results roughly replicate the findings of a previous study by the &lt;em&gt;California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice&lt;/em&gt;. As reported in the Los Angeles Times (&lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jul/01/local/me-death1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Death row report sees failed system&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, July 1, 2008),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The state spends about $138 million a year on the death penalty and has executed 13 people over the last three decades&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In comparison with a penalty of life imprisonment without parole, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice found that (Alarcon and Mitchell, 2011. Footnote 9):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;abolishing capital punishment and replacing it with a system that imposes a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for those now eligible for the death penalty would reduce the costs now incurred by the state of California from $137.7 million per year to $11.5 million per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To help understand where some of the excess cost of the death penalty system comes from, see the &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://digitalcommons.law.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&amp;amp;context=ncippubs&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice Final Report&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Among other things, it mentions an Indiana study that found &quot;the cost of a death penalty trial and direct appeal alone is more than five times the cost of a life without parole trial and direct appeal&quot;. There is no right to appointed council for &lt;em&gt;habeus corpus&lt;/em&gt; petitions in life without parole cases. If instead of discretionary death penalties there were mandatory life without parole sentences, there would be no appeal available based on ineffective council during the sentencing phase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The final report presents a comparison of the costs per year incurred under the current death penalty system and a proposed alternative of life without parole as the maximum penalty. (p. 147):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/3SvDl.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, in the graphic in question, &quot;Cost per execution&quot; is not what the actual physical execution of an execution costs. It is the cost of the program divided by the number of executions that have happened.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T05:07:45.157" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T05:07:45.157" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27745" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27747" CreationDate="2015-05-17T10:48:16.407" Score="37" ViewCount="4732" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been several reports of &quot;raining fish&quot; where fish fall from the sky (usually during a rain storm). An example such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/wild/stranger-than-nature/videos/sky-fish/&quot;&gt;this 2010 video from National Geographic&lt;/a&gt; seems unlikely at best.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this really happened, or is it a popular hoax?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If it happened, was the associated rain salty (sea water)? Were the fish still alive?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26286" LastEditorUserId="26286" LastEditDate="2015-05-20T02:40:16.570" LastActivityDate="2022-01-02T02:31:40.730" Title="Has it ever rained fish?" Tags="|zoology|water|weather|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27746" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27748" CreationDate="2015-05-17T11:49:29.237" Score="2" ViewCount="654" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.campaignfreedom.org/external-relations/super-pacs/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Center for Competitive Politics&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One major misconception about Super PACs is the incorrect belief that they do not disclose their donors. In fact, all Super PACs are required by law to disclose their donors. This disclosure includes the name of the individual, group, or other entity that is contributing, the date on which the contribution occurred, and the amount given. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that true? Can individuals look up a Super PAC's donors as they can with regular PACs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T04:21:55.173" LastActivityDate="2015-05-18T04:21:55.173" Title="Do Super PACs have to report their donors?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27747" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27745" CreationDate="2015-05-17T12:21:16.830" Score="45" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As published in &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/content/109/2834/402.1.citation&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Do Fish Fall from the Sky&lt;/a&gt;?&amp;quot; Science vol. 109 page 402,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On October 23, 1947, biologist &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/bajkov_ad.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alexander Dimitrivitch Bajkov, PhD &lt;/a&gt; was eating breakfast with his wife at a restaurant in Marksville, Louisiana when the waitress told them that fish were falling from the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...J. E. Gremillion, and two merchants, E. A. Blanchard and J. M. Blouillette, were struck by falling fish as they walked to their places of business at 7:45 am.  There were spots in the vicinity of the bank (a half block from the restaurant) averaging one fish per square yard.  Automobiles and trucks were running over them. Fish also fell on roofs of houses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They were freshwater fish native to local waters, and&#xA;belonging to the following species: Large-mouth black&#xA;bass (Micropterus salmoides), goggle-eye (Chaenobryttuis&#xA;coronarius), two species of sunfish (Lepomis), several&#xA;species of minnows and hickory shad (Pomolobuts medfocris).&#xA;The latter species were the most common. I [Bajkov] personally collected from Main Street and several yards on Monroe Street, a large jar of perfect specimens, and&#xA;preserved them in Formalin, in order to distribute them&#xA;among various museums...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fish that fell in Marksville were absolutely fresh,&#xA;and were fit for human consumption. The area in which&#xA;they fell was approximately 1,000 feet long and about 75&#xA;or 80 feet wide, extending in a north-southerly direction,&#xA;and was covered unevenly by fish. The actual falling of&#xA;the fish occurred in somewhat short intervals, during&#xA;foggy and comparatively calm weather. The velocity of&#xA;the wind on the ground did not exceed eight miles per&#xA;hour. The New Orleans weather bureau had no report of any large tornado, or updrift, in the vicinity of Marksille at that time. However, James Nelson Gowanloch,&#xA;chief biologist for the Louisiana Department of Wild&#xA;Life and Fisheries, and I had noticed the presence of&#xA;numerous small tornadoes, or &amp;quot;devil dusters&amp;quot; the day&#xA;before the &amp;quot;rain of fish &amp;quot; in Marksville. Fish rains have&#xA;nearly always been described as being accompanied by&#xA;violent thunderstorms and heavy rains. This, however,&#xA;was not the case in Marksville...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bajkov goes on to refer to the work of E.W. Gudger who published four articles describing 78 instances of fish falling from the sky, and concludes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no reason for anyone to devaluate the scientific&#xA;evidence. Many people have never seen tornadoes, but&#xA;they do not doubt them, and they accept the fact that&#xA;wind can lift and carry heavy objects. Why can 't fish be&#xA;lifted with water and carried by the whirlwind?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of the Gudger's work to which Bajkov refers is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00222932908672931?journalCode=tnah16&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;More Rains of Fishes&lt;/a&gt; Journal of Natural History Series 10, vol. 3, pages 1-26. Gudger's title is given as associate of ichthyology, American Museum of Natural History.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article was a follow up on Grudger's &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=45o1AQAAMAAJ&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PA1&amp;amp;dq=Gudger%20%22rains%20of%20fishes%22&amp;amp;ots=z2uKPTcq9E&amp;amp;sig=iKd0-P7EkhKi-ujNFQA-FtX08zQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Gudger%20%22rains%20of%20fishes%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rains of Fishes&lt;/a&gt; Journal of the American Museum of Natural History vol. 21, pages 607-619&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,887729,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Time Magazine 17 November 1947&lt;/a&gt; reported the fish falling in Marksville with only one sentence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Law of Compensation: In Marksville, La., hundreds of little fish inexplicably fell from the sky on poultryless Thursday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also the United States Fish and Wildlife Service publication &lt;a href=&quot;http://spo.nmfs.noaa.gov/Fishery%20Leaflets/leaflet513.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rains of Fishes&lt;/a&gt; for more fish falling events and references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;update:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;29 December 2021, another fish raining event in Texarkana, Texas  &lt;a href=&quot;https://local12.com/news/offbeat/video-captures-fish-falling-from-the-sky-in-texas-terarkana-storm-raining-hailing-windy-national-weather-service-water-spout-cincinnati-ohio&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://local12.com/news/offbeat/video-captures-fish-falling-from-the-sky-in-texas-terarkana-storm-raining-hailing-windy-national-weather-service-water-spout-cincinnati-ohio&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2022-01-01T17:10:25.547" LastActivityDate="2022-01-01T17:10:25.547" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27748" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27746" CreationDate="2015-05-17T14:34:43.120" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Super PACs must disclose their donors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee#Super_PACs&quot;&gt;Super PAC&lt;/a&gt; is a term widely used to describe independent-expenditure-only PACs that were started in response to &lt;em&gt;Citizens United&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Citzens United&lt;/em&gt;, held that limitations on corporate independent expenditures were unconstitutional, but also that &quot;the disclaimer and disclosure requirements [for those independent expenditures] are valid&quot; (Citizens United 2010, Bauerly and Hallstrom 2012).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With the advent of the Internet, prompt disclosure of expenditures can provide shareholders and citizens with the information needed to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One site that lets you easily browse Super PAC donors is &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/superpacs.php&quot;&gt;OpenSecrets.org&lt;/a&gt;. They mention:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Super PACs must [...] report their donors to the Federal Election Commission on a monthly or quarterly basis -- the Super PAC's choice -- as a traditional PAC would.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some donors donate via an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_liability_company&quot;&gt;LLC&lt;/a&gt;, which makes it more difficult to trace a donation back to an individual. (Potter, 2012) For example, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/pacgave2.php?cycle=2014&amp;amp;cmte=C00484642&quot;&gt;HFNWA LLC donated $1,000,000 to the Senate Majority PAC&lt;/a&gt;. It is possible to connect that donation back to Franklin L. Haney, but only through additional investigation. (Fenton 2014, HFNWA LLC Registration)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I recommend reading (Bauerly and Hallstrom 2012) for more details and for reasons why disclosure doesn't always result in transparency. Bauerly is the chairperson of the Federal Elections Commission and Hallstrom is her chief counsel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;References&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bauerly, Cynthia L., and Eric C. Hallstrom. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://fec.gov/members/statements/square_pegs_nyu_j_of_legis_pub_policy.pdf&quot;&gt;Square Pegs: The Challenges for Existing Federal Campaign Finance Disclosure Laws in the Age of the Super PAC.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; NYUJ Legis. &amp;amp; Pub. Pol'y 15 (2012): 329.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZS.html&quot;&gt;Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, 558 U.S. 2010 (Supreme Court 2010).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fenton, Jacob. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/10/29/corporate-donors-still-prefer-the-shadows/&quot;&gt;Corporate donors still prefer the shadows&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Sunlight Foundation. 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sos.arkansas.gov/corps/search_corps.php?DETAIL=387125&amp;amp;corp_type_id=&amp;amp;corp_name=HFNWA&amp;amp;agent_search=&amp;amp;agent_city=&amp;amp;agent_state=&amp;amp;filing_number=&amp;amp;cmd=&quot;&gt;HFNWA LLC Registration&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. Arkansas Secretary of State. Filed 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Potter, Trevor. &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/five-myths-about-super-pacs/2012/04/13/gIQAGPnEFT_story.html&quot;&gt;Five myths about super PACs&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. The Washington Post. 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2015-05-17T15:35:45.257" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T15:35:45.257" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27749" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27750" CreationDate="2015-05-17T16:07:11.527" Score="12" ViewCount="10336" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many people believe that a run-up helps them to jump higher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(While it seems natural to do this, I'm having trouble believing that horizontal speed can help one jump vertically.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26287" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T09:05:02.833" LastActivityDate="2020-03-10T14:55:01.977" Title="Does getting a running start increase your vertical jump?" Tags="|physiology|physics|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27750" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27749" CreationDate="2015-05-17T16:53:14.627" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See Young, Warren, G. Wilson, and C. Byrne. &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/12590361_Relationship_between_strength_qualities_and_performance_in_standing_and_run-up_vertical_jumps&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Relationship between strength qualities and performance in standing and run-up vertical jumps.&lt;/a&gt;&quot; The Journal of sports medicine and physical fitness 39 (2000): 285-93.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HqQeb.png&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Subjects were 29 males aged 19 to 34 with at least one year experience in a sport requiring sprinting or jumping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reason why is &lt;em&gt;reactive strength&lt;/em&gt;. (Ball, Nick B., and Sara Zanetti. &quot;Relationship between reactive strength variables in horizontal and vertical drop jumps.&quot; The Journal of Strength &amp;amp; Conditioning Research 26.5 (2012): 1407-1412.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reactive strength is an athlete's ability to use the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stretch_shortening_cycle&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;stretch-shortening cycle (SSC)&lt;/a&gt; to increase subsequent force production&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A drop jump is a common way to display and assess reactive strength.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Drop jumping is a plyometric activity that involves stepping from a predetermined height, landing, and immediately performing a maximum jump.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A runup similarly allows a jumper to make use of the stretch shortening cycle to increase subsequent force production.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From (Young &lt;em&gt;et al.&lt;/em&gt; 2000):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;reactive strength is relatively more important for jumping from a run-up than for the standing VJ&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, not everyone is able to make effective use of the stretch shortening cycle — some peoples' drop jumps and runup jumps are similar in height to their standing jumps.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2015-05-19T04:58:15.963" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T04:58:15.963" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27751" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27715" CreationDate="2015-05-17T18:37:36.890" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;None of the studies indexed by PubMed, a search engine of published articles maintained The United States National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, corroborate the original claim.&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; Several studies, &lt;strong&gt;suggest the opposite effect&lt;/strong&gt;, mostly related to the caffeine content of chocolate. These include the following findings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;2002 study published in &lt;em&gt;Sleep Medicine&lt;/em&gt; reports on &quot;chocolate as a possible new precipitating agent for RBD [REM sleep behavior disorder] and comment on a possible mechanism of action in this disorder.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another study finds that caffeine intake, including chocolate is &quot;associated with lower sleep duration among 13-year-old adolescents.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Another study finds that &quot;caffeine is present in many products consumed daily, including coffee, soda, and chocolate, and is known to delay the onset of sleepiness and cause sleep disturbances.&quot;&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please note that this answer does not constitute medical advice. It is only meant to summarize published research related to the original claim and limited to the cited sources. Consult your physician about what these results may mean for your health.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Search terms &lt;code&gt;chocolate AND sleep&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;chocolate AND &quot;night terrors&quot;&lt;/code&gt;, &lt;code&gt;chocolate AND nightmares&lt;/code&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Vorona, Robert Daniel, and J. Catesby Ware. &quot;Exacerbation of REM Sleep Behavior Disorder by Chocolate Ingestion: A Case Report.&quot; &lt;em&gt;Sleep Medicine&lt;/em&gt; 3, no. 4 (July 2002): 365–67.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In this study chocolate contributed to 5.1% of median intake of caffeine. Lodato, Francesca, Joana Araújo, Henrique Barros, Carla Lopes, Antonella Agodi, Martina Barchitta, and Elisabete Ramos. &quot;Caffeine Intake Reduces Sleep Duration in Adolescents.&quot; &lt;em&gt;Nutrition Research&lt;/em&gt; (New York, N.Y.) 33, no. 9 (September 2013): 726–32.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Daniello, Allison, Elizabeth Fievisohn, and T. Stan Gregory. “Modeling the Effects of Caffeine on the Sleep/ Wake Cycle.” &lt;em&gt;Biomedical Sciences Instrumentation&lt;/em&gt; 48 (2012): 73–80.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11209" LastEditorUserId="11209" LastEditDate="2015-05-17T19:28:47.957" LastActivityDate="2015-05-17T19:28:47.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27755" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-18T12:53:26.330" Score="6" ViewCount="234" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had a recent discussion where it was claimed that one's diet has a huge effect on the intensity of allergic reactions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was wondering if food which is unrelated to one's allergies (e.g. eating peanuts and having a peanut allergy does not count) can still have an effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some more sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://20fourcarrots.wordpress.com/2014/10/09/keep-your-allergies-in-check-with-these-naturally-anti-histamine-foods/&quot;&gt;20 Four Carrots blog&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you’ve got allergies (food or environmental), however, histamine-containing foods can trigger symptoms. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.everydayhealth.com/allergy-photos/allergies-and-food.aspx&quot;&gt;Every Day Health&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;10 Eating Tips to Help You Minimize Allergy Symptoms&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25617" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T16:40:15.480" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T07:58:20.857" Title="Does diet affect the intensity of allergies?" Tags="|allergies|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27756" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27757" CreationDate="2015-05-18T13:07:40.457" Score="17" ViewCount="20476" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the following ad, a trainee German coastguard is shown the equipment, and then left to his own devices. He receives a message from a ship which is sinking, saying &quot;Mayday, mayday, we are sinking&quot;, to which the coastguard replies &quot;What are you thinking about?&quot;. The ad ends with the Berlitz logo, and the apt slogan &quot;Language for Life&quot; underneath.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmOTpIVxji8&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmOTpIVxji8&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The ad is regarded as real by the piece &lt;a href=&quot;http://finance.yahoo.com/news/berlitz-had-learn-language-save-165409569.html&quot;&gt;Berlitz had to learn a new language to save its business&lt;/a&gt;, an excerpt from &quot;The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business&quot; by Rita Gunther McGrath:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The company has also taken a fresh approach to its brand, using humor&#xA;  to promote the idea of language proficiency. In one viral video with&#xA;  millions of YouTube hits, a member of the German Coast Guard is seen&#xA;  responding to a desperate plea on the radio:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“May Day, May Day, we are sinking!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Hallo—Zis is ze German Coast Guard.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“We’re sinking, we’re sinking!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“What . . . what are you sinking about?”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The scene cuts immediately to the phrase “Improve Your English,” set&#xA;  against a backdrop of stirring music and the tag line “Berlitz,&#xA;  Language for Life.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was this ad created by/for Berlitz Corporation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-18T13:57:17.910" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T03:55:31.450" Title="Is this ad with a German coast guard mistaking &quot;sinking&quot; with &quot;thinking&quot; by Berlitz?" Tags="|media|advertising|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27757" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27756" CreationDate="2015-05-18T13:56:03.493" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;The advertisement was created for Berlitz Corporation and made by &lt;strong&gt;BTS United&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the following &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wpp.com/wpp/companies/bts-united/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BTS&lt;/strong&gt; has been creating award winning work in Norway for over 50 years. A testament to the quality of their work lies in the long-terms partnerships with clients. They are most famous for creating one of the most awarded viral ads of all time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you go through the main page of their official website &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.btsunited.com&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;btsunited.com&lt;/a&gt;, you'll find the official version of the advertisement uploaded on their website:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/71OCs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see Berlitz is the Client. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, bestadsontv.com has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bestadsontv.com/ad/1479/Berlitz-language-center-Mayday&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;insights&lt;/a&gt; and more information on the production and the creation of the video:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Title:&lt;/strong&gt; The german coastguard&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Client:&lt;/strong&gt; Berlitz&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Agency:&lt;/strong&gt; BTS United, Oslo&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Production:&lt;/strong&gt; Motion Blur, Oslo&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Country:&lt;/strong&gt; Norway&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Uploaded:&lt;/strong&gt; 3 February, 2006&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Credits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Director:&lt;/strong&gt; Nic &amp;amp; Sune&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Creative Director:&lt;/strong&gt; Thorbjørn Naug&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Art Director:&lt;/strong&gt; Thorbjørn Naug&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Copyrighter:&lt;/strong&gt; Paal Sparre Enger&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Producer:&lt;/strong&gt; Espen Horn&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional credits:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Account Director:&lt;/strong&gt; Bror Falck-Paulsen&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;Editor:&lt;/strong&gt; Christian Hvatum&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-19T03:55:31.450" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T03:55:31.450" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27758" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27762" CreationDate="2015-05-18T20:26:46.513" Score="10" ViewCount="766" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3084260/What-strange-sound-sky-Noise-heard-globe-nearly-DECADE-explanation.html?ito=embedded&quot;&gt;According to this Daily Mail article&lt;/a&gt;, there have been recordings of trumpet like noises from the atmosphere. However, nobody knows the cause of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, as it is from the Daily Mail, I am taking it with a pinch of salt, as usually their articles are a little exaggerated. Hence the question&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence or official explanation for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23097" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T04:49:40.580" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T04:49:40.580" Title="Is there any scientific explanation for this trumpet noise from the atmosphere?" Tags="|geography|sound|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27762" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27758" CreationDate="2015-05-19T00:29:43.670" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;A similar type of unexpected large sound, the &lt;strong&gt;Seneca Guns&lt;/strong&gt; or &lt;strong&gt;Barisal Guns&lt;/strong&gt;, has been recorded for centuries. While there is no firm explanation, they are believed to be the result of the atmosphere unexpectedly magnifying loud sounds, such as thunder, ship cannons, or, yes, heavy machinery. While it is not clear how this hypothesis could be tested, most other worldly explanations -- earthquakes, continental shelf movements -- have been ruled out. It is especially notable that these sounds most often happen in &lt;strong&gt;summer&lt;/strong&gt;, and rarely if ever happen in winter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.coastalreview.org/2012/08/seneca-guns-the-booms-of-summer/&quot;&gt;Jack C. Hall, environmental studies professor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/waves/barisal.htm&quot;&gt;James B. Calvert, engineering professor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An important data point comes from Dr. Calvert's essay on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An apparently different phenomenon was first noticed in 1666, during&#xA;  an engagement of the English and Dutch fleets in the Channel on 1&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;June&lt;/strong&gt;. The sounds of the guns were heard in London, but not on the&#xA;  South Downs, Deal or Dover, all points between the battle and London.&#xA;  This was recorded in the diaries of John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys as a&#xA;  remarkable occurrence, that the winds brought to them the noise of the&#xA;  guns, but not to the people in between.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while there is by no means a firm explanation for this, unexplained loud noises have existed for many centuries, and the atmosphere is known to be a large, anomalous, and complex thing that produces strange sights and noises.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T00:29:43.670" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27763" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-19T13:40:19.240" Score="3" ViewCount="4363" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unexplained_sounds#Julia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unexplained &quot;Julia&quot; sound&lt;/a&gt; is described as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Julia is a sound recorded on March 1, 1999 by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA said the source of the sound was most likely a large iceberg that had run aground off Antarctica. It was sufficiently loud to be heard over the entire Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array. The unidentified sound lasted for about 15 seconds. Due to the uncertainty of the arrival azimuth, the point of origin could be between Bransfield Straits and Cape Adare.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you Google for information on this you invariably find a whole slew of web-sites that claim &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thecryptocrew.com/2014/05/iceberg-or-monster.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;something along the lines of&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The photo and all the information regarding this is all &lt;strong&gt;hush-hush and classified&lt;/strong&gt;, but often explained away as underwater volcanic activity or a large iceberg scratching against the ocean floor. But pictures rumored to have been taken by Nasa’s Apollo AA35 suggest something more sinister.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to suggest that anything about the Julia sound or its cause is classified?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same vein, how could these web-sites and others could have determined that any classified evidence exists? (E.g. are there any reports with redactions?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1792" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T13:40:19.240" Title="Is anything about the 1999 NOAA &quot;Julia&quot; recording prevented from publication as being classified?" Tags="|government|sound|oceanography|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27765" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-19T16:22:11.430" Score="13" ViewCount="4577" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people claim that if one comes across a &lt;em&gt;dead venomous snake&lt;/em&gt; one should always cut of and &lt;em&gt;bury the head&lt;/em&gt; as otherwise wasps could reach the venom and add it to their own stinger, for example &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answers.com/Q/Why_do_you_bury_snake_heads&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Answers.com answer&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You bury a venomous snake's head because other animals or insects like wasps, bees and mosquitoes that are attracted to liquid like substances such as water are drawn to the venom. Wasps in particular will use mud and the &lt;strong&gt;venom to build their nests&lt;/strong&gt;. The venom will remain in the wasp's system, causing them to be poisonous and &lt;strong&gt;deadly if they sting you&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now to me this seems very strange as most animals that consume something break down all the proteins, neutralize any acids and dilute anything left over, but people who make those claims insist that this was similar to putting a white flower in a vase with blue dye turning blue as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this is a myth?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22810" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2015-05-20T06:35:23.480" LastActivityDate="2016-07-22T17:32:13.700" Title="Can a wasp ingest and use a snake's venom?" Tags="|zoology|entomology|toxicology|snakes|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27766" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27768" CreationDate="2015-05-19T16:44:59.160" Score="16" ViewCount="1761" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this article in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-new-axis-of-evil-canada-one-third-of-american-8th-graders-think-we-live-in-a-dictatorship&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Post&lt;/a&gt; 33% of American 8th graders believe that Canada is run by a dictatorship:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In recent results from the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress — billed as the Nation’s Report Card — &lt;strong&gt;fully 33 per cent of American 8th graders said Canada, Australia and France are dictatorships of one kind or another&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the following claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorUserId="22266" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2022-11-06T02:10:16.673" LastActivityDate="2022-11-06T02:10:16.673" Title="Do one third of American 8th graders think that Canada is run by a dictatorship?" Tags="|united-states|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27767" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2311" CreationDate="2015-05-19T17:50:17.537" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;This question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any scientific evidence to back up this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Historically, yes, flour has be recommended by the medical/scientific community as a burn treatment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 1829 &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=_37o9T8yinkC&amp;amp;pg=PA467&amp;amp;dq=flour%20burn%20treatment&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=7WtbVeCwGqTmsASp5IGADg&amp;amp;ved=0CEsQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=flour%20burn%20treatment&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CASES OF BURNS TREATED BY THE APPLICATION OF FLOUR&lt;/a&gt; Monthly Journal of Foreign Medicine, Volume 3, page 467-468 (reproducing an article from the London Medical and Physical Journal):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. B scalded the back of his hand and finger with steam.  He consulted me four days later....By applying flour every hour, in less than two days the swelling, inflammation and ulceration were completely cured...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mrs. H ... accidently set fire to her clothes...On the free application of flour, the patient ceased to moan, the spirits revived, and she expressed the greatest relief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the 2009 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305417908003525&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A review of first aid treatments for burn injuries&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By 1901, the recommendations for first aid treatment of burns/scalds were clearly segregated depending on wound depth [37], with treatment of flour, whiting or powdered chalk recommended for burns where the skin was “merely reddened”,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it continues&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wide array of different treatments used probably stems from the fact that a raw fresh burn exposed to the air is incredibly painful and simply by covering it (with anything), pain may be relieved to some extent, giving a perceived benefit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;so it is true that the flour would at least provide pain relief in this sense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article concludes, however:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the recommendations regarding the best first aid treatment for burns should be to use cold running tap water (between 2 and 15 °C) and to not use ice or alternative therapies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T18:24:48.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27768" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27766" CreationDate="2015-05-19T18:05:29.677" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;Participants in the 2014 Grade 8 NAEP civics assessment (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/hgc_2014/files/2014_civics_appendix.pdf&quot;&gt;9,100 students&lt;/a&gt;) answered the question &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/hgc_2014/#/civics/question/204&quot;&gt;What do the current governments of Canada, France, and Australia have in common?&lt;/a&gt;&quot; as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;10% - They are controlled by the military.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;54% - They have constitutions that limit their power.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;23% - They have leaders with absolute power.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;12% - They discourage participation by citizens in public affairs.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether that makes 33% as having answered that &quot;Canada, Australia and France are dictatorships of one kind or another&quot; is a matter of opinion. It looks to me like that description of the results aggregates the group that answered &quot;They are controlled by the military&quot; with the group that answered &quot;They have leaders with absolute power&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2015-05-19T18:11:04.090" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T18:11:04.090" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27769" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-17T21:05:53.273" Score="4" ViewCount="280" Body="&lt;p&gt;A recent discussion on the impending referendum in the Republic of Ireland on adding the amendment &quot;Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex&quot; to the constitution led me to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUL-mn0pmks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; by something called the Iona Institute, a pressure group who advocate voting against the amendment. I'm quite removed from American politics so it could be that the debate has played out exactly the same way as it did in the USA, but I've not personally seen the argument framed in exactly that way before.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Iona Institute's argument is summarised in the video as &quot;If you think that a mother's love is unique and irreplaceable, and so is a father's love, then vote 'No' on May 22nd&quot;. My question is: can this viewpoint actually be justified? As someone who is raised by a single parent, my own perspective is obviously likely to be biased, but I'm wondering whether this debate can be settled with evidence rather than opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="Tom" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-10-15T06:22:42.077" LastActivityDate="2015-10-15T06:22:42.077" Title="Are nontraditional family units less likely to produce a well-adjusted child?" Tags="|sexuality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ClosedDate="2015-05-20T00:49:21.367" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27771" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27769" CreationDate="2015-05-19T19:26:32.277" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;The latest information I've seen is that the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12000610&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Regnerus article&lt;/a&gt;, which claimed to prove that children raised by same-sex parents were more prone to be abused, more prone to develop an STI or drug problem, etc, was &lt;a href=&quot;http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/05/biggest-anti-gay-marriage-study-was-debunked.html?mid=facebook_nymag&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;recently challenged&lt;/a&gt; by scientists who claim that, if one removes all relationships of less than five years and what they believe to be spoof answers to the surveys, the results are just about even.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastActivityDate="2015-05-19T19:26:32.277" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27772" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27773" CreationDate="2015-05-19T23:32:06.323" Score="3" ViewCount="1026" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently heard a claim that a new case of dementia is diagnosed every 4 seconds from various resources including &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/features/factfiles/dementia/dementia_facts/en/index2.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;the World Health Organization&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The total number of new cases of dementia each year worldwide is nearly 7.7 million, implying 1 new case every 4 seconds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alzheimersreadingroom.com/2012/09/Alzheimers-Every-Four-Seconds-Worldwide.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alzheimer's Reading Room&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Worldwide someone is diagnosed with dementia every 4 seconds (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alz.co.uk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Alzheimer's Disease International&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is difficult for me to believe. That would mean there are (&lt;code&gt;60 * 60 * 24 / 4 =&lt;/code&gt;) 21,600 new cases of dementia diagnosed every day. Is there any basis for this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26307" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-20T02:09:06.533" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T02:09:06.533" Title="Is a new case of dementia diagnosed every 4 seconds?" Tags="|medical-science|psychology|neurology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27773" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27772" CreationDate="2015-05-19T23:55:50.330" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The source you cite from the WHO is fairly authoritative, so the best I can do is point to other sources that are consistent with that source.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Approximately 469,000 people age 65 or older will develop Alzheimer’s disease in the United States in 2014.&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.alz.org/downloads/Facts_Figures_2014.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.alz.org/downloads/Facts_Figures_2014.pdf&lt;/a&gt; at p.19)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is approximately 1300 / day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The United States population is approximately 1/20 of the world population – naively multiplying gives an estimated world-wide incidence Alzheimer's of approximately 26000 / day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thus the estimate of a diagnosis every 4 seconds is consistent with the incidence of Alzheimer's disease in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The World Alzheimer Report from 2009 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alz.co.uk/research/world-report-2009&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.alz.co.uk/research/world-report-2009&lt;/a&gt;) estimated a slightly lower incidence:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a new case of dementia in the world every seven seconds there is no time to lose.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with 4.6 million new cases annually&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That number is supported by (Ferri, Cleusa P., et al. &amp;quot;Global prevalence of dementia: a Delphi consensus study.&amp;quot; The Lancet 366.9503 (2006): 2112-2117.):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Applying the DISMOD estimated incidence rates, we estimate 4.6 million new cases of dementia every year (about one new case every 7 s).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T00:01:24.030" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27779" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-20T18:06:15.130" Score="13" ViewCount="888" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today's Guardian (the British newspaper) contains this opinion piece from journalist Marina Hyde:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/may/20/slave-deaths-qatar-world-cup-2022-fifa&quot;&gt;The Guardian: How many slave deaths for the Qatar World Cup can Fifa put up with?&lt;/a&gt;, 20 May 2015&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It includes this paragraph:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fifa’s sponsors, though, are deemed more reachable. This week has seen the launch of a campaign by the International Trade Union Confederation, Play Fair Qatar and the NewFifaNow group to shame them with the appalling conditions endured by labourers building tournament infrastructure for 2022. “&lt;strong&gt;As things stand,&lt;/strong&gt;” declares Play Fair Qatar, “&lt;strong&gt;more than 62 workers will die for each game played during the 2022 tournament.&lt;/strong&gt;”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is being made by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tuc.org.uk/international-issues/countries/qatar&quot;&gt;TUC&lt;/a&gt; under their campaign &lt;a href=&quot;http://playfairqatar.org.uk/&quot;&gt;Playfair Qatar&lt;/a&gt; (name shown in some media outlets as 'Play Fair Qatar'). The specific claim they make is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To date [no date is shown for this post] almost 1000 workers have died in Qatar and &lt;strong&gt;if nothing changes the death toll could be as much as 4000 by the time the World Cup starts&lt;/strong&gt; in 2022.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.tuc.org.uk/international-issues/countries/qatar&quot;&gt;TUC: Qatar&lt;/a&gt;, accessed 20 May 2015&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On their Facebook page the claim appears as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;62 workers may lose their lives for each game played during Qatar’s 2022 World Cup&lt;/strong&gt;, due to Qatar's systemic rights abuses and abysmal safety record. Without sponsorship from FIFA's partner companies Coke, VISA, McDonald’s, Adidas, Kia and Hyundai, this multi-billion dollar tournament couldn’t take place. These firms all have ethical policies in place for their own supply chains, but are silent on the abuses they are funding in Qatar.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/playfairqatar/posts/376164162578051&quot;&gt;Facebook: Playfair Qatar&lt;/a&gt;, 18 May 2015&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the Playfair Qatar website the claim is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;1420&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  CONFIRMED DEATHS OF WORKERS FROM JUST NEPAL, INDIA AND BANGLADESH IN 2012-2014. THAT’S ALMOST 40 DEATHS A MONTH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;4000&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  THE ESTIMATED WORKER DEATH TOLL BY THE TIME THE QATAR WORLD CUP STARTS IN 2022 – IF NOTHING IS DONE TO STOP IT.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://playfairqatar.org.uk/&quot;&gt;Playfair Qatar&lt;/a&gt;, accessed 20 May 2015&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same claim is cited by BBC News:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As well as New Fifa Now and ITUC, the call to sponsors has also been backed by Stephen Russell of Play Fair Qatar, which has the backing of the UK's Trade Union Congress (TUC).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mr Russell said that &quot;&lt;strong&gt;as things stand, more than 62 workers will die for each game played during the 2022 tournament&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32777320&quot;&gt;BBC News: Fifa World Cup sponsors urged to speak out over Qatar&lt;/a&gt;, 18 May 2015&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My questions are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that the stated number of workers have died in Qatar's preparations for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/qatar2022/&quot;&gt;2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar™&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that if workers continue to die at the same rate, 62 workers per match will have died by the time the Qatar World Cup takes place?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22504" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T04:49:22.073" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T04:49:22.073" Title="Will 62 workers may lose their lives for each game played during Qatar’s 2022 World Cup?" Tags="|mortality|sport|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27780" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-20T20:54:39.843" Score="2" ViewCount="251" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this news more than 50% of people would be middle class: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.economist.com/node/13063298&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.economist.com/node/13063298&lt;/a&gt;, the news is from 2009 so maybe now it would be around a 48% or the like considering there's a world economic crisis, considering that news true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However that seems to be the opposite than for example this other news: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/money/2006/dec/06/business.internationalnews&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.theguardian.com/money/2006/dec/06/business.internationalnews&lt;/a&gt;. I mean, if the 10% of population has the 85% of resources we would need an impressive technology to make a good amount of that people middle class, we have much better technology that centuries ago, but still I feel we'd need one that would make sci-fi films look like prehistoric times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If that weren't enough this other news shows that there more rich people: &lt;a href=&quot;http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/29/news/economy/billionaires-oxfam/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/29/news/economy/billionaires-oxfam/index.html&lt;/a&gt;, and if there's more rich people obviously there's going to be more poor people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't know very well what to think, what I find more possible is a 25% of people being middle class or higher and rest low class. But well, I'd like to know from accurate data how exactly is the world wealth distributed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26315" LastEditorUserId="6629" LastEditDate="2015-05-20T23:20:03.663" LastActivityDate="2015-05-20T23:20:03.663" Title="Is about 50% of world population middle class?" Tags="|economics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2015-05-21T02:13:35.763" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27781" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27779" CreationDate="2015-05-20T23:40:23.823" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a 139 page report, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engineersagainstpoverty.org/documentdownload.axd?documentresourceid=58&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MIGRANT LABOUR IN THE CONSTRUCTION&#xA;SECTOR IN THE STATE OF QATAR&lt;/a&gt;, by the law firm DLA Piper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some key points are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-Qatar has a population of approximately 2 million inhabitants. According to a report by the Supreme Council of Health as of September 2013 there were 1,332,838 migrant workers&#xA;  situate in Qatar from the following five major States of Origin: India, Nepal, Philippines, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-We spoke with the representatives from the Embassy of Nepal who confirmed that there are&#xA;  currently more than 400,000 Nepalese migrant workers in Qatar (out of a total migrant&#xA;  population of 1.39 million). In 2012 and 2013, the representatives confirmed that there were&#xA;  162 and 191 deaths of migrant workers respectively. The representatives from the Embassy&#xA;  were not clear how many of these related to construction projects, but said that most deaths&#xA;  were a result of cardiac arrest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-The representative from the Indian Embassy stated that in the years 2012 and 2013 there were 237 and 241 Indian migrant worker deaths respectively. These statistics are confirmed on the Embassy's website, which states that &quot;…further, considering the large size of our community, the number of deaths is quite normal - 233 in 2010, 239 in 2011, 237 in 2012, 241 in 2013 and 37 in 2014. Most of the deaths are by natural causes.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;-The representatives of the Embassy of Bangladesh confirmed that there are approximately&#xA;  130,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers in Qatar and of these approximately 70% are employed&#xA;  in the construction sector. The reported total death rate in Qatar is 15 or 16 per month (or approximately 180 deaths per year). Again, it was not clear how many deaths were on&#xA;  construction sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summarizing the above, according to the embassies of Nepal, India and Bangladesh&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nepal &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2012: 162 (Qatar statistics say 186)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2013: 191 (Qatar statistics say 197)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;India&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2012: 237 (Qatar statistics say 252)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2013: 241 (Qatar statistics say 247)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bangladesh &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2012:~180 (Qatar statistics say 82)&lt;br&gt;&#xA;2013:~180 (no Qatar statistics)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is 1191 in a two year period according to the embassies. (1046 according to Qatar statistics, if the &quot;82&quot; is used for Nepal for both years)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the 1191 rate in extrapolated over a 7 year period, it corresponds to 4168 additional deaths. (3661 extrapolating the Qatar statistics).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So 4000 deaths by 2022 is a reasonable, perhaps conservative, estimate, especially considering there are foreign workers from other countries such as Philippines, Sri Lanka, etc. and due to expected growth in worker population relative to 2012-2013.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It should be kept in mind that this is deaths by all causes and may or may not be related to working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it true that the stated number of workers have died in Qatar's preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar™?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, but does the claim really ever say that they died in preparations for the World Cup?  Those are total deaths, not necessarily having any relationship to the &#xA;World Cup.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-05-21T18:39:01.207" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T18:39:01.207" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27782" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-20T23:46:03.093" Score="9" ViewCount="2725" Body="&lt;p&gt;Related to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/27695/does-microwaving-breast-milk-cause-dangerous-hot-spots/27708&quot;&gt;question&lt;/a&gt; but from nutritional point of view.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does microwave heating (not excessive) reduce human breast milk nutritional qualities?&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Especially compared to conventional stove heating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/health/guides/nutrition/breast-milk/overview.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NY Times&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Never microwave breast milk -- overheating destroys valuable nutrients  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babycenter.com/0_pumping-your-breast-milk-an-overview_8791.bc?page=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;babycenter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Don't use the microwave for defrosting or warming, because it kills the nutrients in breast milk&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My problem is that with microwave I get a more predictable heating result while with the hot water stove top heating I always overheat the bottle and need to wait till it cools down.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26221" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2017-06-18T07:15:46.323" LastActivityDate="2017-06-18T07:15:46.323" Title="Does heating breast milk in a microwave oven destroy nutrients?" Tags="|nutrition|milk|microwaves|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27783" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27782" CreationDate="2015-05-20T23:46:51.257" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few related studies I found:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8889628&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The effect of microwave heating on vitamins B1 and E, and linoleic and linolenic acids, and immunoglobulins in human milk.&lt;/a&gt; - says there are no effects on B1/E/acids if resulted average heat is not higher than 60 C  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/89/4/667.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effects of Microwave Radiation on Anti-infective Factors in Human Milk&lt;/a&gt; - &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Microwaving at low temperatures (20°C to 53°C) had no significant effect on total IgA, specific IgA to E coli serotypes 01 and 04, but did significantly decrease lysozyme and specific IgA to E coli serotype 06. Even at 20°C to 25°C, E coli growth was five times that of control human milk. Microwaving appears to be contraindicated at high temperatures, and questions regarding its safety exist even at low temperatures&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't have a better way to search medical databases, so any links and interpretation is welcome&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26221" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-05-22T11:12:37.297" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T11:12:37.297" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27784" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22436" CreationDate="2015-05-21T08:22:36.357" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Overdiagnosing&amp;quot; of PTSD can be occur in a few different ways. For example, we (soldiers) get briefings all the time about the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3182010/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;distinction between Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They share several similar symptoms, however they differ greatly in their method of sustainment and long-term effects. TBI is more physiological damage, sustained commonly from impacts and blasts, which are common in combat operations with the Infantry and Special Operations communities. PTSD, on the other hand is more psychological damage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because both can likely be incurred from the same incident, it makes it difficult to distinguish between the two. In recent wars, there was potential for TBI to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/bjprcpsych/186/5/423.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;misdiagnosed as PTSD&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Using questionnaires, 59% [of respondents with TBI] fulfilled criteria for PTSD on the Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale and 44% on the Impact of Events Scale, whereas using the&#xA;structured interview (Clinician Administered PTSD Scale) only 3% were&#xA;‘cases’. This discrepancy may arise from confusions between effects of PTSD and&#xA;traumatic brain injury.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The US military, in response, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.military.com/benefits/veterans-health-care/traumatic-brain-injury-symptoms-diagnosis-and-treatment.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;conducts frequent assessments&lt;/a&gt; before and after combat tours to track any developments in the psychological or physiological damage. However, due to inadequate screening, it is difficult to tell the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/06/10/concerns_grow_about_war_veterans_misdiagnoses/?page=full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;exact number of misdiagnosed cases.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Statistics compiled by the VA show that more than 83,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have sought care for psychological disorders. The department does not track the number of TBI cases [...] The Defense Department also does not have figures on the number of brain injuries, but Pentagon officials estimated that they have found about 2,500 potential cases so far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The number of people who have suffered from mild traumatic brain injury could be in the thousands, but we just won't know about it unless we screen everybody who comes back [...] Maybe it's politics, maybe it's negligence, maybe it's incompetence,&amp;quot; Rieckhoff said. &amp;quot;I don't know. I just know that it's taking too long to take things like brain injury seriously.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also been issues with malingering which also might account for overdiagnosing. Getting diagnosed with PTSD before getting discharged from the military is a sure way to get free medical disability. I have witnessed several first-hand accounts of this, but those aren't acceptable sources for this website. However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/as-disability-awards-grow-so-do-concerns-over-the-veracity-of-veterans-ptsd-claims/2014/10/16/8bf577bc-1e64-11e4-ab7b-696c295ddfd1_story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;these concerns aren't isolated&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As disability awards for PTSD have grown nearly fivefold over the past 13 years, so have concerns that many veterans might be exaggerating or lying to win benefits. Moering, a former Marine, estimates that roughly half of the veterans he evaluates for the disorder exaggerate or fabricate symptoms. [...] Frueh and other critics of the disability system have sparred in medical journals with senior VA mental-health officials, who argue that the extent of malingering is impossible to know without more research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user26274" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user26274" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T20:43:41.150" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27785" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27786" CreationDate="2015-05-21T10:13:40.413" Score="37" ViewCount="14392" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/disclosetv/photos/a.10150447008155628.418304.211482380627/10153400746230628/?type=1&amp;amp;permPage=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; on Facebook:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mzR3E.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;JFK image with donation claim&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During his presidency, John F. Kennedy never collected his salary of&#xA;  $150,000 a year. Instead, he donated the full amount to charity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initial googling seems to support his charity, but that amount seems to me like a rather high salary for the 1960s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastActivityDate="2018-06-02T22:44:39.003" Title="Did JFK earn $150,000 a year as president, and donate it all to charity?" Tags="|united-states|charity|jfk|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27786" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27785" CreationDate="2015-05-21T10:13:40.413" Score="48" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ipl.org/div/potus/jfkennedy.html&quot;&gt;Drexel University&lt;/a&gt; validates the amount:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Presidential Salary: $100,000/year + $50,000 expense account (refused&#xA;  by Kennedy)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As DavePhD pointed out, that $50,000 could only be spent on presidential business, so the full amount that JFK could donate from his presidential salary was 100,000 minus taxes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-john-f-kennedy&quot;&gt;The History Channel&lt;/a&gt; backs up the claim that he donated his full presidential income:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;6. He donated his congressional and presidential salaries to charity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Kennedy’s father built a family fortune, and when the young politician&#xA;  entered Congress in 1947, he earned sufficiently ample annual income&#xA;  from trusts established by his father that he decided to donate his&#xA;  entire legislative salary to various charities. Kennedy quietly&#xA;  maintained the practice as president after becoming the richest man to&#xA;  ever take the oath of office.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As The History Channel &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Aliens&quot;&gt;isn't focused on facts anymore&lt;/a&gt;, here's a list of supporting book quotes from &lt;a href=&quot;http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=289629&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A millionaire by age twenty-one, Kennedy was our wealthiest&#xA;  President. The only President besides George Washington to decline his&#xA;  salary, he donated his to the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, the United&#xA;  Negro College Fund and Jewish organizations.&quot; From: Page 67 &quot;Lives of&#xA;  the Presidents: Fame, Shame (and What the Neighbors Thought)&quot; by&#xA;  Kathleen Krull, read using the &quot;search inside&quot; feature at Amazon.com:&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/015200808X&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/015200808X/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;His $100,000 salary as President was being divided, after taxes,&#xA;  among two dozen charities, including the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of&#xA;  America, the United Negro College Fund, and the Federation of Jewish&#xA;  Philanthropies. The schedule of contributions was worked out each year&#xA;  during a short money meeting Kennedy had with a family accountant&#xA;  named Thomas Walsh.&quot; From: Page 428 &quot;PRESIDENT KENNEDY: PROFILE OF&#xA;  POWER&quot; by Richard Reeves, read using the &quot;search inside&quot; feature at&#xA;  Amazon.com: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0671892894&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671892894/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;He donated his entire presidential salary of $100,000 to charity,&#xA;  ranging from hospitals to the Boy and Girl Scouts, to Jewish&#xA;  philanthropies and retarded children's associations. In 1962, however,&#xA;  he chose to make what were clearly strategically political&#xA;  contributions with his private funds?the United Negro College Fund and&#xA;  the Cuban Families Committee.&quot; From: Page 95 &quot;The Kennedy White House&#xA;  : Family Life and Pictures, 1961-1963&quot; by Carl Sferrazza Anthony, read&#xA;  using the &quot;search inside&quot; feature at Amazon.com:&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0743214730&quot;&gt;http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0743214730/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for being a lot of money for that time: 100,000 USD in 1962 would have the same &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/&quot;&gt;purchasing power&lt;/a&gt; as 783,894 USD in 2014. Yet &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_versus_nominal_value_%28economics%29&quot;&gt;nominally&lt;/a&gt;, it would still be worth only 100,000 USD.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5079" LastEditorUserId="5079" LastEditDate="2015-05-21T21:31:45.917" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T21:31:45.917" CommentCount="24" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27787" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27782" CreationDate="2015-05-21T13:13:34.360" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the question that you quoted, one of the studies quoted there covers some aspects of nutrition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1518698&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Microwave heating of infant formula: a dilemma resolved Pediatrics&lt;/a&gt; (1992) vol. 90 pages 412-415. (Bold emphasis is mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Microwave heating of infant formula is a common practice despite concerns of infant scalding. Beyond the issue of physical safety, little is known about the effects on nutrient content of microwave heating of infant formula. Casein-predominant infant formula in 120- and 240-mL glass and plastic nursing bottles of varying colors were heated for 40 seconds and 60 seconds, respectively. Temperature profiling was monitored during the heating cycle. Analysis of riboflavin and vitamin C was made prior to and after heating .... &lt;strong&gt;There was no significant loss of either riboflavin or vitamin C&lt;/strong&gt; ....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastActivityDate="2015-05-21T13:13:34.360" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27790" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-21T21:02:39.723" Score="4" ViewCount="305" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a recent &lt;a href=&quot;http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/20/do-climate-projections-have-any-physical-meaning/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; on the climate skeptic site &lt;em&gt;Watts Up With That&lt;/em&gt; backed up with a published &lt;a href=&quot;http://multi-science.atypon.com/doi/abs/10.1260/0958-305X.26.3.391&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;em&gt;Energy and Environment&lt;/em&gt;, Pat Frank argues that current climate simulation models are scientifically useless. In his words:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the huge uncertainty limits in projections of future global air temperatures make them predictively useless&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His basic argument seems to be that the effect of varying the key inputs to Global Circulation Models over a reasonable range of plausible values gives such a large range of temperature outputs that we can no longer see the key signals that allow us to judge whether the models are physically correct. In other words the range of uncertainty dominates the signal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The GCM models can reproduce the &lt;em&gt;past&lt;/em&gt; climate because the inputs can be adjusted together to reproduce history but we can't validate whether the combination of inputs is just fortuitously right or represents a physically correct set of values.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm skeptical despite my usual doubts about the reliability of any large complex computer models because I find it incredible that we could have spent so much effort on GCMs without a fairly basic form of scientific validation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, are Pat Frank's claims remotely plausible? If not, why not? What validation has been done to make the inputs to GCMs physically plausible?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;PS for those who are experts on climate science, try to avoid excessive jargon in your answers (or &lt;em&gt;translate&lt;/em&gt; the jargon into language educated laypeople can understand.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-24T00:59:18.650" LastActivityDate="2015-05-24T00:59:18.650" Title="Are current climate models too vague to be physically or scientifically meaningful?" Tags="|climate-change|climatology|modelling|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2015-05-21T23:13:17.827" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27793" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26782" CreationDate="2015-05-22T02:22:42.710" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;References that may interest you (that helped answer my questions): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.health-e-learning.com/resources/articles/40-social-drugs-and-breastfeeding&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.health-e-learning.com/resources/articles/40-social-drugs-and-breastfeeding&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kellymom.com/bf/can-i-breastfeed/lifestyle/smoking/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://kellymom.com/bf/can-i-breastfeed/lifestyle/smoking/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://kellymom.com/bf/can-i-breastfeed/lifestyle/marijuana/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://kellymom.com/bf/can-i-breastfeed/lifestyle/marijuana/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://naturalchild.org/articles/breastfeeding.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://naturalchild.org/articles/breastfeeding.html&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26333" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-22T04:01:45.740" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T04:01:45.740" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27794" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27800" CreationDate="2015-05-22T03:04:58.950" Score="10" ViewCount="1606" Body="&lt;p&gt;First heard this claim on TV (yeah, I know, right).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a follow-up I came across online:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/alt.coffee/XolgR2F_vZ0&quot;&gt;Agent Orange In Vietnamese Coffee&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was sent an interesting article the other day that claimed that there was&#xA;  still a substantial amount of dioxin in the Vietnam soils where the new&#xA;  coffee agriculture has spawned. Do any of you think that soil residues make&#xA;  it into the beans and through pyrolysis? I would imagine there is still a&#xA;  great deal of Agent Orange/dioxin residue in Vietnam.&#xA;  D. O'Keefe&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a lot of &lt;em&gt;banter&lt;/em&gt; on the google groups page, linked above, but not a lot with any sort of substantial information.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is there Agent Orange residue found in Vietnamese coffee?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19453" LastEditorUserId="3835" LastEditDate="2018-08-28T00:33:39.250" LastActivityDate="2018-08-28T00:33:39.250" Title="Are there high levels of dioxin in Vietnamese coffee?" Tags="|coffee|vietnam-war|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27795" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-22T05:33:19.013" Score="6" ViewCount="882" Body="&lt;p&gt;Several people claim that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghee&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ghee&lt;/a&gt; can promote weight loss by burning fat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.maxsportsandfitness.com/article/2014/12/eat-fat-to-lose-fat.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Max Sport and Fitness&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ghee promotes a healthy digestive system and is good for weight loss due to its concentration of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which studies show helps keep fat cells from getting bigger and stimulates fat burn. The skinny: grass-fed ghee helps burn fat and it is great for cooking because it is a saturated fat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rujutadiwekar.com/page.asp?pid=30&amp;amp;punder=19&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Rujuta Diwekar, a famous Indian nutritional consultant&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ghee with its short chain fatty acids, helps you burn the stubborn fat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(She makes &lt;a href=&quot;http://rujutadiwekar.blogspot.in/2013/03/the-goodness-of-ghee.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;further claims &lt;/a&gt; including that the ghee must come from an Indian cow or a buffalo.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.details.com/body-health/diet/201405/ghee-superfood-butter-alternative&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Body Health&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Ghee offers the benefits of a high-fat dairy product without the downsides,&quot; says Melissa Hartwig, a certified sports nutritionist and best-selling author of It Starts With Food. Among the pros: aided digestion, detoxification, and weight loss. &quot;It's not a hippie, far-out-there thing,&quot; Hartwig adds. &quot;It's taking a healthy food and making it better.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does ghee help burn body fat?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T14:04:57.053" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T13:59:34.400" Title="Does ghee help burn body fat?" Tags="|nutrition|weight-loss|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27796" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-22T07:32:32.550" Score="1" ViewCount="138" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/ahmedabad/Six-pack-abs-helped-him-breathe-for-life/articleshow/47377512.cms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This News Report&lt;/a&gt; says that the boy mentioned had 75% of his diaphragm removed due to cancer, however as a result of strong abdominal muscles now has 100% lung function.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this really feasible, or is this the media exaggerating, since after all, breathing is not the primary function of abdominal muscles, so reaching 100% on them seems odd...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user26335" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T07:32:32.550" Title="Can abdominal muscles take over 75% of the workload of a diaphragm and restore 100% lung function?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27798" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16920" CreationDate="2015-05-22T15:31:15.700" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A Case Against Wheat&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jn.nutrition.org/content/69/2/202.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jn.nutrition.org/content/69/2/202.full.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Rabbits were fed a diet of hydrogenated cottenseed, cottenseed oil, wheat germ, or sucrose.  Rabbits fed wheat germ had substantially higher level of atheromatosis (hardened arteries) than any of the other groups.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21224837&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21224837&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;Gluten causes gastrointestinal symptoms in subjects without celiac disease:&#xA;&quot;patients were significantly worse with gluten within 1 week for overall symptoms (P=0.047), pain (P=0.016), bloating (P=0.031), satisfaction with stool consistency (P=0.024), and tiredness (P=0.001).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25701700&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25701700&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;In a cross-over trial of subjects with suspected NCGS (non celiac gluten sensitivity), the severity of overall symptoms increased significantly during 1 week of intake of small amounts of gluten, compared with placebo.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6185" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T15:31:15.700" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27800" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27794" CreationDate="2015-05-22T17:12:15.653" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there isn't a high level of dioxin in Vietnamese coffee, because dioxin does not accumulate sighificantly in plants.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ejnet.org/dioxin/dioxininfood.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;INTAKE OF DIOXINS AND RELATED COMPOUNDS&#xA;FROM FOOD IN THE U.S. POPULATION&lt;/a&gt;, which shows dramaticly lower levels of dioxin in plant-derived foods compare to meat (including fish), eggs and milk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PCDDs and PCDFs previously have been detected primarily in lipids&#xA;  of animal origin, and are usually below detection limits in vegetables and&#xA;  fruits&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, while there is some overlap between the coffee growing regions, and the war-time herbicide spraying, as can be seen below, it is unreasonable to expect high levels of dioxin in plant material.  The main concern in the food supply in Vietnam is free range chicken meat and eggs, ducks, freshwater fish, snail and beef.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1438463915000474&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Environmental health risk assessment of dioxin in foods at the two most severe dioxin hot spots in Vietnam&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/8Z0af.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://moussons.revues.org/docannexe/image/1977/img-3-small480.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Above image source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SXnfw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anthony Wild states in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-bitter-cost-of-one-nations-coffee-boom-6171538.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The bitter cost of one nation's coffee boom&lt;/a&gt; as well as in his book &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=82ourCcpnpwC&amp;amp;pg=PA292&amp;amp;lpg=PA292&amp;amp;dq=dioxin%20level%20in%20coffee%20-filters&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=KZR1obi3dl&amp;amp;sig=EtC6cdE6gU1Cr305h5VW1_HJiaE&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=0CCsQ6AEwAmoVChMIzLOl2c3uxgIVgzc-Ch36Vg4A#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=dioxin%20level%20in%20coffee%20-filters&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Coffee: A Dark History&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indeed paranoia seems to be the order of the day, for information on the subject is very hard to gather. This is curious, because all the evidence would suggest that, since dioxin is not water soluble, it cannot be taken up by plants, including coffee. Nonetheless, the coffee trade is very nervous about the subject. The PEC group of coffee scientists looked at the issue in 2002 and reported that no problems had been found. Or rather, they are rumoured to have reported this conclusion, because &quot;once it was established that there was no cause for concern, they didn't go public&quot;. The report was, in effect, unreported. This guardedness may be in turn a result of the persistent scaremongering in the US, where apparently - according to the National Coffee Association of America - a group of people have, for unknown reasons, been regularly feeding the dioxin in coffee story to the press. At one stage they even managed to start an entirely false rumour that the FDA had placed an embargo on Vietnamese coffee.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-07-22T11:32:22.657" LastActivityDate="2015-07-22T11:32:22.657" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27801" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-22T17:48:37.603" Score="9" ViewCount="614" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/health/a-way-to-brew-morphine-raises-concerns-over-regulation.html&quot;&gt;New York Times article&lt;/a&gt; claims that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Their DNA could be put on a watch list, as sequences for anthrax and smallpox are, so any attempt to buy them from DNA supply houses would raise flags. Chemically silent DNA “watermarks” could be inserted so stolen yeasts could be traced. Or the strains could be made “wimpier and harder to grow,” Dr. Oye said, perhaps by making them require nutrients that were kept secret.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have not heard of such a system before, and from the viewpoint of a molecular biologist, this seems rather implausible, considering that molecular techniques such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_assembly&quot;&gt;Gibson assembly&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site-directed_mutagenesis&quot;&gt;site-directed mutagenesis&lt;/a&gt;, which would certainly be familiar and accessible to someone who orders DNA can be used to synthesise the sequence. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, whole genome synthesis is extremely inefficient, and it would not make much sense to put the anthrax genome on a watch list, considering &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jcvi.org/cms/research/projects/synthetic-bacterial-genome/press-release/&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Mycoplasma laboratorium&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; took several years to synthesise, and has slightly over 10% of the length of the anthrax genome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that commercial DNA synthesis labs maintain such a watch list?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="14582" LastEditDate="2015-05-22T17:58:23.647" LastActivityDate="2015-12-12T06:29:09.957" Title="Do commercial DNA synthesis labs maintain a &quot;watch list&quot; of dangerous DNA sequences?" Tags="|biology|dna|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27802" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20090" CreationDate="2015-05-22T22:47:14.207" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The best estimate of people with non-group policies canceled for 2014 due to the requirements of the Affordable Care Act is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2.6 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2014/03/03/how-many-nongroup-policies-were-canceled-estimates-from-december-2013/&quot;&gt;a study by the Urban Institute&lt;/a&gt;.  This value is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factcheck.org/2014/04/millions-lost-insurance/&quot;&gt;recommended by factcheck.org&lt;/a&gt; as correct. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This represents 18.6% of all people with such policies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Factcheck.org further corresponded with the author and reports statistical analysis that the &lt;strong&gt;95% confidence interval&lt;/strong&gt; of the data is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2.3 million to 3.3 million&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastActivityDate="2015-05-22T22:47:14.207" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27803" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27805" CreationDate="2015-05-22T23:49:53.413" Score="11" ViewCount="2752" Body="&lt;p&gt;So I came across this article: &lt;a href=&quot;http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/30/when-a-cop-knocks-on-the-window-just-dri&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;When a Cop Knocks on the Window, Just Drive Away (in Wisconsin)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Earlier this month, the state's Supreme Court ruled that a tap on the glass does not in and of itself give people reason to assume they've been detained, so they're free to go about their business.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Justice David T. Prosser (speaking for the majority):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Although we acknowledge that this is a close case, we conclude that a law enforcement officer's knock on a car window does not by itself constitute a show of authority sufficient to give rise to the belief in a reasonable person that the person is not free to leave.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does this mean that you can really just drive away?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6916" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-23T03:48:11.787" LastActivityDate="2023-08-15T00:44:31.320" Title="Can you legally drive away when Wisconsin police officer knocks on your car window?" Tags="|united-states|law|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27804" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8841" CreationDate="2015-05-23T00:03:39.210" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the 1960 Popular Science article you mention there was a 1923 Popular Science article: &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=ONoDAAAAMBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA4&amp;amp;dq=taximeter%20popular%20science%20rome%20ancient&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=5WlgVaPoDsS_sAWt54DwDg&amp;amp;ved=0CFEQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=taxi&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TAXI METERS USED IN ROME&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Before the time of Julius Caesar, ancient Romans were called upon to travel in chariots for which they paid by a crude method of counting distances, according to a recently discovered records.  The &amp;quot;taxicab&amp;quot; had a device like an hourglass, by which a pebble was dropped into a bowl for about every 5,000 feet traveled. At the end of the journey, the driver would count the stones, thus arriving at the fare to be paid by the passenger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the 1875 &lt;a href=&quot;http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA*/Cisium.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CI′SIUM&lt;/strong&gt;  a gig, i.e. a light open carriage with two wheels, adapted to carry two persons rapidly from place to place. Its form is sculptured on the monumental column at Igel, near Trevesº (see woodcut). It had a box or case, probably under the seat (Festus, s.v. Ploxinum). The cisia were quickly drawn by mules (cisi volantis, Virg. Catal. VIII.3;  Cic. Phil. II.31). Cicero mentions the case of a messenger who travled 56 miles in 10 hours in &lt;strong&gt;such vehicles, which were kept for hire at the stations along the great roads&lt;/strong&gt;; a proof that the ancients considered six Roman miles per hour as an extraordinary speed • (Pro Roscio Amer. 8). The conductors of these hired gigs were called cisiarii, and were subject to penalties for careless or dangerous driving  (Dig. 19 tit. 2 s.13).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Bill Thayer's University of Chicago hosted website on ancient Rome:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might say that &lt;strong&gt;the cisium was the nearest Roman equivalent to our taxi. If so, by good fortune, we still have the remains of one of the world's grandest taxi stands&lt;/strong&gt;: at Ostia, the port of Rome, where just inside the city gate coming from Rome, the guild of cisiarii had their own lavishly decorated baths, usually known by their Italian name, Terme dei Cisiari.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The whole set-up is quite logical: there must have been constant traffic between Rome and its port, with busy merchants in a hurry to get themselves or papers or money from one to the other, putting the drivers under a good deal of pressure; so right on the Via Ostiensis near the Porta Romana, a place to clean up and decant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vitruvius-odometer/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vitruvius' Odometer&lt;/a&gt; Scientific American vol. 254.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://yourforum.gr/InvisionBoard/The-Oedoemeter-By-Vitrueviues-Aend-Heroen-t174792.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;THE ODOMETER BY VITRUVIUS AND HERON&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/greekautomata.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this source&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An odometer is a device used for indicating distance travelled by a vehicle. Vitruvius around 27 and 23 BC describes such a device and Hero also describes an odometer in chapter 34 of his  Dioptra.  Chariots with wheels of 4 feet diameter turns exactly 400 times in one Roman mile. For each revolution, a pin on the axle engage a 400 tooth cogwheel, thus making one complete revolution per mile. This engages another gear with holes along the circumference, where pebbles (calculus) are located, that drop one by one into a box. The number of miles travelled is given simply by counting the number of pebbles&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/biYgf.gif&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Image from The Legacy of Rome, Clarendon Press 1923&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-03-14T19:08:06.537" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27805" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27803" CreationDate="2015-05-23T00:23:55.573" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this case the car being knocked upon was not being pulled over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deputy Small pulled into the parking lot and parked his marked squad car behind Vogt's vehicle a little off to the driver's side.  The squad car's headlights were on, but its red and blue emergency lights were not.  Vogt's car was running and had its lights on as well.  Deputy Small said at the suppression hearing that he was not blocking the car and that the driver could have left, although Daniel Vogt later disagreed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deputy Small got out of his squad car and walked up to Vogt's window.  He was in full uniform and had a pistol in his side holster.  There were two people in the vehicle: Vogt in the driver's seat and Kimberly Russell (Russell) in the passenger's seat.  Deputy Small testified at the trial that he rapped on the window but could not recall if the knock was hard or soft.&lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/346/I/04&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;  He also said that he motioned for Vogt to roll down the window and that if Vogt had ignored him and driven away, Deputy Small would have let him go because he &amp;quot;had nothing to stop him for.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, even the cop agrees that he could not have taken any action against the driver in this case if the driver just drove away, because there was no violation of any law as far as the cop knew when the cop knocked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/DisplayDocument.html?content=html&amp;amp;seqNo=117585&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;County of Grant v. Daniel A. Vogt&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not mean that if a cop pulls you over with his/her emergency lights and/or siren on that it's ok to drive away.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But if the cop gives no other indication that you should stop or stay, it does seem just a knock on your window is not reason enough for you to need to stay put in Wisconsin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a practical matter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't drink and drive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you don't have anything to hide, obviously just roll down the window and chat with the officer.  Why piss-off the officer and encourage him to give you a ticket or worse?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If an officer knocks on your window and you really don't want to roll down the window, yell &amp;quot;Am I free to go?&amp;quot; to make the office commit to whether he believes there is probable cause to detain you. (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.browarddefender.org/page3.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rights During a Police encounter: 4. Determine if You Can Leave&lt;/a&gt;)  If you just drive away, you risk the officer being untruthful and alleging that you failed to comply with &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/346/I/04&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wisconsin section 346.04 Obedience to traffic officers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Even if you do drive away, the officer could follow you and there are so many reasons for the officer to pull you over: allegedly swerving, a couple miles per hour over the speed limit, etc. that it is doubtful you will get very far.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T16:34:00.820" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27807" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-23T07:48:32.737" Score="5" ViewCount="950" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.straitstimes.com/news/asia/south-east-asia/story/fake-rice-made-plastic-reported-have-reached-shores-several-countrie&quot;&gt;The Straits Times&lt;/a&gt;: &quot;Fake rice made of plastic reported to have reached Asian shores but not Singapore's&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;PETALING JAYA (THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - The sacred bowl of rice&#xA;  that used to save lives could now be harmful - and even deadly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Plastic rice laced with poisonous resin has reportedly reached the&#xA;  shores of several Asian nations. The rice is said to stay hard after&#xA;  it has been cooked.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The plastic rice, reportedly made from potatoes, sweet potatoes, with&#xA;  synthetic resin moulded into the shape of real rice, is said to have&#xA;  made its way into countries with large rural populations such as&#xA;  India, Indonesia and Vietnam.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is China creating fake rice which includes inedible resin?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T07:48:32.737" Title="Is China creating fake rice which includes resin?" Tags="|nutrition|china|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2015-05-23T09:24:48.733" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27808" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20090" CreationDate="2015-05-23T11:37:25.843" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Most responsible parties have found that there has been a large net &lt;em&gt;gain&lt;/em&gt; in the number of people with coverage; for example the RAND Corporation puts the gain at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rand.org/blog/2014/04/survey-estimates-net-gain-of-9-3-million-american-adults.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;9.3 million additional Americans covered.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="905" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T11:37:25.843" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27810" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="4611" CreationDate="2015-05-23T15:44:20.450" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was about to make a post on the same subject and found plenty of information here, so decided to append to the archive ... here are some &lt;a href=&quot;https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=antineoplastons&amp;amp;no_unk=Y&amp;amp;pg=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;clinical trial data&lt;/a&gt; on his work ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you exclude the enormous amount of studies with an unknown status, you ignore the withdrawn and terminated studies, there's only one completed study; which doesn't actually have a completion date listed, nothing published and the only investigators are listed as &lt;code&gt;Stanislaw R. Burzynski, MD, PhD&lt;/code&gt; and &lt;code&gt;Burzynski Research Institute&lt;/code&gt;  .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/DxL2c.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14234" LastActivityDate="2015-05-23T15:44:20.450" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27812" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27813" CreationDate="2015-05-24T07:44:01.433" Score="48" ViewCount="8535" Body="&lt;p&gt;This picture is floating around the facebooks with no attribution to an original source (not even a source of the image):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xobPp.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;During pregnancy, if a mother suffers organ damage, the baby in the womb sends stem cells to repair the damaged organ.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During pregnancy, if a mother suffers organ damage, the baby in the womb sends stem cells to repair the damaged organ.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this statement correct, and is there a reliable source for this information?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14542" LastEditorUserId="14542" LastEditDate="2015-05-24T07:53:24.360" LastActivityDate="2018-09-08T14:09:03.113" Title="During pregnancy, do babies send stem cells to their mothers to repair organ damage?" Tags="|medical-science|biology|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27813" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27812" CreationDate="2015-05-24T08:13:24.537" Score="56" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following is true, look up:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dawe GS, Tan XW, Xiao ZC. &lt;strong&gt;Cell migration from baby to mother.&lt;/strong&gt; Cell Adh&#xA;  Migr. 2007;1:19–27. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2633676/&quot;&gt;PMC free article&lt;/a&gt;] [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19262088&quot;&gt;PubMed&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The scientific name of this process is called &lt;em&gt;microchimerism&lt;/em&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4376590/&quot;&gt;defined&lt;/a&gt; by another study as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the presence of cells originating from another individual therefore genetically distinct from the host cells, is a phenomenon seen during pregnancy whereby fetal stem cells pass bidirectionally from fetus to mother and these microchimeric stem cells persist for many years, influencing the immune status of females in relation to transplant therapy &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion of the study was the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fetal cells&lt;/strong&gt; exhibit a remarkable ability to migrate across the placenta &lt;strong&gt;into the mother&lt;/strong&gt; and to integrate with &lt;strong&gt;diverse maternal tissues and organs&lt;/strong&gt;, apparently homing in particularly to sites of damage and disease. &lt;strong&gt;Much remains to be learned about the basic biology of fetomaternal microchimerism.&lt;/strong&gt; The cell type or types involved have yet to be conclusively characterized. If various cell types are involved, it will be important to understand the time course of the migration of the various cell types and their persistence in the mother. &lt;strong&gt;Studies of the process of cellular adhesion and migration that allow the cells to cross the placental barriers, infiltrate tissues and organs, cross the BBB and migrate to sites of damage will be especially informative.&lt;/strong&gt; Although long-term persistence of fetal cells may be less frequent in the mouse, the mouse appears to offer a useful model for investigating aspects of fetomaternal traffic during pregnancy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-24T08:14:56.540" LastActivityDate="2015-05-24T08:14:56.540" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27814" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28161" CreationDate="2015-05-24T17:10:33.410" Score="1" ViewCount="628" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acidosis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Acidosis&lt;/a&gt; is a legitimate medical diagnosis.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some woo-peddlers like to claim that eating too much acidic foods can cause this condition, and recommend alkalizing foods which, counter-intuitively, they claim includes &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturodoc.com/library/lifestyle/umeboshi_vinegar.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;vinegar&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can your diet upset your body's ph balance and cause acidosis? Is legitimate acidosis only caused by other means?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18728" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T14:06:57.217" LastActivityDate="2017-01-26T21:45:19.110" Title="Can acidosis be diet-induced?" Tags="|medical-science|nutrition|alkaline-diet|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27815" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-24T18:32:52.480" Score="16" ViewCount="1208" Body="&lt;p&gt;In his famous book &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glimpses_of_World_History&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Glimpses of World History&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Jawaharlal Nehru writes (p. 610, Penguin 2004 Edition, emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As I have been telling you of Darwin's theory of the origin of&#xA;  species, it might interest you what a Chinese philosopher wrote on the&#xA;  subject 2500 years ago. &lt;strong&gt;Tson Tse was his name,&lt;/strong&gt; and he wrote in the&#xA;  sixth century before Christ, about the time of the Buddha:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;All organizations are originated from a single species.&lt;/strong&gt; This single&#xA;    species had undergone many gradual changes and continuous changes, and&#xA;    then gave rise to all organisms of different forms. Such organisms&#xA;    were not differentiated immediately, but, on the contrary, they&#xA;    acquired their differences through &lt;strong&gt;gradual change, generation after&#xA;    generation.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this quotation were accurate, it would be a clear anticipation of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;common descent&lt;/a&gt; and evolutionary gradual change, both of which are key ideas presented in Charles Darwin's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;On the Origin of Species&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. It would both predate and be more similar to modern thought than other early evolutionary writings such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/6244/21992&quot;&gt;those by Lucretius&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The problem is: I can't find any source for the quote besides Nehru's book. Additionally, a web search for &quot;Tson Tse&quot; does not turn up even a single mention of a philosopher by that name (does he mean &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_Zhou&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Zhuangzi&lt;/a&gt;?). At the same time, I see no reason why Nehru would invent such a minor detail irrelevant to his main political agenda, so I assume there must be at least one source of that claim which predates him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question, therefore, is: &lt;strong&gt;Did a Chinese philosopher living approximately 2500 years ago, whose name could be transliterated to &lt;em&gt;Tson Tse&lt;/em&gt;, write anything that, when translated to modern English, approximately yields the above quotation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user21992" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T15:07:59.367" Title="Did Chinese philosopher &quot;Tson Tse&quot; anticipate key ideas of evolution 2500 years ago?" Tags="|quotes|evolution|china|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27818" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-25T10:15:19.530" Score="28" ViewCount="7216" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/usauncut/photos/a.190167221017767.44131.186219261412563/780041878696962/?type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Facebook&lt;/a&gt; today:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/VDmMn.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;50,000 people in London protest austerity outside the BBC. &#xA;  BBC completely ignores them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Facebook indicates that the meme was posted on June 22, 2014. The accompanying text read:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;More than 50,000 anti-austerity protesters in London marched outside&#xA;  the BBC and Parliament Square today but the BBC refuses to cover them.&#xA;  SHARE this to break the media blackout!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Comedian Russell Brand addressed the crowd: &quot;Austerity means keeping&#xA;  all the money among people who have loads of it. This is the biggest&#xA;  problem we face today--all other problems radiate from this toxic&#xA;  swindle. We can organise a fairer, more just society than they can.&#xA;  These demonstrations are the start.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brand said the group will hold the biggest protest in British history&#xA;  later this year, &quot;Soon we will reach a size and influence where&#xA;  neither the BBC nor this austerity Government will be able to ignore&#xA;  us.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth this?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-25T20:32:20.377" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T17:52:21.977" Title="Did BBC ignore 50,000 people protesting against austerity?" Tags="|media|activism|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27819" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27818" CreationDate="2015-05-25T10:59:29.427" Score="24" Body="&lt;p&gt;First, the protest happened and was reported on Saturday 21 June 2014 20.45 BST by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/21/protest-march-austerity-london-russell-brand-peoples-assembly&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;theguardian.com&lt;/a&gt; in a news article called:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tens of thousands march in London against coalition's austerity measures&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is estimated that 50,000 people were protesting:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An estimated &lt;strong&gt;50,000 people&lt;/strong&gt; in London addressed by speakers, including Russell Brand, after People's Assembly march&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protest was near BBC News Broadcasting House:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An estimated 50,000 people marched from the &lt;strong&gt;BBC's New Broadcasting House&lt;/strong&gt; in central London to Westminster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The protesting was against austerity:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People's Assembly spokesman Clare Solomon said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is essential for the welfare of millions of people that &lt;strong&gt;we stop austerity&lt;/strong&gt; and halt this coalition government dead in its tracks before it does lasting damage to people's lives and our public services.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The real question here is: &lt;strong&gt;Was this event completely ignored by BCC News Broadcasting?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, it didn't. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-27962963&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC News Online&lt;/a&gt; posting this article and video; adding &amp;quot;no commentary&amp;quot; on the video:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TcFulm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, saying that BBC completely ignored the protest is wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;NB: This answer doesn't discuss BBC's coverage: major or minor - international or local (but &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/27826/20749&quot;&gt;user568458's answer&lt;/a&gt; does).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T16:08:16.777" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27820" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27818" CreationDate="2015-05-25T11:15:25.680" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/27819/23&quot;&gt;George Chalhoub's existing answer&lt;/a&gt; addresses the basic question of whether a protest happened recently, and whether it was ignored by the BBC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wish to address another implied claim in the meme image - that the image represents the ignored protest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;NO&lt;/strong&gt;, that is &lt;strong&gt;NOT&lt;/strong&gt; a photograph of a recent protest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image is of a protest in &lt;strong&gt;March 2011&lt;/strong&gt; - reportedly ten times the size - and has been appropriated from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2011/mar/26/thousands-march-against-cuts-in-pictures&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article in The Guardian&lt;/a&gt; which attributes the photo to Dominic Lipinski/PA. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/domlipinski&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Twitter account&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/sC3vi.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Original Image&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T11:15:25.680" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27821" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27823" CreationDate="2015-05-25T11:35:15.137" Score="61" ViewCount="12589" Body="&lt;p&gt;One of the persons I follow on twitter recently linked &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factfiend.com/ray-bradbury-told-interpretation-book-wrong/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;. It contains the following claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;[Ray Bradbury] has always insisted that the main theme of the book is&#xA;the role of the mass media and its effect on the populace&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;virtually nobody accepts this as the true theme of the novel, even&#xA;though it’s an exact-ish quote from the guy who wrote the bloody&#xA;thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The perfect example of this was a time when Bradbury himself was&#xA;giving a lecture on the novel to a class of college students and upon&#xA;casually mentioning that the theme of the novel was the dangers of&#xA;television, he was stopped in his tracks by someone loudly exclaiming&#xA;“no, it’s about censorship!“ [...] Bradbury was so pissed off at the&#xA;sheer pig-headedness of the students that he straight up stormed out&#xA;of the class and vowed he’d never give another lecture on it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All these claims are unsourced in the article and I doubt than any of these are real (for example in the last claim no specific school is mentioned, raising a pretty big red flag).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My question is then: did Ray Bradbury ever claim that his book [Fahrenheit 451] was not about censorship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As additional bonus questions, if he did:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;is it true that virtually nobody accepts it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;did he ever walked out of a lecture on the novel because students were contradicting him?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25375" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T11:12:08.137" Title="Did Ray Bradbury ever claim that &quot;Fahrenheit 451&quot; was not about censorship?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="17" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27822" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-25T11:41:37.953" Score="6" ViewCount="797" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.pk/books?id=vPx4nIsx0EoC&amp;amp;pg=PA338&amp;amp;lpg=PA338&amp;amp;dq=new%20scientist%20lose%20ability%20to%20swim&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=WCiWBuk6Jm&amp;amp;sig=FQj-9j-qJl5XWXuWtR9BQLzl5Uk&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=1nNkVf7hJfWPsQSu2IOYCA&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=new%20scientist%20lose%20ability%20to%20swim&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This 1980 New Scientist column&lt;/a&gt; article says that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human babies can swim instinctively at a few weeks old, and although&#xA;they lose this ability at a few months they learn quickly if&#xA;introduced to the water and taught how to swim when a couple or three&#xA;years old.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babycenter.com/404_is-it-true-that-babies-are-born-with-the-ability-to-swim_10313062.bc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BabyCenter in the US claims&lt;/a&gt; that they not natural swimmers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. It's not true that babies are born with the ability to swim, though they have reflexes that make it look like they are.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A reflex called the bradycardic response makes babies hold their breath and open their eyes when submerged in water, says Jeffrey Wagener, a pediatric pulmonologist in Colorado. (Parents can cause this same reaction by blowing in their baby's face, a response that disappears after about 6 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9woJiy0VDzc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the description on this YouTube video&lt;/a&gt; warns they only look like they can swim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Until around 6 months, babies placed in water tummy-side down will move their arms and legs in a swimming motion. When the swimming reflex and the dive reflex are both engaged, a baby can look like a natural swimmer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cautions about babies in water&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;&amp;quot;These reflexes don't mean the baby can swim, though,&amp;quot; says Wagener. What's more, they don't protect a baby from drowning. (In addition to the risk of drowning, it's dangerous for an infant to swallow large amounts of pool water.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.babycentre.co.uk/x1048249/is-it-true-that-babies-are-born-with-the-ability-to-swim&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BabyCentre in the UK claims&lt;/a&gt; somewhere in between:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your baby does have a natural ability to swim, but she needs your&#xA;help, of course! Her natural ability comes from a pair of reflexes she&#xA;has when she's in the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_swimming&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Human babies demonstrate an innate swimming or diving reflex from birth until the age of approximately six months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can babies naturally swim without training?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T17:14:53.160" Title="Are babies natural swimmers?" Tags="|children|birth|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27823" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27821" CreationDate="2015-05-25T13:17:31.323" Score="82" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Ray Bradbury ever claim that his book [Fahrenheit 451] was not about censorship?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes, absolutely, you can listen to him explain it in his own words (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raybradbury.com/images/video/about_freeDOM.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bradbury on Censorship/Television&lt;/a&gt;) on his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raybradbury.com/at_home_clips.html#&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt;. Transcript:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wasn't worried about freedom, I was worried about people being turned into morons by TV...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fahrenheit's not about censorship, it's about the moronic influence of popular culture through local TV news, the proliferation of giant screens and the bombardment of factoids. All the popular programs on TV, the competition programs, they don't give you anything but factoids. They tell you when Napoleon was born, but not who he was. So it doesn't matter about the date.  You should never memorize dates, to hell with it. So we moved into this period of history that I described in Fahrenheit 50 years ago&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that Bradbury is essentially paraphrasing a portion of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=u9qVbGCcwX0C&amp;amp;pg=PA44&amp;amp;lpg=PA44&amp;amp;dq=%22fahrenheit%20451%22%20%22TV%20news%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=xQpF5TOdcq&amp;amp;sig=zAhTOX9S3uowdDzXr54AlyVaVRQ&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=N5ttVZifFaHIsQSfhYCIAw&amp;amp;ved=0CFwQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22Napolean&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;dramatic version of Fahrenheit 451&lt;/a&gt;, at pages 44-45 of the script:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plenty of facts but no meaning...no Government Regulation, no dictums, no true censorship...Iron facts are safe. TV NEWS? Of course...Give the people more contests to win by remembering the names of popular songs or state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year.  Fill them with non-combustible facts, chock them so full of data they feel stuffed...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And, yes Bradbury confirms he walked out of a lecture, in an interview with Weller in the biography &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=rRmlA33pEcsC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=Listen+to+the+Echoes:+The+Ray+Bradbury+Interviews&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=TApnVZO5As6KyASe54GgAQ&amp;amp;ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Listen%20to%20the%20Echoes%3A%20The%20Ray%20Bradbury%20Interviews&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Weller: have you encounted academic misinterpretation of your work?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bradbury: I was lecturing at Cal Fullerton once and they misinterpreted Fahrenheit 451, and after about half an hour of arguing with them, telling them that they were wrong, I said, “Fuck you.” I've never used that word before, and I left the classroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remaining question is: &amp;quot;is it true that virtually nobody accepts [that the main theme of the book is the role of the mass media and its effect on the populace]&amp;quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example in &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=wvMEoM8gu74C&amp;amp;pg=PA126&amp;amp;dq=%22fahrenheit%20451%22%20criticism&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=mqdoVYjIE5WqyATqxoEQ&amp;amp;ved=0CEsQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22fahrenheit%20451%22%20criticism&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ray Bradbury: A Critical Companion&lt;/a&gt; (2000) by Robin Reid it is stated (quoting the Fahrenheit 451 section at page 59):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bradbury's main theme is the extent to which technology can be used for social control, specifically through the use of the mass media for all entertainment and education.  The novel describes people being bombarded 24-hours a day by &amp;quot;TV class&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;film teacher[s]&amp;quot;, TV parlors and televisors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She goes on to contrast Fahrenheit 451 with Orwell's 1984 explaining that in Fahrenheit 451:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only after most Americans chose to give up reading, seduced by the simplicity and presence of the mass media, did the government step in.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T13:10:42.020" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27824" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27821" CreationDate="2015-05-25T13:28:56.327" Score="34" Body="&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.laweekly.com/news/ray-bradbury-fahrenheit-451-misinterpreted-2149125&quot;&gt;LA Weekly's piece on Ray Bradbury&lt;/a&gt; (which includes an interview) corroborates the claim that Ray Bradbury walked out on a college lecture where he was misinterpreted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“Useless,” Bradbury says. “They stuff you with so much useless&#xA;  information, you feel full.” He bristles when others tell him what his&#xA;  stories mean, and once walked out of a class at UCLA where students&#xA;  insisted his book was about government censorship. He’s now bucking&#xA;  the widespread conventional wisdom with a video clip on his Web site&#xA;  (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.raybradbury.com/at_home_clips.html&quot;&gt;http://www.raybradbury.com/at_home_clips.html&lt;/a&gt;), titled “Bradbury on&#xA;  censorship/television.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastActivityDate="2015-05-25T13:28:56.327" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27826" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27818" CreationDate="2015-05-25T15:27:04.793" Score="36" Body="&lt;h2&gt;Quick summary&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The &lt;em&gt;exact&lt;/em&gt; claim, &quot;...&lt;em&gt;completely&lt;/em&gt; ignored...&quot;, became untrue the day after this post was published&lt;/strong&gt;. There were a few clips on the BBC 24hr rolling news channel around the time the post was published, but the BBC had nothing online about the protests anywhere until the following day, and nothing on any regular scheduled news broadcasts.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is evidence for a &lt;em&gt;reduced&lt;/em&gt; version of the claim.&lt;/strong&gt; The BBC's coverage was limited to small slots on three relatively niche news outputs - its 24hr news channel, Radio 4, and regional (not national) London online news. The BBC acknowledge that they did not provide &quot;extensive&quot; coverage, as a deliberate editorial decision. It wasn't &quot;completely&quot; ignored - but most BBC news consumers would have seen and heard no coverage.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The photo used in this post was misleading&lt;/strong&gt;, from a different, larger protest on a similar theme, from 2011 (demonstrated in &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/27820/10630&quot;&gt;Oddthinking's answer&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The rest of the claim is largely true&lt;/strong&gt;, although it's debatable whether the number of protesters was definitely &lt;em&gt;above&lt;/em&gt; 50,000 (&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/27819/10630&quot;&gt;see georgechaloub's answer&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;More detail&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;At the time the post was published&lt;/strong&gt;, there was nothing on the BBC website about the protest, and no other BBC coverage anywhere except a few clips on the BBC 24hr News channel (see sources below). There were other media outlets which had covered the protest in their mainstream reporting (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-d65b-BBC-defends-scant-coverage-of-Peoples-Assembly-march#.VWMyeE9Viko&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Guardian, and ITV tea-time news are given as examples in one article&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There was, later, some limited BBC coverage:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The BBC's 24hr rolling news channel included clips from the protest in 5 cycles later that evening, after 8pm, according to a BBC statement below&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;On the following afternoon, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-27962963&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a very short article with 23 seconds of film footage&lt;/a&gt; appeared in the local London section of the BBC news site. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;US Uncut, who made the post here, comment that this wasn't posted until &lt;em&gt;&quot;after our meme went viral. I think we shamed them into covering it&quot;&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Despite being in the London local news section, and containing very little content,  comments under the original post claim it reached #2 in the BBC's most viewed videos list.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There are also &lt;a href=&quot;http://occupylondon.org.uk/bbc-complaints-form-letter-response-to-no-more-austerity-news-blackout/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that there was one 25 second report on BBC Radio 4&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The BBC mention unspecified coverage &quot;on social media&quot;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems there was no coverage on regular BBC TV or radio news, and nothing on the national sections of the BBC news site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is based on &lt;strong&gt;the BBC's reply&lt;/strong&gt; sent to many of the people who complained about the coverage of this protest, quoting unnamed &quot;senior editorial staff at BBC News&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://occupylondon.org.uk/bbc-complaints-form-letter-response-to-no-more-austerity-news-blackout/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an example of which can be read here&lt;/a&gt;, with a key part copied below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We covered this demonstration on the BBC News Channel with five&#xA;  reports throughout Saturday evening, on the BBC News website on&#xA;  Sunday, as well as on social media. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They go on to acknowledge that this falls short of &quot;extensive coverage&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We choose which stories we cover&#xA;  based on how newsworthy they are and what else is happening and we&#xA;  didn’t provide extensive coverage because of a number of bigger&#xA;  national and international news stories that day, including the&#xA;  escalating crisis in Iraq, British citizens fighting in Syria and the&#xA;  death of Gerry Conlon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the BBC national news homepage as it was at midnight after the protests, to give some context as to what the competing stories were. It appears to contradict the BBC's statement - there's actually almost nothing about Iraq or Syria (just one story, low down, about a family's response to a Jihadi video, and a mention in an &quot;in the news&quot; roundup article). &lt;a href=&quot;http://occupylondon.org.uk/bbc-complaints-form-letter-response-to-no-more-austerity-news-blackout/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GsXfx.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10630" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T17:52:21.977" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27827" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27815" CreationDate="2015-05-25T16:25:28.350" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;A Source Book on Chinese Philosophy&lt;/em&gt;, Wing-Tsit Chan remarks of Chuang Tzu (page 177),&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;All this is a direct product of his concept of Nature. To him, Nature is not only spontaneity but nature in the state of constant flux and incessant transformation. This is the universal process that binds all things into one, equalizing all things and all opinions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He later quotes directly from &lt;em&gt;The Chuang Tzu&lt;/em&gt;, Chuang Tzu's main work. One selection (page 204) reads&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;    &lt;li&gt;Evolution&lt;br&gt;&#xA;    All species have originative or moving power (chi). When they obtain water, they become small organisms like silk. In a place bordering water and land, they become lichens. Thriving on the bank, they become moss. On the fertile soil they become weeds. The roots of these weeds become worms, and their leaves become butterflies. Suddenly the&#xA;    butterfly is transformed into an insect, which is born under the stove (for its heat), and which has the appearance of having its skin shed. Its name is called chü-t'o. After a thousand days, chü-t'o becomes a bird called kan-yü-ku. The spittle of the kan-yü-ku becomes an insect called ssu-mi. The ssu-mi becomes a wine fly, which produces the insect called i-lu. The insect huang-k'uang produces the insect called chiu-yu. Mosquitos come from the rotten insects called huan. The plant yanghsi paired with the bamboo which for a long time has had no shoot, produces the insect called ch'ing-ning. The ch'ing-ning produces the insect called ch'eng, ch'eng produces the horse, and the horse produces men. Man again goes back into the originative process of Nature. All things come from the originative process of Nature and return to the originative process of Nature. (ch. 18, NHCC, 6:36a-b)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;    &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Comment. Is this natural evolution? Hu Shih (1891-1962) thinks so. Whether it is or not, it cannot be doubted that Chuang Tzu conceived reality as ever changing and as developing from the simple to the complex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not this is evolution is open to interpretation. It sounds a lot like it, and though the processes Chuang Tzu describes aren't the evolutionary mechanisms we theorize about today, they're remarkably similar to Darwinian evolution in the relationship between species; i.e. one insect being directly connected to another insect, but being indirectly connected to, say, a human.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chuang Tzu is also referred to as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhuang_Zhou&quot;&gt;Zhuang Zhou&lt;/a&gt;, a name you mentioned. Could Zhuang Zhou (aka Zhuangzi) be Tson Tse? Zhuang Zhou lived in the 4th and 3rd centuries B.C., two centuries ahead of the hypothetical Tson Tse. Yet Nehru says that Tson Tse lived at the same time as the Buddha, whose lifetime is not yet entirely established - &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metmuseum.org/TOAH/HD/buda/hd_buda.htm&quot;&gt;he may have lived partly in the 4th century B.C.&lt;/a&gt; Nehru could have been mistaken about the date, and even the name of the philosopher - as &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glimpses_of_World_History&quot;&gt;Wikipedia says&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Written from prison, &lt;strong&gt;where he had no recourse to reference books or a library but his personal notes,&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Glimpses of World History&lt;/em&gt; contains the history of humankind from 6000 BC to the time of writing of the book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems possible that Nehru made a mistake somewhere, and that 2500 years is actually 2300 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The one thing missing is the actual quote. Again, Nehru could have been mistaken about this, but I can't find anything resembling the quote anywhere else, besides books that reference the quote as being from Nehru's writings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="22247" LastEditDate="2015-05-26T15:07:59.367" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T15:07:59.367" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27830" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27848" CreationDate="2015-05-26T05:31:58.747" Score="13" ViewCount="749" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was linked to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalresearch.ca/gmo-scandal-the-long-term-effects-of-genetically-modified-food-on-humans/14570&quot;&gt;this article on Global Research.ca&lt;/a&gt; today which claims that GMO companies (specifically Monsanto, but also naming DuPont and Syngenta) ban independent research on their seeds. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There are no independent scientific studies published in any reputed&#xA;  scientific journal in the world for one simple reason. It is&#xA;  impossible to independently verify that GMO crops such as Monsanto&#xA;  Roundup Ready Soybeans or MON8110 GMO maize perform as the company&#xA;  claims, or that, as the company also claims, that they have no harmful&#xA;  side effects because the GMO companies forbid such tests!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;That’s right. As a precondition to buy seeds, either to plant for&#xA;  crops or to use in research study, Monsanto and the gene giant&#xA;  companies must first sign an End User Agreement with the company. For&#xA;  the past decade, the period when the greatest proliferation of GMO&#xA;  seeds in agriculture has taken place, Monsanto, Pioneer (DuPont) and&#xA;  Syngenta require anyone buying their GMO seeds to sign an agreement&#xA;  that explicitly forbids that the seeds be used for any independent&#xA;  research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;....&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only research which is permitted to be published in reputable&#xA;  scientific peer-reviewed journals are studies which have been&#xA;  pre-approved by Monsanto and the other industry GMO firms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that Monsanto and other GMO companies forbid independent testing of their seeds? I am skeptical of this claim because &quot;seed piracy&quot; can already be defended against by existing copyright/patent laws, and it seems counterproductive to ban independent research when it bolsters the cause of GMO as a whole. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-26T14:01:28.103" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T04:27:39.640" Title="Do GMO companies forbid independent research on their seeds?" Tags="|gmo|patents|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27834" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-26T16:56:41.587" Score="10" ViewCount="1904" Body="&lt;p&gt;MenHealth.com &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.menshealth.com/mhlists/pick_up_women_with_confidence/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;writes&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Simply put, confidence gets the girl.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://datingpaladin.com/how-get-girlfriend/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Learn How You Can Get A Great Girlfriend&lt;/a&gt; on the blog &lt;a href=&quot;http://datingpaladin.com/blog/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DatingPaladin&lt;/a&gt; the author writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Getting a girlfriend is something that all straight guys want. [...] Confidence is the most important thing for getting girls. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The belief that man have to be confident to get in sexual relationships seems to be very popular on the internet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there psychological research that proves that confident guys are less likely to be single than shy guys?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2015-11-01T13:03:18.183" LastActivityDate="2015-11-01T13:03:18.183" Title="Are confident guys more likely to get a girlfriend?" Tags="|psychology|sexuality|mating|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="13" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27835" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27822" CreationDate="2015-05-26T17:07:33.857" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think you should take a look at this study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Goksor, E.; Rosengren, L.; Wennergren, G. (2002). &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Bradycardic response during submersion in infant swimming&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. Acta Paediatr 91 (3): 307–312. doi:10.1111/j.1651-2227.2002.tb01720.x. PMID 12022304. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12022304&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12022304&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is extremely important since it shows evidence of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;existence of a diving response in infants&lt;/strong&gt;, which includes: &lt;em&gt;an immediate bradycardic&lt;/em&gt; &lt;em&gt;response&lt;/em&gt;, suggesting &lt;em&gt;vagal mediation&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting the abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The diving response involves: &lt;br /&gt; &#xA;   - &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflex_bradycardia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reflex bradycardia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;br /&gt; &#xA;   -  &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apnea&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;apnoea&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;   &lt;br /&gt; &#xA;   - &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasoconstriction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;peripheral vasoconstriction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;States the purpuse of the study: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This study was performed to analyse the &lt;strong&gt;physiological events during natural diving&lt;/strong&gt; of &lt;strong&gt;full-term healthy infants&lt;/strong&gt; and describe how these events alter with maturation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This shows the method used:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Thirty-six infants&lt;/strong&gt; were studied during diving exercises in infant swimming. All of the infants who participated &lt;strong&gt;showed an immediate decrease in heart rate when submerged&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Results: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On average, &lt;strong&gt;the heart rate decreased by 25%&lt;/strong&gt; (range -5.0% to -50.7%, p &amp;lt;0.0001).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The bradycardia was sustained during the dive and for some seconds afterwards. The response was often followed &lt;strong&gt;by a tachycardia as the bradycardia ceased&lt;/strong&gt;. A decline of reflex bradycardia was observed with increasing age (p = 0.03), but the &lt;strong&gt;response was still clearly evident in infants over the age of 6 mo&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Of course this doesn't mean that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Water-Safety/drown-activities.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;you can throw the infant in a swimming pool and go watch a movie&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-26T17:14:53.160" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T17:14:53.160" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27836" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27834" CreationDate="2015-05-26T18:09:41.510" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This isn't exactly to my satisfaction on scientificalness of approach, but the best numbers I was able to find so far come out of this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Match.com, which helped to pioneer the online dating industry, has revealed the results of its Singles in America: 2013 survey. More than 5,000 single men and women 18 and older participated in the survey. Here are some of the findings:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;92% of single men feel comfortable if/when a woman asks them out&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;The &amp;quot;big three&amp;quot; criteria by which singles judge a date are grammar (83%), &lt;strong&gt;confidence (78%)&lt;/strong&gt; and teeth (76%)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Elsewhere in that survey, it was mentioned that 83% of men wanted a confident woman, which means that the above generic 78% (assuming 50/50 survey response breakdown) would imply ~73% of women prefer confident men.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously, this suffers from faults (self selection bias, demographics bias, bias of people pressured to respond to make a favourable opinion of themselves, as well as some assumptions outlined above). But it's the best I could find, and seems to indicate that confidence in a man is a pretty important factor as &lt;strong&gt;stated&lt;/strong&gt; by Match.com responders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another possible fault of this survey (but it would be inherent in almost all sources using what people say vs. what they &lt;strong&gt;do&lt;/strong&gt;) is that there may very well be a large discrepancy between revealed and stated preferences, that would be impossible to detect absent actual behavioral observation. (And even a behavioral observation would not necessarily be accurate unless done &amp;quot;in the wild&amp;quot;, so to speak - without the pressure of being observed and judged by researchers).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's no raw data available for the survey, but all the figures quoted above are found on their infographics/websites: &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.match.com/category/singles-in-america/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://blog.match.com/category/singles-in-america/&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.singlesinamerica.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.singlesinamerica.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T20:33:00.420" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27837" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27834" CreationDate="2015-05-26T19:32:00.090" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr036.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Sexual Behavior, Sexual Attraction, and Sexual&#xA;Identity in the United States: Data From the 2006–2008&#xA;National Survey of Family Growth&lt;/a&gt; from the CDC web site, &lt;strong&gt;Figure 1. Sexual behavior in lifetime among men and women aged 25–44 years:&#xA;United States, 2006–2008&lt;/strong&gt; on page 9 claims that 97% of men have had vaginal intercourse with the opposite sex (and 90% oral sex with the opposite sex).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This data suggests that it's not just &quot;confident&quot; guys who &quot;get the girl&quot; but, rather, virtually all guys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, table 2 on page 18 says that 1.2% of men aged 40-44 years have never had sexual contact with the opposite sex (nearly 80% of men in this age range have had exactly 1 female sexual partner in the last 12 months).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2015-05-26T19:32:00.090" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27839" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27795" CreationDate="2015-05-26T19:40:46.040" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short version is that it &lt;em&gt;might&lt;/em&gt; have an effect, but there is no evidence to date.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was surprised to find that there are actually quite a few scientific studies on this subject. There's an even larger literature on the effects in animals than in humans. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good survey paper on the area (which may be paywalled) is found &lt;a href=&quot;http://ac.els-cdn.com/S1043661800907357/1-s2.0-S1043661800907357-main.pdf?_tid=91ab1b7c-03dc-11e5-98cb-00000aab0f6c&amp;amp;acdnat=1432668337_9ff23e0b24b80cf758a084dc55cb0d7c&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. The crux of it is that the best designed studies to date do not find any significant difference in fatty mass changes between those who take quite large doses of CLA (roughly equal to eating 250ml of ghee a day, if my understanding of ghee's CLA composition is correct), and those who just eat an olive oil capsule instead. This holds across many populations. Experienced weightlifters, novice weightlifters, and overweight or obese persons. The only human studies reporting significant effects tracked changes over a quite short period of time, or else had systematic problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An example of a study that has some problems can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://jn.nutrition.org/content/130/12/2943.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study above shows a decrease in fatty mass for overweight and obese individuals who consumed concentrated CLA (roughly equal to the amount found in about a half a litre of Ghee, from what I can ascertain) in daily doses, versus those who consumed an equal amount of olive oil (the control). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The improvement is statistically significant, but extremely small. Over 12 weeks, the average subject on olive oil gained about 1.5kg (~3lb) of fat, while those taking CLA lost a small amount of fat instead, but &lt;strong&gt;also gained about 1.5kg of lean mass&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if the study did control properly for exercise, they found no benefit beyond a dose of about 3.5 grams/day of CLA. A weighloss supplement that cuts ~1/4 pound per week from an overweight person is not particularly impressive. The person could just as easily drink one less glass of soda (or milk!) per day to lose at the same rate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the study included sending an offer of training from a local gym to all participants. Those in the higher CLA dosage groups were found to have engaged in an average of 1 more hour of &quot;heavy training&quot; per week by the end of the study than at the start. Over a 12 week period, that could easily be enough to result in a recomposition of just 2kg or so (i.e. trading 2kg of fat for muscle), especially in novices engaged in something like resistance training. &lt;strong&gt;The changes in BMI between the groups were not significant&lt;/strong&gt; at the end of the study, suggesting that all participants gained the same weight, just some of them put it on as muscle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to sum up, there do not seem to be any reputable studies showing a benefit in body fat loss from consuming CLA. There seems to be a lot of interest in it because it is present in certain health foods (like Ghee) though.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As an aside, I'm personally very sceptical of claims that any food (especially what is essentially liquefied fat!) will magically cause weightloss or fat loss. Losing weight isn't complicated. To get rid of a few pounds of &quot;stubborn&quot; fat, eat fewer calories than you burn (your &lt;a href=&quot;http://iifym.com/tdee-calculator/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TDEE&lt;/a&gt;) and exercise more for a few weeks. As a general rule, all the rest of it is noise or tiny effects not worth worrying about. Remember: if there &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; a miracle cure for weightloss, everyone would be thin already. Companies would be lining up to sell it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastEditorUserId="18008" LastEditDate="2015-05-27T13:59:34.400" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T13:59:34.400" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27840" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27853" CreationDate="2015-05-26T20:28:07.090" Score="7" ViewCount="2722" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A strange new game is taking over Twitter, fuelled by speculation that its players can connect with a dead Mexican spirit known as Charlie.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was surfing the internet and came across this, the internet's newest trend, also known as the Charlie Charlie challenge. Simply put, the participants try to summon a Mexican demon and get its advice by asking yes or no questions and the &quot;demon&quot; responds by spinning a pencil into the yes or no section.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After first hearing about the challenge, I was very skeptical that there was a demon that was spinning the pencils. But, after seeing many videos with people doing this challenge and the pencils actually moving, I'm starting to wonder if this so called Charlie Charlie challenge has actually the potential to summon some supernatural forces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, I have two questions about this: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;a) Is there good evidence that that this supernatural &quot;demon&quot; exists?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;b) Are there alternative, naturalistic explanations to explain the apparent movement of the pencils? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26372" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-27T15:49:39.070" LastActivityDate="2015-10-26T17:45:49.677" Title="Does the Charlie Charlie Challenge demon exist?" Tags="|ghosts|spirituality|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27842" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-26T22:11:24.537" Score="2" ViewCount="386" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm seeing stories such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3098184/Mother-teenage-daughter-died-overdose-counter-pills-warns-teenagers-parents-stop-dangerous-new-social-media-craze-dubbed-Paracetamol-Challenge.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this Daily Mail article&lt;/a&gt;, claiming that there's a craze amongst teenagers to basically play chicken with &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paracetamol&lt;/a&gt; (acetaminophen).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a dangerous online trend has emerged encouraging young people to take large quantities of the drug, known as the Paracetamol Challenge. [...]&#xA;  'Now you see teenagers egging each other on, and it's a peer pressure thing where they clearly don't know what they're doing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I can't find anything on this except for other similar news stories, most of which are published by news sources with a reputation for hysteria.  I don't consider the Daily Mail as a reliable source because they have a very poor reputation.  Even they admit that the girl who died in their story was really a suicide rather than a kid following a social media meme.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't see any reason for people to be doing this, as paracetamol is not a psychotropic substance (it won't get you high) and it will kill in a high enough dose.  Then again people do play chicken so there may be something to it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are people really taking high doses of drugs as part of a &quot;paracetamol challenge&quot; circulating on social media?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2992" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T11:04:51.983" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T11:04:56.197" Title="Are people overdosing as part of a &quot;Paracetamol Challenge&quot;?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|pharmaceutical|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27846" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-27T01:17:51.883" Score="3" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2012, the Painters of Louisville published an &lt;a href=&quot;http://paintersoflouisville.com/tag/the-psychology-of-color/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;infographic about the Psychology of Color&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fKvsV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Infographic&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes a number of claims about how seeing certain colors may effects on your mood and physiology. Some examples include:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blue: Most productive color.&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Pink: Calming. Warm&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Red: Encourages appetite.&lt;br/&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19654" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-27T04:05:03.330" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T04:05:03.330" Title="Do colors change your mood?" Tags="|psychology|colors|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-05-27T08:34:59.120" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27848" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27830" CreationDate="2015-05-27T04:27:39.640" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Global Research article has a confusing date line:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Global Research, January 22, 2013&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  Global Research, 29 July 2009&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2009, Monsanto did heavily restrict independent science. An October 2009 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emilywaltz.com/Biotech_crop_research_restrictions_Oct_2009.pdf&quot;&gt;news feature&lt;/a&gt; by Emily Waltz in Nature Biotechnology talks about a complaint by 26 scientists to the EPA about seed company's restrictions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;No truly independent research can be legally&#xA;  conducted on many critical questions involving&#xA;  these crops [because of company-imposed&#xA;  restrictions]&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In late 2009, seed companies, including Monsanto reacted to these complaints and changed their requirements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Monsanto &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.monsanto.com/newsviews/pages/public-research-agreements.aspx&quot;&gt;explains&lt;/a&gt; their new Public Research Agreements: (hat tip to @Atsby for the link)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As a result, Monsanto introduced the blanket agreement, which allows university scientists to work with Monsanto’s commercial seed products without contacting the company or signing a separate contract. This blanket agreement – the Academic Research License (ARL) – enables academic researchers to do research with commercialized products with as few constraints as possible. ARLs are in place with all major agriculturally-focused US universities – about 100 in total.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, scientists are still required by Monsanto to comply to some restrictions, but the level of the restrictions has been lowered, and it can no longer be said that Monsanto &lt;strong&gt;forbids&lt;/strong&gt; independent research.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What do these agreements actually say? They appear to be confidential, which is disappointing, and fosters some doubts over the scientific integrity of the resulting research - particularly publication bias.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the same science writer, Emily Waltz, reported this update as a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emilywaltz.com/News_briefs_10_Oct_Monsanto.pdf&quot;&gt;News Brief&lt;/a&gt; in the October 2010 issue of the same journal. She quotes anonymous scientists as being happy with the new agreement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“[The agreement] is extremely good and specific. ARS will be&#xA;  allowed to do basically everything that could be desired,” says one ARS scientist who asked to remain anonymous.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Waltz examined a version of the agreement:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Monsanto-ARS agreement obtained by Nature Biotechnology allows ARS scientists&#xA;  to conduct agronomic research—studies on how crops interact with local environments&#xA;  and which varieties perform best. Studies outside of agronomic research, such as&#xA;  breeding, reverse engineering or characterizing the genetic composition of the crop,&#xA;  require separate contracts with the company. The agreement is nearly identical in scope&#xA;  to Monsanto’s licenses with universities, but is more specific. An appendix included&#xA;  in ARS’s license lists more than 25 examples of the specific types of studies that are&#xA;  considered “agronomic” and therefore permissible—a definition that has been unclear&#xA;  to public sector scientists in the past. “It allows us to do our research under a blanket&#xA;  agreement instead of negotiating everything [with Monsanto] every time,” says Larry&#xA;  Chandler, an area director at ARS who facilitated the negotiations. “This is much more&#xA;  efficient for all parties.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarise:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;This was largely true in 2009 that Monsanto tightly controlled independent research. It was no longer true in 2013. There are still some limitations on scientists, but Monsanto doesn't forbid independent research.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T04:27:39.640" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27849" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23724" CreationDate="2015-05-27T08:10:44.320" Score="3" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is there anything to suggest arnica tablets reduce bruising?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results seem to suggest &lt;strong&gt;probably not&lt;/strong&gt;.  Though, according to one paper, &lt;strong&gt;topical arnica&lt;/strong&gt; seemed to perform almost as well as 5% vitamin K cream.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I include four papers I was able to find testing arnica on bruising.  Two of which are homeopathic arnica, the other two are topical arnica.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC539394/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Homeopathic arnica for prevention of pain and bruising: randomized placebo-controlled trial in hand surgery&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (full text linked)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Abstract&lt;/strong&gt;: (emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Homeopathic arnica is widely believed to control bruising, reduce&#xA;  swelling and promote recovery after local trauma; many patients&#xA;  therefore take it perioperatively. To determine whether this treatment&#xA;  has any effect, we conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled,&#xA;  randomized trial with three parallel arms. 64 adults undergoing&#xA;  elective surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome were randomized to take&#xA;  three tablets daily of &lt;strong&gt;homeopathic arnica 30C or 6C or placebo&lt;/strong&gt; for&#xA;  seven days before surgery and fourteen days after surgery. Primary&#xA;  outcome measures were pain (short form McGill Pain Questionnaire) and&#xA;  bruising (colour separation analysis) at four days after surgery.&#xA;  Secondary outcome measures were swelling (wrist circumference) and use&#xA;  of analgesic medication (patient diary).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;62 patients could be included in the intention-to-treat analysis.&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;There were no group differences on the primary outcome measures of&#xA;  pain (P=0.79) and bruising (P=0.45) at day four.&lt;/strong&gt; Swelling and use of&#xA;  analgesic medication also did not differ between arnica and placebo&#xA;  groups. Adverse events were reported by 2 patients in the arnica 6C&#xA;  group, 3 in the placebo group and 4 in the arnica 30C group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The results of this trial do not suggest that homeopathic arnica has&#xA;  an advantage over placebo in reducing postoperative pain, bruising and&#xA;  swelling in patients undergoing elective hand surgery.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1524-4725.2002.02011.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Effects of Topical Arnica Gel on Post-Laser Treatment Bruises&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (full text pay-walled)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;background&lt;/strong&gt;. Claims have been made suggesting that topical arnica&#xA;  prevents and speeds the resolution of bruises, yet there are no&#xA;  well-designed placebo-controlled studies to date evaluating topical&#xA;  arnica's effect on bruising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;objective&lt;/strong&gt;. To compare the efficacy of &lt;strong&gt;topical arnica&lt;/strong&gt; in the prevention&#xA;  and resolution of laser-induced bruising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;methods&lt;/strong&gt;. Nineteen patients with facial telangiectases were enrolled in&#xA;  this randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled study and were&#xA;  divided into pretreatment and posttreatment groups. The pretreatment&#xA;  group applied arnica with vehicle to one side of the face and vehicle&#xA;  alone to the other side of the face twice a day for 2 weeks prior to&#xA;  laser treatment. The posttreatment group followed the same procedure&#xA;  for 2 weeks after laser treatment. On day 0, all patients were treated&#xA;  for facial telangiectases using a 585 nm pulsed dye laser. &lt;strong&gt;Bruising&#xA;  was assessed using a visual analog scale on days 0, 3, 7, 10, 14, and&#xA;  17 by the patient and the physician&lt;/strong&gt;. In addition, photographs taken at&#xA;  each of the follow-up visits were later assessed by a second physician&#xA;  using the visual analog scale.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;results&lt;/strong&gt;. There was no statistically significant difference between the&#xA;  mean scores of arnica and vehicle (P = 0.496) and the mean scores of&#xA;  arnica and vehicle (P = 0.359) in the pretreatment and posttreatment&#xA;  groups, respectively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;No significant difference was found between topical arnica&#xA;  and vehicle in the prevention or resolution of bruising.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2133.2010.09813.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&amp;amp;userIsAuthenticated=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Accelerated resolution of laser-induced bruising with topical 20% arnica: a rater-blinded randomized controlled trial&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (full text pay-walled)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background&lt;/strong&gt;  Dermatological procedures can result in disfiguring&#xA;  bruises that resolve slowly.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Objectives&lt;/strong&gt;  To assess the comparative utility of topical formulations&#xA;  in hastening the resolution of skin bruising.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Methods&lt;/strong&gt;  Healthy volunteers, age range 21–65 years, were enrolled for&#xA;  this double (patient and rater) blinded randomized controlled trial.&#xA;  For each subject, four standard bruises of 7 mm diameter each were&#xA;  created on the bilateral upper inner arms, 5 cm apart, two per arm,&#xA;  using a 595-nm pulsed-dye laser (Vbeam; Candela Corp., Wayland, MA,&#xA;  U.S.A.). Randomization was used to assign &lt;strong&gt;one topical agent (5%&#xA;  vitamin K, 1% vitamin K and 0·3% retinol, 20% arnica, or white&#xA;  petrolatum) to exactly one bruise per subject&lt;/strong&gt;, which was then treated&#xA;  under occlusion twice a day for 2 weeks. A dermatologist not involved&#xA;  with subject assignment rated bruises [visual analogue scale, 0&#xA;  (least)–10 (most)] in standardized photographs immediately after&#xA;  bruise creation and at week 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results&lt;/strong&gt;  There was significant difference in the change in the rater&#xA;  bruising score associated with the four treatments (anova, P = 0·016).&#xA;  Pairwise comparisons indicated that the mean improvement associated&#xA;  with 20% arnica was greater than with white petrolatum (P = 0·003),&#xA;  and the improvement with arnica was greater than with the mixture of&#xA;  1% vitamin K and 0·3% retinol (P = 0·01). &lt;strong&gt;Improvement with arnica was&#xA;  not greater than with 5% vitamin K cream, however&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Conclusions  &lt;strong&gt;Topical 20% arnica ointment may be able to reduce&#xA;  bruising more effectively than placebo and more effectively than&#xA;  low-concentration vitamin K formulations, such as 1% vitamin K with&#xA;  0·3% retinol&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://archfaci.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=480929&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Effect of Homeopathic Arnica montana on Bruising in Face-lifts&#xA;Results of a Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (full text linked)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Objectives&lt;/strong&gt;  To design a model for performing reproducible, objective&#xA;  analyses of skin color changes and to apply this model to evaluate the&#xA;  efficacy of &lt;strong&gt;homeopathic Arnica montana&lt;/strong&gt; as an antiecchymotic agent when&#xA;  taken perioperatively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Methods&lt;/strong&gt;  Twenty-nine patients undergoing rhytidectomy at a tertiary&#xA;  care center were treated perioperatively with either homeopathic A&#xA;  montana or placebo in a double-blind fashion. Postoperative&#xA;  photographs were analyzed using a novel computer model for color&#xA;  changes, and subjective assessments of postoperative ecchymosis were&#xA;  obtained.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;strong&gt;No subjective differences were noted between the treatment&#xA;  group and the control group, either by the patients or by the&#xA;  professional staff. No objective difference in the degree of color&#xA;  change was found. Patients receiving homeopathic A montana were found&#xA;  to have a smaller area of ecchymosis on postoperative days 1, 5, 7,&#xA;  and 10. These differences were statistically significant (P&amp;lt;.05) only&#xA;  on postoperative days 1 (P&amp;lt;.005) and 7 (P&amp;lt;.001).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions&lt;/strong&gt;  This computer model provides an efficient, objective, and&#xA;  reproducible means with which to assess perioperative color changes,&#xA;  both in terms of area and degree. Patients taking perioperative&#xA;  homeopathic A montana exhibited less ecchymosis, and that difference&#xA;  was statistically significant (P&amp;lt;.05) on 2 of the 4 postoperative data&#xA;  points evaluated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T08:10:44.320" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27852" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14646" CreationDate="2015-05-27T14:31:24.607" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The origin of this claim is a 25 January 2012 Tumblr article &lt;a href=&quot;http://maryamhenein.tumblr.com/post/16471484566/the-buzz-behind-the-monsanto-beeolgics-acquisition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Buzz Behind the Monsanto/Beelogic Acquisition&lt;/a&gt; by journalist and film-maker &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_Henein&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Maryam Henein&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the original article it is clear that the number &quot;2457842149&quot; is just a joking/hypothetical patent number, associated with the author's prediction that eventually a genetically modified bee will be produced.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Considering that the honey bee has been sequenced, how long before we bear witness to a genetically modified bee? I’ve been saying this since 2008 for the record!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;… Introducing pesticide-resistant SUPER BEE Patent # 2457842149…&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A genuine example of a patent application for a genetically modified bee assigned to the Bayer Corportion is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/patents/US20040048261&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;US20040048261&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;see claims 24-26:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An animal genetically altered ... selected from .... Hymenoptera&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-05-27T15:32:39.700" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T15:32:39.700" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27853" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27840" CreationDate="2015-05-27T16:22:05.033" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;Snopes has an article on the &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://m.snopes.com/2015/05/26/charlie-charlie-challenge/&quot;&gt;Charlie Charlie Challenge&lt;/a&gt;&quot; and they point out that, at the least, the origin is a bit silly:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prior to May 2015, few mentions appeared on the Internet of any practice fitting the description of the Charlie Charlie Challenge. If Mexican folklore featured it at all, it was a well-hidden secret; the BBC quoted a regional correspondent about the dubious ancient origins of the game (noting that &quot;Charlie&quot; is not a Mexican name, nor does any known folkloric entity of that culture resemble the one summoned):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some have claimed that it has been revealed as an &lt;a href=&quot;http://jezebel.com/that-charlie-charlie-demon-challenge-was-a-viral-market-1708196890&quot;&gt;attempt at viral marketing&lt;/a&gt; for a film named &lt;em&gt;The Gallows&lt;/em&gt;. It's also possible that the marketing team for &lt;em&gt;The Gallows&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://m.snopes.com/2015/06/02/charlie-charlie-challenge-viral-marketing-hoax/&quot;&gt;appropriated the meme&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As to how it works, it's the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideomotor_phenomenon&quot;&gt;ideomotor phenomenon&lt;/a&gt; at work, the same thing behind automatic writing, Ouija boards, and pendulum divination:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The ideomotor response (or &quot;ideomotor reflex&quot;), often abbreviated to IMR, is a concept in hypnosis and psychological research. It is derived from the terms &quot;ideo&quot; (idea, or mental representation) and &quot;motor&quot; (muscular action). The phrase is most commonly used in reference to the process whereby a thought or mental image brings about a seemingly &quot;reflexive&quot; or automatic muscular reaction, often of minuscule degree, and potentially outside of the awareness of the subject.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Basically, no matter how still you try to keep your hands, they twitch. The more you notice the twitch and try to still it, the greater the twitches get. From there, you get into various debates as to whether people subconsciously pick out answers in their motions, or if all meaning comes from interpretation. In versions where there's ostensibly no forces acting on it (such as setting it on the table), it's due to the fact that everything is moving and vibrating unless you do very specific controls on the environment, and once an object starts moving in a direction, random motion is likely to keep it moving that way until it is stopped, such as by friction. And, of course, that's assuming that no one at the table is doing a seance trick of intentionally influencing the motion by jiggling the table or blowing surreptitiously.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="19346" LastEditDate="2015-06-02T16:26:09.400" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T16:26:09.400" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27854" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-27T18:23:34.883" Score="3" ViewCount="736" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s50ssHukKM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;news story from &quot;13 Investigates&quot;&lt;/a&gt; shows Walt Augustinowicz (an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-frequency_identification&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RFID&lt;/a&gt; expert, and seller of RFID proof pouches) who has a portable  reader than picks up credit card details while they are still in people's wallets and purses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also demonstrates copying the cloned information onto a magnetic credit-card, and using it to purchase goods without needing to sign or enter a PIN.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it that easy to clone an RFID-based credit card?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-St_ltH90Oc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Adam Savage&lt;/a&gt; reports that when Mythbuster's considered investigating RFID's security, they were warned off by legal counsel for several major credit card organisations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2636" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-28T02:24:13.763" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T02:24:13.763" Title="Can credit cards be cloned remotely with an RFID reader?" Tags="|criminology|security|economics|finance|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27855" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-27T19:18:53.407" Score="6" ViewCount="1085" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently came across this post on my facebook frontpage:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines-2015/alert-media-ignores-report-showing-pentagon-created-isis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines-2015/alert-media-ignores-report-showing-pentagon-created-isis&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now the post links to a multitude of other sites making various other but similar claims, they all go along the line of &amp;quot;Pentagon funding ISIS/Qaeda&amp;quot; or at least includes this claim. Now I understand the US is a huge arms dealer and has been for decades. We all know of the guns they sold to Iraq and various other countries during the cold war which has come back to bite us all in the ass &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_war&lt;/a&gt; So I'm not interested in whether or not the US sold/gave guns or other resources that inadvertently ended up in the possession of either extremist groups. My question is about whether or not they deliberately created ISIS in an effort to destabilise Syria. This is a claim made in the first source and many links from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It stated this was “exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As noted above, the “supporting powers” are the West, led by the United States, and the Gulf Emirates and Turkey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Given this, and the fact that the US-coalition continuously aided the sectarian Syrian opposition knowing full well that this would then lead to an “Islamic State”...&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual title of the article is even more provocative (surprises! :D)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ALERT -- Media Ignores Report Showing Pentagon Created ISIS&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So my question is &lt;strong&gt;did the pentagon &lt;em&gt;deliberately with intent&lt;/em&gt; 'create' ISIS with the intention being it overthrows or damages the Syrian government&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25619" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T23:40:02.890" Title="Did the US create ISIS?" Tags="|politics|terrorism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27857" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17519" CreationDate="2015-05-27T19:58:24.230" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been a new iOS bug lets anyone crash your iPhone with a text message; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/may/27/iphone-crash-bug-text-imessage-ios&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;theguardian.com&lt;/a&gt; reported on May 27, 2015:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A bug in Apple’s iOS means that anyone can crash an iPhone by simply sending it a certain string of characters in a message.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It required sending an SMS to the victim, not him opening an link:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The text string is very specific and is therefore highly unlikely to be replicated by accident. Those worried about being attacked can protect their iPhone from the bug by disabling notification banners. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bug was discovered by a reddit member &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/37edde/eli5_how_that_text_you_can_send_to_friends_turns/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you send the following:&#xA;  &lt;br /&gt; &lt;strong&gt;effective.&lt;/strong&gt;  &lt;br /&gt; &lt;strong&gt;Power&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br/&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;لُلُصّبُلُلصّبُررً ॣ ॣh ॣ ॣ&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;冗&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;   &lt;br /&gt;&#xA;  Send that to someone with an iPhone it turns their phone off&#xA;  To an iphone, it restarts their phone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apple has provided a brief &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.imore.com/unicode-rendering-bug-crashing-messages-lockscreen&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;official&lt;/a&gt; statement to iMore:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We are aware of an iMessage issue caused by a specific series of unicode characters and we will make a fix available in a software update&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-28T09:32:46.987" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T09:32:46.987" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27859" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27854" CreationDate="2015-05-27T23:17:26.990" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Without getting too deep into the technology behind credit cards with RFID (which you can find &lt;a href=&quot;https://security.stackexchange.com/a/71370/44582&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; if you're interested), &lt;strong&gt;yes&lt;/strong&gt;, it is possible to copy the data that credit cards broadcast, but it is &lt;strong&gt;unlikely&lt;/strong&gt; that that information will be useful to a criminal if the card issuer was using modern security methods that are now common practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snopes.com/fraud/identity/pickpocket.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes posted a response&lt;/a&gt; to this video in 2012 that contained a pretty good summary by security analysts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The data streams emitted by contactless cards &lt;strong&gt;don't include such information as PINs and CVV (Card Verification Value) security codes — or, in newer cards, customer names —&lt;/strong&gt; and without those pieces of information a card skimmer should not be able to utilize the stolen card numbers to print up counterfeit cards or engage in Card Not Present (CNP) transactions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;None of the cards transmits the additional number on the front or back&lt;/strong&gt;, known as the card validation code, that some businesses require for online purchases. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;[C]ompany representatives argued [that] the process of making purchases with the cards involves &lt;strong&gt;verification procedures based on powerful encryption that make each transaction unique. Most cards, they said, actually transmit a dummy number that does not match the number embossed on the card&lt;/strong&gt;, and that number can be used only in connection with the verification &quot;token,&quot; or a small bit of code, that is &lt;strong&gt;encrypted before being sent&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;    &#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;It's basically useless information,&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; said David Bonalle, vice president and general manager for advanced payments at American Express. &lt;strong&gt;&quot;You can't steal that data and just play it back and expect that transaction to work.&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Emphasis mine.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the information sent (at least with newer cards) is a &lt;strong&gt;signature on the specific transaction, not information on how to sign any future transactions&lt;/strong&gt;, making it essentially useless to a thief.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, of course there is some doubt as to whether this is the method employed by older cards, but it's more likely that these older cards are not being used anymore.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not sure what to think about the Adam Savage video, but given the information above, I don't think you have to worry about it. :)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23377" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-03-17T13:14:43.757" LastActivityDate="2015-05-27T23:17:26.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27861" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-28T03:04:23.473" Score="20" ViewCount="2174" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read a lot about the State of Israel being the only Free and Democratic country in the Middle East:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3263877/posts?page=6&quot;&gt;John McCain&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is really the worst situation by far that any of us have seen as far as U.S.-Israel relations. The only … free and democratic nation in the entire Middle East, and it’s very serious, and it’s very unfortunate.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sazfcape.co.za/freedom-in-the-middle-east/&quot;&gt;Safcape&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once again, objective and non-political academic studies place Israel as the only free and democratic country in the entire Middle East.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://infogr.am/israel-the-only-democratic-country-all-overt-the-middel-east&quot;&gt;An Infographic&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Israel is rating by the FREEDOMHOUSE as the only free and democratic country all over the Middle East.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=244499848933801&amp;amp;story_fbid=565022703548179&quot;&gt;Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Israel is the only free and democratic state in the Middle East. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the same time there is a lot of anti-Israel reporting in EU media, and even claims of the State of Israel being an apartheid state.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is Israel free, democratic and the only example of both in the Middle East region?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26404" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-28T03:29:59.763" LastActivityDate="2016-04-28T02:24:11.660" Title="Is Israel the only &quot;Free and Democratic&quot; country in the Middle East?" Tags="|israel|democracy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27864" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27861" CreationDate="2015-05-28T09:04:50.633" Score="29" Body="&lt;p&gt;To answer this controversial question, data will be used from Freedom House, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webcitation.org/6BPxBKGBd&quot;&gt;a U.S.-based&lt;/a&gt; non-governmental organization (NGO) that conducts research and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webcitation.org/6BPxIft8t&quot;&gt;advocacy on democracy&lt;/a&gt;, political freedom, and human rights.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The measure of the level of democracy in nations throughout the world published by the Freedom House,the Middle Eastern countries with the highest scores are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Israel&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Kuwait&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Tunisia&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Lebanon&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Turkey&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Morocco. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Countries that are occasionally classified as partly democratic are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Egypt&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Iraq. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remaining countries of the Middle East are categorized as authoritarian regimes, with the lowest scores held by Saudi Arabia and Yemen.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The below table summarizes the findings of the 2010 - 2015 Freedom in the World report on the countries of the Middle East and North Africa.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt; Key: - PR: Political Rights&#xA;     - CL: Civil Liberties&#xA;     - FR: Free Status: Free&#xA;     - PF: Partly Free&#xA;     - NF: Not Free &lt;/sup&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HjCIe.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Screenshot from Wikipedia's page &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_the_Middle_East&quot;&gt;Democracy in the Middle East&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: Freedom House. &lt;a href=&quot;https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/01152015_FIW_2015_final.pdf&quot;&gt;Freedom in the world 2015&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Freedom House categorizes &lt;strong&gt;Israel&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Tunisia&lt;/strong&gt; as &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Free&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, &lt;strong&gt;Lebanon&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Turkey&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;Kuwait&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;Morocco&lt;/strong&gt; &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Partly Free&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, and the remaining states as &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Not Free&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; (including &lt;strong&gt;Western Sahara&lt;/strong&gt;, which is controlled by &lt;strong&gt;Morocco&lt;/strong&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2015, Tunisia became the first Arab country classified as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/01/28/why_was_tunisia_the_only_arab_spring_country_that_turned_out_well.html&quot;&gt;free&lt;/a&gt; since the beginning of Lebanon’s civil war 40 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, as you see Tunisia is a Country in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunisia&quot;&gt;Africa&lt;/a&gt; and not in the Middle East.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lebanon, was one of only two (together with Israel) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/Country%20Status%20and%20Ratings%20By%20Region%2C%201973-2013_0.xls&quot;&gt;politically free countries&lt;/a&gt; in the Middle East. But it lost its status with the outbreak of the Civil War, and has not regained it since 1975.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above suggests that, according to Freedom House:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Israel is the only Middle Eastern country that has full democracy.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2016-04-26T20:48:16.483" LastActivityDate="2016-04-26T20:48:16.483" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27865" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-28T10:12:36.247" Score="8" ViewCount="146" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, there have been news reports about Endochrine-Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) have sprung up, such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/22/eu-dropped-pesticide-laws-due-to-us-pressure-over-ttip-documents-reveal&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this February 2015 Guardian article&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Draft EU criteria could have banned 31 pesticides containing endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). But these were dumped amid fears of a trade backlash stoked by an aggressive US lobby push, access to information documents obtained by Pesticides Action Network (PAN) Europe show. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The result was that legislation planned for 2014 was kicked back until at least 2016, despite estimated health costs of €150bn per year in Europe from endocrine-related illnesses such as IQ loss, obesity and cryptorchidism – a condition affecting the genitals of baby boys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do the pesticides cause the health detriments mentioned: IQ loss, obesity and cryptorchidism?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17130" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T12:56:57.900" Title="Do pesticides containing EDCs cause IQ loss, obesity and cryptorchidism?" Tags="|environmental-health|pesticides|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27866" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27867" CreationDate="2015-05-28T12:17:03.177" Score="16" ViewCount="21293" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I saw a post on Facebook, of this image:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/88sl2.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The caption is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;May 26 is celebrated as Science day in Switzerland in honour of Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, because on that day, Kalam visited the country&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr Kalam is an acclaimed scientist, and a former President of India.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to Google for sources, and couldn't find any that were definitely not Indian in origin:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/rest-of-world/Swiss-declare-Science-Day-in-Kalams-honour/articleshow/1122502.cms&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Swiss declare Science Day in Kalam's honour, &lt;em&gt;The Times of India&lt;/em&gt;, May 26, 2005&lt;/a&gt; (apparently from the PTI)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thehindu.com/2005/05/26/stories/2005052615021500.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kalam arrives in Geneva: Switzerland declares May 26 as science day in his honour, &lt;em&gt;The Hindu&lt;/em&gt;, May 26, 2005&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://cds.cern.ch/record/843531?ln=sk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CERN Press cutting of an apparently defunct website - newindpress.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26412" LastEditorUserId="26412" LastEditDate="2015-05-28T12:33:29.113" LastActivityDate="2020-01-07T21:44:16.683" Title="Did Switzerland declare a &quot;Science day&quot; in honour of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam?" Tags="|politics|india|switzerland|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27867" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27866" CreationDate="2015-05-28T15:08:29.953" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;It doesn't look like it. Searching for &quot;Kalam&quot; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.admin.ch&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.admin.ch&lt;/a&gt; (which purports to be the official site of the Swiss government) brings up one English result, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releases.msg-id-1588.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Indian President to visit Federal Institutes of Technology in Lausanne and Zurich&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. It is the press release for President Kalam's visit, dated 17 May 2005, nine days before the date in question. There is no mention of any &quot;Science Day&quot; in that article. Searching in French and German also returns one &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.admin.ch/gov/fr/accueil/documentation/communiques.msg-id-22209.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;earlier, shorter press release&lt;/a&gt; (translated to each language), which also does not mention &quot;Science Day&quot;. Searching the site for &quot;science day&quot; or &quot;May 26&quot; returns nothing. (Searching for &quot;science&quot; returns 250+ results, but since none of them mention Kalam, they are irrelevant.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, Science Day is not an official Swiss &lt;em&gt;holiday&lt;/em&gt;. Per &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_Switzerland&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;, there is only one federal holiday (i.e., declared by the Swiss national government): Swiss National Day, August 1. All other holidays are declared by the individual cantons. Wikipedia's list, which includes the holidays of the cantons, makes no mention of Science Day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that Kalam visited CERN, so it might be asserted that the canton of Geneva, where CERN is located, declared the holiday (which would not be a Swiss holiday exactly, though it would still be true that it's celebrated in Switzerland); however, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.feiertagskalender.ch/index.php?hl=en&amp;amp;geo=1026&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Geneva's own public holiday list&lt;/a&gt; has no mention of it. It seems unlikely that it would have been declared by one of the other cantons.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://home.web.cern.ch/cern-people/cern-official-holidays-2015&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;CERN has a list of official holidays, too&lt;/a&gt;. There is no Science Day, no mention of Kalam, no listing for May 26.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More circumstantial evidence is provided by TimeAndDate.com which has a list of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/switzerland/2005&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;all Swiss holidays &lt;em&gt;and observances&lt;/em&gt; in 2005&lt;/a&gt; and has no entry for March 26th.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some light googling only comes up with repetitions of this claim, but no sources. If it were declared by Switzerland, we would expect Swiss record of someone declaring it; if it were celebrated, we would expect record of someone celebrating it. I have found none.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17804" LastEditorUserId="17804" LastEditDate="2020-01-07T20:57:41.353" LastActivityDate="2020-01-07T20:57:41.353" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27868" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-28T16:21:47.770" Score="4" ViewCount="595" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/DevelopmentAbstraction.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;one of his essays&lt;/a&gt; Joel Spolsky (co-founder of Stack Exchange) wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] the Roman army had a ratio of four&#xA;  servants for every soldier.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2277" LastActivityDate="2015-05-28T16:21:47.770" Title="Did the Roman army have more servants than soldiers?" Tags="|history|military|ancient-rome|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27869" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-28T18:54:30.027" Score="1" ViewCount="158" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ksl.com/?sid=26729407&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;studies show higher speed limits do not increase accidents&#xA;&lt;/a&gt;, claims that increased speeding does not increase your chance of falling into an accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, another article &lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/transport/wcm/road_safety/erso/knowledge/Content/20_speed/speed_and_accident_risk.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Speed and accident risk&#xA;&lt;/a&gt; articulate the exact opposite:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A higher speed increases the likelihood of an accident.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm asking whether higher speeds increase the risk of getting an accident, not, does going above the speed limit increase risk. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2016-09-01T03:16:51.393" LastActivityDate="2016-09-01T03:16:51.393" Title="Does speeding increase the risk of accident?" Tags="|safety|driving-speed|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2015-05-28T23:25:56.297" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27870" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-28T21:08:38.173" Score="6" ViewCount="1376" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a recent interview Ann Coulter &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2015-05-27.html&quot;&gt;claimed&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;America has already taken in one-fourth of Mexico's entire population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3126" LastEditorUserId="3126" LastEditDate="2015-05-28T21:14:56.487" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T22:15:33.177" Title="Has the US already taken in 25% of Mexicos population as immigrants?" Tags="|united-states|immigration|mexico|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2015-05-28T23:27:34.727" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27871" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27870" CreationDate="2015-05-28T21:50:36.733" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2013, data suggests that the Mexican population is estimated at 122.3 million mexicans.&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kmB90m.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;Graph source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=maxican+population&amp;amp;oq=maxican+population&amp;amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.5438j1j4&amp;amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;amp;es_sm=119&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google&lt;/a&gt;. Number source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.TOTL&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;World Bank&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;25% of 122.3 million = 30,575,000 million immigrants.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the claim is that there are 30m mexican immigrants in the States. Is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A record 33.7 million Hispanics of Mexican origin resided in the United States in 2012, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by Pew Research Center. This estimate includes 11.4 million immigrants born in Mexico and 22.3 million born in the U.S. who self-identified as Hispanics of Mexican origin.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nGLEE.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pewhispanic.org/2013/05/01/a-demographic-portrait-of-mexican-origin-hispanics-in-the-united-states/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;pewhispanic.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You should note here based on the definition of immigrants; 22.3 million people who are born in the U.S. from a Mexican origin are not immigrants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The would mean there 33.7 million Hispanics of Mexican origin in the US but only 11.4 million are considered immigrants (born in Mexico).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-05-29T22:15:33.177" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T22:15:33.177" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27872" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19823" CreationDate="2015-05-29T00:34:22.457" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here's what we know:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The 64-year-old (Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto) &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrrtA6IoR_E&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;fervently denied being &amp;quot;the&amp;quot; Satoshi Nakamoto&lt;/a&gt;, and even claimed he only recently heard of Bitcoin&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Satoshi Nakamoto broke a lengthy online silence &lt;a href=&quot;http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-source?commentId=2003008%3AComment%3A52186&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;to deny being Dorian&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newsweek.com/2014/03/14/face-behind-bitcoin-247957.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Newsweek's story&lt;/a&gt; relied entirely on circumstantial evidence&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Numerous other news outlets excoriated &lt;em&gt;Newsweek&lt;/em&gt; for its coverage and denied that they had enough evidence to run a story&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A good example of a publication laying these facts out is the article &amp;quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/03/the-colossal-arrogance-of-newsweeks-bitcoin-scoop/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The colossal arrogance of Newsweek’s Bitcoin 'scoop'&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot; from &lt;em&gt;Ars Technica&lt;/em&gt;. Here, I think, is the most relevant section:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“It still comes down to the fact that we could not rule him out,” said the forensic analyst. “I said, ‘I think I know this guy—he wears a pocket protector, has a slide rule, he comes from that genre,’” she said. Mentions of “disk space” and “Moore’s law” suggested an older computer scientist, she said, but those concepts resonate in Silicon Valley today, as Marc Andreessen noted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Newsweek story posited various similarities between Dorian Nakamoto and &amp;quot;Satoshi Nakamoto,&amp;quot; some more convincing than others. For instance, Goodman wrote that Dorian Nakamoto’s writing style is similar to the key paper describing Bitcoin. Once writing samples were analyzed by people without months invested in an investigation, however, it became pretty clear that the writing styles aren’t, in fact, similar at all. Goodman had seized on small things like “double spaces after periods and other format quirks,” which she believed supported the Dorian-Satoshi connection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other “similarities” between Dorian Nakamoto and the creator(s) of Bitcoin are thin, to put it generously. Dorian Nakamoto is good at math; he has libertarian-leaning views; and he hasn’t been employed since 2001, which is when some people believe work on Bitcoin began.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While Goodman repeatedly cited Dorian's “career path” as evidence in interviews, that element points directly away from a Dorian-Satoshi connection. Dorian Nakamoto knows about computers, but he studied physics—in the 1960s. While a portrait of the lone inventor working in quiet isolation may sound romantic, the Bitcoin inventor(s) knew cryptography well—and there’s no evidence whatsoever that Nakamoto is conversant with the relevant crypto or distributed algorithms. Monday, he explicitly denied such knowledge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the same article, note that a lot of the evidence stemmed from his name, and how flimsy of a case that makes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that Bitcoin founder “Satoshi Nakamoto”—long thought to be a pseudonym—was living in a modest house in a Los Angeles suburb, and under his real name, was irresistible. ... Dorian Nakamoto ... hasn’t gone by the name “Satoshi” in almost 40 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Newsweek&lt;/em&gt;’s “forensic research” boiled down to background research on a preset list of candidates, which included everyone they could find named Satoshi Nakamoto. (Of course, there was no good way to produce a sufficient set of candidates not named Satoshi Nakamoto.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other things just didn’t add up, either. Why would Satoshi Nakamoto publish under his real birth name when he clearly wants to be anonymous?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the answer to your question can pretty clearly be supplied as &amp;quot;no.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16860" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-29T00:34:22.457" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27874" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27878" CreationDate="2015-05-29T11:52:38.270" Score="35" ViewCount="9930" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jI6v3.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9RZho.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I found these images on this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.earthporm.com/heartbreaking-photos-of-pollution/?ts_pid=2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;image aggregator&lt;/a&gt;, which states that the photo credit is unknown for both images. The tortoises are implied to have become deformed from growing up inside the rings of plastic. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these images authentic, and is it in fact possible for tortoises to become deformed in such a manner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T20:11:36.720" Title="Can tortoises become deformed by growing up inside rings of plastic?" Tags="|zoology|pollution|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27875" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27874" CreationDate="2015-05-29T12:01:34.253" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;There has been discussion on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20190520200606/http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0Zb9b5IpGm8J:x.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Snopes forums&lt;/a&gt; regarding the second image. In the link, they discussed the case of &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130929015710/http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/adoptriver/peanut.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Peanut the tortoise&lt;/a&gt;, which appears to be the same tortoise depicted in the first link. Therefore, at least the first image is authentic, and tortoises can certainly be deformed by plastic rings. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources quoting the Missouri Department of Conservation, the first photo is an authentic image. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This is Peanut the turtle—Peanut the red-eared slider, to be exact.&#xA;  She was found in 1993 in Missouri and taken to a zoo in St. Louis&#xA;  where the six-pack ring was removed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Today she is in the care of the Missouri Department of Conservation,&#xA;  and is doing well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-05-20T20:08:38.263" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T20:08:38.263" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27876" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-29T18:41:25.963" Score="11" ViewCount="926" Body="&lt;p&gt;This Indian Institute of Technology Bombay  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ircc.iitb.ac.in/IRCC-Webpage/Homeopathy-Nanoparticle-Note.pdf&quot;&gt;press release&lt;/a&gt; quotes some research papers which claims to prove that homeopathic remedies do retain original substances even when diluted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The paper reports the fascinating observation that certain high potency (highly diluted)&#xA;  homeopathic remedies made from metals still contain measurable amounts of the starting&#xA;  material, even at extreme dilutions of 1 part in 10 raised to 400 parts (200C).  It is well known that a series of 1:99 dilutions done sequentially will produce a significant dilution of the starting material in very short order. Specifically, if the starting material is at one molar concentration (6.023x10e23 molecules per liter), then at about the 12th dilution (12C) there should be no or very nearly no molecules left of the starting material. At 200th dilution (200C) the likelihood of there being even one atom of the starting material approaches zero. However, dilution does not work so simply, according to this paper. Using electron microscopy (TEM), electron&#xA;  diffraction, and atomic spectroscopy, Chikramane et al. found that, contrary to the arithmetic, there are nanogram quantities of the starting material still present in these ‘high potency’ remedies in the form of nanoparticles.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was published in a homeopathy journal and not a chemical engineering journal, although the department was chemical engineering. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A later paper, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homresearch.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/langmuir.pdf&quot;&gt;Why Extreme Dilutions Reach Non-zero Asymptotes: A Nanoparticulate Hypothesis Based on Froth Flotation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt; suggests that nano-particles are distributed unevenly, floating to the top of the container, which may interfere with dilution predictions,  public in a journal from the American Chemical Society.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;However, physicochemical studies of these solutions have unequivocally established the presence of the starting raw materials in nanoparticulate form even in these extreme (super-Avogadro, &gt;10&lt;sup&gt;23&lt;/sup&gt;) dilutions. In this article, we propose and validate a hypothesis to explain how nanoparticles are retained even at such enormous dilution levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another researcher in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Salvatore_Chirumbolo/publication/256465665_Homeopathy_is_not_pharmacology/links/02e7e528251b293ebd000000.pdf&quot;&gt;Letter to the Editor&lt;/a&gt; that the original element was found may be be because those original elements were stuck to the inner walls of lab glass:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Further-more, soluble compounds can be captured by nanosized structure, often nanobubbles, lining the boron-silicate glasses with which dilutions, subjected to mechanical stresses, are made. Therefore, an imprecise fraction of compound may be dispersed into the solvent from the glass wall whenever a mechanical stress is applied to the dilution, possibly giving gelsemine concentration far from the theoretical evaluation into pure water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The &quot;mechanical stress&quot; presumably refers to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/succussion&quot;&gt;succussion&lt;/a&gt; during homeopathic preparation.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, are some of the original materials still found in 200C dilutions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-05-31T11:19:21.097" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T12:38:11.573" Title="Do extreme homeopathic dilutions still retain quantities of the starting materials?" Tags="|physics|chemistry|homeopathy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27877" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-29T19:06:23.037" Score="-3" ViewCount="1885" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://docs.google.com/document/d/165i0dicryJ_KtzCr6agR6O6v4XaRM2EDr6f1WbmU3Fg/edit?hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Doc&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;United States did go &quot;Bankrupt&quot; in 1933 and was declared so by&#xA;  President Roosevelt by Executive Orders 6073, 6102, 6111 and by&#xA;  Executive Order 6260 on March 9, 1933, under the &quot;Trading With The&#xA;  Enemy Act&quot; of October 6, 1917, AS AMENDED by the Emergency Banking&#xA;  Relief Act, 48 Stat 1, Public Law No. 1, which is presently codified&#xA;  at 12 USCA 95a and confirmed at 95b. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Thereafter, Congress confirmed the bankruptcy on June 5, 1933, and&#xA;  thereupon impaired the obligations and considerations of contracts&#xA;  through the &quot;Joint Resolution To Suspend The Gold Standard And&#xA;  Abrogate The Gold clause, June 5, 1933&quot; (See: HJR-192, 73rd Congress,&#xA;  1st Session). When the Courts were called upon to rule on various of&#xA;  the provisions designed to implement and compliment FDR's Emergency&#xA;  BANKING Relief Act of March 9, 1933, they were all found&#xA;  unconstitutional, so what FDR did was simply stack the &quot;Court's&quot; with&#xA;  HIS chosen obsequious members of the bench/bar and then sent many of&#xA;  the cases back through and REVERSED the rulings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;House Joint Resolution 192 (HJR-192), 48 Stat. 112, was passed by&#xA;  Congress on June 5, 1933. The 'Act' impaired the obligations and&#xA;  considerations of contacts and declared that the notes of the Federal&#xA;  Reserve banks were &quot;legal tender&quot; for the payment of both public and&#xA;  private debts, and that payment in gold Coin was against &quot;public&#xA;  policy&quot;. (In effect, FDR and Congress, under executive orders and&#xA;  legislative fiat, nationalized the people's money, i.e., their gold&#xA;  Coin. Nationalization is a violation of the Law of Nations and&#xA;  existing public policy of Congress. See: Hilton vs. Guyot, 159 U.S.&#xA;  113 (1895). The gold Coin that was confiscated (nationalized) was&#xA;  later used to purchase voting stockholder shares in The Bank and The&#xA;  Fund at $35 per ounce.) At this point in time, &quot;Fair Market Value&quot;,&#xA;  i.e., a willing seller and buyer, without compulsion, lost any&#xA;  substantial meaning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Moreover, all of the Governor's of the several States of the Union,&#xA;  who were summoned to and were in Washington, D.C. during the several&#xA;  days of this pre-planned economic &quot;Emergency&quot; (the first phase of&#xA;  which was to nationalize and expropriate the people's Money, i.e.,&#xA;  their gold Coin on deposit in the banks), pledged the full faith and&#xA;  credit thereof to the aid of the National Government, and formed&#xA;  various socialist committees, such as the &quot;Council of State&#xA;  Governments&quot;, &quot;Social Security Administration&quot;, etc., to purportedly&#xA;  deal with the economic &quot;Emergency.&quot; The Council of State Governments&#xA;  has been absorbed into such things as the National Conference Of&#xA;  Commissioners On Uniform State Laws, whose headquarters is located in&#xA;  Chicago, Illinois, and &quot;all&quot; being &quot;members of the Bar&quot;, and operating&#xA;  under a different &quot;Constitution and By-Laws&quot;, far distant from the&#xA;  depositories of the public records, and it is this organization that&#xA;  has promulgated, lobbied for, passed, adjudicated and ordered the&#xA;  implementation and execution of their purported &quot;Uniform&quot; and &quot;Model&quot;&#xA;  Acts and pretended statutory provisions, in order to &quot;help implement&#xA;  international treaties of the United States or where world uniformity&#xA;  would be desirable.&quot; (1990/91 Reference Book, NCCUSL). These&#xA;  organizations operate under the &quot;Declaration of INTERdependence&quot; of&#xA;  January 22, 1937, and published some of their activities in &quot;The Book&#xA;  Of The States.&quot; The 1937 Edition openly declares that the people&#xA;  engaged in such activities as the Farming/Husbandry Industry had been&#xA;  reduced to mere feudal &quot;Tenants&quot; on the Land they supposedly owned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On April 25, 1938, the supreme Court overturned the standing&#xA;  precedents of the prior 150 years concerning &quot;common law,&quot; in the&#xA;  federal government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;THERE IS NO FEDERAL COMMON LAW, and CONGRESS HAS NO POWER TO DECLARE&#xA;  SUBSTANTIVE RULES OF COMMON LAW applicable IN A STATE, WHETHER they be&#xA;  LOCAL or GENERAL in their nature, be they COMMERCIAL LAW OR a part of&#xA;  the LAW OF TORTS.&quot; -- Erie Railroad Co. vs. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 82&#xA;  L.Ed. 1188.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is the United States Bankrupt?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6916" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T19:07:28.163" Title="Is the United States bankrupt?" Tags="|united-states|law|banking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27878" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27874" CreationDate="2015-05-29T20:46:40.300" Score="36" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are at least two documented cases where turtles were found with constricting plastic rings around their midsection.  One with a six-pack ring, another with a milk bottle safety seal ring:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ln7_m8Msrgc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;turtle deformed from six pack plastic&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-1lF-sRc3M&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Turtle Mae West&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence that these are hoaxes, nor that some other process caused the deformity. It is reasonable to assume they are solely a result of the plastic rings they were found with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Peanut&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Peanut, the figure 8 turtle, appears to still be alive and is living in the Busch Conservation Area in the Missouri Department of Conservation.  This turtle is used in outreach programs to teach students and other groups the dangers of plastics in the environment, and there exist many reports and images of this turtle over the years.  It is very unlikely that it is a hoax of any sort:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20130929015710/http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/adoptriver/peanut.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The story of Peanut the Turtle&lt;/a&gt; at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thedodo.com/turtle-six-pack-unstoppable-1166240209.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Turtle Cut Free From 6-Pack Rings Is Unstoppable 20 Years Later&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="919" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T20:11:36.720" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27879" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27861" CreationDate="2015-05-30T05:23:32.787" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;georgechalhoub, in his &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/27864/20749&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;, has discussed one particular perspective on this issue. I will provide a quick summary of it below (for the sake of collecting information into one answer - for more detail and links, see his answer), and then provide some additional perspectives that demonstrate why this is not a straightforward question. Then, I will give an overall &quot;conclusion&quot;. As this conclusion will not be definitive, I am not going to place it at the start of the answer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/27864/20749&quot;&gt;georgechalhoub's answer&lt;/a&gt; - Freedom House is a US NGO that focuses on advocacy of freedom and democracy. They have a yearly rating of the levels of political rights and civil liberties in each country. When it comes to the Middle East and related countries, they currently consider Israel, Libya, Turkey, and Tunisia to be the only democracies (the latter three not always being considered part of the Middle East). In addition, they currently consider only Israel and Tunisia to be free, with Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, and Turkey being considered &quot;partly free&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, if we use Freedom House as a trustworthy source, we would call Israel the only country that is consistently considered Free, Democratic, and Middle Eastern, with Tunisia now being considered Free and Democratic, but usually considered African.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There have been some concerns raised regarding Freedom House, specifically regarding how they rate. Namely, some have asserted, using statistical analysis, that Freedom House has a bias in favour of capitalist and christian nations. This does not make the claim true, but it is a good demonstration of why a single source is not sufficient on a politically charged claim such as this. Other concerns will undoubtedly have been raised regarding the other sources I present - I will not be listing concerns for each one, as I do not consider any one source to be especially reliable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other sources, and conclusions vary depending on which source you consider more trustworthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Economist has what it calls the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). They are, in many ways, similar to Freedom House. However, they are based in the UK, are a magazine rather than an advocacy group, and they separate their analysis in a different way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to their &lt;a href=&quot;http://knoema.com/GDI2015JAN/democracy-index-2014&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;rankings&lt;/a&gt; (here provided via a third party), Israel is the most free and democratic of the Middle Eastern countries... however, Israel is considered a &quot;flawed democracy&quot; rather than a &quot;full democracy&quot;. Deeper investigation reveals the reason for this. In most of the aspects that EIU take into account in their rating, Israel performs well, being comparable to many European nations. However, on the measure of &quot;Civil Liberties&quot;, Israel performs quite poorly, scoring less than 6 where Australia rates a 10 and Austria rates a 9.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would seem reasonable to suggest that &quot;Civil Liberties&quot; is a reasonable definition of &quot;freedom&quot;, and thus, according to EIU, Israel would not be considered &quot;free&quot; in the way that many of us would define the idea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we consider the Economist Intelligence Unit to be trustworthy, then our conclusion would be that Israel is the most democratic and perhaps the most free, but that one couldn't really call it &quot;free and democratic&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Heritage Foundation (HF) is best described as a &quot;conservative US think tank&quot;. As such, their definitions of &quot;free&quot; and &quot;democratic&quot; are somewhat different from those of the above sources. On the issue of &quot;Freedom&quot;, they consider economic freedom to be most important.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;rankings&lt;/a&gt;, HF considers Bahrain to be the most &quot;free&quot; of the Middle Eastern nations, followed by UAE, Qatar, and then Israel. All four are in the &quot;Mostly Free&quot; region (&quot;Free&quot; contains just five nations - Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, and Switzerland), and all are below United States and United Kingdom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the three that rank higher than Israel, Bahrain is officially considered a Constitutional Monarchy (although some dispute it, saying it's an absolute monarchy), UAE is a federation of monarchies, and Qatar is an Absolute Monarchy with a parliamentary system (in other words, the parliament is a consultative body, with final power lying in the hands of the monarch).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we take Bahrain to be similar to the UK (which is also a constitutional monarchy), then we could assert that they have similar levels of democracy. If we do this, then one could potentially assert, using these definitions of democracy and freedom, that Bahrain is the most &quot;free and democratic&quot; of the Middle Eastern nations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alternatively, we may take the alternative view that Bahrain is actually an absolute monarchy, and if we take Israel as a full democracy, then it is the most &quot;free and democratic&quot;. However, Israel is also somewhat questionable, as demonstrated by, for instance, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Is-Israel-a-true-democracy-352445&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this Israeli Op-Ed&lt;/a&gt;, which claims that one can't really consider Israel a democracy, despite its electoral system, much as is claimed of Bahrain.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As such, based on the Heritage Foundation's rankings, and considerations of democracy along a similar vein, we would likely conclude that Israel and Bahrain are comparable regarding &quot;freedom and democracy&quot;, with other Middle Eastern nations falling short either on freedom or on democracy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another source that considers Economic Freedom is the Fraser Institute (FI). In their report (available &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fraserinstitute.org/research-news/display.aspx?id=20395&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;) from 2013, they rank UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Lebanon, and Oman as having greater freedom than Israel. I have already discussed UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar in connection with HF.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Jordan is another Constitutional Monarchy, and according to the Arab Reform Initiative, in their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.arab-reform.net/arab-democracy-index-iv&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arab Democracy Index&lt;/a&gt;, which does not include Israel, Jordan comes in second place - that is, second most democratic of the Arab nations (first place went to Morocco, which if we consider Tunisia to be &quot;African&quot;, then so is Morocco). Without the ability to compare with Israel, we can't say anything definitively, but if any nation would be considered to be in competition for &quot;most free and democratic&quot; by FI, it would be Jordan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lebanon is a complicated case - their system is parliamentary confessionalist, meaning that they have restrictions on representation to ensure that various religions get appropriate representation. As such, it is debatable whether this is less democratic, more democratic, more or less fair, etc. Oman is an absolute monarchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom measure, we would likely consider either Jordan, Bahrain, Lebanon, or Israel to be the most &quot;free and democratic&quot;, depending on how much weighting we give to various factors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also published by the Fraser Institute is a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.freetheworld.com/2012/freedomIndex/Towards-Worldwide-Index.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Human Freedom Index&lt;/a&gt;. According to this, the more general Freedom ranking (which includes both Personal and Economic freedoms) rates highest, among the Middle Eastern nations, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Turkey, Kuwait, UAE, Egypt, then Israel. In particular, Israel gets a 4.4 on Personal Freedoms (Egypt gets 5.0, and Bahrain gets 6.6, while Australia gets 8.8 and the US gets 8.7). And Israel gets a 6.86 on Economic Freedoms (Egypt gets 6.82, Bahrain gets 7.23, while Australia gets 7.83 and the US gets 7.93).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On this measure, according to the Fraser Institute, it appears clear that Israel is not at all considered the most &quot;free&quot;, either in terms of personal freedom or economic freedom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From all of this, what can we conclude? Well, Israel certainly is no slouch in the category, but classification as &quot;the only free and democratic country&quot; is very debatable. I've identified four different sources that have different measures of &quot;freedom&quot;, and on the basis of these four sources, we would certainly consider Israel to rate well on both measures.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the variations in exactly how they're rated demonstrates why this question is not a simple one - whereas most would comfortably define the US as more democratic than North Korea, such clear-cut distinctions aren't always possible. Israel has a democracy. So does Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt. None of them could be called completely, undoubtedly free and full democracy... but then, the same could be said of the US, the UK, or Australia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What can be said is that the claim that Israel is the only &quot;free and democratic nation in the entire Middle East&quot;, as said by McCain, is simplistic and reductionist, and highly politically charged. A full and detailed discussion of the topic is not feasible in this format.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25723" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T10:24:51.633" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27882" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-30T08:48:56.293" Score="6" ViewCount="277" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this on my Facebook today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/UzEBp.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Herded up like cattle and led away onto Indonesian army trucks to be tortured and then murdered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the reality of life in occupied West Papua. A land where over 500,000 people have been murdered by the Indonesian army, and thousands more have 'disappeared', been raped, tortured and imprisoned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T17:41:11.207" Title="Is the Indonesian army torturing and murdering civilians in West Papua?" Tags="|war|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27883" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27803" CreationDate="2015-05-30T09:44:53.610" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another gem from the decision (&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;: as @DavePhD correctly points out, this quote is from the earlier decision on the motion to suppress, but the S.Ct. decision supports this view more or less fully in paragraph 43, added below):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is no evidence that Deputy Small &amp;quot;commanded&amp;quot; Mr. Vogt to roll down his window by tapping on the window and motioning that he roll down his window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[43] Vogt's assertion that he was seized because of Deputy Small's &amp;quot;command&amp;quot; to roll down the window also is unpersuasive.  The circuit court found in its decision on the motion to suppress that &amp;quot;[t]here is no evidence that Deputy Small 'commanded' Mr. Vogt to roll down his window by tapping on the window and motioning that he roll down his window.&amp;quot;  At trial, the court found that Deputy Small's testimony &amp;quot;would indicate that he wasn't commanding [Vogt] to do anything, . . . that he was simply trying to make contact.&amp;quot;  Even though the circuit court noted that Deputy Small maybe &amp;quot;wasn't quite as subtle as he thought he was being,&amp;quot; the court still determined that Deputy Small's conduct was not so intimidating as to constitute a seizure.  Thus, Vogt's arguments that he was seized due to a &amp;quot;command&amp;quot; from Deputy Small are unavailing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/DisplayDocument.html?content=html&amp;amp;seqNo=117585&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://wicourts.gov/sc/opinion/DisplayDocument.html?content=html&amp;amp;seqNo=117585&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the flip side, of course, if you just try to leave in response to such an action by an officer, this will likely be found to constitute resisting arrest. In such a case, I expect the court would have the epiphany that there is no other reasonable way for an officer to make a show of authority to a suspect in a car whose windows are closed. Indeed, this seems to have bothered the circuit court:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The officer also testified that he did not block the vehicle in, that the vehicle could have gotten around him.  So there are a few factual distinctions as far as the testimony.  It's not a very bright line, and &lt;strong&gt;I don't know how a driver knows the difference between a command and a suggestion, particularly when we're talking about a physical movement, the knocking on the window.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, you wouldn't want to fail to obey a &lt;em&gt;command&lt;/em&gt;, because that can qualify as resisting arrest. Wikipedia has this to state about the crime of resisting arrest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resisting_arrest&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resisting_arrest&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The courts in the United States of America regard resisting arrest as a separate charge or crime in addition to other alleged crimes committed by the arrested person. It is possible to be charged, tried and convicted on this charge alone, without any underlying cause for the original decision to arrest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bottom line, it's a Catch-22 that ensures that there is not much you can do when your car reeks of booze and a cop taps on the window and motions that you roll down your window. If you roll down the window, the officer just &lt;em&gt;suggested&lt;/em&gt; that you do so and you're set for a DUI. If you try to drive off, it will turn out that the officer &lt;em&gt;commanded&lt;/em&gt; that you roll down the window, and you're set for resisting arrest (which the cop can now legitimately arrest you for), plus DUI.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that the officer would've simply let the defendant go about his business if he had simply driven off can be seen as an example of legal fiction.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26363" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T22:23:23.990" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27884" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27882" CreationDate="2015-05-30T10:07:18.967" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;A paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/intellectual_life/west_papua_final_report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;prepared&lt;/a&gt; by the Yale Law School for the Indonesian Human Rights Campaign in 2004 found:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Indonesian military and&#xA;  security forces have engaged in widespread violence and extrajudicial killings in West Papua.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It goes on saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They have subjected Papuan men and women to acts of torture, &lt;strong&gt;disappearance&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;strong&gt;rape&lt;/strong&gt;, and &lt;strong&gt;sexual violence&lt;/strong&gt;, thus causing serious bodily and mental harm. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It turns out this is a genocide, not just murder and rape:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the historical and contemporary evidence set out above strongly suggests that the Indonesian government has committed proscribed acts with the intent to destroy the West Papuans as such, in violation of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the customary&#xA;  international law prohibition this Convention embodies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kwFo7-3Wk0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt; published in 2010 on YouTube Report from Channel 4 News in the UK shows:  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;horrific torture of West Papuan civilians by the Indonesian military.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/5gks9.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;em&gt;Warning: Disturbing footage and scenes there.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A public report to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://griffmun.org/documents/GriffMUN2014%20BP%20HRC.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 1999&lt;/a&gt;, the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women concluded that the Indonesian security forces used rape in West Papua:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;as an instrument of torture and intimidation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;torture of women detained by the Indonesian security forces was widespread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The picture you see is referenced in &lt;a href=&quot;http://freewestpapua.org/info/human-rights/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://freewestpapua.org/&lt;/a&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ISt67.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apartheid in West Papua. Civilians are led away like slaves after being detained following a peaceful meeting. October 2011&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;UN General Assembly. (2006). Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 15 March 2006.&#xA;  60/251. Human Rights Council. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N05/502/66/PDF/N0550266.pdf?OpenElement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N05/502/66/PDF/N0550266.pdf?OpenElement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Kalosil on the question of West Papua: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is clear from many historical records that the Melanesian people of West Papua were the scapegoats of cold war politics and were sacrificed to gratify the appetite for natural resources which this country possesses. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;How can we then ignore hundreds of thousands of West Papuans who have been brutally beaten and murdered? The people of West Papua are looking to the UN as a beacon for hope. It is time for the UN to move beyond its periphery and address and rectify some historical error.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another reference: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia in London. (2009). Facts on Indonesia’s Sovereignty over Irian Jaya (Papua and West Papua Provinces). Retrieved from&#xA;  www.indonesianembassy.org.uk/papua/papua.html&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary: Since 1963's withdrawal of the Dutch colonial administration, the Free Papua Movement (OPM)&#xA;has conducted a low-level guerilla war against Indonesia, targeting its military and police, and&#xA;kidnapping non-Papuan Indonesian settlers and foreigners&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;More evidence: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Indonesia has signed the 1998 UN Convention against Torture yet members of the&#xA;  Indonesian forces in West Papua continue to physically harm civilians in and outside of&#xA;  prisons, such as the 300 people beaten or tortured following a pro-independence&#xA;  Congress in October 2011.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:  Franciscans International. (2012). Widespread incidence of torture in the provinces of Papua&#xA;and West Papua in Indonesia. Retrieved from &lt;a href=&quot;http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G12/106/20/PDF/G1210620.pdf?OpenElement&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://daccess-ddsny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G12/106/20/PDF/G1210620.pdf?OpenElement&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, a definitive final document:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;GriffMUN2014&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://griffmun.org/documents/GriffMUN2014%20BP%20HRC.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Briefing Paper for United Nations Human Rights Council&#xA;  rights abuses by Indonesian forces in West Papua&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;  Flora Varitimos and Riley Kernaghan. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Documents almost all pieces of evidence showing that there has been a genocide against West Papua civilians. The document also argues that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;abuses reported as occurring in West Papua may be violations of&#xA;  international law and to international treaties and conventions by which Indonesia is bound.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-05-30T10:22:17.903" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T10:22:17.903" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27885" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-30T12:45:32.527" Score="3" ViewCount="5027" Body="&lt;p&gt;My girlfriend told me last night that cats evolved meowing specifically in order to mimic the sound of a baby's crying to get us to feed them and so forth. Considering the &lt;a href=&quot;http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CatConcerto&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;meme of throwing shoes at loud, stray cats in American cartoons&lt;/a&gt;, in many cases all the meowing does is irritate us, needless to say I was quite skeptical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I did a little research, and found &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/the-manipulative-meow-cats-learn-to-2009-07-13/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this short Scientific American article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To understand just how cats vocally manipulate owners, including herself, McComb and her team set up a series of experiments. First they recorded the purrs of 10 cats; some were recorded when a cat was actively soliciting food and others in a non-solicitation setting. Fifty people then listened to the sounds at the same volume. Individuals judged pleading purrs as more urgent and less pleasant than normal purrs. When the researchers played the purrs re-synthesized to exclude the hungry cries, leaving all else the same, the volunteers perceived the purrs as far less urgent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;McComb suggests that cats may be cashing in on human's naturally nurturing response to a baby’s cry. Previous studies have shown the cat’s embedded cry shares a similar frequency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2002/05/meow-isnt-language-enough-manage-humans&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cornell article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After more than 5,000 years of human-feline cohabitation and enough elaborations on &amp;quot;meow!&amp;quot; to fill a dictionary, cats still haven't mastered language. But a Cornell University &lt;strong&gt;evolutionary psychology study -- analyzing people's reactions to feline vocalizations -- shows that cats know how to get what they want.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;No matter what we like to believe, cats are probably not using language,&amp;quot; says Nicholas Nicastro, a self-described cat person who has documented hundreds of different feline vocalizations in the common house cat (Felis catus ) and its ancestor, the African wild cat (Felis silvestris lybica ). His study, which he will describe June 5, 2002, at the 143rd meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, in Pittsburgh, &amp;quot;shows that some very effective cat-to-human communication is going on,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Though they lack language, cats have become very skilled at managing humans to get what they want -- basically food, shelter and a little human affection.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks to Wikipedia / @OddThinking, there is also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aspca.org/pet-care/virtual-pet-behaviorist/cat-behavior/meowing-and-yowling&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article from the ASPCA&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kittens meow to let their mother know they’re cold or hungry, but once they get a bit older, cats no longer meow to other cats. But they continue to meow to people throughout their lives, probably because meowing gets people to do what they want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a further suggestion that cat meowing is mostly for humans benefit, which would suggest they would not do it without their relationship with humans. Yet, stray / abandoned cats do meow anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have cats actually &lt;strong&gt;evolved&lt;/strong&gt; in the last 5000 years to get better at manipulating humans? Is it a skill that cats simply get better at through positive reinforcement?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26428" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-05-30T17:30:51.003" Title="Did cats evolve meowing in order to manipulate humans?" Tags="|biology|zoology|evolution|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2015-05-30T17:02:24.547" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27891" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-05-31T14:51:24.577" Score="3" ViewCount="572" Body="&lt;p&gt;Chris Jones styles himself as a comedy hypnotist. In &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnYBmUcdIFg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; on his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onewordchrisjones.com/#!media/c10tw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;official website&lt;/a&gt;, he puts a man to sleep within seconds by waving the person's finger in front of his face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Recently, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=318&amp;amp;v=f9dFLXV9hs0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this official video&lt;/a&gt; claims to show Howie Mandel being hypnotized on America's Got Talent by hypnotist Chris Jones. Mandel was put to sleep instantaneously, and shook hands with Jones, apparently believing that he had gloves on (as he's a well-known germaphobe). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mandel claims he was hypnotized as well, and has been been quoted in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.today.com/video/howie-mandel-i-got-hypnotized-on-air-452179011986&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;video interview&lt;/a&gt; on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.today.com/popculture/howie-mandel-says-agt-hypnotism-act-didnt-cure-him-t23106&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Today.com&lt;/a&gt; as saying that he went for therapy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I was upset about it, and it's hard for me to watch... I didn't know.&#xA;  I was not prepared for that to happen. ... I was open to be&#xA;  hypnotized... I just didn't know what he was going to ask me to do...&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  For those that - I've been reading online in social media, you know,&#xA;  there are people that don't believe it, you  know, you know what&#xA;  you're doing but it's kinda like you're at a party and you had drinks&#xA;  or xanax and you don't care... As soon as [the hypnotist] snapped me&#xA;  out of it, my guard is back up&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these effects possible with hypnosis?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Related question on &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/7936/can-john-morgan-use-hypnosis-to-cause-people-to-quit-smoking-or-lose-weight&quot;&gt;John Morgan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Howie Mandel (currently a judge on America's Got Talent) is well known for being a germaphobe; due to his OCD he refused to shake hands with any of the contestants on &quot;Deal or No Deal&quot; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/2020/howie-mandel-public-obsessive-compulisve-disorder-fear-germs/story?id=9153966&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;opted for fist-bumps instead&lt;/a&gt;. He has also penned a book titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/12/22/dont-touch-him-howie-mandel-goes-on-record.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Don't Touch Me&quot;&lt;/a&gt; about his OCD. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15834" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T00:34:27.853" Title="Can Chris Jones cause positive hallucinations and put people to sleep through the power of hypnosis?" Tags="|television|hypnotism|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2015-06-01T02:37:43.080" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27895" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27876" CreationDate="2015-05-31T23:14:00.857" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This Indian Institute of Technology Bombay press release quotes some research papers&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This isn't really true. It is just &lt;a href=&quot;http://homeoint.ru/pdfs/Extreme%20homeopathic%20dilutions%20retain%20starting%20%20materials-A%20nanoparticulate%20perspective.pdf&quot;&gt;one research paper&lt;/a&gt;, and one comment on said research paper.  Also, it merely describes the paper, without quoting it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, a major finding of the first paper is that there are discrete metal particles in the mixture.  In other words, it is not a true solution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That there are discrete metal particles in the mixture, permits mechanisms whereby the manipulative steps one executes in diluting do not result in a quantitative dilution.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, if you throw 100 liters of ping-pong balls into a 1,000,000 liter swimming pool filled with water, stir the swimming pool, and skim a sample of material from the top layer of the pool, the volume-fraction of ping pong balls in the sample will differ from the ratio 1:10,000 expected on a basis of the ping-pong balls being randomly distributed in the water, because ping-pong balls float.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is basically what the first two articles mentioned in the OP are finding.  The metal particles are concentrated at the surface due to bubbles.  If only material from a top layer is used for each round of dilution, the dilution is not quantitative.  The final concentration is greater than would be predicted on the basis of what would happen to a true homogeneous solution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Flotation is a long-known technique for concentrating metals such as gold at the surface of a mixture using bubbles.  See &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=8zpjAhBViC0C&amp;amp;pg=PA575&amp;amp;lpg=PA575&amp;amp;dq=gold%20concentration%20by%20flotation&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=UJmZH2i05r&amp;amp;sig=qj2m0BNSlYYzgvwm4xDKL_Xzym4&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=76hrVZHfJMmcsAXd9IN4&amp;amp;ved=0CGcQ6AEwDQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=gold%20concentration%20by%20flotation&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Froth Flotation: A Century of Innovation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The research cited in the OP is not something that can be generalized to all homeopathic preparations.  It only applies to certain homeopathic solutions prepared in certain ways.  For example, if material is not taken from near the top of the container, but instead in the central portion of the container, then the final preparation would be at least as dilute as expected.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The title question &quot;Do extreme homeopathic dilutions still retain quantities of the starting materials?&quot; is phrased so as to necessarily be false.  If it retains a significant amount of starting material, by definition it is not extremely dilute.  The articles in the OP simply show that dilution techniques that work for true solutions, such as salt water, do not always work quantitatively for mixtures with solid particles.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above findings are further discussed in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=4&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;uact=8&amp;amp;ved=0CC8QFjAD&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fe-lactancia.org%2Fmedia%2Fpapers%2FHomeopatia_toxicidad-BritJourPharm2013.pdf&amp;amp;ei=lEdsVeaILcGzggS58IHYCQ&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNGLr2bpXaJEqg0OUT_YD1hArw88fg&quot;&gt;Adverse effects and homeopathy: may remedies yet contain noxious or toxic molecules?&lt;/a&gt; British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology  2014 Jul; 78(1):184-5.  The research cited in the OP, together with research such as Effect of alcohol-water exchange and surface scanning on nanobubbles and the attraction between hydrophobic surfaces. J Colloid Interface Science  2008; 325: 267–74 is being accepted as correct and showing the possible risks of metals or other starting materials being unexpectedly present due to failed dilution attempts.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-06-01T12:38:11.573" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T12:38:11.573" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27897" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27803" CreationDate="2015-06-01T04:03:06.933" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The claim that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;you [can] legally drive away when Wisconsin police officer knocks on your car window&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;does not logically follow from the actual finding unless you add a bunch of extra conditions.  The actual finding was:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;that a law enforcement officer's knock on a car window does not by itself constitute a show of authority sufficient to give rise to the belief in a reasonable person that the person is not free to leave&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, the court found that in a hypothetical situation in which a police officer knocks on your window &lt;em&gt;and has shown no other sign of wanting you to pull over or stop&lt;/em&gt;, it would be a reasonable reaction to assume you are not being detained.  And if you put it that way, it sounds more logical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Logically, in practice, you'll find that if the cop really did want you to pull over, but you drove away, they would then very quickly make it known that they want you to pull over, and you &lt;em&gt;would&lt;/em&gt; have to pull over.  Thus, this finding for all practical purposes means nothing.  You'd get to go for a 2-second little drive, then you'd get the cop pulling you over.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In this particular situation, the driver did &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; drive off anyway, so whether or not the court found this was never going to affect the driver in question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It merely came up as a hypothetical argument &lt;em&gt;from the police themselves&lt;/em&gt; to defend themselves against accusations that &lt;em&gt;they&lt;/em&gt; acted improperly.  Basically, the cops said in court something along the lines of &amp;quot;but we weren't commanding him! we only knocked on his window!  he &lt;em&gt;could&lt;/em&gt; have left.&amp;quot;  In reality, he didn't leave, so this was more about determining whether the cops acted appropriately or not.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not that it matters, but in this situation, the driver &lt;em&gt;was&lt;/em&gt; charged with offences during that incident, so it would also be incorrect if you claimed that someone escaped charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;My source for the quote and other information I based parts 1, 3 and 4 on was wholly the same short opinion summary quoted in the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://law.justia.com/cases/wisconsin/supreme-court/2014/2012ap001812.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://law.justia.com/cases/wisconsin/supreme-court/2014/2012ap001812.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Part 2 of my answer doesn't have a source but was a logical argument I was making in response to the hypothetical situation presented by the article's headline.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="979" LastEditorUserId="979" LastEditDate="2023-08-15T00:44:31.320" LastActivityDate="2023-08-15T00:44:31.320" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27901" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27908" CreationDate="2015-06-01T15:33:15.657" Score="34" ViewCount="12281" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been some claims that some software developers were paid per line of code written:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=60616&quot;&gt;Bill Gates was paid per line of code&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I heard that Microsoft has a tradition of needlessly long and complex&#xA;  programs in part because when Bill Gates was starting out, he was paid&#xA;  by the line (rather than by the job or the hour) for codes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.plentyoffish.com/datingPosts14036084.aspx&quot;&gt;Are programmers paid per line of code?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recently, I was told that Microsoft paid its programmers according to&#xA;  the number of lines of code they generated. Is this really true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article on SLOC&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;so it made sense to managers to count lines of code as a measurement&#xA;  of a programmer's productivity&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user14708" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditDate="2016-12-30T21:17:22.710" LastActivityDate="2016-12-30T21:17:22.710" Title="Has any programmer ever been paid per line of code?" Tags="|history|productivity|programming|bill-gates|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27902" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27877" CreationDate="2015-06-01T17:29:22.457" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This claim is utter and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Complete_bollocks&quot;&gt;complete bollocks&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the presidential decrees which it is claimed declare the US to be bankrupt:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14507&quot;&gt;6073 prohibits the unauthorized export of trade of gold&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14611&quot;&gt;6102 prohibits the hoarding of gold&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14621&quot;&gt;6111 admits to the existence of a 'national emergency in banking' and further prohibits the export of gold&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14509&quot;&gt;6260 prohibits the hoarding of gold&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not one of them mentions bankruptcy or anything similar. The remaining motions all touch on similar themes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Given the running theme of the decrees cited, I would assume that the document you quote is the work of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard&quot;&gt;gold standard&lt;/a&gt; fanatics, who believe that all the US financial problems (and probably many others) are a direct result of leaving the gold standard, and that the US 'stole' its people's gold when it substituted &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money&quot;&gt;fiat money&lt;/a&gt; for gold-backed currency. Bankruptcy to such people means that the US no longer has sufficient physical gold to exchange everybody's paper money if they all tried to do so at once, a definition which is not followed by any nation or institution. The claim also refers to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_State_Governments&quot;&gt;Council of State Governments&lt;/a&gt; as a 'socialist committee', which gives you an idea of the color of spectacles it is using to view the world.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The technical definition of bankruptcy is that of an entity having debts larger than its assets. There is nothing in the claim cited that indicates this to be true, and given the size of US government assets would be extremely unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="165" LastEditDate="2015-06-02T19:07:28.163" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T19:07:28.163" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27903" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-01T19:17:00.610" Score="9" ViewCount="1041" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.feedingamerica.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Feeding America&lt;/a&gt; claims, that one in six US Americans struggles with hunger. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xNZ4n.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is that claim true? &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Is the definition of &lt;em&gt;&quot;hunger&quot;&lt;/em&gt; they use similar to the one when talking about hunger for example in sub-Saharan Africa?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T20:25:25.017" Title="Does one in six Americans struggle with hunger?" Tags="|nutrition|united-states|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27904" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27903" CreationDate="2015-06-01T19:58:54.740" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a US Department of Agriculture survey for the report &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/1565415/err173.pdf&quot;&gt;Household Food Security&#xA;in the United States in 2013&lt;/a&gt; , people were asked the following questions (plus additional questions if they had children):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“We worried whether our food would run out before we got money to buy more.” Was that often,&#xA;sometimes, or never true for you in the last 12 months?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“The food that we bought just didn’t last and we didn’t have money to get more.” Was that often,&#xA;sometimes, or never true for you in the last 12 months?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;“We couldn’t afford to eat balanced meals.” Was that often, sometimes, or never true for you in&#xA;the last 12 months?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the last 12 months, did you or other adults in the household ever cut the size of your meals or&#xA;skip meals because there wasn’t enough money for food? (Yes/No)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(If yes to question 4) How often did this happen—almost every month, some months but not&#xA;every month, or in only 1 or 2 months?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the last 12 months, did you ever eat less than you felt you should because there wasn’t enough&#xA;money for food? (Yes/No)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the last 12 months, were you ever hungry, but didn’t eat, because there wasn’t enough money&#xA;for food? (Yes/No)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the last 12 months, did you lose weight because there wasn’t enough money for food? (Yes/No)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the last 12 months, did you or other adults in your household ever not eat for a whole day&#xA;because there wasn’t enough money for food? (Yes/No)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;(If yes to question 9) How often did this happen—almost every month, some months but not&#xA;every month, or in only 1 or 2 months?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based upon answers to the questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;85.7 percent of U.S. households were food secure throughout the entire year in 2013. In concept, “food secure” means that all household members had access at all&#xA;  times to enough food for an active, healthy life&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The remaining &lt;strong&gt;14.3 percent&lt;/strong&gt; (17.5 million households) were food insecure at some time during the year.  That is, they were, at times, unable to acquire adequate food for one or more household members because they had insufficient money and other resources for food. A majority of food-insecure households avoided substantial reductions or disruptions in food intake, in many cases by relying on a few basic foods and reducing variety in their diets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;5.6 percent (6.8 million households) had very low food security—that is,&#xA;  they were food insecure to the extent that eating patterns of one or more household members were disrupted and their food intake reduced, at least some time during the year, because they could not afford enough food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Prior to 2006, households with low food security were described as “food insecure without hunger” and households with very low food security were described as “food insecure with hunger.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So if the criterion is that one or more persons in ones household had to at least reduce the variety of food they eat, 1 in 7 people struggle with hunger in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the stricter criterion that one or more persons in ones household had to actually reduce their food intake, it is more like 1 in 18.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-06-01T20:25:25.017" LastActivityDate="2015-06-01T20:25:25.017" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27908" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27901" CreationDate="2015-06-02T00:47:22.263" Score="38" Body="&lt;p&gt;This may be a reason for the claim, that &amp;quot;Bill Gates&amp;quot; was paid per line of code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/11/half-an-operating-system-the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-os2/2/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ars Technica wrote&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OS/2 was plagued by delays and bureaucratic infighting. IBM rules about confidentiality meant that some Microsoft employees were unable to talk to other Microsoft employees without a legal translator between them. &lt;strong&gt;IBM also &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B00006FXQO&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;insisted&lt;/a&gt; that Microsoft would get paid by the company's standard contractor rates, which were calculated by “kLOCs,&amp;quot; or a thousand lines of code&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a similar story in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_lines_of_code&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia's SLOC article&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds, Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer criticized the use of counting lines of code:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In IBM there's a religion in software that says you have to count K-LOCs, and a K-LOC is a thousand lines of code. How big a project is it? Oh, it's sort of a 10K-LOC project. This is a 20K-LOCer. And this is 50K-LOCs. &lt;strong&gt;And IBM wanted to sort of make it the religion about how we got paid. How much money we made off OS/2, how much they did.&lt;/strong&gt; How many K-LOCs did you do? And we kept trying to convince them - hey, if we have - a developer's got a good idea and he can get something done in 4K-LOCs instead of 20K-LOCs, should we make less money? Because he's made something smaller and faster, less K-LOC. K-LOCs, K-LOCs, that's the methodology. Ugh! Anyway, that always makes my back just crinkle up at the thought of the whole thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently this was a reason why &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2#1990:_Breakup&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;they broke up&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two companies had significant differences in culture and vision. Microsoft favored the open hardware system approach that contributed to its success on the PC; IBM sought to use OS/2 to drive sales of its own hardware, including systems that could not support the features Microsoft wanted. Microsoft programmers also became frustrated with IBM's bureaucracy and &lt;strong&gt;its use of lines of code to measure programmer productivity&lt;/strong&gt;.[15] IBM developers complained about the terseness and lack of comments in Microsoft's code, while Microsoft developers complained that IBM's code was bloated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FYI:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;This was presumably in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2#1985.E2.80.931989:_Joint_development&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;1985–1989 timeframe&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Function Points (an alternative to SLOC for measuring size) were invented &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Function_point#Introduction&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;by an IBMer in 1979&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T01:15:53.640" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27910" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27866" CreationDate="2015-06-02T10:00:10.580" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Dr. Kalam's state visit to Switzerland was originally planned for May 27-28, 2005. The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/medienmitteilungen.msg-id-22209.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;original official media release&lt;/a&gt; (not available in English) emphasized a visit of the capital and the canton of Berne. It also mentioned visits to the Swiss Federal Institutes in Zurich and Lausanne during the president's stay, and referred to a more detailed program to be published later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releases.msg-id-1588.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;second official media release&lt;/a&gt; did schedule the visits to the two Swiss Federal Institutes on May 26, &quot;prior to his state visit to Switzerland&quot;. Dr. Kalam also visited CERN in Geneva on that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The official state visit was thus preceded by an unofficial visit to science institutions in Switzerland. Kalam signed agreements between India and CERN as a European institution, so his visit to CERN could not be part of a formal state visit to Switzerland.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Possibly some spokesperson mentioned that May 26 would be an unofficial &quot;science day&quot; preceding the official, formal state visit. Indian newspaper articles might have misinterpreted such a statement as an official declaration. No Swiss sources, neither official nor in newspapers, can be found on a formal declaration for that day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20884" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T10:00:10.580" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27912" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27915" CreationDate="2015-06-02T11:50:42.440" Score="33" ViewCount="5347" Body="&lt;p&gt;Various workshops given by Nielsen-Norman Group in the User Experience field, mention a specific experiment that involved Air Force cadets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The experiment is meant to illustrate the point that there's no such thing as an &quot;average user&quot;, and it goes like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;680 Air Force cadets were lined up in a field. All were roughly the&#xA;  same age and within narrow height and weight limits. Then an officer&#xA;  called out the average size of uniform items - first underwear, then&#xA;  pants, shirts, etc. Everyone not wearing the average size for that&#xA;  particular item were dismissed and left. By the fifth item, only two&#xA;  cadets remained. By item six, one was left. By item seven, all were&#xA;  gone.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This means that out of the 680 cadets there wasn't a single one who was the average size in all uniform items.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I attended a workshop where this was claimed, and there's also a presentation online from a different workshop of theirs, where this claim can be found (&lt;a href=&quot;https://prezi.com/_xtd-uz_yipj/nng03/&quot;&gt;slide 57 here&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However I couldn't find any other mentions of this experiment online. I wonder whether it can be just an urban legend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8889" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-06-02T12:16:27.907" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T23:06:32.040" Title="Did an experiment show none of 680 Air Force cadets were of &quot;average&quot; size?" Tags="|united-states|physiology|military|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27913" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2853" CreationDate="2015-06-02T12:52:46.433" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There was a joint Hungarian-German study on the subject led by Dr. Gábor Horváth at Eötvös University in Budapest, Hungary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A team of physicists, troubled by the lack of scientific evidence for the phenomenon, set out to test the theory that water droplets on leaves can act like mini magnifying lenses, focusing the sun's rays and leaving a leaf's surface covered in scorch marks.&#xA;  Using computer modelling as well as tests on real leaves, the researchers claim to have disproved the theory.&#xA;  They found that water droplets on a leaf surface were not able to focus the sun's energy sufficiently to damage the leaves before the water evaporated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/7823032/Sunburnt-plants-myth-is-debunked.html&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is true that in the perfect circumstances a droplet of water can cause some burn damage but it's only in the case of some tropical plants with hairy leaves and even then it's unlikely to cause too much damage due the hairy leaves tend to shed the water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However there are other things to keep an eye on as well when you are watering your plants as it is stated on the very same page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Drops of acid rain, salty sea or tap water, chlorinated water and concentrated solutions of fertiliser or other chemicals can all cause sunburn-like brown patches.&#xA;  &quot;Plants could also suffer some kinds of physiological stress from putting cold water onto hot leaves.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That all said and done though. It's still not ideal to water during the midday sun because the plants try to retain as much water as possible and they are pretty much resting (midday depression of photosynthesis can also be examined).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a few nice tips on watering plants:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Early is best; dawn to direct sun is ideal. &quot;Never in the evening, unless you like disease,&quot;... Watering in the evening can lead to fungal growth that's damaging to your plants.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Water deeply and infrequently...&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Don't wet the leaves when watering plants. Always water at the plant's base.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Water when needed. To figure out if your garden needs watering, use a technique similar to the houseplant test: Push your finger into the soil surrounding your plants. According to OrganicGardening.com, you want the top two or three inches of the soil to be dry, with the soil blow that moist. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rodalesorganiclife.com/wellbeing/watering-plants&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26467" LastEditorUserId="26467" LastEditDate="2015-06-02T12:58:34.490" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T12:58:34.490" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27915" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27912" CreationDate="2015-06-02T13:46:08.667" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;This story is sourced to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csun.edu/social-behavioral-sciences/psychology/tyler-blake&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Tyler Blake&lt;/a&gt;, professor CSU Northridge. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is printed in &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=NbXD7KycfOkC&amp;amp;printsec=frontcover&amp;amp;dq=advances+in+human-computer+interaction&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=DLRtVfjCN8bhsASJ2oGABw&amp;amp;ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=blake&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Advances in Human-computer Interaction&lt;/a&gt; (1995) at page 94, and the reference for the story is given as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blake, T. (1985). &lt;em&gt;Introduction to Principles and Techniques for Interface Design&lt;/em&gt; Tutorial Notes for CHI'85 tutorial.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This corresponds to a tutorial by Tyler Blake from 9AM - 12:30 PM Monday 15 April 1985 as part of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Hyatt Regency at Embarcadero Center, San Francisco.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/fa.arpa-bboard/65iwzblTfcM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;see &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=7ojItgAACAAJ&amp;amp;dq=%22Introduction%20to%20Principles%20and%20Techniques%20for%20Interface%20Design&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=brRtVbPwL67lsAStyoC4Ag&amp;amp;ved=0CDIQ6AEwAg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Introduction to Principles and Techniques for Interface Design&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is also in &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?ei=sLZtVccf0OWwBOuLgZgG&amp;amp;id=mApnEOXbJPQC&amp;amp;dq=Tognazzini%20air%20force%20cadets%20680%20design%20average&amp;amp;focus=searchwithinvolume&amp;amp;q=cadets&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TOG on Interface&lt;/a&gt; (1992)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The older version of the story is somewhat different from the one in OP.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original version does not include &quot;All were roughly the same age and within narrow height and weight limits&quot; nor &quot;By item seven all were gone&quot;. Also, the earlier version says &quot;shoes, pants, and shirts&quot; instead of the &quot;underwear&quot; mentioned in the OP.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It makes clear that anyone not within one standard deviation of average was excluded each round.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically, the original (or at least 1992) version of the story is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Several years ago, the Air Force carried out a little test to find out how many cadets could fit into what were statistically the average-sized clothes. They assembled 680 cadets in a courtyard and slowly called off the average sizes - &lt;strong&gt;plus or minus one standard deviation&lt;/strong&gt; - of various items such as shoes, pants and shirts.  Any cadet that was not in the average &lt;strong&gt;range&lt;/strong&gt; for a given item was asked to leave the courtyard. By the time they finished with the fifth item, there were only 2 cadets left; by the sixth, all but one had been eliminated.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comparing the story to statistical expectations for normal distributions of independent variables:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;68.2 % are within one standard deviation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;0.682^5 = 0.148 (101 / 680) &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;0.682^6 = 0.101 (69 / 680)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;0.682^7 = 0.069 (47 / 680)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So even after 7 round, one would expect 47 cadets to be remaining, and even more given sizes of various clothing items are correlated.  The story doesn't seem credible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there is a study involving 680 cadets discussed in the 1955 article &quot;Physique and success in military flying&quot; American Journal of Physical Anthropology, vol. 13, pages 217-52. The story could have originated from actual measured data, but morphed over time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Particularly, it seems to be a dramatization of &lt;a href=&quot;http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&amp;amp;metadataPrefix=html&amp;amp;identifier=AD0010203&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The &quot;Average Man&quot;?&lt;/a&gt; (1952) by Gilbert S. Daniels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The fallacy of the &quot;average man&quot; concept is further illustrated by a&#xA;  study based on body measurements made on over 4,000 Air Force flying&#xA;  personnel. From a total of 131 available measurements a smaller group,&#xA;  all useful in clothing design was selected.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;of the original 4063 men,&#xA;  1055 were of approximately average &lt;strong&gt;stature&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;of the original 1055 men,&#xA;  302 were of approximately average &lt;strong&gt;chest circumference&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;of the original 302 men,&#xA;  143 were of approximately average &lt;strong&gt;sleeve length&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;of the original 143 men,&#xA;  73 were of approximately average &lt;strong&gt;crotch height&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;of the original 73 men,&#xA;  28 were of approximately average &lt;strong&gt;torso circumference&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;of the original 28 men,&#xA;  12 were of approximately average &lt;strong&gt;hip circumference&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;of the original 12 men,&#xA;  6 were of approximately average &lt;strong&gt;neck circumference&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;of the original 6 men,&#xA;  3 were of approximately average &lt;strong&gt;waist circumference&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;of the original 3 men,&#xA;  2 were of approximately average &lt;strong&gt;thigh circumference&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;of the original 2 men,&#xA;  0 were of approximately average &lt;strong&gt;crotch length&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article details what was considered average, basically the middle 25-30%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-06-05T23:06:32.040" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T23:06:32.040" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27918" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-02T17:17:28.327" Score="4" ViewCount="532" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are huge number of articles out there claiming that earth emits some sort of electromagnetic waves. When they are disturbed, it causes &lt;a href=&quot;http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/health-fitness/health-news/Is-your-home-Geopathic-Stress-free/articleshow/22284148.cms&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;geopathic stress&lt;/a&gt; to humans which causes various illnesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Geopathic Stress is said to be physically detected as seen in this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiUAk6BFgeg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;video&lt;/a&gt;, with dowsing rods and the presence of ants and cockroaches.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-03T03:16:14.200" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T10:10:38.543" Title="Does &quot;geopathic stress&quot; cause illness?" Tags="|geology|earth|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27919" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14633" CreationDate="2015-06-02T17:28:34.190" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=Ow5xBAAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA372&amp;amp;dq=okinawa%20poison%20gas%20geneva&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=Z91tVYKcOoO8yQTRzoGIAw&amp;amp;ved=0CB0Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=okinawa%20poison%20gas%20geneva&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Battle of Okinawa: The Blood and the Bomb&lt;/a&gt; by George Feifer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Okinawans, including honorable civic leaders who weren't anti-American, [charged] that the poison gas [was] used on some caves was in violation of the Geneva Convention.  Well after the war, still haunted by the huge number of civilian deaths, they'd ask interested Americans to investigate.  They did, and discovered what actually happen: American explosives unintentionally released poison gases that cause thousands of agonizing deaths in confined cave spaces.  The most lethal was the yellow smoke of the petric acid [sic] used in Japanese munitions stored there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is no such thing as &quot;petric acid&quot;, perhaps he means picric acid. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=wbKInd3YcM8C&amp;amp;pg=PA50&amp;amp;dq=okinawa%20civilian%20deaths%20poison%20gas&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=XOJtVcebCIOEyQTUs4P4Aw&amp;amp;ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=poison%20gas&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;Identity and Resistance in Okinawa&lt;/a&gt; footnote 14 at page 50:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;14&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;See Miyagi's account (note [13]) for a description of a poison gas attack on a cave next to hers (the site of the present Himeyuri Memorial) where forty-six of fifty-one civilians died&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-06-02T17:37:51.763" LastActivityDate="2015-06-02T17:37:51.763" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27924" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27918" CreationDate="2015-06-03T05:11:37.433" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;By the very definition offered in the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Geo means Earth and Patho means suffering. It means suffering from the earth which causes stress in the form of illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Earth has no nervous system and is not scientifically known to suffer, although we can certainly &lt;em&gt;imagine&lt;/em&gt; it doing so. That's a feature of human psychology, which is what this boils down to: psychosomatic illness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;locus classicus&lt;/em&gt; for &quot;geopathic stress&quot; is a 1993 article by an alternative medicine practitioner named Jane Thurnell-Read. She defines it as &quot;the general term for energies emanating from the earth that cause discomfort and ill health in human beings,&quot; and compares it to concepts such as ley lines, dowsing, and feng shui.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To back up her original terminology, Thurnell-Read cites a Weimar period dowser named Gustav Freiherr von Pohl as well as an article called &quot;Cancer in the light of geophysical radiation&quot; in a 1927 issue of an American journal called &lt;em&gt;Cancer&lt;/em&gt;. Neither of these people used the term &quot;geopathic stress&quot;. Furthermore, common sense would tell us that the earth is not a dangerous substance that emanates radiation so much as a large, solid thing that intercepts radiation, which is why atomic bomb shelters and nuclear waste storage facilities are located underground. [edit: As pointed out in comments above, the earth does emit &lt;a href=&quot;https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/4947/does-earth-itself-emit-electromagnetic-waves&quot;&gt;heat and very low levels of gamma radiation&lt;/a&gt;. Heat is more concentrated in some parts of the earth than others but generally it is described as heat and not as &quot;geopathic stress&quot;.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There could possibly be &quot;energies&quot; emanating from the earth unknown to science, that somehow remain reliably in place for years despite plate tectonics and other underground shifts, and by other unknown factors cause discomfort and stress in human beings, but neither Thurnell-Read nor anyone else has explained the mechanism by which this might work, which prevents anyone from falsifying her claim. She admits, &quot;I have used case studies for illustration throughout this book. Unfortunately these do not convince the scientific mind. When I talk to my scientific friends, they tell me I am citing anecdotal evidence.&quot; (&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifeworkpotential.com/products/Geopathic-Stress&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Geopathic Stress &amp;amp; Subtle Energy&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, 2006)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By the admission of the person who invented the term, this is not a falsifiable claim, and is therefore pseudoscience. People who claim that certain arrangements of objects or types of electromagnetic waves make them sick are far more likely to have psychological stresses, for which dowsing, feng shui or other practices may serve as unscientific therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22367" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:50:29.817" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T10:10:38.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27926" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28094" CreationDate="2015-06-03T14:56:52.063" Score="7" ViewCount="879" Body="&lt;p&gt;The basis of this question is a pair of newspaper articles that appeared in the Guardian just over a year apart. I know, it's not a scholarly journal, and the articles aren't remotely scientific.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two articles highlight divergent conclusions between a pair of academics studying nutrition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Charles Spence, an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Spence&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford&lt;/a&gt;, was paraphrased by the Guardian in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/change-way-you-eat-gastrophysics-mealtimes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;June 2015&lt;/a&gt; as advising that &lt;strong&gt;&quot;eating alone will keep you trim&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We eat 35% more when with one other person, 75% more with three others&#xA;  and twice as much when there are seven or more diners.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By contrast, Loïc Bienassis, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.franceslincoln.com/loic-bienassis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;researcher and historian at the European Institute of the History and Culture of Food&lt;/a&gt;, an organisation connected to the University of Francois Rabelais, was portrayed by the Guardian in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/apr/07/france-food-ritual-meal-tradition&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;April 2014&lt;/a&gt; as supporting the idea that, &lt;strong&gt;&quot;with its emphasis on sharing and togetherness, the French approach to food seems to help limit obesity&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;People pay more attention to standards of nutrition in a group than on&#xA;  their own. We drink in moderation, try to have some of everything,&#xA;  avoid taking a third helping because we are being watched and judged&#xA;  by others. Which is not the case when we nibble on our own beside the&#xA;  fridge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In both cases, hefty and irritating journalistic decontextualisation is evident (i.e. the researchers' reported views are probably only accurate in certain fairly narrow contexts, if at all; yet the journalists have presented them as though they are generally applicable).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, the apparent contradiction raises the query: &lt;strong&gt;is there &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; scientific evidence that social eating reduces the incidence of obesity compared to solitary eating, or vice versa; and if so, what is that evidence?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user1802" LastEditorDisplayName="user1802" LastEditDate="2015-06-04T15:24:16.530" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T04:50:42.907" Title="Is obesity correlated with solitary and/or social eating?" Tags="|nutrition|psychology|france|culture|obesity|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27927" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27928" CreationDate="2015-06-03T16:02:04.097" Score="67" ViewCount="16625" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-red-cross-raised-half-a-billion-dollars-for-haiti-and-built-6-homes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; the Red Cross raised half a billion dollars and yet only built six houses in Haiti while claiming to have housed 130,000 residents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In late 2011, the Red Cross launched a multimillion-dollar project to transform the desperately poor area, which was hit hard by the earthquake that struck Haiti the year before. The main focus of the project — called LAMIKA, an acronym in Creole for “A Better Life in My Neighborhood” — was building hundreds of permanent homes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Today, not one home has been built in Campeche.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: six.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of the Red Cross claims are on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redcross.org/images/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m42240166_Haiti_Five-Year_Update_FINAL.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;their own site&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An immediate priority for&#xA;Haitians was the construction of shelters for people then&#xA;living under tarps and tents, so the American Red Cross has&#xA;helped 132,000 Haitians to live in safer conditions—ranging&#xA;from providing temporary homes and rental subsidies to&#xA;repaired and new homes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, has the Red Cross raised half a billion dollars for Haiti and built only six houses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-13T02:00:38.227" Title="Has the Red Cross raised half a billion dollars for Haiti to build 6 houses?" Tags="|economics|charities|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27928" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27927" CreationDate="2015-06-03T16:36:25.917" Score="109" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The statement of the claim in the question is extremely misleading, and the article confuses multiple projects.&lt;/strong&gt; However, the Red Cross housing projects are receiving scrutiny from investigative news organizations&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TLDR: The article has accidentally or deliberately confused the earthquake relief project with the much smaller neighbourhood renewal project, and attacked them both for not doing things they weren't intended to do. The Red Cross did much more in Haiti than build six houses, but it may not have been as much as could be expected&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's focus solely on the specific claim in the question, that &quot;all the Red Cross did with half a billion dollars was build six houses&quot;.&#xA;Other parts of the article raise some possibly valid concerns about the Red Cross effort in Haiti, which have been noted by other reports, and are to some extent shared by many of the organizations operating in Haiti, but that particular accusation is not one of them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Specifically one of the things the article is doing is confusing two entirely different Red Cross programmes - the earthquake relief programme and the LAMIKA project. The $500 million figure they quote is all about disaster relief. It is probable that the reference to 130,000 promised homes is also a reference to the earthquake relief work, although I haven't been able to track that down.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the article, one of the key points is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;After the earthquake, Red Cross CEO Gail McGovern unveiled ambitious plans to “develop brand-new communities.” None has ever been built.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is a link to a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.press.org/news-multimedia/news/red-cross-chief-executive-outlines-haiti-relief&quot;&gt;press interview with Gail McGovern&lt;/a&gt;, supposedly backing this statement up. The interview does not contain the quote, nor any similar statement. We have to dig around to find out whether there were indeed such plans. It turns out that at a press conference in 2011 &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/details/CSPAN2_20110113_040000_Capital_News_Today?q=provide%20tens%20of%20thousands%20of%20people%20with%20permanent%20homes#start/10051/end/10111&quot;&gt;McGovern did in fact announce plans for &quot;a hundred million dollar program to provide permanent housing in Haiti&quot;&lt;/a&gt;. Several schemes seem to be included in these plans, one of which was the LAMIKA project, which does have the goal of &quot;neighbourhood renewal&quot;, and is referred to in the article. However, to be completely clear, it isn't directly funded by the earthquake relief budget and doesn't have a $500m budget. Lamika appears to have a budget of around $9.5m.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding what the Red Cross has actually done, the article says the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Red Cross says it has provided homes to more than 130,000 people. But the actual number of permanent homes the group has built in all of Haiti: six.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the clever insertion of the word 'permanent' in the refutation, but not in the claim. In other words the Red Cross never claimed they had built permanent homes, but the article is taking them to task for not doing so. In fact the Red Cross has never listed 'permanent housing' in its priorities for the $500m relief fund. The earthquake relief fund's focus (or one of them) is on temporary housing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.press.org/news-multimedia/news/red-cross-chief-executive-outlines-haiti-relief&quot;&gt;Gail McGovern interview&lt;/a&gt; contains a statement of the Red Cross priorities for earthquake relief in Haiti:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;McGovern oversaw a six-pronged strategy in rebuilding Haiti that encompassed improving food, water and sanitation; building emergency shelters; jump-starting livelihoods through jobs and grants; strengthening health services and establishing future disaster preparedness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also a summary of the Red Cross' actions in Haiti:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Haiti, the Red Cross gave $30 million to the United Nations food program; spent $14 million on readymade meals, clean water and latrines; provided more than one third of the country's tarps; gave more than 1 million vaccinations; provided loans and cash grants to catalyze business development; and trained hundreds of thousands on how to prepare for the next potential disaster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the mention of 'emergency shelters', and of 'tarps', which are key components of &lt;em&gt;temporary&lt;/em&gt; housing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Where the confusions starts is that the article also makes reference to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://haiti.ngoaidmap.org/projects/3898&quot;&gt;Lamika&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, speaking as though it were part of the $500m earthquake relief work. However Lamika is in an entirely separate project from the Earthquake Relief work. It is about renewing the Campeche neighbourhood near Port Au Prince. Lamika does not have a $500m budget but a $9.5m budget.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is not clear what happened to the Red Cross plans to provide permanent housing. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalcommunities.org/publications/2014-haiti-lamika-factsheet.pdf&quot;&gt;Current statements of the LAMIKA priorities&lt;/a&gt; say that it is specifically about building neighbourhood infrastructure i.e. the things that go around the houses. Priorities in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalcommunities.org/publications/2014-haiti-lamika-factsheet.pdf&quot;&gt;Lamika&lt;/a&gt; project include roads, schools, water and sanitation, public spaces, and &quot;Reinforce or expand more than 300 houses&quot; (i.e. repair existing houses, not build new ones) However reputable news organizations such as NPR are also asking questions about why the permanent housing plans have come to nothing, and about what has happened to the earthquake relief money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="165" LastEditorUserId="6781" LastEditDate="2015-06-07T23:08:27.453" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T23:08:27.453" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27932" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27204" CreationDate="2015-06-04T02:21:33.160" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;I know about hair, not fingernails. But what Ian Gallant writes about nails is true of hair, too. Any diet with enough protein to keep you in good health doesn't need supplementation with protein. It's interesting that the maximum length for one's hair is  genetic trait, as is thickness, although the latter varies widely in adult men. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The degree of curl won't change by eating bread crusts. Curly vs. straight hair  determined by the shape of your hair follicles. This is a link to an explanation on Popular Science:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-11/fyi-what-maks-hair-curly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-11/fyi-what-maks-hair-curly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And a more in-depth one from Science magazine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.sciencemag.org/2007/11/thick-head-hair-genes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://news.sciencemag.org/2007/11/thick-head-hair-genes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26441" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T02:21:33.160" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27934" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27935" CreationDate="2015-06-04T11:26:57.487" Score="109" ViewCount="8594" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an old custom to throw rice at the wedding couple when they leave the church after the ceremony. But now I have heard from several people that you should not throw rice because birds will eat the rice and then explode when it expands in theirs stomachs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think this seems unlikely, especially that they will explode, but it may be harmful in other ways. I haven't been able to find any good sources that falsifies or supports this claim, but this question is similar: &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16490/does-flour-or-rice-make-an-ants-stomach-explode&quot;&gt;Does flour or rice make an ant&amp;#39;s stomach explode?&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Will eating rice cause birds to explode?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26494" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.493" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T09:46:52.347" Title="Is eating rice harmful to birds?" Tags="|biology|birds|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27935" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27934" CreationDate="2015-06-04T12:32:34.073" Score="155" Body="&lt;p&gt;The following has been disproven, based on this study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James J. Krupa. A CLASSROOM EXERCISE FOR TESTING URBAN MYTH: Does Wedding Rice Cause Birds To Explode or Were Ann Landers, Martha Stewart &amp;amp; Bart Simpson Wrong?  The American Biology Teacher 67(4):223-230. 2005 &#xA;  doi: &lt;a href=&quot;http://dx.doi.org/10.1662/0002-7685(2005)067[0223:ACEFTU]2.0.CO;2&quot;&gt;http://dx.doi.org/10.1662/0002-7685(2005)067[0223:ACEFTU]2.0.CO;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2005, James J. Krupa, an Associate Professor of Biology, asked 600 students from his biology classes at the University of Kentucky if throwing rice at weddings would be harmful. 45% percent of the students alleged it was unsafe mentioning exploding birds as the reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Krupa realizing this a teaching opportunity had his students test the claim as a lesson on the scientific method. The students carried out a series of experiments on:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the expansion of contrastive types of grains&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the strength of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.extension.org/pages/65376/avian-digestive-system#.VXF_vVyqqko&quot;&gt;avian digestive system&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the snack preferences of several common bird species.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In results, issued in the journal cited at the beginning of this answer, the students found that the only grain that expanded enough to possibly pose a danger was &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_rice&quot;&gt;instant rice&lt;/a&gt; not the kind usually thrown at weddings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nevertheless, the students prevailed on their teacher Krupa to feed &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_rice&quot;&gt;instant rice&lt;/a&gt; to his own birds and monitor the outcome. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Confident that the birds won't explode, Krupa agreed and fed 60 doves and pigeons a diet of nothing but &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_rice&quot;&gt;instant rice&lt;/a&gt; and water for a day, monitoring them for signs of distress or discomfort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results were out. There was no sign of burst gizzards, deaths, or even regurgitation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Krupa said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They just loved it, and now they're kind of addicted to it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-06-07T10:04:15.280" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T10:04:15.280" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27937" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-04T13:54:21.430" Score="6" ViewCount="777" Body="&lt;p&gt;Facebook, Reddit, and basicly the rest of the internet exploded with the new viral movement HAES. This movement mainly claims, that being fat is healthy; alleging that they have &quot;evidence&quot; catching these claims in the picture:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/CISZL.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lindabacon.org/haesbook/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source: lindabacon.org&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has became a major thing recently to justify being overweight. Is this justification valid?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-04T17:28:17.307" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T13:30:27.807" Title="Are those claims from Linda Bacon's Health at Every Size accurate?" Tags="|healthcare|weight-loss|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-06-04T17:26:33.790" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27938" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27937" CreationDate="2015-06-04T14:45:58.640" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Interesting claim(s) indeed coming from PhD graduate Linda Bacon. Here they are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim 1:&lt;/strong&gt; On average &amp;quot;overweight&amp;quot; people live longer than &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; weight people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True or false? &lt;strong&gt;False.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“Being overweight can extend life rather than shorten it,” spiked the headlines of The Independent on the 2nd of January 2013. A study was published in the peer-reviewed The Journal of the American Medical Association and concluded:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Grade 1 obesity overall was not associated with higher mortality, and overweight was associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;National Health Service the healthcare system for England found that the study was &amp;quot;limited&amp;quot; and said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The bottom line is that being obese (all categories combined) increased the chance of dying compared to those with a normal BMI. This was not the case for overweight individuals or the lowest category of obesity (grade 1) on its own.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to consider that individual risk factors for developing disease and death will vary person to person and BMI is only one of many measures used to assess the risk of developing disease in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if you choose to ignore the limitations of this research, &lt;strong&gt;it would be unwise to interpret its findings as proof that being overweight is ‘healthy’&lt;/strong&gt; – &lt;strong&gt;rather it may be slightly less unhealthy than perceived&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Long story made short, being overweight isn't necessarily an unhealthy thing. However, the Phd graduate didn't make a distinction between correlation and causality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Correction of the claim:&lt;/strong&gt; &amp;quot;Overweight&amp;quot; people might live longer than &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; weight people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim 2:&lt;/strong&gt; No study has ever shown that weight loss prolongs life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True or False? &lt;strong&gt;False&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rbmc.org/new-study-finds-weight-loss-surgery-prolongs-life/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;rbmc.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new study recently reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds &lt;strong&gt;that weight loss surgery appears to prolong life for severely obese adults&lt;/strong&gt;. Among 2,500 obese adults who underwent bariatric surgery, the death rate was about 14 percent after 10 years compared with almost 24 percent for obese patients who didn’t have weight-loss surgery, researchers found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, Weight-loss surgery appeared to prolong life for severely obese adults, a new study of U.S. veterans found &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/scin.2015.187003012/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&#xA;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Correction of the claim:&lt;/strong&gt; Some studies suggest that weight loss (resulting from surgeries) might prolong life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim 3:&lt;/strong&gt; Biology dictates that most people regain the weight they lose, even if they continue their diet and exercise programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;True or false? &lt;strong&gt;True&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16002825&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Approximately 10-20% of subjects are able to maintain a weight loss of at least 5% after 5 years&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another research: The results of other research also look grim; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11684524&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;five years after completing structured weight loss programs, people only maintain a 3% weight loss&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In-depth article I &lt;a href=&quot;http://weightology.net/weightologyweekly/?page_id=95&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recommend&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Claim:&lt;/strong&gt; Eat what you want, when you want choosing pleasurable foods that make you feel good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Implying that fast (or comfort) food is okay after alleging the following claims isn't made of good faith. Whether it makes you fat or not,  fast (sugary or comfort) food is still as unhealthy as ever. Skeptics are well aware of temporal trends in fast-food restaurants, sodium, saturated fats, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2014/14_0202.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;trans fat&lt;/a&gt; content. If you eat what you want, you might risk yourself to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmd.com/diabetes/risk-factors-for-diabetes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;type 2 diabetes&lt;/a&gt; and other endless diseases. It's important to realize that a large number of diseases are directly attributable to obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;People get quite literally being deceived into destroying their health potential by junk food companies seeking revenue or people selling books advocating in &lt;strong&gt;eating whatever you want and choosing pleasurable foods that make you feel good&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This answer has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/georgechalhoub/status/606476912404217856&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;tweeted&lt;/a&gt; to Dr. Bacon.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T13:30:27.807" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27939" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27927" CreationDate="2015-06-04T14:52:14.763" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;While building permanent housing wasn't the only planned use of money by the Red Cross, &lt;strong&gt;the Red Cross promised to spend $100 million to provide tens of thousands of people with permanent housing and infrastructure, which did not happen.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;The claim by @DJClayworth that &quot;the Red Cross has never listed 'permanent housing' in its priorities&quot; is incorrect. (I don't have the rep to comment above).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On Jan. 12, 2011, Gail McGovern (Red Cross President) said, on the topic of Haiti relief, that &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/details/tv?q=provide%20tens%20of%20thousands%20of%20people%20with%20permanent%20homes&quot;&gt;&quot;these projects are part of the $100 million we plan to invest to provide tens of thousands of people with permanent homes ... where we develop brand-new communities ... including water and sanitation.&quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This quote is also used by NPR in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-red-cross-500-million-in-haiti-relief&quot;&gt;their coverage of the story&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As DJClayworth points out, the $500 million raised was used for projects other than building permanent houses. However, the sentiment of the headline is accurate: one-fifth of the half-billion was intended to provide permanent housing to tens of thousands, but ended up only providing this for a few people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26498" LastEditorUserId="26498" LastEditDate="2015-06-04T15:00:37.610" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T15:00:37.610" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27940" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-04T15:15:38.580" Score="40" ViewCount="16756" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just researching legal oddities and came across &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dumblaws.com/laws/international/australia&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Dumb Laws in Australia&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Only licensed electricians may change a light bulb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some sources attribute it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.australiantimes.co.uk/australian-laws-stupid-silly-funny/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;only to the state of Victoria&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does anyone know if it's true or not?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26501" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T02:44:35.110" Title="May only licensed electricians change light bulbs in Australia?" Tags="|law|australia|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27941" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16944" CreationDate="2015-06-04T15:33:07.280" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, she has admitted under oath that she is guilty of assaulting two children and her husband with a firearm.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She &quot;left the house to get a gun from the garage, returned and &lt;strong&gt;fired a shot in the direction of Gray and his two young sons&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news4jax.com/news/marissa-alexander-expected-to-be-released/30947974&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She was originally sentenced to 20 years, but the conviction was overturned on appeal.  She then &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news4jax.com/blob/view/-/30947508/data/1/-/12nghecz/-/Marissa-Alexander-plea-agreement.pdf&quot;&gt;pled guilty&lt;/a&gt; to 3 counts of aggravated assault with firearm and was sentenced to 3 years. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Please see the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.news4jax.com/blob/view/-/30954798/data/1/-/4fs9xfz/-/Statement-by-Alexander-s-stepson--Pernell-Gray.pdf&quot;&gt;handwritten letter from one of the children she fired in the direction&lt;/a&gt; of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I constantly see very disturbing things online, on television, and even posters around Jacksonville stating &quot;Mom sentenced to 20 years for firing a warning shot....but 'nobody' was hurt&quot;.  Well I might not of been hurt physically but I was hurt emotionally and mentally, so that tells me I'm a &quot;nobody&quot; in the mind of the public, and that puts me in more pain and and suffering then a bullet wound.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T15:33:07.280" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27942" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-04T15:58:12.367" Score="5" ViewCount="1599" Body="&lt;p&gt;Today, a professor of ethics was discussing the story of Gina Grant, a straight-A student, aged 14, who stabbed her mother to death by a crystal candlestick with the help of her boyfriend who tried to present it as a suicide; Grant got her Harvard acceptance revoked at 19.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the discussion goes the professor mentions that she served 12 months in prison. Then I started a debate saying that it is impossible to kill in america and serve only 12 months in prison, especially that this sounds like a first degree murder planned already with an accomplice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notability, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://murderpedia.org/female.G/g/grant-gina.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;murderpedia.org&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Status&lt;/strong&gt;: Grant pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to a year in juvenile detention, with probation until age 18&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Grant serve only 1 year in prison for killing her mother?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-06-04T16:28:07.343" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T20:32:37.333" Title="Did Gina Grant serve only 12 months in prison for killing her mother?" Tags="|united-states|criminology|law-enforcement|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27943" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27940" CreationDate="2015-06-04T16:03:03.183" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's not true in Queensland, at least.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.legislation.qld.gov.au/legisltn/current/e/electricalsa02.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Electrical Safety Act 2002&lt;/a&gt; specifies that &amp;quot;electrical work&amp;quot; may only be done by licensed electricians, but Section 18-2-c specifically excepts changing light bulbs from electrical work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electrical work does not include the following .... replacing electrical equipment or a component of electrical equipment if that task can be safely performed by a person who does not have expertise in carrying out electrical work;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Examples for paragraph (c)—&lt;/em&gt;&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;• replacing a fuse&lt;BR&gt;&#xA;• replacing a light bulb in a light fitting&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Victoria's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/domino/Web_Notes/LDMS/LTObject_Store/ltobjst9.nsf/DDE300B846EED9C7CA257616000A3571/7D9A346FFA314873CA257D6D000860A3/$FILE/98-25aa070%20authorised.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Electrical Safety Act&lt;/a&gt; does not have a list of exceptions, so one might include the changing of a lightbulb as &amp;quot;installation of an electrical device&amp;quot; which does require licensing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T18:20:53.123" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27944" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27942" CreationDate="2015-06-04T16:11:51.300" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Less, actually. According to the New York Times, she &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/11/us/for-student-who-killed-her-mother-acceptance.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;only served 8 months&lt;/a&gt; although she was indeed charged with 12 months at the sentencing (some accounts also render the number as &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.philly.com/1995-04-22/news/25688352_1_gina-grant-harvard-homicide-defendant&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;six months served&lt;/a&gt;). I have not found any documentation as to how she got early release, but general wisdom seems to be that each day of good behavior acts as two days of sentence for most crimes, so she would only have had to have been well-behaved for four of the eight months if that were the case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Whether or not she actually planned the murder did not really enter into sentencing since she pleaded down to involuntary manslaughter, which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scstatehouse.gov/code/t16c003.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;has no minimum sentencing&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;SECTION 16-3-60. Involuntary manslaughter; &amp;quot;criminal negligence&amp;quot; defined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With regard to the crime of involuntary manslaughter, criminal negligence is defined as the reckless disregard of the safety of others. A person charged with the crime of involuntary manslaughter may be convicted only upon a showing of criminal negligence as defined in this section. A person convicted of involuntary manslaughter must be imprisoned not more than five years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With the court records sealed, it's hard to say why they might have gone with &amp;quot;involuntary manslaughter&amp;quot;. Manslaughter (a more likely crime for beating someone to death with a candlestick) currently carries a two year minimum sentence (I don't know if it was different then), so the sentence would have been longer if she had been convicted of that. It's possible, also, that juvenile offenses might be treated differently. Nevertheless, the truth may never be known for anyone not directly involved with the case or with access to those sealed files.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T20:32:37.333" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27945" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27946" CreationDate="2015-06-04T17:20:37.060" Score="4" ViewCount="642" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/sportsnation/status/601749481038688257&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This tweet&lt;/a&gt; (retweeted over 2300 times) makes a claim about how to say &quot;Steph Curry&quot; in American sign language:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/YkXJ6.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is that claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T19:52:56.757" Title="Is this how to say Steph Curry in American sign language" Tags="|language|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27946" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27945" CreationDate="2015-06-04T18:58:56.537" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;That sign can mean &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-signs/t/tall.htm&quot;&gt;very tall&lt;/a&gt;&quot; in ASL if made above head height. Otherwise, names in ASL are either spelled out via fingersigning (if unknown) or represented with an identifying &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout/namesigns.htm&quot;&gt;shorthand sign&lt;/a&gt; (if known).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in short, this is almost certainly a joke, possibly about his &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.basketballworkouttips.com/wp-content/uploads/stephen-curry-shooting.jpg&quot;&gt;shooting technique&lt;/a&gt;, especially since Sports Nation &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/sportsnation/photos/a.10153145966951100.1073741835.94471021099/10153145966676100/&quot;&gt;made the same joke in March&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19346" LastEditorUserId="19346" LastEditDate="2015-06-04T19:52:56.757" LastActivityDate="2015-06-04T19:52:56.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27947" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27940" CreationDate="2015-06-04T19:59:33.337" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;Victoria is the only state where to my understanding the usual exceptions to requiring licensed electrical contractors are not directly listed in the relevant Act, so my answer focuses on the situation there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Electrical work in Victoria is regulated by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esv.vic.gov.au/&quot;&gt;Energy Safe Victoria&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their website lists the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esv.vic.gov.au/Legislation-Regulations/Legislation-administered-by-ESV&quot;&gt;legislation they administer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the documents they have there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.esv.vic.gov.au/Portals/0/orders/G%2017_99_consolidated%20version%20as%20at%2010%20February%202013.pdf&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, pursuant to the 1998 Act, which in part 3 (page 9 of the pdf) lists some exceptions to the broad rule that only licensed electrical contractors can carry out electrical work. In particular, subsection (c) exempts work:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(c) involving the insertion or removal of –&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (i) a plug into or from a socket designed for such a plug; or&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (ii) a light globe, fluorescent tube or starter for a fluorescent tube, where access to live parts is not required; or&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  (iii) a fuse element. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So putting a plug in a socket, (and removing it), changing a light bulb and changing a fuse are all explicitly exempted from the rule. That is, those things are allowed to be carried out in Victoria without a licensed electrician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26476" LastEditorUserId="26476" LastEditDate="2015-06-05T02:44:35.110" LastActivityDate="2015-06-05T02:44:35.110" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27948" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27949" CreationDate="2015-06-04T21:56:21.523" Score="113" ViewCount="23067" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this picture/fact, all gold ever mined is able to fit in a 20x20x20 meter cube.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/lCezw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;All of the gold mined in the history of the world would fit into a 20x20x20 meter cube.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence of this, as this seems like very very little gold?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26512" LastEditorUserId="8192" LastEditDate="2015-06-05T19:41:47.540" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T19:01:22.277" Title="Is all gold ever mined able to fit in a 20x20x20 meter cube?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27949" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27948" CreationDate="2015-06-04T22:08:14.263" Score="141" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infomine.com/publications/docs/Mining.com/Jul2008e.pdf:&quot;&gt;Carlin: Where the Train Stops ... and the &#xA;Gold Rush Begins&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;InfoMine&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Official &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20120226134555/http://www.nbmg.unr.edu/dox/mi/06.pdf&quot;&gt;estimates&lt;/a&gt; indicate that total&#xA;  world gold production since the beginning of civilization&#xA;  has been 4.97 billion troy ounces.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=4.97+billion+troy+ounces&quot;&gt;4.97 billion troy ounces is 155 million kg&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=density+of+gold&quot;&gt;The density of gold is 19,300 kg/m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=155+million+kg+of+gold&quot;&gt;155 million kg of gold only requires 8000 m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;. That is 20m x 20m x 20m.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That's as of about 2008. A Sklivvz's answer shows, by 2012, the cube had grown to 21m x 21m x 21m.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's how big that is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/HQoTw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(From &lt;a href=&quot;http://demonocracy.info/infographics/world/gold/gold.html&quot;&gt;Gold - Visualized in Bullion Bars&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Demon-ocracy.Info&lt;/em&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T18:55:42.827" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T18:55:42.827" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27950" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27948" CreationDate="2015-06-04T22:10:08.760" Score="52" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to Wikipedia and the World Gold Council,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A total of 174,100 tonnes of gold have been mined in human history, according to GFMS as of 2012.This is roughly equivalent to 5.6 billion troy ounces or, in terms of volume, about 9020 m&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt;, or a cube 21 m on a side. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gold&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.gold.org/supply-and-demand/supply&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Supply&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;em&gt;World Gold Council&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="49" LastEditDate="2015-08-14T19:01:22.277" LastActivityDate="2015-08-14T19:01:22.277" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27954" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-05T08:22:38.617" Score="9" ViewCount="557" Body="&lt;p&gt;Just found this image on &lt;a href=&quot;http://9gag.com/gag/avgBEdd/some-trivia-about-north-korea&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;9gag&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JY6n1.png&quot; alt=&quot;A claim about meth use in North Korea&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Offered as casually as a cup of tea&quot; is not precise (is tea often consumed in North Korea?), so my question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is meth consumed more often in North Korea than in most countries in the world?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20868" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-10T10:18:56.287" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T10:18:56.287" Title="Is meth widely consumed in North Korea?" Tags="|recreational-drugs|north-korea|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27955" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-05T08:27:03.327" Score="17" ViewCount="442" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-new-scientific-revolution-reproducibility-at-last/2015/01/27/ed5f2076-9546-11e4-927a-4fa2638cd1b0_story.html&quot;&gt;This Washington Post article&lt;/a&gt; quotes Brian Nosek as making the claim that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Brian Nosek offers up a stunning factoid: More than half of the scientists who have ever lived are alive today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It then challenges the reader to double-check this claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Though, yeah, someone ought to double-check that. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are half of scientists who have ever lived alive today?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="14582" LastEditDate="2015-06-09T10:41:17.303" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T10:41:17.303" Title="Are more than half of scientists who have ever lived alive today?" Tags="|quotes|demographics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27957" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="42330" CreationDate="2015-06-05T11:08:19.690" Score="15" ViewCount="4424" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;TL; DR; version:&lt;/strong&gt; Is it possible that hackers were somehow able to &quot;reprogram&quot; a specific Nokia 1100 phone to make it receive SMS messages sent to another person's phone number?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A couple of years ago, a friend of mine asked me if I happen to have an old Nokia 1100 around. I inquired him about this very specific request and he told me that there's a &quot;black market&quot; forming where people buy these phones for hundreds of euros because &quot;hackers found a way to hack ATMs through them&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since this sounded just as ridiculous back then as it does now, I told him it's probably some kind of scam, but he insisted he knew people who sold them on e-bay for a lot more. I Googled it back then and found out that, supposedly, someone actually did sell a Nokia 1100 for as much as $32,413 (this probably started the whole thing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/163409/criminals_pay_for_hackable_nokia_phone.html&quot;&gt;PC World wrote extensively about this&lt;/a&gt;. In short:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The fraud is possible because somehow the phone can be reprogrammed to use someone else's phone number, allowing them to receive some kind of code confirmation via SMS to confirm a bank transaction.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The reprogramming is possible due to a software flaw.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The flaw is only present in phones that were made in a factory in Bochum, Germany.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In addition, the flaw only appears to be present in a specific firmware version (variously reported as RH-15, RH-16, RH-17 or RH-18).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on my limited knowledge of mobile phones, I don't see how such a thing would be possible for many reasons (how was it even possible to modify the software of such a closed platform where not even firmware upgrades were simple? can you really &quot;reprogram&quot; a phone to use a different number when such information is actually stored on the SIM card? wouldn't some kind of special device for these purposes be cheaper than $32000?), but PC World soon afterwards reported that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pcworld.com/article/165326/article.html&quot;&gt;investigators managed to replicate this somehow&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I failed to find any further information confirming or denying these claims or giving some &quot;more technical&quot; explanation and it seems people simply stopped talking about it soon after (despite it creating quite a buzz back then - hell, there were even &lt;a href=&quot;http://buy-nokia1100.blogspot.com/&quot;&gt;sites dedicated to making markets&lt;/a&gt; for these specific phones), so I'm now curious whether this whole story makes sense in retrospect, the whole idea of &quot;reprogramming&quot; a phone to receive an SMS and then using this to somehow steal enough money to make it worth $32,000?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26536" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-09-20T14:42:46.630" LastActivityDate="2018-09-20T20:17:35.027" Title="Could the Nokia 1100 be hacked to sniff SMS messages intended for third parties?" Tags="|technology|mobile-phones|banking|hacking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27959" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-05T13:18:06.293" Score="11" ViewCount="9270" Body="&lt;p&gt;Another legal curiosity: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-2856346/It-illegal-not-smile-Milan-no-donkeys-sleep-bath-Oklahoma-strangest-laws-word.html&quot;&gt;alleged&lt;/a&gt; that people in Milan have to smile by law. Is this true? If so, what is the legislation? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26501" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-06-06T08:37:53.957" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T17:26:24.393" Title="Are the citizens of Milan legally obliged to smile?" Tags="|law|italy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27960" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-05T15:41:16.747" Score="3" ViewCount="625" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are some &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/jetcitystar/status/422595354102489088&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;online sources&lt;/a&gt; claiming that, in Kidderville NH (USA), it is illegal to hang lingerie on the clothesline if you live near an airport. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26501" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-05T16:37:53.067" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T15:30:59.687" Title="Is it illegal to hang lingerie on a clothesline near an airport in Kidderville, NH?" Tags="|united-states|law|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27961" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-05T16:10:24.257" Score="3" ViewCount="1207" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was in the gym today and a (bro-science) trainer told me that I shouldn't use the stair climbing machine because it causes abnormal heart enlargement and associated heart diseases. I asked him for a resource and he said he saw is on Facebook but other trainers vouched for that and said they had heard it too. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I couldn't find any resource for this. The only thing I could find is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heart.org/idc/groups/heart-public/@wcm/@hcm/documents/downloadable/ucm_317637.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Heart.org&lt;/a&gt; saying:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most physicians will advise caution to a patient with an enlarged&#xA;  aorta (the major artery in the body). (An enlarged aorta can occur in&#xA;  people with Marfan syndrome, Turner syndrome, coarctation of the&#xA;  aorta, or a bicuspid aortic valve.) There is no proven link between&#xA;  exercise and harmful outcome from an enlarged aorta&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there absolutely any link between stair climbing and heart disease?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26542" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-05T16:37:03.110" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T23:17:04.093" Title="Is stair climbing linked to heart disease?" Tags="|cardiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27964" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27959" CreationDate="2015-06-06T06:59:45.147" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anarpe.it/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/CORRIEREFC_NAZIONALE_WEB2014_11_15_Page43.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this 2014 &lt;em&gt;Corriere della Sera&lt;/em&gt; article&lt;/a&gt;, “historian” Andrea Santangelo describes this rule, which he also mentions in his and Lia Celi's book &lt;em&gt;Mai stati meglio&lt;/em&gt;, as coming from a nineteenth century &lt;em&gt;Regolamento urbano&lt;/em&gt; (City regulations) imposed by the Austrians then ruling over Milan, due to one “Luigi Fabio”, and never repealed since then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Via i mugugni, basta facce smorte, niente musi lunghi: a Milano si sorride per legge. Lo dice un &lt;em&gt;Regolamento urbano&lt;/em&gt; del periodo austroungarico. «Altri tempi sì, le cose nel frattempo sono cambiate, ma la legge non è mai stata abrogata...» [...] «Erano esonerate – chiosa Santangelo – le persone che partecipavano a funerali, quelle che in ospedale entravano o vi lavoravano». Per gli altri, nessuna scusa a meno di non voler incorrere in una multa pecuniaria. «Abbiamo trovato il riferimento a questa regola in un articolo del “Telegraph” del 2004, ripreso poi in siti che raccolgono stranezze legislative». [...] il regolamento serviva «per dare risalto alla città di Milano stando a quanto sosteneva un consigliere di allora, tale Luigi Fabio (con quei nomi ne abbiamo trovato più d'uno)».&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Down with grumbles, no more glumness or long faces: in Milan law compels you to smile. It is prescribed by a &lt;em&gt;City regulation&lt;/em&gt; from the Austro-Hungarian times. «Other times, indeed, things are different now, but that law was never repealed...» [...] «There were exemptions – Santangelo adds – for people taking part in funerals, for those who entered or worked in hospitals». For everybody else there was no excuse, the alternative being incurring in a fine. «We found this rule mentioned in a 2004 &lt;em&gt;Telegraph&lt;/em&gt; article, since taken up again in sites collecting legal oddities». [...] this rule was supposed to «give prominence to the city of Milan, according to what a councilman of those times said, a Luigi Fabio (we found more than one with this name)».&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One has to be cautious, though, since Santangelo and Celi themselves say, as seen, that they found this rule in a &lt;em&gt;Telegraph&lt;/em&gt; article, later quoted in sites of legal oddities. And, looking in Google Books for the relevant passage in &lt;em&gt;Mai stati meglio&lt;/em&gt;, just &lt;a href=&quot;http://tinyurl.com/qguy7b3&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a cursory mention can be found&lt;/a&gt;, apparently without any reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1246" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T17:26:24.393" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27965" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-06T12:49:18.760" Score="31" ViewCount="2297" Body="&lt;p&gt;The History Channel documentary series &lt;code&gt;Declassified&lt;/code&gt; episode &lt;code&gt;Tiananmen Square&lt;/code&gt; features this quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z77xy7WojAo&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;amp;t=41m10s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/4r9YK.png&quot; alt=&quot;The Chinese government billed the families of the protesters for the cost of the bullets used to kill their loved ones. -Ding Zilin, Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars in the U.S.&quot; title=&quot;The Chinese government billed the families of the protesters for the cost of the bullets used to kill their loved ones. -Ding Zilin, Independent Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars in the U.S.&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any known record of the families being invoiced for either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the costs associated with breaking up the protests; or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a 'Bullet Fee' for the return of the body similar to those applied to executions?&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16720" LastEditorUserId="16720" LastEditDate="2015-07-25T11:41:47.610" LastActivityDate="2015-07-25T11:41:47.610" Title="Were the families of the protesters killed during the Tiananmen Square Massacre billed for the bullets used?" Tags="|politics|china|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27971" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27973" CreationDate="2015-06-06T20:30:23.493" Score="1" ViewCount="289" Body="&lt;p&gt;We often hear news about a new hunt for aliens with a new radio telescope OR to communicate with alien life form.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First life form on our planet was a rare random event. Than all the following evolution, from which life forms with brains(us) evolved, kept reducing the probability of the same thing happening again with each mutation. Isn't that a stupid idea to even think of possibility of another similar or intelligent life anywhere in the universe?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is money really being spent to search for any intelligent aliens? Or are they all a hunt for a planet where life from earth can possibly spread?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="195" LastEditorUserId="195" LastEditDate="2015-06-06T21:41:34.577" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T23:25:23.743" Title="Is any money being spent on hunt for intelligent aliens or is it only for a habitable planet?" Tags="|evolution|aliens|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ClosedDate="2015-06-07T02:24:58.040" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27973" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27971" CreationDate="2015-06-06T23:25:23.743" Score="5" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Yes, there's some alien hunting going on.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Detection&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, yes, money is being spent to search for intelligent aliens. The obvious case is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seti.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;SETI&lt;/a&gt;, the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence. Quoting from their mission statement,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Our mission is to explore, understand, and explain the origin and nature of life in the universe, and to apply the knowledge gained to inspire and guide present and future generations. We have a passion for discovery, and for sharing knowledge as scientific ambassadors to the public, the press, and the government.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seti.org/faq#seti2&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;their FAQ&lt;/a&gt;, they give more information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Institute has suites of activities in three arenas: (1) Astrobiology, the efforts to find and understand the prevalence of life in general (for example, microbial life under the parched landscapes of Mars or the icy crust of the jovian moon, Europa); (2) SETI, experiments designed to detect radio or light signals that would reveal the presence of technically sophisticated beings; and (3) Education and outreach projects that inform the public about our research, encourage young people to become more proficient in science, and train teachers in so-called STEM subject areas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The important part there is (2): Detection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In terms of financial status, they are a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. They are, of course, fond of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.seti.org/supportus&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;donations&lt;/a&gt; from people and corporations. So yes, they are spending money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Transmission&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naic.edu/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arecibo Observatory&lt;/a&gt; is another famous player in the extraterrestrial contact arena. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naic.edu/general/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=149&amp;amp;Itemid=631&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Their description of themselves&lt;/a&gt; is&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Arecibo Observatory is part of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center (NAIC), a national research center operated by SRI International, USRA and UMET, under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF is an independent federal agency whose aim is to promote scientific and engineering progress in the United States. NSF funds research and education in most fields of science and engineering. Additional support is provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The radio telescope there has famously &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory#SETI_.2F_METI&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sent some messages&lt;/a&gt;. The most famous of these was the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space.com/20984-arecibo-observatory.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Arecibo Message&lt;/a&gt; in 1974, towards M13, a globular cluster.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-06T23:25:23.743" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27974" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="53038" CreationDate="2015-06-07T00:16:41.833" Score="15" ViewCount="4652" Body="&lt;p&gt;I read the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/world/asia/the-secret-history-of-seal-team-6.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;first paragraph of an article&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;em&gt;The New York Times&lt;/em&gt; today. It said of US Navy SEAL Team 6:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On clandestine raids in the dead of the night, their weapons of choice have ranged from customized carbines to primeval tomahawks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true, and if so, where and when were tomahawks used by &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nsw.navy.mil/NSW/SEAL-Ethos/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Navy SEALs&lt;/a&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Team 6’s Red Squadron logo includes crossed tomahawks, so I thought that might be the origin of the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4301" LastEditorUserId="61240" LastEditDate="2022-03-11T03:09:48.483" LastActivityDate="2022-03-11T03:09:48.483" Title="Have US Navy SEALs used tomahawk axes as weapons?" Tags="|united-states|military|weapons|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27975" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27974" CreationDate="2015-06-07T02:29:44.370" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;The 2003 ABC News article &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=90038&amp;amp;page=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some U.S. Troops Choose Historic Tomahawk&lt;/a&gt; doesn't show that US Navy SEALS, in particular, use tomahawks, but shows that their use is somewhat common amongst modern US military, and makes the claim seem more prosaic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Members of Air Force security groups, Army Rangers and special forces are some of the U.S. troops who have chosen to add tomahawks to their basic gear. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It wasn't until after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and the United States began fighting in Afghanistan that [a manufacturer] started making [tomahawks] in quantity. In fact, it dramatically changed the way he does business — Johnson says his time is now almost exclusively devoted to producing the modern tomahawks for military customers, and he makes only a few historical tomahawks a month. [...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently, service members are buying tomahawks individually or, in some cases, units are using operational funds to buy them for their group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The terms &amp;quot;primeval&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;weapons&amp;quot; seems to be a little exaggerated. These are of a modern design, and while they might be used as a weapon, they seem to be carried as a more general tool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T09:44:07.863" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27976" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-07T06:04:16.197" Score="1" ViewCount="454" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many articles claim that &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriander&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;coriander&lt;/a&gt; juice (a.k.a. cilantro) has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3654245/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;chelation properties&lt;/a&gt; and help in excrement of toxic metals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://rawfoodhypocrite.com/tag/dr-yoshiaki-omura/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Raw Food Hypocrite&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A recent study by Dr. Yoshiaki Omura from the Heart Disease Research Foundation, New York,  has discovered that the herb cilantro will detoxify mercury from neural tissue*., is used to help stimulate the appetite and relieves minor digestive irritation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this scientifically validated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-07T06:15:13.233" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T06:19:59.073" Title="Does coriander juice help in chelation and excretion of toxic metals?" Tags="|toxicology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27977" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27976" CreationDate="2015-06-07T06:19:59.073" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is no limited evidence of it working, and some evidence that it doesn't work.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I didn't have to go far. You defined &quot;chelation properties&quot; with a link to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Margaret E. Sears, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3654245/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Chelation: Harnessing and Enhancing Heavy Metal Detoxification—A Review&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Scientific World Journal. 2013; 2013: 219840. doi:  10.1155/2013/219840&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is a review of the evidence. It covers cilantro:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(iv) Cilantro (leaves of &lt;em&gt;Coriandrum sativum&lt;/em&gt;), a popular culinary and medicinal herb, gained attention when a soup was reported to enhance mercury excretion following dental amalgam removal and remains popular despite limited evidence [46]. In animals, it decreased lead absorption into bone and inhibition of the delta-aminolevulinic acid dehydratase (ALAD) enzyme [47]. Less encouragingly, in a recent trial in 3- to 7-year old children exposed to lead, a cilantro extract was as effective as placebo in increasing renal excretion (improvements across treatment and placebo groups were ascribed to improved diet during the intervention) [48].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T06:19:59.073" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27980" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27981" CreationDate="2015-06-07T10:22:58.253" Score="3" ViewCount="7169" Body="&lt;p&gt;Currently a story is going around on Facebook that there is a new stroke indicator:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/LZSKR.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;S = Ask the individual to SMILE.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;T = Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently) (i.e. Chicken Soup)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;R = Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call emergency number immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;New Sign of a Stroke -------- Stick out Your Tongue&#xA;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;NOTE: Another 'sign' of a stroke is this: Ask the person to 'stick' out his tongue. If the tongue is 'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other that is also an indication of a stroke.&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The comments are of course plenty, anecdotal and opinionated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any documented proof that a crooked tongue is a reliable indicator?&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;That does not mean that it can't have false positives of course, anything that substantially increases the chance of spotting a stroke, is welcome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One thing we do &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; need is another urban legend.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story is posted on a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/bd.doctor.hospital&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&quot;Doctors and hospital&quot; Facebook page&lt;/a&gt; which contains sensible posts as well as blatant nonsense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user22865" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-06-07T23:21:45.930" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T23:21:45.930" Title="Is a 'crooked tongue' a new stroke indicator?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27981" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27980" CreationDate="2015-06-07T13:01:58.137" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The reliability of &lt;em&gt;a version&lt;/em&gt; of this test was examined in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Wei et al, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedical-engineering-online.com/content/11/1/53&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Analysis of using the tongue deviation angle as a&#xA;warning sign of a stroke&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, BioMedical Engineering OnLine 2012, 11:53&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They didn't just look at stroke patients, but also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.strokeassociation.org/STROKEORG/AboutStroke/TypesofStroke/TIA/TIA-Transient-Ischemic-Attack_UCM_310942_Article.jsp&quot;&gt;Transient Ischemic Attack&lt;/a&gt; (TIA) patients - i.e. a &quot;warning stroke&quot;, that may lead on to full strokes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They used digital photography to precisely measure the tongue's deviation, and also had two physicians visually examine the tongues.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two different physicians got different results, but they were promising:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;With respect to the visual examination of physician “A,” 40% of stroke patients, 24% of TIA patients, and 4% of normal subjects were found to have tongue deviations. As for the visual examination by physician “B,” 32% of stroke patients, 16% of TIA patients, and 0% of normal subjects were found to have tongue deviations [5,16].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, there are some false positives (tongue deviations in healthy patients) and a lot of false negatives (stroke and TIA patients without a deviation), but the results were promising in giving another sign to help a diagnosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using the tongue deviation angle of 3.2° discussed above as the threshold value, 84% of TIA patients and 88% of stroke patients are considered to have obvious tongue deviations. The percentages are much higher than that in reference 5, and they are high enough to be an indicator of stroke.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, these were using two physicians, with some experience at examining tongues (certainly by the conclusion of the experiment), and the size of the assymmetry was sometimes small. This isn't evidence that a First Aid responder could detect such a sign accurately.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T13:01:58.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27982" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-07T13:14:01.103" Score="18" ViewCount="32776" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the image below, &amp;quot;&lt;em&gt;racist&lt;/em&gt; is a made up word by Leon Trotsky in 1927.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I searched in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=racist&amp;amp;source=ds_search&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Online Etymology Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; and found that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;racist&lt;/em&gt; (n.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1932 [as a noun], 1938 as an adjective, from race (n.2); racism is first attested 1936 (from French racisme, 1935), originally in the context of Nazi theories. But they replaced earlier words, racialism (1871) and racialist (1917), both often used early 20c. in a British or South African context. In the U.S., race hatred, race prejudice had been used, and, especially in 19c. political contexts, negrophobia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the Online Etymology Dictionary doesn't mention that Trotsky coined the word.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the Trotsky—racist theory is true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/iG9MP.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27162" OwnerDisplayName="Elberich Schneider" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-05-19T15:25:41.407" Title="Was the word 'racist' coined by Trotsky in 1927?" Tags="|history|language|etymology|" AnswerCount="4" CommentCount="15" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="27983" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27982" CreationDate="2015-06-07T13:30:40.103" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/01/05/260006815/the-ugly-fascinating-history-of-the-word-racism&quot;&gt;NPR's Codeswitch&lt;/a&gt;, the term &lt;em&gt;racism&lt;/em&gt; meaning &quot;discrimination or prejudice based on race&quot;, was used before 1927. &#xA;The  term as used in the picture you show seems to have a different connotation  from the more common one: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Oxford English Dictionary's first recorded utterance of the word racism was by a man named Richard Henry Pratt in 1902. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pratt was railing against the evils of racial segregation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;em&gt;Segregating any class or race of people apart from the rest of the people kills the progress of the segregated people or makes their growth very slow.&lt;/em&gt;  &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Association of races and classes is necessary to destroy racism and classism.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Although Pratt might have been the first person to inveigh against racism and its deleterious effects by name, he is much better-remembered for a very different coinage: Kill the Indian...save the man.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one,&quot; Pratt said. &quot;In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.&quot;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We're still living with the after-effects of what Pratt thought and did. His story serves as a useful parable for why discussions of racism remain so deeply contentious even now.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26587" OwnerDisplayName="Josh61" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-07T16:10:20.210" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T16:10:20.210" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27984" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27982" CreationDate="2015-06-07T14:02:40.753" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Although he did not coin it, he may have popularized it afterwards. Trotksy published &lt;em&gt;What is National Socialism&lt;/em&gt; in June 1933. I have made racism bold&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The theory of race, specially created, it seems, for some pretentious self-educated individual seeking a universal key to all the secrets of life, appears particularly melancholy in the light of the history of ideas. In order to create the religion of pure German blood, Hitler was obliged to borrow at second hand the ideas of &lt;strong&gt;racism&lt;/strong&gt; from a Frenchman, Count Gobineau [4], a diplomat and a literary dilettante. Hitler found the political methodology ready-made in Italy, where Mussolini had borrowed largely from the Marxist theory of the class struggle. Marxism itself is the fruit of union among German philosophy, French history, and British economics. To investigate retrospectively the genealogy of ideas, even those most reactionary and muddleheaded, is to leave not a trace of &lt;strong&gt;racism&lt;/strong&gt; standing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the plane of politics, racism is a vapid and bombastic variety of chauvinism in alliance with phrenology. As the ruined nobility sought solace in the gentility of its blood, so the pauperized petty bourgeoisie befuddles itself with fairy tales concerning the special superiorities of its race….&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Through the back door, &lt;strong&gt;racism&lt;/strong&gt; returns to economic liberalism, freed from political liberties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330610.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/germany/1933/330610.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, Trotsky, in Chapter 1 &lt;em&gt;The Peculiarities of Russia's Development&lt;/em&gt; of &lt;em&gt;The History of the Russian Revolution&lt;/em&gt; (1930), also uses racist with a capital and denigrates the homogeneity of a culture/race:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Slavophilism, the messianism of backwardness, has based its philosophy upon the assumption that the Russian people and their church are democratic through and through, whereas official Russia is a German bureaucracy imposed upon them by Peter the Great. Mark remarked upon this theme: “In the same way the Teutonic jackasses blamed the despotism of Frederick the Second upon the French, as though backward slaves were not always in need of civilised slaves to train them.” This brief comment completely finishes off not only the old philosophy of the Slavophiles, but also the latest revelations of the “&lt;strong&gt;Racists&lt;/strong&gt;.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source:&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch01.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/ch01.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, around the late 1930s (specifically 1937), a rise begins for the terms racist and racism but did not take off until the 1960s.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=racism%2C+racist&amp;amp;year_start=1800&amp;amp;year_end=2000&amp;amp;corpus=15&amp;amp;smoothing=3&amp;amp;share=&amp;amp;direct_url=t1%3B%2Cracism%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cracist%3B%2Cc0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=racism%2C+racist&amp;amp;year_start=1800&amp;amp;year_end=2000&amp;amp;corpus=15&amp;amp;smoothing=3&amp;amp;share=&amp;amp;direct_url=t1%3B%2Cracism%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cracist%3B%2Cc0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can it be linked directly to Trotksy? Maybe, considering Soviet Russia had given a lot of resources to subversion, infiltration, and propaganda and had operatives white-washing Russia in American universities and spreading communism to student and some professors, both of which probably sought out reading material of communism, which would lead to Marx, then Lenin, then Trotsky, and so on and so forth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the translation issue. Here is the link to Russian: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotl007.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.magister.msk.ru/library/trotsky/trotl007.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Russian:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Славянофильство, мессианизм отсталости, строило свою философию на том, что русский народ и его церковь насквозь демократичны, а официальная Россия -- это немецкая бюрократия, насажденная Петром. Маркс заметил по этому поводу: &quot;Ведь точно так же и тевтонские ослы сваливают деспотизм Фридриха II и т. д. на французов, как будто отсталые рабы не нуждаются всегда в цивилизованных рабах, чтобы пройти нужную выучку&quot;. Это краткое замечание исчерпывает до дна не только старую философию славянофилов, но и новейшие откровения &quot;&lt;strong&gt;расистов&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to wiktionary, the word расистов is a translation of racist:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/racist#Translations&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/racist#Translations&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82#Russian&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/расист#Russian&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The capitalization of the word was probably the result of the translator.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As further indication that Trotsky may have helped popularize the term greatly in 1933, a clear correlation can be observed &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=racist%2Cracism&amp;amp;year_start=1900&amp;amp;year_end=1950&amp;amp;corpus=15&amp;amp;smoothing=3&amp;amp;share=&amp;amp;direct_url=t1%3B%2Cracist%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cracism%3B%2Cc0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;using Google nGram&lt;/a&gt; (note that the stated invention of the word in another answer in 1902 was NOT in any way impactful, all the way till late 1920s and into 1930s):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mVSEB.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26610" OwnerDisplayName="Jasper Locke" LastEditorUserId="26610" LastEditDate="2015-06-08T13:09:00.087" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T13:09:00.087" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27985" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="27988" CreationDate="2015-06-07T18:07:05.477" Score="12" ViewCount="1896" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this claim on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.focus.it/cultura/uomini-e-donne-hanno-cervelli-diversamente-connessi&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Focus&lt;/a&gt;, an Italian pop-sci magazine:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AuhWR.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Le reti di connessioni cerebrali nel cervello dei maschi (in alto) e in quelle donne (in basso): in blu sono visibili i collegamenti all'interno dello stesso emisfero, in arancione quelli tra un emisfero e l'altro.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(my translation)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The networks of cerebral connections in the brain of males (top) and in those [sic] females (bottom): same-hemisphere connections are visible in blue, connections across hemispheres are in orange.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems extraordinary to me that males have basically only same-hemisphere connections and females only across? Is this image &amp;quot;lying&amp;quot;, not showing both types of connections for both genders? The article claims scientific accuracy and to report a scientific paper: does this image represent its conclusions in a fair manner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's fairly important to correct any mistakes because this is being repeated by many anti-gay groups (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amicidilazzaro.it/index.php/valorizzare-le-differenze-per-realizzare-una-vera-uguaglianza/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/pages/No-Ai-Matrimoni-Gay/619058594797492&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2023-06-01T11:55:45.777" LastActivityDate="2023-06-01T11:55:45.777" Title="Are male and female brains connected in a completely different manner?" Tags="|neurology|gender|anatomy|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27986" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28016" CreationDate="2015-06-07T18:23:43.337" Score="8" ViewCount="3853" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a potentially dangerous claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The Scientifically proven Micronized Zeolite from Zeolite.com&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Zeolite is a breakthrough supplement that works at the cellular level by trapping heavy metals and toxins and safely removing them from the body. Zeolite is also very effective in removing radiation, as shown in the cleanup after the Chernobyl nuclear accident.  The people showed a 30% reduction in radioactive isotopes after the very first application of Zeolite! Continued use shows increased benefits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The actual Clinoptilolite Zeolite molecule is shaped like a honey-comb and carries a natural negative (-) charge. When this type of Zeolite is ingested into the body all of the positively charged (+) heavy metals, toxins, and harmful chemicals bond with the zeolite and are flushed out through the urine within 6-8 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Using Zeolite for Natural Chelation Therapy is 100% Safe and 100% Effective!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zeolite.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.zeolite.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's also being repeated elsewhere. Is Zeolite safe to consume and does it affect heavy metals and radiation isotopes when &lt;em&gt;ingested&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastActivityDate="2018-08-02T19:31:00.230" Title="Does Zeolite remove heavy metals and radiation from the body?" Tags="|natural-remedies|radiation|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27987" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-07T19:08:08.297" Score="6" ViewCount="603" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/thousands-of-teenage-girls-enduring-debilitating-illnesses-after-routine-school-cancer-vaccination-10286876.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This recent article&lt;/a&gt; in the Independent claims that the HPV vaccine now part of standard round of vaccinations given to children in the UK is causing a range of side effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting Dr Manuel Martinez-Lavin, the article summarises the situation like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Adverse reactions appear to be more frequent after HPV vaccination when compared to other type of immunisations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But the article is heavily dependent on the story of a single teenager's experience (and anecdotes are a poor way of clarifying the relationship between cause and effect). The piece has been criticised by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statsguy.co.uk/the-independents-anti-vaccine-scaremongering/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;statsguy.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; as:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a ridiculous piece of antivaccine scaremongering &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the HPV vaccine a fairly normal vaccine or does it have a higher rate of side effects than typical?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3943" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-08T15:22:42.830" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T18:01:30.173" Title="Does the HPV vaccine have more frequent adverse reactions than other immunisations?" Tags="|medical-science|vaccines|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27988" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27985" CreationDate="2015-06-07T20:53:32.707" Score="12" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this image &quot;lying&quot;, not showing both types of connections for both genders? The article claims scientific accuracy and to report a scientific paper: does this image represent its conclusions in a fair manner?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, it's certainly reporting &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; of the conclusions correctly. &lt;strong&gt;But it's not telling the whole truth.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article doesn't seem to give the exact name of the study mentioned, but it does name &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbica.upenn.edu/sbia/rverma/&quot;&gt;Ragini Verma&lt;/a&gt; as leading the study. This supports my original hypothesis that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mit.edu/~6.s085/papers/sex-differences.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; is the study cited - Verma is one of the authors.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from the paper's abstract:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In all supratentorial regions, males had greater within-hemispheric connectivity, as well as enhanced modularity and transitivity, whereas between-hemispheric connectivity and cross-module participation predominated in females. However, this effect was reversed in the cerebellar connections.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is re-stated later in the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Most supratentorial connections that were stronger in males than females were&#xA;  intrahemispheric (permutation-tested P &amp;lt; 0.05). In contrast, most supratentorial connections that were stronger in females were interhemispheric. However, in the cerebellum, the opposite pattern prevailed, with males showing stronger connections between the left cerebellar hemisphere and the contralateral cortex.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the claim is really only supported in one region of the brain, not &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; regions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the phrasing here. It doesn't say that there are more connections between hemispheres in one gender and more connections inside hemispheres in the other gender, but rather that &lt;em&gt;strength&lt;/em&gt; is different. Not necessarily number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article only tells half of the truth. Consider it untruthful.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image, by the way, is from Figure 2 of the paper. The caption reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fig. 2. Connection-wise analysis. (A) Brain networks show increased connectivity in males (Upper) and females (Lower). Analysis on the child (B), adolescent (C), and young adult (D) groups is shown. Intrahemispheric connections are shown in blue, and interhemispheric connections are shown in orange. The depicted edges are those that survived permutation testing at P = 0.05. Node color representations are as follows: light blue, frontal; cyan, temporal; green, parietal; red, occipital; white, subcortical.&#xA;  GM, gray matter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sections B, C, and D are not shown in the article's use of the image.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="22247" LastEditDate="2015-06-07T21:10:35.913" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T21:10:35.913" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27990" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28004" CreationDate="2015-06-07T22:02:27.047" Score="10" ViewCount="3231" Body="&lt;p&gt;While browsing Facebook I came across a post on &lt;a href=&quot;http://edidyouknow.tumblr.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;eDidYouKnow&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/WdXDDm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Hair in bread&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this something that actually happens on a regular basis or is it just one of  possible ways to create L-cysteine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25200" LastEditorUserId="14582" LastEditDate="2015-06-09T17:50:53.277" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T17:50:53.277" Title="Is human hair used to make bread?" Tags="|consumer-products|cooking|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27991" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-07T22:38:08.810" Score="0" ViewCount="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;When running an RV a/c during the summer, is it more energy-efficient to let the fan run while the compressor is cycling? Does it cause more wear and tear? Does it even matter if you allow the fan to run? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26594" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-06-07T23:19:08.423" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T23:19:08.423" Title="Does leaving the fan on during an RV a/c cycle time save energy?" Tags="|road-vehicles|consumer-products|energy-efficiency|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="2" ClosedDate="2015-06-08T00:01:55.463" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27992" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27961" CreationDate="2015-06-07T23:07:42.207" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Stair climbing machine is pretty intense cardio exercise, but still not even remotely as intense as running a marathon, playing an ice hockey game, or playing a soccer game in hot weather. Yet those people are alive and well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;All of them have enlarged hearts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Athletic heart syndrome - common in athletes who routinely exercise more than an hour a day - is a benign condition. Athlete's heart is a normal, physiological adaptation of the body to the stresses of physical conditioning and aerobic exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, yes, your heart will likely get enlarged and your heartbeat will slow down if you workout regularly. And no, it's not a condition but a normal adaptation to the stresses of the aerobic exercies. In fact, it's what you wanted to achieve in the first place.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now this is where we get to the point. Your instructor is mixing apples and organges. Enlarged heart, through exercise, is expected and normal. Enlarged heart through other causes indicates a serious condition. For example, you might have sickle cell disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, if you use the stair climbing machine and your heart gets enlarged, that's normal. And it will stop there. You won't develop an &quot;associated condition&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sources: Wikipedia, college biology classes, common sense &amp;amp; years of pro training.&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletic_heart_syndrome&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletic_heart_syndrome&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiomegaly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiomegaly&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26595" LastEditorUserId="26595" LastEditDate="2015-06-07T23:17:04.093" LastActivityDate="2015-06-07T23:17:04.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27993" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-08T01:06:13.043" Score="2" ViewCount="1332" Body="&lt;p&gt;My mother and my grandma told me when I was pregnant I should never walk barefoot because I would get sick as you absorb everything from your feet.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this an old wives' tale ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26430" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-08-03T15:48:22.730" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T15:48:22.730" Title="Is it true that if you are pregnant you should not walk bare foot?" Tags="|pregnancy|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-06-08T01:40:34.847" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27996" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-08T04:33:27.817" Score="2" ViewCount="304" Body="&lt;p&gt;Magic Leap has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPMHcanq0xM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;very outward&lt;/a&gt; with their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.magicleap.com/#/home&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;public face&lt;/a&gt; regarding their upcoming augmented reality product.  They've been promising a great deal, and the media has &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/25/magic-leap-explainer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hyped up&lt;/a&gt; their image as a result, using CGI assets provided by Magic Leap and the fact that Google &lt;a href=&quot;http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/21/magic-leap-tech/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;has provided&lt;/a&gt; venture capital as fuel for the fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, I have found little actual information regarding the feasibility of such a product, both technologically speaking and for the consumer.  We know VR-ready (opaque) light field displays &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwCwtBxZM7g&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;have been done before&lt;/a&gt; and are reasonably practical (physically speaking; rendering is another challenge), but what Magic Leap describes is a very different experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was hoping their 40-minute MIT Technology Review &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.technologyreview.com/emtech/digital/15/video/watch/magic-leap-virtual-reality/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;10 Breakthrough Technologies&lt;/a&gt; video interview would be clarifying in this regard, but I felt it was not.  The closest thing to a physical description was the CEO using phrases in passing like &quot;dynamic wavefront of light&quot;, &quot;light-sculptures that are continuously interacting with our eye-brain system&quot;, &quot;silicon photonics&quot;, and &quot;3-dimensional matrix with nanostructure&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can they deliver what they are promising?  Is it feasible for this to come to the consumer &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/534971/magic-leap/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;in the next 1-3 years&lt;/a&gt; and change people's lives in the way they imply?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26598" LastEditorUserId="26598" LastEditDate="2015-06-08T04:44:29.533" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T06:44:26.557" Title="Can Magic Leap deliver its claims about their future augmented reality product?" Tags="|physics|computers|engineering|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="27999" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-08T07:49:25.423" Score="3" ViewCount="535" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/323216&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Does the hops in beer have (a consistent and noticeable) effect on drowsiness?&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whenever I drink a beer, I get so sleepy that I can barely keep my eyes open. Is it the hops? It can't be the just alcohol - wine and vodka don't make me sleepy like beer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That is, compared to an unhopped beer (rare nowadays), or an equivalent amount of alcohol. I see many sources online saying so, but with no links to actual studies, and I recall reading a while ago (studies found via Google Scholar, I believe) that the purported effects of phytoestrogens in hops were exaggerated, at least in the context of (sexual) potency and developing male breasts (to avoid the colloquial terms).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26604" LastEditorUserId="553" LastEditDate="2015-06-08T16:04:43.353" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T16:24:47.050" Title="Does the hops in beer cause sleepiness?" Tags="|chemistry|sleep|beer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28000" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-08T08:08:56.377" Score="5" ViewCount="1885" Body="&lt;p&gt;This Indian retailer of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.grocare.com/diagnose/hernica&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Hernica sachets&lt;/a&gt; claims they can cure hernias without surgery only using Ayurvedic ingredients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Heal Hernia Without Surgery&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&#xA;We care for you much more than you care for yourself. We show this&#xA;by specially crafting Hernica as per your needs. No one likes to get operated on.&#xA;With Hernica, we make sure you won’t ever have to.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.grocare.com/products/hernica/contents&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;active ingredients&lt;/a&gt; are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pongamia glabra helps to relieve Bloating and is useful in Piles and Haemorrhoids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cassia angustifolia is known to treat Constipation. It helps promotes Peristalsis, or the regular contractions that aid bowel movements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Holarrhena antidysenterica has Astringent, Anti- dysenteric, Anthelmintic properties. It is a natural Stomachic, Febrifuge and Tonic. It is useful in treatment of Piles and Haemorrhoids. It is also known to treat Bleeding stools.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ferula asafoetida helps to strengthen Intestines. It is a Digestive, Antispasmodic and Carminative. It is very effective against Colic problems and Constipation with flatulence (gas).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to support this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-08T06:05:34.207" Title="Can hernia be cured without surgery using hernica sachets?" Tags="|medical-science|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28004" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27990" CreationDate="2015-06-08T14:45:00.913" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes and no, if you are making your own Sourdough bread then I would say no, as you have created the starter and the yeast is all natural.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However if you are buying shop bought bread then one of the ingredients to extend the shelf life of the bread is L-cysteine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;L-cysteine is/can be derived from human hair(mostly from barbers in china apparently), and please note it is not only be bread that L-cysteine is added too.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/may/13/10-gross-ingredients-food-horsemeat-scandal&quot;&gt;http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/may/13/10-gross-ingredients-food-horsemeat-scandal&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8704" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T14:45:00.913" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28006" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27999" CreationDate="2015-06-08T16:24:47.050" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;One approach could be to test (hopped) alcohol-free beer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study looking at this was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3399866/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Sedative Effect of Non-Alcoholic Beer in Healthy Female Nurses&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, Franco et al, PLoS One. 2012; 7(7).  Among other things, its conclusions were &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The moderate consumption of non-alcoholic beer will favour night-time&#xA;  rest, due in particular to its hop components, in addition to its&#xA;  other confirmed benefits for the organism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at the study, it gave nurses alcohol-free beer when eating supper, and did not give the control group beer when they ate supper.  I might have thought it could have been slightly more convincing if they had given the control group an unhopped fake beer, to reduce any mental association between beer drinking and sedation.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="949" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T16:24:47.050" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28008" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27987" CreationDate="2015-06-08T17:25:33.637" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;The World Health Organisation &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/initiative/tools/vaccinfosheets/en/&quot;&gt;reports the observed rate of vaccine reactions&lt;/a&gt; from each of sixteen different classes of vaccinations. It divides each type of reaction into mild adverse events or severe adverse events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/initiative/tools/HPV_Vaccine_rates_information_sheet.pdf?ua=1&quot;&gt;HPV&lt;/a&gt; in particular,  it offers statistics for quadrivalent (i.e. protecting from four variations of HPV) and bivalent version of the vaccine. I quote from the quadrivalent version that seems to have more reactions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are a number of possible reactions. Mild reactions are common, including pain at the injection site (83% of patients) and headaches (26%). Serious reactions are much rarer, with anaphylaxis occurring 0.00017% of the time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compare that to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/initiative/tools/BCG_Vaccine_rates_information_sheet.pdf?ua=1&quot;&gt;BCG&lt;/a&gt;, and we find more occurrences of mild reactions with papules (lumps), mild ulcerations and/or scars occurring in &quot;almost all vaccinations&quot;. There are also more occurrences of severe reactions, with local abscesses, infections and similar occurring in 0.01-0.1% of the time, osteitis (bone inflammation) occurring up to 0.03% of the time and Immune Reconstitution Syndrome occurring 0.00016% of the time (amongst other severe adverse events).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;10% of the Rubella portion of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/initiative/tools/MMR_vaccine_rates_information_sheet.pdf?ua=1&quot;&gt;MMR&lt;/a&gt; vaccines leads to serious reactions - acute arthritis. Fortunately, it is generally short-lived:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Symptoms typically begin 1-3 weeks after vaccination and last one day to three weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In conclusion, BCG has more occurrences of both mild and severe reactions than HPV vaccines, while MMR vaccines have much more occurrences of severe reactions than HPV vaccines.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: This should not be read as an argument not to get vaccinated, as the risk of the diseases is considered higher. However, it is an argument against people who overstep the science when they claim that vaccines are &quot;100% safe&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T17:25:33.637" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28009" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27987" CreationDate="2015-06-08T18:01:30.173" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;In addition to @Oddthinking's &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/28008/20749&quot;&gt;answer&lt;/a&gt;; I have to quote The &lt;em&gt;WHO Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety (GACVS)&lt;/em&gt; which regularly reviews the emerging international evidence on the safety of HPV vaccination &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/committee/topics/hpv/dec_2013/en/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;issued a statement&lt;/a&gt; in March 2014 concluding there is &lt;strong&gt;no proven link&lt;/strong&gt; between the &lt;strong&gt;HPV vaccination&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong&gt;adverse effects&lt;/strong&gt;. Quoting the report:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Serious adverse events that have been reported as potential signals have been investigated in more detail and were not confirmed, including Guillain-Barré syndrome, seizures, stroke, venous thromboembolism, anaphylaxis and other allergic reactions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And said:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Examples of such studies include a register-based cohort study in Sweden and Finland that included almost 1 million girls aged 10–17 years, among whom almost 300 000 were vaccinated against HPV.12 The study investigated whether vaccination was associated with an increased risk of autoimmune, neurological or thromboembolic events. The &lt;strong&gt;study results did not show evidence of any association between exposure to HPV vaccine and autoimmune, neurological, and venous thromboembolic adverse events&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is more important is the results of another study:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;An observational study involving almost 200 000 girls and young women who had received at least 1 dose of HPV vaccine found no increased incidence of 16 investigated autoimmune diseases in the vaccinated compared to the non-vaccinated group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Source: Chao C et al. Surveillance of autoimmune conditions following routine use of quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine. J Intern Med. 2012 Feb;271(2):193-203.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Multiple studies have demonstrated no increase in risk of autoimmune diseases, including MS, among girls who have received HPV vaccine compared to those who have not. The Committee remains reassured by the safety profile of the vaccine, but noted the importance of continued surveillance and epidemiological investigation with an emphasis on the collection of high quality data; such data are essential for interpretation of any adverse events which may occur following vaccination. &lt;strong&gt;Allegations of harm due to vaccination based on incomplete information may lead to unnecessary harm when effective vaccines are not used.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2015-06-08T18:01:30.173" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28010" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-08T18:30:08.910" Score="43" ViewCount="5695" Body="&lt;p&gt;See:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/38xryo/lpt_how_to_lace_your_running_shoes/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reddit: LPT: How to lace your running shoes (June 7, 2015)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reddit.com/r/ultimate/comments/36o74t/black_toes_from_ultimate/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Reddit: Black toes from ultimate? (May 20, 2015)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20170311171054/http://www.runnersworld.co.za/shoes-gear/shoe-essentials/how-to-lace-shoes-prevent-black-toenails/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Runner's World: How To Lace Shoes: Prevent Black Toe Nails (March 4, 2011)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They link to these photos:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/9Qu7u.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;shows different lacing techniques for running shoes: 1. Black toenail, 2. Heel slipping, 3. High instep, 4. Narrow forefoot, 5. Overall roomier fit, 6. Wide forefoot&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pvRpQ.png&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pvRpQ.png&quot; alt=&quot;lacing diagram: left lace goes from aglet to toe, right zig zags through every hole&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is that this lacing technique is effective at protecting the toenail on your big toe from being blackened (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subungual_hematoma&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;subungual hematoma&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most authoritative source that I found was (Adams, Brian B. &amp;quot;Traumatic Injuries to the Nails and Toes.&amp;quot; Sports Dermatology (2006): 262-281), which says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lacing techniques can prevent the foot from freely slamming into the toe box, especially on downhill courses when there is a great deal of force pushing the toenail into the end of the shoe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, he simply asserts that without reference to empirical evidence, so it seems to be just a restatement of the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I also found a chapter/article (Werd, Matthew B. &amp;quot;Athletic Shoe Lacing in Sports Medicine.&amp;quot; In Athletic Footwear and Orthoses in Sports Medicine, pp. 79-87. Springer New York, 2010.) that repeats this claim, and calls the technique the &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Distal–Medial Eyelet Lacing Technique&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;, but again, there are no references or any mention of empirical evidence. He says that the purpose is to &amp;quot;pull the upper material off of the big toe and decrease the pressure on the great toe and joint&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2022-05-10T20:54:07.803" LastActivityDate="2023-09-27T00:06:28.023" Title="Is this shoe lacing technique effective at preventing blackened toe nails?" Tags="|physiology|healthcare|sport|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28011" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28160" CreationDate="2015-06-08T19:40:39.853" Score="12" ViewCount="10699" Body="&lt;p&gt;Is drinking Gatorade after a night of drinking an effective method for preventing hangovers?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.forbes.com/2006/12/12/gatorade-excedrin-tylenol-ent-hr-cx_mf_1212hangover_slide_3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;A Forbes article claims:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;You not only lose water when you booze, you also dump&#xA;  electrolytes. These salts and other minerals keep your body&#xA;  functioning properly. Sports drinks like Gatorade help replenish these&#xA;  reserves.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17023" LastEditorUserId="17023" LastEditDate="2016-06-28T16:07:55.017" LastActivityDate="2016-06-28T16:07:55.017" Title="Does chugging Gatorade before going to sleep prevent a hangover in the morning?" Tags="|physiology|drinks|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28012" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27982" CreationDate="2015-06-08T19:54:16.230" Score="7" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We find the adjective &lt;em&gt;racist&lt;/em&gt; penned by Gaston Mery in the November 18, 1897 issue of &lt;em&gt;La Libre Parole&lt;/em&gt; &quot;It is time, in popular meetings, that truly French - truly &lt;em&gt;racist&lt;/em&gt;- voices oppose their eloquence to the rhetoric of internationalist boastings&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above passage is from the chapter Birth, Functions and Avatars of the word &lt;em&gt;Racism&lt;/em&gt; in the book &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=AcOG6Y9XG40C&amp;amp;pg=PA88&amp;amp;lpg=PA88&amp;amp;dq=%22Germanists%20or%20Racists%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=xdOwoCc6Wj&amp;amp;sig=3tzbSys3_Ih4jPXFpLTB5FblJJg&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=wAB2Vb--F6-JsQSwppLgAw&amp;amp;ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22Germanists%20or%20Racists%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Force of Prejudice: On Racism and Its Doubles&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The book also quotes &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Maurras&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Charles Maurras&lt;/a&gt; as saying 25 March 1895:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I am myself a 'racist'! Elsewhere I had occasion to say to my distinguished colleague M. Gaston Mery, who at a point became the Knight of the Race and coined the epithet 'racist'. Like him I believe that there is a French race.      &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See this book for a more complete history of the word &quot;racist&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, it was not coined by Trotsky 1927, it was coined by &lt;a href=&quot;https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaston_M%C3%A9ry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;M. Gaston Mery&lt;/a&gt; by 1895.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also the 1923 use:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A campaign was even planned to expel from the Nationalist party the agitators of the extreme Right known as “Germanists&quot; or “racists&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Quoting from &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?ei=rwx2VbLXLq3jsASb5oHwBg&amp;amp;id=aBQwAQAAMAAJ&amp;amp;dq=%22Germanists+or+Racists%22&amp;amp;focus=searchwithinvolume&amp;amp;q=racists&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace&lt;/a&gt; at page 53&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-07-21T12:53:59.963" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T12:53:59.963" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28013" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-08T21:48:40.327" Score="9" ViewCount="2321" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been suggested that placing an ice cube on your neck where your head and neck are connected (the Feng Fu point) once a day has several health benefits&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailynutritionnews.com/put-an-ice-cube-at-this-point-on-your-head-and-witness-the-miracle/&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://higherperspectives.com/ice-cube/&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;sup&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://beautyhealthpage.com/what-happens-when-you-put-an-ice-cube-on-this-point/&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sup&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supposedly the reason for this is that placing an ice cube in this location &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailynutritionnews.com/put-an-ice-cube-at-this-point-on-your-head-and-witness-the-miracle/&quot;&gt;causes endorphins to be released&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Primary Question:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that placing an ice cube on your neck can cause endorphins to be released?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26622" LastEditorUserId="26622" LastEditDate="2015-06-09T00:49:29.217" LastActivityDate="2017-03-08T17:20:11.760" Title="Does placing an ice cube on your neck provide health benefits?" Tags="|alternative-medicine|healthcare|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28016" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27986" CreationDate="2015-06-09T13:44:35.983" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;From the review article &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00196137&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Natural zeolites as cation exchangers for environmental protection&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Mineralium Deposita&lt;/em&gt; vol. 31, pages  563-575.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Clinoptilolite had a variety of roles in tackling the&#xA;  dramatic detrimental effects of the Chernobyl accident&#xA;  (Chelishchev 1995). About 500 000 tonnes of clinoptilolitebearing&#xA;  material, from Sokirnitza (Ukraine), Tedsami&#xA;  (Georgia), Holinskoe (Russia), and Shivirtui (Russia), were&#xA;  successfully used for accomplishing the following tasks: (1)&#xA;  the decontamination of low-level radioactive waters, in&#xA;  which the cesium concentration was reduced by a factor of&#xA;  1000; (2) clinoptilolite filtration reduced by a factor of 100&#xA;  the radioactivity of milk, maintaining its high quality; (3)&#xA;  the addition of clinoptilolite to soil reduced the supply of&#xA;  radionuclides to plants by a factor of 2--3 times for cesium&#xA;  and by 50 70% for strontium; (4) the addition of clinoptilolite&#xA;  to polluted fodder (1-3 g clinoptilolite/kg of body&#xA;  weight) reduced the concentration of radionuclides in&#xA;  meat by a factor of 2-3 and in milk by a factor of 5-7; (5)&#xA;  the &lt;strong&gt;taking of a clinoptilolite-based medication increased&#xA;  the removal of radionuclides from the human body by&#xA;  a factor of 3-5&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pnas.org/content/96/7/3463.short&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;La roca magica: Uses of natural zeolites in&#xA;agriculture and industry&lt;/a&gt; Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA vol. 96, pages 3463–3470.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In Bulgaria, zeolite pills and cookies were prepared&#xA;  for human consumption to counteract Chernobyl fallout (57).&#xA;  The zeolite apparently exchanges 137Cs and 90Sr in the gastrointestinal&#xA;  tract and is excreted by normal processes, thereby&#xA;  minimizing assimilation into the body.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T13:44:35.983" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28019" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28031" CreationDate="2015-06-09T16:09:38.743" Score="24" ViewCount="34233" Body="&lt;p&gt;While searching for data for another question on here regarding people dying watching TV, I stumbled upon a &lt;a href=&quot;http://gizmodo.com/5017621/woman-who-died-while-watching-tv-sat-unfound-for-42-years&quot;&gt;Gizmodo article&lt;/a&gt; about one unfortunate Hedviga Golik, who died in front of her TV in 1966 and remained undiscovered until 2008.  I tried googling her name for more information, and indeed a lot of hits turned up, but there seems to be a lot of inconsistencies between the various accounts, not least the number of years that elapsed between her dying and her being discovered with timeframes ranging from 42 years all the way down to 35, and one account saying she died in her bed instead of in front of the TV.  This leads me so suspect the whole thing is an urban legend, though it's certainly true that people really have gone years undiscovered after death.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Hedviga Golik ever really exist, did she really die in front of her TV and did she really sit undiscovered for 42 years?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2992" LastActivityDate="2019-08-19T08:27:24.553" Title="Did Hedviga Golik sit dead and undiscovered for 42 years in front of her TV?" Tags="|mortality|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28020" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-09T17:34:34.333" Score="3" ViewCount="40190" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here it's implied that sprouted sweet potatoes are edible because they are not from the same family as potatoes (it's like saying arsenic is fine to eat because it's not from the same family as lead)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are sweet potatoes with green sprouts still safe to eat? Sweet&#xA;  potatoes are botanically unrelated to the common potato. Potatoes are&#xA;  part of the nightshade family while Sweet Potatoes are cousins of the&#xA;  morning-glory. They do not produce the toxic solanine.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eufic.org/jpage/en/page/faq/faqid/sweet-potatoes-green-sprouts-safe-to-eat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and here it's also claimed that you can eat the sprouts itself (even though there's  a lot of junk-science on the site):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The sweet potato sprout tastes very similar to spinach. Its&#xA;  nutritional value is also comparable to spinach. Spinach however, must&#xA;  have its seeds planted and you'll need to wait for over two months&#xA;  each time you harvest it. In the case of sweet potato vines, you can&#xA;  harvest it practically every 2 to 3 days per branch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I recommended this practice to all my brothers and friends three years&#xA;  ago, and most of them are now enjoying following my idea. All of them&#xA;  including their families claim that their blood test results are in&#xA;  normal range and their cholesterol levels have never been abnormal&#xA;  since then. They very much enjoy eating sweet potato sprout salad.&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pyroenergen.com/articles11/sweet-potato-hypertension.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I'm curious, is it safe to eat a sweet potato (with or without its sprouts) or are both these sources incorrect in claiming so? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14234" LastEditorUserId="14234" LastEditDate="2015-06-09T17:50:26.630" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T22:13:10.917" Title="Are sprouted sweet potatoes safe to eat?" Tags="|toxicology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28021" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27965" CreationDate="2015-06-09T18:33:34.653" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Due to the difficulty of performing research on this topic, all the sources cited in this answer derive from anti-government sources, as the extent of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_China&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;censorship in China&lt;/a&gt; makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to obtain information from official sources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is impossible to prove that nobody executed during the 1989 Tiananmen protests had bullet fees charged to their relatives, it is &lt;strong&gt;unlikely&lt;/strong&gt; that any such cases existed in a verifiable manner, due to there being no mention of incidents in 1989 from multiple anti-governmental secondary sources. If such a case existed, it would reasonably be widely communicated as another example of governmental brutality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That being said, however, the bullet fee practices of the Chinese government have been well documented by &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.boxun.com/hero/2007/wangdebang/15_1.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;various&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.qq.com/a/20111226/000397.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;sources&lt;/a&gt;, most cases of which occurred during the &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cultural Revolution&lt;/a&gt; period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epochtimes.com.hk/b5/9/3/13/97072.htm?p=all&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; from the Hong Kong based Epoch Times cites a number of cases where a bullet fee was charged to relatives, none of which occurred in the vicinity of the 1989 protests. The tone of this article clearly shows that the writer is anti-government, and therefore is unlikely to omit cases of bullet fees being charged during the 1989 protests that were known to him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;古今中外，但凡處決犯人，火刑未收過柴火費，電刑未收過電費，毒殺未收過藥費或氣費，斬首、絞刑也沒聽說過有刀具或繩索費──中共黨文化孕育的怪胎層出不窮，子彈費橫空出世，為泯滅人性的黨文化增添了厚重的一筆。遨遊太空的21世紀，中共還在肆無忌憚地踐踏人權和摧殘人性，後世的人們一定會歎為觀止。&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since antiquity, during the execution of criminals, no log fee was charged for burning, no electricity fee was charged for the electric chair, no gas or poison fee charged for lethal injections and gassings, nor were knife or rope fees charged for beheading and hanging. The monstrous logic birthed from Chinese Communist Party (CCP)'s culture resulted in the absurd creation of the bullet fee, adding another line to the inhumanity of the CCP's culture. In the 21st century space age, the CCP still violates human rights with impunity. This would certainly be viewed with horror by people from the future.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article then goes on to cite a number of cases where a bullet fee was charged:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1967 March 23 ，劉文輝 (Liu Wen Hui) was executed in Shanghai for being a counter-revolutionary, and his family was charged a bullet fee of 40 cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1968 April 29, 林昭 (Lin Zhao) was executed in Shanghai  and her family was charged a bullet fee of 5 cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1970 March 5, 遇羅克 (Yu Luo Ke) was executed for being a counter-revolutionary, his parents were charged a bullet fee of 13 cents. The bullet fee was not charged because his cornea was sold in a corneal transplant operation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1975 April 4, 張志新 (Zhang Zhi Xin) was executed by exsanguination and shooting. His family was charged a bullet fee of 10 cents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2006 November 28, 陳滔 (Chen Tao) was executed for rioting and killing a policeman. His family was charged a bullet fee of 50 RMB.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;None of these cases occurred near the time period cited. Therefore, while I cannot show conclusively what the Chinese government's bullet fee policy was during the 1989 protests, there are records of them charging a bullet fee for execution by firing squad before and after that period.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-09T18:33:34.653" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28022" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28266" CreationDate="2015-06-09T19:37:54.210" Score="12" ViewCount="10568" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard a folk legend that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Spock&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Benjamin Spock&lt;/a&gt;, author of the controversial best-seller &quot;&lt;em&gt;Baby and Child Care&lt;/em&gt;&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=S_wuDwAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PT8&amp;amp;lpg=PT8&amp;amp;dq=&amp;quot;We+have+reared+a+generation+of+brats.+&amp;quot;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;recanted&lt;/a&gt; his teachings later in life. Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;We have reared a generation of brats. Parents aren't firm enough with&#xA;  their children for fear of losing their love or incurring their&#xA;  resentment. This is a cruel deprivation that we professionals have imposed&#xA;  on mothers and fathers. Of course, we did it with the best of intentions.&#xA;  We didn't realize until it was too late how our know-it-all attitude was&#xA;  undermining the self assurance of parents.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21907" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2019-05-20T18:16:08.997" LastActivityDate="2019-05-20T18:16:08.997" Title="Did Dr. Benjamin Spock recant his child-rearing teachings later in life?" Tags="|quotes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28024" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-09T22:24:11.293" Score="3" ViewCount="506" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzSKsma0mFw&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzSKsma0mFw&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Video is being passed around as a UFO or &quot;Mystical Light&quot; sighting over Chelmsford, UK, or in some cases &quot;Hawaii&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are the lights special effects added in post production or faked in other ways?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20740" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-08-09T15:53:32.293" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T16:37:59.493" Title="Is the Chelmsford England / &quot;Hawaii&quot; UFO Lights sighting video faked?" Tags="|video|ufo|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-09-11T02:06:10.697" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28026" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="3632" CreationDate="2015-06-10T03:17:33.177" Score="19" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Summary&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the US and Canada, if you buy wipes which say &quot;Flushable&quot; on the package, you normally should &lt;em&gt;never&lt;/em&gt; flush them. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metrovancouver.org/services/liquid-waste/preventing-problems-pipes/wipes/Pages/default.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Source.)&lt;/a&gt; If you do, they may clog your pipes or your local sewer / septic system. And a sewer clog may cause sewage to seep into your basement. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.startribune.com/flushable-wipes-can-cost-thousands-to-fix-clogged-pipes/298728221/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Source.)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead of flushing wipes down the toilet, you can use unscented baby wipes. They're cheaper, &lt;a href=&quot;https://community.babycenter.com/post/a30969995/cottonelle_vs_baby_wipes&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(source)&lt;/a&gt; and probably stronger, than adult wipes. Afterwards, you can throw them in the trash. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.owasa.org/proper-disposal-of-baby-wipes-and-other-hygiene-items&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Source.)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;OK; that was the summary. If you'd like the nitty-gritty details, please read on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Baby wipes are cheaper and better, but are not flushable&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Truly-flushable wipes must be weak enough to break down in your city's sewage system. &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=PM9ZAgAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA59&amp;amp;dq=weak&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Source.)&lt;/a&gt; They're harder to find than baby wipes. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.startribune.com/flushable-wipes-can-cost-thousands-to-fix-clogged-pipes/298728221/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Source.)&lt;/a&gt; They're also more expensive, probably thinner, and probably rip more easily.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You might want to consider buying unscented baby wipes instead. When you're done, you can seal them in a plastic bag and throw them in the trash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, if you insist on buying flushable wipes, please read on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;The &quot;flushable&quot; wipes currently sold in the US should not be flushed at all&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The fine print on the back of the package of one common brand of &quot;flushable&quot; wipes warns: &quot;Use only one wipe per flush&quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ebay.com/itm/401308625500&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Source.)&lt;/a&gt; But even that warning may be insufficient.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In practice, the word &quot;flushable&quot; may mean that a product can pass through your toilet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Maybe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, even if it manages to pass through your toilet, it still might not pass successfully through the drainpipe in your house or apartment. In fact, homeowners and landlords have spent significant amounts of time and money dealing with &quot;flushable&quot; wipes which have gotten snagged inside pipes or equipment. &lt;a href=&quot;http://pdfserver.amlaw.com/nlj/wipes-complaint.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Source.)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You really don't want to annoy your landlord by forcing him or her to come and fix a non-flushable toilet full of poop.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Worse yet, if your wipes cause your local municipal sewage pipes to clog, sewage might start to seep into your basement. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.startribune.com/flushable-wipes-can-cost-thousands-to-fix-clogged-pipes/298728221/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Source.)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.archive.org/web/20120120134629/http://www.newsobserver.com/2009/05/27/64324/now-not-flushable-flushable-wipes.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; discusses the matter. It dates back to '09, but most of it is still valid. The article writes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;A lot of people flush Kleenex thinking that it's just like toilet paper,&quot; [official Darrell Crews] said. &quot;But I can tell you, Kleenex doesn't break down. You can stir it, beat on it, it's just not going to break down.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It turns out that flushable wipes don't break down either, Crews said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Some of them disintegrated a little bit, but a little bit is not good enough,&quot; he said. &quot;If it doesn't break down like toilet paper, you probably shouldn't flush it.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Are there any wipes you &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; flush?&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The official quoted above used the phrase &quot;break down like toilet paper&quot;. But I don't know what he meant. Maybe he meant &quot;break down just like toilet paper, except slower&quot;. Or maybe he meant &quot;break down as fast as toilet paper&quot;. Because we don't want to clog your home's pipes, let's be conservative and assume the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fine. A few years ago, a New Jersey official did some experiments. Back then, he &lt;a href=&quot;http://hasousa.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Rob-Villee-PARSA-Letter.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;found&lt;/a&gt; that the only wipes which disintegrate as quickly as toilet paper were the flushable wipes made by Haso. But, as of May '17, their American subsidiary (Haso USA) isn't fully up and running yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;The Swedish research&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was some more-recent research done in Sweden. Take a look at the table of results at the bottom of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oracwa.org/documents/Wipeoutwipes-ChrisHornbackandFrankDick_Part1.pdf#page=17&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;page 17&lt;/a&gt; of &quot;Wipes in the Pipes&quot;. The wipes which meet the proposed &quot;GD4 WW&quot; criteria are the least-bad choices.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You 'll want to choose a wipe which won't get stuck or cause accumulation in your home's pipes or your city's sewage pumps. So you should choose a wipe which passes the international wastewater industry's &quot;GD4 WW&quot; criteria for flushability (average pump power-draw increase &amp;lt;1%). &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nacwa.org/docs/default-source/resources---public/2017-02-21mdwipes-testimony.pdf#page=14&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Source.)&lt;/a&gt; Even when soaked for only 30 minutes. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nacwa.org/docs/default-source/resources---public/2017-02-21mdwipes-testimony.pdf#page=15&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Source.)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The least-bad choice would be to choose wipes made of &quot;SafeFlush&quot; substrate. But even these take 60 minutes to disperse well. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nacwa.org/docs/default-source/resources---public/2017-02-21mdwipes-testimony.pdf#page=15&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Source.)&lt;/a&gt; They're still not an ideal choice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in practice, if you buy your &quot;flushable&quot; wipes in the US, you shouldn't flush them. You should throw them in the garbage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h1&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most &quot;flushable&quot; wipes sold in the US might not be very flushable at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The least-bad substrate currently available in the US is the &quot;SafeFlush&quot; substrate. (It's found in Cottonelle adult wipes, Scott adult wipes, and Pull-Ups toddler wipes.) But it's still best not to flush it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Haso and Aralar both make substrates which are more dispersible. I don't think these substrates are yet sold in America. Let's wait until they are; then we can investigate and see whether or not they'll dissolve sufficiently in 30 minutes to meet the &quot;GD4 WW&quot; criteria. It looks like they will. &lt;a href=&quot;http://nywea.org/clearwaters/uploads/8NonFlush.pdf#page=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;(Source.)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For now, it's best to throw all your wipes in the trash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6777" LastEditorUserId="6777" LastEditDate="2018-12-03T03:28:41.313" LastActivityDate="2018-12-03T03:28:41.313" CommentCount="6" CommunityOwnedDate="2015-06-10T03:17:33.177" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28027" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28024" CreationDate="2015-06-10T08:58:33.043" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's very unconvincing. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.essexchronicle.co.uk/VIDEO-UFO-sighting-Chelmsford-Ingalterra/story-19352334-detail/story.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Essex chronicle&lt;/a&gt;, commenting on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auV7Q73cToI&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a better copy&lt;/a&gt;, dated a year later, interviewed &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.linkedin.com/pub/mark-pickering/58/765/953&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mark Pickering&lt;/a&gt;, certainly a relevant expert, on the subject:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Like all these videos, it's not shot professionally and when it zooms in the size of the orbs changes perspective. It's all things that are very easy to do on a computer. I have put a UFO on a music video myself and this one is no better than that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Students in the technology department can do it quite easily and it's definitely inconclusive. That's my verdict.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T08:58:33.043" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28031" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28019" CreationDate="2015-06-10T15:18:32.240" Score="16" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Plausible.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But in bed, not sitting in front of a TV. The exact date she was last seen alive is not known.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;May 2008 reports&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jutarnji.hr/lezala-mrtva-u-stanu-35-godina-/250047/&quot;&gt;first reported&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jutarnji_list&quot;&gt;Jutarnji List&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;a daily newspaper published in Zagreb, Croatia&quot;, on 13th May 2008. The body is alleged to have been discovered two days previously. The article's titled translates to &quot;She lay dead in the apartment for 35 years!&quot; The article says her body was found in her bed in the apartment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Must be no longer than 35 years - said Mirko Horvatić, a neighbor who was in the eighth decade of life.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A 14th May &lt;a href=&quot;http://metro-portal.hr/tags/view/hedviga-golik&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; in Zagreb newspaper Metro Portal says&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Hedwig lived in the apartment above me, and the last time I saw her in 1963 when my son was two years old. ... [said] 85-year-old Katica Caric, the oldest resident of the building, &lt;strike&gt;which&lt;/strike&gt;[who] has recently been given to a nearby nursing home for the elderly&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jutarnji.hr/svadili-se-oko-staricina-stana-dok-je-ona-u-njemu-lezala-mrtva/250252/&quot;&gt;second report&lt;/a&gt; in Jutarrnji List  a few days later on 15th May 2008. The author of the article appears to be Velibor Panić. A man by that name has a facebook profile saying that he was a reporter in 2008. Other names in the report show up in web-searches with consistent locations and professions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These reports seem to have been picked up by Associated Press at the time and a version of the story has subsequently appeared in some English language news media at around that time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Dates of last sighting and of death&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The date of the last known &lt;em&gt;sighting&lt;/em&gt; of the deceased woman depends on the memory of an 85 year old in a nursing home and of other people of similar age. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two original reports give the time she lay undiscovered as 35 years and as more than 40 years - it seems to depend on which resident or other person the reporter spoke to on each occasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I don't read Croatian and Google's translation isn't clear enough to be sure but it may be that the last known sighting was in 1963 (45 years before 2008 reports) but there was other subsequent contact suggesting the reclusive woman didn't die at that time - it may be she communicated for a while by lowering messages in a basket from her apartment window.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It may not have been possible to identify the exact date (or year) of death. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Reasons for non-discovery&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the alleged time of death, the apartment was in communist Yugoslavia. At that time, property was state-owned. I don't know if gas and electricity to a building like this would have been metered individually per apartment in communist times - it may be plausible that it was not and that in the transition from communism this small (18 m²) apartment did not acquire a separate account with utility companies. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Essentially, the story is that the apartment in which she was found is very small and was the subject of a longstanding ownership dispute among the residents of the building. It seems that until this dispute was resolved, no-one had authority to enter the apartment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2015-06-10T16:14:35.523" LastActivityDate="2015-06-10T16:14:35.523" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28038" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-11T12:38:48.450" Score="14" ViewCount="1490" Body="&lt;p&gt;The book 'Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams' by Timothy Lister and Tom DeMarco makes an unreferenced claim that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;The average software developer, for example, doesn't own a single&#xA;  book on the subject of his or her work, and hasn't ever read one.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim is notable because Peopleware is an important book in the Software Engineering field, regularly featuring in lists of important or influential programming books and has  been repeated in other highly regarded books such as 'Code Complete' by Steve McConnell. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim has also been referenced elsewhere by leading industry figures - such as on StackOverflow founder Jeff Atwood's &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.codinghorror.com/programmers-dont-read-books-but-you-should/&quot;&gt;Coding Horror blog&lt;/a&gt; (citing Peopleware as a source. In this same post he also claims two books which make this claim - Peopleware and Code Complete - are in the top five books every programmer should read).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are several possible inteperetations of this claim based around what &quot;average software developer&quot; and &quot;the subject of his or her work&quot; means but for the purpose of this question I have interpreted this claim to make 2 distinct claims:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More than 50% of practicing professional software developers don't own a book on software development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;More than 50% of practicing professional software developers have never read a book on Software Development.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are either of these claims supported by evidence?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: As @ChrisW mentions below - this book was first published in 1987 and so is dated. But the book (and claim) are still referenced widely. I'm interested in either the historical accuracy of the claim (and would accept research conducted around the same time as the book showing this to be true/false) or whether these claims are true for the modern state of software development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26649" LastEditorUserId="26649" LastEditDate="2015-06-11T13:49:46.460" LastActivityDate="2015-08-10T22:54:24.217" Title="Does the average software developer not own (or has never read) a book on software development?" Tags="|software|programming|books|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28039" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12354" CreationDate="2015-06-11T15:45:39.737" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Oppositely, according to &lt;a href=&quot;https://etd.ohiolink.edu/rws_etd/document/get/osu1236184248/inline&quot;&gt;MARITAL QUALITY AND PLASMA LEVELS OF OXYTOCIN&#xA;AND VASOPRESSIN&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Social interactions in laboratory do not appear to elicit secretion of plasma OT. Cohabiting couples who undergo a 10-minute warm contact intervention in which they were instructed to sit close to each other, talk about their relationship, watch a romantic clip, and then hug each other do not exhibit an increase in plasma levels of OT after the interaction (Grewen, Girdler, Amico, &amp;amp; Light, 2005; Light, Grewen, &amp;amp; Amico, 2005).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Referring to studies that involved 20 second hugs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T15:45:39.737" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28040" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28038" CreationDate="2015-06-11T15:47:16.913" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is refuted by &lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015&quot;&gt;Stack Overflow's own survey&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;41.8 percent of respondents described themselves as &quot;self-taught,&quot; while 37.7 percent had a Bachelor of Science degree in CS or a related field (e.g. EE or Mathematics). Another 18.4 percent had Master's degree, and 2.2 per cent had PhD's, for a total of 58.3%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So that in itself makes the claim false, since buying a textbook for a course means they owned a book (and presumably read it).   And that doesn't include the self-taught programmers, some of whom must own and read programming books (or else how would they be self-taught? -- can't all be on-line).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;BTW the number of self-taught programmers at large companies like Google is much lower, in the 5 to 10% range according &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.quora.com/What-percent-of-software-engineers-at-major-tech-companies-do-not-have-computer-science-or-related-degrees&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;to this pos&lt;/a&gt;t.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3970" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T12:41:24.653" LastActivityDate="2015-06-11T22:26:23.507" CommentCount="21" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28046" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28049" CreationDate="2015-06-12T02:08:31.043" Score="37" ViewCount="29412" Body="&lt;p&gt;Are the surveys in the gameshow &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Feud&quot;&gt;'Family Feud'&lt;/a&gt; (and its many &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_versions_of_Family_Feud&quot;&gt;international derivatives&lt;/a&gt;) systematically fake?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When I used to watch the British version, 'Family Fortunes', I couldn't imagine that they'd bother with all the trouble, time and expense of conducting endless trivial surveys, each of which had to include 100 participants; not least because of the unreliable answers they would have got.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the show, the surveys' results always comprised a small number of repeated answers, and I don't recall any of the survey answers to be stupid. Whereas I think in real surveys, the number of different answers would be much higher, and would include all sorts of wrong and stupid answers.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anyone ever participated in one of these surveys?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23121" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-06-12T12:43:57.333" LastActivityDate="2016-07-20T02:01:52.003" Title="Are the 'Family Feud' surveys systematically fake?" Tags="|television|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28047" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5026" CreationDate="2015-06-12T03:01:24.897" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;As another data point, the site CureTogether surveys people on which treatments have been effective for each particular disease.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20180630164645/http://mail.curetogether.com/Acid-Reflux/treatments/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Apple cider vinegar is ranked as the &lt;em&gt;worst&lt;/em&gt; treatment for acid reflux&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;29% thought it made their reflux worse&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;43% experienced no effect&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;28% experienced improvement&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For comparison, the highest-ranked treatments are prescription drugs, which improved symptoms for 71% of people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also &lt;a href=&quot;https://keep.lib.asu.edu/items/154285&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here's a small master's thesis study&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The acid chosen for the study was organic apple cider vinegar with mother.  In summary, the results of our study support our second null hypothesis - compared to the placebo trial, the vinegar trials do not show significant alleviation of the heartburn sensation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="155" LastEditorUserId="155" LastEditDate="2022-02-22T22:20:04.327" LastActivityDate="2022-02-22T22:20:04.327" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28049" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28046" CreationDate="2015-06-12T06:14:36.510" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this article, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121391284883989979&quot;&gt;And the Survey Says...&lt;/a&gt; (by Carl Bialik, 2008) in the Wall Street Journal, the Family Feud show does conduct real surveys.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Surprisingly, they don't just conduct polls of the studio audience (which seems like it would be an easy source of survey participants and people that would be happy to do the survey). Instead, they conduct telephone surveys using an outside polling agency. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The agency chooses participants at random and asks 30 - 40 questions in each call out of a list of around 100 from the show's writers. They do not reveal that they are conducting the survey on behalf of the Family Feud show, so no one would know if they were a part of a Family Feud initiated survey. In the show's early years, they did use self-selected participants from the show's mailing list.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Granted, polling  only 100 people does not lend much statistical validity to the survey (the article says that the results have an error margin of plus or minus 10), but still, their polling methodology is more rigorous than I would have expected for a TV game show.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The WSJ article was written back in 2008, so it's possible that they are no longer using the same methodology, but I couldn't find any more recent references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13418" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-06-12T09:13:09.670" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T09:13:09.670" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28053" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="22069" CreationDate="2015-06-12T08:21:32.370" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/industry-and-services/entrepreneurship-at-a-glance-2013/culture-attitude-toward-failure_entrepreneur_aag-2013-26-en&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;OECD (2013), “Culture: Attitude toward failure”, in Entrepreneurship at a&#xA;Glance 2013, OECD Publishing&lt;/a&gt;, United States has an adult belief ratio exceeding 80% for failed entrepreneurs to be given a second chance. In most countries, a large majority of adults believe that entrepreneurs who fail should be given a “second chance”. The ratio is around or above 90% in Brazil, China, Greece, Ireland, Korea, Spain and Sweden, and exceeds 80% in several other countries including the Russian Federation and the United States. Comparing answers in 2012 with those provided in 2009 suggests that in many countries the positive attitudes relating to a ’second chance’ might have been reinforced by the recent financial crisis, i.e. people have become more sympathetic towards difficulties faced by entrepreneurs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="13969" LastEditDate="2015-06-12T20:40:03.740" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T20:40:03.740" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28054" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2450" CreationDate="2015-06-12T09:26:41.577" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ernie, and all,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The primary sources that Himmler and other top Nazis [mainly Hess] were involved in the occult, or what we deem 'the occult' are listed in Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke's books. However, to answer Ernie's concerns - it is well known that Himmler was an avid occultist. The SS was, in his opinion, a 'sacred order of Aryan knights'. Furthermore, the expedition to Tibet in 1938 and the Antarctic in 1937 were attempts by Himmler to not only investigate various cultural exchanges [in the case of Tibet] but also attempts to prove some of the theories that he was interested in [such as the Welteislehre, the existence of Thule, and the Hollow Earth theory].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Nazis in general had a different perspective on what we call 'history' and 'science'. This is well known and documented. All one has to do is download 'Ostara' [which is a primary source from the period] to see the ideas that influenced the Nazis. Also, look at any of the biographies of Himmler, i.e. by Padfield, and one can see how he was influenced by certain occult ideas. Also, the Nazi interest in alternative science might be something of interest here as well. Viktor Schauberger and other 'alternative' scientists were very instrumental in advancing Nazi ideas about science [whether willing or unwilling].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26658" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T09:26:41.577" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28057" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="36759" CreationDate="2015-06-12T12:42:26.567" Score="16" ViewCount="3567" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've known for some time the joke about the American military ship insisting that another ship moves out of their way just to discover it was a lighthouse. I've always thought it was simply a joke, but today &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/brunonumerouno/videos/10152540151601966/&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt; appeared in my Facebook feed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's the same story, but it's seemingly an authentic radio recording of the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this radio recording staged? Did the event take place?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="96" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-08-20T16:22:48.547" LastActivityDate="2021-08-20T16:22:48.547" Title="Did a US Navy ship demand that a lighthouse get out of its path, thinking it was another ship?" Tags="|united-states|military|spain|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28064" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="12373" CreationDate="2015-06-12T16:55:15.287" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25445512&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Safety assessment of dietary bamboo charcoal powder: A 90-day subchronic oral toxicity and mutagenicity studies&lt;/a&gt;&quot; &lt;em&gt;Food and Chemical Toxicity&lt;/em&gt; vol. 75, pages 50-57.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In summary, no BCP[bamboo charcoal powder]-related systemic or general toxicity was induced by the 90-day subchronic oral exposure in SD rats, and BCP did not reveal any mutagenicity in the genotoxicity assays. Results of these in vivo oral toxicity and in vivo/in vitro genotoxicity studies support the existing theoretical weight-of-evidence for dietary safety of vegetable carbon black. ... Data from the present study suggest that BCP should be of no toxicological concern by oral ingestion, and consumption of BCP as a food ingredient and additive is safe at present use levels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, looking at the data in the article itself, lead content of the charcoal was found to be 0.59 mg/kg.  This is about twice the limit (0.30 mg/kg) set by the EU for lead in fish for adults, and about 30 times the limit (0.020 mg/kg) for food for children.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/food_safety/contamination_environmental_factors/l21290_en.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Maximum levels for certain contaminants&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T16:55:15.287" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28066" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6940" CreationDate="2015-06-12T18:00:20.040" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/a_grain_of_truth_recreating_dr._emotos_rice_experiment/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This article from The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry&lt;/a&gt; attempts to replicate Emoto's experiment in a properly scientifically controlled manner (with some &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/a_grain_of_truth_recreating_dr._emotos_rice_experiment/#_ftn11&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;small caveats&lt;/a&gt;), reaching an obvious non-replication (none of the rice rotted significantly). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/e6ypf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In the end, it appears that Dr. Emoto’s assertion that intention can affect soppy rice doesn’t hold water. I can’t help but wonder if the well-meaning re-creators of this experiment on the internet didn’t help their rice along, exposing the neglected or hated rice to more air, changing the jars around to put them in different temperature or humidity conditions, or performing other tricks in an effort to support a well-intended but ultimately self-evident point: that being ignored or belittled hurts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article hypothesises that the reason for the rice turning out the way it did was due to improperly controlled experiments carried out by Emoto. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Apparently, Emoto’s experimental protocols are so lacking as to be unrepeatable, and even the most basic attempts at scientific controls are absent. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="14582" LastEditDate="2015-06-12T18:14:34.373" LastActivityDate="2015-06-12T18:14:34.373" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28067" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-12T18:33:54.047" Score="5" ViewCount="8143" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard (particularly but not exclusively from my friends who grew up in Asia, where the situation may be different) that you should not drink water from a sink in the bathroom.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They believe the water from a water fountain is safe and good for drinking.  However, they believe the water from the sink in the bathroom (I'm not sure why this specifically) comes from some sort of &lt;em&gt;dirty&lt;/em&gt; water source, which is apparently still fine to wash your hands with.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It all sounds a bit strange to me; honestly, it seems more expensive to build and maintain two sets of pipes than you would save by using less purified water in some areas.  But what do I know?  Maybe they're right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To be clear; this is all taking place on a college campus in Maryland, but I suspect the answer is probably the same across most of the US (possibly across the world, but I don't know).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26670" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T09:08:56.377" Title="Is water from a sink different from water from a water fountain?" Tags="|water|public-health|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28072" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27927" CreationDate="2015-06-12T22:44:46.283" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.redcross.org/news/article/The-Real-Story-of-the-6-Homes-Answering-Questions-about-Haiti&quot;&gt;explanation&lt;/a&gt; given by David Meltzer, Chief International Officer of the American Red Cross.  To summarize:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The premise that the Red Cross spent half a billion dollars is true: the figure given in the article is actually $488 million.  Close enough.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The headline for the Pro Publica article that you cited, &quot;half a billion dollars &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;and&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; built six houses&quot;, would be technically true, but &lt;strong&gt;sensationalistic and out of context.&lt;/strong&gt;  They did raise $488 million, and they did build six houses.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;However, the way you misquoted the article when you posted this question, &quot;half a billion dollars &lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;to&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; build six houses&quot;, is &lt;strong&gt;false&lt;/strong&gt;.  Of the $488 million, only $173 million were spent on shelter.  The remaining $315 million were spent on emergency relief, health, water, sanitation, &quot;livelihoods&quot;, disaster preparedness, and cholera prevention.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One might then go on to ask about spending $173 million on six houses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Did the American Red Cross only build “6” new permanent homes?&lt;/em&gt; Yes, these were part of a pilot project outside of Port-au-Prince. As the project progressed, we learned a number of lessons that helped us revise our long-term shelter plans. The solutions we decided on ultimately helped more people than can be served through new construction efforts and could be implemented faster, helping people living in camps get back into safer homes and conditions sooner.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Did we plan to build more new homes?&lt;/em&gt; Yes, plans for three different communities of new homes funded by the American Red Cross were developed, of which two were outside of Port-au-Prince. In all three cases, there were competing claims of land ownership and clear land title couldn’t be established. We also learned that new housing communities built outside Port-au-Prince often remained unoccupied because people strongly preferred to move back into the neighborhood they lived in before the quake - near their jobs, schools and family.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article goes on to say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Housing a relatively small number of people in newly constructed homes that unfortunately could not be quickly built given the uncertainty of clear land title was inconsistent with our mission to quickly and effectively alleviate suffering. In response to these challenges, the American Red Cross chose to focus its housing work on alternatives that offered many more people the opportunity to move into safe and improved housing. We stand by that decision.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The alternative plans included partnering with organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, subsidizing rental housing, and self-help programs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That said, Pro Publica remains &lt;a href=&quot;//www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/39l8cv/we_wrote_a_report_on_what_the_red_cross_did_with/cs4a4vx?context=2&quot;&gt;unsatisfied with the Red Cross's accounting&lt;/a&gt;, saying that they were unable to get a breakdown by project.  There is &lt;strong&gt;no detailed explanation given for how the $173 million allocated for shelters was spent.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22115" LastEditorUserId="22115" LastEditDate="2015-06-13T02:00:38.227" LastActivityDate="2015-06-13T02:00:38.227" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28075" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15293" CreationDate="2015-06-13T06:49:58.293" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Groth (1979) originally identified four types of rapists, classifications that were expanded upon by Berger (2000): the power reassurance rapists (compensatory); power assertive rapists (power, impulsive); anger retaliation rapists (power, control); and anger/excitation rapists (sadistic) which is reported &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178907000262&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Research also shows that acquaintance rapists are characterized as coercive, less violent, and less opportunistic when compared to stranger rapists who are more hostile and use more expressive violence (i.e., inflicting pain or injury as the goal itself) toward women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most commonly cited motivational characteristics of sex offenders mentioned &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.smart.gov/SOMAPI/sec1/ch3_typology.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for rape also reflect the same themes as above like that of compensation, impulsion, assertion, retaliation and excitation. Most modern conceptualizations of rape recognize that it involves both aggressive and sexual motives, but theorists generally emphasize one motive and minimize others. Previous research had not focused on rapists’ communication patterns, except for a study conducted by Darke in 1986 that focused only on verbal communication related to humiliation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The caring/persuasion/reassurance theme appears to be consistent with behavioral characteristics of rapists in the 'power reassurance rapist' proposed by researchers Douglas &amp;amp; Olshaker in 1998 to be the most common type of rapist. Previous researchers have suggested that this type of rapist generally feels inadequate and compensates for these feelings of inadequacy by sexually assaulting women. Further, it seems that this type of rapist is constantly looking for reassurance of his own power and potency, and may apologize and express concern for his victim. However, this type of behavior serves the rapist's need for reassurance rather than expressing any genuine concern for his victim. Papers by Douglas &amp;amp; Olshaker, 1998 and Hazelwood &amp;amp; Burgess, 1987 provide more insight into this behavior.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The angry/demeaning/threatening theme was the next most common type of offender communication. However, some of the communication patterns seem to be consistent with the power exploitative rapist, as researchers suggest that this type of rapist is generally concerned with dominating and controlling his victim and using force, threats and humiliation to gain this submission. This theme is also consistent with the crime scene variables of aggression, antisocial behaviour, anger and vindictiveness identified by Knight et al. in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Behavioural_Characteristics_of_Rapists.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1998&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characteristics of sexually nonsadistic rapist group per Massachusetts Treatment Centre Rapist Typology: Version 3 (MTC:R3) &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3777344&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;classification&lt;/a&gt; revealing their primary motivation of rape as sexual release is not exactly known. 'Sexual release' is not a major/minor motivation class for rape referring to studies such as 'Motivational factors in nonincarcerated sexually aggressive &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3210146&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;men&lt;/a&gt; and 'Motives and psychodynamics of self-reported, unincarcerated &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2188510&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rapists&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per a UN study on men and violence in Asia and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://countryoffice.unfpa.org/timor-leste/drive/p4p-report.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Pacific&lt;/a&gt;, 70 to 80% of men who indulged in rape reported that their common motivation was related to sexual entitlement which is the men's belief that they have the right to sex regardless of consent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T13:26:24.543" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T13:26:24.543" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28076" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-13T07:20:11.273" Score="2" ViewCount="467" Body="&lt;p&gt;Did Thomas Edison say the following quote? :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;To those searching for truth&amp;mdash;not the truth of dogma and darkness but the truth brought by reason, search, examination, and inquiry, discipline is required. For faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction&amp;mdash;faith in fiction is a damnable false hope. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's attributed to him in &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?q=To%20those%20searching%20for%20truth%20not%20the%20truth%20of%20dogma%20and%20darkness%20but%20the%20truth%20brought%20by%20reason,%20search,%20examination,%20and%20inquiry,%20discipline%20is%20required.%20For%20faith,%20as%20well%20intentioned%20as%20it%20may%20be,%20must%20be%20built%20on%20facts,%20not%20fiction%20faith%20in%20fiction%20is%20a%20damnable%20false%20hope.&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;multiple places&lt;/a&gt;, but is the quote actually by Thomas Edison?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4098" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2018-04-22T07:23:33.593" LastActivityDate="2018-04-22T07:23:33.593" Title="Did Thomas Edison say the &quot;...faith in fiction is a damnable false hope&quot; quote?" Tags="|quotes|thomas-edison|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28077" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28020" CreationDate="2015-06-13T11:46:58.697" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Any reference to a toxic potato is based on solanine, the toxin that potatoes have when their skins turn green, (it's also in the leaves) other plants that contain this are other nightshade varieties including peppers, tomatoes, and tobacco.  The sweet potato is a relative of the morning glory and not a nightshade.  Check at &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20161018141722/http://www.nightshadejournal.com/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nightshade Journal&lt;/a&gt; for info on solanine content of many plants. See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.clovegarden.com/ingred/mg_mglory.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; for the reference to sweet potatoes as a morning glory family member, there is also additional information on the site about yams and other false sweet potatoes. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20160426042514/http://www.eufic.org:80/jpage/en/page/faq/faqid/sweet-potatoes-green-sprouts-safe-to-eat&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; for exactly whether or not the sprouts of sweet potatoes are poisonous. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26277" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2018-07-12T22:13:10.917" LastActivityDate="2018-07-12T22:13:10.917" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28079" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-13T17:27:31.013" Score="6" ViewCount="265" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've come across some people claiming that Chinese solar energy companies are dumping defective panels in other countries. The gist of the claim is that these low-cost panels will drive local producers out of business, but will &lt;a href=&quot;http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/solar-panel-degradation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;soon have to be replaced&lt;/a&gt; -- creating dependency on the Chinese industry. There is also a version for non-industrial countries, where the government gets a line of &lt;a href=&quot;http://thecorge.com/2015/06/05/konvict-music-is-right-why-akons-new-scumbag-philanthropy-is-the-worst-thing-for-africa/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;credit from China to buy the panels,&lt;/a&gt; and then enters a sort of international debt bondage when they find that their investment in panels does not pay for itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The core claim of these theories is that the Chinese solar panels degrade much more quickly than others (and more quickly than the manufacturers claim). My internet search did not reveal any direct assessment of this claim. What I did find is this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/15062/what-causes-photovoltaic-solar-cells-to-degrade&quot;&gt;causes of degradation&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Typical r&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy12osti/51664.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ates of degradation&lt;/a&gt; (including &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/18415/do-photovoltaic-solar-panels-need-replacement-after-20-years&quot;&gt;Skeptics&lt;/a&gt; discussion)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There is (or was) a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2014/05/u-s-china-trade-dispute-disrupts-solar-success.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;trade dispute&lt;/a&gt; over subsidies, but no mention of quality.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Problems that China is having in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/defective-photovoltaics-and-other-flaws-plague-china-s-push-to-build-solar-power/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;expanding its solar capacity&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-20/defective-panels-threatening-profit-at-china-solar-farms-energy&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;including defective panels&lt;/a&gt;), and  how they are addressing these problems.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What I cannot find is whether defective panels are an issue in the international market, and specifically whether they are being consciously dumped abroad. It would be great to see how rates of degradation vary in solar installations based on manufacturers (or country of origin).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16282" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-06-13T23:10:04.220" LastActivityDate="2015-06-13T23:10:04.220" Title="Are Chinese companies dumping defective solar panels in other countries?" Tags="|energy|power-generation|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28081" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-14T01:05:04.717" Score="26" ViewCount="19123" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thepinkcross.org/porn-industry&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Pink Cross Foundation&lt;/a&gt;, an anti-porn organisation, which seems to use &lt;a href=&quot;http://danielrjennings.org/TheAverageLifeExpectancyOfAPornStar.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this analysis by Rev. Daniel R. Jennings&lt;/a&gt; as a reference, calculated the average life expectancy of a porn performer as being 36.2 years, as compared to that of an American at 78.6 years, but I'm not sure these numbers are trustworthy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems likely that the sources are biased, but I couldn't find any reputable sites saying otherwise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26687" LastEditorUserId="37236" LastEditDate="2021-05-07T10:37:37.103" LastActivityDate="2021-05-07T10:37:37.103" Title="Is the average life expectancy of a pornographic actor significantly lower than the rest of the population?" Tags="|life-expectancy|pornography|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28084" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7505" CreationDate="2015-06-14T07:08:50.860" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Color theorists suspect that many color associations emerge from evolutionary ingrained responses to color stimuli (Mollon, 1989 &lt;a href=&quot;http://jeb.biologists.org/content/146/1/21.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://jeb.biologists.org/content/146/1/21.full.pdf&lt;/a&gt;). Research indicates that colors often serve a signal function for nonhuman animals (e.g., the redness of fruit signals readiness for eating), thereby facilitating fitness-relevant behavior (Hutchings, J. (1997). Color in plants, animals, and man. In K. Nassau&#xA;(Ed.), Color for Science, Art, and Technology (pp. 222–246). Amsterdam:&#xA;Elsevier). Of the existing research that is theoretically based, most has been loosely guided by Goldstein’s 1942 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&amp;amp;UID=1942-04745-001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&amp;amp;UID=1942-04745-001&lt;/a&gt;) proposal that red and yellow are naturally experienced as stimulating and disagreeable, that these colors focus people on the outward environment, and that they produce forceful, expansive behavior, whereas green and blue are experienced as quieting and agreeable, focus people inward, and produce reserved, stable behavior. Subsequent researchers have tended to interpret Goldstein’s proposal in terms of wavelength and arousal: Longer-wavelength colors like red/orange are experienced as arousing, and shorter-wavelength colors like green/blue are experienced as calming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Experiments demonstrated that the perception of red prior to an achievement&#xA;task impairs performance relative to the perception of green or an achromatic color. This effect was documented in two different countries (the United States and Germany), with two different age groups (high school and undergraduate), in two different experimental settings (laboratory and classroom), using two different types of color presentation (participant number and test cover), using four different variants of red and green hues, using all three achromatic colors (black, white, and gray), and using both language-based and number-based achievement tasks. Evidence from funnel debriefing data, self-report process data, and perceived competence data supports premise that this undermining&#xA;effect of red takes place outside of individuals’ conscious awareness. These experiments also demonstrated that the perception of red prior to an achievement task, relative to the perception of green or an achromatic color, indeed evokes avoidance motivation, as indicated by participants’ choice of easy relative to difficult tasks. The present findings represent the first demonstration of a&#xA;direct, replicable effect of color on performance using rigorous experimental methods. This research was explicitly designed to address weaknesses, and (a) use of tightly controlled color presentations, (b) use of colors perceived to&#xA;be typical and matched on saturation and brightness, and (c) adherence to basic methodological considerations (such as keeping the experimenter blind to the hypotheses and color conditions) allowed to clearly and emphatically document a relation between a relation between red and performance (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psych.rochester.edu/people/elliot_andrew/assets/pdf/2007_ElliotMaierMollerFriedmanMeinhardt_Color.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.psych.rochester.edu/people/elliot_andrew/assets/pdf/2007_ElliotMaierMollerFriedmanMeinhardt_Color.pdf&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Color discrimination is the measurement of how well an observer can&#xA;differentiate between colors. It is understood that human color vision demonstrates variability both within an individual observer (inter-observer) and from observer to observer (intra-observer) (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15811001&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15811001&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These variabilities demonstrated by the human visual system can be broken down into two primary categories, color vision deficiency and normal color vision.  The tests developed to quantify the ability of color discrimination include the Colorcurve HVC Color Vision Skill test and the Farnsworth Munsell 100 Hue test. Research using these tests indicate that large variances of the colors red and yellow are noticed (more than normal variance given by the test guidelines). However, per the paper more experiment data is needed to confirm these&#xA;findings. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cis.rit.edu/research/mcsl2/research/PDFs/ColorCurve.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cis.rit.edu/research/mcsl2/research/PDFs/ColorCurve.pdf&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Results from another study titled Differential binding of colors to objects in memory: red and yellow stick better than blue and green&#xA;indicate that feature binding in memory is not a uniform process by which any attended feature is automatically bound into unitary memory representations. Rather, memory binding seems to vary across different subtypes of features, a finding that supports recent research showing that object features are stored in memory rather independently from each other (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4347302/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4347302/&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-06-14T09:05:05.610" LastActivityDate="2015-06-14T09:05:05.610" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28085" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-14T12:35:49.447" Score="6" ViewCount="4831" Body="&lt;p&gt;The campaign &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ticklingistorture.org/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Tickling is Torture&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; by international animal rescue campaigns against people keeping slow lorises as pets (for very good reasons). One claim they make however is that tickling is torture for slow lorises, something that they do not seem to explain or back up anywhere as far as I was able to find, yet it is even the name of the campaign. The best I was able to find is that them raising their arms like in those tickling youtube videos is a sign that they are preparing to bite, however in that case I would at least expect them to bite/try to attack at some point, which in turn would teach any naive pet owner that they probably shouldn't do it again, instead of doing it again and even filming it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to be very clear here: I am not skeptical of the claim that they make for bad pets, nor of the claim that they probably do not enjoy the tickling (and definitely won't enjoy it in a bright lit room), but the difference between 'not enjoying' and 'torture' is huge.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18335" LastEditorUserId="32459" LastEditDate="2016-12-03T11:48:00.837" LastActivityDate="2016-12-03T11:48:00.837" Title="Is tickling a form of torture for slow lorises?" Tags="|zoology|ethology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28086" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28087" CreationDate="2015-06-14T12:44:52.753" Score="30" ViewCount="6969" Body="&lt;p&gt;This picture of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Dolezal&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rachel Dolezal&lt;/a&gt; has been making the rounds online. Is it genuine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/GnaQJ.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ijreview.com/2015/06/344564-the-book-that-rachel-dolezal-is-holding-has-some-thinking-this-may-be-the-best-political-photo-ever/?utm_source=Facebook&amp;amp;utm_medium=Owned&amp;amp;utm_term=conservativedaily&amp;amp;utm_campaign=Politics&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ijreview&lt;/a&gt;, where it was featured, isn't sure if the image is fake or real. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15834" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2015-06-16T17:40:00.090" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T17:40:00.090" Title="Is this picture of Rachel Dolezal reading a book called &quot;How to be Black&quot; genuine?" Tags="|photography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28087" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28086" CreationDate="2015-06-14T13:48:35.543" Score="59" Body="&lt;p&gt;The image turns out to be photoshopped.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Apparently, that picture has been tweeted recently by a columnist called &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/JonahNRO&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jonah Goldberg&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/609892710170935296/photo/1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; on 14 June 2015 and went viral:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hmT5ol.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After rigorous search online, an old occurrence of the photo was found which was &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.flickr.com/photos/theeasterner/12473640784/in/photolist-tCj33n-k1fMou-k1fEQ9-k1fBhh-k1ft7j-k1e8KV-k1d5pa-k1e1X6-uxuHu9-uyWYTM-tBZGbe-uj1G6t-uyu2k8-ug99ow-tzZmkz-uwLMqy-tBk9mD-uxSDxN-uzfeES-bSV9yH/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;posted&lt;/a&gt; on flickr on February 11, 2014:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/on3eE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, if we want to match the images together, it would look like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/m3rsE.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The photo in the album &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.flickr.com/photos/theeasterner/sets/72157640864760544&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Rachel Dolezal: Tangled (Karissa)&lt;/a&gt; was also accompanied with several other images belonging to the event.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ina3A.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/quHJc.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JpflC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-06-15T04:53:11.133" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T04:53:11.133" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28090" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9907" CreationDate="2015-06-15T04:24:10.620" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The relationship of financial incentives to performance quality and quantity is cumulated&#xA;over 39 studies containing 47 relationships in the study 'Are Financial Incentives Related to Performance? A Meta-Analytic Review of Empirical Research' (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Atul_Mitra/publication/232559540_Are_financial_incentives_related_to_performance_A_metaanalytic_review_of_empirical_research/links/0f317533773cf0d1ea000000.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Atul_Mitra/publication/232559540_Are_financial_incentives_related_to_performance_A_metaanalytic_review_of_empirical_research/links/0f317533773cf0d1ea000000.pdf&lt;/a&gt;). Per this metaanalytic study, financial incentives were not related to performance quality but had a corrected correlation of .34 with performance quantity. Setting (laboratory, field, experimental simulation) and theoretical framework moderated the relationship, but task type did not. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Overall, this study underscores the generalization of positive relationship between financial incentives and performance. It emphasizes the wisdom of designing incentive systems carefully; it also highlights the utility of including financial incentives as integral components in theoretical frameworks of organizational behavior and the management of human resources.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastActivityDate="2015-06-15T04:24:10.620" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28094" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27926" CreationDate="2015-06-15T07:37:27.980" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obesity is influenced by several factors such as behavioral traits, social-environment and genetics and one of the social microenvironmental influences on obesity promoting behaviors is social eating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Socially derived inhibitory norms can account for either increased or decreased intake in the presence of others, depending on how much the others eat and the extent to which one is eager to impress &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14599286&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;them&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is reliable evidence that total energy intake at meals is significantly increased when eating in the presence of other people, a phenomenon termed “social facilitation” as per research mentioned below.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;De Castro studied 63 adults who maintained a 7-day continuous food diary and recorded the number of people present at each meal. Results indicated that energy intake during meals that were eaten alone was significantly lower compared to energy intake during meals that were consumed in the presence of others. This was observed for total energy intake (410 vs. 591 kcals), carbohydrate intake (190 vs. 241 kcals), fat intake (157 vs. 230 kcals), and protein intake (65 vs. 100 kcals). Satiety ratings were 30 percent greater following meals eaten with others compared to meals eaten alone. Indeed, de Castro argued that physiological signals that relate to appetite and meal size can be overridden by social interactions. Specifically, they found that reported total energy intake at meals was positively correlated with time since prior meal consumption, but only for meals eaten alone. When others were present at meals, there was no longer a significant association, suggesting that post-prandial meal regulation may be “disrupted by the presence of other &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2756911&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;people&lt;/a&gt;&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additional analyses of de Castro’s data indicated that the social facilitation effect was greater for meals consumed in the presence of a spouse, family member, or friend compared to less familiar or unknown companions, suggesting that enhanced social interactions and discussions were the underlying &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7972393&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;mechanisms&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Laboratory studies have also demonstrated this social facilitation phenomenon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edelman et al. showed that overweight and normal-weight subjects consumed more lasagna when eating in groups of 4 or 5 persons compared to when eating alone, and that there was no significant difference between the weight groups in terms of this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3963800&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;phenomenon&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Klesges et al. documented the social facilitation effect in a restaurant setting, with the effect being more pronounced for women than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?cmd=Retrieve&amp;amp;dopt=AbstractPlus&amp;amp;list_uids=10207396&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;men&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Kimm and Kissileff also demonstrated the social facilitation of eating in a cafeteria &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8879417&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;setting&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several researchers have noted that during the last 25 years in US, portion sizes of commercially available foods have increased in parallel with the increase of the incidence of overweight and obesity. One study among men and women 19 to 80 years of age has found that the frequency of consuming restaurant food is positively associated with body &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.1550-8528.1999.tb00715.x/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;fatness&lt;/a&gt;. Another study has found that, in women, frequent consumption of meals at fast food establishments is associated with increased BMI (kilograms per meters squared), and in men, eating at both restaurants and fast food establishments is associated with increased &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ijo/journal/v24/n8/full/0801356a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;BMI&lt;/a&gt;. In the year 2000, Americans spent 47% of their food expenditures on foods consumed away from home, and this proportion continues to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ers.usda.gov/media/91062/aib750l_1_.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;increase&lt;/a&gt;. When consumers eat away from home, they are offered a large variety of low-cost, energy dense foods in large &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.andjrnl.org/article/S0002-8223(03)01784-X/fulltext&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;portions&lt;/a&gt;; all of these factors may encourage overconsumption of energy and lead to obesity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds that how much teens eat can be influenced by how much their friends weigh. In the study, kids were allowed to snack as much as they wanted while hanging out with a friend or with a peer they did not know. All the kids ate more when they were with a friend than with a stranger. Participants eating with a friend ate substantially more than did participants eating with an unfamiliar peer. Furthermore, overweight youth, but not nonoverweight youth, who ate with an overweight partner (friend or unfamiliar peer) consumed more food than did overweight participants who ate with a nonoverweight eating partner. Matching of intake was greater between friends than between unfamiliar &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/early/2009/06/17/ajcn.2009.27658&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;peers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2007, Harvard researcher Nicholas Christakis and his colleagues analyzed 32 years' worth of data from an interconnected social network of 12,000 adults and found that a person's chances of becoming obese increased 37% if a spouse had become obese, 40% if a sibling had and 57% if a friend &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa066082&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;had&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a study published in October 2009 issue of Appetite, the influence of gender, group size and gender composition of groups of eaters on food selected for lunch and dinner (converted to total calories per meal) of 469 individuals (198 groups) in three large university cafeterias was investigated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In dyads, women observed eating with a male companion chose foods of significantly lower caloric value than those observed eating with another woman. Overall, group size was not a significant predictor of calories, but women's calories were negatively predicted by numbers of men in the group, while the numbers of women in the group had a marginally significant positive impact on calorie estimates. Men's calorie totals were not affected by total numbers of men or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19646494&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;women&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The mechanism which underlies social facilitation of eating has been termed “time-extension” and has received the most empirical support. Specifically, the presence of people at a meal lengthens meal time which, in turn, promotes further energy intake. The point is important because, &amp;quot;there is evidence that the tendency to eat with others may be genetically influenced. Thus, the fact that some individuals are more likely to eat in the presence of others may not be a random event; rather, eating in the presence of others may be a trait that is influenced by genes that indirectly promote social facilitation of eating at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK19935&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;meals&lt;/a&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Results strongly suggest large portions chosen by others lead to greater consumption and smaller portion choices by others are associated with eating less and is qualified by the weight of the other person. If a heavy-set colleague eats a lot, he or she is a better lunch partner than a thin colleague who orders the same dish. By contrast, a thin colleague who eats lightly is more likely to cause others around them to order less. Thus, from the perspective of self-regulation, recognizing situations where you are likely to be vulnerable to overconsumption is important. &lt;a href=&quot;http://jcr.oxfordjournals.org/content/36/6/915.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Brent McFerran, 2010&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Socially derived inhibitory norms can account for either increased or decreased intake in the presence of others, depending on how much the others eat and the extent to which one is eager to impress them. &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/?&amp;amp;fa=main.doiLanding&amp;amp;doi=10.1037/0033-2909.129.6.873&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Herman, C. Peter, 2003&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-08-18T04:50:42.907" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28101" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10456" CreationDate="2015-06-16T07:35:15.703" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a growing number of baby media products that claim to teach babies to read targeted to infants as young as 3 months old. Flashcards make no difference in learning reading/counting to the children, but had a massive effect on the parents per study 'Can babies learn to read? A randomized trial of baby media'. The grown-ups were convinced their children were learning to read, although there was no scientific evidence to show this was true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers from New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development designed a randomized controlled trial to examine the claim of 'teaching babies to read' by investigating the effects of a best-selling baby media product on reading development. The trial 'Can babies learn to read? A randomized trial of baby media.' by Neuman, Susan B.; Kaefer, Tanya; Pinkham, Ashley; Strouse, Gabrielle was published in &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/?&amp;amp;fa=main.doiLanding&amp;amp;doi=10.1037/a0035937&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 106(3), Aug 2014, 815-830&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One hundred and seventeen infants, ages 9 to 18 months, were randomly assigned to treatment and control groups. Children in the treatment condition received the baby media product, which included DVDs, word and picture flashcards, and word books to be used daily over a 7-month period; children in the control condition, business as usual. Examining a 4-phase developmental model of reading, the trial examined both precursor skills (such as letter name, letter sound knowledge, print awareness, and decoding) and conventional reading (vocabulary and comprehension) using a series of eye-tracking tasks and standardized measures. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those given the products were asked to use them daily and researchers paid the families regular visits to test the language development of the infants and to interview parents. The youngsters were also brought into the lab to be given reading tests while tracking their eye movements. These tests can show experts for instance whether a child is actually reading and recognizing words or simply looking at shapes on a page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results indicated that babies did not learn to read using baby media, despite some parents displaying great confidence in the program’s effectiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Variability &quot;among individuals in verbal abilities is influenced to some extent by genetic factors [Oliver &amp;amp; Plomin, 2007 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17539369&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17539369&lt;/a&gt;)&quot;, but &quot;the contributions of early experience to differences in language proficiency are also substantial&quot;. Research on language problems in twins has also shown that environmental factors are more powerful than genetic factors in accounting for similarities in language development in children in the same family &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15612392/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Oliver, Dale &amp;amp; Plomin&lt;/a&gt;. There is consensus that infants’ genetic potentials in these domains can only be realized with appropriate environmental support. In families where adequate resources and support are consistently available, children are more likely to be buffered from adverse circumstances than are children in impoverished families, and so are more likely to be able to achieve their &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3582035/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;developmental potential&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We will need at least two completely independent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/publications/paul-nation/Hart_and_Risley_critique.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;measures&lt;/a&gt; listed below to truly investigate the relationship between quantity of interaction and vocabulary growth per research mentioned above, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a measure of quantity of interaction such as that used by Hart and&#xA;Risley (1995).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a measure of vocabulary size such as a vocabulary size test.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However these measures are yet to be studied.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-06-21T07:45:42.263" LastActivityDate="2015-06-21T07:45:42.263" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28103" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26447" CreationDate="2015-06-16T13:26:56.117" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, this joke/quote has no relationship to Chief Robert &quot;Two Eagles&quot; Green of the Patawomeck tribe.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The actual Chief Robert &quot;Two Eagles&quot; Green is much younger than 90 years old and does not speak in broken English.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He is Robert Parrish Green who &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&amp;amp;dat=19650612&amp;amp;id=muVLAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=LosDAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=7336,6750008&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;graduated&lt;/a&gt; from James Monroe high school, Fredericksburg, Virginia, class of 1965 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fredsign.com/jmhs/Book35.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;additional source&lt;/a&gt;).  He received a B.A. in history and political science from University of Richmond in 1969. (&lt;a href=&quot;https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&amp;amp;dat=19690609&amp;amp;id=WPJNAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=pYoDAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=5494,4191194&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Free Lance-Star 9 June 1969, page 2&lt;/a&gt;)    &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He still &lt;a href=&quot;https://commonwealth.virginia.gov/virginia-indians/tribe-contact-information/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;lives in Fredericksburg, VA&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The basic flaw of the article linked in the OP, is taking a joke that has circulated around the internet for years, with only the name &quot;Two Eagles&quot;, and associating it with an actual person that goes by that name.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the article linked in the OP shows a photograph that has no relationship with Chief Robert &quot;Two Eagles&quot; Green. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A genuine photograph is available at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.savecrowsnest.org/discovery_days.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.savecrowsnest.org/discovery_days.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A genuine recording of an interview with Robert. P. Green, now Chief Emeritus is also available at:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://staffordhistorical.org/voices-stafford/#rpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://staffordhistorical.org/voices-stafford/#rpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2016-05-21T12:28:44.267" LastActivityDate="2016-05-21T12:28:44.267" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28104" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28067" CreationDate="2015-06-16T15:48:06.067" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;Since the question refers to a college campus in the USA, I will &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uhs.berkeley.edu/tapwater/faq.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;quote information from UC Berkley&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;DO NOT GENERALIZE TO OUTSIDE THE USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Question] The only tap water source available to me is the restroom sink. Is it okay to drink water from there?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[Answer] Drinking fountains and sinks are all part of the same plumbing system. Drinking fountains, however, may feature chillers or filters to improve the temperature and taste. It’s okay to drink water from the restroom sink if there is no drinking fountain or kitchen sink available. There is no significant risk of water contamination from restroom faucets.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Personally, I would add that nowadays many of the restroom sinks provide only a blend of hot &amp;amp; cold water, which are separately supplied, whereas the drinking fountains are only connected to cold water.  Hot water leaches more contaminants such as lead from pipes.  See &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/health/29real.html?_r=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;New York Times article&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-16T16:04:08.290" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28106" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-16T16:17:21.293" Score="6" ViewCount="2938" Body="&lt;p&gt;Reading a recent news article about a Dutch fish processing firm using Sodium Nitrite for white fish processing I learned that the additive is associated with a higher risk of cancer when used in processing white fish. An English source states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Sodium nitrite is cleared for use in meat products but is considered&#xA;  to be potentially cancer-causing when used with fish.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2015/06/fish-processing-firm-foppen-under-fire-for-using-banned-products/&quot;&gt;Fish processing firm Foppen under fire for using banned products&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Reading into why sodium nitrite would be harmful in combination with fish, but not with other foods, I couldn't find much except broader warnings against eating foods with e250, especially for pregnant women. E.g.:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Health effects are acute methemoglobinemia (haemoglobin loses its&#xA;  ability to carry oxygen). Early symptoms include irritability, lack of&#xA;  energy, headache, dizziness, vomiting, diaorrhea, laboured breathing&#xA;  and a blue-gray or pale purple colouration to areas around the eyes,&#xA;  mouth, lips, hands and feet (blue baby syndrome).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ukfoodguide.net/e250.htm&quot;&gt;UKFoodGuide&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Or&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Side effects/ Connected to; Irritability, lack of energy, headaches,&#xA;  dizziness. Pregnancy complications, Infant health problems; Linked&#xA;  with Leukaemia, &lt;strong&gt;many cancers&lt;/strong&gt; such as colon, bladder, stomach, thyroid&#xA;  etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wakingtimes.com/2013/10/14/5-food-additives-avoid/&quot;&gt;Wakingtimes&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these warnings against eating anything with e250 scientifically justified, or is it all baloney (nudge nudge)? If so, why is it that it is banned for use in processing fish, but not meats?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20991" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-16T16:29:39.080" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T18:31:57.537" Title="Is Sodium Nitrite (food additive e250) carcinogenic?" Tags="|nutrition|cancer|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28108" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-16T19:24:16.033" Score="20" ViewCount="9468" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw a &lt;a href=&quot;https://imgur.com/gallery/EqqXnIX&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;photo&lt;/a&gt; today of a UPS carrier walking on the street that did not seem bothered by Twin Towers burning behind him. Is it genuine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/nFw2I.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;UPS carrier on 9/11&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26723" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2015-06-16T19:59:35.537" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T00:21:49.517" Title="Is this picture of UPS man with burning Twin Towers in the background genuine?" Tags="|9-11|photography|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28109" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28108" CreationDate="2015-06-16T19:50:01.500" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;WNYC's &lt;em&gt;On the Media&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.onthemedia.org/story/157708-same-time-twin-towers-were-falling-there-were-people-having-toothaches/&quot;&gt;published a story about the photo&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author is Melanie Einzig, and you can see it in her &quot;USA&quot; gallery on her photography website: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.witnessx.com/street/usa/&quot;&gt;http://www.witnessx.com/street/usa/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This shows that the author presents the photo as genuine, and that the claim passed &lt;em&gt;On the Media&lt;/em&gt;'s editorial process. &lt;em&gt;On the Media&lt;/em&gt; has a reputation for accuracy and fact-checking, having previously won a Peabody Award, and other awards for investigative reporting, press criticism, and media criticism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A print of the photo was &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.phillips.com/detail/MELANIE-EINZIG/UK040113/115&quot;&gt;exhibited at London, Somerset House, Cartier-Bresson: A Question of Colour, 8 November 2012 – 27 January 2013&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That exhibition &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.somersethouse.org.uk/about/press/press-releases/cartier-bresson-a-question-of-colour&quot;&gt;self-described&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Positive View will present the very best in contemporary photography from across the globe and this exhibition will be no exception&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-06-17T03:35:29.847" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T03:35:29.847" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28110" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28117" CreationDate="2015-06-16T20:16:28.333" Score="43" ViewCount="18017" Body="&lt;p&gt;The general belief, at least amongst the LGBT community, is that gender reassignment surgery will increase the quality of life of transgender individuals.  Obviously those that undergo the surgery believe so.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've seen conflicting results as to the accuracy of this statement.  Some studies seem to suggest this may not always be the case&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://web.archive.org/web/20140701194727/https://waltheyer.typepad.com/blog/2013/11/20-regret-changing-genders-over-40attempt-suicide-and-even-after-surgery-a-large-number-remain-traum.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://web.archive.org/web/20140701194727/https://waltheyer.typepad.com/blog/2013/11/20-regret-changing-genders-over-40attempt-suicide-and-even-after-surgery-a-large-number-remain-traum.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this article is dedicated to trying to refute the same claims&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/myths-about-transition-regrets_b_6160626.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/myths-about-transition-regrets_b_6160626.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would like to get the best assessment of the viability of reassignment surgery as a treatment for Gender Dysphoria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the sake of this question I am interested in a treatment of those who already identify as transgender and are perusing other treatments (such as hormones).  I consider the surgery to be successful if the quality of life for a transgender individual is better post surgery, even if it is still lower then your average non-transgender individual.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For instance it seems pretty well agreed that suicide rates of post-surgery individuals are still far higher than suicide rate of non-transgender individuals.  However, since suicide rates are higher amongst all transgender individuals, regardless of reassignment surgery, that statistic means nothing to me until compared to suicide rates of those transgender who have not undergone surgery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not quite sure how to better define quality of life, even though I know I need a more exact definition.  If anyone can suggest good criteria as a basis to use I'll be happy to update the question with something more exact.  For now, I'm interested in how happy, or depressed, the individual is pre- or post-surgery; including how content they are with themselves and their body; via whatever criteria one would use to judge such criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I realize that all things considered there is limited data available, owing to the very small number of individuals who perform the surgery, difficulty of setting up anything like a control or double blind study, and disappearance of patients after the study completes.  I'm hoping to get data as accurate as possible, understanding that there is an inevitable level of uncertainty due to limited ability to do thorough studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Edit: as culture can be a factor in such answers, let's focus on transgender people in USA, Canada, and/or England (who all, I feel, share similar enough culture for the sake of this question).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8366" LastEditorUserId="52391" LastEditDate="2020-06-13T13:35:08.997" LastActivityDate="2020-06-13T13:35:08.997" Title="Does gender reassignment surgery increase quality of life of transgender individuals?" Tags="|psychology|gender|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28115" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14696" CreationDate="2015-06-17T05:37:59.670" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Research (described in by the study &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1097-4679(198007)36:3%3C760::AID-JCLP2270360328%3E3.0.CO;2-H/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Hypnagogic exploration: Sleep positions and personality' by George Domino, 1980&lt;/a&gt;) has shown that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;sleep positions, particularly the full fetal position, appear to be related to CPI variables of Sociability, Sense of Well Being, Achievement by Conformance, Femininity, and Social Maturity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;CPI stands for California Psychological Inventory in this passage.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further research into sleeping positions and quality of sleep is shown by the study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.journalsleep.org/Articles/060108.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Sleep Positions in the Young Adult and Their Relationship with the Subjective Quality of Sleep' by Joseph De Koninck 1983&lt;/a&gt;, results of which suggest that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;sleep positions constitute an important sleep variable and that they may be related to the quality of sleep&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Research in sleep patterns and personality shows that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Individuals of different personalities have different sleep patterns due to the way they cope with stress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A%3A1015548500861#page-1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Effect of Personality on Changes of Sleep Structure Caused by Emotional Stress'  by Levin, Strygin, Korabel’nikova, 2002&lt;/a&gt; examined the effects of personality characteristics on the structure of sleep in 10 normal subjects between the ages of 21-33 under stressors. They were monitored by&#xA;&amp;quot;adaptation, background, and after emotional stress, which was modeled using the pretension level paradigm&amp;quot; for three nights by polygraph recordings of their sleep and several psychological tests. The individuals were broken into two groups based on statistical cluster analysis of psychological tests. The first group used active stress coping mechanisms, causing very little change in their sleeping patterns. This was &amp;quot;characterized by more pronounced alterations of sleep structure in response to adaptation stress (the first night in the laboratory).&amp;quot; The second group used non-adaptive coping mechanisms, causing their sleep structures to significantly change in response to stress.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Normal or irregular sleep patterns are dependent on the psychological factors of individuals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/457888&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Aspects of personality associated with irregular sleep habits in young adults' by Hawkins, 1979&lt;/a&gt; placed 18 males into two groups, one composed of irregular sleepers those whose retiring and awakening times continuously varied by about 2 to 4 hours and the other composed of individuals who slept habitually from 12-8:00 AM (the control group.) The California Psychological Inventory (CPI) and the Cornell Medical Index (CMI) were administered to each group. On the CPI scales the control group scored higher on Dominance, Sociability, Self-acceptance, Self-control, Achievement via conformance, and Intellectual efficiency; but lower on Flexibility. It was determined that normal or irregular sleep patterns are not only dependent on the psychological factors that distinguished the groups but also on &amp;quot;unspecified constitutional and sociocultural antecedents of the human sleep response&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-02-10T12:02:39.147" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28116" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="9405" CreationDate="2015-06-17T09:48:43.433" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;(a) Research in co-sleeping reveals that it may reduce stress in children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Children who had coslept in their parent's room had lower cortisol levels, as did children who had attended less daycare in the first 4 years of life &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17680611&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Waynforth 2007&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An early history of co-sleeping contributes positively to cortisol regulation in 12-month-olds and after controlling for maternal sensitivity, infant attachment status, feeding, and sleeping arrangements at 12 months of age and other confounders, more weeks of co-sleeping predicted lower infant cortisol reactivity to the psychological stressor (Strange Situation Procedure-SSP) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23116166&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beijers et al 2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Infants with a solitary sleeping arrangement in their first month of life showed a heightened cortisol response to the bathing session at 5 weeks compared to infants that co-slept regularly &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21530088&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tollenaar et al 2012&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) Extended nursing improves children's cognitive development and provides nutrition, growth, and complementary feeding of infants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the largest randomized trial 'Breastfeeding and Child Cognitive Development New Evidence From a Large Randomized Trial' ever conducted in the area of human lactation, strong evidence is provided that &amp;quot;prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding improves children's cognitive development&amp;quot;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=482695&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Michael S. Kramer, 2008&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Breast milk continues to provide substantial amounts of key nutrients well beyond the first year of life, especially protein, fat, and most vitamins. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11236735&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dewey KG, 2001&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(c) Baby-wearing: Baby wearing may be associated with higher rates of secure attachment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Significantly more experimental than control infants were securely attached to their mothers. For low-income, inner-city mothers, there may be a causal relation between increased physical contact, achieved through early carrying in a soft baby carrier, and subsequent security of attachment between infant and mother &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2245751&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anisfeld E, 1990&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T10:08:37.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28117" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28110" CreationDate="2015-06-17T14:57:05.433" Score="42" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Studies&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wpath.org/uploaded_files/140/files/IJT%20SOC,%20V7.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender-Nonconforming People&lt;/a&gt; has a good summary of studies (starting at page 229 (PDF page 65)). All quotes are from the standard of care (not in order though), and I linked to those studies that I could find freely available online for easy reference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;These studies measure more concrete things than &amp;quot;quality of life&amp;quot;, including rate of regret (relevant as your blog article mentions this), mental and physical health, sexual satisfaction, etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the Standards of Care have been in place [meaning since 1979], there has been a steady increase in patient satisfaction and decrease in dissatisfaction with the outcome of sex reassignment surgery&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study [&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/464739&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;J. K. Meyer &amp;amp; Reter, 1979&lt;/a&gt; [only abstract]] focused on patients’ occupational, educational, marital, and domiciliary stability. The results revealed several significant changes with treatment. These changes were not seen as positive&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Participants in that study [Pauly, 1981] had much better outcomes: Among 83 FtM patients, 80.7% had a satisfactory outcome (i.e., patient self report of “improved social and emotional adjustment”) [...] Among 283 MtF patients, 71.4% had a satisfactory outcome&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The findings of Rehman and colleagues (1999) and &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1464-410X.2001.02323.x/full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Krege and colleagues (2001)&lt;/a&gt; are typical of this body of work; none of the patients in these studies regretted having had surgery, and most reported being satisfied with the cosmetic and functional results of the surgery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A prospective study conducted in the Netherlands  evaluated  325  consecutive  adult  and adolescent subjects seeking sex reassignment (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15842032&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Smith, Van Goozen, Kuiper, &amp;amp; Cohen-Kettenis, 2005&lt;/a&gt; [only abstract]). Patients who underwent sex reassignment therapy (both hormonal and surgical intervention) showed improvements in their mean gender dysphoria scores, measured by the Utrecht Gender Dysphoria Scale. Scores for body dissatisfaction and psychological function also improved in most categories. Fewer than 2% of patients expressed regret after therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The vast majority of follow-up studies have shown an undeniable beneficial effect of sex reassignment surgery&lt;/strong&gt; on postoperative outcomes such as subjective well being, cosmesis, and sexual function (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Sexual_and_Physical_Health_After_Sex_Reassignment_Surgery.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;De Cuypere et al., 2005&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19477578&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Garaffa, Christopher, &amp;amp; Ralph, 2010&lt;/a&gt; [only abstract]; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20092545&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Klein &amp;amp; Gorzalka, 2009&lt;/a&gt; [only abstract])&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The standard of care then goes on to list some studies showing less beneficial results, but criticizes them for bad methods or comparing post op trans people with cis people to show that their quality of life is lower (instead of comparing them to pre op trans people or measuring increase/decrease in quality of life of individuals).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;swedish study&lt;/a&gt; you link to also has a good list of references, here are some quotes from them that I think are relevant:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19473181&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19473181&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;80% of individuals with GID reported significant improvement in gender&#xA;dysphoria [...]; 78% reported significant improvement in psychological&#xA;symptoms [...]; 80% reported significant improvement in quality of&#xA;life [...]; and 72% reported significant improvement in sexual&#xA;function [...].&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9570489&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9570489&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results showed that 3.8% of the patients who were sex reassigned&#xA;during 1972-1992 regretted the measures taken. [...] The results of&#xA;logistic regression analysis indicated that two factors predicted&#xA;regret of sex reassignment, namely lack of support from the patient's&#xA;family, and the patient belonging to the non-core group of&#xA;transsexuals&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16362252&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16362252&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After SRS, the transsexual person's expectations were met at an&#xA;emotional and social level, but less so at the physical and sexual&#xA;level even though a large number of transsexuals (80%) reported&#xA;improvement of their sexuality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Your Links&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chris Hydes statements (eg &amp;quot;there's still a large number of people who have the surgery but remain traumatised - often to the point of committing suicide&amp;quot;) are not the result of a study (as in published, peer reviewed), but just research he did for The Guardian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Guardian also says this: &amp;quot;Research from the US and Holland suggests that up to a fifth of patients regret changing sex. A 1998 review by the Research and Development Directorate of the NHS Executive found attempted suicide rates of up to 18% noted in some medical studies of gender reassignment.&amp;quot;, but doesn't link to it, nor cites it correctly. I could not find it. But it seems that they infer from an 18% suicide rate that 18% (up to a fifth) regret sex reassignment surgery, which doesn't seem like a reasonable conclusion to me (and I doubt that the NHS made this conclusion).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for the swedish study, it is a study comparing post op trans people to cis people, so it doesn't say anything about the success or failure of gender reassignment surgeries (and it doesn't try to do this either).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The linked blog post also mentions a 41% suicide rate for transgender people overall, but I agree with you, I don't see how that is relevant to sex reassignment surgery.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only actual study showing adverse effects of gender reassignment surgery I could find in your links is the 1979 study by Meyer &amp;amp; Reter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sources I could find highly suggest that the quality of life of trans people who want SRS increases after SRS, and the majority of trans people do not regret SRS.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The linked claims to the contrary rely on decade-old studies or purposefully misrepresent the results of more recent studies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25597" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T15:22:50.110" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28118" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28121" CreationDate="2015-06-17T15:15:52.333" Score="13" ViewCount="1322" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard the gay community complain that the Red Cross/FDA discriminate against them by refusing to allow men who have sex with other men (MSM) to donate blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_who_have_sex_with_men_blood_donor_controversy&quot;&gt;an article on Wikipedia about the controversy&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many LGBT organizations view the restrictions on donation as based on homophobia and not based on valid medical concern since donations are rigorously tested to rule out donors that are infected with known viruses such as HIV, Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C. They state the deferrals are based on stereotypes. Proponents of the lifetime restriction defend it because of the risk of false negative test results and because the MSM population in developed countries tends to have a relatively high prevalence of HIV/AIDS infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/24/health/fda-lifting-ban-on-gay-blood-donors.html&quot;&gt;current US FDA policy&lt;/a&gt; of deferring MSM from donating blood for one year after the last sex act decrease the odds of STDs being transmitted compared to open donations? Does it increase the number of lives saved by blood transfusions?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8366" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-17T17:54:44.360" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T18:46:13.827" Title="Is the US FDA policy of deferring blood donations from MSM justified by increased STD risk?" Tags="|sexuality|blood|charities|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28119" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28118" CreationDate="2015-06-17T18:14:03.370" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The waiting period absolutely decreases the chance of HIV transmission; HIV can take up to six months to become detectable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Once a person is infected with HIV, it generally takes about 3 months&#xA;  for the body to produce enough antibodies to be detected by an HIV&#xA;  antibody test. (For some people, it can take up to 6 months.) Some HIV&#xA;  tests can detect HIV directly in the blood before HIV antibodies are&#xA;  detectable &lt;a href=&quot;https://aidsinfo.nih.gov/education-materials/fact-sheets/19/47/hiv-testing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Aids Info&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/statistics/basics/ataglance.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;gay men are the most at-risk group for HIV&lt;/a&gt;, it only makes logical sense to give them the wait period, though not doing so for any sexually active individuals is a point of contention, but the original FDA policy was a lifetime ban.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The wait period is a vast improvement from a ban (no source necessary for this; this is a group which could not donate before so all blood donated after the wait period is a net gain), and it also serves to lessen the chances of HIV infected blood going through, which saves lives in its own right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="29638" LastEditorUserId="29638" LastEditDate="2015-06-17T18:22:47.253" LastActivityDate="2015-06-17T18:22:47.253" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28120" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-17T19:21:20.140" Score="21" ViewCount="2256" Body="&lt;p&gt;Michael Finkel writes in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0707/feature1/text3.html&quot;&gt;National Geographic&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Some scientists believe that one out of every two people who have ever lived have died of malaria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Wall Street Journal Article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704111704575354911834340450&quot;&gt;The Tenacious Buzz of Malaria&lt;/a&gt; by Sonia Shah author of &quot;The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The malaria parasite has been responsible for half of all human deaths since the Stone Age&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Malaria kill that many people?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="196" LastEditorUserId="196" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2015-08-18T21:46:12.250" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T04:24:54.733" Title="Have one out of every two people who have ever lived died of malaria?" Tags="|public-health|malaria|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28121" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28118" CreationDate="2015-06-17T19:25:06.850" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;Update/Edit&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FDA has recently (15 May 2015) released a draft guidance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Guidances/Blood/UCM446580.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Revised Recommendations for Reducing the Risk of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Transmission by Blood and Blood Products&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This does not necessarily mean a new policy will actually be implemented.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Public comments need to be considered.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The period for public comments ends 15 July 2015&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comments can be filed at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=FDA-2015-D-1211-0001&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this link&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The OP is misrepresenting current US government (including FDA) policy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/BloodBloodProducts/ApprovedProducts/LicensedProductsBLAs/BloodDonorScreening/UCM213552.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;current FDA donor questionnaire&lt;/a&gt; asks&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;strong&gt;1977 to the present&lt;/strong&gt;, have you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;34&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Male donors: had sexual contact with another male, even once?&#xA;(Females: check “I am female.”)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Boldface in original text.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On 23 December 2014 the FDA &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/forpatients/illness/hivaids/safety/ucm117929.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;released a statement&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is a science-based regulatory agency that works to protect and promote the public health. In this role, it is our responsibility to regulate the blood supply and to help ensure its continued safety for the patients who receive these life-saving products.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Over the past several years, in collaboration with other government agencies, the FDA has carefully examined and considered the available scientific evidence relevant to its blood donor deferral policy for men who have sex with men, including the results of several recently completed scientific studies and recent epidemiologic data. Following this review, and taking into account the recommendations of advisory committees to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the FDA, the agency will take the necessary steps to recommend a change to the blood donor deferral period for men who have sex with men from indefinite deferral to one year since the last sexual contact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This recommended change is consistent with the recommendation of an independent expert advisory panel the HHS Advisory Committee on Blood and Tissue Safety and Availability, and will better align the deferral period with that of other men and women at increased risk for HIV infection. Additionally, in collaboration with the NIH’s National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), the FDA has already taken steps to implement a national blood surveillance system that will help the agency monitor the effect of a policy change and further help to ensure the continued safety of the blood supply.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FDA intends to issue a draft guidance recommending this proposed change in policy in 2015, which will also include an opportunity for public comment. We encourage all stakeholders to take this opportunity to provide any information the agency should consider, and look forward to receiving and reviewing these comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In other words, while the FDA stated that it intends to pursue a change in policy, the change has not yet occurred or even been officially proposed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The FDA page with the above statement still links to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/BloodBloodProducts/QuestionsaboutBlood/ucm108186.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Blood Donations from Men Who Have Sex with Other Men Questions and Answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which clearly states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is FDA's policy on blood donations from men who have sex with other men?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Men who have had sex with other men (MSM), at any time since 1977 (the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the United States) are currently deferred as blood donors. This is because MSM are, as a group, at increased risk for HIV, hepatitis B and certain other infections that can be transmitted by transfusion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Why doesn't FDA allow men who have had sex with men to donate blood?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FDA's primary responsibility with regard to blood and blood products is to assure the safety of patients who receive these life-saving products. FDA uses multiple layers of safeguards in its approach to ensuring blood safety, which include donor screening and deferral based on risk factors, blood testing for markers of infection, inventory controls, and deferral registries. The use of these multiple layers helps to assure the safety of the products in the event that one layer fails.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A history of male-to-male sex is associated with an increased risk for exposure to and transmission of certain infectious diseases, including HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Men who have had sex with other men represent approximately 2% of the US population, yet are the population most severely affected by HIV. In 2010, MSM accounted for at least 61% of all new HIV infections in the U.S. and an estimated 77% of diagnosed HIV infections among males were attributed to male-to-male sexual contact. Between 2008 and 2010, the estimated overall incidence of HIV was stable in the U.S. However the incidence in MSM increased 12%, while it decreased in other populations. The largest increase was a 22% increase in MSM aged 13 to 24 years. Since younger individuals are more likely to donate blood, the implications of this increase in incidence need to be further evaluated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Isn't the HIV test accurate enough to identify all HIV positive blood donors?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HIV tests currently in use are highly accurate, but still cannot detect HIV 100% of the time. It is estimated that the HIV risk from a unit of blood has been reduced to about 1 per 2 million in the USA, almost exclusively from so called &amp;quot;window period&amp;quot; donations. The &amp;quot;window period&amp;quot; exists very early after infection, where even current HIV testing methods cannot detect all infections. During this time, a person is infected with HIV, but may not have enough virus or have developed sufficient antibodies to be detected by available tests. For this reason, a person could test negative, even when they are actually HIV positive and infectious. Therefore, blood donors are not only tested but are also asked questions about behaviors that increase their risk of HIV infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Collection of blood from persons with an increased risk of HIV infection also presents an added risk to transfusion recipients due to the possibility that blood that has already been collected and is being stored in a blood bank may be accidentally given to a patient in error either before testing is completed or following a positive test. Such medical errors occur extremely rarely, but given that there are about 17 million Whole Blood and red blood cell donations collected each year in the USA, they can occur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the FDA agrees the current policy is wrong, and intends efforts to change the policy, but the current policy is still any time since 1977, not just in the last year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the FDA does follow through on its intention to &lt;strong&gt;propose&lt;/strong&gt; draft guidance, it will be listed at &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Guidances/ucm223006.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Recently Issued Guidance Documents&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even if there is such a proposed draft guidance, it will still be accompanied by the statement &amp;quot;Draft regulations and guidances are documents that have been proposed, but FDA has not made a decision as to whether the proposal will be adopted in whole, in part, or &lt;strong&gt;not at all&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;quot; (emphasis added) and followed by a time period (such as two month) for comments.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T18:46:13.827" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28122" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28128" CreationDate="2015-06-17T19:43:29.320" Score="15" ViewCount="20449" Body="&lt;p&gt;I heard this growing up, but here's &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.spacetec.org/tag/king-henry-i/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an online example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Probably the most common story of government setting standards of measurement is the story of King Henry I of England, who ruled England from 1100 to 1135.  The standard for the &quot;foot&quot; was supposed to have been made by measuring the King's foot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the 12-inch foot we use today for measurement derived from the length of the foot of a king of England, and the rest is history?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21907" LastEditorUserId="16860" LastEditDate="2016-01-18T18:27:16.787" LastActivityDate="2016-01-18T18:27:16.787" Title="Is the 12-inch foot based off the foot of a King of England?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28127" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-18T08:27:15.737" Score="19" ViewCount="1150" Body="&lt;p&gt;In much (most?) of the world, women are able to use laughing gas (nitrous oxide) to relieve pain during childbirth, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2010/09/nitrous-oxide-childbirth-pain&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this is almost never available to women in the United States&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several websites (for example,&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2015/01/27/laughing-gas-making-a-comeback-for-women-giving-birth/22445003/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Laughing gas making a comeback for women giving birth&lt;/a&gt;) speculate that this is because it would lead to lower profits for the hospital, compared to other forms of pain management.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If other countries have been using nitrous oxide to take the edge off labor pain for decades, why hasn't it been offered to women in the U.S. until now?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dixon said new nitrous oxide delivery equipment was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2011 plus she said it's possible that there has been concern over the years that hospitals would &amp;quot;lose revenue if people have fewer epidurals.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is a little too cynical for me, though, and it doesn't seem to make complete sense, either - N&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;O isn't comparable to an epidural. Besides, it's used often in other areas of medicine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that laughing gas is not used to reduce labor pains because it is cheap?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26744" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-10T10:17:16.883" Title="Is nitrous oxide not used during labor in US hospitals because it is cheaper?" Tags="|medical-science|pharmaceutical|medications|birth|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28128" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28122" CreationDate="2015-06-18T16:08:25.393" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The idea predates England.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;So far as we can tell from records, English kings used their arms not their feet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The length of one foot has been redefined many times since the last recorded use of an English monarch's body.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In antiquity it was common to use human body parts to measure lengths.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The foot as a unit of measure predates the establishment of England as a country - and hence predates English kings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia cites &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=AKJZvXOS7n4C&amp;amp;pg=PA26&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Oswald Ashton Wentworth Dilke (May 22, 1987). Mathematics and measurement&lt;/a&gt; as saying that the Romans and Greeks used the foot as a unit of measure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NuXMf.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So a 12-inch foot predates England. However the exact length of a foot has varied over the centuries. At times, there are records that indicate that the length of a foot was redefined based on the physical size of an actual foot of a ruler such as an emperor. For example:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/TJpb6.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English Kings did redefine units of measure from time to time. Sometimes they are reported as having used their own bodies as the basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The British institution responsible for measures is that National Physics Laboratory (NPL) which &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.npl.co.uk/educate-explore/factsheets/history-of-length-measurement/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;says&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A traditional tale tells the story of Henry I (1100-1135) who decreed that the yard should be &quot;the distance from the tip of the King's nose to the end of his outstretched thumb&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 12th century &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Hc46AAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA445&amp;amp;hl=en#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;William of Malmesbury's Chronicle of the Kings of England&lt;/a&gt; reported that King Henry I redefeined the &lt;em&gt;ell&lt;/em&gt; in terms of his own arm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cvAwE.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the basic idea is sound. But the foot in use today has much more recent definition (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/p59-014#.VYL4jPkzaUk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;) and likely differs from the actual length of any appendage of any particular English monarch.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The most you can say about the current length of a foot in relation to an English monarch's body is that it probably hasn't been redefined very many times since Henry I implicitly defined it as a third of the length from his nose to his outstretched thumb.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;His actual feet were probably not involved in the definition.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="8755" LastEditDate="2015-06-18T16:53:31.863" LastActivityDate="2015-06-18T16:53:31.863" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28133" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-19T13:42:14.143" Score="14" ViewCount="583" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Sweden and other Nordic countries, the presence of beggars on the streets is a relatively new phenomenon, with many beggars originating from new EU member states.  There are frequent claims that those beggars are part of organised networks, and that money raised does not stay with the beggars but goes to ring leaders.  For example of people claiming this, see &lt;a href=&quot;http://bobarno.com/thiefhunters/beggars-in-stockholm/&quot;&gt;Beggars in Stockholm&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelocal.dk/20150416/parties-target-organized-beggars-in-copenhagen&quot;&gt;The Local DK&lt;/a&gt;, or the reports from the very same day that the police in Sweden claim that begging &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dn.se/nyheter/polisen-tiggeriet-ar-organiserat/&quot;&gt;is&lt;/a&gt; or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.expressen.se/nyheter/nu-backar-polisen--ar-inte-organiserat-tiggeri/&quot;&gt;isn't&lt;/a&gt; organised.  A recent article asserts that a recent study shows that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/studie-om-tiggare-slar-hal-pa-myter/&quot;&gt;it is not organised&lt;/a&gt;.  The news is based on &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fafo.no/images/pub/2015/954-innmat-trykk.pdf&quot;&gt;an English language report from the Norwegian FAFO institute&lt;/a&gt; (PDF, 136 pages, 3.6 MB), who write that &lt;em&gt;For most, income from begging and street work is shared only within the immediate family and household.&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What evidence is there for the assertion that a large part of the revenue raised by beggars in Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Oslo, does not benefit the beggars but is taken by third parties?  I imagine some might claim that the report from the FAFO institute is not the end of the debate.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(NB: For the scope of this question, by organised I mean specifically a situation where money raised by beggars goes to a third party in an exploitative manner.  If beggars voluntarily choose to organise themselves in a labour union to demand better condition or whatnot, that is a different matter.)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2015-06-19T14:57:14.997" LastActivityDate="2015-07-19T19:45:21.180" Title="Are beggars in the Nordic countries cities typically part of organised networks?" Tags="|economics|politics|sociology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28135" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-19T19:05:22.883" Score="5" ViewCount="484" Body="&lt;p&gt;I stumbled upon this image in Google images:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/caS5wm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;1 woman is murdered for dowry every 20 minutes.&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image links to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.50millionmissing.info&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;www.50millionmissing.info&lt;/a&gt;, which has, indeed, &lt;a href=&quot;https://genderbytes.wordpress.com/2010/07/12/1-woman-murdered-every-20-minutes-poster/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;created that poster&lt;/a&gt;. The site is dedicated to Indian women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia explains the concept of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowry_death&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dowry Deaths&lt;/a&gt;, including suicide and murder of young brides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4020" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-20T03:19:30.873" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T06:08:57.997" Title="Is a woman murdered every 20 minutes for dowry?" Tags="|criminology|marriage|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28136" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28135" CreationDate="2015-06-20T06:08:57.997" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A study from thelancet.com &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lancet/PIIS0140-6736(04)17625-3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In India about 20 000 murders are committed every&#xA;  year, of which women constitute about 10%–15% of the&#xA;  total, ie, &lt;strong&gt;about 2000 to 2500 per year&lt;/strong&gt;. Homicidal&#xA;  burning of married women constitutes a significant&#xA;  proportion of dowry deaths. Although it is difficult to&#xA;  determine accurate numbers throughout the country,&#xA;  extrapolation from our data suggests that homicide&#xA;  may account for 600–750 deaths per year. Others &lt;strong&gt;(&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/burncareresearch/pages/articleviewer.aspx?year=2004&amp;amp;issue=03000&amp;amp;article=00005&amp;amp;type=abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;see&#xA;  Jutla in recommended reading&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/strong&gt; suggest the figure may&#xA;  be much higher. A 2000 New York Times article quoted an&#xA;  official figure of &lt;strong&gt;6975 dowry deaths in 1998&lt;/strong&gt;. Because of&#xA;  the nature of the crime, it is improbable, if not&#xA;  impossible, to know its true incidence. The&#xA;  circumstances, however, are commonly described.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastActivityDate="2015-06-20T06:08:57.997" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28139" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-21T07:07:28.153" Score="16" ViewCount="1135" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have heard that Earth is experiencing another mass extinction event, with many species going extinct at a rate comparable to Earth's many other past extinction events.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This has been reported in the news. The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-33209548&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BBC reports&lt;/a&gt; the claim like this:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Earth has entered a new period of extinction, a study by three US universities has concluded, and humans could be among the first casualties.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report, led by the universities of Stanford, Princeton and Berkeley, said vertebrates were disappearing at a rate 114 times faster than normal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the Earth experiencing a mass extinction as reported?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26761" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T00:45:22.503" Title="Is the Earth experiencing another mass extinction event?" Tags="|biology|zoology|paleontology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28140" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28162" CreationDate="2015-06-21T13:05:42.933" Score="20" ViewCount="1896" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the 2010 Summary Report of the CDC's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf&quot;&gt;National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey&lt;/a&gt;, there are two figures that are surprisingly similar:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Table 2.1, they claim the 12-month weighted rate of a US woman being raped is 1.1%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Table 2.2, they claim the 12-month weighted rate of a US man being &quot;made to penetrate&quot; is also 1.1%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It would appear that these risks are comparable.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite these figures being similar, the lifetime weighted rates are very different (18.3% versus 4.8%, respectively).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are these figures correct, and is it reasonable to directly compare them?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6840" LastEditorUserId="1246" LastEditDate="2015-06-21T21:03:12.920" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T17:34:25.653" Title="Are annual female rape and male &quot;made to penetrate&quot; rates similar in the US?" Tags="|united-states|gender|sexual-abuse|violence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28148" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-22T00:52:32.640" Score="12" ViewCount="558" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;em&gt;Influence&lt;/em&gt;, Cialdini &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&amp;amp;q=cialdini+influence+self-imposed+silence+isolation+radio&quot;&gt;mentions&lt;/a&gt; the story of a war veteran who remained silent for 30 years until he allegedly heard during a live radio transmission of a sports event that his home team was mistreated by the referee:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] placed him in a veterans' hospital where he remained for 30 years, never breaking his self-imposed silence and sinking into a life of social isolation. Then one day, a radio in his ward happened to be tuned to a soccer match between his hometown team and a traditional rival. When at a crucial point of play the referee called a foul against a player from the mute veteran's home team, he jumped from his chair, glared at the radio, and spoke his first words in more than three decades: &quot;You dumb ass!&quot; he cried. &quot;Are you trying to give them the match?&quot; With that, he returned to his chair and to a silence he never again violated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How would anyone know that he jumped from the chair and &quot;glared at the radio&quot;? There was no reason to have a nurse observe him at all times. Did another patient notice, despite the veteran's social isolation? What made the veteran know that the referee was wrong, over radio?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there more to this story than anecdote?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23016" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T10:35:25.950" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T10:35:25.950" Title="War veteran who didn't speak for 30 years until he heard a sports match over the radio" Tags="|psychology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28152" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-22T21:53:33.460" Score="12" ViewCount="616" Body="&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/14132/23&quot;&gt;an answer to another question&lt;/a&gt;, there is a reference to this 2012 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/038404_massacres_gun_owners_defense.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Natural News&lt;/a&gt; article, which in turn cites this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nraila.org/articles/19960101/the-chronicle-muskegon-mi-82395&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;NRA-ILA&lt;/a&gt; article, which cites &quot;The Chronicle, Muskegon, MI, 8/23/95&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Plans to slay everyone in the Muskegon, Michigan, store and steal enough cash and jewelry to feed their &quot;gnawing hunger for crack cocaine&quot; fell apart for a band of would-be killers after one of their victims fought back. Store owner Clare Cooper was returning behind the counter after showing three of the four conspirators some jewelry, when one of the group pulled out a gun and shot him four times in the back. Stumbling for the safety of his bullet-proof glass-encased counter, Cooper managed to grab his shotgun and fire as the suspects fled. They were all later apprehended and the three present during the shooting face life imprisonment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This incident is being used to defend the argument that guns are used defensively to avoid shootings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article sounds slightly fishy, in that the date of the attack isn't provided, the names of the attackers aren't provided, and the fate of the shopkeeper isn't clear. These are the sorts of details news articles would normally include.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did this event happen?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2023-08-28T06:00:25.193" Title="Did a Michigan jewellery store keeper successfully scare off his attackers with a shotgun in 1995?" Tags="|united-states|criminology|guns|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28153" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-22T21:55:09.127" Score="14" ViewCount="939" Body="&lt;p&gt;It seems to be a commonly-held belief that there is a strong correlation between the use of prescription drugs such as SSRIs and mass-shooters. For instance, this claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.naturalnews.com/039752_mass_shootings_psychiatric_drugs_antidepressants.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Every mass shooting over last 20 years has one thing in common... and it's not guns&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The overwhelming evidence points to the signal [sic] largest common factor in all of these incidents is the fact that all of the perpetrators were either actively taking &lt;a href=&quot;http://ssristories.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;powerful psychotropic drugs&lt;/a&gt; or had been at some point in the immediate past before they committed their crimes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Multiple credible scientific studies going back more than a decade, as well as internal documents from certain pharmaceutical companies that suppressed the information show that SSRI drugs [etc.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the evidence support this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If there is a correlation, is there a way to untangle the statistical relevance? For instance, can the use of such drugs among violent offenders be compared to the use among non-violent offenders or other relevant demographic?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2033" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-02-25T04:04:49.630" Title="Is there a correlation between mass-murder and use of psychoactive prescription drugs such as SSRIs?" Tags="|criminology|psychiatry|violence|medications|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28154" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28139" CreationDate="2015-06-22T21:56:41.137" Score="23" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;tl;dr:&lt;/strong&gt; Yes, the paper provides strong evidence that we're undergoing a mass extinction event. The media reporting is basically right (for once).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What you are asking&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm going to assume that what you're asking amounts to: &quot;Is there any obvious flaw in the methodology of the recent study on this topic, that the (notoriously poor) mainstream science journalists have overlooked?&quot;. The reason I'm making this assumption is because I think that, if the claims of the study are as reported, the claim mentioned in the question must follow. If for some reason you're not convinced by the scientific method in general, then I doubt we can help you here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The actual findings of the study&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, so first let's look at &lt;a href=&quot;http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/5/e1400253.full&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the study&lt;/a&gt;, not the bbc news article. It's authored by reasonable looking academics, at well known and important institutions. It's published in a good place. Because of these two things, I'm inclined to take whatever they &lt;em&gt;actually&lt;/em&gt; say in the study at face value, so let's look at what it says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If you read the study, you find that the authors define a mass extinction to be a time period when the rate at which species go extinct is much higher than the &quot;background rate&quot;. The rate that species go extinct is expressed in somewhat funny sounding units, but basically it's the &lt;em&gt;fraction&lt;/em&gt; of species that go extinct each year. That is, the number of species that went extinct, divided by the total number of living species at the start of that year. This lets us sensibly compare periods of high and low biodiversity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors use what is described as a &quot;very conservative&quot; estimate for how often species go extinct during normal life (i.e. not during a mass extinction event). This estimate is arrived at by rounding up the latest best estimate of how often mammals have gone extinct (derived from the fossil record), and then assuming that &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; types of organisms go extinct that fast, even though we have good reasons to think that this is untrue (apparently invertebrate species live longer?). The authors overall find that for every 1,000,000 species you have alive at the start of a year, about 2 will be extinct by the end of the year. This means that a typical (mammalian) species will live for about 500,000 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors then look at the records of &lt;em&gt;species we know about&lt;/em&gt;, and count how many of those have become extinct in the last century. They find that far more than expected have become extinct. About 8-20 times as many using the &quot;very conservative estimate&quot;, and more like 50-100 times as many using a less conservative estimate. &lt;a href=&quot;https://d3a5ak6v9sb99l.cloudfront.net/content/advances/1/5/e1400253/F1.large.jpg?width=800&amp;amp;height=600&amp;amp;carousel=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This handy graph&lt;/a&gt; gives you a pretty good image of what they find. The dashed &quot;Background&quot; line at the bottom shows how many species &lt;em&gt;should&lt;/em&gt; have gone extinct, while the other lines show how many actually did.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Criticisms&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, so what can we conclude from the paper? Well, taken at face value, it looks like there's a mass extinction in progress. Some arguments against this conclusion might be:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The paper doesn't actually offer a statistical analysis of this phenomenon. I think this is a little sloppy, even though the effect is so large that it almost doesn't matter. Basically they need to look at the variance in the baseline extinction rate, and give us a &lt;em&gt;range&lt;/em&gt; of normal values. However, I rather suspect that the range won't be 10-20 times larger than the mean value.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The paper relies on &lt;em&gt;observed&lt;/em&gt; extinctions. It might be the case that lots of species go extinct all the time, and we just haven't gotten very good at keeping track of things like that until now. I think this is a valid concern. It could be that there are massive and systematic biases in the fossil record, and that species are dying off in large numbers all the time. However, the shape of the curve the authors present suggests otherwise. If species were dying all the time, then certainly after about the 1850s, when citizen science got big and people were actually doing a good job of keeping track of numbers of different species, we should expect the extinction rate to be basically flat. It shouldn't be &lt;em&gt;increasing&lt;/em&gt; if this is the usual rate stuff dies at.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the comments, @matt_black and others raise a criticism of the paper on the basis of its &lt;em&gt;authorship&lt;/em&gt;. I didn't realize this was a controversial issue when I started writing the answer, so I didn't investigate it then, but have now. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In particular, the second author, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Paul_R._Ehrlich&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paul Ehrlich&lt;/a&gt;, has made many widely publicized and incorrect predictions. Most notable was the prediction that hundreds of millions of Indians would die of starvation during the 1970's and 1980s (Counterpoint: Ehrlich is quoted in the given Wikipedia link in the 1990's claiming that the statement in the book was an example, not a prediction, and that the core message of the book was still basically correct). As such, some people would be inclined to discount the paper's findings because its author has a history of publishing somewhat sensationalist and incorrect predictions. As a counterpoint, we can note that this is a logical fallacy: if the paper's methodology is sound, then it doesn't matter who is making the claims. However, going a step further, the paper's opening sentences are: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The loss of biodiversity is one of the most critical current&#xA;  environmental problems, threatening valuable ecosystem services and&#xA;  human well-being (1–7). A growing body of evidence indicates that&#xA;  current species extinction rates are higher than the pre-human&#xA;  background rate (8–15)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examining the cited references, we find that they include a number of papers that I would characterize as having a high, apparently positive, impact on the scientific community. For the first claim (That the loss of biodiversity is a big problem), we see &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bio-nica.info/Biblioteca/Dirzo2003Biodiversity.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;, which boasts nearly 600 citations over 12 years. I did not look at every instance of it being cited, but a sample of 10 citing papers I selected at random contained no citations I would characterize as negative, being roughly evenly split being those I would characterize as endorsing the findings and those I would characterize as using the manuscript to support specific factual claims in their own paper. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For the second claim, the most cited of the 7 listed papers is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rachel.org/files/document/The_Future_of_Biodiversity.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt;, which I would again characterize as having an extremely high impact on the scientific community, which appears to be largely positive. The paper's opening lines make the claim that the extinction rate is 100 to 1,000 times larger than the estimated baseline rate, which is actually a much more outlandish claim than the one made in the paper we're discussing in this question (about an order of magnitude larger). The paper has more than 1800 citations over the last 20 years. Because the paper is older, and scientific consensus changes over time, I looked at the first two pages of &lt;a href=&quot;https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2014&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;as_sdt=2005&amp;amp;sciodt=0,5&amp;amp;cites=1211499315621852544&amp;amp;scipsc=&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;google scholar's list of papers that cited this one in the last 2 years&lt;/a&gt;, and checked all the papers that were not paywalled. Included among them is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rpgroup.caltech.edu/courses/Evolution_GIST_2014/files_2014/articles/Science-2014-Pimm.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a second study&lt;/a&gt; by some of the same authors from the last two years, which again claims (without citation) an extinction rate 1,000 times the baseline. So at least we know the original authors still endorse this view. Of the remainder, I find 4 that restate the key claim (100-1,000 times the baseline rate) with citation, 5 that cite it to support a somewhat watered down version of the claim (diversity is declining &quot;fast&quot;; Humans are &quot;dramatically altering biodiversity around the globe&quot;; Human actions have &quot;generally negative&quot; impact on biodiversity; Ample evidence that extinction rates are increasing), 3 that cite the paper in support of another, more minor claim (diversity is decreasing in specific regions; certain factors making extinction more likely; reasons for certain fauna being rare in Britain; there are lots of species of fungus we don't know about yet), 1 that does not cite the paper at all, 1 that is the paper we are discussing, and 2 self citations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To summarize, I found 9 papers citing the core claim as fact (with more or less hedging of the wording); 3 citing it for other reasons, and 3 miscounts by Google Scholar. Overall, while my sample of 15 papers is small, I'd characterize this as a claim that is probably broadly accepted. If there is controversy, it seems to be well hidden.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastEditorUserId="18008" LastEditDate="2016-11-22T00:45:22.503" LastActivityDate="2016-11-22T00:45:22.503" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28155" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-22T23:34:08.683" Score="6" ViewCount="261" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the end of &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PezlFNTGWv4&quot;&gt;this video&lt;/a&gt;, Dr. Park Dietz says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Because every time we have intense saturation coverage of a mass murder, we expect to see one or two more within a week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15980" LastActivityDate="2015-06-22T23:34:08.683" Title="Does media coverage of mass shootings leads to more mass shootings the same week?" Tags="|psychology|media|criminology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28158" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28176" CreationDate="2015-06-23T05:36:39.413" Score="5" ViewCount="714" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found this video by a creationist who claims that the nylon eating ability of bacteria was not the result of an increase in genetic information. Does he actually have a point or is he wrong?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkNmfA09cGg&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkNmfA09cGg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14033" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T11:07:35.260" Title="Did Nylon eating bacteria come about due to an increase in genetic information?" Tags="|biology|young-earth-creationism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28160" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28011" CreationDate="2015-06-23T08:30:20.093" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Regarding Gatorade efficacy on hangover effects, there are comments from Dr. Seymour &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2007-12-29/news/0712280569_1_hangover-sports-drinks-national-headache-foundation&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Diamond&lt;/a&gt; and Dr. Jeanmarie &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.today.com/health/pedialyte-ultimate-hangover-cure-t21746&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Perrone&lt;/a&gt; that it might be useful for rehydration due to its balanced electrolyte content. However Dr. Jeanmarie Perrone cautions about the placebo effect in beliefs relating Gatorade as a hangover cure since it is not proven with evidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;If it was a proven hangover remedy, then I think we would have more evidence to suggest it was the answer,&quot; she said. &quot;I think believing that Gatorade is going to help you or believing that Pedialyte will help you will probably help you as much as the sugar and salt would help,&quot; she said. &quot;There's a good solid placebo effect to anything that anyone takes in this regard.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A hangover develops when blood alcohol concentration (BAC) returns to zero after a bout of heavy alcohol drinking and is characterized by a mixture of unpleasant physical (lightheadedness, nausea, increased cardiac work with normal peripheral resistance, diffuse slowing on electroencephalography, and increased levels of antidiuretic hormone), &lt;a href=&quot;http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207450390162308&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;nervous system activity by impaired memory/visual-spatial skills&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/npp/journal/v28/n4/full/1300090a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mental symptoms-impaired memory retrieval processes&lt;/a&gt;.  There is empirical evidence for showing that impaired performance is a result of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18238851&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;alcohol hangover&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Symptoms of hangover seem to be caused by hormonal alterations &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4056249/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Antonino Bianco 2014&lt;/a&gt;, dysregulated cytokine pathways &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alcoholjournal.org/article/S0741-8329(03)00217-9/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dai-Jin Kim, 2003&lt;/a&gt;, and toxic side effects such as dehydration &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11391045&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Eriksson CJ, 2001&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hangover symptoms are worst at a time when almost all ethanol and its metabolite acetaldehyde have been cleared from the blood, and peak blood ethanol or &lt;a href=&quot;http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2013/12/30/how-much-alcohol-causes-a-hangover/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;acetaldehyde&lt;/a&gt; levels are not related to the severity of hangover &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1253812&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ylikahri RH 1976&lt;/a&gt;. Congeners–complex organic molecules such as polyphenols, higher alcohols including methanol, and histamine, which occur in varying amounts in ethanolic drinks are probably more to blame than &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/314/7073/2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ethanol&lt;/a&gt;. The severity of hangover symptoms declined in the order of brandy, red wine, rum, whisky, white wine, gin, vodka, and pure ethanol &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/1080019/Chemistry_of_a_Hangover__Alcohol_and_its_Consequences_Part_3.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt; G. L. S. Pawan, 1973&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blinding, i.e. preventing participants from knowing which is the hangover or placebo test day, is especially difficult in alcohol hangover research. Considerable amounts of alcohol (&gt; 1.0 g/kg) need to be consumed to produce a hangover. Alcohol intoxication and its after-effects are impossible to mimic by a placebo condition. Hence, participants can easily recognize the hangover and placebo condition. Alcohol (hangover) expectancies may thus affect performance. &lt;a href=&quot;http://alcalc.oxfordjournals.org/content/43/2/124&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joris C. Verster, 2008&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A new scale, the Hangover Symptoms Scale (HSS) has been developed by researchers, which is used as a standard measure of hangover symptoms that cleanly taps the physiologic and subjective effects commonly experienced the morning after drinking.  Higher scores on the HSS were positively and significantly associated with drinking frequency and the typical quantity of alcohol consumed when drinking, a personal history of alcohol-related problems, and a family history of alcohol-related problems. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1097/01.ALC.0000085585.81711.AE/abstract;jsessionid=68419D2B04B9DBA6F57E28F94FCB81C7.f02t04&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wendy S. Slutske, 2006&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effective interventions per animal studies for hang over symptoms include prostaglandin inhibitors &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20712594&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Khan MA 1973&lt;/a&gt;, and vitamin B6 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4588294&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Verster JC 2010&lt;/a&gt;. Animal studies have shown that dihydromyricetin (DHM), a flavonoid component from Hovenia, is highly effective in counteracting acute EtOH intoxication, EtOH exposure/withdrawal-induced GABAAR plasticity and AWS symptoms, as well as reducing excessive EtOH consumption. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3292407/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yi Shen, 2012&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No compelling evidence exists to suggest that any conventional or complementary intervention is effective for preventing or treating alcohol hangover. The most effective way to avoid the symptoms of alcohol induced hangover is to practise abstinence or moderation. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bmj.com/content/331/7531/1515&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Max H Pittler,2005&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gatorade contains oral sucrose which has been reported with increased rate of alcohol removal from blood &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1119423&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Soterakis J, 1975&lt;/a&gt;. However, more hang over research is needed to make sure that it was the effect of the sugars and not other variables that reduced the alcohol content in the blood in a larger randomized population since the small number (n=8 of total participants) and the type (alcoholic male participants) had an effect on these findings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Screening for hangover severity and frequency may help early detection of alcohol dependency and substantially improve &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10836917?access_num=10836917&amp;amp;link_type=MED&amp;amp;dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;quality of life&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-11-23T08:38:45.073" LastActivityDate="2015-11-23T08:38:45.073" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28161" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27814" CreationDate="2015-06-23T14:08:53.080" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20003625&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Diet-induced acidosis: is it real and clinically relevant?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, the authors review the history of the concepts of acidosis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The available research makes a compelling case that diet-induced acidosis, not diet-induced acidaemia, is a real phenomenon, and has a significant, clinical, long-term pathophysiological effect that should be recognised and potentially counterbalanced by dietary means. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/9/1/72&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Examining the relationship between diet-induced acidosis and cancer&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, the author explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Blood pH from prolonged or chronic acidogenic diets is reported to be near the lower physiological range (7.36-7.38) rather than the higher end (7.42-7.44). Specifically, persistent acidogenic diets have the potential to cause small decreases in blood pH and plasma bicarbonate, but not beyond the normal physiological range. This condition is described as ‘diet-induced’, ‘low-grade’, or ‘chronic metabolic acidosis’ or sometimes ‘latent acidosis’. Diet-induced acidosis is distinct from clinical metabolic acidosis in that clinical metabolic acidosis occurs when factors other than just acidogenic diet contribute a system’s inability to compensate for blood [H+ perturbations, typically resulting in blood pH below 7.35. The patho-physiological effects of clinical metabolic acidosis are well known, while the true pathophysiological impact of long-term, diet-induced acidosis is not well understood. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-23T14:25:02.013" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T14:25:02.013" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28162" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28140" CreationDate="2015-06-23T17:34:25.653" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Page 12 says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Lifetime and 12 Month Prevalence Estimates of Violence&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lifetime prevalence refers to the proportion of people in a given&#xA;  population who have ever experienced a particular form of violence.&#xA;  Lifetime prevalence estimates are important because they provide&#xA;  information about the burden of violence within a population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;12 month prevalence provides information about the proportion of&#xA;  people in a given population who have experienced a particular form of&#xA;  violence in the 12 months prior to taking the survey. Twelve-month&#xA;  prevalence estimates provide a snapshot of the recent burden of&#xA;  violence in a population. When collected over multiple years, 12 month&#xA;  estimates can be used to assess trends in the burden of violence over&#xA;  time (suggesting whether violence may be increasing or decreasing).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I suspect the figures which you quote are as reported.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &quot;weighting&quot; is to try to account for people who don't answer the survey -- page 13 says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Statistical inference for prevalence&#xA;  and population estimates&#xA;  were made based on weighted&#xA;  analyses, where complex sample&#xA;  design features such as stratified&#xA;  sampling, weighting for unequal&#xA;  sample selection probabilities, and&#xA;  non-response adjustments were&#xA;  taken into account. The estimates&#xA;  presented in this report are based&#xA;  on complete interviews.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So given that the sets of numbers don't match, I assert that the reason for those numbers is (as for all their numbers) that they're simply reporting what they were told by the people being surveyed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;FWIW my hypotheses for the discrepancy are that it could be either:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Misreporting by the people being surveyed (the men's looks less likely to me than the women's, with the men reporting a lifetime rate of only 4 times higher than the yearly rate)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;A recent significant increase in the rate of violence against men (reflected in the recent 12 month figures but not evident yet in the lifetime figures), which is the kind of phenomenon which the &quot;12 month prevalence&quot; questions were intended to assess (as stated at the end of the second paragraph of the &quot;Lifetime and 12 Month Prevalence Estimates of Violence&quot; quote above).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastActivityDate="2015-06-23T17:34:25.653" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28166" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-23T20:54:12.387" Score="7" ViewCount="501" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/2015/06/radio-bug-can-steal-laptop-crypto-keys-fits-inside-pita/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2015 Wired article&lt;/a&gt; claims it is possible to use a remote device to determine a key used during decryption by sampling the radio emissions from the processor at 100kHz&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also claim that by:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;tricking the target into decrypting a carefully chosen message, they were able to “twist the algorithm’s arm” into leaking more sensitive information, creating more clues in the leaked emanations for their PITA radio to pick up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with this condition, it seems unlikely for a modern processor to emit enough radio noise such that a device can get meaningful info. But I'm not an electrical engineer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1030" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-24T01:58:14.083" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T05:29:11.377" Title="Can you use a computer's CPU's electrical noise to extract an encryption key?" Tags="|computers|security|hardware|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28167" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28166" CreationDate="2015-06-23T21:56:03.877" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;In 2013, this (unpeer-reviewed) paper, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tau.ac.il/~tromer/papers/acoustic-20131218.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;RSA Key Extraction via Low-Bandwidth Acoustic Cryptanalysis&lt;/a&gt; demonstrated a similar method, using acoustic noise, and argue that electrical potential could also be used. (They don't use electrical noise.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It shares two of the same co-authors as the paper cited by Wired, so it is basically the same research team.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It was written up by &lt;a href=&quot;http://it.slashdot.org/story/13/12/18/2122226/scientists-extract-rsa-key-from-gnupg-using-sound-of-cpu&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Slashdot&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gnupg fixed the issue &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-devel/2013-December/028102.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-devel/2013-December/028102.html&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21130" LastEditorUserId="21130" LastEditDate="2015-06-24T05:29:11.377" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T05:29:11.377" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28171" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="31775" CreationDate="2015-06-24T01:32:29.277" Score="25" ViewCount="33219" Body="&lt;p&gt;This picture recently showed up on my facebook news-feed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/NnJUZm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated.&amp;quot; - Margaret Sanger, Founder of Planned Parenthood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision.&amp;quot; - Hillary Clinton, Democrat, Presidential Candidate&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;These two have done so much damage to the black community. I will see that I expose these two with every fiber of my being!&amp;quot; - Markeece Young, @YoungBLKRepub, `Republican Thinker' Contributor&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I wouldn't be at all surprised if the quote from Hillary Clinton is real, but the quote from Margaret Sanger seems very extreme. Did she really say that? Is there a source on that quote somewhere?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26307" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2019-06-26T23:37:26.040" Title="Did Margaret Sanger say &quot;Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated&quot;?" Tags="|history|quotes|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28173" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-24T02:25:12.533" Score="3" ViewCount="1310" Body="&lt;p&gt;Berocca is a dietary supplement containing mainly B vitamins and a large dose of Vitamin C. Here's a listing from their website for Berocca Perfomance:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Vitamin B1  15 mg   &#xA;Vitamin B2  15 mg   &#xA;Vitamin B3  50 mg   &#xA;Vitamin B5  23 mg   &#xA;Vitamin B6  10 mg   &#xA;Vitamin B12 10 μg   &#xA;Vitamin C   500 mg  &#xA;Vitamin H   150 μg  &#xA;Folic acid  400 μg  &#xA;Calcium     100 mg  &#xA;Magnesium   100 mg  &#xA;Zinc        10 mg   &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Berocca says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Berocca Performance may help:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Improve alertness and concentration&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Improve physical stamina and reduce tiredness and fatigue&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Enhance mental performance &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Improve mood   and reduce tiredness&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorUserId="5186" LastEditDate="2015-08-23T10:17:52.643" LastActivityDate="2016-12-21T00:22:56.787" Title="Do dietary vitamin supplements like Berocca help improve mental performance?" Tags="|physiology|nutritional-supplements|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28176" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28158" CreationDate="2015-06-24T05:07:10.403" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Nylon is an artificial polymer invented by Wallace Hume in Dupont. The nylon polymer or the linkages that bind the subunits together were not found in nature before 1935. By 1975, bacteria capable of hydrolyzing nylon found in waste water from nylon plants were discovered. Genes for hydrolyzing the artificial polymer nylon could not have been present from the beginning in the bacteria, since in the absence of the substrate (nylon not present before 1935), the gene product becomes non-functional, and the gene would have mutated to uselessness or an entirely different function in a few hundred/thousand years by random mutations.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author &lt;a href=&quot;http://ncse.com/cej/5/2/new-proteins-without-gods-help&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;William M. Thwaites, 1985&lt;/a&gt; states in his paper that,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The proteins that are formed by frame-shift mutations are totally useless sequences of amino acids that have no structural, antigenic, or enzymatic relationship to the original protein. This time, however, the new protein was useful. Being useful, it was retained by natural selection and was finally discovered by biochemists who noticed a bacterium that could live on industrial waste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generation of the nylon hydrolyzing genes is standard mutation followed by selection as experimental data does not support directed mutation and no known mechanism supports directed mutation. This is shown by the author in the paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11092619&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Biodegradation of nylon oligomers'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Through selective cultivation using nylon oligomers as a sole source of carbon and nitrogen, two strains which initially had no metabolic activity for nylon oligomers, Flavobacterium sp. KI725 and Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1, were given the ability to degrade xenobiotic compounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-06-24T11:07:35.260" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T11:07:35.260" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28177" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28171" CreationDate="2015-06-24T05:46:17.167" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;Factcheck.org says they found no evidence that she had a view like that one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.factcheck.org/2011/11/cains-false-attack-on-planned-parenthood/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cain’s False Attack on Planned Parenthood&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Herman Cain has offered an alternate version of history in claiming that Planned Parenthood’s founder wanted to prevent “black babies from being born.” We find no support for that old claim. Cain also states that the organization built 75 percent of its clinics in black communities, but there’s no evidence that was true then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sanger says that a minister could debunk the notion, if it arose, that the clinics aimed to “exterminate the Negro population.” She didn’t say that she wanted to “exterminate” the black population. The Margaret Sanger Papers Project at New York University says that this quote has “gone viral on the Internet,” normally out of context, and it “doesn’t reflect the fact that Sanger recognized elements within the black community might mistakenly associate the Negro Project with racist sterilization campaigns in the Jim Crow south, unless clergy and other community leaders spread the word that the Project had a humanitarian aim.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikiquote claims&lt;/a&gt; that it's a misquote of something else:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Unknown source, attributed by Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN) [20] and by Roger L. Roberson, Jr, The Bible &amp;amp; the Black Man: Breaking the Chains of Prejudice (2007), p. 18.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Seems to take words from &amp;quot;a garden of children instead of a disorderly back lot overrun with human weeds&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea&amp;quot; in order to attribute a racial eliminationist position to Sanger.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T05:46:17.167" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28178" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26815" CreationDate="2015-06-24T07:08:33.043" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;During brewing, an ingredient called hops is added to the beer that gives a bitter and tangy taste to it. One compound found in hops, called xanthohumol, has received the attention of researchers for its potential benefits, including antioxidation, cardiovascular protection and anticancer properties.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mounting evidence suggests that oxidative damage to neuronal cells contributes to the development of diseases that originate in the brain. If these cells are guarded from oxidative damage, they might be able to help prevent or slow down Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Fang et al. (2015) tested xanthohumol’s effects on brain cells. In lab tests, the researchers found that the compound might protect neuronal cells and potentially help slow the development of brain disorders. The scientists have concluded that xanthohumol could be a good candidate for fighting such neurodegenerative conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author further explains in his &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf505075n&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Xanthohumol (2′,4′,4-trihydroxy-6′-methoxy-3′-prenylchalcone, Xn), a polyphenol chalcone from hops (Humulus lupulus), has received increasing attention due to its multiple pharmacological activities. As an active component in beers, its presence has been suggested to be linked to the epidemiological observation of the beneficial effect of regular beer drinking. Our results demonstrate that Xn is a novel small-molecule activator of Nrf2 in neuronal cells and suggest that Xn might be a potential candidate for the prevention of neurodegenerative disorders.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However more studies are needed, first in animal models and then in humans regarding the molecule Xanthohumol to confirm that drinking beer helps to prevent Alzheimer/Parkinson diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastActivityDate="2015-06-24T07:08:33.043" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28179" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-24T08:22:01.207" Score="1" ViewCount="242" Body="&lt;p&gt;Coop Sverige AB have a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coop.se/Vart--ansvar/Ekoeffekten/The-Organic-Effect/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;short video shown&lt;/a&gt; based on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coop.se/PageFiles/430210/Coop%20Ekoeffekten_Rapport_eng.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;an unpeer-reviewed pilot study&lt;/a&gt; that found that a family who ate conventionally-grown food had urine tests that could detect pesticides. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(The pesticides were well below dangerous levels. After two weeks of eating organic food, these levels dropped dramatically.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are ingested pesticides detectable in urine samples?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T10:21:50.723" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T10:21:50.723" Title="Can pesticides from conventionally grown food be detected in urine samples?" Tags="|pesticides|organic-food|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28180" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-24T09:15:11.663" Score="9" ViewCount="567" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is widely claimed that cold-press juicing machines are better than the cheaper, and more common, centrifugal juicing machines, because they avoid degrading the nutrients in the juice through oxidising and overheating.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/08/juicer-types-cold-press_n_2618000.html&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The problem with centrifugal juicers is that the fast-spinning metal blade generates heat, which destroys some of the enzymes in the fruits and vegetables you're juicing. The heat also oxidizes those nutrients, rendering less nutritious juice than a cold-press juicer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://ohjuicecleanse.com/module/stblog/2_cold-pressed-vs-centrifugal-.html&quot;&gt;Oh Juice Clease&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It’s been proven that heat damages the vital enzymes and nutrients that we are trying to extract from the juice in the first place.  The Norwalk is different from centrifuge juicers because there is no spinning blade that is rotating at extremely high RPMs causing initial friction, heat and oxidation, all in which lead to a lower nutrient content. Juices that are made from a Norwalk get upwards of 5 days shelf life with minimal nutrient degradation, compared to a centrifuge that encourages consumption within the first 4-6 hours.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mensfitness.com/nutrition/what-to-drink/should-i-care-whether-my-juice-is-cold-pressed&quot;&gt;Men's Fitness&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Traditional juicers, or centrifugal models, use fast-spinning blades to tear apart produce, but the process adds some heat and exposes ingredients to air, two things that cut down on how many nutrients make their way into your glass.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence that juice from traditional juicers has less nutrients than juice from cold-press machines?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20691" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-24T13:20:42.043" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T21:09:52.870" Title="Is cold-pressed juice higher in nutrients?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28181" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28203" CreationDate="2015-06-24T10:58:17.967" Score="7" ViewCount="33300" Body="&lt;p&gt;I had heard somewhere that some women have &lt;em&gt;horizontal&lt;/em&gt; vagina. I didn't think it was true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I asked my biology teacher, &quot;I've heard some women have horizontal vagina. Is it true?&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He replied, &quot;Yes, some women of Mongolian race do. Not absolutely horizontal, though. I'd say slanted at some degrees.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I mean, as an abnormality, yeah I know it's possible. But &lt;em&gt;&quot;women of Mongolian race&quot;&lt;/em&gt; in particluar! I don't think so. I searched Google, got results about Asian women having &lt;em&gt;sideways&lt;/em&gt; vagina. The results don't seem very convincing either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back to question &amp;ndash; Is that &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/10/vagina-myths_n_6135820.html&quot;&gt;6 Crazy Things People Used To Believe About Vaginas&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol start=&quot;5&quot;&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;Sideways vaginas = a thing.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Think of this as early &quot;bro-natomy.&quot; The rumor that Asian women had&#xA;  sideways vaginas originated as racist humor amongst gentlemen visiting&#xA;  Chinese prostitutes in California brothels in the mid-1800s. The rumor&#xA;  was part of the larger cultural fetishizing of Asian women, and&#xA;  persisted through the Korean War, because some people enjoy their&#xA;  misogyny with a side of racism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100722143054AAMK6ws&quot;&gt;Yahoo Answers&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is it true that Chinese girls have horizontal vaginas?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user22914" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-10-29T10:38:51.960" LastActivityDate="2021-08-21T07:25:00.603" Title="Is there a subgroup of Asians that have slanting vaginas?" Tags="|biology|anatomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="15" FavoriteCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28185" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28179" CreationDate="2015-06-24T12:15:55.283" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.  Ingested pesticides are detectable in urine samples which is shown by studies such as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Pesticide residues in urine of adults living in the United States: reference range concentrations &lt;a href=&quot;http://centerforhealthyhousing.org/Portals/0/Contents/Article0234.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Robert H. Hill, 1995&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We measured 12 analytes in urine of 1000 adults living in the United States to establish reference range concentrations for pesticide residues. Reference range concentrations provide information about pesticide exposure and serve as a basis against which to compare concentrations in subjects who may have been exposed to pesticides.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Organophosphate pesticide residues in urine of farm workers and their children in Fresno County, California &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajim.10007/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Paul K. Mills, 2001&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Spot urine samples were obtained and analyzed for six metabolites of organophosphate (OP) pesticides using gas chromatography with flame photometric detection methods. The metabolites of OP pesticides included DMP, DEP, DMTP, DMDTP, DETP, and DEDTP&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Evaluation of Organochlorine Pesticide Residues in Human Urine from Rural&#xA;Population in Sudan &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jmaterenvironsci.com/Document/vol4/vol4_N6/133-JMES-514-Taha.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;M. E. M. Taha, 2013&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Out of 36 samples of human urine that were analyzed, DDE was detected in 4 out of 12 (33%) female and 3 out of 12 (25%) male.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Selected Pesticide Residues or Metabolites in Blood and Urine Specimens from a General Population Survey &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1569072/pdf/envhper00454-0079.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Robert S. Murphy, 1983&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In urine samples, about 79% of these tested had detectable levels of pentachlorophenol. Significant proportions of the samples had detectable levels of pesticide-related phenolic residues: 3,5,6- trichloro-2-pyridinol, 2,4,5-trichlorophenol and pnitrophenol.&#xA;  Detectable levels of dicamba and 2,4-D were less common. Residues of malathion-related&#xA;  metabolites in urine specimens occurred, but quite infrequently. Residues of carbamate pesticide metabolites in urine occurred in 2-4% of the tested samples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Organic produce consistently has lower levels of pesticide residues than does conventionally grown produce and a diet of organic produce reduces human exposure&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/130/5/e1406.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Joel Forman, 2012&lt;/a&gt;. A study has found a link between diet and exposure to specific pesticides, particularly synthetic organophosphorus pesticides. The researchers &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16451864&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Lu C, 2006 et al&lt;/a&gt; found that switching children from a conventional food diet to an entirely organic diet dropped the urinary levels of specific pesticide metabolites for malathion and chlorpyrifos to nondetectable levels in days. However, it's important to note that the pesticide levels these researchers detected during the conventional diet are &lt;a href=&quot;http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/120-a458/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;several orders of lower magnitude&lt;/a&gt; than the levels needed in animal experiments to cause neurodevelopmental or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10346990&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;other adverse health effects&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-06-25T07:04:33.453" LastActivityDate="2015-06-25T07:04:33.453" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28186" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-24T15:31:32.407" Score="7" ViewCount="834" Body="&lt;p&gt;Quite a while ago I stumbled upon a data set from an official US source (or at least a very credible one) listing the detailed accounts of &lt;strong&gt;deaths due to firearms&lt;/strong&gt; per year in the United States. Now, there are many sources for such data sets...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The outstanding part was that &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the data set had very clear distinction between homicide/suicide/accidental killings/killed in war/...&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;and the data set covered an amazing time span, reaching back to the time of the civil war.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The amazing fact the observing reader could extract was, that &lt;strong&gt;since the beginning of time (or rather since the beginning of the United States), more people died &lt;em&gt;within the US due to firearms&lt;/em&gt;, than &lt;em&gt;in all the wars the US ever fought combined&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;. Which is quite incredible, with the Civil War, World War I and II, Vietnam and Korean War, etc. etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sadly I can't seem to find this data source anymore, and thus the above claim remains somewhat arbitrary and ungrounded -- after all this was quite a while ago, and my memory could be tricking me. Or I might have made a mistake in the data analysis back then.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd like to substantiate the above claim (if possible) or refute it. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8851" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T19:56:46.737" Title="Deaths due to firearms in the US since Civil War" Tags="|united-states|guns|violence|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28187" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-24T17:56:56.707" Score="4" ViewCount="500" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are a number of places that claim that Google Chrome spies on its users:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21646188/is-google-chrome-spying-on-its-users&quot;&gt;Is Google Chrome spying on its users?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://surferzworld.com/2010/01/google-chrome-browser-spying/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Chrome browser is spying all of us&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.techarena.in/technology-internet/1298594.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Does Google Chrome spy on users?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm not so concerned about individual web sites doing tracking (even supercookies and such), and google tracking all of my searches (I think those are a given).  What I'd really like to know is if I change the default search engine (and don't use google.com), does Chrome send information about the searches I do and the sites I visit back to Google?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26521" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T11:33:46.427" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:52:37.083" Title="Does the Google Chrome browser spy on users?" Tags="|security|software|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ClosedDate="2015-06-24T18:15:18.527" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28189" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-25T04:08:27.180" Score="4" ViewCount="946" Body="&lt;p&gt;In this &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SpWuseQGys&amp;amp;feature=youtu.be&amp;amp;t=7m20s&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;TEDxVilnius talk entitled, Jew's Harp, Listen and You Will Hear It: Valentinas &amp;amp; Viaceslavas at TEDxVilnius&lt;/em&gt; the following claim is made&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But if we talk about Russia, in time of Stalinism &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jew&amp;#39;s_harp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jew's Harp&lt;/a&gt; in Russia was forbidden. Because of its close connection to shamanism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Stalin's Russia ban the instrument for its connection to shaminsm?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3835" LastActivityDate="2017-01-08T07:38:52.210" Title="Did Stalin's Russia ban Jew's Harp?" Tags="|russia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28195" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28201" CreationDate="2015-06-25T11:05:57.420" Score="1" ViewCount="1536" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/watch-evil-ghost-hurl-furniture-5945659&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; on The Mirror web-site.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Terrifying CCTV footage has emerged online of the moment an 'evil ghost' appears to attack a hotel by throwing around furniture in front of horrified witnesses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the bizarre clip, a man is seen standing in what looks like the hotel's lobby before he inexplicably makes a run for it out of the room.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So far, YouTube viewers seem pretty convinced by the footage, which was uploaded to the video site by Night Ghost House, but little information is available about the clip, including the location and when it was filmed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this staged? It looks pretty sophisticated, maybe it's from a Hollywood movie?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26825" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2023-08-17T17:45:10.550" Title="Did a poltergeist move furniture around in this CCTV footage?" Tags="|ghosts|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28196" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28153" CreationDate="2015-06-25T12:49:38.600" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Healy_(psychiatrist)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;David Healy&lt;/a&gt;, professor of psychiatry at Bangor University and  authority on side effects of psychiatric medications who has testified in numerous court cases involving suicides and homicides whose perpetrators were ingesting antidepressants, is on record to say, &quot;&lt;em&gt;Data on antidepressants and violence are much more scarce than data on suicide,&lt;/em&gt;&quot; and under oath testified to a judge, &quot;&lt;em&gt;We would need to know much more details&lt;/em&gt;&quot; (Healy is not opposed to psychiatric medications--he prescribes them to his own patients.). This suggests to me that the claims made in the question are false. The fact is, some studies show it makes some people twice as likely to have violent outbursts, but there is no real evidence and certainly no scientific studies linking them to the rise in mass shootings.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Their prior condition of mental illness greatly increases the probability that they will be or will have been on some form of medication, but it must be repeated, correlation does not necessarily indicate causation. These people had severe psychotic issues &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; they started taking meds, so the fact that they were on them or had a history of being on them may not be substantial. There are 30-40 million Americans who are prescribed antidepressants, and statistically speaking, virtually none of them commit mass murder-suicide. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26662" LastEditorUserId="37939" LastEditDate="2018-02-25T04:04:49.630" LastActivityDate="2018-02-25T04:04:49.630" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28198" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28180" CreationDate="2015-06-25T23:53:01.983" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short version&lt;/strong&gt;: Maybe, but the scientific literature is really bad for this. It also seems to depend on how long it takes to extract juice from a certain amount of fruit. The longer it takes, the more likely it has some impact.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long version&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, do different juicing methods affect anything about the juice they produce? There doesn't seem to be a literature on the effects of different juicers on nutrient content, but there is a modest one on the effect on flavours, juice yield, and amount of particulate in the juice. The main difference seems to be that cold pressing ends up extracting juice from only the flesh of the fruits, while &quot;hot pressing + maceration&quot; (which is an industrial process that seems similar to a blender or centrifugal method) extracts from seeds and/or skins as well. If there are nutrients that break down when heated, and are present in the flesh of the fruit, it stands to reason that cold pressing would recover them better. &lt;a href=&quot;http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jf020689m&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This paper&lt;/a&gt; has a good discussion of the effects in grapes, but doesn't address nutrition explicitly, only certain oils that affect the flavour.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&amp;amp;lr=&amp;amp;id=Jk-c4l3kb3EC&amp;amp;oi=fnd&amp;amp;pg=PR3&amp;amp;dq=cold%20press%20versus%20blend%20~juice&amp;amp;ots=ff11ip3f7G&amp;amp;sig=XNh_15-m9d3ofqow9asPhP2lKTk#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=cold%20press%20versus%20blend%20~juice&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; rather interesting book covers (starting around page 50), the different things that can affect flavour, colour, clarity, etc. of juice at small and medium production scales. Using a hot press (where the fruits are heated to ~60 degrees and possibly macerated before juicing) does have some effects. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Okay, so what sorts of nutrients might break down during hot pressing? &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20546391&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; paper shows that at least vitamin C (which is presumably a nutrient of interest in juicing) is prone to degradation at the temperature range used in hot pressing (~60 C). However, they exposed broccoli to 60 C temperatures for 10 minutes continuously to get that kind of effect, so it's unclear whether exposure during juicing would be long enough.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can a home juicer get that hot? While, a centrifugal juicer is basically a blender. I could not find any good information on the temperatures they reach (just a lot of unsourced health websites). However, there are definitely higher end blenders capable of bringing their contents to boiling or near boiling temperatures. &lt;a href=&quot;https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/20981/why-heat-soup-in-a-blender&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; Cooking SE question covers how to make soup using only a blender (heat by running on high), and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.blenderbabes.com/blender-babes-101/blender-reviews/vitamix-vs-blendtec/hot-soup-blendtec-vs-vitamix/#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; blender website advertises that you may be able to boil soups in some of its models. It stands to reason then that a lower-end blender should also heat its contents, even if it doesn't go quite as fast. Since it only needs to get up to 50 or 60 C to damage e.g. vitamin C, it might be able to do that.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308814612001938?np=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; paper, appears to show that pomegranates juiced via blender actually yield more citric acid than those juiced by press (tables 1b and 1c). While citric acid is not a nutrient, this shows that some compounds are better extracted via blender than press, so even if say, vitamin C, extraction were reduced, some other nutrients might be present in higher amounts (maybe essential oils from the seeds?).  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;So overall, what can be said is that&lt;/strong&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There doesn't seem to be a real, public, study that looks at these effects directly. The juicing industry (and therefore juice science) is very concerned about how your juice looks, tastes, and smells, but doesn't seem to care about whether its nutrition is affected by the extraction method.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is a plausible mechanism of action for a centrifugal juicer to degrade nutrients: spinning stuff fast and hitting it over and over makes it hot, and hot stuff tends to degrade certain types of nutrients (though if it gets &lt;em&gt;too&lt;/em&gt; hot, the nutrients can become stable again).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;There is also a plausible mechanism of action for a centrifugal juicer to get more nutrients: spinning stuff fast and hitting it over and over can extract things from more parts of the fruit than cold pressing it can.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just a maybe. It does seem like in general, cold pressed juice has better &quot;flavour&quot; properties, but hot pressing yields more actual juice though. So maybe that can help you decide what to buy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastEditorUserId="18008" LastEditDate="2015-06-26T21:09:52.870" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T21:09:52.870" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28199" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="2952" CreationDate="2015-06-26T05:49:01.707" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, subway magnetic fields might not cause hard drive data corruption and erasure based on the measurements taken for magnetic field strengths on the electrically powered trains which operate on alternating current such as the New York city subway and the Baltimore Washington commuter train. The measurements taken on the Baltimore Washington commuter train in 1991 showed 25 hertz magnetic field strengths as high as 500 milligauss in passenger areas at &lt;a href=&quot;http://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi/000005EP.PDF?Dockey=000005EP.PDF&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;seat height&lt;/a&gt;. This is calculated as 500 milligauss equals to 0.5 Gauss (0.5 Oe) which is very minimal compared to the required magnetic field strength of 5000 gauss and above needed to erase data from hard drives.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The highest magnetic field '30 milligauss' measured in Toronto subway is actually 0.03 Gauss (0.03 Oe) which is also below the magnetic fields needed to erase data from hard drives. Magda Havas et. al. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.magdahavas.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/04_Havas_transit.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2004&lt;/a&gt; reported that, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The highest magnetic fields were found in subways (mean 30 mG, range 3 to 100 mG), followed by streetcars (mean 30 mG, range 2 to 100 mG), buses (mean 11 mG, range 1 to 50 mG) and the GO-train (mean 2 mG, range 1.2 to 2.8 mG). The magnetic field increased with acceleration and deceleration and varied with seat location and this was most obvious in subways and streetcars.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the data is stored, a strong interfering magnetic field could reverse the orientation of some or all of the grains in a bit cell, possibly converting a zero to a one or vice versa causing corruption of the data in the hard disk.  The ability of the magnetic material to resist this phenomenon is known as coercivity and modern magnetic media with Cobalt based coatings in disk drives can be on the order of 1000 times higher coercivity than earlier used storage media &lt;a href=&quot;http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jap/69/11/10.1063/1.347501&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Yang, 1991&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;DC magnetic field exposure at and above 255 Gauss causes undesired but temporary performance degradation in the hard drives tested.  Exposures up to 305 Gauss caused no loss of data, and no permanent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/critical-environment/magnets-in-the-data-center-dangerous-for-data/71328.fullarticle&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;damage&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two different models of hard drives were tested in non-time varying magnetic fields of various strengths. The impact of the magnetic flux exposure was quantified by performing data transfer rate benchmark testing, data integrity tests, predictive testing, and surface scanning on the drives before, during and after exposure.  The drives were found to be largely immune to magnetic flux densities up to approximately 250 Gauss (0.025 Tesla).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The earliest hard disks (IBM’s 1956 model) used iron oxide as the magnetic material. The low coercivity of iron compounds explains that there was little resistance to data corruption from external magnetic fields. Iron compounds were commonly used in the floppy disks of the 1980’s and 1990’s. Floppy disks are vulnerable to damage from even relatively weak magnets &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techhive.com/article/116572/article.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Keizer, 2004&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Small rare earth magnets are commonly used in consumer products, and their usage is increasing. For example, the iPad 2 product by Apple Inc contains 31 magnets, 21 in the device’s folding cover, and another 10 in the iPad itself. Yet the servers, laptops and hard drives in proximity to all these iPad magnets are not &lt;a href=&quot;http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=6651655&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;failing&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The only magnets powerful enough to remove all of the data from a magnetic hard drive are laboratory products known as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archives.gov/frc/flyers/e-media-destruction-faqs.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;electromagnetic media degaussers&lt;/a&gt;. These devices operate above 5000 Oe. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="14582" LastEditDate="2015-06-26T10:12:10.333" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T10:12:10.333" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28200" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5809" CreationDate="2015-06-26T09:48:27.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, expired unsealed contacts may be unsafe to use beyond their recommended time limits due to contamination causing eye infection.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion of Dart et al's 2008 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18597850&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; was that daily disposable lenses are associated with less severe disease.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The risk of microbial Keratosis has not been reduced in users of Daily disposable (DD) and silicone hydrogel contact lens. However, vision loss is less likely to occur in DD than in reusable soft CL users.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Results of a 2014 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robin_Chalmers/publication/262045952_Age_behavior_environment_and_health_factors_in_the_soft_contact_lens_risk_survey/links/53fdd0980cf22f21c2f84bc9.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;survey&lt;/a&gt; support previous work which reported that young adult wearers are more prone to higher risk taking and that risk taking may be associated with noncompliance with lens care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wearers who are at high risk because of a high-density living environment could benefit from daily disposable lenses that require less care.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sterility of expired and sealed soft contact lenses was investigated in a study published in The South African Optometrist regarding the safety of expired lenses. The results of that study shows some contamination in expired lens packs, but the researchers were unable to make any broad claims due to a very small sample size. Their goal was to initiate further research into the quality and utility of expired lenses than to answer the question authoritatively.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further the authors report in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/260256468_The_South_African_Optometrist_Investigating_the_shelf_life_of_disposable_soft_contact_lenses&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2008 study&lt;/a&gt; that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Fifty-four  SCLs  were  tested  for  the  presence  of  fungal (27  samples)  and  bacterial  (27  samples)  contamination. These samples included both expired and unexpired SCLs that were either blister packed or vial packed. A small percentage of the lenses tested positive for contamination.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3272197/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Stapleton&lt;/a&gt; et al's research into risk factors for contact lens related microbial keratitis (MK) in Australia found that the risk factors included overnight use, poor case hygiene, smoking, internet purchase, less than 6 months’ wear experience and higher socio-economic group. If safety is to be maximized in contact lens wear, practitioners should ensure their patients wear their lenses according to the recommended wearing schedule, are properly instructed in lens handling, lens case hygiene and replacement, and patients should be aware of the importance of good hand hygiene and the increased risk associated with overnight use. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A reduction in morbidity may be possible through recognition of appropriate risk factors, such as hygiene, specifically attention to storage case hygiene as both case cleaning and replacement reduces the risk of severe disease in daily contact lens use.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-06-26T10:38:22.543" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T10:38:22.543" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28201" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28195" CreationDate="2015-06-26T10:27:04.330" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;The CCTV footage was mistaken with an actual movie called Bangunan (2015). This is the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe_5qfulIZM&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;official trailer&lt;/a&gt; of the movie:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MKQbX.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26836" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-06-28T19:48:30.953" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T19:48:30.953" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28202" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6645" CreationDate="2015-06-26T11:34:18.623" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, Human fetus cannot feel pain at 20 weeks per three research studies mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Per conclusions of the 2005 &lt;a href=&quot;http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=201429&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;JAMA study&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evidence Synthesis&lt;/strong&gt; Pain perception requires conscious recognition or awareness of a noxious stimulus. Neither withdrawal reflexes nor hormonal stress responses to invasive procedures prove the existence of fetal pain, because they can be elicited by nonpainful stimuli and occur without conscious cortical processing. Fetal awareness of noxious stimuli requires functional thalamocortical connections. Thalamocortical fibers begin appearing between 23 to 30 weeks’ gestational age, while electroencephalography suggests the capacity for functional pain perception in preterm neonates probably does not exist before 29 or 30 weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusions&lt;/strong&gt; Evidence regarding the capacity for fetal pain is limited but indicates that fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester. Little or no evidence addresses the effectiveness of direct fetal anesthetic or analgesic techniques. Similarly, limited or no data exist on the safety of such techniques for pregnant women in the context of abortion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While the presence of thalamocortical fibers is necessary for pain perception, their mere presence is insufficient—this pathway must also be functional. It has been proposed that transient, functional thalamocortical circuits may form via subplate neurons around midgestation, but no human study has demonstrated this early functionality. Instead, constant SEPs appear at 29 weeks’ PCA, and EEG patterns denoting wakefulness appear around 30 weeks’ PCA. Both of these tests of cortical function suggest that conscious perception of pain does not begin before the third trimester. Cutaneous withdrawal reflexes and hormonal stress responses present earlier in development are not explicit or sufficient evidence of pain perception because they are not specific to noxious stimuli and are not cortically mediated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Per conclusions of the 2006 study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1440624/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;'Can fetuses feel pain?'&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The neuroanatomical system for pain can be considered complete by 26 weeks' gestation. A developed neuroanatomical system is necessary but not sufficient for pain experience. Pain experience requires development of the brain but also requires development of the mind to accommodate the subjectivity of pain. The absence of pain in the fetus does not resolve the morality of abortion but does argue against legal and clinical efforts to prevent such pain during an abortion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Per conclusions of the 1999 study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrlc.org/archive/abortion/Fetal_Pain/BJOGfetalpain1999.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fetal pain: implications for research and practice&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The physical system for nociception is present and functional by 26 weeks and it seems likely that the fetus is capable of feeling pain from this stage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists' &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.rcog.org.uk/globalassets/documents/guidelines/rcogfetalawarenesswpr0610.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Fetal Awareness -- Review of Research and Recommendation for Practice (March 2010)&lt;/a&gt; says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In reviewing the neuroanatomical and physiological evidence in the fetus, it was apparent that&#xA;  connections from the periphery to the cortex are not intact before 24 weeks of gestation and,&#xA;  as most neuroscientists believe that the cortex is necessary for pain perception, it can be&#xA;  concluded that the fetus cannot experience pain in any sense prior to this gestation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a statement in 2012:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acog.org/~/media/Departments/Government%20Relations%20and%20Outreach/20120618DCAborStmnt.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ACOG STATEMENT ON HR 3803&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) opposes HR 3803, the District of&#xA;  Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, and other legislative proposals that are not based&#xA;  on sound science or that attempt to prescribe how physicians should care for their patients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Fetal Pain&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  The medical profession produced a rigorous scientific review of the available evidence on fetal pain in &lt;em&gt;Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)&lt;/em&gt; in 2005&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. The review concluded that fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester. No new studies since the publication of the JAMA paper have changed this dominant view of the medical profession.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;References:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  1. Lee SJ, Ralston HJP, Drey EA, Partridge JC, Rosen MA. Fetal pain: A systematic multidisciplinary&#xA;  review of the evidence. JAMA 2005; 294: 947-954.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-06-27T09:37:20.470" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T09:37:20.470" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28203" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28181" CreationDate="2015-06-26T14:25:00.547" Score="15" Body="&lt;p&gt;Asians have vaginas that are the same as people of European descent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Inspired by Oddthinking's suggestion of using Chinese Sex Ed or biology textbooks, I decided to use something slightly more convenient: Wikipedia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Japanese and Chinese editions of Wikipedia use the same diagrams for vaginas as those for European languages. They don't use a parallel set of diagrams for European and Asian vaginas.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%98%B4%E9%81%93&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Chinese edition of Wikipedia about vaginas&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OCp8t.png&quot; width=&quot;200&quot; height=&quot;200&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;女性內生殖器縱剖圖標示vagina位置即是陰道。&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google translation: Female genital longitudinal sectional view of the position that is marked &quot;vagina&quot; vagina. [Quotation marks added by me.]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kVU6q.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Diagram from Chinese Wikipedia&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;女性生殖系統的器官，中心部份為陰道&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google translation: Organs, the central part of the female reproductive system, vaginal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also has two photos of actual vaginas. One of them is &lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vulva_and_pubic_hair.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vulva_and_pubic_hair.jpg&lt;/a&gt; , which is also used on the English edition of Wiktionary along with other Wikimedia sites. The other is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Azvag.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Azvag.jpg&lt;/a&gt; , which has English-language labels.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the &lt;a href=&quot;https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%86%A3&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Japanese edition of Wikipedia about vaginas&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qv5AW.png&quot; alt=&quot;Diagram from Japanese Wikipedia&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;女性器の断面図&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Google translation: Cross-sectional view of the female genital.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Plus a photo of an actual vagina, &lt;a href=&quot;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Female_genitalia_inner.JPG?uselang=en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Female_genitalia_inner.JPG?uselang=en&lt;/a&gt; , which has a description in multiple European and Asian languages, and which is used on the Finnish edition of Wikipedia amongst others.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To satisfy those who distrust Wikipedia, I did a google image search for &quot;女性器の断面図&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One page I came across was &lt;a href=&quot;http://cancerinfo.tri-kobe.org/pdq/summary/japanese.jsp?Pdq_ID=CDR0000062964&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://cancerinfo.tri-kobe.org/pdq/summary/japanese.jsp?Pdq_ID=CDR0000062964&lt;/a&gt; , a page about Endometrial cancer treatment:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Yi0E7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Anatomical diagram from a non-Wikipedia source&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the question seems to use the word &quot;Mongolian&quot; to mean &quot;Asian&quot;, (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Mongolian&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a rather dated term for native speakers&lt;/a&gt;), I may as well include literal Mongolians as well. The Mongolian word for vagina is &quot;үтрээ&quot; according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://bolor-toli.com/dictionary/word?search=%D2%AF%D1%82%D1%80%D1%8D%D1%8D&amp;amp;selected_lang=4-1&amp;amp;see_usages=true&amp;amp;see_variants=true&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Bolor Dictionary&lt;/a&gt; (Mongolia typically uses Cyrillic for its language nowadays). Doing a search for &quot;үтрээ&quot; came up with a diagram from a page titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emegteichuud.mn/content/55758.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Нууц хэсэгтэйгээ танилцаарай бүсгүйчүүдээ!&lt;/a&gt;, which Google Translate translates as &quot;Explore the women inside khesegteigee!&quot; (Google left &quot;khesegteigee&quot; untranslated - it corresponds to the word &quot;хэсэгтэйгээ&quot;). The web site domain name is Mongolian (.mn), the content of the page is Mongolian, and the text of the diagram is almost certainly Mongolian, because the first word is &quot;эмэгтэй&quot;, which is the &lt;a href=&quot;http://bolor-toli.com/dictionary/word?search=%D1%8D%D0%BC%D1%8D%D0%B3%D1%82%D1%8D%D0%B9&amp;amp;selected_lang=4-1&amp;amp;see_usages=true&amp;amp;see_variants=true&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Mongolian word for woman&lt;/a&gt;. There's nothing unusual about this diagram indicating that Mongolian women have different anatomy from people of European descent.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MINnV.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MINnV.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Mongolian language diagram&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ideally, I'd like to cite a source that states that it's theoretically impossible to have a sideways vagina, or that there's no basis in fact to the claim that Asians have sideways vaginas, but maybe biologists think it a claim not worth the effort of debunking.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2016-10-30T07:47:53.377" LastActivityDate="2016-10-30T07:47:53.377" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28204" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-26T14:39:15.857" Score="6" ViewCount="744" Body="&lt;p&gt;I recently came across &lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/XvII9.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;a post on Imgur&lt;/a&gt; claiming shaving a Siberian husky exposes it to &quot;sunburn, skin cancer, insects, and parasites&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OcJGG.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Example of claim&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;[...] the layers of your pet's coat help to protect them from overheating and sunburn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&amp;amp;ion=1&amp;amp;espv=2&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8#q=don%27t%20shave%20huskies&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claim seems to be quite well spread&lt;/a&gt;. However I can't seem to find any sources that verify the claim. All sources I can find seem to be enthusiast sites which I feel might be rife with myths and hearsay.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does shaving huskies expose them to sunburn and overheating?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25619" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-06-26T15:18:34.980" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T15:18:34.980" Title="Is shaving Siberian Huskies harmful?" Tags="|hair|dogs|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28206" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28186" CreationDate="2015-06-26T19:51:40.180" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Obviously, I don't have your data set, either.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, if you look at a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/united-states&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;couple&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://usconservatives.about.com/od/capitalpunishment/a/Putting-Gun-Death-Statistics-In-Perspective.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;different&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://heedinggodscall.org/content/pfctoolkit-10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;places&lt;/a&gt;, you can see an annual death rate of ~10 per 100,000 (or about 32,000 per year with our current population) over the past several years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If this rate is consistent, which those sources seem to indicate, that means that per decade since the founding of the country (which I'll call 1790 for when the first &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_United_States#Historical_population&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;census&lt;/a&gt; was done) has been about 2,600,000 (see table for math).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;Census     Population    Avg/Yr of Decade    Firearm Death/Yr    Death Rate      Total deaths &#xA; 1790       3,929,214       4,618,849            462               10/100k         2,543,936 &#xA; 1800       5,308,483       6,274,182            627        &#xA; 1810       7,239,881       8,439,167            844        &#xA; 1820       9,638,453      11,252,237          1,125        &#xA; 1830      12,866,020      14,967,737          1,497        &#xA; 1840      17,069,453      20,130,665          2,013        &#xA; 1850      23,191,876      27,317,599          2,732        &#xA; 1860      31,443,321      35,000,846          3,500        &#xA; 1870      38,558,371      44,373,790          4,437        &#xA; 1880      50,189,209      56,584,488          5,658        &#xA; 1890      62,979,766      69,595,967          6,960        &#xA; 1900      76,212,168      84,220,332          8,422        &#xA; 1910      92,228,496      99,125,017          9,913        &#xA; 1920     106,021,537     114,612,081         11,461        &#xA; 1930     123,202,624     127,683,597         12,768        &#xA; 1940     132,164,569     141,745,184         14,175        &#xA; 1950     151,325,798     165,324,487         16,532        &#xA; 1960     179,323,175     191,267,551         19,127        &#xA; 1970     203,211,926     214,878,866         21,488        &#xA; 1980     226,545,805     237,627,839         23,763        &#xA; 1990     248,709,873     265,065,890         26,507        &#xA; 2000     281,421,906     295,083,722         29,508        &#xA; 2010     308,745,538     308,745,538         30,875        &#xA;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total &lt;em&gt;military&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.civilwar.org/education/civil-war-casualties.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;deaths&lt;/a&gt; in the US Civil War were about 620,000 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.civilwar.org//education/higher-number.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;some&lt;/a&gt; place this as high as 850,000).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total &lt;em&gt;military&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.civilwar.org/education/civil-war-casualties.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US deaths&lt;/a&gt; in WWII were about 405,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Total &lt;em&gt;military&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.civilwar.org/education/civil-war-casualties.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;US deaths&lt;/a&gt; in WWI were about 116,000.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Other conflicts rank below on that chart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just summing the top three wars we have been involved in, total &lt;em&gt;military&lt;/em&gt; casualties come to about 1,141,000 (or maybe 1,371,000, if you use the larger &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.civilwar.org//education/higher-number.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;guess&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Caveats&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The conclusions above are based on reverse extrapolation from data available from the last couple decades - which probably are pretty poor when it comes to the first several decades (at least) of the United States' existence&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;None of the data I have found separate firearm deaths &lt;em&gt;among the military&lt;/em&gt; from the &lt;em&gt;general population&lt;/em&gt; in times of peace&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;None of the data I can find separate &lt;em&gt;civilian&lt;/em&gt; deaths by firearm from &lt;em&gt;military&lt;/em&gt; deaths by firearm during times of war&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All of the data I can find puts the &lt;em&gt;suicide&lt;/em&gt; rate at ~60% of the total &lt;em&gt;death&lt;/em&gt; rate by firearm - IOW, of those about 2,600,000 firearm deaths, 1,560,000 have been suicides&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To echo @&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/users/165/djclayworth&quot;&gt;DJClayworth&lt;/a&gt;, all the deaths in the Civil War happened &lt;em&gt;in the United States&lt;/em&gt; - which will wildly skew the total data (since you'd need to remove those ~620,000 deaths from the total of 2,600,000, which brings the total down to &lt;em&gt;really&lt;/em&gt; only about 1,980,000 - still larger than the deaths from all wars we've been involved with, but a much much lower ratio thereto)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h3&gt;Conclusion&lt;/h3&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Based on the generic claim, &amp;quot;since the beginning of ... the United States ... more people died within the US due to firearms, than in all the wars the US ever fought combined&amp;quot; is at least &lt;strong&gt;plausible&lt;/strong&gt;, if not actually &lt;strong&gt;correct&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="637" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T19:56:46.737" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28209" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5809" CreationDate="2015-06-26T21:57:23.093" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I was unable to find any information on the safety of using 2-week (or longer rated) contact lenses past their date, the contact lens manufacturer Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/18/business/johnson-johnson-settles-lawsuits-over-contact-lenses.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;settled a lawsuit in 2001&lt;/a&gt; for labelling identical contact lenses as &quot;dailies&quot; as well as &quot;2-week&quot; versions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson has agreed to pay as much as $860 million to settle&#xA;  lawsuits accusing the company of misleading consumers into prematurely&#xA;  throwing away disposable Acuvue contact lenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The suits contended that the company drove up sales of its 1-Day&#xA;  Acuvue soft lenses by advising consumers to use them just once, even&#xA;  though the product is identical to regular Acuvue lenses, which may be&#xA;  worn as long as two weeks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Under the settlement, Johnson, based in New Brunswick, N.J., would pay&#xA;  as much as $840 million in cash and coupons to consumers, according to&#xA;  papers filed Monday in state court in New Jersey. The agreement also&#xA;  includes money for new eye exams and $20 million in fees for&#xA;  consumers' lawyers, whose suits were combined into a class action.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The existence of the lawsuit was also verified this time by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.investor.jnj.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=63794&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson itself&lt;/a&gt; on its corporate site. It officially denied that the two forms of contact lenses are identical, but settled the lawsuit anyway:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The class action, filed in Camden, New Jersey in 1996, involves&#xA;  allegations that Vistakon's marketing of Acuvue® and 1-Day Acuvue®&#xA;  lenses created the misleading impression among consumers that the less&#xA;  expensive 1-Day Acuvue® lens was different from the Acuvue® lens and&#xA;  should not be used for the same wear schedule as the Acuvue® lens,&#xA;  when in fact both lenses are medically suitable for the same wear&#xA;  schedules. The action did not question the quality or safety of the&#xA;  lenses.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson and Vistakon deny these allegations. The Court has&#xA;  not ruled on either the merits of plaintiffs' claims or the defenses,&#xA;  and the settlement in no way implies or acknowledges any wrongdoing by&#xA;  Johnson &amp;amp; Johnson or Vistakon. &quot;This was a complex case with difficult&#xA;  issues,&quot; said plaintiffs' counsel Peter L. Masnik. &quot;We are pleased&#xA;  that the parties were able to negotiate a significant resolution that&#xA;  provides valuable benefits to the class members and promotes eye&#xA;  health by payment towards eye examinations.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, at least in the case of this specific brand (Acuvue) of contact lenses, it would be safe to wear the daily version of the lenses for up to 2 weeks, as the products were identical. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastActivityDate="2015-06-26T21:57:23.093" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28210" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="43752" CreationDate="2015-06-26T23:38:00.177" Score="11" ViewCount="877" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/7zTCgMPZRuo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;teaser video&lt;/a&gt; that has been viewed over 5 million times and taken seriously by many media outlets (e.g. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33269116&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the BBC&lt;/a&gt;), Lexus International make a bold claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Lexus has created a real, rideable hoverboard.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The description mostly hypes an associated project &quot;Slide&quot; and offers ways to follow it. The short video itself implies something more specific:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Someone wearing casual trainers rides a regular skateboard over concrete which looks like a street or skate park, then steps off&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They step towards a slim &quot;hoverboard&quot; which appears to be floating about 1cm above the ground (which appears to be ordinary concrete), and is rocking slightly, emitting some sort of exhaust&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;They appear to be stepping on to it, &lt;strong&gt;as if it can be ridden above concrete as easily and casually as the earlier skateboard&lt;/strong&gt;, then the footage ends&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm rather skeptical... However, this does appear to be a genuine promotion by a major technology company, being taken seriously by mainstream media.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that Lexus have a prototype &quot;real, rideable hoverboard&quot; that looks like the sleek item in the video and that someone can just step on and ride on regular concrete wearing regular trainers? (Even if only for a few seconds?)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wired.com/2015/06/lexus-hoverboard-slide/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wired article&lt;/a&gt; claims the device is real but only works on magnetized surfaces using similar technology to maglev trains - however, the article appears to be based on expert speculation, not evidence. It does, however, allude to a conversation with a Lexus spokesperson Maurice Durand who allegedly confirmed this is part of an ad campaign for an as-yet not announced car, and does not involve new or novel technology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above linked BBC article also mentions magnets and superconductors, and suggests the video was filmed in a &quot;modified skatepark in Barcelona&quot;, which is consistent with the idea that it is real but has similar limitations to maglev i.e. needing a special surface, but doesn't confirm anything about the hoverboard's usability or limitations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="10630" LastEditorUserId="48266" LastEditDate="2019-04-09T23:58:13.017" LastActivityDate="2019-04-10T00:02:21.863" Title="Did Lexus create a &quot;real, rideable hoverboard&quot;?" Tags="|technology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28211" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28212" CreationDate="2015-06-27T04:34:17.433" Score="15" ViewCount="14398" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard a few people claim this. Have any reputable studies concluded that homosexuals live, on average, significantly shorter than heterosexuals?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26841" LastEditorUserId="34347" LastEditDate="2020-08-03T21:04:03.557" LastActivityDate="2020-08-03T21:04:03.557" Title="Do homosexuals have a shorter life expectancy than heterosexuals?" Tags="|sexuality|life-expectancy|lgbt|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28212" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28211" CreationDate="2015-06-27T06:09:23.123" Score="32" Body="&lt;p&gt;The source cited in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/homosexual-couples-less-healthy-than-married-heterosexuals-study-finds&quot;&gt;article comment&lt;/a&gt; (which has a anti-homosexual slant) references &lt;a href=&quot;http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/3/657.abstract?ijkey=a053fe12590020df4ae0b6e6ba7c5175ce7578d0&amp;amp;keytype2=tf_ipsecsha&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;, which does in fact show that the life expectancy of gays and bisexuals in Vancouver in 1996 was 8-20 years shorter than all men (note the large confidence interval). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The article was intended to show the effects of HIV on the life expectancy of gay men. One notable factor was the relative difficulty of getting HIV treatment in a timeframe when being homosexual was still considered socially unacceptable, resulting in the high death rates measured. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Based on census and vital statistics data, the mid- period Vancouver&#xA;  male population was estimated to be 180 215 and the total number of&#xA;  male deaths in Van- couver from 1987 to 1992 was observed to be 13&#xA;  106, of which 609 or 5% were attributable to HIV/AIDS either as the&#xA;  underlying or antecedent cause of death...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...CONCLUSION: In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20&#xA;  years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men.&#xA;  If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that&#xA;  nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not&#xA;  reach their 65th birthday. Under even the most liberal assumptions,&#xA;  gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life&#xA;  expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the&#xA;  year 1871.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the authors have published a rebuttal to the claims made by many anti-homosexual sources based on their work in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/30/6/1499.full#ref-1&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...it appears that our research is being used by select groups in US2&#xA;  and Finland3 to suggest that gay and bisexual men live an unhealthy&#xA;  lifestyle that is destructive to themselves and to others. These&#xA;  homophobic groups appear more interested in restricting the human&#xA;  rights of gay and bisexuals rather than promoting their health and&#xA;  well being.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The aim of our research was never to spread more homophobia, but to&#xA;  demonstrate to an international audience how the life expectancy of&#xA;  gay and bisexual men can be estimated from limited vital statistics&#xA;  data...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...In contrast, if we were to repeat this analysis today the life&#xA;  expectancy of gay and bisexual men would be greatly improved. Deaths&#xA;  from HIV infection have declined dramatically in this population since&#xA;  1996. As we have previously reported there has been a threefold decrease in mortality in Vancouver as well as in other parts of&#xA;  British Columbia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The authors then refute the conclusion made by the anti-homosexual links, by statistically defining what their conclusions are, and how &quot;gays are bad&quot; is not a valid conclusion to draw from the paper:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is essential to note that the life expectancy of any population is&#xA;  a descriptive and not a prescriptive mesaure.5 Death is a product of&#xA;  the way a person lives and what physical and environmental hazards he&#xA;  or she faces everyday. It cannot be attributed solely to their sexual&#xA;  orientation or any other ethnic or social factor. If estimates of an&#xA;  individual gay and bisexual man's risk of death is truly needed for&#xA;  legal or other purposes, then people making these estimates should use&#xA;  the same actuarial tables that are used for all other males in that&#xA;  population.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T06:09:23.123" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28213" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28224" CreationDate="2015-06-27T06:18:19.623" Score="21" ViewCount="2989" Body="&lt;p&gt;A image posted recently on 8fact &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/8fact/photos/a.121125554748254.1073741828.120709694789840/371872963006844/?type=1&amp;amp;theater&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;claimed&lt;/a&gt; that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A woman had a heart attack on plane, when the stewardess asked if there was a doctor on board, 15 stood up, they were on their way to a cardiology conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/rUDme.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the following story true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T13:45:00.670" Title="Did 15 doctors save a woman who had a heart attack on a plane?" Tags="|cardiology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28214" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28211" CreationDate="2015-06-27T06:24:08.330" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, there are only few authoritative studies comparing the life expectancy of homosexuals and heterosexuals since death cannot be attributed solely to any group's sexual orientation, ethnic or social factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Per results of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/26/3/657.abstract?ijkey=1c8675ed078c2cd76df7e1a71876afa820e52a51&amp;amp;keytype2=tf_ipsecsha&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;R.S. Hogg et. al.&lt;/a&gt; 1997 study which assessed how HIV infection and AIDS impacts on mortality rates for gay and bisexual men,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The probability of living from age 20 to 65 years for gay and bisexual men ranged from 32% for the 3% scenario, to 59% for the 9% scenario. These figures were considerably lower than for all men where the probability of living from 20 to 65 was 78%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusion of the study was&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday. Under even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However the same research group commented about their aim in 'Gay life expectancy revisited'&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/30/6/1499.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2001&lt;/a&gt; that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It is essential to note that the life expectancy of any population is a descriptive and not a prescriptive measure. Death is a product of the way a person lives and what physical and environmental hazards he or she faces everyday. It cannot be attributed solely to their sexual orientation or any other ethnic or social factor.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If estimates of an individual gay and bisexual man's risk of death is truly needed for legal or other purposes, then people making these estimates should use the same actuarial tables that are used for all other males in that population. Gay and bisexual men are included in the construction of official population-based tables and therefore these tables for all males are the appropriate ones to be used. Overall, we do not condone the use of our research in a manner that restricts the political or human rights of gay and bisexual men or any other group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Per Susan D. Cochran's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4289448/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2015&lt;/a&gt; study investigating the possibility that men who have sex with men (MSM) and women who have sex with women (WSW) may be at higher risk for early mortality associated with suicide and other sexual orientation associated health risks, the conclusion was &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The elevated suicide mortality risk observed among WSW partially confirms public health concerns that sexual minorities experience greater burden from suicide-related mortality.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Per Morten Frisch's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2636618/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2009&lt;/a&gt; research to study overall mortality in a demographically defined, complete cohort of gay men and lesbians to address recent claims of markedly shorter life spans among homosexual persons, the conclusion was&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Despite recent marked reduction in mortality among gay men, Danish men and women in same-sex marriages still have mortality rates that exceed those of the general population. The excess mortality is restricted to the first few years after a marriage, presumably reflecting preexisting illness at the time of marriage. Although further study is needed, the claims of drastically increased overall mortality in gay men and lesbians appear unjustified.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Per Cameron, Playfair, and Wellum &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.familyresearchinst.org/2012/01/how-long-do-homosexuals-live/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1994&lt;/a&gt; study counting obituaries in various gay community publications to calculate the average life expectancy for homosexuals, the conclusion was homosexual men and women had a shorter life span than heterosexual men and women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there were several &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.familyresearchinst.org/2012/01/how-long-do-homosexuals-live/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;inconsistencies&lt;/a&gt; in this convenience sample study calculated using data from a selected sample to generalize to an entire population. Obituaries in gay community newspapers do not provide a representative sampling of the entire community. This is evident in the fact that only only 2% of the Cameron group's obituaries were for lesbians. In addition, community newspapers tend not to print obituaries for people who are not actively involved in the local gay community, those who are in the closet, and those whose loved ones simply don't submit an obituary to a local gay newspaper. The Cameron group systematically excluded an accurate estimate of the life span of gay men and lesbians from the sample By restricting their analysis to obituaries in gay newspapers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="16889" LastEditDate="2015-06-27T22:07:29.423" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T22:07:29.423" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28215" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19001" CreationDate="2015-06-27T07:00:28.193" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes (Note: Air flow needed through the charcoal for the claimed benefits). Per 'Science of Bamboo Charcoal: Study on Carbonizing Temperature of Bamboo Charcoal and Removal Capability of Harmful Gases' &lt;a href=&quot;http://jhs.pharm.or.jp/data/48(6)/48_473.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2002&lt;/a&gt;, the conclusions of the researchers were “charcoal can be used effectively as a countermeasure against Sick Building Syndrome or as a deodorant.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The benzene, toluene, indole, skatole and nonenal removal effect were the highest for the bamboo charcoal carbonized at 1000°C and tended to increase as the carbonizing temperature of the bamboo charcoal increased. The removal effect for ammonia was the highest on the bamboo charcoal carbonized at 500°C. It is concluded that the effective carbonizing temperature is different for each chemical, and a charcoal must be specifically selected for use as an adsorbent or deodorant.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-06-27T08:45:56.570" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T08:45:56.570" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28216" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14547" CreationDate="2015-06-27T07:11:23.827" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes. Per Xuguang Guo et al's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3990543/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2014&lt;/a&gt; study (Dr Honglei Chen is the part of this research group), &quot;compared to nondrinkers, drinking coffee or tea without any sweetener was associated with a lower risk for depression, adding artificial sweeteners, but not sugar or honey, was associated with higher risks. Frequent consumption of sweetened beverages, especially diet drinks, may increase depression risk among older adults, whereas coffee consumption may lower the risk.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In this large study of U.S. older adults, frequent consumption of sweetened beverages was associated with a modestly higher risk of depression, and coffee consumption with a slightly lower risk. As these drinks are commonly consumed, confirmation and further investigations are warranted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T07:11:23.827" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28217" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-27T07:34:34.050" Score="9" ViewCount="1935" Body="&lt;p&gt;Many programmers have heard of the phrase &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;yak shaving&lt;/a&gt;. In real life, do yaks literally get shaved?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://english.stackexchange.com/a/255212/1420&quot;&gt;This answer&lt;/a&gt; to a question about shaving dogs has someone claiming that yaks do get shaved:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Whatever you call it, removing the hair from a yak can be hazardous to your health!&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/MeN4A.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Photo of a person and a yak&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;with an additional comment by the answerer&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rare, but not non-existent ... :-)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A page talking about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tengri.co.uk/yak-wool/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;yak wool&lt;/a&gt; seems to suggest they don't literally get shaved:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mongolian yak live at high altitudes and endure harsh winter&#xA;  conditions. This means they produce a robust and unique wool that can&#xA;  be as soft as cashmere, warmer than merino wool, odour-resistant,&#xA;  breathable and less prone to pilling and fluffing than other woollen&#xA;  fibres. This precious wool can be sourced only by hand-combing each&#xA;  yak individually, once a year, when the yak shed their winter coats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Do yaks literally get shaved, especially if living in their normal environment?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:38:10.210" LastActivityDate="2016-02-07T21:52:02.207" Title="Do yaks get shaved?" Tags="|zoology|agriculture|clothing|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28219" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19804" CreationDate="2015-06-27T07:40:35.717" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;A combined tire tread pattern lowers hydroplaning risk in different modes of vehicle movements. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers have concluded in 'Effectiveness of Tire-Tread Patterns in Reducing the Risk of Hydroplaning' &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/245563295_Effectiveness_of_Tire-Tread_Patterns_in_Reducing_the_Risk_of_Hydroplaning&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2009&lt;/a&gt; that combined groove pattern would help in lowering hydroplaning risk sufficiently in different modes of vehicle movements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The following six forms of tire-tread groove patterns are considered: (a) longitudinal groove pattern, (b) transverse groove pattern, (c) V-groove pattern with 20° V-cut, (d) V-groove pattern with 40° V-cut, (e) combined groove pattern consisting of longitudinal grooves and edge horizontal grooves, and (f) combined groove pattern consisting of longitudinal grooves and 20° V-cut grooves. The analysis shows that a parameter computed as the groove volume per tread area of the tire is a useful performance indicator to assess the effectiveness of various tire-tread groove patterns in reducing vehicle hydroplaning risk. The significance of V-shape grooves is discussed. For vehicular operations involving both forward and lateral movements, the analysis indicates that a combined pattern would provide a good compromise in lowering hydroplaning risk sufficiently in different modes of vehicle movements.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T07:40:35.717" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28224" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28213" CreationDate="2015-06-27T11:16:21.807" Score="26" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, if BBC news is to be trusted.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/merseyside/3359149.stm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gran's heart attack on jet with medics&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When the stewardess put out the call: &amp;quot;Is there a doctor on the plane&amp;quot;, 15 cardiologists stood up to help 67-year-old Dorothy Fletcher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The doctors were en route to Orlando for a heart conference.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T12:10:42.213" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28225" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6742" CreationDate="2015-06-27T14:34:53.460" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, most recent studies give an equal or slightly older date for the Y Chromosome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://haplogroup-a.com/Ancient-Root-AJHG2013.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;An African American Paternal Lineage&#xA;Adds an Extremely Ancient Root to the&#xA;Human Y Chromosome Phylogenetic Tree&lt;/a&gt; (full text pdf)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We report the discovery of an African American Y chromosome that carries the ancestral state of all SNPs that defined the basal portion of&#xA;  the Y chromosome phylogenetic tree. We sequenced ~240 kb of this chromosome to identify private, derived mutations on this lineage,&#xA;  which we named A00. We then estimated the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) for the Y tree as 338 thousand years&#xA;  ago (kya) (95% confidence interval ¼ 237–581 kya). &lt;strong&gt;Remarkably, this exceeds current estimates of the mtDNA TMRCA&lt;/strong&gt;, as well as those of&#xA;  the age of the oldest anatomically modern human fossils.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The numbers presented here may be an overestimate for the age of this haplotype, this paper estimates:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v22/n9/full/ejhg2013303a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The ‘extremely ancient’ chromosome that isn’t: a forensic bioinformatic investigation of Albert Perry’s X-degenerate portion of the Y chromosome&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We show that the authors ignored previously inferred Y-specific rates of substitution, incorrectly derived the Y-specific substitution rate from autosomal mutation rates, and compared unequal lengths of the novel Y chromosome with the previously recognized basal lineage. &lt;strong&gt;Our analysis indicates that the A00 lineage was derived from all the other lineages 208 300 (95% CI=163 900–260 200) years ago.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This 2013 paper summarizes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://science.sciencemag.org/content/341/6145/565.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Low-Pass DNA Sequencing of 1200 Sardinians Reconstructs European Y-Chromosome Phylogeny&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The evolution of human populations has long been studied with unique sequences from the nonrecombining, male-specific Y chromosome (see the Perspective by Cann). Poznik et al. (p. 562) examined 9.9 Mb of the Y chromosome from 69 men from nine globally divergent populations—identifying population and individual specific sequence variants that elucidate the evolution of the Y chromosome. Sequencing of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA allowed comparison between the relative rates of evolution, &lt;strong&gt;which suggested that the coalescence, or origin, of the human Y chromosome and mitochondria both occurred approximately 120 thousand years ago.&lt;/strong&gt; Francalacci et al. (p. 565) investigated the sequence divergence of 1204 Y chromosomes that were sampled within the isolated and genetically informative Sardinian population. The sequence analyses, along with archaeological records, were used to calibrate and increase the resolution of the human phylogenetic tree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastEditorUserId="17572" LastEditDate="2017-01-10T13:27:50.837" LastActivityDate="2017-01-10T13:27:50.837" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28226" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28022" CreationDate="2015-06-27T15:24:49.427" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=lDUxJJ1_50cC&amp;amp;pg=PA166&amp;amp;lpg=PA166&amp;amp;dq=benjamin%20spock%20%22recanted%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=rg_4ulr8w7&amp;amp;sig=MpP1kyaJmSmBtDuX0Hgzyya_8Iw&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=W72OVbiOLYapgwT04IXIDA&amp;amp;ved=0CDAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=benjamin%20spock%20%22recanted%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr. Spock On Parenting: Sensible, Reassuring Advice for Today's Parent&lt;/a&gt; at page 165:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Then, a dozen years ago, there was a report that I had disavowed my previous philosophy, a report that resulted indirectly from a &lt;em&gt;Redbook&lt;/em&gt; press release...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The newspaper editors and newscasters who were under the impression that I was permissive interpreted the press release to mean that I had now turned my back on that philosophy because it produced spoiled children.  This brought me endless requests for interviews from publications all over the world wanting to know why I recanted.  I denied that I had ever been permissive or ever changed my mind.  But it is impossible to counter an incorrect report. I'm still asked the same old questions almost every week of my life.  So you can see why I'm touchy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course, I have changed many things since &lt;em&gt;Baby and Child Care&lt;/em&gt; was first published. But my basic philosophy about discipline and management of children has not changed...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similarly, in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/7419447/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;3 June 1983 newspaper article on page 7 of The Baytown Sun&lt;/a&gt; from Baytown, Texas:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As he celebrates hs 80th birthday, Dr. Benjamin Spock, the famous pediatrician whose teachings have influenced the raising of millions of children around the world, wants the record set straight once and for all — he has never advocated permissive child rearing. &amp;quot;Since 1968, I have teen hounded and raunted by the accusations of those who say that I advocate permissive child rearing,&amp;quot; Dr. Spock says. &amp;quot;And some other people&#xA;claim that I renounced my permissive philosophy and turned strict. If 'permissive' means allowing children to have and do and say almost anything they want (which is what most people think it means), then I never had such a philosophy. In fact, I believe the opposite; I'm bothered — really bothered — when children are allowed to be rude or demanding or uncooperative.&amp;quot; Dr. Spock says false accusations began soon after his indictment for anti- Vietnam War activities. Some foes, he said, accused him of advocating &amp;quot;instant gratification&amp;quot; a charge that showed they had not read his book &amp;quot;Baby and Child Care.&amp;quot; Then, eight years ago, a press release heralding a forthcoming article by Spock was headlined &amp;quot;Why are there so many bratty children? Dr. Spock blames the experts.&amp;quot; This evoked further misunderstanding. Dr. Spock says &amp;quot;The newspaper editors and newscasters who were under the impression that I was permissive interpreted the press release to mean that I had turned my back on that philosophy because it produced spoiled children. I denied that I had ever been permissive or that I had changed my mind. But it's impossible to counter an incorrect report. &amp;quot;I'm still asked the same old question every week of my life. You can see why I'm on the defensive,&amp;quot; Dr. Spock says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T14:59:51.490" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28227" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28233" CreationDate="2015-06-27T17:36:40.857" Score="10" ViewCount="1487" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've heard this claim many times, including this CNN report from 1999 which claims that &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9905/12/children.lights/index.html?_s=PM:HEALTH&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;Night-light may lead to nearsightedness&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...research in chicks [demonstrated] that the relative proportions of light and dark during the 24-hour day greatly affected eye growth and refractive development.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even low levels of light can penetrate the eyelids during sleep, keeping the eyes working when they should be at rest. Taking precautions during infancy, when eyes are developing at a rapid pace, may ward off vision trouble later in life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although they admit that it may be a correlation, not a causation, the study's senior author still makes the following recommendation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Still, it would seem advisable for infants and young children to sleep at night without artificial lighting in the bedroom until further research can evaluate all the implications of our results.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Have there been more recent, more definitive studies to support or debunk this commonly-held belief?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26521" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T19:19:15.580" Title="Do nightlights during childhood cause myopia later in life?" Tags="|medical-science|children|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28229" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17077" CreationDate="2015-06-27T20:28:34.113" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;This has happened several times, but I think more often than not it's a stunt.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 1963, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amandfmmorningside.com/wpgc_larry_justice.html&quot;&gt;&quot;Barefoot&quot; Larry Justice&lt;/a&gt; who had worked for about six months at WPGC in Washington DC, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.amandfmmorningside.com/wpgc_aircheck_1962_08_06th_larry_justice.html&quot;&gt;locked himself in his booth&lt;/a&gt; and repeatedly played the novelty track 'Prez Conference' by Len Weinreb. Listeners really did come to the station to offer support. The issue was a pay raise and contract he had been promised, and he did get them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;WPGC's website verifies that this was a planned event. Larry, now retired in Florida, confirms that while the program director knew about it beforehand, the general manager didn't -- but went along with it because he liked dramatic stuff. The story is told at WPGC's website where you can hear the scoped aircheck tape of Larry's &quot;takeover&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In March 2013, the sound collage group Negativland ran the tape on their weekly KPFA radio program &quot;Over the Edge&quot;. They have done many shows about radio history, featuring period airchecks.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26853" LastActivityDate="2015-06-27T20:28:34.113" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28230" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-28T01:38:13.023" Score="9" ViewCount="1451" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this on Facebook today in the wake of the SCOTUS decision on gay marriage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/l1Ndk.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While the world celebrates gay marriage victory:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Israel, you can marry anyone as long as he/she not Palestinian. :&#xA;According to the 2003 Citizenship Law, citizens of Israel who marry&#xA;Palestinians will have to emigrate in order to live with their&#xA;spouses. &lt;strong&gt;Their spouses will not be granted residency or any rights&#xA;within Israel.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The practical meaning of the law is that Palestinian citizens of&#xA;Israel who marry Palestinian non-citizens (from territories controlled&#xA;by Israel), won’t be able to live with their wives or husbands.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;If they want to unite, they will have to leave the country.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;By doing so, the law achieves two racist objectives against members of&#xA;the Palestinian minority:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(a) it prevents non-Jews from entering the country and applying for&#xA;permanent residency or citizenship, and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(b) it makes it harder for Israeli Palestinian citizens to build&#xA;families in their own community or in their own country, thus&#xA;encouraging them to leave Israel. Palestinian citizens (not including&#xA;those under military occupation) comprise roughly 20 percent of&#xA;Israel’s population. : On the other hand: the Israeli Law of Return&#xA;gives the right to any person from anywhere on earth to come to Israel&#xA;and claim citizenship only based on that person belonging to the&#xA;Jewish faith regardless of their connection to that land. And of&#xA;course that person can marry anyone except a Palestinian.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19053" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T19:37:03.117" Title="Are there discriminatory laws against Israelis marrying Palestianians?" Tags="|law|israel|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28231" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28230" CreationDate="2015-06-28T02:58:30.703" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;The answer seems to be &lt;strong&gt;Yes, mostly&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that I'm examining the claim:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;According to the 2003 Citizenship Law, citizens of Israel who marry Palestinians ... will not be granted residency or any rights within Israel &lt;em&gt;[on the basis of the marriage]&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Further note that by Palestinians they are referring to current residents of &quot;Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza Strip&quot;, except for the Israeli settlements in these regions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think the &quot;no rights&quot; part was just hyperbole (as is much of the rest of the claim's context as DVK notes in his answer).  But, it does seem to be the case that they will not be granted permanent residency or citizenship based on the marriage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3152651.stm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;BBC : UN blasts Israeli marriage law&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On 31 July the Israeli parliament approved a law preventing Palestinians married to Israelis from gaining Israeli citizenship or residency.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Excerpt from the actual UN notes:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=2050&amp;amp;LangID=E&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;COMMITTEE ON THE ELIMINATION OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION CONCLUDES SIXTY-THIRD SESSION&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Also during this session, the Committee adopted a declaration calling upon Israel to revoke its Temporary Suspension Order of May 2002, enacted into law as the Nationality and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) on 31 July 2003, &lt;strong&gt;which suspends for a renewable one-year period, the possibility of family reunification, subject to limited and discretionary exceptions, in the cases of marriages between an Israeli citizen and a person residing in the West Bank or Gaza,&lt;/strong&gt; and to reconsider its policy with a view to facilitating family unification on a non-discriminatory basis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/citizenship_law.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Excerpts from actual Law as translated on Israel Official site:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;area&quot; - any one of the following: &lt;strong&gt;Judea and Samaria, and the Gaza Strip&lt;/strong&gt;;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;inhabitant of an area&quot; - including anyone residing in the area, even though he is not registered in the population register of the area, and &lt;strong&gt;excluding the inhabitant of an Israeli settlement&lt;/strong&gt; in the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the period in which this law shall remain in force, despite what is said in any legal provision, including article 7 of the Citizenship Law, &lt;strong&gt;the Minister of the Interior shall not grant the inhabitant of an area citizenship on the basis of the Citizenship law, and shall not give him a license to reside in Israel on the basis of the Entry into Israel Law&lt;/strong&gt;, and the Area Commander shall not grant a said inhabitant, a permit to stay in Israel, on the basis with the security legislation in the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;This law shall remain in force until the end of a year from the day on which it is published, but the Government is entitled, with the approval of the Knesset, to prolong its validity by order, from time to time, for a period that shall not exceed one year on each occasion.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note: I'm not sure when it was most recently extended.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastEditorUserId="17572" LastEditDate="2015-06-30T11:29:29.923" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T11:29:29.923" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28233" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28227" CreationDate="2015-06-28T04:21:20.127" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Do nightlights during childhood cause myopia later in life?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No, probably not&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This was actually pretty interesting, it's like a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cpalms.org/Uploads/resources/71431/1/4/docs/Lesson.pptx&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;go to&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=vd8JAAAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA268&amp;amp;lpg=PA268&amp;amp;dq=1220%20night%20light%20myopia%20or%20nearsightedness&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=6ovrUAIbzg&amp;amp;sig=avmQf_DA8ZBaFKz-Yd8KQuk5g_Y&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=f3OPVZqOKs_eoATjlYBY&amp;amp;ved=0CDsQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=1220%20night%20light%20myopia%20or%20nearsightedness&amp;amp;f=false&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;example&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2917080/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;confounding&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it was originally found that the amount of light correlated with myopia.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.macalester.edu/courses/econ108/myopia.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Myopia and ambient lighting at night&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt; (pdf)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The prevalence of myopia and high&#xA;  myopia during childhood was strongly&#xA;  associated with ambient light exposure during&#xA;  sleep at night in the first two years after&#xA;  birth.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But, follow up research shows no correlation, so what happened?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v404/n6774/full/404143a0.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vision: Myopia and ambient night-time lighting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Myopia is a common affliction (one in four adult Americans is near-sighted1), and juvenile-onset myopia is believed to be due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors2. Results from animal experiments indicate that light cycles may affect the development of myopia3, 4, and Quinn et al. claim to have extended these to humans5. They reported a strong association between childhood myopia and night-time lighting before the age of two: there were five times more children with myopia among those who slept with room lights on than in those who slept in the dark, and an intermediate number among those sleeping with a dim night-light5. However, &lt;strong&gt;we have been unable to find a link between night-time nursery lighting and the development of myopia&lt;/strong&gt; in a sample of schoolchildren.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It turns out there are two underlying correlations. First myopic parents typically have myopic children. Second, myopic parents are more likely to use night time lighting for their children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v404/n6774/full/404144a0.html&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Vision: Myopia and ambient night-time lighting&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Quinn et al. report a strong association between myopia in children and their exposure to night-time lighting during their first two years1. We have been unable to confirm this surprising result, but &lt;strong&gt;we find that myopic parents are more likely to employ night-time lighting aids for their children. Moreover, there is an association between myopia in parents and their children&lt;/strong&gt;2, 3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T04:21:20.127" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28236" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8376" CreationDate="2015-06-28T07:59:47.063" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the use of burglar alarm as a target hardening crime prevention tactic and micro level approach for crime prevention is supported by the study ‘The Impact of Home Burglar Alarm Systems on Residential burglaries'.   In a report submitted to alarm Industry Research and educational foundation by &lt;a href=&quot;http://airef.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/airef91808_fullreport.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Lee, PHD&lt;/a&gt; the question “do home burglar alarms have the deterrent effect on residential burglary?”  was answered by analyzing the phenomenon between the gradual decrease of residential burglaries and the increase of residential burglar alarms in Newark, N.J.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Prior studies suffer from some methodological shortcomings since in most of those earlier studies, the methods of evaluation met minimal standards, had short followup, and reliable control groups were generally absent &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popcenter.org/library/reading/pdfs/scp2_intro.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Clarke, 1995&lt;/a&gt;; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.popcenter.org/library/crimeprevention/volume_04/01-EckWeisburd.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Weisburd, 1997&lt;/a&gt;. This study resolved several issues present in the earlier studies. However several limits inevitably subsisting in this study are also discussed in the report.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The conclusions of the study were,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The continual decrease of the number of residential burglaries was closely and statistically associated with the consistent increase of burglar alarm installations in Newark, N.J. Chi-square and changed proportion statistics supported the crossing relation was statistically significant and persistent over the years, which indicated that burglar alarms impacted on the decrease of residential burglary incidents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spatial analyses suggested that burglar alarms had some positive impact on residential burglaries on the city level by showing that hotspots of burglar alarms did not overlap those of residential burglaries.  Finally, the applied WDQ analysis revealed that no indication of spatial displacement of residential burglary due to the increase of burglar alarm installations was observed and that there was a positive and substantial impact of burglar alarms on the progressive decrease of residential burglaries over the years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T10:04:06.063" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28238" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="6932" CreationDate="2015-06-28T12:01:47.700" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;I like the other answers, but I like the question so I wanted to give a more complete and thorough answer.  I'd have to say, though I much prefer religious folk contorting their holy books to match science rather than trying to contort science to match their holy books.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So firstly, as Oddthinking points out in his answer, the age of the universe is not some 15 3/4 billion years old. Rather about (13.798±0.037)×10^9 years (as calculated with data &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space.com/24054-how-old-is-the-universe.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;measured in 2013 by Planck&lt;/a&gt; (space observatory).  As I understand it there is a high degree of concordance on this and this number is not likely to be off by much.  Now this would actually be impressive if it wasn't so obviously &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testing_hypotheses_suggested_by_the_data&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;post hoc&lt;/a&gt;.  Which makes it kind of funny that's it's as far off as it is, even with such a contrived explanation, they couldn't have gotten closer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But my spine needs some chilling so let's take a closer look...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Day 1&lt;/strong&gt; (note this is RSV)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3 And God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first obvious problem is there is the earth.  So actually light did exist before the stars.  It seems the first photons formed after about 1 micro second. God's a fast talker.  But that pesky earth...  But there is what's called the photon epoch which lasts from about 10 seconds after the big bang until about 380,000 years.  Matter like hydrogen, helium and some lithium was created in this time but no stars yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jBJ9P.png&quot; alt=&quot;universe formation graphic&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Day 4&lt;/strong&gt; (I know 2 comes next, God doesn't)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So on the fourth day God made two great lights (a single star and a.. moon?) and a lesser light (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.space.com/26078-how-many-stars-are-there.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;~10^29&lt;/a&gt; &amp;quot;greater light&amp;quot;s). We are firmly still in the first 8 billion years here. Note that stars are still being born and dying but the first stars will be in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://phys.org/news/2005-09-ferreting-stars.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;first billion years&lt;/a&gt;.  Star formation is actually quite beautiful, even if there are some artificial colors in there. Note that some elements like gold, &lt;a href=&quot;http://phys.org/news/2013-07-earth-gold-colliding-dead-stars.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;can only be produced in the death of a star&lt;/a&gt;. So stars were born and died before our planet ever formed.  So there is that pesky earth...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/qlf0c.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;stellar nebula&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Day ?&lt;/strong&gt; (I have no idea what day to call this, it's all over the place.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the next thing that happens is the formation of our star(day 4). This would have happened about 9 billions years after the big bang &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.windows2universe.org/our_solar_system/formation.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;or about 4.6 billion years ago&lt;/a&gt;. A &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protoplanetary_disk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;protoplanetary disk&lt;/a&gt; would have formed around the new sun which much of would collapse into planets (planets like Venus would probably be day 4, considered stars).  The earth would have formed from this (day 1).  There is &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Moon&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;various hypotheses&lt;/a&gt; about the origin of the moon but I believe the most accepted hypothesis right now states that a planet, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theia_(planet)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Theia&lt;/a&gt; smashed into the proto-earth. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The collision&lt;/a&gt; ejected the earth's crust into orbit, some of which consolidated into the moon(day 4).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ozpyw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;protoplanetary disk&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Day 2&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;6 And God said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There would have been some Hydrogen and Helium in the earth from the start, this doesn't tend to stick around. But, as the earth cooled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/%7Ecfjps/1400/atmos_origin.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;our atmosphere would have formed&lt;/a&gt; (day 2) then clouds would have formed and rained down on the earth forming the oceans(day 1).  This seems to have been about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geology.wisc.edu/zircon/Wilde_et_al.PDF&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;4.4 billion years ago&lt;/a&gt;(pdf).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qgeb4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;early earth&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Day 5&lt;/strong&gt; Sorry day 3, you have to wait until later.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;20 And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ok the Bible isn't interested in the origin of life, that stuff's boring. So skipping forward a few billion years of microscopic life and ignoring the birds for now, we'll come back to them, we find those watery swarms.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vendian/ediacaran.php&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Animal life seems to have arose&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/sdornbos/www/PDF%27s/Chen%20et%20al.%202002.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;around 575 million years ago&lt;/a&gt;(pdf) and indeed it was in the ocean. But things really got kickin' about 30 million years later in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3861885/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cambrian radiation&lt;/a&gt; (a period of about 20 million years where rapid diversification of animal life took place).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jVSFh.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;early cambrian life&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Day 3&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 And God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, a third day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Skipping over the dry land bit as it was covered in the formation of oceans. We're interested in the plants. But we need to ignore the talk of seeds, fruit and trees.  Following a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian%E2%80%93Ordovician_extinction_event&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;series of extinction events&lt;/a&gt; we are brought to the Ordovician era where we see the first plants. Plants will continue diversifying and evolving until flowers emerge after even mammals.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/v24az.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;first land plants&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Day 6&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[note that the following is a brief simplification and overview of life since the Cambrian radiation to give you a feel for it. It's not as well cited just linked up to Wikipedia. It's uncontroversial so I hope there's no problem].&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordovician%E2%80%93Silurian_extinction_events&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Some more extinction events&lt;/a&gt; bring us to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silurian&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Silurian&lt;/a&gt;. In the Silurian we get diversification of jawed and bony fish and the first terrestrial animals, some arthropods. And then the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devonian&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Devonian&lt;/a&gt; where we get land plants and further diversified fish. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Devonian_extinction&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another extinction event&lt;/a&gt;, then the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Carboniferous&lt;/a&gt; brings us amphibians. Then after &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous_rainforest_collapse&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an extinction event&lt;/a&gt; we get the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Permian&lt;/a&gt; where we have the mammals and reptiles, this is capped off with &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the earth's largest extinction event&lt;/a&gt; finally killing off the trilobites.  Then we find ourselves in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triassic&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Triassic&lt;/a&gt; where we see the first seeds, corals, and a lot of different (what we might recognize as) dinosaurs.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triassic%E2%80%93Jurassic_extinction_event&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another extinction event&lt;/a&gt; and we are in the well known &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jurassic&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Jurassic&lt;/a&gt; where you get the (true) dinosaurs.  In a lovely turn of events no major extinction event happens and we are brought into the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cretaceous&lt;/a&gt;, finally it starts looking a bit more like home with the first flowering plants, recognizable insects like butterflies. Then we have &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_boundary&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;probably the most well known extinction event&lt;/a&gt; and it brings us to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleogene&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Paleogene&lt;/a&gt; where mammals and birds diversify and we see the first grass.  Again, not characterized by a major extinction event we find our selves in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neogene&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Neogene&lt;/a&gt;, birds and mammals continue to diversify and we see the first hominids.  This is followed by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Quaternary&lt;/a&gt; period which takes us through the last 2.6 million years of the earth's history and of course the development of humans and the domestication of cattle.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/fPGi7.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Day 6&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T12:01:47.700" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28239" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-28T12:45:21.987" Score="46" ViewCount="11538" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's a wide belief between Islamists in my country that in the West, men are not allowed to marry more than one woman even if all parties (both women and the man) accept it,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As Islamists view it, this is a restriction of freedom, because those people are not hurting anybody.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the USA, is this the case?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20763" LastEditorUserId="20763" LastEditDate="2015-06-30T13:32:33.237" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T17:57:07.020" Title="Is it prohibited to marry more than one woman in US?" Tags="|united-states|islam|marriage|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28240" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1382" CreationDate="2015-06-28T14:26:05.353" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;I'm willing to bet infant mortality had something to do with it. If you have a person who died at 70, and a person who died shortly after childbirth, and those 2 are your sample basis, the average life expectancy is 35. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I know this source is dubious, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm4838a2.htm&lt;/a&gt; . This is a CDC document that covers the infant mortality rate in the US since 1900. It states that the infant mortality rate was over 10% in the US as of 1900. That's going to be a major drain on life expectancy. &quot;And women dying in childbirth is going to lower numbers too&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26865" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T14:26:05.353" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28242" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28239" CreationDate="2015-06-28T14:51:29.743" Score="49" Body="&lt;p&gt;Bigamy - marrying another person while still being married - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigamy#By_country&quot;&gt;is illegal in the United States&lt;/a&gt;. You can receive fines and / or prison time, depending on the state. For example, in Utah, Bigamy is a &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title76/Chapter7/76-7-S101.html&quot;&gt;Felony of Third Degree&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, meaning you can have &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/PE/htm/PE.12.htm&quot;&gt;between 2 and 10 years in prison&lt;/a&gt; (see Sec. 12.34.). &lt;a href=&quot;http://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title76/Chapter7/76-7-S101.5.html#76-7-101.5(1)&quot;&gt;Child bigamy second degree&lt;/a&gt;, and so is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/PE/htm/PE.12.htm&quot;&gt;2 to 20 years&lt;/a&gt; (see Sec. 12.33.).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/12/us/12raid.html&quot;&gt;It is also enforced&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Polygamy is different to Bigamy - it is broader. It includes bigamy, and is not used in legal context. Polygamy also doesn't have to be illegal. You can hold a &lt;em&gt;religious&lt;/em&gt; ceremony and declare yourself married to 3, 5, 10 - as many people as you want. As long as you only legally marry one of them, you've not committed a crime. This is because of the difference between a legal marriage and a religious marriage in the US. However, living with them, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;amp;rct=j&amp;amp;q=&amp;amp;esrc=s&amp;amp;source=web&amp;amp;cd=2&amp;amp;cad=rja&amp;amp;uact=8&amp;amp;ved=0CCEQFjAB&amp;amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Farchive.freep.com%2Farticle%2F20140417%2FFEATURES01%2F304170139%2Fadultery-illegal-21-states&amp;amp;ei=sjaRVafKNcS1UdbHl9gP&amp;amp;usg=AFQjCNErOl63vVFFgXCwLo-eGXtDzjopEw&amp;amp;sig2=c5cUg-_tnzq7CoaRs_KClQ&quot;&gt;committing adultery&lt;/a&gt; is illegal in 21 states, but it often seems to be that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;no prosecution for adultery shall be commenced except upon complaint of the husband or wife&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Despite that, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.christianpost.com/news/us-woman-faces-jail-time-for-adultery-67120/&quot;&gt;This site&lt;/a&gt; says that someone is having to argue for them to enforce a law (which seems a little strange), and the post suggests he might not win (saying &quot;could be prosecuted&quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;US law was also &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law&quot;&gt;based on English Law (3rd Paragraph)&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The principle that a person could only be married singly, not plurally, existed since the times of King James I of England in English law, upon which United States law was based.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1878 court case &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_v._United_States#Decision&quot;&gt;Reynolds v. United States&lt;/a&gt; was an important test case.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22682" LastEditorUserId="262" LastEditDate="2015-06-30T17:57:07.020" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T17:57:07.020" CommentCount="20" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28243" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28244" CreationDate="2015-06-28T15:57:54.480" Score="19" ViewCount="69683" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a claim that Roberto Nevilis invented homework in 1905 (sic). And it doesn't seem to be a recent meme - there are tons of pics for this meme claiming:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/oxYGh.png&quot; alt=&quot;&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The person who invented homework was an Italian teacher named Roberto Nevilis. He invented Howework (sic) in 1905 (sic) as a punishment for his sutdents. (sic)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To what extent is this claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23505" LastEditorUserId="30596" LastEditDate="2017-09-05T14:55:55.023" LastActivityDate="2017-09-05T15:09:18.157" Title="Is Roberto Nevilis the inventor of homework?" Tags="|education|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28244" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28243" CreationDate="2015-06-28T17:32:49.740" Score="37" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homework#History_of_homework&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Homework was around before 1905&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In 1901, the California legislature passed an act that effectively abolished homework&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So homework was around in 1901, which is before 1905.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think you mean 1095.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of websites seem to claim this, but the only ones that actually reference their source direct to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.answers.com/Q/Who_invented_homework#ixzz1m8n6X3v9&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wiki Answers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Scientists believed that Roberto Nevilis from Italy started homework in 1095. He was a school teacher in Venice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems a little dodgy for a few reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Scientists believed&quot;&lt;/em&gt; - surely it would be Historians? What Science is being done to determine it here? And why is it believed not believe? It seems a little made up.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;&quot;Roberto Nevilis&quot;&lt;/em&gt; - there is nothing online about him except for sources similar to Wiki Answers (which I wouldn't say counts as a source). Roberto is an Italian name, but Nevilis seems to be made up. I checked with a number of Last Name sites, &lt;a href=&quot;http://forebears.io/surnames/nevilis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;and only one found this surname&lt;/a&gt;, from a single person in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This seems to be getting more and more terse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now, education in Italy in 1095 was probably very minimal. In 1095 &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1095#Events&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Pope was organising the first crusade&lt;/a&gt;, and an &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Italy#History&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;organised education system wasn't created untill 1859&lt;/a&gt;. While it is likely that there was some schooling (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.educationengland.org.uk/history/chapter01.html#01&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;based on English History&lt;/a&gt;) there was very little:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Education was still largely about vocational training and most pupils were still intending monks or priests, though 'there was probably an occasional extension, and there are certainly some recorded cases of the education of young members of royal and noble families'. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that the Romans did have schools, but by 1095, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ushistory.org/civ/6f.asp&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Roman empire had well and truly fallen&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is likely that there was education, but probably not schools in the same way. Instead, nobility would have been taught in their homes, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sixwives.info/henry-viii-education.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;by tutors&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Henry VIII's education benefited from the instruction of many tutors&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there would have been little concept of homework from that time because all work was done at home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that homework was invented because of the expense of the presence of tutors also falls down here - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_richest_royals&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;royals typically have a lot of money&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, there is a photograph attached to the quote. The image is of &lt;a href=&quot;http://iagenweb.org/winneshiek/Diaries/Bailey1890-92.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Burritt Haynes&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.google.com/search?tbs=simg:CAES7AEa6QELEKjU2AQaCggACAMIFwg9CEIMCxCwjKcIGmAKXggDEiiyGbEZtRm2GcgOzw7dDrQZsxn3BME6xDrDOsI67SSgLsUu0jqnJZ8uGjCK9bYgI5b1n8J-PTTIhPyE9iMnqDnMQtJSSkx1ERABHhTCVBA6OUPkJTOszQ9Ll1gMCxCOrv4IGgoKCAgBEgQLAdUHDAsQne3BCRpRChEKD2JsYWNrIGFuZCB3aGl0ZQoICgZwZXJzb24KCwoJaGFpcnN0eWxlCgsKCWdlbnRsZW1hbgoYChZtb25vY2hyb21lIHBob3RvZ3JhcGh5DA&amp;amp;q=roberto%20nevilis&amp;amp;tbm=isch&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=BBSRVYjsHcn6UpW7kKgI&amp;amp;ved=0CDAQsw4&amp;amp;biw=1920&amp;amp;bih=927&amp;amp;safe=high#imgrc=k6eaUd39v8FqyM%3A&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;found on this reverse image search&lt;/a&gt;), and he is from Winneshiek County, Iowa. So not even Italian. Also, it's a photograph. Not a painting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, I doubt the claim made here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22682" LastEditorUserId="22682" LastEditDate="2017-09-05T15:09:18.157" LastActivityDate="2017-09-05T15:09:18.157" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28245" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28239" CreationDate="2015-06-28T21:57:28.260" Score="51" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is an aspect of this that is overlooked by the question and the existing answers.  In most US states, there are no laws regarding people &lt;em&gt;living as if they were married&lt;/em&gt; without being legally married.  (Such laws are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/03/17/living-together-law/24888487/&quot;&gt;on the books&lt;/a&gt; in a few states, but they are not enforced, and would likely be struck down as unconstitutional if challenged in court.)  It is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-04/unmarried-couples-living-together-is-new-u-s-norm&quot;&gt;very common&lt;/a&gt; for monogamous couples to live together for years before getting married, or never get married at all.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in practice, &lt;strong&gt;people can and do practice polygamous lifestyles&lt;/strong&gt;.  The practice of polygamy without legal recognition is commonly called &lt;em&gt;polyamory&lt;/em&gt;, and it is widely practiced, as evidenced by the large number of references that can be found about the legal and emotional challenges faced by people who practice it.  Advocates of polyamory &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.morethantwo.com/polyamory.html&quot;&gt;define and distinguish it&lt;/a&gt; from other types of extralegal relationships.  &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-polyamorists-next-door/201401/the-five-most-common-legal-issues-facing-polyamorists&quot;&gt;This page&lt;/a&gt; lists some of the challenges they face due to lack of legal recognition.  In many ways, these are similar to the challenges faced &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/27/us/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage.html?_r=0&quot;&gt;until just a few days ago&lt;/a&gt; by homosexual couples.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21793" LastEditorUserId="21793" LastEditDate="2015-06-28T22:26:54.500" LastActivityDate="2015-06-28T22:26:54.500" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28247" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19171" CreationDate="2015-06-29T04:26:16.270" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;'Pseudo-translation as a Subset of the Literary System: a Case Study' by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://ejournals.library.ualberta.ca/index.php/TC/article/view/21671&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;author&lt;/a&gt; Maryam Mohammadi Dehcheshmeh concluded in 2013 that 'the Letter of Charlie Chaplin to his daughter Geraldine' was one of the most famous Iranian pieces of 'pseudo-translations'. The original writer Farajollah Saba has claimed the letter's authorship in 2012.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Pseudo-translations as classified by Tahir Gurcaglar (2010) are a type of purported translated text even as there is no original text for them. The text is not the original but rather an English translation which was found by analysis focus including the content and the terminology of the text but not the syntax.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Farajollah Saba, in an interview with Serat News on May 23, 2012 speaks that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story happened at the Rošanfekr Magazine. More than 30 years ago, we decided to have a column called Fantasy imitated from westerners. We wanted to test our ability. Every week, we published a fantasy letter in the column. The title “Fantasy” at the top of the column clarified everything. After a year, I noticed that the content of the column had gotten repetitive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One day, in the afternoon, I asked my colleagues, “Why has the content got repetitive?” They said: “If you think you can write better, go ahead!” Well, I was the chief editor and I didn’t want to give up, so I accepted the challenge. I went to my office and wondered what I should write. Suddenly the picture of Charlie Chaplin and his daughter, published in a magazine on my desk, attracted my attention. In the interim, the publisher was persistent in finalizing the pages as soon as possible. Finally, he didn’t print Fantasy at the top of the column and this led to my troubles all these years.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After publishing this letter, the trouble began: “It was recorded on tapes, declaimed on different occasions, recited on the radio and television frequently, and sold in front of the Tehran University. Nobody paid attention to me insisting that it was not Charlie Chaplin’s. The worst thing is that it was translated into Turkish, German, and English. Even in some assemblies I attended, this letter was recited, and when I told them it had been born out of my imagination, they laughed at me and said “What are you talking about? We’ve seen its English version!”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T04:26:16.270" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28251" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1382" CreationDate="2015-06-29T11:16:08.157" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I found quite interesting paper from 1994 by Michael R. Haines&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nber.org/papers/h0059&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Estimated Life Tables for the United States, 1850-1900&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to that paper, life expectancy in US 1850 was 38 years. I would say that 30 years for all world at 1900 is maybe bit low, but plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What else could we see from life table of US 1850? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Child mortality has high impact. 23% of newborns were dying during 1 year.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Median life expectancy was higher than average life expectancy.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Mode of age of death (excluding children) was much higher, than average or median.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If someone reached age 20, he had 90% probability to reach age 30.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26878" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T11:16:08.157" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28252" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-29T12:13:30.423" Score="20" ViewCount="4154" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1198596/My-daughter-13-got-pregnant-using-hotel-swimming-pool-claims-mother.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt; story says that a woman went to court as her daughter got pregnant by swimming.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A mother is suing a hotel claiming her teenage daughter fell pregnant simply from using a hotel swimming pool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Magdalena Kwiatkowska says the 13-year-old conceived after coming into contact with 'stray sperm' in the water of an Egyptian resort.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can this be true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26880" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T08:47:29.780" Title="Can someone get pregnant merely by using the swimming pool?" Tags="|physiology|human-reproduction|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28255" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28270" CreationDate="2015-06-29T15:11:38.057" Score="9" ViewCount="4197" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a widely published meme that you keep thinking after you die:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/v9IPs.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Tumblr&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After you die, it is believed that you have 7 minutes of brain activity left inside you&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Obviously it doesn't hold true if one is shot to the head, but if one has a heart attack or is decapitated with the brain remaining intact is it true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(I have also heard that while active in these final moments, the brain releases dmt (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) which causes one's life to flash before his eyes.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26562" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T18:56:08.653" Title="Does your brain keep thinking for seven minutes after you die?" Tags="|medical-science|physiology|near-death-experience|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28256" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20473" CreationDate="2015-06-29T15:55:57.057" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The short answer is not really.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The longer answer is that, while a silencer (aka suppressor) does dramatically reduce the report of a handgun, the sound of the pistol doesn't universally transform into the audio clip that has become a movie standard (some would say cliche).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Mythbusters tried this one as part of their &quot;Sounds Bogus&quot; episode dealing with movie audio versus real-world sounds. They called their results &quot;plausible&quot; due to the reduction in sound level, but did state that the sounds they recorded did not match the movie sounds. Here's the digest of that myth including what silencers really sound like on &quot;defense-caliber&quot; pistols.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhdXly6jT4E&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhdXly6jT4E&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The trademark &quot;silenced pistol shot&quot; sound in most movies is usually some variant on a suppressed .22 target pistol. That pistol is stereotypically common in the hands of close-in assassins (another movie myth; anyone who could get close enough to be lethal with a 22 has many better options) and therefore the sound it makes has become associated with all silenced pistols.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5997" LastEditorUserId="5997" LastEditDate="2015-06-29T16:06:05.920" LastActivityDate="2015-06-29T16:06:05.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28259" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28022" CreationDate="2015-06-29T21:56:02.793" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a quote in which he answers &quot;no&quot; to this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Chapter 21 of &lt;em&gt;Spock on Spock&lt;/em&gt; (copyright 1985 and 1989) starts with:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I've been asked a thousand times: have I ever changed my opinion on child rearing? &lt;strong&gt;And the answer is no&lt;/strong&gt;, at least not about my basic belief that it is wise to respect children, but also not to forget to ask respect from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The two or three topics on which he's changed his mind the most, he said/explained in the rest of the chapter, are potty training, whether babies need &quot;fresh air&quot; in winter, and feminism/sexism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2703" LastEditorUserId="20749" LastEditDate="2015-10-28T10:19:19.080" LastActivityDate="2015-10-28T10:19:19.080" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28262" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10648" CreationDate="2015-06-30T07:11:15.137" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, Digital infrared thermal imaging (DITI) can be used as an adjunct to mammography and ultrasound to detect breast cancer in women. The role of DITI has been evaluated in the study 'Effectiveness of a noninvasive digital infrared thermal imaging system in the detection of breast cancer' by Arora N et. al. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18809055&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2008&lt;/a&gt; for detection of dense breast parenchyma in women.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per results of the study,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sixty of 94 biopsies were malignant and 34 were benign. DITI identified 58 of 60 malignancies, with 97% sensitivity, 44% specificity, and 82% negative predictive value depending on the mode used. Compared to an overall risk score of 0, a score of 3 or greater was significantly more likely to be associated with malignancy (30% vs 90%, P &amp;lt; .03).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;CONCLUSION: DITI is a valuable adjunct to mammography and ultrasound, especially in women with dense breast parenchyma.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T07:11:15.137" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28263" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28230" CreationDate="2015-06-30T08:14:06.137" Score="28" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let's address the claim piece by piece, in context:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;While the world celebrates gay marriage victory:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Well, at least parts of the world other than Palestine, whether it be Gaza (where &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_Palestinian_territories#Summary_table&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;you get &lt;strong&gt;10 years of prison&lt;/strong&gt; officially for gay sex&lt;/a&gt;) or West Bank (where you merely live in a society that - according to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/04/15/global-morality/country/palestinian-ter/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pew poll in 2014&lt;/a&gt;, has &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; 1% of people who find homosexuality morally acceptable, &lt;a href=&quot;http://ukmediawatch.org/2014/04/29/what-the-guardian-wont-report-pew-study-reveals-extreme-homophobia-in-palestinian-society/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;and a overwhelming &lt;strong&gt;94% morally unacceptable&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In contrast, Israel's latter # from same poll is 43%, with 52% either approving or not caring either way.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;In Israel, you can marry anyone as long as he/she not Palestinian.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;False&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For one thing, a Jew isn't allowed to marry a Halachic non-Jew (even if a non-&quot;Jew&quot; is a Russian of Jewish cultural but not religiously-defined origin) - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_in_Israel#Jewish_community&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;. The state doesn't issue marriage licenses - only Rabbinical court does. And they only do issue when two Halachic Jews marry.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ironically, any Muslim in Israel (including Israeli Arabs of course) has it somewhat easier and less discriminatory - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_in_Israel#Muslim_community&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;any marriage OKed by an Islamic religious authority is automatically valid in Israel&lt;/a&gt;. (Admittedly, I don't quite know the full nuanced rules/restrictions that Muslim authorities use, but almost certain I don't need to cite that marrying an Israeli Arab to Palestinian Arab is OK by them).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, &quot;as long as he is not a Palestinian&quot; is false: Palestinians &lt;strong&gt;aren't the only ones who have additional restrictions on immigrating their spouses&lt;/strong&gt;: so do any other enemy states (Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq and more):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The law makes citizens of &lt;strong&gt;Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen&lt;/strong&gt;, the West Bank and Gaza Strip ineligible for the automatic granting of Israeli citizenship and residency permits that is usually available through marriage to an Israeli citizen (i.e. family reunification). (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_and_Entry_into_Israel_Law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Notice another minor falsehood? The claims states &quot;can marry... except&quot;. The law says &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Can marry, always&lt;/strong&gt;. What happens with immigration after marriage, we get to decide&quot;. It's an immigration law, not a marriage law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now, for a little bit of context of why Palestinians are included into the list of &quot;enemy states&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;70% of whose population openly support &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2014/06/25/want-two-states-not-the-palestinians-poll/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;full destruction Israel according to the polls&lt;/a&gt;. That's full destruction, not just armed struggle to &quot;liberate 1947/1967 borders&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But now, a clear majority (60% overall, including 55% in the West Bank and 68% in Gaza) say that the five-year goal &quot;should be to work toward reclaiming all of historic Palestine, from the river to the sea.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For example, just one-third said that a two-state solution &quot;should be the end of the conflict.&quot; Nearly two-thirds said &quot;resistance should continue until all of historic Palestine is liberated.&quot; And only a third said that &quot;it might be necessary to give up some of our claims so that our people and our children can have a better life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Similarly, only a third said that a two-state solution would be their leadership's final goal. Instead, almost two-thirds said it would be &quot;part of a 'program of stages,' to liberate all of historic Palestine later.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/new-palestinian-poll-shows-hardline-views-but-some-pragmatism-too&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;all 3 quote from poll here&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Palestinian national charter still (despite Clinton and Arafat's English-only statements to the contrary) contains &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pac-usa.org/the_palestinian_charter.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the goals of destruction of Israel&lt;/a&gt; (articles 19, 20, 21, 22). For those skeptical that I got it from Zionist-mistranslated version? WhoIs says that domain is &lt;a href=&quot;http://whois.domaintools.com/pac-usa.org&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;owned by Palestinian Affairs Council&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's #19:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The partition of Palestine in 1947 &lt;strong&gt;and the establishment of Israel is null and void from the very beginning&lt;/strong&gt;, whatever time has elapsed because it was done contrary to the wish of the people of Palestine and their national right to their homeland and contradicts with the principles embodied in the charter of the UN, the first of which is the right of self- determination&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;We won't even go into the fact that FATEH isn't the only and permanent ruler of PA, and Hamas - who are likely to win any elections - has a far less gentle wording in their governing documents regarding Israel (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Covenant#Statements_about_Israel&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;According to the 2003 Citizenship Law&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;True but misleading&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While it is, indeed, carrying the name of &quot;Law&quot;, it is a &lt;strong&gt;Temporary cabinet order&lt;/strong&gt; (USA equivalent of Presidential Executive Order, &lt;strong&gt;not&lt;/strong&gt; a law passed by a legislative branch), which sunsets every 2 years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;em&gt;temporary&lt;/em&gt; is important - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_and_Entry_into_Israel_Law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;it requires explicit extension&lt;/a&gt; (2003 version was yearly; not sure about 2007 or later). And it was amended (in favor of reducing restrictions on Palestinians by age) on some of those renewals, so they aren't merely &lt;em&gt;pro forma&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;, citizens of Israel who marry Palestinians will have to emigrate in order to live with their spouses. Their spouses will not be granted residency&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Partially true but misleading&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They won't be granted &lt;strong&gt;automatic&lt;/strong&gt; residency merely by fulfilling the usual immigration conditions. However, the bill merely gives the government the right to veto in cases it wants to, on a case by case basis:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The bill gives Israel &lt;strong&gt;the right to reject an applicant&lt;/strong&gt; who meets all the criteria.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It doesn't say that they should be rejected 100%. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, and more importantly (see below for rationale), as of 2008, that is &lt;strong&gt;only&lt;/strong&gt; applicable to young (&amp;lt;35 male or &amp;lt;25 female) couples, who are more likely to be interested in terrorist activity based on demographics profile:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In mid-2005 certain provisions were relaxed to enable family reunification in cases where the husband is at least 35- and the wife at least 25-years-old (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haaretz.com/news/gov-t-seeks-to-extend-order-that-can-curb-arab-family-reunification-1.205686&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;And, of course, as discussed above, it's not aimed at &quot;Palestinians&quot;, but citizens of many many states considered hostile to Israel. For contrast - it doesn't include Jordan, despite it having a very sizable Palestinian population.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;or any rights within Israel.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'm unsure but let's assume that's &lt;strong&gt;true-ish, for lack of proof to the contrary&lt;/strong&gt; ATM. If you aren't allowed to immigrate, presumably you have little rights. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Having said that, &quot;&lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; rights&quot; wording is a great exaggeration - a spouse would have &lt;em&gt;some&lt;/em&gt; rights, assuming they manage to slip into the country illegally - same rights as any other illegal immigrants have, which are NOT insignificant. For that matter, &lt;strong&gt;same rights&lt;/strong&gt; as a Russian Jew (who's not Halachically jewish) would have if they were to marry Israeli Jew in-country in a civil ceremony but whose visa expires. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The practical meaning of the law is that Palestinian citizens of Israel who marry Palestinian non-citizens (from territories controlled by Israel), won’t be able to live with their wives or husbands.&lt;/em&gt; If they want to unite, they will have to leave the country.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Technically, the facts are true. the context and conclusion are false.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See above. The practical meaning is that a specific demographic cohort of people who - by a supermajority - reject Israel's right to exist, AND have a history of engaging in terrorism when allowed into Israel - will be restricted from entering Israel under the guise of &quot;marriage&quot;. This doesn't apply to slightly older married couples, who are presumably less of a terrorist risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It also isn't (as discussed above) limited to Palestinians, and includes other hostile nationals (and doesn't include Palestinians living in non-hostile nations).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;By doing so, the law achieves two racist objectives against members of the Palestinian minority:&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;False&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I won't even go into the ridoculous &quot;racist&quot; BS, considering both Jews and Arabs are racially semitic and therefore any enimity between them can be classified as anything else but racist (that's like accusing British and French during 100-years-war of being racist, except they were probably more ethnically diverse from each other. That's a guess and I don't have a citation).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the main objective of this law was explicitly specified, as well as its origin, back in 2002, to be prevention of such unification as a vehicle to get terrorists into the country:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On May 2, 2002 the government decided for the first time to freeze all family reunification proceedings between residents and citizens of Israel and residents of the PA, on the grounds of &quot;&lt;strong&gt;increasing involvement by Palestinians from the region [i.e. the PA - Shahar Ilan] with Israeli identification cards as a result of family reunification, who exploited their status in Israel to engage in terror activities.&lt;/strong&gt;&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haaretz.com/news/gov-t-seeks-to-extend-order-that-can-curb-arab-family-reunification-1.205686&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have asked a &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/28264/did-palestinians-from-the-pa-with-family-reunification-based-ids-engage-in-terro/28271#28271&quot;&gt;question on Skeptics.SE&lt;/a&gt; to clarify whether the quote above is accurate, and the answer is &quot;Yes&quot;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From the start of 2001 until 2004 23 Palestinians who got Israeli citizenship or residence through the family reunification process (FRs), were uncovered/arrested for being recruited by the terror infrastructure in the territories [West Bank and Gaza] and were involved in committing and executing terror attacks against Israeli targets within the Green Line.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  In total FRs were involved in 3 suicide bombings which killed 16 Israeli citizens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;(a) it prevents non-Jews from entering the country and applying for permanent residency or citizenship, and&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;False&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It allows any other non-jews (of any race, including samesuch Semitic Arabs from non-enemy states) to do so. Ref: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b4ec20.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Israel Citizenship law, Ch 7 and Ch 5&lt;/a&gt;. The Temporary Order being discussed excluded hostile nationals from that Chapter 7, explicitly&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During the period in which this law shall remain in force, despite what is said in any legal provision, including article 7 of the Citizenship Law, the Minister of the Interior shall not grant the inhabitant of an area citizenship on the basis of the Citizenship law, and shall not give him a license to reside in Israel on the basis of the Entry into Israel Law, and the Area Commander shall not grant a said inhabitant, a permit to stay in Israel, on the basis with the security legislation in the area. (unofficial translation of initial 2003 law)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;(b) it makes it harder for Israeli Palestinian citizens to build families in their own community or in their own country, thus encouraging them to leave Israel. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Partially true&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;False if you're a part of a family above the safety-appropriate age cutoff (male &gt;35, female &gt;25). False if your spouse is an Palestinian (or anyone else) from non-enemy country. E.g. you can marry American-Palestinian and immigrate them. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Palestinian citizens (not including those under military occupation) comprise roughly 20 percent of Israel’s population&lt;/em&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's assume &lt;strong&gt;true&lt;/strong&gt;, because it's irrelevant either way and I don't see the need to to test it. If that's false, there's no meaningful difference to the rest of the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;On the other hand: the Israeli Law of Return gives the right to any person from anywhere on earth to come to Israel and claim citizenship only based on that person belonging to the Jewish faith&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;True and false&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Originally it was false: &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Return&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Law of Return&lt;/a&gt; wasn't based on faith &lt;em&gt;at all&lt;/em&gt; - merely on heredity (later amended to be 1/8th or more Jewish blood - in symmetry with Nurenbergh laws). &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was &lt;em&gt;later (1970)&lt;/em&gt; amended to allow converts to Judaism, who have no Jewish ancestry. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Curiously enough, I was never able to find any rule that prohibits &lt;strong&gt;Palestinians&lt;/strong&gt; who convert to Judaism to claim the right of return under the same law, so the latter faith-based amendment isn't discriminatory against Palestinians either.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;*regardless of their connection to that land. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Mostly false&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Discounting a later-added faith-based conversion caveat (also available to Palestinians who convert), the main Law of Return has very clear connections for people allowed to that land - &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ancient_Israel_and_Judah#Demographic_history&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;their ancestors lived there for several thousand years&lt;/a&gt;. Far longer than Arabs &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamization_of_Palestine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;who immigrated less than 2000 years ago&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;    &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;And of course that person can marry anyone except a Palestinian&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;False, on many accounts&lt;/strong&gt;. See referenced details above. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They can marry anyone, &lt;em&gt;period&lt;/em&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Including a Palestinian&lt;/strong&gt; (except to be valid in Israel the marriage would have to be to Palestinian convert to Judaism, OR happen outside Israel - which is true for ALL non-Halachic Jews, not just Palestinians, including even people who are included in Law of Return, ironically :)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;They can even bring their spouse to Israel if the spouse aren't a member of a hostile state (not simply &quot;not a Palestinian&quot;), or is of age above cutoff demographics for likely terrorist actor even if they are from PA.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T19:54:56.103" CommentCount="19" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28264" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-30T08:31:18.970" Score="7" ViewCount="260" Body="&lt;p&gt;While answering &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/28230/are-there-discriminatory-laws-against-israelis-marrying-palestianians/28263#28263&quot;&gt;this Q&lt;/a&gt;, I ran into the following claim by Israeli government, cited by a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haaretz.com/news/gov-t-seeks-to-extend-order-that-can-curb-arab-family-reunification-1.205686&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Haaretz article&lt;/a&gt; &quot;&lt;em&gt;Gov't seeks to extend order that can curb Arab family reunification&lt;/em&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... on the grounds of &quot;increasing involvement by Palestinians from the region [i.e. the PA - Shahar Ilan] with Israeli identification cards as a result of family reunification, &lt;strong&gt;who exploited their status in Israel to engage in terror activities&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the bolded claim true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Is it cited correctly from the actual claim made by Israeli government in the context of the reunification law?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;If so, is the government's claim true in that Palestinians from the PA with family re-unification based IDs engaged in terror activities, pre-2003, with &quot;increased involvement&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I'd prefer something &lt;strong&gt;more numerous than 1-2 anecdotes&lt;/strong&gt; (to test the claim &lt;em&gt;in context&lt;/em&gt;), although technically speaking even 2 examples would make the claim technically &quot;true&quot; if prior involvement was 0.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1044" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T21:30:13.443" Title="Did Palestinians from the PA with family reunification based IDs engage in terror activities, pre-2003?" Tags="|israel|immigration|palestine|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28266" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28022" CreationDate="2015-06-30T16:18:42.323" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;&#xA;While the other answers available focus on other claims, this answer morbidly focuses on the quote you mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After extensive research, I found out that a lot of books (&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.lb/books?id=bOqZd4kxgyEC&amp;amp;pg=PA268&amp;amp;lpg=PA268&amp;amp;dq=%22How+Not+to+Bring+Up+a+Bratty+Child%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=FA3yBgeOGt&amp;amp;sig=0foQOHVDWIAyMNa-GoaXNUfnv6M&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=7MmRVZbVIIHpUteWj_gP&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22How%20Not%20to%20Bring%20Up%20a%20Bratty%20Child%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;book 1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.lb/books?id=9oYDtFToYNkC&amp;amp;pg=PA100&amp;amp;lpg=PA100&amp;amp;dq=%22How+Not+to+Bring+Up+a+Bratty+Child%22&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=Fx79qHKwZA&amp;amp;sig=_WHHz3W7ttLEWIjNDfX2JH5RZ7I&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=7MmRVZbVIIHpUteWj_gP&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22How%20Not%20to%20Bring%20Up%20a%20Bratty%20Child%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;book 2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.lb/books?id=ZgjaBjKB0AAC&amp;amp;pg=PA44&amp;amp;lpg=PA44&amp;amp;dq=Benjamin+Spock.+How+to+Not+Bring+Up+A+Bratty+Child.+*Redbook*&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=0WzNqOR-nu&amp;amp;sig=sCsT2buUiypZ089Xw0fCxZi96fg&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=aKiSVfnZHoSiyAOJzIDoAw&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Benjamin%20Spock.%20How%20to%20Not%20Bring%20Up%20A%20Bratty%20Child.%20*Redbook*&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;book 3&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.lb/books?id=g-JrMQDEydIC&amp;amp;pg=PA164&amp;amp;lpg=PA164&amp;amp;dq=Benjamin+Spock.+How+to+Not+Bring+Up+A+Bratty+Child.+*Redbook*&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=zdeGNHNAKQ&amp;amp;sig=KnupzbkurjqnM-_JobXjeOV_-dw&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=aKiSVfnZHoSiyAOJzIDoAw&amp;amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=Benjamin%20Spock.%20How%20to%20Not%20Bring%20Up%20A%20Bratty%20Child.%20*Redbook*&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;book 4&lt;/a&gt;, etc...) referenced the source of your quote to the Redbook magazine: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Benjamin Spock. How to Not Bring Up A Bratty Child. &lt;em&gt;Redbook&lt;/em&gt;. February 1975, 29-31.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a double check, even the New York Times said that Spock wrote for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:67Az6IYtWEMJ:www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0502.html+&amp;amp;cd=1&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ct=clnk&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Redbook&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He wrote columns about raising children for Redbook and Ladies Home Journal and, more recently, for Parenting magazine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After endless research, I was able to find a partial view of the article from the Redbook Magazine from February 1974, p. 29:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/xPJmG.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were extremely lucky to find such snapshot, literally, the magazine dates from 1974 and is currently &lt;a href=&quot;http://backissues.com/issue/Redbook-February-1974&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;out of stock&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote is also cited by an &lt;a href=&quot;https://uakron.edu/dotAsset/724600.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;academic&lt;/a&gt; study called &quot;The science and statistics behind spanking suggest that laws allowing corporal punishment are in the best interests of the child&quot; which cites part of the quote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;In the 20th century parents have been persuaded that the only&#xA;  people who know for sure how children should be managed are the&#xA;  child psychiatrists, psychologists, teachers, social workers and&#xA;  pediatricians—like myself. This is a cruel deprivation that we professionals have imposed on mothers and fathers&lt;/strong&gt;. . . . &lt;strong&gt;We didn’t&#xA;  realize, until it was too late, how our know-it-all attitude was&#xA;  undermining the self-assurance of parents.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is the reference mentioned:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;See, e.g., id.; Benjamin Spock, M.D., How Not to Bring Up a Bratty Child, REDBOOK,&#xA;  Feb. 1974, at 29 [hereinafter Spock, Bratty Child] (“Inability to be firm is . . . the commonest&#xA;  problem of parents in America today.”). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, the U.S. Department of Education, a governamental source, &lt;a href=&quot;http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED114162.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;confirmed&lt;/a&gt; also in a study published  in July 75 that Benjamin's claim in the Redbook is valid. This is how the abstract looked back then:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/7mhmH.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And this the quoted text:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When Dr. Spook writes an article entitled &quot;&lt;strong&gt;How not to raise a bratty child&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;, and books advising parents to teach their 15 month old child to read are selling briskly,. we know we're in the midst of a pendulum swing to the opposite pole from permissiveness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With this reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Spock, Benjdmin, &quot;How not to bring up a bratty child&quot;, Redbook, Feb. 1974.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, with the help of the archive of Google News, I was able to extract a news article from &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2002&amp;amp;dat=19740123&amp;amp;id=nfsqAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=UNoFAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=6430,1705588&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beaver County Times - Jan 23, 1974&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/JPOEq.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you see, this news article, assuming it was reputable back then, has exactly the quote in your question, makes it valid also.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Now, that we know that the &lt;strong&gt;quote is legit&lt;/strong&gt;. Back to the real question, did Dr. Benjamin Spock recant his child-rearing teachings later in life?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The archive of &lt;a href=&quot;https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&amp;amp;dat=19740414&amp;amp;id=gVoaAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;sjid=-CgEAAAAIBAJ&amp;amp;pg=7343,1328377&amp;amp;hl=en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google News&lt;/a&gt; helps again answer this question where Spock &lt;strong&gt;denies that he recanted his child-rearing teachings later in life&lt;/strong&gt; in The Milwaukee Journal - Apr 14, 1974.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/IxKX4.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I will quote the appropriate content from The Milwaukee Journal:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;A Turnabout?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Has the good doctor done a turnabout? &lt;strong&gt;Does he look upon what he was wrought and find that the product is bratty, uncooperative and unpleasant?&lt;/strong&gt; Has he changed his philosophy on bringing up children? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Spock answered some of those questions in a telephone interview last week as he discussed the Redbook article along with his new book &quot;Raising Children in a Difficult Time&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No he hasn't recanted his philosophy of child rearing, yes, his Redbook column was misinterpreted, declared the feisty pediatrician.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Benjamin Spock admits his mistake of using the word 'bratty':&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spock:&lt;/strong&gt; In the first place, I made the mistake of using the word 'bratty' in the article. Then the editors titled it 'How Not to Bring Up a Bratty Child'. That one word released a lot of hostilities. There are lots of people who like to think I'm wrong.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interviewer:&lt;/strong&gt; Why?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spock:&lt;/strong&gt; Because of my involvement in the antiwar movement, of course.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interviewer:&lt;/strong&gt; But back to that Redbook article. What did he say to get everyone excited?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spock:&lt;/strong&gt; One basic reason is that - consciously or otherwise - they don't want to stir up the same kinds of arguments and conflicts, they remember form their own childhood which left them feeling tense and guilty.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spock:&lt;/strong&gt; An unconscious, vicarious enjoyment at seeing their children misbehave in a way the parents were never allowed to do.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interviewer:&lt;/strong&gt; But the statement that put Spock on the front pages was this: We didn't realize, until it was too late, how our know-it-all attitude was undermining the self-assurance of parents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Interviewer:&lt;/strong&gt; What do you think of the young people whose upbringing you have influence (The influence is hard to deny considering the fact that &quot;Child and Baby Care&quot; has sold over 22 million copies since its first printing in 1946)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spock:&lt;/strong&gt; They're marvelous! The great majority of young people are wonderfully clear eye in seeing what's going on.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spock:&lt;/strong&gt; I think it's marvelous that they refuse to be intimidated by authority.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spock:&lt;/strong&gt; When I was a first year medical student I was terrified of the lowliest instructor. But in my last year of teaching before retirement from Western Reserve University Medical School, I discovered how much things had changed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spock:&lt;/strong&gt; You know, I have very old fashioned ideas about sex. I think there should be strong laws on pornography and they should be strictly enforced. Those things are simply not good for children.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spock:&lt;/strong&gt; The way we avoid irritation, whether we realize it or not, is by keeping our children under reasonable control and by being extra firm or sufficiently disapproving when things first threaten to go wrong. Such firmness one aspect of parental love. Firmness, by keeping children on the right track, keeps them lovable. And they love us for keeping them out of trouble.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, I have to quote passage from this &lt;a href=&quot;https://uakron.edu/dotAsset/724600.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; because it is extremely well-referenced:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Many people think Dr. Benjamin Spock started the anti-spanking&#xA;  movement in the 1940s. &lt;sup&gt; (1) &lt;/sup&gt; This is not really true. Dr. Spock did not  oppose corporal punishment until the late 1980s—the twilight of his life. &lt;sup&gt; (2) &lt;/sup&gt; &lt;strong&gt;For most of his career, he believed physical discipline could be helpful, depending on the parent’s temperament.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;sup&gt; (3) &lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Adding those references:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(1): See, e.g., Daniel Costello, Spanking Makes a Comeback: &lt;strong&gt;Tired of Spoiling the Child,&#xA;  Parents Stop Sparing the Rod&lt;/strong&gt;; Dr. Dobson vs. Dr. Spock, WALL ST. J., June 9, 2000, at W1 (saying the notion that children are too fragile to spank “t&lt;em&gt;ook hold after World War[ ] II as Benjamin Spock,  the influential pediatrician, began warning that corporal punishment can traumatize children and trigger more aggressive behavior.&lt;/em&gt;”).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(2) Compare BENJAMIN SPOCK, M.D., DR. SPOCK ON PARENTING 151-52 (1988) (saying that&#xA;  in earlier decades and earlier editions of Baby and Child Care, he never opposed spanking, but now he had changed his position), with Eric Pace, Benjamin Spock, World’s Pediatrician, Dies at 94, N.Y. TIMES, Mar. 17, 1998, at Obituary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;(3) See, e.g., Benjamin Spock, M.D., What I Said in February About Raising Children—And&#xA;  What I Did Not Say, REDBOOK, June 1974, at 31 (“&lt;strong&gt;[W]hen I gave talks about child rearing, at least one of the reporters attending a press conference would ask immediately whether I believed in spanking children—as if this were by far the most crucial issue in child care. I would have to disappoint him by discussing all the other more important factors that go into good behavior, such as the child’s love of parents, wanting to be like the parents, the clarity and consistency of the parents’ leadership. Even when the question about spanking was repeated, I’d have to say that it depended on whether the spanking parent was generally kind and devoted or merely expressing ill temper that had little to do with the child’s behavior.&lt;/strong&gt;”). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note the extreme importance of third reference, where Spock explains what he wrote on &quot;How to Not Bring Up A Bratty Child.&quot; on February 1974.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, as a double check for the validity of the claims, those are the references mentioned by the U.S. Department of Education, a governamental &lt;a href=&quot;http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED114162.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OyYCs.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion &amp;amp; Takeaway:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Benjamin Spock said the following quote on Redbook in February 1974 in the article &quot;How to not bring up a bratty child&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Benjamin Spock explained later on Redbook in July 1974 that he always believed physical discipline (such as spanking) could be helpful depending on the parent’s temperament.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Benjamin said also that he didn't recant his child rearing teachings, he still believes that &quot;the child’s love of parents, wanting to be like the parents, the clarity and consistency of the parents’ leadership&quot; are more essential and important than spanking.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T16:18:42.323" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28270" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28255" CreationDate="2015-06-30T19:08:10.323" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/28255/does-your-brain-keep-thinking-for-seven-minutes-after-you-die#comment107310_28255&quot;&gt;RBarryYoung said&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Pretty sure that's going to be a &quot;define alive&quot; situation...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He hit the nail on the head.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The definition of death has changed throughout history. In the United States, the declaration of &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_death&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;legal death&lt;/a&gt; is generally influenced by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uniformlaws.org/shared/docs/determination%20of%20death/udda80.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Uniform Determination of Death Act (1980)&lt;/a&gt; (a short summary of it and related laws can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://uniformlaws.org/ActSummary.aspx?title=Determination%20of%20Death%20Act&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;). The UDDA was needed to get rid of the discrepancy between &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;clinical death&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_death&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;brain death&lt;/a&gt;. The former was historically based on the stoppage of cardiorespiratory activity, while the latter (a newer approach) is based on brain function. The UDDA elaborates on this conflict:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The medical profession, also, has developed techniques for determining loss of brain functions while cardiorespiratory support is administered. At the same time, the common law definition of death cannot assure recognition of these techniques. The common law standard for determining death is the cessation of all vital functions, traditionally demonstrated by an “absence of spontaneous respiratory and cardiac functions.” There is, then, a potential disparity between current and accepted biomedical practice and the common law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The UDDA gives two possible scenarios to determine death:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ol&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;[Determination of Death]. An individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead. A determination of death must be made in accordance with accepted medical standards.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As mentioned in &lt;a href=&quot;http://uniformlaws.org/ActSummary.aspx?title=Determination%20of%20Death%20Act&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;the summarizing source&lt;/a&gt;, the UDDA &lt;em&gt;does not define death&lt;/em&gt;. Either definition may be used. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/19/nyregion/failure-of-brain-is-legal-death-new-york-says.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The New York Times&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, seven years later, also mentions that some states (40 total, at the time) had enacted similar measures on a state level.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A state related to brain death is &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_stem_death&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;brain stem death&lt;/a&gt;, which must not be confused. The two are treated different legally as well as medically. From the same &lt;em&gt;New York Times&lt;/em&gt; article (giving a state-specific example):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The new definition would not apply, for example, to patients who have lost higher brain function, but who retain brain-stem, or autonomic lower-brain activity, such as the late Karen Anne Quinlan in New Jersey. Such patients can maintain heart and respiratory function with or without mechanical assistance and would be considered alive under the new regulations Under Study in New Jersey.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, according to federal law, if a doctor applies the brain death option of the UDDA, then the claim is absolutely false, by definition. It gets more complicated if you use the other definition, related to cardiorespiratory activity.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If the brain receives no oxygen, it succumbs to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001435.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;cerebral hypoxia&lt;/a&gt;. Brain damage can begin within about four minutes, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000013.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;brain death can occur at about four to six minutes&lt;/a&gt;. I think this might have influenced the claim. &lt;a href=&quot;http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/brain-death1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Stuff Works&lt;/a&gt;, by the way, sets a figure of six minutes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to answer the question:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does your brain keep thinking for seven minutes after you die?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No, if you define death as the permanent cessation of all brain functions.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Possibly, if you define death as the permanent cessation of cardiorespiratory activity.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T18:56:08.653" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28271" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28264" CreationDate="2015-06-30T19:46:32.190" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shabak.gov.il/SiteCollectionImages/%D7%A1%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA%20%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9D/terror-summary-4years-new.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Here&lt;/a&gt; is a summery of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_Bet&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ISA (Shabak)&lt;/a&gt; of the first 4 years of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;second Intifada&lt;/a&gt;. In it they have a section about Palestinians who got Israeli citizenship through family reunification (pg. 18-19). The report states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;מתחילת שנת 2001 ועד שנת 2004 נחשפו/נעצרו בידי ישראל 23 פלסטינים שקיבלו&#xA;  תעודת זהות ישראלית או אישורי שהייה בישראל במסגרת תהליך איחוד משפחות&#xA;  (אחמ&quot;שים), שגויסו בידי תשתיות הטרור בשטחים והיו מעורבים בביצוע ותכנון פיגועים&#xA;  ביעדים ישראליים בתחומי הקו הירוק.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;בפועל, היו מעורבים אחמ&quot;שים ב- 3 פיגועי התאבדות בהם נהרגו 16 אזרחים ישראלים. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which translates to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;From the start of 2001 until 2004 23 Palestinians who got Israeli citizenship or residence through the family reunification process (FRs), were uncovered/arrested for being recruited by the terror infrastructure in the territories [West Bank and Gaza] and were involved in committing and planning terror attacks against Israeli targets within the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Line_(Israel)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Green Line&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In total FRs were involved in 3 suicide bombings which killed 16 Israeli citizens.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the part that they take in the attacks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;מעורבותם של האחמ&quot;שים בפח&quot;ע באה לידי ביטוי במספר אופנים: כמפגעים הנוטלים חלק&#xA;  בביצוע/בתכנון פיגועים, כמובילי מפגעים מטעם ארגוני הטרור ב&quot;שטחים&quot;, כסייענים לוגיסטיים&#xA;  הממלאים מגוון משימות, לרבות איסוף מידע על יעדים לביצוע פיגועים והחדרת אמל&quot;ח,&#xA;  כאותרים וגייסים של פעילים נוספים מקרב ערביי ישראל. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The involvement of FRs in terror activity manifests in several ways: as terrorists taking part in the execution/planing of attacks, as transporters of terrorists on behalf of the terror organizations in the territories, as logistical supporters fulfilling a variety of missions including collecting information of targets for attacks or weapon smuggle, as recruiters of additional activists among the Israeli Arabs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the report gives prominent examples to the involvement of FRs in terror attacks:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;שאדי טובאסי – גויס בידי התארגנות חמא&quot;ס בג'נין/שומרון, וביצע בשליחותם את פיגוע&#xA;  ההתאבדות במסעדת &quot;מצה&quot; בחיפה, בו נהרגו 15 ישראלים (31 מרץ 2002). שאדי היה&#xA;  בעל תעודת זהות ישראלית, כתוצאה מאחמ&quot;ש שקיבל אביו, יליד השומרון, שנישא לאמו,&#xA;  תושבת מוקיבלה/נצרת. יצויין כי שאדי גדל והתגורר בשומרון, עובדה שחיזקה את מניעיו&#xA;  והקלה על גיוסו בידי פעילי חמא&quot;ס באזור.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Shadi Tubasi - recruited by the Hamas organization in Jenin/Samaria, and executed the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matza_restaurant_suicide_bombing&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Matza restaurant suicide bombing&lt;/a&gt; in Haifa killing 15 Israelis (March 31&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt;, 2002). Shadi had an Israeli id as a result of FR of his father, born in Samaria, who merried his mother, resident of Nazareth. It should be noted that Shadi was raised and lived in Samaria, a fact that made his recruitment easier by the local Hamas activists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;מחמד מצרי – מצרי היה בעל ת.ז. ישראלית לאחר נישואי אמו, במוצאה מאזור קלקיליה,&#xA;  לאביו, אזרח ישראלי מג'לג'וליה. מצרי הוכוון בידי תשתית הג'יהאד האסלאמי בטול כרם.&#xA;  במסגרת פעילותו היה אמור להכניס מכונית תופת מהגדה לישראל, ולפוצצה. הפיגוע יועד&#xA;  להתבצע בתחנת אוטובוס הממוקמת מול בסיס צבאי. זמן קצר לפני המועד בו היה אמור&#xA;  לחכות למחבל המתאבד ולהכניסו לישראל, נעצר מצרי במרץ 2003 על ידי גורמי הביטחון. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mahmad Mazri - Mazri had an Israeli Id after the marriage of his mother, from the area of Qalqilya, to his father, an Israeli citizen from Jaljulia. Mazri was directed by the Islamic Jihad infrastructure in Tulkarem. He was supposed to enter a car bomb from the west bank to Israel and to detonate it. The attack was targeted at a bus stop in front of a military base.  He was arrested on March 2003, a short time before he was scheduled to wait for the suicide bomber and bring them to Israel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;מחמד מחאגנה – אזרח ישראלי מאום אל פחם המתגורר בג'נין, שקיבל את אזרחותו&#xA;  הישראלית מכוח היותו בן למשפחה שקיבלה אזרחות במסגרת תהליך איחוד משפחות.&#xA;  מחאג'נה נעצר ב – 2 במאי 2003 לאחר שגויס לחמא&quot;ס ונתפס בעת סיועו להובלת הנער&#xA;  מאג'ד צבאח, לביצוע פיגוע ירי בקניון בחדרה.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Mehamed Mehajna - An Israeli citizen from Umm al-Fahm living in Jenin, who got his citizenship by being a member of a family who got their citizenship in a process of family reunification. Mehajna was arrested on May 2&lt;sup&gt;nd&lt;/sup&gt; after being recruited to Hamas and was caught during his help with the transportation of the teenager Majd Zabah, on his way to commit a shooting attack in a shopping mall in Hadera.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;סאמר אטרש – במוצאו מחברון, תושב מחנה הפליטים שועאפט, בעל ת.ז. ירושלמית כחולה&#xA;  על רקע איחוד משפחות, נעצר ב- 14 ביוני 2003 לאחר שתפקד כמוביל המחבל המתאבד&#xA;  לפיגוע שבוצע מטעם תשתית החמאס בקו 6 בגבעה הצרפתית, בו נהרגו 6 אזרחים&#xA;  ישראלים ו- 20 נפצעו. כמו כן נהרג בפיגוע אזרח זר.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Samer Atrah - Originaly from Hebron, resident of the Shoafat Refugee camp with an Israeli id after family reunification, arrested on June 14&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt;, after transporting the suicide bomber for a terror attack made by Hamas infrastructure on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_French_Hill_suicide_bombings&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bus no. 6&lt;/a&gt; in the French Hill [a neighborhood in Jerusalem], killing 6 Israeli citizens and injuring 20, in the attack one foreign citizen was killed as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The document is in Hebrew, all the English text was translated by me. Where braces ([]) appear in the text, they contain a clarification note by me that doesn't appear in the original text. I have probably misspelled the Arab names.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source talks about a 4 year period which ends in 2004, after the aforementioned law was passed, and it doesn't give all of the instances (23) that it mentions in the summery, so we don't know how many of them happened before the law passed and how many after. But we do know how many of the specific examples happened before the law passed. The law was passed by the Israeli Knesset on July 31&lt;sup&gt;st&lt;/sup&gt;, 2003 meaning all of the four specific examples given by the source predate the law. As explained in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knesset.gov.il/Laws/Data/BillGoverment/31/31_All.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;original bil&lt;/a&gt; The law is based on a previous Israeli government decision from may 12&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt;, 2002. The first example (The Matza restaurant bombing) happened a month and a half before it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2015-06-30T21:30:13.443" LastActivityDate="2015-06-30T21:30:13.443" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28274" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="11223" CreationDate="2015-07-01T04:58:55.413" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, Sensodyne Total Care toothpaste may work as mentioned on its cover based on the ingredients present such as Potassium Nitrate 5.0% w/w and Sodium Fluoride 0.306% w/w.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per the Sensodyne Total Care F product &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mhra.gov.uk/home/groups/spcpil/documents/spcpil/con1412919993512.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;information&lt;/a&gt;, the pharmacodynamic properties of Sensodyne Total Care Toothpaste are  based on &quot;the antibacterial formulation contains potassium ions which are thought to reduce hypersensitivity by interfering with pulpal nerve conduction. With twice daily tooth brushing, Sensodyne Total Care F Toothpaste delivers the regular doses of potassium ions required to build up and then maintain its depolarising activity, thereby providing ongoing protection from, and prevention of dentinal hypersensitivity. Once regular use is discontinued, the desensitising activity of the potassium ions within the dentine tubules will slowly be lost and sensitivity pain will return.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per study 'Desensitizing toothpaste versus placebo for dentin hypersensitivity: a systematic review and meta-analysis' by Ji-Hyun Bae et. al &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpe.12347/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2015&lt;/a&gt; assessing the effect of desensitizing toothpaste on dentin hypersensitivity, the conclusions were&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The study reports that there is sufficient evidence to support the use of potassium-, stannous fluoride-, potassium and stannous fluoride-, calcium sodium phosphosilicate-, and arginine-containing desensitizing toothpastes for dentin hypersensitivity, but not the use of strontium-containing desensitizing toothpaste.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sensodyne Total Care toothpaste also contains sodium fluoride which is an established anticaries agent. Fluoride Recommendations Work &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5014a1.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Group&lt;/a&gt; states &quot;Cariogenic bacteria (i.e., bacteria that cause dental caries) reside in dental plaque, a sticky organic matrix of bacteria, food debris, dead mucosal cells, and salivary components that adheres to tooth enamel. Plaque also contains minerals, primarily calcium and phosphorus, as well as proteins, polysaccharides, carbohydrates, and lipids. Fluoride concentrated in plaque and saliva inhibits the demineralization of sound enamel and enhances the remineralization of demineralized enamel. Fluoride also inhibits dental caries by affecting the activity of cariogenic bacteria. Adults also benefit from fluoride, rather than only children, as was previously assumed.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per American Dental Association &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ada.org/en/science-research/ada-seal-of-acceptance/product-category-information/toothpaste&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ADA&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;a fluoride toothpaste helps remove plaque, a film of bacteria that forms on teeth and gums every day. Plaque can cause gum disease and tooth decay. Fluoride helps prevent tooth decay by strengthening tooth enamel. All ADA-Accepted toothpastes contain fluoride&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However per systematic review of selected desensitizing OTC Products by E. Talioti et. al in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4005032/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2014&lt;/a&gt; &quot;to determine whether there was any evidence on the clinical effectiveness of selected desensitizing toothpastes, calcium sodium phosphosilicate (CSPS), amorphous calcium phosphate (ACP), nanohydroxyapatite, and casein phosphopeptide-amorphous calcium phosphate (tooth mousse) on reducing dentine hypersensitivity (DH)&quot; the conclusions were,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Due to the small number of included studies, there are limited clinical data to support any claims of clinical efficacy of these OTC products. Further studies are therefore required to determine the efficacy of these products in well-controlled RCT studies with a larger sample size.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-07-01T11:27:40.873" LastActivityDate="2015-07-01T11:27:40.873" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28276" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28281" CreationDate="2015-07-01T18:15:18.397" Score="23" ViewCount="7682" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1754-5-weird-realities-life-as-swinger.html&quot;&gt;Cracked.com&lt;/a&gt; referenced &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thedatereport.com/dating/modern-love/how-world-war-ii-soldiers-started-the-swingers-lifestyle/#&quot;&gt;this interview&lt;/a&gt; where author &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Ryan_%28author%29&quot;&gt;Christopher Ryan&lt;/a&gt; claims that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;“World War II fighter pilots had the highest fatality rates of any&#xA;  division of the military. When they were back on base, they had these&#xA;  key parties where they would sleep with one another’s wives... ... They were doing this to create bonds and affiliation and love among the group because 25% of these guys didn't survive the war. They knew they were facing these odds. And they knew that if they didn't come home, their buddies would take care of their wives and children because they had developed this love and trust.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I feel really skeptical about this claim because I doubt that WW2 pilots received leave before the end of their duty of 25-35 missions.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="15834" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-07-01T23:19:03.600" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T19:07:52.757" Title="Did WW2 pilots lead a swinger's lifestyle to ensure that their friends would take care of their family if they died?" Tags="|history|world-war-ii|culture|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28277" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28288" CreationDate="2015-07-01T18:51:15.890" Score="6" ViewCount="873" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OMEND.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;There's a &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/cryptoron/status/616250093407195136&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;screenshot of a Twitter status&lt;/a&gt; circulating suggesting that at 1:19 AM - 1 Jul 2015 Yanis Varoufakis tweeted:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;@Lagarde sorry for the delay. I am really trying to pay the due but I cannot find an open bank&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Supposedly, at the time of the screenshot it was retweeted 1741 times, and favorited 1442 times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, the &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/yanisvaroufakis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;@yanisvaroufakis Twitter feed&lt;/a&gt; does not / no longer contain that tweet (I'm looking at the &quot;Tweets&quot; section on linked page). In addition, said account is not a &quot;verified&quot; Twitter account. So I'm skeptical.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did Yanis Varoufakis actually tweet the above? And, as a bonus question: is that Twitter handle legit?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7206" LastEditorDisplayName="user7920" LastEditDate="2015-07-01T19:24:40.470" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T13:03:46.117" Title="Did Yanis Varoufakis tweet to Lagarde about repaying dues?" Tags="|politics|quotes|greece|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28279" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28280" CreationDate="2015-07-01T20:15:35.467" Score="64" ViewCount="15177" Body="&lt;p&gt;While I worked at Walmart during college in the states, we would copy keys for customers, unless the key looked like this.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Keyblanks.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We were told that it was illegal to copy such keys, however, customers would regularly tell us it was in fact legal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are there any laws that prevent the copying of keys containing a DO NOT DUPLICATE stamp?&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Asking as this seems to be a claim in the US, But if anyone has a similar claim in their own country feel free to post that as well. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23255" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-07-01T22:34:13.963" LastActivityDate="2017-06-07T00:21:14.517" Title="Are there any laws preventing the copying of keys containing a DO NOT DUPLICATE stamp?" Tags="|united-states|law|consumer-products|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28280" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28279" CreationDate="2015-07-01T21:58:17.227" Score="84" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is hard to prove a negative, but the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.associatedlocksmithsofamerica.org/the-associated-locksmiths-of-america-technical-standards-policy/&quot;&gt;Associated Locksmiths of America says&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Orders for keys stamped “Do Not Duplicate” or similar wording will be handled in the same manner as any unrestricted key (see 8).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Paragraph 8 says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;For individual, personal property or unrestricted locks, keys, or other qualifying device, the possession of a the qualifying device itself establishes the authority to order duplicates or recombinate cylinders operated by such devices, unless the cylinders or systems are found to be master keyed (see 10) or of a restricted type (see 12), or unless the service technician suspects some wrongful intent. (See 9).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In summary, the Associated Locksmiths of America suggests that keys marked &quot;DO NOT DUPLICATE&quot; may be duplicated unless:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the key is part of a patented/restricted key control system,&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;part of a master-key system, or&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;the technician suspects wrongful intent.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would have expected the Associated Locksmiths of America to mention a law restricting duplication if such law exists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several locksmiths agree:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://mapleleaflocksmith.com/do-not-duplicate-who-will-copy-this-key-for-you/&quot;&gt;The DND message is not legally binding.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emeraldlock.com/do-not-duplicate.html&quot;&gt;Unrestricted keys are sometimes marked &quot;Do Not Duplicate&quot; [...] The keys are generally not protected by law. Basically, it's on the honor system.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gvlock.com/blog/do-not-duplicate-key-law&quot;&gt;Did you know that there is no such thing as Do Not Duplicate key law?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.acmelocksmith.com/business-locksmith-DND.html&quot;&gt;... there is nothing that actually prevents a DND key from being copied ...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.securityrus.com/faq.html&quot;&gt;Keys marked &quot;Do Not Duplicate,&quot; &quot; Do Not Copy,&quot; or &quot;Unlawful to Copy&quot; (other than some very specific US government keys) indeed may be duplicated legally.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The above is the &lt;em&gt;general case&lt;/em&gt;, but there are some jurisdictions with laws that are implicated by a &quot;DO NOT DUPLICATE&quot; engraving.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In North Dakota, &quot;... no person shall duplicate or make a key from&#xA;another key marked with the words &quot;Do Not Duplicate&quot;, &quot;Do Not Copy&quot;, or words of&#xA;similar intent&quot;. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.legis.nd.gov/cencode/t12-1c23.pdf?20150702132742&quot;&gt;ND Code 12.1-23-08.4&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nebraska mentions the &quot;DO NOT DUPLICATE&quot; label, but it is only an offense if the key is a master key, and it is not unlawful to reproduce a key if &quot;[a]nyone stamps any other type of key with the words DO NOT DUPLICATE.&quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://nebraskalegislature.gov/laws/statutes.php?statute=28-1316&quot;&gt;Nebraska Revised Statute 28-1316&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2015-07-02T19:47:00.727" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T19:47:00.727" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28281" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28276" CreationDate="2015-07-01T22:37:41.360" Score="18" Body="&lt;h1&gt;Possibly.&lt;/h1&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swinging_(sexual_practice)#20th_century&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt; proved to be an excellent starting point. It says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Terry Gould's &lt;em&gt;The Lifestyle: a look at the erotic rites of swingers&lt;/em&gt;, swinging began among American Air Force pilots and their wives during World War II before pilots left for overseas duty. The mortality rate of pilots was so high, as Gould reports, that a close bond arose between pilot families that implied that pilot husbands would care for all the wives as their own – emotionally and sexually – if the husbands were lost. Though the origins of swinging are contested, it is assumed American swinging was practiced in some American military communities in the 1950s. By the time the Korean War ended, swinging had spread from the military to the suburbs. The media dubbed the phenomenon wife-swapping.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I highly distrust the second inline source - no, I'm not going to link to it - as it is quite literally a site for this sort of thing. The third inline citation is for a conservative Christian page on the matter. Gould's book appears to be the best of the three to look at.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I do not have a print copy of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.terrygould.com/the-lifestyle.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;The Lifestyle: A Look at the Erotic Rites of Swingers&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, and only &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/03/polyamory_and_its_surprisingly_woman_friendly_roots_.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;a Slate article&lt;/a&gt;, it seems, does not use some slight variation on Wikipedia's phrasing yet also cites Gould.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After this, I saw that &lt;a href=&quot;https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/23310/is-there-any-evidence-that-ww2-pilots-lead-a-swingers-lifestyle-to-ensure-that/23312#23312&quot;&gt;Semaphore answered the question on History&lt;/a&gt; (using different sources). Semaphore gives one source that supports the idea, but ends with&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, there is &lt;strong&gt;very little actual evidence&lt;/strong&gt; supporting this story, which seems to trace back to journalist &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Talese&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Gay Talese&lt;/a&gt;'s 1981 book, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thy_Neighbor%27s_Wife&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thy Neighbor's Wife&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One theory is that swinging began among Air Force fighter pilots and their wives during World War II ... &lt;strong&gt;Neither theory has been well documented or verified.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;sub&gt; - Taormino, Tristan. &lt;em&gt;Opening Up&lt;/em&gt;. Cleis Press, 2013.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This got me worried, as I could not confirm Gould's sources. Then I saw &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.alearned.com/wife-swapping/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It seems that the original modern American swingers were crew-cut World War II air force pilots and their wives. Like elite warriors everywhere, these “top guns” often developed strong bonds with one another, perhaps because they suffered the highest casualty rate of any branch of the military. According to journalist Terry Gould, “key parties,” like those later dramatized in the 1997 film The Ice Storm, originated on these military bases in the 1940s, where elite pilots and their wives intermingled sexually with one another before the men flew off toward Japanese antiaircraft fire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Gould, author of The Lifestyle, a cultural history of the swinging movement in the United States, interviewed two researchers who’d written about this Air Force ritual. Joan and Dwight Dixon explained to Gould that these warriors and their wives “shared each other as a kind of tribal bonding ritual, with a tacit understanding that the two thirds of husbands who survived would look after the widows.” The practice continued after the war ended and by the late 1940s, “military installations from Maine to Texas and California to Washington had thriving swing clubs,” writes Gould.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I tried to track down the Dixons. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/01.20.00/cover/swingers-0003.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; says that they were sexologists who retroactively studied this in the 60s. I have found some of their other work, but none of it is related to the scenario - or even the time period - discussed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I think that this may negate Semaphore's concerns, showing that the &amp;quot;theory&amp;quot; was actually around way before Talese's book, and looks to be true. But I don't know this for sure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T19:07:52.757" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28282" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-01T23:29:34.380" Score="11" ViewCount="610" Body="&lt;p&gt;In a recent edition of &lt;em&gt;Time&lt;/em&gt; Magazine - I cannot find the article online, nor do I have access to a print copy anymore - a short article regarding the actions of the International Criminal Court (ICC) against African dictator stated that members of the United States government refused to let the United States recognize the Court because they feared the President George W. Bush might be prosecuted for war crimes related to the war in Iraq.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of the actual motivations behind the United States' decision, did any government official actually claim this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="1044" LastEditDate="2015-07-06T15:32:08.940" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T15:32:08.940" Title="Did a United States government official state that refusal to recognize the ICC was due to fear of George W. Bush would be prosecuted?" Tags="|united-states|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="11" ClosedDate="2015-07-02T12:26:46.483" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28283" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28345" CreationDate="2015-07-02T04:59:18.873" Score="14" ViewCount="667" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Greek civil servants get three days leave for donating blood.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A civil servant would be allowed to donate blood twice a year. This means, he could claim an extra 6-day leave. I cannot tell, if this blood-donation benefit has been scrapped as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.keeptalkinggreece.com/2013/09/13/greek-civil-servants-enjoyed-extra-6-day-paid-leave-for-using-computers-at-work/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;keeptalkinggreece&lt;/a&gt;, 09/2013&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I was not able to verify if civil servants are still allowed to take these holidays. If they are, is there any other country in Europe with such a high reward (in terms of holidays)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7384" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T19:46:33.730" Title="Do civil servants in Greece receive 3 days of holiday for donating blood?" Tags="|greece|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28284" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28286" CreationDate="2015-07-02T09:36:03.080" Score="4" ViewCount="600" Body="&lt;p&gt;Browsing Facebook's trending section on the conjunction between Venus and Jupiter, I found several individuals claiming that this is the first time since 2 B.C that the two have gotten as close as they have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;e.g&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Hd2L9.png&quot; alt=&quot;Chad Tucker claims that &amp;quot;The Star of Bethlehem is shinning (sic) for the first time since June 2 B.C&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1916PA.....24..390D&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this page&lt;/a&gt;, a 'striking' conjunction between Jupiter and Venus happens every 20 years or so, but the definition of 'striking' in this case is one as good as the one in 1916. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, what I'm asking is, were Venus and Jupiter in a conjunction like the one this year 2017 years ago, and is it the case that we've not had a conjunction like it since?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26925" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T01:15:38.770" Title="Was the 30th of June the closest Venus and Jupiter have appeared since 2 B.C?" Tags="|astronomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28285" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19382" CreationDate="2015-07-02T10:00:20.203" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;No. The percentage of hominid bones from the human fossil record for 1.0 to 3.8 million years ago is very sparse, since upto 2001 only 243 specimens are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018442X04700025&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;known&lt;/a&gt;. From about 75 known  individuals, some of them are represented by only a single tooth or bone fragment containing identical bone material to be classified as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v404/n6776/full/404382a0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;transitional forms&lt;/a&gt; from Hominids to Homo sapiens. However, evolutionary connections from Australopithecus to Homo erectus, including the evolutionary relationships between Habilis, Ergaster and Erectus, are in need of further research since techniques able to extract DNA from the bones of any australopithecine for comparison with modern human DNA are not yet proven.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/evol.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Hominid fossil&lt;/a&gt; remains are precious since complete skeletons are extraordinarily rare. Teeth and lower jaws, and the facial and upper cranial bones of the skull, are the most common fossils to survive from any period. Skulls are almost never found intact but must be reconstructed from fragments. Thigh bones are next most often retrieved, while remains of the feet, hands, pelvis or spine are extremely rare. Specific behavioral conclusions require specific parts of the skeleton. For example, adaptation for a crouching or upright posture can be inferred from the connection of the spine to the skull, but bipedalism (habitual walking on two legs) requires evidence from bones involved in the thigh, knee, or foot joints. An opposable thumb requires evidence from wrist or hand bones&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The early hominins share a important trait such as nearly efficient bipedal locomotion as humans. The bones of their pelvis, or hip region, were shortened from top to bottom and bowl-shaped like homo sapiens, but unlike apes.  This made the pelvis more stable for weight support when standing upright or moving &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v369/n6482/abs/369645a0.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;bipedally&lt;/a&gt;. The longer ape pelvis is adapted for quadrupedal locomotion. Early hominin leg and foot bones were also much more similar to Homo sapiens than to those of apes.  This is consistent with the likelihood of early &lt;a href=&quot;http://anthro.palomar.edu/hominid/australo_2.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hominin bipedalism&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Currently there are two main categories of transitional fossils such as Australopithecus and Homo and several sub species between the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.sciencemag.org/content/326/5949/74?related-urls=yes&amp;amp;legid=sci;326/5949/74&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ardipithecus ramidus&lt;/a&gt;  which lived 4.4 million years ago and Homo sapiens sapiens, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#chronology&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cro-Magnon I&lt;/a&gt; who lived 30,000 years ago.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.handprint.com/LS/ANC/evol.html#chart&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;classified&lt;/a&gt; not in order as,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(1) Australopithecus afarensis AL 288-1 a.k.a Lucy, 2.95 and 3.85 million years ago/Australopithecus africanus, Taung Child, 2.1-3.3 Million years&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(2) Homo erectus, D3444/KNM-WT 15000, 1.43 to 1.9 Million years/Homo habilis, KNM-ER 1813, OH24-fossils Olduvai Hominid, a Homo habilis, include a partial lower jaw, bones of the braincase and hand bones 1.4-2.4 Million years/ Homo ergaster (early H. erectus), KNM-ER 3733, 1.75 Million years ago&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(3) Homo heidelbergensis, &quot;Rhodesia man,&quot; 700,000 to 200,000 years ago&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(4) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis La Ferrassie 1, La Chappelle-aux-Saints, Shanidar 1, 230000–29000 years&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The author Bruce MacEvoy refers the above data from From Lucy to Language by Donald Johanson &amp;amp; Blake Edgar (Simon &amp;amp; Schuster, 1996), The Last Human by G.J. Sawyer, Viktor Deak, Esteban Sarmiento and others (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007) and The First Humans: Human Origins and History to 10,000 BC. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The first hominid was discovered in 1924 by Raymond Dart, an anatomy professor at Johannesburg in South Africa. The most significant difference between members of Homo and Australopiths, with which they overlapped, was their significantly larger brains (about 30 percent larger, though still small compared to modern humans). While the skull had many apelike features such as a projecting face and a small brain, it had distinctly human features as well—for example, a rounded jaw unlike the pointed jaw of apes. The ventral position of the foramen magnum (the hole at the base of the skull from which the spinal cord emerges) suggested that the creature had walked upright. More than 300 specimens of A. afarensis have since been discovered. In the last 10 years, three additional kinds of australopithecines have been reported. These seven species provide ample evidence that australopithecines were a diverse group, and additional species will undoubtedly be described by future &lt;a href=&quot;http://tolweb.org/treehouses/?treehouse_id=4438&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;investigators&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Scientists further divide the evolution of the modern human genus into three periods: early, middle, and late. Species of early Homo, among them Homo habilis, resembled Australopiths in many distinct ways, but they had smaller teeth and jaws, more modern-looking feet, and hands capable of making tools. They probably lived from between 2.5 or 2.3 million and 1.6 million years ago. Homo habilis co-existed with Homo erectus in Eastern Africa for almost half a million &lt;a href=&quot;http://tolweb.org/treehouses/?treehouse_id=3710&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;years&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The middle Homo species, including Homo erectus, evolved anatomically to be more similar to modern humans but their brains were relatively small (though bigger than australopiths). At the beginning of its time range, around 1.9 Million years ago, H. erectus coexisted in East Africa with several other early human species including Homo rudolfensis, Homo habilis, and Paranthropus boisei. At the end of its time range, around 143,000 years ago, it coexisted with Homo sapiens and possibly Homo floresiensis in Indonesia. Homo erectus was a very successful species of the middle period; fossils have been found throughout Africa, Europe, and much of Asia, and the species may have survived for more than 1.5 million &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14666536&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;years&lt;/a&gt;. Homo ergaster, which differs from the Asian H. erectus fossils in some details of the skull (e.g. the brow ridges differ in shape, and erectus would have a larger brain size). H. ergaster include fossils such as the Turkana boy and ER 3733. H. ergaster does not show significant promise of lasting as a separate taxon due to several factors. It has not been shown to be significantly different from erectus to require the designation of a new hominid species, and it has not been shown to be closer to modern humans &lt;a href=&quot;http://archaeologyinfo.com/homo-ergaster/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;morphologically&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Comparison of Neanderthal and modern human DNA suggests that the two lineages diverged from a common ancestor, most likely &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/192498160&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Homo heidelbergensis&lt;/a&gt;, sometime between 350,000 and 400,000 years ago – with the European branch leading to H. neanderthalensis and the African branch (sometimes called Homo rhodesiensis) to H. sapiens. Archaic forms of Homo sapiens first appear about 500,000 years ago. The term covers a diverse group of skulls which have features of both Homo erectus and modern humans. The brain size is larger than erectus and smaller than most modern humans, averaging about 1200 cc, and the skull is more rounded than in erectus. The skeleton and teeth are usually less robust than erectus, but more robust than modern humans. Many still have large brow ridges and receding foreheads and chins. There is no clear dividing line between late erectus and archaic sapiens, and many fossils between 500,000 and 200,000 years ago are difficult to classify as one or the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;other&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neanderthal 1 was the first specimen to be recognized as an early human fossil. The specimen had oval shaped skull with a low, receding forehead and distinct browridges, the thick, strong bones. Several years after Neanderthal 1 was discovered, scientists realized that prior fossil discoveries in 1829 at Engis, Belgium, and in 1848 at Forbes Quarry, Gibraltar—were also &lt;a href=&quot;http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/human-fossils/species/homo-neanderthalensis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Neanderthals&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;After the discovery of &lt;a href=&quot;http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Primates.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dmanisi fossil&lt;/a&gt; in 1991, it seems likely that fossils attributed in the past to Homo ergaster, Homo habilis, Homo rudolfensis (all in Africa), Pithecanthropus erectus (in Java) are all members of single evolving species, Homo erectus, showing variations with the passage of time (over a million years) and over large geographical distances. With evolution, species are not permanently stable entities. Sometimes they intergrade with other species and its close to impossible to describe completely with typological &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/news/human-evolution-fifty-years-after-homo-habilis-1.14957&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;labeling&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-07-06T09:49:40.200" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T09:49:40.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28286" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28284" CreationDate="2015-07-02T12:18:37.830" Score="4" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;... &lt;em&gt;were Venus and Jupiter in a conjunction like the one this year 2017 years ago, and is it the case that we've not had a conjunction like it since?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes and No&lt;/strong&gt;, respectively&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;TLDR: Venus and Jupiter passed in front of one and other in 2 bc and have since done so, but will not do so again until 2065.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Let's get a couple definitions out of the way...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://in-the-sky.org/glossary.php?term=conjunction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Conjunction&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A conjunction is an event when two or more astronomical bodies appear close to one another in the sky.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://in-the-sky.org/glossary.php?term=conjunction&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Occultation&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Occasionally they will pass so close to one another that the Moon passes in front of one of the planets; this is called an occultation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The planets form conjunctions with one another more rarely since they move across the sky more slowly. However, striking planetary alignments typically occur every few years.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As the page you linked : &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1916PA.....24..390D&amp;amp;classic=YES&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Frequency of Striking Conjunctions of Venus and Jupiter&lt;/a&gt;&#xA;goes into, the significance is due to how closely they pass. Well, we can do one better, necessarily if they occult, then they must, at some point been the same as this one (and even better).  So when was the last Venus-Jupiter Occultation?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://climate.gi.alaska.edu/curtis/astro4.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Planet-on-Planet Occultations (Worldwide)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Venus-Jupiter: Last  3 Jan 1818    Next: 22 Nov 2065, 14 Sep 2123, 8 Oct 2335, 12 Feb 2912, 8 Nov 2954, 13 Aug 2986&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So there was a closer conjunction in 1818.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This page &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bogan.ca/astro/occultations/occltlst.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Venus and Jupiter Occultations&lt;/a&gt; agrees&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;1818   3 Jan 21:51 UT  16oW    10&amp;quot;,30&amp;quot;,12&amp;quot; Occurred over Far East No History Record&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;but also lists a few going back, including ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2 BC   17 Jun 17:53 UT 45oW    26&amp;quot;,32&amp;quot;,28&amp;quot; Very Large Elongation Occurs over Middle East&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The next one seems to be in 2065.  But it will apparently happen near the sun so won't be possible to see.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T01:15:38.770" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28288" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28277" CreationDate="2015-07-02T13:03:46.117" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Twitter account is legit. It is linked from his &lt;a href=&quot;http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;website&lt;/a&gt; also appears to be legit as it is mentioned in his &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.utexas.edu/lbj/directory/faculty/yanis-varoufakis&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;UTexas bio&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The image is very likely a photo-shopped attempt at humour. If it had been legitimate, then there'd have been more of a brouhaha over it. Varoufakis has around half a million followers. Even so, it'd take some time to ratch up 1741 RTs. This implies that the tweet wasn't immediately taken down. Moreover, unless the CNN logo which is noted in the screenshot belongs to a fake account, it was favourited or re-tweeted by an account with &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/cnn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;18M followers&lt;/a&gt;. (Only this account appears to use that particular logo.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Lastly, unlike in this image, trawling through many of Varoufakis' past tweets yields not a single one in which his sentences are not properly capitalised.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user7920" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T13:03:46.117" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28290" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-06-29T12:56:54.527" Score="7" ViewCount="806" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jeffery_(manager)&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Michael Jeffery&lt;/a&gt;, Jimi Hendrix's manager, tricked Hendrix into signing an insurance contract that pays Jeffery $2 million upon the death of Mr James Marshall Hendrix.&lt;br&gt;&#xA;A short time later, Hendrix is found &quot;drowned with wine in his lungs and undigested sleeping pills in his stomach&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's even a claim about it in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/hendrix-murdered-by-his-manager-says-former-aide-1693583.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;h2&gt;Hendrix murdered by his manager, says former aide&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The rock legend Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager, who stood to collect millions of dollars on the star's life insurance policy, a former roadie has claimed in a new book.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;James &quot;Tappy&quot; Wright says that Hendrix's manager, Michael Jeffrey, drunkenly confessed to killing him by stuffing pills into his mouth and washing them down with several bottles of red wine because he feared Hendrix intended to dump him for a new manager, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In his book, Rock Roadie, Mr Wright says Jeffrey told him in 1971 that Hendrix had been &quot;worth more to him dead than alive&quot; as he had taken out a life insurance policy on the musician worth $2m (about £1.2m at the time), with himself as the beneficiary. Two years later, Jeffrey was killed in a plane crash.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="NormLDude" LastEditorUserId="15002" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T22:38:31.653" LastActivityDate="2015-09-08T15:42:46.660" Title="Did Michael Jeffery (Hendrix's manager) kill Jimi Hendrix after tricking him into signing an insurance policy?" Tags="|criminology|music|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28291" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28127" CreationDate="2015-07-02T15:54:28.957" Score="6" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Is it true that laughing gas is not used to reduce labor pains because it is cheap?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be a range of factors contributing to why N2O is not readily available in the US.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3594866/&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nitrous Oxide for Labor Analgesia: Expanding Analgesic Options for Women in the United States&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One major barrier to implementation of N2O services in the United States has been the limited availability of N2O delivery equipment.&lt;/strong&gt; The device must be equipped with a demand valve capable of intermittent high-volume delivery capacity. Most commercially available N2O analgesia systems, such as &lt;strong&gt;those used in the dental industry, employ continuous-flow low-volume systems and are unsuitable for intermittent use with laboring women&lt;/strong&gt;. As previously mentioned, single-cylinder Entonox &lt;strong&gt;systems used in Europe have not been approved for use by the FDA&lt;/strong&gt; and are not available for purchase in the United States. Currently, Nitronox is the only FDA-approved apparatus for the self-administration of N2O. Matrx Medical (Orchard Park, NY), the initial manufacturer of Nitronox equipment, discontinued production several years ago, which made the purchase of new units impossible. Recently, however, the Porter Instrument Division of Parker Hannifin Corporation has secured the rights to manufacture the Nitronox apparatus, and have indicated that they intend to have a device on the market by the end of 2012 (M. Civitello, personal communication, June 2012). Reintroduction of Nitronox equipment will remove a major barrier to N2O availability.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it could be argued that the reason the equipment isn't available is because there is no demand.  And the reason there is no demand is because hospitals don't want to buy new equipment that will reduce their profits.  So let's keep going.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there other reasons why an epidural may be preferable?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.porterinstrument.com/dentalcontent/files/datasheets/AHRQ-N20-For-The-Management-of-Labor-Pain.pdf&quot;&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Nitrous Oxide for the Management of Labor Pain&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/a&gt;(300+ pg pdf)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Inhalation of nitrous oxide provided less effective pain relief than epidural analgesia,&#xA;  but the quality of studies was predominately poor.&lt;/strong&gt; The heterogeneous outcomes used to assess&#xA;  women’s satisfaction with their birth experience and labor pain management made synthesis of&#xA;  studies difficult. The strength of evidence was insufficient to determine the effect of nitrous&#xA;  oxide on route of birth. Most maternal harms reported in the literature were unpleasant side&#xA;  effects that affect tolerability (e.g., nausea, vomiting, dizziness, and drowsiness). Apgar scores in&#xA;  newborns whose mothers used nitrous oxide were similar to those of newborns whose mothers&#xA;  used other labor pain management methods or no analgesia. Evidence about occupational harms&#xA;  and exposure was limited.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One concern with nitrous oxide use is the potential for the gas to escape into the room and&#xA;  potentially affect health care workers as well as other individuals present with laboring women.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;  For this reason, multiple organizations are responsible for regulating the use of nitrous oxide, and&#xA;  factors other than clinical outcomes are important to decisionmaking about its use (Appendix F).&#xA;  Room ventilation systems and scavenging systems that remove waste gases are used to reduce&#xA;  exposure to caregivers and others present for labor. Equipment capable of scavenging provides&#xA;  constant negative pressure so that the woman’s exhalations, which contain nitrous oxide, are&#xA;  captured and removed from the room and facility.6&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There seems to be reasons for and against the use of N2O (though the study seems somewhat supportive).  Either way, it's not exactly a no-brainer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2010/09/nitrous-oxide-childbirth-pain&quot;&gt;Laughing Gas For Labor Pain — Why Not?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Holly Powell Kennedy, Ph.D., a certified nurse midwife and professor of midwifery at Yale University School of Nursing, says one of the reasons nitrous isn’t used in the U.S. is &lt;strong&gt;simply cultural. Many women make decisions about childbirth based on what they learn from family and friends, and most have never heard of or used nitrous oxide for coping with labor pain.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Alright, well that makes sense.  But couldn't they still be conspiring against us?  Well, we'll probably never know, but this article seems to give us a peek inside the important factors in hospital decisions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://formularyjournal.modernmedicine.com/formulary-journal/news/clinical/clinical-pharmacology/role-pharmacoeconomics-formulary-decision-maki?page=full&quot;&gt;The role of pharmacoeconomics in formulary decision-making&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The role of cost- and pharmacoeconomic-related criteria in formulary decision-making was assessed in a literature review of 31 studies of hospital (n=18) and managed care (n=13) pharmacy and therapeutics (P&amp;amp;T) committees. In both settings, cost was important, although the elements of cost considered varied. &lt;strong&gt;Acquisition cost was mentioned more frequently than pharmacoeconomic or cost-effectiveness information. Other factors, including drug characteristics, quality of life, supply-related issues, and physician demand, also influenced decisions.&lt;/strong&gt; Despite the relatively low reported usage of pharmacoeconomic data in decision-making, most respondents considered the information to be &quot;somewhat&quot; or &quot;very&quot; important. Barriers to the use of pharmacoeconomic information included institutional factors and lack of training. Limitations in the survey methods used and issues considered restricted the ability to identify a comprehensive and consistent role for cost information in selecting formulary drugs. Further research on the use of pharmacoeconomic information is required. (Formulary. 2006;41:374–386.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T15:54:28.957" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28292" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28283" CreationDate="2015-07-02T16:14:02.890" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The article &lt;a href=&quot;http://cyrus.tcdn.teicrete.gr/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=2MLUpf5j-dQ%3D&amp;amp;tabid=1089&quot;&gt;BLOOD DONOR BEHAVIOUR IN GREECE: IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH POLICY&lt;/a&gt; Soc. Sci. Med. Vol. 38, No. 10, pp. 1461-1467, discusses:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the right for a 2-day leave from work&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;also phrased as&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Two-day leave of absence from work during blood donation&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Six-day military leave&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2440532/&quot;&gt;Factors that motivate and hinder blood donation in Greece&lt;/a&gt; Transfus Med. 2007 Dec; 17(6): 443–450 :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a large number of volunteers report having hidden the truth in the screening questionnaire so that they are allowed to donate blood in order to be granted leave from work &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;donors belonged to the armed forces. This last group is highly motivated to donate voluntarily as they are compensated with days off from duty&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T16:14:02.890" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28294" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28279" CreationDate="2015-07-02T17:55:43.527" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;After doing some brief research, I found that it &lt;em&gt;can&lt;/em&gt; be illegal in (at least) California - @DavePhD mentions in comments that similar laws also exist for North Dakota and Nebraska, and may exist for other states as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;6980.54.  (a) A locksmith licensed by the bureau shall be subject to&#xA;  the provisions of Section 466.6 of the Penal Code, and shall be able&#xA;  to duplicate any key for any vehicle from another key.&#xA;     (b) A locksmith licensed by the bureau shall be subject to the&#xA;  provisions of Section 466.8 of the Penal Code, and shall be able to&#xA;  duplicate any key for a residence, commercial establishment, or&#xA;  personal property from another key, except as follows:&#xA;     &lt;strong&gt;(1) Duplication is prohibited when a key is stamped, imprinted,&#xA;  marked, or incised with the wording &quot;Do Not Duplicate&quot; or &quot;Unlawful&#xA;  To Duplicate&quot; and includes the originator's company name and&#xA;  telephone number.&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;     (2) Duplication is prohibited when a key is a Restricted Key or a&#xA;  High Security Key and includes the originator's company name and&#xA;  telephone number or registration number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=bpc&amp;amp;group=06001-07000&amp;amp;file=6980.53-6980.69&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Generally, keys marked like this are for apartments or other commercial locks, so &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/28280/25359&quot;&gt;from @nomenagentis's answer&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the technician suspects wrongful intent&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;is a very likely suspicion when the key is marked in this way. While this is just speculation and I'm not sure how one would find out exactly, I would guess that Wal-mart (and many other locksmiths) just make this a company-wide policy to be safe.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25359" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T19:05:45.317" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28295" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24044" CreationDate="2015-07-02T20:46:20.483" Score="3" Body="&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Speisa is a right wing propaganda outlet and has other articles denying climate change. [&lt;a href=&quot;http://speisa.com/modules/articles/index.php/item.521/professor-global-warming-the-biggest-fraud-in-history.html]&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://speisa.com/modules/articles/index.php/item.521/professor-global-warming-the-biggest-fraud-in-history.html]&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Here is the report they are referencing: &lt;a href=&quot;http://ww.rrojasdatabank.info/HDRP_2010_40.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ww.rrojasdatabank.info/HDRP_2010_40.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.  It did not conclude that Sweden would be a third world country or bankrupt. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report was measuring changes in HDI while also categorizing nations into 4 different cohorts. The rank list putting Sweden below a few countries like Libya was measuring net HDI change over the course of specific years selected in the study. This was not meant to be a prediction of the future, it was just following the curve of development which already occurred and has been observed between two dates. Since Sweden has already been developed and Libya is in a transition to raise their own standard of living, the change in Libya is already pinned to have faster development by default than any changes made within Sweden. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The report also doesn't publish all methods and some of the tables compare nations without accounting cohort differences. This can confuse people to think Sweden is going to be &quot;ranked&quot; below Libya on this index of change in HDI when in fact its just comparing development rates beyond varying baselines previously established by the start date. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This report also prefaced that it was merely following the numbers of current trends which are likely to change. They just followed a curve of arbitrary dates. Since all countries vary in their HDI year by year, they could pick different dates and get a completely different ranking list. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Thus, the projections should be interpreted as what might occur based on a past global experience with HDI growth, not a normative suggestion as to what will occur&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26931" LastActivityDate="2015-07-02T20:46:20.483" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28296" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-03T00:48:54.063" Score="10" ViewCount="2655" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are people claiming that the earth is flat. Most notably &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theflatearthsociety.org/&quot;&gt;the flat earth society&lt;/a&gt;. While I believe this is mostly run by people with good knowledge of science having a fun side-project, I'm having a hard time disproving them. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;How do you really prove that the earth is round?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2743" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T08:27:55.477" Title="Proof that the earth is round?" Tags="|earth|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="9" ClosedDate="2015-07-03T10:14:31.560" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28298" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-03T01:12:57.060" Score="4" ViewCount="3486" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this claim a few times around the internet:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The reality is that the average Russian consumes about a pint of vodka a day; or, one-half of a half liter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Source: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.russianlife.com/blog/drinking-in-russia/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Russian Life, 2007&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claim isn't terrible clear about the units. (@ChrisW suggests it means a pint of vodka, which is equivalent to around 250mL of alcohol.) The most generous interpretation is that the average Russian drinks more than 250mL of vodka per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does the average Russian drink more than 250mL of vodka per day?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16869" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-03T22:59:56.893" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T22:59:56.893" Title="Does the average Russian drink 250mL of vodka a day?" Tags="|alcohol|russia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28300" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28298" CreationDate="2015-07-03T05:15:04.373" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;, it's an exaggeration. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2010, Russian males (aged 15+) consumed an average of 23.9 (Confidence interval 21.1–26.8) liters of pure alcohol annually.  Including women brings it down to 15.1 (13.3–16.9) liters.(&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/msb_gsr_2014_3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WHO&lt;/a&gt;; pg. 5)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Note that the break-down is 37.6% Beer, 11.4% Wine, and 51.0% Spirits)(same &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/substance_abuse/publications/global_alcohol_report/msb_gsr_2014_3.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;pdf&lt;/a&gt;, pg. 13)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, to be generous, even if we only look at the &lt;strong&gt;men&lt;/strong&gt; and assume &lt;strong&gt;all&lt;/strong&gt; the alcohol they consume is vodka.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Vodka is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.livescience.com/32735-how-much-alcohol-is-in-my-drink.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;apparently&lt;/a&gt; usually about 40% alcohol by volume. So a liter of vodka would be 0.4 liters of alcohol.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dividing 23.9 liters of alcohol per year by 40% by volume gives us the equivalent alcohol to 59.75 liters of vodka per year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dividing the annual consumption by 365 gets us 163.7 mL of vodka per day.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Even with a generous interpretation of the claim we are still pretty shy of 250mL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Looking at &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_measurements&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;these US tables&lt;/a&gt; (which only apply to US spirits measurements), the glass size falls between a &quot;gill&quot; glass (118 mL) and a &quot;half pint&quot; glass (200 mL) (which is strangely is not half of a (liquor) pint, or half of a US pint or half of an Imperial pint)]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more accurate (but still generous) version of the claim is to consider all adults, not just men, and discard the 49% non-spirits drinks, but assume all the spirits S are vodka.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;15.1 L per year both genders * 51% spirits / 40% by volume / 365 days = 0.050 L = 50 mL.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We are far too shy of the claim for it to be true.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So does...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;the average Russian consumes about a pint of vodka a day; or, one-half of a half liter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that &quot;the average Russian&quot; could be describing about the median value, not the average value.  In which case, under perfectly ideal circumstances at most double our average, still being too low.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-03T22:13:09.533" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T22:13:09.533" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28304" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="21937" CreationDate="2015-07-03T08:45:19.243" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, neck strengthening exercises may not prevent cerebral concussions (knockouts) in boxing per &lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02477111&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; 'Peak accelerations of the head experienced in boxing'. The response of the head-neck system to an external force had been established by forcing the torso of a subject to move in a fore and aft direction, in a sinusoidal manner at various frequencies. In a realistic boxing situation a ‘safe level’ can be exceeded by a factor of 4 when the estimated pulse is used in conjunction with Gadd Severity Index developed for road safety.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results of the study were, &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The duration of a typical pulse of force, as encountered in boxing, was measured, and hence it was inferred that in this situation the head is mass-controlled; i.e. the effect of the rigidity and damping of the neck is negligible. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding boxing knockouts,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Along with legitimate lesions sustained by competitors, for example as a result of cerebral concussion (knockout), there is a considerable risk of acute injuries to the head, heart, and bones in competitive boxing. Neuropsychological deficits last longer than most subjectively experienced consequences of blunt traumatic brain injury beyond the acute phase. Tests conducted on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) verify previous nerve damage.&#xA;Repetitive brain trauma over a lengthy career may result in boxer’s dementia having neurobiological similarities to Alzheimer’s &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3003467/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;disease&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The recurrent head trauma in boxing may be associated with increased risk of chronic traumatic brain &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22496755&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;injury&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Chronic traumatic brain injury (CTBI) associated with boxing occurs in approximately 20% of professional boxers. Risk factors associated with CTBI include increased exposure (i.e., duration of career, age of retirement, total number of bouts), poor performance, increased sparring, and apolipoprotein (APOE) &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10946737&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;genotype&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A majority of boxing-related fatalities result from traumatic brain injury. Biomechanical forces in boxing result in rotational acceleration with resultant subdural hematoma and diffuse axonal injury. There was a significant decline in mortality after 1983 which was hypothesized as the result of a reduction in exposure to repetitive head trauma (shorter careers and fewer fights), along with increased medical oversight and stricter safety regulations. Mandatory central nervous system imaging after a knockout could lead to a significant reduction in associated &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20948404&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;mortality&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Rotational accelerations appeared to be the dominate response and were consistent with levels found in concussion of professional football players in the study 'Biomechanics of the head for Olympic boxer punches to the face' about head injury risks which combines data on the head impact response of a biofidelic dummy and the measured punch force of Olympic class boxers throwing straight punches.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Rotational acceleration had good linear correlation with weight class. Weight class also showed good correlation with punch force, jaw force, HIC, and head velocity. These results support previous epidemiological studies showing that head injuries occur more frequently in the heavier weight classes36 and the general mechanics of the boxing punch.37 While weight was a good predictor, punch force had a stronger correlation with HIC, rotational acceleration, and head velocity. In addition, punch force also correlated with translational acceleration. Hand velocity did not seem to affect the severity of impact. This means the effective mass of the boxer’s punch is more important in increasing the severity of a blow.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, conclusion of another study was that neither the translational nor the rotational acceleration reached a level that was injurious to the boxer based on the tolerance limit of 200 g for translational acceleration and 4500 rad/s2 for rotational acceleration and repeated sub-concussive blows were the injury mechanism for mild traumatic brain injury &lt;a href=&quot;http://wbldb.lievers.net/10107454.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;MTBI&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Research is necessary to determine the outcomes of injury, particularly the long-term neurologic outcome differences between sexes since male boxers have a higher rate of knockout and technical knockouts than female &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16295814&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;boxers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;No compelling evidence is available to suggest that regular magnetic resonance imaging of the brain, rigorous medical supervision, or currently &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1724752/pdf/v038p00078.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;practised safety measures&lt;/a&gt; will influence or prevent the development of chronic traumatic brain injury. However, because today's boxers have shorter careers and reduced exposure to repetitive head trauma, the likelihood of this condition developing is probably &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2034695/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;low&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Effects of concussion a.k.a. Mild traumatic brain injury&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Immediate physiological changes such as multilayered neurometabolic cascade in which recovery of affected cells typically occur, although under certain circumstances a small number might degenerate and die. The primary pathophysiologies include ionic shifts, abnormal energy metabolism, diminished cerebral blood flow, and impaired &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16639155&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;neurotransmission&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Elevations of glutamate and potassium, early hyperglycolysis and glucose metabolic syndrome.  Metabolic recovery generally takes weeks to months after moderate to severe &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3445184/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;TBI&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neck strength studies&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;When exploring the biomechanics of head and neck movement, evidence indicates that brain injury is associated with head acceleration. Minimizing head acceleration has been a focus of recent research in many sports, including American football and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3899908/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;soccer&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Concussions occur as a result of a direct or indirect force that is applied to the head that results in the sudden acceleration/deceleration of the brain . In general, it is not the velocity of the athlete or the force of impact that is being measured, but rather the change in velocity or acceleration of the cranium that is measured by helmet-based &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3643806/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sensors&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Empirical formulations such as the Gadd Severity Index (GSI) and the Head Injury Criterion (HIC) predict when a single uniform, linear acceleration of the head may lead to brain injury. However, the cumulative effects of repeated accelerations remain &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/profile/PV_Bayly/publication/232177222_Linear_and_Angular_Head_Accelerations_during_Heading_of_a_Soccer_Ball/links/0a85e52e913260a896000000.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unknown&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Force can also cause an acceleration which is rotational or translational of the skull/brain structure and acceleration creates intracranial pressures and movement and distortion of brain tissue through strain. Optimal neck strengthening interventions for concussion risk mitigation are not &lt;a href=&quot;http://medicine.utah.edu/pmr/conference/presentations/2013/James%20Eckner%202013.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;known&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Identifying differences in overall neck strength may be useful in developing a screening tool to determine which high school athletes are at higher risk of concussion per Collins CL et. al. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24930131&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2014&lt;/a&gt;.   &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Overall neck strength (p &amp;lt; 0.001), gender (p &amp;lt; 0.001), and sport (p = 0.007) were significant predictors of concussions in unadjusted models. After adjusting for gender and sport, overall neck strength remained a significant predictor of concussion (p = 0.004). For every one pound increase in neck strength, odds of concussion decreased by 5 % (OR = 0.95, 95 % CI 0.92-0.98).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However another &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.researchgate.net/publication/51618401_Does_Cervical_Muscle_Strength_in_Youth_Ice_Hockey_Players_Affect_Head_Impact_Biomechanics&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; by Jason Mihalik et.al in 2011 conflicts with the above finding that&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Our hypothesis that players with greater static neck strength would experience lower resultant head accelerations was not supported. This contradicts the notion that cervical muscle strength mitigates head impact acceleration. Because we evaluated cervical strength isometrically, future studies should consider dynamic (ie, isokinetic) methods in the context of head impact biomechanics. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-07-06T09:50:49.803" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T09:50:49.803" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28305" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-03T09:04:33.753" Score="6" ViewCount="2231" Body="&lt;p&gt;In my country, there is a popular belief that during a thunderstorm, windows should be closed because of the risk of ball lightning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answers to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/2603/4383&quot;&gt;this other question&lt;/a&gt; explain that ball lightning “is a well-documented phenomenon”. Although, I can't find any statistics showing how often a ball lightning occurs, nor how many people were actually killed by it &lt;em&gt;when being inside&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is also &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/5962/4383&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt; which talks about the slight risk that open windows present in a context of an ordinary lightning striking an object inside the house, but ball lightning is not mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it an actual risk to leave windows open during a thunderstorm &lt;strong&gt;in a context of ball lightning&lt;/strong&gt;? How big is the risk of being killed or injured by a ball lightning entering the house (especially compared to the risk of being hit by a car when crossing the road ?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="4383" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.070" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T11:22:44.360" Title="Does closing a window reduce a serious risk of harm due to ball lightning?" Tags="|weather|lightning|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28307" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="359" CreationDate="2015-07-03T14:52:01.693" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There is no strong evidence for this, and plenty of evidence that ancient and Renaissance artists used other systems — for example, ratios of integers.&lt;/strong&gt; That is, it is not as if we have lost &lt;em&gt;all&lt;/em&gt; writing from classical times on ideal numerical systems for art and architecture, but &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; idea does not appear. Therefore, it is likely that the systems which &lt;em&gt;were&lt;/em&gt; documented were the ones used by artists and architects — not the golden ratio, which was not written about in this way until its modern popularization.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Knowledge of the ratio dates back to at least Euclid (300 BC), but he just noted it as interesting in mathematics, not aesthetics. Then, it doesn't seem to really turn up in writing until about 1500, when Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli wrote about it as &amp;quot;the divine proportion&amp;quot; — and while his mystical writing touches on aesthetics, there's no evidence that anyone (even da Vinci!) took it to heart.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea that the number was important in aesthetics comes from a psychologist named Adolph Zeising in 19th century Germany. There is credible &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=mxV6AAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA249&amp;amp;dq=%22golden+ratio%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=OiRrTcfHMMSftweA0Z3mAg&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;ved=0CC4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=true&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;evidence&lt;/a&gt; that this is the start of the modern idea. Zeising's theory — that there was a &lt;em&gt;number&lt;/em&gt; behind beauty — matched the times, as scientists worked to turn psychology into a quantifiable empirical science (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oaa.on.ca/oaamedia/documents/OAAPerspectivesFall2012.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;see more in the article &lt;em&gt;Architecture and the Golden Section&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;), and perhaps this helped the idea spread.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(More on Zeising: &lt;a href=&quot;http://herz-fischler.ca/zeising.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://books.google.com/books?id=bUARfgWRH14C&amp;amp;pg=PA178&amp;amp;lpg=PA178&amp;amp;dq=zeising+crankish&amp;amp;source=bl&amp;amp;ots=AOUjmTKmHo&amp;amp;sig=pjG5ekvmp4-BgyzG7nI1gfE4Xyk&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ei=8i1rTbenC9KWtwenlf3lAg&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;oi=book_result&amp;amp;ct=result&amp;amp;resnum=1&amp;amp;ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false%7CThe&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/de-gruyter/adolph-zeising-and-the-formalist-tradition-in-aesthetics-5fIqaRfpI9&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bachnetwork.co.uk/ub1/tatlow.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just because Zeising popularized the idea doesn't mean he's &lt;em&gt;wrong&lt;/em&gt;. However, I'm coming up empty coming up with anything credible before the 19th century — which suggests that even if he's right about any special aesthetic qualities (a separate question, really), he was wrong about its actual use by prior artists (just as he was wrong about its frequency &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.lhup.edu/%7Edsimanek/pseudo/fibonacc.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;in nature&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Zeising approach of finding some natural or ancient thing which appears to fit the theorized measurements is not satisfactory, for two reasons:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;First, this is subject to selection bias — it stands to reason that if we measure all of the things, some will appear to fit by coincidence.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Second, it is usually the case that such measurements are done very shoddily in order to make them match.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The images Sklivvz has provided in another answer are &lt;em&gt;perfect&lt;/em&gt; examples of this: sure, there are convincing-looking lines and measurements at first glance, but if you look more closely, it's unclear what actual building features they correspond to. The rectangle around the Parthenon doesn't even line up with the borders of building in the diagram — and in fact only comes close to the golden ratio if you start at the &lt;em&gt;second of four steps&lt;/em&gt;. In short, the idea that the Parthenon corresponds in this way has been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fastcodesign.com/3044877/the-golden-ratio-designs-biggest-myth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;well&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/2013/01/mythbusting-golden-mean-part-1.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;debunked&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Most ancient writing on proportions in design seems to follow a system of &lt;em&gt;ratios of integers&lt;/em&gt; — for example &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvius#Vitruvius.27_De_Architectura_libri_decem_.28De_Architectura.29&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vitruvius&lt;/a&gt;, on who's work da Vinci's famous illustration is based. This is the case with the Parthenon:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Parthenon, like a statue, exemplifies a certain symmetria. Its symmetria largely depends upon the 9:4 ratio, which is present in various dimensions of the building—the length of the stylobate [the platform that forms the base of the building] to the width of the stylobate, the width of the stylobate to the height of the column and entablature [the top section between the columns and roof] together.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/glorious-parthenon.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Nova, the Glorious Parthenon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In all, this 4 – 6 – 9 theme pervades the entire Parthenon: in the symmetry of the architectural elements it leads to the geometric proportion 4:6 = 6:9. In the sculptural program of the temple's east front it constitutes the core of the 4 – (6 - 7) – 9 symmetric number symbolism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;— &lt;a href=&quot;http://dro.deakin.edu.au/view/DU:30027873&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Anne Bulckens, Parthenon's main design proportion and its meaning&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Bulkens connects these proportions to Vitruvius' writing on the proportions of Doric temples, This aligns with Vitruvius's writing on architecture, which is extensive — Vitruvius's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0073%3Abook%3D1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ten Books on Architecture&lt;/a&gt;. A particular section is worth quoting a large chunk from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The design of a temple depends on symmetry, the principles of which must be most carefully observed by the architect. They are due to proportion, in Greek [Greek: analogia]. Proportion is a correspondence among the measures of the members of an entire work, and of the whole to a certain part selected as standard. From this result the principles of symmetry. Without symmetry and proportion there can be no principles in the design of any temple; that is, if there is no precise relation between its members, as in the case of those of a well shaped man.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the human body is so designed by nature that the face, from the chin to the top of the forehead and the lowest roots of the hair, is a &lt;strong&gt;tenth&lt;/strong&gt; part of the whole height; the open hand from the wrist to the tip of the middle finger is just the same; the head from the chin to the crown is an &lt;strong&gt;eighth&lt;/strong&gt;, and with the neck and shoulder from the top of the breast to the lowest roots of the hair is a &lt;strong&gt;sixth&lt;/strong&gt;; from the middle of the breast to the summit of the crown is a &lt;strong&gt;fourth&lt;/strong&gt;. If we take the height of the face itself, the distance from the bottom of the chin to the under side of the nostrils is one &lt;strong&gt;third&lt;/strong&gt; of it; the nose from the under side of the nostrils to a line between the eyebrows is the same; from there to the lowest roots of the hair is also a &lt;strong&gt;third&lt;/strong&gt;, comprising the forehead. The length of the foot is one &lt;strong&gt;sixth&lt;/strong&gt; of the height of the body; of the forearm, one &lt;strong&gt;fourth&lt;/strong&gt;; and the breadth of the breast is also one &lt;strong&gt;fourth&lt;/strong&gt;. The other members, too, have their own symmetrical proportions, and it was by employing them that the famous painters and sculptors of antiquity attained to great and endless renown.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Similarly, in the members of a temple there ought to be the greatest harmony in the symmetrical relations of the different parts to the general magnitude of the whole. Then again, in the human body the central point is naturally the navel. For if a man be placed flat on his back, with his hands and feet extended, and a pair of compasses centred at his navel, the fingers and toes of his two hands and feet will touch the circumference of a circle described therefrom. And just as the human body yields a circular outline, so too a square figure may be found from it. For if we measure the distance from the soles of the feet to the top of the head, and then apply that measure to the outstretched arms, the breadth will be found to be the same as the height, as in the case of plane surfaces which are perfectly square.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Therefore, since nature has designed the human body so that its members are duly proportioned to the frame as a whole, it appears that the ancients had good reason for their rule, that in perfect buildings the different members must be in exact symmetrical relations to the whole general scheme. Hence, while transmitting to us the proper arrangements for buildings of all kinds, they were particularly careful to do so in the case of temples of the gods, buildings in which merits and faults usually last forever.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(Emphasis added to highlight the numbers.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This text — not the golden ratio! — is the inspiration for da Vinci's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitruvian_Man&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Vitruvian man&lt;/a&gt;. Now, the actual &lt;em&gt;influence&lt;/em&gt; of Vitruvius on architecture before the Italian Renaissance is itself in doubt, but an example of an intended-to-be-comprehensive ancient survey of practices in architecture, and it's all about the integer proportions. The golden ratio isn't mentioned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we move forward to the Renaissance, the most common example cited is Luca Pacioli's &lt;em&gt;Divine Proportion&lt;/em&gt;. But, only the first part of this book is concerned with the golden ratio, and is primarily about the relationship between religion and math — the word &amp;quot;divine&amp;quot; here is intended to be literal. Pacioli's writing is deeply mystical, and connected with ideas about an indivisible God, the trinity, and so on (see &lt;a href=&quot;http://bookishgirl.com.au/2012/02/15/art-and-maths-the-divine-proportion-of-luca-pacioli-with-drawings-by-leonardo-da-vinci/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this for more&lt;/a&gt;). He does discuss Platonic solids and more complex derivatives and &lt;em&gt;their&lt;/em&gt; relation to architecture, but the connection from that to direct use of the golden ratio as a design principle just isn't there.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;em&gt;second&lt;/em&gt; part of Pacioli's book covers architecture, and discusses the &lt;em&gt;integer-based&lt;/em&gt; Vitruvian system as applied there — &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; the golden ratio! Furthermore, despite da Vinci's illustrations, Pacioli was not an artist, and I see no contemporary evidence that his ideas caught on (in art or otherwise) until Zeising. Da Vinci made extensive notes and sketches for his own work, and none of these make reference to the golden ratio — but there are examples of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/illustration/study-of-the-proportions-face-and-eye-studio-proportion-stock-graphic/132705445&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;other proportions&lt;/a&gt;. The idea that he believed in this theory but left it out is an extraordinary claim with no support.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is, however, &lt;strong&gt;significant counter-evidence&lt;/strong&gt; in a &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/details/vorschulederaest12fechuoft&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1876 study by Gustav Fechner&lt;/a&gt; — a strong believer in Zeising's ideas. He surveyed &lt;em&gt;10,558&lt;/em&gt; paintings from from 22 European art galleries and analyzed their aspect ratios. Expecting to find the golden ratio, he instead found a general disregard for it:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AsXGn.png&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/AsXGn.png&quot; alt=&quot;Page 291 of volume II of Vorschule der Aesthetik&quot; /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of the three types of paintings analyzed, those in &amp;quot;portrait&amp;quot; orientation have an average aspect ratio of about 1:1.25 (that is, 4:5) and those in &amp;quot;landscape&amp;quot; orientation average about 1:1.37 — which is close to 3:4 but nowhere near &lt;em&gt;phi&lt;/em&gt;. Of course, in such a large sample, one can surely find some examples which approach the golden ratio, but were it in any way special to the artists of the time, one would expect at least a &lt;em&gt;pattern&lt;/em&gt; of use — and there isn't one.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For more analysis comprehensive paper on some &amp;quot;conventional wisdom&amp;quot; examples which do not hold up, see George Markowski's paper &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdlmadrid.org/cdl/htdocs/universidaddeotono/unioto/matematicas/markowsky.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Misconceptions about the Golden Ratio&lt;/a&gt;, which covers the Great Pyramid, the Parthenon, da Vinci,  This paper itself contains many further references if you're unconvinced.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Ancient (Pythagoras, Vitruvius) and Renaissance (Pacioli) authors  wrote about the beauty, importance, and mysticism of &lt;em&gt;small integer ratios&lt;/em&gt;, and this is matches various very precise measurements of surviving structures. That is, the writings match the apparent result. To the contrary, there seem to be &lt;em&gt;no&lt;/em&gt; ancient writings espousing the use of the golden ratio in art or architecture, and few if any examples of &lt;em&gt;precise&lt;/em&gt; measurement of artifacts.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="185" LastEditorUserId="185" LastEditDate="2023-05-18T14:54:05.037" LastActivityDate="2023-05-18T14:54:05.037" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28308" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-03T17:47:02.703" Score="0" ViewCount="103" Body="&lt;p&gt;This video, which is apparently by History.com Channel, shows a man called &quot;Electric Mohan&quot; from Kerala, India who doesn't get harmed when electricity flows through him.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it possible for any human being to withstand electricity of 3 Ampere, 220 Volts?&#xA;Is the person (or the video) doing some trick?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWNc2rYUT0c&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWNc2rYUT0c&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26941" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-07-03T18:26:08.627" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T18:26:08.627" Title="Was this video about a person who can withstand electricity staged?" Tags="|physiology|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="7" ClosedDate="2015-07-03T22:38:54.163" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28310" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="359" CreationDate="2015-07-03T18:49:56.860" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;Misconceptions about the Golden Ratio&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;George Markowsky&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;College Mathematics Journal&lt;/em&gt;: Volume 23, Number 1, Pages: 2-19 1992&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;first paragraph...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The golden ratio, also called by different authors the golden section [Cox], golden number [Fi4], golden mean [Lin], divine proportion [Hun], and division in extreme and mean ratios [Smi], has captured the popular imagination and is discussed in many books and articles. Generally, its mathematical properties are correctly stated, but much of what is presented about it in art, architecture, literature, and esthetics is false or seriously misleading. Unfortunately, these statements about the golden ratio have achieved the status of common knowledge and are widely repeated. Even current high school geometry textbooks such as [Ser] make many incorrect statements about the golden ratio.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So I guess we have to look at Markowsky's references.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5125" LastActivityDate="2015-07-03T18:49:56.860" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28312" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="25235" CreationDate="2015-07-04T08:06:11.410" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Effects of temperature of beverages on health&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;1. Temperature of beverages does not affect intestinal absorption. Consumption of cold beverages may reduce less body temperature during exercise.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study by Tan PM et. al. in 2015 found that beverage temperature does not affect intestinal absorption. However, it was also noted that ingestion of cold beverages leads to reduction of less body temperature during &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25943655&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;exercise&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Temperature of drinks does not seem to have an effect on the rate of gastric emptying and intestinal absorption. The ingestion of cold drinks can reduce body core temperature before exercise but less so during exercise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Drinking hot beverages triggers sweat response which may help in production of very small changes in body temperature.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study by Bain R et. al. in 2012 found that drinking hot water triggered a sweat response that compensated for the heat of the drink. The opposite response was produced by drinking cold drinks, with a reduction in sweat cancelling out the cooling power of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22574769&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;drink&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSION: Under conditions permitting full sweat evaporation, body heat storage is lower with warm water ingestion, likely because of disproportionate modulations in sweat output arising from warm-sensitive thermosensors in the esophagus/stomach. Local temperature changes of the rectum following fluid ingestion exacerbate the previously identified error of thermometric heat storage estimations.**&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Drinking cool beverages increase fluid consumption and hydration during physical activity.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A study by Burdon et. al. in 2012 evaluated the effect of beverage temperature on fluid intake during exercise and investigated the influence of beverage temperature on palatability. It found that cool beverages may influence consumption and hydration during &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22693241&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;exercise&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;CONCLUSION: Cool beverage temperatures (&amp;lt;22 °C) significantly increased fluid palatability, fluid consumption, and hydration during exercise vs. control (≥22 -°C).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The University of Nebraska also suggests cool water as the best fluid replacement during sports &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ianrpubs.unl.edu/epublic/live/g918/build/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;events&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastActivityDate="2015-07-04T08:06:11.410" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28313" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10558" CreationDate="2015-07-04T08:42:55.917" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;The degree of female breast ptosis or sagging (woman's breast rate droop) depends on key factors such as cigarette smoking, number of pregnancies, gravity, higher body mass index, larger bra cup size, and significant weight gain and loss. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Per study by Rinker B et. al. in 2010, lack of regular upper body exercise was not found to be a significant risk factor for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20354434&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ptosis&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Upon logistic regression, age, history of significant (&gt;50 lbs) weight loss, higher body mass index, larger bra cup size, number of pregnancies, and smoking history were found to be significant risk factors for breast ptosis (P &amp;lt; 0.05). History of breast-feeding, weight gain during pregnancy, and lack of participation in regular upper body exercise were not found to be significant risk factors for ptosis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastActivityDate="2015-07-04T08:42:55.917" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28314" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28335" CreationDate="2015-07-04T09:58:28.220" Score="21" ViewCount="1748" Body="&lt;p&gt;In the newest episode of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/&quot;&gt;Q&amp;amp;A&lt;/a&gt; (which was broadcast on Monday, 29 June 2015), a theoretical physicist and cosmologist named Lawrence Krauss from America, made this statement/comment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;There's been a study in America that being an atheist is viewed on the level as being a rapist. It's the same thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote is taken from this video: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4246615.htm&quot;&gt;Radicalisation, Religion &amp;amp; Recognition&lt;/a&gt; between 54:50 and 55:10.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The context was whether it's possible for someone who is running for political office in America to admit to being a atheist.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is this study?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26923" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2015-07-05T00:02:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T13:03:14.920" Title="Was there a study finding that being an atheist is viewed on the level of being a rapist in the US?" Tags="|united-states|religion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28321" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28314" CreationDate="2015-07-05T07:50:08.650" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This topic is whether there is a study which found that an atheist is viewed on the level of being a rapist (but not whether the study is accurate i.e. whether it's true that the view exists, nor whether that view is true if it does exist).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is (was) a study titled &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~ara/Manuscripts/Gervais%20et%20al-%20Atheist%20Distrust.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Do You Believe in Atheists? Distrust is central to anti-atheist prejudice&lt;/a&gt;. This paper was published in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/psp/index.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Journal of Personality and Social Psychology&lt;/a&gt;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The paper mentions 6 studies: the first studied American participants and the rest Canadian participants.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It shows that atheists and rapists were distrusted to a similar degree.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The abstract says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A description of a criminally untrustworthy&#xA;  individual was seen as comparably representative of atheists and rapists, but not representative of&#xA;  Christians, Muslims, Jewish people, feminists, or homosexuals (Studies 2-4).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the body says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, this description—of an individual who commits insurance fraud and steals money when the chances of detection are minimal—was only seen as representative of atheists and rapists, &lt;strong&gt;and people did not significantly differentiate atheists from rapists&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A graph also was found showing how atheists were found to fit the description of an untrustworthy person more than christians, muslims or rapists:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/wFhTa.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This study has garnered national headlines in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2011/12/02/study-religious-people-trust-atheists-about-as-much-as-they-do-rapists/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Blaze&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.nationalpost.com/news/religion/religious-people-do-not-believe-in-atheists-study&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The National Post&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/12/study-of-the-day-religious-people-distrust-atheists-as-much-as-rapists/250005/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Atlantic&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-atheists-we-distrust/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Scientific American&lt;/a&gt; and the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-matousek/why-we-hate-atheists-fear_b_1157939.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Huffington Post&lt;/a&gt; for busting the fact that “religious people rank non-believers alongside rapists”.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="2703" LastEditDate="2015-07-05T12:10:14.003" LastActivityDate="2015-07-05T12:10:14.003" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28323" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28326" CreationDate="2015-07-05T13:26:21.783" Score="41" ViewCount="14859" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/6zq2pm.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Found it floating around Facebook with comments praising the queen for behaving like ordinary people. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did the Queen Elizabeth actually queue for a sandwich in this photo? Or something else is happening?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22397" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-07-06T16:34:46.613" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T16:20:58.200" Title="Is Queen Elizabeth queuing for a sandwich in this photo?" Tags="|united-kingdom|photography|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28324" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28323" CreationDate="2015-07-05T13:48:32.963" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;No, the Queen isn't queuing for a sandwich in this photo. It turns out be a cardboard cutout of Queen Elizabeth II or a photoshopped image. Several images were &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/die-queen-macht-ueberall-in-berlin-eine-gute-figur&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;posted on Berlin.de&lt;/a&gt; on June 23, 2015 16:43. They were attributed to photographer Charles Yunck.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/die-queen-macht-ueberall-in-berlin-eine-gute-figur&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Berlin.de&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Origin:&lt;/em&gt; B.Z. war mit der Queen quer durch Berlin unterwegs. Die &lt;strong&gt;89&lt;/strong&gt;-Jährige ist eben nicht &lt;strong&gt;von Pappe&lt;/strong&gt; und macht überall eine Top-Figur.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Translation:&lt;/em&gt; BZ was with the Queen through Berlin go. The &lt;strong&gt;89&lt;/strong&gt;-year-old is not simply of &lt;strong&gt;cardboard&lt;/strong&gt; and cuts a great figure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some other variants are below:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/uix4hm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SQ47tm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zaEZWm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RUgInm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also another video was &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/die-queen-macht-ueberall-in-berlin-eine-gute-figur&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;found&lt;/a&gt;, indicating that it is a cardboard cutout:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/OTAg7m.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While searching, I found a high quality version of the image &lt;a href=&quot;http://static.bz-berlin.de/data/uploads/2015/06/138406151_6e8824685a-1920x1080.jpeg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, zooming in:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ae6wLm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="20749" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T16:20:58.200" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28326" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28323" CreationDate="2015-07-05T22:21:09.877" Score="63" Body="&lt;p&gt;The image is a real&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt; image of a cardboard Queen. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/die-queen-macht-ueberall-in-berlin-eine-gute-figur&quot;&gt;http://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/die-queen-macht-ueberall-in-berlin-eine-gute-figur&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;That reference mentions &quot;von Pappe&quot;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com/#de/en/von%20pappe&quot;&gt;which means &quot;of cardboard&quot;&lt;/a&gt;, and in context (&quot;nicht von Pappe&quot;) may be a pun.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regardless of what that actually means, the reference also contains these photos, which clearly show what appears to me to be a cardboard stand:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/remlTm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RUgInm.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;1. I haven't found evidence eliminating the possibility of cosmetic digital post-processing.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user16797" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2015-07-06T18:50:51.217" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T18:50:51.217" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28329" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18586" CreationDate="2015-07-06T05:41:57.587" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Drawing on yourself with a normal ball-point pen does not lead to harm since writing ink is considered non-poisonous per Medline. Xylene based writing ink is a concern, though toxicity for the xylene based ink is normally linked to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2996004/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;inhalation&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Pen Ink Ingestion:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002791.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Medline&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;writing ink poisoning occurs when someone swallows ink found in writing instruments (pens). Writing ink is a blend of dyes, pigments, solvents, water and it is generally considered nonpoisonous. Large amounts of writing ink must be consumed (more than an ounce) before treatment is needed for symptoms such as eye irritation and staining of skin and mucus membranes&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Tattoo ink:&lt;/strong&gt;&#xA;Regarding tattoo inks, &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/forconsumers/consumerupdates/ucm048919.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FDA&lt;/a&gt; has not approved any tattoo pigments for injection into the skin. This applies to all tattoo pigments, including those used for ultraviolet (UV) and glow-in-the-dark tattoos. Many pigments used in tattoo inks are industrial-grade colors suitable for printers' ink or automobile paint.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-07-06T08:49:03.697" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T08:49:03.697" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28334" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-06T11:46:14.063" Score="3" ViewCount="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://beyondhealth.com/media/wysiwyg/kadro/articles/FoodCombining.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is good to combine vegetables with either proteins or&#xA;starches, but:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not combine proteins and starches (meat and potatoes, fish and rice, etc.).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Generally, eat fruit alone. Acid fruits may be consumed&#xA;with sweet fruits, in which case, the acid fruits should be&#xA;eaten first. Acid fruits can also be combined with nuts&#xA;and seeds.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Do not combine melons with anything (even other fruits,&#xA;except other melons).&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there any studies that back these claims?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is different from &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6283/&quot;&gt;Are there any toxic or dangerous food pairings?&lt;/a&gt;, in which he specifically mentions that he is &lt;i&gt;not&lt;/i&gt; asking about general food categories as being unhealthy, but rather specific foods that can produce toxins when combined.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26963" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.490" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T12:12:09.330" Title="Is combining different types of foods unhealthy?" Tags="|nutrition|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="13" ClosedDate="2015-07-06T11:58:25.890" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28335" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28314" CreationDate="2015-07-06T13:03:14.920" Score="16" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Was there a study finding that being an atheist is viewed on the level of being a rapist &lt;strong&gt;in the US?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Everything I have been able to find points to a single study.  Restricting the search to before the study was published results in nothing interesting. Similarly restricting the search to about a year after the study was published results in a few late comers.  Everything seems to point to one paper.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~ara/Manuscripts/Gervais%20et%20al-%20Atheist%20Distrust.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;paper&lt;/a&gt; is composed of 6 studies.  The first of which surveyed US citizens, comparing how they reported their feelings about gay men in contrast to atheists.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The remaining five studies used a sample from a pool of psychology students from University of British Columbia (Canadian). Of these studies the only one that used the group &quot;rapist&quot; was study 2.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So already, our answer seems to be no. (though, of course you can't prove a negative)  But let's go ahead and take a look at the study anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;Study 2&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One hundred five UBC undergraduates (Age 18-25, M = 19.95; 71% Female) participated&#xA;  for extra credit.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Participants read the following description of an untrustworthy man who is willing to&#xA;  behave selfishly (and criminally) when other people will not find out: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;Richard is 31 years old. On his way to work one day, he accidentally&#xA;  backed his car into a parked van. Because pedestrians were watching, he got out&#xA;  of his car. He pretended to write down his insurance information. He then tucked&#xA;  the blank note into the van's window before getting back into his car and driving&#xA;  away.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Later the same day, Richard found a wallet on the sidewalk. Nobody was&#xA;  looking, so he took all of the money out of the wallet. He then threw the wallet in&#xA;  a trash can.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Next, participants chose whether they thought it more probable that Richard was either 1)&#xA;  a teacher, or 2) a teacher and XXXX. We manipulated XXXX between subjects. XXXX was&#xA;  either &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a Christian (N = 26) &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a Muslim (N = 26)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;a rapist (N = 26)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;an atheist (someone who does not believe in God) (N = 27)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The only difference in descriptions across targets was that the Muslim target was called &quot;a man&quot; rather than &quot;Richard&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the conclusions were drawn based on how often the conjunction fallacy was committed with a 31 year-old teacher named Richard who committed insurance fraud and stole the money from a found wallet, since no one was looking (and threw the wallet away).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In sum, participants frequently committed the conjunction fallacy when given a description of an untrustworthy person and a target who could be an atheist or a rapist, but not for targets who could be a Christian or a Muslim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's not mentioned how the authors think Richard being a teacher would have affected the likelihood of the conjunction fallacy with atheist among these college students; or what affect him sharing his name with one of, if not &lt;em&gt;the&lt;/em&gt;, most prominent atheist might have. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZlbIb.png&quot; alt=&quot;graph atheist and rapists&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;As hypothesized, participants were significantly more likely to commit the&#xA;  conjunction error for an atheist target than for either a Christian target or a Muslim target, odds ratio = 22.29 (95% C.I.: 3.82, 427.10), b = 3.10, p = .004 and odds ratio = 5.11 (95% C.I.: 1.48, 21.13), b = 1.63, p = .01, respectively. The atheist target did not significantly differ from the rapist target, odds ratio = 1.27 (95% C.I.: .43, 3.79), b = .24, p = .67.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You can see the proportion of individuals committing the conjunction fallacy above this can be multiplied by 26 (the number of individuals in each group, 27 in atheist) to get the approximate number of individuals committing the fallacy in each group.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The pool the students were drawn from was a bit interesting as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Christian (34%), None (16%),&#xA;  Nonreligious (12%), Agnostic (11%), Atheist (9%), Other (7%), Buddhist (7%), Muslim (3%),&#xA;  and Jewish (1%)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;East Asian&#xA;  (49%), Caucasian/White (30%), Other/mixed (7%), South Asian (6%), Southeast Asian (4%),&#xA;  Middle Eastern (2%), Hispanic/Latino (1%), and African (&amp;lt; 1%)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One last thing of interest:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In an additional analysis, we examined whether atheists distrust other atheists. We isolated a subsample of 49 individuals from the total sample who indicated that they do not believe in God (based on the binary Yes/No belief question). Atheists Distrust within this subsample did not significantly differ from zero, t(48)= -.08, p= .94, indicating that whereas religious people strongly distrust atheists, atheists neither trust nor distrust atheists, relative to people in general.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17572" LastActivityDate="2015-07-06T13:03:14.920" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28336" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-06T15:32:09.277" Score="10" ViewCount="5325" Body="&lt;p&gt;Various sites claim that &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Hessaby&quot;&gt;Dr. Mahmoud Hessaby&lt;/a&gt;, a senator of the previous Iranian regime, was a student of Albert Einstein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iranchamber.com/personalities/mhessaby/mhessaby.php#sthash.LKZ91ae0.dpuf&quot;&gt;For example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Hessaby was the sole Iranian student of Professor Albert Einstein&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this has been disputed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, his &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk%3AMahmoud_Hessaby#Physics_in_US_under_Einstein&quot;&gt;Wikipedia talk page&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;I removed the text that Dr. Hesaby was a student of Albert Einstein. Other than a single picture and lots of hearsay, I haven't been able to find a credible source proving that he was a student of Albert Einstein.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was Mahmoud Hessaby one of Einstein's students?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26966" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-06T16:27:13.210" LastActivityDate="2017-04-30T12:46:28.980" Title="Was Mahmoud Hessaby a student of Albert Einstein?" Tags="|albert-einstein|iran|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28339" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28230" CreationDate="2015-07-06T22:22:37.763" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim is somewhere between being untrue to being misrepresenting.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;the &lt;strong&gt;TL;DR&lt;/strong&gt; version:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Israel the only marriage possible is religious marriage, so you can't marry anyone you want.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;According to the law, residence/citizenship will not be granted to spouses of Israeli residents/citizens if they are Palestinians (i.e. &amp;quot;citizens&amp;quot; of the PA) living in the territories (West bank and Gaza), or if they are citizens of other enemies states, defined in the law as Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. This does not apply to Palestinians who are citizens of other nations, such as Jordan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also according to the law, there are exceptions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The reason for the law, as stated in its bill, as well as in the three times the law was upheld by the Israeli supreme court, is a security reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The law is not permanent, it's temporary and must be renewed each year, because of the reason standing behind it. Once the security need doesn't apply anymore the law will not be renew and will expire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Palestinians who got Israeli citizenship through the family reunification program take active role in attacks against Israel, exploiting their status.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;h2&gt;Longer Version:&lt;/h2&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The marital law in Israel is a religious one, you can only marry through your religions community which makes the claim &lt;em&gt;&amp;quot;In Israel you can marry anyone&amp;quot;&lt;/em&gt; false.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to give a quick summery of people who can't marry in Israel: People of different religions, people who don't want a religious ceremony, people who can't marry because the religion doesn't allow them to marry (Like, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohen_(surname)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cohen&lt;/a&gt; and a divorcee, a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohen_(surname)&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cohen&lt;/a&gt; and a converted Jew, or a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamzer&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;mamzer&lt;/a&gt; in Judaism). This obviously includes gay marriage.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Israel however does recognize marriages that were preformed abroad even if they wouldn't be allowed in Israel (including Gay Marriage). More information can be found on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_in_Israel&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Wikipedia page&lt;/a&gt; dedicated to marriage in Israel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From looking in the claim one will assume that the law addresses race or ethnicity, while the law doesn't specify ethnicity. The law is applied the same regardless for the ethnicity of either one of the partners, it would apply to a Jewish Israeli marrying a non Arab living in the territories. As the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nevo.co.il/law_html/Law01/999_180.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;law&lt;/a&gt; clearly states (articles 1 and 2):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;אזור&amp;quot; – כל אחד מאלה: יהודה והשומרון וחבל עזה&#xA;&amp;quot;תושב אזור&amp;quot; – מי שרשום במרשם האוכלוסין של האזור, וכן מי שמתגורר באזור אף שאינו רשום במרשם האוכלוסין של האזור, ולמעט תושב יישוב ישראלי באזור.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;2.בתקופת תוקפו של חוק זה, על אף האמור בכל דין לרבות סעיף 7 לחוק האזרחות, שר הפנים לא יעניק לתושב אזור או לאזרח או לתושב של מדינה המנויה בתוספת אזרחות לפי חוק האזרחות ולא ייתן לו רישיון לישיבה בישראל לפי חוק הכניסה לישראל, ומפקד האזור לא ייתן לתושב אזור היתר לשהייה בישראל לפי תחיקת הביטחון באזור.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which translates to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Area - Each one of these: Judea and Sameria [The west bank] and the Gaza Region [The Gaza strip]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Resident of the area - who ever is registered in the civil registry of the area, and whoever lives in the area even if they are not registered in the civil registry of the area, excluding residents of Israeli settlements of the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the time that this law is in affect, despite what is said in article 7 of the citizenship law, the minister of interior will not grant citizenship according to the citizenship law, and will not grant residency licence to live in Israel according to the law of entry to Israel, to a resident of an area, or to a citizen or resident of a country listed in the appendix, and the commander of the area will not grant a resident of the area a permit of stay in Israel according to the military legislation in the area.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The law clearly states that the only qualifiers for the law are place of residence and/or citizenship, and the law doesn't have any ethnic/racial criteria. This is important, as the claim tries to portray the law as a racial law. As DVK noted in his answer, people of Palestinian ethnicity who are not residents of the territories, for example Palestinians from Jordan, can apply for residency/citizenship through the family reunification program.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;To elaborate on the intent behind the law,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The intent behind the law is purely for security reasons. As stated clearly in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knesset.gov.il/Laws/Data/BillGoverment/31/31_All.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;original bill&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;מאז פרוץ העימות המזוין בין ישראל לפלסטינים אשר הוביל בין השאר לביצועם של עשרות פיגועי התאבדות בשטח ישראל, מסתמנת מעורבות גוברת והולכת בעימות זה של פלסטינים שהם במקור תושבי האזור, אשר נושאים תעודות זהות ישראליות בעקבות הליכי איחוד משפחות עם בעלי אזרחות או תושבות ישראלית, תוך ניצול מעמדם בישראל המאפשר להם תנועה חופשית בין שטחי הרשות לישראל.&#xA;לפיכך, ובהתאם להחלטת הממשלה מס' 1813 מיום 12.5.2002 (להלן - החלטת הממשלה), מוצע להגביל את האפשרות להעניק לתושבי האזור אזרחות לפי חוק האזרחות, לרבות בדרך של איחוד משפחות, ואת האפשרות לתת לתושבים כאמור רישיונות לישיבה בישראל לפי חוק הכניסה לישראל או היתרי שהייה בישראל לפי תחיקת הביטחון באזור&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Since the eruption of the armed conflict between Israel and the Palestinians [&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Intifada&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the second Intifada&lt;/a&gt;], which brought, among other things, to dozens of suicide bombings in the territory of Israel, growing involvement of Palestinians who are residence of the area [The West Bank and Gaza] originally who carry Israeli ids due to family reunification processes with citizens or residence of Israel, is emerging, exploiting their status, which allows them free movement between the territories of the PA and Israel.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to this, and with accordance with the governments decision number 1813 from 12/5/2012, it is suggested to limit the the possibility to give residents of the area citizenship according to the citizenship law, including by way of family reunification, and the possibility to give the mentioned residences licences to reside in Israel according to the entry to Israel law, or permits to stay in Israel according to the military legislation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The original law had few exceptions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the purpose of medical treatment.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For the purpose of working in Israel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;For temporary reason, as long as the total time will not exceed 3 months.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;If they are sympathizing with the state of Israel and its goals, and they, or their family member (partner, parent, child) have made an actual action to promote the safety, economy or other important matter of Israel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To prolong the validity of a licence obtained before the gov. decision came into affect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;To give permit for temporary licence for someone who have filed a request before the gov. decision came into affect.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And in 2005 and 2007 the law was amended and more exceptions were added:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Male partners over the age of 35.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Female partners over the age of 25.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A minor younger than 14, whose legal guardian resides lawfully in Israel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;A minor older than 14, whose legal guardian resides lawfully in Israel, unless the permit to stay in Israel will not be renewed if the minor was not residing in Israel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And the maximum time for a temporary permit was prolonged from 3 to 6 months.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Those exceptions are very important, as the law actually allows for Palestinians to get citizenship through the family reunification program, with the exception of younger people who are more prone to terrorist activities. Also, it allows for people to get citizenship by doing something that benefits Israel, and showing in this way that they are not inclined to terrorist activities.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt; The law has an exception for the exceptions, as it states that even people who fall under the exceptions will not be granted a permit if the minister of the interior, or the commander of the area find them to be a security threat. &lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sub&gt;There is another exception which states that if the foreign citizen is a citizen of Syria and the partner is a member of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Druze&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Druze&lt;/a&gt; community and resides in the Golan Heights, the minister of interior may regard this as a special humanitarian reason.&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition to the law itself, we have its interpretation by the Israeli supreme court. The law was reviewed by the Israeli supreme court in 3 different occasions: 2005, 2007 and 2012. Each time the law was upheld it was upheld due to security concerns. An excerpt from what &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elyakim_Rubinstein&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Judge Rubinstein&lt;/a&gt; wrote in the 2012 decision:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;לישראל - כמו לכל מדינה, ולא כל שכן בהיותה שרויה במצב מלחמה - זכות להגביל כניסתם של נתיני אויב אליה, כדרך שעושות מדינות רבות. הזכות להביא נתיני אויב ארצה, להבדיל מעצם הזכות לנישואין, אינה בעיני זכות חוקתית. אכן, קל יותר על פי נטיית הלב היה לומר, כי החוק בו עסקינן אינו חוקתי; ברם, בנסיבות הבטחוניות הקיימות, הגבלת זכותם של אזרחי ישראל להשיג אזרחות ישראלית בעבור בני זוגם או בנות זוגם תושבי האזור אינה פוגעת בזכות חוקתית&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Israel - like any state, especially when it's in a state of war - has the right to restrict the entrance of enemy subject, as many states do. The right to bring enemy subjects to the country, unlike the right to marry, isn't in my view a constitutional right. Indeed, it would be easier to go after the heart and say that the law is unconstitutional; but, under the existing security circumstances, the restricting the right of Israeli citizens to get Israeli citizenship for their partners, who are residence of the area, does not hurt a constitutional right.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asher_Grunis&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;judge Grunis&lt;/a&gt; wrote:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;יש להעמיד על כפות המאזניים פגיעה זו בזכות לחיי משפחה של אזרחים ישראלים מול הפגיעה הוודאית, על יסוד ניסיון העבר, בחייהם ובגופם של אזרחים ישראלים. העמדה הזו מובילה, לטעמי, לדחיית הטענות בדבר פסלותו של החוק.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;b&gt;&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This hurt to the right for family life of Israeli citizens should be weighted against the certain hurt, according to past experience, in the lives and body of Israeli citizens. This stand leads, in my view, to rejecting the claims about the invalidity of the law.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://news.walla.co.il/item/1893404&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Not only the supporters claim that the reasons behind the law are security, Also opponents of the law agree that the law comes to serve a security purpose, but believe that the implementation is too broad. In &lt;a href=&quot;http://law.huji.ac.il/upload/gilayon10_sec.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this article&lt;/a&gt; (in Hebrew) by Barak Medina, a law professor and then the vice dean (he would become the dean in 2009) of the law faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem he discusses the ruling of the supreme court in 2006, claiming that the law is over reaching, discriminatory and will result in more harm than good, but he does acknowledged that the reasons for the ruling of the supreme court are security concerns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, the temporal nature of the law should (in my view) be taken into account. The law has an expiration date, and needs to be renewed every year. Which means that the law isn't meant to be permanent and to change Israel's immigration policy, but comes to fixed a temporary problem, which, once fixed will make the law unnecessary and it'll expire.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as the whole reasoning behind the law is security issues, some examples of the threat it tries to prevent should be given.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I elaborated in the answer to &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/28264/did-palestinians-from-the-pa-with-family-reunification-based-ids-engage-in-terro/&quot;&gt;this question&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.shabak.gov.il/SiteCollectionImages/%D7%A1%D7%A7%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%95%D7%AA%20%D7%95%D7%A4%D7%A8%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%9D/terror-summary-4years-new.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A report&lt;/a&gt; by the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_Bet&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ISA(Shabak)&lt;/a&gt; summarizing the first four years of the second Intifada (2001-2004) states that in those years 23 Palestinians who got Israeli citizenship or residency through the family reunification process (RFs) were uncovered/arrested. And that in total in that time period RFs were involved in 3 successful suicide bombings, killing 16 Israelis. The report states that they take part as both attackers and planners of attacks, in infiltrating terrorists, logistic support, intelligence gathering and as recruiters.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As prominent examples 4 cases are given:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matza_restaurant_suicide_bombing&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Matza restaurant bombing&lt;/a&gt; where an FR suicide bomber killed 16 Israelis.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_French_Hill_suicide_bombings&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The 2003 line 6 bus suicide bombing&lt;/a&gt; where an Israeli FR transported a suicide bomber who blew up a bus in Jerusalem, killing 6 Israelis, one foreign citizen and injuring 20.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The arrest of an FR who was supposed to smuggle a cur bomb and a suicide bomber to Israel.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The arrest of an FR who was caught helping with the transportation of a terrorist who was on his way to commit a shooting attack on a shopping mall in Hadera.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2006, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuval_Diskin&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Yuval Diskin&lt;/a&gt;, then the head of the ISA, revealed in a discussion of the internal affairs comity of the Knesset that 11% of the involved in terrorist attacks are Palestinians who got Israeli citizenship/residence through the family reunification program. Also adding that since the start of the second Intifada (until then) 16 family reunifications were connected to suicide bombing in one way or another, killing 19. And that in 2004 6 family reunification cases were involved in attacks, which comprise 11% of the family reunifications of that year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He also said that analyzing the profiles of terrorists reveals that 97% of offenders are males between the ages of 16 and 35 and females under the age of 25, which is the reason that people older than those ages for each sex were exempt by the revision of the law in 2005.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=935965&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Just to point that it's not so ancient history:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In 2012, during &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pillar_of_Defense&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;operation pillar of defense&lt;/a&gt; an Israeli citizen who got his citizenship through marriage and family reunification put a bomb on a bus in Tel Aviv, injuring 29 people. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1000800648&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the same year ISA arrested an Israeli citizen through FR who was planning, together with two other non Israeli Palestinians to execute an attack on an IDF post near Nablus. The ISA claims that their activity was enabled thanks to his Israeli citizenship, among others. (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4182826,00.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;source&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The full text of the law (in Hebrew) can be seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nevo.co.il/law_html/Law01/999_180.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. An article summarizing the law by a law firm that (according to them) specializes in family reunification of Israeli with Palestinians can be seen &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nevo.co.il/law_html/Law01/999_180.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; (also in Hebrew).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;sup&gt;Most sources are in Hebrew, and the English translation was done by me. Where braces ([]) appear in the text, they contain a clarification note by me that doesn't appear in the original text.&lt;/sup&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6656" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-07T19:37:03.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28341" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-07T01:47:36.783" Score="17" ViewCount="7729" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is a common claim that Walt Disney was a Freemason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/waltdisney.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;For example&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Walt Disney, he was a 33 Degree Freemason of the Scottish Rite and his whole life he has spun threads from the Mystery Schools into the children's minds with the purpose of getting them used to the occult for days to come&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Also, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ocweekly.com/2003-02-20/food/mickey-the-mason/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article provides some speculation into a possible connection between Walt and Free Masonry in relation to Club 33.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was there evidence for this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;EDIT&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As noted in one of the answers, Walt was in fact a member of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeMolay_International&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DeMolay International&lt;/a&gt; (a.k.a. the Order of DeMolay). According to  &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeMolay_International&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; site for the San Jacinto Masons on DeMolay it was: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Founded by Frank S. Land, a Freemason, DeMolay is modeled after Freemasonry.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We can concur that DeMolay is basically Freemasonry for youths. Is it probable that Walt moved on to become a Freemason? I wonder if anyone has dug deep enough to find any proof.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user26968" LastEditorDisplayName="user26968" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T17:54:15.580" LastActivityDate="2017-12-10T09:39:55.017" Title="Was Walt Disney a Freemason?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28344" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28341" CreationDate="2015-07-07T06:27:42.780" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I can find no evidence that Walt Disney joining a Masonic Lodge or having registered records as a Freemason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For example, Walt Disney is not present in Wikipedia's &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Freemasons&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;list of notable Freemasons&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, Wikipedia explains:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Throughout history some members of the Freemason fraternity have made no secret of their involvement, while others have not made their membership public. In some cases, membership can only be proven by searching through the fraternity's records. Such records are most often kept at the individual lodge level, and may be lost due to fire, flood, deterioration, or simple carelessness. Grand Lodge governance may have shifted or reorganized, resulting in further loss of records on the member or the name, number, location or even existence of the lodge in question. In areas of the world where Masonry has been suppressed by governments, records of entire grand lodges have been destroyed. Because of this, masonic membership can sometimes be difficult to verify.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.masonicdictionary.com/demolay.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DeMolay&lt;/a&gt; is a Masonic club for young men between the ages of 12 and 21. Walt Disney was a member of the original Mother Chapter in Kansas City, Missouri. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mouseplanet.com/8184/Walt_and_DeMolay&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-11-09T21:35:38.110" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T21:35:38.110" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28345" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28283" CreationDate="2015-07-07T07:30:41.627" Score="10" Body="&lt;p&gt;The blood donation leave is 2 days, including the day you donate. You cannot transfer it (although it may have happened). This is a motivation for blood donation because Greece imports blood supplies and the public sector has the largest workforce and is the one who pays for importing blood anyway.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For those who can read Greek the law is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ydmed.gov.gr/wp-content/uploads/20140616_kwdikas_ypalilwn_dimosion_kai_npdd.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. Chapter 6, article 50, paragraph 5.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Employees (singular in the original) who respond to an invitation for emergency donation coverage, as well as employees who participate in organised blood donation are entitled to 2 days of leave of absence, fully paid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6201" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T19:46:33.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T19:46:33.730" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28350" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28360" CreationDate="2015-07-07T18:54:50.280" Score="26" ViewCount="55459" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this image &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/RichStanton/status/618439544015331328&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on Twitter earlier&lt;/a&gt;, claiming that they're actual campaign badges for Richard Nixon's 1972 election:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZEwLd.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I believe this is a notable claim, as some other websites report on them (though this link at least claims that it was an &lt;em&gt;unofficial&lt;/em&gt; slogan):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://willrabbe.com/microblog/2011/6/1/most-underrated-political-slogan-they-cant-lick-our-dick.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://willrabbe.com/microblog/2011/6/1/most-underrated-political-slogan-they-cant-lick-our-dick.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;One of the more humorous, unofficial, historic campaign slogans was &quot;They Can't Lick Our Dick,&quot; which was used on at least four different campaign buttons for Richard Nixon.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence that pins sporting the slogan &quot;They Can't Lick our Dick&quot; were in use for the 1972 presidential election, or have they been produced after the fact?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19493" LastEditorUserId="19493" LastEditDate="2015-11-04T09:12:37.310" LastActivityDate="2016-06-19T18:18:18.317" Title="Are these real badges for Richard Nixon's 1972 Presidential campaign?" Tags="|politics|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28351" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-08T00:11:25.023" Score="5" ViewCount="295" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many claims suggesting that Ahmed Merhabet, the policeman allegedly shot and killed by the Charlie Hebdo gunmen, was not actually killed in the way media outlets portrayed. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Several supporting arguments brought forth by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.globalresearch.ca/charlie-hebdo-mystery-surrounding-death-of-french-policeman/5424739&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; article are:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The shot fired from an AK47 visibly did not hit his head&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was no blood&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was no recoil from the gun&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;There was no head movement from the impact&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The guy filming it didn't even flinch&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later on, the gunmen were caught because one of them left his passport in the getaway car. Regardless of the whole event sounding questionable, can anyone explain the claims brought forth by the article and the footage of the policeman being shot?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user26968" LastEditorDisplayName="user26968" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T00:21:03.567" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T00:21:03.567" Title="Was the footage showing the policeman being shot in the Charlie Hebdo shootings a hoax?" Tags="|terrorism|france|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28352" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-08T02:09:17.760" Score="3" ViewCount="890" Body="&lt;p&gt;This picture showed up in my Facebook feed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/ODZBF.png&quot; alt=&quot;![mosquito drone](http://imgur.com/APA6LnQ)&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a mosquito?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No. It's an insect spy drone for urban areas, already in production, funded by the US Government. It can be remotely controlled and is equipped with a camera and microphone.&#xA;It can land on you and it may have the potential to take a DNA sample or leave RFID nanotechnology on your skin. It can fly through an open window, or it can attach to your clothing until you take it in your home.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this drone real/viable given current technology?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="1283" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T02:54:38.607" Title="Is this urban mosquito drone real?" Tags="|technology|government|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28354" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="14022" CreationDate="2015-07-08T06:04:55.787" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The exact number of date rape is not known since there is fear of inflated &lt;a href=&quot;http://time.com/3393442/cdc-rape-numbers/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;statistics&lt;/a&gt; in accounting for rape numbers in USA. Also according to a 2013 global review, 35 per cent of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence and more often than not, cases of violence against women go &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures#notes&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unreported&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Date rape is a subset of acquaintance rape where nonconsensual sex occurs between two people who are in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9806126&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;romantic relationship&lt;/a&gt;. &quot;Acquaintance rape also includes rapes in which the victim and perpetrator have been in a non-romantic, non-sexual relationship, for example as co-workers or neighbors. Date rape is particularly prevalent on college campuses, where it frequently occurs in situations involving alcohol or other date rape drugs, which may facilitate the execution of drug facilitated sexual assault &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_rape&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;DFSA&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/ViolencePrevention/pdf/NISVS_Report2010-a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CDC&lt;/a&gt; in 2010, the annual estimated number of completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration rape victims is 780,000 out of estimated rape victims of 1,270,000. The life time estimated number of Completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration rape victims is 9,524,000 out of estimated rape victims of 21,840,000 in USA. About 5% of women (5.2%) experienced attempted forced penetration, and 8.0% experienced alcohol/drug-facilitated completed forced penetration. One percent, or approximately 1.3 million women, reported some type of rape victimization in the 12 months prior to taking the survey.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/cdc_nisvs_ipv_report_2013_v17_single_a.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;CDC&lt;/a&gt; in 2013, the annual estimated number of rape victims in USA (Completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration) is not reported since relative standard error &gt; 30%. The life time estimated number of rape victims in USA (Completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration) per CDC 2010 is 4,098,000 out of estimated rape victims of 11,162,000. Nearly 1 in 10 women in the United States (9.4%) has been raped by an intimate partner in her lifetime, including completed forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, or alcohol/drug facilitated completed penetration.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, National Crime Victimization Survey by Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2013 quotes a different total annual rape victims number of 96970 (students 31302 and nonstudents 65668) where completed alcohol/drug facilitated penetration numbers are not exactly known since survey does not specifically ask about incidents in which the victim was unable to provide consent because of drug or alcohol &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rsavcaf9513.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;consumption&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T06:04:55.787" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28355" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24070" CreationDate="2015-07-08T07:01:03.500" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to White House sources, yes. Per the official White House &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/12/10/president-obama-first-president-write-line-code&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;blog&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;President Obama became the first US president to write a line of code as part of the &quot;Hour of Code&quot;, an online event to promote Computer Science Education Week&quot;. The US President Barack Obama wrote 'moveForward(100)' as his first line of code using the computer programming language JavaScript, which was the part of an online exercise on 8 December 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The president wrote a single line of JavaScript in a tutorial based on Disney's film &quot;Frozen,&quot; explained Hadi Partovi, the CEO of Code.org. The line, &quot;moveForward(100);&quot; moved main character Elsa 100 pixels to draw a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/09/obama-code_n_6294036.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;square&lt;/a&gt;. President Barack Obama also did a &quot;fist bump&quot; with a student Adrianna Mitchell during the event in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex in Washington, Monday, Dec. 8, 2014, attended by middle-school students from Newark, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-2865297/7-largest-US-districts-teach-computer-science.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;N.J&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T11:35:25.897" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T11:35:25.897" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28360" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28350" CreationDate="2015-07-08T11:51:05.117" Score="21" Body="&lt;p&gt;Association of Nixon with the phrase &quot;They Can't Lick our Dick&quot; started well before 1972.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In the 1960 &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=U5jWAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;q=nixon%20campaign%20slogan%20%22can&amp;#39;t%20lick%20our%22&amp;amp;dq=nixon%20campaign%20slogan%20%22can&amp;#39;t%20lick%20our%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=og2dVY_kIYWrgwT0pYP4CQ&amp;amp;ved=0CCcQ6AEwAg&quot;&gt;The Realist&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a sponsor tries to sign up Nixon and Kennedy for a TV special next April because they've been getting such good rating and a novelty shop sells buttons that read &quot;They Can't Lick Our Dick&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1988 &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=q8DWAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;q=nixon%20campaign%20slogan%20%22can&amp;#39;t%20lick%20our%22&amp;amp;dq=nixon%20campaign%20slogan%20%22can&amp;#39;t%20lick%20our%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=og2dVY_kIYWrgwT0pYP4CQ&amp;amp;ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ&quot;&gt;Tippecanoe and Trinkets Too: The Material Culture of American Presidential Campaigns, 1828-1984&lt;/a&gt; refers to:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Another humanizing tactic was the great prominence given Nixon's nickname, &quot;Dick,&quot; on campaign items, although some uniquely tasteless varieties of buttons that read &quot;They Can't Lick Our Dick&quot;— at least one of them given out by the campaign itself &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Again, this is said in reference to the 1960 Nixon vs. Kennedy election.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T12:03:46.223" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T12:03:46.223" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28361" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20119" CreationDate="2015-07-08T12:04:57.777" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;Different populations may have different odors since earwax type and armpit odor may be correlated in certain select populations. Populations with dry earwax, such from East Asia, tend to sweat less and have little or no body odor, whereas the wet earwax populations of Africa and Europe sweat more and so may have greater body &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/29cnd-ear.html?_r=3&amp;amp;ex=1296190800&amp;amp;en=7f6c667589328421&amp;amp;ei=5088&amp;amp;partner=rssnyt&amp;amp;emc=rss&amp;amp;&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;odor&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;There are two kinds of sweat glands: eccrine sweat glands, which are found throughout the skin, and apocrine sweat glands, which are found in the armpits and groin. Eccrine sweat glands produce sweat that is mostly water and salt, and it does not contribute very much to body odor. Apocrine sweat contains proteins and lipids; when bacteria on the skin metabolize apocrine sweat, they produce body odor. The earwax glands (ceruminous glands) are a form of apocrine gland.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Although the evidence available on Caucasian/Negroid sweating is somewhat inconsistent, it would appear that the Negroid population is capable of producing more malodorous substance in the axilla by virtue of the larger size of the apocrine glands and more prodigious among of secretion observed in experiments. In addition, eccrine sweat gland secretions in Negroids also seem to be higher than in Caucasians, thus providing a volatile medium for radiation of any axillary odor. Mongoloid populations also appear to have active eccrine glands than do Caucasians, but due to the low number of osmidrotic apocrine glands in&#xA;the axilla, there is a lower level of axillary odor present than in&#xA;either of the other two &lt;a href=&quot;https://journals.mcmaster.ca/nexus/article/view/31/1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;groups&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In Japan, wet earwax has long been associated with greater body odor (Adachi 1937, Matsunaga 1962). Yoo et al. (2006) found that 860 out of 896 patients who consulted a doctor about axillary osmidrosis (the medical term for stinky armpits) had wet earwax, in a population where wet earwax is uncommon. Nakano et al. (2009) genotyped the polymorphism in the ABCC11 gene in Japanese axillary osmidrosis patients and found the genotypes that cause wet earwax in 78 out of 79, while only 35 percent of the general population had wet earwax genotypes; Inone et al. (2010) found similar results in a smaller &lt;a href=&quot;http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mythearwax.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Martin et. al. (2010) analyzed sweat from people having different ABCC11 genotypes and found that several compounds that are precursors for body odor were either absent or in lower concentrations in sweat from people with the dry earwax &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/jid/journal/v130/n2/full/jid2009254a.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;genotype&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The characteristic human axillary odor is formed by bacterial action on odor precursors that originate from apocrine sweat glands. Caucasians and Africans possess a strong axillary odor ,whereas many Asians have only a faint acidic odor. These data point to a key function of ABCC11 in the secretion of odorants and their precursors from apocrine sweat glands. SNP 538G → A, which also determines human earwax type, is present on an extended haplotype, which has reached &gt;95% frequency in certain populations in recent human evolution. A strong positive selection in mate choice for low-odorant partners with a dysfunctional ABCC11 gene seems a plausible explanation for this striking frequency of a loss-of-function allele.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T12:10:35.427" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T12:10:35.427" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28362" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="5875" CreationDate="2015-07-08T15:18:32.943" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;The belief that they are healthier came from an article that was published in Midwifery Today, Issue 61, Spring 2002. The article claimed that a fungus growing on the mattress could interact with chemicals such as phosphorus, arsenic or antimony, which could then create &quot;toxic nerve gases&quot;. This hypothesis has failed to be proven in subsequent studies. The claim that &quot;not a single child has died sleeping on a covered mattress&quot; is unsubstantiated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The midwifery today website has a disclaimer on the original study:&#xA;&quot;Editor's Note: Subsequent research has failed to establish the link between baby mattresses and SIDS that this article asserts. Midwifery Today, Inc. does not endorse the research cited above, but presents it as part of the overall effort to prevent SIDS.&quot; [1]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/bedding.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.midwiferytoday.com/articles/bedding.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="13706" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T15:18:32.943" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28363" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26863" CreationDate="2015-07-08T16:29:05.117" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, this would appear to be supported. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some of the papers I link will be about rats, some about humans because it's unethical to intentionally starve humans of vitamins. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Compulsive eating habits are a known symptom of vitamin deficiencies.&#xA;For example patients suffering iron deficiency have been known to crave raw potatoes(high in iron), a craving which goes away after therapy with iron sulfate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0002934382908026&quot;&gt;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0002934382908026&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;When rats are deficient in Vitamin B1 they have been shown to be able to detect solutions containing it from among a number of other solutions in similar containers and they then drink a lot of it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayrecord&amp;amp;uid=1938-00237-001&quot;&gt;http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayrecord&amp;amp;uid=1938-00237-001&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Sodium deficient rats show a specific preference for the taste of sodium salt over other salts. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/com/64/1/49/&quot;&gt;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/com/64/1/49/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though there is some evidence that in some cases deficiencies can induce a more general novel-diet preference: ie you get the urge to eat lots of weird things on the off chance that one of them will contain what your body needs. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/com/64/1/49/&quot;&gt;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/com/64/1/49/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23087" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T16:29:05.117" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28364" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="24070" CreationDate="2015-07-08T18:10:48.613" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;I think it depends how we define &quot;write a program&quot;.  He appears to have used a Code.Org tutorial that I often use with my students (I'm an elementary computer teacher.)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The president wrote a single line of JavaScript in a tutorial based on Disney's film &quot;Frozen,&quot; explained Hadi Partovi, the CEO of Code.org. The line, &quot;moveForward(100);&quot; moved main character Elsa 100 pixels to draw a square.&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/09/obama-code_n_6294036.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://studio.code.org/s/frozen/stage/1/puzzle/1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;This is the tutorial in question&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/09/obama-code_n_6294036.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source (same as above)&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As you can see in the tutorial, you &quot;write&quot; code by dragging pieces and attaching them to the &quot;program&quot;.  You can see the code that you have &quot;written&quot; by clicking the &quot;show code&quot; button in the top right hand corner.  There is no way to manually type in any code in this tutorial, it is purely dragging pieces (with behind-the-scenes code attached to them) to the correct spot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So it is highly unlikely that the president typed in &quot;moveForward(100);&quot;, or typed in anything for that matter, because there is nowhere to type anything in during that tutorial.  What he probably did do, however, is place the correct piece in the correct spot (mind you at this level it is not very difficult as there are only two other pieces to choose from), and Code.Org created the code to execute his &quot;program&quot; for him behind the scenes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does that count as writing code?  You tell me.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether he was the first to do this or not, admittedly I have no idea.  I'm not sure there is any way to prove that a previous president didn't &quot;write&quot; code short of asking all of the presidents who have lived since code was a thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26997" LastEditorUserId="26997" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T21:33:45.600" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T21:33:45.600" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28365" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28367" CreationDate="2015-07-08T21:43:53.823" Score="6" ViewCount="1182" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's the first time I read an article on inquistr, so I'm not sure how reliable it is, but I just saw this article today titled: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.inquisitr.com/1769216/has-science-just-admitted-planet-xnibiru-exists-believers-say-full-nibiru-disclosure-is-coming/&quot;&gt;Has science just admitted Planet X / Nibiru exists?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Astronomers may have inadvertently revived the Planet X/Nibiru cataclysm conspiracy theory that dominated the internet a few years ago. Following the latest announcement by scientists of evidence that there are at least two planets larger than Earth lurking in our solar system beyond Pluto, Planet X/Nibiru cataclysm believers have been saying that governments are finally preparing to disclose the truth about Nibiru to the masses as doomsday nears.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It states that scientists are OK with the possibility of planets past Pluto that could be part of our Solar System. They quote Professor Carlos de la Fuente Marcos from Complutense University of Madrid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any substantial evidence for this in the astronomy community? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="24722" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-09T01:28:52.353" LastActivityDate="2016-08-15T19:19:56.783" Title="Is there any evidence of Planet X / Nibiru?" Tags="|astronomy|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28366" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-08T22:40:41.747" Score="13" ViewCount="563" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me clarify, I'm not asking if a miracle happened, or for a scientific explanation for why the sun might appear to do what was claimed.  I'm asking about the actual numbers... if there is any verification for the claims that &quot;thousands&quot; of people saw a strange solar phenomena?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Though there are discrepancies in the numbers, it's a very popular claim by very religious Catholics (and some others) that &quot;thousands&quot; witnessed a strange solar phenomena...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Although an hundred thousand individuals, from many diverse faiths and from no faith, spread out even over several miles, saw the “miracle of the sun,”&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://newtheologicalmovement.blogspot.com/2014/10/what-really-happened-during-fatima.html&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Gathered in the Cova da Iria near Fatima, an insignificant rural community in the countryside in Ourém in western Portugal, about 110 miles north of Lisbon, were an estimated 40,000 to 100,000 witnesses&lt;/em&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.patheos.com/blogs/kathyschiffer/2014/10/so-that-all-may-believe-the-miracle-of-the-sun/&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly some people claim they saw something odd.  And certainly thousands were present on that day. &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_F%C3%A1tima&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;HOWEVER... Is there any evidence that thousands claim they saw this phenomena?  The only statements I ever see (like in my two links above) claim thousands saw it without providing evidence for the numbers.  What they tend to provide instead are anecdotes of a small handful of people who claim to have seen it combined with the fact that thousands were present and suggest this means thousands witnessed this phenomena.  But that doesn't necessarily mean thousands claim to have seen anything out of the ordinary.  It could have been a small handful of people making the claim and others misrepresenting the situation so it seems like thousands were making the claim.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26997" LastEditorUserId="26997" LastEditDate="2015-07-08T23:05:04.843" LastActivityDate="2015-07-08T23:05:04.843" Title="Did thousands of people claim to witness a strange solar phenomena (&quot;dancing sun&quot;) at Fatima?" Tags="|religion|miracle|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28367" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28365" CreationDate="2015-07-08T23:53:56.073" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;Let me quote &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/18/two-undiscovered-planets-earth-solar-system&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;an article quoting the scientists&lt;/a&gt; (emphasis mine):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Spanish lead scientist Professor Carlos de la Fuente Marcos, from the Complutense University of Madrid, quoted by the Spanish scientific news service, Sinc, said: “This excess of objects with unexpected orbital parameters makes us believe that some invisible forces are altering the distribution of the orbital elements of the Etno, and we consider that the most probable explanation is that other unknown planets exist beyond Neptune and Pluto.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;“The exact number is uncertain, given that the data that we have is limited,&lt;/strong&gt; but our calculations suggest that there are at least two planets, and probably more, within the confines of our solar system.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;. . .&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;One problem is that the theory goes against predictions of computer simulations of the formation of the solar system, which state there are no other planets moving in circular orbits beyond Neptune.&lt;/strong&gt; But the recent discovery of a planet-forming disk of dust and gas more than 100 astronomical units (AU) from the star HL Tauri suggests planets can form long distances away from the centre of a solar system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is straightforward: There is little evidence for it, as &amp;quot;the data is limited&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Addendum&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Six months after this question was asked, &lt;a href=&quot;https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/0004-6256/151/2/22/meta&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Batygin &amp;amp; Brown (2016)&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://arxiv.org/abs/1601.05438&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;arXiv&lt;/a&gt;) showed indirect evidence for the existence of a ninth planet with a semi-major axis of ~700 AU and an eccentricity of ~0.6, swinging it as close as 200 AU to the Sun and as far as 1200 AU away from it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As of several months after the paper's publication, no direct evidence of Planet 9 has been found (as expected), but &lt;a href=&quot;http://subarutelescope.org/Topics/2016/01/21/index.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;the Subaru Telescope is expected to play a major role&lt;/a&gt; in the search for it. Hopefully, observational data can support the models in the years to come - within five years, perhaps, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/feature-astronomers-say-neptune-sized-planet-lurks-unseen-solar-system&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;according to Brown&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The new results aren't quite the same as the results of &lt;a href=&quot;http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.0715&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;de la Fuente Marcos &amp;amp; de la Fuente Marcos (2014)&lt;/a&gt;, which are cited in the question (and in the paper by Batygin &amp;amp; Brown). For example, the original claim posits a planet with a semi-major axis at ~200 AU, in addition to another planet with a  semi-major axis at ~250 AU, in a 3:2 resonance.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, Batygin &amp;amp; Brown explicitly address and criticize the results of de la Fuente Marcos &amp;amp; de la Fuente Marcos and the similar studies by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v507/n7493/full/nature13156.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trujillo &amp;amp; Sheppard (2014)&lt;/a&gt; (pdf &lt;a href=&quot;http://home.dtm.ciw.edu/users/sheppard/pub/TrujilloSheppard2014.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;), who proposed the use of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozai_mechanism&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Kozai mechanism&lt;/a&gt; as an orbiting body is perturbed by another body with a greater semi-major axis. In particular, they note that the orbits of the two planets would have to have orbital parameters within a small range of values. Also, another large body (e.g. a passing star) would likely have been required, which would have produced effects that conflict with observations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-17T21:31:40.507" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28372" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="1770" CreationDate="2015-07-09T04:37:47.897" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yoga has been researched for 100 years and researchers have churned out more &lt;a href=&quot;http://nirmukta.com/2015/06/19/no-yoga-does-not-cure-any-disease/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;than 3000 research papers&lt;/a&gt;, but none of the studies present any conclusive evidence for the efficacy of yoga in treating any illness. They have not even been successful in standardizing the so called yoga therapy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Verrastro [Verrastro G, 2014], although yoga has been deemed effective for treating conditions from hypertension to epilepsy, many claims are poorly substantiated. Most of these studies are small, short, uncontrolled, non-blinded, with many methodological flaws and high risk of bias. And in most of the studies, details of adverse events and injuries are also not mentioned. Moreover, yoga practices used in the interventions vary markedly, making comparison of results difficult. Interventions have ranged from a single 1-hour session to weekly sessions over several months to inpatient treatment that included many lifestyle modifications. Some studies required subjects to practice physically demanding asanas, while others focused on pranayama or practices similar to guided relaxation.[Verrastro G, 2014]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A bibliometric analysis of the characteristics of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of yoga [Cramer H et al, BMC CAM, 2014] included a total of 366 papers published over forty years, between 1975 and 2014, reporting 312 RCTs from 23 different countries with 22,548 participants. The analysis found that most trials were relatively small in size and failed to explore even common medical conditions frequently. More than 40 different yoga styles were used in the analyzed RCTs; whilst most trials included yoga postures and breathing, yoga meditation and philosophy were less often used (that means, not much of “yoga”). The median study sample size was 59 (range 8–410). Two hundred sixty-four RCTs (84.6%) were conducted with adults, 105 (33.7%) with older adults and 31 (9.9%) with children. Eighty-four RCTs (26.9%) were conducted with healthy participants. Other trials enrolled patients with one of 63 varied medical conditions; the most common being breast cancer (17 RCTs, 5.4%), depression (14 RCTs, 4.5%), asthma (14 RCTs, 4.5%) and type 2 diabetes mellitus (13 RCTs, 4.2%). Whilst 119 RCTs (38.1%) did not define the style of yoga used, 35 RCTs (11.2%) used Hatha yoga and 30 RCTs (9.6%) yoga breathing. The remaining 128 RCTs (41.0%) used 46 varied yoga styles, with a median intervention length of 9 weeks (range 1 day to 1 year). Two hundred and forty-four RCTs (78.2%) used yoga postures, 232 RCTs (74.4%) used breath control, 153 RCTs (49.0%) used meditation and 32 RCTs (10.3%) used philosophy lectures. One hundred and seventy-four RCTs (55.6%) compared yoga with no specific treatment; 21 varied control interventions were used in the remaining RCTs. The authors of this analysis concluded that the available research evidence is sparse for most conditions, and more research is clearly needed. Besides primary research, up-to-date systematic reviews and meta-analyses are needed at least for the most commonly studied conditions in order to evaluate the level of evidence and strength of recommendation for or against the use of yoga in each condition.[Cramer H et al, BMC CAM, 2014]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11777" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2017-10-26T17:39:34.630" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28373" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-09T06:36:17.760" Score="82" ViewCount="18089" Body="&lt;p&gt;The viral image below purports to show three TV screenshots of the same photo of a bomb, with the source of the being attributed to three different sources:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zgcF8.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First image: Ukrainian Channel 5. The text translates to &quot;Russia bombs&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second image: Russian RUSSIA24. The text translates to &quot;Ukrainian chastisers bombed their citizens&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Third image: Aljazeera: Israel launches airstrikes in Gaza.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;What is the true origin of this photo? Additionally, are any of the news report screenshots genuine?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.pinterest.com/pin/282108364134458911/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A similar photo on Pinterest&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27004" LastEditorUserId="14582" LastEditDate="2015-07-09T09:02:09.697" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T19:52:20.943" Title="What is the origin of this photo of an unexploded bomb?" Tags="|war|television|russia|ukraine|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28374" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7517" CreationDate="2015-07-09T06:41:20.687" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&quot;&lt;strong&gt;Music is considered an ecologically valid auditory stimulus&lt;/strong&gt; since many different brain centers can be activated through functional dissociation between the ventral and dorsal networks involved in event segmentation of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627307005004&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;music&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Evidence is inconclusive&lt;/strong&gt; to suggest using headphones to drown out office noise is detrimental since some studies show positive/neutral effects while others show negative effects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Positive or neutral effects of music listening in offices&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Researchers Newman &amp;amp; Hunt &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/apl/50/6/493/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1966&lt;/a&gt; found that &lt;strong&gt;employees enjoyed the background music, but there was no effect on their productivity&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Music goes best with repetitive tasks that require focus but little higher-level cognition.&lt;/strong&gt; A landmark &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449326/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1972&lt;/a&gt; study in Applied Ergonomics showed that music goes best with repetitive tasks that require focus but little higher-level cognition since it found that factory workers performed at a higher level when upbeat, happy tunes were played in the background. This research by Fox &amp;amp; Embrey &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15677103&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1972&lt;/a&gt; reveals listening to background music helped improve the efficiency of performing a repetitive task.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Employees in relatively simple jobs responded most positively to the stereos.&lt;/strong&gt; A study ''Listen while you work? Quasi-experimental relations between personal-stereo headset use and employee work responses.' by Greg R Oldham et. al. in &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/apl/80/5/547/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1995&lt;/a&gt; showed that for employees with simple, routine jobs, enhanced relaxation caused their increases in performance, while decreases in distractions improved their attitudes toward their jobs and the company but for others, it will have the opposite effect.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results indicated that employees in the stereo condition exhibited significant improvements in performance, turnover intentions, organization satisfaction, mood states, and other responses. The mood state of relaxation best explained the relation between stereo use and performance. Finally, employees in relatively simple jobs responded most positively to the stereos.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The effect of music on work performance may be due to music making the person feel in a positive mood state&lt;/strong&gt; per Leisuk &lt;a href=&quot;http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/business/LESIUKarticle2005.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2005&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results indicated that state positive affect and quality-of-work were lowest with no music, while time-on-task was longest when music was removed. Narrative responses revealed the value of music listening for positive mood change and enhanced perception on design while working.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;5&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Employees often used music to seal themselves off from the office environment&lt;/strong&gt; per the findings of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://msx.sagepub.com/content/15/1/107.abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2011&lt;/a&gt; survey of 295 office employees in the UK for listening patterns.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Music helped them to both engage in and escape from work, and they often used music to seal themselves off from the office environment. Employees managed their listening practices so as not to disturb colleagues or appear unprofessional in front of clients.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;'Coding war games'&lt;/strong&gt; was an extensive research study that involved 600 developers from 92 companies. The results were that &lt;strong&gt;62% of the best performers said they had an acceptably private workspace and 76% of the worst said people interrupted them needlessly.&lt;/strong&gt; This explains that, &lt;strong&gt;top performers worked for companies that gave them control over space, physical environments and freedom from interruption&lt;/strong&gt;. Headphones may provide absolute control over the worker's &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/05/how-headphones-changed-the-world/257830/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;audio-environment&lt;/a&gt; and helps him in privatizing his or her public space.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, several other studies provided inconclusive results by which we cannot determine any conclusion regarding the effect of headphone use in office for listening to music on productivity since research shows that under some conditions, music actually improves performance, while in other situations music makes it worse.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Negative effects of music during task performance&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Reading comprehension is disrupted when playing fast and loud background&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psy.mq.edu.au/me2/uploads/publications/POM400173.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;music&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Per study by Ravi Mehta et. al. in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/665048&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2012&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Most studies find that noise hurts creativity&lt;/strong&gt; (Hillier, Alexander, and Beversdorf 2006; Kasof 1997; Martindale and Greenough 1973), there is some evidence that &lt;strong&gt;for highly original individuals, moderate noise may lead to improved creative performance&lt;/strong&gt; (Toplyn and Maguire 1991).&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ambient noise, an important environmental variable, can affect creativity. Results from five experiments demonstrate that a moderate (70 dB) versus low (50 dB) level of ambient noise enhances performance on creative tasks. A high level of noise (85 dB), on the other hand, hurts creativity. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Music may impair cognitive abilities while hearing music at the same time as doing the expected task&lt;/strong&gt; per a 2010 study at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff, United Kingdom by Nick Perham and and Joanne Vizard published in Applied Cognitive &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.1731/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Psychology&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Researchers looked at participant's capacity to memorize information while listening to an array of sounds. The students were told to memorize a list of letters in order and tested after studying in complete silence, music they liked, and music they didn't like, among other sounds. Participants performed worst while listening to music, regardless of whether they liked that music or not and they did the best in the quiet or completely silent environment. The researchers believe the music impairs the cognitive abilities in these scenarios because when individuals are trying to memorize data they are thrown off by the changing words and notes within the &lt;a href=&quot;http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2010/07/27/music-may-harm-your-studying-study-says/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;music&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Results revealed performance to be poorer for both music conditions and the changing-state speech compared to quiet and steady-state speech conditions. The lack of difference between both music conditions suggests that preference does not affect serial recall performance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Background music influenced listener attention&lt;/strong&gt;. The results  of a randomized controlled trial 'Effects of background music on concentration&#xA;of workers' by Huang RH 2009 which analyzed how different types of background music and how listeners’ degree of preference for the background music can affect listener concentration in attention testing &lt;a href=&quot;https://givemeinstantgratificationdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/60106388.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;showed&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Background music influenced listener attention. This influence has more to do with listener fondness for the music than with type of music. Compared to situations without background music, the likelihood of background music affecting test taker attention performance is likely to increase with the degree to which the test taker likes or dislikes the music.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;5&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Listening to music with lyrics tend to lower concentration test scores.&lt;/strong&gt; The results of a &lt;a href=&quot;http://josotl.indiana.edu/article/download/1733/1731&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; of 102 Taiwanese college students published in the journal Work found that &quot;music with a higher intensity is more distracting and has a greater effect on task performance and concentration&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T04:04:27.440" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T04:04:27.440" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28376" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28379" CreationDate="2015-07-09T08:27:54.120" Score="46" ViewCount="9025" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/833556710070752/photos/a.833559933403763.1073741828.833556710070752/858924344200655/?type=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This Facebook photo&lt;/a&gt; protesting the recent London underground (Tube) strikes claims that London underground drivers earn more money and have less working hours than  &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Health_Service_%28England%29&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;National Health Service (NHS)&lt;/a&gt; doctors:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/pYag2.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;sub&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/huYgy.jpg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Alternate image&lt;/a&gt; with sources &lt;a href=&quot;https://nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/advice/planning/jobprofiles/Pages/TrainDriver.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Train Drivers&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/advice/planning/jobprofiles/Pages/hospitaldoctor.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Doctor&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/sub&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The claims are as follows:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;London tube driver: 18 months training, £20-30k pay during training, Initial salary: £35000, 5 year salary £50-60k, average 36 hours worked per week, 5 maximum days worked in a row&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Hospital doctor: Minimum 5 years training, £0 pay during training, Initial salary: £22636, 5 year salary £45000, minimum 48 hours worked per week, 12 maximum days worked in a row&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this table factually accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Similar unsourced claims can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/11726174/Striking-tube-drivers-can-earn-more-than-some-hospital-doctors.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T22:08:34.247" Title="Do London underground drivers earn more and work less than NHS doctors?" Tags="|work|transportation|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28377" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-09T08:53:16.090" Score="13" ViewCount="10267" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many sources on the internet which claim that prairie dogs can be exterminated using bubblegum:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/2082473/prairie-dog-negotiation&quot;&gt;Source 1&lt;/a&gt;: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;prairie dogs are handled with poison or bazooka joe bubble gum, of&#xA;  which the dogs chew and can't swallow because it gets caught in their&#xA;  teeth. They choke to death.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.steerplanet.com/bb/the-big-show/prairie-dogs/&quot;&gt;Source 2:&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bubble Gum! Go to Sam's Club and buy a bucket of Bubble Gum an unrap&#xA;  it and scatter it out, the prarie dogs eat it and can't digest it and&#xA;  they die.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bcsalering.com/showthread.php?t=13529&amp;amp;page=3&quot;&gt;Source 3:&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Bubble gum does work and is fairly inexpensive. You need to have a&#xA;  little moisture in the ground, but those little bass turds can't pass&#xA;  the gum and it kills them. You can buy those big bags of that cheap&#xA;  halloween gum real cheap at this time of the year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is it true that eating bubblegum kills prairie dogs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastActivityDate="2018-08-29T16:08:51.963" Title="Do prairie dogs die when they eat bubblegum?" Tags="|zoology|pesticides|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28378" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28373" CreationDate="2015-07-09T09:34:14.490" Score="87" Body="&lt;p&gt;The original photo appears to have been posted by Ukrainian soldier Andrew Zaharov &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1546905768877912&amp;amp;set=a.1490440674524422.1073741831.100006755115784&amp;amp;type=1&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;on his Facebook photo album.&lt;/a&gt; as it predates the articles from any of the news sources below. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/dISoRm.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The initial hit for this image was carried out by cropping the image with Photoshop, then performing a reverse image search, which resulted in a hit to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.62.ua/news/617555&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ukrainian news site&lt;/a&gt;, which has additional images of the truck which was hit by the missile. The site also mirrored Zaharov's photo above.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;js=y&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.62.ua%2Fnews%2F617555&amp;amp;edit-text=&amp;amp;act=url&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Translate&lt;/a&gt; of the page has the following information:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Ukrainian security officials, who are near the village of Dmitrovka&#xA;  Donetsk region were fired from a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BM-27_Uragan&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Russian &quot;Hurricane.&quot;&lt;/a&gt; Fortunately, one&#xA;  of the rockets that hit in the staff car, did not explode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, the original photo in this image appears to be an Ukrainian military truck that was hit by a Russian missile, at least according to the news page. The missile is used by &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BM-27_Uragan#Operators&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries but not by Israel&lt;/a&gt;, so it is clear at least that the final instance of the missile being labelled as Israeli is false. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Furthermore, attempting Google searches for the alleged &quot;headlines&quot; on the 3 images did not yield the original news articles which allegedly had their screenshots taken, but instead yielded the meme-image itself. This, coupled with the fact that all 3 of the images had exactly the same size, position and colour profile made the origin of the image extremely suspicious.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Ukrainian: &#xA;&lt;code&gt;Росія завдає удар&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Russian: &#xA;&lt;code&gt;Россия 24 Украинские каратели обстреляли своих граждан&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;English:&#xA;&lt;code&gt;al jazeera &quot;war on gaza&quot; &quot;israel launches airstrikes&quot;&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From this, we can infer that it is likely that the creator of this image faked the &quot;headlines&quot; for each of the images. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;While we can conclusively find that the truck was an Ukrainian vehicle (from an &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/destruction-in-east-ukraine?articleId=USRTR46YOB&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;independent report by Reuters&lt;/a&gt; courtesy of &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/28408/14582&quot;&gt;Anixx's answer&lt;/a&gt;), it will unfortunately be impossible to determine the actual provenance of the missile. Both militaries use the exact same missile model (&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BM-27_Uragan&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;BM-27 Uragan&lt;/a&gt;), and both countries' media sources deny firing the missile in a mirror of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;MH17 shootdown tragedy&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://n2ru.info/story/12892/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Russian source&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;js=y&amp;amp;prev=_t&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fn2ru.info%2Fstory%2F12892%2F&amp;amp;edit-text=&amp;amp;act=url&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google translate&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;During shelling Russian positions Ukrainian troops soldiers under Dmitrijevka 220-millimeter rockets Russian &quot;Hurricane&quot; has broken Ukrainian staff car and did not explode. This is reported by users of social network Facebook.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://from-ua.com/news/321829-raketa-uragana-probila-mashinu-ato-i-ne-vzorvalas-foto.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ukrainian source&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;amp;sl=ru&amp;amp;tl=en&amp;amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Ffrom-ua.com%2Fnews%2F321829-raketa-uragana-probila-mashinu-ato-i-ne-vzorvalas-foto.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google translate&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Near the village of Dmitrovka in Luhansk Russian rocket &quot;Hurricane&quot;&#xA;  has broken Ukrainian staff car and did not explode.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.487" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T12:41:12.637" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28379" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28376" CreationDate="2015-07-09T13:19:17.527" Score="55" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim about hours seem to be accurate, the claim about salaries not so much.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Summary:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The source data are for UK train drivers, not London tube drivers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The doctors part of the source data does not include that London salaries are generally higher than average, which we should include when comparing to London tube drivers.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The chart mislabels doctor's training salary as starting salary.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The chart mislabels the required university degree for doctors as training.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The 5-year salary in the chart does not come from the same source.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The source has a much higher salary range for a fully qualified doctor but the chart doesn't list it.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The sources appear to be these for &lt;a href=&quot;https://nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/advice/planning/jobprofiles/Pages/TrainDriver.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;train driver&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/advice/planning/jobprofiles/Pages/hospitaldoctor.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;hospital doctor&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Neither of the source documents are specific to London, these are for hospital doctors and generic train drivers across the entire United Kingdom, not specifically London Tube drivers or London doctors.  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhscareers.nhs.uk/working-in-the-nhs/pay-and-benefits/agenda-for-change-pay-rates/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;NHS employees in inner London get 20% extra pay up to a maximum of £6,342&lt;/a&gt;. Outer London NHS employees get 15% extra.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chart says the &amp;quot;starting salary&amp;quot; for a doctor is £22,636 but the source says this salary is for a &amp;quot;junior hospital trainee&amp;quot;.  Immediately after that figure it says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This increases in the second year of foundation training to £28,076. For a doctor in specialist training the basic starting salary is £30,002.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chart chooses just the lowest number.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chart considers the foundation programme to be starting work rather than training and the university degree to be training.  The source consistently calls the foundation programme &lt;em&gt;training&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Two-year foundation programme&lt;/strong&gt; - you will work in clinical settings ranging from acute care to mental health. By the end of this training you will have full registration with the General Medical Council (GMC) and you will have chosen the area of medicine you want to practise.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;[...]&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;You will be assessed throughout your training and if your skills meet the required standard, you will be awarded the Certificate of Completion of Training (CCT). This means that you will be eligible to join the GMC Specialist Register and apply for a licence to practise. For more information check the GMC website.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This also implies that you do not have a license to practice medicine until after the two-year foundation programme which makes calling the salary you earn during this time a &lt;em&gt;starting salary&lt;/em&gt; inaccurate.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The source states directly after the starting salaries:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doctors in training are paid extra if they work more than 40 hours or they work outside the hours of 7am to 7pm, Monday to Friday. This is usually between 20% and 50% of the basic salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Which suggests that some trainee doctors earn more than the basic salary.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;If we consider this foundation programme to be &lt;em&gt;training&lt;/em&gt; rather than a starting salary for a fully qualified doctor then it should be compared to the £20k - £30k training wage for a train driver.  It is still possible that some trainee doctors may earn less than some train driver trainees in the first year of training but most doctors will be earning more by the second year, even if they do no overtime or unusual hours.  It's worth noting that for the London Underground drivers, &lt;a href=&quot;https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/tube/first-and-last-tube&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;some shifts will start before 6am and some will end after 12pm&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33459515&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This BBC article says &amp;quot;as early as 04:45 and end as late as 01:30&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No mention is made in the chart of the higher salaries that doctors can earn.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Doctors in the specialty doctor grade earn between £37,176 and £69,325.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consultants can earn a basic salary of between £75,249 and £101,451 per year, dependent on length of service.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Consultants working in private sector hospitals may receive higher fees.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chart states a value for a salary at five years but this information is not included in the source.  The value £45,000 does not appear in the source. The average of the specialty doctor range listed above is around £53k however it should be noted that we don't know the actual distribution within this range.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://nationalcareersservice.direct.gov.uk/advice/planning/jobprofiles/Pages/Doctor-GP.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;On a different page from the same site regarding GPs&lt;/a&gt;, the salary range is listed as between £55,412 and £83,617.  The hours on that page are listed as 50.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As a full-time salaried GP, you will earn between £55,412 and £83,617 a year depending on your experience.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A lot of GPs are self-employed and have a contract as part of a Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG). In this role you may earn more than a salaried GP. Your income will depend on the type of services you provide for your patients and how you run your practice.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/9300823/Most-doctors-are-not-paid-six-figure-sums-figures-show.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An older article lists various doctors and tube drivers salaries together&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chart says that tube drivers earn £50k - £60k per year but the source says:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Qualified drivers can earn from £35,000 to over £60,000 a year.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lbc.co.uk/how-much-does-a-tube-driver-make-in-a-year-111522&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Elsewhere, a specific value for top of the salary scale for tube drivers  is listed as £49,673&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aslef.org.uk/information/102222/102225/103142/london_underground/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ASLEF (the train driver's union) lists it as £48,133&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33459515&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Various sources state that London Tube drivers salaries do not change based on the time spent in the role&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The chart states that doctors work &amp;quot;min 48&amp;quot; hours per week however the source document says 48 hours per week in one part and the maximum is 48 hours further down the page.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;European legislation has reduced the number of hours you can do to no more than 48 per week.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33459515&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Tube drivers typically work 36 hour weeks but get extra time off for this being above 35 hours&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One extra thing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I would imagine most doctors are well aware that a university degree actually has a negative value, not £0 as it costs a significant amount of money.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11387" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T09:04:17.620" CommentCount="13" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28380" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28395" CreationDate="2015-07-09T14:58:31.690" Score="5" ViewCount="482" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3152971/Cameron-plan-ease-foxhunting-ban-PM-considers-compromise-make-legal-kill-foxes-pest-control-purposes.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Daily Mail reports&lt;/a&gt; plans to repeal the fox-hunting ban. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At present it is legal to hunt with two hounds to flush a fox to a gun. If the proposed change went ahead, the exemption would cover using as many hounds as were necessary for wildlife management.&#xA;  This would help farmers, especially in upland areas, who have struggled to protect livestock from foxes since the ban.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This implies that more than two dogs are needed to flush foxes (as the hounds killing the fox will still be banned). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence to support that allowing more than two hounds will help farmers? For example, evidence showing in a dramatic rise in fox numbers since the ban was enforced or a comparison of ways that foxes can be controlled.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2518" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2018-07-21T04:48:30.280" LastActivityDate="2018-07-21T04:48:30.280" Title="Have 'upland farmers' struggled to protect livestock from foxes since the fox hunting ban in the UK" Tags="|united-kingdom|ecology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28381" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="20061" CreationDate="2015-07-09T16:03:39.243" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is additional data in the 1970 article &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jstor.org/stable/2747894&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Polls: Is War a Mistake?&lt;/a&gt; The Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 34, pp. 134-150.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This article confirms with different data than that linked in the OP that more people 50 and over considered US involvement in Vietnam a mistake than those 21-29.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, when asked in a November 1969 Harris poll &quot;In general, just as far as their objectives are concerned, do you sympathize with the goals of the people demonstrating, marching, and protesting against the war in Vietnam or do you disagree with their goals&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;52% under 35 agreed&lt;br&gt;&#xA;36% 35-49 agreed&lt;br&gt;&#xA;28% 50 and older agreed  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So in summary older people disagreed more with US participation in the war, but also disagreed more with the objectives of war protestors.   &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastActivityDate="2015-07-09T16:03:39.243" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28382" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28392" CreationDate="2015-07-09T16:58:44.840" Score="5" ViewCount="2559" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Coulter&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Ann Coulter&lt;/a&gt;'s &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/1621572676&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Adios America&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt; book claims that there are 30 million non-legal immigrants in the United States.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an &lt;a href=&quot;http://townhall.com/tipsheet/townhallcomstaff/2015/05/27/draft-n2004374&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;interview&lt;/a&gt;,  she explained that figure comes from:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a Bear Stearns study of several factors, including school enrollment in illegal alien hotspots, housing permits in illegal alien hotspots, and remissions of money back to Mexico.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this figure accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="16796" LastEditorUserId="6656" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T20:26:07.593" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T20:16:11.067" Title="Are there 30 million non-legal immigrants in the United States?" Tags="|united-states|immigration|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28383" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-09T18:36:06.270" Score="2" ViewCount="153" Body="&lt;p&gt;New York Stock Exchange &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/NYSE/status/618818929906085888&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;claims&lt;/a&gt; that the downtime was due &lt;em&gt;&quot;internal technical issue&quot;&lt;/em&gt; and denies claims of cyber attack.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/de26h.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On the other hand, allegedly few hours prior to the outage Anonymous &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/YourAnonNews/status/618626955433349120&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;has tweeted&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Wonder if tomorrow is going to be bad for Wall Street.... we can only hope.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/evgJo.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Was the outage result of Anonymous cyber attack?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="3790" LastEditorUserId="3790" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T06:32:21.770" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T06:32:21.770" Title="Was NYSE outage on July 8th, 2015 a result of a cyber attack?" Tags="|finance|hacking|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ClosedDate="2015-07-09T19:07:03.937" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28386" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28387" CreationDate="2015-07-10T05:55:51.797" Score="4" ViewCount="742" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://americannews.com/donald-trump-just-slammed-all-his-haters-with-this-amazing-news/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American News&lt;/a&gt; posted an article in defense of &lt;a href=&quot;http://time.com/3923128/donald-trump-announcement-speech/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;some recent comments by Donald Trump&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They say:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'the Center for Immigration Studies reported that “57 of the 76 fugitive murderers most wanted by the FBI were foreign-born.&quot;'&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;American News doesn't appear to be a reliable source, and I have been unable to confirm that statistic.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Are there studies that support the claim that the majority of fugitive murderers most wanted by the FBI are foreign-born? &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, how many of those fugitives were born in Mexico (and hence add some relevant evidence to support Trump's claim)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27026" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T06:51:07.393" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T06:51:14.360" Title="Are a majority of the FBI's most wanted fugitive murderers born outside the USA?" Tags="|united-states|law-enforcement|mexico|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28387" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28386" CreationDate="2015-07-10T06:14:25.953" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;The Center for Immigration Studies &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cis.org/sites/cis.org/files/articles/2009/crime.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;released a study&lt;/a&gt; in 2009 which makes the claim given in the question. Its claim was misquoted (as 57/76 instead of 57% of 76):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/li40q.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/736ZR.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It gives the source as the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/murders&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;FBI Most Wanted For Murders List&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The CIS study further stated that an overwhelming majority (35/43) of them were Mexican. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Assuming that the list has not changed significantly in composition since 2009, we can directly fact-check this list to verify this claim. A cursory sample of the wanted criminals listed shows that indeed a significant proportion of them are foreign born, and the majority are Mexican. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="14582" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T06:29:17.150" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T06:29:17.150" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28388" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18432" CreationDate="2015-07-10T07:14:36.277" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The research into effectiveness of fairness creams&lt;/strong&gt; such as Fair &amp;amp; Lovely is &lt;strong&gt;inconclusive&lt;/strong&gt; since Aneel Karnani's 2007 paper states that dermatologists claim that fairness creams cannot be effective without the use of skin bleaching agents such as hydroquinone, steroids, mercury salts, other harmful chemicals and further research is warranted. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Skin-lightening or fairness creams are big business in India, an over $200 million industry that comprises the largest segment of the country’s skin cream market. Although corporations like Unilever have been widely criticized for profiting on colorism, they continue to produce advertisements that equate light skin with beauty, success, and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.academia.edu/6323968/Fair_and_Anxious_On_Mimicry_and_Skin-Lightening_in_India&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;empowerment&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; The marketing company Unilever has not been required to prove efficacy of Fair &amp;amp; Lovely creams since Fair &amp;amp; Lovely is not categorized as a pharmaceutical product. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per P. Ravi Shankar et. al in 2007, &quot;the melanocytes in the epidermis are responsible for the intensity of skin colour. The number of melanocytes is the same in both fair and dark skinned people. The amount of melanin produced by the melanocytes is partly determined by genetics and partly by the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.jpad.org.pk/april%20june%202007/7.%20review%20article%20fair%20skin%20in%20south%20asia.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;environment&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per &lt;strong&gt;Aneel Karnani in 2007&lt;/strong&gt;, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;the melanin in an individual’s skin cannot be reduced by applying fairness creams&lt;/strong&gt;, bathing with sun-blocking soaps or using fairness talc. The upper&#xA;layer of skin is dead tissue, below which is a barrier zone that prevents foreign particles&#xA;from entering the body. Only if a substance penetrates this barrier zone, can it reach the&#xA;melanin. Medicated ointments that contain chemicals which aid in skin absorption may&#xA;have some &lt;a href=&quot;http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/49327/1063-Karnani.pdf?sequence=4&amp;amp;isAllowed=y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;effect&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Individual Ingredient effects of Fair &amp;amp; Lovely Advanced Multi Vitamin&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) &lt;strong&gt;Niacinamide&lt;/strong&gt; (Vitamin B3) has antioxidant effects, improves epidermal barrier function, decreases yellowing of skin, decreases erythema and blotchiness, decreases fine lines and wrinkles, reduces &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2921764/table/T3/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;hyperpigmentation&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) Benefits of &lt;strong&gt;vitamin B6&lt;/strong&gt; to skin are inconclusive since few photosensitive reactions caused by pyridoxine hydrochloride have been &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9703142&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;reported&lt;/a&gt;. However, Pyridoxine HCl is FDA approved and has received its Generally Recognized as Safe &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/GRAS/SCOGS/ucm261050.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;rating&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) &lt;strong&gt;Glycerin&lt;/strong&gt; containing cream appears to be suitable in the treatment of atopic dry &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12013198&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;skin&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) &lt;strong&gt;Allantoin&lt;/strong&gt; is a natural soothing, anti-irritant, and skin protectant that increases the water content of the extracellular matrix which provides structural support to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ijcmas.com/vol-3-7/G.O.Igile,%20et%20al.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;cells&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;C) The term &quot;provitamin&quot; is used when it is desirable to label a substance with little or no vitamin activity, but which can be converted to an active form by normal metabolic &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provitamin&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;processes&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;strong&gt;Vitamins C and E&lt;/strong&gt; inhibits the acute ultraviolet damage of erythema, sunburn, and tanning as well as chronic UV &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18681152&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;photoaging&lt;/a&gt; and skin cancer and are highly effective depigmenting agents. Topical vitamin C also increases collagen synthesis and because vitamin C regenerates oxidized vitamin E, its combination is synergistic in cosmetic formulation, particularly in UV &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18045356&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;protection&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;3.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A) &lt;strong&gt;Parsol&lt;/strong&gt; is the trade name of a number of UV absorbers including Parsol Mcx and Parsol 1789. Avobenzone's (Parsol 1789) ability of absorbing ultraviolet light over a wider range of wavelengths than many other sunscreen agents has led to its use in many commercial cosmetic preparations marketed as &quot;broad spectrum&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16520862&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;sunscreens&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;B) &lt;strong&gt;TiO2&lt;/strong&gt; powders are used due to their ability to confer whiteness and opacity on products such as cosmetics. Until relevant toxicological and human exposure data that would enable reliable risk assessment are obtained, TiO2 nanoparticles should be used with great &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3423755/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;care&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;4&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The effect of white optics for instant brightening and natural glow is inconclusive since it is not yet researched.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Per Aneel Karnani in 2007, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;The Indian Association of Dermatologists, Venereologists and Leprologists (IADVL) says that the current situation is unacceptable, and condemns the lack of a law to regulate the sale of skin whitening products&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T08:31:31.440" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T08:31:31.440" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28391" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="10118" CreationDate="2015-07-10T10:42:14.687" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;Per Raffaele Porta et al. in 2013,  edible coatings was to found be extremely advantageous to preserve the characteristics of fresh-cut fruits and vegetables at their peak. A review of various preservative treatments for color preservation and preventing texture loss in fresh cut fruit and vegetables can be found &lt;a href=&quot;http://ucanr.org/sites/Zann_test/files/28711.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Different technologies have been so far used to prolong the shelf-life of fresh-cut fruits and vegetables. Among these, almost all of the chemical treatments (sulfite, citric acid, ascorbic acid derivatives, cinnamate, benzoate, and cyclodextrins) confere off flavors, and many of the most effective substances added are recognized as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/edible-coating-as-packaging-strategy-to-extend-the-shelflife-of-freshcut-fruits-and-vegetables-2155-952X-3-e124.php?aid=22423#a1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unsafe&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A relatively simple technology, such as the application of edible coatings obtainable from inexpensive raw materials, is effective against both browning development and textural deterioration happening during the management and storage of fresh-cut products. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T10:42:14.687" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28392" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28382" CreationDate="2015-07-10T11:52:47.627" Score="14" Body="&lt;p&gt;It is not accurate that a Bear Stearns study found that there were 30 million illegal immigrants in the USA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Instead the Bears Stearns study &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.steinreport.com/BearStearnsStudy.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Underground Labor Force&#xA;Is Rising To The Surface&lt;/a&gt; by Justich and Ng stated:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The number of illegal immigrants in the United States may be as high as 20&#xA;  million people&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Undocumented immigrants are gaining a larger share of the job market, and&#xA;  hold approximately 12 to 15 million jobs in the United States&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=yJl0AwAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PT43&amp;amp;dq=coulter%2030%20million&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ei=5XuiVcazFc-aoQTf37DgDg&amp;amp;ved=0CDUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=coulter%2030%20million&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Coulter's book&lt;/a&gt;, she correctly reports the 20 million figure from Bear &#xA;Stearns and then states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Combining Justich and Ng's conclusion that there were 20 million illegal aliens here in 2005 with the estimate of Pulitzer prize winners Barlett and Steele that another 3 million illegal immigrants would enter in 2006, plus at least another 3 million illegals coming in each year throughout the following decade - surely a low estimate - would mean there are at least 30 million illegal immigrants in the United States today.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So she is stating 3 million per year with no justification for 2007 to present, when this number could have actually been negative some of those years, particularly around 2009 (see DHS report below).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are other sources that have estimated 30 million.  The 2006 book &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.prweb.com/releases/minutemen/illegalimmigration/prweb418456.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders&lt;/a&gt; estimated 30 million and Californians for Population Stabilization &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.capsweb.org/press-releases/illegal-aliens-estimated-20-38-million&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;estimated 20 to 38 million&lt;/a&gt;.  However, the Minutemen book counts children of illegal immigrants who were born in the USA, which is clearly contrary to the definitions of &quot;illegal&quot; and &quot;immigrant&quot;.  Immigrants that were illegal but have recieved amnesty in previous amnesty events are also included.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Californians group's report is actually a collection of 4 separate papers.  For example 1 of the 4 is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_17_4/tsc_17_4_walsh.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Illegal Aliens: Counting the Uncountable&lt;/a&gt; by James H. Walsh, former Associate General Counsel of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in the United States Department of Justice. This report estimates 38 million:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;My estimate of 38 million illegal aliens residing in the United States is calculated, however, using a conservative annual rate of entry (allowing for deaths and returns to their homelands) of three illegal aliens entering the United States for each one apprehended. My estimate includes apprehensions at the Southern Border (by far, the majority), at the Northern Border, along the Pacific, Atlantic, and Gulf of Mexico coasts, and at seaports and airports. Taking the DHS average of 1.2 million apprehensions per year and multiplying it by 3 comes to 3.6 million illegal entries per year; then multiplying that number by 10 for the 1996–2005 period, my calculations come to 36 million illegal entries into the United States. Add to this the approximately 2 million visa overstays during the same period, and the total is 38 million illegal aliens currently in the United States.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, this method is highly sensitive to selection of the number &quot;3&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Another of the 4 papers, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc_17_4/tsc_17_4_elbel.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;How Many Illegal Aliens Are in the U.S.? - An Alternative Methodology for Discovering the Numbers&lt;/a&gt;,  doesn't really calculate an independent number but looks at how reasonable the 20 million figure reported by others is.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/18/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Pew Research Center estimates&lt;/a&gt; 11.2 million in 2012 and 11.3 million in 2013. This is essentially the same as what the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/ois_ill_pe_2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reports (11.5 million for 2011)&lt;/a&gt;.  These are the most widely reported values. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The DHS report at least clearly explains the methodology. The total number of foreign born persons in the USA is estimated from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;American Community Survey&lt;/a&gt; data.  From this is subtracted DHS data for persons who immigrated legally or obtain legal status after immigrating illegally.  Allowances are made for some undercounting of foreign born, mortality of legal/legalized immigrants and emigration. Also, everyone arrived before 1980 is assumed to be legal. So this &quot;subtraction&quot; technique is sensitive to under-response of foreign born persons to surveys.  It is basically assuming 95% of foreign born are counted in the survey (90% of illegal immigrants and almost 100% of other immigrants).  The DHS report specifically acknowledges that if only 80% of illegal immigrants responded to the survey the number could be 13.9 million. The Bear Stearns report says that from interviewing illegal immigrants they determined a low number would respond to such a survey, and that the DHS does not get the supposedly correct ~20 million value for this reason.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T13:35:18.490" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T13:35:18.490" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28393" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28400" CreationDate="2015-07-10T12:36:42.887" Score="5" ViewCount="688" Body="&lt;p&gt;An &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/07/this-is-the-most-outrageous-government-tirade-against-ios-8-encryption/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;article on Ars Technica&lt;/a&gt; reports on a rant against Apple made by New York County District Attorney, &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_Vance,_Jr.&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Cyrus Vance Jr.&lt;/a&gt;, for including strong encryption in their iPhone OS.  One claim he made jumps out as being suspect (or rather even more suspect than the others): &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;He said Apple was evil for baking encryption into iOS 8 and that a law&#xA;  enforcement backdoor should be allowed. He told the committee that a&#xA;  jailhouse recording of two inmates had one of them saying that iOS 8's&#xA;  default encryption was a &quot;gift from God.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote attributed to Vance seems valid.  However, I'm more interested in the claim made in it about the alleged prisoner discussion.  He doesn't name the jailhouse or the inmates so it seems to be entirely hyperbole to me.  Have any criminals ever been documented as having said that?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2992" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-11T02:28:29.280" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T02:28:29.280" Title="Did a criminal call smartphone encryption a &quot;gift from God&quot;?" Tags="|law-enforcement|apple-inc|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28394" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28397" CreationDate="2015-07-10T14:42:38.323" Score="7" ViewCount="1210" Body="&lt;p&gt;A few weeks ago I watched a documentation on French/German TV about UAVs (drones). In it an expert claimed that the USA used them to commit more than 1500 terror attacks in third party countries (with which they were not in war) in the Middle East and Africa killing more than 6000 civilians which were sent to kill assumed terrorists and political opponents. Also I read similar claims in forums i.e. associated with news to the CIA statement 'We Kill People Based on Metadata' saying they send drones to kill people phoning with the wrong person. A similar claim is done in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/45/45335/1.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; newspaper article, about the UAV attacks, with a title that translates as &quot;The murderous terror campaign of the present&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have two questions:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First: Is it true that the USA killed thousands of non-combatants between 2001 and 2013 using UAVs?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: If the attacks took place, were these attacks intended to terrorize civilian populations in the targeted countries, or did they have another purpose?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27034" LastEditorUserId="18008" LastEditDate="2015-07-11T23:37:40.303" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T23:37:40.303" Title="Did the USA kill thousands of people between 2001 and 2013 using UAVs to inspire terror?" Tags="|united-states|terrorism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="14" ClosedDate="2015-07-10T19:52:23.553" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28395" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28380" CreationDate="2015-07-10T15:47:05.880" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short version&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I cannot find any published research that &lt;em&gt;specifically&lt;/em&gt; considers using 2 dogs vs. more than 2 dogs to hunt foxes. However, there is a substantial literature on the effect of fox hunting on fox populations in general. All the studies I found indicate that fox hunting with hounds generally has little to no effect on fox populations.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Long Version&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The reasons for the ineffectiveness of hunting with dogs are well summarized by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bioone.org/doi/pdf/10.2193/0022-541X%282006%2970%5B1102%3AEOCFPA%5D2.0.CO%3B2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; study, which models the breeding and dispersion of fox populations, when subjected to different population control mechanisms. Among the study's (theoretical) conclusions is &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;We conclude that effective control of populations at&#xA;landscape scales (e.g., 1,600 km2&#xA;) is not feasible or practical unless immigration from outside populations is low or can be controlled. These&#xA;results can be used to inform policy on the management of United Kingdom (UK) fox populations and contribute to the ongoing debate on&#xA;hunting with hounds as practiced in the UK&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;quot;. Reading the rest of the study, we find that hunting with hounds is ineffective because:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hunting generally takes place after the fox breeding season, when foxes are most numerous (and, presumably, most annoying to farmers and the like).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Foxes breed extremely efficiently. A large fraction (about 40%; presumably mostly juveniles) must leave their home environment soon after the breeding season because of a lack of carrying capacity (food for all the foxes). Most of these fail to establish themselves elsewhere, and die of natural causes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hunting with dogs typically only kills foxes that would have died anyway. The more foxes that are killed, the easier it is for the remainder to find food.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Winter hunting (which does not use dogs), is apparently somewhat more reliable, since it kills foxes &lt;em&gt;before&lt;/em&gt; they can breed.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Although the findings of the first study are based on a theoretical model, they appear to be well supported by the available empirical evidence. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12214224&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This&lt;/a&gt; 2002 paper (apparently originally published in Nature) claims that during the fox hunting ban produced by an outbreak of Foot-In-Mouth disease, fox populations did not increase overall. The study's authors state &amp;quot;&lt;strong&gt;Our results argue against suggestions that fox populations would increase markedly in the event of a permanent ban on hunting&lt;/strong&gt;.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479702002256&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another&lt;/a&gt; paper, published in Science, interviewed a random sample of several hundred farmers, gamekeepers, foresters, and related professions, from across Britain. A large majority of this group (~2/3) believed that a ban on hunting with hounds would have no impact on their ability to control the fox population with lethal methods.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T15:47:05.880" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28396" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28398" CreationDate="2015-07-10T16:38:42.960" Score="9" ViewCount="619" Body="&lt;p&gt;Some people here in Russia say that there was a time when appendixes were considered so useless and potentially dangerous by USA doctors that they performed operations upon asymptomatic children to remove them. Others make the same claim about tonsillectomy.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any substance to these claims? A nation-wide appendectomy program seems completely implausible to me, tonsillectomy in anticipation of epidemic less so, but still doubtful. Yet may there have been some experimental programs in select states/counties?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="19362" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T17:49:38.307" Title="Was prophylactic appendectomy or tonsillectomy ever performed upon children?" Tags="|medical-science|united-states|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28397" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28394" CreationDate="2015-07-10T17:38:03.813" Score="17" Body="&lt;p&gt;There seem to be two parts to this question.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First: &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Have US drone strikes killed thousands of non-combatiant civilians between 2001 and 2013?&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is &lt;strong&gt;probably&lt;/strong&gt;, though likely not the full 6,000 you mention. The best source for this is The Bureau of Investigative Journalism's &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2015/01/05/obama-2015-pakistan-drone-strikes/#Ob368&quot;&gt;database&lt;/a&gt;. The Bureau uses a well designed and publicly avaliable &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2011/08/10/pakistan-drone-strikes-the-methodology2/&quot;&gt;methodology&lt;/a&gt; to count the number of people killed by drone strikes year to year. In total, they count approximately 3,500 people killed by US drone strikes. Of these, only between 500 and 1000 deaths could be confirmed as &quot;civilians&quot;, though the organization makes note of the fact that the US government may overuse the term &quot;Militant&quot; when describing causalities, and many victims cannot be confirmed either way. A further ~1,250 civilians were confirmed injured. A visualization of this database is available &lt;a href=&quot;http://drones.pitchinteractive.com/&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is possible (perhaps even likely) that the actual number of deaths is higher. This data establishes only a lower bound. A US senator, presumably with inside knowledge of the program, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9884667/US-senator-says-drones-death-toll-is-4700.html&quot;&gt;claimed&lt;/a&gt; in 2013 that the actual number (of both military targets and civilians) killed exceeds 4,700.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Second: &quot;&lt;strong&gt;Is the US killing these civilians to terrorize the associated populations?&lt;/strong&gt;&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is much more subjective, but I think &lt;strong&gt;probably not&lt;/strong&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First, I define terrorism according to what I believe is the conventional definition. A terror attack is one that &lt;em&gt;explicitly&lt;/em&gt; targets civilian, rather than military, targets. The &lt;em&gt;intention&lt;/em&gt; behind such an attack is to inspire terror in the civilian population. I do not think the attacks conform to this definition, but it is a contentious issue, in part because of the subjective nature of the terms involved.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Guardian has a nice summary, including graphics, up &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill-1147&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;, based on the report of Human Rights advocacy group &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reprieve.org.uk/press/2014_11_25_us_drone_strikes_kill_28_each_target/&quot;&gt;Reprieve&lt;/a&gt;, which is in turn based on the Bureau's database pointed at above. Approximately 1,000 reported civilian deaths by drone strike are attributed to attempts by the US government to kill specific individuals, associated in one way or another with the US government's &quot;War on Terror&quot;. For instance, attempts to kill eminent figures in Al Qaeda or the Afghanistani Taliban. The human rights organization points out that an average of 28 civilians are killed for each military target, which seems like a large number. However, it seems indisputable that the &lt;em&gt;targets&lt;/em&gt; of the strike were military in nature.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;On a more editorial note: it is probably not in US interest to inspire terror in the civilian populations of Yemen or Pakistan. Both groups are already hot spots for recruitment into organizations the US is trying to eliminate. Presumably then, these deaths are examples of collateral damage. Of course, there is a moral question of whether the &lt;em&gt;intentions&lt;/em&gt; of the US government negate the &lt;em&gt;effects&lt;/em&gt; of their drone strikes, but I think it's hard to ascribe terror as a motive here.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T17:38:03.813" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28398" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28396" CreationDate="2015-07-10T17:41:39.940" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is true as far as tonsils.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17426070&quot;&gt;According to The rise and decline of tonsillectomy in twentieth-century America&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences&lt;/em&gt; vol. 62, pages 383-421. which states:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Between 1915 and the 1960s, T&amp;amp;A [tonsillectomy/adenoidectomy] was the most frequently performed surgical procedure in the United States. Its rise was dependent on novel medical concepts, paradigms, and institutions that were in the process of reshaping the structure and practice of medicine. The driving force was the focal theory of infection, which assumed that circumscribed and confined infections could lead to systemic disease in any part of the body. The tonsils in particular were singled out as &quot;portals of infection,&quot; and therefore their removal became a legitimate therapy. Nevertheless, what kinds of evidence could prove that tonsils were portals of infection? How could the effectiveness of tonsillectomy be determined? An inherent difficulty was the absence of any consensus on the criteria that would be employed to judge its efficacy. Yet tonsillectomy persisted despite ambiguous supportive evidence. Although criticisms of the procedure were common by the 1930s, its decline did not begin until well after 1945 and involved debates over the nature of evidence, the significance of clinical experience in the validation of a particular therapy, and the role of competing medical specialties&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See also the presentation &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.kaleidahealth.org/childrens/grandrounds/pdfs/grand_Rounds_020411.pdf&quot;&gt;History of Tonsillectomy&lt;/a&gt; which explains that in early 20th century the procedure was considered a &quot;general measure to promote good health&quot; and quotes a 1939 reference:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The doctors had coolly descended on the school, taken possession, lined the children up, marched them past,&#xA;  taken one look down each child’s throat, and then two strong arms seized and held the child while the doctor&#xA;  used his instruments to reach down into the throat and rip out whatever came nearest to hand, leaving the boy&#xA;  or girl frightened out of a year’s growth and bleeding savagely&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-07-10T17:49:38.307" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T17:49:38.307" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28399" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="17398" CreationDate="2015-07-10T17:43:57.693" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;I realize this is an old question, but on the off-chance you haven't already found it, the interview in question appeared in the March 8, 1982 issue of InfoWorld.  You can read the whole thing here:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=gT4EAAAAMBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA12#v=onepage&amp;amp;q&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Apple's Steven P. Jobs talks to IW&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We didn't have much money to make molds. So we hired an  outfit in Mountain View. [...] It got so bad at one point that we decided the outfit wasn't interested in supporting us, so we went down there and some of us kept the guy busy while the rest grabbed our mold real quick.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is important to keep in mind that Jobs was well known for his embellishing flourishes of bombast and hyperbole when recounting a story, so the wooden mold &quot;grab-and-dash&quot; may be partially or entirely apocryphal.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27038" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-11T02:37:27.567" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T02:37:27.567" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28400" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28393" CreationDate="2015-07-10T18:26:30.540" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Here is a more detailed excerpt, including the quote from the alleged recording, from &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/07-08-15%20Vance%20Testimony.pdf&quot;&gt;New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr's written testimony&lt;/a&gt; at the Senate committee hearing:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Recently, a defendant in a serious felony case  told another&#xA;  individual  on recorded jailhouse call  that “Apple and Google came&#xA;  out with these softwares that can no longer be encrypted  [sic : decrypted] by the police. . . . If our phones is running on the iO[S]8 software, they can’t open my  phone. That might be another gift&#xA;  from God.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;During the Senate committee hearing, no one pressed Vance for more details on the matter. It seems to be simply anecdotal, as the authenticity would have little impact on the statement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27036" LastActivityDate="2015-07-10T18:26:30.540" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28402" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="26759" CreationDate="2015-07-11T05:13:12.163" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Someone has &quot;An image from 1966 of the Argentine seminarian Jorge Mario Bergoglio in the El Salvador School, where he taught literature and psychology in Buenos Aires.&quot; and then says that was way before Black Sabbath was formed. So to elaborate:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A search on the internet shows that original photo three times tagged with the date 1966. (I've listed all three sites below) All three sites say that this is a photo from 1966 when he taught in Buenos Aries. His birth date according to Wikipedia is 1936 (also stated above in the answers) That would make him 30 in the photo. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Irregardless of any of this - the photo is from 1966 and another look in Wikipedia says that Black Sabbath was formed in 1968 ergo the photo is definitely a fake. As to whether or not he is a Black Sabbath fan the only way to know is to ask him although reading the Wikipedia entry on him he didn't even learn English until 1980. There is, however, no detailed explanation of how much English he knew, if any, before that. That makes it even more unlikely that he was a fan of Black Sabbath - at least until 1980 or after (14 years after this photo) when he would have been able to understand the lyrics. He would have been 44 in 1980 so no longer a &quot;youth&quot; by most standards. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ilnapoletano.org/2014/08/papa-superstar-quattro-film-su-bergoglio/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://ilnapoletano.org/2014/08/papa-superstar-quattro-film-su-bergoglio/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://archives.deccanchronicle.com/130315/news-world/article/spurned-puppy-love-bergoglio-turned-church&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://archives.deccanchronicle.com/130315/news-world/article/spurned-puppy-love-bergoglio-turned-church&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lavie.fr/medias/diaporamas/avant-francois-la-vie-de-jorge-mario-bergoglio-18-02-2014-50047_76.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.lavie.fr/medias/diaporamas/avant-francois-la-vie-de-jorge-mario-bergoglio-18-02-2014-50047_76.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;for the last site you have to actually scroll through the photos to see the correct image&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27045" LastEditorUserId="27045" LastEditDate="2015-07-11T13:36:48.707" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T13:36:48.707" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28403" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28405" CreationDate="2015-07-11T05:50:03.363" Score="78" ViewCount="10160" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3148311/The-lady-allergic-ELECTRICITY-Woman-50-dons-protective-suit-veil-outside-claims-Wi-Fi-kill-her.html&quot;&gt;A recent article from Daily Mail&lt;/a&gt; cited the case of a woman claiming to be allergic to Wi-Fi, and that it could even kill her. This claim sounded ridiculous and absurd to me. Quoting parts of the exact text: &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;ul&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Jackie Lindsey, 50, &lt;strong&gt;claims she has electromagnetic hypersensitivity&lt;/strong&gt; (EHS).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Says the condition - not recognized by doctors in the UK - &lt;strong&gt;means she is allergic to electricity and Wi-Fi and phones could cause shock&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;She has diagnosed herself with electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS), and says anyone using Wi-Fi or a mobile phone signal around her could &lt;strong&gt;cause her to have an attack similar to an anaphylactic shock&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Four per cent of the population are severely affected by the condition while 30 to 40 per cent are mildly affected.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;  &lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Daily Mail also features other articles along the same lines in the past:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1387972/Woman-allergic-electricity-Cancer-survivor-sensitive-gadgets-lives-candlelight.html&quot;&gt;2011: The cancer survivor allergic to modern life: Mother is so sensitive to electric gadgets she has to live by candlelight&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2331369/The-women-say-allergic-modern-life-Blinding-headaches-Violent-sickness-Even-blackouts-So-wi-fi-mobile-phones-TV-screens-blame.html&quot;&gt;2013: The women who say they are allergic to modern life&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2308193/The-cell-phone-free-town-West-Virginia-sees-influx-residents-allergic-electronic-devices.html&quot;&gt;2013: The cellphone-free town in West Virginia that offers people who are 'allergic' to radio waves escape from the modern world&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Does electromagnetic hypersensitivity exist? Does it severely affect 4% of the human population?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5762" LastEditorUserId="5762" LastEditDate="2015-07-14T07:29:30.907" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T22:59:55.413" Title="Does Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) exist?" Tags="|medical-science|electromagnetism|electronics|allergies|" AnswerCount="3" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28404" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28403" CreationDate="2015-07-11T06:22:01.390" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes there are people that believe they have the problem but it &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.emfandhealth.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;does not come from physical exposure from electric fields&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is usually classified as &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogenic_pain&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Psychogenic pain, also called psychalgia&lt;/a&gt; and can be treated with &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Cognitive behavioral therapy&lt;/a&gt; (&lt;a href=&quot;http://swepub.kb.se/bib/swepub:oai:lup.lub.lu.se:18983?tab2=abs&amp;amp;language=en&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ref&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/28405/2986&quot;&gt;caused by a nocebo&lt;/a&gt; :&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The thesis examines various aspects of &amp;quot;electricity hypersensitivity&amp;quot; (EH).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;An empirical investigation of a group of persons suffering from EH was carried out, a part of the group being treated psychologically according to cognitive- behavioural principles in a controlled outcome study. The major findings concern an explanatory-model of EH, the the assessment of characteristics of EH-sufferers and the effects of the psychological treatment of EH.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The explanatory model for the development and maintenance of EH can be summarized as follows. Persons suffering from symptoms for which they lack an explanation search for an explanation within and outside the medical system. If they consider EH to be a possible explanation, they test the hypothesis that this is the case through exposing themselves to electromagnetic fields and concomitantly performing self-observations in a manner making it probable that the experiencing of their symptoms will be intensified. They then attribute the intensification of their symptoms to electricity. Once their belief in their suffering from EH is established, they gradually develop a cognitive schema regarding EH, one that is self-validating. Belief in EH can lead to the experiencing of a variety of secondary symptoms.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The characteristics of EH-sufferers on various psychometric measures appear to resmble much more those of a normal population than of a psychopathologic one. Certain characteristics suggest particular vulnerability to adverse stress-effects, which in turn could result in a proneness to develop EH. &lt;strong&gt;There was found to be a significant reduction in the degree of EH-suffering of patients trated with Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) as compared with controls (patients offered CBT treatment later).&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A conservative assessment of the treatment results indicated 50% of those treated to be &amp;quot;cured&amp;quot; or at least reliably improved in the sense of their physical symptoms having disappeared or diminished and their no longer considering the symptoms they had or have to be due to their exposure to elctromagnetic fields. The treatment principles employed are described and questions of the adequate assessment of EH and the adequacy of outcome predictors are discussed, as are the characteristics of EH-sufferers. Suggestions are made for empirical testing of the explanatory-model advanced. It is argued that EH can be regarded as a variant of disorders that develop in connection with perceived environmental threats.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EU-SCENIHR (Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks) states that there is no such thing as  electromagnetic hypersensitivity (&lt;a href=&quot;http://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/emerging/docs/scenihr_o_041.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Same goes for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/peh-emf/en/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;WHO&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Too much money is spent on non working treatments and takes precious time from healthcare and policy makers and lobbyists such as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.stralskyddsstiftelsen.se/english/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Swedish Radiation Protection Foundation&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://electromagnetichealth.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;electromagnetichealth&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://emfscientist.org/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;emf &amp;quot;scientist&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; are pushing weak and unscientific politicians to make EMF a &amp;quot;thing&amp;quot; even if it has been &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/28405/2986&quot;&gt;proven not to be caused by EMF several times&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Examples of political statements:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagensmedicin.se/blogg/mats-reimer/2014/12/07/sd-gar-in-nar-mp-overger-de-eloverkansliga/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sweden Democrats in the Swedish defence budget&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML%20WDECL%20P7-DCL-2012-0014%200%20DOC%20PDF%20V0//EN&amp;amp;language=EN&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT PE484.928v01-00&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML%20WDECL%20P6-DCL-2009-0047%200%20DOC%20PDF%20V0//EN&amp;amp;language=EN&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT PE424.995v01-00&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.iemfa.org/wp-content/pdf/EESC-TEN559.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;European Economic and Social Committee TEN/559 EHS&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQjaSJP2Xg&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Dr Jill Stein,&amp;quot;We Should Not Be Subjecting Children's Brains To Wi-Fi Screens In Schools. It's Not OK &amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For TEN/559 EHS&lt;a href=&quot;http://memberspage.eesc.europa.eu/Detail.aspx?id=2013269&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Richard Adams&lt;/a&gt; came with the following counter opinion:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;”The great majority of independent trials to date have found that&#xA;self-described sufferers from EHS cannot distinguish between exposure&#xA;to real and false (meaning zero) electromagnetic fields. … However,&#xA;this is not to deny the reality of EHS-attributed symptoms; clearly&#xA;many people self-diagnose as suffering from a range of disconnected&#xA;health problems which they link with electromagnetic fields.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;But even then the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.eesc.europa.eu/?i=portal.en.press-releases.34545&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EESC woted FOR TEN/559&lt;/a&gt; and against the counter-opinion 136 votes for and  110 against  (and 19 not present or blank). (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagensmedicin.se/blogg/mats-reimer/2015/01/31/eu-representanter-for-lo-och-hso-tror-pa-elallergi/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;src&lt;/a&gt;) &lt;a href=&quot;https://webapi.eesc.europa.eu/documentsanonymous/eesc-2015-00054-00-00-pv-tra-en.doc&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Minutes of meeting&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dropbox.com/s/zsz9unkuci9vy1k/2015-01-07-ten.pdf?dl=0&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Voting Record&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="2986" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-08-01T22:59:55.413" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28405" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28403" CreationDate="2015-07-11T06:38:56.593" Score="140" Body="&lt;p&gt;Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is believed to be an example of a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;nocebo&lt;/a&gt;. A nocebo is a reverse placebo - one's negative expectations cause harm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.lww.com/psychosomaticmedicine/Abstract/2005/03000/Electromagnetic_Hypersensitivity__A_Systematic.10.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;EMF exposure hasn't been able to cause symptoms in blind studies.&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;it has proved difficult to show under blind conditions that exposure to EMF can trigger these symptoms. This suggests that “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” is unrelated to the presence of EMF, although more research into this phenomenon is required.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2982.2007.01336.x&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Sufferers are unable to distinguish RF-emitting mobile phones from non-emitting sham cell phones&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The increase in pain or discomfort (visual analogue scales) in RF sessions was 10.1 and in sham sessions 12.6 (P = 0.30). Changes in heart rate or blood pressure were not related to the type of exposure (P: 0.30–0.88). The study gave no evidence that RF fields from mobile phones may cause head pain or discomfort or influence physiological variables. The most likely reason for the symptoms is a nocebo effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://doi.org/10.1109/EMBC.2012.6346396&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Or here either&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In this double-blind study, two volunteer groups of 17 EHS and 20 non-EHS subjects were investigated in regards to their perception of RF-EMFs with real and sham exposure sessions. Experiments were conducted using a WCDMA module inside a dummy phone with an average power of 24 dBm at 1950 MHz and a specific absorption rate of 1.57 W/kg using a dummy headphone for 32 min. In conclusion, there was no indication that EHS subjects perceive RF-EMFs better than non-EHS subjects.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://doi.org/10.1002/bem.20536&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Meta-analyses report the same&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an earlier systematic review, we reported data from 31 blind provocation studies which had exposed IEI-EMF volunteers to active or sham electromagnetic fields and assessed whether volunteers could detect these fields or whether they reported worse symptoms when exposed to them. In this article, we report an update to that review. An extensive literature search identified 15 new experiments. Including studies reported in our earlier review, 46 blind or double-blind provocation studies in all, involving 1175 IEI-EMF volunteers, have tested whether exposure to electromagnetic fields is responsible for triggering symptoms in IEI-EMF. No robust evidence could be found to support this theory. However, the studies included in the review did support the role of the nocebo effect in triggering acute symptoms in IEI-EMF sufferers. Despite the conviction of IEI-EMF sufferers that their symptoms are triggered by exposure to electromagnetic fields, repeated experiments have been unable to replicate this phenomenon under controlled conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.who.int/peh-emf/publications/facts/fs296/en/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;This is what the World Health Organization has to say about it&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The majority of studies indicate that EHS individuals cannot detect EMF exposure any more accurately than non-EHS individuals. Well controlled and conducted double-blind studies have shown that symptoms were not correlated with EMF exposure.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has been suggested that symptoms experienced by some EHS individuals might arise from environmental factors unrelated to EMF. Examples may include “flicker” from fluorescent lights, glare and other visual problems with VDUs, and poor ergonomic design of computer workstations. Other factors that may play a role include poor indoor air quality or stress in the workplace or living environment.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also some indications that these symptoms may be due to pre-existing psychiatric conditions as well as stress reactions as a result of worrying about EMF health effects, rather than the EMF exposure itself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Some people are moving to Green Banks, WV because it is part of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.discovery.com/tech/gear-and-gadgets/no-cell-phones-allowed-americas-wireless-free-town.htm&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;U.S. Radio Quiet Zone&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://skepdic.com/nocebo.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;More info on nocebos&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://youtu.be/O2hO4_UEe-4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;An informative video on the subject&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I just want to point out - just because the symptoms are not caused by EMF exposure or any known environmental causes &lt;em&gt;doesn't mean they aren't real.&lt;/em&gt; People are experiencing real symptoms and real illness, it isn't &amp;quot;just in their head.&amp;quot; Psychogenic illness still need to be taken seriously and treated.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T03:30:14.390" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28406" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28407" CreationDate="2015-07-11T09:02:44.110" Score="7" ViewCount="3507" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw this quote &lt;a href=&quot;https://russophilia.wordpress.com/2013/09/12/hope-for-russia-america-relations/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any evidence, which confirms or refutes that she actually said and meant (it wasn't a translation error, she didn't later dismiss the statement) it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user18829" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T01:58:54.310" Title="Did Madeleine Albright say that &quot;Siberia held too many resources for Russia alone&quot;?" Tags="|united-states|quotes|russia|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28407" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28406" CreationDate="2015-07-11T09:11:46.503" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;I have read a lot about this. The answer is &lt;strong&gt;no&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.rg.ru/2006/12/22/gosbezopasnostj-podsoznanie.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Here's&lt;/a&gt; the source of this quote. Ratnikov, retired Major-General of the reserves of Russia's Federal Security Service, says that he &amp;quot;scanned&amp;quot; Albright's mind and found there this. He also found in her mind that she hates Russians and other Slavs.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original quote from the interview:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;За пару недель до начала бомбардировок Югославии авиацией США мы провели сеанс подключения к подсознанию госсекретаря Олбрайт. Подробно пересказывать ее мысли не стану. Отмечу лишь наиболее характерные моменты, подтвердившиеся уже после начала агрессии НАТО в Сербии.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Во-первых, в мыслях мадам Олбрайт мы обнаружили патологическую ненависть к славянам. Еще ее возмущало то, что Россия обладает самыми большими в мире запасами полезных ископаемых. По ее мнению, в будущем российскими запасами должна распоряжаться не одна страна, а все человечество под присмотром, конечно же, США. И войну в Косове она рассматривала лишь как первый шаг к установлению контроля над Россией.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It's only your decision to believe him or not. I don't.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27004" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T01:58:54.310" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28408" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28373" CreationDate="2015-07-11T10:01:12.927" Score="12" Body="&lt;p&gt;This is a Soviet truck, ZiL-131:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/ZiL_131_with_koffer.JPG/640px-ZiL_131_with_koffer.JPG&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/BViUY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;which is very unlikely to be used in Palestine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So the claim it is from Palestine is wrong. The bouth Russian and Ukrainian media claimed the truck to be Ukrainian, but attribute the strike differently, &lt;a href=&quot;http://gordonua.com/news/war/Rossiyskaya-raketa-probila-ukrainskuyu-shtabnuyu-mashinu-i-ne-vzorvalas-41075.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ukrainian sources say&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://censor.net.ua/photo_news/302300/chudesnoe_spasenie_220millimetrovaya_raketa_rossiyiskogo_uragana_probila_ukrainskuyu_shtabnuyu_mashinu&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;it was hit by a Russian missle&lt;/a&gt;, while some Russian sources say it was mistakenly hit by the Ukrainians themselves. The incident &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/destruction-in-east-ukraine?articleId=USRTR46YOB&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;had been reported by other agencies, such as Reuters&lt;/a&gt; as well (with a photo by Reuters own correspondent David Mdzinarishvili included). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The incident happened near Dmitrovka at the base of the 12th batallion of territorial defense 12 September 2014.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At least in Russia and Ukraine the incident had been widely reported, but the alleged screenshots from the media outlets seem to be faked as thorough explained in the other answer, possibly with satirical purposes to expose the propaganda techniques in modern media. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/tZnKC.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/I3AVe.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="6248" LastEditorUserId="6248" LastEditDate="2015-07-11T13:00:59.887" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T13:00:59.887" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28409" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23560" CreationDate="2015-07-11T10:28:25.210" Score="4" Body="&lt;p&gt;Per a exploratory meta-analysis of observational studies in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21667398?dopt=Abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2011&lt;/a&gt; by Zheng J et.al., no association was found between consumption of black tea and risk of prostate cancer. The results of the study were,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;For black tea, no statistically significant association was observed for the highest vs. non/lowest black tea consumption.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However per another study by Julia A Montague et.al. in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3695613/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2012&lt;/a&gt;, 'black tea intake may increase prostate cancer risk'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We report a positive association between black tea intake and prostate cancer risk among a prospective cohort of Chinese men in Singapore. Although our findings support an adverse effect of black tea intake on prostate cancer risk, there is no evident biologic mechanism that can explain the association. Our results need to be confirmed in additional, large prospective studies, and through laboratory data on the biologic plausibility of our finding that black tea is a risk factor for prostate cancer, prior to translating these results into primary prevention strategies.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Regarding prostate cancer and dietary supplements, the National Cancer Institute &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/cam/hp/prostate-supplements-pdq&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;states&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 2011 meta-analysis examined the consumption of green and black tea and prostate cancer risk. For black tea, no association was found between black tea consumption and prostate cancer risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25545744&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2015&lt;/a&gt; randomized clinical trial of brewed green and black tea in men with prostate cancer prior to prostatectomy to determine the effect of green tea and black tea consumption on biomarkers related to prostate cancer development and progression by Henning SM, the results and conclusions were&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;RESULTS:&lt;/strong&gt; Evidence of a systemic antioxidant effect was observed (reduced urinary 8OHdG) only with GT consumption (P = 0.03). GT, but not BT or water, also led to a small but statistically significant decrease in serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels (P = 0.04).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;CONCLUSION:&lt;/strong&gt; Given the GT-induced changes in NFκB and systemic oxidation, and uptake of GT polyphenols in prostate tissue, future longer-term studies are warranted to further examine the role of GT for prostate cancer prevention and treatment, and possibly for other prostate conditions such as prostatitis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T10:28:25.210" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28410" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28411" CreationDate="2015-07-11T12:17:20.037" Score="3" ViewCount="984" Body="&lt;p&gt;From Twitter:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/KiCsw.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Cooking Your Dog&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cooking [sticker] Your Dog&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasty, healthy and safe recipes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is the photo in question digitally faked?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The main doubt I have is whether the book, which can easily be modified to have such a rogue title, exists. I'm not skeptical that, given such a book, a bored employee may choose to place a sticker over the word after &amp;quot;Cooking&amp;quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T12:17:20.037" Title="Is this &quot;Cooking Your Dog&quot; book photo digitally faked?" Tags="|photography|books|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28411" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28410" CreationDate="2015-07-11T12:17:20.037" Score="7" Body="&lt;p&gt;Yes, the book is real.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;From &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B005K6QFF8&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Amazon.com&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/jw2ec.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Original&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cooking &lt;strong&gt;For&lt;/strong&gt; Your Dog&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Tasty, healthy and safe recipes&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In addition, there's another photo (&lt;a href=&quot;http://learningfromdogs.com/2011/10/01/cooking-your-dog/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;example link&lt;/a&gt;) of the book with a sticker on it, seemingly with a different background:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/hLryk.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-11T12:17:20.037" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28412" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28443" CreationDate="2015-07-11T14:15:05.503" Score="4" ViewCount="7046" Body="&lt;p&gt;My cousin says he read in a &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0439050138&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;The Journal of Scott Pendleton Collins: A World War 2 Soldier&lt;/a&gt; that the Nazi soldiers cut off their own eyelids. The reason was allegedly to improve their ability to see. Unfortunately I don't have access to the book to get the exact quote, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.chacha.com/question/did-the-germans-cut-off-the-eyelids-of-their-guards-or-troops-occasionally-so-they-would-not-fall-asleep-while-on-duty&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a ChaCha question&lt;/a&gt; refers to this as well.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This sounds really far fetched, but I am struggling with the &quot;but it was in a book so it must be true&quot; syndrome.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="17781" LastEditorDisplayName="user22865" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T13:34:27.793" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T20:01:15.010" Title="Did Nazi soldiers cut off their own eyelids?" Tags="|history|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28415" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-11T17:00:40.557" Score="5" ViewCount="566" Body="&lt;p&gt;There have been some reports in India that the legendary lost city of Dwarka has been found underwater:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Unacknowledged.info (2014): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unacknowledged.info/dwarka-mythical-city-found-water/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Dwarka. Mythical City Found Under Water?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The explorations conducted in the Gulf of Cambay waters revealed sandstone walls, a grid of streets and some evidence of a sea port 70 feet under water. The ruins have been proclaimed the remains of the legendary lost city of Dwarka which, according to ancient Hindu texts, was the dwelling place of the deity known as Krishna.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;YouTube (2008): &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KkDMBhrAD4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Mysteries of Modern Asia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has anything been found underwater? Is it Dwarka?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="7695" LastEditorUserId="96" LastEditDate="2016-08-03T15:48:50.793" LastActivityDate="2016-08-03T15:48:50.793" Title="Has the legendary city of Dwarka been found under water?" Tags="|india|architecture|mythology|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28416" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28106" CreationDate="2015-07-11T17:12:22.290" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;There's good evidence for it.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v106/n3/full/bjc2011585a.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Red and processed meat consumption and risk of pancreatic cancer: meta-analysis of prospective studies&quot;&lt;/a&gt; went over several related studies, including several focusing on nitrites. &lt;a href=&quot;http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/159/7/693&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Pancreatic Cancer and Drinking Water and Dietary Sources of Nitrate and Nitrite&quot;&lt;/a&gt; states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Increasing intake of dietary nitrite from animal sources was associated with an elevated risk of pancreatic cancer among men and women (highest quartile odds ratios = 2.3, 95% confidence interval: 1.1, 5.1, for men and 3.2, 95% confidence interval: 1.6, 6.4, for women).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/95/13/948.long&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Etiology of Pancreatic Cancer, With a Hypothesis Concerning the Role of N-Nitroso Compounds and Excess Gastric Acidity&quot;&lt;/a&gt; also discussed this. &lt;a href=&quot;http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cncr.25463/abstract&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Meat and components of meat and the risk of bladder cancer in the NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study&quot;&lt;/a&gt; studied this and found&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;These findings provided modest support for an increased risk of bladder cancer with total dietary nitrite and nitrate plus nitrite from processed meat. Results also suggested a positive association between red meat and PhIP and bladder carcinogenesis.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A very good overview is given &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thepoultrysite.com/processing/articles/1482/risks-and-benefits-of-sodium-nitrite-in-processed-meats/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;. It states&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A critical report in the long-lasting nitrite debate was a 1970 paper by Lijinsky and Epstein (1970) titled “Nitrosamines as Environmental Carcinogens” published in Nature, which showed that nitrosamines were potent and specific carcinogenic compounds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Nitrosamines are not the same thing as nitrites. &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrosamine&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;However&lt;/a&gt;,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In foods, nitrosamines are produced from nitrites and secondary amines, which often occur in the form of proteins. Their formation can occur only under certain conditions, including strongly acidic conditions such as that of the human stomach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://carcin.oxfordjournals.org/content/5/11/1381.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;&quot;Relevance of nitrosamines to human cancer&quot;&lt;/a&gt; is interesting, especially as it says,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Direct proof that such nitrosation reactions can occur was provided by Ender et al. (3) who identified NDMA in nitrite preserved fish-meal, and by Sander and Seif (4) who demonstrated the formation in vivo of a nitrosamine in the acidic conditions of the human stomach.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;NDMA&quot;, by the way, is N-nitrosodimethylamine.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;hr&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Are these warnings against eating anything with e250 scientifically justified, or is it all baloney (nudge nudge)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;No, it's not all baloney. There is serious evidence the nitrites can cause cancer. However, as &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.thepoultrysite.com/processing/articles/1482/risks-and-benefits-of-sodium-nitrite-in-processed-meats/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;a source I used before&lt;/a&gt; mentioned, studies have also shown that there are some benefits to nitrites. Admittedly, those don't nullify the cancer risk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If so, why is it that it is banned for use in processing fish, but not meats?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have no idea. Also, as an interesting aside, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/21/172.175&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;it's okay for fish in the United States&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22247" LastEditorUserId="22247" LastEditDate="2015-07-12T13:02:29.757" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T13:02:29.757" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28420" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="7614" CreationDate="2015-07-12T06:02:20.803" Score="25" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/11/17/framed-at-the-airport-queens-man-gets-shock-of-his-life-at-jfk/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Roger Levans&lt;/a&gt; of Queens, NY was arrested when two bricks of cocaine were found in his bag on a return trip from Guyana.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Levans said he was strip searched, and jailed until his family could put up $100,000 bail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Three months later, the feds dismissed the charges.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“It was determined the luggage was broken into and drugs planted by a third party into his suitcase,” said Michael Borrelli, Levans’ attorney.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://nypost.com/2011/11/17/yankee-guards-ordeal/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Another news source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;He filed a lawsuit as well &lt;a href=&quot;https://casetext.com/case/levans-v-delta-airlines&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Levans v. Delta Airlines&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5186" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T06:17:52.603" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28422" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-12T08:29:33.097" Score="22" ViewCount="15717" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to this &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scmp.com/article/169389/man-sues-himself-and-wins&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; and this &lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/+LarsFosdal/posts/bBmU5ZihJiV&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;post&lt;/a&gt; a man hit himself with a boomerang and then proceeded to sue himself.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A Kentucky man who threw a boomerang that flew back and hit him on the head has sued himself for US$300,000 (HK$2.32 million) - and won.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And astonishingly, it will not cost him a cent because all the money he won comes from his insurance company.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true, or has there ever been a case where somebody has successfully sued themselves, won, and gotten their insurance company to pay for it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22810" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-04-01T23:22:47.323" Title="Did a man sue himself and win?" Tags="|law|lawsuits|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28424" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28438" CreationDate="2015-07-12T16:48:25.703" Score="1" ViewCount="314" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_%28signal_processing%29#Sampling_rate&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Wikipedia article&lt;/a&gt; about sampling rates a simple CD uses a sampling rate of 44,100 Hz. Is there a notable difference (with ordinary speakers) to the sound quality if I have a bigger sampling rate? This would in mean that the quality of internet streaming can be better than CD quality in certain cases? If yes, what are the charateristics of the differences?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27063" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T07:38:30.683" Title="Does different sampling rate make a difference human can hear?" Tags="|sound|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-07-13T08:02:54.980" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28427" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="23508" CreationDate="2015-07-12T18:20:54.457" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Per a &lt;a href=&quot;http://senseaboutscience.org/activities/debunking-detox/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; by Voice for Young Science for evidence behind the claims made about detox products and diets regarding 15 products that were sold in a range of mainstream supermarkets and pharmacies including foot pads, diet supplements and hair straighteners, the conclusion was &quot;‘detox’, as used in product marketing, is a myth and worryingly many of the claims about how the body works were wrong and in some cases the suggested remedies were potentially dangerous&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;They also found,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;No two companies seem to use the same definition of ‘detox’.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Little, and in most cases no, evidence was offered to back up the detox claims.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;In the majority of cases, producers and retailers contacted by the young scientists were forced to admit that they are renaming mundane things, like cleaning or brushing, as ‘detox’.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Voice of Young Science team also compiled a detox dossier and a ‘anti detox’ leaflet which can be accessed &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.senseaboutscience.org/data/files/resources/48/Detox-Dossier-Embargoed-until-0001-5th-jan-2009.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;s&gt;here&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.senseaboutscience.org/data/files/resources/49/Detox-leaflet-Final-Embargoed-until-050109remargin.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/s&gt; (link now goes to page not found error) in response to misleading claims about 'detox'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="21196" LastEditDate="2017-05-23T21:32:53.873" LastActivityDate="2017-05-23T21:32:53.873" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28428" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-12T20:59:48.910" Score="4" ViewCount="984" Body="&lt;p&gt;This &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7VSTYrmuvo&quot;&gt;YouTube video&lt;/a&gt; is one of several showing that, if you open a Samsung mobile phone battery, it contains a &quot;secret chip&quot; and antenna, and suggests it can be used for transmitting your secret data to Samsung.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this true?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27069" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T02:15:03.877" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T16:40:35.300" Title="Do Samsung phone batteries contain secret chips and antennae for stealing data?" Tags="|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28429" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-07-12T22:19:01.300" Score="0" Body="" OwnerUserId="-1" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2015-07-12T22:19:01.300" LastActivityDate="2015-07-12T22:19:01.300" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28430" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-07-12T22:19:01.300" Score="0" Body="For questions about the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormonism" OwnerUserId="21255" LastEditorUserId="21255" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T03:30:21.417" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T03:30:21.417" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28432" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-13T00:34:46.477" Score="27" ViewCount="2050" Body="&lt;p&gt;Does the TSA fail at a rate of 95% at detecting (fake, &quot;test&quot;) terrorists in breach tests, as reported in &lt;a href=&quot;https://abcnews.go.com/ABCNews/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-find-widespread-security-failures/story?id=31434881&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this news story&lt;/a&gt;? The best information that I have about this is a news report. Is there any official source confirming it?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14975" LastEditorUserId="18008" LastEditDate="2018-08-08T23:42:32.053" LastActivityDate="2018-08-08T23:42:32.053" Title="Does the TSA have a fail rate of 95% in breach tests?" Tags="|united-states|safety|aviation|terrorism|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28433" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28432" CreationDate="2015-07-13T00:46:46.670" Score="30" Body="&lt;p&gt;Apparently yes.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There was extensive news coverage of this, which eventually points back to &lt;a href=&quot;http://abcnews.go.com/ABCNews/exclusive-undercover-dhs-tests-find-widespread-security-failures/story?id=31434881&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this&lt;/a&gt; ABC News report from June 1st, 2015. The report references an internal government report, which is not published on the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.oig.dhs.gov/index.php?option=com_content&amp;amp;view=article&amp;amp;id=22&amp;amp;Itemid=46&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;TSA's website&lt;/a&gt; with other public or partially redacted reports, at least at this time.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The news story states &amp;quot;undercover investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives or banned weapons through checkpoints in 95 percent of trials&amp;quot;. Reading a bit further, we find that the investigators conducted 70 trials, and were only detected in 3 of them, which is a failure rate a little higher than 95%.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In an updated version of the original question, the news source was deemed to be insufficient. Since the raw TSA report is not available, I can only offer reports from other, different, news organizations, which quote other officials or sources. While I realize that newspapers are not always reliable sources, it seems that a broad spectrum of new organizations offer support for this claim. On the extreme right, the (usually unreliable and pro-TSA) Fox News Network &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/06/02/investigation-undercover-agents-snuck-fake-explosives-through-tsa-checkpoints/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;states&lt;/a&gt; (bold emphasis added by me):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The acting head of the Transportation Security Administration was reassigned late Monday after a watchdog report revealed undercover agents were able to sneak fake explosives and banned weapons through checkpoints&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Homeland Security officials confirmed to Fox News&lt;/strong&gt; earlier Monday that TSA screeners failed 67 out of 70 tests -- or 96 percent -- carried out by special Department of Homeland Security investigators known as &amp;quot;red teams,&amp;quot; as part of a DHS inspector general review.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This story does not refer back to the original ABC news report, but instead references (unnamed) sources within the government organization that manages the TSA.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A more reputable source, the Washington Times, cites statements from the DHS inspector general, about a week after the initial news story (it also indicates that the acting DHS secretary Melvin Carraway was ``reassigned'' during the period following the release of the report). It &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/9/tsa-red-teams-were-normal-auditors-inspector-gener/?page=all&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;states&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The investigators who exposed big holes in the nation’s airport screening weren’t specialized, highly trained “red teams,” but rather were normal auditors, the inspector general who led the probe said Tuesday, undercutting Homeland Security’s explanation for how 96 percent of contraband got through in a recent test.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The story also quotes Ben Sasse (a US Senator, who apparently read the report in question), stating:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Mr. Sasse, who has received a classified briefing on the situation, said Americans should be troubled by what they don’t know, and said Homeland Security officials were trying to spin the bad news rather than confront the serious problem they face.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The administration has an obligation to responsibly declassify the inspector general’s investigation and to publicly release everything else it knows about TSA’s failures,” Mr. Sasse said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Several commenters suggest that three independent news articles, citing different sources, should not be considered serious evidence in favour of this claim. Since the report is under wraps, I do not think it will be possible to do better than this. However, we can point at a long history of internal TSA audits with similar failure rates (after which, the TSA usually claims to have &amp;quot;updated procedures&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The strongest official document I was able to find was a public, government accountability office &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gao.gov/assets/120/118618.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;report&lt;/a&gt; from 2007. In it, GAO auditors are described as successfully passing through the TSA's security with the components of a liquid IED at 19 airports (though not randomly sampled airports), without incident. This occurred &lt;strong&gt;after&lt;/strong&gt; the creation of screening rules regarding liquids and gels. The agents successfully caught a bottle of shampoo one of the auditors was carrying, but allowed the components of the IED to pass by.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are also a host of older news stories, though many more seem to have been lost to link rot.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2003/10/16/logan_screeners_fail_weapons_tests/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;article&lt;/a&gt; from the Boston Globe in 2003. A federal official went on record confirming &amp;quot;certain &amp;quot;prohibited items&amp;quot; were carried past the federal screeners hired to improve airport security after Sept. 11, 2001&amp;quot;. Anonymous TSA sources are then quoted as saying that auditors &amp;quot;brought knives, a bomb, and a gun in carry-on baggage through several checkpoints at different terminals without being stopped.&amp;quot; The details go on explain that, for example, although the knife set off alarms, the security agents believed it to be the man's zipper, and allowed him through. In another incident, &amp;quot;one of the screeners who failed to find a gun in a bag was a supervisor, the source said.&amp;quot;. The failure rate of the TSA in these tests is not given, but this article offers insights into the sorts of mistakes TSA agents are making. It establishes the plausibility of the 95% claim, at least as far as I'm concerned.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2006/10/31/tsa-screeners-still-fail-to-find-guns-bombs/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt; from 2006, that quotes a Newark Star-Leger story, apparently lost due to link-rot. The TSA failed 20 of 22 tests performed by security auditors, though details of the tests are not given. That's a &amp;gt; 90% failure rate. Again, this should make a 95% failure rate in a recent test seem more plausible.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's a &lt;a href=&quot;http://archive.9news.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=67166&amp;amp;catid=222&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;news story&lt;/a&gt; from 2007, where TSA checkpoints are again breached in ~90% of tests ( &amp;quot;Sources told 9NEWS the Red Team was able to sneak about 90 percent of simulated weapons past checkpoint screeners in Denver&amp;quot;). Example breaches (according again, to unnamed sources) include one where &amp;quot;an agent taped an IED to her leg and told the screener it was a bandage from surgery. Even though alarms sounded on the walk-through metal detector, the agent was able to bluff her way past the screener.&amp;quot; &lt;strong&gt;The former leader of the internal audit team and current TSA inspector, Bogdan Dzakovic, even goes on record in the article&lt;/strong&gt;, saying &amp;quot;It literally is all window dressing that we're doing. It's big theater on TV and when you go to the airport. It's just security theater.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Because this is a politically charged issue, I suspect we're never going to see gold-standard data on it. We'll have to rely on second hand sources and anonymous claims. However, the data we do have all seem to point one way: that the TSA failing 95% of breach tests is plausible. Granted, breach tests may not be representative of how actual attackers would perform. But if this question really is about the breach tests, and not about &lt;em&gt;actual&lt;/em&gt; attacks, I think the conclusion is clear.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18008" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2018-08-08T21:47:01.377" CommentCount="16" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 4.0" />
  <row Id="28434" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28428" CreationDate="2015-07-13T02:22:08.227" Score="11" Body="&lt;p&gt;This conspiracy theory has been widely debunked already. It is obviously false to anyone familiar with the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.samsunggeeks.com/2012/07/03/nfc-explained-nfc-for-smartphones/&quot;&gt;Near Field Communication (NFC) antenna, installed on Samsung Galaxy batteries&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some of the many sources that have quickly responded to these claims with explanations:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://m.snopes.com/samsung-microchip/&quot;&gt;Snopes&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;While there is a coil “hidden” in the wrapping surrounding most batteries included with Samsung phones, this is merely the NFC antenna and not a “secret microchip” used to steal data.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.androidcentral.com/psa-chip-your-battery-not-government-surveillance&quot;&gt;Android Central&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;So please, don't try to pull the sticker off of your Samsung battery. Don't let anyone you know try it either, the risk for accidentally puncturing your battery is just too high. That chip is not harvesting your data in any way,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/06/your-phones-nfc-chip-isnt-secretly-tracking-you/&quot;&gt;Gizmodo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Inside your smartphone, hidden underneath the sticky plastic wrapping of the battery, or glued to the removable rear cover, there’s a secret, ominous-looking wireless chip. It’s not controlled by the FBI or the government or the Illuminati, though, and it’s not tracking every search you make online — it’s just NFC.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.techworm.net/2015/06/samsung-smartphone-users-fall-for-fake-viral-video-and-end-up-destroying-their-nfc-chips.html&quot;&gt;Techworm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;If you are a Pakistani and have received the above said video through your friends on social media, dont believe in the silly stuff the two gentlemen in the video are preaching and thereby destroy your NFC chip.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://techaeris.com/2015/06/24/samsung-phones-not-secret-microchip-tracking/&quot;&gt;TechAeris&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No it is not some super secret chip put there by Samsung to track your every move and steal all your videos and photos. It’s an important part of the phone that you’re tearing out and is probably a really dumb idea to do that. So you can rest easy Internet, your Samsung phones are not being controlled by Samsung and your data is just fine. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/06/24/no-growing-conspiracy-on-facebook-claims-nfc-stickers-on-smartphone-batteries-are-government-surveillance-devices/&quot;&gt;Android Police&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Basically, there's a video of some guy claiming the Samsung NFC sticker wrapped around his Galaxy S4's battery is a government or corporate surveillance device placed there to steal all your photos and monitor all your phone calls. It is completely, utterly false and also surprisingly bigoted (!), so please note that this video is probably best tagged NSFW for language / anti-Semitism.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/06/25/rumor-check-the-latest-conspiracy-theory-about-spying-on-your-cellphone/&quot;&gt;The Blaze&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The man peeled off this sticker on his phone’s battery claiming it is helping the company collect data on his his photos. What the sticker really holds is NFC technology, which allows users to do a variety of cool things, like mobile payments for example.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://ktla.com/2015/06/25/no-your-samsung-battery-is-not-spying-on-you-heres-proof/&quot;&gt;KTLA&lt;/a&gt; - Mississipi&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, what he is saying isn’t rooted in any fact. The piece inside is an NFC antenna, which powers Near Field Communication features. If you’ve ever used your phone to tap to pay at a cash register or put your phone back to back to another phone to exchange a file or picture, you’ve used it.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T16:40:35.300" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T16:40:35.300" CommentCount="10" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28435" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28403" CreationDate="2015-07-13T03:30:17.593" Score="-8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Great cancer risk in presence of GSM base stations (in German):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.frankenwaldmed.de/Mobilfunkstudie/Studie/umg%204_2004-Eger.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.frankenwaldmed.de/Mobilfunkstudie/Studie/umg%204_2004-Eger.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Austrian research confirms GSM base station health effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&amp;amp;db=pubmed&amp;amp;dopt=Abstract&amp;amp;list_uids=16621850&amp;amp;query_hl=1&amp;amp;itool=pubmed_docsum&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&amp;amp;db=pubmed&amp;amp;dopt=Abstract&amp;amp;list_uids=16621850&amp;amp;query_hl=1&amp;amp;itool=pubmed_docsum&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Non thermal effects:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/9/77&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/9/77&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Brain tumour risk from mobile phone use (WHO study):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/health/3208416/Mobile-phones-increase-risk-of-cancer-study-says.html#&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/health/3208416/Mobile-phones-increase-risk-of-cancer-study-says.html#&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;DNA damage from phone radiation:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psrast.org/mobileng/dnadamage.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.psrast.org/mobileng/dnadamage.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;ad nauseam&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The people who consider this to be a &quot;nocebo&quot; are not being balanced in their assessment. Look at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psrast.org/mobileng/mobilstarteng.htm&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.psrast.org/mobileng/mobilstarteng.htm&lt;/a&gt; website for non corporate funded studies. Neither the government, nor mobile phone companies, have any obvious interest in promoting this (billions in profits, tax revenue, better productivity etc.). Wifi is very similar to mobile phone radiation, except Wifi is much stronger. Some US universities have banned wifi because of its effects on concentration and attention span, and the EU recognises electromagnetic hypersensitivity as a disability. Here's Olle Johansson (neuroscientist at the Karolinska institute, which awards the nobel prize in medicine) talking about it: &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cczGVhd63pM&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cczGVhd63pM&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that major mobile phone manufacturers (e.g. Apple) have started warning customers in their liability statements, not to keep the phone next to them but at least a certain distance away from them.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So don't buy into the &quot;I believe the scientists durrr!!!&quot; argument because science, like everything else in life, is affected at least partially by interests and a majority of non-industry funded (i.e. independent) studies done on this subject have found effects from this kind of radiation, whereas a majority of industry funded studies have found no effect, sometimes through tricks and manipulations. E.g. The Interphone study, and then the BMJ study based upon it, excluded the tumour rate of business users, who have used mobile phones for longest and most extensively. Then they found, unsurprisingly, no link between &quot;heavy&quot; use, in their much shrunken sample set excluding heavy users, and health problems. Here's an article which mentions the difference between industry and independent studies: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/can-cell-phones-cause-brain-cancer/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/can-cell-phones-cause-brain-cancer/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As for whether people can detect wifi or not, why is that relevant? It seems totally irrelevant, except to dismiss the small minority of people who can genuinely detect these things (if indeed it is the case that they can). The purpose of this line of argument seems to be to pathologise those who have real concerns about electromagnetic radiation as crazies who can predict the future by reading tarot cards. People cannot easily distinguish if they have brain tumours, but they certainly have them! Even so, here's another study (double blind) finding a change in heart rate for people with and without the use of cordless phones (which use similar radio-waves): &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.powerwatch.org.uk/news/20101022-cordless-heart.asp&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.powerwatch.org.uk/news/20101022-cordless-heart.asp&lt;/a&gt; study is: 2010 M.Havas, et al: Microwave Radiation Affects Autonomic Nervous System, Eu J Oncology Library Vol.5&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As everything else in life, be truly skeptical and pursue things with moderation. I own, and use when necessary, an expensive and very capable smartphone, but I only make calls on it if I have to and put it in flight mode except when I need to use it. Circumstances might be different for other people but certain communications clients allow computer messaging (e.g. Viber or Whatsapp) and if your computer is connected to your router with a wire, you're getting around the need for wireless access. Perhaps Windows 10 mobile will integrate this into the default messaging service. It isn't easy to live a wired life but it is more secure and more safe, and the inconvenience is relatively minor. I know many people are tied into the Apple ecosystem, some platforms of which do not have wired internet access. Perhaps it is time to make a change, or buy the wired adapter.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Certainly the idea of the house running on wireless electricity with a gigantic wall power plate is ridiculous for this reason, but one doesn't have to give up technology to live safely - just use it carefully, and in moderation.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27076" LastEditorUserId="27076" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T04:08:30.240" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T04:08:30.240" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28437" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="16979" CreationDate="2015-07-13T06:46:52.163" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;Per study 'Social class, power, and selfishness: When and why upper and lower class individuals behave unethically' by David Dubois et.al. in &lt;a href=&quot;http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2015-03027-001/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2015&lt;/a&gt;, people of high and low social classes both can act unethically in different ways.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results of the study were,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;First, income, but not education level, predicted unethical behavior. Second, feelings of power mediated the effect of social class on unethical behavior, but feelings of status did not. Third, two distinct manipulations of power produced the same moderation by self-versus-other beneficiary as was found with social class. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The study found that the driving force behind unethical behavior was not social status but power. Research through the study has shown that the powerful tend to feel independent and focused on their own goals. Powerlessness, on the other hand, increases dependence on and generosity toward others. More details about the study are described &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/rich-and-poor-both-behave-badly&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T06:46:52.163" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28438" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28424" CreationDate="2015-07-13T07:38:30.683" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;The usual formulation of this question is &quot;Can a double-blind A/B/X test distinguish between 44,100 Hz audio and a higher sample rate?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The answer is a very clear &quot;no&quot;.  Probably the best demonstration is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=14195&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;this test by the Audio Engineering Society&lt;/a&gt; where participants were asked to distinguish a recording on &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Audio_CD&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Super Audio CD&lt;/a&gt; (effectively 100KHz) or &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Audio&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;DVD-A&lt;/a&gt; (192KHz) from that same recording passed through a 16-bit/44.1KHz ADA filter.  554 trials produced a success rate of 49.8%, no better than guessing at random which was which.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21297" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T07:38:30.683" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28439" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18998" CreationDate="2015-07-13T09:03:38.610" Score="9" Body="&lt;p&gt;There is association between cow's milk consumption and height gain in children per three studies listed below. &quot;Height gain in children may depend not only on the calcium in cow milk but also on some of its bioactive components&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Per a 2004 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/80/4/1088.2.full&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; 'Effect of cow milk consumption on longitudinal height gain in children' by Tomoo Okada, researchers observed a height gain in the children who consumed a high amount of cow milk.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Per a 2009 &lt;a href=&quot;http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/18/6/1881.full&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; 'Dairy Consumption and Female Height Growth: Prospective Cohort Study' by Catherine S. Berkey et.al., researchers concluded that off the foods/nutrients studied, dairy protein had the strongest association with height growth. &quot;These findings suggest that a factor in the nonlipid phase of milk, but not protein itself, has growth-promoting action in girls.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Per a 2015 &lt;a href=&quot;http://adc.bmj.com/content/100/5/460.abstract&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; 'Milk intake, height and body mass index in preschool children' by Mark D DeBoer et.al., researchers concluded that &quot;in a cohort of children at age 4 years, the volume of milk consumed was associated with higher weight status and taller stature, while at 5 years, higher milk consumption continued to be associated with taller stature.&quot; This study supported current American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations that pre-school children should consume two milk servings daily.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However caution should be exercised since some studies such as 'Childhood Growth and Breast Cancer' in &lt;a href=&quot;http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/159/7/671.abstract?ijkey=7edb4ffdfa3870939859026ccc9d8f7ee814e7b2&amp;amp;keytype2=tf_ipsecsha&quot;&gt;2003&lt;/a&gt; and 'Growth Patterns and the Risk of Breast Cancer in Women' in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa040576&quot;&gt;2004&lt;/a&gt; suggest that more rapid childhood height growth may be a factor in the development of cancer, especially breast cancer in women since dietary factors may promote more rapid prepubertal height growth, which may be a critical period for the development of breast cancer or other adult diseases.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-07-14T09:57:15.477" LastActivityDate="2015-07-14T09:57:15.477" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28443" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28412" CreationDate="2015-07-13T20:18:25.507" Score="10" Body="&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I don't have access to the book to get the exact quote&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=u4kcaKoK0VQC&amp;amp;lpg=PT11&amp;amp;ots=TJEKzIvxyK&amp;amp;dq=%22The%20Journal%20of%20Scott%20Pendleton%20Collins%22%20eyelids&amp;amp;pg=PT11#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22The%20Journal%20of%20Scott%20Pendleton%20Collins%22%20eyelids&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Google Books is your friend:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zwipY.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Extract from book&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Is there anything to this?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Your cousin got the anecdote slightly wrong. Collins did not report that the soldiers were Nazis (a technicality perhaps) nor that they cut off their &lt;em&gt;own&lt;/em&gt; eyelids.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Collins didn't actually claim to have seen this himself. In this extract, he doesn't explain what evidence for motivation was found by the two guys (or perhaps the men from the 101st and/or 82nd who told the two guys) nor does he explain how they distinguished other causes of the injury from the cause they suggest.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I can't find any other sources that mention German soldiers being deliberately mutilated in this way.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There is the history of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1994/02/23/obituaries/gen-johannes-steinhoff-80-dies-helped-rebuild-german-air-force.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Johannes Steinhoff&lt;/a&gt; a German pilot who was burned in a crash and had to have his eyelids reconstructed after the war. It is difficult to see how this could be the origin of Collins' anecdote.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The idea of cutting eyelids off as a &lt;em&gt;punishment&lt;/em&gt; (not as a means of preventing sleep) goes back a long way (e.g. Roman stories of the torture of Regulus in Carthage).&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;hr /&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A possible origin for stories of this sort could be reports about the effects of severe cold on German soldiers at the russian front:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The Italian journalist Curzio Malaparte recalled in his novel Kaputt how he had watched the German troops returning from the Eastern Front, and was in the Europeiski Café in Warsaw when &amp;quot;suddenly I was struck with horror and realised that they had no eyelids. I had already seen soldiers with lidless eyes, on the platform of the Minsk station a few days previously on my way from Smolensk.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;The ghastly cold of that winter had the strangest consequences. Thousands and thousands of soldiers had lost their limbs; thousands and thousands had their ears, their noses, their fingers and their sexual organs ripped off by the frost. Many had lost their hair… Many had lost their eyelids. Singed by the cold, the eyelid drops off like a piece of dead skin… Their future was only lunacy.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;- &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/britain-at-war/5907564/Second-World-War-Frozen-to-death-by-the-Fuhrer.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Andrew Roberts, Daily Telegraph, 25 July 2009&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="8755" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-11-09T20:01:15.010" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28444" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-13T20:26:23.653" Score="4" ViewCount="1209" Body="&lt;p&gt;It's often noted that fruit pits, the hardened seeds inside peaches, cherries, and plums, contain amygdalin, which breaks down into cyanide in the body. It is also often noted that apple seeds and some others also have amygdalin, though admittedly less than pits.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Cyanide, of course, is very toxic. It doesn't take much to kill you. However, from what I can find, it would take quite a few seeds or pits to get enough amygdalin to poison anybody, yet, I've read claims that people have indeed died from cyanide poisoning originating from amygdalin found naturally in these seeds.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;No one has survived eating more than 38 [apricot pits].&lt;br&gt;&#xA;  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nytimes.com/1993/02/16/science/q-a-133693.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The quote implies that some people have indeed died from eating apricot pits. Is this true? What were the circumstances (e.g. did they eat a bunch intentionally)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user11643" LastEditorUserId="17804" LastEditDate="2015-07-13T22:10:43.897" LastActivityDate="2015-07-13T22:10:43.897" Title="Has anyone died from eating fruit pits that contain amygdalin (cyanide)?" Tags="|nutrition|mortality|toxicology|fruit|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ClosedDate="2015-07-13T22:18:20.737" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28446" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28447" CreationDate="2015-07-14T18:20:24.900" Score="25" ViewCount="2077" Body="&lt;p&gt;A story has shown up on my news feed claiming &amp;quot;breaking news&amp;quot; that Planned Parenthood harvests organs from late-term abortions.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.secularprolife.org/2015/07/breaking-planned-parenthood-uses.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;link to blog&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This is probably the most gut-wrenching story I have ever had to report on in my eight years of pro-life advocacy. It is not for anyone with a weak stomach. If you choose not to read any further, know that it is worse than you think.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A three-year undercover investigation by the Center for Medical Progress reveals that Planned Parenthood is selling organs from late-term babies to medical researchers. And to get the best &amp;quot;product&amp;quot; possible, Planned Parenthood abortionists are putting targeted unborn children in a breech position—the hallmark of the illegal partial-birth abortion method.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Back when partial-birth abortion was front and center in the right-to-life debate, abortion advocates swore that the method could in some cases be the safest for women. But it's not women's needs that are dictating the method; it's medical research companies' needs. These organs are pre-ordered, and it is not until later that Planned Parenthood sells the abortions and kills the children for their parts.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;A google search reveals other sites claiming the same, but all of them seem pro-life biased. The original source is unclear to me; the blog above claims a study by the &amp;quot;center for medical progress&amp;quot;, which google reveals is run by a conservative think-tank, the Manhattan Institute.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, does planned parenthood harvest the organs of fetuses? Is this only done for those who request that the organs be donated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="anon" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T14:09:34.907" Title="Does Planned Parenthood sell the organs of late-term fetuses?" Tags="|united-states|abortion|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28447" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28446" CreationDate="2015-07-14T19:01:34.523" Score="16" Body="&lt;p&gt;The OP asks 3 questions, 2 in the body plus the title question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;does planned parenthood harvest the organs of fetuses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Yes.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Deborah Nucatola, MD, Senior Director of Medical Services, Planned&#xA;Parenthood Federation of America (all quotes taken from &lt;a href=&quot;https://cbsla.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/ppfatranscript072514_final.pdf&quot;&gt;the following transcript&lt;/a&gt;):&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;we’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we&#xA;  know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m going to basically crush&#xA;  below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.&#xA;  And with the calvarium, in general, some people will actually try to change&#xA;  the presentation so that it’s not vertex, because when it’s vertex&#xA;  presentation, you never have enough dilation at the beginning of the case,&#xA;  unless you have real, huge amount of dilation to deliver an intact&#xA;  calvarium. So if you do it starting from the breech presentation, there’s&#xA;  dilation that happens as the case goes on, and often, the last, you can&#xA;  evacuate an intact calvarium at the end.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The second question is:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Is this only done for those who request that the organs be donated?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This question doesn't correspond to any claim in the OP, so I'm not answering it.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And finally:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Does Planned Parenthood sell the organs of late-term fetuses?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Deborah Nucatola explains that the goal is not for Planned Parenthood clinics to make a profit by selling the organs.  They do charge money for the organs, in the range of $30-100 per specimen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;They just want to do it in a way that is not perceived as, ‘This clinic is&#xA;  selling tissue, this clinic is making money off of this.’ I know in the Planned&#xA;  Parenthood world they’re very very sensitive to that. And before an affiliate&#xA;  is gonna do that, they need to, obviously, they’re not—some might do it for&#xA;  free—but they want to come to a number that doesn’t look like they’re&#xA;  making money. They want to come to a number that looks like it is a&#xA;  reasonable number for the effort that is allotted on their part....You know, I would throw a number out, I would say it’s probably&#xA;  anywhere from $30 to $100, depending on the facility and&#xA;  what’s involved. It just has to do with space issues, are you sending&#xA;  someone there who’s going to be doing everything, is there shipping&#xA;  involved, is somebody gonna have to take it out. You know, I think&#xA;  everybody just wants, it’s really just about if anyone were ever to ask them,&#xA;  “What do you do for this $60? How can you justify that? Or are you&#xA;  basically just doing something completely egregious, that you should be&#xA;  doing for free.” So it just needs to be justifiable. And, look, we have 67&#xA;  affiliates. They all have different practice environments, different staff, and&#xA;  so that number...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;and&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;affiliates are looking to benefit in very different ways than just dollars and cents. I&#xA;  mean I get, they’re not going to do it in a way that costs them money. They want&#xA;  to break even, they want to be compensated reasonably for the time and space,&#xA;  whatever impact it has.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She does state at one point &quot;this is not something you should be making an exorbitant amount of money on&quot;, which makes it sound like some profit is ok.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;She does also state:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;...they want to break even. And &lt;strong&gt;if they can do a little better&#xA;  than break even, and do so in a way that seems reasonable, they’re happy&#xA;  to do that&lt;/strong&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, summarizing, she is mainly saying that the Planned Parenthood clinics don't want to appear to be profiting from selling the organs, but that some are happy to do a little better than break even on the selling of organs.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-07-17T12:05:35.637" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T12:05:35.637" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28450" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-15T01:49:19.473" Score="9" ViewCount="10680" Body="&lt;p&gt;The YouTube video &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef66Uzngy9U&quot;&gt;Anonymous: Code Red&lt;/a&gt; contains conspiracy theories about how the Obama Government is planning a holocaust of its own citizens. It purports to be from the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_(group)&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;Anonymous&lt;/em&gt; group&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One of the many claims is that Americans have been divided into three groups (Compliance, Re-Education, and Dead groups), and they have used stickers on the mailboxes. They will take the Dead group and have them executed at camps scattered across the Nation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has the US Government used stickers to categorise their citizens?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26393" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-15T02:04:18.127" LastActivityDate="2016-03-24T12:45:44.860" Title="Has the US Government tagged people to be killed with stickers on the mailboxes?" Tags="|united-states|government|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28452" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="8736" CreationDate="2015-07-15T06:10:18.040" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Per Michael Corballis&lt;/strong&gt;, professor of cognitive neuroscience and psychology at the University of Auckland in a Scientific American 2013 article, &quot;&lt;strong&gt;teaching people to become ambidextrous does not appear to improve brain function&lt;/strong&gt;. It is possible to train your nondominant hand to become more proficient. A cooperative brain seems to work better than one in which the two sides &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-training-to-become-ambidextrous-improve-brain-function/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;compete&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Disadvantage due to natural ambidexterity in children&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidence per studies listed below suggests that being ambidextrous from birth may associate with developmental problems.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17964615/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; by Corballis MC et.al. in 2008 of 11-year-olds in England, the results showed that &lt;strong&gt;those who are naturally ambidextrous are slightly more prone to academic difficulties than either left- or right-handers.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Evidence from a large-scale study of 11-year olds in Britain suggests that ambidextrous individuals may be disadvantaged in tests of verbal, nonverbal, reading, and mathematical skills relative to right- and left-handers, but this basic finding was not replicated in another study of younger boys in Germany. The data supports the earlier finding that ambidextrous individuals perform more poorly than left- or right-handers, especially on subscales measuring arithmetic, memory, and reasoning, and extend that finding to adults.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;2&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Per &lt;a href=&quot;http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/125/2/e340.full.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; by Alina Rodriguez et.al. published in the journal Pediatrics in 2010, &lt;strong&gt;children who are mixed-handed, or ambidextrous, are more likely to have mental health, language and scholastic problems in childhood than right- or left-handed children.&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The researchers concluded that “mixed-handed children have a greater likelihood of having language, scholastic and mental health problems in childhood”, and that “these persist into adolescence”. &quot;The researchers do not think that ambidexterity directly causes the language or behavioural problems seen. Instead, they think that differences in the brain that affect hand dominance could also affect both these traits. At this stage, due to the limitations of this study, its results should be seen as very preliminary, and will require confirmation by other &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nhs.uk/news/2010/01January/Pages/ambidextrous-link-to-ADHD-and-mental-health.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;studies&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Per &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831280/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; by David W. Johnston in 2009, the results showed that &lt;strong&gt;mixed-handed children perform significantly worse in nearly all measures of development than right-handed children, with the relative disadvantage being larger for boys than girls.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The most disadvantaged group was children with no hand preference (mixed-handers). The degree of disadvantage for mixed-handers was roughly double the disadvantage of left-handers relative to right-handers. These lower levels of performance corroborate the findings of recent large-scale studies of adults. The current results therefore support Crow et al.’s (1998) proposition that mixed-handedness and hemispheric indecision result in a suboptimal state in which cognitive abilities do not develop normally. Another possibility, however, is that children with mixed-handedness are developmentally delayed. Although hand preference may develop in the first year of life, the rate of development is variable (Michel et al. 2006). In summary, this research demonstrates a broad-based cognitive deficit in left- and mixed-handers relative to right-handers. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The human condition itself might be summed up as the balance between the brain's asymmetries and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.apa.org/monitor/2009/01/brain.aspx&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;symmetries&lt;/a&gt;. &quot;Effects are slight, but the risks of training to become ambidextrous may cause similar difficulties. &lt;strong&gt;The two hemispheres of the brain are not interchangeable.&lt;/strong&gt; The left hemisphere, for example, is typically responsible for language processing, whereas the right hemisphere often handles nonverbal activities. These asymmetries probably evolved to allow the two sides of the brain to specialize.&quot; Latest evidence shows that there is no general pattern between&#xA;relative hand-skill and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ucd.ie/geary/static/publications/workingpapers/gearywp200805.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;ability&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-07-16T09:28:30.790" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T09:28:30.790" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28453" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28455" CreationDate="2015-07-15T10:20:17.743" Score="4" ViewCount="2094" Body="&lt;p&gt;I was (probably foolishly) reading the side of a box of herbal tea-bags, and noticed that they recommended always using freshly boiled water, because &quot;Freshly boiled water contains more oxygen.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As I understand it, boiling water knocks a fair amount of the oxygen out, so I can't see that there would be much difference between freshly boiled and reboiled water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any validity to this claim?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27107" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-15T13:20:07.183" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T13:20:07.183" Title="Does freshly-boiled water contain more oxygen?" Tags="|chemistry|drink|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="7" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28455" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28453" CreationDate="2015-07-15T11:42:02.023" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;In considering the concentration of a dissolved gas (such as oxygen) in liquid (such as water) there are two separate concepts, the equilibrium concentration and the rate at which equilibrium is approached.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The solubility of gases is higher at low temperature and lower at high temperature.  However, there is still dissolved oxygen in water no matter how long you boil it in the presence of air (which contains oxygen).  &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nist.gov/data/PDFfiles/jpcrd219.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;See tables 2 and 3 of The Solubility of Oxygen and Ozone in Liquids&lt;/a&gt;.  In fact from room temperature (293K) to boiling temperature, equilibrium dissolved oxygen only decreases from 2.5 units to 1.4 units according to the tables.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;As reported in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18965910&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Removal of dissolved oxygen from water: A comparison of four common techniques&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;Talanta&lt;/em&gt; vol. 41 pages 211-215&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Boiling at 1 atm was found to be the least effective. None of the techniques evaluated here lead to complete removal of oxygen. The concentration of residual dissolved oxygen after purging for 20-40 minutes with nitrogen is 0.2-0.4 ppm.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This reference, beyond confirming that oxygen still remains after boiling, gives an idea of the timescale for the approach of equilibrium.  The faster you heat and use the water, the more oxygen will remain, but no matter how long you heat the water (in the presence of air) there will still be significant dissolved oxygen.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-07-15T12:53:24.510" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T12:53:24.510" CommentCount="11" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28457" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28106" CreationDate="2015-07-15T18:31:57.537" Score="-1" Body="&lt;p&gt;This seems to be a good summary of recent research. &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/csem.asp?csem=28&amp;amp;po=10&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/csem.asp?csem=28&amp;amp;po=10&lt;/a&gt; Most of the page seems to point to nitrates as being bad for you.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27111" LastActivityDate="2015-07-15T18:31:57.537" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28460" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-15T21:59:42.270" Score="6" ViewCount="273" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are several topical oils that promise to speed up the growth of beards.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's an example of the type of product I'm talking about: &lt;a href=&quot;https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/B00K3VKR6S&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Beard Growther on Amazon&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;About the Product&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;Grow Your Beard Super Fast&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;All Natural Oils&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Its reviews are a ton of 5 stars as well as some middling ones, and then a lot of 1 stars as well. The typical uncommon distribution at the tails of a controversial/polarizing/too good to be true product.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;However, it has so many 5 stars that I have trouble believing that they're all due to astroturfing, so I'm curious if it actually does work for some people.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there any truth to this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are some related questions, but they are not the same:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;ul&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22732/does-onion-juice-increase-hair-growth&quot;&gt;Does onion juice increase hair growth?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22647/does-heavy-exercising-increase-beard-growth&quot;&gt;Does heavy exercising increase beard growth?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/22675/does-eating-brewer-s-yeast-increase-hair-growth?rq=1&quot;&gt;Does eating brewer’s yeast increase hair growth?&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8057/do-biotin-supplements-increase-hair-growth-and-strength&quot;&gt;Do biotin supplements increase hair growth and strength?&lt;/a&gt; (This one seems like it could be close, but I don't know if there is biotin in the oil.)&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ul&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="18510" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T01:38:42.027" Title="Do beard growth oils increase beard growth speed?" Tags="|hair|medications|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28463" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28252" CreationDate="2015-07-16T11:48:01.620" Score="13" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.americanpregnancy.org/preventingpregnancy/pregnancyfaqmyths.html&quot;&gt;American Pregnancy&lt;/a&gt; it looks really improbable. Similar statements are made on the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www2.oakland.edu/biology/lindemann/faq.htm&quot;&gt;Oakland University website&lt;/a&gt;  and on &lt;a href=&quot;http://contraception.about.com/od/contraceptionmyths/p/watersexmyths.htm&quot;&gt;this website&lt;/a&gt; about contraception (which explicitly states it's impossible).&lt;br&gt;&#xA;The girls should have been swimming naked and the &quot;father&quot; should have ejaculated just outside her vagina as sperm would be killed in a few second in the pool's water and it would not be able to &quot;swim&quot; in a pool.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It is more likely she actually had sex and tried to hide it from her (really gullible) parents.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23278" LastEditorUserId="23278" LastEditDate="2015-09-18T08:47:29.780" LastActivityDate="2015-09-18T08:47:29.780" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28464" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="18518" CreationDate="2015-07-16T13:28:48.087" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;If milk induces sleep, it is not because of its effect on skin temperature (in the case of warm milk) or tryptohpan.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;consuming milk as such is unlikely to induce sleep, as the amount of tryptophan present in milk is too small. Milk coupled with a carbohydrate food at bedtime can be a potential sleep &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dairynutrition.ca/facts-fallacies/health-concerns/sleep-and-tryptophan&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;aid&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;having a glass of warm milk is unlikely to raise skin temperature enough to have any &lt;a href=&quot;http://scienceline.org/2006/10/ask-klein-milk/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;effect&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T10:51:16.207" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28466" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-16T13:57:45.520" Score="6" ViewCount="355" Body="&lt;p&gt;In Japan, it is apparently common to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB116595432100447996&quot;&gt;add oxygen to bottled water&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But this isn't standard H20. It's a new mix containing 12 to 15 times as much oxygen as regular water.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;It's totally different. It's delicious!&quot; says Ms. Nagisa, a 23-year-old fashion design student. &quot;And it will make my skin look good.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;The key to this success is consumers such as Yuki Kamioka, a 48-year-old supervisor at a Tokyo advertising agency. She finds oxygen water more refreshing than regular water -- especially when she's swimming laps. &quot;I try to drink it as much as I can,&quot; she says.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Later on in the article:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Koji Ishida, a health professor at Nagoya University in central Japan, studied the heart rate and endurance of a group of students who drank oxygen water while exercising. He found it had no effect.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;(...)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;But he says he won't buy one again. &quot;It just tasted like regular water to me.&quot; Then he drops some change into a vending machine -- and selects a bottle of iced tea.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Evidence seems thin.  The health research cited at Nagoya covers only hearth rate and endurance, which may not be the only potential effect.&#xA;Is there any independent evidence that there is &lt;em&gt;any&lt;/em&gt; beneficial effect to humans of any kind to drinks with extra oxygen added — apart from placebo effects and effects on corporate profits?  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="5337" LastEditorUserId="5337" LastEditDate="2015-07-16T14:41:43.320" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T14:41:43.320" Title="Is water with extra oxygen tastier, healthier, or otherwise desirable for humans?" Tags="|chemistry|public-health|drink|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28469" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="19615" CreationDate="2015-07-16T19:22:03.927" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;To add to the existing answers in the long (signal) electromagnetic and in the visible wavelenghts:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.molalla.com/members/leeper/refcoat.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this source&lt;/a&gt;, Al has a high reflectance in infrared wavelenghts (&gt;90% for near infrared radiation, &gt;95% for far infrared). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=913891&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;this paper&lt;/a&gt;, human skin has a reflectance around or below 10% in most of the near infrared spectrum and presumably no higher values in the far infrared. Even though I have some difficulties finding a good source, hair doesn't appear to be a perfect reflector either. In any case, the following must apply for hairless heads.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, in combination with sufficient water comsumption, good &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.osha.gov/Publications/osha3154.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;protection against a heat stroke&lt;/a&gt; should be achievable. The effect is probably much better if some air vents are cut in to get rid of the internal heat.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27080" LastActivityDate="2015-07-16T19:22:03.927" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28471" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="13945" CreationDate="2015-07-17T05:06:08.243" Score="5" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Brain capacity may be a limiting factor in human muscle function&lt;/strong&gt; per a study 'Maximal Voluntary Fingertip Force Production Is Not Limited by Movement Speed in Combined Motion and Force Tasks' by Valero-Cuevas et.al. which appears in July 8, 2009, Journal of Neuroscience. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Valero-Cuevas and his collaborators, his former students Kevin G. Keenan of the University of Wisconsin/Milwaukee, Veronica J. Santos of Arizona State University, and Madhusudhan Venkadesan of Harvard University interpret the results to mean the brain is sufficiently occupied by the physical demands of combining motions and forces, so the muscle properties are not the limiting factors for how much force the fingers can &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencecodex.com/study_indicates_brain_capacity_is_limiting_factor_in_muscle_function&quot;&gt;create&lt;/a&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The results of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://bbdl.usc.edu/Papers/Keenan%20et%20al%20JNeuroscience%202009.pdf&quot;&gt;study&lt;/a&gt; were,&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We find that maximal voluntary fingertip force is insensitive to finger movement velocity. This challenges the common hypothesis that the force–velocity properties of muscle are a primary limiting factor of force output during anisometric tasks. Therefore, it is necessary to consider other limiting factors, such as how the musculoskeletal structure of the fingers, the constraints of the task, and the nature of the neural controller conspire to reduce motor output even for ordinary manipulation tasks that combine motion and force production. Our musculature is not redundant in the context of combined motion and force tasks, and may begin to explain the vulnerability of dexterous function to development, aging, and even mild neuromuscular pathology.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Human muscular performance might be markedly inferior to that of chimpanzees and macaque monkeys&lt;/strong&gt; per a study of metabolome evolution conducted in three brain regions and two non-neural tissues from humans, chimpanzees, macaque monkeys, and mice based on over 10,000 hydrophilic compounds by Katarzyna Bozek et.al. in &lt;a href=&quot;http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001871&quot;&gt;2014&lt;/a&gt;. The results suggest that &quot;while humans are characterized by superior cognition, their muscular performance might be markedly inferior to that of chimpanzees and macaque monkeys.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;We found that the evolution of the metabolome largely reflects genetic divergence between species and is not greatly affected by environmental factors. In the human lineage, however, we observed an exceptional acceleration of metabolome evolution in the prefrontal cortical region of the brain and in skeletal muscle. Based on additional behavioral tests, we further show that metabolic changes in human muscle seem to be paralleled by a drastic reduction in muscle strength. The observed rapid metabolic changes in brain and muscle, together with the unique human cognitive skills and low muscle performance, might reflect parallel mechanisms in human evolution.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Per Alan Walker&lt;/strong&gt; in April &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090330200829.htm&quot;&gt;2009&lt;/a&gt; issue of Current Anthropology, &lt;strong&gt;humans may lack the strength of chimps because human nervous system exerts more control over human muscles. Human fine motor control allows to perform delicate and uniquely human tasks while preventing great feats of strength when compared to chimps.&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Walker's hypothesis is derived partly from a finding by primatologist Ann MacLarnon. MacLarnon showed that relative to body mass, chimps have much less grey matter in their spinal cords than humans. Spinal grey matter contains large numbers of motor neurons nerves cells that connect to muscle fibers and regulate muscle movement. Walker proposes that more grey matter in humans means more motor neurons and having more motor neurons means more muscle control.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to Walker, human surplus motor neurons allows to engage smaller portions of muscles at any given time and the finely-tuned motor system makes a wide variety of human tasks possible such as  manipulating small objects, making complex tools or throwing accurately. Due to conservation of energy by using muscle gradually, humans seem to have more physical endurance. &quot;Great apes, with their all-or-nothing muscle usage, are explosive sprinters, climbers and fighters, but not nearly as good at complex motor tasks.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-08-17T04:21:10.643" LastActivityDate="2015-08-17T04:21:10.643" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28472" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28446" CreationDate="2015-07-17T06:55:33.660" Score="6" Body="&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/statement-from-planned-parenthood-on-new-undercover-video&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;an official statement&lt;/a&gt; from Planned Parenthood Vice President of Communications Eric Ferrero (emphasis mine), &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;At several of our health centers, we help patients who want to donate&#xA;  tissue for scientific research, and we do this just like every other&#xA;  high-quality health care provider does -- with &lt;strong&gt;full, appropriate&#xA;  consent from patients&lt;/strong&gt; and under the highest ethical and legal&#xA;  standards. There is no financial benefit for tissue donation for&#xA;  either the patient or for Planned Parenthood.  In some instances,&#xA;  &lt;strong&gt;actual costs, such as the cost to transport tissue to leading research&#xA;  centers, are reimbursed,&lt;/strong&gt; which is standard across the medical field.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In fact, even the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/human-capital/document-vault/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Center for Medical Progress&lt;/a&gt;, the organisation which released the controversial video, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/PP-Mar-Monte-tissue-consent.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;has documented the consent forms used by Planned Parenthood clinics&lt;/a&gt;, claiming that Planned Parenthood did not disclose the reimbursement of costs from medical research labs/middlemen. It is reasonable to conclude that had Planned Parenthood not obtained appropriate consent, the CFMP, being a pro-life organisation, would be targeting that issue instead. Therefore, we can conclude that in the absence of better evidence, Planned Parenthood did in fact correctly obtain consent for abortion tissue donations. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/human-capital/document-vault/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;CFMP's list of documents&lt;/a&gt; also show that Stem Express (a fetal tissue middleman company) paid $50 per fetus from Planned Parenthood's clinics. Advanced Biosciences Resources, another middleman company, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.centerformedicalprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Fee-Schedule-1JAN2015.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;charges research labs between $340 to $550 per fetus&lt;/a&gt;. In the absence of financial statements, and considering that the &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/27442/does-the-red-cross-sell-2-1-billion-worth-of-blood-annually&quot;&gt;Red Cross sells blood at $400 per pint&lt;/a&gt;, we can see that the prices are likely to be within the range of covering for the costs of packaging and transporting the fetal material, much like the Red Cross has costs for packaging and transporting blood. Therefore, it is unlikely that Planned Parenthood receives any significant profit from fetal tissue donation. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In any case, the controversial video has sparked a &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/15/us-usa-plannedparenthood-video-idUSKCN0PP2XD20150715&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Congressional investigation&lt;/a&gt; as well as multiple state investigations, so we will likely receive better sources on this soon. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.257" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T14:09:34.907" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28475" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-17T16:19:31.567" Score="2" ViewCount="421" Body="&lt;p&gt;I keep seeing the claim of several recent suspicious deaths of &quot;natural&quot; doctors being passed around lately.  Often the claim is that they died &quot;mysteriously&quot; after visits by &quot;Feds&quot;, etc.  I've tried to get to the bottom of this but all I find is more and more &quot;conspiracy&quot; type sites.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, here is the claim from a couple of sites...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://thefreethoughtproject.com/5-holistic-heath-doctors-dead-5-missing-month-run-ins-feds/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source 1&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthnutnews.com/fifth-holistic-alternative-doctor-33-found-dead-in-florida-making-5-dead-and-5-more-missing-doctors/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source 2&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://freedomoutpost.com/2015/07/five-doctors-meet-untimely-and-suspicious-deaths-in-past-month-five-more-still-missing/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source 3&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://allnewspipeline.com/8_Disappeared_Dead_Doctors.php&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;Source 4&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Etc.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there anything behind this?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26997" LastActivityDate="2015-07-17T16:19:31.567" Title="Is the US government murdering &quot;natural&quot; doctors?" Tags="|natural-remedies|healthcare|homeopathy|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28476" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28479" CreationDate="2015-07-17T16:52:44.037" Score="44" ViewCount="34287" Body="&lt;p&gt;I've seen this comparison of the ending credits of Rambo III:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Original ending credits:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/gylUa.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Original ending credits&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rewritten(?) ending credits:&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/mqXLa.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Rewritten(?) ending credits&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did this happen, or is it manufactured?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I've found this comparison on &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/FGunay1/status/619070575596687360&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;twitter&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27149" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-19T15:11:06.080" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T01:03:43.787" Title="Have the ending credits of Rambo III been changed?" Tags="|united-states|movies|afghanistan|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28479" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28476" CreationDate="2015-07-17T19:38:58.340" Score="43" Body="&lt;p&gt;Original sources from the time of the movie's release, 1988, state that the film is dedicated to the &quot;gallant people of Afghanistan&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;See the BBC's &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=rNNBAQAAIAAJ&amp;amp;q=%22gallant%20people%20of%20afghanistan%22&amp;amp;dq=%22gallant%20people%20of%20afghanistan%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=0CDwQ6AEwBmoVChMIyZDqy_LixgIVCcOACh0VtgFd&quot;&gt;The Listener volumes 119-120, page 218&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;When he does pitch in it's only in order to rescue the Colonel, before becoming converted to the cause of the 'gallant people of Afghanistan' (to whom the film is dedicated). And if the previous Rambo films have been replays of Vietnam with...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=mtFkAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;q=%22gallant%20people%20of%20afghanistan%22&amp;amp;dq=%22gallant%20people%20of%20afghanistan%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=0CCMQ6AEwAWoVChMIyZDqy_LixgIVCcOACh0VtgFd&quot;&gt;New York Times Film Review 1987-88, page 281&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;Rambo III&quot; Is dedicated &quot;to the gallant people of Afghanistan,&quot; and it clearly intends that its politics be taken seriously. The plot sends Rambo into Afghanistan on a rescue mission after Trautman, who has been educating Afghan freedom...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The New York Times article is from the exact day the movie opened in theaters.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Rambo III was dedicated to the &quot;gallant people of Afghanistan&quot; from the beginning.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1995 book &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=2R53AAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;q=%22gallant%20people%20of%20afghanistan%22&amp;amp;dq=%22gallant%20people%20of%20afghanistan%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=0CCwQ6AEwA2oVChMI5JiuntPlxgIVjCuICh1i7QvH&quot;&gt;Civil War in Pop Culture&lt;/a&gt; further confirms at page 152:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;a note at the end of the movie states that &quot;this film is dedicated to the gallant people of Afghanistan&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The 1994 book &lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com/books?id=FDxuAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;q=%22gallant%20people%20of%20afghanistan%22&amp;amp;dq=%22gallant%20people%20of%20afghanistan%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=0CDoQ6AEwBmoVChMI5JiuntPlxgIVjCuICh1i7QvH&quot;&gt;Vietnam war films: over 600 feature, made-for-TV, pilot, and short movies, 1939-1992, from the United States, Vietnam, France, Belgium, Australia, Hong Kong, South Africa, Great Britain, and other countries&lt;/a&gt; also says at page 355:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Dedicated to the &quot;gallant people of Afghanistan,&quot; the film intends to be taken seriously.   It starts with a prologue showing Rambo's newfound inner peace (&quot;My war is over&quot;). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25579" LastEditorUserId="25579" LastEditDate="2015-07-18T22:04:08.597" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T22:04:08.597" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28483" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28486" CreationDate="2015-07-18T03:37:53.093" Score="20" ViewCount="5563" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw an &quot;advertisement&quot; make the rounds on Facebook, which reads:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Jake was drunk. Josie was drunk. Jake and Josie hooked up. Josie could&#xA;  NOT consent. The next day Jake was charged with RAPE.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;A woman who is intoxicated cannot give her legal consent for sex, so&#xA;  proceeding under these circumstances is a crime.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;It only takes a single day to ruin your life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/j5SPKl.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;Jake and josie hooked up&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;It has the usual barrage of comments by outraged internet-goers standing up for Jake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here is an &lt;a href=&quot;http://louderwithcrowder.com/jake-josie-hook-drunk-josie-just-raped-jake/#prettyPhoto&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;example website with this image&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I have trouble believing this is a real ad campaign to raise awareness, because it seems primarily aimed at highlighting inequity in the respective legal system.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this ad a hoax or political attack on biased laws? Or is it designed to raise awareness.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="25893" LastEditorUserId="25893" LastEditDate="2015-07-23T21:55:04.207" LastActivityDate="2015-07-23T21:55:04.207" Title="Was this image used in an anti-rape advertising campaign?" Tags="|united-states|law|sexual-abuse|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="6" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28485" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-18T08:06:52.983" Score="1" ViewCount="176" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.facebook.com/1404986179713522/photos/a.1405119663033507.1073741829.1404986179713522/1641174956094642/?type=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;This image from Facebook&lt;/a&gt; claims that &quot;George Bush had America on autopilot for more than a year&quot;, followed by a number of presidential vacation days for various American presidents, with the Democrat presidents (Obama: 160, Clinton: 174) having less than half the vacation days as the Republican presidents (Bush: 405, Reagan: 349). &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/RmGSf.jpg&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Did George Bush in fact take over a year of presidential leave, and are the number of leave days for the other presidents accurate?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T08:06:52.983" Title="Did George Bush take over a year of leave as President?" Tags="|united-states|politics|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="0" ClosedDate="2015-07-18T08:35:07.950" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28486" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28483" CreationDate="2015-07-18T09:56:44.170" Score="22" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Yes.&lt;/strong&gt;  But it is out of circulation and no longer used.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/anti-rape-poster-reddit-conversations/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;&amp;quot;How this school's old anti-rape poster sparked new controversy&amp;quot;&lt;/a&gt; in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Dot&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Daily Dot&lt;/a&gt;, an internet community newspaper with an &lt;a href=&quot;http://media.dailydot.com/ethics-policy/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;ethics policy&lt;/a&gt; emphasizing accuracy:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Debbie Conner, the vice president for campus life and student engagement at Coastal Carolina University, confirmed to the Daily Dot that the poster originated from the university. Conner said it was published in 2008 by the Campus Assault Resource Education Support Coalition, made up of students, faculty, and staff at the university. “It went out of circulation in 2008,” she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;“The most disconcerting thing for me is that it’s been posted and people don’t understand it’s not something we use or currently endorse on our campus,” she said.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.coastal.edu/women/officersmembers/dconner.html&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Ms. Conner's web page at Coastal Carolina University&lt;/a&gt; gives her role as &amp;quot; associate vice president for University Relations&amp;quot; not &amp;quot;campus life and student engagement&amp;quot;.  However it would not be unusual for such titles to be fluid.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="826" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-18T09:56:44.170" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28487" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28497" CreationDate="2015-07-19T00:55:16.550" Score="2" ViewCount="8733" Body="&lt;p&gt;A tourism-related twitter account &lt;a href=&quot;https://twitter.com/DiscoverMongl/status/622408160062623744&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;tweeted&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Better to see something once, than to hear about it a thousand times. (Asian Proverb)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is this a phrase that has been used a reasonable number of times in Asian countries before it was called an &quot;Asian Proverb&quot;?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorDisplayName="user16797" LastEditDate="2015-08-05T21:47:11.433" LastActivityDate="2015-08-05T21:47:11.433" Title="Is &quot;Better to see something once, than to hear about it a thousand times&quot; used by Asians?" Tags="|history|quotes|asia|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="4" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28488" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28487" CreationDate="2015-07-19T00:55:16.550" Score="2" Body="&lt;p&gt;There are many cases of the quote being used before the world wide web became a major thing.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.au/books?id=yefcAwAAQBAJ&amp;amp;pg=PA686&amp;amp;dq=%22better%20to%20see%20something%20once%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=0CE8Q6AEwCTgKahUKEwi9p67F9-XGAhXCK6YKHaUyAPk#v=onepage&amp;amp;q=%22better%20to%20see%20something%20once%22&amp;amp;f=false&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1988-1989&lt;/a&gt; has the following:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;General Secretary Gorbachev mentioned on Sunday a wonderful phrase you have in Russian for this: “Better to see something once than to hear about it a hundred times.”&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.au/books?id=IepfAAAAMAAJ&amp;amp;q=%22better%20to%20see%20something%20once%22&amp;amp;dq=%22better%20to%20see%20something%20once%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=0CDcQ6AEwBTgUahUKEwi1n9iz-eXGAhUHJaYKHXxbCRk&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Soviet Literature, Issues 1-6&lt;/a&gt;, from Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1974 - Russian literature&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;has&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/cn7P0.png&quot; alt=&quot;text below&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;... I had, therefore, been prepared, though but theoretically, for the plethora of colours and tints I would see up in space. How true the saying that it's better to see something once than hear it described a hundred times over. Though, in fact, I had not only heard Alexei Leonov's account but had also seen his excellently drawn illustrations to it. Still, when for the first time in my life I looked with my own ...&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.au/books?id=F1IPAQAAMAAJ&amp;amp;q=%22better%20to%20see%20something%20once%22&amp;amp;dq=%22better%20to%20see%20something%20once%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=0CBsQ6AEwADgeahUKEwiPw6vp-uXGAhXlH6YKHVzlBL4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;The Beginner's Guide to C++&lt;/a&gt;, from 1994, by the Russian-sounding name Oleg Yaroshenko also uses the phrase.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://books.google.com.au/books?id=qS7yyasqGt0C&amp;amp;q=%22better%20to%20see%20something%20once%22&amp;amp;dq=%22better%20to%20see%20something%20once%22&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;sa=X&amp;amp;ved=0CB4Q6AEwATgoahUKEwiKgKa2--XGAhUhHKYKHb4oCBE&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;FBIS Daily Report: Central Eurasia, Issues 241-252&lt;/a&gt;, published in 1992, quotes someone saying that both the Russians and the Chinese have this expression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There's a couple of scenarios I can think of:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The phrase is genuine, and is of Russian or Asian origin.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The phrase isn't genuine, but was made popular by US President Ronald Regan. It's a bit reminiscent of &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;Trust, but verify&lt;/a&gt;. However, this would require Russians themselves repeating the new phrase.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;The citations on Google books are bogus, at least with regards to which year they're published in.&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastActivityDate="2015-07-19T00:55:16.550" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28489" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-19T02:18:54.613" Score="6" ViewCount="393" Body="&lt;p&gt;The claim has been repeatedly made on the internet (example: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cupertinotimes.com/automatically-disable-cellular-data-3g-4g-connected-wifi/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;1&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;http://cupertinotimes.com/automatically-disable-cellular-data-3g-4g-connected-wifi/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;2&lt;/a&gt;, &lt;a href=&quot;https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/24852/does-disabling-3g-while-having-wifi-save-battery&quot;&gt;3&lt;/a&gt;* )that when a mobile phone is connected to WiFi, disabling cellular data can extend battery life, as it stops the phone from looking for 3G signals.  Equally, there are several counterclaims to this idea (&lt;a href=&quot;https://community.republicwireless.com/thread/32475&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;example&lt;/a&gt;), which basically claim that when on WiFi, many phones automatically turn off their 3G radios, making this pointless.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Is there evidence to support this, for some or all models of smartphone (or for some or all types of popular smartphone software)?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;*Yes this is an SE answer, but no sources are cited, so I'm treating it as a claim&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20902" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:18:36.040" LastActivityDate="2015-07-19T02:18:54.613" Title="Does turning off cellular data when connected to WiFi extend a phone's battery life?" Tags="|mobile-phones|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="5" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28490" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28476" CreationDate="2015-07-19T02:41:52.770" Score="18" Body="&lt;p&gt;Additional evidence that the &quot;Mujahideen of Afghanistan&quot; image is fake can be seen from a few screencaptures of the &lt;a href=&quot;http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B0004Z33G4&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;2004 release DVD&lt;/a&gt;, which contains the latter line in the image. If the claim is true, this would imply that the DVD has been edited from the original. However, the two captures from the movie are taken at different times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the end of the movie, before the credits roll, Rambo drives out of the scene, revealing an army of Afghan mujahideen riding into the distance. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;At the timing that corresponds to the &quot;Mujahideen&quot; image, it can clearly be seen that there is no text on the screen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kUJGT.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same scene four seconds later shows the &quot;Gallant People&quot; image, and there is text on the screen. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/SFJ96.png&quot; alt=&quot;enter image description here&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Therefore, given that &lt;a href=&quot;https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/a/28479/14582&quot;&gt;none of the news sources when the movie was released&lt;/a&gt; mentioned the &quot;Mujahideen&quot; wording, and the video image of the scene at the point where the alleged &quot;Mujahideen&quot; image was taken has no text overlay, it is reasonable to conclude that the author of the images has dishonestly added the text via image manipulation. &#xA;While this evidence is insufficient in isolation, it is strong evidence when combined with the other answer. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="14582" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2017-04-13T12:46:38.640" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T01:03:43.787" CommentCount="8" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28491" PostTypeId="5" CreationDate="2015-07-19T03:39:53.227" Score="0" Body="&lt;p&gt;A land-locked country neighboured by Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and China.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2015-07-19T16:24:10.357" LastActivityDate="2015-07-19T16:24:10.357" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28492" PostTypeId="4" CreationDate="2015-07-19T03:39:53.227" Score="0" Body="Use this tag for questions about claims based in Afghanistan, or limited to Afghanistan." OwnerUserId="104" LastEditorUserId="104" LastEditDate="2015-07-20T05:51:09.913" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T05:51:09.913" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28497" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28487" CreationDate="2015-07-20T05:51:02.917" Score="8" Body="&lt;p&gt;Almost, but not a thousand times.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In Japanese there is the following proverb:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;百聞は一見に如かず&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;hyakubun wa ikken ni sikazu&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;'A hundred listeninings do not [equal|compare with] one look'.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&quot;One picture is worth a thousand [ten thousand] words.&quot;｜&quot;There's nothing like seeing for oneself.&quot; ｜ &quot;Seeing for oneself is (far) better than hearing about something.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;( &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%99%BE%E8%81%9E%E3%81%AF%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%8B%E3%81%AB%E5%A6%82%E3%81%8B%E3%81%9A#Japanese&quot;&gt;English wiktionary&lt;/a&gt; / &lt;a href=&quot;http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/jn2/187344/m0u/&quot;&gt;major Japanese dictionary&lt;/a&gt; / &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.edrdg.org/jmdictdb/cgi-bin/entr.py?svc=jmdict&amp;amp;sid=&amp;amp;q=2138600&quot;&gt;JMdict&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are 34 hits for this proverb in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kotonoha.gr.jp/shonagon/&quot;&gt;balanced corpus of Japanese&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;We may or may not use &lt;em&gt;a thousand times&lt;/em&gt; in English, but the Japanese proverb literally mentions &lt;em&gt;a hundred times&lt;/em&gt;: 百聞 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.unicode.org/cgi-bin/GetUnihanData.pl?codepoint=767e&quot;&gt;百&lt;/a&gt;: hundred, &lt;a href=&quot;http://jisho.org/search/%E8%81%9E%20%23kanji&quot;&gt;聞&lt;/a&gt;: listen, hear)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Of course it is rather unimportant whether it is exactly a hundred times or not, a hundred times is a lot and 百聞 &lt;a href=&quot;https://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%99%BE%E8%81%9E-612781#E3.83.87.E3.82.B8.E3.82.BF.E3.83.AB.E5.A4.A7.E8.BE.9E.E6.B3.89&quot;&gt;metaphorically stands for&lt;/a&gt; &lt;em&gt;very many times&lt;/em&gt;. The English &lt;em&gt;ten thousand words&lt;/em&gt; works pretty much the same.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Finally, as some Japanese dictionaries already mention, this proverb was imported from the Chinese 百聞不如一見. ( &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?wdrst=1&amp;amp;popup=1&amp;amp;wdqchid=%E7%99%BE%E8%81%9E%E4%B8%8D%E5%A6%82%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%8B&quot;&gt;Chinese-English dictionary&lt;/a&gt; / &lt;a href=&quot;http://tw.m.18dao.net/%E6%88%90%E8%AA%9E%E8%A9%9E%E5%85%B8/%E7%99%BE%E8%81%9E%E4%B8%8D%E5%A6%82%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%8B&quot;&gt;Chinese dictionary&lt;/a&gt; / &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E7%99%BE%E8%81%9E%E4%B8%8D%E5%A6%82%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%8B&quot;&gt;wiktionary&lt;/a&gt; )&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Note that Japanese uses the same &lt;em&gt;kanji&lt;/em&gt; (Chinese characters) but in a different order, as well as some Japanese-only glyphs. This is to adjust for the different grammar and word order of Japanese.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;According to wiktionary, this proverb exists in Korean and Vietnamese as well, which is not surprising at all considering the major influence of China and the Chinese culture in the past.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="11948" LastEditorUserId="11948" LastEditDate="2015-07-20T06:34:52.680" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T06:34:52.680" CommentCount="0" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28499" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="27274" CreationDate="2015-07-20T07:34:13.067" Score="1" Body="&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Research into whether atheists and/or non-religious people as a group earn more than religious people is inconclusive per Laurence R. Iannaccone in 1998&lt;/strong&gt; since religious data is limited and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.colorado.edu/Economics/morey/4999Ethics/Religion/Iannaccone1998_Edward.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;unreliable&lt;/a&gt;. “Economics is fundamentally atheistic. Religious beliefs, practices, and behavior play no role in the life of homo economicus.” &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Effects of religion on wealth accumulation&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Religion is defined as &quot;any shared set of beliefs, activities, and institutions premised upon faith in supernatural forces&quot;.  &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;There are two reasons by which religion and wealth are related.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Religion affects wealth indirectly through its strong effect on processes such as educational attainment, marriage, decisions to have kids and women's decisions to work or stay home with their kids. Religion affects these behaviors and processes, and they, in turn, affect household income, expenses and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/20687/1/dp1390.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;saving&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;Religion can affect wealth directly by influencing intergenerational processes, social relations and orientations toward work and money. Intergenerational processes (the transfer of both religious ideas and wealth from parents to children) and social relations (contacts made through religious group who can provide information, capital and other resources) are &lt;a href=&quot;http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&amp;amp;cpsidt=15178817&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;important&lt;/a&gt;. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Family processes such as family size, sibship size are likely to shape adult's wealth &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12962061&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;accumulation&lt;/a&gt;. For example, in explaining the unusually high levels of wealth among Jews in USA, researchers note that in addition to their high educational attainment, their low fertility contributes to wealth accumulation across the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.soc.duke.edu/~lkeister/religionandwealth.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;generations&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Data in support that religious people are more wealthy:&lt;/strong&gt; According to a study from 2015, Christians hold the largest amount of wealth (55% of the total world wealth), followed by Muslims (5.8%) , Hindus (3.3%) and Jewish (1.1%). According to the same study it was found that adherents under the classification no religion or other religions hold about 34.8% of the total global &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.knightfrank.com/wealthreport&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;wealth&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Effects of intelligence/critical thinking on religion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;An atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in God and/or finds the very concept of God meaningless or incoherent. There are somewhere between 500 million and 750 million non-believers in God &lt;a href=&quot;http://pitweb.pitzer.edu/academics/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/2014/12/FAC-Zuckerman-Sociology-Compass.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;worldwide&lt;/a&gt;.&quot; A meta analysis of 63 studies finds a reliable negative relationship between intelligence and &lt;a href=&quot;http://psr.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/08/02/1088868313497266.full&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;religiosity&lt;/a&gt; and analytic thinking can decrease religious &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.ubc.ca/2012/04/26/analytic-thinking-can-decrease-religious-belief-ubc-study/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;belief&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Data in support that no religion/other religion people are wealthy&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;About 38% of atheists and agnostics have an annual family income of at least $75,000, compared with 29% of the general public. Those who say their religion is “nothing in particular” line up more closely with the general public on family income &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise-demographics/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;levels&lt;/a&gt; in USA.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;&lt;p&gt;The GDP of countries generally correlates negatively with their religiosity, i.e. the wealthier a population is the less religious it is. Statistical studies show that the poorest countries tend to be more religious. Belief in God declines in more developed countries and is concentrated in Europe in countries such as Sweden (64% nonbelievers), Denmark (48%), France (44%) and Germany (42%). In contrast, the incidence of atheism in most sub-Saharan countries is below &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201005/why-atheism-will-replace-religion&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;1%&lt;/a&gt;. Religions may play a more active social, moral and cultural role in those countries. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Not all countries conform neatly to the correlation between rising secularism and prosperity — Italy and Ireland, for example, are well-off First World countries where religiosity remains high, while China and Vietnam, whose regimes are officially atheist, are poor nations that are also among the most &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/do-countries-lose-religion-as-they-gain-wealth-1.1310451&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;secular&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;ol start=&quot;3&quot;&gt;&#xA;&lt;li&gt;North America will have the greatest proportion of people in the ultra wealthy category of the world and Europe as a region has a slightly greater wealth portion of the world of 32% than does America &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.zerohedge.com/article/detailed-look-global-wealth-distribution&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;31%&lt;/a&gt;. U.S.A is the most dysfunctional prosperous democracy overall since it is an exceptional outlier with its high level of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP07398441_c.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;religiosity&lt;/a&gt;. Statistics also show that the poorest American states tend to be the most religious and the richest tend to be the least &lt;a href=&quot;http://hubpages.com/hub/Religion-Atheism-and-Wealth&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;religious&lt;/a&gt;.  &lt;/li&gt;&#xA;&lt;/ol&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="26648" LastEditorUserId="26648" LastEditDate="2015-07-20T09:16:38.913" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T09:16:38.913" CommentCount="2" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28501" PostTypeId="1" CreationDate="2015-07-20T12:13:06.263" Score="4" ViewCount="320" Body="&lt;p&gt;It has been claimed (see below for example) that America's relatively high prosperity is the result of slavery, which enabled the development of American capitalism, by using slaves as, well, capital, in various financial endeavors, which in turn, allowed for the financial development of the Industrial Revolution.  Is this a historically/economically correct claim?  Is slavery the reason that America today enjoys relative wealth and prosperity?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Example Claims:&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.vox.com/2014/9/10/6109509/half-has-never-been-told-by-edward-baptist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;American prosperity was built on slavery and torture&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/03/how-the-slave-trade-built-america/?_r=2&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;How the Slave Trade Built America&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerDisplayName="user20902" LastEditorDisplayName="user20902" LastEditDate="2015-07-20T12:18:21.660" LastActivityDate="2015-07-20T12:18:21.660" Title="Is America's prosperity the result of slavery?" Tags="|united-states|history|economics|slavery|" AnswerCount="0" CommentCount="8" ClosedDate="2015-07-20T12:18:47.307" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28504" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28552" CreationDate="2015-07-20T13:15:02.683" Score="23" ViewCount="3496" Body="&lt;p&gt;Popular Christian author Nancy Leigh DeMoss said the following on &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.reviveourhearts.com/radio/revive-our-hearts/god-s-patience-1/?flavour=mobile&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;her radio show&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;One hundred years ago Messina was a prosperous, gorgeous coastal city on the Italian island of Sicily, just off the toe of the boot there. This city of Messina had a population of about 150,000, but it had become a wicked and irreligious city. On Christmas day of 1908, a local newspaper in Messina published a blasphemous parody against God. In that article they dared God to make Himself known by sending an earthquake.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Exactly three days later, December the 28th, 1908, at 5:30 in the morning, a huge earthquake and a massive tidal wave came and utterly destroyed Messina and dozens of nearby towns.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The newspaper is not named and I find mention of this only in other sermon-related sites. Is there any historical evidence for this claim and its timing relative to the earthquake?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The timing of the earthquake itself is clear from history, but on this newspaper article I've found nothing yet.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27178" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2016-02-15T21:24:23.617" Title="Was Messina destroyed by earthquake three days after local newspaper dared God to do so?" Tags="|christianity|natural-disasters|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="12" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28505" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28506" CreationDate="2015-07-20T13:57:13.413" Score="27" ViewCount="5506" Body="&lt;p&gt;I saw &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.healthy-holistic-living.com/essential-oils-stop-cancer-in-its-tracks.html&quot;&gt;this implausible claim&lt;/a&gt; today:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Even scientists now recognize the power agents that exist within some essential oils which stops cancer spreading, and which induces cancerous cells to close themselves down. Their disease-preventing ability is no longer doubted, especially for cancer.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The site makes claims about frankincense oil in particular:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Frankincense separates the ‘brain’ of the cancerous cell – the nucleus – from the ‘body’ – the cytoplasm, and closes down the nucleus to stop it reproducing corrupted DNA codes,” says Suhail.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Frankincense oil is effective because it contains monoterpenes, compounds which have the ability to help eradicate cancerous cells at the onset of their development, as well as their progression stages, making it ideal for those who discover their cancer regardless of when it’s found.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;  &#xA;  &lt;p&gt;Treatment with frankincense could eradicate the cancerous cells alone and let the others live.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here are &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancertutor.com/essentialoils/&quot;&gt;another&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cancercompass.com/message-board/message/all,76272,0.htm&quot;&gt;two&lt;/a&gt; sites I found with a quick search that make similar claims for frankincense.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Can frankincense do anything to treat (not just manage symptoms) cancer?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="21196" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-20T14:13:32.377" LastActivityDate="2015-07-26T03:27:14.833" Title="Does Frankincense cure cancer?" Tags="|cancer|" AnswerCount="1" CommentCount="9" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28506" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28505" CreationDate="2015-07-20T15:44:44.717" Score="40" Body="&lt;p&gt;Ok, there appears to be something to this. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The description of how they claim it works is pure word salad. Nevertheless I've been surprised checking this out, this would appear to be one of those rare cases where they've picked up on something that's actually getting used in cancer treatment. It does not cure cancer but it may be part of a useful treatment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So, on to the science. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Frankincense oil derived from Boswellia carteri induces tumor cell specific cytotoxicity&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/9/6/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/9/6/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Frankincense essential oil prepared from hydrodistillation of Boswellia sacra gum resins induces human pancreatic cancer cell death in cultures and in a xenograft murine model&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/12/253/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6882/12/253/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now these 2 are about killing cancer cells in the lab and we all know the problem with that:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://xkcd.com/1217/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/zYk77.png&quot; alt=&quot;xkcd: shooting cells&quot; title=&quot;Now, if it selectively kills cancer cells in a petri dish, you can be sure it&amp;#39;s at least a great breakthrough for everyone suffering from petri dish cancer.&quot;&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Now I'm going to focus on &quot;monoterpene perillyl alcohol&quot;, one of the monoterpenes in question. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;With a quick search I was able to find this trial:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;In favor:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Efficacy of monoterpene perillyl alcohol upon survival rate of patients with recurrent glioblastoma[brain tumor]&quot; &#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00432-010-0873-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00432-010-0873-0&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Patients with recurrent primary GBM treated with POH survived significantly longer (log rank test, P &amp;lt; 0.0001) than untreated group.&lt;/strong&gt; Patients with recurrent primary GBM in deep location survived significantly longer than with lobar location (log rank test, P &amp;lt; 0.0001). Median survival rate of secondary GBM was 11.2 months, longer (log rank test, P = 0.0366) than primary GBM (5.9 months). Radiographic improvement and reduction of corticosteroid dosage (36%) further associated with a delay towards progression.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So &lt;em&gt;specific&lt;/em&gt; monoterpenes may actually be useful in cancer treatment. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;And also this, against:&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Failure to demonstrate chemoprevention by the monoterpene perillyl alcohol during early rat hepatocarcinogenesis: a cautionary note.&quot;&#xA;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11023545&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11023545&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;  &lt;p&gt;In conclusion, &lt;strong&gt;PA exerted no detectable chemopreventive effect in the early stages of rat hepatocarcinogenesis. It rather exerted a PB-like tumor promoting activity.&lt;/strong&gt; These data argue against a recommendation of PA as a chemopreventive agent for healthy humans.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;So you probably don't want to take it routinely while healthy. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="23087" LastEditorUserId="243" LastEditDate="2015-07-26T03:27:14.833" LastActivityDate="2015-07-26T03:27:14.833" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28509" PostTypeId="1" AcceptedAnswerId="28510" CreationDate="2015-07-20T20:49:08.837" Score="62" ViewCount="25568" Body="&lt;p&gt;Recently, I've often seen this image claiming that some people are dying elephant tusks to prevent individuals from hunting them. &#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/telY3.png&quot; alt=&quot;elephant with pink tusks&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Has this actually been done? Is it common?&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Initially, this seemed a fair idea. However, implementing a staining program seems extremely complicated and, probably, prohibitively expensive.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;First of all, the dye should be absolutely unharmful for the elephant and the environment around him; researchers do not know how a different color of the tusks could affect the elephant's life.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The dye should be capable of staining the whole length of the elephant's tusk, which protrudes into the skull. And of course, tusks grow too; dye should obviously be reapplied as soon as new growth reappears: even a small quantity of ivory holds great value to a poacher.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Moreover, a delivery method not requiring anestethics should be found: they are expensive and tranquilizing an animal involves risk to the people and the animal. &lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="27096" LastEditorUserId="23" LastEditDate="2015-07-21T01:01:06.877" LastActivityDate="2015-07-27T08:15:11.150" Title="Does dyeing elephant tusks help discourage poachers?" Tags="|biology|zoology|" AnswerCount="2" CommentCount="1" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28510" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="28509" CreationDate="2015-07-20T23:51:26.420" Score="82" Body="&lt;p&gt;I cannot speak to the viability of dying tusks, but it does appear that the photo cited in the question is a fake, as noted on the blog &lt;a href=&quot;https://staintuskstostopelephantpoaching.wordpress.com/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;staintuskstostopelephantpoaching.wordpress.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Here's the original photo for reference:&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;&lt;img src=&quot;https://i.stack.imgur.com/kY24C.png&quot; alt=&quot;white elephant&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;This blog also houses what may be the original source of the proposal, with its first post dated Dec 29, 2012 &lt;a href=&quot;https://staintuskstostopelephantpoaching.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/could-we-fight-elephant-poaching-by-staining-the-tusks/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;Could we fight elephant poaching by staining the tusks?&lt;/a&gt;, as well as a reasoned explanation of the problems of this approach dated Mar 28, 2013, &lt;a href=&quot;https://staintuskstostopelephantpoaching.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/a-conservation-biologists-take-on-dyeing-elephant-tusks/&quot; rel=&quot;noreferrer&quot;&gt;A conservation biologist’s take on dyeing elephant tusks&lt;/a&gt;. To quote from that post (which quotes Dr. Sam Wasser)&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Thanks for your note. It’s an interesting idea. The big concern is the&#xA;time it will take to stain the tusks of 400,000 skittish elephants and&#xA;the time it will take for the stain to find it’s [sic] way into the tusk.&#xA;Most likely, permanent stain will have to be delivered by food and&#xA;grow into the tusk. You can’t immobilize 400,000 elephants to stain&#xA;their tusks as it is too risky for the elephants and the people doing&#xA;the immobilizations. Thus, it would take many years to achieve your&#xA;goals, if it is even possible. Given the urgency of the situation&#xA;(30,000-45,000 elephants now being killed annually), we need a plan&#xA;that stops as much of the killing as possible, as soon as possible.&#xA;(This is, of course, in addition to programs aimed at decreasing&#xA;demand.) Our program aims to achieve these objectives by using DNA&#xA;assignment to identify all major poaching hotspots across Africa for&#xA;targeted law enforcement.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;Dr. Samuel Wasser&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Director of Center for Conservation Biology&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;Research Professor, Department of Biology&lt;br /&gt;&#xA;University of Washington, Seattle&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;The same blog goes on to discuss different problems developing and administering an effective dye.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;I could find no source to suggest this was actually being done anywhere in the wild.&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;" OwnerUserId="22258" LastEditorUserId="-1" LastEditDate="2020-06-17T09:41:41.730" LastActivityDate="2015-07-21T11:48:08.033" CommentCount="3" ContentLicense="CC BY-SA 3.0" />
  <row Id="28511" PostTypeId="2" ParentId="15512" CreationDate="2015-07-21T04:36:35.747" Score="3" Body="&lt;p&gt;Per Philip Yaffe in &lt;a href=&quot;http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=2043156&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;2011&lt;/a&gt;, &quot;In the 1960s Professor Albert Mehrabian and colleagues at the University of California, Los Angles (UCLA), conducted studies into human communication patterns. When their results were published in professional journals in 1967, they were widely circulated across mass media in abbreviated form. Most people forgot about what they really meant because the figures were so easy to remember. Hence, &lt;strong&gt;the myth that communication is only 7 percent verbal and 93 percent non-verbal was born&lt;/strong&gt;.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;The fact is Professor Mehrabian's research had nothing to do with giving speeches, because it was based on the information that could be conveyed in a single word. Subjects were asked to listen to a recording of a woman's voice saying the word &quot;maybe&quot; in three different ways to convey liking, neutrality, and disliking. They were also shown photos of the woman's face conveying the same three emotions. They were then asked to guess the emotions heard in the recorded voice, seen in the photos, and both together. The result was that the subjects correctly identified the emotions 50 percent more often from the photos than from the voice.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;In the second study, subjects were asked to listen to nine recorded words, three meant to convey liking (honey, dear, thanks), three to convey neutrality (maybe, really, oh), and three to convey disliking (don't, brute, terrible). Each word was pronounced three different ways. When asked to guess the emotions being conveyed, it turned out that the subjects were more influenced by the tone of voice than by the words themselves.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&#xA;&#xA;&lt;p&gt;&quot;Professor Mehrabian combined the statistical results of the two studies and came up with the famously misused—rule that communication is only 7 percent verbal and 93 percent non-verbal. The non-verbal component was made up of body language (55 percent) and tone of voice (38 percent). Actually, it is incorrect to call this a &quot;rule,&quot; being the result of only two studies. Scientists usually insist on many more corroborating studies before calling anythi